This is the ten percent happier pact cast, I'm Dan Harris Hallo but this is another one of those happy where I test that old adage about never meeting your heroes, because there will inevitably let you down I am a massive fan of Jennifer egon. I just finished reading two of her novels, a visit from the goon squad, which won the pulitzer prize back in two thousand eleven, and then the companion novel, the candy house, which was one of president obama's favorite. eads of twenty twenty two jennifer again is not only a novelist she's. Also written short stories award winning magazine journalism she's. What those writers who can both span affair donating yarn.

the load it up with insight into everything from human nature to the future of technology. All while pulling off these bewitching turns of phrase or with the writer Jonathan friends and has called micro felicity some of that term, as I continue to toil away at my own book. Eggins work gives me that pleasantly unpleasant feeling of being complete hack anyway. The good news is that she did Not let me down at all, as you will hear, she is as funny and interesting and open. I already as she is on the page, although I'm am not sure she feels that way. One of the things we discuss here is how much smarter she feels in writing them instead, We talk a lot about her writing process, in fact that the power of writing by hand- and this truly shocking, relentless ruthless discipline that you

is on herself. Basically, she never allowed herself to do the same thing twice as she's writing. We also talk about curiosity. Ah, panic attacks how she handles feedback for feelings of in substantiality, our cultures, fetish isolation of authenticity. The impact of success her work, and we spent quite a bit of time talking about a high and our possible technological futures. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I thought egon would be a good. it conversation partner on the subject, given that in the candy house, her most reason novel. She plays out some wild ideas about uploading our consciousness to the matrix, so she thinks a lot about technology. I wanted to hear which she had to say. Don't miss out on the enjoy everyday walking, meditation pack over on the ten percent happier up its available for free until august twentieth. If you haven't tried meditation on the app before I highly recommend you check it out here is

one user had to say I'm quoting here, I'm in my six the year with ten percent. I start and end my day with it, I like their walking meditations to use when I'm out exercising or walking the dog. The longer I the more I learn the nuances and subtleties and refinements of the process is life. Changing. That's awesome here down the ten percent happier after day wherever you get your apps and get started for freight this sponsored by better help. Sometimes in life were faced. A tough choices in the path forward is not always clear. What did you do era say when you come to a fork in the road taken, not very useful, although I guess kind Why are we don't always know what the right way to go is, and I find myself in a fork in the road or places in the road where it does more than fork, and it can be really helpful to have expert advice to make better decisions, whether you're dealing with this

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jennifer egon welcome to the show. I can't believe I'm sitting here face to face, albeit digitally with you. I just finished reading two of your books and absolutely love them so so nice to meet you I'll. Thank you. So much I am happy to be here. You write a kind of book so when they end up really sad, it's just like. I missed the book I am happy to hear that cause. I love that feeling myself as a reader, I read a visit from the goin squadron candy house, and I have read recently that there's some effort to turn them into filmed entertainment, which I'm excited about the chance to sort of dive back into the world in a different way. Yeah, let's see what happens in good squad, has had many deals and none has yet resulted in a show, but maybe the they of candy house and a new team will be the magical combination. I've heard that experience with ten percent happier like lots of kristen even at times slots work and then something happens or nothing

and yes, a hollywood is a tricky treacherous place and always makes me so happy to be affixed. Writer or I can actually just write my well. I'm happy we are a fiction writer I mean it's like I get the same feeling reading or writing that I get when I'm like. Looking at the grand canyon, it's like I'm in awe that a human mind can produce words in that that provoke dopamine and saratoga to go off in my brain, and so it so cool what you can do far. Thank you, I didn't actually know much about you until I started to prepare for this pipe cast I didn't want to know anything about you, maybe that with some time how pierce the mystery, but in asking my team whether we can somehow inveigled you the broadcast. I then had to learn a little bit about you and I'm glad I did because one of the things that serve left out to me from me. Your life

something I think we share, which is panic attacks and you ve talked about how panic attacks in a strange way, got you into writing. Am I right about that? Well, I think they are. Me too realise how essential writing was to whatever kind of experience. was having I really started, having panic attacks when I was taking a year off between high school in college and travelling in europe with a backpack on my own, and I had worked for most of that year too. We need to do that, and now I was on the awaited trip, and I said and having these, I called it the terror, because I actually never heard of a panic attack, and I thought that I was having drunk flashbacks, which says something about my high school years for which just concluded, and you to all of us read go ask Alice this supposedly this was these were rural entries from a teen who took too many drugs and lost her mind, but I think

It turned out later that it was actually a concerned mother who had written this book to scare teams away from drugs. But anyway, I was convinced that I was like Alice and I'm losing my mind, so was pretty scary on and off mixed with us. Amazing adventures of being an eighteen year old, backpacking in europe, and I think the discovery was that whatever was going on whether terrifying or joy, Writing was the thing that not only completed the experience but somehow gave it meaning so I just emerged from all of that with a strong sense of the essential nests of writing. For my experience of the world, like you couldn't process it without somehow writing it down else. It was exactly that it was that the experience wasn't complete without that component of writing and, amazingly enough, I even was able to write during the panic attacks sometimes which create,

an amazing record. I have to say I still have that journal, so I think it was something about the recognition that, without writing the world simply was missing a really important aspect and so wasn't so much a sense that I had amazing talent and visions to share as the fact that I knew that, for me, writing was just the essential thing that had to happen it did you think you say that the experience was incomplete without writing it down. There know if this is gonna work, but I feel like nothing's real until I've told my wife, that's lovely. As a swede, What does that mean, you're making a connection that is inappropriate. No, I think that makes total sense actually, and I think maybe in my case, it's I have to tell me- self there's some sort of loop that needs to be completed for the experience to feel entirely real, and I also find a sort of ancillary benefits I feel like I'm aims.

to think more clearly on the page, then I can just sitting down and thinking, and I think I measure we smarter. If I'm writing, I just feel like I make discoveries when writing that I simply cannot make, for example, in conversation, so there's a kind of enhancement, maybe a clarity that it gives me that allows me to understand my own thinking in ways that I can't without it. What do you think's going and there. Why is it that you're smarter when writing than talking well? One thing is when I write fiction. I write my first drafts by hand so in cursive, and I feel like there's something about that act. That has a kind end of meditative are concentrating quality. I dont actually meditate, but I feel it when it going well like. I do have a slightly different state of mind if I'm handwriting and it seems to me

patch me a little bit from the world around me in ways that somehow adds to my ability to get to some deeper level of thinking which may be is where intelligent, lies. I find myself thinking a lot about group think lately because of chechen bt and the general doubt about it, and you know tat, you see seems to be literally embodiment of group. Think that's what it is its pulling on all this language. That's floating around out there I feel like when I write in a more surface way say if I'm just on my computer writing, I feel, like I partake of group thing and somehow I'm trying to get beyond that. Handwriting helps me to do that. So there's something about right. Being in all its forms that sir two. past more million language and familiar thinking in me.

and allow me to access something deeper and more original. First of all, I want to come back to check gb t at some point, but we'll get there. My writing is not on your level at all. But when I write mostly I'm standing at a computer and am in abject misery, but the best stuff is when I printed out- and I'm only put this together when I read about your interest in handwriting when I print it out and make notes on the page or if I'm gonna meditation retreat and I will have a computer and I bring a journal and I'm writing stuff. That is always when the best stuff comes. It's never at the computer. I don't know if it's because of group think or what, but I didn't crystallized that until I read about your process, will you know one thing it might be too is the critical part of all of our brains. That essentially starts censoring us before we ve said a word. So what I find is that of

we're looking at a screen and seeing what I'm writing in print. I immediately see what's wrong with it and I start trying to fix it, so I'm kind of going backwards practically before I've gone forward or his handwriting you, even if you have nice handwriting, which I do not is not real- It is easy to read as print and so there's a way in which it remains little mysterious, and I think that blindness that handwriting can give us is also really useful. It just sort of relaxes that critical tension of wanting to things. I also edit my hand on hard copies what you just described and I feel like a lot of really good stuff comes along that way. In fact, that's almost the most fun because trying to kid Something out of nothing is always really hard and kind of scary. You know the so called blank page, but having

I think, they're already on a page and making it better is just such a joy. I dont think I ever oh, maybe maybe two percent the time feel anything resembling joy. When writing it's mostly just you know this. initiation self hatred things in that zone well, I'm lucky that I do sometimes feel that joy, not always by any means in there definitely miseries for sure, but the sense that I'm solving a problem having a slight a fancy that might make something better really exciting and it can be really absorbing I have edited hard copies by hand on an escalator done it in an elevator. I've got enough the subway and sat in a

smelly, dank station, just the kind of finnish. What I'm doing before I have to walk down the street, so it can really be absorbing and that such a thrill Honestly, I feel like there's this alternate world that I'm inhabiting that is so compelling that I can even engage with it in these odd situations. Maybe I'm underplaying the joy question here because I do remember. being so absorbed in. I was on a shoot in Brazil and I was in a crack house in rio and I had a minute- and I am added some pages from my first book in the corner of a crack house. Maybe I was just aye, but I didn't you're that everyone will act your barricades adversary and because, in your description of it to the eu her, I saw something that really, resonated with me. I'm just going to read it. Other people are real said and the world recognises their reality. But I'm kind of a figment of just a wannabe person that was a really hard way.

To live, and I think when those panic attacks came, there may have been sort of a weird existential aspect to them. A kind of felt like I was disappearing my brain was crumbling. It wasn't like dying. He was like vanishing I'll. Tell you why that hit me, but can you just elaborate upon what I just read. If europe to it yeah I mean When I was younger, especially, I really did have a sense that other people were more real than I was by which I mean that the I thought that their lives were more valid and also more, intense, so there was kind of a sensory aspect to it and also a kind of an analysis I guess, status or legitimacy. I just felt like I was a kind of half person and that if I were only someone else, everything would be more vivid and somehow more complete, and that was of course, a terrible

to feel- and I think there were a lot of reasons for that- that our biographical I've been every step kid and I didn't really exactly have a family unit where I felt like I played a totally into girl unnecessary part, but I also think maybe it was just might the reality, because later I've come to feel like the ease of disappearing. Without the negative connotations like, I'm not real other people, are more real. That sense of disappearing is actually something that I really like, and I think when I talk about your being so absorbed in creating a fictional, world that I can write on an escalator or an elevator. That's an expression of my own disappearance, If you think about it, you know, for example, catholicism which is the religion I was born into on and have not really observed past about the age of ten. But you know the whole idea of transcendence seven after life. This whole notion,

somehow rising above the everyday ordinary nests of our lives in a way, that's a description of what I am talking about, the sense of being lifted out of my life. So that's a more exciting and spiritual way of describing what, as a teen thought, really scary, which was that somehow my life was disposed ball or dispensable? And there was a relationship between this every day, sense of responsibility and the panic attack where it heightened to avoid finishing yeah I mean I think what really was prompting the panic attacks was just alone us, because this was nineteen, eighty one There is no internet, there were no cell phones, my home was in california, which was in nine hours behind europe- or I was so- I think I just was feeling anxious- I mean I think it really just came down to it

zion. He and then anxiety about anxiety about anxiety, a sense that something was wrong. I think that was the fundamental drumbeat of those a panic attacks was something is wrong and thus a disaster I'm terrified. So I don't know, I'm not sure exactly how it relates to the disappearance, but I think all of it is an expression of the fact that I didn't have a strong sense of self yet, and I was not able to calm myself down at all. In fact, I was just noticing I fear, and that made me more afraid. I was an anxious teen. I mean that's putting a kind of in a humdrum way but it really did come to a head because I had isolated myself. Extremely and in a way that the strangest part of this story, why is an anxious? Teen was I? wandering around europe with a backpack with the nine our time too,

it's from home. You know. Why did I put myself in that position? Well, I think that I want That intensity in some way and I got a big reward out of it, even though it was very uncomfortable in moments. It was like a birthing, but maybe in some ways like that, was you starting to kind of make a claim towards self. I think it was actually because it's not that I stopped being anxious after that and still anxious, but I do think of that. As the time when I pointed in a direction that I still pointed in, or I returned from that trip and buy it. I had to leave unceremoniously and not as planned. Like I reached a point where I couldn't go on, and I was really bunda because to spend all of this hard earned money buying a ticket like on the spot and flying home. But I do think that from that point on I was beginning to live the life that I'm still living and up until then, I had to

an flailing around trying to figure out who was cool and how to be real. There's so much in what you have just discussed that I relate to a somebody. Who's had pack attacks and also who we know does his best practice. Buddhism. Maybe I'll go the buddhism route for a second, and I don't know if I'm gonna be able to make this into a coherent so forgive me, but it reminded me of something that I've heard this again in doktor. Mark Epstein has been a really if formative figure in my life is a psychiatrist, any rights books about the overlap between second g and buddhism, and I dont know if he's ever written this or it's just something. I've heard him say or both, but he talks of had a lot of us feel unreal on some level like we look around, everybody else seems real, but we seem in substantial- and this is in some ways the fundamental thing that the buddha was pointing to that. Actually, there is

self. Yet we can look in the mirror and see that there's somebody there buddy, you close your eyes and look you know, look Jennifer egon, you won't find her. You know we're just a yawning chasm of knowing where a mixture of lots of things that are coming going all the time and to me your story of feeling on kind of fits right into that. I'm now at the point where I'm you, the yammering too much but any of what I've said land for you in any way? Yes, very much so I mean one thing, this kind of stranger ironic, about the idea that we all feel and substantial on some level an unreal and that other people are more real than we are. Is the fact that our own consciousnesses are the only things that we know so we actually have no act. Says zero to the interior lives of anyone else and that's kind of what obsessed me. Writing the candy how's this strange

barrier, I mean it's as firm as the barrier between life and death and its as impossible to negotiate as the barrier between life and death. No matter how close you are to someone, you cannot actually enter into their consciousness. So it's so strange to think that our current pollution from that is that we yet somehow insubstantial when we're the only one we know, but I think that The way that I really connect to. What you are saying is that maybe the sense that we're insubstantial is expression of how much our minds and our imaginations are always reaching beyond and ourselves I mean, in my case I'm so curious about other people's lives. I am much more care is about their lives than I am about mine. That's why? I If right about myself, if I get a with that, someone like me is enter

the picture I go dad fact because the fun of it is actually finding out about other people. It's a sense of discovery, so that, in a way, is the exact. The same thing as feeling unreal, it's just that I have now owned it and taken it on as a pleasure to disappear, or to forget about myself and a man in my way over that impermeable barrier between myself and other people's minds ok, but you say that as soon as you get a whiff of Jennifer egon entering the scene as you create these characters, you go dead but of course- every get is creating all of these characters, so there are, of course, a part of you anyway. Yes, that's true and I feel a deep connection to all of them. In fact I have to that is the job. You know if I can't empathize, Oh deeply, with someone, I'm writing about that, their choices, no matter how crazy feel essential end,

inevitable that I cannot read about them well, because that is the job, but it feels much more like I've become them, then that they are me you're. Strangely, maybe there's like a good and bad. That's probably too by mary, but there's a pleasant or an unpleasant d. hearing. You know we have this deep desire to be blown away. I mean nirvana itself is described as a blowing out of the self a pleasant extinguishing, and yet you know you take the wrong kind of psychedelics for me was being fourteen years old and smoking too much weed and you disappear and it's fuckin terrifying, and that was happening for you and your panic attacks. It sounds like an for you. You can have this really pleasant. Snuffing out of the self wall, creating these characters in getting lost in the story in your stuck in a stinky your city subway station, as it's all happening, and yet it still pleasant, and then you can have this terrifying sense through.

Your teams of not being fully real like Unreality, I think, is non negotiable, true and their applause, ways an unpleasant ways to experience it absolutely I mean for me you I've also smoked alot apart and took psychedelic as a teenager, and none of that really worked for me. I feel like that stuff always tipp to me into too much cogitation too much, baroness of my own separation, which would tipp interfere really really easily, so those are just not for me, and I have z, oh inclination towards them. Now, as an adult,

yeah. I have a lot of inclination toward them, but a lot of fear at the same time, I'm curious and also scared, but for me what you just described is exactly what's happening. It's, like my ego, is a vampire confronted by garlic. It recoils and the ego goes crazy in the face of impending destruction. The ego death, that's talked about on psychedelics and what happens is I tip over into panic, which is the last refuge of the ego. Well, one thing to, though I wonder whether in both cases but certainly mine, I am so ready to leave myself behind that. I may be that what some of these drugs deliver is kind of transcendence that allows a separation from oneself. That's her, murder and realized, but that separation come so easily and naturally to me that I think actually, with these enhancements it goes

too far. Somehow- and I feel almost like- I can't get back- you know my brother was gets a frantic and his first psychotic break came about after taking a hallucination. So there is some people for whom this is just too much their brains are maybe inclined too much that way anyway, no onto ego maniacal like I have not so easily slipped and other people stories are ready firmly at my own. I m not so proud to report, but anyway, I tend to agree with your diagnosis and also have had that feeling of being so high that I feel like I'm, never gonna come back and let me be locked in this hell realm. Ever and I can't think of a worse feeling that I've ever had bullets I think another thing about panic attacks is that they bore so deeply into the moment that there is no sense that time passing will help

something about the intensity of this seems to just under cut any possibility that this waiting will offer any kind of deliverance. So there is a strange aspect of panic. It feels almost like time starts to go backwards. It certainly doesn't go forward and therefore there seems to be no exit, as you say, except you intuitively did this thing when you were a teenager. That is, I believe, in any psychiatrist or psychologist her c b, t expert out there can hit me up and twitter and tell me I'm right, here, but I believe what you were doing by writing it down, was actually very smart from a neurological stamp your activating the prefrontal, cortex and deactivate. The middle of the middle of the fierce under the prefrontal cortex allows us to think and reasonably. If you can bring the thinking brain on line, that does cut the panic, and so you intuitively move towards something. Quite there appeared it. You know, I think, writing for me. Naturally, instills a sense of control

Indeed it is an act of control in a certain sense. It is saying you know I am empowered to respond to the world around me and so somehow Even Releasing that voice creates some sense of steadiness. I think- and I get must have done that for me. While I was panicking, because I dont think I would have been able to write about it as it was happening and sat like I was able to do that forever. You know it's interesting. I was also able to read oddly enough, I could read fiction while having a pan Itzhak. I remember reading some short stories by dickens, as I was holed up in a little youth so in rome and I think fiction for our reason. Even as a reader, it seems to touch some part of my brain that coms me. Yes, I don't know gone out and had some past. I think those carbs would have got the panic to not to mention a good glass of red wine. Sure, absolutely whatever it takes

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two way days for a doctor's employment or shift your whole day around to get into the dockers office that health thing can become even more of a thing and the longer you wait, the worse it gets so instead maybe try amazon clinic a virtual health care service that helps you quickly and discreetly get meant for common health conditions such as scientists, in fact, you two eyes acne and bore fruit, but your phone or desktop just open amazon clinic and choose condition to get connected with it? my doctor or nurse practitioner, who will give you a personalized treatment plant with any necessary prescription. Amazon clinic is virtual healthcare that fits into your life, so you can get back to being you head to clinic dot, amazon, dot com, slash happier to get started. So you mention the candy house and I'm not I'm not proceeding here and Amy,

particularly orderly fashion. Here through this interview, but you brought up the candy has, which is your most recent novel, which is unbelievably good, and you talked about this idea that you explored in the candy house of This the human misery that we can never really understand Somebody else's consciousness, although there is a tech fix that you invent in the book that I'd love to have you describe, and maybe this actually will bring us to a in chad, should. he at some point, but you have a character who is attack mogul who invents This thing called own your consciousness. Can you explain that story line sure I own your unconscious actual o urologist, sir. Yes, so yes, so here is what it is only or unconscious allows you to external lies the entirety of your consciousness, all of your memories and perception, starting in the moment of birth,

into a beautiful cuba comes in a variety of colours and what that lets you do is review the entirety of your life, any portion of it from a present day perspective, and if you want to purely voluntary you can share all or part of this conscious. To a collective consciousness on line and in exchange for doing that you will also have access to a proportionate quantity of that collective consciousness. I e you will have the ability to experience consciousnesses of other people anonymously so This is the machine and the guy who invented it, thought that the point of it would just be to own all of your memories, because of course we don't have access to the lion's share of our experience. I think maybe our brains just can't hold it in a conscious

anyway, his thought was great. Now all your memories are really yours. You can see them anew, but what he didn't expect was that it was the sharing part that becomes the huge cultural force and in the world of this book. Social media is completely replaced by this possibility of actually experiencing other people's consciousnesses and it has all kinds of cultural impacts, including, of course, a movement in resistance to it. A lot of people who decide this is horrifying; they don't want to be represented in this collect

and so they do something called eluding, which means that they actually cast off their identities. They sort of seed their identities to the collective and start over as new people who are the counters, while the counters that's basically a kind of a casual term for people who are in the business of data, that's basically what it is in this book. They call themselves counters in a casual

way and what our gray grabs, gray grabs are little snippets of people's memories. So, for example, there's a character in one chapter who has gotten over a terrible drug habit and has as lived a somewhat compromise life since then, but is not on drugs anymore. But he has this lingering curiosity about the guy who used to sell him drugs. He doesn't even know the guy's full name impossible. You not even his real first name, but he's just filled with this sense of wanting to know. What's happened to the sky, so he exe analyzes his specific memories of this guy meeting. He wears electrodes. He remembers his encounters with this guy, thereby releasing, those memories to the collective, then there is a kind of process where using facial recognition. The programme matches his memories of this.

I with other anonymous memories from the collective of this guy, and he is able to view snippets of this guy's life using so called grey grabs, these anonymous memories that other people have of him. So seize him as a kid. He sees him and a kind of wilderness programme. He sees him in college, you see some selling, stolen stereo equipment and final if he sees him, you know in orange in a penitentiary, so he has a question about what happened to the sky is somewhat answered without ever knowing his name, so this aspect of your art, this story line. What does that say about your view of technology in our lives. Well, I don't know if it reveals what I think about technology, because what I think

but it as a civilian is not very interesting. I mean I'm a boomer like I'm scared of it surprise. I grew up without all the stuff knife and get the kind of bad I'm worried about people's attention. Spaz, that's boring! No one wants to hear that. So what fiction lets me do is be curious about it and discover things, and sometimes through that discovery process. I realise that I don't really think what I saw. I thought about something. So the caddy house is a much more optimistic book than I would have expected to write. You know it is, I think, pretty affirming of people's ingenuity and the idea that in the end, were still people no matter what technology were dealing with. I am not sure that is exactly what I walk around with in my conscious life, but that is exactly what I walk around with my conscious life is not that useful for fiction. It

too much it's too predictable, based on my age and circumstances, so interesting that you can go through this process. That reveals what you really think like you would think, you think, would be readily available to you. I'd out, isn't that funny, and in this case it was really a happy surprise because I finished it during the pandemic, a time of such massive uncertainty and confusion, and you know, dread and what I ended up feeling was- and I am very concerned about the climate crisis, etc. But me, the message of the book delivers, is humans can really solve any problem. If we decide to do it there's a line in the book human being our superhuman. You know. I certainly don't think that all the time in my conscious mind, but I found myself affirmed in what the book reveal to me about my vision of humanity located

brings us to chat gb t and all of this freaking out that's going on with AI. Maybe I'm provoking you to say something boring predictable. I dont know, but I'd love, to hear what your thoughts are as we stand at what could be the cusp of view, no world shaking history making technological developments. While I should start by saying I ve never I it used to chat cpt, so am I even qualified to say a word? All I can comment on is the freak out and I and I'm willing to do that. I mean I'm going to say a few things. One is. I think that the very fact that any topic or any conversation is so amplified so constant, so easily. Ten, toward hysteria sometimes has a distorting effect on the topic. So, as I have witnessed the freak out about judge you b t there. Some part of me that thinks ok,

Is this really as big a deal as everyone? Saying and again I don't know, I'm not sure what it means at all accept that you know, I think about other technological things that seemed impossible like that. A computer would ever beat a human being a chess or later go. You know there was a field, like no way. But then peters. Did it didn't stop people from playing chess? In fact, it seems the people are crazy, just right now and knowing what the computer would do has just been absorbed into the process of playing chess and actually seems to be an additional dimension that does not in any way diminish human accomplishment. at playing chess? So I don't know, I guess what I'm really saying is I'm a bystander right now sort of watching this unfold? To me, the most frightening part is certainly the frankenstein

idea of chachi pity somehow setting off nuclear weapons or something like that, I mean that's appalling and horrifying, and and so familiar to us from many disturbing back stories and also like scary movies, that's just what's already out there in the popular culture, but if we apply the lesson of the candy house to the current fears around a I setting aside the nuclear scenario. We could conclude there Then maybe you did conclude that we can figure it out as dark as it may get. yeah. I like to hope so one thing that happened come through a strongly in this initial conversation about chance. You bt, as I would have expected, whereas the EU the invasion of what this is going to do for us, because, usually that's what leads and the unintended consequences follow. You know some,

on a very long time table I mean look at the combustion engine. You know by the time we figured out that was killing us. We were so deeply intertwined with that that we still have an remotely begun to extricate ourselves. So I guess much. She bt, I'm not understanding what the utopian it is the disturbing and seems to be leading and that a little bit of a change, that's interesting to me. I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It may just be that we have really stop believing in every week actively as a culture are so wary of technology. At this point that we are perceiving the potential negatives almost before or alongside the promised positives Maybe that's my guess, actually ended. It really is just a guess. I'm not qualified to apparent here and I'm gonna do it anyway. My guess is We now know enough from looking at ways of technological revolutions from the industrial revolution, which was

in some level, but also lead to the massive income, inequality and lots of other. Negative externalities in the clinical language, the internet and social media, which appear to have had mental health ramifications that are quite negative, depending on which studies you said over and over. We see that the utopian vision needs are, if not totally wrong at the very least, accompanied with something at the opposite end of the spectrum, as wondering whether there might be something healthy about the reaction to ay I, which is like ok, let's really reckon at the front end here with all that could be wrought as a result of this technology, rather than getting sucked into a utopian story, I'm not dealing with it until several generations later yeah. I agree. I mean, if you think, about the internet at the beginning, made a sort of the metal eight nineties and things

Napster coming along so there's something: I've didn't experienced first hand, but I've done research on it and it kind of comes up in both the candy has in a visit from the goons glad. You know the feeling. Discovering napster was like. Oh, my god, we can get things for free and actually that was, I think, a feeling that people had generally and the internet like while we can just has things this is so amazing Like this in real life, but it turned out that the reason things more free was there was a different economy setting in that most of us in no way understood, and I reckon for me, the penny dropped in two thousand and three when I was writing a nonfiction peace for the times magazine about online dating, and I was everything someone from match: dot com. and I couldn't get my mind around why mashed outcome as a business had such a high monetary evaluation of things like what are Why? Why are you so valuable and I essentially ask that question and the person I was intervene.

I said, oh well, because of all the personal information we have about everyone who uses match dot com, and in that moment I really had a kind of oh, my god moment. I got it suddenly you it took a long time for many of us who are not technologically oriented, to understand that none of this was free. We were just paying in a different way, we're paying with our attention and with our data. So it seems like Chechnya. He may be, introducing a new paradigm of value and transaction, and maybe it is a good thing, as you say that there is a reaction of terror because it seems like you, I guess the question is: why are we creating technology that makes us obsolete? What good are we doing there? And so I think that's a really.

Useful question to be asking, although everyone says, there's no putting the genie back in the bottle, etc, etc. So I dont know and again as non chat. She bt user. I can only say so much from my state of ignorance about it given are ignorance, I will gently, I sure I said the other sharpish, but that was actually very interesting, the candy. How so since we're on that, there are many parts of the candy house about I loved all of it. There is one part in particular there actually made me laugh out loud, and I dont know if that was for all its hard to do with me and second, I dont know: if was intentional, but does it character early in the book who takes screaming in public places, and I thought that was just hilarious, but maybe that's why tik tok regularly serves a prank videos to me, because I love that kind of shit. And the guys doing it if memory serves because he wants to

see genuine reactions and he thinks everybody such phonemes that if he can scream at the top of his lungs for ten minutes and a crowded place, he's actually gonna cease to everybody drop. The mask am stating that correctly totally yeah, I mean he's obsessed. You know, I think, as a culture were pretty obsessed with authenticity, we fetish eyes it to some degree, which is always kind of interesting because usually be fetish eyes, things that feel scarce. But yes, he feels the people are fake. He feels that they're playing themselves and that there too, and loans by euro, basically generic popular culture, so he start screaming, and it becomes a little bit him an addiction in the sense that once he had this experience of seeing the mask fall, as you say, seeing these genuine reactions, which, of course, are really negative. I mean imagine what

No at one point he lichens them to the expressions of people in a plane plunging toward the sea. He loves that and of course, if you get a taste for that and realized or seem really bored so we'll get this kind of each to scream, sometimes in very inappropriate. It's almost never appropriated to do that and its problematic, and we basically in the book witness his final screaming episode, which goes awry, but I too found him pretty funny, I have to say- and I'm glad you laughed out loud, because I love writing about things that become really absurd. Yet still makes sense- and I think this another reason I, like writing by hand in this kind of blind way, because its improvisational, and if you think about a lot of improv that we see on stages comedy, I think impact

safe tends towards the comic, because if you push a logical situations, with extreme. It often becomes funny- and I like to get there if I can, because it just one more note to head and the idea is to try to do as much as possible in as little space as one can. In writing fiction. If memory serves as a moment where the character is standing on a proud of bus and his girl for Standing next to me. She senses oh shit, he's about to do this in a remote. Like my wife, can tell when I'm gonna say something stupid. Sometimes, judges, can we hold up her hand and say garbage some garbage is gonna come out of? and I thought that was really funny, but there's a deeper level. Here, and I want to go back to authenticity antiquity and amid a quote you back to you by the way. This is it from the point of view of another character, is studying authenticity and is interested in the screamer, so this academic says, I believe, to her

why study authenticity, if not to seek it, try to ring some last truth from that word before it. So each of meaning that it becomes a word casing, a shell without a bullet, a term that can only be used inside quotation marks. I love that's beautiful writing and I think your pointing to something really true, which is that it's hard to talk about up until it is hard to use that word without lapsing right into cliche yeah, well, I think about this, so much because it's a little bit what I was saying about, why I don't wanna talk about what I think about technology they'd, so predictable, even language I can find to articulate it is predictable and hate that feeling I mean that gets back to group think that's exactly what I'm always to avoid when I raise or at least get beyond, because Often I do have to start there, but I think that there is this thing: happens with language and with argument where the law

we're just speaking us as much as we are speaking. We are basically just using words, phrases and arguments that we have heard and expressing them, maybe with feeling, but also with a sense that we're not getting to the real thing. But I think the problem with how hackneyed authenticity is how hard it is to say that word with a straight face or to say that word and expect other people around you to have a straight face is that it's actually really important. being real knots

wearing a mask. This seems like a really important human capacity that we ought to be talking about quite a bit true, but I think that it's one of those things that, if you have to talk about it, there is already a problem. Yes and it's hard for me not to think that it has a lot to do with mediation. You know so much of our experience is mediated, and actually none of this thinking, as my own earns, I'm just gonna quote my source historian named Daniel Burton who wrote a book called the image published in nineteen sixty one so before mass media, as we know it, he is the man who coined the phrase famous for being famous and he isolated, some really interesting things. About the way media works even at every very early stage, and one of the things he points out is that mediated experience feels artificial. It is in some sense and that artificial

Woody is something we as the consumer's perceive and it causes us to crave something more authentic and then mass media tries to satisfy that craving. So you just mentioned the need to, a real well, my mind immediately goes to the app be real, which notifies people at a particular moment when to take pictures of themselves, so they won't be cured aiding or you know, doctoring the photos and that will somehow be more authentic and maybe it is, but it does feel a little like looking for authenticity and and

all the wrong places to me. This connects back to the beginning of this conversation about this feeling of insubstantial ality. We have and dr mark Epstein this buddhist shrink, who talks about this feeling of instant stanchion city that we have can result in. Like a performativity, you know, there's a poem once that my meditation teacher sent me, I think, or is a line from a poem, I'm tired of walking around pretending to be me. Yeah well. I also think you know social media encourages everyone to pretend to be themselves or certainly to come, modify themselves effectively, and that is a pressure that I think young people certainly feel.

It adds to the sense of one's own unreality, because a lot of what I hear from younger people is that other people's lives seem better, more intense, more perfect, more all of it yeah the image culture plays into that deep your men sense of insubstantial reality and heightened said- and it does, I think, leave a kind of craving for authentic experience, which I am not sure can be answered by the world of media. It may be something that is only solved by the so called real world. I dont know again. I question my own perspective here, because I grew up without an that. I even was an adult before the internet, so Even I have to take any opinion I might have with the big grand of salt and thus much more of my conversation with Jennifer egon, come on up

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of them, I even suspect that I cant do any of them. So I guess in that way nothing has changed all think. Oh I'm pretending to read an article. well, but I know I can't ever really do it. Oh there are a couple of books. I want to write that I probably can't write, but I'm going to kind of pretend I can so I can sell them and you know, keep moving through this process, even as I suspect it might never work out I think the thing that's changed over time is that I'm very use to feeling that way, and so it's easier for me to make the leap of faith and say well, I think I cant do any of the stuff, but I always Think that, and so far have usually been able to do it, so I'm just gonna take a fly. I hear, and just for the sake of argument, assume and speak as if I really can do these things, but I guess what I'm really hearing as I'm

the issue is not that much has really changed. I think the only thing this changed is that I'm much older and I've been feeling this way for a long time. I dont get is frightened, as I used to say, The panic isn't there and I have a little more faith that the fact that I feel that way does not mean I cannot do the same. Well, I'm not in your head were not in the world of own your unconscious, but I think you're not giving yourself enough credit. I hear enormous growth were not even, I think have interviewing somebody today whose very interested in buddhism- and so who does teacher had said Tom if you're an asshole, you become enlightened, you're going to be an enlightened. Asshole like there are aspects of our character that are really deeply ingrained in personal growth and no matter what flavour it comes in is most likely for us mere mortals, not going up route them entirely, and yet

You have now found a way to talk to yourself when these, let's call them impostor thoughts come up. That gets you to move forward, none the less, and that seems like big deal yeah. I know it's funny: it's less about talk and more about action, in other words, what I look and early. Was that thinking I can't do it doesn't stop me from actually being able to do it right, and so I have a high tolerance for discomfort- and that is a huge asset, because what I found it actually doing. The thing is what solves the problem? If the thing I'm afraid of, is that I can't do it, you know, do It is a big help. So I just try to proceed. I mean, I think, I'm pretty dogged honestly and as a very unsexed, see asset, but it is actually really useful, but just to say there is some talk in their because you described it, it's like,

You feel this way, but let's take a flyer, maybe there's a lot of data on this kind of I'm not talking about steward smalley GM formations here, I'm talkin about like talking yourself. The way a good coach would talk to a player you I'm just saying gang of. Do you feel this way you felt this way before, but look at the way to the evidence, a and b, let's just try it that actually is self talk. That then leads to the action. Unless I'm misunderstanding, you know, I think it's true any. But again it the rating and the strength. I feel when I'm writing is also really important. Part of this is often the thing I'm trying to do with the thing I'm worried I cant do is some writing project and actually just riding in and of itself gives me a feeling of control and possibility. So that's a huge help. I can be a very abusive boss. I thought about this. I had an abuse of bars for about three

and she talked to me in ways that I should never have tolerated, although she also payment really well in our draft, because I got up and books written in those years, but you know I can speak to myself there very harshly in ways that even I as an employer would not tolerate. So my working environment is not always good, it really isn't, but I've learned that the best answer for all that is just to do the work. I hope we over time we at least get better at managing ourselves. I think that's kind of what I've gotten better I think, ok, okay, this is one of those days where every thought I have is going to be yeah and you did it wrong or yeah, and you screwed that up yeah you, All this is a day did not listen to myself or honestly exercise huge help, so I just try to work around it when I get in that state of mind. Okay. So let's talk about another aspect of your work,

that I think will flow very nicely into it, and I again I didn't know this. While reading your books only learned in the last couple of days as I was reading about, you but you are ferocious in your hunt for new ways to tell stories. Let me just read to you a couple of courts from you that I found in the new yorker you didn't have to dig that hard to find it in the new yorker and anyway was sent to me by Gabrielle. Is that producer of this episode? So no credit tier to me here the quotes one. I feel such a hunger to do things that I don't feel I've done before too. I like to work against what I've done before it's not as simple as even just wanting novelty I want to repudiate is too strong a word, but if I've gotten used to doing something, I like to cut off that possibility, what happens next, it's a little like pruning you prune to encourage growth in new ways, and I try to prune my own habits to keep growing and getting better. This sounds like first of all, you made me feel extra,

Only lazy as a writer, but this sounds quite a brutal process, your opposing on yourself, It has a moment where it's very uncomfortable to be cut off from something that I want to do but usually there such an immediate reward, there's something very freeing about it. You too, for example, when I was working on my novel manhattan beach, which I published after a visit from the guns glad I brought with me some narrative habits from a visit from the guru squad and started trying to use them to write a historical novel, a new irish thriller set in new york during world war. Two, and I thought that it would be. Really fresh and new to bring these devices to a historical novel, but in fact they were ill suited to the material it wasn't working. It was what I had been

wing assault very familiar to me, and I had also been gotten a lot of rewards for doing them with a visit from a goose glad. So it was uncomfortable to learn from my readers, my writing group, that this was terrible and actually not only did they not like it. It actually made them angry, so. That was not fun. I mean no one likes negative feedback, but then why resign myself to the fact that this stuff really wasn't work

and just let it go. I felt such a sense of relief and possibility. So brief discomfort is sometimes the cost of, or what accompanies a transition for me, but on the other side of it is freshness, and I really crave that so it doesn't really feel brutal. It feels uncomfortable in moments, but ultimately thrilling because again you know I do this for the discovery. I must thrills seeker. You know and I can't find thrills if I am repeating myself. So it's very worth it to me to experience

the feeling of being hamstrung briefly in order to get somewhere else. That is new and to grow in some way. That's the whole fun of it, but it takes a real discipline. I mean you've said if I figured out how to do something. My first goal is to not let myself do it to me. That sounds like because I'm so lazy, like I figured out how to do something. I'm just going to beat that horse until its seven times dead. Well, I think you're not really giving yourself credit either like you're try new things on your podcast you're going and some do direction. So I think you know what I mean little more than your say, but you know I love the sense of novelty

In that way, I really do think I am a thrill seeker in writing, so I'm happy to do something once and it's a joy to get there. Sometimes these things are hard to do like just to be concrete about it. You know using powerpoint, for example, to write fiction and a visit from the goon squad or the piece I wrote for twitter at one hundred and forty character, and the cap has- which is a kind of a gene risk spies story, those who really hard things to pull off, because these are genres. They don't lend themselves to narrative fiction in a number of ways, but the biggest reward for food. emily, making it work, which involves so much time. Ellen error and lots of dead pages that I couldn't use, but the real for me is that if I can make it work, it's only because I've found a story, I cannot tell any other way: that's the only time it works, and that's just

citing, because it means that I actually have threatened a needle and of doing something, that's precious, because this is the only way it can be done. But then, as you can imagine, having done it, am I Rushing back to powerpoint know, first of all, as hell trying to read fiction and powerpoint and second of all like at best it's going to be an also ran. You talked about the importance of having readers, like you have a writing group that gives you feedback on your work and sounds like these. People are really honest, which is invaluable. How did you curate this group and what is it like to submit yourself to that kind of feedback on the regular? Well, the group began as a class and I was a paying student, so we were

we're paying a poet named ruth, Dana and who's, a very gifted teacher to orchestrate a workshop, and this is very common in new york. I mean there are lots of writers who do this out of their living rooms and, of course, also in through institutions. Then, after a few years, we reached a point where I think Ruth also wanted to bring some work in and it felt more like we were just a group of peers, so we morphed into a group of peers and the personnel has changed a little over the years, but it's a small, pretty stable group when I find- helpful about it. It seems most helpful to me at two phases. One is really early when I'm trying to define a new approach and when I'm trying to find the voice of a new peace, so that process I just described with manhattan beach where they hated my narrator in certain moments, and I had to let go of certain narrative bells and whistles that I had been rather attached to that's an example of early intervention

and being incredibly helpful. I could have wasted a lot of time trying to make this narrative approach work, I'm so glad I let it go early and then you know they're very help. later to answer questions like, whereas the slow where it is the chapter feel like it needs more work in a more refined questions that come much later and then I have other readers who are not in the red and group who also read my work. So I get lots and lots of feedback, its unbelievably uncomfortable. I can't over emphasise how much I hate hearing criticism. Some nice, I forget to say that, and it sounds like I'm just a glutton for punishment. I hate it. I have sat there more times than I could count thinking, ok, we're finished it's been a great run. Were I'm not coming back, you don't understand me, etc. You know basically just play my go by and then in some other part of my brain. I can almost feel

scurrying of problem solving its like a problem solving scurry and, ultimately that completely distract me from my hatred. The people who have just given me extremely good advice, which is already helping me solve the problem so it's sort of another iteration of what I said before, which is a discomfort that brings an incredibly rich reward and once I have a sense of how to solve the problem, then I'm excited again and back in problem solving mode. It's that I know at a certain point later in the rating process. I do know what I'm trying to do, but I can't tell if I'm doing, and I dont want to find out too late to try to do it better. Yes, what you're describing here seems like a kind of enlightened self interest, is like it's gonna sock, but on the other side of it are so many rewards,

one hundred percent. It is really uncomfortable, but I'm a perfectionist. You know I don't want to fall short of the vision that I'm trying to complete and at a certain point I just cannot. judge that myself. It's amazing how you I become less and less able to read what I'm doing in a fresh way. So as that diminishing of my own authority happens, I'm more and more dependent on the voices of other people to help me there's one friend who is very critical who's, not in the reading group, who had read the candy has at an earlier phase, because she was really really busy and I was moving really very close to my final draft. Having got lots and lots of feedback is just troubling that she hadn't seen it and I kind of didn't want to give it. Because I knew that I would find out. There was more than I needed to do,

But I finally did, of course, and when she responded at first, I felt rage and You know how dare you and then I was just so grateful because she had found all these problems that other people haddan picked up on and do each time I improve something. Other things become foreground like if you solve big problems, suddenly problems that weren't big enough to really be noticeable before seemed kind of big. So with just a constant back and forth and trying to solve every problem. I can guess I do the same thing with my books and you know I thought I was almost done with my next book about a year ago when I gave it to what your people to look at, and I said,

in the last year, rewriting it I'm probably going to take another six to nine months to continue rewriting just what it is, and I actually think this is very scalable advice. Whatever endeavor we're engaged in, we should all be looking for feedback quite frequently. You know I never want to presume to tell someone else how to create cause. I do think everyone's process is so radically different. It's almost shocking how differently we all do what we do but I can't see a downside to at least hearing what someone else thinks and ideally video several people The thing I'll say is that because I don't knowingly write about myself or people who live the way, I do there's a kind. due diligence that I always have to do with my work, whether it's something very simple like in the first chapter of the cattle.

there's an academic discussion group- and I was here- there's some kind of humorous aspects to this conversation and they talk in a kind of reactor. But at a certain point I thought you know the truth. Is I'm not an academic, and so? with every case like that. In my work, I will give it to at least one person who knows better what this kind of event would really sound. and I always get feedback that causes me to make changes. So I'm really accustomed to a level of due diligence that I think adds to my work, my openness to getting feedback on what I'm doing you're on me. I think this is a muscle right, the willingness to hear and act upon other people's feedback, and I don't think it's just

I think that you would apply in creative endeavours. I think it's like how am I doing at work whatever of doing more, how my doing in this relationship- or you know I'll- send those ass, my son, how we do it and I think that's just a habit we can get into that is generally quite positive. In my experience, yeah, that's interesting. I haven't thought that doing that with my kids, maybe I said, but I do think sometimes there is a fear of other voices getting into the mix in a way that- bad like muddying result. But what I find is that in the end, I am the one who decides what feedback really resident

and not everyone always agrees like even in the writing group. People will radically disagree on something someone likes that someone doesn't know a particular part or feels this language is, is off. Others disagree. So, in the end, I'm the one who makes those calls and again I just don't see the problem with having similar voices in the mix. How are you as a giver of feedback? Please I've found that I crave feedback at every step of the stay in a creative project and also just like I'm looking for feedback and like how I'm doing in many areas of my life, and I love people who are willing to media unvarnished truth, and I naturally, not necessarily that brave all the time to do it for other people were that generous to do it for other people. You know your friend the other day and I'd, given her a copy of my book by giving it to like six people about a year ago, and everybody else came back with like all these notes and she was just like- I love it, and I've been thinking about that for a long time. I was like

just didn't read it and I saw the other night. She said no, no! No! I I generally, like a thing, I just stop getting critical I've just kind of along for the ride anyway. I'm saying a lot here, but how are you giving feedback? I think I look very carefully for the signals that the person asking for this back is sending to me, because I think sometimes people actually want to hear what your friends said. It's great, I love it. I also look carefully at what fate in the process someone is in if a book is published or already and galleys they're not gonna, be fixing anything so they're not looking for a rigorous critical appraisal sought a helpful thing, but I am very willing to be granular, but to apply my perfection, a sick, attended

these toward helping someone fulfil their vision. As I see it, it is, it seems to be expressed to me in the work, if that's what they're looking for and a third time to respond to it, yeah I'll, do that it's a pleasure. Actually, this just a fun process to say: ok, here's what we ve got! This is what it clearly wants to be, and in some moments it feels like that's being fulfilled where the weak points and power my baby addressed. It's just a fun critical process. I wish I could say was found, maybe, as ever found the receiving end, but yes to participate for other people. That is fun for sure, as the clock is ticking here are running out of time. I see that on my list of questions, one that I haven't gotten to that I'm attempted to get too. I know it's not a super original idea. You ve on that, but you have talked about the power of curiosity. You ve said if I could pick one tool to bring with me into the world, it would probably be curiosity. This is almost like authentic

in that it can be a word casing. But why curiosity? What is the power their free? You personally, I think it's maybe even not a power so much as a joy. You know if I'm genuinely curious, everything is interesting like there's no such thing as border the more closely. I look at anything, the more complicated it becomes and curiosity is what gives me access to those complications. I just feel like it's a kind of joy provider because it wakes up my surroundings, and it makes me feel with the world- is just full of possibilities and treasures really and stories. I mean that's why I love journalism because just having people talk about there,

I've is so thrilling and exciting. I think maybe it's a selfish tool to have curiosity, maybe they're more altruistic things I should want to have with me, but just as a way of interacting with the world. I really am grateful for being a curious person. It's actually like a pretty. I think, to the extent that I've thought about it. It's a pretty altruistic kind of selfishness, because, yes, it feels good. I mean I did my whole careers with the two careers built around being curious, but people like it when you are curious about them too and you're, making them happy seen and understood if you're doing it right, and so it seems like a kind of victimless crime. If its selfish I agree yes, as self indulgences go, the price of curiosity is low,

Maybe there isn't one I mean actually there can be. I think it can be nosey. You know I really do just delight in curing people stories or learning really about anything and the more I learned the more I want to fill in every blank I can find, but I think I am so grateful for it because in a way without curiosity are worlds are defined by was extremely severe limits of our individual experience, which is so tiny compared enormity of what surrounds us. So sat enormity that fascinates me and bad actually gets back to what we are talking about before, which is the feeling of disappearing, You know, I think it's hard to perceive and honour and appreciate the enormity of really the mystery of what surrounds us with out also feeling

the tiniest tiniest to the, the a vanishing of our own individualise. It's all the same process from that use. All yeah, exactly we touch on this a alone earlier, but you spent so much time is young person those formative years feeling unseen by people around you not being able to even see yourself find yourself. You felt insubstantial in an uncomfortable way, but now that you know your names on the cover of mega best selling books, some of which might become tv shows or movies or whatever you get awards, how substantial do feel and how to success scan for you. that's an interesting question. I mean I'm very grateful for because our world really cares about that. One time a friend said shortly after what I want the pulitzer she said. Why is like an eye in the moment? The metaphor that came to me was, I said it sort of like

driving a really kind of fancy, rare car and having people look at the car and therefore, at you cause you're in the car, so I feel extremely grateful for that and lucky to even have a readership. You know a lot of the success came to me. Later in my career, I was already in my late forties. I knew very much what it was like the other way. So I really had a point of comparison of what it's like to have accolades. It makes a lot of things easier also feel really keenly aware of how easily that could not have happened. There's so much luck to all of this I've, just prizes, I know how it works in the end, it hasn't chronic quality because we're very oriented toward icons as humans, but it's just people may a choice that

really how it happens, and that's always about luck. It's the look of pleasing the right group of people at the right time and so, along with that, I feel. We are aware that there are other people who could we have got mad at haven't yet and I'm always aware of that sort of like it's a shadow that comes along with my good luck is the knowledge that it could easily I would happened, and it hasn't happened to a lot of people who deserve. It so much if not more at this is not false humility. This is just a fact. I speak from you know, sixty years of experience, so I try to hold all of that, to my mind, and I guess above all I just want to keep getting better and do what I love to do in fresh ways. So, ultimately, what needs to happen is that all of that goes to the side, because that's just distraction,

and I re enter the world of generating language, which is the thing I love and to the degree that any of that stuff is in my head. It's always gonna be to the detriment of the rating. So I tried to be realistic, all of it very aware of my good fortune and then forget all of it forget myself and all the things that have happened to me and just you know, move forward into some new world. Well, I'm glad you keep doing it because it's certainly benefited me as a reader of yours. Is there something that I should have asked you but failed to ask you. I don't know I feel, like we've covered a lot of grounds. There really enjoyed it. Yes, it's fun to be nosey. You mentioned a couple of your books, but can you just throw out some names of your books, just fur Blue Heaven absorbed them. Having read them down yet having yet looked at the show notes were, will have all the links for people who might be looking for their next reed,

sure while the new one that we really been talking about is called the candy house and its part of the same world as an earlier book. A visit from the guru squad there's not a frequent sequel because neither is chronological, nourish wartime through. color in the middle called manhattan beach, then some earlier books. My novel look at me is actually connected to goon squad and candy has there's a sort of small easter egg connection. There, a gothic thriller called the keep my first novel, the invisible circus, which actually did become a movie and two thousand in one and a story, collection, emerald city, Such a pleasure and truly really and honour to meet you. Thank you so much for doing this it's been a joy. Thank you, and jennifer even so cool to meet her. Thank you for listening, give us a rating or a review. It actually helps and thanks most of all

everybody who worked so hard on the show, tempers and happier is produced by Gabrielle ackerman, justine, davy, Lauren Psmith and terror. Anderson DJ cashmere, Our senior producer marisa schneider men is our senior editor and jimmy regular is our executive producer? We get our scoring and mixing from Peter bonaventure over at ultra vires. audio and our theme music comes from next thorburn of the great indie rock ban islands we'll see, and for a brand new upsetting a prime members. You can listen to ten percent happier and ad free on amazon, music downloading amazon music app today or you can listen early and ad free with one repurpose in apple podcasts. Before you go. Do us a solid

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