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How And Why We Play Social Status Games - Will Storr

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Ali AbdaalhostWill Storrguest

Mar 7, 202259mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

70 min read · 14,382 words

0:00 – 0:55
Intro
1. AAAli Abdaal
  Hey, friends. How's it going? Welcome back to Deep Dive. What you're about to hear is an interview with Will Storr, who is the best-selling author of this book, The Status Game, and he's written a bunch of other books, including a book Selfie, which is all about, like, selfie and social media culture and how we're obsessed with ourselves. But this new one is fantastic. It's called The Status Game, and it's one of my favorite topics. It's basically about all of the different ways in which practically all human behavior is ultimately motivated towards seeking and acquiring more social status. We talk about how status is a fundamental part of the human condition and how this has been a thing from, like, the dawn of time. We talk a little bit about the three different types of status games that we can play in everything that we do. And we talk a little bit about how the pursuit of status is often seen as a negative thing, but it can actually drive us to do bigger and better things with our lives. And we also talk about practical ways to increase one's social status, if you're into that kind of thing, by, you know, tactics like warmth and sincerity, which sound like tactics, but are actually just generally being a decent human being. So yeah, hope you enjoy the discussion. That, okay, let's talk
0:55 – 4:55
How Did You Become Interested In Social Status
1. AAAli Abdaal
  about, let's talk about The Status Game.
2. WSWill Storr
  Mm.
3. AAAli Abdaal
  How did you come, become interested in the topic of the pursuit of social status?
4. WSWill Storr
  Well, so The Heretics and then Selfie and then The Science of Storytelling, those three books were all about that idea of the brain as a storyteller.
5. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
6. WSWill Storr
  They were all pursuing this one idea, which is the brain is, is this delusional machine-
7. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
8. WSWill Storr
  ... which, y- as I said before, remixes reality into this heroic story. We're at the middle of the world, the universe. Everything revolves around us. We're amazing, you know? As long as we're psychologically healthy, we have all these, you know, creative artists. So I, I, you know, I, I started to think, "Okay, so if that's, um, if that's what's really going o- if that's the kind of delusion we're in the middle of, if that's the kind of lie of the brain, what is the truth of the brain?"
9. AAAli Abdaal
  Cool.
10. WSWill Storr
  "What's actually going on-"
11. AAAli Abdaal
  Nice
12. WSWill Storr
  ... kind of beneath the hood? And, um, so, so this phrase that I read, um, I think it was a psychologist called, I think Robert Hogan, um, came up with this phrase that I, I, I used it in the Selfie and The Science of Storytelling, that, that, that our, you know, the, our secret subconscious drive is to get along and get ahead. And I thought that. I always loved that 'cause it's, it feels, it's so simple to understand. Um-
13. AAAli Abdaal
  Get along, get ahead. Yeah.
14. WSWill Storr
  A- a- and the, the reason it's those things is 'cause we're tribal. We're a tribal animal. We're, you know, we're, we're these apes that have mastered the art of, um, um, cooperative living. Um, uh, y- you know, we, we, we, we, we, we, we're driven to... And, and, and so, so for those reasons, w- we have these very strong subconscious urges to get in together in groups of people who are, who g- who are like-minded and, um, you know, pursue goals with them. Um, b- but also compete for status with other members of that group, but also those groups compete for status with rival groups.
15. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
16. WSWill Storr
  And so that, that's tribal life. That's life in the tribe, you know? Um, uh, th- that's why we, we organize, human life is organized like that, because it was organized like that 20,000 years ago on [laughs] the African savanna. Uh, o- a- and, you know, I always find this amazing, that, that's still human life today. You know, those groups are political groups. They're football teams. They're, um, you know, cults. They're religions. They're corporations. That, that, we s- we, we, this is what we do. That's human social life. It's groupish, and it's comp- competition. A- and, and so, s- so The Status Game is, i- i- is really a book about that get along and get ahead.
17. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
18. WSWill Storr
  You know, that's what a game is. A game is, you get along. You, you clump into a ga- a group of people that you're playing a game with.
19. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
20. WSWill Storr
  And then you, you start competing.
21. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. How did the story kind of come together? Did you start off with the hypothesis that this is a thing and then find the stories and the examples and stuff to back it up, or wa- was it more investigative? Like, what was, what was the approach there?
22. WSWill Storr
  Yeah, yeah. I, it was... So, so when I was researching Selfie, and Selfie is about, um, how the West, West, in the West, we're very individualistic and, you know, self-obsessed, um, relatively speaking to the rest of the world. And, and so, so it was looking at kinda selfie culture, that narcissistic selfie culture.
23. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. It was a great title, by the way. [laughs]
24. WSWill Storr
  Yeah. It wasn't my, I can't take credit for that.
25. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah, I remember seeing it, like, uh, I think in 2017 or something.
26. WSWill Storr
  Yeah, that's when it came out. Yeah.
27. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah, and I was like, "Oh, that's a interesting book." [laughs] Yeah.
28. WSWill Storr
  Good. Yeah. Um, uh, yeah, and, um, and I, I, I interviewed this guy called Professor Bruce Hood, who's a very well-known psychologist down at the University of Bristol. And this, but in my interview, he said to me, "Oh, you know," he said, "Why do we do the things that we do?"
29. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
30. WSWill Storr
  He said, "Once we've got enough money to live and survive, and we've got enough money for our families to survive, everything's just about validation." He didn't use the word status. He used the word validation. You know, that's why we write books. That's why we pursue, you know, that's why I'm a scientist. And-
4:55 – 14:26
We're All Playing Status Games
1. WSWill Storr
  class background who became very successful. And he's very, very alpha male.
2. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
3. WSWill Storr
  Like, you know, powerful, um, uh, you know, uh, military background. Like, for s- middle class, lower middle class, like, book geek like me-
4. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
5. WSWill Storr
  ... quite intimidating. A- and, um, you know, whe- when I first met him, it was at a meeting at a publishing company. I, I was a bit nervous to be with him 'cause I felt like as far as I, he's concerned, I'm this wimp, this little nerdy wimp-
6. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
7. WSWill Storr
  ... you know, with my little cardigan on. But I kind of felt he was a bit nervous to meet me. He was a bit uncomfortable meeting me, and that really made me sort of, I thought, "Is, is why, what, what's going on there?" And it was great because we were, he was really nice, and I was expecting him to be a bit dismissive of me.
8. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
9. WSWill Storr
  But he was so nice, you know? And, and he was really enthusiastic to understand, and his whole thing with me was just like, "Mate, I don't know what you do, but just do what you do."
10. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
11. WSWill Storr
  "Just, mate, it's a great book." And you know, he really trusted me.
12. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
13. WSWill Storr
  And, um, and then I, and, and that was the big breakthrough for me 'cause I, 'cause I, 'cause, 'cause I realized that, that we have different ways of measuring status.
14. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
15. WSWill Storr
  Like, his way of measuring status is with physical strength, banter, probably football, like talking about football.
16. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm-hmm.
17. WSWill Storr
  Something about that. Um, that, that's his criteria for claiming status, and that, that, that's what he's proud of, you know, his physicality.
18. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
19. WSWill Storr
  Whereas my criteria for claiming status are things like books you've written-
20. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
21. WSWill Storr
  ... and getting nice reviews in The Times or f- or, you know-
22. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
23. WSWill Storr
  ... fucking paintings on the walls.
24. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. [laughs]
25. WSWill Storr
  Those kinds of things. And, um, and that's when I suddenly realized it's, it, it... We- we're not all competing with each other. We're playing different status games.
26. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
27. WSWill Storr
  So, so, so, so when he came round my house to work on my book and he saw the paintings on the walls and all the books on the shelves-
28. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
29. WSWill Storr
  ... e- even with the fact of his incredibly masculine life, he probably would've felt a little bit intimidated and a little bit uncomfortable because he's in a, he's in a different world now.
30. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
14:26 – 16:24
What Happens When We Don’t Have Status
1. AAAli Abdaal
  when status is taken away, that can often be, like, a really, really terrible thing.
2. WSWill Storr
  Yeah.
3. AAAli Abdaal
  I wonder if you can kinda el- elaborate that on a b- on, on that a little bit.
4. WSWill Storr
  Yeah. Um, so status is this kind of social nutrient. It's like an, it's an essential kind of thing that we need.
5. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
6. WSWill Storr
  We need to feel respected and valued by the people around us, and when we don't, we become unwell. Um, we become, um, psychologically unwell. Um, you know, become depressed, become stressed, become anxious. Um, uh, y- we also can become physically unwell, uh, wh- when we're kind of repeatedly, um, uh, you know, robbed of status. Um, at its most extreme, um, you know, in the book I write about humiliation-
7. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
8. WSWill Storr
  ... a state of humiliation, and humiliation is, uh, uh, and w- we've all been there. It's, it's a horrific kind of experience. And, and humiliation is this... It's not just that you've been robbed of all your status within a group. You've been robbed of the ability to claim it ever again in the future.
9. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
10. WSWill Storr
  Like, you're so... It's been, it's gone so wrong-
11. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
12. WSWill Storr
  ... that people are like, "Leave."
13. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
14. WSWill Storr
  "We don't want anything to do with you anymore," and you're kind of forbidden from the group. And that's, I mean, you know, th- that, that's a fearsome thing. It, it, it, subconsciously that, that, that's, that's the equivalent... You know, I- in the, back in the tribal days, if, i- if we were, if, if, if, if we were, if we were that lacking in status within the group, it would've been probably a death sentence.
15. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
16. WSWill Storr
  Either we're kicked out of the group, and that's a death sentence in itself, or we were executed. Execution, capital punishment is thought to have once been a human universal.
17. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
18. WSWill Storr
  Um, so, um, so, so we really fear it. A- and, you know, we need st- as I say, we need status. It's, it, it's this kind of fundamental, you know, psychological nutrient. A- and, and w- I, I think when, w- in the book I write about people who have been, who are kind of humiliated again and again and again and again, and, and these are the people that become very unwell and, and often extremely violent. You know, in the, there's a chapter in the book on mass murderers, uh, you know, s- serial killers, spree killers, terrorists, honor killers. Um, uh, and, um, humiliation is, is deeply implicated in all of those-
19. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
20. WSWill Storr
  ... you know, phenomena.
21. AAAli Abdaal
  Given that kind of
16:24 – 19:15
How To Gain Status - Warmth, Sincerity and Competence.
1. AAAli Abdaal
  if we, if we accept that we're all sort of playing status games, is there, is there anything that we can/should do differently as we're going about our lives in keeping, keeping that in the back of our minds?
2. WSWill Storr
  Yeah.
3. AAAli Abdaal
  Okay.
4. WSWill Storr
  I, I, I think, I, I think it's useful to be aware of the, the, uh, the, the game is, you know, wh- when, when the game is in, in process.
5. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
6. WSWill Storr
  I- it's often very easy to become irritated and frustrated by little slights that people mi- might make to us. Um, a- and, you know, anybody who's seen Curb Your Enthusiasm, that's all about a guy who is highly attuned to kind of status slights. Um, i- in, in the book I write about this study where, about, about orange, glasses of orange juice, and this is the thing. If you pour, if, if you pour lots of glasses of orange juice for people but you get slightly less orange juice than everybody else, it's really, like, you get really upset about it. [laughs]
7. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
8. WSWill Storr
  You know? A- and, and that's because it's not, it's not actually just a mouthful of orange juice you've been robbed of.
9. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
10. WSWill Storr
  It's, it's your brain has gone, it's, it's gone, "That's symbolic of your status." So that's, that's how insanely obsessed the brain is, the subconscious brain is with our, our relative status. A- a- and we're, we're all used to, you know, every day we sort of have an experience where we feel a bit slighted, and I think once you understand that that's just your brain being a, a completely obsessive-
11. AAAli Abdaal
  [laughs]
12. WSWill Storr
  ... idiot-
13. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
14. WSWill Storr
  ... about your status, it's, it's, it's much easier to... You, you don't stop feeling the feelings-
15. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
16. WSWill Storr
  ... but you can s- I think you can separate yourself from them much easier and just sort of almost like a Buddhist look upon yourself and go, "Oh, that's my brain being stupid."
17. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
18. WSWill Storr
  Um, but, but I think one of the big takers for me is, as well is, is the, is the, I, I think we often forget that, um, you know, we have status to give. Like pres- the prestige forms of status, virtue and success, those two forms of prestige.
19. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
20. WSWill Storr
  Um, we get them from other people. Other people voluntarily give them to us wh- when we do good things.
21. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
22. WSWill Storr
  And, um, so we have status to give, like unlimited reserves of status to give other people.
23. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
24. WSWill Storr
  And we're often quite bad at giving it. We often quite jealously, kind of jealously hoard-
25. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
26. WSWill Storr
  ... our kind of stores of status. And I, and I think- No, I, I think just life for ourselves w- w- would be, it gets much better when we're more generous with status.
27. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
28. WSWill Storr
  You know, e- even for a selfish reason, that people want to be around us more if we're giving out-
29. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. [laughs]
30. WSWill Storr
  ... if we're giving out that stuff. A- as long as you're not, um, completely inauthentic about it.
19:15 – 33:58
Gender And Cultural Differences In Status
1. WSWill Storr
  promote The Status Game with a, this woman and, um, on the radio. And she had a really beautiful speaking voice, and after the, um, after the interview I said, "Geez, you've got such a beautiful speaking voice."
2. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
3. WSWill Storr
  And I think I made her a bit uncomfortable. I think she thought I was coming on to her. [laughs]
4. AAAli Abdaal
  Oh.
5. WSWill Storr
  I was like, "Oh, God."
6. AAAli Abdaal
  [laughs] My goodness.
7. WSWill Storr
  Yeah, so sometimes you gotta be careful about it. Like, I really wasn't, you know? But, like, I was just trying to be nice.
8. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
9. WSWill Storr
  But it's things like that, you know, there's always something ni- something nice. I mean, I mightn't, she might not have... I was worried that she thought that it came, it came out badly.
10. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. [laughs]
11. WSWill Storr
  [laughs] Um, but, um, but yeah, so, so, so as long as, um, as long as it doesn't come off as creepy or insincere-
12. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
13. WSWill Storr
  ... uh, you know, I, I, I think that there's always this sort of gift that we can give other people.
14. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense.
15. WSWill Storr
  Yeah.
16. AAAli Abdaal
  Um, you said in another podcast that you were on, I think on Jordan Harbinger's show-
17. WSWill Storr
  Oh, right
18. AAAli Abdaal
  ... you s- y- y- you said, um, that the whole, yeah, you, you were talking about this whole idea of when people say, "Oh, I don't care what people think of me."
19. WSWill Storr
  Yeah.
20. AAAli Abdaal
  I wonder if we can, like-
21. WSWill Storr
  [laughs] Great
22. AAAli Abdaal
  ... elaborate on that a little bit. What's, what's the deal with that? We are gonna take a little quick break from the podcast to introduce the sponsor of this podcast, which is CuriosityStream. If you haven't heard by now, CuriosityStream is the world's leading documentary streaming subscription platform founded by John Hendricks, who's the founder of the Discovery Channel. And on CuriosityStream they've got hundreds of really high quality, high budget documentaries covering all sorts of things from science and technology to history and ancient civilizations to food and medicine and meditation and, like, all of the stuff in between. Now, the really cool thing about CuriosityStream is that they support independent creators. And so there is this service called Nebula, which you might have heard of. It's an independent streaming platform that's run by me and a bunch of other creators. And on Nebula we can put content like videos and behind the scenes and long form, longer form stuff without worrying about things like the YouTube algorithm. And so, for example, on Nebula I have a bunch of exclusive content that you won't find anywhere else. We actually have the original Season 0 of The Deep Dive podcast, which started off as, like, remote Zoom livestreams during the pandemic, and that is only available on Nebula. You won't find it anywhere else. So if you enjoy the sorts of conversations we have on Deep Dive, you might like to see, you know, a whole year before we started this podcast properly once the pandemic stopped what sort of conversations I was having with people on Zoom. I've also got a series of videos on Nebula called Workflow, which is where I deep dive into some of my favorite productivity tools. And on Nebula you also get early ad free access to my videos and videos from a bunch of other creators that you might be familiar with like Thomas Frank and Tom Scott and Legal Eagle and Lindsay Ellis. And the really cool thing is that because CuriosityStream loves supporting independent creators, we've got a little bundle deal, which is that if you sign up for an account on CuriosityStream you actually get free access to Nebula bundled with that. So if you head over to curiositystream.com/deepdive, then for less than $15 a year you can get full access to CuriosityStream's incredible library of documentaries and also free access to all of the stuff on Nebula bundled with that. So head over to curiositystream.com/deepdive to get the bundle deal. So thank you, CuriosityStream, for sponsoring this episode.
23. WSWill Storr
  Well, it's not true. It's never true. You know, we're a social animal. We, we, we are wired, you know, to our core to care about what other people think of us. It's in the human machine. It's part of our human nature to care about what other people think of us. And, and, and I think as I said before, it always makes me laugh when people say that because they always say it in a certain way. "I don't care what people think of me."
24. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
25. WSWill Storr
  And they're like, well, you're, you're just sh- [laughs] You, you know? That's just another way of claiming status. You're claiming that you're better than everybody else.
26. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
27. WSWill Storr
  Like, you know, and it, and it, and it, it's so ironic 'cause it, it's obviously very important to them-
28. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
29. WSWill Storr
  ... that other people think-
30. AAAli Abdaal
  That they-
33:58 – 40:29
Social Media And Status
1. AAAli Abdaal
  the whole status thing has c- clearly been around for a very long time.
2. WSWill Storr
  Mm.
3. AAAli Abdaal
  Um, but then you add the internet and you add social media onto this thing.
4. WSWill Storr
  Yeah.
5. AAAli Abdaal
  Um, what are the kind of impli- implications, uh, in your-
6. WSWill Storr
  Well, social media is just one huge status game.
7. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
8. WSWill Storr
  If you think about those three, those three games, um, dominance, virtue, and success-
9. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
10. WSWill Storr
  ... um, that's what social media is, is like peop- there's, there's people doing dominance, uh, you know, being aggressive to each other. [laughs]
11. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
12. WSWill Storr
  Uh, you know, bullying each other, doxing and canceling and all that stuff. Um, there's virtue, people signaling, "Oh, I think this is..." They're talking about politics is all about virtue stuff. "This is, this person's bad."
13. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
14. WSWill Storr
  "This person's good. This law is bad. This law is good." You know, all that stuff. Um, and there's also success games. "Look at my amazing gym body."
15. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
16. WSWill Storr
  "Look at my healthy breakfast. Look at my tanned knees in the m- in the Maldives."
17. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
18. WSWill Storr
  You know? So, so that, and that, that, that's what s- that's [laughs] what social media is, it's dominance, virtue, and success. And, and so, you know, one of the things I also write about in Selfie is this, is this idea we have that, you know, th- these are kind of inventions of Silicon Valley, and they've kind of created these things which have, like, distorted the world and made us-
19. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
20. WSWill Storr
  But I think, I don't think that's how, how it works. Um, y- you know, i- in Selfie I write about how the, the selfie camera was invented as a business tool-
21. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
22. WSWill Storr
  ... for, for doing, you know, conferences and, um, uh, it was called the front-facing camera when it was launched. And then it was us, the people, that decided to do selfies.
23. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
24. WSWill Storr
  And then the tech companies went, "Okay, if that's what you wanna do with them, then here's Instagram and here's-"
25. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
26. WSWill Storr
  You know, [laughs] "Here's, you know, h- i- i- i- yeah." So, so, so, so, and, you know, Twitter wasn't Twitter a- as we know it when it launched. It was a free SMS text message service, you know? So, so it's, so, so what you've got are these technologies tr- kind of working out by trial and instinct what people want and giving it to them, and what people want are status games, and that's what Twitter is, that's what Instagram is, that's what TikTok is. Um, a- and in the book, you know, I write about, you know, I call the, the, the social media a slot machine for-
27. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
28. WSWill Storr
  ... for status. You know, I think it's quite well known, um, uh, by people who are interested in, in, in sort of back- have a kind of behind the scenes interest in social media or that, the BJ Fogg behavior model, which is the idea, is this, he's kind of evil genius [laughs] who, um, he, he wrote this book in 2003 predicting the iPhone.
29. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
30. WSWill Storr
  Just extraordinary. You know, writing about this young girl who has this device that's about the size of a pack of cards, and her whole life's on it, and ma- like, he basically foresaw the thing in 2003. It was unbelievable. Uh, not only did he foresee the iPhone or the smartphone, um, he, um, he, he, he, he, he, he came up with this, like, this model of how to make it basically not addictive, uh, like compulsive.
40:29 – 59:00
Q&A
1. AAAli Abdaal
  Cowie asks, "How does status actually lead to longevity if it doesn't lead to happiness?" I don't know, she's getting at some kind of link between status and longevity, like living forever.
2. WSWill Storr
  Well, there's a famous set of studies called the Whitehall Studies.
3. AAAli Abdaal
  Oh, okay.
4. WSWill Storr
  Um, uh, there's a guy called Dr. Michael Marmot, which looked at, um, um, the civil, the British civil service, which huge, huge organization, very stratified. And what he found was that the higher you went up the hierarchy, the better your health outcomes-
5. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
6. WSWill Storr
  ... and the lower your mortality. Um, and y- y- you know, a- and so you might think, okay, well, that's because the, the, the richer you are, the, the more you're eating salad and having a personal trainer.
7. AAAli Abdaal
  [laughs]
8. WSWill Storr
  Um, but that wasn't true. It was separate from, fr- from kind of lifestyle and all that stuff. And it c- what, what he found was that, that, you know, i- if the person at the very top of that hierarchy smoked-
9. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
10. WSWill Storr
  ... and the person one beneath that person also smoked, that one person beneath would be more likely to get sick as a result of their smoking than the one at the top. So, s- so it was incredibly-- The brain's incredibly, um, um, um, sensitive to, to our, our level of relative status or where, where we sit in our status games-
11. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
12. WSWill Storr
  ... of life. Um, a- and they found that this is true for men and for women. Um, uh, it-- and the health differentials were, were, were really quite, um, uh, extraordinary. Um, th- they, they even found it in laboratory conditions with baboons. So, so, so they got these baboons, these poor bloody baboons in a lab, and they fed them a really terrible diet, like, you know, high calorie sh- crisps or whatever. [laughs]
13. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah. [laughs]
14. WSWill Storr
  I don't know what it was.
15. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
16. WSWill Storr
  Probably delicious. But, but, you know, really bad for them.
17. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
18. WSWill Storr
  Um, a- and, a- a- and they found th- th- the same true as f- was for, true for baboons as was in the civil service, was that the lower you were down the hierarchy, the more likely they were to get sick as a result of their bad diets. And then they changed the hierarchy. They-- I don't know how they did it, but they, they conspired to change the hierarchy of the baboon troop, and the health outcomes changed in lockstep. So, s- s- so that's just extraordinary evidence that, that, um, Marmot calls this the status syndrome.
19. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
20. WSWill Storr
  The, the... A- and so, you know, it's kind of speculative as to why that's true, but there, there's a field called social genomics, quite a new field called social genomics, and social genomics is the science of how our social worlds impact the function of our genes.
21. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
22. WSWill Storr
  And I interviewed a guy called Professor Steve Cole out in University of California, who's an expert in social genomics, and, and he, he thinks it's to do with, um, inflammation-
23. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm
24. WSWill Storr
  ... um, which obviously you'll know all about as a medic. Um, th- the, the idea that, that, that, um, that if we're kind of lower on the, lower on the totem pole- The body's preparing you for attack-
25. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah
26. WSWill Storr
  ... for trouble and for crisis. And we're not designed to be in inflammation for a long period of time.
27. AAAli Abdaal
  Yeah.
28. WSWill Storr
  And we are designed to be in inflammation for a short period of time. And if we ... And, and, and it also changes our antiviral response.
29. AAAli Abdaal
  Mm.
30. WSWill Storr
  Um, so, so, so, so, so that's, so that's what he thinks is e- that's what they think is going on. So, so, so, so I, I wouldn't ... So, so, it ... I, I guess it wouldn't quite be true to say that having high status, uh, gets you longevity. It's m- probably more accurate to say that having sta- high status protects you from getting i- And it's kind of the same thing.