Tim Urban is the author of the blog Wait But Why and a new book What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Tim's new book: https://waitbutwhy.com/whatsourproblem
Tim's Twitter: https://twitter.com/waitbutwhy
Tim's Website: https://waitbutwhy.com
Tim's Instagram: https://instagram.com/timurban
Tim's TED talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rk5C149J9C0

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Full episodes playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOdP_8GztsuKi9nrraNbKKp4
Clips playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrAXtmErZgOeciFP3CBCIEElOJeitOr41

OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
2:16 - Human history
18:15 - Greatest people in history
26:04 - Social media
32:46 - Good times and bad times
44:16 - Wisdom vs stupidity
46:24 - Utopia
1:00:33 - Conspiracy theories
1:13:44 - Arguing on the Internet
1:33:44 - Political division
1:43:38 - Power games
1:51:37 - Donald Trump and Republican Party
2:08:45 - Social justice
2:31:28 - Censorship gap
2:38:59 - Free speech
2:43:01 - Thinking and universities
2:51:24 - Liv Boeree joins conversation
3:03:44 - Hopes for the future

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A radical political movement, of which there will always be a lot in the country,

has managed to do something that a radical movement is not supposed to be able to do in the US, which is they've managed to hijack institutions all across the country, and hijack medical journals and universities and the ACLU, all the activist organizations and non-profits and many tech companies.

And the way I view a liberal democracy is it is a bunch of these institutions that were trial and error crafted over hundreds of years.

And they all rely on trust, public trust, and a certain kind of feeling of unity that actually is critical to a liberal democracy's functioning.

And what I see this thing is, is as a parasite on that, that whose goal is, and I'm not saying each, by the way, each individual in this is, I don't think they're bad people.

I think that it's the ideology itself has the property of, its goal is to tear apart the pretty delicate workings of the liberal democracy and shred the critical lines of trust.

The following is a conversation with Tim Urban, his second time in the podcast.

He's the author and illustrator of the amazing blog called Wait, But Why, and is the author of a new book coming out tomorrow called What's Our Problem?

We talk a lot about this book in this podcast, but you really do need to get it and experience it for yourself.

It is a fearless, insightful, hilarious, and I think important book in this divisive time that we live in.

The Kindle version, the audiobook, and the web version should be all available on date of publication.

I should also mention that my face might be a bit more beat up than usual.

I got hit in the chin pretty good since I've been getting back into training jujitsu, a sport I love very much, after recovering from an injury.

So if you see marks on my face during these intros of conversations, you know that my life is in a pretty good place.

To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.

You wrote an incredible book called What's Our Problem?

In the beginning, you present this view of human history as a thousand page book where each page is 250 years.

And it's a brilliant visualization because almost nothing happens for most of it.

So what blows your mind most about that visualization when you just sit back and think about it?

So 950 pages, 95% of the book, hunter gatherers kind of doing their thing.

I'm sure there's obviously some major cognitive and advancements along the way in language.

And I'm sure the bone arrow comes around at some point.

So tiny things, but it's like, oh, now we have 400 pages till the next thing.

But then you get to page 950, and things start moving.

So basically the bottom row is when anything interesting happens.

There's a bunch of agriculture for a while before we know anything about it.

Yeah, 25 pages of actual recorded history.

So when we think of prehistoric, we're talking about pages 1 through

If you were reading the book, it would be like epilogue AD, the last little 10 pages of the book.

Human history has been going on for over 2, 000 centuries.

Like that is, it's just, it's hard to wrap your head around.

And this is, I mean, even that's just the end of a very long road, like, you know, the hundred thousand years before that, it's not like, you know, it's not like that was that different.

So it's just there's been people like us that have emotions like us, that have physical sensations like us for so, so long.

And it's, You know, I think we have no idea what it was like to be them The thing that's craziest about the people of the far past is not just that they had different lives.

They had different fears they had different dangers and different responsibilities and they lived in tribes and everything, but they didn't know anything.

Like, we just take it for granted that we're born on top of this tower of knowledge and from the very beginning, we know that the Earth is a ball floating in space and we know that we're going to die 1 day, and we know that we evolved from animals.

And those were all incredible epiphanies quite recently.

And the people a long time ago, they just had no idea what was going on.

And I'm kind of jealous, because I feel like it might have been scary to not know what's going on, but it also, I feel like, would be, you'd have a sense of awe and wonder all the time and you don't know what's gonna happen next.

And once you learn, you're kind of like, oh, that's like, it's a little grim.

But they probably had the same capacity for consciousness to experience the world, to wander about the world, maybe to construct narratives about the world and myths and so on.

They just had less grounded systematic facts to play with.

They still probably felt the narratives, the myths they constructed as intensely as we do.

They also had friends and they had falling outs with friends.

Maybe beauty's in the eye of the beholder.

How many people in history have experienced a hot shower?

That's like, when were hot showers invented?

So like George Washington never had a hot shower.

Like he took cold showers all the time or like, and again, we just take this for granted, but that's like an unbelievable life experience to have a rain, a controlled little booth where it rains hot water on your head and then you get out and it's not everywhere, it's like contained.

That was like, you know, a lot of people probably lived and died with never experiencing hot water.

Maybe they had a way to heat water over a fire, but like then it's, I don't know.

It's just like, there's so many things about our lives now that are complete, just total anomaly.

It makes you wonder like, what is the thing that would notice the most?

I mean, the sewer system, like it doesn't smell in cities.

I mean, it gets rid of waste efficiently in such a way we don't have to confront it both with any of our senses.

Plus all the medical stuff associated with sewage.

How about the cockroaches and the rats and the disease and the plagues?

And then when they got, so they caught more diseases, but then when they caught the disease, they also didn't have treatment for it.

So they often would die or they would just be in a huge amount of pain.

They also didn't know what the disease was.

That was this new thing, the idea that these tiny little animals that are causing these diseases.

In the bubonic plague, in the black death, the 1300s, people thought that it was an act of God because, you know, God's angry at us because why would, you know, why would you not think that if you didn't know what it was?

And so the crazy thing is that these were the same primates.

I know in some sense what it's like to be them, because I am a human as well, and to know that this particular primate that I know what it's like to be experienced such different things.

And like this isn't, Our life is not the life that this primate has experienced almost ever.

I have a sense that we would get acclimated very quickly.

Like if we threw ourselves back a few thousand years ago, it would be very uncomfortable at first, but the whole hot shower thing, you'll get used to it.

After a year, you would not even miss it.

There's a few, I'm trying to remember which book that talks about hiking the Appalachian Trail, but you kind of miss those hot showers.

But I have a sense like after a few months, after a few years.

Yeah, I was saying the other day to a friend that whatever you're used to, you start to think that, oh, the people that have more than me or are more fortunate, like it just sounds incredible, I would be so happy.

Because the experience, what would happen is you would get these new things, or you would get these new opportunities, and then you would get used to it, and then you would, that's the hedonic treadmill, you'd come back to where you are.

And likewise though, because you think, oh my god, what if I had to have this kind of job that I never would want, or I had this kind of marriage that I never would want?

If you did, you would adjust, and you get used to it, and you might not be that much less happy than you are now.

So on the other side of the you being OK going back, we would survive if we had to go back.

You know, we'd have to learn some skills, but we would buck up, and people have gone to war before that were in the shopkeepers a year before that.

But on the other hand, if you brought them here, You know, I always think it would be so fun to just bring, forget the hunter-gatherers, bring a 1700s person here and tour them around, take them on an airplane, show them your phone and all the things it can do.

Show them the internet, show them the grocery store.

Likewise, I think they would be completely awestruck and on their knees, crying tears of joy.

And then they'd get used to it and they'd be complaining about, like, you don't have the oranges in stock?

The grocery store is a tough 1 to get used to.

Like when I first came to this country, the abundance of bananas was the thing that struck me the most.

Or like fruits in general, but food in general, but bananas somehow struck me the most.

That you could just eat them as much as you want.

Probably took several years to really get acclimated to that.

The number of bananas, fresh bananas, that wasn't available.

Yeah, it's like we don't even know what to, like we don't even know the proper levels of gratitude.

You know, walking around the grocery store, I don't know to be like, the bread's nice, but the bananas are like, we're so lucky.

I don't know, I'm like, oh, I could have been the other way, I have no idea.

Well, it's interesting then where we point our gratitude in the West, in the United States.

Probably, do we point it away from materialist possessions towards, or do we just aspire to do that towards other human beings that we love?

Because in the East, in the Soviet Union, growing up poor, it's having food is the gratitude.

And now, but see within that, the deep gratitude is for other human beings.

It's the penguins huddling together for warmth in the cold.

I mean, I'm sure, yes, of course, in the West, we will, on average, feel gratitude towards different things, or maybe a different level of gratitude, maybe we feel less gratitude than countries that, you know, obviously, I think the easiest, the person that's most likely to feel gratitude is going to be someone whose life happens to be 1 where they just move up, up, up throughout their life.

A lot of people in the greatest generation, you know, people who were born in the 20s or whatever.

The story is the greatest generation grew up dirt poor, and they often ended up middle class.

And the boomers, some of them started off middle class, and many of them ended up quite wealthy.

And I feel like that life trajectory is naturally going to foster gratitude, right?

Because you're not going to take for granted these things because you didn't have them.

I didn't go out of the country, really, in my childhood very much.

We traveled, but it was to Virginia to see my grandparents or Wisconsin to see other relatives or maybe Florida after going to the beach.

And then I started going out of the country crazy in my 20s, because I really became my favorite thing.

And I feel like because I'd be, if I had grown up always doing that, it would have been another thing.

I'm like, yeah, it's just something I do.

But I still, every time I go to a new country, I'm like, oh my god, this is so cool.

And in another country, this thing I've only seen on the map.

And so I feel like a lot of times it's a product of what you didn't have and then you suddenly had.

But I still think it's case by case in that there's like a meter in everyone's head, you know, that I think at a 10, you're experiencing just immense gratitude, right?

Which is a euphoric feeling, it's a great feeling.

And it makes you happy, to savor what you have.

To look down at the mountain of stuff you have that you're standing on, right?

To look down at it and say, oh my God, I'm so lucky.

And I'm so grateful for this and this and this.

Now, when you move the meter down to 6 or 7, maybe you think that sometimes, but you're not always thinking that, because you're sometimes looking up at this cloud of things that you don't have, and the things that they have, but you don't, or the things you wished you had, or you thought you were gonna have, or whatever, And that's the opposite direction to look, right?

And that's the either that's envy, that's yearning, or often it's, if you think about your past, it's grievance.

And so Then you go on to a 1, and you have someone who feels like a complete victim.

They are just a victim of the society, of their siblings, and their parents, and their loved 1.

And they are wallowing in everything that's happened wrong to me, Everything I should have that I don't, everything that has gone wrong for me.

And so that's a very unhealthy, mentally unhealthy place to be.

You know, there's an endless list of stuff you can, it can be aggrieved about and an endless list of stuff you can have gratitude for.

And so it's, in some ways it's a choice and it's a habit.

And maybe it's part of how we were raised or our natural demeanor, but it's such a good, you are really good at this, by the way.

Well, like you are constantly just saying, man, I'm lucky, or like, I'm so grateful for this.

And it's a good thing to do because you're reminding yourself, but you're also reminding other people to think that way.

And so anyway, I think that scale can go from 1 to 10, and I think it's hard to be a 10.

I think you'd be very happy if you could be.

But I think trying to be above a 5 and looking down at the things you have more often than you are looking up at the things you don't or being resentful about the things that people have wronged you.

Well, the interesting thing, I think, well,

it's an open question, but I suspect that you can control that knob for the individual.

Like you yourself can choose, it's like the Stoic philosophy, you could choose where you are as a matter of habit, like you said.

But you can also probably control that on a scale of a family, of a tribe, of a nation, of a society.

I mean, you can describe a lot of the things that happens in Nazi Germany and different other parts of history through a sort of societal envy and resentment that builds up.

Maybe certain narratives pick up and then they infiltrate your mind and then now your knob goes to, from the gratitude for everything, it goes to resentment and envy and all the things.

you know, like you said, the Soviet kind of mentality.

So yeah, and then when you're soaking in a culture, so there's kind of 2 factors, right?

It's what's going on in your own head and then what's surrounding you.

And what's surrounding you kind of has concentric circles.

Because that group of people, if they're a certain way, they feel a lot of gratitude and they talk about it a lot, that kind of insulates you from the broader culture.

Because people are going to have the most impact on you are the ones closest.

But often, all the concentric circles are saying the same thing, the people around you are feeling the same way that the broader community, which is feeling the same way as the broader country.

And I think this is why I think American patriotism, nationalism can be tribal, can be not a good thing.

Patriotism, I think is a great thing, because really, what is patriotism?

I mean, it's, if you love your country, you should love your fellow countrymen.

You know, patriot, you know, that's a Reagan quote.

It's like, patriotism is like, I think a feeling of like, unity, and, but it also comes along with an implicit kind of concept of gratitude.

Because it's like, we are so lucky to live in.

People think it's chauvinist to say, we live in the best country in the world.

And yes, when Americans say that, no 1 likes it.

But actually, it's not a bad thing to think.

It's a way of saying, I'm so grateful for all the great things this country gives to me and this country has done.

And I think if you heard a Filipino person say, you know what, the Philippines is the best country in the world.

No 1 in America would say, that's chauvinist.

Because when it's coming from someone who's not American, it sounds totally fine.

But I think national pride is actually good.

Now again, that can quickly translate into xenophobia and nationalism, and so you have to make sure it doesn't go off that cliff.

Yeah, there's good ways to formulate that.

Like you talk about, we'll talk about high rung progressivism, high rung conservatism.

Those are 2 different ways of embodying patriotism.

So you could talk about maybe loving the tradition that this country stands for, or you could talk about loving the people that ultimately push progress.

And those are, from an intellectual perspective, a good way to represent patriotism.

We gotta zoom out, because this graphic is epic.

A lot of images in your book are just epic on their own.

But this 1 has famous people for each of the cards.

And by the way, good for them to be the person that, it's not that I could have chosen lots of people for each card, but I think most people would agree, you know, that's a pretty fair choice for each page.

And good for them to be able, you know, you crushed

it if you can be the person for your whole 250 year page.

Well, I noticed you put Gandhi, you didn't put Hitler.

I mean, there's a lot of people gonna argue with you about that particular last page.

I could have put, I actually, I was thinking about Darwin there too.

Yeah, exactly, You really could have put anyone.

Did you think about putting yourself for a second?

I'm sure that would have endeared the readers to me from right from the beginning of the first page of the book.

A little bit of a messianic complex going on, but Yeah, so the list of people, just so you know, so these are 250 year chunks, the last 1 being from 1770 to 2020.

And so it goes Gandhi, Shakespeare, Joan of Arc, Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, Muhammad, Constantine, Jesus, Cleopatra, Aristotle, Buddha.

It's so interesting to think about this very recent human history.

Just that there's these figures that stand out and that define the course of human history.

And it's like the craziest thing to me is that like Buddha was a dude.

He was a guy with like arms and legs and fingernails that he maybe bit and like he liked certain foods and maybe he got like, he had digestive issues sometimes and he got cuts and they stung.

And he was a guy and he had hopes and dreams and he probably had a big ego for a while before I guess Buddha totally overcame that 1.

But like, and it's like who knows, you know, the mythical figure of Buddha, who knows how similar he was, but the fact, same with Jesus, like this was a guy, like to me, he's a primate.

He was a dumb baby trying to learn how to walk.

Yeah, like having a tantrum because he's frustrated because he's in the terrible twos.

Buddha never had a tantrum, let's be honest.

I mean, listen, hearing about Genghis Khan, it's incredible to me because it's just like, this was some Mongolian herder guy who was taken as a slave and he was like dirt poor, you know, catching rats, is a young teen with, you know, to feed him and his mom and his, I think his brother.

And it's just like, the odds on, when he was born, he was just 1 of, you know, probably tens of thousands of random teen boys living in Mongolia in the 1200s.

The odds of that person, any 1 of them being a household name today that we're talking about, it's just crazy what had to happen.

And for that poor, dirt poor herder to take over the world, I don't know.

So history just continually blows my mind.

And he's the reason you and I are related, probably.

Yeah, no, I mean, it's also, that's the other thing, is that some of these dudes, by becoming king, by having a better army at the right time, you know, William the Conqueror, whatever, is in the right place at the right time, with the right army, you know, and there's a weakness at the right moment, and he comes over and he exploits it and ends up probably having, I don't know, a thousand children, and those children are high up people who might be having a ton of, the species is different now because of him.

Like, forget England's different, or European borders look different.

Like, we look different because of a small handful of people.

Sometimes I think, I'm like, oh, this part of the world, I can recognize, someone's Greek, someone's Persian, someone's wherever, because they kind of have certain facial features.

I mean, obviously that's a population, but it may be that someone 600 years ago that looked like that really spread their seed, and that's why the ethnicity looks kind of like that now, sorry, anyway.

Yeah, yeah, do you think individuals like that can turn the direction of history?

Or is that an illusion, that narrative we tell ourselves?

Well, it's both, I mean, so I said that William the Conqueror, right, or Hitler, right?

It's not that Hitler was born and destined to be great at all, right?

I think in a lot of cases, he's some frustrated artist with a temper who's turning over the table in his studio and hitting his wife and being kind of a dick and a total nobody, right?

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Tim Urban: Tribalism, Marxism, Liberalism, Social Justice, and Politics | Lex Fridman Podcast #360