'Why I'll never release my Andrew Tate interview' | Chris Williamson

Why don't we start at the beginning? Mm-hmm. For the uninitiated, and there can't be many of the uninitiated, tell us what you do and how you found yourself in a position where you're living with men on a tour bus for weeks. Great question. Yeah, yeah, me and men, my favourite topic. So I am a podcaster. For a long time I ran nightclubs in the north-east of England for anyone that went out in Newcastle between the... Years of 2008 and probably 2021. Good years. Likely strong, very strong. Yeah. The Olympic sport of Newcastle is drinking. And I was a big part of forging that scene. And then I started a podcast called Modern Wisdom. I started it when I was 30 and still living in Newcastle. And then at 34, just after COVID finished, I moved to America and tried to see if I could talk to people on the internet as a job full time. And it turned out that that went. Pretty well, and then last year I was the number eight podcast in the world. I was going to say, it's not just pretty well. I mean, you've had a billion streams. You were in the 2022 Spotify Wrapped Top Ten Podcast Globally, number eight. I mean, there's a lot of podcasts out there of people talking to people on the internet. That's correct. So for Cutthrough... What is it that you deliver to people that you think is resonating so much? British accent. British, number one. British accent. British accent. Primarily British accent. British accent, good hairline. And you're living in the States, so that is like... It's a competitive advantage. It's a massive... The single greatest form of international fraud is having an English accent in America. It really is. You can go over there with three GCSEs and an ankle monitor and they will make you a university professor. It's crazy. It's crazy. Yeah, look, I worked real hard. I think... For all that there's criticisms about some parts of British culture, the humility, the tall poppy thing, it really encourages you to work hard. And that blue collar thing, which I definitely got from being in the northeast of the UK, has gone well. And I've done 1,200 episodes in eight years. So that's quite a high work rate. And now I'm back here living on a bus with some blokes. So we'll get to that in just a moment. Why did you decide to do a podcast? There you are promoting, you're a nightclub promoter and you're working in the nightlife industry and blah, blah. Why did you go, right, I'm going to do a podcast that's called Modern Wisdom and interviews, what, philosophers and psychologists? Why did you do that? What was the motivation? I got to the end of my 20s and like a lot of young men, and perhaps women as well, I... I felt a little bit lost. I call it the manopause for guys, the sort of quarter-life century where maybe you've achieved a little bit of success in the kind of way society tells you that you should be satisfied with. Maybe a bit of freedom or something and a bit of self-determination and maybe you've got some goals or some status. But there's, I don't know, it doesn't really feel like it's touching you. It's sort of passing through you in a way. And I've done that. Done Take Me Out, Love Island, DJ, commercial male model, club promo. Like all of the red flags you don't want in your future son-in-law. I'd managed to accumulate them all like catching Pokemon. Sure. And. Despite the fact that that was like real good and fun and everyone said that it should be great It was sort of it didn't really feel like it was touching me So I decided hey, I'm listening to people like Sam Harris and Alain de Botton from the School of Life These really interesting insightful thinkers that I know surrogate patriarchs teaching me stuff about what a good life means and Being on the front door of a nightclub, there isn't a massive amount of room for that. People want their VIP wristband and to find out where the pretty girls are. And... I figured if I'm learning so much from watching this, if I start my own, maybe I'll be able to learn even more. Most, I'm... It's not a midlife crisis, I guess, because it was quarter-life, but maybe a lot of men buy an electric guitar or a soft-top car as part of their expression of freedom. You started a podcast. That is the 2018 equivalent of doing it, yes, exactly. White guys used to start playing guitar, and now they start a podcast. I guess. Why do you think it's so popular? That is a good question. Like being honest about it, that is a good question. I think it's the show that didn't exist that I wanted. And that was one that looked at high performance, blended with how do I live a good life, blended with just like what are the interesting things about the world that I've always wanted to learn about. And... There's a degree of earnestness and vulnerability that I've been able to get out of my guests, men and women and group episodes and comedians and Matthew McConaughey and Bugsy Malone and stories from people that you know and that you don't and insights that were really, really hard to find. I really care about it. You talk about, particularly when it comes to maleness and male loneliness, you said those two worlds of men being told to man up, which has its uses, and men being told to open up, that is a really difficult line to pass. And the problem of male loneliness is one that is growing and the difficulty of what it means to act like a man is changing all the while. And I wonder to what extent you think it's got to do with the options available for a 25-year-old these days rather than starting their own podcast. 43% of 25-year-olds live with a parent. It was 25% in the 1990s. And 35% of those are men. Much, much more pronounced than in women, where it's 22%. Why do you think that is, and what problems do you think that brings with it? I think that the last couple of decades have been really great for a lot of groups. Women have flourished socioeconomically. I don't think the same has necessarily been quite so true for men and boys. The education system isn't... Quite as aligned for men as it is, boys as it is for girls, that being told to sit still for six hours in a classroom and not be rambunctious, the kind of disruption that boys tend to do, just it seems when we take the brakes off of boys and girls and allow them to compete fairly in education. Girls outperform. All the time. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're more conscientious on average, which means they hand their homework in, they're able to plan more, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The education system, it's not like it has been built to serve girls and allow them to outperform. But when the brakes are taken off, they're just more adept at it. And that means that... Boys and men have started to fall behind. And yeah, I think the loneliness thing is a huge, huge problem. Everyone's got that issue. But on average, men have weaker social ties and fewer friends. than women do. In 1990, the number of people who said they have zero close friends that they could call on an emergency was 3%. And now in the 2020s, it's 15%, 5x. So these are big shifts. Boys and men have been hitting the brunt of that. There's a lot of talk at the moment, of course, about young people not in education, employment or training, a million of them, 16% youth unemployment. Thank And a narrative has grown around that which says they don't want to do tough jobs. They don't want to do tough things. Or... They're not able to take the risks that you took in starting a podcast you and seeing how it went and seeing if it, you know, you could have done it to 70 people on YouTube and that would have been it, end of, game over. very Where do you think the truth lies between those truisms? Yeah, I certainly get the sense that there is a risk aversion among young people. much. They are getting their driver's licenses later. They are moving out of the house later. They are less likely to go and find a job. They are less likely to approach a girl. I think men who are under the age of 25. About a third of them say that they have never approached a woman in person. And you could say maybe this is post-MeToo, maybe that's some rightful concern about making a woman feel uncomfortable. Maybe that's even adaptive, that women don't want to be made to feel uncomfortable. But on average, when you poll everyone, everyone wants to be approached more. So you have this very strange sort of shifting tectonic plate underneath everyone. And the risk-taking thing is... Hard. When you feel like you're being scrutinised by the internet, your mistakes are going to be concreted for the rest of time. I used to run a bar crawl called Carnage, and this t-shirt bar crawl had such leery tasks on the back. Got off with three randoms, swapped shoes with someone I didn't know, stuff like that. You can't get away with that kind of behaviour, or anything close to that. Do you think you should be able to, when you say get away with that kind of behaviour? I mean, without social consequences, swapping shoes at random seems relatively harmless to me. Kissing three people also, you know, if you're 18 and you're at university, I don't know if there's that much harm in that. But even within saying that, you can feel like, should you, is this allowed? Like, we don't quite know where the social mores are anymore. And if there's this panopticon of everybody having a phone in their hand, your failures feel much more visceral. And I think this is one of the big problems, that when you fail, it's not a passing comment that kind of gets forgotten. So what's the answer to that, do you think? Because no one's going to take a phone out of your hand. Everyone's got them now and the internet exists. I wonder if there's an attitude that says, well, what's that? There's a quote. A man has two lives. The first starts when you realise he only has one. That you just say, well, to hell with all of that. I don't care. I'm going to go for it. I'm going to go for it. Yeah. I mean, go for it doesn't mean I'm going to be a Larry dick. It means I'm going to believe in myself. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, there's lots of things that are great about the UK, but one of the things I wish that I could take away is the tall poppy syndrome, speaking of which, that... It has a degree of skepticism. Everybody knows this. If you seem to be consciously trying very hard to sort of pursue ambition, to actively improve yourself, it can be criticized as being a bit... Cringe, bit keen. In Ireland, it's called notions. Oh, he's got notions of himself. Thinking above your station. Like, stay where you are. You shouldn't believe too much because you don't want to disappoint yourself. And I wish that I could get rid of that. You know, since being in America, that enthusiasm is something that I wish that I could do and bring back over. Well, some of your critics apply that to you too because they say, well, who are you to be discussing these kinds of things and interviewing these kinds of people? Wonderful question. And you, you know, allow people to... To say stuff that is controversial without apparent necessary criticism. I've heard people describe you as a kind of gateway to the manosphere. Oh, yeah. You're the one you go past in order to meet Andrew Taylor. It's interesting. It depends on who you listen to because The Guardian would say something like that. But if you were to read people on the internet, after I did Tucker Carlson's podcast last year, a number of articles coming out saying that I was riddled with feminist lies and infected with blue-pilled thinking. After the manosphere documentary came out from Louis Theroux, the only person from that entire documentary that I've ever published on the podcast, was Louis Theroux himself. The Manosphere weren't tweeting that next day about the actual podcast, about the series. The entire Manosphere agreed that the single worst part of Louis Theroux's documentary was me bringing him on my show the day after that. I've brought Bernie Sanders on, Hunter Biden on, Cenk Uygur, Ana Kasparian. This is not the proto-right-wing, xenophobic breeding ground, like some sort of training camp, that people want to levy at me. However, If you see a guy that presents like whatever this is talking about men's problems on the internet, the pattern matching. Detection is so hyper attuned that the only accusation that can be levied is you're talking about the problems of men and boys That means that you're not talking about the problems of some other minority group That is more deserving and because we have a world of zero sum empathy at the moment That means that you are purposefully stepping on more deserving groups And we're going to accuse you of having some very horrible views that have come along for the ride as well Yeah, I don't think it's true the i paper wrote Having listened to your podcast, the writer says you'll have noticed, not the quotes, sexism rolling in waves off much of Williamson's content. So not you specifically, but of much of the content. What would you say to that? That iPaper was a world championship in mental gymnastics. It was unbelievable. I noticed that the entire article didn't bring up any of the people that I'd had on the left. Ezra Klein, who is kind of about as unimpeachable for a left-leaning guy, good example of what masculinity looks like on the left. We do three hours with him. Fantastic conversation. Donald Trump, I turned down during the 2024 election. You turned down an interview with Donald Trump? Correct. Why? I didn't feel comfortable about having that conversation with him. Wow. He was already doing the rounds. He'd done a lot of my friends' podcasts. He'd done Theo. He'd done Joe. He'd done... And I was like, what have I really got to add to this conversation? I'm only going to get an hour with him because he's obviously really busy. And say what you want about Trump. He is a generational communicator. Am I going to be able to Sith Lord Jedi my way through that barrier between then and now? So, no. But the ex-president's son that he went up against, he's been on. Bernie Sanders, a guy who's been in U.S. government longer than I've been alive and is the proto-opposite of that, he's been on. So, I mean, the iPaper, again, You can look at the comments on the Facebook post to get a sense check for what people in the real world actually think about my content. People in the real world is an interesting phrase. I mean, you know. Anyone who puts themselves out there to any extent really will face some degree of pushback. Does it get you? Does it upset you? Does it anger you? It seems like you don't like it, I think it's fair to say. Would that be fair? I don't think anybody enjoys being misrepresented. The reason that it's been... I don't even, I don't think about it all that much, but most of the, I haven't had that much pushback. Yeah. Uh, the reason that it feels a little unfair is I'm really trying my hardest to do the fair and balanced thing. Like just look at the list of guests that I've brought on the show. Look at the way that we talk about the problems of boys and men and of girls as well. I'm desperately trying to advocate for the problems of men and boys. In a balanced way, that doesn't turn tons of people off, that isn't just more slop coming out that tries to do the gender divide thing, and then when you're accused of doing the exact thing that you've kind of contorted yourself into knots in an attempt to try and avoid, ugh, come on dude, like, it can be exasperating, but nowhere near enough to stop me from doing it. The, uh, I'm still... I'm still working out the decision to not interview Donald Trump during the election campaign. Because from my world, you know, as a journalist who's done legacy media the whole time, that is like, I mean, I would fall over backwards to do an interview with Donald Trump. What do you think the remainder of my career on the internet, when any topic was brought up to do with how partisan and non-partisan I am, what would the footnote of that be and how they have done that podcast? Well that isn't that In the manner in which you then interview them. So I would interview him by challenging him on this and saying, you said that when, but this is what you've done now. You're an expert interviewer who's got professional media training for a long time. I think I would say, actually the reverse is now happening. You were in government for ages. I was in government for two years. People like yourself, who have this enormous platform, are interviewing those people in a way in which, arguably, some might argue, is resonating more with real people than the old-fashioned, head-to-head political interview. I'd love to see Rogan host the next presidential debate. I think that'd be hilarious. I think it'd be really interesting. I think it would expose an awful lot more that matters about what the character of our future US president Would show. But look, if I'd done it, there is no level of purity from a journalistic integrity and capability standpoint. Also, he is, again, say what you want about him, like a generational communicator. Me as what might be the Black Belt podcast on 1200 episodes, isn't that great? Stepping up against like Royce Gracie of the like Fugazi political speech world. Like how many people has he run rings around? Do you think you'd just be steamrolled? It would be very difficult for me to get to something which is novel, that would be a genuine insight like that. But again, the issue that someone like the iPaper would come up with is, well, how does this fit into our prescribed gingerbread man? Stencil of who this person is supposed to be. You'll notice that JD Vance has been doing the rounds an awful lot. He hasn't been on the podcast. I recorded with Andrew Tate. Didn't release it. Oh really? Why? Because when we recorded it, it was during COVID. He was talking about a lot of inflammatory stuff to do with COVID. That would have got the channel taken down. Then when that would have been allowed and I could have just flagrantly benefited from this two hour podcast with the most famous man on the planet, who apparently I'm loosely affiliated with, despite the fact that he really, really does not like me or any of his friends. I decided not to publish it to benefit off the back of like his notoriety because I'm like, I don't think that this adds value to the conversation. So no matter how many times the this is gateway drug to the manosphere, you talk to Jordan Peterson about the problems of boys and men. I'm like, dude, if I if Chris Williamson and Modern Wisdom is the problem that you have with modern male communication, we are living in a pretty good world. Would you interview Trump now? I'd be much more interested to speak to him now, especially today, but I feel how much less inflammatory it would be to have that, because it was pivotal, it was such an important time. On that sort of debate, discussion about legacy media, new media, the podcast world that has grown exponentially, do you see yourself as the challenger to this world, or do you see us as a separate entity entirely, and the audiences can decide? Great question. In some ways, you guys are now Doing what you always did previously very well and taking some of the elements of what sort of the new world of media is and upgrading it, I would be much more concerned if I was somebody like the iPaper or someone that doesn't have that same kind of new media presence. Very interesting. You're not a subscriber, then. To the iPaper. I've managed to get around the paywall to read the article. That's a lot of good. The interesting thing I've noticed is increasingly, Interestingly, internet... Gossip and drama has actually become the source of headlines for mainstream media, and that's very interesting to me But yeah, as soon as you remove the gatekeepers people were able to vote with their feet Yeah, you know the the shows and the topics that people are interested in like let's not forget as well when we're talking about like Positioning and young men and all the rest of it. I have like planted my flag in the ground of being So pro-emotions, so pro-men feeling their feelings, trying to get in touch, like conversations about male suicide, male mental health, what's happening with young girls, what's the issue with... One of the biggest episodes that I've done was with a woman called Dr. Sarah Hill talking about the impact of hormonal birth control on women's mental health, like learning about the luteal phase and how women should work with their cycle, So much stuff. This is not information that would be readily available if you were just chasing clicks through typical legacy media. It's too niche. But it turns out that that niche is actually really, really widespread. So we're able to A-B test a lot of stuff in new media. And it's cool. I really love being in this industry. I think it's great. What's the wisest thing that you've had on the show that's stayed with you, that has kept you going or grounded? Because it must be quite a weird thing. There you are standing on nightclubs in Newcastle and now you've got literally a tour. It's true, yeah. I was on stage at the Apollo a couple of weeks ago. I mean, that's pretty mental. It's a very unnerving journey in some ways, but it's really cool. And what people take away from that is that if you are some kid from a very boring part of a very boring town in a very boring country, like Stockton-on-Tees, right, in Cleveland, Area that doesn't even exist technically anymore. You're halfway between Durham and Yorkshire. If you decide to commit yourself to something and you keep going, there is an option out there for you to win. So a couple of things. One thing that really, really comes to mind, and I'm just going to decide to hit another third rail because why not? The iPaper needs some more material. Really real. John Peterson said to me, and I brought it up to him. Originally when he wrote his 12 Rules for Life and then 12 More Rules, He answered a Quora question, which was, what are some of the most important rules that you should have for life? And he had 44 when he first wrote them. And there was one that missed off both of the books that I thought that he should have put in. And it was, do not practice what you don't want to become. And I think that is, from habit setting, we are what we do, right? The way that you spend your days tends to kind of influence your self-perception over time. You know, if you train badly and eat badly for long enough, you will see yourself as a fat person, right? Because eventually, in the mirror, you'll go, well, I'm like a... The response to that, of course, is, well, there's nothing wrong with being a fat person. I'm not making a moral judgment about it. I'm simply saying that you can say, you can look in the mirror and go, well, I'm now a fat person, right? All right, that. And if you are not wanting that to be your self-image, impartially, morally, don't practice what you don't want to become. If you don't want to be a negative person, don't say negative things. There is no such thing as not drilling a habit. And for instance, people assume that inaction has no price, that not doing something is kind of an impartial strategy. But not doing something is still doing something. Apathy is a choice. Yes. And if you're... Uh, vacillating about a decision that you're going to make for a very long time. By the way, that was a big thing in, in, in politics, in government. The decision not to do something. Yes. Massive issue. Yeah, but the, there is no such thing as inaction. So don't practice what you don't want to become. If you want to be a more decisive person, you have to make decisions. I guess, so the people listening to this, watching this, who, uh, you know, young males struggling with who they are, what they want to be, can't, you know, frustrated about. They hear a story like yours, you went and did something, you gave your all to it. I think in the podcasts you talk about your absolute obsession with YouTube thumbnails and learning the algorithm and all that stuff. Let me stop. That's great for the kind of content creator, podcast bro thing, but someone's got to be a teacher and someone's got to be a nurse. Do you know what I mean? I think there might be some degree of frustration. And eyebrow raising at the, everyone just be an entrepreneur, go and make money. Never said that. But generally, I think there's a, the attitude that we get a lot is, it's great that someone can come and tell me to run a business. That's my fastest way to wealth. There's so many things I can do. I can live overseas, whatever. It's just not going to happen for the majority of people. Survivorship bias is a hell of a drug. I am hugely in praise of people going and having a 9-to-5. Massively in praise of it. I'm still massively in praise of people going to university. It's very cool at the moment to throw under the bus university, to throw under the bus 9-to-5s. If you're not side hustling your way to 10k a month so that you can go and live in Bali and drink coconuts every morning. Aren't you an NPC with a 9-to-5 and a degree? Isn't that what you've become? I don't know. According to some. According to some, but not according to me. Yeah. Best friends in the UK have got 9-5s and they absolutely love it. Some people have got varying degrees of what from the outside would be accused of being boring jobs. They're significantly more satisfied than I am because I turn myself inside out desperately. Look, working for yourself sounds fantastic until you realize that working for yourself means choosing when you work, which also means usually for most people, never not working. Right? You are both the organ grinder and the monkey. You don't get to choose when you want to switch off. You have no idea where the next paycheck's coming from. Everybody is on your back and everything is resting on your shoulders. You don't feel like you can rest. I don't think that that is an aspirational or desirable life for a lot of people. Maybe even for like the vast majority of people. The difference between Call of Duty, which is dropping in and playing a little bit, and War, is everything. Being in the trenches is like, it's really tough. And I... Yeah, people should go and be teachers. I don't think that there is any issue with people going and being teachers. Like, I had great teachers in school. They were some of the most influential people that I can think of in my life. Isn't it the problem is finding purpose, I think, for a lot of young people is they're cut off from a lot of purpose because economic circumstances, where they are, their geography, what have you, and they're struggling to find it. And they're struggling to find the people to help them find it. I think that's partly where the people that got me into podcasting stepped in that I was that scrabbling around. Why am I not feeling connected to the work that I'm doing? I grew up state primary, state secondary, state sixth form college, first person in my family to complete university, did two degrees at Newcastle. That was Out of the ordinary and I was in a role model desert where I wasn't around anyone like the people I wanted to be like but there were a lot of people like the person I didn't want to be like I don't want his relationship with gambling I don't want the way that he uses alcohol to hide from his emotions I don't want the way that he cheats on his wife and playing cricket. You know, good British sport for a young guy to play. I learned a lot of that very early, 14 years old. I'm playing, I'm in the changing rooms with men, full-grown men, 30s, 40s, 50s, talking about what their life is like. And I mean, I really like that. So yeah, the meaninglessness is a big deal. And unfortunately, you can't like conflate it out of nowhere. I can throw pithy aphorisms at you all day, but like something tactical that I think people can do is to search incredibly hard for someone that seems to have a similar kind of ambition and goal set that you do. And that doesn't mean that it's outsized that the person with the biggest ambition is the one that you should try and find it's where is your particular level of world values and hold onto them a lot because there is a lonely chapter that people go through when they try to go from where they are to where they want to be. And if you can have one or two people that are going through that with you, you're going, Hey man, like I'm, I'm really trying to change my relationship to myself talk. And like, I've got this strange relationship with my mom and I really want to try and heal. But she's like, ****, she gets on my nerves so much, and I'm pushing through, and I think that I can get there. If you have one or two people that are trying to do that thing as well, it makes it so much easier. I could carry on, but unfortunately I've got some radio programs to do, and you've got to get on with the stuff. It's a real pleasure to meet you. Thank you very much indeed for coming in. Good luck with everything else, and going back to Texas and enjoying doing the podcast. I appreciate you very much. Lovely to meet you. Thanks, mate.