Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Sanfracoso. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey everyone, thank you for being here today. On the show,
Speaker 1: we have Rutger Bregman. He's a Dutch philosopher, historian, and author,
Speaker 1: but you likely first heard of him from two different
Speaker 1: viral videos. The first was a monologue he delivered at Davos,
Speaker 1: railing against the hypocrisy of an event that warns of
Speaker 1: our climate crisis and yet has participants from around the
Speaker 1: world flying in on their private jets. The second video
Speaker 1: was his spat with Tucker Carlson. It was an unered
Speaker 1: interview that showed the Fox host getting increasingly irate over
Speaker 1: Bregman's criticism. We walk through both of these events in
Speaker 1: our talk. But most recently, he has a new book
Speaker 1: out titled Human Kind. It makes an argument that we
Speaker 1: don't here presented very often, that most people in their
Speaker 1: nature are actually pretty decent. He makes the case for
Speaker 1: human decency backed by science and history. This may sound
Speaker 1: terribly simplistic or obvious, but that's why I wanted to
Speaker 1: have him on, especially this week as we enter the
Speaker 1: home stretch of this election cycle here in America. I
Speaker 1: have a feeling you may be as worn down as
Speaker 1: I am. The pandemic has exacerbated what would have already
Speaker 1: been a draining election, and so in contemplating what our
Speaker 1: collective future could look like, I thought Rutger's positive philosophies
Speaker 1: may be of value to you and I. Right now,
Speaker 1: I'm still not entirely convinced by everything Rutger says and writes,
Speaker 1: but I do think he has something here, a fundamental
Speaker 1: belief that most people, despite what we see on the
Speaker 1: news on social media, most people are mostly all right.
Speaker 1: Is that hopelessly naive? Maybe? But I'll take that description
Speaker 1: over the alternative, at least today. Rutger Brigman, how are
Speaker 1: you doing right now? I'm good. It's good to see you,
Speaker 1: and thanks for having me this book of Yours human Kind.
Speaker 1: I just finished reading it at five in the morning today.
Speaker 1: I want to know not only how you describe the
Speaker 1: sort of ethos of the book, but where the guiding
Speaker 1: principles and philosophies sit in this moment inside the pandemic. Well,
Speaker 1: it's a book about a very simple idea, idea that
Speaker 1: I can describe in just a couple of words, you know,
Speaker 1: in a short sentence, which would be deep down, most
Speaker 1: people are pretty decent. Now that may sound like I've
Speaker 1: written this nice and warm book about who the Power
Speaker 1: of Kindness or something like that, But what I try
Speaker 1: to argue in the book is that it's a really
Speaker 1: subversive idea, that it has quite radical implications for how
Speaker 1: we structure and govern our society, and that if you
Speaker 1: really believe this, then we can totally reorganize our schools,
Speaker 1: and our democracies, and our prisons and you name it.
Speaker 1: Especially those at the top. Those in power, often become
Speaker 1: quite nervous when you start to argue that most people
Speaker 1: are well, not angels, pretty decent, because it means that
Speaker 1: maybe we don't need them. If people can't trust each other,
Speaker 1: then they need hierarchy. Then they need other people to
Speaker 1: be in control, right, they need monarchs and kings and
Speaker 1: presidents and CEOs and managers. If we can actually trust
Speaker 1: each other, then maybe we can govern ourselves and move
Speaker 1: to a much more democratic, in egalitarian society. So that's
Speaker 1: what the book is basically about. And then the question
Speaker 1: for the past couple of months has obviously been and
Speaker 1: many of my friends have set it's to me, is well,
Speaker 1: now this is the real test of your theory right,
Speaker 1: especially when there was a lot in the news about
Speaker 1: people hoarding toilet paper. Many of my friends couldn't resist
Speaker 1: sort of pointing out, Hey, Rutger, what happened to your
Speaker 1: theory there? In chapter one of the book, you write,
Speaker 1: it's when crisis hits that we humans become our best selves.
Speaker 1: We are in a crisis, do you think we are
Speaker 1: becoming our best selves? Well? And that part of the
Speaker 1: book I focus on natural disasters, and if we see
Speaker 1: a Hollywood movie about a tsunami or an earthquake or
Speaker 1: something like that, then it's easy to get the impression
Speaker 1: that when there's a natural disaster, when crisis hits, that
Speaker 1: we start behaving like beasts, like monsters. You also see
Speaker 1: this in the news a lot. So we all remember Katrina,
Speaker 1: and we all remember what the press did after that.
Speaker 1: The news is full of stories of looting and plundering
Speaker 1: and violence. And then it's interesting to know that actually
Speaker 1: science tells us something very different. Now, we have more
Speaker 1: than seven hundred case studies done by anthropologists and sociologists
Speaker 1: who've done really thorough research into what happens after a
Speaker 1: natural disaster, and every single time they find the same phenomenon,
Speaker 1: an explosion of altruism. People from the left to the right, rich, poor, young,
Speaker 1: old all start collaborating and working together. This is also
Speaker 1: actually what happened after Katrina, but that we only found
Speaker 1: out weeks or months later. Now the question is what
Speaker 1: is a pandemic? What kind of thing is that? It's
Speaker 1: not really like a sudden crisis, right, It's not like
Speaker 1: a sudden war or a sudden natural disaster. It's more
Speaker 1: like we're being occupied by the virus. So it's a
Speaker 1: real test of our endurance. I think that for the
Speaker 1: first couple of months, what really was the most important
Speaker 1: thing to note was that basically billions of people quite
Speaker 1: radically adjusted their lifestyles to stop the virus from spreading further,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty extraordinary thing that we can do
Speaker 1: that we can't really see it. We have to trust
Speaker 1: the experts. Stale people were willing to make pretty big sacrifices.
Speaker 1: But now he goes on and on and on and
Speaker 1: it becomes something different, the test of our endurance. So far,
Speaker 1: I'm still pretty impressed, to be honest, by the global
Speaker 1: corporation that we see and so many experts and scientists
Speaker 1: trying to work on a solution. I think that the
Speaker 1: headline for me is still this massive cooperation that we
Speaker 1: see in so many places in the world, But it's
Speaker 1: not this sudden crisis anymore. I don't think we can
Speaker 1: compare it to a natural disaster anymore. Speaking of natural disasters,
Speaker 1: you mentioned, Katrina, The discussion around what happened in New
Speaker 1: Orleans is often focused on the looting, the rampant poverty,
Speaker 1: the violence. How did you go about ending that dialogue
Speaker 1: in your new book? Since then, there's been a lot
Speaker 1: of books that really try to look into this. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite books on the subject. It was written
Speaker 1: by Rebecca Soulne. It called a Paradise Built in Hell,
Speaker 1: and what she and many others have shown is that
Speaker 1: it didn't happen that way. Sure there was looting, but
Speaker 1: most of the looting was pro social in nature, people
Speaker 1: trying to collect goods and food to share it equally
Speaker 1: to help people survive. You remember, you know, all the
Speaker 1: horrific stories coming out of the Superdome, you know, where
Speaker 1: I think more than twenty thousand people were trapped, and
Speaker 1: then there were stories of people being killed there. None
Speaker 1: of that turned out to be true when they later
Speaker 1: really looked at the evidence. It was all rumors being
Speaker 1: spread around. And that is what you see every single time,
Speaker 1: is that our imagination tends to be really dark at
Speaker 1: those moments, and especially the imagination of those at the top.
Speaker 1: This is a phenomenon that I've encountered a lot during
Speaker 1: my research, is that it's especially those at the top
Speaker 1: who are very cynical because when they think about human nature,
Speaker 1: they look in the mirror and they assume that most
Speaker 1: people are like themselves, which is often quite corrupt because
Speaker 1: power corrupt powers this incredibly dangerous drug, and one of
Speaker 1: the explanation, one of the main explanations for basically evil
Speaker 1: in the world is that you have to be very
Speaker 1: wary of power. And then what happens at moments like
Speaker 1: this is that those at the top in charts have
Speaker 1: this very cynical world view and view of human nature,
Speaker 1: and they based their policy response on that, and instead
Speaker 1: of sending in the emergency services, what they did after
Speaker 1: Katrina they send in the military. What did they start doing, Well,
Speaker 1: started shooting innocent people. So that is the tragedy that
Speaker 1: you often see, first the natural disaster and then the
Speaker 1: second disaster, which often comes from the top In Rebecca
Speaker 1: Solnat's book A Paradise Built in Hell, she wrote, my
Speaker 1: own impression is that the elite panic comes from powerful
Speaker 1: people who see all humanity in their own image. There's
Speaker 1: a Dutch primatologist. His name is Franz d While. He's
Speaker 1: written wonderful books about benobos and chimpanzees, and he has
Speaker 1: a wonderful term for this. He talks about veneer theory.
Speaker 1: And veneer theory is the notion that our civilization is
Speaker 1: only a thin veneer, only a thin layer, and when
Speaker 1: we apply a little bit of pressure, when something happens,
Speaker 1: that this veneer breaks, and that people reveal who they
Speaker 1: really are, which is selfish, which is nasty. You know
Speaker 1: that we basically are these beasts or even monsters. Now,
Speaker 1: veneer theory is very deeply embedded in Western culture. It
Speaker 1: goes back all the way to the ancient Greeks. The
Speaker 1: Greek historian to sit this already was an advocate of
Speaker 1: veneer theory when he wrote about the plague in Athens,
Speaker 1: or when he wrote about the wars between Athenson Sparta.
Speaker 1: It was also Orthodox Christianity. Read the writings of Saint Augustine,
Speaker 1: who talks about original sin, the idea that we're all
Speaker 1: just sinners, and even a small little baby is already
Speaker 1: very sinful. Then he would expect some kind of break
Speaker 1: between orthodox Christianity and the Enlightenment. But actually, if you
Speaker 1: read the Lightnment flaw, they have the same view of
Speaker 1: human nature. Again, veneer theory comes back. So you can
Speaker 1: read Thomas Hobbs, the famous British philosopher who argued that
Speaker 1: back in the state of Nature, we lived lives that
Speaker 1: were nasty, brutish and short, and we were engaging in
Speaker 1: a war of all against all. You also have people
Speaker 1: like David Hume and Adam Smith, who had a more
Speaker 1: mixed view of human nature, but thought that on a
Speaker 1: political level, we should believe that most people are just
Speaker 1: selfish and design our systems around that. Now, then we
Speaker 1: have the founding fathers of the United States, people like
Speaker 1: John Adams who wrote an essay all men would be
Speaker 1: tyrant if they could. Then we have the social Darwinists
Speaker 1: from the nineteenth century. Then we have modern capitalism. And
Speaker 1: I think the central idea of modern neoliberal capitalism, as
Speaker 1: many people call it, is basically that people are fundamentally selfish.
Speaker 1: Many economists have bought into that theory and built a
Speaker 1: cathedral of models around it, and then for decades, if
Speaker 1: you studied economics, this is what you were taught. You
Speaker 1: know in economics one on one that people are just
Speaker 1: the rational, self serving agents. So this notion of Ahneer theory,
Speaker 1: it comes back again and again and again in Western culture. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the reason it comes back again and again,
Speaker 1: or one of the main reasons, is that it's in
Speaker 1: the interest of those in power. It really helps them
Speaker 1: to justify inequality and hierarchy. History is written by the
Speaker 1: victors exactly. And this is also what you see in
Speaker 1: this really famous and important debate between those two philosophers
Speaker 1: from the seventeen and eighteenth century, Thomas Hobbes and Jean
Speaker 1: Jacques Rosseau. So Thomas Hobbes, as I mentioned, believe that
Speaker 1: in the state of nature, when we were hunter gatherers,
Speaker 1: we live these terrible lives, nasty, brutish and short was
Speaker 1: his famous phrase. Jean Jacques Rosseau the French guy, and
Speaker 1: it was often seen as the romantic idealist, revolutionary, bit
Speaker 1: naive thinker. He said that actually, in the state of
Speaker 1: nature life was pretty good, but life as a Nomadican
Speaker 1: together was pretty good and that civilization was the big disaster. Now,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that usually Rousseau has been described as the
Speaker 1: eve guy and Hopes as the realist, and that has
Speaker 1: really been shifting and turning in the past twenty to
Speaker 1: thirty years. More and more experts, anthropologists and archaeologists are
Speaker 1: now starting to believe than actually, all this time it
Speaker 1: was Rousseau who was the real realist and it was
Speaker 1: Thomas Hobbes who was wrong. Now, why don't we know that,
Speaker 1: As you said, histories written by the victors. Nomadican togethers
Speaker 1: don't write a lot of books. They don't do that,
Speaker 1: they travel around, they have these oral cultures. So writing
Speaker 1: itself is an invention of civilization and often written by
Speaker 1: people who are writing in service of the state. So
Speaker 1: the first text that we have that we base our
Speaker 1: view of world history on is often propaganda texts where
Speaker 1: those Nomadican togethers are described as the barbarians and the
Speaker 1: people in cities are described as you, civilized, better, superior beings.
Speaker 1: So you really have to understand that as a historian,
Speaker 1: that the sources that we have are not objective or neutral.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a huge bias in face favor of
Speaker 1: the so called civilized people. You point to Machiavelli, John Adams, Freud,
Speaker 1: Darwin as these a central realists. And I understand why
Speaker 1: these people propagated these ideas of realism as a means
Speaker 1: of control. What I am curious about is why readers
Speaker 1: of that material would believe it. What is their incentive
Speaker 1: to believe their dystopic, heartbreaking view of humanity. So I
Speaker 1: think there are a couple of things here. Cynicism is
Speaker 1: attractive because it gives you an excuse to do nothing.
Speaker 1: I think that often cynicism is another word for laziness,
Speaker 1: because if things are lost anyway, then who cares? And
Speaker 1: then you have to understand that those are the top
Speaker 1: often want you to be cynical because that's how they rule.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at the US election right now,
Speaker 1: a lot of Republicans, they don't use the strategy of
Speaker 1: trying to get more voters. No, they want people who
Speaker 1: are thinking aboutoting for Joe Biden to be more cynical
Speaker 1: so that they don't vote at all. So voter suppression
Speaker 1: is the most cynical strategy that you can imagine in
Speaker 1: a democracy. They want you to be cynical and to
Speaker 1: believe that nothing's ever going to change. Sometimes that's attractive
Speaker 1: as well, because then it just means that you don't
Speaker 1: have to do anything. The other thing that plays an
Speaker 1: important role here is what psychologists call our negativity bias.
Speaker 1: So evil is simply more powerful than good. That's just
Speaker 1: the way it is. The negative is stronger than the positive.
Speaker 1: Why is that just the way it is, Well, there's
Speaker 1: probably an evolutionary reason for it. Imagine you're a nomadic
Speaker 1: and togatherer and you travel around on the savannah or
Speaker 1: on the tun draw or whatever. You know, in a
Speaker 1: world like that, you don't want to be afraid or
Speaker 1: not afraid enough of snakes or spiders, because one mistake
Speaker 1: can be fatal. You'd rather be too afraid or once
Speaker 1: too often because that helps you to survive. So there's
Speaker 1: probably some evolutionary advantage here that this negativity bias for
Speaker 1: thousands of years helped us to survive and have more
Speaker 1: kids and postle on our genes to the next generation.
Speaker 1: But nowadays, in this modern world where we're being bombarded,
Speaker 1: it's on the news all the time and social media,
Speaker 1: there's so much negativity out there, and our brains just explode. Right,
Speaker 1: It's very hard to handle this negativity, but it is
Speaker 1: effective life that you have to deal with. And something
Speaker 1: that I encountered over and over again in my research
Speaker 1: in many different settings is that the only way that
Speaker 1: the good game win is with an overwhelming majority. So
Speaker 1: if you look at protest movements, for example, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of evidence that suggests that peaceful and protest movements
Speaker 1: like Black Lives Matter are more effective than violent protest movements.
Speaker 1: And why are they well, sociologists Erica Chanewe has done
Speaker 1: the huge amount of research and she built a database
Speaker 1: of protest movements that goes back to the year nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: and she's shown that peaceful protest movements just drawing a
Speaker 1: lot more people on average, eleven times more. So they're
Speaker 1: just drawing so many people, you know, kids and men
Speaker 1: and women and poorant young and ault and it's the
Speaker 1: only way the good can win. And then, luckily we
Speaker 1: live in a world where there's more good than evil.
Speaker 1: But it's a bit of a bummer that evil is
Speaker 1: stronger than good. But that's the way it is. In
Speaker 1: terms of the negativity by us. You point to news
Speaker 1: as being one of the culprits in their fascination and
Speaker 1: focus on the exceptional. You speak in this book and
Speaker 1: in previous interviews about how when you rise in the morning,
Speaker 1: try not to watch the news, try to read a book,
Speaker 1: try to go for a long form periodical. But in
Speaker 1: this moment, it does feel like some civil duty to
Speaker 1: watch the news. So I'm interested in sort of your prescription,
Speaker 1: which is, why are we in this toxic relationship with
Speaker 1: the news and how can we break free from it? Well, look,
Speaker 1: I think it's your civil duty to vote, and I
Speaker 1: think that we have more enough information that can help
Speaker 1: us to make up our mind. I think the choice
Speaker 1: is relatively simple. This is from a Dutch perspective. By
Speaker 1: the way, something that I realized last week is, you know,
Speaker 1: when we have elections in the Netherlands, there's a tool,
Speaker 1: a website sort of well, it's it's all that helps
Speaker 1: you to choose what political party you want to vote for.
Speaker 1: And we have a country of seventy million inhabitants and
Speaker 1: I think that around five or six or maybe seven
Speaker 1: million people use that tool. Because we have so many
Speaker 1: political parties and they all have these you know, there
Speaker 1: are all these small differences that it's actually you really
Speaker 1: need that tool before you know you're going to vote
Speaker 1: for it, a kind of cheat sheet. Yeah, exactly, And
Speaker 1: I think that's actually what a healthy democracy looks like,
Speaker 1: where you have actual choice. Now, obviously the US is
Speaker 1: very different, where most people base their vote on you
Speaker 1: know that they hate the other side so much, not
Speaker 1: because they like their own side anyway, that is as
Speaker 1: in a side. I think the thing with the news
Speaker 1: is that the news is almost almost always about what
Speaker 1: happens today instead of what happens every day. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of important things happening right now that
Speaker 1: happens today is such as climate change, but you never
Speaker 1: see a headline that says, today the world was zero
Speaker 1: point zero zero or one degree is hotter than the yesterday.
Speaker 1: But that should be on the front page every day
Speaker 1: because it's one of the most important things in the world.
Speaker 1: We devote much more attention and way too much attention
Speaker 1: to things that are incidents that are sensational, that are
Speaker 1: only happened today instead of every day. This is why,
Speaker 1: for example, terrorism gets so much attention, even though you
Speaker 1: could easily argue that it's not unimportant, but it's a
Speaker 1: relatively marginal phenomenon compared to some of the other threats
Speaker 1: that we are facing as humanity, the decline of biodiversity,
Speaker 1: climate change, artificial intelligence. We all have our favorite existential threats.
Speaker 1: Favorite is the operative word there. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: really striking things actually is this is a really bizarre paradox.
Speaker 1: What often happens is that when things start to improve,
Speaker 1: we get the feeling that they actually deteriorate. So let
Speaker 1: me give you an example. Tax evasion. That's a pet
Speaker 1: issue of mine. Ten years ago, no one it was
Speaker 1: interested in tax evasion. There were very few reports about it,
Speaker 1: very few opinion makers and politicians were talking about it.
Speaker 1: But back then it was actually the worst. It was
Speaker 1: absolutely the worst that you had all these unregulated text paradises.
Speaker 1: Since then, we've made a lot of progress. But now
Speaker 1: there's much more in the news about it because we
Speaker 1: actually have a discussion about it, and there's much more
Speaker 1: discussion around increasing inequality and the role of these awful
Speaker 1: text paradises such as the Netherlands, by the way, but
Speaker 1: we've actually made quite a bit of progress. So for example,
Speaker 1: Switzerland used to have this bank secrecy law. Well it
Speaker 1: was demolished by the United States and their President Obama.
Speaker 1: So that is great, but the feeling is that I
Speaker 1: actually has become worse. This is very paradoxical thing. One
Speaker 1: study that I talk about in the book is study
Speaker 1: into airplane crashes. So airplanes have become much safer in
Speaker 1: the past couple of decades, but that's also the reason
Speaker 1: why these airplane crashes became more news worth, more of
Speaker 1: an incident. So if you actually do polls and people
Speaker 1: are sort of more scared to step into airplanes that
Speaker 1: have become increasingly safe, right, this is a very strange
Speaker 1: paradox and another reason why I think you should be
Speaker 1: a little bit wary of following the news, because it
Speaker 1: just you get this upside down wilt few and you
Speaker 1: give your attention and your your emotional energy to the
Speaker 1: wrong things. This is a complicated issue because you can
Speaker 1: point to something like policing in America and you can
Speaker 1: say ninety nine percent of active police force do their
Speaker 1: job with diligence, a moral compass, and some bit of compassion.
Speaker 1: Then you could say one percent, or even if it's
Speaker 1: point one percent, create these kind of news worthy moments
Speaker 1: where black and brown people in this country are unjustly
Speaker 1: and unfairly attacked over and over again. And by this argument,
Speaker 1: we should be saying every day on the news, look
Speaker 1: at how many police officers did their job effectively, safely,
Speaker 1: and efficiently. Chris Rock has a great joke about this.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. Here's the thing. I know it's hard
Speaker 1: being a cop. I know it's hard. I know that
Speaker 1: shit's dangerous. I know it is. Okay, but some jobs
Speaker 1: can't have bad apples. Okay, some jobs everybody gotta be good.
Speaker 1: Like pilots. Yeah, American airlines can't be like you know,
Speaker 1: most of our pilots like to land. We just got
Speaker 1: a few bad apples that like to crash in the mountains. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at policing in the US and zoom
Speaker 1: out a little bit and take the international context into account,
Speaker 1: you know, the US is really an outlier. So it's
Speaker 1: not just a few apples here and there. But if
Speaker 1: you just look at the numbers and the amount of
Speaker 1: police violence, it's much much higher than in most other
Speaker 1: developed countries. If you also look at the quality of
Speaker 1: police training, it's a totally different planet than Europe. If
Speaker 1: you look at Scandinavian countries, for example, or the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: police training takes much longer, so it takes you about
Speaker 1: three or four years before you are a police officer.
Speaker 1: In the US, it's often, you know, nineteen twenty weeks
Speaker 1: and then they already give you this military equipment. And
Speaker 1: police training in Europe is often all about de escalation,
Speaker 1: so from day one you hear only about the importance
Speaker 1: of de escalation, d escalation, talk talk, talk, talk talk.
Speaker 1: Very often police officers don't even carry guns, so ninety
Speaker 1: percent of police officer unity in London don't carry guns.
Speaker 1: In Norway, you have these prisons where the guards just
Speaker 1: socialized with the inmates. For example. I have one chapter
Speaker 1: about that in the book, which is the most radical
Speaker 1: application of the theory that most people are pretty decent,
Speaker 1: because what they do there is that you have people
Speaker 1: there who've done pretty terrible things in very violent, murder, rape,
Speaker 1: you name it, but they end up in a prison
Speaker 1: where the penalty is they've lost their freedom. But apart
Speaker 1: from that, they can just be part of a small
Speaker 1: society where they have the freedom to make music, read books,
Speaker 1: go to the cinema, They have their own music studio,
Speaker 1: they have to cut their own music label, which is
Speaker 1: called Criminal Records. You look at that and sort of
Speaker 1: your intuition says, well, this is clearly wrong, this is
Speaker 1: not what justice looks like. But then you look at
Speaker 1: the statistics and the scientific research and you realize, hey,
Speaker 1: wait a minute. Norway has the lowest recidivism rate in
Speaker 1: the world, the lowest chance that someone will commit another
Speaker 1: crime once he or she gets out of prison, So
Speaker 1: it really works the USS the opposite, absolutely opposite, where
Speaker 1: these prisons are basically schools for more crime, where very
Speaker 1: often people come in for small drug offenses, for example,
Speaker 1: and they come out as hardened criminals, which is if
Speaker 1: you think about it, it's a crazy system. You have
Speaker 1: these tax funded institute to get more crime. Basically, I
Speaker 1: think that if you zoom out a little bit and
Speaker 1: look at the international context, it's not just incidents. How
Speaker 1: many George Floyd's have there been before George Floyd? And
Speaker 1: if you look at policing in the whole criminal justice
Speaker 1: system in the US, I think there are so many
Speaker 1: things fundamentally wrong. And that's not something that happened yesterday
Speaker 1: or this year. It's been developing since the seventies. It
Speaker 1: has a very long and deep history. You mentioned tax
Speaker 1: avoidance and on the subject of pressing issues that I
Speaker 1: think you are actively combating. Many people learned of you
Speaker 1: and your work last year when you made your first,
Speaker 1: and let's be honest, probably last appearance at Davos. I
Speaker 1: don't think you're getting invited back. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you'd even go. Oh, I would go. I'd love to.
Speaker 1: I would just give the same speech again. Why don't
Speaker 1: we take a listen to some of that monologue from
Speaker 1: your appearance at Davos in January of twenty nine. This
Speaker 1: is my first time at DeVos, and I find it
Speaker 1: quite a bewildering experience, to be honest, I mean, fifteen
Speaker 1: hundred private yet I've flown in here to here, sir
Speaker 1: David etam Brass speak about, you know, how we're wrecking
Speaker 1: the planet. And I mean I heard people talk in
Speaker 1: the language of participation and justice and equality and transparency.
Speaker 1: But then I mean almost no one raises the real
Speaker 1: issue of tax avoidance right, and of the rich just
Speaker 1: not paying their fair share. I mean it feels like
Speaker 1: I met a firefighters fighters conference and no one's allowed
Speaker 1: to speak about water right. There was there was only
Speaker 1: one panel. Actually we've had two. You're the second one.
Speaker 1: There was only one panel. Let's go there, one panel
Speaker 1: hidden away in the media center that was actually about
Speaker 1: tax avoidance. I was about I was one of the
Speaker 1: fifteen participants. So something needs to change here. I mean,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, the Water Economic Forum asked the question,
Speaker 1: what must industry do to prevent a broad social backlash?
Speaker 1: The answer is very simple, just stop talking about philanthropy
Speaker 1: and start talking about Texas. Texas, Texas. We need to.
Speaker 1: I mean, just two days ago, there was a billionaire
Speaker 1: and are what's his name, Michael Dell, and he asked
Speaker 1: the question, like, name me one country where a top
Speaker 1: marginal text rate of seventy percent has actually worked. And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a historian. The United States, that's where
Speaker 1: it has actually worked. In the nineteen fifties, during Republican
Speaker 1: President Eisenhower, you know, the war veteran, the top marginal
Speaker 1: text rate in the US was ninety one percent for
Speaker 1: people like Michael Dell. You know, the top estate tax
Speaker 1: for people like Michael Ell was more than seventy percent.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is not rocket science. I mean, we
Speaker 1: can talk for a very long time about all these
Speaker 1: stupid philanthropy schemes. We can avide bono once more. But
Speaker 1: come on, it's we gotta be talking about Texas. That's it, Texas, Texas, Texas.
Speaker 1: All the rest is bullshit. In my opinion, walk me
Speaker 1: through this moment, because your words didn't feel like an accident.
Speaker 1: What happened in the day is leading up to this appearance.
Speaker 1: So I was indeed to dub Us to talk about
Speaker 1: my previous book, which is called Utopia for Realists. That
Speaker 1: book was about how seemingly crazy ideas can become reality,
Speaker 1: something that we've seen many times in history, right the
Speaker 1: abolition of slavery, equal rights from men and women, the
Speaker 1: welfare state. All these things were utopian ones until they happened,
Speaker 1: and so I've always been very interested in that process
Speaker 1: as a historian. I mean in history for me basically
Speaker 1: is the signs of change, how things that seem completely
Speaker 1: bizarre can actually happen for the better or for the worst.
Speaker 1: So one of the ideas in Utopia for Realists was
Speaker 1: the idea of giving everyone a basic income. When I
Speaker 1: wrote the book six years ago, that was a pretty
Speaker 1: much forgotten idea, but in the past couple of years
Speaker 1: it had become more and more popular, especially in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 1: Circles because people were starting to get worried about automation
Speaker 1: and the threat of robots to our jobs, and we're wondering,
Speaker 1: how are people going to survive if they don't have
Speaker 1: a job anymore. Maybe we just can need to give
Speaker 1: them money. That's actually the worst argument in favor of
Speaker 1: basic income. I think they are much better arguments such
Speaker 1: as basic income is just an investment that pace for itself,
Speaker 1: kids do better in school, crime goes down, healthcare calls
Speaker 1: go down. Etc. Anyway, I was there to talk about
Speaker 1: basic income, and I was also just curious it doesn't
Speaker 1: happen every day that you get an invitation for Davos.
Speaker 1: I almost didn't go, I must say, because they wanted
Speaker 1: me to pay for my own stay and it was
Speaker 1: very expensive. I had to pay like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: three thousand euros for just a couple of days. And
Speaker 1: for those listening, explain what Davos is. Oh, yeah, Davos.
Speaker 1: It's just where the richest of the rich go every year,
Speaker 1: with very powerful politicians attending as well, to talk about
Speaker 1: the great problems in the world. It's a really crazy
Speaker 1: You walk around there and you see, Hey, that's Bill Gates.
Speaker 1: Hey that's a former president of the UNS. Hey, that's
Speaker 1: he's very high at the UN. It's a very bizarre
Speaker 1: place to be and just the level of security is
Speaker 1: crazy as well. There's this whole cost system, so you
Speaker 1: get a pause that determines everything. So the journalists are
Speaker 1: the lowest. They can't go anywhere, you know, they are
Speaker 1: only allowed in the main hall. And then as you're
Speaker 1: more important, you go up and obviously the billionaires and
Speaker 1: the really powerful politicians are a level. And so I
Speaker 1: was pretty high. Actually it was pretty high because I
Speaker 1: was invited as a speaker, so I could go almost everywhere,
Speaker 1: which was fun. I was, you know, also allowed to
Speaker 1: attend a lot of private discussions and debates. So I
Speaker 1: was just walking around that conference that week, and I
Speaker 1: became more and more uncomfortable because here you have all
Speaker 1: these people who are pretty nice, you know, they're actually
Speaker 1: quite frankly, and they talk about issues that I care
Speaker 1: about as well, feminism and inequality and climate change. You know,
Speaker 1: you had David Edenburgh showing his new series. Have you
Speaker 1: seen this new thing on Netflix? It's really great there.
Speaker 1: Actually there's a part where you see people in Davos
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen responding to some of his footage, and I
Speaker 1: saw people crying. I saw people crying there, you know,
Speaker 1: just seeing the impact of climate change and of human
Speaker 1: activity on the natural world and how we're basically wrecking
Speaker 1: the planet. And I just I thought it was crazy
Speaker 1: because I knew that thousands of private jets had flown
Speaker 1: in so that people could attend Davos. I knew that
Speaker 1: the environmental impact of just one average individual in Davos
Speaker 1: was as big as a whole city, or well, maybe
Speaker 1: not the whole city, the whole village in subser and Avoca, Right,
Speaker 1: So I thought it was sort of the high summit
Speaker 1: of hypocrisy. And yeah, I became quite uncomfortable with that.
Speaker 1: It was the last day that I had to participate
Speaker 1: in a panel that I knew was going to be televised,
Speaker 1: or at least cameras were going to be present, and
Speaker 1: people were going to watch the live stream. I think
Speaker 1: kind of know four or five hundred people watched the
Speaker 1: live stream. So the day before I was talking about
Speaker 1: that with my wife and I said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to promote my book there, say my
Speaker 1: standard things in favor of basic income, and then I'm
Speaker 1: going to get the first train out of here because
Speaker 1: I've got enough of this. And she said, are you
Speaker 1: really going to do that? Why don't you just say
Speaker 1: what you really think? I mean, you mentioned eras and
Speaker 1: they said, well, hey, maybe you're right. So I took
Speaker 1: up my iPhone and wrote these short notes on what
Speaker 1: I really thought about the whole conference. So yeah. The
Speaker 1: next morning there was this panel and it took about
Speaker 1: twenty or thirty minutes before I got the opportunity to speak.
Speaker 1: The moderator asked me something about poverty and the psychology
Speaker 1: of it, and I just ignored his question and gave
Speaker 1: my speech. That's basically how it happened, and I felt
Speaker 1: good about it. I got back home and nothing much
Speaker 1: happened basically. I mean, a couple of my friends saw
Speaker 1: it and it did okay on Twitter. But then I
Speaker 1: think it was Sunday or Monday that it completely exploded
Speaker 1: because people started to make viral videos out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think because I basically said what everyone else thinks,
Speaker 1: but you know, most people are not invited two days places.
Speaker 1: How did the room and panelists feel in the moment
Speaker 1: as you're talking about tax avoidance and the hypocrisy of
Speaker 1: this event. What was the temperature in the room, Well,
Speaker 1: temperature went up quite a bit and it was a
Speaker 1: quite mixed response. So you have to imagine there are
Speaker 1: quite a few young people that they call, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's a group called Global Leaders or something like that,
Speaker 1: and I think they liked it. There were quite a
Speaker 1: few journalists who absolutely loved it, and there were quite
Speaker 1: a few billionaires and really rich people who absolutely hated it.
Speaker 1: But you have to imagine that this was not a
Speaker 1: very well attended panel. It was sort of the activist panel,
Speaker 1: you know. It wasn't the thing that most of the
Speaker 1: really powerful and rich people would go to. But just
Speaker 1: the fact that we were there in Davos and that
Speaker 1: behind me was the logo of the World Economic Forum
Speaker 1: that made all the difference. So it was I thought
Speaker 1: it was just hilarious that, out of everything to come
Speaker 1: out of Davos that year, and they spend millions on
Speaker 1: PR and on fancy videos, etc. It was all drowned,
Speaker 1: drowned out by this one viral video of this Dutch
Speaker 1: idiot talking about Texas, Texas, Texas. So yeah, I had
Speaker 1: a lot of Is that how you describe yourself a
Speaker 1: Dutch idiot. Yeah sometimes Yeah, Why is the idea of
Speaker 1: tax avoidance so radical? Well, I think that in adjust society,
Speaker 1: people share, So sharing is very much a part of
Speaker 1: human nature. If you look at nomadic and to gatherers,
Speaker 1: and if you study those societies, then you see that
Speaker 1: the ethos of sharing is incredibly important. Humility is very important,
Speaker 1: Shame plays a very important role. We are the only
Speaker 1: species in the whole animal kingdom with the ability to blush,
Speaker 1: which is such a striking fact, right that we involuntarily
Speaker 1: give away our feelings to each other in order to
Speaker 1: establish trust. But when societies scale up, when we start
Speaker 1: living in villages and cities, and we have these technologies
Speaker 1: and financial systems and you name it, then the distance
Speaker 1: between people increases and people can become more shameless. So
Speaker 1: for the biggest part of our history, there was actually
Speaker 1: a process that scientists will survive of the friendliest. Again,
Speaker 1: when we lived as nomadic and to gatherers, the biggest
Speaker 1: part of our history, it was actually the friendliest among
Speaker 1: us who had the most kids and had the biggest
Speaker 1: chance of passing on their genes to the next generation.
Speaker 1: But then a relatively short while ago, ten thousand years ago,
Speaker 1: which is nothing, you know, if you look at whole
Speaker 1: world history. We started living in a world that is
Speaker 1: often more about survival of the shameless, which is very
Speaker 1: disturbing if you think about it. How is it possible
Speaker 1: that people who you wouldn't want to take care of
Speaker 1: your kids have now become the most powerful political leaders
Speaker 1: in the US and India and the UK and Brazil. Right,
Speaker 1: we see the survival of the shameless everywhere, which is
Speaker 1: a real indictment of our system. And I think the
Speaker 1: same thing you see with tax avoidance. So in any
Speaker 1: just healthy society, paying taxes seen as specific duty right,
Speaker 1: something to be proud of. Actually, you also have a
Speaker 1: certain amount of transparency. So for example, in Norway, people
Speaker 1: know what other people pay in taxes. You can just
Speaker 1: look it up. If you want to know what your
Speaker 1: neighbors pay in taxes, you just type in their address
Speaker 1: in their name. There you have it. It's just sort
Speaker 1: of a transparent way of making sure that everyone knows
Speaker 1: that everyone contributes to the common good. The fact that
Speaker 1: we ended up in a society were very often paying
Speaker 1: taxes scene as something that is bad, that you're a
Speaker 1: little bit stupid. If you pay a lot in tax.
Speaker 1: It's very disturbing. I try to push against that because actually,
Speaker 1: in the best periods of our history. So if you
Speaker 1: look at American history and you look at the fifties
Speaker 1: and the sixties, where we at strongest economic growth and
Speaker 1: the highest levels of innovation, these were actually the periods
Speaker 1: where people paid most in tax. The top marginal tax
Speaker 1: rate if you were very rich went up all the
Speaker 1: way to nine. And we had very high inheritance taxes
Speaker 1: and taxes on estates and on wealth and you name it.
Speaker 1: And that actually went hand in hand with economic growth.
Speaker 1: So capitalism cannot function properly if you do not tame it,
Speaker 1: if you do not make sure that everyone benefits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very simple thing, but there's just so much
Speaker 1: historical and economic evidence for it that I felt that
Speaker 1: you just need to repeat it all over again, because
Speaker 1: if you don't have that, I don't think that you
Speaker 1: can have a just society or a stable society. Putting
Speaker 1: a pause on the conversation for a second. As some
Speaker 1: of you know, we are an independently operated podcast. That
Speaker 1: also means we are a listener supported podcast. But in
Speaker 1: this moment, the easiest and most helpful thing you could
Speaker 1: do for us right now is to share the show
Speaker 1: on social media over email with the friend family. Sharing
Speaker 1: this podcast is really the best way for new listeners
Speaker 1: to find what we do here. So if you can,
Speaker 1: and if you'd like to pass it along, whether it's
Speaker 1: our episode with Representative Ilhan Omar, doctor Cornell West, Noam Chomsky,
Speaker 1: Better Rourke, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ted Danson, Juliette Lewis, Miranda July,
Speaker 1: Claudia Rankin, glory A Steinham, Janelle Monee, Brittany Howard, Carol Burnett,
Speaker 1: Titus Burgess, Norman Lear, Jenny Slate. Those are just some
Speaker 1: of the select few who've come on in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: If any of those talks have meant anything to you,
Speaker 1: it would mean the world if you shared it online
Speaker 1: with a friend, family member, stranger. I'm not gonna tell
Speaker 1: you who to share it with, but it would mean
Speaker 1: a lot to me, and mean a lot to everyone
Speaker 1: who makes this podcast possible, and it would ensure that
Speaker 1: we can continue making this podcast into twenty twenty one.
Speaker 1: Thank you in advance for your support, your generosity, and
Speaker 1: your time. I don't take any of those things for granted.
Speaker 1: And now back to Rucker Bregman. I think some people
Speaker 1: may be listening to you talk about how selflessness is
Speaker 1: actually our core, that's our true nature, and they're thinking, well,
Speaker 1: that toilet paper sure went fast. Oh all the chlorox
Speaker 1: wipes apparently we all needed to have eighty cases of
Speaker 1: them make the case for our nature being selfless in
Speaker 1: that prehistory period that you write about. So one of
Speaker 1: the most important questions that Signs have lost for a
Speaker 1: very long time is why us? Why have we conquered
Speaker 1: the globe? Why not the chimpanzees, Why not the penguins,
Speaker 1: Why not the benobos, why not the Neanderthals? What makes
Speaker 1: us so special? For a very long time, people believe
Speaker 1: that we were chosen by God. Then people started to
Speaker 1: believe that we are very rational, very smart compared to
Speaker 1: other species. Then other people said, well, maybe we're just
Speaker 1: very violent or mean. You know, that's what the social
Speaker 1: darminists started to believe. Survive of the nauseous. But the
Speaker 1: interesting thing is that if you compare animals, if you
Speaker 1: compare a chimpanzee, bonobo and a human toddler of around
Speaker 1: two years old and do an intelligence test, for example,
Speaker 1: then often the chimpanzees win or the pigs if they
Speaker 1: participate as well. They do in the pigs are incredibly smart.
Speaker 1: But it's also interesting because there's actually not a lot
Speaker 1: of evidence that on an individual level, people are very smart.
Speaker 1: Most of the stuff we know we learn from other people.
Speaker 1: I'm now looking at a camera. I have no idea
Speaker 1: how the camera works. I have a laptop in front
Speaker 1: of me, I've got a microphone, I've got a table,
Speaker 1: i've got coffee here, and almost everything around me. I've
Speaker 1: absolutely a clue how to make it on my own.
Speaker 1: People are incredibly incompetent individually, but collectively we're pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: We can do extraordinary things, and that is really what
Speaker 1: makes us special. So, you know, the famous scientist Newton
Speaker 1: once said that if he had seen further than others,
Speaker 1: that was because he stood on the shoulder of giants,
Speaker 1: And I think that's wrong. If we see further than
Speaker 1: other species, it's because we stand on the shoulder of dwarves.
Speaker 1: That's humanity. You just pile a lot of dwarves on
Speaker 1: top of each other, then they can see very far.
Speaker 1: That's really what distinguishes us. We're not very mean, we're
Speaker 1: not very strong. Chimpanzees are much stronger. Bulls are much stronger.
Speaker 1: We're not very quick either, We're not very smart. It's
Speaker 1: just that we can just cooperate on a skill that
Speaker 1: no other species in all animal kingdom can. We're relatively friendly. Now.
Speaker 1: The evidence for that is something that you can really
Speaker 1: see within our bodies today. So I already talked about blushing.
Speaker 1: I haven't talked yet about our unique eyes. So human
Speaker 1: beings have unique cooperative eyes. We have whitees clearer, We've
Speaker 1: got white around our irises, so that means that we
Speaker 1: can track each other gazes. We can see what we
Speaker 1: are looking at with other people are looking at with
Speaker 1: all the other primates, chimpanzees, binobas, you name it. That's different.
Speaker 1: They've got dark around their eyes, which means they're a
Speaker 1: little bit like Mafiozzi, you know, wearing shades, which obviously
Speaker 1: makes it hard to trust. It's much easier if you
Speaker 1: can look one another in the eye. Yeah. This capacity
Speaker 1: for friendliness, this capacity that we can trust each other
Speaker 1: if we can actually see, feel, and hear each other,
Speaker 1: that is so deeply embedded in our evolution. And the
Speaker 1: most interesting thing actually is that if you compare skeletons
Speaker 1: from fifty twenty ten thousand years ago. Then you actually
Speaker 1: start to see that people look nicer. We've evolved to
Speaker 1: be nicer. Right, we have smaller brains, we have thinner bones.
Speaker 1: We look more puppyish basically, So what a dog is
Speaker 1: compared to a wolf, that's what we are. Compared to
Speaker 1: the endethal. We've domesticated ourselves. We are what I call homopuppy. Again,
Speaker 1: you speak of a kind of core common understanding that
Speaker 1: we can naturally have with one another. And in this
Speaker 1: country we have never seemingly been more divided, or at
Speaker 1: least that divide has never been so pronounced or out
Speaker 1: in the open. Part of your book contends that this friction,
Speaker 1: this divide started at the end of the Last Ice Age,
Speaker 1: where land started to cause these problems. Towns and village
Speaker 1: were created, and in those towns and villages people started
Speaker 1: claiming land. With land comes inheritance, As land as passed
Speaker 1: from generation a generation, the ownership of land breeds larger
Speaker 1: and larger economic inequality. How do we undo years in
Speaker 1: centuries and millenniums of history. You know, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about fixing right now, we're up against such a seismic
Speaker 1: such a long history here, it seems improbable that we
Speaker 1: can undo that. Well, look, we can't go back, obviously,
Speaker 1: that's impossible. I'm not advocating a hunter gatherer lifestyle that
Speaker 1: even if, even if we want to do that, that's
Speaker 1: simply impossible because we simply do not have the knowledge.
Speaker 1: It's actually really really difficult, and there's a huge amount
Speaker 1: of cultural knowledge that you need in order to survive.
Speaker 1: What I do think is important, though, is that we
Speaker 1: have a more realistic view of human nature so that
Speaker 1: we can design our institutions around that, because what we
Speaker 1: assume in other people is what we get out of them.
Speaker 1: If we have schools, workplaces, democracies, prisons that assume the
Speaker 1: worst in other people, then that's what we're going to get.
Speaker 1: Think about the traditional boarding school the Lord of the Flies,
Speaker 1: like boarding school right where you assume that kids are
Speaker 1: naturally lazy and selfish, Well, then you need a strict hierarchy, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: And you're going to prepare people for a very nasty
Speaker 1: and competitive society. I think we should turn it around,
Speaker 1: should realize that ideas are never merely ideas. Stories are
Speaker 1: never just stories. We become what we tell ourselves. I
Speaker 1: have one chapter in the book about Lord of the Flies,
Speaker 1: the extraordinary famous novel by William Golding written in the
Speaker 1: fifties about kids that shipwreck on an island and turn
Speaker 1: into monsters. You know, another example of this veneer theory.
Speaker 1: Millions and millions of people were basically forced to read
Speaker 1: it at school, and that must have had an impact.
Speaker 1: So many times when we think about how we should
Speaker 1: govern our workplaces or societies, that people think back on
Speaker 1: this novel and say, well, maybe not give people too
Speaker 1: much treat them, because then things get out of hand
Speaker 1: very quickly, And that's why I think we need news stories.
Speaker 1: But I mean I must also emphasize that obviously, the
Speaker 1: big question that hangs over a book like this, if
Speaker 1: people have evolved to be friendly, then why are we
Speaker 1: often so cruel? Why are we the cruelest species in
Speaker 1: the whole animal kingdom? Because that's clearly true as well.
Speaker 1: I've never heard of a penguin that says, let's lock
Speaker 1: up other groups of penguins and kill them in exterminate them,
Speaker 1: all right. These are singularly human crimes. And I think
Speaker 1: one interesting aspect here is that there's a connection between
Speaker 1: our friendliness and our horrible behavior. If you look at
Speaker 1: atrocities in world history, if you look at wars and genocides,
Speaker 1: then what you start to understand quite quickly is that
Speaker 1: sadism is not the motivating force. People don't really enjoy violence.
Speaker 1: Sadists do exists, but it's very, very rare. So the
Speaker 1: joker as a model to understand human evil that is
Speaker 1: absolutely wrong. Most evil is committed in the name of
Speaker 1: the good, in the name of loyalty, for example, or
Speaker 1: comradeship or friendship, because you want to be loyal to
Speaker 1: your own group and you want to help your friends.
Speaker 1: I've got one chapter in the book about German soldiers
Speaker 1: fighting in nineteen forty four and ninety forty five, even
Speaker 1: though it's clear they were going to lose the war,
Speaker 1: and Allied psychologists couldn't understand. They thought these people must
Speaker 1: have been brainwashed, you know, they've turned into monsters. What's
Speaker 1: happening here. Then they start interviewing prisoners of war and
Speaker 1: they realize that actually these soldiers were not fighting, or
Speaker 1: most of them were not fighting for grand ideologies or
Speaker 1: something like that, but for their friends. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to let their friends down. Now that obviously that explanation
Speaker 1: doesn't work for all the atrocities. If you want to
Speaker 1: understand an ss kemp guard, then ideology becomes much more important.
Speaker 1: But this dynamic where people justify their atrocities in the
Speaker 1: name of some higher cause is something that you encounter
Speaker 1: again and again in history, and it is very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1: So I'm not saying this as a way to make
Speaker 1: people comfortable and say, oh, that's that justifies it. No,
Speaker 1: it's actually very disturbing because it makes you question your
Speaker 1: own ideals. You know. That gets me actually back to
Speaker 1: my previous book, Utopia Frealists, about how we actually make
Speaker 1: progress and how bizarre ideas become reality. Well, that often
Speaker 1: starts with people who are really unfriendly and who are
Speaker 1: willing to go against the status quo. Greater Thunberg said
Speaker 1: this a while ago, you know, when she spoke to
Speaker 1: world leaders at the UN she said, you're too afraid
Speaker 1: to be unpopular. And that's so often the problem with homopuppy.
Speaker 1: Homopuppy wants to be loved, wants to be loved, wants
Speaker 1: to be part of the group, and so often that
Speaker 1: is exactly the problem. I have a very paradoxical message
Speaker 1: at the end of the book is the s you've
Speaker 1: evolved to be friendly. But that's the problem. Actually, if
Speaker 1: you want to make progress, then often we need to
Speaker 1: be a little bit unfriendly and unpopular. Can we go
Speaker 1: to a moment where you were particularly unfriendly On the
Speaker 1: heels of your Davos takedown, Tucker Carlson invited you onto
Speaker 1: his Fox program to talk about tax avoidance. The interview
Speaker 1: never made it to air, but a phone recording of
Speaker 1: your back and forth surfaced online. Why don't we take
Speaker 1: a listen for a second. This is you and Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson last year. America is still pretty much the most
Speaker 1: powerful country in the world. Right so if it, if
Speaker 1: it really would want to, it could easily crack down
Speaker 1: on tex paradises. But the thing is, I mean, you
Speaker 1: guys have brought into power a president that doesn't even
Speaker 1: want to show its own text referns. I mean, who
Speaker 1: knows how many billions he has hidden in the Kimon
Speaker 1: Islands or in Bermuda. So I think the issue really
Speaker 1: is one of corruption and of people being bribed, and
Speaker 1: of not being you know, not talking about the real issues.
Speaker 1: What the family, you know, what the Murdocks basically want
Speaker 1: you to do is to scapegoat immigrants instead of talking
Speaker 1: about tax avoidance. So I'm glad you're now finally raising
Speaker 1: the issue. But that's what's been been happening for the
Speaker 1: past couple of years. And I'm taking I'm taking orders
Speaker 1: from the murdocks. Is that what you're saying? No, I mean,
Speaker 1: it doesn't work that directly, but I mean you've been
Speaker 1: part of the Cato Institute, right, you're you've been a
Speaker 1: senior fellow there for years. You've been You've been taking
Speaker 1: their dirty money. They're funded by billionaires. You know. Why
Speaker 1: don't you tell me how it does work? Well, it
Speaker 1: works by you taking their dirty money. It's as easy
Speaker 1: as that. I mean, you are a millionaire funded by billionaires.
Speaker 1: That's what you are. And I'm glad you now finally
Speaker 1: jumped the bentwagon. You know of people like Bernie Sanders
Speaker 1: and AOC, but you're not You're not part of the solution,
Speaker 1: mister and mister Carlson, you're part of the problem. Actually,
Speaker 1: Can I just say, and it's true, right, it's true,
Speaker 1: right that all the all the anchors, all the anchors
Speaker 1: on Fox, they're all millionaires. How is this possible? Well,
Speaker 1: it's very easy. You're just still talking about certain things.
Speaker 1: It doesn't even where you are. It doesn't play where
Speaker 1: you are. Well, have you heard of the internet? I
Speaker 1: can watch things whatever I want, you know I have. Actually,
Speaker 1: I can't say I'm a great fan of your show,
Speaker 1: but I do my homework when you invite me on
Speaker 1: your show. So, I mean, you're probably not gonna air this,
Speaker 1: but I went to Divos to speak truth to power
Speaker 1: and I'm doing exactly the same thing right now. You
Speaker 1: might not like it, but you're a millionaire funded by billionaires,
Speaker 1: and that's the reason why you're not talking about these issues.
Speaker 1: But I am talking. Yeah, only now come on, you
Speaker 1: jump the bandwagon. You're all like, oh, I'm against the
Speaker 1: globalist the lead, blah blah blah. It's not very convincing
Speaker 1: to be honest yourself, your tiny brains. And I hope
Speaker 1: this gets picked up because you're a moron. I try
Speaker 1: to get you a hearing. You can't handle the criticism.
Speaker 1: Canyon re listening to that exchange, I'm curious, do you
Speaker 1: fundamentally believe everyone your respect of race, class, politics, upbringing.
Speaker 1: Do you believe everyone can be reached in conversation? Because
Speaker 1: if you don't. I'm curious why you'd go on a
Speaker 1: program like his. Well, I would say that on a
Speaker 1: fundamental human level, yes, But obviously we don't live in
Speaker 1: a society like that. In our mediacricy, there's a very
Speaker 1: different dynamic at play. And so when you're being invited
Speaker 1: by someone like Tucker Carlson to be on a show,
Speaker 1: and he wanted me to, He wanted to congratulate me
Speaker 1: on what I said, adove us and that I stood
Speaker 1: up to these hypocrite billionaires, and he thought it was awesome.
Speaker 1: And I think then my role at that point was
Speaker 1: to point out his hypocrisy because, as I sat back, then,
Speaker 1: he's a millionaire funded by billionaires to spread hate and
Speaker 1: tell lies about immigrants and people of color. That's basically
Speaker 1: his job. So in the world we live right now,
Speaker 1: and in that sense, I was a realist. I think
Speaker 1: that was the best thing I could do. Now, if
Speaker 1: it would have been my uncle at some kind of
Speaker 1: birthday party, maybe I would have tried something different. But
Speaker 1: as I said, Humankind, my book is not an argument
Speaker 1: in favor of that you should always be kind. Actually,
Speaker 1: very often the just thing is to be pretty unkind
Speaker 1: and to be a little bit nasty to go against
Speaker 1: the status quore, and I wasn't sure afterwards because to
Speaker 1: be honest, I didn't really plan this all that well.
Speaker 1: It sort of happened by accident, so I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: afterwards whether I'd done the right thing. But then I
Speaker 1: started to see that a lot of fans of Tucker
Speaker 1: Carlson on his own YouTube channel were actually saying, you
Speaker 1: know what, I love you, but you were wrong here
Speaker 1: and he actually has a point and you needed to
Speaker 1: debate him on this, so and then I thought maybe
Speaker 1: it was a good thing after all, especially because everything
Speaker 1: has become so groupish in America that it's very easy
Speaker 1: to be pleasing to the people who already like you, right,
Speaker 1: and it's difficult to reach those on the other side.
Speaker 1: But then again, everything is so polarized now, and especially
Speaker 1: Democrats have right for so long to have this compromising
Speaker 1: approach and it let nowhere. So I'm much more enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about this younger generation of politicians like AOC and the
Speaker 1: Sunrise Movement and just as Democrats and you name it,
Speaker 1: who are basically saying this is what it is. These
Speaker 1: are the huge challenges that I had and we're not
Speaker 1: going to compromise here. But that's also because it's a
Speaker 1: question whether it's even a democracy. Right in the Netherlands,
Speaker 1: we have coalitions, always coalitions, so three, four or five
Speaker 1: political parties governed together. So then obviously if you need
Speaker 1: to govern together, then you need to talk to one
Speaker 1: another and you're not going to say really nasty things
Speaker 1: about the prime minister of the other political party because
Speaker 1: you need to work with that guy. And I think
Speaker 1: that's what a healthy democracy looks like, where you are
Speaker 1: basically forced to work together. But that's sadly not the
Speaker 1: case in the US, where you have a very bizarre
Speaker 1: system of minority rule. One of the criticisms you've had
Speaker 1: of progressivism is that people on the left have not
Speaker 1: been clear about what they believe in. They've been abundantly
Speaker 1: clear about what they oppose. Sexism and racism, misogyny in
Speaker 1: all forms, climate change, the establishment, austerity, you name it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: against everything. There was even a book with the title
Speaker 1: against Everything that was published a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's really a problem. Very often we only
Speaker 1: know what we're against instead of what we're actually for.
Speaker 1: Why do you think that is? That was my criticism
Speaker 1: in utopia frealists when I wrote that book twenty fourteen,
Speaker 1: and it had actually changed quite a bit. Obviously, that
Speaker 1: book was an argument in favor of utopian thinking, of
Speaker 1: actually knowing where you want to go. And if you
Speaker 1: now look at this no generation of politicians, I mean
Speaker 1: Naomi Klein and AOC did this video together of what
Speaker 1: a better and more just society could actually look like.
Speaker 1: And there's so many exciting new ideas that people are
Speaker 1: talking about, not only higher taxes on the rich, but
Speaker 1: also a shorter working week, a green New Deal or
Speaker 1: new sort of green industrial revolution, a basic income to
Speaker 1: completely eradicate poverty, sustainable cities with high speed trains, et cetera.
Speaker 1: It could really be awesome. We're just going to need
Speaker 1: to build a lot. There's just a lot of work
Speaker 1: to do. In that sense, we made so much progress,
Speaker 1: and I think all this talk about the Green New
Speaker 1: Deal is very important because it just emphasizes that there's
Speaker 1: just so much we need to do right. It's not
Speaker 1: just about being against something, you know, stopping fossil fuels
Speaker 1: and consuming less, etc. Etc. It's also about growing new things.
Speaker 1: This is what the issue I have with the d
Speaker 1: growth movement, even though sort of on an intellectual level,
Speaker 1: I agree, I think that d growth is a really
Speaker 1: bad slogan because growth is a wonderful word. Kids grow,
Speaker 1: plans grow. Now, obviously, if you have a lot of
Speaker 1: growth of bullshit, that's not good. That's more like a cancer.
Speaker 1: You sort of need a positive language, a language of progress,
Speaker 1: that makes people excited and give them some kind of
Speaker 1: vision of something, something to strive for, something to fight for.
Speaker 1: And too often, although again I should mentioned that this
Speaker 1: is changing, but still too often people on the left
Speaker 1: of progresses or activists, they sometimes sort of enjoy being raw,
Speaker 1: enjoy losing. Let's put it like that, they like being
Speaker 1: right on the right side of history, but then just
Speaker 1: being swept aside by the more powerful forces. And I
Speaker 1: think there's now a new generation of activists that actually
Speaker 1: wants to win, that actually not only cares about the
Speaker 1: ideals and ideas themselves, but also cares about how are
Speaker 1: we actually going to implement them, how are we actually
Speaker 1: going to get in power, how do we take over
Speaker 1: these institutions, How do we actually do something substantial instead
Speaker 1: of just being right. Because if you're eighty years old
Speaker 1: and your grandchildren ask you well, Grandpa, grandma, what did
Speaker 1: you do when we had just a couple of years
Speaker 1: left to save humanity? And you say, well, I was
Speaker 1: being right all the time. You know, it's not a
Speaker 1: really good answer, right, It's not good, So we need
Speaker 1: something better than that. You mentioned the new wave of
Speaker 1: left progressivism AOC Representative Omar, they're dumb the squad, And
Speaker 1: I can tell you though, after sitting with her. We
Speaker 1: can talk about progressivism, we can talk about these radical
Speaker 1: ideas that they are fighting for, we can talk about
Speaker 1: their interest in winning, but we also have to consider
Speaker 1: I think the very real human toll that it takes
Speaker 1: on someone like Representative Omar AOC. These policies are not
Speaker 1: just words on a page. They're not just viral videos.
Speaker 1: They have very real human consequences that have come with
Speaker 1: death threats, endless harassment online and in real life. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to reconcile those two realities. If you live
Speaker 1: in a in a well governed society, relatively just society
Speaker 1: with little inequality, say Sweden right now or Norway right now.
Speaker 1: In a society like that, you need very few heroes.
Speaker 1: We just don't need them. If you're going to be
Speaker 1: average and that's okay because average people are relatively decent,
Speaker 1: and we'll do the right thing. In a just society,
Speaker 1: they'll pay their taxes, they'll be nice to their neighbors, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: If you live in a society or in a period
Speaker 1: in history when things are breaking down, when we really
Speaker 1: need to worry about whether democracy is going to survive,
Speaker 1: when the temperature of the planet's going up and up,
Speaker 1: when more and more animals are going extinct, then being
Speaker 1: average is not going to be good enough anymore. Just
Speaker 1: being a relatively decent person is not going to be
Speaker 1: enough anymore. We need more heroes, basically, and when we
Speaker 1: think about heroic behavior, we often think about saving someone
Speaker 1: who's drowning, for example, and I don't really see that
Speaker 1: as heroic, because that's actually just humans very intuitive. If
Speaker 1: you interview people who've done something like that, they say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't think about it. That was just
Speaker 1: a completely intuitive thing to do. Actual heroic behavior often
Speaker 1: goes against your intuitions, and you really pay a high
Speaker 1: price for that. If you read biographies of people like
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King, for example, or Nelson Mandela, you understand
Speaker 1: quite quickly that they paid such a high price, and
Speaker 1: also their family and the people around them paid such
Speaker 1: a high price, you know, living in constant anxiety and
Speaker 1: being fearful for your life all the time, and how
Speaker 1: it basically destroyed their private lives as well. It's very,
Speaker 1: very difficult. But the message for me is that if
Speaker 1: you are comfortable, if you enjoy your life, maybe you're
Speaker 1: part of the problem. If your ideals do not make
Speaker 1: you uncomfortable, if you do not pay a price, what
Speaker 1: are they worth anyway? In a normal, just society, we
Speaker 1: don't need a lot of that because the status quo
Speaker 1: is fine anyway. But if things are going downhill, then
Speaker 1: we need more and more people who are willing to
Speaker 1: pay that price. And no, you're not going to get
Speaker 1: a lot of money for that. You're not going to
Speaker 1: get a lot of compliments. The only thing that you'll
Speaker 1: get is the feeling that you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: So before we go, as this election unfolds and we
Speaker 1: try to proceed forward in this country, I want to
Speaker 1: go to your apologue, which includes your ten rules to
Speaker 1: live by. We don't have to go through all ten,
Speaker 1: but I'll pick a few out for us. Number one,
Speaker 1: when in doubt, assume the best Yeah, it's the most
Speaker 1: important one and the most difficult one to live by.
Speaker 1: Very often we're in doubt when people communicate. We don't
Speaker 1: always know what the other person is thinking, especially when
Speaker 1: the distance increases in our communication, and when we can't
Speaker 1: see each other blush for example, or look one another
Speaker 1: in the eye when we're communicating on WhatsApp for example,
Speaker 1: then it becomes more difficult. You get this emoji, a
Speaker 1: smiling bit of shit, you know, how do you interpret that?
Speaker 1: And what we then often do is when we're in doubt,
Speaker 1: we assume the worst. We think that other people have
Speaker 1: bad intentions. And I think that's not the right way
Speaker 1: to approach to things for a couple of reasons. So
Speaker 1: the first reason is that most often you're wrong, because
Speaker 1: most people are pretty decent. They'll mean well most of
Speaker 1: the time, So it's just statistically more likely, and so
Speaker 1: it's smart to have that approach. In the second place,
Speaker 1: that even if people do not have good intention then
Speaker 1: your positive response can cause what psychologists call noncomplimentary behavior
Speaker 1: or a non complimentary reaction turning off the other cheek mechanism.
Speaker 1: I mean, we know this from our personal lives. When
Speaker 1: you're in a fight, for example, and you say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it was actually my fault. Then very quickly
Speaker 1: the other person says, oh, you know, it was actually
Speaker 1: old wifile blah blah blah. So people mirror each other
Speaker 1: all the time, and the way to break a cycle
Speaker 1: of nastiness is to force yourself to be nice, because
Speaker 1: that connect you to be contagious. And the third reason
Speaker 1: why we should assume the best is that even though
Speaker 1: there are sometimes professional call an artists out there, I
Speaker 1: still think it's rational to approach pretty much everyone around
Speaker 1: you with trust because it's just the price that we
Speaker 1: have to pay. This is something that I learned from
Speaker 1: Maria Konnikova, you know, the social psychologists who wrote a
Speaker 1: big book about con artists. She was asked after years
Speaker 1: of research what the impact on her life was researching
Speaker 1: this for years and knowing about you know, all the
Speaker 1: tricks they can pull you, and she said, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I realized that this is just the price that I
Speaker 1: have to pay if I want to live my life
Speaker 1: where I want to trust most people around me and
Speaker 1: most people that I meet. I just got to accept
Speaker 1: that I'll be calmed a couple of times in my
Speaker 1: life because the alternative is that I have to distrust
Speaker 1: everyone all the time, and I think that's completely irrational.
Speaker 1: So if people have never been conned, then they should
Speaker 1: the a terrapist because probably their basic attitude to life
Speaker 1: is not trusting enough. I love that as someone who's
Speaker 1: been conned often. It's something to be proud of, you know.
Speaker 1: I finally found the book to tell me that it's
Speaker 1: okay that I've been conned. It's a sign of psychological helpingness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that or a mass echism. I'm not sure which temper
Speaker 1: your empathy, train your compassion. Empathy is something that has
Speaker 1: a really good reputation. But there's a psychologist called Paul
Speaker 1: Bloom who's written a book against empathy. I love that title.
Speaker 1: Who really convinced me that actually empathy is often part
Speaker 1: of the problem. So we talked about this groupishness, right
Speaker 1: that we often do the nastia things in the name
Speaker 1: of commerce, ship, loyalty, etc. Empathy plays a big role
Speaker 1: here as well. Empathy is like a searchlight. Like a spotlight,
Speaker 1: you really focus on one specific person or a group,
Speaker 1: or you know, just the people who are part of
Speaker 1: your tribe or bubble, and then the rest of the
Speaker 1: world fades into darkness. Compassion is very different. It's also
Speaker 1: a different process in the brain. Different parts of the
Speaker 1: brain light up when people feel compassion. Compassion is more distant,
Speaker 1: it's more rational, where you do have feelings of care
Speaker 1: and love for someone else, but you don't really step
Speaker 1: into someone else's shoes. You don't feel the same feelings.
Speaker 1: And that's not necessary. So we don't need to feel
Speaker 1: whether other people are feeling. We need to recognize their
Speaker 1: feelings and take them into account. But empathy often leads
Speaker 1: to exhaustion. It also increases to call for vengeance, actually,
Speaker 1: because if you feel a lot of empathy for one
Speaker 1: side and then you start hating the other side more so,
Speaker 1: it really became convinced that empathy, even though it's a
Speaker 1: fundamental part of human nature and that quite often in
Speaker 1: our relationships it's a nice and good thing, that if
Speaker 1: you zoom out a little bit, it's often part of
Speaker 1: the problem. Rule five, which I think really speaks to
Speaker 1: a problem right now, which is trying to understand others,
Speaker 1: which is not the same thing as condoning their behavior.
Speaker 1: So if you look at this Norwegian prison system again,
Speaker 1: here you have people who've done really horrible things. But
Speaker 1: still the Norwegians have the compassion and the rationality and
Speaker 1: the distance to realize that, you know, you don't help
Speaker 1: anyone by just giving them a bad feeling at bad time,
Speaker 1: torturing them or whatever. Vengeance in the end serves no one.
Speaker 1: What you want is to heal society because at some
Speaker 1: point people are going to be released, then they're going
Speaker 1: to become someone's neighbor. So the challenge is to turn
Speaker 1: criminals into law abiding, tax paying citizens instead of the
Speaker 1: other way around. Right the USA often at the opposite.
Speaker 1: You have law abiding citizens who do one small thing
Speaker 1: and then you turn them into criminals with taxpayer money.
Speaker 1: But the approach you need here it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of self control. Let's put it like that. It's the
Speaker 1: same with terrorists. What do terrorists leaders want the most, Well,
Speaker 1: they want you to bomb their country because that's the
Speaker 1: best way to recruit more terrorists. The irrational approach is
Speaker 1: to try and understand why people radicalize. We've seen quite
Speaker 1: a lot of that approach in countries like Denmark and
Speaker 1: also in the Netherlands, where police and secret services try
Speaker 1: to de escalate and to have a conversation with young
Speaker 1: people who were thinking about going to Syria, for example,
Speaker 1: in fourteen twenty fifteen. That sounds soft, but if you
Speaker 1: look at the scientific evidence, it's way more effective. There's
Speaker 1: one city called Aarhus in Denmark where they use this approach.
Speaker 1: Really try to understand what motivates young people to do
Speaker 1: such a crazy thing, go to a war thousands of
Speaker 1: kilometers away. Actually try and have a conversation with them.
Speaker 1: It's been the most successful into radicalization program in the
Speaker 1: history of the last fifty years. You know, they had
Speaker 1: dozens of people leaving and after that almost no one
Speaker 1: left anymore. But it takes a lot of self control,
Speaker 1: and it's all about understanding someone else, which is again
Speaker 1: and I can't emphasize this enough, which is not the
Speaker 1: same as justifying their behavior or condoning it or whatever.
Speaker 1: But you have to understand why people do what they do.
Speaker 1: We have two more than I want to hit. Come
Speaker 1: out of the closet. Don't be afraid to do good.
Speaker 1: Often we put the good into carentine. Right. We're a
Speaker 1: little bit ashamed of it, which is a shame because
Speaker 1: then it's not contagious anymore. Human behavior is incredibly contagious,
Speaker 1: you know, it's just like viruses. We imitate each other
Speaker 1: all the time, and so if you do something in
Speaker 1: broad daylight, you act nice, where its other people that
Speaker 1: can spread like a disease, like a virus, a virus
Speaker 1: of goodness. But if you are a little bit ashamed
Speaker 1: because you don't want to be seen as a do
Speaker 1: gooder or something like that, then yeah, you do it
Speaker 1: in secret and people don't see it anymore. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's good to come out of the closet.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also part of the nude site guys.
Speaker 1: So in the nineties, cynicism was avant garde. What's cool.
Speaker 1: We had films like Fight Club, you know, Brett Pitt's saying,
Speaker 1: we just buy stuff. We don't need to impress people
Speaker 1: we don't like. We had bands like Nirvana, just entertainers.
Speaker 1: There were intellectuals like Francis Fukuyama arguing that we had
Speaker 1: arrived at the end of history. So it was cool
Speaker 1: back then to just have no vision, no ideals, nothing
Speaker 1: to fight for because there was nothing. That's very different
Speaker 1: right now. If you now look at the younger generation Millennials,
Speaker 1: but especially Generation Z, they're the most ethnically diverse, most
Speaker 1: highly educated, and most progressive generation this world has ever seen.
Speaker 1: And cynicism is out, hope is in. So it's more
Speaker 1: in fashion to believe to actually believe in something which
Speaker 1: is a good thing, because then it's contagious. I'm happy
Speaker 1: to see that more and more people are coming out
Speaker 1: of the club. Your last piece of advice is to
Speaker 1: be realistic. What does that mean to you in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: As we spoke about so often we equate cynicism with
Speaker 1: realism and realism with cynicism. We think that these things
Speaker 1: are the same thing, and I think it's the other
Speaker 1: way around. If you want to be a realist, you
Speaker 1: need to believe in the goodness of humanity, and I
Speaker 1: think it's actually an act of defiance, a revolutionary act.
Speaker 1: Those at the top, they don't want you to believe
Speaker 1: in the goodness of those around you. They don't want
Speaker 1: you They want you to be cynical. Cynicism is the
Speaker 1: greatest gift to those in power because it justifies their hierarchy.
Speaker 1: It makes sure that you know they can just go
Speaker 1: on doing what they've always been doing. Yeah, believing in
Speaker 1: the goodness of humanity, which is not about being naive.
Speaker 1: It's not saying that we're angels. Clearly we're capable of
Speaker 1: incredible cruelty. But what we assume in other people is
Speaker 1: what we get out of them. Moving to a new
Speaker 1: view of human nature, telling new stories about who we
Speaker 1: are and what we can actually be if we work together,
Speaker 1: I think that's the first steps. Where's a better world.
Speaker 1: My last question, Rucker, is that you have written now
Speaker 1: five books, and in these five books you are actively
Speaker 1: reframing and redefining your guiding principles. You're making them clear
Speaker 1: on the page, both to yourself and to readers. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of readers go through their day
Speaker 1: to day lives and these principles are a little bit
Speaker 1: more nebulous. They're not so defined. They have doubts, they
Speaker 1: have insecurities, They have questions big and small about what
Speaker 1: they believe in. They don't know what they believe in.
Speaker 1: What do those doubts look like? That's a great question.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite intellectuals is the philosopher Burton Droussell,
Speaker 1: who has always been an example for me or for
Speaker 1: a very long time now, because he had just such
Speaker 1: an impressive intellectual integrity. He was willing to say goodbye
Speaker 1: to all of his ideas. If that's what the evidence
Speaker 1: pointed to, he wasn't too attached to his ideas. That's
Speaker 1: what's always impressed me. I'm not saying that I'm as
Speaker 1: good as that, but it's something that I try to
Speaker 1: keep in mind as a writer. What I've tried to
Speaker 1: do while I was writing this book is to ask
Speaker 1: myself the question will this hold up ten years from now?
Speaker 1: Is the evidence strong enough? Do I really want to
Speaker 1: believe this? Do I want to believe it too much?
Speaker 1: Maybe because I just want to believe that people are
Speaker 1: pretty decent or I am I you know I'm rigorous enough.
Speaker 1: The challenge, I guess, and this back to what we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, is to make life a little bit
Speaker 1: more difficult for yourself. A lot of self help books
Speaker 1: are about how to make life easier. And if I
Speaker 1: would write a self help book, then it would be
Speaker 1: a book, here's how to make your life more difficult,
Speaker 1: because I mean, our brains are hard wired to make
Speaker 1: life easier for ourselves, right, to have our ideals, fit
Speaker 1: our group, etc. We are self serving very often on
Speaker 1: a psychological level. So maybe progress starts with making life
Speaker 1: a bit more uncomfortable and difficult for ourselves. And what
Speaker 1: I love here is that sometimes ideas can radicalize you.
Speaker 1: So we talked about vegetarianism. I stop eating meat four
Speaker 1: years ago, and then as you read about that, you
Speaker 1: sort of start radicalizing yourself because you realize that the
Speaker 1: arguments that make you a vegetarian should actually make you
Speaker 1: a vegan. And so I don't want to do that,
Speaker 1: or at least I know a thousand reasons not to
Speaker 1: do that, and the first five hundred are carled cheese.
Speaker 1: But what I love about the power of ideas that
Speaker 1: they can just propel you forward as well because I
Speaker 1: know what they mean. Maybe I should try and write
Speaker 1: that self help book, but I'm not sure if it's
Speaker 1: going to sell a lot of copies, because I would
Speaker 1: want to write a self a book that people would
Speaker 1: wish they hadn't read after when they have finished it,
Speaker 1: because it made their lives so much more difficult. I
Speaker 1: think the lesson to your self help book, but also humankind,
Speaker 1: which indirectly may be a self help book, is that
Speaker 1: you have to embrace the discomfort, or that in any
Speaker 1: just society there's a certain amount of discomfort everyone feels
Speaker 1: amount of discomfort all the time. So if you're feeling
Speaker 1: sort of completely comfortable with yourself and your lovely house
Speaker 1: and your friends and your family members, while there's so
Speaker 1: much injustice at the same time in the world, I
Speaker 1: mean that maybe that comfort is exactly the problem. Rucker Bregman,
Speaker 1: I thank you so much for your time and all
Speaker 1: your words. I hope we listen to some of them,
Speaker 1: most of them, any of them, And I hope as
Speaker 1: I'm looking at your book, hopeful history is the tagline,
Speaker 1: I hope you're right about it. Well, let's put it
Speaker 1: like this. Even if I'm wrong, I think that it
Speaker 1: would have a lot of beneficial consequences if people believe
Speaker 1: that I'm right, spoken like a true philosopher, irrefutable arguments.
Speaker 1: Rutger Bregman, thank you very much, thanks for having me,
Speaker 1: and that's our show. Special thanks this week to Catherine
Speaker 1: Myers and Sabrina Callahan. I'd also like to thank Rutger
Speaker 1: Bregman for coming on His latest book, Human Kind can
Speaker 1: be found wherever you do your reading. If you'd like
Speaker 1: to learn more about him, be sure to visit his
Speaker 1: site at Rutger Bregman dot com. You can find out
Speaker 1: more about this episode and our podcast at talk easypod
Speaker 1: dot com. If you enjoyed today's episode, I imagine you
Speaker 1: would like our talks with Cornell West, Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein,
Speaker 1: Representative Ilhan Omar, Malcolm Gladwell, and Better or Roork. You
Speaker 1: can find all of those and more on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: Google podcast, Stitcher, wherever you do your listening. You can
Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at talk easypod.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to join our mailing list, drop me
Speaker 1: a line at Sam at talk easypod dot com. This
Speaker 1: show is made possible by our incredible team. Our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Janick Sobravo. Illustrations by Christia Shanoy. Our associate
Speaker 1: producer is Nicky Spina. Our lead editor is Andre Lynn.
Speaker 1: Our assistant editors are David Harding, Rina Young, Joshua Siegel,
Speaker 1: and Kevin Core. Our music is by Dylan Peck, Marketing
Speaker 1: by patrese Lee. Our interns are Juliette, Director, Grace Perkins
Speaker 1: and Ian Simmons. Graphics by Derek Gabrazach and Ethan Seneca.
Speaker 1: And the show is produced by Caroline Reebok. I'm Sam Fragoso.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. We'll be back
Speaker 1: on Thursday with a special two part episode including talks
Speaker 1: with doctor Ashish Jah and Justin Rosenstein. Until then, stay
Speaker 1: safe and solo