Kathryn Schulz on Misinformation and Coping with Grief | The Strong Do What They Can but the Weak Must…

Ryan reads today’s daily meditation and talks to Kathryn Schulz about her new book Lost & Found: A Memoir, the perpetual disconnect between reality and rhetoric, the importance of confronting darkness and dealing with grief, and more. Kathryn Schulz is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error. She won a National Magazine Award and a Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for “The Really Big One,” an article about seismic risk in the Pacific Northwest. Her most recent book is Lost & Found, a memoir that grew out of “Losing Streak,” which was originally published in The New Yorker and later anthologized in The Best American Essays. Her other essays and reporting have appeared in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Travel Writing, and The Best American Food Writing. A native of Ohio, she lives with her family on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. For a limited time, UCAN is offering you 30% off on your first order when you use code STOIC at checkout Just go to UCAN. CO/STOICNovo is the #1 Business Banking App - because it’s built from the ground up to be powerfully simple and free business banking that Money Magazine called the Best Business Checking Account of 2021. This year, get your FREE business banking account in just 10 minutes at bank novo.com/STOICNew Relic combines 16 different monitoring products that you’d normally buy separately, so engineering teams can see across their entire software stack in one place. Get access to the whole New Relic platform and 100GB of data free, forever – no credit card required! Sign up at NewRelic.com/stoic. Try Surfshark risk-free with a 30-day money-back guarantee. Get Surfshark VPN at surfshark.deals/STOIC. Enter promo code STOIC for 83 % off and three extra months free! As a member of Daily Stoic Life, you get all our current and future courses, 100+ additional Daily Stoic email meditations, 4 live Q&As with bestselling author Ryan Holiday (and guests), and 10% off your next purchase from the Daily Stoic Store. Sign up at https://dailystoic.com/life/ Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemailCheck out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more. Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookFollow Kathryn Schulz: Homepage, Twitter See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 56:14Speaker 0

  It's hard to understand poverty if you have never lived anywhere near poverty. It's hard to understand the exigencies of healthcare if you've never had to worry about whether you yourself have act like maybe you're frustrated by you know blue cross blue shield or whatever, because who isn't, but you've never had to contend with what it's like to actually not get healthcare.

• 8:03Speaker 1

  That was what I was going to start with. Because I read your piece several years ago about the the um the potential tsunami slash earthquake in in Portland or in Oregon. And um all I feel like existential dread is something that you have thought about a lot as a result of that. And that's one of the feelings I think people have certainly experienced over the last two years.

• 8:28Speaker 2

  Because

• 8:28Speaker 1

  like when you when I read that piece, I I mean, I took two lessons from it. One, uh, don't live in Oregon as beautiful as it might be. But then two, that that are these massive sort of deliberately ununexplored or underconsidered existential risks to us as human beings, perhaps us as a species, climate change, pandemics, et cetera, that if one thinks too much about you become paralyzed. But if you don't think about it all, you're incredibly vulnerable to. So how do you think about that?

• 9:06Speaker 0

  Boy, that's a good question. I mean, it's kind of the big question. Um, you know, in some ways, being a journalist is helpful because on the one hand, um, there's like an absolute mandate that you do think about it, you know, if you're gonna write about this kind of stuff. Uh, and and it gives you at least the illusion of feeling like you're doing something useful with your thoughts. You know, they're not just keeping you up at 3 a.m., they're keeping you up at 3 a.m., but then you're putting them on the page, and hopefully, maybe someone somewhere, you know, bolts their house to the foundation and and their family survives an earthquake or what have you. Um, I have no illusions that uh we are nearly as powerful as we wish we were as journalists, but it's nice to feel like you're doing something uh and you know, at the same time, I think it does um kind of wards off despair, not only because you feel like you're actively working towards some ends, um, but also because on some practical level you do have to go read and learn and think about something else.

• 10:02Speaker 0

  You know, I guess I could have spent my life after that just like working on seismic safety issues, and I admire those who do. Um, but for me, since since that's not what I do, uh there is always something else to go think about, and and life and the world are busy and full of things. So it's fun to go think about other things. But I am also, to be honest, just predisposed towards existential dread. So I think the deep answer is I'm just used to it.

• 10:26Speaker 1

  Right. Yeah, like I think the pandemic brought forth this phenomenon, which clearly existed before. Uh, but but this idea of doom scrolling, like, hey, I'm gonna pick up my phone. I I tend to find like after I'm like waiting for my kids to fall asleep, you know, and I'm just sort of stuck, uh, they're like laying on my laying on me, or you know, I'm I can't leave the room just yet, or I'll make noise on the floor and I'll wake them up. For whatever reason, there's a part of my brain that says this would be a good time to go make yourself profoundly unhappy and worried about what is happening in the world. And uh I feel like, yeah, whether it's thinking about a tsunami that could wipe out, you know, a good part of the the Northern Pacific, uh, or yeah, uh climate change or whatever, we have this tendency to just sort of fixate on these massive dangers over which we have very little control, and it's almost like a form of torture slash entertainment.

• 11:25Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, I have tried really hard over the last several years uh to make a habit of not lying awake worrying uh or or sitting around at midday worrying without just getting up and doing something. Um this is not actually uh entirely practical all the time, and I'm certainly not good at it all the time. But at some point, you know, in 2016, when I did sort of my father had just died, uh the the world in general seemed like it was careening off in terrifying directions, and my propensity to lie awake worrying was was getting um was also creating off in terrifying directions. And I just thought I can't, I can't do this to myself. It's useless to the world, it's destructive to me. Uh, this this is a silly way of coping. And so I try hard to um do something, and and sometimes that feels like something practical, you know, go actually help someone, you know, use my money or my resources or my mind or whatever whatever I can to be useful in the world.

• 12:21Speaker 0

  Um, and sometimes it's just acknowledging that there is nothing useful to be done in that moment, including worrying and that I would be much better served by, you know, going and reading a novel or or whatever I can do to kind of center myself in in the things I actually cherish about humanity and cherish about the world and kind of refresh myself that way and start over.

• 12:44Speaker 1

  Yeah, and then it it's like there's the the propensity to doom scroll, and which is obviously impotent, it doesn't do that much. And then I definitely have seen during COVID, there's another uh part of society that that decides, well, because that makes me uncomfortable and would be unpleasant. I'm not only not gonna think about it, I'm going to deny that it exists all together and almost create a religion uh around uh rejecting this uncomfortable truth uh that journalists or scientists or whomever who have very little agenda or motivation to make it up, uh, you know, it's just accuse them of making it up, which it's a I I haven't quite figured that out either.

• 13:28Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, you and me both, you know, I I wish I had the novelistic abilities ascribed to, you know, the the quote mainstream media. You know, I I wish I had invented this vast complicated web of conspiracies to control the world, but I'm not that creative. And like most of us, I just look around and try to learn from experts and figure out what's really going on. But yeah, I mean, denial is a really interesting thing, right? You know, and um I it's obviously a very deep psychological response, and it obviously operates at every level from the the personal to the collective and the political. And it is a little shocking to live in an era where I feel like it is taking on incredibly um broad scale communal and political shape. Not that it doesn't always exist there to some extent, but you know, I think if you'd asked me 15 years ago to talk about denial, I I would have thought about

• 14:19Speaker 1

  um

• 14:20Speaker 0

  primarily the kind of personal experiences of it, you know, a reaction to grief or to sudden bad news or just unwillingness. Maybe the

• 14:27Speaker 1

  Holocaust denial. That was like the one.

• 14:30Speaker 0

  Right. Sure, sure. And yes, I do feel like since then we've just, you know, I mean, the Sandy Hook denial undid me, you know, and and we live in an era of so much right now, you know, people who don't believe in the vaccines, people who don't believe in climate change, people who believe the election was stolen. I mean, it could go on and on. There's there's there's kind of no baseline empirical fact that someone isn't prepared to stand up and say that's not true. And it's very difficult to live in a world that looks like that, you know, and it's it's hard to extend charity towards others, which I which I do try very hard to do. Um when you feel like, are we are we on the same planet here?

• 14:29Speaker 1

  Back in the ancient world, philosophy wasn't abstract. It wasn't theoretical. It was designed to help you live the best life. In Stoicism 101, we have a two-week course that will introduce you into philosophy that will make you a better person. There's interviews with me, daily lessons that will challenge you to be better, give you new ways of thinking, tackling the problems of life, becoming your best self. Because Marx really says you could be good today, but instead you choose tomorrow, Epic Tis, how much longer are you gonna wait to demand the best for yourself? Check out our new course, Stoicism 101 at Daily Stoke.com/slash 101. Yeah. No, it's it's weird too, because the the ones you just mentioned. I'm not sure if this was true in the past, but it tended to be there was there were a handful of disparate conspiracy theories.

• 15:18Speaker 1

  You know, maybe you have someone who's a Holocaust denier, then you have someone over here who doesn't believe the moon landing or or whatever. But like the ones you just mentioned, they seem to all be the same percentage of like that that that is like a through line. Like I just read a piece and it was sort of it was specifically about the anti-vaxx movement. But it was basically that it's it's too big to fail at this point. Like it's it's not such a fringe group that it can be written off. It's having to be absorbed, like when there's that many people who are into it, inevitably politically, culturally, et cetera, people will have to start to cater to it because it almost has a gravitational pull because it's so many people. And it is strange how that denialism has become just almost a subculture of just like people who just reject information that is uncomfortable or in some way in dying of the status quo.

• 16:11Speaker 1

  You know what I mean? I think that's what they all have in common is

• 16:15Speaker 2

  that

• 16:16Speaker 1

  to like if you accept them, it creates some either the need for moral outrage or uh, you know, change, like lifestyle change or political change. But if you reject them, then you just get to keep being who you are, and you don't have to do anything.

• 16:36Speaker 0

  Yeah, which, you know, I'm I'm terrified by the notion that suddenly, you know, we will start to see more and more people uh cater to what should buy rights be fringe beliefs. I mean, start to, we're obviously already seeing it, right? I mean, plenty of people who know better are endorsing absolutely uh wrong headed and dangerous notions about, you know, the last presidential election. About the vaccines, et cetera. And yeah, it's hard to see it's hard to say the good way out of that, you know, because I don't think we can just seed uh reality or seed our moral responsibility toward one another in the kind of craven name of, well, there's so many of them, you know, we we can't just confront them, confront them head on, or we'll lose their money or we'll lose their votes, or we'll lose their respect or what have you. And I sort of feel like, well, we have none of those right now.

• 17:23Speaker 0

  You know, what is it you think you have to lose? That's that should not be the starting position. The starting position should we be we should be, you know, we actively advocate for what we believe in.

• 17:34Speaker 1

  Yeah, right. Or and and that um having to state and restate basic facts that this is somehow like a transgressive or even political act, right? So like I can already I can already predict emails that I will get for this little conversation we're having where people are like, why did you have to get political? Why did you have to talk about that, but which it's inherently not a political act. Like there is such a thing as information and data in fact. And it it has come to this place where like, yeah, that writing, hey, I think Oregon is at risk of being wiped out in an earthquake is somehow like an activist position, right?

• 18:20Speaker 1

  Or something, right? Like it feels because again, because by writing about it, you're essentially prompting people to do a thing. Like the conclusion is so obvious based on the information you're providing. And yet people really seem to just reject the idea of being prodded or uh that like uh it be implied that they should have to do or change or accept anything.

• 18:48Speaker 0

  Well, I'm very pleased to say I have not yet encountered, you know, a large battalion of like tsunami truthers who don't believe this is gonna happen. Um but but I certainly take the broader point, which is it is um it's very, very hard to get people to change their mind, you know. And I I think actually one of the uh difficult jobs that that all of us should be confronting is figuring out how to do a better job of that, because I don't really see that we have a choice at this point.

• 19:12Speaker 1

  No, I and I loved uh I love I have your first book in hardcover, which I read when it came out. I loved it so much. I I was just I pulled it off the shelf and I could see all the the notes that I took when I uh when I read it. I thought it was so uh so great because um it's a tricky thing, right? Like even what we're talking about, um the idea of doubt or asking questions is so essential.

• 19:38Speaker 0

  And

• 19:39Speaker 1

  yet it's almost as if those very critical things have been sort of weaponized or used against like certainty, as you say in the book is very, very dangerous. Um when people are just asking questions or proposing alternative whatever, that feels like it's in line with getting towards truth.

• 20:01Speaker 2

  And so

• 20:01Speaker 1

  it should be a good thing, and yet it's somehow leading us not closer to being right, but closer to being wrong about more things.

• 20:11Speaker 0

  I mean, believe me, Ryan, I have thought often and hard about what this book would look like if I had written it 10 years later. Um I think the short answer is I probably wouldn't have. Um you

• 20:21Speaker 1

  wouldn't have written it at all, you think, because it's too unstable a ground.

• 20:26Speaker 0

  I mean, it you know, who knows, right? But I I certainly, on the one hand, look, I absolutely stand by uh what I wrote in that book, and I I believe very deeply in epistemological humility, right? And and in doubt as a as a very healthy uh kind of posture towards the world and for that matter the cosmos. Uh and um I believe, as I, as I said a moment ago, I believe in trying to extend charity to people with whom I disagree. So the kind of core tenets of this book um still feel right to me and they still feel like me. On the other hand, you're absolutely right that I watched them get weaponized, you know, and I watched um I watched the position of um of that kind of humility and of extending charity, start to feel, I think in the culture at large, but certainly within me a little less and less tenable, um, if not intellectually, then certainly politically.

• 21:20Speaker 0

  You know, there are there is a larger list today of things I'm confident that I'm right about and other people are wrong about than there was, you know, when I wrote that book. And I don't think that's because I've become more arrogant over that time. I think it's because of what you and I were just describing, this increasing disconnect between reality and rhetoric, the increasing number of people who have been persuaded to abandon actually all the other tools I advocate for in this book, you know, research, reason, science, empiricism, uh the the deep uh humility, not the the shallow one of like, well, I'm just wondering about things, the deep doubt of is this really how the world works, uh not just the kind of doubt uh kind of cynically strewn by politicians.

• 22:08Speaker 0

  And I yeah, I don't I don't know that I could advocate for I'm sure I could, but I don't know that I would have spent four years of my life, you know, let's say the last four years of my life, uh, thinking about how to um make peace with my own fallibility and the likelihood that I'm wrong in an atmosphere, as important as I think that project is, uh, in an atmosphere when a great number of people are telling me I'm wrong about things I'm I'm to be honest, quite confident I'm not wrong about. And nor are you, and and nor are most of us, you know, who believe in in ways of getting to the to the root of things.

• 22:47Speaker 1

  Well, that that's what I think is interesting about it is that like you're talking about you're there's more things you're certain about than than you were in the past. It's almost as if generally uh the let's say the Overton window was different, or just like the stakes of the discussions were lower, it's like you didn't need to have an opinion on the thing. You didn't need to get to a place of certainty because generally reality would had sort of coalesced around those things. And now that people are questioning the very fabric of them, it's like it's like how strong did your beliefs in liberal democracy need to be when everyone is more or less agreed that liberal democracy is a good thing. And then when people start to undermine the foundations of that thing, it forces you to go, hey, this is this is this is important.

• 23:39Speaker 1

  We can't take this for granted. So I wonder if part of it is just we could be a little bit more epistemologically uh loose and flexible when we were all on the same, we were all roughly on the same page. Now we're not even reading the same book. Sure. Yeah,

• 23:55Speaker 0

  and I don't want to pretend that there was some kind of, you know, uh harmonious past where we in any kind of broad sense, we all were on the same page. And yet I certainly share, you know, your sense that somehow what was a kind of tenuous center holding has now is is kind of spiraling dangerously toward collapse. And yes, in that context, it's not that appealing to me to expend my intellectual energy um contemplating what if all my core beliefs are wrong. You know, like actually, no, I do believe in democracy, and I believe that the fundament of democracy is that every single person has an unimpeded right to vote. You're not gonna talk me out of that position. And in fact, I I will, you know, very clearly state that I can't imagine a more important position to articulate again and again into uncertain terms these days.

• 24:45Speaker 0

  So yes, it's not uh we are no longer, I think, living in an atmosphere conducive to the kind of

• 24:50Speaker 2

  um

• 24:52Speaker 0

  the kind of caution and humility with respect to all of our beliefs that I endorse in the book, which again isn't to say that I think that the um the the tragedy to me is I actually do think those are good postures, and I wish we lived in a moment when we could all uh inhabit them because I think you're right to suggest that it's a sign of a healthy culture, right? It's a it's a sign of people able to agree sufficiently that disagreement feels productive and and healthy and fruitful.

• 25:20Speaker 1

  Well, there's that aphorism about sort of strong opinions loosely held, right? And I think that works in an environment where people are operating with good faith. The problem with your opinion being loosely held in a time of propaganda or gaslighting or outright sort of uh subversion and you know, uh, let's call it anti-democratic or anti-scientific thought is they are atempting to manipulate or attack the fact that they know you could change your mind, right? And so, so like that what gaslighting does is exploit your your very sort of good graces, right? That's the that's like the really tricky part about it.

• 26:06Speaker 1

  Like I think about this, like where people go, I'm just asking questions, right? And uh it's like, yes, but are you asking questions because you want to get an answer, or are you just asking questions because you're trying to sow uncertainty? And so that trick that it's like, how do you respond to someone attempting to sow uncertainty if not by becoming a little bit more certain about the sort of first principles on which your life or society needs to be based?

• 26:42Speaker 0

  Sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess listening to I'm realizing that actually I my my feelings about that book are slightly more complicated, complicated than I just suggested, because of course the the effect of feeling um more certain about more things and and more like more more clear. On the political and ethical importance of feeling certain about those things, is that actually, of course, it means that there's a you know larger body of people than ever to whom I am inclined very strongly to recommend my book. Meaning, obviously I wish as ever, you know, that people who disagreed with me were able to adopt these positions of um sincerely questioning themselves, not the cynical, I'm just asking questions that you're referring to, but but sincerely question why they believe what they do and the motives of people who are persuading them to do that and and the company they're keeping and how they came to hold those beliefs.

• 27:33Speaker 0

  Of course, I wish that um that people held that. And it feels, of course, deeply hypocritical to feel that my own hold on that is loosening exactly at the moment that I want other people uh to to embrace it further. And yet I, you know, to your point, I think that is kind of the plight of our current political moment because it does feel more important to me right now to stand up for what I believe than to question those beliefs.

• 27:58Speaker 1

  Well, in a way, I I feel like it makes the book much more important and relevant, particularly if you're anyone with any sort of public platform or or in some sort of knowledge business, because yeah, as a journalist, let's say the stakes of what you're doing have never been higher. And so the tendency to see it as some sort of crusade or sort of moral uh act also makes you uh, you know, uh more likely to get it really wrong about certain things or to reject uh pretent potentially disconfirming information. And so, in a sense, like you need that intellectual humility and self-awareness more than ever, so you know what to really be certain about and then what you know, what to what to question. And obviously, I think that's what's so tricky.

• 28:44Speaker 1

  Yeah, it's like let's say in a pandemic when people are sort of trying to to gaslight or so disinformation about some pretty well established things. How do you separate those pretty well established things with those new things that are coming out that it's impossible for it to have well, like whether it's a new variant or you know, update like like let's say like the mass debate is such an interesting one, right? Because it's like uh first off, they were late, but they they told us not to use mass, and maybe that was like a p there was a political reason for that, then they told us to use masks, and then there was the the logistical constraint of like what kind of masks were available. And then there was as the variants changed, uh the the efficacy of them changes through time.

• 29:33Speaker 1

  And so, how do you how do you maintain a general consistent belief in something that the studies seem to largely support, but then also be flexible inside of it, like as to what kind of mask works, how effective it is under this variant or that variant. Um that it's like this is like graduate level stuff that we are asking people who don't maybe don't even have a high school education to wrap their heads around.

• 29:58Speaker 0

  Yeah, I think it's incredibly complex. And you know, I certainly think you're right that actually it is a moment that calls on us to think a lot about even I I stand by this sense of actually right now we need to be standing up for our beliefs, but those are um, as you said, kind of the the the core tenets, the really indispensable uh things without which we kind of lose our moral ground floor. Um, but obviously, above and beyond that, there's sort of we are confronted with endless uh information right now and the struggle to make sense of um of what's accurate and what's useful. And sometimes those things are pinned together but are kind of pitted against each other in unfortunate ways. And yeah, the mask situation is a great example. You know, I do think um it's been a long strange road through the pandemic.

• 30:46Speaker 0

  And I think part of um, and again, here's a place where I really stand by the book. Um, you know, as the kind of um illiberalism has crept into our culture and our politics further and deeper. I do think there's been a kind of liberal closing of ranks, and and there do become certain things you're not supposed to question and and certain things you just sort of obviously nod your head along with. And I think that's dangerous as well, you know. And I think you're absolutely right to think that that something political was happening uh when we were initially told not to wear masks. And um I uh I'm upset about it to this day. I think it cost a lot of lives, to be honest. Uh and I don't think it was done in sincerity. I think it was done in the face of very, you know, a very complicated moment in the pandemic, and I don't think anyone was out to kill anyone.

• 31:36Speaker 0

  But I certainly don't think it was, you know, um science and public health, you know, at their finest. Uh and and it continues to be really complicated that way. You know, should should elementary school kids be wearing masks, you know, should we be closing schools? Should we be keeping kids out for 10 days at a time to figure out, you know, whether they they're actually contagious or not? I mean, these are these are really really hard questions. And um it is interesting, you know, there's a lot of as ever, there's there's a lot of passion on both sides of them, sometimes unmoored from what feels to me like both the facts of the matter and the and the authentic complexity of it,

• 32:15Speaker 1

  you know.

• 32:16Speaker 0

  Because I I think when you engage with the authentic complexity, complexity has a wonderful way of being a kind of cooling function on passion,

• 32:22Speaker 1

  you

• 32:22Speaker 0

  know,

• 32:23Speaker 1

  in in

• 32:23Speaker 0

  a good way. I think that um the minute you understand, uh, this is actually quite complicated, you can continue to advocate for what you believe, of course, but I think it's harder to dismiss out of hand those who disagree with you.

• 32:35Speaker 1

  It's almost like also there's this kind of uh like intellectual or epistemological nihilism where they would go like because we're just talking about with mass, where it's like there's this and there's this and there's this and there's this. So because all that is confusing or somewhat contradictory, nothing works. We know nothing, right? And so it's almost this tendency, and this is I think where gaslighting comes in where people, it's I think the Russians have a name for this tactic too, like where if the right if the Russians want to uh like compromise a political uh a politician or they want to, let's say they want to invade Crimea, they're like, let's just flood the zone with information, right? Let's just throw so much content, like maybe he's guilty of this, maybe she's guilty of that. Maybe what is happening in this picture?

• 33:21Speaker 1

  Who knows? What about this lie that they told? You know, and then all of a sudden you're like, I don't know anything. And then this goes to your point about certainty. Because I can't be certain about it, I'll just uh throw up my hands. Throw up

• 33:34Speaker 0

  my hands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 1

  And just because something is confusing doesn't mean you can't make educated guess guesses or there aren't sort of uh safe enough assumptions you can make. And so I think that's really also what's tricky is is it's like we're so confused. There's so much information, and then so many people acting in bad faith to muddy the waters even further. People are just like, well, I don't know. So I'm just gonna go with whatever inconveniences me less.

• 34:04Speaker 0

  Yeah, absolutely. And I guess my feeling about this is um I have an instinctive dislike of the throw up your hands response. And yet, and yet I have a lot of sympathy. And I do the that's a moment where I feel like actually um the the useful expenditure of time is not in trying to help, you know, 10 million separate people work their way through the zone of misinformation. It's in it's in dealing with the bad actors, right? Deal in dealing with the bad faith and and trying to kind of write the civic ship because you will never kind of person by person, I don't think um be able to solve this problem. I think it really is a problem that is being deliberately perpetrated on a mass scale, and and it's the deliberate sowers of the information uh that that need to be addressed, not um, which is not to say, you know, abandon the the recipients of the misinformation uh and and abandon those who have just concluded it's you know easiest to throw up their hands and and assume you know some kind of semi-skeptical stance about 100% of things rather than you know threading their way through this kind of complicated maze of information.

• 35:20Speaker 0

  But I but I think you have to go after the misinformation itself.

• 35:25Speaker 1

  I do too. I I wrote about this in my first book, which is what I'd read your book for. Um and and actually uh as it happens, Upton Sinclair wrote this expose of journalism in the 1900s, right? Like right after he wrote the jungle. And he was sort of talking about you basically uh just information, just like the food system or the environment or whatever is a is a public good, right? It's owned by private companies, but it's a it's a the public sphere. And when you have people who are poisoning it or abusing their rights to that uh to that parkland or idea or water, whatever it is, you have to stop that because it ruins it for everyone. And I do think we have people who are effectively poisoning the aquifer that we all drink from.

• 36:13Speaker 1

  And some of us have the education or just frankly the free time to figure things out to to do our own research in the actual sense of what that phrase means. And then other of us, because we're old, because we don't have, we don't even have a computer. We just read stuff on Facebook when we're, you know, working our hourly job at a cash register. You know, it's impossible for us to sort through that. And and those are the people who I think get poisoned the most by these bad actors.

• 36:46Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, I think that metaphor of poisoning the intellectual aquifer is exactly right, you know, and um obviously it's a really long, slow, often unsuccessful battle to go after even the people poisoning the literal aquifer. So it's not that I have high hopes of this turning around quickly, but I think it's where we have to direct our collective attention.

• 37:05Speaker 1

  Yeah, that's right. And then I think, you know, again to go to your point, you look at the existential dread of like a tsunami, what do you do? Um, you know, it's like go help one person, right? Like go help one your aunt who really was just asking questions or was confused, just call her up and go, look, here's let me walk you through this because I'm gonna stop one person from propagating it. You know what I mean? I I think all we can do is really start at that like super small level.

• 37:39Speaker 0

  Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I sure I'll qualify what I said. I I think absolutely we have to figure out how to um how to kind of stop the the poisoners of the aquifer, but it doesn't mean that uh that we should let people around us just keep drinking from it willy-nilly, you know. And it's interesting, you know, in my new book I write, um, I write some about my family, well, my family of origin, but also the family that I married into, uh, and and they're very different. And um I have married into uh not my kind of immediate, certainly not my partner, not my immediate in-laws, but um, but I've married into uh a broader family and a broader community of people. And I now in fact live in a part of the world um where my friends and neighbors and and community members.

• 38:26Speaker 0

  I live on the Eastern Shore of Maryland.

• 38:29Speaker 1

  Okay.

• 38:29Speaker 0

  So if you don't know anything about the Eastern Shore of Maryland, which there's no reason you would, I didn't before I moved down here. Um, but you know, it's the part of Maryland that really reminds you that all of Maryland is south of the Mason Dixon line. Um it is uh it's much more identified uh culturally and politically with the South and with the North. Uh it is parts of it have become very, very affluent in the in the last two decades, but it's historically a um uh agricultural and a kind of water-based economy. It's very um rural and working class. And you know, it's it's you're absolutely right about having the hard conversations. You know, we have um we have very dear family members, my partner and I, uh, who we've had to just sit down and say, no, you know, the vaccines aren't a host, folks. You know, yes, the virus is real.

• 39:16Speaker 0

  Here's why you can't come meet our baby until or unless you, you know, get vaccinated and wear a mask. And um, and and you're absolutely right. I mean, those feel important and um have in some cases been persuasive, and and that's very heartening to me, you know, and I I don't think we can abandon those kinds of of one-on-one conversations at all. But they're tough, you know, and I admire, it's interesting. My I regard my my partner as vastly uh kind of morally braver than I am. And, you know, she literally talked our neighbors into taking down the Confederate flag in front of their house, which I thought was a fool's errand, to be perfectly honest. I mean, that's a great example. Like I wrote off, I wrote off someone I shouldn't have written off, you know, and and um in fact, you know, they they did first they just moved it to the back air, but that actually felt like an improvement.

• 40:06Speaker 0

  And then it came down entirely, and it was a little reminder of, right? Actually, we do have to have the hard conversations and we do have to share our values out loud, because how else are we ever gonna make them compelling and help them to spread?

• 40:20Speaker 1

  Well, and and that obligation, obviously we're all neighbors, so we all have that, but it's commensurate to what you what you have access to as part of your profession. Like I was reading, I was reading Michael Lewis's uh book on the pandemic, which is really good uh and like I didn't know that that the Priscilla uh Zuckerberg, uh the Chan Zuckerberg uh institute funded a lot of the really early pandemic research that probably saved tens of or hundreds of thousands of lives. You're like, oh, this is great. Here they are, they're they're very wealthy, they're spending money on this thing to start this pandemic. And then you're like, but also this guy wakes up every day and goes to work at a place that could actively change you know the way this information is being spread, but but then sort of goes, you know, of course, uh we have no ability to do that.

• 41:11Speaker 1

  So it's also it's always interesting, I think, too, how we decide to see what like our obligations are. It's yeah, it's having the tough conversations with your neighbor, and then it's also like, well, what power or influence do you have in society? Um do you take those steps there too, I think.

• 41:29Speaker 0

  Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it's it's very easy to underestimate our power and influence in society. Um, and I say that specifically to kind of indict my own class and background. I think it's, you know, obviously a lot of people have a lot more money and resources than they think they do. You know, you wish you were a Zuckerberg, but but you know, you might not be the one percent, but you're probably the 10%, and you know, you could be doing something in all kinds of ways. But also I think a kind of across the board. I mean, I'm I'm awed and inspired over and over again by people who have vastly less than I do and do vastly more. Uh and in fact, I take that to be kind of paradigmatic um in the sense that some of the people I know who actually help their neighbors and families the most and uh actually have committed most to genuine social change, actually have like, you know, very little and everything to lose.

• 42:20Speaker 0

  So I do think we're often a little um a little prone to underestimating our power, which I get, right? You know, it's yeah, very hard to feel powerful in the face of these incredibly sweeping forces. Um on the other hand, uh, and it and it's discouraging to feel powerful and then be reminded a million times a day that you aren't in all kinds of ways. Uh on the other hand, it does actually seem ultimately better, not only practically but also emotionally than than feeling impotent.

• 42:46Speaker 1

  Well, so how does that how does what we're talking about intersect with I I was I was fascinated with the piece you wrote on the underground railroad, which is this sort of become part of the the you know the American uh uh not revisionist history, but it but as we as we look at this dark, terrible moment in American history, we also look for like bright spots or you know, uh things we can we can take as inspiring. And you were sort of saying that that the uh that that the underground railroad, not that it wasn't real, and not that the people who were involved in it weren't incredibly heroic, but it's almost a way of kind of like patting ourselves on the back or or fooling ourselves about how like change and and what our obligations to each other, where where that actually is.

• 43:35Speaker 0

  Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, so I said I I live on the eastern shore of Maryland, and um one really remarkable thing about the Eastern Shore of Maryland is it it gave us, I think two of the greatest American patriots of all time. It gave us Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass. Uh so I've thought a lot about the Underground Railroad. Um I live, I live near various uh kind of obviously early Southern stops on it, but yeah, I mean, look, on the one hand, I think it's incredibly wonderful that we as a culture more and more identify with um with our best histories and our best stories and our our bravest acts. And uh there's a part of me that takes heart in the desire of everyone to believe that you know, grandma's house was on the underground railroad, or you know, great grandpa participated in it, or or all this, you know, the kind of the kind of claiming of it.

• 44:29Speaker 0

  Uh, because I think it's a beautiful thing, you know, it suggests we want to be on the side of the angels, right? We want to be on the side of freedom and liberation. Uh, and we want to feel once history has shown us the way, we want to feel that we always would have known it. Uh and and I admire and and want to nurture in all of us the impulse to uh to be aligned with with what we regard as good and right. Um what's very tricky, of course, is that I mean, first of all, look, just as a as a kind of practical matter, uh the Underground Railway was a uh, you know, a very small collection of extraordinarily brave individuals, um, many of them African American uh and and not just the kind of uh white folks along the way um who I think have by and large gotten a lot more, other than Harriet Todman have gotten a lot more attention.

• 45:21Speaker 0

  Um, you know, uh more more than more than that, more than the kind of uh overblown sense of how large the phenomenon was, and thus the sense that everyone could kind of claim a piece of it, um, which is universal, I should say. I mean, everyone in France thinks their relatives were part of the French resistance rate.

• 45:41Speaker 1

  I was just gonna I was just gonna mention that. It's like it's like less than five, it's like the country is literally overrun by the Nazis, and less than five percent of the population was like, I object, you know, like uh I'm gonna do something about this.

• 45:57Speaker 0

  Yeah. Um, but you know, it's it's troubling to me because right. So the exact same thing was true here, right? You know, I mean slavery was not sustained in place for as long as it was by, you know, a handful of vicious individuals. Um it was it was an incredibly widespread and institutionalized system. Uh and it, you know, it was aided and abetted enormously by the North, uh, which often likes to take a moral pass for it these days. Um, you know, I I guess what's troubling to me is, you know, if you think that you would have been a part of the Underground Railroad, look around today and tell me, you know, what's the unbelievably brave, in fact, you know, livelihood risking, life risking thing you are doing on behalf of what you believe to be right.

• 46:44Speaker 0

  Because, you know, unless if you're not doing that, you would not have been a part of the underground railroad. But one of the Scaryest things you possibly could have done, right? One of the riskiest things you possibly could have done. And as ever, very few people have that kind of moral courage. And I think it's a again, I think on the good side, I think it's a it's a beautiful thing to aspire to be our best selves. Um, but but I think it has to come hand in hand with a reckoning of like, well, it doesn't really matter who you think you would have been. What matters is who are you, you know, and and what are you actually doing with your life. Who are you today, right? What are you doing with your

• 47:27Speaker 1

  life? Yeah, that is uh right. It's uh it's easy to get in this debate over what was right and wrong 200 years ago or whatever, and then you're like But you know where your socks were made and you bought them because they were cheaper than the alternative that was made differently, right? Uh well also, I mean, never mind

• 47:52Speaker 0

  200 years ago, you know, 50 years ago, right? I mean, the the the stats on who actually supported the civil rights movement are horrifying. You know, the vast majority of white Americans were gravely troubled by the civil rights uh movement, you know. They they were they disapproved of the freedom writers, they disapproved of Martin Luther King. You know, it is only it is a great act of retroactive revision that that has claimed this even for some of us, tragically not for all of us as uh as an obvious right and is the the destined course of American history, you know, would that it were so uh but but again, it took, you know, it took the passage of time in the clear sense of like actually, no, you know, you didn't want to be on the side of of Wallace and the police dogs, you know, that that that's not where any of us, well, that's not where hopefully most of us want to stand today, but certainly wasn't um wasn't a widespread belief at the time.

• 48:46Speaker 0

  And that's just you know, again, it's 50, 60 years ago.

• 48:50Speaker 1

  Yeah, or or or even, you know, uh I remember when they passed Prop 8 in California, right? That was in 2008. That was like 14 years ago. Uh uh, and you're just like, oh yeah, like people it's not because I think what's so interesting about it is we tell ourselves that a lot of the injustices of the past were acts of indifference,

• 49:13Speaker 2

  but

• 49:13Speaker 1

  they were also overt acts, right? Like it wasn't like uh gay marriage was illegal in California and people had to be activated to uh change it. It was it was actually the opposite. I think that's what's so interesting about these forces is that it's it's not even a defensive sort of conservative energy. I don't mean that in the political sense. I mean that in the preserving of the status quo. It's often an aggressive outward energy. Like the myth we tell ourselves about the civil war is that slavery was just this thing that always existed. No, slavery was an aggressive expansive power that was attempting not just to be what it was, but to dominate everything. Like Lincoln doesn't even have to campaign on uh Lincoln's transgressive act wasn't the eradication of slavery, it was just like no more.

• 50:06Speaker 1

  Like let's not let it be bigger than it is. And so I think so overwhelming whether we're talking about some of the pandemic stuff or or some of these civil rights issues is that you're not just the mob isn't just this thing resisting change, but often driving change, or do you know what I mean? That it's this overwhelming force that we get caught up in. And I think that that dark energy is uh it's it's ever present and it moves like from issue to issue. And you've got to ask yourself, are you in it or are you resisting it?

• 50:41Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, believe me, it's interesting you bring up prop eight and and gay marriage and gay rights in general. I, you know, I think about it all the time. I am gay married, you know, and I um and you know, it's funny, like this new book of mine, um uh part of it, a full third of it is basically a love story. It's about um it's it's about the families that that make us, but it's also about the families that we make. And I have thought a lot about how remarkable it is that I could write a book like this right now, and that in fact um it is in by and large, and and certainly in the kind of circles that are talking about books and buying books, it's it's not even being received somehow miraculously, it's no longer even being received as like you know, a lesbian memoir.

• 51:27Speaker 0

  It's a love story, which it is, you know, and um and and a grief story and many other things, but I'm really mindful of how tenuous that situation is, you know, how recently it was won. I mean, I'm I'm I'm shocked all the time and heartened in good ways by uh when when I despair about political change, I think about gay rights, right? Because actually they happen with with shocking speed. Um, which is all the more amazing because you're right to point out that it was never just a um, you know, a kind of new right we we carved out and gained. It was a there was a and remains a very active um very vituperative in that case and in most cases, uh very powerful force trying to oppose it, you know. And uh, and I have no illusions that that couldn't resurge at any point in time.

• 52:14Speaker 0

  I mean, we're look we're looking at a moment, obviously, when when another very hard-fought right, uh the right of a woman to control the most fundamental choices about her body and her future uh seems extraordinarily tenuous and and very likely to um to be rolled back and and to be fought all over again. So yeah, it's very interesting. I mean for many of us, you know, these are not for for some people, you know, there is a a kind of remove to these rights, and and we want to live in the kind of country that regards all of its citizens as equal, or that cherishes voting rights and civil rights, or that you know, lets anyone marry

• 52:52Speaker 2

  um

• 52:52Speaker 0

  lets anyone control their their body when it comes to private and fundamental decisions. But you know, for a lot of people, it's not about what kind of country you want to live in. It's it's it's can you vote? It's you know, can you can you marry? You know, can you can you feel I mentioned when we were just chatting at the beginning, I have this beautiful five-month-old daughter. Can I feel absolutely certain that that no one is gonna have the power to ever take her away from me or or deny the fact that I'm her mom? Uh and you know, it's uh um I think it's like the idea that just a few

• 53:25Speaker 1

  that just a few years ago, like you might not have been able to be on the same healthcare plan. Like how incomprehensibly banal that is and outwardly evil at the same time.

• 53:39Speaker 0

  Or on the birth certificate, which, you know, is is in some ways, you know, uh in a kind of practical day-to-day, or really like month by month, considering how we pay the bills. Like it's you know, it's it's less important in a certain sense to be on the birth birth certificate, but I can tell you, having been there in the hospital, it's it's not emotionally less important, it's not psychologically less important to feel like from from minute one, I was this baby's mother. Uh and and yeah, you know, these are um these are hard fought rights. And uh it is um, you know, I I guess I feel so grateful. I really do feel like I've um I've lived at a very fortunate time in all kinds of ways. And now that I feel a little bit less that way, it's it's galvanizing. I feel like I owe it to my daughter and to others to help them feel that they lived in fortunate times as well.

• 54:29Speaker 1

  Well, maybe that, yeah, that this there's that sort of myth uh at the end of the cold war that we were at the end of history and that sort of everything was was heading uh in not in a progressive direction, again, politically, but that, but that we were the these sort of fundamental battles over right and wrong or rights uh in inherent inalienable rights were sort of over. And then it's like, no, not even close, not even close. Uh and the and that that one has a sort of moral obligation to participate in that. Um because yeah, if you've ever met a single person who these things affect, you realize these aren't just like abstract markers in a culture war, but things that affect like actual human beings.

• 55:19Speaker 1

  Uh, you know, and you meet someone who again, you can have whatever squeamish or you know uh thoughts you you want to have about say like pro-life or pro-choice, and then like meet someone who was not able to get uh an abortion that that felt you know, need they need like just feel the weight of that, and it suddenly not becomes not such a black and white thing.

• 55:45Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, I we talked earlier about the importance of conversations with individuals. And I do think uh a deep and tragic disconnect in our culture is is the way we are, I think quite deliberately uh separated from people of other backgrounds, people of other means, uh, people of other life experiences in all kinds of ways. And it is uh it's it's it's a corrosive force, you know. It's hard to understand poverty if you have never lived anywhere near poverty. It's hard to understand uh the exigencies of of health care if you've never had to worry about whether you yourself have act like maybe you're frustrated by you know, blue cross blue shield or whatever, because who isn't, but you've never had to contend with what it's like to actually not get healthcare or to over and over and over again get inferior health care, you know.

• 56:39Speaker 0

  I and I do think um, yeah, you know, it's a strange thing. Millions of people in this country uh live in precarity and in poverty and without access to health care and without access to basic civil rights in certain kinds of ways that that should never apply in the first world, and yet somehow um millions of the rest of us managed to. Not ever actually deeply engaged with that as a reality.

• 57:04Speaker 1

  Yes. Right. And I think to go back to your point about understanding history, I think to understand, you know, that picture of those people screaming at Ruby Bridges or whatever. And then of course to realize that Ruby Bridges is like 65 years old right now. Right. You want to understand how recent it is. So like when you when you get like I remember reading about the civil rights movement that there was a Kennedy was is in the middle of arguing of whether it's the I forget which governor it is, but let's say Mississippi or Alabama. He goes he suddenly understands the civil war from a different perspective. He's like, oh, this is that energy. He's like, obviously, we're not fighting about literal slavery anymore, but this is that energy that Lincoln was dealing with, and that Grant was dealing with this is that energy.

• 57:55Speaker 1

  And I think, you know, my experience, you know, dealing with some of that sort of dark internet energy in the last couple years has then informed how I understand that picture of those people screaming at that child. You go, oh, this makes sense to me. Like, not that it's right, but you're like, I see who I know, I have touched that energy, you know, in a modern context. And it's it's uh it's it's terrifying, is what it is.

• 58:21Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, I think it's it's very, it's very, very scary to confront what you're calling that dark energy, which to be honest, I think is often truly hatred in a way that's so uncomfortable to confront. And you know, I said part of this new book is a love story. Um part of it is is also kind of an elegy to my father who died in 2016. And um my dad uh was a refugee to this country. He was born in Tel Aviv uh back when it was still part of Palestine uh to a Polish mother who said my great my my grandmother, my maternal grandmother. Um she had 12 siblings uh and and 11 of the 12 of them and her parents uh all died in Auschwitz. And my family, yeah, on that side, you know, was kind of kicked around the globe by the combined forces of of poverty and genocide and political instability until my dad finally wound up in Detroit as a as a very young teenager, 12, 13.

• 59:22Speaker 0

  Um I grew up with a sense of this is real in the world, right? The desire to literally exterminate a people. This is a this is this exists, you know, and and it's a terrible thing to have to confront as a child or as anyone. I mean, I think a lot about actually how on earth I'm ever gonna teach my incredibly cheerful, precious, beautiful little daughter uh about truths like these because they're terrifying about the darkness. About the darkness. Uh and and yet it's there, and it's ultimately um much scarier, certainly as a species, if not as individuals, if we fail to confront it. And um, you know, it's it's it's shocking to me every time it incarnates itself in in some new form or in some old form, you know.

• 1:00:12Speaker 0

  I mean, anti-Semitism is obviously on the rise globally. Uh I I slightly optimistically, I don't generally believe that progress is, you know, uh irreversible and and and history always marches forward towards better times. But um, but I I thought slightly that the days of um widespread vituperative anti-queer energy was largely behind us, and I've been proven wrong about that too. Although again, I feel grateful every day that it's not the kind of uh real animosity and and and violence that it once was. But yeah, you know, in all of these forms, uh we we are, you know, the present uh reminds us every day that it's actually a part of history and that we're living through it, and uh it it rattles its very terrifying chains uh in our faces all the time.

• 1:01:05Speaker 0

  And I think, you know, I I guess um I guess we should embrace the part of ourselves that thinks we would be part of the underground railroad because God knows we need as many people as we can to stand up and say, I want to be on the, I want to be on the right side this time.

• 1:01:25Speaker 1

  Have you read uh have you read Cormac McCarthy's The Road?

• 1:01:29Speaker 0

  Funny you should ask. Um so I have a policy with respect to Cormac McCarthy. I read one novel every 10 years because I swear to you, that's like as much as I can take. I'm a huge admirer, actually. I really am. I I think he's um incredibly gifted and uh both literarily. I I think he writes incredible sentences, um, and and also uh kind of as a visionary, although let's all hope his vision is not the only one. Um, but no, I most recently read Blood Meridian, and I'm only like two and a half years into my tenure stint, which I'm slightly exaggerating about, but somehow I'm the last person in America not to have read the road, even though I understand exactly why I should.

• 1:02:08Speaker 1

  I I think I read it, I reread it uh at the beginning of the pandemic, which was both a good and a terrible idea. Because I read it before

• 1:02:15Speaker 0

  I had

• 1:02:15Speaker 1

  kids.

• 1:02:16Speaker 0

  It was much, it was much back in the literary news at the beginning of the pandemic, yes.

• 1:02:20Speaker 1

  Yeah, and and I remember I just I, you know, I went into my son's room when he was asleep and I just sort of broke down uh weeping. But but like, you know, in the book he talks about, and obviously that that we talk about dark energy, that that's the culmination of the dark energy that sort of destroys the world. But it the beautiful sort of theme in the book is they talk about carrying the fire, the fire being like, are you one of the good guys or are you one of the bad guys? And I I suppose that the myth we tell ourselves about the underground railroad, if there's any productive part to it, it's the idea that like they were carrying the fire just as uh, you know, the the insert whatever heroic group from whatever generation that you want to celebrate, you know, they were carrying the fire just as the freedom writers were carrying the fire, just as uh the gay rights activists were carrying the fire, just as you know, uh the scientists who invent the vaccine are carrying the fire, that it's all sort of part of this uh you know, procession of torches towards uh keeping that goodness alive despite the darkness.

• 1:03:29Speaker 1

  And there's something I think I do think there's something about having kids that reminds you not just of the necessity of that, but your obligation as a parent to light that within them or to not extinguish it within them, uh, because that's that's the only only hope for humanity.

• 1:03:47Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, it's been much on my mind, both because of my daughter and because I really did try to wrestle in in this new book with how we live with the inevitability of loss and grief and and with suffering and uh and and devastation of all kinds on every scale, you know, tsunamis, genocides, pandemics, uh, as well as the kind of private um the private devastations of of losing people we love. And I kind of landed on on the place of of believing in the importance of caretaking, you know, uh of being the um the watchman and the watchwomen of our of our communities and of our generations because it's it's all we can do, you know, is is try to um protect uh those around us and the world around us and and kind of pass it along in the best condition we can.

• 1:04:44Speaker 0

  But it's uh, you know, it's it's it's painful. It's uh it's sad and scary at various times. And um,

• 1:04:53Speaker 1

  I was gonna just gonna ask you about grief, because that that is a theme in the new book, and then of

• 1:04:58Speaker 2

  course,

• 1:04:59Speaker 1

  collectively uh, you know, America is experiencing, and probably no one wants to put our finger on that as the you know, sort of driving force. But I feel like grief is the explanation for so much of the uh darkness we're seeing, whether it's grief from the destruction of the opioid crisis, whether it's grief from the collapse of certain industries, you know, collapse of in some ways uh our our image about ourselves, and then of course the literal devastation of the pandemic. It's strikes me as grief is both a uh a very personal and loving emotion, but it also can seem like it can manifest itself in a uh toxic way, also.

• 1:05:46Speaker 0

  Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, yes, I have spent a lot of the last, you know, call it five years now uh thinking about grief. Uh the book is called Lost and Found, and the whole first part, uh Lost, uh is very explicitly about grief. And to be honest, it then kind of runs continuously as a as a theme through the rest of it in various ways. And you know, it's interesting. I um I think you're diagnostically right. I I think we are we are grieving society right now. Uh I think that's been wildly exacerbated and and and actually also made wildly tragically literal in the pandemic. Uh, but but I think you're right that that was true beforehand. Um I, you know, we have this language of deaths of despair.

• 1:06:32Speaker 0

  And I I think there is a lot of despair in our culture right now. I think uh yes, collapse of industries, yes, opioid crisis. Uh I think also the unraveling of a lot of institutions that um that kept people supported and and kept them in a community or at least under someone's watchful eye, you know. And I don't want to suggest that was a paradisical time either, you know, there was there were um there were real problems to living under the the close scrutiny of one another. Um and yet I do think that uh we we have we have frayed apart in in all kinds of ways and left ourselves exposed to terrible grief. And the thing about grief is it's very lonely. Uh it's lonely even when you're lucky, like me, right?

• 1:07:17Speaker 0

  You know, I um I mean I was lucky in every way in the kind of grief I'm documenting in the book. Um, as I make a very uh uh uh strong point of making it clear that my father's death was not a tragedy. You know, it was incredibly sad to me. He was an amazing person. Uh, but but he was 74 years old. Uh he had a remarkable life uh and and died, I hope at peace and certainly surrounded by the people he loved. Uh so it was, you know, basically a good death, insofar as there is such a thing. Um, but what's shocking, of course, is that even with all of that going for him, and even with everything I have going for me, which is every imaginable kind of privilege and and comfort, you know, a partner, a great job, financial resources, healthcare to your point, um, it was still unmooring and and devastating.

• 1:08:09Speaker 0

  And it's tough to cope with grief and tougher the with every single resource you take away, a sibling, a partner, a way to pay your next bill, uh, it it becomes um it magnifies its force, you know, it will take over any part of your life that you allow it to. And uh, and it is lonely, you know, even if um even if many other people are mourning in the same way you are, it's uh it's a very private experience, and and it's not shared. And you know, I think that as a culture, I it's one thing to talk about what to do about a private grief, you know. Um there's a huge proliferation of uh books and and podcasts and uh and therapists and so on, uh, that will help you navigate the loss of someone you love down to every level of specific specificity.

• 1:08:57Speaker 0

  If you lost a sibling, if you lost a partner, if you lost a parent. All of which I think is wonderful. And I'm I'm not at all disparaging it. I think it's great that that we're trying to uh support people in these ways. But there's very little written about what to do about just the problem of loss in general, you know, about um, you know, an unmoored culture about you know what happens when you know you lose your father, but also your job, you know, uh, or or you know, when you're um when your community is undone by some kind of mass event, uh, you know, like a like an earthquake or like a tsunami. We don't we don't have good means for dealing with that kind of grief. And you often see that see a kind of brief coming together in the face of real crisis, you know, which is a beautiful thing.

• 1:09:49Speaker 0

  Uh we saw it when when everyone in New York, you know, uh cheered first responders at seven o'clock every day, and there was this sense of kind of resurgent faith in humanity, you know, we love each other, we support each other. And then here we are, you know, two years into a pandemic, and our first responders are uh woefully underpaid, woefully exposed to the pandemic, uh, yelled at and screamed at by the people they're trying to take care of, you know. We we haven't, I don't think, provided um the kind of durable uh love and care, but also just practical resources to to help one another out of the grief of the pandemic. And and again, that's just the pandemic. That's before we get to uh the kinds of issues you're raising, which were the um the I think uh sort of fissures and and and neglect in our society that made so much pre-existing grief flow into the pandemic and become very obvious as it kind of fractured us apart.

• 1:10:50Speaker 1

  I think that's right. Slight slightly more cheerful note as we wrap up. How have you how I I was reading about your sister who's a childhood development expert, right? Um how is how is having that in the family uh shaped your thinking about uh raising uh is it son or daughter? How have you thought about raising uh your kid in in light of the uh wealth of knowledge you have access to, or do you just tune it out entirely?

• 1:11:19Speaker 0

  That is such a funny question. Um yes, my sister is a uh professor of cognitive science at MIT. She's brilliant uh and incredible with kids, um, actually coming to visit again pretty soon because she can't stay away from her little niece, uh, much to my delight. Um do I think about it? I mean, I guess occasionally I've called my sister and said, like, you know, can you explain why my daughter is like absolutely obsessed with this like insane stuffed peacock someone gave us that I was about to donate, but now is like she loves it so much we joke that it's her babysitter because she'll stare at him for 20 hours. Um so I've occasionally reached out to her about things like that. But to be honest, mostly uh what I what I value in my sister is um, and I think this is probably why she got into the field, not a consequence of her being in the field.

• 1:12:05Speaker 0

  Uh, she just loves kids and she's amazing with them. So mostly I think of her in her uh personal capacity as as my sister and my baby's aunt more than I do uh as a as a in her scientific capacity, although I um I also find the kind of unfurling of a consciousness and the unfurling of a self to be just the most fascinating thing to watch in the whole world. So um I do have all kinds of questions about it, and I'm sure that as my daughter gets older, I will pester my sister about them relentlessly.

• 1:12:32Speaker 1

  It does, it does feel you were talking in your New York Times piece about so we have the grief of what we've lost, but one of the one of the things we can focus on is what we gain in the what we go through. And it struck me at some point. I've traveled a little bit now for for some stuff, and then it seemed like it's closed again. Like you at all, it always seems like right as a book is about to come out. That's when that's when suddenly all the things get closed down again. Um but but I realized that I I spent I did 500 consecutive bedtimes, like in person. And realizing that I'll probably never get that again in my life. Um and probably had never, even before I had kids, I'd never gone 500 days without getting on an airplane, probably in my whole life, right?

• 1:13:24Speaker 1

  And um just just it's like inside the trauma and the loss of all of it, there is also the time that we've gotten that you you ordinarily would be on a plane away from your uh your kid not there because work is also important, and now you've got to do it in a different way.

• 1:13:43Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, look, there's a reason I landed on this like very everyday title, lost and found for this book. I um it's incredible uh what we discover uh sometimes without even knowing it was missing from our lives. You know, you said this beautiful thing before we got on that you you you can't even understand why you weren't doing this before. And uh and it's true, you know. I mean, yeah, the pandemic has been full of losses of every kind, including ones pertaining to my daughter, you know. I um like parents everywhere, I have thought a lot about what is and isn't safe, you know, to what extent she can, you know, go play at her aunt's house, or you know, is it's is it safe for my elderly mother to get on an airplane and come visit and how do I keep her safe and the baby safe?

• 1:14:32Speaker 0

  And you know, it's there's been a lot of confusion and anxiety around it all. But um, you're absolutely right that uh also I just I'm at her side all the time and I put her to bed every night and I'm there when she wakes up every morning, and it does feel like a tremendous gift. And you know, for good or ill, I I think a lot of what is very difficult in life is often conjoined to something uh incredibly beautiful or or feeling that incredibly meaningful. Um and and conversely, much of what we love and cherish most in life reminds us of how fragile it is and how precious it is. So I do think we're always living with both at once.

• 1:15:12Speaker 1

  Yeah, that's what I I found to be, as you said, it's a very simple title, but there is a profundity to it because yeah, what you lose presents often the opportunity to find something else. And uh, you know, or at the very least, what did you what did you learn from what you lost, whether it was gratitude or appreciation or whatever. Um it is uh yeah, even just even just uh like okay, sure, uh we haven't been able to do these things. We also haven't gotten sick as a family in two years, you know, which is which as you know is just like a reality of having kids. Uh it's like, oh my god, this is so nice. Could it be like this all the time? I uh, you know, we got a cold a c a couple of months ago, and it was just like this is terrible.

• 1:16:00Speaker 1

  We used to do this all the time, like once a month, we all just collectively accepted uh that that the the downside of working in an office or going to daycare was that we we all were debilitated with the flu once every 30 days. I mean, this is mad.

• 1:16:17Speaker 0

  Yeah, I mean, I am slightly starting to wonder how at what at what point does it become actually bad for my baby that she hasn't had a cold yet, but uh, but I'm not quite motivated to go out and you know expose us to heaven knows what yet to you know put an end to that situation. But I

• 1:16:32Speaker 1

  hear

• 1:16:32Speaker 0

  you.

• 1:16:33Speaker 1

  Yeah, like I I I even like the to go to the mass thing. It was like, I remember a couple years ago I got mono probably on an airplane, and you know, I would just come in from the disgusting airport around these disgusting strangers and just breathe all over these people without a thought to, you know, how one's actions affect anyone else. And so I've I have thought about the I I do hope for some of us, clearly not all of us, but one of the uh One of the upsides of one of the things we should find from this is a greater consideration for like how our choices affect other people, especially kids.

• 1:17:13Speaker 0

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so complicated because on the one hand, um, I mourn the era in which we all just mingled with one another on the subway, you know, at daycare, wherever it may be, um, without feeling like a danger to one another, you know, to me that's been one of the real costs of the pandemic is the sense that other people are somehow imperiling us because I think that's a very um that's a very grim and and dangerous place to inhabit. No, it's

• 1:17:44Speaker 1

  in it's literally antisocial.

• 1:17:46Speaker 0

  It is literally antisocial, right? Uh and and yet, you know, do I share your sense that um that there are lessons to be gleaned uh from how we've all had had to live these last couple of years, you know, yeah, absolutely. You know, I think that it was fascinating to watch people um make happen in three months what what you know allegedly just was impossible. You know, it's been very snowy. Um, as I'm sure you heard, it's like, you know, there's kind of a snowstorm all up and down the east coast. And my sister-in-law is a special ed teacher, and uh, you know, they had a snow day yesterday. Um, no, wait, today, sorry, it's other pandemic problem. I've lost our track of time entirely. They had a they had a snow day today. Um but that's also having a five-month-old though. That's also having a five-month-old for sure.

• 1:18:32Speaker 0

  Actually, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's like parenthood and what's the pandemic and is sometimes unclear. Uh, but you know, they they had a um they had a snow day. It wasn't safe to get into school. Uh, but you know what? They did not lose another day of instruction because this time they sent the kids home with the computers they'd been learning on anyway, which is it ideal? No. But do you want kids to lose more learning time after all this time? No. So, you know, there is um, I do think there uh there are kinds of modifications to society. Um, some of them for the worst, but but some of them for the better. And I I hope the ones for the better do emerge intact out of this.

• 1:19:11Speaker 1

  Yeah, a lot, lot lost and found. Uh it's uh beautiful how that works out.

• 1:19:18Speaker 0

  Yeah, you know, I uh beautiful is um is where I hope we can kind of ultimately sit with it. I know it's it's many more things than that, and and I never want to diminish the kind of grief we've all been through these last couple of years, not to mention just the kind of grief life dulls out in general. Um, but I I try to inhabit the posture of feeling profoundly lucky to be here, kind of no matter what's happening and and to recognize uh that the grief is actually connected to my abundant love of of people and of this planet and of the cosmos and the human experience writ large. So uh yeah, I like to think I land on beauty and and joy at the end of the day. Well then,

• 1:19:59Speaker 1

  yeah, to go to your your point about your your relatives, uh obviously you know, no one chooses to go through the those terrible events, but then you know, because people are resilient, the uh those events change and transform them in a way that again they would never have chosen and shouldn't have to go through. But you know, you you when you talk to when I would talk to relatives who fought in World War II or lived through the depression, it wasn't uh, oh, it was the worst thing that ever happened. My life was never the same. Everything was meaningless and awful afterwards, right? That these events shaped who they became and what they taught to their children and to their grandchildren, and you know, hopefully, hopefully I think this idea that this was like purely bad or purely a deprivation for children strikes me as also the wrong way to think about it because um it was also an opportunity to teach them so many things, provided you know, you didn't get sucked into the dark energy we were talking about.

• 1:21:05Speaker 1

  But your your children could also emerge from this, hopefully uh better and stronger and wiser and uh you know more connected, uh just as we can hopefully emerge from it that way.

• 1:21:17Speaker 0

  Yeah. I mean, I tread lightly always with the notion that our suffering will somehow be redeemed, uh, which I which I think is you know partly from growing up with a grandmother who had endured the kind of suffering that is actually irredeemable and and that in every possible respect impoverished her life rather than um making it deeper or more meaningful. So I'm mindful it's um it's easy to be glib on that theme, and yet it's a mistake to let go of that theme entirely, because of course, uh short of short of that scale of tragedy, um obviously we learn from our pain and our suffering and our loss. Uh and and it's um it's it's right and beautiful, you know.

• 1:22:02Speaker 0

  We we want to try to make it something other than pain. And that takes our own agency and our own work to make it matter to our lives and and to acquire some kind of value or something that we can pass on or use to just um kind of do better in whatever in whatever sense in our day-to-day life. So yeah, I absolutely think that um our losses do sometimes teach us incredibly valuable lessons. It's it's you know, it's never not complicated. Um certainly I think the generation of school children uh who lost so much socially and intellectually these last couple of years, and especially those who who were already uh, you know, in a precarious place with respect to schooling, whether by you know how well supported their schools were uh or or or by whatever special learning needs they themselves had.

• 1:22:56Speaker 0

  It's it's not been pretty, you know, and and they deserved better. Uh, but I know what you mean. You know, I I my we all know people or know of people who were of the um the last generation of pandemic, you know, much has been written about the 1918 flu. I guess we don't really all know people from then, but uh, or or the greatest generation of this kind of thing, you know, obviously there is a narrative that that is about strength and resilience and redemption. And um, as I said, I it's easy to um it's easy to lean too hard on that uh or or to kind of facily decide like, oh, well, it's all

• 1:23:37Speaker 2

  uh

• 1:23:38Speaker 0

  what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right? Which I which I don't actually think is necessarily the case. Uh sometimes almost kills you. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Uh, but you know, there's a reason I got so interested in exploring the category of loss, right? Because I do think that our large losses can teach us about our small ones and our small ones can teach us about our large ones, and all of them in some ways can teach us, even when the lessons are painful and not strictly speaking, redemptive. They they can teach us a lot about what it means to be human because that is one of the very fundamental conditions of being human, is you're gonna lose a lot of things, including in the end your life. And you do have to figure out uh how to live with that and and how to live meaningfully with that.

• 1:24:18Speaker 1

  Well, yeah, it's like one of the the inevitability of suffering in in human life as created our uniquely human ability to, if not make that event meaningful, derive some meaning from those experiences. And in fact, that's kind of all we can do given how powerless we are over, you know, most of what happens to us.

• 1:24:43Speaker 0

  Yeah, exactly. And and also, you know, loss, although inevitable and omnipresent, um, is is seldom, I should not say seldom, but it is um it is certainly not always uh the an unmixed experience or the dominant experience, right? I mean, there are uh you know from my last book, right? I wrote about I wrote about being wrong. I'm drawn to these abstract categories of human experience, you know. Yeah. What's what's it like to err? That's interesting. Well, I, you know, loss is an abstract category of human experience. We all lose endless things, insane range of things, car keys, you know, elections, fathers. Uh, but we also find a really strange range of things also, you know, uh our car keys back again, you know, but also faith and a sense of self and a career and someone to love uh and and meaning uh and joy, exactly.

• 1:25:35Speaker 0

  Uh and and I do like to think that these categories are really intimately related to each other and and um that they do help us make sense of you know what what it what it means to be alive and what it means to be mortal in a universe uh kind of defined by entropy and by things falling apart and and and leaving us in all kinds of ways. Uh so yeah, I think um I mean you heard me say I I I err when I can on the side of on the side of joy and on the side of meaning, even in these really grievous losses, because I think it's uh it's kind of the best and only thing we can do.

• 1:26:12Speaker 1

  Well, beautifully said, and it was uh it was an honor to talk and thank you so much for sharing uh your wisdom in these books.

• 1:26:19Speaker 0

  Thank you so much for

• 1:26:19Speaker 2

  having me on. It's total pleasure.