Why Modern Society Makes Us Depressed - Sebastian Junger

24:14And, you know, the idea in those, just the Hadza in East Africa, for example, you're very well studied peoples. You know, they would just say it's absolutely absurd. Like the idea that you could survive on your own or wouldn't want to. And so in America, there's this myth of individuality, but actually all these people, all these sort of cowboys that think they're like these rugged individuals are enormously independent. on the supply chain and the government that oversees it. So it's a fantasy, right? It's a kind of immature fantasy.

24:43Francis Foster:And what's fascinating to me is that hyper-individualism, which I like aspects of, if I'm honest. I do enjoy the freedom to do what I think is the right thing, within limits, of course, seems to be paired with a hyper-tribalism increasingly when it comes to things like politics. Is there a connection between those two or are they separate issues i i mean you know i'm not a political expert but just as a citizen of this country um one of the things that is odd in both the left and the right i vote mostly democratic okay but i'm enormously frustrated even outraged by the left uh occasionally terrified by the right and very disappointed in them as well so i'm i'm sort of nicely in the middle and i have friends on perfect gas fire show right yeah yeah yeah and i you know i have good friends on both sides right But one of the things that's quite odd is the, particularly on the right wing, the sort of insistence on individuality, but as you say, also on an insistence that conservatives are the tribe that's right about things and the left are the sort of forces of evil and dissolution that have to be fought against.

25:56And so they're both being hyper-individualistic, but also acting collectively as a tribe in ways that I think are kind of frightening. Like January 6th was terrifying, right? The left has their own bullshit, right? I mean, you know, they would never organize January 6th, right? It would never happen. But some of the awful stuff on campus, right, this hyper, hyper-liberal thought where you really, it's dictated to you how you must speak and how you must think about things that are very complicated and nuanced that really no one is in consensus about, but dictating your thoughts, that you only find on the left.

26:38And it's absolute to me. I mean, I grew up in the 60s and 70s where left-wing thought those were the rebels. The conservatives were the, like... Can't say that, can't think this, et cetera. Yeah, the conformists, right? The conservatives, the left-wing were the rebels, right? Oh, I think what you want, blah, blah, blah. It's completely changed. Like the left wing is now dictating your thoughts to you. And I think it's just absolutely horrific.

27:04Konstantin Kisin:Does it worry you when you look at this country through the lens of tribe where you go, we simply can't hold this amount of people together in one coherent tribe? Well, I mean, there's always going to be stresses within a community, right? And there's stresses within the community and then there's outward pressure to keep it together. and when those stresses get to be too much, it can fracture, but there's huge downsides to fracturing, right? Both sides are more vulnerable. So there's a lot of sort of pressure to keep it together, even as you're fighting like cats and dogs, right? Like, I mean, likewise with the marriage or any kind, all kinds of groups are like this, right?

27:43Listen, yeah, this is intense, but we'd both be worse off if we weren't alone, if we weren't with each other. So let's try and keep this together. That's where America's at right now. But what I would say is that you can conceptually say, my strongest identity is as a citizen of this country. I happen to be of Italian origin, or I happen to be female or black, or whatever it is, it doesn't matter, or trans or anything. But first and foremost, I'm an American. And one of the great virtues of this country is that when people come here, what's on offer to them is that you actually don't have to bring with you your tribal identity from your homeland, your country of origin.

28:30You can really become American. You know what? At our best, we're not going to care where you came from or what you are. Just work hard. Don't commit a crime. Be a good citizen. And you're good. Whether you're an Irish immigrant or Somali or your family's been here since the Mayflower, it doesn't matter. It's how you act right now that matters. And that's true in a platoon in combat, by the way. Oh, your dad's in prison, but you're a really good fighter. You're good with us. You're brave and courageous. You're like good looking and rich and you suck in a firefight. I don't want anything to do with you, right?

29:02So there is a little bit of that deal offered in this country, which I think is extraordinary. My father was an immigrant. He came here during World War II, right?

29:10Konstantin Kisin:So, and I think one of the challenges is in this country now and in our country and right the way through the Western civilization as a whole is we talk about tribes, but we're not, we don't really acknowledge that there's now digital tribes. And that's the real danger, isn't it? I think, yeah. I mean, I think that the ability of social media and the algorithms that drive people's opinion towards greater and greater extremes is tremendously dangerous. And we were talking before, you saw my flip phone. I have a flip phone because, frankly, I think smartphones are dangerous. They're dangerous like handguns are dangerous, right?

29:42Just like they're easy to misuse. They're miracles. They're important in some moments like handguns, but they're also very, very dangerous. And so I just want nothing to do with them. So I think that's part of what's been happening in Western society and in the United States recently. But what I would say, I sort of never finished this thought, but you can conceive of a greater identity than your natural political affiliation. You can say, I'm a Democrat, right? But after 9-11, we were attacked and we had to band together. And those differences stopped mattering for a while. And there is a way to do it.

30:17And I'll just, if I could, give you a quick anecdote about someone that did that in the moment he did this thing that was totally extraordinary as an example of that kind of intellectual courage of espousing a national identity. And, you know, it doesn't mean you're without criticism of your country at all, but is do you have a duty to it? What do you have a duty to, right? You have to articulate what your duty to your country is, or you will die an unhappy person right in my opinion so what this guy i was i was outside of a hotel in norfolk virginia and this guy came out he was in a wheelchair he's in sort of very handsome 75 year old guy right and and his right leg ended at the knee and it was swaddling bandages like he had just lost half of his right leg at age 75 and he came out on his own and he tried to get into a car that happened to be in the passenger seat and was locked so i went over to him i was like hey can i help you I was like, no, I just have to wait till my wife gets here.

31:18And I said, it seems pretty complicated what you're dealing with. He was like, well, it takes some getting used to. It'll be all right. And so I tried again. I was like, you seem really brave about it. And he said, there's people in this country missing both their, there's young people in this country missing both their legs. This was during the war on terror. He said, there's young people in this country missing both their legs. Don't tell me I'm brave. That's someone who's not thinking about himself. And so there are small, symbolic, but powerful ways to act as part of this amazing country, any amazing country.

31:59You have to vote. You live in a democracy. You're one of the few and the privileged in history to live in a democracy where you have power over your rulers through rule of law and elections. So don't stay home, right? Don't squander that. Millions of people have died trying to achieve the rights that you have, right? So vote. You have to serve on jury duty. Jury duty is what separates us from authoritarianism. No one person with a jury system, no one person can decide the fate of another person. Only a jury of your peers. No sheriff, no president, no general, no nothing. Only a jury of your peers.

32:36And if you're accused of a crime and you don't serve on jury duties, you'll still get a jury. Right. But you won't deserve one. But you still get one. So serve on jury duty. And finally, give blood. We cannot manufacture blood. We all need it to live. There are fathers. There are daughters, wives, grandparents, like who are dying, who will die if there isn't blood to put into their veins at a crucial moment. I needed 10 units to stay alive, right? We cannot manufacture it, and it makes you part of this human race. The wonderful thing about blood, one of the many wonderful things, first of all, when you donate blood, your body replaces it within a week or two, so it's a total free lunch, right?

33:16And it doesn't care who you are or what you are. Rich, poor, white, black, gay, straight, does not matter. We all need blood, and when we get wounded, blood comes out of us. We're all the same in that way, and it's really quite a profound thing to do, and I do it regularly.

33:31Konstantin Kisin:And we're talking about the rights. And I think a lot of what we're talking about as well is being grounded in a reality. Accepting that there are things that are greater than you. And one of the ways that we can do that in society is through sport. And that's where the tribe phenomenon gets activated again. And it's fascinating to see. And how much overlap is there between sports and the military and so on? I don't know. I mean, I'm guessing that a lot of the, I mean, I was in a unit that was all male. So I'm going to say the boys, the guys, because that was my reality. But I think probably most of them were either involved in sports, in a lot of bar fights, or both.

34:19Bar fights are kind of a sport, right? So they were those guys, right? I mean, we all know those guys, right? We avoided them in the playground because they were tough looking guys. That's the military, right? They're amazing kids. But sports is a reenactment, a practice for combat. It's all, I mean, this isn't my idea. This is well-established. It all trains people for combat. And a lot of child's play trains them for hunting. I mean, the hide-and-seek and all that stuff. Very, very clearly, sports are a way of grooming children to step into adult roles of hunting and warfare. and playing house, you know, and kids play house too.

35:01You know, they're all in training, right, for the things that they'll be doing as adults. But sports, I know I read that with young women who are part of a team, soccer team, lacrosse team, longitudinal studies have shown that they do better in their lives, more stable marriages, professionally they do better, emotionally, psychologically they do better. That experience somehow changes young women in ways that are very, very positive, and I think young men as well.

35:30Konstantin Kisin:And it's also the element of ritual within sport that is super important, and that you also see within the military as well. And I think one of the problems of our society is now that a lot of us are atheists and we have a secular society, we've forgotten the importance of ritual. Yeah. I mean, look, I'm an atheist, and I'm not in the military, and I don't play team sport, and I'm aching for ritual, right? I mean, I would love a ritual. I mean, I don't believe in God, but the experience of church for me is quite pleasant. And sometimes I'll go to church just because it feels good. And you don't need to believe in God to enjoy church, particularly if there's music there and a really good speaker, a really good minister.

36:08And you can be a total stone-cold atheist and really enjoy that hour quite a lot because it's about community. It's about connecting laterally, not to God, for some it is, I suppose. But you don't even need that. It makes everyone the same. In a church, everyone's the same. We're all the same before God or before each other. And that's like a super moving thing to experience.

36:29Francis Foster:I mean, one of my favorite quotes is, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. Do you think that the fact that we've been able to solve so many of our basic need, material problems, is one of the reasons that we're actually struggling for the spiritual side of things, meaning and purpose and so on? Yeah. I mean, the word spiritual is sort of a tricky one. You know what I mean. Yeah. I take your point, though. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's adaptive. For humans, it's been adapted for hundreds of thousands of years. It's been adaptive to contribute to the common good, because if the group is good, you're good.

37:08Right? And so it's adaptive to have that sort of affiliation, that desire to have a duty, to be of service. Right? And all evolution is sort of selfish. Right? And so those behaviors are self-serving, even though they look altruistic, but they're altruistic in a self-serving way or they wouldn't exist. And so I think, yes, I think the trade-off of modern society is that all of a sudden we are not individually needed by our group. In fact, we can't even identify our group. What's your survival group? What is it? It's your neighborhood? Probably not. right? You're, what's like the PTA, the parents organization, the kids school?

37:53No, like, I don't know, who would you die for? Like your family, maybe, right? And so there's enormous loss of connection there. And, you know, they've done studies where they've shown that the more affluent a society, the higher the levels generally of anxiety, depression, suicide, addiction, So affluent Western society has incredibly high levels of all those things. In really poor societies, I think the comparison was rural Nigeria to North America, I think was the study that I read. Now 20 years old. But I think it was rural Nigeria, the poorer the community in rural Nigeria, the more collectively people had to act.

38:34There was, as it were, one well, or literally one well, and everyone had to get their water out of it. the poorer the community, the better off psychologically people were, even though there are great, great stresses to poverty, despite that. But those afflictions of depression, suicide, anxiety, just, you know, when people are banding together to survive, you know, suicide in some ways is a selfish act, right? Depression is isolating, you know, you're not functional. Anxiety, likewise. And when you're needed, those things sort of go away. And so it's always the trick is to be in a community that is struggling enough that you are needed on a daily basis.

39:18And your mental health will probably improve.

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40:03Konstantin Kisin:That's hims.com slash trigger for your free online visit, hims.com slash trigger. Featured products include compounded drug products, which the FDA does not approve or verify for safety, effectiveness, or quality. Prescription required. See website for full details, restrictions, and important safety information. Individual results may vary based on studies of topical and oral minoxidil and finasteride. It's so interesting that you say that because I noticed when I was teaching, I taught in a very, you know, exclusive all girls grammar school where every kid came in, wanted to learn. Every lesson was easy.

40:42Konstantin Kisin:And the moment you walked into the staff room, the teachers were at each other's throats. But when you taught in a terrible school where every day was it felt like war, except the kids had the upper hand because they could throw chairs at you and you couldn't do anything. The camaraderie was never better amongst the staff. That's how, I mean, listen, that's adaptive, right? I mean, you think about humans, like, that we have behaviors that allow us to survive. Of course, as things get better, we act, as things get worse, we act better. If that weren't true, we wouldn't be here. Yeah. Right? I talked to a woman who had survived cancer, like bad cancer, right?

41:16And she barely survived. And thank God, you know, and she said, but you know, the one thing, she said, the one thing about it is that I miss the cancer ward. She missed being in the cancer ward with her fellow sufferers because she had never felt closer to anybody. So if you have a young woman who misses having cancer because it connects her to other people who have cancer, it's clear that our society, for all of its wonderful benefits, and I'm happy to run through the list with you guys if you want, but it's clear that our society is not providing enough human connection to keep people happy.

41:51Francis Foster:And one of the things you talk a lot about in Tribe, and you've addressed already a little bit, is the importance of being necessary to other people. I'm curious if you've thought about the impact of AI and other things that are coming down the pipe, the new technology that is increasingly going to make human beings less necessary and how that's likely to impact our society. I mean, I'm not a tech expert, but just as a human being, it sounds horrible. It sounds terrifying. It sounds dismal. It sounds depressing. It sounds bewildering. Like, I mean, I just like, and a friend of mine was like, oh, it's okay.

42:27Cause then AI will make all the money and then the, you know, everyone, no one will need to work and we can just sit around. I'm like, oh, that worked great with welfare. Didn't it? I mean, you know, just the psychological consequences of uselessness, of not participating or devastating. I mean, the suicide rate goes up when people retire. Right?

42:46Francis Foster:When men retire. When men retire particularly. Yeah. I think it's much more likely for men than for women. Women, I think, are fine with retirement. I think they're not okay when their husband retires. Right. That's the worst point. He's at home a lot more. Yeah, right. That's really annoying. Right. No, but it's a danger point, right? So I was in Sarajevo in 93, 94 during the siege, right? Sarajevo. Sarajevo, yeah, Bosnia, right? So during those terrible years, the older people stayed in the apartments, which were unheated, and there wasn't enough food. But there were babies. There were things that needed to be done at home.

43:23And in that society, grandparents are crucial for helping run the household, right? And they have been for hundreds of thousands of years until Western society invented the nanny, you know, or whatever. But so it started to be able to enroll the grandparents was crucial. And during those terrible years of the war, you know, in the cemeteries, you see the gravestones, they're all young people because they were out. They were getting water, they were getting food, They were working, they were socializing, a mortar would come in. It was more likely to kill young people than old people who stayed home, right?

43:53And the old people were needed at home. As soon as the war ended, you started seeing gravestones for older people, people in their 60s, 70s, 80s. Basically, the war ended, they weren't needed anymore, and they didn't need to stay alive any longer, and they died. They were not needed. And very different from suicide, right? This is just they hung on long enough to be of service, and then when they weren't of service anymore, the war ended. and conditions improved, what it seemed to me from the gravestones was that they checked out. They're like, okay, I got my family across the finish line. I'm good, right?

44:26And the danger, but the danger of having an entire generation, an entire community, an entire nation not be needed is that's new territory for the human race. Like, no one knows how that will go, but I have my doubts they'll go.

44:39Francis Foster:And a lot of people go, oh, you know, you'll be able to be so creative and you can finally... I think there's a big difference between doing something because you enjoy doing it and being absolutely necessary. If you're a man providing for your family. Like that, you know, you take that away from a lot of guys. I don't think it goes well. I really don't. No, I mean, listen, our wiring, our neurological wiring, our emotional and psychological wiring is, you know, from the Stone Age. I mean, we have not changed at all in 20 ,000 years, right? I mean, we are adapted to living in groups of 50, 100, 150 people maximum, fighting and hunting, fighting for our survival and hunting and being totally interdependent in a group and getting our meaning from that.

45:27That's it. That's what we are. Right. And modern society hasn't changed that at all. You know, clearly the amount of disaffiliation from the group that we've already experienced is hard on our mental health. When we're just not needed at all, I mean, I think that's when despair will come in. I mean, that's when the sort of big questions of what is life for? I mean, if you're depressed and you start asking what is life for anyway, like you're at risk of suicide.

45:59Francis Foster:Well, that's how you get Russian literature. Yes. I'm from Russia, hence the joke. And do you think that there's anything that we can do to mitigate some of the effects of modern society on us and on our community? So this is apart from AI, just like right now? Well, I think AI, but also where we've already got to. Because I would argue, I don't know if you'd agree with this, Sebastian, that in some ways we already have AI. I mean, algorithms that drive our content consumption patterns are kind of AI. And I would argue a lot of where we are societally and politically is a product of those technologies that are now driving, you know, political polarization, anxiety, all of this other stuff.

46:43Yeah, they're all stressed. Those are all stressors on our society and our connectedness. Yeah. But being rendered obsolete. Next level. That's still that's next level. That's still in the future. And we'll see if it happens. Right. I mean, I hope it doesn't in some ways. But what can we do? Well, I would say, first of all, the smartphone is a dangerous object, right? Psychologically dangerous, particularly for young people. I mean, the statistic, Jonathan Haidt, I'm sure you...

47:12Francis Foster:Who was sitting at this very table last time we were here. Okay, yeah. So, you know, I don't need to run through his brilliant arguments. But, you know, I think it's pretty much accepted. And people talk about, you know, social media in terms of addiction. They say, oh, I went cold turkey. I didn't look at my phone. I mean, they talk about it like addiction. So let's just say it's an addiction, right? So I think the first thing we need to do is protect the children and the young people from the effects of this. And, you know, I think we need to really reorient society so that the phones and that way of thinking is not the focal point of every single person for almost all of their waking hours.

47:49I mean, it's a moonshot, right? We can do it, but we have to think about it. I think there should be courses in grade school, middle school, high school, college, about how to use social media and technology safely and how to protect yourself from it. I mean, you need to take classes to drive a car. You really should, as a young person, take classes in order to have a smartphone, just to protect you and your generation. I think there probably are ways to design buildings and communities that are more inward-facing and encourage group connection. I think there should be a sort of public awareness campaign of this, as there was with smoking and all, you know, drunk driving and all these other ills of the damaging effects of alienation.

48:34Like, I mean, I think you can really raise the public consciousness. And when you do, people will act in more affiliated ways. Like, they're capable of it. And they're all dying to. That's the tragic thing. is that everyone's waiting to be called, to be needed, to serve. And I think national service in this country, mandatory national service, not the draft, national service with a military option, if that's your scene. But national service for young people, I think, would be incredibly good for them.

49:05Konstantin Kisin:And I'm glad we're talking about the issue of young people, because at the moment, we've got a population crisis happening in the States and right the way through the Western world. people are having fewer and fewer kids. What do you think about that if you look through the lens of tribe? What does it mean for a tribe? I mean, there's the obvious. When we're not having enough kids, what does that show about? What does it display about the tribe? What's going on? I mean, I'm going to be simplistic and sort of facile here, but I'm going to say, you know, having children is an act of belief in the future.

49:37And if people have less children, And I think on some level, like future, is there really a future? Right. I mean, you know, we're armed to the teeth with nukes. The climate is changing in terrifying ways. And, you know, whatever, there's five different scenarios that could bring all this to a halt. And like, and I think it's unconscious thinking. Right. And like, why would we do that? Right. And also, I think that just the experience of community brings out an ethos that values children. Right. and the more and more fractured our communities, I think that ethos just never really has a chance to arise.

50:12And it makes me very sad. And having children, I didn't have children until I was in my 50s. And now I'm like, whoa, I'm finally alive. Like this is what life is, right? And I had a great life till then, right? Oh, but this is the real thing. And I think when people experience community, the hurricane the blitz of london the earthquake in avidzano that whatever right like oh this is like this is real life this is what people are talking this is why we're alive to experience this right and i think we have to figure out how to reintroduce people to that way to that reality

50:54Konstantin Kisin:i think we can do it but we have to go out of our way to do it because i think a lot of the problems that we're seeing in society is that people don't have kids. They don't have families, and therefore they lack purpose. Why would you go to a job that you hate so you can pay money to a landlord for your flat or whatever it may be? And after a while, after you've done the whole single thing and you've been dating, I mean, what's the point unless you're doing it for someone? Right. I mean, what I would say is that there are people that didn't have kids that decided to devote their life to the poor in Tanzania or whatever.

51:27You know, it's like, God bless them, right? I mean, they found their duty to the human race, right? If you're not doing that, I think there are people that fall into despair because they don't know what they're serving, right? And so, you know, I just wrote an article on my Substack,

51:47and it's about disconnection, right? I wrote a piece called Breathe With Me, and then I wrote a piece about its opposite, right? And what I found was that, and this has been in the papers and stuff, the size of the average American home has grown, it's doubled in my lifetime. And what they found was that the bigger the home, the more likely the people were that lived there to be depressed. And that great empty spaces in a house, which is all the trend right now, were correlated with depression. In 1900, 98 % of homes had more than one occupant, right? Apartments, houses, whatever, more than one occupant.

52:25sometimes strangers slept in the same bed, right? I mean, there are boarding houses and sort of rough places for working men where they sort of were crowded into camps and stuff. It was a better time. Yeah, right. So people live collectively, right? And now one-third of American homes are occupied by a single person. And another third are occupied by a childless couple or a single parent, right? That is a... The piece is called The Great Abandonment. And that is, that's the tragedy of, you know, in some ways the tragedy of affluence has allowed us to live far apart from each other. And the consequences, particularly for children, are devastating.

53:05Konstantin Kisin:You know, it's such a good point because I remember reading an article about Kurt Cobain, the very famous rock star from the 1990s. And a lot of people said that when he became successful, he moved into this mansion. It's when he really started to fall apart. And he literally lived in one room of his mansion because he simply couldn't cope with the isolation. Yeah. I mean, he clearly had struggles as well. But that isolation can tip the balance on someone who's already struggling. Then you take Kurt Cobain and you put him in the infantry and send him to Afghanistan. Whatever the downsides of that are, they're easy to list.

53:42The upside is that you don't have room to be lonely. You don't have room to be selfish. You don't have room to be depressed. Like, no one commits suicide in Afghanistan. Some do when they come back, right? But one of the theories is that they do that because they've lost the community, right? It's not the result of trauma. It's the result of a loss of connection. But over there, it never happens because you know, and however much you're struggling, everyone needs you. It's like the grandparents in Sarajevo. I'm needed. I'm not going anywhere.

54:14Francis Foster:Yeah. In that sense of purpose, I remember, I think it's Rambo when there's this scene and he says, you know, I used to operate million dollar equipment and stuff. I think purpose is a thing that's been so not appreciated in our society. And now, of course, you see people looking for purpose and a lot of the time it's in all the right places, but sometimes it gets kind of misallocated to places where it's not adaptive, as you say. I'm curious, by the time this episode goes out, who knows what the hell will be happening with the war in Iran and all of that. But with your experience of covering different conflicts, being there, I mean, one of the things that a lot of people have argued is a lot of this meaningless has come since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

55:02Francis Foster:The West had an enemy. There was a purpose collectively. There was something we were dealing with. And now it doesn't seem to be like that now. When there is a war, even the war on terror, that communal effect didn't last very long, did it?

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56:35Konstantin Kisin:Give it a go. No, I mean, it sort of lasted as long as it needed to until we got to a place where we, again, felt safe in our homes. So just because we were fighting in Afghanistan doesn't mean that people back in this country were like, oh, my God, they're coming for us, right? In the days and weeks afterwards, we did feel that way. Oh, yeah, for sure. And there was a collective taking of responsibility in New York that was really quite amazing to see. I remember walking down the street. It was maybe a week later. I was overseas when 9-11 happened. It took me a while to get back, maybe a couple weeks.

57:08So I got back to New York, and I'm walking down the street by Penn Station. It's a crazy midtown, you know, soulless kind of area, right? And you could still smell the burnt smell in the air. And it was a wartime city still, right? and there was this guy who was a suit, right? He was this like white guy in a nice suit with a briefcase and he had frozen on the street corner. And he, you know, he worked out, I'm sure he worked downtown, right? And whatever had happened on 9-11, like he, and he had frozen. He was just like frozen on the sidewalk thinking. I mean, he clearly was having a moment, right?

57:42And this young black guy who was a bike messenger back when there were bike messengers and fax machines and stuff, he was a bike messenger, right? And he was like on his bike, and he saw this guy. I mean, the two were completely from completely different communities in New York City. And he saw this guy, and he went up to him and he said, hey, man, he grabbed his arm. He said, are you OK? You all right? That was New York for a while, right? It ended when the threat felt like it ended, right? And Hurricane Sandy brought some of it back. Half the city went dark, and downtown was pretty scary. and some of the poorer buildings organize sort of watch groups to watch the building from robbers.

58:23I mean, I live in a neighborhood like that. I mean, we have quite a poor neighborhood in the Lower East Side. And the community spirit, the community action during Hurricane Sandy was quite extraordinary, right? And so it comes back in a heartbeat, right? But it doesn't last longer than it's needed because it's costly. In evolutionary terms, it's costly, right? It costs you opportunity. It costs you energy. It costs you food. You know, so you don't want to do it longer than you need to, like in sort of evolutionary

58:50Konstantin Kisin:times. Do you think, Sebastian, we just, every now and again, we just need to be reminded that we're human? Every now and again, I think. I mean, I, you know, I think if we were reminded of that all day long, we'd be a lot better off, a lot happier, a lot more productive, a lot safer. Why do you think that is? Do you think it's just the acknowledgement that we are mortal? that we, I think, genuinely think that's one of the issues. And correct me if I'm wrong, is that people treat every, the next day as if it's a given when the reality is it simply isn't. Yeah, I mean, so as a species, we are social primates and we owe our lives to the group and we have to participate.

59:29We have a duty to the group in order to stay alive. That's what being human means, right? Is to be part of a group. We're the only species where an individual will die protecting a same-sex peer. Not their kids, not their mate, but a young man will die protecting another young man from harm. No other species does that. Even chimpanzees are closest relatives. Only humans. And so that is what we are. And if you participate in that reality, it takes the focus away from you. It puts it on others. And there's a blessed relief in that. I mean, the problem with our society is that there's enough safety and leisure and convenience that we can indulge in excessive thoughts of ourselves.

1:00:20It's called rumination, right? Obsessive rumination. And it leads to depression and anxiety. It's known to, right? And PTSD. And the other part of being human is that, yes, we are biological beings and we will die. And not only that, we could die, we could be dead by dinner from natural causes. And I know this from personal experience, right? I was in mid-sentence with my wife. I'm not a walking heart attack, right? I'm a really healthy guy. I had something going on in my abdomen I didn't know about. It shows mid-sentence to rupture. I was losing a pint of blood into my abdomen every 10 minutes, 15 minutes.

1:00:57And I barely, barely survived. And it was an utterly ordinary day. So if you can simultaneously understand that you are part of a community of humans, you're lucky to be so, what do you owe them? Because the more you give them, the happier you will be, the more and more meaning you will get out of life. And also all you get is right now, like really right now, right? The past is gone, it's irrecoverable. You have no idea if you're gonna have any sort of future whatsoever, even 10 minutes from now. So what is it like to be alive now and now and now? That's all you ever get. And for me, the point how I answered that question was like to be alive now is I need to be with people I love.

1:01:44I need to be with my family. That's the point of the whole damn thing. Right. And if you can, when you get distracted from that truth is when, in my opinion, at least for me, life starts to seem tedious and puzzling and maybe not quite worth the effort. When you're 7-Eleven's hottest fire chicken sandwich, people think you're intense. Well, yeah, I'm hot! Oh, yeah, intense. Want to see if you can handle the heat?

1:02:13Konstantin Kisin:Then try me. With pickles or spicy mayo and jalapenos. Oh, and it's all just$4.99. That's a deal almost as hot as I am. Almost? Sweet? No. Spicy? See for yourself. $4.99 and only at 7-Eleven.

1:02:27Francis Foster:Valid through 825-46. Participating stores only while supplies last. Visit store for full terms.

1:02:33Konstantin Kisin:It's such a profound moment to end the show, Sebastian. It's been a pleasure having you on. Before we go over to our sub-stat, the final question is always the same. What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be?

1:02:46Francis Foster:Before Sebastian answers the final question, at the end of the interview, make sure you head to triggerpod.co.uk where you'll be able to see this. What do you think about uncontacted tribes like the Sentinelese? Is there a moral duty to bring them into the international community?

1:03:01Konstantin Kisin:Can humans survive without all the modern technological clutter? What's the one thing we're not talking about that we really should be? We survive as nations, right? modern society survives as nations and nations come with laws that protect everybody and they insist on decency by their leaders and we have forgotten i think that western society has a little bit forgotten those truths and i think what we're not talking about is um how we can function in a healthy way as a nation america is not doing so right now and that is not a political conversation right uh that's not a left versus right that's a conversation about human dignity and democracy and um and we need to go back to that conversation in ways that are non-partisan because our literally our survival depends on it it's such a profound point because i saw a clip that the white house released which was like a cartoon almost about the about the bombing in iran and whether you were pro or anti-republican or democrat you think to yourself people are losing their lives over this.

1:04:09Konstantin Kisin:Is this really the moment to release a cartoon of a kid sending a bowling ball down an alley and getting a strike? Is this appropriate? I mean, the immaturity that this administration is capable of is pretty stunning. And I think everyone knows it, even people that voted for Trump, I think they kind of, I'm guessing very few people are really thrilled with that move.

1:04:34Francis Foster:Well, right. For them, it will be part of the package. And, you know, the other package was worse for other reasons. But I take your point, I won't speak for the US, but in the UK, that sense that the caliber of person, forget about their politics, just the caliber of human being who now leads our countries has plummeted so sharply. It's terrifying, actually. The piece that I wrote, Breathe With Me, on Substack, I talk about this extraordinary photo of Bobby Kennedy when he was shot. He was shot in 1968 during the presidential campaign. And it's a black and white photograph. I can't remember the photographer's name.

1:05:16It's a famous photograph. Now, Bobby Kennedy's on the ground, and a young Cuban émigré named Juan Romero, he's 17 years old, is kneeling by Bobby Kennedy. You know, Bobby Kennedy is this beautiful, handsome, amazing, amazing leader dying on the floor, right? Bleeding out like I was. And Juan Romero, 17-year-old from Cuba, is cradling his head. And the last thing Bobby... So leaders must put themselves last. They must put everyone else's concerns first, or they're not leaders, they're just managers. But our leader puts their own interests last, right? So think about that in this context. The last thing Bobby Kennedy said, he looked at everyone standing around him paralyzed.

1:06:03And he said, don't worry, it's going to be okay. He made his best case for the presidency in the last thing he ever said. He was not thinking about himself. Those people are out there. The guy with the, you know, with the amputated leg who said, I'm not brave, there's people missing. Those people are out there, right? and the question is how do you convince them to serve the public good because it's such a nasty environment. There's such good people you almost don't want to do that to them. Well, that's what I was going to say.

1:06:35Francis Foster:Maybe you stop throwing shit at them all the time because I hold us responsible. I hold the electorate responsible. I hold the media responsible for that because if you create an environment where only ego-driven narcissists will tolerate the horrific torrent of shit you have to put up with to be in politics, then that's who you're going to get. Yeah. I agree. And there's a process here, and it's being accelerated by algorithms and AI and all this other stuff. You can't even believe videos you see anymore, right? But I think humans veer between disgust and inspiration, right? And courage. I think we're heading towards a moment of collective disgust that I think might bring people back.

1:07:25I'm going to get his name wrong, Tallarico, I think his name is in Texas. He's sort of espousing a politics of love, which sounds kind of corny. But in his words, it's a pretty powerful message, right? And he said, you have to understand that everyone is human. And he was addressing liberals. He's like, including Donald Trump, everybody. I know you don't like this, but we have to engage people with love, even people we hate. I think he is maybe the beginning of a change of mentality in the public where we're just disgusted with where this has gone. And it might swing back in quite profound ways, I think.

1:08:09Francis Foster:Well, that's a really hopeful message because it's amazing how quickly this has happened because whether you agree with his politics or not, you can't deny that Barack Obama had that approach. That was his approach to politics. Now, you might say he had terrible policies and some people will think that. But in terms of his posture towards the world, it was not about demonizing other people. It was about appealing to people's sense of what America could be. and Obama is not really that long ago at all. Yeah. No, absolutely. And I've got some problems with his policies, but I met him, I was in the same room with him once and he was at a Medal of Honor ceremony or a guy from the unit I was with, he was the first living Medal of Honor recipient since Vietnam.

1:08:55While there was a woman in the audience who was the mother of a young man who was killed in the same firefight, right? She lost her son in the same action that produced this Medal of Honor and so during this ceremony this woman was brought forward and was Hugo Mendoza was the young man's name who lost his life and his mom I don't I don't know I can't remember her first name Mrs. Mendoza was brought forward to meet the president and she was right in front of me and I saw her shoulders start to shake she's starting to cry and uh the president just put his arms around her. Only in a democracy, like fascist countries don't produce touching between the leader and a commoner, right?

1:09:41The kings and queens of Europe would never have done such a thing, right? The totalitarian regime, the Genghis Khan, the works, right? This is a democracy in action, right? A beautiful democracy in action. He just wrapped his arms around her and he held her for five or 10 minutes. Everything stopped. He just held her until she stopped crying. as long as she needed and eventually she got herself together and then she hugged michelle obama and then stepped back in the line now that's that's a leader that's a democracy that's a beautiful thing right and we have to get back to that i can't imagine hillary doing that i can't imagine kamala doing it i certainly can't imagine trump doing it right you know whatever the whole cast of characters no that's the that is the minimum the minimum requirement for leadership is that your heart be capable of that.

1:10:35You want to do that for someone who's suffering and who incurred a grave loss for your country, the country you run. Like, come on. And that's what we need. We need someone like the guy in the wheelchair who lost his leg. We need someone like Bobby Kennedy. You know, I'd be fine with a Republican Bobby Kennedy. I don't care. I really don't. As long as it's that caliber of person.

1:10:59Francis Foster:Sebastian, thank you for coming on the show. head on over to triggerpod.co.uk where we're going to ask Sebastian your questions.

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