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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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It's clear that our society, for all of its wonderful benefit, it's clear that our society is not providing enough human connection to keep people happy. We're way out on a limb here with this individuality. I mean, humans have never survived as individuals. It's not possible. You take someone, you put them down in the wilderness by themselves, they die almost immediately.
As a species, we are social primates, and we owe our lives to the group, and we have to participate. We have a duty to the group in order to stay alive. That's what being human means. 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? Because the more you give them, the happier you will be.
The more affluent a society, the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction,
Sebastian, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much. It's great to have you here. We wanna talk about your book and the broader questions that come out of it. But before we do, tell us a little bit about who you are. How are you sitting here? What's been your journey through life?
I grew up in Boston. I moved to New York in my 30s. I was a freelance war reporter for many years. I also wrote a number of books. My first one was a bestseller, The Perfect Storm. But as soon as that came out, I went back overseas and I covered the civil wars in West Africa.
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Chapter 2: What societal factors contribute to modern depression?
I was in Afghanistan in 1996, and then again in 2000 with Massoud, and then later with American forces. Eventually I had the great good fortune to work with a British photographer named Tim Hetherington. And he and I shot and directed and produced a documentary together called Restrepo about an outpost in Afghanistan that we were at off and on for a year. And then we were nominated for an Oscar.
And a few weeks later, Tim, we were going to go on assignment to Libya to cover the Civil War. Tim went on his own because I had to delay the trip. And he was killed outside of the city of Masrata. And after, he was hit by shrapnel from a mortar fired by Qaddafi's forces. So after that, I sort of had, I got out. I sort of had my fill. Like, I couldn't imagine going back to war.
Not because I was... worry about my being killed. I was worried about others. I mean, I was sort of worried about how it would affect my family, my friends, right? I suddenly realized watching Tim's family, like, what I was actually gambling with their lives in some way, their happiness. So I stopped and I got married. I had... two children, two little girls who are now nine and six.
And now I make my living in quieter ways, so is a writer. And the last book that came out was called In My Time of Dying. After all that war reporting, I'm healthy. I'm an athlete. 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. I had an aneurysm in my abdomen that I didn't know about, an eruption. Wow.
And I lost half my blood, and I came extremely close to dying. And I didn't know I was dying, but I got to the hospital in the last phases of hemorrhagic shock, convulsing on the table and stuff like that. And it barely saved me. 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.
And as they were doing that, I'm an atheist, right? My dad was a physicist and an atheist, like atheist squared, basically. And the universe kind of cracked open underneath me, and I started to get pulled into it. And I was terrified. I didn't know I was dying. I was terrified of the darkness. And then my dead father appeared above me to comfort me.
and said it's okay you don't have to fight it you can come with me i'll take care of you i said to the doctor you got to hurry because i'm going i didn't know where i was going but i knew i was i was leaving and uh so that you know i'm still an atheist and i'm happy to talk about that but but that really rearranged some of my assumptions about the nature of uh of life and consciousness and time and life and death and all those all those big things and now here i am
Well, it's really fascinating, but coming back to the war correspondent years and that side of things, what did you learn from doing that for a very long time? I imagine it's a very unusual experience that most people don't have, and I imagine it draws quite unusual people too.
Yeah, I mean, I don't know in other countries. In the United States, the military is filled. I mean, in some ways, it's our most democratic and diverse organization, right? I mean, it's kind of extraordinary that way. Combat itself is a very select group. It's all male. I mean, the combat infantry is all male, probably 70% or 80% white, sort of working class, middle class people. kids, right?
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Chapter 3: How does individuality impact human connection?
Like they really wanted to be soldiers and to be in combat. And, you know, of course they traumatized them and all kinds of other things, but it was really interesting. So we were out at Restrepo, which was an outpost the size of this room practically, a little bit bigger, but it was very small. 40 men behind sandbags. For the first few months, there was no generators, no electricity.
There was no cooked food. There was no running water. There was like nothing. We were in combat almost every single day and high casualty rates, absolutely brutal existence. And the boys were out there. Tim and I came and went every month or so. But the boys were out there for 15 months straight and no contact with the outside world, nothing, right? And when they got back,
They got back to Vicenza, Italy. This is what I learned about war. When they got back to Vicenza, Italy, after the partying that you can imagine happened after that phase, most of them wanted to go back to Restoppo, to the outpost. They missed it. They didn't fit in anymore. And what they missed was each other.
They missed being in a close circumstance where they were dependent on each other for their lives. And that is, you know, as an anthropologist, former anthropologist, that's basically our evolutionary past. And it resonated very deeply with them. And they were very confused. Like, what's wrong with me? Why would I want to go back to that place? But I do.
And my book, Tribe, is about the sort of anthropological reality that produces that kind of reaction.
Is it partly an addictive existence whereby you're experiencing huge highs, huge lows in the way and a sense of camaraderie that you simply don't get in real life? Yeah, it is.
But you know what I would say is the adrenaline junkie thing is a little overstated. I mean, you can skydive. You can rock climb. There's lots of ways of getting adrenaline in this.
um but those are all quite uh sort of self-serving or enterprises right there for you right i'm going to skydive but the thing about the military the thing about being in combat is when you're in combat you don't feel like you're there for yourself you feel like you're there for everybody else right and that's sort of that brotherhood uh
is that actually the end of the day, I think that is what's intoxicating. I think that's what pulls up our sort of evolutionary past. And I think you could, maybe you could say it's addictive, but it's certainly something that once you acquire it, it's hard to let go of. It feels like, oh, this is meaningful. Back home, it's not meaningful. There's nothing at stake.
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Chapter 4: What lessons can be learned from war correspondents?
It hit that area, Avizzano, Italy. And the people that survived it had to make it another four or five days until help could get there. And this guy wrote, he said, I mean, one of the amazing things about crises like this is everyone's the same. So all these awful social strata, sort of like rich, poor, white, black, whatever, every conceivable category just goes away, right?
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.
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, In civilian life, it's very difficult to become a hero for the average person. The average person doesn't get the chance to be heroic, particularly the male, which is important to us, to be the hero.
But war, particularly something like the Blitz, provides the ordinary, regular, everyday person with a chance to be a hero. And that's very important for us, isn't it?
And what I would say, in those circumstances, you're absolutely right, but I would say the word hero is like a civilian concept, right? In combat itself, no one thinks of being a hero. I mean, the people that have received, and I know some of them that have received the Medal of Honor, our highest medal in this country,
They're like, universally, like without exception, they're like, I didn't do, I just did, I did the minimum that I was supposed to do for a brother who was in distress, in danger, right? I'm not a hero. I did the minimum, right? And it brings me to this idea that I've been thinking about, about duty. The duty is sort of this grim, onerous term, like,
Actually, I think it's a kind of secret to something good. And duty is not purpose. It's not a mission. It's not a passion. It's not a calling. It's actually what you owe your community, whatever that may be. And so Bronze Age England, your community would have been some 100 or 200 people. In modern America, it's 340 million, right? But what do you owe? And I think we're the first,
And what's their duty to you? And that reciprocal arrangement of duty is core to making people feel safe. I mean, humans have three main questions. Every other question is sort of like unimportant compared to these. Is my group safe in the world? Am I safe? Am I accepted within the group? Because if I'm not, I'm screwed, right? So is my group safe in the world? Am I safe in the group?
And are my children safe with me? And duty, this discharging of duty to the individual and from the society and to the society is at the core of answering those three questions in the affirmative. And so when I say to people in this country, what's your duty to the country? Like, no one has an answer, right?
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Chapter 5: How does community involvement affect mental health?
in humans, 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. But really, with the advent of language, people could really talk about what is right and what is wrong. And there were two main There's a wonderful anthropologist called Melvin, I think his first name, Connor. And he wrote a book called Moral Origins.
And he said there's two main crimes that survival groups are on the lookout for. One is abusive leadership, like leaders that abuse their position and enrich themselves, advantage themselves. hurt other people that are lower than them. And those people, that was one of the things that would elicit capital punishment.
So there are rock drawings of one guy bristling with arrows and 10 men standing around him with their bows. Right, clearly an execution by the men of a group of the theory as an abusive leader. The other sort of crime that survival communities are constantly on the lookout for is free riders, people that really aren't contributing to the...
to the pot, to survival, and they're taking more than their share of the chestnuts or the meat or whatever. But we live in societies where leaders can be very abusive, can think they're above the law, that they're beyond the reach of ordinary justice, and enrich themselves. So I sort of understand the mentality. I mean, it's destructive at both sides.
I can understand people saying, you know what? Look what he's doing, right? I'm going to jail because I stole $100 sneakers. He ripped off the government for 500 million, and he's fine. So I think part of the problems of freeloading, which is real in our society, and it's very damaging to the freeloaders psychologically, emotionally, super destructive to them, right?
Terrible for their self-esteem. But part of the problem is that we have sometimes leaders in our governments that are clearly corrupt and unethical and self-serving.
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Chapter 6: What role does duty play in human relationships?
Don't commit a crime. Be a good citizen. And you're good. Whether you're an Irish immigrant or Somali or your family's been here since the Mayflower, it doesn't matter. It's how you act right now that matters. And that's true in a platoon in combat, by the way. Oh, your dad's in prison, but you're a really good fighter? You're good with us. You're brave and courageous.
You're like good-looking and rich, and you suck in a firefight. I don't have anything to do with you, right? So there is a little bit of that deal offered in this country, which I think is extraordinary. My father was an immigrant. He came here during World War II, right?
So, and I think one of the challenges is in this country now, and in our country, and right the way through the Western civilization as a whole, is we talk about tribes, but we don't really acknowledge that there's now digital tribes. And that's the real danger, isn't it?
I think, yeah. I mean, I think the ability of social media and the algorithms that drive people's opinion towards greater and greater extremes is tremendously dangerous. And we were talking before, you saw my flip phone. I have a flip phone because, frankly, I think smartphones are dangerous. They're dangerous like handguns are dangerous, right? Just like they're easy to misuse. They're miracles.
They're important in some moments like handguns, but they're also very, very dangerous. And so I just want nothing to do with them. But I... So I think that's part of what's been happening in Western society and in the United States recently. 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.
You could say, I'm a Democrat. But after 9-11, we were attacked and we had to band together and those differences stopped mattering for a while. And there is a way to do it. And I'll just, if I could, give you a quick anecdote about someone that did that 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. And it doesn't mean you're without criticism of your country at all, but... is do you have a duty to it? What do you have a duty to, right? You have to articulate what your duty to your country is, or you will die an unhappy person, right, in my opinion.
So what this guy, I was outside of a hotel in Norfolk, Virginia, and this guy came out and 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 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? And he was like, no, I just have to wait till my wife gets here. And I said, it seems pretty complicated what you're dealing with. He was like, well, it takes some getting used to. It'll be all right.
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Chapter 7: How does modern society influence our sense of purpose?
And if you're accused of a crime and you don't serve on jury duties, you'll still get a jury. but you won't deserve one, but you still get one. So serve on jury duty. And finally, give blood. We cannot manufacture blood. We all need it to live.
There are fathers, there are daughters, wives, grandparents, like who are dying, who will die if there isn't blood to put into their veins at a crucial moment. I needed 10 units to stay alive. We cannot manufacture it. And it makes you part of this human race.
The wonderful thing about blood, one of the many wonderful things, first of all, when you donate blood, your body replaces it within a week or two. So it's a total free lunch. And it doesn't care who you are or what you are. Rich, poor, white, black, gay, straight, does not matter. We all need blood. And when we get wounded, blood comes out of us. We're all the same in that way.
And it's really quite a profound thing to do. And I do it regularly.
And we're talking about the rights. And I think a lot of what we're talking about as well is being grounded in a reality, accepting that there are things that are greater than you. And one of the ways that we can do that in society is through sport. And that's where the tribe thing gets, the tribe phenomenon gets activated again. And it's fascinating to see.
And how much overlap is there between sports and the military and so on?
I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing that a lot of the... I mean, I was in a unit that was all male, so I'm going to say the boys, the guys, because that was my reality. But, you know, I think probably most of them were either involved in sports, in a lot of bar fights, or both. Bar fights are kind of a sport, right? So, you know, they were those guys, right? I mean, we all know those guys, right?
We avoided them in the playground because... They were tough-looking guys. That's the military, right? They're amazing kids, right? But, you know, sports is a reenactment, a practice for combat. It's all, I mean, you know, this isn't my idea. This is well-established, right? It all trains people for combat. And a lot of child's play trains them for hunting, right?
I mean, you know, the hide-and-seek and all that stuff. Like, it's all... You know, very, very clearly, sports are a way of grooming children to step into adult roles of hunting and warfare and playing house. You know, kids play house, too. You know, they're all in training, right, for the things that they'll be doing as adults.
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Chapter 8: What are the implications of technology on human connection?
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It's so interesting that you say that because I noticed when I was teaching, I taught in a very exclusive all girls grammar school where every kid came in, wanted to learn, every lesson was easy. And the moment you walked into the staff room, the teachers were at each other's throats.
But when you taught in a terrible school where every day was, it felt like war, except the kids had the upper hand because they could throw chairs at you and you couldn't do anything. The camaraderie was never better amongst the staff.
That's how, I mean, listen, that's adaptive, right? I mean, you think about humans, like that we have behaviors that allow us to survive. Of course, as things get better, we act, as things get worse, we act better. If that weren't true, we wouldn't be here. Yeah. Right? I talked to a woman who had survived cancer, like bad cancer. And she barely survived.
And thank God, you know, and she said, but you know, the one thing, she said, the one thing about it is that I miss the cancer ward. She missed being in the cancer ward with her fellow sufferers because she had never felt closer to anybody.
So if you have a young woman who misses having cancer because it connects her to other people who have cancer, it's clear that our society, for all of its wonderful benefits, and I'm happy to run through the list with you guys if you want, but it's clear that our society is not providing enough human connection to keep people happy.
And one of the things you talk a lot about in Tribe, and you've addressed already a little bit, is the importance of being necessary to other people. I'm curious if you've thought about the impact of AI and other things that are coming down the pipe, the new technology that is increasingly going to make human beings less necessary and how that's likely to impact our society.
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