Good Life Project - Make Things That Move People | Milton Glaser [Best Of]

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Iconic designer and New York Magazine cofounder, Milton Glaser's work has been seen everywhere from the halls of global industry to, social movements to local pubs, the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. That famous I ♥ NY logo, that was him. The generation-defining, rainbow-haired Bob Dylan poster? Glaser, too. In 2004 he received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum lifetime achievement award, he's taught for more than 40 years and, amazingly, discovered his vocation when he was 5 years old. Milton Glaser didn't know the "how" or the precise path. But he did know he had to create, which he keeps doing to this day. This “Best Of” conversation from our 2013 archives is a powerful prompt to nurture the creative impulse that exists in all of us.You can find Milton Glaser at: Website | Instagram | Facebook-------------Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://sparketype.com/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.If you enjoyed the show, please share it with a friend. Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This month's Best Of conversation features iconic designer and New York Magazine founder Milton Glazer. Now 90 years old, Glazer discovered his vocation when he was five years old and never looked back. He didn't know how or the precise path, but he did know he had to create, to draw, design, to make years into life. Glazer's body of work is stunning in its breadth, its depth, and its impact. The famed I Heart NY logo, yep, he did that. New York Magazine, he founded that. Iconic Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin posters, he was the one who created them. Brooklyn Brewer logo, so many other identities, all of those two and thousands of other works of art, posters, brands, products, packaging, things that so many of us recognize and had been

sort of a part of our own mythology, but had no idea maybe unless we were in that world, that these came from his unique mind and big heart. His work has been seen everywhere from the halls of industry to local pubs. MoMA in 2004, he received the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Lifetime Achievement Award. And I had the incredible opportunity to spend some time with him at his studio back in 2013, where he was deep at work on a new show. We talked about his really incredible journey, the teacher who validated his choice of happiness over safety, what drives him to continue to create, how he chooses who and what to work on,

the difference between the urge to make and the desire to create beauty, the role of formal art education, and the difference between a calling and a career. We also had a fascinating conversation about the role of computers and technology a calling and a career. We also had a fascinating conversation about the role of computers and technology and art and design today, and how it's affecting and maybe even constraining our ability to create while simultaneously creating a world of opportunity. He has an unusual take here. And Glazer, he uses a computer every day, but actually never touches them. You'll have to listen to understand.

His depth and generosity of thought left me not only reexamining my own choices, but yearning to reconnect with something that's kind of laid all too dormant in me for far too long. And that is my own desire to make with my hands, not just media, but actual physical, tangible stuff. And that has been a huge gift for me. I'm so excited to be able to bring this best of conversation back out of our archives. Many of our newer listeners over the last couple of years have never heard this, but it's an incredibly powerful and important conversation. You'll also notice the audio is a little bit different because we actually originally filmed this and you will hear towards the latter part right next to his design studio in New York

City is a wonderful primary school with a playground and you'll hear, you'll catch little glimpses of kids laughing and giggling and playing in the background, which I think is really fitting for the conversation. So excited to share it with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch,

getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. So we're sitting here today in a room surrounded by incredible art, incredible design,

probably years and years of work. And it's interesting to me because I almost don't know where to dive in. But one of my curiosities is where did this all come from? And I'm curious, you know, when I think about your body of work, going way, way, way back before there was a body of work, what were you like as a kid? Where does the seed of this come from? Are you going to continue to ask me questions that can't be answered? I'll do my best.

I have no idea where it comes from. The only thing that I do know is that after a while, you begin to realize, A, how little you know about everything, and two, how vast the brain is and how it encompasses everything you can imagine, but more than that, everything you can't imagine. And what is perhaps central to this is the impulse to make things, which seems to me to be a primary characteristic of human beings,

the desire to make things, whatever they turn out to be. And then, supplementary to that is the desire to create beauty, which is a different but analogous activity. So, the urge to make things probably a survival device, The urge to create beauty is something else, but only apparently something else, because, as you know, there are no unrelated events in human experience.

Beauty, I've said this before, but beauty and the creation of it is a survival mechanism. There's something about making things beautiful, and we sometimes call that art, that has something to do with creating a commonality between human beings so that they don't kill each other. And whatever that impulse is and wherever it comes from,

it certainly is contained within every human being I've ever met. Sometimes the opportunity to articulate it occurs. Sometimes it remains dormant for a lifetime. You just don't get the shot at it. But I've been very lucky. I imagined myself as a maker of things from the age of five. I realized that to make something was miraculous. And I never stopped. I just kept making things all my life, whatever they were,

whatever category you chose to put them in. Whether they attained the status or official status of art is another story. But that is a set of other conventions. But this desire to make things is a profound human characteristic. I completely agree. Was there something that happened at the age of five, or was it a gradual awakening around then that you seemed to really key in on a moment?

Well, I have a canned story about that, which is why I feel reluctant to tell it again, because I've told it so many times, sometimes on film. But what really happened, this was an event. My parents were going out. I grew up in the Bronx, and my parents were going out to some ceremonial occasion and left me at home to be taken care of by my cousin,

who must have been 16 or 17 years old, who came to the house. My parents left, and he was carrying a brown paper bag. And after we sat down in the living room, he said, you want to see a bird? And I thought immediately that he had a bird in the bag. And I said, yes. And he reached into the bag, and he pulled out a pencil.

And he drew a bird on the side of the bag. And for one reason or another, I think it was the first time I'd ever seen anybody draw something that looked like the object depicted. I mean, I'd seen kids in kindergarten drawing things that didn't look like a bird, but I suddenly realized that you could create life, that you could create life with a pencil and a brown paper bag. And it was truly a miracle in my recollection, although people are always telling me that memory is just a device to justify your present, I really, it was like receiving the stigmata. I suddenly realized

that you could spend your life inventing life. And I never stopped. At five, my course was set. I never deviated. I never stopped aspiring or working in a way that provided the opportunity to make things that if you did right, moved people. Which is interesting, too, I mean, because you, you know, you grew up in essentially post-Depression and then World War II in the Bronx, and there was certainly ample need to create moments

that touched people and work that touched people. But also, I wonder at that time in our country's history, whether, and in's history, whether, and in your mind, whether doing this was something where you said, this is something that I could get paid for and build a career around, or this is just, this is what I need to do, and this is my service. Well, characteristically, I had a very good dynamic. My mother was relentlessly approving of anything I did and just thought everything I did was marvelous. And my father was worried about my making a living

and was very reluctant to even think that I might choose a life in the arts because he wanted me to pursue a life that would basically have some financial security, a kind of simple idea. But during the Depression, very prevalent, I mean, there was a time when making a living was really tough. He had a dry cleaning store, and I used to deliver orders very often that consisted of carrying four winter coats up six flights of stairs and getting a nickel tip. So I couldn't imagine

that a life of an artist would be much more difficult. At any rate, the combination of my father's resistance and my mother's support was a perfect environment because I learned to overcome resistance. And I was convinced by my mother that I could do anything. An ideal psychic environment for accomplishing something in the world. What led you to,

in your mind, you're creating art. Do you remember sort of the first glimpse of the experiences of I'm doing this for me and I love it and there's something that I'm just drawn to versus people are responding to it. It's an interesting and complicated question because I began using my drawings of a means of ingratiating myself with other young people. I mean, I

was the class artist so designated when I was six years old. It's funny, and all through public school I was always the class artist. It was a funny idea, right? And I would do drawings as a kind of service activity for my friends, mostly drawings of naked girls at a time when we other people's needs in that very primitive way. I liked the fact that I had status, I had a position in life, and I could also be of service in a strange way, although I never thought of it as being of service. Yeah, as a mean, that I did something that gave me some privilege in that group. That designation was a useful one to me in terms of developing my own sense of who I was. So when you reach a point where you decide that, well, this is something that I could potentially do beyond high school, this is something I could build my life around.

It sounds like you had already, in your mind, made that decision when you were five or six. Yes. But then you have to work out the details. Absolutely. There was no doubt in my mind what I was going to do, ever. How do you come to the place of deciding what that outlet is going to be? How do I take this? And I'm the class artist, and I know this is in my soul.

In some way, I have to make, I have to create. I have to make and I have to create beauty. This is what I'm here to do. And there are a lot of different directions you could have gone with that. You could have gone fine art. You could have gone so many different directions. What led you to choose the sort of path that you've been creating? Again, you're asking questions that are fundamentally unanswerable.

But I would say that it didn't matter to me as long as... That categorical distinction between the arts is nonsensical. Stupid, in fact, but useful to society for one reason or another. I might have become a painter. I might have become a dress designer. I might have become an architect. All of those possibilities. I knew I wanted to make things. And then circumstances began to intervene and interrupt that vague decision.

And opportunities, which I was willing to seize, regardless of whatever the consequences. So I have to tell you this story, which is very instrumental in that decision. And even though it's sort of part of my official range of stories, it was so profound that I have to tell it just in order to express how 20 seconds can change your life. When I was in junior high school, I had the opportunity to take the entrance examination to either Bronx Science, which is a great New York school,

or the High School of Music and Art, which is another great New York school, neither of which are sufficiently appreciated for how they shaped the city. I mean, these are both incredibly important institutions in terms of New York's population and environment. I had a science teacher who was very encouraging for me to enter into science. I was very good in science. And he wanted me to go to Bronx Science.

And I was evasive about that because I didn't want to tell him that it ain't going to happen. But the day of the entrance exam, they occurred on the same day I took the entrance examination to the high school of music and art and the next day when I came back to school he was in the hallway as I was walking down and he said I want to talk to you and I said uh oh the jig is up he's going to find out I took the wrong exam.

And he said, come to my office. Sit down. And as I was sitting there, he said, I hear you took the exam for music and art. And I said, oh, yes. And then he reached over and he reached into his desk and he pulled out a box of French Conte crayons, rather fancy, expensive box. And he gave it to me and he said, do good work. And I can't tell that story without crying. Because it was such a profound example of somebody who, an adult, authority figure, sophisticated man, who was willing to put aside his own desire for something, I mean, his own direction for my life and recognize me as a person who had made a decision.

And he was, instead of just simply acknowledging it, he was encouraging it with this incredibly gracious and generous gift. And I never forgot that story. You know, I was, I don't know, 14, 15 years old. But that kind of, the thing about it that always astonishes you in your life is that moment couldn't have taken more than two minutes. It was totally transformative about my view of life, my view of others, my view of education, my view of acknowledging the other. And it was a very important moment for me.

I mean, it's interesting to me also as a parent because, you know, everyone says what does a parent want for their child? Well, they want them to be happy. All right. But above that, I think before that, we want them to be safe. Sure. You know, and then we want them to be safe sure you know and then we want them to be happy and I think so we have this kind of ongoing conversation in our heads this may make them happy but this may make that is more likely to make them safe yeah you know so and there's this risk that we're

sort of going and and and so it's interesting when you share this story, because I think of that person, you know, sort of playing a similar role and saying, you know what? I'm choosing happiness and whatever will happen will happen. Well, you learn more and more that everything exists at once with its opposite. So the contradictions of life are never ending. that everything exists at once when it's opposite. So the contradictions of life are never-ending,

and somehow the mediation between these opposites are the game of life. Yeah. I'm asked often, and I'm sure you also you know through your teaching what if i choose wrong what what if i choose wrong and uh you know what if i what if that wasn't the right and and it's an interesting conversation because you know i think the more I think about it and the more I explore life, less and less I believe there is a wrong choice. You know, it's more important to choose and just see what happens. Well, it is. And you can also develop your own understanding by seeing what choices you've made. Some people you know are constantly complaining about their life and the wrong choices they

made. And at one point you say to them, well, stop making those stupid choices. I mean, first acknowledge that you make stupid choices and then see if you want to do something about it. Maybe you don't. And evidently, you don't. So be satisfied in your stupid choices. I mean, without being arrogant about it.

But you realize that the first step is always, in the Buddhist sense, to acknowledge what is. And that's very hard to do. It's very hard to do. It's very hard to do. It is. But incidentally, drawing and attentiveness is one of the ways you do that. I mean, the great benefit of drawing, for instance, is that when you look at something,

you see it for the first time. And you can spend your life without ever seeing anything. No. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether

you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required.

Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg.

You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight Risk. It's interesting that as you're sharing this in the background, we're starting to hear the voices of children playing outside. It's the perfect complement to this topic because what better representation of being here

and seeing what's in front of you than when you're this big? And if we could carry that forward, but for so many people, I feel like in some way we lose that. Oh, we do. And you have to. I mean, I do. I can sound as though I know the answer to anything. I don't know the answer to anything. I don't know the answer to anything. I mean, you have to constantly be attentive to what you deflect in life and what you don't pay attention to and all the things that you can't see

and all the preconceptions that you do have about everything. Those preconceptions basically blur your vision. It's very hard to see what's in front of you. Yeah. I remember hearing once when told that I couldn't draw the response that

it's not that you can't draw, it's that you can't see. Everyone can draw. It's about, can you actually see what's in front of you rather than seeing the image that has already been planted in your mind about what it's supposed to look like. Yeah.

It's true. I mean, it's a shame that educationally now I've been teaching for an awfully long time. And because of, to some extent, the technology, the computer, and so on, and the concern to massive programs and so on, that this most fundamental act of anyone in and out of the arts, which is the desire to understand what they're looking at, which involves looking, seeing the brain transformation,

the neurological path that moves from the brain to the hand. I mean, someone said the hand is a thinking instrument. And I have a book called Drawing is Thinking. Someone said the hand is a thinking instrument. I have a book called Drawing is Thinking. And that has been omitted from art education in most places, not all places, at a great loss to understanding even when you manage the technological needs that you have to produce things for the society. The idea that drawing is a way of developing your ability to think doesn't seem to be sufficiently conclusive. Yeah, and it's so interesting for me also as a writer.

For a long time, I would do all my writing on a computer. And then I would hit a point where I just kind of needed to step out. And then I started taking a little moleskin book with me. And I would just sit somewhere in a park. needed to step out and then i started taking you know a little moleskin book with me and i would just sit somewhere in a park i would go to you know a bar just sit and just write longhand and at first my hand started to ache because i literally lost the muscles to be able to actually write and then what i started to realize was that that that change actually really changed my output. What channeled through me onto the page when I was writing by hand

was very different creatively than what came through my fingers onto the keyboard. And that surprised me. It really did. Absolutely. But everything changes everything. I mean, there are no independent events. I mean, I use a computer every day now. I love the computer, but I never touch it. I mean, I have somebody at my side, and I say, make that big or make that small. But I also use the computer.

Right now I'm doing a series of prints for a show I'm going to have next year, and I use a computer like a lithographic press. I spent years doing lithography. And I just think of the computer as a press that operates at a different speed. Because when you do a lithograph, you have to do a drawing, etch it, prepare a stone, transfer it to the stone, print the proof, look at the proof, and so on, all of which will take you a day. And in order to get five different color proofs, it'll take you a month to do a print. I can do all of that in a day on the computer by simply being able to determine what color

goes on what color on the computer itself rather than the old technology. But if I didn't know that old technology, the computer would be useless to me. So the interaction, also the need for speed, is a separate issue entirely. Because in the case of work that you do on the computer, speed is a factor because it's an economic factor. But in the world of art, speed is irrelevant.

So you have two very different objectives there. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I recently, there's a letterpress shop out in Brooklyn. And I recently went out there and took a class to learn how to use these letterpresses that they had to go and find from the 50s and bring in. So they had really good machines. And there is something so, I mean, when you sit there and you choose the paper and you lay the blocks, you know, and you ink the roller and you just let you roll it through and you roll it back and you hold it up and you feel it.

It's such a different process. And it's so, you feel it so differently and so deeply. It's this visceral, deep thing that's, I could spend all day writing or creating on the computer, but I won't get that. You know, so it's an amazing thing to move back to these sort of ways to make. It is.

And the virtual world has created a very different kind of nervous system for people who spend their life in that world and it produces a different sense of appropriateness of time of morality of ethics of behavior I mean I was I've cited this before, but I was at dinner with my wife, and we sat down next to a table with four people, and they each had cell phones, and they were all talking to somebody outside the restaurant.

That kills me. What's going on there? I mean, why would you be talking to somebody outside the restaurant and not even looking at the people at your table? And when did that become appropriate? If you were on the telephone for a meal with four different people talking to four others outside, when I was growing up, right, it would be incomprehensible. Not only is it comprehensible, now it's unavoidable. Right. I mean mean when i was a

kid you weren't if the phone rang and the family was having dinner you didn't pick up the phone right you know right so what shifted that perception of what's the right thing to do and it's there's something really weird about it i mean who are all these people in the streets talking to what in the middle of traffic as they're trying to cross. I mean, what is it that makes every conversation so urgent that it can't wait until they stop the crossing? I mean, I don't get it. You know, but I think what, because I agree, I think what that technology does, on the one hand, it flattens the world, which is wonderful. I can talk to people on different continents.

Absolutely. So it opens up this cultural divide. But at the same time, it often disconnects us from the people at the dinner table right in front of us. And what you were talking about, people constantly on, is that to me, the biggest ideas don't come to me when I'm working hard at getting them. They come when I step away from the work. When I'm in the woods, just when I create pauses in my day. And I get concerned because we're filling every possible pause with connecting. And what is that going to do to what we're capable of creating in the world?

Well, we don't know. I mean, the thing we don't understand, you never know. Fish in water doesn't know it's in water. We don't know what this is doing to the human psyche or to human behavior or any of it. We know it's changing. We know it'll be a profound change. It won't be what it was, but we don't know what the nature of that will finally be. It'll probably have some benefits and significant drawbacks, but it is just emerging. You are creating a new kind of person. Yeah, I agree. I mean, literally rewiring the brain.

Yeah. I'm curious when you look at the work that you're creating and when you start to make decisions about what am I going to do, what am I not going to do, what's important to you

about what you choose to work on? What are the qualities that draw you to work or that light you up and say, this is something I want to do or be involved in? Well, that's a question that is a little more specific. I mean, so if somebody came with a project and you're a busy person

and you've got limited time. And you need to say yes or no. So my curiosity is in your head. What is it about? Is it about a project? Is it a product or work? Or is it the team or the individuals or the opportunity for you to explore something just yourself that may not be related even to it? That makes you say yes.

It's a dialectic. I don't think it's one thing. I don't think it's ever one thing. It's like, why do you like this person? Well, I like this and this, but I don't like this and this. I always say the question of human affection is so complicated. Why do you like certain people and don't like other people? You go into a room and you say, yes, yes, yes, no, no, no. You've already made up your mind who you can get along

with and who you can't. And I have sort of in my book of principles, or my ten principles of work, the first one is always work with people you like. And that's simple, really simple-minded, but fundamentally profound. I mean, you can't, and this is not entirely true, you can't work with people you don't like. Sometimes there's a kind of dislike that urges you to overcome your own limitations. It becomes fuel to a certain extent. I would say that now getting work is always a combination of factors. One is, A, the first thing is if the work is harmful, I don't do it.

I mean, do no harm is, I think, a principle that does not only apply to the medical profession. Which is to say, to urge people to do what is harmful to them is something that I don't feel comfortable doing. The other thing is whether there's really an opportunity to make something good out of it as opposed to fulfilling a task. Professional life is very often antithetical to artistic life because in professional life, you basically repeat what you already know, your previous successes. It's like marketing. Marketing is the enemy of art because it's always based on the past. Not that art is always based on the future, but it's very often based on transgression. So when you do something that basically is guaranteed to succeed, you are basically closing the possibility for discovery.

So there's that. And I do jobs purely for professional reasons, because I know how to do certain things that will be effective and will work, and that serves me as a professional. And then I do jobs where I don't know what I'm doing, or I do projects where I don't know what I'm doing or I do projects where I don't know what I'm doing. I'm doing that now for a show that I'm going to have in Cincinnati next year. I decided to do a series of landscape prints and I'm doing them on the computer in part.

I'm taking drawings and then subjecting them to the computer to see if I can produce something that doesn't look as though it was generated by the computer, because the computer is a dangerous instrument, because it shapes your capacity to understand what's possible. The computer is like an apparently submissive servant that turns out to be a subversive that ultimately gains control of your mind. The computer is such a powerful instrument that it defines, after a while, what is possible for you.

And what is possible is within the computer's capacity. And while it seems at the beginning like this incredibly gifted and talented service, it actually has a very limited intelligence. The brain is so much vaster than the computer, but the computer is very insistent about what it's good at. And before you know it, it's like being with somebody who has bad habits. You sort of fall into the bad habits,

and it begins to dominate the way you think of what is possible. So now, because I never touch the computer, I'm taking advantage of it. So how? By doing things that are uncomfortable for it to do. So you have to give me more. Well, I'm treating it like it were a printing press instead of like an advanced electronic instrument. Right. I mean, it's fascinating.

So it's essentially a little bit of role reversal there. You're owning it instead of being owned by it. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him.

Y'all need a pilot. When you think about how people are being trained, there's been a lot of really interesting pushback these days against art school, formal art education. As somebody who's an artist, a designer, and a teacher, I'm curious just what your feelings are. What do you mean by pushback in this case? Meaning people saying it's not necessary.

Art education is not necessary? Yeah, that sort of formal art education that... For what purpose? For in order to, I guess, become good at your craft, become good enough so that you can build a living doing it. Well, you have to separate making a living, which is one activity, and one that everybody has to face, with enlarging one's understanding of the world and also providing an instrumentality for people to have, as I said earlier, a common purpose and a sense of transformation.

I went up to the Morgan Library the other day having a show of old, it's called Old Master Drawings, or Master Drawings in any case. Fantastic drawing. I saw Cezanne there, but I had never seen a pencil of watercolor of a landscape. And I was transformed. I looked and my world was enlarged. At this ancient age, I'm still capable of astonishment, of feeling, my God, I've never had this experience before.

And that is what the arts provide, the sense of enlargement and the sense that you haven't come to the end of your understanding, either of yourself or of other things. So that's why art was invented, and that's why practitioners who have, occasionally, the experience of making such objects, feel that they are part of a larger issue than the immediate context of their life. I mean, they're part of human history.

And I was thinking, for any reason, because a friend had recently died, it's nice to feel that you left something behind. When you, which is kind of fascinating because, so I'm 47 and I'm married, I have a daughter. And it's interesting that I find myself now thinking about legacy. I still believe in that I have many decades left to create work, but it's creeping into my everyday at this point. And it's a little bit surprising in an odd way. Well, you don't necessarily have to think of it as legacy. That sort of gives it kind of an overtone to it.

But the idea of doing good work, right, of doing good work, I mean, there's something about that, the simplicity of that statement. And I think, I'm not sure, but I think it was Freud who said, love and work, that's all there is. And that's pretty much true. Germinating on that. Yeah, I need to spend more time on that. That's interesting so um so the name of this project is is the good life project and uh it's an exploration of you

know do we know what any of the pieces are and and one of the questions that i always ask when i when i have an opportunity to sit down with someone like you is, in your experience, when I offer the term to live a good life, what comes up? A significant life? Well, first of all, significant to whom? I mean, I mean, if you're thinking in terms of the history of the world, that's one thing.

If you're thinking in terms of a family that managed to grow up and support itself and live a full life and do no harm, every life is significant. Some more than others. There are heroic figures in history chosen either for real heroism or real importance or for some illusion of status. I was thinking about the Pope, this another human being. You know, the quote about gay people. And I was thinking, yeah, that's a good question. Who are you to condemn anybody else? We elevate these people to heroic roles or significant roles. Just another guy living, trying to make sense of getting old and dying.

That's it. I mean, we're all in the same boat. But it was shocking to hear that coming from someone who'd been anointed with this false illusionistic idea that this person somehow is more knowing than every other human being. I'm sorry. It's a self-serving delusion but obviously useful because it persists so much. I'm curious, do you see a good life and a significant life as one and the same? I'm very suspicious of some words like that and also what they link to. I guess I feel now that you can't take anything at face value.

You have to go beyond the superficiality of existing belief. My favorite quote is, certainty is a closing of the mind. And so I don't know what a good life is. A good life for me certainly has been the things that I think are important, are friendships that I have, people I love, and certainly a marriage that has endured and that continues to endure, teaching, which I've been doing for about well over half a century, and feeling that whatever you know has a possibility of being transmitted and shared.

Outside of that, I wouldn't know how to define a good life. And as you know, some people seem to be villains to some and heroes to another, I mean. Yeah. I mean, what's so interesting to me is I've asked this question now. We're, you know,

over a year into this exploration. And initially I would have guessed that after about 10,

11, 12 conversations there would be a lot of repetition. There hasn't been. That's interesting. It's been fascinating to me.

Is that the lens is so unique to everybody's experience. Well, what is the most recurring idea, though? Service is in various ways. With an idea I am not only for myself. Yeah. Gratitude. Yeah.

In various, under, by various names. Yeah. There are two things that recur. gratitude in various under by various names yeah there are two things that recur in different ways yeah different ways yeah

well in one way certainly in terms of gratitude I feel enormously grateful for the life I've led

I've had an extraordinarily easy life I've led. I've had an extraordinarily easy life, I would say. I've benefited enormously from the generosity of others, and I've been able to live well and do what I aspire to do, make some things that I think are useful. And you have to be grateful, especially when you realize the amount of pain and suffering that the world is full of.

I agree completely. Well, I thank you so much for this conversation. You're very welcome. the world is full of. Agreed. Completely. Well, I thank you so much for this conversation. You're very welcome. I'm grateful to you for your time and your wisdom and your openness. I hope the series goes well. Thank you. Thank you.

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