The New Yorker Radio Hour - Episode 64: Self-Esteem for Owls, and Newt Gingrich on the Heroin Problem

Episode Date: January 6, 2017

Newt Gingrich talks about the opioid epidemic and Donald Trump’s Twitter habit; Patricia Marx tries to relax, and fails. New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

You're listening to the New Yorker Radio Hour. All right, buddy. All right. Are you ready? Are you ready? Yes, I'm ready, yes, I'm ready. Or unflappable. When it comes to soaring, gliding, or chilling on a bow, you are definitely number one owl. Check out your damn wingspan. You dominate all barns.

If there's a barn, you're pretty much about. to dominate it. Even when people think you're just chilling on a bow, what you're really doing is communing with the mystical rhythms of the universe. So there's that. No one looks directly at things in a slightly offended way better than you. A field mouse might think, view, my friend barely escaped by darting just outside that owl's peripheral vision and it's like, actually, I'm just pretty much swiveling my head all the way around to see him, so... A statue might be I think, I have the patent on being totally still and regal in this topiary garden, and it's like, really?

Because I just psyched you out, and you're a statue. It's not that hard to imagine you playing the saxophone and then deftly kicking your top hat into the audience. It's also not that hard to imagine you upending a table where someone to ask you to try some fun new veggie dips. You've got what it takes. You've got what it takes! Time to start another excellent owl day. A little something to get you going there. That's Daily Affirmations for an Owl by Emma Rathbone performed

for the New Yorker Radio Hour by Brian Kihada. I'm David Remnick and welcome to the show this week. It's going to be a pretty busy one. I'll talk with the novelist Elif Shafak about the situation in Turkey and the New Yorker's Patty Marks tries out a sensory deprivation tank, which you might need in the Trump years. We're going to start off in Washington, though, with a man who wrote the playbook for Republican politics as we know it. Newt Gingrich was once called the godfather of Gridlock. As Speaker of the House in the 1990s during the Clinton era,

he forced the shutdown of the federal government during a budget fight, and he helped change the two-party system from one of tension and occasional cooperation to a game of absolute refusal and denial that's more akin to war. He played that game very very very. very effectively. Gingrich was a strong, if occasionally critical supporter of Donald Trump, he was spoken of as a possible vice president, and is now a vice chairman on Trump's transition team. In the environment that Gingrich helped to create any bipartisan effort at all, always seemed like a minor miracle, so it's a little bit surprising that Gingrich himself is an advisor to a new venture called Advocates for Opioid Recovery. It's a nonprofit that lays out

policies for government action on the opioid epidemic, and it emphasizes treatment for addicts over punishment. That's a cause that was once the province of liberals, and Gingrich is working on it now with the former Obama advisor Van Jones and the former Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy, who's had addiction problems of his own in the past. Kennedy and Gingrich joined me in the studio. Patrick Kennedy, you're the sign of a great democratic, liberal dynasty in American politics, Newt Gingrich, you're Newt Gingrich, an icon of conservatism in this country for a long time. How did you, too, come to collaborate at all and describe the nature of the collaboration in the issue? Well, Patrick and I began when he was still in the Congress, and we were working on electronic medical records and health information technology.

And we found that we have very common interest. I had then also co-chaired with Democratic Senator Bob Carey a three-year study on Alzheimer's. So I was very deeply interested in the brain and the advances were making in brain science. Frankly, the opioid epidemic is the largest, the leading national health crisis right now. More people die from opioid addiction than die from gunshots or die from automobiles. first time since the creation of the mass-produced automobile that it's number two. And so we thought, given that modern science indicates profound ways to help people, but isn't being implemented very rapidly or very thoroughly,

we felt there was a public policy role we could play. And so here we are. So 47,000 overdoses in a year. These are numbers that are creeping up on, they've passed auto deaths. They're creeping up on the number of Americans lost in a number of Americans lost in in a war like Vietnam. It's a huge scale. Why does this problem mean so much to you individually? What connection do you have to it? Well, you know, if you had asked me as I was growing up about, does my family have a history of cancer, cardiovascular disease? Of course, I would have said yes.

And of course, if you had asked me as part of my medical exam, does my family have a history of mental illness and addiction. I said, of course not. When in fact, not only does it run in my family, it gallops. And the reason is, is because of the shame and stigma that exists still in this country around illnesses of the brain. As Speaker Gingrich pointed out, the understanding of the brain and the symptoms that are behavioral of brain disorders is now being better understood. Should take away the stigma, but frankly, it hasn't. So our job is to try to connect. the modern medical system to the understandings that we currently have because our medical system has not caught up to the understandings that have been revealed to us through neuroscience and the

like. Speaker Gingrich, what are the roots of the problem? I mean, we've been hearing about drug addiction all our lives, and it comes in waves, heroin in the 60s and 70s, certainly, and then crack in the 80s was dominant. What is the origin of this problem? How did it come about and reach this horrendous scale? Two things happened in the mid-90s that had a huge effect, each of them benign but coming together very hostily. And one is that a article was published in the England Journal of Medicine that said that pain management was a major responsibility.

And so doctors who used to say, yeah, you're going to be in pain, but take two aspirin, began to think, gee, we now have these powerful new tools. Maybe I should give you this drug. At the same time, you had a company which was making the drug. OxyContin was the original case study, and they flooded the market. Well, that led patients to begin demanding that they wanted more drugs. As that's emerging, there are a small number of Mexicans in a very small town in southwestern Mexico who figure out that you can produce Mexican heroin. You could then adopt basically a Domino's Pizza delivery system.

You could give a card to the drug addicts. They could call your telephone person, and suddenly you had this intersection of oxycotton and other totally legal drugs with heroin. And the heroin became much cheaper. And in Columbus, Ohio at one point, it was cheaper to buy heroin than it was to buy cigarettes. I mean, that's how much they reduced the price. So what is my path of addiction if I get caught up on this horrible train? I begin on trying to control my pain, and then where do I understand? up. What's the path? How does this happen? So we're at a point now where we're finally recognizing

this has been a problem and there's things called prescription drug monitoring programs. There's really been a clamping down of doctors prescribing these things. So the irony is now that everyone's hooked, you know, they can't get their oxycotton anymore. It's easier as you could understandably see for them to go to the street and get heroin if they can't get access to their pain meds. So that's what's happening. Unfortunately, our public policy makers have not understood that we have no limitation really on the prescribing authority of doctors for pain meds, but we have all kinds of prohibitions on their prescribing the antidote for addiction from pain meds. So that's opiate replacement therapy. Mr. Speaker, what do you say to the criticism that the way this epidemic has been

treated as a matter of illness, not of crime, is about race? And some have pointed out that, that the reason why we're talking about addiction treatment instead of incarceration as the solution is because a great number of its victims are white, are suburban whites. You think that's fair? Well, my answer to that is that Van Jones and I have co-led an effort for the last three years to develop criminal justice reform, to respond precisely to the fact that we made a huge mistake as a country and locking up people for nonviolent crimes who, in fact, should have been sent to treatment centers. But I think you also have to recognize this opiate epidemic is not purely, you know, a white rural or white suburban epidemic.

What are the demographics of it? Well, I think it's scattered all across middle America now. I mean, it goes from suburbs across the whole country. But remember, one of the most famous people to die from this is Prince. And Prince certainly didn't fit the demographic of being, you know, a white rural person. So, you know, I think that it's a great tragedy how this has evolved. Now, you're, I think of the people in this room, it's fair to say that you, Mr. Speaker, know the Trump campaign much more intimately than anybody. Do you think you've made any inroads in getting the new administration interested in this?

Do they share your point of view on this problem? I know that during the campaign, they were very aware of it in New Hampshire, where the epidemic is so terrible that it was the number one issue. In Ohio, where they did remarkably well and where Senator Rob Portman is probably the leading action. advocate. He's given over 20 speeches on the Senate floor on the opioid epidemic. And I know that they look to Rob as a real leader in this area. I know that they were very supportive of a passing the 21st Century Cures Act, which has a substantial part of it relating to opioid addiction. And I believe you're going to find that they're very concerned. As you know, President President Trump had a personal experience in his own family with his brother who he loved dearly

and who died of alcoholism. And I think in that sense, he's very sensitive. and aware of the dangers of addiction and the need to treat addiction as a health, not a criminal circumstance. So do you see this as kind of emblematic of what's possible, even though there's a lot of dread on one side about a Trump administration and a lot of anticipation on the other? This is a very heightened political season, that this issue and the fact that you two are in the same room and Van Jones is also joining in the effort and many others, is this a possible example of where progress could be made, coordination could be made.

Absolutely. I mean, there's plenty to divide us ideologically, but simply pursuing the science and evidence-based solutions that could make a big impact on both blue and red state America. This really doesn't know any partisan boundaries. I do think that it offers a great opportunity for common ground for this president to take a leadership role in helping us finally bridge that gap where addiction treatment, mental illness has not been integrated with overall health care. And we've seen the consequences of that. Whatever ends up becoming the new model of health care that they put forward, it really does help that there has been a tremendous commitment to this issue.

And let me point out that the 21st Century Cures Act, while it was primarily authored by Senator Lamar Alexander and the Senate and Congressman Fred Upton in the House. It's a very bipartisan bill. It passed by huge margins in both the House and the Senate. It's a substantive bill. It's not just one of those that passes easily because it doesn't do anything. And President Obama signed it. And all of that was done with the support of the Trump team who could easily have blocked it if they wanted to.

But they understood that this was really a big deal. And every conversation I've had with them, including as late as today, they're concerned about research and they're concerned about moving forward with the kind of opportunities to better understand the brain and better understand all of biology is very, very real. It's no secret to you that a lot of people are distressed that some cabinet appointees do not necessarily, in the view of some people, share that kind of fact-based scientific view of the world on a broad range of issues, particularly climate change.

How do you feel about that? Are you encouraged by these cabinet appointees or the opposite? because you've been both supportive and occasionally critical of the Trump people. Well, I would separate climate change, which is a very politicized ideological argument, but frankly, as a topic also where President-elect Trump met with Al Gore. I mean, you can't be much more open on that issue. He met with Al Gore, but then made the appointments he made. Right, but I'm just saying that there's a constant information gathering.

I would separate that as a highly politicized issue. from scientific research and things like the brain project at the National Institutes of Health and so forth, we are almost certainly going to be committed to larger research investment in scientific knowledge. But when you say climate change is a politicized issue, it certainly is a politicized issue. Do you think the science is solid, though? No. I am not convinced. Which leads you to what kind of policy and what you think the Trump administration will go much way? I personally think we ought to take appropriate steps that are economically rational

and that move us towards minimizing carbon loading just as a prudential thing. It's a conservative, I believe, you ought to be conservative on risk. And I think we frankly ought to look at times at mitigation rather than prevention. I think part of what drives conservatives crazy is if I agree that Al Gore might have a point about the fact that there's a problem, then Al Gore promptly says, great. That means you ought to turn over enormous power to an international government. organization, raise taxes massively, and distort the economy. With respect, it's not a matter of just Al Gore.

Al Gore's representing the point of view of, I think you'd agree, vast majority of climate scientists, no? No, I don't know that a vast majority of climate scientists would automatically agree with his prescription. They might agree with his analysis. And that's what part of the fights about. So I would say that there are things we can do that are prudent. And I suspect that the Trump administration's effort, for example, in developing an

infrastructure program, which will be very substantial. substantial, will have some aspects of it that are very positive in terms of solar power and other developments that probably most people concerned about climate will look on positively. What worries you about the new administration, both of you? I'm just concerned about obviously the Constitution of the United States, freedom of press, freedom of assembly. I think that the concern I would have is whether we as a democracy feel. as though we all have a voice and that those opposition voices aren't stifled for fear that, you know, of government reprisal, so to speak, or or some other. I've, I have been concerned, I think, as generally everybody has, about the temper of the election where there's this threatening environment that we all live in and that, you know, there's a real, it borders on violence because keep in mind, politics is a substitute for violence, right? So we have an obligation to not only, you know, it's not to inflame people's prejudices and bigotry,

but to tamp those down and bring connection and community. That's the real challenge. And that's what I hope, I think all Americans hope that we can ultimately see from a new administration. Mr. Speaker, what concerns you? I think I have two major concerns. One is that President Trump is assembling an extraordinary cabinet, but it's a cabinet that has overwhelming experience in the private sector, not the public sector. And I think they will be shocked by the weight of bureaucracy and the weight of regulation and the complexity of the legislative process. And so watching them for the first 90 days come to grips with how different Washington is from running a company.

Was there adequate respect for the art of policy? making in the selection of a cabinet? Oh, I think so. I think he knows what he's doing. Trump campaigned on very large scale change. He is assembling a cabinet that has the energy and the drive and the toughness to potentially achieve very large scale change. But most of them are relatively outside the Washington experience.

I think that's a legitimate gamble. And, you know, it doesn't, it's one of things. The other thing I worry about is, you know, variation on what Patrick just said, which is that this election will never be over. That if you watch the Washington Post, you watch the New York Times, you watch the Democrats, this is going to be a daily fight every day. And the ability to bear up under that and remember why you got elected and stay focused in what you're trying to get done is really challenging.

And it'll be interesting to see how much they get worn down just by the sheer weight of the onslaught. Or distraction. You come to us on a day when the president-elect tweeted about a bad restaurant review in Vanity Fair. What does that portend? That he has the energy of Theodore Roosevelt and that you can expect him to routinely do things. I mean, Teddy's the same way. I don't know. I remember reading biography of Theodore Roosevelt, and of course he had boundless energy,

but he read 500 books a year and shot Antelopes and did what Teddy Roosevelt. tweeting about a bad restaurant review, I don't know. If Teddy were alive today, he'd be tweeting about a bad restaurant? He'd be tweeting about lots of things. As they say in the movie, Anchorman, agree to disagree. Speaker Gingrich, Patrick Kennedy, thank you so much. Thank you. God.

Teddy Rose. Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House and former Congressman Patrick Kennedy. It's a fact. It's the greatest city in the history of mankind. Discovered by the Germans in 1904, they named it San Diego, which of course in German means a whale's vagina. No, there's no way that's correct. Doesn't it mean St. Diego?

No. No, that's what it means. Really? Well, agree to disagree. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Vincent Cunningham writes about pretty, much everything that matters, politics and culture, race, and let's not forget the NBA either.

Recently, he was writing about his early love of Motown. And he said, with all due respect to Smokey Robinson, the Motown sound, as we know it, was created by Holland, Dozier, Holland. Holland. Holland are the guys who wrote Heat Wave, Baby I Need Your Lovin. How sweet it is and so many other hits. Vincent says those old classics may be a little dusty, but they still have a lot to to teach an impressionable young man today. My dad was the music director at the churches I went to when I was a kid. And so I was always interested in music. But there was a moment when I decided, like, I was going to know this stuff, right?

And I got really into Motown in around the 8th or 9th grade. There's a VH1 movie about The Temptations, and it's just a great but bad movie. but the music in it is so beautiful. And the most interesting parts of that movie to me were the sort of technical parts. They would kind of show all of these great producers and songwriters kind of participating in this Motown laboratory.

The Temptations became part of the Motown machine. Barry Gordy's assembly line approach to artist development. We had vocal coaching from Maurice King and countless sessions in Motown Studio A with the in-house band. known as the Funk Brothers. At the same time in school, I was starting to get more into music. So I was like in Glee Club, in school.

And later on, I took music theory and things like this. So I had a notebook. And I would chart, you know, where the chorus came in and how long the verses were. And then when the chorus came back, all these kinds of things about the songs to try to understand whether there was, you know, a formula. Part of this sort of weird, obsessive personality is then you would look in the sort of liner notes and you would see who wrote this, who wrote this.

And I noticed that lots of the ones that I really loved were by this, it would just say Holland, Doja, Holland. And so I wanted to kind of know more about that. There are these two brothers, Brian and Eddie Holland and a friend of theirs, Lamont Dozier. And so they developed this process by which they would all kind of crowd around a piano plunk out some melodies, maybe even give the song a name.

What I found amazing is that they would create the total master track like what you hear on the song was created before ever a lyric was written. And then they would give it to Eddie, who would then torture himself with it. And then would come the vocals as the sort of last part of the production process.

I was so captivated by that that there was a science to the things that I experienced as art. And so all the while, as I'm listening to this music, it's impossible also not to learn something about the message that's coming through in these songs. A lot of these songs are very sad, right? You're hearing this very unique vision of love, which is, in some ways, saying that,

you kind of are going to come out. out of it on the other side, the worst for where. And perhaps this is the right time, right, if you're 12 or 13, perhaps this is the exact right time to listen to this music. I certainly did, in some ways, learn these things about love, which I don't know if they're true or not, but I certainly understood what Eddie Holland thought love was, which was this sort of metaphysical entity, right,

that was defined by your inability to, ever attain it, at least in its perfect form. Literally, standing in the shadows of love is about love's dark side, right? Like, that's implied even in the title. And this song is, it's so odd because there's a sort of full vision. He sees the beginning and he also sees the end. But he's just running headlong into this thing that he knows is going to destroy it. A lot of love songs have a kind of almost epistolary quality.

that you kind of think that it's part of an exchange, whereas these narrators of Holland Dozier Hollins are always kind of in some ways monologuing. The other person seems kind of remote and mute, and it's this person reaching out and in some ways not getting transmissions back. And I think that kind of matched the person that I was. I was like a very sentimental romantic kid.

Like I was like very quick to correct. eye and longing for, you know, there's this idea of love where you wake up in the morning and you're thinking about someone and you know that they're thinking about you. I mean, if you're like me, you just be purely just pined for it. And in some ways, there was a vicarious thing going on where I just like was just hearing how, you know, how it could one day be. I still listen to these songs now and I don't think that love is quite as bad as they made it out to seem. But I think there is one really important insight, which is that the great fact of any kind of love is the imaginary state of being without that love or the imaginary state of being without that person. And so I think Holland Dozier-Holland songs speak of a specific kind of love that is electric and exciting, but the farthest thing possible from a guarantee.

But we do it anyway. Vincent Cunningham is a staff writer at the New Yorker. El Fchifak is a novelist from Turkey, and she's also written about the unnerving political shifts of President Tayyip Erdogan's government. Just a few years ago, we saw Turkey as a more or less reliable, mostly democratic ally for the West and a bulwark of stability in the Middle East.

But the pressures on Turkey have become intolerable. There's a horrifying wave of terrorist attacks that seems almost unremitting. And most recently on New Year's East, in Istanbul. There's a flood of refugees coming in all the time from Syria, and Erdogan's government at the same time has been steadily chipping away at the rights of Turkish citizens, and a coup attempt last year pushed the process into high gear. Erdogan has now jailed tens of thousands of civil servants and rioters anyone who might be seen as part of the opposition.

Elif Shafakis had her own run-ins with Turkey's mandated nationalism. She was taken to court for the crime of what's called insulting Turkishness because a character in one of her novels had lamented the Armenian genocide. She's been living in London and that's where I caught up with her not long before the New Year's Eve attack. Elle, if you seem to have the tension of Turkish society almost built into the dynamics of your family, you were born in Strasbourg in France and your mother is an educated, secular woman, but your grandmother is entirely different. Can you tell me a little bit about that tension and fullness within your family? Yeah, it was a very unusual childhood, if I may put it this way.

I was born in Strasbourg in France because my father was pursuing his PhD in philosophy in France. And my mom, she was so young when she got married and she thought love was enough. So she had quit, dropped out of university and followed him from Turkey to Strasbourg, and that's where I was born. But the marriage didn't live, and when the marriage collapsed, and she came back to Turkey with me as a toddler in her arms, she had no money, no diploma, and no place to go to. And what happens to women in similar positions in Turkey is they immediately try to find her a suitable husband so that, you know, someone, a man, can take care of her and the child. But it was my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, who interfered at the state. And I'm talking about a woman who is not well-educated herself, who is more Eastern, more traditional, more superstitious, if you will.

And she said, no, no, my daughter is going to go back to university. She should have a diploma. She should have a career. She should have choices in life. And in the meantime, I'm going to take care of my grandchild. And then my mom graduated with flying colors, and she became a diplomat. And afterwards, she and I traveled a lot. So my early years in life, I called my grandma,

Anni, which means mother, and I called my own mother, Abla, which means big sister. And it was a little bit unusual because they were very different, but there was a solidarity between these two women. I read your novels with tremendous enjoyment and sheer storytelling, but I also see that, say, in Bastard of Istanbul, you take on the enormous subject of the Armenian genocide. In honor, you talk about,

misogyny and honor killing in really deep ways could it would it be possible for you to live your life totally in Istanbul and write the same novels that you do I think it took me a while to make this confession to myself but now that I have made it I can make it to you as well but you're right I think had I lived in Turkey the entire time I'm not sure I would have written the same novels in the same way. Also, it's not only a matter of geographical movement, but also a linguistic one. About 13 years ago, I stopped writing in Turkish first and I started writing in English first. And ever since then, every single novel that I have written has been written in English first and then translated into Turkish. And then I took the Turkish translation and I rewrote it.

So it was really an insane amount of work went into every one of these novels. But I did it. because writing in another language somehow gave me a cognitive distance. I was able to look at Turkey more closely. Elif, you are a writer of fiction, but lately you've been writing a lot about politics and I sometimes feel it's almost despite

yourself. You'd almost wish not to have to write about politics, but feel that it's an obligation. Why? I think you're very right, because if you're a writer from wobbly geographies like Turkey, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan. If you come from such places, you do not have the luxury of being apolitical as a writer.

If you care about what's happening outside your door, if you care about injustices, inequalities, other people's sorrows, the private space is also political. So politics is everywhere. It's diffused. Wherever power is, there is politics. So I have a much broader perspective on politics. And coming from a Turkish background, I do not have the luxury of being apolitical.

It seems to me that Erdogan has learned a lot from Vladimir Putin in Russia, many things. And one of them is that in modern Russia, journalism is completely controlled, particularly journalism on television, which is where most people get their news and their information, whereas literature is fairly free, certainly compared to Soviet times. You go into a bookstore and you can buy novels not only by Solzhenitsyn and all the dissidents of the Soviet period, but all the more dissident voices of contemporary Russia. You can buy these things, read them, and nobody bothers you. It's journalism where the oppression is. This seems to be the case in today's Turkey that I can buy your novels in Ankara, but the journalism is where the repression is coming.

Why is that? What calculation has Erdogan made? It's very interesting. there are big similarities between Turkey and Russia, because people are usually thinking about the Middle East, given that Turkey is an overwhelmingly Muslim majority country, everybody always compares Turkey with the rest of the Middle East. But I think it's a better comparison to look at Russia and Turkey together. Of course there are differences, but they're incredible similarities as well. Historically, too. They were both empires, you know, multi-ethnic, multi-ethnic, multi- empires, and they both have strong state traditions, and they both revere strong male leaders, whom in some ways they see as the Baba, the patriarch of the society. And in both we find lots of conspiracy theories, paranoia, that the outside world wants to destroy them. In Turkey, we grew up thinking, believing, because this is what we were told, that Turkey was a country surrounded by water on three sides and by enemies on four sides. So imagine when you grow up like that,

what would be your take on international relations? What would be your approach to other people? So there's a lot of distrust of foreigners, xenophobia. Unfortunately, it's a very, very patriarchal country as well. The role of literature is quite interesting and I think you have a very, you've made a very strong point. Journalism is number one enemy, is regarded. that's number one enemy. And to be a journalist is the most difficult thing in Turkey. It's the most difficult profession in Turkey at the moment. Turkey has become the world's biggest jailer for journalists.

There are over 140 journalists in prison today. Among them are editors, columnists, linguists, people of all backgrounds. And it's just unacceptable. I think we writers are feeling a lot of, of pressure, but we're not expressing it as much. And also, there's a lot of self-censorship, which is the subject that we might not be talking about as much, because it's a bit embarrassing, but it is the truth. There's a lot of self-sensorship in Turkey among Turkish writers. Elif, I remember being in Istanbul at about the time when Erdogan was just coming into power,

and there wasn't yet that overall general anxiety about him as an autocrat or as a religious leader in some way. But what's how? happen with him? Why do we see him putting people in jail all the time, firing people by the hundreds and thousands from the civil service? Why has he turned the screws so hard? Yes. I mean, Erdogan went through an enormous transformation and along with him, the party itself, the AKP, the party in power, also underwent a huge transformation. We have to bear in mind that they came to power more than 13 years ago. And back then, it was, or it's seemed to be a different party. They came with different promises. If we remember the promises

they made, it was pro-reform, pro-EU, and every time they would emphasize pluralistic liberal democracy. That discourse began to melt down. It began to shift gradually. It didn't happen overnight, but as the years went by, they became more and more authoritarian. So Erdogan became more and more authoritarian and he also became more and more quarrelsome and he also became more and more divisive, dividing half of the society against the other half, and realizing that it works, that each time it brings him more votes. This is a very dangerous political game. So there's a long tradition of coups in modern Turkey, 1960, 1971, 1980, and each coup is followed by a period of repression, deeper repression. And this happened in

in July, of course. And yet the liberal intelligency, which you're very much a part of, was very relieved to see the coup fail, despite its ambivalence for and even a deep dislike for Erdogan. Why was that the case? I'm not a fan of the AQIP.

It's very clear that I'm not a fan of Erdogan at all. But at the end of the day, it's a government that has been elected. And the only way to change it is, again, through democratic means. The irony in Turkey is, people who reacted to the putchists, to the plotters, the liberals, the Democrats, these were the first people to be punished by the same government they tried to protect against the coup plotters. So the first thing that the government did when they started their purge was to suppress the intellectuals and the critical voices. And this is one of the saddest ironies of Turkey.

I found in Russia what happens in the bad old days and now sometimes again now is that most people are not incredibly strong. Most people don't have the capacity to stand up to all the things they'd have to stand up to. And they become weak and cynical and they try to feed their families by whatever means they can because they can't fight the big fight of a truly great writer or a truly brave dissident, that time-serving becomes the mode of getting along. Absolutely. I think there are, again, big similarities. For me, one of the most dangerous things is this anger. There's an uncontrolled amount of anger and frustration and unhappiness.

And all of these things are toxic and they are contagious. We lost our culture of coexistence because of this enormous. polarization, everybody just constantly mistrusts each other. This is very sad. You know, we can't even unite in grief when there are terror attacks, even in mourning. It's a society that cannot unite anymore. And that's very sad. There are big fractures in Turkey, between Turks and Kurds, between people from different backgrounds, and everybody just wants to socialize with people who are exactly like them. That's not going to help us. That sounds very famous. That sounds very familiar to hear.

And I wonder, you've lived in the United States quite a lot in Arizona, in Boston, Michigan, at various times in your life. And I'm sure you paid attention to the recent election of Donald Trump. What did you make of it? And is there any way that you can compare it to how things are going in Turkey? Absolutely. I find lots of similarities. I mean, I know many people in America tend to think that the Trump phenomenon is a singular. issue, but it is not. There are lots of similarities with what's going on elsewhere in the world.

And in Turkey, in Poland, in Hungary, in a different level, in Austria, now in France, in the Netherlands, then in the UK, we had the Brexit. What I'm trying to say is in country after country, we have observed the rise of isolationism, the retreat back into the interstate, the retreat back into the nation state. There are huge similarities. And of course, there are similarities in the sense that facts are not important anymore. Statistics are not important anymore. Rhetoric is very important. The power of words. As a writer, I'm very interested in this. Populist demagogues. How can they connect so well with people? You know, I'm a very anxious creature myself. And when I see anxious people, I never belittle it.

I think a lot about anxiety. And I think this is the age of anxiety. This is the age of angst. We need to understand this. Angst is not necessarily something that is created objectively or economically. It's mostly psychological. It's sometimes cultural. There's a widespread anxiety about the future,

about immigrants, about refugees, about the other, whether their children will have the same job opportunities, etc. All these anxieties are valid and legitimate, and they cannot be belittled. The problem is, when nations are guided by fear, they make the worst mistakes in their history. And I'm very worried about that. El F. Shafak is a Turkish writer

who lives both in Istanbul and in London. She's the author of 10 novels, and you can find some of her essays about Turkish politics at New Yorkerradio.org. You can also find a really interesting piece by Dexter Filkins about last summer's attempted coup in Turkey. It's definitely worth a read. Now, if you're feeling a little overwhelmed by the news,

and who isn't, don't worry, because we sent our reporter Patricia Marks to explore the latest trend in relaxation, floating in a tank of warm water in the dark. Flotation tanks used to be called sensory deprivation. probation tanks and isolation tanks, but it's kind of a downer of a name. It's a very Manchurian candidate sounding. Leave it to Patty to find the bright side. That's in a minute on the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick and welcome back to the New Yorker Radio Hour. There's

a pretty good chance that you made a New Year's resolution this year along these lines. Disconnect more. Stop checking the news so obsessively. Remember what matters. Familiar stuff. Now, staff writer Patricia Marks is the first to admit that she's a little over-connected. So we asked her to try one of the trendiest ways to disconnect, floating in what used to be called a sensory deprivation tank. Now, since we launched this radio program, Patty has made salad from Central Park weeds. She's practiced archery in her apartment. She drew a little blood there. But relaxing, this is truly outside of Patty's comfort zone. Technology is pretty much all I do. If I told you the things I've looked up in a single hour on Google,

you would probably commit me. And if there was Wi-Fi, I would probably go. I'm like everybody else experiencing a sensory overload, and I was in search of a sensory underload. Wanted some tea? I'm already hallucinating, or not. So I wanted to immerse myself in a flotation tank. Flotation tanks used to be called sensory deprivation tanks and isolation tanks,

but it's kind of a downer of a name. It's a very Manchurian candidate sounding. So now we call it Flotation Therapy. And that sounded kind of cozy. I went to where else would I go? I went to Brooklyn. I went to Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn to a place called, lift floats. I was here early because I'm always obnoxiously early and I was looking through

the log of people have used it and I need to read you some things. Here's what happens. Okay, this person said, did I just drop acid? Maybe. First I died, then I returned to my mother's womb, then I jumped to wife's womb and was my daughter, then I observed my daughter, then there was no there and then I was reborn. That's some itinerary. I'm talking to Gina, whose name I will never be able to pronounce. What is your name? Gina Antioco. And Gina is a co-founder of Lyft. Who's the typical customer and why do they come here? Are they kind of yoga people? It's really hard to say, you know, one is this type, one is that type. We really do see everyone. We really do see everyone A lot of people who are coming in are looking to experience theta brainwave activity,

which is just like a slower brain frequency state. It's the state that you're in just before delta, which is sleep. The main brain waves are the beta, alpha, theta, and delta, which means that I think of them as sororities. When you're in theta, you're kind of on the verge of sleep, you're free associating, you're having really kind of zany but wonderful thoughts. So before I went into my pod, I met Vanessa Cranwinkel. I don't know if that was her name before she'd been in the pod, but that was her name when I met her.

She'd just gotten out of the pod. She couldn't wait to get back in. Did you hallucinate it at all? I felt like I was because I started moving my head in like an S motion. I felt lightheaded and dizzy at the same time and I would close my eyes and I would see like little flashes of light so I knew something was up but I couldn't tell what it was And what about did you hear anything?

No, well I heard my, I didn't eat breakfast So I heard my stomach I feel like I heard my blood pumping It was just so weird It was so wonderful I feel like a feather right now I'm so happy so like at peace Maybe you shouldn't go out into the world

I don't want to So we wired the pot up as most people don't do. And I walk into this room. It has a kind of a, the UFO has just arrived feeling. The pod itself looks as if, let me put it this way. If George Foreman had designed a suave machine for cooking human beings, it would look like the pod. Shiny white, and sleek, and there was 10 inches of water in it. Getting inside, it's kind of a little warm. Now, this is the first time I've been on rain.

Flotation pods were invented in 1954 by a scientist named John Lilly. So John Lilly started out as a pretty conventional science. doing stuff like the physiology of high altitude flying. He was also really interested in states of consciousness. Of course, communication between dolphins and human beings and whales. And did I say LSD and ketamine? He even gave LSD to dolphins. Before one can successfully do a spiritual trip without tumbling,

in outer space and getting dizzy, one has to do the grounding and center. He claimed that he could communicate with alien beings while he floated and also Shakespeare. You're going to move out from this planet. Be sure you're well trained on how to keep a part of you going here while you go somewhere else. That part of you obviously is your physical body. So I'm lying there and I'm thinking, I'm just, on the verge of getting somewhere, where I mean is getting nowhere, by when I say somewhere. And suddenly... So there was a mini-disaster when the mic fell into the water.

I survived, but the mic didn't. And might have been the only thing that found peace today. Well, I feel really an hour. find only Patricia Marks, the New Yorker Radio Hour's official stunt woman. I'm David Remnick, and that's it for the New Yorker Radio Hour this week. Next week, Amy Davidson joins us to talk about the first woman president whenever she finally arrives. And we'll get some sex education from columnist Dan Savage.

Don't miss it. Till then, have a great week. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garvey. of Tune Yards with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Cario, Riannon, Corby, Jill Duboff, Karen Frillman, David Krasnow, Sarah Nix, Michael Rayfield, Mithely Rao, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Susan Morrison, Emma Allen, Becky Cooper, Corey Shreppel, and Johnny Vince Evans.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.