Nicholas Kristof has.

Thank you so much for talking to us.

Thank you for having me.

So you are a physician, but you're also a sociologist who studies the way people behave in groups.

What was your insight that made you connect those two?

I would say that being a doctor, I was actually a hospice doctor.

I took care of people who were dying for many many years.

There's no way you can be a physician and not become interested in humankind.

And as part of my education as a doctor and as part of my ideas about the kind of scholar I wanted to be, I decided sort of early in my medical training to also study aspects of our lives as human beings that weren't just about our bodies and how they worked.

Okay.

So your latest book, Blueprint, makes the argument that the scientific community has been overly focused on the worst of human behavior.

We certainly have ample examples of that.

You are saying that the bright side has been denied the attention it deserves.

How did you come to that?

Well, I think, first of all, I'm an optimistic guy, and I just by nature and I marvel at us at that, the way humans are at, the way human beings as a phenomenon in the natural world.

And I had become sort of upset with the way that the scientists and the person on the street all too often, in my view, focused on the dark parts of our heritage, as you said, our propensity for violence or selfishness or tribalism or or lying and and hatred.

And there we are also as an animal, capable of wonderful things, capable of love and friendship and cooperation and teaching.

And and these things must necessarily have outweighed the bad things.

Look.

Why necessarily?

Well, because if I if I came in our ancestral environment and I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of years of our evolution, if whenever I came near you, you killed me or you filled me with useless information, you lie to me or were mean to me in some way or took advantage of me, then I would be better off not coming near you.

I'd be better off living as a solitary animal.

So whatever the disadvantages, that there are in us connecting to each other, which in there are such disadvantages, the advantages must have surpassed those.

And and because that's how natural selection works.

And so so I began I became very, very interested in those positive aspects of our humanity.

I was just pondering what you just said about the fact that social science has been so focused on the negative.

I mean, I could we could walk out the door of the studio and find ample evidence.

So why they're focused on the negative.

On the other hand, if I tripped, probably somebody would help me.

Right.

So why is it you think that we've been so focused on the negative?

Well, part of that is that we have been shaped also to pay attention to bad news, to two things that are for a number of reasons.

First of all, an argument can be made that it's better for you to be more attentive to bad news and good news because bad news might be more likely to kill you.

But more than that, I think it is, you know, the same way that, you know, the journalists say if it bleeds, it leads.

Social scientists are often that way.

You know, they study homicide, they study crime, they study, quote, deviants.

They study all of these things.

That are are bad.

But there are also all these things that are good about us.

And increasingly, in the last ten or 20 years, people have not just me.

Many scientists have become very interested in, for instance, this notion of cooperation, like the story you just told about tripping.

It would be very odd for any other animal to do that.

Turns out that other animals don't so easily cooperate with non kin, unrelated individuals.

So talk to me about your evidence.

Like, how did you.

So there are various kinds of ways to figure that out.

Yeah.

So the different kinds of things.

One of the things I'm interested in is I was interested in what kind of society would would human beings make if they were left on their own.

And I was not the first person to wonder this question.

In an ideal kind of world, what I would love to do is in a kind of mad scientist way, is take a group of babies and abandon them on an island and and having taught them nothing and let them grow up and then see what kind of water they nice to each other.

Do they love each other?

Now, of course, we can't do that.

No, you can't.

And in fact, it's been called the forbidden experiment precisely for that reason.

So I was trying to think, well, what what is a way that we could find a proxy for such an experiment?

And so I hit upon the idea of using shipwrecks, and it turns out between 1519 hundred there were, there were 9000 shipwrecks during the age of European exploration of the world.

And in one case it was even a perfect sort of natural experiment where there were two shipwreck crews on the same island at the same time.

In 1864 south of New Zealand, north of Antarctica where on the, on the, on the on the lower part of the island, the southern part of the island, the crew of the Grafton wrecked.

There were five men washed ashore and on the northern part of the island the crew of the Invercargill 19 men washed ashore and they were on the island at the same time they didn't see or interact with each other and they had very different differing fates.

So the Grafton, they all survive, they work together, they created a kind of social order that allowed them to survive.

Whereas the crew of the Invercargill 16 of the 19 died, only three made it off the island.

And that's because, well, no analysis.

Yeah.

So they weren't, they weren't able to create any kind of functioning society.

They, it was a kind of every man for himself.

Kind of environment.

They even had some cannibalism.

And the point is, the argument is not that we, that we always make a society.

The argument is that if we make a society, we make a society with these good qualities.

So is the argument that the people who have these qualities or who have developed these qualities of cooperation kindness, empathy toward each other are more likely to survive.

Yes.

Than the people who are fundamentally belligerent, warlike, selfish.

Yes.

Etc.

Because one would think just based on sort of the superficial top of the mind analysis, the strong do what they will, the weak do what they must.

And what you're saying is actually the co-operative, the compassionate.

Yes.

Have a better chance to survive.

Yes.

And in fact, I would even take it a step further.

There's a there's a famous idea in the social science called Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, and it states that you first have to satisfy humans basic needs for like food and water, and then you have to satisfy their needs for shelter and then their needs for sex.

And then their needs for kind of meaning, and then their needs for something called self-actualization, which is a kind of sense of purpose.

And they organize these needs in this little pyramid I would argue it actually that the pyramid is almost backwards, that in order to satisfy our needs for food and shelter and all these basic things that we think of is so fundamental First, you have to have friendship and cooperation.

It's those groups that are able to manifest those traits that are able to survive.

And in fact, any one of us living alone would have a very difficult time surviving.

The reason we humans have had a kind of social conquest of the Earth is not because of our bodies.

It's because of our culture it's because of the tools that we've invented.

It's because we work together to produce knowledge and exchange ideas and and pass along useful information.

I mean, here's the here's just a little nugget to think about.

Many species learn a little fish swimming in the sea can learn that if it sees the light in, it swims up to the light there'll be food there.

So many animals learn, some animals learn socially.

They learn by observing what another animal does.

So for it and this is very efficient for example, if you put your hand in the fire, you pull it out, you learn fire burns, meat, you've acquired this knowledge that fire burns, but you've paid a price, you've burnt your hand.

Or I can look at you and see that you've burnt your hand.

I learn, oh, fire burns, but I pay none of the price by observing you.

That's called social learning.

This is rare in the animal kingdom, but it happens.

We even take it a step further.

We teach each other things.

We teach each other how to build fires.

And this is exceptionally rare in the animal kingdom.

This whole capacity that we have to actually teach each other things, we have been shaped by hundreds of thousands of years to have this capacity.

It's an amazing and wonderful thing that we do this.

This means that you can learn stuff if you're born today and you take calculus in high school, you know, more mathematics if I took you back and put you 500 years ago, you'd be the most intelligent mathematician on the planet just for what you learned in high school.

So all this accumulated wisdom that we, we humans can accumulate and we can pass on across time and also across space, I can teach someone over there calculus today is miraculous.

And I think we forget it.

We lose sight of some of these wonderful qualities.

So we need the group that we need the collectivity, we need the wisdom that has that has accumulated within groups of people in order to survive.

Okay.

I credit your point, and it's a very inspiring and comforting thought.

Then why are people still so terrible?

Okay, so so the point is that I'm not like, you know, Dr. Pan Glass is the best of all possible worlds.

I'm well aware that these types of divisions this type of hatred, this type of warfare and violence and selfishness and tribalism exist everywhere.

But that's not the argument.

The argument is, is that over the long sweep of history, that we are getting better and better.

And so the way I put it is that the arc of our evolution is long, but it bends towards goodness and it does it.

In fact, it does do that.

And furthermore, this long arc of history, of pre-history, of evolution that bends towards goodness, underlies a more recent historical arc of history.

So in the last two or 400 years since the Enlightenment, we have had all these scientific and technological inventions and all these philosophical moves where we sort of believe in equality and we these principles of democratic participation, of democracy and equality, all of these philosophical innovations and technological innovations have shaped us to be it is the case, the richer the whole world is better off, less starvation around the world, more safety, fewer wars, fewer deaths due to warfare.

All of these good things are happening, but they're all happening for historical reasons.

In the last two to 400 years.

And what I'm arguing is, is that in addition to that, deeper, more powerful, more ancient forces are at work and that we cannot escape that, even despite all the horrors still there is there are these wonderful qualities that I think are worth foregrounding, maybe even especially in a kind of world in which we is see ascendant populism and ascendant tribalism and ascendant appeals to us versus them kind of politics, which I reject.

I'm going to ask you in a minute to how we could perhaps speed up the pace of learning.

Yeah.

The benefit of the common good.

Yes.

But I'm the founders.

Well, I just want to glide past a pain point, though, for you, which is this incident at Yale from this big metaphor for something else.

You were ahead of house it at Yale, and there was this whole dustup in 2016 about 20, 15, about Halloween costumes, of all things.

Right, where the administration had put sort of forth an edict saying that people should avoid Halloween costumes that are insensitive to others, specifically people of color, I think.

And then your wife said, you know what, maybe kids should have more of an opportunity to learn to make mistakes.

And to learn from their mistakes.

Well, that's just this was not well received.

Yes.

And there is a video that went viral of students confronting you.

Yes.

They agree with that.

But that's the position because I have you I have a different vision.

If that is what you think about being a classroom, you should step down.

Is there anything in your own scholarship around that informed the way you responded to that?

Yeah.

So first of all, I will say that the essence of my wife's argument, my wife would be offended by many of the same costumes that many people would find offensive.

The essence of my wife's argument was that college students at Yale, do they really want the administration telling them what to do?

So it was a sort of taking the side of the students to say, you can form your own opinions and talk among yourselves, learn from each other that the most important moral lessons are learn not by didactic.

I tell you what's right there.

Learn by experiencing and interacting with each other, and that we she felt and I agreed that the students were capable as students at Yale of actually having these conversations.

And and apparently many students don't agree didn't agree with that.

Apparently, many students actually did want much more guidance from the administration about how to handle these matters.

I think one of the most depressing moments of my life was when I was in that courtyard and there were students who were very upset with me.

And they were also upset, I think, with the ideas that I was trying we were trying to advance these ideas.

Part of them are expressed actually in this book, ideas about about how human beings, for example, learn from each other.

We were just talking about teaching and learning and how that's so important for us as a species or assembly, how people getting together, friends and group formation is an inherent part of our species.

And and at one point, a young woman says to me, she was a young African-American woman.

And she says to me, she goes, You cannot understand what my life has been like.

And because, you know, you're an older white guy.

And and I listened patiently to her.

And then I answered her with an answer, which I fervently believe, which is that I said that despite the fact that we are all different from each other, I believe we are united by our common humanity.

I believe that we can communicate across any divide, partly by making taking advantage of these tools that we've been equipped to have and it was truly one of the most depressing moments of my career.

I was defending the notion to claim what I see as a fundamentally liberal claim, a fundamentally progressive claim, a fundamentally humanistic claim that we have a shared humanity and we are all human beings and we are united by this common humanity.

And the students jeered for some of the students standpoint of the students there.

I think their argument might be, if I could make it in a non yelling fashion, is that the entire structure of many of these institutions means that the white people don't have to yell because it's set up so that the white people never have to yell because their preferences and desires are institutionalized.

These principles.

And in fact, Martin Luther King in the Mountaintop speech the day before he's assassinated makes the same arguments that I'm making exactly the same arguments.

Michael Bennett, the football player, he talks about how important it is to be able to talk to people who are your opposite He makes this argument in a very actually powerful way.

SAT sitting in this chair, Eric Liu sitting in this chair, makes the same argument that there is a kind of civic culture that's worth protecting.

And so my argument is the same as MLK or MLK argument is the same as Michael Bennett's argument.

It's the same as Eric Lue's argument.

It's probably the same as the argument you would make, which is the argument that there are certain fundamental principles about organizing a good society that we want the students to own and be a part of.

So these principles include is the reason to debate open expression right of assembly right to protest right.

We protect the right to protest in our society.

We're not a totalitarian state.

So we defend these principles.

And my argument is these students that are coming to these wonderful universities they can make these traditions their own.

They can only tradition.

In fact, they are using those traditions precisely to express their dissatisfaction and so they should not cut at the root of these traditions.

That's my argument.

I understand.

How did the whole thing end?

Well, I mean, it sort of came down as a turnout after.

Yeah.

No, not after a couple of hours in the courtyard.

And and then I think one of the things that happened that day, which I was well aware of because of my education, was we humans are also endowed with this capacity to to suspend our individuality and become parts of a group And part of that involves a psychological process of individuation, where anyone who's been a part of a rave, for example, or who's been a part of a sporting event or team, is whatever, winning, losing.

Yes.

Or a riot or or a rich or religious experience, you know, you can have this kind of exciting attic experience, right, that people describe.

These phenomena all relate to a surrendering of the self and a participation in a larger whole And this is also part of our common humanity.

It's also we've been shaped to have these types.

I talk about this shape, to have these experiences, and I saw that happening in front of my eyes.

I saw the students becoming part of a mob, actually, and they were moving as one.

And they were they were they were losing their powers of reason.

And also, in some sense, their humanity.

And that also saddened me.

How do we actualize what you know, what you believe you have learned about society?

To make this a better one?

In my view, you can't read this book and not come away with a deeper and more empathetic understanding of our common humanity.

For example, in the book, I review different marital systems around the world.

So some societies are monogamous, some are polygamous.

One man, many women, some are polyandry is one woman.

Many men I talk about arranged marriages, for example.

Some societies, the parents pick the partners for their spouses.

But in all of these societies, people love their mates.

So even though the marriage is arranged, you interview couples in arranged marriages and they have no different amount of intimate affection for their partners than love match marriages.

So in all of these societies, there is this fundamental, recurrent, wonderful quality, despite all this variation that we love our mates.

And to me, this is the magnificent thing that's worth highlighting this this insight that we are so similar to each other, regardless of all these other superficial differences.

And to me, that's miraculous worth attending to.

And it gives us a lever for common understanding.

It gives us a way forward.

It gives us a way to sort of recognize that these things that we think divide us needn't divide us, shouldn't divide us.

And it puts like a big finger on the scale, on the pro-social good part of our humanity.

Nicholas Christakis, thank you so much for talking to.

Thank you for having me, Michel.