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Sebastian Junger on stoicism, the Democrats' man problem, and what happens when we die
55 Plays24 days ago
Sebastian Junger is the author of The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, Freedom, and most recently In My Time of Dying: How I came face to face with the idea of an afterlife.
We discuss…
- Sebastian’s literary heroes
- Sebastian’s literary motivations
- The state of Sebastian’s “tribal health.”
- The wealthier the neighborhood, the weaker the community?
- How big spaces pull us apart—as discussed in Sebastian’s recent essay, “The Great Abandonment.”
- The virtues of stoicism
- American Psychological Association on traditional masculinity: “The main thrust of the subsequent research is that traditional masculinity—marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance and aggression—is, on the whole, harmful.”
- What’s a definition of what manhood is (existentially speaking)?
- Sebastian’s viral Substack post: Young Men and How the Democrats Lost Them
- Harvard Professor pushed out for using words like male and female.
- Fighting words and uplifting voices from Democrats: Talarico on Colbert & Jon Ossoff
- Marie Gluesenkamp Perez on Ezra Klein
- Voting, jury duty, and giving blood: symbolic gestures of national connection
- I propose some radical ideas to simulate tribal dynamics in a more populous, peacetime world.
- Sebastian’s NDE (Near Death Experience) which led him down a scientific journey to understand the un-understandable
- I turn on the hot lights and ask Sebastian: are NDE visions a product of biology or a consciousness that’s not entirely contained in the brain?
- How Sebastian explains death and the afterlife to his children.
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Guest
00:00:05
Speaker
This is the Out of the Wild podcast with Ken Ilgunis.
00:00:18
Speaker
Sebastian Younger is the author of The Perfect Storm, War, Tribe, Freedom, and most recently, In My Time of Dying, How I Came Face to Face with the Idea of an Afterlife.
00:00:31
Speaker
He's reported from conflict zones across the world, embedded with US troops in Afghanistan, and spent decades thinking deeply about courage, community, masculinity, and what gives life meaning.
00:00:46
Speaker
Sebastian, hello. Thank you for having me. Oh, my pleasure, Sebastian. um So yeah, like I told you earlier, I've done a deep dive on your stuff. um And everything I just think is just fantastically written. And I'm wondering, um to start off, where did you learn the the art of writing?
Writing Techniques and Prose Style
00:01:08
Speaker
And who are some of your literary heroes?
00:01:13
Speaker
You know, I never took an English class in college or a journalism class. I really am sort of self-taught. ah and i and i And I sort of learned by mimicry, right? I mean, I read just all the great writers of of the generation when I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. Joan Didion, Ernest Hemingway, um barely smart enough to read Faulkner, but I got through a couple of books. um ah Peter Matheson, and then a little later, Cormac McCarthy, and many others, right? And I just i just read i just read and and tried to figure out why I liked what I was reading or didn't like what I was reading. and and i and
00:01:57
Speaker
And I wrote a lot. And that I did that through my 20s while I did other kinds of work to make money. And um eventually it sort of clicked. Gotcha. And um you're a gifted storyteller. You know better than anyone how to structure a story. um But your prose is is also very clean and punchy and non-flashy. How would you describe your own prose?
00:02:25
Speaker
Well, i like i mean I feel like everything should be sort of um efficient and essential and have some like internal rhythm in it. and And I would say that's true of designing a building or or designing a sentence. You know, I mean, there's a sort of like structural harmony in things that's very, very ah apparent. If it's there, it's very, very apparent. And and it's certainly true with language and with with writing. and um
00:02:55
Speaker
But mostly I just, I i i try to not do write in a way that ah readers have ever seen before, right? Like, i I mean, I really search for words that haven't been used in the same way. So, you know, my classic example example is sort of rain drumming on the roof. Like, no one ever needs to write that again. The first 10 times someone wrote that, it was a pretty good use of language. And then after that, like, just just like, you can't describe rain that way. It's boring, you know? And And I work very, very hard to use the minimum, I mean, the minimum a number of words possible to convey, fully convey what I'm trying to depict or explain. And I work really, really hard at that.
00:03:40
Speaker
Gotcha. so So kind of minimalistic, but also you're kind of sweeping through scanning your own stuff to see, is there a cliche here? Is there a phrase that's just overused? And then it's just reworking that?
00:03:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And you can always take words out. And the more words you take out, the ah the more velocity the the pros have and the more people are like, oh, my God, I like I can't stop. Like I got I got in the raft and I'm going down the river and and and I'm like, um um I can't I'm just going all the way to the end. Like, ah you know, and and that's what approach would feel like a really powerful, a really powerful river.
Publishing Industry Challenges and Substack Move
00:04:20
Speaker
So you're bringing your pros to Substack now. You're slumming with with all of us now. um And I've heard you say in other places that um for your books, it's become harder to sell books. Advances are getting a little bit um not as not what they used to be.
00:04:39
Speaker
um And given those conditions, you know some authors, just maybe it's time to hang the gloves up. Maybe ah i'm just going to teach. Maybe I'm not going to do anything. But you're still you're still writing and and hustling with the rest of us. And I'm wondering, what's behind that? um Why are you writing? Is it for financial reasons or is it for creativity, intellectual stimulation?
00:05:05
Speaker
I mean, i love I love writing. I love the act of writing. And um like i I was an athlete in college and afterwards, I love using my body in an athletic way. Like I just, it just, it gives me real pleasure.
00:05:18
Speaker
And I need to earn a living. I mean, I'm, you know, I'm not done yet. Like I got, I mean, I have ah a nine-year-old and a six-year-old, two little girls. And, um you know, I can't just like decide to coast at this point. It's not going to work financially and it and it won't work. It wouldn't work psychologically for me either.
00:05:36
Speaker
So you need to write. That that gives you you meaning and and purpose and structure and all that. Yeah, I mean, it's what I do. And i'm i'm as I said to my to my wife, Barbara, was like, you know, if I start a Substack, then basically everything, like when I...
00:05:53
Speaker
I said, when I follow you around the apartment with a cup of coffee talking to the back of your head, like that's what's going to walk on my Substack. Like the things I'm thinking about, the things I'm upset about, that that by the ranting about Donald Trump. or but ill just spare I can spare her that and put it on Substack. so Does she want to be spared that? Is she like, oh, you need to put this somewhere else?
00:06:16
Speaker
Well, yeah, I mean, she you know, whatever, we have a great relationship and it's, you know, involves a lot of discussing things. But, um ah you know, it's definitely a good use of ah my energy to put this out for the public. Right. And I guess I have a, you know, over the years I've developed, I've come to find like a ah a a people sort of trust me to be like reasonable and nonpartisan about things that sometimes are very very charged right and so um so you know i'm a democrat i'm a liberal and um and i'm happy to say that to anybody but a lot of conservatives really trust my my work and um
00:06:57
Speaker
Because I spent a lot of time with the U.S. military. So I mean, I would say unique, but I'm in a rare position of being able to speak frankly to both to both sides. And ah and I feel like anyone who can do that should ah because this the country, needs every country needs.
00:07:14
Speaker
people who straddle that that that divide that partisan divide and are willing to be nonpartisan in their analysis.
Critique of News Media and Partisan Biases
00:07:21
Speaker
You know, one of the things I really hate about the news media right now is that even on the left, but certainly on the right, you're they're, you know, sort of...
00:07:30
Speaker
news outlets that just won't report any bad news for their side of the aisle. Like they just like won't do it. Anything that makes their, their candidate look bad, they'll just pretend it didn't happen. And I re or spin it in some way. mean, it just like disgusts me. And, um, uh, even the New York times, which is an amazing publication, but they'll, even they'll even do that a little bit. And I really, i really dislike it.
00:07:52
Speaker
<unk> We'll touch on, I think, some traditional media stuff um a little bit later. I just wanted to touch on Tribe very briefly, just because it's so fresh in my mind. I just finished it um a couple of nights ago.
00:08:05
Speaker
And I'm wondering what the state of your tribal health, your tribal well-being is right now. Are you close to friends, neighbors? Do you have a ah solid community out there?
00:08:17
Speaker
Well, you know, friends are different from community. they You know, those are like dia friends are sort of dyads, like one-on-one relationships that um are super important. But community and friends generally are people that you like, right? Like you've sort of chosen them. i'm Like, oh, I like that guy or I like that woman.
00:08:35
Speaker
Community is different. It might involve lots of people you don't even like that much, but you're part of like family. You're sort of part of this community. part of this thing. And so we are fortunate to live in a, you know, mixed income, mixed race neighborhood in the Lower East Side of New York. And it's very, very much a community.
00:08:55
Speaker
And one with, you know, quite a lot of Spanish speaking people in it. And we live in a um a tenement building, you know, walk up with, you know, people... related on all floors, cousins, uncles, you know sons, nephew, you know whatever. And again, it's largely Spanish speaking. And we're part of that fabric, social fabric. And it just like, i mean, we can't we can't leave the apartment without running into someone we know in some way that, and it just you know it's like a village and it's really, really wonderful.
00:09:27
Speaker
Okay. I wasn't um expecting to hear that about your your New York City life, but that's really good to hear. I mean, it sounds like you're probably in the minority minority for American life for having um you know really good tribal health like that.
00:09:41
Speaker
um You know, what i would what I would say is that the the those community community community connections dwindle with affluence and the sort of the wealth sort the wealthier...
00:09:52
Speaker
the neighborhood, the less, I mean, I grew up in an affluent white community outside of Boston in the sixties and seventies. Like wait we, we didn't know our neighbors. We didn't need to know our neighbors, right? Because we never need to need to ask them for help with anything and vice versa.
00:10:05
Speaker
And there's a real loss there. Right. And, and so, um, you know, ah the, the, the, along with enormous stresses and disadvantages that come with, um, sort of lower incomes, um one thing you do often, not always, but often get is is actually quite a lot of community connection in part, partly because people are just sort of like crammed in closer together, like literally physically.
00:10:28
Speaker
ah We live in 550 foot apartment. four of us And very different from the sort of suburban home I grew up in. Like me and my sister, we each had our own room and we could just be by ourselves if we wanted to.
00:10:42
Speaker
And one of the results is the family just was not that close. I mean, and it was a shame, right? I mean, if there was a real loss there. In in the you know the way we live now, with my wife and I with our two kids, you know it's like we're its something you know it's like we're camping and we're on a boat or something. like We are with each other very, very much. And that's the human norm, right? I mean, that's how humans have lived for 200,000 years, right? And so this sort of every kid with their own room is a is a new um it's a it's a new ah practice for humans. and And I actually think it's probably not that great for them.
00:11:15
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's something, a very simple thing that's overlooked, which is just like the size of your space or how close you are to your your neighbors. I grew up in a suburban house, probably very similar to yours, where we had our own room, our own TV, our own video game situation. and yeah We didn't even eat dinner together. we just kind of Mom made something. we grabbed our dinner and went to some room. so um But nowadays, I live in this tiny Scottish community, and I live in a semi-detached house, which is basically what we call it a duplex. So it's not just that we have a small house. We do.
00:11:49
Speaker
But we're also like right connected to... but literally connected to someone else and the other side of the house and all these houses are tight and close together there's so there's just like a lot more people on your street and some pretty good public areas so i think like infrastructure has like a huge role in kind of tribal well-being the the this the substack i just posted today uh ah it it I write about that, actually.
00:12:21
Speaker
ah hundred years ago, only 2% of Americans lived by themselves. And now it's something like 30%. And and hundred years, 200 years ago, ah lot of adults lived in the same space, the same room, sometimes even shared a bed with non-family members.
00:12:43
Speaker
And, you know, the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville, it starts with um the protagonist talking about how he like had to share a bed with a quick quick.
00:12:55
Speaker
Having little cuddle. yeah this Yeah, the South Seas harpooner. He didn't know him. And they were like tugging at the
Impact of Book Length and Writing Conciseness
00:13:01
Speaker
covers, like with from you know driving like fighting over the covers with each other. They didn't know each other. That was common. That was the norm, right? And and um and with our affluence, we've lost all those societal connections. And it's a real shame. And it's and it's hard on our mental health. And again, this is new in the human experience. like we Humans have never, ever lived like this. And and we're probably not supposed to.
00:13:25
Speaker
So um I was a huge fan of Tribe, and what's surprising to me is that a couple of your books just didn't land on my radar until recently, and one of them was was War, um which is a big book about your time ah as a documentarian, photojournalist, whatever you're calling yourself, in Afghanistan.
00:13:49
Speaker
um And I'm wondering, like I was amazed by that book. I was like, is this his magnum opus? Because it's you know it's so good. It's so big. It's got everything in it. It's got war, character portraits, little sub-themes like religion, history history history, sexuality, evolutionary psychology, neurochemicals.
00:14:12
Speaker
Am I right to think of it as your like magnum opus? How do you place it in your kind of bookography? Oh, God. I mean, I don't even think about it i don't even think about it like that like that. I mean, my first book, The Perfect Storm, was undoubtedly the biggest book I'll ever write. I mean, it just sold extremely well right out of the gate. And, you know, I was i realized afterwards I'm probably never going to equal that or even come close to equaling that. So it depends what you mean. Like, you know, war war was the...
00:14:45
Speaker
I had a very, very personal and intense experience in reporting that book, right? Perfect Storm, not as much. It was really act of reporting war. i was emed you know I was embedded with the platoon in combat and off and on for a year. And though I didn't write about myself particularly, you know, a little bit, um the the process of ah the process of doing that book involved me very heavily and it affected me enormously.
00:15:11
Speaker
And so it's certainly my my most personal book. And although I don't focus on me, but just for myself, like it's the one that like sort of like I got all over me basically as a person. And um so, ah but I couldn't really, you know, then Tribe was after that and and it's a short short little book of 130 pages or something. and it But it was ah it had a concept, right? it has had a way of thinking about things. And I'd never written a sort of concept book before. And my idea with that is like,
00:15:42
Speaker
right If you're going to write a concept book, you want it as absolutely as short as possible in order to explain the concept and then get out of there. right And then the person can take the concept and apply it as they however they might in their life. But don't go on and on. you know When you're trying to provide an account of something and something complicated like the perfect storm or this deployment that I was on or my book of death in Belmont, you don't want to be too short because you you're, you're actually trying to provide a a definitive account of something. It takes some time. It takes some pages, right? So, um, uh, and freedom.
00:16:18
Speaker
And then my last book in my time of dying were, you really books that were about ideas. And I really tried to keep, keep them short again with the a mind With the mind towards the comfort of the reader. the like the the You don't want to take the reader's time if you don't need to.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah, and there's there's like a weird, I don't know if it's weird, but there's an attraction to a small book too. It's just like, oh, this is accessible. You know, this isn't going to dominate me for a long time.
00:16:48
Speaker
um So there's like an attraction to shortness. Like it's almost like I'm more willing to spend that 20 bucks words than that bucks for words.
00:17:01
Speaker
Well, i you know, listen, time, i mean, time is a commodity. Time is a resource like money is. And, and you know you know, in some ways, the, you know, whatever 50 hours that it takes to read a long book costs you more than the 20 bucks it costs to buy it. You know, like, I mean, there's some reasons. There's some real reasons you're thinking about it like that.
00:17:23
Speaker
Yeah, and and our attentions are just drawn in so many more ways than they were 20 years ago. So so yeah. um In so much of your books, both war and tribe, it's about the brotherhood that's formed in war.
00:17:40
Speaker
And how soldiers come home to an American society that feels disconnected, materialistic, where it's harder to find purpose.
Personal Challenges Post-War Reporting
00:17:50
Speaker
And I'm wondering what that was like for you, kind of coming and going from this war. um what did Did domestic life feel dull? um Did your connections back home feel less intense, less strong, less meaningful? I guess I'm asking, did you struggle to live a more ordinary life after coming from this war? Yeah.
00:18:17
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was easier for me because I was older, right? these These are young men who are in the middle of becoming who they're going to be. And that's not true for me, right? So I was coming back to a life of meaning because I was in the middle of my life. I had i was married. I had work. I knew knew who I was. that It was not true for those guys, right? so But um what I would say is it didn't it didn't make me – I didn't have trouble connecting to my life back home.
00:18:47
Speaker
But i missed I missed it enormously. I didn't even know I missed it. I just got very depressed. And i would get very anxious and depressed between the trips. And then after it was all over, I really had a kind of...
00:19:02
Speaker
I don't know, a little bit of a crisis. Like, and i didn't even know it was about the Korengal, right? I didn't even know it was about that experience. The Korengal Valley is where we were. Um, I just felt out, out of sorts. Like I felt like I didn't somehow didn't belong in my life or something, but I didn't, um, I didn't understand why. And then Tim got killed and I really had kind of collapsed.
00:19:23
Speaker
It's like, I didn't collapse, but psychologically that was extremely consequential for me. And, um, and i And I was in a huge amount of pain. and And, you know, I think a lot of the trauma of combat, I mean, I've been covering war for 20 years, and and there was lots of bad things that had happened, not so much out at Restrepo, but over the course of my 20 years, and I just sort of buried. And it just sort of all came out.
00:19:48
Speaker
and um And, you know, it it contributed to breaking up that marriage. And... ah um First wife and I are still quite good friends, and it was you know it was ah it was all right. you know but But the consequences psychologically for me were enormous.
00:20:04
Speaker
And i you know I later realized, wow, that was that was what we're talking about with um posttrauma you know post-trauma processes. you know they're They're extremely disruptive.
00:20:16
Speaker
But I also... But they're also that you grow through them, right? It's not all negative. You also grow enormously from trauma and from experiences like that. And i you know I feel like in some ways it served in some ways to sort of complete me as a person as well. Like it was it was both. What was your um process of processing this stuff? What was your process of of dealing with it? Was it the writing of these these books? Did that help? Or were you going to therapy or or what?
00:20:47
Speaker
No, writing is not a cathartic thing for me. it's ah and it's a It's a game of chess. I'm playing chess with words. with I'm saying playing chess against the English language and hoping I'll win. You know, so it's a' it's not a... I mean, there were moments where it felt very emotional, but it it wasn't like an emotional process like therapy would have been, right? It's not... ah um And no, I didn't...
00:21:11
Speaker
I didn't go to therapy. I just, I didn't deal with it. I mean, I didn't process it actually. I experienced it, but I didn't process it at all, I don't think. But, i but ah you know, and and as a result, there were a lot of consequences, I think.
00:21:25
Speaker
Hmm. and And you said it it had some effect on your your your marriage. Was that the coming and and going, or was it just everything that happened afterwards? ah just people you know I looked at people I was very close to, and they looked like aliens. like i just they just i was like I mean, not aliens, but I just remember thinking, like wow, um they're right next to me, and I know I love this person.
00:21:49
Speaker
But I felt like I was sort of encased in three inches of bulletproof plexiglass. I just couldn't reach them. Like, I couldn't hear them. I couldn't touch them. I couldn't reach them. And that's how I felt all the time. And, i you know, I just thought all these trauma consequences that I've had, and they've appeared off and on, you know, for quite a while.
00:22:09
Speaker
It never occurred to me there was combat or was trauma, right? I just thought that there was something... something was going wrong with me, right? It just, you know, my first real, really traumatic experiences were in West Africa in the late 90s and then in Afghanistan and in 2000. So a year before 9-11, I was in northern Afghanistan with Ahmad Shah Massoud.
00:22:29
Speaker
And, you know, there was some very, very intense stuff going on and very, some really brutal stuff. And I got home and I, you know i I couldn't take the subway. i couldn't be in a confined confined space with a lot of people. like i I kept panicking in these situations. and I had no idea it had to do with Afghanistan. I mean, none. It never crossed my mind. I just thought I was going crazy.
00:22:50
Speaker
At age 38, I was like, wow, what a pity you're going crazy. like and It never crossed my mind. did i you know Eventually, you went away. right you know with these Things don't last forever often, and and this this didn't either. but um Yeah, and eventually I finally talked to a therapist after I almost died a few years ago from blood
Therapy and Trauma Recovery
00:23:10
Speaker
loss. from a And I write about this in my last my most recent book, In My Time of Dying. I had an undiagnosed aneurysm in my pancreatic artery in my abdomen, and a ruptured out of the blue after you know probably 30 years of this thing growing slowly, and a ruptured, and and you know I almost almost died. And that was extremely traumatic.
00:23:32
Speaker
and extremely traumatic. and and i And I did, and I was got really depressed, like profoundly depressed afterwards. and I survived, but there was something about, I really was just, and my my wife actually said, you really have to go talk to someone, this is frightening. like And I did. And and that was that was really the only time I i went to a therapist to talk about trauma. And of course, what came out was 20 years of it, right? you know Like there was a whole whole line of things waiting the You know, things waiting in line to be to dealt with, you know, that waiting patiently for for me to wake up, you know.
00:24:09
Speaker
It's interesting how you, to me, kind of straddle a few worlds between kind of like traditional masculinity, kind of suck it up, stoicism, I've got this stomach pain, I'm not gonna go to a doctor or anything like that, but yet you have some um progressive values and and stuff like that.
00:24:31
Speaker
And i was i was i was ah as I was reading your you're After Death, your your death book, I was just like, why doesn't he just go to the doctors? I mean, he's just being a cliche of a guy who's just like not going to the doctor because he's. Yeah.
00:24:46
Speaker
Well, this is what you know I say in the book. This is why married men live longer. Right. Their wives send them to the doctor. You know, there's a great virtue in stoicism. Right. I mean, I mean, you know, it's it's it can kill you.
00:24:58
Speaker
But if it doesn't do that, it allows you. to um focus much more on things that you're doing, things that need to be done. I mean, you know, if you were if you were reactive to your state of mind and to how your body felt, it would be very hard to be, say, a fireman or a soldier or a farmer or whatever, anything that's scary or uncomfortable, too hot, too cold, too whatever.
00:25:28
Speaker
Stoicism allows human beings to do hard things, right? and And men and women have very different... traditionally very different forms of stoicism and and the the stoicism of women in childbirth is like beyond words. like yeah I have no words to describe it. It's absolutely extraordinary. Right.
00:25:49
Speaker
And there's an equivalent for men. And, and so, uh, yeah, I ignore, you know, I'm like, if, if the pain is bearable, it's probably not going to kill me. And, and I don't really want to spend a day in the hospital. It'll go away. And it did, it would go away. You know, this pain would come and go. And i was like, until I'm doubled over and I can't walk,
00:26:09
Speaker
I'm just going to attend to other things. And and that that's a ridiculous standard for what can kill you. And I came you know i came to find out that very, very ah moderate levels of pain can be from things that will kill you, right? It doesn't have to be. onbe i mean Kidney stones are on unbearably painful and and and and not really life-threatening unless you just don't deal with them at all.
00:26:31
Speaker
um But the pain that I had in my abdomen that came and went was before the rupture. was eminently dealable, oh but it was a mortal threat. And, you know, basically if you're in midlife and you have a new pain in your abdomen, that even if you can, even if you can bear it, or even if it you can ignore it, you have to get it checked out. That's something that just changed in your body.
00:26:57
Speaker
And those changes can kill you. Like, and there are things that can be easily fixed, easily diagnosed and easily fixed until it's too late. For me, it was almost too late. It's a good lesson for me because I'm the same way. My wife is like, why don't you go get your blood levels checked if I'm like fatigued or something? like oh it's just It's something else. It's nothing. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole stoicism thing, that yeah I have a few things to say about that because I feel like our broader culture, maybe namely like progressive or leftist culture, yeah completely devalues stoicism and i think of stoicism like let's recognize it for what it is it's a gift to other people it's you know i have ah emotional or psychological problems i'm not gonna unload that on my wife and um you know make her deal with that i'm just gonna suck it up if i'm hurt in the sports game i'm not going to change the momentum or mood of the team by complaining about something
00:28:02
Speaker
um So yeah, let let me read it let me read you, and I'm gonna let you respond, but let me read you a couple quotes, um because there's an interesting juxtaposition here. One is from your book.
00:28:12
Speaker
ah war. And here's your quote right here. There are different kinds of strength and containing fear may be the most profound, the one without which armies couldn't function and wars couldn't be fought.
00:28:26
Speaker
So that's quote number one. Quote number two is from the American Psychological Association, and you may have come across this at some point.
Stoicism's Role in Masculinity and Society
00:28:35
Speaker
Traditional masculinity marked by stoicism, competitiveness, dominance, and aggression is on the whole harmful.
00:28:45
Speaker
and so So on the one hand, stoicism, emotional containment, they're essential for defending societies that's and protecting liberal values. That's what you're saying in war. But on the other hand, we're told that some of those traits are psychologically damaging. So I'm wondering...
00:29:05
Speaker
um what you think of that and if you do in fact think those traits are harmful in kind of a peacetime society there is no peacetime society right i mean buildings burned down 343 firemen died in the twin towers right i mean they died because they ignored their fear they stayed with their brothers they followed orders to try to save the lives of people they didn't even know and they all died Right. And I'm sorry. and and there's know minor versions of that happen all the time.
00:29:36
Speaker
Right. You know, ah yeah you call your car breaks down and you call the call the cops, you know, yeah and and a trooper pulls up and gets out of his car and talks to you. and And everybody gets hit by a tractor trailer. And that guy's dead, you know, or that woman's dead. You know, I mean, it's just like, give me a break. Like, I mean, yeah who are these liberal fops who think that, like, we figured life out so completely that there is no more hardship. There's no more danger. No one ever needs to make any kind of effort anymore. Right.
00:30:04
Speaker
Of course, those things are happening. They're just happening in segments of society that the left, and I am a left-wing person, but that the left isn't that interested in and has almost no connection to.
00:30:15
Speaker
Right. And just, oh, well, just go drill for the oil and cut down the trees and do all the stuff that needs to be done so we can live our lives. But meanwhile, over here, we're going to say that all the personality traits that make it possible to do work that's that hard and that dangerous, that unpleasant, all those psychological traits, we're go going to just pathologize them because they're not in our little liberal bubble. But we do expect...
00:30:37
Speaker
to have the gas to put in a car and the food to put it on the table and the you roofs over our heads and et cetera, et cetera. Like it's completely preposterous and hypocritical and shame on those people that wrote that textbook and and made that sort of like almost moral judgment about very, very ancient personality traits. And, you know, you could he could do the same thing with female personality traits. And by personality traits, I mean, on an average, on a on a bell curve, and you could pathologize those as well. But why would you do that?
00:31:07
Speaker
Right. Like, I mean, come on. it's It's it's the left. The left. It used to be that the right wing disavowed our sort of biological and animal nature. And and that the fact that we are a product of an evolution and natural selection. Right. It was the right wing that used to disavow that because I think for religious reasons, they prefer to think they were we were made in God's image. Right. The left wing now does that because they feel like you.
00:31:34
Speaker
acknowledging biology and genetics and evolution is a form of determinism. And then it somehow confines our like our our personal agency and autonomy. It's complete nonsense. It's self-indulgent nonsense.
00:31:48
Speaker
<unk> you're You're fired up. I'm fired up too. And I'm wondering, um did did did this, and you know, we're talking about kind of high altitude stuff looking at like a political movement, but I can also tell it's it's personal. Did you feel that some of the the values that maybe be you embody were being devalued um by this segment of the of the culture?
00:32:12
Speaker
Well, okay. So look, I mean, what's the definition of a man, right? I mean, it's a heart like love and all that stuff. It's hard to define these essential human qualities. What's the definition a man? A pretty good one is, you know, someone who puts themselves last, their concerns last, right? And if you don't do that, if you put your concerns ahead of those of other people and particularly of children, you're not a man. I'm sorry, you're a child, right? And ah so...
00:32:39
Speaker
what you know What I would say is that the um that idea, that that that that there is a definition of manhood that implies self-sacrifice and ignoring one's concerns in order to serve people that are that that that that are more vulnerable, right?
00:32:57
Speaker
um that value is essential to society. It's ancient, just as the female equivalents are. And that when the left disavows it, and in fact, when the left condemns it, they start losing elections.
00:33:14
Speaker
And they start losing elections, they should win. They start losing elections they need to win, because without them winning those elections, our democracy goes away. Right. Everyone on my side of the aisle thinks Donald Trump is like doing this to America, whatever.
00:33:30
Speaker
It's our fault. The left let this happen. And um it's unforgivable. And I think they've um been sort of politically beaten enough to to reform themselves. Maybe not, but it it's a crucial and terrifying moment in our country's history.
00:33:48
Speaker
And part of what we lost was a... um
00:33:55
Speaker
and The ability to express our any kind of patriotic feeling, any kind of love of nation, and any kind of admiration for ah for men in our society. like and And it almost is as as if you do if you do that, you're being like ah in bad taste or something. And well, okay, go for it. But then you're going to lose every election, every two years, every four years, you're going to lose every election, and you should.
00:34:22
Speaker
right so But I think it might be changing. Yeah. um I don't know if it's changing. I sense that these things were kind of worse in, I know, 2018, 2020. Like, are we turning a corner now? I have no idea. Sometimes it's difficult for me to feel like if I have my finger truly on the pulse of the culture. So what we're really talking about is your Substack post. Can you remind me what the title of that was?
00:34:50
Speaker
Oh, um... ah the The one today is called The Great Abandonment. Oh, I'm talking about the how Democrats lost... yeah Yeah, so young men and how Democrats lost them.
00:35:04
Speaker
Gotcha. Okay. um So... After Trump won in 2020 and Kamala Harris lost, a column came out in the New York Times. 2024. 2024. Sorry. it's it's it's ah It's a weird title. So yeah, 2024. 2024.
00:35:25
Speaker
um And this columnist for the New York Times wrote this column, and and she quotes, um Mr. Trump offered a regressive idea of masculinity in which power over women is a birthright. That was essentially what the column was. And I couldn't disagree more. And I remember I pitched the New York Times. I don't have... I'm not a big writer like you, but I've been in there a few times. I thought, oh, maybe I have a chance. And I wanted to say, actually, no I don't think that's why Trump was trump won. i don't think most men think women as their birthright. I think men were kind of irritated to the right or annoyed to the right. And that's what I wanted to write. And they didn't want that. It didn't sound like whatever paper you were pitching your story to, they didn't want that. It sounds awfully like the New York times, but I won't push you on that. We'll keep that quiet. rapidly but i will say um So I guess my my question for you is,
00:36:25
Speaker
What does it say about that paper that you pitched this idea to, and maybe the larger media? What does it say when they turned down your story about innate differences in men and women?
00:36:40
Speaker
Well, they just considered it unpleasant, right? that I mean, they wrote me, they asked me to write ah a piece about what it means to be a man in modern society. And I wrote a piece that was rooted in biology and anthropology and and really universal human norms of sort of gender of gender roles. And, you know, there's gender roles in chimpanzee society as well. So it's not like this is just cooked up by by the patriarchy. This is you know this has you know old, old antecedents, right? and And they wrote back... um saying the science seems solid, but the conclusions run against the political currents at this publication.
00:37:16
Speaker
We will not publish it. This is something they commissioned. yeah and and So the science is solid. this The science is is there, but the it does it runs against the political currents. I can't wrap my my head around that.
00:37:29
Speaker
I think they didn't want to take heat for publishing something that ran counter to a sort of like extremist liberal ethos that believes in a kind of fantasy about what our species, right? like it's in And there's an a right-wing equivalent fantasy about our species as well. But yeah you know the left one the the the the the liberal one concerns me because I'm a liberal. And I feel like if rationality has any hope at all in our society,
00:37:56
Speaker
it's going to It's going to come from the left and the the left that's just decided not to be rational anymore and joined the right wing in that, then we're all completely screwed. Right. So I but um i couldn't believe that they said that. and they were they They were basically saying, we would we want us we will stand with our sort of left leftw wing readers in the face of reality, in the face of facts, rather than inform them in ways that might disturb their ideology. Right. right, that might ruffle their feathers. And to me, that that's just not that's not journalism. like That's not adulthood. like What are you talking about?
00:38:29
Speaker
why So why can't we we talk about kind of essential differences between men and women? Why why exactly do you think progressive culture is resistant to that?
00:38:42
Speaker
Because they're ideological, just like the right wing. I mean, they... they So they feel, i don't know. I mean, that's a complex question. I don't know quite what it is. But the the left has become a very, very elitist organization, ah very, very el elitist mindset. And I think it's driven, its ideology is driven very, very much by sort of campus, you sort of you know, liberal campus thought.
00:39:09
Speaker
And in those sort of bubbles, and that there's a right was a right-wing version of this, the most extreme voices get the most attention, the most traction. And there's there's a tendency in those sort of echo chambers to become more and more and more extreme. And and that's just human behavior. and And shamefully, the left wing, in running many of these universities, has made a conscious decision not to...
00:39:35
Speaker
um not to keep their perspective broad and their demographic broad. They've made a conscious decision to allow that process to continue until you have a situation where a biology teacher, a woman, biology teacher, professor at Harvard, who dared use the phrase pregnant woman,
00:39:56
Speaker
was fired because saying pregnant woman ah rather than pregnant person was supposedly an act of violence against trans people. Right. It's completely ridiculous. Right. They let that happen.
00:40:11
Speaker
They didn't have to. That didn't have to have to happen. They let that happen. and And that again, that's how you lose elections. Right. and And Democrats in presidential elections um haven't won majority men since 1976, which was 50 years ago with with Jimmy Carter. Republicans have won the majority male vote. And it's gotten kind of up and down.
00:40:36
Speaker
um but what we're seeing now is is troubling with the younger generation, Gen Z, who identifying less as liberal and um more more open to manosphere types and Trump. And I'm wondering if you've kind of thought about this from kind of like a um a macro level, just kind of looking at politics over the last 50 years. do you have any sense of kind of how we went from 1976 to today where Democrats is kind of more of the woman party and Republicans have become more of the male party?
00:41:12
Speaker
well Well, think of, you know, I mean, look, there's some genetics and biology behind that, right? Testosterone levels, high testosterone levels between the sexes and within men correlate with conservative thought, right? there's I mean, something like 50% of the variance in our political belief is genetically determined, right? It's it's a heritable trait, right? ah Men with broad faces, like literally wide faces,
00:41:38
Speaker
ah are have higher levels of testosterone and as a result are more likely to be conservative and more likely to be aggressive, right? I mean, you can there's a lot of biology involved here, but even even so, the margins are tiny.
00:41:52
Speaker
So in 2016, 47% of men voted for Hillary. forty seven percent of men voted for hillary Right.
00:42:04
Speaker
And 40 percent of American women. i mean, that's that is 47 percent of the voters, not of all men in America, 40 percent of the voters in that election voted for Hillary.
00:42:16
Speaker
Right. So the whole idea with the patriarchy didn't want Hillary to be president. no Well, 40 percent of the patriarchy actually did vote for Hillary. Right. And 40 percent of women voted for Donald Trump.
00:42:27
Speaker
You cannot break this down along gender lines. Something else is going on. And in 2024.
00:42:33
Speaker
Every demographic that the left wing thinks it espouses and represents and protects and uplifts, every single one, black population, African-American population, Latinos, women, every single one migrated towards Trump and gave him a victory. And so, you know, the the the left is just... um completely diluting itself that it's ah somehow representing these people and these these you know vulnerable populations in in in an in an honest and effective way. They're actually um betraying them. They're actually failing them in really important ways. Now, I think that's turning around, right? i mean you know Immigration issue has completely changed the dynamic with with Latinos in this country and the Republican Party.
00:43:23
Speaker
um ah you know Trump is just a rolling disaster on every single front he has chosen chosen to open. And, you know i i mean, the Republicans clearly know they're going to take a bath.
00:43:36
Speaker
in eight months in the midterms. And, you know, I mean, I think, I mean, this is how a democracy writes itself, but um ah yeah the Democrats, it it will it will write itself. And um I trust we're gonna, the left will take, the Democrats will take the midterms in probably 28, but not because they particularly did anything right. It's just that they're again, you know, they're running against a party and a candidate that are a complete disaster.
00:44:00
Speaker
And, um you know, public trust in them is just collapsing by the week. Yeah, so Republicans are just suffering from a lot of self-inflicted wounds. um But I'm also kind of uplifted by just some of the voices I see emerging. There's this guy from Texas, Tallarico, who was on Stephen Colbert, and i've been kind of going through some of his stuff and it's just like, wow, he's kind of really articulate and fiery and he'll take the fight.
Political Voices in the Democratic Party
00:44:28
Speaker
Same thing with, I think, um John Ossoff from Georgia, Gavin Newsom. You know, these are people like,
00:44:36
Speaker
they've got fighting words and a lot of moral strength and um i'm just kind of encouraged to see some of the the strength and voices yeah popping up recently yeah i mean jason crow in colorado was i believe 173rd airborne the group that i was with and um he was democrat in a you know in a red red district and doing great a woman named glusenkamp in um Washington state, I believe, watch or maybe Oregon, I'm sorry.
00:45:00
Speaker
One of the two, Washington or Oregon in a really rural red area. um And she's a Democrat and she's a straight, you know i don't agree with everything she says, but she's a just, she runs an auto repair shop with her husband. I mean, you know, that's what Democrats should be, right? I mean, the you know, the the woman who's running an auto repair shop and is a Democrat and knows how to talk to like,
00:45:22
Speaker
you know, union members and the cops and and farmers, like where did that Democratic Party go? It used to be there, you know, in the 40s and the 50s and the 60s. It used to be there and it went away and it migrated to the sort of college campuses around the country and the like and the the coastal cities. and And again, shame on them. Like you abandoned your constituency and you abandoned this nation and and you let a... a a a morally crippled human being in Donald Trump take over this country and and threaten its very democracy. You let that happen.
00:45:56
Speaker
You, the Democrats. It's appalling. Yeah. The glues in camp. I was introduced to her on a Ezra Klein podcast and was just so impressed. I was like, oh, I would totally vote for you for the president. Yeah.
00:46:11
Speaker
In a lot of your books, you kind of lament how modern society fails at giving us opportunities for sacrifice, brotherhood, codependence, meaning, and I'm sure you get asked this all the time, but how can modern society create conditions in periods of peace time? And you did say, you know, it's not always peace time. to give To give us some of these things, how can we kind of manufacture a little bit of that brotherhood that you felt so intensely in the Korengal?
00:46:48
Speaker
I mean, you know, We're a very adaptive species. And when you are serving your individual needs and interests, that's adaptive. And then when there's a crisis and your community needs you, it's adaptive to be selfless, to put yourself last, as I defined a manhood.
00:47:06
Speaker
Women, of course, have their own their own extraordinary version of that as well. and um ah And it's adaptive to to forget yourself and put your energy and maybe even sacrifice your life for your community. It all makes sort of like Darwinian sense to go toggle back and forth between those two things. We live in a very, very safe,
00:47:29
Speaker
technological, industrialized mass society where the, the group around the immediate group around us does not need us. Right. In any sort of immediate sense. And so it allows us to, in an unhealthy way, focus on ourselves almost continually.
00:47:45
Speaker
So how do you, you so a crisis happens, nine 11 and suddenly everyone's like a, so you know, selfless, you know, whatever, like selfless hero. But how do you do that without the crisis? Um,
00:47:58
Speaker
You have to do it by, know, it's always sort of with creativity and imagination and almost a force of will. um And there are ways in ah in in ah a democracy of in a nation of 340 million people where, you you know, clearly the nation doesn't need you, right? Like, but there are ways to feel like it does. And there's three things that machines cannot do.
00:48:23
Speaker
AI can't do effectively, um that the nation needs done. There's three things, and they all make you part of the fabric of this nation, of this society. um You have to vote.
00:48:35
Speaker
If you don't vote, you are not laying a brick in the wall of democracy and a healthy society. You have decided vote. Go out for lunch and never come back, which is a pity, right? You will live in a democracy, but you won't deserve to if you don't vote.
00:48:53
Speaker
um Serve on jury duty. AI cannot do jury duty for you, right? If you are ever accused of a crime, you have the right to a jury of your peers. And if you don't serve jury duty when called...
00:49:06
Speaker
um you will You will get a jury, but you won't deserve one. You have to serve jury duty. It's what keeps us, it's the line, the thing that keeps us from totalitarianism, from oppression, is that no one person can decide the fate of another person.
00:49:22
Speaker
Only a jury can. you know, finally, give blood. Doctors cannot make blood. There's no way to make blood. Humans make blood. Humans need blood.
00:49:32
Speaker
When people experience blood loss, they will die unless they get someone else's blood put into their veins. And children will lose their father, their their mother. Parents will lose lose a child.
00:49:44
Speaker
You will lose your brother, your girlfriend, your friend, whatever. that Without blood, those people die and they don't need to. And when you give blood, when you donate blood, Your body replaces it within like a week, right? It's the ultimate free lunch, as Christopher Hitchens used to say. If you do those three things, um you will be part of something greater than yourself in a symbolic way, right? But don't knock symbolism. You know, it has a it can have profound emotional consequences. I would also say just generally, I think we need to redesign our cities, our buildings to be sort of inward facing, to have allow common spaces to, I think, homes are way too big,
Housing Design and Community Impact
00:50:25
Speaker
right? i mean yeah I mean, what a pity that we're so rich, our society is so rich that every child has their own bedroom that they can be lonely in. That's just horrible.
00:50:37
Speaker
And the carbon footprint on that is unconscionable. Like, we need to stop doing all that stuff. can I share some ideas? I wrote some some down. i'd love to hear your Your response.
00:50:49
Speaker
um Well, one is kind of like a national service sort of thing um where you you graduate high school and you have to go into the military or something like the the CCC.
00:51:01
Speaker
um i think like the CCC, like yeah some of the most beautiful parts of America, some old, like beautiful masonry or trails or something like that. I did the, um that was part of a a conservation corps in the Gulf Coast after Katrina. And it was just like- um half white, half black, um socioeconomic diversity, half men, half women. it was just like a great way to kind of meet fellow Americans who I normally wouldn't rub elbows with coming from kind of suburban Western, Western New York. So, um so there's that. And I'm, I'm,
00:51:38
Speaker
I'm on two rec leagues here. I'm on a um ah floor hockey team in Scotland and ah a co-ed softball team. And nice I think like adult sports are like a great way to have kind like to kind of simulate brotherhood.
00:51:56
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, you realize it's, ri I mean, you saw ah unconsciously in your mind, you realize it's recreation, not, you know, combat, but it simulates that intensity quite well. And it's very, very good. I mean, theyve there was a study that I read where young women who played team sports in college, it was a longitudinal study, they did much better in their lives, fewer divorces, more successful in their work.
00:52:20
Speaker
ah happy, happier, more stable. what What they learned as being part of a team was like crucial for their ah development as young women. I've got some weirder ideas. Hold on here.
00:52:33
Speaker
um Bring back the long house, a house where 150 people live and you share meals in there. I think we yeah got to think radically about this.
00:52:46
Speaker
Um, What else? ah like There's people kind of like doing doing like adult dormitories in their young adulthood. Just like crazy ideas about like how we how we live.
00:53:00
Speaker
ah Huge canteens. um like Big cafeterias where like the whole town could go. Another idea was i asked Chet GPT for this one and it said public bath houses. I'm like, that's pretty gay. I mean, I know a lot of ah gay guys always get up to shenanigans there, but my wife's German and we go to like bath houses and saunas and it's wonderful.
00:53:24
Speaker
It's just like you're there with all segments of society. It's not that expensive. You're sitting in the sauna with people. You're going swimming. Yeah. The weirdest thing ChatGPT said was bring back the duel dual culture, but use gladiator or kind of padding.
00:53:45
Speaker
um Anyways. that's That's a little odd, but ah ah that's why you don't have AI on jury duty, right? ah I kind of like the duo. Like, oh, I got some problems with some people. I could just kind of suit up and hit them with a big foam stick or something. Right, right.
00:54:03
Speaker
Okay, ah can we touch on My Time of Dying for a little bit? course, yeah. Okay, great. um So in your recent memoir, My Time of Dying, you write about this near-death experience, and you had some amazing visions. Yeah.
00:54:21
Speaker
Hey folks, thanks for listening. That's the end of the free version of the podcast. There's still another about 20 minutes or so of conversation. Arguably, I think the the best 20 minutes um that Sebastian and I had, we get into his near-death experience with his pancreatic aneurysm where he kind of almost bled to death from the inside. He had ah visions that were just kind of inexplicable, which kind of sent him down on this journey, this intellectual journey, thinking about consciousness, quantum mechanics, the possibility of an afterlife, afterlife not something like simple like heaven, but Something grounded in what is incomprehensible science. And this was an interesting conversation for me to have because I'm not a science person, but I think I held my own by just asking smart kind of everyday average brain questions to kind of help me understand.
00:55:22
Speaker
um understand these things more, and I found it personally um fulfilling and thought i began to kind of um get my head around some of these almost impossible concepts.
00:55:36
Speaker
ah He talks about if we even want an afterlife, if we want eternity, and what he tells his young daughters about death and what comes after So if you'd like to listen to that, become a paid subscriber at my sub stack.
00:55:52
Speaker
um Either way, thanks for listening. Till next time.
00:56:15
Speaker
This was the Out of the Wild podcast. Original music by Duncan Barrett. For more episodes, subscribe to my Substack.