The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - The More Successful You Are The Longer You’ll Live: Will Storr

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

Will is an author who brings out the unexpected ways that we’re vulnerable, and how to manage those vulnerabilities and turn them into strengths. The author of six books including Sunday Times bestsellers, he’s one of the most interesting voices on how we can manage our worst impulses to succeed in the modern world. In a conversation that covers everything from are we more narcissistic than we used to be to how a desire for status underpins all of our ambitions, to how to deal with low self esteem and suicidal thoughts, Will held nothing back on this unfiltered exploration of the surprising strategies we can employ to deal with the dark sides of life. Will’s new book, The Status Game, is out now in the UK and in the US on the 23rd August. Follow Will: Twitter - https://twitter.com/wstorr Will’s book - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Status-Game-Will-Storr/ Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo

Quick one. Just wanted to say a big thank you to three people very quickly. First people I want to say thank you to is all of you that listen to the show. Never in my wildest dreams is all I can say. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd start a podcast in my kitchen and that it would expand all over the world as it has done. And we've now opened our first studio in America, thanks to my very helpful team led by Jack on the production side of things. So thank you to Jack and the team for building out the new American studio. And thirdly to to Amazon Music, who when they heard that we were expanding to the United States, and I'd be recording a lot more over in the States, they put a massive billboard in Times Square for the show. So thank you so much, Amazon Music. Thank you to our team. And

thank you to all of you that listened to this show. Let's continue. shouldn't raise your children to believe that they can be Beyonce because the chances are they can't. Will Storr is an award-winning author of six critically acclaimed books. His ideas are disruptive, challenging and life-changing and some of them will make you feel incredibly uncomfortable. People don't like to talk about this stuff. 99% of self-help books never mention genes. They want to promote that idea of I can be whoever I want to be. But a huge amount of who we are is who we were born as. That myth of you have full control over yourself as a human being. That's the problem. It's not about embracing your flaws. It's about accepting your flaws.

Our lives are full of status pursuit. The more status that you earn, the better everything else gets. That was true 10,000 years ago. It's true today. The brain is highly attuned to where we sit in a pecking order. The lower we are down in that pecking order, the more unhealthy we became. If you take two smokers, the one higher up is less likely to die of a smoking-related disease than the one lower down. That's mental.

It matters massively. How do we advance in the status game? There are three general types of status games that we can play. First game is a... Without further ado, I'm Stephen Bartlett, and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. Will, first of all, thank you for being here. Take me right back then to your early years,

because I think when I was reading through your different books here, throughout them you have glimpses of your own perspective, and it hints back to what I read about your early years. So take me back, right back to the start, you know, before the age of, let's say, 12. Okay, so, yeah. I was brought up in Somerset Wells in Kent. Middle-class family, very Catholic.

It was quite a Victorian, strict, superstitious, religious upbringing, not the happiest upbringing, I have to say. Why? Because my parents were very strict. My father was very strict, especially. And they were very much in the grip of their kind of Catholic belief system, which I just didn't, never, like always baffled me,

even as a kid, it's like, what, how can you believe this stuff? And I went to a Catholic school. So, and I was quite a, I was probably a difficult, if you were to ask them, they'd say I was a difficult child because I was pushing against that all the time. You know, I thought it was crazy. I wasn't very good at authority and know i thought it was crazy i wasn't very good at authority and rules so it was a bad fit i would say um and i think that's what's you

know one of the things that's kind of driven my interests into adulthood my you know my my second book the heretics was looking at why do otherwise smart people believe end up believing these crazy things because my parents are smart people. But yeah, you know, they believe in heaven, hell, Satan, all of that stuff. I think that's how my childhood has informed my interest as an adult, trying to figure out how that happens. In your book, Selfie, you talk a lot about self-esteem

and the role that plays. Give me the context of how your self-esteem was shaped in those early years. Oh, well, how it was shaped in those early years, I guess it was poorly would be the answer. I think the, you know, because my behavior was not great, the continual message I would get from teachers and parents was that you're, you know, you're a bad person. You're going to end up in prison. You're going to end up in care.

Yeah. So there was very little kind of positive feedback in my childhood, which I think is, that causes damage that you're never going to get over i believe do you think you never get over that damage yes because i think you know we're all born with a certain kind of personality with a certain genome and that that's not fate that doesn't define who you're going to be forever. But it sets you on a certain course. It makes you vulnerable to a certain kind of mindset. And, you know, I think a good childhood, a good upbringing can, you know, correct that to a certain degree.

But a bad one can set it on a sort of negative course. And I'm quite a neurotic person. I'm anxious. I've always worried a lot so so if you take that kind of natural personality type high neuroticism and add into that a childhood which kind of reinforces that sense that the world is dangerous that people are out to get you all of that stuff that that that reality isn't safe i i and then you know what happens is your brain is still being formed really up until your mid-20s you know that that, that is in your mid-twenties when those kind of learning processes stop. And so it's very hard and probably, I would argue, probably impossible to reverse 18 years of that kind of feedback once it's happened, because those are the years in which your brain is learning how the world works. And so, yeah, I don't think it's happened because that's those are the years in which your brain is learning how the world works and and so yeah so i i don't think it's fixable that's one of the the ongoing um conversations or debates or things that i've kind of been chewing over from doing

this podcast and and listening to to people from all walks of life that have achieved amazing things that still have um underlying trauma or sort of self stories that are controlling their their their life and their behavior and I spent a long time talking to people about whether you can ever truly eradicate some of these traumas they're like the puppet master that's in the back room controlling your your biases and all these things and my conclusion over the last literally weeks has been that we can diminish the power that our early traumas have over us but they're always going to be there and is that is that where you find find yourself but in terms of your belief that we can diminish the power of yeah those

stories but they'll always be there absolutely that's exactly right that's why i believe exactly yeah that we can definitely diminish their power and i you know i'm 47 now and it still amazes me that you still you never stop learning and you never stop learning about yourself you never stop learning about things you get wrong and i've got to stop doing that you know it's overly simplistic to think of consciousness as this battle between reason and emotion um uh but but but there is something like that going on you know like our emotionality is usually in charge of what we're thinking and what we're doing you know we respond emotionally and that voice in your head then tells a story about what you're feeling and usually it's to

justify that emotion it's to say yes you were right to feel like that you were right to respond in anger and hostility at that person and then the the next day you think, oh, maybe it wasn't. So I think what we used to call reason, that reasonable voice in your head actually often isn't reasonable. It's just justifying and validating your initial emotional response, which is sometimes right, sometimes wrong. So I think what you're doing when you're learning for me anyway is your learning actually i mean almost a parent yourself to turn that voice in your head into a someone

that isn't going to be a harsh judge or uh on the other extreme someone who's just going to accept and validate and defend everything every behavior you do every thought you have every mistake you make you make you're looking for for that balance all the time. And then you're looking to spot, I think you're looking to spot those occasions on which you're making the same mistake over and over again, you know. Have you got a harsh judge in your head?

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, I have. You know, I'm self-employed. I've been a writer, you know, without an employer for 20ed. I've been a writer, you know, without an employer for 20 years. You kind of, I think you have to have a harsh judge to get yourself out of bed,

to get yourself in front of the computer, to do eight hours plus work a day. So I think to, it's kind of weird. I think to achieve anything significant, you've got to, there's got to be a harshness to, I'm just trying to think whether judge is the right right word like i read recently that the ideal parent is kind of firm but also kind and caring and understanding and i and i think that's what i think that's if that's the ideal parent i think that's really that that that's that's the ideal

of who should be inside our own heads really you have that balance um and i think you can go you can go wrong in either direction your book selfie yeah um what was the i mean i love the name it was very of the time in 2017 as well um what was the inspiration behind writing this book? Right. So the book before that was called The Heretics. And The Heretics was, as I said before, was inspired by this idea of how do smart people end up believing crazy things? And so that book was all about when we have these stubborn beliefs that are irrational, that we don't let go of. So I was hanging out with holocaust deniers I was hanging out with creationists ufo believers people like this um and then in the promotion for that I

was asked again and again and again by people so what makes people change their minds you're saying that people can never change their minds and I didn't have an answer to that question I'm gonna have to bluff through it so I thought that's no i don't understand that so um maybe i should try and find out so i was a journalist at the time as a day job and so i started interviewing lots of people who changed their minds like in big dramatic kind of powerful ways um one of those guys um was this amazing psychologist called professor roy baumeister um he spent his kind of early professional career in the self-esteem era of the 80s you know when and this is the era i was brought up to when everything was about self-esteem when it was all about that the kind of message out there was if

you want to be successful just love yourself you're amazing you're fantastic you can do anything that you want you know it's whitney houston um the greatest love of all is yourself it was it was that kind of era and i remember it from school school. I remember like, you know, a teacher saying to me, the problem with you, Will, is you just have low self-esteem. And they used to call self-esteem a social vaccine. And if you loved yourself, it meant that you would be more successful, you'd be happier, you'd have a better marriage. And, you know, in America, they thought the self-esteem was going to solve homelessness, gang culture. Teenage parenthood was a big moral panic of the time. They thoughtesteem was going to solve homelessness, gang culture. Teenage parenthood was a big moral panic of the time. They thought it was going to cure that. And he was like, well, is it true?

Is this actually true? And so they looked into it and they found actually that there was no evidence that any of this was true, that every study that quoted it as being true just referenced another study. And he went in this breadcrumb trail of studies. They were all just quoting each other and there was no actual evidence any of this is true and they tested they actually tested to see whether that self-esteem myth was true or not um and it wasn't um it wasn't true um it was it was originally based on this idea that they this this observation that um school children who did well in exams also had high self-esteem so they assumed that having high self-esteem made you good at exams but actually they had high self-esteem because they'd done

good in their exams it was the other way around god is this obvious in retrospect but that's what they you know so that that was the error they made correlation causation that old chestnut um so so he um published this study and the initial response was just you know it was absolutely torn to pieces um it was either ignored or attacked um but slowly he was proven to be right and so when i was i i wrote a profile of baumeister and um you know he was a fascinating guy and and then what i realized was that this idea had not just changed a person, but it changed a culture. Like the whole culture of the West, Britain, America, Canada, and lots of Europe, when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s,

we were just obsessed with this idea. And it was just wrong. It was completely wrong. So that's the heart of selfie. It was this idea of how did selfie culture happen? How did we become so self-obsessed and the self-esteem movement is was a big part of that story and it's the kind of it's that it's the kind of central story of the book chapter zero yeah um the dying self was a was quite

difficult to read oh okay yeah i thought it was a very um you know you explore topics like suicide and um your own sort of self-doubt and things like that and your own suicidal ideation at times. Why did you choose to start the book in that way? I suppose I wanted to start the book there to show, you know, why this matters. You know, where I ended up with the book was this idea that we live, that we are in the West individualists. You know, we see the world as made up of individual pieces and parts and we are individually responsible for our fates. We're individually responsible for our success and our failure.

And there's lots of good things to say about that. You know, it's an extremely motivating way of organising your thoughts, organising your life. You know, I am responsible for me and I will take care of me. But it's also kind of savage, you know, and it means, you know, that kind of Western myth we have is that, you know, that you can do anything that you want, just put your mind to it, you can achieve it, that kind of mindset. But very often we fail. And so if it's true that you're responsible for your success, then it only logically follows that you're also responsible for your failure. And so these individualistic ideas accelerated in the 1980s. And that was because of a variety of things. It was a self-esteem movement movement partly, but the self-esteem movement became successful

because of the Thatcher-Reagan revolution, is my argument, neoliberalism, that we changed the economies of the West. We changed the game. You know, before the 1980s, we were much more collective. It was much more, you know, socialist. Even in America, the top rate of tax was 90%.

You know, it's extraordinary. And then the economy started going wrong in the 70s. So the neoliberal revolution happened. And the idea, the central idea that, you know, Reagan and Thatcher pursued was we're going to increase competition wherever we can. So reduce the social safety net, privatize everything. Just everyone's got to be competitive.

And it changed who we are you know it when you change the rules of the game of life you change the people who play that game which is what my latest book is about really and so we became more um competitive as a people and and what's what psychologists find is a major study that found that since um the you know the onset of neoliberalism, levels of perfectionism have increased massively in the UK, in America, and in Canada. And perfectionism is implicated in suicidal ideation, in eating disorders, in steroid abuse, and self-harm, and so on and so on and so on.

So that's why I wanted to begin the book there, to show why this matters you know this isn't just a kind of abstract academic exploration of the self you know i wanted to begin with this is how it affects people if perfectionism can be quite an insidious um issue in western cultures where we're getting more individualistic what is a better approach do you think to take for, what is a better message to share with society and the world about that? I think, you know, I like the idea of, you know,

I think the idea that I kind of develop is in selfie, partly it's about self-acceptance rather than self-love. I think self-love is that, you know, I used to be a massive fan of Big Brother when Big Brother was on. And there was always a thing in Big Brother where somebody would behave completely obnoxiously. They'd be like rude, aggressive, just deeply unpleasant. And they would always defend themselves in the same way. They go, well, I'm just being me. That's just me. And if you don't like me, you know, and I think that's the self-esteem movement talking. It's like, I'm going to be my just me. And if you don't like me, you know, and I think that's, that's the self-esteem movement talking. It's like, I'm my, I'm going to be my authentic self.

And if you can't handle that, that's on you. And I think that's wrong. You know, you know, we're a social animal. We've, we, we, we have evolved to exist cooperatively. And I think when individualism, I think there's a lot to say in its defense, but when it goes too far, that's where it becomes. It becomes that kind of screw you mindset. So I think self-acceptance is different than self-love. Self-acceptance is I'm flawed, broken animal, you know, as we all are. And, you know, a little like what we were talking about earlier on, it's about being that harsh but loving parent rather than that rather than being your own defense lawyer you know being being that kind of harsh but loving parent and being accepted you know having this

acceptance that you are a flawed and limited animal like you know you shouldn't raise your children to believe that they can be beyonce if they want to be beyonce because the chances are they can't she's like an extraordinarily talented and driven individual she's the one in a billion you know so uh you know you so i think that's an unhealthy message to by which to raise our children and also you know talk to ourselves and it's much more about understanding our our strengths our flaws and kind of finding the right games to play find that little corner of the world in which we can feel um of value i think that's that that's what we should be trying to do had your parents told you that you were beyonce and had those schools told you

that you were beyonce would you have been happier do you think um i mean i was sometimes told that that i could succeed at school but i just wasn't applying myself and it's such a waste it's such a waste yeah um but it's so weird the school thing i i mean i have to say i think i went to a really bad school um it was a comprehensive school um you know you hear these stories about teachers that inspire you and oh it wasn't for this teacher i never had that teacher they were all just really bored and resentful i remember going to class and there's one teacher just open his folder where were we he'd read from his folder for about 50 minutes and that would be the history lesson you know and that that was the school i went to it was miserable and i and i'm i always

wanted to be a writer and i was always in trouble i was always this sort of problem student and i had this english teacher was quite nice called Mr. Lanaway. And I thought, oh, you know, I'm going to start writing short stories in my spare time and I'm going to give them to my English teacher. It's just a way of getting, like, look, you know, I've written this thing. And so I gave him a couple.

And I think I gave him number three, you know, after writing on a third weekend, thinking that he was, in my head, he was thinking, oh, Will's, you know, William has found this thing that he's actually applying himself to. How amazing. And he said to me, you know, this is all just extra work for me, don't you?

Like that. So he kind of scolded me for giving him extra work to do. So I stopped writing those short stories. And I just think if I'd have actually been encouraged to be, I was never encouraged to be a writer by my school or, you know, I wrote a school magazine and that, that caused me all kinds of trouble as well. So, so I was, I never actually had any encouragement. And I do kind of think if I was actually encouraged to be a writer,

I would have probably got there sooner and probably been a better writer today. Well, on that point of Beyonce though, it seems to me that if someone had turned around to you and said, you are Beyonce and you can do anything, you could be an amazing writer. It seems to me that that actually might've helped. Yes, yeah, yes. But that's what I mean about identifying your strengths. Like I think for me, writing was a strength,

but nobody ever, and if that was identified and if somebody said to me, God, you know, you should carry on writing. Literally if one person and if somebody said to me, God, you know, you should carry on writing these. Literally, if one person, one adult said to me, these short stories, you know, they show real problems, you should carry on writing these. It would have blown my mind. I'd have definitely carried on. But I just stopped, you know, I just stopped. So, yeah, but that's what I mean.

I think the mistake is somebody in the research for selfie, this Harvard psychologist, Brian Little said, it's the myth of unlimited control. That myth of you can, you know, you have full control over yourself as a human being. And that means that you can do anything. That's the problem. You know, that's the problem. And, but actually I think what you should do is identify

what is this person passionate about you know and what they actually what they actually good at and if and if and if and if somebody saw promise in me as a journalist or a writer then that that's what they they should have encouraged me in but it was actually just a battle in um in the in the chapter the good self in that book chapter four you talk about um the different forces that are controlling our behavior and uh it made me think i've you know that i've also had this this ongoing thought about how control of of my life i over what the forces are that are actually controlling my life because we tend to believe obviously as we would from this first person view that i'm making my decisions but when i

it sounds quite i don't care i'm gonna say. When I reflect on the stories I've heard from men regarding their behavior before they've ejaculated and after they've ejaculated, it is pretty, and I actually said this in like podcast number four, when no one was actually listening and it was just me under the stairs in Manchester. I said said the change that i saw in my behavior or how i felt before and after ejaculation is extreme yeah and i watched

rogan talk about this he described it as being before ejaculation at the back of the bus and you're just fucking being swung around that he said it's foggy there's papers everywhere and and then he says post ejaculation it's like you zoom forward onto the wheel of the bus and go oh fuck what was going on there yeah and you gain back control yeah and just this um it for me that was one of the clearest signs that my decision making as is not as intentional as i thought it was yeah um and you talk about that kind of thing a little bit in that chapter. Do you talk about a study where men are asked

a variety of different questions while they're masturbating? Can you share that study and also like what you learned from it about the way that we make our decisions? Well, I haven't read about that study for a good five years now, but I think it was something about,

they were asked a series of questions about, were they asked a series of questions about what they would do in certain... Yeah, it's like the sexual preferences. Would you be attracted to an animal? That's it, yeah. And I think before they'd masturbated, their answers were much more extreme in the

direction of yes i would have sex with animal yes i would pressure somebody into having sex than they would after um masturbation and i think most men can can read that study and go you can relate a little bit to not not that i'm saying that you know most men would have sex with an animal obviously but but but how our how our um how our thinking is different and and and you know and and i love studies like that because i feel like it you know when we when we when we feel a different way we do almost become a different person like i remember writing in selfie about um you know when i'm trying to lose weight again. And on Monday morning, I'm absolutely resolute. It's like, I'm going to keep my calories down. I'm going to exercise every day.

I am a machine. I'm a stoic. I'm athletic. You know, that's who I am. But by Friday evening, I'm just like, I need to have some chips, you know? And it's like, it's not just that you feel a different way. It's almost that you've become a different person, but which I mean, you have a different personality.

You're much more loose and happy and good to be around on Friday than you are on Monday, but you're like that. But you have a different value system. On Monday, I value this set of things. I value discipline and order and structure. And on Friday evening, I value fun and laughter and pleasure. So it is that we almost, you know, I think pre and post ejaculation, we almost become a different person. Monday morning versus Friday night, we become different people. So I think that, you know, we're so fluid in who we are, depending on how we're feeling.

We don't want to be there. No, it's not how we think of ourselves. We think of ourselves as a certain kind of person. Yeah, with a certain boxed in set of values and behaviors. I think, you know, there's probably somewhere above 50% of people listening that can relate to that Monday issue of, you know, on Monday I am, you know, a Greek God

and I am disciplined and I am everything. I'll become everything I want to be on by, you know, by next week. And then something happens. How does, I would be remiss if I didn't ask, what can you tell us about how to stop or how to maintain or be consistent as our Monday selves? Is there anything you've learned about the psychology there that might help us to be our monday selves come friday so in in selfie i write about um how important it is to change our environment rather than trying rather than change try and change ourself and and the kind of exact the kind of story that i tell is i call it the the lizard in the iceberg where if you take a lizard from the desert and pop it on an iceberg it's going to be a very unhappy lizard if you put it back in the desert it's going

to be happy and thriving and wonderful and nothing is changed in the lizard it's the environment that's changed and I and I think part of being an individualist and we is that we look into into ourselves to our behavior to um explain the causes of our behavior but actually you know so much of of um of our behavior is controlled by what's going on around us by our environment you know and the reason we feel you know friday on friday is because because it's friday and that has the cultural resonance that is friday night yeah thank thank fuck it's friday and i'm moving on five days of work so we feel different um So I think a lot of it is about changing your environment. You know, there is a lot to say about, you know,

if you take yourself to the gym, you've changed your environment. If you can change, certainly with things like weight loss, I mean, it's a lesson I never seem to learn, but do not have that stuff in the house. Because it will guarantee that you will eat it. You know, it's a lesson I never seem to learn, but do not have that stuff in the house. Oh my God. Because it will guarantee that you will eat it. You know, it's a drug. And so I think maintain your environment to maintain yourself. You know, I think that's one of the key takeaways that I've learned.

How to stay alive in the age of perfectionism. How does one stay alive in the age of perfectionism how does one stay alive one of the interesting things in that chapter was um you kind of debunk this idea that alcoholism for example and a lot of these things you know that i've spoken to guests about on this podcast that they've suffered with um don't necessarily stem from having a unhappy childhood i've got a friend that you know is very public about the fact that he became an alcoholic. And I guess I believed it was because of traumatic early events. I tended to believe that that was the case, but you debunk that quite clearly

and kind of assert that personality is the causal factor in most of our predispositions. Yeah, I think one of the things that I've learned, well, certainly from research in that book, was just the incredible power of personality and the incredible power of our genes. It's really, people don't like to talk about this stuff because they feel it's disempowering. So whenever you read a self-help book, most of them, 99% of self-help books never mention genes because it's unhelpful. They want to promote that idea of 100% self-control. I can be whoever I want to be. But genes are so important. And as I said, it's not that they dictate who we are or, you know, or you're born with a kind of blueprint and that's all you're ever going to be um but you are born with a certain kind of genome you know with a certain level of likely neuroticism openness to

experience extroversion um agreeableness you know how how kind of happy or kind of angry and competitive you are and so on and so you're born kind of with a certain prevailing wind and then your childhood experiences mostly um will um do the rest of that wiring up so by the time you're in your kind of 20s you're kind of who you are like not 100 because still traumatic experiences can break you to pieces you know you know lots of things can change but you're kind of who you are. As I said, you know, people don't like that idea because it really goes against our individualist kind of credo of you can be Beyonce if you want to be. But it is nevertheless true that a huge amount of who we are is just how we were, who we were born as. You know, and I've got that addictive personality. I

was an alcoholic. I haven't, I had to to give up drinking i was 26 because i'd lost control of how much i was drinking and i still struggle with kind of you know sugar now i i've swapped booze for sugar is my problematic behavior which is much easier to manage um so so i get it and and and but but but yeah it's it's not it's i think part of the fact that we're these storytelling animals, I think since the seventies, since it's probably this, well, even the sixties, we've had this kind of therapy culture,

which wants to go archaeological digging in our pasts for the causes of our, all of our problems. And, you know, I think there is a certain amount of truth to that stuff. Like I'm sure our childhoods affect us, but, I think there is a certain amount of truth to that stuff. Like I'm sure our childhoods affect us, but we tend to blame everything on our childhoods,

everything on our parents. And I think alcoholism is one of those things that it's mostly genetic. You know, you've either got that problem with addiction or you don't. Can it be accelerated by trauma though? Because, you know, when I, when I speak to psychologists, they often talk about it being a form of escapism in many ways and other drugs and, you know, other self medications being a form of like trying to escape pain or trauma. Definitely. Yeah. I think how to think about it is that it's,

um, you could have a vulnerability to it yeah um and that's the genetic component um and if something bad happens to you then you're much more likely to kind of fall into that dress as someone else who doesn't yeah exactly yeah okay yeah on that point of storytelling you mentioned storytelling there in our um in our narrative your your book in 2019 was about storytelling i having worked in marketing was very compelled to to read this book for the probably you know we talked before we start recording that a lot of people will see a book about, with the word storytelling on the front of it, and think that they can use it from a marketing capacity or in a business sense. What have you learnt about how people can tell great

stories in the context of business and marketing? Yeah, well, so quite a lot. I teach business storytelling at Section 4, which is an American ed tech organization. So I do a course there in the science of storytelling for business. And, you know, we are storytelling animals. We think in story. Narrative is basically how we experience ourselves and life. And so, as I say in that course,

if you're not communicating with story as a marketeer, you're not communicating. Logic and facts and data and statistics, that's not the language of the brain. The language of the brain is beginning, middle and end. A character overcoming obstacles. I think a lot of the stuff. The language of the brain is beginning, middle and end, a character overcoming obstacles. I think a lot of the stuff we've been talking about is important, especially the idea that people think with their feelings.

You know, it's feelings first, story second. The story justifies the feelings. And so if you want to tell persuasive stories, you need to first understand exactly who you're communicating with. And you need to understand how they feel about the world, how they feel about themselves, how they feel about, you know, justice and what their values are. And so that means understanding them kind of tribally, what groups do they belong to? Who are their heroes? Who are their villains? What motivates them? What demotivates them? So before you can sort of write the story, you need to figure out how they feel about the world. So a bad story then would be one that was, because you know, I thought about this

a lot in my previous business was very successful in storytelling. So my first company, Social Chain, it's grown to be a very big business, maybe a thousand employees worldwide. We started out as a marketing agency, never had a sales team because we focused on telling stories. Those stories were told on social media and on stage by me. So when I would go up on stage and talk about our agency to try and win business from Apple or Coca-Cola, whoever it was, I would actually start by talking about my relationship with my mother. And that would be the first sentences out of my mouth when I walked on stage.

If there was a thousand people or 15,000 people there, it would be about my mother. And through that story about my mother and my upbringing and my battles and all those things, eventually you'd learn about our business and what we do and about the great work we do. But that was the preface of it. And that meant we never needed a sales team.

I've always believed that if I'd walked on stage and started with a case study, I would have had to have a sales team and social team knocking on doors. And I think this is one of the biggest mistakes businesses make. When they pitch, when they speak on stage, when they post on social media,

I think they believe that the the listener wants big numbers and to hear how many views they got for their clients or you know and it just doesn't seem to be consistent with reality no it's not i mean so what you're doing when you're going through but your mother is you're connecting emotionally so people are you know wanting they're on your side immediately and you're making them feel good. You're making them feel things emotionally. Um, the, the, the kind of framework that I use for business storytelling is that, is that, is that, you know, essentially people's brains process reality, um, in the same way. And that's the, uh, you know, so, so they're the hero of their story. You're not the hero standing on the stage, the company that, that, that's selling to

you isn't the hero. They're the hero of their own story um they are you know that they've got goals they're trying to pursue we will have you know that which are the plots of our lives the audience yeah the audience the person you're selling to um and then there's a brilliant story analyst called christopher booker who wrote this amazing book called the seven basic plots and he writes about um archetypal characters in storytelling that he calls light figures and so the light figure is the example he uses of the three ghosts in a christmas carol the charles dickens scrooge story so scrooge is the hero of that story but the three ghosts come in to show him christmas past christmas present christmas future

they help him get what he needs which is is to become a better, more selfless, more generous, more loving, giving person. So they arrive in his story to kind of show him the way to help him get what he needs. And so that's what I argue. That's the appropriate position for most companies and organizations and leaders is not to be the hero because your audience feels like they're the hero.

You're the light figure. You're there to help them get what they want. when you go straight in with here's all my awards here's what this person said about me here's some statistics and stuff you're not a light figure you're presenting as the hero what people really want to know is how can you help me get what i want and and and that's that's the story that you have to tell what kind of example can you give me to really make that make me understand that in a real practical sense? Is there a brand you've seen do this really well? Is there an example of a, I mean, my brain went to Nike for some reason.

Yeah. Well, that's, oh, Nike is a really interesting example. So, so obviously one of the things that Nike has done recently is it's done that ad campaign around Colin Kaepernick, which is controversial, but did them, I think, I think they've sold up to like 6% like after that,

that ad campaign. And that's a really good example of an organization who is behaving as a light figure. So that Colin Kaepernick ad campaign has nothing to do with shoes. There's, you know, what they're not doing is going, our shoes will make you run 8% faster. We've got these sprung soles.

We've got these amazing laces that won't trip you up or whatever. You know, their stats list is not in there. It's purely, they're telling a story. They figured out that their client base are mostly believing, you know, this set of beliefs around the world. And those mostly believing, you know, this set of beliefs around the world. And those are goals, you know, people who, you know,

the target audience that they're appealing to want to achieve this kind of racial social justice and it's important to them. So what Nike are basically saying is, you know, we are light figures in this story. You know, we are on the side of the Colin Kaepernicks, of know, we are light figures in this story. You know, we are, we are on the side of the Colin Kaepernicks of the people who are kneeling. You know, we believe that black lives matter. And, and so they're presenting as a light figure. And if you think about it rationally, it's kind of crazy. Like why would a shoe company have this political

thing? But it's because of the storytelling, because, because they're presenting as a light figure who, who is engaged in the kind of, is engaged in this particular mission in the world. And in order to join the mission, you buy the Nike shoes and it works. It works really well. I mean, one of the archetypal examples that I talk about that I love is there was an ad that was broadcast i think it

was in the 60s by volkswagen and it was the first kind of modern ad advert the first it was the first advert that you would look at and recognize as the kind of advertising that we do today so before this volkswagen ad um you know all ads were just stats lists here's this amazing you know tire and you know this will get you naught to 60 and whatever um and then this volkswagen did this amazing ad where um it just it was black and white because it was still in the days of black and white and they had um it just showed this guy it was all snowing it's a big blizzard outside and this guy gets in his car he turns it's it's like, you know, just before dawn. Turns on his ignition, drives his car through the blizzard,

through the blizzard, through the blizzard, opens these huge shed doors and then you hear this big engine start up and out drives his snowplow. And it's, how does the guy who drives the snowplow get to the snowplow? And it's just Volkswagen. And that's a really simple, really effective story. And it's showing Volkswagen as this light figure.

We are helping the hero achieve what he wants. And, you know, I don't believe that the Volkswagen was particularly good at driving through blizzards. I don't believe that. And they certainly weren't making any factual claim in the sense that we are better than Land Rover and whatever, whatever, whatever, doing this because of this stat.

It was as simple as that. And it revolutionized marketing. It changed everything because they'd figured out that kind of light figure form of storytelling and in that are they saying that the volkswagen volkswagen enables you to be the hero that exactly yeah and nike are saying that the nike shoe associating it with colin kernick enables you to be the social activist hero. Hero, exactly. Like Colin Kaepernick was.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Fascinating. I'm just going to change a few things about my, a few of my companies, I think, on the basis of that. Yeah, I think, I think we, I think in the course of business, we all forget that emotion is the most important thing. I'm thinking about all the newsletters that my companies have been writing. I've got various companies and the newsletters they write and the videos we make and how, and how sometimes we, we think that facts and figures and information is what the viewer is looking for in their lives. But the most compelling way to draw them in to

whatever we're doing, whether it's a newsletter or a tweet or whatever, is by putting emotion first and really thinking about what the emotion of the content is. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And with the Nike example, I mean, we live in, since the global financial crisis, we live in heightened political times. And so, you know, and people are always tribal. And so, you know, one of the big things

that successful kind of persuaders do is to make those tribal appeals. And, you know, sometimes it the big things that successful kind of persuaders do is to make those tribal appeals. And, you know, sometimes it works with Colin Kaepernick, like with the Gillette Razor campaign, it didn't work because you're kind of essentially attacking your target audience. So that was, you know, less successful. I think there was a terrible Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner. I was thinking about that.

Where they were kind of basically, basically yeah where it was just making this yeah will it put a super rich uh beautiful yes model white woman as the uh the hero against social injustice and drinking a sugary drink is going to help yeah you know so it's just all off yeah so so i think organizations are sensing that partly how we can be a light figure these days is by is by is by presenting as people who are assisting in these these political goals that have become very important to people especially young people um and some people are getting it right some people are getting it wrong there's a real science to it though isn't there yeah more we've spoken i've realized how how there is a science to it when you understand the roles and also the audience,

the roles of the characters in your content or your piece. And also, it's really about where the audience sees themselves, as you say. Yeah. And how they feel represented. Your 2021 book, The Status Game. This is the book that when I was reading through all of my notes, I have by far the most amount of notes on because maybe it's just, you know, the way I'm compelled or whatever,

but it was really, really fascinating and felt very relevant. Status as a topic. Why, why does status matter? And what is status for people that don't understand the word? Okay. So, so, so it matters massively. And, and and i and the reason i wanted to write that book is because people just don't really talk about it very much even though our lives are full of status people just don't talk about it very much status or status well americans say status brits tend to say status but it's both yeah it's both um uh so so i think one of the one of the one of the one of the kind of reasons people kind of tend to not like this subject is that when i when i sort of make the argument that we're all

motivated by status pursuit they're kind of they think i'm saying we all want to be rich we all want to be famous and that's not what i'm saying at all what i'm saying is that we all want to feel of value so we evolved as these you know tribal animals and to be successful in the tribe means two things. You've got to be good at connecting with other people. So, so being accepted and, and, and fomenting a sense of belongingness with other people. So that's belongingness, that's connection. That's not stated, that's something else. Um, but once we're in a group, in a tribe, we want to rise within it. We want to feel like we are of value to other people.

And so back in the days when our brains were evolving in the, you know, when we were living in the tribes, the more status that you earned, the more and better food you'd get, the safer your sleeping sites, the safer your children would be, the greater your access to your choice of mates. So, I mean, as we all know, survival and reproduction are the basic, most fundamental drives we have as living things. And status, when you rise in status, your chances of survival and reproduction just go up and up and up and up. So when we're in the tribes, the more, you know, people would try and get status in the tribes. And the more, more status you got, the better everything else became. And so that was

true 10,000 years ago. It's true today. That is still true today. The more status that you earn, the better everything else gets. So it's this huge, huge component of human behavior, but it's subconscious. So we don't like to think about it sometimes we'd like to deny it even though we all love to feel of value and we are all very very sensitive to any indication that we that somebody considers us to be of lesser value you know you said at the start of that when you introduced this topic people will have kind of an allergic reaction because they think you mean, and it goes back to what we were saying

about your audience receiving that message in a bad way because of where it frames them. It frames them as being kind of narcissistic and selfish and, you know, and nobody wants to admit that they are selfish or they're concerned with status. They don't want to admit it, it's true. But if no one wants to say it, I'll say it. It's just the way that we are.

But, and then you, you went on to say that, you know, people don't like to admit they want to be famous, but I tend to believe that a lot of people do want to be famous. And in that book, you talk about children in particular, when they're asked what they want to be when they're older, it's quite pretty alarming, right? Yeah. I's i mean that's that's again an indicator of the rise in individualism uh that that's the the more and more kids in the west since the 70s have been saying we want to be rich want to be famous but there are all kinds of status games that we

can play and i think i think the i i think the one of the important things to understand about status games is is that the brain is so obsessed with status. It assigns kind of status points to anything. So for some people, for lots of people, the accrual of money, that's their status game. That's how they're measuring their status, how much money I've got. But for other people, it can be how how simply i live you know i i i know someone who um he's a lovely guy but he considers himself to be sort of not materialistic and he's very much in the wellness space and he um you know was telling me um last year that he's you know he takes his kids to their private school

but at the school gates you know he's got this beaten up old car that he's had since he was a student and he's got masking tape around the wing mirror. And he was sort of talking, oh, you know, all the other parents have got these big Mercedes and Audis and BMWs, but I've just got this thing. And I think he was trying to express the fact

that he just didn't care. He just didn't care about his status. But for me, he did care. That car was every bit as much of a status symbol for him as the brand new Mercedes four-wheel drives were for the other parents. It's just that he was playing a different status game. In his game, having a crap car is a high status thing. The same as the aristocracy in Britain.

So if you remember the British aristocracyocracy you'll look down your nose at people who have a brand new japanese lexus or whatever they drive up beating up land rovers and so so it all depends what game you're playing different different games um use different things to symbolize status and and and so so that's how that game works lots of people play the fame game lots of people play the money game um but but other people don't you know if you if you were if you were hanging around with gandhi in india you wouldn't be playing the the money game you you you you would have got more status for living the more simpler your life became the more status in that group you would earn it's so true i've played all those games in my life. I'm still playing many of them.

I'm not here to lie. So that's just what it is. And I think really interestingly on that as well is one of the status games I was playing when I was a little bit, well, I say insecure, but clearly I'm still insecure if I'm still playing status games now,

was how much designer stuff can I buy and champagne can I buy in nightclubs i played that game between 18 and 24 yeah and then when i actually got money when i actually was successful i actually saw louis vuitton as a lower status thing so i just started wearing all black and got rid of all of my designer stuff because i now think that it's a different game yeah it's a different game yeah and so i don't now i have an allergic reaction to anything designer because to me yeah it's weird i think it's low standard i think in my head it's true and in the book i write about this this hilarious study where they figured out because in the in the luxury goods

game the bigger the logo the lower the status yes and they figured out that that i forget the exact measurements but a certain amount of um logo space um you know like half an inch um smaller meant you know five hundred dollars more on the on the price and the most expensive designer stuff that has a logo on the inside it has no logo on the outside and so and what that kind of speaks to is that again the whole world isn't so, and what that kind of speaks to is that, again, the whole world isn't one status game. There are kind of almost infinite status games

and people, we're not particularly, we're not that interested in what people outside our games think of us. It's much more about what people who are playing the games with us think of us.

And so, you know, my wife is the former editor of Elle magazine. So, you know, that fashion luxury world, you know, people signal to each other, I will see a handbag and it will just be invisible to me what that handbag means, what the meaning of that handbag is.

But the owner of that handbag, the first fuck what I think about that handbag, they're interested in what, you know, that woman over there who knows about that handbag knows. And they'll know by the quality of the stitching, by a tiny little detail on the corner of that bag that that is a really good bag and that's what matters because that's that's the game they're playing a game with that person they're not playing the game with me so i don't care what i think it's so you know i have this very unproven um thought that just came

to mind when you're saying about the size of the logo that when you're at the very when it comes to luxury goods at the very bottom of the status uh ladder you want the biggest fucking logo possible and you want it you want it all over the car and if you think about certain like you know people you know where they are in that in that status thing they will have they will wear a track suit of that logo and then as you rise financially or in status the logos you say get smaller and then it disappears so if you look at billionaires they're not wearing jeff bezos is not wearing a louis vuitton tracksuit or a burberry basics yeah it's all plain yeah it's all very plain yeah they have the yacht they're playing that game yeah yeah they do how many feet is the yacht but yeah super interesting makes me wonder do we actually really care about these things do we actually really um

we i i spend we spend our lives telling ourselves that we want that birkin bag we we really genuinely love the lamborghini but do we do we actually like the lambhini or we just do we just just like what it's signaling about us well I don't want to over I don't want to over um kind of almost over promise the story like like I think there's a danger where you can say well a Lamborghini is 100% status there's nothing else I think that's that's not quite fair on Lamborghini they're amazing machines and I've never driven ahini, but I'm sure it's a fantastic experience. You know, I've driven sports cars a couple of times and it's been amazing. So it's not just status.

Like it's incredible to have like a camera that's like amazing photographs. So you are getting something extra for your money, but mostly I think what you're getting is status. That's really mostly what you're getting. And it's worth it. I mean, I don't want to fall into that trap of being condescending to status. It is a fundamental human need that we feel of value.

And, you know, if we're playing a high level status game with lots of Lamborghini owners, it's really, really hard to feel a value in that group. So you've got to work really hard. So that's why a brand new lamborghini for somebody playing that game will feel as good as a you know as a dirt bike to somebody playing you know a game over there like one might cost multiples more than the other but it'll feel just as good because they're worried about they're only really concerned about what the other people in their their game are thinking so so so yeah we do

care and and it's it's a good thing because it's that you know the book does talk a lot about the negatives of status pursuit but it also talks a lot about the positives of status pursuit i mean civilization technology that that's what you get um when people want to pursue status when somebody wants to become the best technologist, the best vaccine designer, the best, you know, the best charity, we want to save the most lives. That's humans at their best. And that's also status pursuit.

But it's good. It's positive. What is the toxic downside of being addicted to status, though? And my sub-quest question to that is that is insecurity and sort of a lack of self-worth a predictor of being addicted to status games being human is a predictor of being addicted to status games we're all addicted to status games and do you not think people that were bullied in that didn't that were that were low that were low status in childhood in some context yeah are those that then seek status most as adults um maybe but i again i again i do think that personality comes a lot into play um uh like anything some people are more

interested in status than other people like elon musk is obviously incredibly interested in his own relative status and that's a big driver for him um uh jeff bezos you know beyonce you know these people um uh are in are very highly attuned to the status game and that's what pushes them pushes them pushes them to work harder than i will ever work um um so i don't i don't necessarily think it's about low self-worth. It's probably to do with genetic things like extroversion, agreeableness, which is a personality component. If you're low in agreeableness, you're competitive.

It's that kind of type A personality. So there's definitely a genetic component to it, definitely. But there's also, you know, class comes into it. People on the lower socioeconomic groups have much less access to status games. So, so, you know, I think that's why, you know,

if you were working, if you, if you're a poor guy raised in a housing estate in Stockwell and you're only, the only available status games to you are Tesco's, Bakery, and this gang over here. I know what I'm joining. You know, it's changed the way that I see some of those issues that, you know, we are programmed to crave connection and status

and we will find connection and status wherever we can. And so I think that explains, you know, when people are joining gangs, it's not because they're naughty. It's not because they're bad people. It's because they're just doing what they're designed to do where they're in an environment where there aren't many status games to play.

There's just not a lot of options. It's interesting because when I think of some of my friends that I believe in my own, you know, ill-informed observation, are addicted to status, the ones that are believe in my own, you know, ill-informed observation are addicted to status. The ones that are really addicted to status, the ones that are really pursuing it, are actually pursuing it at the cost of connection. And what I mean by that is my richest, most successful friend that I have, that lives in a massive mansion in the middle of nowhere, because that's the place that he could buy the biggest house and has all the sports cars,

is also the loneliest. Yeah, that's a really good observation. I mean, status and connection, they're separate things. So we crave by nature both of them. People tend to be happier when they're more connected. But status is a separate thing. And I think that's right. I think that's absolutely correct.

Some people's dials are set. I consider myself somebody who is relatively high in need for status, which is why I ended up writing books for a living. But I'm relatively low in need for a connection. I don't really have much of a social life.

I don't really want one. You know, I'm not bothered particularly. So, you know, everybody's dials are set in different ways. Some people have relatively low need for status and they're relatively high need for connection and they're surrounded by friends and they're probably happier than I am.

I'm sure they're happier than I am. Is there instances where we can be too consumed with status and that can cause us to have adverse personal consequences? Yeah, I suppose. Okay, so in the book, I write that there are kind of three general types of status games that we can play the first game is the dominance game and so the dominance game we share with animals we've been playing dominance games for millions of years and they are what they sound like they are they're about aggression but also the threat of aggression um bullying you know that kind of thing whenever we force somebody else to attend to us in status, that's dominance.

There's success games, which is, I think, the best of human nature. Competence. So when you're thinking about how do we become a valued member of our tribe, back in the days when our brains were evolving, we could be the best honey finder, the best storyteller, the best hunter, best finder of tubers. So that's how you're a value to your tribe, competence,

being good at something. But there's also virtue. You know, we can play virtue games. And so in the tribe, that means that you know the rules of the tribe, you enforce the rules of the tribe, you know the rituals, you believe in the spiritual stories.

So virtue isn't just about being selfless and kind and loving to your tribal members. It's also about being an enforcer. And I think, you know, there's no such thing as a pure game. That's the other thing to kind of point out. Like you can see a boxing match as a dominance game. It's pretty clearly a dominance game. But it's also got a virtue element to it. There's some rules in boxing.

You can't just go and kick them in the groin.in you know like there has to be some virtue in there too so you call that dominance virtue game and i think that i think the worst games i think the games that are most destructive are what i call virtue dominance games so a virtue dominance game is one in which i i'm raising status by enforcing rule but by following rules and knowing the moral rules the dominance um component is i'm going to force you to do it so so you know that's what you see on social media a lot those you know cancel culture mobs people attacking each other for believing the wrong things that's a virtue dominance game um at their very worst a virtue dominance game you know in the book i write about the rise of the nazis I write about the final chapter which kind of brings the whole thing together, is the story of the rise of the communists in the Soviet Union from the perspective of status.

And, you know, that's also a virtue dominance game. They're not interested in competence, in success. They're interested in, you're going to believe this, and if you don't, we're going to punish you. Yeah, there's a lot of that going on at the moment yeah that's a lot of that going on at the moment there's a lot of that going on at the moment and i think a lot of it is because um you know trying trying to be kind of open-hearted about it i wrote about this in selfie and i wrote in in the status game is that since the financial crisis life has got harder, especially for young people. Success, you know, like it's hard to get on the property ladder.

People are leaving university with student debt. There's massive underemployment for graduates. We've got what they call elite overproduction. We're producing too many smart, educated people for the roles to fit in. It's, you know, we're now entering a new recession, apparently. So life is much harder for millennials and Gen Zs than it was for boomers and Gen Xs.

So success games are harder to play. So I think what you're seeing is online, people get status wherever they can. So they start playing virtue games instead. One of the alarming things you talk about in this book is that status, did I say that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the English way I need to, because book is that status. Did I say that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's the English way I need to, because I've used it.

You're not American. And that will harm my status. Attack me in the comments section. This idea that status games actually have an impact on our health and mortality, that we will die younger if we have lower status. What evidence have you got or found to support this idea well there's lots of evidence um there's a big a lot of it comes from this guy called dr michael marmot who is just did this incredible set of work which he calls the

whitehall studies so obviously whitehall is the bureaucracy that kind of runs that kind of takes the order you know the civil service that kind of works with the government so it's an enormous organization highly stratified and so marma um uh looked at um kind of health outcomes for people on different levels of that kind of hierarchy that status game and found that the the the the the lower you went down that status game the worst health outcomes became so the obvious thing is oh that's just because if you're being paid less you maybe can't afford the personal trainer you know you're eating worse but it wasn't that that wasn't that case at all literally one rung down below the very top so still a very very wealthy successful high status people had worse health outcomes than the person

at the very top um so so it really did seem like um the brain is highly attuned to where we sit in a pecking order and the lower the lower we are down in that pecking order the more unhealthy we became another set of scientists looked at this in the in a laboratory so they took a bunch of monkeys um uh who um obviously like us very hierarchical they play status games and um they they deliberately felt, it's a terrible experiment, it's pretty awful, but they deliberately fed them a terrible diet of like fast food, like chocolate and crisps. So they ended up having a high level of atherosclerotic plaque, which is, you know, they were getting clogged up basically and vulnerable to heart problems and so on. And they found that it was the same,

that the lower you went down the monkey pecking order, the more likely the monkeys were to die of these heart-related diseases because of their bad diets and the ones at the top. And then importantly, they conspired to change the hierarchy of the group. I don't know how they did it, but they changed them. Maybe they took out the top monkey,

but they changed the hierarchy of the group. And they found that the health outcomes changed in lockstep with a change in hierarchy. So if a monkey went up, they became less likely to die. And so then you might ask, well, this is crazy. Like, why is this? And so the closest answer that scientists have come, there's a whole field called social genomics. It's a new field. And social genomics is all about how does our social world affect the function of

our genes so you know we're social animals our brains are constantly monitoring how we're doing in the world what are our levels of connection what are our levels of status we have this status detection system that's constantly monitoring our level of status and so so the idea is uh that uh when the brain um registers that we we are you dropping in status, we're not too high in status, it prepares our cells. It changes the way our genes work and the actions of our cells change in such a way that it kind of prepares us for kind of trouble. So inflammation goes up and devour response goes down. And so the body changes in such a way that we become more ill there's a really um a narrative in there which some might

deduce from hearing all of that which is that your level of success relates to your health and this i'm going to say in the really gruesome way which is the more successful you are um the longer you'll live obviously there's loads of factors yes yeah if you're eating burgers and smoking and exactly doing class a drugs you're that's going to probably be a stronger sort of determinant in your outcomes but but generally speaking if two people are eating the exact same thing if they're living the exact same lifestyle in terms of what they're consuming and the way that they're living and the only variable is their level of success in a status game yeah then they will be they're less likely to die if they're higher up yeah that's true yeah it's quite alarming as you said there's so many confounds i mean life is much more complicated than that there's there's always

you know that is true that people you know smoke and don't smoke and and so on but but but but you know what marmot finds is that is that if you take two smokers the one higher up is less is less likely to die of a smoking related disease than the one lower down in the status in the status game yeah yeah interesting yeah and one of the other things that i wrote down reading that book was workers at the bottom of the office hierarchy have at ages 40 to 64 four times the risk of death of their i guess administrators means managers yeah at the top of the hierarchy yeah that's from the white house studies yeah that's part of what dr mental yeah it's crazy so they're really significant it's not

marginal they're you know when you when you it will be marginal from one layer to the next. When you actually look at the whole game, it's very significant, the differences, the health outcomes from the top and bottom. It's absolutely mental. I've never really considered that idea before, that status is playing such a significant role in my biological situation.

The same is true for connection. So when we're lonely, the same thing happens. happens the lonelier we are when we lack status the same thing we you know we we have inflammation goes up and devour response goes down which is bad for us in the long term and it's the same with uh the social genomics people say it's the same with loneliness which is why loneliness is bad for our health too the other thing that i found particularly interesting was that um when we lose our status the consequences of that can be pretty morbid yeah and that suicide is often the result of people losing status and the speed in which they lose their status yeah yeah so so this is why i never believed that jeffrey epstein conspiracy theory is i think he did kill himself because he's just at this huge drop in status.

It just makes him incredibly vulnerable to suicidal thought and ideation. So yes, it's not just drops in status. It's especially sudden drops in status makes us very vulnerable. And also I found it was interesting. The research says it's also being left behind. So if we stay still and everybody else,

everybody around us accelerates that that's that also makes us vulnerable to uh potentially you know anxiety depression and potentially suicidal ideation that in particular is quite um an alarming thought that if you're in a group of five friends best friends and four of the best friends do really really well professionally in their careers whatever just because of the best friends do really really well professionally in their careers whatever just because of the context in which you you're existing you might become depressed because your four friends did well and this this in some respects might explain jealousy of course it does yeah i mean i mean that's i mean you know we we've evolved to um want to feel of value,

but unfortunately being of value is kind of relative. Like if everybody is equally valued, then nobody's valued. Do you know what I mean? We're all on the same level. So I think that's where it can become quite damaging. And that's where life can become quite exhausting, especially in this kind of highly competitive neoliberal world that we live in, where everybody's pushing, pushing, pushing to succeed, pushing, pushing to succeed. It's true, you know, we hate it when our friends become successful.

Parts of us are always going to because it kind of devalues what, you know, what we have. You know, it's just an unfortunate byproduct of the status game. You talk about how we look up to people who are like us. Yeah. But we also seem to be more jealous of people that are like us. Yeah. Because they are the clearest evidence of our own inadequacy. Yeah, that was a really sort of kind of naughty paradox for me to get my head around when I was writing the book. And the closest solution I could come to it was, so when you look at how human social groups work, there's a really amazing researcher in America called Joseph Henrich who studies this stuff and has written about a couple of books about this. And he talks about how, how we learn.

And so, so in those, again, those groups in which we evolve, which we've sort of looked to, to figure out why we are like we are, what you'll find is that, is that, is that when you were growing up, you know, young people look, they identify high status people from which to learn. And those high status people are going to be like them in some way. They're probably going to be the same gender and they're going to have the same kind of interests and, you know, that kind of thing. And so this mechanism switches on, which is copy, flatter, conform. So you start copying their behavior because the brain goes, well, this person's high status.

I want to become high status. So if I want to become high status, of course, I've got to do everything that they're doing. So if I do everything that they're doing, oh, you know, it'll work. So it switches on. And then we've got the flatter process, which is, I need access to this person. I want to be around this person to be able to learn everything that they're doing. And you do that with, you know, flattery is a good way of doing that. It's like, you know, you're amazing. I love this. What a that it's like um you know oh you're amazing i love this what a great book what a great podcast you're amazing businesses and then you know so so we'll let people in who treat us that way and conform you do what you do what you do what you're told you behave and and so and so you know you can you can you can think about that when you think

about celebrities you know like i i i remember when i was seven or eight years old i was obsessed with this guy called this guy nick kershaw and i remember seeing him on tvm and he was crossing his legs in a certain way with his ankle on his knee and his legs sticking out and i just found myself sitting at school in the same way as nick kershaw you know so so like my copper you know my copy flatter conform mechanism is switched on. That's impressive. So I think that's how kind of fame works. I think it's that we see people who feel like a piece of us, but a highly successful piece of us.

Like that person's like me, but amazing. And so these very ancient evolved mechanisms switch on, even though we're probably never going to meet that person, they just switch on. And so, you know, you'll notice that people read the same books as their idols. They dress the same way as their idols. They might even, you know, I find, I mean, I'm embarrassed about it, but I think it's probably very common.

When I've watched a stand-up comedy special and I've loved it, I'll find myself talking like that comic the next day, like using their inflections a bit. It's just kind of weird, you know, or laughing like them, you know. So generally speaking, we're quite envious creatures. We don't like high status people.

But there's a very narrow class of people that we identify with. And those are the people that feel like super successful versions of us. Like we relate to them, we identify with them. And that's when that very evolved ancient mechanism switch

on which i call in the book copy flattik and form yeah it's so interesting much of what you've described as well as explains influence marketing and why it's so effective why we why you know if so if you look up to someone they can sell you anything absolutely yeah that's what the whole industry is based on um the other the other point that you talk about in the book around the role that status is playing which really alarmed me and made me ponder quite a lot was about how our pursuit for status is more important than our pursuit for money when we've kind of addressed the money topic and how you know many employees would rather accept a higher status job than a pay rise yeah different job title yeah that's that's pretty alarming yeah well it is but it's not that surprising when you think about the evolution of the brain

we haven't evolved to crave money because money hasn't been around long enough we've evolved to crave status and money is just one way that we can measure status but there are loads of other ways we can measure status so so it doesn't you know it doesn't have to be money-based you know and as you said that was quite a major study. I think it was 15,000 people in the UK that they surveyed and found that most would accept a high-status job title over a modest pay rise, yeah. So instead of, you know, I've got Jack Sutt over there.

He's the producer, director of this podcast. So Jack, what's your job title right now? What do I say say director slash producer okay so if i change jack's job title to ceo of the podcast yeah versus giving him 1000 pound pay rise he'd probably take the ceo of the podcast yeah yeah but it's also it's smart thinking because because you know when we're judging other people's status

it isn't just how much money they have in fact the money's often invisible the title says a lot so if you were to

you know make Jack you know he's my podcast CEO he's more likely than to go on and get a better job

somewhere else higher status more money because of that bump in status so it's actually the instinct is correct it's a smarter move to take the title than the grand so i could reduce his salary by half no yeah i think that's the thing i think we're so sensitive to um reductions in status that is that will never fly that's interesting um you talk about the cues as well within status games

that we we kind of look for what are those four cues yeah this is this is again joseph henrich's work where he looks at um um you know how do we identify the people that we want to copy flatic and form um so there are various cues um one of them is um uh with they've become success cues so in the hunter-gatherer tribe it might be a hunter has a big necklace of teeth one tooth from every creature

that he's killed you know so that's why we have jewellery these days because it's a success cue and it's amazing when you read about the detail because the brain is

some neuroscientists call it has a status detection system. So we are constantly all of the time monitoring our environment for, for, for status cues and, you know, playing that game. And,

and so, so we're constantly monitoring other people's body language. We, we can measure someone's relative status versus, you know, submissive versus dominant in 43 milliseconds. That's how quick when we see somebody, we measure how dominant or submissive they are in terms of status.

So that's how quick it is. So we're looking at things like successful interruptions in conversation. The more successful interruptions you make, the higher status you are. Like we've all been in situations, maybe you're not for a a while where you're trying to get a word in edgewise and everyone's just everyone's just like maybe in a family situation and you just think oh fuck it you know i have to hear smorgasbord on the podcast so i can get a fucking word in edgewise with him but that's but that's that's actually a perfectly valid point he sees himself as higher status than you yeah and so he and so and so both of your games subconsciously were playing a status game and so so we are um so that's another way we're

also measuring another cue is how other people are attending to that person so if we notice lots of people attending to a person we will automatically assume they're worth attending to and so what's interesting um joseph henry writes is that is that these effects were designed to work in small groups of people because that's how we we evolved in very small tribes they weren't evolved to um operate in in a global environment of modern media and the internet so you get these feedback loops where lots of people are looking at one person so more and more people start looking at that person then they get reported in the press and then more people start looking at them and they call it the paris hilton effect because i think when they figured out what was

going on paris hilton was the big why is she famous person but you might as well just call it the kardashian effect or whoever the latest person is that ever that happens to be really famous and then no one can quite work out why it's because it's a feedback loop once you lots of people start looking at that one person everyone just piles in and because their brains are receiving they must be high status must be worth attending to if everyone's attending to them people attend to them and then you know you've also talked about how their their health outcomes would be better potentially as well so shouldn't success cues go up their success cues go up you know it sounds like a wonderful life to live so should we all start pursuing status well no we uh well we again i say we all we already are but but i think you know another way that all this research has

made me understand the world a lot better is that when we look at very high status people really rich wealthy successful people half our brain is just jealous because i lucky them and we imagine have this brilliant life and they're so happy and everything's wonderful but with the other half of our brains we know that's not true because when you meet very rich and successful people they're often not happy right yeah exactly there's suicide there's alcoholism there's workaholism you know they're like they're not happy the marriages don't last so so it it's made sense of that to me and that's it's actually quite a nice understanding that it that there isn't this this hierarchy of happiness where the richer you are the happier you are because we're all playing individual status games so you know those people playing

high level status games the millionaires the billionaires the elon musks they're competing with the people immediately around them they're competing like elon musk is competing with jeff besos and tim cook so so they're no happier than the people at school who are competing to be the best well i'd say no happier that's the general i I mean, I don't know. But, you know, the higher you go, the harder that game becomes. So, you know, that's taken away a lot of that, oh, I wish I was this, I wish I was that. Yes, I'd love a yacht, you know,

but still, you know, I'm not naive anymore to how difficult and punishing that life can be at the very top because you're not competing with me anymore or the people down there or, you know, or even above me, you're competing with people. They not competing with me anymore or the people down there or you know or or even above me you're competing with people they're competing with the people who they're playing against and they're all highly successful highly motivated um incredible individuals it's it's become really interesting this whole um space race yeah richard branson jeff bezos

elon musk exactly you go really you all really care about exactly exactly but the other thing to say about that is and this is again how i've changed i mean i'm a lefty i've always been a lefty but this book has really opened my mind to the idea that actually we do benefit from these people not just in the obvious ways that they they hire a lot of people they give you know people get meaning and purpose from their jobs they people get to live a life and pay their mortgage from their jobs uh they pay taxes that keeps the you know that keeps the countries running so they're they're doing all that uh but also with the space race they're competing because they're playing a status game that's obvious but but science and technology benefits from that too i mean they will i mean i don't you know that there will no doubt be a number of innovations that that are hugely useful to humanity that come as a result of

this um you know this space race or races like it amongst these highly motivated top level players chapter 29 of this book you you kind of you talk about how we can advance in the status game status game fucked it again and the seven rules of the status game um how how do we advance in the status game and what do you mean by advance do you mean win no because you can't win i mean that's the thing i think the brain's the brain has this story that we live by where and stories can take happy endings and happy ending is if i achieve this and i'm going to be happy and again we it's weird because we know that's not true when we've lived a bit of life because you know but but we still kind of believe it if i get this

if this next book sells a hundred thousand then i'll be happy and it's like i know that's not true but um so so so you you don't ever win it. That's an illusion. That's the storytelling brain, you know, just giving you a bit of a lie to keep you motivated. I think there are various ways that you can succeed in the status game.

You know, some kind of are quite practical. I think one of the most practical is that it's this amazing revelation that status is more valuable than money to most people. And it's free. Like we have status to give. We can save money, as I've just said. amazing revelation that status is more valuable than money to most people um and it's free like

we have status to give and um save money as i've just said you can get you can get call him a ceo and you can go pay him half it's unbelievable i wish i'd known this earlier but we can but we know but but we so we have loads of opportunities in our lives to um to give status to to our employees to the people around us and we often don't uh and you know and so i think that and and that feeds back in a kind of real politicky kind of slightly cynical way is if we are generous with status people are going to want to be around us and they're going to want to work with us and they get and and and some of that status will wash back so so i think you know don't treat status as if it's a limited resource. In the business context, I think there's a really, it's not in that final section,

but one of the other sort of light bulb moments for me in the business context was this difference between competition and rivalry. So when you first think about competition and rivalry in business, you think that's the same thing, but it's not. So competition is bad and rivalry is good. So when I'm talking about competition, I'm talking about a corporate structure like Enron. So that's the example I use in the book. So Enron famously had their rank and yank system where the top, I think it was 15% got promoted. And then they were judged at least twice a year. Everybody in the company got judged.

The top 15% got promoted, the bottom got fired and the middle were just fucking terrified. So that's competition. So competition is a sense of all against all. You go into work and it's a fucking war and you've got to grab and, you know, and I think that's when you end up with extremely toxic and ultimately potentially corrupt corporate cultures because status is very hard to come by.

And so that's what you want to avoid. And, you know, it's thought that a very moderate amount of competition is quite good to motivate people, but it very quickly goes wrong. The alternative to that is rivalry. Now, rivalry is healthy and a massive motivator. And rather than being all against all, rivalry is one against one. So that's one individual against one individual, or one group, one team against another team, or one organization against another organization. And rivalry is characterized by having the status competition that's characterized by lots of near misses and skirmishes.

So you can think about Apple and Microsoft had a period where they were great rivals and that rivalry kind of pushed them on. And in the book, I tell the story of the true origin story of the iPhone, which is quite amazing. And it begins when Steve Jobs, Steve Jobs' wife was friends with somebody from Microsoft and she would have regular parties, barbecues. And so this Microsoft executive, this unnamed Microsoft executive would come to the barbecue and be bragging to Steve Jobs. And one day he was bragging to Steve Jobs saying, we've solved computing. You know, it's over for you guys. We've figured it out. We've got these tablets with these styluses.

They're going to change everything and then um the next day the monday steve jobs comes into work furious because his rival microsoft is dragging their faces in saying we've solved computing and he says let's show let's show these fucking pricks how it's really done it's not done with stars it's done with fingers that's how it's done and that became the ipad which well that became the iphone well first it was the ipad but they released the iphone and then it re-emerged the ipad and as um scott forstall who was the guy that told that story said it was very bad for microsoft that steve jobs ever met that guy but that's the true origin story of the iphone this device that's changed the world is status and rivalry this guy from microsoft rubbing steve

jobs face in a barbecue so so that's healthy that's good well not guy from microsoft rubbing steve jobs face in a barbecue so so that's healthy that's good well not good for microsoft but that's that that's what you want to be um in a corporate sense in an organizational sense you want to be um you want to be encouraging rivalry and not competition interesting i've always tried to make sense of my um my love of rivalry and i've always i've always wondered if it was a toxic flaw in me or because it seems to be such an unbelievable motivator. I'm so, I'm so, I've always said competitive. And I'm hesitant to say that word,

but I'm always looking for a rival. Even, you know, I have 10 friends, we're in a fitness competition. And every month we hand out these fake awards. There's gold, silver, and bronze. And four days out, I won gold last month. And then four days out from this month, my friend, good friend of mine,

he's managing director of one of my companies, Olivier Onchev, he starts talking shit to me. And I was so happy he did because I realized that in those last four days of the month, I was going to work out three hours, four hours a day to beat him. And it's almost, I reflected on what i saw in michael jordan's documentary when michael jordan would it would seem look for rivalries he would so much so that he would make them up and when they went and asked the other person if it had happened they'd go no that didn't happen but michael jordan had created a rivalry in his head that's to motivate himself there's

actually a clip on youtube called it became personal with for me which is just a compilation of michael jordan repeatedly saying a story that might might not have or might have happened and then saying it became that's when it became personal with me and then it shows him slam dunking on that person or winning another title or whatever this constant search for rivalry as a motivator that's fascinating that's exactly right yeah that's that's fascinating and. And so that description you say of somebody whose highlight is we're constantly looking for rivalries, I think that's correct. And I also think it's a mistake to think,

is it healthy or like, is it toxic? Is it a good thing or a bad thing? I think one of the things I try not to do in my books is to categorize what's good and what's bad. It just is. Because in real life reality, it's usually a trade-off. Most things are trade-offs. And so, yes, in lots of sense, if you're playing your success games, it's a good thing.

It's a massive motivator. It was for Steve Jobs. It was for Michael Jordan. It sounds like it is for you. But that doesn't mean it's a 100% good thing. If you start losing, that's going to become a source of a lot of misery for you so i think we often make mistakes and we try to figure out whether something's good or bad because i think the reality is that most things are trade-offs you're

completely right it is a trade-off and working out for three four hours a day was not a good idea it was a significant cost to that with my my relationship with my sleep with you know with my productivity. So it is a trade-off. And I guess it all depends what your objective ultimately is. You've written a number of books now, many, many books, more books than I think I'll ever write in my life, because I think I struggle to write books. And, you know, you find yourself in a place in life now where you're 47. It was difficult to find your age online.

I had to go back to an article, I think where you said you were 38 and do the math. So I wasn't sure if you're 47. But what else are you in search of in your life personally? What else? I've asked this question in maybe the last, I don't know, 10 episodes to my guests. But if your overall happiness was a recipe consisting of a set of ingredients, what are you looking for personally now in your life to fulfill that happiness recipe?

That's a very good question. So I think that one of the things I've done recently is I've not started yet, but I've, it's going to be happening this month, is I'm going to start volunteering to a charity because I feel like, as we've already spoken about, one of the things I don't have is much connection. Like I've got a great marriage, but outside the marriage, I don't really see people that much.

And I feel like because I don't have children, I don't actually do anything for anyone else so it's kind of i felt like i was becoming quite a selfish life everything was just about either my well part of my dogs so i i'm obsessed with i don't do anything for anything else so i i figure that's that that that's a bit of a hole in my life so that's why i'm i'm going to start volunteering um um if i've got to be interviewed by this charity but assuming that goes well That's why I'm going to start volunteering. I've got to be interviewed by this charity, but assuming that goes well.

So I think that's a whole. And I do want to sort out the connection side of things. Like I've started having semi-regular meetups with some old school friends recently, which has just been an absolute joy to see these people after so long. And and i kind of i kind of in my head started telling the story that it was me that had failed all my exams and was a total disaster but it was amazing to sit around today with all these lots of that's a lawyer and there's also successful people we all failed our exams it was just a really bad school but we all kind of

succeeded um regardless of that um so so that's been a that that's that that's been really fun and i've had to kind of um yeah so so i think it's i think it's moving the dial on connection that that's what i'm missing we have to become more and more intentional about that connection i think i feel like men probably more so definitely yeah you know and it's one of the things i've said to my five friends is i've said to them you know as we get older when it's a birthday or when there's a wedding make sure we all go because it's going to become increasingly there's going to become increasingly more excuses as to as to why we shouldn't go or we can't go we live further apart we have families and you really i feel like as a man you really have to fight for that connection as you age it's

like yeah i mean i i kind of i kind of really do believe that there are basic biological differences between the genders on average you have to say generally speaking and there's huge overlaps of course we're more alike than we are different but i think on the average i think you know men and women are you know that there are differences and i i do think that one of them is how we manifest socially. I think, you know, women are much better instinctively at the group. Yeah. You know, whether that's politically or in a friendship context, there just seems to be, men just seem to have an instinct for going it alone yeah and women seem to have an instinct for the group going it together going

it together that's lovely way of putting it yeah and um and i and i think that you're right i think men especially have to fight against that i think that's why the suicide statistics are so much worse for for men and and i and as the suicide expert i spoke to for selfie said the solution isn't that men should be you know should be more like women um because that's you can't change biology but but and but i think you're right i think especially with the social connection thing we have to push ourselves a bit harder and i always notice with the social stuff it just seems to always happen where when you've got a social appointment coming up you think oh what did i say yes to that for but then that that's like a hundred percent of time you think oh i don't want to go but then

when you go you go oh what a great time this is amazing i should do this more often and that's also 100 at some it's so weird that um we we seem so like men especially seem to be so bad at predicting how much we're going to enjoy a social occasion on that point with the suicide expert you know because much of the narrative i do here regarding male suicide is that we we just need to talk more and we're often with that argument often comes the the sub point that if you look at how women are open and communicate with their social circle with their yeah you know their their friends and they they say i'm feeling this i'm going through this blah blah blah blah men don't do that so men need to do more of that yeah what what did you learn from your conversations with that suicide expert well his view and mine

too um is that i don't think i i like sure talking helps but but but but just saying to men you should be more like women is not that helpful. And actually what we need to do is figure out what are men like and start trying to develop solutions that are specifically designed for men. I just think saying to men that you should learn to cry. I haven't cried for years. You know, it's like, it's just not, it's not fair on men. It's not smart. There needs to be more work done in how can we actually help men in a male friendly way?

You know, I think that's the way to go. What are men like? What are men like? Because, you know, you said we have to to go what are men like what are men like because you know you said we have to figure out what men are like yeah cater to cater to their unmet needs i'm guessing in a in a in a way that kind of they can relate to what is that well again you've got to be very careful but but but by not generalizing yeah there's a huge variety in what men are like you know you know but but but but just to sort of underline the fact we're talking sort of generally speaking here my sense is that as as i said before women are much better in your great words at going together whereas men tend to be mine but tend to be more by instinct going alone

and and like everything that's a trade-off um And the negatives are that we are less good at talking to other people and sharing our kind of burdens. I think that I've got no scientific evidence to back this up, but my impression is that male identity often is focused more around success personal success so i think i think that's why you see lots of male suicide in middle age because in middle age men start losing their bodies they state their careers might grind to a halt their relationships with their children might start going wrong they might get divorced and divorce you know you know uh yeah it's not good so so i i and i and i think that that's where men um particularly might get into trouble when when men feel like i'm not a success i'm not looking after my family i I'm failing in my job. It's that sense of being a failure.

Yeah, I think that's very, very hard for men. The suicidal ideation you describe in Selfie, was that linked to those reasons? Yeah, I think it's connection and status for me. I mean, the last time it happened really badly was when I moved back from, I lived in australia for four years and did quite well in australia as a freelance journalist but came back with nothing

no job because i was a freelancer and so yeah and then for a while i just thought i was gonna have to start doing day shifts you know uh in magazines like Like it was bad. I just felt like everything had gone wrong. And so I think that was very much connected to status. I mean, I'm very bad because in the book, I recommend playing lots of games, playing multiple games. I mean, the science is pretty clear that the more status games people play in their life,

the more sources of status they have, the more groups they belong to, the more stable their personality, the happier they tend to be. And as I said earlier on, I just, I tend to do writing. That's kind of what I do. That's partly the selfish reasons for the volunteering.

I want to have another source of status to protect myself against the inevitable getting older thing. When we realize that status games are like getting older thing. When we realize that status games are like a comparative thing. So, you know, being a journalist, if there's a journalist, that's the editor and is doing amazingly well.

And you're underneath. And then there's somebody at the very bottom of the ladder. And the person at the bottom of the ladder is going to be lower status just by measure of comparison. So does that mean that in some regard in the society we live in that is based on status there will always be someone at the bottom that is feeling that way because just by

a measure of comparison there's going to be someone else who is making them feel inadequate or like low status yeah there's always going to be a hierarchy you can't remove the hierarchy from the human it's how we process reality i mean when you go into any sort of situation if you make if you if you're introduced to five strangers you know this you know like you'll have a conversation and within minutes you'll start getting a sense of who's up there who's down there and it'll be body language it'll be who's got the jobs who's got the clothes you know your brain's just calculating you can't stop it it's going to happen and and And you can't stop it because everybody else is doing it to you too.

You know, that's something that other people give to us as well is our sense of status. We sense it from other people. So there will always be people, you know, at the bottom in inverted commas.

But there are a few things to say. That sounds grim, but there are a few things to say about that. The first thing is that, again, we all play individual little games so so it isn't as though the cleaner in the office feels like they're competing with michelle obama

because if they did they would just walk they just throw themselves out the window that's not how life works that cleaner is comparing themselves to the other people in their life they work with their families their cousins they you know so they're not feeling horrific because they're not the king of Thailand. So that's not how it's working. Life isn't that brutal. Two, we have amazing imaginations. And we're very good at buffing ourselves up and finding ways of seeing we're of value.

And I think in a healthy organization, as I say in the book, you can go to a meeting as the lowest status member of the organization in that formal status game, make a fantastic contribution and leave feeling like the king of the world, like the best person in the room. And that, and if that's a healthy organization, that's how you'll be made to feel too. You'll be like, oh, it's brilliant. It's amazing. So, so, so, so even within those kinds of formal games that we play in life, we can still have an encounter, an experience in which we actually feel hugely of value. So there's also that to say. And also, you know, life is a never-ending game. As long as we're not suffering from depression, if we're a mentally healthy person, we're a little bit optimistic. We're backing ourselves a bit. You know, that's what people are like. You know, I feel like I'm going to i have the capacity to achieve x y and z

you know so so so so yes um there will always be people at the bottom but but a they're probably not going to stay there for very long because the game's so fluid and b that that that doesn't mean that they're condemned to a life of constant misery and torture and and as you said earlier they can you know they might also play for a sunday league team and be top of constant misery and torture. And as you said earlier, they can, you know, they might also play for a Sunday league team and be top of the league and captain of that team. Or they could be religious. I mean, religion is a status game and that's a virtue game.

You know, and it's often a healthy virtue game. You know, in a religious game, I've got to follow the Ten Commandments and go to the church and do whatever I've got to do. And then I become a high status Christian or whatever. And that's, you know, that's a big journey I've got to follow the Ten Commandments and go to the church and do whatever I've got to do. And then I become a high status Christian or whatever. And that's, you know, that's a big journey I've gone on. I used to be very angry and hostile about religion because of my background. But now I see that religion, although it's not for me,

it's hugely valuable to people because it gives them a status game to play. And meaning and purpose. I was the same. I was religious up until i was uh 18 very religious household and i rejected it quite passionately for many years until i stopped caring about it so now i'm just like do what you like i don't care exactly which is a funny arc we kind of go through where it's like the aggression against it and then the acceptance of it um we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the previous guest asks the next guest a question okay right in the diary diary so i get to read it now jack keeps the diary until this point um we

the question left for you is when it all gets too dark what helps you find the light when it all gets too dark what helps you find the light i mean creation i mean that really is true if i'm feeling depressed um i just i've got this it's quite cheesy but i've got this little i've got this little saying i say to myself on the head which is the only way out is art and and so if i want to feel good i'll go and do some work do some writing and if i'm proud of it it'll sort of pull me out of it so that that's kind of what helps me see the light my my my art and how does that relate to the status game book status game massively because I feel good about myself you

know if I this is my game writing and if I feel like i've written something good i feel like there's hope and it kind of gives you a psychological status boost absolutely yeah because we you know we we have this imaginary audience in our heads we're not just being judged by other people we're being judged by ourselves so so so yeah i think that's hugely important well thank you incredibly illuminating and it's given me a tremendous amount of food for thought you know when we do this podcast i'm always selfishly looking for um ways that i can make changes to my life or understand the decisions i'm making so that i can make decisions more in line with my values or more in line with where i want to go and i think you're this book in particular the status game i pause every time i say it because i'm scared to get the status game yeah

this book in particular, The Status Game, is one of those that is tremendously illuminating because it explains so much. It's almost like it's turning a light on in a huge room that I didn't even know was there and really revealing to me what the forces are that are controlling much of my decision-making, for better or for worse.

It's not to say that I will try and abandon those forces because I don't actually believe I can. I think that's who I am. But being more conscious about them, which I think is exactly what this book allows you to do as they relate to your relationships, your personal life, your business, is I think something that we can all benefit from. So thank you for writing such an amazing book. And thank you for writing all of these amazing books. But this one in particular is my favorite. The Status Game came out last year, I believe. Yeah, just down paperback two weeks ago.

On paperback two weeks ago. And I've had a lot of people specifically, because you've had a few conversations with some friends of mine, really raving about this book. So I highly recommend everybody checks it out. Of all these books, I love them all. But this one in particular is my favorite.

And I can't be more excited to see what you write next. Fantastic. Thank you for your honesty as well not everybody is so willing to be so open and honest and i think there's something so um so important because it's human it's human and it's truthful about the way you're willing to be honest about your own struggles in your life and the things that you're searching for as it relates to connection and those things that is we're all we're all going through the same battles and hearing that from you as well, I think is particularly important. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for your amazing questions too, Stephen. I had a really good time. Thank you.