Shankar Vedantam
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Appearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
It started when his wife noticed something about his complexion.
At York University in Canada, Gordon, who goes by Gord, studies the physical and psychological conditions that can help people flourish.
He says interactions like the one he had with his nurse remind us that we matter, and mattering is a feeling that is vital to our well-being.
Gord also researches what happens when we feel we don't matter.
He remembers a time more than two decades ago when two students at a high school in Colorado felt like they were invisible.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had families and a few friends, but they were obsessed with the notion that they didn't matter to the people who held the most power in their social world, the popular kids at school.
Dylan's journals show a kid who felt like a ghost, wandering through the halls and feeling completely overlooked and ignored.
On the other hand, Eric felt he was actually better than everyone else, and it made him furious that no one recognized his greatness.
They fed off each other's bitterness, eventually deciding that since they couldn't get the respect or attention they wanted through normal means, they would take it by force.
To fix their feeling of being nobodies, they planned a tragedy that they hoped would make them the most famous names in the country.
They didn't just want to commit a crime.
They wanted to stage a massive cinematic event that would be studied for decades.
We now know that event as the 1999 Columbine High School shootings in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and injured more than 20 others.
More than a quarter century later, in 2025, the death toll was raised to 14 after a woman who was paralyzed in the shootings died of complications related to her injuries.
Gordon Flett says the two killers at Columbine High School are an extreme example of a theory propounded by the social psychologist Ari Kruglansky.
People will go to extraordinary lengths to feel noticed, to feel significant.
Gordon has spent time reading the journals of the killers.
He says they paint a chilling picture of social isolation and alienation.
Typically, Gorton says, most of us seek to make our mark on the world by achieving something of value, by doing good deeds.
Influencers might try to create a video that goes viral.