#2102 - Will Storr

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

Will Storr (0:13)

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 do, do your best version of your show. And they really just get out of the way. And it was fucking amazing.

Joe Rogan (0:36)

Yeah. Yeah. So they got out of his way. They let him be the best of himself.

Will Storr (0:40)

They figured out how to do that. You know, Kamau Bell had a really good show too. Is that show still on?

What was that show called?

I'm sorry. I forget the name of these shows. But W. Kamau Bell was really good at being like calm. United 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's just a very nice guy. He's a very nice guy, like 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, you know, they're like, well, you're not like the others.

Joe Rogan (1:22)

Well, that's the best kind of journalism. You know, you can properly immerse yourself in those worlds.

Will Storr (1:29)

Yeah, and CNN did that for a while. You know, they had that other show. Was it Radical with that one gentleman who?

Raza 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 TikTok, just grabbing you with everything is going to terrify you every day. And there's so much to terrify you from about today.

You know?

Joe Rogan (2:07)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They seem to have lost the art of storytelling.

Will Storr (2:11)

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.

Joe Rogan (2:31)

That's right.

Will Storr (2:32)

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 showing is like these status games that human beings play, they're 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, if you get hijacked by these just normal mechanisms of human thinking.

Joe Rogan (3:14)

That's right. That's right.

So I think the general thesis is that humans want two things. They want connection into groups, and then once they're in the group, they want status.

So it's not enough to feel like we're a Christian. We have to be a good Christian, and that means following certain rules. And that's what brains just want to do. 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? And we're all vulnerable to this stuff. And that's how people end up believing fucking crazy things, because the brain's just believing what it has to believe.

Will Storr (3:52)

I've seen it with people that get what you call audience capture.

Yeah, absolutely. Their audience, they find, they get some love. You can only, if you're doing it politically, you can only do it once. It's a dangerous move. It's like changing genders.

Like you can't go male to female and then back to male again. It's fucking, it's too complicated.

Joe Rogan (4:09)

It's a one-shot deal, yeah.

Will Storr (4:11)

So you get one shot. If you start out a liberal, you're a lifelong liberal. And then at 36, all of a sudden, you become like the most hardcore right-wing Republican. Like that seems like, well, what did you believe before and what happened?

Did you take mushrooms?

Did you fall on your head? Did something happen where 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, again, you can only do it once, but you get like really embraced.