the most effective strategies for

dealing with depression and anxiety

are the ones that deal with the reasons

why we feel so bad in the first place

we need to stop asking what's wrong with

you and start asking

what happened to you if you think life

is about money

and status and showing off you're gonna

feel like [ __ ] it's not like i'm

explaining quantum physics right and

we've all had that experience where you

crave a consumer object

you build up to it you get it you get

home and you just feel flat

is it's not the trauma that destroys you

it's the shame about the trauma

and giving people ways to release that

shame

is an antidepressant god

change is really possible

today we have a real treat for you

this guest today johan hari is one of my

all-time favorite ever podcast guests

ever and i'm not saying that to blow

smoke up his ass when i had the

conversation with him and when i started

reading his books many years ago

i can quite honestly say that no book

i've ever read in my life has had more

of a positive impact

a more transformative impact on the

topics that matter most to my

fulfillment and happiness

than the work that johann has done he is

a comedian on one hand

he's an incredible storyteller he spends

a decade writing his book so you know

the information he's going to share with

you today

is both profound it is evidence-backed

and it is compelling

true important and everything that our

society at this point in time

needs to hear this could well be the

most important podcast i've ever

recorded

if you asked me if there was one podcast

that i wish the world's

got to hear it's definitely this one

above all of the other podcasts i've

ever recorded this is the conversation

so without further ado i'm stephen

bartlett and this is the dire ceo

i hope nobody's listening but if you are

then please keep this to yourself

[Music]

johan it's uh it's a real pleasure to

have you back on the podcast you are one

of my all-time

favorite guests top three i don't know

the order but you're definitely up there

these other two i don't actually

and not just because of the conversation

we had but because you changed my

fundamental beliefs

around depression mental health

the importance of human connection and

everything in between

and that had a really fundamental

positive impact on my life

it's also you feature heavily in my book

i talk about you on this podcast all the

time

so you know the amount of times i've

plugged so really what i brought you

here today was to get the royalties from

all the friends no but no but i do i

talk about this podcast all the time so

give you an old bag of crisps please

that's all you're getting that's why i

wanted to get in the podcast because

you know you changed my life and i'm not

saying that's no smoke up your ass i

genuinely mean that

with your book lost connections so the

first question i have is like completely

off track but

i've just finished writing my book

published it's all great and everything

you're

you're onto your third fourth book now

yeah yeah talk to me about why you like

writing books what is it about writing

books

why are you doing that oh for me

i write books because there's a question

i want to answer for myself that i don't

know the answer to at the start

so we'd lost connections i wanted to

there would

for me there's always a core mystery

that i want to understand right so we've

lost connections to core mystery was two

really simple things when i

when the book came out i was 40. uh all

throughout my lifetime depression and

anxiety have increased in britain

the us crossed the world i wanted to

understand why right why is it that with

each year that passes

more and more of us are finding it

harder to get through the day i wanted

to understand it for a personal reason

which is that i had been really

depressed myself i had done

everything i was told to do by my

doctors and i remained depressed

or chasing the screen my but before that

um i had a kind of core question which

was

you know we had a lot of addiction in my

family one of my earliest memories is of

trying to wake up one of my relatives

and not being able to

um and i wanted to understand what

causes addiction

and what can we actually do about it i

want to understand a personal level but

also

at a social level what we could do about

it so for me

i always start with a core question um

so a book i'm been working on for the

last 10 years that i'm sort of writing

at the moment about

um something i have to be careful what i

say about a series of crimes that have

been happening in las vegas

for me there's always a core question a

mystery

and then i'm like okay i want to take

the reader on a journey

as i try to unsolve this mystery i tried

to solve this mystery for myself right

so um all of my books are

long journeys where i you know for both

books i traveled more than 30 000 miles

went to a crazy mixture of people and

for me the best journeys

are not where you find yourself everyone

goes are you on a journey to find

yourself to me the best journey is where

you find other people

right so i think about the crazy mixture

of people that i've got to know for

these books

who i love who are still you know

important people to me from you know

for the addiction book i think about

chino hardin who's a

trans crack dealer in brooklyn who's one

of the smartest people i've ever met

uh rosalia retta a hitman of the

deadliest mexican drug cartel

he's unfortunately not one of the

smartest people i've ever met but uh you

know

or for lost connections uh you know i

think about these people will probably

talk about these people in berlin

who transform who's starting from

position a terrible depression

transformed their city in their country

i think about this

couple homeless couple i know very well

in vegas

so for me it's always about finding

people and solving mysteries

and i write to figure out to try to

understand the world and to figure out

what we can do about the world you know

so for me it's it's

i would i can't imagine writing a book

where i

felt i knew in advance of course i've

got ideas when i start right

i don't start as a blank slate but i

can't imagine writing a book

where i felt i knew in advance i was

standing above the reader and going

well reader you know i mean there are

books that do that you know if you've

been in it i'm a journalist i'm not an

expert

right so if you've been an expert for 30

years on

uh just read a fantastic book about

octopuses right if you guys spent 30

years studying octopuses

he knows a [ __ ] ton about octopuses i'm

very happy for him to stand above me and

say

let me tell you a little crazy [ __ ]

about octopuses that is crazy [ __ ] right

but that's great it's called other minds

i really recommend that book

um but i'm not that i'm not an expert so

for me it's about the journey come on

the journey with me come to all these

different places

come with me to a favela in rio come

with me to the killing fields in mexico

come with me to a gulag in vietnam let's

go on the journey let's figure out what

the [ __ ] going on

and of all the books and this is i know

that i can probably guess the response

here they'll hold like i'll choose your

favorite kid

which one oh chasing scream i have a

really easy answer to that

because only because um

so chasing screams a book i wrote about

the addiction and

and the war on drugs and it's because

it's the book that i've

it sounds uh so fagrandizing and wanky

but it's the book that i've seen do the

most good in the world it's a place

where i've been to

so many places where people have used

that book and the things that

to me the happiest moment in any book

and the whole process of writing

is when so i track down people i think

are really interesting and important

uh so to give an example there's a guy

in vancouver called professor bruce

alexander

one of the most amazing human beings

alive

who did a really important experiment

this transformed how we think about

addiction

called rat park i suspect we'll talk

about it and

bruce you know that experiment was known

before my book and before my ted talks

and stuff

but as bruce says you know it got a huge

boost from that

and and and that evidence is now used

was used in norway where they're just on

the brink of decriminalizing all drugs

um in all sorts of places in mexico i

remember having a surreal conversation

with some mexican politicians about it

in all sorts of different places

and to me the most exciting moment is

when the people i've written about

get in touch with me and say oh people

are contacting me because of you

because they've read about me and it's

that moment where you feel that you've

been a conduit

between someone who's doing something

really important and

people who needed to know it and to me

that's like the blissful

feeling you know so chasing the scream

just because

um that's that's what that's the book

i've seen do the most work in the world

you know what i mean quick interruption

today we have luke with us behind the

scenes watching this podcast be recorded

luke is a subscriber of this podcast and

as i said in the previous podcast we're

gonna start bringing in subscribers

to watch the show being filmed to sit

behind the scenes to and to meet me and

the guests

if you want that to be you all you've

got to do is hit the subscribe button

wherever you're listening to this

podcast

so let's talk about rap park i i read

about this study

numerous times but i think it's you know

you've probably talked about it before

but i think it's so

important and foundational for so many

reasons and and speaks actually speaks a

lot to lost connections as well

in many respects um but i would love you

to tell the story of rap park and

exactly what it what it is

you know rap park was for me i found it

very challenging when i learned about

rap park because i realized

that all my life i've been

misunderstanding some of the things i

was seeing right in front of me so like

i said we had addiction in my family

we still have addiction in my family

it's very difficult

and when i started doing the research

for chasing the scream god 10 10 years

ago exactly 10 years ago almost

i am if you'd asked me let's say her in

addiction because i was close to me if

you said to me john what causes heroin

addiction

i would have looked at you like you were

thick and i would have said well stephen

the clue's in the name

right yeah obviously heroin causes

heroin addiction right

we've been told this story for a hundred

years that's become totally part of our

common sense it was definitely part of

mine

so we think we're sitting here in east

london we think

if we kidnap the next 20 people to walk

past your flat in east london

and like a villain in a saw movie we

injected them all with heroin every day

for a month

at the end of that month they'd all be

heroin addicts for a simple reason

there's chemical hooks in heroin that as

you use it

your body starts to crave you want more

and more of them and so

at the end of that month people would

have this tremendous physical hunger for

the chemical hooks right

that's why we call it being hooked um

and that's

that's the story we have in our heads

now that story is not completely wrong

it turns out it's a very small part of a

much bigger picture

and the first thing that i remember the

first thing that alerted me to that

was in my research i was interviewing

doctors and experts and it was explained

to me right

here in britain if you and me step out

into

the street and we get hit you get hit by

a truck right god forbid terrible loss

to the world

um you'll be taken to hospital and if

you say you broke your hip

you'd be given a lot of a drug called

diamorphine right

diamorphine is heroin it's much better

than the [ __ ] you'd buy just like the

road from here

on the street because it's medically

pure heroin right

and anyone watching this if you if

you're british and your nan's had a hip

replacement operation

your nan's taken a lot of heroin right

now if what we think about addiction is

right

that it's caused primarily or entirely

by exposure to the chemical hooks

what should be happening to all these

people in british hospitals who've been

given a lot of powerful heroin

some of them should be leaving and

trying to score on the streets you

should be meeting people in their name

meetings

who say well you know i started i had a

hip replacement

this has been studied very carefully it

never happens right i remember when i

learned that

i'm just thinking the first person who

told me that was dr gabor marte

and i remember thinking saying to him

gabor that can't be right

how could you have a situation where

you've got someone in a hospital bed

they're using a [ __ ] ton of really

powerful heroin they don't become

addicted

and you've got someone in the alleyway

outside who

you know is shooting up actually a

weaker shittier form of the drug

and they and they do become addicted how

could that be and i only began to

understand it when i went to vancouver

and interviewed professor alexander

professor bruce alexander

so bruce explained to me the story we've

got in our heads that addiction is

caused primarily or totally by the

chemical hooks

comes from a series of experiments that

were done earlier in the 20th century

they're really simple experiments um

your viewers can try them at home if

they're feeling a little bit sadistic

and bored in

covid times right not heroin is it

no they don't have to try it you take a

rat you put it in a cage and you give it

two water bottles

one is just water the other is water

laced with either heroin or cocaine

if you do that the rat will almost

always prefer the drugged water

and almost always kill itself quite

quickly within a week or two right

so there you go that's that's our story

that's that's how we think it works

but in the 70s professor alexander was

working where i met him on the downtown

east side of vancouver which has a lot

of

he's working with a lot of people with

very bad addiction problems

and he starts to look at these

experiments and he says well hang on a

minute

you put the rat alone in an empty cage

it's got nothing that makes life worth

living for rats

all it's got is the drugs what would

happen if we did this differently

so he built a cage that he called rat

park which is basically

heaven for rats right they've got loads

of friends they've got loads of cheese

they've got loads of colored balls they

can have loads of sex everything that

makes life worth living

for rats is there in rat park and

they've got both the water bottles the

drugged water and the normal water

this is the fascinating thing in rat

park

they don't like the drug water they

don't use it very much

none of the music compulsively none of

them overdose

so you go from almost 100 compulsive use

and overdose

when rats don't have the things that

make life worth living

to no compulsive use and overdose when

they do have the things that make life

worth living

and obviously we are not rats we're more

complicated

but the core of this there's lots of

human evidence that i can talk about

but what what this taught me and a lot

of the other evidence taught me is

the core of addiction is about not

wanting to be present in your life

because your life is too painful a place

to be and

it actually makes you realize why our

approach of punishing people with

addiction problems is such a disaster

actually makes

the problem worse the opposite of

addiction is not sobriety although that

is valuable for some people

the opposite of addiction is connection

and we're living through a great example

of that right now just

just i think two days ago the government

announced massive increase in

alcohol-related deaths

massive increase in other drug-related

deaths in britain and in the united

states

why would that be right we i think

rightly

in order to suppress the virus which we

had to do we have had to become more

disconnected

and that has caused an increase in

addiction now that tells us something

about what was causing addiction all

along and what the paths out of

addiction are

so i thought it was a very long answer

perfect answer and obviously with the

with that in mind you know covert

has um accelerated the um

adoption of remote working which i

you know there's been a lot of debate

around that whether it's a good thing or

a bad thing

my stance is pretty clear i think it's

an awful thing and i say this because

you know after reading your book i

understand that um

connection organic connection in our

lives is

has this like has been on this sort of

macro decline and one of the like

institutions in our lives that has held

that together has been the office

so like most of my friends come from

working in a big office

you know if i think about where 90 of my

connection comes it came from the office

and to think especially as a young

person who hasn't got a family or kids

whatever

that that is also now going to move to a

screen i think is a [ __ ] terrible

idea

to be honest um i wanted to get your

your thoughts on that because i think

i i don't i think people think of the

convenience factors but

we thought of the convenience factors

when we in we created social media and

dating apps and all these other things

but the unintended consequences of the

convenience tends to be

you know stripping us of connection once

again and like what do we have left

like everything else is on a screen now

so if you take away work from me i'm

like

i probably wouldn't see anybody like

porn you know i can do that online now

dating swipe swipe swipe so it feels

like

you know the last institution of

connection is being uh is that war

i think that's really interesting i

think there's a

there's two things i was thinking about

as you talked about that stephen one is

what a lot of us get out the web the

relationship between social media and

social life

is a bit like the relationship between

porn and sex and she mentioned porn

because i'm not anti-porn porn's going

to meet a basic itch right

um but no one you know spends an hour

looking at porn and feels

like satisfied and seen speaks me

physically

not the way you do after you've had sex

right unless you're having a very bad

sex step

in a similar sort of way you know

it's not that the these

a lot of these technologies are attempts

our unhealthy relationship with the

technology itself is neutral

a lot of our relationships with these

technologies are attempts to fill

holes in the way we're living right phil

whole but unfortunately we're talking

about porn but you know what i mean

um the the the and even if you just

think about when the internet arrived

right

the internet arrives for most of us the

early 2000s or 1999 i got my first email

address in 2000

and a lot of the things that we're

talking about had already

been going rising for a long time big

increase in loneliness before that

and what happens is the internet arrives

and it looks a lot like the things we've

lost right

you've lost friends here's facebook

friends you've lost status in the

economy

here's some status updates but they're

not the things we've lost it's like

giving pawn to a sex starved man in

prison or something

it's not the thing you've lost right i

mean it'll meet a certain basic hitch

but it's not the thing you've lost

and if interacting through screens met

our basic needs as human beings

we would all be very happy zooming all

the time right sitting on zoom would be

as good as sitting in the office right

you know and people often say to me why

do you travel to so many places

to do all these interviews why don't you

just talk to them on skype or zoom and

always say

because you get 10 of the experience

through a screen people don't open up to

you they don't feel they've met you

i wouldn't remem all these people i'm

describing to you i can picture them so

vividly

people have interviewed zoom i can never

remember even what they look like right

so these forms of interaction they've

got a place you know look it's better to

have zoom in a time of a plague than

than nothing which would have been the

alternative in in the context of covid

but it's not it doesn't we evolved to

interact

to look into each other's eyes to see

each other to interact in three

dimensions

we did not evolve to interact through

screens it doesn't meet our deeper needs

that is why i've never done this podcast

over zoom despite the

temptation yeah so we we started doing

in just we started we upped everything

in december and really started going for

it you know built the team and all these

things

and that's obviously in the middle of

the pandemic there's flight restrictions

no one can fly in

and we've got the most amazing guests in

the world that want to come on via zoom

and i just said

i do this because i enjoy it right

that's like the fundamental reason

that's the reason why i'll keep doing it

for the next 10 years

and i would not enjoy doing it over zoom

it would become like a job to me because

i like

meeting people and obviously the the

conversation we have now

you can feel the emotion you can you can

hear the you know

you can see it my eyes you can see at

certain points you know you can feel

what i'm thinking

and that unlocks for a podcast that's

meant to be a little bit more

um deeper it unlocks that depth we've

had you know

tears and we've had all sorts and i

formed real friendships

from it so many pretty much all of my

guests i feel like i'm friends with it

straight after because of the

vulnerability

so i just i just made a rule that i

would not do anything over zoom and when

people ask me to go on their podcast

over zoom the answer is the same

i don't want to do it and i with my team

my office is actually downstairs

so we come in every day there is one

thing about work i think everything you

said is totally true

so there's one thing about work i would

say which is a slightly different point

uh but relates to remote working which

is so

uh i mean we can talk about some more

detail if you want but for the purposes

of this part of the conversation

there's a lot of evidence that um

lacking control over your work makes you

depressed

right i'm sure we could talk about that

more um

one thing that people do benefit from i

think from zoom not actually

funny interestingly not so much in covid

times as evidence people are working

more hours under kobe than they were

normally partly because zoom meetings

take so damn long

um but some people

i think as we come out of this which we

will

as we come out of covid um the pandemic

some people i think would like to have

more leeway about

when they are in the office oh yeah and

would like to and i think

it's interesting when you look at the

research on this

it's not so much the ratio is it 20 at

home it's whether you can choose

yes it's the amount of agency you have

um

so in that sense i think that's where

and of course we didn't have any choice

about coping but the that's the bit

where i would say

we'll probably have some value going

forward 100 agree

i i actually wrote about um motivation

intrinsic motivation

and extrinsic motivation and one of the

big factors of

people feeling motivated in work is as

you say autonomy feeling like you have

control of your work and

and that's the that's also the balance

that i've always tried to create at my

companies which is

um one way you can book um as much time

off as you need

without having to put like tell a

computer and ask it for approval

and there is no bitchiness there is no

one that's going to look at you the next

day and be like

oh you've had a couple of days off and

giving people the same level of freedom

that i've always had has been super

important

um but at the same time like i'm i've

been super clear even though it's an

unpopular narrative right now

i think this remote working future where

you know these companies are coming out

and doing all their virtual signaling

you know whatever i think it's a load of

nonsense and i think they're actually

harming

people by supporting the idea that we're

going to all

especially younger people live our lives

through screens and i think that people

are going to figure this out i actually

think

people have overestimated the stickiness

of remote remote working

because the narrative is companies that

offer remote working

will attract all the staff all the good

talent so you're gonna have to do it

but i actually think companies that are

able to offer community

and much more than work which is for me

is what a good job is much what's the

it's the friends you make the

experiences you have the challenges

you're

driving towards together the worthwhile

it's like the worth while striving for a

challenge

with a group of people you love for me

that's like become my

my the reason for why i live i i managed

to get it down to those three things

which is

people i love uh worthwhile challenge

right and i don't know how that links

into your work but that's i think the

most foundational i've managed to get

with like my reason to live is like

oh at least my reason to work so if i

think like

you've gone to a really important um

one of the most important things that

relates to depression anxiety in your

own life

which is meaning right so there's all

this i mean

it's funny exactly a year a little bit

more than a year ago a year and a month

ago i was in moscow

it was the last thing i did before i got

covered it was grim i

interviewed this fascinating uh russian

psychologist

called um dimitri leontyev and his um

so his dad had actually been a super

famous uh so his grandfather had been an

incredibly famous

psychologist but he's a very

distinguished psychologist as well and

um i remember him saying like um

british and american people british

american philosophy if you go back it's

very often about happiness the belief

that you should try to make yourself

happy

right obviously it's in constitution the

pursuit of happiness right

and he said when russians hear that we

just laugh right that's a child's game

trying to chase happiness it's the

child's philosophy so

you can't you don't have that much say

about whether happiness will come and go

he said

what life is about is not happiness but

meaning right the pursuit of meaning

and actually when you've got meaning in

your life you can tolerate a lot of

unhappiness

and you even think about something as

simple as uh a dentist or a good example

a dentist drill

right so if i now took out a drill

opened your mouth and

you know jabbed it into your teeth and

it was agony because that would have no

meaning in the context between us it

would be different it would literally be

torture it would cause you

terrible suffering and you'd be

traumatized for ages but you've been to

the dentist and they've done that right

and it didn't traumatize you most likely

some people do get traumatic dentists

that's a different story

it's rare um why because it had a

meaning right you could tolerate the

pain

because there was because it was for a

purpose all right if i don't tolerate

this pain my teeth are going to get

[ __ ] up right

um it's worthwhile and i think that's

one of the things that's a big

a big driver depression anxiety is one

actually

it was one of the two hardest causes of

depression and anxiety that i wrote

about lost connections for me to

it was the one one that was most chat

one of the two that was most challenging

for me

was this crisis of meaning so for

thousands of years philosophers have

said

if you think life is about money and

status and showing off

you're going to feel like [ __ ] right

it's not an exact quote from confucius

but that is basically what he said right

but weirdly nobody had ever

scientifically i'm looking to is this

true how do we know

no one had actually scientifically

investigated this until an amazing man i

got to know

named professor tim casa who did an

incredible amount of

uh spent 35 years researching these

questions

he discovered loads of things but i

think for what we're talking about

there's two in particular

firstly he discovered exactly as the

philosophers warned

if you think life is about money and

status and showing off

all the values you get from advertising

instagram everything like them

the more likely you are to become

depressed and anxious by a significant

amount

and secondly he discovered as a society

as a culture

we have become much more driven by these

junk

values right they've been rising all

throughout my lifetime

your lifetime and and i was talking

about well why is that right and there's

many reasons that i go through the book

why does that make us feel so bad

um a key reason i think is just

it trains us to look for happiness in

all the wrong places

right you know your technical crew know

everyone knows

everyone watching this knows you're not

going to lie on your deathbed

and think about all the likes you've got

on instagram right

you're going to think about moments of

love and meaning and connection

um but but as professor casa put it to

me

we live in a machine that is designed to

get us to neglect what is important

about life right

we live in a machine where we are

bombarded more 18 month old children

know what the mcdonald's m

means than know their own last name

right so from the moment you're born

you are trained to think if you don't

feel good there's a solution for that

work harder buy [ __ ] display on

instagram to make people go omg so

jealous right

that is the script of our society and

it's

it's like kfc for the soul right you're

not going to find happiness there

but the more meaningful values are lying

just beneath the surface right nothing i

just said i mean

it's almost like a hallmark card at the

level of banality everyone knows that at

some level

and yet we don't live by it and this is

true of a lot of things to learn from

lost connections

it's not like i'm explaining quantum

physics right it's not like i'm

not that i could do that it's not like

i'm explaining at noam chomsky's

linguistics or something

these are things at some level we all

know but we live in a machine like

professor casa put it

we live in a machine that has taught us

to neglect to mistrust our own instincts

about what will give us a good life

and to and to pursue um

other things instead do you know what i

mean does that make sense of course it

makes [ __ ] sense to me

of course it makes sense do you feel but

i really

feel the reason it was challenging is

because i could see

how much of my own life was driven by

these junk folks i was never a

materialistic person i was never

i was once nominated for an award as the

worst dressed gay man in britain so i

was never like a kind of did you in

material no i was beaten by david

furnish who i've always thought was very

well dressed so

i show so much i know but you know

a big part not i was never like i was

never like trump it was never 100

but a big part of my life

was driven by trying to think about how

people perceive me

managing people's expectations does it

still

yeah of course it's still a part of my

character but it's a radically smaller

part of my personality than it was

uh 15 years ago because i was thinking

as you're saying that i was just

thinking i was thinking this is also

true but again the question

posed my mind was how would i get out of

the machine

when so much of the things i

enjoy keep me within the machine so

you know i could i could abscond and go

to bali and go and live on a beach and

just

you surround myself with a couple of

friends and you'd give up my louis

vuitton

shoes i don't have a ton shoes but you

know what i mean give up my lamborghini

which i also don't have

and i could i could escape but much of

the joy of my life comes from doing

things like this having conversations

with people like you which means that i

have to live in london and then to

promote this i'm gonna have to use

instagram and social media and then i'm

gonna get a little pat on the back from

the algorithm if it's good or bad and

and so in the pursuit of some of my

intrinsic joy

and fit goals i i'd have played with

this a lot i

i i'm i'm putting myself in the machine

and i can't see another way to live

the best i say to myself the best you

could probably do steve

is live within the machine but just live

much more consciously

know that you're in the machine and it's

the minute that you don't know you're in

the machine that the machine becomes

your puppet master

and then i'll start [ __ ] buying louis

vuitton again so it's funny there's

doing things you're saying louis vuitton

because

i once a party met calvin klein and

until that moment i i thought calvin

klein was a fictional character

like rory mcdonald so someone said oh

this is kevin clinton i almost said

i like the clothes and then i was like

is this

like it was it was like suddenly meeting

you like ronald mcdonald or something

so i think tim caster discovered two

answers to actually lots of answers but

two specific things that he discovered

that i think really help answer your

question so

and they operate at different levels so

what can we do about the fact we live in

the machine there's two things there's

one thing that's going to sound very big

and is very big which is we can

dismantle the machine

the machine was created by human beings

and it can be dismantled and

again i went to places that have started

that sao paulo

in brazil uh city was full of

advertising it was doing people's heads

in

they banned outdoor advertising people

felt much better do you remember the

campaign that happened here when was it

it's in the books it must have been at

least four years ago five years ago

maybe

there was a campaign on the tubes skinny

too i know this is funny

yeah exactly somebody who don't remember

there were it was a picture of

a super ripped guy

and a super lean woman and it said

are you beachbody ready right and it was

an advert for some

john i'm so out of touch with sorry i

know

so what was it a protein shake it was

like a a protein a powder

right right right i'm so unhealthy i

don't even know what that powder would

you conceive of what you would do with

that powder except snort it which i

assume is not what you did but

anyway and city khan just banned it just

said you know what this makes people

feel like [ __ ] it's got an insidious

vile message which is if you don't look

like these people i.e if you're like

99.99 the population

you're not fit to go to the beach just

banned it there was a campaign to

vandalize

that poster which uh people vandalized

it just with the slogan advertising

shits in your head

so that was a great slogan so you can do

a political thing

we don't have to allow all this stuff

right um and we can build up to that in

all sorts of ways

smaller steps and one is a more personal

one

and that's something i now do i have a

group of friends we talk you know

once every couple of weeks we talk about

okay what are the times when we've been

tempted by [ __ ]

you know like uh we had the conversation

the other day and one of my friends said

you know oh

she'd got retweeted by some famous

person and it lifted her move for five

minutes and then she was like i need

more i need more i

need more and then we're like okay but

did you write that day she's writer

she said no no it distracted me i didn't

write and we're like

okay but and of course you only had to

say it don't you oh yeah

that's the thing that gives my life

meaning that's the moments when i feel

flow not the sugar high of

you know um i've tried to remember it

was it was someone really famous

um so just having these so i would say

and and those things are complementary

by the way when we have those

conversations

with the among ourselves it makes us

feel more powerful to take on

the aspects of the machine that are

[ __ ] us up as well what you've

described is like a counterbalance right

because

you've got the machine whispering in

your ear every day every time you log on

social media walk down the street look

at the internet look at the newspaper

and it's saying bye louis vuitton

[ __ ]

and then what you've described there is

just by having someone

um in your ear once in a while going

down by louis vuitton live your life for

you know intrinsic

your intrinsic values you know things

that actually matter it acts as a bit of

a counterbalance

and it's so true because i know this

stuff

right done a lot of reading about it

your book really helped me understand

it lots of other books i've you know you

talked about um

professor tim casa read his writings

after you wrote about it in your book

i know this stuff yet

once every quarter i'll pop up in the

whatsapp group with

dom and sophie and i'll go

what about a lamborghini and they'll and

they'll they'll respond to me i mean dom

goes [ __ ] get it because he's this

he's bad egg but um

he's like you might as well know but um

but my all it takes is one of my good

friends to go to me

but why do you need that and i go yeah

of course you're right but this is what

tim casa puts him really well

i remember him saying it to me we all

have a need intrinsic values but

intrinsic values are very fragile

yeah and they can be very easily

hijacked by

signaling around us which is why

you're right we need to counterbalance

it we also need to

actually get less of this [ __ ]

please right

and that's a social thing that we can

fight for right there's all sorts of

there are countries that regulate these

things sao paulo banned outdoor

advertising

there's all sorts of things we can do we

but also

um it's not just that we're bombarded

with the advertising

externally we then police that among

ourselves right when i remember when i

was a kid and people were obsessed with

nike sneakers and i was a kind of fat

kid who sat in the corner of reading i

didn't give a [ __ ] about

um uh basketball and yet i wanted these

things right

why did i and it wasn't it partly it was

exposure to advertising

but actually it was more um

the way we police it among ourselves so

once you set and train those values

people then police among themselves so

that's about how do we undo that and

it's partly about saying people

how does this really make you feel right

very occasionally you will meet an

extremely materialistic person

who will tell you that donald trump

would be a good example right

who will tell you this makes me feel

good and yet you look at them

and you see that they are achingly

unhappy right

i've rarely seen a more unhappy person

than donald trump um

so you can see but one of the dangers of

these values

is one of the reasons that makes us they

make us feel so bad

is that those values can then pollute

your relationships

when you measure it scientifically

people have high levels of junk value

what called extrinsic values is the

scientific term

people have high levels of extrinsic

values junk values

have less successful relationships that

break up more often

because relationships where you value

the other person for

very superficial external things like

you know do other men feel jealous when

they see me with this person

um those aren't good relationships right

i've been in uh

so many of them you were nodding very i

thought yeah it's just

exactly yeah no it is and um you talked

about how

you know there's the fear one of the

reasons why people are less happy in

those relationships is the fear that

this person would leave if i lost my

money or my looks whatever

and then you alluded to the point that i

was thinking most about which is

um you formed your connection with them

based on something

basically extrinsic something

superficial so you have these like

surface level connections

and then your life with that person you

don't your psychological needs don't get

met because you don't have the you know

in my case like an intellectual

connection with them you can't talk

about

the things you want to talk about you

haven't formed that basis on a deeper

level

but then i just wanted to this is if

this was a confession box

here's what i would say in the same way

that as a young

28 year old guy who's been successful um

uh you know i guess that word in my ear

that just says buy a lamborghini like a

little kermit every three months

i also get in the same year from the

same little [ __ ] evil kermit

says to me there's that a hot girl

who's completely i don't know i don't

want to get cancelled because i've got

some stuff coming up in the media but

there's that hot girl who has made

herself

look um beautiful on the outside do you

usually see the distinction stephen

right

like there's nothing wrong with sexual

attraction in front of people

we don't want to counter pose a world of

junk values versus puritanism

do you know what i mean it's like sexual

attraction is one of the great joys of

life yeah

i was just trying to i don't want to i

don't want to say it in in the words

there is that person who offers nothing

more than

um just they look good they offer

nothing more and the same way it says

come on steve go for it

and every time i've gone for it it

doesn't take me very long to be

miserable in that situation

and then on the other hand i've got

these other this other person

in my life who is the antithesis of that

who is all substance

and um something in my life tries to

sway me back to the junk

people but i think there's a thing about

um i in several ways i think

what you said is really important

because

it's not like there's this category of

saintly benign human beings

who are immune to all these temptations

and you know we need to be more like

that

every human being is a conflict of

intrinsic and extrinsic values and

extrinsic values are

a certain measure of them is healthy

right desire for external success is

nothing to be ashamed of

uh finding people hot and wanting to

have sex with hot people is perfectly

is something we all have right at the

expense of

a meaningful relationship it's like a

balanced diet isn't it you want to have

um you want these

you want these things to exist in a

balance with

all your other motivations but what i

don't think

what definitely doesn't work is because

i tried this myself i remember

being quite cut off from my own um

status seeking behavior and sort of

not owning it and i think actually

when you just acknowledge oh yeah this

is part of me this is a part this will

always be a part of me

there are some pleasures to be found

there it's not it's not barren

right um but

you always want that to be one part of a

much bigger picture then you can have a

healthy conversation

with yourself and with other people

about these aspects of yourself that's

very different to

and especially if you live in a society

and culture that is all about

getting you to be that one thing and you

know presenting as images of success

i mean you and i both met lots of rich

people

and i've got to say they are the most

miserable bastards

or you're one of the very few cheerful

rich people i know right

if i think about says a handful who are

happy and they're almost

always uh i'm trying to think of

i can look well one person who inherited

it so i don't count that

um some artistic people like a few

people who

pursued their artistic dream like elton

john and became really rich he's happy

after a [ __ ] rocky journey as

everyone knows

and the machine that's [ __ ] us all up

do you believe that because it's

making us all care it's conditioning us

to care more about extrinsic values and

these

like you know all this nonsense do you

think it's in

it's it's hindering our chances of

forming meaningful

romantic connections i for just from

what i've grown up in this instagram era

where it looks like

everybody's getting prettier on the

outside and everyone's getting uglier in

the inside

because instagram and the machine have

told us that this is what society values

how big is your ex how white is your why

how perfect is your hair you know

so it feels like life is gone okay the

game everybody get in get in everybody

get in okay

you're gonna this is how you win you'll

get the most points in life if you have

the best hair the best uh eyes the best

boobs you know biggest six-pack

chest that is the game do you understand

everyone's going yeah okay okay and if

you see someone that has that as well

pam on the back and we go okay cool and

we've had ten years of this black mirror

experiment

so all of our values have gone you know

extrinsic and junk values

and i think we're struggling to form

meaningful

connections because that didn't the

machine told us

that didn't matter you know it's funny

after the book came out

a group of people i did not expect to so

i was

absolutely inundated on it was

particularly my ted talk about it came

out

inundated on instagram by massive

instagram

yeah um start what we call it influences

like really people with some of the

biggest instagram followings in the

world

messaging me saying you're so right i

feel like and i remember getting a

message i

always say who it was but from someone

who was a big instagram influencer

messaging me saying i'm so depressed

i don't want to get a bed in the morning

my life is terrible i

didn't hear this person also i clicked

on the instagram page and literally five

minutes before sending me that message

and five minutes after

yeah she had done a kind of glowing my

life is you know i can't know the words

but you know kind of my life is so great

um bragging and and i really

yes but the thing i would say

that is so important about this it's a

funny thing to say i know it might sound

odd

but the widespread nature of our

depression anxiety and addiction crises

in one sense although

terribly painful and horrible and

excruciating and i've been there

is a positive thing because

the system is not working for more and

more people

and it becomes harder to defend this

system and these values

when it makes everyone feel like [ __ ]

right

at some point you have to go you know

what this ain't [ __ ] working for us

so think about where we are i lived here

as i said for 10 years right just

not far from here so tower hamlets

you know i mean the tahoe says some of

the hot i think

if i remember rightly when i lived here

it was i think it was the constituency

in england that had the highest level of

poverty right

um so there's a lot of distress in tower

hamlets right i mean and by the way you

can be distressed and not be poor a lot

of this distress is happening in

middle class and wealthy areas but think

about where we are look for signs of

distress

connect with the people who are

distressed fight together with them for

something better

and of course that has to be something

people do i can't tell people what the

signs of distress around them are and

they'll be different

in you know um a coastal village in kent

to

you know glasgow where my mom's from to

the isle of skye

different there'll be certain shared

factors but

look for the signs of distress i mean

you're spoiled

for signs of distress they're all

[ __ ] around us right

i mean think about um the number of

people who drank themselves to death in

britain last year and how much that went

up as we said

and then meet them where they are

because god

change is really possible right and i

think about that in my own life

you know i'm gay right i didn't hear the

concept of gay marriage till i was 20

and my friend andrew sullivan wrote the

first book advocating it right literally

i did never crossed my mind i remember

the first person i was ever in love with

when i was 16.

i never had a sense of a future didn't

even occur to me that we could get

married it never even

entered my head right um you think about

the scale of that transformation

i remember just before kovid i was on

the tube

and there were these two girls who can't

have been more than 16

and they were making out and i was

staring at them and i think they thought

i was like an elderly person

and i had to go oh no no i'm gay i'm

just really this is really moved this

could never happen when i was your age

like i said i just thought i was like a

mental person but

the the how did that happen right

it happened because ordinary people

came out they appealed to other people

around them

lots of heterosexual people saw that it

was

pointless to be cruel to gay people and

they could be loving and accepting

instead

and that change happened unbel you

basically got

2 000 years of gay people being

horrifically persecuted

and then like 70 years of this from

from less than 70 years 60 years from

send them to prison to yay they can get

married right

so absolutely change on when we talk

about things like oh

you know we're trapped in this machine

that's making us depressed right

that can sound like such a big thing

right we had

2 000 years of homophobia right and i'm

not saying we've completely overcome it

obviously

but there's stunning progress right

the things we're talking about are much

more recent inventions than homophobia

right

like infinitely more recent and

homophobia

terrible though it was only ever

affected a small part of the population

the things we're talking about

[ __ ] make they don't make everyone

depressed but they make everyone less

happy than they could be

so these are you know these are

absolutely things that can be challenged

they can be challenged in individuals

lives

and we can deal with them at the

political level as well

it requires a transformation in

consciousness which is happening

and we can talk about addiction if you

want in places that solved

that made extraordinary changes in that

and massively reduce their addiction

deaths that i went to

but we need to understand this

differently and we need to listen to our

pain

we need to stop insulting our depression

anxiety and addictions

by saying they're a sign of weakness or

madness or

purely biological although there are

some biological contributions

and start listening to them listen to

the signal as a society

and as a culture because it is telling

us

where we need to go and what we need to

do i've been a hill fan for a long time

as you obviously know by now but in the

last six months i've got a real

opportunity to get to know the people to

get to know the ceo of huell which is

james to get to know the founder which

is julian

the teams that agonize over the

ingredients that go into these amazing

recipes

and i can honestly say with my hand on

my heart my appreciation

and admiration for huel and its people

has multiplied by a factor of 10

because and this is the singularities

not only are they nice people

but because i've seen first hand how

much they are non-negotiable

about the values of huel they will not

compromise they will not compromise

on the the goodness of the ingredients

that goes into the products the amount

of

proteins and minerals and these things

regardless if they can't get to where

they want to get to with the products

they will cancel the product i've tasted

products and they've said we've not

managed to make it this

we've not delivered on our promise of

veganism we've not added enough fiber

so we're canceling it and that sort of

non-negotiable set of values

has made me realize that they have my

back when i choose cure

let me talk about you okay

and your connections yeah and your

romantic connections your friendships

and all of those things

sometimes i find it fascinating that

obviously since you know people can

know a lot of stuff but applying it to

oneself is challenging

i've you know some of my my favorite

guests that i've sat here with i'm

thinking about jamal

kreishi who i sat here with who's like a

you know you one could call him like a

motivational

uh coach you know probably doesn't quite

characterize who he is but

my last question to him was um are you

good at taking your own advice he went

absolutely [ __ ] not he was like i'm

the least motivated motivational coach

in the world

so my question to you is how are you

doing with your connections in your life

in your

mental health and all of these questions

i think people are often most articulate

about the things they most struggle with

right so and it's interesting because

sometimes that's presented as hypocrite

give you an example

there's a left-wing political who but

there's a left-wing politician

i know who is incredibly articulate

about greed

and how terrible it is and is incredibly

greedy right

now you could look at that and go that's

hypocrisy

and of course at one level a kind of

boringly obvious level it is

but to me what's more interesting is

that is a person who's internally

struggling against his own flaw

right that is a person who has this

force within him

and is genuinely trying is so articulate

because he's wrestling with it all the

time

and so i think um in a sense taking your

own advice is sort of like

the fact that you needed to articulate

the advice suggests that internal

struggle do you know what you mean yeah

i think about um ian foster

one of my favorite writers who famously

said only connect

who was someone who really struggled

with connection um

partly because he was a gay man of a

much earlier generation

who uh well his connections

his loving romantic connections were a

crime right so he was really

there were other ways in which he

struggled with with connection as well

so in terms of myself

um i was always very lucky with

friendships

um all my life i've had amazing

friendships

for me um you know i said before there

were two causes of

two cause out of the nine causes of

depression anxiety that wrote about in

the book there were two that i struggled

with a lot

and this so one was drunk values the

other

it this was a hard journey for me in the

book

i learned about this through a story of

a scientist discovered it

who i met and she explained i think

people understand it better if they know

the story even though for like a minute

you're going to think

what the [ __ ] has this got to do with

what he just said but just bear with me

so in the mid 1980s there was a doctor

called vincent felitti

who um was approached

he was in san diego in california and he

was approached by kaiser permanente who

are one of the big not-for-profit

medical providers in california

and they came to him and were like we've

got a problem

and we need your help and the problem

was

um obesity

obesity was massive rising hugely

exploded since then but it was

rising and rising and they were like

look nothing we're doing is working we

give people diet advice we talk to them

about nutrition

we even give some of them personal

trainers nothing is working

so they just gave him a quite big budget

and said just do blue skies research

work with really obese people

just figure out what the hell we can do

so dr felitti starts working with

uh 250 severely obese people people who

weighed more than 400 pounds so people

who are really

you know in terrible danger he's working

on this thing

he's interviewing them he's thinking

what can i do and

one day he's talking to one of them and

he has an idea

which sounds like it actually is a quite

stupid idea

he said what would happen if really

obese people

literally stopped eating and we gave

them like

i know vitamin c shot so they didn't get

scurvy we gave them like

vitamin shots would they just burn

through the fat supplies in their body

and get down to a normal way

so with a [ __ ] ton of medical

supervision they try it

and incredibly at first it worked

there's a woman i call her susan that's

not a real name

um who went down from being more than

400 pounds to 138 pounds it's amazing

right

and people are like how can this be

what's going on uh and her family are

like you've saved her life

and then one day something happened they

didn't expect susan cracked

she went to kfc she wasn't kfc that's me

projecting whatever it was

uh some fast food place she starts

obsessively eating

and pretty soon she's back at her

dangerous weight not where she'd been

but a dangerous weight

and dr felitti called her in he's like

susan what happened

said i don't know i don't know

and he's kind of dumbfounded and he says

well tell me about the day that you

cracked what

did anything happen that day it turned

out something had happened that day that

never happened to susan

she was in a bar and a man came up to

her and hit on her not in a nasty

predatory way in a nice way

and she felt really freaked out and she

goes and she starts eating and

if he's like huh what's the significant

could this be significant and then he

said to her

saying he never asked his patients

before he said susan when did you start

to put on your weight

in her case it was when she was 11.

and he said to her well did anything

happen that year that didn't happen any

other year anything when you're eleven

she said she looked down she said yeah

that's when my grandfather started to

rape me

dr philippe interviewed everyone in the

program and he discovered that more than

60 percent of them have put on their

extreme weight in the aftermath of being

sexually abused or assaulted

and he's thinking what's what's that

about how what

and susan explained it to him really

well she said overweight is overlooked

and that's what i need to be this thing

that seems so destructive and of course

it's bad for you to be severely obese

was performing a positive function for

all these people it was protecting them

from sexual attention

right um and just things like ah this is

this is kind of interesting um so he

but this is a small group of people it's

250 people it's not much you can't

draw big scientific conclusions based on

this so

dr felitti goes to the cd center for

disease control who fund a lot of

medical research

and he got funding to do a massive study

everyone

who came to kaiser permanente in san

diego so more than 17 000 people

for a whole year no matter what for

headaches schizophrenia broken leg

anything

got given two questionnaires first part

says

did you have any of these bad

experiences when you were a kid things

like sexual abuse

severe neglect that kind of thing second

part said

um have you had any of these problems as

an adult it was initially only going to

say

obesity but and this is where it comes

to our story at the last minute they had

loads of other things like depression

addiction suicide attempts

and at first when they added up the

figures people they were like no there's

been a mistake added up again

because the figures were so extreme for

every category of childhood trauma that

you experienced

you were two to four times more likely

to be depressed obese and addicted

but when you got into the multiple

categories the figures just went crazy

if you had six categories of chance of

trauma

you were 3100 more likely to have

attempted suicide

and 4 600 percent more likely to have an

injecting

drug problem i mean these are just

insane figures you very rarely get that

in science right

and i remember dr felitti saying to me

like that that he he realized

it was like there had been a house fire

and we have been focusing on dealing

with the smoke

not on dealing with the fire right dr

robert ander who's one of the other

scientists who worked on it said to me

he realized when you see things like

obesity depression addiction

we need to stop asking what's wrong with

you and start asking

what happened to you but

it's kind of difficult to talk about

this but so dr felicia is a super nice

guy right if you met him you'd really

like him when i interviewed him he was

like

81 so ages ago lovely

good decent admirable man

and when i interviewed him in san diego

the first time i was sitting with him

and i was getting angrier and angrier

and i actually ended the interview early

because i was getting so angry

i remember walking to the beach in san

diego walking around thinking

what the [ __ ] is this about why am i so

angry with this lovely old man who's

done this amazing research that's helped

so many people

and i'm thinking so

when i was a child i'd experienced some

very extreme things from an adult in my

life

and i had i didn't want to think about

that i didn't want to

uh i didn't want to think about that in

relation to the depression i had

experienced

i didn't i didn't want to give this

individual power over me now

um but one of the reasons

i'm glad that i went back and carried on

talking to him is because of what dr

felicity

do you think is really relevant to what

you're asking so

obviously they'd asked all these people

who came for healthcare about their

childhood trauma

so suddenly they've got all this data so

they said to people's gps don't call

them back in

but next time they come in look at the

childhood trauma thing and if they've

experienced childhood trauma say to them

something like this

i see that when you were a child you

were sexually abused or whatever it was

i'm really sorry that happened that

should never have happened to you you

should have been protected that was a

failing

would you like to talk about it and 40

percent of people did not want to talk

about it but 60

of people did and they wanted to talk

about it on average for five minutes

and then it was randomly assigned some

of them were told we can go to

therapists to talk about it more

what they found was just five minutes of

an authority figure saying

i'm so sorry this should never have

happened to you that alone

led to a significant fall in depression

and anxiety and people who refer to a

therapist had an even bigger form

and what this shows it fits with a whole

load of other evidence from people like

professor steve coles at ucla professor

james pennebaker at florida state

university

is it's not the trauma that destroys you

it's the shame about the trauma and

giving people

ways to release that shame is an

antidepressant

so for me

learning that and it's one of the

reasons i made myself put it in the book

and talk about it

is so very often people who survive

abuse as children

internalize the voice of the abuser

right almost invariably the abuser says

you made me do this you're a bad person

you made me do this

right and so although of course there

was never any point in my adult life

where i

thought that was a rational you know

there was never a point where i would

have if you

you know if someone had told me they had

been abused and told me negative things

they'd been told

i would never have thought yeah the

abuser was right obviously

i didn't reckon with that

internalization in my own life and i

think it meant that

a lot of the time although i always had

great friendships

with romantic relationships um

they would i would often cauterize them

at a certain point

because i didn't feel at that time that

i deserved to be loved

i didn't feel that i deserved to be

treated well so it would mean that

sometimes i would get into relationships

people who didn't treat me well

or sometimes if they did treat me well i

would end it prematurely

at the point at which they were treating

me well because i've internalized so

many of these negative

uh and destructive and untrue ideas

and and the process of thinking that

through obviously i had a therapist as

well

the process of thinking that through and

releasing that shame made me

much more open to

know love you know uh because i didn't