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- [00:01]
Chris Williamson
Why are stories so persuasive?
- [00:04]
Will Storr
Well, stories are persuasive because humans think in stories. Our brains remix reality and turn that reality into a narrative, you know, with ourselves at the center. So, you know, storytelling is sense making for the human brain. We haven't evolved to think in data algorithm. We've evolved to process reality in the form of stories. A story is always going to be the most persuasive, you know, technology out there. Stories also always going to be the thing that persuades people most of all.
- [00:37]
Chris Williamson
Is it kind of ironic that in the modern world a lot of the time we're told to take great heed of rationality and data and statistics and stuff like that, but you've got to disregard all of that personification and narrative and archetypes and religion and mythology, you know, that sort of, that's very unsophisticated. It doesn't really meet the criteria by which we judge what's happening in the modern world. So you're asking people to get rid of the stuff which to them feels most real and is persuasive, which is story and archetype and mythology and personification and blah, blah, and to start to believe in the thing which is the most sterile and novel and sort of alien to us.
- [01:21]
Will Storr
Absolutely. And I think there's a huge naivety out there that, you know, especially in, you know, what you might call our world of, you know, we like to think of ourselves as rational people, atheistic people, people who are interested in data, in science, and as amongst our people, there's a very naive idea that we are the ones who are led by data. I mean, I remember earlier in my career as a journalist interviewing a famous skeptic, Stephen Novella, who used to present a podcast called the Skeptics Guide to the Universe. And he very confidently told me that skeptics were kind of immune to irrationality because they were kind of tuned to be, you know, automatically skeptical about crazy beliefs. I just think that's sort of deeply naive. You know, like what, what you'll find, especially, you know, you see it all the time in the era of social media, is that, you know, even scientists, you know, not even scientists as much as anybody else, they start with the story and then they find the data to back up their story. So you can find, you know, academics who know way more than you or both of us put together about human biology, who believe in that kind of woke idea of, you know, biology, gender biology, and, you know, you know, why are men better than women at certain things? You know, they could find all the data in the world to tell you that that's not true, even though we believe that it is true. So, you know, you can take some like Jordan Peterson on the one hand and Adam Rutherford on the other hand, two very smart men, two very opinionated men, two men who I respect, you know, equally, I would say, but two men who are very angry and very lost in the story. They're both lost in the story at this, you know, so, you know, I love Adam and I love Jordan. I can never imagine being in the same room together.
- [03:04]
Chris Williamson
I was about to say, yeah, I wonder what happens over that dinner table.
- [03:07]
Will Storr
But equally, with the greatest respect to both of them, I wouldn't trust either of them to talk to me about the science of, you know, gender. Talk to me, certainly about what's going on in Israel, Palestine.
- [03:19]
Chris Williamson
Dispassionately.
- [03:20]
Will Storr
Yeah, dispassionately. Not because they're dishonest, not because there's anything wrong with them, but because they're lost in the story. They're utterly lost in their particular story of the world and the data that they cite, the data that they choose to believe is subservient to the story. So even with people like Adam and Jordan, you know, two brilliant minds, the story comes first, as far as I'm concerned. I think that's inarguable.
- [03:44]
Chris Williamson
Have you come across knowingness? Do you know what that is?
- [03:47]
Will Storr
No, this is new to me.
- [03:49]
Chris Williamson
Cool idea. So this is from Brian Klass, who wrote Fluke. Outstanding book, Nearly as good as yours. And he talks about. He talks about the problem of knowingness. A lot of people in the modern world think that the biggest issue is misinformation. It's people being given poor quality information. He contends that a much bigger issue is knowingness. And knowingness is a belief that you already have the answer to the question before the question has been posed. It's a kind of reverse intellectual curiosity. So I know. No, no, no, no, no. The science is settled on climate change. Humans are not having any impact or whatever it is. And the interesting insight he's got here is if the issue was simply misinformation, and that is true. Let's just imagine for a moment that misinformation was the biggest problem. All that you would need to do in order to counteract that would be to provide better, more compelling information. But it's not. It's knowingness, which is this kind of Faraday's cage insulation, where people don't. It doesn't matter about the information because they're not open to any new information regardless of whether it's miss or real or dis or male, whatever pre bunked malinformation. And he makes this really great point that when you're thinking about the problems of the modern world, talking about misinformation, talking about you needing better facts, we need to deliver more information. If you can't get past the problem of knowingness, if you can't get past the issue that people feel like they already know the answer. And this is, this is kind of similar to the. Every religion believes that it's the right one, but by definition that can't be true. Like only one of them can be right given that they don't all agree. He has this great line where he says everybody acts as if the facts are already settled whilst no one can agree on what the facts actually are.
- [05:51]
Will Storr
Yeah, I mean knowing this sounds, it sounds like implicit belief. It's the beliefs that just implicit. And you believe with such kind of ferocity that you can't see that they're beliefs, they just feel like reality to you. And when I talk about the story world, we all live in this story world, you know, I think that speaks to that idea that we all, you know, we all live in this narrative and you know, one of, one of the kind of moments in my career as a writer that always sticks with me was when I was in my twenties, I wrote my very first book was about ghosts and went around the world trying to figure out if ghosts existed. It was, it was good fun. And one of the guys that I met was called Morris Gross and he was this, you know, this old guy who lived up in Muswell Hill and he'd been a ghost hunter all his life and he was, he was famous for investigating the Enfield Poltergeist case. These kind a legend, Morris Gross. And so I managed to get an interview with him and I went to his house and as I was leaving his house he said, you know, you know Will, he said if you're looking for evidence of the supernatural, you're going to find it. And it's always stuck with me because I did find evidence for the supernatural even though I don't believe in the supernatural. And it's always stuck with me because I think the great the brain is this amazing evidence finding machine. If you've got a belief, the brain will find evidence to back up your belief. No matter what you believe about gender or Israel, Palestine or whatever it might be, your brain is going to find multitudinous evidence to back up, you know what you believe, you're going to see it everywhere. And that's one of the tricks of the kind of storytelling brain. You know, we live in this story world, we live in this narrative. And the brain's very, you know, the brain's not interested in what's the truth. The brain's not really interested in you having this kind of perfectly clear understanding of reality. The brain wants you to succeed in your life as a human. And what that means is we have to achieve connection with a group. And once we've achieved connection with a group or a tribe, we kind of earn status within it. And so, and so to earn state connection to that group, you've got to believe their story. Every group has a story. It tells of the world, a political, you know, whether it's a politicalization or a cult or a religion or, you know, you know, me and you are in the kind of same kind of cultural group. We believe roughly the same things. We have, we have a shared reality, we have a shared idea of who are the heroes, who are the villains, what are the good beliefs, what are the bad beliefs, what is stat, you know, so me and you share a story, and we share a story with most of your viewers. And it's reassuring, you know, we see evidence for it everywhere. So that's kind of how you know, all this is working. The brain isn't motivated to tell, to discover the truth. The brain is motivated, motivated to make us want to collect with like minded people and then status from those people. And that means believing their stories.
- [08:28]
Chris Williamson
So is it right to say that story is the language of the brain then?
- [08:33]
Will Storr
Absolutely, that's exactly right. You know, and what we know, and as I write about end of story is the deal. I think the big idea that kind of made me excited about this book was this idea that, you know, what is story originally for? Well, story is what enables us to be these highly cooperative apes. You know, as you know, humans are an ape. We're one of five existing species of great ape. But we are a weird, obviously an unusual kind of apex. And that weirdness is that we are also a bit like ants in that we're highly collective. You know, other rapes overcome the obstacles of their existence. Individually, they live in troops, but they find food. Individually, they pursue goals individually, you know, broadly speaking. But we don't. Humans are like ants that we form into these superorganisms, these problem solving superorganisms in which every kind of individual human plays their part. And that's how we're Amazing. That's how we've. And we've taken the best of the ape and the best of the ant and we've taken over the world. But that poses a problem. You know, you've got all these apes, you know, once upon a time. How do you connect all those individualistic ape brains together? How do you get all those. Those brains firing in the form of this highly collected superorganism? Well, you do it with Story. Story is a device for fusing brains together. You know, under the power of story. We're all facing in the same direction, pursuing the same goals, overcoming the same obstacles. We'll have a shared idea of who you are, who you are, what your role is, what you should be doing. So that's what Story's doing. It's. It's fusing individual human brains together and getting them to experience the same reality. And you can see that effect happening when you go to the movies, when you go to the cinema. You know, we go into the cinema as this crowd of individuals. And if the film is any good, we're transported into it. And for that 90 minutes, we forget our own reality, we forget our own consciousness. We're all sucked into that consciousness of the, of the film, experiencing the lives of the people up on the screen. And we kind of leave that cinema connected as one, having. Having had that mad experience. And, you know, you often have that weird, kind of almost trippy experience coming out of the cinema where for a few moments you feel like the hero of the movie. You know, you feel like Luke Skywalker for a moment is all. Everything goes a bit weird. You kind of. You kind of snap out of it. Well, that's story doing what story is supposed to do, which is entering our brains and getting us all to experience this kind of collective reality of the story.
- [10:52]
Chris Williamson
So it's kind of like a coordination mechanism to get everybody onto a similar page.
- [10:58]
Will Storr
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you know, that's. And it still works, of course. You know, MAGA people have a particular story of the world that they tell each other. You know, anti vax people do. Provax people do. Climate change people do, you know, like that. That's how it works. We still collect into these groups that are defined by the stories they tell of the world. And those stories infect us, they influence us, they cause us to believe certain things and to behave in certain ways.
- [11:28]
Chris Williamson
Why is this just that? Evolutionarily, if all you've got is the spoken word, humans needed to. The most obvious way to explain the world is to do it. Through personification, narrative roles, characters, motivation. This is why the goddess that is the moon and the God that is the sun rises and the thunder and Thor and, you know, is this just before you've got written word and before you can do statistical analysis? The most obvious, most common, most sort of close to our experience of reality way to communicate information was to personify it into a sort of a narrative is that we're just the progeny of storytellers that told stories to pass down wisdom. To tell stories to pass down wisdom.
- [12:21]
Will Storr
Well, I mean, the current leading theory is that. Is that. Is that language evolved in the first place to tell stories. That enabled us to operate as these highly cooperative groups, these super organisms, as I call them. You know, one early form of storytelling is gossip. You know, gossip is a universal human behavior. We all do it. You know, why do we do it? Well, gossip teaches us who we ought to be in the superorganism. It teaches us what are the good behaviors, what are the bad behaviors. It motivates us to behave in a kind of way that serves the superorganism because then we're rewarded with status. And it, you know, also incentivizes in the other way that if you're being gossiped about and the gospel is negative, you're going to get punished. You know, so that's. So that's one form of early storytelling. I mean, the other story, the other kind of storytelling is about the future. You know, we tell stories about the future. There's a very brilliant, you know, evolutionary biologist called Michael Tomasello that says, you know, that it's. It's impossible to imagine two chimpanzees picking up a log and carrying it together to take it somewhere else. Like even that basic level of coordination, cooperation, even chimpanzees can't do our closest relative. And storytelling enables us to do that. You know, okay, you know, if we. If we move that log over here, that can be a foundation for our next camp. All right, dude, you know, we're going to do it. So. So. So that's a form of storytelling. You know, we're telling stories about the future. And that's why stories are always about obstacles and goals. Every functional story fundamentally, is about obstacles and goals because that's what story evolved to do. Its purpose is to. Is. Is to pull us into a group. And the purpose of that group is to overcome obstacles in pursuit of goals.
- [13:56]
Chris Williamson
What role does social identity and mimicry play here?
- [14:01]
Will Storr
Huge, huge roles. I mean, you know, social identity is. Is. Is your identity within the Group, you know, who, who are you in the group? You, you know, the basic idea might, you know, basic concept might be a football team who are in a football team. But you've got a position, you're playing in a particular position that comes with certain expectations, you've got certain roles to perform and you're judged, your status goes higher or lower depending on how well you perform those roles. And that's the same in every, you know, your social identity in the football team is striker, defender, goalkeeper, whatever it might be, referee even. And that's the same in every human group. You know, with every group we join we have what we call a social identity. And what, you know, a human identity is in part a collection of these various social identities that we have.
- [14:46]
Chris Williamson
Right. Yeah. I wonder, what was that, what was that Apple ad? The Lemmings thing.
- [14:54]
Will Storr
Yeah. So yeah, in a story as a deal, I tell the story of, well, I sort of pose a question really about like one of the most famous ads that was ever made was Apple's 1984 ad, which kind of played on the George Orwell's novel and showed this horrendous kind of totalitarian hellscape. All these kind of bald, gray middle aged men, God forbid, you know, drone like automatons and, and this kind of like barking patriarchal face and this Technicolor woman with an Apple T shirt on runs down the middle of it, throws a hammer, smashes the, the face and then it comes up saying, you know, in January 1984 you're going to find out why, you know, I forget the actual words. Because of Apple, 1984 won't be like 1984. So basically, basically 1984 is freedom. It's power, it's creativity, it's progress. Hugely successful, massively successful ad campaign. I mean they sold in today's money would be, you know, hundreds of millions dollars worth of computers when that, when, when they were launched after that ad. So enormously successful. And then the next year people know about the 1984 ad because it is seen as one of the most successful ads in, in history. But the next year they tried to repeat it. They did the same thing. It was the same advertising agency chat day. They used a Hollywood film director and what this ad was, it's called Lemmings. And it was just the most horrendous like dark, dark thing where you've got all these like automaton sad sack businessmen, a bit like the PC guys in their 1990s or early 2000s. As I'm a Mac I'm a PC kind of march, you know, with briefcases, marching off this cliff to their deaths. The sound of a nightmarishly slowed down version of hey ho, hey ho, it's off to work we go. And basically saying that all these business computer users were a bunch of lemmings and if they, you know, implying if they knew what they were doing they'd be buying Apple computers and it was just, it was a massive disaster. It wasn't just, it wasn't even like a null effect, everyone just ignored it. The day after it was launched on the Super Bowl, Apple's headquarters were inundated with phone calls from people saying there were business people saying they were never going to buy an Apple computer again. And you know, and one of the things I'm arguing in the book is that, you know, one of the reasons, one of the things I didn't understand was that, you know, that 1984 ad was offering the Apple user status. It was saying, you know, fundamentally that if you buy an Apple computer you're on the side of progress, you know, creativity, smashing the man, which is a big thing in the 80s. It's not going to be 1994, you know, so it's a very optimistic, high status, fashionable story they were telling. But, but the other ad, it took status away. So it was an absolute disaster. It was basically telling people that there, there were these bunch of brain dead lemmings and they were gonna fall to their death due to their own stupidity.
- [18:03]
Chris Williamson
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- [19:27]
Will Storr
Yeah, a little bit. So to understand one of the reasons that 1984 was so successful, you have to really understand the story of computers that was being told in the 1980s. So when the advert was broadcast, the boarding more stood up. This wasn't the age of Silicon Valley, you know, Facebook, Google and all the, you know, friendly corporate, you know, brands that we know today. Computers were still feared. They were seen as these kind of machines that were going to like, yeah, going to introduce a future of conformity and you know, totalitarianism. It was just a year before 1974 was broadcast there was a massive film called War Games which I just about remember from my childhood, you know, which, which was all about this computer that was, that did, that did War Games with the Soviet Union. Kind of what goes crazy and actually starts and almost starts a brand new nuclear war. And a computer then was this huge kind of flashing mainframe thing operated by inscrutable men in white lab coats. So that was, that was, that was what people fear. People feared computers weirdly that that fear is re, re reawakening at the moment. In the age of AI people are start fears again. But they went away and, and you know really largely one of the reasons they went away is because of that ad. It was saying that no, you know, this is not what purchasing personal computers are all about. Personal computers are about freedom, they're about individuality, they're about progress. So people would love that story. You know, they massively identified with that story and ended up being an incredibly powerful, powerfully persuasive piece of storytelling for Apple. I mean, you know, like, like all the ads I talk about in the book, it had no information in it about the actual product. It had no price, no technical details, it didn't have a picture of the damn thing. It was pure storytelling and incredibly successful. And then you know one scholar in marketing that I read And I agree, argues that 194 didn't just tell a brand new story about Apple computers, it told a brand new story about Silicon Valley, about computers in general. That story about computers being the tools for creativity and changing the world and freedom that became the story of computers going on for decades.
- [21:37]
Chris Williamson
Is it, is it right to say that stories are identity manipulation in that way then?
- [21:43]
Will Storr
Manipulation is a strong word.
- [21:48]
Chris Williamson
Curation.
- [21:49]
Will Storr
Curation. I don't think, I don't think their ads are manipulating our identity strictly speaking, I think they are manipulating us by appealing to our identity. So you know, humans, you know, we, we live in these two worlds at once. We, we live in the physical world like, like other animals. And in that physical world we care about our survival, we care about food and shelter and procreation and the inner and importantly the safety of our children who are going to then move, move our genes forwards. So in that respect we're no different from a dog or an elephant. But humans live in this other kind of crazy world, this story world where we care about other things. And in the story world we aren't a flesh and blood machine. We're an identity with this collection of ideas. That's what we are. And this identity means more to us than our lives. You know, like to the average human being, their identity is the most precious thing they'll ever own. I mean, you know, our children's aren't our possessions, but our identity is. So, you know, you can see people throughout human history have chosen identity over their own lives. When we go to war, that's what we do. When we fly planes into the World Trade center, that's what we do. When we kill ourselves, that's what we do. You know, most cases of suicide are what I call identity failure. It's not because, you know, they can't physically live anymore because they're sick or because they're poor or something. I mean, of course people do often kill themselves because they're ill, but, but very often they don't. Very often they kill themselves because they feel like failures, because their identity has failed, because they're lacking in connection. No one loves me, no one likes me, everybody hates me. They're lacking in status. I'm useless, I'm pathetic. And, and crucially, they're also trapped. They feel there's no way they can rescue their identity. And the pain of their identity failing become so acute that they choose death over, you know, over the, the pain of having their identity fall to pieces. And so, so that, that's the power of identity. And so the most powerful ads, you know, appeal to. To identity. And, And. And again, that's what, you know, Apple did with their. With their other really famous and successful ad campaign, Think Different. Just a bunch of black white pictures of people like Gandhi and Mother Teresa and John Lennon. And this is. You think Different. You know, so if you're. If, you know. So basically, people who identify with those characters, you know, changed the world, became another absolute cliche in Silicon Valley. And it began really with Think different when it became popularized, that idea. And that's an appeal to identity. You know, there's. There's another really great example which I found, which I'd never heard of. And if you're not Canadian, you won't know about it, but it's Molson Beer. So back in the year 2000, Molson Beer were in trouble. They were number one, and then they were slipping. And so the ads agency were tasked with rescuing the reputation of Molson Beer. And the guy who at the ad agency was Canadian and knew that one of the things that annoys Canadians is when Americans basically say, you're just Americans. There's no difference between Canadians and Americans. It's something that really winds Canadians up, as you can imagine. So he came up with this ad campaign called I am Canadian. And all it is, it's this ordinary guy in a plaid shirt and jeans on a stage listing things that are Canadian. Like, it's Z, not Z, for example. We don't say a boot. We say about. It's just a list of things. But it was massively successful. It went instantly, you know, viral. Viral at the time, you know, kids began, you know, shouting it on the streets. The value of Molson Beer, you know, rockers, it. I forget the exact number, but, you know, tens of millions of the value of the company through the roof. One really, what the incredibly smart thing they did was they debuted that ad in the ad break of the Oscars just after the south park film Blame Canada had been performed. And then they had this very patriotic I'm Canadian thing. But what's fascinating about I'm Canadian is. And it became known as the rant in Canada. It's very famous in Canada. And what's fascinating about it, again, just like the Apple ad, there's nothing in there about the beer, about its tastiness or whatever. You know, what are the qualities of this beer? Why should we buying it? Nothing. It's. It's literally an appeal to identity. It's saying it's. It's holding a mirror up to their market. Their audience saying, this is who you are. And we're so in love with our identity. We go, yes, that's me. And we, we, we, we, we flock to the product that's. And it's the same as what Apple did with Think different. They just said, here you are, we see you, you're amazing, you're fantastic. And, and, and, and this is who you are, you are this person. And you know, so, so that's how it's manipulating us for our identity. Like the very best, most persuasive ads. That's how they do it.
- [26:32]
Chris Williamson
Does that mean from a story perspective? Stories overall adverts too, but just generally stories that they can, they're a way that tribal preferences can be used, can be manipulated in group, out group, the people like us meme.
- [26:49]
Will Storr
Absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so, so I mean, and this is, this is, this is, you know, this is another concept that really came home to me when I was doing my research for A Story is a Deal. And it really made me feel like as a society we are still at the foothills of maturity in talking about issues like race because, you know, we fundamentally hate this idea. But, but, but it's an inarguably true idea. And the idea is that people like people like them. You know, we collect into groups of like minded people. So we're always looking out for people who are a bit like us to identify with. And so, you know, that's why, you know, race becomes a problem because white people naturally tend to flock towards white people. Black people naturally tend to flock towards black people. And at its core it isn't racism, it's human nature. And until we've sort of really grasped that, we're not going to make any progress in these sort of very difficult problems. So that's what we're kind of constantly doing. And again, it's human nature because it's in our, it's in, we're always looking for people with similar identities to us that we can cooperate with. Is that super organism, you know, programming. Again, nature is constantly wanting us to gather into groups of like minded people and repel, you know, repel people who we think aren't like minded. And the most persuasive storytelling, you know, understands that. Like one of the most recent examples was from the Trump election, the one just gone, which I thought was extraordinary, where, you know, there's a concept in the book I call atomic statements, which are kind of, you know, tiny little phrases that, that are, you know, that are absolutely packed with meaning and, and they're Atomic because they're. They're tiny little things, but they explode on contact with the human brain. They're so packed with meaning, and you can see, like, lines of movie dialogue like we're going to need. We need a bigger boat is an atomic statement because it's the entire movie packed into a. To a line. Houston, we have a problem. It's an atomic statement. You know, these are the lines that we love and we repeat and become iconic because they're atomic. They're packed full of meaning. And the best advertising lines are like that. Just do it is packed full of meaning. It's a story about what Nike stands for. Just do it. You know, it's fantastic. And politicians use these to great effect, too. You know, in the book I write about Project Fear and Take Back Control, which are very successful for the Brexit leave campaign. But after the book was finished, there was this other incredible atomic statement that came out of the Trump campaign, which was, kamala is for they. Them. Trump is for you. Which, you know, even the people that came up with it were staggered by how successful it was. You know, Kamala's own research team figured worked out that it had created a 2.7% shift in the election race. Just that line alone. So, you know, that's a story. And it's a story that millions of Americans immediately understood. A certain kind of American who were incredibly frustrated and fed up with the kind of, you know, with the kind of era of wokeism. And so, yeah, that was another example of incredibly powerful, persuasive storytelling that appeals to identity.
- [29:48]
Chris Williamson
Does that mean that misaligned messages and misaligned stories can threaten identity, then if you get it. If you get it wrong and the other way.
- [29:56]
Will Storr
Yeah, exactly. So you look at the Gillette ad campaign where they were trying to appeal to men by calling men abusers and, you know, harassers. You know, it's like lemmings all over again. Like, you're not gonna. You're not gonna make people happy by removing their status by telling them a story that they don't wanna believe. It's the Bud Light campaign, you know, giving a, you know, transgender woman. I'd like to drink. You know, that. That. That's a story. You know, we. We know that this person stands for Wokeism. And wokeism is at its core, you know, if we're honest about what wokeism is at its core. One of the things it. It is, is a movement against straight white men. So, you know, straight white men were the. Were the market for. For Bud Light. So that, that was a ridiculous thing to do. And, and it exploded in their faces. And also Tesla, you know, you know that, you know, Tesla's stock prices collapsed, that's partly because of the tariffs. But their sales have dropped massively across Europe, which isn't because of the tariffs. And that's because the story that Tesla stands for has been polluted by Elon Musk's behavior in the last 18 months and his alignment with the Trump government.
- [31:07]
Chris Williamson
It's vicious, isn't it, the power that stories have. Because much of this, if you were to say reality, you said there's two things. We sort of live in the world and we live in stories. Tesla's cars from, I don't know, when they launched a decade ago, something like that, until now, have just linearly got better and cheaper and faster and more convenient with improved build quality, but largely are the same thing. Right? So my point is that they haven't changed, but the story around them has. And that's made way more of an impact on the stock price and on their sales and on the way that people see them than the incremental improvement month on month, year on year, over a decade to their full self driving capacity. So in this way, the story is more real than reality is.
- [31:57]
Will Storr
It is more real than reality. That's exactly right. And to understand why, you've got to go back to that concept of the story world that human beings are these two things. We're a bag of bones and blood in the survival realm, but in the story realm, we're nothing more than a collection of ideas that we, that we collect. You know, we are the things that we love, we are the art that we like, we are the podcasts that we listen to. You know, we are amazing. It makes me laugh when I'm watching, you know, travel podcasters who go around the world and they all do, they all copy boredom Bankrupt's body language. You know, he does this weird thing where he looks behind him all the time and you see him, especially at the beginning. They do it, I think, subconsciously, aping his body language, like, because they're, you know, they're part of, he's part of their identity. And that's also true of the things that we own. The things that we own are part of our identity. So if you're somebody that stands against Trump and you're in a Tesla, that's because it becomes toxic to you. Because, because it's like, it's like you've become, your very self has become polluted with this alien kind of element, you know, you want to cut it out of you. It's a, it's a, it's a radically bad thing to happen to you. So you're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna reject it. It's like being forced as a middle aged man to walk down the road, you know, with a, I don't know, with a big skin tight Taylor Swift T shirt on. Like, it just makes you feel deeply uncomfortable, you know, so, so because the self is nothing more than a collection of ideas in that story realm.
- [33:23]
Chris Williamson
What does the Theranos story tell us about group psychology and how that works?
- [33:28]
Will Storr
Well, it's, it, you know, I love the Theranos story because really speaks to all this stuff, you know, as we. Holmes, you know, came along and said she had this incredible device that she called the Edison. And the Edison was revolutionary because he used to take a couple of vials of blood to do all this huge battery of blood tests and they, she could do it with a, with a, with a pin prick of blood in your finger. Amazing, revolutionary, fantastic. And as we know now that the, it was fantasy. It didn't, it didn't work. There was no machine. And so what's incredible about the Edison is that, is that she managed to get huge amount of backing from, from people on her board, including Henry Kissinger, you know, you know, the former director of the Centers of Disease Control, you know, like very, very high status smart men. They were all men on her board. Not a single, not a single woman. And that's important for reasons will become apparent in a second. So, so, so all these guys gambled their reputation on her telling the truth. And then incredibly smart successful guys and girls invested hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in, in thoroughness. Rupert Murdoch, it was the bit, it was the most amount of money he's ever invested in any company outside of his own family of companies. And the incredible thing about this is most of these people did no due diligence. So Rupert Murdoch did no due diligence. So they didn't even bother to find out whether she was telling the truth. Like, it's extraordinary, some people did. So, so somebody from Google Ventures who were interested in investing went down to a Walmart where Theranos were doing their tests for a, for a blood test and they took two massive vials of blood out of his arm. He's just like, hang on a minute, this is, we are not investing in this. So some people didn't fall for the story, but Rupert Murdoch did. And Henry Kissinger did and the Walmart family did. And you know, me and other commentators too, this is not just me who's come up with this, are convinced it was the story that she stood for. You know, this was at a time, we're still in that time. We're in the girl boss era. People were and remain desperate for a female Steve Jobs. You know, people talk very disparaging about tech bros. You know, the masculinity of the tech world is a problem for the, you know, for the good people of our culture today. So people were desperate for a female Steve Jobs and she became a female Steve Jobs, even down to the turtleneck. You know, it was extraordinary the kind of cosplaying that she did. And so, you know, people like Rupert Murdoch and Henry Kissinger, by buying into Theranos, they're making that part of their identity. So her heroic story becomes their own heroic story. Rupert Murdoch comes somebody that has backed this female billionaire, genius, founder. So that's how important the story is. And as I say in the book, I mean the device didn't exist. The device was worth nothing, but the story was worth $9 billion. That's what Theranos was valued at at their peak, 9 billion billion. So that's the power of stories heading to kind of bedazzle the minds of even our greatest, smartest, wealthiest people.
- [36:32]
Chris Williamson
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- [37:53]
Will Storr
Yeah, we do. There's something in the brain that tells us that we are something very powerful that tells us that we are not under the influence of story, that we are under the influence of rationality. You know, it's actually quite easy to figure out why that is. Like, you have to believe in the story of your group in order for that group to function. Like obviously you do, because if you.
- [38:15]
Chris Williamson
Don'T believe, you can't be a part of the group.
- [38:17]
Will Storr
Yeah, because, because you're not part of that group's mission, you're de. Identified with the group. And also, you know, one of the fundamental things that you want from that group is, well, the two fundamental things that you want is connection and status. So, so you only really connect with the group if you believe in, in their story. So if you believe in that Jesus was a real guy and that he died and resurrected on the third day, you're, you're a Christian now. That's what you are. You know, you're a Christian. It's as simple as that. Jordan, by the way. And, and so, so now you're connected into that Christian world. But in order to earn status in that Christian world, you have to allow that belief to kind of fill you up. I call it this process, active belief. You have, you have to, that belief has to act on you like a parasite controlling your behavior. So you go out in the world and you, you, you start acting out the values and the story of the Christian set of beliefs. You know, you can't do that if you, if you don't believe in Christianity it won't make any sense to you. And also you can't earn the status, you know, like, like, like it, like one of the things that, that Muslims do, they call it the Hafiz, where they, some, some Muslims will learn the Quran by heart. So every, every, every word of the Quran, you know, takes sometimes two to three years is a massive thing. And if you managed to pull this stunt off, you get a huge amount of status. I think it's called hafiz, but you get a certain title in a certain status. Now you have to believe in the Story of Islam to go through that trial of two to three years of earning it by heart because otherwise you're not going to be motivated to do it. And also, more importantly, the status will mean nothing. It doesn't mean anything. So if you don't believe in the story, to you and me it's a waste of time learning that book word for word, why would you bother? But if you believe in the story, it has massive meaning, you know, so yeah, we have to believe that the stories that aren't just stories that they're actual truth their reality. And we believe it so much. You know, look at through human history. People all the time fight and die on behalf of the beliefs of their groups.
- [40:24]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, I had this conversation with Andrew Schultz a couple of months ago. Ben Shapiro's famous tweet about facts don't care about your feelings, but in reality, feelings don't care about your facts. And that's a much better way to put it. So I get this sense that facts are kind of, in some ways they do become obsolete in a story driven world.
- [40:46]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah, I saw that too and I was jealous. I was like, damn, I wish I'd come up with that. But yeah, it's absolutely not too late.
- [40:51]
Chris Williamson
To add it to the book. It's only a preprint.
- [40:55]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I think that's absolutely right. That's the right way to think about it. And again, I'll just go back to, you know, poor Adam rather than Jordan Peterson who I would emphasize, they've got to be smart guys who have nothing but respect for. But they're, but, but, but they have their stories of the world, they believe thoroughly and nobody, no, no set of facts is gonna, is gonna change their minds on, on their beliefs. That seems pretty clear for the tenor of their conversation on social media.
- [41:26]
Chris Williamson
Okay, so connection, identity, but also status. So how do we use story to gain status?
- [41:34]
Will Storr
Yeah, as I said, it's like, you know, once we believe the story of the group, what we want then is to earn status within the group. So nobody wants to be at the bottom rung of a group, liked but seen as kind of useless. We kind of want to rise up the group. That's that, that's human nature. And you do that by developing a reputation of somebody that's valuable to the group in some way. So, so yeah, so, so as I said, you know, if you're a Christian, you just become a better Christian. You start acting like a Christian. If you're a anti vaxxer, you don't get Vaccinated, you go, you might go protesting, you might start doing some blogging, you might have an argument with your GP about how vaccines are shit. And then you'll tell all your friends. And I go, you're amazing. You know, so, so that's what I call that kind of active belief. We, you know, again, we allow that story to take us over. And again, this is why stories are so incredibly persuasive. You see it all the time. Stories take over the minds of people and they start behaving in ways dictated by the story. At its most extreme, it's a cult. I mean, that's the most extreme form of, you know, I call a status game where you, where, where people have one identity, one story, one status game. And, and that's it. I mean, that's why people in culture usually encouraged to not even contact family and friends anymore because they, they cannot be allowed to have any other source of any other story, any other identity, any other source of status. And you know, a religion is just a slightly weaker form of a cult. A political party is a weaker form of a cult. And you can, you know, carry on going down and down the line. You know, all groups are kind of loose or tight, and the tightest is the cult.
- [43:11]
Chris Williamson
Is there a difference between high and low status influence and storytelling?
- [43:18]
Will Storr
Yeah, so you've mentioned mimesis a couple of times. And so the copying instinct and how that tends to work in the human groups is that we are unconsciously constantly on the lookout for people like us. So people that we identify with who are higher status than us, and when we identify like a high status version of ourselves, we tend to automatically start copying them. That's when the mimesis kicks in. So we will want to get near them. So that might be by flattering them if they're a celebrity, might be by buying their products, joining their, you know, social media feeds, whatever, you know, going to their concerts, we might start mimicking their patterns of behavior, the way they talk, the way they dress, their artistic tastes. We will automatically. Yeah, so it's. And unconsciously, that's, that's because our brain has gone, well, this is a person like me who's got high status. I want high status. So the more I can make myself like this person, the more likely I am to rise up that status gain.
- [44:21]
Chris Williamson
What about virtue signaling? That's a very specific type of status and probably involves story.
- [44:28]
Will Storr
Yeah, well, there are kind of, there's lots of different kinds of status, but there are, there are three main kinds of ways that we can earn status in human groups. The first way is dominance. So that's the much more animalistic way, the much more ancient way. So dominance is violence, the threat of violence, also the threat of social violence, ostracization, cancel culture. All that would come under the commander, dominance. And then, and then there's the other two kind of forms which are based on our reputation, our identity. And so the first one is competence. So we become good at stuff. So we become valuable to our group by becoming an excellent hunter or a honey finder or an excellent storyteller or an excellent sorcerer. And so people respond to us by rewarding us with status. And you know, in all human groups, the more status you get, the better everything else becomes. You become safer, better fed, you get greater access to choice of mates. You know, in, in the modern world you get richer that, you know, it's always worked like that, it always will work. But the other way of voting status is by virtue. You know, we also award status to people who we perceive as virtuous. And the role of virtue in human groups is about rules. It's about knowing the rules, knowing the stories, but it's also enforcing the rules. So again, we have this very naive view that virtue is obviously good, but virtue is 50% good, 50% evil. Because you know, packed in with virtue is that instinct to enforce the rules and to punish people who don't share our story world. So you know, Michelle Obama, you might call her a virtue superstar because she's, she, she's, you know, known for her perceived moral goodness by, by her people, the Pope, the Dalai Lama. These are virtue superstars. These are, these are people who are incredibly high status. You know, Greta Thunberg, on the basis of the perception that they are high in, you know, levels of virtue. But also, you know, the, during the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards were playing virtue based status games. People doing cancel culture. You know, it's dominance, virtue. You know, they're not interested in competence, they're not interested in success. They're interested in, I'm going to punish you for not following the rules and for not believing the sacred stories of my group.
- [46:53]
Chris Williamson
How do it sounds a lot like rivalry. How do the mechanics of rivalry play out in stories, storytelling?
- [47:00]
Will Storr
Rivalry is interesting. So within a group, rivalry can be very productive. So but rivalry tends to be classified as a one on one thing. So if you are rivalrous with one individual and you know, one of the tests of rivalry, you know, people who are rivals are usually quite similar. They're playing, they're playing A same status game and they have a history of near wins in close matches. So that's the recipe for a rivalry. And that kind of rivalry can be amazing. It can drive people to incredible feats. It's the Lennon McCartney thing. You know, in the status game, I told the story of, you know, the true origin story of the iPhone, which is that when Steve Jobs went to a barbecue that his wife, that his wife organized with some twat from Microsoft who was sort of going, oh, Microsoft has solved computer. We've got this touch device with a stylus. It's going to blow you out the water. And then Jobs came in to work on the Monday and were furious, livid, and instructed his team to figure out a way of blowing Microsoft out the water. And it wasn't going to be a stylist, it was going to be with a finger. So, you know, that's rivalry. I mean, rivalry made the iPhone. It began as the iPad and then reemerged with the iPhone. So that tends to be good for us. It's obviously exhausting, but it's, you know, but you know, we've all been in that situation where we become obsessed with the rival. It drives you forward. What's less healthy is competition. So if rivalry is one on one, one person versus one person, one group versus one group, competition is kind of all against all. And competition in, in that kind of technical sense is, is often less productive. It's kind of exhausting. It's kind of toxic. People, kind of people in organizations high in, you know, very high in competition experience lots of burnout. They experience kind of a, kind of a toxic culture in which everybody's kind of hoarding the status for themselves, taking all the credit, pushing all the blame away. So, yeah, you've got to be careful in organizations how you're engineering your teams so there's not too much competition, but there is plenty of healthy rivalry.
- [49:06]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, well, you need people to be able to capture the upside from doing a really great job whilst not detracting from the positive sum gains that you get by working in a team. And this, you know, the tension between connection and capturing, I suppose, self capturing of this status. Like I need to show that I'm contributing to the group. I actually want to capture as much, if not maybe even a little bit more than I actually contributed. But I can't do too much because if I do too much, then people are going to know that I'm a freeloader. So, you know, I need to have a conspicuous productivity to the point where people Will I remember? This is so funny. I haven't thought about this for forever. So during my degree at Newcastle, we had a consultancy project. This was so fucked up. I can't believe I haven't thought about this in ages. We did a consultancy project for a company. It was a marketing consultancy project. And we were chosen, I think it was the British Fly Fishing Association. And I remember we went down to Stoke on Trent. We all drove down as a group and it was a group of five or six, I want to say six. Group of six. And me and my business partner were in there. So obviously we were a super, super tight group and real competent. We, you know, we were doing this professionally ourselves. We knew how everything was going, went down. We did this consultation project and then we present it to the, to the lecturer. Now, one of the ways that your grades were mediated was that everybody in the group had to give a relative rating that they thought about the contribution of everybody else in the group, which just. It was immediately going to allow us to get into coalitional bullshit. And sure enough, there was a couple of people who hadn't contributed all that much. And I think, you know, we got the ranking correct, but we fucking twisted the knife for sure because we were like. And it just became a coordination problem. And given that me and my business partner were club promoters, all that we do is coordinate people into social groups. That was. I was a professional social coordination manipulator. We were always. I was never gonna. I like, I got the. I think I got some like, absurdly high mark, you know, I got like a 1.5x multiplier on whatever the group score was for me and my business partner because of how much we'd contribute. And we convinced everybody else to give us this grade, which again, I stand by the fact that we deserved it. But yeah, it just, you know, perverse incentives. So another thing on the, on the rivalry point, have you looked at venting much like the specific act of venting?
- [51:40]
Will Storr
No, I haven't. I'm fascinated.
- [51:42]
Chris Williamson
Fucking awesome. So this is a little bit of Christina Durante, a little bit of Tanya Reynolds, a little bit of Corey Clark, some evolutionary psychology lady, super smart people. And venting is a unique type of gossip. And you mentioned gossip earlier on. Yeah, it's a, it's a very unique type. Venting allows the gossiper to couch their gossip under the pretext of empathetic concern for the victim.
- [52:13]
Will Storr
Ah. Yeah.
- [52:14]
Chris Williamson
So me and you are having a conversation and I say, will, you know, I'm just, I'm really worried About John because, you know, he's sleeping with all these girls and I'm just really worried that he's gonna get hurt. Cause I, you know, I care about him so much and I just really can say he just keeps on sleeping around all the time. And like, I really think that, you know, he's worth more than that. And he doesn't really understand that he's worth more than that. Okay, so what information have I communicated during that? Well, I've told you that John's being a man whore. Right. But I've done it. John, I'm just so worried. I didn't say anything bad about you. I just care about you so much. As a phrase.
- [52:59]
Will Storr
Yeah, it's coming from a good place.
- [53:00]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've. I've positioned me as the sort of person that morally would. Well, I mean if I'm pointing this out, I can't be behaving, engaging in the same behavior. Me like Jon, I would never, I would never behave in the same way that John behaves. I mean, this is. I mean, just. I care about him so much. So you've got all of this stuff. It's a very unique form of gossip, venting.
- [53:21]
Will Storr
Yeah. Yeah.
- [53:22]
Chris Williamson
Really a novel vector of attack that it's specifically done amongst women, which is why all of the people that I mentioned that did the research were female researchers.
- [53:34]
Will Storr
Well, I hate to bring it up, but I am thinking about Love island as your.
- [53:38]
Chris Williamson
There it is coalitional warfare.
- [53:42]
Will Storr
Exactly. That's why I remain a fan. Like you see that all the time amongst the women in Love Island. The other kind of gossip which I've sort of detected in Love island is you see that what you call venting, which is, which is that kind of. Yeah, that kind of. That naked kind of status warfare. But you either see, you also see what, what, what they call it some, they call it co rumination. And what I found, especially recent, recent series of Love island, when, when the guys have a problem, it's so interesting, the guys get together and try and solve the problem and they'll often hold each other a bit accountable and that might get a bit rc, but they, but, but, but they often will. And sometimes they'll try to build each other up and you can do it, mate. You can do it. You just need to do this. So, so the kind of, the kind of coalitional care amongst the men is, is focused around problem solving and accountability a bit. But the female, when the females get together, they did the venting, but they also do this co rumination. So Rather than. So when the woman says, oh, I've got this problem with Bob, rather than trying to figure out and solve the problem, it's this pile of yeah, he's an asshole, he's a bastard. Oh, you're quite right. I feel so sorry for you. And again, it's similar to the venting thing because it feels like they're being sisterly and supportive, but they're actually doing. Is driving that person even further into the ground, away from exaggerating the problem. They're demonizing the man and turning his behavior into this horrendous thing. You know, there's usually tears and then a big fucking argument after it. You know, it's, it's a, it's a, it's a wholly kind of toxic and kind of devious form of in advertise commerce hell. Because it just, it, because it makes everything worse for that individual. Individual. And like with fencing, the, the women who are doing it are made to feel superior, like they're being helpful and supportive, but actually they're not.
- [55:37]
Chris Williamson
Yeah, it's performative empathy in that regard. It looks like a caring approach from the outside and probably feels like it from the inside. I mean, this is, you know, the best way to deceive others is to believe the deception yourself. And you know, very few people that are venting are thinking this is some 5D chess way for me to gain status or stand on the shoulders of this other person's rumor or whatever it might be. But yeah, the, the sort of bare facedness of revealing somebody else's shortcomings. There's this phenomenal Bill Burr bit where he's talking about the wnb, he's talking about body positivity in the wnba and he says, ladies, if you could only support the WNBA the way that you support a fat chick who's ate herself out of her dress size and is no longer a threat to you, they'd be making more money than the NBA. And dude, I wrote an entire essay about it because it's such an accurate insight. And I think that the body positivity movement in many ways is women encouraging their attractive but slightly chubby girlfriends to not diet themselves down into their mating competition pool. It's no, darling, you look great at any size. Like, you don't need to lose weight. No, you're a queen. Like if they.
- [57:03]
Will Storr
And if you can't see that, if.
- [57:05]
Chris Williamson
He can't, if he's not able to work out, he doesn't deserve you. Like you're better than him. Meanwhile, like rules for thee, but not for me. It's a luxury belief as, as, as Robert Henderson would say, that if you're a bigger girl with a bigger girlfriend, her dieting down or her, you know, hitting the gym and making herself more physically attractive is you now no longer being able to keep up with her. And if you are a more in shape girl, that is a huge threat to you. It's one of the reasons why I believe that people who are in shape BMI are more threatened by Ozempic than people who are plus size. Because the people that are plus size, even though ostensibly they are the ones whose identity is being threatened, they don't have anything to lose in the same way because my competition pool is my competition pool. Maybe there's even fewer people at this size now, so perhaps I can access the people more easily. But if you're in shape and you see that someone's able to get there easily, unfairly. Hey, fuck you. Get back. Stay where you. You don't deserve this. So, yeah, yeah.
- [58:15]
Will Storr
This is not how our status game is played. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's absolutely right.
- [58:20]
Chris Williamson
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- [59:19]
Will Storr
Yeah, so. So it is interesting. Substack. They, yeah, they're obviously kind of a new kind of social media player and they've been sort of figuring out how to kind of employ status game psychology into their platform. I think a little bit. I've got to be careful because my wife works for Substacks like so. But, but, but I've got none of this from her. I've got this. What I've written the book I got from something that Chris Best, one of the founders wrote and, and he wrote a really interesting essay about, about status psychology and substack. And it was initially I think that they, they kind of made this mistake where they were putting writers into the. Some kind of chart that could easily be gamed. So what, what that meant was that writers were then getting bots to you know, like, and you know, like their, their essays. So they were gaming the thing and so they changed it to we, we are now going to reward writers who make the most money because that's the status game of Substack. Our purpose on this earth is to allow creators, especially writers, to make a living from their work. So that's our game. So from now on we're going to reward you. We're going to reward the writers who earn the most money. And then it kind of fixed itself. They got their incentives correct and the game started to be being played correctly.
- [60:50]
Chris Williamson
Did you look at how stories play out in the role of reputational crises? We're in the era of takedown and breakdown and accusation and stuff like that.
- [61:04]
Will Storr
Yeah, I mean, so there are a few ways of sort of tackling that. I mean, you know, one of the ways is to kind of think, you know, go back to that idea of female aggression as we're just talking about with the venting and the co. Rumination And I feel, you know, I feel that the whole woke thing, the reputation destruction thing, it just feels like a very kind of female heavy movement. It kind of, it feels like a female style movement. You know, male aggression tends to be one on one, out in the open. You could talk about toxic masculinity as being a bit. Being a guy walking into the room, being very intimidating to people and pushing people around and bullying people. Female aggression tends to be coalitional. It's the, it's the group against the one. There's a lot of behind the scenes gossip and it's about not physical destruction, but reputation destruction. And so, so, so, you know, you can see the success of feminism, the incredible rise in the power of women in society and culture kind of goes hand in hand with this new way that we're playing status games in the world, you know, woke ism and cancel culture being one of them. So, so that's that, that, that, that's one way that I kind of think about this kind of more technically, you know, there are a few things I write about in the stories, a deal about, about how to kind of manage terms of representation, destruction. You know, what is a good apology? One of the things that's really interesting from evolutionary psychology is just how incredibly toxic the, the state of selfishness is. So because we're this tribal animal, we are this, you know, coalitional loving ape. You know, we, we, we, we, we form into these super organisms. What the story is always wanting us to do is to be selfless, is to put the group's interests before our own interests. So when you look in storytelling generally a hero is always somebody that puts the group before themselves, but somebody else before themselves. So selflessness is the essence of heroism universally. So you know, courage in the face of crisis for the, for the group, you know, whatever it is. So, so selflessness is, is, is ineffably heroic and its opposite is selfishness. So you know, villains in stories are always selfish in some way. They want to keep all the, all the rewards for themselves. They want to keep the girl, you know, whatever it is. They want to, you know, hoard resources. So, so one of the things that leaders need to avoid massively doing in times of crisis is to have the appearance of selfishness. And that's one of the things that Tony Hayward did, you know, the CEO of bp, when there was the huge Gulf oil spill, you know, he didn't handle it very well at the beginning. He tried to kind of push blame away, but he eventually accepted full blame and enacted the, the most expensive cleanup operation in all of history. Just an enormous, you know, deliberation pay for by, by bp. And then, then he did a TV interview. And at the end of the TV interview he said, believe me, no one wants to get this over more than I do. I'd like my life back. And that moment just destroyed him. Not only did it destroy me, gave me international news. You know, Barack Obama, who was president at the time, even started talking about it. And of course he got, you know, his 25 year career, BP was, was kind of over in a flash. So, so that's really important that, that, that in times of, times of trouble you've got to appear selfless because selflessness is the essence of the hero in the, in the human story world. And there was, there was another thing which I, which I thought was very interesting. This guy called Christopher Booker, who's, who wrote an epic book called the seven Basic Plots. And he defined the heroes having these four qualities of feeling, order, strength and agency. And so heroes in stories kind of tend to show those kind of four qualities. And when you look at really good apology videos from people, they tend to.
- [65:12]
Chris Williamson
Embody those four Feeling, order, strength and agency.
- [65:16]
Will Storr
Yeah. Yeah. They tend to embody those kind of four qualities in a really perfect way.
- [65:24]
Chris Williamson
What's a good apology video and what's a horrible apology video?
- [65:27]
Will Storr
Well, the apology video I really like is from way back in history, and there's a guy called. What, way back in history, 20 years ago? No, it's about. It was 2007. It's very early days of YouTube. And it's Patrick Doyle who took over Domino's. And kind of. Patrick Doyle is an amazing CEO. He really turned Domino's around. He turned it from being, you know, from. From down there to up there. He was a kind of revolutionary guy, but he just. He just began Domino's. And it was the early days of YouTube. And these two idiots in a local Domino's decided to make a video themselves, picking their noses and rubbing on a pizza and farting on a pizza and setting the pizza out, and they put the video on YouTube. And nobody really knew what YouTube was at the time. And so this thing went on YouTube on the Monday and Domino's like, ah, nobody's going to see this. Then the next day, hundreds of thousands of people. And then by the Wednesday, when you typed in Domino's into Google, it was the top thing on Google. So. So, so Domino's actually opened their first Twitter account in order to put this video on there. And Patrick Dole did this, you know, kind of, kind of off. It's seemingly sort of pretty off the cuff apology video. You can still find it on YouTube. And. And he really embodies all of those. I mean, you know, broadly speaking, it's the kind of masculine and the feminine. You've got strength and order, feeling and sorry. Which is strength, order feeding and understanding. Not feeling an agency. Strength, order, feeling and understanding. And he does all. He hits all of those kind of four. Four buttons in the apology video. You can tell he's furious. You know, he's. He's angry. He's. We've called the police, they've been arrested. We've shut down the branch of dominoes. We've. We've completely, you know, he tells you all the things they've done, which is that, you know, the tough guy stuff. But then he adds in, look, we're a franchise business. All these dominoes around the country, they're owned by mums and dads that, you know, like and they're all suffering. And the people who own this domino's franchise are suffering too. And we, you know, we, we feel really bad for them. So you've got that feeling and understanding stuff in there too. And it worked. I mean, so, you know, we talk about this whole domino's scandal with the, with the snot and the farts. No one's ever heard of it. It went away. You know, it went away. So it was a really successful apology video. And I think it's because, you know, he does come across as this, you know, he's a, he's a lumpy CEO. He doesn't look particularly heroic, but he, but he's embodying all the causes of the classic narrative hero in that video.
- [67:47]
Chris Williamson
Have you seen any bad ones? Do any scientific science of storytelling suboptimal?
- [67:54]
Will Storr
Oh yeah, I forget the name of the platform now. But there was, it's in the book. There's a guy. What's that? There was some website he owned, I think, and he, he had to lay off like two people. And, and when he had to lay off two people, he put a video of himself up on LinkedIn with a tear, like a genuine, like a tear coming down his face talking about, I wish, I wish I was the kind of CEO that could just lay people off and not care, but I care so much. And of course, you know, it's back to the selfishness thing. He's just thinking about himself and, you know, it was entirely self defeating. The comments under the LinkedIn video were hilarious. It became a big Daily Mail story. He became this kind of massively hated figure for a few days in the media generally. So yeah, the LinkedIn tier guys is I think, the worst one I've ever seen.
- [68:46]
Chris Williamson
Okay, so getting practical. What do most people get wrong about good score, good stories, good storytelling?
- [68:56]
Will Storr
What do most people get wrong with good storytelling? Well, I, I think there's so much. But, but like, like, like, I, I, what do you mean when they're trying to create kind of persuasive stories? Yeah, okay, well, I, I think people still feel that the best way to sell a product is with facts about the product. I mean, there might be cases in which that's true. Certainly you can, you can list lots of business to business cases in which that's true. If you're wanting to order a part for your car, your rocket, you just want to know how good the cut the part is that, you know, it's fine. But, but, but if we're not talking business to business, it generally is the best ways to appeal to people's identities. It's much more powerful than, you know, appealing to the quality qualities of your product. And that. That general kind of idea of identification is just a massively important thing, not just in persuasive storytelling, but in all storytelling. You know, in the stories that we love, we sit down and the film begins or the novel begins, and we. We meet a character that we identify with. You know, there's a. There's a very ridiculous kind of idea in storytelling still that people want to write characters that we like. Likeability is the thing, but likability isn't the thing. Identification is the thing. You know, if we identify with somebody, if part of our brain goes, that person on the screen, that's me, then we're gonna love that story. You know, that's why the girl bossier in Hollywood has been so unbelievably toxic. You know, the Indiana Jones, the. The Star wars, and in the uk, the Doctor who, where they've not just removed all the straight white male characters, but. But humiliated them. They. They've killed them and humiliated them and replaced them with mostly, you know, cardboard cutout girl bosses. So. So. So, you know, so, you know, these. These story franchises were broadly made for young men, you know, like they were. There were stories for young men, but they've been, you know, disidentified with these stories which are a part of their identity, like a big part of their lives. And. And that's why they respond with such fury. It's not because they're misogynist or racist or anything stupid like that. It's because, you know, in. In a very real sense, if you're humiliating and degrading Luke Skywalker and Indiana Jones and Doctor who, you're humiliating and degrading they themselves who are watching it. So. So that identification is just a massively.
- [71:18]
Chris Williamson
Because if it was just, I like Luke Skywalker. He is likable. You've made him unlikable. So what? But I identify with Luke Skywalker. I see me in him. And he's now being mocked or castigated or whatever. That makes me feel mocked and castigated.
- [71:37]
Will Storr
Absolutely right. So. Absolutely. So when we identify with anything, we make it a part of ourselves. You know, we make the music, the art we love a part of ourselves. We make the cars we buy part of ourselves. You know, we are a collection of ideas. And, you know, one of the most important facets of our identity are the people, the stories that we love, and the characters that we grew up with. You know, Luke Skywalker at the beginning of the first Star wars film is this orphan. He works on a moisture farm. His solo status, his nickname amongst his school friends was wormy. That's what they called him, wormy. And he overcomes his fears and becomes this incredible hero. And people love Luke Skywalker, but in the latter period of Star wars, they've reintroduced him as. Just as they did with Indiana Jones. And you know, they do it time and time again. They reintroduce these amazing straight white male heroes and make them miserable, sexist, disillusioned. They had him sort of chugging this kind of weird teats milk off her. I mean, he was humiliated.
- [72:38]
Chris Williamson
I mean, you saw this with Chris Hemsworth as Thor, right? And you've done that across a much shorter timeline. I think the first Thor probably came out less than 15 years ago, maybe 10 years ago, something like that. And you know, across the span of maybe only four Thor movies, maybe like eight that he was involved in to do with the Avengers, he's gone from being slightly childish but lovingly heroic God guy to person that does Jean Claude Van Damme splits over flying dragons and is kind of always out of touch in the butt of every joke and totally unselfaware. And yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if someone was like, I, I see a little bit of that, you know, heroic energy, but kind of adult man child thing in Thor. I think they would feel put out in a way. So how, yeah, how important are heroes then? Is it, is that a crucial element of most stories?
- [73:38]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah. Archetypal storytelling. I'm talking about, I'm not talking about modernist novels that kind of exist to break the rules. That's the kind of whole point of them. In archetypal storytelling, yeah, protagonists are really important because, you know, my book is called A Story is a Deal. And what I mean by that is that a story subconsciously says if you behave like the hero does, you're going to be rewarded with these incredibly precious social resources of connection and status. That's what all heroes and archetypal stories win. They win connection and or status. So that's what happens with, obviously with Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. He begins as Wormy and ends up with a big middle around his chest, surrounded by people who love him. You know, that's what we all want. That's that, that's a, that's a human universal. That's that, that's what drives everyone is, well, three things. Survival, connection and status. Those are the three things that all humans want and that's. Those are the three things that all. The subject of all archetypal storytelling, all stories are about survival, connection, or status. And the best stories, the stories that last through the ages that we can watch again and again and again, are about all three. So if you think about a movie like the Revenant, that's about survival, a movie like Stand by Me is about connection. A movie like Barbie or Whiplash is about status. But the Godfather, that's about survival and connection and status in about equal measure. So is Romeo and Juliet. So is Star Wars. You know, these epic, amazing stories are. Feel so rich and full and drenched in meaning because they're, they're about, you know, all three of the things that matter most to humans. And we learn about them through the hero. How does the hero survive? How does the hero earn connection? How does the hero earn status? We absorb those, you know, messages subconsciously. You know, they, they teach us who to be in the world, and that's why they're so incredibly important. And when we're a teenager and we, you know, we, we kind of make Luke Skywalker part of our identity and then he's, you know, humiliated and degraded and replaced in this way. It's, you know, it's painful. And, and the bitter irony is we've got this kind of moral panic in the UK at the moment about this ridiculous show, adolescence on Netflix, which is another kind of, as far as I could see, straightforward piece of anti straight white male propaganda painting us as misogynist woman, you know, woman killers who, who can't even take an insult without picking up a knife and committing murder. And, and now there's all these stories saying, oh, men, men just don't have any role models anymore. Is. Yeah, because you replaced us all. You replaced us all with girl bosses. You humiliated us, you know, and, and wrote us out of your script. And now you're worrying and panicking. Yeah, no, you're right. We don't anymore. Because. Because the, the men that we see on our screens these days, as you said, tend to be the butt of jokes. They tend to be disempowered. Women are always running rings about them, humiliating them, knocking them down with one punch. I mean, you see it again and again and again and again and again. And it's been going on for over a decade now.
- [76:27]
Chris Williamson
If you, if you create a vacuum in terms of story, in terms of archetype, and you. Yeah, retcon. Replace role models for any group, any group at all. And you know, for a good while, maybe the Archetypal boss bitch woman who did want to be focused on their career, who did want to feel like they were high achieving and they had agency. Maybe that was an issue and maybe many women were left cut adrift and felt lonely because. Well, I don't really see women with the sort of drive that I have in 1960s cinema that all. What's that rule somebody's law about whether or not a woman talks to another woman in a movie and not about a man. Do you know this?
- [77:12]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's true. I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's fair, it was a totally fair criticism. But, but, but, but, but I think they're always have. But I think, you know, I think you're right. There weren't enough well written female heroes with agency, you know, but you did get Princess Leah. You did get, you know, Weaver in, in, in Alien. I mean I, growing up, I love Prime Suspect, Helen Mirren's character from Suspect. I mean I loved all that stuff. I mean so, so, so it's not as though these characters didn't exist, but I think we, we've got to a crazy place now where in order to find a kind of straight white man in hero role, you've got to watch some terrible Guy Ritchie movie or like, like, like it like in, you know, like, like largely speaking they just don't really exist anymore. And interestingly I think a lot of, a lot, a lot of people are now like you are thriving on the Internet because the Internet is a, is a meritocracy and isn't, isn't. There's no gatekeepers, there's no, there's no gatekeeper. So, so, so the Internet's kind of the only place now where straight white male creators can survive and make a living.
- [78:17]
Chris Williamson
Well, you also certainly end up with a situation if there is a vacuum. You know, there was a vacuum for the women role model and that got filled, it got filled by a variety of better and worse examples of that. And then you know, the novelty has been taken to complete parody with saturation. And then if you create a vacuum around men, you will have Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson and bodybuilder Rich Piano. Pick your alpha male guy or whatever, like even beta male guy of choice. Pick your whoever role model it is that you want from the left, from the right, libertarian, authoritarian, whatever. If there aren't any that are supplied, that creates a gap in the market. There's no coffee shop for 3 mile radius around this particular neighborhood. Guess what? There's gonna be a fucking coffee shop.
- [79:08]
Will Storr
Yeah, well, that's the thing. And I think early Jordan Peterson, well, he was so electrically exciting because all he was doing was sticking up for men. That's what he was doing. And he became this lightning rod. He became, you know, you either loved him or you hated him. And all he was doing was sticking up for us, you know. You know that we were so desperate for somebody to stand up and go, you know, there's actually nothing wrong with being a straight white man, and this is how you ought to do it. And you should hold your head up and clean your room and all that stuff. You know, it was. It was. It was kind of a ledger. Fine. But then. But then on the other side, so you do have your Andrew Tates, you know, if. If young men, if, If. If the culture keeps on telling straight white men that they're bad and they're useless and they're the butt of every joke, and they're going to be girl boss to hell in every drama they see, and they're going to be in adolescence and. And shown stabbing women to death. Then they're going to go to the people that says, no, I respect you. I've got your back. Of course they are, because they want status, like we all do. I mean, you know, it's a kind of. I think people underestimate kind of how pervasive all of this stuff is, really. I mean, and I kind of think we're at the foothills of a new era here, and I see it very starkly in my world, which is books.
- [80:26]
Chris Williamson
Given that you've been involved in the writing and publishing industry for a long time, I can see that this is a point of passion for you.
- [80:35]
Will Storr
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because. I mean, I've kind of. All right. In a sense, because I'm in there now, and I. And I. And I have a readership, and so that's fine. But I know I'm pretty sure if I was starting out now, I'll be finding extremely hard to get. And I've also seen the change in the way my books are received since all this happened. You know, like when, like Selfie was published, I think 2017, it was reviewed across all the newspapers. I was on the television, I was on Newsnight, I was on radio 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. You know, like, there was loads of publicity. It was fantastic. And then when all this started happening, I found it extremely hard now to get any publicity. Like a story is a deal book just published. We got one review. One review. And we could release in the Times. That's it. So paradoxically, the more successful I've become as an author, you know, my last two books have been by far and away my most successful. The harder it is for the. To get any coverage in the mainstream media, to get support from the bookshops and to get slots at book festivals. I used to be at the Edinburgh Festival every year. Now there's no way I get to the Edinburgh Festival anymore.
- [81:39]
Chris Williamson
Despite the fact that you're selling more books than you ever did.
- [81:42]
Will Storr
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you know, and, and the fact is that the only reason I'm still going is because of the, because of the podcast Fear. Like the, you know, it was the podcast guys that supported the Status Game. Like, you know, the Status Game's done really well now because it was embraced by people like you and.
- [82:00]
Chris Williamson
Well, because it was brilliant. Right. Well, it was a brilliant book.
- [82:03]
Will Storr
Thank you, Chris. But like, but, but, but when it was published again, we got one review week of release. We couldn't get anyone to talk about it. It was crazy. The day it was published, I looked on Amazon and it was at number something like six. Six. I think it was 6,500 in the best solution. Honestly, I was devastated. I was like, what is going on? But it's because it got an adversity. But it's ended up being successful because of the podcast.
- [82:27]
Chris Williamson
Because shoved it down everybody's throat. Yeah, well, you know, for now, the podcast sphere is still male dominated and we'll see between. Unless you're Mel Robbins or Alex Cooper. Yeah, I think it's, you know, the top whatever.
- [82:42]
Will Storr
But you see, I don't think that's a coincidence because I think people like you and you know, a lot of the other so big podcast guys in the previous generation, you'd be on television. But there's no place in mainstream media for. For the straight white guys anymore. So they're doing podcasts and so I.
- [82:56]
Chris Williamson
Think that's why that's a little bit of a meme. I actually did a. I recorded a live tour video going on tour in the U.S. and Canada back end of this year. And the entire crux of the joke is that I'm in prison, I've been detained by ice in America and I'm in prison because America's getting rid of all surplus white podcasters. So, you know, the meme keeps on memeing just on the practical point around the stories. You mentioned atomic statements before.
- [83:25]
Will Storr
Yeah.
- [83:26]
Chris Williamson
How do you make stories more sticky? You know, it's all. Well and good. You tell someone a story, it's for you as the person that's written it or put it together, you believe that it's important, but it needs to grab someone. You know, it needs to sort of get its teeth into their brains. It needs to stay with them. What, what are the things that determine whether a story's sticky or not?
- [83:50]
Will Storr
Well, I mean, you know, one thing is that atomic nature, it's got to be. Have brevity and clarity. So, so, so it's got to have his maximum meaning in minimal space. So, you know, that, that, that. So that's a tweet, that's a meme. That's a. That's an aphorism. You know, so, so it's got to. It's got to have maximum meaning in mineral space. It's got to appeal to somebody's identity. So people got to identify with what you're saying, and it's got to tell them a story that they want to hear that reaffirms their. The story of their identity. So, you know, going back to that example of Kamala is for they. Them. Trump is for you. You know, that's a perfect example of a. You know, it's a perfect kind of atomic statement, sticky because it's easy to understand, easy to memorize, easy to share. You know, you're going to tell it to each other. It appeals to identity, and it tells a story that people really want to hear. It reaffirms their perception of the world, the story of the world.
- [84:44]
Chris Williamson
Are there fundamental questions that everyone's trying to answer with the story, or are they so varied that there's no such thing as a unifying thread?
- [84:53]
Will Storr
The most fundamental question that humans ask really is who do I have to be in this place in order to earn connection and status? That's fundamentally what brains are always asking. You know, when we come out of the womb, we have these, what they call experience expectant brains. They're half wired up, and the rest of the worrying comes up during our childhood. And a culture is kind of forming itself in our brains. We're figuring out our identity. Who do I have to be in order to earn connection and status? And of course, you know, we. Adolescence and early 20s is a peak time for really thinking about this stuff and identity formation. But we never stop asking those questions. We never stop. We never stop changing who we are. You know, people talk about audience capture. That's. That's why audience capture is so dangerous. You know, even the smartest people, some of them who we mentioned tonight, Started off, you know, in my estimation, is sort of rational, smart, really interesting people. And they've. They've gone on a journey, and the journey has been to kind of take their identity to a much to. To a place that feels like it's much more about telling their audience what they want to hear and telling a story of heroes and villains. And we're great and they're terrible. So that, to me, is. These are the most fundamental questions that everybody asks, and we turn ourselves into the answer. You know, we turn ourselves into the people we have to be in order to earn connection and status from our groups.
- [86:15]
Chris Williamson
Interestingly, there was an article by Ethan Cross. I must bring this up fucking once a week. It's phenomenal. It's called criticism capture is more dangerous than audience capture. And what he talks about with audience capture being predicting what it is that the audience wants and allowing yourself to be puppeted by their desires. You feed red meat to the audience. You become increasingly predictable over time. Is that sort of regression to the mean of what your audience wants? Kind of would be a way to put it. Criticism capture is his belief that criticisms are much more warping than compliments are enthusing. So people who make content online, they start to compensate in a variety of different ways. They become fire brands. You know, they become very defensive or very aggressive about their position. They begin to create in a manner that pushes back or tries to sort of counter what it is that their perceived critics or their genuine critics say about them. And I, at least in my experience, if you look at a lot of the sort of Internet personalities and the ways that people have conducted themselves, and also, I can see this in myself, too, I get way more warped by criticism than I do by compliments. You know, I start to caveat more aggressively, or I couch things, or I steer clear of particular topics, or there's a temptation to do all of these, you know, in my braver, more equanimous moments, I'm like, no, fuck it. Like, just say what you mean. But pain is much more painful than pleasure is pleasurable. And that simple sort of fact about the way that we experience the world, it plays out too, in the way that people respond to you. If you were learning to do salsa dancing and you salsa danced and someone gave you a high five classes in a row and said, oh, man, that was cool. But then on the sixth class, someone went, dude, you fucking suck. Why are you doing salsa dancing? Like, you're gonna. That one's gonna stay with you. And then maybe you're not gonna show up anymore. And maybe you're gonna salsa dance more slowly or quietly or maybe you're gonna come in and you're gonna say, I'm the best salsa dancer in this entire place. You know, there's loads of ways that you get warped by criticism.
- [88:31]
Will Storr
Well, as an author, you always remember, you never remember the good reviews, you only remember the bad reviews. It's just a cliche, but it's absolutely true, you know. Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely right, I'm sure. And there's also an evolutionary kind of angle to that because, you know, criticism is a form of gossip. And you know, back in the days when our brains were evolving in the hunter gatherer tribe, if you are the subject of negative gossip, it was life threatening. You know, literally you could be kicked out of the tribe, you could be killed, you know, and sometimes even eaten. So, so in the back of our minds we've always got that, that, you know, that that program is programming is still inside us. Social criticism is, is dangerous but potentially life threatening. So you must attend to it very carefully and adapt your behavior. So I've no doubt it's a smart take from me thinks absolutely. Yeah. I have no doubt that the criticism capture is far more important than audience capture. Yeah.
- [89:21]
Chris Williamson
What was that smoker discussed thing? The, the story about changing habits around smoking?
- [89:31]
Will Storr
Oh yeah, this is one of my, the stories I really like because it really shows you how people care about identity far more than they care about their own lives. And it's just, just an argument that you can't understand why humans smoke without understanding our need for status and needs to have this kind of a kind of higher status identity. You know, I smoke, you know, I started smoking in the, in the, in the 90s. And you know, we knew back then that smoking was going to kill you. We knew it was addictive and it was going to make you, you know, your breasts stink, your clothes stink. It's going to cost you a fortune. And yet we still did it. Well, like why did we do it? Well, we did it because it, you know, makes you perhaps 8% look 8% cooler when you're at the gig. You know, like that's why we did it. You know, it's ridiculous, it's crazy. And, and you know, that's, that's, that, that's, that's kind of what they found. And in the book I tell the story of how, you know, when cigarettes kind of were, became popular after the, the war because they packed tobacco into the, into their ration packs in the First World War and the Second World War. So all these like veterans, his soldiers came back smoking cigarettes. They're smoking, took on this very masculine, rebellious identity. Like if you've been to war and walked out of it, you smoked, you know, that kind of thing. So it's very masculine thing to do. And then there's this brilliant. So genius, Sigmund Freud's nephew was hired by cigarette company to try and get women smoking. And this was in the 20s when you know, feminism was just becoming as big, massively powerful kind of cultural force. And so he, he said that. So he paid lots of like debutantes and Vogue models to appear at some big sort of flashy event in New York or smoking cigarettes. And, and they were photographed and you know, it was shown everywhere. So you know, arguably this is a high status thing. And, and he ran these ad campaigns saying the cigarettes were, yes, they're rebellious, but that's why feminists should smoke, because feminists, he called them torches of freedom. They're tortures of freedom. And it was massively you, you know, and again an appeal to identity. And, and so that traveled across to the UK in, in cinema. So, so, so you know, in Hollywood heroines like started smoking cigarettes, you know, Marlon Dietrich and people like that. And, and, and so women in the UK started smoking too. So, so the whole story of smoking is all about status, it's all about identity. And, and, and that's how it fades out as well. It faded out accidentally for generations. Well, generations. I don't know. For a long time governments in the uk, America and elsewhere was always appeal to survival. To stop smoking, it's going to give you cancer. Here's a picture of a lung, all that, you know, there's the warnings. No one gave a. Had no, no impact whatsoever. And what made it stop was when they, there was a moral panic about second hand smoke. You know, why should I be in a restaurant and breathe in somebody else's smoke? So starting in California, I think it was in 2007, they banned smoking in restaurants. And then it became workplaces and then it spread throughout America, spread to the UK and then suddenly you couldn't look 8% cooler anymore if you're smoking a cigarette because the smokers weren't inside, but at the restaurant, at the bar, at the gig, they were shuffling outside in the rain to have a quick fag by the bins and shuffling back in again. And very quickly smoking began to kind of fall out of fashion because it became low status rather than high status. And you know that, that Reflects my own story. I desperately tried to go out smoking because I started coughing up. Up, literally. I was, I was changed to chain smoke when I was drinking and I was used to drinking. I used to. Was alcoholic basically. And, and I would cough up brown jelly in the, in the sink in the morning. It was freaking me out. But even that didn't stop me smoking. I tried twice and failed. What got me to stop was I was a. I was a journalist on a magazine called Loaded. And you might be seeing, but it was just a. Kind of a men's magazine and there were lots of women in Loaded. And one time I was assigned to go. And I can't remember if it was a model or it was a Hollywood actress. It was one of the two. And if you've ever been on one of these shoots, they have these false polystyrene walls behind which they do the dressing. So they're doing the hair and the makeup and the styling. So I knocked on the wall and went to introduce myself and said, I'm here, I'll be waiting out here. And sat behind the, sat behind the polystyrene wall. And then I heard the stylist say to the Hollywood actress, did you see his fingers? Are those yellow stains on them? That's disgusting. I was like, oh my God, like. So it was the status, it was the having the two pretty women call me disgusting. That was what pushed me over the edge. And, you know, and what was true for me is true for people in general. I mean, I know we've got the vaping issue now is a new issue, but smoking cigarettes is, is, you know, it fell out of. It became low status and that's what stopped it.
- [94:07]
Chris Williamson
And then do you think binge drinking, the decline in binge drinking now is. Where do you think that's come from?
- [94:15]
Will Storr
Yeah, I, I suspect there is some truth in the argument that you hear a lot that it's to do with social media, that. I mean, God, you know, when I was binge drinking when I was a teenager, there's no. I mean, you wake up in the morning, you want to forget everything that ever happened. The idea that it's going to be filmed on Tick Tock is just horrendous. But, but I also think there's a bigger story to that that I don't fully understand. I mean, there's certainly this has been this kind of lurch towards puritanism in the, in the, in the Gen Z generation, the generation of my nieces, because it's not just about binge drinking. It's about sex, it's about drug use, it's about, you know, the moral purity which, which, which you know that like are they the first generation to be more kind of morally pure than their parents? I mean maybe. Like it, like, like it's definitely a, kind of a weird thing that's happened to, to, to, to, to, to, to Gen Z's that, that encompasses binge drinking is just part of it.
- [95:13]
Chris Williamson
Yeah. I think, you know, an increasing focus on health. I ran nightclubs for forever. So I saw this firsthand that the arc of probably the peak of Larry British drinking, especially young people drinking culture and contributed to it and profited from it in many ways. And yeah, the advent of the smartphone, the fact that, that this can just detect whatever it is that's going on. We used to run this bar crawl called Carnage and there was tasks on the back that you had to tick off with a marker pen, like pulled a pig, got off with three random swapped shoes with somebody. And there's just no this fucking surveillance state run by gullible volunteers. That is the smartphone in your pocket and the subsequent like info that gets put up on the Internet afterward. It's like a Panopticon. Right. It's just there is nothing you can do. There is no amount of embarrassment that can be forgotten about. Like you could deny it, you could say that someone misremembered it, you could say that they were lying. But if there's video evidence, you're fucked. And there's video evidence of everything now.
- [96:26]
Will Storr
Yeah, I'm sure that's got a lot to do with it. I'm sure you're absolutely right. I mean, you know, because again, it goes back to what do we want? We want connection and status. And you know, when you are sort of bidding, drinking, it's hard to maintain that sense of status in the, in the eyes of people. And Jesus, if it's recorded indelibly and Perhaps uploaded to YouTube by somebody, there's no way.
- [96:47]
Chris Williamson
Not good. Especially not if it's reacted to by the Domino's fucking CEO. That would be a bad beginning. Will, let's bring this one home, mate. I love you. I love your work. I think that the things that you write are phenomenal. Where should people go? They want to keep up to date with all of the shit that's going on.
- [97:01]
Will Storr
My substack, willstore.substack.com it's called you are a Story. We've got weekly essays on that. Everything we've been talking about today really and more. So yeah, I'd love to see you there.
- [97:13]
Chris Williamson
And you've got a book.
- [97:14]
Will Storr
Oh, yeah, my book. Story is a Deal. In Trouble. I get told off. Yeah, stories are there. My new book on storytelling, Persuasion. So if you're interested in. In the science of storytelling and how it's used to persuade people and change belief and change behavior, you will find it in A Story is a Deal.
- [97:33]
Chris Williamson
Heck, yeah. Well, I appreciate you. Thank you, mate.
- [97:35]
Will Storr
Thanks, Chris. That was amazing. Thank you.