Radiolab - In the Dust of This Planet

Episode Date: April 8, 2022

Horror, fashion, and the end of the world … In this episode, first aired in 2014, but maybe even more relevant today, things get weird as we explore the undercurrents of thought that link nihilists, beard-stroking philosophers, Jay-Z, and True Detective. Today on Radiolab, a puzzle. Jad’s brother-in-law wrote a book called 'In The Dust of This Planet'. It’s an academic treatise about the horror humanity feels as we realize that we are nothing but a speck in the universe. For a few years nobody read it. But then … It seemed to show up on True Detective.   Then in a fashion magazine.   And then on Jay-Z's back. How?  We talk nihilism with Eugene Thacker & Simon Critchley, leather jackets with June Ambrose, climate change with David Victor, and hope with the father of Transcendental Black Metal - Hunter Hunt Hendrix of the band Liturgy. Also, check out WNYC Studio's On the Media episode Staring into the Abyss, in it Brooke Gladstone and Jad Abumrad continue their discussion of nihilism and its place in history. You can find Eugene Thacker's 'In The Dust Of the Planet' at Zero Books Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab today.     Radiolab is on YouTube! Catch up with new episodes and hear classics from our archive. Plus, find other cool things we did in the past — like miniseries, music videos, short films and animations, behind-the-scenes features, Radiolab live shows, and more. Take a look, explore and subscribe!

Wait, you're listening to radio lab from WNYC. Hey, it's like this radio lab. I'm just going to kick it over to Chad. This is a rerun from several years ago, but it's a weird one. It's not a typical radio lab episode, and yet like every great radio lab episode, it feels like it's about now somehow more than things

that are being made now that are about now. I don't know, whatever. You listen to it and yeah, enjoy. Okay, this is Jad Abumrah, this is Radio Lab, the podcast of Robert is out of town today, so it's just me. I thought in this podcast, I'd wander a little bit. So I'm invited to do do do do do do. Generally, and that should be in front of your mouth. So I'm going to start with a conversation that Brooke Gladstone and I, this is Brooke from on the media, the scene I had with my brother-in-law, Eugene.

I'm Eugene Thacker. I'm an author and professor at the New School in New York City. We talked about this very weird thing that happened to Eugene. And I asked Brook to join me because it just felt like her kind of story. I've been wearing black since I was 13. I just want to point out the two of you are head to tone black right now. In any case, to set it up, Eugene is a hardcore scholar of philosophy. And he writes these books that sometimes could be a little dense.

I mean, you'll use words like exegesis and radiosenation. And so the family joke is that he writes books for no one. I think the joke started out. I write books that nobody reads. And then after a slow long period of acceptance, I started to think, well, maybe I should write books for no one to read. I'm just sort of embrace that. Meaning at a certain point, if you do this kind of work, you kind of have to ask yourself, if you knew that this would not be published, would you still write it? How committed are you?

And he decided he was committed. He would write it no matter what. So the story begins a couple years ago. In 2011. Eugene writes this book. Called In the Dust of this Planet. In the Dust of this Planet. In the dust of this planet. It's kind of a hard book to describe, but if you have to sum it up in a sentence, it's about the end of the world, but not in the Hollywood sense. It's darker

than that. Your hypothesis is the greatest horror is that nothing exists and nothing What's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what's more, what to things or to your life or to our existence or to the cosmos. There might not be an order to things. We might not be here for a reason this all might be purely arbitrary and in accident. But there's no inherent meaning to anything. That it just doesn't matter. This is what Nietzsche called the most difficult thought. And in the book Eugene traces this idea through all of these different. Horror movies from slasher films to sort of more supernatural horror

and also music at one point he goes into this deconstruction of how different types of black metal deal with this thought. I don't know it's it's something it's the way of thinking I've always found really intriguing and ironically kind of inspiring. Are you a pessimist? On my better days. ironically kind of inspiring. Are you a pessimist? On my better days. Are you a nihilist? Not as much as I should be. Okay, so Eugene writes this book in 2011.

It is dark. It is dense. He writes it, as he says, for no one and as expected. Beyond a few philosophy types. No one really pays attention. So he keeps his head down, teaching, writing. But then, some things happen. 2014. No kinds of ghettos in the world.

It's all one ghettoman. Giant gutter in outer space. The show True Detective comes along, comes a big hit, and at the center of the show is this character Russ Cole, the slewisy and a detective, who is one dark dude. I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep and evolution. He goes on these rants about how there's no order in the world, how humans are just this accident, we have to deal with that. I've got to consider myself a realist, and I put in philosophical terms on what's called a pessimist.

And I just remember watching it and being like, wow. That's Eugene's wife, Prema Murphy, my sister-in-law. I was like, this replicates so many conversations that we've had in the car. She's like, were they listening in on us? Yeah, it was eerie. So Prema goes online, clicks around. And all of a sudden I see this article about the true detective director. He was an article where actually the writer of the show, Nick Pizzolato, was asked, how did you create that character of the nihilist police detective?

And he lists a bunch of things he was reading at the time. And included in that list was Eugene. To which I was like, cool. At least one person's reading the book. But I really just try to keep my head to the ground and just keep writing, just doing what I'm doing. But then, things got weirder. Okay, so now let's, let's pull up the lucky magazine.

Let's see if we can find it. Short time later, Prima is flipping through this fashion magazine. Lucky magazine, and there was a spread with this actress. Lily Collins, 25-year-old actress. I've never heard of. Pretty big right now. She's standing on a street corner. Dressed up in all of this sort of goth makeup and clothing. And in the photo, she is wearing Eugene's book on her chest. She had on in one of the shots of sweatshirt that had the cover of the book. In the dust of this planet, big letters right on her chest. And I was just like, no way.

You know, it was definitely what the f*** is this? It was crazy, like what? She's just casually wearing my husband's book cover. I don't know. Again, I didn't react to, but it was just strange. Turns out a Norwegian artist had made a painting of the book. That image had gotten picked up by a fashion label and turned into some very expensive clothes.

You know, I write books for no underweens. So obviously, I'm not pulling in a lot of royalties on these. But, you know, Eugene says he's not going to sue. I'm not going to sue lot of royalties on these, but you know. Eugene says he's not gonna sue. I'm not going to see or take any legal action or really do anything about it. Because he says that's not why he writes. Okay, so that happened. But then it gets weirder still.

So one day my wife, Carla Murphy, is online. This is the day that Jay-Z and Beyonce announced they're gonna do this big international tour. Carla's watching the video that they released to promote that to a sort of a fake movie trailer. This is on the run. It's all flashy guns, fire, focus. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. I mean, it's some kind of Bonnie and Clyde thing. I think, I mean, they're running from someone. You're not quite sure who Beyoncé is in a wedding dress.

She's got a veil on. But she's shooting semi-automatic weapons in wedding dress, cut to car chases, cut the money flying everywhere, but at exactly 37 seconds in. Of course, of them. Oh, oh, that's not good. Go back, go back, go back. It's like you're making me think too fast.

You see Jay-Z turn, stick a giant gun out to his right, and he is wearing Eugene's book. I'll pay my life for you. Right there on his back, in the dust of this planet. I hear a sirens while we make us money. That is what they don't know. Now this is the point at which I was like, okay, what do we make of this? I mean, could it be that Eugene is no longer writing books for no one, that somehow he has become a conduit for this idea that we all, in that subterranean way that pop music operates,

that we all are channeling right now. That was my thought. Yeah, no, I think that's the question, is whether this is something particular to the moment we're living in. And Eugene, his knee jerk reaction is, I think it could have been this cover or a million other covers. No, this is just meaningless appropriation.

I don't think there's anything more than that to me than it's just looks like a cool phrase to go on a t-shirt to put on a golf girl in some photo shoot. And why is it cool? Right. Because my hunch is you might be right, but you also might be wrong because of the answer that you're about to give to Brooks' question. It's cool because some publicists... No, no, no. This was sort of the conversation I wanted to have,

and it's why I called Brooke, like, what is behind all of this nihilistic entertainment that's everywhere? Now Brooke, for her part, agreed that Eugene probably is tapping into something. Yes, but is this unique to this moment? And to that, I would say no. Really? You don't think this says anything about now.

I think there are cycles in which the sense of meaninglessness comes out in sharper relief than other times. But you can identify them over and over again. Yeah. Nileism goes all the way back. Brooke actually turned us onto this guy. Simon Critchley, I am the hands-y-own-ass professor at the new school for social research. Simon wrote an article that basically made the argument that Nihilism is the basic credo of cool.

Because it's sexy, it's interesting. And it's been that way forever. Oh, I've got the best thing for you. You love this. It's a Russian word, right? He said the word really got its pop in 1862. This is 150 years ago. There's a novel by Tuganyev called Fathers and Sons. And in the novel The Sun, who's the nihilist, turns to his conservative dad.

And he says... We base our conduct on what we recognize as useful. In these days, the most useful thing we can do is to repudiate, and so we repudiate everything. The father says, everything, everything, with indescribable composure. So that's the nihilist moment. Everything goes. And Simon says, roughly from that point on,

you see young people glum onto this idea again and again, as a way to say no to the older generation, or to just what's happening in the world. For example, after World War I, you had tens of millions of people dead, this lost generation that was confused and disgusted, it just happened. And out of that says Brook, you get Dada.

I wanna pull up here on the computer, the manifesto of Tristan Sara. He was one of the founders of the Dada. I want to pull up here on the computer, the manifesto of Tristan Sara. He was one of the founders of the Dada movement. He says, Dada means nothing. Everything one looks at is false. I do not. Dada, abolition of memory, Dada, abolition of archaeology, Dada, abolition of profits, Dada, abolition of profits, Dada, abolition of the future.

And after World War II, she and Simon say, you had similar movements in the 70s and 80s with the threat of nuclear annihilation, you get punk rock, and it just keeps going. Pop culture at least since I was a kid has always been deeply nihilistic, you know. All right, so it's nothing new. But when I ran Simon through the Eugene Jacket situation, and then I asked him, like, is there something different about today's nihilism versus nihilisms of the past? Like, is there something more potent about it?

Without hesitation, he said. I say yes, mm-hmm. Huh. Based on what? That's producer Andy Mills who was with me during the interview. Well, you know, you can get... Simon says it was more of a gut feeling based on this class that he taught last year.

With Eugene, oddly enough, I didn't actually know they knew each other but they had taught this class together. So the seminar that we did in the fall last year was one of those rare seminars. We're teaching mysticism. Nobody teaches mysticism. Really obscure stuff, within desert fathers, medieval female mystics. This is early Christianity.

Neither of us are religious. He says they started the seminar, not really expecting much, by talking about how in the four century AD... There was the city Alexandria. This is near Egypt. No, Alexandria was a lot like Manhattan. by talking about how in the 4th century AD There was the city Alexandria. This is near Egypt. My Alexandria was a lot like Manhattan.

It was an offshore island. It was a colony of a former power. Roman Empire. And it's the sea of all culture and all learning in the ancient world. At a certain point in the 4th century, people start to leave. They start to leave and go into the desert. People wander off and they seem to want something else. The city doesn't just do it anymore.

Why? It's corrupt. It's broken. It's sinful. He said crime was rampant, pollution, and so people just started to wander off into the desert and live in these caves. And these intense forms of ascetic practice

begin. Like you had these women who were not intense forms of ascetic practice begin. Like you had these women who were not educated because women couldn't be educated. Who were so enraptured with Christ that they began hurting themselves, throwing themselves into icy rivers, jumping into ovens.

The body is something which is you're trying to strip away in order that you can free the capacity for love. Like that's a classic mystic idea, right? The body is just getting in the way. I want to go soul to soul with God. Exactly. But the premise of that again is that the world is a kind of field of ruins.

But he says what really struck him is that as he was talking about all this, he would glance out at the students and he would notice this look in their eyes. It just felt that in the room there was this deep need was being fulfilled by these strange mystics. He said the students were just in it in a way that almost never happens when you're teaching. We weren't not saving souls, but it was hitting something really, really deep. What exactly? Do you think they were starting to form the thought of

wandering into the desert, so to speak? Yeah, I think there's a sense of which, you know, what you do, you're supposed to walk away. You know, that's where a lot of people are at. That's for what's behind it all. He says, just turn on the news. A video showing the beheading of a second American journalist has now been verified. Disease experts say this is turning into one of the longest deadliest outbreaks ever. on the news. A video showing the beheading of a second American journalist has now been verified.

Disease experts say this is turning into one of the longest deadliest outbreaks ever. The girls were gang raped and strangled. Once again it is mostly children we are seeing brought into this hospital. When the world I grew up in may sense it was completely crazy, mutually assured destruction but it made sense and you could understand it in very simple terms. The United States was a Soviet Union. We were gonna be eviscerated. That was clear. But you knew what the balance of power was.

You're nostalgic for mutually sure destruction. Is that what's happening now? It seems a much simpler world. Well, you at least knew who to blame for it, right? Right. That's Andy again. I mean, that's the thing. You look at the Cold War and you could see,

like specifically like you Soviets, you Americans, the nukes. That's right, that's right. And now, what am I supposed to say? You two, I'm saying you to everybody. Carbon emissions. Speaking of which. Today the world's leading climate scientists

warn it will get worse. No doubt, one of the reasons for the current gloom is that we are in the middle of an uncomfortable shift in how we talk about climate change. This is made official when the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released a report where for the first time they stopped using the language of prevention and shifted to the language of adaptation. In other words, hundreds of scientists and policymakers, this is the world's top organization

for assessing climate change. We're now saying, we can't stop it. It's inevitable. So now we need to talk about dealing with a mess that is now on our doorstep. That's David Victor. Professor of International Relations at University of California at San Diego. And he is one of the authors of the report. When the IPCC first began back in the late 1980s,

you could imagine that people would take the climate change problem seriously. They would start to control emissions and then over a period of decades climate would stop changing. And instead what's happened is people have talked a lot about climate change, but they haven't actually done much to control emissions. And now he says we're all in this strange middle ground where we're trying to find the

language to say why it's important to keep working at this, while at the same time admitting some degree of failure. And that's the kind of inevitability that I think you see in the new reports. And the reports are bending over backwards to try and find ways to be optimistic. The report says if you put into place all these technologies and international agreements, we could still stop warming at two degrees. My own assessment is that the kinds of actions you need to do that are so heroic that we're not going to see them on this planet.

All of which reminded me of that true detective moment. I've had to consider myself a realist, and I put in philosophical terms on what's called a pessimist. Um, okay, what's that mean? Well, uh, pessimists like Nilellist agree there's no meaning. They're just a little more moby about it, less likely to do something. Means I'm bad at parties.

I mean, is that where we're all headed? You know, in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, 76% of people 18 and over weren't confident that the future is going to be brighter than the past. Which brings me back to Brooks' question. Why is it cool? Call it nihilism, pessimism, whatever. Shouldn't it be depressing?

Why would you want to put a phrase like in the dust of this planet? A phrase that deliberately negates the person wearing it? Why would you want to put it on your chest or on your back? Yeah, yes, we do. And since it was Jay-Z's jacket, which was in a way the catalyst for this whole podcast, we decided to talk to him. Sort of. That's coming up. This is Chad's radio lab. So we ended up in the flow of things, you know, as we were trying to figure out like in the dust of this planet Why is that cool? Why is that just scary and depressing? We ended up like they want to talk to me? Why? That's a good question. Talking to this lady. Who turns out was the person who made the decision to put it on

Jay-Z's back. I should say my name, I guess. My name is Junan Bros. I've been a costume designer for 22 years. I'm 23 this year and I've worked with everyone from... Luke the Vandros, Tupac, Tushon, Timor Icari, Buster Rhyme, Marija Blaschial, Wee-Shakis, Dave Matthewspan, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Ripper, Kim Katrouff, Miss Yellie. Did you do the Missy with the balloon?

Yeah, that was you. Yeah. Oh my god. And of course, Jay-Z and Beyonce. That's like culture, basically. Yeah, that's responsible for some of that nutsy stuff. It occurred to Andy and I during the interview that June has probably influenced the fashion sense of a significant portion of the human beings on this planet.

And she was very clear that a costume is more than just a costume. It's like a conversation without words. It really what she's doing when she styles someone is whispering to all the people that are going to watch the videos come in contact with the billboards go to the concerts. I don't have to talk to you but I can create this conversation with a pair of pants and how they fall and how they fit in the texture and the color and the feel. She says with Jay-Z for that video, she knew she needed something epic. But like, effortless.

I knew I wanted a biker jacket, because it was a motorcycle scene, but I knew that I just couldn't give him a black leather. I needed to say something, feel like something. So we were on a hunt. Her and her assistant went to dozens of places. Tilly A's, the studio, the showrooms. Look at all these leather jackets. places. Tiliets, studios, a showroom. Look at all these leather jackets.

It's like finding a Neelina Haysek. Nothing was right. But then they santa into this one place. Black denim. This place that does sort of high-end grunge, they're flipping through the racks when she sees it. The jacket, those words. And that was it.

I knew it. I said, I need this is what I need. It just felt, I mean, it was just perfect. Question was why. At this point, I hadn't really told it the whole backstory. So I pulled out a screen capture from the video. This is one where you see Jay-Z sort of standing in the desert, chopped from behind, in the dust of this planet on his back. He's kind of pointing this really long dirty hairy gun off to his right sort of up like it's about to shoot the sun. Yeah you think he's about to shoot the sun. I printed it out because it's just got this like billboard quality to it right here it is. I have a

really cool one in my phone too. Let's just look at this for a second. Yeah. So why did you choose that jacket? Um, you know, it's something very menacing about it. It's almost like the aftermath. That there was something going on that was parallel. The end of an era, the beginning of something new. She says in the back of her head, she was thinking about how the music industry might be dying. It's definitely in a place where it's like, what now? You can hear it in the music. And you know, if this is the biggest tour in history, really, what now?

You know, and these are the whispers that you hear. But she says one of the loudest whispers was super simple. Just, here's a guy. Massive pop star. Like a sovereign. He's in the desert. It's about to go down. The end of the world is literally on his back. But it was almost as if he didn't even know that was on his back. You know what I mean? It's like, that was the afterthought. Like, oh yeah, the world's ending. Psst, I don't care. Going out instead. In other words, he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid.

Wasn't afraid. You know what, that's what, that's what this, when you talk about whispers, that's what I get from it. Now that you said that, it's not so much I don't give a sh**, I'm not afraid. Yeah. I mean, we all have to leave the planet. You know, everybody has their day. But you work on it as not being afraid when you have to leave.

afraid when you have to leave. Yeah, we'll get it here. Okay, that'd be cool. Thank you. This was actually refreshing. Oh, cool. Walking out of that interview, this was by the way after we had told her that the phrase on Jay-Z's back was lifted from a book written by my brother-in-law Eugene. Oh, wow. Now I need to get the book and I need to get it to Jay.

Which she was very interested to know, can we do that? Yeah, let's do that. And we did send him the book, haven't heard back. Oh, my God. Anyhow, walking out of there, I kept thinking, is that what this is all about? That all this pop nihilism around us is not about tearing down power structures or embracing nothingness. It's just, look at me, look how brave I am.

But I can wear it on a t-shirt. Yeah, I would go with that. And this is why as you pointed out, you know, from data to punk, this is a recurring motif of how badass you are in facing mortality. Bingo, badass, that's when I was thinking. I think that that is nothing more than a posture. I mean, it's all fine when you're 18 to wear that t-shirt,

but when you're like in your 50s dealing with cancer, like, okay, you know, maybe then is when you really have to confront those things. So, it's simply a posture and that's why it's in pop culture. So it's simply a posture and that's why it's in pop culture. We've got cynical response, would be to say, you know, why we love nihilism in pop culture is that it saves us having to be burdened with it. Simon, Crichly, again? It saves us from feeling it, right? We can enjoy it in our rooms, we can get off on it, and then we let it go.

And we go back to work. But Simon says, you don't have to be cynical about this if you don't want to be. I mean, Nietzsche, Mr. Dark Pessimist himself, had this idea about nihilism that it was just the beginning, that if you really dealt with it, took it in, accelerated it to its logical end, you could get to the other side, which he called... A revaluation of values. Some new way of thinking about who we are as moral creatures, and that's kind of where I am. And love, love is that capacity which can see through that. And that, he suspects, is why his students were so interested in those mystics because they had found a way through. These people, these mystics have got

the uncompromising commitment to something like love. The fact that they were ready to go all the way, to negate even their own bodies for that love. Right, so in a world where love has been reduced to tender exchanges, if that's the hell that you're living in as a 25 year old, then yeah, you're gonna read these mystics and think, I want what she's having. I'll take, I'll take what she's having. Burn my flesh. That's right, burn my flesh.

And you could argue, I mean, why not, that Jay-Z and Beyonce, you've got a little bit of that going on. I mean, part of what's made this tour so big, biggest tour ever actually, is that it's like this grand love story. I'm with the love of my life, so it's like it's like a world. But you're saved, but it's a world. I have a fantasy. I have a fantasy that, beyond saying Jay-Z, will do this tour, and they will go off into the desert, and they'll live in a little hut,

like this monastic existence together in love, in a new sort of age of Aquarius will begin, starting with the two of them. That's beautiful. The loudest mic drop. And you chanted that? Oh, you can really hear me slip right in the sleep on the screen. Yeah, that was my sound.

That was your answer. Peanut collado on the beach. Maybe a perfect response to J.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.D.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.A.D.S.D.S.A. to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down.

I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. Special thanks to the Murphy tribe and to Zero Books and of course to Eugene Facker, who even though he harbors no redemptive fantasies about human beings whatsoever, is an awesome dude and this piece is an homage to him, one of the most committed writers I know. Also happens to be my brother-in-law.

If you would like to read in the dust of this planet, and I actually do highly recommend it, it's super fascinating. Go to our website radiolab.org and we'll link you to it. I'm Chad Abumrod, thanks for listening. Radio Lab was created by Chad Abumrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler. Lulum Miller and Lutdiff Nasser are co-hosts. Suzy Lektemberg is our executive producer. Dilling Keif is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, Rachel Kusik, W. Harry

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Foundational Support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Thanks guys. you