Strength, Faith and Survival Tactics - Zuby - #096

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Well, hello there, people of Podcastland. Welcome back to Modern Wisdom. My guest today is Zuby. He is a rapper, a podcaster, author, and a graduate at Oxford, but he's most famous at the moment for being a deadlifter. He released a tweet earlier in the year, which went viral and has springboarded him into, I guess, the public eye. Interestingly, the parallel that I draw between him and Jordan Peterson continues to hold true that he just happens to be this guy who was perfectly equipped to deal with massive amounts of scrutiny and press attention, and also to be able to cut his way through very complex issues that often people get quite offended about. So today we're talking All Things Woke from Titania McGrath, whose creator, Andrew Doyle, will be coming on Modern Wisdom very soon, by the way. Mario Lopez and his recent run-in with transgender activists after putting his foot in it, and an awful lot of other stuff. We find out what is the wakest city in the UK. And yeah, Zuby guides us through some pretty complex topics, some ones which I haven't delved into before, but it was interesting to hear these very inflammatory and very contested topics broken down by someone who has had a front row seat to these situations unfolding in front of them. So without further ado, please let me welcome Zuby.
I am joined by the strongest female deadlift champion on the internet, Zuby, welcome to the show.

**Zuby** (1:56)
How's it going, Chris, how you doing?

**Chris Williamson** (1:58)
Fantastic to have you on, man. Recently spoke to Brian Carroll, who is a multiple record holder in powerlifting for men, and now speaking to one for women as well.

**Zuby** (2:07)
That's right, man. Deadlift and bench press, 84 kg weight class, women's, of course.

**Chris Williamson** (2:11)
How heavy is the squat? What have you got to get your squat to?

**Zuby** (2:16)
Man, I haven't squatted properly for ages because of an injury that's been harassing me for literally about five years now. But my personal best on the squat is 190, and I believe the women's record in my weight class is about 210, something like that.

**Chris Williamson** (2:31)
A little bit of work, and you've got the total as well.

**Zuby** (2:34)
Yeah, man, I think I could do it. I can completely annihilate the deadlift and the bench press ones, but the squat will take a little bit of work.

**Chris Williamson** (2:42)
I got you. So for everyone who's listening, who doesn't have a clue what we're talking about, can you take us through what's happened over the last few months of your life?

**Zuby** (2:51)
Yeah, the last few months have been quite the whirlwind. So going back to February now, at the end of February on my Twitter account at Zuby Music, I posted up a nine-second video of me doing a deadlift in the gym. I was lifting 230 kilograms, which is 500 and something pounds. It's actually well below my maximum, but I just had a clip of me doing it on my phone. And I posted it up with a caption saying, I keep hearing about how there's no biological difference between men and women in 2019 So watch me destroy the British women's deadlift record without trying. And then I wrote, PSI identified as a woman while lifting the weight, so don't be a bigot. And this tweet caught absolute fire. It went hyperviral. It's got 1.7 million views on the original video. I think it got about 55,000 likes and 20-something thousand retweets. It just went nuts. It went viral in the UK, in Canada, in America, in Europe, like all over the world. And then newspapers and media started picking up on it. It was covered by Fox News, The Daily Wire, Sky News, BBC, a whole bunch of different outlets and then a bunch of podcasts such as Louder with Crowder, The Ben Shapiro Show and the one that really catalyzed a few things, which was the Joe Rogan Experience. So it just went bonkers. At the time I tweeted it, I had 17,000 followers. And as of this week, I'm the proud owner of over a hundred... Well, I don't want to say owner. I'm the proud...

**Chris Williamson** (4:26)
What's the right term?

**Zuby** (4:29)
Is it owner? Yeah, well, I have over 100,000 Twitter followers now. So it's increased just crazily this year, as well as my YouTube audience and my podcast audience and my music listeners. Everything I do has just exploded. It was a real catalyst for everything I do, which is awesome, but also kind of ridiculous.

**Chris Williamson** (4:48)
Yeah, I know. This kind of real asymmetry with viral content and stuff like that is a real blessing when you get it right. And what's hilarious is the fact that this is you working up to like an RPE 7