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Leitura de 86 min

O Afeto na Diferença (com Andrew Solomon)

Resumo

Nesta entrevista especial do Calma Urgente, Alessandra Orofino conversa com o autor e jornalista Andrew Solomon sobre seu livro “Far From the Tree” (Longe da Árvore). Solomon explica seu conceito de identidades verticais (passadas de pais para filhos, como raça e nacionalidade) e horizontais (que os pais não compartilham com os filhos, como surdez, autismo ou homossexualidade), explorando como as famílias negociam essas diferenças.

A conversa aborda a tensão entre a busca por uma “cura” e a aceitação das diferenças, usando exemplos como a cultura surda e a experiência pessoal de Solomon com a homossexualidade. Eles discutem como tecnologias como mapeamento genético de embriões colocam novas questões éticas sobre quais diferenças são consideradas desejáveis ou indesejáveis na sociedade.

Solomon também compartilha detalhes sobre seu próximo livro, que investiga a epidemia de suicídio entre jovens. Ele argumenta que o problema vai além de fatores individuais como depressão ou redes sociais, refletindo uma crise mais ampla de desesperança, falta de significado e perda de conexão na sociedade contemporânea. A conversa explora como o narcisismo, a crueldade e o colapso de narrativas compartilhadas contribuem para esse fenômeno.

No final, Solomon reflete sobre o que lhe dá esperança, compartilhando a experiência de seu filho de 16 anos como “page” no Senado dos EUA, onde jovens de diferentes origens políticas convivem sem celulares e desenvolvem um diálogo respeitoso. Ele vê na próxima geração uma abertura para reconhecer que o sistema atual não está funcionando e uma busca por soluções mais criativas para os problemas sociais.

Indicações

Books

  • Far From the Tree — O livro de Andrew Solomon que investiga famílias com crianças que são muito diferentes de seus pais, explorando identidades horizontais como surdez, nanismo, autismo e criminalidade.
  • The Noonday Demon — Livro anterior de Solomon sobre depressão, mencionado como uma obra fundamental para entender essa condição, escrita a partir de sua experiência pessoal com depressão severa.
  • Whitopia — Livro mencionado escrito por um autor negro e gay que passou três meses em cada um dos quatro lugares mais brancos dos EUA, explorando o medo dos imigrantes em comunidades sem imigrantes.

Concepts

  • Identidades Verticais e Horizontais — Conceito central de Solomon: identidades verticais são passadas de pais para filhos (raça, nacionalidade); identidades horizontais não são compartilhadas (surdez, autismo, homossexualidade), exigindo aprendizado com pares.

People

  • Eduardo Coutinho — Documentarista brasileiro citado por Alessandra como tendo dito que ‘as palavras mais hediondas em qualquer idioma são perfeição e pureza’.
  • Jhumpa Lahiri — Romancista mencionada por Solomon que, quando perguntada se um computador poderia escrever seus romances, respondeu: ‘Um computador pode escrever meus romances se entender que um dia morrerá’.
  • Lucretius — Filósofo romano do epicurismo citado por Solomon: ‘O sublime envolvia a troca de prazeres mais fáceis por prazeres mais difíceis’.

Linha do Tempo

  • 00:05:52 — Introdução e conceito de identidades verticais e horizontais — Andrew Solomon explica seu conceito central do livro “Far From the Tree”: identidades verticais são aquelas passadas de pais para filhos (como raça, nacionalidade), enquanto identidades horizontais são aquelas que os pais não compartilham com os filhos (como surdez, autismo, homossexualidade). Ele discute como crianças com identidades horizontais precisam aprender com seus pares, não de seus pais, e como isso inverte a dinâmica familiar tradicional.
  • 00:11:42 — Identidade política, preconceito e exposição à diferença — A conversa aborda como a política identitária evoluiu e como o preconceito muitas vezes surge da falta de exposição a pessoas diferentes. Solomon compartilha exemplos pessoais, incluindo ter um terapeuta palestino sendo judeu, e discute como a epidemia de AIDS forçou pessoas LGBTQ+ a saírem do armário, reduzindo o preconceito através da familiaridade. Ele argumenta que é difícil odiar pessoas cujas histórias você conhece.
  • 00:19:26 — A tensão entre cura e aceitação — Solomon explora a tensão fundamental entre tentar “curar” uma diferença versus aceitá-la, usando exemplos da cultura surda e sua própria experiência com a homossexualidade. Ele descreve como buscou terapia de conversão quando jovem antes de chegar à aceitação. A discussão aborda como essa tensão aparece em debates contemporâneos sobre neurodivergência, deficiência e positividade corporal.
  • 00:27:21 — Tecnologia genética e escolha de embriões — Alessandra pergunta sobre empresas como a Orchid Health que oferecem mapeamento genético de embriões para selecionar características desejáveis. Solomon faz uma distinção crucial: escolher um embrião sem surdez não é “curar” a surdez, mas sim decidir que uma pessoa surda é menos desejável que uma pessoa ouvinte. Ele discute a complexidade ética e como a realidade de viver com uma diferença muitas vezes difere das expectativas negativas.
  • 00:31:19 — O novo livro sobre suicídio juvenil e a crise de esperança — Solomon apresenta seu próximo livro, que investiga a epidemia de suicídio entre jovens. Ele argumenta que, embora a psiquiatria tenha insights valiosos, não está resolvendo o problema, que está enraizado em uma crise mais ampla de desesperança. Ele conecta isso ao colapso de valores cívicos, à perda de significado e à sensação de impotência diante de problemas globais como mudança climática e desigualdade extrema.
  • 00:39:37 — Amor, narrativa e o perigo da quantificação excessiva — A conversa aborda como a sociedade valoriza excessivamente o que pode ser quantificado (dados, STEM) em detrimento do que não pode (amor, narrativa, arte). Solomon argumenta que o amor, embora impossível de medir, é crucial para a resiliência. Eles discutem como a perda de narrativas compartilhadas e a atenção fragmentada pelas mídias sociais corroem a conexão humana e exacerbam a solidão.
  • 00:56:31 — Desesperança, impotência e a busca por controle — Solomon explora como a sensação de impotência diante de corporações gigantes, problemas globais intratáveis e a quebra da mobilidade social contribui para a desesperança. Ele menciona como alguns jovens expressam esse descontrole através de anorexia, tatuagens, transgeneridade ou suicídio. A conversa conecta isso ao colapso da eficácia política e à dificuldade de ver impacto nas ações coletivas.
  • 01:04:41 — O que dá esperança: a experiência do filho no Senado — Solomon compartilha uma experiência que lhe dá esperança: seu filho de 16 anos servindo como “page” no Senado dos EUA. Os 30 jovens (democratas e republicanos) vivem juntos sem celulares por meses e desenvolveram amizades além das divisões partidárias. Ele observa que, enquanto os senadores agem como crianças, esses adolescentes estão tendo conversas adultas e buscando compreensão mútua, mostrando que a próxima geração reconhece que o sistema atual não funciona.

Dados do Episódio

  • Podcast: Calma Urgente
  • Autor: Calma Urgente
  • Categoria: News Politics
  • Publicado: 2026-02-17T15:00:00Z
  • Duração: 01:15:40

Referências

Dados do Podcast

Transcrição

[00:00:00] What’s up guys, how are you? Today I’m here, quickly, just to introduce

[00:00:09] a special episode of Calma Urgente. Today, which is the second week of Carnival, it’s impossible to pull

[00:00:16] Gregório Duvivier and Alessandra to record a new episode and I imagine that many of you

[00:00:23] also prefer not to talk about these daily dystopias and that’s why we prepared

[00:00:29] a special episode that was actually recorded at the end of 2025, if I’m not mistaken, in October

[00:00:37] or November of 2025, which is an episode that that year was exclusive to the participants of our

[00:00:44] book club and that this year it became Calma Urgente’s culture club, which was an interview

[00:00:50] that Alessandra did with the author of the book that we read last year, Andrew Solomon, who

[00:00:57] wrote this book, which we had a lot of interest in, which we had a lot of interest in, which we had a lot of interest in, which we had

[00:00:59] The pleasure of reading in group away from the tree parents sons and the search for identity we

[00:01:06] wanted to put this episode on the air because we think especially interesting we think

[00:01:10] it is a conversation that is worth listening to beyond our club but it is also a way

[00:01:16] of showing people who are not part of it what kinds of content that we also

[00:01:21] bring to our culture club so this year we are going to talk to directors writers and authors.

[00:01:29] people who somehow did or know how to analyze very well some of the books, films,

[00:01:37] series that we will read and watch together throughout this year. For those who don’t know, Andrew

[00:01:43] Solomon is a journalist and I think one of the most interesting in the United States in the last 20,

[00:01:50] 25 years, who does something very peculiar, that he does a kind of investigative journalism,

[00:01:57] of the depth of human subjectivity. He uses all the resources of an obsessive

[00:02:05] apuration , but to go after feelings and an emotional landscape of our time.

[00:02:13] So he is known, I think, by the general public through his first big book that was

[00:02:20] The Deadly Demon , which is a book about depression, is a fundamental kind of book for those who want to

[00:02:26] this evil of the century, and he puts himself a lot in this book because he suffers from very severe depression,

[00:02:33] as a chronic condition of his, and I think that in some way this book guided him a lot to write

[00:02:39] The Far From the Tree, which is an investigation into many examples in different categories of children

[00:02:47] who came out very different from their parents, who fell far from the tree.

[00:02:52] So it can be some kind of disability, it can be some sensory issue, it can be super-dotation, it can be crime,

[00:03:00] it can be, in short, a series of things, and each chapter deals with this, and I think that more than about parenthood,

[00:03:08] what he’s going after is how the human being is able to reconnect with someone so close without recognizing a mirror of himself.

[00:03:19] So it’s also a very big way to look for

[00:03:22] the connection and to connect with this issue of depression that he has always investigated

[00:03:27] and is also present in some way in this same book.

[00:03:30] But the conversation that Alessandra had with Andrew, a wonderful conversation,

[00:03:36] also goes through the book that he is writing, his next book, which has nothing to do with a light theme,

[00:03:42] but a very important theme, which I think is a lens for us to understand our times today,

[00:03:48] which is about suicide, specifically suicide between young people.

[00:03:52] So it’s a way to understand the cultural, psychic conditions of our time and this lack of the future,

[00:04:00] which sometimes leads a generation to be more prone to commit the most serious, most definitive act that a person can commit.

[00:04:09] It doesn’t sound like a light subject for a carnival Monday, but I guarantee that it’s not a heavy conversation,

[00:04:17] it’s a conversation full of search for a light and a lot of connection, and it’s a guy that you,

[00:04:22] Alessandra, will be able to see extremely sensitively that Alessandra knew how to connect very well.

[00:04:27] For those who are going to watch here on YouTube, there is a subtitle, it’s an English conversation, of course,

[00:04:33] and for those who are on the podcast, you can either go on YouTube and watch with the subtitle if you don’t speak English,

[00:04:38] or on Spotify we also have the video, so you can watch on this platform with the respective subtitles.

[00:04:46] To close, really close, participate in our culture club of this year.

[00:04:50] Enter calmurgente.com.br

[00:04:52] and you will know more about how to participate and the numerous benefits that we offer.

[00:04:58] In addition to weekly conversations about movies, books, series and things that we will read and watch together,

[00:05:05] we have interviews, special participations, we have a community that only those who are part of it can be together,

[00:05:12] in many WhatsApp groups, on Instagram it is exclusive for members and members,

[00:05:17] and we have on the website calmurgente.com.br a very large list

[00:05:22] of publishers, bookstores, theaters, cinema, bar, restaurant, and the list will increase,

[00:05:27] which offers discounts and partnerships for those who have the wallet of the Calm Urgente culture club,

[00:05:33] because yes, we have a wallet, so you can be a member, excuse me, of the Calm Urgente wallet.

[00:05:41] So now, without further ado, Andrew Solomon with Alessandra Orofino.

[00:05:47] Happy Carnival, guys!

[00:05:52] Andrew Solomon, welcome to Calm Urgente.

[00:05:56] Bom dia, what a pleasure to be here.

[00:05:59] Thank you. Thank you for making the time for this conversation, Andrew.

[00:06:03] And I’m going to jump right in.

[00:06:05] What?

[00:06:07] In Far From the Tree, you explore this tension between vertical and horizontal identities.

[00:06:13] And I was wondering if you could explain to our audience what these identities mean and how you came up with this concept.

[00:06:21] So the idea is that vertical identities are identities that are passed down generationally from parent to child.

[00:06:29] So there are your race by and large is a vertical identity, your nationality tends to be, your religion frequently is.

[00:06:38] All of these are things that parents have in common with their children.

[00:06:42] Some of those identities can be very difficult.

[00:06:44] There certainly is a lot of racism and prejudice in the world altogether and in the United States in a hideous way right at this moment.

[00:06:50] But you also get all of the reinforcement of having a family who supports you in negotiating those difficulties,

[00:06:59] who say there’s prejudice against, for example, black people, but these are the ways you stand up to it.

[00:07:05] This is what you do. This is how you establish a sense of pride.

[00:07:08] Then there are what I call horizontal identities.

[00:07:11] Horizontal because parents and children don’t tend to have them in common.

[00:07:15] So, for example, most deaf children are born to hearing parents.

[00:07:19] Most parents, most children who are dwarfs are born to parents of ordinary height.

[00:07:25] Most children with autism have non-autistic parents.

[00:07:28] Most gay children have straight parents and so on and so forth.

[00:07:31] And those are identities that you have to learn through your interaction with a peer group.

[00:07:36] You have to be able to pick them up really from other people because your parents don’t understand them.

[00:07:42] And in effect, instead of having parents who teach you how to be yourself,

[00:07:46] you have to teach your parents how to be yourself.

[00:07:48] And your parents have to accept the person you are.

[00:07:51] And so I’ve called those horizontal because there isn’t that generational element in them.

[00:07:56] Fantastic. And when you look back at the book now, you know, the book came out a while ago,

[00:08:01] how do you see that framework evolving in this world where family structures,

[00:08:06] social expectations and identity politics have all shifted so much?

[00:08:10] Do you see any meaningful changes or do you believe that the gist of the thesis there remains the same?

[00:08:18] Well, the question of identity politics has become so central to conversation all over the world at this point.

[00:08:25] I just had lunch with an editor from The New York Times who said to me,

[00:08:29] do you think that black children need to see black therapists?

[00:08:32] Do you think little boys need to see male therapists?

[00:08:35] What are the boundaries of identity?

[00:08:37] And I said, you know, the idea that there were these very rigid boxed identities,

[00:08:42] I think there’s been a movement away from that.

[00:08:45] I think it became oppressive at a certain point.

[00:08:48] But the idea that people actually need to interact with other people who understand who they are

[00:08:53] and understand where they come from is enormously urgent.

[00:08:57] And that what there’s been certainly, as I say, in the United States,

[00:09:01] but I think in many other places in the world,

[00:09:04] is a breakdown of communication among people who are having different experiences of the world.

[00:09:10] And in a sense, instead of saying, wow, you see things differently, that’s so fascinating.

[00:09:15] Explain to me how you see them so I can understand it.

[00:09:17] You have people saying, well, if you see things differently, you’re wrong,

[00:09:20] and you should go away, and I don’t want anything further to do with you.

[00:09:24] So I think in a sort of liberal world, there’s been a loosening of this idea,

[00:09:30] which was to some degree formulated through liberalism.

[00:09:33] And in what I would overall call a conservative world,

[00:09:36] though liberal and conservative have become vague terms now,

[00:09:39] I think there’s been a tightening of it.

[00:09:41] And part of what’s been striking to me is the question of gratitude,

[00:09:47] and randomness.

[00:09:49] And I was born in the United States,

[00:09:53] and I have a mind that was in any case adequate to write some books.

[00:09:58] And other people were born to enormous disadvantage

[00:10:03] and are struggling across the rubble of Gaza under truly dire circumstances.

[00:10:09] And I know that while I’ve worked quite hard,

[00:10:14] that I was in a position in which my working quite hard would be productive.

[00:10:17] And that many other people who’ve worked quite hard

[00:10:19] weren’t in a position in which that was the case.

[00:10:22] So at the moment, the most dramatic evidence that I think we see everywhere

[00:10:26] is this prejudice against immigrants.

[00:10:29] And the prejudice against immigrants,

[00:10:31] which also often plays out in complex generational ways,

[00:10:35] because immigrant parents who don’t really understand the culture they’re in

[00:10:38] have children who then become much more part of it and so on.

[00:10:41] That prejudice against immigrants is based in the notion that some people deserve

[00:10:46] to have useful citizenships and the privileges associated with them,

[00:10:50] and other people don’t deserve that.

[00:10:53] And so while the question at one point was just to define,

[00:10:55] well, who’s like this and who’s like that,

[00:10:58] the question now more and more has become a really urgent moral question

[00:11:01] of what do you do with whatever advantages or privileges you have,

[00:11:06] and how do you find dignity,

[00:11:08] and how do you find a sense of self that actually has power in the world

[00:11:13] when you’ve been born to these disadvantages

[00:11:15] and are facing prejudice?

[00:11:18] That is a fascinating subject.

[00:11:20] We did a show recently about, well,

[00:11:23] Nick Fuentes and the Groypers and this emergence of white nationalism

[00:11:28] and white supremacy in the United States

[00:11:32] and how that is now informing far-right movements,

[00:11:34] not only in the U.S., but all over the world.

[00:11:36] We have our own version of Nick Fuentes and the Groypers

[00:11:39] and all of that here in Brazil, for instance.

[00:11:42] And it’s very interesting because, of course,

[00:11:44] Brazil has a complicated but quite different history with race and racism.

[00:11:50] It’s not the same as the U.S. at all,

[00:11:52] and the cleavages and the differences are just different and context-specific,

[00:11:57] but they’re borrowing a lot from that idea.

[00:12:00] And if I had to define this kind of new white supremacy speech in any way,

[00:12:06] you’ll be around the claiming of a white identity

[00:12:10] as something that needs to be protected,

[00:12:12] something that is under attack,

[00:12:13] from all these other identities that have articulated themselves politically, right?

[00:12:18] And it’s such a scary but also interesting moment to see that emerging,

[00:12:23] and I don’t know that we are up to the task of facing that,

[00:12:28] of articulating answers to that.

[00:12:30] And I have a hunch that some of your research for your book

[00:12:34] can give us some elements of that,

[00:12:37] not necessarily from a public policy perspective,

[00:12:40] but more importantly to me,

[00:12:42] from an intimacy,

[00:12:43] how do you deal with the other perspective?

[00:12:46] So I was wondering, all of that to say,

[00:12:49] based on your interviews and the extensive research that you did for Far From the Tree,

[00:12:54] how do you now make sense of the strength of these kind of white supremacist movements

[00:13:00] and how they claim identity,

[00:13:01] and the kinds of identities that they claim

[00:13:03] and the kinds of identities that they then disregard or consider inferior?

[00:13:08] Right.

[00:13:09] So in the first place,

[00:13:10] I just wanted to say that,

[00:13:12] you know,

[00:13:13] you all,

[00:13:14] if you’ll allow me to use that vague Southern American expression,

[00:13:17] but you all did manage to put Bolsonaro behind bars.

[00:13:20] Yes!

[00:13:21] We instead elected someone with many criminal convictions to run the country,

[00:13:25] not to display all my politics too quickly right at the beginning of the conversation.

[00:13:30] But I think altogether that a lot of the issue is exposure

[00:13:36] and that there is a very striking error that is often made,

[00:13:40] that people,

[00:13:41] who feel most under threat from those who are different,

[00:13:45] are the people who have the least experience of people who are different.

[00:13:49] So I’ve often said that I think if every American

[00:13:52] were required to spend six weeks in another country

[00:13:55] before the age of 30,

[00:13:57] no matter what the country was

[00:13:59] and no matter what it was they were doing there,

[00:14:01] that half of the diplomatic problems caused by this country would evaporate.

[00:14:07] And I think likewise,

[00:14:09] you know,

[00:14:10] I certainly didn’t grow up in a racist household,

[00:14:13] but when I got to college and had lots of friends

[00:14:16] who came from different races and from different places,

[00:14:19] I think there were a lot of assumptions I had made that fell aside.

[00:14:25] And I’ve been struck even,

[00:14:27] I mean,

[00:14:28] it’s a very miniature and autobiographical thing and it’s recent,

[00:14:31] but I had a very beloved psychotherapist whom I had seen for many years.

[00:14:35] I had suffered from severe depression.

[00:14:38] He died during COVID.

[00:14:39] I then saw a number of other people who didn’t work out very well.

[00:14:42] And I now have a therapist whom I really adore,

[00:14:44] but I am really the only Jew in New York I know who has a Palestinian therapist.

[00:14:48] Oh my God,

[00:14:49] I love this.

[00:14:50] He and I sometimes get into debates back and forth about,

[00:14:53] you know,

[00:14:54] particular issues that we may see somewhat differently.

[00:14:56] But I certainly feel that the fact that we are talking to,

[00:15:00] and so does he,

[00:15:01] the fact that we’re talking to each other about all of these things means that

[00:15:05] we aren’t taking positions that are as unchallenging,

[00:15:08] as uncharitable as the ones that are in fact dividing and destroying

[00:15:13] so much of the country in the U.S.

[00:15:16] and indeed in Israel and Palestine and that area of the Middle East.

[00:15:20] And someone I know wrote a book called Whitopia.

[00:15:25] He’s black and he’s gay.

[00:15:27] He went through the demographic surveys of the United States

[00:15:30] and he moved for three months each to the four whitest places in America.

[00:15:35] Okay.

[00:15:36] And he found when he got there,

[00:15:37] there were all of these rallies going on that were about,

[00:15:39] we have to protect ourselves from the immigrants.

[00:15:41] And he kept saying to people,

[00:15:42] there are no immigrants here.

[00:15:44] Who is it you’re protecting yourself from?

[00:15:46] What do you think?

[00:15:47] Who are these people you’re talking about?

[00:15:49] They were all actually,

[00:15:50] because he’s quite charming,

[00:15:51] very nice to him.

[00:15:52] His book is quite ironic and it has a lot of anger in it.

[00:15:55] But nonetheless,

[00:15:57] they were perfectly pleasant to him,

[00:15:59] but there still was this fear of the unknown.

[00:16:02] And the place where I really came to understand this is that essentially most

[00:16:07] gay or queer people in the United States were closeted.

[00:16:11] And then the AIDS epidemic came along,

[00:16:13] which is certainly not how anyone would have chosen for progress to take place.

[00:16:17] But during the AIDS epidemic,

[00:16:19] people stopped being closeted.

[00:16:21] And so people all over the country realized,

[00:16:24] oh, I know gay people,

[00:16:26] I guess.

[00:16:27] And the prejudice began to evaporate.

[00:16:29] And I just think the separations that sometimes have been brought about,

[00:16:33] even in the name of well-intended identity politics,

[00:16:37] have been incredibly dangerous.

[00:16:39] That it’s by mixing and being together and knowing one another,

[00:16:43] it’s hard to hate people whose stories you know.

[00:16:46] And I’m particularly struck on the national security front

[00:16:50] by the fact that there’s all this talk about how we can’t let in all those foreigners

[00:16:54] because if they come in and they study at our universities,

[00:16:56] you know, they’ll sort of…

[00:16:58] I spent a lot of time reporting from all over the world.

[00:17:01] I was in Afghanistan.

[00:17:02] I was in Libya.

[00:17:03] I was in Rwanda.

[00:17:05] I was in South Africa at the end of apartheid.

[00:17:07] I reported from Central Asia and China and late Soviet Russia.

[00:17:13] Time after time,

[00:17:15] I found that the people who had actually spent time

[00:17:18] in the United States or the UK,

[00:17:21] which are the two countries that I’m a national of,

[00:17:24] tended to have rather affectionate relationships with those countries.

[00:17:28] The people who had not been allowed to go to those countries

[00:17:31] were full of rage and hostility.

[00:17:33] So there’s this notion that because some of the people

[00:17:35] who were involved in the 9-11 bombing

[00:17:37] were here on student visas,

[00:17:39] that means that letting students in is dangerous.

[00:17:41] And I think it’s not only that it’s not dangerous,

[00:17:44] I think excluding students is in fact precisely what is dangerous

[00:17:49] and that this attempt all the time to push people away

[00:17:53] is the thing that ultimately undermines the safety and security,

[00:17:57] I mean, I’m most informed about this country,

[00:18:00] but really of the world.

[00:18:02] Yeah.

[00:18:03] We talked a little bit about that as well,

[00:18:05] like this kind of transfer of people

[00:18:07] and this kind of patriotism,

[00:18:09] and at least in the Brazilian community,

[00:18:11] the Brazilian community that emigrates to the US

[00:18:13] is certainly very patriotic towards the US.

[00:18:16] So it’s a very interesting shift in identity, I guess,

[00:18:19] and affiliation that happens there.

[00:18:21] I am tempted to ask you about your war stories

[00:18:23] from all of these places you’ve lived in,

[00:18:25] but I want to stay with Far From the Tree just a little bit more.

[00:18:28] And one of the most powerful arguments in the book

[00:18:32] is that, well, I’m probably,

[00:18:37] I don’t want to,

[00:18:38] this is not exactly the way you say it,

[00:18:40] but the way that I interpret it is that there is this conflict often

[00:18:44] between acceptance and the search for a cure

[00:18:47] or a search to address something

[00:18:50] that could also be seen as an illness or an issue.

[00:18:53] And I was just wondering about how this tension appears.

[00:18:58] Well, how did you first formulate that tension?

[00:19:01] How did you observe it?

[00:19:03] How did it show up then when you wrote the book?

[00:19:05] And then how does it appear,

[00:19:07] in current political and cultural debates,

[00:19:10] around disability, around neurodivergence,

[00:19:13] even things like body positivity?

[00:19:15] I see that tension all the time now

[00:19:18] when I’m looking and I’m reading about the culture

[00:19:21] and I’m immersed in the culture.

[00:19:23] And I’m just really curious about your take on that.

[00:19:26] Well, it emerged for me because I wrote an article

[00:19:29] for the New York Times Magazine 30 years ago now

[00:19:32] about deaf culture.

[00:19:34] And I hadn’t really even known at that point

[00:19:36] that there was a deaf culture

[00:19:38] and that people who communicated in sign language

[00:19:40] had a world that was so much their own.

[00:19:44] But I found that deaf children who are born to deaf parents

[00:19:47] often grew up with a sense of great connection to this culture,

[00:19:50] which has many things to recommend it.

[00:19:53] And that deaf children who are born to hearing parents

[00:19:56] had parents who were desperate to make them hear

[00:19:59] because they thought that was the only way

[00:20:01] you could manage and be happy in the world.

[00:20:03] Now, I can hear.

[00:20:05] At least reasonably well.

[00:20:07] And I like being able to hear.

[00:20:09] And it’s not that I wanted to go and join deaf culture,

[00:20:12] but I recognize some beauty in it.

[00:20:14] I’m gay.

[00:20:16] My parents were straight.

[00:20:18] My parents were not so pleased when they found out that I was gay.

[00:20:21] I mean, they weren’t terrible about it,

[00:20:23] but they certainly weren’t thrilled.

[00:20:25] And I think they had the idea

[00:20:27] that the way you could be happy

[00:20:29] was to be a man who had a wife and had a family

[00:20:31] and had all of these other things

[00:20:33] and had a normal mainstream society.

[00:20:35] They didn’t send me for conversion therapy,

[00:20:38] but I was so distressed,

[00:20:40] I think partly because of them,

[00:20:42] but partly because of the attitudes that existed altogether in the 1970s,

[00:20:46] which was that homosexuality was an illness and so on.

[00:20:49] I went and sought out a form of conversion therapy

[00:20:52] because I thought I can fix this

[00:20:54] because I had always been good at pleasing everyone

[00:20:57] and fixing everything.

[00:20:59] And I thought, well, I’ll fix this too,

[00:21:01] and then I’ll be normal like everybody else.

[00:21:03] And then I realized that wasn’t going to work

[00:21:06] and that I was making myself miserable.

[00:21:08] And it was a kind of gradual process of thinking,

[00:21:11] well, if I’m not going to cure this,

[00:21:13] then I should get to the point at which I don’t feel so sad about it.

[00:21:16] And that was the journey toward acceptance,

[00:21:19] which I think I’ve accomplished.

[00:21:21] There are sort of occasional moments

[00:21:23] when I get flashes of thinking,

[00:21:24] oh, life would be easier otherwise.

[00:21:26] But I also feel there are enormous rewards that have come my way.

[00:21:30] So then once I got started on that,

[00:21:32] I began looking around at the experiences

[00:21:34] of all these people I know.

[00:21:35] So I have a transgender goddaughter.

[00:21:39] I have an autistic goddaughter.

[00:21:42] I happen to have ended up with a bunch of godchildren

[00:21:44] who turned out to be pertinent to a book

[00:21:46] I was already writing before any of them was diagnosed.

[00:21:49] And I just thought in all of these cases,

[00:21:53] in the first place, you have to figure out

[00:21:54] whether or not you can cure something.

[00:21:57] But in the second place, is it desirable to cure it?

[00:22:00] And also, on a larger scale,

[00:22:02] you might say, well, I have a deaf child.

[00:22:05] I want to be able to communicate.

[00:22:07] I would like my child to have a cochlear implant

[00:22:09] so that my child can hear.

[00:22:11] And there’s a validity to that line of argument.

[00:22:14] But if we were to lose deaf culture entirely

[00:22:18] and lose the theater that’s been built around sign language

[00:22:21] and lose the whole idea of the way

[00:22:23] that the human brain develops differently

[00:22:26] if it expresses itself through physical gesture

[00:22:29] than if it expresses itself through sound,

[00:22:31] that would be, I think,

[00:22:32] a terrible and catastrophic loss.

[00:22:34] And so the question is,

[00:22:36] how do we get some kind of balance

[00:22:39] between saying what we can cure,

[00:22:42] what we want to cure in an individual instance,

[00:22:45] and what we want to cure on a larger scale,

[00:22:47] and what are the ways in which we learn

[00:22:49] that we must accept ourselves,

[00:22:51] our children, the people around us,

[00:22:53] and then possibly notice

[00:22:55] that we can not only accept them

[00:22:57] but also celebrate them

[00:22:59] and then just become,

[00:23:00] and then just become accustomed to them.

[00:23:03] And I had one moment that was of great clarity.

[00:23:06] I was at an event at my son’s school

[00:23:08] when he first started at the high school that he goes to.

[00:23:11] And one of the other parents who was there

[00:23:13] was someone I had known marginally many years ago.

[00:23:15] Her son and ours had been in preschool together.

[00:23:20] And my son had commented

[00:23:23] that her son was very popular with the girls.

[00:23:26] And so I saw her and I was just making conversation

[00:23:28] at this sort of parents’ event

[00:23:30] the kind at which making conversation is nearly impossible.

[00:23:33] And I said,

[00:23:34] Oh, I gather your son is very popular with the girls.

[00:23:36] And his mother said,

[00:23:37] Well, he does seem to have an awful lot of friends who are girls.

[00:23:39] She said,

[00:23:40] I can’t figure out whether that’s because he’s kind of good-looking

[00:23:43] and they’re all really into him

[00:23:44] or whether that’s because he’s gay

[00:23:46] and that’s who he feels comfortable around.

[00:23:47] She said,

[00:23:48] So I guess the jury’s out.

[00:23:49] We’ll have to wait and see.

[00:23:50] And what was striking to me in that moment

[00:23:52] was I thought she didn’t say,

[00:23:54] Yeah, I’m really worried about it.

[00:23:56] But neither did she say,

[00:23:57] Yes, I think my son is gay

[00:23:59] and I’m going to be behind him and we’re going to do…

[00:24:01] Oh, and she didn’t get into that sort of super festivity,

[00:24:04] I’m waving my pom-poms in the air kind of mode.

[00:24:06] It was just a sort of,

[00:24:07] I guess we’ll see.

[00:24:08] I guess we don’t know.

[00:24:09] And I feel like in terms of all kinds of difference,

[00:24:12] if we could get to the point of saying,

[00:24:14] Ah, that’s kind of interesting.

[00:24:16] I wonder,

[00:24:17] instead of being at the point of feeling

[00:24:19] we had to achieve acceptance

[00:24:21] or we had to insist on celebration

[00:24:23] or any of those things,

[00:24:24] if we could arrive at that point

[00:24:25] at which it’s not that much of a big deal,

[00:24:28] that would actually…

[00:24:29] be the success of the society.

[00:24:31] That is a very interesting vision for success.

[00:24:34] And I am stricken by what you said around

[00:24:37] the difference between having a valid desire

[00:24:42] or inkling for having a child

[00:24:44] that you can communicate with more easily,

[00:24:46] for instance,

[00:24:47] as in the case of being a hearing parent

[00:24:49] for a deaf child,

[00:24:51] and then erasing that culture altogether

[00:24:55] and how these two things are very different.

[00:24:58] And I’m wondering,

[00:25:00] with the advances that we’ve had

[00:25:01] since you wrote the book, again,

[00:25:03] in IVF and genome mapping

[00:25:07] and so on and so forth,

[00:25:09] how that’s changed.

[00:25:10] I’m going to give you just a little bit of context

[00:25:11] for that particular question.

[00:25:13] I was very stricken by an interview

[00:25:15] that I listened to.

[00:25:17] I think it was with Ross Stout

[00:25:19] at Interesting Times,

[00:25:20] at the New York Times.

[00:25:21] And he interviews the CEO

[00:25:23] of this company called Orchid Health.

[00:25:26] And Orchid,

[00:25:27] Orchid’s tagline is,

[00:25:29] have healthy babies.

[00:25:31] That’s the tagline.

[00:25:33] And what they do

[00:25:34] is that they do genome embryo reports,

[00:25:37] essentially.

[00:25:38] So you,

[00:25:39] you know,

[00:25:40] if you’re considering IVF

[00:25:41] and you already have your embryos,

[00:25:44] before you implant those embryos

[00:25:47] into the mother’s uterus,

[00:25:49] you can essentially map out that genome.

[00:25:53] And they claim to offer best in class,

[00:25:56] extremely comprehensive genome mapping

[00:26:00] and reporting

[00:26:01] so that you can pick the embryo

[00:26:03] that has a better chance of being,

[00:26:06] quote unquote,

[00:26:07] healthy.

[00:26:08] Now their definition of healthy,

[00:26:09] of course,

[00:26:10] includes certain things

[00:26:12] that I think most people would agree

[00:26:14] are highly desirable.

[00:26:16] So making sure that your baby can survive

[00:26:18] outside of the uterus,

[00:26:20] for instance.

[00:26:21] And I think for some people

[00:26:22] that have very complicated syndromes

[00:26:24] in their family,

[00:26:25] that is a real concern,

[00:26:27] that they would even

[00:26:28] have a baby that is viable.

[00:26:31] But it could also include things like

[00:26:33] your baby not being deaf.

[00:26:35] It could also conversely include things

[00:26:37] like your baby being deaf,

[00:26:38] which for some deaf people

[00:26:39] could be actually a desirable trait.

[00:26:42] So how do you make sense of that

[00:26:44] in a world where

[00:26:46] the possibility of having

[00:26:48] this kind of technology available

[00:26:50] to most couples

[00:26:52] is becoming increasingly high, right?

[00:26:54] This was something that was

[00:26:56] a bit of a luxury a few years ago.

[00:26:58] I mean, the technology wasn’t as accessible.

[00:27:00] The price point was different.

[00:27:01] And it’s now approaching that moment

[00:27:03] when it could become mass,

[00:27:05] almost like a product for mass consumption.

[00:27:08] How does that change the conversation

[00:27:10] around cure?

[00:27:11] Because in that case,

[00:27:12] we’re not even talking about cure.

[00:27:13] We’re talking about precluding

[00:27:15] that person from existing, right?

[00:27:17] And how does that,

[00:27:18] what does that mean in your mind?

[00:27:21] So one of the points

[00:27:22] that I think it’s important to make

[00:27:23] is that when one makes that choice

[00:27:25] in a prenatal setting,

[00:27:27] it’s not as though you think,

[00:27:29] I will have the child I was going to have,

[00:27:31] but my child won’t be deaf.

[00:27:33] You’re choosing not to have the child

[00:27:35] who would have been deaf

[00:27:36] and instead to have the child

[00:27:38] who will be hearing.

[00:27:40] And so, and I think you’re welcome

[00:27:42] to make whatever choices you want to

[00:27:44] once those choices are available.

[00:27:46] I don’t take a strong moral position about it.

[00:27:48] But it’s not the same

[00:27:49] as curing someone’s deafness.

[00:27:51] It’s deciding,

[00:27:52] this person with deafness

[00:27:54] is less desirable to me

[00:27:56] than this person

[00:27:57] who does not have deafness.

[00:27:59] I think that’s a fine point

[00:28:01] that people often miss.

[00:28:03] Absolutely.

[00:28:04] What I found over and over again

[00:28:05] in talking to people,

[00:28:06] I mean, there are some things,

[00:28:07] you know, children who suffer hideously

[00:28:09] from Ty-Sachs syndrome

[00:28:10] and die within a year of birth

[00:28:12] and die in complete physical agony.

[00:28:14] There are some things that seem to me,

[00:28:16] but these are only my own judgments,

[00:28:18] that it really does make sense to avoid.

[00:28:22] But when I look at my own children,

[00:28:25] I mean, I’m very glad

[00:28:27] that they seem in general to be healthy.

[00:28:30] My real question is,

[00:28:32] are they kind?

[00:28:35] Are they purposeful?

[00:28:37] Are they loving?

[00:28:39] Are they upstanding?

[00:28:42] All kinds of other things.

[00:28:43] And the genetics of all of that

[00:28:45] are so unbelievably far away.

[00:28:48] And I have met deaf people

[00:28:50] who I thought were

[00:28:51] remarkable people,

[00:28:53] including two in particular

[00:28:55] who have become very, very close friends

[00:28:57] whom I would not have met

[00:28:58] had I not been doing this work, probably.

[00:29:00] And I’ve met plenty of hearing people

[00:29:02] who’ve done all kinds of terrible things.

[00:29:05] And I remember talking to the mother

[00:29:07] of a child who had Down syndrome,

[00:29:10] and she said to me,

[00:29:11] who had not known prenatally,

[00:29:13] she said,

[00:29:14] all of my friends thought

[00:29:15] they had these wonderful children,

[00:29:17] and bit by bit,

[00:29:18] they’ve discovered their flaws.

[00:29:20] She said,

[00:29:21] I was given what seemed to be tragic news

[00:29:23] the day my child was born,

[00:29:25] and every surprise since then

[00:29:27] has been a good one.

[00:29:28] And so I think people’s perception

[00:29:30] of what will it be like

[00:29:31] to have a child with this difference

[00:29:33] and the reality of what is it like

[00:29:35] to live with this difference

[00:29:37] can often be very different things.

[00:29:39] And I felt quite good about the fact

[00:29:41] that I’ve had letters

[00:29:42] from people who read the book

[00:29:43] and who said,

[00:29:44] I read your book,

[00:29:45] and I realized

[00:29:46] I don’t have the strength

[00:29:47] to deal with all this.

[00:29:48] It sounds totally overwhelming.

[00:29:49] And I decided to terminate a pregnancy.

[00:29:53] And I’ve also had letters

[00:29:54] from people who’ve written to me

[00:29:55] and said,

[00:29:56] I read your book.

[00:29:57] I was thinking of terminating

[00:29:58] my pregnancy.

[00:29:59] Some of the stories you wrote

[00:30:00] really inspired me.

[00:30:01] I decided to keep the pregnancy

[00:30:03] and have the child I had.

[00:30:05] And I’ve met almost no one

[00:30:07] except people whose children

[00:30:08] went through really extreme suffering

[00:30:10] who, once they actually have a child,

[00:30:13] wish they hadn’t had that child.

[00:30:15] I mean, some people perhaps

[00:30:16] who have accidental pregnancies

[00:30:17] and so on,

[00:30:18] some people who want children.

[00:30:19] You grow attached to the child you have,

[00:30:21] even when the child you have

[00:30:23] is really very flawed

[00:30:24] in a whole variety of ways.

[00:30:26] And your child will be flawed.

[00:30:28] So perhaps your child will not be deaf.

[00:30:31] But if you go with this parental fantasy

[00:30:34] that you’ll be a perfect parent

[00:30:36] and you’ll have a perfect child,

[00:30:37] you are setting yourself up

[00:30:39] for complete misery.

[00:30:40] Yeah.

[00:30:41] There is a Brazilian documentarist,

[00:30:42] Eduardo Coutinho,

[00:30:43] who said that the most hideous words

[00:30:45] in any language

[00:30:47] were perfection and purity.

[00:30:49] And I think I strongly agree with that.

[00:30:52] And we’re seeing that

[00:30:53] in the politics of the world today.

[00:30:55] Andrew, I want to talk a little bit

[00:30:57] about your new project.

[00:30:58] And you’ve told me that your new project

[00:31:00] is focusing on the epidemic

[00:31:02] of teen suicide.

[00:31:03] And I was wondering

[00:31:04] what you could share with us

[00:31:05] about where you are with that book

[00:31:06] and why you chose to tackle

[00:31:08] this particularly hard subject.

[00:31:11] I mean, I don’t know.

[00:31:12] I don’t know what comes after that.

[00:31:14] You’ve been just making it harder

[00:31:16] and harder.

[00:31:17] So tell me a little bit about that.

[00:31:19] Well, I do have what I think is referred to

[00:31:23] as a counterphobic tendency

[00:31:24] that when something is frightening to me,

[00:31:26] instead of running away from it,

[00:31:27] I run toward it,

[00:31:28] which is quite weird

[00:31:29] because when I was a child,

[00:31:30] I definitely ran away from anything

[00:31:32] that made me anxious.

[00:31:33] It was something that set in later on.

[00:31:35] One of my son’s classmates

[00:31:37] at the age of 12

[00:31:38] jumped off the roof of his building

[00:31:40] on Park Avenue in New York City

[00:31:41] and killed himself.

[00:31:42] When it happened,

[00:31:44] his parents expressed interest

[00:31:46] in having me try to write

[00:31:47] about their experience

[00:31:48] and the experience of their child.

[00:31:50] I had also years earlier lost,

[00:31:54] when he was in his 40s,

[00:31:56] lost one of my college roommates to suicide.

[00:31:59] And there were some very close friends

[00:32:02] of my parents who’d lost a child to suicide

[00:32:04] and become activists in the area.

[00:32:06] I’ve suffered from depression,

[00:32:08] and I knew that as someone

[00:32:09] who had suffered from depression,

[00:32:10] I was going to have children

[00:32:12] who were at a higher risk than others were.

[00:32:15] I think I began to think

[00:32:16] about my parents

[00:32:17] in the investigation,

[00:32:18] partly because I thought

[00:32:19] these stories are so painful

[00:32:20] that nobody wants to tell them.

[00:32:22] And it may well be that nobody wants to read them,

[00:32:24] in which case no one will read my book.

[00:32:26] But in any event,

[00:32:27] nobody wants to sort of engage with them.

[00:32:29] And yet there’s more and more of this going on,

[00:32:31] and there’s so little information available.

[00:32:34] In part, I thought it was important

[00:32:37] for parents who needed information in general

[00:32:41] not to feel so alone and so ashamed

[00:32:44] in the conversations

[00:32:45] that they were having.

[00:32:48] But I also, as I’ve worked on the book,

[00:32:51] have come to feel

[00:32:52] that there is a great temptation always

[00:32:54] to present very simple solutions

[00:32:56] to very complicated questions.

[00:32:58] And that suicide comes up all the time,

[00:33:01] and people keep saying,

[00:33:02] you know,

[00:33:03] suicide has really gone up

[00:33:04] since cell phones came along.

[00:33:06] Suicide has really been caused by social media.

[00:33:09] And I think, well,

[00:33:10] you know, none of these things have helped.

[00:33:12] I mean, I’m not wildly pro cell phones

[00:33:14] all the time in front of someone all day long,

[00:33:17] and I don’t actually use social media.

[00:33:20] But those are actually the vehicles

[00:33:23] through which a kind of breakdown

[00:33:25] of the system of civics and values

[00:33:28] that kept a society intact

[00:33:31] has been communicated.

[00:33:33] And while I don’t know that we need to return

[00:33:35] to an old system of civics and values,

[00:33:37] it’s not that I’m idealizing the 1950s

[00:33:40] or the 1870s or the 1710s

[00:33:43] or any other period.

[00:33:44] It’s that I think we’ve stopped thinking

[00:33:46] about a lot of really urgent questions.

[00:33:49] So I’ve gone to a lot of suicide conferences

[00:33:52] where suicidologists,

[00:33:53] which is now an entire field,

[00:33:55] stand up and present their work.

[00:33:57] And they’ve arrived at all these insights.

[00:33:59] They’re psychologists.

[00:34:00] They’re psychiatrists.

[00:34:01] And they say,

[00:34:02] we figured this out,

[00:34:03] and we put together these data,

[00:34:04] and we’ve got this information.

[00:34:05] And it sounds so impressive.

[00:34:07] And they, I’m afraid,

[00:34:08] tend to sound quite self-congratulatory.

[00:34:10] And then at the end of the conference,

[00:34:12] I always want to say,

[00:34:13] that’s really great.

[00:34:15] The rate is escalating rapidly.

[00:34:17] Perhaps it would be escalating even more rapidly

[00:34:19] without your research,

[00:34:20] but you don’t seem to be solving this problem.

[00:34:23] And they say,

[00:34:24] well, we just need to.

[00:34:25] And I think,

[00:34:26] no, actually,

[00:34:27] I don’t think psychiatry is the solution.

[00:34:29] I think it has a role to play.

[00:34:31] And I think the insights that have come out of it

[00:34:33] are very profound.

[00:34:34] But I don’t think it explains

[00:34:36] what’s actually happening

[00:34:37] to a hopeless younger generation.

[00:34:40] And I’ve said,

[00:34:41] you know,

[00:34:42] the bottom of Pandora’s box was hope,

[00:34:44] and it’s hope that has disappeared.

[00:34:46] How you reintroduce hope to the world

[00:34:49] is a bigger project

[00:34:50] than I’m going to attempt to solve in this book.

[00:34:52] But recognizing what the manifestations of it are,

[00:34:55] what it looks like,

[00:34:56] and what its consequences are,

[00:34:58] is a way really of saying,

[00:34:59] where are we in the world,

[00:35:01] and what are the things

[00:35:02] to which we should be paying attention

[00:35:04] if we actually want humanity to continue

[00:35:07] in whatever meaningful

[00:35:08] and sometimes joyous ways it has.

[00:35:11] Well, I want to come back to this theme of hope,

[00:35:13] because I agree that it’s central.

[00:35:15] But before I do,

[00:35:17] since we just spoke about Far From the Tree,

[00:35:19] I was curious about any connections

[00:35:21] that you make between your earlier work

[00:35:23] and this new project.

[00:35:24] Like, what continuities do you see?

[00:35:26] Do the same themes of difference,

[00:35:29] belonging, family dynamics

[00:35:31] help explain why some teenagers

[00:35:34] become more vulnerable than others?

[00:35:36] Like, what are your thoughts on that,

[00:35:38] on the continuities and the parallels

[00:35:40] between the two books?

[00:35:42] Well, first, in terms of saying

[00:35:44] what the vulnerabilities are,

[00:35:45] there are certain things

[00:35:46] that are obvious vulnerabilities.

[00:35:47] But as I said,

[00:35:48] I started writing the book

[00:35:49] in hopes that it would give me information

[00:35:51] I could use to protect my children.

[00:35:53] And the research has made me think

[00:35:55] there actually is no information

[00:35:57] that will help me to protect my children.

[00:35:59] This is a vulnerability

[00:36:00] that’s taking place on a vast scale.

[00:36:02] There are some things I can do,

[00:36:04] but I haven’t come out of it thinking,

[00:36:06] oh, I’ve got the solution,

[00:36:07] and, you know, just do this and this,

[00:36:08] and it’s all going to be okay.

[00:36:09] But in terms of continuities,

[00:36:12] I mean, I feel like my first book

[00:36:14] was about a group of Soviet artists

[00:36:16] and how their lives changed glass-nosed.

[00:36:18] My second was a novel

[00:36:19] about my mother’s illness and death

[00:36:21] from ovarian cancer

[00:36:22] when she was younger than I am now.

[00:36:24] My third was a book about depression.

[00:36:26] My fourth was the book

[00:36:27] Four from the Tree.

[00:36:28] And my fifth was

[00:36:29] The International Reporting.

[00:36:31] And when I looked at them all,

[00:36:33] I realized, which I had not realized

[00:36:35] when I started on all of these

[00:36:37] rather diffuse-seeming topics,

[00:36:39] what really interests me is resilience.

[00:36:42] Why is it that some people,

[00:36:44] confronted with things that seem so difficult,

[00:36:47] are utterly destroyed by them?

[00:36:49] And other people,

[00:36:50] confronted by things that on the surface,

[00:36:52] at least, seem somewhat less difficult,

[00:36:56] sorry, that some people with great difficulty

[00:36:58] manage resilience,

[00:36:59] and others facing less difficult things

[00:37:01] are destroyed by them.

[00:37:02] And what are the things that give people

[00:37:04] the strength and the courage

[00:37:06] to find a way forward?

[00:37:08] And what are the ways

[00:37:09] that we find meaning

[00:37:10] in suffering and in painful experiences?

[00:37:13] And I think that’s what’s united all of it.

[00:37:16] And in a way,

[00:37:17] suicide represented the greatest challenge

[00:37:19] because I met parents who said,

[00:37:21] you know, having a deaf child changed me

[00:37:23] in such wonderful and profound ways.

[00:37:25] I have not met any parents who said,

[00:37:27] you know, I’m so glad my daughter killed herself.

[00:37:29] People are not glad of that.

[00:37:30] They may grow from it.

[00:37:32] They may change from it.

[00:37:33] They may become better people.

[00:37:34] But they aren’t glad of it.

[00:37:36] And yet, nonetheless,

[00:37:37] it forces people

[00:37:38] to think about why it is

[00:37:40] that they have chosen to stay alive.

[00:37:44] And while each individual case of suicide

[00:37:47] is, I think,

[00:37:48] or almost every one of them is tragic,

[00:37:50] the reality that it exists

[00:37:52] means that you and I

[00:37:55] and whoever else watching this conversation right now,

[00:37:58] we all could have killed ourselves

[00:38:00] and we haven’t done so.

[00:38:01] We’ve chosen to be alive instead.

[00:38:03] And so in thinking about suicide,

[00:38:05] it’s really a matter of thinking,

[00:38:07] what, I mean, without wanting to get sort of huge

[00:38:10] and sound as though I’m trying to rewrite

[00:38:12] the New Testament,

[00:38:13] but what is the meaning of life

[00:38:15] and why is it that we keep going

[00:38:17] and what are the things that drive us forward?

[00:38:19] And I think that’s the question

[00:38:20] that’s run through all of the work

[00:38:22] from the Soviets who were experiencing

[00:38:25] such terrible persecution and oppression

[00:38:28] right through to the suicides

[00:38:30] who are in a very different situation

[00:38:32] but with some of the same issues.

[00:38:34] Yeah, fantastic.

[00:38:36] One, I wonder about that question

[00:38:38] about the meaning of life.

[00:38:39] And again, we don’t need to rewrite the New Testament,

[00:38:42] but you said before that you didn’t find any answers

[00:38:45] that could potentially save your own children.

[00:38:48] And I like that,

[00:38:51] not that I don’t want your children to be healthy

[00:38:53] and live wonderful lives,

[00:38:55] but I like the fact that this is not a manual

[00:38:58] for anxious parents, right?

[00:39:00] Like this is not about you saving your own progeny.

[00:39:04] And because this kind of question,

[00:39:06] this kind of survivalist mentality,

[00:39:09] I think is very much at the root

[00:39:11] of so much of societal illnesses that we see today.

[00:39:15] So I’m wondering about the collective dimension

[00:39:17] of the meaning of life.

[00:39:19] And maybe you can find an answer

[00:39:20] for your children in particular,

[00:39:22] but could we find answers

[00:39:24] that apply to children in general, right?

[00:39:27] Like how do we make meaning together?

[00:39:29] And is there anything about that

[00:39:31] that has come out from your research

[00:39:34] that could point us at least

[00:39:35] in the right direction?

[00:39:37] So I would say a few things.

[00:39:39] The first is that as a society overall,

[00:39:43] we’ve come to a point at which people believe

[00:39:45] that anything that can be expressed in math is true.

[00:39:50] If there’s a chart, if there are numbers,

[00:39:52] if you can say 37% of people under the age,

[00:39:55] all of that seems to be true.

[00:39:57] And narrative seems to be a kind of cute luxury

[00:40:01] of well-to-do people who need some entertainment.

[00:40:05] And the reality is that there’s a great deal

[00:40:07] of human wisdom that cannot be expressed in numbers.

[00:40:11] There’s a reason why the Bible and Shakespeare

[00:40:15] and none of it was written in charts and diagrams.

[00:40:18] It was written in stories.

[00:40:20] And I just this morning was making a presentation

[00:40:23] at the Metropolitan Museum of Art,

[00:40:25] and it was about the idea that looking at art

[00:40:27] is actually not just because pretty things are pleasant.

[00:40:31] It’s because if you really look at it,

[00:40:33] you gain insights into things.

[00:40:35] You gain insights into people and how they operate

[00:40:37] and how they think and how they see one another

[00:40:39] that are applicable to the whole rest of your life.

[00:40:42] So one of the huge things, I think,

[00:40:44] is to shift away from this idea

[00:40:46] that what here get called the STEM subjects,

[00:40:48] science, technology, engineering, mathematics,

[00:40:51] that those STEM subjects are somehow the important ones

[00:40:54] and that this other business is all sort of stuff and nonsense.

[00:40:57] I think that’s been a gigantic issue.

[00:41:00] I think there’s also this issue

[00:41:02] that because many of the children,

[00:41:04] most of the ones who I’ve been writing about

[00:41:06] who’ve died by suicide,

[00:41:07] have come from families in which they were very well loved,

[00:41:10] people are very leery of the word love.

[00:41:13] They don’t like to use it,

[00:41:15] and they don’t ever want to suggest

[00:41:17] that children kill themselves because they aren’t loved,

[00:41:20] though some children clearly do.

[00:41:22] What it is not possible to assemble statistics about,

[00:41:26] because how could one ever know,

[00:41:28] are all of the people who might have killed themselves

[00:41:31] if they were not loved.

[00:41:33] And that is a group in which I include myself.

[00:41:36] I, as I mentioned, had this terrible depression,

[00:41:38] and at the time I was between relationships

[00:41:40] and I was in my twenties,

[00:41:42] and my father took me in and took extraordinary,

[00:41:44] extraordinary care of me

[00:41:46] through that terrible period

[00:41:48] and saw me through it.

[00:41:50] I don’t know, maybe I would have survived anyway,

[00:41:53] but I feel like the sense that this love

[00:41:55] just never relented and never went away saved me,

[00:41:58] which is not to say it could save everyone

[00:42:00] and that the people who’ve died have died

[00:42:02] because they didn’t have that.

[00:42:04] It’s only to say that having that makes a difference.

[00:42:06] And so I think certainly,

[00:42:08] I can’t say if you love your children they’ll be fine,

[00:42:11] but I can say loving your children is a better idea

[00:42:13] than not loving your children for them

[00:42:16] and probably for you too.

[00:42:19] So that I think is, that I think is crucial.

[00:42:23] And then beyond that,

[00:42:25] I think we need as a society to address the idea,

[00:42:29] I mean I had to do a lecture recently

[00:42:31] and they asked me to come up with the name of it

[00:42:33] sort of in five minutes.

[00:42:35] And I said, which rather surprised me,

[00:42:38] I hadn’t thought of it in these terms,

[00:42:39] I said youth suicide and incivility.

[00:42:41] And part of what I encounter all the time

[00:42:44] at the level of government,

[00:42:45] at the level of what people are doing at schools,

[00:42:47] at the level of how people interact

[00:42:49] when I’m getting on a, I don’t know,

[00:42:51] a train or something,

[00:42:52] there’s a level of cruelty

[00:42:54] that’s become par for the course

[00:42:56] and that people now accept as sort of,

[00:42:58] well, I mean we’re just all in it for ourselves

[00:43:00] and we all have to get ahead where we get ahead.

[00:43:02] And I’ve come to think that selfishness

[00:43:05] does not serve people’s self-interest

[00:43:08] and that people are very confused about that.

[00:43:10] And they think, well, I’m just going to go

[00:43:12] for what makes me happy.

[00:43:14] But often what makes people most happy

[00:43:16] is doing things for other people.

[00:43:18] It’s not just that the helping is good

[00:43:20] for those who are helped,

[00:43:21] it’s also good for those who are helping.

[00:43:23] And what you do for other people

[00:43:24] and how you do it and which other,

[00:43:26] I mean there are a million different ways to define it.

[00:43:28] But I think the narcissistic,

[00:43:30] the narcissism that has become par for the course

[00:43:33] and this sort of unleashing of,

[00:43:35] I mean, you know, there was one person who,

[00:43:38] this young woman died by suicide

[00:43:41] after being bullied to death effectively

[00:43:43] by children at her school.

[00:43:45] Her parents held a funeral,

[00:43:47] which was broadcast on Zoom

[00:43:49] for relatives who lived far away.

[00:43:51] And the children who had bullied the girl to death

[00:43:54] crashed the Zoom of the funeral

[00:43:57] and began taunting the young woman’s family.

[00:44:00] To the extent that they had to turn off the Zoom.

[00:44:03] And I knew that story and it was horrifying to me.

[00:44:06] And then I went to interview the mother

[00:44:08] and I actually watched the Zoom.

[00:44:10] And I thought, these are broken people

[00:44:14] who are doing this.

[00:44:16] It isn’t that I necessarily thought,

[00:44:18] well, I just feel sorry for them

[00:44:20] and I wasn’t exactly forgiving.

[00:44:22] But I also thought, what has gone on

[00:44:24] that we’ve come to this point

[00:44:27] at which that doesn’t seem to be

[00:44:29] so surprising to people that these things happen.

[00:44:34] And I just think that we need to get back to a place.

[00:44:37] And, you know, it used to be that religion

[00:44:40] was often the bribe of sort of,

[00:44:42] if you’re a nice person, you’ll go to heaven.

[00:44:44] And if you’re a mean person, you’ll go to hell.

[00:44:46] And so it was a sort of,

[00:44:48] it was almost a capitalist arrangement even then.

[00:44:50] But this idea that actually be kind to people,

[00:44:53] not just because you’re noble-minded

[00:44:55] and have the luxury of being able to do it.

[00:44:57] Be kind to people because

[00:44:58] then they might be kind to you

[00:45:00] and you might just all be happier.

[00:45:02] It’s got lost as a narrative.

[00:45:04] And there are many, many ways that we could recapture it.

[00:45:07] And we’re not really pursuing any of them at this point.

[00:45:11] There’s so much to debunk there

[00:45:14] and to talk more about there.

[00:45:16] First, I really identify with

[00:45:18] the first part of what you said

[00:45:20] around the STEM subjects

[00:45:22] and the importance of storytelling

[00:45:24] and how certain things that we know intuitively

[00:45:27] or from empirical research

[00:45:29] or from talking to people,

[00:45:30] interviewing people like you do,

[00:45:32] we know that they probably make a difference,

[00:45:35] probably a big one,

[00:45:36] but they’re still not quantifiable.

[00:45:38] And because they’re not quantifiable,

[00:45:40] we then in this paradigm

[00:45:43] where the only things that matter

[00:45:44] are the ones that are quantifiable,

[00:45:45] we then ignore them.

[00:45:47] And we don’t address them when we think about policy,

[00:45:49] when we think about social norms.

[00:45:51] And love is one of those things, right?

[00:45:52] It is very hard to quantify

[00:45:54] who can tell if a child who died by suicide

[00:45:56] was loved or wasn’t loved

[00:45:58] or how much love they had in their lives.

[00:46:00] It is almost impossible to make sense of,

[00:46:03] but that doesn’t mean that love

[00:46:04] isn’t a fundamental question there

[00:46:07] and a fundamental tool

[00:46:09] not to avoid all kinds of suicide

[00:46:12] because as you said,

[00:46:13] this is not going to work for everyone

[00:46:14] and these are complex issues.

[00:46:17] And I’m sure that many, many children

[00:46:19] who died by suicide were very much loved.

[00:46:21] But again, there is an immeasurable role

[00:46:25] in saving so many children

[00:46:27] or so many people of all ages

[00:46:30] that we could assign to love

[00:46:31] and we don’t because it’s not quantifiable.

[00:46:33] And I think we are all the poorer for it

[00:46:36] both as individuals and as a society

[00:46:40] when we only assign meaning

[00:46:43] and importance and value

[00:46:45] to the things that fit very neatly

[00:46:47] into spreadsheets.

[00:46:49] And in fact, it’s one of the things

[00:46:50] that I worry the most about

[00:46:52] with the advent of AI

[00:46:54] and kind of these kind of handing over

[00:46:57] of so many important decisions

[00:46:59] to systems that by their very nature

[00:47:03] can only work with data,

[00:47:05] with things that have become data,

[00:47:07] even when it’s language,

[00:47:08] but it’s language transformed into data.

[00:47:10] It’s always about probability, right?

[00:47:12] Like ChatGPT will not tell you

[00:47:14] anything necessarily meaningful,

[00:47:15] but it will tell you which word

[00:47:17] most probably follows the previous word

[00:47:19] and so on and so forth.

[00:47:20] And that’s how it creates answers, right?

[00:47:23] And that,

[00:47:24] that world of probabilities

[00:47:27] has its usefulness,

[00:47:29] but it’s not enough, right,

[00:47:31] to apprehend the world.

[00:47:32] So I am so intrigued by that

[00:47:34] and how that shows up.

[00:47:35] But then the second piece

[00:47:38] of what you were talking about

[00:47:39] around cruelty and narcissism,

[00:47:41] and I think it links so well together.

[00:47:43] I mean, you said jokingly

[00:47:45] that we shouldn’t rewrite the New Testament,

[00:47:46] but at the end of the day,

[00:47:47] these were the foundational stories,

[00:47:49] the religious stories,

[00:47:50] the biblical stories

[00:47:51] that held us together

[00:47:52] because, you know,

[00:47:53] because they were common stories,

[00:47:55] we had common characters

[00:47:56] and common values

[00:47:57] that we could all kind of relate to

[00:47:59] and, you know,

[00:48:00] very different interpretations

[00:48:02] of those texts,

[00:48:03] but still some level

[00:48:05] of common storytelling.

[00:48:08] And I’m very curious

[00:48:09] about what replaces that.

[00:48:11] In my mind for a while,

[00:48:13] maybe it was Hollywood,

[00:48:14] maybe it was like the bigger stories

[00:48:16] in film and TV

[00:48:17] that inhabit our consciousness

[00:48:19] and subconsciousness.

[00:48:21] Now, even that is because,

[00:48:23] you know,

[00:48:24] people are becoming less available

[00:48:25] or less desirable.

[00:48:26] People are not consuming long format,

[00:48:28] even movies anymore.

[00:48:30] And our attention spans are so shortened

[00:48:34] that we’re consuming these very rapid,

[00:48:36] like reels and TikTok videos.

[00:48:38] And again,

[00:48:39] not to blame it all on social media.

[00:48:41] Again, I’m less interested

[00:48:42] in the social dynamics of that.

[00:48:44] I’m more interested

[00:48:45] in what that does to storytelling.

[00:48:47] And what does it mean

[00:48:48] when stories themselves

[00:48:50] become kind of chopped?

[00:48:52] And you only access the stories

[00:48:54] that had the most likes

[00:48:55] and the most comments,

[00:48:56] which were probably

[00:48:57] the most outrageous ones,

[00:48:58] the ones that ignited

[00:48:59] the most kind of commentary,

[00:49:01] but not necessarily the ones

[00:49:02] that mean the most.

[00:49:04] So how do we,

[00:49:05] how do we yank ourselves out of that?

[00:49:08] And as a storyteller yourself,

[00:49:10] your whole life is about

[00:49:11] telling the stories of people

[00:49:12] who went through unimaginable things.

[00:49:15] What is the role of storytelling

[00:49:17] that you see today?

[00:49:18] And what can we do

[00:49:19] as each of us,

[00:49:20] now a producer of stories,

[00:49:21] and a consumer of stories

[00:49:23] at a massive scale?

[00:49:27] The Roman philosopher Lucretius,

[00:49:29] leader of Epicureanism,

[00:49:31] said that the sublime entailed

[00:49:33] the exchange of easier

[00:49:35] for more difficult pleasures.

[00:49:37] And I think part of the problem is

[00:49:39] that the easy pleasures

[00:49:40] are now so accessible.

[00:49:42] They’re all over the place,

[00:49:43] almost every kind of easy pleasure

[00:49:45] you can get within seconds.

[00:49:47] And people think,

[00:49:49] well, why would I bother

[00:49:50] with these more difficult,

[00:49:51] I mean, it just seems like a nuisance.

[00:49:53] And I had lunch yesterday

[00:49:55] with the person who’s the head

[00:49:56] of the creative writing program

[00:49:57] at Princeton University.

[00:49:59] And she said,

[00:50:00] she said to her students

[00:50:02] in her creative writing class

[00:50:04] at one of the top universities

[00:50:05] in this country,

[00:50:06] she said,

[00:50:07] how many of you actually

[00:50:08] can sit and read a book

[00:50:09] for half an hour

[00:50:10] without becoming distracted?

[00:50:12] And she said,

[00:50:13] they were very honest.

[00:50:14] She said,

[00:50:15] there were 30 people in the room

[00:50:16] and four of them raised their hands.

[00:50:18] She said,

[00:50:19] so I said to them,

[00:50:20] okay, I said,

[00:50:21] we’ll discuss this next class.

[00:50:23] And she said,

[00:50:24] the next class when they came in,

[00:50:25] I said,

[00:50:26] you all have to give me your phones

[00:50:27] and here’s a really wonderful story.

[00:50:29] She said,

[00:50:30] and you have half an hour.

[00:50:32] And why don’t you see

[00:50:33] what it’s like

[00:50:34] just sitting and reading

[00:50:35] for half an hour

[00:50:36] when you have nothing else

[00:50:37] that can draw your attention?

[00:50:38] And she said,

[00:50:39] they were quite surprised

[00:50:40] to discover

[00:50:41] that they really

[00:50:42] kind of liked doing it.

[00:50:44] It’s as though

[00:50:45] because all of this

[00:50:46] sort of no attention span,

[00:50:48] no focus has taken over,

[00:50:51] we don’t give anything else

[00:50:52] much of a try.

[00:50:54] And because a pop song

[00:50:56] that will catch your ear

[00:50:57] the second you hear it

[00:50:59] is a lot of fun,

[00:51:00] you don’t bother with music

[00:51:01] that, you know,

[00:51:02] by the tenth time

[00:51:03] you listen to it

[00:51:04] begins to feel like

[00:51:05] it has some kind of depth

[00:51:06] and meaning

[00:51:07] and so on and so forth.

[00:51:08] And I think it’s really

[00:51:09] a matter of managing,

[00:51:11] I mean,

[00:51:12] fortunately,

[00:51:13] it’s a kind of sales job,

[00:51:14] but to say to people,

[00:51:16] look,

[00:51:17] I’m not just telling you

[00:51:18] this because I think

[00:51:19] it’s somehow in the abstract,

[00:51:20] it’s nutritious

[00:51:21] to sit and read,

[00:51:23] you know,

[00:51:24] the great writers of the,

[00:51:26] you’re saying,

[00:51:27] if you do it,

[00:51:28] it will actually help you

[00:51:30] and you’ll be happier

[00:51:31] as a result of doing it.

[00:51:33] I mean,

[00:51:34] I don’t want to exactly say,

[00:51:35] you know,

[00:51:36] my life has been a bower of bliss

[00:51:37] because I read Tolstoy.

[00:51:39] But on the other hand,

[00:51:40] I think that sense

[00:51:41] of sort of

[00:51:42] all of the knowledge

[00:51:43] of humanity

[00:51:45] that came out

[00:51:46] of the reading I did,

[00:51:47] the reading that my parents

[00:51:48] did to me,

[00:51:49] the sort of fact

[00:51:50] that I was lucky enough

[00:51:51] to grow up

[00:51:52] in a household

[00:51:53] where that was valued

[00:51:54] has made a difference.

[00:51:55] And there are lots of things

[00:51:56] you can learn

[00:51:57] from watching a film

[00:51:58] or from reading,

[00:51:59] you know,

[00:52:00] something short.

[00:52:01] But there are other things

[00:52:02] that take,

[00:52:03] they take time

[00:52:04] and they take space.

[00:52:05] And so,

[00:52:06] in the same way

[00:52:07] that I think

[00:52:08] a Zoom conversation,

[00:52:09] you know,

[00:52:10] lots of information

[00:52:11] can be exchanged

[00:52:12] and I’m thoroughly

[00:52:13] enjoying this one,

[00:52:14] but I won’t be able

[00:52:15] to give you a hug

[00:52:16] when we finish.

[00:52:17] And we won’t have

[00:52:18] a quick drink together

[00:52:19] and talk about

[00:52:20] sort of what it’s really

[00:52:21] been like for you

[00:52:22] to be a mother

[00:52:23] and what it’s really

[00:52:24] been like.

[00:52:25] There’s a lot of stuff

[00:52:26] that just doesn’t happen

[00:52:27] in those contexts

[00:52:28] that’s very, very precious.

[00:52:29] And I think its value

[00:52:31] has been sort of marginalized

[00:52:34] and has been sort of,

[00:52:35] has been sort of lost.

[00:52:37] And the value

[00:52:38] of these real intimacies

[00:52:40] and the intensity

[00:52:41] of real intimacy

[00:52:43] is something

[00:52:44] that’s been undermined.

[00:52:46] And, you know,

[00:52:47] I mean,

[00:52:48] we talked about hope,

[00:52:49] but the other great problem

[00:52:50] of human beings

[00:52:51] is loneliness.

[00:52:52] And a lot of the sort of

[00:52:54] these methods,

[00:52:55] these methods

[00:52:56] of inattention

[00:52:57] are methods

[00:52:58] that strengthen

[00:52:59] and enforce loneliness.

[00:53:01] And again,

[00:53:02] I think what we have to do

[00:53:03] is not say to people,

[00:53:05] you mustn’t do this

[00:53:06] because it’s making you lonely

[00:53:07] and you must do

[00:53:08] this other thing.

[00:53:09] I mean,

[00:53:10] preaching at people

[00:53:11] is never very successful

[00:53:12] in these instances.

[00:53:13] It’s a matter

[00:53:14] of demonstrating

[00:53:16] to people

[00:53:17] and leading them

[00:53:18] into the realization

[00:53:19] of the joy

[00:53:20] that can be there

[00:53:21] and also of stopping

[00:53:22] being afraid

[00:53:23] of,

[00:53:24] of the emotional

[00:53:25] and sentimental life.

[00:53:26] I mean,

[00:53:27] I’ve noticed that

[00:53:28] in the scientific papers

[00:53:29] of which I’ve now read

[00:53:30] 77,000

[00:53:31] that relate

[00:53:32] to depression

[00:53:33] and suicide,

[00:53:34] because you can sort of say,

[00:53:35] you know,

[00:53:36] I love the necklace

[00:53:37] you’re wearing,

[00:53:38] scientists feel

[00:53:39] the word love

[00:53:40] is too vague.

[00:53:41] You read all of these

[00:53:42] endless articles

[00:53:43] that are about things

[00:53:44] like sort of

[00:53:45] profound maternal attachment.

[00:53:46] Now,

[00:53:47] I don’t know

[00:53:48] whether your mother

[00:53:49] wrote you birthday cards,

[00:53:50] but when my mother

[00:53:51] wrote me birthday cards,

[00:53:52] she did not sign them

[00:53:53] with profound maternal attachment.

[00:53:54] No.

[00:53:55] She signed them,

[00:53:56] I love you,

[00:53:57] mom.

[00:53:58] And so I think

[00:53:59] there’s this attempt

[00:54:00] to sort of

[00:54:01] become scientific

[00:54:02] about things

[00:54:03] and not to acknowledge,

[00:54:04] I mean,

[00:54:05] I don’t know

[00:54:06] anything in fact

[00:54:07] at all

[00:54:08] about your mother

[00:54:09] and maybe,

[00:54:10] but whatever it was,

[00:54:11] people love one another

[00:54:12] in different ways.

[00:54:13] It means different things

[00:54:14] to different people.

[00:54:15] That’s precisely

[00:54:16] what’s so strong

[00:54:17] about it

[00:54:18] is that it isn’t

[00:54:19] a formula.

[00:54:20] It isn’t like,

[00:54:21] oh,

[00:54:22] I should learn

[00:54:23] to be loving.

[00:54:24] Okay,

[00:54:25] what are the five things

[00:54:26] you do to be loved?

[00:54:27] It has to rise up in you

[00:54:28] and as soon as you try

[00:54:29] to turn it

[00:54:30] into spreadsheets

[00:54:31] as you said,

[00:54:32] you’ve killed that.

[00:54:33] And that’s the,

[00:54:34] and that’s the beauty of it

[00:54:35] and part of what defines

[00:54:37] love also

[00:54:38] is,

[00:54:39] I mean,

[00:54:40] for human beings

[00:54:41] as we exist anyway

[00:54:42] is mortality.

[00:54:43] The novelist

[00:54:44] Jhumpa Lahiri

[00:54:45] said,

[00:54:46] do you think a computer

[00:54:47] could ever write your novels?

[00:54:48] And she said,

[00:54:49] a computer can write my novels

[00:54:50] if it understands

[00:54:51] that it will one day die.

[00:54:52] I love that.

[00:54:53] And so I feel like

[00:54:54] in looking at these

[00:54:55] difficult questions

[00:54:56] like suicide,

[00:54:57] really it’s a matter

[00:54:58] of saying,

[00:54:59] look,

[00:55:00] we’re all mortal

[00:55:01] and so part of what love

[00:55:03] consists of

[00:55:04] is clinging

[00:55:05] to one another

[00:55:06] with the awareness

[00:55:07] that we could lose

[00:55:08] one another

[00:55:09] at any time

[00:55:10] and so the,

[00:55:11] the things

[00:55:12] that are most difficult

[00:55:13] and the things

[00:55:14] that are most rewarding

[00:55:15] are so intimately entangled

[00:55:17] that you can’t have one

[00:55:18] without the other

[00:55:19] and a lot of the people

[00:55:21] who are young people

[00:55:22] who are killing themselves

[00:55:23] are killing themselves

[00:55:24] not because

[00:55:25] of the unhappiness

[00:55:27] that they have

[00:55:28] because of their cell phones,

[00:55:29] they’re killing themselves

[00:55:30] because they don’t have

[00:55:31] either

[00:55:32] that real unhappiness

[00:55:34] or the real joy

[00:55:36] that should be

[00:55:37] its counterpart.

[00:55:38] So I want to go back

[00:55:40] to the question of hope

[00:55:41] because I said I would

[00:55:42] and we often talk

[00:55:44] here on the show

[00:55:45] about the perils

[00:55:46] of say,

[00:55:47] late stage capitalism

[00:55:48] and how somehow

[00:55:49] it feels like

[00:55:50] so many of the world’s

[00:55:51] biggest problems

[00:55:52] are unsolvable

[00:55:53] and there was,

[00:55:54] we have,

[00:55:55] we ourselves

[00:55:56] have a hard time

[00:55:57] articulating a vision

[00:55:58] that could give anyone

[00:55:59] who is young today

[00:56:00] hope for the future

[00:56:01] and when you and I

[00:56:02] indeed did have

[00:56:03] a drink together

[00:56:04] and dinner together

[00:56:05] and did hug each other,

[00:56:07] we talked a little bit

[00:56:08] about that as well

[00:56:09] and I’m curious

[00:56:10] about that aspect of it.

[00:56:12] How does that

[00:56:13] broader

[00:56:14] understanding

[00:56:16] of the world’s issues

[00:56:17] and our role

[00:56:18] in solving them

[00:56:19] and even the possibility

[00:56:20] of solving them

[00:56:21] and hope for a better world,

[00:56:22] for a better life,

[00:56:23] not just for oneself

[00:56:24] but for others,

[00:56:25] how does that play out

[00:56:26] and show up

[00:56:27] in your research

[00:56:28] around suicide

[00:56:29] specifically?

[00:56:31] Well, I think

[00:56:32] one of the things

[00:56:33] that people often yearn for

[00:56:35] is a feeling of control

[00:56:37] and a feeling of efficacy

[00:56:39] and I talk to people

[00:56:41] who are a generation

[00:56:42] older than I

[00:56:43] and who say,

[00:56:44] during the Vietnam War,

[00:56:46] we really believed

[00:56:47] that if we all marched

[00:56:48] on Washington together,

[00:56:49] we could eventually

[00:56:50] get them to end this war

[00:56:52] and it would change

[00:56:54] and actually,

[00:56:55] they did march

[00:56:56] and the war did get ended

[00:56:58] and things did change.

[00:57:00] I mean,

[00:57:01] I’m not going to say

[00:57:02] that it all went smoothly

[00:57:03] and beautifully

[00:57:04] but there was a sense

[00:57:05] of personal power

[00:57:06] and agency.

[00:57:08] I was talking a while ago

[00:57:10] to Anna Wintour,

[00:57:13] who is now

[00:57:14] the editor of Vogue

[00:57:15] and I was saying,

[00:57:16] you know,

[00:57:17] the problem of anorexia

[00:57:20] has been triggered

[00:57:21] to some degree

[00:57:22] by fashion magazines

[00:57:24] and she said,

[00:57:25] and it’s contentious

[00:57:26] and it’s much more complicated

[00:57:27] but I repeat it nonetheless,

[00:57:28] she said,

[00:57:29] people who have a sense

[00:57:30] that they have no control

[00:57:31] over anything else

[00:57:32] are left with control

[00:57:33] only over their own bodies.

[00:57:35] She said,

[00:57:36] for a long time,

[00:57:37] they expressed it

[00:57:38] through anorexia.

[00:57:39] Now, many of them

[00:57:40] express it

[00:57:41] through covering themselves

[00:57:42] with tattoos and piercings.

[00:57:43] She said,

[00:57:44] some of them

[00:57:45] express it

[00:57:46] by being transgender

[00:57:47] and I thought,

[00:57:48] yes,

[00:57:49] and some of them

[00:57:50] express it

[00:57:51] by killing themselves.

[00:57:52] That feeling

[00:57:53] of being utterly powerless

[00:57:54] is a terrible feeling

[00:57:55] and it’s enforced

[00:57:56] by the breakdown

[00:57:57] of social

[00:57:58] and educational mobility

[00:57:59] which I think

[00:58:00] has occurred worldwide

[00:58:01] and is very acute

[00:58:02] again in the US

[00:58:03] but it’s also occasioned

[00:58:05] by the sense

[00:58:06] that things are run

[00:58:07] by these gigantic

[00:58:08] bewildering corporations

[00:58:10] on which you can really

[00:58:12] have no effect at all.

[00:58:13] I was in a meeting

[00:58:14] at the UN recently

[00:58:15] at which the ambassadors

[00:58:16] of several countries

[00:58:17] were discussing

[00:58:18] the fact that

[00:58:19] the President

[00:58:20] of the United States

[00:58:21] was really not relevant

[00:58:22] because the decisions

[00:58:23] ultimately rested

[00:58:24] in the hands

[00:58:25] of Elon Musk

[00:58:26] and Jeff Bezos

[00:58:27] and all of the other people

[00:58:28] who have become

[00:58:29] the sort of hyper billionaires

[00:58:30] of our time

[00:58:31] and I can’t do anything

[00:58:33] that’s going to change.

[00:58:34] I mean,

[00:58:35] I could write them a note

[00:58:36] but it’s not really

[00:58:37] going to change

[00:58:38] their positions

[00:58:39] and their policies

[00:58:40] and so I think

[00:58:41] it’s this feeling

[00:58:42] of, you know,

[00:58:43] not only hopelessness

[00:58:44] but helplessness

[00:58:45] which is a very acute form

[00:58:47] of hopelessness

[00:58:48] and the sense that,

[00:58:50] you know,

[00:58:51] my father was born

[00:58:52] into poverty

[00:58:53] and he managed

[00:58:54] to get an education

[00:58:55] and managed to make

[00:58:56] a very nice life

[00:58:57] for all of us

[00:58:59] and I feel like

[00:59:00] there was this sense

[00:59:01] of progress

[00:59:02] and now there isn’t

[00:59:03] and then there are

[00:59:04] these gigantic problems

[00:59:05] like global warming.

[00:59:07] Is there actually

[00:59:08] going to be a planet

[00:59:09] for us to live on

[00:59:10] or for our grandchildren

[00:59:12] or our grandchildren

[00:59:13] or our great-grandchildren

[00:59:14] or whoever they are

[00:59:15] or our children

[00:59:16] to live on?

[00:59:17] What are we to do

[00:59:18] about that?

[00:59:19] What are we to do

[00:59:20] about the rising

[00:59:21] of the oceans?

[00:59:22] What are we to do

[00:59:23] about this incredible inequality?

[00:59:24] What are we to do

[00:59:25] about the fact

[00:59:26] that there are people

[00:59:27] who do need to flee

[00:59:28] their countries

[00:59:29] and that we’re no longer

[00:59:30] letting them in

[00:59:31] and we’re sending them off

[00:59:32] to die?

[00:59:33] And in the United States

[00:59:34] during this government shutdown

[00:59:35] there was,

[00:59:36] as used as a political tool,

[00:59:38] were what are called

[00:59:39] SNAP benefits

[00:59:40] which are the food benefits

[00:59:41] for the impoverished

[00:59:42] and I thought,

[00:59:43] look,

[00:59:44] there are a lot of subjects

[00:59:45] on which I feel very strongly,

[00:59:47] you know,

[00:59:48] women’s right to choice,

[00:59:49] gay marriage,

[00:59:50] all kinds of things

[00:59:51] but I know why other people

[00:59:52] feel otherwise.

[00:59:53] I would like to convince them

[00:59:54] of my point of view

[00:59:55] but starving children?

[00:59:57] Haven’t we all agreed

[00:59:58] that the wealthiest country

[00:59:59] in the world

[01:00:00] should not be full

[01:00:01] of starving children?

[01:00:02] I thought that was something

[01:00:03] on which there could be

[01:00:04] no argument

[01:00:05] and so this sense

[01:00:06] that actually

[01:00:07] what is obviously significant

[01:00:09] and meaningful

[01:00:10] seems to have no effect

[01:00:11] on the progress

[01:00:12] of public discourse

[01:00:13] as it’s unfolding

[01:00:14] I think is immensely destructive

[01:00:16] not only to those children

[01:00:18] but to all of the people

[01:00:20] who are not themselves starving

[01:00:21] but who are observing,

[01:00:22] oh,

[01:00:23] well,

[01:00:24] I mean,

[01:00:25] I guess if you want to win

[01:00:26] the election

[01:00:27] and it means causing

[01:00:28] all these people to starve,

[01:00:29] I mean,

[01:00:30] so explicitly,

[01:00:31] not sort of indirectly

[01:00:32] but so explicitly

[01:00:33] by withholding those benefits,

[01:00:34] I guess that’s what you do

[01:00:35] to win the,

[01:00:36] it’s an acceptance of that

[01:00:37] that I think is

[01:00:38] so pernicious

[01:00:40] and I think

[01:00:41] it disrupts

[01:00:42] people’s ability

[01:00:43] to form connections

[01:00:44] to one another

[01:00:45] and it disrupts

[01:00:46] people’s ability

[01:00:47] of any kind of safety

[01:00:49] or security

[01:00:50] or stability

[01:00:51] or continuity.

[01:00:52] It feels like the,

[01:00:53] is the world ending?

[01:00:54] Not is the world ending

[01:00:55] in a rapture

[01:00:56] but is the world

[01:00:57] just falling apart

[01:00:58] to the point

[01:00:59] at which it’s going to become

[01:01:00] uninhabitable?

[01:01:01] You know,

[01:01:02] I don’t think it quite is

[01:01:03] but I see why other people

[01:01:04] think that.

[01:01:05] Yeah,

[01:01:06] well,

[01:01:07] maybe,

[01:01:08] maybe the best answer

[01:01:09] to the epidemic of suicide

[01:01:11] is the possibility

[01:01:12] of deeper revolutions

[01:01:15] in the sense of really changing

[01:01:16] things profoundly

[01:01:17] and unless we can,

[01:01:19] and I’m not saying

[01:01:20] that’s the only answer

[01:01:21] that every suicide

[01:01:22] is because of that

[01:01:23] but I feel it in my bones

[01:01:25] that I kind of despair

[01:01:26] as you said,

[01:01:27] has a lot to do

[01:01:28] with this sense of efficacy

[01:01:29] and control

[01:01:30] and the possibility

[01:01:31] of having an impact

[01:01:32] and one thing

[01:01:33] that you do control

[01:01:34] to some extent at least

[01:01:35] is your own body.

[01:01:36] So,

[01:01:37] if you can,

[01:01:39] yeah,

[01:01:40] if you can aim

[01:01:41] that purpose

[01:01:42] towards something else

[01:01:43] because it’s become

[01:01:44] so impermeable,

[01:01:45] it’s very easy

[01:01:46] to then,

[01:01:47] you know,

[01:01:48] point it to yourself.

[01:01:49] I certainly feel

[01:01:50] that I spent,

[01:01:51] as you know,

[01:01:52] Andrew,

[01:01:53] a long time

[01:01:54] in my own career

[01:01:55] trying to mobilize people

[01:01:56] to get them

[01:01:57] to volunteer,

[01:01:58] to show up,

[01:01:59] to gather,

[01:02:00] to sign petitions,

[01:02:01] to pressure decision makers,

[01:02:02] to advocate

[01:02:03] for a better lives

[01:02:04] for their community

[01:02:05] and I could very,

[01:02:06] I saw this,

[01:02:07] I saw how

[01:02:08] the internet

[01:02:09] went from being

[01:02:10] the basis

[01:02:11] of essentially

[01:02:12] lowering the barriers

[01:02:13] to entry

[01:02:14] into civic life,

[01:02:15] right,

[01:02:16] like it was easier

[01:02:17] to do things

[01:02:18] by email,

[01:02:19] by online petitions

[01:02:20] and et cetera,

[01:02:21] et cetera

[01:02:22] and the idea

[01:02:23] was that,

[01:02:24] oh,

[01:02:25] it’s going to be

[01:02:26] so much easier

[01:02:27] for everyone

[01:02:28] to participate

[01:02:29] politically

[01:02:30] in our democracies

[01:02:31] and then you went

[01:02:32] from that

[01:02:33] to this weird

[01:02:34] version of that

[01:02:35] where your entire

[01:02:36] civic participation

[01:02:37] happens

[01:02:38] in the confines

[01:02:39] of these platforms

[01:02:40] in that language,

[01:02:41] it’s very hard

[01:02:42] to go beyond that

[01:02:43] and then it just

[01:02:44] becomes noise,

[01:02:45] it doesn’t actually

[01:02:46] have any effect

[01:02:47] into the political

[01:02:48] systems that they

[01:02:49] were supposed

[01:02:50] to affect

[01:02:51] in the first place

[01:02:52] and I feel very,

[01:02:53] very strongly

[01:02:54] that if we don’t

[01:02:55] get out of this,

[01:02:56] not only we’re going

[01:02:57] to see more

[01:02:58] societal level

[01:02:59] unrest

[01:03:00] and instability

[01:03:01] and the emergence

[01:03:02] of these far right

[01:03:03] movements

[01:03:04] that are deeply

[01:03:05] radicalized

[01:03:06] and based

[01:03:07] on hatred

[01:03:08] but also

[01:03:09] on the fact

[01:03:10] that we’re going

[01:03:11] to pay a price

[01:03:12] at a more individual

[01:03:13] intimate family level

[01:03:14] and that to an extent

[01:03:15] is what suicide

[01:03:16] is to me at least

[01:03:17] so I’m,

[01:03:18] I am interested

[01:03:19] by the fact

[01:03:20] that you’re finding

[01:03:21] that in your stories

[01:03:22] as well

[01:03:23] and in interviewing

[01:03:24] these families

[01:03:25] and trying to get

[01:03:26] to the root causes

[01:03:27] of this.

[01:03:28] And I should say

[01:03:29] that you’re very kindly

[01:03:30] interviewing me

[01:03:31] in this case

[01:03:32] but I have tremendous

[01:03:33] admiration

[01:03:34] for the work

[01:03:35] you’ve done

[01:03:36] in that area

[01:03:37] and it’s been

[01:03:38] profound

[01:03:39] and I thank you

[01:03:40] for that.

[01:03:41] Thank you so much.

[01:03:42] I guess

[01:03:43] my closing

[01:03:44] thought

[01:03:45] and question

[01:03:46] for you Andrew

[01:03:47] is around

[01:03:48] what gives you

[01:03:49] hope?

[01:03:50] So we talked about

[01:03:51] what is

[01:03:52] maybe precluding

[01:03:53] particularly young

[01:03:54] people

[01:03:55] from having

[01:03:56] hope

[01:03:57] but after listening

[01:03:58] to so many families

[01:03:59] to so many teenagers

[01:04:00] to so many stories

[01:04:01] for all of your books

[01:04:02] and you said

[01:04:03] right

[01:04:04] what really

[01:04:05] interested you

[01:04:06] and continues

[01:04:07] to interest you

[01:04:08] is resilience

[01:04:09] because in order

[01:04:10] to get to the root

[01:04:11] of resilience

[01:04:12] you had to really

[01:04:13] immerse yourself

[01:04:14] in a lot

[01:04:15] of despair

[01:04:16] and just really

[01:04:17] terrible things

[01:04:18] and understanding

[01:04:19] what makes

[01:04:20] someone come out

[01:04:21] of those experiences

[01:04:22] stronger.

[01:04:23] But what gives

[01:04:24] you hope

[01:04:25] in your day to day

[01:04:26] and both

[01:04:27] at the kind

[01:04:28] of family

[01:04:29] intimate level

[01:04:30] but also

[01:04:31] at a broader level

[01:04:32] hope that we can

[01:04:33] potentially

[01:04:34] maybe

[01:04:35] build societies

[01:04:36] where people feel

[01:04:37] they have a future

[01:04:38] worth staying for

[01:04:40] worth living.

[01:04:41] So my hope

[01:04:42] which I have to say

[01:04:43] fluctuates

[01:04:44] some days

[01:04:45] I have lots of it

[01:04:46] some days

[01:04:47] I have somewhat

[01:04:48] less of it.

[01:04:49] Yeah it’s totally fine

[01:04:50] to answer the question

[01:04:51] by saying

[01:04:52] nothing nuts.

[01:04:53] It’s fine

[01:04:54] by the way.

[01:04:55] I’ve had this experience

[01:04:56] which has been

[01:04:57] very cheering

[01:04:58] to me

[01:04:59] and quite surprising.

[01:05:00] My

[01:05:01] and I

[01:05:02] not to go

[01:05:03] into sort of

[01:05:04] completely

[01:05:05] autobiographical mode

[01:05:06] but I have a 16 year old

[01:05:07] son

[01:05:09] who became

[01:05:10] what’s called

[01:05:11] a senate page.

[01:05:12] So I spend 90%

[01:05:13] of my time

[01:05:14] saying how much

[01:05:15] I loathe

[01:05:16] the American government

[01:05:17] and 10%

[01:05:18] of my time

[01:05:19] saying how proud

[01:05:20] I am that my son

[01:05:21] is participating in it.

[01:05:22] And there are 30 pages

[01:05:23] there are 16 Republicans

[01:05:24] and 14 Democrats

[01:05:25] now because of

[01:05:26] the majority situation

[01:05:27] and

[01:05:28] they all live

[01:05:29] together

[01:05:30] in a dorm

[01:05:31] in Washington DC

[01:05:32] and they’re all 16

[01:05:33] which is

[01:05:34] I think really

[01:05:35] in many ways

[01:05:36] still quite young.

[01:05:37] It’s a lot of

[01:05:39] younger stories

[01:05:40] and now there they are

[01:05:41] on the floor

[01:05:42] of the senate

[01:05:43] and they have a very

[01:05:44] very rigorous schedule

[01:05:45] in which they

[01:05:46] get up at 5am

[01:05:47] they have full

[01:05:48] school between

[01:05:49] 6 and 10

[01:05:50] and then they’re on

[01:05:51] the floor of the senate

[01:05:52] until 6 in the evening

[01:05:53] and sometimes

[01:05:54] until midnight

[01:05:55] if it’s a long day

[01:05:56] at the senate

[01:05:57] and it’s very demanding.

[01:05:58] Let me

[01:05:59] let me interrupt

[01:06:00] just for one second

[01:06:01] because this is

[01:06:02] such an American thing

[01:06:03] that I’m not sure

[01:06:04] our Brazilian audience

[01:06:05] will get it.

[01:06:06] Remind our audience

[01:06:08] or explain to our audience

[01:06:09] what a page actually does

[01:06:10] and what it means

[01:06:11] to be a page.

[01:06:12] I get about the schedule

[01:06:13] but what is it?

[01:06:14] What is that?

[01:06:15] What a page actually does

[01:06:16] is quite banal

[01:06:17] but what

[01:06:18] a page

[01:06:20] learns

[01:06:21] and discovers

[01:06:22] is enormous.

[01:06:23] They’re on the floor

[01:06:24] of the senate

[01:06:25] all day long.

[01:06:26] If one senator

[01:06:27] wants to send another

[01:06:28] written note

[01:06:29] then they carry it

[01:06:30] across to them

[01:06:31] they open the doors

[01:06:32] they escort senators

[01:06:33] back to their office

[01:06:34] and carry their briefcases.

[01:06:35] I mean it’s

[01:06:36] it’s not

[01:06:37] exalted work

[01:06:39] but they are all people

[01:06:40] they had to go through

[01:06:41] quite a rigorous process

[01:06:42] to get into this program

[01:06:44] and they’re all people

[01:06:45] from all walks of life

[01:06:46] from all over the country

[01:06:48] from various parties

[01:06:49] from various

[01:06:50] economic and racial groups

[01:06:51] who are all working

[01:06:53] and they’re on the floor

[01:06:54] of the senate

[01:06:55] all day.

[01:06:56] Most of the senators

[01:06:57] come in and out

[01:06:58] so they end up

[01:06:59] knowing more about

[01:07:00] what’s going on

[01:07:01] day to day in government

[01:07:02] than the senators

[01:07:03] than many of the senators do.

[01:07:04] And for how long

[01:07:05] does it last?

[01:07:06] Like a semester?

[01:07:07] Yeah so

[01:07:08] September 1st

[01:07:09] to January 23rd

[01:07:10] and on the day they arrive

[01:07:11] they all have to turn in

[01:07:12] their cell phones

[01:07:13] and which

[01:07:14] as my husband said

[01:07:15] they look like a line

[01:07:16] of unwilling organ donors

[01:07:17] outside the surgery suite

[01:07:19] and then they don’t get them back

[01:07:20] until January 23rd.

[01:07:21] Oh my god

[01:07:22] I love this

[01:07:23] so they’re without phones

[01:07:24] like completely without phones

[01:07:26] for a few months.

[01:07:28] That is an incredible experiment.

[01:07:30] They deliberately

[01:07:31] in each room

[01:07:32] it’s both

[01:07:33] boys and girls

[01:07:34] but there are four boys

[01:07:35] in the boys’ rooms

[01:07:38] two Democrats

[01:07:39] two Republicans

[01:07:40] so they’re all sort of

[01:07:41] mixed together

[01:07:42] and before he went

[01:07:43] my son had said

[01:07:44] I really don’t think

[01:07:45] I want to do this

[01:07:46] because everything

[01:07:47] is so partisan in America

[01:07:48] and people are just going to

[01:07:49] fight the whole time

[01:07:50] and everyone’s going to

[01:07:51] hate everyone

[01:07:52] and then they got there

[01:07:53] and these 16 year olds

[01:07:54] are all agreed

[01:07:55] that the partisanship

[01:07:56] that exists

[01:07:57] in the United States

[01:07:58] is destroying the country

[01:08:00] and they’ve all made friends

[01:08:02] and they all do things together

[01:08:04] and George’s closest friend

[01:08:06] is a Republican page

[01:08:07] who comes from

[01:08:08] a Midwestern state

[01:08:09] and George said to me

[01:08:10] the other day

[01:08:11] having not had any kind of

[01:08:12] connection to religion particularly

[01:08:14] he said but

[01:08:15] I feel like religion

[01:08:16] is actually affecting

[01:08:17] the way they think about politics

[01:08:18] and I just decided

[01:08:20] I should really get to understand it

[01:08:21] so I’ve been going to church with them

[01:08:22] to try to sort of see

[01:08:23] what they’re doing

[01:08:24] and there’s an openness

[01:08:25] from both sides

[01:08:27] from all of the

[01:08:28] he said there are one or two

[01:08:29] who take extreme positions

[01:08:31] he said we don’t all agree

[01:08:32] about policy

[01:08:33] he said I’ve also discovered

[01:08:34] there are people

[01:08:35] with whom I absolutely agree

[01:08:36] about policy

[01:08:37] who I think are really

[01:08:38] not very nice people

[01:08:39] and people with whom

[01:08:40] I radically disagree

[01:08:41] whom I actually really like a lot

[01:08:43] and he said

[01:08:45] and all of us

[01:08:46] are trying to figure out ways

[01:08:47] to talk to one another

[01:08:48] and I went and I sat

[01:08:50] in the visitors gallery

[01:08:51] at the Senate

[01:08:52] which you can sort of

[01:08:53] get access to

[01:08:54] if you apply for it

[01:08:55] and I watched the Senators

[01:08:58] arguing with one another

[01:08:59] and I saw these kids

[01:09:01] many of whom I’ve now

[01:09:02] got to know

[01:09:03] I’ve gone back and forth a lot

[01:09:04] and sat with them

[01:09:05] and had lunch and so on

[01:09:06] and I thought

[01:09:07] the adults in this room

[01:09:09] who somehow managed to run

[01:09:10] gigantic successful campaigns

[01:09:13] are behaving like 12 year olds

[01:09:15] and the 16 year olds

[01:09:17] in this room

[01:09:18] who went through this weird

[01:09:19] application process

[01:09:20] but who are from

[01:09:21] all over the place

[01:09:22] and I thought

[01:09:23] are behaving like adults

[01:09:25] and what gives me hope

[01:09:27] is the thought that

[01:09:28] all of these things

[01:09:29] we’re saying

[01:09:30] people have lost track of

[01:09:31] nobody knows

[01:09:32] nobody understands

[01:09:33] and the next generation

[01:09:34] they will

[01:09:35] and I don’t want to

[01:09:36] aggrandize my son

[01:09:37] who of course can also

[01:09:38] drive me completely

[01:09:39] bananas and up the wall

[01:09:40] but just to say

[01:09:41] that seeing him in this context

[01:09:42] and seeing all of these kids

[01:09:44] seeing these 30 kids together

[01:09:46] I’ve thought

[01:09:47] there are people

[01:09:48] who have noticed

[01:09:49] that what’s going on now

[01:09:51] isn’t working

[01:09:52] and I don’t know

[01:09:53] that they’ve figured out

[01:09:54] what the solution is

[01:09:55] but at least they’ve acknowledged

[01:09:56] that we need to find a solution

[01:09:58] and so you know

[01:10:00] I mean it’s so boring

[01:10:01] what gives you hope

[01:10:02] youth

[01:10:03] young people give me hope

[01:10:04] but they do

[01:10:05] well that’s amazing

[01:10:06] yeah and I agree

[01:10:07] and I love this story

[01:10:08] for so many reasons

[01:10:09] I mean one of the most interesting

[01:10:11] discussions I’ve seen

[01:10:12] around democracy

[01:10:13] and the future of democracy

[01:10:14] and going beyond representation

[01:10:16] is around this kind of democracy

[01:10:17] by

[01:10:18] how do you say this in English

[01:10:19] oh my god

[01:10:20] how do you say that in English

[01:10:24] drawing

[01:10:25] like random

[01:10:26] yeah

[01:10:27] random assignment

[01:10:29] like jury duty

[01:10:30] like randomly assigned

[01:10:31] to a group

[01:10:32] or like

[01:10:33] not to vote

[01:10:34] or

[01:10:35] like

[01:10:36] or

[01:10:37] like

[01:10:38] just

[01:10:39] like

[01:10:48] the

[01:10:52] the

[01:10:53] the

[01:10:54] the

[01:10:55] the

[01:10:56] the

[01:10:57] the

[01:10:58] the

[01:10:59] the

[01:11:00] the

[01:11:01] actually a healthier way in other words aren’t we through our electoral process actually selecting

[01:11:06] the worst instead of selecting the best in us and setting them setting people also up for failure

[01:11:13] because during the process of you know rising up through the party ranks and running campaigns and

[01:11:19] courting donors and all the things that you have to do to become a successful politician and

[01:11:23] striking deals sometimes shady ones and you know all of that if we aren’t in fact then also

[01:11:30] taking people who could have been excellent but hardening them in positions that they had to take

[01:11:36] in order to get there essentially making them also worse through the process and maybe this

[01:11:41] page experiment um not only tells us about 16 year olds and and what gives you hope in youth but also

[01:11:47] it makes at least me wonder if there aren’t better ways for us to select um the people who

[01:11:54] who govern us who represent us um to other more creative means i mean we’ve been stuck in the

[01:12:00] same system

[01:12:00] for so long and it’s clearly not yielding very good results so maybe we need to get more creative

[01:12:05] i think george should just run the senate this is my this is my propose that to him

[01:12:10] but i think you’re right i think in the first place i think the entanglement of money in

[01:12:14] politics has been an evil sort of across history but it’s been particularly acute in um uh in

[01:12:21] recent decades um but beyond that i think the the it’s too many unrelated skill sets the skill of

[01:12:30] understanding what policies will make for a better world and the skill of getting elected to office

[01:12:36] and the skill of raising enough money to have their different skills and i don’t mind that the

[01:12:42] world requires many skills and i’m certainly not an anti-capitalist um but um but i think the

[01:12:51] the idea that you can’t you can’t make use of important groups of skills unless you’re willing

[01:12:58] to sort of play along with all of these things and i think that’s the the the the the the the the the

[01:13:00] other things limits the field and eliminates a lot of the people who could actually be doing

[01:13:06] real good in the in the world and i think there are a lot i think there are a lot of people of

[01:13:13] goodwill in the in the world and i think they aren’t able to exercise it very well and that

[01:13:19] i mean that’s that’s a gigantic tragedy to feel like there are all these good people they want

[01:13:25] to do good they’re willing to work really hard at it i mean even as this um trump administration

[01:13:30] has unfolded people have said to me you know i have a job i have a family to support but

[01:13:35] i’m sure i could spare three or four hours a week what do you think i should do to try to fix things

[01:13:40] and i feel like i i don’t know i mean they seem to be such a and i feel like there has to be

[01:13:47] somebody who can rally everyone and pull them together and say throw yourself in and we’ll be

[01:13:52] able to to do something and there has to be a an openness to that or a readiness for it for that

[01:14:00] well on that note andrew i want to thank you so much for your time and your energy and all that

[01:14:06] you’ve done you have inspired us here at calm or change you were as i said the second book that we

[01:14:12] read this semester in our book club and it was so much fun to read a book with this incredible

[01:14:18] community of people thousands of people really who read it together who talked about it together

[01:14:23] week after week um it’s been really the honor the honor of a lifetime to interview you

[01:14:30] um

[01:14:30] and to get to know you and I’m sure we’ll be talking about your next book very soon so

[01:14:34] thank you so much well thank you I’ve been so honored to be part of it and if anyone wants

[01:14:39] to reach me I have a website at andrewsolomon.com feel free to write to me and if you read in

[01:14:44] Portuguese I’ll figure out how to translate it I can help you good okay have a wonderful one

[01:14:50] Andrew bye-bye thank you and you bye-bye

[01:15:00] in the presentation alessandra orofino gregório do vivier and bruno tortura in the production carolina

[01:15:06] foratini igreja and sabrina macedo in the research and script luiz amigues in the sound capture

[01:15:12] edition and mixing vitor bernardes illustrations ana brandão na sonoplastia felipe croco na edição

[01:15:19] de cortes julia leite nas redes sociais bruna messina gestão de comunidade marcela brandes

[01:15:24] na identidade visual pedro inoi e consultoria de comunicação luna costa

[01:15:30] e

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