The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions by Evan Puschak

Episode Date: September 4, 2022

Escape into Meaning: Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions by Evan Puschak Producer, editor, and writer behind the highly addictive, informative, and popular YouTube channel The Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak presents an unconventional and whip-smart essay collection about topics as varied as Superman, politics, and public benches. As YouTube’s The Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak plays the polymath, posing questions and providing answers across a wide range of fields—from the power of a split diopter shot in Toy Story 4 to the political dangers of schadenfreude. Now, he brings that same insatiable curiosity and striking wit to this engaging and unputdownable essay collection. Perfect for fans of Trick Mirror and the writing of John Hodgman and Chuck Klosterman, Escape into Meaning is a compendium of fascinating insights into obsession. Whether you’re interested in the philosophy of Jerry Seinfeld or how Clark Kent is the real hero, there’s something for everyone in this effervescent collection.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi folks this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming here with a good podcast we certainly appreciate you guys sitting in we've got evan pushak on the show with us today he's gonna be talking to us about his amazing new book coming out august 30th 2022 he runs a massive youtube channel you're gonna want to hear about if you're not already a fan

the nerd writer and is the name of the channel on youtube there and we're talking about his new book in the meantime refer your show this any show, for all shows, to your family, friends, and relatives. Say, have you subscribed to Chris Voss Show? It's the family that loves you but doesn't judge you. The best kind of family there is. Frankly, some people say the only kind of family there is when it really comes down to it.

But stop sending me emails for money, okay? It's not that kind of family. We just love you unconditionally, but we don't loan you money. Okay. Cause everybody knows how that works out in a family. Anyway, guys, be sure to go to all our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places. The kids are playing the big LinkedIn group, the LinkedIn newsletter and all that sort of good stuff. You can see everything going on over there. He's the author of the newest book that's coming out. As I mentioned, it's going to

be out on August 30th, 2022. My God, we're almost to September. Escape into Meaning, Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions by Evan Pusak. He's on the show with us today. He's going to be talking to us about his amazing book. He is the creator of the popular YouTube channel, The Nerd Writer, which has more than 3 million subscribers. He's a Philadelphia native with a degree in film production from Boston University. He previously worked at MSNBC. We've had a few of those folks on, and you can check out his channel. Welcome to the show, Evan. How are you? I'm doing great. Thanks, Chris, for having me. Thanks for coming. We certainly appreciate it. Congratulations on the new book. Is this your first book? It is. It is my first book, so it's very exciting.

There you go. Give us your dot-coms, your YouTube URLs, all that sort of good stuff you want to plug here so that people can check you out on the web. Well, the most important thing is, the biggest thing is the YouTube show, The Nerdwriter. You could just type that into Google and you'll find it. But the most important thing is the book. So you can find Escape Into Meaning at anywhere you buy books. There you go. And let me ask you this really quick because we just touched on it, so I want to put it to bed. Why did you call the channel The Nerdwriter? What was the proponent behind that? So when I started the show in 2011, which is very long ago now,

I was essentially doing a clone of a YouTube channel that I really loved called The Vlog Brothers. John and Hank Green. John Green is a novelist, wrote The Fault in Our Stars, a bunch of other things. Hank Green, this is brother. They had a show called The Vlog Brothers and their fans were called Nerdfighters. At the time, I was, and then this connects to the book in a funny way, is that I had written a couple novels of my own back in 2011 that that were not good but i didn't know that at the time i thought they were good and i was starting the show to sell those books to self-publish them and so i thought oh here's an idea i'm a nerd fighter and a writer so i'll just combine those

two things and make it the nerd writer and And 11 years later, here we are. There you go. There you go. What's normally on the show? We'll get that out there too. So it's a series about art and culture. So it is seven to 10 minute videos that kind of do a deep dive into something that I'm interested in. There's a lot of film analysis, painting, but I also talk about science and politics and whatever sort of strikes my fancy that week or that month. It's sort of like video essays, kind of like the book, but in video form. And yeah, check it out.

I definitely will. I got it pulled up here and will subscribe and be sure to check it out. So let's talk about your book. What motivates you on to write this book? Well, this is a book of 11 essays. I've been a little bit obsessive about making videos that really were really visual that had to that sort of needed YouTube to exist. I wanted to find out what the unique strengths of YouTube were. And so I was gravitating towards things that just really worked in a visual medium. But that meant that over the period of the last decade

when I was making the show, there were some ideas that I had that I thought really didn't fit on the show because they didn't need to be visual, but that just wouldn't let me go. That stuck with me. And when I was approached about potentially writing a book, those were the things that came directly to mind. I knew that prose or a book of essays would be the right format for that. I just feel so lucky and privileged to get a chance to actually explore those ideas, which are really more like obsessions to me. There you go. The format where they belong. Why did you entitle it escape into

meaning what did you choose on that title so that is the title of one of the essays but the reason i chose that is as i look back at the book which was intended to be 11 separate essays about 11 separate subjects i just found there was a lot was a lot more connective tissue than I imagined there would be. And one of those big connectors was this idea of escape, whether it's the idea of escaping a stale mindset or escaping from the flow and the chaos of cities on a public bench, for example. And the idea of escapism. There are a lot of essays in the book about traditionally escapist things. There is an essay on my obsession with cyberpunk. I have an essay on the Lord of the Rings. And those things are, you know, fantasy, traditionally considered escapism. For me, they were very meaningful. And so was the other escapes that I was talking about earlier. And so it's just seemed that escape into meaning captured a lot of what

the book actually contained and you know it's it's exciting title escape you know we were hoping people would pick up the book you know titling titling a book is an art you know that is not not easy yeah yeah it definitely i you know we have a lot of authors on the show and i think sometimes that their titles are picked by the publisher sometimes and some of these are not sometimes i know the covers a lot of times you get a choice on so that you know this is my first book right so i was so curious about all that stuff like i was almost positive that i wasn't going to get any control over cover or title. And so I just kind of was at peace with that. But then when it came to the process, actually came time,

they basically turned to me to, and we talked through the title, but I really had like the biggest say. And I give credit to my publisher, Simon & Schuster, for including me in those conversations. And then with the cover, they hired those conversations and then with the with the cover they hired a designer and i worked closely with the designer to to get something that i really

liked and so it you know it is such a there's so much education going through the publishing process it it is like it is a whole world you know and i education is the is. Education is a good term. Well, listen, I'm sure some people don't have a good experience. I've heard those stories. I had a good experience except for the – but there you go. My editor – I love my editor. She was great, Stephanie Hitchcock. I think it's probably individual for every person.

It's just the reading it like 5 000 times and the you know going through it and you know i i remember reaching the point where i i called all my friends and going throwing this fucking thing out the window and they're like no no when you're at that point of yeah yeah everything away and burning it in the fireplace that's the good point you're almost there just go just go like a little bit further and you got it. Yeah. If you, if you don't hate your work at some point in the process, then you're not, you're not really doing work.

Yeah. If you, if you're, yeah, you're just like, you know, I understand why Hemingway drank anyway. So let's, let's get into this book, but I want to touch on some point. Wait, wait, I have another funny story because you just mentioned that. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here with a little station break. Hope you're enjoying the show so far.

We'll resume here in a second. I'd like to invite you to come to my coaching, speaking, and training courses website. You can also see our new podcast over there at chrisvossleadershipinstitute.com. Over there, you can find all the different stuff that we do for speaking engagements, if you'd like to hire me, training courses that we offer, and coaching for leadership, management, entrepreneurism, podcasting, corporate stuff. With over 35 years of experience in business and running companies as a CEO, I think I can offer a wonderful breadth of information and knowledge to you or anyone that you want to invite me to for your company. Thanks for tuning in.

We certainly appreciate you listening to the show. And be sure to check out ChrisVossLeadershipInstitute.com. Now back to the show. I was so ready for the moment of actually getting the physical book. You know, they sent it to me. And I always had this fantasy in my head that when I finally got my first book in physical form, I would just open it up and read it. And I got the packages. I took the book out.

I was like so excited for it. I opened up the book and I was like, I cannot read this. I've read this a million times. You know, it just didn't happen in the way that I fantasize. But sorry, I just had to. No, I feel you, bro. I feel you, man. I was the same way.

I was like, I crammed my book out in three months. Wow. And just, you know, I've been a griot of my life. And so there's stories and antidotes and business lessons from my life. And so, you know, these stories, I'd shaped them and gotten good at telling them and making them sound interesting or funny. And so, or at least I think I did, I don't know, read the book. And so I, you know, it was, it was pretty easy. It was just putting it all down on paper.

So, you know, first part of it was just slammed down. It was just, you know, just hammer it all down on paper so you know first part it was just slammed down it was just you know just hammering it down and then and then there was the weaving and you know the whatever you call it the formatting and crap but you know it was three months during covid i was writing like 12 to 18 hours a day and editing 12 to 18 hours a day wow and i am i have i have i don't want to read anything in that book since when i do podcast appearances appearances like this one, they go, so what's in your book? I'll be like, I don't know. Here, let me grab the chapters. There's a chapter here, evidently.

Some guy wrote. Yeah, yeah. It's like I actually had to take a vacation after I published because I'm like, I need some space from you. Anyway. I felt like I felt like almost like I exorcise like an exorcism, like an exorcism, those things from my, you know,

like I was obsessed with all the things in the book, but not anymore. You know, you spend so much time with it. That's really what it is. The beautiful thing I love about it is it's on paper and fuck it. It's just there for all time and attorney. I don't have to think about it anymore. If anybody had, Hey Chris, will you tell us the stories to tell

us about the whatever? I'll be like, read the damn book already. You know, anyway, let me ask you this. Cause you, you kind of alluded to, uh, you know, people use things as escape. Is that what we do with stories? Is that what we do with obsessions or like some of the things you talk about in the book, like Superman and Lord of the Rings and stuff? In some cases, yes. I mean, there is this kind of, there's this dichotomy in escapism of what Tolkien said was people confuse the escape of the prisoner. So like the freedom aspect of escape with the flight of the deserter. Somebody who is trying to escape reality into a more comforting fantasy world that allows them to not face reality.

And so I think those two sides exist. I think we do use escapist art to step away into a more comforting reality. I mean, given the state of the world, it's hard to blame people for doing that, you know, but that's what superhero movies are. That's what fantasies are. I don't think that's necessarily a huge problem but it's a matter of degree you know how much do you let yourself get taken away um and yeah go ahead no no there's there's probably some healthy things to it we need to escape we need yeah yeah some relaxing time you know people

video games they you know whatever it is they do, they need to escape. And sometimes life is maybe sometimes a little dark or tough. And, you know, you need to have some place you can go to get your hopes up and your spirits up. Absolutely. I think that's, you know, that's part of being a healthy person, you know, knowing when to step back. And there's a reason these things are hugely popular. I mean, you know they they give people a lot of joy and so there is that side of it and and and fantasy particularly fantasy takes bears the brunt of a lot of the aspersions toward escapism for that reason but there's also meaning in these in these things i personally found a lot of meaning in

superman as as a teen and lord of the rings had reality from a very strange and different angle, which can be also really useful. So I don't think it's all good or all bad, but I do think this dichotomy that tolkien mentioned was exists yeah so let's piss off some people what did you write about superman are we gonna have we're gonna have opposing teams of comic comic people give us maybe i don't think so so basically the superman essay and i was so obsessed with superman as a kid and still am am. The Superman essay jumps off from a speech that is at the end of Kill Bill 2, where the bad guy says that Clark Kent is essentially the costume and Superman is the real guy. He's the guy and clark kent this bumbling idiotic guy is superman's critique on the human race it's how he views us and so the the essay is all a giant refutation of that from the perspective of a superman fan basically the point i'm trying to make in the

essay is that superman is sorry clark kent is the core of the character and stories that fail to focus on clark actually tend to be boring and forgettable and you can find instances in that in the recent superman movies and lots of superman media but the the major criticism of superman is that he's too perfect he's too vanilla he's too good he's boring you know for that reason and in terms of physical might he is too i mean they had to invent kryptonite just to give him an enemy because none of the enemies can actually do anything, you know. But that actually, I think I make the point in the essay presents a really good opportunity to focus on all the things that physical power can't do. And it cannot solve your emotional psychological issues these are things that superman or clark kent share with all of us and it just has been disappointing to me watching superman media in the last you know couple decades to not see more energy focused

toward that it seemed to me to be the most interesting part of the character. I don't know if that's really going to annoy comic book fans. It's just my sort of personal like obsession about it. My understanding is you can always find something to piss people off between, you know, I, what's your favorite Superman? Like what,

out of all the variations of it going from the original black and white, where I grew up watching. Yeah. George Reeves, George Reeves. George Reeves, all the iterations since. I saw a scene the other day from George Reeves' son. I forget his name, Christopher Reeves. And, you know, I did love those Superman movies,

but they really were corny. Go back and look at them. They're a little bit slapstick. I mean, so there's a great quote by a guy called bob prohl which is the the best superman is whatever superman you encountered when you were 12 so when i was 12 the superman i encountered was smallville the show on on the wb and that's really what piqued my interest in it because it was about the clark kent character and it was about his pain of being different of you know of not fitting in and all these interesting things but that said i do have a huge soft spot for christopher reeve as superman and and again the reason is because he

played clark so well you know he he was so he balanced it so perfect perfectly and when you saw superman when he has the conversation with lois on the roof in the first movie you see clark's eyes in the superman like you see that guy in the Superman character, he shines through. The tagline for the 78 Superman movie was, you'll believe a man can fly. But what Christopher Reeve accomplished was making us believe that the larger than life icon is a man. We saw the man behind the character. That said, as you say, it gets really corny. And we're not even going man behind the character that said as you say it gets really corny and we're not even going to touch the fact that he flies around the earth so fast that it turns the it turns the the earth backwards and that turns back time that doesn't make any sense but i think

the first one was really good yeah and then it's's great. The one that – actually, to be fair, the corny scene I saw was the one with the three people in the mirror. Was that the third one or the second one? It could be the second one, yeah. So I actually just – a couple weeks ago, just did a video on the Nerdwriter about the second Superman movie. And how it was just a complete mess because they changed directors mid-movie. And so you've got all these super goofy things happening in the third act that weren't intended to be there. The guy who directed all the Beatles movies was brought on to direct

once they fired the first guy, and he brought a lot of that Beatles energy. If you remember Help or a hard day. Yeah. Yeah. So that, that's the energy he brought to Superman, which just did not fit with what it originally was. And it,

it suffers for that reason. And then the third and fourth Christopher Reeve movies are horrible. They're so bad. I'm not even sure I watched them. I remember the second one was bad was that the one with the dam but the first one i thought was it nailed it and stuff let me let me say this i know we're stretching the superman story out a little bit much but why do you think that appeals and maybe this ties into what you wrote in your essay why do you think it appeals

to 12 year old boys i mean i discovered comic books comic books when I was like 9, 10, or 12, and we had a whole pile of them we collected. We had kind of like a shared stash. 12-year-old boys specifically can relate to. It also presents a vision of the world in which morality is very black and white. And at that age, I think it's harder to see the shades of gray, or rather the shades of gray in our world really intimidate us because they don't fit into neat categories and we turn to superhero comics and we see the good guys that we see the bad guys and we get a sense of what good actually is in this world and it's something we can understand and root for and all these things the issue is good no no was just going to say the issue is that those 12-year- want, at a certain age, we want stories with shades of gray. And the superhero frame is not, it's not naturally great at carrying that kind of story.

And so it takes really good writers to do, to do it justice. But, you know. You find out life isn is black and white when you get older and stuff yes it's much more complex you know when you when i grew up as a child and you know we had john wayne we didn't understand the racial undertones of some of the stuff that was going on there but you know i mean we we it was you know it was supposed to be good and good and evil and black and white. And, you know, the, the Lone Ranger wore white and the bad guys were black and, you know, that theme through all the movies. And it's interesting to me, you've made me think about how I never really thought about those things as important as establishing a black and white, a good and evil, stuff like that. I just kind of, you know, I think, I think some of it too is you're, I, you know, I was a nerd as a, as a, as a young man, I was a thin guy. I, you know, I, my parents were, didn't have money, so they didn't have clothes, you know,

I had bullies and stuff that I had to deal with. And maybe that's part of the fantasy too is, you know, you imagine you're Superman or you imagine you're a guy who doesn't have to take anybody's crap anymore yeah i mean i i i felt very similarly you know i i would fantasize about being that powerful or that courageous or that that able to sort of say what i felt you know in the in the moment and be articulate and all these things, which I think, you know, a therapist could say is the reason I do all, everything I do now in terms of my job. You know, I mean, maybe people do that at Comic-Con, you know, they, they feel more empowered by putting on the thing. And, and I think there's,

you know, I put on a cape, you know, we put on capes, we made little capes out of pill cases and, you know, run around the yard, like silly people. And, but I mean, I, you know we put on capes we made little capes out of pill cases and you know run around the yard like silly people and but i mean i you know i guess there's some things in there all right let's get let's get let's get to who did you piss off in the jr tolkien realm i read the hobbit and the lord of rings like ad nauseum when i was 12 so oh i hope nobody because i absolutely love but i maybe i mean so the tolkien essay and the cyberpunk essay are sort of sister essays and the tolkien the tolkien one is actually about is the one that's called escape into meaning and the specific the specific way i use that in the story is that cyberpunk if you think of like

blade runner you know these dystopic future worlds worlds. For me, the question I asked at the beginning of that essay was, why do I find that comforting? You know, why is this dystopia a place that I keep returning to and feel like warm and fuzzy about? It seems like it doesn't seem to work. Dystopia shouldn't make you feel that way and so what i sort of figured out in the process of writing was that cyberpunk was a like that future was a space in which nothing really mattered and so i by placing myself there i no longer had to go through the difficult work of finding a place in the world and making meaning for myself and so it was a place where i could let go so that was one side and that was an escape from meaning and in lord of the rings what i found was a fantasy world in which everything has a meaning relative to the greater story.

So all the characters, all the sacred objects, everything's got a destiny, and it all fits together in this perfect kind of whole. And I personally am a nonbeliever, and so I don't believe that there's a purpose for mankind or for me or a god of any kind and so what i found in the lord of the rings was a kind of place where i could indulge in that thing i think we all have inside us evolutionarily which is to want there to be a meaning to want to have a purpose relative to the greater universe by immersing myself in Lord in the,

in the Lord of the ring story, I could feel that way, but not have to believe something I didn't believe. And so that was an escape into meaning. Yeah. You know, it was escaping. They're both escaping from the same thing,

which is real life in which you have to make meaning for yourself. And that's hard work. You have to find a place in the world that you fit and that's hard work in two different directions. Yeah. Two different directions. Those were the two directions I took. Jesus. I meanan you're like a psychiatrist to my 12 year old child between comic books and the lord of the rings like dude i i read that book and the only book i had trouble reading was a similar similarian similarian similar really i know yeah that thing was like it's like reading a thesaurus or a dictionary it's a history book yeah it's it's it's it's not a story yeah it's not i don't know i don't know you can ever put that in a movie it's a history book yeah it's it's it's not a story yeah it's not i don't know i don't know you can ever put that in a movie it's not fun i don't know i don't remember anything about it but

i i love the hobbit i love the lord of the rings i just read them over and over again but yeah you what you speak to is is yeah a lot of what was going on as a 12 year old boy trying to find meaning and you know having your own little camp of meaning and it makes sense in its own, its own little sort of thing. But yeah, it's interesting. You know, I think, I think a lot of males go through this. I don't know what females go through because I haven't done that side of the things, but there's still time.

I, you know, when boys grow up and they go through, you know, a lot of different things and you've given me some concepts that I need to think about. And I was like, wow, that explains, you know, why, why I really loved it. We've talked to Terry Brooks to have Terry Brooks on the show. He wrote the Sword of Shannara. I don't know if you. I know Terry Brooks, but I haven't, I haven't read it. Yeah. It was a, it was a, it was a huge series. It was kind of really Tolkien-ish and he wrote like, I think three series of books. And then I think there were six and nine. And these are in a lot of different things. But yeah, same sort of genre. I was really big into, who's the Foster guy? John Dean Foster. He wrote like a lot of science fiction stuff the same way. And I really embraced that when I was 12 too. What are some other things

we want to touch on? Of course, we don't want to give away the whole book. We want people to order it. What are some other things we want to touch our cheese on that's in the book? Well, so that's the side of escapism, you know, which is a sort of major focus of the book. The other side, I think, is the escapes from sort of stale mindsets and places that I found myself stuck in. And the first essay is called Emerson's Magic about Ralph Waldo Emerson and how he sort of woke me up to just curiosity about the world. And he's sort of the reason why I've done everything I've done. And just talking about what is really my biggest obsession, which is people who can articulate themselves really well, whether a way that it unlocks something in your mind. And I'm so obsessed with the people who are masters at that.

Emerson is one. Seinfeld is another. Virginia Woolf, I mentioned in the book, is also somebody who, just sort of changed my life. Because when you read these people's work or listen to their work, for me, at least the experience, is like reading your own thoughts. You know, there is so much going on in our head that is messy. And when a writer can tidy those things up for you, it's almost like they're more you than you because they understand. And the motivation for the show and the motivation for the book is just a general frustration that I have personally with not understanding or knowing what I believe and think about things. That's why I write things down. That's why I make videos.

Yeah. And you do a brilliant job from what I've seen. Ralph Waldo Emerson, his book on self-reliance, that was like finding, being lost in the woods and finding truth and finding sanity. You know, I grew up with people pushing religion into my face and, you know, all sorts of that indoctrination. And, and, and I had my own thoughts and my own questions and, you know, no one can answer them for me. And, you know, you're insane because you don't, you know, believe in the cult. And I'm like, I think you're the problem. I don't think I'm the problem. But at the time, I was one of the few people. And finding Ralph Waldo Emerson, finding George Carlin and other voices that were like, hey,

I'm not mad. There's other people like me. It was really helpful. I'll throw this out here. I love to hear that. I love that you had that experience with Emerson. Yeah. And so finding that book, there were some quotes I picked up and I was like, who the hell is that? And they got ruffled and I went and bought the book Self-Reliance and I loved it. One of my favorite things is I was still a teenager when I got it. And I was pretty much my own person as a teenager because I was living in Utah. I was raised in the cult and I'd been fighting it ever since I was like three years old and ditching church and playing all sorts of silly games to keep from going to church. But it's just constant indoctrination. And one of my favorite quotes

from him, there's a lot of great quotes from him. One of my favorite quotes is, the nonchalant of boys who are sure of a dinner, who would disdain as much as a lord to do or say ought to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. And so I try and keep that in what I do. A boy is to the parlor what the pit is to the playhouse. Independent, irresponsible, looking out for his corner on such people and facts as they pass by. He tries and sentences them on their merit in the swift, summary

way of boys as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, and troublesome. And he covers himself never about the consequences or interests. He gives independent genuine verdict. You must court him. He does not court you. Yes. Isn't that so beautiful? I love it. And it's

so much my personality today. But that's, that's the thing. It's like, he just had a way. And this is 150 years before, you know, before we were born, you know, and he has a way of reaching into the future and describing, describing you today in 2020 or whatever 2022 you know that is so amazing and i had the exact same experience what i was just what i was just talking to you about about how i felt like he was more me than me i was having that thought like he understands me more than i understand myself and then i read the quote

by him the young man reveres men of genius because to speak truly they are more himself than he is which was like he had the thought about the thought that i was having too like he was just in my head and i was you know know, I was 18 or 19 when I first encountered him and it was transformative. One of the other things I always remember is wherever you go, no matter how much you travel, try and get away from yourself. There you always are. Yeah. And I was like, God, that makes sense. I know people, they're always trying to get away from themselves. They travel the world or they think if they move, you know, to Rhode Island or something, they'll, things will be different. If I just go over there, you know, no, you still have you with you.

Let's, let's touch on one more fun thing out of your book. What do you have against, what is it? Urban planning? It's the ode to benches, public benches. I don't have anything against urban planning, but i'm just i know i know you're just being provocative um i what the hell is wrong with you and public benches damn what do they do to you show me on the doll where they are you i can i can i can play if you want the that that is exactly what it is i love i love benches but when i say a, what the, exactly what I say in the book is that I've had more moments of genuine peace on public benches than anywhere else. And it's that, you know, you're out there in the city or wherever you are, you're sitting and you're just kind of observing.

And all of a sudden you get get i get this wave of sort of tranquility and that was the jumping off point to talking about the value of public benches but also public space in cities and how benches are essentially these invisible parts of urban design that we walk right past, but they actually play a huge role in terms of individual and community health. And that is just the beauty of my job is that I can just say, I can think to myself, oh, this is fun sitting on this bench. I'll write 5,000 words about it. You know, I'll be able to actually figure out why. Why does Lord of the Rings, why am I obsessed with Lord of the Rings? You know, I can actually write it and make it, you know, make it into my job.

And so all these things that you've mentioned, including public benches, are just personal obsessions, you know? Well, I mean, I can see from what you're talking about that there's a bit of a it's a peaceful place inside the hubbub of, you know, metropolis that's a chaos, right? Totally. And it's a peaceful place where you can sit

and reside. Of course, sometimes that warm feeling that you have is the poop left behind from the homeless guy who was there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes it smells. Sometimes it smells. If you're in New York, it just comes with the territory. That's the smell of urine in the autumn.

Nice. Wow. I must be out of New York. Yeah. Yeah. If it has that really musky smell, you know, it's, I don't know what month. I don't have a joke for that. But no, I think it's good that you've identified these things and appreciate them.

Are they a little bit from a comedic nature where you take something and you build it up, you tear it down and build it back up again, almost like a Jerry Seinfeld that you talk about in the book. Yeah, I mean. He'll take something basic and he'll just break it down. Yeah, I mean, it always starts from this feeling. It always starts from a feeling that I have, you know, and in the case of Tolkien, it's like, okay, I've watched the Lord of the Rings movies 50 times. So what could possibly have motivated me to do that? There's something deeper going on there. And then the case of public benches, it's like, okay, I really feel at peace on these benches. Why is that the case?

In the case of benches, it's like, okay, cities encourage you, like the planning of cities, the architecture of a city encourages you to move from point A to point B. And that's what most city dwellers are doing outside. They're heading to the store, they're heading to a restaurant and they're heading home. But a bench allows you, you mentioned New York City, you know, if you stop from moving point A to point B, you can get trampled by the herd that's moving, you know, so you can't really stop. But a bench allows you to step away from the herd and that radical there's just that simple act of sitting radically alters your relationship to the city architecture and when we encourage more public spaces green spaces with benches you know and things like that we can imagine and achieve a just a different way of existing in these cities.

You know, cities have been commuter driven. They've been work driven for, you know, 100 years. And now all these cities around the world, including where I live in Barcelona, they are trying to carve back some of these street spaces for pedestrians, for people who just want to have some living space. And it's difficult, but they're all trying to do it because I think now we get that having communal public green space is necessary to keep people from just going you know going stir crazy yeah covid really taught us that that's i think why it's really booming right now but you know when when i was here in barcelona for covid sitting on a bench was basically all you could do in barcelona You couldn't do anything. Everything was closed.

So it just showed how vital these invisible things become when the chips are down and a crisis happens. You know, I really agree with you. There is a point where you sit on the bench, you step off of the causeway of people that are going by and the hustle and the bustle. And you sit there and you have a chance to look around, take in the sights or read a book. I'm thinking maybe a good idea for both you and I is maybe we should each get a public bench in our house. Just have it someplace.

And then that's your creative spot when you want to write or think about what you want to write or something like that. That might be a thing. Maybe we just made something new that Ikea can do or something. Well, now that I've written this, now that I literally have public benches on the cover of my book, I think I have to get one. I think you've got a trend here. What you don't get in your home is the ability to people watch, which is really, really the great thing about benches. The great thing about benches is that they disappear into the background. So you can sit on one and it's almost like you're invisible and you can just observe people.

And what's more fascinating than that? You know, people watching is such a fun thing to do. I love people watching. And I don't know, you could hire some people to come in your home, maybe invite some homeless people, you know, pee in the corner, give it that, you know, that real effect. Yeah, that reality. Yeah, yeah.

Have some pigeon lady or something like from that homeless movie, Home, Home, Home, whatever. With the fucking kid, the muck holy culkin thing home alone yeah you could have that lady come over with the pigeons and whatever she stands in the corner just i don't know you make some of her i was gonna tell you though i i gotta i got i do gotta cut this joke the thing i did love about about oh what was the cyberpunk movie that you mentioned that i played runner much blade runner i've seen it like 5 000 times the ending the ending is so beautiful and it was improv too but no the reason i liked unlike you

the reason that i liked blade runner was just for the sex of the hot sexy robots so you could have sex with that well i mean there was must be love westworld then which that's what that's i yeah i well i haven't really watched that i i started watching it i'm like where are these sex scenes that i keep hearing about and i'm just there's a lot of going on here and i'm i i do i need to fast forward through some of this what's i yes it's all dumb yeah man see i i love the original westworld with you know i saw that thing with the movie the movie with the bren yule brenner yeah yeah and oh my god when you find out he's movie with Yul Brynner? Yeah, Yul Brynner. Yeah, and oh my God, when you find out he's a robot,

holy shit, you about to shit your pants. And he was such a tough man. The other thing I want to call back, we're just going to do callbacks for the rest of the show. The other thing I want to call back to you on is you wrote the essay on how, and correct me if I don't have this right, how I was thinking Wayne, which is, that's Batman. Clark Kent's take of what his nerdiness is, his nerdiness thing, is his take on us.

Is it a mockery of us? Is he mocking us? That's what Bill thinks from Kill Bill. from kill bill bill thinks that that clark kent is essentially a critique or a a mock a mockery of it's like what this god-like alien imagines human beings are these frail bumbling idiot characters but i make the reason and the reason he says that in the movie is because he's trying to convince uma thurman that she can never be a normal person with a normal family. She'll always be a killer. She'll always be an assassin.

You have to be, you know, you can't put on the costume of this normal person like Superman does. But the point I make in the book is that Bill is the villain. And if there's one thing that villains are usually wrong about it's the hero and not only is he wrong about uma thurman's character the bride from kill bill but i also think that he's wrong about superman it it would be a hugely boring character if the clark kent side of that was just a critique or a mockery i mean where do you go from there maybe you have one joke and that's it or you know it you made me realize superman's an asshole fuck that guy wow more interesting as an asshole so let me play something on the spin on that and run a baby because as you were telling me that and this is why i gotta call this back as you were telling me that it made me think what if

fight club what if superman doesn't exist and clark kent Clark Kent is Edward Norton and Superman is Tyler Durden? And he doesn't really exist except in his mind. I think that would be a far more interesting story than pretty much every Superman movie for the last 20 years. Yeah, it'd be like Dallas where it's just like a fucking what's his face had a dream. It was all the dream. Write it, write it.

Well, what's that? What's that? It'd be like that show where the guy goes, I see dead people. And the guy at the end finds out he's dead. You know, I'll,

I'll shop it. It's been fun to have you on the show. You've psychologically analyzed my whole childhood. So thank you very much for explaining my fascination with Tolkien and comic books and everything else. I'll send you the bill. There you go. There you go. So give us your.com so people can find you on the interwebs.

You can search the Nerdwriter on Google and you'll find all my stuff. But the book is called Escape Into Meaning. It's out in 14 days. And if you guys would preorder it or get it or anything, that would just be a huge help to me. Thank you. Thank you, Chris, for having me on. This was a blast, man. Thank you for coming, Evan.

This has been fun. Yeah. This has been fun. You know, we have a lot of great people on the show, but sometimes we have really stuffy journalists from CNN or MSNBC, you know, and all the Washington Post people. And they're really professional folks. And, you know, there's not much fun I can have with sometimes the politics that are pressing. But this has been fun.

So I really enjoyed it. Thank you very much. You're so easy to talk to, Chris. I try to be. You know, that is the vodka that's in the coffee. I don't know what the fuck. Anyway, thank you very much, Evan. Thanks, my audience very much, Evan. Thanks, Mon.

It's for tuning in. Go order the book. Wherever fine books are sold, but don't go in the Zalliway bookstores. Last time I was in one, I got stabbed, robbed, and I had to take a tetanus shot. Escape into Meaning, Essays on Superman, Public Benches, and Other Obsessions, out August 30, 2022. In the meantime, for the sure, family and friends and relatives, go to youtube.com, 4chesschrisvoss. Go to goodreads.com, 4chesschrisvoss.

See everything we're reading and reviewing over there. All our groups on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok. All those places those crazy kids are playing on the interwebs. Stay safe, be good to each other, and we'll see you guys next time.