#1034 - Sebastian Junger

[0] four, three, two.

[1] Welcome back, man. Hey, thank you.

[2] Good to be here.

[3] Great to see you again.

[4] Yeah, I like your new spot.

[5] Thank you.

[6] Thank you very much, man. You have a real flip phone.

[7] I do have a real flip phone.

[8] And you said that you didn't go back to it.

[9] You never left.

[10] I never left her.

[11] So you never went like iPhone, Android, never?

[12] No, no, never even thought about it.

[13] Never even thought about it?

[14] No. You see people taking pictures and using apps, nothing?

[15] Nothing.

[16] I don't need the apps.

[17] I'm good.

[18] There's no draw at all Using the internet Answering email I have a laptop at home And I do access the internet Yes But when you're out You don't want to mess with it No When I'm out I want to be out I'm in the world You know Right If you're if you're looking at your phone You're not in the world And so you don't get either You don't get either thing You'd get along very well My friend Ari He went back to a flip phone And he looks disdainfully Sort of like Former Alcoholics look at everybody with a drink like there's no way you could just enjoy one drink you loser you know that right yeah no I I um I just look around at this I mean I'm an anthropologist and I you know I'm interested in human behavior and I look at the behavior like literally the physical behavior of people with with smartphones and it doesn't it looks antisocial and unhappy and anxious and I don't want to be I don't want to look like that and I don't want to feel like I think those people feel wow that's deep I'm a junkie.

[19] You know, it's really interesting because I was at a restaurant the other day and I was looking around and literally everyone in the restaurant was looking at their phone.

[20] No one was talking to anybody.

[21] And I was thinking, what if there was a drug that did that?

[22] What if there was a drug that didn't kill you, but it just sucked up all your time and you just stared blankly at your hand and did everything that you do while you're using a phone?

[23] People would be terrified.

[24] Like you're staring at your hand and crashing into cars.

[25] You're staring at your hand and walking in the polls.

[26] Yeah, I mean, there is a drug.

[27] It's that, it's social media.

[28] I mean, I think the big lie of our generation is the phrase social media.

[29] It really isn't.

[30] It's anti -social media.

[31] And it has a lot of uses and, you know, whatever, but it's not social in any human sense.

[32] And if you look at suicide rates, depression rates, PTSD rates, anxiety rates, they're doing nothing but going up in our society.

[33] Mass shootings, you know, just something tragedy just happened yesterday.

[34] all those things, they're indicators of something, and they're all going up in our society, despite the fact that we're a very wealthy, powerful, relatively peaceful society, like something's going on.

[35] I can't prove that it's, you know, the Internet or social media or whatever.

[36] I mean, obviously.

[37] But the fact that those things are happening at the same time does make me wonder that these new devices certainly don't bring happiness because the numbers are going on the wrong direction.

[38] Well, I don't think they're designed to bring happiness, but they're certainly designed to give you access to information.

[39] but perhaps maybe with some discipline they can be used in some sort of a way that benefits us and not Well, yeah, I mean all that information is available on your laptop At your desk at home Right.

[40] I mean, I think the problem is when when people want to be socially and socially connected constantly no matter what they're doing And that, I think, keeps people from actually fully experiencing whatever they're actually doing.

[41] I think there's definitely some truth to that.

[42] But I do like the fact that I can.

[43] ask my phone questions.

[44] Like, if I don't know anything, and I can add it.

[45] There's a new feature on this Google pixel where you squeeze the side of it, and the Google Assistant comes up, and you can ask your questions.

[46] You squeeze it and ask a question.

[47] I mean, that's some space -age shit, man. Yeah, or it's downright creepy.

[48] I mean, you know, I get it.

[49] Like, I mean, you have all of human knowledge in your front pocket.

[50] Yeah.

[51] Accessible at every moment.

[52] Like, I do understand the power of it and the appeal of it.

[53] I'm not saying there aren't great things about it.

[54] Of course there are.

[55] It's just, for me, the downside outweighs the upside.

[56] For other people, I guess it doesn't.

[57] But if you look, again, if you look at mental health statistics in this country, we're doing something wrong because they're all going in the wrong direction.

[58] I agree with you.

[59] I just wonder if the mental health statistics are indicative of other issues.

[60] You know, I think lifestyle, what you do with your time during the day.

[61] A lot of people live a very deeply unsatisfying lives.

[62] And I don't know.

[63] I don't know if the phone accentuates that problem.

[64] I mean, we were talking the other day about, we were at the airport, we were waiting to fly home, and there was some girl, and she was talking, we were just eavesdropping, and she was talking about, like, the amazing race, and how she, you know, oh, this show's so boring now, and I can't wait to, and I'm going to eat this, and then I'm going to eat that, and I'm supposed to get a raise at work.

[65] It's like all nonsense, non -engaging, not interesting.

[66] There's no real life to anything.

[67] talking about.

[68] I'm like, this is most of our country or a large part of our country.

[69] Absolutely.

[70] I mean, the thing about social media is that it sort of weaponizes blandness.

[71] I mean, it allows, it gives people a platform for the most mundane, uninteresting aspects of their lives because they have to constantly, constantly be producing some kind of output of communication.

[72] Well, and if not producing it, certainly absorbing it, right?

[73] Yeah, we're both.

[74] I always feel like I'm mining when I'm on Twitter, like nothing, nothing, nothing, oh, rape.

[75] Oh, murder.

[76] Oh, look at this.

[77] You know, I mean, there's other people you could have on the show that could speak more intelligently to this.

[78] But I know that, I mean, I've heard that risk of suicide and Facebook are correlated.

[79] In other words, people that are on Facebook and in social media, they are at an increased risk of depression.

[80] thoughts of suicide.

[81] And that's terrifying.

[82] Do you think that that's correlation equals causation, though?

[83] You know what I mean?

[84] Like, do you think that people on Facebook all the time are doing that because they're already depressed?

[85] Well, right.

[86] I mean, that's the question.

[87] But the correlation means we have to look at something more closely.

[88] Anxiety rates and teenagers have skyrocketed.

[89] Anxiety partly comes from a sort of painful self -awareness.

[90] And of course, that's amplified by social media because you can never escape the opinions of your peers.

[91] I mean, that's crippling to people.

[92] you know, I wasn't the most popular kid in class by a long shot.

[93] I mean, when I came home, whatever my issues were were on hold until, you know, when I was a kid in high school, those issues were on hold until 8 a .m. the next morning, right?

[94] You got a 12 -hour break from your problems, and now you don't, and it's really tough on kids.

[95] Yeah, I could only imagine growing up today.

[96] You know, I think we got very lucky that we experienced the Internet in adulthood.

[97] You know, for me, I was, I think I was 27 the first time I ever got online.

[98] And that's nice, you know?

[99] And no one knew what online was back then.

[100] You weren't leaving any traces.

[101] You were just going out and looking at stuff.

[102] Yeah.

[103] You know, it wasn't.

[104] That's right.

[105] That's right.

[106] Yeah, I was, how old was I?

[107] I was about 36.

[108] I remember a girl asked me, she said, do you ever logged on?

[109] And I was like, logged on, logged on what?

[110] She had to explain to me what that meant.

[111] And then I literally said to, oh, that's never going to catch on.

[112] Come on.

[113] That's like, yeah.

[114] Really?

[115] Yeah.

[116] Wow.

[117] Yeah.

[118] Isn't that what they said about the first computers?

[119] like that was one of IBM's initial reactions to the idea of the personal computer I think that's the reaction to the first of everything except maybe the bow and arrow I mean like when they invented the bow and arrow everyone was like no that is going to catch on that is cool right but everything else I think that's you know the skepticism like we don't need anything more we're good and then you realize I mean that's the amazing thing about the human mind is that we invent this stuff and it doesn't mean that it's good I mean we evolved over hundreds of thousands of years to live a very different environment that we live now.

[120] So these things that we invent, it doesn't mean that they're sort of psychologically good for us, but they definitely are incredible.

[121] I mean, they're definitely amazing things.

[122] Yeah, I don't think that necessarily they're good for us, but I don't think, this kind of sound weird, but I don't even think they're necessarily designed for us.

[123] I think they're designed for the future.

[124] I think, and I don't even think it's a design.

[125] I just think that all things move in an ever more complex direction and that whatever a person is now is not going to be the same thing, years from now or 100 years from now even.

[126] I think there's going to be some sort of symbiotic connection between us and electronics.

[127] Like, we're going to have it installed in our bodies.

[128] Well, you know, that gets to a kind of profound question, like what is the point of existence, of human existence?

[129] What's the point of it?

[130] Is the point for as many humans as possible to lead safe human fulfilled lives?

[131] Or is it for the human race as an entity to produce the highest technological achievements and scientific insights.

[132] You know, and I don't have a vote either way.

[133] But that does sort of seem to be the question.

[134] And that technology, I mean, we know does not lead to fulfillment and happiness.

[135] But it does lead to scientific insight and to, you know, incredible, I mean, a profound understanding of how the universe works in a physical sense.

[136] Yeah.

[137] I wonder if what we're doing is just being caught up in the momentum of all this innovation.

[138] and instead of like using discipline or using some sort of a rational objective analysis of like what it takes to be happy and then maybe pushing some of that stuff aside and engaging in actually physical activities going out and doing things and making that almost like a prescription like hey you know let's look at your daily chart hey you don't you didn't get enough vitamins buddy and hey you didn't get enough activity like you need you need that in order to be in order to feel right, to feel, feel balanced.

[139] Right.

[140] And if feeling right is the point of existence, then iPhones are probably not a good development.

[141] No. Right?

[142] If the exchange of data, if the exchange of information is the point, then they're a great innovation.

[143] So it really depends on what we're all here for.

[144] I was in San Francisco with my wife and we were walking behind these two kids who were talking about robots.

[145] And one was saying they were sort of geek kids.

[146] I was sort of sort of in the know about all this stuff.

[147] And one guy was saying, you know, they're taken over, you know, in 50 years, you know, we're going to be, humans are going to be completely unnecessary.

[148] And I said to my wife, you know, we always were unnecessary.

[149] Like, none of this had to happen.

[150] It's not like the world needs human beings to exist and for some purpose, right?

[151] We just, we are here.

[152] But we didn't have to be here.

[153] And so if robots replace us, we go right back to where we would have been if we hadn't, if we hadn't evolved.

[154] And it was just a funny way of thinking about it.

[155] Like, none of this is actually necessary.

[156] It doesn't have to be happening.

[157] No, it certainly doesn't.

[158] I mean, look, if we are finite life forms, if you're only going to be lived to be, you know, if you're lucky 90 years and when your health's going to fail and then you're going to die, what should be our goal is to feel good, right, to have community and relation.

[159] That's a big part of that book, Tribe.

[160] Your book's fantastic, by the way.

[161] I've read it twice since I read it again.

[162] I read it before and then I read it again since our first podcast.

[163] Oh, thank you very much.

[164] Yeah, I've been getting a lot of, I keep getting a lot of good responses to it.

[165] And, you know, I think partly, I mean, whether you're a Democrat or Republican, this is a pretty unsettling time in this country.

[166] And I think people are coming to the book a little bit, just partly because they're wondering what is the glue that holds us all together.

[167] And is there.

[168] Does that exist still?

[169] Like, I mean, I think there's a real question in people's minds about what is it that binds us together.

[170] Well, there certainly is.

[171] And you really covered a lot of the sort of just not.

[172] not commonly discussed aspects of it, like the need for real community, the need to really, and the need to have something on the line, you know, the need to be in situations where there's real consequences, and it seems that this is part of the glue that holds us together.

[173] Well, I mean, the thing about technology is it buffers us from real consequences in the physical world, which is what's great about it, right?

[174] But the downside is that as humans get buffered from consequences, they need each other less and less in order to survive.

[175] So now, sort of modern homo sapiens in a suburban house with an iPhone and a garage door opener and all that stuff, you know, you get a paycheck at work.

[176] And you don't need your neighbors to help you gather food or hunt food or defend yourself from the gang from the other neighborhood.

[177] I mean, it all kind of gets taken care of, which is a great liberation from your neighbors, from your community.

[178] but it deprives you of that essential human reliance on other people around you.

[179] That's what makes people feel good and safe and like their leading meaningful lives.

[180] And so that transition to having a life that's not part of any community, that is a really tough one for people.

[181] And I think that's part of the reason for high depression rates and such, and high PTSD rates in our society.

[182] Yeah, I think that lack of community is a very confusing thing.

[183] when you see most people just sliding into their garage and shutting the door or going into their house and they don't even know their neighbors.

[184] And that's really highlighted in your book, how alien that is to the human experience until fairly recently.

[185] This idea of like living in these, like I was in New York City this past weekend and this enormous apartment.

[186] Like my friend Jim was talking about this.

[187] He lived, Jim Norton, lives in this enormous apartment building.

[188] He goes, I don't know anybody there.

[189] He goes, I live in a house, a building, essentially, a house with a thousand people.

[190] I don't know any of them.

[191] Yeah, and listen, I mean, I live in a little tentament building, but it's the same idea, these little cubby holes we all live in.

[192] But, you know, I got to say, and I grew up in a suburb, but I got to say at least in the building I live in, I'm in the Lower East Side, and at least in the building I live in, I run into people on the landing and the staircase.

[193] There's no elevator in the staircase, and you get to know them a little bit.

[194] The problem with the suburbs is that everything's a stone, you know, everyone's a stones throw away behind a big hedge, and you don't have to share an elevator.

[195] with anyone.

[196] You can be totally isolated.

[197] And I grew up in that environment.

[198] It was crushing.

[199] And, you know, in a material sense, I was lucky.

[200] We were affluent family.

[201] But I was not lucky in any human sense.

[202] That's so fascinating.

[203] You say it was crushing to live the American dream.

[204] I mean, a lot of people's ideas.

[205] The American dream is living in a nice, quiet suburb.

[206] Yeah.

[207] And listen, there's a lot that's dreamlike about it.

[208] But the data will tell you that people in those situations are not happy.

[209] I mean, by the metrics by which we measure human fulfillment, human happiness, mental health, they suck in the suburbs.

[210] And generally in modern society, I mean, as affluence goes up in society, the suicide rate goes up.

[211] The depression rate, PTSD rate, all that stuff goes up with affluence.

[212] Yeah, I've noticed that in some of the circles that I'm hanging around with now because of of nice people, but the children of my children, my children's friends, parents.

[213] Yeah.

[214] So I'm interacting with these people that I don't know from work.

[215] I don't know from social circles and just, and most of them are great, but a lot of them are on pills.

[216] Like a lot of them.

[217] Like half of them are on pills.

[218] On pills, yeah.

[219] Yeah.

[220] And they're taking Adderall, they're taking anxiety medication, and they're taking antidepressants, and they're making it all.

[221] together with alcohol and there's some new freak out every week.

[222] And there's literally no physical fear for anything.

[223] Everyone's driving a Mercedes.

[224] Everyone's living in a gated community.

[225] Everybody's, it's all smooth edges and nerfed corners.

[226] Everything is very soft and easy.

[227] And the big appeal seems to be the newest objects.

[228] Chase the newest objects.

[229] And it's a really well -known phenomenon that if you introduce a disaster into that environment, if you introduce the blitz in London or an earthquake or what have you, a flood, a tidal wave, a war, people wake up out of their dream.

[230] I mean, they're in a kind of dream state, and for some people that's induced by pills and some people it's just induced by isolation, but they're in a kind of dream state where they're not part of society in a meaningful way.

[231] and a catastrophe wakes them up out of that.

[232] And people, I mean, over and over again, you can hear testimony of people saying, well, I really miss those days, you know, the days after the earthquake during the blitz.

[233] I mean, from generation after generation that goes through their things, right?

[234] They're tough things.

[235] Those days are missed.

[236] And they're missed because people, the thing they actually like most is being an essential part of a small group that is struggling to survive.

[237] Like, that is the human experience for hundreds of thousands of years.

[238] were wired for it.

[239] We're wired to like it.

[240] The people that responded to that challenge tended to pass on their DNA.

[241] The people that didn't respond well didn't pass on their DNA were the descendants of the people that sort of took some thrill from that challenge and acted well and with sort of vigor and with community in the face of hardship and danger.

[242] Were the descendants of those people inevitably.

[243] And because the people that didn't act well didn't survive as well, right?

[244] They didn't pass on their genes.

[245] And so that's one of the things we're missing.

[246] And the big trick is, I mean, I'm not saying burn down the suburbs, banned the car, and live in a lean -to.

[247] I mean, no one would say that.

[248] Huge benefits to this society, too.

[249] But the trick is, how can we have that close communal connection that buffers us from our, from mental health problems that makes us feel meaningful and fulfilled?

[250] How can we have that and have the benefits of modern society.

[251] You know, like, can we do both?

[252] And I think that's the big challenge because what I see in America, I love this country, but what I see in my lifetime, I mean, when I grew up, we didn't have mass shootings.

[253] I mean, you know, like that didn't happen.

[254] You go into a church with a machine gun and kill as many people as you can.

[255] It just didn't happen.

[256] What is going on?

[257] I mean, to me, it's a country in kind of, I mean, those things are all a symptom of a country that's in the kind of psychic pain.

[258] Yeah.

[259] You know, and all the people on their eyes, iPhones.

[260] I sort of get it, but also it makes me think you're anxious.

[261] Like, you're so anxious that you can't bear not to look at your feed for more than 20 seconds.

[262] Well, it's an addiction, for sure.

[263] I mean, you're literally getting dopamine shots every time you check your feed.

[264] And they're very small.

[265] It's a trickle.

[266] It's not like a real, like, it's not really worth it.

[267] You don't get any real good feeling, very rarely.

[268] It's like fast food.

[269] Like the end of, you know, you go to pull the drive in, you know, get your cheeseburger and fries and shake or whatever.

[270] Afterwards, you're full, but you didn't get any nutrients.

[271] And social media is the same way.

[272] You're sort of socially full.

[273] But actually, it's all calories.

[274] There's no nutrition.

[275] I mean, there's nothing to sustain you.

[276] Yeah.

[277] Well, I've found, for me personally, that people get a lot of fulfillment out of tribes, for lack of a better word, of like -minded people doing similar things that are difficult.

[278] Absolutely.

[279] Like, I see it amongst, like, rock.

[280] climbers.

[281] A lot of rock climbers.

[282] They find like real community and other rock climbers and runners get it.

[283] Jiu -Jitsu.

[284] It's huge in the Jiu -Jitsu community.

[285] Of course.

[286] You know, um, and, uh, I experienced it in a deep way the first time I ever went hunting.

[287] Yeah.

[288] Because hunting was almost like, like I had a wall that I didn't know there was a door on it.

[289] And I opened up the door and, oh, there's a whole new area back here.

[290] Like your, your DNA like goes up, we know what to do with this.

[291] We're hunting now.

[292] And you feel like, wow, this is crazy.

[293] Like, this is lighting up parts of my brain or parts of my genetics.

[294] Yeah.

[295] Listen, I went through that same door when I started boxing.

[296] I mean, I started late in life.

[297] I was 50.

[298] I was going through a big life change.

[299] My first marriage ended.

[300] And I need something a little different.

[301] And I think one of the things that really works for people is a situation where they're evaluated for their behavior.

[302] rather than for how and where they were born.

[303] Yes.

[304] Or how much money they have.

[305] Right.

[306] Which is a function, you know, is a function of, to some degree, of how you were born, where you were born.

[307] And, yeah, but so, you know, in high school, you were evaluated for the family you come from, for how you look, for all that stuff.

[308] You don't have control over any of that stuff.

[309] Yeah.

[310] But in the boxing ring, out hunting, you know, whatever, there's a million things like this.

[311] You're evaluated by your peers for your conduct.

[312] and that you have complete control over.

[313] Soldiers are the same way.

[314] You know, and I was with this platoon in combat off and on for a year in eastern Afghanistan.

[315] Those guys didn't care if you were good looking or bad looking, if your dad was in prison or not.

[316] They didn't give a shit, right?

[317] What they cared is how you acted in that situation, and would you put the group, the welfare of the group ahead of your own welfare?

[318] And that was this basic human, basic human question, is the group more important to you than you are to you?

[319] And if we all answer that question with a yes, then we're good.

[320] And so, you know, when you're in situations hunting in the gym, jiu -jitsu, whatever it is, where you're not bringing your street identity in there.

[321] You're just a human being trying to act as well as possible with dignity and respect for others.

[322] You're good.

[323] And it doesn't matter if you suck at jiu -jitsu, right?

[324] As long as you have that basic respect and hard work ethic and being freed from those things you're not responsible for and so and are not judged for it.

[325] That is a huge liberation and it really makes people feel close to each other.

[326] Yeah, so people need, and it's also, do you think that a lot of what's going on today is just the fact that I don't think people are supposed to work in an office all day.

[327] I think it's probably bad for your biology.

[328] I think it's sitting in a chair all day is terrible for you.

[329] I think staring at a computer all day is terrible for you.

[330] All these things that people do or just counter to they're contrary to what your your body was designed for and that must cause a lot of depression and anxiety in people yeah i mean if you if you want to know what we were involved for you can look at um modern day hunter gatherers who more or less anthropologists agree represent our evolutionary past and you'll find that there's at least two hours of pretty vigorous movement every day you know fast walking basically two hours a day by all virtually everyone in the community.

[331] You are almost never out of contact with, I mean, out of physical proximity with other people that you know extremely well.

[332] There's about four or five hours a day devoted to survival, food gathering, that kind of thing.

[333] We work eight, ten hours a day, right?

[334] The most, quote, primitive hunter -gatherers in some of the harshest environments in the world spent around four hours a day surviving.

[335] But survival is a group, endeavor.

[336] It brings everyone together.

[337] Everyone's needed.

[338] High protein, low, you know, no processed foods, obviously.

[339] I mean, the diet, obviously it's a very pure diet.

[340] And people who live like that have extraordinarily good health.

[341] And if they survive, you know, childbirth in those first early years often live into their 70s, 80s to 90.

[342] I mean, you know, West, basically live as long as Westerners do with no medical intervention.

[343] I mean, it's pretty extraordinary.

[344] That is extraordinary.

[345] When you think about it, I mean, what we've, I saw an article, and I didn't, I didn't read the article, but the headline was something along the lines of, it was talking about artificial intelligence.

[346] And it was, uh, whether or not the rise of artificial intelligence will, uh, will even out inequality.

[347] And I remember looking at that and went, just, boy, that's like giving into the hive mind.

[348] Like, artificial intelligence is going to cure all the woes of the woes of the world like let the computer think for you and everything's going to be even and you know now that I'm thinking about it the two guys we were walking behind in San Francisco so it wasn't robots it was artificial intelligence they were talking about it I mean obviously they're connected yeah and and but yeah it was it was AI and you know it's either AI is either the final blossoming of the human mind or it's the end I don't think anyone knows which it is it could easily be the end I've been thinking for the last few years that it's we're some sort of a electronic caterpillar that's giving birth to some new butterfly.

[349] And what we're doing is we're the biological thing that makes the electronic thing and that the electronic thing is going to go, thanks, we got it now.

[350] And then, I mean, we assume that the things that we hold dear, like emotions and camaraderie and this feeling that we have of community, that that's important.

[351] But if we live and we die, like it's important to us while we're alive.

[352] But if we didn't exist, is it important, in air quotes, to the universe?

[353] Is it important to the planet?

[354] Not necessarily.

[355] It's just important as a human.

[356] My understanding of physics is that it was incalculably unlikely that the universe would exist and that life would start on this particular planet or on any planet.

[357] That it was extremely unlikely.

[358] That even the universe would exist.

[359] Yeah.

[360] Yeah.

[361] And so it's hard to say that anything would be important to a system that statistically shouldn't have happened and that doesn't have a conscious and moral mind behind it.

[362] Like, I mean, no, of course we're not important.

[363] I mean, if we were sitting on the moon and you watched a nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States that obliterated civilization, if you were sitting on the moon, you'd barely be able to see it.

[364] you would barely notice anything happened.

[365] Yeah.

[366] That's the moon.

[367] And that's pretty close.

[368] Of course it doesn't matter.

[369] Yeah.

[370] So keep in mind that all those emotions, everything we are had survival value in our past or that we wouldn't have those things, right?

[371] We're the legacy of an evolutionary process that went on for two million years.

[372] So if we feel sadness, if we feel anger, if we feel shame, all of those things had survival value for humans and the individual.

[373] that had the capacity for those emotions made better citizens within their little community.

[374] We're better hunters.

[375] We're better, whatever.

[376] And so those emotions, we find them meaningful, but actually what they are is they helped us survive.

[377] And now we have so altered our circumstances that survival is no longer a question.

[378] And so what do we do with those feelings?

[379] What do we do with those capacities, the ability to hunt, the dopamine that you get from hitting a target.

[380] I mean, teenage boys will sit in a basement for hours, days, years, playing video games.

[381] They're practice.

[382] They're training for hunting, right?

[383] They're training for hunting in war, and they're getting rewarded with dopamine, which is exactly what should have been happening for 500 ,000 years.

[384] And now there's nothing to hunt, nothing to fight.

[385] They're still doing the behavior as they should because they're wired for it, but there's no useful purpose for it, and they're making themselves irrelevant.

[386] They're human casualties of this technology.

[387] and I find it really tragic.

[388] Are they more irrelevant than someone who play sports?

[389] I mean, I think our relevance comes from our relationship with our community and with society.

[390] Right.

[391] And, I mean, at least if you play sports, you're part of the human community.

[392] And when you're playing a video game by yourself, you're really not.

[393] By yourself.

[394] But a lot of kids, what they're doing now is they're playing these online games.

[395] They're playing against other people.

[396] They talk to each other online.

[397] They have like headsets and they, I mean, e -sports is a big growing thing.

[398] And it's a, I mean, it's a fascinating thing because it's also sort of based on your ability to perform.

[399] You know, the ones who are the heroes or the ones who are like, when I was playing Quake, there was this dude name, Fatality was his name.

[400] He just killed everybody.

[401] He was awesome.

[402] But it was, you know, he was the king because he was just the best at the game.

[403] So in the community of people that were only judged by their performance, he had risen to this very high level.

[404] But it was a community.

[405] Well, you know, if you look at humans, you look at chimpanzees, we clearly need the proximity of others, like the physical proximity of others.

[406] So, I mean, the only way I can evaluate that is to say that's awesome training for hunting in war.

[407] Right.

[408] And the military does use those games to train their soldiers.

[409] And so I get it.

[410] It's effective.

[411] What I would do is look at suicide and depression rates in gamers and see, are they above or?

[412] below the national average for that age group and if they're above then there's a problem yeah either depressive people are seeking that as a refuge or that activity makes people withdrawn and depressed and you know like either way it's the problem that needs to be solved and I have no idea what the data is but that's that's where I would look now when you're researching all this data and you're putting together a book like tribe and you're you're putting it out are you thinking to yourself that you have that it's not just an interesting study um human behavior but it's also probably important for people to read to kind of get an understanding and these are to get an understanding of what it is it's causing people to have all this depression and anxiety that it maybe this is this is something that needs to be said I mean any categorical statement I shouldn't make but a lot of authors when they write books it's their firm conviction that their book needs to be read by the public and that will help the public in some way right it will illuminate life illuminate America, eliminate the world in some way that's important.

[413] I mean, that's just a starting point for the two years of work that a book takes, right?

[414] You have a child, your assumption is the child's going to be a good person in the world, not a terrible person, wind up shooting up a church, right?

[415] It's just a starting basic assumption.

[416] So for me, when I was writing tribe, I was trying to make sense of a number of different things.

[417] I mean, one was that the soldier I was with in Afghanistan, I was really struck some months later that a lot of them wanted to go back to this sort of flea -bitten godforsaken outpost where they got shot out every day and didn't want to come home to the u .s it's like that needs explaining yeah right um and it made me think of this uncle that i had sort of surrogate uncle named uh named ellis ellis settled he was a he was a lecota sue and apache he was born in 1929 out west and um he had a very rough interesting life and he was very well read and i remember him telling me he was a sort of mentor figure for me and i remember him telling me when i was in my 20s.

[418] He said, you know, all throughout the history of the United States, along the frontier, and this is how he put it.

[419] He said, white people were always running off to join the Indians.

[420] And the Indians never ran off to join the white people.

[421] And so here was this fact again, like, oh, no one wants to go back to or go to the sort of modern world.

[422] And this wasn't even the modern world.

[423] This is the modern world in 1865.

[424] Right.

[425] I mean, right, or 1755 or whatever.

[426] I mean, at the, at the time it was the modern world.

[427] Right.

[428] But so no one, no one, it's basically the post -agricultural revolution world, the industrial world, the world of organized religion, organized government, of industrial economy, and an agriculture -based system where people had jobs and you got up at dawn and plowed the fields all day and went to bed and your minister and your king told you what to do and, you know, whatever.

[429] That's the modern world.

[430] And that's what nobody wants to be part.

[431] of, including the soldiers I was with at Restrepo, right?

[432] And so it just made me think, maybe what the soldiers are missing isn't war, although that certainly has its charms for some people, but it's community, it's that they were with each other.

[433] Community with consequences.

[434] That's right, exactly.

[435] Community with consequences.

[436] Likewise for the Native Americans, for the tribal societies in North America, maybe what the young men and some young women along the frontier were looking for was an escape.

[437] from the sort of oppressiveness of the congregation on Sunday mornings, the oppressiveness of the society that they were toiling in, the regimented nature of an agrarian society.

[438] Maybe what they longed for was the closeness and freedom of a tribal society.

[439] And indeed, I mean, there was this incredible sort of hemorrhaging of people from the frontier to the tribes.

[440] And even when people were kidnapped on raids by the Indians, kidnapped from their log homes along the frontier and abducted and forcibly adopted into these tribal societies.

[441] When given the chance to come home to be repatriated, some years later, very often these people refuse to go.

[442] They didn't want to go back.

[443] They wanted to stay with their adopted tribe, their adopted community.

[444] That's amazing to me. And it says a lot about the way humans are wired to want to live.

[445] Yeah, that was one of the craziest aspects of your book.

[446] I'd never heard that before, and how many people had done that, where they were kidnapped, and then they said, we like it here better.

[447] Yeah, that's right.

[448] And again, we're talking about more than 100 years ago.

[449] So what we think of as modern society today has only escalated those anxieties and woes and all the things that separated them from the tribal world.

[450] That's right.

[451] And one of the things about tribes is they're sort of inherently egalitarian.

[452] It's very hard to pass on wealth in a non -capitalist society.

[453] In a mobile nomadic society, it's impossible to pass on wealth because you can't carry it.

[454] I mean, there's no way to carry wealth when you're in a nomadic hunter -gatherer society.

[455] So they're very, very egalitarian, and they also guard against the sort of abuses of power, sort of one alpha male trying to sort of bully people and take more than his share.

[456] Or for that matter, people sort of freeloading and not contributing to the group survival effort and sort of scamming a little bit of food here, a little bit of whatever there.

[457] Both of those sins against the community are really harshly punished.

[458] So it's very egalitarian.

[459] And egalitarianism is something we are all wired for, right?

[460] And I think one of the distresses of a modern capitalist society is that it can't be egalitarian.

[461] And that's painful for people.

[462] But then if you introduce a crisis, the blitz in London, for example, an earthquake in Italy that I studied, what happens is that money doesn't matter anymore when the floodwaters are rising, when the bombs are falling.

[463] Social class doesn't matter at all.

[464] It's like being in the boxing gym, how you conduct yourself with respect to the others around you is actually what gets evaluated.

[465] And, you know, a poor man can be brave and generous just as easily as a rich man. There's no advantage to being wealthy or powerful when it comes to those basic human qualities.

[466] And that is a huge liberation.

[467] And so, I mean, I live in New York City.

[468] And after 9 -11, there was a bit of that in New York City.

[469] I mean, you know, there's a lot of poor people in New York, a lot of rich people, you know, whatever.

[470] Obviously, we all know that.

[471] But after 9 -11, no one was rich or poor or anything.

[472] We were all New Yorkers wondering if there was going to be another bomb dropped on us, basically, another attack on the city.

[473] So what happened in New York?

[474] The suicide rate went down.

[475] The violent crime rate went down.

[476] Vietnam vets in New York said, who suffered from PTSD, said that their symptoms disappeared after 9 -11.

[477] Everyone was needed.

[478] And everyone for a while, everyone was equal because we were all facing some danger that terrified us.

[479] And that, for all of its tragedy, that is an intoxicating social state to be in for human beings.

[480] That's so bizarre.

[481] It's so bizarre, but it also so makes sense.

[482] One of the things that I also thought was fascinating in your book where you were talking about PTSD suffers and how people in these veterans hospitals would be absolutely furious if they thought someone was faking their symptoms and that they had to be physically restrained to keep from attacking people that they thought were just jukeing the system and how many people were on PTSD benefits.

[483] Yeah, I mean, the numbers are really elusive, but, you know, what I have sort of anecdotally from veterans as well as people within the VA administration who are, you know, acting as therapists or whatever group counselors, is that there's certain number of people, and I don't know what the fraction is, but there's a certain number of people who were not traumatized in war, and PTSD is hard to prove or disprove, and it's, you know, sort of obviously wide open for either an unintentional, misdiagnosis or an intentional misrepresentation, whatever.

[484] And so, I mean, of course, and any bureaucratic system gets scammed and PTSD benefits are no different.

[485] But it really is traumatizing, I mean, seriously angering and traumatizing to soldiers who really were traumatized because they really were in combat.

[486] And keep in mind, only about 10 % of the U .S. military experiences direct combat.

[487] How would they know if someone was seriously traumatized?

[488] And the other thing that's fascinating is that as you were talking about in these small societies, freeloaders are looked down upon, as are the greedy alpha males who try to dominate the wealth, like that in these societies, like egalitarian ideas are much more openly expressed.

[489] It's much more important that this is represented by these people that are legitimately suffering, seeing someone who's scamming the system, and angry.

[490] Whereas like, say if you had a hurt knee or something like that, you were going to the doctor and you saw someone who was faking a back injury, you wouldn't be upset.

[491] Right.

[492] They were just robbing money from the insurance company and just getting free benefits.

[493] Well, yeah, I mean, because it hurt and he doesn't have a sort of emotional cargo to it, right?

[494] But combat does.

[495] I mean, if you're in combat and you lost your best buddy and you got trauma from that, as well you should.

[496] And then you're in some group therapy thing at the VA with some guy who was on a rear base the whole time is claiming 100 % PTSD disability for something that never happened.

[497] Like, yeah, that would make you angry.

[498] It would make me angry.

[499] Because combat is extremely emotional.

[500] And again, I don't know, is it one in a million, one in 100, one in the thousand?

[501] I have no idea what the rates are.

[502] I'm not even sure if the VA does.

[503] And there's, you know, in some ways incentivize not to find out.

[504] But it's, I can tell you from like the real deal combat vets, that happens.

[505] They smell it instantly.

[506] And one way it gets sorted out is.

[507] is that those guys who are misrepresenting themselves get questioned by the combat vets.

[508] Oh, so what you're with?

[509] Like, you said, what happened exactly?

[510] Oh, a mortar hit the other side of the base?

[511] That's a pretty big base.

[512] I've been there.

[513] You know, I was a mile away, and you're traumatized?

[514] Are you kidding?

[515] Like, you know, I mean, they'll get questioned, right?

[516] Right.

[517] So, I mean, like, you might question someone who's bullshitting you about how much, you know, how much fighting is done with the MMA or whatever, you know, wherever your area of expertise is.

[518] I'm sure you can smell a fraud instantly, right?

[519] Yeah.

[520] Well, everyone can.

[521] And that's one of the things, that's one of the characteristics of humans is that because we live in collective societies where we have to sort of trust one another, we're extremely good at smelling out misrepresentation and fraud.

[522] We're really, really good at it.

[523] And it's one of the things that feels intolerable is to have someone who was unfairly gaining from the hard work of the rest of us.

[524] And I should just say, when I say egalitarianism, I don't mean that there's no hierarchy.

[525] Right.

[526] Right.

[527] I mean, complicated systems need hierarchy, need order.

[528] I mean, groups need hierarchy so that not everyone's a general, not everyone's a private.

[529] I mean, you need organization within the group.

[530] But egalitarian means that nobody gets extra rights.

[531] You know, like we all have basically the same rights in the group.

[532] That's what that means.

[533] Well, I mean, it all completely makes sense.

[534] It particularly makes sense the idea that these people who were real combat vets, who saw real action.

[535] would be instantaneously able to discern whether or not someone was faking it.

[536] Yeah.

[537] Yeah.

[538] But that this, it sort of mirrors what you were saying about these small tribes, that in these small tribes, someone who's a freeloader is extremely dangerous to the group.

[539] You'll look that as a liability.

[540] You looked at as someone who just can't be trusted, and you need trust.

[541] You need community.

[542] And this is like what you're saying about combat troops that what they want to, to know is that you're going to be willing to put your own safety secondary to the safety of the troop.

[543] Right.

[544] And if everyone does that, everyone's safer.

[545] But if no one, if some one person doesn't do that.

[546] I mean, that's always in the movies, right?

[547] It's always the one guy who runs away or the one guy who sells out or.

[548] Yeah, that's right.

[549] And, you know, those human themes are enduring and very powerful.

[550] So sometimes I speak to a lot of liberal audiences, right?

[551] And so I love doing this to them.

[552] Like I'll, and I'm a Democrat, so I sort of know those people pretty well, right?

[553] I grew up in Massachusetts and I get it, you know?

[554] And so, you know, I'll say to them, okay, who here is against war and doesn't want to know anything, have anything to do with war?

[555] And of course, everyone raises their hand, right?

[556] And, and then I say, okay, who here is paid money to go be entertained by a Hollywood war movie?

[557] And everyone raises their hand.

[558] It seems like a contradiction, but then I go on to say to them is, look, if if war, can get a room full of passivist to go pay money to watch it.

[559] So there's something important going on in that narrative.

[560] Yeah.

[561] It's not a, you're not going to the movies to watch people get killed, right?

[562] You're not, you guys aren't all sociopaths.

[563] You're going to the movies to see these very ancient human concerns of who's loyal to the group, who's a coward, who's brave, who's willing to risk their life for someone else.

[564] I mean, these are, these are things that have kept humans alive or endangered them, as the case may be, for a million years.

[565] Of course they're compelling narratives.

[566] And in war, you see those things happen like in a sort of accelerated intense rate.

[567] I mean, you know, you grew up in a suburb.

[568] You almost never see someone have to choose between their own safety and the community.

[569] It never happens.

[570] That's the problem with the suburbs.

[571] In war, that happens every moment, every day, right?

[572] So it gives you this sort of like human narrative in this incredibly compressed intense form, which reconfirms the value, the human values we all have about, okay, if you're in a group, you have to love that group, even if you're, if you dislike some of the people in it.

[573] Like, that's what it means to be part of a group, and that's what has kept humans alive for a very long time.

[574] You even see that narrative in science fiction, futuristic movies like The Matrix, right?

[575] The one guy who sells out the other humans to the Matrix and just says, look, I want, you know, I want to be in the Matrix, I want to have a great life.

[576] eat good food and yeah i mean listen once you once you are aware of this narrative you see it everywhere and i mean one part there's some research that i did that didn't actually make into the book i couldn't quite fit it in but i i i um interviewed someone who um had a consulting firm in hollywood that did basically sort of like market research for the big studios and they would they would screen films for audiences and then ask the audience's questions about the ending about the characters, about how to construct the plot.

[577] They were sort of trying to figure out what's the public want to see, right?

[578] So what they found was that in disaster films, very typically, where a community was facing a disaster, right?

[579] A plague or, you know, a flood or a war or whatever, you know, when the community had to rally to survive, right?

[580] An alien invasion.

[581] There's a million scenarios, but it's all the same basic story.

[582] You have these different characters.

[583] There's usually a male figure.

[584] that takes the lead to physically defend the space, right?

[585] There is often a female figure that's connected to him that sort of takes place of the community that's being defended.

[586] Takes care of dresses the wounds, dresses the emotional wounds.

[587] I mean, sort of takes care of all that stuff while the man or the men are sort of physically defending the place.

[588] And then there's a guy who often was really well -themed, or well off before the catastrophe, who's continuing to act in a self -serving way, even during the catastrophe when everyone's needed.

[589] And everybody gets mad at that guy.

[590] Well, that guy always dies.

[591] Yeah.

[592] Always dies.

[593] And then there's another character.

[594] And again, this is just very common in these narratives.

[595] The Weasley Beta Mail.

[596] Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[597] No, but keep in mind that these narratives afford by public opinion, right, this isn't the studios trying to make the public force feed the public like gender roles and, you know, whatever.

[598] This is the public saying, I like that.

[599] I don't like that.

[600] So the studios are responding to the questionnaires that these researchers give out.

[601] So one of the really interesting things, and this is totally inflammatory, but the role of the person defending, like physically, physically defending the community, when they try to put a woman in that role, people have a problem with it.

[602] And frankly, often women have a problem with it.

[603] Like, it's really, really interesting.

[604] And women are just as important as men in a crisis or in anything, right?

[605] But what the public seems to want is the guy with the sword and the woman with the bandage.

[606] You know, or with the sort of reassuring, you know, like it gets divided like that.

[607] And it's not, again, it's not the studios forcing something on people.

[608] It's the people watching these films saying, just voting on what they, the narrative that they like best.

[609] but the other character that I thought was really hilarious.

[610] There's often that there's an estranged husband who's betrayed his wife and family in some way.

[611] He's on the outs, right, with his family and with his wife.

[612] And then the crisis happens.

[613] The Martians invade, the floodwaters rise, whatever it is.

[614] And he comes to the rescue and does the right thing and saves his wife and family.

[615] And maybe even the wife's new boyfriend.

[616] I mean, he even could have gotten to that stage, right?

[617] And because he does the right thing, she takes him back.

[618] It's funny, man. It's really just playing out these ancient archetypes.

[619] That's exactly what it's doing.

[620] I mean, those storylines resonate because they're ancient and because those roles in society helped us survive.

[621] And there's always the woman who, in absence of the strong male figure, rises to the occasion herself.

[622] Right.

[623] I mean, some of the research I did with Tribe, what I found, I studied this coal mine disaster in Canada.

[624] So it was all men trapped two miles down in these collapsed passageways.

[625] Two miles down.

[626] Two miles down.

[627] I mean, two miles down a angled shaft.

[628] But two miles down.

[629] Yeah.

[630] So they had an explosion, some gases ignited, and the passageways collapsed.

[631] So they're two miles in.

[632] Their gas light, their batteries last, you know, 24 hours.

[633] Their water lasts 48 hours.

[634] Pretty soon they're just sitting in darkness, not knowing, not only if they'll survive, not knowing if their bodies will ever even be recovered.

[635] They have no way of this, sitting in darkness trying to.

[636] So, this is what happened.

[637] I mean, obviously, the situation like that needs leadership.

[638] So in the first minutes and hours, there were these sort of alpha males that weren't necessarily crew bosses, right?

[639] They weren't within the traditional hierarchy.

[640] They were just guys who grabbed a pickaxe and a shovel and said, come on, guys, we're going to try to dig our way out.

[641] And they basically, I mean, literally attacked the problem of these collapsed mine shafts.

[642] There was too much rubble to dig through.

[643] they were two miles down.

[644] So they dig dug and dug and dug, and dug, and it required these guys.

[645] And again, it was all men down there, but there was one sort of leader was this very aggressive.

[646] He didn't care how anyone else felt, oh, you're scared.

[647] I don't give a shit.

[648] Grab a shovel.

[649] We got to solve this problem, like totally unempathic, right?

[650] When they realized they couldn't dig their way out and they ran out of batteries and they were sitting in darkness, a new kind of leader was required.

[651] And that was someone who was able to keep people's spirits up, who was empathic, who listened.

[652] If a guy was really scared, was able to say, hey, listen, man, it's going to be all right.

[653] It's okay to be scared.

[654] We're all scared.

[655] You know, that kind of voice.

[656] It's a different kind of leadership.

[657] Now, typically in society, the male role would be the guy with the pickaxe attacking the problem.

[658] The female role would be the person sort of like trying to keep the group emotionally together and functioning.

[659] And, but what happens in a situation where there's all of one sex, those gender roles will be filled no matter what, it'll just be filled by people of the same sex.

[660] So if it was all women down there, some woman would have grabbed the pickaxe and taken on what would be typically considered a quote male role, but she's female.

[661] Right.

[662] So the gender roles that society needs to survive in adversity, in war, in nature, in a collapsed coal mine, it needs both gender roles, but either sex can fill those roles.

[663] It's amazing, and we will sort it out.

[664] So it doesn't matter who's male and female.

[665] What matters is that those two basic kinds of leadership and caretaking get taken care of.

[666] Wow.

[667] So how did those guys get out?

[668] They eventually, I mean, the rescuers eventually got to them.

[669] How long were they down there for?

[670] They're over a week.

[671] I might even have been two weeks.

[672] I mean, they, oh, eight days.

[673] I can't remember, actually.

[674] Something like a week.

[675] How did they survive?

[676] I mean, barely.

[677] I mean, they ran out of water.

[678] They were eating the bark off the timbers, you know, the support structures.

[679] They were eating coal.

[680] I mean, eating coal.

[681] They were trying to, yeah.

[682] They were drinking their own urine.

[683] I mean, you know, yeah, and the guys died.

[684] I mean, not everyone survived.

[685] One guy was trapped, his arm was trapped between two collapsed timbers, and they were, you know, it was a pretty lively conversation about it.

[686] And he was begging them to cut his arm off so that he could at least be free.

[687] and there was a pretty lively conversation with the other men in the group like do we do that or not right and they decided not to that if they all they had was an axe they're like we chop his arm off and free him he might die from that right and he was removed from where those guys were so he was lonely and that was the thing he was lonely he was like cut my arm off I wanted to join you guys and they didn't and he died whoa amazing yeah amazing it's intense yeah yeah And so, you know, I mean, not to, whatever, to steer this conversation too much, but I mean, that's a microcosm in some ways for America, right?

[688] I mean, every country is potentially trapped in a coal mine trying to figure out how to survive.

[689] We don't know, I mean, the day before 9 -11, we didn't know 9 -11 was coming, right?

[690] We don't know what's coming, right?

[691] And the only way for any group of people, whether it's 330 million or, you know, 18 people as it was in that coal mine, the only way for any group of people to survive.

[692] is to act collectively, right?

[693] Humans don't survive in nature by themselves.

[694] And so in that coal mine, both kinds of people were needed.

[695] They happened to be all men, but it didn't need to be, whatever, it doesn't matter.

[696] Gender doesn't matter.

[697] I mean, sex doesn't matter.

[698] They needed both kinds of people.

[699] They needed aggressive alphas that attacked the problem and didn't care how people felt and were interested in like strict law and order in the group.

[700] You do this, you do that, you do what I say, this is a survival.

[701] You needed those kinds of people.

[702] And you were interested in, like, you needed the other kind, like, hey, we're going to be all right.

[703] Are you feeling okay?

[704] Yeah, we're, you know, like that kind of collaborative, empathic person.

[705] You needed that also.

[706] So when you look at the politics in this country, you need both conservatism and liberalism, right?

[707] You cannot, I mean, a completely conservative America will be well defended, right?

[708] No one's going to mess with us, right?

[709] America first, like, no one will mess with us.

[710] But what will let, we'll let, we'll, will be left unaddressed is some of the internal dynamics of this country, which is, frankly, not at the foremost of conservative thought.

[711] I mean, sort of racial disparity, economic disparity, all that stuff.

[712] Like, you know, I mean, that's not at the foremost of the conservative agenda, and it shouldn't be.

[713] It doesn't need to be.

[714] It doesn't need to be because it's at the forefront of the liberal agenda.

[715] And God forbid, you have a country that's completely run by liberals.

[716] It'll get overrun immediately by the nearest armed neighbor, right?

[717] Which liberals just aren't wired that way to be suspicious of the world.

[718] But what liberals do quite well is to try to figure out a sort of system of fairness within the group that gets, you know, it just tries to equalize things and get everyone to sort of participate and to be valued and taken care of.

[719] Like, I mean, it's all lovely, right?

[720] I mean, that's needed also.

[721] And so every country is at its best when you have both of those dynamics going on and they're in a kind of dynamic tension with each other, but neither completely takes over.

[722] And one of the things that breaks my heart watching this country is there's this idea on both sides, on the liberal side and on the conservative side that the other not only is totally wrong, but it's totally immoral and shouldn't exist.

[723] Right.

[724] It's just not true.

[725] And this country is not going to find peace until both sides of that political equation sort of reach across and shake the other person's hand and say, look, I disagree with you on almost everything, but I'm glad you're with us.

[726] I need you.

[727] And I need you because I don't think like you do.

[728] I need you to think like you do.

[729] And until this country figures out how to do that, we're going to be in this sort of awful partisan strife that eventually will destroy it.

[730] It's like bullets are not going to take down this country.

[731] Words will.

[732] And they're going to be our words.

[733] And it just breaks my heart to see this dynamic not only going on and on, but getting worse and worse.

[734] It does seem to be getting worse and worse.

[735] And what seems to be new is the idea from the liberals to silence people on the right and to think that free speech is important.

[736] that what's important is their ideas and that their ideas are especially i think now that trump is president and i think people feel even more emboldened and locked up in this i mean listen i mean i think it's both i mean honestly i think it's equally both sides but i agree with you i mean the problem with the right with the left for me and again i'm a democrat so i you know i love evaluating my own sides problems because they drive me they make me more upset than the right wings problems, right?

[737] Because they're my people, right?

[738] And I'm like, come on, can you, like, can you act a little better, please?

[739] Do you see the irony, though, that you've chosen a tribe and the tribe of people that you don't even know and that these people are just, it's a political tribe?

[740] Well, I mean, listen, I, I share some of those political ideals and the conservative ideals I don't, I don't share.

[741] But I would hate to live in a country that didn't have conservatives in it.

[742] Right.

[743] Even though I disagree, I mean, because I disagree with them, right?

[744] I don't want to be surrounded by people I agree with.

[745] Right.

[746] And there are conservatives that do not want liberals in this country, right?

[747] Shame on them.

[748] Sure.

[749] And likewise for liberals.

[750] Like, I may hear it on both sides.

[751] So I think both sides try to silence the voices of the other side, frankly.

[752] You know, that's a sin, I think, that's committed equally on both sides.

[753] But one thing I wanted to bring up because I actually made a mistake.

[754] Last time I was on your show, I mentioned a book, and I got the name wrong.

[755] And it's such a good book.

[756] And I wanted to – and I just saw on Twitter that people.

[757] trying to find it and they couldn't because I got the name wrong.

[758] It's called our political nature.

[759] It's by a guy named Avi Tushman.

[760] And he collected an awful lot of data about the fact that political opinion is about 50 % determined by genetics.

[761] In other words, you inherit about half of your political opinion.

[762] And the other half is acquired through experience, through exposure.

[763] So if you grew up in a liberal family, you're probably, you're about 50 % likely to wind up being a liberal because you absorb that way of seeing the world.

[764] And I'm a Democrat.

[765] Have I grown up in a conservative family?

[766] I think I'd be a conservative.

[767] And I actually think, having read this book, I think I'm actually a genetic conservative that adopted liberal values because of my environment.

[768] And I think there's a lot of people who are genetic liberals who have adopted conservative values.

[769] I mean, it's about 50 -50.

[770] But the point is, so it's Avi Tushman, our political nature.

[771] That's the name of the book.

[772] I got it wrong.

[773] I just wanted to correct that.

[774] But the point of this, to me, is that, and he knows this.

[775] I mean, scientists know this because when they look at identical twins that share almost all of their DNA, identical twins later in life are far more likely to have the same of political opinion than fraternal twins, which don't share all their DNA.

[776] You understand what I'm saying?

[777] Yeah, yeah.

[778] So that's how they know this.

[779] When they look at identical twins, there's a much higher concordance of a political opinion later in life than for fraternal twins.

[780] internal twins.

[781] That's how they know that it's around 50 % of your political view is determined by genetics.

[782] If it's determined by genetics, that means it had survival value.

[783] That means that liberalism and conservatism both had survival value in our evolutionary past and as a result has become encoded in our DNA, like other behaviors like generosity, other character traits like generosity, courage, things like that.

[784] Those are all encoded in our DNA because they had survival value.

[785] Well, likewise, conservatism and liberalism, which means that in the argument, the discussion in this country about politics, you can disagree with people.

[786] Go for it.

[787] Democracy comes out of disagreement and compromise is great.

[788] But what you cannot do is point your finger across the aisle and say, not only you wrong, but you shouldn't exist.

[789] Like, go away, disappear.

[790] You're not part of what America is.

[791] That assertion is completely contradictory to evolution.

[792] And if it's contradicted to evolution, it won't work.

[793] Well, it seems to me that people have a really difficult time managing conflict, even managing verbal conflict, that when someone disagrees with them, they want to silence that person, they want to yell at that person, they want to scream, and they think about their own thoughts rather than putting themselves in the position of the other person, or objectively recognizing that there is an important factor, that both, it's important to have both sides.

[794] It's important to even be challenged on your ideas, so you can solidify what's the root cause of your ideas?

[795] Where are they coming from?

[796] How much have you examined these ideas?

[797] Are you just married to them because they were given to you?

[798] Are these things you've adopted?

[799] Or are these really well -considered thoughts that you've put through the mill?

[800] Right.

[801] I mean, the thing is, there are rules to contests, right?

[802] I mean, there are rules in MMA, right?

[803] There are rules in boxing.

[804] There were rules in marriages, right?

[805] I mean, if you would never stay in a marriage, where your spouse treated you the way the political parties treat each other right now.

[806] You would never stay.

[807] Right.

[808] I mean, there's incredibly contemptuous, mocking, disparaging tone that both sides have.

[809] Like, you were like, I'm out of here.

[810] You know, my wife clearly just thinks like I'm a complete dirtbag or no one who talked.

[811] You don't talk to someone like that that you have any respect for, right?

[812] I'm out of here.

[813] I think no one would stay in a marriage like that and what's happened.

[814] And this is new, right?

[815] We didn't grow up with this.

[816] Like, this is a new thing where.

[817] the political parties talk to each other.

[818] I mean, disagreement is great, right?

[819] Eventually you compromise and you figure something out where nobody's happy, but that, you know, the machine goes on, right?

[820] That the ship sails on.

[821] What's new now is this contempt.

[822] And it's toxic in marriage.

[823] And it's toxic in a country, too.

[824] And this is a new thing.

[825] And I think if you really take in the reality this truth that half of our political opinions are genetically wired, you've got to get rid of the contempt.

[826] You know, I mean, it's part of what we are.

[827] I don't think most people are aware of that.

[828] No, they're not, right.

[829] That's why I'm talking about it.

[830] I mean, you know.

[831] And Congress plays on this, right?

[832] It's a great campaign strategy to, like, say things that are hateful things about the other side and it consolidates your base.

[833] And if you consolidate, and both sides do this, right?

[834] And if you consolidate your base, then you're more likely to win the election.

[835] You're in a more solid political position.

[836] And we know behavioral psychologists will tell you that one way to make a group cohere, make it close ranks and strengthen its group commitment to itself.

[837] One way to do that is to introduce an enemy.

[838] And when there's no enemy, groups naturally dispersed because people just go off to do their individual thing.

[839] Of course, you know, you have the freedom to do that.

[840] There's no threat anywhere.

[841] Introduce a threat.

[842] Boom.

[843] Everyone's in a group.

[844] Right.

[845] So what politicians do is they create a threat where there is none.

[846] You know, they say that other political party, they're actually trying to destroy democracy.

[847] They're not part of the democracy.

[848] They're actually trying to destroy it.

[849] They're trying to destroy this country.

[850] The same thing happened at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

[851] My father grew up in Spain, and I studied the Spanish Civil War quite a lot.

[852] The Democratic reforms that were coming in the 30s, you know, just land redistribution, things like, you know, the vote for women.

[853] You have pretty normal.

[854] things.

[855] But they were a threat to the power structure in Spain.

[856] And the military and the sort of far right in Spain, the fascists, basically said that those democratic reforms were people who were trying to destroy Spain.

[857] So you create an enemy that consolidates your power and you go on to win the election.

[858] It's great campaign strategy.

[859] It's just terrible for the nation.

[860] Yeah, this lock her up, lock her up when Trump was running.

[861] That was the big thing, right?

[862] The enemy.

[863] This was the enemy.

[864] that was Hillary Clinton.

[865] She represented the evil Democrats who just had been stealing and robbing.

[866] Right.

[867] And I, you know, listen, I totally understand being in disagreement with Democrats, right?

[868] But it's a different matter to say that they're actually antithetical.

[869] The Democrats are antithetical to free democratic ideals.

[870] But just seems to me to there's not a good party right now.

[871] The Republicans are a mess.

[872] The Democrats are a mess.

[873] There's not, right?

[874] No, they both suck.

[875] And so reform them, right?

[876] I mean, or created a party.

[877] Yeah, isn't there also an issue with just having two sides, right?

[878] Having the Yankees versus the Red Sox every year in the World Series?

[879] Well, those two sides do represent the sort of the genetic strains in our...

[880] Liberal and conservative.

[881] Yeah, I mean, it's going to break down one way or another.

[882] In that direction.

[883] Right.

[884] And so, I mean, it is sort of a binary.

[885] I mean, our brains are sort of binary in that way.

[886] I mean, as humans, surviving in the wild, you have to defend your group and you need fairness within the group.

[887] The two things you have to do.

[888] to survive and remain a group, right?

[889] And so those tasks have been sort of like subcontracted out to conservatives and to liberals.

[890] And it's been that way for a very long time.

[891] And you can even see some of those same behaviors like in chimpanzee society, right?

[892] So this is very, very ancient behavior.

[893] So like it or not, I think you have two groups.

[894] But that doesn't mean that the two groups have to act so abysmally with each other.

[895] And I really think that if you want to save the, if you want to sort of save this country, morally, politically, nationally, maybe, you know, really what you need is a bipartisan committee in Congress that calls people out and calls them out for doing and saying things that undermine our sense of unity as a nation.

[896] So when Democrats say he's not my president, that undermines the understanding of what democracy is.

[897] No, he's your president.

[898] He got voted in, man. That's what happens in the democracy is the guy you didn't vote for ends up being your president.

[899] That's what a democracy is.

[900] So just deal with it, right?

[901] I hate that.

[902] I hate that.

[903] I'm a Democrat.

[904] I didn't vote for him, but I hate when people say that.

[905] And likewise, when Donald Trump, when citizen Trump was accusing Barack Obama, and I understand not liking Obama, I don't really care if you don't like him or don't like him, but when citizen Trump accused Barack Obama of not being a citizen, and the GOP didn't repeat.

[906] putiate that?

[907] I mean, think about it.

[908] Citizen Trump was telling every veteran and soldier fighting overseas that their commander -in -chief was an imposter, was a fraud, was not an American citizen and has usurped the White House, right?

[909] That's a terribly destructive thing to tell men and women in uniform or in a trench getting shot at, right?

[910] And the GOP, like the DNC with this stupid, he's not my president thing, the DNC is not projecting that idea.

[911] They let people say it.

[912] They don't denounce it, right?

[913] The GOP never repudiated that stupid idea that Trump came along with.

[914] And for the good of the nation, they both had to, right?

[915] And this isn't a free speech issue.

[916] Right.

[917] Everyone has the right, legal right, to make a fool of themselves.

[918] Go for it.

[919] But that doesn't mean the two political parties have to stay silent in the face of things that are completely toxic to our democracy.

[920] And they really should have spoken out.

[921] And I think some kind of bipartisan commission in Congress that would call out the worst outrages and call on the political parties to denounce them, that that would be enormously positive thing in this country.

[922] I agree with you, but I think it would take a truly exceptional person to look at the other side's faults and not capitalize on it, you know, and especially even if it's a false thing, like the Obama thing with Trump or any number of things you could find in that regard.

[923] But it seems to me like this is like the perfect time if there was ever going to be a time where a third party would some sort of a centrist type party would come around.

[924] This would be the perfect time where people are.

[925] And we also, I think, people recognize that what we're seeing on the right and the left in regards to Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump is you're seeing people that are pretending to be this thing, right?

[926] With Donald Trump, he's a lifelong Democrat.

[927] And then all of a sudden he's a Republican.

[928] He's talking about God.

[929] And, I mean, this is like it's a show.

[930] It's a little dog and pony show on the right.

[931] And on the left, you got this woman who was a woman who was a woman.

[932] was a part of the Clinton Foundation.

[933] They were essentially, it was a pay -to -play scheme.

[934] They were making millions of dollars and hundreds of $1 ,000 for bullshit speeches that they would give to banks.

[935] And this is not some sort of a real liberal.

[936] This is not the ideas that you were embracing about liberal values.

[937] I mean, no, I mean, the two parties basically have become sort of cartels to keep themselves in power.

[938] Yes, that's a great way to put it.

[939] Yes.

[940] And, you know, Hillary was absolutely part that on the on the on the on the left and you know it uh all of it's antithetical to the highest ideals of the framers of the constitution and the people that establish this country and and i and i i mean i hear you about the centrist's party that would be great but there's you know i mean the way the power structure works the way the cartels work is they got all they have access to all the funds right all the money right where you where do you where do you where do you get the money for something like that yeah you need to build something from from scratch and get up to speed in turn in time to win an election.

[941] That's very, very hard to do.

[942] But at the very least, I mean, a centrist party could fall prey to that kind of toxic rhetoric as well.

[943] I mean, but I feel like there should be norms where freedom of speech is an absolute, I mean, we get it, but that the parties don't, they have a moral obligation to denounce things that they know undermine the unity of this country.

[944] I don't mean people in disagreement with one another.

[945] I mean a basic level of respect for the other person's personhood for their citizenship, for their right to participate in the democratic process.

[946] And when someone accuses the president of not being a citizen of the U .S., they're basically saying, I don't respect this system.

[947] Like, I think the entire system is a lie.

[948] And I don't even think Donald Trump thought it was true.

[949] I think it was a tactic.

[950] And that the GOP never called that.

[951] I was really shameful.

[952] You don't think he thought it was true that Obama was actually born in Kenya?

[953] Because I think he did.

[954] Because I know that he's really good friends with everything.

[955] Alex Jones and talks to him all the time.

[956] I think he believes a lot of very wacky conspiracies.

[957] You know, I think he starts out believing that, but by the end, I mean, did he, I mean, did he, he did it for seven years.

[958] So many people did believe it, though.

[959] I know, but he, but the thing is, he was doing something that worked.

[960] He's a pragmatist.

[961] One of the things I really like about him in a way.

[962] I mean, I hate, I find him sort of amoral in the way that makes me the chills, but he's also a pragmatist, right?

[963] So I think he's completely capable of advocating a position that he doesn't believe in, but I don't think he needs to believe in.

[964] He's like, enough people believe in this, that this is working for me. What was the benefit for him even chasing that idea down?

[965] I mean, he wasn't running for president back then.

[966] Do you think he was considering it?

[967] I think he's been, I think he was considering it for a long time.

[968] So he was doing it to sort of deteriorate to Democratic Party?

[969] Yeah, and to see, see of this, you know, the immigration stuff also.

[970] I mean, maybe he believes in that stuff.

[971] Maybe he doesn't, it doesn't matter.

[972] What he figured out very astutely is he identified a demographic that feels like the country's getting overrun by immigrants, right?

[973] And, you know, statistics don't really bear that out.

[974] But people feel that way.

[975] If people feel that way, they vote that way.

[976] And he figured that out, right?

[977] And so, I mean, more power to him, right?

[978] Like, I mean, I'm not questioning his, I mean, it worked for him, right?

[979] But the only thing that I would say is, like, please don't say anything that undermines the nation's sense of unity.

[980] Right.

[981] You know, that's the crucial thing.

[982] That's the thing that's keeping us.

[983] as safe in the world is that we're a unified country.

[984] Yeah.

[985] And when you disparage the courts, for example, you're splitting the country apart.

[986] And the intelligence agencies.

[987] Don't do it.

[988] Right.

[989] Like you're drilling holes in your own boat, man. But are you astonished that all that works?

[990] That he can do that, that he can disparage the intelligence communities, that he can disparage the courts, and that no one calls him out, no one says, this is fucking outrageous.

[991] This is stupid.

[992] Especially knowing all of his campaign's ties to Russia that are coming out now, even more so.

[993] Well, listen, I mean, some process is happening that will eventually catch up with him.

[994] Like, I mean, I mean, I don't know how it's going to turn out.

[995] Am I surprised?

[996] Yes, of course I'm surprised.

[997] I'm also surprised that the Democrats that, you know, within my lifetime went from being a party that was deeply concerned with the poor, with the working poor, with people working in factories, you know, what I mean, I mean, those are at least the highest ideals, right?

[998] Right.

[999] In my lifetime, they went to, they became a completely elitist organization.

[1000] They didn't give a shit about those people, right?

[1001] I think I don't care how people, you know, how people react on this is, as Martin Luther said, here I stand for I can do no other.

[1002] A lot of places that Trump stands, I don't agree with, but I actually, I'm actually impressed by his ability to say something no matter what the repercussions.

[1003] This is kind of cool.

[1004] Well, it is definitely a first.

[1005] Yeah.

[1006] You know, I mean, he's, I mean, at the debate when he was talking to Hillary Clinton and I forget exactly what she said, you know, and he said, because you'd be in jail.

[1007] And the whole place went crazy.

[1008] Like, who the fuck has ever done that during the president?

[1009] It's amazing, and it worked.

[1010] You know, like my hat's kind of off to him, although I disagree with him on almost every political point that he says he holds.

[1011] But I got to say, like, it worked.

[1012] And I wrote an essay, and I was talking about different kinds of courage.

[1013] And, you know, there's sort of physical courage, right?

[1014] And I mean, literally, you know, being courageous in the face of harm to your body.

[1015] And I feel like Trump is, you know, he's a bit of a bully.

[1016] And I think that, to me, bullies and cowards are sort of the same thing, right?

[1017] They're just two different size of the same character trade.

[1018] I said, but that's not all Trump is.

[1019] He's actually morally, he's actually very courageous.

[1020] Like, he's not a moral coward.

[1021] He will say exactly what he thinks, no matter what the opinion is going to be.

[1022] He has extreme confidence in who he is.

[1023] Or he doesn't give a shit.

[1024] I mean, that's moral courage.

[1025] You're like, this is what I believe, and I'm going to say it.

[1026] I don't care if I don't win.

[1027] I don't care if I go to jail.

[1028] Here I stand for I can do no other.

[1029] It's a part of his elitist mentality because he does, believe that he's above a lot of the repercussions for saying these things.

[1030] But a lot of people who are elitist are cowards.

[1031] And the thing, and I disagree with Trump on just about all of his policies, right?

[1032] But the thing I do kind of have to tip my hat to is that he's not a moral coward.

[1033] He will say a thing that every political pundit in the world will say, no, that's going to get, that's going to destroy you.

[1034] You're going to attack John McCain and you're going to hope to win the Republican nomination and you're fucking crazy.

[1035] Right.

[1036] I know.

[1037] And he did it.

[1038] And it worked.

[1039] Not just that, but he attacked him.

[1040] for being captured.

[1041] I know.

[1042] Which is insane.

[1043] And I think Trump truly feels that way.

[1044] And I don't agree with them, but I do respect the fact that he said it in the face of all political advice.

[1045] He didn't give a shit.

[1046] He said it because he believed it.

[1047] That's moral courage.

[1048] I just disagree with his opinions.

[1049] But that moral courage, very few people have it.

[1050] And he has it.

[1051] And I just, I wish he used it to unify the country.

[1052] And he's still splitting the country.

[1053] I don't think he has any desire to unify the country.

[1054] I know.

[1055] He's very self -serving.

[1056] I agree.

[1057] And, you know, I don't think Hillary did either.

[1058] No, none.

[1059] You know what I mean?

[1060] And that's the problem with our parties right now is that they're serving themselves before they serve the country.

[1061] Well, I think it speaks to what you were talking about in your book that no one is looking at this like a real tribe.

[1062] No. This is an enormous tribe of 350 million people, but there's no one person that's standing out as a real leader.

[1063] And at least what Obama was, I mean, whether you agree with his policies and there's a lot that I don't agree with, particularly.

[1064] where the way he flip -flopped about whistleblowers and freedom in the press, those things disturbed me greatly because I know how intelligent he is.

[1065] I know he's a lawyer.

[1066] He was a statesman though.

[1067] I mean, he really came across as a guy who you go, oh, well, that guy should be the fucking president.

[1068] He sounds like the president.

[1069] He's, he's, he has a fantastic vocabulary.

[1070] He speaks clearly.

[1071] He's very, he's a highly honed human being.

[1072] That's right.

[1073] That's right.

[1074] No, I, no, I, no, I agree.

[1075] And, you know, there are things I didn't like, whatever, about him.

[1076] But absolutely, as a person, I mean, he brought a huge, I thought, he brought a huge sort of gravitas and dignity to the office.

[1077] Dignity.

[1078] Yes, definitely, without a doubt.

[1079] He mean, he was probably one of the best ever at that.

[1080] But I think that what we need now is someone who genuinely wants to help the country be unified.

[1081] And someone who genuinely wants to help the country, not help their party, not not help themselves, not just think, well, hey, when this is all done, I'm going to make a fucking million dollars a year doing speaking fees or whatever, however much they make when they do that.

[1082] Well, yeah, and you're going to, I mean, we need, I mean, we need that to stay, to remain a country.

[1083] Yeah.

[1084] Right.

[1085] I mean, like, I mean, it really is headed towards a bad place, I think.

[1086] And so that person is going to have to overcome the sort of the reflexive reaction of the left wing.

[1087] You know, he's not my president.

[1088] Like, and the reflexive reaction of the right wing.

[1089] The right wing hated Obama in ways that were completely out of proportion to Obama's actual policies.

[1090] Right.

[1091] And, you know, when Mitch McConnell said, you know, the Republicans' job in Congress, their foremost job is to make sure that Barack Obama is a complete failure as a president.

[1092] Like, that's not serving the country.

[1093] Not at all.

[1094] Right?

[1095] So you need a leader who's actually able to overcome that toxic thinking in both parties.

[1096] Right.

[1097] I mean, who, like, is Jesus coming back?

[1098] Like, who's going to do this?

[1099] Right.

[1100] Who is going to do this?

[1101] But I think the start is a bipartisan commission that starts to call people out.

[1102] Right.

[1103] So you have Republicans calling Republicans out because they're on this commission.

[1104] You have Democrats calling Democrats out.

[1105] You need it.

[1106] You got the free speech to make a fool yourself.

[1107] Go for it.

[1108] But you're not going to undermine this country without being called out by this commission.

[1109] And I was talking with someone in government pretty high up about this.

[1110] And I said, you know, I said my thing, you know, bullets aren't going to destroy this country.

[1111] Al -Qaeda's never going to destroy this country.

[1112] But our own words can destroy our democracy.

[1113] Like that actually could do it if we play this hand wrong.

[1114] And I said that makes partisan rhetoric actually a matter of.

[1115] of national security.

[1116] And when you can think about it as a national security concern, then you actually have a sort of political and legal basis for forming a commission that addresses it.

[1117] And I really truly think that should happen.

[1118] And if it doesn't, hopefully something else will happen that works, but it's the only thing I can think of that will begin to address that can rise up above the partisan interests of both parties because the parties clearly don't seem capable of doing it.

[1119] on their own.

[1120] Now, when you write a book like Tribe and you outline all these issues that people have and all these issues historically that people have had, do you try to consider a solution?

[1121] I mean, do you have a solution?

[1122] Are you just examining all the various problems that we have?

[1123] So, I mean, Tribe was me trying to make sense of sort of what ails us, right?

[1124] Starting with, you know, people hemorrhaging off the frontier to the American Indians, like, and on up of the soldiers I was with, mass shootings, you know, something's not working for us, right?

[1125] So it was foremost an analysis.

[1126] And towards the end, I talked a little bit about solutions.

[1127] And one of the solutions I talked about was making a concerted effort to get rid of contemptuous partisan rhetoric in government.

[1128] And I really felt that, like, that trickles down and pollutes, you know, it pollutes the water stream down, like downstream, it pollutes everything so that, But everyone, all as citizens, are drinking toxic water from that rhetoric and wondering if the unity can survive.

[1129] Like, will the center hold?

[1130] You know, you hear your parents screaming at each other in the bedroom and saying unforbivable things to each other as a child.

[1131] You might rightly think, wow, this marriage isn't lasting.

[1132] This family's not lasting.

[1133] That's how it feels to be a citizen of the United States right now.

[1134] Like mom and dad are screaming at each other.

[1135] And so I talked about contempt.

[1136] Disagree if you want.

[1137] Don't speak with contempt about someone you share a combat outpost with.

[1138] And that's what this country potentially is.

[1139] Don't you think also with the mom and dad analogy that it also shows you how to behave in your own life?

[1140] And I think that's one of the things that's really important about the president is the president does sort of represent the best example of what we can be.

[1141] When we were kids growing up, that was the thing like you ask a kid what they want to be.

[1142] if someone said, I want to be president.

[1143] We're like, holy shit, you're really going for it, kid.

[1144] You want to be the biggest job.

[1145] That's the number one position.

[1146] So you're supposed to be the best person ever, which is why we hold someone to such an incredible microscope, which is almost even more impressive that Trump won after that grab the pussy audio recording and that he could just brush that off.

[1147] It's locker room talk.

[1148] In a way, he's kind of right.

[1149] I mean, it really is kind of fucked up that they did try to use that on him and pull it out the last minute.

[1150] But it does give you also an understanding.

[1151] of how he thinks and behaves when no one's around.

[1152] Right.

[1153] I mean, you know, my problem with him was that, like, if I look at the worst of his behavior, I mean, people sent, society sends people to jail for the worst thing that they did.

[1154] So it is actually legitimate to judge people's worst behavior.

[1155] Sure.

[1156] And evaluate them on that basis.

[1157] So if I look at the worst, if I look at the worst of his behavior, even if I was a diehard Republican who adhered to all of the things he says he believes in.

[1158] If I looked at the worst of his behavior, mocking a Gold Star family, like mocking a disabled person.

[1159] That wasn't real, though.

[1160] You know that mocking a disabled person was sort of trumped up.

[1161] He does, I hate to use that word, trumped up.

[1162] He does that whenever he's talking about anyone.

[1163] Like when he acts flustered, like, oh, what are you going to do here?

[1164] Like that.

[1165] They tried to say that he was mocking a reporter that it was disabled, but it's pretty clear that that's not right.

[1166] Well, I mean, maybe so, but with a question from someone who's visibly disabled, maybe you just don't do that.

[1167] Right.

[1168] You know what I mean?

[1169] I think that's a speech pattern he does, though.

[1170] Well, maybe.

[1171] Maybe I'm giving them more of the benefit of doubt than I should.

[1172] If it was the only example, then I wouldn't be thinking about it.

[1173] But there is a sort of pattern that model from Mexico who gains him weight that he was mocking.

[1174] I mean, like the mockery of less powerful people is sort of endless.

[1175] Right.

[1176] So to me, I wouldn't have that person.

[1177] person at my dinner table.

[1178] You know what I mean?

[1179] Like I just, with my close friends, like someone who was acting like that, he started acting like, started doing that at my dinner table, I'd walk around, I'd get up, I'd walk around the table, put him in a headlock, and I'd drag him out of my house, right?

[1180] Right.

[1181] And I don't want to think that about my president.

[1182] Right.

[1183] I want my president to be someone I'd be, like, glad to have at my dinner table.

[1184] I would have, I didn't vote for George Bush, but I'd love to have that guy at my dinner table.

[1185] Ronald Reagan did all, you know what I mean?

[1186] Like, he's the first president.

[1187] I'm like, no, man, I don't want to subject my friends to that.

[1188] You ever read Woody Harrelson's account of dinner that he had with Trump?

[1189] No. He said literally he had to get up in the middle and go outside and smoke a joint, just to just relax himself.

[1190] Yeah, I was talking about it.

[1191] I think he said early 2000, he had dinner with Trump, and he said he never met someone so narcissistic, so self -obsessed.

[1192] Yeah.

[1193] And, you know, my worry, like in this conversation is that it will somehow seem partisan.

[1194] And, like, I would be saying the same things of Trump were a Democrat.

[1195] Well, you said something about George Bush that you would be happy to have him over.

[1196] And I just think, I hope that what comes out of this is that a hero will rise and that someone will, someone who's really a legitimately good person will say, look, this is a fucking travesty.

[1197] Like, someone who actually could assume the role correctly will step into place and it will see that very clearly in comparison.

[1198] Right.

[1199] Well, I mean, to get back to your question, one of the solutions that I talk about, it's not in my book, but I talk about this, is a compulsory national service with a military option.

[1200] And your question was, how do we make this nation feel like a nation?

[1201] Right.

[1202] And the problem, psychologists will tell you that the more you sacrifice for something, the more you value it.

[1203] Right.

[1204] And if you're part of something, there doesn't require any sacrifice at all, you just don't value it very highly, right?

[1205] the advantage of national service, and I don't mean the draft, I think, I don't mean military service, I mean national service with a military option.

[1206] I don't think it's moral to force someone to fight a war that they don't believe in.

[1207] So what sort of service would you, you know, whatever it is, the nation needs a lot of stuff done, right, and whatever that may be.

[1208] But the point of it is, so if you had a military option, but otherwise you could teach in schools, otherwise you could dig ditches.

[1209] I don't know.

[1210] Whatever the nation needs done, this, this core of workers at 22, 23 years old, does it for a year.

[1211] My first wife was from Eastern Europe.

[1212] And the young people formed work brigades in the summer and helped harvest wheat and stuff.

[1213] Like that was what she did when she was a teenage girl.

[1214] And it was incredibly good for the kids over there.

[1215] And it made them feel like they're part of something, right?

[1216] And so what I would say, there's a downside to national service, which is the government telling people what to do.

[1217] There's also an upside, which is it makes everyone feel like they're part of this thing called the United States.

[1218] And it puts white people and black people and rich and poor.

[1219] And everyone puts them all in a big pot and stirs them up, just like the military does.

[1220] And they get to know each other.

[1221] And so everything's, there's an upside and a downside to everything, right?

[1222] So National Service has a very obvious downside.

[1223] But the upside isn't discussed much, which is that it creates an American identity, a shared experience that all Americans have, like in Israel, there's compulsory service, and that is a common ground that every single Israeli has.

[1224] Whatever, wherever they fall in the political spectrum, they all have that shared experience.

[1225] And it's an enormously potent thing in that country, keeping it bound together.

[1226] And this country, I think, needs something like that.

[1227] I think it would be very, very healthful.

[1228] Well, it would be nice if people did have some, I mean, some sort of connection to what it takes to keep things running, whether it's help fix the streets, whether it's, you know, help do something.

[1229] But the problem that I would have with it is the idea that someone from the government would be able to require you to do something, and that if you didn't do it, they could treat you the same way the IRS treats you if you don't pay your taxes and just lock you in a cage, which is...

[1230] Well, I mean, one way to do it might be to incentivize it by, instead of making it mandatory, incentivizing it by giving people really large tax breaks for doing it.

[1231] Yeah, but young people aren't going to think about tax breaks.

[1232] They're going to think about, fuck that, man. I want to skateboard.

[1233] All right.

[1234] All right.

[1235] Then they have to go.

[1236] All right.

[1237] I mean, listen, for most of this nation's history, we've had a draft.

[1238] Yeah.

[1239] That's the government telling people what to do, right?

[1240] And likewise with taxes, you don't pay your taxes.

[1241] You go to jail.

[1242] Like, I mean, the government does, you know, the government puts red lights and intersections, and you have to fucking stop.

[1243] I agree, but to try to do that today, it would be extremely difficult.

[1244] The distrust of the government is so high, and if the government comes along and says, you have to do all these things, and then we go, wait a minute, are you doing these things?

[1245] Are you going to join the military?

[1246] You're 55 years old.

[1247] Your senator.

[1248] Are you going to go pick wheat or fucking fix the roads?

[1249] It definitely has to start.

[1250] I mean, you're not going to get 60 -year -olds in national service, right?

[1251] They're already involved in their lives.

[1252] The great thing about 18, 19, 20 -year -olds, 22 -year -olds, is they're, they're lives haven't really started yet.

[1253] I mean, that's why it works in Israel.

[1254] Yeah.

[1255] So are people going to object?

[1256] Of course they are.

[1257] But the question is, how do we unify this country?

[1258] The truth is, like, if we wanted to unify communities, you'd ban the car.

[1259] Right.

[1260] Right.

[1261] People can, you know, they're spending their whole eyes within walking distance of their home.

[1262] That will, that will unify communities.

[1263] We're just not willing to do that.

[1264] What will unify the country is national service.

[1265] We may not be willing to do it, but that's a different conversation from would it work or not.

[1266] My opinion is that it would help.

[1267] It's a good opinion.

[1268] I mean, I definitely see merit in it.

[1269] I definitely think that it would be something that would be a fascinating debate to have back and forth.

[1270] I just wonder if people at any point in their lives today would be willing to give up freedom for the government.

[1271] I think people are used to this kind of like free ride.

[1272] I pay me taxes, and that's all you got from me. I don't have to vote.

[1273] I don't have to do anything.

[1274] You know, in Australia, you have to vote.

[1275] And if you don't vote, you get fined.

[1276] Well, you know, that's what you said it right there.

[1277] That's the misconception.

[1278] for the government.

[1279] It's for your neighbor.

[1280] It's for your fellow citizens.

[1281] Everything you, you pay your taxes, not for the government.

[1282] You pay your taxes for the country.

[1283] But you pay them to the government.

[1284] You pay them to the government.

[1285] And there's no auditing of your taxes.

[1286] And I think that's one of the things that freaks people out today.

[1287] Like, you don't know where that money's going.

[1288] They don't have to tell you.

[1289] And if you don't give it to them, they'll lock you up.

[1290] Right.

[1291] And that's the problem with a large -scale society is that collective effort.

[1292] It's not clear that that collective effort is going to the whole entity.

[1293] It looks like it's going to the tax man. Right, exactly.

[1294] It's not.

[1295] I mean, that's an illusion.

[1296] Right.

[1297] But, I mean, the check is to the IRS.

[1298] The IRS hands it over to the government that then spends it on the country.

[1299] I mean, that's the reality.

[1300] But it looks like the IRS is oppressing you.

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] But that's actually not what's happening, right?

[1303] The IRS is an arm of government that you elected in, right?

[1304] And it's been charged with getting money from people.

[1305] Like, that's just the IRS isn't doing anything.

[1306] It's like TSA.

[1307] I was standing in line at TSA and someone was complaining about how long it was taking.

[1308] And a guy next to her, they didn't even know each other.

[1309] And the guy next to her who said, look, they're not doing it for them.

[1310] They're doing it for us.

[1311] Right.

[1312] They're searching all our stuff.

[1313] They don't care, right?

[1314] They're not on the damn plane.

[1315] They're searching our stuff for us.

[1316] Likewise with the government.

[1317] The government isn't doing it for itself.

[1318] It's doing it for us.

[1319] Right.

[1320] We like to think of it as one entity.

[1321] Right?

[1322] We like to think of the IRS as the government.

[1323] Right.

[1324] You know, they are collecting the money.

[1325] We almost think of it as them spending the money as well.

[1326] Right.

[1327] We don't think of it as them distributing it to the rest of the government.

[1328] That's right.

[1329] Yeah.

[1330] That's right.

[1331] So if you want to gin up a sort of like anti -government screed, like it's easy to play on that misperception because it's an easy misperception to have.

[1332] I mean, you get a $200 parking ticket in New York.

[1333] And he definitely feels like the parking bureau is like is vengeful, is, you know what I mean, has targeted you personally.

[1334] And it's going to take your $200 and spend it on itself.

[1335] That's what it feels like.

[1336] Right.

[1337] The truth is that that $200 pays the, you know, fills in the potholes that you're going to be driving across next year.

[1338] Yeah.

[1339] That's the truth of it, right?

[1340] You know, we're talking about solutions for the woes of society and the, and particularly the individual.

[1341] You have sort of found your own solution in journalism and in embedded journalism in these very dangerous environments, that this is how you have sort of reinforced your tribe.

[1342] And you talk about that in the book, about how.

[1343] you know, how well you slept in this very tight confines in these bases with all these, like, very loud, snoring men, but the fact that you guys were all together in this very hostile environment, that was your solution.

[1344] Well, I mean, it wasn't a solution in this, in a sense, I mean, it wasn't a long -term solution, but it did give me this experience of sort of, sort of shared, a shared fate, right?

[1345] I mean, sort of collective effort, right?

[1346] I was part of this group, and my welfare was tied to the welfare of the group.

[1347] My actions could help or hinder the group.

[1348] I was judged by how I behaved in the group, right?

[1349] And that's our evolutionary past, and it felt great, right?

[1350] Yeah.

[1351] And so, you know, the trick is, you know, we live in a dispersed modern society where that's just not going to be the 24 -hour -a -day reality.

[1352] for most people throughout their lives.

[1353] But it may not need to be.

[1354] You may just need a little bit of it.

[1355] You know, maybe you get a little bit of that sort of collective norm at the boxing gym.

[1356] You know, maybe you get it in the military.

[1357] You know, maybe you get it hunting, you know, whatever.

[1358] Like, there are ways to experience it.

[1359] And maybe you just, you maybe you get it at church.

[1360] I mean, I'm not religious, but I understand church to be a profoundly communal activity.

[1361] And so I'm not.

[1362] saying burn down the suburbs and banned the car, although that would work pretty well.

[1363] Maybe for your own personal sense of sort of meaning and fulfillment in life, find that collective experience in little bits and pieces, and the little goes a long way.

[1364] Yeah, and doing something, doing something difficult, I think, is also very important.

[1365] Absolutely.

[1366] I mean, getting together, shoe pool with your buddies every Thursday night, that's great, but it's not quite what we're talking about.

[1367] Yeah, yeah, difficult things and things that test you physically.

[1368] and mentally, for some reason, those seem to be a requirement for people.

[1369] And when people don't fulfill that requirement, it seems to me that those are the people that are most unhappy.

[1370] Yeah, I mean, there have to be stakes involved.

[1371] Yes.

[1372] There are no stakes to pool, to golf, right?

[1373] They're pleasure to look.

[1374] Right, right.

[1375] But that's not a collective, you know what I mean?

[1376] That's not a collective stake.

[1377] Right.

[1378] And they're pleasant activities, but what, you know, what reproduces our evolutionary past as being in a small group where the stakes are where the stakes are serious if not life and death but even if it's not life and death at least they're real physical consequences and that collective action makes the group more able to navigate those adversities successfully and when you do that it's an intoxicating feeling it's what we're wired for it's what we're missing in our sort of like modern lives and you don't need a huge amount of it to feel better.

[1379] Another thing that seems to make people feel very fulfilled is creating things, working with their hands, creating anything, whether it's furniture or art, just making something, doing something where your mind is involved in an actual task of bringing forth something into existence that didn't exist before.

[1380] Well, think about it.

[1381] I mean, again, in terms of evolution, if doing something successfully produces a chemical reaction that feels good, a little bit of dopamine or in terms of communal connection, a little bit of oxytocin, the trained monkey that we are will continue doing that good thing.

[1382] So basically the tasks that helped with survival get rewarded with neurochemicals that feel good.

[1383] Yeah.

[1384] And the things that are dangerous to us and lessen our chance for survival don't feel good.

[1385] So being isolated, Being alienated from your group, being an outcast feels bad.

[1386] And your survival chances go down, right?

[1387] You don't want to stay in that place.

[1388] You want to join the group again.

[1389] And so there's these neurochemical incentives and punishments that get to herd people towards behaviors that help survival.

[1390] Doing things, accomplishing things, building things, that all feels good.

[1391] It's clearly what we needed to do in our evolutionary past and is reinforced.

[1392] And creativity factors onto that how, like say like art, like painting or something like that.

[1393] Like there's something deeply satisfying to people that are painters.

[1394] Well, yeah.

[1395] And what they're, I mean, art, they know from the, from the incredible paintings on the caves in France and Spain, Lesko and the other caves.

[1396] That art is one of the things that's used to bind communities together in ceremonies.

[1397] I mean, you can see in church.

[1398] I mean, there's no, there is no church in the land that doesn't have art on the walls.

[1399] Right.

[1400] The depictions of Christ or whatever, or one of the visual aids that helps bind people into a group, like, oh, we all believe in the same thing, right?

[1401] So art is a great binding force.

[1402] Music is an incredible binding force.

[1403] So rhythmic, like rhythm and a heavy drumming rhythm will get a whole group of people sort of moving in unison.

[1404] And Jonathan Haight has talked about that sort of hive behavior and how it works.

[1405] and very, very powerful.

[1406] So what I would say, and I'm just guessing here, but I would say is that the arch that are so intoxicating to be engaged in, their survival value is that it makes the group cohere around a unified idea.

[1407] And the music does that, the visual arts do that, the spoken word, poetry, song, those do that as well.

[1408] And so you have a group of people that are unified on all these different levels.

[1409] So what happens when the enemy comes?

[1410] I mean, the music starts, the sort of like visual pageantry starts.

[1411] Like, I mean, you get, you know, like the, you know, the wartime posters showing heroic soldiers with rifle and bayonet, right?

[1412] You get the war art, right?

[1413] You get the martial music.

[1414] All of that galvanizes the public spirit to face the enemy.

[1415] And it works extremely well.

[1416] Wow.

[1417] So you think that that's one of the reasons why art is so satisfying?

[1418] I mean, I just assume that our evolution has produced that anything that feels good to us has.

[1419] had survival value in our past.

[1420] So if creating art feels good, that's because we are genetically predisposed towards doing things that bind the group together.

[1421] Generosity feels good.

[1422] If you walk down the street and you give someone $5, he's a random dude, you just give him five bucks, and you measure the neurochemicals in his brain and your brain, you get more of a high than he does, right?

[1423] So generosity feels good.

[1424] It's clearly adaptive and helps groups go here.

[1425] Right?

[1426] Yeah.

[1427] and art as well.

[1428] So that art, like when you create something amazing, what you're realizing is that someone's going to see that and go, wow, that's incredible.

[1429] Like they're going to get a great feeling off of seeing your art. Yeah, you have the same vision, right?

[1430] Like, oh, I painted that tree and this other person or that antelope or that bison or whatever you find in the walls of Lesko.

[1431] And this other person comes like, oh, my God, that's an incredible bison.

[1432] There's not, like, you did something that the other person connected to.

[1433] Now you, the two of you are joined in your understanding.

[1434] understanding of what that painting means, right?

[1435] And that's a very powerful thing.

[1436] So if you drew that bison and no one else in the world ever saw it, I'm guessing that the chemical rewards for that creativity would be lower.

[1437] Yeah.

[1438] You know, I noticed that in my children.

[1439] My kids love to draw, and one of the things that they love is showing their drawings.

[1440] I mean, they love to draw, but they're like, not yet, not yet, not yet.

[1441] And then when they're done, like, look.

[1442] That's right.

[1443] And then they're just like, boom.

[1444] They're getting that little rush themselves.

[1445] and you get the rush.

[1446] I mean, look, I mean, just do it.

[1447] It's easy to test.

[1448] Like, take a musician, measure their neurochemicals while they're practicing in a room by themselves, and then put them in a stadium filled with 10 ,000 people and see what happens.

[1449] I'm guessing that the guy in the stadium with Bruce Springsteen in front of 10 ,000 people is experiencing a neurochemical reality that he's not getting in his living room.

[1450] Not only that, probably a neurochemical reality that very few human beings will ever experience.

[1451] Yeah, that's right.

[1452] Some sort of a strange.

[1453] But think about the power of that.

[1454] I mean, you know, any musician on stage is basically acting sort of in the role of the shaman.

[1455] Yeah.

[1456] Like, I'm going to act as a conduit between you all and the divine, right?

[1457] And my music is going to do it.

[1458] My words are going to do it.

[1459] My dancing is going to whatever it is.

[1460] But I'm the conduit, right?

[1461] I don't matter.

[1462] I'm connecting you with a divine feeling.

[1463] And that feeling is going to unify all of you.

[1464] And I'm going to play these chords.

[1465] I'm going to sing this song.

[1466] and like magic, you all are going to be tapping your feet in unison.

[1467] Like, how do you get 10 ,000 people to do the same thing at the same time?

[1468] You sing him a song.

[1469] It's the only way to do it.

[1470] That's an incredibly powerful thing.

[1471] And that's the, I mean, that's the power of the shaman.

[1472] I mean, Bruce Springsteen isn't a shaman literally, but he occupies that space in a modern secular society.

[1473] He doesn't have shamans.

[1474] But in the old days, that's what he would be.

[1475] Do you feel that way when you put a book out?

[1476] Like when you put the book out, when you know it's done, you read.

[1477] it's done and you send it out there.

[1478] Do what kind of weird feeling that you get?

[1479] Are all these people going to read that?

[1480] It's an interesting thing about a book because you actually never observe in real time people's reaction to it.

[1481] Right.

[1482] I mean, I'm not perched in someone's armchair watching them read in bed.

[1483] You know what I mean?

[1484] The general public.

[1485] What about like reviews?

[1486] Yeah, but that's also very, it's very distant.

[1487] But when I started making documentaries, for the first time I had the experience, are the experiencing of watching other people's experience when I'd done, right?

[1488] I'm not watching...

[1489] Being in the audience.

[1490] I'm in the audience, and I'm watching people react to Restrepo.

[1491] Yes.

[1492] I never got to see people react to the books I've read because I'm not in their damn bedroom.

[1493] Right.

[1494] Right.

[1495] But I am in the movie theater, and I'm watching people react to the things that, the films I made, and I wouldn't say it's apples or oranges.

[1496] I don't know which is one better ones, whatever, but it's a very different experience, and it's incredibly powerful.

[1497] Which, do you like one better?

[1498] I mean, movies just can't, they don't have enough bits of information.

[1499] I mean, a book, you can really communicate information, right?

[1500] Very sophisticated ideas.

[1501] And they're permanent, right?

[1502] There they are in the person's bookshelf, and the person can underline that paragraph and go back to it.

[1503] You know you've actually affected the sort of communal thinking.

[1504] You've affected the way people understand the world.

[1505] A film is an experience more than it is a sort of data dump.

[1506] and or a philosophical argument.

[1507] And that experience is very, very powerful.

[1508] It acts on a different part of the brain than a book does.

[1509] It's much more emotional.

[1510] I mean, I've, you know, I've choked up, I've teared up watching my own films because they're personal to me, you know.

[1511] I've never done that reading my own book, rereading a book that I've written.

[1512] So it's a different experience, and I would say this is just different parts of the human mind.

[1513] Like you sort of need both.

[1514] So, no, a long answer.

[1515] I don't have a preference.

[1516] I feel like I need both.

[1517] Now, this documentary on Syria, when is this available?

[1518] Well, it's called Hell on Earth.

[1519] Our website is hellonearth .com.

[1520] How'd you get that?

[1521] Seems like that would have ever been taken, right?

[1522] Of all the different websites that are available in the English language?

[1523] Yeah, it's true.

[1524] It's amazing.

[1525] I never even thought about that.

[1526] I wasn't in charge of getting it.

[1527] Somebody's a wizard.

[1528] That's right.

[1529] They might have to pay for that one.

[1530] So it's called Hell on Earth.

[1531] It's about the Syrian Civil War.

[1532] We made it for National Geographic.

[1533] I made it with Nick Quested, my partner, and all the films that I've made.

[1534] And it broadcast last June.

[1535] It's going to, you know, NatGeo rebroadcast everything that they do, obviously.

[1536] You can also go to their website and stream it.

[1537] So we can stream it today.

[1538] Yeah, absolutely.

[1539] It's about the Syrian Civil War, how it started.

[1540] And particularly how ISIS, why ISIS rose up out of that.

[1541] And we all know what ISIS is.

[1542] This is a grotesquely violent radical jihadist movement.

[1543] movement and that, I mean, we have all seen, you know, seen their video, heard of their videos where they're, you know, beheading people in, you know, in front of a video camera and ghastly, ghastly things.

[1544] So why did that, you know, why did that happen in Syria?

[1545] How did that, that mutation occur at this point in history in that place?

[1546] And so the film examines that.

[1547] And were you there?

[1548] Did you go to Syria?

[1549] No, you know, after my friend Tim Hetherington was killed, Tim, obviously I made Restrepo with, and he was a brother and a good friend and a colleague, and he was killed in Libya in 2011 on an assignment that I was supposed to be on with him, the last minute I couldn't go, and he got killed.

[1550] And so I stopped war reporting after that, frontline reporting.

[1551] Syria was so dangerous that you couldn't think of going in there.

[1552] I mean, in numerous kidnappings and beheadings, it was basically a suicide.

[1553] By the time we started working on the story, it was a suicide mission.

[1554] So we actually worked with Syrians in Syria who were documenting their own war.

[1555] Wow.

[1556] Including an incredible family that was living in territory, under ISIS control and surviving.

[1557] And they were trying to figure out like, do we try to escape or not?

[1558] And of course, if you try to escape and you're caught, you're dead.

[1559] They will drag your family out of a pickup truck and line you up in a wall and machine gun you.

[1560] But they were worried that if they stayed, they'd also die.

[1561] And they decided to escape.

[1562] We got a camera to them and a very nondescript little cell phone camera.

[1563] and they self -documented life under ISIS and the decision to leave and their flight through the ISIS checkpoints through the front lines all the way to Turkey and they self -documented and it's part of it's the sort of through line in the movie absolutely extraordinary family Wow and so then they're in Turkey now they're in Turkey now they tried to get to Greece on a rubber raft on a zodiac they returned again this is also documented by them it's in the film they returned back at the last moment by the Turkish Coast Guard sent back in Greece and they're actually doing really well.

[1564] They started a small business.

[1565] They're incredibly hardworking, resourceful, beautiful people.

[1566] I mean, they're, you know, like, I wish they could come to this country.

[1567] We'd be lucky to have them.

[1568] And they'd be lucky to have us.

[1569] They're an incredible family.

[1570] And if you see the film, you know, you see what I'm talking about.

[1571] That's a, that's a big point that a lot of people felt was missed at all the criticisms of immigrants coming over to this country.

[1572] You know, stop, close the border, stop allowing Muslims, stop allowing all these people to come over from these dangerous areas.

[1573] Somehow I know these people would be agents of these dangerous areas coming to destroy our democracy.

[1574] But these people are trapped.

[1575] A lot of these people are people that are experiencing these horrible conditions, much like many of the people that originally made it to America in the first place.

[1576] Yeah, I mean, our country is immigrants.

[1577] That's what the country is.

[1578] My father is a two -time war refugee, right?

[1579] I mean, he fled Spain during the Civil War.

[1580] I mean, he's passed away.

[1581] He was born in 1923.

[1582] He fled Spain during the Civil War, and then he fled France because the Nazis rolled in.

[1583] He came to this country.

[1584] He was a brilliant physicist, and we were lucky to have him, right?

[1585] And he was eternally lucky to be part of this country as well.

[1586] So what was odd about Trump's travel – I mean, not to get political again, but I got to say what was odd about Trump's travel ban, there were countries that we'd never been attacked by.

[1587] Right.

[1588] Like, no one from those countries had ever attacked this country.

[1589] Like, I don't really – like, what are those countries doing on the travel ban?

[1590] This lunatic that killed people in New York, it was Bekistan.

[1591] Like, that wasn't on the travel ban.

[1592] Like, I mean, I understand trying to – create a filter that keeps bad people out.

[1593] Of course, every country does that.

[1594] I just didn't understand the specific logic of those countries on the list.

[1595] It made no sense to me. No, it made no sense to anybody.

[1596] And it's also, you're assuming that everybody in these areas is bad, including the people that trying to escape.

[1597] That sounds insane.

[1598] And that sounds, it's just, it's cruel and anti -human to not want people to have a chance.

[1599] I'm not saying don't vet these people out, Don't interview them and communicate with them and find out what their backgrounds are as much information as you can get.

[1600] Yeah, of course.

[1601] Are you concerned, because this is something that's been bothering me, I was concerned about my own reaction to yesterday's mass shooting.

[1602] That I was almost nonchalant about it.

[1603] I was like, well, there's another one.

[1604] Like, that we're getting numb to mass shootings.

[1605] You know, I asked myself two questions, and I didn't mean to ask them, and I'm just being honest in telling people this.

[1606] I asked myself, I wonder if it was a white church or a black church.

[1607] And I asked myself, I wonder if the attacker was an Islamic radical and a foreigner or was he a homegrown American.

[1608] I assumed it was a he, obviously.

[1609] Yeah.

[1610] And I don't even know what that says, what those questions say about me or about the country.

[1611] But it's really interesting.

[1612] Those are the first things I asked.

[1613] And I didn't like that those questions came to my mind so quickly.

[1614] There was something about it that didn't feel good.

[1615] And they're very obvious questions to ask.

[1616] I mean, you know, it's clear that those are very important things to know.

[1617] But I didn't like that it came to me so quickly.

[1618] Yeah, I asked the exact same questions, but I also felt like it's just these are patterns.

[1619] They're inescapable patterns, whether it's the Vegas massacre or this one or the Orlando shootings.

[1620] It's always a man. And is it a Muslim or is it a crazy white guy?

[1621] Well, you know, in tribe I write about mass shootings.

[1622] They're a very particular thing.

[1623] I mean, there's gang shootings in Chicago or whatever.

[1624] whatever, that may have a kind of logic to them, right?

[1625] Like, you're controlling turf, there's money involved, drugs, whatever.

[1626] Yeah, it makes sense.

[1627] So, show you a bunch of innocent people get shot.

[1628] That's the price you pay for gang wars.

[1629] There's a logic to it.

[1630] There is, mass shootings are completely nihilistic, right?

[1631] It's someone killing as many people that he doesn't know, right, as possible before he dies.

[1632] It's totally nihilistic.

[1633] And what I found, and I did a lot of research into it, that that those kinds of mass shootings typically happen in middle -class communities, like otherwise safe, middle -class communities or small, low -crime Christian communities.

[1634] They have never happened in the inner city.

[1635] I mean, literally never happened.

[1636] They happen in communities that are otherwise very safe, very Christian, very boring, frankly.

[1637] And it really made me wonder, like, is there, I mean, lots of countries have as many guns as we do.

[1638] Every country has crazy people in it, in them, right?

[1639] We are the only country that does this to ourselves.

[1640] And we do it only in a certain kind of community, right?

[1641] It doesn't happen in high -crime, low -income communities, right?

[1642] It happens in the most sort of like small, quiet, Christian, low -crime, bland, suburban, or rural communities.

[1643] That's where it happens.

[1644] So what does it say?

[1645] why is it that these communities are not producing crazy people, but somehow those people come to a place where they think this is a good thing to do?

[1646] Like, why is that happening?

[1647] My theory is that the deep alienation of the suburbs, of sort of small -town America, the lack of real community effort, and the lack of national union.

[1648] in the past, I mean, the mass killings have risen abruptly in the last 15 years.

[1649] And, you know, it's hard.

[1650] For me, it's you don't murder people in your own community.

[1651] When that happens, it means the community doesn't exist, at least for the murderer.

[1652] Do you see any connection, or do you consider any connection between psych drugs?

[1653] I mean, I don't know how many of these people are on psych drugs.

[1654] A tremendous amount.

[1655] Yeah.

[1656] Like, there was a study that, see if you could find it, Jamie.

[1657] They connected all the mass shootings that have happened over the last.

[1658] two decades with all the different medications that people were on and every single one of them was on something or was withdrawing from something.

[1659] Okay, so here's the question.

[1660] Are the drugs creating the behavior or are the drugs treating a mental disorder that itself is tied to the behavior?

[1661] Very good question.

[1662] Right?

[1663] I mean, there's no way to know.

[1664] Mass shootings of the nihilistic sort that I'm referring to started abruptly rose in the 80s.

[1665] Okay.

[1666] And then doubled since 2006.

[1667] And I think they're increasing even more since then.

[1668] Every mass shooting over the last 20 years has one thing in common and it isn't guns.

[1669] Yeah, this is it.

[1670] Right, but that's not just positive.

[1671] Right.

[1672] You know what I mean?

[1673] Right.

[1674] You're right.

[1675] It's not correlation.

[1676] It could be the depression is rising in alienated communities and the depression is getting unsuccessfully treated with drugs.

[1677] So all these people are.

[1678] on drugs, but really what's happening is that, and this is true, suicide, depression, PTSD, anxiety, alienation, all of these things are going up in society.

[1679] I mean, that's just statistically true.

[1680] Unquestionably.

[1681] The question that I would have about this, though, is that when I've talked to a psychiatrist about it, they say that the dissociative aspect of the psychiatric medications are part of the problems, that people do not feel, they don't feel the connection even to their actions, that they can do something horrific, like shoot people.

[1682] And they might be even doing that to try to get some feeling.

[1683] Listen, that's totally possible.

[1684] I would also offer this idea that the massive national addiction to violent video games is a dissociated experience.

[1685] You're shooting people.

[1686] They're not real people.

[1687] That doesn't happen, you know?

[1688] Right.

[1689] I mean, I think they're connected somehow?

[1690] I don't know.

[1691] But I'm just saying what you just described happening in the streets of America is exactly duplicated digitally in video games.

[1692] Right.

[1693] Right, but the video games doesn't keep you from feeling things in the real world, where the psych medications do.

[1694] Right, but the experience of shooting at human targets that aren't real.

[1695] Right.

[1696] If you incorporate that into how you feel about shooting, then you go out into the real world.

[1697] It may not be that hard, particularly with the aid of psych drugs and whatever depression is sort of endemic in the society right now.

[1698] It might not be hard to transpose that dissociated experience in a video game with digital images.

[1699] is transpose it onto actual humans in the real world if you're sufficiently disturbed.

[1700] That's a very good connection and an interesting question because I've heard it discussed when they're talking about war and how kids that grow up playing like call of duty and things along those lines, they get really good at it, would be actually better in combat.

[1701] They would have the tactics mapped out in their mind better.

[1702] Yeah, yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

[1703] I mean, look, there's a TV program called Active Shooter, right?

[1704] Like, and they go back, I just heard about it.

[1705] I haven't seen it.

[1706] I never watch it.

[1707] But it's, it's, they go back and recreate.

[1708] They interview everyone who survived an active shooting incident and recreate it.

[1709] And now people watch for, I mean, on some sense, entertainment, right?

[1710] TV is entertainment.

[1711] They watch for entertainment recreations of acting shooting incidents that are, I think, partly the result of the kind of deep alienation that happens in a, in a media obsessed society that where no one's talking to each other.

[1712] You know, I mean, it's a perfect circle, right?

[1713] Like, well, they're definitely.

[1714] escalating, right?

[1715] I mean, we had the event in New York where the guy runs over all those people, and then a couple of days later, we're having the one in Texas.

[1716] Look, this is happening not over the scale of one a year, one every few years.

[1717] We're getting them once a week.

[1718] Well, yeah, and what's interesting, I mean, in New York, there was an ideology behind it.

[1719] So it wasn't nihilistic.

[1720] I mean, it felt nihilistic to us, but to that guy, he actually believed in what he was doing.

[1721] But the real mass shooters that they're just out there to kill as many people as possible, it's hard to what the ideology is.

[1722] Well, this guy was dishonorably discharged from the military for something.

[1723] I forget what it was.

[1724] So he was in a position.

[1725] What's up?

[1726] It was abuse on his spouse and child.

[1727] Right.

[1728] And he didn't have a license to own a gun.

[1729] Right.

[1730] You know, he owned whatever guns that he had.

[1731] He got them illegally.

[1732] In Colorado, right?

[1733] He drove to Colorado.

[1734] That's what I heard.

[1735] He got him in Colorado.

[1736] He was in Texas.

[1737] I think he got him in Colorado.

[1738] Did he get him at a gun show or something like that?

[1739] I don't know where he go, but, yeah, I mean, we're looking at little tiny details.

[1740] The real question is, how the fuck does a person do something like that?

[1741] I mean, shot babies, you know, he shot five -year -olds, and the whole thing is just, it doesn't even make sense.

[1742] And I don't know if he was on any psych medication or if they know he was, but, you know, just the staggering numbers of broken individuals that are committing these crimes is just very, very confusing.

[1743] Right.

[1744] And you think that it's tied to what you were saying, too, about communities, about inner cities where you have impoverished high crime areas, but they're not seeing these things.

[1745] Do you think because in these high crime communities are dealing with much more life and death and the struggle is much more real, that they feel more connected than live?

[1746] You know, this is totally a theory.

[1747] I mean, I have no idea.

[1748] It's just the truth is that those awful sort of school shootings and mass shootings in the streets, have never happened in a high -crime neighborhood.

[1749] And so one has to wonder, what is it?

[1750] It's possible that for all the very real stresses and traumas of poverty, that for all of those things, there is also more face -to -face communal connection in poor neighborhoods than in wealthy neighborhoods or in middle -class neighborhoods.

[1751] And that communal connection, I mean, literally meeting people on the landing of your apartment building, right, meeting people on the doorstoop, on the street, you know, whatever, that those kinds of human interactions, even at, even in an economically stressed neighborhood, that those create enough of a sense of community that people who might otherwise go crazy and turn their guns in this nihilistic way on people, on innocent people, that they just don't do it.

[1752] Because, like, why would I do that to my own people?

[1753] Right.

[1754] That's the, and what I fear in this country is that we're losing the sense of what our own people are.

[1755] What are our own people?

[1756] And if you're doing that in the streets of the neighboring town, like, you know, clearly there's been some loss of, like, some idea of what we belong to.

[1757] And that's where, you know, national service or a congressional commission that really calls out rhetoric that undermines our sense of who we are as a nation.

[1758] Like, you know, it might start at the top.

[1759] Changing that might start at the top.

[1760] It might help.

[1761] Do you think there's any incentive that these people experience to be?

[1762] be someone who creates this big event where everybody has to look at them?

[1763] Yeah.

[1764] I mean, I'm guessing, but I'm imagining that someone like that feels powerless and insignificant and abused by society, and at least they'll be famous in their last acts and their death.

[1765] They're going to cause a lot of reaction.

[1766] They're like, oh, you messed with me my whole life.

[1767] at least for the last five minutes of my life, you guys are the ones are going to be scared.

[1768] You're going to be begging me for mercy now.

[1769] I've begged you for mercy my whole life.

[1770] Now you're going to be begging me for mercy.

[1771] I mean, I'm totally guessing, right?

[1772] I'm just riffing here.

[1773] But I wouldn't be surprised if there was something of that to it.

[1774] Well, it's a good guess.

[1775] I mean, this has been a very common conversation lately as to whether or not you discuss these people and even bring up their names.

[1776] I know in some places, in some even media outlets, they don't want a report on the person, the individual is creating this chaos.

[1777] Well, you know, one of the things I think is a problem is that if you love this country, there is a certain pressure to think it's the best possible country ever, right?

[1778] Yeah.

[1779] And I think it's very painful for Americans to actually look at the actual statistics and say, you know, for example, with mass shootings, we're the only country that does this to ourselves.

[1780] The only one, there's down on another country that has?

[1781] I mean, not at the rate that we do.

[1782] Right.

[1783] I mean, there were, in China, there were, you know, there's a rash of knife attacks, right?

[1784] I mean, it's not that it doesn't happen at all.

[1785] But if you really look over the last like 20 years since, more than that, since the 80s when this shit started, like we're the only country that does this regularly to ourselves.

[1786] There's regularly to the point where it's like every month practically.

[1787] Right.

[1788] Right.

[1789] So it's a sign.

[1790] I mean, if your child was acting out in a violent way and punching kids in the playground, you'd think, okay, he's in pain, right?

[1791] acting out.

[1792] Like, what's wrong with this kid?

[1793] Like, he's clearly in pain in some kind of pain and he's lashing out.

[1794] Well, the society is in some kind of pain.

[1795] Like, what is it?

[1796] You know, and, you know, you can dismiss me as a, like, bleeding heart liberal, you know, whatever.

[1797] I don't mean you, but one could dismiss me as a bleeding heart liberal.

[1798] Like, okay, well, then what's your, what's your question then?

[1799] My question is, what, what, what, why are we in so much pain?

[1800] Right.

[1801] That's the question that I think might begin to lead to an answer of why there's such high suicide rates in such a wealthy society?

[1802] Why there's mass killing rate?

[1803] You know, that would begin to answer those questions.

[1804] If you don't like that question, what's your question to answer those terrible tragedies?

[1805] What's your question?

[1806] Well, what you're saying is very compelling, and it's an aspect of this that I don't think is being considered, and I think your book is very important when it comes to that.

[1807] I think the questions that you raise and all the various examples that you give, it's It's really food for thought.

[1808] And I don't think it's being discussed in very many other circles.

[1809] It's everyone's looking at the psychiatric drugs.

[1810] Everyone's looking at the white men with guns and the gun problem, the NRA and all these various aspects.

[1811] They're not looking at the root cause of this depression, anxiety, and this detachment that we have from our neighbors and our community.

[1812] Look, I mean, Somalia's got a lot more guns than we do, right?

[1813] And there's plenty of violence in Somalia, but no one's walking down the streets of their own neighborhood massacring their own people.

[1814] Only we do that.

[1815] And what is, you know, in a sense, it's a cry for help by our society.

[1816] Like, not by that person.

[1817] I'm saying generally the phenomenon within our society is a kind of cry for help.

[1818] Like we are, something is wrong, psychically, spiritually wrong.

[1819] Christians will say we're not a Christian enough country.

[1820] But, you know, like, that's, that's a, that's not true.

[1821] That's not the problem, right?

[1822] There are peaceful Muslim societies and very violent Christian ones, and you can't correlate it with Christianity.

[1823] I think the one thing you can, there are, there are oppressive societies, there are very low violence, and there are full democracies like us, there are lots of violence.

[1824] So it's not the democratic system, right?

[1825] What is it?

[1826] And my guess, and it's only a guess, my guess is that a certain amount of the high suicide rates, the high depression, anxiety, drug addiction, porn addiction, child abuse, mass shootings in the streets, My guess is that the common denominator in all those things is the sort of catastrophic lack of communal connection that many Americans experience.

[1827] Well, it's a very compelling argument.

[1828] It's a very compelling point that, again, I don't see being discussed in very many other areas.

[1829] And I really appreciate it, man. I really appreciate your book.

[1830] I think it's great.

[1831] And I really suggest anybody who's interested in this subject.

[1832] Please go read it.

[1833] Tribe, Sebastian Younger.

[1834] Thank you, brother.

[1835] Appreciate it, man. Really enjoyed it.

[1836] Thank you very much.

[1837] Anytime.

[1838] Come by and by.

[1839] All right.

[1840] Thanks, everybody.

[1841] Awesome.