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Flukes, Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters with Brian Klaas · The Smart Cookies podcast

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Brian Klaas is an associate professor in global politics at University College London and
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a contributing writer for the Atlantic magazine.
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He's also the author of Corruptible, Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us and the very latest
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Fluke, Chance, Chaos and Why Everything We Do Matters, which is being released, I believe,
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January 23rd, in which I had the pleasure of reading over the past couple of days.
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Brian, welcome.
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Thanks for having me on the show.
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I'll say this about the book.
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It's extremely rare to read something that manages to shake the ground on which you're
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standing to make you feel that the way you see the world is being challenged.
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It's almost like a little slap across the face or something.
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I got to be honest, at times it can make for a discomforting read a little bit.
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I remember going like, no way or stop it, you know, physically arguing with the book,
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like as if it was a person standing there challenging me with very provocative ideas.
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And that's probably the ultimate compliment a nonfiction book can receive because it's
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so rare.
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I remember I had a similar reaction when I was reading Being You by the famous consciousness
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researcher Anil Seth, who I was also lucky enough to host on the show.
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I know I'm going to remember the feeling of reading it three years from now.
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It was the same with Fluke.
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It did the same thing to me.
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Anyway, I just wanted to share my very impression.
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That is exceptionally kind of praise.
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And that's exactly what I was hoping would happen when I wrote this.
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Basically I started writing the book because I thought there's a lot of stuff about the
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conventional worldview that is wrong, which is an incredibly arrogant and ambitious thing
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to think that you can write a book that challenges how people think about themselves and how
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the world works.
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But lo and behold, that's what I've tried to do.
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So I appreciate your kind reaction to it.
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It's very nice of you to say.
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Are you ready for the reaction of some people who are probably going to get a tiny bit upset?
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Yeah.
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I mean, I wrote the book in a way where I hope that I'm respectful of other people's
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ideas because one of the things that a major theme in Fluke, as you know, is uncertainty.
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There's lots of stuff we don't know.
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So to write a book about uncertainty with extreme certainty about how the world works
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is a mistake.
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And so I was trying to say, there's bits where, for example, I'm not religious.
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I don't believe in God.
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But when I talk about religion in the book, I say, look, there's lots of people who do
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believe in this.
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And so this is not part of the terrain of the book.
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So I'm going to leave it to the side rather than sort of being critical of people who
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have different viewpoints on religion and faith and so on.
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So that was the kind of thing where I've gotten some early feedback from people who've had
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advanced copies and so on.
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And one person said something very nice, which said, I am religious.
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And I thought that this book engaged with these ideas in a very respectful way.
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So I'm also going to piss off a lot of social scientists because there's a book, there's
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a chapter, as you know, that's called The Emperor's New Equations, which is deliberately
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provocative about some of the flaws of social research.
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And so I don't think I'm going to be a hit at many political science conferences in the
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future.
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But such is the way of writing a book like this is you want to challenge people.
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And if you don't, then you're just sort of confirming people's existing beliefs.
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And they've wasted however many hours reading what you wrote.
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And so the rights for conferences are going to get rescinded at the last minute.
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All right.
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So the central premise of the book is this.
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The storybook version of the ordered world we tell ourselves we live in is wrong.
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The world we actually inhabit, our societies and we ourselves are much more the result
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of and governed by chaos, chance events and complete randomness.
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In short, by flukes.
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Would that be accurate?
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Yeah, exactly.
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And I think the reason why that is, is because the world is extremely interconnected.
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So the sort of storybook reality worldview that you describe is not just that the world
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is extremely ordered and progresses according to sort of logical choices and decisions that
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people make, but also that we're in control of it.
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So in addition to the arbitrary and the accidental playing a much bigger role, the sort of underlying
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reason for that is because every action that we take has ramifications that are often invisible
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to us, but that affect the lives of others and the trajectories of our society.
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So that's the sort of idea where you always look for this neat story, which our brains,
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I mean, Anil Seth's work would touch on this as well, but like where our brains are pattern
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processing machines, basically.
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And so we find ordered, rational, reasonable explanations for things when in fact there's
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a lot of messiness in the rest of the world.
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And this is where I take issue with what some people, very often there's a whole realm of
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thought that says separate the signal from the noise.
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And I hate that phrase because it suggests that the noise is unimportant.
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And what Fluke is trying to say is like actually a lot of stuff that we care about happens
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in the noise, the unexpected, the chance, the contingent and so on.
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If we take a step back and clear something basic first, what do you mean by a fluke?
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Great question.
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So what I'm talking about are sort of things that are unexpected, driven by apparent randomness
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and that create contingency.
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Now I'm going to explain that last word contingency because honestly, if I could title the book
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anything without regard for sales or whether someone would pick it up, I would have probably
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called it either contingency or why things happen, right?
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Which is neither of those titles is going to be as exciting as Fluke.
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So the publisher wins out on that one.
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But contingency is basically, it's imagining like a fork in the road.
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Now we think about these things as forks in our lives, for example, where we make deliberate
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choices.
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The point I'm making is that the path we're on is forking constantly.
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And so we're constantly in contingent moments where turning left rather than right is changing
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your life, even though you're unaware of what the alternative could have been.
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And that's true for society as well.
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Now the easiest way to explain contingency is with the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs,
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right?
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I put it in the first chapter of the book because it's a very obvious example of this
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where if the asteroid had been delayed somehow by some unseen force, by like three seconds,
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it would have missed Earth and dinosaurs wouldn't have probably died out.
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Mammals probably wouldn't have risen in the same way and humans wouldn't exist.
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So all of our existence, all human history, is derived from this little accident in the
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cosmos.
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And if it hadn't happened, we wouldn't be here.
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So that's contingency.
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And the idea is that it's constant, right?
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This is something that's constantly happening.
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So a fluke is something where you get to this contingent moment and something arbitrary
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happens and it diverts your trajectory basically.
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And what's convergence?
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If we're sticking to big words for a moment.
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Yes, indeed.
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And this is the kind of stuff where you're beholden to the terminology a little bit.
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But contingency and convergence, I think, are really useful ways of thinking about life.
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And I stole these terms from evolutionary biology and then tried to apply them to humans.
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So contingency is the dinosaurs, as I say.
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Convergence is the opposite, right?
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It's the order progression of things.
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And the example I use in the book is an astonishing one, which is if you took the eye of an octopus
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and you took the eye of a human and you looked at both of them, they're actually extremely
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alike, which is bizarre because there's been about 400 plus million years of evolutionary
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divergence between those two branches of the species tree, right?
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We're on totally different tracks.
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We're very unrelated to them.
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And yet we have basically the same eye.
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And the reason for that is because there is order produced by the fact that there's pressures
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on things that work, right?
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And when things work, they survive.
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So the eye is very, very effective at providing a way to navigate the world.
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So it's evolved twice in these two very different lineages.
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And the same is true of flight, which has evolved four different times and so on.
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So convergence, if you apply it to humans, is to say, OK, let's imagine you hit your
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snooze button on Tuesday morning.
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If your life unfolds basically the same way, then that would be a convergent event.
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If your life is radically changed by the snooze button, then that would be a contingent event
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because everything hinged on that one choice.
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So what I'm trying to do is take this sort of world of evolutionary biology in that sense
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and say, how would we think about this in human society and in individual life stories?
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And I think it's actually a very useful framework that all of us understand when we think about
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our own lives.
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But when we apply it to how did our societies become democracies, for example, all of us
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all of it goes out the window and we just tell a very neat and tidy, cleaned up story
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where the contingency is written out.
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In the book, you keep emphasizing and you reference that at the beginning of our conversation
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as well.
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The fact that we live in a mind bogglingly interconnected world.
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Every little thing we do, the way we do it, every thought that enters our minds will have
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an effect on the world, even if we can't see it, like you just said, and in turn on other
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people as well.
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Yet we have constructed a society with an exactly opposite idea.
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We are individuals who can supposedly, the story goes with enough hard work and talent,
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achieve everything we possibly set our minds on.
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And we can do all of that pretty much alone.
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The idea of the self-made man or self-made woman is the engine that drives our society.
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Why?
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Yeah, it's a great question.
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So this is where I was really struggling when I was thinking about these ideas, because
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I was thinking this is so at odds with what most people think about the way the world
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works.
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We're sold in Western modernity, and this is very unique to Western modernity, this
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idea of sort of control and individualism.
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So a lot of self-help books, for example, if you take any self-help book off the shelf,
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it basically tells you that it's your fault that you're unhappy or poor.
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Because they don't put it in those terms, right?
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But that's the implication when they say, if only you did these things, you would be
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rich and happy.
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It's like, okay, well, then why doesn't everyone do those things?
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Because obviously, if it worked 100% of the time, then we'd all be rich and happy.
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Of course, that doesn't work.
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And I think it's because people want to have a solution to their problems that puts them
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fully in control.
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Now, I don't believe that we're totally out of control, right?
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I use this phrase, and it's something that comes from the complexity science literature,
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but where you say, we control nothing, but we influence everything.
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And I think it's a much more useful way of thinking about your life.
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It doesn't mean you should stop striving, that you don't have control.
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It means that, and I think this is a beautiful truth, is that everything you do is important
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in some way.
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And the last third of the subtitle is why everything we do matters.
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And I struggled with deciding on that term because I was like, oh, people are going to
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think this is some flippant or cute phrase.
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I mean it quite literally.
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I mean it exactly as what it says.
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I do not think there's anything, any word, any action we do that has no effect.
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And that's because I think the world is so interconnected and our brains are so constantly
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changing from how we interact with the world that saying one word rather than another changes
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us or turning left rather than right out of a shop means that you'll meet different
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people in the rest of your life potentially because you'll bump into someone and that
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person will be affected.
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There's this endless interplay that we're totally blind to because we can't see the
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alternative path.
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And so when you start thinking that way, it becomes really obvious that the sort of myth
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of control and self-determination that is part of the individualist Western worldview
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is just like as a factual matter, incorrect.
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And the way I put this in the opening chapter of the book, you've read this, but it's
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the way I explain it to people that I think is actually quite intuitive is everybody I
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talk to accepts on its face the idea that if you travel back in time and tweak some
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small detail about the past, 10,000 years ago or something like that, that you might
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accidentally delete yourself from the future.
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And the problem is that historical causality operates the same way whether it's past, present,
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or future.
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So if that's true about the past, it's definitely true about the present.
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And that means that every single thing that we do in the present is shaping our future.
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So I think one of the two things has to give, right?
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Either the idea about how time travel operates is wrong, which I don't believe, but that
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could be one possibility, or the logic is correct.
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And that means that every action we take in our daily lives actually has unforeseen consequences
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that may affect our futures and the lives of other people around us.
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Let's talk about the related idea of what you call the myth of a secret genius.
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In our achievement society, capitalist world, we automatically assume that the richest people,
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folks like Elon Musk, are a bunch of secret geniuses, and as such, they deserve all their
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wealth and the power it brings them.
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Even more, it usually makes them impervious to any criticism.
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For example, if we stick with Elon Musk, because he's in the news yet again, he keeps coming
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out with these insanely dumb statements that are actively hurting his endeavors, as all
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advertisers are now running away from X or Twitter.
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And yet a lot of people are still convinced that he's just playing some sort of 4D chess
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and that we regular idiots just don't understand his grand strategy.
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However, as you're showing the book again, we have it a bit backwards.
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Could you break down the almost mathematical fact that the richest people are not necessarily
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the most gifted ones?
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Yeah, so I think there's a few things, some of which I didn't go into the book that I'll
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mention when it's talking about whether someone deserves their success.
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The first point is a relatively obvious one, which is I think about any successes I've
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had in life, and I didn't get to choose my brain, I didn't get to choose my parents,
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I didn't get to choose where I was born or my upbringing, all those things, which are
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huge factors.
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I mean, some of the largest factors in people's success are totally unchosen.
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So yeah, okay, I worked hard, but why did I work hard?
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Well, I don't know.
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It wasn't like I made a conscious decision as a seven-year-old to be good at school.
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So the way we talk about success, I think, is already backwards in the first place.
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The second thing, the myth of the secret genius idea, it draws from some research that I think
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is really important, that was a collaboration of physicists and economists, complex systems
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researchers along with an economist.
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And what they were basically looking at was like, let's just make a fake world where we
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have a few crude variables, but we also are trying to chart what creates wealth.
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But in our world, we're going to assume that every so often there's an intervention that
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randomly helps or hurts someone, and they're going to call it luck or misfortune.
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And the idea, of course, is that luck by its very nature is random.
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So it's going to strike like lightning every so often.
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Now, the insight they have, which once you hear it is really obvious, but we never really
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discuss this as a society, is they say, look, if you've got 8 billion people in the world,
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there's going to be a sort of standard distribution of talent.
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In other words, there's going to be some extremely talented people, but that's going to be a
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small number.
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There's going to be some extremely untalented people, again, a relatively small number.
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And most of us are going to be clustered closer to the middle, like a bell curve, right?
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And this is true.
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I mean, when you chart abilities among humans, this is definitely true.
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Now, wealth is not normally distributed, right?
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So if you think about height, for example, you're going to have people who are clustered
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around a certain set of heights.
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I mean, most people in the world are between, I don't know, 4'10 and 6'5 or something like
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that.
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And beyond that, you're talking about some relatively small percentages.
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And so with wealth, it's different.
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You have a lot of people who are poor, right?
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I mean, the average person is living on a substantially lower salary than those who live
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in the rich West.
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And then you have people like Elon Musk who have over $100 billion.
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I mean, I don't know what his now worth is now after he destroyed Twitter, but it's less
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than it was.
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Anyway, the point is that what they find in this simulation is that lightning, that luck
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aspect is going to strike most often in the middle of the bell curve, which makes complete
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sense because the most people are there.
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So it's really rare for luck to hit the extremely talented.
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It's also really rare for luck to hit the extremely untalented.
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It mostly hits the people who are near the middle.
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So what they find is that as the luck hits those people, they actually get very rich.
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And so what this suggests is that, yes, talent plays a role, but actually luck plays a much
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bigger role for getting to the extremes.
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So there is a correlation between talent and success in some societies.
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But if you want to be super rich, you have to be both a little bit talented, but mostly
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you have to be really lucky.
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And this is something where we make the mistake because we only see the rich people and say,
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oh, wow, they must have deserved it.
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What we don't see are the extremely talented people who didn't hit success because they
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were unlucky.
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And we also don't see a lot of the people who are at the same level of talent as someone
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like Elon Musk and just never got lucky.
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And I think that's the point that is really important for societies to internalize because
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this myth making around uber wealthy people is so counterproductive in suggesting that
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he's just better than us, which is just false basically.
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And I think that the Twitter debacle has showed that because he has not run that company successfully.
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What about hard work?
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Yeah.
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Hard work obviously matters.
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I think going back to the first point I made, whether someone works hard or not, I don't
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think is totally a unconstrained choice that they have that just, you know, oh, some people
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choose it and some people don't.
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I think there's some factors that influence it.
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But I also think that, yes, I mean, obviously perseverance and striving are good things.
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So in the book, I talk about whether there's free will and so on.
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And that's a question about causality, what causes behavior.
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But whatever causes behavior, I think that humans are striving beings and we should want
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to better ourselves.
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We should want to improve ourselves and so on.
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So working hard, obviously, all things being equal is a good idea.
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I mean, of course, you can't always hold everything constant and say all things are equal.
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But as a principle, yes, I mean, I think hard work is correlated with success to a certain
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degree.
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That being said, there are some things where this myth making around self help, it's like,
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okay, if I was born in...
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One of the countries I do a lot of research in is Madagascar.
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And if I was born in Madagascar, my life chances would just...
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No matter how hard I worked, my life chances would be substantially lower because there's
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just a large number of barriers that no matter how talented or hardworking I was, the odds
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that I would have a successful life are just lower.
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Right?
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I mean, only 40% of the island has electricity, the average person's living on less than $2
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a day.
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It's hard to become successful in that society.
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And so I think that's one of those things where we need to simultaneously say that hard
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work is a value to be promoted because good for society, but also that we overplay the
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degree to which people deserve success.
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And the corollary of that, which I think is very comforting, is we also overplay the degree
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to which people deserve blame for not succeeding.
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And I think a lot of us could let ourselves off the hook a little bit more and understand
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that our lives are partly directed by our actions, but partly they're not.
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And partly we can't control that.
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And so this sort of culture in which individualism and self-help ideas reign supreme creates
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a lot of misery that I think is unnecessary because people internalize setbacks and failures
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as though it's exclusively their fault.
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It's not true.
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Yeah.
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I asked about hard work because I don't know how much time you spend on the internet.
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I hope you spend less time than I do there because there's this soul-sucking, pervasive,
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hustle culture thing going on which tells you that you need to squeeze every last ounce
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of sweat out of your body, constantly striving to achieve more.
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And if you do, you're going to get rich and successful.
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And it seems that it's quite successful and it terrifies me.
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Yeah.
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I mean, this is some of the philosophy in the book.
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I mean, one of the things that was fun about writing this book was that I didn't know exactly
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what it was going to take me.
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And I start by thinking about ideas from evolutionary biology and chaos theory and some of my own
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social research.
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And all of a sudden I end up with philosophy because it starts to sort of challenge some
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of the questions and basic assumptions that we have about why our lives are meaningful
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and so on.
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And this is one of the areas where I think...
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I look around and I'm guilty of this myself, where I look at February of 2020.
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And I have a huge number of checklists on my laptop.
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It's like my to-do list of February 2020 and then I have another one two weeks later and
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so on.
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And it's sort of constantly being updated.
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And every day is just this check...
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What I call a checklist existence.
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And a lot of it's for these sort of arbitrary metrics about what we deem as successful.
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And I think one of the things that starts to be internalized when you think about the
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way that I think the world actually works, which is swayed by a lot of these contingent
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chance chaotic events, is you start to think a little bit less about the importance of
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our lives in terms of these metrics that were sold as the sort of virtues of a good life.
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And it was a fun...
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I don't write about this personally in the book, but from a personal perspective, it
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was a really interesting thing writing this because I started living differently as I
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researched and wrote things that changed my worldview, where a lot of the writing that
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I did was after I walked my dog and I would go out into nature and I would just jettison
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that online culture and just be in the moment and think about things and reflect on things
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and then come home and write.
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And I realized that that made me way happier.
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So I stopped doing a lot of stuff that made me less happy and I started spending a lot
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more time walking my dog.
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And I have no idea how much this will hurt me professionally or financially or whatever,
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but I'm happier.
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And so I think it was one of those...
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This has never happened to me in writing a book before.
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All my other books, I was sort of broadcasting what I thought to be true in written form.
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And in Fluke, I was learning how I thought about the world in a totally different way
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as I was writing it and then adjusting my lifestyle accordingly, which was super interesting
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and is why it's the most fun thing I've ever worked on and the most rewarding thing I've
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ever worked on in my life.
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How do we make sure that it lasts because I also have those moments sometimes and it's
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quite clear that I'm happier as well when I'm not spending all of my time scrolling endlessly
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through YouTube shorts and TikToks and stuff like this.
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But then it sucks me right back in.
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I'm sorry that I'm pursuing this self-help sort of line of questioning, but I'm genuinely
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curious how to make it stick.
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If you know we're happier, but we keep going back.
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Yeah, and I don't have all the answers.
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I still spend way too much time on my phone and so on and way too much time on social
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media.
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So I haven't cracked the case completely.
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What I would say though is that it's just...
23:59
What I hope happens...
24:00
This is when I was writing this, I was hoping that people would just think more reflectively
24:04
about these things.
24:07
If they agree with me on some of the aspects about the worldview stuff, it starts to become
24:12
immediately apparent how illogical it is to live this sort of checklist existence and
24:17
also the passivity that comes with doom scrolling through things on the internet.
24:23
Because I think we've just sort of lost sight of some of the things that make us human.
24:28
And one of those things is just being present in the moment, interacting with people around
24:32
you and enjoying life.
24:35
And I think this is the stuff where I worried and I was very careful in how I tried to write
24:39
this.
24:40
Some people will read Fluke and feel nihilistic, I think, because they'll misinterpret what
24:46
I'm saying, I think, as nothing matters, right?
24:49
Because we're not in control and all these cosmic flukes and so on that we can't bend
24:54
to our whims are diverting our trajectories all the time, et cetera.
24:58
I think the exact opposite of that, which is that when you think about the world this
25:02
way, every moment that you have is affecting the future, not just of your life, but also
25:08
quite literally the future of which people get born and how other people live their life
25:12
and so on.
25:14
And that creates a mentality where it's very much live in the moment, enjoy the moments
25:18
you have.
25:19
And I think the other thing that's quite obvious, cliche advice, but it's just sort of like,
25:23
I think about the things that I'm going to care about when I'm on my deathbed, whenever
25:26
that will be.
25:28
It's not going to be a lot of objects.
25:30
So this is at odds with basically the way that society is set up.
25:34
I mean, society is set up with dopamine hits on the internet, which are basically addictive
25:38
and they cause you to keep coming back, as you say.
25:41
But it's also set up to tell you that the way to live a successful life is to be rich
25:45
and to buy things.
25:47
And so I think there's some of these things which are, when you think about the idea,
25:51
there's some ideas in the book about evolutionary psychology and so on.
25:54
And evolutionary psychology is talking about how our minds basically were shaped for a
26:00
very, very different world from the one we now inhabit.
26:04
And I think one of the lessons of that is, let's try to live 10 or 15% more like our
26:11
primitive ancestors, which means going out in nature, spending time with people, not
26:16
constantly checking our watches to try to figure out what the next scheduling commitment
26:19
is.
26:20
And so I mean, some of these things are impossible to avoid completely.
26:22
Obviously, you have to live in the real world.
26:25
We can't all be hermits in a sort of commune or whatever.
26:28
But I do think there is some degree of self-reflection that can be used to overcome.
26:38
Every time you write a book, you hope people send you certain kinds of emails.
26:40
One of the emails that I hope people send me after reading this book is exactly what
26:44
you said at the opening of the show, that it made them think about their lives differently
26:47
and they therefore are living a happier existence.
26:49
And that's going to be totally different from how I will adapt to these ideas.
26:54
But I hope that everyone internalizes a challenge to their worldview in a slightly different
26:58
way that makes them live a more deliberate and enjoyable life.
27:03
Speaking of evolutionary psychology, one of the most jarring chapters in your book for
27:08
me is the one where you explain why by design we are creatures who constantly look for patterns
27:14
and who can't really make sense of things unless they relate to us in the version of
27:20
a story.
27:21
How can we ever get over this need for a narrative every time we look at the world if we are
27:28
built this way, essentially?
27:30
Well, the short answer is we can't.
27:32
Yeah, that's what I thought.
27:34
Okay, that's done.
27:35
This is a footnoted fluke where I say, look, I'm going to tell you all this stuff about
27:38
how narrative bias exists and how our minds travel.
27:41
And then you give us a bunch of stories.
27:43
Yeah.
27:44
But I have to, right?
27:45
Because the only way to convey meaning.
27:46
There's no way to do it.
27:47
I don't think it's bad either.
27:48
I mean, I think there's an importance in acknowledging this, right?
27:53
So the reason I bring this in is because I say the reason why we don't appreciate or
27:59
acknowledge the randomness that does divert our lives and the chance and contingent events
28:04
that shape our existence and our societies is precisely because the processing units
28:09
we have to explore the worlds have evolved to write out the noise and focus on the pattern.
28:15
And the reason for that, I mean, it's very simple to understand, right?
28:17
So if you hear a bit of rustling in the grasses in prehistoric earth as early humans, and
28:25
you think, oh, that used to correlate in the past with a saber-toothed tiger being in the
28:31
grass, then that pattern of cause and effect saves your life because you know to avoid
28:36
something.
28:37
Now, it's not very costly if the rustling in the grass turns out to be nothing.
28:41
It's very costly if you dismiss the rustling in the grass and it turns out to be a saber-toothed
28:45
tiger, right?
28:46
So through survival and who gets to pass their genes on, we've basically been honed to over
28:53
sensitize ourselves to patterns.
28:55
Now, that's very, very good a lot of the time because it basically means that we learn really
28:59
quickly from past events and avoid catastrophe when we have an experience that's useful to
29:05
learn from.
29:06
What it also does is it means that when things are truly unconnected, we still connect them.
29:11
And this is where we write stories.
29:14
And I have in that chapter, there's a very short story of six words that when I say it,
29:20
everyone will conjure up the same images.
29:22
It says a tiger, a hunter, a tiger, right?
29:27
And almost everybody has the same sort of narrative stitched together from the six words.
29:31
There's no reason why they have to be related.
29:33
It could be two different tigers in totally different places.
29:36
The hunter might be eating a sandwich a thousand miles away.
29:39
We don't know.
29:40
But everybody sort of assumes what has happened is the tiger has come, the hunters arrived,
29:44
the tiger has eaten the hunter or mauled him or whatever.
29:47
And also, very often in our minds, we have imaginings that are connected to these seemingly
29:55
related stories.
29:57
This innate aspect of us is one that we shouldn't necessarily shy away from.
30:01
We should just understand that it is causing us to misunderstand the world sometimes.
30:06
So whenever there's a blank, our mind has to fill it up and make a sensible kind of
30:12
story out of it, right?
30:15
Yeah.
30:16
It's the same thing.
30:17
There's this idea, everything happens for a reason.
30:20
And that is narrative bias incarnate, right?
30:24
It's not true.
30:25
It's not that everything happens for a reason.
30:28
If you're a believer, you might think there's a grand plan to all these things.
30:32
But from my perspective, when I think about the dinosaurs getting wiped out by the asteroid,
30:37
the best thing that physics has, the best grasp of that event that physics has at the
30:41
moment is that there was an oscillation in the Oort cloud in the distant reaches of space
30:45
which flung this asteroid out that wiped out the dinosaurs.
30:47
I don't think there was a reason for that.
30:49
I think it was sort of just a random thing that happened in space.
30:52
So however, whenever something happens, we sort of stitch the narrative backwards.
30:58
Oh, well, the reason why this happened was because humans were supposed to exist.
31:03
And religion has that as a mentality.
31:05
So of course, if people believe those things, then there is a cosmic purpose to all these
31:09
things.
31:10
My worldview is that there isn't.
31:13
And so therefore, what I think is important to think whether you believe in a grand purpose
31:17
or not, what I do think is a universal truth is that we do overemphasize the patterns in
31:24
explaining social change in ways that are potentially harmful.
31:27
Because if we think that the reason why X happened was Y, then what we're always going
31:33
to do is try to learn from that.
31:34
And sometimes randomness does create diversions of effects and so on.
31:40
So the Arab Spring is a great example of this where you've got a random man who sells vegetables
31:47
in the middle of Tunisia, gets just totally fed up with life and lights himself on fire.
31:53
And uprisings start in what, 10 countries in the span of a few months and multiple regimes
31:57
collapse.
31:58
And who knows what would have happened if he didn't light himself on fire?
32:02
I don't know.
32:03
But our societies can be drastically changed by very comparatively small events.
32:09
And I think there's a tendency to always emphasize the order, the sort of what I call the storybook
32:16
reality in which everything is a neat and tidy progression.
32:19
I think if you think about the world differently, you start to appreciate that the narrative
32:24
bias is potentially useful for navigating the world, but fundamentally untrue, which
32:30
is important to note.
32:32
Are conspiracy theories the ultimate manifestation of this desire to see the world as ordered
32:39
by simple rational cause and effect model?
32:42
Because as ridiculous as they usually sound, at least someone, even if it's a shadowy cabal,
32:48
is driving the whole thing.
32:50
Yeah.
32:51
And so people, there are two realms that are particularly prone to narrative bias on steroids.
32:57
One of them is negative news, right?
32:59
So what I mean by that is you get told that you have a cancer diagnosis, which, God forbid,
33:03
when people get that, it's a terrible, terrible moment in their lives.
33:07
And it's really difficult to just believe it just happened.
33:11
There was no reason, right?
33:13
So when really bad things happen to people, narrative bias kicks in to overdrive.
33:17
And this is also true when we lose jobs or when people break up with us and so on.
33:22
So negative events are very difficult to explain without narrative.
33:28
Positive events, people are willing to accept random chances.
33:30
Very few lottery winners, I mean, some of them do, but it's less likely that a lottery
33:35
winner will come up with this grand story about how exactly this was meant to happen.
33:40
We're more willing to accept just random chance for positive events.
33:44
Now, conspiracy theories are a different realm where they're prone to what's called magnitude
33:49
bias.
33:50
And I think there's a lot of discourse about conspiracy theories.
33:52
I think there's a simpler explanation, which Jonathan Gottschall, a great writer and scholar
33:58
has come up with, where he says, look, the problem is that conspiracy theories always
34:06
have one hell of a good story.
34:08
And we are prone to lashing out stories.
34:12
Sometimes even the story is crap.
34:14
That's true.
34:15
That is true.
34:16
But often, QAnon is a crazy, crazy story.
34:20
For those who aren't familiar, it's this idea that the Democratic Party is somehow taken
34:24
over by satanic cabal of pedophiles who have these secret meetings and run the world and
34:30
so on.
34:31
Totally crazy.
34:32
But you could see this as some sort of sci-fi movie or something like that, and the plot
34:36
would be interesting.
34:38
So the point that Gottschall is making is the way you debunk a conspiracy theory is,
34:43
okay, here's the story that you've been told.
34:45
Now, what we're going to tell you is there's no story.
34:47
Nothing's going on.
34:48
And for the storytelling...
34:49
A bit anticlimactic.
34:50
Yes.
34:51
Yeah, exactly.
34:52
And he has this phrase.
34:53
He wrote this book called The Storytelling Animal, and he says, we're a storytelling
34:56
animal.
34:57
Telling the storytelling animal there's no story is just a losing battle.
35:01
So that's part one.
35:02
Part two is magnitude bias.
35:04
And the classic example of this that comes up in the research that I've read is Princess
35:09
Diana's death.
35:10
So I believe that what happened is what happened, right?
35:14
That she was trying to outrun the paparazzi and they sped in their car and they crashed.
35:20
But this seems like a very sort of small cause for what was believed to be a very large political
35:27
event, at least in Britain and so on.
35:29
And so magnitude bias is where people say, something important happened.
35:33
There must have been an important cause.
35:35
There must have been an action that was driving this.
35:38
And this is where, amazingly, in the conspiracy theory literature, you have people who will
35:42
say yes to the following two premises.
35:45
That A, Princess Diana is still alive, and B, that the government killed her, right?
35:50
And the reason they're willing to do those obviously incompatible ideas is because they're
35:55
more willing to accept there was something that happened that was behind the scenes than
35:59
that there was nothing.
36:00
It was just this sort of arbitrary accident.
36:03
We're allergic to accidental explanations.
36:05
And this, you know, Gottschall comes up, I wrote this in Flute, but Gottschall comes
36:08
up with this when he's describing how fiction works, right?
36:12
He has this brilliant line, I quoted it in the book, where he says, you know, we don't
36:16
know how the story of Harry Potter is going to end when we're reading the book.
36:20
We're pretty sure though, that what's not going to happen is Voldemort is going to slip
36:24
on a banana peel and die, right?
36:26
Because we just wouldn't deal with that very well.
36:28
It's like you read these seven books and then all of a sudden this accident happens.
36:32
And it's like, oh, okay, that's it.
36:34
And the reason why we wouldn't accept that is because we are totally, totally allergic
36:39
to explanations that are just like, whoops.
36:42
And yet the world is full of oops moments that are important.
36:47
Your Princess Diana story made me think about Tupac's death because I'm a big hip hop fan.
36:53
And as a teenager, I remember how we had the same reaction to his death.
36:58
We were like, oh, somebody else killed him.
37:00
It was a big conspiracy.
37:02
But then other days we would just be like, no, he's in Cuba.
37:05
He's still alive.
37:06
You know, he's hiding in Cuba.
37:07
Yeah.
37:08
Well, I mean, it makes sense.
37:11
It's a way to make sense of a tragic and unforeseen event.
37:13
So it's totally rational in that sense of how to cope with it.
37:18
I hosted an ex-truther on this podcast recently.
37:22
His name is Brent Lee.
37:23
He's a fantastic guy, super smart.
37:25
He's from the UK.
37:26
He used to be in the rabbit hole, as he calls it, for 15 years.
37:29
He has a podcast now where he's breaking down all of these various conspiracy theories with
37:36
a critical eye, trying to pull other people out of them.
37:39
And he very vividly described the moment he fell for conspiracy theories.
37:43
His father was a Vietnam war veteran suffering from PTSD, which turned Brett into a staunch
37:49
pacifist.
37:50
And as a staunch pacifist, he wondered why wars keep happening around the world.
37:55
It kept bothering him until he watched a series of videos about how 9-11 was an inside job
38:02
and how all of these conflicts are actually orchestrated somewhere in the background,
38:06
of course.
38:07
He said that everything suddenly made sense.
38:10
He didn't have to question anymore, you know, and that was it.
38:14
It's very similar to what you described.
38:16
We need to fill in the blank space with something that makes sense.
38:20
Yeah.
38:21
I mean, it's a complete classic.
38:22
And it's also, I mean, I've studied conspiracy theories a little bit in my prior work as
38:27
well.
38:28
And, you know, the other thing, in addition to the storytelling aspect, it's also the
38:31
sense of belonging.
38:32
And this relates to questions around fluke too, because I think there's sort of this
38:36
universal search for meaning in life.
38:39
And I think that my belief on this is that I am sort of an accident, right?
38:46
I mean, I tell a story early on in the book about how I'm the byproduct of a mass murder,
38:52
basically in 1905.
38:53
So I am an accidental being, right?
38:55
I mean, if this hadn't happened, I wouldn't be alive.
39:00
And so when you think that way, you think, OK, well, maybe my life is sort of arbitrary,
39:05
the fact that I exist.
39:07
And again, that tempts people towards nihilism.
39:09
I think the alternative view is that you're part of something enormous, which is humanity.
39:15
You're part of a community.
39:16
You're constantly affecting other people's lives.
39:18
And so that sense of alienation that lots of people have in modern society is tied to
39:23
the idea that we talked about previously, the atomization of individual belief that
39:27
you're the sort of independent agent, not part of a larger system that controls everything,
39:33
controls your life.
39:34
And that, I think, is really, really pervasive in modern life, which is feeding into this
39:38
conspiracism.
39:40
Because what lots of people do when they go down the rabbit hole is they find a community
39:44
of similar believers who bond really quickly because they share the same narrative and
39:49
they feel like they're part of the same community.
39:52
So you basically are putting, I mean, this is why it's so difficult to get people out
39:56
of these communities, is because, first off, you're telling the story telling animal there's
40:00
no story when all of a sudden this new information has suddenly made sense of a very complex
40:05
world for them in a very simple narrative.
40:08
And then secondly, you have the social glue of the community for people who are often
40:12
very socially isolated and find themselves connected to these people.
40:16
And I think this aspect of the simplicity of the story as well, I mean, what you're
40:20
describing with that, oh, here's the explanation for all wars.
40:23
Yeah, it's like, OK, well, actually, the real explanation is that there's eight billion
40:28
people in extraordinarily complex systems that we call the international relations world.
40:35
And there's this drastic, there's this long history of grievances and injustices and there's
40:40
actions and greed and there's a million things happening.
40:44
And our brains are not cut out to process a million things because our brains evolved
40:48
in a world that had very simple cause and effect patterns.
40:51
I mean, that's the thing that I think is worth remembering is that if you took the whole
40:55
world history, all of humanity's history, rather, and you put it into a 24 hour time
41:01
scale, 23 hours and three minutes would be hunter gatherers.
41:05
So our brains were shaped almost exclusively by a period in which the complexity of society
41:11
was not big.
41:12
It was basically small groups of 80 to 100 people who basically foraged around for food
41:18
and tried to kill animals to survive.
41:20
And so in those worlds, you don't have to understand geopolitics.
41:24
You don't have to understand economics.
41:26
You don't have to understand complexity of eight billion people interacting.
41:29
And our brains are just not equipped to that.
41:31
So when you give people, oh, here's this really straightforward X to Y explanation, the storybook
41:36
reality I talk about, it's seductive and our brains are fundamentally honed to trick us.
41:43
And so that's the realm where I think those experiences where people talk about how they
41:49
were duped, I hope more people incorporate that aspect of storytelling because it does
41:55
resonate with people to understand, hold on, you're just being sold a good story.
41:59
And that's sometimes hard to avoid, but you just do have to think a little bit deeper.
42:04
Is this story too neat to be true?
42:07
And I think almost all of the time the answer is yes.
42:10
Okay, we talked about our need for storytelling.
42:13
Where does this need for control that we all feel on a personal and societal level feature
42:18
in all this?
42:19
Yeah, I mean, when people think about their own lives, they write stories as well.
42:23
Right?
42:24
I mean, people have a narrative arc to how they think they got to where they are today.
42:27
Now, I mean, the point that I make is that narrative arc is not a bad one.
42:31
It's often good to be self reflective and so on.
42:34
But there's two things I would say about it.
42:36
First off, the narrative arc is wrong.
42:39
And I don't mean this to sort of belittle people's stories about their lives.
42:42
I mean, I have a story about my life I think about internally.
42:45
I also believe that I'm wrong about my story because there's a series of invisible things
42:51
that I am not aware of that totally diverted the trajectory of my life.
42:54
So I'll tell for your listeners and viewers just in more detail what I alluded to a second
42:59
ago with that mass murder story.
43:02
So it's 1905 in Wisconsin.
43:04
This woman has four young children.
43:06
She snaps and probably has postpartum depression.
43:09
That's what you call it today, but it's 1905 so they don't know about this.
43:12
So she basically snaps and kills her four kids and then kills herself.
43:17
And her husband comes home and finds the whole family murdered.
43:21
And this is my great grandfather's first wife.
43:24
And so he remarries to my great grandmother.
43:27
And the only reason I exist is that lineage that was formed as a result of this horrible
43:32
mass murder of children.
43:33
Now the reason I tell that story in the context of your question is because I was totally
43:39
unaware of this until my dad told me about it when I was in my 20s.
43:44
And I might have been unaware of it forever.
43:47
But this is an important part of my life story because the origin of my existence is quite
43:51
clearly predicated on this event.
43:54
The other thing that is important about this is that this means that they're often way
44:00
less dramatic.
44:01
There's all these things where our lives could have unfolded very differently.
44:04
The snooze button effect I describe, I coined that term in the book, where we hit the snooze
44:08
button or don't and our lives do unfold differently.
44:11
We meet different people that day.
44:13
We cross paths with someone different.
44:15
Now maybe it doesn't happen that day, but maybe down the line because we bumped into
44:19
someone at the coffee shop after having hit the snooze button, they introduce us to somebody
44:24
else and there's this ripple effect and so on.
44:26
So these invisible pivots in our lives are ones that we never can put into our stories
44:30
because we simply don't know they exist.
44:32
And so it's impossible to write them into our histories.
44:35
But I also think the other idea that I bring up in the book, this is the philosophical
44:39
implication of this, is that, and I think personally people disagree about this with
44:44
me when I've talked to them, but I find this really moving and beautiful.
44:48
If you believe that everything is interconnected and that every action has an unforeseen but
44:52
important reaction, then the best and worst moments of your life are inextricably linked.
44:59
And the reason I came to this conclusion is because everything that is good in my life,
45:05
every positive impact I've had, every happy moment, wouldn't exist unless four children
45:09
were murdered in Wisconsin in 1905.
45:11
Now that is quite literally true.
45:14
It's something that's very odd to say that way.
45:17
And it doesn't mean that we should go out and kill people, right?
45:21
What it means is that you cannot foresee the ripple effects of your actions.
45:24
Now, because we can't foresee them, you should live an ethical and decent life.
45:27
You shouldn't murder people and so on.
45:29
It's not to say, oh, there's a good effect to this.
45:32
But it's to say that in the span of our own lives, every moment that I've had that has
45:36
felt the worst possible moment I've ever had is directly causing in the future my best
45:42
moment.
45:43
And the thing that's interesting about this is I think this is actually a scientific
45:47
fact, right?
45:48
If you talk to physicists or you talk to people who study chaos theory and so on, they're
45:53
like, yeah, obviously.
45:54
But this isn't talked about by people who study society because we try to model society
46:00
into these neat and tidy worlds of here's five variables that cause things.
46:04
Or we try to talk about the self-help mentality in our own lives, which is like, oh, if you
46:08
just change these three things, you'll be happy.
46:11
But actually, the way the reality operates is that we're in this constantly interconnected,
46:16
unbroken thread of life where one stitch of the thread at a moment that was horrific for
46:23
us, if you undid that, it would also undo the good moments in your life.
46:29
It's not to say you wouldn't have good moments.
46:31
They would just be different, right?
46:32
So it's not to say like, oh, our lives would be, every single moment, our lives would be
46:36
radically different.
46:37
No, that's not necessarily true.
46:38
There's a certain level of order in our lives.
46:40
But they would be different somehow.
46:42
And we don't know how that would be.
46:44
Sometimes more profound, sometimes less profound.
46:46
But I do think the philosophical implications of that are really arresting when you think
46:50
about them.
46:51
Because when I have terrible moments, they are the cause of my later happiness.
46:58
And if they weren't, then my life would be different.
47:01
Which also means trying to control every single aspect of your life in every single moment
47:06
is futile and would also make you feel like you're failing, basically.
47:12
Yeah.
47:13
Right.
47:14
So this is, it was interesting.
47:15
I thought about this with some people who were a bit skeptical and were more sort of,
47:18
well, like, how do we live this way?
47:20
Right?
47:21
And I said, look, there's a way to break this down between the sort of useful pragmatic
47:26
illusion and the underlying reality.
47:29
So the underlying reality, which is, you know, I think is basically just physics, is that,
47:33
yes, quite literally, you are sort of along for the ride in some ways, right?
47:37
There are some things that you can't control and you're sort of just like, you know, along
47:40
for the ride.
47:41
But pragmatically, it's useful to live with the illusion that that's not true because
47:45
it causes us to strive more, it causes us to be more proactive, and that often does
47:49
yield good results.
47:51
Now, because of my views on free will and so on, I think we are still along for the
47:54
ride even when we strive.
47:56
But my point here is that I think that you can have philosophical implications for the
48:02
sort of way that reality operates, where, yeah, you have a lot less control than you
48:06
think you do.
48:07
And there can still be a useful illusion of some level of control.
48:11
Now, I say some level because the problem is that when you start to get hubris, that's
48:15
derived from the fact that, you know, a lot of our world is run on models.
48:21
When you think about social science, like economics, politics, a lot of it is run on
48:24
models.
48:25
And we've internalized those models as being the way the world works.
48:28
So it's like, oh, if we just tweak this one thing, then this will happen.
48:32
And it provides a sort of funhouse mirror version of reality that gives us the illusion
48:37
of control, where, you know, you just need to tweak these three variables and then everything
48:42
will be fine.
48:43
And so I think overconfidence in control can be dangerous.
48:48
I think this is the kind of stuff that gets us into wars and financial breakdowns and
48:52
so on.
48:53
So, you know, I think there's a happy medium here.
48:56
I think for me, what I do is I think, OK, yeah, like I have a lot less control than
48:59
I think I do.
49:00
Do I still wake up and try?
49:02
Yeah, right.
49:03
I mean, of course I do.
49:04
Now, can I control whether Fluke will be a bestseller?
49:07
No, I can't.
49:08
Right.
49:09
Like, I talked to a publicist, like I talked to my publisher and, you know, we try.
49:14
But like, I also recommend, recognize, like, there's just some things that happen.
49:19
And you know, did Yuval, you know, Yuval Noah Hariri wrote Sapiens, sold like a billion
49:24
copies.
49:25
I mean, why did that happen?
49:27
I don't know.
49:28
He doesn't know.
49:29
I mean, that's the thing.
49:30
It's like he couldn't recreate that if he tried.
49:31
And I think there's some aspects of this where you just have to accept the limits of your
49:36
control of the world and also internalize that you are affecting the world all the time,
49:41
which I think is quite empowering.
49:43
This makes me think of a terrifying interview I saw recently.
49:46
There's this tech millionaire who's completely obsessed with longevity.
49:49
I'm not sure if you've heard of him.
49:51
His name is Brian Johnson.
49:53
I Googled him just before the interview.
49:54
And he actually looks a little bit like a vampire, which is slightly ironic.
49:58
This guy's entire life is devoted to reverse aging.
50:04
So far, so good, right?
50:06
But the frightening thing is in the video, I was listening to the guy describe his day
50:11
to day life and every single day he eats the same meal at the exact same time.
50:16
He doesn't date because he's busy collecting his stool sample six times a day.
50:21
He takes exactly 111 pills every day.
50:25
He even has a tiny jet pack attached to his penis to monitor his nighttime erections.
50:31
So in the service of ultimate control, he basically eliminated every single thing that
50:36
brings any joy in life.
50:39
I mean, the guy's intent on not creating any new memories until the day he dies, which
50:43
for me is the opposite of living.
50:46
And this kind of attitude is now spreading like wildfire everywhere.
50:50
I mean, like you said, it's probably definitely a good idea to take care of yourself.
50:54
But why are we so intent on banishing every bit of spontaneity and chance from our lives?
51:01
Yeah.
51:02
And this is the kind of thing where I think it's just, there's a question that is sort
51:08
of underlying a lot of fluke, which is what are humans for?
51:14
And I don't think humans are just to exist.
51:17
I don't think that the reason we're on the planet, first off, I mean, I think that we
51:20
are sort of an evolutionary accident in a lot of ways.
51:23
But if there was a reason, I do not think it is just to prolong existence.
51:27
I think that we have, as a species, we have some tools and gifts that are unbelievable.
51:33
I mean, the sort of joys and extremes of emotion and connection we can find with other people
51:39
is really extraordinary.
51:41
Maximizing that is, if there is a meaningful life, I am confident it will be derived from
51:46
our interactions with other people, not in the jet pack you described or in the pills
51:51
you take to have the maximum longevity.
51:55
And I think it's the example you use is an astute one, because it's the ultimate example
52:01
of someone who has mistaken the sort of purpose or joy of life for exactly what it's not in
52:12
my view.
52:13
I mean, other people have different views on this.
52:14
But my idea here is, I just think we have this small time on the planet and you want
52:22
to make the most of it and it's not just to prolong it.
52:25
I want to live a long life, don't get me wrong.
52:30
But I want to live a good life.
52:31
And I would much rather live a good but slightly shorter life than a extremely long but miserable
52:37
existence.
52:38
And I think that's what that guy is drifting towards.
52:41
Next question, where does a sense of humor feature in all this?
52:45
Some of the hardest I've laughed, which means some of the best times I had, were acknowledging
52:50
the fact that we live in a crazy random existence in a way within an accidental fluke, which
52:56
is the universe in a funny way.
52:59
Would you agree?
53:00
Yeah, no, I love that.
53:02
I haven't been asked that question about this book.
53:05
And I love that question because I think it makes you take life a little bit less seriously
53:10
and savor just sort of the joy of it when you think like, I mean, again, believers will
53:15
have a different take on this.
53:16
But I sort of do think like, look, I'm just sort of this accident that emerged from 13.8
53:22
billion years of the universe existing and all of a sudden, boom, here I am.
53:25
Why?
53:26
I don't know.
53:27
There's a whole bunch of random stuff that happened.
53:28
I mean, an asteroid hit the planet and the dinosaurs died and there's all these evolutionary
53:32
things that happened that could have gone otherwise.
53:35
And then there's all these people and before that, chimpanzee-like creatures that mated
53:40
and then eventually here I am.
53:42
And when you start to think that way, you think that's sort of funny, sort of weird
53:47
that I'm here.
53:49
And so, you know, the stuff where you like I recently wrote this piece on my newsletter
53:54
where I was I included the pale blue dot image, which is that image that was taken of the
53:59
Earth from 3.7 billion miles away and where this little tiny pixel in the blackness of
54:06
space.
54:07
And when you start to think that way, you're like, yeah, like, maybe it doesn't matter
54:11
if I'm like slightly down the social hierarchy today from like my friend who like makes $10,000
54:17
more than me because like literally where this little pixel in space and, you know,
54:23
some people find that as I say that it's two sides of the same coin.
54:26
It's either, oh, there's this nihilism that's associated with this.
54:28
Oh my gosh, like we're in this tiny little pixel.
54:31
I think it's actually sort of it just liberating.
54:33
It's like, OK, for this cosmic accident, what should I do with my time?
54:38
I don't know.
54:39
I should like spend it with people I like and like do fun stuff and enjoy things and
54:43
try to make other people happy.
54:46
And you know, there's a lot of philosophy that's that's basically that simple.
54:51
So this sort of arbitrary accident stuff.
54:53
I mean, if you think that everything happens for a reason, then you sort of everything
54:56
has to be exactly right.
54:59
You know, you have to constantly chase control and so on.
55:03
I think if you have a more appreciation for the chaos of life, it liberates us to live.
55:08
And that's yeah.
55:11
As you say, I think it's a moment where sometimes you can just sort of sit back and just laugh
55:15
and say, well, you know, there's nothing I could do.
55:17
I sort of ended up in this position.
55:19
I'm not sure why, but let's just enjoy the ride.
55:22
You just mentioned chaos.
55:23
The very last quick question.
55:25
I'm a huge pop culture fanatic.
55:29
Have you seen The Dark Knight?
55:30
I have.
55:31
Yes.
55:32
OK, so the Joker says I'm an agent of chaos and there's one thing about chaos.
55:37
It's fair.
55:38
Would you agree with that statement?
55:40
Well, I don't I don't think it's fair in the sense that it creates extremely unequal outcomes
55:45
that are totally arbitrary.
55:46
I think it's fair in the sense that it affects all of us.
55:49
So the lack of control is one where, you know, it is universal.
55:55
In my opinion, we're all subject to the forces of chaos.
55:59
But I think also that chaos can produce extremely.
56:02
I mean, one of the things that's weird to think about is like there literally is someone
56:07
who is the unluckiest person in the world.
56:08
I don't know who it is, but there is someone out there who's literally the unluckiest person.
56:12
By definition, there's also someone who's the luckiest person.
56:15
So there's unfairness in chance.
56:18
But we are all subjects to its forces.
56:20
I do think we're all sort of playthings of lots of these arbitrary and accidental forces.
56:26
And that is a universal that is fair.
56:29
Brian, what a pleasure.
56:31
Thank you so much for taking the time.
56:33
I can't recommend Fluke enough.
56:35
When is it out and where can people get it?
56:38
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
56:40
It's out January 23rd in the US and February 1st in the UK.
56:43
So somewhere around those dates anywhere in the world, probably.
56:47
And you can get it wherever books are sold.
56:49
All right.
56:50
Do you have any social media where people can follow your work?
56:53
I do indeed.
56:54
I have a newsletter called The Garden of Forking Paths, which is an idea that's central to
56:59
Fluke, which you can sign up for for free.
57:01
And then I also have a Twitter account that I use, which is just my name, Brian Kloss,
57:06
which is spelled K-L-A-A-S.
57:07
All right.
57:08
Thanks again.
57:09
This was a riot.
57:10
Thank you.
57:11
Oy, thank you for listening to the episode.
57:14
If you've enjoyed it, please subscribe and follow on YouTube, Apple podcasts and Spotify.
57:20
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57:26
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57:33
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57:34
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57:38
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57:44
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57:48
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57:50
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57:51
Neither cultures, and all communities have 22 different species.