0:00

is taking a hard look at the

0:02

promise and the dark side of health

0:05

technology. From scientists who

0:07

are trying to make artificial blood.

0:09

Within minutes, the rabbits' ears

0:11

started twitching again. They're

0:14

fine. To patients that are

0:16

stuck with implants in their brains after

0:18

the company that keeps them running disappears.

0:21

It's often the battery that's the

0:24

problem. It's something that simple. That's

0:27

on the next two weeks of Unexplainable. This

0:30

miniseries is presented by Roomba Robots.

0:42

Frenemy's Stephanie Smothers and Emily Nelson, played

0:44

by Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively, reunite

0:46

on the beautiful island of Capri for

0:48

Emily's grandiose wedding, where revenge is a

0:50

dish best served chilled with a twist.

0:53

And with more twists than the winding roads of Capri,

0:55

it will keep you on the edge of your seat

0:57

from start to finish. Another

0:59

simple favorite premieres May 1st only on

1:02

Prime Video. You've

1:10

no doubt heard the phrase loneliness

1:12

epidemic many times. But what does

1:14

it mean to say that there's

1:17

a loneliness problem? More

1:19

to the point, what does it mean to be

1:21

lonely? At the very

1:23

least, loneliness implies two things.

1:26

One, that you're alone. And

1:29

two, that you don't want to be. That

1:31

second part is important. To

1:33

feel lonely is to yearn for

1:36

connection and company. If you don't

1:38

want to connect with someone else,

1:40

you're alone, but you're not

1:42

lonely. Here's a question

1:44

we haven't really asked in these

1:46

conversations about loneliness. Are

1:49

Americans alone because they don't have anywhere

1:51

to go, or they don't have anyone

1:53

to go with, or are they choosing

1:55

to be alone? And if

1:57

they're choosing to be alone, even when we

1:59

know that's not good for us, why

2:02

are they doing this? And

2:05

what does it mean, long term, for

2:08

society. I'm

2:11

Sean Elling, and this is the Gray Area.

2:19

Today's guest is Derek Thompson. Derek

2:22

is a staff writer at The Atlantic

2:24

and the author of a recent essay

2:26

called The Antisocial Century. The

2:29

piece challenges the conventional wisdom

2:31

around loneliness. Derek

2:33

gathers a ton of data, much

2:35

of it alarming, and concludes that

2:38

we've mostly misunderstood the situation here.

2:40

It's not that we've become lonely.

2:43

It's that we've started to

2:45

prefer solitude. We've

2:47

become anti -social, and that's a very

2:50

different kind of problem, one we absolutely

2:52

have to solve as a country. So

2:55

I invited Derek on the show to

2:57

talk about what he discovered, and why

3:00

he thinks self -imposed solitude might just

3:02

be the most important social fact of

3:04

the 21st century in America. Derek

3:19

Thompson, welcome back to the

3:21

show. It's great to be here. Thank you,

3:23

Sean. Everyone's been saying

3:25

for years now that we

3:27

have a loneliness epidemic. And

3:30

you think that's not quite right.

3:32

So tell me what's actually going

3:34

on. So it's probably

3:36

worth defining loneliness. Loneliness

3:39

as the sociologist that I talked

3:41

to, in particular NYU's Eric Kleinberg,

3:43

is a very healthy thing to

3:45

feel. Loneliness is the felt gap

3:47

between the social connection that you have

3:50

and the social connection that you

3:52

want. And so when I'm home

3:54

working a lot, taking care of my kid,

3:56

not hanging out with friends that's at my

3:58

house, sometimes I feel lonely. And that inspires

4:00

me to reach out to my friends and

4:02

hang out with them, get a drink. But

4:05

something else I think is

4:07

the social crisis of this

4:10

moment and this century for

4:12

America. And that's social isolation.

4:15

If you're spending more and

4:17

more time alone, year after

4:19

year after year, and you

4:21

are choosing to socially isolate

4:23

yourself, And you're even, in

4:26

many cases, as I see sometimes happening

4:28

on TikTok, celebrating when your

4:30

friends cancel plans because it means

4:32

you can add another heaping scoop

4:34

of a loan time on top

4:36

of the historic amounts of a

4:38

loan time they're already spending. Well,

4:41

my feeling is that's not

4:44

loneliness. That is a

4:46

choice to socially isolate more and

4:48

more. month after month, year after

4:50

year, even decade after decade. This

4:52

is not loneliness. And the last

4:55

thing I would say is, if

4:57

you choose to see this moment

4:59

as a loneliness epidemic, you have

5:01

a research problem. You have an

5:03

empirical problem. Because right now, two

5:06

things are true from the numbers.

5:08

Number one, we spend a historic

5:10

amount of time alone. And

5:12

number two, it doesn't seem...

5:15

for many Americans, loneliness

5:17

is spiking at the same rate

5:19

that social isolation is spiking. What

5:22

we have is not a crisis

5:24

of loneliness as it is broadly

5:26

understood, but actually something

5:29

much more gnarly, something much

5:31

more toxic, and actually something

5:33

much stranger than a mere

5:36

crisis of loneliness. Well,

5:38

just so we have a point of

5:40

reference, give me a sobering stat here.

5:42

How much more time? are

5:45

people spending alone? Relative

5:47

to how much time we used

5:49

to spend alone, 10, 20, 30,

5:51

40, 50 years ago. So between

5:54

the 1960s and the 1990s, Americans

5:56

were withdrawing from all kinds of

5:58

associations and clubs. This was the

6:00

thesis of and point of Robert

6:03

Putnam's book, Bowling Alone. But

6:05

in the last 25 years, the Bureau of

6:07

Labor Statistics has been running a survey called

6:09

the American Time Use Survey, which asks Americans

6:11

a bunch of questions about how they spend

6:13

their week. How much time do you spend

6:15

sleeping? How much time do you spend eating

6:17

dinner? And they also ask, how much

6:19

time do you spend in face -to -face socializing? And

6:22

the amount of time that all Americans

6:24

spend, the average American spends in face

6:26

-to -face socializing is declined by over

6:28

20 % in the last 25 years.

6:30

For some groups, like black men and

6:33

young people overall, the decline

6:35

is more like 40%, negative 40%.

6:37

face -to -face socializing over the

6:40

last 20, 25 years. So that

6:42

brings us to a point now

6:44

where there is no period in

6:47

modern historical record, going back to

6:49

the mid -1960s at least, and

6:51

probably going back decades before then,

6:54

that we have spent so much

6:56

time by ourselves. And

6:58

how does this break down across

7:01

class lines? Are we seeing the

7:03

same trends? across class lines, or

7:05

are there noteworthy differences? And if

7:07

there are, why might

7:09

that be? So what I

7:12

would say is, as a matter of

7:14

sort of coming to a firm answer

7:16

to this question, is this an income

7:18

-based phenomenon? Is maybe, but because the

7:20

best data we have doesn't have very

7:23

large sample sizes for the richest and

7:25

poorest Americans, it's hard to

7:27

say that this is a fact, the

7:29

same way we can say that it's

7:31

a fact that for all Americans, face

7:34

-to -face socializing is at its lowest

7:36

point in 25 years or maybe 60,

7:38

100 years, and alone time is at

7:40

its highest. Well, I just wanted to

7:43

ask because we have a tendency to

7:45

talk about upper class problems as though

7:47

they are universal problems, and this ain't

7:49

that. Whatever else it is, it's not

7:51

that. I think it's

7:53

really important to say that You're exactly

7:55

right. I mean, especially I would say

7:58

in this space, right? In talking about

8:00

like the way we live today, the

8:02

problems of modernity, always very difficult to

8:04

avoid the temptation to talk about the

8:06

upper middle class as if they are

8:08

representative of the entire country. So when

8:11

we talk about like the problems of

8:13

intensive parenting or anxiety, college

8:15

-based anxiety for kids, a lot

8:17

of times those fears are about

8:19

a large part of the country

8:21

that is not all of the

8:23

country. In this case, however, you

8:25

will find that face -to -face

8:27

socializing is declining for men and

8:29

for women, for literally every age

8:31

cohort, the young and the old,

8:33

for white and black and Hispanic

8:35

Americans, for the bottom quartile, for

8:37

the top quartile, for married Americans,

8:39

for unmarried Americans, for college graduates,

8:42

for non -high school graduates. This

8:44

is something that is absolutely

8:46

happening to everybody. And

8:48

so therefore, if you want to

8:51

understand it, I think we need

8:53

to look for causes that are

8:55

more universal than income inequality. So

8:58

why was the first half of

9:00

the 20th century so social? What

9:02

changed around the 70s? And why

9:04

is the answer clearly neoliberalism? And

9:06

why is the answer clearly the

9:08

election of Ronald Reagan? So

9:11

the simplest way to summarize what

9:14

happened is that there was a

9:16

revolution of individualism. that struck this

9:18

country and affected it at many

9:20

different levels, at the political economy

9:23

level, at the social level. And

9:25

it ended, as you said, a

9:27

very social century. Between

9:30

the 1910s and the 1950s

9:32

and early 60s, certainly, just

9:35

about every measure of sociality

9:38

in this country was rising.

9:40

The marriage rate spiked in

9:42

the middle of the 20th

9:45

century. fertility rates spiked in

9:47

an incredibly unusual way. You

9:49

had a surge in unionization

9:51

rates. You had more associations

9:54

created, more clubs created. So

9:56

by so many different measures, socializing

9:59

was surging in the middle of

10:01

the 20th century. And that ended.

10:04

And I think that among many, many

10:06

things, two things that ended it were

10:09

the two most important technologies of the

10:11

20th century. The first was the car.

10:14

that allowed us to privatize our lives and

10:16

move away from other people. And

10:18

the second was the television, which allowed

10:20

us to privatize our leisure time so

10:22

that we could spend it alone looking

10:24

at a screen and not necessarily spend

10:26

it throwing a dinner party. Well, you

10:28

talk to a psychologist, you talk to

10:30

a sociologist. Why

10:33

do we choose solitude? If we know it,

10:35

it won't make us happy. in the

10:37

long term. And I say we know

10:39

not just in the sense that there's a

10:41

lot of research telling us so, but

10:43

we all pretty much know this from lived

10:46

experience as tempting as it is to

10:48

stay home and Netflix or whatever. Most of

10:50

the time we all feel better once

10:52

we actually get out of the house

10:54

and spend time with friends. So what's behind

10:56

this pathological behavior? I think

10:58

it's a very good and a very complex question. And

11:01

the first thing I'd say is that we do things

11:03

that we know aren't good for us all the time.

11:06

This is the whole problem with nutrition, is that

11:08

you have people coming up with ever more complicated

11:10

ways of explaining what's good for us, but you

11:12

inject anybody in the world with truth serum and

11:14

you say, you know, is the Twixbar good for

11:16

you? Is going to the gym good for you?

11:19

Is celery good for you? Everyone

11:21

knows the answers to these questions.

11:23

The problem is actualizing the answers

11:26

in your behavior because we're cross

11:28

-purpose machines and the relevant cross

11:31

pressure is that we are dopamine

11:34

-seeking creatures, and

11:37

we're also interpersonal creatures for social

11:39

animals. And sometimes those

11:41

drives are totally across purpose with

11:43

each other. That seeking dopamine in

11:46

the most efficient way necessarily means

11:48

not spending time around people, right?

11:50

Like if I were trying, for

11:53

example... simply solicit as much dopamine

11:55

as possible and be surrounded by

11:57

maximal stimulative novelty as much as

12:00

possible on a minute -to -minute

12:02

basis. What would I do? I

12:05

would never leave my house. Our

12:07

homes are so much more comfortable than they

12:09

used to be. They're so much more diverting

12:11

than they used to be with their television

12:13

sets and their smartphones and their speaker systems

12:15

and their streaming and their cable. there's

12:18

so much that is interesting that we

12:20

can do just staying at home. And

12:22

so I think many people just do.

12:24

Now, I'm not here to say the television's evil. I

12:27

am trying to say that the

12:29

invention of television was akin to

12:32

the discovery of this element of

12:34

human nature that fundamentally wants to

12:36

turn ourselves into passive audience members.

12:39

And so we invented this technology

12:41

that seemed to elicit from us

12:43

this aspect of ourselves that just

12:45

wants to lie back, open our

12:47

eyes, and be awash in novel

12:49

visual stimuli. And I

12:52

think that, unfortunately, when you ask, you know, why don't we

12:54

just leave the house? Why don't we just hang out with

12:56

people more? I think that

12:58

we are complex creatures and that this

13:00

is a really relevant cross -purpose for

13:02

us. Well, I mean, having an economy

13:05

increasingly built on personal convenience, it's just

13:07

such a huge part of this. You

13:09

know, I mean, from streaming services to

13:12

online shopping, I mean, everything is curated,

13:14

everything's on demand. Everything is easy. If

13:16

you have a phone and Wi -Fi,

13:18

you don't have to leave the house

13:21

for damn near anything. I mean, that

13:23

kind of economic order has to condition

13:25

us psychologically to want to avoid the

13:28

messiness and the unpredictability of the actual

13:30

world. It's a beautifully made point, and

13:32

I want to be really, really clear

13:34

about my reaction to it. The

13:37

on -demand economy is good. It's

13:39

good for busy families. It's good for

13:41

the disabled. It's good for the elderly. It's

13:44

good for the chronically sick. The

13:47

on -demand economy is an

13:49

absolute economic mitzvah. But

13:52

life is complicated and progress has

13:54

trade -offs. The Industrial

13:56

Revolution was good. It allowed

13:58

us to be rich enough to

14:00

take a world where the average

14:03

person had a 50 -50 shot

14:05

of living to see their 16th

14:07

birthday into a world where The

14:09

vast majority of people have a

14:11

very, very good chance to turn

14:14

16. But we also

14:16

know that the industrialized economy had

14:18

costs and trade -offs. One of

14:20

them being that it took us

14:22

a while to recognize that industrialization

14:24

was coughing up all of this

14:27

pollution that was choking the biosphere.

14:29

It took us a while to realize

14:32

the cost of progress. And it took

14:34

us a while to recognize what the

14:36

cost of this economic mitzvah was. And

14:38

in the same way, I think a

14:41

world of entertainment and a world of

14:43

on -demand convenience is wonderful in many,

14:45

many ways. It just takes

14:47

us a while to figure out what the costs

14:49

of that progress are. And one thing I'm trying

14:51

to do in this piece is to hold up

14:53

a mirror to Americans' behavior and say, this is

14:56

the receipt. What you bought

14:58

is an economy of extraordinary dopaminergic reward

15:00

systems. And it's helped your life in

15:02

many ways and made life more fun

15:05

in many ways. But here's part of

15:07

the cost. Here's the receipt that you

15:09

haven't seen for the progress that you've

15:12

purchased. And it's not so much to

15:14

say that I want to move progress

15:16

back. I think we just need to

15:19

find a way to adapt to it.

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maybe deep down on some

16:27

core existential level, I feel

16:29

like I'm justifying my existence

16:32

when I have an original

16:34

thought or idea. I'm

16:37

Chris Sullivan, a producer here at Vox. I

16:39

called up Sean Ealing to explore the engine that

16:41

helps drive our world. Creativity.

16:46

I used to think being creative

16:48

was almost a waste of time

16:50

if you weren't a serious artist,

16:53

but now I think that's just...

16:55

utterly wrong, being

16:57

creatively expressive.

17:00

It is its own justification, like I'm

17:02

making a tiny little contribution to the

17:04

stock of human knowledge, and that's pretty

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nice. We transformed Sean's insights

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into a dynamic canva presentation, diving deep

17:11

into lessons of the gray area,

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stats, top episodes, and more of his

17:15

takes on creativity. We've

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got some stats here. We

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have 8 ,880 minutes of

17:22

the gray area. That's interesting.

17:24

I've never seen any of

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that data before. I had

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no idea. A fun fact.

17:31

Listening to Hans Zimmer gets Sean's creative

17:33

juices flowing. Fact check true.

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When I was in the military,

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I was bombarded with lots of

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presentations to the point where even

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the thought of a slide change

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Curtis documentary the century of self

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He's really about the birth of

18:55

modern public relations and consumer society

18:57

and the century of self the

19:00

way he uses it isn't quite

19:02

Solitude or antisocial, but it's part

19:04

of the same story. I mean

19:07

there's this shift from a needs

19:09

-based culture to a desires -based

19:11

culture and more of life becomes

19:14

about eliminating inconvenience and friction and

19:16

that ultimately leads to eliminating other

19:18

people because other people

19:20

involved in convenience and friction. It

19:23

reminds me of what the University

19:25

of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley said

19:27

to me. And he talks about

19:29

the ways in which there's an

19:32

expectations gap that we suffer from

19:34

or several expectations gaps that we

19:36

suffer from in our social relations.

19:39

And one is

19:41

that often we

19:44

withhold ourselves from

19:46

talking to strangers.

19:48

or asking people to hang out with

19:51

us, because we're afraid that we might

19:53

be boring to them. We're afraid that

19:55

we might disappoint ourselves by being in

19:58

that conversation and seeing other people react

20:00

negatively to us. And he

20:02

points out that a lot of human interaction

20:04

is instead governed by a principle of reciprocity,

20:06

such that when you're nice to someone, they

20:08

tend to be nice back. When you initiate

20:11

a little bit of conversation, they tend to

20:13

talk back to you. And so

20:15

there's an expectations gap between the

20:17

withdrawal that we sometimes conduct ourselves

20:20

with and the social interaction that

20:22

would actually make us much more

20:24

happy in the next 15 minutes

20:26

of life. And the second gap

20:29

that he talks about that I

20:31

think is really profound is an

20:33

expectations gap about depth of conversation.

20:36

And I think that people, they

20:38

wanna be asked deep questions. They

20:40

like talking about things that matter

20:42

to them. And

20:45

often, We're afraid

20:47

of initiating deep conversations with people.

20:50

So I think that one of

20:52

these just really wonderful points is

20:55

that despite the fact that we're

20:57

social animals, we live

20:59

under this patina of illusion about

21:01

asociality where we withhold deep and

21:04

meaningful conversations both from ourselves and

21:06

the people around us because we

21:09

have false expectations about how those

21:11

conversations are going to go. Well,

21:13

speaking of connections and depth of

21:16

connections or lack thereof, it leads

21:18

to I think a very important

21:20

part of the piece where you're

21:23

talking about these three rings of

21:25

connection, inner, middle, and outer, and

21:27

how this middle ring, which is

21:30

key to social cohesion, that's disappearing.

21:32

Can you say a bit about

21:35

that? Because it seems really, really

21:37

important. So Mark Dunkelman, who's

21:39

an author and a researcher at Brown

21:41

University, when I called him to talk

21:44

about this piece, what he

21:46

said was that ironically, our digital

21:48

devices, which might seem like they alienate us from

21:50

each other, actually make some relationships

21:52

much closer than they used to be.

21:55

For example, at the inner ring of family, it

21:58

is possible for families to be

22:00

connected throughout the day, throughout the

22:02

week in ways that were totally

22:04

impossible 50 years ago. I mean,

22:06

the amount of times per day

22:08

that I text my wife or

22:10

my wife texts me is just

22:12

enormous. We're just in constant. contact

22:14

and constant communication. He

22:17

said at one point, you know, if my daughter buys

22:19

a Butterfinger from the CVS, I get a notification on

22:21

my phone, which, you

22:23

know, intensive parenting, take it or leave it. Like

22:25

at least it's a connection that you could not

22:28

imagine happening 30 years ago. And

22:30

then so at the inner ring, you have

22:32

lots of intimacy. And then there's

22:34

an outer ring that he describes which

22:36

is, you can sort of think of it as

22:38

tribe, people who share your affinities. So

22:40

if you're a Cincinnati Bengals fan, or if

22:43

you're a New Orleans Saints fan, for example,

22:45

for the NFL, you can

22:47

follow the world of Saints fans

22:50

and be in touch with them

22:52

in a way that was absolutely

22:55

impossible 40 years ago. Mark

22:57

talks about the fact that he lives in Providence, Rhode

22:59

Island, and he's texting the beat reporters from Cincinnati Ohio

23:02

about how the Bengals should change their offense.

23:04

I mean that is a connection that you

23:06

could just never have before the rise of

23:08

group chats and acts and things like that.

23:11

So what he says is you sort of in

23:13

a weird way have this inner ring of family

23:15

and friends which can be strengthened by digital communications.

23:18

And this outer ring of tribe, which can

23:20

be strengthened by digital communications, because it puts

23:22

us in touch with the crowd. But there's

23:24

an inner ring that atrophies, and that inner

23:26

ring he calls the village. And the village

23:28

is the people that live next to us.

23:30

It's the people that we live around. It's

23:32

the people that we might see at grocery

23:34

stores or form clubs with. It's people we're

23:36

not related to and that don't necessarily share.

23:38

our opinion about everything in the world. And

23:41

that's what makes it so important, because

23:43

if the inner ring teaches us love

23:45

and the outer ring teaches us loyalty

23:47

or ideology, it's that middle ring that

23:49

teaches us tolerance. It requires

23:51

tolerance to be in the world of

23:53

people you're not related to who might

23:55

disagree with you about things. And in

23:57

a world where that middle ring is

23:59

atrophying, you would predict, if you knew nothing

24:01

else about the world, that our politics

24:03

would become a lot less tolerant. There's

24:05

a section in the piece titled, This

24:07

is your politics on solitude. And

24:11

you make the case that this

24:13

drift towards solitude is really rewiring

24:15

our civic and political identity. Is

24:18

this how it's rewiring it? That

24:20

it's basically teaching us to love

24:22

the people we love, perhaps even

24:25

more, but also hate the people

24:27

we don't really know? I

24:30

think it might be that. The two

24:32

implications that I draw from the piece

24:34

are one that you would expect the

24:37

political winners of a native solitude to

24:39

exist in that sort of all -tribe,

24:41

no -village level. They'd be great at

24:43

stoking out crude animosity, and they would

24:46

be almost celebratory of their lack of

24:48

tolerance. And certainly, I think both

24:50

those things describe Donald Trump. The

24:53

second is that the conventional wisdom used

24:55

to be that all politics is local,

24:57

that people vote based on issues that

24:59

are local to the village. But in

25:02

a world where the village atrophies and

25:04

a more global... of reality concretizes. It's

25:08

not that all politics is local.

25:11

It's that all politics is focal

25:13

with an F. All politics is

25:15

what national media gets us to

25:17

focus on, whether or not it's

25:19

relevant to our local interests. So

25:21

one example from the right, and then maybe one

25:23

example from the left. Some of them

25:25

from the right, and this anecdote didn't make it

25:28

in the final piece, but are the Russell Hawks

25:30

child, who's a sociologist in California, just

25:32

published a book and I was emailing her

25:34

about that book as I was writing this

25:37

piece and she pointed out that there are

25:39

folks in rural Kentucky where she was doing

25:41

some of her ethnography where you walk into

25:43

their trailer homes, you walk into their houses

25:45

and the television is just the biggest piece

25:48

of furniture in the house. And

25:50

for them, the most important issue

25:52

in the 2024 election was the

25:54

rise of illegal immigration and the

25:56

hordes of migrants crossing the border.

25:58

This was incredibly alarming to them.

26:01

And you look at these census reports

26:03

of rural Kentucky, and these are some

26:05

of the places with the least, the

26:07

smallest share of immigrants in the country.

26:10

So in a world where all politics is

26:12

local, rural Kentucky does not

26:14

care about immigration politics at all.

26:16

But in a world where all

26:18

politics is focal, they're paying

26:20

attention to the same news stories that

26:22

a conservative living in downtown Chicago or

26:25

New York or San Francisco is paying

26:27

attention to. And that struck me

26:29

as very interesting. And the

26:31

point that I made about the

26:33

left, which got me into trouble

26:35

among sunk people, is that I

26:38

think that progressives have comforted themselves

26:40

with the understanding that Trump is

26:42

a kind of political alien who

26:45

is inexplicable to anyone who shares

26:47

progressive values. But it's led them

26:49

to... not understand Trump as

26:52

a political phenomenon in a way that

26:54

I think has hurt the left by

26:56

not allowing them to take seriously some

26:58

of the values that underlie this incredibly

27:01

successful right populist movement. The

27:03

left would be better at understanding

27:05

itself, which is to say the

27:07

country that it lives in if

27:09

we spent more time around other

27:11

people who lived in our so

27:13

-called village. I never thought of

27:15

the village as a moderating. mechanism in that way,

27:17

but it makes all the sense in the world.

27:20

The lack of engagement, the lack

27:22

of understanding that has been

27:24

brewing because of this disconnection,

27:27

it's just been toxic to

27:29

our politics. And I don't

27:31

know. I'm just whining out

27:33

loud here. No, I accept your whining in the

27:35

spirit in which it's intended, I think. I'm

27:40

not particularly optimistic

27:42

about Americans. agreeing

27:45

with each other. And one

27:47

thing that I don't want to

27:49

happen and that I can see

27:51

happening is a world where people

27:53

fall so out of touch with

27:55

where they live and the issues

27:58

that are material to their communities.

28:00

that they vote for people that are giving them

28:03

something that's bad for them and bad for their

28:05

neighbors who agree and disagree with whoever's in the

28:07

White House. So I think

28:09

there are material consequences to a

28:11

world where voters are fundamentally disconnected

28:14

from their local material realities. How

28:17

does the antisocial turn, especially among

28:19

men, lead to what you call

28:21

chaos politics? I think even use

28:23

the phrase grotesque style of politics.

28:26

Yeah, it's a term of art

28:28

from a Danish researcher, a Danish

28:30

political scientist named Michael Bank Peterson

28:33

called Need for Chaos. And he's

28:35

done a series of studies with

28:37

some of his co -researchers, and

28:39

they've essentially felt that there's a

28:42

certain demographic that responds very positively

28:44

to conspiracy theories about any establishment

28:46

politician left or right. And they

28:49

tend to agree with statements like,

28:51

I don't believe in the political

28:53

process, I just want to see

28:56

everything burned down. And he

28:58

calls them need for chaos because his

29:00

theory is that this is a cohort

29:02

of the electorate that is essentially given

29:04

up on institutions and establishment processes. And

29:07

they see politics at a

29:09

distance as a kind of,

29:12

as a piece of entertainment

29:14

where the most destruction visited

29:16

on existing institutions, the better.

29:18

And while Certainly, it

29:20

sounds like this movement would lean far

29:22

right. There are elements of the left

29:24

that he sees associated with it as

29:26

well. And what he

29:29

found, and the reason that I included

29:31

his findings in my piece, is that

29:33

one of the things that correlates most

29:35

highly with need for chaos is self

29:37

-described self -isolation. And he

29:39

says, these people aren't seeking out friendships

29:41

the way that someone might, if they

29:44

were lonely, in a typical way that

29:46

is seeking out a friend because you

29:48

feel that gap between felt and desired

29:50

social connection. Rather, they

29:52

take stock of their own

29:54

social isolation and they seek

29:57

to remedy it by going

29:59

online and seeking power in

30:01

some way, typically by joining

30:04

some online whore trying to

30:06

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30:08

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go back to

32:20

the radio? Okay

32:22

So what are

32:25

the different paths

32:27

we can go

32:30

down at this

32:32

point, I mean

32:34

if the antisocial

32:37

trend continues Where

32:39

does that leave

32:42

us if we

32:44

course correct? What

32:47

might that look like? So,

32:49

should we do gate to hell

32:51

first, then gate to heaven so

32:54

we can end in a happy

32:56

note? Yeah, let's lead with gate

32:58

to hell. Okay, good. I

33:03

can't imagine a world where artificial

33:05

intelligence continues to advance at the

33:07

rate it's advancing and it not

33:09

meaningfully inflecting this space. How

33:12

so? We already see that if

33:14

there was a big article in

33:16

The New York Times just a

33:18

few days ago about people falling

33:20

in love with chat GPT and

33:22

having deep personal relationships with a

33:25

genitive AI software whose guts live

33:27

in some data center in the

33:29

Dallas corridor of Virginia. That's

33:32

weird, but it's going to get less weird because

33:34

it's become more common. Jason

33:36

Fagone, who's a journalist who I

33:39

spoke to, is writing a book

33:41

about people's relationship with AI companions.

33:43

And the stories that he told me, some of which I reported

33:45

in the piece and some of which were off the record, were

33:47

just absolutely extraordinary. I mean, mothers

33:50

with families married to a man,

33:52

but who feels bisexual and has

33:54

a engaged emotional relationship with an

33:57

AI that identifies as a woman.

34:00

Men who having lost

34:02

a girlfriend or fiance

34:04

creating avatars of their

34:06

lost loves out of

34:08

silicon and having

34:10

ongoing relationships with ChatGBT

34:13

or with other AI

34:15

companions that essentially mimic

34:17

the emotional life of

34:19

their ex. This

34:22

is all going to get more common and

34:24

it's all going to get weirder because the

34:26

technology is going to improve and also because

34:28

these technologies are going to become more multimodal,

34:30

which is, I guess, maybe just a fancy

34:32

way of saying they're going to get better

34:34

at talking to us, literally talking to us

34:36

and not just texting us back. And in

34:38

some ways, people are going to find that

34:40

silicon -based friendships and relationships are just richer

34:42

than carbon -based relationships to put things somewhat

34:44

frequently. So I think this is

34:47

coming. And I think we need to see

34:49

it clearly for the threat that it could

34:51

have to the way that humans deal with

34:53

each other in the physical world. You

34:56

know, I have to say, I

34:58

think this is where some of

35:00

those old, curmudgeonly cultural critics like

35:02

Christopher Lash, you know, who famously

35:05

wrote. the culture of narcissism are

35:07

a little vindicated as you point

35:09

out in the article you know

35:11

like one of the reasons we're

35:13

so prepared for chatbot friendships is

35:15

that we have come to expect

35:18

different things from our relationships and

35:20

what a lot of us really

35:22

want is a set of feelings

35:24

we want validation we want sympathy

35:26

we want someone or something to

35:28

make us feel a certain way

35:31

about ourselves. That's

35:34

about self -fulfillment that is

35:36

kind of narcissism and It's

35:38

kind of where we are

35:40

Yeah, I mean You know

35:42

this is maybe where we

35:45

we dust us some of

35:47

your favorite existentialist writers and

35:49

you know think about like

35:51

what what like phenomenologically what

35:53

is Friendship for the most

35:56

part It's a lot of

35:58

spending time with people in

36:00

the physical world. Hopefully But

36:03

for a lot of people, it's phone

36:05

calls and it's texts. And

36:07

it's the feeling of, hey, I'm having an issue with work, or

36:09

hey, I'm having an issue with my kid, or I'm having an

36:11

issue with my relationship. Hey, man, can we

36:13

just talk on the phone? Can I just give you a call? Can

36:16

you just respond to a couple of texts while we both

36:18

watch the national championship game at home? What's

36:20

happening there? You're picking up a

36:23

piece of hardware, and you're

36:25

holding it to your ear, or you're holding it in

36:27

your palm. and you're having

36:29

a voice -based or text -based

36:31

conversation with an entity who is

36:33

not there, but an

36:35

entity within which you entrust

36:38

with love and a host

36:40

of complex feelings that make

36:42

it so that you want

36:45

to spend time with someone

36:47

who is physically a ghost

36:49

to you. Well, like, you're

36:52

just talking to someone who isn't there, that

36:54

you've decided to put trust in. What's

36:57

phenomenologically so different than it being

36:59

an AI? Hell,

37:01

I probably have half a dozen

37:03

friendships now that exist solely through

37:05

the exchange of funny memes on

37:07

Instagram. My point isn't

37:09

that my best friend or your best friend

37:11

is no different than an AI. I

37:14

want people to think

37:16

capaciously about the ways

37:18

in which relationships with

37:20

AI won't be weird

37:22

to lots of people.

37:25

It's weird to me. I

37:27

have no relationship with an artificial intelligence.

37:29

I'd be surprised if you did. I'd

37:31

certainly be surprised if my wife did.

37:33

But I don't think that many people

37:35

growing up in an age, especially young

37:37

people, who by the way, one of

37:39

the first points made in the show,

37:41

spent a historic amount of time alone

37:43

on their couches interacting with the world

37:45

through their smartphone screen, is it really

37:47

going to be so strange for them

37:49

to have friends at school and friends

37:51

on their phone? I just don't think

37:53

it takes an enormous amount of imagination

37:55

to see how this is coming. Yeah,

37:57

and I should say, I don't think

37:59

people today are any more inherently narcissistic

38:01

or self -involved than people were really

38:03

at any other point. We have built

38:05

a world optimized to cater to these

38:08

sorts of impulses. Oh, yeah. No, we're

38:10

no different. I mean, biologically, how can

38:12

we be different than our grandfather's grandfather's

38:14

grandfather's grandfather? We're not. Nothing's

38:16

changed about human biology. Nothing's changed about

38:18

human biochemistry or very little. Very little's

38:20

changed about human psychology. We're different because

38:23

of technology. And technology

38:25

of different times elicits

38:27

different aspects of our

38:29

personalities because we're incredibly

38:31

cross -purposed. We are

38:33

designed to replicate our

38:35

genome through history. But

38:37

that's not all. We're designed to seek

38:40

novel stimuli and also designed to seek

38:42

familiarity and designed to seek safety and

38:44

designed to seek adventure. We're so, so

38:46

complex and we just live in a

38:49

world right now where I want people

38:51

to recognize just how much intelligence and

38:53

treasure and talent has been devoted to

38:55

the job of keeping us stimulated inside

38:58

of our homes. And what if we

39:00

actually confronted the costs of that world?

39:03

When I asked you earlier about

39:05

the different ways forward you gave

39:08

me the vision for the road

39:10

to the gates To hell you

39:13

didn't give me the vision of

39:15

the path to the gates of

39:17

heaven. What's the utopian optimistic sunny

39:20

scenario so the difference between science

39:22

and culture is that science tends

39:24

to move linearly and culture is

39:27

a cycle Culture goes up and

39:29

down culture is backlash Culture

39:32

is not just one thing accumulating over and

39:34

over and over again. It's backlash. And

39:37

a proper understanding of the antisocial century,

39:39

I think, will inspire its own backlash.

39:42

And we've backlashed before. The

39:45

late 19th century was a

39:47

highly individualistic time. And

39:50

around the progressive era of the

39:52

early 20th century, up until the

39:54

middle of the 1900s, we had

39:56

a social revolution in this country.

39:58

that was inspired by religion in

40:00

the social gospel, that

40:02

was inspired by a change of political economy, the

40:04

New Deal, and the rise of collectivism, and

40:07

was reinforced by everything

40:10

from behavior and habit

40:12

to technology. It

40:14

was a physical time, a time of

40:16

physical togetherness. And we can have it

40:18

again. People need to make new choices

40:20

with their lives, and those new choices need to be

40:22

inspired by a clear understanding of what we've done to

40:24

ourselves in the social century. that year

40:27

after year of being alone is unacceptable.

40:29

And we can make choices as small as

40:31

I'm going to call my friend when I

40:34

feel like I miss them. I'm going to

40:36

spend more time outside of my house. I'm

40:38

going to go out every single weekend absolutely

40:40

for sure to make sure that I prioritize

40:42

a Friday or Saturday hangout. The people who

40:44

are in my life that I text but

40:46

don't see physically, I'm going to make a

40:48

point to see them. I

40:50

think that behaviors can cascade

40:52

and they can create norms.

40:55

And I think norms can cascade and they can

40:57

create movements. And this is

40:59

a disease, the anti -social century is

41:01

a disease, the cure is

41:03

free and is well known. And

41:06

that makes me optimistic. Is

41:08

all of what you just said

41:10

personally aspirational or are you becoming

41:13

the change you want to see

41:15

in the world, Derek? After having

41:17

thought this through so deeply and

41:19

reported this out, are you changing

41:22

the decisions you make day to

41:24

day? Are you out in the

41:26

world engaging with more? People a

41:28

thousand percent. Yeah, I'm an introvert.

41:31

I'm a couch potato. I'm a

41:33

bookworm. I I love to stay

41:35

home and read and think about

41:37

things and You know writing this

41:40

piece Was a reckoning for my

41:42

own behavior and the ways that

41:44

my own hour -to -hour minutes

41:46

minute preferences were affecting my life

41:49

and affecting my happiness You know

41:51

as Nick Epley says You

41:53

have a great conversation for 15 minutes rather than be

41:55

alone. That doesn't change your

41:57

life. It just changes the next 15

42:01

But life is just one 15 -minute block

42:03

of time after another. And

42:05

the way we spend our minutes is the way we spend our life. And

42:08

that understanding has affected me really

42:11

deeply. And I'm thinking so much

42:13

more about how I spend more

42:15

time around people and how I

42:17

reach out to people more. That's

42:21

such a beautiful place to end. We love your work

42:23

around here. So thanks for coming back on the show,

42:25

man. Thank you, man. Total pleasure to be here. All

42:30

right. I hope you enjoyed this

42:32

episode. I always love talking to

42:34

Derek. As always, we want

42:36

to know what you think. So drop

42:38

us the line at the gray area

42:40

at Vox.com and tell us. And if

42:42

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42:45

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42:47

stuff really helps our show grow. This

42:53

episode was produced by Beth

42:55

Morrissey, edited by Jorge

42:57

Just, engineered by Christian Ayala,

43:00

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43:02

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