Ted Chiang and Natasha Lyonne Didn’t Need a Tech Company to Broker Their Friendship, and Neither Do We
Also: Supercommunicators and Shuna's Journey
Ted Chiang and Natasha Lyonne didn’t need a tech company to broker their friendship, and neither do we.
Today, I’m sharing a roundup of some good things I’ve been attending, listening to, and reading:
Recs, Wrecks, and Reflects
Ted Chiang Is Natasha Lyonne’s Therapist
It’s Been a Minute: All the Lonely People, part 3
Supercommunicators, Charles Duhigg
Shuna’s Journey, Miyazaki Hayao
I like this title that I came up with for my roundup posts: “Recs, Wrecks, and Reflects”.
Particularly the Recs and Wrecks, part—but I don’t tend to write negative reviews, so the Wrecks won’t come into play too often. But it’s a great punny wordplay!
And then, I also write more of short reflections on the items rather than it being a straight recommendation. And “reflects” has a nice rhyme with the other two, so there we go.
But then, it seemed like a more specific title and subtitle for the post would be more effective at drawing readers in…so here it is just as a section title.
A quick status update on the Blood of My Blood finale:
Pages left to pencil: done!
Pages left to ink: 7
Pages left to “color”: 10
Chipping away at it!
What I’m Attending
Ted Chiang Is Natasha Lyonne’s Therapist
The conversation kicked off with Natasha Lyonne sharing that she said Ted Chiang is her therapist in a recent interview, when talking about her dread of mortality, desire for immortality, and consternation that the only people who seem to want it are awful, very rich men (so the company’s terrible if you’re immortal). She followed up by reading Chiang’s emailed response to her, saying he’d heard about what she’d said in the interview, and that it sounded like they should take it up in their next session. Lyonne punctuated this anecdote by leaning back with her hands behind her head, saying “Your move, Ted. I came prepared!”
That’s a good representation of the tone and topics of the night.
I definitely enjoyed listening and watching (Lyonne is more animated on stage than Chiang), and added to the chorus of laughter at their funny interactions and Lyonne’s anecdotes. Chiang tends to avoid talking about himself, so there weren’t many anecdotes from him. (This aspect of his personality was also apparent in his interview on the Ezra Klein show.)
I’m a big fan of Chiang’s short stories and Lyonne’s Russian Doll TV Show (though, I haven’t seen season two—I don’t watch much TV), so I was stoked when I found out that Chiang was going to be interviewing Lyonne in Seattle.
The two come from very different backgrounds and experiences (Chiang is a speculative fiction writer while Lyonne was a child star who struggled with drug addiction and has become a director, producer, actor), and yet clearly have great respect and affection for each other, so it was fun to see their personalities bounce off each other.1
Chiang could have been a smoother interviewer, making awkward transitions between topics, but the man’s a writer, not a podcast host, so I wouldn’t hold it against him.
What I’m Listening To
It’s Been A Minute: All The Lonely People, part 3
If you’re preoccupied with the crisis of connection, as I am, the recent three-part series of episodes on It’s Been A Minute, with Brittney Luse, is a good listen.
The crisis has been covered in many outlets, in many ways, but this episode discussed a new dimension of the issue: “the privatization of community”.
There are new tech-enabled services arising to help people connect with each other, like:
Peoplehood, a 60-minute experience that is based around active listening and connected conversation,
Timeleft, a friend-making service that matches you with five strangers to go to a surprise restaurant, and
Meeno, an AI-powered relationship advice app.
But the trouble with private, for-profit services that purport to want to connect us with each other is that if they’re there to make money, then their incentives aren’t aligned with ours. It’s the same with the dating apps. Once people “find their people”, they’ll move off an app, which means no more revenue for the company. Thus, these companies are incentivized to keep people on their platforms rather than to effectively and quickly help users “find their people”.
Further, if we all shift to rely on private services like those to connect with people around us, it would indeed mean the privatization of community. Something seems wrong about having such a fundamentally important aspect of society partitioned off into private control. Like if we were to move from public libraries for everyone, or publicly maintained and accessible roads or buses, to private ones that you had to pay a membership to use.
I suppose you could do it, but that kind of balkanization of public spaces and resources seems to me like a worse way to set up a society.
If the profit model doesn’t add up for such services to also be effective at the same time, and if we value those services, then it sounds like something ripe for government provision or facilitation. Like basic research, something that’s valuable for our communities and society that isn’t a money maker.
And indeed, in the interview they do mention local government grants for neighborhood dinners and block parties while discussing how we all need to make choices to change how we relate to each other.
What I’m Reading
Supercommunicators, by Charles Duhigg
This is a great read in which Duhigg shares stories and skills that help you to connect with other people more deeply whether at work or in your personal life.
It’s hard not to think about the utter failure to communicate between individuals and different groups (particularly political) in our society when reading Supercommunicators. Though in reality, there are strong motivations not to put in good faith efforts to communicate with apparent opponents in the political arena. You get to look “strong”2 and grandstand to your current and potential supporters, prevent action that would notch “wins” for your opponents, etc. etc.
Even so, I can’t help but imagine that society would be better if we all learned better communication skills. If nothing else, our immediate communities, our personal circles, our work spheres, could benefit from everyone being better at understanding and connecting with each other.
And maybe having better skill and preparation to communicate will make us more likely to try.
Shuna’s Journey, by Miyazaki Hayao
Shuna’s Journey is an earlier manga of Miyazaki’s, created in 1983, shortly after he started his Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind manga series, and before his breakout movie successes.
It’s actually more of an illustrated story (emonogatari) than a graphic novel/comic (manga). But beautiful illustrations and very cinematic storytelling (surprise surprise).
Miyazaki writes darker themes into his stories than Disney does theirs, and Shuna’s Journey is no exception. With Shuna’s Journey, Miyazaki adapted a Tibetan myth about how barley, Tibet’s staple grain, came to the region, and along the way made the key female character much stronger and more important to the story—as Miyazaki’s female characters often are. You can also see how Shuna’s Journey is the basis for Miyazaki’s eventual movie Princess Mononoke.
I am definitely picking up a copy for my collection.
Interestingly, someone on Reddit came away with a diametrically opposite interpretation of the interview, posting on Reddit that they “Attended his interview with Natasha Lyonne March 11 in Seattle. I don't much [sic] about him prior to this event and I do NOT want to....he is a smug POS and Natasha laid him to waste as he deserved.”
I don’t know how you could watch that conversation and read Lyonne as “laying him to waste”. There was nothing confrontational about the tone of either of them. And Lyonne’s opening revelation of calling Chiang her therapist and Chiang replying with a joke about needing to discuss it in their next session, with Lyonne ending her story by putting her hands behind her head and saying it was “your move” in a self-satisfied way was clearly friendly banter. And Chiang didn’t seem smug to me, though he has a bookish voice.
I’d guess the post is trolling. But why would you about Ted Chiang? I’m glad the Redditors who responded were skeptical and asked for details (none have been provided).
The immaturity of our conception of “strength” is a massive peeve of mine.