September 21, 2023 • 45 mins
Josh and Jesse were planning to get married. It should have been a breeze. Except it was the spring of 2020, she was in Germany and he was in NY, and the EU had just closed its borders.
With the constantly shifting regulatory and travel restrictions, not to mention the difficulty of securing the required documentation, most people would have put it off.
But not these two.
What ensued was an adventure spanning three countries on two continents, clandestine visits with cash payments, and a tense standoff at a registrar in a London suburb.
Would love conquer all?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Max Chopovsky (00:02):
This is Moral of the Story Interesting people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, max Jepofsky.
Today's guest is Josh Berson, atinkerer, mystic scryer of long
horizons and fashioner ofexploratory fictions.
Trained as an anthropologistand historian of science, he has
(00:23):
held appointments at the likesof the Max Planck Institute for
Human Cognitive and BrainSciences at the Berggruen
Institute, where he was theinaugural USC Berggruen Fellow
in the transformations of thehuman Over the past 10 years,
josh has pioneered an approachto reasoning about the dynamics
of human behavior over timehorizons of 10 to 100,000 years
(00:44):
that integrates insights fromlinguistic and evolutionary
anthropology, philosophy of mindand philosophy of biology, with
compositional strategies drawnfrom fiction and generative
sound art.
In 2013 and 2017, concurrentwith his time at the Berggruen
Institute, josh served as anadvisor to the Dutch design
(01:05):
studio Lust, and from 2020 to2021, he was the chief scientist
of the early stage startupKandel, whose mission was to
address disinformation byproviding information
credibility metrics at the pointof search.
Since then, josh has served asan advisor to a range of
organizations in the future'shealth, analytics and venture
capital spaces.
(01:26):
Not to be outdone with the pen.
Josh is the author of multiplebook-length monographs,
including the Meat Question,released in 2019, which
investigates the full sweep ofhuman economic relationships
with other gregariousvertebrates, from the Great Rift
Valley 3 million years ago tothe wet markets of China and
Southeast Asia just prior to thepandemic.
Josh is pretty sure he's alonein publishing regularly in
(01:49):
peer-reviewed venues such asPlus One and comparative studies
in society and history, andthen fashion and lifestyle
magazines, including O3-2C andJane by the Grey Attic.
In a spare time, you'll findhim swimming in the cold sea off
the Heberties or geeking outabout Casio F91W mods and 32-bit
(02:10):
audio recorders, something Ican personally attest to from
one of our first phone callswhen we went off on the long
tangent about the pros, cons,frequency responses and polar
patterns of various recordingdevices.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh Berson (02:26):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Max.
Max Chopovsky (02:28):
So you are here to tell us a story, so set the
stage.
Is there anything that weshould know before we get into
the story itself?
Josh Berson (02:37):
One thing I would say before we get into the story
proper is that, as we werediscussing just prior to coming
on, I'm standing now in anapartment that has been the home
of my partner, jesse, for thebetter part of 20 years, and I
did not come on the scene untila little bit more than nine
years ago.
That's enough to set the stage,because the story I'm going to
(03:00):
tell is a pandemic marriagestory.
Max Chopovsky (03:04):
I love.
It All right, let's get into it.
Tell me a story.
Josh Berson (03:08):
Okay, so you mentioned my 2019 book, the Mead
Question, and when that bookcame out, I had just sent in the
final draft of what became my2021 book, the Human Scathode,
and I went to the States topromote the book in late 2019.
And then I was in the Statesdoing various book promotion
related things into early 2020,just as the pandemic was getting
(03:32):
underway.
My partner, jesse, haspermanent residence in Germany.
I do not, and at the time I wasbetween visas because I had
just spent a year, as youmentioned, in Los Angeles at the
Berggruen Institute preparingmy third book and we weren't
sure exactly what was going tohappen if I was going to stay on
in LA, so I deferred renewingmy visa.
(03:53):
So when European Union closedits frontiers, I was in New York
and Jesse had just returned toGermany and we said well, we'll
see what happens.
It's probably not going to lastlonger than a few weeks the
closure, and so I dug down inNew York and meanwhile Jesse was
having really a lovely earlypandemic in Germany.
(04:15):
They did a very good job in thefirst wave and it was a very
different experience in Berlinto New York.
But then, after the first month, the EU and the German Interior
Ministry announced they wererenewing the 30-day ban on
entries of non-EU nationals.
This went on and on into Juneand finally, at the end of June,
(04:37):
when the guidance from theBundespolizei had not changed,
we consulted an immigrationlawyer and he said you're just
going to have to get marriedoutside the European Union.
That's the only way I can seeto make this happen.
Now Jesse and I at this pointhad been together for six years
and we had discussed gettingmarried in the past.
We discussed getting marriedbefore going to California so
(05:00):
that it would be easier to puther on my American health
insurance, because it's alwaysjust a pain in the ass trying to
arrange health insurance.
Even though Jesse is a UScitizen, she doesn't maintain
cover in the US because shespends most of her time
elsewhere and in Germany inparticular.
She's a member of what's calledthe KASCO, which is a
(05:20):
state-sponsored artist unionwhich provides a very good deal
on a group plan for healthcoverage.
So this is not something shehas to consider, except when
she's going to spend an extendedperiod in the States.
So we had discussed it then.
In Germany it takes forever toget married.
It really takes about ninemonths to provide all the
documentation, whereas inCopenhagen, you can go up and do
(05:41):
it in a couple of days.
We had considered thispreviously, but, for one reason
or another, had decided to forgothe opportunity, and now we
were faced with the challenge offinding a suitable venue to get
married in the middle of thepandemic.
So that's now July the firstweek of July 2020, when I
started looking into this and weconsidered our options.
(06:02):
Jesse could fly to New York andwe conclude things in about two
days, but I really didn't wanther to have to return to the
States if we could avoid thatfor a number of reasons for the
health-related reasons, for thelong-haul travel reasons and
various family dramas with whowould be invited at this
emergency wedding.
So we decided, okay, we'll findsome neutral venue, some place
(06:25):
that's in Europe, but outsidethe EU.
Well, where could that be?
The clear choice was the UK, butthis presented a number of
obstacles.
The UK had implemented a systemof special-purpose marriage
visas that we would need.
To get these visas, you have tofurnish biometrics with the
home office.
In practice, this turned out tobe kind of a joke, but it's one
(06:47):
of the obligatory points ofpassage in the process of
getting this special-purposevisa.
The only problem was all thevisa processing centers were
closed in New York for thepandemic, and this was just the
first in a series of steps whichI'll get to.
But very briefly, by chance Iknew the single best visa
expediter in the United Statesbecause he had helped me get a
(07:10):
visa to teach in China on twodays' notice a couple of years
before.
I was in New York just for fivedays.
And in China you have to getthe visa in the place in the US
where you have Hukou right.
And since I'm registered, so Icalled him up and he said I
don't know, things are kind ofcrazy right now, but put in your
application with the Foreignand Commonwealth Office and send
me the details about theapplication number and we'll see
(07:32):
what we can do.
So I did as he asked and hecalled me a few days later and
he says can you be in midtown at7.30 tomorrow morning?
And I said yes, I can.
He said okay, bring, you'regoing to have to pay this many
hundreds of dollars for the, forthe visa processor, and then
bring 500 in cash for theexpediter's fee.
So I went down and did that andput it in, and we didn't know if
(07:54):
it would work.
They could have rejected theapplication, and so that was
another couple of weeks wait,and then, finally, the news came
that they'd approved my visa,and then I said, okay, jesse,
now you have to do the samething in Berlin, where it was
significantly easier, like evenso.
She said you know, if I'd knownit would be this much hassle, I
would have simply come to NewYork.
I said you know what I'vealready been through, and we're
(08:15):
just getting started.
So then there was the questionof well, where are we going to
do the ceremony?
In London, because of thelockdown in London in the early
part of 2020, all the registeroffices, all the borough halls
had a large backlog of peoplewho had been planning to get
married, and now we're waitingright, and we didn't want to
spend hundreds of pounds for youknow the stately room at some
(08:39):
random register office when wewere only going to be allowed
two witnesses.
Anyway, we wanted a basicstatutory marriage ceremony, so
finding one within a day's trainjourney of London took two
weeks of calling around on mypart and on the part of my
friend Lynn, who lives inHolloway, in the bar of
Islington, and had agreed to putus up in London.
(09:02):
Because the other part of thisis that in the UK there's a 28
day waiting period between whenyou give notice of your intent
to marry and when you canactually do the ceremony, and
you cannot give notice untilyou've been in the country seven
days.
You have to establish this kindof fictive residency if you're
coming with a marriage visa fromoutside the country.
(09:22):
So I arranged to fly and then,of course, I had to find a place
to quarantine in London for twoweeks.
So I found a place in Islingtonto quarantine, a place I'd
stayed previously.
So I was going to be there,essentially in a 120 square foot
flat for 23 and a half hours aday for 15 days.
Then, as soon as I was done,jesse would fly in from Berlin
(09:47):
and then I had arranged a datewith the Islington Register
Office to give notice and thenwe had found a ceremony at a
different register office for amonth later.
I knew that something was goingto go wrong and that the weak
point I had an intuition wasgoing to be this date with
Islington Register Office.
The day before we were to givenotice I called them and I said
(10:08):
we're coming in tomorrow to givenotice.
They said, but you can't,possibly because your partner
hasn't been in the country forseven days.
I said, well, I have it inwriting from you from four weeks
ago that this would be okay.
They said, well, there'snothing we can do.
I said, well, there better besomething you can do because we
have this date for the ceremony.
And they said you'll have toget another one.
(10:29):
We said we can't, we're notstaying another two months in
the country.
They said, well, come in, youcan have a new date in 10 days
time to give notice and thenyou'll have to submit a petition
for a waiver of the 28-daynotification period.
I said, okay, you're on, we gointo the following week to give
notice and by this time Lynn hasreturned from a trip to
(10:51):
Scotland where she'd been upwild swimming with an old friend
of hers and she's enrolledJesse in her wild swimming
program.
Jesse is going up to BlackfireHeath every morning to swim in
the pond, at which was about 60degrees.
At the moment, I'm buckled downin Holloway trying to do
investor calls for the startupyou mentioned, candle, which was
(11:13):
also trying to get off theground.
At the moment I'm meeting witha prospective CTO trying to
recruit someone and in themiddle of all this we're
preparing this letter to thehead office of the Register
offices of England and Walesexplaining why they had better
give us this waiver.
We go in to give notice and itwas fascinating the kinds of
questions they asked to makesure that this was a legitimate
(11:34):
marriage, that if we knew oneanother's places of birth.
And of course we're sittingthere doing it next to one
another.
It's really just a protocol,because if you listened to the
first person you could have gotanyway.
Then Lynn had formed a bubblewith her neighbors.
There were children running inand out much of the day because
she was conducting a directaction urban rewilding project
(11:57):
in the middle of this, which Iwas supposed to be helping with,
where we were trying to pushthe borough of Islington.
We were trying to use thecrisis to get the borough of
Islington to license theconversion of street parking
into gardening allotments,because which Lynn had already
done in Gorilla fashion, and thecouncil had tried on a number
of occasions to remove the skipsshe had placed in the parking
(12:19):
spot in front of her home.
Eventually she'd posted guard.
It turned into this drawn outdirect action program.
I was advising her on strategy.
We needed to get away.
We went to a friend of Jesse'swho lives in Devon, on the South
Coast Jesse's friend Asher.
She knows him from theperformance scene in Berlin.
(12:40):
He's an old circus arts guy andhe's a bit nuts.
We take the train out to Totnesand Asher greets us on the
platform with a big hug and Ifreak out Because this was just
when the so-called Kent variety,the beta variety, was in
circulation right in that area.
We spend the week at Asher'sand Asher says are you guys
(13:01):
coming to the sauna we're doingtonight?
Because he lives out on a farmand he was a sauna.
I said no, I'm not going to thesauna.
But Jesse went and I said, okay, you can go to the sauna.
Things continue to be a littletense.
And then Asher said would youlike to go to the coast?
We drove down to the coast andstripped off and got in the
water, which was about 11degrees Celsius, so say 55
(13:24):
degrees.
It was the most cathartic thingimaginable.
Then we went back to London toprepare to get married, just as
the government announced Londonis locking down again.
I said I do not have it in meto call the Barnett Register
Office to find out if we'restill on for next Monday.
You have to do it.
Jesse calls the Register Officewhere we had agreed the
(13:46):
ceremony.
They said oh yes, come in withyour witnesses.
We went there the followingMonday, the 19th of October 2020
.
It was just the strangest thing.
The person who conducted theceremony just created this
remarkably I hesitate to saysacred, but let's say sacred
(14:06):
atmosphere in the middle of thisvery prosaic setting, with Lynn
and our friend Virginia servingas the witnesses.
Jesse and I were both becausewe had both been viscerally
opposed to the very principle ofgetting married.
This was purely an instrumentalploy on our part so that I
could reenter Germany with notrouble.
Then it happened and we thoughtwow, actually this is
(14:30):
interesting.
Then we go outside and Virginiasays oh, didn't you know that
Belgium has just been put on theKoch Institute's red list?
You were like the German CDCsIf you were planning to take a
train back to Berlin and passthrough Brussels change at
Brussels you would have toquarantine when you got back to
(14:51):
Berlin.
We celebrated our marriage bycanceling our train and booking
a flight back to Berlin for twodays then and arrived just hours
before the Koch Instituteplaced the UK on its level three
list or whatever.
Then I believe, I did not leavethe city limits of Berlin for
(15:12):
370 days.
Probably that was in 10 years Ihad not been quite so.
I think it was four times inthe year that followed did I
travel more than a half hourswalk from home.
That's the story and I'm happyto discuss more.
What makes it so compelling.
I mean, of course there's thissort of comic element.
It became an exercise in changemanagement with the register
(15:33):
offices of England and Wales, sothey might not have seen it
quite that way.
But really what was sounexpected for both of us was
how fun it was Not gettingmarried but being married Like
we felt it.
Right after that we went outfor a walk and it was
unseasonably warm the followingday and we were staying not far
from the cold drop yards and wewent out to this posh mall just
(15:56):
to have a look around and wethought, oh, this is kind of
great.
And then of course I had totake the train back up to
Barnett Register Office to pickup the certificate, the piece of
paper saying we'd got married,to show the passport control
officials in Berlin, becausenothing is so important as your
papers here.
So there you have it, mypandemic wild swimming marriage
(16:21):
that is crazy.
Max Chopovsky (16:23):
I probably would have just tried to forge the
document.
It's not the best approach, butif I knew, if you knew?
So let's look at it like thisIf you knew at the beginning
what it was going to take andall of the twists and turns,
would you have done anythingdifferently?
Would you have taken thatapproach at all?
Josh Berson (16:46):
I probably would have said to Jesse, fly to New
York and let's drive up toWoodstock and do it there.
But I'm glad we didn't do that,because I'm glad we did it
where we did it and how we didit.
I'd have to think a bit aboutwhy exact.
I'm sure it would have beengreat no matter what.
But yeah, it's funny you sayyou would have simply forged the
documents, because then thefollowing week when I went to
(17:08):
re-register my address inregister at this address in
Berlin, we went up to theborough hall here in the borough
of Pankow and the first thingthe civil servant who
interviewed us said when shelooked at our marriage
certificate, is there's no stamp.
It doesn't feel official.
And we said but they don't giveus, it's on counterfeit proof
(17:30):
paper.
It's on the special paper thatwith the green message all over
that lights up under UV.
So we might as well have triedto forge it, because without the
stamp, what good is it?
Max Chopovsky (17:41):
Yeah, by the way, speaking of the lighting up
under UV, we were recently on aflight and as we're going
through the airport the agent,the TSA agent we ran into one
who was A in a good mood and Bhad some extra time I guess it
wasn't a big line and he waslike, hey, do you wanna see why
(18:03):
scan your license?
I was like, yeah, I'm socurious about all that stuff.
He's like, check this out, andhe gets out of black light and
he shines it on the license andyou see an entirely new pattern
light up in UV.
And I was like, oh my God,that's insane.
So, yeah, counterfeiting mightseem sort of the easy way out,
but yeah, I'm glad that youdidn't do it.
(18:25):
You know it's interesting.
This is a common refrain that Isee from people when they do
something, embark on a journeywhich seems like it'll probably
have some hiccups but shouldarrive at its conclusion
relatively normally, and thenhilarity and chaos ensues.
(18:51):
Right, they achieve theirobjective and at the end of it,
when I would ask them if this isa story they share on the
podcast, if you would do it allover again, knowing what you
knew and all the shit that wasgonna go down.
Would you do it?
They say two things which arereally interesting.
The first is no, I probablywouldn't have done it, and the
(19:13):
second is but I'm still so gladthat I did it and I would not
change a thing right.
So the naivete that people havewhen they embark on certain
quests is actually a good thing.
It's actually a good thing.
Josh Berson (19:30):
There are two coders I would add to this.
One is that halfway through noteven halfway early on in this
process, you know, I'd got themarriage visa, and then Jesse
was in the process of getting it, and then suddenly, in August
of 2020, the German InteriorMinistry reversed itself and
said oh yes, we will allowpartners who do not have a
(19:50):
statutory marriage to enter thecountry, but we decided we need
to go ahead because this isgonna keep coming up.
It's just gonna make thingseasier if we have it, and it's
gonna be so much easier to do itin the UK than in Germany.
We're gonna have to do thiseventually, you know, if we keep
living this high mileage, readyfor action lifestyle.
So we should just go ahead.
(20:12):
And then the second part isafter all this, when we got to
Berlin, I was incredibly nervousthat there'd be a problem at
passport control, and I shouldadd that this wasn't my only.
I'd written the Bundespolizeiin advance to say this is what
we're doing and this is the datewe're re-entering Germany.
And they said yeah, that'sgreat, just have the following
documentation.
(20:33):
Even so, I was, we get to theline and I had.
In addition to the marriagecertificate, I had a letter of
invitation from a researchinstitute here which had it was
bringing me on as a courtesy.
So I got to the window firstand they looked at my
information and before the visaagent realized that Jesse has a
(20:55):
niederlagungsalabnis, you know,and Jesse has has leave to
remain in Germany.
He assumed that the marriagecertificate was so that she
could enter with me by virtue ofmy having this, the writ from
this Posh Research Institute.
So it's possible we didn't needto do any of this exactly, but
I'm glad we did it and we endedup we both became.
(21:16):
Prior to that I grew up on theAtlantic coast and swam all the
time and Jesse grew up in SaltLake City and you know, when
hiking in the mountains quite abit and early on in our
relationship we would go up toDenmark or Scotland and I'd get
in the water and she'd beshocked right that I could swim
in water like that.
And after this adventure shewas a better cold water swimmer.
(21:40):
She had greater tolerance for,you know, the 60 degree water
than I did.
So we we got locked into a dareabout cold swimming.
So now we take cold swimmingholidays.
We went swimming in theHebrides in September last year.
So it's had that added benefit.
If nothing else good came of it, you know, we both we could say
(22:02):
that we so this water, so youknow, call it 55 degrees.
Max Chopovsky (22:07):
you do this without a wetsuit, right?
Josh Berson (22:09):
Well, I wouldn't call it swimming.
The interesting thing in Devonand more generally in the UK
with the exception of, possibly,of Cornwall is that the tides
are really shallow, the break isreally mild.
It's very difficult to doanything you would you would
call swimming or body surfing.
You can certainly immerseyourself, right, and we do that,
(22:30):
but there's very littleopportunity to stay in for an
extended period of time.
Certainly in Devon, in SouthDevon, where we were in October
2020, and again in August oflast year, the shelf is very
stony, you know.
So it's not, it's notcomfortable for walking on the
way the way a sand beach breakwould.
(22:51):
There's practically no break.
So you really you almost haveto lie down to get yourself
completely covered.
In the Hebrides it's a littlebetter and you can.
You can swim.
I wouldn't say we're staying infor an extended period of time.
I was swimming off the Jerseyshore last month, just briefly,
and the water must have been 74and it felt soupy to me.
(23:13):
You know that felt way too warm.
Now.
Max Chopovsky (23:16):
So like how long would you stay in the Hebrides?
That was sub-60 degree water,right.
Josh Berson (23:22):
When we were on the Isle of Egg in 2018, in July,
and on the Isle of Mull in 2022,in September.
The interesting thing is thatyou get, because of the Gulf
Stream and because of thehysteresis in the solar warming
of the water actually, septemberis probably the mildest time of
(23:42):
year to go up there it's stillchallenging, especially when
it's pissing rain.
We were staying last year onwhat's called the Ross of Mull,
which is a little peninsula onthe southwest corner of the Isle
of Mull.
It's not very big, but even so,you were staying on one side
(24:04):
and we had to cross over to theother side to swim.
So it was about an hour, a75-minute walk.
Some days it was raining, sowe'd get tugged up in our rain
gear and just trudge across theisland and then get to the beach
and strip down and get in thewater.
So on this occasion, I mustadmit we didn't really stay in.
We got in.
Our bodies expressed suitabledispleasure at our having put
(24:26):
them in this situation.
Then we got out and ate oatcakes and walked home.
Even so.
That's a four-hour adventure inthe cold rain.
It was like a cold plunge.
That was more like a coldplunge, but I would really love
to get back to the Isle of Eggin the small isles, which is a
bit north of Mull.
There's enough of a break thatyou can actually get out and
(24:48):
swim and you don't really haveto worry about a rip because
you're still in the lee of thenext isle, out of the Isle of
Ross.
So I would love to get outthere again and spend a month
there and get, because at theend of a month, if you do it
every day, you'll be getting inand staying in for 20 minutes.
Max Chopovsky (25:06):
I mean you certainly get used to it, but at
some point there is just humanphysiology that dictates that
water temperature of a certainlevel starts to cause
hypothermia in an increasinglyshorter amount of time.
The reason I ask you about theswimming piece of it is because
I just did my first Olympictriathlon at the end of July.
(25:26):
It's about a mile swim.
I started training for it byswimming in the pool in February
and then March and April.
Then, as Lake Michigan startedto warm up a little bit, I got a
wetsuit and I thought, hey,since I'll be swimming outside
outdoors, at least I need to geta few swims in Lake Michigan.
(25:48):
Then I started fanaticallymonitoring the temperatures in
Lake Michigan and doing all thisresearch because I'd never done
a triathlon before but I wasn'tmuch of a swimmer before this.
I remember looking at whether itwas 62 or 63 degrees, 63 or 64.
(26:10):
Every degree makes a difference.
Nevertheless, the first timethat I got in to the water with
my wetsuit on, I do remember itwas a little bit of a shock,
because with a wetsuit, as youknow, the water has to come in
to the wetsuit and then it staysbetween your skin and the
(26:31):
neoprene and it warms up andthat serves as a buffer between
you and the water that firstswim.
Even so, I started to get alittle warmer, but every degree
matters.
From everything that I read,people still don't go if it's
under 60 and they have a wetsuit.
(26:52):
I've done the cold plungesbefore in 40-some-odd degree
water for a minute, maybe twominutes, but swimming in
anything under 60 without awetsuit, I just have mad respect
for that.
Maybe that's crazy.
Maybe the listeners are goingto say, well, I can swim with a
wetsuit in water that's in themid-50s.
(27:13):
That's just not me.
That's crazy.
Josh Berson (27:15):
I wouldn't put myself in this category, at
least not yet.
I've realized over the pasthalf-year that open water
swimming is really important tome and I'm determined to do
quite a lot of it over the next10 years.
I have a friend who lives inLondon and they have a place out
in Wales.
He went through an episode ofcancer around 10 years ago when
he was 50.
(27:35):
When he recovered he decidedokay, one of the ways I'm going
to mark my recoveries bybecoming a very strong open
water swimmer, at least then hehas swum a channel relay.
How long is that?
I don't know how long his linkwas, but for that people coat
themselves in petroleum productsto stay warm.
(27:56):
I don't know if I'll ever getto that stage.
Joan Didion writes in Quiet Daysin Malibu, the final essay in
her 1978 collection, the WhiteAlbum, about.
She's describing the careerlifeguards on the coast of
Malibu and how they wererequired at that time to take a
(28:18):
one-hour swim in the ocean everyday.
If the water was below, I think, 57 degrees they were allowed
to use a wetsuit.
There was one day where herprincipal informant the person
she's profiling she says thewater on this day was 58 degrees
and he swam in his regulationtrunks.
(28:39):
The most interesting thing isyou feel the metabolic change.
You feel this incredible, thisinner fire.
For a day afterward, when I justarrived at Lynn Friedley's
house in Holloway, just waitingfor Jesse to arrive, and Lynn
was about to go up to Scotlandto do this wild swimming holiday
, she was doing a lot of bakingto take up to her friend there.
(29:02):
One of the things she baked wasessentially this babka or a
yeast cake, but she enhanced itwith a layer of marzipan at the
center.
She said, yes, there's a verygood high energy food for when
you're swimming in the locks,because the locks are even
colder than the ocean up there.
And I said, yeah, I bet thisincredibly dense cake with
(29:23):
almond meal at the end you gotto eat a lot, but not too close
to the swim.
Max Chopovsky (29:28):
So I just looked it up.
So between the watertemperatures between 50 and 60,
to reach exhaustion orunconsciousness is one to two
hours and the expected time ofsurvival is one to six hours.
Pretty wide range because we'retalking about 10 degrees and
you know the physiology andfitness level of the swimmer.
But that is crazy to me,although I will say it does say
(29:50):
that between 60 and 70 degreesit's two to seven hours
exhaustion or unconsciousnessand two to 40 hours expect the
time of survival.
So that's a pretty wide range.
Josh Berson (30:01):
The other thing that makes a big difference is
how much you're getting in andout.
In my third book, the HumanScaffold, there's a passage and
it started almost as a it grewout of something I wrote one
morning in late in 2018, in afit of absent mindedness but
it's become kind of the key setpiece in the book about the
physiology of cold water apneadiving and this is something
(30:23):
that you know as practice inJapan and Korea.
It's mainly a woman'ssubsistence practice and I got
into it because there's acontroversy in the anthropology
of Tasmania where it's about whyTasmanians included or excluded
certain things from their toolkit and so on, and one prominent
investigator in this in thisdebate makes disparaging remarks
(30:47):
about about the, about abalonediving as it was practiced by
women in Tasmania at the time ofthe European invasion, about
how the fact that this was amajor subsistence practice
clearly demonstrates thatsomething had gone wrong, that
there had been some kind ofmaladaptive devolution in
Tasmanian subsistence culture,and disavows the knowledge of of
(31:09):
comparable traditions in otherparts of the world that might be
used as basis for forcomparative ethnography.
But of course, there arecomparable traditions the, the
Amasan of Japan and the Henyo ofJeju Island and and Ipoh,
gyeonggi and Busan and Korea.
And I started looking into thiswhen I was finishing the second
(31:29):
chapter of the human scaffoldand it turns out there's quite a
lot of research that's beendone on the the physiology of of
the Amasan and Henyo frombefore they started using wet
suits and modern equipment,because the US Navy was
interested and commissioned a aconference in 1965 on this theme
.
So, for example, you can readall sorts of interesting things
(31:52):
about the cutaneous coldtolerance of and subcutaneous
adiposity of of Korean women whowere diving for abalone off
Jeju Island in the 1960s, theirmedian age and so.
But it's it's quite remarkable.
Max Chopovsky (32:08):
So you can train it then.
Josh Berson (32:10):
You can train it.
You have to start early.
You have to start early for theemotional training as much as
anything else.
I mean, traditionally, girlswould start diving in two to
three meters of water at the ageof 10, so that by the time they
were 18 or so they could bediving in in 10 meters of water.
And then there are certaintraditions in Japan where they,
where you, you go out with adive boat and you wear a
(32:31):
weighted belt so you can getdown to 20 meters.
Right, but the most traditionalmethod in Korea, practice among
the Henyo, say, of Jeju Islandyou're not diving very deep,
you're diving maybe five metersand then surfacing repeatedly.
And that repeated surfacing anddiving exerts a, a barret
trauma in and of itself and alsoa, a vascular trauma.
(32:52):
Right, it would be thisrepeated tachycardia speed,
speeded up heartbeat, followedby Bradycardia, lowered
heartbeat.
So it takes a toll on the bodyover years and decades that you
practice it, but it is, at thesame time, it there's.
There is something very, veryparticular about this sensation
of relief, the clarity thatcomes from from getting in in
(33:13):
water, that your body is tellingyou is really, really too cold
to be.
Max Chopovsky (33:17):
Have you seen the deepest breath documentary on
Netflix?
Josh Berson (33:21):
I have not, I have not it is.
Max Chopovsky (33:24):
So it's a free diving documentary about how
people pursue world records.
They do it in warmer waters, somy wife was watching and I was
kind of coming in and out of theroom.
That thing really messed withme, because when you watch how
far down they go and what'scrazy is, past a certain point,
(33:45):
the pressure starts pulling youdown.
So you don't actually have totry very hard.
But the flip side of that coinis when you reach the bottom you
have to go extra hard and youhave to sort of leave the this
really sort of hellish gravityfield of the depth of the water
(34:08):
and you have to kick with allyour might, by which point your
oxygen stores are depleted, theCO2 is filling up your lungs and
when people start havingconvulsions as they reach the
final 10, 20 meters and thesafety divers have to grab them,
(34:29):
and then they surface andthere's cameras at the surface
and you just watch this personwho is unconscious and just
these empty facial expressions.
Dude, I couldn't watch thatLike that.
To me they look like they'redying right, and so to me I have
so much respect for that sport,for the people that do that,
(34:49):
because it's not like you'rerunning on a treadmill and you
can get off at any time and befine.
It's not like you're doing alap around the block, you can
always stop.
It's like you're going to aforeign environment, an alien
ecosystem, and the only way backto survive is to fight your way
(35:11):
back once your energy isalready depleted.
I can't get my mind around thatLike that just.
And then to add to that thetemperature of the water, which,
to your point, obviously thereis this reflex like if we're
under the shower and water getscold, the reflex is to inhale,
right, and what it does to yourbody, to your point, with a
(35:33):
faster heartbeat than a slower,the slowing of the heartbeat.
It's actually both terrifyingand incredible.
The human body is capable ofthat.
Just both of those feelings, ohfor sure.
For sure?
Josh Berson (35:46):
Yeah, I would be a terrible free diver, in part
because I only have an inner earon one side, so I would be
subject to really, reallyterrible disorientate alternate
barrow vertigo.
Why do you only have inner?
Max Chopovsky (35:59):
ear on one side.
Oh, it's just congenital.
Josh Berson (36:03):
The ear on the side you can see is only partly
formed on the outside andthere's no inner ear.
The semicircular canals arerudimentary, there are no
auto-liths.
So my sense of balance dependson visual cues and
proprioceptive cues from theshoulders and arms, but also on
what I can derive from thevestibular apparatus on this
side so you can get when you'recoming up.
If the pressure changes in oneear before the other, it can be
(36:25):
very disorienting.
So I would grant that I'm offthe hook for free diving, but
I'm determined to be able toswim in the 60-degree water with
something approaching pleasure.
I mean, I will say this.
Max Chopovsky (36:39):
My dad had years ago what we believe was a
localized stroke in one of hisears, and so he lost the hearing
in that ear.
The hearing in his other eargot a lot better.
The senses made up for it, asphysicians and scientists have
known for years, or other sensesjust make up for it.
Somebody who's born blind justhas incredibly accurate, much
(36:59):
more than the average personhearing and a sense of smell and
touch.
So for what it's worth, there'sobviously some benefit there.
I want to go back to the storyfor a bit.
That was a really sort offreewheeling and unexpectedly
complex narrative, so thequestion I have for you is
(37:21):
looking back on it now.
What is the moral of that story?
Josh Berson (37:25):
There are a bunch of morals one could take away.
One is that the sweetest moral,the most generous moral I'll
offer is to temper one'scynicism, because we both were,
and we remain in cynics aboutthe institution of marriage.
I'm still of the opinion thatmarriage ought to be
disestablished, that you shouldbe able to register a domestic
(37:47):
household with whomever youplease and that the state should
not be in the business ofconsecrating intimate unions in
particular.
And Jesse was getting on herend before she left Berlin from
her, you know, from a circle offriends, all of whom come out of
the avant-garde Berlinconceptual dance scene, and
you'd think they'd bearchetypally anti-capitalist,
(38:09):
anti-everything.
For them this was an incrediblesex in the city type storyline
that they were determined towrite Jesse into, and by the
time she got to London she wasalready ready not to be done
with the whole thing.
So we were aligned on nothingelse.
This was 100% an instrumentalgesture.
You know we were pandering tothe requirements of the German
(38:31):
Interior Ministry and yet themoment it happened we thought
this is kind of cool, it'ssomething felt different, and I
give credit to the ceremonialistat Barnett Registry Office,
whose illocutionary actconsecrated our relationship in
the eyes of the state forcreating this scene.
So the one moral is temper yourcynicism, because even the most
(38:52):
instrumental gesture can end upevoking something of sentimental
value.
Another moral is thinkcarefully before you undertake
some complex diplomatic maneuverfor the thinking that it's
going to make a good story.
I mean, we saw certainly Idon't know about Jesse because
she didn't see all thecomplexities that I've seen on
the New York end, but I sawgoing in okay, this is going to
(39:13):
be a pain in the ass, but boywill it be a great story.
But the value of the story israrely worth the pain,
especially given the level ofuncertainty we were dealing with
, where three days before wewere to get married, we wondered
if the register offices wereabout to shut down again.
But I would say to thelisteners what I would ask them
(39:34):
to take away is temper yourcynicism.
That's all.
I'll put the sweetest spin onit.
Max Chopovsky (39:40):
Well, look, if you're leading and aspiring to
continue to lead this sort ofnomadic lifestyle, the longer
stints in some cities.
Notwithstanding, that justcomes with adventure right, and
I think one of the signaturetraits of any adventure is
uncertainty.
Otherwise it wouldn't be anadventure, right?
(40:01):
If it's predictable, it's notreally an adventure.
And so, to me, this created theuncertainty of it all, and the
twists and turns are whatcreated its essence, when
distilled, resulted in theessence of adventure.
And the thing about uncertaintyis it can make us uncomfortable
(40:25):
.
Sometimes it makes meuncomfortable, and I love
adventure.
Sometimes it makes meuncomfortable, but at the same
time, that's what makes a goodstory right.
Like yesterday, I took my familyand another family on a boat to
a group called the Chain ofLakes and we got a pontoon boat
(40:45):
and it's been a very long timesince I drove a boat.
But I was like, yeah, I candrive this boat and everything
was fine, everything was good.
We had 10 people on the boat,five adults, five kids and then
we had to dock for lunch and theplace was pretty packed because
it was Labor Day and I had tofind a way to dock this boat and
I came close to a couple ofother boats.
(41:06):
A couple of times it got alittle shaky.
I was nervous, but at the sametime I'll look back on that day
and think nothing but what ahell of an adventure.
Everybody had fun, everybodysort of enjoyed themselves, and
we did have some moments ofuncertainty, but it turned out
OK.
So let's talk aboutstorytelling for a minute.
(41:26):
What, in your mind, do goodstories have in common?
Josh Berson (41:33):
Most good stories, like most good works of
organized sound, entail thecreation of tension and then its
resolution or its partialresolution.
I was having a very similarconversation with an editor not
long ago who chided me, in theirview, for being a bit too
effulgent with the ending of awork and said you want the
(41:55):
readers to come away feelingthat their questions have been
answered.
And I said well.
To my way of thinking, framingthe quality of the reading
experience in those termsforecloses on a broader field of
possibility of what reading orwhat storytelling should be for.
Is it for the asking ofquestions which are then
resolved in some kind ofsatisfactory way, or is it?
(42:19):
Are there more exploratoryoptions?
I lean toward those moreexploratory options, that
storytelling should be a way ofallowing us to practice
resisting closure, to practicesitting with an abiding
uncertainty for longer.
At the same time, if you neverhave any release, if you keep
introducing tension into thestory and you don't at least
(42:41):
have partial cadences, momentswhere it resolves or where the
listener or reader can releasethe tension that they've taken
into their own bodies, then itjust becomes an endurance
exercise.
Now I listened since we've beentalking about audiophily, I've
been listening lately to some ofToshimaru Nakamura's no input
(43:03):
mixing board stuff, and soessentially he just has a line
plugged from the line out to theline in of his mixing board and
he's learned over a period of20 years or more to manipulate
the feedback to create all kindsof effects.
So he's creating something outof nothing and some of it is
very musical and some of it isvery noisy.
(43:24):
Of course the real connoisseursof this stuff prefer the
noisier stuff.
They don't want the ear candy,they don't want the stuff that
appears to be cleaving tooclosely to establish conventions
of musicality.
There's a fine line when youcan learn to cultivate your
tolerance for unresolved tension, and maybe that's a form of
opening up.
But to my way of thinking, agood story will always have,
(43:48):
will create tension but at leastpartly and ongoingly resolve
some of that tension, but notall of it.
Max Chopovsky (43:56):
That makes perfect sense, I agree.
Otherwise, if you leave it toounresolved, the audience might
get a little angry with you.
Maybe it's their discomfort,who knows?
But that's a really good point.
So last question, josh If youcould say one thing to your 20
year old self, what would it be?
Josh Berson (44:17):
We're here at such a brief time.
We'd be too concerned aboutcreating a secure context for
yourself or others, aboutestablishing something and
getting there and just holdingvery still and not disturbing
something.
We're here at such a brief time.
Whatever uncertainty you feelnow is nothing compared to the
uncertainty you're going to feellater.
So you might as well dosomething interesting.
(44:39):
You might as well try to leavesome kind of trace that will be
meaningful to people, or someother things that we don't think
of as people, but meaningmakers, but to interpreters of
traces, long after we're gone.
Because we're here at a brieftime.
Max Chopovsky (44:55):
What a great way to look at it, because you're
right, we are here for a veryshort time and most of the
things we think matter do notNot in the grand scheme of
things, not even in our own life.
So very sage advice.
Well, that does it.
Josh Burson, polly Math WardSmith, philosopher, writer,
(45:19):
cold-wall water swimmer, nomad.
Thank you for being on the show, max, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you, of course, for shownotes and more.
Head over to MossPodorg.
Find us on Apple Podcasts,spotify, wherever you get your
podcast on.
This was Moral of the Story.
I'm Max Jropowski.
Thank you for listening.
(45:39):
Talk to you next time.
This is Moral of the Story Interesting people
telling their favorite shortstories and then breaking them
down to understand what makesthem so good.
I'm your host, max Jepofsky.
Today's guest is Josh Berson, atinkerer, mystic scryer of long
horizons and fashioner ofexploratory fictions.
Trained as an anthropologistand historian of science, he has
(00:23):
held appointments at the likesof the Max Planck Institute for
Human Cognitive and BrainSciences at the Berggruen
Institute, where he was theinaugural USC Berggruen Fellow
in the transformations of thehuman Over the past 10 years,
josh has pioneered an approachto reasoning about the dynamics
of human behavior over timehorizons of 10 to 100,000 years
(00:44):
that integrates insights fromlinguistic and evolutionary
anthropology, philosophy of mindand philosophy of biology, with
compositional strategies drawnfrom fiction and generative
sound art.
In 2013 and 2017, concurrentwith his time at the Berggruen
Institute, josh served as anadvisor to the Dutch design
(01:05):
studio Lust, and from 2020 to2021, he was the chief scientist
of the early stage startupKandel, whose mission was to
address disinformation byproviding information
credibility metrics at the pointof search.
Since then, josh has served asan advisor to a range of
organizations in the future'shealth, analytics and venture
capital spaces.
(01:26):
Not to be outdone with the pen.
Josh is the author of multiplebook-length monographs,
including the Meat Question,released in 2019, which
investigates the full sweep ofhuman economic relationships
with other gregariousvertebrates, from the Great Rift
Valley 3 million years ago tothe wet markets of China and
Southeast Asia just prior to thepandemic.
Josh is pretty sure he's alonein publishing regularly in
(01:49):
peer-reviewed venues such asPlus One and comparative studies
in society and history, andthen fashion and lifestyle
magazines, including O3-2C andJane by the Grey Attic.
In a spare time, you'll findhim swimming in the cold sea off
the Heberties or geeking outabout Casio F91W mods and 32-bit
(02:10):
audio recorders, something Ican personally attest to from
one of our first phone callswhen we went off on the long
tangent about the pros, cons,frequency responses and polar
patterns of various recordingdevices.
Josh, welcome to the show.
Josh Berson (02:26):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Thank you, Max.
Max Chopovsky (02:28):
So you are here to tell us a story, so set the
stage.
Is there anything that weshould know before we get into
the story itself?
Josh Berson (02:37):
One thing I would say before we get into the story
proper is that, as we werediscussing just prior to coming
on, I'm standing now in anapartment that has been the home
of my partner, jesse, for thebetter part of 20 years, and I
did not come on the scene untila little bit more than nine
years ago.
That's enough to set the stage,because the story I'm going to
(03:00):
tell is a pandemic marriagestory.
Max Chopovsky (03:04):
I love.
It All right, let's get into it.
Tell me a story.
Josh Berson (03:08):
Okay, so you mentioned my 2019 book, the Mead
Question, and when that bookcame out, I had just sent in the
final draft of what became my2021 book, the Human Scathode,
and I went to the States topromote the book in late 2019.
And then I was in the Statesdoing various book promotion
related things into early 2020,just as the pandemic was getting
(03:32):
underway.
My partner, jesse, haspermanent residence in Germany.
I do not, and at the time I wasbetween visas because I had
just spent a year, as youmentioned, in Los Angeles at the
Berggruen Institute preparingmy third book and we weren't
sure exactly what was going tohappen if I was going to stay on
in LA, so I deferred renewingmy visa.
(03:53):
So when European Union closedits frontiers, I was in New York
and Jesse had just returned toGermany and we said well, we'll
see what happens.
It's probably not going to lastlonger than a few weeks the
closure, and so I dug down inNew York and meanwhile Jesse was
having really a lovely earlypandemic in Germany.
(04:15):
They did a very good job in thefirst wave and it was a very
different experience in Berlinto New York.
But then, after the first month, the EU and the German Interior
Ministry announced they wererenewing the 30-day ban on
entries of non-EU nationals.
This went on and on into Juneand finally, at the end of June,
(04:37):
when the guidance from theBundespolizei had not changed,
we consulted an immigrationlawyer and he said you're just
going to have to get marriedoutside the European Union.
That's the only way I can seeto make this happen.
Now Jesse and I at this pointhad been together for six years
and we had discussed gettingmarried in the past.
We discussed getting marriedbefore going to California so
(05:00):
that it would be easier to puther on my American health
insurance, because it's alwaysjust a pain in the ass trying to
arrange health insurance.
Even though Jesse is a UScitizen, she doesn't maintain
cover in the US because shespends most of her time
elsewhere and in Germany inparticular.
She's a member of what's calledthe KASCO, which is a
(05:20):
state-sponsored artist unionwhich provides a very good deal
on a group plan for healthcoverage.
So this is not something shehas to consider, except when
she's going to spend an extendedperiod in the States.
So we had discussed it then.
In Germany it takes forever toget married.
It really takes about ninemonths to provide all the
documentation, whereas inCopenhagen, you can go up and do
(05:41):
it in a couple of days.
We had considered thispreviously, but, for one reason
or another, had decided to forgothe opportunity, and now we
were faced with the challenge offinding a suitable venue to get
married in the middle of thepandemic.
So that's now July the firstweek of July 2020, when I
started looking into this and weconsidered our options.
(06:02):
Jesse could fly to New York andwe conclude things in about two
days, but I really didn't wanther to have to return to the
States if we could avoid thatfor a number of reasons for the
health-related reasons, for thelong-haul travel reasons and
various family dramas with whowould be invited at this
emergency wedding.
So we decided, okay, we'll findsome neutral venue, some place
(06:25):
that's in Europe, but outsidethe EU.
Well, where could that be?
The clear choice was the UK, butthis presented a number of
obstacles.
The UK had implemented a systemof special-purpose marriage
visas that we would need.
To get these visas, you have tofurnish biometrics with the
home office.
In practice, this turned out tobe kind of a joke, but it's one
(06:47):
of the obligatory points ofpassage in the process of
getting this special-purposevisa.
The only problem was all thevisa processing centers were
closed in New York for thepandemic, and this was just the
first in a series of steps whichI'll get to.
But very briefly, by chance Iknew the single best visa
expediter in the United Statesbecause he had helped me get a
(07:10):
visa to teach in China on twodays' notice a couple of years
before.
I was in New York just for fivedays.
And in China you have to getthe visa in the place in the US
where you have Hukou right.
And since I'm registered, so Icalled him up and he said I
don't know, things are kind ofcrazy right now, but put in your
application with the Foreignand Commonwealth Office and send
me the details about theapplication number and we'll see
(07:32):
what we can do.
So I did as he asked and hecalled me a few days later and
he says can you be in midtown at7.30 tomorrow morning?
And I said yes, I can.
He said okay, bring, you'regoing to have to pay this many
hundreds of dollars for the, forthe visa processor, and then
bring 500 in cash for theexpediter's fee.
So I went down and did that andput it in, and we didn't know if
(07:54):
it would work.
They could have rejected theapplication, and so that was
another couple of weeks wait,and then, finally, the news came
that they'd approved my visa,and then I said, okay, jesse,
now you have to do the samething in Berlin, where it was
significantly easier, like evenso.
She said you know, if I'd knownit would be this much hassle, I
would have simply come to NewYork.
I said you know what I'vealready been through, and we're
(08:15):
just getting started.
So then there was the questionof well, where are we going to
do the ceremony?
In London, because of thelockdown in London in the early
part of 2020, all the registeroffices, all the borough halls
had a large backlog of peoplewho had been planning to get
married, and now we're waitingright, and we didn't want to
spend hundreds of pounds for youknow the stately room at some
(08:39):
random register office when wewere only going to be allowed
two witnesses.
Anyway, we wanted a basicstatutory marriage ceremony, so
finding one within a day's trainjourney of London took two
weeks of calling around on mypart and on the part of my
friend Lynn, who lives inHolloway, in the bar of
Islington, and had agreed to putus up in London.
(09:02):
Because the other part of thisis that in the UK there's a 28
day waiting period between whenyou give notice of your intent
to marry and when you canactually do the ceremony, and
you cannot give notice untilyou've been in the country seven
days.
You have to establish this kindof fictive residency if you're
coming with a marriage visa fromoutside the country.
(09:22):
So I arranged to fly and then,of course, I had to find a place
to quarantine in London for twoweeks.
So I found a place in Islingtonto quarantine, a place I'd
stayed previously.
So I was going to be there,essentially in a 120 square foot
flat for 23 and a half hours aday for 15 days.
Then, as soon as I was done,jesse would fly in from Berlin
(09:47):
and then I had arranged a datewith the Islington Register
Office to give notice and thenwe had found a ceremony at a
different register office for amonth later.
I knew that something was goingto go wrong and that the weak
point I had an intuition wasgoing to be this date with
Islington Register Office.
The day before we were to givenotice I called them and I said
(10:08):
we're coming in tomorrow to givenotice.
They said, but you can't,possibly because your partner
hasn't been in the country forseven days.
I said, well, I have it inwriting from you from four weeks
ago that this would be okay.
They said, well, there'snothing we can do.
I said, well, there better besomething you can do because we
have this date for the ceremony.
And they said you'll have toget another one.
(10:29):
We said we can't, we're notstaying another two months in
the country.
They said, well, come in, youcan have a new date in 10 days
time to give notice and thenyou'll have to submit a petition
for a waiver of the 28-daynotification period.
I said, okay, you're on, we gointo the following week to give
notice and by this time Lynn hasreturned from a trip to
(10:51):
Scotland where she'd been upwild swimming with an old friend
of hers and she's enrolledJesse in her wild swimming
program.
Jesse is going up to BlackfireHeath every morning to swim in
the pond, at which was about 60degrees.
At the moment, I'm buckled downin Holloway trying to do
investor calls for the startupyou mentioned, candle, which was
(11:13):
also trying to get off theground.
At the moment I'm meeting witha prospective CTO trying to
recruit someone and in themiddle of all this we're
preparing this letter to thehead office of the Register
offices of England and Walesexplaining why they had better
give us this waiver.
We go in to give notice and itwas fascinating the kinds of
questions they asked to makesure that this was a legitimate
(11:34):
marriage, that if we knew oneanother's places of birth.
And of course we're sittingthere doing it next to one
another.
It's really just a protocol,because if you listened to the
first person you could have gotanyway.
Then Lynn had formed a bubblewith her neighbors.
There were children running inand out much of the day because
she was conducting a directaction urban rewilding project
(11:57):
in the middle of this, which Iwas supposed to be helping with,
where we were trying to pushthe borough of Islington.
We were trying to use thecrisis to get the borough of
Islington to license theconversion of street parking
into gardening allotments,because which Lynn had already
done in Gorilla fashion, and thecouncil had tried on a number
of occasions to remove the skipsshe had placed in the parking
(12:19):
spot in front of her home.
Eventually she'd posted guard.
It turned into this drawn outdirect action program.
I was advising her on strategy.
We needed to get away.
We went to a friend of Jesse'swho lives in Devon, on the South
Coast Jesse's friend Asher.
She knows him from theperformance scene in Berlin.
(12:40):
He's an old circus arts guy andhe's a bit nuts.
We take the train out to Totnesand Asher greets us on the
platform with a big hug and Ifreak out Because this was just
when the so-called Kent variety,the beta variety, was in
circulation right in that area.
We spend the week at Asher'sand Asher says are you guys
(13:01):
coming to the sauna we're doingtonight?
Because he lives out on a farmand he was a sauna.
I said no, I'm not going to thesauna.
But Jesse went and I said, okay, you can go to the sauna.
Things continue to be a littletense.
And then Asher said would youlike to go to the coast?
We drove down to the coast andstripped off and got in the
water, which was about 11degrees Celsius, so say 55
(13:24):
degrees.
It was the most cathartic thingimaginable.
Then we went back to London toprepare to get married, just as
the government announced Londonis locking down again.
I said I do not have it in meto call the Barnett Register
Office to find out if we'restill on for next Monday.
You have to do it.
Jesse calls the Register Officewhere we had agreed the
(13:46):
ceremony.
They said oh yes, come in withyour witnesses.
We went there the followingMonday, the 19th of October 2020
.
It was just the strangest thing.
The person who conducted theceremony just created this
remarkably I hesitate to saysacred, but let's say sacred
(14:06):
atmosphere in the middle of thisvery prosaic setting, with Lynn
and our friend Virginia servingas the witnesses.
Jesse and I were both becausewe had both been viscerally
opposed to the very principle ofgetting married.
This was purely an instrumentalploy on our part so that I
could reenter Germany with notrouble.
Then it happened and we thoughtwow, actually this is
(14:30):
interesting.
Then we go outside and Virginiasays oh, didn't you know that
Belgium has just been put on theKoch Institute's red list?
You were like the German CDCsIf you were planning to take a
train back to Berlin and passthrough Brussels change at
Brussels you would have toquarantine when you got back to
(14:51):
Berlin.
We celebrated our marriage bycanceling our train and booking
a flight back to Berlin for twodays then and arrived just hours
before the Koch Instituteplaced the UK on its level three
list or whatever.
Then I believe, I did not leavethe city limits of Berlin for
(15:12):
370 days.
Probably that was in 10 years Ihad not been quite so.
I think it was four times inthe year that followed did I
travel more than a half hourswalk from home.
That's the story and I'm happyto discuss more.
What makes it so compelling.
I mean, of course there's thissort of comic element.
It became an exercise in changemanagement with the register
(15:33):
offices of England and Wales, sothey might not have seen it
quite that way.
But really what was sounexpected for both of us was
how fun it was Not gettingmarried but being married Like
we felt it.
Right after that we went outfor a walk and it was
unseasonably warm the followingday and we were staying not far
from the cold drop yards and wewent out to this posh mall just
(15:56):
to have a look around and wethought, oh, this is kind of
great.
And then of course I had totake the train back up to
Barnett Register Office to pickup the certificate, the piece of
paper saying we'd got married,to show the passport control
officials in Berlin, becausenothing is so important as your
papers here.
So there you have it, mypandemic wild swimming marriage
(16:21):
that is crazy.
Max Chopovsky (16:23):
I probably would have just tried to forge the
document.
It's not the best approach, butif I knew, if you knew?
So let's look at it like thisIf you knew at the beginning
what it was going to take andall of the twists and turns,
would you have done anythingdifferently?
Would you have taken thatapproach at all?
Josh Berson (16:46):
I probably would have said to Jesse, fly to New
York and let's drive up toWoodstock and do it there.
But I'm glad we didn't do that,because I'm glad we did it
where we did it and how we didit.
I'd have to think a bit aboutwhy exact.
I'm sure it would have beengreat no matter what.
But yeah, it's funny you sayyou would have simply forged the
documents, because then thefollowing week when I went to
(17:08):
re-register my address inregister at this address in
Berlin, we went up to theborough hall here in the borough
of Pankow and the first thingthe civil servant who
interviewed us said when shelooked at our marriage
certificate, is there's no stamp.
It doesn't feel official.
And we said but they don't giveus, it's on counterfeit proof
(17:30):
paper.
It's on the special paper thatwith the green message all over
that lights up under UV.
So we might as well have triedto forge it, because without the
stamp, what good is it?
Max Chopovsky (17:41):
Yeah, by the way, speaking of the lighting up
under UV, we were recently on aflight and as we're going
through the airport the agent,the TSA agent we ran into one
who was A in a good mood and Bhad some extra time I guess it
wasn't a big line and he waslike, hey, do you wanna see why
(18:03):
scan your license?
I was like, yeah, I'm socurious about all that stuff.
He's like, check this out, andhe gets out of black light and
he shines it on the license andyou see an entirely new pattern
light up in UV.
And I was like, oh my God,that's insane.
So, yeah, counterfeiting mightseem sort of the easy way out,
but yeah, I'm glad that youdidn't do it.
(18:25):
You know it's interesting.
This is a common refrain that Isee from people when they do
something, embark on a journeywhich seems like it'll probably
have some hiccups but shouldarrive at its conclusion
relatively normally, and thenhilarity and chaos ensues.
(18:51):
Right, they achieve theirobjective and at the end of it,
when I would ask them if this isa story they share on the
podcast, if you would do it allover again, knowing what you
knew and all the shit that wasgonna go down.
Would you do it?
They say two things which arereally interesting.
The first is no, I probablywouldn't have done it, and the
(19:13):
second is but I'm still so gladthat I did it and I would not
change a thing right.
So the naivete that people havewhen they embark on certain
quests is actually a good thing.
It's actually a good thing.
Josh Berson (19:30):
There are two coders I would add to this.
One is that halfway through noteven halfway early on in this
process, you know, I'd got themarriage visa, and then Jesse
was in the process of getting it, and then suddenly, in August
of 2020, the German InteriorMinistry reversed itself and
said oh yes, we will allowpartners who do not have a
(19:50):
statutory marriage to enter thecountry, but we decided we need
to go ahead because this isgonna keep coming up.
It's just gonna make thingseasier if we have it, and it's
gonna be so much easier to do itin the UK than in Germany.
We're gonna have to do thiseventually, you know, if we keep
living this high mileage, readyfor action lifestyle.
So we should just go ahead.
(20:12):
And then the second part isafter all this, when we got to
Berlin, I was incredibly nervousthat there'd be a problem at
passport control, and I shouldadd that this wasn't my only.
I'd written the Bundespolizeiin advance to say this is what
we're doing and this is the datewe're re-entering Germany.
And they said yeah, that'sgreat, just have the following
documentation.
(20:33):
Even so, I was, we get to theline and I had.
In addition to the marriagecertificate, I had a letter of
invitation from a researchinstitute here which had it was
bringing me on as a courtesy.
So I got to the window firstand they looked at my
information and before the visaagent realized that Jesse has a
(20:55):
niederlagungsalabnis, you know,and Jesse has has leave to
remain in Germany.
He assumed that the marriagecertificate was so that she
could enter with me by virtue ofmy having this, the writ from
this Posh Research Institute.
So it's possible we didn't needto do any of this exactly, but
I'm glad we did it and we endedup we both became.
(21:16):
Prior to that I grew up on theAtlantic coast and swam all the
time and Jesse grew up in SaltLake City and you know, when
hiking in the mountains quite abit and early on in our
relationship we would go up toDenmark or Scotland and I'd get
in the water and she'd beshocked right that I could swim
in water like that.
And after this adventure shewas a better cold water swimmer.
(21:40):
She had greater tolerance for,you know, the 60 degree water
than I did.
So we we got locked into a dareabout cold swimming.
So now we take cold swimmingholidays.
We went swimming in theHebrides in September last year.
So it's had that added benefit.
If nothing else good came of it, you know, we both we could say
(22:02):
that we so this water, so youknow, call it 55 degrees.
Max Chopovsky (22:07):
you do this without a wetsuit, right?
Josh Berson (22:09):
Well, I wouldn't call it swimming.
The interesting thing in Devonand more generally in the UK
with the exception of, possibly,of Cornwall is that the tides
are really shallow, the break isreally mild.
It's very difficult to doanything you would you would
call swimming or body surfing.
You can certainly immerseyourself, right, and we do that,
(22:30):
but there's very littleopportunity to stay in for an
extended period of time.
Certainly in Devon, in SouthDevon, where we were in October
2020, and again in August oflast year, the shelf is very
stony, you know.
So it's not, it's notcomfortable for walking on the
way the way a sand beach breakwould.
(22:51):
There's practically no break.
So you really you almost haveto lie down to get yourself
completely covered.
In the Hebrides it's a littlebetter and you can.
You can swim.
I wouldn't say we're staying infor an extended period of time.
I was swimming off the Jerseyshore last month, just briefly,
and the water must have been 74and it felt soupy to me.
(23:13):
You know that felt way too warm.
Now.
Max Chopovsky (23:16):
So like how long would you stay in the Hebrides?
That was sub-60 degree water,right.
Josh Berson (23:22):
When we were on the Isle of Egg in 2018, in July,
and on the Isle of Mull in 2022,in September.
The interesting thing is thatyou get, because of the Gulf
Stream and because of thehysteresis in the solar warming
of the water actually, septemberis probably the mildest time of
(23:42):
year to go up there it's stillchallenging, especially when
it's pissing rain.
We were staying last year onwhat's called the Ross of Mull,
which is a little peninsula onthe southwest corner of the Isle
of Mull.
It's not very big, but even so,you were staying on one side
(24:04):
and we had to cross over to theother side to swim.
So it was about an hour, a75-minute walk.
Some days it was raining, sowe'd get tugged up in our rain
gear and just trudge across theisland and then get to the beach
and strip down and get in thewater.
So on this occasion, I mustadmit we didn't really stay in.
We got in.
Our bodies expressed suitabledispleasure at our having put
(24:26):
them in this situation.
Then we got out and ate oatcakes and walked home.
Even so.
That's a four-hour adventure inthe cold rain.
It was like a cold plunge.
That was more like a coldplunge, but I would really love
to get back to the Isle of Eggin the small isles, which is a
bit north of Mull.
There's enough of a break thatyou can actually get out and
(24:48):
swim and you don't really haveto worry about a rip because
you're still in the lee of thenext isle, out of the Isle of
Ross.
So I would love to get outthere again and spend a month
there and get, because at theend of a month, if you do it
every day, you'll be getting inand staying in for 20 minutes.
Max Chopovsky (25:06):
I mean you certainly get used to it, but at
some point there is just humanphysiology that dictates that
water temperature of a certainlevel starts to cause
hypothermia in an increasinglyshorter amount of time.
The reason I ask you about theswimming piece of it is because
I just did my first Olympictriathlon at the end of July.
(25:26):
It's about a mile swim.
I started training for it byswimming in the pool in February
and then March and April.
Then, as Lake Michigan startedto warm up a little bit, I got a
wetsuit and I thought, hey,since I'll be swimming outside
outdoors, at least I need to geta few swims in Lake Michigan.
(25:48):
Then I started fanaticallymonitoring the temperatures in
Lake Michigan and doing all thisresearch because I'd never done
a triathlon before but I wasn'tmuch of a swimmer before this.
I remember looking at whether itwas 62 or 63 degrees, 63 or 64.
(26:10):
Every degree makes a difference.
Nevertheless, the first timethat I got in to the water with
my wetsuit on, I do remember itwas a little bit of a shock,
because with a wetsuit, as youknow, the water has to come in
to the wetsuit and then it staysbetween your skin and the
(26:31):
neoprene and it warms up andthat serves as a buffer between
you and the water that firstswim.
Even so, I started to get alittle warmer, but every degree
matters.
From everything that I read,people still don't go if it's
under 60 and they have a wetsuit.
(26:52):
I've done the cold plungesbefore in 40-some-odd degree
water for a minute, maybe twominutes, but swimming in
anything under 60 without awetsuit, I just have mad respect
for that.
Maybe that's crazy.
Maybe the listeners are goingto say, well, I can swim with a
wetsuit in water that's in themid-50s.
(27:13):
That's just not me.
That's crazy.
Josh Berson (27:15):
I wouldn't put myself in this category, at
least not yet.
I've realized over the pasthalf-year that open water
swimming is really important tome and I'm determined to do
quite a lot of it over the next10 years.
I have a friend who lives inLondon and they have a place out
in Wales.
He went through an episode ofcancer around 10 years ago when
he was 50.
(27:35):
When he recovered he decidedokay, one of the ways I'm going
to mark my recoveries bybecoming a very strong open
water swimmer, at least then hehas swum a channel relay.
How long is that?
I don't know how long his linkwas, but for that people coat
themselves in petroleum productsto stay warm.
(27:56):
I don't know if I'll ever getto that stage.
Joan Didion writes in Quiet Daysin Malibu, the final essay in
her 1978 collection, the WhiteAlbum, about.
She's describing the careerlifeguards on the coast of
Malibu and how they wererequired at that time to take a
(28:18):
one-hour swim in the ocean everyday.
If the water was below, I think, 57 degrees they were allowed
to use a wetsuit.
There was one day where herprincipal informant the person
she's profiling she says thewater on this day was 58 degrees
and he swam in his regulationtrunks.
(28:39):
The most interesting thing isyou feel the metabolic change.
You feel this incredible, thisinner fire.
For a day afterward, when I justarrived at Lynn Friedley's
house in Holloway, just waitingfor Jesse to arrive, and Lynn
was about to go up to Scotlandto do this wild swimming holiday
, she was doing a lot of bakingto take up to her friend there.
(29:02):
One of the things she baked wasessentially this babka or a
yeast cake, but she enhanced itwith a layer of marzipan at the
center.
She said, yes, there's a verygood high energy food for when
you're swimming in the locks,because the locks are even
colder than the ocean up there.
And I said, yeah, I bet thisincredibly dense cake with
(29:23):
almond meal at the end you gotto eat a lot, but not too close
to the swim.
Max Chopovsky (29:28):
So I just looked it up.
So between the watertemperatures between 50 and 60,
to reach exhaustion orunconsciousness is one to two
hours and the expected time ofsurvival is one to six hours.
Pretty wide range because we'retalking about 10 degrees and
you know the physiology andfitness level of the swimmer.
But that is crazy to me,although I will say it does say
(29:50):
that between 60 and 70 degreesit's two to seven hours
exhaustion or unconsciousnessand two to 40 hours expect the
time of survival.
So that's a pretty wide range.
Josh Berson (30:01):
The other thing that makes a big difference is
how much you're getting in andout.
In my third book, the HumanScaffold, there's a passage and
it started almost as a it grewout of something I wrote one
morning in late in 2018, in afit of absent mindedness but
it's become kind of the key setpiece in the book about the
physiology of cold water apneadiving and this is something
(30:23):
that you know as practice inJapan and Korea.
It's mainly a woman'ssubsistence practice and I got
into it because there's acontroversy in the anthropology
of Tasmania where it's about whyTasmanians included or excluded
certain things from their toolkit and so on, and one prominent
investigator in this in thisdebate makes disparaging remarks
(30:47):
about about the, about abalonediving as it was practiced by
women in Tasmania at the time ofthe European invasion, about
how the fact that this was amajor subsistence practice
clearly demonstrates thatsomething had gone wrong, that
there had been some kind ofmaladaptive devolution in
Tasmanian subsistence culture,and disavows the knowledge of of
(31:09):
comparable traditions in otherparts of the world that might be
used as basis for forcomparative ethnography.
But of course, there arecomparable traditions the, the
Amasan of Japan and the Henyo ofJeju Island and and Ipoh,
gyeonggi and Busan and Korea.
And I started looking into thiswhen I was finishing the second
(31:29):
chapter of the human scaffoldand it turns out there's quite a
lot of research that's beendone on the the physiology of of
the Amasan and Henyo frombefore they started using wet
suits and modern equipment,because the US Navy was
interested and commissioned a aconference in 1965 on this theme
.
So, for example, you can readall sorts of interesting things
(31:52):
about the cutaneous coldtolerance of and subcutaneous
adiposity of of Korean women whowere diving for abalone off
Jeju Island in the 1960s, theirmedian age and so.
But it's it's quite remarkable.
Max Chopovsky (32:08):
So you can train it then.
Josh Berson (32:10):
You can train it.
You have to start early.
You have to start early for theemotional training as much as
anything else.
I mean, traditionally, girlswould start diving in two to
three meters of water at the ageof 10, so that by the time they
were 18 or so they could bediving in in 10 meters of water.
And then there are certaintraditions in Japan where they,
where you, you go out with adive boat and you wear a
(32:31):
weighted belt so you can getdown to 20 meters.
Right, but the most traditionalmethod in Korea, practice among
the Henyo, say, of Jeju Islandyou're not diving very deep,
you're diving maybe five metersand then surfacing repeatedly.
And that repeated surfacing anddiving exerts a, a barret
trauma in and of itself and alsoa, a vascular trauma.
(32:52):
Right, it would be thisrepeated tachycardia speed,
speeded up heartbeat, followedby Bradycardia, lowered
heartbeat.
So it takes a toll on the bodyover years and decades that you
practice it, but it is, at thesame time, it there's.
There is something very, veryparticular about this sensation
of relief, the clarity thatcomes from from getting in in
(33:13):
water, that your body is tellingyou is really, really too cold
to be.
Max Chopovsky (33:17):
Have you seen the deepest breath documentary on
Netflix?
Josh Berson (33:21):
I have not, I have not it is.
Max Chopovsky (33:24):
So it's a free diving documentary about how
people pursue world records.
They do it in warmer waters, somy wife was watching and I was
kind of coming in and out of theroom.
That thing really messed withme, because when you watch how
far down they go and what'scrazy is, past a certain point,
(33:45):
the pressure starts pulling youdown.
So you don't actually have totry very hard.
But the flip side of that coinis when you reach the bottom you
have to go extra hard and youhave to sort of leave the this
really sort of hellish gravityfield of the depth of the water
(34:08):
and you have to kick with allyour might, by which point your
oxygen stores are depleted, theCO2 is filling up your lungs and
when people start havingconvulsions as they reach the
final 10, 20 meters and thesafety divers have to grab them,
(34:29):
and then they surface andthere's cameras at the surface
and you just watch this personwho is unconscious and just
these empty facial expressions.
Dude, I couldn't watch thatLike that.
To me they look like they'redying right, and so to me I have
so much respect for that sport,for the people that do that,
(34:49):
because it's not like you'rerunning on a treadmill and you
can get off at any time and befine.
It's not like you're doing alap around the block, you can
always stop.
It's like you're going to aforeign environment, an alien
ecosystem, and the only way backto survive is to fight your way
(35:11):
back once your energy isalready depleted.
I can't get my mind around thatLike that just.
And then to add to that thetemperature of the water, which,
to your point, obviously thereis this reflex like if we're
under the shower and water getscold, the reflex is to inhale,
right, and what it does to yourbody, to your point, with a
(35:33):
faster heartbeat than a slower,the slowing of the heartbeat.
It's actually both terrifyingand incredible.
The human body is capable ofthat.
Just both of those feelings, ohfor sure.
For sure?
Josh Berson (35:46):
Yeah, I would be a terrible free diver, in part
because I only have an inner earon one side, so I would be
subject to really, reallyterrible disorientate alternate
barrow vertigo.
Why do you only have inner?
Max Chopovsky (35:59):
ear on one side.
Oh, it's just congenital.
Josh Berson (36:03):
The ear on the side you can see is only partly
formed on the outside andthere's no inner ear.
The semicircular canals arerudimentary, there are no
auto-liths.
So my sense of balance dependson visual cues and
proprioceptive cues from theshoulders and arms, but also on
what I can derive from thevestibular apparatus on this
side so you can get when you'recoming up.
If the pressure changes in oneear before the other, it can be
(36:25):
very disorienting.
So I would grant that I'm offthe hook for free diving, but
I'm determined to be able toswim in the 60-degree water with
something approaching pleasure.
I mean, I will say this.
Max Chopovsky (36:39):
My dad had years ago what we believe was a
localized stroke in one of hisears, and so he lost the hearing
in that ear.
The hearing in his other eargot a lot better.
The senses made up for it, asphysicians and scientists have
known for years, or other sensesjust make up for it.
Somebody who's born blind justhas incredibly accurate, much
(36:59):
more than the average personhearing and a sense of smell and
touch.
So for what it's worth, there'sobviously some benefit there.
I want to go back to the storyfor a bit.
That was a really sort offreewheeling and unexpectedly
complex narrative, so thequestion I have for you is
(37:21):
looking back on it now.
What is the moral of that story?
Josh Berson (37:25):
There are a bunch of morals one could take away.
One is that the sweetest moral,the most generous moral I'll
offer is to temper one'scynicism, because we both were,
and we remain in cynics aboutthe institution of marriage.
I'm still of the opinion thatmarriage ought to be
disestablished, that you shouldbe able to register a domestic
(37:47):
household with whomever youplease and that the state should
not be in the business ofconsecrating intimate unions in
particular.
And Jesse was getting on herend before she left Berlin from
her, you know, from a circle offriends, all of whom come out of
the avant-garde Berlinconceptual dance scene, and
you'd think they'd bearchetypally anti-capitalist,
(38:09):
anti-everything.
For them this was an incrediblesex in the city type storyline
that they were determined towrite Jesse into, and by the
time she got to London she wasalready ready not to be done
with the whole thing.
So we were aligned on nothingelse.
This was 100% an instrumentalgesture.
You know we were pandering tothe requirements of the German
(38:31):
Interior Ministry and yet themoment it happened we thought
this is kind of cool, it'ssomething felt different, and I
give credit to the ceremonialistat Barnett Registry Office,
whose illocutionary actconsecrated our relationship in
the eyes of the state forcreating this scene.
So the one moral is temper yourcynicism, because even the most
(38:52):
instrumental gesture can end upevoking something of sentimental
value.
Another moral is thinkcarefully before you undertake
some complex diplomatic maneuverfor the thinking that it's
going to make a good story.
I mean, we saw certainly Idon't know about Jesse because
she didn't see all thecomplexities that I've seen on
the New York end, but I sawgoing in okay, this is going to
(39:13):
be a pain in the ass, but boywill it be a great story.
But the value of the story israrely worth the pain,
especially given the level ofuncertainty we were dealing with
, where three days before wewere to get married, we wondered
if the register offices wereabout to shut down again.
But I would say to thelisteners what I would ask them
(39:34):
to take away is temper yourcynicism.
That's all.
I'll put the sweetest spin onit.
Max Chopovsky (39:40):
Well, look, if you're leading and aspiring to
continue to lead this sort ofnomadic lifestyle, the longer
stints in some cities.
Notwithstanding, that justcomes with adventure right, and
I think one of the signaturetraits of any adventure is
uncertainty.
Otherwise it wouldn't be anadventure, right?
(40:01):
If it's predictable, it's notreally an adventure.
And so, to me, this created theuncertainty of it all, and the
twists and turns are whatcreated its essence, when
distilled, resulted in theessence of adventure.
And the thing about uncertaintyis it can make us uncomfortable
(40:25):
.
Sometimes it makes meuncomfortable, and I love
adventure.
Sometimes it makes meuncomfortable, but at the same
time, that's what makes a goodstory right.
Like yesterday, I took my familyand another family on a boat to
a group called the Chain ofLakes and we got a pontoon boat
(40:45):
and it's been a very long timesince I drove a boat.
But I was like, yeah, I candrive this boat and everything
was fine, everything was good.
We had 10 people on the boat,five adults, five kids and then
we had to dock for lunch and theplace was pretty packed because
it was Labor Day and I had tofind a way to dock this boat and
I came close to a couple ofother boats.
(41:06):
A couple of times it got alittle shaky.
I was nervous, but at the sametime I'll look back on that day
and think nothing but what ahell of an adventure.
Everybody had fun, everybodysort of enjoyed themselves, and
we did have some moments ofuncertainty, but it turned out
OK.
So let's talk aboutstorytelling for a minute.
(41:26):
What, in your mind, do goodstories have in common?
Josh Berson (41:33):
Most good stories, like most good works of
organized sound, entail thecreation of tension and then its
resolution or its partialresolution.
I was having a very similarconversation with an editor not
long ago who chided me, in theirview, for being a bit too
effulgent with the ending of awork and said you want the
(41:55):
readers to come away feelingthat their questions have been
answered.
And I said well.
To my way of thinking, framingthe quality of the reading
experience in those termsforecloses on a broader field of
possibility of what reading orwhat storytelling should be for.
Is it for the asking ofquestions which are then
resolved in some kind ofsatisfactory way, or is it?
(42:19):
Are there more exploratoryoptions?
I lean toward those moreexploratory options, that
storytelling should be a way ofallowing us to practice
resisting closure, to practicesitting with an abiding
uncertainty for longer.
At the same time, if you neverhave any release, if you keep
introducing tension into thestory and you don't at least
(42:41):
have partial cadences, momentswhere it resolves or where the
listener or reader can releasethe tension that they've taken
into their own bodies, then itjust becomes an endurance
exercise.
Now I listened since we've beentalking about audiophily, I've
been listening lately to some ofToshimaru Nakamura's no input
(43:03):
mixing board stuff, and soessentially he just has a line
plugged from the line out to theline in of his mixing board and
he's learned over a period of20 years or more to manipulate
the feedback to create all kindsof effects.
So he's creating something outof nothing and some of it is
very musical and some of it isvery noisy.
(43:24):
Of course the real connoisseursof this stuff prefer the
noisier stuff.
They don't want the ear candy,they don't want the stuff that
appears to be cleaving tooclosely to establish conventions
of musicality.
There's a fine line when youcan learn to cultivate your
tolerance for unresolved tension, and maybe that's a form of
opening up.
But to my way of thinking, agood story will always have,
(43:48):
will create tension but at leastpartly and ongoingly resolve
some of that tension, but notall of it.
Max Chopovsky (43:56):
That makes perfect sense, I agree.
Otherwise, if you leave it toounresolved, the audience might
get a little angry with you.
Maybe it's their discomfort,who knows?
But that's a really good point.
So last question, josh If youcould say one thing to your 20
year old self, what would it be?
Josh Berson (44:17):
We're here at such a brief time.
We'd be too concerned aboutcreating a secure context for
yourself or others, aboutestablishing something and
getting there and just holdingvery still and not disturbing
something.
We're here at such a brief time.
Whatever uncertainty you feelnow is nothing compared to the
uncertainty you're going to feellater.
So you might as well dosomething interesting.
(44:39):
You might as well try to leavesome kind of trace that will be
meaningful to people, or someother things that we don't think
of as people, but meaningmakers, but to interpreters of
traces, long after we're gone.
Because we're here at a brieftime.
Max Chopovsky (44:55):
What a great way to look at it, because you're
right, we are here for a veryshort time and most of the
things we think matter do notNot in the grand scheme of
things, not even in our own life.
So very sage advice.
Well, that does it.
Josh Burson, polly Math WardSmith, philosopher, writer,
(45:19):
cold-wall water swimmer, nomad.
Thank you for being on the show, max, it's been a pleasure.
Thank you, of course, for shownotes and more.
Head over to MossPodorg.
Find us on Apple Podcasts,spotify, wherever you get your
podcast on.
This was Moral of the Story.
I'm Max Jropowski.
Thank you for listening.
(45:39):
Talk to you next time.
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