Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is gonna be pretty serious, but I hope it's
helpful to some people. It's one more thing.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm strong andy. One more thing.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I'm guessing you haven't. But have you ever read Infinite
Jest by David Foster Wallace? Are you familiar with it?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Not? Really, No, you've heard of it. Sounds familiar.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
It's a very very big deal book that came out
in the nineties, won the Pulitzer Prize. But it is.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
That's an indictment, but I have no doubt.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
It was a really big deal of literature and sold many, many,
many millions of copies. And he was I don't know
how many times I saw him interviewed on Charlie Rose
and their biographies of him and the movie made about
him and everything like that, partially because he killed himself
when he was in his forties. So this book, Infinite Jest,
(00:59):
which is like a thousand pages long, I'd never read
it before. I'm about a third of the way through
for I don't like it. I don't think it's very good.
My favorite literary critic, critic Harold Bloom, thought it was crap,
so maybe I'm influenced by that. I feel like it's
crap myself, but I'm gonna fight my way through it.
But a lot of it is about you know you
(01:21):
write what you know?
Speaker 2 (01:22):
Is this famous of.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
Writers. It's about a guy who It's about a number
of different things. The main theme of it is supposed
to be basically how in modern world we're amusing ourselves
to death, which is a common theme on this show
and is absolutely true. That's kind of where the title
infinite jest comes from. But it's about a guy at
a tennis academy and he's a stoner and he watched
(01:47):
his TVL time blah blah blah, and David Foster Wallace
was a big amateur tennis star, and he was a stoner,
and he suffered from depression and anxiety and everything same
way as the character in the book. And there's a
lot about that in one character who's in a constantly
being fifty one to fifty in a mental institution and
describing their depression and anxiety. And I found it as
(02:09):
somebody the writer being somebody that had depression and anxiety
to the level that when he was in his forties
in Arizona, as a married man, he hung himself from
his porch, his back porch at his house, and his
wife came home and found him. But the reason I
bring this up is I got a couple of people
in my life who have depression and anxiety. They often
(02:31):
go together, and I've just never really been able to
understand it. But I mean, I understand that, you know,
you're really really down when you're pressed or anxiety, you
feel really anxious. That's about all I know.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
And it's good definition.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It's bothered me that, you know, I can't really relate
to it, and they're trying to describe it to me
and they're struggling with it, and I just have never
quite fully gotten it until I read this book where
a guy who's a really good writer describes what it
feels like to be anxious, anxious, or depressed, and he
does it over many hundreds of pages. So my shorthand
(03:05):
version won't be that good, But I thought, maybe this
will be helpful to anyone here who's in a similar
situation where they don't have it but somebody they know does,
because it's been helpful to me. One person I know
who's got depression and anxiety tried to explain it to
me and gotten close. But for whatever reason the Politiczer
Prize winning author did a better job of describing the depression,
(03:28):
mostly being about the hopelessness of it. I'm never imagining
it ever getting any better, Like I've never had that.
I've been down before. Everybody gets down, but I've never
had the I can't I not only I can't imagine
it getting a better I'm one hundred percent certain it'll
(03:49):
never get any better.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
Life can include a feeling of and it shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Right, Yeah, I'm everything sucks and it will always suck.
I've never felt that, so I you know, I can
imagine why if everything, and I mean everything, you get
no joy from a relationship with your husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend, parents, job, music, anything,
and it will never change.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Right.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
That would be a hard thing to convince yourself to
go ahead and endure constantly trying to get your head
above that water to.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
Avoid bringing people down with you.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
And again, I'm doing a very shorthand version of this
that might be pointless compared to the hundreds of pages
of describing it. But the person in the fictional character
in the who'd been fifty one fifty with anxiety talking
to the doctor about it's like when somebody jumps out
and scares you aah, and you get that adrenaline rush,
(04:52):
only it's constant and you have no belief that it's
ever gonna stop, which sounds horrifying. That sounds like a
really terrible feeling a.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Lot of anxiety among young people in the modern world.
And you know, to what extent are they just expressing
the nervousness and foreboding that we all feel through life,
or to what extent is is there really that much
more of it in the air. Nobody's really sure. I
would tend, partly through my own life's experience, to say,
(05:21):
let's not underestimate it. Let's try to get a handle
on it. Because their environment, both physical and mental, I
guess solf physical in a way, but it has changed
a great deal. The lives kids live right now are
very different than the lives we lived.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Is there any chance that the two things came together
at the same time in an unfortunate perfect storm, that
there's something in plastics or cell phone towers.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Or ultra processed foods, ultra processed foods or pesticides. It
could be anything. Anything contrails all of them. The government hank.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
All of them working together, that all that happened, and
you know, cause people's brains to be more susceptible to
depression and anxiety. And at the same time, generation generation
or two of helicopter parents convinced you that the world
is very dangerous, always very dangerous. No, no, no, no, no,
(06:16):
you're not going to the park, No way. You and
your friend are going to the park and riding your
bike over there and spending the afternoon without me knowing
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (06:23):
And learning to take on risk and learning it's okay
to get lost and find your way back again. Yeah,
that's entirely possible. It's a combination, but.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That it just accidentally happened at exactly the same time. Boy,
that's unfortunate.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Oh, or roughly at the same time. Yeah, close enough. Yeah.
It may be one thing, it maybe two, it may
be three. I don't know. Nobody knows. It's it ought
to be studied.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
You know, constantly, every woman should be terrified of walking
down the street because every man you.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
Pass is most likely a rapist.
Speaker 1 (06:51):
Right at the same time that their brains might be
wired to be more anxious and depressed.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Yeah, it's funny. I think it's the other side of
the coin. That's more significant, the lack of free ranginess
and exploring and making mistakes. And because you can hit
me with all the harem scam stuff you want about,
say a city I know, and I'll say no, I've
been there, I've tried that, I know what to do,
I know what to avoid. It'll be fine.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Maybe it's all the one thing. Then that would be
good news that it's not any the plastics or cell
phone towers or anything like that, that it's just all
of us. Would be this way if I had grown
up being told by my parents that the world is very,
very scary. Do not leave the house. You're not allowed
to ride your bike to the park. Who knows my
brain to be?
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Like?
Speaker 1 (07:35):
You know, like they've discovered in Europe that kids need
a certain amount of figuring things out on their own
to get their brain psychology risk.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
They need risk. Yeah, yeah, I don't know the answer
to that.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Well, nobody does, but we ought to make it a
high priority to figure it out.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
So when I picture tennis lessons, I picture the tennis
pro having sex with divorces that end or cheating housewives.
How is that part of the novel really? That fact? Yes, yeah,
there's a lot of that. There is a lot of
that in that world. Yeah, I mean, cause you've got
a super fit youngish man and aging gals in short
skirts trying to hold onto their beauty and all that.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I'm actually sticking with the book, which I find terrible
so far.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Really, what's terrible about it just you don't like to
write age. I just think it's so hack.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
It just like a lot of the jokes or observations
are yeah, geez, really, I wish I could think of
one off the top of my head. I mean, some
of the things he throws in is like, is this
supposed to be a clever new thing I've come across
or I've heard eight million times in my life.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
But I actually did a deep dive on this where
somebody said that's the overall point of the book, that
we're all swimming in hack regurgitated pop culture, and I thought, well,
if that's the point, then it's just do I need
a thousand pages?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
How much? Yeah? Just give me like five hundred words
on that. And I'm a person.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
Who's willing to read really long books. But I'm to
the point now that i'm reading it just to try
to figure out because I'd like to try my hand
at writing someday. Is just like, this is like one
of the most revered novels of all time. I got
to figure out what's going on here? Why that happened?
Speaker 3 (09:23):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (09:23):
What was the book? I wish I read more fiction?
I don't.
Speaker 1 (09:28):
I started again a couple of years ago, So glad
I did, and I wanted to stop. Need I need
a break from nonfiction is making me crazy and unhappy?
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I can relate. Dang it, I can't
remember what I read. Oh, it'll come back to my mind,
just just too late. But was I thought? Yeah it was.
It was strength. It was September nineteen eighty eight copy
of Swank, like.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
The magazine Sware an Idiot, which you had to a
high schooler in a certain era to be aware of
that pornographic magazine.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Oh my god, what was I No, it's not a
top tier, not at all, second tier porn that it
was like ninety percent of the book and then in
the last ten percent. Oh, now it's coming back to me.
At the very end, the author says, essentially, oh, it
(10:27):
was the Cane mutiny. The Cane mutiny which is a
brilliant work of fiction. Spoiler alert. As I discussed at
the time, you get ninety percent of the way through
the book and you think, yeah, yeah, I get it,
and you're right, author as bullshit. Yeah. Then the author says,
it's not bullshit at all. I've led you astray. Here's
(10:49):
why it's bullshit. Here's why it's not bullshit. And you think,
oh christ, yep, yep, yep, yep, I made all the
wrong assumptions. Just like the main characters in the book.
It's a bit. It's brilliant. So maybe there's a moment
coming like that, I hope. So the guy instructs the
gals to go with the two hand backhand, and it
really changes it.
Speaker 1 (11:10):
It doesn't get better out of bottom in the rope.
I mean, God put me through a thousand ways too much.
This tastes too far soon. Back to sirious briefly before
we end this. It is it is troubling, as if
I've said someone who knows several people very close that
I want to do okay, who've suffer from these things.
(11:31):
Here's a guy, this writer, David foss Wallace, who is brilliant,
completely aware of a situation completely aware of every bit
of psychological or medical help available, tried most of it,
wealthy connected, and he couldn't find a way out. Yeah,
kind of like the Chandler from Friends thing. I mean,
(11:55):
if you if throwing nine million dollars or whatever he
threw at here's a dick didn't do the trick, then
what hope does the regular person have?
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Yeah, that's rough Man rough.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
Tomorrow's One More Thing podcast will not be so heavy.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
I have a little clip that I could end with.
I wanted to play this during the show. And this
is a guy Walmart. There's a fire.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Apparently a teenager set fire to a bunch of.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Bras and so this set fire to at a Walmart
ros Sears. And so this is about the cup size.
You got the you got to see you got the
d that's the biggest about the cup size.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
So this clip is a guy losing his man card.
He has a very deep voice in the beginning, and
it turns very high.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
You can't make this up. Look at this, I mean
Walmart and written it's on fire.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
What's going on?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
What you bring him? In? His voice got too Yeah, wow,
he did kind of go Mickey Mouse.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Let's say that one more time.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
He can't make this up. Look at this, I mean,
Walmart is written, It's on fire. What's going Upstia Morrison
and nz up Beege's what happened?
Speaker 3 (13:25):
Well, I guess that's it.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
That was a good ending, Michael