Speaker 1: In order to be able to have peace at all
Speaker 1: with ourselves and with other people, we need to be
Speaker 1: able to acknowledge that there is contradiction and everything, and
Speaker 1: that is the beauty of life. And trying to resolve
Speaker 1: that contradiction is a fool's errand that's only ever going
Speaker 1: to make us feel disappointed, because one part is not
Speaker 1: going to seize existing because we try to will it
Speaker 1: to do so. Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time,
Speaker 1: great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 1: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think, ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest today is Maria Popova, a
Speaker 1: writer blogger and critic living in Brooklyn, New York. She's
Speaker 1: best known for brain pickings dot org, which features her
Speaker 1: writing on culture, books and many other subjects. Brain Pickings
Speaker 1: has seen by millions of readers every month. Maria describes
Speaker 1: her work as a human power discovery engine for interestingness,
Speaker 1: a subjective lens on what matters in the world and why,
Speaker 1: bringing you to things who didn't know you were interested
Speaker 1: in until you are. Before we start the interview today,
Speaker 1: I wanted to let you know that we have a
Speaker 1: free download at one you feed dot net. It's a
Speaker 1: resource guide we can all use to keep us inspired.
Speaker 1: So don't forget to check that out. And here's Eric
Speaker 1: with a quick message followed by the interview. I believe
Speaker 1: we're all doing the best we can in our lives
Speaker 1: with the abilities that we have and the things that
Speaker 1: we know. But sometimes getting some new methods or getting
Speaker 1: some accountability and support can really help us and feeding
Speaker 1: our good wolf and moving our lives forward. If this
Speaker 1: is something you're interested in learning more about some of
Speaker 1: the programs that we're offering, send an email to Eric
Speaker 1: at one you feed dot net. Thanks. Hi'm Maria. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Such a pleasure to be with you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for taking the time. I know
Speaker 1: that you are not a big fan of interviews all
Speaker 1: the time and you are extremely busy, so I I
Speaker 1: genuinely appreciate you taking a few minutes. Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: a fan of interviews, but I am a big fan
Speaker 1: of human conversation. And what makes the one you feed
Speaker 1: so special to me, and I listened to it just
Speaker 1: on my own, is that you actually have conversations as
Speaker 1: opposed to que and the type interview, right right, yeah,
Speaker 1: I usually I usually try and stay away from the
Speaker 1: word interview. It's what I used for a while, and
Speaker 1: I was like, well, that's not really what I want
Speaker 1: to be doing. I want to be having conversations, which
Speaker 1: is certainly I got. I got that that vibe more
Speaker 1: from from Christa Tippett, who I know you are also
Speaker 1: so sure. We we had her on and I joked
Speaker 1: that it was like cooking for Julia Julia Childs to
Speaker 1: have to try and lead her in the conversation. But
Speaker 1: so you've been doing brain pickings for about a little
Speaker 1: over eight years at this point, right yep, turning nine
Speaker 1: in a few months, and so we've got a little
Speaker 1: intro about about, um, what Brain Pickings is, but maybe
Speaker 1: you could put it into your own words for our listeners,
Speaker 1: for you know, a couple of sentences. Um, it's mostly
Speaker 1: a record of my effort to figure out how to
Speaker 1: live and how to live a life that is meaningful
Speaker 1: and inspired and intelligent and uh that that makes me
Speaker 1: excited to get up basically, and that record comes in
Speaker 1: the form of all these different ideas that I that
Speaker 1: I encounter through reading mostly from very old books, and
Speaker 1: how they apply to our daily lives in a way
Speaker 1: that's both timely and timeless. Yeah, you're I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm such a fan of of what you do. I
Speaker 1: think you do it so well. And I one of
Speaker 1: the things you've got out there that you say, and
Speaker 1: you're when you're talking about your describing your show as
Speaker 1: you you say, the core ethos behind Brain Pickings is
Speaker 1: that creativity is a combinatorial force. It's our ability to
Speaker 1: tap into our mental pool of resources and you know,
Speaker 1: all the fragments, and I just am so amazed by
Speaker 1: you do that so well. You pull these these different
Speaker 1: pieces together in a really, really elegant way. I'm curious,
Speaker 1: do you have like a list of ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: core themes that that you're that you're sort of scanning
Speaker 1: for when you're out there doing your reading. Could you
Speaker 1: define those in your own mind, like, these are the
Speaker 1: main things that I mean, I could probably pick some
Speaker 1: of them pretty easily, like creativity or um presence or
Speaker 1: some different things. But do you have that sort of
Speaker 1: list in your mind of the core themes and then
Speaker 1: as you read something you go, yep, that fits in
Speaker 1: that bucket? This ties back to that, Is that sort
Speaker 1: of how your mind approaches that. Yes, and no, I
Speaker 1: would say all of these sort of things that you
Speaker 1: say are really grab bad terms that we have, things
Speaker 1: like happiness and love and creativity. I mean, they they're
Speaker 1: they're so vast and so broad that they're kind of
Speaker 1: empty of meaning unless you contextualize them in a way
Speaker 1: that actually adds dimension and and practical resonance at the
Speaker 1: same time. So I kind try to stay away from
Speaker 1: things that are overly umbrella alike. But the reason why
Speaker 1: these themes are still recurring in in the history of
Speaker 1: humanity really is because, well, actually, when you think about it,
Speaker 1: the core human concerns, the core inquiries of just human
Speaker 1: life and the human experience are kind of cliche, and
Speaker 1: their cliche because they matter to us so deeply and
Speaker 1: so repeatedly that they recur. And so it's a fine
Speaker 1: line between talking about these things that are so fundamental
Speaker 1: in a way that that actually enriches that conversation and
Speaker 1: talking to about them in a way that just sort
Speaker 1: of regurgitates these used phrases. But I actually want to
Speaker 1: go back to something you said just a minute ago
Speaker 1: when you were quoting from my about page, and you
Speaker 1: said my show. And I think it's interesting that you
Speaker 1: use that word because the sort of mental glitch of
Speaker 1: calling something that is textual a show, it actually reveals
Speaker 1: something which is goes back to this question of conversation
Speaker 1: and human conversation. And perhaps the reason I feel such
Speaker 1: a kinship of spirit with what you do and perhaps
Speaker 1: you with me by making that verbal mistake, is that
Speaker 1: actually brain cookings is a kind of to me, a
Speaker 1: conversation between the present and the past through one person's life,
Speaker 1: but also through all these many lives, and so in
Speaker 1: a way there's almost this radio like experience for me
Speaker 1: being the radio coordinator in that conversation. Yeah, it definitely
Speaker 1: does have that feel to it. So One of the
Speaker 1: posts that you have out there on brain Pickings is
Speaker 1: the seven things that you learned in seven years of
Speaker 1: of doing this project, and so I'd like to explore
Speaker 1: some of those. But I'd first like to ask, now
Speaker 1: that you're a little over eight years, have you got
Speaker 1: another thing to add to the list? An eighth thing?
Speaker 1: I have many, many, many things that sort of were
Speaker 1: left off the list. Um. I think I touched on
Speaker 1: that a little bit in one of the points, which
Speaker 1: I don't right now off the top of my head
Speaker 1: remember the order of them, but I think and and
Speaker 1: back to this question of the most core things being
Speaker 1: kind of cliches but being vital. This quality of kindness,
Speaker 1: I would say, and and practicing it and recognizing it
Speaker 1: in others is increasingly it reveals itself as increasingly important
Speaker 1: as I'm learning more and more that ultimately how intelligent
Speaker 1: a person is, how talented, how creative, how driven, can
Speaker 1: all be completely invalidated if they are not kind. Um,
Speaker 1: So that would be I guess the eighth one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Kindness is a is a good one. You've One of
Speaker 1: them that you have is be generous. And one of
Speaker 1: the lines that you say to be to understand and
Speaker 1: be understood. Those are among life's greatest gifts. In every
Speaker 1: interaction is an opportunity to exchange them, and I love
Speaker 1: seeing the world through that through that view. M hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think very often for people who put
Speaker 1: any person of themselves out there for the world to
Speaker 1: sort of experience and respond to, the hardest thing about
Speaker 1: criticism is not the people who disagree with you, because
Speaker 1: then you actually get to have a conversation, and that
Speaker 1: can be very stimulating, and I'm all for sort of
Speaker 1: evolving and sometimes changing your point of view based on
Speaker 1: those types of conversations. But the most the kind of
Speaker 1: criticism that burns the most is from people that you
Speaker 1: feel profoundly misunderstood by, because when you're not understood, there
Speaker 1: isn't any more that framework of agreement and disagreement because
Speaker 1: the very point you're trying to make is not the
Speaker 1: point that or reading, and so the conversation is broken
Speaker 1: by default, it just can't happen. So I do think
Speaker 1: that mutuality of understanding is the perrequisite for any kind
Speaker 1: of dialogue, whether it's in terms of affirming one another's
Speaker 1: point of view or disagreeing with them, and that's a
Speaker 1: really interesting way to think about that. Do you think
Speaker 1: that there are people that it's difficult to ever get
Speaker 1: to dialogue on because our core framework or our way
Speaker 1: of view in the world is so different that it
Speaker 1: sometimes can't be overcome. I think the majority of disagreement,
Speaker 1: or sort of that hurdle that you're descriving, most of
Speaker 1: it comes not from being unable to overcome our differences,
Speaker 1: but being so impatient as to not consider the root
Speaker 1: of that difference and whether beneath that there might be
Speaker 1: some sort of shared value or shared aspiration. And we
Speaker 1: very much live in a culture of instant opinions. You know,
Speaker 1: people would rather be, would would rather react than respond
Speaker 1: because that's faster. And actually was listening a couple of
Speaker 1: days ago to a very short episode you did on
Speaker 1: on Knowing Versus Acting and in which you basically say
Speaker 1: that there's this disconnect between what we know and how
Speaker 1: we're able to act in the world. And I both
Speaker 1: agree and disagree, because I think what's happening is that
Speaker 1: knowledge is this static place, and once people know something
Speaker 1: and are not willing to further that and transmute that
Speaker 1: into wisdom, which is a kind of dynamic understanding of
Speaker 1: the world. They're more likely to just assert their opinions
Speaker 1: the static knowing, and we've almost kind of lost the
Speaker 1: capacity for thinking, or have become bored with thinking. We
Speaker 1: want to instantly know, you know, which is why all
Speaker 1: these listicles ten ten of history's most expensive art paintings,
Speaker 1: you know, why Why would you think about what makes
Speaker 1: great art and how it moves it and and what
Speaker 1: makes a painting extraordinary when you can see a list of,
Speaker 1: you know, the ten most expensive ones. And so I
Speaker 1: think a lot of that disconnect between knowing and understanding
Speaker 1: is actually at the root of conflict. Yeah, I I
Speaker 1: would agree. I would agree with that. I think that
Speaker 1: is a that's that old idea of when you're when
Speaker 1: you're having a conversation with someone is if you can
Speaker 1: it's again it's back to cliches, But if you can
Speaker 1: try and understand really where they're coming from and their
Speaker 1: view of the world, it makes it makes all those
Speaker 1: things happen so much better. But most of us, at
Speaker 1: least in a lot of meaningful conversations, I've certainly been
Speaker 1: this way and work on it. It becomes very much
Speaker 1: a defensive thing, very quickly versus an ability to really
Speaker 1: sort of stop and and and get under that person's
Speaker 1: skin and understand what's what is it that's driving what's
Speaker 1: happened in there. That is a really hard thing to
Speaker 1: do sometimes, particularly with subjects that mean a lot to us,
Speaker 1: especially because we have a pretty core and sort of
Speaker 1: almost biological aversion and fear of being wrong. We are
Speaker 1: just we are incapable of being wrong, and and and
Speaker 1: would go to extreme lengths to avoid the just soul
Speaker 1: crushing feeling of that. And very often, you know, when
Speaker 1: you actually come to understand, as you say, where a
Speaker 1: person is coming from and what are those more deep
Speaker 1: seated beliefs and issues and traumas and experiences that inform
Speaker 1: their point of view of the world, it might cause
Speaker 1: you to change your point of view. And of course,
Speaker 1: every time we change something, and you can even use
Speaker 1: user behavior on the internet as as a great sort
Speaker 1: of parable that every time we change. Implicit to that
Speaker 1: is the kind of awareness that the former way, the
Speaker 1: older way, was somehow inferior to the way that we're
Speaker 1: adopting now, which is why people hate every time Facebook
Speaker 1: redesigns it's this or that, you know, we just don't
Speaker 1: like this being told that here's a better way to
Speaker 1: do something because what we're here is, oh, the way
Speaker 1: you're doing it now is wrong. Yep. And I think
Speaker 1: that ties to one of your one of your other
Speaker 1: seven things you learned, which is allowing yourself the uncomfortable
Speaker 1: luxury of changing your mind. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that I'm always so fascinated by is in our culture,
Speaker 1: how much we hate the ultimate insult to call a
Speaker 1: politician is a is a flip flopper. And it always
Speaker 1: is interesting to me that we don't. I mean it,
Speaker 1: I guess it's not that interesting if you look at
Speaker 1: our overall cultural mentality, it's not surprising that that's But
Speaker 1: I think that that is actually a good thing in
Speaker 1: a lot of I mean, depending on what's driving it.
Speaker 1: But I think if at least for me, if I'm
Speaker 1: not changing my mind on certain things, I'm probably not
Speaker 1: really being very open to the world. Oh absolutely. And
Speaker 1: then the scariest part to me is there's a fair
Speaker 1: amount of behavioral research showing that the more intelligent people are,
Speaker 1: the better they're able to use that intelligence to rationalize
Speaker 1: and affirm their existing beliefs and sort of create these
Speaker 1: infrastructures supporting infrastructures around them as to bolster these sort
Speaker 1: of fixed beliefs and the less likely they are to
Speaker 1: actually branch out and change their mind. Yeah, they're the
Speaker 1: studies that are out there on this more and more
Speaker 1: where we realize that we we decide emotionally and then
Speaker 1: use our brain to come up with a logical you know,
Speaker 1: so we can tell a logical story about what's happening.
Speaker 1: That's so so fascinating to me. And then you start
Speaker 1: getting into all the the biases, you know, the confirmation
Speaker 1: bias and and all these different things it is really
Speaker 1: to be and to be an open minded thinking person,
Speaker 1: I think takes an awful lot of effort. It goes
Speaker 1: against I think a lot of our programming. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: especially because it really begins being open minded, really begins
Speaker 1: by being open hearted, and that implies a level of
Speaker 1: vulnerability that is often intolerable and vulnerable. Vulnerability is another
Speaker 1: one of these terms that have become kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, grab bag business world cliche. But but it's
Speaker 1: but it's a very core thing that that we experience,
Speaker 1: and we experienced daily and all these things that we
Speaker 1: just talked about, you know, criticism disagreement, the mutuality of understanding.
Speaker 1: There's always the higher the stakes are in terms of vulnerability,
Speaker 1: the more likely where to digger heels in and not
Speaker 1: be willing to change your minds. But of course the
Speaker 1: only way to do that is to be open hearted,
Speaker 1: and then we can be open minded. That's a great point,
Speaker 1: and it makes me think of You've got a really
Speaker 1: lovely posting about Alan Watts and the wisdom of of
Speaker 1: insecurity and this this um idea that the more we
Speaker 1: try and cling you know, we're really trying to cling
Speaker 1: to that not knowing is really can be really really scary,
Speaker 1: and that so we try and put things into a
Speaker 1: way that that makes sense to us, because that I
Speaker 1: think Pemma, the Pema children, the Buddhist nun uses the
Speaker 1: word the groundlessness is if you really experience that is
Speaker 1: is kind of unsettling. Oh yeah, and which is why
Speaker 1: I mean most world religions exist to alleviate that groundlessness. Yep.
Speaker 1: One of the things that is a is a very
Speaker 1: consistent theme on your blog that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: and it is one of your it is one of
Speaker 1: your seven things that you learned, and it just it
Speaker 1: repeats throughout I would say if I had to identify
Speaker 1: some of your core themes, and it's this idea that
Speaker 1: presence is far more intricate and rewarding and art than productivity.
Speaker 1: Can you elaborate on that? I think I know because
Speaker 1: I am part of it and culpable of it. We
Speaker 1: live in a culture that approaches life in general as
Speaker 1: a series of tasks to be accomplished. You know, go
Speaker 1: to school, you graduate, or you drop out, and you
Speaker 1: make a million dollars in Silicon Valley, you start a family,
Speaker 1: or you create a major work of cultural contribution, all
Speaker 1: these sort of checkpoint checklist items on what we think
Speaker 1: is a successful life. And the rub is that it
Speaker 1: becomes very easy to sort of keep showing up for
Speaker 1: these things for our our our own lives, while actually
Speaker 1: being absent from them to go. And you talk about
Speaker 1: autopilots a lot, and you know, this notion of just
Speaker 1: cruising through what we think the course of a great
Speaker 1: life is, but not really experiencing each moment as it comes.
Speaker 1: And I had a very disorienting experience recently. I've been
Speaker 1: meditating for years, but I'd never gone to a sort
Speaker 1: of retreat, like a formal, organized meditation retreat and I went,
Speaker 1: and I, first of all, I was very kind of
Speaker 1: aware in a way that was scarier than in everyday
Speaker 1: life of privilege and the fact that most people there
Speaker 1: were very wealthy white people, you know. And I went
Speaker 1: with my best friend actually, who was the only non
Speaker 1: white person on the entire estate. And this was like
Speaker 1: probably a few thousand people, because there were multiple retreats
Speaker 1: going on at the place at the same time. And
Speaker 1: that was one thing. But the other thing, the one
Speaker 1: woman was talking about, Oh, I debated whether to take
Speaker 1: my Porsche down or not, and I decided against it.
Speaker 1: And it was kind of this moment. I don't doubt
Speaker 1: that some part of her has the genuine desire for
Speaker 1: um self transcendence or enlightenment or whatever whatever we call this,
Speaker 1: you know, this sort of thing that we seek by
Speaker 1: going to these places. I don't doubt that there was
Speaker 1: earnestness and that, But I also fear that perhaps there
Speaker 1: was a part of her and a part of a
Speaker 1: lot of us, but in that place more more of
Speaker 1: a caricature of that that sees that thing, the enlightenment
Speaker 1: or self transcendors or whatever as another checklist item on
Speaker 1: our conception of the good life and not as a
Speaker 1: thing to be attained, you know. And I think when
Speaker 1: we approach these things in such a way, we're no
Speaker 1: longer present with the unfolding of our experience. We're just
Speaker 1: sort of performing another another kind of hedonic treadmill hamster
Speaker 1: wheel thing. Yeah, it's it's I've got a couple I've
Speaker 1: got a bunch of thoughts about what you just said.
Speaker 1: But we had a guest on shows in Jack Cobner,
Speaker 1: who wrote a book called Zen Confidential, which is a
Speaker 1: remarkable memoir of his time and a in a Zen monastery,
Speaker 1: funny and enlightening. But he's got a part in there
Speaker 1: that I think speaks to this, and he says, I
Speaker 1: had become largely a person who worked on changing themselves.
Speaker 1: That's what I was. I was my whole focus in
Speaker 1: life was always changing myself. And and uh, and I
Speaker 1: think that's an interesting you can find. You can find
Speaker 1: that sort of in the personal development, self help culture,
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. I think where we
Speaker 1: we can get so caught up in I need to
Speaker 1: be better, I need to be different, And I'm always
Speaker 1: fascinated by that. And I'd be interested in your thought
Speaker 1: on and how we find that that line or how
Speaker 1: we hold these two what sometimes feel like exclusive states
Speaker 1: of mind. One is the striving and the desire to
Speaker 1: to do better, to become better, to produce important things.
Speaker 1: And then the other is the acceptance and the presence
Speaker 1: of being right where we are and I I have gotten.
Speaker 1: I get caught up in my mind sometimes feeling like
Speaker 1: those things are they can that they're mutually exclusive. I
Speaker 1: don't think they are, as I've talked more about it,
Speaker 1: but I'm interested in your thought on that because it
Speaker 1: gets right to this productivity versus presence piece. Well, I
Speaker 1: think what's interesting is that you look at somebody like
Speaker 1: Alan Watts or any of the sort of great teachers
Speaker 1: is Eastern philosophy in the West, and the common theme
Speaker 1: is the sort of m M dispelling the illusion of
Speaker 1: the self as an entity that's separate from the rest
Speaker 1: of everything, from the rest of the universe and all
Speaker 1: their beings, and that the self is sort of this
Speaker 1: this illusion, right, But how we think in in the
Speaker 1: West and the traditional sort of Western psychology tradition of
Speaker 1: the improvement of the human experiences in terms of self improvement,
Speaker 1: So it doesn't just mean improving oneself as a person
Speaker 1: in also means improving the self itself, the sense of self,
Speaker 1: the sort of this fortifying um of of this essentially
Speaker 1: this illusion. And I think that's where it gets kind
Speaker 1: of toxic, because that feeds into our illusion of separateness,
Speaker 1: which is a phrase that Alan Wattson, Tara Brock and
Speaker 1: all these teachers used. It feeds into our sense of
Speaker 1: dividedness from everybody else. And this extreme individualism is often
Speaker 1: the root of a lot of conflict and a lot
Speaker 1: of desire to be right. And even if you think
Speaker 1: about self righteousness, which goes back to all these things
Speaker 1: that we're talking about in terms of being wrong and
Speaker 1: seeing other's points of view, I mean self righteousness is
Speaker 1: also predicated on a strong, solid and static self. And
Speaker 1: so I think the only way to reconcile these conflicting
Speaker 1: drives is to constantly revisit this question of am I
Speaker 1: really such a separate self? And am I so attached
Speaker 1: this experience of the self as an individual asked to
Speaker 1: miss of what's going on around me as to cast
Speaker 1: other people is wrong? And all these all these things
Speaker 1: that's spraying from just our very vulnerable feeling of if
Speaker 1: I don't fortify the self, then I don't matter that
Speaker 1: I don't exist. Boy, that's that idea of not being
Speaker 1: a distinct self, and that that is at the heart
Speaker 1: of a lot of Eastern philosophy is something that I
Speaker 1: have really I struggle with on and off over the years,
Speaker 1: because on one hand, I think that sounds like that's
Speaker 1: kind of the whole enchilada on some degree, right, And
Speaker 1: then on the other hand, I go, boy, that feels
Speaker 1: so intangible to me. I don't know what to do
Speaker 1: with that, Like even if I that's that's one for me,
Speaker 1: that feels like the real difference between an intellectual understanding
Speaker 1: and a deep wisdom or an emotional connection to it,
Speaker 1: because in my mind I can think through that. But boy,
Speaker 1: this this feeling of being this separate self is so
Speaker 1: strong and the evidence feels so compelling to some degree
Speaker 1: that I always as I look at sort of a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice, I always am wondering should I be spending
Speaker 1: more focus on that piece or should I be spending
Speaker 1: more focus on more tangible things like being kinder and
Speaker 1: um And not that those things are exclusive, it's just
Speaker 1: that as I as I think through those ideas, I
Speaker 1: I often get I get kind of lost in that one. Well,
Speaker 1: you see, I think actually part of our anguish comes
Speaker 1: from the very fact that we approach this question too
Speaker 1: with the goal oriented mindset of this needs to be resolved.
Speaker 1: And even I mean, we are creatures of contradiction and
Speaker 1: of constant flux. And that's really the notion of the
Speaker 1: self as an illusion isn't about saying that we don't
Speaker 1: exist or or didn't dying or nature or spirit or
Speaker 1: whatever you want to call it. It's more about being
Speaker 1: able to hold multiple things together at the same time.
Speaker 1: And even if you look at Alan Watts, I mean
Speaker 1: he died an alcoholic, and he was also wonderfully wise
Speaker 1: and witty, but also kind of arrogant, and he had
Speaker 1: all these contradictions, and I think the immature and sort
Speaker 1: of snap judgments. The way to talk about these things
Speaker 1: is to say, well, he was a hypocrite, you know,
Speaker 1: how could he teach all these things and not practicing
Speaker 1: his life. But and we do that a lot in culture,
Speaker 1: by the way, we point the fingers the finger at
Speaker 1: other people's so called hypocrisy. But what really is happening
Speaker 1: is that in order to be able to have peace
Speaker 1: at all, with ourselves and with other people. We need
Speaker 1: to be able to acknowledge that there is contradiction in
Speaker 1: everything and that is the beauty of life, and trying
Speaker 1: to resolve that contradiction is a fool's errand that's only
Speaker 1: ever going to make us feel disappointed because one part
Speaker 1: is not going to seize existing because we try to
Speaker 1: will it to do. So. Yeah, I boy, I love
Speaker 1: what you just said. They're about that being a fool's
Speaker 1: errand of trying to resolve those those contradictions, or or
Speaker 1: the inability to embrace paradox because it seems to be
Speaker 1: right at the heart of a lot of this. And
Speaker 1: and yet as a as a thinking person, I tend
Speaker 1: to try very often to um to find you know,
Speaker 1: I think one of the things that has been interesting
Speaker 1: me as I as I've done the show longer is
Speaker 1: I think I thought, I'm going to ask all these
Speaker 1: people some of these questions and there's gonna be some answer,
Speaker 1: and uh, I was. I think I knew on some
Speaker 1: level that wasn't true. But it's become more and more
Speaker 1: clear to me that there there are not answers to
Speaker 1: a lot of these things. It's it's the human condition.
Speaker 1: This is what being human is, and it's it's about
Speaker 1: relaxing into that. And I know that you are. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of stuff about Rilka on your site,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, certainly that's one of those there
Speaker 1: that learning to love the questions and live the questions.
Speaker 1: Maybe we could talk about Roca for a second, because
Speaker 1: I think there's so much, there's so much in there.
Speaker 1: What would be the first thing besides that quote that
Speaker 1: I that I brought up there, that that you have
Speaker 1: gotten from from his work? Um. I love a lot
Speaker 1: of what he says about this sort of another another
Speaker 1: inability to embrace opposites right, body and soul um, And
Speaker 1: he basically says that it's foolish to try to prioritize
Speaker 1: one at the expense of the other, to sort of, um,
Speaker 1: make make yourself be the sort of soulful creature by
Speaker 1: denying the body. And then he has this one really
Speaker 1: beautiful line where he says something like, um, I am
Speaker 1: not a person who neglects the body in order to
Speaker 1: make it a sacrificial offering to the soul, since my
Speaker 1: soul was thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.
Speaker 1: And he's sort of being again witty and wise, which
Speaker 1: is I think these are qualities that a lot of
Speaker 1: the great enduring thinkers have where they are very clear
Speaker 1: in in their beliefs, beliefs that are bar the way
Speaker 1: constantly evolving. But they're also are reluctant to take themselves
Speaker 1: too seriously, because I think that's when we stop evolving.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of them have a level of
Speaker 1: humor about things that are actually very deep and very important,
Speaker 1: but they're not articulated in a in a preachy and
Speaker 1: sort of s frighteous way. I think cliches are a
Speaker 1: theme of this conversation. But there's always that idea of
Speaker 1: the zen monks who are who are off laughing, um,
Speaker 1: you know, when they when they really finally, you know,
Speaker 1: achieve some degree of insight, you know, often it seems
Speaker 1: that that's accompanied by a certain degree of laughter humor.
Speaker 1: I certainly think levity is a underappreciated virtue. Oh absolutely.
Speaker 1: And even you know cuk Guard, the great non humorist
Speaker 1: of philosophy, actually um said that basically the task of
Speaker 1: the of He said something like, it's it's man's destiny
Speaker 1: to amuse himself. Um. And and that's in a long
Speaker 1: long essay on boredom that he hadn't either or and
Speaker 1: which is very grave and very uh, sort of grumpy
Speaker 1: and serious. But then he has this weird oddball line
Speaker 1: which actually reminds you, Wait, that's why most people tussle
Speaker 1: with ideas, because they want to not only enlighten themselves
Speaker 1: but also feel the levity of life in that enlightenment. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that that article or that I don't know what what
Speaker 1: what do you call what you put out there? A post?
Speaker 1: A story? And article? Uh? Do do you ever? Is
Speaker 1: there a particular term for it? I don't particularly care.
Speaker 1: I guess I call it an article because it's what
Speaker 1: I missed you from sort of magazines and stuff. Um,
Speaker 1: I guess I don't define things by the technology and
Speaker 1: which they live, which is why posts is a little
Speaker 1: kind of neither here nor there exactly exactly. Well, I'll
Speaker 1: call them. I'll think of them as articles. Or I
Speaker 1: think Danielle Report has things she calls truth bombs. You
Speaker 1: could you could call your own truth bombs, which might
Speaker 1: be that's that has certain hubris do it, but it
Speaker 1: is Uh, it's it's a question question. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yours are are definitely that. So that that Guard article
Speaker 1: was interest because you you, you explored along with him
Speaker 1: the ideas of boredom versus idleness, and and we sort
Speaker 1: of flew by this idea of presence and you know,
Speaker 1: being more important than productivity. And then I think we
Speaker 1: we spiraled out somewhere from there. So I'll use that
Speaker 1: as a way to sort of to bring us back,
Speaker 1: because I think he made a distinction and there is
Speaker 1: a distinction between boredom and the term he used is idleness,
Speaker 1: which I think semantically probably doesn't culturally fit with what
Speaker 1: we're doing. But he had a very different meaning. And
Speaker 1: I think again it gets back to presence. Can you
Speaker 1: go off that for a minute. Yeah. Well, so, first
Speaker 1: of all, the reason I remembered this reading this many
Speaker 1: years ago is that actually last night I did this
Speaker 1: little event with w n y C, which is the
Speaker 1: NPR affiliate here in New York um called bored and Brilliant,
Speaker 1: And they have this project, I guess ongoing project about
Speaker 1: boredom and how we can break free from the hear
Speaker 1: any of our devices and just be more present. And
Speaker 1: so I did a little thing with them and remember
Speaker 1: this and thinking, because a lot of what I write
Speaker 1: about is really all of it is really what I
Speaker 1: think about. To the day before, I was thinking about boredom,
Speaker 1: and I've covered that many times before, and mostly from
Speaker 1: the perspective of people like Adam Phillips and and and
Speaker 1: Susan Sontag, who basically say boredom is essential to creativity,
Speaker 1: to contemplation, it's it's Adam Phillips calls it a developmental
Speaker 1: achievement for the child um. And then I remembered Carricter
Speaker 1: Guard who and distinctly remembered the line boredom is the
Speaker 1: root of all evil, and I thought, wait, there must
Speaker 1: be more depth to that. It can just bet he
Speaker 1: can't just be this. I mean, he's one of the
Speaker 1: greatest thinkers of humanity. He can just be that absurdly
Speaker 1: no pun intended, you know, narrow. And so I went
Speaker 1: back to this work It comes from either or, And
Speaker 1: sure enough he goes on this very very long rant
Speaker 1: on boordom in which he basically also talks about why
Speaker 1: distraction uh doesn't work in alleviating boredom, which he defines
Speaker 1: as a sort of existential emptiness, a sense of emptiness.
Speaker 1: And I love that for for a separate sort of reason,
Speaker 1: which is that it actually explains why all the cats
Speaker 1: lide shows on the internet are not gonna fix your
Speaker 1: existential emptiness for you, you know. And I love that
Speaker 1: he a hundred fifth years ago could peer into these
Speaker 1: issues that we're dealing with today. But then after his
Speaker 1: massive rant, he actually says idleness is not the root
Speaker 1: of all evil, and in fact, it's its catterpoint. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he says that idle miss is not evil, and
Speaker 1: it can be said that it's the greatest, the most
Speaker 1: divine good, uh, if one is not bored. And the
Speaker 1: way that he uses idleness is very much as we
Speaker 1: would today use presence, which is now on the verge
Speaker 1: of becoming another one of those rab bad terms, you know,
Speaker 1: or stillness or contemplation, and it's not the sort of
Speaker 1: passive just droning, you know. But but he makes a
Speaker 1: case for how creating these pockets of stillness right into
Speaker 1: our own lives are actually is actually essential to to
Speaker 1: being able to to to raise ourselves, he says, to
Speaker 1: the human level, because those who are not able to
Speaker 1: do that are at the animal level of just driven
Speaker 1: by a basic need and an instinct. Um. So I
Speaker 1: am very much a proponent of this of this deliberate
Speaker 1: engineering of stillness into everyday life, and I think we
Speaker 1: don't do it enough, and we don't do it enough
Speaker 1: for reasons that are pretty trivial and easily resolved if
Speaker 1: we actually decide to resolve it. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are kind of these micro compulsive behaviors that we have.
Speaker 1: And one thing I learned from that w n y
Speaker 1: C event. They have some sort of app called Moments
Speaker 1: that tracks how people are using their phones, and apparently
Speaker 1: the average person spent two hours a day looking at
Speaker 1: their phone, and most of it is for no specific purpose.
Speaker 1: It's not like they're writing, you know, an email to
Speaker 1: their mother. It's just checking the time or just mindlessly
Speaker 1: scanning Instagram feeds and things that we do as a
Speaker 1: as a habit that we've formed. But I'm very much
Speaker 1: with William James on the point about habit that that's
Speaker 1: how we weave our destinies, and some of these habits
Speaker 1: are actually not that hard to change. Yeah, I have
Speaker 1: been I have been wrestling with that one a little bit,
Speaker 1: trying to be more cognizant of that those those small
Speaker 1: chunks of time that it seems easy to just pick
Speaker 1: up the phone and look at you know, at Twitter
Speaker 1: or Facebook or whatever, and go, that's just a couple
Speaker 1: of minutes. But those really add up. And I think
Speaker 1: the other thing that I really liked about that Cure
Speaker 1: Guard article is that I think that those things actually
Speaker 1: increase my uh, existential emptiness. Like I'm doing it to
Speaker 1: fill that whole and it's having it has I don't
Speaker 1: know that I can articulate what it is, but it
Speaker 1: weakens me in some way that I don't I don't
Speaker 1: quite have the words for, um. But so I've recently
Speaker 1: gone to you know, all right, I'm just taking that
Speaker 1: stuff off the phone, and then the question becomes, Okay,
Speaker 1: now I've got two and a half minutes, right, I'm
Speaker 1: standing in line at a place. I've got two and
Speaker 1: a half minutes. Boy, I don't even know that I
Speaker 1: know what to do with that time anymore, you know.
Speaker 1: And if I'm not using Facebook, maybe I'm reading a
Speaker 1: book on the kindle, which, you know, on one hand,
Speaker 1: I go, well, that's you know, there's something good about that,
Speaker 1: But it is that inability to sort of be present
Speaker 1: for any time. And so I'm right in the midst
Speaker 1: of of exploring that more for myself, right now and
Speaker 1: seeing because I've One of the things that I've I
Speaker 1: think about productivity wise, is that those small chunks of time,
Speaker 1: I tend to write them off like I've only got
Speaker 1: four minutes still the next thing I need to do.
Speaker 1: But boy, if I if I focus, you know, I
Speaker 1: can I can get a lot done. I can use
Speaker 1: those four minutes in a valuable way, versus just saying, uh,
Speaker 1: well they're just four minutes, I'll just kind of throw
Speaker 1: them away. Well, I think that's absolutely true. But there's
Speaker 1: also the parallel question of do we really need to
Speaker 1: get something done every four minutes of our lives like that?
Speaker 1: Are we really that compulsively, you know, addicted to producing
Speaker 1: as opposed to just living? And I am very much again,
Speaker 1: we're all women of these contraditions. I'm culpable myself, and
Speaker 1: you're actually implicated in that because I listened to podcasts
Speaker 1: primarily when I commute on my bike, which I do
Speaker 1: a lot here in New York. That's just how I
Speaker 1: get around. But I even though most of the podcast,
Speaker 1: all of the podcast I listened to have a very
Speaker 1: strong element of contemplation and sort of philosophical thought, and
Speaker 1: Christa's you know, on being and the one you see
Speaker 1: it and things like this. But I found myself at
Speaker 1: one point feeling like the second. Sometimes the length the
Speaker 1: duration of an episode is shorter than the duration of
Speaker 1: my ride, and then it ends, and I feel this
Speaker 1: sort of sense of panic at the silence, and that
Speaker 1: frightened me because I don't want to be I don't
Speaker 1: want to live that way. And uh So, now I've
Speaker 1: been making an effort to sort of deliberately not listen
Speaker 1: to things on some of my rides and some of
Speaker 1: my commutes, because I think four minutes put towards answering
Speaker 1: another email or some other productivity task is not nearly
Speaker 1: as valuable as four minutes with their own mind and
Speaker 1: just seeing what your inner life says to you in
Speaker 1: those four minutes. Yes, so this idea of presence versus productivity,
Speaker 1: and I think it's something I think we all wrestle
Speaker 1: with if we are both. UM feel feel a desire
Speaker 1: to contribute something in the world, and yet also I
Speaker 1: feel like being present. And I know that you. I'll
Speaker 1: use the term work um a lot, right. You put
Speaker 1: a lot of effort and time into the reading and
Speaker 1: writing that you do for brain pickings and I'm curious,
Speaker 1: do you see a lot of that time as being present?
Speaker 1: Where do you see that time as productivity? Or is
Speaker 1: it both? Sometimes? And where's the distinction? It can be
Speaker 1: both um one thing and again, all of that stuff
Speaker 1: is a constant case of dialing in with your own
Speaker 1: sense of where you are and trying to readjust course
Speaker 1: if it doesn't feel right. And so in the beginning
Speaker 1: of this year, one thing I actually realized I was
Speaker 1: doing is transforming what is or should be or has
Speaker 1: been historically a very present thing for me, which is
Speaker 1: reading and thinking and text, which is really you know
Speaker 1: what bring pickings is for me, transforming that into some
Speaker 1: sort of quotea feeling filling activity for no reason, because
Speaker 1: there really is no reason. I have no boss I have.
Speaker 1: I don't run ads on my site, so it's not
Speaker 1: like I pay I played the page view game, which
Speaker 1: is you know what the ad supported internet does, and
Speaker 1: it's not. It doesn't. It just doesn't make any difference
Speaker 1: other than to my own very compulsive I am a
Speaker 1: uh there, I have a compulsive personality, I guess um.
Speaker 1: And so I had created the structure for myself that
Speaker 1: was just completely unreasonable because in in when I made
Speaker 1: a very deliberate choice to no longer do any freelance
Speaker 1: writing for anybody, anybody else at the time I was
Speaker 1: writing for Wired and Business Week and Design observing things
Speaker 1: like that, and to reallocate that time into my own
Speaker 1: labor of love, into brain pickings. I started doing three
Speaker 1: articles a day Monday through Friday, going from one a day.
Speaker 1: But they were very short, you know they were. At
Speaker 1: the time. I didn't have many books because I had
Speaker 1: lived on two continents, three coasts, six cities, and like
Speaker 1: twelve apartments over the course of two years. So it's
Speaker 1: point being I didn't I didn't have any physical stillness
Speaker 1: in my life to have mental and spiritual stillness. So
Speaker 1: there were very short, sort of little snippets of what
Speaker 1: I was looking at. But over time, when I settled
Speaker 1: in New York and I got all my old books
Speaker 1: back and I started getting more and more and more.
Speaker 1: My apartment is now infested with books, the articles became longer,
Speaker 1: and I mean seriously longer. They went from maybe a
Speaker 1: couple of hundred words to now on average two thousand
Speaker 1: words um, and I didn't adjust the pace for that.
Speaker 1: I kept doing three a day of those, and you know,
Speaker 1: January one this year, I just found myself thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, why why do I do this? I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't have time to breathe and to live. And
Speaker 1: granted I'm very stimulated by what I do and excited
Speaker 1: by it, but there comes a tipping point past which
Speaker 1: it's actually draining because um, and so I've been trying
Speaker 1: to dial back to this place where it does feel
Speaker 1: like a present activity, a present a present thing. And
Speaker 1: I'm sure I will keep sort of playing around with
Speaker 1: the actual pace and and schedule until it works better.
Speaker 1: But I think there's always this interplay for people who
Speaker 1: have a very strong integration between so called work and
Speaker 1: so called life, you know, when their work is their
Speaker 1: life and vice versa. It's it's a constant osmosis between
Speaker 1: these two, you know, that the present and the productive part.
Speaker 1: And again back to the not having to resolve it
Speaker 1: right away thing, Um, it just constantly tinkering with it
Speaker 1: and really listening to what your inner voice says about
Speaker 1: isn't working? Is it charging me? Or is it draining me?
Speaker 1: And in either case, how do I you know, retune
Speaker 1: the dial on that? Yep, And that gets to one
Speaker 1: of your other seven things. You learned, which is doing
Speaker 1: nothing for prestige or status or money or approval alone.
Speaker 1: And uh and so I think that ties right into that.
Speaker 1: And I can tell you as a reader that there
Speaker 1: is no I can't there's no way I can even
Speaker 1: keep up as a reader. So you, I don't think
Speaker 1: you need to feel pressured to get three of those
Speaker 1: out there, because there is I'm not even in the
Speaker 1: neighborhood to keep it up. So you know, look, even
Speaker 1: my partner, who is the most dedicated reader of the site,
Speaker 1: obviously cannot reasonably read everything every day. And there comes
Speaker 1: a point in which I think, will wait a minute,
Speaker 1: If my partner can't read all of it, who would?
Speaker 1: But I mean, it's it's a fine line too, because
Speaker 1: I have often said, and I still really believe that
Speaker 1: I actually right for myself, whether it's some sort of
Speaker 1: I don't know, psychoanalyze me, you know, some kind of
Speaker 1: hedge against immortality and trying to keep a record of
Speaker 1: my thought and trying to not forget, you know, because
Speaker 1: a large part of why I write, so I don't
Speaker 1: forget what I read and what I think about. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, there's that, there's how what chunk
Speaker 1: of it. Am I doing for me? And do I do?
Speaker 1: I doesn't matter that other people don't keep up if
Speaker 1: I keep up, and you know, yeah, I mean absolutely
Speaker 1: was all I was saying is I don't think that
Speaker 1: if there's any external pressure that enters your equation, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't think it needs to be there. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I appreciate the assurance, and I could I could use it.
Speaker 1: I've heard you say that before about that you do
Speaker 1: the site largely for yourself and this podcast. For me,
Speaker 1: that was sort of the um. You know, there's certainly
Speaker 1: a big part of that for me too. It was
Speaker 1: a combination of things. One was I just wanted to
Speaker 1: It's a way to keep myself off autopilot, spiritual autopilot.
Speaker 1: And also, you know, I was like, I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: make the show that I wish I could listen to.
Speaker 1: And I think that's such um there's such a freedom
Speaker 1: in in in doing that, and uh, I'm just I'm
Speaker 1: grateful to be able to have that mindset and and
Speaker 1: I can almost always recognize it when I see somebody
Speaker 1: else who's doing something and I think none of us are.
Speaker 1: There's no you know, back to that there's a blend.
Speaker 1: None of us are so pure. It's like, oh, I
Speaker 1: don't you know. I don't care what you know. I
Speaker 1: put it out into the world whatever happens. I have
Speaker 1: no preference. I don't think anybody's that ideologically pure, but
Speaker 1: but certainly they're the for me. The more that I
Speaker 1: can stay on the why I'm doing this and tying
Speaker 1: it back to what's going on inside me, the more
Speaker 1: of it remains something that is um gives me energy,
Speaker 1: gives me strength firstus the other way around. Well. Austin Cleon,
Speaker 1: who is a friend and an artist and just a
Speaker 1: kindred spirit he has, he likes to say, you know,
Speaker 1: make the thing you want to see in the world
Speaker 1: right right, the books that you want to read, do
Speaker 1: the art you want to see, make the music you
Speaker 1: want to hear, and all of that, And I very
Speaker 1: much believe it. But I also think, really what's at
Speaker 1: the root of that is put the values into the
Speaker 1: world that you would like to see thrive and person severe.
Speaker 1: And so when you frame it that way, then yes,
Speaker 1: absolutely you're doing it for yourself. But there's also this
Speaker 1: element of I actually want to help other people live
Speaker 1: in a in a in a way that is somehow better,
Speaker 1: somehow better and not and not I don't mean better
Speaker 1: and by my own self righteous standard, you know, but
Speaker 1: better for for humanity in some way. And this actually
Speaker 1: goes back to your the parable after which your show
Speaker 1: is titled. And I mean, I do believe that we
Speaker 1: have a choice in which will we feed, especially in
Speaker 1: a culture in which snark and cynicism rain rampants and
Speaker 1: are frequently rewarded, and in which people do truly horrible
Speaker 1: things to one another from behind the veil of anonymity,
Speaker 1: and in which is just generally easier to be a
Speaker 1: critic than than a celebrator. And I believe that we
Speaker 1: have choices in this, both large existential ones by which
Speaker 1: were all to live our lives a certain way, but
Speaker 1: also small daily ones by which we affirmed that direction.
Speaker 1: And so I choose for myself, varied deliberately when I
Speaker 1: started Bring Pickings nearly nine years ago now, and also
Speaker 1: every day to feed the celebrator rather than the critics,
Speaker 1: both in myself and in my readers. That's great, And
Speaker 1: I completely forgot that. I completely forget to ask you
Speaker 1: the wolf question, didn't I? I think I was so
Speaker 1: excited to talk to you that I completely missed the
Speaker 1: intro and uh wow, well I'm glad you you you
Speaker 1: you nailed it right there, so that's good. I may
Speaker 1: end up having to move that earlier in the interview.
Speaker 1: We'll see to that end, though. I have to say
Speaker 1: another thing about how the wolf parable applies to my life,
Speaker 1: which is a more a more meta way, which I
Speaker 1: actually think is perhaps even more important, which is that
Speaker 1: much of what I do deals with archival and historical
Speaker 1: materials and coming from them, all of these enduring ideas
Speaker 1: and how to live of and this requires both understanding
Speaker 1: those ideas in the original context and re contextualizing them
Speaker 1: in our present culture at this intersection you know, of
Speaker 1: the timeless and the time like. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Our present culture is very much one of short termism,
Speaker 1: and it's very often divorced from historical context. And we
Speaker 1: assume that if something isn't on the Internet, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter or doesn't exist at all. And what is in
Speaker 1: the Internet is we assume accurate and valid. But what's
Speaker 1: on the Internet is often misattributed quotes and fragmentary ideas,
Speaker 1: stripped of original context and reclaimed in a different way,
Speaker 1: which doesn't necessarily preserve the integrity of the original idea.
Speaker 1: And so the metaway is this that take, for instance,
Speaker 1: this parable about the two wolves. Now the internet is
Speaker 1: rife with citations of it, regurgitating it as this old
Speaker 1: Cherokee legend, But in fact, as you know, it first
Speaker 1: appeared in that book the eight I think, was booked
Speaker 1: the Holy Spirit by an evangelical Christian minister named Billy Graham.
Speaker 1: And now this context might change things for some people.
Speaker 1: It can make the parable all the more compelling for Christians,
Speaker 1: for instance, or be off putting to those of us
Speaker 1: who have a distaste for organized religion. And yet the message,
Speaker 1: the core message of that little fable is an important one.
Speaker 1: But I believe the role of a great writer or editor,
Speaker 1: or podcaster or museum curator is to equip people with
Speaker 1: the appropriate context and critical tools to make a decision
Speaker 1: both inspired and informed about which aspects of an idea
Speaker 1: or ideology they want to subscribe to and carry forward. Well,
Speaker 1: you do that very well. Thank you, as do you well,
Speaker 1: Thank you so um, we're pastime. I could probably do
Speaker 1: this for six hours, but I'm going to end with
Speaker 1: one one more of your seven lessons and you just
Speaker 1: talked about it, which is this idea and it's one
Speaker 1: that that comes up in in what I talk about
Speaker 1: all the time, and you just referred to it in
Speaker 1: the in the way of our culture. But this short
Speaker 1: term um mentality that things should be quick, they should
Speaker 1: be easy. Um. And you you've got a quote from
Speaker 1: Debbie Millman that says, expect anything worthwhile to take a
Speaker 1: long time. And can you give us maybe just a
Speaker 1: couple of thoughts on that before we end? Sure? I mean,
Speaker 1: first of all, Debbie is my partner, which is why
Speaker 1: I quote her in my life learning as one should. Um,
Speaker 1: I think she kind of she nails this thing that
Speaker 1: it really bespeaks an idea that's that's very deep in
Speaker 1: our culture, but to which we have such resistance, which
Speaker 1: is that you can't you cannot make it overnight. And
Speaker 1: whatever your definition of make it is, and the more
Speaker 1: um sort of spiritual and less material your definition of
Speaker 1: make it is, the more true that is. Because perhaps
Speaker 1: we can have an overnight success by building a really
Speaker 1: successful startup and selling it off to Google in a
Speaker 1: year and a half. You know, that's a certain kind
Speaker 1: of success. But if you're after things like the things
Speaker 1: that character guard was talking about, like filling that existential
Speaker 1: emptiness and living with the sense of presence and purpose
Speaker 1: and again back to all those kind of cliche but
Speaker 1: kind of inevitably true things that we all want. Then
Speaker 1: you can't do it overnight, and yet so much of
Speaker 1: our cultural mythology is focused on that. Even if you
Speaker 1: look at what kinds of people are being spotlighted in
Speaker 1: the mainstream media, and um, how the people who achieve
Speaker 1: success by their own measure, how their stories are told. Um.
Speaker 1: I don't remember which writer was. I read an interview
Speaker 1: with his son in The Guardian maybe five or six
Speaker 1: years ago. It was a UK writer and the father
Speaker 1: had just won the National Book Award or some other
Speaker 1: major honor and he had said to his son, well,
Speaker 1: twenty two years of writing, and they're calling me an
Speaker 1: overnight success, you know, And we have that. It's funny,
Speaker 1: but it's really sad because we have that mentality that
Speaker 1: either you make it right away or or you make
Speaker 1: it after a long stretch of time, and that long
Speaker 1: stretch is completely erased from your history and you're hailed
Speaker 1: as an overnight success. Yea. And I think in addition
Speaker 1: to being an ill informed way to look at the world.
Speaker 1: I think the other thing that comes out of that
Speaker 1: is that when we embark on something new, we tend
Speaker 1: to think that we should be as good as what
Speaker 1: we're seeing out there without and if we don't realize
Speaker 1: how long, you know, how long it took. You know.
Speaker 1: I bet if we went back and looked at the
Speaker 1: first few articles you wrote for right, you'd say, and
Speaker 1: and and a lot everything dreadful. Yeah, and and yet
Speaker 1: that wasn't a measure of your competence or your capability.
Speaker 1: It was a measure of your current skill level, which
Speaker 1: can be improved. Well. One thing related to that was
Speaker 1: actually very important in something that I get so many
Speaker 1: young people, I assume young people asking me about, is
Speaker 1: the very very recurring question, Please tell me, does the
Speaker 1: donation based model work. It's kind of like because my
Speaker 1: site is like public radio. It's just it's all of it.
Speaker 1: It's free, it's ad free, and it's supported by people
Speaker 1: volunteering to donate whatever they feel like. And the the
Speaker 1: answer to that question is yes and no. It works
Speaker 1: really well now nine years into it, and I'm at
Speaker 1: a point where I can actually afford very fancy servers,
Speaker 1: which I actually need, you know, and all these things
Speaker 1: that I can pay my rent, I can do things
Speaker 1: that you can say in a valid way it works.
Speaker 1: But for the first six years at was beyond broke,
Speaker 1: you know, and not only beyond broke, but beyond broke,
Speaker 1: and without any kind of assurance that this would ever
Speaker 1: quote unquote work, you know, And and so I do know.
Speaker 1: I never I never know what to tell people in
Speaker 1: a way that doesn't mislead them to think it's all hopeless.
Speaker 1: But also it's very clear in letting them know that
Speaker 1: if you want to make it work, you have to
Speaker 1: be willing to kind of suffer through a bunch of
Speaker 1: stuff and mostly suffer through uncertainty for a long period
Speaker 1: of time before even have your own answer. And that
Speaker 1: goes back to the overnight success thing that even I mean, look,
Speaker 1: Kickstarter I think has done tremendous things for creative culture today,
Speaker 1: and I am a regular and very sort of avid
Speaker 1: supporter of projects and Kickstarter, but I also think it's
Speaker 1: breeding a certain mentality in people that they wanted the
Speaker 1: safety net, the assurance before they even begin. And for
Speaker 1: certain things that's great when it's a product based thing,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's perfect but if it's a long term commitment,
Speaker 1: there is no safety net. You weave your own safety net,
Speaker 1: like a little spider chipping away every single morning when
Speaker 1: you wake up. And not everybody has a tolerance for that.
Speaker 1: But back to the point of putting into the world
Speaker 1: the kinds of things that you want to see. I
Speaker 1: would love to see more people do that. And I
Speaker 1: actually keep this list of sites that I love that
Speaker 1: I come across somehow randomly because I rarely read the
Speaker 1: Internet anymore, who seemed to be doing similar things and
Speaker 1: just doing writing about what they feel matters, right, And
Speaker 1: because that's what writers do for people, They help us
Speaker 1: figure out what matters in the world and why it matters,
Speaker 1: and doing that and having to be donation based and
Speaker 1: doing it quietly and with perseverance, and just doing it
Speaker 1: and not knowing where it's going to. Oh and some
Speaker 1: of them. There's a wonderful site. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you know. It's called weight but why uh No, I don't,
Speaker 1: which I discovered only recently because I live under a
Speaker 1: cultural rock the size of the moon. But but this
Speaker 1: guy who runs it, his name is Tim urban uh
Speaker 1: answers questions about sort of science psychologist philosophy in a
Speaker 1: very thoughtful way, very long form, and he's been doing
Speaker 1: it for a while and it's tipping now into a
Speaker 1: point where it quote unquote works. It's also donation based, uh,
Speaker 1: and I just love seeing that because I believe it's possible.
Speaker 1: But when these young people asked me in an email,
Speaker 1: does it work, it's very hard to say it will
Speaker 1: work in nine years, because to a one year old,
Speaker 1: nine years is eternity. You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: And I think that's I mean, that's the number one
Speaker 1: question I get asked by people about the show. You know,
Speaker 1: we've had some success with iTunes picking this is one
Speaker 1: of the best and all that. And the question I
Speaker 1: get asked all the time, it's nothing about the show.
Speaker 1: It's nothing about the ideas. You know. Percent of the
Speaker 1: questions that I get that are from other people in
Speaker 1: the business is what's your monetization plan? And oh my god,
Speaker 1: I don't really have one. Now. I'm I'm fortunate that
Speaker 1: I have other things that I also do in addition
Speaker 1: to this that enable me not to need this to
Speaker 1: make money to survive. I've got other things that I
Speaker 1: do that I like doing that are but it's just
Speaker 1: not where my mind has been with it. And it's
Speaker 1: always I always say I'll think about that, and then
Speaker 1: it never really happens, um more than in passing. But
Speaker 1: but I'm just I'm I'm I think podcasts right now
Speaker 1: are culturally very hot, and so it's the gold rush,
Speaker 1: right and everybody's rushing in and it's about how they're
Speaker 1: going to make money doing it. And you know, the vast, vast,
Speaker 1: vast majority of them aren't to start with, and the
Speaker 1: rest that do will probably do it over you know,
Speaker 1: a substantial period time by doing something similar to what
Speaker 1: what you've done, which is building something that's worth supporting.
Speaker 1: Well that here's the thing, though, One reason why what
Speaker 1: you've done has become what it is and why you
Speaker 1: know people like Austin Cleon are who they are, is
Speaker 1: that you can tell that it doesn't that it didn't
Speaker 1: originate from a place of let me make some content
Speaker 1: the word I hate most in the world and make
Speaker 1: some money with it. You know, it's you can tell
Speaker 1: the spirit in which it comes into the world. And
Speaker 1: I think the only way that things like this cultural
Speaker 1: material really have enduring and and meaningful impact is if
Speaker 1: the question of monetization or whatever system is is secondary
Speaker 1: and only when it's a byproduct, because that's the only
Speaker 1: and of course that does require that you do it
Speaker 1: for a while with no pay and probably no money
Speaker 1: to live on, and depending on your tolerance for that.
Speaker 1: But I guess one one reason you say you know
Speaker 1: you have another way of making a living. But I
Speaker 1: bet you that if today you put a big, big
Speaker 1: old donate button on the site, people would actually do
Speaker 1: it and it would become a living. And the difference
Speaker 1: that the crucial difference and culturally between the things that
Speaker 1: matter and the things that don't, and back to Carcy
Speaker 1: Guards boredom and idleness and meaningless distraction, is that if
Speaker 1: buzz seed were to put a donate button on their site,
Speaker 1: nobody in the world would pay. If nobody would pay,
Speaker 1: and they know that, which is why ad supported sites
Speaker 1: are the awfulness that most of them are, you know.
Speaker 1: And I say this very mindfully as a critic, because
Speaker 1: I also don't believe the whole celebrator critic equations should
Speaker 1: be to the detriment of being able to discern between
Speaker 1: what is good and what is bad in the world
Speaker 1: and the kind of valleys that you want to support,
Speaker 1: So I think it's important to have critical judgment, which
Speaker 1: is not the same as being a critic in the
Speaker 1: saints of a in the sense of a hater. Right,
Speaker 1: it's in that generous part that I keep coming back
Speaker 1: to your seven lists. There's a there's a theme here,
Speaker 1: but the the generous part, which is that behind every
Speaker 1: work of creation is a real human But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of stuff out there that you'd be stretching a
Speaker 1: little bit to call it a work of real thoughtful creation. Right.
Speaker 1: You know, I do music in addition, and and I
Speaker 1: have a hard time criticizing people who who put out,
Speaker 1: you know, a full record, because there's a certain amount
Speaker 1: of effort that has gone into that and they've chosen
Speaker 1: to spend that time in a certain way. But ten
Speaker 1: Easy Ways to make your Cat Smile is a little
Speaker 1: bit different, brought to you by Liturgy Game. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: we've gone an hour, which is far further than normally
Speaker 1: we take these shows. And I know you've got time constraints.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I could probably do this for another
Speaker 1: two hours, but I am going to wrap it up here.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much, Maria for taking the time.
Speaker 1: This has been a really fun conversation. Like I've said,
Speaker 1: there'll be links to to brain Pickings and and I
Speaker 1: am I'm a big fan. It's one of the very
Speaker 1: few places that I actually go to on any kind
Speaker 1: of regular basis. So thanks so much for what you're
Speaker 1: doing with that, and thank you Eric for being kind
Speaker 1: of a force of goodwill hidden valley in the world.
Speaker 1: It really means a lot. And I don't speak just
Speaker 1: for myself. Well, thank you so much. Have a great afternoon.
Speaker 1: By As a reminder, if you're interested in doing some
Speaker 1: one on one work with me, send an email to
Speaker 1: Eric at one you feed dot net. Thanks. You can
Speaker 1: learn more of out Maria Popova and this podcast at
Speaker 1: one you feed dot net slash Maria