 Hello, Will. Thanks so much for joining me. How are you doing today? Good. Thanks, Chris. How are you doing? I am fantastic and I'm so excited that we get to talk about the status game. I've been waiting. I've been waiting for a book like yours to come out. But before we dive into some of the topics from the book, can you kind of explain what inspired this specific book? Like you talk about it was kind of a combination of a couple other books you worked on. So he talked about why you want to write this? Yeah. So the last sort of two, three books I've written have been really, you know, the central idea has been like, you know, we experience life as this story and it's the kind of a made up thing, you know, like, so that's why we can be so irrational because the brain is this kind of hero maker that tells this heroic story about the world and it's distorted and it's biased and all that stuff. But then, you know, so the biggest question, if the illusion is a story, what's the truth? What's actually are we doing as we go about the human life? And I think the answer is there's two things, is connection and status. That's what we want. We want to connect into little into games. And once we're connected, we want to earn status within them. And, you know, once I kind of saw that, you still used to see it everywhere. It's human life, you know, religion, politics, sports, corporations online, you know, it's everywhere. It's what we do. It's what we, it's what all humans are constantly doing is joining groups and playing for status. So yeah, I thought that, yeah, as soon as I kind of saw that, I thought, well, yeah, I really want to sort of think more about this. Yeah, yeah, like that's that's why I was so excited when I saw that you wrote this book, because I'm personally, you know, I'm always looking for like the root like where like, when I see like an issue or some weird human behavior, I'm like, okay, well, what's underneath that? What's underneath that, right? And I think, you know, why I got interested in this whole idea of status was, you know, I'm a recovering drug addict, and it was from my depression. And I looked at a lot of my depression and things like that. And a lot of it was my comparison to other people, you know what I mean? And when I got sober in 2012, and I started working with other people, I started looking around. And I saw that a lot of like, depression, anxiety, and just like overall human suffering seem to come from us constantly chasing status, you know what I mean? So have did you kind of have you kind of seen that like you touch on a few like, well, quite a few things like in everyday life, but how do you think this is affecting people on a daily basis with the status? Well, it's everywhere. And it's everything, you know, it's, well, I mean, it's not everything, but it is everywhere. You know, and it's interesting that, you know, you mentioned your own background, you know, I'm an alcoholic, I haven't had a drink for 20 years. I used to take a lot of drugs when I was young. And so I can totally relate to where that's coming from. And especially, you know, in terms of mental health, you know, very often that you see when people are really suffering, even up to an including kind of suicidal ideation, you know, not always, but often the problem is, is connected with status, you know, you feel that you're failing in life. And only do you feel that you're failing in life, you feel that it's hopeless that you've tried everything. And the game is going to keep throwing you out and you're at the bottom. And that's that. And so what researchers find is that is the risk of, you know, suicide and suicidal thoughts, you know, seriously increases when people, especially when people were suddenly loose status. So when they're here, and then they're suddenly down there. But interestingly, interestingly, another flashpoint, danger point is when people simply are left behind when they feel that everybody else has kind of accelerated ahead, and they're just still they're kind of stuck there. That also is linked to increased risk of suicide. So, so yeah, I mean, you know, the way I see status is it's, you know, it's a fundamental human need, like food and water is a fundamental human needs, but it's a psychological need. Yeah. And when people feel that they're being unfairly deprived of status, they get they get depressed and they get sad, but they also get really, really angry, you know, and that's the thing that we see more often, I think, especially at the moment in the world. Yeah, it's, it's, you know, I notice a lot, you know, especially when people are unemployed, like you said, when your status drops, right, like during my addiction, I don't know about you, but I lost so many jobs, just so many jobs. When I was a new father, you know what I mean, it was actually in 2008 when the recession hit, lost my job. And even then, like, it just felt terrible. I'm not as good as other people, I'm not able to provide and all these other things. And so much of it is just thinking about what others are thinking of me, right. And just like that, that sense of security. But like you said, too, like, it's interesting that there's like these two primary emotions, there's like the depression and sometimes it's like this helplessness. But then also it's this, it's this anger, right. And, you know, in the United States, you know, what we've seen all these, you know, protests and just so much stuff going on, right. And I'm not as familiar with all the stuff going on in the UK. But how much do you think it's from this, you know, people don't feel like they're able to get to the status level that they want to be at or deserve to be at? How do you think that's playing into it? Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, again, very frequently when you see groups entering into conflict with other groups, it's to do with status. And that, you know, that goes back all through human history. And I do think there's a lot of that underlying the kind of, you know, what we call the culture wars at the moment. You see on the one side is, you know, white working class, white low middle class people who, you know, perhaps in the 60s and before, you know, had status, they were doing, you know, they had relatively more money than they have now. They had more respect than they have now. There were the, you know, the backbone of America or the, you know, the salt of the earth and over here. And, you know, since the age of, you know, multiculturalism has arisen. And, you know, over here, the problem is, let's say it's not a problem, but the, you know, the flashpoint is immigration, you know, immigration after the Second World War. You guys, there's the, you know, the well-known kind of race issues. And I think, you know, part of what's happened is a genuine declining status for white working class people and white low middle class people in terms of, well, so generally, so declines it in terms of, you know, income, but also just the level of respect they're afforded, generally, as the kind of focus of the left especially has moved on to minority groups for lots of very good reasons. The white working class, white low middle class feel abandoned and they feel disrespected and, you know, they get angry about that. And, you know, they make a lot of mistakes. And the most obvious one is that they blame the immigrants, they blame African Americans, which is the wrong, you know, it is the wrong target, but that's who they see as responsible for this. And then on the other side, you've got, you've got, you know, very privileged, educated people who have also, you know, seen a relative decline in status in the sense that so when researchers look at the exactly who are the people who are kind of fighting these culture wars on the left, that's really interesting things, you know, they're a minority of people, I think it's 13% in the UK, 8% in the US. They are out of sort of about seven different demographic groups. They're the wealthiest, they've got the most family incomes of 50,000 pounds over here. They're the most highly educated. And they're the most dominant voice on social media. So in the UK, this group of people make more contributions to social media than the rest of the nation combined, even though they're only 13%. So they're the ones on Twitter, you know, they're the ones shouting and about racism and social justice and so on. But many of these people, I mean, they also skew heavily Gen Z and Millennial. The interesting thing about wealthy, highly educated Gen Z and Millennials is that they are also suffering a decline in status compared to what was gone before. You know, famously, it's much harder to get the property ladder. It's much harder to they're earning a lot less money than their parents and at the same stage. So, you know, I don't think it's, you know, I don't want to oversimplify it, but I don't think it's a coincidence that in both of these groups in these kind of angry left-wing activists and angry white working class kind of pro-Trump anti-EU people have both seen a decline in relative status, you know, over the last few years. I don't think that's a coincidence at all. You know, it's not just that, but I think that's a big part of the picture. Yeah, it's so crazy as I look out at the, you know, at the landscape of how people are behaving just because I'm just constantly fascinated by human behavior. I see all these people fighting and kind of like what you're saying. I'm like, everybody's kind of dealing with the same thing, right? It's just how we're perceiving it. And my chance, have you, have you read the book Strangers in Their Own Land from, what's her name, Arlie Hothschild? I don't know how to say her name. No, that's a new one, that's a new one on me. Yeah, so yeah, if you ever get the chance. So basically, like she's like this liberal woman, I believe she's a sociologist or something, and she's from like the, you know, one of the coastal places in the United States, but she wanted to go to the middle, middle of America and say, what's going on, right? Why do you guys disagree so much? And she wanted to understand. And yeah, you go there and they're dealing with a lot of the same things. And they, you know, it helped me kind of widen it. And my, why do my perspective and understand like, oh, these people feel like they're being left behind, right? But then you have other people, you know, like you mentioned, like, you know, millennials, Generation Z and stuff, who also feel left behind, right? And I've been really interested in books lately that kind of explain or just have different opinions on the culture wars and how, you know, they're making us fight left versus right when there's really, we're upset about the top versus the bottom. You know what I mean? Do you feel like a lot of people are distracted by that? Yeah, well, yeah. And I think that's the mistake they make. And I think what was really interesting for me is understanding the two different stories that they tell about the world. And they're both stories about status as these things very often are. And what the kind of, you know, progressive activists online, you might call, you know, often known as woke people. The story that they tell of the world is that white people, especially white men, especially straight white men, have unfairly dominate the world and unfairly kind of hold resources and fix the game so everyone else is kind of screwed. But then if you look on the other, the other kind of story that, you know, a Trump voter or over here, a Brexit voter might believe is that it's not, it's the highly educated who unfairly dominate the game and fix it so everybody else is kind of screwed. And what, you know, I think the broad point, you know, I think if there's one kind of thing I've learned from the last few books is that stories are never true, you know, and usually it's not that they're complete outright fabrications, it's that they kind of hold half the truth. And what's interesting about those two stories is that white people, you know, fix the game on there and men do and so they're highly educated people. It's all true. All those things are true. But each side only sees that half of the truth. So you get these extraordinary scenes where, you know, a left-wing journalist on Twitter that I kind of write about is kind of, you know, literally, contemptuously disparaging white working class people who worked in a chicken processing cut of all things and complain that they have all the advantages and they're still whining about earning $13 an hour. And this woman has been to, you know, elite college after college. She writes for, you know, the Washington Post and, you know, so she's right at the top of the game, completely bathing in privilege. And yeah, she doesn't feel like it. She feels like she's kind of a plucky, you know, brave, I don't know, you know, person who feels morally entitled to accuse these chicken factory workers of having all the privileges. And it's like, man, you know, it's, yeah, it's a really fucked up situation. But it's because people, that's the thing we believe the story the brain tells us. And the story always holds about half the truth, if not less. Yeah, it's something like it, like every time there's like this topic kind of comes up, I just start to feel the frustration inside myself because it feels like just such an obvious sleight of hand trend, right? It's like someone just like sitting there with a pile of money and just holding it all for themselves and saying, look at, look at that, look at that guy over there. He's, he's the reason you're in trouble. And people are like, yeah, you're right. And I'm like, do you guys do, do we not see this? How can we not see this? Because it's like they're just playing us like a fill, you know what I mean? And, and yeah, and I think, you know, I think one of the best things I would love if you could explain this study that you touch on in the book, because I think it really helps people understand how, how much we value status. So there was a study where they, they like offered employees and said, would you rather have a promotion to raise your status or like a pay raise or something like that? Yeah, can you, can you kind of break down like that study? They just straight out ask people, would you prefer a pay rise or a better job title? And about 70% opted for the, for the better job title. So a filing clerk wanted to be a data storage specialist. And, you know, yeah, and that just shows, I mean, you know, like the way to understand these status games is that it's like any game is that we use symbolic things to measure status. And you know, if we're playing monopoly, it's a, it's a plastic hotel. But, but you know, in this day and age, money is a way that we use to symbolize status. But it's not the only, it's not the only way it's just, it's just another way of playing the status game. You know, job title is, is, is also it's very clearly about status. So people often opt for the, for the improved status. And for good reason, you know, it's probably going to make them happier than the money is. We were in certain limits, obviously. Yeah, it's like the two primary things I often think of, think about that, like, are these driving forces of us is like status and signaling, right? And I'll never forget one time I was in Los Angeles, and I think I got lost and wasn't in the best neighborhood, right? But like these houses, there were, you know, there were, it wasn't the best neighborhood, but the cars were nice, right? They're that's such nice cars. And it's like, you know, that, that, you know, that might be beneficial for them because they're signaling to people like, hey, my potential status is this, but you know, I have a 12 year old son, and it's something I'm trying to teach him, you know, because he gets an allowance and stuff, he wants to buy like in-game cosmetics for Fortnite and all that. And I have him stop and think like, why do you want that? Right? Because I want him to start recognizing, are you trying to signal a certain status or, you know, is that going to bring your true happiness? But, but yeah, I, again, I love getting down to the root and we evolved this way. And you, you cover it just excellently in the book, but can you kind of give an overview of like, why it was beneficial for us to even care about status like back in our ancestor days? Totally, yes. So it's basically the way that we've solved the problems of survival and reproduction, you know, it's that fundamental. And so as you might know, we're apes, humans are apes, but we're apes that have cracked, you know, the secret of being highly social. So Jonathan Hyatt, the famous psychologist, says that we're part A, part B, you know, we're that social. And so, you know, what we do is we, in our troops, in our, in our groups, we sort of master the art of dividing responsibility for tasks with each other and working together, cooperating, obviously, you know, language being a big part of that. So that's, so that's how we did it, you know, you know, in order to survive and reproduce, we connect into these groups. But it's more than just about connection. It's because, you know, it's fine to feel connected into a group and we're driven by evolution to feel good when we're successfully connected into group and to fear being ostracized from a group. But once we're in that group, we're not, we're not, you know, we're not really happy to just flop around in the lower runs, you know, everyone likes me, but I'm a bit of a loser, you know, people aren't happy with that. And so, so we know we've evolved this kind of urge to want to move up, to be respected, and to feel above other people. And that's because, you know, being connected into a group solves the very basic problems of survival and reproduction. But if you want to really thrive, you had to earn status, because in any, in the human trials in which we evolved, the more status that you earned, the better food you got, the better your access to your chosen mates, the safer your sleeping sites, the better the opportunities for your children even. So, so the more status that you had, the better you were surviving and reproducing. So it's so it's that fundamental. And of course, you know, you still see that today, you know, that was true 10,000 years ago, you know, when all this circuitry was evolving and longer, and it's still true today, the more status you have in the modern world in the West, the better able you are to provide for your children, the better schools they go to, the better universities they go to. So it's still the same old game that we're playing. And as you know, if you just didn't get into the root, that really is the root, you know, connection and status. That's what we're doing all the time. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like when, you know, I talk about this, because I just love, I love evolutionary psychology so much. But it feels like when I talk, when I talk about this, like it seems like it's like this kind of like cliche, like, hey, we're just these like old school tribalistic apes and we haven't really caught up. But it's like, it's so true. We're doing these, these ancient behaviors that helped us. And I think, you know, there's this weird balance of finding like, okay, this is part of how we evolved. And there was a pretty good reason since we're at the top of the food chain, right? But some of it, we kind of got to, you know, recognize it and balance it out because not all of them are as advantageous in 2021 as they were back in like BC. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think the main one is, main thing is really is that we evolved to play these small games. You know, we evolved in relatively small groups. And even within those small groups, your games are divided. So the genders would have been pretty much divided. Women would compete with women, men would compete with men. And in that, you know, it's down to age and, and, you know, hunters would compete with hunters, honey finders would compete with honey finders. You know, so you're playing these very small games and, you know, and they were so shallow that it's often people you hear talk about these human groups involved in being egalitarian, but they weren't egalitarian in the sense that everybody, nobody was interested in status. They were egalitarian because everybody was very, very fucking interested in status. And they were constantly kind of managing each other and pushing each other down, making sure nobody starts throwing their weight around. So they're egalitarian because everyone's all constantly shuffling to get up to get the better resources, you know. So, so yeah, so we've evolved to play these small games. And the big difference is now, of course, we've played these massive, gigantic games, you know, across the world. You know, we have thousands, tens of thousands of other who were playing it. So we've kind of driven mad by it. You know, we've driven mad by it in the sense that the status rewards on offer today are insane compared to what they were in the groups we evolved with. You know, our brains are designed to play these small games. Yeah. And, but today they, you know, the rewards on offer, but the downsize that means the resentments that they treat are much, much bigger than they would have been otherwise. You know, people would have been held in check back in the day, but today they're not. And so, you know, the resentments that we've that we've evolved to experience in order that nobody gets too big over us, just go crazy in the modern world, much more envious than we would be. You know, I think we evolved. Yeah, that's crazy. Like, as you as you talk about that, like, I think that's just such an excellent point because, you know, they talk about like Dunbar's number, right? Like 150 people. That's like the max relationships. So you think about these old school tribes, and you just kind of had to worry about a small group of people. Yeah. But then, but then, you know, like, even in just, you know, the industrial revolution, it's like, all right, now we're in these factories, and I got to worry about my status compared to this guy, right? And when you're in a small town, and like, are you better than the blacksmith down the road, right? But then like with, with the internet, like, for example, you're a writer, you're a journal, like, you're, you're competing with every other author on the planet. And every time you touch, every time we touch Twitter or Instagram or Facebook, we're competing. It's, it's this huge competition. And, and status is like, it's all over the place. But like you mentioned, like, the resentments, we, we, we get in all that kind of stuff. And I'm curious, because you touched on it a minute ago, but like, what are some of the key differences you see or you learned about through your research between men and women and how we kind of fight for status without broad generalizations and all that, but it's kind of the evolution. Well, you know, that, you know, there are differences. You know, the main caveat, we would say that, that, that, you know, we now know that men and women aren't categorically different. You know, there's huge overlap. So, so, you're always talking about generalizations. You're always talking about, you know, if you take lots of men and lots of women compared together, you get these rough, you get these rough differences. And so, but there are some differences. The most obvious one is, is in terms of physical violence. So the most, you know, the most basic way you play for status is with dominance is called, you know, and so, and, you know, it's much more, it's much more typical in the animal sphere, you know, when chickens meet and they peck at each other until the pecking order is established, that's dominance. So dominance is about forcing status from people, either physically or by threat. And so men play kind of physical dominance games, you know, far more often than women do. You know, we're still built physically even today. We're still built physically, you know, without the body, muscular strength to fight physical one-on-one dominance games. So, so, so it's embedded in us. But, you know, women are aggressive too. Women also play dominance games because women don't tend to fight physically anywhere near as much as men. They use these other games, which is about, you know, destroying people's reputation and ostracization, reputation destruction. The literature is very mixed. So, so, so when you read some papers, they say that the reputation destruction is very much the female form of aggression. So if toxic masculinity is, you know, is physical aggression and one-on-one bullying, toxic femininity is reputation destruction. Other papers just as confidently announced that that's not true, and that men use reputation destruction just as much. So I don't really know what the truth is. But certainly, you know, men obviously use reputation destruction too. But, you know, anybody that's spent more than 10 minutes online can see that women are very good at dominance, at least as good as I would say, as dominance through reputation destruction and ostracization as men. So that's one of the, that's the most obvious is in the aggression styles. Another big difference that's sort of very well kind of established is this idea that we're drawn to different kinds of games. And this is all around the world, you know, cross-culturally, men are more likely to have interests involving things and women interested in involving people. And so that very basic broad general difference reflects in the kinds of jobs and vocations people join. So, you know, if you're going to open a tractor factory tomorrow, it's more likely that when you advertise for jobs in the tractor factory, it's likely you're going to get more male applicants than women applicants. And it's likely that, you know, that gender difference will reflect in your staff. And it won't because you're a sexist monster, because of this general difference. You know, what is argued about is the source of that difference. So a feminist will say, well, the reason you've got more men in the tractor factory than women is because women are told from an early age, you're not allowed to be in traditional tractors, you've got to be interested in cooking or something. Whereas, you know, an evolutionary psychologist might say, well, actually, it's more to do with millions of years of division of labor. You know, women had to give birth, so they have a psychology that's more interested in other people and empathetic things. But, you know, this is an argument that we're just going to go on and on and on forever because the status involved in it, you know, because if there's status under, you know, at its core, any round that's the people's status, it has the capacity to become incredibly toxic, incredibly quickly. I mean, people have been fired for making these arguments. Yeah, yeah. No, when you were talking about that, I was thinking about the James DeMore situation. Yeah. And it's interesting because I've recently been reading some books on, you know, the trans debate and I read Carol Hoover's book on testosterone. And I've been thinking, you know, just like with how slow evolution is, I just wonder if thousands of years from now, if things will look different just because of the cultural changes, you know what I mean? So now, you know, since, you know, women don't have to necessarily stay at home or gather and stuff. And I was talking with, I believe David Buss about, you know, a lot of women around my age, you know, or even within this group, I've noticed a lot of them just not wanting to have kids, right? So I'm like, how's that going to shift? But it's funny too, when you mentioned the kind of reputation stuff. When I got, when I had the internet coming after me in 2019, I got so interested in why we gossip. Like, why do we talk trash about each other? Why are there these mobs online? And why do people do this? And why do people care? And, you know, it all goes back to status, right? Like the person gossiping is saying, I have information about other people in the group about who you should interact with, who's good, who's bad, right? So you're showing status with gossip. And, and that's why, like, that's just reason number 9000, why I love your book, because it touches on all these things. And I just want to tell everybody, like, it's all about status. But when we're talking about the reputation, one of the things you touched on in the book, which I was like, yes, was going back to, you know, men and their status is you talked about embarrassment and humiliation. And you touch on like serial killers. And here in the States, I also think about mass shooters, right? When I look at these stories of mass shooters, I think, you know, you know, humiliation and like whenever you look at the backstory, it was never like, this guy, this guy was dating a lot of women, you know, he had a nice car and everything like that. It's never like that, right? Yeah, it's never American psycho, isn't it? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So can you, can you kind of explain what you found in the research about, like, just how humiliation plays into our drop in status and, and why people turn to violence when that happens? Yeah, this was really, really early when I was still wondering whether to write a book about this, one of the little tests I gave myself was, okay, if you think that status is such a fundamental human need, then it must be really bad when it's taken away from us. So let's work out if it is or not on what happens. And so yeah, I, you know, I came across this paper that I think it's just called humiliation and it's causes and the way that these psychologists define humiliation is it's the removal of a person's status to such a degree that it's impossible for them to claim status in the future. So they kicked out of their game from my, you know, they're expelled from their status game. And then when you look around the literature, you know, my God, humiliation is connected to so much unbelievable evil, everything from honor killings to serial killings to, you know, incel murders. Yeah, so that's what I thought, you know, I believe this now, you know, but you know, that's what really convinced me finally that status was as important as people were saying, because when you look at the humiliation literature, it's just, you know, and even as I go in later on the book, when you look at the massive evil movements in history, most obviously the Nazis, the humiliations suffered after the after the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles, and they blame the Jews. So you know, the Jews get it in the neck, you know, and so one of the interesting things to be one, I looked in depth at the story of Elliot Rogers, who was the University of California, Santa Barbara. Because he left a really detailed autobiography behind 108,000 word kind of memoir, essentially that was unsparing in its honesty. Did you read the whole thing? I did. Yeah, I found it weirdly gripping. Yeah, it was just unbelievable because he was so so devastatingly honest. And it was like, it wasn't, yeah, what struck me about Elliot Rogers was he was clearly a narcissist. So I think the most dangerous people aren't isn't just like you and me, you know, when we humiliated and yeah, in that moment we might be dangerous. If somebody humiliates us, we might lash out, we might do something we really regret, especially if we, you know, drunk or on drugs. But the really dangerous people are the narcissists because the people who are very grandiose, they're the ones who automatically assume they're up here and they deserve to be up here. Yeah. And if you take those people and you, and you destroy them and you humiliate them again and again and again, they become extremely dangerous. And you see this with Elliot Rogers, you know, very grandiose, sort of not definitely, I mean, I would say narcissistic person, you know, he really does this for himself as a, as a, you know, it's beautiful, cultured, intelligent, gentle, kind of thing. But, and yet he was just bullied like insanely all throughout his childhood. No, once he hit puberty, before puberty, he was happy. But as soon as he started showing interesting girls and realizing that girls didn't like him very much, he became tortured by this. And, and yeah, you know, he becomes obsessed with the fact that the pretty girls that he desires don't want to go near him. And he aides all what friends he does have and ends up entirely alone and rejected. And there's a very touching thing in his book where, where the only thing that brings him happens is the computer game World of Warcraft. And he would, he would meet up with some friends, just remaining friends and play all night. And then he found out somehow that his friends had started meeting up without it to play World of Warcraft and that's what and from that moment on he's just destroyed he stops playing World of Warcraft which is his only source of status and he goes from being just basically a very hateful individual to somebody who you would think he's mentally ill he starts telling a story about the world that he says that women are the cause of all evil in the world because they choose to mate with jocks you know stupid violent jocks and therefore they have stupid violent jock children and you know this is the cause of all the terrible things in the world when they really should be choosing him this glorious gentleman and so his solution is to kill all the women except for a few of them that he'll keep in some sort of laboratory or you know factory or something in which should be artificially inseminated to have children and sex will be abolished completely and anything you know when you're reading it you think man you've lost it now you've literally got insane this is like if somebody told you this story they they think you're a crazy person yeah and yet when you look at the story of the second world war it's it's hauntingly similar an entire nation well it was to go too far to say an entire nation but you know a large number of Germans started telling almost exactly that story about the Jews after the after the first world war and and you know and they did begin exterminating them as a race so so and that really when I realized that that sent a real chill down my spine because suddenly Eddie Rogers isn't this like crazy outlier I mean he is an outlier but but you think what his brain is just doing what brains do and that's telling that's when you know when we feel unfairly robbed of status we tell an unbelievably toxic and hateful story about the people that we blame yeah and that story can really really take us to incredibly dark places yeah so yeah so at the risk of being both cheesy and controversial here's a rant that I think that you'll understand because it's something I think about quite often so on one hand you have you have this kind of entitlement right like I deserve these types of people to you know women these types of women should desire me right but you know something I learned from David Buss's recent book is the worst thing you could do is be like on a scale of one to ten be like a five and go after eights right like just don't do that you got a day within your range so but there's this weird entitlement where people don't acknowledge that and they they lie to themselves and say I I should get better and that that's that's insane right um and Kate man that's the grandiosity that's the grandiosity yeah it's not everybody that's just some people yeah and uh you know uh Kate Mann in her book titled entitled actually she talked about Elliott Rogers right but then on the other hand here's my controversial slash cheesy side of it I I remember the Parkland shooting when it happened I looked at it and whenever stuff like this happens I'm like why why why I want to know a motive like by the way at the time of recording this there was a bomb threat like at the Capitol last week and I still don't know the full reason why nobody's talking about it but it's driving me nuts because I want to know why I want to know the story behind it but anyways uh the the kid from Parkland you find out that there was like uh you know all these kids who are bullying this guy for so long right and with uh you see this like temperature knob slowly being turned up and I guess like my view on it is just we got to be a little bit nicer right because because the bullying is a sign of status I used to be a dick when I was in school when I was in high school and stuff like that I was an angry person and I had an alcoholic mom and a crappy family so I bullied other people but that was status that was how I inflated myself you know but I was putting someone else down causing humiliation or whatever and the thing is once somebody does something so horrible like a mass shooting it feels like we can't even have that conversation anymore right because they crossed the line so far that we can't talk about what led to it does that make sense it feels like it's totally yeah no totally and I think that's the story you know we you know we tell a story about the world and it's a heroes and villains story and it's angels and demons and you know that's one of the things that I've always done in in my books which is he's tried to just put that to one side and not and try as far as possible to not morally judge people because I'm in no position to morally judge people and you know and you know and I think you could probably you know pick up in that chapter about Elliot Rogers you know I have him in sympathy for him in a in a way because Jesus the things he went through were horrific you know he was he he was he was probably an autistic kid so he had problems making social connections he was bullied just remorselessly and yeah and and you see you know status is a fundamental human human need we need it and and and if you and if you take anybody and put them through what Elliot Rogers went through yeah they're not going to to do what Elliot Rogers did you know he was a very rare combination of events and as I said the grandiosity is definitely a part of that the narcissistic yeah that's really dangerous you know male narcissistic humiliated is a bad combination but but but but you you're going to end up not with a you know a poor you know sad sorry victim that you're going to find in a Disney movie you're gonna go with an asshole yeah you know you're going to end up with an angry probably extremely aggressive anti-social prick that no one likes because that's what happens and and you know and it's big and it's it's because of what happens to these people I mean in the same way you know in the chapter about the Nazis I you know decided that I you can't I couldn't not write about all the things that Hitler did yeah that that actually genuinely make people love him and that wasn't to do with you know this again the story that we told about the Nazis because when people cross a certain line as you say we go into this we're going to this kind of cartoon framework of oh they're a monster yeah um but you know and of course you know Hitler was an unbeliever did unbelievably evil things um but but but he there was a reason that the the the germany's worshipped him like a god and it wasn't because he was like a monster with you know amazing or powers of speech making or whatever you're told at school yeah it's because germany was you know humiliated after the first world war lots of people believed a story that the jews were responsible for that is you know completely made up full story but but and not only did but he you know he yes he you know he told that story though although not as much as you'd think during the 1930s yeah but what he actually did was promise to restore the the status of germany and he did it you know he did it you know in in in less than 10 years he did you know he took this this country that was humiliated and fallen to pieces and achieved full employment and and you know and uh the the Treaty of Versailles which was the source of you know you know so much of that humiliation he just he just um row rough shot on it with no apparent consequences so that's the real reason that um that people loved Hitler but it's because he he he gave the nation the status they felt you know and I think it was quite a grandiose narcissistic nation at the time they were the leading they were by far the most successful country in continental Europe and probably all of Europe including the UK at you know before the First World War so so so you know you you have to if you really want to find out what's going on you've got to god to have the courage I think to push aside this urge to go well they're a monster I don't want to understand them yeah because it doesn't get us anywhere you're not going to prevent the next Elliott Rogers or the next Hitler by by by doing that you're going to prevent it by understanding what was the appeal of Hitler genuinely it was that he promised anti-delivered status I mean unlike Trump who promised status but didn't deliver it yeah you know um and you know what caused Elliott Rogers was was this unbelievably dangerous combination of narcissism and humiliation yeah yeah it's it's yeah it's just like one of those things where you're like you accidentally make a bomb right you take the wrong combination of genetics and how they were raised and you know like you you put that all together and a certain experience and boom right but you know the the thing is it feels like it feels like we have this human tendency to just want to simplify it as much as possible and forget the nuance and just we want to say you know these people are evil they were born different they were this is how they were because we want to believe that this couldn't happen regularly this couldn't happen or there's nothing I could do to cause somebody to you know or or play a small role you know what I mean and it feels like a oversimplification but but humiliation you know it's that final ingredient and let me ask you something let me ask you something will because it's very rare that I have somebody else who used to be an alcoholic on here do you think because I I bet you could relate to this like humiliation I already did all that shit you know I've done so many things that I can't remember and people tell me about so like I'm not telling people to be an addict or an alcoholic but do you think that prepared us a little bit better for dealing with humiliation I don't know I mean I can only speak for myself and yeah I mean humiliation is the big part of why I get quit or you know it's that awful moment of waking up and just not knowing what you did and then looking at your phone and shit looking at the text messages oh my god yeah and so yeah yeah but I don't know if that prepares me any better for yeah I just think humiliation is such a fundamentally dreadful experience it's you know it's like suffering from starvation you know it's the opposite of what the the mind craves yeah so I don't know I can only speak for myself but I don't think it's given me any kind of inoculation yeah that's a good point like when I think about it it's just kind of like shifted right like there's certain aspects where like you know somebody might look at me and be like aren't you embarrassed and I'm like no like I've done way worse but there's yeah what it does do is it makes me much more empathetic towards other people you know and I think that reflects in in in the writing I don't often you know you know judge other people in those ways like I'll look at an earlier Roger and not think there's a monster but I'll think oh yeah you know I'll be much more I have a high tolerance for bad people because I'm that person myself and I'm not going to like cast them into the fire because I get I get I get why people at like pricks yeah yeah I did I I've been reading books on like the justice system and everything like that and just to get you know just about like just because of my personal experience I used to be a completely different person just angry terrible bad father bad son bad friend all those things and I've changed I'm a pretty decent guy now right so I see that in other people and I'm like okay well maybe these people can change if given the opportunity and that's kind of why I'm interested in the justice system and the talks around it and stuff because like I'm like hey if a guy like me because here's the thing like especially just me personally like I should have had so many DUIs like driving under the influence here in Las Vegas like I just got lucky right so there's not there's not much aside from luck that separated me from a lot of other people who be considered bad on a lower level so that's why you know I try not to morally judge people but but yeah I want I want to ask you about a few just like situations now we talked about evolution and we're in 2021 and I want to hear your thoughts on how status plays into certain things that we're all dealing with right now and I want to start with like QAnon and anti-vaxxers and conspiracy movements right because you touch on it a little bit in the book but how does status play and do people like try to outdo each other within those groups for status because there's a weird thing going on where it's like are people trying to be like hey I have the craziest conspiracy theory and is that a status thing do you think? Yeah I think one where it gets really interesting this stuff is when you start looking about people's beliefs about the world and you know what the brain wants is connection and status it's not particularly bothered about it's not motivated to find out what's true it's motivated to find out who do I have to be in order to connect and earn status so we're very vulnerable to believing any crazy shit if our status is dependent on it and so in the book I tell the story I spoke to a young man in Pennsylvania called Miranda Dinda who was 18 years old and she was pregnant all her friends were at college she had been brought up in a family of women and was and you know really was one of these people that loved the idea of powerful strong independent you know women she had the misfortune to find a midwife who was an anti-vaxxer and this is before you know COVID so this midwife said if you consider not vaccinating your kid and Miranda was like what are we talking about? And this woman said oh you should just google it you should just google it so she googled why not vaccinate and of course the whole fucking internet blew up in the face of all these reasons why not vaccinate she's like oh my god this is horrific you know I never knew all this stuff and she joined a Facebook group and the Facebook group was um I think it was called great mothers questioning vaccines great moms great mothers questioning vaccines and she said you know the experience is like I'm suddenly surrounded by all these really amazing strong powerful women who you know who were just like a model for me and and you know she said she announced herself as vaccine hesitant and kind of just smogged her on this group really telling encouraging her and she basically said you know you know she described the situation in which of course she wanted to be connected to these people she said it was like imagine if you wanted to be a firefighter in Europe and your parents took you to the fire station you saw these amazing firefighters you're like oh my god I want to be just like these people that's how it felt you know so so so she did and that's what we do and that's backed up by huge amounts of research in you know in psychology and topology you know we humans copy people we don't just copy we don't just copy anyone we copy people that we look up to that you know we're playing a state in a status game with these people and we're like I want to be like that person so we start mimicking them we start you know even the way they dress their tastes in art the way they talk you know I remember when I was a kid I used to was obsessed with this popster called Nick Kershaw and I saw it Nick Kershaw on breakfast TV and he crossed his leg in this funny way with his ankle on his knee and I started doing that but it you know I was like eight years old it's just it's just a natural thing that you do and one of the things you do is you copy the beliefs and so she started believing this thing and then she said you know the way that you actually earned status and rank in this group was that you went out and evangelized the belief so yeah you'd go out into the world you'd lecture your cousins you'd lecture your doctor you know have arguments then you'd come back to the group you'd type it all in and everybody would go oh yeah wait I go mom and you know so it was it was a classic status game and the way that you earned status and you know secured your connection was by being useful to the group was by going out there and I think that becomes really dangerous for people who because you can imagine something like Miranda you know she's isolated she's in Pennsylvania all her friends are at college this this could easily become your main source of status so you know you have all these different sources of status and you know we designed to get status for people we actually spend our lives with but now we've got the internet and actually you can become somebody really important on the internet um for acting in a certain way and if all your and if and if your your major source of status is this internet persona you've got you're in a very dangerous place if if that persona depends on adherence to a belief because you ain't going to give that belief up not very easily yeah and and just you know even thinking about that and you're like you know that that facebook group of anti-vacces but we saw this rise of QAnon during the pandemic but like when you know I've watched several documentaries and read some books on QAnon and you often find that a lot of these people were isolated alone not really someone huge you know in their community or whatever but like you said online you can be you can be someone totally and and you can imagine during the when they when they kind of storm the White House these people just from you know had from ordinary lives in ordinary places all over America in that on that day when they stormed the White House they were Tom Cruise that they were literally saving America and saving the free world and you know like that is status you know that they really thought they were superheroes that day yeah and so so yeah you know it's very when she's when she sort of see the status dynamics in in all this stuff it's very hard to unsee it yeah you know so I I have a dumb question for you but I want to make a point for everybody listening to this this episode so with everything we're talking about like anti-vaxxers you know QAnon and stuff like that do you see similar causes with outrage culture right like who can get the most mad about something so morally stupid and insignificant right like oh I can't believe this person said this like do you see that same thing so they can go back and say oh I freaked out on this person more than anything right do you think that's happening as well with outrage yeah I mean totally I mean I mean that that's what outrage comes all about it's a status game and it's it's it's you know it's it's um it's about you know people kind of perform groups around uh you know political ideas on the internet and um you know within these groups there are high status kind of warriors who you know they can be journalists or columnists or politicians or you know celebrities often as well and and yeah and you know sometimes you know it's in the book and there's two British actors you know there's Jamila Jamil um it was a good place yeah and and Lawrence Fox um you know she's on the left he's on the right and and they're both I mean in the UK it's no I don't think it's an exaggeration to say they're now more famous for their internet warrior kind of behavior than they are for actual acting you know their main source of status is for Jamila Jamil it's for being this body positivity kind of activist you know yeah she's very interested in um in in in appearance and you know she's attacked numerous women um online and you know Lawrence Fox is this kind of anti-woke kind of warrior that that kind of that kind of attacks people that he perceives as being um you know two two two left wing in their thinking yeah and and you can see that they you know yeah it's it's so and you know and you know they've all got these sort of groups of people that follow the one on Twitter and and if they say something then they all mob against the the person they're complaining about and yeah I mean it's just classic status game behavior you know and and and it's interesting when you see in the book I kind of just you know went on the way about machine and I was interested and you see that from the moment they started doing this online Twitter you know warring their social media followers just counts just rocket upwards you know so they're running huge amounts of status um doing this yeah so I I have a few more questions for you but I got I have another quick rant to go on right so like earlier we were talking about how you know people are profiting off of this and you know corporations and companies and you know status and you know we want to move up the corporate ladder but on this like social status level like what you're talking about like like yeah I do that too like I look back and and humans we our actions are largely based on incentives right and we do what gives us rewards so if you say something right like you could you could start out with something soft and just be like hey body positivity and people like yeah but you're like oh wait well what if I turn that heat up a little and then people like yeah so then it gets to a point where I'm looking at these people and I feel again like it's this sleight of hand I'm like do these people even believe it anymore someone like a Jamila or you know other yeah there's endless I'm like do they even believe it anymore or is it do they keep that going just to keep their status and do all of their followers not see that because now they're motivated not only for the status but sometimes there's you know even profit incentives a profit mode it's like there's there's people on TV or you know whoever where because of their personality because they do that they're like the leader of this tribe that gets angry about stuff yeah I I'm inclined to tend to look towards the less cynical view I think they do you know I really do I think I think that when when you're looking from a distance and seeing them it's very easy to believe you can't possibly believe that you know but most of the time I'm sure there are cynical people out there but I think if you were really cynical you would lose energy and momentum in it you know I think it's very I don't underestimate the power of human irrationality when you know when status is in play I mean you know there are billions of people around the world who have religious beliefs literally billions of people who have religious beliefs religious is a status game and you know and you know so it is the norm to believe magic supernatural irrational things if your connection into a group and your status depends on it that's the norm it's not a rare thing if you look at the religious belief it's the norm so so yeah you know I really I really think they do believe it and there's not to say that it doesn't all fall to pieces around their heads at some point which which it may well do yeah but you know it like um I don't I don't rise about it in the book but it's always fascinated me from the European perspective to look at the experience of Germany East Germany you know East Germany in the 20th century went from being Nazis to communists you know these are the same people having the same life and some of the people that were in the Gestapo ended up being in the Stasi and but you know so so so that you know and it's obviously not as simple as they were all nice and all communists it's not everybody um but but you know a sizable number of East Germans you know who embraced Nazis and then went on to embrace communism like the opposite yeah point of view because that was the status game then and so so that shows you you know that that's a really that shows you kind of how malleable kind of people can be and how how vulnerable people can be to these um kind of these kind of um stories that you adopt you know what it's gonna feel good about yourself yeah yeah and and you know what will I'm glad I'm glad you're here to balance me out because I like your your view better because yeah but I'm looking at I'm like I'm like you don't really believe that because this is happening like the world's gonna end right like there's no way you can actually believe but but yeah like uh you know our our brain's like self deception is very real yeah look at the COVID pandemic I mean Jesus Christ I mean you know I've been writing about a rationality for for years now and even I was thinking well once once it'd be interesting with COVID because it will get rid of anti-vax but it hasn't got rid of anti-vax oh no just today um a bunch of protesters are storming um you know a TV channel a national TV channel in London you know so then these people are literally surrounded by suffering and death on a mass scale and they they are not only believing the anti-vax conspiracy theories they're believing it to such an extent they're storming TV stations yeah and attacking people so you know that that is the power of it and you know it's not most people but but it's a lot it's it's more people than it should be yo yeah no absolutely and I think that's I think that's why I enjoy your work because I'm fascinated by irrationality like like we were talking about the January 6th uh storming of the capital that was all based on something that had zero evidence of voter fraud and it's like you guys believe this so much that you like people got in cars and drove across country people got in planes they bought plane tickets got a hotel room and then they stormed like all the steps they took for believing something without evidence and I'm just constantly really fascinated by that whole thing but but yeah so I want to I want to end with a couple positive questions for you well so I'm hoping to learn from you since you just wrote an entire book on status and stuff like I'm curious like how how is this experience writing this book how has it changed how you view status and like does it help you like I don't know navigate a little bit more and yeah so it helps the one thing it does is it helps kind of grounds you because all of us and I'm definitely obviously no exception are vulnerable to when we feel that our status has been attacked unfairly you aspire into these kind of weird stories oh it's all a plot against me you know it's not fair and and I catch myself doing that much more now so so hopefully I'm less you know and but the process is so hard you can catch yourself at it but it still feels like it's true yeah you still think it must be true um but but it isn't so there is that but but also I think you know it does make me more kind of empathetic to other people because you know he's understanding that I think before we're into this project the way you see status is it's this kind of slightly dirty grubby thing that kind of loses and egotists are interested in and actually you know good people are worried about that kind of thing yeah it's absolute nonsense it's rubbish you know it's it's just it's just not true and so and so that does that does give you a lot of empathy for the other side for their irrationality for their anger um you know it's just saying you know for people like Elliot Rogers or you know you know these these people who do terrible things I think anything that gives you a kind of a deeper understanding into why people end up doing terrible things and that's got to be a good thing I think yeah yeah it's it's it's crazy because uh you know just I I remember just for a long time I was this huge advocate of like hey just quit caring what other people think right and then like when I had the internet coming after me and I was spiraling out of control I wanted to like relapse right and I'm just like what's going on and and now I cut myself some slack because I'm like this is like wired inside of me you know like you're talking like yeah so so we could acknowledge it and try to fight it but it is it's like trying to fight against like a wave that's coming at you well you can't do it because it's the way you're experiencing the world I mean you know like there was this funny study that I wrote about in the book where you know because some people meditate because they they want to destroy the ego you know yeah and so they did a study of 3,700 people who who who meditated specifically to get rid of their desire for status and they found that they measured really high in what was called spiritual superiority so they were all walking around going if only the rest of the world was like me the world would be a better place it's like you know the fact is that you don't really you know people who meditate on feel they think they feel really good about themselves they think they're better than you because they know because they do it so you can't you can't get rid of it because it's it's how we experience the world and any people that really try yeah the Hikikomori in Japan and they ain't happy yeah no I uh you know just even something similar that comes to mind is when I got sober and I was introduced to you know 12 step rooms and like you know they they they try to uh uh not have the status too right but but it's it's part of me like when I walked in there I'm like oh this guy's been sober longer right oh that person's not been sober as long and we're just constantly sizing up but and they're competing over who did the worst thing oh yeah yeah the three people I killed seven people yeah oh yeah I got sober in a sober living house so just all the newly sober people just talking about oh I sniffed this off of that and you know stuff like that so it's yeah it's crazy because we'll even fight for status of who did the worst thing which is which is also nuts but um so so this this I I hope we can simplify this because I can see this being like a whole another episode but so that on an individual level you know how this has kind of helped you but like how do you think like just society culture government can do better like for example for example when I think about all this the status game and you know jobs and everything like I I keep trying to find somebody who can argue who can make who can make me believe that capitalism is just the best system right but it seems like it it just amplifies the status game and one of the one of the common you know arguments is well if we get rid of money incentives people will no longer innovate and I'm like well that's bullshit because we're always seeking status so even if we were all on the level playing field we'd still want to do better than other people you know so I'm curious I'm sure this is cross your mind like do you have any thoughts on like a starting place for just how if you you start a country tomorrow you start will store yeah country right what's the system to set up to kind of avoid these status conflicts well you're not going to avoid the status the trick is to the trick is to is to arrange the the status games in such a way that it benefits everybody so so you know in the book I write about the virtue game and the success game and what kind of defines modernity is that is that we is that since the industrial revolution you know we play success games much more now so we award status on the basis of competence you know much more than we used to for thousands of years so you know and that you know it's like anything it's not all good or all bad it's a trade-off but but it's really good when you award status for competence in terms of fighting diseases you know in creating technology it makes you know it makes the world a kind of vastly better place yeah I think you know I think you know there is no perfect system but I think the best system that we've had that we that we've come upon so far is is what you might call neoliberalism with cushions I think neoliberalism is this heightened very very competitive form of capitalism that we've been living in the midst of since the 1980s you know we've seen wealth grow through the 1980s but but but it needs more cushions you know those white working class people who have suffered through neoliberalism they need help you know people are born with low IQs with with with social personalities they need help because they fail for reasons that are not their own but not their fault so you know I you know I tend towards a Scandinavian model because they have capitalism me too yeah with cushions yeah you know just today on twitter a kind of Atlas of Happiness was published and which I retweeted because I thought it was very interesting that the happiest places were the western places with capitalism but the happiest places with the Scandinavian places where they seem to have the best of all worlds over there yeah so you know like you know there is no perfect system but but I think the Scandinavians have got it best you know they've got that they've got competition but but they use a lot of its rewards to sort of take care of the people who are less able to compete yeah yeah absolutely no I love that yeah when I look because it's not about like where you know perfection is this thing we're never going to achieve but it's like I think we can nudge a little bit closer you know we can get a little bit closer but yeah well thank you so much for your time and well honestly the book was so amazing I have like two more pages of notes for topics we didn't even get to talk on so so I hope everybody goes out gets the book at the time of releasing this the books out but can you let everybody know where they can find the book and where they can find you because you're you you are a writing machine so where can people keep up to date best thing is Twitter which is just at W store st o double r and yeah the book is the book is out september 2nd it's available on amazon and everywhere else where you usually find books yeah beautiful awesome well thank you so much will and we'll we'll do this again sometime because i'm sure you'll find it out more boys