Sebastian Junger

00:08all right we're live what's up man how are you hey pretty good I'm uh excited I walked in on a pool game that was uh I barely squeaked it out that was a very nice shot to to end it though that's the way to end it so uh I've been reading your book man tribe I really enjoy it it's really good and it's it's so uh it resonates it's very interesting I will to the first chapter I wanted to move in with the Native Americans that was it was such a I mean it it was a one of the more interesting aspects of it was uh something that I didn't know about which was uh the European settlers that had been kidnapped and were living with the Native Americans and then when they were rescued many of them wanted to go back yeah or they would go into hiding so they wouldn't have to be repatriated to colonial society they wanted to stay with their adopted tribes and there and there was also a lot of um a lot of

01:02young white people particularly white men but young women too who basically absconded across the frontier into tribal Society they they fled White Society they didn't like it and and as Benjamin Franklin pointed out we have lots of col col young Colonials fleeing to the Indians and we have not one example of an Indian as they were called fleeing to White Society yeah that was one of the more fascinating aspects of it I didn't anticipate that I thought that there would be a lot of Native Americans that would be like wow this is a way better look at all the food look at the houses and I mean they had plenty of food you know they were whatever they were a success success very successful Society in fact they were they had better nutrition than the whites did um uh a more VAR diet um and a much much more egalitarian society uh than colonial society that was also

01:52interesting about it um when you were talking about the women that had moved in with the Native Americans and were expressing how much more freedom they experienced yeah I mean Indian Society native Society wasn't crushed by Christian morality so you could divorce you could marry as a woman you could marry whom you wanted you could get divorced you could do whatever you wanted it was very very galarian what they've shown is that um the in societies where everyone is necessary for food prot food production uh everyone's more or less equal and in a agrarian societies agricultural societies industrial societies you have large segments of the population often women who are not involved in food production they're involved in reproduction and so their um equality goes down wow it's just it's almost like society as we've created over the last couple of hundred years is almost totally

02:51incompatible with with human genetics or with the human body or the the human Spirit or whatever well if you look at at um I mean genetics are complicated I mean obviously on some level industrial modern society is very successful we have 7 billion of us um uh but as wealth goes up in a society as modernity goes up in a society the suicide rate goes up the depression rate goes up schizophrenia goes up uh in urban environments um they're not good for the human psyche we are designed we evolve to live in groups of 30 40 people in a harsh environment totally inter relian on one another for survival uh that creates a huge amount of equality within a group and loyalty within a group that's what we are designed for genetically uh modern society allows the individual to be independent from the group which is in some ways a great Liberation uh in other ways it can lead

03:46to a profound alienation and depression yeah it's it's just a very confusing thing it seems for people to be amongst so many people but to be alone yeah I mean we're not wired to uh be confronted with strangers all day long and I live in New York City and I love New York City um but all day long you you encounter strangers and you don't and you don't recognize anybody so you can be alone in a crowd which is not something that human beings have experienced until quite recently in their history yeah um that was I I think one of the more disturbing Parts about this idea that these people um were uh kidnapped by the Native Americans and wanted to to stay with them was that whatever that Native American life was like however they were living that just seemed to just resonate with them it seemed to it seemed to be what was right well we're we're wired to want to feel

04:44like we belong to a group uh Native American society was uh sexually quite relaxed it was quite egalitarian um in a hunter gather Society you really can't accumulate wealth very well because these societies are often no IC so you can only accumulate as much wealth as you can carry which isn't much um and and ultimately in societies like that uh as in a platoon in combat which is another part of my book obviously um you're you're you're primarily Val valued for your contribution to the group and that has been lost in modern society people are enormously self-serving uh capitalism basically instructs us to do so uh that's a whole other evolutionary imperative which is also important but in our society it's way out of wack so we are wired to serve ourselves and we are wired to serve the group and in a healthy Society those two those two are in a dynamic tension with

05:38each other and in balance in modern society there really is no group to serve uh and it leads to a really profound sense of um meaninglessness for a lot of people yeah uh I also found it pretty fascinating that when you were really young you when when you were working I think you said you were working construction is that what it was uh I'm trying to remember the story you about to you you were talking to you were just saying that you were uh talking to someone you were working with and they were telling you to slow down because some of us some of us have to do this for a lifetime that's right yeah I forgot about that story yeah yeah I was on a construction crew it was the highway department of my town and you know a lot of these guys were kind of lifers in the high Department not a particularly challenging job um in in a sense uh but you were on your feet all

06:22day long in the Sun or whatever and and so you know I was a young guy and I you know I wanted to sort of prove my medal or whatever I was was we were digging a trench and I was digging like crazy and uh and an older guy came up to me you know he's probably in his 60s he came up to me clapped me on the shoulder he said Son you want to slow down there you know some of us are going to have to do this job our whole lives and he knew I was a college kid he knew I wasn't going to right um and I said just slow down you know no one needs to work this fast it just uh it was uh really interesting that you were longing for something you were saying like almost to go wrong so everybody had a band together whether it was a hurricane or something and that that mundane life of just work and doing things you don't really want to do well I mean the irony about modern society is

07:10that it has removed hardship and danger from everyday life and it's in the face of hardship and danger that people come to understand their value to their society and their they get their sense of meaning from that and so what you have is when you know during the Blitz in London for example um 30,000 people were killed by German bombs it was a horror show over the course of 6 months it was ghastly but people were sleeping shoulder-to-shoulder in the tube stations and putting out fires with bucket brigades and digging people out of rubble and and they were acting as a unified society and the English government was prepared for Mass psychiatric casualties because it's a civilian population getting bombed at bits and the opposite happened admissions to psych wards went down during the Blitz and then back up after the bombing stopped and um and then afterwards there was an enormous

07:58nostalgia in England for the blitz for those days um as tragic as they were because English society felt um people felt like they were together um later I was I went back to Saro where i' had been during the siege of Saro in the early 90s and civilians would tell me you know this is 20 years later 20 years after the war people would say you know a lot of us missed the war because we were better people back then we took care of each other I've talked about that with September 11th um I went to New York City um about I guess it was maybe six months after September 11th and uh I was there a couple times and the the before September 11th and after September 11th there was a very clear difference in the way people were behaving people seemed to be more more friendly more open they were uh really appreciative of First Responders um I was there once and a friend of mine She fainted and uh some

08:53they called the fire department came to check her out and and when the fireman showed up man you would think super superhero showed up it was amazing everybody was so happy to see him and it was in stark contrast to the way people used to behave and treat each other and it was directly because of having experienced this horrific event well adversity produces Pro pro-social behaviors in people it adversity makes people act well uh the lack of adversity safety and comfort allow people to act selfishly uh so after 9/11 um the suicide rate went down in New York uh the violent crime rate went down in New York Vietnam Vets reported that their PTSD symptoms went down after 911 um what happens is um people suddenly feel that they're needed by their society by their people and if you feel needed you are able to um ignore your own personal troubles as one someone in

09:51England an official an English official said uh during the Blitz in London um he said it's amazing we have The Chronic neurotics of peace time driving ambulances um and if you think about it in terms of evolution if adversity and danger produced bad human behaviors we wouldn't be here today another way to say that is we are the descendants of the individuals 100,000 years ago who acted well in a crisis the people that acted badly in a crisis and just took care of themselves and didn't take care of their people their group those those PE those groups died out uh it's people it's groups that encourage a a form of altruism and self self sacrifice of individuals for the group during a crisis those groups survive that that DNA gets passed on to us and did you gain a a deep appreciation for this because of your time as a war journalist did it sort of manifest itself in your

10:44mind because of that well I I this book came to me in sort two-step process you know first of all when I was a young man I had a surrogate Uncle figure in my life very important person to me named Ellis Ellis settle he was half Lota Sue Apache and he was born in 1929 on a wagon out west he had lived an extraordinary life he was very very educated self-educated and at one point he said to me you know it's so funny all throughout the history of this country white people were always running off to join the Indians and the Indians never ran off to join the white people and I filed that away in my mind I kind of liked the idea of it I thought it was I hoped it was true I didn't know if it was true and then decades later I was with American soldiers on a remote Outpost in Afghanistan and uh called Restrepo and I made a documentary film by that name with my colleague Tim

11:31heatherington and there was almost daily combat there was no no link to the outside world no internet there was no electricity for a while they just slept in the dirt they got shot at every day we got shot at every day uh there was no women out there there was nothing but combat and tarantulas and pallets of water and MREs and ammo that was it for a year those boys were out there for over a year and they were very psyched to come back to Italy where they're based at the end of their deployment you can imagine they had some pretty good parties planned but after after that died down a real depression set in and by the time I got caught up with them again in Venza and interviewed them many of them said that they wanted to go they didn't want to go come back to America they wanted to go back out to Restrepo and it reminded me of what Ellis had said and I thought what is it that's why

12:15is it that no one wants to come home like what is it and I realized it's not that they they want war they're not sociopaths you know like they don't they don't want to be out there killing people and getting shot at um they missed each other they missed the intense community ISM of life in a platoon on a on a remote Hilltop in combat and um and that's and and it it struck me I studied anthropology in college oh my God a platoon in combat effectively reproduces our human evolution right I mean we evolve the living groups of that size in in a harsh environment that's that's what a platoon is and so of course it resonated with them resonated genetically with them and um I got to say as tough as was as it was out there there was a weird also a weird I don't quite want to call it a Euphoria but a a strange sense of well-being out there that I missed enormously when I left as well you

13:05missed it oh enormously yes did you try to rationalize it did you try to when did you sit alone with it and try to figure out what it was or did you just accept it I I mean I you know I I've been covering Wars since the early 90s I started going to Afghanistan in the mid 90s um I came back from from rreo you know we were in a lot of combat I almost almost killed a couple of times so I had some sort of trauma issues I mean everybody did uh my marriage started to fall apart um that was not coincidental by the way I I now realized that the timing was significant um it took me a while to understand that and I sank into a real depression and it took me a while to understand that my depression was partly connected to the fact that I was no longer part of a group and and it but took a long time for me to figure that out while I was experiencing all that I just felt like I was in some kind of

14:01that I was behind bullet bulletproof plexiglass and I was on the inside and everyone I cared about was on the other side of the plexiglass I couldn't reach them that they were somehow inaccessible to me I couldn't hear them I couldn't touch them I was alone in this plexiglass cage and that's what it sort of felt like I was incredibly depressed and then Tim my good friend and brother and colleague who I made Restrepo with he was killed in combat in Libya and that was the final blow I mean then I really crashed my marriage ended I mean I was a real mess for a while how did you pull out of it uh I you know I you know I just I had a year or so in the wilderness I think psychologically and um TR you know humans are evolved obviously to deal with trauma I mean eventually I mean if trauma was incapacitating to people for years or lifetimes we wouldn't exist right I mean our our our

14:56our our history as a species involved a huge amount of trauma so we are designed to react to trauma by protecting ourselves emotionally and physically for a certain amount of time for some weeks or months maybe a year or two and then the slowly come out of it and continue functioning that's exactly what happened to me what do you did did you get something out of it I mean obviously it's a terrible experience to be depressed for that long and to go through all that but did you get some sort of an understanding of yourself out of it oh absolutely I mean I I I um some way is um I mean I my my my my marriage ended um I I you know moved out of my home uh I was living in a very sort of uh threadbear existence for a while I sort of gave up everything that that made me feel safe and protected in the world I mean finan no it just sort of happened you know financially

15:49emotionally uh I wasn't doing I wasn't working as a reporter for a while I i' sto or reporting after Tim got killed and I just I sort of hit the reset button on my myself as a person and and and I sort of um when I came back from that I I the things I added to my life were very solid uh were were very very good things and um I sort of started from zero again and that really kind of worked and um and I I also St I I mean I didn't have a drinking problem but I but I stopped drinking and I stopped drinking alcohol and that um the drinking alcohol it made me drinking alcohol made me feel good right I I'm really happy drunk and when I was depressed for for a bunch of reasons if if I drank I felt great and so there's a real incentive to do that and I realized that that it was depriving me of experiencing my actual life like my actual life was filled with some very

16:42tough things at the moment and if you self-medicate your way through them you actually those things are taken from you it's your life it's the life you're going through and and they were take you I realize I might I might lose the experience of these things and you know my ex-wife and I are like quite good friends now and in so partly because um I decided to try and experience the loss of the marriage as directly as possible and that involved not drinking did you during this time of depression did you consider or did you take any anti-depressants or did you just likewise like I I I mean I I was you know I was talking to someone professional about how I felt because I you know I was a little worried about myself but um as I said to her I said you know if I was on anti-depressants it might allow me to accept it might make make we feel good enough to accept a

17:30life that isn't really working very well yeah that's uh as a person who's not depressed it's a very uh it's a slippery argument for me because I am just an outside Observer yeah you know and when I talk to people that are depressed and I always wonder like how how much of what you're doing is life circumstances how much is an actual some sort of a mental imbalance some sort of a chemical imbalance that you just are unfortunately born with I mean listen I'm not a I'm not a shrank obviously there are people that encounter their first depression as teenagers and struggle with a very dangerous illness their whole lives I'm not talking about that kind of depression this even that kind of depression I I don't know why I mean is it circumstances it natur genetics involved in that for me I you know my depression was a very healthy reaction to some tough circumstances I

18:18was going through I was having a completely healthy self-protective reaction uh to what was going on in my life when you say you started putting like positive things in your life good solid things in your life like what kind of thing yeah a good relationship um I you know I started working again um I started um being physically really active again uh uh I mean I just you know I just I started boxing actually and and uh and that was um inspiring and stuff and that was incredibly frightening to me just you know that kind of it's very very hard and among other things and uh but all that stuff really was really really good for me one of the things that I've been um dwelling on a lot lately is how important struggle is and for me personally um I I do a lot of things and I do a lot of things that I'm terrible at and uh I feel like the more happy I am is when I just get slightly better at these

19:09terrible things like that's when I feel like little bits of progress that is exactly how we're wired to react to success and if you sort of think about it think about us as a species as an animal if you're presented with a challenge and you get a little dose of of endorphins of dopamine or some Feelgood chemicals when you do a task well that will encourage you to keep doing that task and keep looking for Success small successes in your life which is exactly how people adapt and survive in harsh circumstances um the problem with affluent modern society is it takes away all of the tasks of survival right you no no one in this room I don't think is having to figure out every morning how to literally physically survive where where am I going to get my the berries I'm going to eat today where going to go to kill something that I can eat how am I going to avoid the enemy like we're

20:02not thinking like that and which is an enormous blessing right I mean it's enormous luxury to live like that the downside is you don't get this sense of Mastery over your circumstances you actually don't feel responsible for your own Survival you you don't feel like you are earning your own Survival in the world you feel like it's being handed to you and I grew up in an affluent suburb and I never had a sense as a young man that I was contributing in any way to the fact that I was physic alive on the planet well that's the that's that's very very recent in human history that young young men could afford to feel that way it it's um again it's a blessing but also a bit of a curse it's the most disconnected amongst us are always spoiled rich kids that get handed everything to them and don't have an understanding at all about the consequences of their behavior yeah and

20:52and and and that kind of life is correlated with depression yeah um and uh I mean and drug abuse yeah all that all that stuff and the the um uh the suicide rate is rising fastest among middle-aged white men who if you listen to some people um are apparently arguably the demographic that that are most privileged in this Society yes doing the best with this civilization that we've constructed doing the worst biologically in terms of how they adapt to it and psychologically yeah yeah psychologically is a big part of the biology right and the thing about this this quest for stuff you know and one of the things that I thought was really interesting in the book where you were outlining the key factors for happiness and that wealth is not the primary one but being good at something being recognized for being good at something uh being a part of a group like all

21:48these things were primary yeah I mean if you think about it and again in evolutionary terms um we are safest when we are needed yeah so if you're in a group and the group needs you your status in the group is secure and it had better be because humans do not survive alone in the wild a a a aone human in nature is a dead human right we're primates we're social primates a lone primate in the in nature is a dead primate and uh for most of the species and we get our we get our safety our protection from the fact that we work very very well in groups we don't have long claws we don't have uh sharp teeth we can't run very fast we can't climb trees worth a dam we're extremely vulnerable and we get our safety and our dominance in in the natural world from our ability to work in a group so if you're necessary to that group you're safe so people get very depressed when

22:44circumstances in their life change and they're suddenly not needed right when people get old and retire they're at very very high risk of depression and and sometimes suicide uh when people lose their job and can't find a job they're at extremely high risk of depression and suicide so when the economy takes a downturn as it did in 2008 um and the unemployment rate goes up the suicide rate immediately goes up it tracks the unemployment rate almost exactly and one of the points I make in my book is that a very small number of mostly men collapsed the US economy in 2008 and most of them living on working on Wall Street and there was a direct I I read an article in EP a um academic journal on epid uh epidemics um that there was a directly attributable to the financial collapse there were five or 6 thousand additional suicides in the United States mostly middle-aged white men okay and sort of

23:45professional sort of professional people and um of of all of all classes and um and the uh and I realized that that was almost EX exactly the casualty rate from the two Wars from Iraq and Afghanistan in other words something that happened at home economically killed just as many Americans as both wars did and nobody went to prison not one of those guys was prosecuted the people responsible for the collapse of our economy nothing happened to those guys and and you could argue they killed just as many people as you know our enemies did overseas and there's a real Injustice there I think most people aren't even aware of how screwy the whole thing was there's a great documentary that I always recommend to people called an inside job it's fantastic when that guy starts questioning those economics professors those the guys who eventually got jobs in the government and or went from there

24:44and uh got jobs at Big corporations and you see them like folding folding under the weight of the actual truth of what they've done it's very disturbing I mean listen there were I mean there were there were uh companies that were getting bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of billions of dollars right bailed out and the the head the the the corporate leaders the corporate heads of those companies who had bankrupted their countries and asked the country to bail them out while they were getting bailed out these men were taking year-end bonuses of 10 20 $30 million yeah it was stunning and then they were trying to put a cap on the bonuses like instead of removing it they were going to put a cap on the bonuses or a cap of 20 million right it's insane right so you you think about that and and and you makes you feel it makes me feel like we don't really have a country

25:39like an entity a group that isn't willing to defend itself isn't really a group right we were attacked by in some ways we were attacked by those people economically right the actions of those people the self-serving actions of a very small number of people cost this country $14 trillion right there were no consequences for those people they were actually rewarded and it makes a person think like wow is there what you know we is there something is there something called America like the United States like in the in the sense that we'll defend ourselves if we're attacked I mean that's one of the definitions of a country of a group and we didn't defend ourselves and so you saw in the recent election the sort of um the confusion in the in the population about what it means to be an American like who like what what do we belong to here like what do we owe our loyalty to enormous amount

26:33of confusion and and and in my opinion it's it's increasing not decreasing right now in the current Administration but it comes from some of those questions like we're in two Wars that no one's paying attention to we you know we lost $14 trillion and nobody blinked like what is it that we belong to yeah what is it yeah I mean we do seem to be in a deep state of confusion and and I think uh one of the things you're seeing with people even like Trump supporters people uh that are these online frog people you know the little frog uh avatars I think one of the things that they like about it is that become they've become a part of a Troublesome little group oh totally yeah they have a sense of purpose yeah yeah absolutely I mean why do you think people join Isis I mean these European you know people in Europe joining Isis yeah they want a sense of purpose and you know they've

27:23been taken in by the propaganda and all that they don't realize it's a completely bloodthirsty horrible um criminal group but but they want a sense of meaning a sense of purpose there was a um great band from out here about 15 years ago called called Queens of the Stone Age sure I love those guys they're amazing right and one of the lines the line in one of their song I'm sorry to quote Rock lyrics to you but one of the lines is um she wanted something to die for to make it beautiful to live yeah right something like that that's a very profound Insight actually into what makes people feel like they're leading a a worthy life yeah instead of walking through a nerfed world which is what we're doing right on Prozac so if you walk around and ask people on the street what would you die for like who or what idea would you die for I mean people wouldn't you know they they wouldn't

28:14have an answer for most of human history you know the immediate answer would be well i' die for my people right of course like this this our encampment gets attacked by the enemy I would die I would die defending this place you know and and no no one has that answer right and and it it and which is shows that we live in safety and luxury which is lovely but it deprives people of a sense of purpose and meaning not just safety and luxury but this staggering change in what what has been a normal way of living for people for thousands and thousands of years when you were writing this book and you were thinking about all the ways that human beings have altered the the environment around them did you like did you were saying that and I've read this before that genetics essentially we're riding on the same genetics that were uh 10,000 years ago from the 20 25 yeah um are we going to

29:05change that like are we going to become more compatible with this bizarre and artificial world that we've created or are we going to get deeper and deeper depressed are we going to well well okay so our society our culture is changing way faster than genetic change can happen right right so we haven't even adapted genetically to the Advent of Agriculture 10,000 years ago that's pretty crazy right so yeah and the only way genetic change happens in a population is that there is a difference in survival between people with one trait and people with another trait so so if you have a certain genetic trait and it leads to you having fewer children eventually 10,000 years from now people with your genetic trait will tend to die out because you're leaving few you're you're passing on less DNA to the next round right and if you have a trait that allows you to raise more

29:58children to maturity they carry your DNA and then they'll be more successful and that trait tends to spread so does human unha does unhappiness lead to lower fertility rates probably not you know what I mean like I mean often depression starts in midlife um by that time most people have uh one or two children um they've passed on their DNA so I don't it only acts through reproductive rates is something happened to us then there there must be some way where human beings are going to become going to become accustomed to this bizarre way we're living stacked on top of each other constantly in traffic we are accustomed to it I mean humans are very adapt adaptable I mean you know people you can put people in solitary confinement in jail and they're not happy they're extremely depressed but they it will physically survive for decades right so I mean Evolution

30:54doesn't promise happiness it doesn't mean that we'll evolve towards happiness it means means that we will adapt so that we can re reproduce our DNA for the Next Generation that's all Evolution means I've always just looked at all this Reliance upon electronics and our fascination with Innovation and I've wondered if that's where we're headed if we're I mean it's almost like it's priming us for some sort of a symbiotic relationship with machines that we're as we become more relying on technology stack more and more people into places make it easier and easier to survive that's the one constant is that we're constantly embedded in technology yes I mean technology is a tool uh like the bow and arrow was and but um you know keep in mind the the segment of the world population which is deeply intertwined with high-tech is very very small I me most of humanity lives in a

31:46pretty simple and very very poor way so if you're talking about the human race as a whole I mean I'm not talking about Southern California I'm not talking about New York City I the human race as a whole you know all this technology happened yesterday right happened 10 years ago 20 years ago in 20 years it's going to be you know whatever I mean who knows what's coming down the pike um but that that's not even a blinking of an of an eye in evolutionary terms it doesn't even exist I mean it's I mean Evolution happens over the course of 10 20,000 years now when you're living this life when you're uh a war journalist and you're in these insane places and then you come back to New York City what kind of like a decompression period do you have to go through well you know often the the develop world that I've worked in I'm I'm no longer covering Wars by the way but but the developing world is

32:32often a very chaotic Urban mix of you know poverty and cars and and pollution and buildings that you know whatever I mean it is not necessarily not Urban um H but what I what I would say is is that there's a um there's something I would describe as a kind of disappointment to have the uh the if you wake up in the morning and your survival is a kind of question mark and you know that you have to act well and and and and with with sort of clarity and and precision and quickness in order to survive that is intoxicating right the challenge of that's intoxicating and you feel like you're sort of in a way earning Your Existence and when you leave that it's a relief but it's also a disappointment and because you're no longer earning anything right so it's a relief but it's also kind of disappointing and in that disappointment you can get quite depressed so I know

33:29that the depression rate like when PE when Peace Corps volunteers come back from two years service overseas they're not in war zones but they're in the developing world they're living in small communities they're living a much more difficult physically difficult existence than people in our most people in our society when they come back to America uh the land of cars and everything you can want in the superstore in in the supermarket and you know nice beds and everything that you think people want when Peace Corp volunteers come back to this lovely environment around 25% of them get profoundly depressed wow so clearly what makes people feel good is challenge not ease yeah that's the conclusion I draw and not just challenge but challenge in the context of a community of people um here we have ease in the in in in the context of oneself or one's individual

34:22family but not in the context of the community and so you know if you look at catastrophe is Hurricane Katrina I was just in Mississippi and I was amazed not amazed actually in some ways to have people many people say wow we really miss Hurricane Katrina we were all so close afterwards you know it's a society with a lot of racial Division and all kinds of stuff none of that mattered after Hurricane Katrina everyone cooperated everyone helped each other made people feel great that's what human beings want so what we've done by making things too safe we've we've we've dropped off the hills and just made everything flat and people long for those Hills absolutely there's a a group of friends that I have um that are bow hunters and one of the things that people have gotten really addicted to is solo hunting where even regular bow hunting is not quite difficult enough

35:10for these psychos so they go deep deep deep 20 miles plus Into the Wilderness by themselves and one of the things they say about it is how profoundly lonely and sad it is and even though they know they could walk those 20 plus miles back anytime they want but there's something about being out there by themselves that when they do return they just feel invigorated and alive and energized and they feel like they've accomplished something especially if they come back with an animal yeah well listen I mean that's an ancient narrative right I mean the hunter goes out and kills the game and brings it back and feeds his people I mean that's a beautiful story and it's it has kept um human beings alive for you know for hundreds of thousands of years you know some hunting is well done groups and some hunting is a solo Enterprise depending on the animal and there absolutely is a role for that sort

36:02of solo Endeavor um Scouts uh you know are often work by themselves because I mean in a native in a native context um like for example the American Indians the scouts often work by themselves because they were just harder to detect and ter I'm sure a terrifying Endeavor um but you're doing it for your people and so you you come back from that um that solo experience which is so frightening I mean we social species so being alone in and in danger is terrifying and you come back from that to your community you've served your community and your among your people again I must be completely intoxicating I envy those people that experience yeah just having the experience of being in danger and then coming back and being at peace makes you appreciate that peace but constantly and consistently being at peace has a numbing effect that's right it's like constantly and consistently

36:51being wellfed I mean I mean it's not bad to feel hungry once in a while and you really appreciate food yeah um say um food warmth um being rested or or tired I mean you we're adapted to to get through situations where we don't have enough of what we want what we need and if we if we're not deprived of those things we stop appreciating them and those things are what make up life so we're actually losing we're losing our our appreciation our enjoyment of the things that make life what it is and there's a real irony there there is a real irony there did you feel compelled at all to come up with a solution I mean in deeply describing and just going over the various aspects of these problems that we're facing as a culture as a society did you did you have some sort of a a need I didn't I mean listen if I thought if there was a solution that I was capable of thinking

37:48of I would have put it in the book either I'm not smart enough or there's no solution I don't know which it is yeah I think there's some things we can do around the edges that will help um but we're talking about a a a systemic problem in society that has that has uh that got it start 10,000 years ago and really got it start in the industrial revolution and really got really got going in the technological Revolution you're not I mean we're not going to ban the car right the Amish in Pennsylvania don't use cars they have a very low rate of suicide and depression because they spend most of their lives within their Community right that buffers them from suicide and depression we're not going to ban the car right we're not going to burn down the suburbs and live in lant we'd probably be happier if we did but we're not going to do it so but what can we do the biggest

38:34community that we have is the nation is the country and I think one thing that would help enormously is to treat our nation as if we all belong to it and as if we all respected it and that it was meaningful to all of us and which means among other things it means insisting that politicians who uh denigrate um who denigrate other other politicians who denigrate Ms of the population um who rank American citizens in terms of value in terms of being quote American whatever that means politicians who do that are undermining our sense of national community and I think that has a trick trickle down effect which is extremely demoralizing and makes gives you the equivalent of feeling like wow feeling like you're a child in a family that might where the parents might get divorced I remember during the campaign between Donald and Hillary I sort of felt like wow are Mom and Dad going to split up

39:29like what's happening in this country you know what I mean right like okay you can argue but you guys are really talking as if the country is not going to stay together right and that's terrifying and I think it's extremely demoralizing and unsettling for people well it's also extremely irresponsible like the type of person that should be a leader is not the type of person that puts that idea out there to the point where it gets into the Zeitgeist and people say well hey maybe we really are in trouble well exactly I mean I think I think it it it's fearmongering in a lot ways it is and and you know these are ancient human behaviors and if you tell your people that there's a threat your people will rally behind you I mean it's a it's an Adaptive Behavior right the problem is as a politician if you tell your people that the enemy is actually the other political party you

40:18are effectively splitting the country in half right so you can act tribally all you want I mean tribal tribalism has a very negative connotation as well you you can act in that Tribal Way all you want as long as you define your tribe as the country the entire country right and if you start slicing off group parts of the country demographic groups in the country political groups in the country say you know you're actually not really American like you really shouldn't be part of this when you start doing that you destroy the country you're way more of a threat to our democracy than than Isis is than alada is I mean we're such a powerful country we are the only force that can destroy us no one else is Kentucky they can hurt us they can't really destroy us we can destroy us and we can and we can we will destroy ourselves through rhetoric was one of the things that was most disturbing

41:05about the debates When Donald Trump said that if Hillary Clinton won he wouldn't necessarily accept the decision yeah absolutely I mean he was being uh what that was completely antithetical to the uh to democracy and to the um to the concept of a country the concept of a democratic country yeah absolutely cuz he's a part of it so if she becomes the president she's his president and we're all supposed to look at the president as this is the one person that we've elected as leader and what he's essentially saying it's either me or nothing that's right and what and what I really I'm a Democrat I didn't vote for Donald Trump um but I really didn't like it when some of my fellow Democrats after he was elected and he was elected right I mean one way or another uh I mean if you you can investigate Russia if you want or whatever but but the fact is that he he got the most electoral

41:53votes and he's our president and I really disliked it when my some of my fellow Democrats said he's not my president he is actually and if you don't like that work harder next time and get someone else elected but he is your president and and it was equally disgusting when the shoe was on the other foot with Barack Obama and um some conservatives started saying that Barack Obama wasn't really American or he wasn't really their president or that he was an enemy of the state that he was a secret Muslim spy who wanted to destroy America meran candidate yeah exactly I mean totally Ires responsible and and it's antithetic it's the opposite of patriotism it's revolting do you think in that case that maybe it's good that we have a guy like Donald Trump and the president because he is kind of like almost like a human hurricane he's something to Rally against he's a a

42:40problem that's occurred where there's the eroding confidence in the president now I mean it's palpable people know he lies he lies all the time I mean he just accused James Comey today of lying under oath when he talked about their conversations you know I I think Donald Trump is a very damaged and unhealthy person I think he causes a lot of pain to people around him and I I'm guessing that he's in an enormous amount of of psychic pain himself that's the only thing that makes sense for all the the hate tweets and all the thing he's constantly going after Rosie O'Donnell and like why I mean what I've learned in my life is that if someone's acting badly they're in pain yeah I mean it's a really simple rule right they're either scared or they're in pain I think he's both and on some level I I feel kind of a kind of compassion for him but what I what I I mean he's a he he's he already is and

43:33will be a completely failed president but he may actually help this country in his failure um the GOP I think has abandoned all of its core values and core moral principles uh and decided that seems to have decided that anything that will help their party is more important than things that will help the country and that is a very very undemocratic way to think um I think if Don if Hillary Clinton had been elected and these things were coming out the same kind of things about Russia Etc were coming out the GOP would be proing her Prosecuting her up to her eyeballs right so they have a complete double standard and what I'm hoping is that the Trump Administration is such a failure that it gets the GOP to re-evaluate its its policy of partisan Politics as a way to win power and I hope it makes the entire country realized that the only way to really win power is through

44:31bipartisan politics you can argue all you want but you have to you have to put the welfare of the country first I read an amazing book um called our political selves I think it was called um that about half of our political opinion is Gen is genetically determined so genetically determined yeah so and which makes sense so liberalism and conservatism basically liberalism is concerned with fairness within the group and equality within the the group and an acceptance of Outsiders as poss for possible inclusion in the group conservatism is focused on hierarchy and sort of Law and Order and a suspicion of Outsiders and they're very very powerful evolutionary adaptive evolutionary reasons for both of those worldviews and you they've done TW studies with identical twins that were adopted at Birth and compared to them to fraternal twins and there's a far higher

45:24concordance of a political opinion in identical twins that were adopted at Birth and put in different kinds of families than with fraternal twins so that means that our political apparently it's around 50% of our political beliefs are genetically determined which means that those beliefs had adaptive value in in our evolutionary past which means that the argument I'm right you're completely wrong and you shouldn't exist is a false argument it it that that the country actually needs both parties very very badly and that a healthy Society has conservative M and liberalism in a kind of dynamic tension where yes they might fight they might argue but they are they're roughly proportional in the population and equal weight is given to those two competing values was it taken into consideration that when these people are adopted that growing up adopted without your

46:12biological parents puts you in a certain mindset automatically and that maybe it wasn't necessarily a genetic thing but it was a circumstantial or a nurture thing well they compared identical twins who were genetically identical of course that were adopted to Fraternal twins who were adopted you understand yes and fraternal twins are not genetically identical but they still come from the same body they come from no no but there's their DNA is different right they're two individuals right so both sets of twins were adopted right so they all went through that whatever that is that that process the effects of that whatever they are one are one shared DNA exact duplicates of their DNA the other set of uh twins don't they're fraternal so the the the twins that shared identical DNA were far more likely to sh have the same political beliefs than the fraternal twins in other words the genetic

47:09component was influencing their beliefs and the environmental component was not as much compared to the fraternal twins it's an amazing book and it really it to me it makes sense like both worldviews clearly were needed to keep our society healthy and strong and safe I mean God I mean a country that was run completely by liberals would get overrun by You Know The Enemy state next door immediately right a country that was completely run by conservatives would never get overrun by the enemy but it would be a heartless and brutal Society right where the poor weren't taken care of and etc etc so you can't have one or the other you need both in a kind of dynamic tension so it makes genetic sense that it works that way just like there would be genetic variations and all sorts of different aspects of people height and personality and all those different things yeah I mean sort of

47:57character traits right I mean they're partly genetic and they're partly determined by experience so right um you know courage or whatever generosity sensation seeking right uh is a genetic trait um but you can you can your s your impulse towards sensation seeking is also determined by your experiences in life right I don't know what the proportions are but in terms your political belief it's roughly 50/50 your experience in life is about 50% responsible for your uh political beliefs and the and the other 50% is genetics we're always looking for one reason right we're always looking for nature or nurture we're looking for one of the we're not looking at this just whole soup of different entangled influences yeah that create a person yeah and it's really interesting when I tell people that their genetics determine half of their political view they get really upset right they want to

48:49be completely self-determining right I mean that people want to think that they are completely who whatever they are they've created themselves and uh certainly something as emotional as political belief they don't want to think that it's wired into their DNA at all but you know that's that's the truth of it well just determinism in general I mean I remember the first time it was ever really deeply explained to me by Sam Harris I was rejecting it like almost instant of realizing I was like I didn't want to just be open-minded about it I wanted to go no you could pull yourself up you could figure you do what you your it's willpower you decide what you want to do with your life but not really necessarily I mean listen when I was young I was a really good distance Runner right and I ran half mile mile on up to you know 10,000 meters Marathon whatever I ran 412 for the mile which a

49:36pretty decent time in fast I really wanted to be like the fastest miler in the world right and I trained as fast as anyone has ever trained as as hard as anyone's ever trained and I my my ceiling was 412 I mean that was genetically determined you know sorry like you can run 130 miles a week like I did for months on end and still not go to the Olympics yeah yeah there's no doubt about it I mean uh as a mixed martial arts commentator the the big factor that you can't do anything about is power some people are born with striking power and it doesn't make any sense they have they they look exactly the same they look just like a person who can't hit nearly as hard as them right right yeah I mean my understanding is this sort of sequencing of muscle groups in coordination that result in that kind of power is amazing it's bone structure as well there's a lot of

50:22variables is actually the the the the geometry of the shoulder like how wide your shoulders are in terms of the hips to waist ratio there's a lot of different factors no kidding yeah that's one of the reasons why men can hit so much harder than women is literally the shape of the hips women's hips are wider they the legs go inward more it's a different sort of mechanical advantage which is probably connected to the speed you can throw a baseball at yeah I I bet connected the same skeletal yeah apparently boys and girls can throw pretty much the same until puberty and then it really splits um and uh and so it's probably for that reason I would that' be interesting I would like to see what what they do with transgender uh women to men who start taking testosterone I don't think it changes the shape of your pelvis no I mean the testosterone doesn't change you know

51:07isn't going to change your it does change your it does have some effects on bone density and I think the width of the shoulders changes and certain character the face obviously changes yeah right yeah and just the sort of muscle I mean explosive power of the muscles I mean as you get old you lose explosive power as a man right so I mean testosterone is sort of key I mean you're your peak in your early 20s I guess yeah but what anyway what we're saying is that there really are genetic limitations there's no doubt about it and you this idea of a like a fair fight there's sometimes it's not fair it's just not going to be and uh with you is the mile with some people it's the the ability to hit hard it's some people it's just speed you know I mean if you've ever seen like a Floyd Mayweather fight is incred inedibly clear that not only is he ridiculously skillful but

51:59he's got some stupendous speed advantage over most human beings yeah yeah absolutely I also I was watching a fight of his it was sort of slow mo I mean I sort of slowed it down so I could really watch and he got hit full in the face by somebody I mean right in the face and his his eyes never blinked yeah yeah like he W the I mean he couldn't get out of the way he watched that thing come in and hit him Square in the face and his eyes never closed yeah it's incredible yeah really good boxers can do that as they're getting punched in their face their eyes are wide open and they're looking for the counter it's really incredible yeah it's amazing no Flinch at all I mean nothing absolutely nothing amount of training you would have to do to overcome the end it's one of the one of the more important reasons why it's so critical to learn striking in particular at a very young age the body

52:43develops some people can pick it up late in life and still be really successful at it but I don't think you ever really get like a real elite boxer that doesn't start training before puberty or around puberty but you're probably right yeah there's just something about the development of the body like your body growing and maturing with this task learning how to strike and move and explode with combinations well likewise for music and languages I mean if you're not learning that before puberty you will never be like at a top top top world class level oh that makes sense and in terms of languages you will not uh be able to speak with a perfect accent really yep after puberty the the brain is finished wiring itself and it cannot it not exactly mimic a foreign accent and and if you learn French or whatever any language at you know 8 9 10 you can sound exactly

53:35like a native and after puberty you can't wow do you have kids yes I have a three and a half Monon old daughter oh well when they start talking to you man that's when it gets weird um I have a three a 20 a nine and a seven and uh what's what's really fascinating is watching the um the the traits that you know have come directly from DNA like parts of you emerge out of the kid and and maybe one kid and then the other kid none of it you know and some of it it'll be your wife and it's just it's it it's so strange to because you try to piece it together like what are what are instincts right why are why are dogs barking at snakes they don't know what the a snake is but they know something's wrong there's something deep in their memory banks that say this is an issue whereas a stuffed animal on the ground is not an issue right yeah that's right that's right um we don't know what

54:31that is entirely well I tell you what it is is that the dogs that weren't in reflexively fearful of something that looked like a snake died more often produce Offspring and so they'll bark at a crooked stick too just to be on the safe side and you know like likewise humans are scared of heights um yeah there's a and if you're not scared of heights you're more likely to fall and you won't pass on your jeans right um Lucy the famous early early human skeleton in in uh East Africa um I I mean do you know Lucy from your science classes yeah um she died by falling out of a tree wow yeah they they just figured that out from the like fractures and stuff in her bone structure wow yeah yeah that must have been incredibly common it's just uh all the different things that people are afraid of arachnophobia like maybe someone in your past or some well I tell you I mean the the the range

55:31of things that of the common phobias that people have those those things have a have a sort of survival significance right so people usually aren't phobic of chairs because chairs were not a survival threat in our evolutionary past but Heights spiders snakes uh those kinds of things were a were a threat and so when children get phobias they're choosing something that makes genetic sense yes why I chose spiders I don't know I was probably just exposed to a frightening spider at the wrong moment in my insecure little life do you think you were exposed to it or you think maybe is it possible that someone in your past as some ancestor pass that through the DNA well I mean we're all predisposed towards being um uh reasonably fearful of those things right right a phobia is a panic disorder yeah so we're all nervous around um barking dogs snakes spiders Heights those kinds of things right um

56:34be claustrophobia being trapped in a small space that's all normal things to be worried about but when it crosses the threshold to a phobia that's a panic disorder and that is a function of something going on in your childhood where but is it absolutely in your childhood I mean phobia start in childhood yeah but I mean is it possible that someone could had a have a I and not have experienced spiders or snakes so one of the things that happened to me when I was hosting Fear Factor is I would see people that were pretty risk taking they were and they would they would be willing to do the heights they would be willing to jump a car off the top of a building they would take chances they were Risk Takers but You' put them in front of a snake and they would freak the out and it was a it was a deep cellular thing like you could see with some people that that

57:24they weren't cowards they weren't timid folks right but they would see that one thing whatever that thing is right well I you know I don't know I I I I will tell you though that once I don't have a television but I was in a hotel so like I watch TV when I'm traveling because they're I'm in a hotel and I saw Fear Factor and there was and so keep in mind I've been terrified of spiders my entire life and there was what I mean this was actually quite traumatizing to me I mean seriously like traumatizing like it it it affected me for of days there was like a very hot young woman in a bikini and you put her in a glass like a glass box yeah and you dumped a 55 gallon drum of tarantulas onto her yeah I remember that her boyfriend threw up it was so and she finally stood up with tarantulas falling off her I mean she couldn't take it and I was like in the fetal position

58:16in the corner of my hotel room wow yeah it was totally horrifying to me I mean it really messed me up for a few days it's just so strange that there's particular things that resonate like that like particular things whether it's a snake or a spider just uh I mean I I really wonder if like the things that human beings have like and that also animals have these instincts if we just don't totally understand what memory is we don't totally understand genetic memories right yeah well it's all stuff that that helped us survive um those are all threats in our Prim in our primordial past now you've got a a documentary out that you're you're working on as well uh well it's out no it's airing on Sunday it's um it's called hell on Earth it's about the Syrian Civil War and the rise of Isis and it's out on National Geographic Channel uh 9 Eastern 8 central uh this Sunday this Sunday um is

59:08it going to be available I mean you can obviously watch it at the time but it's going to be available on Netflix or Apple TV or something like that where yeah yeah it's um I haven't even thought that far ahead I mean it's owned by National Geographic so I don't quite know how there I'm sure you'll be able to get it on their website at some point but it's aing on Sunday and what was your experience doing that well I you know I was home riding tribe actually and so I wasn't overseas and you couldn't really get into Syria anyway I mean it was a suicidal thing to do um and uh so what we did my colleague Nick the guy who was here earlier um we basically sort of worked the border border areas around Syria um looking for people who were living in Syria who knew people in Syria who could shoot for us and we found some very very brave people who documented their lives under under

59:56Isis their lives with the free Syrian Army there was a lot of combat um and we accumulated about an hour a thousand hours of footage and interviews we did with experts and we put together uh hell on Earth uh trying to explain how really quite peaceful Democratic protests um turn into violent demonstrations and finally into a Civil War and of course it's the it was the repressive government I mean people protest in the street and they're met with machine gun fire and eventually civilians are going to get some machine guns themselves and and fight back and that's how you get a civil war how do you take thousands of hours like that and boil it down to a one show well that's it's very very hard um I mean that's what film making is and it's figuring out what's the 1% that goes into the film and how do I structure it um how much time does it take to do something like that we had a

60:46really good I mean this is the first I've made this is my fifth film most of the films I've made it was me and an editor and some another person in the room or whatever this we had a big team and so we had some very very smart young people who are going through all this footage and categorizing it like here this is a section about you know this material is about um whatever escaping Isis and this is about trying to find food you know whatever they would they would sort of put it into categories and then I would start to look through some of that material and we could gradually sort of build a build a structure the um the situation in Syria seems to be uh from someone who just hasn't studied it that much but just looks at it from the outside one of the Bleaker darker situations that we have here in the world I mean it's the tra tragedy of this generation I think uh over 400,000

61:34syrians mostly civilians have died the equivalent death equivalent death toll in this country would be I think seven or eight million Americans the equivalent amount of people um and and half the country half the Syrian population has been displaced from their homes and millions millions are you know outside the country's borders in Europe and and and even in this country what did you take out of the documentary I mean it seems like no one has a solution for Syria no I mean Civil Wars are tough that way um I think Isis Isis eventually is going to be defeated on the battlefield um they're going to be eradicated and I hope they are because they're a ghastly brutal group um and Assad who is who's killed way more people than Isis he just didn't do it publicly like they did um he's the the leader of Syria uh president of Syria um he's propped up by Iran and by Russia

62:31and so he's not going anywhere I mean if you have those two countries as your allies like you're not going anywhere so I think what's going to happen ultimately is that Isis will be defeated and the country will be partitioned along sectarian lines um and there eventually there may be a kind of uh delicate piece it seems like with all those Middle Eastern countries well any country that's run by a brutal dictator as soon as that dictator's removed or as soon as somebody dies there's this massive power vacuum yeah yeah I mean that would be the argument for not trying to remove him I mean he's a complete criminal and sadist and um he's horrible but what was the argument for keeping Saddam Hussein in power was the argument for keeping Gaddafi in power yeah I mean basically sort of utilitarian argument you know from John Stewart Mill like what's going to what's going to cause the least human

63:23suffering or promote the most human happiness and and uh you know I sometimes um I can understand the reasoning behind look the guy's a dictator but we should leave him in place because the alternative is a lot of other innocent people suffering when we remove him and the country collapses this this country is already collapsed so the pro the question is okay we make a tentative peace deal with him we'll leave you in power we won't try to topple you um but let's stop fighting I mean I can I I I could support that yeah personally wow isn't that crazy the the idea of keeping that guy in Power just so less people suffer you keep a brutal murderous dictator in power yeah and we're better off that way yeah well I mean you know the war killed almost half a million people so if you want if you want that to continue like you know yeah that's I mean those are the awful moral choices

64:14um it's very frustrating for people though because they would like to see like the we'd like to see some solution like on the T but that doesn't seem like a solution well it's a solution to the violence right I mean any any peace deal is a solution to the violence so and the first thing that has to happen I think is that the violence stops so that people stop dying um the pursuit of justice is a secondary it's important but it's a secondary matter after that I know you're running out of time here so just I'm good what what brings you what brings you satisfaction when you when you do something like this documentary or or your book tribe I you I really like the um I like the sort of game of ideas right like I like exploring a topic and starting to make sense of it and starting to see connections between things so when I was writing tribe it started when the central thesis of it

65:13sort of occurred to me and all these disperate facts suddenly aligned themselves in an orderly way and I felt like I'd shown a little bit of light onto the world and shown how it worked like that's totally intoxicating to me and likewise when you're making a documentary you suddenly start to see themes and structures in the film in human Affairs and they sort of come out and and and when and when you work on that level it's incredible to me it's like incredibly gratifying and because that means that I've now made sense of something there's a disorderly confusing world and I've manage to organize it in an understandable way and that means other people can understand it and then we can have a conversation about how the world works and how people work and that to me is the point of Journalism it's the point of all intellectual Endeavor and and to be even a small part of it to

66:05me is like incredibly exciting well you nailed it and you you definitely nailed it with this the thing I was talking about how when just beginning the first chapter I had a real urge to get out of the city I had a real urge to like there's this thought like could I live in the woods can I live in a tribal Society it seems I just if it seems like you were outlining like uh almost like a mathematical problem yeah um yeah it it um or chemical maybe even a chemical problem well you know I studied anthropology in college and to and and and my understanding of humans is that we are a social we are social primates that prefer to live in groups of about 50 people in a in a challenging environment that's what human beings are and uh to the extent that we depart from that we we uh lead lives of dissatisfaction and um and frustration and that's how I understand life and how

67:06do you manage that in your own life uh I um I mean I wish I you know I wish I was part of a communal group fighting to survive in the wilderness like I mean I I had some taste of that with the platoon that I was with and that was intoxicating it has downsides obviously and uh you can't can't stay out there forever but um it made me at least understand that the source of my dissatisfaction in life wasn't internal it was it made sense it was a that I was having a healthy reaction to circumstances in society that that humans were not adapted for and even that was enough to make bring a kind of Peace of Mind for me um I also very consciously and deliberately tried to live in places where there is the possibility of of um a sort of close communal neighborhood I live in a very poor uh neighborhood in New York City and which for some of the hassles at least has the sort of Rich fabric of

68:02human connection that you just don't get in wealthy neighborhoods so you do it on purpose oh yeah what what I don't want to you just say where you do you want to say where you live I live in the Lowry Side Manhattan and I mean it's not very very poor but it's you know it's a Domin it's a Dominican neighborhood half half the people in that neighborhood really don't speak English very well so it's you know it's a very it's a very rich or ethnic neighborhood people are quite poor um and I and I know everybody and everyone knows each other by sight and we look God for each other and it's I mean during Hurricane uh hurricane when Hurricane Sandy hit New York I mean a lot of the people that had young children had to leave because there was no light there was no water the power was out right the half of Manhattan was completely dark it was really actually quite dangerous at night in the dark

68:41half of Manhattan and uh where there was no street lights and um so this building it's a tenement building that I live in with my wife and um and a lot of the people left and the they were worried about being robbed and and these are poor people right this is not a wealthy building at all it's quite quite a poor building and so they they they organized a guard shift one of the people one of the women in the building had a machete and they organized guard shs at the front door with a machete and the the young men in the building took turns like two hours at a time guarding the building with a machete whoa yeah and um you know I wasn't associated with the building at that time but boy would that have made me feel good to be part of that like that you know what I mean like that is what human beings that's what they are right it's that right and you didn't see that in a wealthy

69:27neighborhood partly because the wealthy neighborhoods actually had light right it just seems weird to make the choice to live in a community like that because of those factors well my wife lived there and I moved in with her so but but what the re the reason I was happy to move in with her one of the reasons I was happy to move in with her is precisely because it wasn't an affluent neighborhood like the kind I grew up in that to me is just Soul death right I mean it's just I grew up in an affluent suburb and it's just the most boring thing on the planet like it's just deadly to me and and I you know like had I not grown up like that maybe I'd be living in a neighborhood like that I mean I get it right but I did grow up like that and the one thing that I just cannot survive is that kind of complacent affluence like it just kills me it's so funny because that's the one

70:16thing that people try to achieve when they grow up in that sort of poor Community they want to get out and live in that big house with a big yard look at their suicide rates their addiction rates their their depression rates I mean seriously if you go if you look at those uh alcoholism depression suicide in affluent neighborhoods I mean it's astronomical it's brutal boy but try to convince people to abandon that way that's where it's really odd it seems like so counterintuitive to them it's like no no no you're going to live in a safe neighborhood no no no you're going to have a big house you're going to have a nice car and a great job you're going to do great well think about in evolutionary terms terms the impulse towards safety and luxury is a totally healthy one in a situation where nature doesn't offer that very often right right so we're programmed to go for

71:02those things right what we're not prepared for is to go for those things and have it happen all the time ah right you see what I'm saying like this totally healthy instincts of course right but we didn't involve in a world where you could actually achieve that 100% of the time I mean dogs are programmed a lot of dog species are programmed will will will eat until they've eaten so much that that they'll kill themselves eating right it's because there wasn't enough food to like the programming to keep eating as long as their food is great if there's a scarcity of food right right as soon as there's a plentitude of food that becomes maladaptive and the dog dies you know likewise people put fat on very easily because in a harsh environment with not much food you have to be able to put fat on easily or you'll die now with the the reason there's so many obese people is because we have that

71:51impulse to eat and eat and eat and the food there to do it with and we don't have a mechanism for stopping it and so that's why there's so many fat people well it's also sugar that's a big course absolutely but our taste for sugar and for fat is programmed by Evolution right because there wasn't much of those things so now you can have as much as you want and suddenly people weigh 350 pounds right I mean it's it's it's evolutionary programming run a muck in a world where there's too much of something that was is very good but was very scarce you highlight some really profound issues with culture in your book but I I would wonder if how many people come up to you after they've read it and go what do I do like you're right you're right but what do I do I mean here I am I'm this guy I have this house I have a mortgage I have kids I have a job that's good and I don't want to

72:40leave it but what do I do CU you're right I'm miserable what do you what do I do like what do you tell those people um I I mean you know there really a question of it's a question if you can't have it all and and I mean what I would say to them is um sell your house like move into sell your car if you can move into a community where you have to be inter reliant with the people around you and you have to interact with them every day like that is what makes people feel good and it's but the thing is people are understandably not willing to give up the pleasures of an affluent life in order to have social connection I mean I get it right but but you really can't have both very successfully it's extremely hard to yeah I have a buddy of mine who lived in Venice in a real nice tight-knit community they had this culde saac and everybody lived in the everyone everyone knew everybody I live in a

73:29culde saac i they're great and he started doing well and the first thing he did he moved out and he got this really nice house and this big yard he hates it and he's miserable when we talk about it he goes I hate it he goes I don't know my neighbors he goes I have this big yard I just sit stare at it and go back inside my house he goes I used to know everyone on the Block I knew everyone in the community that's right well that that guy is I mean that lifestyle is correlated with higher depression and suicide rate I mean he's literally at a statistical risk uh increased statistical risk of suicide and depression because of that change wow so you regardless of how much money you would make you would always move into a neighborhood where people are relying upon each other and stay tight to each other oh yeah I'm not yeah absolutely wow I mean it's not even a

74:16yeah it's no way like it's not even a choice yeah I mean I mean I just get instantly depressed in affluent neighborhoods wow that's so crazy I I crash I mean hard do you accumulate any material possessions or are you one of those dudes who has like a notebook and a couple pairs of shoes no you know I mean minimally but yeah I mean we live in a very small apartment so there's not room for much but um uh and you're happy with that oh yeah yeah I mean listen the less you have the happier you are at the end of the day like you can probably make that as a empirically true statement empirically true really and and I'm not listen I'm not talking about poverty lack of food lack of resources I mean I'm I'm obviously not talking about that I'm talking about material possessions Right Stuff cars and yeah boats and I always feel like once you get a boat you're probably fall

75:05falling apart you know it's like you know what I mean like dude's unless you're a fisherman you know you're going out there and getting a boat it's like what you just you know what are you doing well you know it's interesting like that kind of material those kind of material possessions also they I mean again Evolution right like particularly for males in the society if you control resources you you have a reproductive advantage over males that don't control resources and you know girls will like you better right so when you're an 18-year-old boy the instinct to get a car to get a boat maybe one day to get a private air you know what a private airplane whatever that instinct has huge evolutionary Advantage because it gives you access to women right not all women but enough so it's it's a great strategy for meeting girls right right right the problem is that once you're sort of further on

75:56in your life and you have children you have a family if you don't have a community and what you have instead is a huge lawn an overpowered boat and a ridiculously expensive car you have you have taken things that were that were that were a definite reproductive Advantage at 18 and you have drag them into midlife where instead of uh making you feel good they will depress you in my opinion like that's that's what happens to those guys so it's not that those things are a stupid idea at an earlier point in your life but definitely when you're 50 years old again I'm sure like you could cor if you did the proper study you could you could make a correlation between um those kinds of material possession and alcohol abuse depression suicide all that stuff I wonder if that's the case with like rers and people that grow up in these poor black communities that go on to have insane material we I've

76:55always been fascinated by the uh ridiculous hip-hop culture of just giant houses and 50 cars and throwing money up into the air and just this celebration of excess coming from a place of nothing and having this deep desire to to achieve all those things that seemed unattainable look I mean I think athletes have the same problem too you know and particularly I mean they have the fraternity of their team uh until they retire and apparently retired athletes professional athletes are at real risk of of depression yeah um and uh I mean listen I met a young woman who had survived cancer and she said to me rather sheepishly she said you know when I had when I was sick she was on a Cancer Ward and she knew all the other cancer sufferers surv sufferers on the ward and her family and her basically her tribe rallied around her she didn't know if she was going to

77:42survive she was going there going chemo and all that awful awful stuff and she looked at me S really sheepishly and said that and I survived and now I miss being sick she missed the community of of of cancer sufferers on that Ward and in her own community that rallied around her she she was lonely soldiers are missing war and cancer survivors are missing cancer like something's missing yeah so well there's a struggle that's missing for sure you know in my own life um I'm I'm a very addictive person I have an addictive personality and I've found uh a lot of happiness in uh martial arts and one of the things about martial arts is particularly in cuz it's one of the rare martial arts you could practice going 100% and not really hurt each other too much cuz you're not you're not hitting each other right you're just choking each other and tapping each other out and stuff but

78:36there's there's a camaraderie and a bond between people that choke each other all the time that you just don't see with other men or I don't see well yeah listen I hear you man I I mean I started when I when my marriage started falling apart I started boxing right and I just needed something I'd always been a pretty intense athlete when I was young then I was s of smoked cigarettes and drank for a while and then suddenly my life's in crisis at 50 and I started going to a boxing gym Mendes boxing in New York city so at 50 you learn how to box yeah and i' always had a pretty intense relationship with my body as an athlete right so I wasn't starting from zero I've always been in really good shape um and but I I'd never boxed before never done anything like that and what I loved about Mendes it's an old gym in New York and it's like Lon it's in Manhattan and uh what I loved about

79:23it is that that there were some very tough kids from the outer Burrows right there was like suits that would come in from Wall Street at lunchtime to box there was women there was all kinds of people wealthy people poor people black white whatever was every everyone's in there right what I loved about it is that no one no one brought their street identity into the into the gym right you were it's just like a platoon in combat you were you were judged in there not for whether you're young and black and poor or wealthy and affluent and white or whatever but how you act in the gym and there is no Prejudice that I can see against the young black kids that are in there but there's also no prejudice against the wealthy white guys as long as you leave it at the street you're whoever you are in that space and you get all the respect you want if you act well and that is the Deep egalitarianism

80:11of a tribal Society you're judged by how you act and that's it that's the same thing with jiu-jitsu schools you're judged by your effort yeah and how well you can perform on the mats right and listen I'm a middle a I'm a middle-aged guy right I mean I'm never going to win a champ I'm never I mean what am I going to do professionally with boxing it's not happening but I work out really really hard I'm not afraid to get hit like and I have all the I mean everyone in the gym knows me and I have all the respect I could ever want and through that struggle also you achieve some feeling of Peace because you're strug I mean it's a brutal struggle boxing for people who've never tried it it's unbelievably exhausting I I I I mean I thought a 412 mile was the hardest thing I could imagine I I had no idea what I 1 hour session like a really intense 1 hour training session was like much less

80:58sparring Jesus yeah not much left getting hit in the liver yeah yeah yeah I just I mean annihilating and and um but I was in a lot of psychic pain and I needed it yeah I really feel like um especially physical struggle I mean there's a lot of people that are averse to exercise and like I can't stress it enough I think the body needs physical struggle I think if you don't I think there's an overflow of energy and stress that's unmanaged and it it manifests itself in a very physical way there was a there was a study that I read of um I mean there are a few Hunter gather societies that are still in existence and the average amount of physical activity in subsistence level Hunter gather societies which of course is our evolutionary past I mean that's what we are designed to to do um is something like two hours of hard walking per day like on average men and women moved like

81:53vigorously for 2 hours a day usually walking quickly right that's what our our bodies are designed for and it's what if we do that we're that we're tuned up at that level right where're our mind feels good our bodies feel good and if you don't do that I mean you can lay around all day but it will not you will you will experience a def a psychological deficit and a physical deficit yeah I think that I mean there's no way to make people do it but I think if you could give people advice that would be one of the big ones and you know in Western Society the older you get the more money you tend to have and the Le more sedentary you are and there's a corresponding decline in testosterone levels in males right what they found in these very mobile physical societies is that testosterone levels in males really didn't decline until the 70s 70s the 70s I mean it declined

82:46slowly but it didn't go off a cliff like it does in our society at 35 or whatever it is like it was a gradual decline and if there was a cliff it was in the mid s and that's because I mean the theory was that it was because that constant intense physical activity testosterone allows for it but that activity actually keeps those levels High I it's a symbiotic relationship no it completely makes sense I mean one of the things that they prescribe to middle-aged men is Sprints you know run up hills like uh carry heavy things do squats do things that stimulate your entire body right yeah or boxing yeah or boxing yeah all those things listen man uh I've taken up enough of your time and I really appreciate it and uh I'm really enjoying your book and I'm looking forward to your documentary and it's hell on Earth and it's available uh this Sunday what time is it does it say up there what

83:35time it is 11 oh June 11th 9 Eastern 8 Central and uh I've I've enjoyed your work over the years man so it was a real pleasure to sit down and talk to you thank you I really enjoyed this conversation I it was really really nice great conversation all right man thank you very much apprciate my pleasure that's it folks see you you fny spot other