Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 407: Lost Connections with Johann Hari

Episode Date: April 2, 2018

Thank you to Johann Hari for joining us this week. You can find out more about Johann's work at: Twitter: Stories From The Week   PUB MERCURY MISTRESS http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x11ok

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Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political.

And there is no welcome mat. This is episode 407 of Cognitive Distance. And we are actually joined in studio by a guest who we will not have on the air, but we have a millennial in studio. We have, right? You're millennial. Yeah. He looks millennial.

He's got the glasses, the beard, the whole thing. He doesn't eat meat. He doesn't drink. I don't even understand how he's in Glory Hole Studios, but it is our new employee, Ian. He is here all the way from Connecticut to eat real food. And he waved at the mic, so he won't do. He just waved at the mic. He did. He just did again. He did. But anytime we have a guest...

He's got a lot of studio discipline. I gotta say, studio discipline on this young man. Unlike David Smalley. Unlike, yeah, he's not dropping, he didn't drop anything. He's. But anytime we have a guest... He's got a lot of studio discipline. I gotta say, studio discipline on this young man. Unlike David Smalley. Unlike, yeah. He's not dropping... He didn't drop anything. He's not banging stuff on the table. He didn't, you know, like, plug his phone in that's gonna make a ding sound. So, you know,

later on in the program, we're gonna be joined by Johan Hari, the author of... And Johan will let him talk on this stuff, right? We going to let Johan talk. He's not going to sign language us. But Johan is going to talk about his book, Lost Connections, and maybe his TED Talk. We're very excited to have Johan on the program. So we're excited for that. But we're going to do a couple stories before he actually joins us.

I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government. We allowed our government to become a secular government. When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it's based on biblical principles, and we allowed those that don't believe in those things to keep pushing us, pushing us, and pushing us away from the government. So this story is from TheHill.com. Fake photo of Parkland student ripping up Constitution goes viral. So this is fucking crazy. You know, there's a student, Emma Gonzalez, and she's been very vocal.

She's a survivor of the Parkland shooting. She's been very vocal about her activism toward gun control. And the right has taken photos of her ripping up a paper target and they have, uh, Photoshop that and they, they only Photoshopped it to look like the constitution that she's ripping up, which we'll talk about why that would be a weird thing to do. Um,

anyway, even if that were true, but they also Photoshopped her to look like weirdly sunburned. Yeah. Like she does look like she's on like a ruckus or something like she's walking, you know, on Dune somewhere. There's a gum Jabbar happening right now somewhere.

She's got a weird pinkish kind of hue to her skin. Yeah. I love the idea of photoshopping somebody like so you're not only you're photoshopping them to change like the thing that they're holding in their hand, but then let's also just make her a different color. You know what they also did? They did a video of this.

There's an actual video of this where they actually did a motion of it. In the video? In the video. Let me see. So if you look at the video. Oh, it looks so fake. It does look fake.

It does look fake. And this person specifically, they're saying it's satire. And they're like, this is obviously a satire. You're all mad because it's believable, isn're like the obvious. This is obviously a satire. You're all mad because it's believable, isn't it? That's the best type of satire. It's comedic reflection reality.

That's not funny. Like that's not it's not funny to Photoshop or ripping up the Constitution because the reason the the the point of all this is that they're saying that what the students are doing is saying they want to rip up the Constitution. You know, there's no there's no comedic value in that. You're changing her message, right? Yeah. This is not like it's believable. What do you mean it's believable? So when you say that it's believable, the idea then is that I can believe that the student

wants to do this or is one step away from taking that next leap. This straw man is believable is what it really is. Right. Yeah. Because they're not ripping up the Constitution. They're just saying, hey, man, maybe your Second Amendment isn't really is. Right. Yeah. Because they're not ripping up the Constitution. They're just saying, hey, man, maybe your Second Amendment

isn't so awesome. Right. Yeah. I love, too, it's like they're not just, they're not ripping up the Bill of Rights. Right.

They're ripping up the Constitution. The Constitution. Right. It's the whole thing. The scrap, the whole thing. She's just got, like, extra pages behind it.

It's like a phone book. She just, rah! Tears it in half. Fuck it. Give me the Declaration of Independence, too. Give me every, I want every rule book,. Fuck it. Give me the Declaration of Independence, too. Give me every...

I want every rule book, every law book. She's using one of those hydraulic cutters they cut into cars with. They're just like... She's like Tommy Lee Jones in the fucking Fugitive. She's like, I'll rip up every Constitution Bill of Rights. Outhouse, doghouse, headhouse.

Just whatever. Give me anything made of paper, I'll rip it up. I don't give a shit. And what she's actually ripping up is that uh that specific like target she's ripping up a like a target a gun a gun target saying look we don't want to be targets and it makes you know it's and it makes sense and they specifically it's for this teen vogue and like what galls me about this is that somebody sat down at a computer for a very very long time to make a very realistic image of her ripping up a constitution for no reason.

For no reason. Well, the reason is to try to discredit what they're saying to make you appalled. You want to see this. If you're on the right, you see this and you're appalled that she's tearing up the constitution. Can I ask you a question? If you saw somebody tear up the Constitution, would you be appalled? I wouldn't even think about it. I wouldn't think about it about the flag either.

You know what I mean? It's not my cum sock. Yeah. You know what I mean? I'm not fucking hard over the Constitution. See, now I might be a little upset by that. That was my favorite one. It was so soft on the face.

It wasn't soft. Not anymore. It was crunchy. It was crunchy. Would you turn them inside out and wash them in cold water? It's like frosted flakes on the, it wasn't soft. It was crunchy. It was crunchy. Would you turn them inside out? Wash it like frosted flakes. So delicious. I can use a breakfast again. That sounds good. I just like, like this, this crazy reverence people have for a document. Like this is look, here's the thing. The constitution is the best set of ideas. A bunch of folks had a couple of hundred years ago. They're a generally good set of ideas a bunch of folks had a couple of hundred years ago.

They're a generally good set of ideas. I'm pro that set of ideas. I do, however, think that it is reasonable to challenge those ideas when it's time and to say, like, hey, is this still a good idea? Has the world changed in ways that we need to add to it? I don't know. By amending it through the amendment process, for example. by amending it through the amendment process. Yeah. For example.

Has our technology surpassed what the original writers thought it was going to be? Right. You know what I mean? Like at that time, and this is brought up all the time, it's brought up by so many different people, that at that time, you know,

shooting three bullets a minute would have been very, very, very difficult. Only the most trained person would have been able to do something like that. The same thing here. It's like, you know, like, they can shoot three bullets a second. I mean, it's like, everybody was a sniper back then. One shot, one

kill. That's all you got. Like, you shoot, and then it's like, you gotta pull out your fucking powder horn, and your tamping rod, and your fucking chewing gum, and whatever. Then you gotta get your man servant to load the damn thing for you. Your ball bearings or whatever. You loaded that thing.

Are you kidding me? It was all, it's, it's, you know, honestly, and I, and I mean this genuinely, guns are so different that they're not even the same device anymore. Right. They only have the most like rudimentary similarities between the ye olde gun. Pick up a ye olde gun, pick up a, pick up a genuine 200 years ago gun and pick up something that is a modern representation of like an assault rifle, right? They are so disparate in terms of their capability. The only thing that they have in common is that at the end,

a piece of lead goes fast out one end. That's it. People don't even understand that it wasn't even until the Civil War that we had rifled barrels. The Manet ball was the first bullet that actually came out, the slug that came out that expanded and was able to use the rifling to spin and increase accuracy. But that's Civil War technology. That's fucking almost 100 years later after the document's been written. Right. And the advances forward from there have been so tremendous. That we aren't really talking effectively about the same machine any longer.

We're not talking about the same machine any more than the Model T is the same thing as a Tesla. Right. Right. Would you say that they are comparable? Would you say like the rules that are in place that govern how we should use something like a Model T are the same sorts of rules that you should govern how a Bugatti Varon works or operates? Are they fundamentally similar in any ways other than their wheeled technology that sits on the bottom? And their wheels are so different. It's just like, but beyond that, like this idea that like, oh my God, ripped up the Constitution. What a monster.

Really? What if she had ripped it? No, she didn't. I don't want to make it very clear. She didn't. But what if she had? What if it was her suggestion that the Second Amendment, as a recent chief justice has been quoted as saying, maybe we need to look at repealing this, right?

So it's not just some fucking student. One of our current sitting justices recently said maybe the Second Amendment has outlived its usefulness. Was it a sitting justice or was it somebody who has retired from the bench? I think I thought it was a retired

judge. I think it's a retired judge. I'm sorry. I may have misspoken. Forgive me if I did. But it's a previous Supreme Court justice. Yeah.

That's still alive. So how does that work? Why? Like, is this tired? You just don't like, fuck it, I'm not going to work anymore. Like, fucking RBG that shit. Stay in it to win it. Like, what the fuck? Like, is this tired? You just don't like, fuck it. I'm not going to work anymore. Like fucking RBG that shit. Stay in it to win it.

Like what the fuck? Like until you're like, you know, ruling on and you're, and you're getting interrupted by elves, just keep going. You know what I mean? I wonder if like,

interrupted by elves. I wonder if like being a Supreme Court justice is like anybody else's job though. Or you're just like, I just want to save enough to retire. You know, like I don't want to work anymore. Like, I don't like all I'm trying to do. My entire life goal is to save until I can retire. You know? I don't know. I don't want to work anymore. I don't know. Like, all I'm trying to do,

my entire life goal is to save until I can retire. That's all I care about. My entire life goal is to eventually go to work in my pajamas. And that's what Supreme Court justices do.

So I'm good with that. I already wear the wig. They wear a wig, right? I wear a merkin. That's America? I wear a merkin. You don't have to. That's just a comfort thing.

No, yeah. It's like Velcro, too, because it gets stuck on the actual pubic hair. That's not how you don't have to that's just a comfort thing no yeah it's like velcro too because it gets stuck on the actual pubic hair because it's not how you're supposed to do that it makes that sound oh

so don't edit that out Ian by the way don't edit that that's gold that's comedy gold in the name of Jesus we speak that

oramana shanda karabat lo korre menemere jere kere burushida kere birasa that. Oh, man. I'm rocket man. Makes me want to sing the song. Rocket Man. I love this story. This is from Gizmodo. At long last,

flat, fat? I don't know. Maybe. Possibly. I think flat is better. Flat. Flat, flat Earth. Flat Earth.

I know. Almost. Flat Earth Rocketeer finally manages to blast himself into sky at God knows what speed. Oh, that's good. So this is the steam rocket guy, Mike Hughes.

Rocket man. He had a fucking rocket that said, you know, research flat Earth stuck on the side of it. And he managed to launch a rocket with himself in it to the inestimable heights. Oh my gosh, Tom. How high did he go? Of 1,825 feet or human beings have never been 1,825 feet in the air before.

Who knows what the earth could look like from such a fucking vast altitude. It probably looks like a pale blue dot, I imagine. Could you, I mean, I don't even know if your eyes and lungs would work up there. This is unexplored territory. It really is. It's just, I mean, God, I mean, how, what kind of pioneer is this guy?

You know, I've always said we're not doing enough with steam technology these days. Have we considered running our trains upon it? Fix my shirt. Oh my God. I also like the Let's just for the audience

1800 feet is shorter than some buildings There are buildings that are 1800 feet So you can look out And like base jump off of It would be a very tall building No doubt right It would be a very tall building but it is not You know something you can't

Take an elevator to, for example. 1,825 feet is fucking nothing. It's like if there's two buildings next to each other, the Russian parkour guys would jump building the building. Right?

They'd just be like doing one-arm pull-ups off a crane at the top of the thing. Have you ever seen, like there's been a couple of these where these guys die. Yeah, they fall off. Yeah, they just fall right off. Because they're fucking parkour. That's like, there's been a couple of these where these guys die. Yeah, they fall off. Yeah, they just fall right off. Because they're fucking parkouring.

It's like, they're all playing Assassin's Creed on the top of a fucking building. It's like the Faces of Death version. What did you say? The Assassin is Gravity. Assassin is Gravity. It works. Curses. Right?

Foiled by Gravity. Like this guy. He was foiled by Gravity, too. Gravity plays the long game, but it wins a lot. It does. I'm just saying. Like, guy. He was foiled by gravity too. Gravity plays the long game, but it wins a lot. It does. I'm just saying. Eventually we all fall down.

Look at grandpa's spine. I do want to read a quote. When he didn't have bed sores and he was standing up. That's what I mean. That's what I mean. Nobody wants to look at grandpa. That's why we put him in that home.

That's true. So we don't have to see him. We don't have to look at him. I'm going to read this quote because this kills me. I hope he sends me $5. In my birthday card? Video of the launch posted by

AP freelancer Matt Hartman captured the moment the rocket took off, which seemed to take onlookers by surprise, including a nearby group of boys who appear to be idly throwing rocks into a bigger pile of rocks. Oh, the excitement.

Oh, you know, I will say that that is way more. Watching a steam rocket run by an idiot motherfucker. Yeah. It, it, it cracks me up because it's like the video.

I have this thing called cosmic rocket at home. Right? So if I've got, I got 213 kids and this cosmic rocket, you put a vinegar or you put baking soda in it and then you put vinegar in it and then you shake it and put on this little launch pad and it goes, could you change it for like, like diet Coke and Mentos?

Could you do that? You can't, you can also make a works bomb in it. You just put, you know, works in aluminum foil on there. And that's now, now that fucking FBI has got to

shoot me or something. You're going to edit that, Ian. The guy didn't sit home. He shook his head. Fucked up. Yeah, that's great. That's great. He did get hurt though, which is nice. He's going to go to the library and check out in your name anarchist cookbook.

No, no, no. I want to get TSA pre-checked. That's not going to happen now. They're going to do a pre-check. They're just going to grab each ball. So he did get hurt, which is nice. Oh, that's a shame.

Oh, no, I meant that's a shame. From 1,800 feet. And his parachute did deploy, so he didn't just rocket back down to the ground. so he didn't just like rocket back down to the ground I mean because he wouldn't have gotten hurt he would have gotten deadified he would have gotten unless unless he was in like one

of those egg crates or like pantyhose that suspended him you know like like how like we gotta drop this egg off the roof and whichever egg doesn't break oh yeah and you suspend it in like a pantyhose or whatever you know what I'm talking about I do know what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. It's like a competition to not break your egg.

Mechanical engineers or whatever join the competition. That's the level of technology we have here with the steam rocket. It's fucking ridiculous. There are large hills bigger than this. Seriously, if you were at an elevation of 1,825 feet, I don't think your ears would pop.

You wouldn't change your recipe. Water still boils at the same temperature. So you'd be okay. God, what a fucking waste. In recognizing a communist, physical appearance counts for nothing. If he openly declares himself to be a communist We take his word for it

If a person consistently reads and advocates the views expressed in a communist publication He may be a communist If a person supports organizations which reflect communist teachings or organizations labeled communist by the Department of Justice, she may be a communist. If a person defends the activities of communist nations while consistently attacking the domestic and foreign policy of the United States, she may be a communist. If a person does all these things over a period of time he must be a communist oh this is great this is right wing watch this is uh wayne allen root chicago and baltimore are third world hell holes because they don't practice capitalism all right this is wayne allen root he's at a place uh giving a speech and jerking himself off so uh so this is where he was giving a speech so

this does not may me a little shitty. Number one, God bless American capitalism. There's no other country in the world where it can happen. It's impossible. If you look at every country that has high taxes in the world, their lives are a nightmare. You look at all those surveys, they're like the happiest people in the world.

Oh, where do we rank on that? Yeah. I don't know. Do you know where we rank? Not at the top 10. I know where a lot of people in Chicago rank, six feet under. No, but seriously, we're not up there. And the people that are in the ball sack countries up there.

Oh, the testicle countries. The testicle countries. They're squirting happy. Yeah, they love it. They love it up there. even though they only see the sun like one day a year or whatever. It's just fucking anticipation. The fucking sun is just, the darkness is edging them

for that sun moment. The whole sun. It's like, oh God, it's coming. Oh, that sun hits and it's just a fucking 24 hour orgasm. The whole it's a national holiday edging for the rest of the year. And that's it. Their lives are a nightmare. What did Donald Trump call them?

I think they were called sh-holes, right? What were they? Sh-holes. No, what he said was shitholes. And he denied saying it, except for nobody believes that he denied it. So at first, they didn't deny he said it. Then the next day, he denied he said it. So his administration didn't at first.

They said he used very strong language. And then the next day, oh, no, he didn't say that. And then four or five senators come out and said, yeah, he said it. So his administration didn't at first. They said he used very strong language. And then the next day, oh no, he didn't say that. And then four or five senators come out and said, yeah, he said that. Right. And then the two senators that like to fucking like tickle his balls while they go fucking throat deep on him said, no, no, he totally didn't say that. So we don't really know

whether he said it or not. But I love the idea that even his supporters are like, no, all right. We don't even believe his own denial. We don't even believe that he didn't say it. Yeah, come on. We all know that he called him shithole country. Yeah. He called like Haiti a shithole country. He didn't call like fucking Norway. He specifically said like

the Netherlands is where we should be getting people from. Yeah, but this is Wayne Allen Root and I don't think he knows where countries are or how things work. It's terrible at risk. Who's letting him speak? He's constantly invading. I put all my cannons in Hawaii. I just put all my armies on Kamchatka.

And we've got a few holes in America too. Chicago is a hole. Baltimore is a hole. There's a few. It's not bad here. I mean, know I mean here's what we don't have garbage on the streets

that's one thing we don't have that's true we don't have garbage juice and rats doing the backstroke through it that's one thing we do have good pizza

yeah we have good pizza as well right um okay all right yeah we have more murders

per capita okay all right you know you have to give a little to take a little what do you I mean but here's the thing you know you got you know you you have to give a little to take a little. What do you, I mean, fuck, you know. You got, you know, you can't make an omelet

without breaking a few eggs. If the eggs are brown, they don't count as much. It's three-fifths the eggs. Edit that out. Keep that in there. No, Ian knows that's good. That's fucking gold. Detroit is a shithole. There are third world hell holes right

in the middle of the United States of America. Wait, ithole. There are third world hell holes right in the middle of the United States of America. Wait, it can't be a third world hell hole in the middle of the United States. Literally, what is the first world? What it is actually defining is the United States. That's what it's defining. To his point, though,

there are parts of the United States that I would say, there are parts of the United States that are an embarrassment that we allow people in one of the United States that I will be like, I would say like there are parts of the United States that are, they are an embarrassment that we allow people in one of the richest countries in the world to live in such grinding poverty. And I will say like, if that were his point, which it's not, but if that were his point, I would agree that it is a shame and it is a disgrace that our social safety nets are not stronger. I'm sure this is what Wayne Allen was going to say. I'm jumping ahead. Yeah, the social safety net

he wants is a social safety net gun that he can shoot around poor people to capture them. Live capture the poor people and put them in the fucking running man. That's what he wants to do with poor people. Hey, Sub-Zero would take good care of those folks. The running man. That's what he wants to do with poor people. Hey, Sub-Zero would take good care of those folks. Oh, gosh.

The running man. Are you kidding me? Remember when Dynamite had his pants up? That's me every night on the couch. That fucking movie. I loved that movie when I was a kid. I did too. That movie was so...

That movie was like... It was the perfect teenage boy movie. Yeah, it was the perfect like teenage boy movie because it's like, he's going to fight another specialty guy. And it's like, I am specialty guy. And then they have

a specialty fight and he kills him. And there's the hot chick that he's always saving. Right. But it's basically a video game. It goes up level by level. It's a boss.

It's a boss at every level. Yeah. It's fucking great. Yeah. And he constantly run into it. Wasn't it a story though by Stephen King initially? Yeah, Every level. Yeah. It's fucking great. Yeah. And he constantly run into it. Wasn't it a story though by Stephen King initially? Yeah, it was.

Yeah. Is it different? Not, not, not fundamentally. Yeah. Okay. I mean,

conceptually it's the same thing. I think it's a little more gripping as a book than it is when you see it. And you're like, does Dynamo, is Dynamo chubby and have his pants off in the book or no? I don't remember. Cause I had, I was chubby and had my pants off when I read it. So's no room for both of us in that we're chubby he was

guys i said and had my i'm wearing pants and i'm chubby there are third world hell holes right in the middle of the united states of america where they don't practice capitalism that's why uh there's no capitalism here so we just went out to breakfast and we paid. We had to work. We had to work based on our means. What is that saying? Like work according to your means. And then. Oh, I know. Yeah.

I'm talking about it's like that Marxist thing. It's like according to your means you work and then. To each according to their means. And then something else. I don't know. We don't know. Cause I don't remember it. Cause I because I learned it like 20 years ago. Comrade, this is ridiculous.

I can't believe you're not. Oh, God. You're from Chicago. That's so amazing. You would think that this would be like etched upon your skin or something. From each according to his ability and to each according to his needs. Oh, we were way off. We were close.

We were close. We were close. Like somebody in the audience was going to correct us anyway if Ian didn't do it. I'm glad it was Ian. And we were close. We were close. We were close. Like somebody in the audience was going to correct us anyway if Ian didn't do it. I'm glad it was Ian. Like if Ian didn't do it, someone else.

He did. I appreciated that. I didn't feel judged. Thank you. These millennials are very accepting. I wonder if folks at the fucking, the stock exchange or whatever

are just like, this isn't capitalism. It's not capitalism. Yeah. I literally bring my bull in every day and leave with a bear. I don't know. I just, it's just flabbergasting.

Because I know, but let's back up, because I know what he's referring to. What he's referring to is the South and the West sides of Chicago, right? Right, sure. Which would be the communities, the blighted and impoverished communities in Chicago. And I think he's suggesting that

because many of the folks that are in those areas rely upon government services, that's the reason that they're a hellhole. That is insane. If you just pause for just a moment and think about the life of somebody who is born on the West side or born on the South side of Chicago and think about the services that they consume and the reasons why those services are consumed and the opportunities available to those people. It's ultra capitalist, right? It's ultra capitalist. What do they suppose? You wake up, you're born on the West side, you're born on the South side. You're exposed to a lower quality of education, a less safe environment,

your job opportunities and educational opportunities are minimal. Right. And so, you know, the likelihood that you're going to succeed, you know, financially and escape those neighborhoods is also minimal. That's literally capitalism. Yeah. It's just the less successful people within the capitalist system. And it's also, you know, if they're thinking about it, it's cheaper to keep those people poor. For you, if you're a capitalist, and especially if you're a business owner, it's cheaper for you to keep them poor and to give them a tiny amount of aid in comparison to the corporate tax cuts or whatever, which, you know, cuts right out of, I mean, that amount of money that we give to those people exceeds well over what you're going to give the other.

So it's even a cheaper system. Those people that are stricken by poverty will continue to stay in that cycle no matter what. They're never going to break out of it. Once in a while, you'll get a bootstrap story. But most of the time, they're just going to stay in that cycle. But those are exceptional stories, right? It's like you're saying, yeah. They're not going to ever escape from it. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. This story is from the raw story. Atlanta mom crashes car trying to prove to her kids that God is real. This story is fucking crazy. So this woman's driving along. She got a couple of kids. She wants to prove that God is going to protect them. So she's driving along in her SUV

and she closes her eyes, crosses over like lanes of traffic, crashes in an intersection. And the children told the officers that their mom wanted to prove to them that God was real and that God would protect them. I love this because it's a quote from the kiddo, right? Her eyes were closed and she was saying, blah, blah, blah. I love God. One daughter said to the police, she didn't want us to just have an accident. She wanted us to know that God is real. You want to find out if God is real, real fast?

Crash your fucking car into oncoming traffic. That question is going to be, the likelihood is the answer is no. That's my bet. If you want to know my bet on that question, it's going to be no. But if you want to find out for fucking sure. Also, this proves, guys, your kids aren's going to be no. But if you want to find out for fucking sure. Also, this proves, guys, your kids aren't listening to you.

They're just not listening to you. Blah, blah, blah. I love God. Even after an accident, you made that little impression. There's a fucking Ford impression embedded into the fucking skin of this little girl's forehead. And she still walks out like, blah, blah, blah. Whatever, Mom. Every day, it's like, blah, blah, blah. Dad hates his job. Bl out like blah blah blah whatever mom every day it's like blah blah

blah dad hates his job blah blah blah mommy drinks her box of wine blah blah blah where's my 3ds so tom let's take a few seconds to talk about our sponsor, our wonderful sponsor, AdamandEve.com. It's springtime. It is. And this is normally when you impregnate people. Isn't that how this works? Well, you can.

Or is this when you give birth? When is it? I don't know, man. All I know is it's always time to practice. Right. You know what? You want to make sure when you step up to the plate, you're ready to think about baseball.

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author of Lost Connections. Johan, thanks for joining us today. It's great to be with you guys. So let's, I want to get something out of the way first. And I saw an interview with you where some people were sort of questioning your new book, Lost Connections. And there was someone who had reviewed your book that might not have read it.

And I want to just get this out of the way. Before we get started, before we move in, nobody here is a doctor and nobody's saying get off your meds, right? Nobody here on this podcast is saying it's time to remove your medication, right? Yeah, my book says the exact opposite. It's very clearly anyone who's taking chemical antidepressants for whom the benefits are outweighing the side effects should carry on taking them. And I point out very clearly, there are specific benefits that some people are getting from chemical antidepressants. And as you say, the people who've argued online that I'm telling people to quit their chemical

antidepressants, to be fair to them, they admit they've not read the book. Okay, now wait, hang on a second. Because if I were judging this book solely by its cover, what I would propose is the cure for depression is sparklers. Is it? I think that there are sparklers on the cover of this book. Yeah, sparklers. Yeah, you're right.

Or fireworks. Somebody's like holding their fist up and their fireworks. Right. So are you suggesting for the record? Now, I want you to be you are being recorded, sir. Are you suggesting right here live? This is happening right now that sparklers are the cure for major depression. Is that your assertion?

Good, sir. I want to explain to everyone listening. If you are taking chemical antidepressants, immediately burn them. Go and buy one of those sparklers and any other kind of help for as long as you live.

Oh, gosh. Excellent. You heard it here first. Breaking news. Joanna Harry says. I was so worried. The best way to review a book is by not reading it. I think so.

And then just assuming what it might be saying and then being judgmental about that. So let's jump right in and start talking about depression because the title of the book sort of embolizes what it's about. Explain to us what your goal was with writing this. Yeah, well, there were these two mysteries that were really hanging over me. The first is I'm 39 years old, and almost every year that I've been alive, depression and anxiety have increased in the United States and across most of the developed world. And I was like, well, what's going on? Why is that happening? And I wanted to understand it for a very personal reason. When I was a teenager, I'd gone to my doctor and I'd explained that I had this feeling like pain was leaking out of me and I couldn't control it or regulate it. I didn't understand

it. I was very embarrassed about it. And my doctor told me a story that I now realize was crazily oversimplified. He said, well, we know why people feel this way. Scientists have discovered it. There's a chemical called serotonin in people's brains and makes them feel good. Some people are naturally lacking it as part of a chemical imbalance in their brains. You're clearly one of them. All you need to do is take these drugs and you'll feel better. And I started taking an antidepressant called Paxil. I felt a really significant boost for a few months. Then this feeling of pain started to come back through. So I went back to the doctor. The doctor said, clearly we didn't give you a high enough dose, gave me a higher dose. Again, I felt

significantly better. Again, the feeling of pain started to come back. And I was kind of in that cycle until for 13 years, I was taking the maximum possible dose, at the end of which I was still depressed. And I wanted to understand really why, despite the fact that I was doing everything I was told to do, I still felt this way. So I ended up for Lost Connections going on a big, long journey. It was over three years, over 40,000 miles. What I wanted to do was, firstly, just interview the leading experts in the world about what causes depression and anxiety and what solves them. And also just meet people who had very interesting perspectives on this from an Amish community in Indiana, because the Amish have very low levels of depression, according to quite a few measures, to a city in Brazil where they banned advertising to see if it would make people feel better. They banned what, I'm sorry?

They banned advertising. I thought you said appetizing advertising. Advertising. I thought you said appetizing. And I was like, I was very confused. I was like, that doesn't sound, that sounds more depressing. Like, you know, mozzarella cheese sticks? You're just like, fuck.

Like, why would I get up? I know there's no cheese curds or pretzel bites. I'm not doing this. They took the staff of Applebee's and sent them to a fucking gulag, right? Okay, now I'm with you. Now, keep talking. How much flair did they wear when they to a fucking gulag. Okay, now I'm with you. Now keep talking. How much flair did they wear when they were in the gulag?

That's important. Exactly. Well, actually, I was once given a sparkler in a branch of Applebee's. This fits entirely with our earlier thesis. Just to say a last little bit about that, which is that I learned loads of things on this journey. which is that I learned loads of things on this journey. I learned, you know, the heart of it, I think, is I learned there's scientific evidence for nine causes of depression and anxiety,

two of which are biological. The rest are factors in the way we live. And this really helped me because for several reasons, I realized that until I went to my doctor when I was a teenager, I thought my depression was all in my head, meaning, you know, I was just weak, I thought my depression was all in my head, meaning, you know, I was just weak, I needed to man up. And then for the next 13 years, I thought it was all in my head, meaning it

was just a chemical imbalance in my brain. But what I learned is while there are real biological factors at work, which are right about that make us more sensitive to these problems, actually, the factors, the causes are largely not in our heads. They're largely in specific elements of the way we're living. And that opens up a very different set of solutions that should be offered alongside chemical antidepressants. Not in place of them. This is about expanding the menu, not contracting the menu. So what do you mean by that, expanding the menu rather than contracting the menu? You're talking about treatment options? So right now, our treatment option is get a bunch of drugs and then not be able to have an orgasm.

That's your first option, right? And then the second option is get more of the same drugs, but try different ones later when those fail. I think those are our two primary current options, right? I thought eliminating orgasms would make people's lives better. I do think that that's a funny... I bring that up because I think it's a funny side effect of a lot of those antidepressants is the sexual dysfunction

because nothing says I'm having a great life like my dick doesn't work anymore. Jesus. 75% of men taking chemical antidepressants experience some form of sexual dysfunction. Now that isn't full impotence for everyone. Okay, 75% sounds bad

because it's most of them by a lot, but okay. Yeah, exactly. So I think in terms of expanding the menu, it's not just treatment options for individual depressed people. It's about dealing with these deeper causes. So I'll give you a specific example. We are the loneliest society that has ever been, right? There's a study that asks Americans, how many close friends do you have who you could turn to in a crisis? And when they started doing this study years ago, the most common answer was five.

Today, the most common answer, not the average, but the most common answer is none. There are more people who have nobody to turn to than any other option. That's a lot less than five. Yeah. None? Really?

The most common answer is people have nobody to turn to? Yeah. Oh my God, that is depressing. You're not the only one who thinks it's depressing. The leading expert in the world on this was a man called Professor John Cassioppo who was at the University of Chicago who I interviewed a lot. He sadly died two weeks ago, which is a devastating loss because he wasn't an old man and he was an amazing person. So Professor Cassioppo showed lots of things.

Firstly, he showed for human beings, becoming acutely lonely is as stressful as being punched in the face, right? It releases as much of the stress hormone cortisol. And he showed a whole range of devastating physical effects that occur when you become acutely lonely. It's as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. His theory about why, which I find quite persuasive, is you think about why do we exist, right? One of the reasons we're able to have this conversation is that our ancestors on the savannas of Africa were really good at one thing in particular. They weren't bigger than the animals they took down. They weren't faster than the animals they

took down. They were a lot better at banding together in groups and cooperating on complex tasks. Just like bees evolved to need a hive, humans evolved to need a tribe. And you think about those circumstances. If you were separated from the tribe in those circumstances, you were depressed and anxious for a really good reason, right? You were about to circumstances. If you were separated from the tribe in those circumstances, you were depressed and anxious for a really good reason, right? You were about to fucking die. You were in terrible danger. Those are the impulses we still have, right?

We are still that species. A species of people who were comfortable being alone would have died out in those circumstances. And so he proved that loneliness is a big cause of depression and anxiety. There's a massive amount of social science that proves that we have become lonelier than we've ever been. Can I ask an intersecting question? I don't mean to interrupt you, but something occurs to me. How does that intersect with some people's more generally introverted nature? So when I think about some of the people that I know in my life, some people I know are quite comfortably introverted. And I wonder how that intersects with this idea of a need for people while other people seem to have more of a need for private space and personal space.

How do those ideas intersect? Yeah, I remember talking to Professor Cassioppo about that. And it's interesting. There's a natural variation in people's sociability. But interestingly, sociability and loneliness are kind of different. So he made this one of his most fascinating discoveries about loneliness. It's a subtle one, but I think it's a really interesting one. He did some really interesting papers on this. is he noticed, this seems at first weird and paradoxical, because most people he says to them, well, what is loneliness? We don't have any difficulty intuitively knowing. But to develop a definition is quite difficult. And he noticed loneliness does not correlate very closely, just subjective feelings of loneliness don't correlate very closely with how many people you actually interact with every day. And it's like, well, that's weird, because what's going

on there? One of the ways he made a breakthrough in thinking about this is he thought about the analogy. So imagine you go to Paris for the first time. You've never been there. And you go to Place de la République, which is their Times Square. Or you come to London.

You've never been to London before and you go to Trafalgar Square, right? You're not alone. You are surrounded by people, but you will feel quite lonely, right? Or imagine you're in a hospital bed. You can push a button, but you will feel quite lonely, right? Or imagine you're in a hospital bed. You know, you can push a button and you can get a nurse there at any moment. You're not alone. And yet you will feel quite lonely. And his understanding of this

involves what he discovered is what does correlate with feelings of loneliness is not your objective social interactions, not how many people you've talked to, what reduces loneliness is whether you feel you have a reciprocal relationship with someone. So it's not where you're just the recipient of something. So lying in a hospital bed, the nurse will come and help you. If you try and help the nurse back, she'll tell you to stop, right? What reduces loneliness is where relationships where you feel they'll give you something if you ask, and you will give something to them if they ask. So it's where you feel it's an exchange of kind of not money, but moral obligations, duties, pleasures, joys. It's where you feel you're pooling your life chances with somebody else.

Helps to explain why people begin to feel so lonely at the end when marriages are beginning to break down and you feel you're not in it together anymore, right? You're not exchanging this reciprocity so it's reciprocal um obligations and joys shared moments that reduce loneliness not just so you know you're not alone when you're in the middle of trafalgar square or times square but these people aren't going to don't owe you anything you don't owe them anything right you that you so you there's no reciprocity between you they don't care about you you don't care about them and and so and there's been this has been a big increase in in in loneliness um across the the developed world really significant and i was interested in thinking about exactly what you asked when you asked about you know how do we expand what is expanding the menu of options mean

so this is one of the the kind of more like a medical intervention that i write about i like about lots of different kinds of what i think we should regard as different antidepressants anything that reduces depression should be regarded as an antidepressant one of the things that most one of the ones that most moved me i write about quite a few in lost connections comes from the story of an amazing doctor i got to know called Sam Everington. So Sam is a doctor in East London, poor part of East London, where I actually lived for a long time. And he was really uncomfortable because he had loads of patients coming to him with depression and anxiety. And like me, he thinks there's some role for chemical antidepressants. They do give some relief to some people. But he could just see just pulling that one lever was not solving the problem for

most people, right? That there were deeper problems going on. One of the things he could see is that his patients were really lonely. So he decided to pioneer a different approach. One day, a woman came to him called Lisa Cunningham, who I got to know quite well. Lisa had been shut away in her home for seven years with just crippling depression and anxiety. And Sam said to Lisa, don't worry, I'll carry on giving you these drugs. I'm also going to prescribe something else. I'm going to prescribe for you to take part in a group. So there was an area behind the doctor's surgery that was known as Dogshit Alley, which gives you a sense of what it was like. And he said to Lisa, what I want you to do is to come and turn up twice a week. I'll turn out and support you with a group of other depressed and anxious people. I want you to turn Dog Shit Alley into

something beautiful, right? First meeting, Lisa was literally physically sick with anxiety, but several things happened in this group. The first was Lisa noticed they had something to talk about that wasn't how shit they felt, right? That normally we either give people drugs or we prescribe therapy where they can go and talk about their woe, both of which have some value for some people. But in this case, they decided they were going to learn gardening. They started to put, they were going to turn this into a garden. They started to put their fingers in the soil. They started to learn the rhythms of the seasons. There's a lot of evidence that exposure to the natural world is a very powerful antidepressant. Another thing that happened is they started to form a tribe.

They started to form a group. And they started to do what human beings do when we form a tribe. They started to solve each other's problems. So, for example, this is the most extreme example, but there was a guy in the group who was sleeping on the public bus, right? They started, everyone else in the group was was sleeping on the public bus, right? They started, everyone else in the group was like, well, of course you're depressed if you're sleeping on a bus. They started pressuring the local authority to get this guy a home. They succeeded. It was

the first time they'd done something for someone else in a really long time and it made them feel great. The way Lisa put it to me is the weeks and months and years passed in this program. great. The way Lisa put it to me is the weeks and months and years passed in this program. And as the flowers began to bloom, we began to bloom. There was a study in Norway of a very similar program, which is part of a growing body of evidence that found it was more than twice as effective as chemical antidepressants. I think for a kind of obvious reason, it was dealing with two of the reasons why they were so depressed in the first place, their disconnection from other people and their disconnection. I actually have a question about that. So like right now we are connected to a lot of people through like social media and things like that. Um, you know, we're able to, I'm able to be connected to people I haven't seen in 20 years,

but I can still see what they post and maybe comment to them on occasion. In some ways, we're way more connected than we ever were before. And I also want to bring this back to something you mentioned earlier, too. You had said you had visited an Amish community. What's the difference? This is sort of a two-part question. Do you think we're more connected with social media?

And secondly, what do you think about were there any sort of interesting discoveries when you visited the Amish, when they're not dealing with technology as much as we are today? Yeah, remind me to come back to the Amish part in a second. I wanted to understand exactly this question that you're asking, something that I thought about a lot. One of the places where I made a breakthrough for myself in understanding it was when I went to the first ever internet rehab center in the United States.

It's outside Spokane in Washington, at Washington state. And I have to admit, the minute I arrived there, it's this big clearing in the woods. First thing I did absolutely instinctively was reach for my phone. Look at it. I feel really pissed off.

I couldn't check my email. Did you download the irony app before you left to make sure? Exactly. So the woman who runs it, co-runs it, is this amazing woman called Dr. Hilary Cash, who's super interesting. And I spent a lot of time there and I spoke to some of their, quite a few of their patients. And she said this really interesting thing to me that really stayed with me. So they get a whole range of people, but they disproportionately get young men. Often young men who become obsessed with multiplayer role-player games like World of Warcraft. And Dr. Cash said to me, you've got to ask yourself, what are these young men getting

out of these games, right? What's the positive thing they're getting out of these games? They're getting what they used to get from the culture, but no longer get. They get a sense of tribe. They get a sense of identity. They get a sense, a way to gain status. And they get a sense that people see them and value them. But as I thought about it more, and as I spoke to lots of these young men and as she put it, it's more like a kind of parody of the connection we need than the actual connection we need. I started to think the relationship between social media and social life is a bit like the relationship between porn and sex. I'm not against porn, like virtually all men,

sometimes I look at it. But if your entire sex life consisted of looking at porn, you'd be going around pissed off and irritated the whole time because your deeper needs would not be met. No one spends, you know, an hour looking at porn and then feels satisfied and held and valued the way you do after sex, if it goes well anyway. I thought that had a memory there, I thought, oh, not every time. But the, you know, sex, if it goes well anyway. I thought I had a memory there.

I thought, oh, not every time. But in a similar way, and I think you've got to think about the moment in history when the internet arrives, right? And we become obsessed with it. By coincidence, the internet arrives for most of us the late 90s, the early 2000s. Most, not all, most of the causes of depression and anxiety that I write about in Lost Connections

were already in place or being supercharged by then, right? So loneliness is an obvious example. What's called the collapse of social capital, that was well in place before the internet comes along. But what happens is the internet arrives and it looks a lot like the things we've lost, right? You've lost your friends, but here's some Facebook friends. You've lost your sense of status. Well, here's some status updates. It looks a lot like the thing we've lost in the same way that if you give, you know, a copy of Playboy to someone in prison,

it looks a lot like actual sex, right? But it's not sex. And in a similar way, it's not. And I think our obsession with these forms of connection is partly a way of dealing, a way of trying ineffectively to substitute for the connections we've lost, the connections we no longer have. You know, Marc Maron, the comedian, said 90% of all Facebook status updates could be boiled down to the underlying sentiment,

will somebody somewhere please acknowledge I exist? There's no value in these things. Actually, Professor Cassiopo, the loneliness expert I mentioned, gave me a really good rule of thumb for this. He said, you know, if your social media is a way station to meeting people offline or staying in touch with people you know and value offline, then it's a good thing. If it's the last stop on the line, then you've got a problem. Well, let me ask about that a little bit. So what is it that is unique about an offline

interaction, a physical face-to-face interaction that has greater social value or has greater potential to surpass the sort of loneliness problem? I think it's several things. And one of the ways I think about that is people sometimes say to me, for both my books, this is my previous book, Chasing the Scream, which is about addiction. People often say, why did you spend all this money and spend all this time going and traveling all these places to interview these people? You could have just spoken to them on Skype, right? And I've got to tell you, speaking to people on Skype, you don't get you really don't get 10 percent of the material you get when you sit with someone. And I think that fits intuitively with what everyone knows.

Right. When we when we are physically present with people, there is a different character to the interaction. We did not evolve to interact through screens, just like we didn't evolve to masturbate over images, right? We evolved to- Yeah, but we're really good at it. Yeah, I mean, yeah. We're not going to knock it out of the park.

You know what I mean? That's like, I feel like fucking level 99 wizard shit on that stuff or however that works. I'm going to ask you a question. It's going to sound snarky, but I don't mean it that way. Can you make it up in volume? And what I mean by that is like, all right. So there are a lot of people, um, for whom they are isolated and they're genuinely isolated and things like, you know, social media platforms offer folks maybe a lesser, and I don't disagree with you, you know, and I don't think most people would a lesser interaction than a physical face

to face, you know, lunch date with a buddy. But, um, can you make it up in volume? Can I have, cause I can have more interactions and I can have interactions with more people online in the same amount of time. So if it's worth 10%, but I can have 10 times more, does it add up the same way? And I think I know the answer, but if not, why? The evidence suggests not. So there's a lot of, I mean, it's slightly contested evidence, but there's solid evidence. I interviewed a brilliant person called Dr. Susan Pinker about this. There's pretty solid evidence that the longer you spend on Facebook, for example, the more likely you are to become depressed.

This is called, I mean, the term for it is Facebook depression. Even Facebook admitted that, although they said the solution was spend more time online, but just be more cheerful. I love it. Hey, wait, the problem isn't our product. just be more cheerful. I love it. Hey, wait, the problem is in our product. It's smile while you're using it. Smile while you're... It's so sad.

You're going to fucking smile while you're sad, motherfucker. That'll fix it. You better mean it. It's contested about why this is. Some people say, and the truth is we don't know, some people say it's just that people who are already more inclined to be depressed are more likely to sit in front of their computer and just sit and scroll through Facebook. And there's clearly some truth in that as well. It's clearly one of the things that's going on, but I think it's saying deeper.

We know, for example, the more time you spend on social media, not just Facebook, the more prone you are to make social comparisons between yourself and other people. Facebook, the more prone you are to make social comparisons between yourself and other people. And of course, what you see on social media is overwhelmingly a kind of curated version of the person. Yeah, it's a highlight reel. Yeah. It's we're basically, we've turned ourselves into kind of paparazzi and PR officers for ourselves, right?

Right. So partly what's going on there is comparison, but I think that's one of the things that's going on. I think there are lots of factors going on. But I also think it comes back to, it's like saying, well, I could masturbate over 10 women rather than just have sex with one of them. And you think, well, yeah, but you haven't.

What's that line that people always say in AA? You can never have enough of something that's not quite enough. And I think there's, I do think it's not quite enough to just be seeing people in a one dimensional way. Yeah. So is it the physicality of the thing? Like, you know, because I, I, you know, and I'm not, I'm just curious about it because I think that intuitively we understand that there's a sort of hierarchy of intimacy when it comes to relating with other people, right? Like there's, There's something like the one-way communication

or the quasi one-way of something like Twitter or Facebook, right? Which is like a status, a comment to comment to comment versus like a text message would be much more intimate than that, right? And more intimate still would be a phone call and more intimate still would be a video call. And then there's face to face. So what is it? Is it literally just the physicality of presence that helps to shed that loneliness feeling? I don't know. I think it's partly, and I'm going beyond the science here because I couldn't find the answers to what you're asking, but there's a few things that are suggestive. One is just the continuity. Generally, we see people physically who we will see repeatedly physically, right?

So, for example, just before you spoke to me, I was chatting to my neighbor who lives in the apartment below me. I'm going to see her, you know, probably tomorrow and the next day, and I'm at least going to see her a couple of times a week for years and years, right? So there's a degree of continuity, i'm never you know we may never speak again right very nice talking to you and i hope we do but you know the odds are we'll you know maybe we'll speak again in another few years so i think partly there's a kind of continuity and feeling so we know for example there's this interesting research by professor richard layard that found one of the things that gives people most happiness are what are called micro interactions so actually we think that one of the things and we rightly think one of the things that gives people most happiness are what are called micro interactions.

So actually, we think that one of the things, and we rightly think one of the things really important is, okay, you've got a partner, you've got to have children or whatever, your close family. But actually, just bumping into people in the street who you know a little bit, that is a really important factor in happiness. The absence of micro interactions leads to a real deterioration in happiness. I think it's partly that. And that's just the absence of micro interactions leads to a real deterioration in happiness i think it's partly that and that's just the feeling that you are in a place where you are seeing that makes you feel safe that makes you feel where you are seeing people you know that you know you're being seen back i think something else is going on we know there's good evidence for example um infants babies um there's a lot of correlation between infant satisfaction and happiness and

eye contact. So mothers or caregivers who look after their babies but don't make sustained eye contact, those kids tend to be less happy, more prone to crying and so on and so on. So yeah, we're physically embodied beings. The singularity has not happened. We're not in a cloud, We're physically embodied beings. The singularity has not happened. We're not in a cloud, right? We are physically embodied beings. We evolved in all sorts of complex, physically embodied ways. I've been kind of weighing it recently. He said, let me think about how he said it exactly. I'm giving his words slightly wrong, but he said, you know, we're made to think that the mind is in the brain. In fact, the brain is in the mind, that your whole body is your mind, right? Not, it's not, that's not, it's not confined to your brain.

And this is a controversial, I should point out, this is a controversial theory. But we know things through our bodies in addition to knowing them intellectually through the more classic picture of a brain. And so I do think there's something about being physically embodied with somebody, which is not just a sexual thing. Being physically embodied with somebody is more compatible with our deeper kind of human nature. What do you, let's roll back to the Amish question. I'm very curious what you found when you visited people that really do, don't have as a level of technology that most people can enjoy or use. Yeah.

So we know this is another amazing thing that Professor Cassiopo, I mean, it's such a devastating loss. We've been talking about a lot of the things that he, he discovered, Professor Cassiopo made such a devastating loss. We've been talking about a lot of the things that he discovered, Professor Cassiopo discovered. So he looked at this group called the Hutterites, who are rather like the Amish, a bit more hardcore than the Amish. They're based in South Dakota. So they're like the Amish. They're off the grid.

They don't have any, they have even less technology than the Amish because the Amish will have propane tanks and things. And he did this. So, you know, sometimes they say, oh, these groups are less lonely. But you just think, well, is it a cultural taboo about saying they feel lonely? And Professor Cassiopo discovered a way to measure this. So one of the things that happens when you're lonely, it's a very good way of measuring loneliness scientifically, is when you go to sleep, you will have much higher levels of what are called micro-awakenings.

So they're where you just wake up slightly from your sleep. You won't remember it. You don't wake up fully, but you wake up slightly. One of the theories about this is if you were isolated on the savannas where we evolved and you went to sleep, your body wouldn't let you rest because it knew you weren't in the group. So you were in greater danger. Anyway, so you can wire people up and measure how many micro awakenings they have. Professor Cassiopo did this and he discovered that the

Hutterites, this Amish-like group, had basically no micro awakenings. They had the best sleep of anyone that had been monitored, which shows that they really were less lonely. It's not just they said they were less lonely. Anyway, so I went to this Amish community outside Fort Wayne. It's a place called Elkhart Lagrange. It's just outside Fort Wayne in Indiana. And I've got to admit, it was really challenging. I'm a gay atheist.

And if you had asked, you know, I grew up in an area, part of North London, as you can tell from my weird Downton Abbey accent, I'm British, although I spent a lot of time in the US. I grew up in an area uh part of north london as you can tell from my weird danton abbey accent i'm british and i spent a lot of time in the u.s i grew up in a part north london where there was a big orthodox jewish community and you know i thought it was just kind of backwardness not not not uh i want to stress not jewish people specifically orthodox jews who most of the people i knew when i was a kid were jewish and when my you know secular jews on the opposite i kind of hugely admired.

But Orthodox Jews who live in a not totally dissimilar way to the Amish, I just thought they were crazy, right? I thought they were just bizarre throwbacks. But when I spent time with the Amish, I began to see, while there's still a lot I would criticise about the Amish, don't get me wrong, not least because I recently re-watched Witness, I could see they had something we don't have. I write about these nine factors that cause

depression and anxiety in my book, and a significant number of those factors, the Amish have found interesting ways of dealing with that we have not. So we've talked about loneliness. The Amish are not lonely ways of dealing with that we have not. So we've talked about loneliness. The Amish are not lonely, right? They are in constant tribal interaction, right? They are constantly working together. Another factor that causes depression and anxiety is inequality, partly because extreme inequality creates a sense of humiliation in people at the bottom, and it creates a

sense of insecurity in people at the top. Well, there is no inequality among the Amish, or at least among amish men uh there's gender inequality amish men have monstrous power about women but which is terrible and one of the many things i'm criticizing about them but within the community of amish men i mean the richest amish man is as wealthy as the poorest amish man the richest amish woman is as wealthy as the poorest amish woman so there's no status comparison that triggers a sense of humiliation. There's also, I mean, one of the things I write about is, and I'm sure we can talk about this more, but a disconnection from meaningful values is a really big driver of depression and anxiety. And as a culture, just like junk food has taken over our diets and made us physically sick,

a kind of junk values have taken over our minds and made us mentally sick. A guy called Professor Tim Kasser, who I write about, has shown that the more you think life is about money and how you look to other people, the more likely you are to become depressed and anxious. It's a quite significant effect. I can tell you why if you want. But again, the Amish have a very strong sense of meaningful values. And I don't agree with their values in many ways, but they are very deeply connected to their sense of meaning. And it was interesting because the amish have this curious perspective on our way of life as well because one of the reasons the amish are not classed as a cult by any social scientist is that when you turn 16 in the amish as most listeners will know you have to leave you have to go and live in what they call the english world the outside world

for two years you have to leave they make They make you go. And then you have to decide whether you want to come back. And if you decide to come back, you become an Amish. If you decide not to come back, you can still come and visit, but it's a once-in-a-lifetime decision. You can never come back and be Amish after that. This process is called going on room springer. About 80% of them choose to come back and about 20% don't. And one of the things that's fascinating about that is when you go and talk to the Amish, they know our world really well. They lived in our world, right?

And so it was fascinating talking to them about what they saw as why they chose to come back, right? Why they chose to reject our way. And I mean, one guy, really fascinating guy, people can listen to the audio of my conversation with him on the book's website, who said, Freeman Lee Miller, his name was. And he said, I don't see how people can raise kids when you're so isolated. But he also was talking about, it was so interesting. He said, there's loads of things I miss about your world. I miss that 70s show. I miss watching NBAba games i would love to go trucking across the

country i'd love to go to jerusalem he said but you know if i chose those things i would be tacitly choosing to give up something else which is the time i spend with my friends my family and my community that it's that you know precisely because for example they the irish don't use cars so they can only travel as far as a horse will take them or as far as they can walk. He said that forces us to be in constant contact, that forces us to be together, to be a tribe. We can't become separated out. And he made this analogy that really struck me. He said, well, you know, Weight Watchers, right? And I was like, yeah. And he said, well, you know, why do people join Weight Watchers? It's because if they, you can't

lose weight on your own, you can't discipline yourself on your own, but you're in a group, you can do it. Right. And I said, well, wait, are you saying like the Amish is like Weight Watchers for the problems of Western civilization? And he said, that's exactly what I'm saying. And I found that a really, now. How many points is Pornhub worth on the Weight Watchers scale? It's a lot. It's a lot. I'm just saying. That's why I spend all my points every day.

The Bible's free. You can do the Bible as much as you want. It's like celery. I think Pornhub would burn calories, right? I think that's encouraged on Weight Watchers. But that makes me think of, you know, this is too disgusting to say, but I'd like to say, you know,

Weight Watchers sell these protein shakes. But no, it's not that I'm saying we should become like the Amish. Of course I'm not. No gay atheist is going to tell you that we should become like the Amish. What I think it does help us to do is to set a kind of point of direction on

the compass away from some aspects of depression and anxiety, especially since those insights the Amish are offering us are compatible with so much of the science, including science from the leading medical body in the world, the World Health Organization and what they tell us about this. I like to shift gears a little and talk about your, your discoveries about addiction. I had watched a TED talk that you had done. It was absolutely fascinating. I'm coming from a different perspective than some people. My father was an alcoholic. My father died of cirrhosis, actually, from alcoholism. So I have an interesting perspective of knowing what it's like to live with an alcoholic for many, many years of my life. Tell us a little bit about your

discoveries about addiction. And specifically, one of the things that Tom and I brought up in the past is how Portugal deals with addicts. That's always, I think, a really fascinating thing that they do. Yeah, I'm really sorry for what happened with your dad and what you went through. I learned a lot about this from my previous book, which was called Chasing the Scream. And like you, I had a lot of addiction in my family. One of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to, and I don't understand why then, but as I got older, I realized we had drug

addiction in my family. And like a lot of people in that position, I felt a really big mixture of things. And I think this is partly why the debate about the war on drugs, which the book strongly argues against, I think one of the reasons why the debate about the war on drugs is so charged is because if we're honest, I think this debate runs through the hearts of all of us, right? there's a part of all of us that looks at someone with an addiction problem and thinks oh fuck someone should just stop you and then there's another part of us that's loving and compassionate and sees there's something deeper going on there um and i wanted to understand you know there were people in my life who were in a really bad way when i started working on that book.

And I wanted to understand what was going on. And it was one of the biggest things. And it wasn't a discovery on my part. I'm a journalist. I don't make scientific discoveries. But I was able to interview people who have made scientific discoveries that really helped me to understand what I thought I'd seen, what I thought I'd understood in a very, very different way. So if you'd asked me seven years ago, what causes, say, heroin addiction, I would have looked at you like you were an idiot. And I would have said, well, obviously heroin causes heroin addiction, right? We've been told this story for a hundred years.

It's become part of our common sense. It definitely was with me. We think if we kidnapped, you know, I'm in London at the moment moment and we think if we kidnap the next 20 people off the street who walk past my apartment in london and we forcibly injected them all with heroin every day for a month like some villain in a saw movie they would they would all become heroin addicts for a simple reason that there are chemical hooks in heroin that their bodies would start to desperately physically need, right? And that's what addiction is. And I'm going to be able to understand this differently. When I went and met an amazing man called Professor Bruce Alexander,

I went to go and see him in Vancouver, who made this breakthrough that's really led to this global transformation in how we understand this. So he explained to me, the theory of addiction we have that it's caused by the chemical hooks comes from a series of experiments that was done earlier in the 20th century. They're really simple experiments. Your listeners can try them at home if they feel a bit sadistic. You take a rat, you put it in a cage and give it two water bottles. One is just water. The other is water laced with either heroin or cocaine. If you do

that, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water and almost always kill itself quite quickly. So there you go, rat. That's our story. But in the 70s, Professor Alexander came along and said, hang on a minute. You put this rat alone in an empty cage where it's got nothing to do except use these drugs. What would happen if we did this differently? So he built a cage that he called Rat Park, which is basically like heaven for rats. They've got loads of friends. They can have loads of sex. Which is where the first set of rats went

after they OD'd on heroin. So it's just full circle. It's beautiful. Exactly. Exactly. You know, they had loads of cheese, loads of colored balls, anything a rat could want in life.

And they had both the water bottles, the normal water and the drugged water. And of course they tried both, they didn't know what's in them. This is the fascinating thing. In Rat Park, they don't like the drugged water. They don't use it very much. None of them ever use it compulsively. None of them ever overdose. So you go from almost 100% compulsive use and overdose when they do not have the things that make life meaningful to none when they do have the things that make life meaningful one of the things i take from this and the enormous amount of human evidence i can talk about if you like is the opposite of addiction is not sobriety the opposite of addiction is connection and sometimes people when they hear

me say that think i'm just talking about social connection and this is partly what my new book lost connections is an attempt to explore what does it mean to be connected? And I think a big part of it is social connection, but there's a lot more things going on. And there's a lot more that we need to talk and think about. And depression and anxiety and addiction are very related. The core of addiction is about not wanting to be present in your life because your life is too painful a place to be. The drug is an attempted antidepressant, right? It's a very challenging line marianne faithful the great british rock star who's best remembered for being mick jagger's girlfriend but it's much better than mick jagger i think and has a memoir which you know is quite challenging she says heroines she had a peer when

she was homeless in 60s and she had a heroin addiction she said heroin saved my life because if it wasn't for heroin i would have killed myself, the point she's making is not heroin is a good antidepressant. Of course, it brings all sorts of problems that are too obvious for me to mention. But the point she's making is people are seeking out painkillers because they're in very deep pain. And so I think we have to understand the connections between these problems and we have to understand what it means to be connected and what we have become disconnected from and i think these nine factors that are causing depression and anxiety that i write about in lost connections are very much playing out in the in the addiction crisis and so you mentioned you asked about portugal

portugal is a place that really acted on these insights so in the year 2000 port i spent a lot of time in portugal obviously after this but in the year 2000 uh I spent a lot of time in Portugal after this, but in the year 2000, Portugal had one of the worst drug problems in the world. One percent of the population was addicted to heroin. And every year they tried the American way more. They arrested more people. They imprisoned more people. Every year the problem got worse. And one day the prime minister and the leader of the opposition got together they basically, they decided to do something incredibly radical,

something nobody had done in nearly 70 years. They said, should we like ask some scientists what they think we should do? So they set up this panel of scientists and doctors, led by an amazing man I got to know called Dr. Hua Guilao. And they said to them, you guys go away, figure out what would solve this. And we've agreed in advance, we'll do whatever you recommend. So they went away. They looked at all the science, including Rat Park. And they came back and they

said, decriminalize all drugs from cannabis to crack the whole lot. But, and this is the crucial next step, take all the money we currently spend on fucking people's lives up, on punishing them, shaming them, stigmatizing them, jailing them, and spend all that money instead on turning their lives around, on reconnecting them to a meaningful life. And by the time I went to Portugal, it was 13 years since that had begun. The best piece of research on this by the British Journal of Criminology found injecting drug use was down by 50%. Addiction was massively down. HIV was massively down. Overdose deaths were massively down. Street crime was massively down. Virtually nobody in Portugal wants to go back. I went and interviewed the guy, a man called

Juan Figueroa, who led the opposition to the decriminalization when it happened. He was the top drug cop in Portugal at the time. He said, you know, if we decriminalize all drugs, we have a massive increase in drug use, massive increase in kids using drugs. And he said to me, everything I said would happen didn't happen. And everything the other side said would happen did. And he talks about how ashamed he was that he spent so many years fucking people's lives up when he could have been helping them turn their lives around. So these models are based on connection. They don't solve every problem, but they lead to radical improvement.

All right. I have a question then. It's probably the obvious question. But so we're in this space now where we have this need. I think you've made a strong case for connection. So how the hell do we, I mean, clearly we're not doing a good job of it. We're not on our own doing a good job of it. Otherwise, we wouldn't have these issues to solve. And we've developed these tools that we talked about earlier that are not the right tools for these real connections.

And we talked about that. So how the hell do we solve this? How the hell do we connect as people in the 21st century in America with the society, with the social structure that is in place? Because we can't wake up tomorrow and fix the social structure, the technology structure. We can't just snap our fingers and fix that. So how do we live in this space and connect in those meaningful ways? I think we have to change the space in which we live. If we carry on being a society of deeply lonely individuals, taught that life is about buying and spending, left to scream at each other through screens, we will continue to have a huge depression, anxiety and addiction crisis. But we have the

power to change the way we live. We change to this way and we can change out of this way. You know, I talk in the book about lots of specific ways we can do that, both as individuals, there are some things individuals can do, and how we can come together as citizens and make these changes. When I get pessimistic about this, and I think this is a big struggle because it's a deep problem, average white male life expectancy has fallen in the last few years in the United States for the first time since the Civil War, right? These are really deep problems. I think about a friend of mine who I write about in Lost Connections called Andrew Sullivan, who's a journalist, a lot of your listeners all know his work. In 1994, height of the AIDS crisis, Andrew was diagnosed as HIV positive when there was no treatment in sight.

And Andrew's first thought was, I deserve this, because he'd grown up in such a homophobic culture. So he went to a little place called Provincetown in Cape Cod to die. And as the last thing he was ever going to do, he decided to write a little book about a crazy utopian idea. He was like, well, I'm obviously not going to live to see this. No one alive now will live to see it. but maybe somewhere down the line, someone will pick up this idea. The idea he was the first person to write a book proposing was gay marriage. And when I feel pessimistic, I try to think, okay, I try to imagine going back in time

to 1994 and saying to Andrew, to Andrew, you're not going to believe me, but 26 years from now, first of all, you're going to be alive. Good news. Secondly, you're not going to believe me, but 26 years from now, first of all, you're going to be alive. Good news. Secondly, you're going to be married to a man. Thirdly, the Supreme Court of the United States is going to quote this book that you're writing now in its judgment, making it mandatory for every state of the union to introduce gay marriage. And I'll be with you the next day when you receive an invitation from the president of the United States to go to a White House that

will be lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag to celebrate what you and lots of other people have achieved. And by the way, that president, he's going to be black. It would have sounded like the most ludicrous science fiction, right? We're talking about 2000 years of homophobia that had to be overcome, right? Andrew lived to see it. A lot of the people listening to this podcast fought for that moment, right? So enormous changes can happen. Every single person listening to this podcast is the beneficiary of a positive change. The weekend was a utopian idea when it was first proposed. And, you know, women listening to this show don't need me to mansplain the benefits that have happened,

but I will just remind you, my grandmothers were not allowed to have bank accounts when they got married, right? Because it had to be in the man's name, right? That's how recent some of it, and we still have a long way to go on gender, obviously. But everyone listening to this show knows about positive transformations that have happened. It is a symptom of our isolation and collective depression that we've been made to feel like we just have to accept this whole fucking system as a given and then tweak ourselves chemically in in in the gaps in between right that is not true we can deal with the deep underlying ways that factors that are making us depressed and anxious and i go through a lot of ways we can do that i do talk about things individuals can do but i do think we just

have to be honest the bigger social changes for which there's evidence are the ones which will be most effective. And I've seen at work all over the world. I got a question and I'm going to, I'm going to roll it back just a little bit to addiction. One of the things that I wonder if you got any pushback from when you say like, you know, someone is taking those drugs or, you know, using those substances to escape their reality to the people around them, their, their people, like, you know, like their family or whatever, do they resent this idea? Because in a way they're, you're, you're saying they're escaping from their family, right? They're escaping from people that are

around them. Is there some sort of pushback from people who have been close to people who have been addicted? Some of the people who've been close to people who have been addicted? Some of the people who've most championed Chasing the Scream, the book where I write about this, have actually been the families of people with addiction problems. And, you know, obviously I had a lot of addiction in my own family. I think part of the problem is we're taught to think in such an individualistic way, right? When I was a kid, Margaret Thatcher, the British Prime Minister said, there's no such thing as society. There's only individuals and their families. And as you can probably guess, I never liked Margaret Thatcher, but

I've realized how much I had internalized that. So if you've internalized that, then when someone comes along and says there are these deep social causes of depression, anxiety, and addiction, what a lot of people hear is, fuck, he's saying I'm a failure, right? He's saying I screwed up, right? Or he's saying, you know, I didn't treat my son well enough, rather than saying actually the society didn't give your son or your daughter or your brother or whoever it is the things that we need to have a meaningful life, right? But if you think, as Margaret Thatcher said, there's no such thing as society, only individuals and their families, then you will hear that as a criticism. But I'm not saying that. I'm talking about much wider social...

There's no one in the United States or anywhere in the world where all they have in their life is their family right right right if you even if you live on a mountain and you know you don't only have your family um so yeah this isn't about um and i think it helps families to understand the suffering in a different way it also helps them to see through some of the very bad advice i think families are given. One of the things I tried to do, and I can't say I do this consistently, and I certainly, you know, there's a lot of times I can't do it with people I love, but I tried to be more Portuguese. I tried to be more present with them. I tried to not express my anger to them, but to be present with them and say, well, I love you unconditionally. I'm here for you.

I'll come and sit with you when I can to strengthen my connection, not threaten my connection. Like an intervention, right? So like something like an intervention. Like an intervention, actually. Because if you think about that show Intervention, which admittedly is the extreme end of interventions, what that does is it says, well, we love you. is the extreme end of interventions what that does is it says well we love you and our love for you is entirely contingent upon you doing one thing which is going away and uh to a treatment model that frankly doesn't work for most people uh and um which in fact fails for the big majority of people who go through it and then if you if you don't continue turning to if you don't stop turning

to the anesthetics you feel you need we're going to shun you right well that? Well, that's the opposite of unconditional love. That's making your love contingent on something that is extremely difficult to do and actually probably not very good for the person in many ways. Now, this doesn't mean, of course, that you should, you know, no one is obliged to sacrifice themselves for someone else. And if it becomes untenable for you to be in a relationship or if you're, but you know, you can have untenable relationships with people with addiction problems. You can have untenable relationships relationships people who don't have addiction problems i mean it's not this is not unique to debates about addiction right of course we can all have situations where we're treated badly and decide you know okay well it's not about um but i really

dislike this concept of enabling um of course you people can get into destructive relationships with with um people have addiction problems but too often that's premised on the idea that the problem for the person with the addiction is their drug use, right? The drug use is a symptom of the problem. Now, it's a symptom that can make the problem much worse. Don't misunderstand me, right? It can kill you. But the problem is not the drug, right? The problem driving this is largely, the drug plays some role, of course, probably is largely the pain that is making the individual want to anesthetize themselves in the first place. And for that, you have to look to the much broader solutions, things like Portugal,

like what they did in Switzerland, I can tell you about that, or these deeper forms of reconnection that I write about in Lost Connections, which are about dealing with our collective despair. I learned about so many of these things from are about dealing with our collective despair. And, you know, there was a place that, it's funny, I learned about so many of these things from experts and there were key moments when these things fell into place for me. And one of them was, I went and interviewed this South African psychiatrist

called Derek Summerfield, who happened to be in Cambodia in 2001 when chemical antidepressants were first introduced in Cambodia. And the local doctors, the Cambodians, were like, what are these drugs? They'd never heard of them. So he explained, and they said to him,

oh, we don't need them. We've already got antidepressants. And he said, what do you mean? He thought they were going to talk about some kind of herbal remedy. Instead, they told him a story. There was a farmer in their community who one day stood on a landmine and got his leg blown off. So they gave him an artificial limb and he went back to work in the rice fields. But apparently it's super painful to work underwater when you've got an artificial limb. I'm guessing it was

traumatic for obvious reasons. The guy starts crying all day, doesn't want to get out of bed, classic depression. They said, so we gave him an antidepressant. Derek said, what was it? classic depression. They said, so we gave him an antidepressant. Derek said, what was it? They explained that they went and sat with him. They listened to him. They realized that his pain made sense. They figured if they bought him a cow, he could become a dairy farmer. He wouldn't be in this position that was making him feel so bad. They bought him a cow. Within a couple of weeks, his crying stopped. Within a month, his depression was gone. They said to Derek, so you see, doctor, that cow, that was an antidepressant. That's what you mean, right? Now, if you've been raised to think about depression or distress the way we have,

that it's a chemical imbalance in your brain, that sounds like a really bad joke, right? I went to my doctor for an antidepressant. He gave me a cow. Those Cambodian doctors knew intuitively. I mean, to be fair, they got three magic beans as well. So, I mean, that's not the whole story. Exactly. But what those Cambodian doctors knew intuitively is what the World Health Organization, the leading medical body in the world, has been trying to tell us for years. If you're depressed, if you're anxious, your pain makes sense. You're not a machine with broken parts. You're a human being with unmet needs.

And this connects back to what we're saying about addiction. Everyone knows that human beings have physical needs, right? Obviously, you need food, you need water, you need shelter, you need clean air. There's equally strong evidence that human beings have natural psychological needs. You need to feel you belong. You need to feel your life has meaning and purpose. You need to feel that people see you and value you. You've got a future that makes sense. Our culture is good at lots of things. I'm glad to be alive today, but we're getting less and less good at meeting these deep underlying psychological needs, which is not the only thing that's going on, but it's one of the factors in why we have such a big depression, anxiety, and addiction crisis. And we've got to deal with those deeper problems.

Johan, if people were going to find your work, where would they look? Oh, I've been told by my publicist to say a little spiel about this, which always makes me feel like an absolute dick. If you would like to find out what a whole range of people, from Elton John to Hillary Clinton to Russell Brand to Ariana Huffington to Glenn Greenwald have said about the book, if you want to take a quiz to see what you know about the real causes of depression or anxiety if you want to listen to audio of loads of the people we've been talking about like those amish guys who are really funny

and interesting you can go to all where you can get the book on the audiobook you can go to www.thelostconnections.com it's not lostconnect connections.com because there's a fucking band called Lost Connections. They don't even exist anymore. I mean, no disrespect to them. I'm sure they're very nice people, but they fucking bought all the websites. And also on that site, you can see where to follow me

on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Although I had this weird experience at the end of an interview recently where they said to me, so what's your Twitter? What's your Facebook? What's your Instagram? And then your Facebook? What's your Instagram? And they said,

what's your Snapchat? And I said, I am a 39 year old man. Only 39 year old men on Snapchat are certainly pedophiles. You know that show To Catch a Predator?

Yeah. What they should do is instead of doing all this elaborate detection work where they catch pedophiles by like talking about themselves, they should literally just go up to grown men in the street and say

hi what's your snapchat handle they just take a look if there's a snapchat picture like a selfie with like dog ears on it it's like okay just come to jail right now just come to jail right now this puppy face snapchat selfie come the fuck on. Are you Big Daddy 1970

is that who you are I think the ACLU will issue a statement saying, I know we've stood up for civil rights for a really long time, but in this rare instance, fucking throw them away and lock up the TV. I don't want Snapchat. Can't be tolerated.

That's amazing. Johan, it was absolutely amazing talking to you today. Really informative. Great. Cheers. I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. So we want to thank our patrons, Nick, Mario, Mark, Brandon. I'm a racist. Well, there we go.

Well, now I'm screwed. I said it out loud. And now somebody's sampling that audio. It's been taken out of context. That's amazing. Morgan, Jacob, and Jesse, thanks. I said it out loud. Somebody's sampling that audio. It's been taken out of context. That's amazing. Morgan, Jacob, and Jesse, thanks so much for your generous donations. We really do appreciate all the donations

to Glory Hole Studios. You're the ones who make sure Glory Hole Studios exists, and you're the ones who pay our employee. So thank you very much. We got a message from Brimstone Gridlock, who said, you guys passed over the LSD possession on the person who was, he had a bunch of child porn on his priest who had like some really sadistic, gross child porn. He also had an LSD charge.

And Tom had said, that's not a big deal. And he had said, well, maybe he dosed children with it. That's possible, but didn't say that anything like that in the article. So maybe he didn't. Like, we don't know. with it. That's possible, but didn't say that anything like that in the article. Yeah, maybe he didn't. We don't know. He's done enough awful shit that you don't have to

speculate about whether or not he did other awful shit. He also had a hammer. We don't know that he hit anybody with a hammer. That's very true. We can't be sure that that's what he did. We got a bunch of messages about the Chupacabra group. This is amazing. I want to braid some of these off.

Ashley said they would not have had a wedding cake at a Chupacabra wedding. This is amazing. And so I want to, I want to braid some of these off. Ashley said they would not have had a wedding cake at a Chupacabra wedding. Instead, they would have had a Chupacabra. Nice. Absolutely. That was our mistake. That's terrific. And then Aaron said a group of Chupacabras

would be a chimichanga. I like it. I think that's pretty accurate. Also, Aaron said that chupacabra kai is a dojo in the Karate Kid. Nice. And that makes sense. I like it. Very, very strange form of karate

that they practice. There's also a group of chupacabras could be known as a chunk, according to Wayne. A chunk of chupacabras. And that doesn't really roll off the tongue, it turns out. It's more like a tongue twister. It is. A chunk of chupacabras. Here's another chupacabra message. This one's from Twitter. Samuel Cain on Twitter says, I was listening to episode 406. The name for a group of chupacabras is a liberal cabal of chupacabras. And I think that's true. This is another one.

This one is from Sam on Twitter. And he says, to answer your question, a group of chupacabras is called a group of coppers. Group of coppers is great. I think that's the winner. Uh, Keith says a burrito of chupacabras. That's tasty. A group of chupacabras from dysfunctional vet. A group of chupacabras is also called a menudo of chupacabras.

And they sent a picture that is just outstanding. It's just a weird tongue. It's a goat liquor. That's perfect. Oh, I get it. Yeah. So's just a weird tongue goat. It's a goat licker. That's perfect. Oh, I get it. Yeah. So we got a message and this one is from Dylan and Dylan said, I just wanted to send you guys a message

about this SNL skit from 1998 called A Car Called the Mercury Mistress and he's talking about the Alex Jones thing where he's like, I have sex with our cars. And so this is- This is genius.

It's hilarious. It's so funny. We'll put a link on this week's show notes. This is episode 407, so check it out. Tom, we got a message about the bee therapy from Joe. Yeah, Joe was concerned. Her father, it looks like, had attempted or used the bee therapy.

It did not work out. There's some tragic consequences for it. And I think the concern here is that if it's poo-pooed or sort of glossed over, it kind of bypasses some of the harms that these alternative therapies do to patients. A lot of patients or some patients may choose an alternative therapy, like an AP therapy, which is the crazy beast singing shit, in lieu of conventional Western medicine or conventionally proven therapies. We've discussed that idea many, many times in the past. We know that that's a concern. In fact, I think, to be perfectly honest, that's the chief concern that Cecil and I have

regarding Wu. If you were getting regular Western medical care and then also just wasting your money on Reiki, I don't think I would give a shit as long as it's your money and you're not on a fixed income falling prey to a con man, right? People waste their money on things they like that don't work all the time. Sure, yeah. Who cares? We care because of the harms these things do. And that is one of the central harms that alternative therapies can have. Yeah.

That is one of the central harms that alternative therapies can have. Yeah. And we talked about this very recently, actually, when we were talking about some major large hospitals offering alternative care. And we were mentioning how difficult that might be because they're giving legitimacy to this care. And that's something you don't want to do. You don't want to give any legitimacy to this wacko woo therapy because there is nothing that says it works. It's just hope. There's nothing behind it. Well, there's a bee behind it, actually. There's venom

in the stinger in the pulsing sack that continues to envenomate you. So we want to thank Johan Hari for joining us today. Johan is the author of Lost Connections. We're going to post links to his work on this week's show notes 407. It was great to talk to Johan is the author of Lost Connections. We're going to post links to his work on this week's show notes 407. It was great to talk to Johan. Really interesting conversation.

All right. So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative acupunctuating, pressurized stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales

pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands.

Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and information provided on this podcast are intended for entertainment purposes only. All opinions are solely that of Glory Hole Studios, LLC. Cognitive dissonance makes no representations as to accuracy, completeness, currentness, suitability, or validity of any information and will not be liable for any errors, damages, or butthurt arising from consumption. All information is provided on an as-is basis. No refunds. Produced in association with the local dairy council and viewers like you.