Natasha Joukovsky — On Recursion, Status Games & Manufactured Nonchalance (EP.268)

Strategy consultant turned writer Natasha Joukovsky joins me to discuss why bourgeois comfort is more conducive to writing than you think, why choice-plots make for better fiction, the eyerolling prevalence of manufactured nonchalance, our shared distaste for Atlantis Bahamas, and MUCH more! I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack. Important Links: Natasha’s Website Natasha’s Substack The Portrait of a Mirror Show Notes: “You can do everything, just not at the same time” It’s Recursion All the Way Down Pretending to Read vs Actually Reading Manufactured Nonchalance as a Status Signal Counter-Signalling, Fake-Famous & Jim’s Cursed Trip to Atlantis Bahamas On No-Choice Plots & Writing in Service of Beauty The Self-Deception of Status Hunting Why Bourgeois Comfort is More Conducive to Art Than You Think Natasha’s Next Book “We don’t do auctions” Natasha as World Empress Books Mentioned: The Portrait of a Mirror; by Natasha Joukovsky The novels of Jane Austen Status Anxiety; by Alain de Botton The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem); by T.S. Eliot Class: A Guide Through the American Status System; by Paul Fussell Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas R. Hofstadter Ulysses; by James Joyce Metamorphosis; by Franz Kafka Beloved; by Toni Morrison In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); by Marcel Proust Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose The Status Game; by Will Storr Anna Karenina; by Leo Tolstoy The Theory of the Leisure Class; by Thorstein Veblen A Little Life; by Hanya Yanagihara