Strategy consultant turned writer Natasha Joukovsky joins me to discuss why bourgeois comfort is more conducive to writing than you think, why choice-plots make for better fiction, the eyerolling prevalence of manufactured nonchalance, our shared distaste for Atlantis Bahamas, and MUCH more! I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack - https://8ca54796.streaklinks.com/CJPd0z7cXCh07hc4JAiMaKTC/https%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter.osv.llc%2F. Important Links: - Natasha’s Website - https://natashajoukovsky.com/home/#books - Natasha’s Substack - https://joukovsky.substack.com/ - The Portrait of a Mirror - https://natashajoukovsky.com/buy/ Show Notes: 0:00:00 Intro 0:00:43 “You can do everything, just not at the same time” 0:04:46 It’s Recursion All the Way Down 0:14:33 Pretending to Read vs Actually Reading 0:19:33 Manufactured Nonchalance as a Status Signal 0:29:20 Counter-Signalling, Fake-Famous & Jim’s Cursed Trip to Atlantis Bahamas 0:50:00 On No-Choice Plots & Writing in Service of Beauty 1:02:42 The Self-Deception of Status Hunting 1:12:55 Why Bourgeois Comfort is More Conducive to Art Than You Think 1:23:08 Natasha’s Next Book 1:27:02 “We don’t do auctions” 1:33:07 Natasha as World Empress Books Mentioned: - The Portrait of a Mirror; by Natasha Joukovsky - The novels of Jane Austen - Status Anxiety; by Alain de Botton - The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem); by T.S. Eliot - Class: A Guide Through the American Status System; by Paul Fussell - Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas R. Hofstadter - Ulysses; by James Joyce - Metamorphosis; by Franz Kafka - Beloved; by Toni Morrison - In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); by Marcel Proust - Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose - The Status Game; by Will Storr - Anna Karenina; by Leo Tolstoy - The Theory of the Leisure Class; by Thorstein Veblen - A Little Life; by Hanya Yanagihara