Jason Guriel: Why Culture Got Nicer—and Much Less Useful

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Gist

Episode: Jason Guriel: Why Culture Got Nicer—and Much Less Useful
Host: Mike Pesca (Peach Fish Productions)
Date: January 22, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode of The Gist features a conversation between host Mike Pesca and Canadian poet and critic Jason Guriel. The discussion centers on the state of poetry, criticism, and cultural gatekeeping in 2025, touching on the overarching theme of how contemporary culture has become "nicer" but less critical, resulting in a dilution of standards and usefulness. Guriel draws on his experiences and the arguments in his new essay collection Fan Mail: A Guide to What We Love, Loathe and Mourn to reflect on issues facing poetry, publishing, and the broader arts landscape.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The State of Poetry in 2025

• Diminishing Audience and Conversation ([15:56])

  • Guriel laments the decline of a robust critical culture around poetry, noting the near disappearance of review outlets willing to engage deeply (or negatively) with new work.
  • Once-central magazines, such as Poetry, have become less fun and less useful, shifting from critical evaluation to celebratory anthropology.
  • Quote:

    “Poetry has lost a critical culture...There used to be more publications that were willing to publish reviews of poetry. I’ve found over the last ten years that has really vanished.”
    — Jason Guriel [15:56]

• Gatekeepers and Quality Control ([17:37])

  • The lack of strong, thoughtful gatekeepers (publications and editors) leads to “celebrating everything,” which ultimately means celebrating nothing.
  • Technological shifts mean everyone is now a self-publisher, leading to a cacophony with little curation.
  • Quote:

    “If you don’t have an active conversation in which critics are willing to say, ‘Hey, this Ocean Vuong book is not a particularly good book,’ the culture...suffers for it.”
    — Jason Guriel [17:20]

2. Social Media, Self-Publishing, and Poetic Persona

• Poetry as Lifestyle Product ([19:50])
  • Substack and TikTok have brought some revitalization, but often the poet's persona becomes the product, not the poetry itself.
  • Rupi Kaur is cited as an exception; most others treat poetry as a “scented candle,” a lifestyle accessory rather than an artistic endeavor.

3. Historical Context—The Golden Age of Poetry

• Aspirational Readership and Public Prominence ([21:06])

  • Mid-century figures like Robert Frost or T.S. Eliot addressed a broader, general audience, not just a niche.
  • Reading poetry once signaled aspiration or cultural capital, akin to seeing an art film.
  • Attempts to reach the general reader today (e.g., Guriel’s verse novels in rhymed couplets) have had some success, but the audience remains much smaller.

• On Amanda Gorman and “Big Poetry” ([22:47])

  • The gatekeepers’ choices for mainstream or ceremonial poetry (e.g., Amanda Gorman) often don’t resonate deeply, possibly contributing to the art form’s retreat from broader cultural relevance.

4. Problems of Oversupply and Lost Curation

• The MFA Effect ([24:11])

  • Guriel references Dana Gioia’s Can Poetry Matter? (1991) to illustrate how an “MFA industrial complex” created an oversupply of “competent but not captivating” work, overwhelming and alienating readers.
  • Quote:

    “He argued that we were churning out too many poets. It was almost like subsidized farming.”
    — Jason Guriel [24:20]

• Difficult Discovery in the Digital Age ([25:05])

  • The liberating power of the Internet makes it harder to stand out; it’s now “impossible to find a signal in all that noise.”

5. Serendipity, Bookstores, and Attention Economy

• The Loss of Slowness and Discovery ([29:35])

  • Pesca and Guriel discuss the tangible pleasure and serendipity of physical browsing, which digital abundance has made almost impossible.
  • The flood of content—“flood the zone”—is likened to a firehose that drowns meaningful engagement, making it as hard to find quality as in a censored milieu with enforced scarcity.
  • Quote:

    “The speed of information is the enemy of quality.”
    — Mike Pesca [30:57]

• Curation and Human Cognition ([32:16])

  • The human brain, they argue, is better suited to “books on a shelf” than infinite digital abundance.

6. Wider Cultural Consequences

• Neutralizing Genius
  • Even the genius-level creators (the “top .01%”) may not break through in our fragmented ecosystem ([29:27]).
• Analogies to Political & Social Chaos
  • The way overwhelming choice and lack of curation plays out in culture is likened to manipulation in politics, where too many choices or too much info can bewilder and disempower the audience ([29:35]).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Guriel on Contemporary Poetry’s Usefulness:

  "That kind of poetry … it's almost like a lifestyle product. It's like a scented candle or something."
  — Jason Guriel [19:50]

• Pesca on the Dilution of Standards:

  "When you celebrate everything, you celebrate nothing."
  — Mike Pesca, paraphrasing Guriel [18:02]

• Guriel on Limitation as a Virtue:

  “Being in physical space does limit you and impose limits. And that’s good, in some respects.”
  — Jason Guriel [31:25]

• Pesca’s Serb/Russian Election Analogy:

  “The spigot being turned on so heavily is the exact same thing as if the spigot were dry in a somewhat totalitarian country.”
  — Mike Pesca [29:35]

• Guriel’s Infinite Jest Setup:

  “My first paperback edition of Infinite Jest is holding up my laptop right now.”
  — Jason Guriel [27:28]
  (notable for revealing his literary roots and adding wry charm)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• State of Poetry & Critical Culture – [15:35–19:24]
• Social Media & “Lifestyle” Poetry – [19:24–21:06]
• Historical Prominence of Poetry – [21:06–24:11]
• Oversupply & MFA Culture – [24:11–25:36]
• Discovery & Curation Lost – [25:36–33:09]
• Broader Cultural Parallels (Speed, Attention, Chaos) – [29:27–33:09]

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Closing Reflections

The episode provides a nuanced look at how a “nicer” culture—one that avoids tough criticism and actively celebrates all—results in diminished standards for poetry and culture writ large. The discussion is both nostalgic and critical, mourning lost structures of curation and serendipity while acknowledging the liberation that new media can bring. Pesca and Guriel agree that the flood of content and lack of robust criticism leave readers lost, disengaged, and less likely to encounter truly great work.

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For listeners seeking a well-reasoned, gently provocative critique of today’s cultural landscape, this episode delivers insight, wit, and plenty to ponder about the past, present, and possible futures of poetry and criticism.

Transcript

[Mike Pesca]

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[Mike Pesca]

It's Thursday, January 22, 2026. From peach fish Productions, it's the Gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Jack Smith testified before Con. I thought he did very well. The point of the testimony was of course, not to get at the truth, but it was even a little different from normal congressional testimony, which is a dog and pony show meant to either filet or elevate a witness. It's something very, very different from a genuine give and take. Smith was being subject to an extensive perjury trap. Now, whenever I hear this charge, I usually think, all right then, to get out of the trap, don't commit perjury. But that assumes that those bringing the charges will be adhering to the usual standards of evidence. And that's just not the case with the Trump Justice Department. As we have seen with the Comey James and possible Powell prosecutions, Smith measured his answers, knowing that any discordance with previous testimony, spoken or written, would be seized on by Donald Trump and his allies and used to prosecute him. Smith, the former prosecutor, Trump doesn't need a plausible reason to do this. He doesn't need one that will ultimately stand up in court. He's just looking to torture the men and women who he deems to have tortured him. And almost every Republican in Congress, as far as I can see, is going along with this. So before we get to the analysis of how successful the undertaking was. Let's just listen to a sample give and take of Smith in this case being quote unquote interrogated by Representative Brandon Gill of Texas in May of 23.

[Jack Smith]

We did issue.

[Jason Guriel]

You did.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

And there were non disclosure orders in conjunction with those subpoenas as well, right?

[Jack Smith]

That's correct. Consistent with department policy and law.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

So again, nobody would know what you were doing. The senators wouldn't, the representatives wouldn't, the American people wouldn't know what you were doing, is that right?

[Jack Smith]

The toll records that we secured and the non disclosure orders were consistent with policy and consistent.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

And you knew whenever you were doing that that there was a risk you were violating the speech or debate clause, is that right?

[Mike Pesca]

Okay. Toll records, those are records that Smith's office did obtain and they indicate when a call was made, for how long and between which parties, nothing about the content of the call. There were Republicans, members of the House and Senate on those records because that's who Donald Trump and his allies were talking to about overturning the election results. There were also Senators and Representatives who didn't get any calls from Donald Trump and there was no further follow up. But Gil, as you heard, was not terribly interested in an answer.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

This is an email from John Keller at Public Integrity Section to your team. As you are aware, quote, as you are aware, there is some litigation risk regarding whether compelled disclosure of toll records of a member's legislative calls violates the speech or debate clause in the D.C. circuit. That's from your own analysis right there. So you did know, didn't you, sir.

[Jack Smith]

With respect to the item you just put up on the screen, the last sentence states.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

Oh, we're going to get to the last sentence. Okay, we're going to get to the last sentence and we, we're going to.

[Mike Pesca]

Get to that final sentence. Now here, Gil summarized it. So Smith didn't have a chance to.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

Let's get to that last sentence then, quote, given my understanding of the low likelihood that any of the members listed below would be charged, the litigation risk should be minimal here. In other words, you're using a novel legal theory, which you knew was novel, has never been tested by any court. You're not charging any of these members. Nobody's going to know about it because you issued ndos. Nobody's going to sue about it. So sue this. So who cares? We're going to do it anyways. You walked all over the Constitution throughout this entire process.

[Mike Pesca]

Chairman, the gentleman's time.

[Representative Brandon Gill]

I'm members of Congress and you know it. It's absolutely disgraceful.

[Mike Pesca]

The time I yield back, gentleman yields back. Not going to be charged. They're not going to see it. They're not going to know because we're not going to tell them. So let's go ahead and do it. Is exactly what happened. Smith might have answered, well, it's a novel legal theory because the president of the United States has never before tried to overturn an election. Also, I guess novel legal theory sounds scary and wrong and it can't be true. But there are novel legal theories all the time and then they become familiar legal theories or disallowed legal theories. That's a lot of how the law works. And by the way, I worked within the law, the letter was the experts who we had to talk to giving us the okay sign to do that, which is proper procedure.

[Jason Guriel]

Right?

[Mike Pesca]

The last voice you heard there is exactly what happened. That was Jim Jordan, the committee chair, putting the old rat a tat cherry on the cake, baked entirely by Gill. Now with that exchange, ultimately, Smith was given the chance to give his obvious answer when a Democratic rep said, hey, anything else you'd like to say? And of course said this letter from the Public Integrity Office was proper procedure. It was them advising us and the permissibility and legality of what we were doing and also laying out their arguments and possible downsides. And of course, we needed to keep it quiet because President Trump had demonstrated a keen eagerness to, let us say, mess with the investigation. Here's some of Smith's answer.

[Jack Smith]

But I was aware during the course of our investigation of targeting of witnesses in, during the course of the conspiracy itself, there were election workers who had their lives turned upside down and received vile death threats because they were targeted by Donald Trump and his co conspirators. I had a duty to protect witnesses in this investigation. That risk, that threat to witnesses was only confirmed when we went forward in this case and Donald Trump suggested that one witness should be put to death and then also issued a statement to the effect of if you come after me, I'm coming after you. In my mind, I can't think of a more direct threat to witnesses and individuals involved in that proceeding. Given that sort of threats, it was in my view completely appropriate to protect the integrity of the investigation, to protect against destruction of evidence and to protect the witnesses in our case.

[Mike Pesca]

But of course, the clips that Gil and Jordan attained, the Q and A more of a Q and or a Q and they were to their liking and did not include any of Smith's rejoinder you know, any of the actual facts and truth. There were so many questions that were asked of Smith that he didn't have a chance to answer that I, as someone with a glancing familiarity with his case, who never went to law school, knew what the answer would clearly be if he was just allowed to give it. One representative bore in on. If this was such a wide conspiracy, why was only Donald Trump charged? Smith might have answered something like, you know, in conspiracies you often go after the kingpin. He might have also answered, you know, there were state prosecutions that did go after other conspirators. Then there was one of my favorite demonstrations of what Smith was up against from Darrell Issa of California, again on the toll records that shows that calls were made, but would require a court order to see the actual content of those calls. Here's Isaac. So you spied on the speaker of the House and these other senators and so on and informed no one and in fact put in a gag order so they couldn't discover it. If they were not subjects of a conspiracy investigation, why did Congress, a separate branch that you under the Constitution have to respect, why is it that no one should be informed in, including the judges? As you went in to spy on these people, did you mention that you were spying on seeking records so you could find out about when conversations occurred between the US speaker of the House and the President? Did you inform the judge or did you hold that back?

[Jack Smith]

My office didn't spy on anyone.

[Mike Pesca]

Wait a second. The question I asked you, Mr. Smith, was pretty straightforward. Pretty straight, double straightforward. I ask you, was that a straightforward question? Don't answer. I don't want to hear your answer. I just want to know if, when you murder that kitten, did you wash your hands? I want to know. I asked about the hands. Did you use dove soap or dial soap to wash your hands after the kitten murder? Sorry, no. I asked a dove or dial yes or no question. The reason why Smith knows that it's important to play the game as patiently as a unemotionally as possible is that he understands what's coming and it might be an indictment. Now, the strength of the indictment is in fact somewhat important. It's true that indicting someone without any basis to do so is a serious abuse of law. But it's also true that thus far in America, that doesn't get you put in jail. The Comey indictment was such a poor pretext, depending on as it did supposed perjury. One supposed statement based on the syntax of Chuck Grassley or Lindsey Graham's questions. It all fell apart. And that was one of the reasons why Comey's case didn't go forward. Actually, it didn't really even get to that. The procedure of filing the case was such a mess. But I'm speaking mostly of questions of refiling it. Letitia James, there's a bit more to her protection indictment. It's all written down in the black and white of mortgage statements so that case proceeds. The Democrats on the committee for their part were actually playing a different game than the Republicans and everyone knew this. The Democrats were essentially using their time to put Donald Trump on trial and emphasizing the events of January 6th. I don't know how far this goes in our siloed attention economy. The Republicans wouldn't have really convinced the supposedly fair minded viewer who does not possibly exist In America in 2025, this Rumpelstiltskin of a viewer. They in no way convince such a viewer that Jack Smith did something wrong. But that's not the purpose of these proceedings. Oh, and one final note. Jack Smith as a prosecutor in his day job is engaged in something like the pursuit of truth. And they do it through the adversarial system where a prosecutor makes his or her case and defendant has a lot of rights to present their case and a jury decides. And that is really, really imperfect. And there are so many ways that doesn't get at the truth. But compared to this monstrosity, this congressional hearing, the adversarial system is an unbelievably better version of truth or facts or discerning what actually happened or what they say they're doing when they raise their hands on Bibles at the beginning of each justice on the show. Today I talk a little bit about the reactions in the room to Donald Trump's and his plans not to invade Iceland. I mean Greenland. I think he meant Greenland. I don't know what he meant. But first, Jason Giro is a critic and as you'll hear in the interview, a poet. I really never get enough chances to give the poet the third degree. And so I shall. He is the author of a collection of his essays, Fan Mail, A Guide to what We Love, Loathe and Mourn and Trigger Warning. He is quite Canadian. Jason Gurriel, up next, The gist 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.

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[Mike Pesca]

The digital world feels more chaotic than ever. Huge data breaches, AI threatening jobs, foreign meddling, that creeping feeling of obsolescence. It's information overload. I'm Dina Temple Rousten, host of Click Here from PRX and Recorded Future News. Want to understand how we got here and how you can get ahead of it all? Listen to Click Here. We can help you make sense of all the noise wherever you get your podcasts.

[Jason Guriel]

Foreign.

[Mike Pesca]

Jason Guriel, whose name has been, in an attempt at mockery, turned into grilled cheese. I found that out in his new book, Fan Mail. A guide to what we love, loathe, and mourn is many things. A critic, a poet. You're not going to get me to do the pirate, the pawn and the king. He's also a comic book guy, but not the comic book guy. That would be the Simpsons character Jeff Albertson, who, Jason, Jason argues, invented a genre of criticism that sort of curdled the industry. This new collection of essays, Fan Mail, is really good, really provocative, and so I'm going to use this interview not to go point by point or essay by essay. Just going to throw some cultural observations I had at him and I know that he's going to be able to parry them. Jason, thanks for coming on. Welcome to the gist.

[Jason Guriel]

Thanks so much. And it's kind of a thrill. I've been listening to you for a long time, maybe back to the slate days.

[Mike Pesca]

I will now anoint you someone who is to give not the state of the state or the state of the city or the state of the Union, but the state of poetry. What is the State of Poetry 2025? It seems extremely niche, but the poets still love it and definitely celebrate themselves and acknowledge themselves in the prefaces.

[Jason Guriel]

Well, it's a. That's a big question. I would say that the state of poetry is probably not great. Like, I'm someone who I. I love poetry. I read it a lot when I was younger. I've written poetry, but we have. Poetry has lost a critical culture like it does. There really isn't. There used to be more publications that were willing to publish reviews of, of of poetry. And I've found over the last 10 years that that has really. That has really vanished. Poetry magazine used to be a very good vehicle for criticism and for like really kicks getting the sort of mythical unicorn. General reader interested in poetry. I think it, you know, they would. They had pieces by Christopher Hitchens and Clive James back when Christian Wyman edited it. That magazine, I think has gotten, you know, very political and the criticism's less fun, it's less useful. And I would say that that has sort of happened across, across the board as well. And there used to be a lot of really interesting publications that were really driving the conversation and that a lot of that's vanished. Newspaper space has vanished. I mean this is. None of this would be news to you, but. And, and so I've always felt that if you don't have like an active conversation in which critics are willing to say, hey, this, this, this Ocean Vuong book is not a particularly good book. The, the culture, the subculture suffers for it.

[Mike Pesca]

Okay, so you're saying the. One of your theses there is that the quality of the poetry sort of veers away from actual quality because there's no quality control. And the quality control, the gatekeepers were places like Poetry magazine, which, I don't know, I haven't followed it. And when you say it got political, how did it get political if it's say. If poetry is saying the right things, they celebrated it.

[Jason Guriel]

Yeah, basically, I think in. It went through a whole spasm in 2020 when, you know, I don't remember all the details, but a poem was published by, by an editor and it was sort of deemed like offensive and racist. And I had, for years, I had already stopped reading, had already veered into a kind of. There was less criticism. It was more like anthropology. It was just like, let's just celebrate everything. And of course when you celebrate everything, you celebrate nothing. But it's. What happened to poetry is what happened to a lot of cultural institutions I think over the last decade or so. And I've seen it up here in Canada. I've seen it. You've probably seen it south of the border and yeah, like there, we've have. And there's the technological component too. I mean everyone's self. A self publisher at this point. Right. And so we've, we've. A lot of the poets have Shifted to, you know, they're on Instagram and they're on substack and we don't. There isn't any kind of. There isn't anything like a robust monoculture where really smart, thoughtful gatekeepers, which I contend are important to have, can. Can sort of give you a thumbs up or thumbs down. So I think readers are lost at this point and it's hard to get a handle on. On. On what's worth reading.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. Now I do understand that there is, I guess there's been some revitalization of a certain kind of poetry via substack and TikTok. There is TikTok poetry, but I don't know that it would be the kind of poetry that you like or maybe I like. And I also think that the purveyors of those poems can't, once they establish Persona and just a brand, have to keep delivering that. So that is a late development. Yeah, yeah.

[Jason Guriel]

No, I was going to say I don't. I think the product then becomes them. Right. And it's not like, I don't think there's necessarily selling books like, I mean, Rupi Kaur might be the exception that proves the rule, but you know, to me it's. That's like that kind of poetry. It's almost like a lifestyle product. It's like a scented candle or something. It's not.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A printed sign that you put up on the summer home. Maybe if it's a log cabin, it's in wood and if not, it's quilted. But am I right or am I just somewhat nostalgic that 75 years ago, post World War II, poetry was big and Frank O' Hara would come out with a collection and people, many, many hundreds of thousands of people would actually read it. And Ezra Pound, before he was imprisoned, was well known because of the quality of his work. And T.S. eliot and other genuine poets. And we could list many of them and there were many more of them and they were more prominent and popular than the one or two Robert Pinsky, Seamus Heaney poets that can actually make a living as poets today.

[Jason Guriel]

Yeah, 100%. I think there was a. There was a larger audience for poetry. I think there was a kind of aspirational readership, particularly mid century. Like people who were like, what? You know, like the kind of people who'd go to see a Fellini film, like, this is good for me. I should. There. There was an aspiration to read poetry, but I do think an earlier generation of poets, like, like Robert Frost, for example, they were, they oriented themselves at the general reader. Like which, which doesn't mean that the. You did not have a lot of substance or depth, but they didn't see what they were doing as like, as a niche activity. A couple of years ago, I mean I tried to, I've tried to rectify this in my, in my own very small niche way by. I wrote a couple of verse novels that, that are sort of written in rhyming couplets that, where the goal was really to, to engage like, like a non specialist reader because for the most part poetry is a kind of niche activity. And those actually, those books like probably all the, of all the poetry I've written, they've, they've had, they've had the most, they've made the most connection with, with readers. Like they're not bestsellers by any stretch but you know, like the New York Times took an interest in at one point and, and you know, Wall Street Journal a couple years ago reviewed one of them. So I, I have really tried to orient my work at like the smart general reader who, who I think could really enjoy the pleasures of poetry if it wasn't cryptic or swathed in like a kind of identitarian agenda or whatever.

[Mike Pesca]

So I love poetry. But I will find myself reaching more for the Frank o' Hara collection than anything written today or that's popular today. And I never examined it. I think it probably does have something to do with gatekeepers or the fact that the poetry that is put forward, like when it comes to poetry, I'm like middle American thinking about the good films or quality films and I just know I have an aperture for a few of them and if I watch these quality, maybe art films and they resonate with me, which does happen and it's happened from time immemorial and people get inspired and want to make films of their own, but the stuff that the culture points to and say this is good, has to resonate. And that worked when we're talking about Seamus Haney, but also o', Hara, but nothing really lately. And I don't want to drag Amanda Gorman and maybe she's not, she's a youth poet, but she was elevated as I guess the poet that an average American would know. And like you read her stuff, she's more a youth than a poet or it doesn't resonate with me and I wonder, I wonder if that's part of it that we only have so much attention when big poetry or the gatekeepers point at a couple examples and they're just not Good. Maybe that's one reason why poetry rescinds 100%.

[Jason Guriel]

And I mean, this is not a new problem. There's a very. In the poetry world. There's a famous essay that was in the Atlantic in 1991 called Can Poetry Matter? By Dana Joya. And he argued at that time that poetry had lost the interest of the general readership because of the MFA industrial complex. So he argued that we were churning out too many poets. It was almost like subsidized farming. We were putting out too many poems that were sort of competent but not particularly captivating and that we had. In doing so, we had sort of put. We had overwhelmed audiences, the audiences and, and there was. There was no quality control. Now we have that like times. At times 10,000 with. With right people.

[Mike Pesca]

Because. Because the way the media changed, I don't.

[Jason Guriel]

It's incredible. I don't even know how you would get a foothold at this point because I. I don't write a lot of lyric poems, but they're. You know, I used to, when I used to write shorter poems, I'd send them out to magazines and I'd wait eight months for my self addressed stamped envelope to come back and. And it was this kind of slog to get my work out there. In some senses, I guess the Internet's been very liberating for younger generation. But I just don't know how you find a signal and all that in all that noise at this point.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah, I'll give you a personal. Two personal examples. When it comes to poetry, my education is not complete. And I guess Philip Levine died about 10 years ago. Right. So there was a lot of looking back and remembrances and I said, I don't. Do I know Philip Levine and I read a bunch of his poems about working and being from Detroit and on the assembly line and my mind was blown. I'm like, this is poetry. Right? But without him dying. And I guess I missed his whole life because no one told me about him beforehand. That's my own fault. And then. You ever hear of Matea Harvey?

[Jason Guriel]

I have heard of her, yes. I don't. I'm not familiar with the work though.

[Mike Pesca]

So this book I'm holding up is if the tabloids are true, what are you. And she does Abdicadarian poems. Really great fun, complex stuff. She's written children's books. The way I found out about her was after one of your, I'll say, heroes, David Foster Wallace died. I think this was right after he died, they published a curriculum that he had A reading list that he would assign his class. And one of her books is titled Pity the Bathtub. Its Forced embrace of the human form. I think I'm getting that right. And that phrase, that title so jumped out at me. I like how he used. I like how she used Pity the Bathtub. Like thinking about an anthropomorphized bathtub. And the point itself, like our bathtubs do they have aspirations not to have to kowtow to the human experience. I looked it up and I got really into her. But that's exactly what you're saying. What's the signaling mechanism? How could poetry ever be resurrected if. Sorry again. Amanda Gorman, Nice kid. What she did at 16, I'm sure was. Would. If you knew her, you'd be very proud. But if that's the. Or if TikTok poetry is the only poetry that I'm. That's going to flit across my consciousness.

[Jason Guriel]

It's so funny you mentioned Wallace because. Well, first of all, my. My first paperback edition of Infinite justice holding up. Is holding up my laptop right now. It's directly underneath. And I. I have it out because I'm so.

[Mike Pesca]

Wait, I don't understand how I'm still looking up at you. Shouldn't I be looking down at a great height if the. True.

[Jason Guriel]

That's right. This table's too low. But I'm writing something about. About Infinite just right now to mark the 30th anniversary next month. But, you know, I bought this. This very fat paperback in a Mall Bookstore in 19. It must have been 1997. That big orange spine just, like jumped out at me. And it jumped out at me because I was the kind of kid who. In 1997, I lived in a suburb of Toronto. There was nowhere to go. I haunted this bookstore. I knew what the shelves looked like, so anything new like that would jump out. But I remember, you know, reading someone like Wallace and, you know, within the first few pages of that book, I know it's a challenging book and it's a dense book, but he would just come up with descriptions and similes and metaphors that just blew me away. And, you know, there's a scene early on where he describes the impermanent smile of, like, one of the deans as, like. As, like stamped into uncooperative material. And I like those kinds of little moments like that cut through whatever noise was in my brain in 1997. And it really is. As much as we've enabled, like, thousands and thousands and thousands of writers and artists to share their work online. The people that can really cut through with, with a brilliant image or a brilliant title like you just mentioned, they're just, that's just. That has always been, I think, a very small elect group. And, and so, you know, and Wall certainly was one of those people.

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah. I'm not sure that the quality of the top.01% genius now in our attention economy will still cut through.

[Jason Guriel]

Yeah.

[Mike Pesca]

And when you write about, and when you write about shopping in a store, it reminds me of the essay in fan mail about shopping for. Shopping in person for Christmas. What is a Christmas irl? So yes, there is. And what I get from that is not just the tactile pleasures and practicalities, but the deluge of information we have in our attention economy serves. And I don't think it's anyone's plan, I don't think it's a nefarious mustache twirling conceit, but it serves the same purpose as if there was the spigot. Being turned on so heavily is the exact same thing as if the spigot were dry in a somewhat totalitarian country. In fact, one way that they used to rig elections in, I think it was Serbia was, or maybe it was Russia, was to allow, when they would have elections in name only was not to suppress the number of candidates who ran, but to allow no barrier to entry so there'd be hundreds of opposition candidates and no one could get any time to make a case and no one could cut through and then Putin or whoever or Milosevic or whoever would win. So that's just an observation about stores. And I think what stores do is they just slow you down a little bit. Any, anything in real life just slows you down. And the speed of information is the enemy of quality.

[Jason Guriel]

So often 100%. I mean, you think about Steve Bannon and the flood, the zone stuff and I mean, yeah, and I, I wrote a couple years back of this little monograph about browsing and it was sort of a. It was written during the pandemic in part because it was a love letter to, to just. We, I was in Toronto and we had really long lockdowns and it was sort of written as a love letter to that, to the, the practice of like being in like three dimensional space, being limited by what was available, but also being like opened up to serendipity. So if you're combing a used bookstore, you know, you're gonna, your eyes are gonna fall on something that's gonna totally potentially surprise you that you didn't set out to look for. I think Leon Weaseltier had a great line about, about when he used to go to the libraries. He'd be like, the book I needed was always next to the book I was looking for. And, and, but, but this does sort of circle back to this gatekeeper conversation. Like being in physical space does limit you and impose limits. And, and, but that's good in, in some respects, I mean, I can't even keep up. The news cycle is just, it's impossible to, to stay on top of at this point.

[Mike Pesca]

And before, right before we were technically able to. Did we organize information in an approachable, manageable way just because we didn't have the tools to open? Or was it because there was something about human cognition where books on a shelf and a person's eyes scanning that shelf or those shelves or those stacks in my college library worked? Right. Was it when I was scanning those stacks in my college library and couldn't actually concentrate on my homework because I was so interested in these other books? Was the, was that, was that functional? Or did I not know it, but I secretly wanted 10, every single book ever written somehow available at my fingertips? Is that what I yearn for? I think not.

[Jason Guriel]

No, I agree. And I think part of it is all, you know, we've also lost the curation aspect as well, right?

[Mike Pesca]

Yeah.

[Jason Guriel]

There's a million free agent writers now. And you know the joke, the joke at this point, which is a cliche, is, hey, maybe we should bundle these guys together.

[Mike Pesca]

And Jason's a smart guy, an interesting guy. I love talking to him and I hate to keep so much of that conversation from you. So I offer you a chance to become a subscriber to Pesca plus or just to get the whole show ad free. But if you want the extra stuff, go to subscribe.mikepesca.com today, The gist 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. And now the spiel. Donald Trump's speech in Davos was long, weird and confused as to the first syllable of Scandinavian islands. It was also ahistorical and mean. Steve Bannon loved it.

[Jason Guriel]

Mark Carney yesterday.

[Mike Pesca]

Like I said, my perspective is if you're a globalist in the audience, you.

[Jason Guriel]

Think Trump's a gangster, right? And if you're a nationalist, you think.

[Mike Pesca]

Trump Is Pericles at Athens. It's that.

[Jason Guriel]

I mean, it was just a fabulous speech. Your thoughts, ma'.

[Mike Pesca]

Am.

[Jason Guriel]

Listen, regardless on which side you find.

[Mike Pesca]

Yourself on, the aura is undeniable.

[Jason Guriel]

And you had the standing ovation as he entered the room. You had the standing ovation as he exited. So there is no one like President Trump on the world stage.

[Mike Pesca]

I think that standing ovation at the end might have just been people needing to stretch after an hour and a half. But Walter Russell Mead, who's a fairly well respected thinker and editor, writing in the Wall Street Journal today noted Bannon's comparison to Pericles and allowed quote, that goes a little too far. Mr. Trump is a performer, not an orator. And the rambling monologues he delivers bear little resemblance to Pericles is tightly worded speeches, end quote. I mean, that's what we think of Pericles now. They all might have been punched up by Thucydides. For an alternative view of the effect in the room from two people in the room, I checked in with the Rest Is History podcast.

[Jack Smith]

That was one of the most horrific events I've attended in my entire life.

[Mike Pesca]

The host, former government officials in Britain, Rory Stewart, Alastair Campbell, described the speech in less grandiose terms than ancient Greek military glory.

[Jack Smith]

The whole sort of having all these dozens of overflow rooms, most of which probably don't have anybody in them, walking back from the main congress center to here. It's amazing we left before we finished. I mean, it was by the Q and A beginning. People were falling asleep.

[Mike Pesca]

Now, I watched the whole speech, and I'm not going to say it was actually much closer to the Rest Is History version than the Bannon version. I'm going to say Rory and Alister got it exactly right, and I don't always agree with them. The speech was not, to use the exact framing of Walter Russell Mead, a performance. It was more a horror show. This was a bored man, or an incapable man unable to master proper nouns, expecting applause for his facially ridiculous assertions about, say, China not having wind farms. This in front of a crowd that does a lot of business with China, or in the case of the Chinese delegation, is China. But also, it strikes me that even 15 years ago, such wildly veering descriptions of reality would not be possible. And even though one should not trust Steve Bannon, and even though the Wall Street Journal editorial board certainly leans right, though they've been known to smack Trump over his protectionist instincts, the idea of that, you can get a description of that speech as anything other than shambolic, embarrassing to us even in the pages of a publication that's more or less sympathetic to him. It would have been unthinkable in many ages before this one, because we all saw the speech. Except in our attention ravaged economy and ecosystem. We didn't. Donald Trump the day before gave a long and crazy assessment of his first year in office, which we also all saw. Except we probably didn't because we're all seeing what's going on in Minnesota. Except we don't. And we all saw the Jack Smith hearings today. Except no, we probably didn't. Maybe we saw some of them, maybe some of us saw all of them. But this is all not just the chaos that Trump has unleashed. This is just the conditions of our world today. Conditions that Donald Trump usually ends kind of masterfully, takes advantage of, or at least has backed into. I don't think it's a strategy of distraction. I just think it's how the world works and how Donald Trump works well within it. But if we don't call out what he does and what he says as closer to a disaster than to Pericles, then we've done something wrong. As Pericles said, future ages will wonder at us as the present age wonders at us now. Yes, we've certainly inspired a lot of wonder. And that's it for today's show. Cory Wara produces the gist. Leah Yan is our production coordinator. Kathleen Sykes, she does the gist list. Jeff Craig is in charge of the moving image. Here's a one man museum of the moving image. Michel Pesca is the doyen of the moving spreadsheet or static spreadsheet too static. We got to get on that improve do Peru. And thanks for listening.

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