EP.263 - ZADIE SMITH

Adam talks with author Zadie Smith about fun, trivial things like Wordle start words, men who dress as if they're still young, and the sadness of podcasts becoming TV shows, and then not trivial things like the problems associated with empathy when it comes to politics, war and fiction writing. Plus, what is Zadie's problem with Generation X? Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 7 October 2025 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ Sign up for the newsletter on Adam's website https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ (scroll down on homepage) RELATED LINKS DEAD AND ALIVE https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/465300/dead-and-alive-by-smith-zadie/9780241729595 by Zadie Smith - 2025 (PENGUIN) ZADIE SMITH ON FASHION NEUROSIS PODCAST WITH BELLA FREUD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBprZOTMaA0 - 2025 (YOUTUBE) ZADIE AND DEVONTÉ HYNES ON 'HOLDING UP THE LADDER' PODCAST https://shows.acast.com/holding-up-the-ladder/episodes/zadie-smith-devonte-hynes - 2025 (ACAST) ZADIE SMITH ON WILD CARD https://www.npr.org/2025/03/06/nx-s1-5319068/wild-card-author-zadie-smith-time#:~:text=Festival%20in%20Denmark.-,YouTube,would%20be%20an%20intolerable%20world. - 2025 (NPR) LISA THATCHER - THE BRILLIANCE OF WHITE TEETH https://lisathatcher.com.au/2012/03/04/white-teeth-the-brilliance-of-zadie-smith/ - 2012 CHARLIE KIRK WAS PRACTICING POLITICS THE RIGHT WAY https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/opinion/charlie-kirk-assassination-fear-politics.html by Ezra Klein - 11 September, 2025 (NY TIMES) CHARLIE KIRK REDEEMED, A POLITICAL CLASS FINDS ITS LOST CAUSE https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/charlie-kirk-ezra-klein-tanehisi-coates?srsltid=AfmBOoqVrwQJnlFDC1PqzcRl-iB-NlATNoFuEP9m41CPJGKMbXwfsQA7 by Ta-Nehisi Coates - 2025 (VANITY FAIR) EZRA KLEIN AND TA-NEHISI COATES HASH OUT THEIR CHARLIE KIRK DISAGREEMENT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaeoDlLNnok - 2025 (YOUTUBE) PHILOSOPHERS DESCRIBED BY PEEP SHOW https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHxw1yI-VSY&t=3s - 2025 (YOUTUBE) ZADIE SMITH ON HOW LANGUAGE UPSETS THE RIGHT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh4vTR80dpw - 2025 (YOUTUBE) THANK YOU VERY MUCH - ANDY KAUFMAN DOC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD2aZIOwylo (OFFICIAL TRAILER) - 2023 (YOUTUBE) CHRIS SMITH ON JIM CAREY AND ANDY KAUFMAN https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/bonus-audio/chris-smith (ADAM BUXTON PODCAST BONUS) - 2017 (ADAM'S WEBSITE/SOUNDCLOUD) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, Podcats? It's Adam Buxton here. I'm on a Norfolk farm track with my best dog friend Rosie. And we are having a nice afternoon walk. The sun is nearly below the horizon, even though it's not yet 4pm. Yuck. That's because the clocks went back last weekend, of course. Just in case anyone missed that. I'm here to keep you up to speed with all the latest. It's nice to get an extra hour in bed, sure, but then you've got to deal with the gloom. Anyway, so myself and Rosie are out here grabbing a bit of daylight while we can. Oh, stopping for a wee-wee. Rosie, that is, not me.

• 1:16Adam Buxton?

  I went before we left. How are you doing, anyway, Podcats? I hope you're well. Hey, thank you very much to those of you who came out to the Royal Festival Hall last weekend for my book chat with Miranda Sawyer. That was a fun night. I hope you agree if you were there. I really enjoyed that evening. Sang a couple of songs as well with Michael Lovett from Metronomy and the Adam Buxton Band. And if I say so myself, the version of Tea Towel we did was...

• 1:54Adam Buxton?

  Pretty good. And it was nice to meet some of you afterwards, signing books. Okay, let me tell you a bit about podcast number two hundred and sixty-three, which features a conversational ramble with the British author and friend of the podcast, this is her third appearance, Zadie Smith. Quick reminder of a few Zadie facts for you. Born in nineteen seventy-five to a Jamaican mother and an English father, Zadie grew up in northwest London. Her debut novel, White Teeth, was written while she was still studying English literature at Cambridge University. It was published in two thousand. The book

• 2:35Adam Buxton?

  interweaves the stories of two wartime friends, a Bangladeshi man, Samad Iqbal, and a white Englishman, Archie Jones, and their families in London. It's an imaginative tour de force that brings to life a diverse collection of characters with humour and empathy. And twenty-five years after its publication, it's still easy to see why it became an international sensation and turned its author into a literary star. Since then, as well as teaching fiction at Columbia and New York University during the seventeen years she spent living in New York City from around the mid-two thousands, Zadie has written five more novels: The Autograph Man, On Beauty,

• 3:20Adam Buxton?

  N W, Swing Time, and The Fraud, as well as a play, The Wife of Wilston, short story collections, children's books written with her writer-poet husband Nick Laird, and essays published in four collections so far. The most recent of those, Dead and Alive, was published earlier this year, twenty twenty-five, and contains a fantastic selection of pieces on subjects as varied as the film Tar, starring Cate Blanchett, Storm Z performing at Glastonbury, political censorship, the impact of digital media on our perception of time, and narratives

• 4:00Adam Buxton?

  concerning the Black Diaspora. There's also obituaries and reflections on literary figures, including Joan Didion, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Martin Amis, and Hilary Mantel. And there's personal reflections as well on hidden emotions, Zadie's relationship with her body, and growing older in general.

• 4:23Adam Buxton?

  This conversation with Zadie was recorded in early October this year in her small cozy book-strewn writing room in the north-west London home she shares with her husband and their two children. And after some fun chat about wordle start words, appropriate fashions for the older man, and the sadness of podcasts becoming TV shows, we talked about a couple of the essays in Dead and Alive that made a particularly big impression on me. One is titled Fascinated to Presume: In Defence of Fiction, which challenges the idea that authors should, quote, "write only about people who are fundamentally like them,"

• 5:05Adam Buxton?

  close quote, asserting instead that fiction requires the challenging and inherently risky imaginative act of finding universal connection through a fascination to presume the existence of shared griefs and consciousness in others. The other essay we talked about is called Shibboleth, originally published in The New Yorker in May 2024, during a period of, as the short intro to the essay says, heroic student protests against the war on Gaza. In the essay, Zadie notes that participants in the political conversation around Israel-Palestine use Shibboleths, which Zadie defines in this

• 5:48Adam Buxton?

  context as, quote, "phrases that can't be said, or conversely, phrases that must be said," end quotes, "to show which side you're on." In both essays, Zadie, as far as I can tell, is considering the value of empathy at a time when efforts to empathise, particularly with political adversaries, have become especially divisive, as demonstrated by a piece which I talked to Zadie about. Written by New York Times journalist Ezra Klein, who I've mentioned before appreciatively on this podcast, the piece we're talking about was written the day after the assassination

• 6:28Adam Buxton?

  of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk. And in the piece Ezra Klein spoke about the importance of trying to talk across political divides. But one of the people who felt the piece effectively laundered anti-democratic and dehumanising ideas was the American author and journalist Tana Heesey Coats, an acquaintance of Ezra Klein's who appeared on his podcast soon after Kirk's murder to talk through his objections to Ezra Klein's piece. Zadie and I also spoke about what her problem is with Generation X, not the band, but the

• 7:07Adam Buxton?

  cohort. I'm sure she loves Billy Idol. Who doesn't? Now, trigger warning, as well as the political chat, you've got at one point a short period of slobbering and grunting from Zadie's lovely pug dog Peggy, who appears and it's a bit like having boggins back. Some of you Black Squadron members will recall those days, the divisive boggins times. Not everybody likes having even a very cute dog slobbering and grunting at close quarters,

• 7:44Adam Buxton?

  but it doesn't last very long. And I think it's nice not to say sexy. Back at the end for another doc recommendation, but right now with Zadie Smith, here we go.

• 8:41Adam Buxton?

  Well, speaking of Wordle, do you have a standard start word?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  It's a big argument in this family because everyone here says always start with slate. And so I get bored and then one day it didn't start with slate and you can imagine it was slate. So everybody fucking here got it first time apart from me. So now I do slates, it's good. What do you do?

• 9:02Adam Buxton?

  I don't have a standard one, groin.

• 9:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's good. And sometimes I just, it's what I see at the breakfast table or whatever. I just wanna.

• 9:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  Go for it.

• 9:10Adam Buxton?

  I want a couple of vowels.

• 9:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:12Adam Buxton?

  Uh, and then.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Are we recording already?

• 9:15Adam Buxton?

  We are recording, yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Okay, sorry.

• 9:17Adam Buxton?

  This is it.

• 9:18Speaker 01

  This is it.

• 9:18Adam Buxton?

  And it's quite nice. How many will you play on the trot?

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Uh, I play three every morning, yeah.

• 9:24Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  But if spelling bee doesn't go well, like sometime, I mean, I'm ashamed to say, but sometimes that could take up to midday. Before I get any work done.

• 9:34Adam Buxton?

  Three is good.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:36Adam Buxton?

  Now, just now I went and used your beautiful lavatory.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:41Adam Buxton?

  And I changed because I arrived here on my bike. But I was listening to you talking to Bella Freud the other day.

• 9:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:49Adam Buxton?

  On fashion neurosis.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  That, that is a kind of interesting story because that was my first realisation that podcasts are now TV shows.

• 9:58Adam Buxton?

  Oh god, yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  I agreed to do it and then I got there and then it was like a TV studio.

• 10:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And I was really shocked, but it was too late and then she made me lie on the sofa and now for all time. That's on the internet. But now I know, now I know better. So I get dressed before podcasts.

• 10:17Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it's terrible. I think it's so awful. I love the podcast medium.

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Radio, I love podcasts and I don't like television, so I don't wanna go on television.

• 10:27Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. And then if it's all about fashion and you don't even know, that's a bit weird. They didn't give you a heads up.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  You have to kind of whatever get, you know, so normally I'm dressed like a delivery driver, kind of like today. And so. It was a lot. On the Bella day, I, cause it was Bella, I had made some effort, but not, I hadn't realised it was gonna be filmed.

• 10:45Adam Buxton?

  Okay, I'm sure you looked great. I'll check it out later. I only listened to the audio version. And you were talking at one point. Both of you about men's fashion.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:55Adam Buxton?

  At one point you referred to the sadness of middle aged men still dressing as they did when they were in their twenties.

• 11:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 11:04Adam Buxton?

  In the nineties specifically cargo shorts Adidas tops. And I was thinking, oh, that's me.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  I mean, it's a lot, it's, it's fair. And I, I, I was wearing bootcut jeans for a really, really long time until I. You know, went out into the streets and thought, stop this now.

• 11:20Adam Buxton?

  What's wrong with bootcut jeans?

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Just, they're coming back actually, but it's just, it's not, it's not a thing that I wanna be wearing anymore. I wore them a lot. And we're done, we're done there.

• 11:30Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:31Adam Buxton?

  But that's a fashion perennial. That's a great look.

• 11:34Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:35Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  I, I think jean shapes change and it's kind of important to, to recognise that.

• 11:40Adam Buxton?

  All right. Well, I've made an effort to dress like a sort of grown up.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  You look like you deal in Japanese vinyl. It looks good.

• 11:46Adam Buxton?

  This is, yeah, I've got Japanese jeans on.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  There you go, see.

• 11:51Adam Buxton?

  Cause I heard you talking about those. I was like, well.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  They are good.

• 11:54Adam Buxton?

  I'm gonna get some Japanese jeans. They're very austere, like it's so thick for denim.

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they look good.

• 12:00Adam Buxton?

  Okay, good. And then I've got a blue top that my wife bought me for my birthday from Toast.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:06Adam Buxton?

  Short sleeved linen.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Very nice.

• 12:08Adam Buxton?

  Shirt. I've been wearing the living heck out of it this year.

• 12:10Speaker 01

  Hipster hat.

• 12:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I've got the Docker cap, Stepson, white hat. I've been wearing it nonstop this year.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  I think it works.

• 12:17Adam Buxton?

  Some people don't like it. Some people have said, oh, why are you wearing that?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  That is a problem in Britain. If you try and make any variation on a uniform, someone will comment. But at least it's not an orange hipster hat, which is the one I really dislike, the orange beanie.

• 12:32Adam Buxton?

  Is there a problem with orange in general?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  I think few people can wear it. I definitely am not. I think if you're very like my mother in orange and yellow, if you're dark skinned, it looks fantastic.

• 12:43Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  On the rest of us, I think it looks a little, um, it makes you look sallow. It's not good.

• 12:47Adam Buxton?

  I was worried that maybe it had a political connotation for people. I don't know what that would be other than the orange order.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  I think it's a Taylor Swift colour. Didn't she just, um, like Napoleon, take orange as hers?

• 13:01Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So that's hers now.

• 13:03Adam Buxton?

  Cause I did go to a wedding the other day and you were supposed to dress, quote, over the top. So I wore orange shorts and a orange short sleeve top. It was very orange. And there was a guy in the street when I was walking to the tube who said, keep wearing orange, bro.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  That's what I mean. That's that's past remarkable. These British people. I'm amazed you're still going to weddings. I don't think I've been to a wedding since nineteen ninety seven.

• 13:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it was pretty good. Everyone said the same thing. It was someone getting married. They'd been divorced, one of them, and now they were getting married late in life. The other person had never been married, so.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Oh, that's nice.

• 13:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it was nice, actually. And although they had, it was a lovely wedding, if anyone is listening from that wedding. We all had a great time, didn't we? It was a beautiful occasion. But they had a brass band in the corner of this quite small space where we gathered afterwards. And I just couldn't hear.

• 13:54Speaker 01

  What what were they playing?

• 13:56Adam Buxton?

  They were playing pop tunes. So.

• 13:59Speaker 01

  All brass?

• 14:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  That's a strong choice.

• 14:02Adam Buxton?

  Well, it was a really good band and anywhere else, you would have been going, this is the best band.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 14:08Adam Buxton?

  But in that space with quite a lot of older people.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  People in their fifties who are having hearing issues.

• 14:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  From earlier clubbing.

• 14:15Adam Buxton?

  I could literally hear like every third, fourth word, maybe.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  But I've got very good at just the nodding and smiling in between, not really comprehending what people are saying.

• 14:24Adam Buxton?

  In those moments, are you thinking, what am I gonna say when they stop talking?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you need neutral phrases. Sometimes you get caught out. Sometimes it's good to just say, you know, I'm old. Try that again, louder.

• 14:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Okay, I've got notes here.

• 14:40Speaker 01

  Yes, go on.

• 14:41Adam Buxton?

  How do you feel about someone that has notes? I mean, especially the older I get, the more I feel like I just need notes.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  No, no, it's fine.

• 14:48Adam Buxton?

  And I have to be kind of transparent about it. But the notes I've made are a little weird. They're in a weird order. I heard you on another podcast, Holding Up The Ladder, enjoyed it very much, hosted by someone I didn't know, Mati, Mati Diso?

• 15:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Mati, she's a really old friend of mine.

• 15:09Adam Buxton?

  Mati Diso?

• 15:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And she is a great girl. Went out with my brother, maybe briefly, and a long term of this neighbourhood, and she's fantastic.

• 15:18Adam Buxton?

  She's a artist musician.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:20Adam Buxton?

  It was you and Devonte Hines.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yes, Mr. Blood Orange.

• 15:24Adam Buxton?

  Right, who I also, I was sort of familiar with Test Cycles, great, great band name.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  One of the best band names of all time. Though you can't say it in front of him, but really, he does not enjoy that.

• 15:34Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it's so good. I remember like emailing a load of people at the time going, there's a band called Test Cycles.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 15:41Adam Buxton?

  And we were like, yeah, things are great. And I liked him and it was a good chat, actually. I really recommend it. I'll put a link in the description. But you talked there about the fact, and maybe you've talked elsewhere about it too, that part of your training as a writer, if we can call it that, was literally transcribing other people's writing.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I, I thought it was unusual, but then once I did an event with Michael Shabon years ago, and he did exactly the same thing, but with science fiction and fantasy stories.

• 16:13Adam Buxton?

  How old were you when you were doing that then?

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Like nine, 10, 11, 12. I got a typewriter when I was 12, it was given to me by my mum, and I typed out stories on that. A lot of Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie.

• 16:25Adam Buxton?

  Because it was fun to be learning to type and also just to sort of feel the words of these stories?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  You can kind of pretend they're yours, you know, it's a, it's a kind of confidence thing. I would write it out and think, oh, well, I could have written that. I didn't, but I could have.

• 16:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. I used to have the same approach to exams, like in college, I would think, or even at GCSE. No one knows yet that I.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  Haven't failed. I don't know how to put that. As if I could do well. They don't know, so maybe I'll just do well. It's like a mind trick.

• 16:59Adam Buxton?

  The feeling at the beginning of an exam.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, anything could happen. You don't know. I'm not necessarily gonna get what my teachers strongly felt I was gonna get. Anything could happen here. So that it's that kind of confidence bump.

• 17:11Adam Buxton?

  That's great, man. I literally have not thought about that feeling since back then. But you're right, that is how, that's certainly how I felt like this might go well.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Might go well. Didn't, didn't always go well. As my kids really enjoy reminding me of my G C C results, which were mixed. They were mixed.

• 17:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:29Speaker 01

  But some of it went well just exactly because of that feeling like, well, who knows?

• 17:33Adam Buxton?

  Sure, confidence, that's half the battle.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:36Adam Buxton?

  But I, I remembered that I, my own version of doing that kind of thing was writing down the lyrics to songs I liked.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Oh, look at that.

• 17:44Adam Buxton?

  And I found them all. These are the original bits of paper.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  What songs are we copying?

• 17:49Adam Buxton?

  So we're, it's mainly Madness's greatest hits.

• 17:51Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:52Adam Buxton?

  But this is the lyrics for The Message by Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five.

• 17:56Speaker 01

  Classic.

• 17:57Adam Buxton?

  It's like a jungle sometimes. Makes me wonder how I keep from going under.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  Watching.

• 18:02Adam Buxton?

  It really is good and the lyrics are great. Although I didn't quite understand all of them. Turn around, broke my sacrophiliac.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:13Adam Buxton?

  Midraine migraine, cancered membrane. Sometimes I think I'm going insane. I swear I might hijack a plane.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  You know, one of the things about hip hop is that the rhyme is quite important. You're often going for the rhyme and not entirely for literal sense.

• 18:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:26Adam Buxton?

  Fair enough.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:28Adam Buxton?

  But no, that was very, it was fun to hear you talking about that. Oh, okay. Here's an actual interview question.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:36Adam Buxton?

  Seeing as, are you doing a fair number of interviews around the publication of the essays?

• 18:40Speaker 01

  I'm doing, cause I always, the choice is put in front of me. Do you want to sit down for uh profiles with newspapers and or go on television or podcasts? And so I always go for the podcast and so I'm doing a lot of podcasts.

• 18:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:54Adam Buxton?

  And when you are doing them, how pleasurable or not is the experience? How often do you come out with feelings of pain?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  My thing is, this is a medium where whatever you do exists forever. And I find that concept really, really hard to deal with. Like even in the old days, if you, I guess if you're on television, you were on television, then it went, right? There was no, the BBC probably had an archive, but you didn't get to see it, no one, it just happened. So I, I do find that pretty tough, but I don't know, I'm getting used to it.

• 19:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I mean, that's everything now.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  It's everything, everything lasts forever and that is modern life.

• 19:38Adam Buxton?

  And at least there are still podcasts that aren't filmed.

• 19:42Speaker 01

  Yes, there are a few, but they're getting, you know, this is a rare species, what you have here.

• 19:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  If, if I'm not filmed, I'm on the radio or on a podcast, I feel like I can have a human conversation, which is nice.

• 19:53Adam Buxton?

  And do you, my specific question was, to what degree do you feel like the person you want to be? When you come out of these things, like often I, like this, this year I've been doing a lot of press. I did a book and I did an album and so many times I come out and I'm like, oh God, that is not who I want to be.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  No, that's it. And it feels like a kind of mask that's eating your face and you wake up at three AM thinking, did I say that? Or particularly with the book of essays, cause point of an essay is that you formally consider something and write it the way you wanna write it. And then talking about it is like saying the same thing, but so much worse. In a disorganized and crappy way. So it's a little painful, but.

• 20:34Adam Buxton?

  I would say unusually, it sounds like you're unguarded, whether that's true or not.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  People always, that's the thing which scares me about podcasts. People always say that and I'm like, what does that mean? What are, what are other people doing on podcasts? If I listen to more podcasts, I would know.

• 20:48Adam Buxton?

  You would know. I think that, that, they're either keeping things so light. They're either choosing podcasts where they know that there won't be anything.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 20:57Adam Buxton?

  Scary brought up.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 20:59Adam Buxton?

  Or they are just minding their Ps and Qs, or you get a list of stipulations from the PR beforehand saying, you can't talk about this, you can't talk about that. And that's not the case with someone like you.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  No, I'm kind of worried that in 25 years of publishing, I don't think any. PR has ever given me any, why don't, maybe they should.

• 21:20Adam Buxton?

  You could ask for it.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Maybe they should. No one, no one ever seems to, they just set me off and.

• 21:25Adam Buxton?

  Well, I guess it would be a bit weird for someone like you at this point. Uh, you know.

• 21:31Speaker 01

  A bit late, yeah.

• 21:32Adam Buxton?

  So you don't presumably read back reviews, for example, or?

• 21:38Speaker 01

  No, no, I do. Every, every time a book is published, I have this thing in my mind, I'm not going to Google myself, I'm not going to look at any reviews, I'm gonna, and then I don't, and then at some point, eventually you read every review. It might take two years, but in the end.

• 21:53Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:54Adam Buxton?

  So you do just suddenly splurge?

• 21:55Speaker 01

  It's just self harm. It's, it's a terrible, um, it's, it's also not, like with my sensible hat on, I know that despite the explosion of this technology around two thousand and eight, for hundreds of years, what a writer knew about what they've written were the responses of readers, which come to you in a control, you know, at a reading, someone writes you a letter, that's a normal amount of response. And actually, if you could stop there, it's brilliant advice to young writers, but they wouldn't be able to do it, you'd get, you'd get the gamut. So I, in the first few weeks of a book coming out, I maybe get nine emails. In those nine emails, I, I get it. Some people liked it, some people hated it, some, that's all you need.

• 22:37Adam Buxton?

  And are those from acquaintances and friends?

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Sometimes strangers, people guess your email address or whatever, but you get the idea.

• 22:44Adam Buxton?

  People get to you.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  How that needs to be amplified by then reading fifty thousand versions of the same thing is, is no human brain is ready for that.

• 22:53Adam Buxton?

  So you don't go below the line on pieces that have been published?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Not anymore, maybe when I was younger, but I, I, you know, for my own mental health, my anxiety, I, I need to, um, do a little bit, kind of minimum of self-protection. And there are whole bits of it, like, I don't, I haven't seen Goodreads in ten years, I don't, Amazon is a stranger to me, like, I don't, I'm not crazy.

• 23:14Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm. And then if you write a piece that you think might be controversial in one way or another, what, what's your policy there? Do you then withdraw more purposefully? Or are, are you just the same as ever and stuff gets through?

• 23:27Speaker 01

  I, I always know, like, people talk to me, tell me, whatever, but I need to kind of. Be able to do what I do.

• 23:34Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  So I I'm absolutely, you know, thumbs up to everybody having their opinion, but I think it's acceptable for a human being not to take on two million opinions.

• 23:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Twenty to thirty is good.

• 23:46Adam Buxton?

  I mentioned Ezra Klein before. I've kind of gone down a rabbit hole with him this year. I like where he's coming from and I like listening to his podcast and I like the way he conducts conversations. But especially in the last few weeks after Charlie Kirk's murder, he wrote a piece called. Charlie Kirk was killed practicing politics the right way or something like that. And that was in the, I mean, that was literally in the hours after he was killed.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  I didn't read the piece. I just saw Tanya Hezey or listened to Tanya Hezey um talking to him and. I I I mean, no offence to Ezra, I I know he does a very good job at what he does, but I think.

• 24:21Adam Buxton?

  Is he someone you know?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did his podcast.

• 24:24Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  And of course, in New York, he's ubiquitous, but um. Tanya Hezey makes a very good point that. People have different jobs and Tanya Hezey's job is different from Ezra's and my job is different from Ezra's and different from Tanya Hezey's. I I think sometimes Ezra um. I don't know how to put it, like he does, he's very technocratic, he doesn't know what he doesn't know. And what Tanya Hezey was trying to say to him is. Uh here are people with this particular trauma. It's not, Ezra doesn't need to know that. He doesn't know it kind of. To the bone, but this trauma exists and these people will respond in this way to this event. That seems to be like a important. Kind of political philosophical lesson for anyone, right? There is no perfect objectivity in this world and I.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  I thought that conversation between them was really beautiful because. There was no anger, like they're they're old friends, they know each other, they have. In some ways, opposite political positions at times, but they were able to discuss it in a way and. Tanya Hezey stood his ground and I think was right to and I and I, that was a, you know, a hopeful moment on the internet.

• 25:27Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I mean, when I I listened to the piece, I didn't read it with my eyes. And so I could hear the emotion in Ezra Klein's voice, recording a few hours after Kirk was murdered. And, you know, I could hear how worried he was and, you know, the feelings that a lot of people had, just about like the moment. Political, sociological moment, whatever. And I listened thinking, okay, he's talking, he's trying to be as fair as he possibly can to this person who he fundamentally. Disagreed with and, you know, I don't suppose there was all that much at all that. He would have approved of as far as Charlie Cook and his views were concerned.

• 26:10Adam Buxton?

  But he was trying to be sort of as fair minded as he could and say, well, one thing you could say for him was that. He was at least going through the motions of trying to meet people and debate with people and that's sort of what. Democracy should look like. That's what I took from that piece. But then afterwards. I heard so many, obviously, there's quite a big backlash against it. Antoni Heesey Coats wrote a piece. Explaining why he was so offended by it and detailing all the appalling things that Charlie Kirk had said.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Genuinely appalling, yeah.

• 26:39Adam Buxton?

  And the way that he conducted himself day to day as well, which was in no way. You know, practicing anything the right way.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Right. And I would actually even take the the particular heat of his views out of it and say this. If you're claiming that that is um successful debate. It's not even undergraduate one O one debate, like coincidence is not causation. He does, it's not, his way of arguing has not got anything to do with actual debate, like philosophically, the structure of his arguments. It was kind of like child's play and often attractive to children. But I think adults who understand what a discussion actually looks like could not think of that as serious debate, no. So I I mean, I didn't read the Ezra, the original Ezra piece, but um I thought Tana Heesey made an absolutely. Solid and impassioned defence of of his position.

• 27:34Adam Buxton?

  Definitely. Then I read, then I sort of went down a bit of a rabbit hole with the whole thing and started reading responses to it and then responses to his conversation with Tarnahasty Codes.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Right, this doesn't seem like a good use of time.

• 27:48Adam Buxton?

  The way that you do, I know, but, but it, it feels like it is because it feels like, look at me, I'm engaged with what's happening.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  But that is the trick of capitalist internet monopolies is that they make you feel that you are not a political or engaged person unless you are engaging with a machine 24/7. But that isn't actual political engagement, that's just spending time on their platforms. So I think trying to separate those two things is quite significant. And there is also, again, like a gap between the unbelievable seriousness of murdering a man, which is of enormous ethical and political import, and the actual content of his discussions, which to me were almost comically childish. So it's hard to contain those two things in the same place, but because something incredibly

• 28:38Speaker 01

  serious has happened doesn't mean that this person has to be taken seriously as a thinker or debater. Those are two completely separate things in my mind.

• 28:45Adam Buxton?

  The reason I brought it up though was because, you know, to me Ezra Klein seems like a fair-minded person who acts in good faith and thinks hard about what he's saying. And that's not to say that he gets it right all the time, but the wave of comments and people just sort of going, oh, well, this guy, he's part of the problem, he's the reason we're in this mess in the first place and.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  But, but what is that old thing, don't go to the hard wish store if you're looking for milk? Like you're looking, you're looking in the wrong place for what you need. I mean, I, I think Tarnahasty's point about Ezra is that when you assume that your base idea of rationality and fairness is everyone's, you're making an error because people have, again, their individual traumas, their individual histories, and what might seem obvious and rational and fair to you might not seem so to them because they're dealing with a completely different. Set of American facts. And I think that was the point of that conversation, which was key, is that the America that Ezra is thinking of is not the same America that Tana Hesey has experienced and lived through. They're talking about two different places.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And I I felt like the conversation, as it moved on, Ezra could recognize that this is not the same America. We can have the conversation, we have to realize that our particular experiences of them are radically different.

• 30:02Adam Buxton?

  These guys commenting on to the thing though. People don't express themselves in the way that you you just did. You know, rather than saying any of that, it's just like Ezra Klein, he's just a plant. He's just a shill for the neoliberal system and.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  But but Adam, don't take the bait.

• 30:20Adam Buxton?

  I know, I know.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  It's just there are there are other things to think about and engage with.

• 30:24Adam Buxton?

  That's true.

• 30:27Adam Buxton?

  I know, I could be spending time with my.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Again, Coach is a great example of someone who doesn't take the bait. He thinks instead, he thinks things through in depth and is able to articulate himself properly. Thank goodness.

• 30:40Adam Buxton?

  Another fun conversation in the world has been in the last couple of years. Well, we're talking on the seventh of October. Uh, two years after the attack on southern Israel by Hamas. You write in the book, there's a piece called Shibboleth. And that was written in May twenty twenty four.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 31:00Adam Buxton?

  And that was, reading from my notes here, examining the, I have read it, obviously, but it examined the ethical and rhetorical dimensions of the pro Palestinian campus protests over the war in Gaza. And a lot of that piece was about the kind of weaponization of language and and about the, well, what is a Shibboleth?

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Well, look, it's happening right now. When you talk about the weaponization of language, Netanyahu says, anyone who doesn't leave this strip now is a terrorist. That is an example of language as magical thinking. You don't suddenly make someone a terrorist because you say that they are. The mothers who can't move, the children who can't move, the people who refuse to move are not immediately terrorists because your language decides that they are. And that's what I mean about the weaponization of language. It's a kind of magical thinking where you twist reality into what you wish it to be by speaking it so. And that is not the case. So when I was writing that piece, I was interested in the history of that kind of language in that region, a language which hopes that just by naming something, it will come to pass.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I don't think that's how reality works. And even more directly, my question was, you know, at that moment, there had been these enormous protests against Netanyahu and Israel. So there is an opening, a possibility of solidarity. And the question is, what kind of language might model that hope of solidarity? It doesn't mean that that solidarity will be accepted or taken. But to me, to be asked to to ignore or minimize murder or rape is not something that I can do. I don't, it's not something I can do.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And I don't think it's necessary in the fight for justice. That was my point. I don't think it's necessary. I think if you want a one-state solution, which I personally do, though what I want in my chair in Wilson Green is not really relevant, but if that's your dream, the question is what kind of political modeling and language will allow for it? You have, I wanted in my piece to say, in the context of a student at that point had just been brought up before a board in Columbia and asked about his idea of killing Zionists, that's what he'd said. And he was asked, do you think there's anything wrong with that? And he said, no. And I wanted to try and write a piece which suggested that our fights for justice don't have to include the dehumanisation of our adversaries. I don't think they do.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  I think, in fact, I think our claims for justice are much stronger when our adversaries are seen as human. And in this situation right now, where any attempts of solidarity has been closed down, then you move on to the next battle. But in the first instance, I knew, I knew there was a movement within Israel against this government. I knew there was a movement that might be spoken to. To shut down all possibility of that in the first minute is not the job of a writer like me.

• 34:07Adam Buxton?

  And when you write a piece like that, one thing that Ezra Klein gets accused of is not centrism exactly, but kind of both sides-ism. Anyway, this idea of both sides-ism and also centrism as a dirty word is something that I have noticed.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  But I don't feel like I'm doing the business of the left.

• 34:28Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  If a reader cannot tell the difference between the numbers 1,700 and the numbers of whatever they were, 42,000 at that point, that is the job of a reader, of an ethical intelligence, to know the difference between 1,700 bodies and 40,000 bodies. There is an obvious ethical, philosophical, moral, practical difference between those two amounts. That there is no, only a machine makes, thinking like a machine creates those two things as unresolvable binaries, this or that. There is a war crime and then a greater war crime that becomes a genocide. If you can't understand that as a reader, I don't know what kind of reader you are.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  So to me, I wanted to write about that moment and about something which felt to me like a human tragedy. In that moment, what that essay calls for is a ceasefire, the end of arms sales to Israel and the end of police entering universities to oppress students who are protesting, which is their right to protest. That was not the question. The question is, how do we do this? How do we move forward? What kind of language do we use? Who are we while we do this? And everybody will have their different answer to that. I'm not judging anyone, that's not my business. But for me... I don't believe that the fight for justice involves the dehumanisation of your adversary.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  I don't believe that, personally. I never will.

• 36:04Adam Buxton?

  And did you have conversations after you'd published that piece? That made you think differently, or did you remain completely happy with what you've written and?

• 36:15Speaker 01

  I felt ev- the pain.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  But.

• 36:22Adam Buxton?

  By the way, I'm not suggesting that you ought to.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  No, no, uh, what interests me is that I, I don't think. It's so, because I'm not online in the way that these people are online, right? That everybody's online.

• 36:33Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  So I know that the simple reference to the pain of your adversary prior to like. Two thousand and eight and the invention of these iPhones would not have seemed. In any way strange to anyone on the left. That would have been a part of our acknowledgement of a struggle. So it's not, it's not me who's changed. Everyone has changed around me. I don't see those things. Uh, uh, one state solution has been part of my imagination. Since I knew about this situation, uh, for many people on the left. But it does not include the idea that a war crime is unmentionable. That's not something that I can conceive of. A war crime is a war crime.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  A genocide is a genocide. It is not a zero sum game. In terms of mentioning these things. And to me, it's almost a. An aid to justice, because when you say to someone, I understand your pain. Now try and imagine that pain on this scale. You aid justice, you don't stop it. That's a novelist insight. I absolutely understand. No activist, no politician has to care anything about that. But psychologically, I think I know that to be true. And if you do the opposite, if you say your pain is insignificant, or I don't recognise it, or I even don't believe in it. You bring these people no further towards justice. And so, you know, I'm not a nihilist.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  And I was thinking, particularly I have a friend in Israel, the writer Edgar Kira, who wrote recently about, you know, standing in the street every weekend with pictures of dead Palestinian children and being attacked by his fellow Israelis. What are you doing here? Why are you doing it? What are you speaking of? You trade to you. And that's guts. Writing an essay in your chair in Wilson Green doesn't really involve much bravery. What he's doing is brave. What, to me, people like standing together are doing are brave. Palestinians and Israelis on the scene, trying to find some way to work together. These things are difficult to do. But I also do think bravery is, you know, structural.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Nothing could have been easier for me to write just what everybody around me was writing with the same fury and with the same zero-sum knowledge and with the absolute insistence that this other trauma is insignificant. That would have been, I would have got all my plaudits and... So the question is, why did I do it? Because I genuinely, if I call myself someone who is concerned with human flourishing, it has to be everywhere and at all times. And I think if you, um, am I talking too much?

• 39:13Adam Buxton?

  No. I mean, it's, it's, I feel like I've sort of sprung it on you and it's such a loaded topic.

• 39:19Speaker 01

  No, it's okay. And I, I think you, one of the things about ethical thinking, aside from political thinking, is it has to be flexible. And if it isn't flexible, for instance, when you turn to Sudan, if you have these rigid categories of who, who is the hero, who is the enemy, and eternally, then Sudan is, is nothing to you, right? You can't even see it because it's, it's a situation that doesn't fall into these, these categories that you've already established in your own mind. But that too is a genocide happening right now. What's happening in Israel, to me, is a genocide. The question is, can you create a language in which people are able to join you in the struggle against these kinds of war crimes that are happening?

• 40:03Speaker 01

  In many places, that is the kind of language I wanted to model. But, you know, at the moment, it's a hiding to nothing if people don't want to do it. And I understand at the point where people absolutely refuse solidarity, what can you do? You can only turn from them if they're unwilling to see what is in front of their eyes. Then you then you are within your rights to turn and with every ethical emergency, the main thing is the ethical emergency in front of you. And at the moment, that is the dissolution of a land and the murders of thousands.

• 40:40Adam Buxton?

  You write about some of the same things in a different context in another essay in the book, Fascinated to Presume, in defence of fiction.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:50Adam Buxton?

  And so superficially, that's kind of dealing with cultural appropriation. That's something I've always been fascinated by in various contexts, because it so often seems like a dead end. You write about all those things in that essay. And again, you're talking about compassion and empathy. And well, you make a distinction between efforts to presume what someone else's life might be like that are compassionate and those that are containing. What do you mean by that?

• 41:23Speaker 01

  Um, I would think, first of all, the one thing I do think about that essay is that, you know, I've lived through a period of everybody defending very fiercely their identity groups. And I thought, I actually belong to an identity group called novelists. And I'd quite like to, if not defend them, explain them. And I think the essay is open, like if you reject the category of fiction again, okay. I wasn't trying to make some kind of bombastic defence of it really, but only to say this is what it has been. And maybe we don't need it anymore. And I think that is absolutely possible. Like, I really don't deny that possibility that the category of fiction is just not interesting to people anymore or not useful.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  But I tried to speak about it, not as a writer, because I find it quite hard to defend writing as a writer, but as a reader. I have found it incredibly nutritious and enlargening to my experience on this earth. And that's what I wanted to defend far more than writing or my writing in particular, the experience of reading. And it's not physics, right? So uh that's a pug. Sorry, one minute.

• 42:32Adam Buxton?

  Who's this?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Peggy.

• 42:34Adam Buxton?

  Peggy, hello Peggy.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Sniff too much. Um em- empathy is often overstated, particularly by writers. And, you know, it is obviously the case, as I always find myself saying, that the Nazis, you know, loved Bark and read Anna Karenina. So this is clearly not, you know, a one-shot solution to all your ethical problems. Nobody's claiming that. But I am aware as a reader of being in some way broadened by what I have read. And no guarantee, right? Like, I find myself, you know, I was talking about this book I read recently. About Haiti, it's a novel called Cece by a woman called Emmeline Profite.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  And that takes you into the kind of street supporter prince, the gangs, the drama, the violence. From this very kind of intimate, it's a pug snorting, sorry, uh, novelistic uh perspective. And when I finish that novel, uh when I enter into the world, Haiti is in some sense. Opened up to me in a new way. What I do with that knowledge is another question. You might do literally nothing with it. You might just sit around thinking, oh, Haiti. But for me, without that, I have the news, I have reports, but that kind of uh. Human connection with other minds, other worlds is important to me. And I have a feeling it's important to a lot of people. I know they find it hard to defend.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Or to find a language for defending it. And I'm not, you know, I I don't have any of that kind of Lionel Schreiber desire to scream you down. About the great uh, you know, benefits of fiction, because I I don't really feel that. I just know that. Intimacy and privacy between a reader and a writer is really significant to me. The way that it's not mediated by money or commerce, of course you buy a book, but after that, you're kind of on your own. No one's nudging you, no one's controlling you. That relationship is really important to me. And um. I wrote it for readers who who have that feeling. And I always say, if you're a reader who finds fiction. Repulsive or ethically dubious or whatever it is.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Cool, like, don't read it. I get it. Just read thought pieces. They're definitely more factual. Mm-hmm. Um, and they come from the first person you know who wrote them. There's no ambiguity and you don't have to feel worried or ambivalent or, that's all fine. But for those of us who love fiction, I tried to write about, oh my god, Peggy. Sorry, this is a pug making a lot of noise. Tried to write about what's valuable in it to me. But it is also, of course, the case that fiction, like every other cultural medium, has often been used to contain people, to write stereotypes, to write ridiculous versions of people. Um, and in particularly if you were a black child of my age in the eighties, seventies, eighties, nineties,

• 45:22Speaker 01

  all you were coming across were these containing images that had nothing to do with you, that did not express who you were, and which felt like an affront. But then I was even more grateful for those times when I read a novel, oh Peggy, in which

• 45:39Speaker 01

  people like me were given our full humanity and capacity for human action. I'm gonna have to take this dog out of here because I cannot concentrate with this pug. Sure. Doing her full pug. I'm sorry, Peggy. I'm gonna lock you in the living room, honey. One minute.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  I, I do think, one of the things we have to be careful about now with our attacks on quote-unquote empathy from the left is that whereas before, maybe five or six years ago, it felt like an edgy, fun game. One of the first things I ever heard Charlie Kirk say, which was after he died on World Service, was, "I don't believe in this thing called empathy. I think it's a liberal conspiracy." And I thought, "Oh, you too." So, to me, it's not that I consider empathy the cure to all our ills, and it's certainly a mostly ineffective political force. But I do think that the people who are...

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Open and made by books and who have allowed books in and have allowed stories in have some chance of entering into the world with a slightly expanded curiosity. And that can't be a terrible thing. I'd rather those people. You know, had some influence in the world than people who have decided that the area of other people's consciousness and the other people's lives is of no interest to them.

• 47:18Adam Buxton?

  Um. Do you think differently, though, about writing characters that have different identities from your own compared to the person that wrote White Teeth?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  No, and also I think that argument is kind of, I don't think anybody's really even making it anymore. Like, one of the funny things about that essay being this book is that some of the early readers were like, oh, that's such a passe argument. And of course, that's a classic game where you make an argument really fiercely, then when someone. When you find it countered, you're like, oh, well, I never, who who even believed that? That was just some nonsense. I'm like, well, it was pretty fiercely argued, as I remember. But no, it was always based on, for me, on a philosophical idea of identity, which was really, really flat. You know, which was the idea that you know someone and you know who they are simply by looking at them. And I really don't feel that. I feel that there are mysteries within people which are hard to bring to the light.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  But I also obviously believe that people are objects of contingency. They are influenced by everything that happened to them, and that includes their history. That includes their trauma, and that includes the way they have been treated by other people. When I'm writing characters, I'm trying to always keep those contingencies in mind. There are obviously contingencies which are out of my purview. I don't know everything. I don't know everyone. But in my life, and I think in a lot of people's lives, there are a lot of different types of people. There are a lot of different types of people in my family. Um, even in my immediate family. So I don't think fiction has to come from that place of personal experience, but I I certainly have all my life been exposed to a variety of people and been curious about them. And even if it is a.

• 48:56Speaker 01

  In a moral or vampiric way of being, uh, that's what a novelist is.

• 49:03Adam Buxton?

  Hmm. Well, you make the point, I think, that most people don't even know themselves.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  I mean, that becomes really, really clear. It's very hard to know when you're in your twenties. I get it, because I absolutely thought. I knew what was going on, I think, then. But the older you get, the absolute childish terror grows. Like, I I have no idea what's going on ninety percent of the time, both in the world and in myself. Um, and the areas of non-knowledge just get wider and wider and wider. Um, and that's why it's actually really weird for me to always be on these podcasts, because I feel like I have to. What am I meant to be doing? Like, convey, what do I know? What do I know about Israel-Palestine? What do I know about Charlie Kirk? All I'm doing is talking.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  From my very small bag of knowledge and my, um.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Principles, yeah.

• 49:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but you, someone like me responds to what they perceive as a kind of sympathetic foundational ethics. And you're able to express them better than most people and, you know.

• 50:10Speaker 01

  Nice, thank you.

• 50:11Adam Buxton?

  It's good to hear someone like you talking, you know, it makes you feel better about the world, it makes you feel. Connected to, um.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  I don't feel better, but I'm glad, I'm glad if someone else feels better. I I don't know, I I feel a lot of despair right now. I I am. It it's, I I think I thought that the the fever of. Of online life would was gonna break sooner or break more radically. I really had a lot of faith in. In young people that they would have enough, but I don't know if it's got there yet. And also, when things are. Addictive, and though it is, of course, cringe to talk about it as an addiction, I I don't think there's really any other word at this point. And. People don't just say, ah, I had enough heroin.

• 51:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  That just doesn't really happen. So it's not that surprising. But I thought there would be more disgust. I thought that children growing up with parents who have spent so much time with their heads down on a screen, even at the most vital points of, I think, I thought those children would revolt. I thought they'd be more like, fuck this, fuck you and fuck this.

• 51:21Adam Buxton?

  Well, there's always the illusion, though, that you are connected, that you're not actually isolated. It's like me and um my Ezra Klein rabbit hole. I feel like I'm making an honest attempt to connect with other points of view.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  I think there are loads of places online where people um genuinely connect, but they tend to be kind of like modeled on the old chat rooms. Reddit isn't a bad one. Like, there are little corners where people are actually talking, but the structural design of the algorithms that most people are spending most of their time on are not for that purpose.

• 51:53Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:54Speaker 01

  They're for continued engagement. That's different from connection.

• 51:57Adam Buxton?

  I heard you on the Wildcard Podcast, another one.

• 52:01Speaker 01

  That is another one, straight off a plane, told to go on a podcast. I'm literally, I'm so tired. I, my, my hair might have even been in a hairnet and I got there and they were like, yeah, this is TV. And I was like, oh god.

• 52:15Adam Buxton?

  Oh, that was TV as well, right?

• 52:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was TV as well. So uh then that happened, yeah.

• 52:21Adam Buxton?

  And the conceit for that podcast is each question, you just select it from three cards.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 52:29Adam Buxton?

  And so it's exciting to hear you, to hear you go two or one.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Oh, it was fun.

• 52:36Adam Buxton?

  Sometimes three.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  It was a new one to me. I'd never, I'd never heard of it, but it was fun.

• 52:40Adam Buxton?

  I mean, it's good. I'm, I'm not trashing the podcast. It was, they were good questions on the cards. Rachel Martin was the host. Anyway, you were saying to her that one of the things you said was that you wish you were less selfish. And I've heard you say things like that before, and it's one of the things I respond to about you is that I have a lot of those thoughts. I think you and I share a lot of anxiety over time.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  A lot of anxiety, yeah.

• 53:04Adam Buxton?

  And a certain amount of guilt of, over various things.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:09Adam Buxton?

  And regret, and I think maybe you said.

• 53:13Adam Buxton?

  Well, did you always feel the same way about regret? I remember as a young person thinking, I'm never gonna regret anything. What's the point? It's a waste of time. I'm basically a decent person. And so I'm just gonna go through with an open mind and a curious spirit. And occasionally I'll get things wrong, but what's the point of regretting it?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  I think maybe that attitude is only possible without children. Like when, when the ethical area is just you and you know what you're gonna have for lunch today or like, I imagine, I don't know, because I have them now, but I can tell you, once you have them, by nine fifteen, you've already committed so many ethical failures, both to your children and yourself. And you've told a child to fuck off, terrible things have happened, people have screwed. It's impossible to keep the ethical area clear. And mistake just piles on mistake. And I always think it's funny. I, I haven't actually done this, but somewhere in the middle of parenting, you have this urge to go into your kid's room and go, how's it been so far? Like, has this been a good childhood?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  I mean, relatively speaking, are we good? That is a terrible thing to do and you should never do it, but the instinct is quite strong. Like, please tell me this has gone okay. And the answer is no, it hasn't. It never does go okay. There's no such thing as a perfectly happy childhood, but it's, it's hard. Yeah, I, I've always felt a lot of regret and um, a lot of uncertainty and so it takes a lot to write things, cause you,

• 54:45Speaker 01

  I don't write things with this feeling like, oh, I'm right. And I must tell you how right I am. It's more like, I feel this thing strongly. I'm often aware, oh, other people don't seem to be feeling this. So maybe it's a shameful thing to feel. And I, I guess I definitely felt that with Shibboleth, like I knew that I was not meant to think at all about that day. I was only meant to think about this other thing, but I couldn't help but think about both things. Not because I thought they were equal, not because I thought they were of equal weight, but just because I'm a human being and I don't know how you avoid doing that. So it's quite often like that when I'm writing, I think, oh.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Nobody else seems to be saying this. Are you are you sure? But I I don't know, I I there's some part of me feels like it's it's my job to at least think out loud and give it a go. But there's a lot of anxiety all the time.

• 55:42Adam Buxton?

  That's what makes it good, though, I think, is that you're doing that work. And those are really relatable worries that you have, that you don't hear very well expressed by mostly anyone.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  I just I don't want to betray myself. I know when I was a teenager, like you, I just thought I'm gonna live this absolute pure and brilliant life. I'm never gonna compromise. And in the end, you compromise in so many ways. But I think at least when I'm writing, don't do it there. Otherwise, what the fuck is the point? Like, what have you done if you're doing it there? So that place has to remain, you know, as honest as I can make it. Everything else in life is, you know, tricky, full of regret, absolutely. And one of the biggest regrets, of course, is spending so much time on this goddamn writing when there's a lot of other things, you know, to do in life.

• 56:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but you're good at it, though. And people doing things well are in short supply, I think. And it's like.

• 56:38Speaker 01

  Oh, I don't know about that. Music's very good at the moment.

• 56:40Adam Buxton?

  Sure, I'm not saying there's none of them. I'm just saying it's valuable when you find them. It is a better way of saying it. Maybe they're not in short supply. Sure, there's lots of people doing things well. But that's good, and I'm glad that they're doing that. And I've I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be doing anything else at all. And I get, I I relate strongly to the feeling of like, oh, God, why, why have I spent a whole day singing a song about

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Why?

• 57:06Adam Buxton?

  um spoons or whatever. And how is that helping?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's that's the main feeling. And um but I the weird thing is, as an as a um, I don't wanna say consumer, it's a gross word, but as someone who experiences are of other people, I don't have any doubts. I never have any doubts. If I'm if I'm listening to Chapel Rowan, or more specifically, watching her perform, I absolutely think that is an unbelievably necessary thing for her to do right now in the world. No notes, like, at all. I'm like, please do that. No matter how many wars go on, thank God that you're doing that. So I don't have doubts about other artists. It's just when you're doing it yourself, it's hard to. Justify or imagine why you would continue and and also, because I did this recently. This is new, so normally I don't have any.

• 57:53Adam Buxton?

  Zegi is pointing to a stack of her own books.

• 57:56Speaker 01

  My own books, there's one of each book and normally I never wanna look at them. I send them to my mum's house, I hide them in the basement.

• 58:01Adam Buxton?

  Are they in chronological order?

• 58:02Speaker 01

  They are. So this is my attempt to be like, okay, get a grip. You wrote some books.

• 58:09Adam Buxton?

  You've done some things.

• 58:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I I also do feel um.

• 58:12Adam Buxton?

  That is a lot of books.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  It's a lot of books and there comes a time in a writer's life where it's just time to stop writing and I hope um. You know, it comes and that I know it when it comes.

• 58:23Adam Buxton?

  What's gonna happen then?

• 58:25Speaker 01

  I just.

• 58:25Adam Buxton?

  Start rapping.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  I'm just gonna, I don't know, I'm just gonna chill. I'd love to travel, like I've not really. I've done a lot of, you know, book travel, which is go and sit in a hotel in Berlin for two nights, but I've never done. These amazing adventures that you hear people doing, you know, just travelling. It'd be so exciting to see more of the world and, you know, I've been a very parochial writer. I've been stuck in my corner. Either London or New York, those are both very parochial places, you know, in the end. And I'd quite like to see. Other things, like for me, going to West Africa particularly, that was my only big adventure.

• 59:04Adam Buxton?

  Where did you go?

• 59:05Speaker 01

  I went to the Gambia, Ghana, but it was like. Genuinely mind blowing. I was like one of those boring year off people used to meet at college who were like, I've been to India and you're like, oh, shut the fuck up. I was I was like that. I couldn't get over it. It appeared in swing time. It affected my thinking. It had a whole kind of. Consequence, the way I thought about. Myself, black people, the diaspora. It was so. Useful and so beautiful and I I think young me thought that. All life could be got out of books and walking up and down Kilburn Highway and it's not true. It helps to travel. You learn new things.

• 59:51Adam Buxton?

  You often refer to the generations, Gen X, the millennials, the baby boomers. It's a facet of your preoccupation with time, I suppose.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  I just think, and I've talked about it a bit elsewhere, but it makes me, it's funny to me,

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  kind of generational discourse, because it's so insane. Like, what is the point, if you happen to be young, of railing against the old when tomorrow you will be old? It doesn't, it doesn't make any sense. Like, I get, like, that kind of racial animus or gender animus, because outside of unique circumstances, you're not going to become this other. But in this case, it's like guaranteed. If you're lucky, you're going to be this person who you've thrown total contempt on. That's, that's not going to work. But also, more seriously, I do think, when I think about us when we were young

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  and listening to what were then boomers, my memory, you can correct me if this is wrong, is that we,

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  when they talked about their things, their Woodstock and their Beatles and their blah blah, you kind of rolled your eyes, you thought they were a bit pathetic quite often, but there was this kind, there wasn't the animus, and I was thinking, why? And it's because though they were ridiculous in a million ways, they were handing on to us a decent job market, houses we might possibly be able to afford. So there was no, it's completely economic. Like, when there's an economic situation in which people feel that there's a space for them, then they can just roll their eyes when their mum is talking about that time she met Jimi Hendrix. They're just like, fine, you do that. And even secretly...

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  I think even though we threw some contempt, we secretly quite admired them, right? Like, but didn't tell them. So we'd listen to their music, don't tell them, or imitate their music, Oasis, or whatever it was, but oh, blah. We, it was respectful because it wasn't a zero-sum game. Now it is a zero-sum game and plus the planet. So you can't expect any nice word from someone younger than you, they're completely within their rights. Look what we did. Or what we failed to not do, if you see what I mean.

• 1:02:11Adam Buxton?

  Yes, well, I, yeah, we, we met last year at a party.

• 1:02:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:17Adam Buxton?

  And, yeah, you mentioned that you've got some Gen X guilt. You basically lumped it all on Gen X and said, uh, what a total shitbag generation that.

• 1:02:30Speaker 01

  I said ineffectual, like incredible for art.

• 1:02:34Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 1:02:35Speaker 01

  Best movies, best music. I was watching a YouTube compilation of Peep Show extracts as philosophers. It's absolutely brilliant. Look it up online. The whole gamut from Plato to Nietzsche to Wittgenstein. You can find a clip of Peep Show, which perfectly articulates the entire philosophy of everybody. It's brilliant. I don't know who did it, but well done you. So great cultural products, but actually I was thinking about it this morning. I mean, I don't want to name and shame, but a great section of our cohort went into the city. And we all know how that ended.

• 1:03:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  So that is definitely part of our generational shame.

• 1:03:14Adam Buxton?

  We told our kids that we loved them, though.

• 1:03:18Speaker 01

  We did do that. We did do that. We, we've tried our best.

• 1:03:20Adam Buxton?

  That means something, doesn't it? I mean, sometimes I worry that actually just because that's one skill I have. I kind of let myself off the hook for all the other things.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  I mean, it's better than nothing, but definitely going into the world economy and treating it like a casino and destroying the future of millions is not the best thing we ever did. But I, I do feel when, when those people, I saw those people go into the city and we were all twenty. I thought they were assholes then. And as bad as those guys were, the tech bros make them look like Mary had a little lamb. So I think this generation will have something to say to their kids in twenty five years about why they celebrated, idolized, thought Polonex were cool and basically went all in with a group of Palo Alto sociopaths.

• 1:04:10Adam Buxton?

  Because you could store your entire music collection.

• 1:04:13Speaker 01

  I don't think that's a good enough reason. I think these kids will have questions.

• 1:04:16Adam Buxton?

  One device.

• 1:04:16Speaker 01

  No, I don't. I don't think they're gonna take that as an answer. We'll see.

• 1:04:21Adam Buxton?

  Did you go and see Oasis when they reformed?

• 1:04:25Speaker 01

  I feel like all I'm doing on this podcast is digging my own grave. I don't, um, I do not partake of Oasis as a thing.

• 1:04:32Adam Buxton?

  Come on, the first time that you were on the podcast, we waxed lyrical about supersonic, about the the doc, Oasis doc.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Because I was on a plane, I'd had some white wine and I got incredibly sentimental about the nineties, but that does not include, I I do not, they're not my, no. I I think that Liam has the fantastic voice and, you know, it's just not, it's not my vibe. I went to see Usher. That was my nineties nostalgia.

• 1:04:59Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Thing or Buster at Glastonbury. You know, it's just, oh, it is not for me. I would have loved to seen Blur, but I did not get it together to get a ticket. Yeah.

• 1:05:09Adam Buxton?

  Have you never seen Blur?

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  Never, such a shame.

• 1:05:11Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean.

• 1:05:13Adam Buxton?

  They'll do it again.

• 1:05:14Speaker 01

  Will they? I don't know.

• 1:05:16Adam Buxton?

  They're very good. Live, they're brilliant. I think Oasis are good life as well.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  I I I hear it. Everybody, um, people go and.

• 1:05:23Adam Buxton?

  Don't look back in anger. That's, I mean, that's Knowles.

• 1:05:25Speaker 01

  The lyrics are like, uh, Beatles wingdings. I just can't, I can't, no, it's so awful. I can't. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. God bless them both and.

• 1:05:37Adam Buxton?

  Well, the other day, I was in Oxford Street. I think I'd done a gig or something. It was late. And I was cycling back. It was a warm night. And there was all those tuk tuk's, you know? And they blast out music. And people, I just don't, that doesn't seem fun to me. Let's go and get deafened in a tuk tuk.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  With the flashing lights, the neon lights. It's like having a fit, yeah.

• 1:06:02Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, they were playing Oasis. I think it was Wonderwall. And it was amazing to be in the wake of this tuk tuk going down Oxford Street. And you could see the effect it was having on people.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  People singing.

• 1:06:15Adam Buxton?

  People singing. It really was like every kind of person, from every like tourists and different races and ages.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  No, it's amazing. I do love a mass event. Like, I know if I was actually, someone dragged me to the concert, I would be overwhelmed. Like, I. I don't know, I don't know how to admit this in public, but I, at Glastonbury, I found myself in front of Coldplay and then for the next two weeks, I was going around explaining to people how I can't even finish.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  How great they are live. That happened to me.

• 1:06:51Adam Buxton?

  Well, that happened to me and I wasn't even there. I watched it on TV and I was just like, holy shit, I get it now. They're amazing.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Incredibly susceptible to group events. If there's a hundred thousand people, I'm in my happy place. I love to be in a massive crowd. I love to go to carnival. When it's on the edge of chaos, that's my favourite. So I, I'm willing to believe if I was at an Oasis concert, I would squeeze out a tea. You never know.

• 1:07:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, man. Slip inside.

• 1:07:15Speaker 01

  Stop it. I can't with those lyrics.

• 1:07:24Adam Buxton?

  Wait. Continue.

• 1:07:36Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Zadie Smith, of course, talking to me there. I'm very grateful indeed to her for making the time for letting me visit her with her teetering piles of books. It was really good to talk to her. I loved her essay collection, Dead and Alive. Really recommend it. Such a variety of pieces in there. In the description of today's podcast, you'll find links to some of those things we were talking about, including a couple of podcasts, Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud.

• 1:08:12Adam Buxton?

  And that episode of Holding Up The Ladder with Zadie and Devonte Hines. Really enjoyed that. There's a link to Ezra Klein's piece about Charlie Kirk and Ta-Nehisi Coates's response in Vanity Fair. And then Ezra Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates talking through their disagreements on Ezra's podcast. Careful you don't disappear down that rabbit hole too deeply. Who would do that? There's also a link to that compilation of moments from Peep Show that demonstrate the worldviews of various philosophers.

• 1:08:55Adam Buxton?

  And there is a link to the trailer for a documentary that some of you might enjoy, which I alluded to in the last episode with John Fox, when I was saying that this doc changed my mind about the American comedian Andy Kaufman. It's called Thank You Very Much, directed by Alex Braverman. Came out in 2023. Andy Kaufman, of course, American comedian. Well, he called himself a song and dance man, but he was, I guess, more of a performance artist, perhaps prankster, someone who blurred the lines between fact and fiction

• 1:09:38Adam Buxton?

  in order to delight slash confuse his audiences. He became a huge star in America after landing a role in the sitcom Taxi in 1978, where he played Latka, who talked like that. And one of his catchphrases was, "Thank you very much. Thank you very much," he would say. But he died of cancer when he was really quite young. And he was the subject of the film Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carey. And then there was the documentary about Jim Carey making Man on the Moon, directed by Chris Smith, which I actually talked to Chris Smith about.

• 1:10:20Adam Buxton?

  Maybe is that, I think that is a bonus episode of this podcast, which you can find if you go on to my website, adam-buxton.co.uk. Link in the description. And there are a few bonus episodes of this podcast.

• 1:10:36Adam Buxton?

  And one of them is with Chris Smith, the director of Jim and Andy: The Great Beyond, which was about Jim Carey's efforts to portray Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon and how he stayed in character throughout the production and ended up driving people nuts in the same sort of way that Andy Kaufman would do for Comic Effect and In the Name of Art or whatever you want to call it. Anyway, this documentary, thank you very much, is a really nicely put together portrait of Andy Kaufman with a lot of really good archive and a lot of his stuff makes a bit more sense, having seen this documentary.

• 1:11:21Adam Buxton?

  Not so much the wrestling women part, that remains a mystery still, I don't know what that was all about really. Anyway, thank you very much. Okay, I think that's it from me for this week. Thank you very much to Zadie Smith once again. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support. Thank you to Helen Green, she does the artwork, thank you Helen. Thanks to everyone at Acast who work so hard liaising with my sponsors, but my biggest thanks are reserved for you. Thank you so much for coming back, listening right to the end, I appreciate it.

• 1:12:01Adam Buxton?

  And if you would like a hug on this cold November evening, then just stay right where you are and I will creepily approach you. Hey, how's it going? Good to see you. Oh, it's cold. Till next time, we share the same sonic space. Please go carefully and for what it's worth, I love you. Bye.

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pan when me bums up. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pan when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pan when me bums up. Gimme like and smile and a thumbs up, I sick a pan when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, please like and subscribe.