Our Modern Glut of Choice

Summary

Critics at Large | The New Yorker Episode: Our Modern Glut of Choice Release Date: March 13, 2025

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I. Introduction to the Episode

In the episode titled "Our Modern Glut of Choice," hosts Vincent Cunningham, Nomi Fry, and Alex Schwartz delve into the pervasive abundance of choice in contemporary society. They explore how this glut impacts daily decision-making, individual freedom, and societal structures. The conversation is enriched with personal anecdotes, historical insights, and critical analysis, drawing heavily from Sophia Rosenfeld’s recent book, The Age of a History of Freedom.

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II. Opening Discussion on Choice Overload

The episode kicks off with Alex Schwartz posing a seemingly abstract question about commonalities among a series of words, which turns out to be different shades of white from the luxury paint company Farrow and Ball. This playful exercise segues into a deeper conversation about the overwhelming abundance of choices in modern life.

Notable Quote:

Alex Schwartz [01:08]: “Choice is something that's been much on my mind. It is so woven into the experience of being alive right now in all realms.”

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III. Personal Experiences Illustrating Glut of Choice

The hosts share personal experiences that exemplify choice overload:

• Vincent Cunningham discusses the complexities of selecting health insurance for his newborn, highlighting how even essential decisions become daunting due to the myriad of options.

  Quote:

  Vincent Cunningham [05:20]: “Any metaphor of overwhelm, of your liking of choice. Choice that you have to read further and further... it becomes a job in itself.”

• Nomi Fry reflects on the overwhelming selection of entertainment options on platforms like Netflix, often leading to frustration and indecision.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [03:29]: “I'm probably not gonna be watching something good tonight. Something that I'm really gonna like... there are similarities [with choosing health insurance].”

• Alex Schwartz recounts the challenge of selecting appropriate shapewear for a fancy event, illustrating how even mundane choices can become burdensome.

  Quote:

  Alex Schwartz [08:00]: “I have to make many returns right now because I just have...”

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IV. Historical Context: Sophia Rosenfeld’s The Age of a History of Freedom

The discussion transitions to Sophia Rosenfeld’s book, which provides a historical lens on the concept of choice as a marker of freedom.

Key Points:

• Vincent Cunningham summarizes Rosenfeld's argument that the association of choice with freedom is a relatively recent historical development.

  Quote:

  Vincent Cunningham [18:06]: “Choice was not always the sort of hallmark definition of freedom... it was a historical development.”

• Nomi Fry contrasts her upbringing in Israel with the American proliferation of choice, emphasizing how the abundance of options is intertwined with capitalist ideals.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [14:51]: “America was always choice.”

• Alex Schwartz highlights the evolution of shopping from 18th-century auctions to modern malls and digital platforms, underscoring how choice has been commodified over time.

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V. The Illusion of Choice and Modern Society

The hosts question whether the multitude of choices available truly equates to greater freedom or merely an illusion of it.

Key Points:

• Alex Schwartz introduces the idea that while choices seem endless, many options may not be genuinely beneficial or diverse.

• Vincent Cunningham and Nomi Fry discuss how marketing and technological advancements have amplified the perception of choice, often masking deeper inequities.

Notable Quote:

Alex Schwartz [17:19]: “Are we just being given the illusion that we're sampling from so many different options while there aren't really many good choices?”

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VI. Impact of Technology on Choice

The conversation delves into how technological advancements have exponentially increased the number of available choices, sometimes leading to decision fatigue and reduced satisfaction.

Key Points:

• Vincent Cunningham draws parallels between past and present media consumption, noting how streaming services have transformed access to entertainment but also contributed to choice overload.

  Quote:

  Vincent Cunningham [11:34]: “The advent of streaming... What in the whole history of music making would you like?”

• Nomi Fry discusses algorithmic bubbles on social media platforms like Twitter, where perceived free choice is often manipulated by underlying algorithms.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [33:48]: “Algorithms... the illusion that was the feeling you work under.”

• Alex Schwartz mentions the impact of online shopping giants like Amazon, which present a facade of choice while centralizing control over options.

  Quote:

  Alex Schwartz [35:21]: “Amazon is itself the choice. This huge mega store... are we really?”

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VII. Social and Political Implications of Choice

The hosts examine how the ethos of choice influences societal norms, individual responsibility, and political discourse.

Key Points:

• Vincent Cunningham connects Rosenfeld’s analysis to contemporary issues like abortion rights and economic redistribution, arguing that framing these as matters of choice obscures broader social responsibilities.

  Quote:

  Vincent Cunningham [27:37]: “The language of economic redistribution... hinges on this bedrock belief that everything has to do with choices.”

• Nomi Fry critiques "choice feminism," which emphasizes individual empowerment through personal choices without addressing systemic inequalities.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [27:20]: “Choosing feminism as being able to like an Instagram influencer... is that necessarily justice?”

• Alex Schwartz reflects on the tension between individual and collective choice, citing the Federalist Papers to illustrate how foundational the concept of choice is to American identity.

  Quote:

  Alex Schwartz [29:41]: “The idea just at its most basic level, that choice is itself a revolution... who among us is not choosing choice?”

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VIII. Recommendations for Managing Choice Overload

Towards the end of the episode, the hosts offer strategies to cope with the overwhelming abundance of choices.

Key Points:

• Nomi Fry suggests engaging with curated content like the Criterion Channel’s “247,” which removes the burden of choice by presenting a single selection without user input.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [43:13]: “They have this thing called 247 where you just... end up on whatever it is they're giving you.”

• Alex Schwartz advocates for community-supported agriculture (CSA) and fish shares, where professionals make selections on behalf of consumers, reducing the need for constant decision-making.

  Quote:

  Alex Schwartz [44:10]: “I find out on the Friday before... I trust the choosers, the fish curators.”

• Vincent Cunningham recommends simple activities like taking walks without predetermined routes to minimize decision-making.

  Quote:

  Vincent Cunningham [45:01]: “A good way not to make choices is take a walk.”

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IX. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a reflection on the intricate balance between choice as a marker of freedom and the psychological burden it imposes. The hosts emphasize the importance of recognizing when choice becomes limiting rather than liberating and advocate for mindful engagement with the myriad options that define modern life.

Final Thoughts:

• Alex Schwartz underscores the paradox of having endless choices that can simultaneously impoverish the human experience.

  Quote:

  Alex Schwartz [45:02]: “There's a kind of human impoverishment in the world of choice being moved to the digital realm.”

• Nomi Fry reminisces about pre-pandemic times when choices were limited but perhaps more meaningful, highlighting the loss of tactile and communal experiences in the digital age.

  Quote:

  Nomi Fry [40:08]: “When all you do is choose, choose, choose self, self, self. What you end up is by yourself... loneliness.”

The hosts leave listeners with a contemplative view on how to navigate the glut of choice, suggesting a return to more curated and community-oriented decision-making processes.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Alex Schwartz [01:08]: “Choice is something that's been much on my mind. It is so woven into the experience of being alive right now in all realms.”

• Vincent Cunningham [05:20]: “Any metaphor of overwhelm, of your liking of choice. Choice that you have to read further and further... it becomes a job in itself.”

• Nomi Fry [03:29]: “I'm probably not gonna be watching something good tonight. Something that I'm really gonna like... there are similarities [with choosing health insurance].”

• Alex Schwartz [17:19]: “Are we just being given the illusion that we're sampling from so many different options while there aren't really many good choices?”

• Vincent Cunningham [18:06]: “Choice was not always the sort of hallmark definition of freedom... it was a historical development.”

• Nomi Fry [14:51]: “America was always choice.”

• Vincent Cunningham [27:37]: “The language of economic redistribution... hinges on this bedrock belief that everything has to do with choices.”

• Nomi Fry [27:20]: “Choosing feminism as being able to like an Instagram influencer... is that necessarily justice?”

• Alex Schwartz [29:41]: “The idea just at its most basic level, that choice is itself a revolution... who among us is not choosing choice?”

• Nomi Fry [43:13]: “They have this thing called 247 where you just... end up on whatever it is they're giving you.”

• Alex Schwartz [44:10]: “I find out on the Friday before... I trust the choosers, the fish curators.”

• Vincent Cunningham [45:01]: “A good way not to make choices is take a walk.”

• Alex Schwartz [45:02]: “There's a kind of human impoverishment in the world of choice being moved to the digital realm.”

• Nomi Fry [40:08]: “When all you do is choose, choose, choose self, self, self. What you end up is by yourself... loneliness.”

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Final Notes

This episode offers a profound exploration of how the modern glut of choice shapes our identities, relationships, and societal structures. By intertwining personal narratives with historical analysis, the hosts invite listeners to critically assess the true nature of freedom in a world overflowing with options.

Transcript

[Nomi Fry]

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Welcome to Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorker. I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Nomi Fry]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm Alex Schwartz. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now and how we got here. Hello, critics. Hello. Okay, I have a series of words I would like to just run by you. I want you to tell me if you know what these things have in common.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay.

[Alex Schwartz]

Okay, here we go. Are you ready?

[Nomi Fry]

This is like. Yeah, this is like the SATs or something. Is it like.

[Alex Schwartz]

No, it's not about you. It's about them. Do you know what I mean? It doesn't reflect on you.

[Nomi Fry]

Okay, thank you.

[Alex Schwartz]

Let's just begin with that.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So scared.

[Alex Schwartz]

Weave it. Pointing Slipper. Satin. Dimity.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, that's it.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'll go on. Oh, Wimborne White.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh.

[Alex Schwartz]

James White. White tie. Lime white.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, these paint colors. Are these swatches.

[Alex Schwartz]

Is this Pantone? Vincent Cunningham.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It took me a while.

[Nomi Fry]

At first I thought it was like, something to do with Linger.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I was a bit tricky about it.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, yeah, you were a bit tricky.

[Alex Schwartz]

These are all different shades of white by the luxury paint company Farrow and Ball. These are all shades of white. I have lovingly poured over in swatch form an array of choices that my feeble mortal mind simply cannot sort through or understand how to preference one white over the other. Maybe by the end of my days I will have figured it out, but I simply don't know. And I'm bringing this up right now because choice is something that's been much on my mind. It is so woven into the experience of being alive right now in all realms. You want to paint a room? Good luck to you. Oh, God. You know, you go and weave it or you go and Winborn White. Or are you even going with Faron Ball? My lord, have you seen the Benjamin Moore selections?

[Nomi Fry]

What about Dimity?

[Alex Schwartz]

Dimity. Don't even get me started. Dimity. So, on the one hand, all of us are living more luxuriously than ever before. You know, the idea that I would go to my shtetl ancestors and talk about Dimity, it's an insult.

[Nomi Fry]

Insult.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, what did they have? They didn't have a thousand shades of this and that, that we can just be.

[Nomi Fry]

No, they were lucky if they didn't get killed with a hatchet.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. And here I am. Here I am in my modern life. We laugh, but it's true. Thinking about what color would look best on the wall. I'm thinking about what food I want to order at night. Oh, do I want Thai food, Do I want Chilean food? Whatever. The options, they're endless.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Too much.

[Alex Schwartz]

They're just at the tip of my fingers and I'm sitting there paralyzed. The abundance that we have, I mean, it's wonderful. It's amazing. Is it also a bit perhaps soul crushing, I wonder. The experience of being constantly bombarded with endless options from all sides, you know, for dining, for traveling, for shopping, for clothing, for watching, for reading, whatever. It's endless. It's overwhelming, certainly. What do you guys think?

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah. Night falls and there I am looking, looking slack jawed at Netflix and I'm like, what of these, like, 17 horrible new documentaries that just came out about, like various murders am I gonna watch? You know? And I'm just like, does it matter even? Like, can someone decide for me, I need a strong leader.

[Alex Schwartz]

Nomi often calls for a strong leader, but still she's here, just trying to muddle through.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, I know.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vincent, how about you?

[Vincent Cunningham]

No, it's true. You get into little squabbles with your partner about who has to choose. I've always had the idea that people want to be the decider, but actually now the fight is over. You, please, you take over. Yeah, somebody's got to do it, and I don't want to be it.

[Nomi Fry]

No.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's too much pressure.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, all of this brings me to today's topic. We have chosen to talk about this today. The abundance of choice that defines so many of our experiences. Right now we're talking about how we got to this place where we think of choice as a fundamental part of living a free life and whether the ability to endlessly customize so much of what we do is making our lives better. And one question I've been thinking about a lot, which I would like us to discuss, is whether we actually have as much choice as we think we do. Are we just being given the illusion that we're sampling from so many different options while there aren't really many good choices? So that's today on Critics at Large, our modern glut of choice. Okay, let's start by sketching out a bit what we're talking about here. So when you guys think about being a consumer Today, right now. Are there specific experiences or anecdotes that have defined it for you recently?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, one thing is having a baby means, of course, that you have to get that baby covered on health insurance. And doing anything that relates to health insurance is an absolute glut maze, open fire hydrant. Any metaphor of overwhelm, of your liking of choice. Choice that you have to read further and further. Okay, this one gives you. This one does this. This one. Choices that relate to technical realities that sometimes I have no real expertise of. I really don't know what I'm supposed to be choosing. But you have to make all of these choices that become a job in itself. Thinking about it makes my stomach hurt.

[Nomi Fry]

You know, Vincent, that's actually a really interesting example. And I. I can sympathize with it. I mean, I think a lot of us can. One thing that I find kind of, I guess, significant or like, essential about this example is that one of the reasons that you have a pit in your stomach, I suspect, is that, you know, you're in some way gonna get fucked over. So, like, the house will win. And I think. I think the way I feel this most in my life right now is in entertainment. Netflix, you know, hbo, Max, Hulu, you know, the screen is set before you. You have literally like hundreds, thousands of little squares on which you can click. And yet my feeling, at least when I sit down before this, this glut, this, you know, this glorious abundance is I'm probably not gonna be watching something good tonight. Something that I'm really gonna like. You know, my feeling is often a kind of dread. Right. This is not gonna end up well. And of course, the stakes are different between kind of like choosing health insurance and watching, like, a shitty whatever, like, series, Spy series. But. And yet, you know, there are similarities, many similarities.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, in both ways, you're betting on a certain kind of experience. You know, I have an example for us of a recent choice I had to make. The New Yorker anniversary party was coming up. Ah, yes, we've celebrated. This magazine has celebrated its centenary. Hooray. Go us. Go the New Yorker magazine.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Nomi Fry]

And this is a big deal.

[Alex Schwartz]

For once in our lives, we were invited to a fancy party.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, this never happens.

[Alex Schwartz]

Never happens. We got excited. I mean, I'm just speaking collectively here. I got excited.

[Nomi Fry]

We got excited.

[Vincent Cunningham]

And.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, and we were told also that we need to dress fancy.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, it was encourage.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I took the encouragement and procured a garment and was pretty happy with my choice of garment. I then felt that I needed an undergarment to fit with this jumpsuit I had purchased. So I go on Amazon.com.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, no.

[Alex Schwartz]

Your little local retailer.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, boy.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I'm looking for shapewear. I'm looking for something that gives me a kind of short, but maybe connected to a lifting bust situation. And I buy so many things. Guys, I'm ashamed and I'm embarrassed. I have to make many returns right now because I just have.

[Nomi Fry]

How many?

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, probably six. Oh. I ended up with a garment I really enjoyed by a brand called slimers.

[Nomi Fry]

Slimers.

[Alex Schwartz]

I think slimmers was the intent, but 1M does spell slimers. So I'll recommend slimers to anyone who might be looking for a similar thing. But it's pilot Schwartz Bump. Yeah. Let's see if slimers can sell a few more. I don't even know what they're called.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Shape Slimes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Shape Slimes. So that was my recent experience with choice and being bombarded by it. Where else do we see a bloat of options? Just give me. Just throw out the examples like you're tossing cards on a table.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Let's go. Dating profiles.

[Alex Schwartz]

Dating profiles.

[Nomi Fry]

Eat food. Either ordering food at home or making a reservation at whatever hot new restaurant you know, there are many. You know, even, like, scrolling through Instagram and seeing I've been getting served. I'm a woman of a certain age, so I've been getting served a lot of kind of like plastic surgery and injectable type content, you know? Oh, my God. You can, like, your nose could look like this or it could look like.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Instagram thinks I need a new nose. It's weird.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, really?

[Vincent Cunningham]

They keep showing me noses. I like mine, by the way.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, that is. That is odd.

[Alex Schwartz]

But this is the thing. Even choosing to continue with your unmodified face or body is now a choice. It's a choice.

[Nomi Fry]

It's a choice. It's like a choice that has ideological baggage, of course. With it. Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

Can I give you a more basic list?

[Nomi Fry]

Of course.

[Alex Schwartz]

Grocery shopping.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

Olive oils. Hmm. Which one to select? Cottage cheeses. There are quite a few breads. Don't even get me started with the breads.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Breads.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

And then. And I say this and you know, like everyone else, I'm talking about how annoying this is, but if I don't have my special choice there, I'm very frustrated. Nobody wants the one fashion.

[Nomi Fry]

Totally. And I just read this article, I believe it was on the cut, about micro trends. And there's too many trends. Right. That the mob wife aesthetic, the clean girl aesthetic, the, you know, just. Just like the. The rocker chick aesthetic. And these things cycle so, so swiftly in and out that the. The article was making the. The point that, like, enough with this glut. Enough with this glut. Can we just choose our style and stick with it? Like, why do I suddenly have to like, slick my hair back and wear like door knocker earrings and a fur coat? Because, like, or TikTok has decided that now we're dressing like Michelle Pfeiffer and married to the mob circa like late 80s, you know.

[Alex Schwartz]

All right, so here's what I wanna know. Does this feel like a recent thing to you? Because some of the things we're talking about have been with us for a while. But I do think there is a sense that all of this choosiness in modern life has sped up. So is this recent? What do you guys think?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think that it has accelerated drastically alongside certain technological advancements. I mean, the advent of streaming is, you know, you go from. You can see what Blockbuster has to perhaps you could see any movie in the history of moviemaking. You could go to your local. I mean, the saddest one for me is having grown up on the Upper west side of Manhattan and gone to the Tower Records at Lincoln center like it was a church. Or now you can go on Spotify. And again, what in the whole history of music making would you like? Art song today or yesterday's new hip hop? Just getting on the train and deciding what to listen to, as I often do, can take half the subway ride. So I think technology has advanced it. But fundamentally, at least in my childhood, this has been the underwriting presented as a good. Definitely what we're describing is the American dream.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, I mean, I remember gonna get a little bit personal here. As you guys know, and probably a lot of listeners know, I mostly did not grow up in the states. I grew up in Israel. And I would come to the States starting in the 80s because of my dad's job intermittently and Israel. I mean, much can be said about Israel, but in terms of kind of like the economic system in the 80s, the American idea of choice and capitalism certainly hadn't reached Israel. And so the glut was kept at bay. Let's put it this way. Whether it was cultural products, where it was actually physical products, like I went to the school in my neighborhood, there wasn't a choice about that. You know, all of these things that when I would go to America would be very different. You know, I mean, even just the Ability to pick up fast food. Like the first McDonald's opened in Israel, I think in, I think it was like 1992, maybe. And so, you know, that's kind of crazy if you think about it. And so for me, coming to America in the 80s, that was what America was about. It was like, oh, my God, I can actually go to the store. Go to the mall. The mall, the mall, which we didn't have in Israel when I was growing up. The mall. So many stores, so many department stores. Stores within stores, stores within stores. Being able to, you know, there's more than one type of thing. You know, you can choose a sweater from this brand or from that brand. You know, it was just like tv, the channels, you know, I mean, good God, it was like revelatory, you know. And so, of course, I think, Vincent, what you're saying about the kind of the advent of technology, the apps, you know, the streaming, the phone, even the, you know, the advent of the iPhone, that's something that made a big difference, I think, in the acceleration of this whole. This whole, you know, phenomenon. But essentially, America was always choice.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes, we're sitting around here knocking a proliferation of choice, but at the same time, would you rather choose to have a king ruling you? Let's talk about history. This is critics at large from the New Yorker. Choose to stick around.

[Nomi Fry]

Hi, I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor of the New Yorker. Each week on the Writer's Voice podcast, New Yorker fiction writers read their newly published stories from the magazine. You can hear from authors like Colson Whitehead.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Turner nudged Elwood, who had a look of horror on his face. They saw it. Griff wasn't going down. He was going to go for it. No matter what happened after.

[Nomi Fry]

Or Joy Williams, her father, was silent. Slowly, he passed his hand over his hair. This usually meant that he was traveling to a place immune to her presence, a place that indeed contradicted her presence. She might as well go to lunch, listen to news stories, or dive into our archive of great fiction. You can find the work of your favorite fiction writers and discover new ones. Listen and follow the writer's voice wherever you get your podcasts.

[Deborah Treisman]

This episode is brought to you by mubi, the curated streaming service that champions great cinema from around the globe, from iconic directors to emerging auteurs. Every film is hand selected by real people who really love movies. So you get the best of cinema streaming anytime, anywhere. There's always something new to discover. And out now from Mubi is the substance, one of the most talked about movies of the year. It stars Demi Moore in a Golden Globe winning performance as Elizabeth Sparkle, a past her prime Hollywood, a lister who turns to a mysterious experimental drug to recapture her youth. Spoiler alert. It doesn't work out quite as intended. Rolling Stone called it an instant body horror classic. And the LA Times called its gonzo ending quote the most astonishing climax of the year. Your jaw will unhinge. Guaranteed. The substance streams exclusively on MUBI. And you can try MUBI free for 30 days at MUBI.com criticsatlarge that's M U B I.com criticsatlarge for a whole month of great cinema for free. Do it.

[Alex Schwartz]

We've been talking about the glut of choice of modern life. This sense that everywhere you look you have so many options to choose from and a kind of overwhelm, a choice overwhelm with all of these selections that we have to make just to get through the day. So I wanted us to dig into a new book that gets at this exact topic. It came out last month and it's called the Age of A History of Freedom in Modern Life. It's by Sophia Rosenfeld, a professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania. I am just gonna spoil it for a sec. I love this book.

[Vincent Cunningham]

It's a good book.

[Alex Schwartz]

I really think this is a great book. I'm so into this book. And she.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Rosenfeld's a really good writer.

[Alex Schwartz]

She's a very good writer. So someone give me the argument that she lays out in the book.

[Vincent Cunningham]

In many ways through lots of wonderful examples, sort of anecdotal, technological, sweepingly historical. It actually makes a pretty simple argument which is simply that choice was not always the sort of hallmark definition of freedom. That these were not sort of. These ideas did not come into being at the exact same time. And that the fact that we now in much of the world equate almost choice and freedom is in fact a historical development. That it was not always, as she says, a doxa d O X a an underlying taken for granted ideology. It came into being and that this coming into being has certain consequences.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vincent, do you wanna just give us a little bit of a sense of when it did come into being?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Well, what I like about the Age of Choice is that it is not totally dogmatic about causes. It does not say, here is the beginning of choice as freedom. She does, though, start us in a really beguiling and sort of interesting place with a.

[Alex Schwartz]

Are you gonna talk about Mr. Cob?

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm gonna talk about Christopher Cox.

[Nomi Fry]

Mr. Cobb, it's Mr. Cox. It's Mr. Cox, the unfortunately named Mr. Cox.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes. Who did not invent the auction, but did in sort of updating the auction, making it sexier and cooler to his London audiences between the 1720s and the 1740s, did sort of invent shopping.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So he had an auction house that, first of all was delimited in space. Only certain, as he said, choice items could appear there. And so Rosenfeld has fun distinguishing choice as we know it. You know, selecting among many options, but also the secondary and a little bit more archaic definition of choice, meaning high value, within a certain larger sort of gallery of choices. I've brought you only the choice items, and you can choose among this choice group. And he put out pamphlets, books of what's there when you can come and look at the items before the auction, and kind of brings this ethic of perusal before choice. What we call shopping, which ends in the mall, as Nomi was talking about, really invents this activity. The fact that shopping could be invented is just like a thrilling notion.

[Nomi Fry]

I could really kind of, like. I could feel it, like, whetting my appetite, which is. Which is crazy, because.

[Alex Schwartz]

Did you wish that you could pay a visit to Mr. Cox's warehouse? Yes, of course. Me too. Yes.

[Nomi Fry]

Because I love it. It really reminded me of me, like, even going to a junk shop. I love junk. I love going to, like, an antique store that's, like, really junky and being like, oh, my God, what is this disgusting thing? But maybe I like it. You know, it's just like that. That thing that Rosenfeld pinpoints is, you know, and she makes also the larger point, I think, in the. In the book, that women, the category of woman, has often been overlooked as a defining, animating element in this rise of choice as. As a kind of, like, marker of individual freedom. Right through, for one, things like shopping. You know, she talks about Jane Austen and how, you know, the kind of, like, activity of choosing between Muslims, which is, again, something I love. Like, I just, you know, I. I.

[Alex Schwartz]

Love to choose between Muslims.

[Nomi Fry]

Who doesn't? I love to choose between Muslims.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Calicos.

[Nomi Fry]

Calicos. And I love to read about choosing between Muslims. It's just like, so there's something so pleasurable about it. And Rosenfeld makes the argument that this is. This is something that was absolutely imperative to the kind of rise of the new individual, the new free individual, you know, based on. On that individual's choices in the marketplace.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, you guys are getting at so much of what is really interesting about the story. We're Talking about the consumer element of the story. And there are other elements which I want to bring in in a second. But right. This idea that suddenly you have marketing, you have these two sides of an exchange. You have the creation at the same time of the shopper and of the seller. No longer are you just going to the dry goods store and saying, I need, you know, three bales of cotton or whatever. I guess it wouldn't be bales. Three reams. I don't know what the. What the relevant unit was. And bartering or maybe taking something on credit or the guy goes to the back to see what he has. No. Now these beautiful things are laid out for you to see and suddenly your taste comes into it. The idea that people even have taste, that you can distinguish yourself in a certain way, while of course many other people are distinguishing themselves in exactly the same way by getting similar things. But again, she's talking about a kind of glut of options that are there from the beginning of this really heightened period of commercial activity in England in the late 18th century, basically, which only continues with colonialism and access to more goods from elsewhere.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

One thing I thought was really interesting that I didn't know about before, which Rosenfeld returns to a lot, is this idea of the choice of Hercules. Had you guys come across that before?

[Nomi Fry]

No.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I could recognize it in some of the. In literature, literary tropes. But she explains it in a way that is so like paradigm shifting, sort of.

[Alex Schwartz]

The choice of Hercules is this ancient Greek parable about Hercules being offered a choice between vice and virtue and really becomes a motif increasingly in popular culture, according to Rosenfeld, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the choice is obviously supposed to be towards the path of virtue. Which choice will you make? And something that I thought was really interesting that's connected to this, that Rosenfeld goes into, is the history of choice in religion and in Christianity specifically. There does come to be this idea in post Reformation Europe that actually people should be able to choose among competing religious practices and conclude which is the right one and which is the best one.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

What Rosenfeld does so well is give the age of choice and its acceleration certain partners. One is Protestantism. The other, to Nomi's point, is a certain kind of woman who is adjacent to privilege, who has certain advantages but is constrained in her choices. And finally, this is what I love about this book. The form of the novel is brought in. She calls the novel the art form par excellence of the age of choice, that the crises of choice that characterize the novel, who to marry, who to love, what to buy, where to live, that these are artistic renderings of a whole sort of change of epoch.

[Nomi Fry]

But she doesn't present this notion of freedom, individual freedom equated with choice as totally unproblematic.

[Alex Schwartz]

Right.

[Vincent Cunningham]

To the contrary.

[Nomi Fry]

To the contrary, Certainly not.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. By revealing that this, and this is really maybe the deeper argument, by revealing that this is not natural, that this idea that choice equals freedom is not just an idea descended from the heavens or whatever. She can therefore look at certain contemporary phenomena, talking about maybe the framing of abortion rights as choice as opposed to something like justice, you know what I mean? The current framing of certain areas of our current life can therefore be reproblematize. We can say this is not the only way to talk about these issues.

[Nomi Fry]

Right? Yeah. Specifically with abortion. She, from my understanding, would like to see it as a kind of more essential right rather than just a kind of like, oh, I can, you know, I can choose one choice, just like I choose calico. This should be kind of a more essential right that doesn't depend on kind of like the whimsical, say, of the market or the whims of the consumer, which I thought was really interesting. And she also kind of brings up this idea of like, what we call choice feminism, you know, the kind of like, oh, yeah, I can, I can choose feminism is about being able to like, oh, I wanna be like whatever it is. Like, I wanna be like an Instagram influencer who is, you know, objectifies herself, you know, and that is what it means to me to be kind of like an untethered free individual. Right. Like, is that kind of like an essential thing? You know, is that necessarily justice? You know, if we use kind of like a more essential term to kind of like making choices?

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And with this ideology, she points out, comes the rhetoric too, of personal responsibility. The way we understand not just social behavior, as in choice feminism, but social outcomes. If you are poor, is it perhaps because you made bad choices?

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely.

[Vincent Cunningham]

So the language of economic redistribution, whether to or not a kind of punitive libertarianism, hinges on this, again, this doxa, this bedrock belief that everything has to do, even the outcomes in our lives have to do with choices. And because we are such free, unfettered individuals, it therefore becomes sort of not our responsibility to sort of. As she talks a lot about choice, choice, choice makes it harder and harder to really figure in your mind what it means to act collectively on the. For the benefit of the whole.

[Nomi Fry]

Absolutely. And, you know, it makes me think again about Your healthcare example, where it's like, oh, I have all of these choices. Yeah. But even the choices you have under the system are given to you because you have managed to achieve a certain status in society, a certain standard of living. You know, as we know, healthcare is not something, you know, universal and freely given just because you are a person.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Nomi Fry]

So even getting to the point where you can make a choice is a political thing.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, that's why I think this tension, which is in Rosenfeld's book, but it's also just in the nature of choice making in general is so interesting, which is the tension between choice as an individual process by which we make decisions about our own lives, from the very banal, like, what you're gonna wear on a given day to the huge, like, what healthcare your kid is gonna have or where they're gonna go to school or whatever it might be. But also, choice is a collective phenomenon. Like, we are all sitting in a country right now that came about as a result of the idea of people choosing their own form of government. That's no small thing. And we can poke as many holes in that as we should about who was entitled to choose. But, you know, reading Rosenfeld got me thinking about the Federalist Papers. And I went back to the Federalist Papers.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Beautiful.

[Nomi Fry]

Just there you were just going Hamilton Mode.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, it was just. I was going Hamilton Mode. I was just, you know. And Madison, please don't forget him, Madison. And just have. And John Jay. You know, gotta just cite the trio there. And I was having a little glance at Federalist Number one, and you get right there. It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country by their conduct and example to decide the important question whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. And that is so interesting to me. The idea just at its most basic level, that choice is itself a revolution and that its alternatives are accident and force. Like, if you hear those things as a choice, which of course is what they're cannily doing in Federalist 1 presented to you today, who among us is not choosing choice? As Charlotte York says on Sex and the City is, of course, Vincent Cunningham, well known watcher of Sex and the City, knows, I choose my choice. It feels today like the choices are endless. But do we actually have access to as many options as we think we do? Critics at large from the New Yorker will be right back.

[Nomi Fry]

Chloe, you know what I think the world really needs? What? More fashion.

[Alex Schwartz]

The people want it, the people have.

[Nomi Fry]

Asked for it, the people are getting it.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yes. Everyone's in luck. I'm Nicole Phelps, the director of Vogue Runway, and I'm excited to announce that the run through is coming to Tuesdays. The run through is now going to be twice a week, every Tuesday. Join me and the Vogue Runway team as we dig into the latest fashion news.

[Nomi Fry]

Thursdays will still be Chloe and Shoma talking about the latest in fashion and culture, per usual. And Tuesdays, more fashion, fashion, fashion.

[Alex Schwartz]

The run through with Vogue is available wherever you get your podcasts. So we've been talking about the really interesting history of choice even becoming a thing to contend with in modern life and how choice eventually comes to be more and more conflated with the idea of freedom, that the more choices you have, the more you are able to exercise your freedom to choose between them. And what I'm wondering is, do we actually have as much choice as we think we do? Because I'm not seeing always such great choices. It's the same thing as what you were saying, Nomi, about, you know, this seems like a trivial example, but I do think it can stand in for a lot of different examples in modern life. The Netflix slop, the just kind of unwatchable, uninteresting, seemingly algorithmically fashioned, not even really intended to be paid attention to stuff. Okay, great. I can choose between many, many, many of these options, but when I am presented with that choice, the act of choosing itself just feels very impoverished.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah, one of the. To return briefly to Rosenfeld, one of her most sort of paradoxical and interesting arguments is that sometimes a big proliferation of choice is there precisely to mask deeper disparities of choice. You know, how somebody says if you're not at the table, you're on the menu kind of thing. Sometimes choice comes into play when someone else is being chosen, not doing the choosing. So she, at the same time as she shows the innovation of the posters of Mr. Cock, she shows how similar they are to the posters for slave auctions. You know, choice individuals that you can buy chattel. And so often the language of choice is precisely about force. Force is underneath this seeming choice.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah, And I think another point or another aspect of like, maybe we don't have as much choice or as free choice as we think we do is, you know, the classic example of like, the different algorithmic bubbles that we live in. Right. I mean, X, nay, Twitter is, you know, a case in point where, you know, it Used to be when it was still Twitter, that all you would see was your kind of like your kinfolk, you know, all saying kind of like pretty similar things. Right Then Elon came in. Now I'm getting. Now I see a lot of like, sort of Nazi adjacent stuff, you know, I mean, it's not funny, but I'm like, oh, wow, this is, you know, I thought I had free choice. I thought I was like surfing merrily along. I mean, I didn't really, but that is kind of like the illusion. That was the feeling you work under. And now I'm like, oh, now the choice looks totally different. In both cases, these things were decided not by myself, but by someone else, by a mechanism outside of myself. So that seemingly free choice to click on whatever tweet or, you know, and like engage with it as one will is in fact totally predetermined. And it's kind of. That's pretty dark, I guess. Yeah, it kind of brought it home to me.

[Alex Schwartz]

I guess I just feel that there is a way in which choosing and being required to choose so often is itself something that has been chosen for us. I'm thinking of an article I recently read in the New York Times about people who are confronting their own self diagnosed, basically, shopaholicism. Shopaholism. People who felt that they were unable to stop making purchases online because they were presented with so many options all the time. They were getting the alerts from the brands that they had signed up for to get the discount code. Stuff that is really, really rote and bas in our society. We all know what it is to be bombarded by the, you know, get 15% off on whatever today and people and going on Amazon or going on any of these, which, you know, I find it ironic. I'm sure I'm not the only one that Amazon is itself the choice. This huge mega store which seemingly presents all these different options. It's just this one monolith that we're purportedly choosing, but are we really? There it is. And everyone is drawn to it like a magnet. But I was reading this article because there was that boycott. Did you guys look into this at all the other week that sort of seemed to hit various social media feeds sort of anecdotally.

[Nomi Fry]

There was like a kind of a cute cartoon type thing where it was like they would know Amazon.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah, it was a boycott that was called for, I think, February 28, to not shop at Amazon or other big box stores.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Alex Schwartz]

The idea, right, was to have an economic blackout, show them our power. If we choose not to choose.

[Nomi Fry]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

I bring it up because it seems to have created for certain people an awareness around how much of their choosing was really involuntary and how much just going through the day has meant deciding you need something, deciding you want, that. I'm thinking about want and need a lot lately because my two year old confuses the words.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yes.

[Alex Schwartz]

So, you know, I need. Green grapes is a phrase that's often. Yeah. And it's like you do feel you need them, but I guess part of the point is, as one grows older, you're supposed to be able to distinguish between those things.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

And yet a society with a glut of choice doesn't want you to, I guess, is where I'm coming out on this. Doesn't want you to distinguish between want and need.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. And, you know, speaking of the. How technology accelerates and sort of inflects this ethos of choice, the new technology makes it so that you kind of, sort of do need to at least interact with the field of choice. You have to eat. It's just a question of, therefore, mechanisms that we build in now where all of these choices are presented on the very same interface. The phone, where you kind of do all of your other urgent functions, it has sort of twinned want and need in this way where you kind of. They become increasingly hard to parse.

[Alex Schwartz]

Yeah. Nomi, you were Talking about how Mr. Kock, the originator of shopping, the auctioneer with flair, ends at the mall. Well, no, Mr. Cock ends on our phones.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

We all have Mr. Cock in our.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Pockets, don't we ever.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm so sorry.

[Nomi Fry]

Some of us more than others.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah. If he's reaching the pocket, it's a crisis, but go ahead.

[Alex Schwartz]

I was committed to bringing up Mr. Cock as many times as possible in this episode as I humanly can. I love commerce and the pleasure of commerce, by which I mean just walking down the street, popping in, popping out, browsing, speaking to someone and. Yeah, I understand why people, including me, shop on Amazon. Of course. I get it. Absolutely.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

But I do think there's a kind of human impoverishment in the world of choice being moved to the digital realm, just like there is with many other kinds of human activity. You know, Do I wish that I was browsing my muslins in person? Yeah.

[Nomi Fry]

I mean, this all brings to mind for me the pandemic, the early pandemic, when, as all of us may recall, you know, we couldn't really. We barely left our houses. Certainly everything was closed. All the stores were closed, bookstores were Closed. And we would walk around the neighborhood in Bed Stuy. And people, you know, would put out books, as they often do. And usually, like, when you pass that sort of pie, I always look because I love junk. I love the tactility of things left behind. This was like, super jackpot. I would be like, oh, my God, which book can we choose to take home and read? The stores are closed.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Right.

[Nomi Fry]

And I kind of. I can't say I missed this. It was awful, obviously. But there is something about that, Alex, to your point where I'm just like, okay, the choice. The funnel was. You know, the funnel was funneling. There wasn't that much to choose from. And in some ways, not to again, romanticize a really bad time, but it made one more grateful for what you could kind of discover.

[Alex Schwartz]

Vincent, before you were describing a kind of choice burnout.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Ugh. I don't wanna choose. You choose for me. There's just too much, too much stuff, too many things to have to select from. Scarcity can make choice seem more precious.

[Nomi Fry]

Yeah.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I think what so much of we've been saying has in common, Nomi's anecdote about the pandemic and this issue of, you know, ordering things. And so much of it seems to be connected to thinking in a kind of local way. And the local really being the site also of thinking like a different conception of the self. That you can think about yourself as an individual. Sure. A choosing agent. Yes, sure. But also as the member of a society. Like a kind of. During the pandemic, part of this was your choices were limited by a certain kind of. Maybe it was a return a little bit to the Hercules choice. It was, hey, I can order something and make somebody else leave their house and do all these things for me and live like a prince and be an asshole, or I can get up and go to the grocery store. That the conception of the self had widened just a little bit. Do I make my neighbor sick? Do I not? Do I expose someone else to outdoors? Do I not? The self as being not just a site of individual choice, this very bracketed notion of liberty, but also as, like, someone who can, in a way, help his or her neighbors, you know, and this being an important function of selfhood, when all you do is choose, choose, choose self, self, self. What you end up is by yourself. What it is, is loneliness. And so it's, like, about putting yourself with people again seems to be one of the perhaps, like, salves for what is being described here.

[Alex Schwartz]

Amen. As George Costanza said, we live in a society. And now you've heard it from Vincent Cunningham, too.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We ought to.

[Alex Schwartz]

We ought to. Yeah. We ought to make choices that are for the greater good. Such as vaccinating one's children against measles, dare I say.

[Nomi Fry]

Definitely, yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, I have one last question for my fellow critics and it is this. What recommendations do you have for taking a break from choice, if you have any?

[Nomi Fry]

Um, these are tiny, small things, of course, Lately the Criterion channel, which is of course another kind of organ of choice, Right. One of the many apps that we.

[Alex Schwartz]

Have, although a well curated one.

[Nomi Fry]

A well curated one to be sure. But they've started doing this thing called 247 where you just much like an old time TV or single channel television, you click it and then you just end up on whatever it is they're giving you. You don't need to choose anything. And they don't tell you what it is. Even you can like check online, but it doesn't even say, you know, in a little box like this is this or that movie. You know, we've been occasionally, you know, going to that and being like, let's see what they give us. Oh, my God. It's a movie with John moreau from like 1961 that I've never watched and I wouldn't have chosen probably had it been given to me in the lineup of choices. And that's kind of. That's kind of nice.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Yeah.

[Alex Schwartz]

Beautiful. I love it.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Alex.

[Alex Schwartz]

Well, one aspect, one area in which I deal with choice a lot, both good and bad, is cooking. What am I gonna cook? Oh, my God, I can't believe I need to eat again. Can't believe my child needs to eat again. But I will say, you know, I've often liked the whole CSA model community, sustained agriculture, where you just sign up for a farm share and you get a box of vegetables and you don't know what's gonna be in that box. And there they are. Lately I've joined a fish share fishing.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, yes.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Oh, my God.

[Alex Schwartz]

It's run by the fish store, Mermaid Garden in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.

[Nomi Fry]

Mermaid Garden.

[Alex Schwartz]

And I don't know what the fish is going to be from week to week. I find out on the Friday before I pick it up on the Saturday. And I trust the choosers, the fish curators.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Would you call these curators also? Mongers.

[Alex Schwartz]

They're mongers.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Fish mongers.

[Alex Schwartz]

Oh, they're mongers.

[Nomi Fry]

Oh, God.

[Alex Schwartz]

They're mongering, they're curating, they're choosing. And I say, just tell me what I'm cooking and I will show up and I will get my fish and I will cook it.

[Nomi Fry]

Gosh, I love that. I love that going Little House on.

[Alex Schwartz]

The Prairie, moon, bless a monger.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Get yourself a monger. Vincent maybe in line with all we've just said about, you know, encounter, accident. You know what's a good way not to make choices is take a walk. I don't mean to be all touch grass about it, but whim enters the conversation once again. You don't have to decide a route. You go, you come back.

[Nomi Fry]

Something that really helps is if you know that you're gonna pass some windows that have cats in them.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Ah, see?

[Nomi Fry]

Cats just watching. Cat shopping. Window cat shopping.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Window cat shopping.

[Alex Schwartz]

This has been Critics at Large. Our senior producer is Rhiannon Corby and Alex Barish is our consulting editor. Our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Conde Nast's head of global audio is Chris Bannon. Alexis Quadrato composed our theme music and we had engineering help today from Jake Loomis with mixing by Mike Kutchman. You can find every episode of Critics at [e-mail] Critics. See you soon.

[Nomi Fry]

You come to the New Yorker Radio Hour for conversations that go deeper with people you really want to hear from, whether it's Bruce Springsteen or Questlove or Olivia Rodrigo, Liz Cheney or the godfather of artificial intelligence, Geoffrey Hinton, or some of my extraordinarily well informed colleagues at the New Yorker. So join us every week on the New Yorker Radio Hour wherever you listen to podcasts from prx.