Speaker 1: Anyone who claims to care about the environment has to
Speaker 1: acknowledge also hypocrisy. But that doesn't have to stop our
Speaker 1: efforts in their tracks.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, today, I'm with Jonathan Saffron four, who is
Speaker 2: one of the most accomplished authors and thinkers of his generation.
Speaker 2: I first met Jonathan Oh quite a few years ago
Speaker 2: when he published an amazing book, Eating Animals. That was
Speaker 2: not your first book, though, was it, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: No, and it's not the first time we met, Oh,
Speaker 1: you tell me we met even before then. When I
Speaker 1: published Everything Is Illuminated. I came out to your farm.
Speaker 1: Unless I dreamt this, which is also possible.
Speaker 3: But there's a.
Speaker 1: Detail from that afternoon that I remember really vividly, which
Speaker 1: was that whatever the piece was before me that you
Speaker 1: were doing involved smoothies, and you had a bunch of
Speaker 1: smoothies on the table. And after we had done our segment,
Speaker 1: I said, could I drink one of those smoothies? And
Speaker 1: you said you want to drink one of those smoothies?
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, they look delicious, and they're just sitting there,
Speaker 1: and for whatever reason, you thought it was the funniest
Speaker 1: thing you'd ever heard.
Speaker 3: How was the smoothie who can remember.
Speaker 2: I don't know all smoothies are the same ultimately, but
Speaker 2: I always liked you because I always liked your books.
Speaker 2: And it's just incredible the career you've had as one
Speaker 2: of the literary world's most accomplished writers. You gained the
Speaker 2: literary world's attention with your best selling fiction book Starting Books,
Speaker 2: starting with Everything Is Illuminated, and you've also written best
Speaker 2: selling nonfiction books that explore factory farming, which really attracted
Speaker 2: me and really appealed to me and my daughter a vegetarian,
Speaker 2: but also global warming. You have focused on that, and
Speaker 2: the latest book is We Are the Weather. We have
Speaker 2: so much to talk about and it's so nice to
Speaker 2: see you again. It just happened a couple weeks ago.
Speaker 2: I was doing a commercial and it was in a beautiful,
Speaker 2: beautiful on a late late nineteenth century house in is
Speaker 2: a Kensington section of It's some.
Speaker 1: People call it Ditmus Parks, some people call it Prospect
Speaker 1: Park South.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right in your Prospect Park, which is one of
Speaker 2: my favorite parks, by the way. And I love the
Speaker 2: Brooklyn Botanic Garden and I love the Brooklyn Museum. But
Speaker 2: I was in this house and my dressing room was upstairs,
Speaker 2: these very steep, beautiful staircase, and it was in a bedroom,
Speaker 2: and I'm looking around. Every wall was covered with shelving
Speaker 2: and which was full of books. And I'm looking and
Speaker 2: looking and looking in the hallway too. In the hallway
Speaker 2: there are books in Hebrew and German and French and Italian,
Speaker 2: but there's multiples of each book. I'm saying, what would
Speaker 2: so many books in the same book and all these languages.
Speaker 2: And then I saw the author and it was you.
Speaker 2: So you had copies of all the different translations of
Speaker 2: all your different books. And then I realized it was you.
Speaker 2: I looked you up in my phone and I called
Speaker 2: Jonathan and we chatted for a little while. I think
Speaker 2: he was horrified that I was in his bedroom. Were
Speaker 2: you horrified I was in your bedroom?
Speaker 1: I had been dreaming about it for twenty years.
Speaker 2: Well, welcome to my podcast. Thank you, and you look great.
Speaker 2: I told him as I walked in the door today
Speaker 2: that he looks like a man now, because the last
Speaker 2: time I saw you, you looked more like an older boy.
Speaker 1: I suspect that's coded language, And what you're saying is no,
Speaker 1: it's not.
Speaker 2: It's not coded at all. You do look more immature. Now,
Speaker 2: you don't look at any of those things.
Speaker 1: I came here from NYU where I teach, and I
Speaker 1: take a nap every single day. That's the secret to
Speaker 1: my relative youthful looks.
Speaker 2: Oh good. And how long a nap?
Speaker 3: Twenty minutes? Oh?
Speaker 2: Sometimes I take two naps? Are good? I am an apper? Also,
Speaker 2: you take it every day? Well, I'm in the car,
Speaker 2: so I sometimes nap in the car on my way
Speaker 2: to someplace. And I think it is rejuvenating and good
Speaker 2: for you because I don't sleep at night. Do you
Speaker 2: sleep at night?
Speaker 3: I have problems at night. Need you don't sleep? A choice?
Speaker 3: Or you don't sleep? I just don't sleep.
Speaker 1: You want to sleep and you can't sleep? Yeah, And
Speaker 1: is your mind spinning with things?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I read or I watch a movie or you know,
Speaker 2: I'm addicted to my iPad?
Speaker 1: Right, that's of course terrible to do when you can't sleep. Yes,
Speaker 1: any kind of screen as.
Speaker 2: You go down the rabbit hole with a whole series,
Speaker 2: I can watch an entire I can binge anything at
Speaker 2: night all night long.
Speaker 3: Too.
Speaker 2: So anyway, well back to more serious matters. Jonathan is
Speaker 2: very active person, father of three, and you have a
Speaker 2: new baby.
Speaker 3: Yep, fifteen months old.
Speaker 1: Sixteen months old, and good, fine, great, She's a girl,
Speaker 1: which is a new experience for me and utterly different,
Speaker 1: I mean, exactly the same and utterly different.
Speaker 3: But I've been enjoying it a lot.
Speaker 2: Well, you recently visited the Vatican, which interested me tremendously
Speaker 2: because I was raised a Catholic and we were revered
Speaker 2: the various popes. I did meet Pope John once when
Speaker 2: I was visiting Cuba. He was there to meet with
Speaker 2: Castro and I was sent down by CBS to cover
Speaker 2: the visit. And it was that same visit when Monica
Speaker 2: Lewinsky's bomb dropped, so everybody left Cuban and I was
Speaker 2: left there with Pope John, and it was a very
Speaker 2: unusual situation. But I got to know Cuba pretty well.
Speaker 2: But Pope John, what a delightful man he was. How
Speaker 2: is Pope Francis.
Speaker 3: Well, he is everything I was hoping for.
Speaker 1: I'm not a Catholic, as you know, and I don't
Speaker 1: know that much about Catholicism.
Speaker 3: I don't know that much about the Pope.
Speaker 1: But I got an email on like a Wednesday that
Speaker 1: said the Pope is going to be delivering a paper
Speaker 1: lau datte deem. It was the kind of sequel to
Speaker 1: a paper he'd released a couple of years before about
Speaker 1: climate change and about the church's responsibility, Catholics responsibility and
Speaker 1: as he put it, the responsibility of people of goodwill.
Speaker 2: And they said, who sent you the who sent you
Speaker 2: the letter?
Speaker 1: Some his like right hand, oh guy, whatever that title
Speaker 1: would be. And they said, do you want to come
Speaker 1: next week to give a little talk about it?
Speaker 3: How wonderful, how wonderful.
Speaker 1: But I thought, this is my little brother or you
Speaker 1: know who sent me this this email?
Speaker 2: I thought it was a joke.
Speaker 3: I did. I did think it was really Yeah.
Speaker 2: Did you come on fancy he's papal stationary.
Speaker 1: Well it was an email, an email, yeah, but it
Speaker 1: did have a fancy little stamp at the bottom, and
Speaker 1: English was like sort of like questionable enough to feel authentic.
Speaker 1: I know somebody in Rome's brother works for it.
Speaker 2: I hope you saved that. Did you say that? Even
Speaker 2: course of course yes.
Speaker 1: Anyway, a couple days later I found myself in the
Speaker 1: Vatican and I got to to meet him for a
Speaker 1: little bit.
Speaker 3: I brought my daughter, which was really special.
Speaker 1: He In advance of meeting him, I asked his people,
Speaker 1: you know, what's the what's the protocol? I've never met
Speaker 1: a pope before. Am I supposed to look him in
Speaker 1: the eyes? Do I kiss a ring? Do I bow?
Speaker 3: Do I do I not touch him? What? What do
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 1: And they sent me back a two sentence text. They said,
Speaker 1: be normal. He's normal, That's all they said.
Speaker 2: Isn't that nice?
Speaker 1: And he's one of these people and you don't meet
Speaker 1: that many of them in the course of a life.
Speaker 1: Who walks in a room and you just know he's special.
Speaker 1: He doesn't even have to say anything, he just obviously.
Speaker 2: Isn't it great when you meet that? Amazing?
Speaker 1: And he was just drawn to my daughter. You know,
Speaker 1: there was a in that room. There was a Nobel
Speaker 1: Prize winner for physics. There was an incredible young woman.
Speaker 2: This is the baby daughter you took.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh great, Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did he bless her?
Speaker 1: Did he bless her? Probably? Who knows? He gave her
Speaker 1: a rosary, you know he did? Yeah, Oh that's so nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he tickled her, which was blessing enough. And then we
Speaker 1: had this like press conference where he had these different
Speaker 1: speakers and the way that he runs his organization I
Speaker 1: found just incredibly impressive and inspiring.
Speaker 3: I said, what should I talk about?
Speaker 1: I said, whatever you want to talk about, whatever his
Speaker 1: paper moves you to say. For about how long should
Speaker 1: I speak? Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, but whatever your move
Speaker 1: to say. Should I send you my remarks before I
Speaker 1: give them? They said no, there's no need for that.
Speaker 1: And there were four or five people. Carlo Petrini, you
Speaker 1: know him, this slow food, he was one of the speakers,
Speaker 1: and we just got up and we said whatever we
Speaker 1: wanted to say.
Speaker 3: You know, in America.
Speaker 2: You would have been produced to death, right produce death.
Speaker 3: I would have been vetted to death, produced to death.
Speaker 2: And this was distributed to the public.
Speaker 1: How so it was the official release of this paper,
Speaker 1: of his pamphlet. It's maybe like forty pages. You can
Speaker 1: find it online in anywhere, and it's really worth reading.
Speaker 1: It's an incredibly impressive document. It's more progressive than any
Speaker 1: elected world leader would say. So they had added a
Speaker 1: two hundred three hundred journalists there and we gave our
Speaker 1: talks and then it was disseminated through there.
Speaker 3: And magazine tu Well.
Speaker 2: Global warming certainly is abstract, it's overwhelming, it's frightening to
Speaker 2: all of us. And to me it's kind of especially
Speaker 2: depressing and at the same time kind of enlightening. I'm
Speaker 2: a gardener, so it has affected me a lot. My
Speaker 2: hobby's gardening. And I just found out that Bedford, New York,
Speaker 2: which has been traditionally zone five on the climate chart,
Speaker 2: have you know it's for gardeners and growers and farmers,
Speaker 2: is now a seven. It has warmed. The climate has
Speaker 2: warmed two whole not degrees, but two whole classes up
Speaker 2: to seven. So it's almost I can almost grow anything
Speaker 2: now in a seven. We still we'll get frosts, and
Speaker 2: citrus would die if I if I put them outside.
Speaker 2: But it's horrifying, horrifying where I can grow now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, gardeners see what the rest of us have a
Speaker 1: harder time seeing.
Speaker 3: Yes, we don't have a day to day experience with it.
Speaker 1: These horrible floods in California.
Speaker 2: And they're talking about atmospheric rivers now, which means there's
Speaker 2: a river in the sky dumping eight inches on Los
Speaker 2: Angeles and Brentwood had eight inches of rain in one
Speaker 2: and a half days. That is an extraordinary amount of water,
Speaker 2: and plants can't take it, the houses can't take it.
Speaker 2: The hillsides in California certainly can't take it, and they're
Speaker 2: so worried that another storm is coming and then the
Speaker 2: MUDs lives will start. But all of this has prompted
Speaker 2: you to write a really interesting book, We are the Weather.
Speaker 2: Can you tell us about that book?
Speaker 1: So I should say I never thought I would write nonfiction.
Speaker 1: I never really wanted to when I was Younger writers,
Speaker 1: I know, seemed to break into two categories. Those who
Speaker 1: grew up and always knew they wanted to write were
Speaker 1: always reading like kids who had books under the covers
Speaker 1: of the flashlight when they were little.
Speaker 2: That's me. See, that was not me, it was it. No,
Speaker 2: I came to reading later.
Speaker 3: I'm still not.
Speaker 2: I read a lot of books in your room. Who's
Speaker 2: reading all those books?
Speaker 3: First of all, as you said, they're all No.
Speaker 2: No, they weren't because I was looking at the titles
Speaker 2: of all the books I like to read.
Speaker 3: But I bet you read more books than I do,
Speaker 3: or I.
Speaker 2: Used to read more. As time disappears, I have read
Speaker 2: fewer and fewer books a year. But I did read
Speaker 2: so so much under the covers with a flashlight. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so I came to a kind of late and not
Speaker 2: because I.
Speaker 1: Loved literature, but I loved just a certain kind of
Speaker 1: expressiveness and freedom.
Speaker 2: A way of like, and you had an imagination.
Speaker 1: Exercising my imagination, Yes, And so that got me into
Speaker 1: fiction and then nonfiction. It was really born out of
Speaker 1: this concern that I had and I've had since I
Speaker 1: was a little kid, which I think a lot of
Speaker 1: kids have, which is why do.
Speaker 3: We eat meat?
Speaker 2: Anxiety?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and anxiety about it, and not even anxiety, but
Speaker 1: an acknowledgment that our relationship to animals. Every story I
Speaker 1: received about what animals are and how to treat them
Speaker 1: was sort of like made a kind of sense to me,
Speaker 1: except for food. So you have a family dog, you
Speaker 1: treat it well. You certainly don't abuse it, you know,
Speaker 1: you try to give it pleasure, and you act as
Speaker 1: if it is has some sort of experience of its existence.
Speaker 1: I had stuffed animals that I was like tucked in
Speaker 1: with my parents, read me stories, and I was a
Speaker 1: kid that had animals for heroes.
Speaker 3: And then there's this other thing we do where.
Speaker 1: We keep them in cages and dismember them and eat them.
Speaker 1: So that doesn't mean it's wrong. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of things that kids find weird that aren't wrong. You're
Speaker 1: just not mature enough to understand the way that they
Speaker 1: are a part of life. If you showed a kid,
Speaker 1: you know, an image of people having sex, the kid
Speaker 1: would freak out and think, this is the most horrible
Speaker 1: thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 3: So I was an on and off vegetarian for a
Speaker 3: lot of my life.
Speaker 1: At times I was really on, and I was kind
Speaker 1: of like annoyingly inflexible about it and probably a little
Speaker 1: self righteous. And at times I was really off and
Speaker 1: I would eat anything that was in front of me.
Speaker 2: But it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Until my first child was born that I thought, you know,
Speaker 1: I really need to figure out what's going on here,
Speaker 1: both in the sense of how this industry works and
Speaker 1: also how I actually feel and like what my own
Speaker 1: limits for change are. There are a lot of things
Speaker 1: that I think would be great that I don't do
Speaker 1: because they're impossible.
Speaker 2: Well, in your book about climate change, you make very
Speaker 2: bold statements. If we skipped animal products before dinner, we
Speaker 2: could make a huge impact. What does that mean?
Speaker 1: So you know, I don't actually think of that as
Speaker 1: a as a bold statement or not anymore then it's
Speaker 1: bold to say if you jump from a building, You're
Speaker 1: going to fall toward the ground like it's the it's
Speaker 1: the science, and the science at this point is really unambigious.
Speaker 2: I mean, don't eat any meat all day long, but
Speaker 2: you can have it for dinner.
Speaker 1: What is behind the statement is that meat is one
Speaker 1: of the biggest problems we're facing when it comes to
Speaker 1: climate change, and we cannot meet the goals of the
Speaker 1: Paris Climate Accords without eating a lot less meat.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of ways to do it.
Speaker 1: It's not certainly not a binary, like everybody doesn't have
Speaker 1: to become a vegan or vegetarian.
Speaker 2: You know. Mark Zuckerberg's solution he kills if he eats meat,
Speaker 2: he has killed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, personally, I find that dumb. I have to be honest.
Speaker 1: You know what does killing it yourself prove? First of all,
Speaker 1: most people obviously can't do that. It's an enormous luxury
Speaker 1: that he's able.
Speaker 3: To do it.
Speaker 1: And I would like shudder to think about the carbon
Speaker 1: footprint of his hunting habits.
Speaker 2: Taking the jet to some place where there's a cow.
Speaker 3: Yeah you can shoot, yeah doing it.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't need to murder somebody to know
Speaker 1: that murder's wrong. I don't need to commit any number
Speaker 1: of other ethical offenses to know it's wrong.
Speaker 2: I raise my own food. Eight of my beautiful turkeys.
Speaker 2: They were a year old, and they're eating a tremendous
Speaker 2: amount of food. They are giving me turkey manure, which
Speaker 2: I put into the compost and feed it back to
Speaker 2: the earth and the forest will grow better, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. If you're going to ever serve a turkey,
Speaker 2: you might as well raise it yourself, if you can.
Speaker 2: I bought a pair of them at the Poultry Congress.
Speaker 3: Last year was the Poultry Congress.
Speaker 2: Oh, this wonderful, wonderful congress where people who grow their
Speaker 2: own backyard poultry for eggs primarily, and also for beautiful
Speaker 2: birds and keeping species alive. People come from all over
Speaker 2: with prize birds of every kind of species of chicken,
Speaker 2: for example. I mean amazing. I go every year because
Speaker 2: I want to see all the different geese and all
Speaker 2: the different She said, Oh, don't expect any babies this year,
Speaker 2: but next year you'll get a whole big crop from
Speaker 2: these two. And I got thirteen babies the first year
Speaker 2: out of their eggs, very fertile, very very well cos seeds, yes,
Speaker 2: and so I have my own turkeys. But I do
Speaker 2: that with chickens, and I do it with guinea fowl,
Speaker 2: and I do it with a pheasant. I do. I
Speaker 2: have all kinds of birds. But I don't feel guilty.
Speaker 2: I feel good if I have to eat meat that
Speaker 2: I have. I know what they've eaten and how they've lived,
Speaker 2: and they're not tortured, and they're not raised. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't raise anything big, no cows.
Speaker 1: So I don't write about and I don't talk about
Speaker 1: and honestly I don't think that much about cases like that.
Speaker 3: I don't have a problem with them at all.
Speaker 1: The problem is the dominant industry, which is responsible for
Speaker 1: nine factory percent of the animals that we eat. You know,
Speaker 1: you're talking about your turkeys. You put them together. They
Speaker 1: made other turkeys. There's not a supermarket in the United
Speaker 1: States where you can buy a turkey that was not
Speaker 1: the product of artificial insemination. I agree now, because their
Speaker 1: their bodies have been bred to grow so big that
Speaker 1: they're literally incapable of having sex anymore. So, the notion
Speaker 1: of that as like our symbol of harvest, our symbol
Speaker 1: of gratitude, is truly insane.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it has changed tremendously and I and
Speaker 2: I totally understand that, and it has not yet driven
Speaker 2: me to vegetarianism. But I cannot go to a supermarket
Speaker 2: and buy a steak. I just can't. I have to
Speaker 2: go to a local farmer and buy something that he
Speaker 2: raised in his in his pasture that looks good, tastes good.
Speaker 1: Well, we can, I think we can move toward more
Speaker 1: system like that. Yes, it's just about to do so
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 3: To eat a lot less.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, both will be more expensive than they explain
Speaker 2: about the gases that arise from just the manure of
Speaker 2: all these animals and feed lots. I mean that's more.
Speaker 2: Isn't that the most most the biggest cause of pollution
Speaker 2: in the United States.
Speaker 1: Of methane, Yes, yeah, And it's not only the burping
Speaker 1: and farting of cows. It's also an incredibly energy intensive industry.
Speaker 1: So you have to put in about between seven and
Speaker 1: twenty calories into an animal to get one calorie out
Speaker 1: of the animal. So living on a planet with finite
Speaker 1: resources and ever increasing human population and needs for food,
Speaker 1: it's just unsustainable. And it's not like a provocative opinion
Speaker 1: When I was writing We Are the Weather, I spoke
Speaker 1: to a lot of climate scientists, and I met some
Speaker 1: who were vegetarian.
Speaker 3: I met some who eat meat once a day.
Speaker 1: But I didn't meet one who disputed the fact that
Speaker 1: this is an enormous piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2: And yet they have not stopped eating me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but who would I be to judge that I
Speaker 1: have not stopped flying, I have not stopped driving cars?
Speaker 2: Yeah. I was going to ask you, do you drive
Speaker 2: a car? I do, yeah, yeah, gas car.
Speaker 1: I had an electric car and then I found myself
Speaker 1: getting in trouble all the time, you know, running out
Speaker 1: of charge with my kids and whatnot. So now I
Speaker 1: have a guest car. I'm lucky in Brooklyn not to
Speaker 1: really have to drive hardly at all. But I mean,
Speaker 1: we are all massive. Anyone who claims to care about
Speaker 1: the environment has to acknowledge also hypocrisy. But that doesn't
Speaker 1: have to like stop our efforts in their tracks.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I think when we feel vulnerable, and climate change makes
Speaker 1: a lot of us feel vulnerable, there's a temptation to
Speaker 1: race towards these binaries.
Speaker 3: These all are nothing like.
Speaker 1: If you acknowledge that meat is problematic, then it makes
Speaker 1: one feel like a hypocrite not to go all the way,
Speaker 1: you know, and become a vegan or a vegetarian. If
Speaker 1: one acknowledges that climate change is a catastrophe, you can
Speaker 1: feel like a hypocrite if you still drive.
Speaker 2: Or fly or take an airplane. Right, But there's no.
Speaker 1: Progress in that because the reality is we're human beings.
Speaker 3: We're not ethical or logical robots.
Speaker 2: And unjul we are. We're going to keep flying and
Speaker 2: we couldn't keep driving.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the good news is, like meeting the goals
Speaker 1: of the Paris Climate Cords doesn't require us to give
Speaker 1: that all up, to give it all up. It just
Speaker 1: requires us to live with a kind of moderation we're
Speaker 1: not used to. And that probably scares us more as
Speaker 1: a prospect than it would actually be uncomfortable as reality.
Speaker 2: But I remember growing up, you had one car. I mean,
Speaker 2: this family of eight, we had one car. We turned
Speaker 2: the lights off when we left a room, We ate moderate,
Speaker 2: moderate amounts of store bought food, and we traveled not
Speaker 2: too much, but we did travel. This was, you know,
Speaker 2: fifty sixty years ago, and now it's just snowballed so
Speaker 2: drastically that we have to, we have to take some steps.
Speaker 2: I travel a lot, and I see I see every
Speaker 2: I just went to Mumbai for the first time in India.
Speaker 2: I was horrified at the way people live there, the
Speaker 2: crowded nature of the city. The filth is such a
Speaker 2: difficult place to exist and polluted beyond believe, and nothing's being.
Speaker 3: Done about it.
Speaker 2: So it's heartbreaking, worriesome, really worrisome.
Speaker 1: The trick is, the stuff is heartbreaking when you have
Speaker 1: occasion to think about it or when you're forced to
Speaker 1: look at.
Speaker 3: It, and it's incredibly easy to forget when you don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you were in Mumbai.
Speaker 3: You saw it with your own eyes. You were moved.
Speaker 1: If you are like me, and you probably are in
Speaker 1: this way, in a week, you'll think about it less.
Speaker 3: In two weeks you'll think about it less.
Speaker 2: No, I have a pretty good memory, and I don't
Speaker 2: and vivid, a vivid memory for things that are not pleasant.
Speaker 1: And so what do you do with it? If you
Speaker 1: see something like that.
Speaker 2: And well, I talk about it, I ask about it,
Speaker 2: and I learned about it. And what else can we
Speaker 2: do really except read your books and give you give
Speaker 2: a book to everybody about this and hope that more
Speaker 2: and more and more people will take it seriously. How
Speaker 2: long does it take you to write a book like
Speaker 2: We Are the Weather?
Speaker 3: That's a tricky question. Two years.
Speaker 1: But you know, there's a great old story someone told
Speaker 1: me once when I first started writing about Picasso, that
Speaker 1: a friend of his went to his studio as Pacaussa
Speaker 1: was preparing a show, and they were there's a show
Speaker 1: of drawings, and there were drawings on all the walls,
Speaker 1: and they were sort of like naive looking, primitive looking,
Speaker 1: and his friend said, just between us, like how much
Speaker 1: are you going to sell that for? And Pacassa said,
Speaker 1: I don't know the equivalent today of a million dollars
Speaker 1: five million notes. He said, because how long did it
Speaker 1: take you to draw that? The implication being it looks
Speaker 1: like it took thirty seconds to draw, And Pakassa said
Speaker 1: that one took me about seventy six years, which is
Speaker 1: how old he was at the time. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's different kinds of ways of work, like everything that
Speaker 1: one does leads to where you are. But then there's
Speaker 1: also the time when you're like sitting down and trying
Speaker 1: to put words on a page.
Speaker 2: So but you're prolific. I used to be you used
Speaker 2: to be more powerful. Do you think you were more
Speaker 2: Your first book came out in what year?
Speaker 1: That was in two thousand and two, which is easy
Speaker 1: to remember because it was right after two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Okay, and that is everything is illuminated. Yeah, tell us
Speaker 2: what's the storyline? And everything is illuminated if you have
Speaker 2: not read this beautiful book.
Speaker 1: So I should say I have not read that beautiful
Speaker 1: book since since I wrote.
Speaker 3: It, So I hope I get this right.
Speaker 1: It is about a young American who shares my name,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Saffron for who goes to the Ukraine searching for
Speaker 1: a woman who supposedly saved his grandfather during the war.
Speaker 3: That's half the book. The other half we're just.
Speaker 1: Woven through, is a kind of imagined history of this
Speaker 1: village that he goes to.
Speaker 2: And has that village been destroyed?
Speaker 1: That village, that village has been staying many times. The
Speaker 1: last time it was destroyed was during World War Two.
Speaker 1: It wasn't rebuilt. Oh yeah, but you ask a good question.
Speaker 1: I don't know what that area is like undergoing right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, horrifying. Yeah, your maternal grandmother inspired that book.
Speaker 3: She did.
Speaker 1: She was born in Poland and lost her family. She
Speaker 1: escaped east. She was a member in some socialist youth
Speaker 1: groups and assumed that because of that she would be
Speaker 1: a bigger target. So she with a friend walked east,
Speaker 1: the equivalent of walking across the United States.
Speaker 3: I don't know one and a half or two times,
Speaker 3: ended up coming back meeting my grandfather.
Speaker 1: My mother was born in a DP camp, and then
Speaker 1: they came to the States a couple of years later.
Speaker 2: Amazing stories, It's just amazing stories that people went through.
Speaker 2: You studied philosophy in school, So did you know you
Speaker 2: were going to be a writer or did you were
Speaker 2: you thinking when you went to college?
Speaker 1: I wish I could do it again. My oldest son
Speaker 1: is going to college next year. Oh it's given me
Speaker 1: an opportunity to think about how wasted the experience was
Speaker 1: on me.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't know what I was doing.
Speaker 2: Where did you go to college?
Speaker 1: To Princeton. And it's not even like I had so
Speaker 1: much fun. I just I didn't know how to enter
Speaker 1: the stream.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: I felt like I was on the banks looking at
Speaker 1: the stream passed by me. So, you know, I studied
Speaker 1: and there were things that I liked philosophy. I ended
Speaker 1: up choosing at the last minute because I had to
Speaker 1: have a major. I didn't get seriously into writing until
Speaker 1: probably my junior year, and I had Joyce Caro lots.
Speaker 3: As a professor.
Speaker 2: I love her.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she's Have you ever had a conversation with her?
Speaker 2: No, I have not, but I love her.
Speaker 3: I think you would enjoy her company.
Speaker 2: And no, I've read every single one of her books
Speaker 2: that I don't know about the most recent recent ones,
Speaker 2: but I read everything.
Speaker 3: She was incredible. Yeah, she's a good teacher. I remember
Speaker 3: when I was saying that.
Speaker 1: The Pope is one of those people who walks into
Speaker 1: a room and you say, this is a special person.
Speaker 3: Joyce is very much like that as well.
Speaker 1: So she was my teacher, and she was the first
Speaker 1: person ever to say to hey, you should take this seriously.
Speaker 3: You know, there's what would happen if you really tried.
Speaker 3: She did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she I mean, I'm not that's encouraging.
Speaker 1: It is encouraging. It's very encouraging. I'm not unique in
Speaker 1: that way. She's started a lot of careers, a lot
Speaker 1: of writing careers. She would write letters to me at
Speaker 1: my parents' house during vacations, saying you might think about
Speaker 1: reading this book. I was thinking about your last story.
Speaker 1: It got kind of thin at the end. Here's how
Speaker 1: you might.
Speaker 2: And she is.
Speaker 1: She has as much success as anybody would ever need.
Speaker 1: She has no need to become involved.
Speaker 2: She does. She's a teacher. She's a teacher, and that's
Speaker 2: why she does that, because she actually cares. And that's
Speaker 2: such a fantastic, fantastic thing.
Speaker 3: I literally owe my life to it.
Speaker 2: Oh nice, Yeah nice. I'm the daughter of two teachers,
Speaker 2: and they cared. They cared that we learned and that
Speaker 2: we were encouraged. And that's that's the that's the goal
Speaker 2: of a teacher. Don't have fabulous? That is Jrace Carrol Oates. Yeah,
Speaker 2: lucky man. So you've written not only fiction but also nonfiction.
Speaker 2: Similar processes for you? Or which is hard? Which is harder?
Speaker 1: Fiction is much harder it is Nonfiction is more laborious.
Speaker 3: You know, you know what you have to do, and
Speaker 3: you do it. With fiction.
Speaker 1: What's so tricky is not knowing what you have to do,
Speaker 1: not knowing what the destination is.
Speaker 2: Do you do an outline?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: I don't you just go? I just go? Which is
Speaker 2: I used to think was really inefficient.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I have a friend who's a writer who once said
Speaker 1: writing a novel is like.
Speaker 3: Pulling teeth out of your penis.
Speaker 1: Uh, you're just very, very uncomfortable, and I find it's
Speaker 1: gotten harder, not easier over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, now you're teaching. I teach. I teach it.
Speaker 1: But I've been teaching for a while. I've been teaching
Speaker 1: what's your what's your course? At n y U, I
Speaker 1: teach two different classes. They're both workshops. One is fiction,
Speaker 1: one is nonfiction. My classes are almost always twelve students,
Speaker 1: and each week three of them will turn something in
Speaker 1: and we just talk about it. There's no like reading
Speaker 1: that they do other than each other's work. There's no
Speaker 1: lecture that I give. It's very conversational. There tends to
Speaker 1: be a lot of camaraderie.
Speaker 2: Have you found another Jonathan Saffron four in that group?
Speaker 1: I've found much better than that. Oh yeah, I've had amazing,
Speaker 1: amazing excuse.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: One of the great lessons of teaching is really talented
Speaker 1: people and really smart people are not that rare. They're
Speaker 1: not as rare as you would think. You know, every
Speaker 1: semester I've ever taught. I've had at least one student
Speaker 1: that I've been jealous of who's talent I've been jealous of.
Speaker 2: So great when you're jealous, isn't it?
Speaker 3: It's the best?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the worst to love. No, I love
Speaker 2: finding somebody I'm jealous of it, and it makes me
Speaker 2: better in a funny way. And I'm sure it does
Speaker 2: that to you too, it does.
Speaker 3: I guess I've been fortunate.
Speaker 1: The people that I have been jealous of, I've all
Speaker 1: so liked, which makes quite a bit of difference and respected,
Speaker 1: and you know, their success feels like my success because
Speaker 1: I respect them. But yeah, I've had I've had some
Speaker 1: some truly amazing students.
Speaker 2: As a reader, who are your favorite authors?
Speaker 3: I tend to read more nonfiction than fiction.
Speaker 1: I tend to read probably even more poetry than non Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a tricky thing reading when you're a writer. The
Speaker 1: old joke about the gynecologist who comes home Friday night
Speaker 1: and his wife is in lingerie on the bed and
Speaker 1: she taps the bed next to her, has a little
Speaker 1: romantic music playing, there's whatever roses in the vase.
Speaker 3: You know where this is? Guy?
Speaker 2: Maybe I can guess.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, he says, if I have to look at
Speaker 1: another one of those things, I'm going to kill myself.
Speaker 1: I have sort of that relationship to books. I find
Speaker 1: it I cannot read on the way that I used
Speaker 1: to read before I was a writer, because now I.
Speaker 2: Never marry a gynecologist.
Speaker 1: Ladies, Yes, never marry a gynocologist. But writers are safe.
Speaker 2: So three of your books have been adapted to films.
Speaker 2: Everything is Illuminated, Extremely Loud, and incredibly close. Who was
Speaker 2: in Everything Is Illuminated? Well?
Speaker 1: Leev Shreiber wrote and directed it and is one of
Speaker 1: my oldest and best friends. I met him right at
Speaker 1: the beginning of my career before my first book came out.
Speaker 1: It was excerpted in The New Yorker and he bought
Speaker 1: the rights to it, and we just became friends.
Speaker 3: And never stopped.
Speaker 1: In fact, when you were in my house, when you
Speaker 1: displaced me, I was staying at his house. You were, yes,
Speaker 1: just to bring it all together, Elijah Wood, wasn't that much?
Speaker 3: Okay?
Speaker 2: What about extremely loud and incredibly close?
Speaker 3: How was that adapted? Stephen Daldry was the director, Eric
Speaker 3: Roth was the writer, and Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock
Speaker 3: were in it, and in both cases, I didn't really
Speaker 3: have anything to do with you.
Speaker 2: You just sold the books for the movies. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: what about eating animals? Did you have a lot to
Speaker 2: do with that?
Speaker 1: A little bit more? Because documentaries are kind of labors
Speaker 1: of love. Natalie Portman produced it. Christopher Quinn with the
Speaker 1: name of the director, and I think he did a
Speaker 1: great job. It's such an important conversation to have, but
Speaker 1: it's a really tricky one because it just makes people
Speaker 1: feel so increable and defensive. It makes me feel scared
Speaker 1: and defensive. So finding a way to both speak honestly
Speaker 1: about it but also accessibly and to create room just
Speaker 1: for inconsistency and to create room for things like cravings
Speaker 1: and family culture and religion and celebration gathering.
Speaker 3: It's hard. It's really hard balanced to strike What.
Speaker 2: Are the most surprising aspects of seeing your works translated
Speaker 2: to the screen? And do you watch your movies more
Speaker 2: than once?
Speaker 3: No? I don't do. I don't watch them more than once.
Speaker 2: You never tempted to go back and see that first
Speaker 2: movie again?
Speaker 1: No, but not not not for any It's like, you
Speaker 1: know it, if I were to play for you a
Speaker 1: message you left on my cell phone you probably have
Speaker 1: like an uncomfortable relationship with your own voice. Right, So
Speaker 1: now imagine that it was somebody who was adapting you,
Speaker 1: like impersonating you left a message on my cell phone.
Speaker 2: You might say, oh, that's that's funny or.
Speaker 1: That's interesting, or hey, that person did a great job.
Speaker 1: But you would have a discomfort. So I have a discomfort,
Speaker 1: as I said, I haven't. I don't read my books
Speaker 1: either after I write them.
Speaker 2: I always think I don't want to sit in an
Speaker 2: edit room. That's one thing I hate to do is
Speaker 2: sit in the edit room because I know what I did,
Speaker 2: I know what I see, I know what I can see,
Speaker 2: what I see what I did in my head. I
Speaker 2: don't have to see it on the TV. And yet
Speaker 2: it is surprising, sometimes surprisingly bad, and sometimes surprisingly you
Speaker 2: could I do finally see thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was glad they did it because the scale.
Speaker 2: It's good for all of us that they did it,
Speaker 2: because you know, the visual now, the screen is where
Speaker 2: we get most of our information, and I think people
Speaker 2: are more more anxious to see things adapted for the
Speaker 2: screen then even read them. Sorry to say, well.
Speaker 3: It's not even close.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the scale of viewership is way bigger than readership.
Speaker 3: Right. Oh god.
Speaker 1: You know a film that is considered an absolute bomb.
Speaker 1: You know that Dies The Quietest Death is seen by
Speaker 1: more people than is.
Speaker 3: Read by most bestsellers.
Speaker 1: Yeah, boy, yeah, so that's the world we live on.
Speaker 3: What are you going to do?
Speaker 2: I know, well, I had a magazine that has already
Speaker 2: gone by the by the wayside, and that was forty
Speaker 2: years old after thousands of issues and now and now,
Speaker 2: you know, just people miss it. I know they miss
Speaker 2: it because I get letters from them. But it's the
Speaker 2: same kind of thing. What's it like to have a
Speaker 2: family in Raisive in Brooklyn? Is that where you grew
Speaker 2: You didn't grow up in Brooklyn, do No?
Speaker 1: I grew up in DC, in d C, d C.
Speaker 1: Whenever I tell someone I'm from DC, they always say,
Speaker 1: are you from d C? Are you from Potomac or
Speaker 1: Silver Spring? I grew up in d C and lived
Speaker 1: there in my life until I went to school, And
Speaker 1: then immediately after school I moved to New York.
Speaker 3: I moved to Jackson Heights. Queen's where I was for
Speaker 3: Have you ever been to Jackson Kights?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jackson Kights is the best. That was My original
Speaker 1: sin was leaving Jackson Heights, OH.
Speaker 2: I went to doctor Roschieton there. He was a chiropractor
Speaker 2: type in Jackson Heights. Crazy place.
Speaker 1: One of my recent nighttime hobbies to sort of sand
Speaker 1: down the corners at the end of the day and
Speaker 1: just like relax myself. I'll watch videos of things and
Speaker 1: I find that I get drawn to really unusual subjects
Speaker 1: for no obvious reason. And a recent one that I've
Speaker 1: been taking a lot of pleasure in is chiropractic adjustments
Speaker 1: of dogs and it works.
Speaker 3: It works incredibly well.
Speaker 2: And horses. You should see, I have horses. I have
Speaker 2: a chiropractor who does my horses.
Speaker 3: I've seen that too, and it helps them so much.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna do it. I'll do it.
Speaker 2: Okay. What's it like to raise your kids in Brooklyn?
Speaker 3: I think about that a lot.
Speaker 1: I think about it a lot, especially now that I
Speaker 1: have a very young child again.
Speaker 3: And can you know.
Speaker 1: Now I have the benefit of knowing then what I
Speaker 1: know now Brooklyn is if I were to live in
Speaker 1: New York City, if I were to live in a
Speaker 1: city in the United States, I can't imagine living anywhere
Speaker 1: other than Brooklyn. In fact, I can't imagine living anywhere
Speaker 1: other than my neighborhood. I like it so very much.
Speaker 2: You have a beautiful neighborhood. It is beautifulghe it's so unusual.
Speaker 2: It's usually beautiful. And those houses on your street and
Speaker 2: the streets around you, these are giant mansions. How many
Speaker 2: square feet is your house?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's huge, those three stories high. I didn't look all
Speaker 2: around it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure you did.
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know. I know I did not. I
Speaker 2: did not. I only went to to the second floor,
Speaker 2: to your bedroom, to the hallway. I went into your library,
Speaker 2: into your kitchen.
Speaker 1: I have a list of everything that was there by
Speaker 1: the way, double check. And I couldn't find my de
Speaker 1: ownerant this morning.
Speaker 2: Oh, I do not take that. And you're and that
Speaker 2: beautiful living room. It's giant, giant living room. It's like
Speaker 2: three living rooms running into each other and big beautiful windows,
Speaker 2: has architectural very fine architectural detail. And who built that house?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2: You haven't done research on that? Now when I when
Speaker 2: I uh, that is that's a novel, you know when
Speaker 2: I'm that neighborhood is a novel.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there you know Sophie's choice the film.
Speaker 2: Was filmed there, film there. Yet when I moved into.
Speaker 3: That house, no one had lived in it for like
Speaker 3: four years.
Speaker 1: There were like weeds growing inside. Yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty disgusting place. So it took some.
Speaker 2: Any of your children going to be writers, I.
Speaker 3: Have no idea. I don't think so.
Speaker 1: But maybe my my younger son is really into filmmaking
Speaker 1: and fifteen just turned fifteen actually two days ago, and
Speaker 1: he's truly great at it. And I know that, like
Speaker 1: a dad is not the most trustworthy. You know, in
Speaker 1: a way, it's harder to make predictions like that now
Speaker 1: than it's ever been before, because who knows what the
Speaker 1: hell the world's.
Speaker 3: Going to look like?
Speaker 1: Like you saw this new Apple thing.
Speaker 2: I've put those goggles on. Have you done that yet?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's horrifying. Yeah, there's all sense of reality right away,
Speaker 2: and you get you get all disoriented because there's so
Speaker 2: much going on right in front of you, so close
Speaker 2: and colorful and brilliant. You should rewrite your first book
Speaker 2: from God with goggles on. Well, I'm on that. The title.
Speaker 2: The title is perfect, it's true.
Speaker 3: Maybe they'll be my corporate sponsor. It could work out,
Speaker 3: it could be.
Speaker 1: I'm actually on the hook to write a non fiction
Speaker 1: book about technology. Oh good, Yeah, because it's something I
Speaker 1: think about a lot and it bothers me a lot.
Speaker 1: But I don't know what to do with my feelings.
Speaker 3: About it, because well, it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing as edy animals. We are trying
Speaker 2: in technology. It is not going to go away. Did
Speaker 2: you watch the hearings this week? There were these there
Speaker 2: were these congressional hearings this week on TikTok and on
Speaker 2: Instagram making us feel so so bad that these platforms exist.
Speaker 2: And I use both platforms, and if you use them
Speaker 2: responsibly and playfully, they're okay. But boy, when you lose
Speaker 2: them inappropriately, they arouse a tremendous amount of iron and
Speaker 2: there's no and there's nobody monitoring them really, and then
Speaker 2: they complain about it, and then they want to fire everybody,
Speaker 2: and they want the stocks to go down. They want
Speaker 2: these companies to go away. They're not going to go away.
Speaker 2: So that is a very good book subject for you,
Speaker 2: if you could get it, If you can look at
Speaker 2: it the way you looked at eating animals, that would
Speaker 2: be it would make so many enemies for you. You would
Speaker 2: love it.
Speaker 3: I would love it. You know.
Speaker 1: The other day when I came, if you just think
Speaker 1: about why we're having this conversation right now. You were
Speaker 1: in my house and you sort of had a very
Speaker 1: analog experience of moving around the objects in my house,
Speaker 1: and you even said, like there were nice architectural details.
Speaker 1: I noticed these books. These books were in these languages.
Speaker 1: They were on bookshelves. Some of the bookshelves have those
Speaker 1: their barrister bookshelves with the glass door. Some of them
Speaker 1: were open. Everything has like a character. And in response
Speaker 1: to that, you wrote, hand wrote a letter. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: could have written a text, you could have written an email.
Speaker 2: Now I wrote you a little note.
Speaker 1: You hand wrote a letter, and you put it on
Speaker 1: my bedside table, which is.
Speaker 2: You know you read it. Of course, good read it.
Speaker 2: And that's where you know. And then it led to us.
Speaker 1: Sitting in these chairs having this conversation like it scares
Speaker 1: me to think that scares me.
Speaker 2: It's a tragedy that that might not happen in the future,
Speaker 2: that might not happen, and it's on its way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And that's when I think about the things I
Speaker 1: enjoy most in life and that make me feel most
Speaker 1: alive and grateful to be alive.
Speaker 2: Like the human interaction.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those analog things that you touch and taste and
Speaker 1: see and engage with your senses and that are interpersonal.
Speaker 2: And you must keep that up with your kids. I
Speaker 2: only have one daughter, but her kids I want her
Speaker 2: kids to experience all that that I grew up with.
Speaker 2: I think you're so right about that. It is the
Speaker 2: human interaction that we have to maintain.
Speaker 1: I was walking here from NYU, maybe twenty minute walk,
Speaker 1: and I found myself looking at my phone as I walked.
Speaker 2: It's a beautiful day out, and then you're going to
Speaker 2: get run over.
Speaker 1: I'm going to get run over or I'm going to
Speaker 1: miss everything that's going on.
Speaker 2: And yes, and your children will not have a father.
Speaker 2: Don't do that. Do not be running your phone when
Speaker 2: you're walking or listening. I don't put earphone, I don't
Speaker 2: put earplugs in my ears. I just won't do that
Speaker 2: because I don't want to miss what's around me. Yeah,
Speaker 2: So if we could only learn how to do that,
Speaker 2: it would be better.
Speaker 1: You know you talked about you mentioned that the magazine
Speaker 1: is now non existent. Like my impression of that magazine
Speaker 1: was it was almost entirely about how to make things
Speaker 1: nicer with your hands. That's right, Like, here's how you
Speaker 1: can make a table look a little nicer, and believe
Speaker 1: it or not, a table that looks a little nicer
Speaker 1: inspires a slightly different kind of conversation, slightly different kind of.
Speaker 2: Appreciation does That's what we were crafters, inspirers, and how
Speaker 2: to do it yourselfers And if you didn't want to
Speaker 2: do it yourself, at least you knew how it had
Speaker 2: to be done.
Speaker 1: I think that I've given a lot of thoughts to
Speaker 1: this reason. I read a book called The Architecture of
Speaker 1: Happiness not that long ago, and the point that the
Speaker 1: author was making it's going to sound like he's saying
Speaker 1: nothing at all, But when you start to like sit
Speaker 1: with it and really think about it, it can make
Speaker 1: an impression. Which is, the spaces that we are in
Speaker 1: influence the kinds of thoughts and feelings and experiences we have.
Speaker 1: So if you walk into Notre Dame, it's almost hard
Speaker 1: not to have a deep thought, you know, a deep feeling.
Speaker 2: No more Notre Dame for a while, no more Noture Dam.
Speaker 3: So let's say Saint Patrick's.
Speaker 1: If you walk into McDonald's, it's almost hard not to
Speaker 1: have a cheap, styrofoam thought or feeling. And you know
Speaker 1: that extends not only be on our physical spaces, but
Speaker 1: the kinds of people we spend time with and putting
Speaker 1: aside forty five minutes or an hour to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with someone you haven't seen in a long time.
Speaker 3: It's like a kind of space.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm very glad that we got together, and I'm
Speaker 2: very glad to hear about your work, about your progress
Speaker 2: as a very very fine and acclaimed author in the
Speaker 2: American genre of literature, and I wish you well in
Speaker 2: all your future endeavors. So I'm not going to ask
Speaker 2: you about your new book, but I hope when it
Speaker 2: is out that you will come back and speak to
Speaker 2: me on our podcast.
Speaker 1: I would love that, and I hope it won't be
Speaker 1: as long as it was since our last conversation, I hope.
Speaker 2: So thank you very much, Jonathan Saffron for and be
Speaker 2: sure to pick up We Are the Weather to learn
Speaker 2: more about climate change. Eight