Chris Williamson runs the Modern Wisdom podcast and Youtube channel. We discuss how Chris went from zero subscribers to nearly half a million; how to get big guests; and how to think about wisdom in the internet era. Modern Wisdom by Chris Williamson Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/0XrOqvxlqQI6bmdYHuIVnr Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/ModernWisdomPodcast Other Life ✦ Subscribe to the coolest newsletter in the world https://OtherLife.co ✦ Get a free Urbit ship at https://imperceptible.computer ✦ We're building a new country at https://imperceptible.country 0:00 Intro 1:01 YouTube channel optimization 6:33 Channel growth strategy 9:51 Cross-platform management 15:47 Tracking Chris's growth 17:39 Securing famous guests 22:32 IRL studio vs remote setups 24:37 Professionalizing YouTube channel, the importance of thumbnails & titles 27:43 How building a team & outsourcing leads to success 32:22 Social media promo strategy 40:32 Long-term goals & monetization 47:00 Managing a newsletter 55:02 The ATX scene 58:14 Work setup recommendations 1:01:26 Web3 & crypto content creator landscape 1:20:34 Closing words ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCAxIU4WaWE

Order my book, Based Deleuze: https://theotherlifenow.com/based-deleuze/ If you'd like to discuss these and similar themes with me and others, you can request an invitation here: http://bit.ly/join-otherlife-via-youtube For obvious reasons, we have strong inclinations to be understood by others. There is a problem here because, to the degree we wish to be perceptible to others, we are conditioning our own expressions on contingent social and political variables. In an ideal community, this might not be a problem. If technological or other contextual variables veer off in a way that biases and malforms popular perceptions, then thinking and speaking to be perceptible can easily lock one into a life of inescapable confusion, suffering, and reproduction of precisely what one despises. This is the problem of perceptibility, in a nutshell. Note that perception refers to sense data. Perceptibility therefore has pre-conscious connotations. You might think of perception as kind of like "understanding,"but the latter is misleading because it connotes conscious intellection. It's worth clarifying this point because the problem here is not the prospect of being correctly understood intellectually. We will seek to be understood, but only by those who can understand. Seeking to be perceptible means catering to the initial and cheapest pieces of others' psychological and behavioral equipment. To be perceptible means that institutions, and their human trustees, know how to manipulate you. Being perceptible means you are easily pigeonholed, and what's worse is that often you are correctly pigeonholed. If you optimize for how you are perceived, and especially if you build a life on how you are perceived (i.e., anyone who's income is based on status in an institutional hierarchy), then your thoughts, words, and actions are easily controlled by anyone above you in the institutional hierarchy. For by definition their edicts have greater influence on the perceptions of everyone attuned to the hierarchy than anything you might say or do, thus pleasing one's status-superiors is a necessity for those who wish to be perceived well. (This matter is greatly complicated in contexts of institutional breakdown and fragmentation, as we are currently observing, so we will need to treat the matter in greater detail later; but for now, most of us are still maneuvering lives overwhelmingly characterized by the inertia of mass institutions, so even if institutions break down rapidly over the course of the next few generations, the general lessons here will suffice for most people for quite some time.) ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJMmBjHYivI