The Evolutionary Psychology Of Friendship - Chris Williamson with Dr Jaimie Krems

1. Friendships and Social Dynamics

• Sex-Differentiated Friendship Structures: Male friendships are typically less emotionally close, looser, and multi-male, often described as "shoulder-to-shoulder" relationships that focus on coalitional and social support, and shared activities. In contrast, female friendships are generally more emotionally intense, close, and dyadic ("face-to-face"), emphasizing emotional support and detailed discussions. Men also tend to stand at an open angle (around 120 degrees) when conversing to avoid confrontational cues, whereas women are comfortable facing each other directly.
• Fragility and Intimacy in Female Friendships: Female friendships tend to be shorter-lived and more fragile due to their emotional intensity and the sharing of intimate details. This shared information can become "ammunition" if the friendship breaks, leading to significant grief.
• Adaptive Reasons for Female Friendship Styles: Possible adaptive explanations for the depth and dyadic nature of female friendships include the high stakes of allo-parenting (shared childcare requiring high trust) and patrilocality (females often leaving their natal groups to join a partner's kin, necessitating the formation of kin-like bonds with non-kin).
• Social Signalling and Alliance Manipulation: Women use detailed self-disclosure, including sensitive social information or secrets, to build trust and closeness, signalling "you can trust me". Venting, which involves complaining about a third party in an agitated or frustrated manner, is a key tactic for women to manipulate alliances. This allows them to harm the target's reputation without appearing aggressive or manipulative themselves. Sharing privileged information with a close friend can also bolster that friend's perceived value within one's social network.
• Friend Guarding: Similar to mate guarding, friend guarding serves as an adaptive function, signalling the value placed on a friend. However, it requires careful "calibration" to avoid being perceived as too needy or jealous. People, particularly women, are often hesitant to introduce friends from different groups due to the fear of being displaced. This emotion, often stigmatised, is widespread in social animal species (e.g., horses, cows, dolphins, lions) and likely serves an adaptive purpose to prevent the loss of valued relationships.

How To Become The Perfect Partner - Esther Perel

1. Embrace Self-Reflection and Personal Responsibility

• When a relationship ends, it's vital to look beyond what the other person did wrong and consider your own role. Ask yourself: "Who were you in this relationship?", "What role did you play?", "What did you see that you didn't want to pay attention to?", and "What things do you wish you had done differently?".
• Focusing solely on the other person and adopting a passive, receptive stance means you're missing a significant part of the story and may even be more of the problem than them.
• It's about understanding the dynamic and taking responsibility for your contributions without self-blame, while still holding the other person accountable without blaming them. This is not a "blame dance" but an inquiry into "what did I do that made you do what you then did to me?".

What Makes Men And Women Different - Chris Williamson

With Dr Carole Hooven...

With David Geary...

Learning Points:

The Biological Reality and Binary Nature of Sex:

• Sex is Binary: Dr. Carole Hooven asserts that sex is binary in mammals, including humans, and is not a spectrum. She contends that rare intersex conditions (affecting 0.02% of people) do not disprove this fundamental biological reality.
• Innate Brain Differences: Dr. David Geary highlights significant, early-emerging structural and functional differences in male and female brains. Brain patterns can predict sex with 93% accuracy in 10-year-olds and 95% in adults, with these differences detectable even prenatally (at six months of gestation) and in early infancy. This strongly suggests a biological foundation before significant socialisation.
• Hormonal Influence: Both experts emphasize the critical role of lifetime exposure to sex hormones (testosterone and estrogen), starting in fetal development, in shaping these brain differences and associated behaviours.

Why Is This Generation Struggling So Much - Chris Williamson with Scott Galloway

Learning Points

Generational Economic Disparity and Wealth Transfer:

• For the first time in US history, young people are not better off economically than their parents were at the same age. Only half of Millennials are earning more than their parents, down from a 90% chance in the 1950s for young people to out-earn their parents.
• Since 1989, people under 40 have seen their share of the nation's wealth plummet from 19% to 9%.
• This decline is attributed to deliberate decisions rather than external forces. The two biggest tax deductions in America, mortgage interest and capital gains, primarily benefit older, wealthier generations.
• There's a significant recurring wealth transfer of £1.5 trillion from working-age people to retirement-age people in the form of Social Security, further enriching the already wealthiest cohort (US Baby Boomers).
• Education costs have skyrocketed; for example, a college that cost £1,200 a year in the 80s now costs closer to £30,000, with admission rates dropping from 76% to 6%.
• Baby Boomers are seen as having created a "rejectionist exclusionary society", making it difficult for younger generations to access education, housing, and entrepreneurial opportunities. They've weaponised government to transfer wealth to older, wealthier individuals, even during crises like pandemics.

The Hedonic Treadmill

Can you remember the last time you were dreaming of buying a new car, getting a promotion at work, moving into a nicer house or finding a partner to share life with? Do you remember fantasizing about how happy you would be if you attained those things? If you finally did attain one of those things, you may have found that the “happiness boost” didn’t last that long or wasn’t as intense as you’d imagined. Most of us have gone through this cycle. The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is a theory positing that people repeatedly return to their baseline level of happiness, regardless of what happens to them.

I think that happiness is best defined as the feeling of making progress towards your goals, not achieving them but making progress towards them. This means having some well thought out goals, e.g. building health and fitness, building better social relationships, setting specific challenges and living by a set of values (integrity, authenticity, respect and compassion for others and yourself, excellence and commitment, courage, personal responsibility, optimism and gratitude).

https://positivepsychology.com/hedonic-treadmill/

https://www.healthline.com/health/hedonic-treadmill

https://g.co/kgs/1pwyrD

Optimise for your future self not your current self

Recently I've heard/read about a mental framework called "Regret minimisation". With regret minimisation you ask yourself, "would my future self in x minutes/days/weeks/months/years regret doing this or regret not doing this?", and based on this you do what would be preferrable for your future self.

An short term example might be if you are considering eating a sugary snack, you ask yourself, "Would my future self in 15 minutes regret this?". If the answer is yes, then you do not eat it, if the answer is no, then you do eat it. Or if you are sitting on the sofa, and consider should you continue to scroll through various apps on your phone or should you get up and practise xyz. You ask yourself "Which option would my future self in 1 week prefer?" and go with that.

Typically, our current self is more likely to pick an option that is more comfortable in the moment, implicitly delaying anything that is immediately uncomfortable to our future self. However, the option that would optimise happiness and comfort for your future self is typically the one that is more uncomfortable in the moment, and thus less appealing to your current self. Thus it is better to think through what your future self wants in any scenario and go with that.

I prefer to think of this as optimising for your self rather than minimising the regret of your future self.

Also see Your Future Self Needs Your Help Today - Dr Maya Shankar A Slight Change of Plans with Hal Hershfield

Understanding cardiovascular disease risk, cholesterol, and apoB - Dr Peter Attia

Understanding cardiovascular disease risk, cholesterol, and apoB - Peter Attia:

Cardiovascular disease in women: prevention, risk factors, lipids, and more with Erin Michos:

Measuring cardiovascular disease risk and the importance of apoB - Peter Attia

1. Understanding Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease (ASCVD)

• Definition: ASCVD is a disease state characterised by the deposition or build-up of cholesterol (or more rigorously, sterols including cholesterol and phytosterol) in the artery wall.
• Ubiquity and Inevitability: Atherosclerosis is considered the only inevitable disease of the human species if people live long enough, unlike cancer or dementia, which are prevalent but not inevitable. Most people die with atherosclerosis, even if not from it.
• Leading Cause of Death: ASCVD is the leading cause of death globally, in the United States, and specifically for both men and women.
• Timeline of Disease: The disease process begins very early, even in childhood, with fatty streaks observed in aortas of young children (4-8 years old) and subclinical atherosclerosis in military personnel in their 20s. Plaque development can even start in fetuses of mothers with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH). It takes decades for this cholesterol deposition to lead to noticeable plaque or symptoms.
• Clinical Presentation: The most common presentation for a first heart attack is sudden death, historically over 50%, now slightly below 50% but still staggering (around 40%). Over 50% of men and one-third of women will experience their first major adverse cardiac event (heart attack, stroke, or sudden death) before the age of 65.
• Mechanism of Harm: Cholesterol deposition initially forms fatty streaks, which consolidate into plaques. These plaques can reduce blood flow (ischemia) leading to tissue damage, such as a heart attack. More catastrophically, inflamed plaques can rupture or erode, triggering the body's clotting system, which leads to sudden occlusion of the artery and potentially fatal events. The small size of coronary and cerebral arteries makes them particularly vulnerable to obstruction.

Do We Know What Turns Women On - Chris Williamson with Catherine Salmon

Both interesting and at times funny.

Pornography and the "Cum Shot" Phenomenon

• There's a long-standing claim that pornography, particularly external ejaculation on the face, is degrading to women. However, it's ubiquitous in porn, prompting questions about why it's considered negative while internal ejaculation is "sacred".
• A study by Catherine Salmon and colleagues showed participants images of male and female faces with cum shots, varying the recipient's emotional reaction (happy, neutral, unhappy).
• Key Findings:
  • Enjoyment is Key: The biggest factor influencing whether an image was perceived as positive or degrading was whether the person in the image appeared to be enjoying the experience.
  • Sexual Orientation: Straight men disliked images of other men with cum shots, while homosexual men found these to be their favourite. Bisexual women showed a slightly higher preference for the images than heterosexual or lesbian women, which might indicate a general openness to sexual experience.
  • Disgust Sensitivity: Individuals high on pathogen avoidance (i.e., easily disgusted) were less keen on images featuring bodily fluids, especially near the face.
  • Sociosexuality: People with more permissive sexual attitudes and an interest in short-term mating generally enjoyed the images more.

Ketogenic diets effect on depression, anxiety and other mental disorders - The Tim Ferris Show, Dr Andrew Huberman

A very interesting podcast from Tim Ferris with Dr Christopher M. Palmer, on how a ketogenic diet could help positively with depression, anxiety and other mental disorders.

Also a similar conversation with Dr Andrew Huberman.

As a disclaimer, I am not a strong advocate of ketogenic diets but strongly believe in eating less processed foods which does generally mean less processed carbs and less carbs in general, as there is only so much fruit, vegetables and salad one can eat 😊.

The podcast connects mental disorders with mitochondrial function. Here is a good summary of how to improve mitochondrial function, no big surprises here:

1. Get at least 30 minutes of exercise daily.
2. Eat fewer calories.
3. Eat 2-3 meals, within an 8-10 hour window, stopping 3 hours before bedtime.
4. Reduce refined carbs such as bread, pasta, pastries, alcoholic drinks and sugary drinks including juices. Replace these with fresh vegetables, fruit and salad.
5. Eat quality protein like grass-fed beef and pasture-raised eggs.
6. Eat sources of omega-3s and alpha-lipoic acid. Eat antioxidant-rich foods with resveratrol like dark chocolate.
7. Prioritize getting 8 hours of sleep every night.
8. Reduce stress with relaxation techniques like meditation or massage.
9. Try heat therapy like sauna.

Use of hands and dopamine sparking words in meetings and presentations

I really liked the second and third points in this podcast on the effect of using hands and dopamine sparking words in meetings and presentations:

The Psychology Behind Becoming Charismatic And Building Trust With Anyone - Vanessa Van Edwards

Charisma is a Combination of Warmth and Competence

The foundation of charisma lies in the balance of two key traits: warmth and competence. People who are highly charismatic signal both high warmth (trustworthiness, friendliness) and high competence (reliability, capability). Relying too heavily on one without the other can be counterproductive. Too much competence without warmth can make you seem suspicious, while too much warmth without competence can lead to being perceived as friendly but not taken seriously.

Signaling Trust and Reliability

In every interaction, people are subconsciously asking two questions: "Can I trust you?" and "Can I rely on you?". To build charisma and trust, it is crucial to send cues that affirmatively answer these questions as quickly as possible. This goes beyond words and extends to your actions and body language, which must be congruent with your verbal messages.

Rocky Balboa's quote on resilience and responding positively to failure

One of my favourite quotes from Rocky Balboa deals with resilience and responding positively to failure:

You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.
But it ain't about how hard ya hit.
It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.
How much you can take and keep moving forward.
That's how winning is done!

This quote from Rocky Balboa is a powerful meditation on resilience, strength, and the nature of success. Its core insight is that true strength isn't about power, but about perseverance.

The Universality of Hardship

"You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life."

This opening line establishes a fundamental truth: life is difficult for everyone. No amount of personal strength, wealth, or status can prevent adversity. Life's challenges—failure, loss, disappointment, and pain—are the great equalizers. The quote immediately dismisses the idea that one can simply overpower obstacles. Instead, it frames life as the ultimate opponent, whose "hits" are inevitable.

Redefining Strength and Winning

"But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward."

Here, Rocky redefines what it means to be strong. Society often glorifies offensive strength—the ability to dominate, to "hit hard." However, the quote argues that this is a secondary, less important quality.

The real measure of a person is their resilience—their capacity to endure pain and setbacks and refuse to quit. It’s not about avoiding failure, but about what you do after you fail. The key actions are:

1. Absorbing the hit: Acknowledging the pain and difficulty without letting it break you.
2. Keep moving forward: Maintaining momentum, even if it's just a small step. Progress, not perfection, is the goal.

The Formula for Success

"How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done!"

This is the conclusion and the ultimate takeaway. Winning is a process of endurance. It is not a single, glorious event but the sum total of countless moments of getting back up after being knocked down.

This philosophy suggests that success is not reserved for the most talented or the most powerful, but for the most persistent. It democratizes the idea of "winning" by making it a function of will and spirit rather than innate ability or favorable circumstances. This perspective empowers anyone to succeed, because while we can't always control how hard life hits us, we can choose to get back up and keep moving forward.

Growth versus Fixed Mindset

In a fixed mindset people believe that their intelligence is fixed and static. Those who adopt a fixed mindset are more likely to:

• Want to PROVE intelligence or talent.
• Put in less effort to learn. Believe putting in effort is worthless.
• Stay in their comfort zone and avoid challenges to avoid failure.
• Quit easily at first failure, believing it is validation they will never master the talent.
• View feedback as personal criticism and ignore it. Hide flaws so as not to be judged by others.
• Feel threatened by the success of others.

In a growth mindset people believe that intelligence and talents can be improved through effort and learning. Those who adopt a growth mindset are more likely to:

• Want to IMPROVE intelligence or talent through life long learning.
• Put in more effort to learn. Believe putting in effort is worthwhile.
• Get out of their comfort zone and embrace challenges.
• Believe failures are just temporary setbacks and repetitions/opportunities to learn from.
• View feedback as an opportunity to learn.
• View others’ success as a source of inspiration.

Adopt of growth mindset!