The podcast bro whose toxic slurry of sexism targets impressionable young men

Who broke Britain? Welcome to The i Paper’s opinion series in which experts and writers debate the issues that concern them about modern Britain. • You won’t know James Bevan, but you should know what he did to this country• Boris Johnson wrecked Britain. But this man left even deeper scars• Martin Lewis: the money-saving expert… who accidentally cost Britons billions• The American woman who ripped the heart out of Cadbury• The shadowy maverick who pulled Labour’s strings… and sunk Starmer• Steven Bartlett: the glorified PR man quietly making Britain worse• The Tory who sold off Britain’s greatest assets – then told us to take back control• Dua Lipa: the ‘magical thinker’ unwittingly making Britain’s young women miserable Chris Williamson is a hard man to précis – self-styled wellness guru? “Bro-science” influencer? Podcaster? Or is it best to put it like this? He is likely the most influential man in Britain you’ve never heard of. Williamson, 38, rose to fame following his appearance on the first series of Love Island in 2015. He launched his podcast Modern Wisdom three years later. His website claims it has now had over a billion downloads. In some ways, Williamson moves beneath the radar. But the more I tune in to his brand of blandly objectionable, socially conservative bilge, the clearer it becomes that Williamson’s unremarkableness is an inherent part of his proposition. Frankly, it’s what makes him a subject for this series. While he’s probably best known for Modern Wisdom, Williamson is nothing if not multifaceted, with a YouTube channel and weekly newsletter (“3 Minute Monday”) too. But no matter the medium, his modus operandi is the same: instead of taking much of a stance on anything, Williamson tiptoes up to the line on controversial topics, from pro-natalism to the manosphere, before scurrying away to cower beneath the cover of plausible deniability. You know the (exhausting, self-satisfied) type. Always “just asking questions”, playing devil’s advocate, or urging others to “hear them out” when it comes to certified bad guys. Speaking of whom – from professional transphobe Jordan Peterson to the renowned David Goggins (whose daughter branded him an absent father, a claim which Goggins has denied), Williamson’s show features an impressive parade of contrarians and pseudo-experts, with a few real ones thrown in there, remember that plausible deniability caveat. And while Williamson largely leaves the work of voicing actual opinions to his guests, the episode titles leave little to the imagination. Recent classics include “the extreme crisis of young women”, “the art of unstoppable self belief”, “a shocking turn in the war on men” and “the uncomfortable science of sex differences”. Get the gist? If so, you will have noticed not only the sexism rolling in waves off much of Williamson’s content, but the breathlessly declarative tone with which he approaches topics that ought to be tackled with the utmost nuance. Yet, his audience remains not only loyal but devoted – Modern Wisdom was among the top ten podcasts globally on Spotify last year, and regularly sits in the UK’s top five Society and Culture shows. All this, I have come to suspect, not despite his unmistakable combination of sensationalism and reticence, but because of it. Certainly, the fact that he often stops short of saying what he’s clearly thinking doesn’t make the world views he’s espousing any less rotten. On the contrary, Williamson is sanitising those attitudes, slapping an acceptable, artfully stubbly face onto self-improvement twaddle, casual misogyny, and the pseudoscience that so often underpins both. From biohacking to evolutionary psychology, Williamson loves nothing more than a spurious data point to lend his arguments the veneer of science; trouble is, he’s normally working backwards from a conclusion – say, women should have more babies – than towards one (as when he appeared on co-bro Steven Bartlett’s podcast Diary of a CEO last year, wondering loudly whether “female emancipation” and the availability of reliable contraception was to blame for falling birth rates). Whether he’s talking about circadian rhythms or gender roles, Williamson’s lazy combination of snappy stats with sloppy analysis means his audience gets to enjoy the thrill of controversy without ever being actually challenged. It’s clearly an irresistible formula – besides the staggering popularity of his podcast, his YouTube channel has more than 4.3 million subscribers. As such, the fact that many in Britain haven’t heard of him is testament to the depth of the silo into which slurry like Williamson’s pours. As for “slurry” — I’m afraid there’s just no other word for content at once so toxic and so beige. Williamson’s newsletters read like an incel discovered ChatGPT. Here’s one on gender politics back in 2024, “How many false allegations are worth a sexual assault? How many female graduates are worth a male CEO? […] It’s victimhood masquerading as arithmetic. And entirely based on a flawed premise.” That rhetoric, in which he pairs legitimate issues of sex-based disparity with often wildly unequal counterclaims, then dismisses the comparison as based on a “flawed premise”, is classic Williamson – it means he can disseminate as much incendiary content as he pleases, benefitting from algorithms’ tendency to elevate controversial topics without risking much of a backlash. It’s enough to make you wonder how much he himself believes, and how much is in pursuit of a reaction, a viral moment, a slot on YouTube’s “suggested” bar. Which brings us to the other string in Williamson’s bow: his health content. He says he has a number of health conditions, from Lyme disease to chronic fatigue, “black mould toxicity”, to multiple parasites. And while of course, it’s his prerogative to talk about them, it is impossible to extricate his personal struggle from his personal brand. Videos featuring procedures that have been “organised” by the companies administering them feel disingenuous, as does the fact that Williamson shills Neutonic, the company he co-founded which offers a range of “productivity enhancing” drinks, pills and supplements. His podcast is notably sponsored by Function Health, a company offering to test levels of listeners’ testosterone – an emotive hormone whose levels we can now measure at home, but not reliably interpret ourselves. Perfect! As such, Williamson’s “alternative” health content is just as problematic as his other work, not to mention more telegenic. Exemplary of the wellness-to-alt-right pipeline, Williamson approaches health with the same provocatively passive stance as he does social issues. The thing is – if he really is just asking questions, why not put these questions to a relevant medical expert rather than a controversial biohacker? And while it’s not surprising that his own treatments seem calibrated for maximum visual impact (see recently released footage of a trip to Austria where he was put into a forced fever while having all his blood filtered) – this is YouTube we’re talking about — that he is disseminating them at all feels irresponsible. There are a number of vulnerable or chronically ill people who seem to be watching, or even looking to him for guidance, judging by their comments. Put all his health content together and you get a big puddle of science-y words that sound concrete but remain ultimately unprovable and nebulous. That’s useful for someone looking to sell an expensive drink, but also catnip to an audience of young men (according to him, 70 per cent of Williamson’s listeners are male, 80 per cent between 18 and 45), who – if those interactions on social media are anything to go by – are searching for meaning, certainty, remedy for the malaise and disconnectedness that characterise their lives. Given the ongoing crises affecting the country’s young people, from unemployment to loneliness, that fragility is no surprise — but that doesn’t mean it ought to be exploited. Pointing his audience at someone to blame, in this case women and the medical establishment, is the oldest trick in the book. Yet, Williamson doesn’t even have the guts to say things with his chest, working by insinuation rather than straightforward statements. While Williamson is perhaps better understood as benefitting from Britain’s struggles than having caused them, there’s no doubt he’s making things worse. He’s feeding off the attention spans, which are shot, of young men (and inevitably a few women), fuelling mutual mistrust in a world that seems to be failing its younger cohorts; the chronic and systemic loneliness that makes clicking “play next” the easiest option. Ultimately, Williamson’s brand lives and dies online – but unfortunately for us, its effects are felt all too keenly in the real world, with gender equality lately facing a stark, staggering backlash (a survey of British Gen Z men last year showed over half of them agreed with the view that feminism had done more harm than good). Propelled to prominence by the internet’s most fetid tides, Williamson and his ilk are exploiting our atomisation, not only pushing rebarbative ideas but throwing their hands up with a “who, me?” as they do so. Slowly but surely breaking Britain. Yes, Chris, you.