How to Take Back Your Own Mind (ft. Tim Urban)

Today, I'm joined by my old friend Tim Urban, the mastermind behind the wildly popular blog Wait But Why. Known for his ability to break down complex topics with humor and stick-figure drawings, Tim has captured the attention of millions worldwide. From his early days as a blogger to the release of his first book, "What's Our Problem?: A Self-Help Book for Societies," Tim has consistently delivered thought-provoking content that challenges our understanding of the world around us. In this episode, we dive into pressing issues like unfettered tribalism, the concept of "idea prisons," and the potential impact of AI on society. Tim also shares personal insights as a new parent and teases his upcoming book. It'll challenge your perspectives and leave you craving more of Tim's signature blend of depth, wit, and accessibility. Don't miss this captivating conversation that tackles the complexities of our modern world head-on. Tim’s blog: Wait, But Why?: https://waitbutwhy.com/ Tim’s book: What’s Our Problem: https://www.amazon.com/Whats-Our-Problem-Self-Help-Societies-ebook/dp/B0BTJCTR58 Follow Tim: https://www.instagram.com/timurban https://x.com/waitbutwhy https://www.facebook.com/waitbutwhy CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: Tim Urban and Why Everyone Lost Their Minds 00:02:04 The Idea Prison Test: What Have You Changed Your Mind About? 00:03:00 Democrats, Republicans, and the Noun Prison 00:04:01 Sports Tribalism vs. Political Tribalism 00:05:33 How Tim Escaped His Own Idea Prison 00:07:15 Religion, Atheism, and the Wisdom Tim Missed 00:09:49 The Vertical vs. Horizontal Distinction in Politics 00:11:57 Are We Past Peak Tribalism? 00:12:31 Historical Patterns: The Red Scare and Salem Witch Trials 00:13:24 When the Primitive Mind Takes Over 00:14:59 The Wokeness Wave: A Crazy Thing That Happened 00:16:44 Social Media: The Root Cause That Remains 00:18:50 The Environmental Shift: New Media, New Power Dynamics 00:20:10 Developing Antibodies: Why It Takes a Generation 00:21:49 Mad Men and the Low-Hanging Fruit of New Media 00:23:02 Evolution, Power Vacuums, and the Iron Age Analogy 00:25:15 The Follower Economy and Algorithm Incentives 00:26:47 AI: The Next Cycle Before We've Finished This One 00:28:30 Will AI Solve or Worsen Our Information Problem? 00:30:30 The Alien Attack Solution and Productive Tribalism 00:31:56 When Information Becomes Universal and Free 00:32:57 Democracy, Facts, and the Will of the People 00:34:44 MSNBC, Fox News, and the Misinformation Business Model 00:36:10 The Three Tiers of Tribalism 00:37:20 When National Threats Disappear 00:38:30 Latin America, the Middle East, and Tribalism Geography 00:41:32 Parenthood: The Massive Pile of Pros and Cons 00:42:29 Pure Love and Low IQ Company 00:46:27 The Temporary Loss of Freedom 00:47:59 The History of Everything: Tim's Next Book 00:48:56 The Hell of Book Writing and the Freedom of Not ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson Theme Song: Icarus Lives by @Periphery , used with permission from Periphery.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  Hey everybody. Today I am excited to have an old friend of mine, Tim Urban, on the show. He's a brilliant mind behind the popular blog Wait But Why, where he breaks down complex topics in a thoughtful and extremely entertaining way. In 2019, Tim embarked on an ambitious project called The Story of Us. The goal of the project was to explain why it seemed like everybody was losing their minds, despite the fact that technology was amazing and everything seemed to be going great. This eventually evolved into his first book, What's Our Problem?, a self-help book for societies, and it was released in 2023. Now, the book digs into the psychology behind tribalism and in-group-out-group hatred. Tim painstakingly explains these mechanisms

• 0:41Mark Manson?

  using real-world, present-day examples from both ends of the political spectrum. Now, as you can imagine, he got canceled by everybody for it. Now, Tim's writing style, it has depth, wit, and accessibility. It has earned him praise from world leaders, CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world, and millions of everyday readers alike. His work is at the intersection of psychology, politics, science, and technology, always with an eye toward making the complex feel more understandable. Today, we talk about the psychological roots of tribalism, what it feels like to start hating an outgroup without realizing it, and how you can hopefully stop. We look at how our minds can become locked inside of idea prisons and what the simple way out of those idea prisons is.

• 1:26Mark Manson?

  We disagree briefly on how AI might make our mental health problems better or worse, what Tim has learned as a new parent, and we get a sneak peek of his upcoming book on the history of the universe. That's right, it's only a book on the history of the universe. So, sit back, enjoy, draw some stick figures, and try not to hate the outgroup so much. This is Tim Urban.

• 1:47Speaker 01

  It's the Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck Podcast with your host, Mark Manson.

• 1:55Mark Manson?

  Tim, it's so good to have you here, dude.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fun to hang in this weird environment here.

• 2:04Mark Manson?

  It's been a long time. We've known each other a long time. One of the things in my personal life I've started doing, which has been great. One of my favorite things to ask people now is, over the last five years, what are the biggest things you've changed your mind about? And I've noticed that, like, if I meet somebody new, and they can't really answer that question, or they seem to, like, be taken aback by it. To me, that's kind of like a signal that they're not... They're probably, like, tribally minded, you know, whatever their tribe is. The other thing, especially this last election cycle, because I have both Republicans and Democrats in my family, and things get heated.

• 2:48Mark Manson?

  I just started asking people, I'm like, what are three things you disagree with your own party about? And again, if they can't really come up with anything, then I just, I know not to listen to them.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Well, what you know is that they are in a little idea prison.

• 3:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:04Speaker 02

  And even just calling yourself a Democrat or a Republican.

• 3:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Or, I think that is...

• 3:11Mark Manson?

  Like, why would you do that?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  What I want to tell people is, you're, you're, you're like, cooler than this. You're better than this. Like, you're gonna allow what, I, I think, I want people to think of the Democrats and Republicans as like Coke and Pepsi, or Verizon and, you know, Amazon. Like, you're gonna let some, like, big lame corporation basically hijack your identity and like, say, we own, we, we own it now? So, once you're a Democrat, when the Democrats start doing something that, deep down, you know, your principles would disagree with, you have to violate your own principles, or violate this identity you've given yourself. So you're in kind of like a noun prison, you know? You put yourself in this, this idea prison, and that's, when you're in a prison, you can't go anywhere, right?

• 3:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Where do you disagree with your party? Well, I'm in the prison, so nowhere. How, how have you changed your mind? Well, I'm stuck. I'm, I'm, I've been just sitting in this jail cell, so I haven't changed my mind. I haven't gone anywhere.

• 4:01Mark Manson?

  Well, you, you're also choosing how to delude yourself. It, it reminds me of sports teams. You know, it's like, when you watch your favorite sports team, and your team obviously commits a foul or a penalty. Like you scream at the ref, like the ref's the problem, right? But, but like if you're watching a team you don't care about, you're like, oh yeah, obviously that's a foul or a penalty. And I feel like a lot of Americans, uh, especially identify with a political party the way they identify with a sports team. And they, and they blame the refs instead of their own team when a foul's committed. More often than not.

• 4:37Speaker 02

  And you'll notice that they, they have a completely different reaction to the same foul when it's one party versus the other.

• 4:44Mark Manson?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so obvious. The, this, they, it rank hypocrisy. And again, with sports, you're supposed to be a hypocrite. It's okay. It's sports is fun.

• 4:53Mark Manson?

  Happens all the time. Yeah.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  We all like sports tribalism. Great. And you cheer, you put your arms up like you just won a tribal battle when your thing wins. You go like this to protect your head when your team loses. I mean, it's great. It's, it's play, it's play tribalism. Politics is shitty because it matters and it affects, you know, it affects real things.

• 5:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:09Speaker 02

  And, um, and, and, and the hypocrisy, it's like, I guess another thing you can do is just, just test your, just, just. Is a simple litmus test to test your hypocrisy, which is what, how would I feel if the other team were doing this?

• 5:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Whether it's something good or bad.

• 5:25Speaker 02

  How would I feel of this with the other team? And if it was like, well, and your head kind of explodes, you have a, you're not thinking straight.

• 5:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Speaking of which, what have you changed your mind about? In the last, say, three to five years, what are some of the biggest things that you've changed your mind about?

• 5:42Speaker 02

  There are some like very factual things like nuclear energy. I'm like, I thought it was bad. Now I think it's extremely good. But in like a more philosophical way, um. Five years ago, maybe more like eight, but I, I was in the process five years ago of, I, I was a, I'm a Democrat. And also I'm an atheist and you know, right wing religious people are stupid and bad, right? That, that was maybe not five years ago. There was a little longer ago, but 2012, 2015, I was, I was in that zone. I grew up in that zone. I was just. And I have like, I look at that person right now, I'm like, oh God, you are a lost,

• 6:23Speaker 02

  like you are, you are a little boy, you are a little boy with that attitude. Like, so a few things is I was in the zone where I saw blue, good, red, bad. And that's your prior, that's at the very base. Now, maybe blue does something bad, but it's for a higher thing. Or because, or then you, everyone does whatever, but and red, you know, does something good, but they have some bad, if that's at the base, every single thing can can always fit into that. You know, you can, so coming out of that, just like releasing, again, realizing this prison has a, I have the key. Oh, oh my God, you know, and then you come out. And it's not that I'm now like, well, blue, bad, red, good. It's that I just, once I came out of that, I realized how much of a prison I was in.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So things like, I also was like, you know, religion, bad. And I'm just like, first of all, that is so arrogant to have this, this religion is this thing that's been going on, you know, where I was thinking mostly in Christianity in this case, 2000 years of like trial and error and like, it's maybe there for both good and bad reasons. Maybe there is something really important about this for our species. And I think now I've come to think there's a lot of wisdom in religion and it's also a very, it can be, it's, we're all, we're a religious species. And so when we don't have a religion that's tested for 2000 years of refinements, we end up with a new religion, maybe a political religion, it's just worse. So a lot of these things that that guy was so sure about, I now am just much more kind

• 7:53Speaker 02

  of like open about like, in as far as atheism itself, regardless, I still, I'm not, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim or a religious Jew. I'm not, I don't believe in those books. But I also had stopped being a staunch atheist in that, what I would have said as a staunch atheist is there's no creator. There's, there's, there's, this is, you know, everything is, you know, how we think, you know, a spontaneous generation of life on this planet, and then it evolved through evolution to today. Now, I believe in evolution, I believe in the things we've proven with science, but how about all the things we have proven with science? We don't know how life started. It could have been planted here by another species, an alien species. It could, we could be in a big computer simulation.

• 8:36Speaker 02

  And just starting to have those things, again, it humbles you and it makes you realize like, that atheist was so sure about a bunch of things that, he was sure in a way that he was criticized, a religious person for being sure that, you know, Adam and Eve existed and that the flood is why the Grand Canyon has seashell fossils on it. The atheist team was just as sure about that there's none, nothing, you know? And so now I would call myself like very firmly agnostic. So a lot of these, the theme in a lot of these is, I'm less sure than I was and much less likely to just like dismiss. Likewise, now coming out of not being associated, I don't identify with the left at all anymore,

• 9:21Speaker 02

  but I also don't want to identify with the right because I feel like, so, I also likewise, because some people, I think if you're not fully, you come out of the prison, but you're still in that mindset, you'll go fling to the other side. And now suddenly you're a full red pill, you know, the left is the problem. I don't, I don't think that either. I think there's probably a lot of wisdom in progressivism and there's a lot of wisdom in conservatism and both of these parties suck and a lot of hypocrisy on both sides. But underneath that, there's actually very important principles that need to butt against each other. So I, you know, a staunch partisan would call me like an insufferable, you know, enlightened centrist.

• 9:55Mark Manson?

  A both side, what they used to call them?

• 9:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, but so.

• 9:59Mark Manson?

  Both sides.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  Both sidesism. And I think, I think it's misinterpreting because a centrist or a both sidesism is someone who says that like, these, the parties are equally right about each issue, you know, there's somewhere in the middle. And that's not what I think. I think maybe the right is way more right about certain things, left is way more right about other things. It's that I'm on the side of the people who don't identify with any party, who said that each of these issues is like a complex puzzle that needs like an endless debate and testing and experimentation and balancing many different values and a compromise. That doesn't say anything about where I am on left or right on any issue. It's not a horizontal distinction. It's what I would say is like a vertical distinction. And that's mistaken bipartisan people who say you're either left or right.

• 10:42Speaker 02

  As both sides ism, as centrism, because they only seeing this horizontal access. If you're not left or right, you must be this annoying person in this who wants to say they're in the center. I don't, that's not misinterpreting what I, what I am.

• 10:53Mark Manson?

  Yes, we are the tribe of no tribe.

• 10:57Speaker 02

  I try to be. And by the way, then you can get sucked into, you can get sucked into the no tribe tribe becoming quite tribal. You know, you have to constantly watch it.

• 11:07Speaker 02

  But yeah, I also looked, I always, you know, I always respect someone who I see disagree with their own in-group. And when I say their own in-group, I don't mean someone who like, used to be on the left and they're criticizing the left now is their, is their thing. Because the left is now their out-group. I'm talking about the people who are like, totally agreeing with them about what they're saying this week, and then totally disagreeing with those people. That's like, that shows someone, I'm like, this person is truly rogue. They're not like afraid, they're, they're not trying to appease, you know, they're not in any prison. I mean, it's hard to find, I'm not sure, I haven't fully gotten there. It's like hard to, the people who really are, you know, love what's our problem, like, it's hard to fully, you know, disagree with them on something.

• 11:44Mark Manson?

  You wrote this book, kind of at the fever pitch of just political misery in the country. I don't know about you, but like, I, I personally feel like this last election cycle seemed less, I don't know, apocalyptic than previous ones. Like, I, I, it could just be me, but I feel like we're, we've like, we peaked maybe three or four years ago, and we're like, on the downhill side. Do you agree with that? And if so, do you want to take credit for it?

• 12:15Speaker 02

  If I, if I could take credit for that, I would be like, demanding a Nobel, Nobel Peace Prize.

• 12:20Mark Manson?

  But if so, like, why do you think that's happened? I'm curious.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  So, if you look at like, history, and one of the things I, I think one of the things that helps a lot, understanding the current moment, is just looking at history, because you start to see patterns, and you're like, oh, we're doing that thing from the 50s, we're doing that now. Like, the Red Scare in the early 50s, has a lot in common with what happened in the last five years. It was different, you know, the Mad Lib had different things in the blanks, but the idea was

• 12:50Speaker 02

  Kind of a tribal wave sweeps over the country. And when it happens, it's like what you'll see is when you're not in it, it almost you forget how scary it can be in a moment when it becomes really tribal. You suddenly are like, you know, it's hard to even have a you're you're, you know, with three, four friends at dinner and you're suddenly like, where are you like, are we, are you one of them or like, are you going to judge me or like, are we allowed to still? And even small little things, everyone starts to get kind of scared and then forget like a classroom, you know, one person in that moment can start really being like a bully that's, you know, that that's that's emphasizing the current tribal craze and everyone else in the classroom will be really scared and start to like jump on that bandwagon. And it's a reminder that we can be a very scary species.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  You know, you hear about the the most extreme example always is everything is, you know, Nazis Holocaust and you hear about, you know, these, these people in, you know, Poland who would turn in their Jewish neighbors who they've known for 30 years and they've been friends and they they would quietly turn them into the, you know, and these awful stories and and you start to, but I understand why, you know, in this moment, when things are really, when that fear kicks in, basically, when when tribe, when tribalism is in the air in a really intense way and the stakes feel really high, it's like pheromones, wolf pheromones and the primitive mind wakes up and gets into a crazy zone and completely takes over your brain and you get into this zone where it's like, you can't suddenly, you can't trust anyone and it's like, you know, so the the less extreme example is like

• 14:17Speaker 02

  the early 50s with, you know, the red scare and you have, you know, anyone who even gets, you know, you can, you know, it's like a witch hunt, the actual Salem witches and the same thing, it's like, once you know that someone being accused of being a witch might actually let lead to their execution, everyone gets really scared and now, you know, someone might, who your friend, you think is your friend, might accuse you so that they don't get accused of being a witch. And it becomes a very, and that's how these crazy. Things kept that Salem witch trials wasn't like, it wasn't like that was just the times. It was a crazy thing that happened and then stopped.

• 15:00Speaker 02

  The red scare in the 50s was a crazy thing that happened and then it stopped and then sanity returned. And I think that the 2020, you know, wokeness thing was a crazy thing that happened. And I think at some point, hopefully it will be something totally in the past. And I think it's again, to bring back your, you become more aware of your own dicking around. You can become more aware of your own, you know, echo chambers. Well, you also, I think the society itself can kind of like, if it has been too long since that happened, the society can get caught off guard. And I think that once it now, I think now society starts to be more self-aware about that was crazy. And now when you see signs of it now, you're less likely to fall into it. And more likely to be like, no, we don't do that anymore. We're done with that.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And you see the corporations, you know, quietly reversing policies that were insane. So I feel like we are on the other side of the specific things that happened. We're, you know, there's still good, look, there's still a huge fight that's going to be put up within institutions, policies that were changed, admin people that were turned over. I mean, that has, that takes a while. That gets into the vital organs of a lot of institutions. It's going to be a long, painful process to try to return to kind of the basic values that those institutions used to have. But what worries me is that, you know, why did this happen right now?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  In the 50s, it happened because, you know, it was on the heels of war, which is kind of a tribal time. And there was a genuine fear of the, of communism, right? It was like this could, this was an existential threat. And when I'm like, why did this happen now?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  And I feel like it's very tied to social media and this new force that's in there in the world that, you know, has a huge impact scares, you know, the media is scared of social media, companies are scared of social media. And you empower a lot of the most tribally crazed people who want attention, want to do damage, want to sensationalize things, want to punish people. Those people have a lot more power right now than they did 15 years ago. Like they actually, you know, one of those people can get a big following and suddenly, you know, scare a lot of institutions into getting on their bad side. So my worry is that like, you know, that the root causes might still be there.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  And that maybe it's not wokeness that that is the thing. Maybe it's a another thing comes along. You know, maybe it's right wing hardcore, right wing, you know, white supremacy, which is of course, the thing that I spent years saying this is overblown by by woke people. Now I'm like, well, this thing, you know, has now been trained to actually be more of a real white identity by this thing. And it could right, who knows? I don't, I'm not saying that's what will happen. I'm saying I just think that the we might be still in a vulnerable situation in our society.

• 18:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And it's, it's hard to, it's also hard to separate just like how unique the COVID era was and like all of the second and third order effects that, you know, you can't really, it's hard to know what is an actual part of cultural evolution and what is just kind of this freakish happenstance thing. You know, I've had a bit of a pet theory. I'm sure I'm not the first person or the only person who's who has thought of this, but like.

• 18:37Mark Manson?

  When you look at the history of media, anytime there's like a major technological revolution in in media itself and like how information is disseminated across society, you generally see like massive political upheaval immediately after. So like when the printing press is invented, you get the Reformation a few decades later and that creates 100 years of war across Europe and results in a lot of, you know, the Enlightenment and all sorts of other things. When TV and radio come along, you get a lot of the fascism and communism of the 20th century. And part of me thinks that, you know, with the internet

• 19:20Mark Manson?

  and social media, it's probably inevitable that like there's this reconfiguring of social identity that has to happen along these like new railways of information. And and I also think like it probably just takes a generation or two to develop the antibodies. You know, it's like everything that's in your book, What's Our Problem? It like all of that stuff is probably going to be really obvious to our kids or our grandkids. Like they're going to look at that book and they'll be like, well, yeah, no shit. Like you can't just believe anything that's posted on Instagram. And uh, but it like, it takes us years of

• 20:05Mark Manson?

  falling for it and then realizing that you can't fall for it. And seeing the repercussions happen over and over again. You know, it's kind of like the first TV marketing and the first, the first radio propaganda in the early 20th century was like wildly successful, like massively successful. There's all these stories of um, like the Orson Welles Alien Invasion radio story and like thousands of people are like running out of their houses thinking that it's real, you know? It's it's laughable from our point of view today because we're just so jaded by an entire lifetime of listening to bullshit on the radio and

• 20:45Mark Manson?

  on TV. I think it's like when a medium's new, we haven't like developed that jadedness yet. And because we're not jaded enough, we're more susceptible. Like it's easier for, I guess.

• 21:04Mark Manson?

  Tribal sinister and tribal narratives to to reach people and and seduce them. Because they they haven't developed that the antibodies to it yet.

• 21:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it's like it's like, um, you know, and and

• 21:19Speaker 02

  a certain, you know, companies can jump in and get really, really, really rich during the inoculated phase.

• 21:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:26Speaker 02

  The non that the pre inoculated phase like. I just think about also like think about cigarette companies. They made a killing in a window when they when they really could.

• 21:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  And then awareness spread, laws changed. We built kind of a antibodies to protect the protect ourselves around for that from that thing. And and now they make way less of a killing, at least in the US.

• 21:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, it's it's one of the things. It's funny. My wife and I, we went back and started watching Mad Men again. And one of the things I didn't.

• 21:57Mark Manson?

  Fucking still amazing show, by the way. One of the things that I didn't put together the first time I saw it, I saw it for the first time, maybe 12, 15 years ago. Watching it now as somebody who's like a lot more well informed about advertising and US history and business cycles and stuff. It's there's like this realization that Mad Men takes place in the 50s and 60s when television is new. And like people have literally never seen a television commercial before. And so you could literally just put anything on the screen and people would want to buy it. And so it's like, no wonder Don Draper was making a fucking killing, sitting around drinking whiskey all day like it's. There's just this low hanging fruit that comes with a new medium.

• 22:44Mark Manson?

  And it comes from with advertising. It comes with building a business or marketing. It comes with people like you and I building audiences. And then it also comes with with like political movements, right? Like it's people are most susceptible. When there's some like new fangled. Technology that that nobody's like everybody's wide eyed and has no idea what to expect.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  It's like it's it almost reminds me of just like in evolution when you have like I don't know some event, some weather change, you know, to the climate like this predator dies off and now there's this power vacuum and this other predator comes in this this species thrives it gets too big and blah blah and all these things happen and then it eventually settles into a new like interlocked into equilibrium but it's hard to change.

• 23:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  And so that happens rarely in in evolutionary history, but here it's like a new thing drops into society. There's a you know, another example is the iron age, you know, iron came around and suddenly people who were kind of in the outskirts of society could make weapons in a way they couldn't before. And they the the cities lost their advantage and that and it just it changed all kinds of you know geopolitical things back then. So you have social media drops in and in the internet and it's almost society takes a while to even figure out that where the new opportunities are, where the power vacuum suddenly are, who suddenly has way more power than they

• 24:16Speaker 02

  ever did before and who has less power. And so like I think that in a world like that, you see a lot of things where like media, the media model of trying to be neutral and be professional doesn't work so well in this new environment. And so somebody like Fox News catches on to that quicker than others, gets huge and then all these other things copy and before you know New York Times is acting like Fox News, right? They're all acting like like Fox News, right? It's a and so it's like the the the there's like a new there basically is an environmental shift and now in the new environment.

• 24:57Speaker 02

  Is going to reward different things and empower different things. And you see all, everyone reacts to it. You know, it's like everyone reacts to it to try to stay successful, to stay afloat, to survive. And then you see people and their behavior changing because new behavior is rewarded. Yeah. And there's a new thing, which is followers on social media. And that becomes this new shiny thing. It's not, no, it's not just money. That's one thing. There's a new way to get status with this number and its attention and status. So suddenly all these primitive minds become obsessed with this thing. And then, so how do you, you know, and then the algorithms are sitting there and they're trying to maximize attention in this new thing. And so the algorithms now favor a certain, you know, a certain way to get, you know, certain behavior gets more followers.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  And you can just see this whole new environment configured. The people who get there first get really rich, you know, and you know, if you can notice the changes in the environment, you can capitalize on attention, you know, wealth, whatever. And then it kind of starts to crystallize into a new thing. And then I think, like you're talking about, I think then there starts to be a reflection on, wait, this is hurting people. Wait, maybe 13 year old girls on Instagram isn't good. Yeah. You have, that's something like John Height's book that just came out, you know, The Anxious Generation. You have, and then you start, start to see, you know, like surgeon, you know, his book is like, you know, going to lead to hopefully like a surgeon general's warning about cigarettes type thing where you start to have, you know, rules and parents don't allow this anymore.

• 26:23Speaker 02

  And you can look back and say, I can't believe that kids were allowed on Instagram at some point. It's going to sound like kids in child labor or child prostitutes. There's crazy things from the past you hear about. And it's going to be like, wow. And so the antibodies then form and we develop a healthier way to, we start to figure out where, what the harm is in these, in this thing. We tweak things to make it healthy. Now, what's scary. Is that if this happens once a century, it's like, okay, there's a rough 20 years and then we figure it out. And then we kind of develop a healthier thing with this. And there's laws and there's norms that, you know, understanding that comes around. What's scary is how is the rate of change just speeds up.

• 27:03Mark Manson?

  Right, because AI is probably going to do this again.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  AI and who knows when you start having the VR starts getting better and better. And before you know it, everyone has one of these things. Like a visor glasses that we're wearing. AI is, you know, I feel like ChatGPT and these things right now is like, is like, um, the really old internet where it's like this new thing.

• 27:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  And it's like the, or like the really, really beginning Twitter, where you just like, you post, there's no retweet button, there's no like button. It's just kind of like, you know, or old, old Facebook. It feels like it's very early and it's like, they haven't even figured out how to make it addictive yet. That hasn't even started yet.

• 27:40Speaker 02

  You know, and I'm like, that's going to be a whole cycle and there's going to be a whole new set of, you know, some people, some people who can see now where it's going or can get really rich. And get it, you know, really powerful and then others will, and then, then everyone will, then, then the mainstream will really, really, you know, conform to this new thing. And then we'll start to figure out, but oh wait, this is bad. But at that point, AI is getting smarter and smarter really quickly. It's like, but you don't have time to do the antibodies phase and new changes are happening. It's a little scary. It gets very chaotic.

• 28:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Yeah, I have no idea where any of this is heading. It is, the AI thing is super interesting too, because I feel like it, you know, one of the issues, especially in the social media era, but also kind of going back into the more conventional media era as well as like, is the information fragmentation.

• 28:31Mark Manson?

  As you put it, echo chambers, right? Like there's just some certain topics or certain sets of data are like just not included in various narratives for political reasons. And in the social media era, people actually just get caught in these little bubbles of hearing the same three or four things over and over again. Cause that's what the algorithm feeds them. I feel like AI, you know.

• 28:57Mark Manson?

  The potential of AI is that it commoditizes all information universally. Like, everything is just always there for everybody. And all context and relevance can be provided, you know, in each situation. So there's, in a way, it can like, I feel like it could solve a lot of the informational side of things. But then it makes me wonder, I'm like, if you, if everybody just has all the same information all the time, it might actually make us, it might actually drive us like more into tribalism. Because then that's really the only thing we're gonna have left is,

• 29:41Mark Manson?

  like, you can't, you can't argue over the facts anymore because the AI has figured that out. So we're just gonna argue over our subjective moral principles, which are, you know, essentially non-resolvable.

• 30:00Mark Manson?

  And we'll just be like more entrenched than ever before.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  It's a little, it's a little like, you know, when, you know, again, 22-year-old Tim would have been like, my, if I had a genie, I would say, all religion is gone. And now I would go to that guy and be like, no, don't. Be careful what you wish for, right? Be careful what you wish for, because we are a religious species and we're gonna find other religions that you might realize are not tested and new and really, really, really bad. And, you know, the kind of religion that can lead to hundreds of millions of people being murdered. And it's the same thing here where it's like, you're saying kind of like, oh, this tribalism sucks. We wish, if only we could just all get on the same page and have facts, you know, no more, you know, fighting about facts. And it's like, be careful what you wish for, because we're a tribal species and we'll find tribalism elsewhere. And like, where's that? It's almost like, you're not gonna eradicate tribalism.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  How can we, you know, of course, the classic example is, what we would love is an alien attack. And then we're all tribal in the best possible way, which is earthlings, you know?

• 30:57Speaker 02

  Humans, I love you because you're another human. Okay, it's not, it's still a childish tribalism, but it's, it's productive and it's nice. And for everyone, but then, of course, you have an alien attack, which is its own shitty thing. But we're not gonna have that, probably.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  And...

• 31:14Speaker 02

  And so the question is, you know, yes, does it turn into, well, first of all, the question is, if, is it better if we're arguing about moral principles and like trying to find the edges of what's, is that worse or better than arguing about facts? Like, maybe it's, maybe it leads to more like hardcore, like, political violence in a way. But maybe also it's more productive because we're actually arguing about things that need arguments to happen versus things that are just, we shouldn't even be arguing about this if we were just not being deceived in two different directions.

• 31:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah. You know, I've just been, like, this has kind of been my, where my brain has been a lot lately is just thinking about if, if information becomes universal and commoditized, like free essentially, like, there's, there's, most ambiguity is removed, most misinterpretation is removed. Anything that's knowable is available, like, typing a couple of sentences and

• 32:18Mark Manson?

  what, like, what effect does that have on us? Socially, politically, psychologically? Because I, I feel like when you remove one scarcity, you, you create another one. And I feel like if you remove the informational scarcity, like if we're no longer arguing, debating over

• 32:39Mark Manson?

  what exactly is the wealth inequality or what exactly is a,

• 32:44Mark Manson?

  you know, were these tax cuts stimulative or not? You know, once you remove those debates, now, now you're getting purely into the, like, philosophical, foundational

• 32:57Mark Manson?

  equality versus freedom, uh, collectivism versus individualism.

• 33:06Mark Manson?

  Like, and those don't really have resolution.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  But maybe, but maybe, I mean, I feel like that's what politics is supposed to be, right? If you think about like what the Greeks thought about politics, like what were they doing on the Acropolis? Like, they weren't, they were probably doing this kind of really core things. And I feel like that is how a society, the best way for a society to grow and evolve. What's nice about democracy is that it has a solution, which is that there's not like a king and we have to all convince the king. It's like the country will be in the mood for more individualism. We'll be sick of, we're looking all the stats and we'll vote for that. And then it'll go too far a little bit. And then will the country, a certain part of the country will feel like, you know, left out and there'll be rebellion.

• 33:48Speaker 02

  And there'll be a vote for more collectivism and, and it will kind of evolve like a shape shifting thing that meets the needs of the moment. I mean, that, that to me is, it sounds idyllic. Sure, of course it comes along with a lot of other things, but I feel like that's how you actually, what you want is democracy to express the will of the people, to serve the will of the people at the time. And what we'd like is if we're all on the same page about facts and what we're, and then, you know, you have these philosophies butting against each other. And then, you know, it, that is actually going to get to the best will of the people possible versus here. If people are on the wrong page about facts, they think they're having a philosophical, voting for their philosophies, but they're actually not because they've been misinformed. So they think that, you know, something is 10 times worse than it is.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  And they're going to vote now to fix that when it actually is not that, that's not the problem. So it feels in a way like it's better. And then you have, right now, you have actually like the media and a lot of big social media accounts. Their job, their game is in misinforming you, like making you feel.

• 34:51Mark Manson?

  A hundred percent.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  You know, my, my, my aunt is glued to MSNBC every day and she sends me like, you know, we need to move out of the country stuff like that. They have, that, that, that, that is a company, MSNBC, um, whose business model is making people like her.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Feel as extreme as possible about stuff and believe things are as extreme as possible. So her vote is not going to be accurately like linked aligned with her actual will because, right? So I, I, yeah.

• 35:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah, the way you describe it sounds much nicer than the way it sounds sounded in my head.

• 35:34Mark Manson?

  So maybe you're giving me some hope. But yeah, it is, it is.

• 35:41Mark Manson?

  The, the, the informational thing is, is interesting. I don't know, like I,

• 35:48Mark Manson?

  I feel like when you remove the, the informational games or like the, the, the pursuit of facts and truth and that for the majority of the population and it's just kind of like handed to us by AI. That kind of all that leaves is status games for us to play in and

• 36:07Mark Manson?

  and I don't know that like concerns me.

• 36:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I, I think that tribalism will always creep in nasty base tribalism will always find a way to creep in. I think even that goes in waves. Like the country is generally has like a higher amount of it happening for a few years and then it, it calms down. Um, I also wrote in my book about how one of the things in like the 50s is, you know, it seems like a very untribal time politically.

• 36:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  You know, the parties were very mixed. They didn't, it wasn't like that. It was, but I, but actually the same quantity of tribalism was there. It was just that it was distributed in like different tiers. So one tier was US versus Soviet Union or Hitler before that.

• 36:49Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 36:50Speaker 02

  And that takes a bunch of energy. A bunch of people's minds are just fixated on that. That's where their head is. Other peoples were like, no, like Republicans versus Democrats, whether in the state or in the country. And that's where their head was. And the, and some other people were the, there are Democrats, you know, who the thing they hate the most is the other Democrats, who are the other faction who are actually much more, because it was much more mixed. So the factions themselves hated each other.

• 37:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  And what you have is the, the, the, the big high level. Tribalism, the biggest us versus the biggest them is a uniting force below. It chills out the things below because they're like, well, we also, or at least we're together at this thing. And then the lower ones, the fighting there, simmers the national ones. You don't want the national one goes too far. You start to, you know, just the xenophobia goes out of control and you want to, you know, you dehumanize the other part of the world. You hate each other so much, suddenly, you know, you almost want to, you know,

• 37:46Speaker 02

  part of the left felt, you know, more on the side of the Soviets than they did on the, than they did with the riot or whatever. And I think that all of that kind of, the three tiers being distributed evenly, like, I think it's nice because it simmers it on all levels. It keeps it from, and what happened since then is the national threat went away. The US stopped having a serious existential threat outside its borders. And the factions went away because, within the party, the lowest level, because the party's purified. So all the progressives went over here, all the conservatives went over here. And then you have the media, and so there's this one thing now, red versus blue, this middle one, it was the only one left, and the media inflames that and suddenly it becomes this crazy thing. People stopped caring about local politics, all these kind of kooky local politics people, I feel like are all, have all had their minds channeled into this national thing,

• 38:30Speaker 02

  which they can't, which doesn't even affect their lives nearly as much as the local politics. So it's concentrated into this one tier, and that is bad.

• 38:37Mark Manson?

  That's an interesting way to look at it. It's, because yeah, it does seem like there's a kind of a, tribalism is constant. Conflict itself is kind of constant, but it can be distributed in different amounts across different layers, as you call it. It makes me think, you know, I lived in Latin America for a while and my wife's Brazilian. And one of the things that I found really interesting is that there have been almost no wars in South America, and it's primarily due to geography. And like, reading, reading up on some of the history of some of the countries down there, there's been so much internal political conflict, like so many coups, assassinations,

• 39:18Mark Manson?

  revolutions, like mass murders, civil wars, in every single country down there. Yet they've, they like, have, I don't think they've ever fought each other in like over 150 years. And part of me wonders if it's just like, when you can't turn that aggression outward, you find somebody inward to face it towards. And, and it's, it's

• 39:44Speaker 02

  You could say the opposite about the Middle East, where Whenever Israel Palestine becomes a huge thing and that comes in waves. It's obviously we're in the middle of a big, big one now.

• 39:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 02

  All of these Arab countries that actually have very little in common, you know, feel more unified. And if you actually dig into any of what's going on in any one of those countries, most of them have a good reason to really hate their dictator.

• 40:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:14Speaker 02

  And this is maybe not a coincidence that, you know, it's very helpful to that dictator to deflect all of this anger you feel. Israel. And so that's, that's something that would bring people up to the top tier.

• 40:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  Of, you know, the, you know, kind of Muslims versus Israel or, or the West, the West. And, you know, the US is another one, of course, the Iraq war, I'm sure you've had this, all this unity. So you, it brings all this unity here, but it's so much that, you know, it's like that, that instead of, you know, you should be really angry at your own dictator and whatever. So I, I feel like you see the opposite there of Latin America in a way.

• 40:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  That's interesting. But it is interesting. It's like, where, where, where is the like Brazil, Argentina war, right? It just doesn't happen.

• 40:58Mark Manson?

  I think.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  You know, in East Asia, you have the countries that have this long history of hitting each other, Middle East, obviously.

• 41:03Mark Manson?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's crazy. I think there was one war between Brazil and Uruguay in like 1850 or something. And then that's it. That's like basically it. And, but meanwhile, every single country down there has had multiple revolutions, civil wars, multiple coups, military dictatorships, like mass killing.

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Africa, Africa seems, Sub-Saharan Africa seems the same.

• 41:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  There, there's all kinds of, it's a mess within each country, but you don't see, you know, Burundi and Rwanda going to war.

• 41:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah, totally. Last thing before we go. You are a new parent. I'm curious, what, what, what is your biggest, you're two years in. What are, what are, what are your biggest parenthood takeaways so far?

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Well, it's like.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  There's a massive pile of cons and a massive, massive tower, towering pile of pros.

• 42:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  And what I can say when I look at the two of them is that the pros pile is bigger.

• 42:07Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  It's a net positive, but there's a big pile of cons as well.

• 42:14Mark Manson?

  You, I think you're the first person who's ever described their kid as, eh, it's done net positive.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  Net positive, net positive.

• 42:25Speaker 02

  Because, uh, yeah, the, the, um, it's, it's like, you know, I, I, when I first got a dog, I was like, wow, this is such like a source of joy.

• 42:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Joy is hard to find in life, right? You know, like real, like just pure joy, just purity of that. Like I see my puppy runs up to me and it's just this feeling of pure love and joy. So this is even, this is like, there's even more of that here. Just like, there's so much like, it's, it's, there's a real purity to the, to the pros. Like it's just, it's just pure love. She's also so little. Her world is so small. She doesn't know about war or death or tribalism or religion or politics. She just, she doesn't know anything. She's just a little like pure, little, little like drop of humanity. And, and so it's just, then our relationship is so pure. The love I feel is so pure, the joy, the feeling, the way she sees me is so like,

• 43:20Speaker 02

  you know, idyllic. It's not going to last, of course, and everything, like everything, you know.

• 43:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  She will become a human. It will get, become complicated. She will become complicated. Our relationship will become, but at the moment it's just, it's just like a, it's like a puppy. It's just like such a delight. So that's all amazing. It's, it's definitely made me grow up in certain ways. These are all the pros. Though the cons are legit, like travel, like I used to go on these writer retreats, a couple of friends, I'd go for two weeks. That's over unless we do them with the whole family, you know. I, uh, I, I, summer of 14, I went away for 10 weeks, two weeks to each of five countries. So I could write about them like, that was awesome. Can't do that anymore. That's a big loss.

• 44:04Speaker 02

  You know, uh, we, one of us is up every morning at freaking seven, uh, 7am. That we're not early morning people like, that sucks. Uh, we want to just spontaneously get dinner with a friend. We can't, we don't have a babysitter, like real, like, you know, genuine, you know, my wife and I went to two new countries every single year. That was like our thing.

• 44:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  It's just, you know, when they get older, maybe we can start traveling with them. But like, so one, we have another one on the way. So it's about to be two and a baby. So those are genuine, real, major losses. And for my wife, just being pregnant, some women like it, she does not. So, you know, that's like huge toll on her body twice now. So the cons are very, very real and I'm not, and I don't, I don't think it's obvious that everyone should have kids. No, I think that the pros and cons are huge on book for, for everyone probably. And I think some people, it's not a net positive and they shouldn't do it. I think it's okay. And once you have a kid, you can't be selfish anymore, but you can be selfish before you have a kid and say, I want to, I don't want to dedicate my life to raising a kid. I want to be selfish. I think that's a totally reasonable decision as well.

• 45:04Mark Manson?

  Question.

• 45:06Mark Manson?

  Has being a parent changed your evaluation of the importance or the value of some of those things? Such as traveling to a new country every year or, uh, traveling with friends for a week or whatever. Like, has it raised your perception of how valuable that is? Or has it lowered it or has it not changed at all?

• 45:29Speaker 02

  I don't think it's changed very much.

• 45:31Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  It's, you know, I, I think that like the things would change maybe that if some people say like, oh, they're like petty fights with their friends or like feeling like they're excluded from like, you know, getting invited to this wedding or whatever. Like that stuff just you care less about, and that's probably true. But the things I'm talking about are like. You know, I'm not like now I realize that those like traveling wasn't important after all like nope, it really was important. It's really great. It's like, it's not critical. Um, I, I'm, it's a nice to have. It's not a need to have. The, that freedom was, was nice and I miss it and it's great. Um, and I, but, um, so I, I think, I don't think, I'm not sure I've had some like massive shift in like values or priorities.

• 46:14Speaker 02

  I, I do feel like it is, you know, it was, it was before it was like, it sucked to go away from my wife for two weeks, but like, worth it, you know, she would agree worth it. You should go like, she'll go away some other time. It, it feels like not okay to go away from a two-year-old for two weeks. Like again, she'd be fine, but I feel like our bond is like a very core important thing for her and I don't want to just, uh, to not be there for that. So, so I'm prioritizing her over those things, but that's not because I think those are less important than they were.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  And the other thing is, you know, I think that a friend reminded me these the other day that like this phase, when you're really, you lose a lot of freedom because the kids are so little. And you're kind of like, you know, they, it's relentless. If we're doing, you know, if we do an afternoon on Sunday and it's just like me and her, there's a five hour wait window between nap and sleep. And it's like, this is a very low IQ person to be spending five hours with. Like this is, you know, again, I, I, she delights me, but like on our three and a half, and I'm like, I, I cannot read that book again that you want me to read for the fifth time. And like, you know, it's, it is, it is relentless. And like that phase is temporary because at some point these two little kids are five and seven. Now they're playing with each other, playing with themselves.

• 47:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 47:31Speaker 02

  They go to school. So it's like less time. They go to maybe go to camp in the summer. So very quickly. And then I think, you know, what everyone says, of course, it happens so quickly and then you miss the time. So we try to savor it and appreciate it and appreciate that the freedom is not, it's not a permanent loss. It's a loss right now in return for something nice. So I'm trying to frame it that way. So it's like, I'll have, I'll get to write a retreats later, you know, I'll have plenty of time in my.

• 47:52Mark Manson?

  You've got the rest of your life for that.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, you know, so if they go to camp, I can do it in the summer. Like there's just plenty of times you can do that later.

• 47:58Mark Manson?

  Totally. All right. Speaking of which, you are currently.

• 48:03Mark Manson?

  In grind mode on a book. Are you talking about that book yet? Or are you?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's like, uh, it's, I don't know the exact title yet, but it's like everything, the story of everything.

• 48:13Mark Manson?

  It's the history of the universe, right?

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Big Bang to the end of the universe. It's basically an excuse for me to cover all my favorite topics along the way. And it's way easier than the last book in terms of it's, it's a, it's a hard project, but it's just every 10 pages, I'm on a different topic. So it feels like blogging and I'm getting sick of the topic and it's not like current events were happening before they changed the book. I'm like, well, now I have to incorporate this is none of that, other than some stuff with the near future.

• 48:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  And, um, and also I think I have figured out my, you know, my system's a little bit more of the, so I, it's, it's moving along. It's going to be done in like two years as opposed to seven for the last book. It was just a total disaster.

• 48:57Mark Manson?

  I'm happy to hear that.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:59Mark Manson?

  Well, any idea when it's, when it's supposed to come out?

• 49:02Speaker 02

  The last one's in print now, which is really fun. So I'll send you one of these.

• 49:05Mark Manson?

  Oh, cool. Yeah, I'd love to have that.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  But yeah, and I think you owe it to me to start another book because it's not fair.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I don't like what's happening here where you're like somehow feel like you're free of the hell that you signed up for.

• 49:20Mark Manson?

  You know what's funny? I was actually under contract to do another book and, uh, the deadline was it in the, or beginning of 24. Uh, and I just got on a call with my publisher and I was like, you know what? I haven't started writing and I don't think I'm going to. And, uh,

• 49:39Speaker 02

  Imagine the freedom.

• 49:40Mark Manson?

  And then they, they were like, well, fuck you, Manson, give us our money back. And so I, I wrote a check and gave the money back and, uh, life's been good.

• 49:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:50Mark Manson?

  Life's been really good.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  After I finish this book, I might have to experiment with not being in hell for a little bit.

• 49:57Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, it, you know, after, I think between starting subtle art and finishing Will's book, I think it was seven, seven, eight years of writing, pretty much nonstop. So yeah, it, the, the last two and a half, three has been really nice, but I am starting to have ideas for the next book and like get a little bit of the itch. You know, it's, it's, it is kind of like, Well, it's what I hear pregnancy is like is that you forget how hard it is.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Totally.

• 50:28Mark Manson?

  And so it's you start to I I'm already like playing those head games where I'm like, whoa, you know, it's like, that's a simple concept. I bet I could bang that out in six months. And, you know, I'm like, clearly.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  I know, I know. And in my head, I have this this vision for a future book because these books are both going to be, you know, the first draft is 200,000 words plus for both. And then I cut it down to, you know, 140, whatever. I'm like, what if I wrote a 60,000 word book and I wrote 2,000 words a week? For 30 of the 50 weeks of the year with some weeks off in the middle.

• 50:57Mark Manson?

  Easy.

• 50:57Speaker 02

  And I just wrote, I just woke up in the morning, wrote 400 words and got on with my day. And I'm like,

• 51:01Mark Manson?

  Piece of cake.

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Somehow that seems, why can't I just do that? That sounds so easy. Wake up, write one Microsoft Word page. Five days a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year handed in.

• 51:12Mark Manson?

  It always sounds, it always sounds great when you say it out loud. And then when you go to try to do it, you, it's like eating glass for 18 months.

• 51:20Speaker 02

  I know. It really, really is. Right now I'm on, I'm like, I'm, I'm like, I'm 170,000 words into this draft. And I have one, one big chapter left and then I'm going to then have the hideous process of cutting it down. And fact, there's over a thousand fat checks my fact checker has ready for me that I haven't even looked at yet.

• 51:38Mark Manson?

  Oh, my God.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  The other thing to think about is, you know, we both have experienced both books and

• 51:45Speaker 02

  articles, like you also could just be like, you know what, I'm going to write a, go back to the days when I write like a killer viral article twice a month and do that.

• 51:55Speaker 02

  You know, but it's hard to know because that feels like you do all this work and it's not really, it just kind of goes away. It kind of like fades away.

• 52:02Speaker 02

  On the other hand, it's just like you get the instant gratification of publishing right then. And you can, you can hop on something you're thinking about right then and just get it out. Or you can, I mean, I guess you can do that on your other mediums.

• 52:11Mark Manson?

  I, I will say, I am really, really enjoying being in back in internet land. It's, it feels like home. It's like, it's like coming home after living abroad or something. But yeah, there is an impermanence to it. Like there is a little bit of a treadmill type aspect to it of like, You just have to keep producing month after month after month and it feels like it, nothing lasts for very long. Like every once in a while, like one thing will hit and it'll last for a few years.

• 52:42Speaker 02

  Like if you had done subtle art as a, as a series of, and each chapter just was a post, it would have been much worse, much worse decision, right?

• 52:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 02

  It's a hard one.

• 52:52Mark Manson?

  There is.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  But, but, but if I had done the year one of Wait But Why, you know, you're as, as one big book, it would have been worse because it was better to have that be this kind of viral.

• 53:00Mark Manson?

  To me, there's like, each has its strategic place.

• 53:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:04Mark Manson?

  And, and also like some ideas, you know, obviously some ideas don't merit a book and some ideas shouldn't stick around for more than a few months or a year or two. But it is, it, I have been having a lot of fun with it, but yeah, I do like there is a permanence and a significance that comes with a book that you, you just, you don't really get any other way. So I will be back at it at some point.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah. All right, dude. Well, this has been a blast. Thank you so much for making the time and good luck finishing up the manuscript.

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Thank you. I'll keep you posted.

• 53:40Mark Manson?

  Cool. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Burney, edited by Andrew Nishimura, Jessica Choi is our videographer and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.