In The Dust Of This Planet

Summary

Radiolab: "In The Dust Of This Planet"

Episode Date: September 8, 2014
Host: Jad Abumrad (Robert Krulwich absent)
Main Guests: Eugene Thacker, Brooke Gladstone, Simon Critchley, June Ambrose

Overview

This episode explores how the philosophical ideas of nihilism and pessimism—especially as articulated in Eugene Thacker’s book In the Dust of This Planet—have unexpectedly migrated from the academic margins into mainstream pop culture. The story traces the eerie journey of Thacker’s gloomy philosophical treatise as it surfaces in HBO’s True Detective, high fashion, and even on the back of Jay Z in a Beyoncé music video. Through conversations with Thacker, media analyst Brooke Gladstone, philosopher Simon Critchley, and celebrity costume designer June Ambrose, the episode unpacks what it means when dark, meaning-destroying phrases become "cool," and whether that represents a cultural shift or simply a recurring motif in times of existential uncertainty.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Origins of "In the Dust of This Planet"

(02:07–04:37)

• Jad introduces his brother-in-law, Eugene Thacker, a philosopher, and his book In the Dust of This Planet, which deals with the concept that "maybe there’s no inherent meaning to anything."

  • "The family joke is that he writes books for no one." – Jad Abumrad (02:34)
  • Thacker himself: "I write books that nobody reads... so maybe I should write books for no one to read and just sort of embrace that." – Eugene Thacker (02:56)

• Core philosophical thrust:

  • The "greatest horror" is the possibility that nothing exists and nothing matters.
  • The tradition of nihilism and pessimism: there may be no order, no purpose, just accident and arbitrariness.
  • "This is what Nietzsche called the most difficult thought." – Jad Abumrad (04:13)

• Thacker traces nihilism in horror films and black metal music as forms wrestling with this challenging idea.

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2. From Obscurity to Pop Culture Phenomenon

(04:54–07:28)

• Thacker’s book initially goes largely unnoticed until True Detective airs:

  • The character Rust Cohle echoes Thacker’s worldview.
  • Show creator Nick Pizzolatto names Thacker as an influence.
  • "I was like, this replicates so many conversations that we've had in the car." – Prema Murthy (05:45)

• A fashion moment:

  • Actress Lily Collins is photographed wearing a sweatshirt with the book title.
  • The design comes from a Norwegian artist’s painting picked up by a fashion label.
  • "She's just casually wearing my husband's book cover." – Jad Abumrad (07:15)
  • Thacker: "I write books for no one to read, so obviously I'm not pulling in a lot of royalties on these." (07:40)

• Jay Z dons a jacket emblazoned with the book's title in the Beyoncé "On the Run" tour promo video.

  • "You see Jay Z turn, stick a giant gun out to his right, and he is wearing Eugene's book right there on his back: In the Dust of This Planet." – Jad (08:51)

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3. Nihilism as the "Credo of Cool"

(10:21–13:11)

• Simon Critchley, philosopher, enters the discussion, tracing the allure and history of nihilism in youth and pop culture.

  • "Nihilism is the basic credo of cool because it's sexy, it's interesting, and it's been that way forever." – Simon Critchley (11:00)

• Historical cycles:

  • 19th century literature (Fathers and Sons by Turgenev).
  • The Dada movement post-WWI: "Dada means nothing. Everything one looks at is false." – Brooke Gladstone quoting Tristan Tzara (12:12)
  • Punk rock emerges post-WWII amid nuclear fears.

• "Pop culture, at least since I was a kid, has always been deeply nihilistic." – Simon Critchley (12:40)

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4. Modern Nihilism: What's Different Now?

(13:11–16:36)

• Critchley notes students are more drawn to nihilistic and mystical ideas than ever, based on a seminar he taught with Thacker on mysticism.

  • Students were captivated by stories of ascetics and mystics withdrawing from corrupt civilization—parallels are drawn to modern disillusionment.

• Underlying cause today:

  • Overwhelming, diffuse crises (beheadings, pandemics, climate change).
  • "The world I grew up in made sense... there was the United States, there was the Soviet Union, we were going to be eviscerated. That was clear... now who am I supposed to say 'you' to?" – Simon Critchley (15:58–16:36)

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5. Climate Change, Pessimism, and Adapting to the Inevitable

(16:40–18:23)

• Citing the IPCC’s new language around adaptation rather than prevention—an example of society moving from hope for salvation to preparing for unavoidable consequences.

  • "Now we need to talk about dealing with the mess that is now on our doorstep." – David Victor, climate policy expert (17:16)

• "My own assessment is that the kinds of actions you'd need to do that are so heroic that we're not going to see them on this planet." – David Victor (18:23)

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6. Why Do We Find Nihilism 'Cool'?

(18:32–29:39)

• Refrain: What is the appeal of donning the phrase "In the Dust of This Planet" on clothing?
  • "Why would you want to put a phrase that deliberately negates the person wearing it on your chest?" – Jad (18:56)

Jay Z’s Jacket: The Origin Story

(23:45–28:12)

• June Ambrose, Jay Z’s costume designer, tells how she found the jacket:

  • Wanted something "epic, but effortless."
  • The words on the jacket felt "menacing… the aftermath, that there was something going on that was periling. The end of an era, the beginning of something new." – June Ambrose (26:48)

• Ambrose reflects: it's about fearlessness in the face of the end.

  • "It was almost as if he didn't even know that was on his back. You know what I mean? It's like that was the afterthought... I don't care... I'm not afraid." – June Ambrose (27:33–27:56)

The Deeper Motif

• "That all this pop nihilism around us is not about tearing down power structures or embracing nothingness. It’s just—look at me, look how brave I am that I can wear it on a T-shirt." – Jad (28:33)
• "That is nothing more than a posture... It's simply a posture, and that's why it's in pop culture." – Eugene Thacker (29:06)
• "Why we love nihilism in pop culture is that it saves us having to be burdened with it... We can enjoy it... and then go back to work." – Simon Critchley (29:30)

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7. Beyond Cynicism: Transforming Nihilism

(29:48–31:36)

• Nietzsche saw nihilism as a beginning, a place to "reevaluate values."

  • "If you took it in, you could get to the other side, which he called a reevaluation of values, some new way of thinking about who we are as moral creatures. And that's kind of where I am. And love, love is that capacity..." – Simon Critchley (30:09)

• The mystics (ascetics) in Critchley and Thacker’s seminar embodied a "radical" love, a devotion that went beyond nihilism—something students responded to.

• The episode ends with a playful fantasy of Jay Z and Beyoncé as mystic lovers in the desert, starting a new age.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On writing for no one:
  "I write books that nobody reads. And then after a slow, long period of acceptance, I started to think, well, maybe I should write books for no one to read and just sort of embrace that meaning."
  —Eugene Thacker (02:56)

• On pop appropriation:
  "It just looks like a cool phrase to go on a T-shirt, to put on a goth girl in some photo shoot."
  —Eugene Thacker (09:47)

• On why nihilism stays cool:
  "Nihilism is the basic credo of cool because it's sexy, it's interesting, and it's been that way forever."
  —Simon Critchley (11:00)

• On mystical yearning:
  "There was this deep need being fulfilled by these strange mystics."
  —Simon Critchley (15:09)

• On climate inevitability:
  "Now we need to talk about dealing with the mess that is now on our doorstep."
  —David Victor (17:16)

• On nihilism as posture:
  "It’s simply a posture, and that's why it's in pop culture."
  —Eugene Thacker (29:06)

• On transcending nihilism:
  "Nietzsche... had this idea about nihilism—that it was just the beginning, that if you really dealt with it... you could get to the other side, which he called a reevaluation of values."
  —Jad Abumrad (30:09)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:07] – Thacker on writing "for no one"
• [04:13] – Nihilism, meaninglessness, and Nietzsche’s "most difficult thought"
• [05:45] – True Detective as a vector for Thacker’s ideas
• [07:11] – Lily Collins wears the book on a sweatshirt
• [08:51] – Jay Z’s "In the Dust of This Planet" jacket
• [11:00] – Simon Critchley on nihilism and coolness
• [12:12] – Dada and historical nihilism cycles
• [16:14] – Diffuse modern crises and longing for simpler threats
• [17:16] – Climate change and adapting to inevitability (David Victor)
• [23:45] – Interview with June Ambrose
• [26:48] – Why the jacket "felt right"
• [27:56] – Fearlessness in facing oblivion
• [29:06] – Nihilism as posture and performance
• [30:09] – Nietzsche and the creative potential of nihilism
• [31:36] – The episode’s semi-fantastical conclusion

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Conclusion

The episode traces how a deeply philosophical meditation on cosmic meaninglessness is transformed—by chance and pop culture’s perennial fascination with darkness—into a statement of stylish indifference and perhaps even bravery. In unraveling how and why nihilistic themes come to prominence, and whether this signals resignation or the chance to rethink our values, "In the Dust of This Planet" encapsulates Radiolab’s knack for connecting the esoteric with the everyday, and the grim with the surprisingly life-affirming.

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Further Reading & Listening:

• In the Dust of This Planet by Eugene Thacker
• Radiolab.org for the episode link and resources

Transcript

[Jad Abumrad]

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[Simon Critchley]

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[Simon Critchley]

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[Jad Abumrad]

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[Simon Critchley]

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[David Victor]

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[Jad Abumrad]

Oh wait, you're listening. Okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to Radio Lab Radio from WNY.

[Radiolab Announcer]

And npr.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, this is Jad Abumra. This is Radiolab, the podcast. Robert is out of town today. He's actually his son is getting married, so it's just me. I thought in this podcast I'd wander a little bit.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Generally and that should be in front of your mouth.

[Jad Abumrad]

So I'm going to start with a conversation that Brooke Gladstone and I. This is Brooke from On the Media that she and I had with my brother in law Eugene.

[Eugene Thacker]

I'm Eugene Thacker. I'm an author and professor at the New School in New York City.

[Jad Abumrad]

We talked about this very weird thing that happened to Eugene and I asked Brooke to join me because it just felt like her kind of story.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I've been wearing black since I was 13.

[Jad Abumrad]

I just want to point out that the two of you are head to toe in black right now. Any case, to set it up, Eugene is a hardcore scholar of philosophy and he writes these books that sometimes can be a little dense. I mean, he'll use words like exegesis and ratiocination. And so the family joke is that he writes books for no one.

[Eugene Thacker]

I think the joke started out, I write books that nobody reads. And then after a slow, long period of acceptance, I started to think, well, maybe I should write books for no one to read and just sort of embrace that meaning.

[Jad Abumrad]

At a certain point, if you do this kind of work, you kind of.

[Eugene Thacker]

Have to ask yourself, if you knew that this would not be published, would you still write it? How committed are you?

[Jad Abumrad]

And he decided he was committed. He would write it no matter what. So the story begins a couple years ago in 2011. Eugene writes this book called in the.

[Eugene Thacker]

Dust of this Planet.

[Brooke Gladstone]

In the Dust of this Planet.

[Eugene Thacker]

Mm.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's kind of a hard book to describe, but if you had to sum it up in a sentence, it's about the end of the world, but not in the Hollywood sense. It's darker than that.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Your hypothesis is the greatest horror is that nothing exists and nothing matters. And the world that we live in, that we define in terms of humanity, doesn't care about us.

[Eugene Thacker]

Right. What in philosophy is often referred to as nihilism or pessimism, that there might not be a purpose to things or to your life or to our existence or to the cosmos. There might not be an order to things. We might not be here for a reason. This all might be purely arbitrary in.

[Jad Abumrad]

An accident, that there's no inherent meaning to anything, that it just doesn't matter. This is what Nietzsche called the most difficult thought. And in the book, Eugene traces this idea through all of these different.

[Molly Webster]

Horror.

[Jad Abumrad]

Movies, from slasher films to sort of more supernatural horror and also music. I mean, at one point, he goes into this deconstruction of how different types of black metal deal with this thought.

[Eugene Thacker]

I don't know. It's something. It's a way of thinking I've always found really intriguing and ironically kind of inspiring.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Are you a pessimist?

[Eugene Thacker]

On my better days.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Are you a nihilist?

[Eugene Thacker]

Not as much as I should be.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so Eugene writes this book in 2011. It is dark. It is dense. He writes it, as he says, for no one. And as expected, beyond a few philosophy types, no one really pays attention. So he keeps his head down, teaching writing. But then some things happen. 2014. All kinds of ghettos in the world. It's all one ghetto man. Giant gutter in outer space. The show True Detective comes along, comes a big hit, and at the center of the show is this character, Russ Cole, this Louisiana detective who is one dark dude. I think human consciousness is a tragic misstep in evolution. He goes on these rants about how there's no order in the world, how humans are just this accident. We have to deal with that. Look, I'd consider myself a realist, but in philosophical terms, I'm what's called a pessimist. And I just remember watching it and being like, wow, that's Eugene's wife, Prema Murthy, my sister in law. I was like, this replicates so many conversations that we've had in the car. She's like, were they listening in on us? Yeah, it was eerie. So Prema goes online, clicks around, and all of a sudden I see this article about the true detective director. It was an article where actually the writer of the show, Nick Pizzolatto, was asked, how did you create that character of the nihilist police detective? And he lists a bunch of things he was reading at the time. And included in that list was Eugene. To which I was like, cool, at least one person's reading the book.

[Eugene Thacker]

But I really just try to tee my head to the ground and just keep writing, just doing what I'm doing.

[Jad Abumrad]

But then things got weirder. Okay, so now let's pull up the Lucky magazine. Let's see if we can find it. Short time later, Prema is flipping through.

[Eugene Thacker]

This fashion magazine, Lucky magazine, and there was a spread with this actress, Lily.

[Jad Abumrad]

Collins, 25 year old actress who I'd never heard of. Pretty big. Right now she's standing on a street.

[Eugene Thacker]

Corner dressed up in all of this sort of goth makeup and clothing.

[Jad Abumrad]

And in the photo, she is wearing Eugene's book on her chest.

[Eugene Thacker]

She had on in one of the shots, a sweatshirt that had the COVID.

[Jad Abumrad]

Of the book in the dust of this planet, big letters right on her chest. And I was just like, no way.

[Eugene Thacker]

I mean, it was definitely. What the.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is crazy. Like what? She's just casually wearing my husband's book cover.

[Eugene Thacker]

I don't know. Again, I didn't react to, but it was just strange.

[Jad Abumrad]

Turns out a Norwegian artist had made a painting of the book. That image had gotten picked up by a fashion label and turned into some very expensive clothes.

[Eugene Thacker]

You know, I write books for no one to read, so obviously I'm not pulling in a lot of royalties on these.

[Jad Abumrad]

But, you know, Eugene says he's not going to sue.

[Eugene Thacker]

I'm not going to sue or take any legal action or really do anything.

[Jad Abumrad]

About it, because he says that's not why he writes. Okay, so that happened. But then it gets weirder still. So one day, my wife, Carla Murthy, is online. This is the day that Jay Z and Beyonce announced they're going to do this big international tour. Carla's watching the video that they released to promote that tour. Sort of a fake movie trailer. This is on the run. It's all flashy. Guns, fire hookers. You're a smart guy. It doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. I mean, it's some kind of Bonnie and Clyde thing, I think. I mean, they're running from someone. You're not quite sure who. Beyonce's in a wedding dress. She's got a veil on, but she's shooting semiautomatic weapons in her wedding dress. Cut to car chases, cut to money fl. Everywhere. But at exactly 37 seconds in. Go back, go back, go back.

[Eugene Thacker]

It's like you're making me think too fast.

[Jad Abumrad]

You see Jay Z turn, stick a giant gun out to his right, and he is wearing Eugene's book right there on his back in the dust of this planet. Now, this is the point at which I was like, okay, what do we make of this? I mean, could it be that Eugene is no longer writing books for no one? That somehow he has become a conduit for this idea that we all, in that subterranean way that pop music operates, that we all are channeling right now? That was my thought. Yeah.

[Eugene Thacker]

No, I think that's. That's the question is whether this is something particular to the moment we're living in.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Eugene, his knee jerk reaction is.

[Eugene Thacker]

I think it could have been this cover or a million other covers.

[Jad Abumrad]

No, this is just meaningless appropriation.

[Eugene Thacker]

I don't think there's anything more than that. To me then, it just looks like a cool phrase to go on a T shirt to put on a goth girl in some photo shoot.

[Brooke Gladstone]

And why is it cool?

[Jad Abumrad]

Right? Because my hunch is you might be right, but you also might be wrong because of the answer that you're about to give to Brooke's question.

[Eugene Thacker]

It's cool because some publicists.

[Jad Abumrad]

This was sort of the conversation I wanted to have, and that's why I called Brooke. Like, what is behind all of this nihilistic entertainment that's everywhere? Now, Brooke, for her part, agreed that Eugene probably is tapping into something.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Yes. But is this unique to this moment? And to that? I would say no.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really? You don't think this says anything about now?

[Brooke Gladstone]

I think there are cycles in which the sense of meaninglessness comes out in Sharper relief than other times, but you can identify them over and over again.

[Simon Critchley]

Yeah, nihilism goes all the way back.

[Jad Abumrad]

Brooke actually turned us on to this guy, Simon Critchley.

[Simon Critchley]

I am the Hans Jonas professor at the New School for Social Research.

[Jad Abumrad]

Simon wrote an article that basically made the argument that nihilism is the basic.

[Simon Critchley]

Credo of cool because it's.

[Jad Abumrad]

It's sexy, it's interesting, and it's been that way forever.

[Simon Critchley]

Oh, I've got, I've got, I've got the best thing for you. You'll love this. It's a Russian word, right?

[Jad Abumrad]

He said the word really got its pop in 1862. This is 150 years ago.

[Simon Critchley]

There's a novel by Turgenev called Fathers and Sons.

[Jad Abumrad]

And in the novel, the son who's the nihilist turns to his conservative dad and he says, we base our conduct.

[Simon Critchley]

On what we recognize as useful. In these days, the most useful thing we can do is to repudiate. And so we repudiate everything. The father says, everything, everything with indescribable composure. So that's the nihilist moment. Everything goes.

[Jad Abumrad]

And Simon says, roughly from that point on, you see young people glom onto this idea again and again and again as a way to, you know, say no to the older generation or to just what's happening in the world. For example, after World War I, you had tens of millions of people dead. This lost generation that was confused and disgusted at what had just happened. And out of that, says Brooke, you get Dada.

[Brooke Gladstone]

I want to pull up here on the computer the manifesto of Tristan Sara.

[Jad Abumrad]

He was one of the founders of the Dada movement.

[Brooke Gladstone]

He says Dada means nothing. Everything one looks at is false. I do not. Dada, Abolition of memory. Dada. Abolition of archaeology. Dada. Abolition of prophets. Dada, Abolition of the future.

[Jad Abumrad]

And after World War II, she and Simon say you had similar movements in the 70s and 80s with the threat of nuclear annihilation. You get punk rock. It just keeps going.

[Simon Critchley]

Pop culture, at least since I was a kid, has always been deeply nihilistic, you know?

[Jad Abumrad]

All right, so it's nothing new, but when I ran Simon through the Eugene Jacket situation, and then I asked him, like, is there something different about today's nihilism versus nihilisms of the past? Like, is there something more potent about it? Without hesitation, he said, I'd say yes.

[Simon Critchley]

Mm hm.

[Jad Abumrad]

Based on what? That's producer Andy Mills, who was with me during the interview.

[Simon Critchley]

Well, you know, you can. You can get.

[Jad Abumrad]

Simon says it was More of a gut feeling based on this class that he taught last year with Eugene. Oddly enough, I didn't actually know that they knew each other, but they had taught this class together.

[Simon Critchley]

So the seminar that we did in the fall last year was one of those rare seminars. We're teaching mysticism. Nobody teaches mysticism. Really obscure stuff. We're doing Desert Fathers, medieval female mystics.

[Jad Abumrad]

This is early Christianity.

[Simon Critchley]

Neither of us are religious.

[Jad Abumrad]

He says they started the seminar not really expecting much, by talking about how in the 4th century AD there was the city Alexandria. This is near Egypt.

[Simon Critchley]

Alexandria was a lot like Manhattan. It was an offshore island. It was a colony of a former power Roman Empire. And it's the seat of all culture and all learning in the ancient world. At a certain point in the 4th century, people start to leave. They start to leave and go into the desert. People wander off and they seem to want something else. The city doesn't. Just doesn't do it anymore.

[Jad Abumrad]

Why?

[Simon Critchley]

It's corrupt, it's broken, it's sinful.

[Jad Abumrad]

He said crime was rampant, pollution. And so people just started to wander off into the desert and live in these caves.

[Simon Critchley]

And these intense forms of ascetic practice begin.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like you had these women who were.

[Simon Critchley]

Not educated, because women couldn't be educated.

[Jad Abumrad]

Who were so enraptured with Christ that.

[Simon Critchley]

They began hurting themselves, throwing themselves into icy rivers, jumping into ovens. The body is something which is you're trying to strip away in order that you can free the capacity for love.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's a classic mystic idea. Right. The body is just getting in the way. I want to go soul to soul with God.

[Simon Critchley]

Exactly. But the premise of that, again, is that the world is a kind of field of ruins.

[Jad Abumrad]

But he says what really struck him is that as he was talking about all this, he would glance out at the students and he would notice this look in their eyes.

[Simon Critchley]

I just felt that in the room there was this. This deep need was being fulfilled by these strange mystics.

[Jad Abumrad]

He said the students were just in it in a way that almost never happens when you're teaching.

[Simon Critchley]

We weren't not saving souls, but it was hitting something really, really deep.

[Jad Abumrad]

What exactly? I mean, do you think they were starting to form the thought of wandering into the desert, so to speak?

[Simon Critchley]

Yeah. I think there's a sense in which you know what you do. Secede, walk away. You know, that's where a lot of people are at.

[Jad Abumrad]

As for what's behind it all, he says, just turn on the news.

[Eugene Thacker]

A video showing the beheading of a.

[David Victor]

Second American journalist has now been verified.

[Jad Abumrad]

Disease experts say this is turning into one of the longest, deadliest outbreaks ever. The girls were gang raped and strangled. Once again, it is mostly children we are seeing brought into this hospital.

[Simon Critchley]

The world I grew up in made sense. It was completely crazy. Mutually assured destruction. But it made sense and you could understand it in very simple terms. That was the United States, there was the Soviet Union. We were going to be eviscerated. That was clear. But you knew what the balance of power was.

[Jad Abumrad]

You're nostalgic for mutually assured destruction. Is that what's happening now?

[Simon Critchley]

It seems a much simpler world.

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, you at least knew who to blame for it. Right, right. That's Andy again. I feel like that's the thing. You look at the Cold War and you could see specifically like you Soviets, you Americans, the nukes.

[Simon Critchley]

That's right, that's right.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now who am I supposed to say you to?

[Simon Critchley]

I'm saying you to everybody.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

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[Jad Abumrad]

Speaking of which, today the world's leading climate scientists warn it will get worse. No doubt one of the reasons for the current gloom is that we are in the middle of an uncomfortable shift in how we talk about climate change.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

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[Jad Abumrad]

This was made official when the ipcc, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released a report where for the first time, they stopped using the language of prevention and shifted to the language of adaptation. In other words, hundreds of scientists and policymakers, this is the world's top organization for assessing climate change, were now saying, we can't stop it, it's inevitable.

[David Victor]

So now we need to talk about dealing with the mess that is now on our doorstep.

[Jad Abumrad]

That's David Victor, professor of International Relations.

[David Victor]

At University of California at San Diego.

[Jad Abumrad]

And he is one of the authors of the report.

[David Victor]

When the IPCC first began back in the late 1980s, you could imagine that people would take the climate change problem seriously. They would start to control emissions, and then over a period of decades, climate would stop changing. And instead what's happened is people have talked a lot about climate change, but they haven't actually done much to control emissions.

[Jad Abumrad]

And now, he says, we're all in this strange middle ground where we're trying to find the language to say why it's important to keep working at this, while at the same time admitting some degree of failure.

[David Victor]

And that's the kind of inevitability that I think you see in the new. The new reports. And the reports are bending over backwards to try and find ways to be Optimistic? The report says if you put into place all these technologies and international agreements, we could still stop warming at 2 degrees. My own assessment is that the kinds of actions you'd need to do that are so heroic that we're not going to see them on this planet.

[Jad Abumrad]

All of which reminded me of that True Detective moment. Look, I'd consider myself a realist, but in philosophical terms, I'm what's called a pessimist.

[Eugene Thacker]

Um, okay, what's that mean?

[Jad Abumrad]

Well, pessimists, like nihilists, agree there's no meaning. They're just a little more mopey about it, less likely to do something. Means I'm bad at parties. I mean, is that where we're all headed? You know, in a recent Wall street journal poll, 76% of people 18 and over weren't confident that the future is gonna be brighter than the past. Which brings me back to Brooke's question.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Why is it cool?

[Jad Abumrad]

Call it nihilism, pessimism, whatever. Shouldn't it be depressing? Why would you want to put a phrase, like, in the dust of this planet, a phrase that deliberately negates the person wearing it? Why would you want to put it on your chest or on your back? Yeah. Yes, we do. And since it was Jay Z's jacket, which was, in a way, the catalyst for this whole podcast, we decided to talk to him. Sort of. That's coming up. This is Darlene calling from Kampala, Uganda. Radiolab is supported in part by the National Science foundation and by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about [e-mail].

[Radiolab Announcer]

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[Molly Webster]

Hey, I'm Molly Webster, and this is an ad by BetterHelp. So it happens every year. The seasons are changing, the days are getting shorter, and basically, once it becomes dark outside, of my window. I feel like the rest of the world disappears and I'm just alone and there's nothing left to do but watch television. This November, BetterHelp is asking everyone to reach out to our people. That could be your family, your friends, your neighbors, and to resist this call of the cocoon. And yeah, reaching out can take some courage. I've got text messages from January I haven't responded to and you know what? I'm gonna write them back right now. Hi, sorry I've been missing. How are you? Why don't we all do this sooner? Therapy is the same way. BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. You just fill out a short questionnaire and they find a licensed therapist who they think you'll like. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com Radiolab that's betterhelp.com Radiolab.

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[Jad Abumrad]

Good.

[June Ambrose]

This sounds great.

[Jad Abumrad]

Hey, this is Jaz. This is Radiolab. So we ended up in the flow of things, you know, as we were trying to figure out, like in the dust of this planet. Why is that cool? Why is that just scary and depressing? We ended up.

[June Ambrose]

They want to talk to me. Why?

[Eugene Thacker]

That's a good question.

[Jad Abumrad]

Talking to this lady who it turns out was the person who made the decision to put it on Jay Z's back.

[June Ambrose]

I should say my name, I guess. My name is June Ambrose. I've been a costume designer for 22 years, 23 this year. And I've worked with everyone from Luther Vandross to Puffy to Sean to Mariah Carey, Busta Rhymes, Mary Jablash, Alicia the Keys, Dave Matthews Band, Backstreet Boys, Kelly Riper, Kim Cattrall, R. Kelly, Jamie Foxx, Missy Elliott.

[Jad Abumrad]

Did you do the Missy with a balloon?

[June Ambrose]

Yeah.

[Jad Abumrad]

That was you? Yeah. Oh, my God. And of course, Jay Z and Beyonce. That's like culture.

[June Ambrose]

Basically, I was responsible for that Nazi stuff.

[Jad Abumrad]

It occurred to Andy and I during the interview that June has probably influenced the fashion sense of a significant portion of the human beings on this planet. And she was very clear that a costume is more than just a costume.

[June Ambrose]

It's like a conversation without words.

[Jad Abumrad]

That really what she's doing when she styles, someone is whispering to all the people that are gonna watch the videos, come in contact with, with the billboards, go to the concerts.

[June Ambrose]

I don't have to talk to you, but I can create this conversation with a pair of pants and how they fall and how they fit and the texture and the color and the feel.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says with Jay Z, for that video, she knew she needed something epic, but like, effortless.

[June Ambrose]

I knew I wanted a biker jacket because it was a motorcycle scene, but I knew that I just couldn't give him a black. I needed to. I needed to say something, feel like something, something. So we were on the hunt.

[Jad Abumrad]

Her and her assistant went to dozens of places.

[June Ambrose]

Tillier Studio, the showrooms.

[Jad Abumrad]

Looking at all these leather jackets, it's.

[June Ambrose]

Like finding a needle in a haystack.

[Jad Abumrad]

Nothing was right. But then they saunter into this one place, black denim, this place that does sort of high end grunge. They're flipping through the racks when she sees it, the jacket, those words.

[June Ambrose]

And that was it. I knew it. I said, this is what I need. It just felt. I mean, it was just perfect.

[Jad Abumrad]

The question was why? At this point, I hadn't really told her the whole backstory. So I pulled out a screen capture from the video. This is one where you see Jay Z sort of standing in the desert, shot from behind in the dust of this planet, on his back. And he's kind of pointing this really long, dirty, hairy gun off to his right, sort of up, like he's about to shoot the sun.

[June Ambrose]

Yeah, you think he's about to shoot the sun?

[Jad Abumrad]

I printed it out because it's just got this, like, billboard quality to it. Right Here it is.

[June Ambrose]

I have a really cool one in my phone, too. That's never been.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay, so let's just look at this for a second. So why did you choose that jacket?

[June Ambrose]

You know, it's something very menacing about it. It's almost like the aftermath, that there was something going on that was periling. The end of an era, the beginning of something new.

[Jad Abumrad]

She says in the back of her head, she was thinking about how the music industry might be dying.

[June Ambrose]

It's definitely in a place where it's like, what now? You can hear it in the music.

[Jad Abumrad]

And, you know, if this is the biggest tour in history, really, what now?

[June Ambrose]

You know? And these are the whispers that you hear.

[Jad Abumrad]

But she says one of the loudest whispers was super simple. Just, here's a guy, massive pop star, like a Sovereign. He's in the desert. It's about to go down. The end of the world is literally on his back.

[June Ambrose]

But it was almost as if he didn't even know that was on his back. You know what I mean? It's like that was the afterthought.

[Jad Abumrad]

Like, oh, yeah, the world's ending. Psst. I don't care.

[June Ambrose]

Going out of his stuff.

[Jad Abumrad]

In other words, he wasn't afraid. He wasn't afraid.

[June Ambrose]

Wasn't afraid.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know what? That's what. That's what this. We talk about whispers. That's what I get from it now that you said that. It's not so much. I don't give a. I'm not afraid.

[June Ambrose]

Yeah. I mean, we all have to leave the planet. You know, everybody has their day. What you work on is not being afraid when you have to leave.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. We'll get it to you.

[June Ambrose]

Okay.

[Jad Abumrad]

That'd be cool. Thank you.

[June Ambrose]

This is. This was actually refreshing.

[Jad Abumrad]

I actually wanted something walking out of that interview.

[June Ambrose]

Thank you.

[Jad Abumrad]

This was, by the way, after we had told her that the phrase on Jay Z's back was lifted from a book written by my brother in law, Eugene.

[June Ambrose]

Oh, wow. Now I need to get the book, and I need to get it to.

[Jad Abumrad]

Jay, which he was very interested to know. Can we do that?

[June Ambrose]

Yeah, let's do that.

[Jad Abumrad]

And we did send him the book. Haven't heard back. Oh, my God. Anyhow, walking out of there, I kept thinking, is that what this is all about? That all this pop nihilism around us is not about tearing down power structures or embracing nothingness. It's just, look at me, look how brave I am that I can wear.

[Brooke Gladstone]

It on a T shirt.

[Eugene Thacker]

Yeah, I would go with that. And this is why, as you pointed out, you know, from dada to punk, this is a recurring motif of how badass you are in facing mortality.

[Brooke Gladstone]

Bingo. Badass. That's what I was thinking.

[Eugene Thacker]

I think that that is nothing more than a posture. I mean, it's all fine when you're 18 to wear that T shirt, but when you're like in your 50s dealing with cancer, like, okay, you know, maybe. Maybe then is when you really have to confront those things. So I just. It's a. It's simply a posture, and that's why it's in pop culture.

[Simon Critchley]

A quite cynical response would be to say, you know, why we love nihilism in pop culture is that it saves us having to be burdened with it.

[Jad Abumrad]

Simon Critchley, again, it saves us from feeling it.

[Simon Critchley]

Right? We can enjoy it in our rooms, we can get off on it, and then we let it go and we go back to work.

[Jad Abumrad]

But Simon says, you don't have to be cynical about this if you don't want to be. I mean, Nietzsche, Mr. Dark Pessimist himself, had this idea about nihilism, that it was just the beginning, that if you really dealt with it, took it in, accelerated it to its logical end, you could get to the other side, which he called a reevaluation.

[Simon Critchley]

Of values, some new way of thinking about who we are as moral creatures. And that's kind of where I am. And love. Love is that capacity which can see her through that.

[Jad Abumrad]

And that, he suspects, is why his students were so interested in those mystics, because they had found a way through these people.

[Simon Critchley]

These mystics have got the uncompromising commitment.

[Jad Abumrad]

To something like love, the fact that they were ready to go all the way to negate even their own bodies for that love, Right?

[Simon Critchley]

So in a world where. Where love has been reduced to tender exchanges, if that's the hell that you're living in as a 25 year old, then, yeah, you're gonna read these mystics and think, I want what she's having.

[Jad Abumrad]

You know, I'll take. I'll take.

[Simon Critchley]

I'll take what she's having.

[Jad Abumrad]

Burn my flesh. That's right.

[Simon Critchley]

Burn my flesh.

[Jad Abumrad]

And you could argue, I mean, why not, that Jay Z and Beyonce, they've got a little bit of that going on. I mean, part of what's made this tour so big. Biggest tour ever, actually, is that it's like this grand love story.

[June Ambrose]

I'm with the love of my life. So it's like, it works.

[Jad Abumrad]

I have a fantasy. I have a fantasy that Beyonce and Jay Z will do this tour and they will go off into the desert and they'll live in a little hut like this monastic existence together in love, in a new. A new sort of age of Aquarius will begin, starting with the two of them.

[June Ambrose]

That's beautiful.

[Jad Abumrad]

The loudest mic drop. Any chance of that?

[June Ambrose]

Wow, you can really hear me slip, right and squirp on the instrument.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah. Oh, that's a nice sound. That was your answer.

[June Ambrose]

Pina colada on the beach.

[Jad Abumrad]

Maybe.

[Eugene Thacker]

A perfect response to Jared's question.

[Jad Abumrad]

Yeah, Ram.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So, Jen, I can hear that you're gonna take a lot of this stuff and you're gonna look at the current moment and see how this idea is expressing itself. And this made me want to go back and see when and where and how it's been expressed all along.

[Jad Abumrad]

Okay.

[Brooke Gladstone]

So I'm delighted to be on this, and I'm gonna be delighted to have you on our show in a couple of weeks.

[Jad Abumrad]

Really?

[Brooke Gladstone]

Yeah. We want you to come on after.

[Jad Abumrad]

Oh, my gosh.

[Brooke Gladstone]

After I've put it together.

[Jad Abumrad]

I love that we're pulling you in after. Beautiful. I'm game. I'm game. Thank you for being game for this. Thank you. Look for on the media's take on nihilism in a couple of weeks. Big thanks to producer Andy Mills, who, in the process of helping me put together this podcast, began to say things like, the other day, I thought of it in the sense of, I saw this ladybug. My friends and I, we were watching this ladybug crawl around my shoe, and then it started to crawl up my leg. It got caught in my leg, hair fell back down to the shoe, and we were all like, oh, that's life. That's it. They were all just bugs crawling around on a goddamn shoe. And he was totally serious. And special thanks to the Murthy Tribe and to Zero Books, and of course to Eugene Thacker, who even though he harbors no redemptive fantasies about human beings whatsoever, is an awesome dude. And this piece is an homage to him. One of the most committed writers I know. Also happens to be my brother in law. If you would like to read in the Dust of this Planet, and I actually do highly recommend it, it's super fascinating, go to our website, Radiolab.org and we'll link you to it. I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening. All right, if you're still listening, here's a little something extra. So while we were putting together this podcast, we bumped into the band Liturgy and this particular tune that I want to play for you now. Now, this tune, it's called Generation. I'm obsessed with it. It's from Liturgy off their album.

[Podcast Sponsor Voice]

Off.

[Jad Abumrad]

Their album Aesthetica, which is from Thrill Jockey. Thrill jockey dot com. This tune. Well, first of all, attached to it is a manifesto. I'll just quote a bit transcendental. Black metal is in fact nihilism. However, it is a double nihilism, a final nihilism, a once and for all negation of the entire series of negations. With this final no, we arrive at a sort of vertiginous affirmation, an affirmation that is white, knuckled, terrified, unsentimental and courageous. Here it is, Generation by Liturgy. It. It. Sam it. Sam. Sa.