I built my dream podcast studio in Austin.

This is supposed to be a studio tour — the most expensive thing I've ever bought and the most complex project I've ever built. We did it: the studio is finished. It was arduous, and every little touch means something because we spent so long on it. So, where do I start?

This is the first day in what will become a Modern Wisdom studio. I'm excited — and slightly daunted. We moved in and found out the building had a ton of mold, so we needed to remediate all of it. But it's part of an HOA, which means you can't make changes without getting their approval. And since some of the mold was inside and outside, the outside needs to be reclad differently.

Everything needs to be done sequentially: you can't do the build until the mold's done, the mold can't be done until the remediation's finished, and the particulate clean has to come after that. The bathroom needs to be done at this time too.

Getting this wrong means realizing too late that we committed so much time. We keep getting into the weeds on the specifics of the office and the studio, and I keep changing my mind — any pendant lighting we want, and if we don't go that route, well, it's amazing. I'm pretty good at moving quickly, but I can be quite undecisive. Essentially, any build is just a huge list of decisions that need to be made. It's not just "what do I want it to look like" — it's "can I make that happen?"

This is the most complex and elevated studio we've put together for any of our clients, even Rogan. Nothing was skimped on in terms of quality, budget, equipment, or construction. It's difficult enough to put any building project together on a good timeline, but when you're also building a studio — with electronics, lighting setups, and five different companies providing your lenses, cameras, and the storage that goes online and needs to speak to the system that records locally and then uploads to the cloud — it's an unrelenting stream of challenge after challenge. Each time we think we've reached a stage where we can move on to the next thing, there's a hold-up. That's the same with any big project, especially one that requires people with hammers, nails, and paint — add cameras and microphones on top and it gets exponentially more difficult. I'm learning the art of patience, one studio build day at a time.

Isn't this good? I bought this place 10 months ago and it's still not entirely finished — nearly, nearly done — but you've been watching me record episodes out of here for a long time, so now's the time to show you around.

The most impressive part? The doormat. This is the studio and the office. I bought it in October; it was a marketing office. None of these pillars existed, the middle section didn't exist, and obviously there was no podcast studio. We made fake walls, fake ceilings, and painted everything. I wanted a green room — green room adjacent — because sometimes guests bring family, friends, or managers, and they can sit here and watch the vestboard thing in the office that everybody sees, including guests when they walk in. It says VB+/modern wisdom, and you can put whatever you want on the board apart from swear words.

I've been involved in everything: the art, the soft furnishings. I really love Cozy Earth — every time I sit down, it always feels really comfy. We also got this pencil-design "head in the sand" ostrich wallpaper, which I think is really cute and kind of dumb; everyone's like, "what the hell is that?" Everybody's got different offices, there's a place for people to work out here, and a cute kitchenette with a variety of snacks. Hey, Huel — sponsor me. Nuts.com are awesome, and Huel, I need you as well. There's a custom Neutonic fridge; we're fueled by frosty beverages, and I'm an equal-opportunity energy drink consumer, though the lion's share is obviously Neutonic.

My office — I love that it's light and airy, which is a big deal. This little mezzanine means I can be outside, take a call, or just get a bit of fresh air. This is a copy of Joe Rogan's favorite book — it's his birthday today.

"We're up, Christopher." — "Hi, good to see you." — "Thank you very much for the book, this is very cool of you. There's an inscription inside to Yoko Ono: 'who knows well what the jazz life entails.'"

I've just exploded a can of Neutonic all over my crotch, as well.

Look, I love being able to make a fool of myself on Rogan, and I love bringing you great guests on the podcast. Your support and pressing subscribe helps me continue to do that. So if you haven't hit subscribe — or if you just check down below whether YouTube has unsubscribed you from the channel. Tons of people who pressed the button apparently just get unsubscribed, which sucks and makes me very sad indeed. So go check, please, and I'll continue to do my best to bring you great episodes — all recorded on this table right here.

Thanks. This was a gift from Mark Zuckerberg — the decal from his ranch, from when I got to go and hang out with him in Kawaii. And this was a gift from Bill Thompson, who put a custom Modern Wisdom decal on the site.

I'm aware we're kind of edging you toward the actual thing you care about, which is the studio in there, but this is foreplay — interior design foreplay. I'm like a naked Marie Kondo.

I've got a bit of PTSD from VOCs, mold, bad paint, and building materials, so we did a micro-particulate clean before moving in, with Jasper air purifiers in every room. Importantly, we wanted furniture with no VOCs and no blow-off — just the highest quality we could get. It's all Human Scale, which makes the best office furniture on the planet.

I've fallen in love with vertical bookcases. I had one in my first ever studio back in Newcastle — go back and watch the David Allen episode. I've had one of these everywhere I go. And that's a gay bear. Very important.

This is the bullpen — that's where the blood, the feces, the titles, and the thumbnails are made. I did everything in my bedroom on my own for basically forever, so having a place to work that isn't a coffee shop is still kind of deranging. I come in and there are people here saying, "Hey, this thing happened," as opposed to it just being a Facebook Messenger chat between me and video guy Dean.

The Podcast Setup and the Show's Range

We get a lot of questions about the setup for the podcast. It's been the most basic setup in history — this guy. When people ask what Modern Wisdom is about, well, it's interesting: there are porn stars, but there are philosophers, psychologists, and sometimes people trying to maximize our ability to do space flight. Then there's this whole other area of health and fitness, and I've got these two mates from the UK and we talk about how to make the best toasted sandwich. So, kind of that.

Years of "Spit and Sawdust" Recording

It's been kind of insane to go for as long as I have, doing it out of bedrooms and spare rooms. This really has been a spit-and-sawdust operation for a long time. Every single bedroom of every house or Airbnb I stayed in for more than a couple of weeks got turned into a studio. My bedroom in the first house I ever bought was the studio for the first 500 episodes of the show, before I flew out to America and moved there.

I think that grassroots "make it work with cellar tape and cable ties" thing maybe held me back for a little while. I thought, I can do it myself, I don't need a big space — I can have the most beautiful podcast in the world and still record out of my spare bedroom, and both of those things can work at the same time. That is true, but it's not exactly conducive to being a sane human, because some days I would never leave the house and never speak to anyone except the guest. Wake up, go to the gym, listening, prepping, thinking about stuff, come back, still prepping in my dining room, go upstairs, record, finish up, go back downstairs — it's 6 p.m. and I've spoken to one other person, and they were on the other side of a laptop.

The Co-Working Space and the Main Event

So it's nice to have a place to come in to work. This is the co-working space — I can do my prep, sit down, have meetings with people if I need to, or the guests come in. Everything so far is just the spiral staircase going up to the Bonnie Blue bedroom — a little bit of foreplay: catch up, have a chat, "Oh, do you want a new tonic? Should you try this protein shake?" And then we get into the main event.

Here it is. Let's go down a little lower. This is 20. Yeah, I think that's nice.

You still get that spill underneath the light. Yeah, and you're still catching a good bit of it from here as well, because this is quite bright.

Nearly a year into buying the office and we're still fixing things, still making small artistic improvements. I think the window fall-off really helps with the blowout from the back of this person.

This is the shot we've been trying to fix, and we spent a long time putting it together. Where do I even start? The table is entirely custom, built as a trapezoid shape, so I and guest one sit further apart than guests four and three. That means the wide shot gives you a four-shot with all four of us in frame.

There's a collection of stimulants and disguises on it — including the "Make Autism Great Again" hat, which I'm told is very important.

Really, this is me trying to bring everything together, from a color perspective and a history perspective. Copper and teal is a bit of a cheap trick from Hollywood — they're opposite ends of the color wheel, but they look beautiful together, and I fell in love with that combination a long time ago.

The Custom Tree

We had this tree completely custom made in Singapore and shipped over. I wanted something with an interesting shape that would create nice shadows, but that would also double as shelving for practicals and art elements. So we've got statues, some books, and these figures climbing up a cricket ball — I used to play cricket.

Lighting

From a lighting perspective, I'm fortunate that we've built some of the most beautiful podcasting sets in the world in the space of a day. The guys came in and dialed and refined and played until everything was exactly as they wanted. If you look up, there's a lot of Nanlite and some Aputure equipment here — we have a great partnership with Nanlite, and Aputure absolutely rule too.

We worked hard on the details. Even this softbox is covered with our own muslin cloth, because it changes the falloff across people's faces. This is just a little bounce fill, but we've put a tiny bit of additional cloth over the top, which creates a more flattering shape on the face. Then there are all these Nanlite tubes creating the colors and the falloff.

Fake Windows

My big flex was having one set with multiple looks without it feeling chaotic. The solution was to create fake windows — shock horror, this isn't a real window behind here. It's Astera tubes and Nanlights, all controlled by the same system that controls the rest of the lighting. This window will never be seen on camera — it's behind me, behind the cameras — so this is the only time you'll ever see it.

This was the feature piece. In this window, we're bouncing tubes off a white wall, through diffusion paper, and then through hand-cracked, hand-painted, hand-stained glass panes individually colored with different gels. There are even custom-made little tree branches you can't see, and we can change the color of the tubes — turning it from daytime to nighttime to sunset to spooky house. All of the foreground lighting changes to match the background lighting so it feels cohesive: if the background is a different color but people's skin looks the same, it doesn't feel like the light is falling out of the windows. That, to me, is the coolest thing — one set, multiple different looks.

Making It Look Derelict

It's kind of insane to take a room, make it completely brand new, plaster the whole thing, and then go through even more work to make it look derelict. All of this moss was put on and stuck on by hand, and all the cracks in the walls were custom created — we use them to hide cabling.

Perhaps the centerpiece: I didn't order this or ask for it. I came in one day and it was just up — the team had put it together. We had a bunch of other versions too. There's a topless version which I gifted him on the pod, and another where we're in swim shorts.

A Rembrandt. An original.

Yes, this is an original — I'm not sure if you've noticed. I'd like to thank my friends and family.

I look like some sort of freak child with bicep veins.

It's like an ancient Chippendales. But for some reason, you're in Hawaiian shorts — I didn't notice that. And the one behind it is the original.

If you go back and watch episode 17, above my old couch in Newcastle there was this hand of item. I didn't even ask for it to be put up here, but the guys saw it and recreated it, complete with the light above and below. This might be too nerdy for you, but I think it's really cool. When I sit down, I'm reminded of it — it's just little doses of nostalgia and trajectory for me. This thing that hung over the first ever episode Dean and I worked on together, eight and a half years ago, now has a little nod here underneath the TV — in a new city, a new country, and essentially a new business.

The lighting presets

This is the party trick you might have seen a couple of times on the show. All of the lighting in here can change. There's a "Streets of LA" setting — the colors shift, we can add pulsing, and all of the foreground lighting changes with it. Then there's the standard daylight setting, which is really good unless somebody's very pale, in which case everything brightens up. It's pretty neutral, with a nice fall-off on people's faces, and it's quite bright. It's not as dramatic, but there's still a good bit of drama because of the negative fill.

We also put together a "spooky" preset for Peter Santenello, who goes into deep rural Appalachian forgotten communities. In that mode, the fill up there is completely killed, with a bit more green coming through the lights, which results in a really aggressive shadow. Since the cameras come in from this side, that's what creates those really interesting shots — the tights, plus the sharp wide. I really love the profile shot we've started using recently; we did it in the Alain de Botton episode in the church in London last year. That side-on shot, especially when it's this dark, just looks so moody and cool. I'm not Martin Scorsese, but I think all of this is fun. I don't know what I'm doing, but I know what I like.

The virtual set

This is the virtual set, with more human-scale custom vines growing up here to create a bit of texture. It's for virtual episodes — guests who can't come to see me. I spent so long doing virtual episodes that I think we were, for a very long time, the biggest virtual podcast on the planet. I'm still very pro virtual episodes, because the content is what I care about most. I spent a long time building the skill set to do virtual well, and I'm not prepared to let that go. I would rather speak to a guest I really love virtually than not at all. I'm also doing more solo stuff, so you may already have seen — and will see more of — essay-style reflections, Q&As, lessons episodes, and the like.

Why the studio matters

Today's significance is that it's our first episode in the new studio. It's like stepping into another world. What stands out is how much use case the studio has — a lot of people don't realize what goes into the back end of simple things: capturing my desktop, doing Zoom calls, having nine cameras in one space all feeding to one place. When you come in, you're wowed by the finishes, but what people don't appreciate is how low-impact it feels despite the amount of technology in the space. You sit down in a comfortable place, vulnerable enough to have these conversations, and everything is out of sight — the lights are all mounted to the ceiling, and the system runs itself with Jared and the producers operating it. You can tell we put a lot of time and thought into making sure you have a really cool spot for a two- or three-hour conversation.

This is HQ — home base. Everything feeds into and out of here, whether that's guests or content. Having this home base in the literal center of Austin, Texas means guests can come through a nice central location where we'll be able to get a lot done.

Finally — today is studio launch day. It's taken so long. This is the first place I've ever had that's mine, and the first time I've ever recorded in a studio that isn't someone else's or a bedroom. I've kind of moved from a prostitute to a girlfriend — this feels like a long-term commitment to me.

When I look back across the trajectory of the show, it is not one of palatial luxury and fortune or expenditure. It's been very shoestring budget. When we started to make a little bit of money, I just dumped all of it into making beautiful episodes and prayed that we could make it back, and ran it back again and again, slowly building up. Then we started doing Data Goggins on a sound stage in Vegas with custom-built sets, and my assistant at the time wafting smoke through the room with a piece of cardboard because there was no fan to blow the fog machine around. We didn't know what we were doing.

There is nothing that could get me to speedrun that journey. It was so cool. I understand that on the way up you have uncertainty about whether you're going to make it, and that uncertainty doesn't make it feel glorious in the moment — it makes it feel perilous. But in retrospect, that is all of the coolest. This is also very cool, I'm not going to lie. I get to come in here — Hunter Biden, Jocko Willink, Matt McCusker, Duncan Trussell, having a laugh, puffing on a pipe, wearing a captain's hat. It's sick. But that's not what gets you here. What gets you here is doing it in your bedroom, Airbnbs and hotels.

I'm some bloke from the north of the UK who started off with no money, no spare time, nothing at all, and just really loved having these conversations and didn't stop. Because I didn't stop, I ended up here. It's been enabled by every single one of you, by a device in your pocket — you literally changed my life with this. I'm not going to say it's as much your studio as it is mine, because it's definitely mine. But you played a big part in it, too.

That's the tour. Expect more round table episodes over the next couple of months, more lessons, more masterclass stuff. We're going to put together a medley of my favorite moments from different guests and episodes — Jordan Peterson on resilience, Alex Hormozi on how to build a business. I'm excited for what the future has in store. I don't need to travel quite as much as I did — I did over 100,000 miles every year for the last three years. Now I get to sit in that room and people can travel to me.

I appreciate you all. To have this is not something I take lightly, and I'll see you next time.