Hey everybody, today I am excited to have an old friend of mine, Tim Urban, on the show. He's a brilliant mind behind the popular blog Wait But Why where he breaks down complex topics in a thoughtful and extremely entertaining way. In 2019, Tim embarked on an ambitious project called The Story of Us. The goal of the project was to explain why it seemed like everybody was losing their minds, despite the fact that technology was amazing and everything seemed to be going great.
This eventually evolved into his first book. What's our problem? A self help. Book for societies and it was released in 2023. Now the book digs into the psychology behind tribalism and in Group out group hatred. Tim painstakingly explains these mechanisms using real world present day examples from both ends of the political spectrum. Now, as you can imagine, he got cancelled by everybody for it. Now Tim's writing style, it has
depth, width, and accessibility. It has earned him praise from world leaders, CEO's of some of the largest companies in the world, and millions of everyday readers alike. His work is at the intersection of psychology, politics, science, and technology, always with an eye toward making the complex feel more understandable. Today we talk about the psychological roots of tribalism, what it feels like to start hating an out group without realizing it, and how you can hopefully stop.
We look at how our minds can become locked inside of idea prisons and what the simple way out of those idea prisons is. We disagree briefly on how AI might make our mental health problems better or worse, what Tim has learned as a new parent, and we get a sneak peek of his upcoming book on the history of the universe. That's right, it's only a book on the history of the universe. So sit back, enjoy, draw some stick figures, and try not to hate the out group so much.
This is Tim Urban. It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. Tim, it's so good to have you here, dude. Yeah. It's it's fun to hang in this weird environment here. It's been a long time. We've known each other a long time. One of the things in my personal life I've started doing, which has been great. One of my favorite things to ask people now is over the last five years, what are the biggest things you've changed your mind about?
And I've noticed that like if I meet somebody new and they can't really answer that question or they seem to like be taken aback by it, to me, that's kind of like a signal that they're not, they're probably like tribally minded, you know, whatever their tribe is. The other thing I especially this last election cycle, because I, I have both Republicans and Democrats in my family and things get heated. I just started asking people. I'm like. What are three? Things you disagree with your
own party about. And again, if they can't really come up with anything, then I just, I know not to listen to them well. What you know is that they are in a little idea prison and even just calling yourself a Democrat or a Republican or I, I think that is. Like why would you do that? What? I want to tell people is you're, you're, you're like cooler than
this, you're better than this. Like you're going to allow what I, I think I want people to think of the Democrats or Republicans as like Coke and Pepsi or Verizon and you know, Amazon, like you're going to let some like big lane corporation basically hijack your identity and like, say we own we we own
it now. So once you're a Democrat, when the Democrats start doing something that deep down, you know, your principles would disagree with, you have to violate your own principles or violate you this identity you've given yourself. So you're in kind of like a noun prison. You know, you put yourself in this, this idea prison and that's when you're in a prison, you can't go anywhere, right? Where do you disagree with your
party? Well, I'm in the prison, so no where, where, how how have you changed your mind? Well, I'm stuck. I'm in, I'm I've been just been sitting in this jail cell. So I haven't changed my mind. I haven't gone anywhere. Well, well, you, you are also choosing how to delude yourself. It, it reminds me of sports teams. You know, it's like when you watch your favorite sports teams and your team obviously commits a foul or a penalty. Like you scream at the ref, like
the refs the problem, right? But but like, if you're watching A-Team, you don't care about, you're like, oh, yeah, obviously that's a foul or a penalty. And I feel like a lot of Americans especially identify with a political party the way they identify with the sports team and they and they blame the refs instead of their own team when a foul's committed more often than not. And you'll notice that they they have a completely different reaction to the same foul when
it's one party versus the other. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's so obvious the, the IT it rank hypocrisy. And again, with sports, you're supposed to be a hypocrite. It's OK. And sports is. Functions all the time. We all like sports. Tribalism. Great. When you cheer, you put your arms up like you just want a tribal battle when your thing wins and you go like this to protect your head when your team loses. I mean, it's great. It's it's play.
It's play tribalism, politics is shitty because it matters and it affects, you know, it affects real things and and and and the hypocrisy. It's like that's another thing you can do is just just test your just just is a simple litmus test to test your hypocrisy, which is what how would I feel if the other team were doing this, whether it's something good or bad? How would I feel this for the
other team? And if it was like, well, in your head kind of explodes, you have a, you're not thinking straight. Yeah. Speaking of which, what have you changed your mind about in the last, say, three to five years? What are some of the biggest things that you've changed your mind about? There's some like very factual things like nuclear energy. I'm like, I thought it was bad. Now I think it's extremely good, but in like a more philosophical way.
Five years ago, maybe more like 8, but I, I was in the process five years ago of I, I was a, I'm a Democrat and also I'm an atheist and you know, right wing religious people are stupid and bad, right? That that was maybe not five years ago. There's a little longer ago, but 20/12/2015 I was, I was in that zone. I grew up in that zone and I was just and I have like I look at that person right now, I'm like, Oh God, you are a lost like you
are you are a little boy. You are a little boy with that attitude like so a few things is I I was in the zone where I saw blue good, red bad, and that's your prior that's at the very base. Now. Maybe blue does something bad, but it's for a higher thing or because, or then you as everyone does whatever, but and red, you know, does something good, but they have some bad. If that's in the base, every single thing can can always fit
into that. You know, you can so coming out of that, just like releasing again, realizing this prison has I have the key. Oh, Oh my God, you know, and then you come out and it's not that I'm now like, well, do blue bad, red good. It's that I I just once I came out of that, I realized how much of A prison I was in. So things like, I also was like, you know, religion bad. And I'm just like, first of all, that is so arrogant to have this, this religion is this thing that's been going on.
You know, where I was thinking mostly in Christianity, in this case, 2000 years of like trial and error and like it's maybe there for both good and bad reasons. Maybe there is something really important about this for our species. And I, I think now I've come to think there's a lot of wisdom in religion. And it's also a very it can be it it, it, it, it's we're all
we're a religious species. And so when we don't have a religion that's tested for 2000 years of refinements, we end up with a new religion, maybe a political religion is just worse. So a lot of these things that that guy was so sure about. And now I'm just much more kind of like open about like in as far as atheism itself.
Regardless, I still, I'm not, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim or a religious Jew. I'm not, I don't believe in those books, but I also had stopped being a staunch atheist in that what I would have said as a staunch asiat is there's no creator. There's, there's, there's this is, you know, everything is, you know how we think, you know, the spontaneous generation of life on this planet. And then it evolved through evolution to today. Now I believe in evolution. I believe in this.
The things we've proven, the science. But how about all the things we haven't proven? The science. We don't know how life started. It could have been planted here by another species, an alien species. It could, we could be in a big computer simulation and just starting to have those things
again. It humbles you and it makes you realize like that atheist was so sure about a bunch of things that he, he was sure in a way that he was criticized a religious person for being sure that, you know, Adam and Eve existed and that the flood is why the Grand Canyon has seashell fossils on it. But the atheist Tim was just as sure about that. There's none, nothing, you know. And so now I would call myself like very firmly agnostic.
So a lot of these, the theme in a lot of these is I'm less sure than I was and much less likely to just like dismiss.
Likewise. Now coming out of not being associate, I don't want to identify with the left at all anymore, but I also don't want to identify with the right because I feel like it's so I, I, I also likewise because some people, I think if you're not fully, you come out of the prison, but you're still in that mindset, you'll go fling to the other side and now suddenly you're a full red pill. Do you know the left is the problem? I don't, I don't think that either.
I think there's probably a lot of wisdom and progressivism and there's a lot of wisdom and conservatism and both of these parties suck and a lot, there's a hypocrisy on both sides, but underneath that, there's actually very important principles that need to but against each other. So I, you know, a staunch partisan would call me like an insufferable, you know, enlightened centrist. But I would say both sides, what they used to call them, Yeah, but. Both sides, both sides.
And I think I think it's misinterpreting because a centrist or both sides of them is someone who says that like these, the parties are equally right about each issue. You know, there's somewhere in the middle. That's not what I think. I think maybe the right is way more right about certain things. Left is way more right about
other things. It's that I, I'm on the side of the people who don't identify with any party who said that each of these issues is like a complex puzzle that needs like an endless debate and, and testing and experimentation and balancing many different values of compromise. That doesn't say anything about where I am on left to right on any issue. It's not a horizontal distinction. It's what I would say is like a vertical distinction. And that's mistaken.
Bipartisan people who say you're either left or right as both sides ISM as centrism because they only seen this horizontal axis. If you're not left to right. You must be this annoying person in this who wants to say they're in the center that I don't. That's not misinterpreting when I when I am. Yes, we are the tribe of no tribe. I try to be and by the way, then you can get sucked into you can get sucked into the no tribe
tribe becoming quite tribal. You know, you have to constantly watch it. But yeah, I also looked. I always, you know, I always respect someone who I see disagree with their own in Group. And when I say their own in Group, I don't mean someone who like used to be on the left and they're criticizing the left now is their is their thing because the left is now they're out
group. I'm talking about the people who are like totally agreeing with them about what they're saying this week and then totally disagreeing with those people. That's like that shows someone I'm like, this person is truly rogue. They're not like afraid. They're they're not trying to appease, you know, they're not in any prison. I mean, it's hard to find. I'm not sure I've fully gotten there. It's like hard to the people who really are, you know, love
what's our problem? Like it's hard to fully, you know, disagree with them on something. You wrote this book kind of at the fever pitch of just political misery in the country. I don't know about you, but like I I personally feel like this last election cycle seemed less. I don't know. Apocalyptic than previous ones like I, I, it could just be me, but I feel like we're, we've like we peaked maybe 3 or 4 years ago and we're like on the downhill side. Do you agree with that?
And if so, do you want to take credit for it? If I, if I could take credit for that, I would be like demanding a Nobel. Nobel, right? But. If so, like why do you think that's happened? I'm curious so if. If you look at like history, not one of the things I, I think one of the things that helps a lot understanding the current moment is just looking at history because you start to see patterns and you're like, oh, we're doing that thing from the
50s, we're doing that now. Like the Red Scare in the early 50s has a lot in common with what happened in the last five years. It was different, you know, the the Mad Lib had different things in the blanks, but the idea was kind of a tribal wave sweeps over the country.
And when it happens, it's like what you'll see is when you're not in it, it almost you forget how scary it can be in a moment when it becomes really tribal, You suddenly are like, you know, it's hard to even have a you're, you're you know, with three, four friends at dinner and you're suddenly like, where are you? Like are, are we, are you one of them? Or like, are you going to judge me or like, are we allowed to still?
And even small little things, everyone starts to get kind of scared and then forget like a classroom, you know, one person in that moment can start really being like a bully. That's, you know, that that's that's emphasizing the current tribal craze and everyone else in the classroom would be really scared and start to like jump on that bandwagon. And it's a reminder that we can be a very scary species.
You know, you hear about the, the, the most extreme example always is everything is, you know, Nazis, Holocaust and you hear about, you know, these, these people in, you know, Poland who would turn in their Jewish neighbors, who they known for 30 years and they've been friends and they, they would, they would quietly turn them into the, you know, and these awful stories and, and, and you start to, but I, I understand why, you know, in this moment when things are really when that
fear kicks in, basically when, when tribe, when, when tribalism is in the air in a really intense way and the stakes feel really high. It's like pheromones, wolf pheromones. And the primitive mind wakes up and get into a crazy zone that completely takes over your brain. And you get into this zone where it's like you can't suddenly you can't trust anyone.
And then it's like, you know, so the, the, the less extreme example is like the early 50s with, you know, the Red Scare and you have, you know, anyone who even gets, you know, you can, you know, it's like a witch hunt. Actual Salem witches in the same thing.
It's like once you know that someone being accused of being a witch might actually let lead to their execution, everyone gets really scared and now you know someone might your friend, you think it was your friend might accuse you so that they don't get accused of being a witch and it becomes a very and that that's how these crazy things kept the Salem witch trials wasn't like it wasn't like that was just the times it was a crazy thing that happened and then stopped.
The, the Red Scare in the 50s was a crazy thing that happened and then it stopped and then sanity returned. And I think that the, the 2020, you know, wokeness thing was a crazy thing that happened. And I think at some point, hopefully it will be something totally in the past. And I think it's again to bring back your, you become more aware
of your own digging around. You can become more aware of your own, you know, echo chambers while you also, I think the society itself can kind of like, if it has been too long since that happened, the society can get caught off guard. And I think that once it now, I think now society starts to be more self aware about that was crazy. And now when you see signs of it, now you're less likely to fall into it and more likely to be like, no, we're we don't do
that anymore. We're done with that. And you see the corporations, you know, quietly reversing policies that were insane. So I feel like we are on the other side of the specific things that happened. We're we're, you know, they're still good. Look, there's still a huge fight that's going to be put up with any institution's policies that were changed, admin people that were turned over. I mean, that has that takes a while. That gets into the vital organs
of a lot of institutions. That's going to be a long, painful process to try to return to kind of the basic values that those institutions used to have. But what worries me is that, you know, why did this happen right now in the 50s? It happened because, you know, it was on the heels of war, which is kind of a tribal time. And there was a genuine fear of the of communism, right? It was like this could this was an existential threat. And when I'm like, why did this
happen now? And I feel like it's very tied to social media. And this new force that's in there in the world that, you know, had a huge impact scares them. You know, the media is scared of social media. Companies are scared of social media and you empower a lot of the most tribally crazed people who want attention, want to do damage, want to sensationalize things, want to punish people. Those people have a lot more power right now than they did 15 years ago.
Like they, they actually, you know, one of those people can get a big following and suddenly, you know, scare a lot of institutions into getting on their bad side. So my, my worry is that like, you know, that the root causes might still be there and that maybe it's not wokeness, that
that is the thing. Maybe it's a another thing comes along, you know, maybe it's right wing, hardcore right wing, you know, white supremacy, which is of course, the thing that I spent years saying this is overblown by by what people Now I'm like, well, this thing, you know, has now been trained to actually be more of a real white identity by this thing. And it it could right? Who knows? I know I'm not saying that's what will happen.
I'm saying I just think that the we might be still in a vulnerable situation in our society. Yeah, and it's it's hard to. It's also hard to separate just like how unique the, the COVID era was and like all of the second and 3rd order effects that, you know, you can't really, it's hard to know what is an actual part of cultural evolution and what is just kind of this freakish happenstance thing. You know, I, I've had a bit of a
pet theory. I'm sure I'm not the first person or the only person who's who's thought of this. But like when you look at the history of media, anytime there's like a major technological revolution in in media itself and like how information is disseminated across society, you generally see like massive political
upheaval immediately after. So like when the printing press is invented, you get the Reformation a few decades later, and that creates 100 years of war across Europe and results in a lot of, you know, the Enlightenment and all sorts of other things. When TV and radio come along, you get a lot of the fascism and communism of the 20th century.
And part of me thinks that, you know, with the Internet and social media, it's probably inevitable that like, there's this reconfiguring of social identity that has to happen along these like new railways of information. And, and I also think like it probably just takes a generation or two to develop the antibodies. You know, it's like everything that's in your book, what's our problem? It it like all of that stuff is probably going to be really obvious to our kids or our
grandkids. Like they're going to look at that book and they'll be like, well, yeah, no shit. Like you can't just believe anything that's posted on Instagram. And but it it like it takes us years of falling for it and then realizing that you can't fall for it. And seeing the repercussions happen over and over again, you know, it's kind of like the first TV marketing in the first, the first radio propaganda in the early 20th century was like wildly successful, like
massively successful. There's all these stories of like the Orson Welles alien invasion radio story and like thousands of people are like running out of their houses thinking that it's real. You know, it's, it's laughable from our point of view today because we're just so jaded by an entire lifetime of listening to bullshit on the radio and, and on TV. I I think it's like when a mediums new, we haven't like developed that jadedness yet.
And because we're not jaded enough, we're more susceptible like it's easier for, I guess, tribal, sinister and tribal narratives to, to reach people and and seduce them because they they haven't developed that the antibodies to it yet. Yeah, it's like it's like, you know, and and certain, you know, companies can jump in and get really, really, really rich during the inoculated phase. Yeah, the the non that, that the pre inoculated phase like I just think about also like think
about cigarette companies. They made a killing in a window when they when they really could. And then awareness spread, laws changed. We built kind of antibodies to protect the protect ourselves around for that from that thing. And and now they make way less of a killing, at least in the US. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of the things, it's funny, my wife and I, we went back and started watching Mad Men again and one of the things I didn't fucking still.
Amazing show, by the way. One of the things that I didn't put together the first time I saw it. I, I saw it for the first time maybe 1215 years ago. Watching it now as somebody who's like a lot more well informed about advertising and U.S. history and business cycles and stuff. It's there's like this realization that it Mad Men takes place in the 50s and 60s when television is new and like people have literally never seen
a television commercial before. And so you could literally just put anything on the screen and people would want to buy it. And so it's like, no wonder Don Draper was making a fucking killing sitting around drinking whiskey all day. Like it's there's just this low hanging fruit that comes with a new medium and it comes from with advertising. It comes with building a business or marketing. It comes with people like you and I building audiences.
And then it it also comes with with like political movements, right? Like it's people are most susceptible when there's some like newfangled technology that that nobody's like. Everybody's wide eyed and has no
idea what to expect. It's like it, it, it's, it almost reminds me of just like an evolution when you have like, I don't know, some event, some weather change, you know, to the climate, like this predator dies off and now there's this power vacuum and this other predator comes in this, this species thrives. It gets too big and blah, blah. And all these things happen. And then it eventually settles into a new, like interlocked into the equilibrium.
It's hard to change. And so that happens rarely in, in, in evolutionary history. But here it's like a new thing drops into society. There's a, it, it, you know, another example is the Iron Age. You know, iron came around and suddenly people who were kind of in the outskirts of society could make weapons in a way they couldn't before. And they, the, the, the, the cities lost their advantage And that and it, and it just, it changed all kinds of, you know,
geopolitical things back then. So you have social media drops in and in the Internet and it's almost a society takes a while to even figure out that that where the new opportunities are, where the power vacuum suddenly are, who suddenly has way more power than they ever did before and who has less power.
And so like, I think that in in in a world like that, you see a lot of things where like media, the media model of trying to be neutral and be professional doesn't work so well in this new environment. And so somebody like Fox News catches on to that quicker than others, gets huge. And then all these other things copying before, you know, New York Times is acting like Fox News, right? They're all acting like, like Fox News, right?
And so it's like the, the, the, the, there's like a new, there basically is an environmental shift. And now in the new environment is going to reward different things and, and empower different things. And, and you see all, everyone reacts to it, you know, it's like everyone reacts to it to try to stay successful, to stay afloat, to survive. And then you see people and their behavior changing cause new behavior is rewarded.
And there's a new thing, which is followers on social media and that becomes this new shiny thing. You know, it's not just money. That's one thing. There's a new way to get status with this number and its attention and status. So suddenly all these primitive minds become set for this thing. And then, so how do you, you know, and then the algorithms are sitting there and they're trying to maximize attention in this new thing.
And so the algorithms now favor a certain, you know, a certain way to get, you know, certain behavior gets more followers and you can just see this whole new environment configured. The people who get there first get really rich. You know, when you if you can notice the changes in the environment, you can capitalize on attention, you know, wealth, whatever. And then it kind of starts to
crystallize into a new thing. And then I think like you're talking about, I think then there starts to be a reflection on wait, this is hurting people. Wait, maybe 13 year old girls on Instagram isn't good. You have something like John Height's book that just came out, You know, the ancient,
ancient generation you have. And then you start start to see, you know, like surgeon, you know, his book is like a, you know, going to lead to hopefully like a surgeon general's warning about cigarettes type thing where you start to have, you know, rules and parents don't allow this anymore. And you can look back and say, I can't believe the kids were allowed on Instagram. At some point it's going to sound like kids in child labor or child prostitute.
There's crazy things from the past you hear about. And it's going to be like, wow. And so the antibodies then form and we develop a healthier way to we start to figure out where what the harm is in these in this thing. We tweak things to make it healthy. Now, what's scary is that if this happens once a century, it's like, OK, there's a rough 20 years and then we figure it out and then we kind of develop a healthier thing with this. And there's laws and there's norms that, you know,
understanding that comes around. What's scary is how is the rate of change of speeds up, right? Because AI is probably. Going to do this again. AI and who knows when you start having the VR starts getting better and better and before you know what, everyone has one of these things like a visor
glasses that we're wearing. AI is, you know, I feel like the ChatGPT in these things right now is like is like the really old Internet where it's like this new thing and it's like the OR like the really, really beginning Twitter when you just like you post, there's no retweet button. There's no like button. It's just kind of like, you know, our old, old Facebook feels like it's very early and it's like they haven't even figured out how to make it
addictive yet. That hasn't even started yet, you know, and I'm like, that's going to be a whole cycle. And there's going to be a whole new set of, you know, some people, some people who can see now where it's going to get really rich and get it, you know, really powerful. And then others will win. And then everyone will then, then the mainstream will really, really, you know, conform to this new thing. And then we'll start to figure
out what, oh, wait, this is bad. But at that point, AI is getting smarter and smarter really quickly. It's like, but if you don't have time to do the antibodies phase and new changes are happening, it's a little scary. It gets very chaotic. Yeah, yeah, I've I've no idea where any of this is heading. This episode is brought to you by Fuel. Ever feel like you're stuck in a battle between your growling stomach and a pack schedule? Meet your new secret weapon, Fuel.
No, it's not alien food. It's Fuel HUEL, the world's complete nutrition brand trusted by millions. Picture this. You're rushing out the door, you have no time for breakfast, and you're already dreading the sad vending machine lunch. But wait, a Fuel ready to drink meal is in your fridge ready to save the day. It's like having a personal nutritionist and a chef all in a plastic bottle, minus a tiny chef hat, which would go right
here. Packed with 27 vitamins and minerals and up to 35 grams of protein in a fuel black addition, it's like a superhero Cape for your insides. I don't even know what that means, but fuck it, it's in the ad Reed. We've got chocolate and vanilla flavors that feel like a milkshake with a degree in nutrition. And no, it's not pricey either. These complete meals are under 5 bucks each. They're cheaper and way better than that sad salad that you were eye before. Go to huell.com now.
And as a bonus for being one of my awesome listeners, if you use the code IDGAF, you'll get 15% off your first order plus a free gift. That's 15% off plus a free gift if you use the code IDGAF at. Huell.com don't let the hunger
win. People fight it with Huell it is. The AI thing is super interesting too, because I feel like it, you know, one of the issues, especially in the social media era, but also kind of going back into the more conventional media era as well as like is the information fragmentation, as you put it, echo chambers, right? Like there's just some certain topics or certain sets of data or like just not included in various narratives for political reasons.
And in the social media era, people actually just get caught in these little bubbles of hearing the same 3 or 4 things over and over again because that's what the algorithm feeds them. I feel like AI, you know, the potential of AI is that it, it, it commoditizes all information universally. Like everything is just always there for everybody and all context and relevance can be provided, you know, in each situation.
So there, there's in a way it can like I feel like it could solve a lot of the informational side of things. But then it makes me wonder, I'm like, if you, if everybody just has all the same information all the time, it might actually make us, it might actually drive us like more in the tribalism because then that's really the only thing we're going to have left is like, you can't, you can't argue over the facts anymore because the AI is figured that out.
So we're just going to argue over our subjective moral principles, which are, you know, essentially non resolvable and and we'll just be like more entrenched than ever before. It's. A little. It's a little like, you know, when I, you know, against 22 year old Tim would have been like my if I had a genie, I would say all religion is gone and now I would go to that guy and think, no, don't. Be careful what you wish for,
right? Be careful what you wish for because we were a religious species, and we're going to find other religions that you might realize are not tested and new and really, really, really bad and leading, you know, the kind of religion that can lead to hundreds of millions of people being murdered. And it's the same thing here where it's like you're saying kind of like, oh, this tribalism sucks. We wish if only we could just all get on the same page and have facts, you know?
You know, no more, you know, fighting about facts. And it's like, be careful what you wish for because we're a tribal species, and we'll find tribalism elsewhere. And like, where is that? It's almost like you're not going to eradicate tribalism. How can we? You know, of course, the classic example of what we would love is an alien attack. And then we're all tribal in the best possible way, which is earthlings, you know, humans. I love you because you're another human.
OK, It's not, it's still a childish tribalism, but it's, it's it's productive and it's nice and for everyone. But then you course you have an alien attack, which is its own shitty thing, But we're not going to have that probably. And and so the question is, you know, yes, does it turn into, well, first of all, the question is if is it better if we're arguing about moral principles and like trying to find the edges of what's, is that worse or better than arguing about
facts? Like maybe it's maybe it leads to more like hardcore, like political violence in a way. But maybe also it's more productive because we're actually arguing about things that need arguments to happen versus things that are just, we shouldn't even be arguing about this if we were just not being deceived in two different directions. Yeah. You know, I've just been like, this is kind of been my where my brain has been a lot lately is just thinking about it.
If, if information becomes universal and commoditized, like free, essentially, like there's, there's most ambiguities removed, most misinterpretation is removed. Anything that's knowable is available, like typing a couple sentences and what, what, like what effect does that have on us socially, politically, psychologically? Because I, I, I feel like when you remove one scarcity, you,
you create another one. And I feel like if you remove the informational scarcity, like if we're no longer are debating over what exactly is the wealth inequality or what exactly is a, you know, were these tax cuts stimulative or not? You know, once you remove those debates now, now you're getting purely into the like philosophical foundational equality versus freedom, collectivism versus individualism, like, and those don't really have resolution.
But but maybe, but maybe, I mean, it's, I feel like that's what politics is supposed to be, right? If you think about like what the Greeks thought about politics, like what were they doing on the Acropolis? Like they weren't, they were probably doing this kind of really core things. And I feel like that is how a society, the best way for a society to grow and evolve. What's nice about democracy is that it has a solution, which is that there's not like a king and we have to all convince the
king. It's like the country would be in the mood for more individualism, will be sick of looking at all the stats and will vote for that. And then it'll go too far a little bit. And then we'll the the country is a certain part of the country will feel like, you know, left out and they'll be a rebellion and they'll be a vote for more collectivism and and it will kind of evolve like a shape shifting thing that meets the needs of the moment. I mean that that to me is it
sounds idyllic. I'm sure. Of course it comes along with a lot of other things, but I feel like that's how you actually, what you want is democracy to express the will of the people, to serve the will of the people all the time. And what we'd like is if we're on the same page about facts and what we're and then, you know, you have these philosophies butting against each other and then you know it, that is actually going to get to the best will of the people possible.
Versus here, if people are on the wrong page about facts, they think they're having a philosophical voting for their philosophies, but they're actually not because they've been misinformed. So they think that, you know, something is 10 times worse than it is and they're going to vote now to fix that when it actually is not that that's not the problem. So it feels in a way like it's better. And then you have right now, you have actually like the media and a lot of big social media
accounts. Their their game is in misinforming you like making you. Feel 100%. My, my, my, my aunt is glued to MSNBC everyday and she sends me like, you know, we need to move out of the country, stuff like that. They have that, that, that, that, that is a company, MSNBC, whose business model is making people like her feel as extreme as possible about stuff and believe things are as extreme as
possible. So her vote is not going to be accurately like linked aligned with her actual will because. Right. So, yeah. I, I, I. Yeah. Yeah, the way you describe it sounds much nicer than the way it sounds sounded in my head. So maybe you're giving me some hope. But yeah, it it is. It is the, the, the, the informational thing is, is
interesting. I don't know, like I, I feel like when you remove the, the informational games or like the, the, the pursuit of facts and truth in that for the majority of the population and it's just kind of like handed to us by AI. That kind of all that leaves is status games for us to play in. And and I don't know that like concerns me. Yeah, I I think that tribalism will always creep in. Nasty base tribalism will always find a way to creep in.
I think even that goes in waves. Like the country is generally has like a higher amount of it happening for a few years and then it it comes down. I also wrote it in my book about how one of the things in like the 50s is, you know, it seems like a very untribal time politically. You know, the parties were very mixed. They didn't, it wasn't like that. It was, but I but actually try the same quantity of tribalism was there. It was just that it was distributed in like different tiers.
SO1 tier was US versus Soviet Union, Oregon, Hitler before that. And that takes a bunch of energy. A bunch of people's minds are just fixated on that. That's where their head is. Other people's were like, no, like Republicans versus Democrats, whether in the state or in the country.
And that's where their head was. And then as some other people were the, there are Democrats, you know who the thing they hate the most is the other Democrats who are the other faction, who are actually much more because it was much more mixed to the factions themselves hated each other.
And what you have is the the the the big high level tribalism, the biggest US versus the biggest them is a uniting force below it make it chills out the things below because it like, well, we also we're at least we're together with this thing. And then the lower ones, the the fighting there simmers the national one. You don't want the national one
goes too far. You start to, you know, just the xenophobia goes out of control and you want to you know, you dehumanize the other part of the world when you hate each other so much. Suddenly, you know, you almost want to, you know, you, you know, part of the left felt, you know, on more on the side of the Soviets than they did on the than they did with the riot or whatever. And I think that all of that kind of that the, the three
tiers being distributed evenly. Like I think it's nice because it simmers it on all levels. It keeps it from. And what happened since then is the national threat went away. the US stopped having a serious existential threat outside its borders and the factions went away because within the party, the lowest level, because the parties purified. So all the progressives went over here, all the conservatives went over here. And then you have the media.
And so there's this one thing now, red versus blue, this middle one was the only one left in the media and flames that and suddenly becomes this crazy thing when people stop caring about local politics. All these kind of kooky local politics people I feel like are all, have all had their minds channeled into this national thing, which they can't, which doesn't even affect their lives nearly as much as the local politics. It's concentrated into this one
tier and that is bad. That's an interesting way to look at it. It's because, yeah, it does seem like there's a kind of a tribalism is constant conflict itself is kind of constant, but it can be distributed in different amounts across different layers, as you call it it it. Makes me think.
You know, I lived in Latin America for a while and my wife's Brazilian and one of the things that I found really interesting is that there have been almost no wars in South America. And it's primarily due to geography. And it like reading, reading up on some of the history of some of the countries down there. There's been so much internal political conflict, like so many coups, assassinations, revolutions, like mass murders, civil wars in every single country down there.
Yet they've they like have, I don't think they've never fought each other in like over 150 years. And part of me wonders if it's just like when you can't turn that aggression outward, you find somebody inward to face it towards and and it's it's. Did you say the opposite about the Middle East, where whenever Israel, Palestine becomes a huge thing and that comes in waves, it's obviously we're in the middle of a big, big one now. Yeah.
All of these Arab countries that actually have very little in common, you know, feel you more unified. And if you actually dig into any of what's going on in any one of those countries, most of them have a good reason to really hate their dictator. And this is maybe not a coincidence that, you know, it's very helpful to that dictator to deflect all of this anger you feel Israel.
And so that's, that's something that would bring people up to that top tier of, you know, the, you know, kind of Muslims versus Israel or, or the West, the West and you know, the US is another one, of course, the Iraq war. I'm sure you've had this, all this unity. So you it brings all this unity here. But it's so much that, you know, it's like that, that instead of, you know, you should be really angry at your own dictator and whatever.
So I, I feel like you see the opposite there of Latin America in a way that's interesting. But it is interesting. It's like where, where, where is the like Brazil, Argentina war, right? It just doesn't happen. I think in East Asia. You have the countries that have this long history of hitting each other, Middle East, obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's crazy. I think there was one war between Brazil and Uruguay in like 1850 or something and then that's it. That's like basically it.
And but meanwhile, every single country down there has had multiple revolutions, civil wars, multiple coups, military dictatorships like Mass. Africa, Africa seems sub-saharan. Africa seems the same. Yeah, there's, there's all kinds of, it's a mess within each country, but you don't see, you know, Burundi and Rwanda going to war. Yeah, totally. Well, hello fellow entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
You know we all dream of creating the next All Birds or SKIMS, right? Well, here's the secret, it's not just about a cool product or a flashy brand. Nope, it's the behind the scenes magic that turns dreams into cold hard cash. Now enter Shopify. It's the wizard behind millions of businesses. Now you may be thinking another e-commerce platform. Boring. But hold on to your wallets because Shopify is a master platform of selling. It's smooth, efficient and it's always closing sales.
Their Shop Pay feature can boost sales by up to 50%. That's enough to bring in most abandoned shopping carts crawling back and shop. Shopify doesn't just live online, it's everywhere. Your customers are on their phones, in your store, even in your fucking dreams. OK, maybe not the dreams part, but you get my point. So if you're ready to turn your side hustle into your next big thing, here's what you do. You go to shopify.com/I DGAF.
That means I don't give a fuck and you sign up for a $1.00 per month trial and watch your business grow faster than your credit card bill on Black Friday. Shopify.com/I DGAF. Your wallet and your future empire will thank you. Well no not you thank me. Last thing before we go, you are a new parent. I'm curious what what what? What is your biggest? Your two years end? What are what? What are your biggest parenthood?
Takeaways so far. Well, it's like there's a massive pile of cons and a massive, massive tower, towering pile of pros. And when I can say when I look at the two of them is that the pros pile is bigger, OK, it's a net positive, but there's a big pile of cons as well. I think you're the first person who's ever described their kid as it's a net positive. Net positive. Net positive because yeah, the, the, the it's it's like, you know I, I, I when I first got a dog I was like, wow, this is
such like a source of joy. Joy is hard to find in life, right You know, like real, like just pure joy just purity of that like I see my puppy runs up to me and it's just this feeling of pure love and joy. So this is even this is like there's even more of that here just like there's so much like it's it's there's a real purity to the to the pros like it's just it's just pure love. She's also so little.
Her world is so small. She doesn't know about war or death or tribalism or religion or politics. She she doesn't know anything. She's just a little like pure little little like drop of humanity. And and so it's just that our relationship is so pure, that love I feel is so pure. The joy, the feeling, the way she sees me is so like, you know, idyllic. That's not going to last. Of course, everything, like everything, she will become a human.
It will get become complicated. She will become complicated our relationship. But at the moment it's just, it's just like a, it's like a puppy. It's just like such a delight. So that's all amazing. It's, it's definitely made me grow up in certain ways. These are all the pros, though. The cons are legit. Like travel, like I used to go on these writer retreats, couple friends, I go for two weeks. That's over unless we do them
with the whole family. You know, I, I summer 14, I went away for 10 weeks, 2 weeks to each of five countries so I could write about them like that was awesome. Can't do that anymore. That's a big loss. You know, we one of us is up every morning at freaking 77 AM that we're not early morning people like that sucks. We want to just spontaneously get dinner with a friend.
We can't, we don't have a babysitter like real, like, you know, genuine, you know, my wife and I went to two new countries every single year. That was like our thing. It's just, you know, when they get older, maybe we can start traveling with them. But like, so we have another one on the way. So it's about to be two and a baby. So those are genuine real major losses. And for my wife, just being pregnant, some women like it, she does not.
So, you know, that's like huge toll on her body twice now. So the cons are very, very real and I'm not and I don't, I don't think it's obvious that everyone should have kids. No, I think that the pros and cons are huge on for for everyone probably. And I think some people it's not a net positive and they shouldn't do it. I think it's OK. Once you have a kid, you can't
be selfish anymore. But you can be selfish before you have a kid and say, I want to, I don't want to dedicate my life to raising a kid, I want to be selfish. I think that's a totally reasonable decision as well. Question has been a parent changed your evaluation of the importance or the value of some of those things, such as traveling to a new country every year or traveling with friends
for a week or whatever? Like has it raised your perception of how valuable that is or has it lowered it or is it not changed at all? I don't think it's changed very much. It's, you know, I, I think that like the things would change maybe that some people say like, oh, they're like petty fights with their friends or like feeling like they're excluded from like, you know, getting invited to this wedding or whatever, like that stuff.
Just, you care less about. And that's probably true, but the things I'm talking about are like, you know, they're not, I'm not like now I realize that those like travelling wasn't important after all, Like, Nope, it really was important. It's really great. It's like, it's not critical. I, I'm, it's, it's a nice to have. It's not a need to have the that freedom was was nice and I miss it and it's great. And but so I I think I don't think I'm not sure I've had some like massive shift in like
values or priorities. I I do feel like it is, you know, it was it was before it was like it sucked to go away from my wife for two weeks, but like worth it. You know, she would agree worth it. You should go like away some other time. It it feels like not OK to go away from a 2 year old for two weeks. Like again, she'd be fine. But I feel like our bond is like a very core important thing for her and I don't want to just to not be there for that.
So, so I'm prioritizing her over those things, but that's not because I think those are less important than they were. And the other thing is, you know, I think that a friend reminded me these the other day that like this phase when you're really, you lose a lot of freedom because the kids are so little and you're kind of like, you know, they, it's relentless. If we're doing, you know, if we do an afternoon on Sunday and it's just like me and her, there's a 5 hour wait window
between nap and sleep. And it's like, this is a very low IQ person to be spending five hours with. Like this is, you know, again, I, I, I, she delights me, but like an hour 3 1/2 and I'm like, I, I cannot read that book again that you want me to read for the. 5th time and like. You know, it's it, it is, it is relentless and like that phase is temporary because at some point these two little kids are five and seven now they're playing with each other, playing
with themselves. They go to school. So it's like less time. They go to maybe go to camp in the summer. So very quickly. And then I think, you know what everyone says, of course, that happened so quickly and then you miss the time. So we're trying to savor it and appreciate and appreciate that the freedom is not, it's not a permanent loss. It's a loss right now in return for something nice. So I'm trying to frame it that way.
So it's like I'll have I'll writer retreats later, you know, I'll have plenty of time in my. You got the rest of your life for that. Yeah, like, you know, so they, if they go to camp, I can do it in the summer. Like there's just plenty of times you can do that later. Totally. All right. Speaking of which, you are currently in grind mode on a book. Are you talking about that book yet or you are you? Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's like a, it's, I don't know the exact title yet, but it's like everything, the story of everything. It's the history of the universe, right? Big Bang to the end of the universe. It's basically an excuse for me to cover all my favorite topics along the way. And it's way easier than the last book in terms of it's, it's a, it's a hard project, but it's just every 10 pages I'm on a
different topic. So it feels like blogging and I'm not getting sick of the topic. And it's not like current events were happening before they changed the book. I'm like, well, now I have to incorporate this. There's none of that other than some stuff with the, the near future and, and also I think I have figured out my, you know, my systems a little bit more with them. So I, I, it's, it's moving
along. It's going to be done in like 2 years as opposed to seven for the last book just in total disaster. I'm. Happy to hear that. Yeah. And and there's a deal when it's when it's supposed to come out well. Afrin's in print now, which is really fun, so I'll send you one of. These. Oh, cool. Yeah, I'd love to have that. But yeah, and I think you owe it to me to start another book because it's not fair.
I don't like what's happening here where you're like somehow feel like you're free of the hell that we signed up for. You know, it's funny, I was actually under contract to do another book and the deadline was in the OR beginning of 24. And I just got on a call with my publisher and I was like, you know what? I haven't started writing and I don't think I'm going to and. Imagine the freedom. And then they, they were like, well, fuck you Manson, give us
our money back. And so I get I wrote a check and gave the money back and life's been good. Yeah. Life's been really good. After I finished this book, I might have to experiment with not being in hell for a little bit. Yeah, it's it, you know, after I think between starting subtle art and finishing Will's book, I think it was 778 years of writing pretty much non-stop. So yeah, it the the last two and
a half 3 has been really nice. But I am starting to have ideas for the next book and like get a little bit of the itch. You know, it's it's it is kind of like, it's what I hear pregnancy is like is that you forget how hard it is and totally. And so it's you start, I I'm already like playing those head games where I'm like, well, you know, it's like, that's a simple concept. I bet I could bang that out in six months.
And you know, I'm like, clearly. I know, I know, I, I, in my head, I have this, this vision for a future book because these books are both going to be, you know, the first draft is 200,000 words plus for both. And then I cut it down to, you
know, 140, whatever. I'm like, what if I wrote a 60,000 word book and I wrote 2000 words a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year with some weeks off in the middle and I just wrote, I just woke up in the morning, wrote 400 words and got on with my day and I'm like piece of cake. Somehow that seems why can't I just do that?
That sounds so easy. Wake up, right One Microsoft Word page, five days a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year handed in. It always sounds, it always sounds great when you say it out loud and then when you go to try to do it, you it's like eating glass for. 18 months. I know it really, really is. Right now I'm on. I'm like, I'm, I'm like, I'm 170,000 words into this draft. I don't know. I've got.
One big chapter left and then I'm going to then have the hideous process of cutting it down and fact, there's over 1000 fat checks my fact checker has ready for me that I haven't even looked at yet. But the other thing to think about is, you know, we both have experienced both books and
articles. Like you also could just be like, you know what, I'm going to write a go back to the days when I write like a killer viral article twice a month and do that, you know, but it's hard to know because that feels like you do all this work and it's not really it just kind of goes away. It kind of like fades away.
On the other hand, it's just like you get the instant gratification of publishing right then and you can, you can hop on something you're thinking about right then and just get it out. Or you can, I mean, I guess you can do that on your other mediums. I, I, I will say I am really, really enjoying being in, back in Internet land. It's, it feels like home. It's like, it's like coming home after living abroad or something. But yeah, there is an
impermanence to it like that. There is a little bit of a treadmill type aspect to it of like you just have to keep producing month after month after month and it feels like it nothing lasts for very long. Like every once in a while, like one thing will hit and it'll last for a few. Years if you were done subtle art as a as a series of each chapter just was a post, it would have been much worse, much worse decision, right? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a hard one.
There is but but but if I had done the year 1 of wait, but why? You know, you're as as one big book. It would have been worse because it what it it was better to have that. Be this kind of viral to me. There's like each has its strategic place. Yeah. And and also like some ideas, you know, obviously some ideas don't merit a book and some ideas shouldn't stick around for more than a few months or a year or two. But it, it is it, I have been having a lot of fun with it.
But yeah, I do like there is a permanence and a significance that comes with a book that you, you just, you don't really get any other way. So I will be back at it at some point. OK. All right, dude. Well, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for making the time, and good luck finishing up the manuscript. Thank you, I'll keep you posted. Cool. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.