SOLVED with Mark Manson - How to Take Back Your Own Mind (ft. Tim Urban)

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Today, I'm joined by my old friend Tim Urban, the mastermind behind the wildly popular blog Wait But Why. Known for his ability to break down complex topics with humor and stick-figure drawings, Tim has captured the attention of millions worldwide. From his early days as a blogger to the release of his first book, "What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies," Tim has consistently delivered thought-provoking content that challenges our understanding of the world around us. In this episode, we dive into pressing issues like unfettered tribalism, the concept of "idea prisons," and the potential impact of AI on society. Tim also shares personal insights as a new parent and teases his upcoming book. It'll challenge your perspectives and leave you craving more of Tim's signature blend of depth, wit, and accessibility. Don't miss this captivating conversation that tackles the complexities of our modern world head-on. Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://markmanson.net/breakthrough Tim’s blog: Wait, But Why?: https://waitbutwhy.com/ Tim’s book: What’s Our Problem: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Our-Problem-Self-Help-Societies-ebook/dp/B0BTJCTR58 Follow Tim: https://www.instagram.com/timurban https://x.com/waitbutwhy https://www.facebook.com/waitbutwhy Follow me: https://instagram.com/markmanson/ https://twitter.com/IAmMarkManson https://facebook.com/Markmansonnet/ https://linkedin.com/in/markmanson/ https://www.tiktok.com/@iammarkmanson Chapters 01:55 The virtue of changing your mind 05:31 What has Tim changed his mind about 11:43 Are we on the other side of insanity yet? 18:05 How new media platforms shape culture 29:30 AI and tribalism 40:11 Internal and external wars 44:04 Tim on being a new parent 47:34 How Tim's views changed after having a kid 50:29 Tim's next book Theme music: “Icarus Lives” by Periphery, used with permission from Periphery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, before we get into it, if you listen to the show, you probably consume a lot of personal growth content. The books, the podcasts, YouTube videos, all of it. And you've probably noticed the gap between knowing what to do and then actually going out and doing it. You've got the insights, but what you don't have is something that connects them to your actual life. That's why I built purpose. It's a personal development AI that learns you, your patterns, your blind spots, all the stuff that you keep circling back to over and over again. Instead of handing you another framework, it gives you specific personalized direction. So check it out. You can try it for free for seven days. Go to purpose.app. That is purpose.com. Hey everybody. Today I am excited to have an old

friend of mine, Tim Urban, on the show. He's a brilliant mind behind the popular blog, Wait But Why, where he breaks down complex topics in a thoughtful and extremely entertaining way. In 2019, Tim embarked on an ambitious project called The Story of Us. The goal of the project was to explain why it seemed like everybody was losing their minds, despite the fact that technology was amazing and everything seemed to be going great. This eventually evolved into his first book, What's Our Problem? A Self-Help Book for Societies and it was released in 2023. Now the book digs into the psychology behind tribalism and in-group, out-group hatred.

Tim painstakingly explains these mechanisms using real-world present-day examples from both ends of the political spectrum. Now as you can imagine, he got canceled by a everybody for it. Now Tim's writing style, it has depth, wit, and accessibility. It has earned him praise from world leaders, CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world, and millions of everyday readers alike. His work is at the intersection of psychology, politics, science, and technology, always with an eye toward making the complex feel more understandable. Today, we talk about the psychological roots of tribalism, what it feels like to start hating an out-group

without realizing it, and how you can hopefully stop. We look at how our most of our most minds can become locked inside of idea prisons and what the simple way out of those idea prisons is. We disagree briefly on how AI might make our mental health problems better or worse, what Tim has learned as a new parent, and we get a sneak peek of his upcoming book on the history of the universe. That's right, it's only a book on the history of the universe. So sit back, enjoy, draw some stick figures, and try not to hate the outgroup so much. This is Tim Urban. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

Tim, it's so good to have you here, dude. Yeah, it's fun to hang in this weird environment here. It's been a long time. We've known each other a long time. One of the things in my personal life I've started doing, which has been great, one of my favorite things to ask people now is over the last five years, what are the biggest things you've changed your mind about? And I've noticed that, like, if I meet somebody new and they can't really answer that question

or they seem to, like, be taken aback by it, to me, that's kind of like a signal that they're not, they're probably, like, tribally minded, you know, whatever their tribe is. The other thing, especially this last election cycle, because I have both Republicans and Democrats in my family and things get heat. I just started asking people, I'm like, what are three things you disagree with your own party about? And again, if they can't really come up with anything, then I just, I know not to listen to them. Well, what you know is that they are in a little idea prison. Yeah. And even just calling yourself a Democrat or a Republican.

Yeah. Or I think that is... Like, why would you do that? What I want to tell people is, you're like cooler than this. you're better than this. Like, you're going to allow what, I think, I want people to think of the Democrats and Republicans as like Coke and Pepsi or Verizon and, you know, Amazon. Like, you're going to let some, like, big Lane corporation basically hijack your identity and, like, say, we own, we own it now. So once you're a Democrat, when the Democrats start doing something that

deep down, you know, your principles would disagree with, you have to violate your own principles or violate you, this identity you've given yourself. So you're in kind of like a noun prison, you know, you put yourself in this idea prison, and that's when you're in a prison, you can't go anywhere, right? Yeah. Where do you disagree with your party? Well, I'm in the prison, so no. How have you changed your mind?

Well, I'm stuck. I've been just sitting in this jail cell, so I haven't changed my mind. I haven't gone anywhere. Well, you're also choosing how to delude yourself. It reminds me of sports teams. You know, it's like when you watch your favorite sports teams and your team obviously commits a foul or a penalty,

like you scream at the ref, like the ref's the problem. Right. But like if you're watching a team you don't care about, you're like, oh, yeah, obviously that's a foul or a penalty. And I feel like a lot of Americans, especially identify with a political party the way they identify with a sports team. And they blame the refs instead of their own team when a fouls committed more often than not. And you'll notice that they have a completely different reaction to the same foul when it's one party versus the other. Oh, absolutely. I mean, it's so obvious. It rank hypocrisy. And again, with sports, you're supposed to be a hypocrite. It's okay.

Sports is fun tribalism, right? We all like sports tribalism. Great. And you cheer, you put your arms up, like you just won a tribal battle when your thing wins. And you go like this to protect your head when your team loses. I mean, it's great. It's play tribalism. Politics is shitty because it matters.

And it affects real things. Yeah. And the hypocrisy, it's like, that's another thing you can do is just test your, It's a simple litmus test to test your hypocrisy, which is how would I feel of the other team we're doing this? Whether it's something good or bad, how would I feel of this for the other team? And if it was like, well, and your head kind of explodes,

you're not thinking straight. Yeah. Speaking of which, what have you changed your mind about in the last, say, three to five years? What are some of the biggest things that you've changed your mind about? There are some, like, very factual things, like nuclear energy. I'm like, I thought it was bad now. I think it's extremely good. But in like a more philosophical way, five years ago, maybe more like eight, but I was in the process

five years ago of I was a, I'm a Democrat and also I'm an atheist. And, you know, right-wing religious people are stupid and bad, right? That was maybe not five years ago. There was a little longer ago, but 2012, 2015, I was, I was in that zone. I grew up in that zone and I was just, and I have like, I look at that person right now, I'm like, oh, God, you are a lost, like, you are, you are a little boy, you are a little boy with that attitude. Like, so a few things is I was in the zone where I saw Blue Good Red Bat and that's your prior, that's at the very base. Now, maybe Blue does something bad, but it's four. a higher thing or because or then you guys everyone does whatever but and red you know does something

good but they have some bad mode. If that's at the base, every single thing can always fit into that. You know, you can, so coming out of that, just like releasing, again, realizing this prison has a, I have the key. Oh, oh my God, you know, and that you come out. And it's not that I'm now like, well, do blue, bad red good. It's that I just, once I came out of that, I realized how much of a prison I was in. So things like, I also was like, I also was like, like, you know, religion bad. And I'm just like, first of all, that is so arrogant to have this, this religion is this thing that's been going on, you know, where I was thinking mostly in Christianity in this case,

2000 years of like trial and error. And like, it's maybe there for both good and bad reasons. Maybe there is something really important about this for our species. And I think now I've come to think there's a lot of wisdom in religion. And it's also a very, it can be, it's, we're all, we're a religious species. And so when we don't have a religion that's tested for 2,000 years of refinements, we end up with a new religion, maybe a political religion that's just worse. So a lot of these things that that guy was so sure about, I now am just much more kind of like open about. Like as far as atheism itself, regardless, I still, I'm not, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim or a religious Jew.

I'm not, I don't believe in those books. but I also had stopped being a staunch atheist in that what I would have said as a staunch atheist is there's no creator there's there's this is you know everything is you know how we think you know know the spontaneous generation of life on this planet and then it evolved through evolution to today now I believe in evolution I believe in the things we've proven with science but how about all the things we haven't proven with science we don't know how life started it could have been planted here by another species an alien species it

could we could be in a big computer simulation. And just starting to have those things, again, it humbles you and it makes you realize, like, that atheist was so sure about a bunch of things that he was sure in a way that he would criticize a religious person for being sure that, you know, Adam and Eve existed and that the flood is why the Grand Canyon has seashell fossils on it. The atheist, Tim, was just as sure about that there's nothing, you know, and so now I would call myself, like, very firmly agnostic. So a lot of these, the theme in a lot of these is I'm less sure than I was and much less likely to just like dismiss. Likewise, now coming out of not being associated, I don't identify with the left at all anymore, but I also don't want to identify with the right because I feel like, so I also, likewise, because some people, I think if you're not fully, you come out in the prison, but you're still in that mindset, you'll go fling to the other side.

side. And now suddenly you're a full red pill. You know, the left is the problem. I don't think that either. I think there's probably a lot of wisdom in progressivism. And there's a lot of wisdom and conservatism. And both of these parties suck. And a lot of there's a hypocrisy on both sides on both sides. But underneath that, there's actually very important principles that need to butt against each other. So I, you know, a staunch partisan would call me like an insufferable, you know, enlighten centrist. But I would say both sides. What they used to call them? Yeah. But both sides. And so both sides is. And I think, I think it's misinterpreted. because a centrist or both sides is someone who says that like these the parties are equally right about each issue you know there's somewhere in the middle that's not what I think I think maybe the right is way more right about certain things left is way more right about other things it's that I'm on the side of the people who don't identify with any party who said that each of these issues is like a complex puzzle that needs like an endless debate and and testing and experimentation and balancing many different values and compromise that doesn't say anything about where I am unless

left or right on any issue. It's not a horizontal distinction. It's what I would say is like a vertical distinction. And that's mistaken bipartisan people who say you're either left or right as both sidesism, as centrism, because they only see this horizontal access. If you're not left or right, you must be this annoying person in this who wants to say they're in the center. That's not misinterpreting when I, when I am. Yes. We're the tribe of no tribe. I try to be. And by the way, then you can get sucked into, you can get sucked into the no tribe, tribe becoming quite tribal. You know, you have to constantly watch it. Totally. But yeah, I also look to, I always, you know, I always respect someone who I see

disagree with their own in-group. And when I say their own in-group, I don't mean someone who, like, used to be on the left and they're criticizing the left now is their thing. Because the left is now their out-group. I'm talking about the people who are like totally agreeing with them about what they're saying this week and then totally disagreeing with those people. That's like, that shows someone I'm like, this person is truly rogue. They're not like afraid. They're not trying to appease. They're not in any prison. I mean, it's hard to find. I'm not sure I've fully gotten there. It's like hard to the people who really are, you know, love what's our problem. Like, it's hard to fully, you know, disagree with them on something. You wrote this book

kind of at the fever pitch of just political misery in the country. I don't know about you, but like I personally feel like this last election cycle seemed less, I don't know, apocalyptic than previous ones. Like, I, it could just be me, but I feel like we're, we've like, we peaked maybe three or four years ago and we're like on the downhill side. Do you agree with that? And if so, do you want to take credit for it? If I could take credit for that, I would be like demanding a Nobel.

Nobel prize. But if so, like, why do you think that's happened? I'm curious. So if you look at like history, and I think one of the things, I think one of the things that helps a lot understanding the current moment is just looking in history because you start to see patterns and you're like, oh, we're doing that thing from the 50s. We're doing that now. Like the Red Scare in the early 50s has a lot in common with what happened in the last five years. It was different, you know, the Mad Lib had different things in the blanks. But the

idea was kind of a tribal wave sweeps over the country. And when it happens, what you'll see is when you're not in it, it almost you forget how scary it can be. be in a moment when it becomes really tribal, you suddenly are like, you know, it's hard to even have a, you're, you know, with three, four friends at dinner and you're suddenly like, wait, are you like, are you, like, are you one of them? Or like, are you going to judge me? Or like, are we allowed to still? And even small little things, everyone starts to get kind of scared and then forget like a classroom, you know, one person in that moment can start really being like a bully that's, you know, that's, that's, that's emphasizing the current tribal craze.

and everyone else in the classroom would be really scared and start to like jump on that bandwagon. And to remind her that we can be a very scary species. You know, you hear about the most extreme example, always everything is, you know, Nazis, Holocaust, and you hear about, you know, these people in, you know, Poland who would turn in their Jewish neighbors who they know them for 30 years and they've been friends and they would quietly turn them into the, you know, and these awful stories and you start to, but I understand why, you know, in this moment when things are really, when that fear kicks in, basically when tribalism is in the air in a really intense way, and the stakes feel really high, it's like pheromones, wolf pheromones. And the primitive mind

wakes up and gets to do a crazy zone, it completely takes over your brain. And you get into this zone where it's like, you can't suddenly, you can't trust anyone. And it's like, you know, so the less extreme example is like the early 50s with, you know, the red scare. And you have, you know, anyone who even gets, you can, you know, it's like a witch hunt. Um, actual, Salem Witchism, the same thing. It's like, once you know that someone being accused of being a witch might actually lead to their execution, everyone gets really scared. And now, you know, someone might, your friend, you think your friend might accuse you

so that they don't get accused of being a witch. And it becomes a very, and that's how these crazy things kept, that Salem Witch trials wasn't like, that was just the times. It was a crazy thing that happened and then stopped. The Red Scare in the 50s was a crazy thing that happened and then it stopped and then sanity returned. And I think that the 2020, you know, wokeness thing was a crazy thing that happened and I think at some point, hopefully it will be something totally in the past. And I think it's, again, to bring back your, you become more aware of your own dicking around. you can become more aware of your own, you know, echo chambers.

Well, you also, I think the society itself can kind of, like, if it has been too long since that happened, the society can get caught off guard. And I think that once it now, I think now society starts to be more self-aware about. That was crazy. And now when you see signs of it now, you're less likely to fall into it and more likely to be like, no, we don't do that anymore. We're done with that. And you see corporations, you know, quietly reversing policies that were insane.

So I feel like we are on the other side of the specific things that happened. You know, there's still good. Look, there's still a huge fight that's going to be put up within institutions, policies that were changed, admin people that were turned over. I mean, that takes a while. That gets into the vital organs of a lot of institutions. That's going to be a long, painful process to try to return to kind of the basic values that those institutions used to have.

But what worries me is that, you know, why did this happen right now? In the 50s, it happened because, you know, it was on the heels of war, which is kind of a tribal time. And there was a genuine fear of communism, right? It was like, this could, this was an existential threat. And when I'm like, why did this happen now? And I feel like it's very tied to social media and this new force that's in there in the world that, you know, has a huge impact, scares, you know, the media is scared of social media, companies are scared of social media, and you empower a lot of the most tribally crazed people who want attention,

want to do damage, want to sensationalize things, want to punish people. Those people have a lot more power right now than they did 15 years ago. Like they actually, you know, one of those people can get a big following and suddenly, you know, scare a lot of institutions into getting on their bad side. So my, my, my, worry is that like, you know, that the root causes might still be there and that maybe it's not wokeness, um, that that is the thing. Maybe it's a another thing comes along. Um, you know, maybe it's right wing, hardcore right wing, you know, white supremacy, which is, of course, the thing that I spent years saying this is, uh, overblown by, by woke people. Now I'm like,

well, this thing, you know, has now been trained to actually be more of a real white identity by this thing. And it could, who knows? I know, I'm not saying that's what will happen. I'm saying, I just think that the, we might be still in a vulnerable situation in our society. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's hard to, it's also hard to separate just like how unique the COVID era was and like all of the second and third order effects that, you know, you can't really, it's hard to know what is an actual part of cultural evolution and what is just kind of this freakish happenstance thing. You know, I've had a bit of a pet theory. I'm sure I'm not the first person or the only person who was thought of this. But like, when you look at the history of media, anytime there's like a major technological revolution in media itself, and like how information is disseminated across society, you generally see like massive political upheaval immediately after. So like when the printing press is invented,

you get the reformation a few decades later. And that creates 100 years of war across Europe and results in a lot of, you know, the enlightenment and all sorts of other things. When TV and radio come along, you get a lot of the fascism and communism of the 20th century. century. And part of me thinks that, you know, with the internet and social media, it's probably inevitable that, like, there's this reconfiguring of social identity that has to happen

along these, like, new railways of information. And, and I also think, like, it probably just takes a generation or two to develop the antibodies. You know, it's like everything that's in your book, what's our problem, it, like all of that stuff is probably going to be really obvious to our kids or our grandkids. Like, they're going to look at that book and they'll be like, well, yeah, no shit. Like, you can't just believe anything that's posted on Instagram. And, uh, but it, like, it takes us years of falling for it and then realizing that you can't fall for it.

Um, and seeing the repercussions happen over and over again. You know, it's kind of like the first TV marketing and the first, the first radio propaganda in the early 20th century was like wildly successful, like massively successful. There's all these stories of like the Orson Well's alien invasion radio story and like thousands of people are like running out of their houses thinking that it's real, you know? It's laughable from our point of view today because we're just so jaded by an entire lifetime of listening to the, you know, it's, it's laughable from our point of view today because we're just so jaded by an entire lifetime of listening. the bullshit on the radio and on TV. I think it's like when a medium's new, we haven't like developed that jadedness yet. And because we're not jaded enough,

we're more susceptible. Like it's easier for, I guess, tribal, sinister and tribal narratives to reach people and seduce them because they haven't developed that, the antibodies to it yet. Yeah.

It's like, you know, and certain, you know, companies can jump in and get really, really, really rich during the inoculated phase. Yeah. The non, the pre-inoculated phase. Yeah. I just think about also, like, think about cigarette companies. They made a killing in a window when they really could. Yeah. And then awareness spread, laws changed.

We built kind of antibodies to protect ourselves around for that. from that thing, and now they make way less of a killing, at least in the U.S. Yeah, I mean, it's one of the things, it's funny, my wife and I, we went back and started watching Mad Men again. And one of the things I didn't, fucking still amazing show, by the way, one of the things that I didn't put together, the first time I saw it, I saw it for the first time, maybe 12, 15 years ago, watching it now as somebody who's like a lot more well-informed about advertising and U.S. history and business cycles and stuff.

it's, there's like this realization that Madman takes place in the 50s and 60s when television is new. And like people had literally never seen a television commercial before. And so you could literally just put anything on the screen and people would want to buy it. And so it's like no wonder Don Draper was making a fucking killing sitting around drinking whiskey all day. Like it's, there's just this low hanging fruit that comes with a new medium. And it comes from with advertising. It comes with building a business or marketing. It comes with people like you and I building audiences.

And then it also comes with with like political movements, right? Like it's people are most susceptible when there's some like new fangled technology that nobody's like everybody's wide eyed and has no idea what to expect. It's like it's it almost reminds me of just. like in evolution when you have like, I don't know, some event, some weather change, you know, to the climate like this predator dies off and now there's this power vacuum and this other predator comes in. This species thrives. It gets too big and blah blah. And all these things happen and then eventually settles into a new like interlocked into the equilibrium or it's hard to change.

Yeah. And so that happens rarely in evolutionary history. But here it's like a new thing drops into society. There's a, you know, another example is, um, the iron age, you know, iron came around and suddenly people who were kind of in the outskirts of society could make weapons in a way they couldn't be for. And they, the, the, the cities lost their advantage in that, and it just, it changed all kinds of, uh, you know, geopolitical things back then. So you have social media drops in and in the internet.

And it's almost, society takes them all to even. even figure out that where the new opportunities are, where the power vacuum suddenly are, who suddenly has way more power than they ever did before, and who has less power? And so, like, I think that in a world like that, you see a lot of things where, like, media, the media model of trying to be neutral and be professional doesn't work so well in this new environment. And so somebody like Fox News catches on to that quicker than others. It gets huge. And then all these other things copying. And before, you know, New York Times is acting like Fox News, right? They're all acting like Fox News, right? And so it's like the, the, there's like a new, the business is an

environmental shift. And now in the new environment is going to reward different things and, and empower different things. And, and you see all, everyone reacts to it, you know, It's like everyone reacts to it to try to stay successful, to stay afloat, to survive. And then you see people and their behavior changing because new behavior is rewarded. And there's a new thing, which is followers on social media. And that becomes this new shiny thing. No, it's not just money. That's one thing.

There's a new way to get status with this number and its attention and status. So suddenly all these primitive minds become theft with this thing. And then so how do you, you know, and then the algorithms are sitting there and they're trying to maximize attention in this new thing. And so the algorithms now favor a certain, you know, a certain way to get, you know, certain behavior gets more followers. And you can just see this whole new environment is configured. The people who get there first get really rich. You know, if you can notice the changes in the environment, you can capitalize on attention, you know, wealth, whatever. And then it kind of starts to crystallize into a new thing. And then I think, like you're talking about, I think then there starts to be a reflection on, wait, this is hurting people. Wait, maybe 13 year old girls on Instagram isn't good. You have, that's something like John Heights book that just came out, you know, the anxious, anxious generation. You have, and then you start to see, you know, like surgeon, you know, his book is like, you know, going to lead to hopefully like a surgeon general's warning about cigarette

type thing where you start to have, you know, rules and parents don't allow this anymore. And you can look back and say, I can't believe that kids were allowed on Instagram at some point. It's going to sound like kids in child labor or child prostitutes. There's just crazy things from the past you hear about. And it's going to be like, wow. And so the antibodies then form, and we develop a healthier way to, we start to figure out what the harm is in this thing. We tweak things to make it healthy.

Now, what's scary is that if this happens once a century, it's like, okay, there's a rough 20 years, and then we figure it out, and then we kind of develop a healthier thing with this. And there's laws and there's norms that, you know, understanding it comes around. What's scary is how, is the rate of change just speeds up. Right, because AI is probably going to do this again. AI and who knows when you start having the VR starts getting better and better and before you know what, everyone has one of these things, like a visor glasses that we're wearing. AI is, you know, I feel like chat GPT and these things right now is like, is like the really old internet where it's like this new thing. Yeah.

And it's like the, or like the really, really beginning Twitter when you're just like you post. There's no retweet button. There's no like button. It's just kind of like, you know, or old, old Facebook. it feels like it's very early and it's like they haven't even figured out how to make it addictive yet. That hasn't even started yet. You know, and I'm like, that's going to be a whole cycle and there's going to be a whole new set of, you know, some people who can see now where it's going or to get really rich and get it, you know,

really powerful. And then others will, and then everyone will, then the mainstream will really, you know, conform to this new thing. And then we'll start to figure out what, oh, wait, this is bad. But at that point, AI is getting smarter and smarter really quickly. It's like, you don't have time. to do the antibodies phase and new changes are happening, it's a little scary. It gets very chaotic. Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea where any of this is heading. It is, the AI thing is super interesting, too, because

I feel like it, you know, one of the issues, especially in the social media era, but also kind of going back into the more conventional media era as well, is like, is the information fragmentation, as you put at echo chambers, right? Like there's just some certain topics or certain sets of data are like just not included in various narratives for political reasons. And in the social media era, people actually just get caught in these little bubbles of hearing the same three or four things over and over again because that's what the algorithm feeds them. I feel like AI, you know, the potential of AI is that it commoditizes all information. universally. Like everything is just always there for everybody.

And all context and relevance can be provided, you know, in each situation. So there's, in a way, it can like, I feel like it could solve a lot of the informational side of things. But then it makes me wonder, I'm like, if you, if everybody just has all the same information all the time, it might actually make us. it might actually drive us like more in the tribalism because then that's really the only thing we're going to have left is like you can't you can't argue over the facts anymore because the AI has figured that out so we're just going to argue over our subjective moral principles

which are you know essentially non-resolvable um and and we'll just be like more entrenched than ever before. It's a little, it's a little like, you know, against, 22-year-old Tim would have been like, if I had a genie, I would say all religion is gone. And now I would go to that guy and be like, no, don't. Be careful what you wish for, right? Be careful what you wish for because we were a religious species and we're going to find other religions that you might realize are not tested and new and really, really, really bad and, you know, the kind of religion that can lead to hundreds of millions of people being murdered. And it's the same thing here where it's like, you're saying kind of like, oh, this tribalism sucks.

We wish, if only we could just all get on the same page and have facts, you know, you know, no more, you know, fighting about facts. And it's like, be careful what you wish for because we're a tribal species and we'll find tribalism elsewhere. And like, where is that? It's almost like you're not going to eradicate tribalism. How can we, you know, of course, the classic example is what we would love is an alien attack. And then we're all tribal in the best possible way, which is earthlings, you know, humans.

I love you because you're another human. Okay. It's not, it's still a childish tribalism, but it's, it's productive and it's nice and for everyone and they'll, but then, of course, you have a alien attack, which is its own shitty thing. But we're not going to have that probably. And so the question is, you know, yes,

does it turn into, well, first of all, the question is, is it better if we're arguing about moral principles and, like, trying to find the edges of what's, is that worse or better than arguing about facts? Like, maybe it's, maybe it leaves to more, like, hardcore like political violence in a way. But maybe also it's more productive because we're actually arguing about things

that need arguments to happen versus things that are just, we shouldn't even be arguing about this if we were just not being deceived in two different directions. Yeah. I don't know. I've just been, like this has kind of been my, where my brain has been a lot lately is just thinking about if information becomes universal and come on,

like free essentially like there's there's most ambiguities removed most misinterpretation is removed anything that's knowable is available like typing a couple sentences and what what like what effect does that have on us socially politically psychologically um because i i feel like when you remove one scarcity you you you create another one. And I feel like if you remove the informational scarcity, like if we're no longer are debating over what exactly is the wealth inequality or what exactly is a, you know, were these tax cuts stimulative or not, you know, once you remove those debates, now, now you're getting purely into the like philosophical, foundational equality versus freedom.

collectivism versus individualism. And those don't really have resolution. But maybe, I mean, I feel like that's what politics is supposed to be, right? If you think about like what the Greeks ought to about politics, like what were they doing on the Acropolis? Like they weren't, they were probably doing this kind of really core things. And I feel like that is how a society, the best way for a society to grow and evolve. What's nice about democracy is that it has a solution, which is that there's not like a king. and we have to all convince the king.

It's like the country will be in the mood for more individualism. We'll be sick of it. We'll looking at all the stats and we'll vote for that. And then it'll go too far a little bit. And then the country, a certain part of the country will feel like, you know, left out and there'll be a rebellion. And there'll be a vote for more collectivism. And it will kind of evolve like a shape-shifting thing that meets the needs of the moment. I mean, that to me is, it sounds idyllic.

I'm sure, of course, it comes along with a lot of, other things, but I feel like that's how you actually, what you want is democracy to express the will of the people, to serve the will of the people at the time. And what we'd like is if we're on the same page about facts and what we're, and then, you know, you have these philosophies budding against each other. And then, you know, that is actually going to get to the best will of the people possible versus here. If people are on the wrong page about facts, they think they're having a philosophical voting for their philosophies, but they're actually not because they've been misinformed. So they think that, you know, something is 10 times worse than it is. And they're

going to vote now to fix that when it actually is not that, that's not the problem. So it feels in a way like it's better. And then you have right now, you have actually like the media and a lot of big social media accounts, their job, their game is in misinforming you. Like making you feel, 100%. You know, my aunt is glued to MSNBC every day. And she sends me like, you know, we need to move out of the country stuff. Like that, they have. That is a company, MSNBC, whose business model is making people like her feel as extreme as possible about stuff and believe things are as extreme as possible. So her vote is not going to be accurately, like, linked, aligned with her actual will because, right? So, yeah.

Yeah. I, I, yeah. Yeah, the way you describe it sounds much nicer than the way it sounds, sounded in my head. So maybe you're giving me some hope. Amazon presents Jeff versus Taco Truck Salsa, whether it's Verde, Roja, or the orange one. For Jeff, trying any salsa is like playing Russian roulette with a flamethrower.

Luckily, Jeff saved with Amazon and stopped. up on antacids, ginger tea, and milk. Habaniero? More like Habinier, yes. Save the everyday with Amazon. But yeah, it is, it is, uh, the, the, the, the informational thing is, is interesting. I don't know. Like I, I feel like when you remove the, the informational games or like the, the, the pursuit of

facts and truth. and for the majority of the population, and it's just kind of like handed to us by AI, all that leaves is status games for us to play in. And I don't know, that, like, concerns me. Yeah, I think that tribalism will always creep in. Nasty base tribalism will always find a way to creep in. I think even that goes in waves.

Like the country generally has, like, a higher amount of it happening for a few years, and then it calms down. I also wrote it in my book about how one of the things in like the 50s is, you know, it seems like a very untribal time politically. Yeah. You know, the parties were very mixed. They didn't, it wasn't like that. But actually, the same quantity of tribalism was there.

It was just that it was distributed in like different tiers. So one tier was U.S. versus Soviet Union or Hitler before that. Right. And that takes a bunch of energy. A bunch of people's minds are just fixated on that. That's where their head is. Other peoples were like, no, like Republicans versus Democrats, whether in the state or in the country. And that's where their head was.

And some other people were, there are Democrats, you know, who the thing they hate the most is the other Democrats who are their other faction, who are actually much more, because it was much more mixed. So the factions themselves hated each other. Yeah. And what you have is the big high-level tribalism, the biggest us versus the biggest them, is a uniting force below. It chills out the things below because it like, well, we also, or at least we're together a disthing.

And then the lower ones, the fighting there, simmers the national one. You don't want, the national one goes too far. You start to, you know, just the xenophobia goes out of control and you want to, you know, you dehumanize the other part of the world. When you hate each other so much, suddenly, you know, you almost want to, you know, you, know, part of the left felt, you know, on more on the side of the Soviets than they did on the, than they did with the right or whatever. And I think that all of that kind of the three tiers being distributed evenly.

Like I think it's nice because it simmers it on all levels. It keeps it from. And what happened since then is the national threat went away. Yeah. The U.S. stopped having a serious existential threat outside its borders. And the factions went away because within the party, the lowest level, because the party's purified. So all the progressives went over here. All the conservatives went over here.

And then you have the media. So there's this one thing now, red versus blue, this middle one. It was the only one left. And the media inflames that and suddenly becomes this crazy thing. People stop caring about local politics. All these kind of kooky local politics people, I feel like have all had their minds channeled into this national thing, which doesn't even affect their lives,

nearly as much as the local politics. So it's concentrated into this one tier, and that is bad. That's an interesting way to look at it. Because, yeah, it does seem like there's a kind of a tribalism is constant, conflict itself is kind of constant, but it can be distributed in different amounts across different layers. as you call it. It makes me think, you know, I lived in Latin America for a while and my wife's Brazilian.

And one of the things that I found really interesting is that there have been almost no wars in South America and it's primarily due to geography. And like reading up on some of the history of some of the countries down there, there's been so much internal political conflict. Like so many coups, assassinations, revolutions, like mass murders, like mass murders, civil wars in every single country down there yet they've they like have

I don't think they've ever fought each other in like over 150 years and part of me wonders if it's just like when you can't turn that aggression outward you find somebody inward to face it towards and and it's

it's just bad you just say the opposite about the Middle East where whenever Israel Palestine becomes a huge thing, and that comes in waves. Obviously, we're in the middle of a big, big one now. Yeah.

All of these Arab countries that actually have very little in common, you know, feeling more unified. Right. And if you actually dig into any of what's going on in any one of those countries, most of them have a good reason to really hate their dictator. Yeah. And this is maybe not a coincidence that, you know, it's very helpful to that dictator to deflect all of this anger you feel, Israel. And so that's something that would bring people up to that top tier of, you know, the, you know, kind of Muslims versus Israel or the West, the West. And,

you know, the U.S. is another one, of course, the Iraq war. I'm sure you've had this, all this unity. So it brings all this unity here, but it's so much that, you know, it's like, that instead of, you know, you should be really angry at your own dictator and whatever. So I feel like you see the opposite there of Latin America in a way. Yeah. That's interesting. But it is interesting. It's like where is the like Brazil-Argentina war, right?

It just doesn't happen. I think in East Asia you have the countries that have this long history of hitting each other, Middle East, obviously. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's crazy. I think there was one war between Brazil and Uruguay in like 1850 or something. And then that's it.

That's like basically it. But meanwhile, every single country down there has had multiple revolution. civil wars, multiple coups, military dictatorships, like mass killing. Africa, Africa seems, sub-Saharan Africa seems the same. Yeah. There's all kinds of, it's a mess within each country, but you don't see, you know, Burundi and Rwanda going to war. Yeah, totally.

Last thing before we go, you are a new parent. I'm curious, what is your biggest, your two years end? What are your biggest parenthood takeaways so far? Oh. Well, it's like there's a massive pile of cons and a massive, massive, towering pile of pros. Yeah. And when I can say when I look at the two of them is that the pros pile is bigger. Okay.

It's a net positive, but there's a big pile of cons as well. I think you're the first person who's ever described their kid as net positive net positive net positive um because uh yeah the the the um it's it's like you know when I first got a dog I was like wow this is such like a source of joy yeah joy is hard to find in life right you know like real like just pure joy just purity of that like I see my puppy runs up to me and it's just this feeling of pure love and joy. So this is even, this is like, there's even more of that here. Just like, there's so much like, it's, it's a real purity to the, to the prose. Like,

it's just, it's just pure love. She's also so little. Her world is so small. She doesn't know about war or death or tribalism or religion or politics. She doesn't know anything. She's just a little, like pure little, little like drop of humanity. And, and so it's just, then our relationship is so pure. The love I feel is so pure. The joy, the feeling, the way she sees me is so like, you know, idyllic. That's not going to last, of course, and everything, like everything. Yeah. She will become a human. It will become complicated. She will become complicated. She will become complicated. Our relationship becomes, but at the moment, it's just, it's just like a puppy. It's just like such delight. So that's all amazing. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's,

definitely made me grow up in certain ways. These are all the pros. Though the cons are legit. Like, travel. Like, I used to go on these writer retreats, a couple friends. I go for two weeks. That's over, unless we do them with the whole family, you know? I, at summer of 14, I went away for 10 weeks, two weeks to each of five countries so I could write about them. Like, that was awesome. Can't do that anymore. That's a big loss.

You know, one of us is up every morning at freaking 7 a.m. That we're not early morning people. Like, that sucks. We want to just spontaneously get dinner with a friend. We can't. We don't have a babysitter. Like, real, like, genuine, you know, my wife and I went to two new countries every single year. That was like our thing.

Yeah. It's just, you know, when they get older, maybe we can start traveling with them. But like, so we have another one on the way. So it's about to be two and a baby. So those are genuine, real major loss. And for my wife, just being pregnant, some women like it, she does not. So that's like huge toll on her body twice now. So the cons are very, very real.

And I'm not, I don't think it's obvious that everyone should have kids. No, I think that the pros and cons are huge for everyone probably. And I think some people, it's not a net positive and they shouldn't do it. I think it's okay. Once you have a kid, you can't be selfish anymore. But you can be selfish before you have a kid and say, I don't want to dedicate my life to raising a kid. I want to be selfish.

I think that's a totally reasonable decision as well. Question. Has being apparent changed your evaluation of the importance or the value of some of those things, such as traveling to a new country every year or traveling with friends for a week or whatever? Like, has it raised your perception of how valuable that is, or has it lowered it or has it not changed at all? I don't think it's changed very much. Okay. Um, it's, you know, I, I think that like the things would change maybe that some people say like, oh, they're like petty fights with their friends or like feeling like they're excluded from like, you know, getting invited to this wedding or whatever. Like that stuff just you care less about. And that's probably true. But the things I'm talking about are like, you know, I'm not like now I realize that those like traveling wasn't important after all. Like, nope, it really was important. It's really great. It's like it's not critical. Um, I'm, it's a nice to have. It's not a need to have. Um, the, that freedom was was nice.

and I miss it and it's great. And, but, but, so I think, I don't think, I'm not sure I've had some, like, massive shift in, like, values or priorities. I do feel like it is, you know, it was, it was, before it was like, it sucked to go away from my wife for two weeks. But, like, worth it. You know, she would agree. Worth it. You should go. Like, you know away some other time.

It feels like not okay to go away from a two-year-old for two weeks. Again, she'd be fine, but I feel like our bond is like a very core important thing for her, and I don't want to just to not be there for that. So I'm prioritizing her over those things, but that's not because I think those are less important than they were. Yeah. And the other thing is, you know, I think that a friend reminded me this the other day that like this phase, when you really, you lose a lot of freedom because the kids are so little, and you're kind of like, you know, it's relentless. If we do an afternoon on Sunday, and it's just like me and her, there's a five-hour wait window between nap and sleep. And it's like, this is a very low IQ person to be spending five hours with.

Like, this is, you know, again, she delights me. But like, an hour three and a half. And I'm like, I cannot read that book again that you want me read for the fifth time. And like, you know, it is relentless. And it's like, that phase is temporary. Because at some point, these two little kids are five and seven. And now they're playing with each other, playing with themselves. Yeah.

They go to school. So it's like less time. They go to maybe go to camp in the summer. So very quickly. And then I think, you know, what everyone says, of course, it happens so quickly. And then you miss the time.

So we try to savor it and appreciate it and appreciate that the freedom is not, it's not a permanent loss. It's a loss right now in return for something nice. So I'm trying to frame it that way. So it's like, I'll have, I'll get to write a retreats later, you know? Yeah. You've got the rest of your life for that.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, so. If they go to camp, I can do it in the summer. Like, there's just plenty of times you can do that later. Totally. All right. Speaking of which, you are currently in grind mode on a book.

Are you talking about that book yet? Are you still? Yeah, yeah. It's like, it's, I don't know the exact title yet, but it's like everything, the story of everything. It's the history of the universe, right? Big Bang to the End of the Universe. It's basically an excuse for me to cover all my favorite topics along the way. And it's way easier than the last book in terms of it's a, it's a,

It's a hard project, but it's just every 10 pages I'm on a different topic. So it feels like blogging. And I'm like sick of the topic. And it's not like current events were happening before that changed the book. I'm like, well, now I have to incorporate this. There's none of that other than some stuff with the near future. Yeah. And also I think I have figured out my, you know, my systems a little bit more.

So it's moving along. It's going to be done in like two years as opposed to seven for the last book. just in total disaster. I'm happy to hear that. Any idea when it's supposed to come out? Well, after one's in print now, which is really fun. So I'll send you one of these. Oh, cool. Yeah, I'd love to have that.

But yeah, and I think you owe it to me to start another book because it's not fair. I don't like what's happening here where you're like somehow feel like you're free of the hell that we signed up for. You know what's funny? I was actually under contract to do another book. And the deadline was in the or beginning of 24. And I just got on a call with my publisher. And I was like, you know what? I haven't started writing and I don't think I'm going to.

Imagine the freedom. And then they were like, well, fuck you, Manson. Give us our money back. And so I wrote a check and gave the money back. And life's been good. Yeah. Life's been really good. after I finish this book, I might have to experiment with not being in hell for a little bit.

Yeah, it's, you know, after I think between starting subtle art and finishing Will's book, I think it was seven, seven, eight years of writing pretty much nonstop. So yeah, the last two and a half three has been really nice. But I am starting to have ideas for the next book and like get a little bit of the itch. you know it's it's it is kind of like well it's what i hear pregnancy is like is that you forget how hard it is and totally and so it's you start i'm already like playing those head games from like well you know it's like that's a simple concept i bet i could bang that out in six months and you know i'm like clearly i know i know i in my head i have this this vision for a future book because these

books are both going to be you know the first draft is 200 000 words plus for both and then i cut it down to you know 140 whatever i'm like What if I wrote a 60,000 word book? And I wrote 2,000 words a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year with some weeks off in the middle. Easy. And I just woke up in the morning, wrote 400 words and got on with my day. And I'm like, piece of cake. Somehow that seems, why can't I just do that?

That sounds so easy. Wake up, right? One Microsoft Word page, five days a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year handed in. It always sounds great when you say it out loud. And then when you go to try to do it, you, it's like eating. glass for 18 months. I know. It really, really is. Right now I'm on, I'm like, I'm like, I'm 170,000 words into this draft. I don't know. I've one, one big chapter left. And then I'm going to then have the hideous process of cutting it down. And fact, there's over a thousand fat checks.

My fact checker has ready for me that I haven't even looked at yet. Oh my God. The other thing to think about is, you know, we both have experienced both books and articles. Like, you also could just be like, you know what? I'm going to write a, go back to the days when I, write like a killer viral article twice a month and do that, you know, but it's hard to know because that feels like you do all this work and it's not really, it just kind of goes away. It kind of like fades away. On the other hand, it's just like you get the instant gratification of publishing right then. And you can hop on something you're thinking about right then and just get it out or you can,

I mean, I guess you can do that on your other mediums. I will say I am really, really enjoying being back in Internet land. it feels like home it's like coming home after living abroad or something but yeah there is an impermanence to it like there is a little bit of a treadmill type aspect to it of like

you just have to keep producing month after month after month and it feels like nothing lasts for very long like every once in a while like one thing will hit and it'll last for a few years like if you had done subtle art as a series of each chapter just was opposed, it would have been much worse, much worse decision, right? So it's a hard one.

There is. But if I had done the year one of wait, but why, you know, as one big book, it would have been worse because it was better to have that be this kind of viral. To me, there's like each has its strategic place. Yeah. And also like some ideas, you know, obviously some ideas don't merit a book. And some ideas shouldn't stick around for more than a few months or a year or two. but it is

I have been having a lot of fun with it but yeah I do like there is a permanence and a significance that comes with a book that you just you don't really get any other way so I will be back at it at some point okay all right dude well this has been a blast

thank you so much for making the time and good luck finishing up the manuscript thank you I'll keep you posted cool the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie. It's edited by Andrew Nishamura. Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer.

Thank you for listening, and we will see you next week.