Calling Bullshit with Jill Louise Busby

Jill Louise Busby, a former “woke influencer” with the handle @JillisBlack, opens up about examining her own complicity and calling bullshit on herself. She also discusses performative social media practices, having conversations across cultural lines, and the bounds of cancel culture. Bubsy’s book, Unfollow Me: Essays on Complicity, is out now.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
where we explore the stories behind the stories in the news.
I'm Noah Feldman. Today's conversation on Deep Background grew out
of an extraordinary new book that I read as part

(00:37):
of a project of working my way through a whole
pile of recent books of memoirs and non fiction essays.
The book is called Unfollow Me Essays on Complicity, and
it's by a remarkable intellectual called Jill Louise Buzby. Jill
had worked for years in the nonprofit sector focusing on

(00:59):
diversity and inclusion when she uploaded a short and powerful
video in which she called out white liberal progressives and
the corporate nonprofit machine in which she had been a participant.
The video went viral, and it helped turn her into
an Instagram influencer using the screen name Jill is Black.

(01:23):
In the years that followed, Jill became a widely recognized
figure on social media, commenting on issues of race and identity.
In the book, what Jill does is she turns the
very same sharp knife of her incisive analysis and criticism
onto herself. The result is a book of searing honesty

(01:46):
and genuine self reflection about the phenomena of power, identity,
and race that are occurring in real time today and
what happens when, through her own success, she starts to
confront the possibilities of a role of power in an
infrastructure that she has been deeply committed to criticizing. I'm

(02:06):
thrilled that Jill agreed to come onto deep background to
talk about this amazing book, and I know you're going
to love this conversation as much as I did. Jill,
thank you so much for being here, and thank you
for your amazing book, unfollow Me Essays on Complicity, which

(02:28):
I just had a chance to read. I know it
just came out and it blew me away. Thank you.
I want to start by saying something that I felt
very strongly on reading the book, and that is you
have an uncanny and exquisitely honed talent for calling bullshit.

(02:48):
My mother would be so proud. It's definitely a family trait.
My mother growing up, she could handle almost everything except
for bullshit, so I knew that that wasn't allowed. One
of the things I want to try to do in
this interview is convey to listeners who might not have
had a chance to read the book yet, and who
might or might not have known about your online work

(03:09):
before the book, the layering that's in this amazing book.
And you know in the book there's this kind of
subtle process where you start calling bullshit on white people
with the dear white people mode, then you gradually start
calling bullshit on black people with the dear Black people mode. Right,

(03:32):
And then at some point we got to the third level,
which is in some ways the most fascinating, where you
start calling bullshit on yourself. Yes, talk a little bit
about what the experience was like for you intellectually when
you were discovering that your capacity to call bullshit drew
an audience. Right. I always think that people want more

(03:55):
honesty then they say, I think it makes them feel
seen in a way that is intimate. And I think
there was intimacy that I had with my audience and
trust that was built very quickly because all I really
had to do was stay consistent with saying things that
they weren't hearing elsewhere. And I think that's still something
that I get to do. It's not about intellect, I subjective.

(04:16):
I don't know what that really means anymore. What I
do promise is that I'm going to always be doing
the work of being honest about how I actually feel.
So I was already doing it personally with my family
or with myself. It was interesting to me and I
was very curious about myself. But then really all that
happened was I began to say it in public, and
especially as we become again more scripted and people are

(04:38):
scared to be themselves online. I think, you know, the
messages that I get now are like, oh, thanks for
saying the stuff that we're all thinking, and well, that
means that there is something that is happening where people
are thinking things and they are scared to show up
as themselves. And I don't think that's going to push
us towards more honesty and diversity and inclusion or anti

(04:58):
racism work to say, Oh, I know what to say now,
but did we really fix anything with all of these words,
all of this rhetoric. To me, No, and especially in
the style in which I was doing it, which was
one minute monologuing around. You know, I didn't really react
to headlines because that felt like it was going to
date my material. So I wasn't doing that. But I

(05:22):
just I got tired of it, and I started answering
my own questions, such as, if I were a white
liberal person and a scary and chaotic society where I
don't feel like I have a lot of control outside
of my identity and the idea of privilege, would I
give that up? Would I genuinely give that up? I mean,
I don't know. I see people of all identities not
giving up what they have all the time, including me,

(05:45):
And we were entertaining this conversation that we didn't understand
how white people could go and do all of these things,
but we do them all the time. I pick up
my phone. I don't know who that affects. I ordered
from this company. I try not to think about. We
were all doing this. So eventually it felt silly to
single out. It could be true, but it felt silly
in the work that I was doing to keep singling
out when I was doing some of the same things

(06:09):
without the same level of power history. Sure, but I
understood what we were doing, which is trying to be safe,
trying to avoid being the other group of people. You
can say that you want to help them, but you
never want to be them, right, and in fact, to
say you want to help somebody is to self define
as not that right to exactly. You know, one of
the things that kind I found inspiring and that I

(06:33):
have myself struggled with is and you just mentioned privilege,
which is what put it into my mind. And I
also was thinking this when I was reading your book.
The formulation check your privilege often translates into acknowledge your privilege.
And I happen to be someone who's had a lot
of privilege in my life on pretty much every possible dimension,
and I have noticed that when I acknowledge and speak

(06:55):
about those facts, it sounds like to me, at least,
I'm doubling down on reinforcing my privilege. Like I do
it because there's a value in being honest about these things.
And that was the part which I found inspiring. You know,
you're sort of view of like, just say the truth regardless,
but sometimes if you say a truth in the context
where people want you to say, it actually a little bit,

(07:17):
and then you listen to yourself, you can realize I'm
actually doing the exact opposite of what the whole check
your privilege is supposed to do, because in principle, it's
supposed to be somewhat equalizing, and in fact, I experience
it is having the opposite effect, Like I think I'm
making myself less equal. When I start, you know, listening
the ways in which I've been fortunate in privilege, I start,

(07:37):
I'm like, Wow, that guy really sounds horrible, Like he
sounds like he's really trying to like beat it into
your head. Yeah. I said recently that it feels like
its own status symbol, like I do this, and I
do this, and I have a lot of privilege, and like,
the more you say it, the more you're kind of emphasizing,
let see what I got that you don't have. Yeah,
I agree with you. It's not a phrase that I used.

(08:01):
And even our idea of using privilege is the way
that we solve this is silly because we know that
in a few years we're throwing this away. It's going
to be the next thing that we say, Oh wait,
actually privilege was a problematic word, and so we'll move
on to this one. It's it's an evolution, and we
want the words and the ideas to fix everything right
now so that we can really go back to our privilege.
So I try not to get too deeply invested in

(08:22):
the language that we're using, stating what you are is
not working on it even when I do it. When
you started writing the book and you hit on at
some point presumably in the writing process, that you were
going to do to yourself as it were what you
had done onto others. Yes, you know that's in some
way what this book is an exercise in. You've mentioned

(08:42):
a few times that you thought of it as engaging
with the ego. I've also heard you say this in
a few other interviews that you've given that I've listened to.
You've referred to the online persona, the Jilli's Black persona
as having a lot of quote unquote ego in it.
Your word, and it made me wonder, do you mean
to hint sort of that the persona in the book
is sort of the super ego, you know? And then

(09:04):
I don't know where the it fits into this exactly,
but you know it is playing a big role because
the way that the your persona in a way was
able to succeed just by saying stuff that everyone thinks
that no one says. And that's what it is all about, right,
It is all about doing the thing that you kind
of want to do. That everyone's telling you not to
do and then you just do it and it works.
So I was wondering if any of that was in play,

(09:26):
that kind of psychoanalytic troika was in play, or whether
you were using you go in a different, maybe more
vernacular way. I am using it in a more vernacular way.
But I think the way that you've described it as
also true. I think it's not just what I was saying.
I think it was also the way that I was
saying it, which was self righteously, which was doing it,

(09:48):
you know, in a way that the drama that I
had taken for many years allowed me to do it.
There was I was sort of I mean, I knew
that it could work, you know. So it's not like
I just fell into it and I hoped that it
would because I'm so noble. I also felt like if
I were at that time smart enough to get this

(10:09):
stuff out, it would be so universal that everybody would
love it. That also wasn't true. But yeah, the super
ego there, setting out to write this book and doing
unto myself is as I was doing on others, is
a great description of it. And I don't I don't
know that I need to label it anything other than
the attempt to do that that seems beautiful enough for me.

(10:31):
Why does nobody do this? I mean, why does nobody
do unto themselves what they do unto others. It's so
powerful and it's so honest, and it must, in some
ways feel like incredibly liberating, self liberating. Is it just
that we're all scared of what will happen of, you know,

(10:52):
like laying ourselves bear? What enabled you to do it?
What enabled me to do it was an accountability from
people that I trusted, who saw me as unhappy and
we're willing to disagree with me. People that I really
cared about, like my mother, who eventually was like, how
do you feel saying all of the stuff about white

(11:13):
people online? And you know, and of course it comes
with like blocking people, ignoring people, telling them all all
of the things that go along with social media. It's again,
I just I got exhausted, you know, and I couldn't
be myself, which is also exhausting. So I was hiding

(11:36):
all of this other stuff about myself, identity wise, maybe
even privilege wise, things that were really happening in the
rooms that I described. I was hiding all of it,
and that is very tiring, and so I derive a
lot of pleasure from getting to finally say, Okay, here's
what was going on behind the scene. So it's not
that it doesn't come with benefits. But I also I

(11:58):
don't think that most people have to I think we're
fine with the persona, so you know, all right, maybe
it's it's waiting for somebody to go first. And I
don't think I'm the first one to do this kind
of work. I think I'm amongst the first to do
it from the position that I held on the Internet.
I want to ask you about blocking, which I've heard
you referred to just now and other times. And I

(12:20):
was actually listening to in preparation for our conversation, I
was listening to a podcast interview that you had given,
and you talked about how you had a tendency, you know,
if someone was questioning what you were doing, you blocked them,
and it made me immediately want to ask you. Blocking
is like some new thing, right, it's a product of
social media. Before social media, we didn't have even the

(12:40):
concept really of blocking in this way. Is there a
special pleasure, human pleasure in the act of blocking, Like
did we like, do we need a German word to
describe that you need human pleasure? I think we always
need a German word to describe anything, first of all.
But I'd only blocked in the beginning. It was what
people did, and I did what people did, but I

(13:03):
didn't get enough pleasure out of that because then they
were gone. So eventually what I like to do is engage.
I'd like to screenshot it for my audience. So that
was step two, which was a lot of fun. Then
I was like, hey, chill, this is ridiculous and why
are you doing this and who are you performing for?
And so then I started engaging in the direct messages

(13:26):
with people. Again I derived pleasure from that also because
I got to use my brain to figure out why
they were the way that they were. So, you know, blocking, Yeah,
it's new, and these days I find it to be
very performative because people don't block in silence. They tell
us that they're going to do it, or they warn

(13:46):
us that they will. You know, I've seen a lot
of things go online where here's an example of who
you don't want to be. Don't be this guy because
I told him off and then I blocked him. So
you know, it seems pretty performative, and I think it's
something we wish that we could do in real life.
But we only wish that we could do it in
real life because we've been doing it on social media. Probably,
But you've just say super suggestive, and it's something I've

(14:08):
actually wondered about. Whether our impulse to block people in
other formats in life might be derivative of the technology
in a way, right, Like, until arguably, until you could
block somebody as a technological matter, yes, you wouldn't think
of trying to block them at a that's a grander level.

(14:30):
You might think other things, I want to boycott them,
or you know, I don't want to ever hear their
names again. But then I wonder if you think that
there is some connection between our impulse collective impulse it's
right left center, it's everybody to sort of, you know,
silence people who are different from from we are in
this moment, and the actually technological capacity to block somebody,

(14:51):
Like did the person who invented the blocking button actually
have a bigger social impact than the person who invented
the like button? Oh? Great, I can't answer this question,
but I hope that you find a guest who can't
because I'm going to be listening. It seems impactful, and
of course you know it's hard to remove it from
cancer culture or whatever we're calling it today. That feels

(15:11):
better for us, but I think that it does feel
increasingly more threatening that we can block people in this way.
And I will not say threatening in my identities or
the society and how I'm treated. I just mean me
the human who showed up to this planet to do
some work and is now like, do I get to
do that within the confines of these rules of the

(15:32):
inorganic society? And I think we all have that human desire.
So when people say they're scared of cancel culture, maybe
we should get more specific and say, do I get
to be a full human here as long as this
thing exists? Not to say that I didn't make a
mistake or do something wrong, but do I get to recover,
bounce back? Do I continue having, you know, a human experience?

(15:52):
Do I get to learn? I don't know. So it
does seem to be intensifying. We'll be right back. One
of the phrases, Jill, that you use a lot that
I'm really interested in is being in the rooms or

(16:15):
in these rooms. And actually, the first time I heard
you say it, I was like, huh, Like, isn't that
an AA phrase? You know, the A people talk about
the rooms as sort of you know, the places where
the conversation happens. You're not using it that way. You're
more using it in the like lin Manuel Miranda, you
know the room where it happens kind of a space
where certain elites have a certain kind of conversation and

(16:37):
engage in a certain kind of social performance with each other. First,
I guess I want to know if I am hearing
you correctly when you use that formulation, and then I'm
really curious about why that is a subject of interest
to you you. It's a subject of total fascination to me
and it always has been, although I've never used that
particular phrase for it. It's sort of why this podcast

(16:58):
is called Deep Background, because I was interested in trying
to ask people about what happens in spaces of power
where the general public isn't allowed in, and then asking
people to say something about what's going on behind there.
But I want to know sort of am I getting you,
and also why you're so interested in that. Then we
can talk about what happens in the rooms. Yes, you
are getting me. However, you and I go into different rooms,

(17:21):
and we go into them differently. So as a black
queer woman going into the room, I have a lot
more on the line than you do, and my conversations
are different because I should know better. And the truth
is is if your group got to the place where
you keep saying you hope they get you wouldn't be
in the room anymore. And I don't see anybody giving
up any money, any vacations, any magazine covers anything, any homes.

(17:46):
But you should know better because you're part of the
group that you're saying is experiencing the greatest harm that's
out there. And so the steaks aren't as high, you know,
But if you had those steaks on your shoulders going
into the room, how could you ever forget It's not
just you know, toasting with whoever else is there. But

(18:07):
I do see that there is a conflict. There is
some kind of conflict, and we at least need to
talk about the conflict of But how could you be
you without them? So what I hear you saying, and
I'm fascinated by this and I'm learning a lot from it,
sounds like it imposes an incredibly high standard on yourself

(18:28):
and anyone else who would say, look, because of who
I am, I am supposed to be, and I am
profoundly aware of the demand for equality, the problematics of privilege. Right.
I'm in the room, as you're saying, as a black
queer woman. And yet if I really took that seriously,
there would be no rooms. Right, And I hear you

(18:48):
loud and clear and as a kind of calling bullshit.
It's incredibly powerful. But it also imposes, by implication, like
a higher standard on the intersectional representative person that it
imposes on anybody else. But I'm talking about the people
who are like me. Is it a high standard? I
do have a high standard now in my real life.
What I'm going to say is I just wish we

(19:11):
would say the truth if you want to be in there.
Because I wrote the book. I wrote the book, I
wrote the book proposal, I have an editor and agent.
All of that. I'm trying to sell it right now.
So all of that is me. Okay, that is happening
to me. I'm doing this interview right now. This to me,
I thought of that before I said I want to evolue.
It's like, you know, now I'm clearly part of the

(19:32):
system too. And I was like, all right, well that's true.
It's hard to avoid that, right, that would be bullshit.
But I think what I'm seeing is I find that
it's dangerous for us to not say that this is
what's happening, because then it imposes the higher standard on
people where it's like, oh, but keep lying and saying
that we're this moral and this nobel whatever, And I'm
looking to free people from the idea that you aren't

(19:54):
more complex than this, that it's just like we're going
to save the world. And also I'm in this room
just so lie about it. I just don't want you
to lie about it, because then we keep trying for
something that doesn't really exist as opposed to something that does.
Will be complicit. You will, if you want these things here,
you will be complicit. What does that look like for you?
It's the same as starting this off by saying I

(20:16):
engage with a million things every day that make me
just as complicit as anybody else. But if I get
a get out of jail free card for myself based
on identities, when I know that I know better that
doesn't make any sense. If you're just giving that to
me because you feel sorry that I have identities that
are harmed in again, inorganic society, then don't give it
to me at all. I am a human being. I

(20:37):
have enough intellect to say, oh, I'm being indulgent, or
oh I don't care about anybody else. So it's like
I do know better sometimes, and I trust that other
people know better more than they're saying, because I'm also
having those private conversations with them. You can go and
talk about this person who doesn't agree with you politically,
but you don't agree with you politically, so you know,

(20:59):
I think there is a self righteousness that I practice
online that yes, I am trying to remedy in society
because I contribute it to that. And so this first
book is really undoing part of what I have done,
which is create a harder world for people to be
honest about what they feel and think. There's a chapter
in the book which walks through like a DM based

(21:22):
conversation that you have with someone who's self presenting as
a proud boy so a white supremacist, and not only
do you give us an account of the conversation, you're like,
totally empathetically engaged with him, and you make some degree
of humanizing progress in which somehow it seems as though

(21:43):
it's at least possible that the two of you are
having some form of communication. Yet it also connects up
to this question of is it okay to be empathetic
to people who, at least by their persona, are reprehensible
and repugnant? Reprehensible or repugnant. Wow, when you have to

(22:04):
come back from that, that is really really hard. Yeah,
I am aligned with people that are reprehensible and repugnant.
So we find out about people that we believed in
every day now and we thought we were aligned with them,
and then they do this big, horrible thing and suddenly

(22:26):
we have to act like we were never in agreement
with it, where we never knew who they were, and
that's not working either. The truth of the matter is
is we had a conversation. It is a civil conversation.
In the chapter, by saying nope doesn't mean you can
do it all the time with everybody, or that I
have some special skill with this person the things that

(22:46):
are said to me reprehensible and repugnant. Sure, and he
believed them, and I believe what I believe, and there's
some stuff that I've believed that has been pretty horrible,
not as extreme, definitely, And well, I guess it's not
my job to say is dangerous, but I've believed things,
and I don't understand why we keep talking to people
who believe what they believe, Like he's going off of

(23:11):
his own belief system, and so all I can really
do is talk to him in a way where I
gain information. I'm obsessed with this idea of how one
talks to people who really really believe something when that
thing is wrong on some dimension, you know, factually wrong,
then how do you get people to not think of
the thing is factually wrong, morally or ethically wrong, even

(23:34):
esthetically wrong, like someone just has terrible taste in something
and you want to talk them out of it. And
I'm totally obsessed with this question. And I always say
when people ask me, like, well, how do you try
to do that? And I do try to do it,
I always say, well, I start by trying to figure
out what that person believes his or her big picture
values are, and then try to suggest that it maybe

(23:56):
would be more consistent with their beliefs or values to
think some other thing. And I think the whole thing
is like trying on clothes, you know, in a mall
or something like that, back when people did that, right,
you know, all you can ever really do is try
on a garment and say to a person, hey, try
this on, look in the marri and see if you
like who you are in this garment. And if you do, hey, man,
you might want to buy it. And if not, fair

(24:18):
enough like walk away. And I have this, I guess
naive fantasy that by doing that sometimes you can get
people to re examine. And I have the feeling that
if I ask you that you would say, yeah, that's
really that's very naive or that's not like the right
way to go about it. But maybe I'm misreading that
the way you related to your own conversation in that chapter.

(24:40):
I actually do have genuine hope, and that it's just
scary to say, I feel like I am, you know,
saying something that could get me canceled to say that
I have hope almost in a group of people, but
I do. That's the genuine answer, is that I felt
better even though he was saying things that I imagined

(25:02):
he would say to me that we're terrible. I still
felt better afterwards. First of all, I had a firsthand count.
And you know, in the book, I say that we
sort of thank each other after this, and we're very
like polite with each other. And I see some hope
in it. I see some hope in that because I've changed.

(25:23):
I've changed that I have to believe in that for
someone else or else, I think that I'm bigger than
someone else, or that I have more awareness than someone else,
and I don't think that's true, or else I'm setting
myself up for another ego battle. But if I change,
then yeah, he can, and I can change from that
conversation too. I can learn to talk to people differently.
So it was reciprocal and we both got something. And
maybe we don't get the nice shiny bow on it

(25:45):
that people would like to say that we got we
solved racism, but we got something, and these days, why not.
It's getting so out of control you might as well try.
And I think a lot of this is that I
might as well try while I'm here because the other
isn't working. Being negative about everything that I see out there,
calling everything problematic, or saying that everybody is evil except

(26:08):
for me, seems like I think I live a really big, important,
magic life, and I don't. I think I'm here with
other people who are in all of their own stuff
and all of their own trauma, and all of their
own belief systems, and we're doing it together, whether we
like it or not. I absolutely have that hope. It
is scary, but I'd like to have it anyway. I
find that profoundly moving. In at the same time that

(26:29):
I say that, I'm afraid that if I say it's
profoundly moving, like I screw it up for you. I
want to close by asking you about so far what
you've experienced as the downsides of honesty relative to the
upsides you write in the book about being aware that
there could be a lot of downsides to talking in

(26:50):
the honest way that you're doing it now. Book's been
out for a bit more than a month. Seems to
be in my world, at least the people who read
it love it and are really interested in it. Have
you been experiencing any of the downsides of this kind
of honesty yet or is it sort of like its
own reward to be honest like this so far it's

(27:12):
its own reward. I think that the people who don't
love it I expected wouldn't love it, and so that
makes sense to me. But for the most part, it's
been well received. At least the people who are reaching
out to me have received it well. And yeah, that
gives me some hope. First of all, I finally get
to go out into the world with vulnerability, like the

(27:36):
vulnerability that's present in this book. That's new for me.
I've been hiding behind us smug persona for a very
long time, and now I feel very exposed in a way.
That is a relief. But also when I meet people
and we connect around this book, it feels like a
real connection. It doesn't feel like that same thing where
we believe the same six things and now you love me. No,

(27:57):
it feels like we're connecting around something deeper. It's been
kind of amazing, actually better than I thought it would
have gone. And so I guess that's the part of
the book that I got wrong is all of my
I doubt that it was going to be such a
I don't know something that turned people against me, and
that wasn't true, and so I would say, well great

(28:17):
to everybody else. I think that this could bring us
closer or whatever your honesty is, I think there's the
chance that could bring you closer to people, not further away.
And I didn't believe that going in. So that's a
huge lesson for me. Some humility in like, no, what
you're saying is also not so big, and you know
knew that it's going to create the splash you thought

(28:39):
it would either maybe it'll be just a soft sort
of hug of a book. So yeah, I feel very hopeful.
Thank you for writing a book that is unflinchingly honest.
And if it is a soft hug of a book,
it's a soft hug from someone who knows how to
call bullshit. But I really want to I want to
thank you. I want to recommend the book to listeners.
De Louis buzbys unfollow me Essays on Complicity, which is

(29:02):
the most honest book that you will read this year,
and I think of genuine value to all of us
in a moment where little self reflection can go a
long way. Thank you very much, and I hope when
you have your ethic of Postcomplicity ready book form or otherwise,
you'll come back and we can talk more about it.
I appreciate it and thank you for reading and sharing
this book. We'll be right back. As I listened to

(29:35):
Jill Louise Busby, I had the constant feeling that you
get when you're listening to a genuine intellectual working out
a very complex set of issues. In Jill's case, the
format in which she's been working on fundamental questions of
human connection, honesty, authenticity, race, and bullshit is the format

(29:58):
of our contemporary lives, the world of diversity and inclusion,
the persona that we produce on social media, and now
the literary reflection on all of that, complete with calling
attention to the honesties and dishonesties of the self. In
a way, almost all great essayists all the way back

(30:18):
to Montaigne have been interested in exactly this phenomenon. Where
is the truth as I depict it about myself? Where
is the truth as I try to depict it with
reference to the rest of the world. What Jill is
profoundly adding to that frame is her searing willingness to
be honest and to call bullshit on every institutional actor

(30:42):
in our current world who is trying to make sense
of things and, at least in principle, to make the
world a better place. Her standard is high, so high
that I could certainly never survive it, and so high
that she herself, subjecting herself to that level of scrutiny,
finds herself wanting as well. And yet from this analysis

(31:04):
comes not a throw your hands up in the air
and give up, but rather a radically reformulated possibility of
communication and connection and something that Jill herself was not
afraid to call hope. All of that in a moment.
Where As Jill herself suggests, just saying that you might

(31:26):
be hopeful is itself an invitation for somebody to be
very frustrated with you. They say that every society gets
the government that it deserves, well, it may also be
true that every historical moment gets the intellectual life that
it deserves. Measured by that criterion, I don't always think
that our current era is doing that well, but hearing

(31:48):
Jill gives me some hope. Genuine thinkers with genuinely remarkable
ideas have the capacity to shape the way we are
thinking about some of the hard problems that face us.
All until the next time I speak to you, breathe deep, think,
deep thoughts, and if it gives you some hope, have

(32:09):
a little fun. If you're a regular listener, you know
I love communicating with you here on Deep Background. I
also really want that communication to run both ways. I
want to know what you think are the most important
stories of the moment and what kinds of guests you
think you would be useful to hear from. More So,
I'm opening a new channel of communication. To access it,

(32:32):
just go to my website Noah Dashfelman dot com. You
can sign up from my newsletter and you can tell
me exactly what's on your mind, something that would be
really valuable to me and I hope to you too.
Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries. Our
producer is mo La Board, our engineer is Bentaladay, and

(32:53):
our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbn. Editorial support from noahm Osband.
Theme music by Luis Garat at Pushkin. Thanks to Mia Lobell,
Julia Barton, Lydia Jane Cott, Heather Faine, Carlie mcgliori, Maggie
Taylor Xandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find me on
Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write a column

(33:15):
for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at bloomberg dot
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