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[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] conversations with Tyler is produced by the mercada center at George Mason University Bridging the Gap between academic ideas and real world problems learn more at arcades.in conversations withth tyler.com
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[Music] [Applause] I'm honored tonight to be here with Masha gesson who is one of America's most influential public intellectuals also one of Russia's most influential Masha is a very regular columnist for the New Yorker as you all probably know
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and she's written many books on all kinds of topics including Soviet mathematics Putin her grandmother's genetic screening and just about anything else uh you might find interesting Masha is a true polymath and extremely impressive to all of those who
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know her so Masha welcome thank you very much and we just Dive Right In uh obviously the first question why was Soviet mathematics so good Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century um and
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basically because of the arms race because the Soviet Union realized you know World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower and they realized very quickly that the way for that to to make that happen was to develop weapon
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weapons technology and so there was a huge organizing and recruitment effort around the country to find kids who were particularly had particular math aptitude yank them out of wherever they were living put them in specialized
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boarding schools or specialized schools in in their city if they lived in a big city give them an elite mathematics education but actually a broad education but with a focus on mathematics put them through through excellent colleges and
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then create conditions in science towns for them to live I mean they were truly privileged and lived in these sort of incubated conditions and it was amazing because it was really the only area in the Soviet Union where intellectualism was prized and privileged so Drew
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probably a broader range of people than uh than just you know kids who were interested in mathematics and was the Soviet system of math compet ition is useful you know that's uh there's some debate about that the uh the Soviets
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were certainly extremely good at math competitions both in the country and internationally right I mean I can't uh it's it's been many years since I wrote about this so I can't now remember the statistics but basically you know they were always either winners of the
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international math math Olympics or you know somewhere in the top three but if you look at it I mean it pro it was a great feeder system for sort of the the weapons industry but you didn't see a whole lot of research mathematicians
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come out of the of the math competition system they seem to pretty much in parallel tracks what about the emphasis on physical training and athleticism and just being in great shape Magnus Carlson does that in chess does it matter for
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math um it was part of the system uh whether it matters for math we don't know uh but we know that uh the extraordinary Soviet mathematician Andre korov who designed the Soviet mathematics education system he had this idea that it was it had to be like what
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he imagined Greek schools to have been like so he felt that a good literary education uh a high level of physical culture and Mathematics were the keys to success why is it that so many dissidents came from the Soviet worlds
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of math and physics there seems to be a correlation right what what's causing what okay well I don't know the answer I can tell you my personal hypothesis so my hypothesis is that for people who are both trained and you know inclined to
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think in rigorously logical ways it is particularly difficult to adapt to the Soviet system of double think and I think that uh you know now when we talk about uh this kind of inclination now I think we talk about you know people being sort of spectrum me and and having
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uh or being neurologically different and therefore having difficulty with sort of the illogical irrational ways of life but you know I think we can R retroactively diagnose a lot of dissidents with that because basically what we're talking about is there is you
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know the conditions of being not just survival but of being reasonably comfortable while living in the Soviet Union were the conditions of double think you had to be able to live inside you know untenable contradictions all the
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time the opposite option was to confront those contradictions but to basically be thrown out of Society to be an extreme discomfort right so think about the type of person who would prefer the discomfort of being completely ostracized to the discomfort of living
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in inside the tension and I think that that goes some way to explaining why so many people came from from math and physics uh and and the exact sciences and you know these days when I look at Greta thumberg who I was actually I'm
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pretty sure the first American journalist to interview her you know the the now 16 old Swedish girl who went on school strike uh and has started this worldwide climate change movement she is very she she is diagnosed with autism and she's very
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very clear about talking about the how intolerable she finds life with the way that adults are not acting rationally in the face of climate change and how for her it is an absolute necessity to confront it and I really recognize that
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Spirit of Soviet dissonance now you've written a biography of Gregory perilman and at some point early on before he was famous he tried to get a job at Princeton by basically just demanding one would it have been good for his career as a mathematician to have gotten
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that job let's say they had given him tenure do whatever you want good for him bad for him well we don't know there's little evidence that he would have enjoyed teaching so you know basically the conditions that allowed him to for
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those who who don't know I assume everybody knows who Gregor peronas his he proved the PO correct conjecture um and published his Solution on archive on the web and without any explication it took three groups of mathematicians
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about three years each to actually delve into his proof and conclude that yes in fact it worked um and since then Perman who turned down the million dollar prize uh has basically disappeared you don't know what he's doing now he claims to not be doing
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mathematics and last I heard he was going to move to Sweden where his sister lives but I I I I haven't had it confirmed that he moved there but you know the conditions that clearly allowed him to uh to create his his proof were conditions of solitude and and calm and
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in St Petersburg would he have done the same thing at Princeton would he have found those conditions probably I don't know that it would have made much of a difference I have so many questions about Russia proper let me start with
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one why is it that Russians seem to purge their own friends so often the standing joke being you know the Russian word for friend is future enemy there's a set sense of loyalty Cycles where you have to reach a certain bar of being
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loyal or otherwise you're purged yeah I don't know that I agree with the with with the premise of that question I mean what kind of purges are you talking about people who stop being friends with those who were previously close friends
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whereas Americans will drift apart at but there's a kind of discreet break in Russian friendships as I see it huh that's interesting I don't know that I agree but uh but I think that and and and and this might answer your question
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you know Russian friendships are much more emotional and intense than American friendships I mean when I moved back to this country five and a half years ago I it was like the sense of whiplash because you know I had a a lot of friends here but I had been absent for
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20 years and um and then I would get together with my friends and then two hours later our would get together would be over and like well what was the point of that was that just to like Let each other know that we still exist because
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you don't really get into a deep conversation until about 4 hours in right and you know a number of bottles of alcohol and if you're going to we're missing the alcohol here tonight right we're missing the alcohol here tonight
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but uh you know if you're going to like really get down uh it it it's at like 3:00 a.m. 4: a.m. proposition uh you can't just like have dinner and go home so um then I realized this was really a way to be very productive because I
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could go back to work I I write at night so I could work after seeing friends which was amazing but something that I had never experienced in Russia so uh I think that maybe that's what you're referring to maybe you're just referring to sort of the emotional um
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intensity of Russian friendship where it's hard you know it's like it's like lovers even in this country don't really drift apart usually you kind of have to break up you can't just like stop calling and um uh you know and go back go from from
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talking every day to talking every few weeks and then forget about each other's existence in Russian grade school as I understand it it's often the case you sit in the same room in literally the same seats next to the exact same people
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year after year after year is that a good system or a bad system that's a great question I don't I don't know the answer it is true and it's very odd to me because I've I've um I've had kids my older kids were educated partly in Russia and partly here and my youngest
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son is is now in elementary school here I mean I find it pretty disorienting that every year Americans reshuffle their their classes and sort of put kids in a in a new social situation there's something amazing to having gone through
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life from the time you were six or seven with the same people I think it it it it can foster really incredible friendships it can also Foster like you know awful d amics obviously why has Russia basically never been a free country you know most
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countries have a history of never having been free countries until they become free countries but Russia has been next to some semi-free countries it's European nation right it's been a part of European intellectual life for many centuries and yet it with a possible
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exception of parts of the 90s it seems It's never come very close to being an ongoing democracy with some version of free speech why isn't it like say Sweden why isn't russan like you know I mean I I tend to read Russian history a little
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bit differently in the sense that I I don't think it's a continuous history of unfreedom I think that Russia was like a lot of other countries a lot of Empires uh in being you know a tyranny up until the early 20th century and then Russia had something
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that no other country has had which is the longest totalitarian experiment in history you know and that's a 20th century phenomenon and it's a very specific set of conditions and so I don't think it's uh I don't read Russian history as as this history of you know
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Russians always want a strong hand which is a very traditional way of of looking at it I think that Russia add breaking points when it could have um developed a democracy or a semi-democracy actually you know started this totalitarian
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experiment and what we're looking at now is the aftermath of the totalitarian experiment but it's striking to me if I speak to non-jewish ethnic Russians living in the United States where they have access to all the media most of them still seem to
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be Pro Putin right and Putin is not a Democratic leader he's in numerous regards a pretty nasty autocrat and Russians living in this country again non-jewish non-armenian whatever seem to support him what accounts for that
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ideological strand in Russians I think that among Russian immigrants it's actually very specific uh thing which is that there you know there have been distinct waves of Russian immigration my parents and I came here in 1981 as part
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of the Jewish immigration and we were fleeing the Soviet Union my parents made the decision to step into the abys they knew nothing about the West uh or what was going to happen to them here they thought they would never be able to see their friends
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and relatives in in the Soviet Union and they made this decision to get get out of the Soviet Union because it was so important for them to leave the Soviet Union people who came here and who are much more numerous who came here in uh
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starting in about 1990 and basically you know through that decade who I think are the people you're referring to they were fleeing the collapse of the Empire they were not running away from the Soviet Union they were not leaving Russia they
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were leaving that sense of of extreme instability and uncertainty that was created by the end of the Soviet Union so to them you know there's no contradiction between liking Putin who came in and said I'm going to take you back to that imagin stability and
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predictability of the Soviet Union right there's no contradiction between that and what they felt when they were leaving so I think it's perfectly logical that they support him now you've been a major advocate of LGBT rights if
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you think about Russian culture do you think it's more homophobic than average compared to other autocracies and if so culturally why might be that the case oh not at all I think that the the anti-gay campaign that has been a centerpiece of
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Russian politics for the last now seven years it's completely Kremlin manufactured I think most Russians you know had never given the subject any thought which is of course why it's so effective but they haven't given up the campaign it's endogenous that they're
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continuing it right it's in some way succeeding there's a positive public response right but a country like turkey which is a close neighbor of Russia it seems homosexuality is more accepted even though it's maybe in quiet ways well actually erdogan has also managed
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to traffic an anti-as sentiment quite effectively I mean this is this is this is a theme that we're seeing really you know in common among many autocrats in the world right now and the fact that you know that it's not surprising that
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hatred is getting traction you know campaigns of hatred get traction especially when you control all the media in the country I mean how could it not get traction right um and it's particularly effective of course because
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there was no language there was no conversation really about sexuality before that campaign began so it wasn't pushing back against anything that existed it was just occupying a vacuum once the Kremlin started a conversation about sexuality it owned it how
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constrained is Putin in your view what's your basic model of how Putin rules and what he can do what he can't do I've never thought of it thought of it in terms of constraint I think that he has a natural sort of inclination for economy
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you know an economy of means he is not a totalitarian type leader in the sense that he wants to exert only as much force as is necessary to continue accumulating money and power and which of those two does he care about more money or power well they're
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inextricably linked I mean he measured measures his money in power and his power in money right but he has he has applied force when he has encountered resistance and the application of that Force has created totalitarian type
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conditions in Russian Society but he is really I mean he uh he has not created Terror he has created selective selective enforcement and uh and has gone after sort of signal enemies and uh and random people people in order to create a sense
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of that that that he controls the country and to to minimize the possibility of any kind of resistance but saying in 2011 you seemed to think that Putin was on the verge of losing power and that doesn't seem to be the case so how have you updated your model
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of how that works and GDP per capita in Russia has fallen for the last five years in a row right that can't be good for him so what is he doing oh it is very good for him it is very good explain well because because Russian
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Society has reconstituted itself as a totalitarian Society poverty and scarcity are actually very good for totalitarian societies they maintain uh that sense of mobilization That's essential for totalitarian societies right there's and this is actually not
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my idea but I think it has a lot of Merit this idea that the pro the mass protests in Russia that we saw in 2011 2012 were partly uh a function of prosperity you know people lived well enough that they had uh they had the luxury of demanding good
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governance when you are constantly worried about how your survival you do not actually engage proactively in politics what's the chance that Putin leaves office alive probability if you had to give a single number you know I learned my lesson from
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2011 that I journalist should never make predictions but a probability is better than a prediction because a probability is well well okay all right well let's say 50/50 you know either he leaves the office alive or he leaves office Dead
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uh I think he plans to be an office for life when you met Putin what was that like what was your impression Vis so you know uh some some history I met Putin about 6 months after publishing an unauthorized biography of him that came
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out in about 20 languages and and became a bestseller in many of them and he didn't know about the book uh so that that was really interesting because you know and it's it's obvious why he didn't know about the book in order for him to know about
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the book someone would have had to tell him about the book and and nobody wanted to be that person but my experience of of meeting him you know he called me and said that he wanted to meet uh for a different reason that had nothing to do with the book and
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um and so you know I I couldn't tell anybody about it because I was afraid of having the meeting canceled so I just texted I was in Prague that day I texted my editor in New York and said you know I have to talk to you get on g chat and
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so she got on g chat and I said you know Putin just called me and and he wants to meet and she said well I'm really scared for you I'm like are you kidding you said how are you feeling I and I said well it would I would be more excited if
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it had been Perman but this is really good um Perman was the first person that I wrote a book about who didn't talk to me and um and P was the second so you know it was the sense of meeting a character from your book It's like
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because the experience of writing non-fiction isn't that different from writing fiction in the sense that you you have all this available information then you construct a character to the best of your ability based on the available
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information and so at that point I felt like I had constructed him and it was like getting a phone call from the protagonist of your novel who says I want to meet and then you really want to to see whether you got it right and part of me wanted him to be exactly like the
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person in the book and part of me wanted him to be different part of me wanted to make a discovery uh uh to have him be more interesting more deep more human because you know the guy in my book was like pretty twood dimensional and he was
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that he was completely two-dimensional uh um exactly the guy in my book which was both gratifying and disappointing why did Gary Kasparov fail at Russian politics and overthrowing Putin that's a great question Gary's a good friend of
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yours right he's a friend of mine uh he is um you know and I think he is absolutely brilliant and he is also charismatic I actually went on the road with him for a bit in I guess 2005 and when I was done I thought you know I came home and I literally said to
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my partner I said you know I I want to quit journalism and like good work for him he's amazing he has an understanding of the world and politics and people like no one I've ever met he is the smartest person I know I just I just
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want to work for Gary uh and so it's it's it's actually painful to to see him living in Exile on a proa side uh and um having having not just failed right I mean anybody can fail in in trying to overthrow a regime but really having
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failed to make a dent I mean I think that most of it is that Putin controls the public sphere right Gary tried to run a fairly traditional campaign um organizing campaign right where where he just traveled the country and met with people and you know he'd get to a town
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and the hall that they had rented would be shut down and he wouldn't be able to talk to people and um or like every person who was supposed to meet with him would have gotten a threatening phone call I mean he couldn't do that kind of
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Grassroots level organizing that he set out to do and that he put all his resources and money toward uh Alexa naali the anti-corruption campaigner has shown how you can do organizing in a country that has destroyed a public sphere and basically
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you know it's through the internet it's through creating your own kind of media Universe which in a sense is is what Donald Trump has done as well right but I think there there are great limitations even to that strategy but but that's not what G was doing what's
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the biggest American misconception about modern-day Russia right now I don't know throw some at me and I'll tell you whether they're misconceptions or not well how about The Stereotype of you know the strong Russian woman there's a
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belief that there's a particular kind of woman in Russia highly accomplished super strong almost like a Superwoman Yes is this true or a misconception true 100% true it's true and where does that come from where does that come from I think that comes
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from Life um uh look uh you know um part of the Soviet experiment was this very strange gender equality ideology right strange because it it was an enforced ideology right it was it was top down so it was women almost um were were almost equally
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represented in the workforce to men but of course at home they also did all the housework and housework in the Soviet Union was not you know doing housework in the United States uh it was washing clothes by hand often you know in a
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communal bathroom or or a communal bath house was cooking in a communal kitchen it was getting you know getting food products in uh conditions of extreme shortages right it was like this constant battle for survival and and and for the survival of one's family and I
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think that that made women strong productive and and created a kind of matriarchal family that wouldn't exist if women weren't also you know Breadwinners on par with men but but also what H I think there you know there there may be
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something about women that is just more adaptable and and more likely to take responsibility and we really saw this after the Soviet Union collapsed or even you know during per sta when men who lost their jobs um and lost their bearings would often and you know I'm
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I'm trafficking stereotypes but they are rooted in in in research the men would be would stay at home and feel useless and lost and women would go out and get new careers and new professions and new training and figure out ways to make
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money because they had to finally to ultimately support the family but what's your hypothesis well here's another possible misconception about Russia I'm an American I walk down the street in Moscow and it seems to me people don't
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smile very much no they in turn may see me smiling and think I'm stupid absolutely because I'm smiling now are they actually less happy or is that just a cultural difference that they don't smile as much and where does that come
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from yes people in Russia certainly do not smile as much and yes when I moved here in 1981 I thought Americans were so strange and you know I we moved to Boston not the smilest city in in in in country contrary certainly not the friendliest and I thought you know
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Americans were bizarre me they would say hello to you in the street for no reason and and yeah I I found them very unreasonably friendly I think that there's a kind of grumpy and dark culture in Russia uh Russians certainly uh are you know have a lot of
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discernment in the fine shades of misery uh Russians do not cheerfully resp you know if you ask a Russian how they are they will not cheerfully respond by saying you know they're great uh and if they're miserable they might actually
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share that with you in some detail uh there's no shame in being M miserable in Russia there's in fact uh you know there's a lot of validation and you know read a Russian novel you'll you'll you'll find it all in there it's uh we
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really are connoisseurs of depression so um so I think you know I think I think that that's it it's part of the culture it's part of the literary culture it's part it's part of the narrative it is also a function of powerlessness and I think that it's you
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know according to Hanah arand the defining condition of totalitarianism is loneliness I think she is exactly right in Her diagnosis I think this is something that is often overlooked in her writing but it's an incredible sort
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of humanistic discovery that I think she made in writing about totalitarianism uh and I think that if you read uh you know when I teach Russian literature I I teach it with through that lens right the L 20th century Russian literature the lens of
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loneliness and when we also look at some of the social phenomena in Russia a lot of them are you know like for example excess mortality are explainable through Mass depression now America is a Freer country richer country I hope a more
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stable country yeah you moved back to Russia at what age and why did you move back there so I was um was 24 when I first went back so I was already a journalist and I I just went back on a story and I thought what I mean first of all I was blown away by feeling at home
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which is something I didn't expect I had I had moved here when I was 14 I had no sort of sentimental attachment to Russia at that point I was I really expected to feel like a foreign country where I was reporting and I just happened to speak the
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language and feeling physically comfortable in a way that I never did in New York right and I love the city right but um but somehow just you know the way the light fell the way that the air smelled everything about it was so comfortable and I've
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talked since to many people who went back to their childhood countries um you know not necessarily Russia it is a sensation that that catches you unaware as often and that is incredibly powerful so that was part of it it's not like I
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you know I was walking around and thought Oh my God I'm going to move back this is home not at all but but it was very powerful and the other thing was that it was the most interesting place in the world it was March 1991 the Soviet Union still existed but it was in
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such turmoil and people were having such important conversations and they were having them in a way that actually made it feel like those conversations would have consequence es right and so it was irresistible to me as a journalist so I
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started going back and forth and after a couple years I realized I should stop paying rent here and just move to Moscow and why did you move back here the second time what six years ago about 5 and a half years ago um yeah I the
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anti-gay campaign started I was uh at the time you know parenting three children with a woman and the state was threatening to take my oldest son who is adopted away and that didn't leave me any choice you backed up and left in which way is
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American society more collectivist than that of Russia my initial response would be in no way well say you go to a high school football game isn't there part of you that thinks oh my goodness all this conformism I've read teville you know we
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Russians are the true individualists what are all these people doing shouting at the same time over nothing is there no part of America that brings forth that reaction in you you know I probably haven't had that experience of America
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Tyler I've never been to a high school football we'll bring you sometime my uh my my oldest son I mean he was he graduated from high school here in New York but he went to specialized music school high school not a football playing school and
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and my second child is unschooled let's see if you can talk me out of another possible misconception about Russia and that is I have the sense that there are only about five first names for women in Russia there's Ana there's Natasha and why is this why
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is this the equilibrium why don't more people deviate when naming their children you know Russia I mean Russia is a conformist society and people yeah my friends have kids who have different names right but it only became possible
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really to give your children names that s kind of marked them out after the Soviet Union collapsed so all of my friends have the same name and uh and then all of our children have bizarrely different names now in the middle of all these
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conversations there's a segment called overrated versus underrated and I'll toss out some Notions and you tell me if you think they're overrated or underrated okay tarkovsky movies oh God overrated why I can't stand them I'm sorry I look Bagels overrated or underrated
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um underrated it especially in New York yeah I'm thinking sort of more globally spending time on Facebook depends on what you do for you for me it's essential it's essential to my work I I you know it doesn't feel like a waste of
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time sometimes it's a waste of time but uh but if it's a waste of time it's basically me working inefficiently but it's an essential part of my work American television as a whole underrated or overrated currently probably overrated why I think we've
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gotten used to the idea that uh that we're in the Golden Age of Television which you know in the sense of of how many things are being produced is absolutely true but but if there used to be the presumption that if something is on television it's probably terrible and
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if and if it has any redeeming qualities to it that's already extraordinary and I think we've gone over to the opposite side where we assume that something is a is a masterpiece so you know for example I I I had to endure the five episodes of
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Chernobyl because I I had to write about it and it was really an ordeal I thought it was terrible and not just because not just because I thought you know it was reductionist but I thought the writing was awful the dialogue was horrible and
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I don't know why like you know it was it was incredibly well received by critics among among others it's like we no longer have an ear for for bad writing on television why was the last year of the American so good and I know you've
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worked for the show as a translator but what made that so magical toward the end I thought all of it all of it was actually amazing but you know the Americans is like the exact opposite of Chernobyl in the sense that it's it's actually and it was it was a very
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strange experience for me as a translator because I translated all the all the Russian scenes in for in the last three seasons and there was like almost nothing in the dialogue like everything that happened in the Americans happened not in what
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people said but what they felt how they acted things I mean it was in in that sense it was it was very good film making right whereas in Chernobyl like everything is is is processed and and dispensed and explained and overexplained in in dialogue and I think
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that what made the Americans so so good and made it get better as it went on was the psychological depth of not speaking things out but showing things and you know and showing relationships develop and disintegrate on screen without everything having to
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be Spilled Out tul sto's long short story Morad overrated or underrated where in America in America underrated how do we fix the College admission Scandal uh a simple question we nationalize higher education what does that mean I mean it means we have to we
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we have to talk about to learn to think about higher education is a public good uh there has to be a way to create to create publicly funded higher education that doesn't cost you an impossible amount of money for most people who want
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to get higher education I think it would also H have the result of leveling sort of the field among colleges I mean there are lots of normal countries that have normal higher education where but they have worse systems than we do it seems
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German higher education is nationalized it's close to free it seems starve to funds a lower quality than what America produces and Germany's a smart fairly effective country I don't know that it's necessarily lower quality than what
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America produces how do you measure that say Nobel prizes or the value of the degree in terms of I don't think Nobel prizes are a great way to um to measure it because you know a lot of people come to the United States to do research in
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University settings and end up winning Nobel prizes that doesn't tell us a whole lot about the the difference between higher education in this country and and the countries that that we draw from right but look you know look at like Australian education next to free
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basically every the stress of getting into a university is it exist but it's so much less than it is in this country you basically assume that you're going to go to university in your city the best university or the second best or
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the third best you're going to get in you're going to get an education that education is going to allow you to you to work professionally after you get it and depending on your grades you know you're going to get into the better or
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the worst University and it's not you know it doesn't it doesn't have the the the import that it it has here where you know where young people feel like their lives depend on it depending on where they get in which you know seems just absurd and like I'm I'm
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I'm in I'm rambling because this is very close to home because I'm also like in involved in these arguments with my kids about about their education you know and I say to my daughter look it doesn't matter which college you go to you can
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get a really good education anywhere right which is true in this country and you can also be miserable anywhere so just look at some places look look at what looks good do you have a few safety schools relax and she says no no you
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don't understand um I I'm never going to be successful if I don't go to one of the best colleges like that is patently not true but that's uh that's the kind of stress environment that that is created even for an unschooled kid you know so outs outside a high pressure
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high school environment even with a parent who is like me now it was about 15 years ago that you described with very powerful writing the choices that you took when you learned you had a diagnosis of of having some cancer mutations and if I understand this
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correctly you chose to have a double myectomy but not to have your ovaries removed and you wrote about this in a book 15 years later what would you say to someone who faces the same diagnosis today what advice would you give them or
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how does it look different to you 15 years on you know I haven't fully kept up with the research I did end up um having my overs removed when I was 50 so but I'm really glad I I had I had the extra you know more than a decade of of
37:29
of hormones I would say do your research I think that some of the interesting uh things that I found when I was researching and re the reason I end up writing a book is that when I found out I had this dilar mutation this was
37:44
really in the early days of of this kind of thing and I just felt like I realized I I couldn't process information so then I thought oh well I used to be a medical reporter I used to to be able to read medical papers and actually process this
38:01
stuff so I just have to stop thinking of myself as the person who's trying to make a decision and and and think of this as a research project so then I sold a series of stories to slate and the project was to conduct a series of interviews with people who
38:19
could give me information that would um help me make a decision and then at the end of the series make a decision so I did that over the course of something like 8 weeks for slate and I cast a much wider net than you normally would
38:34
normally people would go talk to an oncologist and a genetic counselor and make a decision and you went to the Harvard Economist David libson right the one of the people I went to Yes uh and uh and many other people but yes that was actually one of the best interviews
38:48
although you know he we devised a formula together and the formula suggested that um that I should have both the uere rectomy and the myectomy but but then I ended up deciding to just have the myectomy but one of the things
39:02
I realized and this is just a small illustration of how you know of people's heuristics I realized that doctors were pushing women to have ectomies the removal of the ovaries and not mastectomies because an ectomy is a very easy surgery and it you cannot see
39:20
outward expressions of it the easy surgery has a much greater impact on health I mean everything in your body is hormone dependent in somewhere or another and so it is it completely changes the functioning of the body whereas the more complicated surgery
39:37
that a myectomy is um and that has clearly visible results actually has no impact on health whatsoever but doctors have this very strong bias that that results from what is an easier surgery with a shorter recovery time right
39:57
but then you know no long-term consequences seems like a better solution to them and how did that whole experience change your sense of what is valuable in life you ask all the really easy questions um you know it actually uh I don't know
40:12
that a changed my sense of what is valuable in life I um uh I I I definitely think that you know life is uh more important than breasts but I probably thought that before that question was put to me as well but it it actually had an impact sort of long term
40:29
on how I think about gender right and how well uh so you know I um I was not at that time particularly thinking about experimenting with gender I was perfectly happy living as as as as a woman and having all the organs that go
40:49
with that and then as I went on and shed the organs that that go with Womanhood I thought well this is you know like now I'm a body without organs and hormones so what am I going to do with about this and I've actually made decisions about hormones hormone
41:08
replacement uh as a kind of blank slate right I went on female hormones at first I went on estrogen I mean female and male obviously you know both men and women have both estrogen and testosterone but in different proportions and I felt horrible I felt
41:25
really really awful taking estrogen I thought okay well let me go in the other direction and I started taking testosterone and I'm having a lot more fun on testosterone uh then I did an estrogen I'm in a very low dose but that has created a kind of
41:42
non-binary gender situation for me but for me sort of the physical stuff was primary and then the gender stuff is secondary now I have a few questions about what I call the mash gessen production function how you manag to do
41:54
and be what you are first question question super simple like like the others how is it you manag to read so much in so many different areas you have a book on terrorism we didn't even get to talk about that right you have a book on Riot that's hasn't been
42:08
mentioned so how do you absorb what's your trick well you assume that if I write I read um there are footnotes in all of these books this this is true I um you know I mean I I don't actually think I I I read an extraordinary amount I'm I'm a
42:23
I'm I'm a pretty uh slow reader it's it's just I have the luxury you know I have a year or two to write a book and I can read extensively on the topic and I absorb very well and then I forget it all I um a friend of mine once called me an empty
42:42
pot how do you manag to follow politics in two very different very large countries at the same time I'm always feeling like I'm not following enough like I don't that I like I'm not getting enough information I mean dream is to
42:56
follow more rather than less depressing in a way my dream is to feel like I have a better handle on things I mean Russia is much simpler in a way you know very little happens in fact uh or what happens is is more or less the same thing over and over again so I find it
43:14
you know uh and that's and that's one what I mean when I say that Facebook is spending time on Facebook is really part of my work I try to have a sense of you know the temperature of the air the the flavor of the conversation uh and that's where social
43:31
networks use strategically I think are extremely useful it's the kind of research tool that I didn't have as a young journalist and I and I really appreciate it now um as for American politics I I I'm always in fear of
43:44
missing stuff like major stuff I listen to a lot of podcasts I bike a lot and whenever I'm biking I'm I'm listening to podcasts and and I try to switch among podcasts a lot but but then you know like I I go hiking and I go offline for
44:00
24 hours and stuff happens and then I discover that it happened days later because there's another new cycle I mean you know like the insanity of the new cycle is impossible putting normative questions aside just analytically what do you wish you understood about
44:17
American politics that you feel maybe you don't that's a question that is actually objectively impossible to answer because if I understood what I don't understand then I'd go and understand it wouldn't I well I might feel I wish I understood how Congress
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influences Regulatory Agencies more than it does or voter Behavior might be the thing I don't understand or what presidents actually seek to maximize or state and local government no I think that you know those are research
44:45
questions I don't feel a deficit in that area I because I you know you can always do the research to answer a research question um I think there are sort of cultural deficits that I have because I didn't grow up here and in fact I didn't I
45:00
haven't lived here in most of my life in some ways that gives me a good perch because it's sometimes really beneficial to write about things as an outsider as an informed Outsider but I think where I'm at a huge disadvantage is race
45:14
politics not having grown up in this country I I never feel on solid footing and you don't seem to write about it much if at all is that impression correct that's correct because yeah because I don't feel I can yeah now you had an early career as a journalist in toia
45:32
right yes how did that shape your later views I mean that must have been quite formative yeah I don't know I mean maybe well one way it shaped my My Views is that I'm I'm a pacifist and I think that being a war reporter will do that for
45:47
you that's actually influenced how I bring up my kids right I there are never guns in the house there are no war games and I talk to them at length about why that is and that sticks you think yeah of course it it can't not stick I mean
46:02
it it may be traumatic because they they don't get to play with some of the same things that that their friends play with but it makes an impression what is your most unusual writing habit I write by hand you write by hand and someone types
46:16
it into a computer or that never happens no I write books long hand and then I Type I Type them up chapter by chapter so I write a chapter out long hand and why is that good for you because I think that the process of writing long hand is more linear if you
46:36
ever look at how you write or if I ever look at how I write if I just write on a computer um unless it's the column is also pretty linear I mean I I I I outline it and then I just fill in every paragraph but uh and I do that on on on
46:52
a computer but um but if I wrate a very long piece I don't notice how much I jump around when I'm writing on a computer you can't do that on paper you have to keep going and then opposes a kind of narrative structure that is unbreakable I mean you
47:09
have one sentence has to follow the previous sentence you can't go back and and reinsert it right so um so it keeps me very focused I find and the other thing it does is that when I'm typing it up I'm reading it on paper and I think
47:26
that there's a difference I will then you know when the book is ready I will then print it out and edit it again on paper right but every time you read when you're reading on paper and you're reading on screen you're seeing completely different things and you
47:39
listen to music when you write no never uh I used to but I I don't know what book would we be most surprised to see on your bookshelf at least the active section of your bookshelf I don't know actually I'm not convinced that there's
47:52
anything surprising in my bookshelf I think it's probably pretty predictable and you just you buy books on Amazon and they arrive I buy books on Amazon a lot of the a lot of the time books just come um I mean that's the advantage of being
48:04
a writer and and a journalist is that people send me books and if you had to describe your philosophy of child rearing other than pacifism what else would you say I I think that the the best thing I do as a parent and I do many things not very well but the best
48:18
thing I do as a parent is all my kids have always been included in adult conversations we always talk about everything um part of it is laziness I mean I can't like separate things out but um but my kids have grown up hanging out with adults being very
48:36
comfortable being part of adult conversation but also knowing that they can have a say and they can you know have an opinion on whatever political issues being discussed regardless of what what age they are do you think
48:49
there's too much age segregation in the United States I think there is I I I see that among my kidss my older kids friends like uh when when as teenagers they started bringing friends home and I realized that these young people had no
49:04
experience socializing with people their parents ages last two questions before we turn to Q&A first if a very smart young person say 18 19 years old came up to you and said they wanted to be like the mhha guessin of the Next Generation and they asked you for advice
49:21
non-trivial advice what would you tell them I would probably tell them to take a as many risks as possible as many risks as possible and finally what's your next project so I'm working on on a book I'm I'm actually about to set it
49:34
aside for a couple of months but I've been working in a book for a couple years on imaginative political projects and it's based on a concept from Czechoslovakia from the 1970s from Charter 77 uh the concept of the parallel polus which is and I think you might
49:54
actually find this this this might relate to your work in in a way but um so the the idea of the parallel polus is that in a totalitarian Society you can create a sort of a so an experimental society that functions according to a
50:09
different set of rules in at least one area so it might be economically different or socially different or politically different or religiously different or different in other areas and then when the totalitarian Society collapses under its own weight all
50:23
around you you have a working model of the future and I look I start there and I look at some societies that are very close to being totalitarian in the sense that um that that people can have no influence on the larger politics of it
50:36
and look at those kinds of projects there and then I argue that actually that has implications not just for totalitarian societies but for societies where wherever a democracy is broken or part of a democracy is broken you can
50:50
see an imaginative project like that can be very important and then I even argued that it doesn't even have to be a non-state actor it can be a state actor that create that creates a project that kind of imagines something into being
51:03
Masha gesson thank you very much we now have time for questions I will call on you please wait for the microphone to come over from the floor yes uh you mentioned that there was no shame in being miserable in Russia or there's no shame and misery I was
51:21
wondering how like Jubilation or like excessive cheer was is viewed with suspicion that's a that's a fair question yes um unless it's a it's a kind of you know Collective um drunken ex moment of exhilaration yes excessive cheers is viewed with with suspicion uh
51:41
one might be suspected of being an optimistic idiot next question further back hello thank you so much for being here uh I apologize for knowing what I was going to ask you beforehand but um uh you recently uh wrote an article for the New
51:59
Yorker uh in which you critique uh Pete Buddha did the speech where he talks about his experience growing up as a homosexual or he's like you know if I could find the part of me that was gay and cut it out I would have done that
52:12
and you were saying like you know it's kind of problematic because it posits that heterosexuality is like the better default and that like you need to like have to be forced to be gay in order to be accepted um but I was wondering if you think that that kind of like
52:28
essentialist reduction stuff is like useful in certain cases as a political tool like for example modern Russia um with the situation that's gone on there so um it has yeah it has proven to be an extremely effective political tool that
52:43
has it has it this is the narrative and you know I want to make it clear I'm not critiquing Pete or criticizing pet budd's um personal story his you know obviously his story is his story I'm criticizing his choice to use this narrative that is a very
53:03
traditional gay rights narrative uh that is rooted in the argument of choicelessness right and implicit in that argument is this idea that gay people should have rights because they didn't have any other option and that I if sexuality were
53:30
choosable then that choice shouldn't be validated right I find that deeply problematic because I think it doesn't correspond to everybody's Human Experience of of of sexuality and I also think that it is ultimately it is ultimately not Progressive It ultimately
53:48
is not Liber liberatory right but it is of course as a reductionist narrative very useful and has proven to be politically at least in the short term very effective in in in this country I mean the a lot of the gains and gay
54:04
rights have been rooted in that argument next question yes hi thank you so much for being here if America were to collapse as the Soviet Union did how do you how would you posit that resulting States might sort of emerge from that how uh how
54:24
would I expect if America just broke apart as a union and like different states were forced to form into new countries as happened after the fall of the Soviet Union right um you know I mean I I don't know that that's a great analogy uh the Soviet
54:40
Union was genuinely an Empire you know it was just a contiguous Empire so not everybody recognized it as such but um but there was a There Was An Imperial power there were many many many colonized people people uh the
54:57
borders between those colonies were known and there was in every Colony there was a national identity that could be kind of resurrected and a national narrative that could be created I don't think that's true in I mean it's not true in this country right
55:16
we have we have borders between States but we don't have National identities in States and we don't have clear ethnic majorities in in in in different states that would create that kind of national narrative so I yeah I don't I'm having trouble
55:34
with the parallel sorry next question yes up front let me ask you one while the microphone is coming if Ukraine became a free successful Democratic state would autocracy in Russia go away no why not wouldn't it be such an example no relation no relation um I
55:51
mean it's it's that's that's a great question actually because it is a very common fallacy and it is a com a fallacy that comes from Russia which fails to understand both Russian uh both the Kremlin and the Russian opposition
56:04
actually fail to understand that Ukraine is a separate country with at this point a very different political culture it's been a generation right since the Soviet Union collapsed and Ukraine has spent that generation now more than a
56:17
generation 28 years um Ukraine has spent that that period in a transitional state it hasn't been a functional democracy but it has also not been an autocracy in that long right so um that has created a completely different set of expectations and and
56:37
really very different culture and I feel it when I go to Ukraine when I talk to people when I interview people uh you realize that there are different kinds of relationships of trust there are very different expectations uh of the possibility of
56:49
political action there are very different expectations of accountability You know despite the level the very high level of corruption in Ukraine whereas Russia has basically spent um the last 20 years as an autocracy so uh and and and Russians
57:07
have this magical thinking both the Kremlin and the opposition have this magical idea that Ukraine is like a smaller mirror of of of Russia and whatever happens in Ukraine is then going to happen in Russia now to the question up front so you mentioned how
57:22
um internet access in Russia can offer a little bit of an escape from this very tightly controlled public um control over over the um Communications are there ways in which you think the somewhat greater Freedom among um among
57:36
these online communities has led to different cultures or different sort of norms from uh those that have been established under this strict totalitarian regime yeah it's a great question and I I don't want to exaggerate uh right because as you know
57:50
we've gone from this sort of dominant idea of the internet is inherent Democratic to this dominant idea of the internet is inherently undemocratic and uh you know it's not inherently anything but um Alexa naal has been able to use his online presence
58:09
to circumvent the kremlin's control over the public sphere that you know that that that has required a set of conditions the most important of which is just you know he's uh he's very good at what he does and he found the one thing that millions and millions of
58:26
Russians find compelling which is proving corruption and validating their sense of constantly being lied to and uh and stolen from but there are also limitations to that kind of organizing and I find those limitations fascinating
58:45
because when we talk about organizing we usually uh assume that there's a kind of collective action at work right and politics is acting with others and I think that there's a very different kind of organizing than navali
58:58
does because Naval will publish like an appeal on YouTube and people will go out and protest in more than a hundred towns around Russia at the same time and it looks like Collective action but I would argue that it's not because it's one individual uh at a time
59:16
watching the video on YouTube going out into the Public Square and going home without actually having done anything together with any other people in their town except for being present in the Square at that particular moment and
59:31
that is completely different from you know from actual political organizing and Collective action as we know it does that distinction matter I think it does I think that the the the experience of physically and on an ongoing basis interacting with other people in the
59:51
political space is essential for politics next question yes supposed tensions rise substantially between Russia and the West perhaps level of open military conflict is it more likely that Russia cuts off Western access to networks or
1:00:07
vice versa and would it be more would you predict it's more likely because of cyber security or journalism politics accessibility information what was the last part uh like would it be more more because of cyber security and hacking or
1:00:19
more because of access to these you know political organizations and journalistic information right I think that Russia is very likely to cordin off its internet I think that the pretext would be cyber security uh which may not be quite so
1:00:37
much of a pretext I think that um that the effect and the desired effect would be total informational isolation um of the of the Russian public next question yes way in the back while the mic is going my quick question if you were advising a hedge
1:00:57
fund as to what they could learn from training of talent in the world of Soviet mathematics what would you tell them I would tell them that um in the abstract I would actually tell them that maybe it's better to have not quite so such such amazingly trained talent but
1:01:16
to live in a Freer Society in the back yes uh why is there currently less or not very much control over the internet in Soviet Russia in Russia sorry um that's right um it actually goes to what I said earlier about Putin's uh economy of
1:01:37
means um there's as much control as necessary right the internet oversight agency has shut down access to a number of opposition websites that means the vast majority of Russians don't have access even even if they maybe want to right
1:01:58
they don't have access to uh to anything that contradicts the dominant narrative but the internet you know is it's not a push media the internet is is a place where you don't get answers to questions you don't ask I think that the Kremlin is
1:02:17
sensitive to that even if they can't necessarily articulate it there's not a whole lot of danger coming out of the internet for the kman next question so in the context of your uh current project on alternative polus was it parallel polus parallel
1:02:35
polus um what do you see as example or examples of that currently in Russia or in America and um do you see that the internet as a vehicle for that or um in kind of what you were saying about um uh the this moob mobilization not actually being a collective action
1:02:59
but being this individual action do you think that that actually detracts from parallel polus yeah for it it has to be not just parallel but polus right and um and polus can't be homogeneous there has to be some sort of cooperation AC cross
1:03:16
difference uh to for a parallel polus or any kind of polus to to exist um that's something that doesn't happen whole lot on the internet I also think that you know again politics is something that that has a physical Dimension so I'm I'm only
1:03:31
looking at actually existing uh physical projects in the states I'm looking at um a particular complicated project in Detroit that's an urban farm SLU space slash history slash communitybased economy project and I'm not I'm not actually looking at
1:03:56
any in Russia the other question on this side um is there good Russian food in New York and where can I find it um yeah I like Mari van which is a which is a restaurant in uh on E 21st I think it's pricey but really good last
1:04:15
question comes from me obviously there are many famous works of Russian literature but if you had to recommend to us something in particular we ought to read that's special to you and maybe not something which everyone reads what would that be and why
1:04:30
um I don't know that the books I would recommend have been translated to English tell us one nonetheless and I'll give you one more question then okay so um two books I would recommend one is prer uh which is um it's one Omission or
1:04:49
Illusion uh by Li chovka uh which is an amazing book about um uh about the absence of her husband he was arrested when they were quite young I think she was 25 she never saw him again and she spent the next she's she was a great writer who wrote
1:05:09
many great books but this is a book that she she kept going back to over the course of I think 45 years up until her death uh trying to write it and it's really it's it's a book about absence but it's also a book about the absolute senselessness of Terror uh and I think
1:05:24
that's one of the hardest things for a writer to convey because how do you write about something that is senseless the moment you start writing about it you're imbuing it with meaning it's actually very very hard and so and that book succeeds um and another
1:05:39
book that I love is I think has been translated into English uh it's by Dina kaminska and it's it's called um an attorney's notes uh or something like that uh she was uh a defense attorney who who defended dissidents in the
1:06:00
Soviet Union and ended up having to immigrate to this country uh quite late I think she was in her 60s or 70s when when she finally got forced out of the country but it's an incredible sort of anatomy of the corruption of not just the Soviet court
1:06:16
system but of of of the possibility of legal thinking in the Soviet Union I think it's the best book about the Soviet system uh that I know also fun fact Dina kaminska was Dimitri Sim's Mother final question you know the new
1:06:31
cold war with Russia how much did America provoke Russia with NATO expansion electoral influence in Ukraine and even earlier the Serbia Co ofo intervention who started it in a sense um yeah I um I don't have a lot of patience for the uh for the NATO
1:06:50
expansion argument for the simple reason that it's uh it fails to take into account the countries that joined NATO right all the countries that joined NATO without exception asked to join NATO begged to join NATO because they wanted to have
1:07:05
protection against Russia which had colonized them and which they had good reason to suspect might want to colonize them again and uh and so they they wanted to be a part of NATO and and this idea that you know the United States provoked
1:07:20
Russia by uh by taking those countries under under under it completely ignores the agency and and and desire of of the people of those countries Kosovo I think was huge it um you know and I think that we still have to reckon with the with a corrosive
1:07:39
effect of uh the illegal bombing campaign in Kosovo both on on Russia but also on American politics and on International politics andl you know politics of military intervention my a guess in thank you very much thank you Tyler thanks for listening to
1:08:02
conversations with Tyler you can subscribe to the podcast in iTunes Stitcher or your favorite podcast app and if you like this podcast please consider rating it on iTunes and leaving a review this helps other people find the [Music] show