How Love Island star reinvented himself as a millionaire podcast host as his debate on what REALLY lies beneath Egypt’s pyramids goes viral after Joe Rogan interview

Love Island star Chris Williamson has gone viral after he appeared on Joe Rogan‘s podcast to discuss what really lies underneath the Pyramids of Giza. 

Last week, Italian researchers claimed to have uncovered ‘a vast underground city’ which stretches more than 4,000 feet directly underneath the structure, making them 10 times larger than the pyramids themselves.

Yet debate around the topic exploded after one of Egypt‘s top ancient history experts slammed the underground city claims as ‘fake news’. 

As a result of the ongoing conversation, Rogan and Williamson’s debate has gone viral, with more than 1.5 million viewers tuning into the episode in just 48 hours.

Yet with Joe’s podcast marketed at international audiences, many will be unaware of his guest Williamson’s unusual background.   

Brits may well be familiar with Williamson, 37, and his reality TV roots having appeared as a contestant on Paddy McGuinness‘ Take Me Out in 2012 before finding fame on the first series of reality show Love Island UK three years later. 

Williamson was working as a club promoter when he appeared on the ITV2 series, which was ultimately won by Jess Hayes and Max Morley.

He entered the villa on day one but failed to strike up a romance despite being coupled up with Danielle Pyne, Lauren Richardson and Zoe Basia Brown, ultimately being dumped from the show on day 19. 

Three years on, Williamson – who hails from Stockton-on-Tees in County Durham – decided to launch his own podcast, called Modern Wisdom, and completely reinvented himself from his party boy era.

He has since recorded more than 900 episodes, and interviewed over 100 New York Times bestsellers including Douglas Murray, James Clear, Aubrey Marcus. Seth Godin, Jordan Peterson and Steven Pinker.

Williamson now boasts more than 3.4 million YouTube subscribers, which has the bio: ‘Life is hard. This podcast will help.’ 

Speaking to ITV in 2022, he explained: ‘Bizarrely, Love Island was kind of like a mini existential crisis. I basically got to the Champions League of being a party boy and then I realised that I wasn’t supposed to be there at all.

‘I spent just under a month in a villa with no distractions, no phone, no internet, no friends, no contact with the outside world surrounded by people that were the epitome of the person I thought I was.

‘I thought I was this super extroverted big name on campus, a big guy around town. And it turned out that maybe I wasn’t like that.

‘I made myself into a club promoter, which I needed to do to make a successful company, but that perhaps wasn’t fully aligned with who I truly was.

‘I then took the opportunity to think – could I do with a little bit of self-work and some personal development to try and figure out who I actually am and what I want to try and contribute to the world?’

He describes his podcast as being about He describes his podcast as ‘being about human nature, marketing, philosophy, life, life hacks, biohacking, fitness, health, pretty much everything’. 

Detailing his plans for the future, he told Practical Ecommerce: ‘I want to focus on conversations with people. There’s not much in my life now that I would get rid of. I like what I do. I like doing the research, for instance.

‘My two longtime business partners — one for nightclubs and my video guy for Modern Wisdom — are both friends. They were friends that became business partners. I know that that’s fraught with danger, but I’ve managed to get lucky.’

Now Williamson has reached a wider audience after teaming up with American podcaster Rogan to debate the ‘mind-blowing’ Giza Pyramid debate. 

Rogan said in his latest episode: ‘This is insane. It’s quite stunning. They don’t understand what it is but it’s a uniform structure. There are several pillars and all of this is very very very weird. It’s really crazy.’

He added: ‘Christopher Dunne believes that the Pyramid of Giza is a big power plant. He has a theory about why its built the way its built.

‘He thinks it coincides with the ability to produce hydrogen, to utilise the rays of space and to generate electricity through this.’

Researcher Jay Anderson added: ‘What has just been announced in relation to the pyramids at the Giza plateau and the plateau itself is so incredible, so awe-inspiring and narrative shattering that I’ve been sitting here for the last hour trying to wrap my heard around the implications of what we were just told.

‘It’s nothing short of mindblowing. What’s been discovered is that there are huge structures coming down from the base of the pyramid deep into the bedrock. It then connects to massive internal structures deep deep down.

‘The pyramid itself was already a massive red flag in the ancient Egyptian historical narrative but now, with this discovery, I think it’s impossible to say that the Egyptians we’ve been taught about built these structures.

‘It provides the most extraordinary evidence for a pre-flood era civilisation that was flourishing in a way that we can scarcely comprehend.’

The paper, which has not been peer-reviewed by independent experts, found eight vertical cylinder-shaped structures extending more than 2,100 feet below the pyramid and more unknown structures 4,000 feet deeper.

A press release described the findings as ‘groundbreaking’ and if true could rewrite the history of ancient Egypt. 

However, independent experts have raised serious concerns about the study.

Professor Lawrence Conyers, a radar expert at the University of Denver who focuses on archaeology, told DailyMail.com that it is not possible for the technology to penetrate that deeply into the ground, making the idea of an underground city ‘a huge exaggeration.’

Professor Conyers said it is conceivable there are small structures, such as shafts and chambers, beneath the pyramids that existed before they were built because the site was ‘special to ancient people.’

He highlighted how ‘the Mayans and other people in ancient Mesoamerica often built pyramids on top of the entrances of caves or caverns that had ceremonial meaning to them.’

The work by Corrado Malanga, from Italy’s University of Pisa, and Filippo Biondi with the University of Strathclyde in Scotland has only been released during an in-person  briefing in Italy this week and is yet to be published in a scientific journal, where it would need to be analyzed by independent experts.

Despite the scepticism, Professor Conyers added that the only way to prove the discoveries to be true would be ‘targeted excavations.’

‘My take is that as long as authors are not making things up and that their basic methods are correct, their interpretations should be given a look by all who care about the site,’ he explained.

‘We can quibble about interpretations, and that is called science. But the basic methods need to be solid.’

He also told DailyMail.com that he could not tell if the technology used actually picked up hidden structure below the pyramid.

‘They are using all kinds of fancy proprietary data analysis software,’ said Professor Conyers.

The Giza complex consists of three pyramids, Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, built 4,500 years ago on a rocky plateau on the west bank of the Nile River in northern Egypt.

Each was constructed in the name of a pharaoh. The northernmost and oldest of the group was built for Khufu. Also known as the Great Pyramid, this structure is the largest, at 480ft tall and 750ft wide at its base.

The middle pyramid was built for Khafre, which the team studied, and Menkaure is the southernmost and last built of the group.

Malanga is a UFOlogist and has appeared on YouTube shows about aliens, where he has discussed his more than decade-long career of studying UFO sightings in Italy. 

Biondi, on the other hand specializes radar technology.

Malanga and Biondi’s published a separate peer-reviewed paper in October 2022 in the scientific journal Remote Sensing which found hidden rooms and ramps inside Khafre, along with evidence of a thermal anomaly near the pyramid’s base.

The new study used similar technology, but got a boost from a satellite orbiting Earth.

The new radar technique works by combining satellite radar data with tiny vibrations from naturally-occurring seismic movements, to construct 3D images of what lies beneath the surface of the earth, without doing any physical digging.

Nicole Ciccolo, the project’s spokesperson, said: ‘A vast underground city has been discovered beneath the pyramids,’ 

‘[The] groundbreaking study has redefined the boundaries of satellite data analysis and archaeological exploration.’

She shared a short clip of the press briefing held on March 15, saying the full video of the event will be released on March 25.

The cylinder-shaped structures, which Ciccolo referred to as ‘shafts,’ were arranged in two parallel rows and surrounded by descending spiral pathways.

Ciccolo said the cylinder structures were found underneath each of the three pyramids and appeared ‘to serve as access points to this underground system.’

The team explained the system as other chamber-like structures interconnecting under all three of the pyramids. 

‘The existence of vast chambers beneath the earth’s surface, comparable in size to the pyramids themselves, which have a remarkably strong correlation between the legendary Halls of Amenti,’ Ciccolo said.

‘These new archaeological findings could redefine our understanding of the sacred topography of ancient Egypt, providing spatial coordinates for previously unknown and unexplored subterranean structures,’ she added. 

The news has gone viral this week, with X flooded with posts about the potential discovery. 

Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna shared a post about the structures on her X page.

The team plans to continue their research throughout 2025.