TRIGGERnometry - Why Modern Society Makes Us Depressed - Sebastian Junger

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00:01:00.000 It's clear that our society, for all of its wonderful benefit, it's clear that our society

00:01:06.660 is not providing enough human connection to keep people happy. We're way out on a limb here with

00:01:11.340 this individuality. I mean, humans have never survived as individuals. It's not possible.

00:01:15.480 You take someone, you put them down in the wilderness by themselves, they die almost

00:01:18.220 immediately. As a species, we are social primates and we owe our lives to the group and we have to

00:01:24.220 participate. We have a duty to the group in order to stay alive. That's what being human means.

00:01:28.860 If you can simultaneously understand that you are part of a community of humans, you're lucky to be so, what do you owe them?

00:01:36.760 Because the more you give them, the happier you will be, the more affluent in society, the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction.

00:01:50.820 Sebastian, welcome to Trigonometry.

00:01:52.600 Thank you so much.

00:01:53.580 It's great to have you here. We want to talk about your book and the broader questions that

00:01:59.280 come out of it. But before we do, tell us a little bit about who you are. How are you

00:02:03.740 sitting here? What's been your journey through life?

00:02:06.300 I grew up in Boston. I moved to New York in my 30s. I was a freelance war reporter for

00:02:12.880 many years. I also wrote a number of books. My first one was a bestseller, The Perfect Storm.

00:02:18.480 and but as soon as that came out I went back overseas and I covered the civil wars in West

00:02:23.540 Africa I was in Afghanistan in 1996 then again in 2000 with Masood and then later with American

00:02:29.460 Forces and um eventually I had the great good fortune to work with a British photographer named

00:02:35.860 Tim Hetherington and he he and I shot and directed and produced a documentary together

00:02:40.740 called Restrepo about an outpost in Afghanistan that we were at off and on for a year and then

00:02:47.300 And we were nominated for an Oscar, and a few weeks later, Tim, we were going to go

00:02:52.660 on assignment to Libya to cover the Civil War.

00:02:54.920 Tim went on his own, because I had to delay the trip, and he was killed outside of the

00:02:59.220 city of Masrata.

00:03:00.220 And after he was hit by shrapnel from a mortar fired by Qaddafi's forces.

00:03:04.820 So after that, I got out, I sort of had my fill.

00:03:09.700 I couldn't imagine going back to war, not because I was worried about being killed.

00:03:15.940 I was worried about others.

00:03:16.940 I mean, I was sort of worried about how it would affect my family, my friends, right?

00:03:20.420 I suddenly realized watching Tim's family, like, what I was actually gambling with their

00:03:25.120 lives in some way, their happiness.

00:03:26.920 So I stopped and I got married.

00:03:29.380 I had two children, two little girls who are now nine and six.

00:03:34.000 And now I make my living in quieter ways, so as a writer.

00:03:39.040 And the last book that came out was called In My Time of Dying.

00:03:43.900 After all that war reporting, I'm healthy.

00:03:46.180 I'm an athlete.

00:03:46.660 I've never thought that I would ever go to the ER for anything other than a car accident or a chainsaw accident or something.

00:03:53.300 I had an aneurysm in my abdomen that I didn't know about, an eruption, and I lost half my blood, and I came extremely close to dying.

00:04:01.820 And I didn't know I was dying, but I got to the hospital in the last phases of hemorrhagic shock, you know, convulsing on the table and stuff like that, and they barely saved me.

00:04:11.820 But one of the last things I remember was that they were working to put a large-gauge needle through my neck into my jugular to transfuse me.

00:04:20.280 And as they were doing that, I'm an atheist, right?

00:04:23.380 My dad was a physicist and an atheist, like atheist squared, basically.

00:04:28.800 And the universe kind of cracked open underneath me, and I started to get pulled into it.

00:04:34.580 And I was terrified.

00:04:35.620 I didn't know I was dying.

00:04:36.340 I was terrified of the darkness.

00:04:37.880 And then my dead father appeared above me to comfort me.

00:04:41.820 and says okay you don't have to fight it you can come with me i'll take care of you i said to the

00:04:45.740 doctor you gotta hurry because i'm going i didn't know where i was going but i knew i was i was

00:04:49.820 leaving and uh so that you know i'm still an atheist and i'm happy to talk about that but but

00:04:54.860 that really rearranged some of my assumptions about the nature of uh of life and consciousness

00:05:01.420 and time and life and death and all those all those big things and now here i am well it's

00:05:05.820 really fascinating but uh coming back to to the war correspondent years and that side of things

00:05:10.940 things. What did you learn from doing that for a very long time? I imagine it's a very

00:05:17.020 unusual experience that most people don't have. And I imagine it draws quite unusual

00:05:22.560 people too.

00:05:23.560 Yeah. I mean, I don't know in other countries, in the United States, the military

00:05:28.940 is filled. I mean, in some ways it's our most democratic and diverse organization, right?

00:05:34.000 I mean, it's kind of extraordinary that way. Combat itself is a very select group. It's

00:05:40.920 all male. I mean, the combat infantry is all male. Probably 70 or 80% white, sort of working

00:05:49.600 class, middle class kids, right? And they really, unlike during Vietnam, they really wanted to be, 0.80

00:05:59.180 I was with the 173rd Airborne. You don't get sucked into the 173rd Airborne by accident,

00:06:03.980 right? They really wanted to be soldiers and to be in combat. And of course, they traumatized them

00:06:10.280 and all kinds of other things, but it was really interesting.

00:06:12.420 So we were out at Restrepo, which was an outpost

00:06:15.180 the size of this room practically.

00:06:16.940 I'm not a little bit bigger, but it was very small,

00:06:19.680 40 men behind sandbags.

00:06:21.440 For the first few months, there was no generators,

00:06:23.700 no electricity, there was no cooked food,

00:06:25.520 there was no running water.

00:06:26.660 There was like nothing.

00:06:27.740 We were in combat almost every single day

00:06:29.760 and high casualty rates, absolutely brutal existence.

00:06:34.500 And the boys were out there.

00:06:36.040 Tim and I came and went every month or so.

00:06:40.240 But the boys were out there for 15 months straight

00:06:42.620 and no contact with the outside world, nothing, right?

00:06:47.220 And when they got back, they got back to Vicenza, Italy.

00:06:50.620 This is what I learned about war.

00:06:51.780 When they got back to Vicenza, Italy,

00:06:54.280 after the partying that you can imagine happened,

00:06:56.920 after that phase,

00:06:59.680 most of them wanted to go back to Restrepo,

00:07:01.740 to the outpost.

00:07:02.480 They missed it.

00:07:03.440 They didn't fit in anymore.

00:07:04.980 And what they missed was each other.

00:07:07.160 They missed being in a close circumstance

00:07:08.960 where they're dependent on each other for their lives. And that is, you know, as an anthropologist,

00:07:13.520 former anthropologist, that's basically our evolutionary past. And it resonated very deeply

00:07:17.900 with them. And they were very confused. Like, what's wrong with me? Why would I want to go

00:07:21.780 back to that place? But I do. And my book, Tribe, is about the sort of anthropological reality

00:07:26.380 that produces that kind of reaction. Is it partly an addictive existence whereby

00:07:33.560 by you experiencing huge highs, huge lows in the way and a sense of camaraderie that you simply

00:07:40.500 don't get in real life. Yeah, it is. But you know what I would say is the adrenaline junkie thing

00:07:45.780 is a little overstated. I mean, you can skydive, you can rock climb. There's lots of ways of like

00:07:51.200 getting adrenaline in this. But those are all quite sort of self-serving or enterprises, right?

00:08:00.440 there for you, right? I'm going to skydive. But the thing about the military, the thing about being

00:08:04.560 in combat is when you're in combat, you don't feel like you're there for yourself. You feel

00:08:08.920 like you're there for everybody else, right? And that sort of, that brotherhood is that actually,

00:08:16.140 the end of the day, I think that is what's intoxicating. I think that's what pulls up

00:08:21.780 our sort of evolutionary past. And I think you could, maybe you could say it's addictive,

00:08:26.860 but it's certainly something that once you acquire it,

00:08:29.360 it's hard to let go of.

00:08:30.180 It feels like, oh, this is meaningful.

00:08:33.180 Back home, it's not meaningful.

00:08:34.480 There's nothing at stake.

00:08:37.180 Now, everything's at stake for all of us.

00:08:39.120 One guy said to me, he said, you know,

00:08:40.660 there's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other,

00:08:43.720 but we would all die for each other.

00:08:46.040 Imagine how secure that feels.

00:08:47.840 It's not even dependent on your feelings.

00:08:50.100 It's just, I'm part of this group.

00:08:51.460 I'm good.

00:08:52.300 I would die for them.

00:08:53.200 They'd die for me.

00:08:54.140 We're good.

00:08:54.580 Like, it's an extraordinary feeling.

00:08:56.440 Especially when you think about in society at the moment, we're talking about the crisis

00:09:00.240 of meaning, where even ordinary people who've never experienced that type of intense bond

00:09:05.360 or extreme situation is looking at their life and going, I don't know what this means.

00:09:10.280 I don't know what my purpose is.

00:09:11.520 I don't know what my role is.

00:09:13.060 So it must be even more of a contrast if you've experienced war to what we're going through

00:09:17.700 now in the civilian population.

00:09:19.280 Oh, absolutely.

00:09:20.140 I mean, if you think about for most of our evolutionary past, the fighters, the warriors

00:09:24.160 that came back, the Cheyenne, the Sioux, the Comanche, the Apache, when they came back from

00:09:29.120 their combat, they were coming back to a close community that was also living on the edge of

00:09:34.500 survival, right? So there wasn't that transition from survival to ease and luxury. It was all

00:09:41.560 survival, right? And everyone was involved in all of it. And that's how, in evolutionary terms,

00:09:47.200 that's how it should be. In our society, I mean, there are a lot of blessings here. Let's not

00:09:51.800 forget. To live in a society where our safety and our daily survival needs are basically mechanized

00:09:57.160 and taken care of and outsourced is a huge blessing, right? I mean, you know, let's acknowledge

00:10:03.120 it, but there are downsides even to blessings. And one of the downsides is that people can feel

00:10:06.800 very alienated because they're not needed by their group and vice versa until there's a crisis. So

00:10:11.900 the Blitz in London, I write about this in my book, Tribe. It shocked the authorities because

00:10:16.560 they were prepared. I mean, this is quite well-known, right? The authorities were prepared

00:10:22.440 for mass psychiatric casualties when the German Air Force started bombing London and other British

00:10:28.040 cities, right? And in fact, the admissions to psych wards went down during the bombings because

00:10:33.800 people had a purpose. They had something they had to do. They were digging people out of the rubble.

00:10:37.300 They were sleeping side by side in the tube stations. They were doing all of the sort of

00:10:41.840 urgent survival things that our human ancestors have always done and in circumstances like that

00:10:48.320 there's a great um relief and be able to forget about your own concerns our anxiety comes from

00:10:54.000 our own concern and when we're in situations where we're concerned about others and others need us

00:10:59.360 it's almost like a painkiller it's like oh i feel no fear i'm good but i just have to make sure

00:11:04.720 everyone else is good it happened in new york on 9 11 after 9 11 right hurricanes and earth

00:11:11.040 It was an earthquake in Italy that I looked at in, you know, 1916, I think it was.

00:11:17.820 And it killed something like 95% of the population in a minute, right?

00:11:22.100 It was like a nuclear bomb.

00:11:23.340 It hit that area, Avizzano, Italy.

00:11:25.680 And the people that survived it had to make it another four or five days until help could get there.

00:11:32.160 And this guy wrote, he said, during, I mean, one of the amazing things about crises like this is everyone's the same.

00:11:37.200 So all these awful social strata, sort of like rich, poor, white, black, whatever, every conceivable category just goes away, right?

00:11:46.900 And so this guy said, it's such an amazing sentence, he said that the earthquake had produced what the law promises, but cannot in fact deliver, which is the equality of all men. 0.58

00:11:58.980 Wow. And as I was listening to your book, it made me think about something, and I'd love to explore it with you, which is...

00:12:07.960 In civilian life, it's very difficult to become a hero for the average person.

00:12:12.860 The average person doesn't get the chance to be heroic, particularly the male, which is important to us to be the hero.

00:12:20.140 But war, particularly something like the Blitz, provides the ordinary, regular, everyday person with the chance to be a hero.

00:12:27.960 And that's very important for us, isn't it?

00:12:30.180 And what I would say in those circumstances, you're absolutely right.

00:12:34.380 But I would say the word hero is like a civilian concept, right?

00:12:38.220 In combat itself, no one thinks of being a hero.

00:12:40.360 They just, you know, I mean, the people that have received,

00:12:42.880 and I know some of them that have received the Medal of Honor,

00:12:45.640 our highest medal in this country, they're like, universally,

00:12:49.860 like without exception, they're like, I didn't do, I just did,

00:12:52.940 I did the minimum that I was supposed to do for a brother

00:12:56.180 who was in distress, in danger, right?

00:12:59.280 I'm not a hero. I did the minimum, right?

00:13:02.560 And it brings me to this idea that I've been thinking about, about duty.

00:13:07.040 The duty is sort of this grim, onerous term.

00:13:09.460 Like, actually, I think it's a kind of secret to something good.

00:13:14.520 So, and duty is not purpose.

00:13:16.160 It's not a mission.

00:13:17.400 It's not a passion.

00:13:18.740 It's not a calling.

00:13:19.800 It's actually what you owe your community, right?

00:13:23.660 Whatever that may be.

00:13:26.820 And so, you know, Bronze Age England, your community would have been some 100 or 200

00:13:31.340 people.

00:13:32.560 In, you know, modern America, it's, you know, $340 million, right?

00:13:38.240 But what do you owe?

00:13:39.540 And I think we're the first, and what's their duty to you?

00:13:43.540 And that reciprocal arrangement of duty is core to making people feel safe.

00:13:51.020 I mean, humans have three main questions.

00:13:52.820 Every other question is sort of like unimportant compared to these.

00:13:55.980 Is my group safe in the world?

00:13:58.560 Am I safe?

00:13:59.680 Am I accepted within the group? 0.92

00:14:02.180 Because if I'm not, I'm screwed, right?

00:14:03.820 So is my group safe in the world?

00:14:05.540 Am I safe in the group?

00:14:06.920 And are my children safe with me?

00:14:09.000 And duty, this charging of duty to the individual and from the society and to the society is

00:14:16.060 at the core of answering those three questions in the affirmative, right?

00:14:20.380 And so when I say to people in this country, what's your duty to the country?

00:14:25.860 Like no one has an answer, right?

00:14:28.000 And I think we're probably the first society in history, I mean modern Western society, where people don't have a ready answer for that very obvious and ancient human question.

00:14:39.000 I think you go back 1,000 years, 5,000 years, you ask a Native American in 1750, what's your duty to the Iroquois, your tribe?

00:14:48.300 They'd be like, are you kidding?

00:14:49.440 I mean, my duty doesn't end.

00:14:51.680 It's just I wouldn't be alive without them.

00:14:54.120 I protect them.

00:14:55.340 I do this.

00:14:56.060 I do that.

00:14:56.440 It would be very obvious.

00:14:57.220 We can't answer that question. I think until we can, all of us individually will feel unsatisfied

00:15:02.920 and in some ways fearful because we don't have a safe place in the world.

00:15:09.760 One of the fascinating things is I think on the flip side, if you ask people what they're entitled

00:15:15.520 to, they will give you a list as long as they're arm, which is a relationship that seems to me to

00:15:21.700 have become distorted because you are, as a member of a group, of course, entitled to certain things,

00:15:27.500 but that is the flip side of the duties that you have to that group. And we now have a long list

00:15:33.500 of entitlements and very little idea of what our duty is. Yeah. I mean, Western society,

00:15:38.020 it's a mass society that had to scale up and come up with answers that aren't very finely tuned to

00:15:45.200 actual human needs. But basically, you pay taxes, and then the society's duty to you is to basically

00:15:53.640 keep you safe from harm, to render aid if you're in a crisis. It all sort of makes sense, right?

00:16:01.900 And I think the conversation, and the conversation between liberals and conservatives, is where is

00:16:06.740 that line, right? The idea of a society that owes nothing to the individuals is barbaric,

00:16:11.780 Right. I mean, someone's dying on the sidewalk and there's no ambulance to call.

00:16:16.040 Right. Or they kick him out of the hospital because he can't pay the ten thousand dollars, you know, for the appendectomy is a porperic.

00:16:22.460 Right. On the other hand, there's a you know, there's a real consequence for society when people sort of game the system and try to take, you know, more than I'll just put it this way, more than they should.

00:16:35.740 Right. You know what? And I've looked at the sort of origins, the human, the origins of moral behavior in humans.

00:16:43.940 Right. Which they just sort of start in, you know, we're social primates and you can see some sort of moral behavior in chimpanzees.

00:16:49.800 But really, with the advent of language, people could really talk about what is right and what is wrong.

00:16:55.420 And there were two main—there was a wonderful anthropologist called Melvin, I think his first name, Connor, and he wrote a book called Moral Origins.

00:17:06.380 And he said there's two main crimes that survival groups are on the lookout for.

00:17:12.120 One is abusive leadership, like leaders that abuse their position and enrich themselves, advantage themselves, hurt other people, right, that are lower than them, right?

00:17:24.520 And those people, that was one of the things that would elicit capital punishment.

00:17:29.140 So there are rock drawings of one guy bristling with arrows and 10 men standing around him with their bows, right?

00:17:35.600 Clearly an execution by the men of a group of the theory as an abusive leader.

00:17:40.520 The other sort of crime that survival communities are constantly on the lookout for is free riders.

00:17:47.180 People that really aren't contributing to the pot, right, to survival, and they're taking more than their share of the chestnuts or the meat or whatever, right?

00:17:58.920 But, you know, we live in societies where leaders can be very abusive, right, can think they're above the law, right, that they're beyond the reach of ordinary justice and enrich themselves, right?

00:18:11.820 So I sort of understand the mentality.

00:18:15.080 I mean, it's destructive at both sides.

00:18:17.340 I can understand people saying, you know what, look what he's doing, right?

00:18:22.460 I'm going to jail because I stole $100 sneakers.

00:18:26.940 He ripped off the government for $500 million, and he's fine.

00:18:31.260 So I think part of the problems of freeloading, which is real in our society, and it's very

00:18:35.820 damaging to the freeloaders psychologically, emotionally, super destructive to them, right?

00:18:40.440 terrible for their self-esteem. But part of the problem is that we have sometimes leaders in our

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00:20:13.620 One of the things,

00:20:14.660 we've been coming to the United States for a long time

00:20:16.660 and we love this country

00:20:17.780 and we've observed a lot of interesting things.

00:20:20.760 I mean, one of the things I was gonna ask you is,

00:20:23.380 you know, America is a hyper-individualistic society

00:20:27.080 and I wonder how that connects

00:20:29.660 with the things that you're talking about

00:20:31.360 Because I imagine if you optimize for the individual, actually you are taking away many

00:20:37.600 of the things that you're talking about as being necessary for human flourishing.

00:20:41.840 Yeah.

00:20:42.400 I mean, look, we're way out on a limb here with this individuality.

00:20:46.100 I mean, humans have never survived as individuals.

00:20:48.140 It's not possible, right?

00:20:49.340 You take someone, you put them down in the wilderness by themselves, they die almost

00:20:53.540 immediately.

00:20:54.300 And so within Western society, none of us are surviving without the supply chain, right?

00:21:01.360 without the you know lots of other people that to do the stuff that we need done to survive while

00:21:07.200 we're doing one thing that we're good at that other people need to survive right you're an eye

00:21:11.040 doctor you're a dentist you're a construction worker it's just how it works so the idea that

00:21:15.040 like oh i'm just an individual and i don't need anything from anyone and so stay away from me and

00:21:19.520 i don't want to pay any taxes whatsoever and blah blah blah like it's you know it's a fantasy right

00:21:24.400 human society has never worked that way and you can go to a you know there are some tribal societies

00:21:30.240 current day that i thought to represent very closely what our evolutionary origins are

00:21:35.840 and um you know the the idea that in those in those just the hadza in east africa for example 0.98

00:21:42.480 you're very well studied peoples um you know they would just say it's absolutely absurd like the

00:21:47.520 idea you could could survive on your own or would want to like and so in america there's this myth

00:21:53.600 of individuality but actually all these people all these sort of cowboys that think they're like

00:21:57.600 these rugged individuals are enormously independent on the supply chain and the government that

00:22:01.840 oversees it so it's a it's a fantasy right it's a kind of immature fantasy and what's fascinating

00:22:06.960 to me is that hyper individualism which i like aspects of if i'm honest you know i i do enjoy

00:22:12.720 the freedom to do what i think is the right thing with you know within limits of course

00:22:16.720 seems to be paired with a hyper tribalism increasingly when it comes to things like

00:22:22.800 politics is there a connection between those two or are they separate issues i i mean you know i'm

00:22:28.400 not a political expert but just as a citizen of this country um one of the things that is odd

00:22:34.800 in both the left and the right i vote mostly democratic okay but i'm enormously frustrated

00:22:39.840 even outraged by the left uh occasionally terrified by the right and very disappointed in them as well

00:22:46.000 so i'm i i'm sort of nicely in the middle and i have friends on perfect guest for our show right

00:22:50.640 That's how we feel, too.

00:22:51.640 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:22:52.640 And I have good friends on both sides, right?

00:22:54.760 But one of the things that's quite odd is the, particularly on the right wing, the sort

00:22:59.880 of insistence on individuality, but as you say, also on an insistence that conservatives

00:23:08.740 are the tribe that's right about things, and the left are the sort of forces of evil

00:23:14.660 and dissolution that have to be fought against.

00:23:18.720 So they're both being hyper individualistic, but also acting collectively as a tribe in ways that I think are kind of frightening.

00:23:26.280 Like January 6th was terrifying, right? 1.00

00:23:30.220 The left has their own bullshit, right? 1.00

00:23:32.040 I mean, you know, they would never organize January 6th, right? 1.00

00:23:35.340 It would never happen.

00:23:36.220 But some of the awful stuff on campus, right?

00:23:42.900 this hyper hyper liberal thought where you really it's dictated to you how you must speak and how

00:23:48.980 you must think about things that are very complicated and nuanced that really no one

00:23:53.700 has is in consensus about but the dictating your thoughts uh that that you only find on the left

00:24:00.900 and it's and it's absolute to me i mean i grew up in the 60s and 70s where left-wing thought

00:24:05.780 But those were the rebels.

00:24:08.340 The conservatives were the, like...

00:24:13.040 Can't say that, can't think this, et cetera.

00:24:15.400 Yeah, the conformists, right?

00:24:16.500 The conservatives, the left wing were the rebels, right?

00:24:18.720 Oh, I think what you want, blah, blah, blah.

00:24:20.020 It's completely changed.

00:24:21.440 Like, the left wing is now dictating your thoughts to you.

00:24:24.220 And I think it's just absolutely horrific.

00:24:26.700 Does it worry you when you look at this country through the lens of tribe,

00:24:30.520 where you go, we simply can't hold this amount of people together

00:24:34.300 in one coherent tribe?

00:24:37.380 Well, I mean, there's always going to be stresses

00:24:39.220 within a community, right?

00:24:41.680 And there's stresses within the community,

00:24:45.520 and then there's outward pressure to keep it together.

00:24:47.640 And when those stresses get to be too much, it can fracture,

00:24:50.700 but there's huge downsides to fracturing, right?

00:24:54.220 Both sides are more vulnerable.

00:24:55.460 So there's a lot of sort of pressure to keep it together,

00:24:58.620 even as you're fighting like cats and dogs, right?

00:25:01.600 Like, I mean, likewise, the marriage or any kind, all kinds of groups are like this, right?

00:25:05.440 Listen, yeah, this is intense, but we'd both be worse off if we weren't alone, if we weren't with each other.

00:25:14.640 So let's try to keep this together.

00:25:16.860 That's where America's at right now.

00:25:19.100 But what I would say is that you can conceptually say my strongest identity is as a citizen of this country.

00:25:27.360 I happen to be of Italian origin or I happen to be female or black or whatever you whatever it is.

00:25:33.820 It doesn't matter. Right. Or trans or anything like. But but first and foremost, I'm an American.

00:25:38.820 And, you know, one of the great virtues of this country is that when people are come here, what's offered,

00:25:44.520 what's on offer to them is that you actually don't have to bring with you your tribal identity from your other from your homeland,

00:25:51.840 your country of origin. You can really become American.

00:25:54.160 You know what? At our best, we're not going to care where you came from or what you are.

00:25:58.900 Just work hard. Don't commit a crime. Be a good citizen. And you're good.

00:26:02.840 Whether you're an Irish immigrant or Somali or your family's been here since the Mayflower, it doesn't matter.

00:26:08.640 It's how you act right now that matters. And that's true in a platoon in combat, by the way.

00:26:13.400 Oh, your dad's in prison, but you're a really good fighter? You're good with us. You're brave and courageous.

00:26:19.020 You're good-looking and rich, and you suck in a firefight. I don't have anything to do with you, right? 0.90

00:26:24.160 So there is a little bit of that deal offered in this country, which I think is extraordinary.

00:26:28.740 My father was an immigrant.

00:26:29.740 He came here during World War II, right?

00:26:32.340 So and I think one of the challenges is in this country now and in our country and right

00:26:37.420 the way through the Western civilization as a whole is we talk about tribes, but we're

00:26:42.460 not we don't really acknowledge that there's now digital tribes.

00:26:45.940 And that's the real danger, isn't it?

00:26:47.920 I think.

00:26:48.280 Yeah.

00:26:48.440 I mean, I think that the ability of social media and the algorithms that drive people's

00:26:53.640 opinion towards greater and greater extremes is tremendously dangerous.

00:26:56.500 And we were talking before, you saw my flip phone and, you know, we just, I have a flip

00:27:00.520 phone because I, you know, frankly, I think smartphones are dangerous.

00:27:03.460 They're dangerous like handguns are dangerous, right?

00:27:05.280 It just like they're easy to misuse.

00:27:07.200 There are miracles.

00:27:08.800 They're important in some moments like handguns, but they're also very, very dangerous.

00:27:13.220 And, and so I just want nothing to do with them.

00:27:15.180 So I think that's part of what's been happening in Western society and in the United States recently.

00:27:22.400 But what I would say, I sort of never finished this thought, but you can conceive of a greater identity than your natural political affiliation.

00:27:29.560 You can say, I'm a Democrat, right?

00:27:31.140 But after 9-11, we were attacked and we had to band together.

00:27:34.560 And those differences stopped mattering for a while.

00:27:37.900 And there is a way to do it.

00:27:39.320 And I'll just, if I could, give you a quick anecdote about someone that did that.

00:27:43.660 In the moment, he did this thing that was totally extraordinary as an example of that kind of intellectual courage of espousing a national identity.

00:27:56.160 And it doesn't mean you're without criticism of your country at all, but do you have a duty to it?

00:28:02.680 What do you have a duty to?

00:28:04.180 You have to articulate what your duty to your country is, or you will die an unhappy person, in my opinion.

00:28:11.180 So with this guy, I was outside of a hotel in Norfolk, Virginia, and this guy came out, he was in a wheelchair, he's a sort of very handsome 75-year-old guy, right? And his right leg ended at the knee, and it was swaddled in bandages, like he had just lost half of his right leg at age 75.

00:28:28.940 And he came out on his own, and he tried to get into a car that happened to be in the passenger seat, and it was locked. So I went over to him, I was like, hey, can I help you?

00:28:37.520 I was like, no, I just have to wait till my wife gets here.

00:28:41.200 And I said, it seems pretty complicated what you're dealing with.

00:28:44.100 He was like, well, it takes some getting used to.

00:28:46.040 It'll be all right.

00:28:47.140 And so I tried again.

00:28:48.960 I was like, you seem really brave about it.

00:28:51.720 And he said, there's young people in this country missing both their legs.

00:28:59.180 This was during the war on terror.

00:29:01.540 He said, there's young people in this country missing both their legs.

00:29:04.460 Don't tell me I'm brave. 0.98

00:29:05.400 right that's someone who's thinking not thinking about himself right and so there there are small

00:29:15.440 symbolic but powerful ways to act as part of this amazing country any amazing country right

00:29:21.320 um you have to vote right you live in a democracy you're one of the few and the privileged in

00:29:27.760 history to live in a democracy where you have power over your rulers through rule of law right

00:29:33.000 and elections. So don't stay home, right? Don't squander that. Millions of people have died trying

00:29:39.920 to achieve the rights that you have, right? So vote. You have to serve on jury duty. Jury duty

00:29:45.120 is what separates us from authoritarianism. No one person with a jury system, no one person can

00:29:50.900 decide the fate of another person. Only a jury of your peers. No sheriff, no president, no general,

00:29:56.340 no nothing. Only a jury of your peers. And if you're accused of a crime and you don't serve

00:30:02.060 on jury duties, you'll still get a jury, right? But you won't deserve one, but you'll still get

00:30:07.280 one. So serve on jury duty. And finally, give blood. We cannot manufacture blood. We all need

00:30:14.020 it to live. There are fathers, there are daughters, wives, grandparents, like who are dying, who will

00:30:20.800 die if there isn't blood to put into their veins at a crucial moment. I needed 10 units to stay

00:30:25.280 alive, right? We cannot manufacture it. And it makes you part of this human race. The wonderful

00:30:31.080 thing about blood one of the many wonderful things first of all when you donate blood your body

00:30:34.760 replaces it within a week or two so it's a total free lunch right and it doesn't care who you are 0.79

00:30:40.840 what you are rich poor white black gay straight does not matter we all need blood and when we get 0.70

00:30:47.320 wounded blood comes out of us we're all the same in that way and it's really quite a profound thing

00:30:51.560 to do and i do it regularly and we're talking about the rights and i think a lot of what we're

00:30:58.120 talking about as well is being grounded in a reality accepting that you there there are things

00:31:03.800 that are greater than you and one of the ways that we can do that in society is through sport

00:31:10.760 yeah and that's where the tribe thing gets the tribe phenomenon gets activated again and it's

00:31:15.880 fascinating to see yeah and how much overlap is there between sports and the military and so on

00:31:23.000 i don't know i mean i i'm guessing that a lot of the i mean i was in a unit that was all male so

00:31:28.700 i'm just i'm going to say the boys the guys because that's what i would that was my reality

00:31:32.960 but you know i i think probably most of them were either involved in sports in a lot of bar fights

00:31:40.040 or both bar fights are kind of a sport right so yeah so you know they were those guys right i mean

00:31:46.200 we all know those guys right we avoided them in in the playground because they were tough

00:31:50.640 Tough-looking guys.

00:31:51.840 That's the military, right?

00:31:53.120 They're amazing kids, right?

00:31:54.960 But, you know, sports is a reenactment, a practice for combat.

00:32:00.240 It's all, I mean, you know, this isn't my idea.

00:32:02.460 This is well-established, right?

00:32:04.260 It all trains people for combat.

00:32:08.280 And a lot of child's play trains them for hunting, right?

00:32:11.200 I mean, you know, the hide-and-seek and all that stuff.

00:32:13.000 You know, very, very clearly, sports are a way of grooming children to step into adult roles of hunting and warfare.

00:32:20.640 and playing house, you know, and kids play house too.

00:32:23.600 You know, they're all in training, right,

00:32:25.820 for the things that they'll be doing as adults.

00:32:28.020 But sports, I know I read that with young women 0.54

00:32:31.220 who are part of a team, soccer team, lacrosse team,

00:32:35.820 longitudinal studies have shown that they do better

00:32:38.180 in their lives, more stable marriages,

00:32:41.560 professionally they do better,

00:32:43.160 emotionally, psychologically they do better. 0.95

00:32:46.540 That experience somehow changes young women

00:32:49.500 in ways that are very, very positive, and I think young men as well.

00:32:52.780 And it's also the element of ritual within sport that is super important,

00:32:58.020 and that you also see within the military as well.

00:33:00.960 And I think one of the problems of our society is now that a lot of us are atheists

00:33:06.200 and we have a secular society, we've forgotten the importance of ritual.

00:33:09.760 Yeah, I mean, look, I'm an atheist, and I'm not in the military,

00:33:12.620 and I don't play team sport, and I'm aching for ritual, right?

00:33:16.260 I mean, I would love a ritual.

00:33:17.360 I mean, I don't believe in God, but the experience of church for me is quite pleasant.

00:33:21.920 And sometimes I'll go to church just because it feels good, right?

00:33:24.520 And you don't need to believe in God to enjoy church, you know, particularly if there's

00:33:27.660 music there and a really good speaker, a really good minister, right?

00:33:31.100 And you can be a total stone-cold atheist and really enjoy that hour quite a lot because

00:33:35.560 it's about community.

00:33:36.700 It's about connecting laterally, not, you know, to God, right?

00:33:39.960 For some it is, I suppose.

00:33:40.980 But you don't even need that.

00:33:42.240 It connects, it makes everyone the same.

00:33:44.100 You know, in a church, everyone's the same.

00:33:45.560 We're all the same before God or before each other.

00:33:48.480 And that's like a super moving thing to experience.

00:33:51.840 I mean, one of my favorite quotes is, there are no solutions, only trade-offs.

00:33:55.200 Do you think that the fact that we've been able to solve so many of our basic need, material

00:34:01.260 problems, is one of the reasons that we're actually struggling for the spiritual side

00:34:07.120 of things, meaning and purpose and so on?

00:34:09.840 Yeah.

00:34:10.180 I mean, the word spiritual is sort of a tricky one.

00:34:12.980 You know what I mean.

00:34:13.820 Yeah, I take your point, though.

00:34:14.880 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:34:15.560 Um, I think the, the, it's adaptive for humans. It's been adapt for hundreds of thousands of

00:34:24.560 years. It's been adaptive to contribute to the common good, because if the group is good,

00:34:30.240 you're good. Right. And so it's adaptive to have that sort of affiliation, that desire to, to have

00:34:36.880 a duty to be of, to be of service. Right. And, um, you know, all evolution is sort of selfish,

00:34:44.060 Right. And so those behaviors are self-serving, even though they look altruistic, but they're altruistic in a self-serving way or they wouldn't exist. Right.

00:34:52.520 And so I think, yes, I think the tradeoff of modern society is that all of a sudden we are not individually needed by our group.

00:35:02.700 In fact, we can't even identify our group. What's your survival group? Like, what is it? Right.

00:35:07.320 Like, it's your neighborhood? Probably not, right?

00:35:09.860 You're, what? Like, the PTA, the parents' organization, the kids' school? No.

00:35:15.820 Like, I don't know. Who would you die for?

00:35:17.780 Like, your family? Maybe, right?

00:35:20.120 And so there's enormous loss of connection there.

00:35:24.120 And, you know, they've done studies where they've shown that the more affluent a society,

00:35:29.920 the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, right? So

00:35:38.880 affluent Western society has incredibly high levels of all those things. And really poor

00:35:43.060 societies, I think the comparison was rural Nigeria to North America, I think was the study

00:35:47.980 that I read, you know, now 20 years old, but I think it was rural Nigeria, the poorer the community

00:35:53.200 in rural Nigeria, the more collectively people had to act, right? There was, as it were, one well

00:35:59.260 and won, you know, or literally won well

00:36:02.420 and everyone had to get their water out.

00:36:04.620 The poorer the community,

00:36:07.320 the better off psychologically people were,

00:36:10.720 even though there are great, great stresses to poverty,

00:36:13.460 despite that.

00:36:14.760 But those afflictions of depression, suicide, anxiety,

00:36:17.860 just, you know, when people are banding together to survive,

00:36:22.580 you know, suicide in some ways is a selfish act, right?

00:36:25.580 Depression is isolating.

00:36:27.540 You know, you're not functional.

00:36:28.340 anxiety likewise and when you're needed those things sort of go away and and um so it's always

00:36:35.620 the trick is to be in a community that is struggling enough that you are needed on a daily

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00:37:50.880 finasteride it's so interesting that you say that because i noticed when i was teaching i taught in

00:37:57.240 a very you know exclusive all girls grammar school where every kid came in wanted to learn

00:38:03.300 every lesson was easy and the moment you walked into the staff from the teachers were each other's

00:38:08.380 throats but when you taught in a terrible school where every day was it felt like war except the

00:38:15.240 kids had the upper hand because they could throw chairs at you and you couldn't do anything the

00:38:19.120 the camaraderie was never better amongst the staff that's how i mean listen that's adaptive right i

00:38:24.160 mean you think about humans like that we have behaviors that allow us to survive of course

00:38:29.040 as things get better we act as things get worse we act better if that weren't true we wouldn't be 0.81

00:38:33.200 here yeah right i i talked to a woman who had survived cancer like bad cancer right and she

00:38:39.040 barely survived and thank god you know and she and and and she said but you know the one thing

00:38:45.040 she said the one thing about it is that i'm i miss the cancer ward she missed being in the

00:38:50.960 cancer ward with her fellow sufferers because she had never felt closer to anybody right so if you

00:38:56.400 have young young woman who misses being having cancer because it connects her to other people

00:39:01.200 who have cancer you it's clear that our society for all of its wonderful benefits and i'm happy to

00:39:06.560 run through the list with you guys if you want but it's clear that our society is not providing

00:39:12.000 enough human connection to keep people happy and one of the things you talk a lot about in tribe

00:39:16.160 is and you've addressed already a little bit is the importance of being necessary uh to other

00:39:22.160 people i'm curious if you've thought about the impact of ai and other things that are coming

00:39:28.160 down the pipe the new technology that is increasingly going to make human beings less

00:39:32.560 necessary and how that's likely to impact our society i mean i'm not a tech expert but just as

00:39:37.520 human being, it sounds horrible. It sounds terrifying. It sounds dismal. It sounds depressing.

00:39:44.080 It sounds bewildering. And a friend of mine was like, oh, it's okay, because then AI will make

00:39:50.960 all the money, and then no one will need to work, and we can just sit around. I'm like, oh,

00:39:56.240 that worked great with welfare, didn't it? I mean, the psychological consequences of

00:40:00.400 uselessness, of not participating, are devastating. I mean, the suicide rate goes up when people

00:40:06.640 retire, right? When men retire. When men retire particularly, yeah. Yeah, I think it's much more 0.89

00:40:12.460 likely for men than for women. Women, I think, are fine with retirement. I think they're not okay 0.99

00:40:18.140 when their husband retires. Right, yeah. He's at home a lot more. Yeah, right. That's really

00:40:24.200 annoying. Right. No, but it's, you know, it's a danger point, right? And so I was in Sarajevo in

00:40:29.280 93, 94, during the siege, right?

00:40:32.940 Sarajevo.

00:40:33.540 Sarajevo, yeah, Bosnia, right?

00:40:35.040 So during those terrible years, 1.00

00:40:38.600 the older people stayed in the apartments,

00:40:41.040 which were unheated, and there wasn't enough food,

00:40:42.980 but there were babies.

00:40:43.920 There were things that needed to be done at home.

00:40:45.700 And in that society, grandparents are crucial

00:40:47.880 for helping run the household, right?

00:40:50.300 And they have been for hundreds of thousands of years

00:40:53.420 until Western society invented the nanny, you know, or whatever.

00:40:57.220 But so in Sarajevo, the role of the grandparents

00:40:59.120 was crucial just and and and during those terrible years of the war you know in the cemeteries you

00:41:05.360 see the gravestones they're all young people because they were out they were getting water

00:41:08.480 they're in the food they're working they're socializing a mortar would come in it was more

00:41:12.400 likely to kill young people than old people who stayed home right and the people the old people 0.59

00:41:16.320 were needed at home as soon as the war ended you started seeing gravestones for older people people 0.84

00:41:21.440 in their 60s 70s 80s basically the war ended they weren't needed anymore and they didn't need to

00:41:26.640 stay alive any longer and they died they were not needed and um very different from suicide right

00:41:32.240 this is just they hung on long enough to be of service and then when they weren't of service

00:41:36.880 anymore the war ended and conditions improved what it seemed to me from the gravestones was

00:41:43.440 that they checked out like okay i got my family across the finish line i'm good right and the

00:41:48.960 danger but the danger of having an entire generation an entire community entire nation

00:41:53.760 not be needed is um that's new territory for the human race like no one knows how that will go but

00:41:59.600 i i have my doubts they'll go and a lot of people go oh you know you'll be able to be so creative

00:42:05.200 and you can finally i think there's a big difference between doing something because

00:42:10.400 you enjoy doing it and being absolutely necessary if you're a man providing for your family yeah

00:42:17.120 like that you know you take that away from a lot of guys i don't think it goes well i really don't

00:42:23.040 No, I mean, listen, our wiring, our neurological wiring, our emotional, psychological wiring

00:42:29.380 is, you know, from the Stone Age.

00:42:32.480 I mean, we have not changed at all in 20,000 years, right?

00:42:35.620 I mean, we are adapted to living in groups of 50, 100, 150 people maximum, fighting and

00:42:43.580 hunting, fighting for our survival and hunting and being totally interdependent in a group

00:42:47.800 and getting our meaning from that.

00:42:49.500 That's it.

00:42:49.920 That's what we are, right?

00:42:51.000 and um modern society hasn't changed that at all you know clearly the amount of um disaffiliation

00:42:58.680 from the group that we've already experienced is taking is hard on our mental health when we're

00:43:03.720 just not needed at all um i mean i think that's when despair will will will will will come in i

00:43:12.680 mean that's when the sort of big questions of what is life for i mean when you start if you're

00:43:16.680 depressed and you start asking what is life for anyway like you're at risk of suicide that's how

00:43:21.560 you get russian literature i'm from russia hence the joke um you know and do you think that there's

00:43:28.280 anything that we can do to mitigate some of the effects of modern society uh on us and on our

00:43:35.400 community so this is apart from ai just like right now well i think ai but also where we've already

00:43:42.600 got to because i would argue i don't know if you'd agree with this sebastian that uh i mean in some

00:43:47.240 ways we already have ai i mean algorithms that drive our content consumption patterns a kind of

00:43:52.680 ai and i would argue a lot of where we are societally and politically is a product of those

00:43:59.720 technologies that are now driving you know political polarization anxiety all of this other stuff

00:44:06.040 yeah they're all stressed those are all stressors on our society and our connectedness yeah um but

00:44:11.480 being rendered obsolete next level that's still that's next level that's still in the future and

00:44:16.280 we'll see if it happens right i mean i i i hope it doesn't in some ways but um i what can we do

00:44:23.080 well i i would say first of all the smartphone is a dangerous object right uh psychologically

00:44:30.360 dangerous particularly for young people i mean the statistic jonathan height i'm sure who was

00:44:35.320 sitting at this very table last time we were here okay yeah so i don't you know i don't need to run

00:44:39.000 through his brilliant arguments but you know i think i think it's pretty pretty much accepted

00:44:43.880 and people talk about so you know social media in terms of addiction they say oh i went cold turkey

00:44:48.600 i didn't look at my phone i mean they talk about it like addiction so it's a let's just say it's

00:44:52.200 an addiction right so i think the first thing we need to do is protect the children the young

00:44:55.960 people from the effects of this um and you know i think we need to really reorient reorient society

00:45:03.000 so that those the phones and that way of thinking is not the focal point of every single person

00:45:09.000 for almost all of their waking hours.

00:45:11.960 I mean, it's a moonshot, right?

00:45:13.400 We can do it, but we have to think about it.

00:45:15.600 I think there should be courses in grade school,

00:45:17.540 middle school, high school, college,

00:45:19.560 about how to use social media and technology safely

00:45:22.760 and how to protect yourself from it.

00:45:24.960 I mean, you need to take classes to drive a car.

00:45:27.400 You really should have, as a young person,

00:45:29.560 take classes in order to have a smartphone

00:45:31.760 just to protect you and your generation.

00:45:35.100 Um, I think there probably are ways to design buildings and communities that are more inward

00:45:40.720 facing and encourage group connection.

00:45:43.380 Um, I think there should be a sort of public awareness campaign of this, as there was with

00:45:49.560 smoking and all, you know, drunk driving and all these other ills of the damaging effects

00:45:54.500 of alienation.

00:45:56.960 Like, I mean, I think, I think you can really raise the public consciousness.

00:46:00.620 And when you do, people will act in more affiliated ways.

00:46:04.360 like they're capable of it and they're all dying to that's the tragic thing is there everyone's

00:46:09.200 waiting to be like called to be needed to serve right and uh and i think national service in this

00:46:15.420 country like mandatory national service not the draft not a you know man national service with

00:46:21.360 a military option if that's your if that's your scene right but but national service for young

00:46:25.900 people i think would be incredibly good for them and i'm glad we're talking about the issue of young

00:46:31.500 people because at the moment we've got a population crisis happening in the states and right the way

00:46:36.220 through the western world yeah people are having fewer and fewer kids what do you think of that

00:46:41.100 about that if you look through the lens of tribe what does it mean for a tribe i mean there's the

00:46:45.100 obvious when we're not having enough kids what does that show about what does it display about

00:46:50.600 the tribe what's going on i mean i'm going to be simplistic and sort of facile here but i'm going

00:46:56.300 to say you know having children is an act of belief in the future and if people have less

00:47:00.600 children i think on some level like future is there really a future right i mean you know we're

00:47:06.220 we're armed to the teeth with nukes the climate is changing in terrifying ways and you know

00:47:12.280 whatever there's five different scenarios that could bring all this to a halt and like

00:47:15.380 and i think it's unconscious thinking right and and like why why would we do that right and and

00:47:21.560 also i think that just the experience of community brings out an ethos that values children right and

00:47:29.440 And the more and more fractured our communities, I think that ethos just never really has a

00:47:33.580 chance to arise.

00:47:35.140 And it makes me very sad.

00:47:38.140 And having children, I didn't have children until I was in my 50s.

00:47:41.540 And now I'm like, whoa, I'm finally alive.

00:47:46.940 This is what life is, right?

00:47:48.840 And I had a great life till then, right?

00:47:50.680 I'm like, oh, but this is the real thing.

00:47:53.980 And I think when people experience community, the hurricane, the blitz of London, the earthquake

00:47:59.280 and Avanzano that whatever right like oh this is like this is real life this is what people are

00:48:06.120 talking I think this is why we're alive to experience this right and I think we have to

00:48:11.440 figure out how to reintroduce people to that way to that reality and then we can do it but we have

00:48:18.220 to go out of our way to do it because I think a lot of the problems that we're seeing in society

00:48:23.000 is that people don't have kids they don't have a family's families and therefore they lack purpose

00:48:29.580 Why would you go to a job that you hate?

00:48:31.380 So you can pay money to a landlord for your flat or whatever it may be.

00:48:36.660 And after a while, after you've done the whole single thing and you've been dating,

00:48:40.980 I mean, what's the point unless you're doing it for someone?

00:48:43.720 Right.

00:48:44.100 I mean, what I would say is that there are people that didn't have kids that decided

00:48:46.980 to devote their life to the poor in Tanzania or whatever.

00:48:50.220 You know, it's like, God bless them, right?

00:48:51.820 I mean, they found their duty to the human race, right?

00:48:55.200 If you're not doing that, I think there are people that fall into despair because they don't know what they're serving, right? And so, you know, I just wrote an article on my Substack. And it's about disconnection, right? I wrote a piece called Breathe With Me, and then I wrote a piece about its opposite, right?

00:49:18.140 And what I found was that, and this has been in the papers and stuff, the size of the average

00:49:22.500 American home has grown, it's doubled in my lifetime. And what they found was that the bigger

00:49:26.860 the home, the more likely the people were that lived there to be depressed. And that great empty

00:49:32.020 spaces in a house, which is all the trend right now, were correlated with depression. In 1900,

00:49:40.200 98% of homes had more than one occupant, right? Apartments, houses, whatever, more than one

00:49:47.340 occupant. Sometimes strangers slept in the same bed, right? I mean, there are boarding houses and

00:49:51.480 sort of rough places for working men where they sort of were crowded into camps and stuff. 1.00

00:49:55.900 It was a better time. 1.00

00:49:56.860 Yeah, right. So people live collectively, right? And now one third of American homes

00:50:03.680 are occupied by a single person. And another third are occupied by a childless couple

00:50:09.520 or a single parent, right? That is a, the piece is called The Great Abandonment.

00:50:15.660 and that is that's the tragedy of my of you know some ways the tragedy of affluence has allowed us

00:50:22.300 to live far apart from each other and the consequences particularly for children are

00:50:27.180 devastating you know it's such a good point because i remember reading an article about

00:50:31.260 kurt cobain the very famous rock star from the 1990s um and a lot of people said that when he

00:50:37.500 became successful he moved into this mansion it's when he really started to fall apart and he

00:50:43.360 literally lived in one room of his mansion because he simply couldn't cope with the isolation yeah

00:50:49.840 I mean he clearly had struggles as well but but but that I mean that isolation can tip the balance

00:50:56.020 on someone who's already struggling then you take Kurt Cobain and you put him in the infantry and

00:50:59.940 send him to Afghanistan whatever whatever the downsides of that are and they're easy to list

00:51:04.360 right the upside is that you you know you don't have room to be lonely you don't have room to be

00:51:10.220 selfish. You don't have room to be depressed. No one commits suicide in Afghanistan. Some do when

00:51:15.240 they come back, right? But one of the theories is that they do that because they've lost the

00:51:21.420 community, right? It's not the result of trauma. It's the result of a loss of connection. But over

00:51:26.460 there, it never happens because you know, however much you're struggling, everyone needs you.

00:51:33.360 It's like the grandparents in Sarajevo. I'm needed. I'm not going anywhere.

00:51:36.340 Yeah.

00:51:37.340 In that sense of purpose, I remember, I think it's Rambo when there's this scene and he

00:51:41.960 says, you know, I used to operate million dollar equipment and stuff.

00:51:47.620 I think purpose is a thing that's been so not appreciated in our society.

00:51:55.520 And now, of course, you see people looking for purpose and a lot of the time it's in

00:51:59.780 all the right places, but sometimes it gets kind of misallocated to places where it's

00:52:04.440 not adaptive, as you say. I'm curious, by the time this episode goes out, who knows what the

00:52:11.080 hell will be happening with the war in Iran and all of that. But with your experience of covering

00:52:16.280 different conflicts, being there, I mean, one of the things that a lot of people have argued is a

00:52:21.760 lot of this meaningless has come since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The West had an enemy. There

00:52:27.360 was a purpose collectively. There was something we were dealing with. And now it doesn't seem to

00:52:34.220 be like that now and that when there is a war even the war on terror it that communal effect

00:52:38.700 didn't last very long did it look i'll be honest with you i was skeptical a green powder that

00:52:45.200 claims to do everything sounds exactly like something i'd tear apart i've seen enough people

00:52:50.520 pushing miracle solutions to know what that looks like but i take ag1 every morning and i'm not

00:52:55.860 someone who sticks with those things out of habit if they're not delivering one scoop in water that's

00:53:01.060 it over 75 vitamins minerals and nutrients designed to support your energy mood and digestion

00:53:07.160 for someone juggling the podcast writing travel and trying to stay sharp enough to hold my own

00:53:12.580 in the conversations we have on this show that foundation matters to me i'm not dragging myself

00:53:18.400 through the afternoons the way i used to with ag1 i feel like i'm actually running on a full tank

00:53:23.620 and this isn't just marketing copy ag1 is clinically backed every study on their website

00:53:29.440 is openly available for you to read if you're a trigonometry listener you don't take things on

00:53:35.020 faith so go and look at the evidence yourself that transparency is part of why i trust it

00:53:40.060 so if you care about thinking clearly and staying on top of your game try ag1 for yourself at

00:53:46.200 drink ag1.com slash trig and for 59 pounds instead of 79 pound for the first month plus vitamin d3

00:53:53.760 and k2 a free five count travel pack and a free welcome kit give it a go

00:53:59.440 No.

00:54:00.440 I mean, it sort of lasted as long as it needed to until we got to a place where we, again,

00:54:06.480 felt safe in our homes.

00:54:08.100 So just because we were fighting in Afghanistan doesn't mean that people back in this country

00:54:11.100 were like, oh, my God, they're coming for us, right?

00:54:13.440 In the days and weeks afterwards, we did feel that way.

00:54:15.440 Oh, yeah, for sure.

00:54:16.440 And there was a collective taking of responsibility in New York that was really quite amazing

00:54:23.480 to see.

00:54:24.480 I remember walking down the street.

00:54:25.480 It was maybe a week later.

00:54:26.780 I was overseas when 9-11 happened.

00:54:29.040 It took me a while to get back, maybe a couple of weeks.

00:54:31.220 So I got back to New York and I'm walking down the street by Penn Station.

00:54:33.940 It's a crazy midtown, you know, soulless kind of area, right?

00:54:37.700 And you could still smell the, you know, the burnt smell in the air.

00:54:41.200 And it just, it was a wartime city still, right?

00:54:43.820 And there was this guy, he was a suit, right?

00:54:46.460 He was this like white guy in a nice suit with a briefcase.

00:54:49.700 And he had frozen on the street corner.

00:54:52.360 And he, you know, he worked out, I'm sure he worked downtown, right?

00:54:54.740 And whatever had happened on 9-11, like he, and he had frozen.

00:54:58.680 He was just like frozen on the sidewalk thinking.

00:55:01.540 I mean, he clearly was having a moment, right?

00:55:05.140 And this young black guy who was a bike messenger

00:55:07.360 back when there were bike messengers

00:55:08.580 and fax machines and stuff,

00:55:10.660 he was a bike messenger, right?

00:55:12.040 And he was like on his bike and he saw this guy.

00:55:16.280 I mean, the two were completely

00:55:18.000 from completely different communities in New York City, right?

00:55:20.720 And he saw this guy and he went up to him and he said,

00:55:23.500 hey man, he grabbed his arm and he said,

00:55:24.980 are you okay?

00:55:25.900 You all right?

00:55:26.880 That was New York.

00:55:28.540 for a while right it ended when the threat felt like it ended right and um you know hurricane

00:55:35.020 sandy brought some of it back the whole half the city went dark and downtown was pretty scary and

00:55:40.460 you know some of the poorer buildings organized sort of watch groups to watch the building from

00:55:44.780 robbers i mean i live in a neighborhood like that i've been quite a poor neighborhood in the lower

00:55:48.540 east side and they you know the the community the community spirit the community action during

00:55:54.060 hurricane sandy was quite extraordinary right um and uh so it comes back in a heartbeat right

00:56:01.260 but it doesn't last longer than it's needed because it's cost in evolutionary terms it's

00:56:05.100 costly right it costs you opportunity it costs you energy it costs you you know so you don't

00:56:09.580 want to do it longer than you need to like in sort of evolutionary terms do you think

00:56:14.620 sebastian we just every now and again we just need to be reminded that we're human

00:56:19.740 every now and again. I think if we were reminded of that all day long, we'd be a lot better off,

00:56:27.640 a lot happier, a lot more productive, a lot safer. Why do you think that is? Do you think

00:56:33.100 it's just the acknowledgement that we are mortal? I genuinely think that's one of the issues,

00:56:38.400 and correct me if I'm wrong, is that people treat the next day as if it's a given,

00:56:43.380 when the reality is it simply isn't. Yeah. I mean, so as a species,

00:56:47.500 We are social primates, and we owe our lives to the group, and we have to participate.

00:56:52.280 We have a duty to the group in order to stay alive.

00:56:54.880 That's what being human means, right, is to be part of a group. 0.72

00:56:58.680 We're the only species where an individual will die protecting a same-sex peer.

00:57:05.700 Not their kids, not their mate, but a young man will die protecting another young man from harm, right? 0.77

00:57:12.000 No other species does that.

00:57:13.700 Even chimpanzees are closest relatives, right?

00:57:16.360 only humans. And so that is what we are. And if you participate in that reality,

00:57:22.820 it takes the focus away from you, right? It puts it on others. And there's a blessed relief in

00:57:29.700 that. I mean, the problem with our society is that there's enough safety and leisure

00:57:34.780 and convenience that we can indulge in excessive thoughts of ourselves. It's called rumination,

00:57:43.620 right obsessive rumination and it leads to depression and anxiety it's known to right

00:57:48.320 and ptsd and the other part of being human is that yes we are biological beings and we will die

00:57:54.500 and not only that we could die we could be dead by dinner from natural causes being complete and i

00:58:02.980 know this from personal experience right i was in mid-sentence with my wife i'm not a walking

00:58:08.300 heart attack right i'm a really healthy guy i had something going on in my abdomen i didn't know

00:58:12.780 about. It shows mid-sentence to rupture. I was losing a pint of blood into my abdomen every 10

00:58:18.080 minutes, 15 minutes, and I barely, barely survived. And it was an utterly ordinary day. So if you can,

00:58:25.300 if you can simultaneously understand that you are part of a community of humans,

00:58:30.720 you're lucky to be so, what do you owe them? Because the more you give them, the happier you

00:58:36.340 will be, the more meaning you will get out of life. And also, all you get is right now. Like

00:58:43.600 really right now, right? The past is gone. It's irrecoverable. You have no idea if you're going

00:58:48.460 to have any sort of future whatsoever, even 10 minutes from now. So what is it like to be alive

00:58:53.660 now and now and now? That's all you ever get. And for me, the point how I answered that question

00:59:01.960 was like to be alive now is I need to be with people I love. I need to be with my family. That's

00:59:08.260 the point of the whole damn thing, right? And if you can, when you get distracted from that truth 0.99

00:59:15.420 is when, in my opinion, at least for me, life starts to seem tedious and puzzling and maybe

00:59:23.120 not quite worth the effort. It's such a profound moment to end the show, Sebastian. It's been a

00:59:28.920 Pleasure having you on.

00:59:30.860 Before we go over to our sub stack,

00:59:32.760 the final question is always the same.

00:59:34.660 What's the one thing we're not talking about

00:59:36.360 that we really should be?

00:59:38.500 Before Sebastian answers the final question,

00:59:40.500 at the end of the interview,

00:59:41.560 make sure you head to triggerpod.co.uk

00:59:44.240 where you'll be able to see this.

00:59:45.900 What do you think about uncontacted tribes

00:59:48.040 like the Sentinelese? 1.00

00:59:50.140 Is there a moral duty to bring them 0.87

00:59:51.880 into the international community?

00:59:54.340 Can humans survive

00:59:55.420 without all the modern technological clutter?

00:59:58.680 What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

01:00:02.800 We survive as nations, right?

01:00:07.220 Modern society survives as nations.

01:00:09.760 Nations come with laws that protect everybody.

01:00:12.840 And they insist on decency by their leaders.

01:00:15.840 And we have forgotten.

01:00:17.920 I think that Western society has a little bit forgotten those truths.

01:00:21.460 And I think what we're not talking about is how we can function in a healthy way as a nation.

01:00:27.320 America is not doing so right now. And that is not a political conversation, right? That's not

01:00:33.380 a left versus right. That's a conversation about human dignity and democracy. And we need to go

01:00:40.360 back to that conversation in ways that are nonpartisan because literally our survival

01:00:44.440 depends on it. It's such a profound point because I saw a clip that the White House released,

01:00:50.240 which was like a cartoon almost about the bombing in Iran.

01:00:55.480 And whether you were pro or anti-Republican or Democrat,

01:00:59.040 you think to yourself, people are losing their lives over this.

01:01:01.320 Is this really the moment to release a cartoon of a kid

01:01:06.300 sending a bowling ball down an alley and getting a strike?

01:01:09.500 Is this appropriate?

01:01:11.740 I mean, the immaturity that this administration is capable of

01:01:15.260 is pretty stunning.

01:01:18.440 And I think everyone knows it.

01:01:19.960 even people that voted for Trump, I think they kind of, I'm guessing very few people are really

01:01:24.380 thrilled with that move. Well, right. For them, it will be part of the package. And the other

01:01:30.320 package was worse for other reasons. But I take your point, I won't speak for the US, but in the

01:01:36.520 UK, that sense that the caliber of person, forget about their politics, just the caliber of human

01:01:43.560 being uh who now leads our countries has plummeted so sharply uh it's terrifying actually

01:01:53.560 the piece that i wrote breathe with me on substack um i talk about this extraordinary

01:01:59.160 photo of bobby kennedy when he was shot he was shot in 1968 during the presidential uh campaign

01:02:05.880 and it's a black and white photograph i can't remember the photographer's name it's a famous

01:02:09.240 photographed and bobby kennedy's on the ground and a young a young cuban emigre named juan romero

01:02:15.800 he's 17 years old is kneeling by bobby kennedy you know bobby kenny's this beautiful you know he's

01:02:20.760 handsome amazing amazing leader uh dying on the floor right bleeding out like i was and juan

01:02:30.120 romero 17 year old from cuba cuba is cradling his head and the last thing bobby so leaders

01:02:36.120 must put themselves last. They must put everyone else's concerns first, or they're not leaders,

01:02:43.060 they're just managers. But our leader puts their own interests last, right? So think about

01:02:48.120 that in this context, the last thing Bobby Kennedy said. He looked at everyone standing

01:02:53.760 around him paralyzed. He said, don't worry, it's going to be okay. He made his best case for the

01:03:00.480 presidency in the last thing he ever said he was not thinking about himself um those people are

01:03:06.700 out there the guy with the you know with the amputated leg who said i'm not brave there's

01:03:11.740 people miss those people are out there right and the question is how do you how do you convince

01:03:18.900 them uh to serve the public good because it's such a nasty environment you know there's such

01:03:24.940 good people you almost don't want to do that to them well that's what i was going to say maybe 0.99

01:03:28.180 you stop throwing shit at them all the time. Because I hold us responsible. I hold the electorate 0.98

01:03:33.220 responsible. I hold the media responsible for that. Because if you create an environment where

01:03:37.840 only ego-driven narcissists will tolerate the horrific torrent of shit you have to put up with 1.00

01:03:46.580 to be in politics, then that's who you're going to get. Yeah. I agree. And there's a process here, 1.00

01:03:53.520 and it's being accelerated by, you know,

01:03:57.960 algorithms and AI and all this other stuff,

01:03:59.960 you can't even believe videos you see anymore, right?

01:04:02.460 But I think humans veer between disgust

01:04:07.360 and inspiration, right, and courage.

01:04:08.960 And, you know, I think we're heading,

01:04:10.400 I think we're heading towards a moment

01:04:11.880 of collective disgust that I think

01:04:15.600 might bring people back, I'm gonna get his name wrong,

01:04:18.940 Tellurico, I think his name is in Texas.

01:04:20.740 know he's a he's sort of espousing a politics of love which sounds kind of corny but in his in his

01:04:25.940 words it's a pretty powerful message right and he said you have to understand that everyone is human

01:04:31.540 and you know he's addressing democrat liberals he's like including donald trump everybody right

01:04:35.940 i know you don't like this but you know we have to we we have to engage people with love even

01:04:41.060 people we hate right and and uh and i you know i think he is maybe the beginning of a change

01:04:47.220 change of mentality in the public where we're just disgusted with where this has gone.

01:04:57.500 And it might come back, it might swing back in kind of quite profound ways, I think.

01:05:02.500 That's a really hopeful message because it's amazing how quickly this has happened because

01:05:07.500 whether you agree with his politics or not, you can't deny that Barack Obama had that

01:05:13.380 approach.

01:05:14.380 That was his approach to politics.

01:05:15.380 You might say he had terrible policies, and some people will think that.

01:05:18.660 But in terms of his posture towards the world, it was not about demonizing other people.

01:05:23.680 It was about appealing to people's sense of what America could be.

01:05:29.640 And Obama is not really that long ago at all.

01:05:33.040 Yeah.

01:05:33.720 No, absolutely.

01:05:35.440 And I've got some problems with his policies, but I met him.

01:05:39.300 I was in the same room with him once, and he was at a Medal of Honor ceremony

01:05:43.040 for a guy from the unit I was with.

01:05:44.600 He was the first living Medal of Honor recipient since Vietnam.

01:05:47.380 Well, there was a woman in the audience who was the mother of a young man who was killed in the same firefight.

01:05:54.840 She lost her son in the same action that produced this Medal of Honor.

01:05:59.480 So, during this ceremony, this woman was brought forward.

01:06:08.340 Hugo Mendoza was the young man's name who lost his life.

01:06:11.000 And his mom, I don't know, I can't remember her first name.

01:06:13.660 And Mrs. Mendoza was brought forward to meet the president.

01:06:17.100 And she was right in front of me.

01:06:18.340 And I saw her shoulders start to shake.

01:06:20.260 She was starting to cry.

01:06:22.040 And the president just put his arms around her.

01:06:26.620 Only in a democracy, like fascist countries don't produce touching between the leader and a commoner, right?

01:06:33.880 The kings and queens of Europe would never have done such a thing, right?

01:06:36.960 The totalitarian regime, the Genghis Khan, the works, right?

01:06:40.700 This is a democracy in action, right?

01:06:43.620 beautiful democracy in action he just wrapped his arms around her and she he held her for five or

01:06:50.260 ten minutes everything stopped he just held her until she stopped crying as long as she needed

01:06:57.220 and eventually she got herself together and then she hugged michelle obama and then stepped back

01:07:02.420 in the line now that's that's a leader that's a democracy that's a beautiful thing right and we

01:07:07.860 have to get back to that. I can't imagine Hillary doing that. I can't imagine Kamala doing it. I 1.00

01:07:13.860 certainly can't imagine Trump doing it, right? You know, whatever, the whole cast of characters,

01:07:18.200 no. That is the minimum, the minimum requirement for leadership, is that your heart be capable of

01:07:26.680 that. You want to do that for someone who's suffering and who incurred a grave loss for

01:07:32.220 your country, the country you run. Like, come on. Like, and that's, that's what we need. We need

01:07:37.860 someone like the guy in the wheelchair who lost his leg. We need someone like Bobby Kennedy. You

01:07:44.260 know, I'd be fine with a Republican Bobby Kennedy. I don't care. I really don't. As long as it's that

01:07:49.980 caliber of person. Sebastian, thank you for coming on the show. Head on over to triggerpod.co.uk

01:07:55.440 where we're going to ask Sebastian your questions.

01:07:59.360 Why are the UK, EU, and to some extent the US

01:08:02.640 suppressing our own tribalism,

01:08:04.420 stroke nationalism,

01:08:05.220 and promoting nationalism in the third world?

01:08:07.700 Is there a historical precedent

01:08:09.200 for such bizarre behavior?

TRIGGERnometry - June 13, 2026

Why Modern Society Makes Us Depressed - Sebastian Junger

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