The conversation begins with a reference to Adam Smith's idea that humans desire not only to be loved but to be worthy of that love. We want to earn the respect of others. This sets the stage for the central topic: the human drive for status.

Will Storr explains the thesis of his book, "The Status Game." He suggests that while we consciously experience life as a story with ourselves as the hero, our subconscious brain treats it differently, like a game. Citing neuroscientist Chris Frith, he notes that the brain views our environment as a "reward space," guiding us toward things we need.

Humans have fundamental urges beyond survival and reproduction. These are connection and status. We are a "collective, tribal, highly cooperative ape," which means we are highly motivated by signals showing we are of value to our group.

We need to feel that we are being of value to other humans because we're this sort of collective, tribal, highly cooperative ape. So we're highly motivated by signals that we are contributing to the great cooperative game of human life.

This drive for status is a subconscious obsession. When we feel we lack value or respect, we experience distress. Chronic low status can even lead to mental and physical illness. This leads to the book's core argument.

The book is really arguing that status is not a want, it's a need, and then just extrapolating all the various ramifications of that.

Russ recounts his experience on silent meditation retreats where strict rules are in place. You are not supposed to make eye contact, speak to, or touch anyone. If someone is struggling emotionally, you are not meant to comfort them; that is the role of the staff. Even passing someone in a hall requires avoiding their gaze without any form of acknowledgement.

Initially, Russ thought these rules were silly and ridiculous. However, after a few minutes of practicing this, he had a profound realization. When he wasn't looking at someone, he understood that they weren't looking at him either. This created one of the most liberating feelings he had ever experienced. He was free from the constant stream of potential judgments: "He's overweight. He's not attractive. His hair is funny. That shirt's wet. Why do you wear that shirt?"

This experience highlighted how frequently we engage in judgment every second of the day. While judgment can be useful in many situations, the retreat's goal was to make participants aware of its constant presence and the cost it carries.

Our brains have what neuroscientists call a 'status detection system.' It is an always-on technology that continually assesses other people's status and how they are assessing us. This constant judgment happens everywhere, from an elevator, where we might judge people by their clothes or the floor they select, to a CrossFit gym. We are a highly cooperative species, and to make our groups functional, a system of rewards and punishments is necessary. This is the status game.

Status is a score of our perceived value. Back in the days of the hunter gatherer tribe... the more useful you were to the tribe, the more pro social you were, the more you put the tribe's interests before your own, the higher you would raise in status and the more food you'd get, the better food you'd get, you'd get safer sleeping sites, you'd get better access to your choice of mates.

The fundamental rule is to go for status, because it improves everything else related to survival and reproduction. The flip side is the desire to avoid a loss of status. This can lead to cruel behavior, like pushing away people we deem unworthy to avoid having their lower status affect our own. This phenomenon is described as status leakage.

Status leaks. And so we want to be around higher status people than us because their status leaks out onto us. But it also goes the other way. And if we feel that we're around people who are lower status, then that makes us uncomfortable, because that means that we feel that some of the status is leaking out.

Will shares an experience from his CrossFit class, where, as an older member, he is one of the lowest-status people. He notes that the other older men gravitate toward him, realizing, "These are your people. Accept it." Russ and Will also recount similar experiences of aging at concerts, where they suddenly see themselves in the older crowds. This illustrates a key point: if you cannot win at one status game, it is best to pick a different one.

We are always looking for a place where we can be a bigger fish. A liberating insight is that life is not one big, monolithic status game where you simply move up and down. Instead, life is composed of many different status games. For example, you can go to a CrossFit class and be at the bottom of the hierarchy, but just half an hour later, you can enter a different status game and not be at the bottom.

This understanding becomes particularly important with age. Will, who recently turned 50, explains that you can't keep playing the games of youth. There are other games to play based on experience and expertise, areas where a 22-year-old cannot compete.

You just can't be playing those games of youth anymore. You can't be playing a status game that involves beauty anymore because you're going to make a fool of yourself. But there are other games to play. When you're in your 40s and 50s, you've got experience and expertise and there are things that a 22-year-old can't do that you can do.

It's about embracing these new games. This can be difficult because Western culture tends to worship youth. Russ mentions that at 71, looking good for his age is one of his status achievements.

Will Storr tells the story of Ben Gunn, who he interviewed years ago. Ben was one of the longest-serving prisoners in the UK, having been sent to prison as a 14-year-old for accidentally killing someone. After initial despair, Ben decided to fight back against the prison system by studying prison law. He became so knowledgeable that he was known as the "prison lawyer," a high-status figure who helped other inmates and caused trouble for the guards.

Because he was a troublemaker, the authorities repeatedly denied his parole. Eventually, Ben fell in love with a visiting English teacher. She offered him a future together in a cottage in the Cotswolds if he would just behave for a year to secure his release. To her astonishment, he refused. He realized he didn't want to leave. Inside the prison, he had immense status; when he walked down the corridor, people would say, "Oh my God, it's Ben Gunn."

When Will met him, Ben had been released and was living in that cottage, but he was having a terrible breakdown. Ben explained the feeling perfectly:

I knew who I was. Inside, I was someone, and out here, I'm nothing. I'm just an ex-con.

The story illustrates the profound and preeminent human need for status. Ben would rather have high status in the hell of the British prison system than have freedom, the love of a good woman, and no status on the outside. Russ Roberts notes the parallel to a character in "The Shawshank Redemption" and how it shows the human desire to be loved in the Adam Smith sense of being respected and admired. Will clarifies that romantic love falls under the category of connection, which is a separate need from status, the feeling of being valued by the wider community.

The status game is an unavoidable part of human existence. While some social movements rebel against it, the drive for status is deeply embedded in our nature. Will Storr argues that you cannot opt out of the status game; it's impossible because it's part of how we experience ourselves and the world.

He offers three examples of groups that fool themselves into believing they have escaped. The first is the hikikomori of Japan, people who become shut-ins to escape a harsh, judgmental society. They often end up playing computer games, which are simply proxy status games, and frequently die alone. The second example is Buddhists, who believe they are exempting themselves. Will calls this a fantasy, pointing out that their karmic system is hierarchical and scientific studies show that advanced practitioners often develop a sense of spiritual superiority.

The better people become at Buddhism, the more highly they regard themselves as kind of spiritual superiors to the people around them.

The final, and most catastrophic, example is the communists. They aimed for a world of 'pure connection' with no status but created an enormously hierarchical society with cults of personality around leaders like Stalin and Mao. These attempts to escape status are often disastrous.

Furthermore, status is not just a source of pain; it's also responsible for civilization itself. Major achievements like technological advances, space travel, and the internet are driven by smart people wanting to win the respect of their peers. Steve Jobs's intense status anxiety and rivalry, for instance, were foundational to the creation of the iPhone. Status, like religion or capitalism, is a complex system of trade-offs that cannot be simply labeled as 'good' or 'bad'.

There's a general truth that people are never fully satisfied. You think a certain achievement, title, or amount of money will make you happy, but it rarely does. There's always a new goal to strive for and always people ahead of you. The flip side of this constant striving is grievance. When you don't get the respect, title, or income you feel you deserve, the conclusion is often that "it's them," not you. This feeling is captured in the desperate plea, "Do you know who I am?"

It's a plea. It's usually said in anger or outrage, but it's basically an incredible statement of insecurity because it's saying, you are not giving me the status I am entitled to.

Russ suggests that as he has gotten older, reaching age 71, these grievances don't bother him as much. The "fire of injustice" that people often feel in the status game seems to quiet down with age. Will finds this idea reassuring and comforting. He wanted to write about this in his book, suspecting that these status-seeking urges lessen as we age. However, when he researched the topic, the evidence was too inconsistent to include. For example, studies on retirement show mixed results. If you choose your retirement, it tends to be a positive experience. If you feel forced into it, it's often negative. While he couldn't find the evidence to definitively support the idea, Will says he instinctively hopes it's true.

The feeling that we don't have the status we deserve is a fairly universal human experience. This is reflected in the power of the underdog archetype in storytelling. Characters like Harry Potter or Luke Skywalker are low-status individuals who are deserving of more, and we identify with them because we see ourselves in their struggle. This psychological trait of feeling we deserve more keeps us pushing forward in life.

I think that's the reason why we love underdogs so much, why we identify with them. Because that's us. That's me. And my guess is that's part of our psychology because it keeps us pushing for more. I deserve more. I deserve more. I deserve more.

However, as we get into middle age, the optimism of youth can fade, and this feeling often transforms into a sense of grievance. Many successful writers, for example, still feel that life is unfair. Russ notes that orphans are a particularly potent example of the underdog archetype. In stories like Oliver Twist, orphans are stripped of all status. They not only lack the guidance and income of their parents but also any social standing their family might have provided. They are truly starting from zero, which makes their situation feel deeply unjust and makes us root for them. This resonates because it taps into that fundamental human feeling that we too should have more status than we currently do.

Late in his career, Paul McCartney went through a phase of reversing the traditional "Lennon-McCartney" songwriting credit. He and John Lennon had agreed that all songs would be credited this way, regardless of who wrote what. But later, McCartney felt it was unfair for Lennon's name to come first. On live albums featuring Beatles songs, he began to flip the credit to "McCartney-Lennon." This prompted the threat of legal action from Yoko Ono.

Will sees this not just as petty, but as a deeply human example of the insatiable desire for status. McCartney is famously a nice guy and one of the most famous, beloved people on the planet. He seemingly has all the status one could want, yet he still sought this small adjustment. This story illustrates a key difference between power and status. The desire for power, which is about controlling resources, can wear out because it comes with responsibility and stress. The desire for status is different.

But when they test people's desire for status, it never runs out. Like, it never stops. And the interesting thing about status is it's not to say that everybody's walking around thinking, I want to be the king, I want to be the number one. Most people don't. They're quite happy to be above average. But it's about ratcheting up. You go up a little bit in status, then you want a bit more and you want a bit more and you want a bit more. And that never stops.

This pursuit of status never truly ends. While the intensity may fade with age, there likely never comes a point where someone is happy to be seen as the lowest-status person in the room.

In academic life, listing authors alphabetically on papers is a common norm. Russ points out that in economics, authors will sometimes add a note stating that the order was chosen randomly, just to be clear that the first author isn't necessarily the most important. This can seem like a small detail to fight over.

The joke is the fighting is so petty because the stakes are so small. Here's this journal article that 11 people are going to read and you're worrying that you're second, really.

Will explains this is part of the human status game. He references a study from the 1970s where one person in a group was given slightly less orange juice than everyone else. That person reliably became distracted and obsessed with the small difference. The reason for this is that humans are deeply attuned to their relative status, as it's connected to our most basic drives.

Everything can be a symbol of status. And we are deeply interested in our relative status because it plugs directly into our ability to survive and reproduce. So it's extremely important to us.

Will Storr argues that the political and economic policies of the 1980s, under leaders like Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, fundamentally changed Western culture. These policies, often labeled neoliberalism, aimed to increase competition through deregulation, privatization, and weakening unions. This shift created a new cultural environment where the brain, constantly asking how to earn status and connection, adapted. The culture moved from the 1960s ethos of "screw the man" to the 1980s idea that "greed is good."

Margaret Thatcher once said, "Economics is the project, but the object is to change the soul."

Will suggests this is precisely what happened. He points to psychological evidence, such as a study showing that parents in the early 1980s began choosing unusual names for their children, wanting them to "stand out and be a star." Research also shows that rates of perfectionism soared in the UK, US, and Canada during this period. These changes reflect a move away from a collective self toward a more individualistic, competitive self.

Russ Roberts offers a different perspective. He questions whether Thatcher and Reagan were as successful in their aims as is often claimed, noting that deregulation in the US actually began under Jimmy Carter. For Russ, the goal of these movements was not to promote selfishness, but to devolve responsibility from the state to voluntary civil society. He argues that the cultural shift toward a more self-centered, transactional sense of self is real, but its cause is complex. He suggests that people might have chosen exotic names simply because it was fun and cultural restrictions were loosening, which many see as a positive development. Russ believes the typical story about Reagan and Thatcher is a caricature and that other factors, like the birth control pill and later the smartphone, were also powerful drivers of cultural change.

Russ comments that being an economist rarely elevates his social status; in fact, it usually lowers it. In a social setting, he finds that people don't concede superiority or respect to an economist's opinion. This is because everyone participates in the economy—they have jobs and incomes, so they feel they already know all about it. Russ humorously adds that they might even be right.

Russ questions the idea of subsuming tribalism under the status game, viewing them as separate, hardwired traits. Will argues that we play the status game on two levels: individual and group. Our identity is partly formed by our group memberships, and the status of our group matters deeply to us. This is evident in the passionate, often tearful, reactions of football fans to their team's wins and losses.

This leads to a phenomenon called "group narcissism." While social rules often restrict us from boasting about our individual status, we are free to be boastful on behalf of our groups. Will points to a study where people from various countries collectively estimated their nation's contribution to world history at over 300%. This applies to nationalism as well as fan groups like the Swifties.

Reflecting on this, Russ reconsiders his view of conflicts like the Israeli-Palestinian issue. He typically frames the intense debate over its 77-year history as a matter of injustice, where each side feels it isn't getting what it deserves. He now sees it could also be about status, with each group feeling it isn't getting the respect and status it deserves.

Will agrees, proposing that concepts like justice and truth are actually downstream from status. Each group has its own "local truth" that it believes fervently. Modern phenomena like cancel culture are expressions of this group status competition. One group demands that others subscribe to its truths, and if they refuse, they face status attacks, such as reputational damage or removal from their positions.

I think justice and truth in inverted commas are downstream from status in the sense that every group, like it or not, truth is local. The Zionists in Israel have one truth and the Palestinian, you know, Palestinians have another truth and they both equally believe their truth to be the truth.

These group-versus-group status competitions can be savage, with truth and justice used as symbols in the ultimate battle for group dominance.

Will offers advice for navigating the status game in the modern world: reduce your moral sphere. He explains this was a reaction to the feverish nature of the culture wars, where people spend too much time on the moral surveillance of others. This surveillance is ultimately about status.

It's all about, are you on my side or are you not on my side? Are you a source of status for me in my group or are you a threat to the status of me and my group?

This constant judgment brings hatred, aggression, and stress to others and to oneself. Will believes a better approach is to focus inward.

Reducing your moral sphere in the sense of trying to hone it down just to think more about your own moral behavior rather than obsessing about the moral behavior of others, felt to me like probably a fundamentally good thing that most people should try and pursue.

Russ sees a parallel in Judaism. When you suffer, you're encouraged to do soul-searching to become a better person. But you're not supposed to do that for other people who are suffering; you should not investigate their soul or assume they did something wrong. This echoes the idea of focusing on your own improvement rather than judging others. In an era where social media puts this judgmental urge on steroids, this advice is particularly valuable.