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No one is immune from status. No.
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Some people are better at manufacturing nonchalance than others.
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Modern meritocracy, at least according to de Botton, increases our status anxiety precisely because we're told that hey, anyone can succeed, right?
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Success generally rests on disarming the very cognitive defense mechanisms designed to protect one's fragile psyche.
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If you're going to write about writing, fine, but the bar is higher.
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Having some kind of other job, being a scientist, being you know, anything, it gives you stuff to write about. Well, hello everybody.
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It's Jim O'Shaughnessy with another edition of Infinite Loops.
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I am so thrilled today to welcome Natasha Chkauskay, who has worked You're such an interesting person.
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You've straddled two very different worlds.
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You worked for years in the art world, where you were at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Metropolitan here in New York. Yes.
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Then you moved on to strategy consulting.
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And oh, on your the few hours that you had available to you, you managed to publish a debut novel, The Portrait of a Mirror in 2021.
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You also write non-fiction.
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My God, I'm I'm feeling social anxiety already.
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And as art mirrors life, you also are the patent holder and inventor of a recursive estimation algorithm.
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Now you're speaking my language.
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Uh, hard at work on a new novel. Natasha, welcome.
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Thank you so much for having me, Jim.
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I got to tell you, you're very You're very, very impressive.
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Let's Let's talk a bit about, before we get into your first book, how do how do straddle these two very different worlds?
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And and keeping in mind that like we're going to talk a lot about the unspoken game rules and all of that, they're very different in the art world and the world of consulting and commerce.
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You can do everything just not at the same time.
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So, I mean I I didn't I never worked in consulting in the art world at the same time, right?
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I I fully switched careers in what was it about 2014 after I finished business school.
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Um but then you know with the novel stuff, with the other stuff, it's it's three words, leave of absence.
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You know, I'm very fortunate to work for a company that is you know, large enough with with uh you know, diversity of folks trying to do a huge number of different things that they have a really good program for leaves of absence.
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I've taken advantage of basically all of them at this point, I think.
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I did you know, you can do up to a year unprotected which I did in um 2016.
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Uh bought you know, one way tickets to Europe with my husband and that's where I wrote the bulk of the portrait of the mirror.
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Um of course they have like maternity paternity leave.
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I wrote a lot a lot of the end of of my first novel on maternity leave um with my son like sleeping right next to me.
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And um I took a future leave which is more like a sabbatical, a protected three months leave to write the bulk of my new book which I can't talk about right yet.
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I'm going to I'm going to tease a couple of at least they won't be spoilers but maybe they'll be teasers.
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We can do teaser Yes, teasers, no spoilers. How about that?
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I'm hoping to be able to say more very soon.
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Yeah, I'm working on a on my first novel myself, as well.
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Oh, what's your novel about?
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Oh my gosh, I'm no, no, no, no, no, I can't even tease it because I'm sure I'm I I I I'm I'm sure that it it is so interesting to me though, having written four non-fiction books, right?
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That all focused on, you know, investing, etc.
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Uh boy, fiction writing is a whole lot different.
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Do you think fiction's harder? Yes.
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I think fiction's so much harder.
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But do you also think it's more fun? Oh, absolutely. I No question, right? Absolutely.
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It is much more fun, but it is much harder, and, you know, it's like it's just a wonderful experiment for me.
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But let's let's talk about your your book.
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You know, the characters in your book might fit very comfortably into the world of consulting or into the world of the art world.
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Um you know, it's focused on warring desires, you know, which social norms do we transgress, which do we adhere to. Why? Why do we do that? Okay.
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And kind of the what what you infer as the illogical and bizarre American etiquette norms. Yeah. Yeah.
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So essentially, you're following two well-off couples, and it seems to me the themes are recursion, innovation, mythology, and glamour. So your research. I did.
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I'm kind of a research junkie. The themes came first.
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The novel The The novel was admittedly a vehicle for the themes, a vehicle for ideas.
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And I don't know how familiar you are.
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I'm guessing a bit because um of your relationship with Anna Gott, but uh I didn't know about René Girard yet when I was writing the book, but um I had come across many of the same insights incidentally and in literature and was writing, you know, very much in in that tradition of exposing the romantic lie and um the the the imitative nature of desire.
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Yeah, the the Girard, he he was I I knew a lot about Girard because I thought his work was very um helpful in trying to understand auction markets.
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In fact, I did a uh thread on Twitter using uh the conceit of Titanic.
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Remember in Titanic where Rose is buying all the artists who go on to become the the greatest masters, but at the time everyone thought it was just junk and scribble.
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And and so I change it, the ship doesn't sink.
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She does marry the bad guy and sets up a salon in New York City.
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And then I talk about uh mimetic desire of all the couples joining this glamorous couple.
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And maybe that's how the art got very, very important.
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Um I'm I find it really interesting that you started with the themes.
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I'm kind of doing the same thing with mine. Yeah.
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You know, art mirrors life.
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But you know, in the real world, you have a patent on a recursive estimation algorithm, which Okay.
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to me kind of lives at the higher end of quant probability modeling, right?
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And yet in your book, you've turned recursion into a literary engine of doubt and self-reflection.
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Talk about that a little bit.
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Well, I mean, we we were we were chatting a bit before before we started recording about um Douglas R.
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Hofstadter's Gödel, Escher, Bach and you know, the the recursive nature of I want to say reality writ large um on so many different levels is a a pattern that just emerged to me in many different areas.
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many different areas. I mean, I think I knew I was interested in it before I would have known to call it recursion um and you know, probably since college and the exposure to it in the Narcissus myth um of of Ovid's and you know, the stories within the stories you that you have you have the the kind of the frame and and then the structural layer, you
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have all of the reflections of reflections of reflections in you know, the layers of the arch to within the story of you know, of Narcissus looking at himself, but then Echo being an echo of Narcissus and the you know, the visual and auditory thing all you know, operating at all of these different levels, but the same sorts of um isometric patterns, right? And
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And I would say that I don't think I draw the hard lines between literary and quantitative that a lot of people do.
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I think that you know, the the patterns emerge in both in similar ways to me and mutually reinforce each other.
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I always kind of joke that um you know, the the studying Ulysses was um more instrumental in you know, and and a good uh consulting education than business school was even, right?
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Like they're looking at you know, and trying to figure out how you know, unstructured data is is composed and and patterned is is I mean, I'm sure you you deal with it all the time and you know, your businesses and you know, when you're thinking about investing in something like um whether whether the you know, the folks are are are tapped into kind of these these fundamental um these fundamental yeah, recursive the recursive patterns.
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Yeah, I I have been absolutely fascinated by them for a long time.
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Um and I think that you're right.
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Um they you see them in literature a lot.
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Once you're exposed to it, right?
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It's like the the reticular activating system, right?
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If and I did an experiment on it once.
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It's like you you you don't see things unless you've planted a you know, an instruction to see them, right?
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And I was kind of reading that and I'm like I think that's kind of [ __ ] And so it gave an exercise and it said, you know, think of something you don't see very often.
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And write it down and then for one day see how many of them you see, right?
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And so I thought, well, I don't see very many really green cars.
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You know, I see a lot of black cars, a lot of white cars, a lot of blue cars, but I very rarely see a green car.
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And so I wrote down green cars and then it asked me estimate how many you think you will see over the next 24 hours."
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And my estimate I think was five. You know how many I saw? Uh 15. 43. Oh my god.
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Well, that's I mean recursion, you know, is like that to the the if if you're seeing 43 rather than five green cars, I mean, recursion is just you can't not see it everywhere in everything.
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It becomes like the I mean and it is, I mean, the pattern of life that, you know, the the fractals that you see in coastlines and even tree branches.
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You you can't I can't look, you know, behind me anywhere anywhere without seeing it truly everywhere.
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And I think that one of the great things that, you know, Gödel, Escher, Bach does is show these isomorphisms so explicitly in such different realms.
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Um the realm that I think he really uh uh forgets or or doesn't do justice to is the literary realm because if you look at Gödel's what, like 19 um what, 30s?
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Yeah, early early 20th century.
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Yeah, early 20th century. Um Escher's mid century.
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Bach is um you know, 18th century.
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But Ovid Ovid is in the 1st century AD and not only do you see like Escherian, Bachian, um Gödelian patterns in the Metamorphoses in particular, but you like like have the multiple layers of of reflection about those patterns themselves.
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I mean, the story of Narcissus is a story of those patterns.
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The story of Pygmalion is a story of those patterns.
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The story of Medusa is a story of those um patterns.
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There's I mean there's there's more. There's so so many.
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Um so I I I think it's I think it's a miss.
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I'm going to I'm going to, you know, try and pitch a review somewhere, I think, to do a um you know, a meta-dialogue style review of uh Gödel, Escher, Bach um you know, accusing like world historical genius Douglas R.
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Hofstadter of of leaving off it out of out of, you know, one of the most brilliant perfect books of of all time. I love that.
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Uh way to counter signal, by the way. Excellent. Uh hey, Hofstadter. Yeah, okay.
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It was the book was okay, but dude, you you missed all of the literature. What is up with you?
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It's so funny because like Mandelbrot, I'm sure you're a fan of his as well. Uh big fan. Big fan.
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You know, I reread, talk about torturing myself, I reread Gödel, Escher, Bach about 10 years ago.
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I read it first when it came out and I was young.
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Uh so I What it came out in '70 '79. Yeah, '79. So I was 19.
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Um and probably not really well equipped to read Gödel, Escher, Bach, but I insisted I was going to make my way through it and when we before we started recording, I talked with you we were talking about the our both of our experiences of reading it and and I would read a page, make notes, etc.
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You know, I was very diligent.
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And then I would turn the page and I would look up and I would think, "I don't think I understood a single thing he said on that last page."
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I but honestly, I bet you were as ready to read it as ever.
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Like, when could you be ready to I've been I've been thinking about recursion and, you know, the related phenomena basically non-stop for over a decade.
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And, you know, this book totally blew blew my mind.
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I mean, there's no way to prepare yourself.
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I actually the my my line on this is because it was in my house for 20 years because my husband my husband picked it up in college and read it so young that, you know, he'd kind of forgotten enough about it not to I'm like so mad at him that he never told me, "You have to read this book."
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I'm mad at literally everyone that I've ever met who has read this book and didn't like implore me beg me like, you know, get down on their knees saying, "You have to read this.
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You're going to be obsessed with it."
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Because it's you know, but I I just don't I don't think that I think a lot of people bought it.
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I don't I don't think a lot of people have actually read it. Yeah, no, I agree. We completely agree.
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It's one of those it's I I'm a big fan of the Tao Te Ching and I often do threads on Twitter or whatever about how you can apply it to other aspects.
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Uh investing is one theme that I I did uh many threads on.
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And I could always I always knew I got into this recursive pattern where when somebody would ask me on, you know, the timeline of Twitter, uh which translation should I read, Jim? I knew two things.
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I knew number one, they were never going to read the book.
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And number two, they were signaling, right?
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They they they you know, it's like and I mentioned to you, Gödel, Escher, Bach, like just doing a cover pick of Gödel, Escher, Bach and putting up, you know, current current currently reading. Current read, yeah.
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I don't think you should be allowed to post this book until you've read it. I I I agree.
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it's kind of like there's the in I think the literary on literary Twitter back when, you know, there was literary Twitter.
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There's a whole kind of theme about not being allowed to um like like read Remembrance of Things Past in public until you were like at least, you know, a hundred or so pages and that it was just too too cringe, too embarrassing.
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You had to get through like a certain chunk of this in private before you were allowed to read it in public.
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admit that I did not get through Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. I tried. it yet, either.
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really hard, but I just didn't get there. I'm on the third book.
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I'm not going to say that I haven't gotten there.
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I'm going to say I haven't gotten there yet and that it is a book that takes a really, really long time to read.
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I've loved everything that I have read, but you also just need to be kind of in a specific mindset um and it requires, I mean, like Gödel, Escher, Bach, a hundred percent of your attention and as we all know, it's getting harder and harder to give that, isn't it?
18:28
But I want to I want to I want to go back to what you said, Jim, about translations and how translation is signaling because there's actually a scene in the Portrait of a Mirror where one of the characters signals to another about uh you know, their their high status and and um uh erudition by specifically recommending a specific uh uh translation of of Anna Karenina. So, there you go.
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And you know that they're never going to read it. Of course.
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But she But she But she But she does because she because you know, only if you're in love, I think, maybe.
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I think that it's really interesting because so much of your book does cover the status game, for lack of a better Will Storey picked that beautiful title for his best-selling book. Yeah. It's a good one.
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Um, and you've written about kind of an arms race in manufactured nonchalance. Okay.
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And I remember when when I was preparing for this, that's kind of like one of the ways that I was raised.
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I was I was raised, and it was never overtly said to me.
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It was an unwritten game rule, right?
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But I got it from my parents, I got it from the rest of my family, and that was never make it look hard.
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Always make it look easy, which I kind of lived by for a big portion of my young life until I like was really working very, very hard on setting up a company, etc.
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, and and I just had this insight like, this is [ __ ] Like, this is really hard. Okay.
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And yet I've got to continually say, "Ah, yeah, that was nothing."
20:31
What Why do you think that that is such a a a unique aspect, I guess we would call it, of certain classes in America, where you know, it's definitely a class thing. It absolutely is. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about that.
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Give me your your your thesis on that.
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Well, I mean, off the cuff, it is utterly ingrained in our elite education system.
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So, you know, my public school in central Pennsylvania where I went until eighth grade.
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You know, there was a certain level of it.
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You know, it was an upper middle class, you know, um, academically inclined environment around Penn State, etc.
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And you know, there was there was some sense that maybe, you know, you you wanted to make it seem like you weren't trying quite as hard.
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But when I went then to boarding school in Connecticut, different world.
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The level of, um, the delta between the amount of effort and and like the effort to shield effort is part of what you are literally learning there because it is such a class signifier and, um, you know, what classes ultimately function to do is is self-perpetuate, right?
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It's the success is succession as, uh, my friend Erica Robles Anderson, a professor at NYU, would say, right?
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And and that is non-manufactured nonchalance is how you show that you are part of of the club.
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And specifically, it's not it's not manufactured nonchalance, it's it's trying to make it as genuine seeming as possible.
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And really, it's very, very hard to It's hard to it's it's hard to to learn that skill.
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That kind of ease is, uh, you know, a function of being raised in privilege.
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And it it came It did not come so easy to me, um, you know, coming from State College, Pennsylvania, as it came to, you know, many of the kids from from New York, from Boston, etc.
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And, um, you know, that but that's that's probably why I worked all the harder for it, right?
23:04
Well, you know, like De Botton writes about status anxiety.
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I don't know whether you've read my friend Rob Henderson's luxury beliefs.
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Yeah, yeah, I'm familiar with I'm familiar with luxury beliefs.
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And and like in one view sort of merit modern meritocracy increases, at least according to De Botton, increases our status anxiety precisely because we're told that hey, anyone can succeed, right?
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Under the merit system, hey, it doesn't matter that you went to state state school, it doesn't matter where you come from, you can succeed and that can cause a lot of anxiety to people who like, wait a minute, I I went to, you know, fill in the blank Ivy, the the blank prep school.
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And and it seems to me that I I guess one of his prescriptions is that, you know, you should you should try to as best you can become of like what Paul Have you read Paul Fussell's class?
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Oh, you better believe it. You better believe it.
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That you know, right around the end of college, I think what very few books have influenced me more. I thought it was a riot.
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It you know, no, it's it Paul Fussell's influenced my work immensely.
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Actually, I love that book and it's kind of it's kind of a guilty pleasure because he is so caustically funny, But so funny. nails it.
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He He he nailed it from from I I guess when was that published?
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In the 80s, like 40 19, yeah, like 19 40 years ago.
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I mean, even by the time I was reading it in like the late aughts, it was already outdated in some ways, but it was familiar enough that you know what it you know what my favorite part of that that book is?
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You know the like the the living room diagnostic in the end.
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I mean, I die over it because, you know, this is where this is and and a lot of it with you know with what's really really funny about that book is the whole creation of the X class. Yes.
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It like gives him an out, right?
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It's like a very status conscious thing for him to do to like try and remove himself and you know what what David Brooks would go on to like like glob on in in the early aughts around the Bobo movement or the Bohemian movement.
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It's like very I I want to say self-consciously in the um Facelian tradition of of you know class books.
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But the you know, the living room thing I thought was hilarious, but it was also very um at that you know, point in my life where I you know, gained some some some social confidence, right?
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Having gone to boarding school, having gone to university, feeling feeling like I could could um manufacture nonchalance a little better, right?
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But to go back and see, "Oh my gosh, no wonder I could eventually do it.
26:18
I you know, I grew up in an upper you we didn't have very much money, but I grew up in an upper class living room, right?
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With like, you know, old valuable paintings and lots of books and you know, all all the things even if it was in in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania and and you know, my parents were effectively not not not not wealthy at all, you know, academics and professional class kind of kind of folks.
26:49
Yeah, and I I think that it's just his target uh which he skewers brilliantly, but kind of viciously is the middle and middle upper class.
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And he he basically is like there is where a constant state of anxiety is ever present. Mhm.
27:12
And and like I love I love the way he sets up the nine different classes with with the top out of sight is what he calls the the richest or the highest class and then the bottom out of sight and basically says they're the same. Yeah, they're the same.
27:28
That But what's so funny about I actually don't He He is super super hard on on um the bourgeois strivers.
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But that actually to me is less impressive than how much she gets away with skewering the lower middle classes and the I mean in ways that really I think would be politically incorrect these days and you just basically couldn't do.
27:52
But I mean everyone except for the top out of sight bottom out of sight, he he's merciless and the X class.
28:01
He's just He's merciless.
28:03
He You can't You almost can't imagine It's so funny you almost can't imagine a book And it's laugh-out-loud funny and there's a there's a mid-20th century author, Stephen Potter, who wrote a series of books on gamesmanship, on how to one-up the other person. Uh Oh, that's funny.
28:22
It's really really nicely with Foucault. Yeah.
28:25
But the the you know, you're right about the way he skewers the the lower class.
28:29
Like he you know, prole gap in the suit.
28:34
The prole gap the the and the and the kitch like all of like the little What are those little dolls?
28:38
I like don't even know what they're called. The gnomes I think. The gnomes.
28:42
The garden gnomes and like all of the kitchy stuff like unicorns and stuff. I don't know.
28:48
I think it's I don't even know what it is because that actually was like the least relatable Right. part of it.
28:54
It I mean I mean it was hilariously funny, but I think that, you know, those trends maybe turn over faster and and and they would just weren't as many of them were gone by the time I was I was reading the book.
29:10
Yeah, whenever I recommend it, I always say, "Now you got to understand this is a very old book and a lot of things are not going to resonate with you because we don't have them anymore, but I I also reminded I don't know whether you've ever seen the comedic movie Arthur with Dudley Moore. I haven't.
29:27
he plays this super rich complete malcontent.
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Great sense of humor, but he's a drunk.
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He doesn't do anything, etc.
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And so his family does an intervention on him to get him to stop drinking and and they go and he goes to like AA and they're all in their little circle and and somebody he's he's talking very much like the top out of sight member that he is and so somebody takes him on and he goes, "You know, you're just a drunk just like all the rest of us."
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And and Mork delivers the line perfectly.
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He leans back in his chair and he goes, "You know what? You're absolutely right.
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I am just a drunk just like the rest of you, but unlike the rest of you, I am a drunk who knows exactly where his next drink is coming from."
30:19
I know I you you think about this a lot though.
30:21
I mean you know, we laugh, but it's true.
30:24
Like like alcoholism is seen very differently by social class and it is judged so much more harshly when you actually don't have the resources to support it And you know, early in life it can get like almost glorified as oh, he's a party boy. She's so much fun.
30:49
You're only fun and like a party boy if you have the means to sustain your addiction.
31:01
Um, so yeah, no, it it is it's there's so many it's this is one example, right?
31:05
There's so many examples where the exact same behavior reads not just um more or less offensively, but like antithetically based on um on your social class in many ways uh at a certain point you can like the Olsen twins they're talk you want to talk about top out of sight top out of sight and bottom out of sight by the way, absolutely still exist.
31:30
The Olsen Look at the Olsen twins with their and and it doesn't matter.
31:36
They could do they can dress often times they're very elegant, but sometimes they can look just like crazy homeless bag ladies and you know, it's a that's a $150,000 bag that they're carrying, but nobody you know, if somebody else was wearing that same thing, I don't know.
31:57
Nobody Nobody's going to be putting it on vogue.
31:59
com is what I'll is what I'll say.
32:02
But that's also interesting to me because we have changed so much from where social status was pretty easy to signal in the physical world. Yeah. Right?
32:13
Like, you know, a bespoke suit, a a beautiful watch, beautiful home, etc.
32:20
But we we now live so much of our life through screens.
32:26
And and it doesn't land like in fact, often it lands the opposite where you get mocked.
32:32
Like if you if you're putting up uh you know, just like the person who puts up the picture of Goethe Leisure Bach, right? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
32:40
The people who are kind of really switched on just chuckle, right?
32:44
And and so, you've got this this disconnect between the person striving like, "Oh, I want to I want to show the world that I can read Goethe Leisure Bach or I can do this particular thing."
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And and then it backfires.
32:59
And what do you think about that?
33:00
What do you do you you know, Oh, I I I have a whole theory on it.
33:04
I would like to hear it because Veblen goods like aren't the thing anymore. Damn it, Jim.
33:11
You beat me to it with Veblen.
33:13
Like Like I So, I I did an addendum to Veblen a couple of years ago, the theory of the leisure class on Instagram.
33:20
And the like central nature of my, I guess, evolution is that his his theory basically holds in terms of all of the phenomena, pecuniary emulation, conspicuous consumption, etc. etc.
33:37
But that the mediation of screens and particularly image-based social platforms has it skew very differently.
33:47
And we we can actually chart starting in 2012 like the evolution of of Veblenite behaviors for lack of a better word.
33:57
And like, you know, in 2012, there there wasn't there wasn't yet um you know, that that much difference.
34:05
It was really just like pictures of the bespoke suit and the, you know, and the vacation and what, you know, whatever whatever whatever.
34:15
It evolves over time because, and this is where where, you know, the the what I call it is egoic bifurcation.
34:20
And this is where your online ego fundamentally separates from your embodied physical world ego and we get the phenomena that we see now and you see and what was that like there was that HBO documentary like fake famous or what was that? yeah.
34:41
I know which one you're talking about.
34:43
So you that's like the perfect example of egoic bifurcation because you have people working to pretend they are at leisure which is of course the antithesis of leisure and is actually miserable to do and you know so
35:02
they're like they're like you know lying on some uncomfortable thing where just you know just in the circumscribed shot does it look like you know they're they're relaxing at a spa or something and then they're they're like literally lying in a parking lot. And and and this this phenomenon of
35:17
And and and this this phenomenon of egoic bifurcation is just getting worse and worse and worse and if anything I think that that is definitely tied to you know mental mental health problems and and challenges that we we we we are often solutioning our lives and like the status games we play all of
35:41
the you know Debord and you know Will Store and all of what these guys are are saying is you know true but we're it it it fundamentally changes when you are like optimizing for your digital avatar that doesn't actually exist and at the expense of your like your one wild and precious life for like a word right? Like and it's really
36:09
Like and it's really really crazy but we all I mean I I have had to I was so addicted to Instagram at one point like when I was writing portrait I it it's it's really really it it's really hard not to do it.
36:23
You can be extremely sophisticated in thinking about these things and still get sucked into you know, the whole the whole process because because it's moreish and it's such an effective you know, status mechanism for for as it gets easier to fake status, it it status itself changes and the signifiers it itself change and you know, evolve away from from the ease of communicating status itself.
37:00
This is where you get things like the like the phenomenon that I kind of end with in my in my post Babylon piece where you can see a lot of what I call conspicuous crap.
37:08
Like the ultimate flex online at least and maybe I think it's maybe changing but a few years ago anyway was like Timothy Chalamet posting a picture of his sneaker with a cup of noodles.
37:23
Like like honestly the duck and it gets 3 million likes. 3 million likes.
37:29
Getting that many likes for something that dumb is that is where the status comes from.
37:40
You're effectively saying I am so cool that I can do the dumbest [ __ ] imaginable.
37:45
Like like actual brain dead kind of stuff and you're just going to you know, you're just going to eat it up.
37:57
And I think part of that is because at its core status is associated with scarcity. Okay.
38:03
And the problem is we're we're we're moving towards more and more abundance at least of material goods.
38:14
And so people are kind of at sixes and sevens for how to counter signal like like Timothy did with his his ratty sneaker and and whatnot.
38:23
But, you know, thinking back to that emergence, I was not an Instagram guy for a long time until my wife is a street photographer and she has a different picture every day on her Instagram account.
38:36
And so, she was like, "Hey, it'd be nice if you followed me and and like" and Okay, I'm I'm not I'm not an Instagram guy, but I will.
38:47
And so, I started on Instagram and we have a a friend Joel Meyerowitz who is kind of the the granddaddy of street photography.
38:59
And we were together at dinner and he turned to me and he said, "You know, Jim, I have to tell you your Instagram account is my absolute favorite.
39:06
And you should check out your Instagram account.
39:09
I only do it on my desktop. That's my secret.
39:13
But You should have seen my wife's face, though.
39:15
Oh, she would have been mad. Yeah.
39:16
She looked at him and she goes, "But But Joel, Jim just posts random [ __ ] like all day long.
39:26
That and the grandchildren. That's what Jim posts."
39:28
And Joel looks at her and he goes, "That is precisely why I love it."
39:35
It it it's And then we got into a conversation about authenticity, right?
39:39
And how do you fake authenticity?
39:42
Groucho Marx said that great line.
39:42
If you can fake If you can fake authenticity, you've got it made. I'm butchering it.
39:50
He He said something else, but you know, being a good guy or whatever.
39:53
If you can fake those, you've got it made.
39:55
Okay, but Oscar Wilde has an even better one on this, which is naturalism being just to be natural is just a pose a pose and the most irritating one I know. I love Wilde.
40:11
What Another classic example, he would have killed it on Twitter.
40:15
He would have just killed it. killed it everywhere.
40:18
I My My God, he Yeah, there's I don't think there's any age where he wouldn't have been a celebrity.
40:25
He would have been amazing on reality TV. Can you even imagine?
40:30
Oh, I mean I mean amazing.
40:30
Just because I I love his work and and him.
40:37
Um but the the idea of the the flipping if you will from, you know, the person lying at leisure and they're really lying on a sidewalk.
40:48
I remember learning about people who would rent private planes for like 10-minute allotments. I read that, too. I read that, too. picture taken on it. I And you know what?
41:01
I actually I actually read that it wasn't just private planes, that somebody actually set up like a fake private plane But they can put them can It looks like a private plane for people to rent out and take their picture, which is crazy.
41:19
There are also I mean there are also all those hacks about like using a toilet seat to look like you're flying.
41:25
And these things are I mean you can't make it up. It's so crazy.
41:27
Um and then you But then you catch in in little ways I mean not anything that that egregious or anything, but in little ways I catch myself doing it.
41:40
And you know, I catch myself falling for it and like having to tell myself, "Wait a minute.
41:46
That That one is That's not real." It It's all of it.
41:49
All of it is the highlight reel.
41:52
Even your grandkids, you're posting the best picture of your grandkids.
41:57
Presumably it's not the one where they're like Like that.
42:02
I mean maybe it is and maybe and and and maybe when when you do that again, these things go in go in go in cycles too because I'm going to amend what you said about scarcity and we're getting dangerously close to my new book.
42:16
So I'm going to have to be careful, but I told you I was going to sneak it in. It's not scarcity. It's rarity.
42:23
Scarcity is is lack of necessities.
42:28
You got you you know, a scarcity of a scarcity of water.
42:29
You have a scarce There's never a scarcity of diamonds.
42:34
They're you know, nobody needs a diamond.
42:37
You can only have scarce resources that are needs as opposed to wants.
42:41
And it's it's rarity not scarcity that I think really really drives a lot of um you know, stat- status games and and and recursive cycles around what becomes cool and uncool in that accelerating um sense of cycles as you know, it becomes harder and harder to gate keep signifiers.
43:10
And so they have to shift faster and faster, you know, in order for everybody to to show they're rich and cool.
43:18
And and yet it also bleeds downward, right?
43:21
Uh you had the piece on Atlantis, the the hell hole that I absolutely despise in the Bahamas.
43:32
Oh my god, so you've been there too?
43:32
Did you go I've been there very reluctantly and against my will because of the duty to the children that my wife Yes. uh used to get me there.
43:43
But the moment I got there, I looked at her and I went, I hate cruise ships, too.
43:48
Oh my I I've never been on like a big cruise ship.
43:50
I've never been on one of the big ones, but I just hate them just looking at them.
43:55
And I get to Atlantis and they clap that little wristband on you.
44:01
Oh god, I had a totally wristband.
44:01
And literally I looked at my wife and I said, you have brought me to a cruise ship on land.
44:08
I hate Did you I I I like I died with some of the theme and like like where the Trojan horse is like on top of the child.
44:21
I mean I like I could not deal with that place.
44:24
At the same time Jim, I like my husband was like we were like what we got to practice like taking our you know, I think he was he was four or five at the time when we were about to go on some big trips like Japan and Scandinavia and he was like this is going to be like our trial run to start you know, traveling and being people again and you know, all that stuff and I was like okay and But then but then I negotiated.
44:51
I was like if we go to this place, you better book the nicest thing like the nicest part of it and then I will admit that when they slapped the wrist band on my hand.
45:06
I was like I I have the best wrist band.
45:11
I was like I'm in I'm in I'm in the least shitty circle of hell.
45:21
I like your optimistic attitude towards that.
45:27
But it it's kind of like me and so I I decide my wife is just like all right, just stop because like I you're not going to ruin this trip and what I want you to do Jim is just take your [ __ ] notebook and sit by a pool and do your anthropological expedition and that's what I did.
45:49
You can't you can't though because or at least you can only from like 9:00 to 10:30 a. m. because at 10:30 a. m.
45:56
even like the the adults only pool what starts?
45:59
It's It's It's It's like you can't even read it at all.
46:05
I was like I looked at my eye because this is what This is part of what he sold me on.
46:09
He's like, "There's an adults-only pool.
46:10
You'll be able to sit there and read like, you know, while while, you know, Dorian's in child care and like uh yeah, that's what I got sold on."
46:19
And then it was like this I don't know, you know, third-rate Miami club and I I couldn't handle it.
46:29
It's the same reason that I hate Las Vegas.
46:33
Uh it's basically just a a a monument to ersatz and being false and like been there.
46:42
Uh so I used to stay I used to have to give a lot of speeches in Las Vegas because when I was in asset management Okay.
46:49
and they would do big conferences there and I would always stay at a hotel.
46:54
In my day, it was the Four Seasons.
46:57
I think there are other ones now that did not have a casino.
47:03
But then when I was wandering through um one of the uh places where I was speaking, it would had a huge casino and I recommend it actually because if you want to see a perfectly tuned Potemkin village of like persuasion, go onto the floor of a casino.
47:31
You will notice there are no clocks. They take time away. Yeah.
47:33
The slot machines close to the entrance are rigged to pay off bigger than the ones inside the casino.
47:43
So it gives the illusion to people coming in that oh my god, look at how easy it is to win.
47:51
And like it is it could be a master class in trying to persuade people to get them to give you all their money. Yeah. Yeah.
48:04
I mean, we we had to walk through one in Atlantis.
48:07
They have one in Atlantis. Yes, they do.
48:08
Well, it wouldn't it wouldn't be Atlantis if they didn't. Atlantis. Yeah.
48:14
Because like it's we we had a friend my parents had a tiny villa on an out island in the Bahamas on Abaco. Okay.
48:25
And so like nobody went there at all.
48:29
And our neighbors down there loved that fact.
48:32
They loved the fact that nobody was there. Okay.
48:37
And then so the owners of the hotel and complex tried to get cruise ships to come in.
48:43
And I remember I was like a teenager, but I still remember the conversation.
48:46
The woman's name was Frankie Corbett and she was talking with my mom. And she was very irate.
48:54
And and she cuz cuz she called the people came off the cruise ship were according to Frankie package people.
49:01
And and then she turned to my mom and she goes free drinks ruin everything.
49:14
Don't get her to sponsor your wedding, man.
49:19
Well, she was an an old school, you know, New England type.
49:23
And but I I always loved that line because, you know, it it there's a lot of truth to it.
49:33
Which kind of leads me to do in the casino, too.
49:35
They ply you with free drinks. Absolutely.
49:38
as you're gambling, you got you get to to drink however much you want, yeah? Yeah.
49:42
And and of course it also has a very definable objective. Yeah.
49:47
Get you drunk because you're going to play any of those games much less well when you're drunk than when you are concentrating and sober. And for longer. And for a lot longer.
50:00
Let's shift gears to choice plot versus no choice plot.
50:02
Yeah, one of my favorites. Okay.
50:05
Let's talk a bit about that and bring in like are are are the streaming algos that we now face today flattening out the various literary forms in a manner that we could talk about in the First off, tell our listeners and viewers what you mean by choice plot versus no choice plot, and then we'll talk about the effect of the algos.
50:32
Are are they maybe turning the modern world into a no choice plot?
50:35
Uh yeah, I mean, at least at least behind the scenes I think that there's a lot of evidence that they are.
50:43
But first, you know, to start, you know, what what I mean by the choice plot and no choice plot.
50:47
So, um a couple of years ago now, Parul Sehgal had a great piece in The New Yorker against against the trauma plot, and she uh you know, talks about the trauma plot versus versus the marriage plot.
51:04
And I, you know, this piece had me thinking for a long time, and and uh uh thinking, you know, even more broadly because honestly, what it was was was Toni Morrison.
51:16
I could not wrap my head around why I loved her books and why Beloved was one of my favorite books.
51:26
And and, you know, versus the the general trend in how much I I don't like, you know, trauma literature and prefer, you know, marriage plot literature.
51:36
And And it's just Morrison seemed to be such an exception.
51:40
There's so much trauma in her books, and yet they are amazing.
51:45
And what I sort of realized is I, you know, most the the the the when I think about what what I really like versus don't like in novels, it's not just about like, you know, is there marriage structurally or is there trauma structurally.
52:01
It it's it it's a slightly broader category around the level of agency that um the the characters have as they move through the world of the novel.
52:15
So, you know, most marriage plot novels are choice plot novels and most trauma plot novels are no choice plot novels, but you know, not all.
52:27
There you know, there there's exceptions um and and when I when I as I was looking for a framework that, you know, better aligned with my own literary tastes, um you know, it couldn't just be sentence level because I'll take my least favorite book ever, A Little Life.
52:50
Um very good on the sentence level and yet I think it's just like a steaming pile of garbage.
52:54
And it comes down to not that it's traumatic so much as that just no one makes any choices.
53:04
This poor character is just like brutally pedophilically raped over and over and over again.
53:10
And that's like the whole novel.
53:13
And you know, it it's the the problem with the no choice plot isn't that it's traumatic per se, it's that without choice it's boring.
53:25
And because choices are interesting.
53:29
If you have no agency, where does the tension come from?
53:35
Um so so that's really what I land on.
53:38
Of course, I need like strong sentence level uh, writing to enjoy a book, too, but it's it's a necessary condition, not a sufficient one.
53:48
And and yeah, I I I fundamentally gravitate toward, um, you know, novels where where the characters have some sort of agency.
53:56
As I'll talk about like Beloved again because, you know, you you may look at that as like, "What What do you mean?
54:02
She you know, there's so much out of her control."
54:05
Yeah, but the this the novel hinges around the like the last choice, the last most difficult choice that, um, that Sethe has and it's it's heart-wrenching because she has to make it, because only she can make this choice, and she does, and and thus she has no one to blame as Beloved comes back and all these things happen, but but herself, and it's tied to her own the one voluntary action she had left. Mhm.
54:46
I I I agree entirely on the idea of agency being interesting, right?
54:53
I I long ago kind of took the idea that I'm just going to decide once and for all that I am responsible for everything that happens to me.
55:06
The ridiculous idea because I'm not. Yeah.
55:09
But it really helped me because it stopped me from ever blaming other people, right?
55:17
Like when something goes wrong, you the tendency to want to get push it off Yeah.
55:23
say it's somebody else's fault, uh, is just almost overwhelming, and so I just decided I am going to act as if I am responsible for everything that happens to me, good and bad. Okay.
55:37
And it really offers you a actually oddly a much broader menu of options because you're you're you're you're like, "Okay, if I'm responsible, I've got to take I've got to really think this out.
55:55
I've got to really learn from all these screw-ups and mistakes and everything else."
55:59
But the idea of agency um it being much just more interesting, right? Mhm.
56:06
It's like if you're reading something where there are no choices and it's just this horrible this I mean it's kind of like Kafka's Metamorphosis, right?
56:17
Well, that's I To me it To me that's probably like the the least bad. Right. Right.
56:23
That's actually a very elegant story.
56:25
It's a beautiful It's a beautiful By the way, it's a it might be hypocritical, but I don't think it is.
56:30
I think it's been verified through letters and everything.
56:33
Do you know that he wanted to have his friend burn everything he wrote? Yeah, I I've heard that. I have heard that.
56:40
Oh my god, thank god that friend had agency and didn't do it.
56:42
Yeah, but I I also think it's the kind of thing that you don't say to someone if you really want them to do it.
56:49
If you if you want your stuff burned, you burn it.
56:53
You don't tell somebody else to do it.
56:57
That's part of Part of that is like the you know, the status posturing. I think. great point.
57:03
That's a really great point.
57:05
So it's like wink wink, nudge nudge. Yeah. Burn Burn my stuff. I didn't burn it.
57:14
Don't Don't And then the guy goes to get the matches in the next scene.
57:20
You got to complete serious. I wasn't serious. You're crazy.
57:23
But what advice would you give to like an aspiring novelist who to paraphrase Elliot has these you know, in The Love Song of Prufrock, "I shall come back and tell you all, I shall tell you all."
57:36
And then he ends it with the woman saying, "That's not what I meant at all." Yeah. Right?
57:42
What what tip would you give somebody who is, you know, really trying to serve beauty and truth? You know.
57:51
But but has something that they want to convey, has some moral conviction that they want to convey. Is it Is it possible?
57:57
I I I actually don't know because I So, I was really interested in what you said about always taking, like like like almost having the forced misconception that you are in control of everything and and almost Total illusion, you know.
58:14
giving yourself Yeah, no, I know.
58:14
Like but but but it's but it can be helpful one.
58:18
I guess I I guess I would amend it that on negative things, like on on things that damage our egos, we are like psychologically hardwired to try and blame everybody else. Yeah.
58:31
So, I think that my technique is probably a little bit different than yours um in that uh where I do the exact same thing on, you know, stuff that's unflattering to me.
58:42
On I don't On the unflattering stuff, I try very hard to like actively counteract that bias and overtake uh because of, you know, because I know that I'm going to like give myself an out.
59:01
Think that actually, no, you you have more to do with that than than you'd probably like to admit.
59:06
But on the other side, I actually do the opposite because we're psychologically hardwired to think that everything that we do well and every success is, you know, due to our, you know, our greatness rather than any sort of luck.
59:24
So, on that side, I actually tend to attribute Oh, yeah.
59:29
I should I should amend my statement because I I do that as well. Yeah. Yeah.
59:36
Whenever it's like Harry Truman, if you don't mind who gets the credit, it's amazing what you can accomplish. Really. It really is.
59:42
And again, my my one of my favorite thinkers, Laozi, talks about the best rulers being those where the people don't believe they have a ruler at all.
59:51
Where the people say, "We did it ourselves."
59:53
And and he puts as the worst ruler the one who rules through fear and intimidation.
1:00:01
And then the next is the one who takes credit for everything.
1:00:03
And then the next is one who tries to be loved, but then the best ruler, the absolute best ruler, is that which makes the people think, "No, I we did that ourselves.
1:00:14
We we didn't do any of that."
1:00:16
So, I'll amend yes, I do So, I I actually do kind of apply it the same way you do.
1:00:21
I I I wonder if you do this um, you know, at your at your companies, but uh I am really really big on self-organizing teams and kind of that the really really at least in on the product development side, like really uh flat agile structures that allow for um I think that structurally allow best for that sort of thinking to take hold.
1:00:51
That is exactly how we organize everything at O'Shaughnessy Ventures. Yeah.
1:00:55
It's very very flat structure.
1:00:57
It's it's And I'm always trying I'm always trying to do that on, you know, every every one of my work teams.
1:01:02
But to answer your question on like, you know, what I would my my advice to an aspiring novelist with this challenge is uh and I actually have a whole set of 10 of these things for for that LitHub published a couple of years ago for, you know the the aspiring aesthetic novelist, but it's it is number one on the list.
1:01:25
Success generally rests on dis- disarming the very cognitive defense mechanisms designed to protect one's fragile psyche.
1:01:35
So, the ones that we've already talked about are among them, but there are more, too, right?
1:01:38
Like our our brains are our self-protective devices, and ironically, you know, you need to to tear down your um cognitive protection in order to, I think, access the type of truth that makes for really, really good art.
1:02:01
Um You know, the kind of art that that when you encounter, at least in literary art in particular, where you encounter it and and you think, "Oh my gosh, that's so true, and nobody wants to admit it, right?"
1:02:16
So much of the greatest literature is is uh and the mimetic desire, you know, all of the you know, Girard's insights would would count among among these things.
1:02:25
Things that we just don't like to admit um are in existence.
1:02:31
It's it's a huge amount of our problems.
1:02:33
To go back to the like the um arms race type stuff, right?
1:02:38
Uh uh We So many of our problems are based on the fact that we can't even admit as a as people that we care about positionality and and positional status more than absolute benefit.
1:02:59
And so, when we're, you know, trying to solve systemic problems like how to do taxation or, you know, like big, naughty, hard things, we can't even frame the problem correctly because we're unwilling to admit basic things about how our own brains work.
1:03:23
Could not I mean that is beautifully put and I completely concur.
1:03:28
It is it is one of the biggest challenges that you know, I faced it personally like I always believed that I was that I had escaped the status hierarchy and that I was not signaling and then I got to know Will Storr and I read all of his books and I got to know Rob and I read all of his writings and then I thought to myself, oh [ __ ] I'm signaling all the time. All the time. All the time.
1:03:58
I I was uh fascinated by the way, I think you were I think it was Alex Danko you were talking to about the like like the the whole not name-dropping Harvard game, right?
1:04:08
Like that is deeply deeply related to that and the number and the number of recursive layers that get between us because, you know, it it you get into this system where where you know, your your defense mechanisms are like on top of defense mechanisms on top of defense mechanisms.
1:04:28
So, it's like I don't want to signal that I went to Harvard.
1:04:32
But I want to signal that I went to Harvard.
1:04:36
But I don't want to use the word, but you right?
1:04:39
So, so that in and of itself is this, you know, is this is this loop of of of self-deception around, you know, around what what even somebody is doing.
1:04:50
But you have to admit like like oh, I want to say that I want the other person to know that I went to Harvard because it is high status and status is important to me and status like anything that is so basic, it's really not that embarrassing because no one is immune from status. No.
1:05:09
Some people are better at manufacturing nonchalance than others.
1:05:16
You know, that I I have a line in portrait about like one of the characters you know, almost passing the Turing test like the the the um the most impressive aspect of her algorithm being the like like the inability to see that that the algorithm was there. Yeah.
1:05:37
Yeah, some people are really really good at hiding it.
1:05:41
Sometimes it comes close to crossing into second nature, but it's always an almost.
1:05:46
Everyone is interested in status.
1:05:49
It We are social creatures.
1:05:52
We we definitely are and you know, it was Will talking with Will and reading all of his stuff who finally convinced me I'm like, "Okay, I surrender. You're right, Will."
1:06:04
And and and you know, the the whole Harvard thing.
1:06:07
Another thing that works really well on all of these misconceptions and misperceptions is humor. Right? Oh, humor is the best.
1:06:14
So so I immediately thought when you were talking about the Harvard, I really want to signal that I went to Harvard.
1:06:20
I thought of the joke that was a Texan who went to Harvard doesn't know which to mention first. Exactly. Exactly.
1:06:30
And this goes this goes to the fact you know, why why you know, Paul Fussell what we we don't mind we we we can take it when there's when there's humor in it.
1:06:41
It makes it so much more palatable.
1:06:44
Now, better yet if it's both humorous and there is let's say an obscuring layer that allows us to still like keep our own ego out of it.
1:06:59
So, um my friend Luke Burgis says has this great example of Seinfeld that the reason Seinfeld is so popular is because um they're taking advantage of all of like like the the underlying natures and and and mechanics of mimetic desire, but they're doing so in such a way that you're laughing at rather than with them, and you yourself can have the satisfaction of saying, "Oh, how silly. That's a them problem." Yeah.
1:07:33
Like, I've seen this in so many other people, but not me.
1:07:35
Whereas, you know, you get into into some of the others if you get into Proust, for instance, and there it becomes much much much harder to divorce yourself from um you know, the the the insights that that you're seeing in Marcel. Yeah.
1:07:53
And um the the other thing that that ties into is something that I got worried about kind of mid uh 20 14 13, about what I was noticing, especially in younger people, was um basically presenting uh things that they did not believe in as they did, right?
1:08:19
So, falsifying their preferences.
1:08:24
And falsifying their preferences because they were worried that if they were honest about their true preference, revealed preference, right? Mhm.
1:08:35
That they would be in some way um excommunicated from the group.
1:08:38
And you know, Todd Rose wrote a really good book about this called Collective Illusions. Mhm.
1:08:44
Where it's like, if you believe that everybody believes, right?
1:08:51
You're you're you're going to go along even if everybody's just faking it.
1:08:53
Even if everyone doesn't believe that, and that can lead to some really bad outcomes.
1:09:00
They they have the I mean, they have the academic psychological studies to prove this.
1:09:05
All of those studies where, you know, it turns out that that that the group is brought in and to the the one person who is a subject, it seems that all, you know, five or six of the people are subjects.
1:09:19
And then and then, you know, you have two lines and and, you need to and and and the publicly, the five people have to say, you know, are they the same length or different length?
1:09:30
Like, which one is longer?
1:09:30
And you know, very often I don't know, it's like two-thirds or three-quarters of the time, the one subject who's not in on the joke will join the group with the obviously empirically wrong answer. Yeah.
1:09:46
And what I find interesting about that is it gets back to how do you determine if somebody is a high agency person?
1:09:54
They're the person who and and low in agreeability if you're bringing the big five in, right? Yeah.
1:09:59
It's like the whole memetic Girardian idea.
1:10:02
Um I'm very interested in the person who throws the first stone.
1:10:10
That's the person I want to figure out.
1:10:15
Because, like, they are the one that allow uh the all of the other stone throwers to to let them have it. Oh, yeah.
1:10:25
But, we are mostly we mostly copy.
1:10:32
And, you know, it's like Robert Anton Wilson is another guy who's written extensively about this, kind of riffing on uh the idea of reality tunnels.
1:10:39
And we all see the world very, very differently.
1:10:44
And then, he gets into game rules, that unspoken thing, right?
1:10:46
That we all know we all know they're there.
1:10:52
But, uh different people play that game better, right?
1:10:56
Um basically the the the person who like has no fluency in being able to infer what the game rules are is going to like appear pretty stupid to the people around them. Yeah.
1:11:09
And yet he gives examples like in driving, right? That's an easy one.
1:11:15
Obviously there are official traffic rules, right?
1:11:17
You stop at the red light, you know, you give way on the yield and all, but there's a whole host of unwritten driving rules, right?
1:11:27
The letting somebody come in, the thank you wave, uh all of that that can cause huge road rage if if you uh violate them.
1:11:37
You know, office politics, being reasonable, all these things are separate reality tunnels kind of crashing.
1:11:44
And then he has this great line where he says, "You know, what it does is it makes it very difficult for people to have actual substantive communication and conversation with one another."
1:11:57
And and the way he puts it is, "You know, if if I'm a dog and I say woof to you and you're a cat and you go meow, we're both going to think the other one's a bit dumb."
1:12:08
And what and we're really not going to be able to and we're going to make assumptions about them that simply are not true simply because, you know, a dog doesn't speak cat or a cat doesn't speak dog.
1:12:22
What what you and I and I saw a lot of that in your work, kind of the game rules.
1:12:26
Um like like one of your characters, I don't remember which one, I think it was Dale, Mhm.
1:12:33
um who uh you know, you your characters in certain parts of the book treat uh their romantic partners like college admissions, right? Oh, yeah.
1:12:42
Uh Dale is Vivian's backup, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
1:12:50
And it's like, "What's your backup here?
1:12:52
And so let's get back to the um the differences because I'm fascinated by the fact that you live in two really different worlds.
1:13:04
That's actually what I was going to relate it to and this is relevant to the novel, too, because I bring both of those worlds in, but one of the things that I'm really interested in kind of industry to industry is what the points are and how that changes between like like in so many ways business is way more simple because the dollars are the points. They're material.
1:13:26
They're easily quantifiable.
1:13:29
We all, you know, have a shared understanding of what they mean.
1:13:35
It is money is a really successful cultural story that um you know, it has been very successful.
1:13:47
It's It's It's killed it over over a three and part of the reason is because it's so easy because it's so clear.
1:13:56
Um so, you know, that that side of things is less interesting in many ways um just because it's it it kind of to a certain extent is what it is.
1:14:07
When you get into the prestige industries, which I experienced firsthand at in, you know, the big museums, but also in publishing, it's really interesting because the dollars are no longer the points.
1:14:22
The The points are metaphysical.
1:14:22
They are difficult to understand.
1:14:24
They um and and oftentimes you need to be getting dollars from from somewhere else even to play.
1:14:34
So, uh it's it's just They are They are two totally different games, um totally two two totally different games governed by different social rules that have varying amounts of respect for each other.
1:14:49
One of the most interesting things that I found which I you might you may appreciate this is that um in you know, in my day job in consulting job like like my boss and my co-workers are way more interested and supportive of my literary career than I think you know, the publishing industry.
1:15:13
I think it's it's very much you know, looked down upon as like a kind of a sellout move.
1:15:20
Like nobody like a consultant really like nobody wants to you know, wants the consultant to you know, publish a book over you know, the people who have have been um have have given their lives and and and sacrificed their material well-being to you know, for this this great work, but I'm going to be honest.
1:15:47
I think that the that like bourgeois comfort is highly conducive to literary literary art in particular because of the amount of time it takes the stability it requires and and and the the challenge of it.
1:16:11
Meanwhile so many writers fall into the trap and this is actually one of my like one of my other tips that if you're going to write about writing, fine, but the bar is higher.
1:16:21
Like you need to be better if you're going to be writing about writing because it's much harder to be interesting having some kind of other job being a scientist being you know, anything.
1:16:36
It gives you stuff to write about in different you know, a different different games to compare between and contrast and you know, think about.
1:16:46
So, um I think operating in multiple worlds in both like a materially and a metaphysically driven industry at once has been very very helpful um for me anyway and in in thinking about the ideas that that drive my fiction a lot of the time. Yeah. I again uh I agree.
1:17:12
I many high-achieving people kind of have portfolios of status games, if you will. Yeah, for sure.
1:17:19
And that's just and and that many times causes envy, right?
1:17:24
Because they're like, you know, [ __ ] you.
1:17:26
You're you're this great consultant, you write great literary fiction, you're pretty, you're stable, you're all of these things and then you know, you can feel the envy rising, right?
1:17:36
But I definitely think that you you're on to something because um the you're right.
1:17:42
The the trope of the artist is starving in a garret somewhere.
1:17:47
Doesn't really work, right?
1:17:50
It it worked okay, Van Gogh.
1:17:50
He didn't have an easy life.
1:17:53
He also was a visual artist, which is again, the medium is I I I I say literary arts specifically because even in literary arts though, like the starving the the starving artist archetype is a much better fit for poet than a novelist.
1:18:12
You know, you can write a beautiful poem in in an afternoon and it and you know, being there for the inspiration in your garret, I I don't necessarily think that that uh poverty is is particularly um at odds with with great poetry and
1:18:29
maybe it's even um conducive to it, but good lord, I mean, unless you're Jack Kerouac and like and I know precious few people who actually you know write write this way where you're you know just kind of stream and and going and and going very very fast. Um
1:18:48
Um The stability is it is is part of it.
1:18:50
I mean I I can see at least for myself like when I am able to work full-time when I'm on one of my leaves of absence that I so wonderfully get to take it's just so much easier to when you have those kind of big chunks of time the leisure the um it's really it it's conducive to to working.
1:19:18
I think a lot of I can't remember who what's his name Cal Newport the slow productivity kind of mindset Jane Austen's his first example in in that book and it's like it's like a total uh it's totally apocryphal that you know she was like scribbling in between her social obligations.
1:19:36
No, she had this like these these set periods of like massive amounts of leisure and she she crushed it during those times and then often went years like her she had a really difficult period where she you know in Bath and she was like barely writing at all but she was living there and you know being a writer is and I'm I'm sure you've seen this too like with all of the hats that you wear as as an investor and as an author or etc.
1:20:03
Like you're not necessarily writing all the time like I mean how many over how many years have you written your four books?
1:20:13
I mean I would imagine that you weren't always in the act of writing one.
1:20:17
Even I haven't even in my last two books, right?
1:20:20
Like 80% of my most recent novel was written in my three-month leave of absence where I was spending 14 hours a day on it. Mhm. Yeah, no.
1:20:30
It the luxury of having time to concentrate, time to really do deeper work is at least in my experience.
1:20:38
This might not be true for others, but in my experience it was necessary. Yeah.
1:20:46
Because literally you had to be able to do that and I because I had in most instances my own companies that I'd founded, I I could say, "Yeah, Jim, you can take the that 90 days off."
1:20:58
Uh but it it it is really something that ha- has to be there and and I I'm very fascinated by the pretense, right?
1:21:12
That these various social systems that collide with one another.
1:21:14
They they have different pretenses, right?
1:21:17
Like on in the literary one, there's there's a lot of, you know, kind of like, "How dare you?
1:21:26
You can't have a best-selling book. You're a money manager." You can't do that.
1:21:30
Um and and yet over in the world of asset management, they're like, "Huh, maybe I should write a book, too."
1:21:41
Yeah, I think I think that part of it is it goes to rarity, too, though, right?
1:21:48
Because like as as um lofty as we tend to think of, you know, asset management or, you know, high-end consulting or investment banking as being, it is infinitely easier to get one of those jobs than to publish a novel.
1:22:07
Like it's not it's not in the same realm of They're just not that rare versus, you know, they're rare in a certain sense.
1:22:17
I mean, it's still not easy, but it's not that hard.
1:22:18
Like most people, if you like really really want to to a management consultant and you are willing to put in the effort and like go, you know, listen to Victor Cheng for 100 hours before uh you know, your case interviews, like most people could probably do it.
1:22:41
I think the vast majority of people could work their whole lives and never write a good book. Oh, totally.
1:22:48
I could couldn't agree more.
1:22:50
It's It's I I love I'm going to steal that from you. I love the rarity.
1:22:53
Um that's that's that's a better way to look at it than scarcity.
1:23:00
Um as I'm thinking about it.
1:23:02
Um much better, actually.
1:23:02
So, thank Thank you for that.
1:23:05
I will definitely steal that from you.
1:23:07
Before we go though, I'm just going to touch because we don't want to we'll just give teasers, not spoilers.
1:23:15
Your your your new book is about probability, basketball, and narrative illusion.
1:23:21
Tease it tease it a little bit for what people Yeah. can look forward to.
1:23:24
Um it is a another Well, my first book was a modern reinterpretation of the myth of Narcissus.
1:23:32
The new one is a modern reinterpretation of two myths.
1:23:35
It is the story of a modern Icarus as narrated by a modern Cassandra. And so, Oh, I love it. I love it. I love that. Yeah.
1:23:46
Yeah, I I was really, really tickled by the idea I never thought I would write a first-person novel to be honest.
1:23:53
You know, I'm very of the Austenian tradition.
1:23:58
She's the voice in my head, like the reason I wanted to be an author, etc. , etc.
1:24:02
And my first book was very much in kind of her like like 19th century third person.
1:24:08
Um but no, I was really tickled by the idea of an omniscient first-person narrator.
1:24:16
Um I just I thought it was funny and And so, I had an idea for a Cassandra novel, and I had an idea for an Icarus novel.
1:24:24
And as as happened to me with portrait, too, when I really realized I Oh, I really have an idea is when I realized that those two novels were actually one novel and that Cassandra needed to tell the story of Icarus.
1:24:42
But I think all three of them all three of the myths that I've been, you know, really really drawn to um are you know, to the level of wanting to like put put a whole a whole book around or just hold up in our modern world so well.
1:25:01
I mean, you know, you talk about like algorithmic determinism for instance and you know, there's a lot of Cassandras running around saying this stuff.
1:25:14
Like it kind of doesn't doesn't some of that stuff make everyone feel a little bit like Cassandra?
1:25:21
I feel like Cassandra all the time with that stuff.
1:25:24
Um and and, you know, Icarus flying too close to the sun and and just our our world's obsession with with fame and flight and um and status highness high medium lowness and um Yeah, I I and of course, I mean, Narcissus is probably the the most I I went for that one first for obvious Yeah. reasons, I think.
1:25:52
I mean, like you know, you you start you you start looking for you talk about talk about a you know, seeing something everywhere when you start looking for it.
1:26:05
Count how many times something reminds you of the myth of Narcissus during the day.
1:26:09
Like in a single scroll through the social media platform of your choice.
1:26:16
Like it is it's all all narcissists. Yeah. Yeah, and It's all echo. I Yeah, it's all echo.
1:26:24
And on Twitter, there's that uh handle uh VCs congratulating themselves.
1:26:29
Oh gosh, I've never I haven't heard I'm not very Twitter Twitter savvy.
1:26:33
So, you've got to tell me.
1:26:35
You You should check it out. It's hysterical.
1:26:38
Because it's kind of like the old Goldman Sachs elevator, uh which is, you know, just basically making tremendous fun of these people who are so tone deaf they don't understand that they're being like they're making narcissists look modest by comparison.
1:26:57
I have to think that that you must to a certain extent and I'll I'm curious if I can ask you this, if you feel that you have a competitive advantage as a VC in the way you've expanded beyond that role with this podcast, with Infinite Books, where you're, you know, just often talking to like you talked to my friend Julia Sonnevend about charm, right?
1:27:24
Things way outside of, you know, necessarily what what what somebody reading your Wikipedia article would think of as your core interest, right? Yeah.
1:27:33
Do you think that has given you you Because I Because I I do in terms in terms of like the novelist consulting thing, I'm curious if you think all of your other endeavors um uh make you better as a VC, too.
1:27:48
I think that that's probably true, but my my my origins were really in uh public stock management.
1:27:54
So, VC I didn't really start doing private investing until about 2006.
1:28:01
And but definitely it has um uh very much influenced the type of venture investing we do.
1:28:09
So, for example, we love uh what they call pre-seed and seed.
1:28:15
That's when things are just getting started.
1:28:20
And we love that because it's not as crowded as sort of series A and series B.
1:28:28
We're we're not playing in the my brand is better than your brand, which happens a lot with the marquee, you know, sort of series A, series B.
1:28:40
And it it we're just crazier.
1:28:44
And and the ability to glean insights from our other verticals, like films, books, social media, YouTube, Substack, etc. Very, very helpful. Yeah. Yeah.
1:28:58
But it also helped me understand what I'm not good at.
1:29:05
Sometimes it's really good to understand your own limitations and Like I kind of suck at the series A, series B. I'm not built like that.
1:29:12
I'm built much more for the oh, wow, this guy, this woman over here, she's got a great idea.
1:29:21
Let's give her some seed money and see if it plays out. Yeah. We we enjoy it more.
1:29:26
We have a lot more fun because we can actually help.
1:29:32
And, you know, when it comes up to the when the business model's been proved and every kind of thing like that, I'm we're not going to really be of much help. Yeah. So, yeah, definitely.
1:29:45
you're avoiding the memetic hype train. Yes.
1:29:47
Where you get interested in something because other people are interested.
1:29:52
In fact, one of the one of the rules that we have across all our verticals is we don't participate in auctions.
1:30:01
Meaning like if there is some an author for Infinite Books that we really love, but it's got to be an auction environment, we'll wish them well, we'll support the book even when the other publisher pays up for it, and so we'll continue to support the author.
1:30:18
Uh but like if there's an auction, we don't we don't play. Yeah.
1:30:22
Same with VC, same with films, same everywhere.
1:30:28
Because that because of the memetic nature. That's right.
1:30:32
And because like I'm a fairly competitive person. And it's hard to avoid. It really is.
1:30:40
And so I put rules in place to remind myself, "Hey dummy, you you you know, if you if you're going to do that, you're going to regret it, and you know, you'll end up, you know, not having as much fun."
1:30:52
So, yeah, we try to avoid and yet understand the memetic nature of many markets.
1:31:01
Literary markets, financial markets, movie markets, like it plays in all of them. Oh, yeah. Cuz it's human. Exactly.
1:31:10
Well, and that's kind of like Will Storr's conclusion about status games, right?
1:31:15
Whereas de Botton basically says, "Hey, no, be a bohemian or do the arts or philosophy."
1:31:20
Will just says, "You know what? We're human."
1:31:25
And we're never going to stop playing this game.
1:31:28
So, my response to de Botton on this is interesting, too, because like it I think I think his position is interesting because and I'm more sympathetic to some than others, because I actually think that art, for instance, is a very good conduit at lessening the impact of, I guess, status anxiety around, um the just in life, right?
1:31:52
Cuz the status anxiety isn't pleasant, and facing it head-on and and facing it in in many of the conduits that de Botton de Botton recommends are actually helpful.
1:32:03
It's that you can't fool yourself that those arenas themselves are devoid of the thing you're looking to escape.
1:32:15
Like the like like as if the art world isn't brimming with status games.
1:32:21
Like where are the status like like find me a more intense status game structure than the art world. You can't.
1:32:31
Like or or you know or well I mean one of those is religion, right? Or philosophy.
1:32:35
Like you think like big big like brand name philosophers aren't competitive with each other for you know academic status and their you know chairs and and accolades. Like dream on. It exists everywhere. So face it.
1:32:55
Realize that you can't escape it.
1:32:56
Realize no one else can either. It's not embarrassing.
1:32:59
And and you know do do your best to keep it keep it in perspective.
1:33:07
Perfect segue to our final question.
1:33:07
I have had the most fun chatting. Oh, me too. Me too.
1:33:12
We have We have a heck of a lot in common.
1:33:15
I I We absolutely We absolutely do.
1:33:19
Um so our final question here is plays a little game and that game is we're going to make you Empress of the world only for one day. Yeah, of course. Who wouldn't, right?
1:33:31
But only for one day and there's two things that we do have two rules.
1:33:32
You can't You can't kill anyone and you can't put anyone in a reeducation camp.
1:33:39
But what we're going to allow is we're going to hand you a magic microphone and you can say two things into it that will incept the entire population on planet Earth.
1:33:52
Whatever their next morning is, they're going to take the two things that you've Incepted and they're going to say, "You know what?
1:33:58
I so rarely act on things that are ideas to me, but I've just had two of the best ideas and I'm going to actually act on them."
1:34:08
What two things are you going to Incept into the world? Okay.
1:34:14
The first one read Jane Austen. All six novels. All six of them.
1:34:23
No better way to understand the world.
1:34:28
And the second one's very selfish.
1:34:28
Which is read all of mine. Love that.
1:34:39
You're going to have You're going to sell 8 billion copies I sure hope so. your book.
1:34:43
What a great Inception point.
1:34:47
Natasha, this has been so much fun.
1:34:50
Thank you so much for coming on.
1:34:53
Um and best of luck with the the book that shall not be named, but hopefully is coming out sometime within a year maybe. Let's Let's sure hope.
1:35:01
Thank you so much for having me. The pleasure was mine. Um what a treat.
1:35:06
Uh the treat and pleasure were mine.