If I Speak - 117: Is screen addiction ruining our connection to art?

Episode Date: June 16, 2026

* We’ll be at Crossed Wires festival in Sheffield on 4th July! Final tickets: https://crossedwires.live * Moya has a big theory about why wealthy elites seem to have stopped caring about culture, which leads to wondering if addiction and dependency are the best framework for understanding modern society. Plus: when you’re body-shamed by a much younger hook-up. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

So you might feel that you've had more than enough of us for one summer, but just in case you are a thirsty, thirsty little piggy with your snout at the content trough, why not join us at Crossed Wires Festival in Sheffield on July 4th? You can get tickets at crossedwires.live and there are going to be other live podcasters there as well. So just in case you want to add to your yapping diet, as well as if I speak, they'll be Blind Boy. There'll be bold politics with Zach Polanski and many more to boot. So go to crossedwires dot live and grab your tickets there.

Hello. Hello. Hi. Hello. Hello. Who's on the other end? Who's calling? I mean, normally it would be you saying who's calling, but I guess you've thrown it to me.

This is, if I speak from London, I am Ash Sarker and you are. Moia Lathian Maclean Live and direct Also from London As mandated As a journalist Who also does a podcast I live in South London

You get south or east And increasingly a little bit of north But No man There's the strong north representation I'm not taking that I'm not having that one bit What are your

What are your headlines at the moment How are you doing? What's going on? It's hard isn't it? Because I want to tell the podcast Everything that's going on But you can't really you can't really let the podcast in on

on the nitty gritty details I went to Can't be like oh my vaginal discharge is whack Although I am on my period at the moment And I very rarely have periods So my resilience to that is low I don't like I don't enjoy periods at all

But I did go to a party At the weekend That was a party that is both Adjacent and separate To the normal party I go to because it was the party It was really cool It was my boyfriend's old landlady's party

and it was this lovely gathering that was supposedly it was technically for her 80th birthday but she claimed it wasn't. It was actually for 50 years that she'd been having lodgers in her big farmhouse which is somewhere in a shire. I'm not going to say exactly where. But those lodgers live there on peppercorn rent.

They're like waifs and strays and she's taken in like 140 over the years who get to live in this house. And it's very, it's, the whole premise is like communal. You help out. You help kill the chickens. You help cook the food. But it's very, yeah, it's a kind of living that a lot of people I know my age talk about.

But then not that many actually do. And it was really interesting to go and see the people that have been collected along the way and the differences between them. But the similarity of like the needing a home and the wanting to muck in. And the just quite beautiful stories that had created. and the gratitude that they felt, but also like connection to the house and the gratitude she felt to them

for being in this house with her. And it was interesting because I was talking to someone there and they were saying like, oh, you know, they're thinking about how they could set this up more permanently in the future. It's quite hard and there's not many people who could take it over.

And it was interesting to me to think about that because there's a lot of people I think would like immediately be like, yeah, I want to set this commune here. But then the reality of the work is very at odds with the sort of fantasy. And I think maybe young people nowadays don't have as much staying power. I might be wrong there, but it brought me into contact with a group of people who I would loosely

describe as radical slash hippie, which is slightly different from the left. There's overlap and there's a lot of left principles and activism, but it's actually slightly different. And my boyfriend sort of characterised this by saying, these people are doers and they might not have the same sort of, might not have the same sort of politics. But if you say to them, I think we should do this. They're like, actually, that's a good idea. we're just going to do it.

Talk about it less. Yeah. And the left just talk. And it was really interesting. It was a lovely party. It was really lovely. In a sort of similar vein, thinking about communal living, we actually, as a household,

took a step which has really improved our lives. And you're going to laugh because it's so stupid. Go on. We bought a telly. And let me tell you something. So the backdrop to this is that both me and my husband and our housemate were feeling increasingly like we had no respite from work slash politics. And that's because politics is our work. It's a big part of what connects us. And then also

all three of us work from home a lot in different ways. And I think that there was a feeling of increased anxiety and inability to rest. And I think, you know, there was a sort of timely reason, right? So my housemate is now, well, he's a green counsellor now is part of running her and gay council and the house was like a real centre for political activity. So we ended up in this space where there were no boundaries between work and rest or work and play. And also when you think about individualised screens, so there's something which absolutely everyone has to contest with, you're constantly responding to things which are somewhat of work. because all of us were feeling a bit like crap about it.

So I can't remember who brought up the idea first. We'd always prided ourselves on being a non-TV household. We've got a TV. And moving from everyone having two individualised screens, your laptop and your phone, and sometimes like all of us sort of engaging with six screens at once, right? The three of us together and we're doing things on our individualised screens. We now just like watch films together.

And obviously we're watching films together before. or like watching TV or, and it's really improved the sociality of our household. And I was talking to a friend about it who is a fan of this podcast, a dedicated listener. Shout out to special one. And he said that maybe having dedicated rooms for screens, like when you were growing up and you had a computer room is better for you. And so it has, it has been a real improvement. So if you can't live on a commune where you've got to get your hands in,

the soil and, you know, grow and prepare all your own food. Maybe get a telly. Very same thing. In that vein, shall we do 73 questions minus 70? Yep, because I've got questions for you. Oh, is it for me? I was going to ask them for me. Yeah, because this is your party.

Don't tarnish me with that brush. All right, are you more of a jara? Oh, it makes me licky. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to them and their legacies that have been tarnished. Go on, go on. Right. So this is our, Our traditional opening segment, 73 questions, minus 70. Question one, what is your ideal burger?

Okay, I'm going to say something. Not controversial. I hate burgers. Whoa. I haven't eaten a beef burger or any type of burger, actually. I can't remember when the last one I had was I must have been a student 10 years ago. What don't you like about them? I think they're a waste of food.

I think they're a waste of food If I want to, I love a sandwich I'm a sandwich person I love a wrap Those are my sort of bread and filling favorites

Something about the burger It's so greasy It gives me such a headache It feels so American And I don't like Americans Sorry to America I like some of you I'm really sorry

Donald Trump's really not going to let me in now Your ideal burger is the one that doesn't exist Yes Basically yes I actually can't ask that question Because I just don't like them so much I can't pretend I won't pretend

I'm sure you must have one though If you ask the question Well I think that some of the very hyped burgers that you can get Are in fact overhyped So everyone was going on about The Dexter burger at the Plimsel

And I went to go get it And it just tasted like a McDonald's burger To me It just tasted exactly like a McDonald's burger to me It just tasted exactly like a McDonald's burger. So for me, the difference between a really, really expensive beef burger and a cheaper one isn't that big. A difference between a really good chicken burger and a shit chicken burger is huge, vast. So I think that that's where I'm going. Obviously, it has to be some

kind of enriched dough for the bun. Could be. Milk bun could be. Milk bun could be. a brioche but has to be an enriched dough feel very strongly about that you need a pickled element you need a pickled acidic element true of all sandwiches true of all sandwiches you need something spicy if it's a burger so

preferably for me a green chili over a red chili in there this is just sandwich this is just sandwich politic it is it's sandwich talk it's a sandwich talk but a burger is a subspecies of sandwich It is. It is. It's just what I reject. So, like for me, it's not about saying here is the one way to do an ideal burger.

I'm saying if you bring all these elements together, you will have a great burger. True. A great, great burger. Do you take leaves in your burger? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. I don't understand. This is something quite strange. Where did I go recently? Where they don't put Italy.

They don't put greener in their sandwiches. No, they do not. The green is in the pesto. Which is so odd to me because the one thing that could improve a delicious for catcher or whatever, I can't remember the name of those special sandwiches they have in like Florence. But put some fucking leaves in it, just a couple of leads. Also, I really, really love a particular Italian green, Freirelli.

Frierelli, I think. Love it. If you put that in a sandwich. Yeah. It seems an odd miss from the Italians. Usually they're so good on that stuff. Question two. Money, no object.

I wish. You can redecorate one room in your house. The dimensions of the room stay the same, but everything else can change. What one are you picking? And what might you do to it? It's hard because I was saying to my partner the other day, partner a lot, we were saying, you know when you just hit 30? He's been upgraded.

Well, I was just saying they automatically hit your partners when you hit your 30s. Got no time to faff around. You just partner. Sorry, my partner. Imm in does. Literally. Because we were talking about a renovation project that he's about to embark on. and we were like dreaming about the different rooms

and he's really torn between doing his bathroom in a beautifully like chic green tile or doing that 90s maximumism where you get a toilet seat with this fish in it so I was thinking tell him to do the tasteful green I was like you wait and you do this

you do the first one don't you do I get the toilet seat with a fish in it and I was thinking about why the flat that I've lived in I haven't done anything to it is because fundamentally I think I'm going to have to move out of it in like a few years. So I've never settled long enough to like really renovate a place. My current flat, what would I do? I would only paint one wall of the bedroom. I like the bedroom as it is.

Honestly, the bathroom I do like, but probably the bathroom just because there's so much I want to do. But I actually think I'd have to live in a different flat if I wanted to renovate a room. And it would be a bathroom. And it would be, I'd want a stained glass on one pane of the window. Oh, yeah. But I think I'd want it a bit like 1920s, Reni Macintosh style, stained glass. But then I could take any stained glass.

I don't mind. There's some really nice Margaret McDonald's style that I think would be perfect for a bathroom. I'd want a little bit of stained glass on one of the windows. I'd really want, like, some beautiful wood, like fittings and fixtures, like a dark wood. And I'd want the green tiles. And I think I'd want, no, I'd want the bath done in like a,

it's like a greeny, almost turquoisey tiling on the bathtub. and then I'd want the, I'd want like terracotta tiles behind the bath. I think that would be very beautiful. I'd love that. So I think the bathroom, because I think the bathroom is such a great place to spend time in. But it depends how but it's the living room is. Depends how butter is the living room is. Otherwise living room.

After being in Thailand, there is one upgrade to the bathroom that I wish to introduce, which is bum gun. Bumgum's a great. I'd have a bead in any bathroom that I had a choice of. Yeah. Bum gun. Final question. Are you good at making new friends and what, if anything, inhibits you?

No, I'm not. And the thing that inhibits me is making and keeping plans. Everyone is so busy in London. So you meet someone and you really want to hang out with them. And then you're both too busy to meet for like 10 years and you finally meet. And then another 10 years past and you finally meet again. Another 10 years past and you finally meet again. And I think the rhythm of career.

Creating a friend is quite difficult if you don't have time to do social gatherings. So like, you know, in my past I would host parties and I'd do all these other things so I could bring people in and they'd feel like they were great friends to me. And I don't do that anymore because I don't have time. So that really inhibits the making of new friends, I think. So there's people I just, we just text each other every few months and like miss each other constantly. It makes me really sad, actually.

It makes me really sad. I worry about making new friends if I ever, you know, move somewhere else again for a bit. That's what really scares me. I won't be able to make friends. What about you? Necessity is the mother of invention. You think that, but when I went to Glasgow, I was like,

I hermitted myself and I was, like, people wanted to hang out and I was quite bad at hanging out. Yeah, but you were a scared little dog. Yeah, but why, what about a move means I won't be a scared little dog again? What about you? Can you make good friends, new friends? I had a great run in my mid to late 20s. Fantastic run.

And then in my 30s, I've made a few really, really good new friends. But what is required is different, whereas before I could meet someone relatively cold. Whereas I think actually now I'm probably a bit less trusting. I think also maybe because the profile of this job has gone up and more and more people are interacting with me parisocially. I need a lot to reassure me that that's not going on in their head. Would you make friends with someone who watches Navarro or engage in Navarro? Probably not, but also I don't think they'd really want to be friends with me.

No, they're probably. I've got like a really good nose for is the person interacting with me parasocially. they might not know they're doing it but I always know yeah they always say stuff where you're like oh so even that sometimes it's just the way just the way their eyes are

or what's a parasocial eye they don't have to say anything I just know what's the parasocial eye um I think sometimes it'll be too attentive like we'll be in a group and actually it's really clear they're listening to me more than other people

and need to be ignored sometimes you need to just be treated like a human being they're hungry like a dog for your attention. Dear, dear, okay. All you parasycial listeners, pay attention to us now. We want your attention now.

I have a big theory. This is our segment. I have a big theory for once. And this came through, I've discovered a new well for my big theories, and it's called my boyfriend, so that's useful. He doesn't professionally. spent his time thinking of theories so he has lots of spare time to think of theories

and it means that we discuss them together which was fun if you would like to hear more musings on say which Pope is the most impactful of the last century he thinks it's Francis we can talk about that but today we're not talking about that

Ash is Ash is saying no no no I'm sorry is Vatican too a joke to him I have no idea what these words mean I have no idea what these words mean but you should definitely discusses with him. He has lots of investment in it. Anyway, today's big theory is a joint big theory from the studio of Moyer and Unnamed Partner. And it is, is culture suffering from elite

disinterest? So this started before my partner and I were able to articulate what exactly we were trying to get at. And it was because I was reading an article in, I think the New Yorker side note I've talked about my beef with New Yorker before I still get issues every week because stupidly I sign up to a year's subscription so I do force myself to read them at breakfast but I don't enjoy them I don't enjoy them a lot of the time but I was reading this article in New Yorker about the struggle that is being faced by the Metropolitan Opera in New York

because this massive two hundred million pound no two hundred million dollar sorry deal where Saudi Arabia has just fallen through and that was going to plug their funding for up to, I think, 2032. But now the MET has to scramble to make up the gap. And they have like a $330 million shortfall in funding. They've already made all the cuts that they think are possible. So they've cut wages, they've cut performances, they've got jobs, and they still can't find the money.

New York is a city of very, very rich people. And historically, the MET was funded through ticket sales. and philanthropy. They have the same amount of people doing the performances. Like it's still four people doing performances, the same four people that would be doing performances in, I don't know, 1860. But obviously some of the costs of production have gone up. However, that still is interesting to me because, you know,

there's so many rich people in New York. So where is the funding? And in the UK, the arts have a similar problem, right? So support from both the state and philanthropists is receding. So I think it was two years. no, go now in 2024, there was a top director in the Royal Academy of Arts who was blaming these losses on funding on rich people leaving the UK. So this was used as a sort of, ah, the tax changes are making people leave and we're losing our money. And she said four

six-figure patrons had left because of tax changes, which, sure, but wealthy people are coming in all the time to Britain. So those four people who are funding arts to the tune of six figures have left, but we have 157 billionaires in Britain alone, and their wealth is equivalent to one-fifth of Britain's economy. So what's happening is people who are willing to fund the arts are leaving, but the rich people coming in, all the rich people already here, are not invested in filling their gap. And this leads me to today's big theory, which is the joint venture. Where we were discussing this decline in batch nage, he said this, he said that Western elites don't care about high culture anymore. And then we went on to be like, oh, is that maybe why it's

stagnating a bit? Because from the bottom up, artists who would create, you know, who used to be able to create on things like the doll, etc. The states rip the funding from them. You can't, you can't create in the same way if you're from a working class background. You have to really scramble. There are ways and means, but it's not, there's not the same amount. You're seeing the narrowing of scope. And then from the top, the people who the elites, who used to show their elite status through, you know, funding arts, engaging with art. They did it through leisure and investment in arts, like beautiful paintings, great literature, funding an opera, funding an artist.

They're not focusing on that anymore. They're not interested in that. They're focusing instead on performatively working all the time. The work is the art, you know, you get financial elites like Stephen Bartlett. The whole thing is like, I'm going to show my work even when I'm not working. That's why there's so many people on his podcast. Oh, body transformations. Mark Zuckerberg, E.

on Musk. I'm sure Bill Gates is an M.M.A. ring too. But Leisure ultimately has now seen as idle and art is frivolity. And the more I thought about this, the more it grabbed me. So, Dewe Leeper Leeper is in the cultural spotlight at the moment. Dula peep. Partly because she got married, but also because she's been rising in status as a celebrity who has carved out quite a niche.

and it shouldn't be a niche because her niche is cultured socialite. Her niche is socialite who reads. She sings as a side thing, but her main thing is being beautiful, being on vacation and reading, which is fascinating. But Reese Witherspoon, who used to be the main reader, has moved on to AI and power producing. It's all about like business and tech. The money that I think elites would have funneled into art patronage is now going on tech and things that can get more power like newspapers.

Elon Musk bought Twitter to consolidate his power. He spends his money on political parties. I was looking at what art that Elon Musk had engaged in. And it was a mural of this Ukrainian woman who'd been murdered in America that became a big far-right vehicle to talk about anti-immigration because she was murdered by an immigrant, even though she also was an immigrant. So who is funding art now? Brands. Brands are funny art, which is why I think it's stagnated and is all about IP.

You've got Barbie, another Marvel movie, the musical version of train spotting. It's either something that's been, you know, a comic book or a product that's turned into a movie, or it's, I don't know, like, an old, a thing that's certain to get bums on seats, which is a rehash of all Queen's songs, a jukebox musical. There's not these radical risks. It's not arts for art's sake. And I want to get your take on this because I could go on forever. do you think elite disinterest is contributing to cultural stagnation?

Well, when I read your script yesterday, I made notes. Yay! Because I think that that's a part of it, but I think the picture is more complex than that. So the first thing to point out is that there has been real reckoning with elite patronage of the arts in recent years. And I think the really big one here is the Sackler family. So the Sackler family, huge patrons of the arts. They're the family behind Purdue Farmer. And Purdue made their money through the cells of Oxycontin.

So this is a synthetic opioid which they, it was already prescribed, but sort of as a palliative drug. you know it was for people with terminal cancer and they invented a new coating they argued that it would be more difficult for people to develop dependencies on it and they absolutely flooded to the market they had a very aggressive sell strategy they put loads of money behind doctors saying things like pain is the sixth the vital sign and you know it's it really that combined with de-industrial realisation in America is what spawned the opioid crisis. So they had a wing, I think, also at the VNA here in London, you know, huge patronage of the arts in the States and spearheaded by

Nan Golden, the American artist and photographer, there was a real reckoning with it. So Nan Golden herself struggled with drugs dependency and just sort of thought, that this was disgusting, you know, this is completely disgusting, that the Sacklers were able to launder their reputation through art. And of course, there are big institutional funders whose presence in art has been fiercely protested and contested, BP being another big one. So big climate campaigns around getting BP out of the arts. So that's the thing that I would say is that it's not just about disinterest. It's a, well, this is more trouble than it's worth for me. If I'm a, you know, billionaire family who's, you know, made their money in all the ways that

billionaire families make their money, or I'm a huge corporate institution like BP and you go, all right, initially I was doing this because there were reputation enhancing elements for me and now it's the opposite. It's made us hyper visible, a site of protest, you know, we're tied up in the new cycle in a way that we don't want to be, it's now a risk to our interest. So that's, that's one of the things that would include is that it's not just about disinterest, it's that, you know, the quid pro quo doesn't deliver in the same way. And I would say that that's a, you know, a feature of what Anton Yeager calls hyperpolitics. So he describes us in his new book as being in an age of hyper politics. Everything is really politicised. Everything is a site of political

contestation. So when you think about the way in which Elon Musk views culture and art, it's purely as a way to further his particular set of what I would describe as white nationalist and fascist politics. And I don't think that's something which is unique to the right. I think that we are as a society in a moment where we're viewing culture through that lens. It's about the politics of it. And, you know, it's about this intensely. politicised mindset that we're bringing to things. Then I would also add post-literacy. So I think that you've sort of like touched on this with Dua Leaper.

But moving from a culture in which you had television, radio, newspapers, if you want to engage with the world around you, everyone kind of has to be part of. of one audience, you now have the super fragmented media market hyper individualized, where instead of being like, okay, there are maybe, you know, four, five or six audiences that we're thinking about, it's now hyper, hyper individuated. It's also turned culture into content. So everything sort of like gets compressed into, you know, information nuggets, which you're consuming through ever smaller screens, laptop screen, phone screen. And your expectation is to be constantly entertained throughout your day, right?

So you can dip in and out of entertainment sort of like on a minute to minute basis and not think about it very much. That's something which is, I think, hit culture absolutely like a bomb. So yeah, those are the things that I'm. I would say have really contributed. A big presence in culture doesn't benefit the wealthy anymore like it used to because it draws attention to how they made their money and their practices. We're in this hyper-political age where everyone's engaging with politics thinking about,

so everyone's engaging with culture thinking about it through a political lens. You know, how does this advance my cause or detract from it? and you've got a post-literate, hyper-individuated audience context. On the sort of the wealthy don't engage with arts anymore because it doesn't benefit them, or rather they don't patronise it, back in the day, back of the day, but previously, I think there was also a difference in the type of values the wealthy had. Like some of them obviously were doing it just reputational,

because also you're talking there about BP, that's a company. So that's separate to say like a Sackler individually or a Medici. You know, these families can operate almost as a company, but it's not quite the same as having a company that's not built on a family structure or a wealthy individual like Bill Gates. I do think there's a difference in values that maybe speaks to the post-literity thing, and also the fact that everything is optimized now, everything is about, you know, We're living the tech age, the age of the motherboard, as opposed to the age of, I don't know, the Enlightenment age.

So these people who become wealthy, they don't have the same investment in arts. I don't think. I think the tech bros in particular who are guiding the conversation don't seem to have the same sort of investment in the arts. Or at least the group think of the spaces they're in don't prize it. Like, they'll own famous paintings and they might, you know, get a signed copy of their favourite book. It's always the fountain. What's it called? The Fountainhead, Iron RAND.

But they're not, they don't actually have that, like, Renaissance style. This is an important part of being a cultured human. This is an important part of being a rounded human. It's almost inefficient. And there was a quote I actually read today in my morning New Yorker, which was by the, you know, the two artists, Christo and Jean-Claude, who wrap buildings. So they're wrapped buildings. Christos actually died, but his nephew, it's called Vladimir Yavachev, and he's been rapping the buildings. And he says at the end of this piece about the latest building they're rapping.

The power of this and why it's so strong is because it's an artwork and because it's an artwork and because of it's useless. Nobody needs it. The uselessness of the thing is, uselessness of stuff is the thing that makes us human. And I think a lot of art is sort of, you know, useless. It's been interesting to me existing on platforms like Substack, where everyone wants to pretend to be a great literary expert, and they're all, but they're all talking about books in a very optimized way. There's a real, there's a real divide. Some people are just talking about, like, bring up old, There's a, there's like a real nostalgia on Substack as well. It's like they're just constantly regurgitating old quotes and other people's writing in order to, on the notes section,

in order to sort of further your own profile, which is a fascinating little tick. But there's a, there's a real performance of being a writer. So much writing on Substack is about how to write, how to be a great writer. It's, it's the optimization of writing. And it's one of my favorite writers on a platform like Sub-Dak is actually someone who doesn't own a computer and goes to the public library to type up their work because it is just existing for the sake of existing. It's not trying to really say anything bigger. It's just work that exists. And I think there's this idea that we have to make something really original and really special and really optimise and it's the best to our ability and blah, blah, blah. And we have to be this archetype of a writer.

whereas like what about the uselessness? When have we lost the ability to accept something is useless and it just exists and that we can like it on those terms? And there's another part of that which is the idea that we don't have a monoculture anymore but we have big sort of globs of culture which people circulate around because they, I was talking to someone who said, I think it was someone who works in the literary world. It might have been my agent who was talking about. how books get blown up. It's just the same, the books that are sold by like, that are platformed by like Waterstones,

um, you know, Barnes and Noble, etc. Those books, the Amazon, the books are spotlighted. They will blow up and every other book gets very low sales now.

Um, and it's like there's globs of culture that's picked for you. It's Spotify. It's waterstones. It's things, people don't know how to get recommended books anymore. She says, people are always asking how I don't know how to pick a book.

I don't know how to pick a book. I don't know how to pick a book. because they want to read the best book or the book that has been co-signed because now you have access to everything possible all at once. The choice is so overwhelming. You don't know how to pick correctly, what will make the good book.

So instead we started coalescing around five books that go absolutely massive and dominate the market like that year. And you won't see any other book on the tube. You'll just see those five books and every other book doesn't get a look in and is not deemed worthy anymore. And the writer that was talking about,

the one that I really like, who writes in the public library was talking about how she came across this imprint called Persephone books and they do books, they reprint books that were out of print originally and she just thought that was a useless idea because how would it be that a work of genius could be missed? But it was even that idea of like it had to be a work of genius. Why does it have to be a work of genius?

Why can't it just exist? So I think like, you know, the uselessness of art, I mean, you know, Oscar Wilde talking about all art is perfectly useless because it's an actor of resistance to productivism, right? So he's saying that in a way which is playful. It's also a sort of repost to

Victorian moralism, but it's also a repost to industry. And so he's writing that in the 19th century. And I think that that's something which still remains true, that sort of uselessness of art. One of my favourite things about

Nabokov as a writer is that he does this sort of like metafictional framing of Lolita to take the piss out of the idea that this might have a morally or socially instructive purpose

so he writes something from an imaginary social worker saying well this is why it's really important to take the piss out of that idea and I think that that's a way of thinking about art which is deeply antithetical both to a culture built around optimisation

and sort of the drive to success, which also includes a sort of fake it till you make it. So if you're constantly presenting yourself or lopping as a writer, that's sort of the same as like actually doing good writing. But it's also, I think, something which is really challenging in this age of the political utility of the work is the value of the work. So I think it's got something to do with, you know, like optimisation, culture, modern capitalism, but I think it's also got something to do with that, like,

really intense politicisation. I was also thinking about something a friend of mine said over the weekends that we were talking about my theory of smartphone is atom bomb for human connection. We're having a talk about political potential. And I was saying, like, I sort of wonder if there's so much. focus on electoral projects because we actually can't get a grasp on what's really happening to us as a species, which is the majority of people are in the grip of an active addiction, and that's two phones and screens. And he said addiction is increasingly a central power

of relation in modern capitalism. And he said, it used to be consumerism. And consumerism was about a fantasy, a fantasy of who you are if you buy these things, right? The dream of amassing a self and a self which has a particular meaning and status in society through the things you buy. And now it's dependency. And so, yes, there are elements of fantasy and projection in there, but it's actually about the itch, the anxiety and the self-soothe and being caught in that loop. And if you're at the theatre, for two and a half hours, if you are at the ballet

for however longer a ballet takes, I've never actually seen a ballet. If you are... It's a couple of hours. It's like an hour a half each side. Tristan and DeZolder for three hours or three and a half hours. He's waiting for these people to die. You have to be out of that itch scratch cycle

that you have with your phone. And people find it really, really challenging. people find focus really, really difficult for that amount of time. It is, especially if you're bored, because we hate boredom. If you get bored during a performance, it's so difficult to sit still and just take it in. You have to really resign yourself to the fact you're going to have to be bored. She says yawning. I say yawning, even thought of it makes me bored.

I do fundamentally think that smartphone use is holding so many of us back culturally, both in consuming it and producing it. It makes it really bums me out. I don't know what to say because we talk about this all the time, but it does come back to it again and again that it's not just smartphones. It's obviously like all our screens. It's internet addiction. And my partner said the other day, he says,

you talk about addiction too much. Everything's addictive. And I'm like, maybe, as you say, Ash, we live in an age of addiction. And that is the framework that's sort of dominating the now. It might not be the framework that should be used for everything. But it just seemed to explain a lot of the way we use stuff. When I start thinking about how many times I pick up my phone, if I was doing like a line of cocaine every time I picked, oh, my God,

I would obviously be in NA years ago. but the way it's used to just dull any sort of discomforting emotion whether that's the friction of having to think of a new line and a thing I'm writing or put off a task that I don't want to do or when I have a difficult conversation with someone, the phone is there. And I do think, because we think that we can access so much culture on our phones, that there'll be a turn towards that. It's easy to stay at home with our screen,

and then force ourselves out into watching, you know, the theatre. But what we're accessing on our phones, is it really, is it really good culture? I don't know. I really don't know. Well, no, I just think that the answer is obviously fucking not. Yeah. You know, I was doing the moral maze last week. And moral maze is one of the things I really enjoy about doing as a show is that it brings me into contact with the right in a way that I would never ordinarily have it.

So, you know, regular co-panelists include Tim Stanley from The Telegraph, James Orr, who is the head of policy for reform. And you get to see, part of moral maze and part of how it works is that you kind of have to make arguments which make the show work, right? So you're not always arguing something that you believe, but you're doing it because you want to, you know, create the range of opinion which makes the show work. And so that's fine. But we were talking about short-termism, right?

we were talking about immediate gratification. And the first, they're called witnesses, so someone who's coming to state their case, who was a psychologist, was talking about the infinite present that the internet offers us. So we're constantly being pulled into immediacy, immediacy, now, now, now, now, now,

which breaks down our ability to do long-term thinking. And the thing is, is that when you're thinking about forms of arts which require high levels of literacy. Not necessarily high levels of education, but high levels of literacy that requires focus, attention, building up knowledge and familiarity over time, probably not going to like something straight away. And that's very different from the sort of instantaneous, I don't even want to call it gratification. It's more like the scratch of an itch that's offered by a phone. And one of the things that, you know, Tim Stanley and James all we're saying, and I suspect they were saying this to make the show work rather than this

what they actually believe, is I were like, but the internet can offer you anything, you know, if you want to, you can learn ancient Greek, you know, or you can do chair yoga or whatever. And I was like, yeah, but you're not doing that. Like, no one's doing that. This is not set up. It is not programmed through, you know, billions and billions and billions of dollars of research in Silicon Valley to try and make us better, more attentive people. It works on breaking down our ability to resist or have any kind of resilience and wants us to be dependent on these little quick hits which are sort of, you know, second to second minute by minute.

And so that's what I mean by, you know, the purpose of a system is what it does. Let's not like get into this thing of like, oh, you know, we could all learn ancient Greek on the internet. you know part of what the internet emerges into is an era where the traditions of working class auto didacticism right working class self-education right so non-university education are being killed off like around the trade union movement was a whole culture of reading you know what was it that Lenin says you know read read and read again that was a real tradition of the left and that gets killed off that gets killed off with um um you know, the attacks and systematic dismantling of the trade union movement under neoliberalism, it gets killed off also, I think, with the collapse of actually existing communism. The sort of intellectual role of the Soviet Union,

I think, is something which is really important worth thinking about when you think about traditions of the left. And what replaces it is, you know, consumerist, mass culture and then dependency mass culture. And so I think that that's something which, which is worth being attentive to. So obviously I'm not saying that information is bad, but information overload,

I think this is the really clever thing about the ruling class and what it is they worked out, which is before you would wield power by restricting information. So you'd say you put all the information behind this door. And the thing is, is that creates a desire to batter down the door. And I think what they've realised is that you can generate something more powerful

than censorship, which is in curiosity through constant 100% wrap-around information overload. I wonder if the question, as we come to the end of the segment, should really be, do we get the elites that we deserve? So the elites that have been created by this period of, you know, neoliberalism on crack, then moving into late-stage capitalism, is going to create a cohort of elites who have no interest in culture and only have interest in the accumulation of wealth for accumulation's sake.

Yeah, but like do we deserve it? I mean, look, society is a reflection in every dimension, I think, of the balance of class forces within it. So it's like, do we deserve that? I mean, you know, I think that I don't want to sound like a, a broken Marxist record, but I am. So I just sort of think that, I think the left, we feed ourselves a load of cope and we sort of think that it's through the sort of like contestation of projects which are

like marked political is how we do it. But I just think that there is this like much bigger project and we need to be speaking in these terms that it's not about who you vote for. It's not even about left and right. It's about taking on the machines and the interests who want to make us enfeebled versions of the human species. So I'm getting increasingly closer to, you know, the Frank Herbert June thing. Butlarian jihad. Is there a way to reclaim culture, healthy, intellectual, nourishing culture?

Or do you think we just have to let people do it? do it themselves. Destroy the machines. I do fundamentally think if I get rid of my smartphone first and then slowly phase down my laptop use, I could do something. I'm actually useful, but that is an individual thing. Destroy the machines, destroy the men who own the machines. Would you be able to log off?

Would you be able to log off, Ash? I mean, I've talked about this before and I talked about this last week is that you need a 12-step program for phone. No, you do, but... If it's about my interest, you know, if it's about my interest, individual willpower know. Do you think we should start a 12-step program for phone? But you couldn't do it with your job. That's the problem.

The job is so... Oh, what if I made my job different? This is true. How would Navar Media be different if I was less internet dependent? Who knows? 12-step. There must be 12-step program for phone. 12-step for phone. Right, okay.

Shall we do 12-step for the people? What's 12-step for the people actually called? It's called I'm in big trouble. And how do you... How do you access the support? If you want to access a completely non-regulated, non-qualified support. Non-FDA approved, baby. Which is sort of AA.

Then you can email, what's our email? If I speak at Navaramedia.com. That is, if I speak at Navarra Media. We've had a glut of dilemmas in the last few weeks. The summer. The harvest has been bountiful. The summer is starting to hit. So we're going to have to do full dilemma.

Lemma's episode soon, I think, because there's been a lot recently. It was quiet and now we've had... Your problems have kicked off, which just shows to show you're out of hibernation. So, this one is... Today is really interesting. Today is really interesting. Do you want to read it out? No, no, no, maybe you go first.

Okay, I'll go. I'll read. Ready. Strap in. I'm going to edit some of these bits just because it's quite long. Dear Legends, for the obligatory, it's not obligatory. You just want to do it. It's not mandatory.

You chose this. It's not mandatory, I swear. For the obligatory congratulations, I just want to say that last year, Spotify informed me that I was within the top 0.1% of your listeners, and I was truly offended. I was not in the 0.01% because it's just that good. Sorry you have a life. Sorry.

You're both geniuses and you make my life better. I'm also a proud 50% Ash, 50% Moyer, which as you can imagine, makes my life easy, peasy, lemon squeezy and I've never been more exhausted. My very recent dilemma. Yesterday, very recent. I, female, 32, met up with a guy I met online, male 23. Wow. We had chatted briefly and met up for what was obviously a very casual hookup, but I was excited as the conversational vibe and pace had been solid. I'll confess I'd already been fantasising about a summer fling. That's all I wanted. When he got to, when he got to the place, I was disappointed with the reality versus the profile as these things go, but we went inside and chat

was mostly okay. I asked more questions. It was lively throughout. When we got to the topic of politics, things started getting more interesting for me, but also more heated due to our disagreements and obvious difference in values. When we had both finished our drinks, we decided to go home where we had kind of mediocre, we're just strangers fucking sex. after he started acting quite weird and shifty. At first, annoyed slash upset that he had come too soon, repeating it several times, calling it unmanly, which I said was totally fine, we could just try again.

He then started getting more evasive. I was trying to find out whether he was going to stay or not, but he started getting dressed. I was a bit taken aback by the sudden change, so started prodding. Eventually it came out that he wasn't feeling so much. He said the politics chat had turned him off, and I was a lot paler than he expected. The more I asked, the more it seemed to stem from a physical thing,

and finally he confessed he expected me to be thinner and essentially considers me fat. I was quite shocked by this. Beyond the sheer embarrassment and humiliation from someone who had just been inside you, I had and have trouble understanding it. I'm not skinny and have had boobs in an ass, but I wear a very average small-slaught-medium size. I'm fit and work out, and just last week, someone was equally embarrassingly prodding me about getting too thin. The conversation spiraled. and devolved into a very weird post-mortem,

me trying to understand the details and reasons of what he was saying and explaining my position of, yeah, the night slash sex hadn't been amazing and there was no spark, but that's just how things go sometimes. I wanted to get laid and it was sort of fit for purses. He added some things about being disappointed by the sex because my blowjob wasn't long enough. I had to encourage him to go down on me. And even my tongue kissing was apparently wrong.

He left shortly after. If I'm being totally honest, both on the attraction and sex fronts, this is far from the feedback I usually get specifically, especially on the latter. I definitely attach too much of my identity to this. Sex itself is one of the few things I feel genuinely confident about. This also comes back off the back of a hard depressive period

and a really hard three years of relentless rejection, mostly on the professional front. I'm frazzled tired, shocked and hurt. I've been trying so hard to put myself out there as I'm trying to be better and braver and grow in the ways I need to. But truly for such a long time, it seems like I can only lose. and I'll get slapped in the face as soon as I get up from the last one.

I have been reeling since yesterday. I historically don't have the best relationship with my body in terms of self-esteem, but I do take care of it and assume an active position of neutrality about it. I tend to disengage from discourse until someone reminds me and generally have a strong reaction to whatever has been said at the time and by whom, with feedback ranging from negative to very positive out my lifetime, often in odd and definitely uncalled for ways. I'd appreciate your thoughts, comments on this.

There's a lot here, but I think my question is fundamentally a metaphysical one. When it comes to my body and self-worth, how do I stop swerving between people's daily comments and find my grounding about the obsessing over it? The distress is so real every time and even today it feels like I need to deal with this huge thing. I've got no idea how to tackle it healthily. How do I find peace with myself in my body under current conditions? Obviously, finding peace about anything else is kind of out of the question. Forever yours, ever loyal.

Woof. All right, special one. The love is tough, but it's loving. How is it that this crazy you, this 23-year-old, know nothing about the world, came too quickly, tried to make it about you, has set you off thinking about you? Like, I'm sorry.

Like, obviously we're getting your perspective on this, right? we weren't in the room, we don't know what happened. But if everything went down exactly as you say it went down, he's so obviously nuts. And I think that his age probably has something to do with it. He seems a bit manosphere-pilled, to be honest. You're saying there's this big political difference. There is a man-sphere tactic where men are advised to treat a woman badly after sex,

because then if she comes back for more, it puts them in a psychologically dominant position, and they can keep wearing away at your sense of self. And it sounds a little bit to me that he felt a bit emasculated by, you know, the sex not being, you know, fireworks or whatever. And then was trying to take that out on you. What I'm struggling to get my head around

is that none of what you've said is about how do I make sense of this guy's behaviour? Like, where is it coming from? Like, that was a really weird social thing for me. It's now about you and how you think about yourself. like, oh no, I'm not actually fat, but like, oh, no, I don't want to be seen to be someone who's valorizing being skinny and like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You are in a rumination vortex.

And I think that that's the problem. Obviously, low self-esteem undergirds it, but I think that part of why you're so vulnerable is that it's really easy to get you thinking about yourself. And it sounds like it's quite difficult to get you thinking about the other person. And I'm not saying having a sense of the other in terms of like always being like kind or empathetic, but sometimes just being able to go, another person was involved in this and this is how they behaved. Like I think that without that your grip and reality is going to be quite weak. So like what do you do about it?

Like what do you do about your body? Like what do you do about how you think about yourself? What is the sense of humour goes a real long way? You know, we're in a society which is set up to try and make women. hate themselves, hate their bodies, right? No matter what it looks like your body is wrong. And you have to hold some stuff a bit lightly and also like have some stuff with a sense of humour. Like, I'm never going to have a flat stomach as long as I live. And I have people on the internet telling me how disgusting and obese and pig-like and stinky and shitskin and all the

rest of it I am. And when they try and make me feel bad about my body, there's literally a mantra that I repeat to myself, which is, this can sound so stupid. But I'm just going to sound so stupid. like is a confession, this is what lives in my head. Is that when they try and make me full fat, I go, well, good pumpum needs shelter. Like, literally I'm just like, look, man, like, good puss needs shelter. Like, and it's a way of laughing at myself and it's a way of like laughing off the comment. And it's also a way of saying to myself, I'm a sexual being who experiences desire and is desired. And that's having a body which looks good for men on the internet who have a vestus in

interest in hating me is actually going to take me further away from being a being who can experience desire in sex in a way which is like actually enriching and good. So yeah, a bit of humour. You need to find some circuit breakers, I think, for when you find yourself in this rumination cycle because I think the extent to what you're thinking about yourself is the unhealthy thing. I don't know. What do you think?

I think everything you said is dead on. I wonder what made you go home with the 23-old in the first place when you were having this date and you weren't impressed by him and you weren't that attracted to him and then you had this argument who who were you trying to prove that he would still be attracted to you to?

What audience were you thinking was watching that interaction? What did you think that would give you? Because you didn't fancy him that much and you enjoyed the chat but throughout the entire sort of early part of this encounter it was downhill you had very different political opinions

fine but does that make good sex you were disappointed when he turned up he's also 23 he's 23 what do we what business do we have with 23 year olds don't go to the bad sex store and complain when you get bad sex

unless you I just think fundamentally unless you are really attracted to someone, don't sleep with them. First of all, you might still have a bad experience, but at least you have reasons for why you would go on that journey in the first place. And that is times 10 with a 23-year-old. They're so stupid. Sorry to the 23-0 listening, you're not stupid, but some of you are.

I'm thinking of how careless I would be as a 23-old. Especially as a 23-man, like Asha said, who feels like, feels like he has not performed in the way he wants to and then immediately has to flip that around like that is just an immature person who is not very experienced and he could have had loads of sex but that doesn't make him experienced emotionally

and clearly not experienced in a way that was compatible so you're you're saying like how do I stop swerving between people's comments to Jure I think first of all, I don't want this to sound like this is all your fault because it's not all your fault but I think you've got to try and think about the situations

you put yourself in that will make these, what seems like rejection a lot rora. Like, if I said on paper, right, I'm going to go on this date with this 23-year-old and then I get that I'm like, I'm not attracted to him, we've got really difficult, different opinions on life and politics, there doesn't seem to be a spark.

And I said, but I'm going to sleep with him anywhere and I think it's going to go really well. You'd probably tell me that doesn't seem like a good idea for somebody who already has issues when it comes to self-esteem and struggling at the moment with the way other people perceive them. I would, yeah, go on, Ash. You phrased it really, really well, which is, what are you trying to prove into who?

Because actually, when you write it out, you go, by doing this, what am I trying to prove into who? If I go home with this guy to whom I'm not very attracted don't have a lot in common what do I want to happen and why? What does it mean if the good thing happens? And I think that, you know,

not to sound like Jaze, I can be like, ah, the super ego is looking, providing analysis, is disgusting, but like, you know, that invisible observing eye who will make a value judgment on you. Who is it? And sometimes you just have to, you just have to name like who that imaginary audience is

because then it loses some power over you. Yeah. Who is that audience? Why do they get to you so much? Whose voice is it as well in your head? That one really helps. And when you manage to get rid of that audience, it will change how you interact with people

and who you look to for validation. Anyway, I think that's probably enough to go on for now. Like, I think there's a world in which having sex to the 23-year-old can be fun. Yeah, you've got to be feeling your oats when you're doing it. You've got to be like, you know, into them, into yourself. And also you actually have to be attracted to them. I've had relations with people much younger than me, right?

You've had relations. I've had relations. I've had relations. Wow, wow, wow. And they've been really fun. Do you know why? Because we actually fancy each other and liked each other and had a respect for each other. Wanting to be fancied is not the same as fancying someone else.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think you really need to think about that as the bedrock for your interactions with people. And that's not getting into the professional stuff. Like right now you're probably ping ponging around looking for validation from all kinds of places because you feel like you've just had three years of rejection. But in the words of scissors therapist, when she's saying,

I'm feeling a lot of rejection right now. He says, that's great. That means you're free. You're free to make new decisions and recast yourself as a different person. He wants different things. Rejection doesn't have to define you. But yes, those are my comments. Shall we reject the podcast?

Yeah, let's reject you. All right, listeners, thanks for sticking with us. If you're 23, I'm sorry for slagging you off, but when you get... You deserve sex too. You deserve sex, but just like everyone. for everyone. Have sex with people you actually fancy as a starter point, I think. You know what, to be honest, I just, like, if someone was just like your blowjob wasn't long enough, I'm sorry, you just, you need some little things in your back pocket to say in situations

like that. Like, do you see a comments and complaints box anywhere? Yeah, like, I don't, you can leave it on Google reviews, but I don't care, you know? Like, I don't care. Say what you like on TripAdvisor, mate. Your blowjob wasn't long enough. You still bother me with this. Okay, well, you're still Okay, real quick. So obviously it did summant. It still didn't. Don't think you could have. Can I just say, just to bust that miss, by the way, bust the busting myth?

I actually love it when men come. Not too quick, but like, you don't have to last an hour. That is a myth. Also, sometimes I feel really proud of myself where I'm just like, ha-ha. I think it's great. Overcame your self-control. Yeah, it's hot. It's not, not too quick, but just like, you know.

But the thing is, there's no such thing as, it's only too quick or too slow if you're not enjoying yourself. Yeah. Like, there isn't a shape that sex has to fit. Yeah. Yeah. And when you're with a partner that you actually, and that can be something you've just met, but if you actually have that level of communication and ease,

it will all be fine. But this was an incompatible match. Okay, right, now we are going, bye. Bye-bye.