WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 726 - Chuck Klosterman

Episode Date: July 21, 2016

Writer Chuck Klosterman is always thinking. That's a good thing because his latest book is called "What If We're Wrong?" and you don't want someone who doesn't think raising that question. Marc and Chuck break down the ideas in the book by going all the way back to Chuck's childhood and leading up to present day to find out if things are better or worse now. Their conclusions are not as bleak as you might think. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. It's a night for the whole family. Be a part of Kids Night when the Toronto Rock take on the Colorado Mammoth

at a special 5 p.m. start time on Saturday, March 9th at First Ontario Centre in Hamilton. The first 5,000 fans in attendance will get a Dan Dawson bobblehead courtesy of Backley Construction. Punch your ticket to Kids Night on Saturday, March 9th at 5 p.m. in Rock City at torontorock.com. all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucking delics what the fuckericans what the fucksikins what's happening i'm mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to the show thanks for being here i'm happy to be in your head. I'm very sad to say that a recent guest on the show,

Mr. Gary Marshall, one of the great creators in television and in movies, passed away day before yesterday. I'm not sure how. I got word. We just had a conversation, it feels like, in here. It was only a few months ago, and we posted it a couple months ago. It's still up there. What a sweet guy. He was not young, but still, you feel like people are going to live to 100 these days. Some people do, but it's very sad. It's sad that I had this conversation with him just sitting right over there.

This happened a few times in here. I think I had one of the last conversations with Lemmy as well and i knew he wasn't long and i don't think i knew that about gary but they it's just sad now he's he's not here but he did left he left a lot of stuff and he made uh he made a lot of our childhoods somewhat bearable i i i remember happy days when i was very young. And, hey, come on. Right? The Fonz, man. Anyways, rest in peace, Gary Marshall. My heart goes out to everybody who knew him.

Friends and family, I'm sorry for your loss. He was a great guy. And an important guy. Game changer. So, it's sad. But it also makes me think about my own mortality more than i usually do i don't think about it a lot do you guys think about a lot like i don't think about dying except when i go to sleep at night

really like i'm not hung up on it but i do wonder like after i eat barbecue or something like that did i just take some years off my life? Is tonight the night that the heart stops ticking? Could it please happen in the night? And then I think about that moment, like when it happens, then what happens? Then I picture me just laying there, but not knowing it. Somebody having to deal with that, with the me laying there. That's when I think about it. It's my way of getting some shut eye. I've actually gotten to the point where I panic so much where I'm just sort of like, I don't think I can go to sleep because I'm not feeling great about this one, about this particular sleep.

Not feeling great about it. Don't know if I'm going to make it through this sleep. I don't know why I choose to do it then. Sometimes lately I've been thinking about my time my time like i i mean i waste a lot of time and i dick around a lot i guess but at some point you have to think like well this is the life i choose to live it's not a waste of time if i'm engaged in it and i'm enjoying it right but it seems that like what starts to happen like with music and with movies and with what i watch or what i read i have this this um system of judgment like this better be

fucking great because i don't know how long i'm gonna live like okay here's a big book i'm gonna read this book but i don't know if i'm gonna read this book i mean how much time do i got i'd like to listen to all these records but some of them just by the cover of but i don't know if i'm going to read this book i mean how much time do i got i'd like to listen to all these records but some of them just by the cover this i don't know if this is going to be good maybe i can just uh listen to a couple songs because i could die in the middle of one of those songs i actually have those fucked up thoughts like i got into an argument with sarah like a couple weeks ago where we're just like looking on netflix doing that thing and going through my movies like i always seem to want to watch a movie i've seen before that's great if she hasn't seen it but she doesn't like violence but that's not the issue the issue was

she's able to just sort of watch garbage and contextualize it i seem to think that it's like you know like cancer could be eating me now from the inside. And now you're going to make me watch two episodes of what? We're going to sit and watch that and just pretend like that time is not precious. I would rather sit there stewing about what we may or may not watch than waste for an hour. Than waste an hour and a half watching something that is just garbage does nothing but then like if i get involved and i start watching the garbage i'm like it's not that bad i guess there's some positive things to it and then i learn a lesson it's like maybe don't be so quick to judge maybe you should just relax a little bit all right like i just i don't know how

much time i have left like i got a tweet the other day i should interview trey anastasio is that how you say his last name from fish people are like you got to get into fish i'm like i don't know i don't have that kind of time anymore those days are behind me i got no room i got no room in my heart or my mind for another jam band i just don't it's no disrespect i guess i could listen to a couple records but i feel like fish people they want you to they think like you just get a taste you're gonna go down the rabbit hole i i don't know if i live that long i'm not sick i'm doing okay i'll probably live a long life but i don't think it's be long enough for me to really wrap my brain around the fish experience maybe i'm wrong all right that's that's enough on that topic, I think. Okay. That's that. Did I mention my guest today is Chuck Klosterman. Got a new book out called, But What If We're Wrong, that I read the

entire thing. So I was loaded up. Most of the time, it's not good. Most of the time, it's better off I don't read anything or know what I'm getting into because then you end up a little interview tip, if that's what you call what I do. I call it talking, but you don't want to know the answers to what you're asking questions of. Which is, I think, a wrong approach. Some people think you should basically know the answer. I think, I don't know. I don't study anything.

But I'm better off if I just get a sense and then they can answer the question. Because if I know everything or if I've read the book, then I'm like, remember that time in the book you did the thing? In the book you said. But like, what I noticed about the book, yeah, I don't love doing that. But it happens. Chuck closed for me, though. And I like the book. And but like what i noticed about the book yeah i don't love doing that but it happens chuck closed for me though and i like the book and it didn't matter that's happening do i have to plug anything for me the things that i need you to know about things that i'm doing like you can go to wtfpod.com and check out the the tour schedule because i added dates check out the tour schedule because I added dates.

Yes, there are pre-sales that you can indulge in. On September 24th, I'll be in Boston, Massachusetts at the Wilbur Theater. And the pre-sale started yesterday, but it goes until like midnight tonight. The password is Boston. Again, another one, New Haven, Connecticut on the 25th of September. Pre-sale until 10 o'clock tonight, Thursday.

Password WTF. That's TicketFly.com. Nashville, Tennessee at the James K. Polk Theater. I will be there on the 19th of November. The presale started yesterday, but it goes until tonight at 10 p.m. The password is WTF. You can go to WTFpod.com slash tour for that stuff. All right?

Chuck Klosterman, whose name I've mispronounced on and off for years, has a new book out called But What If We're Wrong? It's available now wherever you get books. And now I'm going to talk to Chuck. This is the third time I've talked to Chuck. One of those times was at a live event in Brooklyn, and it was a fucking nightmare. It was outdoors in an amphitheater,

and it was very poorly attended, and we felt like we were just floating there on this amphitheater stage, me and four or five other people talking to an audience of a few drunk people and some other people that weren't clear what they were watching it was a mistake and it was never released in the can forever then there was another time chuck was on a live one and we had a nice conversation but this was nice we talked a lot about the book about about thinky stuff. He's a thinky guy. And here we go.

Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising.

Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Death is in our air. To be continued... When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun. A new original series streaming February 27th exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. Go.

I read the whole book because it seemed like you meant business. You're like, I mean, I've read your books before, but I'm like, this one seems like you started and you're like, well, this is what I'm going to set out. I'm proving I'm going to try to prove this point or explore this idea. They explore a lot of ideas. But about by about two thirds of the way through the book, I thought to myself, this is kind of almost a midlife crisis book, in a way. Really?

Well, we'll see. I don't think so. No, I mean, how old are you? 44. All right. So I'm 52. It just seems that at some point, we reckon with a lot of like, why is shit the way it is?

And is it going to change? And is anything I'm doing important? You see, I feel like that happened to me earlier what age i feel like the killing yourself to live book is like that uh-huh i mean existed you know but you're not the first person who's mentioned this that they like a lot of are we taping now yeah sure talking okay um a lot of people they ask they think that this book is book either must be optimistic or pessimistic, because it's about the future, right? It's either like you're optimistic about the fact that reality could be unknown, or you're pessimistic because it's hopeless to know.

It's like you're almost giving up on the ability of understanding what's going on. I don't feel like, it seems like a neutral charge to me. I didn't feel that it was optimistic or pessimistic, and I felt a neutral charge to me. Yeah, I didn't feel that it was optimistic or pessimistic and I felt a neutral charge but like at some points I was sort of like, well, you know, I was laughing and the footnotes themselves

feel like they should have been a book. Like you should release another book of just the footnotes because they're hilarious. Some people hate those though. Really?

Well, they just think it's work. It's just added work and they're like, why don't you just put it into the text but it doesn't seem right that way. No, but they sort of serve as another exploration and sort of sometimes a funny punctuation of things. You know, the placement of the footnote in reaction to whatever was written.

Sometimes it's sort of like, oh, that's funny that he decided to put that in. And some of them are clearly jokes. Yeah. Well, no, I mean, I'm glad you think that. But I just know that sometimes I always wonder, should I jam them in? But then it seems like sometimes they kind of contradict the tone of the book but well you explore all these different things that you know the premise that sets out the beginning is you know how do we know what's going to be what's going to remain or what's going to be important in the future right i mean is that

the premise yeah yeah and and then you sort of go through all these different areas of uh of space of music of sports of uh of uh you know technology and and you sort of like you meld them all together and you know i don't want to spoil the end of the book but it seems that you know you you come full not full circle but you land at today and and you seem okay with that oh it don't seem like if you read this in a day part of me thinks like this was a rough morning for chuck i you know i i guess it's okay if that's how it seems it didn't feel that way when i wrote it i just this was what was sort of interesting to me now. I mean, because the overall premise, everyone agrees with. If you say to somebody, it's like, you know, if I said to you, hey, do you think in, you know, 100 years that we're

going to perceive presidents differently and that we'll rank the presidents differently and somebody who we currently think is a great president won't be thought of that way then. Everybody goes like, oh, of course. We are. We're always reshuffling. Right. But then you say like, okay, it's going to be Lincoln. Yeah.

And they're like, they just freak out. It's like everyone in the abstract sort of accepts this. But as soon as you start talking about specific ideas that we might be wrong about, people are very uncomfortable with that because they need to feel like a degree of certitude about specifics, even if they can accept in a general sense that they might know nothing. I guess I don't come from that breed or I don't talk to those people or have those conversations because I just assume that there's a lot of things I don't know.

There's a lot of history I don't know. There's a lot of ideas. And you cover this in the book. Like, what do we really know? And how do we really know it? And how are our brains programmed and wired? And what's underneath all of that? Which is, you know, terror.

But you strike me as pretty confident, though, in your opinions about this. I mean, I wouldn't say that you're walking around absolutely certain about everything you say. But I feel as though when you express ideas, I get the sense that you're walking around absolutely certain about everything you say but it's i feel as though when you express ideas i get the sense that uh that you feel like well i've kind of rationally considered this and now i feel safe having this opinion because i don't feel safe with my opinions yeah and i mean like you don't in general oh no less the more i i get older i mean when i was in college i felt like i was very intellectually confident.

I wouldn't say I am now. I think that I was in college and in a lot of my life, I was sort of, I felt like I was sort of an intellectual fraud. And once I started to say things like, yeah, I don't fucking know anything about that. Like the more I say, I don't know the better off I am. And then I can see like my opinions are mine and you know, the world that I travel in and what I think about, uh, uh is is pretty specific but it's not trivia or or history or i don't i don't sit around and and really worry about space that much i mean like well how do you feel then about like the period when you were there america yeah because there was a real emphasis on kind of being a polemicist very very it was very specific to me is that you know when i entered that situation to talk about politics i felt like um

like i felt naive i felt like i didn't know enough i actually showed up at the offices of air america with a uh democracy for dummies i was not a wonk i was not really that familiar uh of the nuances or the the way that american government worked on a day-to-day basis i just knew that i was angry. And if I had some direction with it, I could make an impact. I was a pretty... Did you try to overcompensate with force of personality? Well, I just was a reactionary. I knew what didn't sit right with me.

I didn't exactly know why. And the more I learned, which it was an incredible civics lesson for me, more than anything else, about how the American system works specifically and how government works and who the players were and what was really at stake and what was really being done, which I entered that world not really knowing. And the more I learned, the more I realized it was very hard to have political ideas that were your own. It was very hard not to carry water for a team or a side. Most of what you were saying was being generated as talking points by who, who knows. But there was definitely a momentum that you were part of.

And I became disillusioned with it. And I realized that I'm not that interested in it. I obviously care about progressive causes, but I don't know if this is my fight to fight. I seem to be a little more neurotic and a little more aggravated at a deeper level that seems to be worthy of exploration let someone else handle this i mean the key thing there you said is like you don't it's hard to have political opinions that are your own i think that is very true i think it's it took me a long time to accept that i can't really control what i think

that i guess i used to always assume that that was the one thing that I did have agency over, that I could control what I think. Oh, it's weird. And now I realize that. And I think that is kind of the starting point to any kind of authentically sort of interesting thoughts is first accepting that the way you think about things is almost built into you

and then kind of shaped by society and by the people you surround yourself with. And then you just, once you kind of realize that you're trapped in this position, then the whole idea is getting out of the trap. Well, it's sort of like at that moment where you realize that your brain is sort of a recording device and that there's an emotional board in there that's laid down pretty early but the rest of it is is just you know what's resonating with you and what has impacted you in any sort of given moment and what fits philosophically for you at any given point in time and as you make it pretty clear in this book it's all fed to you from somewhere but you

record it well yeah but it's the emotional aspect that fucks up the recording. I know. Thank God. That's why people just can't remember things that actually happened to them. And the way that they sort of perceive everything is through this kind of false memory that is, like, the superstructure is the intellectual part that remembers the event. is like the superstructure is the intellectual part that remembers the event. And then the emotions make it all different. And then they can actually have a conversation where they really believe what they're talking about happened.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you did a lot of research for this book. That's a whole area of the book where you sort of talk about how the brain thinks in terms of story and thinks in terms of narrative. So, like, when you set out to do this, it seems that, you know, your insistence that it's not a book of essays, which it isn't, but your research took you a lot of different directions that didn't necessarily seem to completely coincide with the idea of the book

more than it just coincided with, you know, you were interested in stripping it all down to figure out what is, you know, what does humanity expect? Yeah, well, I mean, the titles get confusing. You know, the title of the book is The End, but what if we're wrong? So then some people assume it's just going to be a litany of things we're wrong about, and that's not really what the book is.

And then the subtitle is thinking about the present as if it were the past. That's closer to what is in the book, but not totally. Right. It's, I mean, I guess there isn't like, I'm kind of lucky about this, that when I write these books, that I don't necessarily have to stay on a specific trajectory. There seems to be no expectation that I will do that. Right. Like, no one has ever complained that my books are not straightforward enough ever.

So, I guess it just doesn't matter if they're not. But when did you where you grew up like what what size city was it you grew up in where fargo or no outside it was a town called winemere which is like 500 people and i was lived five miles outside of that so i was on a farm outside of a town called winemere north dakota so it's 65 miles south of fargo like a functioning farm yeah your your family were farmers? Yes. What kind of farmers?

Well, when I was a real little guy, we had dairy cattle and sort of raised grain and row crops and everything. Then we had beef cattle for a while. My dad had a stroke when I was like 10 or 11. My brother took over the farm. I'm the seventh kid in my family. You're 70? Yeah.

So my oldest sister's 18 years older than me. My brother is 17 years older. And you're the youngest? Yeah. But he took over the farm. And now the farm is almost exclusively like corn and beans. Like it has sort of evolved from- How many acres?

Well, okay. A lot of the land, some of the land we rent, we live on, I mean, I can't even give you the exact number. I'm not even sure myself. Right. It's not big though. Right. Because we, when I was young, it seemed like most of the land that we farmed was rented.

Yeah. So we had like the plot of land we lived on, which was like a quarter section. Yeah. Where the farm and everything was. Right. We had a pasture too. Right. So you can count that.

Yeah. Where the animals just hung out yeah they just hung out there good life for a cow you know yeah but when your dad when your dad raised beef cows you just he just sell them off and they were butchered and dealt with elsewhere right yeah you would sell like the calves every you know when they came so you breed them primarily yeah you'd have like you'd have like two bulls and a whole bunch of cows. So it was a very good life for the bulls. Yeah.

And when you did dairy, was there milking on premises? Yeah. Oh, yeah. But I mean, I was too little for that. I feel like we sold those cows, those Holstein cows, when I was like four. One of my earliest memories is the selling. Because when you're a little kid, you love the animals, you know? Yeah.

And I was really bummed out by this. Yeah. Yeah, but I mean, like, growing up, my mom and dad and the other brothers and sisters, you know, they would milk twice every day. Yeah. It seemed like a terrible life. I mean, I never would have wanted that life, to be honest. It's just, I can't believe they did it, kind of, but, you know?

But that was your childhood. It was. Oh, no, it was a great childhood. Right. And it was a great, I you know. But that was your childhood. It was. Oh, no, it was a great childhood. And it was a great, I'm not saying that their life is terrible. I'm saying for me. Yeah. I just, I wasn't that kind of guy. I mean, I liked, I didn't, I mean, I was terrible at farming.

And the whole time I grew up, I was always sort of very ashamed about this. Because even like my friends at school yeah like there's 23 kids in my class was it like a classic red schoolhouse kind of situation or you know no it was a classic big brick school right yeah i mean you know so there's like 80 kids in the high school yeah but most of my friends uh from the almost the inception of my memory of them intended to be farmers as well right and they would all, you know, and they, so they were always talking about like, people were always arguing about like,

about like, international versus John Deere tractors. And like Chevy versus Ford. These were just constant arguments, you know, that I had almost no like input on. I mean, I guess I could have the conversation just because I could talk, but I didn't have any investment in it yeah you didn't you weren't a chevy guy well we were a

chevy family so i guess i adopted that idea but i mean like in retro i i didn't know why i didn't know i don't know anything about engines and stuff like that i mean i'm terrible about that like my brothers my two older brothers they can like fix or do anything. Like they're almost part of the generation that doesn't exist anymore where it's like if something breaks, the first reaction is to fix it. That is never my first reaction. Like I just, I've never fixed anything. But that's sort of interesting in relation to this book because that's sort of what we're talking about, about your own thoughts. It's like that early where you're like, well, we're Chevy family. Like it's just a given.

Yeah, well, I, and then it just was. It was just, I, you know, I had no. I'm sure you defended the truck. I'm sure I did. I'm sure I did. As you entered, you know, puberty and junior high and stuff, when you started to sort of realize, you know, who you were and what you wanted to do,

or at least what your interests were, what was going on on the farm? Well, it was the 80s, so all I remember hearing about is how we were going to go bankrupt. Because there was a terrible drought, the economy was terrible. I mean, all that John Mellencamp, blood on the scarecrow stuff, that felt very real to me when I heard that. I don't ever remember conversations about the farm that were in any way like things are going great.

Right. It was like either it's never raining or the prices are terrible. It was only bad. I mean, I still, for the rest of my life, anytime it looks like it's going to rain, I feel happy because I just, it's so ingrained in me to feel good when that happens. So I just, I just remember farming seeming like just like an extremely hard job that you had no control over whatsoever. You couldn't control the prices and you couldn't control the weather. And it was always hard. That's how I viewed the life of a farmer. Is that when you sort of took solace and uh you know you talk at length it

really in one section of the book about about sports and about statistics and about numbers is that when you started to sort of find some peace of mind in that stuff i just liked being inside yeah i liked being inside and you know i liked reading i liked listening to the radio and listening to sets i liked we had a Quonset. Quonset's a big metal building with a concrete floor. That's where the basketball hoop was, so I spent a lot of time in there just listening to cassettes, playing basketball. That's what I remember about what it was like. And if you wanted to hang out with friends, would you have the truck?

Well, kids really start. I mean, I used to drive around when you're like 12 yeah yeah uh so we but it was a town of 500 people right so there's there's nothing i mean there's there was three bars and like a tasty freeze and a gas station there wasn't a grocery store that had already closed and stuff so we would just drive around i mean you just drive oh yeah yeah right and and you know and there was one cop and the whole goal was to make the cop chase you when you weren't drinking like if the cop if you could get the cop to stop you when you weren't drinking that was a huge win

because it's like you wasted his time yeah yeah that was that was rebelling in your neck of the woods. Yeah. They called the cop Pumpkinhead. Yeah. He had a big head. But I can't, now that I try to remember him, I can't actually remember what he looked like. So in my mind, it's just like the silhouette of his huge head in this cop car. Yeah. So I think that some of the stuff you talk about is stuff i i think about a lot and maybe we can focus on some of that because i think it's interesting because you know i'm a

little older than you but you there is something about you know the shift from not so much radio to television but a television universe that was you know even when you were young uh intimate that there was you know a limited number you were young, intimate, that there was, you know, a limited number of stations. It was finite. There were three networks. Maybe MTV was around by the time. No, I never saw MTV until 1990. But there was something about the feeling of the unity of information, even if it was misinformation as a country and as other people, we're all kind of on the same page. information, as a country and as other people, we're all kind of on the same page.

Well, yeah. The shared experience of that. Because, you know, now we talk about popular TV shows. There is no television show as popular as any random episode of Laverne and Shirley. Right. There isn't. I mean, it's not even, mathematically, it's not even close, you know? Right.

And also, there's networks now or TV shows where people, it happens to to me all the time out here where they ask me if I've seen the show not only do I not know the show but I don't even know how to I don't even know what the fuck what's it on

yeah well it's you're not the only person who feels that way and then there's all these shows that are constantly discussed sort of

by the critical community of television that are being seen by you know 780,000 people in the country so there's this you know well you know and is, I think the first time

I met you was when you interviewed me when Michael Jackson had died. Right. And I think we might've talked about it then, but it's very true now. It's very clear to me that by sort of splitting up television so that there's just no kind of monoculture, nothing is shared, that we now need these celebrity deaths to have shared experiences. That's the only way that people can know it's like we're all having the same kind of emotional exchange at the same time.

Or even more darkly, you know, terrorist events. Well, yeah, I guess. I guess. That's true. Although that's a little different, too, because those events immediately get politicized. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas like when Prince dies or like when David Bowie dies

or whatever, Lemmy dies, it just sort of gives people this ability. It's like, well, you can just sort of openly emote about this. You don't even have to necessarily have had this thought for 15 years. Right, but not only can you openly emote because of social networking plans,

platforms, you can emote and make it about you. And also, you know, try to, to construct a proper eulogy in 140 characters that will be somewhat celebrated and recognized by other people. And it's strange.

Even the people who do that would say they hate it. Of course. Like no one is saying like, ah, finally everyone says it's terrible, including the people who seem to do it every time it happens. But aren't you finding now, because, again, our age is not that different, that you're starting to realize that these people that were mythic to us were mortals, and even as

grown people. I'm dealing with this every day. I mean, I had Neil Young sitting there. I've had David Crosby sitting there. I've talked to Keith Richards. I've talked to Nick Lowe. I've talked to a lot of... I talked to Lemmy, probably've talked to Nick Lowe. I've talked to a lot of, I've talked to Lemmy, you know, probably the last interview before

he died. And one thing I'm realizing by having these conversations is that, that everyone is very painfully human. And, and, and that's great. That, that's the best thing that can happen in here is that I realized that, you know, it's a human being that, that with struggles and, and a life and a history, but, you know, as a kid, you, you a kid you you don't i don't you know the the fact that keith richards might live forever was like a very real possibility

in some weird fucking way that you just never expect these guys to die and when they do die like when people said you know bowie's dead when he died i mean i had to sit there and go like when was the last fucking time i bought a Bowie record? And the truth is, it's probably been since Scary Monsters. And he's done a dozen since then, probably. It's not that I love him any less. But just knowing he was still around was somehow comforting. That we're seeing a generation of people that we fucking look up to, that they're going to die, man.

Well, it's kind of like the thing we were talking about before, the abstract against the specific. Everyone, of course, knows, well, all people are going to die, man. Well, it's kind of like the thing we were talking about before, the abstract against the specific. Everyone, of course, knows, well, all people are going to die. But then when Prince died, you would see things, people saying things like, I can't believe someone who made all these great records is gone. As if, like, why would that make someone unkillable? Immortal. It's like, yeah, it's the specific person.

It's that they just can't imagine like this, like Keith Richards, you say, that'll be an interesting one when he dies because the idea of his death has really existed in the culture since like undercover people have talked about, you know? So it's like the ID, people have been discussing his death longer, I think almost than anyone I can think of even longer than Dylan or something.

So when it happens, it will be a very jarring one. Maybe that will be, maybe that's, you know, like when people start accepting celebrity death. Like his death will be like, well, okay, now we must learn and just kind of take for granted. Because now also there's so many more famous people now than there used to be. It's going to be people dying like this every month from now on. I mean, there's just a greater number of celebrities than there was in the 70s right but when we were kids these celebrities

because there were a few and again the intimacy of it they were you know they were a mythic character they were huge people to us they were giants and that generation are the ones that are going now i guess you but this might be one area where the little difference in our age plays a role in this. Because, you know, like the band, music, for example. The bands I really got into were bands like Motley Crue and Rat and Guns N' Roses and these things. I think it was a little different for people who were into bands like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin and stuff. Because they were more mysterious. They seemed more outside of the world.

But, I mean, I feel at a very young age, like sixth, seventh grade, I was obsessed with these bands, but I still perceive them as being like, this is some extension of something that had come before them. Like, you know, like Motley Crue wants to be like Kiss. I know this or whatever. You know, it's like it's not. So they already seem closer to conventional entertainment than I think it did for people who were into that. That's probably right because I came to it late.

By the time I was taking this stuff in in junior high or maybe a little, like it was a bad time because it was the mid 70s. You know, AM music was still very popular. Disco was happening. And those bands, you know, I remember when In Through the Outdoor came out. That might have been the only album that Zeppelin put out that I was actually grown up enough to realize that a Zeppelin record had come out. All the other stuff had been done already. Like that weird period in the mid 70s through disco before punk really took hold, we were just dealing with the sort of like undertow of the 60s and early 70s. Like it was all done.

It was all old shit. Yeah. By the time, you know, that. Well, I mean, it's just the whole thing with age is weird that way. I mean, like in the middle 80s. Yeah. Like Black Sabbath seemed very old. Right.

They'd seen the same amount of old now. Right. Somehow. Like even though more time has moved on. But it's just that there was just this belief. I mean, you can find it just talking about the Rolling Stones. You can find interviews where they're like talking about T-Rex in 1972 or whatever. And people are like, are you still in this game or are you going to give

it up to people like mark bolin or whatever and they're like oh well i know we're too old to be doing this but we're just like they were talking about being too old in 1972 right i i don't know i think it's hard to deal with you to to sort of parse the press or what because you know they like i'm i'm not i'm just discovering shit now. I mean, honestly, I just, I was not a Sabbath kid, you know, and I just really got into Sabbath or really assessing who they were and what they did and liking their music literally three years ago. So like three years ago, uh, Sabbath four was a new record to me and I'm excited about that.

That's one of the benefits of this, uh, of this benefits of this history all the time as opposed to linear. Well, tell me this. Yeah. What's the farthest back year to you that still feels recent? Like 19 what? What year would you say that if you heard something happened in 19 whatever, it would be like, that doesn't seem that long ago to me. Well, I mean, when I was at Air America 2004, I can see myself there. 2004-ish.

Or like 9-11 seems a long time to you, Beck. That seems very much the past to you. It doesn't seem like a recent event in your mind. I don't know. It kind of does. I think it feels like a recent event. Yeah, it does. I feel like many, many things from the 90s still seem like very recent events to me.

It makes me very tentative about sort of talking or thinking about my life because I realize now I'm having this sort of skewed perception where the impact of things is staying with me as the years go by and it's making it seem as though things that happened a long time ago are recent. Yeah. Like a band like The Strokes or whatever. Yeah. They still seem new to me. Yeah.

That's insane. Like that's an insane thing. But Motley Crue doesn't. Well, that, no, they don't seem recent. Because you wrote about it. Yeah, but they don't seem recent. Yeah it but they don't seem that now feels like something no I know what you're saying

yeah like the like the Strokes seem like oh I remember they're this new band or yeah if somebody was saying they were you know I like new bands I might unconsciously think

like the Strokes yeah like that and they're like gotta be almost 40 now well sure I mean their first record came out in 2001

so their band alone has lasted 15 years, which is longer than the Rolling Stones in the early 70s. But I guess my question is, even in looking at this book, how much of this is just by virtue of the fact that we're getting older, man? I mean, I know that one of the things you wrestle with in this book is that it seems like you're actively fighting nostalgia in a way. Oh, well, boy, I would think that I would be perceived as overly nostalgic. I guess.

But it seems like you're trying to talk yourself out of it. Well, as a critic, you're supposed to be against nostalgia. That's definitely from the perspective of any kind of criticism. The idea of nostalgia is problematic because it's like, well, you're not really remembering this film. You're remembering your own experience seeing that film. You're remembering your own life. Right.

And you're shifting the value of it. Right. So I suppose that maybe it has been unconsciously drilled into me to be against nostalgia. But I don't think that's a big part of this book. I mean, to me, this book is more like just the history of ideas seems to be the history of people being wrong. And of course, we must be wrong now, but we're inside the system, so it's not visible. And the only way to sort of deal with this is to try to jump forward, get into the minds of people who don't exist, and imagine how they would look back on this period the same way we look back at like the 1840s yeah but you also talk a little bit about the fact that most popular music for

most other periods in history it's gone most people who are popular entertainers are forgotten yeah you know that that you know it takes a sort of i can't remember exactly what you said about what causes something to last or why something stays in. But everything's always open to recritical assessment. What seems to happen to me is that you start with like an entire field of candidates in any genre of anything. And then time marches forward and certain candidates disappear and they fall kind of by the wayside until there's one person left and then that person is amplified and exaggerated and that becomes the whole

thing. Like John Philip Sousa is the example. Like John Philip Sousa now is now interchangeable with marching music. For all practical purposes, he may be the only he needs to be the only one who exists. And that's sort of how it works. So to think about that happening with rock music is weird because it just doesn't seem possible that they could ever somehow synthesize this down to one identity.

But that's what happens with everything else. Or like with reggae music. I am sure, probably by late in our own life, that the worldwide memory of Bob Marley and the worldwide memory of reggae will be interchangeable. Right. That he will be as famous as the music. Right. And no one's going to care about Desmond Decker or Yellow Man. Only specialists.

And then there'll be just these people who have the specialized knowledge. Well, thank God for the nerds who are the curators of history. You know, the guys who are sitting there. Well, they care the most. Yeah. I mean, it's good. It's actually good that weirdos get to dictate a lot of this because weirdos care more. Sure.

They don't have, maybe their life is missing certain things, but it's not missing this. Right. It's not missing my knowledge of the progenitors of post-punk. So I'm going to dictate who we remember from that period. I often have this problem that like, are we going to get to a point, and we might even be there now, where a young person who is relatively intelligent says, oh, yeah, Hitler, he's the guy with the mustache, right? Is there going to be a point where so much content, as they call it, which I think is a demeaning and horrible name for things because everything is leveled to that. You know, there is no context for it it just there's just more shit that almost everything will lose its meaning

other than to be just sort of a a compulsive viral meme or that someone sort of like you know helps to get traction or a or or or just sort of like that's surprising hitler is an interesting example though because hitler's become a stand-in for other things right hitler is the thing that you use uh when you're commenting on the internet and you want to shortcut the conversation you accuse someone of being Hitler. Or the Hitler mustache is like, you know, you criticize Michael Jordan

because he once had a Hitler mustache. Like Hitler now means something that has no relation to what he actually did. So there probably will always be sort of this generalized memory of who Hitler was. but like someone like stalin or pol pot or any of those people they will be i mean i wouldn't i would i assume that the average 15 year old kid has no idea who those people are now right i mean unless i'm just totally

off and kids are more informed than the kids in canada might know but don't you think that some of the the the inability for us to you know and i think you covered it a little bit and i know i'm jumping around but that's what the book does is that when you talk about there's a pretty brilliant sentence in there about how if you live to a certain age there's no way you're not going to seem crazy that the the actual inability of the human brain or the individual with a life to really process how quickly and thoroughly things change almost on a yearly basis. Your grandmother, I guess you said, was born before 1900 and lived to in 1950s, that there

would be really no way for her to really assess. Yeah, no, she lived into the 80s. So she was born and like the Wright brothers had not had a flight yet. And then she died many years after it had been boring to go to the moon. Like we'd given up on that. Technology clearly is now accelerating much faster than sort of intellectual evolution. So I don't know how anybody can sort of live in this world and be engaged with it. Unless you just totally be like, I'm going to Unabomber it and just step away from everything and cut this off.

If you're actually going to be engaged in society, it's going to change faster than your ability to sort of comprehend those changes. So, of course, the last 25 years of your life, you're going to be crazy. It's just going to be this, it's going to make no sense how these things work. But also, it just seems that our our our our default as humans is to adapt so we can continue to function in the culture right i mean yeah ultimately whatever the technological changes are i gotta be like do i have to be on twitter all right let's let's try it and now what does this phone do i mean you know but these things are tied in with what you do for

a living you will stop those things too i mean like there. But these things are tied in with what you do for a living. You will stop those things too. I mean, like, there are many people who are now in their 80s. My mother's using emoticons. I mean, well, okay, not everybody. There's always Yeah, but I'm saying. You're saying she's an outlier? I would say that she might be a little bit of an outlier. There are some people in their 80s

who just won't use cell phones. They're just like the phone changed enough in their life. And this is what they're stopping, you know? And it's, I think that's an understandable thing. I want to relax now. I mean,

there will be some probably key technology, I would guess, I mean, unless you're just different, you might just be different, but I would guess there'll be some

new technological advent in the next 10 or 15 years and you will just sort of not be interested at the beginning, but this time you won't get pulled in. You'll just stop, and that will be it, and then that will... You did that with Snapchat. Yeah, I was just going to use.

This seems to be one that's happening now. There's a certain kind of person who's just like, I signed up for Snapchat, and I looked at it, but I didn't really get it, and I was like, what's it going to add? And they just sort of stopped. Yeah. I find myself realizing my life is relatively small.

My concerns, media concerns, and my media creativity are sort of paramount to what I do with my life. I only have so much time to put new shit into my head. A lot of times I miss almost everything. I have no real, I have no experience with the Kardashians. I'm not sure I could really even identify them on pictures i'm i'm proud of that but it didn't happen because uh you know it just didn't grab me i don't i don't know why and there's a lot of things that don't grab me so all this shit is happening all the time you use that example because you're like here's something that most

people seem to be in that i am into that i am not or like what no I'm just using it because I seem to miss, because of what is connecting people, the computer or information that they get, and we all have the ability to cherry pick how we want to input information and how it supports our ideology or beliefs. There's rarely, I know that the internet seeks and finds communities of people

that are interested in specific things, but it just seems there's this tremendous fragmentation going on in terms of possibilities of interests and that you know what really happens for me is happening between me and you right now and a lot of that shit like if anything i think we're going to be known for this this generation of uh sort of spoiled you know entitled infantilized people that reacted almost exclusively to random information at all times and pissed away their life. Okay, well, I guess here's the central question of what you're saying, though. It's like, okay, is something important because of what it is, or is something important because enough people feel that it is? Because you're talking about the Kardashians, right? because enough people feel that it is.

Because you're talking about the Kardashians, right? It's hard to look at someone like Kim Kardashian, for me, to look at Kim Kardashian and see any sort of importance in what she does. However, the magnitude of people who seem to be into this does make me think, well, there must be something meaningful about, she's occupying the role of something that matters. So now I don't know, though, Is that a superficial way of me to think? That just because a lot of people care.

That it must have meaning? Yeah. Or has that always been the case? I mean is the reason Elvis was important really because so many people liked him? Or was it had anything to do with what he was actually doing? His interpretation of these songs, his onstage persona, that was the most important thing about Elvis was that people were crazy about him. Because if that's the case, well, then we have to look at people like Kim Kardashian differently. Right. But I guess what I'm getting at and what I seem to get at when I push aside everything is that. All right. Well, that aside and criticism, and the speculations in the book aside,

what is really important, Chuck? Hmm. I mean like, you know, your father, right? Yeah.

And you know, we, we live these lives and you want to do the right thing and, and, and, and hopefully add something to the world and you do with your, your books. But like for me,

just rendering, like the idea that keeps coming back in the book is that, you know, Aristotle's misconception about gravity and thinking that the rock wants to be on the ground, to me, was a very poetic and reasonable observation to have. Oh, it is. And maybe it was clearly wrong, but it held for a long time. But also, there's also the idea of, like, well, what else was he doing? Maybe he was having dinner and enjoying time with friends and stuff.

Like, how important is all this shit? I mean, it doesn't have to be important for me to pursue it as my career, to be honest. I mean, it doesn't. I mean, because here, you know, you talk about having kids. That's right. Okay, now, so I have two kids now. And I'm having many of, I'm almost embarrassed to admit this,

I'm having many of the most cliche reactions to this in terms of how happy it has made me. In a way that I guess maybe unconsciously, I always assumed people were kind of lying about some of it. That you just had to say it was like joining the military or whatever. But actually, no, I'm having all the most cliche feelings. And I think for me, though, and maybe this is true for lots of people, is that having kids, the main thing it does in your mind is make you think about yourself less.

Yeah. So I just, I think about myself and not just my career, myself in general, how I'm feeling about things way less. And it's starting to make me sort of accept the fact that that is like the real key to being happy is to thinking about yourself as little as possible, which is so counterintuitive to everything else I've ever thought about my life. I always thought sort of the one thing that you can really, the only thing that we can really understand is ourselves. And that's even kind of impossible. And now it just seems like just don't think about it. Just think about anything else. But like in this book, and the reason why I found it to be sort of like a flurry of existential issues, more than just the thesis of the book, that you know that you bring a certain amount of

skepticism which you talk a lot about in the book and it's really the the driving force of this book in a way right yeah so so like in your day-to-day life um you know how much of that is in play like when oh well i mean certainly when i'm working on a book right in totality yeah but like i mean all the time i mean i guess all the time i mean i feel as though i'm always writing even when i'm not typing but like with your kids like oh let's go back a little bit you know you come from a family of seven children and you know you must have been wearing everyone else's clothes for god knows how long and like the idea of a large family was just something you grew up with and you know you had siblings that were way older that you barely knew growing up i imagine right but they check in yeah i mean in a real way i didn't know them i did yeah yeah that

was because i was even if even if we'd been together i was too young to sort of understand what the life of a 20 year old was so when you depart that unit you know in uh in north dakota and you like go out to the big city i mean you, you know, what was the goal? Well, you know, I mean, this is, when I was in college, I wanted to become a journalist because it seemed like I could do it. Yeah. Like, I was interested in it, and it seemed like I could do it. Like, the interviewing and the writing, I could just do. And it seemed like, this is great.

Yeah. Okay, it's like something I like, something I'm kind of good at. And you major in journalism, you become a journalist. There was actually a job. I knew what the job would be. So then I worked in Fargo for four years and then I took a job at the newspaper in Akron, Ohio. But I guess my goal was, can I write a book-length manuscript? I didn't think it would get necessarily published. Maybe it would eventually. For most of my life, though, or not now, I guess, for the first half of my life,

my goal was to get a job at the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Yeah. That was a pretty big newspaper, and I could maybe write one book in my life. And that was, so all the things that have happened are far beyond any goal. I never, ever, ever imagined, like I would never, I used to read Spin magazine in college.

Yeah. So when I got the job at Spin, my friends from the college newspaper were like that was your dream that was your dream and i was like i never ever dreamed that i did i never even thought how like i knew people worked there but i never ever thought of getting a job there like how i it wasn't like even something like i was lucky man i had real limited dreams and i think that's a big that big, that's an important part of being a satisfied person. Right.

Is having a real limited dreamscape. Or just assuming that, you know, it wasn't going to happen for you. I mean, it's better to have a limited dreamscape than to end up bitter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But when you went into journalism, were you in pursuit of truth? Were you a person that was sort of like going to break big stories? Were you like, you know, going to seek out, you know, justice? I wasn't one of those people.

I know. I just wasn't. You know, I started as a sports writer. And then when I was a senior in college i was like i'm interested in politics now i'm going to be a political writer yeah and i i guess if i had a desire it would be sort of to be like like i wanted to be in the mix of political writers like the boys on the bus or whatever um but then when i graduated there was an opening for the paper in fargo for an entertainment writer and i had only written one or two stories on culture ever.

But I sent them those stories, and I talked about it all the time. Yeah. And I knew about it, so I just convinced them. I just convinced them, I was like, I can do this. So that's what I did. So then I became a culture writer, and that's how it, I mean, if the job had been for a political writer, that's what I'd be doing. If the job had been for a sports writer, that's what I'd be doing.

So, I mean, it's not as though I don't love it. I mean, I'd be doing. If the job had been for a sports writer, that's what I'd have been doing. So, I mean, it's not as though I don't love it. I mean, I guess I do. So you could have applied your curiosity and your desire to learn to either. Yeah, well, because at the time I was into, more than anything else, I was into journalism. Yeah. Like almost devoid of the subject.

Like I was into the ideas of being a journalist, of like the way a journalist lived the way you know well who are you guys i mean you mentioned mankin but uh like hunter or who who else who were the sports writers you like bob whipsite oh no no no no and i i wasn't into anybody like that i mean i like i i i wouldn't have known who those people were i mean i i i outside of the people who i read in these books and i was into almost like um uh like how can i describe this like a like a fictional caricature of a journalist who wore like a hat that said press yeah and like carried a notebook and went around asking people questions and then went home and typed up a story that was interesting to read. It was like, I, I, I, I've.

So it was an idea based on a comic book almost. Oh, well, yes. The comic book that I wrote in my mind, I guess. No, but the press, the press didn't have it. I mean, I wouldn't have literally thought that's how a journalist dressed, but that's kind of what I was into because also, you know, I was working at the college newspaper and I was the kind of person that like, oh, so I'm writing about like the, you know i was working at the college newspaper and i was the kind of person that like oh so i'm writing about like the uh you know like some some student government board was are like they're gonna put in like video games in there like i would to me that was as important

as it would be if i had been covering watergate i mean i know it was no difference to me like there's never. It was the job. Every story I have ever done, no matter what, like I do, people will ask like, oh, you know, how is it to go from like writing about, you know, Kobe Bryant and then Taylor Swift, like sports to. Right. I do it all the same.

I just, one, I have one style and it's no style. Yeah. Like that's my style. No style. But out of that, you evolved this style and you evolved a wit about it. But it's not like I'm trying to do this the way you're, I have no interest in that. Right. Yeah.

And, you know, but, you know, because of that, you know, I mean, they're just, like, there was something very telling to me about you in this book, because'm looking for like you know autobiographical tidbits about this sort of weird you know uh compulsion uh around sports and around numbers and then sort of following that through to how numbers ultimately are breaking down the the joy that is available in actually watching sports even if they're right there are certain things that we just because they're right right and that like that was the one part of the book where you actually conceded that like, maybe we don't need to know this. It's going to ruin shit.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I feel that way sometimes. But there is, you know, it's like the first three books I wrote, some people kind of perceived, they all perceive them as memoirs. I don't think any of them are, except the third one maybe. But so that was like three memoirs at 33. That's a book for every 11 years of my life. Well, Fargo Rock City, yeah.

I mean, like, I think that sort of redefined how, you know, you could approach, you know, you did your own sort of amazing paradigm shifting work on rock criticism and sort of establishing a point of view that kind of made you rethink everything you thought about music. Well, that would be great if that happened. You didn't think that happened? Well, I don't know. First of all, here's the deal. Even if I did think it happened, I certainly wouldn't fucking say it on the podcast. That would make me seem like a real jerk. Even if I totally believed it, I wouldn't say it. Maybe off mic, you could tell me. But I just, it was, you know, I mean, there weren't books like that.

And I wanted there to be a book like that. So there was no other way to do it. So how old are your kids? My little guy is two years and five months and the girl is five months. So these are young kids. This is new stuff. It is. But like, it is an interesting deal.

Like I was, you know, I remember I had a professor in college, a psychology professor. She'd been a therapist. She had said that in her entire career, she had never encountered a man who did not have some kind of unresolved issue with his father, either anger or, you know, whatever the case may be. Something negative, you know. So, you know, now the case may be. Yeah. Something negative, you know. So, you know, now he's like two and a half. Our relationship is basically as idyllic as you can imagine.

Right. Like, he's like, you know, it's great. But I do look at him and I wonder, like, is that inevitable? Is it inevitable that that's just going to be a component of our relationship? Well, what did you find in yourself? I imagine your first thought was like, well, what about me and my dad? Well, it was interesting because my dad had this stroke and that really changed him. And I think that maybe that.

How old were you? 10, I think, or 11. Oh, so, okay. Yeah. But I mean, he lived. Yeah. And in a way he recovered, you know, but in some ways he was always emotionally different. Yeah.

And I suppose that was it because I never had an adversarial relationship with my father the way some of my friends did. So I just thought, well, okay. I mean, of course. Now, also. And also, you're the last kid, so they must have been exhausted. Well, yeah. And I had seen their relationships with my older brothers and sisters, and I just wanted

it to be easy for them. Yeah. So I just sort of, anything about my life that they were not happy about, I hid. Yeah. You know, I just hid all that. And I was just trying to be like, make it easy. Yeah. You know, this thing this professor said, I mean, somebody else pointed this out to me.

Like, she is talking about people who saw her as patients. Yeah. So it's like, you know, it doesn't mean like it has to happen. But I do. I look at this little guy and I just wonder. It's like, I can't fathom him hating something about me, but is that going to have to be the case just by the nature of a father-son relationship? Is it impossible for not that to be?

I mean, we can still love each other and have a great relationship, but is that an inherent component? I don't know. From my understanding, it kind of is. Just in order for them to sort of define themselves they have to go up against something and you're the closest target but does that then is that temporary or does it always it seems it seems temporary i don't know even with i think about my own father it's a very volatile sometimes uh horrendous and and difficult

relationship but still like now is? It has its moments. But, you know, I've learned to develop an empathy. Like it seems to me that you were given the gift in a sort of horrible way to have to have empathy for your father's situation because he was physically compromised by that thing. That, you know, I don't know if that's always the thing. I think that we idealize our parents and they are either obstructions or for whatever reason, they're going to get the first hit. If you're feeling your oats or you're feeling fucking pissed. But if you have a sympathetic situation like my father, I think there's a lot of Oedipal or whatever the opposite of that is. There's a competition at some point. Well, and it's also kind of complicated by the fact that like my relationship with my

kid will be closer than my relationship was to my dad. Sure. In the same way our relationship was closer than his relationship with his dad. Well, his dad died when he was like two months old, but he would have been, you know, just like going back, every generation is more like a friend to their kid than the previous one. generation is more like a friend to their kid than the previous one um although i do wonder like if there's like some like law diminishing return if at some point that becomes a real problem what the closeness well a kind of closeness that sort of then that sort of surpasses the parental aspect

you know there's a certain aspect that you do have to be an authority figure, and you can't be better. That's also the... You still... Yeah. Well, yeah. Also, we come from a very infantilized generation of men in a lot of ways. Yes, probably. You're wearing a thin Lizzie shirt. I'm wearing a Grimey's Record shirt.

I'm 52 years old. You know, like, that there is this need to sort of, like, stay, hey, come on, I'm one of the... Although this now seems like a shirt that makes more sense for me to wear than a teenager. Well, yeah, but... Not because of the band, but just because that seems to be, like, the fashion that we live through. And I think another, at some point, people stop.

Like, to me, it's weirder to be concerned about fashion beyond the age of dating. It seems like a weird thing. At some point, you should be like, well, give up what, though? Give up worrying about shirts? Looking good. Well, that's not really in the equation. So it's like, I just don't like it seems like such a dumb thing to be into i i just seems like at some point i just feel like it's important to be like well this is

the kind of person i am this is how i look but but it's interesting in in in relation to the thesis of this book too about you know how you're going to handle parenting like it seems a lot of parenting now is sort of like well how am i going to give him a a moral structure to to understand all the input that's going to be possible yeah and and how am i gonna like in the thing about sports one of the things i've said on the show a lot is that i regret like your whole sort of vision for the possibility of football disappearing i don't give a fuck about football i don't give a fuck about sports at all it just wasn't wired that way But I do regret not being taught or given the opportunity to experience healthy competition and understand how to accept losing is not a life or death situation. That's interesting. That's interesting.

You regret having had no relationship with sports. I kind of assume that people who had no conception of sports or no relationship to it kind of looked at it like people who were raised in a totally secular way where it just seems crazy to them. When you see thousands of the way the Super Bowl impacts things, I would think if you didn't have any relationship to sports, that would seem crazy idiotic. No, I mean, I completely understand it. It took me years to understand it. completely understand it it took me years to understand it but like i my even my resentment of jocks in high school as a sort of you know uh you know art department kid you know was not was not horrendous because i was able to sort of engage with them and be okay because i was funny and you know i was weird but but in retrospect i i think that you know some of that weird boy

shit that you know people that had some sports in their background and you know i was i played some little league but just to understand that you know competition is is is healthy in some respects and necessary and to have some handle on it is not a bad thing as opposed to feeling threatened all the time i mean it does i mean i know people this is kind of a of a cliche thing to say, but it does feel to me like my experiences playing football and basketball and stuff

had more impact on the way I live my life than the classes I was taking at the time. How so? I just, I remember those things more. I think the lessons I learned were some of the sort of, at times, dark lessons, but just the idea that like,

sometimes you got to listen to people who don't know what they're talking about because that's how it is. And it's like, if you want to fight against it, that's fine. But you can, you can use that as your identity, you know,

to being like a separatist, but like, you're not going to experience the thing. Right. Like if you want to experience the thing, you know, and just sort of like the, you know, so much now in my life like the reality of like physicality and stuff is totally removed like i

can there's just no part of my life that really involves physicality it's just a totally intellectual like life of the mind or whatever but i remember in sports it was like that's not how it is like there is some sort of visceral primal thing where it's like there's a physical component to our life and if you took away a lot of the trappings of society the people in charge would be very different than the people in charge now but like we've created a world

where that's not the case and that's better but it's kind of a fake superstructure yeah and what do you mean well it's sort of like we superstructure. Yeah. And what do you mean? Well, it's sort of like we have figured out a way to sort of benefit the qualities that we perceive as enlightened good qualities. Yeah. You know, and because a lot of it has to do with the wealth of this country. Yeah.

And sort of the security we have. I would guess that there are places in other parts of the world where that is not the case. Okay. Like we've removed ourselves from that. And because of it, we sort of think it's reasonable, but it's only reasonable because we made it this way. Like if something really, really, really bad happened, a different kind of person emerges

as necessary. Yeah. And I'm glad that we're not in that situation because I don't know how well I do in that world. Well, I mean, some people think we're on the that situation because i don't know how well i do in that world well i mean some people think we're on the precipice of that possibility people always think that people always think we're on the precipice of everything we're always out we're always right there it's never that we're looking back because it happened it's always we're on the moment you know people like to panic they do love to panic well that was also the interesting thing

about sports that you said is that that it's really the only you know sort of thing that you see on television that that that you don't know what's going to happen for real yeah it's and because it's it's it's completely it's structured but it's random and it's all yeah okay now i know what you're yes for that part that's true it is it like it's it sports is a connection to authentic aliveness. Right. That this is not something that anybody can control or script or, you know, it's like it's this unknown thing. You know, I think the reason like just that it is hard to find situations in life where even if you don't know the answer that, you know, no one knows the answer. Like you watch the Academy Awards, you don't know who's necessarily going to win no one knows the answer. Like, you watch the Academy Awards, you don't know who's necessarily going to win,

but somebody does. Yeah. Like, there's something real interesting about nobody knows, you know, because there's just not much of that anymore. But do you ever experience that yourself in a moment? Like, you know, because you're talking about, I think, real authentic moments.

You know, not just events of the mind or puzzles or problems. But even when, you know, you witness a car accident, if it's not a bad car accident, you know, everything sort of slows down. Or if you're watching a performance where something goes wrong, there's nothing greater than that. Or you're actually witnessing something that is happening in the moment. And it's clear that it is you know that that seems to me to be a very nourishing element of life and interaction with human beings that you know we're having this conversation i don't know what the fuck i'm talking about i'm hoping you and i connect no i mean that's like you go to a play as opposed to

a movie okay like if you want to enjoy a play what you really need to do is constantly remind yourself, they could screw up right now. Yeah, but that's... Like, that guy could fall down. Like, if she's singing, she could blow this. Like, because the problem when you go to a play now is we almost watch them like movies or TV shows, where that will never happen. It's sort of hard, though, because you still feel the people. You see them spitting and talking. I've gone to plays where I'm really getting off it.

No, that's why you want to sit as close as possible. Yeah, yeah. That's the best part. It's kind of mind-blowing. Like, this is really happening. Same with a good rock show. Yes. But I guess, like, you know, coming through all this,

you know, at the end of the book, it seemed that you sort of resigned yourself in the present and found some solace in the idea that you kind of just you know hope tomorrow's okay yeah i mean i just i've i i've come to accept that like i'm a conservative person i'm not a republican because they're not conservative i'm a conservative person well how so how do you define that if it's not political well i mean because the republicans are like the first day in office, I'm going to change it. That's like the opposite of, like, conservatism to me would mean sort of like, I am trying to, I want the world to stay stable.

Right. Like, I want things to remain as they are. I feel as though, you know, life is really complicated and I prefer having an understanding of whatever I, the little bit I understand. So I, I just, I find that in anything that my natural inclination is to be conservative. Like I don't gamble. I'm not a gambler. You know, I like what I, I, even if you talk to a financial advisor, they always give you

like the three options. I always take the most conservative option. Yeah. When I, I like to go to a restaurant where I understand the menu totally. I don't want to be guessing at what I'm getting, you know. I honestly like prefer to talk to people I've talked to a thousand times before. Yeah. Like if I go to a party and two of my friends are there and there's a whole bunch of other interesting people,

I'll just talk to my two friends the whole night. That's just how I am. Right. It sounds to me what you're calling conservative is practical for you. I don't know if it's practical because I mean like a practical person would be like, well, I think a practical person would say

things like the internet are a net positive. But to someone like me, it feels like a net negative. That even though it has lots of positive things that the downsides are maybe deeper and more like i think that i have so i'm always like i'm not a very pro technology person even though my life is completely interlocked with it yeah i can't get away from it what are you afraid of i just i think that it is i think it's changing uh i think it's changing the way people view the world in a real sort of deep, profound way. Now, what I would say alongside that is that that's

not necessarily bad, but it will be different. And for people like me, and I think for most people, it's like difference is uncomfortable. Well, let's say it's going to be bad. What is bad? Because I kind of think that most technology is very good in the short term and probably bad in the long term. Like even going way back to like, like the gramophone or whatever,

like it allows us to have music in front of us that is not there. You know, we can just, you know, but maybe long term that has changed our relationship to music itself. That there was a time when part of the magic of music was that it's happening here it can only happen here and like i'm hearing this person play the violin because there they are it's the only way it can be and now that's not

how it is so now we can appreciate much more music right we have access to it but has it actually changed the way something like that is supposed to feel. I always, I think that like the most underrated thing that people talk about a little bit, but not much, but it's like, you know, prior to like the early 20th century, if somebody saw a lion, that meant a lion was in front of them. Like all of, you know, it's like if a lion's moving, you're looking at a lion. And all our sort of biological evolution was built toward this. And then starting with, like, the Great Train Robbery and stuff, we're so now used to seeing things that aren't actually there. I wonder if television, anything. The Great Train Robbery, the film.

Yes, yes. That is it, you know, it seems as though that shift happened much more faster, much quicker than the time it would take to sort of evolve to the, like we can intellectually understand it. But I wonder if in our subconscious level we can really, like, is this why I think, this is my theory, that technology often gives people a vague sense of alienation and they don't know why. They don't know why their email and internet bums them out or why watching TV makes makes them feel a certain way they love it they'd never give it up right they love you i wonder if it's this if it's that this technology has advanced faster than our bodies like biologically have been built to sort of understand how fucking insane it is that we can see things moving that aren't actually there. That's so crazy, but we're born into it, so it just seems normal.

The adaptation happens. Did you watch that big Eagles documentary? Yeah. I watched as much of it. I think I watched all of it. It was like three days long, right? Yeah. There's one part in it where Joe Walsh, he's like, I didn't say this.

Somebody else said this. But he mentions how it's like, in the moment moment your life feels completely chaotic and confusing and unreasonable but when you look back on your life it seems like this perfectly knit together novel well okay i'm sure many people have said this and but when you think about it does seem that way when i look back on my life even all the things from childhood all these things you just mentioned yeah it all seems to make sense but i do wonder am I reverse engineering it? I now going back and I'm going to be like, well, this, this must had led to this or this made this happen or because I had this relationship with my parents and my brothers and my friends

and my sisters and all these things like, did this happen? I suspect that no matter what had happened in my life and no matter what had that had been like, I could make the same connection. I'm skeptical of my own ability to sort of explain my life. Right. No, I get that. But for me, I find that

there's a certain feeling that I have that's been there all along that is somewhat maybe negative and maybe not the best part of me. And then I have to understand you know try to understand well is it sort of a traumatic sort of frequency that that you know i grew up with like i get off on that it might be sort of it's a navel gazing well no it's like the idea in this book this idea that maybe the way we think of the world is just inherently incorrect. I guess I have always thought that.

I mean, I wasn't able to explain it. Right. But I think even if I could somehow have a serious conversation with me as a 12-year-old, I think in some kind of rudimentary lexicon, the 12-year-old version of me would be like, it just seems like what we think about the world is probably fake. The world, it's like there's something about the world that's just not, what we think is wrong. Like we just think, you know, and I, so I've all, so this book in some ways I probably

have been sort of writing my whole life, but it didn't dawn on me to do it until like three years ago. And that's how books work. It's like you think about them for a long time without knowing it. and then something happens that causes you to make it into a physical book and if if if you really had been thinking about it the book turns out to be good and if you hadn't been thinking about it the book ends up being forced and do you know what the event was it provoked you to write it well i was it just i was found myself interested in, like, I was watching the reboot of the series Cosmos. Yeah.

And they would talk about scientists from the past and very often about scientists who, like, had been lost to history. But they had an idea. And within one generation of their life, it became as though we'd always thought that. And I was like, well, that must be happening now. Right. And then I was reading about Moby Dick on like on the internet just reading about it yeah and i just thought it was so interesting the story of melville's life and his career that's obviously a subjective thing and the other thing is objective because it's science but there's something about both of them just the sense

that we we just will not we like what we think of the world now and all the thoughts we have are inevitably going to seem different than the way this period is remembered. So the people who live through any time period, they have the firsthand experience of what it was like. And yet their experience is not what gets remembered. It's what other people interpret it as. I think that's just a interesting thing yeah and constantly sort of changing and it's almost hard to it's obviously very hard to pinpoint impossible that's it it's impossible to do this is an impossible book to do if you were a betting man a gambling man which you aren't uh who do you think out of this period, what era would this be? Let's say 2000 to 2020.

Who's going to be the standout defining individual? Well, I mean, what I would say is it's going to be whatever person sort of encapsulates what future people think about this period. So whatever, you know, like I suspect that the period that we're in right now, when we get far enough away, the main thing that will be remembered about is the advent of the internet. Because it wasn't like, even like the advent of television was huge, but television was still mostly like entertainment. The internet's now interlocked with our lives and like getting more and more. So I think it will probably be someone who is seen as sort of like the internet's now interlocked with our lives and like getting more and more so i think it will probably be someone who has seen a sort of like the like a stand-in for however thought changed from like 1995 to 2025 or whatever whatever you know like if what

you know so who that person is i i i can't mean, I could guess, but my guess would be terrible. Yeah. I could just say something, but I don't have a real good answer. I mean, I would just be saying it. I always feel dumb if I'm just saying something. This happened recently. Some guy interviewed me from like Salon or something. And we had a good interview all the way through.

And then at the end, he was like, okay, I need you to make a prediction. What's something that we believe now we won't believe later? And I was like, well, this isn't a book of predictions. He's like, okay i need you to make a prediction what's something that we believe now we won't believe later and i was like well this isn't a book of predictions he's like but you gotta make a prediction so i was like well okay this isn't really my prediction but you know probably chemotherapy if there's ever a time in the future when we change the way that like we deal with cancer like through biogenetics or something we'll look back to like pumping poison into people and well boy that's so barbaric and crazy. But it's not crazy. It's just that was the headline of the story. I've had, like, so many people now ask me about this specific thing, which began with me saying, I don't want to make a prediction.

He was like, come on. I was like, okay, you're a good guy. I just make a prediction. Well, what was the backlash of that prediction? Well, it wasn't the backlash. It wasn't like I'm like, oh, my God, people now think I'm anti-Came to Therapy. It's just that it was weird to me how much

when you talk about the future, people want a real definable prediction. They want this thing to be, they don't want ideas about the future. They want like, this will happen. But I understand why. I mean, it would be kind of useless if you asked me, I kind of

mentioned this in the book, like, if you asked me about the Kentucky Derby, who will win the Kentucky Derby next year? And I'd be like, well, it will be a fast horse. It will be a fast horse who understands his role in the race. It's like, people don't want that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you were very specific about sort of talking about not including a conversation about global warming in the book. Because what was that battle? Well, you know, the thing is, first of all, it's not like a speculative thing.

Like, we can measure the carbon in the air. Yeah. We know what's happening. So, it's not really like, you know. Right. Also, it's not like that. I mean, I'm interested in questions that are so almost obvious in a way that people don't even ask them.

Right. And people are obviously having that conversation. Like it's not as though people aren't talking about the possibility of climate change being real or false. But the, the, the part I'd note was that like my editor was sort of like, you should talk about this more. Yeah. And then a few friends of mine who read the book early were like, you should take that out.

It's just going to distract people. So then I left in what I had. I didn't make it bigger or smaller. But by mentioning that, by saying like, I'm not talking about this because it will distract people, has definitely increased the number of people interested about it. Yeah. It does distract people. Right. Because it's something that people just don't feel comfortable being part of this. definitely increase the number of people interested about it yeah it does distract people right because

it's something that people just don't feel comfortable being part of this hey who knows debate they don't want this to be part of that on either side right like there's some debates people are just not cool with you being like let's just be devil's advocate no way you just can't handle it are you concerned about the country yes yes yeah yeah i mean but i i think i always was i don't i don't remember you know i don't it's not like it was like 1989 and we're like we're finally going after it now things are great like it has always seemed like uh the country is getting worse it is always my whole life it is that way. I don't know what it is. I sometimes wonder if I'm actually seeing it in complete reverse.

If actually every year of my life has been better than the year before. But for whatever reason, I can't see it. It's like it seems worse to me. Where are you living now, New York? I live in Brooklyn right now. Oh, yeah? And you're happy? Yeah.

Good. I don't think my life has ever had more happiness in it, certainly. I mean, when you're younger, you're more optimistic because anything is possible. You're also struggling, too. Yes, yeah. Fighting the fight and figuring it out. And you're just more emotional. It's good to become less emotional, I think.

I think this is a misnomer in the culture that we're not emotional enough. I think it's good to be less emotional, I think. I think this is a misnomer in the culture that we're not emotional enough. I think it's good to be less. But also you have specific emotions that now are appropriate and not as selfish because you've got a family. It's all good. It's working out for you. I hope so.

Are you happy? I'm happier. I don't have a family. I'm too anxious a man. Yeah, the problems remain, Chuck. And I wish that I could relieve myself by doing the big thinking in the way that you do. Do you think you'll get married again? I don't think so.

You don't think so? I'm with somebody, but I don't know. I'm losing a sense of what the purpose would be. You know, like, what does it really mean for me at 52? but I don't know. I'm losing a sense of what the purpose would be. What does it really mean for me at 52? But you seem to be big into symbolic acts. You like symbolism, and that's what marriage is. I know, I get that. I think that you would appreciate just the sort of what it says for you to do it.

No, I know, but I've become cynical because what it has said in the past, it didn't end well, one way or the other. I don't think I'm going to have kids. And I just wonder what the nature of relationship is for me at 52. What do I really want? Do you know what I mean?

You've done the thing that I didn't manage to do, which is you brought life into the world and you realize that there's a profound amount of awe and joy and a lot of other things. But the idea of necessary selflessness and having that be a revelation uh is is is something that i i don't know if i'm going to experience and i don't know i think that might hobble me in the final quarter but but we'll see so you're anticipating hobbles yeah yeah a little bit not all around but i would like to figure out

what uh what um what the point is for me you know i mean you have you know you have a couple of points at home that you know it's very clear you know it's mapped out for you well has has the way your career changed has that made you a happier person definitely because you work a long time to do something and then something happens it's a surprise for me how it happened but you know you feel like all that work wasn't for nothing but the idea like some people will say like it doesn't really matter the condition of your life you're going to be happy or sad regardless of this you would say for you that's not true. It's not true because the insecurity and the sort of lack of self-esteem that comes from struggling to do something, to achieve something, to create something relevant, it's real. And I think that if you spend your life doing that and it never really comes to pass or you don't get that break or it doesn't it doesn't

happen uh that that's horrifying to me and i was fortunate and in my uh that it happened do you feel nervous about losing it not not right not anymore you know what you feel nervous about is some sort of weird blindside some other shoe dropping some you know peculiar lawsuit or slander that's all my biggest anxiety is always that it's all going to go away as fast as it came right so so in some ways that's but you've created things that won't go away i've created things that won't go away i'll have maybe one more dead or whatever no no i don't i don't mean like i just mean that like i'll i'll i'll screw up or something and lose it you know like that right yeah that be, that it will be, you know, because it happened so fast

and so arbitrarily it felt that things went good that I just wonder like, well, couldn't that exactly happen at first? I mean, of course it could. So, you know, I hate thinking about that. Yeah. No, I, well, that's the one thing you hate thinking about. Yeah. I do hate thinking about that.

But it's great talking to you man oh thanks for having me and i really appreciate and i enjoyed the book and there was a lot in it my takeaway was like am i interested in enough things should i be reading more about science and you know but that's good i learned things yeah i i guess i just have a shallow interest in everything i don't know like a little bit like a little i mean i mean not i'm not sure i'm not shallow as a weird i'm just saying like i'm kind of a dilettante no you know you just want to have a handle on shit well it's just it's just it's i like to know a little bit about everything yeah

yeah but i mean but but in that you know that informs your personal you know wisdom and philosophy probably oh yeah it's real lucky to be a writer and this is like i like the idea of like these are luxury thoughts yeah like these are thoughts that like that the average person can think about when they're reading this book but like the idea of thinking about it several hours a day many many days that's like not many people have this job i'm lucky i have this job like i have the job to do that you know but also but i think it's deeper than that in the sense that like as i get older you know i i you know i find that i give a fuck less about certain things and that, you know, my personal sort of stability and kind of, you know, search for meaning in life becomes paramount to my concern about other things. And like this, when I read a book like this, you know, skepticism is healthy.

You know, having a little fight in you is healthy. Questioning the nature of reality. What you just said makes me nervous, though. What? having a little fight in you is healthy questioning the nature of reality what you just said makes me nervous though what the first thing i thought of when you said that is i was like i don't think being interested in something and giving a fuck about it are remotely connected like that was the first thing i thought it's like i like i'm interested in many things i don't care about them i'm just interested it's purely that and i was like boy is that is that does that make me like a sociopath that That's how it is. It's sort of like, you know, the way I follow things, I just see other people's emotional investment.

And I'm like, that's so, it's interesting that you feel that much. You know, it's like, I want to talk about this, but I don't want to feel the way you do. That seems terrible. Well, do you feel like you're avoiding your own feelings? Probably. But, I mean, probably. I just, you know, I mean avoiding your own feelings? Probably, but I mean, probably. I just, you know, I mean, half the feelings feel bad, right? Half of them are good and half of them are bad.

So it's like, you know. You and your numbers, the percentages. Well, I hope the good ones start to outweigh the bad ones. Thanks for talking. Thank you. That's it. That's me and chuck closterman the book was interesting i i i read right through it he's very compelling thoughtful smart dude makes you look at things different that book is called but what if we're wrong enjoyed it i like his books go to WTFpod.com for all your WTFpod needs. Powered by Squarespace.

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