Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself and Canadian editor Jonathan Kay.

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Welcome to the Kulett Podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

This week we're going to talk about the S word, status.

It's the thing that humans tend to think about a lot even when we're pretending not to.

Why do philanthropists put their names on public buildings?

Why do we drive around in cars with letters on the back that advertise the size of the engine under the hood. Why do we spend so much

time gossiping about real estate and salaries and job titles? It's all about status. And in

his new book, The Status Game, on Social Position and How We Use It, a claimed author

Will Store argues that status is central to the human condition, and he even includes a typology of different kinds of status hierarchies,

including dominance, prestige, and my personal favorite, as you'll know if you follow me on Twitter,

Virtue. In fact, Stor argues that much of human history can be explained by our shifting adherence

to different status norms and the often tragic consequences of those who run afoul of them.

I spoke to Will Store earlier this month over Skype. Here are excerpts from our conversation.

In your book, you talk about a guy by the name of Ben Gunn as an illustration of how no matter what environment we're in

we're always looking for opportunities to seek status. Can you tell listeners a little

bit about who this guy was? Well he basically beat somebody to death who was 11 so at 14

years old he was imprisoned at what they called Her Majesty's pleasure in the UK which

...