Speaker 1: Okay, so you're in London now right, Yeah, you can
Speaker 1: tell from the books they have them Lost Angeles. I'm
Speaker 1: going to use them as coast because you pull them
Speaker 1: out there. Drink bring. I must say I'm using a
Speaker 1: book as a coaster right now for my comp tea.
Speaker 1: It's not a very good book. Hello, I'm Mini driver
Speaker 1: and welcome to many questions. I've always loved Pruces questionnaire.
Speaker 1: It was originally an eighteenth century parlor game meant to
Speaker 1: reveal an individual's true nature. But with so many questions,
Speaker 1: there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So
Speaker 1: I took the format of Pruce's questionnaire and adapted What
Speaker 1: I think are seven of the most important questions you
Speaker 1: could ever ask someone. They are when and where were
Speaker 1: you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself?
Speaker 1: What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What
Speaker 1: question would you most like answered, What person, place, or
Speaker 1: experience has shaped to you the most? What would be
Speaker 1: your last meal? And can you tell me something in
Speaker 1: your life that has grown out of a personal disaster.
Speaker 1: The more people we ask, the more we begin to
Speaker 1: see what makes us similar and what makes us individual.
Speaker 1: I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I
Speaker 1: am honored and humbled to have had a chance to
Speaker 1: engage with. My guest today on many questions is writer, editor, producer,
Speaker 1: and legendary party thrower Graydon Carter. Grayden co founded the
Speaker 1: satirical magazine Spy and was editor in chief of Vanity
Speaker 1: Fair magazine for twenty five years. After a brief interlude
Speaker 1: after Vanity Fair, which I believe he called his gardening leave,
Speaker 1: he created, along with Alessander Stanley, the online weekly newsletter Airmail,
Speaker 1: which as a subscriber, I can tell you is like
Speaker 1: getting an email each week from your gossip eist, most
Speaker 1: well read, well traveled aren't slash uncle, slash friend slash enemy.
Speaker 1: The Vanity Fair parties celebrating the oscars that Grayden through
Speaker 1: were legendary. It was at that party that I really
Speaker 1: cut my teeth on learning how to interact with Hollywood.
Speaker 1: I remember I was at the party one year before
Speaker 1: I was what you call famous, and I'd really ill
Speaker 1: advisedly borrowed away too casual striped sundress from a friend,
Speaker 1: and Madonna asked if I had come as a beach umbrella,
Speaker 1: and frand Liebowitz asked if I was selling ice cream
Speaker 1: good times. Grading is a man of brevity. He really
Speaker 1: is the living embodiment of the short letter. Mark Twain
Speaker 1: was referencing in his quote, sorry about the long letter,
Speaker 1: didn't have time to write a short one. Okay, So
Speaker 1: tell me about this podcast. What's completely hilarious and ironic
Speaker 1: with this idea of women because I'm sort of invisible
Speaker 1: and silent after the age of forty five, and then
Speaker 1: it's only women who sort of stand up and go, no,
Speaker 1: we're not We're great, and it's like, yeah, but culture
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily absolve you of that getting old. And the
Speaker 1: reality is I have never been more creative. I've never
Speaker 1: been making more things that I love, whether it's the
Speaker 1: book that I just wrote, which is coming out next year,
Speaker 1: or this podcast, which came out of, you know, the
Speaker 1: isolation of lockdown and wanting to speak to people wanting
Speaker 1: to create. Well, it's like a memoir. In essays, it's
Speaker 1: a tell most tell some, it's to tell some memoir,
Speaker 1: with the central thesis that runs through the essays being
Speaker 1: that things not working out is actually everything working out,
Speaker 1: and that is just life that we might not be witnessed.
Speaker 1: Were so used to witnessing everything these days on the internet,
Speaker 1: seeing every failure and fall down, But it often happens privately. Agree.
Speaker 1: I agree. And my mother used to throw around the
Speaker 1: Christian Questionnaire and it was always really fun. And I
Speaker 1: also loved Desert Island Disks, which is the English radio program, right,
Speaker 1: but it was the first page I would always turn
Speaker 1: to in Vanity Fair was the back page. Okay, very telling,
Speaker 1: very chilling, Bruce, And you can tell a lot about
Speaker 1: it person by the way they answered these questions, if
Speaker 1: they answered them honestly, definitely, and also that the brevity
Speaker 1: of a lot of the questions belies of deeper response,
Speaker 1: like they seem to engender, like it's been fascinating. You know.
Speaker 1: The funniest one we ever got in twenty odd years
Speaker 1: of doing it was Arnold Schwarzenegger's What did he say?
Speaker 1: It was just funny and self dappricating. He was really
Speaker 1: very funny. Yeah, he is the people. It was funnier
Speaker 1: than the comedians. He's pretty fantastic. When I first met him,
Speaker 1: I met him a hundred years ago. He did do this, Hillary,
Speaker 1: I mean, by today's standards, it would not be allowed
Speaker 1: at all. But at the time I thought it was
Speaker 1: hilarious and awful in equal measure. He was introduced to
Speaker 1: me and his lovely then wife was next to him,
Speaker 1: smiling a lot, and I went to shake his hand
Speaker 1: and he reached out and he just picked me up
Speaker 1: and he went five pounds that's party drink. He literally
Speaker 1: did like a guess your weight, and he would have
Speaker 1: done it to everybody. Yeah, but I told him it
Speaker 1: wasn't a good idea. No, that would be against everything
Speaker 1: is against a lot nowadays, but that's certainly against a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But guessing a woman's weight, even if you low ball it,
Speaker 1: you can't ever do that unless it's like when you're
Speaker 1: at bale Moral apparently where they do wear you when
Speaker 1: you arrive for Christmas. Did you see that in that film, Spencer?
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. Now. Apparently the queen weys you
Speaker 1: to see how much you've enjoyed the food, and then
Speaker 1: they wear you when you leave and see how much
Speaker 1: weight you've gained. The silver ware in your pockets you're
Speaker 1: way more. And by the way, that's really what they
Speaker 1: should be looking for, is that that's what I do.
Speaker 1: They don't call you light fingers guard for nothing. No, no,
Speaker 1: they don't know. So what do you want from me?
Speaker 1: I want you to answer these seven questions, and I
Speaker 1: want you to make the answers perky and excellent. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure I can do that pretty early in
Speaker 1: the morning here, I mean in my time. But anyway, okay,
Speaker 1: I'll do my best. Am I supposed to weep at
Speaker 1: certain point during this thing, and just absolutely not. In fact,
Speaker 1: you might be penalized if you do. Okay, So when
Speaker 1: do we start? Okay, we're gonna start right now. We're
Speaker 1: gonna start right now. In your life, can you tell
Speaker 1: me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster.
Speaker 1: When I was in college, I had a magazine and
Speaker 1: it was a literary political magazine, and it did nothing
Speaker 1: but lose money. I spent so much time on it
Speaker 1: that I was thrown out of school before I had
Speaker 1: so many incomplete and they said, basically, there's no point
Speaker 1: you're ever coming back because you can never graduate. And
Speaker 1: the magazine folds, and I thought, okay, I'm out here.
Speaker 1: This magazine I worked on for five years have folded.
Speaker 1: And I was in my early twenties. I was thrown
Speaker 1: of the school and I thought, that's it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got nothing left. So then ten years later I
Speaker 1: started Spine Magazine in New York and that worked, and
Speaker 1: it was a huge success, and it changed the course
Speaker 1: of my professional life. But I learned from my magazine
Speaker 1: in Canada that to succeed, the thing you do has
Speaker 1: to have a point. And my magazine in Canada didn't
Speaker 1: really have a point to it. It just was a
Speaker 1: magazine that wrote about politics and culture in a maronic way,
Speaker 1: the way twenty three year olds dude. And Spine Magazine
Speaker 1: had a point because it was a satirical magazine about
Speaker 1: New York City at a very particular time in the
Speaker 1: city's history. And it was funny and it was fact
Speaker 1: filmed and it was nonfiction and it did well. And
Speaker 1: I've had a restaurant that did really well because it
Speaker 1: had a point in that restaurant that did less well
Speaker 1: because it didn't have a point. So out of that
Speaker 1: horrible crisis, and when you're in the early twenties, everything
Speaker 1: seems like it's like the end of the world. Something
Speaker 1: came out of it, and that is just that things
Speaker 1: have to have a point. I mean, they have to
Speaker 1: be there for a reason. There has to be a
Speaker 1: slight audience for it, and it has to be not
Speaker 1: a complete rip off of what's gone before. That is
Speaker 1: a really good point. I haven't thought about it like that.
Speaker 1: It's like a story. William Goldman needs to say that.
Speaker 1: You have to have a spine of a story that
Speaker 1: everything else hangs on. If you don't have that central spine,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter how clever, how brilliant the characters, how
Speaker 1: wonderful the dialogue, none of it matters if you don't
Speaker 1: have that central thesis, right, I mean, look at the
Speaker 1: Star Wars. You know, George Lucas, and then something is
Speaker 1: sort of original. There's eight thousand imitations of Star Wars,
Speaker 1: but if you want to buy a collectible lego, it's
Speaker 1: a Star Wars and it's not like Star Gigantica or
Speaker 1: some other rip off thing. It's the original and originals
Speaker 1: it may take a little longer to catch on, but
Speaker 1: they have longer shelf lives. So how do you figure
Speaker 1: out what the point of something is? You personally? How
Speaker 1: do you know what the point is? Is there a
Speaker 1: need for it? Was there something exactly like this before?
Speaker 1: Even if you recreate someone from the past as long
Speaker 1: as it fills a purpose in other people's lives. Because
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, everybody's in the service industry.
Speaker 1: And whether you're man factoring artisanal candles in Brooklyn or
Speaker 1: making a tesla in Texas, you're in the service centery.
Speaker 1: You're gonna take that candle or that tesla and give
Speaker 1: it to somebody else, and they're going to give you money.
Speaker 1: And that's the service industry. And I suppose other than
Speaker 1: people in fintech or whatever the hell that is, we're
Speaker 1: all in the service business. You've got to think about
Speaker 1: the other person at the other end. And when I
Speaker 1: add an a vanity fair and we never did any
Speaker 1: readership studies or anything like that, but I just thought
Speaker 1: of some person getting on an eight hour flight and
Speaker 1: picking up a copy of the magazine, and I just
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure they were engaged and entertained for
Speaker 1: a portion of that flight, and I figured if they were,
Speaker 1: they'd come back the next month. It's so true. It's
Speaker 1: so true, And I'm just trying to figure out how
Speaker 1: it works in like filmmaking, because sometimes it feels like
Speaker 1: there are films that directors have just made for themselves
Speaker 1: and yet they do seem to strike a note like
Speaker 1: the Lobster, for example, is a strange I don't know
Speaker 1: if you ever saw that movie. It's a strange movie,
Speaker 1: but you can catch the threat of the creativity and
Speaker 1: the strangeness of it, which becomes the point. Maybe it's
Speaker 1: slightly harder to pin down in films than it is
Speaker 1: in a magazine or a restaurant. Well, person, you've gotta
Speaker 1: be talented. You've got to be talented. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of untalented filmmakers, and it's hard to make
Speaker 1: it movie. It's hard to make a bad movie, let
Speaker 1: alone a good one. It's hard to make a movie,
Speaker 1: point blank. Yeah. And I've been in some stinkers and
Speaker 1: some really good ones, and they were all as hard
Speaker 1: to make. Yeah, but that's true. That's life. To make
Speaker 1: a crummy car is just about the same amount of
Speaker 1: work to make a really good car. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, to me, the joy in life is about
Speaker 1: trying to have a job that's less about a sausage
Speaker 1: assembly line as possible, make it in each individual meal,
Speaker 1: and try to make it as good as possible because
Speaker 1: you want the person to enjoy it. I like that
Speaker 1: I like that it's a service industry. In the service industry, yes,
Speaker 1: if you're offering up any kind of cultural content, you're
Speaker 1: in a service industry for sure. What question would you
Speaker 1: most like answered, Well, there's the obvious, what's the world
Speaker 1: going to look like at the end of the century
Speaker 1: for children, grandchildren? And is their life after death? But
Speaker 1: I feel we're going through an age of unaccountability and
Speaker 1: I would like to see some of the miscreants and
Speaker 1: criminals of the last eight years. I'd like to see
Speaker 1: justice done. You know, it's funny. After the savings and
Speaker 1: loan crisis in the early nineties, people went to jail,
Speaker 1: and after there were two thousand and eight banking crisis,
Speaker 1: nobody went to jail. And I thought, you know, you're
Speaker 1: never going to scare these people off unless somebody pays
Speaker 1: the price for it. Do you think that we really
Speaker 1: are in a sort of middle ages. We're in a
Speaker 1: strange period and we all come out of it, because
Speaker 1: we always do. Because the pendulum swings very dramatically in
Speaker 1: the United States and less so in Britain, less so
Speaker 1: in Canada, probably less so in Australia. But in America
Speaker 1: you go from the anti establishment sixties and by three
Speaker 1: or eighty four you had a Wall Street explosion with
Speaker 1: the same people. So things do tend to swing. They're
Speaker 1: going to swing another way, and I have no idea
Speaker 1: which way that's going to go, but things will be
Speaker 1: very different in three years than they are now. I agree.
Speaker 1: So if it's this era of on accountability, then how
Speaker 1: is it also this era of sort of witch hunting
Speaker 1: as well and forcible responsibility. It seems to be these
Speaker 1: two extremes are happening at the same time. That's a
Speaker 1: good point, is that part of the pendulum swinging, I mean,
Speaker 1: is that part of what you think is that when
Speaker 1: something cannot settle, when it needs to change but it
Speaker 1: can't figure out where it's going to, that all voices
Speaker 1: just become louder. Well, the culture wars are so far
Speaker 1: out on one swing of the pendulum, do you worry
Speaker 1: that if the pendulum does swing, those voices won't count
Speaker 1: at all? Because that's the only way to go. You
Speaker 1: can't have counting more. And if they don't count at all,
Speaker 1: you go back to a very dark place where people
Speaker 1: who are underserved or underprivileged have no say in what's
Speaker 1: going on. So all I know is it won't stay
Speaker 1: the same. Never does. So things will shift and I
Speaker 1: have no idea which way they'll shift. And if you're
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties and you said, like, the same
Speaker 1: guys that are protesting the war in Vietnam in the
Speaker 1: nine Democratic Convention are gonna wind up being the suspender
Speaker 1: wearing bankers on Wall Street fourteen years ladies say you're crazy.
Speaker 1: It's so weird because stuff needs to change, like systemic changes.
Speaker 1: That is a very real happening that America needs and
Speaker 1: arguably the world needs. A lot of good will come
Speaker 1: out of this. I don't know what good will come
Speaker 1: out of it, but a lot will social and people generally.
Speaker 1: The end result is something better than before the social
Speaker 1: people started, right, and that historically that's what it looks like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so four years now things will be better, at
Speaker 1: least I as him, So maybe they won't be. I'm
Speaker 1: a half glass full sort of person, so my son
Speaker 1: said the other day when he was like, I don't
Speaker 1: I don't understand the glass half full. The glass had empty, Like,
Speaker 1: why don't you just refill the glass though it's full? Like,
Speaker 1: just refilled the glass? What relationship real or fictionalized defines
Speaker 1: love for you. You know, I've got five children. I've
Speaker 1: seen the way my children are with each other, and
Speaker 1: that is absolutely and utter true love. Even if they
Speaker 1: haven't seen each other for like four months, because one
Speaker 1: lives in Los Angeles, one in London, three of them
Speaker 1: live in New York, that they just sort of pick
Speaker 1: up a conversation that they left off like six months
Speaker 1: before and never stopped talking, And that would be it
Speaker 1: would be my definition of luck. It's the way that
Speaker 1: they love each other. Right, How do you think that
Speaker 1: you have thoroughly nice children because they learned that that's
Speaker 1: learned that. I feel like it's learned behavior. You know,
Speaker 1: Like we would go to dinner and they would sit
Speaker 1: at the table, they couldn't bring any toys before, screens
Speaker 1: or anything like that, and they either like said nothing
Speaker 1: or they would have to start talking to each other.
Speaker 1: It took a few dinners and restaurants before they have
Speaker 1: sudden they realized that this is it, we have to
Speaker 1: start talking to each other. And they started and they
Speaker 1: never stopped. Do you think that conversation is a far
Speaker 1: more powerful tool than we give it credit for? I
Speaker 1: feel like conversation is kind of dissolved now into screaming matches,
Speaker 1: and that that idea of being able to share ideas
Speaker 1: or listen to someone else is kind of a bit
Speaker 1: more remote. Well, there's always been hot button issues within families,
Speaker 1: within groups of friends, within colleagues, you know. And during
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties and early seventies, you know, the war
Speaker 1: was a very much a hot hot button issue. You know,
Speaker 1: climate changes, the culture wars are now. The Battle of
Speaker 1: the sexes in the sixties was a hot button issues.
Speaker 1: So there's always there. So you're going to have sort
Speaker 1: of elements at a dinner table that you are going
Speaker 1: to avoid based on your reading of the other people
Speaker 1: at the table, right, Because interesting getting your children to
Speaker 1: listen to each other or to even engage, Like it
Speaker 1: was funny Kate's youngest and my son at the same age,
Speaker 1: and I took them out for lunch today and they
Speaker 1: sat there and locked in this awkward silence to begin with,
Speaker 1: and then I got up to go and talk to
Speaker 1: a friend who I had seen and it's so interesting
Speaker 1: when there isn't any alternative. They really did just start talking.
Speaker 1: But it's kind of like your their backs have to
Speaker 1: be against the wall to do it and there has
Speaker 1: to be no distraction. Yeah, you need something to prime
Speaker 1: the pump. I used to do this thing called quiz
Speaker 1: Masters at the dinner table, and because I got home
Speaker 1: at five thirty most days and then I've had dinner
Speaker 1: with my family, we have a thing called quiz Masters,
Speaker 1: and I would just just make up these things, like
Speaker 1: for five points, what does you know NBC stand for?
Speaker 1: For like eight points what cars to general motors make?
Speaker 1: And you know, things like they are in cultural things
Speaker 1: and business things and political things. And as a result,
Speaker 1: we have something called Loser Nightlife where we have dinner
Speaker 1: and watched Jeopardy. I love Jeopardy, so my kids, I mean,
Speaker 1: my kids are astoundingly good to Jeopardy. I think because
Speaker 1: of quiz Masters, you ran you dinner like trivial pursuit.
Speaker 1: It primes the pump and conversation. I think it's really good.
Speaker 1: I'm adding that into my percentages of what parenting is.
Speaker 1: I think being a quiz master is a legitimate percentage. Sure. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's like stupid stuff. It's not an important history
Speaker 1: racle stuff. It's just dumb things that are sort of
Speaker 1: linked in the culture that you want them to know.
Speaker 1: About is because they're gonna learn important stuff in school. Definitely, definitely, definitely,
Speaker 1: And also weirdly, there's a brevity and there's well maybe
Speaker 1: it's just with children with a short attention span, a
Speaker 1: short question with a short answer that has a sort
Speaker 1: of mind blowing concept. But my son loves that you
Speaker 1: know the distance from the Earth to the sun, and
Speaker 1: that's why it's right, why quiz is good. But I
Speaker 1: do also think it gives you like a foundation of curiosity,
Speaker 1: which I do think needs to be encouraged, particularly now
Speaker 1: with the distraction of everything. I agree, I agree, I
Speaker 1: agree with that what would be your last meal? Like
Speaker 1: the actual food elements, Yeah, I mean you can actually
Speaker 1: expand on where it would be in Hobie with but yeah,
Speaker 1: the food, I'm not going to say, like you know,
Speaker 1: your hoody menu went in Winston Churchill like everybody else,
Speaker 1: and I mean they could be I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's your last dinner. My last dinner would be pretty simple. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not a gourmand. I don't know about lines or
Speaker 1: anything like that, or smoke cigars or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I'd probably have Italian food and red wine and now
Speaker 1: ice cream and I'd have cigarettes after the meal, you
Speaker 1: would definitely are you kidding me? Yes, cigarette before the meal,
Speaker 1: sigarette after the meal. Good cigarettes. Cigarettes are a huge
Speaker 1: part of your meal. Man, I wish they were. I know.
Speaker 1: I'm with you. I will always, I think, be a
Speaker 1: smoker who chooses not to smoke. Yeah, and I'm a
Speaker 1: white knuckle non smoker. Yeah. That's actually a good wife
Speaker 1: putting it. It's terrible. It's terrible to have done something
Speaker 1: that I knew was so, Joe, what person, place, or
Speaker 1: experience has most altered your life? Well, obviously you know,
Speaker 1: family members and huge part you know, so I knew
Speaker 1: has had a huge impact of my life. I worked
Speaker 1: for for twenty years and he was like a father
Speaker 1: to me, and I learned more from him than I
Speaker 1: probably learned from anybody in a working situation. And I
Speaker 1: feel blessed by that. And I got to ride the
Speaker 1: concorde at the same time. So that was win win.
Speaker 1: Hold on, So, did he teach you a lot about
Speaker 1: life or about specifically working in publishing and being an editor.
Speaker 1: It's altogether. You know, he hated trickery. He loved you know,
Speaker 1: the cleanliness of making a magazine is easy to read.
Speaker 1: As humanly possible, and they're often when you have lunch
Speaker 1: with them, to be long gaps, and you learned not
Speaker 1: to fill in those gaps because I was thinking about
Speaker 1: what he wanted to say, and as a result, I
Speaker 1: don't recall him ever saying anything dumb. Ever, everything he
Speaker 1: said was thoughtful and reasoned, and he had a study
Speaker 1: of yoda Ish wisdom and this I've also learned that
Speaker 1: he would have a conversation about a problem in a
Speaker 1: very socratic method. Rather than saying do this, he said,
Speaker 1: have you thought of this? And you worked through a
Speaker 1: problem that way? So what he'd ask you to examine,
Speaker 1: like have you thought about these different ways of looking
Speaker 1: at this? Yes? And you could say, well, I can't
Speaker 1: do it this way because of this, for this reason
Speaker 1: and that reason. And I think it came through him organically.
Speaker 1: I don't think anybody sort of instructed him to do this.
Speaker 1: It's just the way his mind worked. I found it
Speaker 1: invaluable when I was working for him, and I find
Speaker 1: it a value as I work after him. Now, do
Speaker 1: you think that having a sort of paternal or Evankula
Speaker 1: figure in your life was that all pre children? I'm
Speaker 1: tryingly no, I've I've always had an older man in
Speaker 1: my life. And you know, when you're in your twenties
Speaker 1: and somebody in their thirties takes you seriously, you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're e static. It's very validating. And so I've always
Speaker 1: been last with any number of sort of older figures.
Speaker 1: I mean, David Halberstam was a good friend of mine
Speaker 1: and he was fifteen years older than me, but we
Speaker 1: used to talk a couple of times a week. And
Speaker 1: there was a writer called Michael Hare who had brought
Speaker 1: a very famous book about Vietnam called Dispatches. You know,
Speaker 1: I talked to him for hours usday, used to talk
Speaker 1: to for hours every day to like frandly with it.
Speaker 1: So it's just there a lot of people in your
Speaker 1: life that have part in shaping who you've become over
Speaker 1: the years. And the way you think, yeah, do you
Speaker 1: find that you at that figure for your children? Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you want your child to be able to
Speaker 1: come to you, but you do not want to be
Speaker 1: intruding on their lives. They're adults, they have their own lives,
Speaker 1: their own careers, and then there as a backdrop in
Speaker 1: case they want to talk about something. And I see
Speaker 1: a lot of them, and I'm trying to be as
Speaker 1: supportive and helpful as I can without getting in the way.
Speaker 1: Where and when were you happiest? I mean, I'm generally
Speaker 1: a pretty content person. I can put up with a
Speaker 1: lot of crap and still managed to get through a
Speaker 1: good day. But four years ago, almost today, i'd left
Speaker 1: fanity Fair. I left handy Fair one day. The next
Speaker 1: day we're on a flight to London on our way
Speaker 1: to Provence. And the time I spent spent most of
Speaker 1: the next three years in this little town in Provence,
Speaker 1: about twenty miles north of Antibe, and I honestly think
Speaker 1: I was happier there than I've ever been in my life.
Speaker 1: I had no stress of a big job in jobs
Speaker 1: like you know, being the other vanuy Ferrets have an
Speaker 1: enjoyable job, but it is stressful and it does take
Speaker 1: its toll. And I just felt like all this weight
Speaker 1: had been lifted from my shoulders. I got like two
Speaker 1: thousand letters from around the world, people saying congratulations or whatever,
Speaker 1: and I replied to every one of them, and I
Speaker 1: just read and relaxed and went to the Christmas markets.
Speaker 1: And we had thirteen family members come for Christmas and
Speaker 1: it was just the one of the most enjoyable periods
Speaker 1: of my life. And how long were you therefore, well,
Speaker 1: about two and a half years, over three and a
Speaker 1: half year period, and we had to go back to
Speaker 1: New York for a period, and then we're back in
Speaker 1: New York. Now that's where I am. Now. So what
Speaker 1: if we don't associate work with being happy, then why
Speaker 1: is that the sort of apparently all an end all pursuit.
Speaker 1: It's like, why are we happiest when we don't have
Speaker 1: that pressure? And yet that pressure is about of our lives,
Speaker 1: it seems all the pursuit of it. Well, there's stress,
Speaker 1: and there's pressure, and I find that stress comes from
Speaker 1: external factors. Sure, just sort of something you can put
Speaker 1: on yourself to do something better, to write something better,
Speaker 1: to film something better, to paint something better. And I
Speaker 1: love working and I love my job at Vanni very.
Speaker 1: I was just really happy when I was done. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I love working. Yeah, me too, I love it in moderation. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The best time is the time between when I know
Speaker 1: I've got a job and when the job actually starts.
Speaker 1: I really like that bit in between. That's true, because
Speaker 1: you need an income and you need to be busy,
Speaker 1: otherwise you just woind up being a playing golf and
Speaker 1: becoming a Republican. Yes, those two things do seem to
Speaker 1: go hand in hand. They do, brilliant. Thank you so much. Okay, Okay,
Speaker 1: it's the pleasure, and thank you so much. Thank you,
Speaker 1: graydon At. You can sign up to receive air mail weekly,
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