Over the past 6 months, I keep telling

people,

"We are living in Super Sad True Love

Story."

And sometimes they'll say to me, "What

was Super Sad True Love Story? What do

you mean?"

Super Sad True Love Story, if for some

terrible reason you don't know,

is a 2010 book by Gary Shteyngart. And

[music] I think more than any other

book,

it predicted the strangeness of the

world we live in today.

And also, a lot of what it feels like to

live in it.

All of the constant staring at screens,

the hyper-visual nature of modern life,

the obsession with wellness

>> [music]

>> and longevity,

and looksmaxing,

amidst a backdrop of a country that

often feels like it's falling apart.

>> We are living in a time of profound

corruption.

>> Inflation is hitting its highest point

in 3 years.

>> A world where

everybody is upset,

and they're grabbing at the wrong things

to try to fix it.

I wanted to understand how the author of

this book, Gary Shteyngart,

had predicted all this, how he had known

what it was going to feel like well into

the future of when he was writing.

Gary Shteyngart, of course, has written

a number of wonderful novels, including

The Russian Debutante's Handbook,

Absurdistan, and his most recent, Vera

or Faith.

He's also written all these amazing

essays [music] on travel and cruise

ships and martinis and his love of suits

and watches. Many of those essays will

be collected in a new book coming out in

November called The Sensualist.

>> [music]

>> That name, The Sensualist, I think tells

you something about what his project is,

what he [music] believes is necessary to

live well in a moment like this one.

But I wanted to talk to him about all of

it. As always, my email [music] is

replyallshow@nytimes.com.

>> [music]

>> Before we begin today's show, we're

going to be doing an ask me anything

episode quite soon. So, if you have

[music] any questions, email us at

ezraclineshow@nytimes.com

with the headline AMA.

Gary Shteyngart, [music] welcome to the

show.

>> Great to be here. Longtime listener.

>> So, I've said to many people in my life

that when I look around right now, I

feel like I'm living in the world of

Super Sad True Love Story.

So, for those who haven't read it, can

you just describe the world you create

in that book?

>> So, everyone carries a device called the

apparet, which wherever they go it

constantly ranks them. But, you know,

the sort of the germ of Super Sad True

Love Story is that the main character

Lenny Abramov

will walk into a bar or restaurant and

immediately he is ranked as say the 23rd

ugliest man in the room, right? That's

that's his thing. Uh at one point he

walks in and he's the second ugliest man

in the room and the ugliest man can't

take it and he leaves so that Lenny

becomes the ugliest man in the room.

Uh you're constantly being ranked

everywhere. You're being ranked even as

you walk down the street. There's giant

credit poles that showcase your credit

for, you know, you can tell

Gary has 600 out of 800 points in

credit. He needs to save more. So, even

on that level the society is so

intrusive that it tells you you needs to

save more. Some people need to spend

more. It just constantly wants to keep

people in equilibrium.

Um

women are very sexualized even more so

than in our world.

America's run by a kind of, well,

fascist leader who has started a war in

Venezuela, etc. So, a lot of familiar

stuff is happening.

Um there's two main characters. Lenny is

kind of like me, a sort of neo-nebbish

who's

uh Gen X,

which is this interesting generation

that's kind of a bridge between the

analog and the digital worlds. And

Eunice is 10-15 years younger than him,

but she's already a full digital native.

So, probably, you know, if you think

millennial or something like that. And

so, this is a very unlikely love affair

between two people. And I think the

biggest thing

that holds them back is the fact that

they live they live in two different

worlds.

>> So, the thing that made me start

thinking a lot about Super Sad True Love

Story has been the omnipresence of Brian

Johnson, the longevity influencer,

clavicular, the looksmaxer.

And the way that streaming culture and

looks and ratings and everything, hyper

visual culture, all seem to be now

holding our attention in a way I don't

remember happening before.

So, as a guy who wrote a book about all

this as the future at one point, how

does this look to you?

>> [laughter]

>> Um you know, the book was written about

mid-aughts, I would say. It came out in

2010.

As I was writing I was thinking, yeah,

this future might be possible in I don't

know, 30 years. Usually when people are

writing speculative fiction, they give

themselves that 30-year corridor, but it

happened to I don't know, 10 years

later, 14, 15 years later. Um

there's an invasion of Venezuela in this

book.

>> Oh yeah, there is an invasion of

Venezuela in the book, yeah.

>> Israel is controlled by a Smotrich-like

party. It's called Security State

Israel. It's this kind of

Jewish Iran, if you will, which I think

is where we're headed. But the main

thing I was kind of thinking was, well,

one of the main things was the way young

people, including myself when I got

into, you know, social media, was the

way we were into being ranked.

Uh this was something very new to me. I

mean, I guess it's always been a thing,

you know, people apply to college and

then they're ranked to get in or

you know, athletes are ranked, blah blah

blah. We're in a very competitive

society.

And in this book there's a thing called

Rate Me Plus technology, which

constantly ranks people over and over,

not just on their looks, but also on

their finances, all every single aspect

of their being.

And at one point the internet of the

future goes out and

the Rate Me Plus technology disappears

and young people start killing

themselves because they just can't

understand how they can live without

knowing where they fit into the grander

scheme of things. Yeah, I thought that

was a very I actually had that quote

here. I found it very moving. You talk

about these young people who committed

suicide um in the building complex and

you write, "One wrote quite eloquently

about how he reached out to life but

found there only walls and thoughts and

faces which weren't enough.

He needed to be ranked to know his place

in this world."

>> Yeah.

Yeah. Uh

>> [sighs]

>> I mean, when I wrote that, I remember

feeling a little chilled myself because

I wondered if that's

if that's what the new technology that I

was being exposed to, the Zuckerberg

technology, was doing to me a little

bit, you know, because I would um

I travel a lot and there were times when

I would go to, I don't know, some kind

of Uzbekistan-like country and where

there at that point you just didn't have

constant contact with the internet. And

I would find myself going through

withdrawal, you know, if I went for 2 3

weeks and I was like, "But who who am I

now?" You know, I'm just Gary in the

block on the block. I I don't have um

you know, that other I I fell into that

trap so quickly. I have friends,

relatives who

uh work in Silicon Valley that they

really create barriers between their

kids and this technology. They know

exactly what they're making and they

want their kids as far away from it as

possible.

And and look, none of this is 100% new.

Ever since civilization began, there

was, you know, the the head caveman and

the lower caveman and

blah blah blah. So, we we we know that

there's always been a hierarchy, but the

need to know to the infinitesimal

decimal point. It was funny. Uh my

preparation for some of this was going

to a super competitive high school in

New York, uh Stuyvesant High School,

which was all full of immigrant kids

like myself. I'm from the Soviet Union.

Kids were from Soviet Union, East Asia,

South Asia, etc. And I to this day,

86.894

was my average uh at Stuyvesant and I

remember it. You know, this is a

shocking thing to the thousandth decimal

point. And that I think prepared me in

some ways. Stuyvesant prepared me for

this world in which every single metric

is constantly deployed against you, I

would say, because none of these people

are enjoying life, you know, when you

look at all these men who are, you know,

measuring their cheekbone to the nth

millimeter. This isn't a good way to

live. [laughter]

>> So, this to me, it's it's The other

interesting thing about the book, and it

also comes up in your your book of

essays, but it is this simultaneous

obsession with living forever without

enjoying life.

>> Right.

>> And what I was find so fascinating about

when I watch Bryan Johnson I don't mean

to be

uh insulting everybody's life decisions

here.

But I don't know, if I was I I don't

want to live like that.

>> Your life goal is to drive down your

heart rate, okay? The reason is because

the lower heart your heart rate goes,

the better your sleep, the better your

sleep, the better willpower. More

willpower, better exercise, better food.

When your heart rate is high,

bad sleep, bad willpower, no exercise,

and bad food. So, resting heart rate is

the most important marker of your entire

life.

>> I think the reason he is so fascinating

people in part is that to constantly

have a self-level self-examination, the

self-level of self-diagnostics.

I mean, you you have a partner now, and

so the first thing you do is you go

online and talk about her vaginal biome.

>> Good relationships are really rare, and

Kate is important to me because she

really does feel like my other half.

>> Biohacker Bryan Johnson recently boasted

about his girlfriend's top 1% vagina,

sparking interest in at-home vaginal

microbiome tests.

>> Yes, got to get that vaginal biome.

>> [laughter]

>> Clavicular, who it's like you've

divorced getting hot from the point of

getting hot, right? He talks about how

he can't have a girlfriend given the

life he leads. He is not fertile.

>> Wait, why are you infertile right now?

>> Uh so, there is just like a negative

feedback loop when you're uh you know,

not needing to produce testosterone

anymore cuz your body realizes, okay,

we're getting it from an external

>> are not producing any testosterone

naturally?

>> No.

>> None?

>> No.

>> Oh, I'm going to take a TRT, bro.

>> We want to live because we want to

enjoy. We want to be hot because we want

love and children. And this severing of

all of these urges from the things the

urges are supposed to do, the severing

of the pursuit of desire from the thing

the desire is supposed to It's

incredible.

Um taking testosterone to look good, to

attract a mate, but at the same time,

you know, taking all this testosterone

causes shrunken testicles, which

probably will not allow you to

propagate. So, you know, these things

are completely at odds and at the same

time it's almost like a perversion of

whatever strange biological instincts we

had. Clavicular is one of my favorites

when it comes to this cuz he's just

really funny unintentionally so.

>> How important is it to you to also make

the girl have an orgasm?

>> Not important.

>> How come?

>> Well, because, you know,

the amount of extra effort that's

required to do that is just not going to

really have much ROI. So,

>> [laughter]

>> So,

I don't

>> [laughter]

>> Well, it's true. I mean, really.

>> That means return on investment.

>> Um you know, he'll talk about how um

knowing that he can have sex with a

woman, a given woman, is way more

important for him than actually having

sex with the woman.

>> What's the ranking about? Mogging the

>> mogging, the ranking. But, you know, and

and so it's like, but wasn't sex

supposed to be enjoyable? Especially

when you're 21? I I I remember, you

know, it took me a while until I started

having sex, but when I did I was like,

this is the most incredible thing that's

ever happened to me. I don't care if I

die tomorrow if I keep having this, you

know, for the next 24 hours. This is

this is kind of it. You know, I'll give

you another example, which is a little

strange, but so I've been teaching

creative writing at Columbia for about

20 years now. Um

and I've noticed the way and my students

are wonderful, they write wonderfully.

The craftsmanship keeps getting better

and better. But the things they write

about have changed so drastically, you

know. Um, 20 years ago in the odds,

there was this kind of

John Cheever bisexual energy going on

where

>> Explain what a John Cheever bisexual

energy is. You can't You can't move that

fast.

>> Sorry. Well,

>> [laughter]

>> you know, the Cheever Updike Roth era

and I know that skews very masculine,

right? There

>> was you know, people wrote about sex

now.

>> Stop. I mentioned Cheever because at

least he had a lot of you know, he was

bisexual himself and there was an

appreciation of

both hetero and homosexuality. So,

but what I'm trying to say in general is

that sex was appreciated as a major life

force.

When I read the wonderful things that my

students submit now, there almost is no

sex and love, no love and almost no

pleasure. You know, I have a collection

of essays coming out in November called

The Sensualist which is all about my

love of

pleasure but in millions of contexts.

There's sex in there, there's food,

there's I mean, you know, life is a

endless buffet of pleasure. And this

clavicular generation just says, "Nah,

we don't want that, you know. You might

as well be an algorithm. We just want to

match up to all these metrics and say

done, done, done, check, check, check.

We are the best. We won."

And that's that. Uh, so so there

>> view of where that came from?

>> I mean, I think it's When I look at my

students, we're talking about our place

in the world earlier. They're unsure of

the world's place in the world. They

don't know what's going to happen next.

Everything is a source of anxiety.

Half of what my students write, if not

more, is speculative fiction of one sort

or another, right?

And and the speculation isn't that, you

know, we're going to be living in a

utopia in 20 years. It's it's The The

mood is The vibes, as they say, are you

know, they're low-key horrible.

It's like we've separated ourselves so

much from the possibility of joy that to

make it the subject of a book or of a

story

seems almost privileged. Like you don't

want to touch that anymore. And I'm not

saying that, you know, the Cheever

Updike crew

didn't write in a solipsistic way about

whatever, you know, their own identity

as

wealthy white people in Scarsdale or

whatever, you know, obviously there was

a lot of that kind of stuff as well, but

there was a sense that life wasn't

entirely hopeless.

>> [snorts]

>> When I read a lot of modern literary

fiction, the driving force to me is

neurosis.

>> Yeah.

>> People being anxious, being unsure,

being self-loathing.

I find it very, very, very depressing.

Like when you describe that, right, it

does like mid late mid-20th century male

writing was very horny.

>> Yeah.

>> And like 2020s writing is very nervous.

>> Yeah. Yeah, my students call this the

sad girl novel.

And there've been some amazing sad girl

novel. The Year of Rest and Relaxation

is probably

to me it reads like a really cool,

smart, and funny version of that. I

think sometimes what I lack, and it not

always, but what I kind of look for in

the neurosis novel is a sense of

is a sense of humor that almost leads

you into a path of joy. You know, I

teach a class called So You Want to

Write Funny at Columbia. And for

example, you know, we teach talk about

neurosis. Like we we teach I teach

Portnoy's Complaint, you know. And that

is obviously it's all it's all set in a

psychiatrist's office. It's this

neurotic horny Jew. Like they don't make

them anymore, right? And he's just

you know, chomping at the bit to get out

of his particular identity and just to

have sex with every non-Jewish woman he

can find. And that is I mean, wrong in

many ways, but also really, really

funny. The the the pursuit of it is

very, very funny. Look, super sad is the

word sad is the second part of the

second word in the title, but I hope

that that that Lenny, you know, when he

finds the love of his life Eunice, when

he uh out with his friends, that there's

still an avenue toward a kind of

overwhelming feeling of contentment.

That may go away by the next day or when

the hangover uh sets in, but that is

there at least for a while.

>> There's a a character in Super Sad True

Love Story who I think is interesting um

for this conversation, which is Joshy,

Lenny's boss. Tell me a bit about Joshy.

>> So, Joshy is Let's see how old is Joshy.

Well, we don't even know how old Joshy

is. He could be in his 80s, but it

doesn't matter because he is using every

kind of um anti-aging technique

possible.

Joshy does not want to die. He feels And

this is interesting because I think this

is true of so many of the people that

use this kind of technology. He feels

that he hasn't really lived, that he

hasn't really had a good life. I A lot

of people I And I

I knew I know a lot of people in, for

example, finance because I wrote a book

uh Lake Success that was set in the

world of hedge funders, so I had to

spend 4 years hanging out with them. Um

I think s- not 100%, but so many of the

ones I've met have had really

unremarkably awful childhoods. And

there's a need to somehow create the

perfect life and live that life. And

that life is always i-

the opposite of the rearview mirror, I

don't know, always in the windshield.

You're always looking forward to it. It

never quite comes, but in order to reach

it one day, one has to extend life

almost indefinitely. I remember one of

the first things when we emigrated to

America, my parents would say about

Americans, who always seemed so unhappy

despite the fact that they were so much

richer than us. We were living on

government cheese for a time, you know.

And my parents and other Russians would

say, "Oni uzh s zhiru besitsya." Which

translates very vaguely as, "They're

wild with their own fats."

>> [laughter]

>> They're so juicy and fat, and yet they

don't know what to do with it. Just

enjoy the fat, you know. But sometimes

this greater meaning combines with this

egotistical impulse to have more and

more and more into And to not die is one

of those almost Protestant kind of

extension of everything and striving.

Why should the striving ever end?

>> Well, there's the the search for greater

meaning, and there's where you're

searching for it. I mean, one of the

fundamental things about Super Sad

and that feels like a fundamental thing

of modern life is everybody's looking

for it in a screen.

>> Right.

>> And you have one of the fun Phillips of

the book is that talking to other

people's called verbaling.

>> Verbaling.

>> Right? You've needed to create a

different linguistic category for what

it is we're doing when we have

a conversation.

And you know, screens are made by

corporations.

>> Yes. Yes.

>> Corporations have their own incentives

and their own things they're trying to

do.

And what they're trying to do is not

make you happy.

>> Right.

>> They're trying to make you keep coming

back. And nothing keeps you coming back

like a ranking. There was a funny tweet

I saw today

and it said, you know, Sisyphus's life

would have been much better if every

time he got the rock to the top, he got

some points.

>> [laughter]

>> And if he could then like exchange those

points for stickers.

>> Yeah, stickers that you can put on the

rock, right? Yeah, that'd be great. Oh

my god, now that is that is really,

really smart.

>> But but so there is this real I mean,

the way you talk about eating a bowl of

pasta, it's it's fundamentally erotic.

>> Right. Right.

>> So often I will see like people who are

together, they're like on some kind of a

date, a married couple or a non-married

couple, I don't know, and they're both

looking at their phones.

>> Mhm.

>> And

there is something about a very

unfulfilling

but very compulsive world

>> Mhm.

>> like beckoning

>> Mhm. Mhm.

>> that I think is a

an enemy of enjoyment.

>> There's a lot in there. So, verbaling is

very hard for members of younger

generations. I know COVID messed them up

as well. Obviously, people in Generation

Alpha, my son's generation, um

that didn't help, obviously, but I think

verbaling

is just well, it's it's it's it is what

it is. Letting sounds come out of your

mouth as communication is very hard for

people to do, much harder than obviously

sending emojis or shortens, you know,

shortened text messages, etc., stuff

like that.

And I think it's interesting when you

look at someone who is, for example,

doing looksmaxing. Uh

who is using a hammer, talk about the

opposite of joy. This anti-enjoyment.

You're hammering your cheekbone in to

make it a certain metric.

>> Describe what bone smashing is.

>> Um, yeah, so bone smashing is based off

uh, of Wolf's law that, you know, when

you break down a a bone it grows back

stronger.

>> And you feel like this is how you make

yourself attractive to women. But the

real way to make And this I learned this

as a small furry immigrant without a

great deal of good looks, you know. You

attract women by verbaling with them and

and saying interesting things, being an

interesting human being, listening to

them, and then getting into

conversations with them, having any kind

of charisma that allows you to actually

interact with somebody of the opposite

of the same sex, whatever your

preference is. And this is like, no, we

can't do that. We can never achieve that

level of being interested in another

person or even being interested enough

in our own interiority to access that

kind of level of interaction. So, we're

just going to It's hammer time. We're

going to get that hammer and just chisel

ourselves.

>> There's been a fascinating recent trend

among Silicon Valley types where they're

on a tear against interiority.

Um, you have Mark Andreessen talking

about how he doesn't want to to to have

interiority. He doesn't want to have

introspection, which he described as

looking backwards, which not quite what

it is, but nevertheless.

>> You said something that I love and I

never hear other entrepreneurs think

about talk about, but I think it's super

important, that you don't have any

levels of introspection.

>> Yes, zero. As little as possible.

>> Why?

>> You move forward. Go.

Yeah, I don't I don't know. I just have

fun people who dwell on the past get

stuck in the past. It's It's just It's a

real problem and it's a It's a problem

at work and it's a problem at home.

>> And I've been trying to think on this

because I I mean, these are smart

people, right? And

I do think it

is in some ways a If I'm being maximally

generous, it is in some ways a reaction

to what I was talking about a minute

ago, where a lot of modern intellectual

culture is very neurotic and very

anxious and is endlessly displaying how

anxious it is. And

but then you go all the way to the other

side to where you're not thinking

in a deep way about yourself at all and

not trying to self-understand at all and

that is the opposite

problem and dysfunction.

>> Right. Right. Yeah, that's a very

interesting way and I think a a correct

way to put it. There's a lot of

interesting things about who these

people are and this may seem a little

out there but I would say that you can't

look at people like Musk and not think

of

neurodivergence but also neurodivergence

combined with terrible parenting.

Now you have somebody like Elon, right,

who obviously is proclaims to be

neurodivergent who was raised by

possibly the worst father this side of

Woody Allen. I mean, so you have someone

who obviously cannot deal with somebody

with special needs

and at the same time somebody who

possesses all of the gifts that those

special needs

in the case of neurodivergence give

them.

>> I think when I was I don't know, five or

six or something, I thought I was

insane.

>> Why did you think you were insane?

>> Because it was clear that other people

did not

what their mind wasn't exploding with

ideas all the time.

>> They weren't expressing it. They weren't

talking about it all the time and you

realized by the time you were five or

six like, oh, they're probably not even

getting this thing that I'm getting.

>> No.

It was just strange.

It was like

Hmm.

I'm strange.

>> [laughter]

>> That was my conclusion. I'm strange.

>> So you have this strange combination

where it's not it's somewhere in growing

up these people were not given the

opportunity by the school system, by

their parents, by relatives to look

inwards. Looking inwards was considered

something so wrong that there was never

a skill developed for it.

>> Let me go back to the the the Mark

Andreessen to the world because I think

what they might say on your riff on Elon

Musk there

is and Musk hates his father to to to

note that here. But listen, it created

the greatest industrialist of our age,

the richest man in the world, the guy

who is able to put reusable rockets in

space.

Isn't that success? Isn't that what

humanity needs to go forward even if the

New York writerly class literary class

doesn't like it.

>> Let me tell you this, I do think that

space colonization really is not

something I'm terribly interested in. I

don't think going to Mars is going to

answer any of our problems. I don't

think we'll ever live on the kind of

scale we live in. You know, we have a

really nice planet here which we're

destroying. We really don't need to

discover, you know, the marvels of

Mercury anytime soon, right?

So a lot of this is complete [ __ ] as

far as I'm concerned. That part of it,

right? Now of course electric cars etc.

all that stuff is very good and and if

anything that Musk did that was good was

Tesla which now will be probably brought

to scale by Chinese automakers, right?

That will make it cheaper and possibly

better at some point. But when I look at

what the great industrialists of the

world have given us

lately and

is it that

have the

last 26 25 years 30 years have they been

really that great in terms of just life?

Let me let me bring it down. I know that

perhaps if you're living somewhere if

you're living in Kenya far away from

Nairobi and you have a cell phone a new

technology, right? That's really helping

you in a way that not having a cell

phone would have hurt you 30 years ago.

But at the same time

this is not a happy life wrought by

these wonderful industrialists who

create screens and algorithms that make

us you know

that have destroyed my life to a very

large extent. I write at a much slower

clip. I don't write as introspectively

as I used to.

I am as addicted to and by the way

please follow me at Steingart on Twitter

Instagram Blue Sky Substack. I mean it

never ends, right? This this never ends.

So

>> Why are you on them then?

>> Well it's it's part of the marketing you

know you

absolutely it helps. You're a big deal

man. Do you actually need to be there?

I still need it. Everyone needs it. But

the point and I do get that dopamine

kick from it. Yeah, I think that's the

more honest answer right there. Both

both both profit and dopamine. Let me

say this, when I started writing Super

Sad

the odds mid odds, I didn't know much

about this technology. But I had this

great intern and he got me into he was

very young into Facebook and it was

called

MySpace I think was the thing, right?

And the moment I got on it I thought

this is this was the germ of Super Sad.

I thought this technology is going to

destroy everything. Why did you think

that? Because I knew look, when you're a

writer or an artist you are a part of a

narcissist, right? You are partly at

least a narcissist because what do you

do this for? You don't just do this

There was a great way of putting in the

Soviet Union when people were writing

things that the system would hate so

much that you knew you could never

publish it. It was called pisat' v stol

to write into your desk literally. That

is the highest level of writing, right?

Because nobody will see it.

But I did not want to write into my

desk. I wanted the world I was this like

I said small furry immigrant strange

sense of self. I wanted people to read

my books and say, "Oh, look at this."

Oh, these people exist too, you know.

But when I saw MySpace and Facebook I

thought everyone's a writer now. There

are no barriers. Now, on the one hand

that sounds great. Woo, more democracy

than ever, right? Everyone's now is is

is whatever is is Aristotle or

everyone will express themselves. But

then

I lived for about half a year a year

more on those platforms and I thought

this is just garbage. We're on this all

the time. Half of what I read are

complete lies. Lies seem to get more

clicks. I'm now addicted to this to the

point where it's hard for me to start

reading and finishing a book. What's the

and books are the best way to get inside

into interiority because what is a book?

It's a communication between one

consciousness and and another. I love

film and theater and TV and all this

other stuff, but this is the fastest

this is like a mind melding Vulcan

technology you're in somebody else's

head and somebody who's completely

different from you hopefully. So, when I

started using that I thought that this

would be a problem for personalities

especially personalities like mine and

and for the rest of society.

>> I I'm very influenced by this thing Ryan

Broderick has said who's a internet

writer. He talks about it as a porn

theory of the internet

>> Mhm.

>> that all content now at least all the

content on places like Tik Tok and

Instagram

what it's doing is creating an instant

surge of sensation. Right? I see this

even when we're creating like clips from

the show we needed to make you feel

something immediately.

>> Yes.

>> It's like the way like porn evolved on

the internet but but now it's like you

know, people like you know, pulling

apart cheese sandwiches and

>> Right? Like you got to feel angry or

curious or hungry or something

immediately.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> And I'm I mean you're again like writing

this some time ago

there's a section in the book where

Lenny is reading it

from a

the unbearable lightness of being to to

Eunice

and book by Milan Kundera and you write

or he he says he writes in the book I

felt that Kundera had put too many words

on the fetish for her to gain what her

generation required from any form of

content

a ready surge of excitement a temporary

lease on satisfaction.

I mean now you hear everybody talking

about how like kids can't follow along

book anymore everything is too long. I

mean that's all really there in that

book. So, as somebody writes books

somebody who's clearly thought about

this a lot how do you think about what

it is doing to us as a country as a

collective as a world

when we get sort of

trained to expect that the things we see

will immediately create

a reaction a sensation.

>> Oh, absolutely.

>> As opposed to something we have to

follow along and interpret ourselves.

>> I have now started

putting I

realized that if I post something on

Instagram at Stein Greg

if I post something on Instagram,

I and then I start reading something,

it's impossible.

Because I will every two pages, even if

I'm reading the most incredible I was

reading this incredible New York New

Yorker article about

Ukraine. Ukraine obviously is a subject

that I'm I'm very involved with and

I couldn't every three five minutes.

Well, who liked that? Oh, oh look at

that. I thought this person never liked

me, but I guess they like me. Oh,

someone recently liked this. Wow, life

is really good. Uh I mean, do I think

that there's a future in long-form

fiction? I think it's going to be very

much a

speaking of fetish, like a very small

tiny group of people that do this

and most people simply will not have

Even today, I think something like 47%

of Americans have read a full-length

book in the last year. So, this is

obviously going to be a very minority

position. But when I write myself, I

What do people in California call it

in Silicon Valley call it the end user

experience? Like I I

For me, because I hope I write funny. I

I think the humor is the thing that

gives you that little hit. It keeps the

reader hopefully somewhat attached to

the page.

So, this is this interesting thing,

right? Like does does writing have to I

don't know. Will we have books that

explode while you read them in order to

get your attention in the future? That

could be a great technology or it

releases a plume of

smoke or something. So, like, oh yeah,

right right. I got to get back to this.

>> There's an interesting tension around

that in the book because one of the

other main characters is Eunice who is a

much younger partner of Lenny.

And

Lenny is a a writer and a reader and he

has actual physical books, which is a

bit of a gauche thing to have in that

world and they smell bad and they smell

musty.

>> And you know, not to spoil too much of

any any of the book, but but at the end

when some of their communication with

each other has been discovered by

others,

it's Eunice who is considered like the

great writer and she is internet adult.

Everybody is texting on a service called

Global Teens, which is very funny.

But I actually thought that too. When

you're reading it, like her writing is

much more, in a way, vivid because it is

less self-conscious, right? You can you

can read Lenny writing to be read. I

mean, there's nothing worse than reading

the journal entries of somebody who

wrote a journal hoping somebody would

want to read their journal entries. And

you can I mean, those get released a

lot, right?

>> Oh yeah. Oh my god, that's half of

literature.

>> That's half of literature. And there's a

lot of life in uh the the writing that

comes without that self-consciousness.

>> Yeah, absolutely. And that's, you know,

this is Sorry, I keep talking about the

craft of writing, but I I hopefully

uh listeners won't mind, but it's this

idea, you know, when we start teaching a

workshop, what I'm looking for in the

first paragraph, the first page, the

first chapter, is a sense that there's a

really active voice that's unlike any

other voice I've read before, and that

is has something to declare that's so

desperate to declare.

Uh they need to do this or or they won't

survive in some way. That's maybe

overstating the case, but some sense of

that kind of, you know, call me Ishmael.

You know, you can't you can't look away

from that. And yeah, Lenny's voice uh

Lenny is almost in some ways a kind of

uh he thinks of himself as being very

literary. He's actually not a writer per

se, you know, but he thinks of himself

as journaling a lot, and so he,

you know, a lot of what he writes is

very much meant for a certain kind of

it's meant for a certain kind of

Brooklyn reader or Brookline mass

reader, let's say.

Uh whereas Eunice is What I loved about

writing Eunice was that Eunice was She

wrote in this completely Global Teens

way. Everything she's buying this, she's

buying that, she's buying clothes, she's

she's looks maxing in her own way.

And at the same time,

she has an ability, especially as the

novel continues, to look more inwards

and to see

the dichotomy between what the society

wants from her and what she wants to be.

>> One of the things, going back to the the

subject of Clavicular,

is I find him to be a very tragic

figure. Doesn't seem happy to me.

Like I just saw pictures of him uh after

getting a rhinoplasty, a nose

job. His nose seemed fine to me before.

And he just like is miserable in their

wheelchair and has like, you know, kind

of like small legs around him and people

are making fun of them on the internet.

>> Oh my god.

>> And you just think like

this guy has achieved a level of social

notoriety that is remarkable. I mean,

most successful streamer of the age.

>> Mhm.

>> And how much happier he would probably

be if he had never touched it. And like

look, I'm not in there, but but I like

this is not good for people to be

putting that much of their lives

forward, to have so little backstage in

their own mind.

>> Mhm.

>> And you're writing there about a world

in which this has become very, very

common.

>> Mhm.

>> And one of the things that I see in our

world is that this has become very, very

common. Everybody, you know, the number

of people with a brand, everybody, you

know, on TikTok.

And I wonder what you think it

does to people when they keep offering

up things that are so cherished to them,

right? Like and important and that

they're insecure about, right? How do I

look? Am I loved? Am I successful? Who

am I? And they keep giving it

>> Mhm.

>> out to the public

>> Mhm.

>> and saying, "What do you think? What do

you think? What do you think? What do

you think?"

And then they're dependent on what the

people around them think.

>> Yeah. Yeah. You know, since I'm mid-Gen

X, we grew up sitting around bars

talking to each other, counseling each

other, helping each other. Everybody had

different things they could do. You

know, one friend could really write a

great CV, another friend could do

something else really well for you. You

You We really were a small village onto

ourselves.

It was just

wonderful. Did we get into fights? Yes,

and breakups, etc. All this stuff, but

we were still a wonderful unit. I don't

think these people have that on that

level.

What our society has done, what these

platforms have done have done is that

they have made being mentally ill a very

profitable thing, being openly mentally

ill

a profitable thing, and I think that

reaches up to our commander-in-chief,

you know, there is this sense that

uh if you flaunt the fact that you are

you don't know what you're doing, you're

completely out of it, uh but you do it

in this way that combines humor and

trolling and all this kind of stuff. It

you know, it's almost like a

carnivalesque atmosphere. Look, I'm

completely crazy. I'm beating myself up

with a hammer, you know. And people will

pay for that. They will pay for that. Uh

but what happens to that person is

nobody cares, right? If tomorrow he

OD'd, you know, I don't think even his

followers would care. They'd be like,

"Okay, that that was interesting, you

know. I'm going to I'm going to find

someone else who beats his you know, his

nose with a hammer or whatever."

>> That's interesting, and and a very grim

way to put it. Like that these

relationships that they feel real, but

they're not

>> Right.

>> real. They're not real.

They're not real. And again, people will

say, "Well, Jerry, you know,

or these the Horowitzes or these

industrialists will say, 'But Jerry,

you're living in the past, you know,

society moves on.' And in fact, if you

think social media did anything

uh to destroy the sense of people

hanging out in your in your bar, talking

to each other, rubbing elbows, hitting

on each other. If you Wait till AI

enters the chat, and then you won't even

need friends. You'll just have six or

seven AIs hanging out with you, possibly

helping you as you, you know, pleasure

yourself, so you don't even have to

Hey, save time, you know, just you can

get it all without even leaving the

comfort of your own bed. The concept of

bed rotting, etc. So, I think they would

say, "We're only getting started here."

Uh now, this creates interesting

challenges on a political level because

uh nobody's having children uh in the

developing I don't even know what you

call it anymore.

>> [laughter]

>> The opposite of the global South, the

global North, nobody's having children.

The wealthier world I

you know

East Asia wonderfully leads the pack. I

go to South Korea a lot because my

wife's Korean-American. Nobody's having

kids there. If they do it's one kid. I

say this is also with someone with one

kid but you know there nobody's

replicating themselves in those

societies.

>> me what you see when you're there from

that perspective because low fertility

rate is happening in the background

there of super sad.

>> Yes.

>> And it's clearly been something you've

thought about for a while. So when you

go to South Korea which is a

society that is now

if trends continue it will shrink

geometrically.

>> Yes.

>> Shrink very very very fast.

>> Yes.

>> What's it like?

>> It's amazing because oh first of all if

if you're uh

>> [laughter]

>> if you're into technology even if you

like a dystopian um

version of that there's it's all

technology all the time, you know,

there's a

waste basket that says it's honored to

accept your waste. I mean it just it

never ends. Everything's the internet of

things. I remember I did a piece for

Smithsonian

I went to visit um you know, Korea. One

of the ways they advance is that the

government uh decides oh now we're going

to do this. Uh so oh now we're going to

do um flat screen televisions. This is

decades ago. So they became you know, LG

Samsung took over the market in that.

Um the last time I was there it was like

oh we're going to take over robotics.

Obviously robotics is a thing. So I went

to this um

way outside of Seoul in the

I went to this

>> [gasps]

>> place where they were creating bull

robots. Bull robots? Uh this bull you

know, you

you stood there with a red hanky and

this bull would charge you and they're

like yes, we're trying to corner the

toreador market in Spain because people

don't want real bulls to die anymore,

you know, so we're developing these

toreador bulls. And this bull looked

pretty fierce, you know.

Uh and I'm like Jesus Christ. It's like

there's no end to it. Every single part

of our lives is going to be replicated.

But when you hang out with people in

South Korea, they are exhausted. They're

exhausted, you know, and they will drink

as a Russian I can drink, but nobody

drinks more than people I've met in

Korea. They will drink themselves into a

stupor and then talk about how, oh, at

work I'm on the B team. I want to be on

the A team. I'm glad I'm not on the C

team, but being on the B team isn't

great either, you know.

Uh, the metrics are even more finely

attuned than they are in America and

then, you know, but when you're also

working 80 hours a week and if you have

kids, you have to put them through these

schools to get into a university that

will take up half your paycheck already.

So having one kid is already a gigantic

undertaking. Having two is basically an

impossibility for most Koreans. And I

think that's where we're going to.

>> I think there's a really interesting way

this actually connects to rankings.

One of the fascinating thing about

fertility rates around the world is it

people tend to have a lot of kids for

some reason when they're very, very

rich.

But also when they're quite poor.

And then in the middle here it's too

expensive to have kids.

And it's not that that's wrong, but it

has to do with the positional

competition of having kids

when you are in richer countries in

particular.

And I mean obviously there's other

things going on here, birth control and

women's liberation and a million

different things, but there is a reality

that, you know, you go to much poorer

places and they have a lot more

children.

And then you go to Brooklyn and

everybody's like, it's too expensive to

have kids.

And it's not that that's fake, it's

true.

But it has to do with,

you know, we have made having kids very,

very expensive.

>> We've made it having kids very, very

expensive. We've also made it too

competitive. Um,

I was just in Palo Alto and then I flew

back to downtown Manhattan

[clears throat] where I live and and in

both of these precincts there's this

feeling that you're not just having a

child, you're having a kind of

I I don't know, you're having a

corporation, a mini corporation that has

to do really, really well. The

competition among these kids because it

almost feels like these parents and the

kids recognize that the pie is so small

that it's so easy to get kicked out of

the whatever you want to call it, the

upper middle class, the coastal elites,

whatever you want to call it. And so the

competition is breathtaking for just a

little smidgen of the pie, you know. God

bless Clavicular as an economic agent.

He's figured out his own path forward.

He's making 1.2 million or something a

year by, you know, doing this complete

horse [ __ ] That's incredibly cool for

him. Uh and that I think that is the

model that so many Americans are looking

at. It used to be, you know, oh, I'm

going to be a basketball player, you

know, I'm going to be in a cool rock and

roll band. Now it is, I'm going to be

mentally ill on TikTok and I'm going to

make a lot of money off that. People are

trying to and you were talking about

this earlier, trying to sort of

commodify their own sense of grief.

There's like grief maxing now where

people talk on, you know, about all the

grief that they've suffered, which I

guess is called a novel, but

uh right, but now it's also a TikTok.

So,

um but again, these kids that I'm

looking at, like, yeah, what happens to

them? Um I know parents who are

decamillionaires, centimillionaires, and

they're still incredibly worried for

what their kids will do. And so this

isn't fun for the parents. It's not fun

for the kids. It takes away It creates

It recreates that sense of metrics that

creates for Clavicular Claviculars down

the line.

>> I find this very frightening. I have a

first-grader and another one who'll be

in kindergarten next year.

>> Yeah.

>> And I know it's coming for them. I know

it's coming for them and for me. So

there's a sadness to this for me. I I,

you know, look at my son like studying

his Pokémon card binder every morning.

Which it's not for anything.

>> It's not for anything.

>> He just likes the cards cuz he likes the

cards and I know homework is coming in a

real way and I know the competitions are

coming and I know it'll be important for

him to at least do like well enough in

them and and obviously for my younger

one when it's his turn.

And I just feel this dread

of so much of the joy being drained out

of their life. One thing I can suggest

is

mind when your kid develops a real love,

especially a love of something creative.

My son loves composition, musical

composition. Loves it, and he's going to

school next year, you know, during the

weekend that will, you know,

um, prep him for, if he wants a career

as a composer someday. I don't know,

maybe AI will do that, too.

Uh, but he loves it, and this, I think,

you know, he's sitting there in a class.

He may like the class, he may not like

the class, but he's humming to himself.

>> I think there's a, this is like an

interesting bridge to this book of

essays you have coming out called The

Sensualist.

And, you know, you could really see this

in Lenny. You could see this in some of

your characters over over the years.

That it feels to me that one of the

arguments you've quietly been making and

then making more loudly in your

non-fiction

is that it is a radical act to in a

bodily, physical way

just enjoy this life.

So, so first, like, what is sensualism

to you?

>> Well, first of all, it's not even just

about the senses. It is in a more

Buddhist or meditative way, if you want

to take it that way, it is enjoying

what's happening in the present moment.

I am, I bet, right?

>> [laughter]

>> Very nice pandering. But also, I know

that there's some probably Buddhist,

uh, listeners out there, and I love all

of you. I do a little little headspace

here and there,

when when when life requires it. But,

um, I do,

you know, I was walking here today, and,

uh, mostly I'm in the summer upstate,

but I came down for for this interview,

and I'm walking down Broadway, and I

looked up, and I'm just noticing these

beautiful mansard roofs of some of these

buildings. Now, I spend half of my year

in New York. I forgot all about these

mansard roofs. I'm like, damn, somebody

did something right architecturally. New

York is such a hodgepodge of good and

bad architecture. Maybe that's one of

the things that makes it such a cool

city is that it's not beautiful

beautiful, it's just this Michael

>> Michael Kimmelman, uh, when I moved

here, which is only a couple years ago,

I read Michael Kimmelman, uh, his book

called The Intimate City, and he says,

"The beauty of New York is the

juxtaposition of this with that."

>> Yes, this with that. That's this with

that.

>> And that like allowed me to see the

beauty of New York. It was like a single

sentence that reshaped how I looked at a

whole place.

>> This with that. This with that. So,

[snorts] look,

I agree with that. Wonderful man.

Wonderful lunch date. Um,

this and that I'm I'm I'm I'm going down

the street and this and that is creating

a fear of great pleasure in me.

Is it one of the senses? Yes, this is

sight, which is probably the most boring

sense.

Uh, but I am,

>> If you had to rank them.

>> If I had to rank them. Well, it's the

most obvious one.

Uh, but you know, recently I got a

dachshund, which is the world's best

dog, clearly, and this giant sausage,

uh, completely out of control. Bernie is

his name. I dedicate The Sensualist to

Bernie, my furry sensualist, because he

is a very sensual dog. And his great

sense is smell, obviously. So, he will

walk down the street and there's a

corner where every dog pees on, and he

approaches it like a Talmudic scholar,

you know, and he

he sniffs here, he sniffs there. Yes,

Rocco was here at 12:30. That's right.

That's right. Let's remember that, you

know. He loves and his tail is wagging

away. He's just enjoying the hell out of

life. He enjoys this more than I mean,

he loves food, obviously, but food is

So, we all have this part in us that is

able to enjoy things on this crazy

level. It's most of it is free. Some of

my hobbies are slightly expensive, but

most of this stuff is wonderfully free.

It's all around us, you know. So, the

more and the more I live, also, I find

in some ways

that the sense of ambition that, you

know, that younger people have

diminishes in some good ways. As I sort

of see what the rest of my life will

look like, I'm fine with it. Maybe good

things will happen. Maybe some terrible

things will happen. But I'm more or less

okay with it as long as that sense of

enjoyment doesn't leave me. The other

thing that I talk about in The

Sensualist is that I recently two of my

most sensual friends have died recently,

and it was remarkably sad, obviously, to

watch them die of cancer in their early

50s in my my generation. Incredibly sad.

But to the last moment, you know, they

found things to enjoy. Almost to the

very last moment, there were things that

they enjoyed. And I think the thing they

enjoyed the most was talking, verbaling,

if you will, with their friends. Either

even at the, you know, nobody wants to

verbal in Sloan Kettering. That's the

worst place you want to do it. But if

it's there, it still beats not verb- it

still beats not having cancer, I think,

and hitting yourself with a hammer to

create the sense that you're meeting

symmetric.

>> I think the

the interesting thing you're doing in

that in across these essays which are

about martinis and suits and, you know,

all all all kinds of things, capybaras.

>> I love capybaras.

>> Yeah, capybaras, is that how you say it?

>> Well, I'm trying to be a little more

Latin American given that they mostly

live in a capybara in in Brazil.

>> Oh, there you go. Capybara.

There is something about the way

elite culture

flaunts the repression of enjoyment.

>> Yes.

>> Um I saw there was this clip that had

gone viral the other day from uh the guy

who hosts Diary of a CEO.

>> I had a year of not drinking, decided to

have a drink again.

It ruined 3 days of my life.

I had a couple of glasses of wine,

didn't get drunk. It ruined 3 days of my

life because of the the domino effect it

caused. So which it meant that I got

worse sleep that night. I ate more

poorly the the next day because my

dopamine system or whatever the cortisol

system was all

>> That's brilliant.

>> And then I I podcasted worse. I didn't

go to the gym the day after that that

day or the day after because of that

because I felt really bad. I then slept

worse. And I was like, "Oh my god, that

those three glasses of wine had this

hidden domino effect that I must have

been living with."

>> And I thought this is a little bit

unfair to him how viral it went, but it

it it it hit a nerve.

>> Yeah.

>> Because it was hitting this culture,

right? It was a good example of this

culture in which there is a status

in optimizing everything, the aura ring,

right? You never have a drink.

And and I do think people have this

feeling of like

well, what about enjoyment? Like, what's

the point of all this? AI can already do

a bunch of the things we can do. Like,

if we're not going to be here and

enjoy music, enjoy

a drink, enjoy great food, right? If

you're going to endlessly be having like

a glucose monitor and you're not a

diabetic. And then you're like, well,

pasta really spikes my glucose.

And and like this is what like the

people I mean, you listen to some of the

you know, top podcast will have like all

kinds of health influencers on.

And I'm not saying that necessarily even

that they're wrong about what they're

saying. Sometimes they are.

But it just sounds so joyless. I was

watching something go around the other

day. There was like from this study and

it was like

>> [snorts]

>> turns out that doing 12 air squats every

25 minutes is like better for you than

like running to whatever it was. It's

like

I think I I don't want to say I'd rather

die than do 12 air squats every 45

minutes.

>> so I'm I'm probably ahead of you.

>> But it it didn't seem like a way to

live.

>> No, no. I think yeah, the other way I

could title a book about current status

no way to live.

>> [laughter]

>> None of this is a way to live. You know,

me I posit and I don't know, there could

be some blowback or pushback on this,

but that this is a problem for us as

Democrats. Is that you know, because of

so much of this is a part of what you

hear and see in certain in elite

democratic principle precincts. This

isn't, you know, just I mean, Silicon

Valley obviously has a

a lovely fascist wing now, but there's

still quite a few people who are

democratic in some way or another.

But the one thing about Trump, humor is

always even when it's has this very

nasty edge, it's seen as a kind of

joyous thing. And he would belt things

out and then he would

you know, you know, and

people people listened, you know.

Speaking of Trump, Emily Nussbaum I

think wrote the best piece ever on that

when she wrote in the New Yorker about

um

Trump really

stealing appropriating as they say the

humor of sort of Jewish Borscht Belt

comics of a certain period, right? And

then using it for his own evil purposes.

So, I think a lot of the other Trump

wannabes try to do this. Many of them

failed, but there is that kind of

motion.

>> Trump is a sensualist.

>> Trump is in some horrible

>> He loves a pretty room.

>> He loves a pretty room.

>> Thinks a lot about interior design. He

loves loves a good musical.

>> That's right. Right, right, right.

>> J.D. Vance is not a sensualist. Marco

Rubio is not a sensualist. Trump is.

>> I I think you're absolutely right. And

and maybe that maybe there is in a

horrible way something that we can take

away from this. That the people that we

nominate

to be our leaders can't be I mean

>> Kamala Harris

>> She talked about joy so much that you

knew that there wasn't that much joy

going on, you know, it was this Look at

the joy. It's a what we call in fiction

telling not showing.

Joy, joy, joy, you know, but we need

leaders or or candidates who can evince

not just the unhappiness of what

everything we're confronting from, you

know, climate change to inflation to the

mess that's going to be left to us when

the president leaves. And that's not

easy to do because we so programmed this

idea that we have to democracy max and

we have to be constantly, you know,

talking about all the terrible things

instead of talking about the things that

give us pleasure, the things that we

love, the parts of community that make

life livable.

>> There's a lot of honest answers to that.

One is,

you know, and this I think is fairly

bipartisan transpartisan sort of elite

display of discipline.

It is a positional competition

to show

that you are like optimizing your body

within an inch of your life and your

mind and you're never you know, you're

how much you're reading and you're you

know, and and look I'm not saying by any

means I'm free of this.

The other side which I think is more

specific on the left

is that pleasure is problematic.

>> Yeah. For all different kinds of

reasons, right? You know, maybe the

things you enjoy are not politically

like a center, the the the jokes are too

gauche, right? The There's like a

million reasons, but I do not find that

people are

comfortable admitting to a lot of

enjoyment. It's the the discourse is

critical, not appreciative.

>> Yeah, and I think look, I think

uh this is a Protestant country. Uh

there is this kind of

uh Protestant background. And many of

the immigrants that come here, including

my own family, right? They are

Protestant in a sense, too, in that they

they, you know, they work to they live

to work instead of working to live.

That's part of the the sort of the coda.

So, it's very hard for people to

appreciate things that are um

that bring you joy, because joy itself

is kind of suspect. Well, do that on

your own time. Don't talk about that.

Just leave the joy out of there, you

know.

I I think people miss the idea of being

able to talk, in my case, write about

that I love, you know? Um there's so

much pleasure in The writing is almost a

second pleasure I get when I try to

think about what all these things mean

to me, and I get to I get to sort of

live in that world for a while. You

know, I was just in Spain with my kid

and my wife, and I was showing him

Andalusia, you know, this

which is considered the poorest region

or one of the poorest regions of Spain.

There's this wonderful I think I was

listening to this on a former podcast of

yours where we were talking about, you

know, how Mississippi is um

uh richer than almost every uh European

state.

Well, I have spent time in Mississippi.

You know, Mississippi, if anything,

reminds me of Russia, where there's a

couple of super rich people with

gigantic houses and pools, and then

there are people living in conditions

that, you know, almost anywhere in the

world would be seen as very poor. And

the medium of that becomes whatever that

number is.

Uh I'm sorry, the average of that, not

the median, becomes whatever that number

is. You go to You go to the poorest

region in Spain, life is beautiful. Um

I'm not saying that there that it's

completely free of poverty, but the

communal connections are so strong. The

things that bring people joy are so

celebrated, whether it's wine or a large

midday meal or or people, you know,

having

sex with each other, you know, and then

talking about it and loving it, you

know, they love their culture even

though statistically they're making half

of what Mississippi makes. It doesn't

matter. They're three, four, five, six,

eight times as rich as we are in almost

every other context.

>> Say say more on this. So, be because I

mean these numbers are true, right? Like

I've I've looked into this debate and

it's not just averages, it's medians and

you can cut this a lot of ways. Like

we've gotten a lot richer than Europe in

this country.

But,

you know, this is a thing we've actually

been exploring on the show recently.

We've just gotten a lot richer than we

used to be. Um, you know, maybe not as

much as we could have.

And people hate the way the economy

feels. They I mean, everything is

incredibly expensive, the prices are

going up, they feel nickel and dimed,

they can't afford a home. So, there is

this there's a lot that

your wages, your income does not say

about how life feels.

Some of this can all be like resolved

down to economic, but some of it can't.

When you say people are six and eight,

nine times richer in these places than

we are despite the

wealth differential, why?

>> Well, look, for example, if you're

living in Southern Europe, you could be

very content with uh 600 square foot

apartments uh where you live.

Uh, you know, could be two, three people

are living in stuff that we in America

would, especially outside the larger

metros, consider horrible way to live.

This is complete poverty. How can you

live in such a small space, not have a

backyard, often not have a car? I'm

using Spain as an example, but that

applies to others, but Spain is one of

the most has one of the most wonderful

transit systems both within cities and

and interconnected uh transit systems.

Everything you need costs a lot less, so

you don't need to feel like you have In

some ways, America and China have more

in common because there's such a lack of

a safety net uh that people need to save

constantly in order to be able to make

sure that if things do turn against them

that they're not one paycheck away from

complete bankruptcy if they don't have

if they get a if they you know go over

their deductible on a horrible medical

bill that they're not completely

bankrupt. All this stuff doesn't exist

at a place like Spain. That's where the

wealth is. The wealth is being taxed at

a different rate, obviously a much

higher rate than we are, but also

knowing that these aren't real problems

that you're going to face.

And Spain also figured out the fact that

the Spanish are also not having any

children

that actually if they let in a certain

amount of immigrants life is even

better. Now there's people working for

less doing more and the society keeps

expanding despite the fact that they

should be shrinking.

It's not that

crazy. You just have to be a little less

xenophobic and you have to figure out

the things that really mean something to

you. Is it having a 4,000 square foot

McMansion half of which you don't even

see or is it you know sitting around

with friends having a botellón and

having a open bottle in a square and

enjoying their company. So I think this

is very

>> important. It's important in the

conversation we're having about kids,

about rankings, about a lot. Which is

the role that expectations and

positional competition

play in

uh degrading quality of life or or

making it feel so hard to enjoy life.

Right? Because

you know

we do buy more. We have more air

conditioning here.

Um I mean a lot of people die in Europe

every year because of heat. Right? That

doesn't happen here nearly to the same

degree.

Uh we have gotten you know we want

bigger homes and much of the country we

want cars, right? New York is like a

little bit unusual in that, but the way

in which like the treadmill of what it

just what the trappings of a good life

are.

And then you look around and

you're unhappy and you're atomized and

you're you know far from family and

you live in a place you didn't quite

intend to live in and and and it is I

think this feeling and I think it's

quite poisonous

that you did everything right and this

wasn't you were told it would be or feel

and like there's never a resting space.

>> Right. I mean look at all the young

people who voted for Mondani, you know,

who

used it I think in part also as a

protest vote against the fact that here

we are professionals in New York and we

can't afford to live on what we're being

paid, you know, this is a nightmare. I

think it's the look since you know,

since the Thatcher Reagan years there's

been a very there's been a project to

destroy as much of the middle class as

possible and to create a small I mean

obviously that's not how it was stated

but that was the effect of that I think

was creating an upper middle class and

above that still has access to stuff and

then obviously people who are living in

some degree of precarity. That's that's

that's what's been happening and I think

that creates the need to find even

better rankings.

Uh but there is still a sense that life

can be slow and pleasurable and I think

that's all I really want out of life. I

think that's all I really wanted.

Growing up I had very few friends. I

didn't speak English. Once I started

making friends and once I started

enjoying my life with them

and learning to create distances between

me and my parents I am more and more

ready to spend my life not just thinking

about happiness but actually being happy

because I know how to do it. I know how

to do it walking down Broadway looking

up at a man's

>> advice on how to be happy?

>> It's not even advice it's it's the

advice is you know, I mean again, I'm

not trying to you know, suck up with

this Buddhism but the advice really is

present moment living. It's it's that

simple. But also not saying no to things

that are against the the Protestant

thrust of this country. So if you're if

it's 4:30 p.m. and Negroni beckons,

you're all you're all by yourself. Oh,

one shouldn't drink alone obviously but

the day is beautiful. There's sunshine.

There's people walking by and you sit

down by yourself at the bar and you

order that Negroni and you sip it.

Somebody comes up and talks to you. You

talk back. You verbal at them first

maybe in a non-aggressive way.

Uh you do all these these I can't

believe I'm even giving this as advice.

>> I think the thing you do is be in the

present moment. Having read a number of

your essays now and and and a number of

your books,

I think you search out beauty.

And I mean I I take much of what you're

writing in The Essentialist. I mean you

have this beautiful uh piece about like

the perfect suit and the perfect

martini. I've told you this before we

started, but I feel like I got a

hangover just reading your piece about

your your martini runs. Um some of us

may not have the same constitutions.

>> Right. Right.

>> Uh but

I I think this is important. I mean I

could say some politics where I think we

have sacrificed beauty as a political

virtue and as a social virtue and I

think it has been a mistake. But I could

just say it in in [clears throat] in

life. I think that

I think it requires a certain

navigation to seek out beauty, a certain

intention to seek out beauty. Look,

to to counter to counter my own some of

my own episodes here,

I I do think some present moments are

better than others.

>> [laughter]

>> And I think decisions you make are

meaningful.

Trying to find ways to be in beauty,

which doesn't It can be expensive, but I

find Prospect Park to be like a place of

extraordinary beauty in the spring and

in the summer.

>> Of course.

>> And but I don't know. I feel like you're

making a real argument about this. I

want to hear more about the search for

beauty.

>> Oh, well, look, first of all, I I don't

know if the search needs to be as

systematic as as that because one can

also create a kind of martini maxing

when one is Yeah, or suit maxing when

one is definitely

>> the intention to the orientation towards