The Joe Rogan Experience - #2102 - Will Storr

Will Storr is a former journalist and author. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is "The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It." www.thescienceofstorytelling.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duration: 2h 43m
Broadcast on: 14 Feb 2024
Audio Format: other

Will Storr is a former journalist and author. He is the author of several books, the most recent of which is "The Status Game: On Human Life and How to Play It." www.thescienceofstorytelling.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan experience. Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day. CNN at one point in time when Bourdain had a show on they were doing some very interesting things they were trying to do shows not just the news right so they had no reservations was the best one of them where they had you know they just told Anthony Bourdain just be you and just do what you did do your best version of your show they really just get out of the way and it was fucking amazing yeah yeah so they got out of his way they let him be the best of himself they figured out how to do that you know Kamal Bao had a really good show too is that show still on what was that show called I'm sorry forget the name of these shows but W Kamal Bao was really good at being like calm shades of America really good at being calm like talking to like KKK people and he's black and he's a comic but he says like a very nice guy he's a very nice guy like a genuinely nice guy in real life and so when he's doing a show even when he's confronted by the most ignorant racist he can have conversations with them and then and you know they're like well you're not like the others you know that's the best kind of journalism you know you can properly immerse yourself in those worlds yeah and CNN did that for a while you know they had that other show was it radical with that one gentleman who raised an Aslan is that his name that was another good show they did some interesting stuff they did like quite a few interesting shows where they were just shows it wasn't what it is now which is this like bizarre version of news tick-tock just grabbing you with everything's gonna terrify you every day and there's so much to terrify you from about today you know yeah yeah yeah they seem to have lost the art of storytelling yeah it's very unfortunate so ladies and gentlemen we started this podcast after a long conversation about Anthony Bourdain but it felt like we were already rolling so let's just roll into it I really enjoyed you on trigonometry and that's why I wanted to talk to you here because it's just I think your book is the status game that's right yeah and I think what's really interesting about what you're talking about mechanisms that make people understand like behavior patterns in a way instead of just accepting them you know because I think a lot of people fall into accepting behavior patterns but what you're what you're showing is like these status games that human beings play they sort of wired into our being and we don't recognize them they can get hijacked by far right movements or far left movements or a lot of different things can happen that can really screw your life up yeah if you get hijacked by these just normal mechanisms of human thinking that's right that's right so I think sort of the general thesis is that the humans want two things they want connection into groups and then once they're in the group they want status so you know it's not enough to feel like we're a Christian we have to be a good Christian and following certain rules and and that's what that's what brains just want to do that brains don't really care about what's true brains are always asking this question who do I have to be and what do I have to believe in order to earn connection and status we're all vulnerable to this stuff that's how people end up believing fucking crazy things because the brains just believing what it has to believe I've seen it with people that get what what you call audience capture where their audience they find they get some love you can only if you're doing it politically you only do it once it's a dangerous move it's like changing genders like you can't go male to female in the back to male again it's fucking too complicated once you get one shot if you start out a liberal you're a lifelong liberal and that 36 all of a sudden you become like the most hardcore right wing Republican like that seems like I well what did you believe before and what happened did you take mushrooms did you fall in your head something happened yeah will you just radically change your ideology or did you get captured by the idea of being accepted with much more vigor by the other side like that's one thing that they really do enjoy when someone bails on the other side and then you can again you can only do it

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