Will Storr Part 2 | Nigel Farage, Gordon Ramsay Crying, and Joe Rogan vs Steven Barlett

14:58Steven Bartlett:situation that they're trying to solve and you know talk about the nuance and talk about the challenges and talk about what might work and what might not work without completely crucifying them

15:08Joe Rogan:yeah i agree i actually think like yeah i'm a tory and so on but it's like kia starmer i have quite a lot of respect for in the sense of came from really quite a working class background like i've had a mum who was ill from when he was quite young actually far younger than i realized it's like he's got to the top of two professions in like law and politics like that does actually yes you know that's like it's it's when we had the chat with him and so on i asked him what he thought

15:34Will Storr:his kids would do i know he's quite private about his kids but they're 12 and 17 so i thought it's interesting that because they're going to be like five and ten years before they kind of go into the workforce generally so it'd be interesting to see how he followed it and he he said well my all my 17 year old has said to me is that he doesn't want to do politics and he doesn't want to do law okay and we click this up and put it out on social media and oh my gosh the comments

15:58Joe Rogan:and there's kind of like vitriol about why why would he want to follow you and whatever yeah he's does been prime minister and sort of like you can say he's not doing a good job and all that like but like the the sort of the vitriol and so on was just quite like gosh it's like people are

16:16Jimmy:really angry yeah that that that's right it's um and i think social media doesn't help yeah you

16:22Joe Rogan:know it's definitely and it's sort of it becomes that kind of status what are your kind of like yeah we talk about the future on this podcast a lot what are your kind of like predictions for the future of status because it's always going to matter yeah and we talked about generations wanting to define that and redefine it as well perhaps a better way of asking this actually is how does you have this line in the book about status and what matters to you changing post the

16:55Will Storr:age of 40 how has it changed for you post the age of 40 that's an interesting question i i i think

17:06Steven Bartlett:it's a bit different for me because i don't have children i think one of the things that that the the way status changes in middle ages that you become a parent or yeah pre-middle-age and and i think so you start playing status games for your children quite a lot like you the status

17:20Jimmy:of your child becomes your you know weird because your status and yes it becomes this kind of like slight obsession um so so so there's that i i think it's stressful like like um you know i turned 50 last year and i didn't enjoy it one bit like like like especially like even things like i've never been a vain person in terms of my appearance but like but but i was so surprised

17:42Steven Bartlett:um just the extent to which looking in the mirror and seeing an old person but looking back at me it really upset me and it is about mortality and all that stuff but it's also about status like you just yeah you don't want to walk through the world you know like i'm always watching television and then somebody in their 50s um comes up i said to my office am i do

17:59Jimmy:do I look that old?" She's like, you do, but she's happy, you know, you do, but you know, you become a bit obsessed with it because it's hard to take. So, you know, yeah, there is that. So I think it is hard as you get older. It's, you know, in some ways,

18:18Steven Bartlett:because you've had a lifetime to build up some kind of expertise, hopefully, you know, that kind of works for you.

18:25Jimmy:But then I think there are lots of ways in which you see your status decline in middle age. And I think one of the ways that's gendered

18:32Steven Bartlett:is I think that competence is really important for men, especially not that it's not important for women, but I think men see their work and the idea of being a provider as part of their core part of their identity. And that's why you see such a huge I mean, the most vulnerable group to suicide is middle aged men. And a lot of that when you look at the literature is about I feel useless. they feel overtaken especially men who are divorced and they feel like they're not looking after their children you know able to look after their children anymore um so so i think that that can be really hard in middle ages that you feel a decline of your competence in lots of ways and

19:10Jimmy:you're you know your physical fit you don't feel as physically fit yeah so so so so i mean it's

19:15Joe Rogan:hard it's hard as you go a quick thanks to octopus energy for supporting this episode now a lot of people know about octopus for their home energy products i have recommended people switched to them for years but what you might not know is that they are now rolling out more products across home and businesses from solar panels ev chargers heat pumps so if you're thinking of upgrading your home or business and you are a jimmy's jobs listener you can ping jimmy at octopus.energy and get the very latest deals and insights and if you're already on the journey with octopus leave us a comment or a message i'd love to hear how it's going with their wider products all right back to the episode are there things that sort of matter more as you get older that

19:57Will Storr:well i might not be aware of i'm about to hit 40 this year basically let's get to the crooks of it

20:02Jimmy:well i mean i mean you know you know what they say is that is that is that as you get uh maybe

20:09Steven Bartlett:not old enough yet but then you you move into more of a kind of uh teachy you know looking out for the next generation phase of your life the kind of grandfather grandmother phase where you're kind of sharing what you've learned, your knowledge with the younger generation. Yeah. I don't feel like I'm there yet. Like, fuck them. Definitely.

20:29Joe Rogan:One of the things in the book that you didn't massively kind of like expand on that I wanted to ask about was the two predictors of professional success in terms of traits are self-control and consciousness. Why are they so important for professional success?

20:47Jimmy:So self-control and conscientiousness. So self-control is about controlling your emotions. And so that's a really big one.

20:56Steven Bartlett:And actually, I think that's why I struggled to work in offices quite a bit. I used to work at a magazine called Arena as a feature editor. And I remember I had to sit me down once and say to me, you've got to take the emotion out of it. When you're talking to people, just take the emotion out of it. I remember thinking, oh, God, you know, but I think he was right. really it stuck with me because it was right i was just you know i used to get you know yeah quite upset if things were going wrong and it's not good so so i i think i i think that ability to control your emotion and even find that in with children the more the more children are able to resist you know going for the sweets when they're told not to the more successful they'll end up being in their life so so there's a way in which we're always battling our emotions and and some of our emotions wants to do impulsive kind of me first things rather than selfless wiser karma can more considered things so the better able you are to control your emotions the the better you're able to work as a cooperative partner and a successful employee and conscientiousness is a personality trait so conscientiousness is about um order discipline um you know turning up on time thinking about other people in that kind of organizational way so that's partly genetic i I mean, you know, that's sort of roughly about 50 % genes.

22:14Jimmy:So a lot of it, we can't really choose how conscientious we are. But we do kind of tend to get more conscientious as we get older. So those two things. And that's partly why it's a lot of this kind of idea of meritocracy. I mean, meritocracy is, I agree, it should be the great goal. A pure meritocracy is where we ought to be going. But it's never going to be fair because there's always going to be a huge genetic component

22:37Steven Bartlett:into how successful people are able to become. Genes aren't fate, but they do set limits. There's a certain, we're going to have a certain IQ, we're going to have a certain level of conscientiousness which is really important. Extroversion tends to do well in groups. People like happy, smiley people in the office and not miserable gits. A lower agreeableness, perhaps paradoxically, is that people who are low in agreeableness do well in the corporate world because they're ambitious yeah and they they don't want to get on with everybody particularly but they want to succeed so so lower agreeableness kind of correlates with with with that kind of steve jobs kind of intensity to sit to actually win so so so there are all these factors going on which which which are quite powerful in determining how successful you're going to wind up being i

23:31Will Storr:wrote a substat last year when i realized it was 20 years since i got my a levels which was the sort of like elderly brother younger uncle advice to like if i was in the early stages of my career this is what i'd sort of be thinking about and with it being 20 years i thought this is the last year i can really get away with like uh killing myself this and like but one of the things i put on it was actually like smile more like i was like it's the amount of interviews that we do with people with young people whatever we just sit there kind of like you know sort of just yeah i'm

24:01Joe Rogan:just like if you just smile more it makes a massive difference and it is something that can be learned i think a lot of this stuff like i think they're kind of like you know there's there's this is a

24:10Will Storr:bit of a hero element in the story that we tell people is that they are naturally have charisma or they are naturally gifted at this and we sort of put them on this pedestal that they you know they're just there's an innate ability that we can never quite understand whereas actually that is almost never true it is almost always learned to a degree and certainly practice that considerable amounts.

24:34Jimmy:Well that's right and I think one of the things that we're about in the status game is that idea of status. It's this resource that we value more than gold. People love to feel good and it's free. We have unlimited reserves of it. I mean there's a caveat that

24:51Steven Bartlett:we've got good bullshit detectors. If people are kind of being sycophantic towards us we can tell quite quickly and it gets annoying.

24:58Jimmy:Chat GPT.

25:00Steven Bartlett:Exactly. Chat GPT.

25:01Jimmy:Exactly. but but but but but that's but but it's but it's such a kind of life hack if you know if yeah because it's very often we meet people and think oh they were a nice person or they did a really good job with that or you fit you think good things about them but you don't communicate those things and actually if you do communicate those things it's going to make their day it's going to get really happy and also they're going to want to work with you again because like oh you know so so it's this kind of you know understanding status and and it's and its value but also it's it's kind of it's so good for you to be aware of the power of sharing that status with people much more than you're doing already you know you know it's it's um it makes you feel good it makes them feel good

25:41Joe Rogan:it's just this huge win being yeah easy to deal with and so i always think about in terms of like try to spread praise as well if you're getting it like share it with the team and so on one of the

25:50Will Storr:interesting things actually about nigel farage that i heard the other day like about part of the reason he's always got so much coverage on the bbc and places is that he always answers his

26:00Joe Rogan:phone to the producers he's easy to book he turns up on time yes he's got a quote and all that kind of stuff but like just the ease of you know booking him is you know might be a bit more difficult now with where he is and so on but like you know just makes a massive difference being

26:14Jimmy:easy to deal with yeah that when i found that when i when i got my first editor's job at a magazine it was when arena again you know i had all these writers that i wanted to work with

26:24Steven Bartlett:um and a lot of them i you know they were the best writers but a lot of them um

26:31Jimmy:they were just so hard to deal with they were they were so you know they were late they were arrogant they were rude they wouldn't be edited and so so so i learned very quickly then that it's not really that of course being good at your job is really important yeah what's more important

26:46Steven Bartlett:is actually do you know being easy to work with so then when i went freelance my goal always was never complain about anything you know never push back unless it's really important get your

26:57Jimmy:commission file your copy and that's it and and and and it really worked i mean there's one there was one guy who um who you will have heard of very famous restaurant critic still working today who i

27:08Steven Bartlett:i approached to work at the um arena to do to write a piece for us you know i sent a lovely

27:13Jimmy:email big fans and he's he replied back to me with just three pound signs and i just and i just thought i just ignored it i just just thought you know what a cock you know and 25 years later i still think when i see him what a cock you know so so so it's that it's it's that it's like just don't be the three pound signs guy you know how do you structure your day like one of the things

27:39Will Storr:I was thankful for in the pandemic was having kids because it really bookended my day because I'm you know a bit of a workaholic I've always loved work etc and I just think gosh in the pandemic I could totally see where I would have ended up working 16 18 hours a day had I not had that kind of like thing with the kids of where you kind of had to get them up and put them down

28:02Joe Rogan:kind of bookending it how do you do that as somebody who clearly thinks a lot about the world as well i mean you're in a way you're almost always working right you're always looking at things and like how do you sort of well to the extent that a lot of writing is actually thinking

28:15Steven Bartlett:you know when you're actually physically writing all you're doing is writing down the stuff that you've been thinking yeah so so it's very hard to shut off a lot especially when i'm actually writing a book it's very hard to get any sleep sometimes i wake up at four in the morning thinking about the thing and then you know um um i mean literally i i think i was up yesterday morning at four o 'clock thinking about this chapter that i'm working on at the moment

28:34Jimmy:so it is very hard to switch off for sure

28:40Joe Rogan:how have you learnt to do it? is there any sort of tricks? I think it's one of those things you get older I mean I haven't really

28:47Jimmy:I mean that's the thing I don't have children so I don't really I'm not really bothered about shutting off I'm happy for it to happen because I enjoy it

28:55Steven Bartlett:I enjoy thinking about the ideas and if it's a problem and it's caused me stress I'm motivated to fix it so I don't feel stressed anymore

29:03Jimmy:like until the chapter's fixed i can't really relax so so so yeah i don't really i don't really shut off and and part of what i do is for my kind of work is that i um i go away for sort of three

29:17Steven Bartlett:three or four week trips to like stay at a nice hotel with a whole ton of books and i spend the just the entire time working and thinking with no days off um and walking going on long walks and And that's kind of how my books come together really. It's very intense. These sort of super intense sessions on my own.

29:36Will Storr:But also walking or doing something else I think is quite an interesting activity.

29:40Joe Rogan:Like if you sit down to think. It's quite hard. No, that doesn't work.

29:44Steven Bartlett:No, you have to, yeah, walking is, that's how I do it. Yeah, just really long walks. Yeah. Because you kind of, yeah, it just bubbles up. You can't be, it's not a top down thing. It's a bottom up thing. You fill your brain with information. and then it all mixes up and starts to bubble up into something new.

30:03Will Storr:How do you think AI is going to change your job, your work? Yeah.

30:09Steven Bartlett:Well, I think it's going to be really hard, and I'm glad in a way that I'm in my 50s now because I think at the moment AI couldn't write one of my books, but I think in a few years' time it probably will because it's just going to get better and better and better and better, isn't it? As far as I can tell, AI's read all of the internet, but it's not that read that many books you know so so when you're asking it questions it's always just looking at some often quite dodgy website so it's so but but i think it's it's obviously going to be transformative it's it's definitely going to impact my business in a in a in a very um important way i think um the the the kind of the you know that going back to charlie xcx and pink panther s unfortunately the kind of the brand of the writer is going to become ever more important because people are going to be wanting to buy the books by this particular person who has this particular worldview this particular tone of voice um so i think that's going to be really important you you know it's that you know what what what an individual human can bring is that is that is that very pure individual perspective i mean you know people are people are weird people are odd and strange everybody is you know i don't think there's really such a thing as a boring person when you really you know get past in their outsides and and i think that writers are going to have to um really pursue what makes them unique and individual because ai will always be the sum of the mass you know it's going to be the voice of the average um so and you want to be getting away from that as a as a creator as much as possible so hopefully it incentivizes originality incentivizes kind of you know you uniqueness I think that one of the realities is that it's going to

31:55Steven Bartlett:I think in fiction it's going to be quite hard like in the sense that inevitably authors and screenwriters are going to be using it to kind of help them

32:06Jimmy:plot and all that kind of thing but hopefully I always remember Steve Jobs used to talk about the idea of the bicycle of the mind he wanted he wanted computers to be the bicycle of the mind which is just too much just to get

32:18Steven Bartlett:humans what humans do already and just make it much better and i think the internet didn't really do that but i think ai probably will it's going to take it's going to add 30 to the you know if it's used properly and responsibly and ethically it'll add 30 to the capability of a very good writer you know so i already use it as a kind of editorial assistant you know like um uh so so it's so it's very useful for that and it's actually quite good at saying this isn't very good this isn't very good this isn't very good yeah yeah like when you ask it's cool yeah yeah yeah in terms of in terms of you know like one of my one of my things i'm always fighting is that i'm very much in the ideas and the theory and the model and some of my writing can get a bit boring sometimes because it's like it's like i'm just obsessed with the model yeah and so it's asking it is this

33:06Jimmy:boring you know uh you know so so so you know i think using it as an editor um you know it's useful i'm finding it useful because because yeah i have an editor at my project company but they take two weeks to get back to me with a christian because they've got so much work to do whereas whereas whereas ai can get back to you straight away i mean the problem is you can't quite trust it because because i i think the um obviously as everybody knows the problem with ai is that is

33:29Steven Bartlett:that you can't trust it that it wants to please you and it's trying it's always trying to second guess what you want yeah but even to the extent where where you tell it what you want and it

33:36Jimmy:repeats back to you what you want but in different words that's kind of helpful because it gets you thinking about it in a slightly different way yeah so so yeah i think there are ways that you can use it um that kind of that are really helpful in a similar way that you would use a human editor you

33:50Joe Rogan:know yeah but you also have this in the science of um storytelling as well you have the idea of the sort of the five acts

33:58Will Storr:and that being actually like almost like every story in history kind of like plays out into those sort of things and now since hearing that as well I've kind of like seen it everywhere and seen it with our politicians and business as well like all the sort of like you know it being settled at the beginning then competence kind of being questioned changed the hero coming back

34:24Joe Rogan:yeah like in a new like it's so yeah do you think there's any way that ai might impact that sort of

34:31Jimmy:way of telling stories i don't think so because it's it's so it's so basic the kind of five acts

34:38Steven Bartlett:is you know like it's the the kind of pattern of story where you begin with a flawed character something causes them to kind of understand their flaw and want to change and they change and then that their commitment to change is tested and then they finally decide like it's such a basic it's basically the the pattern of human learning you know it's how we learn it's how we change so so so i i i don't think it's gonna it's gonna really interrupt that that's been how we tell stories for you know for thousands of years so so so i don't i don't think it it needs to like it's such a it's such a you know it's a pattern but but but it's like dna you can get so much variety out of that very basic pattern that it'll keep on working.

35:23Steven Bartlett:I think what is changing is people's attention span. People are much more story hungry. They want to be entertained much more quickly. But I think that's been going on for hundreds of years. I mean, if you read Charles Dickens now, it seems really slow. But that used to be mass market entertainment. So I think that's been going on for a long time.

35:42Joe Rogan:My kids watch Thomas Stank engine. They're like, nothing's happened. even that's too slow exactly and you do you do courses as well like this is a business podcast right so i feel like

35:55Will Storr:we can we can justifiably sort of like plug into talk about this right but but you you do courses on it and like you were sort of well ahead of that curve as well in terms of it like i think

36:06Joe Rogan:one of the big things that more people will do and influencers are doing etc not i'm calling you an influencer but like but is is they are building out these online courses as well right yeah when

36:18Jimmy:was when did you start doing it oh i mean probably about 15 years ago i started but they started the

36:23Steven Bartlett:guardian the guardian used to do um master classes they don't anymore so i started off at the the guardian yeah so that that's where um the science stories became it was a course i taught at the guardian and then and i thought maybe maybe i can do a book of book of the course

36:39Joe Rogan:so that's where that started yeah but you also but you now do proper courses yeah people could

36:45Steven Bartlett:do yeah exactly so i i go into businesses and and do and do courses and that kind of thing yeah

36:52Joe Rogan:yeah what in terms of how to tell us because i think that's going to become like bigger and bigger i mean you see it in court comms land right like these more corporate communication

37:01Will Storr:agencies they're all strategic non-limat tactical i've noticed um but there's more and more of them

37:07Jimmy:yeah well my my latest book is called a story is a deal and it's about how to use the science of

37:12Steven Bartlett:storytelling to lead motivate and persuade so so so that's that that's that that's the that's the most recent book i've done and that's really looking at how um how we use storytelling to

37:23Will Storr:yeah to lead to lead motivate and persuade you know to hear um one of the striking stories in the book if you could give us a summary of this i think it'd be quite interesting is how like Marco Pierre White just changed the British food industry via status?

37:41Jimmy:Well, that's really interesting. So one of the fundamental way that status games work

37:48Steven Bartlett:in the kind of human tribal sense is that somebody will exude competence, will show competence, and then everybody will start paying attention to that person and then start copying them and mimicking them and wanting to be like them. And then so that so that so that kind of the whole kind of value of the tribe would increase. So that's how it kind of works. And you can see that working with with with Marco that he that he he, you know, came. He basically was this incredible kind of rock star chef. He was the youngest, I believe, the youngest chef in the world to earn three Michelin stars. And this was in the era when Britain still I mean, we still do joke about British food.

38:26Steven Bartlett:But really, you know, the British food scene was, you know, not great back when Marco came, you know, came up. And then there was a TV show with him, you know, incredibly handsome, kind of dangerous, smoking a cigarette with his big cleaver. But so, yeah, he had this TV show.

38:50Jimmy:So suddenly being a chef was cool and sexy.

38:53Steven Bartlett:and not just in Britain, even Anthony Bourdain said, you know, in the world of chefs, there's pre-Marco and there's post-Marco. He had this book, White Heat, which was, you know, mostly black and white photos of him looking like a rock god, you know, cutting heads off, you know, ducks or whatever. He said that kind of changed everything for chefs because it's a status thing. It kind of reframed what chefing was. It was the beginning of chefing as an exciting, you know you know quite masculine dangerous shouty you know it was it was exciting it was

39:24Jimmy:like it became sort of like punk rock um but but importantly you know marco it spread you know

39:30Steven Bartlett:marco hired gordon ramsey and then gordon you know gordon ramsey famously trained under marco and he famously made gordon ramsey cry he remains the only human being as far as i'm aware

39:42Gordon Ramsay:who's ever made gordon ramsey cry no i didn't make gordon ramsey cry he made himself cry

39:49Steven Bartlett:that was his choice to cry um do you know about that story yeah he made gordon ramsay cry and there's it's one of my favorite clips ever is that somebody asked marco about the time he made you've got to watch this clip it's so good somebody asked marco about the time he made gordon ramsay cry and marco goes i didn't make gordon cry gordon chose to cry someone like that it's very funny he made himself cry it was his choice to cry yeah so so that that was it was

40:16Joe Rogan:this is absolute um and do you think that's why gordon ramsay now tries and does it on everyone

40:21Jimmy:else in terms of yeah that's what marco said i mean marco there's a quote in the book where marco said gordon was basically a mini marco he wanted to do understand you know he basically worked at harvey's his restaurant sucked up everything he knew about him but also became him you know he copied his mannerisms um you know copied his his ways of leading and then of course marco trained an entire gen the current entire generation of you know claire smith angela hart and Jason Atherton. I mean, you know, the list goes on and on and on. So you see this kind of tree with Marco at the top and then Gordon and then, I'm probably being unfair because I think Marco trained more influenceable than Gordon, but Gordon was obviously the big one.

40:56Jimmy:And then underneath Gordon, he's created this whole generation of really incredibly talented chefs. And this kind of transforms the British food scene because as soon as Marco becomes sexy and famous, he becomes this kind of media hot property. And then suddenly chefing is really interesting. and the TV companies want to make TV shows about chefs. And then you get, I mean, Marco would not want to take responsibility for this, but you get Jamie Oliver. And Jamie Oliver became this big thing in the 90s because suddenly cooking was cool and cooking was a bit like rock and roll, you know. But that has an effect, you know, that has an impact.

41:31Jimmy:And so you see, you know, the idea of fine dining of good quality food is now something to do with status and it's a high status thing. And that changes the culture. and it did change the culture. So I think a lot of that, but of course there were successful chefs in Britain before, you know, Marco, there were the Rue brothers and there was the Italian restaurant in Chelsea, I always forget what it's called,

41:57Steven Bartlett:the River Cafe. But none of them were really unbelievably cool like Marco was. And it's that coolness, it's that high status kind of thing. It's that thing that people want to copy. I want to be like that. That's what makes the difference.

42:11Will Storr:It's also that thing, we're so driven by the media as well. Whatever the media is at that time as well. Jamie Oliver, when he started in the beginning of the noughties, having his own TV show, that was quite an innovative thing at the time. That would definitely be a YouTube show now. Even the Top Jaw guys and all the stuff that they do on Instagram as well. It's just interesting how this history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, etc. It's fascinating. Also, you made me think about the masculine thing. It's quite interesting, because I can't remember the statistic now, but it is over a period of like the 90s where it goes from three in ten men doing Christmas Day cooking to like eight in ten men.

42:55Will Storr:Seriously? It's something like, I'm butchering the quotes, pun intended, but it's like, but such a kind of like, you know, status thing, how it's been influenced, et cetera. Right, Sonny, we need to check that quote and put it at the bottom of the YouTube thing because I've probably got it wrong.

43:12Steven Bartlett:But that's really interesting. That shows you how it's changed. Yeah, and it becomes a status thing now, like, you know, cooking. And that is right. I mean, I know loads of guys who are, and they get obsessed with things like barbecue, you know, like if you watch one video on YouTube about barbecuing a brisket, suddenly there's a million. But they're all men and they've all got the, and it's got, they've got the gadgets and they're arguing about what's the best cut of meat and which, and they get, But that's part of, you know, we laugh at men for this and we talk about mansplaining and all this stuff.

43:44Jimmy:But that's part of that male identity, that competence. But, you know, that's how we compete men with each other. That's how we socialize with who knows the most, who's the best. And actually, and we admire, you know, each other for doing something impressive in a way that's quite masculine, you know.

44:00Steven Bartlett:And so it's easy to laugh at it. And it is kind of comical. It is absurd in a way because people get so obsessed. but it but it's also quite telling how when you when you look at these subcultures these status gains which are which are which are often very very much about competence in that kind of nerdy way they're often lean heavy on the men yeah it's definitely well like running

44:23Will Storr:is the other one right yeah it's like this thing about like men after 40 because i get all this on my instagram now of like get interested in like barbecuing yeah running yeah like it's just and And it's like, but it's the ability to kind of get like nerdy about it as well and get more data on your running and so on. And I was thinking about this the other day, like my rugby coach used to sort of like slightly wind me up being like, you know, Lachlan, you're only interested when people are watching, you can't do it like da-da-da-da and like all this. And I don't think I was ever quite true, but he certainly knew it would push my buttons in saying that.

44:55Will Storr:And it was, I was just like running around in the rain the other day. I just had this flashback to it and I thought, well, at least I'll be able to upload my run to Strava afterwards and tell the world about it. And I just wish I could go back and tell him that kind of like, don't worry, we'll find a way to tell everyone about it still.

45:15Joe Rogan:Also, one other story I just wanted you to share that was just so funny and chuckling when I was reading the book was about the first ever social media troll. Oh, yeah, that's right.

45:26Jimmy:yeah so so so this this i found really interesting just because the argument from for me is that is

45:33Steven Bartlett:that social media is a status game you know that that's in the book as you know i talk about there are three main routes to status there's dominance where we're pushing each other around like animals but there's also virtue where we're competing to be who's got the best beliefs and you know who's the nicest kindest most empathetic person and then there's success he's the most competent those are the three things and that and that and that is kind of what we're doing on social media So before social media happened, there were these kind of tech utopianists, you know, a lot of them centered around Wired magazine in the US that predicted that when the internet finally happened, it was going to knock down all the hierarchies and the world was going to become a much more beautiful, like kind of almost communist utopia.

46:13Steven Bartlett:And it's like, that's not going to happen. And it's not going to happen because what happens when you connect large numbers of people together or even small numbers of people together is that they start playing status games. and the way that I kind of showed that in the book as you say is that I looked at the first ever social media network it's called the well the whole earth electronic link which came out of a magazine in the Silicon Valley called the whole earth catalog which was this kind of very influential sort of the early technologists like Steve you can clean Steve Jobs and so they got together something that's basically I read it where you had these individual little forums and people talk about talk about stuff but this is back in the days when you had you had to dial into the internet with like special modems you had to put your phone handset on a thing and it would go you know like it was really what and there's basically about 500 people on the on the on this whole earth electronic link talking to each other um and even then they had um problems but they would they would they would they would they call them flame wars where they just start arguing and bickering with each other about who knew more about this esoteric subject and and there was an individual um on there who um yeah who who became a troll and started attacking them all for being sexist and misogynist and this, that and the other.

47:27Steven Bartlett:And they kind of all conspired to get this person kicked out of the network, cancelled, as it were.

47:34Joe Rogan:Also the bit about pronouns. That's right, yes.

47:38Jimmy:They were even arguing about pronouns. Like this person, I'm not going to misgender them, but they weren't trans.

47:45Steven Bartlett:But there were somebody who said they were beyond gender, they were outside of gender. um uh so but but but of course that caused all the all the usual oh so you what do you order all that stuff that all those jokes about that all this you know about identifies this they were making those back in the 80s with this in this situation so so so the fact that this that it was

48:03Jimmy:all about pronouns and gender it just just adds layers of irony to it so so so so that was going

48:08Steven Bartlett:on in the 80s you know with the with the first ever social media um network um all of the stuff that happens that happened on twitter during the during the during the big years of cancer culture was happening in this 500-strong social media network in the 80s. So that just shows you, you know, unfortunately that's what we're like as animals. You know, we play status games and sometimes they can be amazing things. You know, without status games, we wouldn't have hugely expanded life expectancy and vaccines. We wouldn't have technology, but we also wouldn't have genocide, you know. So status can be, it's not good or bad, It's just who we are.

48:47Steven Bartlett:And sometimes it leads to amazing outcomes and sometimes it leads to terrible outcomes.

48:51Joe Rogan:In my research for this, I realized that you have, you are unique in terms of perhaps having done the big three podcasts that I talk about, which is Modern Wisdom, Diary of a CEO and

49:06Will Storr:Joe Rogan. And I'm always fascinated by which British politician is going to go on Rogan first, who he's going to ask. I think that's, yeah, I don't know who it would be, but that in itself would be an interesting marker.

49:19Joe Rogan:What was it like doing all three of those? Like you've obviously known them and did them quite early on, perhaps before they were sort of like real super megastars, et cetera. Like just what are your kind of reflections on it?

49:32Jimmy:Well, yeah, I mean, they're all good really. You know, I'm obviously very honoured to be asked to be on these podcasts. What can I tell you? I mean, Stephen Bartlett, Diary's CEO, to my shame, I didn't really know who he was. So I was asked to go on this podcast. All I knew was he was off Dragon's Den. I thought, oh, he's off Dragon's Den. That's interesting. But then when I turned up at his studio, I could tell it was his sort of big production. This is a bit weird. And it was just after COVID. I had this massive, like, I had, like, Mag Raga Thatcher hair. I ain't got my hair. It was terrible.

50:03Jimmy:So I looked awful. I always cringe when I see clips of that show. But, like, I was really impressed with him. Like, so he has a team of researchers that read all my books and not just books, but went through to the articles. And so he did a fantastic job of doing the research. But also Stephen himself, like, you know, I've got a background as a journalist, but he was, everyone that's ever interviewed me, he was the one that most felt like I was being interviewed like a professional journalist because he was super intense. he asked follow-up questions and he could tell when you were getting uncomfortable and he'd go in like that and so i was in this kind of in this sort of sitting there thinking oh god but also thinking this guy's really good so so so so like i know that stephen bartler inspires mixed feelings in people but my experience with him i was really impressed with him like i just

50:56Steven Bartlett:thought like i left feeling like i've been in the boxing match and that's how you should feel you know after a really good interview i think is that you should feel a bit like wow he really

51:04Jimmy:not in a negative way, but he really, you know, he wanted to go there. He wanted to push my buttons and stuff respectfully. So he was, you know, really, really impressive. Chris, I didn't meet in person. You know, I love Chris, but I've met him since. But we did the interview on Zoom, so it was great. But you had that kind of distance. And Joe Rogan was just really, just a lovely guy. Like, he was not at all, I think people expect Joe Rogan to be this very bro-y, yeah man thing but he was really um lovely really welcoming was very good because i was nervous you know um you put me at my ease he invited me out that evening um to hang out in his comedy club with him and his friends i said no i was too i don't know i'll do that um it was just too you know just just that would be too stressful but yeah but yeah just he was a really really genuinely lovely guy you're ease out of interest because it must happen when you get to that kind of

52:03Will Storr:level and I think I've even heard Chris Williamson talk about it he's got his own force field around him now when he does get yeah he's just become such a big sort of thing but he seems very down to earth

52:13Joe Rogan:but how do you put you at ease?

52:14Jimmy:I don't know it's that thing where you know I walked into I walked into his space his kind of you know it's on this industrial estate somewhere outside Austin you get driven there you don't really know where it is and it's an unmarked

52:29Steven Bartlett:location you know so you go

52:31Jimmy:in there and it's like oh right now now yeah now i'm in joe rogan world um and um it was initially

52:37Steven Bartlett:a bit intimidating because of these huge men you know just hanging out smoking blunts and he's

52:41Jimmy:thinking oh god you know here's me from tunbridge wells and um but then he walked in and and we just started talking he had a big picture of anthony bourdain and we started checking about anthony bourdain and it was just like a friendly chat and he said okay just come in with me and we sat down and and we were still talking about anthony bourdain he said oh just stop recording and you know you feed off it's like when you're doing um i think it's like when you're doing a speech or around teaching there's that truism which is people don't really remember what you said they remember how you made them feel and i always think that's really true like you know i

53:10Steven Bartlett:i've done teaching where i'm feeling a bit on edge and i'm feeling maybe a bit intimidated by the audience and it never goes well because you're uncomfortable when they feed off that

53:18Jimmy:but then when i'm relaxed it's it always it's the same course but it seems too much better and he was just very relaxed and very and i think there's also the thing that he does so many podcasts he does like two or three a week so for him it's just another day and then so you get that feed that you're all like oh my god it's just another day in the office and then so you you feel oh yeah okay so you you feed a bit of that and i i do think it's that bit where you are you just feed off him you feed off his kind of energy and because he's so relaxed and friendly you you kind of relax yeah much more i i think with with rogan the thing that i wasn't prepared for was that

53:55Steven Bartlett:he doesn't really he's the opposite of stephen bartlett this is the no research he doesn't really know who you are you know so so he he just expects you to sit there and and and and you've got to be entertaining and i and i think that that's hard for just just a distant author yeah so i think i think the most popular joe rogan shows are with these stand-up friends because they're just they're they stand-ups have just got this they're just entertainers they can just talk can be entertaining in a very kind of expert way. And so actually it was Chris that told me that in the comedy community in Austin, there's this idea that you've got to do Rogan three or four times before you really crack it.

54:35Jimmy:So I thought that was really interesting because it's a three and a half hour conversation. Yeah.

54:44Will Storr:Now I'm going to read as a final thing, the passage of the book, the ending, which I thought summed it up so well. But I did also say, you would, I'll hold it that way whilst I'm saying it so the camera can see it, writers, next generation writers,

55:00Joe Rogan:who's on your kind of radar

55:02Will Storr:that's impressing you that people should check out, we should maybe get on the show, etc.

55:07Jimmy:Well, I don't know how on the cutting edge I am with this, but there's a young female writer called Freya India. Are you familiar with it? Oh, good. Everyone has that Freya. yeah Freya India is very interesting writer she's she's I think she's millennial she might be Gen Z but she she's doing some fantastic writing about life for her generation I think she's got a book coming out I think it's called Girls okay so I would get her on yeah yeah she's somebody that I think is really really talented in his game places super right well we can get that invite out

55:43Joe Rogan:to get on that well I just thought I would I would I would sum this up because I think one of the reasons, I mean, I love the book so much because I just agreed with like so much of it, which is always a bit of a dangerous thing.

55:56Will Storr:And I was sitting there getting myself in a bit of a meta kind of like landscape with it all at times about it. But I just thought the summary was so good. I believe that we can all take consultation

56:07Joe Rogan:in that consolation in the knowledge. See, I need glasses and I'm just not admitting it. The point about help is so...

56:15Steven Bartlett:If you've got massive writing on your phone. I like people who don't wear glasses and you look at their phone and they've got massive rotting.

56:19Will Storr:Part of the reason I'm liking audiobooks is I'm finding it quite hard to read. Right, anyway. I believe we can all take consolation in the knowledge that nobody ever gets there. Not the superstars, not the presidents, not the geniuses or the artists we gaze up to at any given time. That promised land is a mirage. in our lowest moments we should remind ourselves of the truth of the dream that life is not a story but a game with no end that means it isn't a final victory we should seek but simple humble progress the never ending pleasure of moving in the right direction nobody wins a status game they're not supposed to the meaning of life is not to win it's to play I just thought it was a brilliant end brilliant book that people really should read and so on so well thanks so much for coming on jimmy's jobs of the future no thanks for having me jimmy i've enjoyed the chat thank you