The Daily Stoic - Jon Ronson on Empathy, Culture Wars, and Finding Community

Episode Date: February 12, 2022

Ryan talks to author and filmmaker Jon Ronson about how to balance empathy and compassion with finding the truth, the importance of policing your side of the street to fight radicalization, the lack of connection in modern culture, and more. Jon Ronson is an award-winning writer and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of many bestselling books, including So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test, and The Men Who Stare at Goats. His latest work is a Radio 4 and BBC Sounds podcast series entitled, Things Fell Apart, which covers unexpected human stories from the history of culture wars. Go Macro is a family-owned maker of some of the finest protein bars around. They're vegan, non-GMO, and they come in a bunch of delicious flavors. Visit gomacro.com and use promo code STOIC for 30% off your order plus free shipping on all orders over $50.Talkspace is an online and mobile therapy company. Visit talkspace.com and get $100 off your first month when you use promo code STOIC at sign-up. That’s $100 off at talkspace.com, promo code STOIC.LinkedIn Jobs helps you find the candidates you want to talk to, faster. Every week, nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn, Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/STOIC.Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Jon Ronson: Homepage, Instagram, TwitterSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the weekend edition of the Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview stoic philosophers, we explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend when you have a little bit more space when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly to prepare for what the week

ahead may bring. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wunderree's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target, the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. I just, I love John Rothsons work. I've read a ton of his books and I've recommended his books to a ton of people. He's just, as I talk about in today's interview, he's just got a delightful tone and style and voice. And he manages to pick the most interesting subjects and make them accessible and eye-opening.

His book, Them Adventures with Extremists, is unfortunately quite timely as he studies conspiracy theorists and why they act the way they do. His book, The Men Who Stare at Goats, was turned into a delightful movie with George Clooney. His book, The Psychopath Test, also very, very good. But of course, I think his best and most relevant book, which is one I also carry here at the Painted Ports, is so you've been publicly shamed, which looks at our online culture, why we react the way we do to people, why we gather in mobs back to the Stoics Times and to the

online times. Why we shame, why we bully, why we struggle so much with forgiveness and empathy and most of all grace. And John just does an incredible job in this book. I know Billy Bush, who I've had on the podcast, read it. A number of people I know who have been sort of in the midst of these massive internet sensations turned to this book. I tend to find people will read my first book, Trust Me I'm Lying, and then so you've been publicly shamed. I think they come at a similar problem

from very different perspectives, but I remember when I read, so you've been publicly shamed. I thought, fuck, that is a good book. I wish I had written it, but I don't think I could have, or anyone could have written it as delightfully and thoughtfully as John Ronson did. And I was very excited to have him on the podcast. He writes in many different publications,

including the Guardian. He's made several BBC television documentaries. And he's the host of a new podcast, Things Fell Apart, which looks at the conflicts of the culture war with that same lens. So he doesn't get bogged down and who's right and who's wrong. What it means, he's focusing on on how this issue came to be what it is and the mistakes that were made and the generalizations that were made and the lack of sympathy that was made and the nuance that was missed. And I'm just so excited about this podcast. And I hope it can do for these interminable destructive culture wars we are in.

What John managed to do for the subject of online shaming, which I think we've gotten a tad bit better about. I was really excited to bring this interview. You can go to john at ronson.com. You can follow them on Instagram at john ronson. That's john on the H. You can follow him at john ronson on Twitter. If you haven't read, so you've been in public ashamed. You should. You can pick it up at thepaintedportch.paintedportch.com. Anywhere books are sold.

I don't know if he reads the audiobook. I hope he does because he has a delightful accent. And check it out in Indian All Formats and enjoy this interview with John Ronson. I think what I've always been struck by in your books, and I thought this before you wrote, so you've been publicly shamed, although it sort of was the penultimate example of this, I feel like in all you're writing, the one theme that runs through it is you manage to find a remarkable amount of empathy or compassion, or in some cases cases even understanding for people, either people that have screwed up people who are a bachelorette crazy or somewhere in between. Where does that come from in you? Getting older and feeling more fragile and vulnerable myself and the more of a battering life gives you, the more you feel empathetic to other people.

I'd like to. Yeah, yeah. It's really, I was just reading a conspiracy, which I like a lot, I think you wrote a great book. But it's interesting, you talk a lot about manipulation. And the older I get, the more I was never into manipulation at all, I've always been like, I've always found it something to avoid, but the older I get, the more I feel that way.

And so if you're approaching somebody as a writer, you wanted to tell their story, the opposite of manipulation, the opposite of tricking people into somehow becoming an ingredient in your preconceived agenda is curiosity and empathy. And I just found over the years that the more I leaned into that aspect of things, just the better it was in every way. Yeah, in that book, I talk about the famous Janet Malcolm sort of view of journalism that it's, it's this inherently exploitative or vicious thing because you're taking someone's life and then you're turning it into like material for what you do.

And it's like in the way that a woodworker cuts down a tree and uses that tree to make something that benefits them at the expense of the tree. There is an element to that in journalism and writing, and I think internet journalism compounds it. But yeah, there's a thoughtfulness and it's not even unbi... I think being objective would be one thing, and you're kind of letting the people hang themselves. But even in your stuff on pornography, I feel like you really just tried to understand who these people were and why what they were doing

or who they were made sense to them. Yeah, and just try and see the world through other people's eyes. Just try and get to the heart of people, which yeah doesn't mean that I'm I'm credulous. You know I have beliefs. I fall somewhere on the ideological spectrum, but I just feel, well as Janet Malcolm said, I can't remember the exact quote, but it was something like, you know, every journalist knows deep down that they're a con artist. And I think that really has to weigh heavily on us all, because we're in it, you know, we have power when we're telling people stories. So, yeah, there are also, it's just such a great belief to tell stories where you want to be

empathetic, which I'll say, doesn't mean that I'm uncritical or I've lost my rationality or reason. I think you take all of, you bring all of those things to the thing. If somebody is doing something that hurts other people, then you have to point that out and you have to I love to guess that and not give them an easy ride over it, but at the same time, you want to try and understand what's going on inside people's heads. Yeah, I was reading something about Joan Didian and I remember reading this in one of her essays, but she was talking about how, because she was little and pretty and unassuming,

she would get in the room with people, particularly big, powerful men who would just sort of take her for granted, and she was like, I'm not your friend. I'm not here. She's like, I'm here for me, and if destroying you is good for my story, I'll do it. But yeah, I just feel like in your stuff, like you're, it's almost the opposite of that. Yeah, and I love John Dittin. It's not like, you know, I'm, but yeah, I just think there aren't that many people,

I guess, approaching it the way that I'm approaching it. So for instance, I just made this series, series Things Fella Part which is about the history of the culture wars and the very first thing I thought when I decided to do that was I want to make a show about the culture wars that doesn't become a part of the culture wars and how do you do that? How is that possible? And the answer is you tell human stories and humans and nuanced and complicated and good people do stupid things and vice versa and if you're telling if you're honing in on a person and you're telling just a human story then all the ideology can can kind of take a take a back seat and you can start

thinking about the culture wars and how we got here in a different way through curiosity and humor rather than getting very upset. Well, how does one find the balance in? This is something I've experienced. I think you as well. But in this line of work and then if depending on what you write about, you can find yourself in the room with people who have either done bad things

or been accused of doing bad things. And then, you know, you sit down with them, you talk to them, they tell you their story, it feels very believable. They feel like human beings, as you're saying. Like, something hit me a while ago, this is, again, I think think a weird confluence of the things I've written about in my public relations background, I realized that I've probably been in

the room with like, at least a dozen different people who have been like me, too, on like a national level, right? And every single one of them can trick, like told me a convincing story about how they were totally and completely innocent, right? And on an individual basis, you know, again, if you're trying to be compassionate, empathetic, see someone as a human, that like on the, if you're looking at it with a sample size of one, it makes sense. And then I was like, they can't all be innocent, right? So how do you balance empathy and compassion and not being sold a bill of goods?

Right. In my case, the answer is you keep going. You, my relation, other than in particular circumstances, normally with my stories, they unfold, they twist and turn, and so if I'm really with someone for an hour and I believe what they say and just move on with the story, instead maybe they'll say something that triggers me to think, okay, I'll go off and explore over there or have an adventure over there. So they're still in my life, they're still in the backgrounds. And I'm going off to another adventure and maybe six months down the line, I go back to the person and say, I've just learned this thing. And then so, you know,

you try and so what you're doing is balancing empathy and curiosity with with investigative journalism. The two things go hand in hand, it's I think a lot harder than to be to be duked. Trust but verified. Yeah, yeah. And be curious, keep going, like if they say something, it always surprises people when I say that I never have a, I never ask, I never have a list of questions in front of me. Yeah.

But it's because you have to listen. And then if you haven't got a list of questions in front of you, then you're much more likely to pick up on something that that person says in the moment, that my entirely changed the narrative, it might take you 180 degrees. Whereas if you've got a list of questions in front of you, then you're not really listening to what the person's saying, because you've got a safety net. Isn't that the tricky thing though? It would almost be easier if bad people were like, yeah, I'm a piece of shit.

I don't care about other people, right? Like, almost always, and I think this goes to Socrates, he says, nobody does wrong on purpose. Everyone always has a reason. They always have an explanation. They always have, almost always seem to have, and I know you talked about psychopaths too, but even them, very rarely are they like, I'm a psychopath, right?

Well, I was thinking about psychopaths while you were saying that, because one thing I did learn, I learned to let all tip when I was writing the psychopath test, and I went on Robert's course and learnt about the checklist and obviously one of the main items on the checklist is lack of empathy. And I'll tell you a story really quickly. After I finished writing the psychopath test so this isn't in the book, I was interviewing this spy, this spy who had worked for the Russians, but he was British, so I'm talking to this guy, and I noticed that he was not listening to any of my questions, just monologuing at me for a long time, and I hope that this is more of a kind of conversation. We're listening

to each other, which is an empathetic situation, but this guy didn't have that. So I thought, I remembered another item on the checklist, early behaviour problems and there seems to do a childhood. So I said to him, when you were a child, were you a bully? And he sort of looked twinkle at it and he said, oh yes, yes. He said, I was a terrible bully. I used to, I got a pile of bricks, and I put them in my bag, and I hit behind the tree, and then I jump out and hit the other kids with this bag. And he said, but it was always like other bullies, you know. Yeah, sure. Or that's what he said.

So I said, I said, how did I make you feel? He said, good. And I said, I'm looking back at it now, 60, 70 years later. How does it make you feel? And he said, he said, still good. I said, so you're not really the sort of person who feels empathy. And he said, you've really got to the root of it there.

He said, you know, he said, you know, if a dog dies, if my pet dog dies, I feel incredibly upset. I cry for days, but all the people who I've hurt, I just feel nothing. So, if you can get a psychopath to really get to the root of it. And it had similar conversations with one or two other psychopaths too. Well, no, and what I mean is like when you talk to somebody who spreads misinformation or conspiracy theories, the tricky part about them is that they, it's not like, I think some people go,

they know deep down, it's, it's BS, but they don't they believe it right That's the that's often the tricky like I think what's so tricky is that They are deceived by their own deceptions in a way and so it makes it really hard as a as a person to to know Kind of who and how you're dealing with someone well one of you know one of the questions I'm asked more than any of the question is Alex Jones question. You wrote about years ago, right? Yeah, like in the 90s. Does he mean it? Does he believe it all or is he a showman? So that thing that you just said is of enormous interest to people. Do they mean it? I think because the thing

that people hate more than almost anything else is hypocrisy. So the idea of Alex not meaning a word of it would be worse, I think, for people than the things that he says. But I think the answer is really complicated. I think especially if you're narcissistic, meaning it and not meaning it, bullshitting people, it all sort of blurs into one. You know, if you don't have those ethical guidelines, it just all blurs into one. Right, no, I think that makes it easier. Yeah, it makes it trickier to tell fact from fiction with these people, because they're not one camp or the other.

It's very, how could they, they, they, slip from exactly for one thing to the other. It's, it's really hurt and it's frustrating. And it's why there haven't been that many really great things about Q&A. Yes, the, I thought the HBO documentary that got the guy I've gotten his name. What's the young guy's name? The son? Yeah, I forget, but I know who talking about it. Yeah, I thought that was really good because that's kind of all we really do need to know.

Because we want something solid. If you're just trying to talk to conspiracy theorists about their conspiratorial beliefs It's just like it's almost like asking someone to describe a dream So you need something solid and what solid is like who is doing this? And why are they doing it and how can you I think that that is the tricky part of our age Which is we we seem to believe that if we just get which is we seem to believe that if we just get the truth out there, if we, if it's like, if I can just show you factually why you're incorrect, you will change your mind. And that's not how it works.

Yeah, I've long ago realized that's not how it works. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, you have to lead them to a place where they want to come to that realization themselves, or not even lead them there. You just have to let them come to that place. And they don't know. Yeah, you just have to leave them to sober up basically. Yeah.

We're not. Or not. So, going back to this journalistic approach with empathy. I think what's, why it strikes me as so remarkable is that, or perhaps what makes it possible is it does seem you spend large amounts of time in person with the people. You can trust that with Gokker who I was writing about.

It's like they're doing this through a computer screen, so it's disintermediated, or it's intermediated. And as a result, they're able to act like it's a video game. Is it harder for you to stick the knife in someone because you're like, I just spent eight hours with them. I know there is human being. I can't fool myself about that. To be totally honest, the only reason why I travel and meet people is I need for narrative, for writing, I need the sense of a journey. I actually think, so probably the best interviewer in America is Terry Gross and Fresh Air and I believe that she never meets them. It's always done down the lines, always done by ISDN. So actually, I think the answer is I

would, things fell apart, the shy just made. That's about to come out all over the world. I did that remotely. And it's a great show. So, but I so for me, the reason for travel isn't to be in the room with the person. It's because I need, you know, I need a journey, I'm getting off the plane, and I'm getting informed into the hotel, and then a funny observation, and then another funny, you know,

so that's just kind of how I write. Interesting. Yeah, I just wonder how, like I think part of what you talked about and so you've been publicly ashamed, what makes that possible is that we've reduced human beings to these sort of avatars or bits on a computer screen, whereas when you actually had to see this person

or you knew them, you might not be so quick to reduce them to a caricature. You know what, Sabine Puppetley-Shend is the big exception to what I just said. I couldn't have done, well there's no way I could have done Sabine Puppetley-Shend any other way. And the most emotional things that I saw were things that I saw. So one of the, so for instance, Lindsey Stone, she, she, she got piled in on for making a joke about the silence and respect side at Arlington Cemetery in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Anyway, when I finally

went to her house, it's funny, all the things that I did for that book, this is kind of my first memory, and it's not like wild did for that book, this is kind of my first memory. And it's not like wild, but it kind of gets to the heart of it. So I go to a house, she lives in this cabin in the woods with her pair and it's just very nice. She told me that when the media door stepped her, they came out of the cabin with the dog, like with their German shepherd or whatever, and one of them was smoking. And I said, we're talking, they noticed the camera went down with the dog, like with their German Shepherd or whatever, and one of them was smoking. And I said, we're talking, they noticed the camera went down to the dog of the cigarette. They were immediately forming this narrative about them being, you know, mountain people.

So I go in there, and she showed me the desk, like this little desk in the corner with a little old desktop on it where she would sit night after night reading every comment, I'm believing every word of it because she wasn't a public figure, she had no practice, she was a carer, I'm just believing every word. You'd have to see that, you'd have to be in that room with her and see her in need. And because if I was going to write a book about public sharing, it would have to be kind of the Blair Witch project, it would have to make people feel horror because you want to feel the horror

of what you do to other people because we all think, oh, they're fine now. We're talking about that, they're fine now. We're talking about that, but they're fine now. But we have no idea because we've just moved on. And one of the things I wanted to show in that book was the intense psychological trauma. But it does to somebody, and you know, Lindsey Stone, like many people were having suicidal thoughts. They became insomniac, agrophobic, and you know and this is what I'm used to. Gotta carry up here every night.

So, yes, I have to be in the room with her. Hey there listeners, while we take a little break here, I want to tell you about another podcast that I think you'll like. It's called How I Built This, where host Guy Razz talks to founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies to learn how they built them from the ground up. Guy has sat down with hundreds of founders behind

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on the Amazon or Wondery app. Yeah, that suicidal component is been the thing for me as I've, you know, because my first book, and then because of some of the stuff I've written, I just, people just email me, they're like, hey, you know, insert person in the middle of the headlines for this thing, their career, their life, whatever just happened and they either want my advice or they sometimes they read some of the other books. Like Billy Bush, who I've had on the podcast, was like, you know, he read, he read, my first book, Trust Me I'm Lying, and he read The Daily Stoke, as his life imploded, and I remember talking to him, and one of the things I took out of some of those conversations

is like, there's plenty of people that are gonna hold this person accountable, right? Or there's gonna inflict the consequences rightly or wrongly for what happened. And there's almost always a deficiency of people who will just talk to or be there for that person and I

I don't know I just I just feel like If you turn away from that role and something happens, you're responsible. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think things about missing out a little bit. I think when I wrote, say, been publicly shamed, I described people on Twitter as being a toddler's crawling towards a gun. And I think things have matured quite a lot since then. Where it's a gun that social media is a gun? Yeah, well, what I meant by that analogy, a toddler crawling towards a gun was just, we have no idea of our own power. We have no idea of the consequences

of what we're doing, the power of the weapon that we are utilizing. And I think things have changed now, and I think there's more. I was really encouraged, did you see the NSSLE incident happen a few? No. Okay, it was another dog park racist moment in a dog park, some of which was captured on video.

So, if you remember this, yes. So similar to Amy Cooper, but with some favorite differences, not to go into too much detail, because you can just read about it if you want to. There was quite a, it was gentle, but there was a sort of firm backlash against the person doing the shaming from leading progressive voices, which I thought was interesting. They were saying, I'm not sure this is a good use of your platform.

And they were arguing against the things that we've been arguing about for well seven or eight years now. You shouldn't judge somebody on a fragment of information and so on. Yeah, you know what struck me and so you've been publicly shamed when I first read it was I was roughly the same age as Jonah Berger. We had the same age. Oh, Jonah Berger. Oh, Jonah Berger, sorry, yeah. Jonah Berger is also an amazing writer, or is it an amazing writer who's not gotten in trouble?

So sorry to try to give him in here. No, no, Jonah Berger. Roughly the same age, same publisher, same speaking agency, sort of, he was a little bit more prestigious in the circles he was in. But I just remember thinking like, not that it could happen to anyone, but that it would be so easy to go down that road. You know what I mean? And so I think what I took from your book was not just a sort of compassion, but just because I understood it, because it was sort of, it's stuck closer to home, I was just like, I don't,

I, the lesson from that should not be, oh, what a piece of garbage he is, the lesson should be, you could end up in a similar situation if you are not careful. Yeah, it's funny with Dona Lara, The thing that made me a little bit paranoid was one of the things that he was accused of, but never, but actually he sort of wasn't done for this, but it was like the first slap before the real transgressions came out, was self-plagiarism. Yeah, that's not a thing. Well, I thought, well, you know, like if you tell a joke in a column in the Guardian,

no one congratulates you for, and then five years later, you think of another way to use that same joke. And this time, everyone's like, that's the best joke I've ever heard. That's a win. So I'm like, so I'm like, I think, fuck, you know, are they? It just felt like we were on shift, when I read that, I thought I felt like I was standing on shifting sounds. Yeah. And I think a lot of people in many, many different ways over the last few years have thought we're standing on shifting sands.

Now, to me, that's something to be very empathetic about, right? Because oftentimes what someone goes down very hard for, they may have just been ahead of the curve, right? And so, like, I think Jonah, as someone who wrote for a lot of different media outlets and was very prodigious in his output was sort of on the front line of, now that's what writing is, you publish in all these places, you're on all these different platforms. And so of course he was remixing and moving stuff around. It's not the same as David Brooks recycling his columns. You know, it's a different, it's a different mode and style of writing. Well other stuff was yeah, well I mean it's been a

while but to be specific there was fabricated quotes. So one of the most famous ones but just kind of stupid, I mean he he he quoted that very famous Bob Dylan line from Don't Look Back where Dylan's reading about himself in the paper and he goes, you know, he smokes 60 a day. And Dylan looks up in the paper and goes, well, I'm glad I'm not me. And Dylan, and John will have a quote that, but ads, I'm glad I'm not that.

I'm glad I'm not me, I'm glad I'm not that. And so then when Michael Moynihan started investigating Jonah, he said to Jonah, where did the I'm glad I'm not that. And so then when Michael Moynihan started investigating Jonah, he said to Jonah, where did the I'm glad I'm not that come from? And Jonah said, oh, I had special access to extra takes that I got from one of Dylan's managers, so just digging and digging and digging. But it's like, why, why even, right, I'm glad I'm not that. Why, why even do that? So that was the sort of, that was the kind of thing that, that was being done. But of course, when you compare that to, when you compare that to the kind of lies that are all over the media right now, that it seems pretty minor. But of course, you know,

there's a line in saying you've been publicly shamed where I say that our shameworthiness lies in the space between who we are and how we present ourselves to the world. And Jonas space was big and that was his problem. No, and I also think it's interesting when we talk about cancel culture, which I wanted to ask you about, is one's vulnerability to being shamed also depends on how dependent you are on other people or institutions or public favor to do what you do, right? So if you write for the New Yorker and for Wired and blah, blah, blah, and you are sort of, you're dependent on these big outlets to get your stuff out in the world. You are much more cancelable than someone who writes directly to their audience, right? Like, a Joe Rogan, people have tried to attack and I don't need to get into wire, whether it's deserved or not. But Joe Rogan basically only has him and Spotify, you know,

between him and the audience. And so people have been frustrated by their inability to sort of hold him accountable, and I'm putting the accountable in quotes. But I think, to me, one lesson from all of it is like, as as you said to be honest and true and not try to present yourself as something other than you are, but also it's like not depend on other people or other platforms to put your work out in the war. Yeah, and I guess that's that a true meritocracy happened. Is that what it means? I don't know. Maybe, yeah, it's a strange. The cancel culture thing is interesting because it's become this whole thing. And I remember actually, I said this to someone who had been canceled.

And I said, the problem is that, that, that, cancel culture, like it exists. Most of the people who are canceled deserve to be canceled, right? That's the tricky part, like it is problematic. But then oftentimes it's to get rid of, but oftentimes it is deserved. So it's this tricky thing of like the difference between shaming and canceling. Yeah, well, one of the main problems is the phrase itself because so many wildly disparate situations are described as part of cancel culture. everything from Lindsay Stone, a private individual being wildly disproportionately punished for a joke that came

out badly, which is kind of where, so you've been publicly shamed to set in that world, a private people being disproportionately punished, then you go to the middle and you've got Ashom Povacata newspaper columnists and the pushback can be ferocious and confratern people into silence, but there's also the fact that when you put yourself out in the public eye, you should be held to a different set of standards than the kind of people I was asking about in my book. So that's the complicated middle ground. Yeah. Then at the other end, you've got politicians

who've committed sexual assault, who say I'm being canceled. So it's a maddening phrase. Well, Noah, you have Josh Hawley, who encourages an insight and insurrection on the United States government, loses his book deal over it and calls it cancel culture. That's not what cancel culture is. And it's a problem for so many reasons.

Obviously he is politicizing it and cancel culture and the culture wars are going to be a big part of 2024 and you know they're all laying the ground for that. Then but then you know the problem is also that you have people on the left who look at that happening and say you know it's they see there's no such thing as cancel culture and then people at Ninsie Stone slip through the cracks what do you say? There's no such thing as cancel culture, it's just accountability culture, then the private individuals who don't deserve it. Who are, I probably, no, no,

I was about to say they're the bulk of council people, but they're not, but there's a lot of them. And, you know, what about them? So the whole thing becomes a mess. How much do you think is rooted, I was thinking about this, it's almost like it's rooted in kind of impotence or the deadlock of our culture.

So like, if Josh Hawley was held legally accountable for what he did, or if Josh Hawley was held politically accountable by his own party for what he did, I imagine there would be less pressure on his book publisher to cancel he did, I imagine there would be less pressure on his book publisher to cancel his book, right? So sometimes I feel like the sort of vehemence and anger and destructiveness of our online culture is really rooted in the fact that our politicians and our other cultural and business institutions are not operating as efficiently or as justly as they should. And so people feel like that is the only lever of power that they have in a dysfunctional unfair world.

So they're like, this is where I can affect change. It's a very inefficient cruel way to enact change, but it's the only lever that feels like it's working. Yeah, yeah, it's true. And I started to hear that Mapo-Koro only based small amount of pushback, but when it came out thank goodness, but that was the pushback. Public shaming is one of the few weapons of the marginalised and so if you're attacking public shaming, the near attacking marginalised people. And it's a valid thing to say. In my case, I just don't, I think I was very careful at drawing distinctions, so I don't think it was a fecklet system of my book,

I don't think. But I'd say it's valid, it's a valid point. Yeah, it's like if you want to reduce cancel culture, just start policing your side of the street, you know? And then I think some of that goes away. Yeah, yeah. And which maybe is starting to happen in term, like the MSI-ally thing. I was very encouraged by that. I mean, she had, I think, they severe consequences. I think she

was fired from her job and then she moved to a different part of America. But certainly on social media, the way it was being lashed around felt quite different to previous similar shanings. I know you spend a fair amount of time on Twitter not too much. Have you been as sort of dismayed slash like cautioned by what it feels like Twitter has done to the brains of a lot of the media class. Like, to me, it feels like it's consumed their life and broken their ability to think compassionately, long term, rationally. It doesn't feel healthy or happy.

Well, yeah, I mean, Twitter's the worst thing in the world. It's the world's worst Twitter is the worst thing in the world. It's the world's worst information swapping service It drives our brains because it's because it's upgraded by libertarians episode five of things fell apart looks at How libertarians created the internet and how all living in a libertarian utopia. It's driving us all insane So and yes, that's where we all started. With the fact that people who were ideologically enamored with the idea of unencumbered free speech, built the internet and controlled the internet and effectively still does, although things I think are changing and have been changing for the last three or four years. It's interesting that Peter Tiel, who obviously you wrote so well about in conspiracy, he said, you know, when he was starting out,

Silicon Valley was Libertarian and the reason why he left and moved to Los Angeles a couple of years ago was because it no longer felt Libertarian. So yeah, that's a big part of it. This is what happens when you allow Libertarians to run the party. Yeah, isn't that the Aaron Sorkin joke that these social networks were designed by fundamentally a social or unsocial people who don't actually understand human dynamics and how relationships work and aren't capable of that empathy. That's so true and that's the world that we all live in. Those are our Robert Balens, right? Those are our Rockefellers. And I know, right? And the consequence of it, and to do with the outings, to do with the algorithms,

but it's just to do with so much else, is yeah, we retreat to our corners. My friend, Adam Curtis, said something really interesting to me about this. He said the internet is designed by engineers. And what do engineers like more than anything else? Stability. So that's why when a destabilizing force enters our world like somebody who said something that we don't agree with, it's like the machine spits them out to maintain stability.

and spits them out to maintain stability. Right. Yeah, it's very strange the world that we're living in, and then the people could sort of see these things happening and go, oh, I don't work itself out. Yeah, well, that's only what people always felt about public sharing. I remember when I was writing soapy public sharing with Justin So, I remember asking Sam Biddle from Gorka, like how it felt to have started the onslaught against her, and he said it felt delicious,

and then he said, but I'm sure she's fine now. So, which I felt like, for me, it felt like a moment of cognitive dissonance. You just't want to, he just didn't want to think about maybe that she wasn't fine. No, I think, I think, you know, that's, that's Zuckerberg statement after the 2020 election in 2016 too, he's like, there's no way Facebook influenced the election. You know, because you think that it had an impact would then obligate him to do something and so if he chooses to deny that it had anything to do with it, he can keep doing what is doing.

Yeah, also, and also, I think it's that, but and also it's this ideological vision that they have about tech. The machines must be allowed to do whatever the machines are capable of doing. It's fundamentally a moral. Yes. Yes. That is the libertarianism. Yeah, it is. And you know, on a personal level, when I meet libertarians, they're really nice. And you know, I live upstate.

There's a bunch of libertarians close to where I live. And they're really nice. People, but I just don't think it's a really good idea to live a de-reforced libertarian system, which is basically what the internet has been for most of its life. Well, I think to go to your work on psychopaths, it doesn't work when those people

enter the mix. Yeah, yeah. Well, what happens with psychopaths and I guess happens with every extreme personality type I guess is if you have a psychopath at the top of a corporation, in the psychopath test, I talk about how you have four times more likely to have a psychopath at the top of a corporation, in the psychopath test, I talk about how you have four times more likely to have a psychopath at the top of the bottom. It trickles down. Everybody behaves a little bit more psychopathically, so we all become a bit more psychopathic. in a very small way, just in offices. Look, that God, I've never had to work in offices, but when I've worked for companies and so on, I've noticed that kind of thing happening. Everybody getting a little bit harder, and more willing to be manipulative

if the wrong person is in charge. I'm sure a lot of people would recognize that. What's very primal. It's like, oh, if everyone in the tribe is behaving, we can pretend to be all well-behaved monkeys. But then if the dial gets turned a little bit, we can go primal real quickly. Oh, it's funny.

I've got a more humanistic explanation. You could be absolutely right. My kind of hearted thing is maybe, you know, people are being forced against their will to behave in a more exploitative way than they feel terrible about it afterwards. That could be true. I think it works. but about it afterwards. That could be true. I think it works. Yeah, maybe I guess. I guess it's all sorts.

Different, different strokes of different folks. Offices will have both types in them. So I was thinking about the culture wars. I think the other thing where I think culture wars and some of the public shaming stuff intersects, it's kind of like, who cares? wars and some of the public shaming stuff intersects. It's kind of like, who cares? Like, why do people care so much?

I think, to me, you know what, like I get why it's a problem. What I'm saying is the individual thing, you know, it's like, it's like people like, can you believe they did X? And it's like, no, I don't care. Like I don't, it's not, you know what I mean? I feel like the antidote to a lot of the intensity of where we are is the more stoic approach of like,

I'm gonna focus on my own stuff. Well, that was my starting point for things to fall apart. Over the pandemic, but before the pandemic too, like most people, I was watching friends going sane online and caring and it wasn't so much like what the particular cultural war was, but it was the intensity with which they were fighting it. Yeah. Seemed so stirling to me and I wanted to try and figure out why and that's why I made the show.

But yeah, I think people are, and I don't, people are noticing it more and more, people are just changing very quickly. Yeah. What, why are we so wrapped up? Is it that, is it, so one theory I have is that, okay, 15, 20 years ago, we would have all been watching friends together or like the TV show, you know, like that 60 million people would watch an episode of Seinfeld, as culture fractured, there stopped being any large things to be a part of. So these events, these culture war events are kind of the only other than sports.

They're the only mass culture left. Yeah, let me think about that. I mean, yeah, I mean once in a while, everybody falls in love with a particular meme, or, you know, Charlie bit my finger. So those kinds of things do still happen. Yeah, I was thinking, when you were describing everybody sitting down together to watch friends, I was matching a room full of people watching friends. And I think if you're the kind of person who can be easily wounded, maybe you score high on narcissism, but you're very easily wounded. If you're in a room with someone and a fight breaks out, people can quite easily navigate it,

and no one to stop, no one to pull back this watching and so you know the most terrible thing that can happen to a narcissist for instance is they feel so wounded it like becomes a permanent war for the rest of their lives that's more likely to happen I'd say on social media because because there isn't a personal human connection. Speaking of which, there's one episode of Things Fell Apart where I tell the story of this man called Steve Peters, and I won't tell the whole story here, but it's incredibly moving. It's probably the most moving story I've told. And it's a story about connection. It's a story about warring factions in a cultural war.

What is the cultural war issue? I don't know. It was eight in the eighties and the evangelical right responded to the AIDS crisis. And the story was just, it's so moving. I would encourage people to listen to its episode three of Things Fellow Parts, but I had so many messages that day and since, from people saying I was listening to that show while I was driving up the motorway and tears were rolling down my face, and the show was all about connection. And it made me think that we're dying.

We're so basal wary. We're dying for connection now. Yeah, no, that's right. And maybe that's why we end up caring about things that we don't care about. We wouldn't otherwise care about because it puts us in a community. So, yeah, suddenly we're very concerned about voter fraud, not because

it exists, or we were a political person beforehand, but now we're in a tight-knit unit of people fighting that part of the culture war, and that's very edifying. Right. I would say as a Brit, when I moved to America, I've been living in America for 10 years now, and a few things like really surprised me about America. It feels very much my home now more, you know, it's just it's my home. But one thing I'd say about Britain is that other than some very egregious, jerry-mantering in Northern Ireland, join the troubles,

in Britain, vote of fraud, really hasn't been, not so vote of fraud, the idea of sort of voter suppression, people's names, just mysteriously vanishing from roles, all of that stuff, just doesn't exist. So democracy obviously, Britain's democracy isn't very well either. Yeah, well, the institution, certainly when I first moved to America,

democracy felt surprisingly fragile in America compared to Britain. So I think I feel part of that group, like I'm really worried. Like the thing that worries me right now more than anything is this whole Republican legislation plays. Sure. Yeah. No, and to me, the issue there isn't the voter suppression or the voter counting.

It's what happens after, right? It's the election certifications that's the issue. I wanted to have the parliamentarian system encourages collaboration, whereas the American system is winner take all effectively. And I wonder if that creates a kind of war mentality. I've been watching Prime Minister's questions lately. Have you ever watched it?

No. Oh, every Wednesday, you ever watched it? No. Oh, every Wednesday, you've got to see it. It's like you're watching something from another planet. It's Prime Minister's questions. I grew up with it, and I said it's half an hour, the Prime Minister, who obviously is by this, Johnson is going through the rockiest patch of his Prime Minister's story, because when everybody else was being forced to stay at home, they were just having constant parties and now it's all coming home to roost. So I've been watching

Prime Minister's story lately for that reason and it's an unbelievable bear pit. It's all, it's the most adversarial thing you can possibly imagine. It's performatively adversarial, booze, cat, cause. It's like watching something from the 19th century. You have to say it. It's like nothing in American politics. But it's funny. So when you look at that, you just think Britain has the most adversarial system possible. Now, I'm beginning to speak beyond my level of expertise here, but because I've never really studied British politics, but I believe, yeah, there's there were many cross-party alliances in terms of trying to get laws changed and things. I believe. So there is real problems with obviously, and I'm against

pretty much any adversarial situation. But yeah, but you could be right. You could be right. I think there's more consensus politics across the parties and Britain. Well, just the idea of a coalition government does not exist in America. That's like a phrase that doesn't make any sense in American politics, but it does make sense in Israel or Britain that it's possible in your system. Yeah, I don't think it went very well. We had that most recent one, but we did have one.

Yeah, I um, there's a when Peter Till spoke at the Republican convention in 2016, which is I think he would probably likely admit was a mistake. He did say something that was interesting that I think about a lot, and I don't know if I'm changing the meaning of what he said, but he said something he was like transgender bathrooms, who cares, right? And I think what I took from that is if people want transgender bathrooms, they can have transgender bathrooms. What do I care? It doesn't negatively affect me, right? So, and to me, that's, I think something that we struggle

with that would solve some of the publicly shaming stuff, some of the culture war issues, is that response? Who cares, right? Like if we cared a little bit less, we could give people a bit more grace. And also the best thing about social media was that one of the best things was that it gave a voice. When I started Argonne's social media and I was pretty early on Twitter, I was like 2008, I think, or 2009. And it was a very different place. When did you join Twitter? We were at... I was at Southwest in 2007 when it launched.

Okay, well... I thought it was the dumbest idea in the world and it would possibly work. So what do I know? Well, I had a couple of friends who said to me, you've got to join Twitter. It's like nothing else on the internet. There's no fighting.

Everybody's supportive of each other, it's a place where you can just be yourself and talk openly. So that's kind of what it was at the beginning. I've met it. I can't remember, I was going somewhere with that in response to your question, but I forgot what your question was. We're not on cares. Like, oh cares, yeah. So one of the things I loved so much about it back then was that it was giving a voice to everyone. It was giving a voice.

And I was particularly struck as somebody who has various anxiety situations in my life. I was particularly struck by people who were so anxious that if they had to go to a party, they would be mute. They'd have selective mutism. And those people were being like really eloquent on social media. And I'd meet people who were so socially awkward in real life, but they shone on social media. So I thought, you know, Twitter is so the best thing about social media is that it's giving a voice to voiceless people. And now I think maybe sometimes, you know,

just because everybody now has a voice, doesn't necessarily mean that you need to like use at all the fucking time. Like, because look what happens when everybody's screaming all the time, look what's happened. I've always found it illustrative like, what the empty box on Facebook or Twitter says, right? It's like, what are you thinking or like, what do you have to say, right? So it's

almost like this, this machine that's prompting you to have opinions about stuff that if you didn't, if you weren't prompted, you would say nothing, and probably be happier and kinder. One of my favorite Marxist realist quotes, he says, always remember that you have the power to have no opinion, but I think we've kind of relinquished that power to the algorithm. Oh yeah, yeah, I've often felt that the tyranny of needing to have an opinion about everything,

the tyranny of certainty. Yeah, I embrace uncertainty. Embraised silence. Yeah, the funniest thing, like prisons, like I've done quite, I've been to kind of a lot of prisons and I've done a lot of stories in that world. And obviously, and you know this from Effie Prison drama, like the way you're judged when you're a new inmate is like everybody yells at you

and how well or badly you respond to being yelled at is basically defines how well you're doing prison. But I think that's like such a weird way to judge someone. It's so arbitrary. We're like, I respond very badly to big shots. They're very badly, I go into my shell, but that doesn't mean I'm like worse than someone who responds well to it.

Can't we come up with a new way of judging people like to Adelaide, who like Jixos or something. Wordal. I would say generally our social dynamic should not resemble the dynamics of a prison wherever possible. Right, yeah. I'm going to write about this. I'm about to do things that are very small stage

show in Britain and what everything I just said to you. I've been meaning to write about, so I'm going to write about that. Well, I love that. Did I see Tom Wolfson, man, and four behind you? Yeah, but actually I've done a bit of a reddit. Oh, man, I think it's right there on the middle shelf. Yeah. So it is, you know what?

I never read it. I bought it in a frenzy of enthusiasm after enjoying the bonfire, the vanities. I don't think I ever read it. It's an incredible book. It's actually about stoicism. Okay. Now actually now you have to read it because one of the characters gets wrongly imprisoned and then that's where he's introduced to stoicism. How interesting. Yeah, it's a lovely book How interesting. Yeah, I'm

lovely. Okay, yeah, I'll read it or listen to the audio, but people keep phone in me. I'm going to send them. Brando will finish in quite soon anyway, I have nothing bad happened. No, I don't think so. I haven't gotten any. My last question for you, just as you as you've thought about all this stuff, how has it changed your relationship or understanding of words like forgiveness or justice or how are those two things related to each other? Like, and someone does something abhorrent or unethical, let's say in Jonah

Burgers or Jonah Larris case or does something stupid or mean, or how do you think about accountability, justice, and then also forgiveness? Well, I suppose you always think, has that been a victim? Like the thing that the person, yeah, did is they were victim. I mean, like, so that's, so I feel much less, I feel less forgiving of somebody

where there's an victim. You know, on a personal level, and I'm, you know, not perfect, like I beg grudges if people, you know, have paid badly towards me, I'll beg grudges. So I'm no, you know, I haven't reached to, I'm reached to level of self-actualisation. But I, but broadly, I certainly in my work, as much as I possibly can in my personal life, I, and it gets easier as you get older. You are trying to be empathetic and kind and

forgiving. I had a big fight with someone this morning and I think the reason why the fight didn't escalate was because I remembered to, I remembered that, yeah, I've got to, you know, it's like every, every self-help book, you know, but I remembered that, I remember that they were coming from some difficult place and that's why they were yelling and I sort of remembered that and then it's easier to not retreat to your corner. And I think that very much about, so you've been publicly shamed and also the last days of August, which was a podcast I made about the death of a porn star August James. And when somebody spirals on Twitter, very often there's something I was going on in

their life. And I think that's something that we forget when we pile in on someone. No, those are two, I think those are two great and really practical versions. As you, something happens in the world, you're thinking about getting mad about it or frustrated about it or, you know, criticizing them for it. Number one is, was there actually a victim to what happened or were they just being stupid or weird or, you know,

what maybe just what they did was in bad taste like the middle finger at Arlington Cemetery? And then two, you know, is that person dealing with a full deck of cards, or is that person going through something, or is that person, is it fun to be that person? Is the other question I like to ask? Right, yeah. And what's the wider context? Have we, have we discovered everything about that person? I mean, you know, the number of Twitter have we discovered everything about that person? I mean, you know, the number of Twitter shamings when three days later we found out that we got the information all wrong.

There's countless ones of those now. So do we also have all the facts? That's true. And then, you know, is it my place? Like, who appointed me the enforcer on this issue. Yeah, yeah, I mean, for me, and that has to be a personal like I wouldn't want to impose that on people. These all have to be things that people figure out for themselves. Yeah, like I don't want to create. I was really reluctant and so you'd been publicly ashamed to like create a set of rules for people. Like you get that sometimes in self-help books. So a few people say, well, I didn't you do that. But I don't wanna be like a lifestyle guru. I don't wanna tell people, I don't wanna give people a set of rules to live.

But I do think these are things that people should really figure out for themselves. No, I feel like, so you've been publicly shamed was so powerful because it was just a mirror. It didn't tell you what to do about it and explain how to solve the problem. It was just like, let me show you a problem and how much worse it is than you think it is. Yeah, and you may not have even realized this yet. It was, once they've publicly shame came out, it was so early in the way people thought about the internet,

people were saying to the internet's boring and it's not the real world and nobody cares about the internet. People were still thinking of the internet as shopping bag or whatever. And yeah, and I don't think anybody thinks any of those things anymore. Now the internet is, is culture now. Yeah, it's the real world. The people felt that back in 2015, 2014, whatever, it was really

around 2012, the things began to change. You know, I hope there's some self-reflection from people who thought that this was going to stay self-contained. I hope so too. I think that's what the best books do is they just give you something to think about. Yeah. Well, look around. I have to go. I'm getting all these text messages. I want to make sure everything's okay. I hope nothing bad happened. I can't wait to listen to the new podcast and I've loved all the books and thanks for taking the time. Thank you and before I go can I say so that the new podcast is well by January the 25th once it's going out. It'll be after that so it'll be out. Oh okay yeah so that's just like every week it should be on pretty much every podcast platform. Things fell apart.

I can't wait to listen. All your stuff is amazing, so I'm very excited. Thanks, man. Hey, it's Ryan. Thank you for listening to the Daily Stood podcast. I just wanted to say we so appreciate it. We love serving you. It's an honor.

Please spread the word, tell people about it, and this isn't to sell anything. I just wanted to say thank you. Hey, Prime Members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic early and add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with add free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and add free with Wondery Plus in Apple podcasts.