JOHANN HARI | The Real Causes Of Depression & Love Island | Modern Wisdom Podcast 172

1. 0:00 – 1:32

   Depression & anxiety as signals, not malfunctions (reframing the problem)

   1. JHJohann Hari0:00

      For a really long time, we've been told implicitly that our depression and our anxiety are malfunctions. They're signs of being broken on the inside. And mostly, depression and anxiety are not malfunctions. They're signals that something isn't going right, either in your psyche or in the environment, and they're signals that we need to change. And what we need to do is stop insulting those signals by saying that they're a sign of weakness, or craziness, or purely biological malfunctions, and instead listen to them. If you listen to the signal, you can find a solution.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:36

      I am joined by Johann Hari, author of Lost Connections. Johann, welcome to the show.

   3. JHJohann Hari0:41

      Oh, it's great to be with you, Chris. You're also a very rare instance of a person who's said my name right first time. I once waited for six hours with a broken arm in casualty 'cause they were calling for Joanna Hairy to come forward, so-

   4. CWChris Williamson0:53

      (laughs)

   5. JHJohann Hari0:54

      ... I'm always so happy when people get it right first time.

   6. CWChris Williamson0:57

      (laughs) Yeah, I think, um, I've said your name or heard it on podcasts and interviews sufficiently for me to know what it is. Um, so for the people who are listening, you should have already heard me say Johann's name. Uh, it is-

   7. JHJohann Hari1:12

      (laughs)

   8. CWChris Williamson1:12

      As far as I'm con- as far as I'm concerned, Lost Connections, your book, is the 80/20 way to understand everything you need to know about depression and I think you should be incredibly proud of it.

   9. JHJohann Hari1:21

      Oh, thank you. I'm, um, really chuffed by that and I'll start paying you commission the more-

   10. CWChris Williamson1:25

       Yeah, that's-

   11. JHJohann Hari1:25

       ... the more times you name drop it. There you go.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:27

       I swear to God, I must have sent it to 20, 30 people and most of them are gonna be listening. Um-

   13. JHJohann Hari1:32

       (laughs)

2. 1:32 – 4:20

   Why the book is trending again: rising distress and pandemic “supercharging” causes

   1. CWChris Williamson1:32

      ... so first questions first. Your book's been out for, what, two and a half, three years now? Something like that?

   2. JHJohann Hari1:38

      Something like that. It, um... Let me think. January two years ago. Yeah, so t- two and a bit years, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson1:43

      Got you. Why is it back in the charts now, then? Apart from the fact that it's great, but why is it back in the charts now?

   4. JHJohann Hari1:49

      It's a really interesting question. I've been thinking about it a little bit. I've been sort of in a slight frenzy finishing another book and, um, and actually g- almost certainly got coronavirus, so I've been a little bit out of it. And I've been thinking a lot about the, the, the themes of the book and, and why they're really resonating with people at the moment. So I guess I should just say what the book is about and then, and then just, just very briefly. Which is really the book was... The thing that impelled me to write the book was that there were these two mysteries that I was thinking about a lot of the time. Uh, the first mystery is I'm 41 years old and all throughout my life, depression and anxiety have increased in Britain, in the U.S., and across the western world, right? And so has anxiety. And I wanted to understand, well, why, right? Why is this happening to us? Why is it that with each year that passes, more and more of us are feeling depressed and anxious? What's going on? And I wanted to understand that for a more personal reason, which is that when I was a teenager, uh, I went to my doctor. I explained that I was very depressed, I was quite ashamed of it. And my doctor told me a story that I, I now know wasn't totally wrong, but was really over-simplified. My doctor said, "Well, we know why people get like this. Some people just have a natural problem in their brain, right? It's got an imbalance. You're clearly one of them. All you need to do is take a load of drugs, you're gonna be fine." Right? So they gave me an antidepressant called Paxil or Seroxat, it's got different names, and it did give me some relief, but for most of the 13 years that I took it, I was still depressed. And at the end of it, I was asking, "Well, what's going on here?" Right? And for, for the book, Lost Connections, I ended up going on a big journey all over the world. I met the leading experts in the world about depression and anxiety, and people who have just very different perspectives on this, as you know, from an Amish village, 'cause the Amish have very low levels of depression, to a city in Brazil that banned advertising to see if that would make us feel better, to a lab in Baltimore where they're giving people psychedelics to see if that helped. Ask me afterwards. And, um, I think the heart of what I learned is there's scientific evidence for nine different causes of depression and anxiety. Two of them are in fact in our biology, right? There are real changes that happen in your brain when you become depressed that can make it harder to get out, and your genes can make you more sensitive to these problems. But most of the factors that cause depression and anxiety and make us feel like shit are not in our biology. They're factors in the way we live. And once you understand them, that opens up a very different set of solutions. The reason I started to set it up just thinking about it is a lot of the factors that I learned there's strong scientific evidence for that cause depression and anxiety have been

3. 4:20 – 12:54

   Financial insecurity and expanding what counts as an “antidepressant” (UBI, policy, dignity)

   1. JHJohann Hari4:20

      supercharged to fuck in the last five weeks or whatever it is since this began for a lot of us, right? So, to give some very obvious examples, financial insecurity causes depression and anxiety. Now, that in some ways seems like a "No shit, Sherlock" insight, right? If you'd said to my nan or your nan, you know, "Do you think if you're really financially insecure, you're gonna be more or less likely to be depressed?" My grandmother would've clipped me around the ear and said, "Stop fucking wasting my time." Right? She was Scottish. That's, of course-

   2. CWChris Williamson4:47

      Nice. That's a good S- that's a good Scottish accent there, man.

   3. JHJohann Hari4:48

      ... the closest I get-

   4. CWChris Williamson4:49

      I'm impressed, man.

   5. JHJohann Hari4:50

      Uh, it's the closest I can get to it.

   6. CWChris Williamson4:51

      You've nailed it.

   7. JHJohann Hari4:51

      You know, but, but, um, uh, the... I could say a lot about Scottish accents later-

   8. CWChris Williamson4:56

      (laughs)

   9. JHJohann Hari4:56

      ... if you want, but in the, uh, uh, all my, um... Not 'cause of my nan, but 'cause of my mother, all my, um, negative thoughts in my head, 'cause my mother's a very positive person in many ways, but also very negative, um, uh, happen in a Scottish accent. So whenever-

   10. CWChris Williamson5:09

       That's hilarious.

   11. JHJohann Hari5:10

       ... I remem- whenever I feel I'm fucking up, I'm like, "What you doing, you cunt? What you doing?"

   12. CWChris Williamson5:13

       (laughs)

   13. JHJohann Hari5:14

       But, uh, "What the fuck is this?" But, uh-

   14. CWChris Williamson5:15

       I've got to, I've got to interject there. Um, Alain, Alain de Botton, one of my favorite philosophers, says-

   15. JHJohann Hari5:20

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   16. CWChris Williamson5:21

       "... every, every bad inside voice was once an outside voice."

   17. JHJohann Hari5:24

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson5:24

       Isn't it so interesting that you've got a signature that is, is like embedded from something that's outside this disciplinarian, this past grandfathered in, archived in, right? From, from this old sort of era perhaps where you were disciplined more and that's now what's re-, re-

   19. JHJohann Hari5:42

       That's an interesting, yeah-

   20. CWChris Williamson5:42

       ... coming back?

   21. JHJohann Hari5:43

       That's true 'cause both my parents have f- uh, I about to say foreign accents 'cause my mom does regard Scotland as a foreign country.

   22. CWChris Williamson5:49

       (laughs)

   23. JHJohann Hari5:50

       Um, so whenever she's really pissed off with me... The only time I've ever made my mother truly angry with anything I've ever written was once, um, I was... It must have been, when was it? 2004. I was in New York, um, covering something and for a play on the Sting song, I called myself an Englishman in New York.... my mother phoned me the next day and was like, "No fucking son of mine is an Englishman, you cunt."

   24. CWChris Williamson6:14

       (laughs) Disowned.

   25. JHJohann Hari6:14

       "You forgot what they did, did to Mel Gibson. Fuck you."

   26. CWChris Williamson6:17

       (laughs) You're disowned.

   27. JHJohann Hari6:18

       Even now when she's really pissed off at me, she'll go, "Oh, is that my English son, is it?"

   28. CWChris Williamson6:23

       Oh God-

   29. JHJohann Hari6:24

       So, I don't... Think about-

   30. CWChris Williamson6:25

       Isn't it? Mothers can keep grudges like no one else.
4. 12:54 – 15:38

   From “your control” to “our control”: collective agency and unmet psychological needs

   1. CWChris Williamson12:54

      ... and then at the end there's an affix of, "But I'm skint." This is a thought, "Oh, but money worry." This is a thought... and it's the same with, "This is a thought, but I'm hungry. This is a thought, but I'm hungry," and it's diet brain. Um, I've got, I, I've tried to summarize Lost Connections in one sentence. I'm gonna see-

   2. JHJohann Hari13:10

      Oh, go on then, let me see. Go on.

   3. CWChris Williamson13:11

      ... I'm gonna see what you think. Your state of mind and mental health is much more under your control than you or the medical industry might think.

   4. JHJohann Hari13:22

      I would ch- only change one word in that, which is, I would say our control, not your control, 'cause a-

   5. CWChris Williamson13:28

      Ah, nice.

   6. JHJohann Hari13:29

      ... big part.

   7. CWChris Williamson13:29

      That's one letter.

   8. JHJohann Hari13:30

      (laughs) There we go.

   9. CWChris Williamson13:31

      That is one letter. Fuck.

   10. JHJohann Hari13:33

       You're one letter away. 'Cause I do think it's important to explain to people that a lot of these problems can't be solved by us as isolated individuals. Some of them can, a lot of them can't. But they can be solved by us together as groups, right? Um, a- a- and so I would try to explain to people that, um, we can regain control collectively over many of the things that have been fucking with us, that are making us, uh, some of us anxious and depressed and a lot more of us a lot less happy than we otherwise would be, right?

   11. CWChris Williamson14:02

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   12. JHJohann Hari14:04

       Um, uh, yeah, so, but I think that's a pretty good summary. I could-

   13. CWChris Williamson14:06

       Thank you.

   14. JHJohann Hari14:06

       ... do that thing where David Bowie used to have a, um, used to have a, when he didn't want to turn up at concerts, he had a person who, who he would sort of send out-

   15. CWChris Williamson14:14

       A body double.

   16. JHJohann Hari14:14

       ... to pretend to be David Bowie. It's like, now, unfortunately, we're not exactly body doubles or-

   17. CWChris Williamson14:18

       You know what? I think-

   18. JHJohann Hari14:18

       ... body doubles.

   19. CWChris Williamson14:19

       ... I think that I could do. You get me a quiff. You get me a quiff-

   20. JHJohann Hari14:21

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson14:22

       ... and, and give me a slightly posher down s- down south accent, and I reckon, I reckon I can make it work.

   22. JHJohann Hari14:27

       (laughs)

   23. CWChris Williamson14:27

       Right. So, um-

   24. JHJohann Hari14:27

       You, you gain several stone and, uh-

   25. CWChris Williamson14:30

       So it

   26. NANarrator14:30

       No.

   27. JHJohann Hari14:30

       ... it's funny you say that about posh, because my mum, going back to my mother and accents, so b- both my parents were from very, pretty poor backgrounds. And, um, for some reason, even when I was a little boy, I had this weird posh voice, right? It's so funny when you watch our home videos, right? It's like my mum goes, I'm like five, and my mum goes, "Johan, go and pick up that." And I go, "Certainly, mother. Of course, I'd be happy to." (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson14:55

       (laughs) Where the fuck's this voice come from? Yeah.

   29. JHJohann Hari14:57

       So when my mum wants to fascinate me, what she does is she goes, "Ya, ya, ya. Ya, ya, ya, ya, ya."

   30. CWChris Williamson15:04

       (laughs)
5. 15:38 – 24:01

   The Cambodian ‘cow antidepressant’ story: diagnosing causes by listening

   1. JHJohann Hari15:38

      So this is not, not true of all of them, but it's, it connects a lot of them. So every- and it goes, relates exactly to what you just said. So everyone knows they have natural physical needs, obviously, right? You need food, you need water, you need shelter, you need clean air. If I took those things away from you, you'd obviously be in trouble really quickly. But there's equally strong evidence that all human beings have natural psychological needs, right? You need to feel you belong. You need to feel connected to other people. You need to feel your life has meaning. You need to feel your work has meaning. You need to feel you've got a future that makes sense. And the culture that we've built is good at lots of things, right? I'm glad to be alive today. A lot of things are better than they were in the past. But we've been getting less and less good at meeting these deep underlying psychological needs that people have. A lot of them, not all. Uh, and I think this is the key reason why depression and anxiety have, have b- have been going up. And, and, you know, there are loads of different people who explain this to me in all sorts of different ways. But the moment when it really emotionally fell into place for me was when I went to interview this South African psychiatrist called Dr. Derek Summerfield. He's an amazing guy. And Derek happened to be in Cambodia in 2001 when they first introduced chemical antidepressants for the people in that country, because they'd never had them in Cambodia before. And the local doctors, the Cambodians, were like, "Well, what are these drugs?" And he explained to them, and they said to him, "Oh, we don't need them. We've already got antidepressants." And they, and he was like, "What do you mean?" And he thought they were gonna talk about some kind of like herbal remedy, like, I don't know, ginkgo biloba, St. John's wort, something like that. Instead, they told him a story. There was a farmer in their community who, uh, worked in the rice fields. And one day he stood on a landmine leftover from the war with the Americans, and he got his leg blown off. Um, s- so they gave him physical therapy, they gave him an artificial leg, and after a while he went back to work in the rice fields. But apparently, it's really painful to work underwater when you've got an artificial limb.

   2. CWChris Williamson17:49

      Wow.

   3. JHJohann Hari17:49

      And I'm guessing it's quite traumatic to go back and work in a field where you got blown up. The guy started to cry all day. After a while, he refused to get out of bed. He developed classic depression. This is when they said to, to Dr. Summerfield, "Well, that's when we gave him an antidepressant." And he said, "What was it?" And they explained that they went and sat with him. They listened to him. They realized that his pain made sense, right? It had causes in his life that actually when you sat down with him were entirely understandable. Um, one of the doctors figured after listening to him, "You know, if we bought this guy a cow..."... he could become a dairy farmer, he wouldn't be in this position that was fucking him up so much. So they bought him a cow. Within a couple of weeks, he stopped crying. Within a couple of months his depression was gone. They said to Dr. Summerfield, "So you see, Doctor, that cow, that was an antidepressant. That's what you mean, right?" Now, if you've been raised to think about depression the way we have, that sounds like a joke, right? "I- I went to my doctor for an antidepressant, she gave me a cow." But what those Cambodian doctors knew intuitively is what the leading medical body in the whole world, the World Health Organization, has been trying to explain to us for years, right? If you're depressed, if you're anxious, you're not weak, you're not crazy, you're not, in the meshet- the main, a machine with broken parts, right? You're a human being with unmet needs and what you need and deserve is support to get those deeper needs met. And the reason why I say "our" rather than "your" is 'cause that farmer on his own could not have solved that problem, right? He needed people around him to help him figure out what had gone wrong, and more importantly, to think of a solution and build a solution with him. And I think so many of the problems we face, in a way, you know, when you explain these causes to people... I mean, let's think about another one, a really obvious one that's risen in the last five weeks. Loneliness, right? It's not rocket science when you explain to someone, "If you're lonely, you're more likely to become depressed," right? But I remember, do you know, it's funny, I remember when... I remember the night before my book came out, I was sitting with one of my best mates and we were talking about it. And you know, when a book comes out, you- you always think about how people are gonna react. And I said, "I think most people are gonna say..." You know, obviously there's interesting stuff that people could learn and lots of stories and facts and people they won't know about in the book. But I thought some of the ideas, I thought they're going to go, "Well, n- no shit, Sherlock. Why the fuck did we, uh... What we needed you to tell us that loneliness and financial insecurity causes depression, right?"

   4. CWChris Williamson20:23

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JHJohann Hari20:24

      "This is really obvious." And then the book came out and I kept being introduced in radio (laughs) interviews and things, people going, "Well, we're now going to talk to Johann Hari, who's written this incredibly controversial new book."

   6. CWChris Williamson20:35

      Mm-hmm. (laughs)

   7. JHJohann Hari20:36

      And I-

   8. CWChris Williamson20:37

      I wanna, I wanna interject there, Johann. So two things. First thing being the best books tell you a story that you already know, is a universal... Atomic Habits by James Clear, one of the best books that I've read over the last few years. I knew everything that was in that book, but no one had synthesized it, put it across with those examples and put it in a single unit, right? That makes a big difference. Second thing, reason that I think people see Lost Connections as controversial is that it puts the locus of control onto the individual. From an individual's perspective, you're hearing stories of snowflake generation and helicopter parenting and all this sort of stuff. Lack of sovereignty, lack of high agency, no upward mobility, people wanting the state and increase in socialism and, and sort of leftist thought where people want the state to give them as much as they can and do the problems, fix the problems for them. I think it shines a bright light and a very ugly mirror onto some of the things that people are doing that can affect their own mood. Now again, neither of us, both, both of us have suffered depressive, depressive episodes and depression in our lives. Neither of us are saying that depression is in, uh, in, uh, an easy mistress to bear, right? Like it is an existential crisis that feels like you're drowning in thought. Um, but being told that you have, that we have more control over our mental health than we might have thought, it makes you become the architect or more of the architect of your own suffering. And that's quite uncomfortable for people.

   9. JHJohann Hari22:14

      It's interesting, I- I, I'm thinking about what you're saying because I think there's... Think how I'd put it slightly differently. I think it's, if you're given a story about your pain, right? Even if that story doesn't work very well, at least you feel like you know where you are, right?

   10. CWChris Williamson22:32

       Mm-hmm.

   11. JHJohann Hari22:33

       And, uh, what's called the biomedical model, which is basically just the idea that depression and anxiety are overwhelmingly biological, right? Biological flaws in you, in the individual. I think because people have been told that story for so long, it becomes a, and it, I don't say this separately, uh, for me, it became part of how I saw myself. It became part of how I, how I, um, how I understood the world.

   12. CWChris Williamson23:02

       Inbuilt, right?

   13. JHJohann Hari23:03

       Yeah. And if someone, and i- by the way, it's not that those insights are totally wrong, right? There are real biological factors, but if someone comes along and says, "Um, that's true, but actually..." And it's not just me saying this, it's the leading medical body in the world, the World Health Organization. "Actually, these problems are mostly social problems and we mostly need to deal with them together, you know, as individuals and as groups." Um, it's very painful to make the transition from one story about your distress to another.

   14. CWChris Williamson23:35

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JHJohann Hari23:35

       It's, it's disorientating. The analogy I was, I thought of, I think when I was learning this, 'cause it was destabilizing for me, was like, if you feel like you understand your pain, even if you feel like shit, but you understand it, to me it's like there's a dog, a wild dog, but it's on a leash, right? And that moment of switching stories, of seeing that something much more complex and I think interesting and empowering is going on-

   16. CWChris Williamson23:57

       Mm-hmm.

   17. JHJohann Hari23:58

       ... is like a moment when the dog is let off the leash, right?

   18. CWChris Williamson24:01

       Mm-hmm.

6. 24:01 – 28:22

   Junk values and the Love Island lens: status, image, and hidden misery

   1. JHJohann Hari24:01

      And, and that's a very disorientating moment. But actually, I wanted to ask you about this, Chris, 'cause I, I'm really interested in how you think about this. That I was thinking about this in relation to Love Island and reality TV that I think for me, one of the interesting things, I've been thinking about it a bit in the last few weeks, but obviously it's a big part of the book, is I think one of the things we can get from this crisis is an understanding of what had gone wrong with our values. So there's-And this, for me, was one of the most challenging things that I learned about in the research for Lost Connections, and I could see how much it had played out in my own life. So, um, everyone knows that junk food has taken over our diets and made us physically sick, right? As you can see from my chins, I'm not immune to this temptation. I'm really pissed off that KFC is r- some KFCs have reopened, but not within a radi- delivery radius of me.

   2. CWChris Williamson24:52

      (laughs)

   3. JHJohann Hari24:53

      But the, um... but, but just like... (laughs) and it's funny, I got a message from someone on Facebook the other day I hadn't seen in years and years, like literally about 20 years, and she said, "I don't know if you remember, but when we were 16, we watched, uh, uh, some horror film about the end of the world together and we talked about what's the point in the collapse of civilization where we would all kill ourselves." And she said to me, "You said it's when they shut all the branches of McDonald's and KFC and they stop filming EastEnders." And she was like, "Just so you know-"

   4. CWChris Williamson25:19

      Oh, this is-

   5. JHJohann Hari25:19

      "...it's time."

   6. CWChris Williamson25:19

      ...that's two of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

   7. JHJohann Hari25:21

      Fucking happened. It's come.

   8. CWChris Williamson25:21

      That's two of the... that's two of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

   9. JHJohann Hari25:24

      So bad sign. But, but so anyway, sorry. Don't mean to distract about that though, but, uh, so just like junk food, uh, you know, we all know junk food has taken over our diets and made us physically sick. In a similar way, a kind of junk values have taken over our minds and made us mentally sick. So for thousands of years philosophers have said if you think life is about money and status and showing off, you're gonna feel like shit, right? Um, but weirdly nobody had actually scientifically tested this until an amazing man I got to know named Professor Tim Kasser who did a load of research I'm happy to talk about, but the core of what he discovered is kind of two things. Firstly, the more you think life is about money and status and showing off beyond a baseline of financial security where you can provide for yourself, the more you think life is about money and status and showing off, the more likely you are to become depressed and anxious because it trains you to look for happiness in all the wrong places, right? You're not gonna lie on your deathbed and think about all the likes you got on Instagram and all the shoes you bought, right? You're gonna think about moments of meaning and connection and purpose in your life. The second thing he showed is that as a society, as a culture, we have become much more driven by these junk values. Um, just much more. They've become really dominant. And, and I, I guess for me one of the interesting things about this moment is it's a moment when we can really reappraise those values because, um, it turns out when our backs were against the wall, who did we really need? Who were our key workers? Who's allowed to leave the house? It's not, um, billionaires, right? It's not, um, you know, whoever-

   10. CWChris Williamson27:04

       Instagram influencers.

   11. JHJohann Hari27:04

       It's not the people who have the biggest followers on Instagram, right? It's people like my grandmother was a cleaner, she cleaned toilets. My dad was a bus driver. Um, my sister was a nurse. You know, it's, it, it, it's people who, who are doing the things that have been devalued for so long in this society and culture. And also I wanted to ask you about that in relation to Love Island as well. One of the things that surprised me when the book came out was how many people, um, who are reality show stars. I got a... (laughs) funnily enough there were three categories of people who I did not expect to contact me who I got a shit ton of messages from. Um, WWE people, wrestlers.

   12. CWChris Williamson27:41

       Yep. Got you. Yep.

   13. JHJohann Hari27:42

       Uh, reality stars and porn stars, right?

   14. CWChris Williamson27:45

       Amazing.

   15. JHJohann Hari27:45

       And what's so interesting to me-

   16. CWChris Williamson27:46

       That's the big three.

   17. JHJohann Hari27:48

       ...unfortunately they were all female porn stars, which doesn't do anything for me, but-

   18. CWChris Williamson27:50

       Motherfuckers.

   19. JHJohann Hari27:51

       Uh, I know. I was like, "Where's all the gay porn stars or prosperspansions?"

   20. CWChris Williamson27:54

       Excuse me, I'm over here. Johann Hari, here's my address.

   21. JHJohann Hari27:56

       Exactly. But, um, the... and it was interesting 'cause what I'd get would I'd be getting all these messages from people who if you looked at their Instagram pages looked like they had the most perfect life.

   22. CWChris Williamson28:07

       Best life.

   23. JHJohann Hari28:08

       And they'd message me and go, "I'm suicidal. I read your book. I'm trying to think about this and this and this." And I'd be like, "Oh." So I'm just interested in your perspective on that, that those values and how, how did that play out for you in relation to something like Love Island?

7. 28:22 – 33:47

   Reality TV, public cruelty, and misaligned aspirations (Chris’s insider view)

   1. CWChris Williamson28:22

      Real interesting question, man. I've got about 20 different threads open in my mind and I'm gonna try and close them all before we, before we finish this podcast. So, um, firstly, I'm, I was very good friends with Sophie Gradon, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago, ex-Love Island contestant. I'd known her for 10 years previously to that. We'd modeled together for a long time. Uh, Mike, uh, I didn't know personally but knew sort of secondarily. Um, and people are associating that, those situations, the fact that TV stars have taken their own life with some sort of a failing on the part of ITV, uh, with some sort of systemic problem that they weren't given n- enough support or whatever it might be. I've said this before but I'll say it again, ITV2 give more than enough psychological support to everybody that goes on there. You're given a full psychometric evaluation before you enter, there's a psychologist on site at all times who you have access to, and there is a full post-show aftercare thing. Perhaps they're not super forthcoming with it, but they have a show to run, you know? It's not their job to check in on you every week and say, "Hey, how's it going?" Also as the show continues and goes on and on... This isn't me... this is not me saying I don't have sympathy for those. Sophie was one of my best mates, like, but she wouldn't want me to pity that or say that it was somehow the fault of ITV2, right? I, I know that she wouldn't. Um, uh, people want to blame it on that, right? And I did this tweet, it was when Caroline Flack passed away, I did this tweet and, um, it went pretty big. And I said, uh, "How many people need to die from reality TV before we realize that it's not the fault of the producers or the newspapers? They are not the ones who are retweeting and posting vitriol on a daily basis. If you want to find out who is the cause of this problem, look in the mirror." And the problem is people... the general public believe that somebody with a blue tick now no longer has feelings or emotions, they're just like this kind of sounding board to throw things at. So that's kind of my, my thoughts in terms of like the big stuff that's gone on recently. Um, more so in terms of the values and things, man, like my main problem with reality TV at the moment is it takes these people out of the general public and then puts them on a pedestal, and what does that say to everybody that's listening?... it says that you, too, your path toward becoming two million follower blue tick person with a, a huge clothing deal with this particular company, all that you need to do is get on reality TV. Like that's now the path to itself. So a lot of people, I think, that go on reality TV aren't looking for a springboard for their career, they are looking for it to be their career. And that, for me, is, i- is, um, is a challenge. I, I don't think necessarily that kids who are growing up at 14 years old should be looking to Love Island as the pinnacle, like the zenith of what their career aspirations should be, and yet I know that that's the case. I was away in Dubai with my dad a couple of years ago, and we were sat down with, um, a young family. We got put in, it's when you go on one of those tours together and you get put in a car and it's like mom and dad and a young kid and 18-year-old daughter, and, uh, Dad- we're talking about just, "So what do you do?" and "What do you do?" and "What do you do?" And this, that, and the other. And I was, "Oh, I run club nights and I do this," just give a brief, brief overview of stuff. And there was a bunch of stuff in there that I thought was super interesting and virtuous but not really ... none of them batted an eye, none of them batted an eye at playing cricket for Durham back in the day, even though one of the kids played cricket for Durham. None of them batted an eye at the podcasts or the other bits and pieces. Halfway through the night, my dad dropped, "Oh, and Chris was on Love Island." That was it, rest of the night, that's all they wanted to talk about. And I thought, "That is a misalignment of values as far as I'm concerned." That is being, uh, something which literally is essentially by chance, being put on a pedestal m- significantly higher than things which, uh, require genuine, uh, work ethic, uh, and, and, sort of virtue and value to get to. Um, so that's my thing to do with Love Island. And I've also got something that, um, uh, relates back to what you were saying before to do with how people like to try and, um ... they want to make sense, right? They want to have a story to tell themselves and why they have comfort in a story. And this is the third time I'm gonna drop this same psychological effect on the podcast so the listeners should know by now but they might not. Uh, it's something called compensatory control. Have you heard of this?

   2. JHJohann Hari32:48

      A little bit, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson32:49

      Yeah, cool. So Matthew Syed in The Times talked about this, uh, and what he said was that when there is a period of uncertainty, people much prefer to give something a story than to believe that it could happen by chance. So one of the, uh, experiments that was done was people that were given an uncertain medical diagnosis were much more likely to see patterns in a meaningless screen of static than those that weren't. And, uh, it's used, it was used by Matthew Syed to explain why there's a proliferation of 5G conspiracy theories and stuff like that at the moment, because it is significantly easier to believe that this global pandemic was caused by the plans of some malign scientists than by the chance mutation of a silly little microbe. And, um, as soon as I saw that, it has got so, that compensatory control has so many wide-ranging implications.

   4. JHJohann Hari33:43

      I think that's really interesting. I wanna go back to the Love Island thing in a second if we can, but-

   5. CWChris Williamson33:47

      Sure.

8. 33:47 – 40:31

   Control, work, and politics: why low autonomy drives depression (co-ops as an antidote)

   1. JHJohann Hari33:47

      ... that's so interesting because I think wha- there's ... Michael Marmot, who's a professor, brilliant Australian professor who studied lots of aspects of health and depression, said to me, "At the heart of so much depression is a lack of control." And I think it's interesting, um, l- we live in a society and culture where people have very limited control over their lives, right? Um, and people have been actually systematically denied it. So I'll give, uh, uh, an obvious example which is Michael Marmot did, i- is Australian, like I say, an Australian scientist, who made a real breakthrough in the 1970s. So I had noticed that loads of the people I know who are depressed and anxious, their depression and anxiety focuses around their work, right? Uh, I was like, well, am I, um, maybe people I know are unusual, so I looked at the science on this and the polling actually is really striking. So 13% of people like their work most of the time. 63% are what they, they called sleep working, you don't like it, you don't hate it, you sort of get through it. And, uh, I think it was 23% fucking hate their jobs, right? It's quite striking, right? That means you're almost twice as likely to hate your job as to love your job, and the vast majority of people are not enjoying the thing they're doing most of the time. So I started to think, "Well, could this bear some relationship to our depression and anxiety crisis?" And that's when I learned about and went to interview Professor Marmot. So he had basically discovered in the 1970s the single biggest factor that causes depression at work, not the only one but the biggest factor by a long way, is if you go to work tomorrow morning and you have low or no control over your work, right?

   2. CWChris Williamson35:26

      Mm-hmm.

   3. JHJohann Hari35:26

      So if you go in and you're like a robot on a mach- uh, on an assembly line, right? So you, you can't use your creativity, you can't use your intelligence, you can't ... you just got to do what you're told and you're told by your boss and that's why you have to do it. Um, and, and it's really interesting, I think, so ... and workplaces are now very controlled, you know, people are living under the tyranny of email. Um, and, and I think, um, I think it's one reason actually, this lack of control is one reason why slogans like "Take Back Control," the Brexit, um, slogan, which, uh, uh, resonates so deeply-

   4. CWChris Williamson36:01

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JHJohann Hari36:01

      People at a very deep level feel they don't have control over their lives. Now I ... leaving the European Union hasn't given anyone back any control over anything. I'm, as you can probably guess my m- my views about that, but whatever you think about that, I think it does help us to understand why these things resonate. And it's really interesting because there is a solution to that, right? A very simple solution, and it's a big change but it's in some ways simple. Uh, to understand it, I went to interview, um, a group of people in Baltimore. Uh, one of them is called Meredith Keogh. And Meredith was, when I met her, she was in her, uh, early thir- late 20s, early 30s.And Meredith used to go to bed every Sunday night just sick with anxiety, right? She had a kind of administrative job. It wasn't the worst job in the world, right? Sh- she would tell you she wasn't being bullied or anything, but she just... It was really boring and she couldn't bear the thought this was gonna be the next 30 years of her life. More than that, 50 years, whatever. Um, so one day with her, uh, her husband, Josh, and her friend, they did this really quite bold thing. Josh had worked in bike stores in Baltimore since he was like 15 and especially in the US, you know, low income jobs, you don't have healthcare, you don't even have guaranteed holiday time. You know, it's just really insecure.

   6. NANarrator37:12

      Ruthless. Yeah. Yeah.

   7. JHJohann Hari37:14

      Brutal. You can be fired at any moment. You've got no rights at work. And, um, one day Josh and his- the colleagues he worked with in this bike store said to themselves, "What does our boss actually do?" Right? They- their boss wasn't a asshole or anything, but they were like, "We seem to do all the work and he seems to make all the money," right? So they decided they were gonna, uh, do something bold. Uh, they set up a bike store of their own, but this bike store works on a different principle. So the place they'd worked before was like where most people watching this will work, a corporation, right? You've got a boss at the top and everyone has to pretty much do what he says or you leave. You know, you can rebel a little bit, but it's pretty limited. Um, that's actually a very recent human invention, and it goes back a little bit more than 100 years. They decided they were gonna build their bike shop around an older idea. So their bike shop is what's called a democratic cooperative. So they don't have a boss. Uh, they make decisions about the business together, have a meeting once every couple of weeks to vote if they don't agree, in practice they agree most of the time, they share all the proceeds, the money, according to how much they work, some do a little bit more work than others. Um, they, um, they share out the good tasks and the shitty tasks and no one gets stuck with the sh- all the shit tasks. And one thing that was so interesting, and this totally fits with Professor Marmot's research, spending time with them was how many of them talked about how they had been depressed and anxious in their previous job and were not depressed and anxious now. And it's not like they, you know, they- they quit their jobs fixing bikes and went off to become Beyonce's backing singers, right?

   8. NANarrator38:45

      Mm-hmm.

   9. JHJohann Hari38:45

      They fixed bikes before they fix bikes now. What was the difference? Now they had control over their work. Now that's still a capitalist economy. They compete in a capitalist economy. They had to have a good shop or it was shut down, right?

   10. NANarrator38:56

       Right.

   11. JHJohann Hari38:56

       But the- the- the u- the unit that's competing is a democratic cooperative where... And I was thinking about when I was spending time there and at other democratic cooperatives, and there's loads of them, I was thinking about how many people do I know who are depressed and anxious, who would feel quite differently if they knew that tomorrow they were going to work in a workplace where the boss was accountable to them as well as the other way around-

   12. NANarrator39:20

       Mm-hmm.

   13. JHJohann Hari39:21

       ... where they can control it, where if they can use their intelligence for their task, if something isn't working, they can persuade their colleagues, they can change how it works. It's actually more efficient as well. A study at Cornell University found that more democratic businesses do much better, because you're using the intelligence of all your workers, not just, you know, you're not deadening them all day.

   14. NANarrator39:40

       Mm-hmm.

   15. JHJohann Hari39:40

       So there's a lot of ways we can change the way we live. Partly that's individuals can do that, and partly I- I just- I just think we should get rid of corporations. I think everything should be a democratic... All businesses should be democratic cooperatives. They're more... It's more efficient, it's better for the economy, and it's much better for people's mental health. But, um, the... I think it helps us to see again when you reframe problems in this way based on the best science, again, you can see how that's saying to people who are depressed and anxious, it's not that there's something wrong with you, right? It's not that you're broken. It's that we- we fell into these ways of living that didn't work very well for us, that don't meet our needs, and we can change those things together, right? We don't have to go on in these way... It's about giving people, like you were saying before, Chris, giving people a sense of power and agency that we can change, change these things.

   16. NANarrator40:31

       Mm-hmm.

9. 40:31 – 49:20

   How big change becomes possible: hope, movements, and the ‘oil slick’ of depression

   1. JHJohann Hari40:31

      And some are small changes, some of them are big changes, but the changes that are possible are incredible. And one of the reasons I think I'm actually very optimistic about change is partly because I'm gay, right? And I'm 41 years old and I've seen the world... If you had ex- I didn't hear the phrase gay marriage till I was 21 years old, right? And- and when I heard it, I thought, "Well that's fucking never gonna happen," right?

   2. NANarrator40:57

      (laughs)

   3. JHJohann Hari40:57

      This is gay, and I- I- I... In the book, I tell a story about a really close friend of mine who, um, I think about all the time when I get into a mode where I think, "Oh, we can't change anything." And I've been thinking about him a lot in the last few weeks for reasons that will be obvious when I say it. So in 1994, my friend Andrew Sullivan was diagnosed as HIV positive at the height of the AIDS crisis. The last big plague, if you like. Uh, it's not totally the same, a lot of differences obviously, but some parallels.

   4. NANarrator41:24

      Mm-hmm.

   5. JHJohann Hari41:25

      And this was before there were protease inhibitors or anything. So this was a death sentence, right? His best friend Patrick had already died of AIDS. Gay people, intravenous drug users, all sorts of people were just dying all over the place. And Andrew decided he would do one last thing before he died. He went to a little place called Provincetown, and he wrote a book about a crazy utopian idea that no one had ever written a book advocating, right? And he thought, "Well, I'm never gonna live to see this obviously. No one alive today will live to see it, but maybe someone further down the line will pick up this idea." The idea he wrote the first book ever to advocate was gay marriage, right? And when I try to get... When I think, "Oh fuck, things are never gonna change-"

   6. NANarrator42:07

      Mm-hmm.

   7. JHJohann Hari42:07

      I try to imagine going back in time to 1994 and saying to Andrew, "Okay, Andrew, you're not gonna believe me. 26 years from now, you'll be alive. Step one, great news." Right?

   8. NANarrator42:19

      Elton- Elton John's married.

   9. JHJohann Hari42:21

      (laughs) Elton John's married. You'll be fucking married-

   10. NANarrator42:23

       (laughs)

   11. JHJohann Hari42:23

       ... um, the... To a man because that'll be legal. Uh, I'll be with you when the Supreme Court of the United States quotes this book you're writing now when it makes it mandatory for the entire United States to introduce gay marriage. And I'll be with you when you get an invitation...... uh, from the president of the United States, to go and have dinner with him the next night in a White House that will be lit up in the colors of the rainbow flag-

   12. CWChris Williamson42:48

       (laughs)

   13. JHJohann Hari42:48

       ... to celebrate what you and everyone has achieved. And by the way, that president is gonna be black, right?

   14. CWChris Williamson42:54

       Yeah.

   15. JHJohann Hari42:54

       Every aspect of that would have s- be like, "Okay, Chris."

   16. CWChris Williamson42:58

       Yeah.

   17. JHJohann Hari42:58

       "Uh, 25 years from now, a transgender prime minister-"

   18. CWChris Williamson43:01

       (laughs)

   19. JHJohann Hari43:01

       "... is gonna invite us to smoke crack in Downing Street-"

   20. CWChris Williamson43:03

       (laughs)

   21. JHJohann Hari43:04

       "... with her." You know? I mean, it would have seemed like we'd, not that we'd smoke crack-

   22. CWChris Williamson43:07

       Yeah, yeah, yeah.

   23. JHJohann Hari43:08

       ... but, uh, the, uh, the-

   24. CWChris Williamson43:09

       I know, be a good night out.

   25. JHJohann Hari43:10

       So, it would be fun. Uh, the, the, you know, incredible changes are possible-

   26. CWChris Williamson43:15

       Mm-hmm.

   27. JHJohann Hari43:15

       ... and I think, you know, particularly in a moment like this when we're all feeling pessimistic (laughs) for totally understandable reasons, we're in a terrible crisis, it's so important to stress to people that incredibly powerful positive changes are possible and we are all the beneficiaries of them. The idea of the weekend was a crazy radical idea when it was first proposed by ordinary working class people in the 19th century. Now, if anyone tried to take away the weekend, they'd be lynched, right?

   28. CWChris Williamson43:43

       Mm-hmm.

   29. JHJohann Hari43:43

       The, you know, um, i- my grandmothers were not allowed to have bank accounts in their own fucking names-

   30. CWChris Williamson43:49

       Mm.
10. 49:20 – 51:49

    Loneliness: meaning shared vs. people present (and why solitude differs)

    1. JHJohann Hari49:20

       That's really interesting. I'm just thinking about what you're saying. I think, I think there's lots of things in what you're saying. One thing, and I-I don't think it's the biggest thing, but I think one thing that relates to that, I think you have to see that in the context of this explosion in loneliness, right? So the- there, there's incredible studies on this. A, a study that asks Americans, "How many close friends do you have who you could turn to in a crisis?" And when they started doing it years ago, the most common answer was five. Today, the most common answer, not the average, but the most common answer is none. Right? Uh, 40% of Americans agree with the statement, "Nobody knows me well." And on those international league tables in Britain, we're just, we're just behind them. And I think there's a thing about... i- in a profoundly lonely society, all an individual has is the self, right? Or at least they begin to believe all they have is the self.

    2. CWChris Williamson50:16

       Mm-hmm.

    3. JHJohann Hari50:17

       And what that can do is begin to promote, uh... so it can promote, uh... and I'm not saying this is... I wanna be clear, the kind of things you're describing, like having a routine and so on, are extremely healthy ways of structuring anyone's life-

    4. CWChris Williamson50:31

       Yeah.

    5. JHJohann Hari50:31

       ... whether you're, you know, a lonely society or a profoundly socially-connected society. So I'm not talking about that, but I think it can produce a kind of, um, self-centeredness because the self is all you have, and I remember speaking, um... I spent a lot of time interviewing this incredible man named, um, Professor John Cacioppo, who was the leading expert in the world on loneliness. And, uh, he sadly died recently, but he... I remember him saying to me, you know, um, "Why do we exist? Why are we here," right? Um, one key reason is that our ancestors on the savannas of Africa were really good at one thing. They weren't bigger than the animals they took down a lot of the time. They weren't faster than the animals they took down a lot of the time, but they were much better at banding together into groups and cooperating. So just like bees evolved to live in a hive, humans evolved to live in a tribe. And we are the first humans ever to disband our tribes. And if you think about the circumstances where we evolved, if the human... if an individual was separated from the tribe, they'd be depressed and anxious for a really fucking good reason. "You're about to die," right? "You're in terrible danger. If you get injured, no one will be there to heal you, uh, if you... you, you can't hunt." Um, the, the-

    6. CWChris Williamson51:43

       How... I want to interject there, Johan-

    7. JHJohann Hari51:44

       Sure, sure.

    8. CWChris Williamson51:44

       ... because I've heard you tell this, I've heard you tell this story a number of times.

    9. JHJohann Hari51:47

       Yeah.

    10. CWChris Williamson51:47

        And I've always wanted to jump out-

    11. JHJohann Hari51:49

        Sure, sure. Please.

11. 51:49 – 58:57

    Is depression adaptive? Submission response, hierarchy stress, and ‘bed-bound’ shutdown

    1. CWChris Williamson51:49

       ... into the conversation and, and do exactly what I'm gonna do right now. Um, how is depression adaptive or fitness-enhancing?

    2. JHJohann Hari51:59

       So, um, it's a slightly technical way of putting it, but Professor Cacioppo said to me, "Depression and anxiety are necessary aversive signals to get back to the tribe," right?

    3. CWChris Williamson52:10

       Okay. So I, I-

    4. JHJohann Hari52:11

       So if you think about-

    5. CWChris Williamson52:12

       ... I get that. I get that you have this yearning-

    6. JHJohann Hari52:14

       Partly.

    7. CWChris Williamson52:14

       ... you have this, yeah, you have this yearning to be around other people, um, which is what people feel as loneliness, right? It's like a hunger for, for company, you know? That's how I would describe it. What I don't understand is why does depression make you bed-bound? Why does depression make you not want to get up and do things and move?

    8. JHJohann Hari52:34

       (laughs)

    9. CWChris Williamson52:34

       That's what I don't understand.

    10. JHJohann Hari52:37

        So I think there's a few possible explanations for that. There's a guy I interviewed called Professor Robert Sapolsky, who's at Stanford University, wh- and a guy called, uh, Paul Gilbert, who's also got interesting theories about this. So, uh, Professor Sapolsky did this interesting work a long time ago with, um, primates, with, um, baboons and it turns out, uh... so he was living with them on the savannas of Africa. And baboons, it turns out, male baboons live in a really strict hierarchy.

    11. CWChris Williamson53:05

        Mm-hmm.

    12. JHJohann Hari53:05

        So if there's 40 of them, number three knows he's above number four, number seven knows he's above number eight. And, uh, so, uh, you know, there's, um, uh, y- a very strict hierarchy and where you are in the hierarchy determines things like what you get to eat, what women you get to fuck, um, w- how, whether you get to sit in the shade. It's a really big deal, right? And what he noticed, Professor Sapolsky... other people have written about this as well, is, um, it's only the baboons... and so the baboons at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and it moves around, you're n- you don't, you're not born into the hierarchy. You can... it can shift. The baboons at the bottom of the hierarchy often will behave in a particular way. They will... because basically everyone can beat the shit out of them, right? I- very rarely does everyone gang up and beat up number one. It happens sometimes j- when they drive them out, but mostly if number four is having a bad day, he'll go and beat up the person at the bottom of the, the troop. Number seven is having a bad day, he'll go and beat up the same person. So the person at the bot- the baboon at the bottom is absorbing a load of shit all the time. And one of the things they'll do is they will cover their heads, they'll put their, their butt in the air, and they'll just stop moving, and they'll stop eating, and they'll just stay there. And this is called a submission response, right? And it's basically the baboon going, "All right, you cunts, you beat me." Right? "Just leave me alone. You've beaten me. I'm defeated. I just want to be left alone now." Right? And Paul Gilbert and some other scientists have argued that one of the things depression is, and again, it's... we're moving around because there are-

    13. CWChris Williamson54:38

        Mm-hmm.

    14. JHJohann Hari54:38

        ... lots of things depression is, and it's... we don't want to give a simplistic story. There are many causes, but one of the things depression could be seen as is a submission response, right? It's going...... I'm fucking, uh, had taken enough of the humiliation, I've taken enough of the stress. Please leave me alone, I cannot go on anymore. And I think that's quite a plausible explanation when you speak to, if I think about people I've known who were depressed.

    15. CWChris Williamson55:02

        Is there an element-

    16. JHJohann Hari55:03

        Not for everyone.

    17. CWChris Williamson55:03

        Is there an element, do you think, perhaps of being away from the tribe would mean caloric intake is likely to be down? That you're probably gonna have f- less food, less resources? Is that a reason perhaps to be more sedate, to be more, um, still so that you don't expend that? That's something I've been thinking about.

    18. JHJohann Hari55:26

        That's interesting. I would want to ask people who are much more, who are, who are sci- who are scientists on that, but I think my instinct is because it kicks in so quickly, even really s- very small doses of loneliness.

    19. CWChris Williamson55:36

        Yes, yes.

    20. JHJohann Hari55:37

        Um, so, uh, before you would have had a deprivation of calories, make people feel absolutely terrible.

    21. CWChris Williamson55:42

        Yeah.

    22. JHJohann Hari55:42

        But then I, I don't ... But there's an interesting fact about loneliness I've been thinking about, actually. Something, something Professor Cacioppo told me that I didn't clock that much at the time and I've been thinking about it a lot in relation to this period of quarantine. So remember, when Professor Cacioppo started studying loneliness, obviously to study something you have to define what it is, right? And at first you think, well that'll be really easy. Everyone knows what loneliness is. If you say to someone, "Are you lonely?" no one struggles to understand the concept, right? But it turned out to be quite hard to, to define because most people instinctively think, well, loneliness is being alone, right? But it turned out people describing themselves as lonely didn't bear that much relationship to how many people they saw every day. I mean, and I thought it was weird at first, but then Professor Cacioppo said, "Well, okay, imagine the first time you go to a new city." Let's say you've never been to New York and you go to Times Square for the first time. You're not alone, right? You're surrounded by people, but you feel lonely, right? So he was trying to figure out what is it that makes people lonely. If it's not interacting with other people, what is it? And he discovered loneliness isn't about the number of people you interact with. Loneliness is about how much meaning you share with other people. And one of the ways he helped me to understand this was to say, you know, we've all had the experience when a relationship breaks down when the other person is still around but you feel really lonely, right?

    23. CWChris Williamson57:04

        Mm-hmm.

    24. JHJohann Hari57:04

        So you're not alone. They're there, but you feel like shit and you feel lonely. Why is that? It's because the sense of meaning between you is gone, right? So loneliness is not about, uh, uh, purely about how many people you interact with. Loneliness is about how many people you share something meaningful with, right?

    25. CWChris Williamson57:21

        Mm-hmm.

    26. JHJohann Hari57:21

        It's wh-

    27. CWChris Williamson57:21

        I've got a, I've, I've got an interesting point there to do with solitude-

    28. JHJohann Hari57:24

        Mm.

    29. CWChris Williamson57:24

        ... as well and this comes from Cal Newport's book, Deep Work.

    30. JHJohann Hari57:27

        Oh, I love him, yeah.
12. 58:57 – 1:24:46

    Movement, nature, and awe: captivity analogies, exercise, and psychedelic parallels

    1. JHJohann Hari58:57

       You should totally, you should, Chris, you should totally have on the podcast my friend Isabelle Behncke who's a incredible Chilean primatologist and is the most glamorous person I know. Every time I email her and I'm like, "Isabelle, where are you?" She's like, "I'm in the Congolese rainforest trying to-" (laughs)

    2. CWChris Williamson59:10

       Oh my God. Is that glamorous? That's cool. I don't know whether it's glamorous.

    3. JHJohann Hari59:14

       She's, she's, she's so gorgeous that even I almost have to-

    4. CWChris Williamson59:16

       Is she single? Is she single yet?

    5. JHJohann Hari59:18

       (laughs) I will put you in touch with her. She might well be.

    6. CWChris Williamson59:20

       This is the only reason I'm here. Uh, this is just a glor-

    7. JHJohann Hari59:22

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson59:22

       ... a glorified groundwork session. Thank you.

    9. JHJohann Hari59:24

       It's like a very high-brow blind date, right?

    10. CWChris Williamson59:27

        I love it.

    11. JHJohann Hari59:27

        But the ... Exactly. I'll, um, I'll take on Cilla Black role in this. But, but, but as, because Isabelle talks a lot about, uh, a d- she did this really interesting work. She worked with, um, female bonobos, or bonobos. She worked with bonobos. Uh, initially she studied bonobos initially in Whipsnade Zoo and, uh, (laughs) she's very interesting on this because I didn't know this. One of the ways that bonobos live is they engage in massive amounts of lesbian group sex as a constant ongoing-

    12. CWChris Williamson59:58

        Hugely sexual creatures, yeah, yeah, yeah.

    13. JHJohann Hari1:00:00

        A fact. And she, she was the first person to document that, um, bonobos will work really hard to make dildos. And she was in, obviously in a, a British zoo, so if you give them like a bucket, they will break off the handle and just start going at it, uh, uh, like it's a dildo.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:00:16

        Yep.

    15. JHJohann Hari1:00:17

        Um, and she thought it was hilarious because she's from Chile which is a much more free and open place when it comes to sexual things, and she thought it was just hilarious watching all these British people with their kids trying to explain to them-

    16. CWChris Williamson1:00:28

        No, darling. Darling, look away.

    17. JHJohann Hari1:00:29

        ... "That's-" (laughs) Exactly, but-

    18. CWChris Williamson1:00:30

        Little, little Johnny asking mommy, "What's that?"

    19. JHJohann Hari1:00:33

        But, you know, it's this really fascinating thing which is ... So she worked with bonobos in Whipsnade Zoo and then she worked with bonobos in their natural habitat in the Congo. It was just at the end of the war in the Congo which I'd actually covered as well. And Isabelle, uh, was out there. She was living with this, this bonobo troop for years and she noticed something which hadn't been documented until her which is in-... uh, captivity, bonobos will often develop symptoms that look a lot like human depression. A bit like the submission response. You know, they just sit, they rock back and forward, they won't join the group, they look like, they f- they, you know, they stop grooming themselves, they go to shit, right? And she noticed this never happens in the wild. And she, she argued ... And there's a huge amount of evidence that animals in captivity, um, start behaving in ways that look like obsessive-compulsive disorder or, or mental illness, right? Parrots will rip out their feathers, elephants will grind their tusks down. You know, which are a source of great pride in the wild, down to, like, bloody stumps. Um, horses will start obsessively swaying. There's all sorts of things. And Isabelle argues a big part of this is just physical movement, right? We've become a society that does not move.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:01:44

        Mm-hmm.

    21. JHJohann Hari1:01:45

        Um, if you think about the- the actual n- amount of movement we do, we are the humans who move least who have ever lived, right? And a- and she argues, uh, I think the way she put it to me, it's in the book, is sort of, "An animal that is not moving through its natural habitat cannot be a healthy animal physically or mentally." I think that's totally right. But I just wanted to go back to something you were saying before, I, 'cause I forgot to pick up on this. I think, 'cause one of the things that, about Love Island I'm, I'm really interested in. I, I actually love reality TV but I was away from Britain when Love Island came out, so I- I- I-

    22. CWChris Williamson1:02:15

        Good for you, it's fine.

    23. JHJohann Hari1:02:16

        If you did me, uh, if you gave me a, uh, a, a ... If you d- gave me a, um, what do you call it? A Trivial Pursuit que- series of questions-

    24. CWChris Williamson1:02:25

        You'd be shit, yeah.

    25. JHJohann Hari1:02:25

        ... about-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:02:25

        It's fine.

    27. JHJohann Hari1:02:25

        ... about Big Brother in the, in the early 2000s-

    28. CWChris Williamson1:02:29

        Got you.

    29. JHJohann Hari1:02:30

        ... I could do a lot there. But, um, but what I'm interested in about Love Island is, Love Island, the, the people who from Love Island who've contacted me and people on other reality shows, led me to think there's this thing about ... I think it reveals something about the game. I mean, the game of our society and culture, not narrowly the game of Love Island. That the people who are winning the game feel like shit, right? That tells you something about the game. It's a bit like when you meet billionaires, right? I've now, in my life, met quite a lot of billionaires and I've almost never met a billionaire who wasn't unbelievably unhappy, right? Like, achingly unhappy. And, um, I've met t- two that I would say were not unhappy and all the rest were, right? And I think there's something about ... Because it's, um, b- because it's a game that's a quest to be valued, uh-

    30. CWChris Williamson1:03:25

        Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 1:49:08