Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?
the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day
CNN at one point in time, when Bourdain had his show on, they were doing some very interesting things. They were trying to do shows, not just the news, right? So they had No Reservations was the best one of them, where they just told Anthony Bourdain, just be you and just do your best version of your show. And they really just got out of the way, and it was fucking amazing.
Yeah, so they got out of his way, they let him be the best of himself. They figured out how to do that. You know, Kamau Bell had a really good show, too. Is that show still on? I don't think so. What was that show called? I'm sorry, I forget the name of these shows. But W. Kamau Bell was really good at being calm. United Shades of America. United Shades of America.
Really good at being calm, like talking to KKK people. And he's black, and he's a comic. But he's just a very nice guy. He's a very nice guy, like a genuinely nice guy in real life. And so when he's doing a show, even when he's confronted by the most ignorant racists, And he can have conversations with them. And then, you know, they're like, well, you're not like the others.
Well, that's the best kind of journalism. You know, you can properly immerse yourself in those worlds.
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Chapter 2: How did Anthony Bourdain's shows influence storytelling?
Yeah. And CNN did that for a while. You know, they had that other show. Was it Radical with that one gentleman who, Reza Aslan, is that his name? That was another good show. They did some interesting stuff. They did, like, quite a few interesting shows where they were just shows.
It wasn't what it is now, which is this, like, bizarre version of news TikTok just grabbing you with everything that's going to terrify you every day. And there's so much to terrify you about today. You know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They seem to have lost the art of storytelling.
Yeah, it's very unfortunate. So, ladies and gentlemen, we started this podcast after a long conversation about Anthony Bourdain, but I felt like we were already rolling, so let's just roll into it. I really enjoyed you on trigonometry, and that's why I wanted to talk to you here, because it's just, I think your book is The Status Game. That's right, yeah.
And I think what's really interesting about what you're talking about mechanisms that make people understand like behavior patterns in a way instead of just accepting them, you know, because I think a lot of people fall into accepting behavior patterns. But what you're what you're showing is like these status games that human beings play.
They're sort of wired into our being and we don't recognize them. They can get hijacked by far right movements or far left movements or a lot of different things can happen that can really screw your life up if you get hijacked by these just normal mechanisms of human thinking.
That's right, that's right. So I think the general thesis is that humans want two things. They want connection into groups, and then once they're in the group, they want status. So it's not enough to feel like we're a Christian. We have to be a good Christian, and that means following certain rules. And that's what brains just want to do. Brains don't really care about what's true.
Brains are always asking this question, who do I have to be, and what do I have to believe, in order to earn connection and status. And we're all vulnerable to this stuff. And that's how people end up believing fucking crazy things because the brain's just believing what it has to believe.
I've seen it with people that get what you call audience capture.
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Chapter 3: What are the mechanisms behind human behavior patterns?
But at some point in time, they became leaders. I mean, they've been leaders for so long. When we settled down. When was that? Like agriculture days? Yeah, it was about 11,000 years ago.
Don't you think that's enough to bake it into our DNA?
I don't know. I think what is in our DNA is that idea of A, stories. So, you know, we're storytelling animals. We think in stories. Every tribe has its particular story about the world. And so we're very good at channeling those stories. And as I said, every story has its design of what is a hero. And we try and become that kind of hero. So that's that holdover from the tribal day.
But more fundamentally, again, it's that brain question of, Who do I have to be? What do I have to do? Tell me what I have to do in order to achieve connection and status. And that's what a cult does. And that's what a charismatic leader does. It tells you this is what you've got to do. These are the rules. This is who you have to become.
And that's really seductive to us subconsciously because those two things of connection and status are so incredibly important to us.
Yeah.
It's... Is it something you think should be taught very early on? It seems like this is information we should get to kids as young as we can so they can recognize these patterns that people fall into.
Absolutely. I've always thought that there should be a lesson in school about what is a human, what is the basic operating system manual for a human, and these are the mistakes that humans make. Because, as I said, one of the big ideas is that We're not particularly interested in the truth. The truth doesn't matter to human brains.
What matters is what do I have to believe in order for people to like me and respect me.
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Chapter 4: How does status impact human connection and identity?
So that just shows you how many, just how wired we are to believe basically any old shit we're told to believe as long as we feel like it's going to get a status and secure connection into a supportive group.
I remember during the suicide bomber days when that was something that was in the news all the time. They talked about 72 virgins. And that these gentlemen thought that they were going to get 72 virgins in heaven. Like, that is so cultural. Yeah. Like, if you offered 72 virgins to a Christian, they'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? I'm not fucking any virgins, you crazy psycho.
How old are they? What are you saying? I'm not a pedophile, dude. I just like women. Yeah. What the fuck are you talking about? You know what I'm saying?
It's like... Yeah, but I'm not sure how... I mean, I don't know if that 72 versions thing is true.
It could be like 21-year-old versions that have been saved for this moment by the great one. But I think that term is not real. I think the term 72 versions is like saying, how many times have you lost your phone? A fucking million? It's like that kind of a... It's an exaggeration.
But I think the real promise there, though, I mean, the 72 virgins is, yeah, but I think the real promise for Suicide Bombers is, again, its status. It's like, if you sacrifice your life on behalf of the group's mission, you're a hero. You're like a god. And so that's the promise. And again, I think it's a really good example of how... human beings value status over their lives.
I mean, that's how much we value status. We're the only animal that kills ourself, which is just a weird thing in itself. An animal would voluntarily end its own life. And very often the reason that people will kill themselves is because it's a sudden drop in status or they feel completely isolated and alone.
So it says they're lacking in those essential kind of psychological resources to such an extent that they, you know, in their own lives. And that's how much we value these things. And,
Suicide bombers are another manifestation of that like yeah, like if you're gonna consider me a hero And if Mohammed is gonna consider me a hero strap me out brother You know that that's how much that that's how crazy we become about these these social rewards God that is such an insane belief It's so insane and when the the most evil thing is when you hear about them talking kids into doing it Yeah
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Chapter 5: How does AI impact language translation in podcasts?
I haven't seen that. I saw that going on Twitter. Yeah.
It's fascinating because of AI. One of the things that they can do now, like that they can do even with podcasts. So this podcast was When Spotify runs its AI through it, they'll be able to translate you into perfect Spanish in your voice. Wow. And they have this technology now. I know they could do it in German, Spanish, and I think French, and of course English, and back and forth.
So they could do that with Hitler.
That's amazing.
Wow.
See, he's talking about... That sounds so much scarier.
Yeah, it does.
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Chapter 6: What role does status play in the rise of extremist beliefs?
Let me hear that. The IA voice hasn't really got the attitude.
Wow.
The fucking accent, boy.
There's something about German. When you hear him yelling, you're like instinctively. I think it's burned into us.
But he's not. During the 30s, he wasn't ranting about the Jews because everybody was anti-Semitic in that period in history. But the middle classes, they didn't want to see the Jews being attacked and killed. It didn't play well. So he suppressed all of that stuff and all that ranting. Most of it he's talking about. I'm going to restore Germany's status.
I'm going to I'm going to create this third right, this thousand year kingdom.
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Chapter 7: How do societal pressures influence personal identity and mental health?
And that's what convinced people to support him. And he he did. He did like that.
some of the statistics are quite extraordinary when the Nazi party came in a third of the population were unemployed and by 1939 they had full employment between 1932 and 1939 GDP went up 81% so he was doing the thing of restoring Germanist status and when you see that footage of people going completely mad that's when he's reversing the humiliations of Versailles so he took back the industrial heartland by force
And nobody stood in his way. They went mad. He took Austria. Nobody stood in his way. So it was all about the restoration of status. That explains the rise of Hitler. And there was some mad stuff in the research, like women would get swastika tattoos. They would do the Hitler salute at point of orgasm. Whoa. Yeah, yeah. Whoa, that's kind of hot.
Chapter 8: What lessons can we learn from historical patterns of status and power?
Yeah. There was a butcher that was making swastika sausages. People would even name their female children after Hitler. People with tuberculosis would stare for hours at pictures of Hitler because they thought they would make them better. So again, that's another example of that status. That's how mad people go for status. It was taken away from them. And he didn't just promise to restore it.
For a while, he did restore it. So that's why they loved him. It wasn't to do with the, you know, with... with really anything else. When do you think meth came into the picture?
Because somewhere along the line, the Hitler story is not complete unless you realize Hitler was a meth head. Yeah, and wasn't his army on amphetamines? Everybody was on amphetamines. That's how they talked the kamikazes into doing that. Yeah. Yeah, that's not a natural pattern of behavior for grown men. No, no. Flying planes and boats. You got to be fucking jacked. Let's go, bitch.
You just want to take everybody out. But Hitler was a full-on meth head. Yeah. And there's video of him at the Olympics in 1936 just straight up tweaking. Have you ever seen that video? Yeah, I have, yeah. It's nuts. Yeah, it's insane. And if you see that video, that's a guy, like, he's not just doing that once. Yeah. I'm going to go to the Olympics. My first time trying meth.
That was a meth head. That's it. Blitz. While other drugs are banned or discouraged, methamphetamine was touted as a miracle product when it first appeared on the market in the late 1930s. I bet it was a miracle. Indeed, the little pill was the perfect Nazi drug. Germany awake, the Nazis had commanded.
Energizing and confidence-boosting, methamphetamine played into the Third Reich's obsession with physical and mental superiority. See? Superiority. There you go. In sharp contrast to drugs such as heroin or alcohol, methamphetamines were not about escapist pleasure. Rather, they were taken for hyper alertness and vigilance.
Aryans were the embodiment of human perfection and Nazi ideology could now even aspire to be superhuman. And such superhumans can be turned into super soldiers.
That's it, superhuman. So it's the same as the cult that was promising, we're going to take you to a level above human. It's always the promise of these mad people that we're going to give you so much status that we're going to essentially become superhuman. It's what the communists thought as well, that the average human, their intelligence would become so much that everybody would be a genius.
That's what they really believed. That communism would lead to. Like the promise of these lunatics is always insane amounts of status. And religions too. That's what heaven is, isn't it? And it's also hope to people who have none.
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