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Offline: Jenny Odell on How to Do Nothing · Pod Save America

0:00
Speaker 1: The thing that I feel like I've learned in the
0:02
Speaker 1: last year especially is that there's like kind of an
0:04
Speaker 1: opposite loop where somewhere in there you break the cycle.
0:08
Speaker 1: You know, that could be anywhere really.
0:09
Speaker 2: Put the phone down, just cut it off.
0:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Compared to like even a year ago, it's like
0:15
Speaker 1: I really, I have zero desire to look at the
0:18
Speaker 1: feed of any social media.
0:20
Speaker 3: I just, I actually don't want to.
0:23
Speaker 2: That's, I want to get to that point. That's my
0:27
Speaker 2: North Star right there. I'm Jon Favreau. Welcome to Offline. Hey, everyone.
0:35
Speaker 2: My guest this week is Jenny O'Dell, an artist and
0:38
Speaker 2: writer whose first book became a New York Times bestseller
0:41
Speaker 2: and something of an aspirational manifesto for this show. It's
0:45
Speaker 2: called How to Do Nothing, Resisting the Attention Economy. It
0:49
Speaker 2: should be fairly obvious by now that I have absolutely
0:52
Speaker 2: no idea how to do nothing. I have never been
0:55
Speaker 2: able to sit still. I've had a fear of missing
0:57
Speaker 2: out on just about anything since I was a kid.
0:59
Speaker 2: I've been a workaholic and a political news junkie since
1:01
Speaker 2: graduating college, and I rarely relax for more than a
1:04
Speaker 2: couple hours. Emily might say a couple minutes. But I
1:08
Speaker 2: picked up Jenny's book this summer when I was feeling
1:10
Speaker 2: particularly anxious, exhausted, and just burnt out by how much
1:14
Speaker 2: time I was spending staring at screens, scrolling through bad takes,
1:18
Speaker 2: going from one awful news cycle to the next. And
1:21
Speaker 2: it completely changed the way I think about how I
1:24
Speaker 2: spend my time. As Jenny explains in our conversation, the
1:27
Speaker 2: title is more tongue-in-cheek than literal. Nothing isn't really nothing.
1:32
Speaker 2: It's just not the hyper-connected, hyper-productive existence that so many
1:36
Speaker 2: of us have become accustomed to. In Odell's view, stepping
1:39
Speaker 2: out of that world isn't about quitting social media or
1:42
Speaker 2: disconnecting from the internet completely. It's about learning to redirect
1:46
Speaker 2: more of our attention toward the people and places around us.
1:50
Speaker 2: I found Jenny's perspective especially valuable because she's got a
1:53
Speaker 2: different background than most of our guests so far. She's
1:55
Speaker 2: an artist and a nature lover who's found offline fulfillment
1:59
Speaker 2: watching birds or just sitting in a local park. We
2:02
Speaker 2: talk about how her book was a reaction to the
2:04
Speaker 2: 2016 election, why she thinks that social media news cycles
2:07
Speaker 2: are like sleep deprivation torture, what it means to resist
2:11
Speaker 2: the attention economy, and her advice to me on how
2:15
Speaker 2: I can start doing a little more nothing. As always,
2:18
Speaker 2: if you have questions, comments, or complaints about the show,
2:21
Speaker 2: feel free to email us at offline at crooked.com. Here's
2:25
Speaker 2: Jenny O'Dell. Hi, Jenny.
2:32
Speaker 4: How are you?
2:33
Speaker 2: Good.
2:33
Speaker 1: How are you?
2:35
Speaker 2: I'm good. Um, thank you for taking the time to
2:37
Speaker 2: do this. I, uh, I've really been looking forward to
2:40
Speaker 2: this conversation. I bought your book a few years ago,
2:44
Speaker 2: but I didn't read it until last September. Uh, for
2:46
Speaker 2: one of the very reasons that you wrote the book,
2:48
Speaker 2: which is that it's become harder for me to pay
2:50
Speaker 2: attention to anything longer than a tweet. But you know,
2:56
Speaker 2: it happens. I, but I finally took it on a
2:58
Speaker 2: brief vacation in September. I left my phone in the
3:00
Speaker 2: hotel room and then I just found myself like highlighting
3:03
Speaker 2: full paragraphs of the book. So I really wanted to
3:06
Speaker 2: thank you for writing it because it's, it's changed the
3:08
Speaker 2: way I think about how I spend my time.
3:10
Speaker 3: That's awesome to hear.
3:11
Speaker 2: Yeah. You start by telling the story of why you
3:16
Speaker 2: wrote How to Do Nothing, which was partly a reaction
3:18
Speaker 2: to the 2016 election. Can you talk about how that
3:22
Speaker 2: reaction led to a book on resisting the attention economy?
3:27
Speaker 2: What was the connection to Trump winning?
3:29
Speaker 4: Yeah.
3:29
Speaker 1: I mean, it kind of started out in a almost
3:32
Speaker 1: happenstance way, um, in that I live about five minutes
3:37
Speaker 1: away from this municipal Rose garden in Oakland. Um, and
3:41
Speaker 1: I found that around that time, uh, I was just
3:46
Speaker 1: without really thinking about it consciously, I was going there. Oh,
3:50
Speaker 1: I pretty much any chance that I could get, I
3:52
Speaker 1: was teaching at the time. So I had a little
3:53
Speaker 1: bit of a flexible schedule. But I was just going
3:56
Speaker 1: and kind of like, you know, thousand yard stare, like
3:58
Speaker 1: sitting in the rose garden.
4:02
Speaker 2: What has happened?
4:04
Speaker 1: And I think after a while, I started to wonder
4:06
Speaker 1: why I was doing that and why that felt so
4:09
Speaker 1: different from the rest of my day. A lot of
4:11
Speaker 1: which was like, you know, doom scrolling, feeling like a
4:15
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety and information overload and not being able
4:18
Speaker 1: to process anything. And so it kind of just started
4:22
Speaker 1: with that sort of movement from here, where I am
4:25
Speaker 1: in my apartment, to this park. And the more time
4:29
Speaker 1: I spent there, the more I started to think about
4:31
Speaker 1: how the values that were embodied by this garden were
4:34
Speaker 1: very different as well. It's volunteer-maintained. It's a space that's
4:40
Speaker 1: very valued by the community, but it's not really productive
4:44
Speaker 1: in the ways that we would, you know, normally use
4:46
Speaker 1: the word productive. It doesn't, you know, create a profit.
4:49
Speaker 1: You don't get any results from going there that you
4:50
Speaker 1: could sort of quantify. It just sort of gestures towards
4:54
Speaker 1: this other kind of value system, other ways of valuing experience,
4:59
Speaker 1: other ways of being like, I go there, I'm just
5:00
Speaker 1: a person, you know, I'm not a producer of content.
5:03
Speaker 1: I'm not a consumer of content. And so I just
5:08
Speaker 1: happened to be spending a lot of time there thinking
5:09
Speaker 1: about that. And then I was asked to give a
5:12
Speaker 1: talk at a conference that called io so i wrote
5:16
Speaker 1: this talk called how to do nothing to give at
5:19
Speaker 1: that conference in the summer of 2017 that is about
5:23
Speaker 1: those things that i sort of thought about and learned
5:25
Speaker 1: about being in the garden i did not expect it
5:27
Speaker 1: to resonate really with anyone outside of that conference um
5:30
Speaker 1: necessarily certainly not as much as it did um and
5:34
Speaker 1: i also didn't expect it to turn into a book
5:37
Speaker 1: um That was not my idea. That was suggested to
5:40
Speaker 1: me by someone who was at the conference. Um, and so, yeah,
5:44
Speaker 1: here I am. Um, and it, it just came out
5:46
Speaker 1: in Korea.
5:48
Speaker 4: Wow.
5:51
Speaker 2: So for people who haven't yet read the book, how
5:54
Speaker 2: do you define doing nothing? Okay.
5:58
Speaker 1: So it's obviously not literally doing nothing. That could be
6:01
Speaker 1: very interesting to you that you could do that. Um,
6:05
Speaker 1: You know, but I don't necessarily mean, although now during
6:07
Speaker 1: the pandemic, it's different. I didn't necessarily mean lying on
6:10
Speaker 1: the floor, staring at the ceiling.
6:11
Speaker 4: Right.
6:12
Speaker 1: But it's sort of tongue in cheek, right? It's like
6:15
Speaker 1: nothing is supposed to mean nothing from the point of
6:18
Speaker 1: view of a very sort of capitalist, cut and dried,
6:22
Speaker 1: you know, objective way of thinking, like producing X and
6:26
Speaker 1: Y results. Kind of to go back to the garden, right?
6:30
Speaker 1: the maintenance of that garden from the point of view
6:33
Speaker 1: of producing something looks like nothing. There's so much work
6:36
Speaker 1: that I've learned from being there. There's so much work
6:38
Speaker 1: that goes into roses all through the year. You have
6:41
Speaker 1: to do all this stuff, even in the winter when
6:43
Speaker 1: there's like nothing, it doesn't look like there's anything going on. Um,
6:46
Speaker 1: and so there's all this stuff that falls into that category,
6:48
Speaker 1: like care, you know, caregiving, um, maintenance, I kind of,
6:54
Speaker 1: I have a fraught relationship with the phrase self-care, but
6:56
Speaker 1: you could put self-care in there as well.
6:58
Speaker 2: Right.
6:59
Speaker 1: Um, so really nothing just means. Things that don't sort
7:05
Speaker 1: of appear in the value system that we typically have
7:08
Speaker 1: when we talk about productivity or, you know, like producing value.
7:12
Speaker 2: Well, it also seems like it's defined in opposition to
7:17
Speaker 2: sort of the habits that the attention economy. uh, has
7:22
Speaker 2: sort of incubated in all of us. Um, which is,
7:26
Speaker 2: I know the subtitle of your book is resisting the
7:28
Speaker 2: attention economy.
7:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely.
7:31
Speaker 1: I mean, I think in the context of the attention economy,
7:34
Speaker 1: it's so reactive, right? It's like, do you like this
7:37
Speaker 1: or do you not like this? Do you hate this
7:39
Speaker 1: or do you not hate this? And then there's like
7:41
Speaker 1: this other option of like, what if I just wasn't there? Like,
7:45
Speaker 1: what if I, What if I just walked away from
7:48
Speaker 1: this question? Or what if I thought about it some
7:50
Speaker 1: more and put it in some historical context or something?
7:52
Speaker 1: And what if I talked to a friend about it?
7:54
Speaker 1: Do I really need to be in this state of
7:56
Speaker 1: constant reaction? Which I think is what I was feeling
7:59
Speaker 1: around the election was like, I had gone so deep
8:03
Speaker 1: in the sort of the rabbit's fur, right? That I
8:05
Speaker 1: couldn't get any perspective on myself. Like, I honestly think
8:10
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting exercise even now to like, when
8:12
Speaker 1: you're in that state, Just like pretend you're a fly
8:16
Speaker 1: on the wall and look at yourself. You're like probably
8:18
Speaker 1: in a little ball, you know, and your face is
8:20
Speaker 1: really strained.
8:21
Speaker 2: I think about this all the time. Sometimes I catch
8:23
Speaker 2: myself because when I'm like really into Twitter or I'm
8:28
Speaker 2: reading the news and like hours pass, I think like
8:32
Speaker 2: if I was looking at myself right now, I would
8:34
Speaker 2: just see someone. staring at a screen, scrolling, and my
8:38
Speaker 2: jaw would constantly be clenched. I do that a lot too,
8:42
Speaker 2: especially when I'm like stressed out. And I would look
8:44
Speaker 2: like a crazy person. Like it's not, so it's like,
8:49
Speaker 2: why do I do that to myself? I mean, what
8:51
Speaker 2: were your, so much of this is about social media
8:54
Speaker 2: and the internet, which is what our show is about.
8:57
Speaker 2: Like what were your social media habits like when you
8:59
Speaker 2: first started thinking about why you should try to change them?
9:05
Speaker 1: They were, so they were pretty bad by my current standards.
9:10
Speaker 1: I will say in my defense that I taught digital
9:14
Speaker 1: art at Stanford. So I had to be kind of
9:18
Speaker 1: aware of things that were happening. And a lot of,
9:21
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of my friends were making new
9:23
Speaker 1: media work. So we're kind of like in that world.
9:26
Speaker 1: But I definitely, you know, it would be really interesting
9:29
Speaker 1: to go back and look at like journals from that time.
9:32
Speaker 1: Cause I actually have no idea. I, I have no
9:35
Speaker 1: idea like what my screen time was at the time. Um,
9:39
Speaker 1: but I definitely was feeling like, it's like, I'm sure
9:43
Speaker 1: many people know this feeling. It almost feels like you're sick, right?
9:45
Speaker 1: Like you're just like, your heart rate is kind of
9:49
Speaker 1: weird or you're like, you feel too hot or, um.
9:53
Speaker 3: You just like, it's just bad. It's bad. You feel
9:55
Speaker 3: really bad.
9:56
Speaker 1: And it got bad enough that I think I was
9:59
Speaker 1: trying to feel my way out of that. Like it
10:01
Speaker 1: finally reached a point and everyone has their point, I think.
10:06
Speaker 1: Even if you come back later, but there is a
10:07
Speaker 1: point where you're like, this feels so intuitively bad that
10:11
Speaker 1: I need to change something.
10:13
Speaker 2: It's a little too like either if you've ever eaten
10:16
Speaker 2: too much in a setting or drank too much. Like
10:20
Speaker 2: it feels like you, it feels fine while you're doing it.
10:23
Speaker 2: But like the second you stop, you just start feeling bad.
10:28
Speaker 2: You know, it's like, there's a hangover effect to using
10:30
Speaker 2: social media that even as you keep scrolling and scrolling
10:34
Speaker 2: and scrolling, it's just like at some point you don't
10:36
Speaker 2: feel very fulfilled as you just keep trying to scroll
10:39
Speaker 2: more and more and more information. It's like too much. Yeah.
10:43
Speaker 4: Yeah.
10:44
Speaker 1: I mean, this is sort of a weird comparison, but, um, I,
10:49
Speaker 1: during the pandemic, I played this video game called Stardew Valley.
10:52
Speaker 3: It's very popular. I don't know if you've ever seen it.
10:54
Speaker 2: I'm not a big video game person, but yeah. Okay.
10:57
Speaker 1: So it's a, you know, you're like living on a
10:59
Speaker 1: farm and you have your little farm or whatever, but
11:01
Speaker 1: the days in the game are seven minutes long, which
11:03
Speaker 1: means that you always think you have time for another day.
11:07
Speaker 3: Seven minutes, right? It's not that long.
11:09
Speaker 1: And the game only saves at the end of a day.
11:13
Speaker 1: So if you start a day, you have to finish
11:15
Speaker 1: it because otherwise you're going to lose everything that you did.
11:17
Speaker 2: Right.
11:18
Speaker 3: And when I started playing it, my boyfriend.
11:20
Speaker 1: Was like, you got to watch out. Those days are
11:22
Speaker 1: going to get you. And I had no idea what
11:24
Speaker 1: he was talking about. And now I do, or I'm like,
11:26
Speaker 1: oh my God, you just always fall into the next one.
11:29
Speaker 1: And then what was interesting to me was that it's
11:30
Speaker 1: exactly physically, it's the same feeling that I remember from before. Like, oh,
11:35
Speaker 1: this is just the same thing, but like devoid of
11:38
Speaker 1: like maybe like some forms of like terror. But in
11:41
Speaker 1: terms of like how it actually just like feels in
11:44
Speaker 1: my head and like in my body, it kind of
11:46
Speaker 1: really reminded me of that. And I was like, oh,
11:47
Speaker 1: this really is just like the hamster wheel, like dopamine thing.
11:50
Speaker 3: Like here I am.
11:51
Speaker 2: It's the same. I'm trying to figure out when it
11:53
Speaker 2: all changed because just before this interview, I was thinking
11:56
Speaker 2: about when the iPhone first came out, one of my
11:59
Speaker 2: close friends got it first and I was asking him
12:01
Speaker 2: about it. And it was like, what's the big deal
12:04
Speaker 2: with this thing is, you know, different than a typical
12:06
Speaker 2: cell phone, you know? And he said, we will never
12:10
Speaker 2: be bored again. He goes, that's how I can explain
12:13
Speaker 2: the iPhone. He's like, now that you have an internet
12:15
Speaker 2: in your pocket, whether you're standing in line, whether you're
12:17
Speaker 2: waiting around, whether you're by yourself, there will always be
12:20
Speaker 2: something to do. And at the time I don't like
12:24
Speaker 2: being bored. No one likes being bored. And so I
12:27
Speaker 2: thought this is perfect. What a wonderful invention that I'm
12:30
Speaker 2: never going to be bored again. And now it's like
12:32
Speaker 2: a careful what you wish for kind of thing. Because now, like,
12:37
Speaker 2: what do you think the difference is between doing nothing
12:40
Speaker 2: and being bored, which has more of a negative connotation?
12:45
Speaker 1: Well, actually, it's funny you should say about being bored.
12:48
Speaker 1: I guess maybe this is like one way of illustrating it.
12:51
Speaker 1: I was recently given something that I would describe as
12:54
Speaker 1: something where you're never bored. And it's a jeweler's loop.
12:58
Speaker 1: I don't know if you've ever seen a jeweler's loop.
12:59
Speaker 1: It's like a little, I wish I had it so
13:01
Speaker 1: I could show you, but it's a little, um, 10
13:04
Speaker 1: X lens that folds out and people use it to
13:06
Speaker 1: look at moss. It's like one of the common uses
13:08
Speaker 1: for it. So a friend of mine who had one
13:11
Speaker 1: and was like raving about it and saw how much
13:14
Speaker 1: I liked using his, he got me one for Christmas and.
13:19
Speaker 1: You're just going to have to take my word for
13:20
Speaker 1: it or find somebody who has a loop because you
13:22
Speaker 1: could look at anything. Like you could look at like
13:25
Speaker 1: this tissue or I don't know, like anything like, you know, moss, obviously,
13:28
Speaker 1: but also like rocks or your blinds. It is just
13:32
Speaker 1: endlessly fascinating. Like it's not going to be what you think.
13:35
Speaker 1: And it has this sort of element of surprise that
13:38
Speaker 1: I think we're all very addicted to, right? Which is like,
13:41
Speaker 1: you have to get really close to something with the loop.
13:44
Speaker 1: And then all of a sudden it like pops into focus.
13:47
Speaker 1: And it's like this plant that you thought was smooth.
13:49
Speaker 1: It's like really hairy or something, you know? And I
13:51
Speaker 1: remember when he gave it to me, I was like,
13:52
Speaker 1: I'll never be bored again. I'm like, it's exactly what
13:55
Speaker 1: you're describing. But I think the difference is, I mean,
13:59
Speaker 1: there's a lot of differences. Like one is it fills
14:01
Speaker 1: me with like wonder instead of dread.
14:04
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:04
Speaker 1: And another really big difference is it's, I'm looking at
14:07
Speaker 1: something that's actually in front of me. not something that is,
14:13
Speaker 1: you know, being said by a stranger far away out
14:16
Speaker 1: of context, right? Like one is hyper contextualized. It's in
14:19
Speaker 1: front of your body, like in your eyes. And the
14:21
Speaker 1: other one is really not.
14:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.
14:23
Speaker 1: And I think that those like lead in two very
14:25
Speaker 1: different directions.
14:26
Speaker 2: Well, that brings up, you know, you argue that the
14:30
Speaker 2: internet and the idea of social media aren't inherently bad.
14:35
Speaker 2: What do you think is bad about them or what
14:37
Speaker 2: has become bad about them?
14:41
Speaker 1: I mean, there's obviously, I mean, I think like the
14:44
Speaker 1: biggest thing is the whole sort of business model of
14:47
Speaker 1: social media runs on constant maximum engagement, which already is
14:52
Speaker 1: a problem.
14:53
Speaker 3: Um, and then.
14:56
Speaker 1: Both, I think in terms of the ways these platforms
15:00
Speaker 1: are structured, but also just kind of unspoken rules that
15:02
Speaker 1: people kind of learn about what gets engagement. tend to
15:06
Speaker 1: favor certain types of expression, um, like outrage. Um, there's
15:11
Speaker 1: a lot of like, I find like mic drop kind
15:13
Speaker 1: of statements, you know, it's not really inviting dialogue. Um,
15:17
Speaker 1: it's like every statement has to be a mic drop.
15:19
Speaker 2: Yeah. Um, and, and so it just, a lot of,
15:23
Speaker 2: a lot of louder for the people in the back
15:24
Speaker 2: kind of stuff. Yeah.
15:26
Speaker 1: And I, and I'm like, I'm, I'm so sick of that.
15:30
Speaker 1: It was making me hate myself because it was like,
15:33
Speaker 1: I think that's what I realized like, you know, in
15:36
Speaker 1: changing my habits was like, you're going to feel the
15:39
Speaker 1: way that people treat you, right? Like you hang out
15:42
Speaker 1: with friends who treat you the way that you want
15:45
Speaker 1: to be seen. So if you're spending all your time
15:47
Speaker 1: reading statements that, no, they're not personally addressed to you, but.
15:50
Speaker 3: You're reading them that way.
15:51
Speaker 4: Right.
15:51
Speaker 1: And they're all talking down to you. And they're all like,
15:54
Speaker 1: you know, written in this kind of like sanctimonious shaming tone.
15:57
Speaker 1: Like you're going to develop so much shame. That's what
16:00
Speaker 1: happened to me. I mean, there's so many, you know,
16:03
Speaker 1: problems with it, but that's, I think that's a really
16:05
Speaker 1: big one. And unfortunately, I think that just kind of
16:07
Speaker 1: emerges from like the structure of the, the implicit goal
16:12
Speaker 1: of this game is to get the most engagement.
16:14
Speaker 2: Right.
16:14
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, of course you could go on there and
16:16
Speaker 1: not do that, but that would be, I don't know,
16:19
Speaker 1: that'd be like going to a soccer field and like
16:22
Speaker 1: not trying to get the ball in the goal.
16:23
Speaker 3: Like you're just kicking the ball around or something.
16:26
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the many places in the book
16:28
Speaker 2: where I found myself nodding furiously was was where you
16:32
Speaker 2: compare social media-driven news cycles to the sleep deprivation tactics
16:37
Speaker 2: that the military uses on detainees. And you write that, quote,
16:50
Speaker 2: whipped into a permanent state of frenzy, people create and
16:52
Speaker 2: subject themselves to new cycles, complaining of anxiety at the
16:56
Speaker 2: same time that they check back ever more diligently. Why
16:59
Speaker 2: do you think, what is it about us that keeps
17:02
Speaker 2: checking back in, even though it makes us more anxious?
17:06
Speaker 1: You know, I think I have an even worse opinion
17:09
Speaker 1: of this than I did when I wrote the book.
17:11
Speaker 1: I think I thought it was like, well, no, I
17:14
Speaker 1: still do think it's like an emotional thing of wanting
17:18
Speaker 1: to wanting to know what's going on and then wanting
17:21
Speaker 1: to be seen and heard.
17:22
Speaker 2: Right.
17:22
Speaker 1: Like wanting to be connected to other people, especially when
17:24
Speaker 1: something dangerous is going on.
17:26
Speaker 4: Right.
17:27
Speaker 3: That's a natural thing.
17:28
Speaker 2: Right.
17:28
Speaker 1: But I, but I've sort of come recently more to
17:31
Speaker 1: think that it's like, like I said, it's just the
17:33
Speaker 1: sort of like hamster wheel, like dopamine thing. Like it
17:36
Speaker 1: just turns out that like, we love checking things.
17:40
Speaker 2: Yeah.
17:40
Speaker 1: Like it could really be that simple. It's just that, um,
17:45
Speaker 1: that's just something that our brains like to do. It's
17:48
Speaker 1: like a loop that you get into.
17:49
Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's like, it's sort of like this addiction
17:52
Speaker 2: to new information all the time. Like, has anything changed?
17:57
Speaker 2: Is anything new? Is there an update? Which I don't
18:00
Speaker 2: know why I thought about this a lot. Like, why
18:02
Speaker 2: do I always need some kind of new piece of
18:05
Speaker 2: information to keep going? Why can't I just be like,
18:08
Speaker 2: happy with what is right now?
18:11
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and sometimes I wonder if that's not even
18:14
Speaker 1: necessarily a problem. Like, okay, this could, you know, this
18:16
Speaker 1: is just me, but I am obviously a nature enthusiast, right?
18:19
Speaker 1: Like I write about that in the book. I think,
18:22
Speaker 1: you know, people might think of being outdoors.
18:24
Speaker 3: It's like very peaceful. It's neutral.
18:28
Speaker 1: Like it's quiet, like nothing's going on. It's not like
18:30
Speaker 1: that to me. It is an absolute riot. Um, it's like,
18:35
Speaker 1: you know, and even more if you have this loop thing, right.
18:38
Speaker 3: But even without the loop, um, Or binoculars or whatever.
18:42
Speaker 1: I think, and I think that's what I was trying
18:46
Speaker 1: to get at in the book was like that you
18:48
Speaker 1: can train your attention to be able to look for
18:52
Speaker 1: these things. kinds of changes and I don't want to
18:58
Speaker 1: call them updates, but there are, you know, I'm looking
19:00
Speaker 1: at my window right now. This update is like a
19:02
Speaker 1: guy just walked up the street, you know? So like,
19:05
Speaker 1: maybe there's nothing wrong. I was just thinking this, you know,
19:07
Speaker 1: last week I was in the mountains and I was like,
19:09
Speaker 1: maybe this is like the one place where I'm never
19:11
Speaker 1: bored is actually here.
19:13
Speaker 2: Was it always like that for you? Or you talked
19:15
Speaker 2: about sort of training your attention to focus on, on
19:19
Speaker 2: those kinds of changes? Or was this just, were you
19:21
Speaker 2: always just a nature enthusiast and this came natural to you?
19:25
Speaker 1: I think I don't know necessarily about the nature context.
19:32
Speaker 1: I think I sort of I'm familiar with that from
19:34
Speaker 1: childhood and I came back to it. But I think
19:37
Speaker 1: what I always had was I've always been very curious.
19:41
Speaker 1: And that's just sort of an orientation that, you know,
19:44
Speaker 1: no matter what you sort of direct that you're going
19:46
Speaker 1: to be looking closely and waiting for things to change
19:49
Speaker 1: and seeing that things are changing. And so I actually,
19:52
Speaker 1: you know, it's like you hear people say, oh, people
19:55
Speaker 1: need to learn how to be bored. Again, and I
19:58
Speaker 1: don't know that I agree. I think it's more just
20:01
Speaker 1: like you should embrace your desire to learn new things
20:05
Speaker 1: and perceive new things. And maybe the problem isn't that.
20:08
Speaker 1: The problem is the context in which you're applying it
20:11
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's being exploited by a social
20:13
Speaker 1: media platform. But in itself, I think that's like a
20:16
Speaker 1: lovely thing. It means you're like alive and you're paying
20:19
Speaker 1: attention to things.
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24:22
Speaker 2: I'm interested in your distinction between connectivity and sensitivity. Can
24:28
Speaker 2: you talk about that a little bit?
24:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that, I should say, is not my distinction.
24:33
Speaker 1: It's a theorist, Franco Bifo Berardi, made this distinction in
24:38
Speaker 1: a book called After the Future. The way he summarizes
24:41
Speaker 1: that is basically connectivity, you could almost think of it
24:46
Speaker 1: as like ports in a computer, right? Like it's either
24:50
Speaker 1: compatible or it's not. And if it is compatible, the
24:53
Speaker 1: information goes through. So with people, that would be like,
24:57
Speaker 1: you know, you and I have the same preferences on paper. We're,
25:01
Speaker 1: you know, we, we sort of checked all the same boxes.
25:03
Speaker 1: So when I recommend something to you, it's not even
25:06
Speaker 1: really like you just sort of accept it. And I
25:09
Speaker 1: didn't change in the transmission of that information and you
25:11
Speaker 1: didn't change. Um, so that's pretty cut and dried and the,
25:15
Speaker 1: and it happens quickly. That can happen really quickly. Um,
25:18
Speaker 1: sensitivity is more like you have these two kind of
25:21
Speaker 1: like oddly shaped, maybe incompatible, um, people, bodies, whatever you
25:28
Speaker 1: want to call it, um, entities, um, And they are communicating,
25:32
Speaker 1: but it's much more of a process. They both might
25:37
Speaker 1: change in that interaction and the information might change in
25:40
Speaker 1: the interaction. So a really easy example would be if
25:44
Speaker 1: you have a long conversation with a friend or someone
25:48
Speaker 1: you know who you respect, but you don't agree on something.
25:51
Speaker 1: And it might be really fundamental. So the example that
25:54
Speaker 1: I give in the book is someone who is Catholic. Um, and,
25:58
Speaker 1: and then I'm basically, I don't know what I am anymore,
26:00
Speaker 1: but at the time I described myself as an atheist. Right.
26:03
Speaker 1: And that's how, that's kind of how she saw me.
26:05
Speaker 1: And we would have these long evening conversations. It was
26:09
Speaker 1: at a residency about science and, um, and religion and
26:14
Speaker 1: like the meaning of life, you know, and we didn't,
26:17
Speaker 1: we didn't come to what we would call like an agreement, um,
26:20
Speaker 1: but we did have an exchange and we were both
26:23
Speaker 1: changed by it. And my mind was changed and her
26:25
Speaker 1: mind was changed. So that would be an example of sensitivity,
26:28
Speaker 1: obviously not favored by social media.
26:32
Speaker 2: The understatement of the century. When I got to that
26:35
Speaker 2: part of the book, that's when I was like, you know,
26:37
Speaker 2: sort of furiously highlighting because I'm interested in a lot
26:40
Speaker 2: of how this connects up to politics and democracy. And
26:44
Speaker 2: I think like there is no sensitivity on social media.
26:49
Speaker 2: Like it's just not built for those conversations. But I
26:51
Speaker 2: think sometimes there's the illusion of that, right? Because we're
26:55
Speaker 2: all connected to each other via social media. And so
26:57
Speaker 2: we're having these conversations, but you don't really get to
27:00
Speaker 2: have conversations with sort of the nuance or the context
27:04
Speaker 2: where you're allowed to disagree or you're allowed to change
27:07
Speaker 2: people's minds. You try to change people's minds like that
27:10
Speaker 2: sort of all disappears. And I kind of wonder what
27:14
Speaker 2: that does to all of us.
27:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, it can't be good.
27:17
Speaker 1: I mean, I suspect that people approach social media with
27:24
Speaker 1: a lot of fear about how they look because that's
27:30
Speaker 1: what social media is all about. And there's so much
27:33
Speaker 1: about likes and upvotes and downvotes. It's so numerical, right?
27:38
Speaker 1: It's like a score and you want your score to
27:39
Speaker 1: be good. And it's almost like a credit score or something.
27:42
Speaker 1: And so I think people are already kind of Approaching
27:47
Speaker 1: these topics and spaces with like a lot of fear
27:51
Speaker 1: and a lot of defensiveness. And I'm just so struck
27:56
Speaker 1: by the difference between the way like a disagreement might
28:00
Speaker 1: play out in social media versus like the times that
28:05
Speaker 1: I've had close friends or like just someone I know.
28:08
Speaker 1: say something to me that only maybe even like years later,
28:12
Speaker 1: I realized that was like a very deep critique of
28:14
Speaker 1: something about what I thought. Like it's really like, it's
28:18
Speaker 1: not a sort of surface level thing, right? It's like,
28:20
Speaker 1: I think you're wrong about something. And I think, you know,
28:24
Speaker 1: I think your politics are wrong. But when I go
28:29
Speaker 1: kind of remember that moment, that's not how it felt.
28:32
Speaker 1: It felt like a conversation. Like it felt like a
28:34
Speaker 1: respectful conversation where I learned something And it's like only
28:39
Speaker 1: later do I realize like, oh, actually they were, that
28:41
Speaker 1: was actually someone like seriously disagreeing with me.
28:45
Speaker 2: Well, and it is like incredibly rare to find that
28:48
Speaker 2: these days. And I know that because, you know, like
28:51
Speaker 2: I had done some episode the other couple weeks ago and.
28:54
Speaker 2: you know, the negative comments were like five words in
28:57
Speaker 2: a tweet that I just sort of, I brushed off
29:00
Speaker 2: at this point or I didn't pay attention to. And
29:02
Speaker 2: then you remember like someone did like a, you know,
29:05
Speaker 2: seven part tweet thread was like, hey, I went into
29:08
Speaker 2: this conversation open-minded, but I didn't like this and I
29:10
Speaker 2: disagreed with this. And I sort of like took that
29:12
Speaker 2: critique to heart, right? And I thought, I understand that
29:15
Speaker 2: and I want to learn from that. And that's interesting
29:17
Speaker 2: that the person pointed that out. And it's just so
29:19
Speaker 2: much more effective than someone saying like, I saw that
29:24
Speaker 2: you did that. Do better. And then that's it. Yeah.
29:27
Speaker 4: What are you.
29:28
Speaker 2: Supposed to do with that? What am I supposed to
29:29
Speaker 2: do with that? That's not persuading me. Yeah.
29:32
Speaker 1: And I honestly, I think that's part of the mic
29:35
Speaker 1: drop effect, right? It's like it's like you almost don't
29:38
Speaker 1: think about how the person continues to exist after you
29:41
Speaker 1: said something. Right.
29:42
Speaker 2: Yeah.
29:42
Speaker 1: It's like, I'm just going to leave this here and
29:44
Speaker 1: walk away. That's like, that's what everything is, right? It's like, no, well,
29:47
Speaker 1: I'm still here and I need help understanding this.
29:51
Speaker 2: Like, right. Do you want? Yeah. I first learned about
29:53
Speaker 2: your book because it was on Barack Obama's book list.
29:57
Speaker 2: You know, my former boss. And I was like, I
29:59
Speaker 2: was wondering why he was so into this book. And
30:02
Speaker 2: then when I got to this line in the book,
30:04
Speaker 2: what if we spent less time shouting into the void
30:06
Speaker 2: and being washed over with shouting in return and more
30:08
Speaker 2: time talking in rooms to those for whom our words
30:10
Speaker 2: are intended? I was like, that's why Barack Obama really.
30:15
Speaker 2: But I do think it's sort of the way that
30:18
Speaker 2: social media operates really is just a lot of people
30:21
Speaker 2: shouting past each other all the time. And there's just
30:24
Speaker 2: not a lot of sort of one on one conversation.
30:27
Speaker 2: But that's the way we are most of the time.
30:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I get that frustrates me because I think
30:35
Speaker 1: if you look at it from a kind of like crass,
30:37
Speaker 1: like numbers point of view, right?
30:39
Speaker 2: It's like.
30:40
Speaker 1: If you make a statement and it gets, you know,
30:43
Speaker 1: thousands of whatever, retweets or likes or whatever, like that
30:48
Speaker 1: is a measure of something, right?
30:51
Speaker 4: Right.
30:51
Speaker 3: That's not nothing.
30:52
Speaker 1: But then I think about things like, you know, if someone...
30:57
Speaker 1: This is a really like overdetermined example, but like if
30:59
Speaker 1: someone wrote, made a zine, right.
31:01
Speaker 2: Yeah.
31:02
Speaker 1: And they only mailed it to 20 people, but those
31:06
Speaker 1: were the 20 right people. Like, and those are 20
31:09
Speaker 1: people who are going to like sit down and spend
31:11
Speaker 1: time with this and talk to other people about it. Yeah.
31:14
Speaker 1: Maybe write something in response and then they respond and
31:17
Speaker 1: then you get somewhere, right.
31:19
Speaker 3: There's traction. I don't know.
31:20
Speaker 1: Like that's a different way of measuring, I guess, like impact. Like,
31:24
Speaker 1: I don't even know what to call it, but. Like,
31:27
Speaker 1: that's also something that feels like substantive to me. And
31:30
Speaker 1: I'm kind of more and more interested in that and
31:34
Speaker 1: bored with the other thing.
31:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, it's intentional and it's designed to try to
31:39
Speaker 2: persuade people to make people think or act differently, which
31:41
Speaker 2: I think is sort of the basis for, you know,
31:43
Speaker 2: a democratic society. I mean, we've been talking a lot
31:46
Speaker 2: about sort of the effects of social media and overconnection
31:49
Speaker 2: on individuals. right? It can make you anxious. It can
31:53
Speaker 2: make you feel bad. It can make you distracted. But
31:56
Speaker 2: you point out that a social body that can't concentrate
31:59
Speaker 2: or communicate with itself is like a person who can't
32:02
Speaker 2: think or act. And I have been thinking about this
32:04
Speaker 2: a lot more is like, what does it mean for
32:07
Speaker 2: the country as a whole if we're just all so
32:10
Speaker 2: distracted all the time? And what does that mean for
32:14
Speaker 2: social movements? What does it mean for labor movements? What
32:17
Speaker 2: does it mean, you know, like for civil rights movements?
32:20
Speaker 2: Because I think as you point out in the book too,
32:24
Speaker 2: that sort of collective action requires discipline and organization and, and,
32:31
Speaker 2: and a lot of attention. And I wonder if we're
32:33
Speaker 2: sort of losing that capacity. Yeah.
32:37
Speaker 3: I mean, it's, it's hard to say.
32:38
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't know, but I, I mean, I
32:41
Speaker 1: was just reading an article actually a couple hours ago where, um,
32:46
Speaker 1: you know, it was basically organizers talking about this and
32:49
Speaker 1: saying that, you know, like they were comparing it to
32:51
Speaker 1: going door to door. And having conversations with people and
32:55
Speaker 1: finding out that, you know, if you actually tell someone
32:59
Speaker 1: what something is beyond a slogan, they'll oftentimes maybe not
33:03
Speaker 1: agree with you, but it'll be something other than the like, no,
33:08
Speaker 1: like door in your face. Right.
33:11
Speaker 3: And it's, and.
33:13
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, definitely like the capacity to listen
33:18
Speaker 1: and is, is probably getting eroded. I mean, I talk
33:21
Speaker 1: about deep listening in the book, which is Pauline Oliveros'
33:25
Speaker 1: term from music, but deep listening requires like a stance
33:31
Speaker 1: basically that is, would, you know, be described as almost
33:34
Speaker 1: like passive or nonjudgmental or whatever, but it's basically like a, like,
33:39
Speaker 1: let me actually like hear this thing first.
33:41
Speaker 4: Yeah.
33:42
Speaker 1: Before I jump into like analyzing and all of that.
33:46
Speaker 1: Not to say everything needs to be listened to, but
33:48
Speaker 1: just that, you know, that there's, if you want to
33:50
Speaker 1: have an encounter that involves like that sensitivity and the
33:54
Speaker 1: exchange that requires you not to do the mic drop, basically.
34:00
Speaker 2: So you wrote this book a year or so before
34:03
Speaker 2: the pandemic. And I've seen some people say that it was,
34:05
Speaker 2: you know, well-timed to a period where doing nothing was
34:09
Speaker 2: forced on many of us. But I actually found that
34:13
Speaker 2: being stuck at home during the pandemic made doing nothing
34:17
Speaker 2: in the way you define it even harder. It's like
34:19
Speaker 2: I was glued to my screens and social media and
34:23
Speaker 2: it made like even a news addict like me feel
34:26
Speaker 2: even worse than usual. What was your experience like during
34:31
Speaker 2: the pandemic? What has your experience been like since I
34:33
Speaker 2: guess unfortunately we're still in it?
34:35
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's well, I feel like summer of 2020 I
34:41
Speaker 1: kind of started approaching a point that was reminding me
34:44
Speaker 1: of the moment that had spurred How to Do Nothing,
34:47
Speaker 1: where I was like, oh, this feels familiar, you know?
34:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was a rough summer. That was like the
34:54
Speaker 2: protests plus the wildfires in California plus the pandemic. It
34:58
Speaker 2: was just everything.
35:00
Speaker 1: I couldn't walk because the air was too bad. And
35:03
Speaker 1: it was just, yeah, I was feeling very sort of
35:06
Speaker 1: trapped in that. And so I had sort of like.
35:10
Speaker 1: Moment number two of, I can't do this. And, uh,
35:16
Speaker 1: ever since then, you know, I, I'm on social media.
35:21
Speaker 1: I will like check for messages. Um, and you know,
35:25
Speaker 1: I'll kind of, yeah, I'll dip in once in a
35:28
Speaker 1: while because there are important things like the fact that, um,
35:32
Speaker 1: people who read my book often connect me to other
35:34
Speaker 1: things that I would like to read that, you know,
35:36
Speaker 1: it's like, I find out about this other stuff that's
35:39
Speaker 1: in conversation with what I'm doing. And that's really important
35:42
Speaker 1: to me. Um, however, I religiously avoid feeds of all kinds,
35:47
Speaker 1: all kinds. Like I will not look at the Twitter feed.
35:49
Speaker 1: I will not look at Twitter moments.
35:51
Speaker 2: Wow.
35:51
Speaker 1: I will not look at the Instagram feed. Um, I
35:54
Speaker 1: can't look at my Facebook feed because I have something
35:56
Speaker 1: called Facebook newsfeed.
35:57
Speaker 3: Eradicator, which I highly recommend.
36:00
Speaker 2: Yeah. That's if I went on Facebook, I would use that. Yeah.
36:04
Speaker 1: Um, I, I, I barely look at Facebook anymore because
36:07
Speaker 1: that's turns out if you don't have a newsfeed, then
36:10
Speaker 1: there's no reason to be on it for more than
36:11
Speaker 1: two minutes. So yeah, so that's, I kind of had,
36:14
Speaker 1: I had almost like a second moment of reckoning.
36:19
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear your thoughts on like what you
36:21
Speaker 2: think we can all do to resist the attention economy,
36:24
Speaker 2: both as individuals and as a society. I mean, I
36:26
Speaker 2: think it's important to point out that you don't believe
36:29
Speaker 2: we should all just stop using social media. You know,
36:32
Speaker 2: you point out that you're less interested in a mass
36:34
Speaker 2: exodus from Facebook and Twitter than a mass movement of
36:37
Speaker 2: people regaining control of our attention and redirecting it together.
36:41
Speaker 2: Can you talk about what that means and what it
36:43
Speaker 2: might look like?
36:44
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's maybe helpful to think of it
36:47
Speaker 1: in terms of, like, feedback loops.
36:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
36:51
Speaker 1: There's a bad feedback loop, and then I like to
36:54
Speaker 1: think there's a good feedback loop. The bad one is
36:56
Speaker 1: the one that is sort of like being exploited right now,
36:59
Speaker 1: which is there's a lot to be upset about and scared.
37:05
Speaker 1: Just like deeply frightened, right? Like there's so many sources
37:08
Speaker 1: of dread. And we're also, you know, a lot of
37:10
Speaker 1: people are still pretty isolated, you know. They're more isolated
37:13
Speaker 1: than they would be. So you go to social media
37:16
Speaker 1: because you want to feel some connection and you want
37:18
Speaker 1: to feel, maybe you want to feel validated. You want
37:20
Speaker 1: to feel seen and recognized. You go there, you don't
37:23
Speaker 1: get that. You get something else. The something else that
37:26
Speaker 1: you get makes you feel more lonely and disconnected and
37:29
Speaker 1: have more anxiety.
37:30
Speaker 3: So you go back.
37:31
Speaker 1: And I mean, I've literally read papers in like travel
37:35
Speaker 1: journals where like tourism people like know about this loop
37:39
Speaker 1: and they name it. And they're like, we need to
37:41
Speaker 1: figure out a way to use, use that to drive
37:43
Speaker 1: ticket sales for like, when people see other people's vacations,
37:47
Speaker 1: like they're going to have low self-esteem. So like, how
37:49
Speaker 1: do we get in there and have there be a
37:51
Speaker 1: button where you can like buy your ticket? Right. Like
37:53
Speaker 1: this is very known. Um, so that's, that's the bad,
37:57
Speaker 1: that's the bad feedback loop. And it sort of self-reinforcing
38:00
Speaker 1: the thing that I feel like I've learned in the
38:03
Speaker 1: last year, especially is that there's like kind of an
38:05
Speaker 1: opposite loop where somewhere in there, you break the cycle.
38:09
Speaker 3: You know, that could be.
38:10
Speaker 4: Anywhere, really.
38:10
Speaker 2: Put the phone down, just cut it off.
38:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
38:13
Speaker 3: Facebook News Feudal Advocate or whatever.
38:14
Speaker 2: Whatever you have.
38:15
Speaker 1: Yeah.
38:16
Speaker 3: Or you get a loop, get the jeweler's loop and
38:19
Speaker 3: go outside and look at a bush.
38:20
Speaker 1: Somewhere you break the cycle and then you get the opposite,
38:23
Speaker 1: which is like you find other sources of meaning and
38:28
Speaker 1: belonging and being seen. And that makes you feel more stable.
38:33
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:33
Speaker 1: And then because you feel more stable, you don't feel
38:35
Speaker 1: the need to go to social media anymore. Because you're
38:38
Speaker 1: not going to social media anymore, you feel more stable, right?
38:42
Speaker 1: Like this is what's kind of been happening to me.
38:44
Speaker 1: Like I have a joke that my social media is,
38:49
Speaker 1: you know, on iMessage, you can pin like people to
38:51
Speaker 1: the top of your iMessage.
38:52
Speaker 2: Yeah.
38:53
Speaker 1: So I have like nine people and they all have
38:55
Speaker 1: different animal photos. And so I was calling it like
38:58
Speaker 1: animal net. And when something goes viral on animal net,
39:01
Speaker 1: it's just me sending it to every single person.
39:04
Speaker 3: Like one at a time.
39:05
Speaker 1: And like, I get news from animal net. Like people
39:09
Speaker 1: tell me about stuff, you know, like in whether it's
39:12
Speaker 1: like something happening to them or the news or something
39:14
Speaker 1: that they saw that was funny. Like, you know, it
39:16
Speaker 1: is a little mini kind of like, and some of
39:18
Speaker 1: them are group chats.
39:19
Speaker 3: So yeah.
39:21
Speaker 1: And I find that I actually get what I wanted,
39:24
Speaker 1: I originally wanted from that and from interactions with just
39:29
Speaker 1: individual people It could be friends, it could be other writers,
39:32
Speaker 1: it could be whoever. either like one-on-one or kind of
39:36
Speaker 1: like small groups. And, you know, a lot of that's
39:39
Speaker 1: been on my phone because it's the pandemic, right? Like,
39:42
Speaker 1: but it's very different than sort of broadcasting or being
39:46
Speaker 1: on a feed. And it's really like, it's amazing. Like
39:50
Speaker 1: I compared to like even a year ago, it's like,
39:53
Speaker 1: I really, I have zero desire to look at the
39:57
Speaker 1: feed of any social media.
39:58
Speaker 3: I just, I actually don't want to.
40:01
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43:00
Speaker 2: slash cricket. Again, that's tryfuture.com slash cricket. I had been
43:10
Speaker 2: thinking even before reading your book that I sort of
43:12
Speaker 2: wanted to redirect more of my attention away from social
43:15
Speaker 2: media and towards real-life interactions with people. I'm an extrovert.
43:19
Speaker 2: I get energy from other people. I hadn't thought about
43:23
Speaker 2: Redirecting my attention toward the place that I live, which
43:28
Speaker 2: you write about a lot. So much of your book
43:30
Speaker 2: is about your connection with nature. What is it about
43:34
Speaker 2: nature that you find important and fulfilling?
43:37
Speaker 1: I think, I mean, maybe the most basic part of
43:42
Speaker 1: it is nature. kind of illustrated by the part where
43:44
Speaker 1: I talk about the crows. Although I realized that crows
43:47
Speaker 1: are getting out of hand in a lot of places.
43:50
Speaker 1: I was just reading or someone, I think three different
43:52
Speaker 1: people on animal net sent me an article about like
43:55
Speaker 1: using like lasers to control crows anyway, because the crows are.
44:00
Speaker 3: Getting out of hand in San Jose.
44:01
Speaker 1: But, um, you know, I have that, that description in
44:04
Speaker 1: the book of like, um, crows, you know, can recognize
44:07
Speaker 1: human faces. So I befriended these crows. The crows are
44:09
Speaker 1: looking at me. I'm looking at the crows. Crows are
44:13
Speaker 1: not human, but they're like regarding me.
44:15
Speaker 3: In some way, right?
44:16
Speaker 1: And it was this reminder that I am also, you know,
44:20
Speaker 1: an earthbound animal who, you know, from their point of view,
44:23
Speaker 1: I sort of emerged from this little box every day
44:25
Speaker 1: and then I go back inside. And so it's a
44:27
Speaker 1: very kind of, it's like almost like moves the center
44:31
Speaker 1: of gravity out away from you. And I was finding
44:36
Speaker 1: that very therapeutic at the time because the other thing
44:39
Speaker 1: that I think social media does is it kind of
44:41
Speaker 1: like hyper stimulates your ego. Like you really get into
44:45
Speaker 1: like the center of your head and it's like very
44:47
Speaker 1: dense in there. And for me, just being reminded that
44:51
Speaker 1: there are these like kind of other societies that are
44:54
Speaker 1: just outside, like I've lived in the same neighborhood for
44:57
Speaker 1: long enough. I know like the bird neighborhoods, like, I
45:01
Speaker 1: know that like the chickadees are always in that one
45:04
Speaker 1: tree or like, I just, I just noticed two weeks ago,
45:07
Speaker 1: there's a sap sucker, which is like a type of
45:09
Speaker 1: woodpecker that makes these little holes in a very dense pattern.
45:15
Speaker 1: It's always in this one tree between 10 AM and noon.
45:19
Speaker 1: And I'm like, there he's at work, you know, I
45:21
Speaker 1: passed this bird and it's very inspiring to me because
45:23
Speaker 1: then I go home and I like do my work.
45:24
Speaker 1: But I think it's just something about being reminded of,
45:32
Speaker 1: a different context for yourself, right? And it's pretty insistently
45:36
Speaker 1: like physical context.
45:37
Speaker 2: I can see why it might be useful because I,
45:39
Speaker 2: you know, I've been trying to go on walks where
45:43
Speaker 2: I like, like don't look at my phone the entire walk.
45:46
Speaker 2: And I don't listen to anything either, right? I don't
45:48
Speaker 2: even listen to a podcast. I just want to walk
45:49
Speaker 2: and look around. But sometimes, at least at the beginning,
45:53
Speaker 2: I noticed that as I'm walking, I'm still thinking about
45:57
Speaker 2: All the things I would think about if I was
45:59
Speaker 2: scrolling through Twitter. Right. So I'm thinking about political issues
46:02
Speaker 2: of the day. I'm thinking about things I have to do.
46:03
Speaker 2: Like your mind's still racing. And I think part, you know,
46:06
Speaker 2: you write about this, too. I think when you're focusing,
46:09
Speaker 2: when you redirect your attention on something else like nature,
46:12
Speaker 2: like birds, like the trees. Right. Then you sort of
46:16
Speaker 2: get out of your own mind and. you don't just
46:18
Speaker 2: leave the scrolling and social media behind you leave sort
46:21
Speaker 2: of all the stuff that comes with it, which is
46:24
Speaker 2: thinking about all that shit constantly, which continues to give
46:27
Speaker 2: you anxiety, even if you're not staring at the screen.
46:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
46:31
Speaker 1: And I think it also has like very concrete lessons,
46:34
Speaker 1: at least that, that I have learned from observing and
46:38
Speaker 1: learning about ecology in particular. You know, one of the
46:41
Speaker 1: things I write about in the book is that in ecology,
46:43
Speaker 1: there are very few hard boundaries and, So like there
46:48
Speaker 1: are bioregions and they have identifiable characteristics, but there's not
46:52
Speaker 1: like you're in Oak Savannah and then all of a
46:54
Speaker 1: sudden you cross a line and you're in a redwood forest, right?
46:57
Speaker 3: Like it just doesn't work that way.
46:59
Speaker 1: You also find out that like everything is affecting everything
47:01
Speaker 1: else all the time. And like, for me, that was
47:04
Speaker 1: meaningful because I'm biracial and I like really resonated with
47:07
Speaker 1: that idea that you could have something be multiple with
47:11
Speaker 1: like identifiable parts, but they're not so easily pinpointed. And
47:16
Speaker 1: I think actually it's really, it's interesting to bounce back
47:19
Speaker 1: and forth between contexts. Like if you take those lessons
47:23
Speaker 1: and then you come back to something, you know, like
47:27
Speaker 1: a political situation, right? Maybe you look at it differently.
47:30
Speaker 1: Like you see, for me, it becomes easier to see
47:33
Speaker 1: things like, oh, this is a knot of strands, one
47:36
Speaker 1: of which started in like the 1800s or something, right?
47:39
Speaker 1: Like something that's a little bit more complex than like
47:42
Speaker 1: the Twitter moments of the day. Like it just allows
47:45
Speaker 1: you to like zoom out or sort of like change
47:49
Speaker 1: your focus a little bit and like appreciate and like
47:53
Speaker 1: sit with complexity because I think that's everywhere.
47:56
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the first things I did after
47:58
Speaker 2: I finished your book is I started looking up books
48:02
Speaker 2: about the history of Los Angeles, which is where I live.
48:05
Speaker 2: And like I moved here in 2014 and I always
48:08
Speaker 2: think to myself, oh, I just moved to LA and
48:10
Speaker 2: I've been here eight years now, seven, eight years now.
48:13
Speaker 2: And because I live such a hyper-connected life and I'm
48:17
Speaker 2: working so much and I'm online so much, I was like,
48:20
Speaker 2: I finished your book. I'm like, I don't even know
48:22
Speaker 2: that much about the place that I live, like the
48:25
Speaker 2: history of the place that I live, you know? And
48:27
Speaker 2: I wonder like the more that we're online and you
48:31
Speaker 2: can be sort of online anywhere. And the internet is
48:34
Speaker 2: just this big global space that has like a lot
48:36
Speaker 2: of nothingness around it. You do sort of forget that
48:40
Speaker 2: like you live in a physical place with history and
48:43
Speaker 2: tradition and culture and nature and all that kind of stuff.
48:46
Speaker 2: Like it's wild. Yeah.
48:48
Speaker 1: Although I should point out that, you know, similar to
48:51
Speaker 1: the fact that, you know, I say that social media,
48:53
Speaker 1: just as, as the idea of like a network of
48:56
Speaker 1: people who are in communication is not necessarily a bad
48:59
Speaker 1: thing in and of itself. I think similarly, you know,
49:02
Speaker 1: let's say like, let's say you move to a new
49:04
Speaker 1: place and you want to learn more about it. Like
49:07
Speaker 1: the internet is actually going to be a huge use
49:09
Speaker 1: to you, right?
49:10
Speaker 2: That's where I looked for books.
49:13
Speaker 1: And I, I learned, I mean, I really got off
49:16
Speaker 1: the ground by using iNaturalist, which is the app that,
49:19
Speaker 1: you know, it's basically just for plants, right?
49:21
Speaker 2: Like you.
49:21
Speaker 3: Take pictures of plants.
49:22
Speaker 2: And it tells you what they are.
49:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so good. It's like what I've been waiting for.
49:27
Speaker 1: That's utopian technology to me. But yeah, I think it's like, again,
49:32
Speaker 1: it's almost like the loop versus the iPhone again, right?
49:35
Speaker 1: It's like, are you using it to actually become more
49:38
Speaker 1: engaged with the place that you are or are you
49:40
Speaker 1: using it in the opposite direction? And certain platforms or
49:44
Speaker 1: apps or whatever are kind of, will push you in
49:46
Speaker 1: either direction.
49:47
Speaker 2: On a societal level, are there policies or rules collective
49:52
Speaker 2: actions you think we should take in order to help
49:55
Speaker 2: resist the attention economy you mentioned in the book that
49:58
Speaker 2: you know a lot of people have jobs that don't
50:00
Speaker 2: give them the privilege of trying to do nothing because
50:04
Speaker 2: they're so.
50:05
Speaker 1: Busy yeah i mean that is kind of something that
50:08
Speaker 1: i am taking up um thinking about specifically about time
50:13
Speaker 1: because you know one really obvious response to how to
50:17
Speaker 1: do nothing as a whole as a book is like
50:19
Speaker 1: that's great i don't have time And time is a
50:22
Speaker 1: sort of very obvious dimension in which some people have
50:25
Speaker 1: more affordances than others.
50:27
Speaker 3: So anything.
50:30
Speaker 1: That opens up more time, or not even more time,
50:33
Speaker 1: but gives more temporal autonomy to people, I think. Because
50:39
Speaker 1: to be able to be curious about things and go
50:43
Speaker 1: for your walk and whatever... meet with the local birding group,
50:47
Speaker 1: you know.
50:48
Speaker 3: You have to have the time and the resources to
50:50
Speaker 3: do that.
50:51
Speaker 4: And I.
50:52
Speaker 1: Think that's one of the things that I wish that
50:54
Speaker 1: I had made clear in the book was, was that,
50:57
Speaker 1: you know, distinction between someone who finds it difficult to
51:01
Speaker 1: do nothing because, you know, they're so steeped in like
51:04
Speaker 1: achievement culture or whatnot. And then someone who really actually
51:07
Speaker 1: just does not have control of their time.
51:10
Speaker 2: Right. I mean, do you think that This great resignation
51:14
Speaker 2: we've seen, you know, throughout the course of the pandemic,
51:18
Speaker 2: a lot of people, you know, sort of quitting their jobs,
51:20
Speaker 2: looking for other things to do, has to do with
51:23
Speaker 2: some of the challenges that you wrote about in the book.
51:28
Speaker 1: I mean, one sort of overlap that I definitely see is,
51:32
Speaker 1: you know, I talk about kind of like the pause
51:36
Speaker 1: in the book, like when you take a pause and
51:38
Speaker 1: you shift your perspective, like I talk about my dad.
51:42
Speaker 1: taking two years off of work when he was in
51:44
Speaker 1: his thirties. And again, you know, that's a very privileged
51:47
Speaker 1: thing to do, but he, he kind of had like
51:50
Speaker 1: all these epiphanies during that time about himself and his
51:53
Speaker 1: work and what he wanted to do and and what
51:56
Speaker 1: it actually took for him to, you know, be creative
52:02
Speaker 1: and have like purpose and meaning or whatever.
52:04
Speaker 2: Right.
52:04
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I have no way of knowing really,
52:08
Speaker 1: but I, my sense is that maybe that happened, for
52:12
Speaker 1: people where it's like, it's this forced pause. Everything suddenly
52:16
Speaker 1: looks weird, right? Like things that were once familiar look
52:21
Speaker 1: very strange. Like even things like buildings getting used for
52:25
Speaker 1: other things. And that's such a destabilizing moment. And I
52:30
Speaker 1: think that that can be really scary, but it can
52:33
Speaker 1: also kind of like shake loose these things that you
52:36
Speaker 1: took for granted or not even necessarily took for granted.
52:39
Speaker 1: You were just so busy going. You had to take
52:42
Speaker 1: it for granted. There wasn't a time to stop and
52:44
Speaker 1: think about it. And now you have to stop and
52:45
Speaker 1: think about it. And maybe your work situation is a
52:50
Speaker 1: little different. Maybe you work from home and you realize
52:53
Speaker 1: how shitty your boss is or something.
52:55
Speaker 4: I don't know.
52:55
Speaker 1: Because something has changed. And something becomes clear to you.
53:00
Speaker 1: And then maybe also, I don't know, but because we've
53:03
Speaker 1: all been living with this hyper-awareness of mortality... like people
53:08
Speaker 1: are dying, there's this like, this possibility of dying.
53:10
Speaker 3: Was just in the air.
53:11
Speaker 1: Then maybe that also people were thinking about like, I
53:14
Speaker 1: have one life.
53:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
53:16
Speaker 1: You know, and what am I going to do with
53:18
Speaker 1: this one life? Am I really going to spend it
53:20
Speaker 1: doing this and, and, and just staring at this all day?
53:24
Speaker 3: So I don't know. I, that's my kind of guess.
53:27
Speaker 2: Look, I think that's, I've had that experience. I think
53:29
Speaker 2: it's a combination of the trends that you've been writing about,
53:33
Speaker 2: which is so everyone being hyper-connected on social media and
53:35
Speaker 2: that leaves you feeling sort of shitty. and distracted all
53:39
Speaker 2: the time. And then something like the pandemic happens and
53:43
Speaker 2: you stop and think of your own mortality and you're like,
53:46
Speaker 2: is this how I want to be for the next 10, 20, 30, 40,
53:49
Speaker 2: 50 years? It's just doing this nonstop. Or do I
53:52
Speaker 2: need like a real change here? And that change can
53:55
Speaker 2: be your job. It can also just be, I think
53:58
Speaker 2: how you, you know, describe really well, just figuring out
54:01
Speaker 2: how to redirect your attention on a daily basis, just
54:04
Speaker 2: in even small ways.
54:05
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally.
54:07
Speaker 1: Just something that I've observed among people that I know
54:09
Speaker 1: is people sort of leaving jobs or contexts and they
54:14
Speaker 1: don't actually know what's next, but they knew enough that
54:18
Speaker 1: it was wrong that they could leave. And I think
54:20
Speaker 1: that's really interesting because more and more lately I put
54:24
Speaker 1: such a, I really value intuition and like intuition versus
54:32
Speaker 1: like the kind of objective, like just I don't know.
54:36
Speaker 3: I don't even know how to describe it.
54:37
Speaker 1: Um, but like the gut feeling, right? Like the gut
54:41
Speaker 1: feeling when you're on social media too much is this
54:43
Speaker 1: is bad. And it's like, how do you learn how
54:46
Speaker 1: to better hear what that is saying? And I think
54:50
Speaker 1: maybe people were following that same intuition of like, I'm
54:53
Speaker 1: not happy where I am. This isn't fulfilling. Um, I
54:56
Speaker 1: need to find the things that actually give me some
54:59
Speaker 1: sense of like traction in life.
55:01
Speaker 2: Yeah. Last question I ask all of our guests, which
55:05
Speaker 2: was partly inspired by your book. What's your favorite way
55:08
Speaker 2: to unplug right now, now that you're busy writing another book?
55:12
Speaker 2: And how often do you get to do it?
55:15
Speaker 3: That's hard. I mean, I would say maybe currently it's
55:19
Speaker 3: the loop.
55:20
Speaker 2: The loop? It's the loop. I'm going to look into
55:23
Speaker 2: this loop.
55:23
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think it's very expensive.
55:27
Speaker 1: I think that you can also get magnifying lenses for
55:30
Speaker 1: your phone.
55:31
Speaker 2: Okay.
55:32
Speaker 1: Um, I don't know as much about those, but, um,
55:35
Speaker 1: and I'm very lucky. I get to do that every
55:36
Speaker 1: day because every day my boyfriend and I go on
55:39
Speaker 1: basically the same, it's all your pandemic walk.
55:43
Speaker 2: Yeah.
55:44
Speaker 3: Like some variation.
55:45
Speaker 2: We've had a few of those. Yeah.
55:47
Speaker 3: Yeah.
55:48
Speaker 1: And, uh, And it's like the loop, it's so small
55:53
Speaker 1: and it's such a high magnification that like I'll never
55:55
Speaker 1: be able to like loop everything on this walk.
55:58
Speaker 2: Like it's endless.
56:00
Speaker 1: So I think that's my current favorite way. But I
56:03
Speaker 1: honestly like so many. I mean like bird watching, obviously.
56:07
Speaker 1: I'm still really into that. Yeah.
56:11
Speaker 2: Fantastic. Jenny O'Dell, thank you so much for joining Offline.
56:14
Speaker 2: Appreciate the time.
56:16
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for having me.
56:27
Speaker 2: Offline is a Crooked Media production. It's written and hosted
56:30
Speaker 2: by me, Jon Favreau. It's produced by Andy Gardner-Bernstein and
56:34
Speaker 2: Austin Fisher. Andrew Chadwick is our audio editor. Kyle Seglin
56:38
Speaker 2: and Charlotte Landis sound engineered the show. Jordan Katz and
56:41
Speaker 2: Kenny Siegel take care of our music. Thanks to Tanya Somenator,
56:45
Speaker 2: Michael Martinez, Ari Schwartz, Madison Holman, and Sandy Gerard for
56:49
Speaker 2: production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Nar Melkonian,
56:53
Speaker 2: and Amelia Montooth. who film and share our episodes as
56:56
Speaker 2: videos every week.