Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 310: People Of Substance (w/ special guest Molly McGhee)

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

In the first half of the show we have an interview with author Molly McGhee about her upcoming book, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, as well as a discussion on a variety of themes: debt, dreams, work, and religion. Then in the second half of the show Tom joins us for a look into how the other half lives, by way of the society pages in the New York Times. Order Molly's book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/734829/jonathan-abernathy-you-are-kind-by-molly-mcghee/ And support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

🎵 Okay, welcome to the show this week, Trillbilly fam. We have a very special guest on, joining us, from New York by way of Tennessee. So it's like all the uh no not a fan no no no go ahead go ahead we have with us molly mcgee who is an author uh you you said to mention that you oh girl i said you said to mention that you went to columb, and teach there, but that's a bad thing. See, I'm so far removed from it. I don't know why that's a bad thing.

Oh, well, okay. First of all, for context, you asked me what my bio should be. And I said, I wish we could skip that part,

but my publisher would kill me. And it's just like, so cringe to be like, I live in New York and teach at Columbia. Like, okay. That's all right good for you what that means that's good though um that means that the students at columbia are very blessed to have you as a teacher yeah i mean i know that because you have edited me and you're a good teacher i've've learned a lot from you, Molly.

And in fact, I've read your entire book. Oh my God. Yes, Jonathan Abernathy, Your Kind. It's about to come out in a few weeks, correct? On October 17th. We're getting increasingly closer. We are. We're getting very close.

Scary. I read the entire book. I sped through the entire book honestly it's uh really that is like one of the highest compliments that i could get yeah you could say to me i uh it's very sad it's it but it's also like i think i was reading another essay of yours that you wrote in the paris review about uh what's that russian author's name oh yeah dead souls dead souls um and it's you know your piece is about debt and your book is about debt it's about really are we seeing a theme yeah i'm seeing um i think like debt is a very, in my opinion, like a very rich vein for content, but also just for exploring what it is to be a human. Yeah. I mean, it controls all of our lives and we just pretend it doesn't.

Well, that is an interesting point, right? Because debt is money, but you're right. It's not real. It's like abstracted money. There's actually a line in your book. You're talking about your main character, Jonathan Abernathy, said he's forced to live in the past, his debt, the present, his hunger, and the future, his housing all at once. This gets at a very interesting thing about debt, which is that it both condenses and expands time, time itself. It's almost supernatural.

It is. You're right. It's like as a social technology, it is supernatural, right? It both removes us from the world and it puts us back in it sort of transformed in a different way, Like you're consigning a part of yourself to something else. Yeah. It's really strange. Cause the thing about debt is we're agreeing that our future self can eat shit,

but like we have no idea who we will be at that time. Um, and it's usually a younger, dumber self who agrees to it. Uh, so I don't know about you, but I'm in some debt and I am very, very angry at 17 year old me.

I am like, girl, I will kill you with my bare hands. Like, why did you do this? I have a lot of debt. Most of it is medical and student debt. That's real. Yeah, it's like two forms of debt that are like for services rendered

yes a long time ago it's not a long time yeah you can't even get like an asset thing out of it it's not even an investment it's not even like debt as an investment also like things that you kind of have to have in the moment. You know, it's like, well, you can get treated medically or you can die of discomfort. And it's also like, well, you can get educated or you can suffer slowly by wearing your body away moment by moment in a physical labor job.

Your choice. Good luck, bestie. No, you you're right and honestly this is really weird i went down a rabbit hole about this um like christian theologians in like oh shit like the 12th and 13th century they were very concerned with the concept of debt because to them they could they could see how it was like stealing time and for them this was a sin because it was like it was impossible to sell time or purchase time like that was you're relying by doing so have you did you grow up religiously i did very much okay i thought i thought you did. What denomination? Southern Baptist.

Oh, girl, same. Okay. So I was like, evangelical, Jesus Christ is my Lord. And there is like a really interesting Bible quote. I can't remember it off the top of my head, but it's in the form of a prayer. And it is, Lord, give me the grace to forgive my debtors. So not, you know,

like get me out of debt or like help me find grace with myself, but like, let me reach the point of patience and understanding where I can forgive the people who took advantage of me at my lowest. I think that's really beautiful. Yeah. It is weird how debt is shot through so many different aspects of christianity actually it really is the whole concept of jesus like

basically jesus being sent here to forgive your debts right to like absolve you of your debts yeah he was like by the way i'm gonna die and then you'll never have sin again. You're welcome. You know, this actually does go very deep because I'm pretty sure that the etymology of the word debt in a lot of like early European languages is almost synonymous with the word sin. And that makes sense. Yeah.

And in Plato, I'm pretty sure that one of the very first like ethical dilemmas he presents is of the promising law that like it's a kind of like creditor ideology that like your your most like moral or ethical violation would be to default on your debts i'm kind of like giggling over here because like, as you know, you know, you can escape the evangelical, but the evangelical never escapes you. And so you are picking up on a lot of my pet interests that I hope are not. I have left the church and you know why. and you know why um but it's like interesting though those concepts those philosophies those like things that you ponder over when you're growing up they really stay with you they like form a foundation you know it's it's interesting that like if capitalism could talk i feel like

it would say what you just said it would say uh you, you can escape evangelicalism, but evangelicalism can't escape you because like so many because like debt pre, you know, debt is a social technology that is precedes capitalism. Right. Like we've had it. I really like the framing of it as a social technology, because I think that allows us to have some distance so that we can think about it as something we created as a tool to live. And sometimes it's hard to separate the idea that like we actually did create this thing. It's not just inherent in being alive. Yeah. And it's like I was saying a second ago about how in Western ethics, in philosophy like plato they talk about like the promising lie being like the biggest ethical violation defaulting on your debts but in a lot of

like islamic jurisprudence and theology there are instances where you can default on your debts you can like that is permissible it's allowed it's just it's clean. There is actually like something really interesting that was normalized in the middle ages where they would have days where all the debt was eradicated and they would start afresh. And it was a way of like building community and building faith and institution. And I just think it's such a beautiful concept that we have no grasp of in the current moment. Not at all. There's no grace built into our monetary systems. It's almost as if the whole thing is about how we should be perfect, which is the most inhuman thing of all you're right and to pivot to what we are kind of here to talk about that is a theme that is very much undergirds a lot of your book like there is no there's no grace like you know it's like you you know just to sort of like

put it very crudely and i don't want to like give away spoilers or anything but yeah there's kind of a lot there's kind of like some twists there are some twists i was like oh shit like there are parts where you get to where your perspective just does a huge turn yes um so be careful terrence yeah i don't i don't want to yeah right i'm trying to be very careful i don't want to like give any spoilers um but to put it as sort of sort of like matter-of-factly as possible your main character is someone who has a lot of debt yeah not only debt that he incurs himself but debt that is he's saddled with yeah after the death of his parents um which is illegal and yet he still has to deal with it in some way yeah that is interesting this is

something that we have talked about a lot on the show recently which is that there are a lot of forms of debt that you can shed in bankruptcy and that don't get passed on there is one form of debt that is legal to be passed on and that's student debt student loans like they're just like oh you want to change classes fuck you and your entire family respectfully though respectfully you're right like because you're right like the underlying premise is in getting an education you are aspiring towards social mobility but it is it is like a it is up front literally a gamble it's going to be like okay well you're going to gamble with this you want to try to escape your class right but my grandparents who are like um they're deep Alabama Southerners.

And my grandfather just passed away. But when he was alive, they were horrible, horrible, like gamblers. Like would go to the casino, roll up, gold jewelry, Hawaiian shirts. You know what I'm saying? Like that Southern grandparent archetype. Yeah, when I went to school, it did feel a lot like that. I was like, I'm playing against the house baby let's go yeah um well you know and it's just like you know i uh just to sort of like formally ask maybe that's a good segue into it it's like where did this project begin for you? You know what I mean? Like what, how, um,

what did you decide to pick debt? That's not, that's not exactly, that's not entirely what the book is about. Right. It's, but it's about a lot. It's about, I would say communities and relationships and debt and how kind of like the

whole system is, is built so that we, the only answer is individuality, which is just such a lonely answer and is a setup for failure. But where did the inspiration come from? Is that kind of what you're asking? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So my mom passed away. We kind of referenced that earlier. And I was working at a company as an editor and I was working on a bunch of different um book projects and my mom died really unexpectedly through sort of like tragic um and I will say very southern circumstances that's all I'll say about it I won't get into it too deep, but very, very Southern. And my workplace at the time gave me like three days off, like to handle her debt or her death. But she had a lot of debt. She didn't have a will. And my mom was a little bit of a light hoarder. You know, I don't know if she

would like the term hoarder, but she was a collector of items. And there was a lot to sort through when she passed away. She left a lot of things in flux. And three days was not enough time for me to handle it all. But I was given a sort of maxim that I needed to come back to work or lose my job. And I did go back to work and in going back to work, I missed my mom's funeral. And to me, this is like a huge point of shame. Like this is one of the worst decisions I think I made in my life. And I started when I went back to work, having intense anxiety dreams and my anxiety dreams. I dream very vividly. My anxiety dreams turned out to be this novel. Yeah. And so I don't know why I don't ever dream about myself. Like I'm never a first person in my dreams, but it's always me dreaming about someone else.

I think maybe like, I really didn't have any empathy for myself during that time. And I think writing and working on, I became obsessed with this project. Like when I wasn't at work and when I wasn't dealing with my mom's death, I mean, it was COVID 2020 yeah like all I did was just like obsess over this book um and it was really sort of a way to escape myself at that time I was very very disappointed with myself and I was looking at a lot of my life decisions and I was looking at how much

debt I accrued to like help my family. I really wanted to like help my mom. Um, and then for her to die before I could ever put all that gambling to use was almost like too much for me because it, it was really what I had gambled was my time with her and that just felt like really hard to hold yeah it seems like there's not to go hashtag uh deep that's what a novel is it's like yeah it is it's like you know and this like I think there's a lot of different like critiques being made here, one of which is like debt and how it, you know, like we were talking a minute ago, sort of warps time around you and warps space around you. And changes everything retrospectively. Yeah. It's like it's really it is a lens with which your perception of the world is shifted.

Yeah, that's exactly right and and i think that like through that you're also trying to say something about the nature of like work in the 20th century it's like i don't again i don't want to like give too much of it away but i think that like a large a large part of the book is about how in some ways like blue collar workers are almost enlisted in a way to sort of maintain or or expurge the sort of neuroses and anxieties of white collar workers. Yes. Being exploited in different ways. Emotionally, physically. Yeah, definitely. um emotionally physically um yeah definitely i think there's some like class examination

going on about who gets to live life and who gets to maintain life and they're very different experiences totally and it's like it it sort of paints the portrait of like an ecosystem um that is like sort of held in place in some ways it's very tenuous though um because all the people in this ecosystem are people and they all have their own hopes and dreams yeah the individuals yeah like they're just because you know and you know it it's something else that i tried to examine is they're not just individuals, they're emotional individuals. And Terrence, I don't know about you, but growing up in the South, the emotions were either, when expressed, either bigger than life or they didn't exist. And so I really wanted to explore like the fact that our, you know, we, okay okay i must say something a little cringy um

and it's going to give away the fact that i grew up evangelical but it's like our spiritual health is our emotional health and you know a lot of us leave the church and we write off our spiritual life but like that is our emotional life and our emotional life cannot be separated from our day to day existence it is so tied to our health our communities our interactions with other people and when we are emotionally dry or run dry or um you know given no time to experience and in our life it isn't good for anybody it's gross it's just really gross how being how money seems to determine your personhood like what you are allowed to want and not want absolutely mean, that is a theme that you return to a lot in this too, like connecting your self-worth to your career, to your job. And deadly that can be in many ways.

Yeah, it can be, you know, because it's just artificial. It's not real. You know, what's real is your love for other people and whether you support a community or work hard to lift someone up. And I think one of the reasons we're all so obsessed with working is because we're obsessed with respect and we feel like we're not respected. And so we think that if we just work hard enough or get enough accolades, it will force people to respect us. And what's sad about that is it does force a lot of people to respect you. There's something that is at work in your book that's very fascinating. It's almost a kind of like dialectical exploration of dreaming because like you've got a passage and i marked it it's like one of my favorite things you said the thing about dreams and coincidentally this applies to work

as well is that once the dream ends you can no longer recollect what happened yeah you feel that something has happened um but like you you what you're you know you're equating like work in dreaming here which i think is a fascinating move because traditionally we like we generally see dreaming as a way out of work it's like an escape from work and escape from our lives but like what you're saying here is that like at at this kind of like point of degraded like late capitalism like they found a way to conflate the two yes so like they're both they're both they're they're it's all fleeting now that like even in your dreams you can't escape from like

the time being stolen from you no um no it's your time is being stolen from you to make other people wealthier and it's when you go to bed, and you feel like incredibly anxious, and you can't sleep, and you stay up all night worrying about your job the next day, what's actually happening is you're worrying about your stability, you know, you're worrying about your life. And what that's telling me is that the dream as it's being sold to us is no longer about success, but rather about stability. And I think one of the reasons we are so obsessed with working is because there is such a cruel scarcity mindset around so many of our institutions. When you look back to the early 20th century, the mid 20th century, people had stability.

You know, they had like not everybody, but lower middle class people, middle class people. They could wake up the next day pretty confident they would have a job that is not true for our generation like you can it you know i think of tech workers a lot of them um they were told over and over again that their field is one of the most secure and stable fields and then we saw all those layoffs affecting like hundreds and hundreds of people that just came out of nowhere. And I just, we're just supposed to just accept it. Like we're, as a society,

we're just supposed to accept that this like small group of people are controlling all of our lives. Why? You know, it's just I. It's not even economic either. Specifically, every aspect of it. It's like every single aspect of our lives. Yes.

And it's it's interesting that like. So, again, I sort of like take your book to in many ways be a parable about kind of like, you know, like I said a second ago, this kind of like degraded sort of like late stage of capitalism where like there's a lot of different things going on with your main character, Jonathan Abernathy. But there is also, there's a story being told about a family here too. And it's sort of like fragmentation. And a second ago, you mentioned how like in the mid 20th century, you had stability. And a lot of stability was on these sort of like family forms that were illusory, right? Like they weren't,

they were just as much socially constructed as anything else. But they were constructed and stabilized for a reason to kind of keep this kind of like delicate balance between capitalists and workers. At a certain point, that kind of just got swept aside and then we got sort of atomization and precarity. This is really interesting to me personally. It's like thinking about sort of gender and sexual politics and how they are related to economic politics and how a lot of our decisions are interconnected. they're siloed. You know what I mean? But I would argue that the breakdown of the nuclear family is because it was an inefficient capitalist model. And that it actually, like went against the exploitative, like, properties that we work in. And so as we see nuclear families break down in America and the West, what we're actually seeing is like corporations actively pushing that. Now, I'm not saying that's a good or bad thing. Like, I think that looking at the family structure as more fluid will help everyone yeah um but they're absolutely linked which is why

which is why sometimes the politics around it is so funny to watch because it's like bro you can either pay your workers and keep the like mom dad and two children or you can't and guess what you know like you can't have both like you gotta pay people if you want them to live that lifestyle totally because it's expensive yeah and that's the that's the thing about like these arguments about abolition of the family and like the optics of it so it doesn't matter what you think about it it's happening regardless it's like yes terrence exactly like it literally does not matter what your personal opinions are. It's happening. Right. I think a lot of people when they're talking about politics, they forget, like, it doesn't

matter if you want to believe it or not. Like, or we don't always know the reason why it's happening, but it's happening and a bunch of people are complaining about it so let's think about why right instead of like how do you personally feel that's what i liked about your book a lot that there's there at no point is there any kind of introduction of a kind of like politic in in any way i'm saying this is a good thing because it really accurately sort of... For a second I was like, are you calling me a neoliberal? No, I'm saying... What I'm saying is that

in many ways you're playing in the sort of narrative. You're playing with what's real and what's artificial. By reintroducing dreams dreams and like weaving people in and out of those like in a way that is very interesting because it is in for some people in this story it's their job it's their job to dream so but like what i'm saying is that at no point do any does anybody even have really the time to sit back and say like well why is this any

of this happening like that's really and that's accurate that in many ways is how most of us approach these things in life yeah it's like man i just gotta get through the fucking day you just gotta get through oh my god like i just gotta look if i can just go to bed and wake up the next day, and if I can just do it, then I'll figure it out later, which is what debt is about. Right. That's so sad. So in that sense, I think that this is like a kind of parable, in the way that like Dead Souls was a kind of like parable.

I love that book. Yeah. The late Russian serfdom and everything like you're sort of just laying out this like you know and as you point out in the book like dead souls was billed as surrealism but like when you were actually that close to it you realize it's not that surreal it's not that surreal it's the same thing with your book incredibly it's like i don't know this kind of seems like it could happen you know so uh i don't know i love that vein of american fiction um like ray bradbury fahrenheit 51 right like that's just such an

amazing text uh there are a lot i teach at columbia so this is the thing is i'm up at columbia and i'm the designated creative writing professor who teaches the weird shit the stuff that like the other teachers are like I don't want to touch that so I'm teaching right now a class on apocalypses and dystopias and it's so interesting to think about um you know how much of our fear like as a society how much of our fear, like as a society, how much of our fear is just a fear of change. And it's because change happens to us without our permission. And we have to figure it out in retrospect. And a lot of times we don't realize change has happened until we are already in our new, like, I'll use a Taylor Swift word, era. Like, we don't always get a forewarning when we're

moving into our next era. So. Yeah. Well, and debt actually sort of, in many ways, tries to foreclose upon change. This is, again, this is the dialectical nature of it. It's, in many ways, it tries to foreclose change and make sure is again, this is the dialectical nature of it. It's in many ways, it tries to foreclose change and make sure that it doesn't happen. But in doing so, it quite often forces change. Absolutely. Well, because it's unsustainable. When we think of our future, we have actually no real conception of it. We only have best guesses. But it's completely unpredictable. Our lives are so weird. And we just like, pretend they're not, you know, and that they follow these rules. And that if we just do this, then this, the next thing will work out. I was talking to a friend the other day. And he was talking about how, like, he feels a lot of pressure in his relationship to get it right because he doesn't want to turn into his father.

And I think that is a lot of people's fears. And we think, you know, if we could just follow the rules or if we can just do things in the prescribed way, we can avoid or outsmart tragedy. But we really can't. It just happens. It's, you know, it is chaotic. It's unpredictable. It's really, really sad. And that notion is so hard to hold on to, because for me, at least that idea that anything could happen tomorrow gives me a lot of panic and a lot of depression and so trying to grapple with how much of our lives is lived in a way where we actually don't know what's going on like is is huge we only sort of find understanding

retrospectively i think when we have time to put the pieces together and that very much comes across in the book and especially in the way that it ends terrence i feel like what you have you and i have in common is that we both love thomas tension and we both like real nerd shit you know like we're both like but what if a book is an examination of the book that the book is and is in conversation with all the other books to have ever existed um that's how you know we're freaks yes well and this actually this is a that's actually a good point too because like in some ways like your book does in have a discourse with other works of art and you know especially i noticed some like dave foster wallace references oh yeah oh my god but that's um that's exactly

we don't we don't get can you tell he's my biggest influence can you tell that i like i'm not going to show you right now but what i am looking at while i talk to you is my shelf of shame, which is just like one shelf of like every book he has ever published and all the work ever done. It's like so embarrassing. Whatever you can. Everybody should have a shelf of shame. Everybody should have a shelf. That's my show. Well, and that's that's the thing.

It's like earlier I said, there's no sort of like mention of like a politic here. And you know, there is literature though. And that, again, that is how I came to an understanding of the world. It's not like I was like 16 and was like reading Marx. It's like,

no, I started out reading. I started out, you know, reading like fiction, reading fiction. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, you know, let's just say i didn't have a lot of patience growing up for preaching and i feel like literature is the opposite of preaching um preaching is you know i have an answer i know what's happening god is speaking to me literature for the most part is like what the fuck is going on like what this is so confusing like why is being alive so what is so beautiful um so yeah i'm yeah i really i just really like books you know i even like the bible when other people aren't up in it you know when it's just me chilling that shit hits

i agree if you if you consider literature to be like anti-preaching in a way or non-preaching the good literature rather i should say some literature you're like okay and ran yeah right yeah well i think that's probably a great sort of place to plug the book um the book is called jonathan abernathy your kind i highly recommend everybody if you're listening to this before october 17th 2023 you can pre-order it please go do that please go pre-order um and then after october 17th you could probably find it in your local bookstore or online. Yeah. Or you know what?

Go get from your library. Make somebody else pay that money. Yeah. Have your library order it. They don't have it. You can even download it on Libby. That's for free. Yeah.

The audio book is really good. Actually. I got to pick like a fancy actor who's in walking the walking dead. His delivery is so sick. It's so funny. So, yeah, I think the audiobook's going to slap. Nice, nice. Well, go find it wherever you can.

Stay tuned for the second portion of this. I'm going to get Tom on. And then maybe we can riff a little bit on this New York Times article. If you have time, Molly. If you don't, that's totally fine. Oh, that sounds fun. Thank you. um okay all right we got tom on board uh welcome to the second portion of our program uh we've got tom with us who has just returned from rough rider river or something like that you were uh rough trade damn uh state park and uh litchfield k Kentucky. Rough trade. So, yeah, so we've got Molly for the second portion of the show, too.

I wanted to have you guys both on because I wanted to read this article in the New York Times. I feel like it's like a good... It converges with a lot of our interests, obviously on this show, namely just about how like supremely bizarre the, the wealthy and influential are. Okay. It's like, it's a portrait of how the other half lives.

It very much is a portrait of how the other half lives. Thankfully, we don't know much about how they live you know um this is in the new york times the title is she pioneered internet fame he helped draft a constitution now they're in love who who would have guessed that the former new york media obsession julia allison and the and the law school scholar Noah Feldman would make a great couple? I had to look her up. I didn't know anything about her before this. I didn't either.

Yeah. But like apparently she she used to publish a blog on her college campus called it was a play on sex in the city it was like sex on the hilltop or something okay did she go to an ivy i think she she went to like one of those midwestern liberal arts schools i think i have to say it doesn't roll off the tongue but uh i'll give a benefit of the doubt here let's let's let's hear more she um okay no she went to georgetown um which not an ivy right but it is close enough you know what tom there'll be people out here who'll be like absolutely not you don't know what you're talking about yeah i agree with you where i'm from if you're educated by the jesuits you might as well be an aviator um so yeah according to her wikipedia she began

her writing career with a dating column in georgetown student newspaper called sex on the hilltop uh and then she parlayed that into like an influencer sort of job in the late 2000 like the late aughts early 2010s um she was like one of the first people to like make money off of people wanting to know her business yeah yeah that's exactly right she was kind of like a caroline calloway of her day yeah she was like the first caroline calloway yeah very very true um and this guy well it'll become apparent what he's into um so i'll just go ahead and start here uh new york times one interview one afternoon in may 2020 julia allison said in a hot spring near joshua tree national park crying a media strategist and tech world socialite who in her former life as a New York City journalist and media personality pioneered the sort of Internet driven micro fame we now call influencing.

Miss Allison was going through yet another breakup. She wanted to know what was the point of it all. Don't we all? Yeah, this is like where all great literature starts right she was becoming micro famous he was micro cheating and then they parted ways that's when noah feldman came on the scene this is okay so she says this was not the plan 39 and single what is my life come to okay this next This next paragraph I think is like, honestly,

it's up there with the grades. This blew me away. Then Miss Allison had an unusual epiphany, even for Joshua Tree. I think that's understating it slightly. She needed to consult the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School, Noah Feldman.

We've all been there, right? Like post-breakup, you're at Joshua Tree and you're like, who? There's only one man for the job, my broken heart. That's Felix Frankfurter. What was his title again? Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Oh, my gosh. I guess that's his title again? Felix Frankfurter, Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. That's his title. Oh, my gosh.

I guess that's his title, yeah. I'm the Felix Frankfurter Professor. Why do professors always have such long titles? I've wondered that, too. They always have names like the major John Keynes Professor of Macroeconomics and stuff you know maybe they think it makes them sound more important I was just the Frank Furter professor of political science at Moosehead State University

I was just the hot dog professor like like Miss Allison Mr. Feldman first rose to prominence in lower Manhattan in the aughts as a wonderkind constitutional law scholar at NYU. In 2003, at 33, he advised the Iraqis in writing their constitution after the U.S. invasion. That's like, if you were wondering what constitution they were referencing in the title. What constitution they were referencing in the title.

I just imagine he starts a Google Doc and he reaches out to the sort of interim government of the newly formed Democratic Republic of Iraq. And he's like, I'll take a first pass at it, boys, and I'll send it over to you for edits. We'll circle back on it yeah um yeah that i like when i first read the title i was not expecting i should have known right because like how many constitutions have been written in the last 30 or 40 years like nation-state constitution like not a lot i mean lower manhattan and the odds i immediately went george bush who, you know. Right, right. Yeah. Also, like Miss Allison, Mr. Feldman had been unlucky in love, a bachelor since his 2011 divorce.

The two had never talked, but a mutual friend had described Mr. Feldman to Miss Allison as the world's most fascinating man. Oh, who's the friend? You know, I know. i want to know right like was he the um was he the earl warren professor who else was on the frankfurter court right brandeis i think was on there with frankfurter perhaps um through the friend she had mr feldman's number which she dialed from the hot spring damn she dialed it straight from the hot spring straight from the hot spring

that's crazy this next part makes me so I get such bad second hand embarrassment like my face is about to turn red no no seriously he picked up and Miss Allison asked him the meaning of life oh man that's y'all give me a minute they they spoke for 90 minutes like that is an incredible

scene right like joshua tree hot spring i got a question. What is worse? Is it like that, like getting faux deep, like early on like that? Or like the sort of LinkedIn-ization of dating where you just like ask somebody what their five-year plan is on their first date. And it's like. I think they are the same. They are the same. Yeah, I guess they come from the same ooze, don't they? It's basically like they're like,

what if we just skipped this whole getting to know each other process? Right. Let's get down to brass tacks. Yeah. Honestly, though, like, kind of props to her. You're right. There is a lot of secondhand embarrassment here. But, like, if I was him and someone called me from a hot spring and Joshua

Trey asked me the meaning of life to a guy like that, that's the hottest thing you could possibly do. You know? Well, yeah. Like stroking his brain. He was right. He was ready for that shit. He knew it was going to fall into his lap like at one of these days.

When the next sentence is great. Neither of us can remember what noah said but i know it was so profound she says sounds like uh shit um it's so much worse with you reading it all after oh well you know what i was thinking like reading this is like how does this make it into the new york times does one of their pr agents like pitch it's just fascinating like how that's um i feel like old-timey newspapers like in the late 1800s would write like pieces like this like around the round the town uh the banker alma garrett, the banker, is dating, you know.

Yeah, maybe it's like a society's pages. Yeah. Trying to bring back the society pages. This is the society pages, right? Now, three and a half years later, after a courtship that has been, while not precisely a secret, at least conspicuously discreet, Ms. Allison and Mr. Feldman are engaged. So I guess they were keeping this under wraps, and that's why it's in the paper now like they're coming out with

it so this is basically like a long form version of a wedding announcement yeah i have a feeling it's like the professor's like i'm still serious guys like that's true that is true actually in my brain is still very important stick a pin in that because that will come true actually in my brain is still very important stick a pin in that because that will come back up in a minute that is very true yes you're right this is the professor getting out in front of it being like that's he's like look i know how this looks but it's never been done like this before. Yeah, that is very true. Okay. On the surface, it was an unlikely match.

Miss Allison 42 is a 10 time Burning Man attendee who had lived in California for a decade. Her friends included startup chief executives and psychedelic psychotherapists. She considers Bali her spiritual home. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, my God. I'm going to try not to be too mean because I'm on press tour.

I'm not saying nothing. Yeah, we're going to get you in trouble, Molly. You're going to get me in trouble. That's good, though. All press is good press, Molly. You're going to get me in trouble. That's good, though. All price is good price, Molly. That's true. On the other hand. No.

Tell that to Subway Jared. Miss Allison described a period of her dating history as 10 years of relationships with polyamorous djs miss allison said she also dated the former democratic congressman harold ford jr when she was a college student at georgetown he did date one serious man is what she's saying yeah that's right he honestly hero for junior is he kind of sexy he caught me he looks like he might is he relate no no relation to gerald ford but his name is harold ford that's weird um he's not sexy he's not and he kind of looks like he might be sexy in certain situations in the right light perhaps yeah right light right amount of drinking yeah um mr feldman

meanwhile embodies the east coast establishment the son of an mit professor and a harvard lecturer who graduated first in his class from harvard mr feldman 53 speaks five languages has written nine books and is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. Mr. Feldman has also been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. Oh, there you go. There you go. He's also eight. There's a problematic age gap here, folks.

He's 53. She's 41. Noah Feldman gave a talk in January 2012 called The Future of Islam kind of a heavy topic by a guy who wrote the Iraqi state constitution after toppling its government his ex-wife is also at Harvard Law I just googled her she is a professor at Harvard Law. I just Googled her. Yes. She is a professor at Harvard

Law and is a public intellectual. And she is 50, so she's closer to his age. He should have stayed with her. Okay, this next sentence is what you're referring to, Molly. This is the kind of

kicker here. He said, people I dated seriously subsequently were people of substance, Mr. Feldman said in a recent interview in his office, distinguished in their professions. Miss Allison, sitting arm in arm with Mr. Feldman, smiled. Serious people, she said in a stage whisper. That's something. Do you think she knows she she clearly knows but like i think it's the thing it's like they're both trying to be kind of like haha about it they're both trying to be sort of like tongue-in-cheek

but it comes across as extraordinary like extremely uh condescending still to her yeah i mean it's not flattering for her no it gets worse it gets worse um but miss allison's call came at a time early in coveted restrictions when mr feld, then nearing 50, teaching remotely and spending much of his time alone at home, was questioning the basics of human connection. I love it when my midlife crisis gets a ride. I was not an optimistic. I was not at an optimistic point in my romantic life, he said. He remembered wondering, will anyone ever meet any human ever again wait what so like this guy suffers from some sort of solipsistic paranoia

yeah like don't yeah he like if i die in this plane crash the universe will also cease to exist you're right sounds like his wife got the friends that's exactly right like he his wife got all the friends it's like he applied his own specific situation to the entire nexus of human relations at large just amazing can i share something with y'all that i just uh came across on his wikipedia page this might shed some light on our previous query there, but in December 2019, Feldman, alongside some of his colleagues, was called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the constitutional grounds for the impeachment

of one President Donald John Trump. Mr. Feldman is quoted as saying, someday we will no longer be alive. Well, you know, that's how it goes. And we will go wherever it is we go the good place for the other place and we may meet there madison and hamilton feldman suggested they will ask us molly when the president of the united states acted to corrupt the structure of the republic what did you do and our answer to that question must be that we followed the guidance of the framers and it must be that if the evidence supports that conclusion

the house of representatives moves to impeach him okay that means all right this is fascinating this is fascinating to know okay why was he consulting the Congress on this? Before you go any further, why does he think that Madison and Hamilton will be in here? Let's start there. Carry on. I just love that he wrote the Iraq Constitution. Yeah, no. He's like, when you die. I just love that he wrote the Iraq Constitution. Yeah, no.

He's like, when you die, you know. You'll have to stand before just God, but also Hamilton Madison. This makes sense. And give account for your acts. Right, right. Because he was there fighting jihadists who believe when you die, you get 27 virgins in the afterlife. He believes in the afterlife you get Madison and Hamilton

and they all want some answers you'll get 27 framers good lord this makes so much this puts all this in so much more context now that he would be very self conscious about marrying her I think it all boils down to the fact that he's a

simp yeah yeah yeah i think you're right um the pair said they spoke every day for three months after that first call often for hours at a time mr feldman invited miss allison to maine where he owns a home it took some convincing miss allison was ambivalent about a bi-coastal romance and about the East Coast in general. Though she felt their chemistry was obvious, she was committed to California. Miss Allison had moved there after half a decade in the late 2000s, in which she became a recurring character in the New York gossip pages and was profiled by the Times as a kind of neo-Candace Bushnell, a dating columnist who people both loved and loved to hate. Is Candace Bushnell the one who created the calm that Sex and the City is based on?

I'm pretty sure it is. An attention economy savant, Ms. Allison was perhaps best known as a foil for Gawker, which obsessively and sneeringly covered her social life. In exchange, she gained a kind of toxic fame, both hyperlocal and completely global, thanks to the Internet, which was a harbinger of the culture to come. She was too early, said Taylor Lorenz, the Washington Post tech columnist and chronicler of social media influence. She predicted it all. Scarred by the experience miss allison had been living

mostly out of the spotlight ever since earlier in their phone calls she asked mr feldman not to google her it's not a representation of who i even was then let alone now she said but eventually somebody says don't google me they absolutely want you to google yeah yeah you're right like you would rather just not mention no don't oh yeah no don't if you're trying to obscure something you just don't bring it up period also though he had to have kind of known who she was because like you don't just take a call from a stranger at a hot spring in joshua tree if you're the felix frankfurter professor of law well terence here's the thing you don't understand is before he was a frankfurter he

was a bemis in 2007 feldman joined the harvard law school as the bemis professor of international law so he's graduated from bemis frankfurter that's with great with great uh you know uh wealth comes great responsibility that's true um but eventually she got on a plane at the portland airport from his car mr feldman caught sight of miss allison for the first time oh my god i saw julia dancing alone in a sundress on this tiny little triangle of grass in the middle of the airport he said it was a beautiful moving image of somebody who was sourcing joy entirely internally they spent five days together picking out produce at the farmer's market lying in the grass and as miss allison put it kissing on noah's boat i was completely magnetized by this man she said oh my god that that visual

image is really that's a little too manic pixie dream girl throwback for me it's pretty rough just dancing on the runway why was she on the runway what would that look like was she just standing there like how does she do it i don't know um still there wasn't nobody's watching yes she was dancing it says this literally in this paragraph still there was an there was an acculturation process particularly for mr feldman who is not really the dance like no one is watching type to begin with miss allison was immersed in a scene centered on burning man about which mr feldman knew nothing. Oh, my God.

This is the thing. A lot more of these constitutional law guys are getting more into Burning Man. Like, wasn't Neal Katyal at Burning Man? Yes. Like, who's out there? I guess I'm really enjoying what's going to result from the combination of Burning Man with constitutional law like one could say burning man is the center of american politics you i you could say that well before it was though i knew a guy named uh only by the name richardson he was only known by his last name and he built the rocket

that was on the muppets movie and he used to go every year. And that's the only I ever knew that was a Burning Man guy. He seems cool. If you have proximity to the Muppets, you're good. Many of Julia's friends have jobs I didn't know existed until I met her. Mr. Feldman said, one is a fire dancer. She also has a friend

named Purple. He only wears purple and his métier, his body work. Great. I would like to be purple. Yeah, I need to use the word métier in a sentence somehow. You could, Terrence, if you were a hyper polyglot fluent in English, Hebrew, Arabic, and French, of course. And also if you were conversational in Korean and had reading fluency in Greek, Latin, German, Arabic, and French, of course. And also if you were conversational and Korean

and had reading fluency in Greek, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, and Aramaic. It sounds to me like he's having fun already, but apparently, according to Miss Allison, he's learning how to have fun, but he's a fast learner. Miss Allison took Mr. Feldman on several pilgrimages, acid tests, really really to make sure he could loosen up first the pair went to the indonesian island of bali where miss allison

lived spiritual home it's her spiritual home where she lived for a year from 2017 to 18 doing what she referred to as a yoga and meditation sabbatical in which she said she said she paid for with earnings from her investments in cryptocurrency. OK, this this this like really is not this is insane. Mr. Feldman was familiar with the island in part through the work of the anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who wrote about the social dynamics at play in Balinese cockfighting. Honest pension could never you're right this is like we are in pension territory like constitutional law professors learning about cockfighting and hey well this is the first venn dagger this is the first time i felt like you may

maybe me and this guy could kick it now, though. Only on this one topic, cockfighting. Right. He began to feel pleasantly removed from the rigidly intellectual culture of Cambridge mass. And maybe as far away as you can go from Boston, he said. Next, in the fall of 2022, came the final exam, Burning Man, the week-long event where tens of thousands of people gathered to camp and revel in the Nevada desert. I really wish his first Burning Man experience would have been 2023.

Yeah, like I said, deal with like shrimp hatching in his sleeping bag. To say Noah was having trepidation about burning man would be a major understatement miss allison said he understood it was a requirement if you're going to be with me you have to go to burning man there okay that's for like you can't crawl you have to what do you think about that red line right what do you think about that as a red line it's pretty admirable right it's like these are my non-negotiables she knows how to set boundaries yeah when they are important oh my god what would you do what would you do if you had met somebody that was perfect for you but they said hey there's only one thing you have to do and that is go to

burning man annually this is what we got the law professor had agreed to emcee some events for Miss Allison's camp, which she described as a quote, matriarchy. One session featured a woman in a large headdress leading the audience in a mind-body therapy that involved rapidly tapping certain points on the body. As Miss Allison entered the

tent, she saw Mr. Feldman in front of the crowd tapping himself and repeating the mantra I love and accept myself unconditionally. She said it was the best moment of her life. She said she like, OK, still for all the changes Mr. Feldman made, it was Miss Allison who agreed to pull up stakes. She moved to Cambridge and last month she began a master's program at Harvard Kennedy School. She said she hoped to work on issues that matter to her. Environmental justice, gender issues, and animal rights.

Because of her course load, she missed Burning Man. Famously, the things you go to the Harvard Kennedy School for. And not to say pacify much of Southeast Asia. She has moved into Mr. Feldman's 5 000 square foot mansard route home which she has with her fiance fiance's intermittently enthusiastic participation redecorated it was a sad beige house for a sad beige bachelor she says a sad beige man this is insane she her changes include whimsical pink wallpaper with a pattern of monkeys and leopards, thick velvet drapes, Balinese statuary, antique chandeliers,

and a formidably deep blue velvet couch in the living room. I don't know. My association with blue velvet is such bad vibes. It has the lynching qualities that's like i'm just kind of i'm kind of like as much as we have been like sort of side-eyeing this it is like kind of worrisome that she like moved across the country and then gave up her favorite thing within a year and then completely dropped everything to go to his school. It's given controlling.

He must be a little controlling. That is the kind of fascinating thing about this article. It's very obvious that they will be divorced within... Well, listen, Molly, I hate to rebuff what you're saying here, but how many hyperpolyglots are still around these days? Thomas Jefferson is not walking through that door anytime soon. That's true. Who doesn't want a man that can read Aramaic, you know?

Right. When you put it that way. She knows. Right. He's in high demand is basically what you're saying well he was single for 11 years that is pretty wild how are you a hyper polyglot and you're single like if you're a hyper polyglot you're having this conversational aramaic talk like if you're a hyper polyglot that opens up so many other dating pools to you because you can talk to so many other people in different languages.

Yes. Not just limited to English. No. I'm going to be honest. That's a red flag. It's a red flag. You're right. It is giving and controlling.

This is not good. We got to get her out. You're a hot commodity in at least 11 nations. Let her dance in the airport, King. I don't think I recommend it for safety issues but imagine yeah you're taking off and your pilot's like if you'll look out the left wing you will see our resident uh free spirit Now, Miss Allison calls the house the Bohemian Embassy, and she sends guests a mission statement ahead of time. Our home is more than dwelling, the message reads. It is a confluence of diverse minds and spirits, a space of exploration and enlightenment. Miss Allison hopes to turn the house into a place where the free-spirited sensibility of Burning Man can mix with the cerebral culture of Cambridge.

I love that. I fucking love that shit. Because it will, over time, he knows what he's doing here. He's playing with fire. He really is degrading the prestige and honor of Harvard by associating it with Burning Man. I love that. That's great. He's like, what if all my friends who study like deeply for a decade were friends with people named Purple?

That would fix everything. It's like. Read that last line again, Terrence. Miss Allison hopes to turn the house into a place where the free-spirited sensibility of Burning Man can mix with the cerebral culture of Cambridge. You know, she kind of reminds me of this guy my buddy

went to an MFA program with named Trip. And he just wrote a lot about his experiences at Bonnaroo. Like through the program. Like some people are very touched by festival culture they like it you know what I mean it like really gets in them in a very visceral way and I think I think that's what we have with the future Mrs. Feldman on their hands that's the thing like we we've got Harvard law professors perhaps taking ayahuasca and like this

is gonna yeah that's illegal it's like with the acid trips and it's in the new york times i'm like uh hello my friend lost the ability to vote he was in jail because he had like two times of acid on him this is like some rap snitches type shit like you dog you you're you're snitching on yourself and he's like getting pulled into the office and reprimanded by his new lifestyle and they're like what do you think this is son stanford well you're acting like this is stanford in the 70s 60s rather okay we're closing in on the end here we've got a quote from cory booker cory booker says noah is a sharp edge that needs to be softened he is a square that needs

to be rounded the two have been close since they were road scholars together at the university of oxford this woman is a gift to him a guy who has been walking a narrow pathway toward extraordinary success all his life cory booker continued and she was on the side of the road in this wondrous field filled with wildflowers and she got him off the path to dance. I was like, I can only imagine how cringe and awful this wedding would be. And I'm just

reading this. Imagine having to experience this article in real life. That's what their wedding would be like. I too would break the constitutional law to take drugs. Yeah. I mean, it could be fun, though, maybe. On a recent humid August evening, the couple hosted a Shabbat dinner to put those hopes into practice. Mr. Feldman, who is working on a book about the nature of contemporary Judaism,

grew up more modern Orthodox. Miss Allison said that she planned to join judy's wait wait the good place or the bad place he's jewish he is he is jewish he's um he grew up orthodox uh but it doesn't say what he is now maybe he's reformed i love that uh she plans to join judaism though like honestly like yeah like it's uh yeah i plan to join the kiwanis or the hell doesn't exist in the conception of judaism right so i'm going back to the madison hamilton thing for a second you're right you're right what you're right That's why they're not in hell, Molly, because they went to heaven. But he said the bad place in his speech. Like, he referenced it.

You are right. Like, we will go to the bad place if we don't vote for impeachment. What the fuck are you talking about? You're right. What are you talking about? The guest list featured friends of Ms. Allison's, among them a professional intimacy coach, The guest list featured friends of Ms. Allison's, among them a professional intimacy coach, an entrepreneur who built a high-tech chair for meditation, and a professional relationship coach,

as well as two friends of Mr. Feldman's, a physicist and a sociologist. After a dinner of plant-grilled salmon prepared by Mr. Feldman and several glasses, I don't even know how to say this, we say, I have no idea what the fuck that is hey palace and keep it clean i'm gonna kids watching the show the group retired to the living room mr feldman wearing a rakishly oh my god a rakishly unbuttoned pink oxford shirt reclined on the sofa where the meditation chair entrepreneur draped her legs across his lap honestly you're right there's pinching vibes but there's also some strong delilo vibes here i'm feeling a little james salter too a little sport in the past time novels are living the rakishly unbuttoned pink oxford is straight out of james salter you're right

yeah um miss allison's burning man friends place a premium on physical touch and soft surfaces a phenomenon they refer to as bringing the squish this is fucking real i i guess ah um miss allison set on her heels on the floor in front of them her full-length pink floral dress gathered around her. Topics of conversation include the potential for MDMA to treat trauma, the 19th century German sociologist Max Weber, and the nature of love. Stariel Hope, the intimacy coach,

said that at first she had been skeptical about the match. That's, okay, we're back to Pynchon. That's okay. We're back to pension. That's a pension name. To me, they were so different. She said, he is a man who is part of a hierarchical system, and she is a woman who is sinking in unconventional life and balmy climates. Miss Allison laughed. These two worlds could do so much together, she said.

The physicist reclining in an oxblood Eames lounge chair offered that the hippies had saved physics to murmurs of ascent as the evening progressed. He performed sleight of hand this summer. Mr. Feldman and Miss Allison went on a four country trip to Europe to sprout wedding locations. But the couple hasn't yet set a date. Miss Allison said that she was simply too busy with school to properly focus on the wedding she envisions. I have to plan an event worthy of waiting until 42 to get married, she said.

There you go. That's true love. That's what love looks like, guys. I hope that by reading this, we've informed our audience of what love looks like so that they too know what it is when they find it this needs to be this episode time needs to be like one of those reddit posts where it's

like uh surf bum hippie gf 42 uh hyper polyglot law professor bf 53 i am um i'm honestly like, look, y'all ain't giving good press to the whole coastal elites thing. They're not helping themselves here. I'm like, this is why people hate you. Yeah. Bringing the squish. That's crazy. Bringing the squish to love. Oh, man. squish that's crazy bringing the squish to love oh man well um i think that about covers the gang um i am yeah i i'm way more disturbed after reading that than i thought like when i was

reading it alone i was like this is funny and interesting but having it after reading it yeah out loud something about it yeah no i feel sort of like disassociated or something i'm gonna go take a shower yeah yeah go uh disinfect um so uh so thanks for listening everybody um we just want to go encourage you all to please go check out Molly's book, Jonathan Abernathy, You Are Kind. Also, Molly, you're on Twitter. How can people find you? I'm the dying machine that is X. It's just my name, Molly McGee.

But also, I'm on Blue Skies. I was going to say, plug Blue Skies. Well, I'm not on there yet. Whatever. I don't know. The whole thing depresses me there's nothing quite like having a book coming out right at the death of twitter oh man that's why we've got podcasts you're all gonna have to buy we have podcasts

um so please go buy molly's book or like i said earlier pre-order it and then after october 17th you can buy it. Or even go to your library and request it. They might be able to get it a little early. Oh yeah, that'd be great. Okay. Check out Molly's next book, Terrence Ray, You Are a Bastard.

We'll start writing now. Yeah, for introducing me to two of the most deranged individuals on the coasts um all right uh well tune in maybe we'll have you back next time east coast meets west coasts and you know combines in a collision of wishing love okay thanks. Thanks for listening, everybody. Please go check us out on Patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com slash Trillbilly Workers Party. You can support us over there.

We very much appreciate your support. And until next time, we'll see you later. Thank you.