Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness

00:00:00.000 | People whose favorite songs are their happy songs

00:00:02.820 | play it on their playlist about 175 times.

00:00:05.700 | The people who love sad music play them about 800 times.

00:00:08.880 | And they say that they feel connected to the sublime

00:00:14.080 | when they're listening to that music.

00:00:16.180 | The longing for what you lack is the very thing

00:00:19.440 | that gives you what you're longing for.

00:00:21.800 | So the longing is the cure.

00:00:23.160 | - The following is a conversation with Susan Cain,

00:00:28.520 | author of "Quiet, The Power of Introverts in the World

00:00:32.200 | "That Can't Stop Talking" and her most recent book,

00:00:35.400 | "Bittersweet, How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole."

00:00:39.720 | This is the Lex Friedman Podcast.

00:00:42.880 | To support it, please check out our sponsors

00:00:45.000 | in the description.

00:00:46.480 | And now, dear friends, here's Susan Cain.

00:00:50.160 | You've written on your website that, quote,

00:00:53.080 | "I prefer listening to talking, reading to socializing,

00:00:57.060 | "and cozy chats to group settings."

00:01:00.320 | So I think this conversation in the podcast

00:01:02.120 | is gonna be fun.

00:01:03.520 | What's a good definition of an introvert?

00:01:05.920 | Is something like those three things a good start?

00:01:09.320 | - It is a good start in terms of how introverts

00:01:13.500 | experience day-to-day life.

00:01:15.260 | I think a good definition is one that some of your listeners

00:01:20.040 | will have heard many times before,

00:01:21.800 | the idea of where do you get your energy?

00:01:24.320 | And for some people, they get their energy

00:01:26.120 | more from quieter settings, and for other people,

00:01:29.640 | they get it more from being out there.

00:01:31.960 | So a good rule of thumb is to imagine that you're at a party

00:01:35.820 | that you're really enjoying, and you've been there

00:01:37.560 | for about two hours or so,

00:01:39.440 | and it's with people you really like,

00:01:41.280 | and it's in your favorite place, so it's all good.

00:01:43.840 | An extrovert in a setting like that

00:01:46.760 | is gonna feel charged up, and they're gonna be looking

00:01:49.940 | for the after party.

00:01:51.440 | And an introvert, no matter how good a time they're having

00:01:54.000 | and how socially skilled they are,

00:01:55.840 | there's this moment where you just wish

00:01:58.000 | that you could teleport and be back at home.

00:02:00.680 | - Yeah, and that the time before the start of the party

00:02:03.760 | to the time when that moment happens

00:02:05.920 | is different for different people.

00:02:07.160 | So the shorter that is, the more of an introvert you are?

00:02:09.320 | Is that that kind of thing?

00:02:10.680 | - The shorter the moment until you get to the place

00:02:13.200 | where you've gotta teleport home.

00:02:14.640 | - I've gotta teleport home.

00:02:15.800 | - Yeah, and then for extroverts, it's the opposite.

00:02:18.560 | They're gonna feel, maybe they're working on,

00:02:22.580 | I don't know, focused on producing a memo

00:02:25.100 | that's really intensely interesting to them,

00:02:27.560 | but if they're in that state of solitary,

00:02:31.280 | the solitary mode of really focusing,

00:02:33.400 | they might get stir crazy a lot faster

00:02:35.520 | than an introvert would.

00:02:37.100 | And so it doesn't have so much to do

00:02:38.320 | with what you're good at as how you get your energy.

00:02:42.520 | - And so for an introvert, the source of energy

00:02:46.680 | is what, silence, solitude, and for an extrovert,

00:02:50.880 | it's interaction with other people?

00:02:53.200 | - What I'd really say is that,

00:02:54.580 | and this is neurobiological as well,

00:02:56.580 | is that it has to do with how your nervous system

00:02:59.980 | reacts to stimulation.

00:03:01.740 | So for an introvert, you're feeling

00:03:04.620 | in a great state of equilibrium

00:03:06.380 | when there are fewer inputs coming at you.

00:03:09.460 | So they could be social inputs,

00:03:10.960 | but that's why an introvert in general

00:03:12.780 | would rather hang out with one close friend at a time

00:03:15.660 | as opposed to a big party full of strangers

00:03:18.140 | 'cause that's just too many inputs for the nervous system.

00:03:21.060 | And for an extrovert, the nervous system

00:03:23.520 | needs more stimulants, so if they're not getting enough,

00:03:25.960 | they get that listless and sluggish feeling.

00:03:28.560 | - So if you're just walking through the world,

00:03:31.640 | like people listening to this, but in general,

00:03:34.760 | how do you know if you're an introvert?

00:03:37.200 | Like how do you empirically start to determine

00:03:40.400 | if you are in large part an introvert?

00:03:43.640 | - Well, I would start by just asking that question

00:03:46.560 | of what happens to you at around the two hour mark

00:03:49.280 | where you're having a good time.

00:03:50.120 | - Go to parties?

00:03:50.940 | - I mean, imagine.

00:03:51.780 | - Go to parties every day.

00:03:52.600 | - But I also find, I'm curious if you have

00:03:55.080 | a different experience from this,

00:03:56.180 | but from all the years that I've been out there

00:03:58.840 | talking about this topic, I found that most people

00:04:02.120 | really seem to know once they're being honest

00:04:05.440 | with themselves, and maybe that's the question to ask

00:04:08.020 | is like if you imagine that you have a Saturday

00:04:11.680 | or a whole weekend where you can spend your time

00:04:14.280 | exactly the way you want to with no professional obligations

00:04:18.080 | and no social obligations, who would you spend it

00:04:20.880 | with, how many people, what would you be doing,

00:04:24.360 | and what does that picture that you're painting

00:04:27.040 | start to look like?

00:04:28.180 | - Yeah, so there's nuance to this though,

00:04:31.840 | because I'm sure for extroverts to get energized

00:04:35.060 | by stimulation, whether that's stimulation

00:04:37.980 | with other people, like it depends

00:04:39.520 | what that stimulation is, right?

00:04:41.760 | Like maybe you're not surrounded by the kind of people

00:04:44.280 | that you enjoy being around, so you know,

00:04:49.760 | maybe that has to do less with whether some characteristics

00:04:53.400 | of your personality, more has to do with the fact

00:04:55.720 | of what your environment is like,

00:04:57.300 | that's always kind of the question,

00:04:59.680 | do you want to be alone because everybody around you

00:05:01.640 | is an asshole, or do you want to be alone

00:05:03.280 | because you get energized from being--

00:05:05.440 | - Well, I would hold the variables constant, I guess,

00:05:07.920 | I would say, you know.

00:05:09.960 | - Keep the assholes constant and see.

00:05:11.800 | And then there's the other thing you kind of observe

00:05:15.120 | that there's a lot of people that will say

00:05:17.960 | they get energized from being alone,

00:05:20.520 | like people are exhausting to them or something like that,

00:05:24.780 | but at the same time, when you see them at a party,

00:05:27.960 | they seem like the life of the party.

00:05:30.600 | - I know, and I hear from those people all the time,

00:05:33.640 | there's so many people like that.

00:05:34.480 | - What would you classify them as exactly?

00:05:37.240 | Is it ultimately as the source of energy?

00:05:39.600 | Is it the most important thing?

00:05:40.800 | Or like how the heck are they the life of the party?

00:05:43.680 | - It's a bunch of different things, you know,

00:05:45.520 | so first of all, just to say like a big caveat

00:05:48.960 | to all of this is humans are just amazingly complex,

00:05:52.600 | so you can't like explain every individual human

00:05:55.920 | through these parameters,

00:05:56.840 | even though I think the parameters are really valuable.

00:05:59.680 | But that person at the party,

00:06:01.440 | it could be that they're more of an ambivert,

00:06:04.600 | so they kind of are more in the middle of the spectrum.

00:06:07.160 | It basically means someone who's not extremely introverted

00:06:10.160 | or extremely extroverted, they're kind of in the middle,

00:06:12.560 | so maybe at a party,

00:06:13.520 | their more extroverted side comes out.

00:06:15.480 | Or it could be an introvert who's gotten really good

00:06:20.160 | at the skills of acting more like a pseudo extrovert,

00:06:23.440 | and they pull that up at the moments that they need it.

00:06:27.000 | - So they've learned how to fake it.

00:06:28.520 | - Yeah, oh, there's a lot of people like that.

00:06:30.680 | And I know this because like I think out of all the people

00:06:33.680 | on this planet you could be talking to,

00:06:35.240 | I've heard from the most number of those people.

00:06:38.160 | Like they all come and tell me about their experience

00:06:41.840 | out in the world presenting a face

00:06:44.160 | that's different from what they feel.

00:06:45.760 | - So one of the things you talk about is,

00:06:47.880 | at least in the West, we've constructed a picture of success,

00:06:51.000 | and that picture is usually one of an extrovert.

00:06:55.200 | Like when you imagine somebody who's a leader,

00:06:57.200 | who's a successful person,

00:06:58.640 | that person has some of the qualities

00:07:02.000 | you would associate with an extrovert.

00:07:03.920 | And so there's a lot of incentive for faking it.

00:07:08.760 | - Yeah, exactly.

00:07:11.400 | If you wanna be successful, you gotta be able to fake it,

00:07:15.000 | to sort of hang with the rest of the team.

00:07:17.880 | You have to be able to be outgoing

00:07:20.080 | and all those kinds of things,

00:07:21.400 | and not be drained by the interaction.

00:07:23.800 | - Yeah, but I mean, there are also a lot of introverts

00:07:26.440 | who figure out ways to draw on their own strengths,

00:07:30.200 | and they're incredibly connecting and successful,

00:07:33.880 | and they're great leaders,

00:07:34.840 | and they're not actually faking it.

00:07:36.720 | They're more just figuring out ways to do it their own way.

00:07:40.080 | You see a lot of people like that.

00:07:41.840 | - Is there advice, is there lessons you can draw from that,

00:07:45.000 | from just observing how you can be an introvert

00:07:47.960 | and be in a leadership position?

00:07:49.560 | - Yeah, it's kind of like a mantra,

00:07:52.400 | figuring out what your own strengths are

00:07:53.960 | and how to draw on them.

00:07:55.840 | I think of a guy I know, Doug Conant,

00:08:00.040 | who had been the CEO of Campbell Soup for many years.

00:08:04.120 | He's very introverted.

00:08:06.400 | He's quite shy also, by his own description.

00:08:09.440 | And he really cares about people.

00:08:13.800 | And so when he started at Campbell,

00:08:18.640 | the employee engagement ratings of the company

00:08:20.880 | were all the way at the bottom of the Fortune 500.

00:08:23.600 | And by the time he stepped down 10 years later,

00:08:26.000 | they were all the way at the top.

00:08:27.600 | And it wasn't that he was going out there

00:08:31.520 | and schmoozing people, but he really did care.

00:08:34.640 | So he would find out who were the people

00:08:36.600 | who had really been contributing,

00:08:38.520 | and he would write to them personal letters of thanks.

00:08:42.240 | And these letters meant so much to people.

00:08:47.480 | They would carry them around with them.

00:08:49.680 | And during his time, the 10 years there,

00:08:51.560 | he wrote 30,000 of those letters.

00:08:54.640 | So that was his way of doing it.

00:08:56.840 | That was his way of drawing on his own strengths.

00:08:58.920 | And you know what?

00:08:59.920 | He did that together with, of course,

00:09:02.120 | you sometimes have to go outside your comfort zone,

00:09:04.120 | no matter who you are.

00:09:05.160 | So he was doing plenty of that too.

00:09:07.160 | Kind of combination.

00:09:08.560 | - Yeah, the writing process

00:09:11.040 | and focusing on the one-on-one interaction,

00:09:14.080 | I can definitely relate.

00:09:15.280 | There's something deeply draining,

00:09:16.880 | which concerns me about like Zoom meetings,

00:09:19.520 | because it's some weird brain manipulation.

00:09:22.840 | - Wait, say more.

00:09:23.680 | - Well, 'cause you're not really engaged,

00:09:26.840 | but it wears on you the same way that it does a party.

00:09:30.440 | It feels like you're emptying that bucket

00:09:34.520 | for the introverts,

00:09:35.960 | even though they're not participating at all in the meeting.

00:09:38.840 | I mean, I suppose that's true for physical meetings too,

00:09:41.320 | but with Zoom meetings, remote meetings,

00:09:43.600 | it's so much easier to invite a larger number of people

00:09:46.360 | into the meeting.

00:09:47.480 | So you're draining more and more of the introvert energy.

00:09:50.400 | And probably extrovert too,

00:09:51.760 | but the introvert definitely.

00:09:53.320 | I mean, it's interesting.

00:09:54.440 | I would love to understand that more,

00:09:56.320 | because there's more and more push towards remote work

00:09:59.200 | without, I think, a deep understanding

00:10:02.900 | of why these meetings are so draining on people.

00:10:05.400 | I just anecdotally have heard from that.

00:10:08.040 | But maybe that's because the managers,

00:10:10.060 | the people who arrange the meetings,

00:10:11.860 | are just not sufficiently yet aware

00:10:14.680 | of the draining nature of them,

00:10:16.280 | so that they pull in too many people,

00:10:18.240 | they schedule them too regularly,

00:10:19.640 | so they need to adjust, that kind of thing probably.

00:10:21.880 | - I think people are starting to realize,

00:10:23.800 | but I would say one reason that Zoom is so draining

00:10:27.680 | is because you can see your own self-presentation

00:10:32.680 | the whole time if you choose to.

00:10:35.320 | And when you go into in-person, you can't.

00:10:38.720 | So you're kind of freed of thinking about that.

00:10:40.800 | - Oh, that's brilliant.

00:10:41.640 | - So it's like an extra cognitive load

00:10:42.740 | that you're bearing the whole time.

00:10:44.700 | - Oh, yeah, that's brilliant.

00:10:47.080 | - And you might wanna turn off the camera

00:10:49.920 | so you can't see yourself,

00:10:50.800 | but then you feel like, well, I have the ability to,

00:10:53.120 | so I probably should be doing it.

00:10:54.700 | And then that alone is a decision that you're making.

00:10:57.960 | - Yeah, there's probably studies on this now happening,

00:11:00.200 | either have happened or are happening,

00:11:02.680 | the effect of seeing your own face on camera,

00:11:07.680 | 'cause it's reminding you

00:11:08.840 | that you're supposed to be acting a certain way.

00:11:10.560 | And that is especially a stressful thing.

00:11:13.560 | - Yeah, you can't be in the moment as much.

00:11:15.600 | But I mean, for you, you make the decision

00:11:18.280 | to do all your podcast interviews in person, right?

00:11:22.000 | And so--

00:11:22.920 | - And that's even when it's very costly.

00:11:26.120 | If there's any kind of chemistry that contributes at all

00:11:30.560 | to the conversation,

00:11:31.400 | which I think most conversations have chemistry,

00:11:34.080 | even the boring work meetings, there's something there.

00:11:38.160 | Because yes, you're trying to solve a particular problem

00:11:41.000 | at this particular time,

00:11:42.760 | but underneath it, there's a team building that's happening.

00:11:46.100 | And honestly, people also have told me about this,

00:11:50.520 | why they enjoyed the Zoom meetings during the pandemic,

00:11:54.880 | is like, they're lonely.

00:11:59.320 | It's annoying to have to sit and listen

00:12:01.480 | to folks talk about nothing and so on,

00:12:03.760 | but they tune in anyway,

00:12:05.840 | because it's kind of lonely to sit there by yourself.

00:12:09.160 | And that, I mean, there's a deep connection there

00:12:12.520 | when you're with other people.

00:12:13.760 | And that is especially true when they're in person,

00:12:17.420 | which is a huge concern for me for more and more offices

00:12:21.360 | from a capitalist perspective,

00:12:23.580 | realizing, hey, why do we have these large office spaces?

00:12:27.240 | Why do we have to get people together?

00:12:28.840 | But I think in some deep sense, we do.

00:12:32.040 | But then you also talk about that once we do,

00:12:34.640 | we wanna protect the introverts.

00:12:38.160 | Like you don't want the open space, office space,

00:12:42.240 | which was a big fad for a while.

00:12:43.760 | I don't know where people stand on that at this point.

00:12:46.400 | - Yeah, I think people are figuring it out

00:12:47.900 | in a post-pandemic context, but I mean, I know what you mean.

00:12:52.280 | So before I became a writer,

00:12:55.080 | I was a corporate lawyer for like seven years,

00:12:57.760 | and literally the only thing I miss from those years

00:13:02.360 | is hanging out with people at the office.

00:13:06.360 | Like, I don't know, just some of the funniest moments

00:13:09.080 | I've had in my life came from being at the office

00:13:12.680 | until midnight with the other people I was working with.

00:13:15.000 | So I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:13:16.520 | Though I will say the offices there at that firm

00:13:19.160 | and at most firms in those days,

00:13:20.720 | everybody had their own office.

00:13:22.160 | So it was like a dorm room,

00:13:23.640 | where it was like a long hallway

00:13:24.960 | with everybody in their own little dorm room.

00:13:27.520 | So you had tons of privacy,

00:13:29.000 | but you would also come out and hang out with people.

00:13:31.920 | - You could just kind of roam whenever you want.

00:13:34.640 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:13:35.480 | - And whenever you roam, that means you're kind of open.

00:13:38.680 | You're looking for trouble.

00:13:40.760 | You're open for interaction.

00:13:42.160 | - And the extent to which you would keep your door open,

00:13:44.360 | you know, was it wide open or was it half a jar

00:13:46.560 | or just a little bit, those were all signals.

00:13:49.520 | - So is there, 'cause you said re-energize,

00:13:51.280 | is there, do you like to think,

00:13:53.080 | and again, the human mind is complicated,

00:13:54.840 | but do you like to think of it as like a bucket

00:13:57.200 | that gets refilled for introverts in terms of energy,

00:14:00.720 | of social interaction that they're able to handle?

00:14:05.720 | Do you think of it like that,

00:14:09.520 | as a bucket that gets emptied and needs to be refilled?

00:14:12.280 | - I think of it, yeah, more or less,

00:14:13.560 | 'cause I use the metaphor of a battery

00:14:15.360 | that gets recharged or not.

00:14:16.880 | It's basically the same thing, different metaphor.

00:14:19.920 | But yeah, but just to add on that,

00:14:21.760 | that there is a layer of complexity to that

00:14:24.000 | because you could be somebody

00:14:27.640 | who doesn't want the kind of social life, let's say,

00:14:32.280 | where you have to be like on and presenting

00:14:35.080 | and interacting with tons of people all the time,

00:14:37.120 | but you'd get really lonely if you were just by yourself.

00:14:39.720 | You know, so what you want is to maybe be in the company

00:14:42.360 | of a couple people you know really well.

00:14:44.760 | Like for me, the pandemic was not actually that hard

00:14:47.640 | for me personally.

00:14:48.560 | I mean, I lost family, but I mean,

00:14:50.600 | from the point of view of what we're talking about,

00:14:52.720 | it wasn't that hard because I live with my husband

00:14:55.480 | and my kids.

00:14:57.080 | So I knew it was hard on the kids and I felt badly for them.

00:15:00.140 | But for me, I was like, you know what?

00:15:02.920 | I have a lot of social life right here in the house.

00:15:05.880 | - That's why you love your husband.

00:15:06.720 | - And I can focus and do my work.

00:15:08.280 | Yeah.

00:15:09.780 | - That's the cool thing about the pandemic.

00:15:11.980 | I think it helped people figure out

00:15:13.280 | how much they love their family.

00:15:14.960 | - I think that's true.

00:15:16.240 | - And a lot, it gives you a chance

00:15:17.680 | to really reconnect with kids,

00:15:19.880 | with your kids, like really spend time with them.

00:15:22.160 | Which is fascinating to watch.

00:15:23.360 | Like people actually, it did strengthen the family unit

00:15:26.920 | in an often beautiful way.

00:15:29.960 | Which just sucks to have to leave behind at this point.

00:15:34.560 | - Yeah, and I think that's part of what people

00:15:36.320 | are not gonna wanna go back to,

00:15:38.000 | that we need to solve for,

00:15:39.660 | to the extent that work becomes non-remote again.

00:15:44.120 | I think people have just realized how precious

00:15:46.000 | those aspects of their lives are.

00:15:47.400 | And you know, for somebody who's in a sort of

00:15:50.160 | conventional office job where you're going home

00:15:53.000 | and seeing your kids for an hour before bedtime,

00:15:56.040 | and that's your interaction with them,

00:15:58.000 | that's kind of a ridiculous way to set things up.

00:16:01.400 | - It's cool that you can get,

00:16:02.640 | I think a lot of places give you the option now.

00:16:04.960 | Which is interesting, you get to optimize

00:16:07.120 | that element of your life.

00:16:08.400 | You take the commute and the office work

00:16:10.080 | and then the social interaction there,

00:16:11.360 | do you focus on the work at home?

00:16:13.760 | It's also lonely at home,

00:16:15.120 | but then you get to see your kids if you have kids.

00:16:17.640 | That's part of the optimization,

00:16:19.240 | is like I have some options now

00:16:21.640 | and I'm gonna try to optimize

00:16:23.600 | solitude, loneliness, happiness, productivity,

00:16:30.120 | seeing family, seeing coworkers,

00:16:34.840 | the chemistry with the team building with the coworkers

00:16:36.760 | versus just the raw exchange of information

00:16:40.320 | with the coworkers.

00:16:41.320 | It's fascinating to see how that kind of evolves.

00:16:44.640 | - Yeah, and then there's the third space idea

00:16:48.520 | of the spaces where you're in a coworking space

00:16:52.640 | or a cafe or something like that.

00:16:54.240 | You've got other people around you,

00:16:55.640 | but you're not exactly interacting with them,

00:16:58.320 | but they're very much there.

00:17:00.440 | And that's huge too.

00:17:01.960 | I don't think we think about that enough.

00:17:04.360 | - Yeah, that energy's there.

00:17:06.320 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:17:07.360 | I lived in Manhattan for 17 years before we had kids.

00:17:11.800 | And I absolutely loved it.

00:17:15.520 | I loved it, the feeling of all that energy all around you,

00:17:18.680 | but you could be anonymous within it.

00:17:21.200 | To me, it was perfect.

00:17:22.280 | - Yeah, it's beautiful.

00:17:23.120 | I worked this morning for a few hours,

00:17:26.240 | programmed for a few hours at a Starbucks.

00:17:28.560 | And first of all, wearing suits,

00:17:31.880 | Manhattan is the one place you can kind of fit into

00:17:35.400 | 'cause everyone's wearing suits.

00:17:36.760 | - Do you wear suits every day?

00:17:38.760 | - Well, these days, unfortunately,

00:17:39.920 | 'cause I get recognized,

00:17:41.400 | I wear usually not suits when I just on my own life.

00:17:45.520 | But yeah, I love it.

00:17:46.760 | I love the way it feels.

00:17:47.840 | I don't know.

00:17:48.840 | And the way I think about the world when I wear a suit,

00:17:51.360 | I take it seriously as if my life is gonna end today.

00:17:54.600 | Like this is what I would want to wear.

00:17:56.960 | Not for physical appearance,

00:17:58.800 | but just for some reason it makes me feel like focused.

00:18:02.880 | I don't know.

00:18:03.720 | - So even if you're not gonna see anyone,

00:18:05.200 | you would still put the suit on when you're doing your work?

00:18:07.120 | - Especially then.

00:18:07.960 | - Really?

00:18:08.800 | - Especially then, yeah.

00:18:10.560 | Yeah, I really love doing that.

00:18:12.680 | - So it like tells you seriousness of purpose,

00:18:14.960 | something like that?

00:18:15.800 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:18:16.640 | - Like everything's elevated now?

00:18:17.800 | - I don't know what it is.

00:18:18.640 | I don't know what I imagine exactly,

00:18:20.080 | but it's some kind of platonic form

00:18:23.680 | of like a mixture of James Bond

00:18:26.520 | and like, I don't know who else, Richard Feynman.

00:18:30.440 | Can I think about when I think about a suit?

00:18:32.280 | - You know, I think of Leonard Cohen,

00:18:33.640 | but he was always wearing suits too, but you know.

00:18:37.040 | - Leonard Cohen is definitely one of my,

00:18:38.720 | is a tragic human, is a beautiful human being.

00:18:42.240 | Through his words, through his own private life.

00:18:44.560 | Yes, I definitely would think about Leonard Cohen.

00:18:49.560 | So small talk, that's another thing.

00:18:53.940 | Is that part of the equation of introvert versus extrovert?

00:18:58.840 | - Well--

00:18:59.680 | - How much people enjoy small talk?

00:19:01.120 | - I kind of went into this whole thing thinking that it was,

00:19:04.840 | but from what I've seen, most people,

00:19:07.520 | my study is that most people don't like small talk.

00:19:10.080 | I think that's why people like your podcasts,

00:19:12.840 | 'cause you're like, forget the small talk,

00:19:14.880 | I'm going deep into it from the very beginning.

00:19:17.440 | - Yeah, so it's actually, the picture you're painting

00:19:19.600 | is like the way you started, like with your,

00:19:23.160 | with the book "Quiet," and the way you are today

00:19:27.000 | is you realize the picture may be more complicated.

00:19:30.680 | - Yeah, everything's more complicated.

00:19:32.600 | I will say with the small talk thing

00:19:37.280 | that I'm curious if you have this experience,

00:19:41.080 | but I find it fantastic to have a career

00:19:44.760 | where I'm known for anti-small talk kinds of topics

00:19:49.760 | because it means that anywhere I go,

00:19:52.560 | like if I show up at a conference or something like that,

00:19:55.040 | no one does small talk with me.

00:19:56.680 | They're like telling me about the deep truth of their lives

00:20:00.040 | from the first "Hello," and I love that.

00:20:03.120 | And in normal life, you have to like wade through a lot

00:20:05.840 | before you know if people are ready to go there.

00:20:08.240 | - Yeah.

00:20:10.200 | - Do you have that experience too?

00:20:11.020 | - No, definitely, definitely,

00:20:12.160 | with people that know me for sure.

00:20:14.160 | - But you forget how many people feel like they know you

00:20:16.880 | because of your podcasts.

00:20:18.160 | - Oh, that's what, no, that counts.

00:20:19.640 | 'Cause I'm a huge fan of podcasts,

00:20:21.160 | and I feel like before I ever became friends with Joe Rogan,

00:20:26.160 | I felt like I was friends with him

00:20:27.840 | 'cause I was a fan of his podcast.

00:20:30.160 | And so like, it was, I feel like it's a friendship.

00:20:33.200 | I know it's a one-way friendship

00:20:34.640 | with all the people I listen to in podcasts,

00:20:37.120 | and even people who are no longer with us, like writers.

00:20:41.000 | I feel like I have a relationship with them.

00:20:42.400 | Maybe I'm insane.

00:20:43.360 | - No, I totally feel that way.

00:20:45.120 | That's the whole reason I became a writer.

00:20:46.800 | - Like I'm friends with Leonard Cohen.

00:20:48.440 | - Yeah. (laughs)

00:20:50.800 | - And he's not aware of it.

00:20:52.160 | - No, but I think that's the whole reason

00:20:56.440 | for writing or making music or whatever people do.

00:20:59.800 | It's to be able to have those kinds of connections

00:21:02.920 | that don't require having to be in a room together.

00:21:06.160 | 'Cause there's only so many people

00:21:07.760 | you can be in a room with in your lifetime.

00:21:10.800 | - The hard thing is, unfortunately,

00:21:15.800 | because I value human connection so much,

00:21:18.080 | and I only have, just like you mentioned,

00:21:21.960 | sort of a small circle of people I'm really close with.

00:21:25.440 | By design, it always hurts me a lot

00:21:28.040 | to say goodbye to people.

00:21:29.400 | Like you meet people,

00:21:31.280 | and you can tell they're beautiful people.

00:21:32.720 | They're amazing.

00:21:33.560 | There's something so fascinating about them.

00:21:35.600 | They've had a complicated life.

00:21:40.160 | Like you could see in their eyes

00:21:41.480 | and the way they tell their story in just a few sentences.

00:21:44.760 | They've gone through some shit,

00:21:45.920 | but they also found some elements of beauty.

00:21:49.040 | And then you get to realize,

00:21:50.760 | okay, well, there's a fascinating human here.

00:21:53.000 | And all you get to say is a few words here and there.

00:21:55.440 | It was like a funny little joke,

00:21:58.640 | maybe a dark joke here and there.

00:22:00.160 | And then you just say goodbye,

00:22:01.680 | maybe hug it out, and you go on your way.

00:22:04.360 | So that's a hello and a goodbye,

00:22:06.120 | and your paths will never cross again.

00:22:08.040 | That makes me a sad walk away.

00:22:13.040 | But I guess I wouldn't have it any other way,

00:22:14.840 | I suppose, is the reality is.

00:22:16.760 | In your book, you talk about that sorrow,

00:22:20.520 | that sadness not being such a bad thing.

00:22:22.960 | - Yeah, and when you just said that,

00:22:26.000 | I just thought of this one moment in my life

00:22:29.040 | that I haven't thought of for 20, 30 years or something.

00:22:32.560 | But it was when I was in law school,

00:22:34.360 | and a classmate of mine had his friend

00:22:38.280 | come to visit for the weekend,

00:22:39.560 | and the three of us hung out a lot,

00:22:41.000 | and we just had an amazing time.

00:22:44.440 | And then this other guy,

00:22:46.560 | who wasn't gonna be coming back anytime soon, if at all,

00:22:50.080 | sent a postcard to me.

00:22:52.000 | And the only thing written on the postcard

00:22:54.080 | was this quote from Oscar Wilde.

00:22:55.840 | And I don't remember the exact words,

00:22:57.160 | but it basically said that there's no pain as intense

00:23:00.320 | as the sorrow of parting from someone

00:23:03.600 | to whom you've just been introduced.

00:23:05.960 | - Yeah.

00:23:06.880 | - And there was something so intense about that,

00:23:09.280 | and so true.

00:23:10.680 | I think partly also,

00:23:11.600 | because when you've just been introduced to somebody,

00:23:14.480 | you don't yet know their difficulties.

00:23:18.400 | So you're seeing the most sparkling version of them,

00:23:22.200 | you're seeing a platonic version of love and friendship.

00:23:26.560 | - And your imagination fills in the rest

00:23:28.400 | in some beautiful way that matches perfectly

00:23:31.040 | the kind of thing you're interested in.

00:23:33.000 | That's how I feel about one spoonful of ice cream,

00:23:37.000 | and that's why you always finish the whole tub,

00:23:39.880 | and you regret all of it.

00:23:41.320 | You do cite, what did you write this?

00:23:45.400 | I think this is on your website,

00:23:47.000 | that one of the best things in the world

00:23:48.560 | is that sublime moment when a writer, artist, or musician

00:23:52.160 | manages to express something you've always felt,

00:23:54.960 | but never articulated,

00:23:56.200 | or at least never quite so beautifully.

00:23:58.440 | So that's the Oscar Wilde line is one line like that,

00:24:01.280 | but just a line from a song,

00:24:04.200 | or maybe a piece of art that just grabs you.

00:24:07.560 | Is there something that jumps out

00:24:09.120 | into memory like that for you?

00:24:11.760 | - I don't know if I have an exact line, though.

00:24:13.960 | I mean, that feeling that you just quoted

00:24:15.920 | happens to me all the time.

00:24:17.400 | I'm just bad at recalling exact instances, but--

00:24:19.840 | - Me too.

00:24:20.680 | (both laughing)

00:24:21.520 | On the spot.

00:24:22.720 | - But the writer Alain de Botton

00:24:25.000 | regularly makes me feel that way.

00:24:27.480 | He's just this beautiful essayist

00:24:29.960 | and observer of human nature,

00:24:31.880 | and he's just constantly expressing things

00:24:34.120 | in this gorgeous way that you've experienced yourself.

00:24:37.560 | And you feel like,

00:24:39.480 | I don't know, it's just this grand act of generosity.

00:24:41.600 | You feel less lonely,

00:24:43.080 | you feel this deep sense of communion.

00:24:45.560 | It's such an elevating experience.

00:24:47.280 | - Even when it's a melancholy line.

00:24:49.600 | - Maybe especially when it is.

00:24:52.240 | - Yeah, what is that?

00:24:53.640 | (Lyle laughing)

00:24:54.840 | - There's a,

00:24:55.960 | so Jack Kerouac, "On the Road"

00:24:59.200 | definitely makes me feel that way,

00:25:01.160 | like every other line in there.

00:25:02.820 | "Forlorn rags of growing old."

00:25:05.760 | - Do you know, I never read that book,

00:25:06.880 | so what was it about that book that made you feel that way?

00:25:10.120 | - Well, okay, well, since you asked,

00:25:13.400 | I'm going to linger on this.

00:25:16.040 | So, there's a story,

00:25:19.360 | it's kind of the book,

00:25:21.600 | the kind of defining book of the beats,

00:25:24.960 | of the beat generation.

00:25:26.440 | And it's basically a story of a writer

00:25:29.440 | who takes a road trip across the United States

00:25:32.840 | a couple of times,

00:25:34.580 | and experiences a few close friends

00:25:37.040 | and a few strangers along the way.

00:25:39.200 | And there's a lot of just those

00:25:40.880 | melancholy goodbyes along the way.

00:25:43.200 | You meet all these people with interesting lives.

00:25:46.100 | Some of them are defined by struggle,

00:25:47.600 | some of them are defined by drugs, drinking,

00:25:50.360 | women, all that kind of stuff.

00:25:52.080 | And still, he just kind of dances around all of that,

00:25:55.120 | and is defined by the goodbyes and the passing of time.

00:25:58.900 | So a lot of the really powerful lines are basically like,

00:26:01.880 | there's one on there, again, I don't remember exactly,

00:26:05.580 | but he meets a beautiful girl at a rest stop,

00:26:10.580 | and the girl is getting,

00:26:14.640 | or a woman is getting on a different bus

00:26:17.100 | than he's getting on.

00:26:18.520 | And so it's that feeling of falling in love

00:26:23.520 | for a second, and realizing that fate

00:26:29.160 | is just ripping that out,

00:26:30.840 | which is similar to this idea of,

00:26:34.440 | it sucks to say goodbye just when you met,

00:26:36.480 | but it's especially true when you fall in love

00:26:38.420 | just a little bit with that stranger,

00:26:39.840 | with all the possibilities that could lay there.

00:26:43.660 | So there's a few lines I've written down.

00:26:48.200 | I went down this whole rabbit hole of thinking,

00:26:50.080 | what are the lines that grabbed me?

00:26:52.240 | A couple of lines from "On the Road."

00:26:53.760 | So one is, "What is that feeling

00:26:56.120 | "when you're driving away from people

00:26:58.200 | "and they recede on the plane

00:26:59.540 | "till you see their respects dispersing?

00:27:01.880 | "It's the two huge worlds vaulting us, and it's goodbye,

00:27:05.200 | "but we'll lean forward to the next crazy venture

00:27:07.400 | "beneath the skies."

00:27:08.640 | So this is him talking about leaving a particular city.

00:27:11.600 | The spoiler alert towards the end of the book,

00:27:14.720 | rather the end of the book, line I return to often.

00:27:18.140 | It's more poetry, but it's a feeling

00:27:21.440 | that captures the book, I would say.

00:27:23.240 | "The evening star must be drooping

00:27:27.240 | "and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie,

00:27:30.520 | "which is just before the coming of complete night

00:27:32.640 | "that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers,

00:27:35.920 | "cups the peaks and folds the final shore in,

00:27:38.740 | "and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody

00:27:42.520 | "besides the forlorn rags of growing old."

00:27:45.260 | And it just captures this kind of in-the-moment appreciation

00:27:51.520 | of the beauty of the world and the sadness

00:27:54.640 | over the fact that time passes

00:27:56.640 | and you leave the people you love behind,

00:27:58.560 | you leave the places you love behind,

00:28:01.480 | or at least the way they were at the time

00:28:03.880 | that you really enjoyed them, and you just leave all that.

00:28:06.520 | Just the sadness you feel when you,

00:28:08.600 | something about it, like look at her picture,

00:28:10.980 | look at your kids grow up,

00:28:12.760 | look at your old friends getting old.

00:28:15.140 | Something makes you realize that time passes

00:28:18.440 | and somewhere deep in there is probably a realization

00:28:21.240 | of your mortality and it just makes you somehow first sad

00:28:25.160 | that everything comes to an end,

00:28:28.480 | and then that's immediately followed

00:28:33.280 | by sort of an appreciation of the moment,

00:28:35.120 | like a gratitude that you get to experience this moment.

00:28:37.760 | - Yeah, I know it exactly.

00:28:39.120 | I mean, that's the whole reason that I wrote "Bittersweet."

00:28:42.380 | It's all about that.

00:28:43.340 | (both laughing)

00:28:44.540 | So I know intensely what you're talking about.

00:28:46.700 | And by the way, my husband loves the book

00:28:48.960 | "A Movable Feast" by Ernest Hemingway,

00:28:50.920 | which I also haven't read,

00:28:52.040 | but it talks about that same thing,

00:28:54.040 | groups of people traveling around together

00:28:56.500 | and the group coalesces into some magical formation,

00:29:00.180 | and then one person leaves the group

00:29:01.680 | and it's never gonna be the same again,

00:29:03.720 | and then they move on to the next one.

00:29:06.160 | - Yeah, I mean, I think that's the deepest essence

00:29:09.760 | of human nature,

00:29:12.060 | the feeling of longing for some kind of state

00:29:17.040 | of perfect completeness, completion, perfect love,

00:29:21.400 | the Garden of Eden, all of it,

00:29:23.040 | and the feeling that you're never gonna quite attain it,

00:29:27.960 | but you get glimpses of it here and there,

00:29:30.160 | and that those glimpses are some of the best things

00:29:32.220 | that ever happened to us.

00:29:33.360 | And there's a fused with sadness

00:29:34.920 | because they're not the real thing,

00:29:36.660 | or they're not the full thing, they're just a glimpse.

00:29:39.520 | It's a glimpse of what we long for.

00:29:41.280 | - So the sadness that we might feel

00:29:45.040 | is always connected to the ways in which we fall short

00:29:50.000 | from the perfect thing that we're,

00:29:52.360 | like there's always a thing you're longing for,

00:29:54.720 | and the sadness has to do with getting a glimpse of it,

00:29:59.640 | but not quite getting a hold of it.

00:30:01.800 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:30:03.120 | - So it's always losing.

00:30:04.840 | - It's always losing, but it's also always,

00:30:07.320 | but it's not, that sounds really depressing,

00:30:09.280 | but it's not, you know it's not depressing

00:30:11.760 | 'cause you experience this all the time.

00:30:13.160 | It's also, those are the most beautiful moments

00:30:16.560 | I think life offers.

00:30:18.400 | I mean, it's intense, intense beauty in those moments,

00:30:22.380 | because it's getting closer to the real thing

00:30:25.000 | that we long for.

00:30:25.960 | - So what about, like, loss, losing love?

00:30:31.440 | Is that also?

00:30:33.800 | (Lex laughs)

00:30:35.040 | A beautiful thing?

00:30:36.960 | - Well, the moments you're talking about,

00:30:40.920 | I think it's easier to appreciate the beauty of it all

00:30:44.920 | in the moment, because you're experiencing,

00:30:48.480 | you're kind of experiencing the loss and the love

00:30:51.520 | all at the same time.

00:30:52.820 | Whereas if you're talking about straight up loss,

00:30:55.920 | like a betrayal or a bereavement or whatever it is,

00:31:00.640 | that's, it's different, it's quite overwhelming.

00:31:04.140 | - So losing a loved one kind of thing.

00:31:06.880 | - Losing a loved one.

00:31:07.880 | I mean, I will say that the truth that I think

00:31:12.400 | that we can come to after a lot of time on this earth

00:31:16.760 | is the idea that love exists not only

00:31:20.720 | in its particular forms, so not only in the form

00:31:24.280 | of the one person, you know, that one person we love

00:31:28.040 | or that other person we love, but love itself is a state

00:31:31.640 | that we have access to, and so over time,

00:31:34.620 | the loss of person A can heal and you can tap into

00:31:40.280 | a kind of bigger river of love.

00:31:43.460 | - Yeah, I mean, I had this, this comes from Louis,

00:31:46.240 | Louis C.K., in a show, damn, I love that line.

00:31:50.360 | I mean, there's, he talks to an older gentleman,

00:31:54.480 | and Louis is all sad about losing a loved one

00:31:59.480 | or getting rejected, essentially, like a breakup,

00:32:04.540 | and then the older gentleman gives him advice,

00:32:08.760 | saying, basically criticizes Louis for saying,

00:32:13.280 | "Why are you moping around?

00:32:15.160 | "'Cause this is the most, this is the best part.

00:32:17.920 | "Like, losing love is the best part."

00:32:19.760 | 'Cause that's, the real loss is when you forget.

00:32:24.460 | Like, feeling shitty about having gone through a breakup

00:32:28.140 | is when you most intensely appreciate

00:32:32.860 | what that person meant to you.

00:32:34.400 | Like, you most intensely feel love in some strange way

00:32:40.340 | by realizing that you've lost it, by missing it,

00:32:43.340 | wishing, at this moment, I wish I had that.

00:32:46.640 | Like, that feeling, that's when you feel that love the most,

00:32:50.820 | the absence of it, and so the older gentleman gives advice

00:32:55.100 | that that's the best part, and it can,

00:32:57.740 | if you're good with it, it can last for the longest.

00:33:00.340 | It could be the most sort of prolonged experience

00:33:05.540 | of deep appreciation and emotion and so on.

00:33:09.400 | So that's kind of a, that's a nice way to look at loss,

00:33:14.140 | which is a reminder of how much somebody meant to us.

00:33:18.540 | - Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of truth in that,

00:33:22.180 | because, yeah, you wouldn't care so much

00:33:26.140 | if it weren't something that mattered to you,

00:33:27.660 | so it's always a signpost to the direction

00:33:30.220 | you really wanna go to.

00:33:31.480 | That's always what it is.

00:33:33.620 | Yeah, and it's interesting to see the way

00:33:37.100 | that the mystical versions of many of the great religions

00:33:42.100 | all point in this direction.

00:33:45.380 | You know, whether you were looking at Sufism

00:33:47.220 | or the Qabbalah or in Christian mysticism,

00:33:50.340 | you see this idea that the longing for what you lack

00:33:54.860 | is the very thing that gives you what you're longing for.

00:33:58.300 | So the longing is the cure.

00:33:59.740 | I mean, that's the way the Sufi poet Rumi puts it.

00:34:02.780 | The longing is the cure.

00:34:04.540 | You know, and he says, "Be thirsty."

00:34:05.820 | Like, be as thirsty as you possibly can.

00:34:08.460 | That's what you wanna be.

00:34:09.900 | - The good stuff is the wanting, not the having.

00:34:12.300 | Yeah, yeah, of course, tell that to a person

00:34:16.820 | that just broke up, and they'll be like,

00:34:18.380 | "Shut up, asshole.

00:34:19.740 | "We don't need your advice, this sucks.

00:34:21.560 | "I wish I had her or him back."

00:34:24.780 | - Yeah, no, absolutely.

00:34:26.320 | Those are the kinds of life lessons

00:34:29.120 | that only work when you kind of step away for a while.

00:34:31.620 | They don't work in the moment of excruciation.

00:34:35.320 | There is something about the fact of knowing

00:34:39.240 | that all humans are in that experience together

00:34:42.520 | that is also incredibly uplifting.

00:34:46.740 | But that takes time for people to realize.

00:34:48.900 | You know, like heartbreak in your early teenage years

00:34:54.380 | or something like that could feel like

00:34:56.300 | this is completely the most novel

00:34:59.260 | and the most dramatic pain that any human has ever felt,

00:35:04.260 | right, or maybe even when you're younger.

00:35:07.020 | And then one of the things you realize

00:35:10.620 | is that everybody goes through this.

00:35:13.060 | That can be an awakening to the fact

00:35:14.960 | that we're all in this together,

00:35:16.540 | this human condition is not just a personal experience.

00:35:19.740 | It's an experience we all share.

00:35:21.580 | And that's a kind of love, the unity of it.

00:35:24.980 | - Yeah. - That you can get

00:35:25.900 | to experience. - That's a really

00:35:26.740 | deep kind of love.

00:35:27.580 | And I feel like we're prevented from perceiving that love as,

00:35:32.580 | it's actually like the most obvious kind of love,

00:35:36.300 | and it's right there, and it happens all the time.

00:35:38.480 | But we're prevented from perceiving it

00:35:40.140 | because we're not really supposed

00:35:41.100 | to talk about things like that.

00:35:42.660 | It's like there's something unseemly about it.

00:35:45.380 | - Well, it's also, in the West,

00:35:47.180 | it's an individualist society,

00:35:49.060 | so there's a pressure to sort of see the individual

00:35:53.900 | as a distinct sovereign entity that experiences things.

00:35:58.900 | And the unity between people is not obviously

00:36:02.660 | sort of communicated or talked about

00:36:04.580 | or is part of the culture.

00:36:06.600 | - Yeah, it's not part of the culture,

00:36:08.060 | and yet you see it in our behaviors because we're humans.

00:36:12.380 | So why do people listen to sad music?

00:36:15.460 | I mean, one reason is they're hearing expressed for them.

00:36:19.100 | Like the musician is basically saying to them,

00:36:21.460 | this thing that you have experienced,

00:36:24.700 | I've experienced it too, so have lots of other people.

00:36:28.420 | But they're saying it all without words,

00:36:29.700 | and it's transformed into something beautiful.

00:36:32.980 | And there's something about that

00:36:34.340 | that's just incredibly elevating.

00:36:37.460 | And people don't know it, but there's one study

00:36:40.900 | that I have in Bittersweet that found

00:36:43.620 | that people whose favorite songs are their happy songs

00:36:47.180 | play it on their playlist about 175 times.

00:36:50.060 | But the people who love sad music

00:36:51.460 | play them about 800 times.

00:36:53.260 | And they say that they feel connected to the sublime

00:36:58.460 | when they're listening to that music.

00:37:00.800 | - What do you think that is?

00:37:03.260 | So what is that?

00:37:04.340 | What is it in music that connects us

00:37:08.140 | to the sublime through sadness?

00:37:10.640 | - I mean, I have a bunch of different theories.

00:37:14.780 | The whole reason I started writing this book

00:37:19.260 | is because I kept having this reaction reliably to sad music.

00:37:24.260 | And I realized that for people who I knew

00:37:27.540 | who were religious believers,

00:37:29.100 | the way they described their experience of God

00:37:32.020 | was what I was experiencing when I would hear that music.

00:37:36.900 | Like all the time, it happens over and over again.

00:37:39.660 | - So you wonder what that is?

00:37:42.100 | - And yeah, so I started wondering what that is.

00:37:44.580 | And lots of people have tried to figure out

00:37:48.300 | what that's all about.

00:37:49.400 | And there are different theories that it's expressing.

00:37:53.540 | It's like a kind of catharsis for our difficult emotions.

00:37:57.420 | That it's, as we were saying,

00:37:58.500 | a sense of being in it together.

00:38:01.160 | We don't react in that sort of uplifted way

00:38:06.140 | when you just see like a slideshow of sad faces,

00:38:10.140 | which is something researchers have actually tested.

00:38:12.620 | No one really cares when they're seeing the slide

00:38:14.180 | of the sad faces.

00:38:15.340 | But the sad music, they're really reacting.

00:38:17.420 | And also, they don't really react

00:38:18.900 | when they're hearing music expressing

00:38:20.500 | other negative emotions,

00:38:21.900 | like martial music or something like that.

00:38:23.980 | It's just the sad music that gives people

00:38:25.640 | this elevated sense of wonder.

00:38:28.260 | So I think it's the combination of the sadness

00:38:31.660 | and the beauty.

00:38:33.260 | And I think it's just tapping into the essence

00:38:37.420 | of the human source code,

00:38:38.740 | which is a kind of spiritual longing.

00:38:40.860 | Whether we're atheists or believers,

00:38:43.300 | there's this feeling of longing for a state

00:38:46.620 | and a place of perfect love and perfect unity

00:38:49.500 | and perfect truth and all of it.

00:38:51.660 | And like an acute awareness that we're not there

00:38:54.180 | in this world.

00:38:55.020 | And in religions, we express that through the longing

00:38:58.220 | for Mecca or Eden or Zion.

00:39:02.660 | And artistically, we express it with Dorothy longing

00:39:06.140 | for somewhere over the rainbow.

00:39:07.660 | Or Harry Potter enters the story at the precise moment

00:39:12.020 | that he's become an orphan.

00:39:13.860 | So he's now gonna spend the rest of his life

00:39:16.820 | longing for these parents who he can never remember.

00:39:19.780 | And there's something about that state

00:39:23.380 | that's at our very core.

00:39:24.820 | And I think that's why we love it so much.

00:39:26.760 | - Well, it could be, you could have the Ernest Becker theory

00:39:29.740 | of denial of death, where at the core of that,

00:39:33.140 | the warm of the core, as Jung said, is the fear of death.

00:39:37.980 | So where the longing for the perfect thing

00:39:42.020 | has to do with sort of becoming immortal,

00:39:45.980 | is reaching beyond the absurdity, the cruelty of life,

00:39:50.980 | that all things come to an end

00:39:56.100 | for no particularly good reason whatsoever,

00:40:01.100 | one we can rationally explain.

00:40:03.220 | - I know, you know, I wonder about that all the time.

00:40:05.940 | Like, I know obviously there's that idea from Becker

00:40:09.820 | and throughout philosophy and the tale of Gilgamesh

00:40:12.340 | about the idea that the thing we're longing for

00:40:14.380 | most of all is immortality.

00:40:16.960 | But I feel like it's not only that.

00:40:20.300 | I think it's more so or also, let's say,

00:40:26.180 | a longing for the lions to lay down with the lambs, finally.

00:40:30.780 | You know, for like the fundamental calculus of the universe

00:40:34.420 | to just be different, where life doesn't have to eat life

00:40:37.460 | in order to survive.

00:40:38.740 | And yeah, just a completely different situation.

00:40:42.060 | - I wonder.

00:40:42.900 | - That immortality would not solve.

00:40:45.620 | - I wonder.

00:40:46.820 | That could be a very kind of modern thing,

00:40:53.300 | 'cause surely so much of human history

00:40:55.980 | is defined by violence and glorified violence

00:40:59.180 | that doesn't give inklings of this lions and the lambs.

00:41:02.540 | So much of-- - It's in the Bible.

00:41:06.980 | I mean, I know all the other stuff is in the Bible too.

00:41:09.100 | - There's other stuff in the Bible,

00:41:10.420 | and the Bible, that particular aspect

00:41:12.780 | doesn't necessarily reveal the fundamental motivation

00:41:15.900 | of human nature.

00:41:17.240 | There could be deeper stuff, you know.

00:41:19.780 | But yeah, that is a beautiful picture.

00:41:23.420 | But is it just about humans, or is it about all of life?

00:41:28.420 | And you have to think about

00:41:29.820 | what does the perfect world look like?

00:41:34.420 | It's not just the lions and the lambs laying together.

00:41:37.360 | How many lions and how many lambs?

00:41:41.420 | - Right, right.

00:41:42.260 | - And you know, having just had a few

00:41:46.780 | very technical conversations about Marxian economics

00:41:49.860 | versus Keynesian economics versus neoclassical economics,

00:41:53.580 | what does the economic and the government system

00:41:55.620 | look like for the lions and the lambs

00:41:57.660 | that we're longing for?

00:41:59.180 | So then you start to build society

00:42:01.380 | on top of all those things,

00:42:02.620 | but still you return to this.

00:42:05.420 | What are we longing for?

00:42:08.340 | And what's the role of love in that?

00:42:09.980 | What's the role of that sad, melancholy feeling,

00:42:13.540 | the feeling of loneliness?

00:42:14.820 | Is the feeling of loneliness fundamental

00:42:17.420 | to the human condition?

00:42:18.740 | Are we always striving to channel that feeling of loneliness

00:42:24.460 | to connect with others?

00:42:27.300 | We want that feeling of loneliness,

00:42:28.740 | otherwise we wouldn't be connecting.

00:42:30.620 | Is that fundamental, that feeling like you're alone in this

00:42:35.200 | even when you're with other people,

00:42:36.540 | sort of alone together.

00:42:37.660 | You're born alone, you die alone.

00:42:39.660 | Maybe loneliness is fundamental.

00:42:41.300 | - I think the longing for union is fundamental.

00:42:44.460 | It's just that it looks so different for different people.

00:42:47.300 | And coming back to what we were talking about

00:42:51.580 | at the beginning, union looks incredibly social

00:42:55.100 | for a lot of people and hardly social at all for others,

00:42:58.380 | but everybody needs some version of union.

00:43:01.300 | - Yeah, people have been telling me recently

00:43:02.940 | about polyamory and all those kinds of things.

00:43:04.820 | So having probably grown up in a certain part of the world,

00:43:08.220 | I'm very monogamy-centric,

00:43:12.780 | not in a judgmental way, just for me,

00:43:14.540 | what makes me happy is one person for my whole life.

00:43:18.380 | Basically, just dedication.

00:43:20.860 | 'Cause I've just seen through relationships

00:43:23.500 | with people and objects in my life,

00:43:26.380 | the longer we stay together, the deeper the tie.

00:43:31.660 | So that's just an empirical thing.

00:43:36.220 | And yes, that probably is a personalized thing.

00:43:40.180 | That's just true for me.

00:43:41.220 | It could be very different for others.

00:43:43.100 | Maybe it's connected to the introverted thing, maybe not.

00:43:46.540 | Who knows?

00:43:49.860 | Before I leave, 'cause you mentioned songs, sad songs.

00:43:53.380 | What are we talking about?

00:43:55.060 | What's a good, what song do you remember last crying to?

00:43:59.460 | - Oh, gosh, well, I mean, as you know, I--

00:44:03.140 | - Don't say Taylor Swift.

00:44:04.380 | - I literally dedicated my book to Leonard Cohen.

00:44:08.180 | He's played such a huge role in my life.

00:44:10.700 | I love him, I love him.

00:44:12.420 | And I've loved him with this crazy love

00:44:15.820 | that I've never been able to understand for decades.

00:44:19.060 | I think I understand it a little better now, but.

00:44:20.980 | (both laughing)

00:44:21.980 | - So you're better friends with him than me, I'm jealous.

00:44:25.140 | So does it make you, is it the musician or the human too?

00:44:30.140 | Because the human is a tortuous soul in a way.

00:44:34.380 | - I'd say it's the musician.

00:44:36.340 | It's the musician.

00:44:37.180 | I actually was thinking about this the other day.

00:44:38.940 | Obviously he's not alive anymore,

00:44:41.140 | but I was kind of running the thought experiment.

00:44:44.020 | If he were alive still and I had the chance

00:44:46.660 | to meet him in person, would I wanna do that?

00:44:49.900 | And I'm not really sure that I would

00:44:53.180 | because he represents for me symbolically everything.

00:44:58.180 | Well, everything, I'll end the sentence right there.

00:45:04.180 | And so, and I think that's okay.

00:45:06.580 | I think people can express something through their art

00:45:10.100 | that they might or might not express

00:45:12.260 | if you were just hanging out with him and having a coffee.

00:45:15.660 | And I'm happy to know him that way.

00:45:17.580 | - He can express himself, I'm sure,

00:45:19.620 | in the way that you know him as over coffee too.

00:45:23.500 | - Yeah, maybe you would. - It just requires

00:45:25.660 | like a focus of remembering,

00:45:30.660 | like a deep focus of connection.

00:45:31.940 | That's why when I interact with folks,

00:45:36.560 | it's so draining for me because I'm putting all my,

00:45:41.560 | whatever weapons I got in terms of deeply

00:45:45.960 | trying to understand the person in front of me.

00:45:48.520 | And doing that dance of human interaction,

00:45:50.560 | the humor, the intense kind of delving into who they are,

00:45:55.560 | which requires navigating around small talk type of stuff

00:46:02.520 | and just like compliments and so on in general.

00:46:05.960 | Like people, depending on the culture,

00:46:07.840 | depending on the place,

00:46:08.840 | they'll sometimes flower stuff with smiling

00:46:11.240 | and like compliments like, "Oh, I love you.

00:46:13.440 | "This is great."

00:46:15.040 | Like that's all great,

00:46:16.000 | but you wanna get to the core of like,

00:46:17.920 | what are the demons in the closet?

00:46:20.640 | Let's talk about it.

00:46:22.320 | And that can be exhausting.

00:46:24.560 | That can be really exhausting.

00:46:25.720 | So from a Leonard Coe perspective,

00:46:27.160 | you get more and more famous.

00:46:29.360 | It can be hard sometimes

00:46:31.160 | because he probably is also an introvert.

00:46:33.560 | - Oh yeah, I know he was an introvert

00:46:35.440 | because he actually tweeted about my book when it came out.

00:46:39.320 | So that was a precious moment for me.

00:46:41.080 | Something about we should all be listening to the quiet.

00:46:43.160 | I can't remember exactly what he said.

00:46:45.880 | But yeah, yeah, no, he definitely was.

00:46:48.680 | - He struggled with depression,

00:46:50.960 | which I wonder if that's something

00:46:53.320 | that's also connected to introversion.

00:46:55.400 | But perhaps not actually.

00:46:58.120 | Perhaps that they're very disjoint and also--

00:47:00.400 | - It's connected to sensitivity

00:47:01.800 | and many sensitive people are introverts.

00:47:04.040 | So it's kind of like a Venn diagram.

00:47:06.160 | It's about 80% of highly sensitive people are introverted,

00:47:09.360 | but then some are extroverts.

00:47:11.080 | And then not all introverts are sensitive.

00:47:13.280 | So it's complicated.

00:47:14.720 | But he was definitely a sensitive type.

00:47:17.200 | - Well, there's on top of that,

00:47:18.240 | you see like the percent of artists

00:47:21.480 | relative to the average that suffer from depression.

00:47:23.600 | So creative people is very high.

00:47:26.160 | - Very, very high. - It's crazy.

00:47:27.400 | - Yeah, and then the number of artists

00:47:29.120 | and successful artists who were orphaned

00:47:31.840 | when they were young,

00:47:32.680 | who lost one parent or both parents,

00:47:34.560 | it's like an astronomical number.

00:47:36.080 | I have it in the book.

00:47:37.240 | I don't remember the percentage, but huge.

00:47:39.440 | And he was one of them.

00:47:40.360 | He lost his father when he was nine.

00:47:43.040 | And his first act of poetry was,

00:47:45.120 | his father made suits.

00:47:49.160 | That's why I thought of him

00:47:50.040 | when we were talking about you in your suit.

00:47:51.960 | And he took one of his father's bow ties

00:47:54.720 | and wrote a poem in his honor

00:47:57.240 | and buried the poem and the bow tie in the backyard.

00:48:01.400 | And that was like his first creative act.

00:48:04.200 | - You know that song, "Chelsea Little Number Two"?

00:48:07.080 | - Sure.

00:48:07.920 | - Where he met, I guess it's about Janis Joplin.

00:48:10.280 | - Janis Joplin, yeah.

00:48:11.280 | - What a fun, intense, and cool person she is.

00:48:18.000 | - Yeah.

00:48:18.960 | - So I guess-

00:48:21.920 | - Have you ever seen, I'm sorry to interrupt you,

00:48:23.960 | but have you ever seen his son, Adam Cohn

00:48:26.480 | and Lana Del Rey perform that song together?

00:48:28.960 | - Oh, wow, no.

00:48:29.920 | - It's incredible.

00:48:30.880 | I have to send it to you.

00:48:31.880 | - Yeah.

00:48:32.720 | So that for people who don't know,

00:48:34.840 | I mean, maybe I don't know.

00:48:36.600 | It goes, "I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel.

00:48:39.320 | You were talking so brave and so sweet,

00:48:42.560 | giving me head on the unmade bed

00:48:46.120 | while the limousines wait in the street."

00:48:48.360 | There's a good line in there about being ugly.

00:48:53.840 | - Oh yeah, we are ugly, but we have the music.

00:48:56.520 | - No, before that, from a guy's perspective, it was-

00:48:59.840 | - Oh, you told me again, you preferred handsome men.

00:49:03.200 | But for me, you would make an exception.

00:49:05.120 | Yeah, so good.

00:49:07.120 | - Well, she continued that thread in later

00:49:09.920 | because I think she said that he was lousy in bed.

00:49:13.560 | - Oh, is that right?

00:49:14.400 | - Yeah, she publicly said that.

00:49:16.160 | Which is like, oh man, did there...

00:49:18.640 | (laughing)

00:49:20.520 | Just, okay, for people who don't know,

00:49:23.000 | I think this is a true story about them interacting

00:49:26.280 | and being together for a very brief time.

00:49:29.600 | I don't know, dating, but just connecting,

00:49:31.200 | falling in love, or in this very particular way

00:49:35.560 | that I think famous musicians, poets can,

00:49:39.440 | which is like, it's impossible

00:49:40.640 | for that kind of thing to last.

00:49:42.800 | But they did for a brief moment.

00:49:47.040 | There's like a sadness to it because it's so momentarily,

00:49:52.220 | but it's so epic.

00:49:53.880 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:49:54.720 | - And that these two paths cross,

00:49:55.960 | and then you just look at it,

00:49:56.880 | we know these famous people,

00:49:58.520 | and it's interesting to watch.

00:50:01.080 | - Yeah, and you don't even have the impression

00:50:02.480 | that they're thinking it's gonna last.

00:50:04.400 | They more know that it's like a blaze of an intersection,

00:50:07.560 | and the limousine's already waiting

00:50:09.680 | while they're in the middle of it, and then it's done.

00:50:12.700 | Yeah.

00:50:15.400 | And he's talked about how his music,

00:50:18.340 | he said something like,

00:50:20.640 | some people are more inclined to say hello with their music,

00:50:23.800 | but I'm rather more valedictory.

00:50:26.720 | That's what he said.

00:50:27.560 | - What does valedictory mean?

00:50:28.400 | - Like saying goodbye, like the valedictorian's address.

00:50:31.140 | - Interesting.

00:50:33.120 | - You know, so many of his songs really are about some form

00:50:38.080 | of parting, or goodbye, or an imperfection, or something,

00:50:41.940 | or like the broken hallelujah.

00:50:43.580 | - Yeah, that song.

00:50:46.040 | - But the thing that's so incredible about him

00:50:50.140 | is the way that he's taking all of that

00:50:54.720 | and pointing it in the direction of transcendence.

00:50:57.600 | Like it's not just pure sadness, it's sadness and beauty,

00:51:02.200 | and that's the thing.

00:51:03.960 | - Yeah, there is a feeling of transcendence

00:51:05.720 | in a lot of the songs.

00:51:07.720 | It's like sadness and transcendence, you're right.

00:51:10.600 | It's a goodbye, but you're moving on to some bigger thing,

00:51:15.600 | but in a sort of ethereal way.

00:51:19.200 | Like not like a proud, arrogant way.

00:51:23.460 | - Yeah, so his favorite poet was Garcia Lorca.

00:51:28.000 | He actually named his daughter after him.

00:51:30.040 | His daughter's name is Lorca.

00:51:31.480 | And he talks about how there's some poem

00:51:36.480 | that Lorca had written that made him realize

00:51:40.400 | that the universe itself was aching,

00:51:44.200 | but the ache was okay because that's the way

00:51:46.320 | you embrace the sun and the moon.

00:51:48.260 | (Lex laughing)

00:51:49.860 | And that's what I think is,

00:51:51.420 | that's why I think there's this whole rich vein

00:51:55.900 | in this bittersweet tradition that he embodies

00:52:00.380 | that's like the essence of beauty.

00:52:02.340 | It's the way you embrace the sun and the moon.

00:52:05.260 | - The song "Hallelujah," I return to that often.

00:52:07.660 | Have been meaning to play it.

00:52:10.140 | I have now a friend who wants to sing it with me.

00:52:14.260 | - Are you a singer?

00:52:16.460 | - Hmm.

00:52:17.300 | (Lex laughing)

00:52:20.900 | When somebody says they're a singer,

00:52:22.540 | do they have to be good?

00:52:23.900 | (Lex laughing)

00:52:25.100 | Because then no.

00:52:26.420 | But I would say yes.

00:52:27.500 | I was in a band for a while.

00:52:28.900 | I sang for a while.

00:52:29.740 | I was always bad, but I enjoy it.

00:52:33.940 | I enjoy it.

00:52:34.780 | I enjoy lyrics.

00:52:35.660 | I enjoy words.

00:52:37.180 | When sung or spoken, they capture something.

00:52:40.620 | They could get in that moment.

00:52:42.840 | Tom Waits is a huge favorite of mine for that reason.

00:52:46.340 | Although he often, his lyrics are often not that simple.

00:52:51.340 | I'd rather have a bottle in front of me

00:52:54.940 | than a frontal abottomy.

00:52:56.420 | He's always playing with just like these weird word play.

00:53:01.420 | Especially in the English language, it's trickier to do.

00:53:06.300 | I'm fortunate enough to know another language,

00:53:08.060 | which is Russian, so I get to understand

00:53:10.700 | that certain languages allow for more word play than others.

00:53:15.800 | English, for that reason, I don't think has a,

00:53:18.240 | like a culture of, you know what?

00:53:23.400 | I need to push back on what I'm about to say,

00:53:25.320 | but there was no culture of word play

00:53:30.240 | until hip hop came along.

00:53:33.040 | So like distorting words in interesting ways

00:53:37.120 | for there to be a rhythm, a rhyme,

00:53:39.540 | and at the same time, you're capturing

00:53:42.320 | some really powerful message plus humor.

00:53:46.800 | All of that mixed in.

00:53:47.680 | Actually, hip hop does a really good job of this,

00:53:49.720 | but there wasn't a tradition.

00:53:51.000 | If you look at poetry in the 20th century,

00:53:53.160 | there wasn't really a tradition of that

00:53:54.600 | in the United States, but there was

00:53:56.960 | in other parts of the world and certainly in Russia.

00:53:59.600 | - Interesting.

00:54:00.440 | - Empowered also, not just by the language,

00:54:02.320 | by the fact that you go through a world war

00:54:03.960 | where tens of millions of people die.

00:54:05.840 | Something about mass death of civilians

00:54:09.720 | that inspires great literature and music and art.

00:54:12.800 | - Yeah, absolutely.

00:54:13.960 | 'Cause you start telling the real truth, I think.

00:54:16.040 | - Yes.

00:54:16.880 | (laughing)

00:54:17.720 | There's no more reason for small talk.

00:54:19.520 | (laughing)

00:54:21.600 | - That's funny.

00:54:22.440 | I always have thought that if I could choose

00:54:25.640 | any other medium besides writing, it would be singing.

00:54:28.540 | But then-- - Are you a singer?

00:54:31.000 | - No, I mean, like I'm really not.

00:54:32.520 | I just love the idea of it.

00:54:34.460 | But then I also think, you know,

00:54:35.600 | I'm fundamentally a shy person,

00:54:37.320 | so I think it's much better that my medium is writing

00:54:40.000 | instead of singing.

00:54:40.840 | So like, it all worked out.

00:54:42.600 | - That said, you're also an exceptionally good public speaker

00:54:46.640 | and you're not supposed to be, mathematically speaking.

00:54:51.440 | - Mathematically speaking?

00:54:52.640 | - You're not supposed to be a good public speaker.

00:54:54.680 | - Oh, you mean because of shyness or?

00:54:56.440 | - Yeah, because of shyness, because of introversion,

00:54:58.400 | because of all those kinds of things.

00:54:59.760 | - Oh, yeah.

00:55:00.680 | But lots of introverts are public speakers, actually.

00:55:03.200 | Like this is one of, I knew this from the studies,

00:55:05.700 | but then also when I started going out

00:55:07.800 | on the lecture circuit, I realized that all my fellow

00:55:10.120 | speakers at all these conferences I was going to,

00:55:12.520 | they're all introverts, 'cause, you know,

00:55:14.640 | they're all people who like spent years

00:55:17.200 | figuring out some idea and now they're out there

00:55:19.100 | talking about it.

00:55:19.940 | - Oh, they're in their head figuring out the idea?

00:55:22.160 | - Yeah, yeah. - So how do you explain

00:55:23.920 | that the public speakers, would you say

00:55:27.080 | the good public speakers are usually introverts?

00:55:29.880 | - No, I think there's just different styles of it

00:55:32.120 | and I think that we just have,

00:55:34.520 | when we hear the word public speaker,

00:55:36.260 | we have a really limited idea of who that person would be.

00:55:40.260 | So for me, I used to be very phobic about public speaking

00:55:44.940 | and part of the reason for it was because I thought

00:55:47.940 | that being the kind of person I was

00:55:50.100 | didn't equal being able to be a good public speaker,

00:55:54.140 | 'cause you're only imagining, you know,

00:55:56.020 | like the super kind of out there showman.

00:55:58.840 | But I think there's another style of public speaking

00:56:02.260 | that's more reflective and thoughtful and conveying ideas

00:56:06.920 | and people like that too.

00:56:08.360 | - Is there advice you can give on how to overcome that?

00:56:10.840 | Like if you're a shy person, how to be a public speaker?

00:56:15.280 | - I can totally give that advice because I used to,

00:56:18.700 | before I would give speeches, you know,

00:56:20.560 | if I had to do it in law school,

00:56:22.180 | if I knew like today was the day

00:56:24.000 | when I was gonna get called on in a law school class,

00:56:26.560 | I literally one time vomited on my way to class.

00:56:29.360 | That's how nervous I used to be.

00:56:31.920 | And yeah, the way to do it is through desensitization.

00:56:36.180 | You know, it's like been figured out.

00:56:37.700 | It's the way to overcome any fear.

00:56:39.260 | You have to expose yourself to the thing you fear,

00:56:42.460 | but in very small doses.

00:56:44.580 | So you can't start by giving the TED Talk.

00:56:47.420 | You have to start, I started by going to this class

00:56:50.220 | for people with public speaking anxiety,

00:56:52.380 | where on the first day, all we had to do

00:56:55.180 | was stand up and say our name and sit down.

00:56:58.540 | I was like, that's the victory.

00:57:01.000 | - That's fun to watch all those people with anxiety.

00:57:03.700 | Okay, that's the first step and then step,

00:57:07.520 | one step at a time.

00:57:08.760 | - Yeah, and then like with this class,

00:57:10.360 | you go back the next week

00:57:11.560 | and he would have us come to the front of the room

00:57:15.340 | and stand up with other people standing next to us

00:57:18.840 | so that you didn't have the feeling

00:57:20.800 | of being all alone in the spotlight

00:57:22.480 | through others sharing it with you.

00:57:24.400 | And you would answer some questions

00:57:25.760 | about where do you grow up?

00:57:27.160 | You know, where do you go to school?

00:57:29.120 | And you declare victory and you're done.

00:57:31.540 | And then little by little by little,

00:57:33.380 | you keep ratcheting up the exercises

00:57:35.540 | until you get to the point where you can do it.

00:57:37.900 | And then you start having successes and you realize,

00:57:39.900 | oh, you know, actually I can do this.

00:57:42.240 | - What about like writing versus improvising?

00:57:46.540 | Because I knew a few people,

00:57:47.940 | sort of the colleagues of mine

00:57:49.500 | that were working on TED Talks

00:57:50.900 | and it feels like you're supposed to like

00:57:54.420 | write the thing like way ahead of time

00:57:56.820 | and you practice it and they help you

00:57:58.820 | and all that kind of stuff.

00:58:00.300 | I don't think I've ever practiced a speech

00:58:02.500 | once in my life or a lecture or any of that.

00:58:04.900 | Like I know it's really good to do,

00:58:06.580 | but do you find that relieves some of your anxiety

00:58:10.860 | preparing well or are you now able to do

00:58:13.660 | not preparing well at all?

00:58:15.860 | - I definitely like to prepare before,

00:58:19.860 | but the kind of preparation that I've done for my TED Talks

00:58:23.260 | is completely different from what I've done

00:58:25.300 | for everything else.

00:58:26.220 | 'Cause TED Talks are more like a theatrical event

00:58:29.460 | where it's like a one person show.

00:58:31.460 | And of course, if you were gonna go on Broadway

00:58:34.060 | with a monologue, you would know every word.

00:58:36.620 | So it's kind of like that.

00:58:37.860 | And so I would rehearse it over and over

00:58:40.380 | the way you would do that.

00:58:41.660 | - Isn't that more anxiety?

00:58:43.140 | - Yes. - Like knowing

00:58:43.980 | every single word?

00:58:44.900 | - It's so much anxiety because yeah,

00:58:47.260 | you're not even so freaked out about being on stage

00:58:49.340 | so much as what if I forget something?

00:58:51.140 | - Yeah. - Yeah, absolutely.

00:58:54.220 | I mean, they do things like the last TED Talk I gave,

00:58:57.020 | I actually did forget something halfway through.

00:58:59.100 | Like I just couldn't remember the next line.

00:59:01.300 | And so I had to walk over, like over there were my notes.

00:59:05.620 | And so I did that and the audience like very kindly clapped

00:59:10.620 | while I did that and then I came back to the spotlight

00:59:13.340 | and kept going and they edit that out.

00:59:15.100 | - Nice, so there's a failure mode.

00:59:16.900 | That's okay. (both laughing)

00:59:18.220 | But still, it seems really stressful.

00:59:21.940 | Like I'm now, I'm not sure if I'll ever publish it,

00:59:24.900 | but I've been, mostly it's for a personal journey,

00:59:29.900 | but I've been working on a series on, wait for it,

00:59:35.700 | Hitler and the Third Reich.

00:59:37.740 | Sort of looking at the historical context of everything

00:59:40.560 | because my family was so much affected

00:59:42.700 | by that whole part of history.

00:59:44.420 | So for me to rigorously, I've read a lot

00:59:47.780 | about Stalin and Hitler and for me to force myself,

00:59:51.340 | one of the best ways to force yourself

00:59:53.380 | to really consider material is to have to talk about it.

00:59:56.940 | - Totally, yeah.

00:59:57.780 | - And so that's why I'm doing it,

00:59:59.460 | but I'm playing with ideas of some of it,

01:00:04.180 | maybe like 20% is written down on paper,

01:00:08.540 | but the rest of it is my thoughts in the moment.

01:00:11.300 | And it's a difficult balance to strike

01:00:15.220 | 'cause if you write a lot, you're going to be more precise,

01:00:17.620 | you're going to be more accurate,

01:00:20.340 | but you're going to miss some of the deep,

01:00:22.980 | like honest emotion.

01:00:25.420 | The silences won't be correct.

01:00:29.060 | Or the silences between the words

01:00:32.340 | won't capture the depth of feeling.

01:00:36.380 | Unless if you're somebody like me,

01:00:38.300 | if you're like, I guess that's what actors

01:00:40.720 | and actresses have to do.

01:00:42.380 | Like basically, even though the script is fully written,

01:00:46.620 | you improvise between the words, between the lines.

01:00:50.940 | - Yeah.

01:00:51.780 | - But that's a skill.

01:00:52.860 | - Well, it also takes so much time.

01:00:54.700 | I mean, I experienced that with the TED Talks.

01:00:57.180 | It's like you get to a stage,

01:00:59.540 | so you're memorizing everything word for word,

01:01:01.940 | and at first in that process,

01:01:04.580 | it comes out in a really wooden way,

01:01:06.300 | the way you're saying, like the emotion's gone.

01:01:08.640 | But once you really know it,

01:01:10.060 | so you've internalized the words,

01:01:11.780 | then all the emotion comes back

01:01:13.800 | and you can say them in a completely different way.

01:01:15.860 | You know, and you're really speaking it from the heart.

01:01:17.740 | But you have to know it so well before you can do that.

01:01:21.300 | - It was still difficult.

01:01:22.140 | - I would never recommend it,

01:01:23.380 | 'cause it's just like, it's so time consuming.

01:01:25.500 | - It's an, well, in your case, it works out beautifully.

01:01:28.260 | Like when it all comes together, it is a theatrical thing.

01:01:32.860 | It's like a musical or whatever.

01:01:35.000 | I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna come out

01:01:38.580 | with a one-man show on Broadway, singing.

01:01:42.380 | Now I'm inspired.

01:01:43.220 | - No, but for real, where are you gonna,

01:01:44.900 | where are you gonna talk about Hitler and Stalin

01:01:47.300 | and everything you're learning?

01:01:48.140 | - On YouTube.

01:01:49.020 | - Have you ever thought of using the medium

01:01:52.500 | of just speaking into a microphone, but without the video?

01:01:56.780 | I'm curious about this,

01:01:58.720 | because like I fell in love with podcasts originally,

01:02:02.960 | before there was ever this whole video component to it.

01:02:05.900 | And I realized there's something so primal and magical

01:02:09.300 | about having someone's voice in your ear.

01:02:12.380 | And my favorite kinds of interviews still,

01:02:14.620 | very few people do it this way nowadays,

01:02:16.580 | but my favorite kind are when you're just talking

01:02:19.780 | into the microphone.

01:02:20.980 | So it's not over Zoom.

01:02:22.860 | It's not in person.

01:02:23.740 | It's just you and the microphone

01:02:25.620 | and the other person in the microphone

01:02:26.940 | and they're in your ear.

01:02:28.300 | It's like the ultimate in intimacy.

01:02:30.780 | - Oh, you mean from the interviewer perspective,

01:02:32.500 | that's your favorite?

01:02:33.540 | - Yeah, but it would be interesting also

01:02:35.740 | as with the kind of thing you're talking about

01:02:38.200 | of just speaking, like just you and the mic.

01:02:40.620 | - I would love to be in person,

01:02:42.100 | but you can't see the person.

01:02:43.420 | I wonder what that's like.

01:02:44.780 | - Wait, what do you mean?

01:02:45.620 | Like they're all there, but behind a curtain?

01:02:47.140 | - No, you just have your eyes closed.

01:02:48.820 | You're just talking and you have your eyes closed

01:02:50.500 | or whatever you have,

01:02:51.940 | because I think you still have to get

01:02:53.620 | the same kind of chemistry,

01:02:54.580 | 'cause it's not just the visual.

01:02:56.700 | I don't even know that,

01:02:58.100 | 'cause obviously I have trouble making eye contact,

01:03:01.140 | but I don't know if the visual stimulation

01:03:03.060 | is the necessary thing.

01:03:04.660 | There's something about the way audio travels

01:03:07.420 | that captures the intimacy.

01:03:08.900 | Where some people actually have headphones on,

01:03:11.660 | like Joe does this, have headphones on.

01:03:13.300 | That's really intimate.

01:03:14.980 | Like there's something about that sound

01:03:16.660 | going directly into your ear.

01:03:18.500 | - Exactly, yeah.

01:03:19.320 | - Yeah, there is something primal there, yeah, for sure.

01:03:21.860 | I've thought about it, definitely.

01:03:25.380 | And some of my favorite podcasts are like that,

01:03:28.060 | WTF with Marc Maron, that's audio only.

01:03:31.420 | There's a few audio only podcasts that I just love.

01:03:34.740 | What is that?

01:03:35.580 | I still go on Clubhouse,

01:03:37.660 | that was a social media platform where it's audio only.

01:03:42.020 | It's so interesting that people,

01:03:44.260 | the interesting thing about Clubhouse in particular

01:03:46.300 | is people from all walks of life can tune in

01:03:48.500 | and they just have,

01:03:50.500 | somebody needs to do some research

01:03:53.500 | in terms of introversion on that one,

01:03:55.020 | because I don't feel any of my introvert

01:03:58.180 | like triggers happening.

01:04:03.080 | Because nobody can see you, it's just audio.

01:04:06.220 | And nobody is offended if you're just sitting there quietly,

01:04:11.620 | just listening.

01:04:12.700 | So you can participate whenever you want or not.

01:04:16.140 | - Yeah, it's like the ultimate social freedom.

01:04:18.180 | You can listen as much as you'd like,

01:04:19.820 | you can participate if you want,

01:04:21.140 | but you don't have to, it's no big deal.

01:04:22.740 | - Yeah, because nobody can,

01:04:24.060 | if I'm actually at a physical party,

01:04:25.980 | somebody's gonna look at me and be like,

01:04:28.140 | why, there'll be that pressure to speak,

01:04:30.740 | but you don't have to in that kind of audio setting.

01:04:34.380 | And there's that intimacy.

01:04:36.060 | Like you can, when it's audio only,

01:04:38.260 | it feels like you can reveal a lot more of yourself

01:04:40.620 | in some kind of honest way.

01:04:43.700 | I don't know what that is.

01:04:44.740 | What is that?

01:04:45.580 | - I don't know, but I assume it's tapping

01:04:48.140 | into something really ancient.

01:04:49.940 | Like we used to tell stories around the fire,

01:04:51.880 | like our whole storytelling tradition was oral originally.

01:04:56.620 | - So maybe it's that, but we used visual stuff.

01:04:59.560 | - That's true, you could actually see the person

01:05:01.940 | on the other side of the campfire.

01:05:03.780 | - It seems like the visual element's so fundamental

01:05:06.260 | to social interaction,

01:05:07.540 | but there is something primal about audio.

01:05:11.820 | I wonder what that is.

01:05:12.660 | And still, that's why, I mean,

01:05:14.140 | most people listen to podcasts, I think, audio only.

01:05:17.360 | They have it in their ears while they're doing stuff.

01:05:19.460 | - Yeah, that's how I do it.

01:05:21.020 | - And then there's, yeah, that's how I do it too.

01:05:22.660 | And that's where the friendship is formed.

01:05:26.780 | It's weird, the deep connection with other humans

01:05:29.380 | is formed because they're in your ear.

01:05:32.420 | And you get to see them grow.

01:05:35.820 | You get to see them be bored, experience excitement

01:05:39.420 | and anger and fear and all those kinds of things.

01:05:42.460 | It's fascinating, it's fascinating.

01:05:45.100 | The world of podcasting is fascinating

01:05:46.900 | because we're in this world of essentially radio,

01:05:50.380 | even though we have all this high-definition content,

01:05:55.080 | all this TikTok-style fast stuff and still podcasting.

01:05:59.020 | - I know, and we still choose to do this.

01:06:01.300 | - It's weird.

01:06:02.140 | - 'Cause at the end of the day,

01:06:02.960 | I think that's really what people want most,

01:06:04.520 | is just to talk to each other

01:06:06.260 | and to know what people really think.

01:06:07.740 | And podcasting of all the media that I've ever seen

01:06:10.780 | is the one where people come closest

01:06:12.500 | to telling you the truth.

01:06:13.740 | And to telling you the good and the bad

01:06:18.460 | and the bitter and the sweet and all of it.

01:06:19.940 | - Especially long form, there's not enough time.

01:06:21.860 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:06:23.020 | - I had to explain this to people,

01:06:24.820 | like you talk to CEOs and stuff,

01:06:27.420 | they don't understand,

01:06:28.940 | they're starting to understand much better.

01:06:31.980 | Now as a hard requirement,

01:06:34.440 | with CEOs and stuff, it has to be three hours.

01:06:37.300 | I say, like, this is...

01:06:39.380 | - Wow.

01:06:40.220 | - Because there's something,

01:06:42.700 | they can't be doing marketing stuff for three hours.

01:06:46.540 | They break.

01:06:47.740 | They start being human, they start joking,

01:06:49.420 | they start relaxing.

01:06:50.460 | And if they can't, that also tells a kind of story.

01:06:53.420 | But I do that kind of torture for CEOs only.

01:06:56.180 | Anyway.

01:06:57.000 | - Yeah, when I was getting,

01:06:58.820 | my publishing house did media training with me

01:07:01.380 | before "Bittersweet" came out.

01:07:03.020 | And they were preparing me for the five

01:07:07.760 | to seven minute interview that you might have,

01:07:10.320 | you know, if you go on some quick TV thing

01:07:12.040 | or something like that.

01:07:13.360 | And God, I hate that.

01:07:14.600 | It's like, it feels like they're,

01:07:16.700 | you're basically having to not tell the full truth somehow,

01:07:21.280 | because you can't, you can't tell it

01:07:23.040 | in such a short amount of time.

01:07:24.680 | - Well, the other--

01:07:25.520 | - So to me, podcasting is just the best thing

01:07:27.200 | that's ever happened.

01:07:28.360 | - The other downside of the seven minute interview,

01:07:33.060 | is I think you could do a really good job with that,

01:07:35.140 | but the dance partner has to be very good.

01:07:37.840 | It's actually challenging for everybody involved.

01:07:39.860 | It's much harder for everybody involved.

01:07:41.860 | 'Cause if you can do, you know,

01:07:45.500 | I can imagine like a Christopher Hitchens type character,

01:07:48.300 | who's just super witty.

01:07:50.060 | Then that you could do a seven minute thing,

01:07:52.900 | you can get to the core of "Bittersweet".

01:07:55.340 | You can get to the core of the book

01:07:57.100 | without asking those generic small talk questions.

01:07:59.280 | 'Cause too many people in that short form interview

01:08:03.740 | are just asking very generic questions.

01:08:05.760 | They're doing small talk for seven minutes.

01:08:07.860 | It's like, all right, you only get seven minutes,

01:08:10.980 | you only get one interesting question.

01:08:13.500 | Go ask the weirdest, the deepest question

01:08:16.500 | that also energizes the other person.

01:08:20.740 | It's an art form that people don't take seriously.

01:08:24.980 | I think the seven minute thing, five minutes or even less.

01:08:29.140 | And then the commercials, which I...

01:08:31.880 | - Yeah, and I've noticed that many of the best podcasters

01:08:36.880 | are ones where when you're on my side of the table,

01:08:39.960 | you feel like it's more of a conversation

01:08:42.040 | and less like an interview

01:08:43.680 | where you're answering all the same questions

01:08:45.240 | you've answered a million times before.

01:08:47.800 | It's really interesting how different the experience is.

01:08:51.000 | - And you're right, the audio thing,

01:08:52.920 | if you can lose yourself in that, the intimacy of that,

01:08:57.840 | and you don't even remember what stupid stuff you said.

01:09:00.640 | (Bridget laughs)

01:09:01.480 | 'Cause people, I've seen that,

01:09:02.840 | I mean, people don't give 'em enough credit as...

01:09:05.240 | You might not be aware, might not be a fan,

01:09:08.880 | but Joe Rogan is an incredible conversationalist

01:09:12.520 | in that he makes you forget that anything's being recorded,

01:09:17.520 | that you're talking at all.

01:09:20.560 | He makes you forget time and you just enjoy yourself.

01:09:23.840 | And that's, whatever that is.

01:09:26.940 | And that plugs, then you plug into that primal connection

01:09:30.900 | to other humans.

01:09:31.800 | What's your favorite Leonard Cohen song?

01:09:36.140 | - "Famous Blue Raincoat."

01:09:37.500 | Do you know that one?

01:09:38.340 | - Yeah, yeah, maybe I'll play it.

01:09:40.060 | - Yeah, for people who don't know Leonard Cohen,

01:09:43.620 | and this is your first introduction to him,

01:09:45.780 | it's gonna sound so gloomy, but it's so good.

01:09:49.540 | - He's got this deep, rich voice.

01:09:52.000 | Tori Amos covering "Famous Blue Raincoat," yeah, yeah.

01:09:55.500 | No, we want the original.

01:09:58.700 | Just like "Hallelujah," Jeff Buckley covered Leonard Cohen.

01:10:02.180 | That was a really good one.

01:10:03.140 | - That was a really good one, yeah.

01:10:04.740 | And I also really like Rufus Wainwright's cover.

01:10:07.980 | But "Famous Blue Raincoat," for people who don't know it,

01:10:10.100 | it's basically about a love triangle,

01:10:13.860 | and it's told from the perspective of a man

01:10:17.100 | whose wife has just been with another guy

01:10:20.660 | who is also his friend,

01:10:23.380 | and he's writing a letter to that other guy,

01:10:26.180 | and he's reflecting on the way

01:10:28.740 | that all their relationships have changed

01:10:31.100 | in the wake of this event.

01:10:33.860 | - So they're still friends.

01:10:36.060 | - So they're still, well, he refers to him

01:10:38.180 | as my brother, my killer,

01:10:40.220 | which is such a Leonard Cohen thing to do,

01:10:42.020 | because it's always like, you know,

01:10:44.060 | it's light and it's dark all at once.

01:10:45.960 | Nothing is ever all one thing.

01:10:50.200 | (gentle music)

01:10:52.780 | (gentle music)

01:10:55.360 | - Yeah, I love this song.

01:11:02.060 | - Yeah, right?

01:11:02.900 | I mean.

01:11:03.720 | - He just speaks in it.

01:11:15.160 | ♪ It's four in the morning ♪

01:11:18.460 | ♪ The end of December ♪

01:11:22.540 | ♪ I'm writing an out to the sea ♪

01:11:23.380 | - And the fact that it's four in the morning

01:11:24.980 | and it's the end of December,

01:11:26.220 | like those are transitional moments, you know?

01:11:28.660 | It's night going into day,

01:11:30.640 | and it's December going into the new year.

01:11:33.960 | It's not an accident.

01:11:36.260 | - There is something about December, whatever.

01:11:41.980 | There's certain scenes you can paint in your mind.

01:11:44.680 | There's a poem by Charles Bukowski called "Nirvana."

01:11:50.420 | It's a young man traveling through the middle of nowhere

01:11:53.900 | in the snow.

01:11:54.740 | There's something about the snow,

01:11:56.040 | either the rain or the snow,

01:11:58.420 | puts you in a certain kind of mood that just,

01:12:01.300 | what is it, James Joyce, the dead,

01:12:03.580 | the snow is falling on Dublin.

01:12:06.260 | Yeah, it can put you in a place.

01:12:09.260 | - I mean, David Yadin, he's a researcher

01:12:12.180 | in psychedelics and consciousness at Johns Hopkins.

01:12:15.580 | He's a great guy.

01:12:16.660 | And he's done research that has found

01:12:18.740 | that when people are in their transitional moments of life,

01:12:23.060 | you know, and it could be a career change,

01:12:24.660 | it could be a divorce,

01:12:25.740 | it could be that they're nearing the end of their life,

01:12:28.980 | that they very often will say

01:12:31.300 | those are their most meaningful moments

01:12:33.220 | and their most spiritual moments.

01:12:35.140 | And so I feel like that's what Leonard Cohen

01:12:37.500 | knows how to tap into instinctively.

01:12:39.740 | The year after he died, his son, Adam Cohen,

01:12:42.960 | made a memorial concert for him

01:12:44.780 | where all these famous musicians came to Montreal

01:12:47.140 | where they had lived and performed his music.

01:12:51.180 | And my husband, who's not a Leonard Cohen fan,

01:12:54.220 | and he's not a bittersweet type at all,

01:12:55.900 | but he knows how I feel about him,

01:12:57.540 | he's like, "You know, you should really go to that concert."

01:13:00.220 | And I felt so ridiculous.

01:13:02.180 | The whole family went all the way to Montreal on a Monday.

01:13:05.500 | - On a Monday.

01:13:07.300 | - On a Monday, it was just like a random Monday.

01:13:09.580 | And we got on the plane, so like, everyone's out of school,

01:13:13.740 | just so I can go to this concert.

01:13:15.860 | And I got there, and at the beginning,

01:13:20.860 | I was feeling like, "Ugh, this was all a terrible mistake

01:13:24.460 | "because it's all these other musicians playing this music,

01:13:28.220 | "and I don't actually really wanna hear them.

01:13:30.340 | "I'd rather listen to him on YouTube."

01:13:32.860 | And then a musician named Damien Rice

01:13:37.300 | came and played "Famous Blue Raincoat," and he sang it.

01:13:41.740 | And he did the most amazing thing at the end.

01:13:45.420 | The whole thing was amazing.

01:13:46.620 | But then at the end, he sang this musical riff

01:13:49.020 | that was like, all I could say is

01:13:52.340 | it was like a musical lamentation of the ages.

01:13:55.700 | And the whole audience just rose silently to its feet.

01:14:00.700 | And it was one of the greatest moments that I've ever had.

01:14:04.620 | - There's sometimes certain artists in a cover

01:14:06.780 | can capture in some kind of deeper way,

01:14:10.220 | like carrying the thread of the power of the song.

01:14:13.820 | So I've been listening a lot to Johnny Cash Hart,

01:14:17.540 | which is a Nine Inch Nails, Trent Reznor song.

01:14:20.140 | - I know, you talked about it on your podcast

01:14:22.100 | with Rick Rubin, which is when I reached out to you.

01:14:24.860 | I love that interview, and I love that song also.

01:14:27.860 | - Yeah, yeah, so there's that.

01:14:30.400 | There's the Kennedy Center Honors

01:14:31.940 | where they celebrated certain artists.

01:14:33.980 | They did that for Led Zeppelin,

01:14:35.260 | and I forgot what her name is,

01:14:37.080 | but the lead singer of Hart performed "Stairway to Heaven."

01:14:41.700 | And it's like, if you're like, all right,

01:14:45.300 | you take one of the great sort of rock songs of all time,

01:14:48.380 | what do you do in front of, oh, the cool thing is

01:14:51.740 | you get to perform this in front of the artist

01:14:53.900 | while they're still there, and they're still alive.

01:14:56.180 | So you get to watch you sort of perform,

01:14:58.860 | and in that case, the president, President Obama's there,

01:15:01.380 | and she just knocked it out of the park.

01:15:03.540 | But at the same time, without outdoing the original somehow.

01:15:09.540 | - Right, you're just making it your own.

01:15:13.300 | - You're making it your own.

01:15:14.140 | - It's not overlapping it.

01:15:15.940 | - But not departing completely,

01:15:17.340 | not departing from the spirit of the original.

01:15:20.300 | It's tough because the original "Hollywood" by Leonard Cohen,

01:15:23.900 | it's just not, it's so powerful,

01:15:28.300 | but it's just not as good as some of these covers.

01:15:32.000 | - Well, I think it's the words and the melody,

01:15:35.100 | and then the covers take it to a different place.

01:15:37.660 | The thing that Leonard Cohen seems to do well,

01:15:40.380 | I don't think he did it on "Hallelujah"

01:15:45.020 | because he was almost being playful on "Hallelujah."

01:15:48.020 | Like, I don't know, as opposed to that deep melancholy,

01:15:52.620 | like painful longing thing that Jeff Buckley did,

01:15:57.420 | and others do too.

01:15:59.360 | - I wonder if it's because, in a way,

01:16:01.380 | I don't mean that he over-edited it,

01:16:03.740 | but he apparently worked on that song for years

01:16:05.980 | and went through gazillions of verses

01:16:08.140 | and checked most of them out.

01:16:10.060 | So I wonder if we're hearing his version

01:16:12.500 | after he's a little tired with that process.

01:16:15.860 | - Yeah, well, that's the other thing,

01:16:17.660 | is maybe from a book tour, you know,

01:16:20.760 | is you get tired of saying the same thing

01:16:24.580 | over and over and over and over.

01:16:25.580 | You forget.

01:16:26.420 | You forget the--

01:16:27.460 | - You forget the initial, the heart of it.

01:16:30.340 | - Yeah, but I actually got a chance to hang out

01:16:34.180 | with Dan Reynolds, who's the lead singer of "Imagine Dragons."

01:16:38.540 | And this is an incredible band, super popular.

01:16:43.380 | The most played band on Spotify or something.

01:16:45.820 | - Is that right?

01:16:46.660 | - Yes.

01:16:47.480 | - His went through a huge "Imagine Dragons" phase,

01:16:49.260 | so we were listening to their music a lot.

01:16:51.220 | - It was so surreal to be hanging out with him,

01:16:53.300 | and he's such a, like, very few people I've met in my life

01:16:57.520 | are just as good of a human being.

01:16:59.980 | And that has to do with the fact that he struggles.

01:17:02.620 | He still, I think, struggles, but he struggled

01:17:04.460 | for a long time with depression.

01:17:06.900 | And so out of that pain, you see born

01:17:10.500 | this really good human being,

01:17:12.160 | this really good relationship with his wife,

01:17:16.180 | like, when times are good, they lean on each other

01:17:20.740 | for, like, they're deeply grateful

01:17:23.380 | for those precious moments.

01:17:24.500 | So it's beautiful to watch.

01:17:26.020 | But he said that it's really important

01:17:31.260 | to feel the song every time.

01:17:34.580 | Otherwise, people know.

01:17:36.280 | People are really good at detecting your bullshit.

01:17:39.020 | You can't fake it.

01:17:40.340 | - Yeah.

01:17:41.180 | - You really have to feel it every time.

01:17:42.360 | You have to feel the emotion of it,

01:17:44.180 | whatever the emotion is, of the original time you wrote it.

01:17:47.780 | Yeah, it's just interesting, 'cause it put,

01:17:51.960 | I thought you could maybe fake it,

01:17:53.820 | but he believes personally, 'cause he played

01:17:57.660 | in front of gigantic crowds and over and over

01:17:59.860 | and over and over and over.

01:18:01.020 | He's like, "No, every time, you have to be there."

01:18:03.740 | - But there's gotta be times when he's about to go out

01:18:06.460 | and he's not feeling it, and he has to figure out

01:18:08.900 | some way of getting himself into that heart space.

01:18:11.380 | - Well, that's what he's saying.

01:18:12.220 | You have to, otherwise you're just, that's the job.

01:18:15.500 | - Right, right. - Don't take the job then.

01:18:17.600 | And he loves it.

01:18:20.820 | He says the biggest struggle, in fact,

01:18:23.320 | is the comedown from that, which is like,

01:18:25.900 | you have such a beautiful experience

01:18:29.020 | of connecting with this large number of people,

01:18:31.140 | sharing a song that you love,

01:18:34.260 | and then it's just a rush of connection.

01:18:37.500 | And then you have to, when you get off stage,

01:18:41.880 | you're now back to normal life.

01:18:43.900 | And that's why a lot of musicians get into heavy drugs

01:18:46.540 | and all that kind of stuff,

01:18:47.380 | because you're looking for that rush again.

01:18:50.200 | It's very tough to, then going to this,

01:18:53.140 | speaking of introvert, 'cause he probably is an introvert,

01:18:55.740 | is like, you have to find that calmness.

01:18:59.500 | And how do you find the calmness

01:19:00.860 | when you were just playing in front of tens of thousands

01:19:03.660 | of people, or hundreds of thousands,

01:19:05.340 | whatever that number is, that rush of connection.

01:19:08.340 | And everybody, there's love in the air,

01:19:10.540 | and you still have to find that inner peace and calm.

01:19:13.260 | - That's interesting, 'cause I,

01:19:14.580 | so I don't know if this is the introvert in me talking

01:19:17.500 | and the writer in me talking, but I don't know.

01:19:21.700 | I love most the moments where, let's say,

01:19:24.420 | I'll get a letter from a reader who will tell me

01:19:27.420 | what something I wrote meant to them.

01:19:29.920 | And they'll talk about having had that kind of moment

01:19:32.300 | of the communion between the writer and the reader.

01:19:34.860 | And obviously I wasn't there physically when it happened,

01:19:37.300 | so I wasn't getting that kind of rush

01:19:39.100 | that a musician would get in a concert.

01:19:41.020 | But just the knowledge of that having happened

01:19:44.300 | out there in the world,

01:19:45.660 | Jesus, something that I added to it,

01:19:48.380 | is the most amazing thing. - You love it.

01:19:50.420 | But see, imagine reading thousands of those letters,

01:19:54.300 | and then it's such a strong rush,

01:19:56.660 | and everything else doesn't,

01:19:58.100 | it could be overwhelming, I guess.

01:20:01.420 | But like anything else, you have to come down

01:20:04.660 | and find a calm place.

01:20:06.340 | Like, for example, the danger

01:20:07.900 | with getting letters like that,

01:20:10.100 | you start taking yourself too seriously.

01:20:11.580 | You think like you are a special person somehow.

01:20:15.220 | But that's, you really wanna avoid that feeling too.

01:20:19.660 | - Yeah, I don't actually experience it as that much different

01:20:23.060 | from when I'm on the other side of it.

01:20:24.420 | Like, if I'm the reader,

01:20:26.180 | and some other writer has made me feel that way,

01:20:29.060 | to me it's the same thing.

01:20:30.020 | - Yeah, me too.

01:20:30.860 | Yeah, it's a cool, it's a virtual hug.

01:20:34.740 | - I think it's like, I was just listening to something

01:20:36.820 | about the different Russian writers.

01:20:41.100 | I was mentioning him to you, this academic,

01:20:44.780 | his name is Gary Saul Morsin,

01:20:46.260 | and he studies Russian literature.

01:20:48.740 | And he was talking about,

01:20:50.660 | I don't know if I'll be able to get this right,

01:20:51.860 | but basically that the people misunderstand

01:20:54.500 | a work like Anna Karenina,

01:20:56.140 | and that we think of it as telling us

01:20:59.620 | that you're supposed to live,

01:21:03.020 | you're supposed to have like these grand,

01:21:05.900 | tempestuous romances that might end in death

01:21:10.900 | or despair or whatever it is,

01:21:12.780 | but you should be in it for the intensity of the emotion.

01:21:15.940 | And he's saying, actually, that's not,

01:21:18.340 | that's exactly not what Tolstoy was saying,

01:21:22.420 | that actually it was the opposite,

01:21:24.380 | that he was really making,

01:21:25.620 | he was really advocating for everyday life.

01:21:28.100 | He was saying it seems from everyday,

01:21:29.460 | like he was juxtaposing Anna Karenina

01:21:31.500 | with all these other couples

01:21:32.580 | who were just living happily and quietly day by day.

01:21:36.300 | And that was what he believed was the ideal.

01:21:39.740 | So as opposed to the grand rush

01:21:43.940 | and as opposed to the intensity.

01:21:46.220 | - I wonder if he, is there a depth to the,

01:21:49.980 | is there a romance of just the day to day?

01:21:52.940 | - I think there is a romance to the day to day.

01:21:55.100 | - And don't get distracted by the dopamine rollercoaster ride

01:21:59.420 | of the grand romantic notions.

01:22:01.380 | - Yeah, and enjoy it while it's happening

01:22:03.180 | 'cause those are life experiences also,

01:22:05.300 | but not to mistake those for being everything.

01:22:08.620 | - Where is he from?

01:22:09.900 | - He's a professor at Northwestern.

01:22:11.780 | - At Northwestern.

01:22:12.620 | - And apparently his lectures

01:22:14.180 | are like the most popular on campus.

01:22:16.180 | - Wow, people love him.

01:22:18.460 | Gary Saul Morrison is an American literary critic and slob.

01:22:22.140 | He's particularly known for his scholarly work

01:22:24.140 | on the great Russian novel lists,

01:22:26.740 | Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky.

01:22:29.300 | Morrison is Lawrence D. Professor in the Arts and Humanities

01:22:32.060 | at Northwestern University.

01:22:33.180 | Yeah, wow, and there's a lot of incredible work.

01:22:36.380 | And then I'm sure looking through the lens

01:22:38.500 | of Russian literature and the romance of all of that,

01:22:40.460 | he's looking at the modern world.

01:22:42.380 | - Yeah, I think you should have him on your podcast.

01:22:44.820 | - And Quiet Flows the Vodka or When Pushkin Comes to Shove,

01:22:49.460 | The Carmudian's Guide to Russian Literature and Culture.

01:22:51.940 | This is one of the silly books he has on the list.

01:22:54.820 | Okay, cool.

01:22:55.660 | What were you saying?

01:22:57.500 | I'm sorry.

01:22:58.340 | - Oh no, I was just saying, yeah,

01:23:00.300 | I find that when I take photos on my phone,

01:23:03.300 | I hardly ever take photos at the moment you're supposed to.

01:23:06.580 | Everybody's gathered for some event.

01:23:08.980 | I'll forget to take the photo,

01:23:10.360 | but I take a lot of scenes from everyday life

01:23:12.740 | 'cause that's what I actually wanna remember

01:23:14.660 | in the end.

01:23:15.500 | - Yeah, yeah, I'm the same, the same.

01:23:20.380 | It's actually concerning 'cause it's bad for productivity.

01:23:24.980 | 'Cause I love everyday life so much,

01:23:27.500 | then why do any ambitious big thing?

01:23:30.660 | - Your productivity is pretty good.

01:23:32.180 | I don't know that you have to worry about it.

01:23:34.580 | - I do.

01:23:35.420 | So I wanna launch a business.

01:23:36.900 | I have a dream outside.

01:23:39.300 | This is like a fun side thing.

01:23:42.380 | That I wanna, there's been a lifelong passion.

01:23:45.860 | Anyway, I like building.

01:23:47.740 | I like building stuff.

01:23:48.660 | And I haven't been doing that as much as I would like.

01:23:51.300 | That's because largely, 'cause I like sitting in silence

01:23:56.300 | and enjoying the beauty that is just nature and life.

01:23:59.580 | And when there's people, there's people.

01:24:02.380 | I love people.

01:24:03.260 | I love everything.

01:24:04.100 | And so when you love everything,

01:24:05.820 | why go through hell to build a company?

01:24:08.300 | - Yeah, it's a valid question.

01:24:11.780 | I mean, I think you have to have a really good reason

01:24:13.740 | for wanting to do it.

01:24:15.140 | - But then your heart calls you for the certain,

01:24:17.460 | sometimes you look out into the mountains and you say,

01:24:20.700 | "For some reason, I long to go there."

01:24:22.540 | Even if it means leaving the tribe

01:24:24.220 | and putting yourself in danger and doing stupid shit.

01:24:27.700 | That's the human imperative for exploration.

01:24:31.540 | - Yeah, absolutely.

01:24:32.840 | Like when we were talking about this idea of longing

01:24:36.100 | being like the source code of humanity,

01:24:38.740 | I think that's also the source code of our creativity.

01:24:42.260 | It's the same longing for Eden.

01:24:44.580 | It's like you're always reaching for something

01:24:47.900 | that you wanna get to or that you wanna build.

01:24:50.100 | - Yeah.

01:24:50.940 | - It's the best of us.

01:24:51.780 | - What do you think,

01:24:54.220 | you write about creativity and sadness.

01:24:58.260 | Practically speaking,

01:25:01.860 | how should we leverage sadness for creativity?

01:25:05.700 | Is that sort of in the artist domain,

01:25:09.140 | in the writer's domain,

01:25:10.180 | in the engineering domains and so on?

01:25:13.260 | - It's definitely in those domains,

01:25:15.180 | but it's in all domains.

01:25:16.780 | We're all gonna face pain in this life at some point.

01:25:20.820 | And we all have the ability to weather it and withstand it

01:25:25.820 | and live with it for a bit

01:25:29.300 | and then try to transform it

01:25:30.980 | into something that we find beautiful.

01:25:35.540 | It's very easy to notice the grandeur

01:25:40.540 | of the painting hanging on the gallery wall

01:25:44.300 | or the new company that's just been created,

01:25:46.780 | but it takes a thousand different forms, right?

01:25:49.460 | You could bake a cake or like in the wake of the pandemic,

01:25:53.940 | we've had more people applying to medical school

01:25:56.020 | and nursing school.

01:25:57.340 | And after 9/11, you had people applying for jobs

01:26:00.140 | as firefighters and teachers.

01:26:02.940 | So there's something in the human spirit

01:26:05.060 | that takes pain and turns it into meaning

01:26:08.100 | when we're at our best.

01:26:09.980 | And when we're not at our best,

01:26:11.580 | we deny the pain and then take it out on ourselves

01:26:14.580 | and on other people.

01:26:15.740 | So there's a kind of fork in the road

01:26:17.260 | of what to do with it.

01:26:18.340 | But we know, I mean,

01:26:20.420 | there's all these studies that I go through in the book.

01:26:23.460 | There was one where the researchers

01:26:28.380 | had people watch different movies,

01:26:29.980 | like happy movies, sad movies, bittersweet movies.

01:26:33.380 | And they found when people watched "Father of the Bride,"

01:26:35.740 | which is like the ultimate bittersweet,

01:26:38.180 | you're walking your daughter down the aisle kind of feeling,

01:26:42.140 | that was, they would give them creativity tasks

01:26:45.980 | after watching these different movies.

01:26:47.380 | And the people who had been primed for bittersweetness

01:26:49.860 | were the most creative.

01:26:51.540 | And they were like primed to remember finality,

01:26:54.060 | you know, like love and finality, basically,

01:26:56.700 | love and impermanence.

01:26:57.860 | There's something about that

01:27:01.260 | that gets us to our most beautiful state.

01:27:04.260 | - I wonder if it is, I mean, there's studies like that.

01:27:06.180 | There's a, I don't know if you've looked

01:27:07.900 | into terror management theory.

01:27:09.860 | - Yeah, that's really interesting stuff.

01:27:11.580 | - So they especially intensely have you focused on

01:27:15.940 | not just sad, but traumatic, like death,

01:27:19.900 | prime you with death and see how that changes your mind.

01:27:22.700 | Like both, like, I don't know if there's creativity studies,

01:27:27.860 | but they have interesting, I think a little bit tainted

01:27:32.860 | by political bias, but maybe not.

01:27:35.300 | I mean, psychology is a complicated field,

01:27:37.780 | but they study like who are you likely to vote for

01:27:41.820 | if you're primed by existential,

01:27:44.260 | like by thinking about death.

01:27:45.100 | - Like the fear of mortality.

01:27:46.780 | - Fear of mortality.

01:27:47.620 | I forget what the conclusions are, but.

01:27:49.380 | - I think they find that people become more tribalistic.

01:27:52.660 | - Yeah.

01:27:53.500 | - You know, like there was one study

01:27:54.320 | where they found that after they primed people that way,

01:27:56.820 | that they would then give them the chance

01:28:01.460 | to put hot sauce on a meal

01:28:04.140 | that their political opponents were gonna be eating

01:28:06.180 | and they put way too much hot sauce on

01:28:08.220 | after they've been primed to worry about death.

01:28:12.100 | - I think at the core, we're simple creatures.

01:28:16.020 | - So I actually, like in the book,

01:28:17.520 | I spent a bunch of time with people

01:28:20.340 | who are working on radical life extension,

01:28:23.580 | you know, or the quest to live forever.

01:28:26.260 | And people ask them a lot, questions like,

01:28:28.420 | you know, the kinds of questions

01:28:29.260 | you were talking about earlier.

01:28:30.540 | Well, like how are you gonna feed everybody

01:28:32.180 | and how is there gonna be space for everybody

01:28:34.500 | if everyone really could live forever?

01:28:36.940 | And what about conflict?

01:28:38.620 | Won't we have an intensified conflict?

01:28:41.060 | And their answer to that is,

01:28:42.840 | they point to terror management theory,

01:28:46.180 | you know, and they say, because it's the fear of death,

01:28:50.220 | they're basically saying it's the fear of death

01:28:51.560 | that are causing our conflicts in the first place

01:28:53.460 | and that if we remove the fear of death,

01:28:55.700 | we'd have less conflict to contend with.

01:28:58.740 | And that, I don't really buy that.

01:29:01.260 | - It's possible that that's true,

01:29:02.740 | but are you also, how does the expression go,

01:29:05.820 | throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

01:29:08.580 | Are you also going to remove basically

01:29:10.860 | any source of meaning and happiness in the human condition?

01:29:15.860 | Like it's very possible that death

01:29:18.740 | is fundamental to the human condition, the finality.

01:29:22.940 | - Yeah, that's the great philosophical question.

01:29:26.060 | And I went to a conference of people who are working on this

01:29:30.080 | and I thought that they were gonna be talking

01:29:32.380 | about those questions all through the conference,

01:29:34.340 | but the MO is much more like,

01:29:37.820 | we're so happy that we're here with people

01:29:39.700 | who have gotten past all those quibbles.

01:29:42.620 | - Yeah. - You know,

01:29:43.460 | and we just know there's gonna be meaning no matter what.

01:29:45.420 | - The basic assumption is,

01:29:47.260 | let's try to extend life indefinitely

01:29:51.140 | and then we'll figure out if that's a good decision.

01:29:54.100 | - Or more like we're sure it's a good decision.

01:29:55.780 | - We're sure. - Or at least that was--

01:29:56.620 | - It's a mix. - That was what I felt.

01:29:58.740 | - It's either-- - Or what we expressed,

01:30:00.340 | let's say. - Sure.

01:30:01.180 | It's either we're sure it's a good decision

01:30:04.860 | or we're sure that it's good to believe

01:30:07.860 | that it's a good decision.

01:30:09.460 | Meaning like there's no downside to that,

01:30:12.940 | even if we find out it's wrong.

01:30:14.500 | But yes, there's a kind of certainty.

01:30:16.060 | Obviously you want to extend human life,

01:30:18.520 | that's the kind of assumption.

01:30:19.980 | That always seemed,

01:30:21.160 | now it could be true,

01:30:25.100 | but just like the people who over-focus

01:30:30.380 | on colonizing other planets,

01:30:33.840 | it feels like you neglect the beauty

01:30:37.980 | and the struggle of our life here on Earth.

01:30:41.340 | I have sort of the same kind of criticism,

01:30:43.060 | whether it's thinking about Valhalla

01:30:45.200 | or any other afterlife,

01:30:47.480 | is you can have, if you're not careful,

01:30:50.560 | forget to make this life a great one,

01:30:56.020 | whatever happens afterwards.

01:30:57.740 | So yeah, definitely.

01:30:58.960 | But from an engineering, from a biology,

01:31:01.040 | from a chemistry perspective,

01:31:02.100 | it's very interesting to think

01:31:04.180 | how do we extend this thing?

01:31:05.620 | 'Cause it does seem that nature,

01:31:07.580 | the way it designed living organisms,

01:31:10.860 | it really wants us to die

01:31:12.540 | because that's part of the selection mechanism,

01:31:16.220 | this part, this seems to be fundamental to evolution.

01:31:19.420 | It gets people young, they need protection.

01:31:23.900 | Once they're a young brain,

01:31:26.100 | they get to explore a lot,

01:31:27.120 | get to figure out the world,

01:31:28.060 | they come up with their own novel ideas,

01:31:29.940 | how to adapt and how to respond to that world.

01:31:34.200 | And then as they get older and older,

01:31:36.260 | they get stubborn and stuck in their ways.

01:31:39.060 | And so we need them to die

01:31:40.660 | so we make room for new life

01:31:44.860 | that's able to adapt to the changing environment.

01:31:47.220 | If the old doesn't die,

01:31:49.540 | then you're going to get stale

01:31:52.100 | and not be adaptable to the changing environment.

01:31:56.060 | - But maybe it doesn't have to happen so soon.

01:31:58.440 | - Yeah, maybe it doesn't.

01:31:59.540 | It's like pressing, listen,

01:32:00.480 | I'm a big fan of pressing snooze on the alarm clock

01:32:04.540 | in the same way.

01:32:06.840 | I do, I'm one of the people that believe it's,

01:32:10.140 | or I don't definitely believe,

01:32:13.780 | of course, I don't know,

01:32:16.300 | but I think death is a fundamental part of life.

01:32:21.300 | But yeah, if I'm on my deathbed,

01:32:24.940 | I would sure as hell press snooze

01:32:26.500 | as many times as possible.

01:32:27.700 | - Yeah, I know.

01:32:28.540 | - I really don't wanna die.

01:32:29.380 | - And it's interesting 'cause in some ways,

01:32:30.860 | I really, I share your instinct.

01:32:34.700 | There was one scientist who I spoke to at that conference,

01:32:37.100 | he's one of the leading advocates,

01:32:38.980 | and he said, "That's a story

01:32:41.380 | "that we've invented for ourselves

01:32:43.940 | "because we have no choice."

01:32:45.700 | And if you really believe that you have no choice,

01:32:48.300 | then it's adaptive to tell that story,

01:32:51.420 | that death gives meaning to life.

01:32:52.940 | - Good point.

01:32:53.780 | - But if you really think you don't,

01:32:55.340 | if you really think you could triumph over it,

01:32:57.700 | would you still be telling that same story?

01:32:59.800 | And I've been thinking about that question ever since.

01:33:02.500 | - Yeah, yeah, no, they got a good point.

01:33:06.140 | They got a good point no matter what.

01:33:07.820 | As in engineering and the scientific pursuits,

01:33:10.100 | it's a beautiful one.

01:33:11.220 | In your own personal life, if we can go there.

01:33:14.940 | - Sure.

01:33:16.460 | - What's been some dark places you've gone in your own mind?

01:33:20.140 | Grief, loss, sad moments, moments of sadness

01:33:25.140 | that have made you a better writer,

01:33:30.440 | a better creator, a better human being?

01:33:33.500 | - Well, I mean, I've been through a lot of bereavement

01:33:38.020 | just in these last couple of years with COVID,

01:33:40.540 | but even before that, I mean,

01:33:45.220 | there's all kinds of stuff.

01:33:46.540 | I write about it in the book,

01:33:48.060 | and in some ways I feel like I can write about

01:33:50.340 | those kinds of things better than I can speak them.

01:33:53.100 | But I had a really complicated relationship

01:33:55.500 | with my mother growing up,

01:33:57.620 | where we had a kind of Garden of Eden during my childhood.

01:34:02.620 | Like we were intensely, intensely close.

01:34:05.980 | And my mother, because of some vulnerabilities

01:34:10.980 | that she had reacted with a lot of trouble

01:34:18.220 | to my adolescence and to growing independent from her

01:34:23.820 | and starting to have different religious views

01:34:26.820 | and different political views and all kinds of things.

01:34:29.820 | And we had a pretty intense break

01:34:35.820 | that I describe in the book.

01:34:37.940 | And it was so intense that even though after that,

01:34:42.300 | we still would get together for holidays

01:34:45.540 | and talk to each other on the phone and all that,

01:34:48.260 | there was a sense in which it was over at that point.

01:34:51.700 | The relationship was over.

01:34:53.420 | - The Garden of Eden was no more.

01:34:55.460 | - Yeah, yeah.

01:34:56.500 | It was like a feeling of like, yeah,

01:34:59.100 | like I know what Eden was like,

01:35:01.060 | and it's not there anymore.

01:35:03.940 | And I think it was all the more confusing

01:35:06.900 | 'cause like if you lose someone to actual bereavement,

01:35:10.460 | you go through a mourning process

01:35:12.900 | and people have thought for thousands of years

01:35:14.580 | about how to do that.

01:35:15.860 | But with something like this,

01:35:18.020 | there's no process

01:35:18.860 | because you're not even admitting to yourself,

01:35:20.820 | especially when you're like in your teens and 20s,

01:35:23.700 | that you're mourning something.

01:35:25.220 | So, but it was the case that for decades,

01:35:30.860 | for decades, I could not answer

01:35:33.620 | even the simplest question about my mother,

01:35:35.260 | like where did she grow up,

01:35:36.740 | without tears in my eyes,

01:35:38.260 | or more than tears in my eyes,

01:35:40.900 | like embarrassing tears.

01:35:42.700 | So I would just try to steer the subject in another place.

01:35:45.940 | But I will say, two things happened.

01:35:51.220 | One is that I've spent the last six, seven years

01:35:54.260 | writing this book about joy and sorrow

01:35:57.140 | and loss and love and all of it.

01:36:00.260 | And I've really come to terms with all of it.

01:36:02.620 | And then the second thing that happened is

01:36:05.300 | my mother now has Alzheimer's.

01:36:07.580 | And in her Alzheimer's,

01:36:12.020 | she's still actually the same person.

01:36:14.260 | Like she's forgotten most things,

01:36:15.740 | but she still has these conversational lanes

01:36:17.500 | that you can travel down

01:36:18.500 | that are like the way she always was.

01:36:21.100 | And the way that she was when I was a kid,

01:36:24.980 | which was like so incredibly loving and so connected

01:36:28.820 | and so warm and sweet and funny and all of it,

01:36:32.780 | all the things I remembered, like it's all come back.

01:36:36.100 | And for all these decades,

01:36:39.420 | I had been wondering whether that Garden of Eden

01:36:43.900 | I remembered had actually happened,

01:36:46.500 | or whether that was just like the fantasy of a child

01:36:50.100 | and maybe it was always difficult and I had not seen it.

01:36:53.340 | But I'm seeing her now,

01:36:56.060 | and I realized that it was all true.

01:36:58.020 | Everything I remember, it was all true.

01:37:00.500 | It all happened 'cause it's happening again.

01:37:02.740 | - And you returned to the Garden of Eden for a time.

01:37:09.180 | - Yeah. - And to childhood.

01:37:11.020 | It's always a question

01:37:12.540 | of whether you can return to that place.

01:37:15.140 | - Well, I don't know.

01:37:15.980 | I don't even know if I'd say I've returned

01:37:17.380 | because I'm a different person now

01:37:19.220 | and I don't need her. - Are you sure?

01:37:22.660 | Are you sure? - Yeah.

01:37:23.620 | - You're different than the 10-year-old?

01:37:28.380 | - Well, okay. - You feel different?

01:37:29.620 | - No, I mean, I'm the same person

01:37:31.220 | in terms of my need for love and love of love

01:37:34.380 | and all of that, but I don't look,

01:37:37.280 | I'm not dependent on my mother for it the way I was then.

01:37:41.780 | And that makes the experience really different.

01:37:43.940 | - Yeah, when you're younger, she's a god figure.

01:37:48.940 | What is that? - Yeah.

01:37:50.100 | - The roots to parents.

01:37:52.100 | Such a funny civilization we live in.

01:37:54.860 | There's a depth of connection to parents

01:37:56.820 | that's probably more powerful than anything else

01:38:00.580 | in terms of its formative effect on who you are.

01:38:03.220 | - I think it's the most powerful.

01:38:04.840 | And in fact, when this started happening,

01:38:08.420 | I got to college and I took a class in creative writing

01:38:11.260 | and I tried to write a story, a fictional story,

01:38:13.860 | a fictionalized version of what was happening.

01:38:16.080 | And I called it "The Most Passionate Love"

01:38:19.020 | because of what you just said.

01:38:20.180 | - Yeah.

01:38:21.380 | - And the teacher actually said to me,

01:38:23.100 | she was like, "You should put this story in a drawer

01:38:25.540 | "and not take it out again for 30 years

01:38:27.680 | "'cause you're way too close to it."

01:38:29.460 | - Yeah.

01:38:30.700 | - So I've now finally written it 30 years later.

01:38:33.380 | - Yeah, you're probably still too close to it though.

01:38:39.820 | (both laughing)

01:38:41.060 | - I don't know though.

01:38:41.900 | I mean, I do think everybody goes through experiences

01:38:46.900 | in this life where you're experiencing

01:38:49.140 | a fundamental pain of separation and desire for a union.

01:38:53.780 | And it takes so many different forms.

01:38:56.500 | And this was my primal form of it.

01:38:58.500 | But for someone else, it's a betrayal or a bereavement

01:39:02.700 | or an exile from a country of their birth

01:39:05.140 | or whatever it is.

01:39:06.100 | - And then you get to solve that puzzle

01:39:09.340 | for the rest of your life.

01:39:12.300 | - Yeah, the fact of like, I really do believe

01:39:15.340 | that the original love that we long for,

01:39:19.700 | like that one of the great things that you learn

01:39:21.320 | as you grow older is that the love exists

01:39:24.980 | in some plane that's more general

01:39:27.420 | than the particularized form in which you first knew it.

01:39:30.300 | - Yeah, I mean, that's why,

01:39:31.580 | despite all the creepy interpretations,

01:39:33.660 | even though Sigmund Freud is probably wrong in the details,

01:39:39.420 | he was the first one to sort of suggest that

01:39:42.060 | our experiences, I mean, he said

01:39:44.500 | that that was really controversial at the time

01:39:47.540 | when young people, they start having sexual thoughts

01:39:50.140 | like at age two or something, whatever the hell he said.

01:39:53.120 | So you develop this kind of connection

01:39:55.900 | to the opposite sex or whatever,

01:39:58.180 | to your mother, to your parents.

01:39:59.900 | And I think while a lot of that is shown

01:40:04.180 | to be probably not true, what is like a deeper truth there

01:40:08.860 | is your first early experiences of love

01:40:11.220 | or depth of connection are probably somehow

01:40:14.580 | strongly formative of your conception of love

01:40:18.100 | and your definition of the perfect thing

01:40:21.380 | you're reaching for for the rest of your life.

01:40:23.620 | - Yeah, I think that's right.

01:40:25.140 | And you can really see it when you become a parent too.

01:40:28.300 | You know, you can just see like there's--

01:40:30.940 | - Don't screw it up.

01:40:32.700 | - You know, I have to say, I mean, knock on wood,

01:40:35.980 | I actually feel like we're doing pretty well.

01:40:38.300 | Like my kids are teenagers now

01:40:39.940 | and I really had thought that I wasn't gonna repeat

01:40:44.220 | the issues that I had been through with my mom.

01:40:45.780 | And I can say, I really am not.

01:40:48.040 | Yeah, like my mom for various reasons

01:40:52.980 | just had a lot of trouble with my independence

01:40:55.900 | and I just don't feel that at all.

01:40:58.060 | So--

01:40:59.180 | - Yeah, there might be other things

01:41:02.020 | you're totally blind to.

01:41:03.340 | - I guess that's possible.

01:41:05.020 | - Isn't that the way of parenting

01:41:06.700 | is you solve the problems of the past

01:41:08.900 | but there's always gonna be a new one.

01:41:10.380 | - But there's some other new one.

01:41:11.220 | I guess I'll find out in 10 or 20 years.

01:41:13.140 | But like so far so good.

01:41:14.860 | - What wisdom about parenting can you give

01:41:18.340 | from your own experience and from your writing?

01:41:20.740 | - Yeah, well, oh my God, there's a lot to say.

01:41:24.300 | So on the bittersweet side of things,

01:41:27.500 | the wisdom that I would give is

01:41:29.540 | that especially for kids who are growing up

01:41:35.780 | in relative comfort with everything going pretty well,

01:41:39.200 | they get the idea that real life

01:41:45.500 | is when things are going well.

01:41:47.440 | And when things don't go well,

01:41:49.020 | it's like a detour from the main road

01:41:51.460 | as opposed to understanding that it's all the main road.

01:41:56.020 | And I tell this story in the book of this time

01:41:59.540 | that we went on this family vacation

01:42:01.940 | where we rented a house in the countryside

01:42:04.180 | and the house was next to this field

01:42:07.180 | where lived two donkeys that our kids fell in love with.

01:42:11.140 | They were like really little at the time, two boys.

01:42:13.940 | And they're spending all this time

01:42:16.260 | feeding carrots to the donkeys and it's all beautiful.

01:42:18.940 | And then comes the day where they realize

01:42:20.760 | that we're leaving in like two days

01:42:22.260 | and they're never gonna see these donkeys again.

01:42:24.900 | And they start crying themselves to sleep.

01:42:27.260 | And the usual things that parents might say

01:42:30.300 | at a moment like that of like,

01:42:32.340 | maybe we'll come back or another family will feed them,

01:42:35.700 | we'll feed these donkeys.

01:42:37.020 | None of that made any difference.

01:42:39.540 | But when we said to them, goodbye is part of life

01:42:44.180 | and this feeling you're having, everybody has it.

01:42:49.180 | You've had it before, you're gonna have it again.

01:42:51.980 | You'll feel better in a couple of days,

01:42:53.920 | but this is the way it's supposed to be, this is natural.

01:42:58.140 | That's when they stopped crying

01:42:59.620 | because I think that's when they stopped resisting.

01:43:03.820 | - Yeah.

01:43:04.660 | - Like it's one thing to feel the pain of goodbye

01:43:07.140 | and it's another thing to be feeling like

01:43:08.980 | this isn't supposed to be happening.

01:43:10.740 | It's the resistance part of this isn't supposed

01:43:13.620 | to be happening that makes life really difficult.

01:43:16.660 | - Yeah.

01:43:17.500 | - As opposed to a more clear eyed view of what it really is.

01:43:19.620 | - This is indeed supposed to be happening.

01:43:21.540 | There's a show called Yellowstone

01:43:23.020 | that I recently started watching.

01:43:25.020 | - Yeah, no, I've heard of it.

01:43:26.220 | We actually started watching it, but only a few minutes

01:43:28.940 | and didn't get into it.

01:43:29.940 | - So there's just a quick, it's not a spoiler of any kind,

01:43:32.580 | but there's a father taking out the son for the first time

01:43:36.060 | to go hunting and to shoot their first buck.

01:43:39.860 | And the son is really sad because he pulls the trigger

01:43:44.340 | and he took a life and the father says

01:43:47.740 | that everybody gets killed in this life.

01:43:51.660 | That's the way of nature.

01:43:52.980 | That's the way each one of us is going to get killed.

01:43:57.060 | And it's interesting because I didn't really think of it

01:44:01.260 | that way because you think you die,

01:44:03.580 | but he really framed it as killed.

01:44:06.220 | Because he's like, there's no such thing

01:44:10.340 | as dying of old age.

01:44:11.980 | Let's medically, let's discuss that a bit.

01:44:14.380 | But basically there's something,

01:44:16.420 | whether it's a truck or a bacteria,

01:44:21.420 | something's going to kill you in the end.

01:44:26.500 | And that was an interesting way to look at it

01:44:28.820 | because we tend to think of humans

01:44:31.580 | aren't supposed to be killed.

01:44:34.100 | We think of murder as one of the sins,

01:44:35.780 | sort of one of the things that you don't do in society.

01:44:39.580 | But you know what?

01:44:40.580 | We do, that's a more technical discussion,

01:44:43.060 | whether we ultimately get killed by something in the end.

01:44:46.620 | But to some degree that's true, at least for most of us,

01:44:49.420 | that there's something that gets us,

01:44:50.660 | whether it's cancer, those kinds of things.

01:44:53.660 | It's interesting.

01:44:54.860 | But yeah, that reframing of it's supposed to be,

01:44:58.340 | this is the way of the world.

01:44:59.700 | - Yeah, so it's funny.

01:45:01.300 | I mean, at the same time that I just wrote a whole book

01:45:03.900 | about the fact that this is the way it is.

01:45:06.100 | Like I really do believe this is the way it is.

01:45:08.140 | And with this reality, there's an intense beauty

01:45:11.700 | that comes along with it.

01:45:13.580 | So we have to accept the reality to get to the beauty.

01:45:16.140 | I believe that.

01:45:17.020 | And at the same time, there's a part of me

01:45:19.140 | that's just like, yeah, but give me the magic wand

01:45:22.620 | to make the world different.

01:45:24.380 | - Yeah.

01:45:25.220 | Yeah, yeah.

01:45:27.180 | - I don't know how much of this is a female thing too.

01:45:29.860 | Like I was watching with my son,

01:45:31.820 | my 12 year old the other day,

01:45:33.420 | we were watching this show about the battle of Thermopylae.

01:45:36.320 | (laughs)

01:45:37.160 | And it was like all about, you know,

01:45:40.180 | valor and glory on the battlefield.

01:45:43.460 | And I said to him something like,

01:45:46.780 | gosh, don't you just wish we lived in a world where

01:45:49.380 | you didn't have to do all this in order for everyone

01:45:53.740 | just to live their lives?

01:45:55.500 | And he just looked at me completely puzzled.

01:45:57.820 | Like, no, you know, like to him it all just seemed

01:46:01.580 | self-evident that the world would be structured that way.

01:46:04.700 | You know, and he had like the 12 year old's

01:46:07.060 | like admiration for the valor of it all.

01:46:09.740 | - But you wonder if that's nature or nurture.

01:46:14.740 | I wonder what that world looks like.

01:46:19.160 | We do live in a world where murder is seen as bad,

01:46:23.540 | but you look at a lot of the human history,

01:46:27.220 | I don't know if they had the same kind of conception of that

01:46:30.880 | in terms of, you have to ask what kind of murder,

01:46:35.220 | you know, for what purpose?

01:46:38.140 | You know, war was a way of life.

01:46:40.040 | It's interesting.

01:46:42.500 | It's interesting if we can imagine properly a future

01:46:47.500 | that is different than ours in terms of operating

01:46:52.140 | under different moral systems.

01:46:53.780 | I'd like the same with living indefinitely

01:46:58.300 | or living in a society with no war.

01:47:00.660 | Like how fundamental is war?

01:47:04.260 | How fundamental is death to humanity?

01:47:06.220 | - I think it's so fundamental to our source code.

01:47:08.660 | I just wish that our source code were different, basically.

01:47:11.300 | Like I can't get past that wish.

01:47:13.980 | - There's brain-computer interfaces that try to merge.

01:47:17.560 | So greater and greater, where smartphones

01:47:21.300 | were already kind of cyborgs,

01:47:23.140 | but greater and greater merger of computational power.

01:47:26.920 | So literally adding source code to our original source code,

01:47:30.620 | just a different, there's the mushy biology

01:47:33.500 | that runs source code,

01:47:35.020 | and then there's more cold electrical systems,

01:47:39.860 | and then they integrate together,

01:47:41.380 | and potentially one day we offload

01:47:45.060 | the magic that is human consciousness also into the machine,

01:47:50.540 | and then we'll get to see.

01:47:51.420 | Maybe they'll be a little bit less asshole-ish

01:47:54.340 | about the whole war thing.

01:47:56.100 | There'd be more.

01:47:57.080 | But there is, I think, even when I think about engineering

01:48:02.500 | human intelligence or superhuman intelligence systems,

01:48:05.920 | I feel like they also need to have the yin and yang of life.

01:48:10.060 | They have to be able to be afraid and to be sad

01:48:13.740 | and all those kinds of things.

01:48:15.460 | But maybe it's because I'm a product

01:48:18.740 | in this particular environment.

01:48:19.900 | Maybe sadness is a useful human invention,

01:48:24.580 | but not a universal one.

01:48:26.540 | - This is what I don't know,

01:48:27.660 | 'cause this is where I come back to the,

01:48:29.940 | as I told you, the original reason

01:48:31.980 | that I wrote my whole book was the feeling

01:48:34.420 | that somehow in the expression of sad music

01:48:37.900 | is what other people see when they talk about God.

01:48:41.420 | Like there's something so,

01:48:42.820 | there's like an ultimate beauty there

01:48:46.540 | that I don't know if we have access to without that.

01:48:49.140 | But maybe we do.

01:48:50.000 | But I can say in this world,

01:48:52.260 | it's a great way to get access to that state.

01:48:55.460 | - Is it within the reach of science

01:48:56.860 | to deeply understand this, you think?

01:48:59.500 | To understand why you feel sad when you're listening to a song?

01:49:02.660 | - Or why you feel so much love

01:49:04.200 | when you're listening to a sad song.

01:49:05.620 | - To a sad song, right.

01:49:06.660 | Why the sad song opens up some kind of deep connection

01:49:11.660 | to something you can call divine or something,

01:49:16.060 | whatever the heck that is.

01:49:17.380 | - Yeah, I do think.

01:49:19.060 | I mean, we have like really early signs of it

01:49:22.180 | from the research and I'm sure we're just at the,

01:49:24.860 | scratching the surface stage.

01:49:27.020 | But I mean, like we know, for example,

01:49:28.820 | that the vagus nerve, which is so fundamental

01:49:32.860 | that it governs our breathing and our digestion,

01:49:35.700 | that our vagus nerve also activates

01:49:38.380 | when we see another being in distress.

01:49:41.220 | There's like an instinctive impulse to wanna make it stop.

01:49:46.380 | And the theory is that that's an evolutionary design

01:49:49.340 | because we had to be able to respond

01:49:51.620 | to the cries of our infants.

01:49:54.180 | And from that ability grows the greater ability

01:49:57.060 | to respond to other people's cries too.

01:49:59.740 | So that's probably just the very first step

01:50:04.740 | in being able to understand what all that is.

01:50:08.540 | - We've already given plenty of advice,

01:50:10.300 | but broadly, what advice would you give to young folks today

01:50:15.700 | about career or about life,

01:50:17.620 | whether they wanna be writers, lawyers, scientists,

01:50:22.380 | musicians, and artists, whatever the heck they wanna be,

01:50:25.340 | how can they live a life they can be proud of?

01:50:27.940 | - Okay, here's what I think.

01:50:29.380 | You should absolutely do that thing

01:50:36.580 | that you're dying to do,

01:50:38.460 | but you should always have a plan B,

01:50:43.500 | like a backup plan and a way of earning a living

01:50:46.420 | no matter what happens.

01:50:48.020 | Because I feel like people,

01:50:49.980 | we have this narrative in our culture

01:50:54.020 | of like that the glamorous thing is to figure out

01:50:57.980 | the thing you love and then risk everything to achieve that.

01:51:02.300 | But first of all, a lot of people aren't comfortable

01:51:04.580 | with that level of risk.

01:51:05.860 | And second, when you're living with that level of risk,

01:51:09.340 | that's a cognitive load too.

01:51:10.980 | And so you don't have the full emotion and heart

01:51:14.340 | to be able to focus on the thing

01:51:15.700 | that you actually really love

01:51:16.740 | 'cause you're like stressed out about it.

01:51:18.900 | So I'd say like get the backup plan in place

01:51:21.140 | and then do the thing.

01:51:22.540 | - My advice would be the opposite.

01:51:25.620 | - Huh, okay, tell me why. - I'm living the romantic,

01:51:27.860 | well, I think the best, the truth is be aware of the cost

01:51:32.860 | not having a plan B has, so do it deliberately if you don't.

01:51:39.780 | But I'm with Bukowski on find what you love

01:51:43.180 | and let it kill you.

01:51:44.780 | I think you have to actually know your personality.

01:51:48.220 | I know if I have a plan B, I will not try as hard on plan A

01:51:53.220 | and I would likely take plan B

01:51:56.820 | 'cause if plan A is the risky thing,

01:51:59.060 | I just work way much better when in the state of desperation

01:52:04.900 | so with my back against the wall.

01:52:06.900 | And you have to know that about yourself.

01:52:08.220 | I think that has to do with--

01:52:09.060 | - So I think we can refine it to say

01:52:10.540 | you actually have to really know yourself

01:52:12.460 | and how you respond to different kinds of risks.

01:52:15.020 | Like I would not do well in that kind of situation.

01:52:17.660 | I'd be like up at two in the morning worrying about it

01:52:20.780 | whereas if I have some,

01:52:22.980 | like it doesn't have to be paying the rent in some grand way

01:52:25.060 | but if there's some basic way of paying the rent,

01:52:28.420 | then my heart's free to do the thing I really love.

01:52:31.340 | - That's hilarious.

01:52:32.900 | For me, the only way I'm free is when I don't know

01:52:37.580 | how I'm gonna pay the rent.

01:52:38.980 | 'Cause otherwise I'll find a way to pay the rent

01:52:46.020 | that's not at all a source of deep fulfillment for me.

01:52:48.920 | - I see, so it's like if you don't have the,

01:52:52.860 | what's the expression?

01:52:53.860 | I don't know, something like the dog at your back.

01:52:56.340 | - Deadlines. - Then you won't

01:52:57.180 | actually do it.

01:52:58.000 | - I create real or artificial deadlines,

01:53:00.340 | anxiety and so on.

01:53:01.620 | Yeah, you have to know yourself.

01:53:04.580 | - Yeah, so really the advice is know your triggers

01:53:07.340 | but we're still saying the same basic thing

01:53:09.980 | of like do the thing you really love

01:53:12.460 | but just set up the--

01:53:13.940 | - Strategize the rest. - The rest of your life.

01:53:14.780 | - Appropriately to your personality and triggers.

01:53:17.380 | - Exactly, exactly.

01:53:18.860 | - What do you think is the meaning of life?

01:53:21.020 | The meaning of this whole thing?

01:53:23.460 | Probably has something to do with whatever we feel

01:53:29.180 | when we listen to a sad song.

01:53:31.260 | - Yeah, 'cause two things come simultaneously to my mind

01:53:36.400 | when you ask that question

01:53:37.680 | and I've been asking it since I was four.

01:53:39.960 | I remember the first time I did.

01:53:41.560 | - The question is more important than the answer probably.

01:53:45.040 | - Yeah. - Just keep asking.

01:53:46.960 | - I don't know, the first one is beauty

01:53:48.520 | and I don't know why beauty's so important

01:53:50.640 | but I just know that it is.

01:53:52.000 | - And possible to define perhaps.

01:53:54.520 | - Is it definable? - Yeah.

01:53:56.080 | - Other than you know it when you see it.

01:54:00.000 | I don't know, I mean just--

01:54:01.360 | - Has to do with that line that you feel something

01:54:06.280 | when you just see it or you hear it.

01:54:08.400 | - Yeah, you just see it and it's like some,

01:54:11.840 | it's whatever can deliver you to that mode of transcendence

01:54:15.840 | where you're no longer purely in your own self

01:54:18.840 | and you're in something higher.

01:54:22.520 | And when you're in those states of mind,

01:54:25.280 | you know it because you have the temporary sensation

01:54:30.400 | that you could die at that moment,

01:54:33.320 | that the people you love could die and it will all be okay

01:54:36.120 | because there's something else.

01:54:37.840 | So that's my first answer.

01:54:41.160 | And then my second answer is the need to relieve psychic pain

01:54:46.160 | like other people's psychic pain.

01:54:48.320 | I don't know why, that's just like an impulse that I have.

01:54:51.440 | - Psychic pain is more like suffering of any form.

01:54:55.240 | What is psychic pain? - Yeah, but I mean.

01:54:58.160 | - What, is there a particular--

01:54:59.520 | - Yeah, just making the world better and less pain.

01:55:05.520 | Less pain to go around in general.

01:55:08.040 | - Hence your sort of optimistic desire and longing

01:55:12.160 | for a world without sort of destruction,

01:55:15.680 | without malevolent destruction.

01:55:19.440 | - Yeah, a world where that wouldn't be necessary.

01:55:22.120 | Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:55:24.480 | But yeah, so I had this moment.

01:55:26.680 | It wasn't so long ago, I was doing some interview

01:55:30.120 | and somebody asked me, what are you longing for right now?

01:55:33.800 | And my answer at that moment was like, you know what?

01:55:38.000 | I'm actually at this moment in life

01:55:39.760 | where I'm not longing for anything.

01:55:41.720 | I'm at this particular way station

01:55:43.120 | where everything is the way I want it to be.

01:55:46.120 | Of course, the minute you say something like that,

01:55:51.000 | you know you're gonna be proven wrong

01:55:52.320 | because like an hour later, I get a letter from a reader

01:55:57.000 | who I've been in touch with over the years

01:55:58.640 | and he was telling me about like a psychic struggle

01:56:02.600 | that he's going through.

01:56:03.520 | And I just felt like, oh my gosh,

01:56:06.840 | if there were anything I could do to make it

01:56:08.960 | that his life wouldn't have been such

01:56:10.960 | that he would be in this position in the first place.

01:56:13.200 | Like his struggles had to do with a long life history.

01:56:16.660 | So I don't know why I feel that so intently, but I do.

01:56:22.200 | - Those moments when you are just at peace,

01:56:24.960 | there's nothing else you want,

01:56:26.800 | feel like that's like a temporary repose, like a pause.

01:56:30.200 | - Yes, exactly.

01:56:32.760 | You bet your ass a desire follows that at some point,

01:56:37.760 | but you get to enjoy those little moments.

01:56:39.680 | - Yeah, and even when he asked me and I answered that way,

01:56:42.880 | I said, this is a way station.

01:56:44.240 | Like I knew it was temporary,

01:56:45.860 | but I didn't realize it would be disrupted

01:56:47.640 | like an hour later.

01:56:48.620 | - And sort of to give you pushback to your statement

01:56:54.600 | about the possibility of, you said beauty

01:57:00.100 | and basically alleviating suffering.

01:57:02.940 | There's a quote I really like from Hunter S. Thompson

01:57:04.940 | that pushes back against that,

01:57:06.740 | which is for every moment of triumph,

01:57:09.180 | for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

01:57:13.820 | But that's a very Hunter S. Thompson.

01:57:17.060 | And you know how he ended up.

01:57:19.020 | He's not the greatest philosopher of all times,

01:57:22.660 | but he's certainly a beautiful, a chaotic human being.

01:57:26.700 | - Well, that's true.

01:57:27.540 | And I will tell you that my nickname for my husband

01:57:29.880 | is Gonzo, kind of because of him.

01:57:32.620 | You know, he invented that form of Gonzo journalism

01:57:35.120 | where like the writer is totally in the story

01:57:40.120 | and my husband, like that's his personality.

01:57:42.100 | He's like in everything that he does.

01:57:44.000 | He's really in it.

01:57:45.020 | He's really present.

01:57:46.140 | He just lives that way.

01:57:47.300 | So his name is Ken, but I call him Gonzo

01:57:50.740 | like 90% of the time.

01:57:52.140 | - Well, then that's a beautiful way to end this season.

01:57:55.520 | This is, thank you for your work.

01:57:57.020 | Thank you for being who you are.

01:57:58.620 | Thank you for initially at least making me feel okay

01:58:01.940 | about being an introvert and educating

01:58:04.220 | and making the rest of us feel great about being introverts.

01:58:07.100 | It's like half the world or whatever the heck it is.

01:58:09.380 | It's a lot of people.

01:58:10.420 | Thank you for being you.

01:58:13.420 | And thank you for talking today.

01:58:14.260 | This was awesome.

01:58:15.340 | This was fun.

01:58:16.180 | - Thank you so much.

01:58:17.020 | It was so great to talk to you.

01:58:18.420 | And I think it was the, what I said to you

01:58:20.740 | when we first got connected is thank you

01:58:22.280 | for your way of being in the world.

01:58:24.060 | I really, really love it.

01:58:26.100 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation

01:58:28.580 | with Susan Cain.

01:58:29.980 | To support this podcast,

01:58:31.140 | please check out our sponsors in the description.

01:58:33.860 | And now let me leave you with some words

01:58:35.880 | from Susan Cain herself.

01:58:37.560 | The highly sensitive introvert tends to be philosophical

01:58:42.420 | or spiritual in their orientation

01:58:44.860 | rather than materialistic or hedonistic.

01:58:48.860 | They dislike small talk.

01:58:51.020 | They often describe themselves as creative or intuitive.

01:58:54.780 | They dream vividly and can often recall their dreams

01:58:57.900 | the next day.

01:58:59.340 | They love music, nature, art, and physical beauty.

01:59:04.060 | They feel exceptionally strong emotions,

01:59:06.620 | sometimes acute bouts of joy,

01:59:09.300 | but also sorrow, melancholy, and fear.

01:59:12.620 | Highly sensitive people also process information

01:59:15.380 | about their environments,

01:59:16.580 | both physical and emotional, unusually deeply.

01:59:20.740 | They tend to notice subtleties that others miss.

01:59:23.660 | Another person's shifted mood

01:59:25.900 | or a light bulb burning a touch too brightly.

01:59:30.020 | Thank you for listening.

01:59:32.540 | I'd hope to see you next time.

01:59:34.540 | (upbeat music)

01:59:37.120 | (upbeat music)

01:59:39.700 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts and Loneliness | Lex Fridman Podcast #298

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