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A
It's springtime, which means that Princeton University Press is having its annual 50% off spring sale. From May 4 through June 9, you can get 50% off nearly every single print, ebook and audiobook from Princeton University Press. Just go to Press, Princeton. Edu to get 50% off. Incredible Books like Disneyland and the Rise of Automation and Beyond Belief. How Evidence shows what really works. There are so many fantastic books you can get an incredible deal on. Go to press princeton.edu and use the code spring50. That's S P R I N G50 press princeton.edu. the sale only lasts for a month, so go and get some books. Welcome to the New Books Network.
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B
Hi, this is Helena Wissing, your host on the New Books Network. Today I am having a conversation with a very special and amazing author, Adam Phillips, about his latest book, the Life you Want, published by Farah Strauss and Chiru. It was, as always, an amazing experience to get to talk with Adam, so enjoy the interview. Adam, I'm so happy to get to talk with you about your latest book, the Life youe Want. So I wanted to talk with you about the lives we want or think we want. And this book is about how daunting it can be to actually reckon with a question and just how difficult wanting can be. And it struck me, you know, you really, in this book, show us how difficult the question of wanting is. And I see. I feel like we live in a culture that wants us to believe that it should be a very straightforward matter.
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A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I think consumer capitalism depends on the idea that we can know what we want. And we've just simply got to get the wherewithal to get it. But the actual process of wanting isn't difficult. It's just the question of acquiring what we want that is the problem. And I think in a way, even though that is true, there is a really interesting question and issue about how we get to know what we actually do want, which is a version of how do we get to know what we really enjoy or that is really nourishing or enlivening for us.
- [02:39]
B
Yes. And I think this is what's powerful, is that you might look at the title and then you might think, oh, this book will tell me how I can get the life I want. But I don't think the book will. Will do that. But it. I think it's gonna show just how difficult a question it is. And I. I was thinking about in your lifetime, how, what would you have been seeing in your lifetime in Terms of the expectations people have for their lives. How have you seen this shift in your, in your life? How have the stories about the lives that are available to us changed in, in your lifetime?
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A
Well, I, I don't feel at all easy or confident about making sort of large cultural generalizations. I really don't know and I don't know who I'd be talking about if I answered that question. I do think, though, that certain things are discernible and one I think is certainly in the last 20 or so years. I don't know how true this is in America, but there's been, if you like, an escalating consumer capitalist culture, an escalating disparity between the rich and the poor, and an escalating right wing revival in most of the countries, certainly in Europe and clearly in America. And I think, of course, these are all forms of acculturation. These are all ways that we are told implicitly or explicitly what we should be wanting and how we should want it. And I think they're very, very powerful.
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B
Yeah, I mean, I certainly, I feel like I've seen that with consumerism, culture, Even the last 10 years, things have sort of seemed to have been intensified so much. And one of the things I was thinking when I was, when I was reading your book is that I get a sense that in your generation there was this big shift. It was ongoing, it had been coming along in different ways, but there was the dismantling of authorities. I mean, you've written about this in previous books and that was often experienced as really liberating. But there seems to be something about younger generations where it's almost like that it's a struggle with the way that authorities have been dissolved and almost like a return or a frantic search and maybe like this disappointment to realize that there is no big other. So I know not to talk about big generalizations, but how is that changing?
- [05:15]
A
Well, I think you're right. I think that there's been a resurgence, if you like, of the wish to be controlled, which is a version of a desperate quest for authority. Now, presumably there's a desperate quest for authority when people feel at their most uncertain or at their most abject or at their most humiliated. The question why would anybody want a strong leader anyway? Or ever? What's the draw of that? Well, part of the draw is simply being told what to want and how to want. And I think people are only going to be drawn to this when, as you've suggested, the problem of wanting becomes intolerable or unbearable or too conflictual. And I think really, it all gets. Certainly in psychoanalytic terms, it really all gets down to the question of what kind of relationship people have with their own frustration, whether they want to magically abolish it, whether they can transform it into something useful, or whether they're living in a state of perpetual rage.
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B
Yeah. Speaking of frustration, that was also something that struck me when I was reading, is that this attachment people seem to have with persuasion or who is right or what is it to be right? And that seems also to be a pressing, ongoing thing that comes up in your writings.
- [06:36]
A
Yes, I think that's right, I think. Because my assumption is that omniscience is the saboteur of development, if you like, and that there's nothing more boring than the wish to be right, because it's the enemy of conversation, really, in free exchange. So I think my project, if you like, is to show us what the predicament is in which we have recourse to omniscience, and how omniscience, in a way, is always a dead end. It's against sociability and against exchange. So I think it's all to do with the idea that we should know what we want. So you could, for example, believe that we have relationships in order to get our needs met. Whereas the alternative this would be to think we have a relationship in order to work out what our needs might be. So we don't start from an essentialist position of knowing who we are and what we want. We start from a related position in which we assume that relations are in the service of this discovery and that it might be a lifelong, ongoing discovery.
- [07:43]
B
Yes. And you also show very well how this thing about who is like, what does it mean to be right? That it's like, between the lines, you're actually confessing to some kind of devotion to the other position. Like there's such an attachment to the other one who is seemingly wrong. I remember one time at a conference where I distinctly remembered how there was someone who wanted to really get you into a disagreement about something. And I remember that you said, I think you should stick to your guns. You had no interest in trying to persuade the person. And it struck me how rare that has been, at least in my training, that someone would really be clear on that.
- [08:27]
A
Yeah, no, no, me too. And that it's as though the project has been persuasion rather than putting an emphasis on people's capacity to be receptive or capacity to digest their material. Because you may have had a similar experience. But I found it very Dismaying when I trained, because I had been a hippie in the 60s and 70s, and it was precisely the skepticism, dismantling of forms of authority that we were committed to. I then went into analytic training and people would talk with immense authority about the unconscious, about development and so on, as though there never had been the 60s, though this never happened. And so I found that this very dismaying because for me, psychoanalysis was all about, as it were, understanding why one needs to believe somebody or something and what the alternatives might be.
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B
Yeah. And, you know, this brings me to one of the other themes in. In your book, because, you know, this is the season of the year, at least here in the US where we have a lot of, you know, commencement, graduation ceremonies. We just had the. And at my. The university where I work and you have, I mean, so much of your. In your book, at least there are two of the essays where you, you know, you really write about pedagogy, but not in the usual sense. I mean, I would. Maybe we could call it like, evocative pedagogy. And I don't know if you wanted to speak a bit to that.
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A
Well, I thought just about the distinction between being informed of something. And of course, if you want to learn chemistry, there's a certain amount of information and knowledge that is required. But what that leaves out is that. And this, in a way, is a psychoanalytic point, but not only that, which is that we never know the consequence of our words for ourselves or for other people. So that even when I'm sitting in a chemistry lesson, I might be having all sorts of associations and memories. That means I might be taking in the information, but a lot of other things are going on in my mind at the same time. So I suppose that what I wanted to make the case for there was the way in which we can learn, but we can't always be taught that the intention to teach somebody something in some contexts can be very misleading. So that I go to a lecture, or we as a group go to a lecture, and each of us are going to pick out different things that seem significant to us. And it would seem to me that the point, rather than the lecturer needing to know that we've all got the same message or we've acquired his point. And so that's really the distinction. And it seems to me it's operative in psychoanalysis. You know, it's the thing that Winnicott said that it's not what the analyst says that matters, it's what the patient can make of it. And that for me it's like a reception theory. So I can't say to you, I'll tell you a great joke. I can tell you a joke and you'll tell me whether for you it
- [11:28]
B
is a good joke or if it's a good joke. But for reasons, different reasons that you would thought at first. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the thing, the parts about the pedagogy has been very, very helpful because I think try, you know, being an educator, I think it's. It's a. It's a very, very difficult thing to do. It feels sometimes like an impossible job. Just like being an analyst can also feel impossible. And, and it's. It's impossible because I think we. I mean, I see it, you know, students come in, I feel like there's so much work to kind of open them up to the fact that the process is not about pouring, injecting information into them.
- [12:11]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is where again, psychonacity to me is very helpful simply with the idea of resistance. You know, that we know that if people are interested in something, they're likely to be ambivalent about it. So there's always going to be an element of resistance. So you're not only as. But wanting to help people listen. You're helping people to get over their resistance to listening and their anxieties about what will happen if they do take things in.
- [12:38]
B
Yeah. And I found it very helpful. This is also one of the essays on resistance is the way you really look at it from all the sides. Because, yes, resistance is that sort of pushing back, but something is also revealed in that. Right. It's a knowledge claim. There's also a. Like, there's a libidinal connection to what it is you're resisting and it reveals something about yourself.
- [13:01]
A
Yes. And also resistance is a way of playing for time. When we say no, it's a probe as well as a decision. So the question is, how is the other person going to receive our no? What are they going to make of it? And how much do I need to say no first as a precondition for a possible yes further down the line? So I need to take time to decide what I want. And I think resistance at its best is part of the way one does things in one's own time.
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B
Yes. That it's a process. That it's a developmental process that can't be rushed.
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A
Yes, exactly. Or hurried.
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B
Yeah.
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A
If one's being hurried, then effectively one develops a false self to manage the person who's hurrying one.
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B
And I mean, what I also see in my work with my students is that there is something about the fear of the intimidation. And there's this wonderful quote. You also say, you say that education, like psychoanalysis, should be about supporting someone and finding out what they're interested in, but without intimidation. And that piece, they're about the intimidation. It seems like this is what students are really, really needing because unfortunately, they have gone through educational experiences with a lot of intimidation.
- [14:24]
A
Yes, absolutely. And this is both an internal and an external problem. You know, the institutions they've been through have intimidated them to varying extents. And then of course, there's internalized superego that puts a lot of pressure on them. And this makes, and this, if you like, kills the joy or the delight in learning. The idea this might be a pleasure, not an exam, gets completely lost.
- [14:48]
B
But, you know, when I was reading about this, it also struck me how when you really, you draw on Winnicott also Marian Milner Ferency, like, you also show just how much is at stake because, you know, the educator or the analyst or the parent for that matter, is always operating with like, you know, being the one who's supposed to know, but who doesn't know and who doesn't know the things they're putting out there and, and the student or child or whatever, the analyst also, then they. There's some they know they want and there are all the things they don't know they want. So we're both operating this chaos of the unconsciousness, the dialogue of unconsciousness, like Bering Seed says. And, you know, this is where, this is the, the dark waters we're in. So it's not like you're making it out to be just all good and easy if we just all are nice to each other.
- [15:43]
A
No, no, no, no. And also that psychoanalysis isn't an epistemophilic project. It's not about, in my view, gaining self knowledge. It is sometimes. But the risk is that self knowledge is used as a way of preempting or defending against experience. So the reason I like the Winnicott independent tradition is because they seem to me to be much more interested in the, if you like the risks not taken developmentally, the experiences that haven't been had or that have been longed for, as opposed to getting more and more and more supposed knowledge about who one is.
- [16:22]
B
Yes. And this is something you've written about before and you talk a lot about this thing of like getting sort of, sort of tongue in cheek, getting over ourselves. And this seems to be incredibly Incredibly hard because we have this narrative of the individual or the personal brand, you know, to bring the consumer culture into it that it's not just goods that are brands, but personalities. You know, we become brands. And it seems so hard for us to cultivate this way of being in conversation in education where the point is not the Persona.
- [16:58]
A
Yes, and that's right. But I think that we have to have regard for the fact that what we think of as our characters or our personalities are like a lifetime achievement. And we've worked very hard. And so of course there's tremendous anxiety about relinquishing them or modifying them. And it would seem to me in analysis, one of the things we're doing is trying to work out what any one of our given personal characteristics has been a self cure for and that there's ongoing attempted self cures so that we know this. But the alcoholic's problem is not alcohol. The alcoholic's problem is sobriety. And so the difficult thing is to reconstruct what the alcohol was originally medicating for any given person. And it's the same, it seems to me with any of our so called character traits that they've had been solutions to developmental problems, but more or less good ones. But we're not going to be in a hurry to ruin. Christian.
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B
Yes. You know this, this may reminds me of there, there's one, the essay on immune suran that you bring in here. It's, it's an essay about this question of, you know, the, the, the wish to not have been born and how we go about this. And you know that, that essay, it's quite, it's quite heavy. That's not like a light, light reading. I, I, you know, I both wanted my, I want my teenager to read it and also maybe I don't want my teenager to read it. Yeah. But it made me think that.
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A
I'm sorry to interrupt, but it's an interesting anxiety, isn't it? Because it's as though we don't want our adolescents to really think about whether they feel their lives are worth living. As though we don't want to, as it were, introduce the idea of suicide into the developmental process.
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B
Yeah. And, and I mean you've written about development and adolescence over the years and, and you, you really make the case for it about remembering like how, how it's kind of like the, the demands we put on our, our young people. It's just, it's just incredible the pressure we put on them to be, to be done people when they are. It's Absolutely impossible for them.
- [19:11]
A
Yes, I think that's right. And I think the combination, the pressure of puberty and the pressure of the parents and the culture is almost potentially overwhelming.
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B
Yeah. And it's actually maybe a teenager who's grappling with like the question Emile Siorrant asks about like the, like the questioning, did it even is it worth it that I was born? But you're also saying we have to appreciate what can it offer to destitute to that it gives them maybe a freedom, an opening, something.
- [19:47]
A
Yes. And a genuine question is, you know, are there sufficiently sustaining pleasures as opposed to thinking life is sacred or it's intrinsically good. Whereas it's quite clear that for some people their lives are literally unbearable. And so the ezra help them go on living is like torturing them.
- [20:05]
B
Yeah. Is it too simplistic here? I guess I'm thinking about when you cut good enough, like the good enough life is that. I mean, that was just. And association occurring to me.
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A
Yes. I think that's very important in this because the risk is that the life you want becomes a kind of idealized project. And I think you're right, that over time we will hopefully acquire a sense of a life that's good enough for us. And there's got to be in this fantasy of the life we want, there's got to be what Freud called a reality sense. And that's crucial to this. So I think the phrase the life you want is a very interesting one because it focuses on the wishful element, but not on the realistic constraints. And back to the other half of this equation. There's the life you want and then there's the life that is possible within your given circumstances and history. And that's what's being worked out. Really.
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B
Yeah. I mean, your. Your book from some years ago, missing out. You. You talk about this thing of the. There's the life we want we long for and there's the life we have and the relationship between the two. And I mean, I. I've told. I have told you before this. That book changed my life. It was really important to me. It was really amazing. And I had thought. And I thought that. I thought that, wow, you know, that you had really. There was a. So much that had been opened with that and. And I was struck by, you know, in a sense, this book. You further the discussion. Continue it.
- [21:38]
A
That's right. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I think that. I'm sure there are threads throughout my books that I'm unaware of, but I Think the book this is most connected to is missing out. I think it picks up a lot of those things. I think you're right.
- [21:53]
B
And I'm very fascinated by this thing of, like, the lives, the way we form, the idea about the life we want. Because I think we seem to have such an interesting relationship to discipline disappointment. Because it's almost like there's this, you know, this thing where disappointment is also a way to demonstrate that you have the adequate levels of expectations in life.
- [22:16]
A
Yeah. Yes, for sure. And you could think that disappointment is potentially a great educator because it's going to be sure. Unless we get stuck in it or begin to relish it as a state of mind, it's going to be revealing to us the discrepancy between our wishes and reality. And then ideally, the question is, well, is disappointment the best thing we can do with this, or are there other possibilities? Because it's like getting like living a grudge that there's something tempting about disappointment, like it can be an addiction. As if to say in a rather omniscient way, I've discovered the truth about life. It's intrinsically disappointing. And that becomes like kind of a bad faith. It's a bit like saying, well, I know the truth about life.
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B
Yes, exactly. When people are very disappointed, they seem to be very certain that they knew exactly what they wanted, as opposed to, well, maybe there could have been other. There could be other things I want.
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A
Yeah, exactly. And the disappointment is also an opportunity for revision or reconsideration.
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B
Yeah, like there's that moment for an opportunity. And this. Actually, I thought about something. I also see a lot, probably mostly in the parts of the world where people are relatively affluent and have relative good resources, whatever that means. Because sometimes there's some people who can sometimes get stuck in wanting specifically only the life that is exactly not possible for them. What do you think is going on there?
- [23:54]
A
Yeah, well, if you like, that's a way of engineering a continual or repeating a continual enforced disappointment. It's almost like. Think it's almost like an attack on pleasure guarantees that I will not be enjoying myself. And I think that's why the so Kleinian idea about. Not only a Kleinian, but ideas about both the attack on pleasure, but also one's attack on one's own development. And that's always feeling like a temptation.
- [24:21]
B
Yes. And you know what you're saying there also links back to that. The essay about Emile Siran, about how this thing of thinking, if I had only not been born is also sort of an Attack on being alive. It's sort of a. Attack aliveness.
- [24:40]
A
Yeah. And of course, you know, as I say, Miatim, it's obvious you can only have that thought having been born. So the thought is always after the event. And that, you might think, is what's interesting about it. We can't choose not to be born.
- [24:58]
B
But also. Yes, you can't choose it. And you're kind of thrown into aliveness in that way. It's the one thing we did not have any say in it. And I mean, it also points to how this is such a reflection of the modern person. Right. That it feels like in front to us that there was something we didn't get to choose ourselves.
- [25:20]
A
Yeah. Everything should be a source. It's a bit like, you know, being in the supermarket.
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B
Yeah. But all these choices are clearly, you know, they're too much for us. I mean, it's obvious that it's too overwhelming when you're. You also, the question of life, desire, you know, it's like we have these enormous freedoms of our lives. You also say, you know, it's almost like the intense pleasures of life. That is what makes the absence of them unbearable.
- [25:54]
A
Yes. And also there's an illusion of freedom here. So pleasure equals an enormous range of choices. Whereas, of course, in actuality, pleasure, the range of choice can absolutely deaden or kill one's capacity to enjoy oneself. As you say, it's an excess.
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B
Yeah, yeah. It's too much. And this fantasy of like, that we have so many choices and the freedoms I wondered about, and maybe this is like a mythological reading. It's almost like we have so much freedom. But then there's the fact of the unconscious, like you write about. Right. The way that we don't have our full control. And maybe the combination of the two. How can a mortal being handle that? I mean, that sounds like, in a way, a bit of a recipe for disaster.
- [26:46]
A
Yeah, it's like being tantalized. On the one hand, we're saying, okay, there's a whole range of choices here. And yet people like us are saying, yes, but there's also an unconscious. We're not simply conscious, vulgaristed beings. We're largely motivated, unconscious. Seriously. So it's a bit like being driven mad.
- [27:06]
B
Yeah, mad. Yeah, madness. And then, like Winnicott said, madness is the need to be believed. And we hans down trying to persuade others of the rightness of our conscious ideas. Yeah, but, you know, the overwhelm of our. That overwhelm is also, you know, the thing about the unconscious Right. I'm thinking maybe we haven't even talked about the pragmatism and Rorty, which is a huge part, these odd belt fellows that you bring into conversation. Because I sometimes struggle with, like, well, I believe in the unconscious. I think it's very real and you know, there are ways to experience it. But I also, I have always wanted to, like, well, what about those? And we see them all the time. People who are like, have this like, skepticism of the unconscious and like, they don't really see it. And I can't give up on the idea of the. I can't unthink the fact of the unconscious.
- [28:06]
A
I agree, but I think we also have to acknowledge that the unconscious is a friction. This is an invention. There isn't something we can point to or smell called the unconscious. This is a fiction. And the question, for me, the pragmatic question is, well, what's the use of it? What does it make possible that we want?
- [28:24]
B
And that's where you think together psychoanalysis and pragmatism. And I am kind of struck by that. I mean, I wonder, have you, what, how, when you started to develop these ideas, like, how, how did people respond? And I'm sure there would be some people who would say that this is not psychoanalysis and this is not.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah, but you see, again, I would say the people who want to say things like this is not psychoanalysis are the people that I don't want to talk to. You see what I mean? People who know what psychoanalysis is are, for me, against the spirit of psychoanalysis. But of course, you're right. I mean, in many ways you could think pragmatism is like a denial of the unconscious. But what pragmatism does add to psychoanalysis is that because it's anti essentialist, it opens things up, you know, if, let's say, and this is the caricature. But if we're traditional Freudians, we will assume that our patients are coming to talk to us about their conflicts about sexuality and aggression. But we know what the fundamental conflicts are, as opposed to thinking somebody might come to psychoanalysis to find out what they think sexuality is and what significance, if any, it has in their lives. So we wouldn't be assuming it's the heart of the matter. We would be enabling somebody to work out for themselves or what kind of thing it was for them.
- [29:48]
B
Yeah, like what they're making of it. What they make of it. Yes. Yeah. And yeah, that's what's so interesting, is that you kind of also tease out the way that the pragmatism approach actually can support psychoanalysis or can actually further a psychoanalytic project in a way I had never thought was possible.
- [30:14]
A
Yes. I definitely think that. I don't, as I say in the book, I don't see these things as necessarily antagonistic. I see them as complementary and that they've both got a lot to offer to each other. That's why I think it's worth thinking about both together.
- [30:28]
B
But maybe that's the richness is in the fact that they do bump up against each other. I mean, there is some tension.
- [30:35]
A
Absolutely. I agree. And in a way, it validates both of them for me in different ways and opens them up as well.
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B
Yeah. So the, the, the. I think a lot of people have this understanding of the unconscious maybe a little misunderstood, that it's all the bad stuff. Right. It's all the tricky stuff, where Rorty has, like a more generous reading and said, well, what about if our unconscious is not only against us, but for us and works at our favor.
- [31:03]
A
Yes, exactly. And, and you would think, you know, if you thought in terms of evolution or Darwinian biology or whatever, you'd think how odd it is that we were the animals that are so divided against ourselves. I mean, dogs and cats aren't. So in terms of our survival, it would make sense to think that we are more on our own side than we may always be aware.
- [31:29]
B
Yes. Even as we are also at times, working against ourselves. Right.
- [31:34]
A
And very selfless, destructive. Yeah, exactly.
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B
Yeah, yeah. I, you know, you do mention a few times about the death drive. That. And how's this impossible. It's, of course, an impossible term. It's hard to even talk about. But you. You do tease out some of the. The kind of the contradictory tension there is in. In that and how. How it also presents in the world.
- [31:55]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And clearly it's about something, even if you don't know what it's about. You know, either we, you know, if you think crudely, either we believe there's innate death instinct so that each of us is born with a different amount of destructiveness, or we think destructiveness is reactive to frustration. But one way or another, aggression is going to be a very powerful preoccupation for everybody.
- [32:19]
B
Yeah, for sure. You know, this reminds me of. I know that you wrote a book a while ago with the late Leo Bersani.
- [32:28]
A
Yeah.
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B
Which is an amazing book, Intimacies. And I was very inspired by that and very sad that Leo Bassani is not here with us today because I was really struck by one of the things and he's written about. He wrote about and talked about him. I'm sure you did, too, about how, in a way, it's actually pretty amazing the way that the young child. The world is just so much for the child. It's too much. But then in order to solve that, we find a way of, like, taking pleasure in the too muchness and the suffering.
- [33:01]
A
Yes.
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B
And that's really struck me as such a sensitive way of making sense of that.
- [33:07]
A
Yes, I completely agree. And I think that, you know, the idea that mathoclasm is like a trick we learn to survive, that because life is potentially so painful, we have to find a way of making pain pleasurable in order to survive it. And that this is amazingly ingenious.
- [33:24]
B
It is. It's actually really amazing when you think of it like how we as a species develop that. That capacity.
- [33:32]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm delighted with light intimacy.
- [33:36]
B
Yeah, it's a really good. I think, I mean, that talks about relationships and some also. I was reminded of that book, reading through this one, too, of how you. You mentioned about the, you know, the way we experience our dependency. But, Adam, I don't want to take up too much of your time. I wanted actually to think, to hear about, as we come up at the end, you know, generally, usually we want to end by asking, you know, what are the. What are new things next projects and so on, you know. And Adam, you hardly. You have hardly written any books in your life.
- [34:14]
A
Yeah, well, I. Books sort of occur to me or essays occur to me, and what I've most recently written, in fact, it's recently come out on YouTube because I gave it a lecture at the New School in New York, which is. It's called On Psychoanalysis as Moral Education. And that's really, I think, something that I'm now preoccupied by in some way.
- [34:38]
B
Yeah, I know a lot of our listeners will know the New School and will be familiar with that, and we'll be looking forward to checking that out for sure. Adam, do you live the life you want?
- [34:48]
A
Sorry?
- [34:49]
B
Do you live the life you want?
- [34:52]
A
Yes, I think to some extent, I've certainly never wanted to be anybody else, and I haven't suffered from being envious by luck of other people. And there are lots of things and people in my life that I love and like, which isn't to say, of course, there aren't real frustrations and anxieties, but I think, on balance, if such a phrase makes any sense, I do live the life I want.
- [35:22]
B
I'm happy to hear that. I mean, I can tell you that certainly right now in this moment, I'm definitely living the life I want because I'm very pleased to be talking with you. I think the way of the focus on conversations that you write about, about how having the conversations that are enlivening, that they seem to be really important and way more meaningful than any of the other things on offer, certainly from consumer culture, about what you should aspire to in life. I think these kinds of conversations feel meaningful in a way that's hard to capture in words.
- [36:06]
A
No, I totally agree. And this conversation, as is always in the past with you, has really been interesting and pleasurable. And thank you very much for doing it.
- [36:16]
B
Thank you so much. I hope you and all your loved ones are well and yeah, and you. Thank you for listening to this episode of the New Books Network. We are an academic podcast network with the mission of public education. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend and rate us on your preferred podcast platform. You can browse all of our episodes on our website, new booksnetwork.com Connect with us on Instagram and BlueSky with the handle ewbooksnetwork, and subscribe to our weekly Substack newsletter at newbooksnetwork.substack.com to get episode recommendations straight to your inbox.