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0:26

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to conversations

0:29

with

0:29

Tyler. Today, I'm here with Glen Loury

0:31

who needs no introduction. Glen? Welcome.

0:34

Thank you, Tyler. Good to be with you.

0:36

Would you like to start with economics or

0:38

with music? Why don't we start with music?

0:40

I'm not sure what you have in mind, but I'm gay.

0:43

Let's try some music questions. Let's

0:45

say that your views, the Glen Loury World

0:48

View, where writ large is a political

0:50

movement. What would the music be for that

0:52

movement? It

0:54

would be Bebop era jazz,

0:57

late fifties, early sixties. It

1:00

would be Charles Mingas. It would be

1:02

Miles Davis. It would be a young

1:04

John Cole Train. It would be a young McCoy

1:07

Tyner. It would be thelonious

1:09

monk. It would be in that space.

1:11

And why is that music the

1:14

correct association with your political

1:16

movement? Oh, actually,

1:18

it's association with my

1:21

life story and upbringing

1:24

and it was like the coolest

1:26

and the hippest and, you know, I was born

1:28

in nineteen forty eight, so I was like

1:30

fourteen years old in nineteen sixty two

1:32

and stuff was happening in my uncles and

1:35

cousins and whatnot, and everybody was listening

1:37

to this stuff. And I would just import

1:39

that into my political mood. There's no politics

1:41

in that music that I'm aware

1:43

of, but should we be looking for politics? In

1:45

music? Well,

1:46

I think it's whether we're looking for politics

1:48

in you. Right?

1:50

Okay. Let's say we take the more narrowly

1:52

Chicago R and B tradition, Curtis May

1:55

field, highlights, Jerry Butler, Major

1:56

Lance, the Dales. Right? Does any of

1:58

that become the music of your movement?

2:01

Yeah. That's in a different register.

2:04

I'm dancing now rather than sitting

2:06

back, nodding my head to the, you know,

2:08

exquisite improvisational runs.

2:10

I'm dancing to that, and I'm dancing with

2:13

a girl, you know. So it's gonna be romantic.

2:15

It's gonna have all of that kind of adolescent

2:18

stuff. But, yeah, I could I could get to Curtis

2:20

Mayfield and shy lights and Well,

2:22

in Motown too, which was right down the down

2:24

the street from

2:25

Chicago, was sort of part of

2:27

the same world.

2:29

Why has stacks faded more than Motown

2:31

with time for listeners? That's

2:34

an economist question, isn't it? I don't know

2:36

the data well enough to answer that.

2:38

But there must be a

2:39

story. But everyone still knows

2:41

Diana Ross, the Supreme's Otis

2:43

Reading is somewhat known, but a lot of the

2:45

stacks sound was maybe too gritty, or

2:48

not polished in the right way. It's not

2:50

played in in music as often, I think.

2:52

That's my impression.

2:53

Yeah. Or a smoky Robinson or

2:56

some of these others. But I don't know.

2:58

I mean, this is beyond my knowledge.

3:00

I I wanted to credit the organizational and

3:03

marketing genius of Loury Gordie at

3:05

Moulton as part of the Loury, but it

3:07

might be that it was too gritty. What about the south of

3:09

Philadelphia since we're going back? I mean,

3:11

there were

3:12

other, you know, R and B

3:14

studio dynamics that were going

3:16

on, and they have it off here as

3:18

well as Moulton has done. I agree

3:21

with that. I'm not sure why. Al still

3:23

turns up in movie soundtracks I

3:25

notice, but a lot of the rest of it may be

3:27

not. Did you ever see Jacky Brown?

3:29

That early Quentin Tarantino film, Jackie

3:31

Brown. Of course. Isn't it a TSOP

3:34

soundtrack? I believe

3:36

so. We'd have to ask GPT. Right?

3:40

GPT or

3:41

Google. Oh, okay. Okay.

3:42

Yeah. These days, it's GPT.

3:44

I'm still in Google, man. I gotta get with it.

3:47

Should we listen to Michael Jackson with

3:49

the same emotions as we did before,

3:52

or is he cancelable?

3:54

I don't know how you Michael Jackson. I

3:56

mean, you probably listen with something

3:58

firing in the back of your brain about warning

4:00

warning, but you still listen.

4:03

The song seem much sadder though. Right?

4:05

Yeah. Yeah. They do. But the pop

4:07

icon, Michael Jackson, it wasn't just the

4:09

lyrics, it wasn't just the tune, it was

4:12

the whole thing. It was the performance.

4:14

It was the dancing. It was the tragic

4:16

arc of this celebrity life. It

4:18

happened that I was in Bogotá, Columbia

4:21

teaching summer school when Jackson

4:23

died. And our host

4:26

took us out to one of these four hour lunch

4:28

stravaganza at restaurant out in the

4:30

countryside that it was beef, beef, beef,

4:33

and more beef, and it just kept coming.

4:36

And all of the wait persons were

4:38

dressed as Michael Jackson impersonators,

4:41

and there were big screens playing Michael

4:43

Jackson videos everywhere you look.

4:45

And this was in Colombia. But,

4:49

you know, such was the force of Michael Jackson's

4:52

celebrity and genius, musical

4:54

genius and personality. I

4:56

don't know. I I don't have problem listening Michael

4:58

Jackson, although you're right, I don't hear it being played

5:00

on the radio.

5:02

At what age would you let your daughter

5:04

listen to Prince's dirty mind album.

5:08

I'm gonna tell you, I don't know what's in Prince's

5:10

dirty mind album.

5:11

Well, this from the title of the album, perhaps

5:14

you have some idea. Right? I'm gonna

5:16

acknowledge, while I do have two

5:18

daughters, they're in their fifties.

5:20

So the time

5:21

Are they old enough?

5:22

Anything to say it. Yeah. I think they're

5:24

old enough. But

5:26

nowadays, can you really control what your daughter's

5:28

listening to? If you tell them,

5:31

I think in some cases, it has an

5:33

impact at times a negative or reverse

5:35

impact. Right? But words matter, Would

5:37

you put it on in front of them? Would be another

5:39

way to answer the

5:40

question. If you don't want them to listen to

5:42

Prince, that they have to listen to Prince,

5:44

that it's a mandatory right of passage

5:46

to listen to

5:47

Prince, that might get them to not listen.

5:49

Do you ever enjoy Bluegrass music?

5:53

Like, what's the wettest stuff you listen

5:55

to a

5:55

lot? And really like. You know, I don't

5:57

listen to as much music as I used to.

6:00

I'm partial to to jazz.

6:02

I'm blues. I work out Monday, Wednesday,

6:04

Friday with trainer who

6:06

has a small studio with a good

6:09

sound system. We listen to hip hop.

6:11

We listen to blues. We listen to a lot of blues.

6:13

Bluegrass. Now I love

6:16

a brilliant banjo solo

6:18

as much as the next guy. I mean, I I can

6:20

really get with it when it comes up in the soundtrack

6:22

of a movie that I'm watching or whatever.

6:24

But I wouldn't have gone out of my way

6:26

to find it. It's just something that comes across

6:28

my screen. So I'm I'm not very knowledgeable

6:31

at all about Bluegrass or about

6:33

the

6:33

country. For that matter. Do

6:35

you like the movie deliverance speaking of

6:37

Banjo Salos? It's been

6:39

a long time since I've seen it again, but,

6:41

you know, yeah, it was disquieting at

6:44

a very deep level.

6:46

I'd like to go back and revisit your early

6:48

career in theoretical economics, see

6:50

what some of your current thoughts are on those

6:52

pieces, are you game?

6:54

Okay. Yeah. I'm game. Do

6:57

markets exhaust natural resources

6:59

in the ground? Too rapidly or

7:01

too slowly under competitive

7:03

conditions. What's your current view? Well,

7:06

in that you haven't internalized the environmental

7:08

sternality, I'd say probably if

7:10

I had to answer that question too rapidly or

7:12

too

7:13

slowly, too rapidly. Because

7:15

there'll be too much of the environmental externality

7:17

now, whereas you should spread it out over

7:19

time. Is that the implicit belief?

7:22

Well, no. Just my thought process was

7:25

that the initial price level would be higher.

7:27

The theory tells us that the price is supposed

7:30

to rise at the rate of interest or something

7:32

like that because the supplier can substitute

7:34

supply today versus supplied tomorrow.

7:36

So he has to anticipate a return in price

7:38

terms that's comparable to what he did if

7:40

he sold it all today. So I don't

7:42

know that anything about the environment

7:45

influences the rate of increase

7:47

of prices and the pure theory of

7:49

pricing of natural

7:50

Loury. But the level is too low.

7:53

So should we be happy when a lot of those

7:55

resources perhaps are held by

7:57

monopolies? Because the monopolist will

7:59

restrain

7:59

output. Right? And that brings us closer

8:02

to an optimal or not. Yeah.

8:04

Well, I think that's worth exploring.

8:06

The quantitative magnitudes probably matter.

8:09

Maybe the monopolists monopoly is

8:11

so strong that he overshoots in terms

8:13

of internalizing the kind of Peruvian,

8:16

you know, tax that you wanna slap on to

8:18

the market price in a competitive environment.

8:20

So it might be the monopolist. It's too much of a

8:22

a monopolist, but at least it's worth

8:24

I think thinking about. Better than relying

8:27

on monopoly would be having a government

8:29

that could estimate what the right,

8:31

you know, non priced external

8:33

cost of the use of the fuel

8:35

is and then slap that tax

8:37

on, but that's a political impossibility. Sure.

8:40

And governments very often subsidize

8:42

say fossil fuels more than they tax them.

8:44

Now here's a nineteen, I think seventy nine

8:46

release from Glenn Loury. Are larger small

8:49

firms better at innovation? What do you think these

8:51

days?

8:52

I think that that was a nice little paper,

8:54

the GJE circuit nineteen seventy

8:56

nine. I was proud of it. I took this

8:58

problem that guys like Mike Scheurer,

9:00

the distinguished IO guy at that time

9:03

or more came in or other people had been

9:05

worried about its market structure and

9:08

innovation. What's the relationship between

9:10

the two. And I had a nice,

9:12

you know, little stick figure

9:14

model where I could analyze that issue.

9:17

But I never got beyond an industry

9:19

with identical firms and they were either

9:21

in of them or in plus one of them.

9:23

And that was my parameterization

9:27

of competition, more firms, more competition.

9:29

I didn't get it at all into real

9:32

industrial organization, which would have

9:34

to do with, you know, oligopoly and,

9:37

you know, a size distribution of firms

9:39

in the industry and so on. And

9:41

I'm trying to remember Well, what

9:43

I had to say about the relationship

9:45

between number of firms and rate of

9:47

innovation, I think. The rate of innovation is

9:49

increasing in the number of firms but

9:51

think that's what I found. But it's

9:53

a long time ago, time. When

9:56

you were researching newspapers and

9:58

writing them, what did you see then?

10:01

As your career trajectory. What did you

10:03

think what the seventy two year old Glen Loury

10:05

would be?

10:07

I thought This is, by the way, before

10:09

Glenn Loury becomes at all political. I

10:11

was just an applied theorist. I was a student

10:13

of Bob Solo, Peter Diamond, MIT,

10:16

and nineteen seventies. I thought

10:18

I was just gonna write papers more

10:20

or less like that. For the rest of my

10:22

academic life, I thought, you know, getting into

10:24

a top five journal and getting

10:26

elected a fellow of the econometric society

10:29

and getting grants from the National Science

10:32

Foundation was the be all and end all of

10:34

my professional life. I was at Northwestern

10:36

in my first job in the late seventies,

10:39

and I get this. The year that I

10:41

was hired, Roger Meyers, who

10:43

was also hired in the theory

10:45

group at Northwestern. The next year,

10:47

Bank Tomstrom showed up

10:50

The following year, Paul Milgram showed

10:52

up. Leonette Herwitz was always

10:54

around because he and Stan Ryder were very

10:56

close buddies that Leon was up at Minnesota,

10:59

but he was always around at conferences and

11:01

seminars and stuff like that. I was

11:03

right there at the birth of mechanism

11:06

design and information

11:08

economic and the revolution and

11:11

theory of auctions and bargaining and

11:13

stuff like that that was going on in

11:15

my midst. And I didn't appreciate

11:17

fully at the time the

11:20

extraordinary and, you know,

11:22

revolutionary character of the developments

11:24

in economic theory did. I was in the midst of. I was

11:26

still, you know, using my differential calculus

11:29

and, you know, just trying to write down these little

11:31

silly models, and I didn't have deep

11:33

questions. That's that's what I'm trying to get to.

11:35

There's several Nobel laureates in your list

11:37

of names as you know.

11:39

Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Now

11:41

when you meet promising young economists today

11:44

in graduate school, is your first

11:46

thought, oh, let the person stay on that

11:48

path and be the next Roger Myers,

11:50

or do you a bit wanna shake them? And

11:52

say, I want more of you to go the Glen

11:54

Loury Way and be public intellectuals

11:56

or some of the other things you've

11:58

done. What's your gut reaction to that?

12:00

No. I don't do that. I want them

12:02

to get jobs. I want them to have a

12:04

successful launch. I wanna get

12:07

them focused on question in writing.

12:09

Now, I must say, I'm not advising very many

12:11

graduate students these days in heaven for some

12:13

years now, but I wanna get them focused

12:15

on producing a dissertation that's marketable.

12:17

So I want them to ask a good question. And

12:20

I want them to use rigorous methods appropriate

12:22

to the, you know, high standards that

12:24

we have. But these days, my kind of

12:26

applied theory life that I took

12:28

up more or less successfully in the decade

12:31

after I left graduate school is Pasei.

12:33

Everybody is calibrating and estimating

12:36

and they're looking for a natural experiment

12:38

or a quasi natural experiment or

12:40

whatever it is, and they're doing

12:42

the kind of empirical work that you can do

12:44

now with the computing power that we have and the data

12:47

availability and whatnot, the profession is completely

12:49

different. So I I wouldn't advise a young graduate

12:51

student to follow in the path of writing papers

12:54

like the papers that I wrote because a, they're

12:56

not gonna get in the AER and

12:58

b, you know, you wanna get a job. I mean,

13:00

you know, you wanna be able to sell yourself.

13:03

But III confessed to being a little bit

13:05

alienated from the profession these last

13:07

years, especially as my public intellectual

13:09

profile has risen. I don't spend that much

13:11

time worrying about what to tell graduate students.

13:13

I don't teach graduate students. I used to

13:15

teach microeconomic theory to

13:17

our first year PhD students But

13:20

two years ago, I stepped aside from that.

13:22

We have, like, eight theorists in our department

13:24

and the younger professors weren't able

13:26

to get at the graduate students in the first year.

13:29

They're eight of us, and there's

13:31

only those two courses. So I thought

13:33

I it was time for me to make room for some other

13:35

people. To teach theory to our

13:37

graduate students. So I'm I'm not doing

13:39

very much interacting with graduate students

13:41

these

13:42

days.

13:42

What's your favorite Thomas shelling story?

13:45

Okay. This

13:47

is a story about me as much as it is about

13:49

time shelling the year is nineteen

13:52

eighty four. I've been at Harvard for two

13:54

years. I'm a need a professor of economics and

13:56

of afro American studies, and I'm having

13:58

a crisis of confidence thicken. I'm never gonna

14:01

write another paper worth reading again. Tom

14:03

is a friend. He helped to recruit me

14:05

because he was on the committee that Henry

14:07

Ryssovsky, the famous and

14:09

powerful dean of the College of the Factory

14:12

of Arts and Sciences and Harvard, who hired me

14:14

The committee that Ryssovsky put together to

14:16

try to find someone who could feel the position

14:18

that I was hired into. Professor of Economics,

14:21

and of afro American studies. They said

14:23

afro American in those years. So

14:25

Tom was my connection. He's

14:27

the guy who called me up when I was sitting

14:29

at Michigan in Ann Arbor in

14:31

early eighty two and said, you know, do you think

14:34

you might be interested in a job out here? So

14:36

he had helped to recruit me. So I had this crisis

14:38

confidence. Am I ever gonna write another paper? Am I ever gonna

14:40

write another paper? So I'm saying this to Tom, and

14:42

he's sitting, sober, listening, nodding.

14:45

And somebody starts laughing. And he

14:47

can't stop and the laughing becomes uncontrollable.

14:50

And I am completely foremost

14:52

by this. What the hell is he laughing

14:55

at? What's so funny? I just told him something

14:57

I wouldn't even tell my wife, which is was

14:59

afraid I was failure that was an impostor

15:01

syndrome situation that I could never measure

15:03

up. Everybody in the faculty meeting

15:05

at Harvard's Economics Department in nineteen

15:07

eighty two was famous. Everybody you know,

15:10

and I was six years out of graduate school,

15:12

and I didn't know if I could fit in. He's laughing.

15:14

And I I couldn't get in after Wiley, David

15:16

gains his composure. And he says,

15:18

You think you're the only one? This

15:21

place is full of neurotics hiding

15:23

behind their secretaries and their ten

15:25

foot oak doors Fearing the

15:27

dreaded question, what have you done for

15:29

me lately? Why don't you just put

15:31

your head down and do your work? Believe

15:33

me. Everything will be okay. That was time, Shelly.

15:36

He was great. I still miss him. I

15:38

have a few questions about America for

15:40

you. Where is the best place to raise a

15:42

family in the United States today?

15:45

Oh, gosh. It's gonna sound like a

15:47

cliche. I'm gonna say something like a

15:49

a small town in Ohio or

15:52

a Missouri or someplace like that.

15:54

Where there's a Presbyterian Church

15:56

or a Lutheran Church on the corner

15:58

where it's suffocating in the sense that

16:00

everybody knows everybody else's business,

16:02

but, you know, schools are halfway decent. You

16:04

can let your kids play until the

16:06

sun goes down without worrying about their well-being,

16:09

and you can leave your back door unlocked if you

16:11

dare. But That's corny. Doesn't

16:13

that sound corny to

16:14

you? Yeah.

16:15

But corny is good. What about Providence Rhode

16:17

Island? Right? That's that's where brown is.

16:19

What do you think? You know, I was past the

16:21

kid bearing age by the time I got here

16:23

in two thousand and five, but I

16:25

see my younger colleagues and if you

16:27

can get past the problem that the public

16:30

schools are challenged. And,

16:32

you know, you you have to work really really

16:34

hard to find a school

16:36

and a program and a community that

16:38

you could be confident in your kids too. And so

16:40

a lot of my colleagues send their

16:42

children to private schools and it, you know, it's

16:44

costing them fifty thousand a year per kid

16:46

or whatever it costs which ain't nothing.

16:49

If you can get past that problem, Providence

16:51

is not so bad. I live on the east side

16:53

of Providence and Brown University sits

16:55

up on a hill go down the hill across

16:57

the river into the flatlands, and that's

17:00

where the quote unquote real city

17:02

of Providence is. And it's or it can class

17:04

town. It's doing better than it had been doing

17:06

thirty years ago. I think it's, you know, the

17:08

the restaurants are good. The economic

17:10

climate here seems to be healthy. There

17:13

are challenges up here on the east side,

17:15

it's a bedroom community of middle,

17:17

upper middle class, mostly single

17:19

family housing on decent

17:21

sized lots. It's quiet. There's crime in

17:24

Providence. There's not so much crime on the east

17:26

side, so it's not a bad place.

17:28

And I like the smaller town,

17:30

Providence is maybe two hundred thousand

17:32

relative to I lived in Boston for many

17:34

years. I was born in Chicago. There are

17:36

no traffic jams to speak of around

17:38

here in Providence when I wanted to

17:40

vote and had to go to city hall in order

17:43

to cast my ballot, I could park my

17:45

vehicle across the street from

17:47

city hall and walk in cast my

17:49

ballot, walk back out again, things like

17:51

that. I like myself personally, the

17:53

smallest scale of this town that

17:55

I'm living in.

17:56

Why do undergraduates today seem

17:59

to have worse mental health issues than

18:01

they did say twenty years

18:02

ago? You're

18:03

asking the wrong guy, but I'll I'll then

18:05

You teach them. Right?

18:07

I do teach them and they're under enormous stress.

18:09

You must have noticed that. But from

18:11

what? Right? Levels of wealth are higher

18:14

If they're going to brown, their future, while

18:16

not

18:16

assured, is certainly not looking bad,

18:18

what's really going on here? I

18:20

again confess ignorance, but I will nevertheless

18:22

plunge a hit. They all wanna, you

18:24

know, get the brass ring. I agree with

18:27

you that the prospects for there are Loury, all

18:29

things considered, but not everybody is gonna

18:31

get into Stanford law school or Yale Law

18:33

School or the Chicago business school

18:35

or get hired as a a young

18:37

associate at one of the investment banks

18:39

or something. They're they're fiercely competitive.

18:42

The great grubbing is mind boggling.

18:44

They seem to be driven

18:46

by this idea that each and every one of

18:48

them has to be in top ten percent when only ten

18:51

percent of them are going to

18:52

be. So that's part of it. But you you're

18:54

asking the wrong guy. You need a culture critic

18:56

to respond. You are a culture critic Glen.

18:58

And you've thought these people for so long.

19:00

Now is it different for black students

19:03

at top schools such as

19:04

brown, similar set of mental health

19:07

problems or quite a different situation. What

19:09

do you think? I think it's a different situation.

19:11

I won't qualify my quantity further

19:13

by saying, I don't know what I'm talking about. Let's just

19:15

stipulate that I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm gonna

19:17

talk anyway. I think they

19:20

are for the black students, the

19:22

kinds of pressures that I mentioned, which

19:24

might be moderately ameliorated

19:28

by the fact that affirmative

19:30

action both in postgraduate

19:33

admissions programs and in employment

19:36

gives them a leg up, a black kid with a

19:38

decent portfolio coming out of brown

19:41

probably is in a relatively

19:43

advantaged competitive position for

19:45

the next step. But they are

19:48

black kids and they're in depending

19:50

on the background, now they may feel exactly

19:52

perfectly comfortable in an elite

19:55

environment if they come from the

19:57

increasingly large number of prosperous

19:59

black families who sending their children off to

20:01

places like brown, but I've known many

20:03

kids of color as they say who didn't

20:05

have those advantages and nevertheless find themselves

20:07

because they're CrackerJack smart

20:09

and they got discovered here

20:12

or there and channeled into the

20:14

funneling mechanism that leads to them getting

20:16

admitted to brown who didn't feel like comfortable

20:19

socially in this environment, which

20:21

is pretty high pressured in

20:23

in a pretty elite, self consciously elite,

20:25

almost smugly so. But, you know,

20:27

I'm in my seventies and the kids

20:29

don't come and cry on my shoulder. I don't

20:31

know what's keeping them up at night.

20:33

Moving somewhat away from the elite fentanyl

20:36

as the driver of a high death rate in the

20:38

United States. How's that one going to

20:40

end? Do we just cycle through where all

20:42

the people who can get addicted, become addicted,

20:44

and a lot of them die, and then it burns out

20:46

after a generation. Is there something we

20:48

can do? Will it continue to spread to

20:51

blacks and not just say whites in the

20:52

Midwest? What's the equilibrium? That's

20:55

a good question. It could be very bad.

20:57

It could be that we're not at the beginning

20:59

of the end that we're just kinda at the

21:01

end of the beginning with it. I hadn't even thought

21:04

about the social contagion

21:06

aspects of the question. was thinking mostly

21:08

about enforcement issues. Can you keep it from

21:10

coming across the border treatment issues?

21:12

What do you do with people who are susceptible

21:15

to the addiction and who are find themselves

21:17

in trouble. There's some accountability for

21:19

the opioid epidemic problem

21:22

with pharmaceutical companies

21:24

and so on. That's the kind of thing that I was thinking

21:26

about. But breaking through

21:28

to other elements of the population, and

21:30

you're right, it's not yet as far as

21:32

I know, anything like the crack epidemic

21:35

of the eighties and early nineties was

21:38

for Urban Black America, but

21:41

heroin is not an unknown drug

21:44

of choice in those precincts, and I I gathered

21:46

very highly

21:46

substitutable. So again, I'm gonna confess

21:49

ignorance, but I'm Loury. You've got me

21:51

worried now. In your life, when you

21:53

stopped taking drugs, did you feel

21:55

you had lost anything positive, or was it

21:57

just pure gain? Like, that was just a terrible

21:59

thing. And once I could stop, I was just

22:01

flat out better off. Or is there some kind

22:04

of fun that you actually

22:05

lose? You know, that's a good question.

22:08

I'm actually at the end stages

22:10

now finalizing my draft of my memoir

22:12

manuscript that I'll be submitting to the publisher

22:14

in few weeks, literally. Is actually

22:16

gonna happen. Anybody who's followed me

22:18

knows I've been talking about writing a memoir for

22:20

almost a decade and, you know, people were

22:22

saying, where's the book? Where's the book? Where's the book? Well, the book's gonna happen?

22:25

And in it, I tell the story being

22:27

addicted and free basing cocaine,

22:29

crack cocaine in the late eighties. And

22:32

I went into treatment, and I went to a halfway

22:34

house, and I went and I fought alcoholics

22:36

anonymous, narcotics anonymous, the support

22:38

of my lovely wife, the late economist,

22:41

Linda Loury. Thank god for her,

22:43

for the Church that community that took

22:45

me in and so on and I kicked it. But

22:48

I thought I was missing something. I thought

22:50

that there was a kind of fun.

22:52

You call it a a kind of excitement, a

22:55

a kind of sensation of,

22:57

know, euphoria. And so

22:59

having gone two years sober, I

23:02

took myself back to one of my

23:04

places where I would comp. I bought a little

23:06

cocaine. I prepared it and

23:08

I smoked it. And the feelings of euphoria

23:11

came back just as I had remembered them,

23:13

but also with them came a

23:15

sense of shame. I mean, there was

23:17

no doubt that I was experiencing a

23:20

titillation, a euphoric sensation

23:23

that was quote unquote happiness

23:25

there. But

23:26

having gone through as it were

23:28

the valley of the shadow of death

23:30

and having emerged from it to the

23:33

arms of a loving wife who stuck with me

23:35

and a young family that was coming along my

23:37

son's Glen and Niamaya,

23:40

who were in their thirties now, having done all of

23:42

that, I asked myself, is this

23:44

what you were willing to risk everything for?

23:47

And I realized that there was no doubt about the

23:49

euphoria. The euphoria was certainly there.

23:51

But my obsessive pursuit of it which

23:54

had nearly destroyed me was a way

23:56

of living that was just undignified and

23:58

contemptuous. And so I I

24:00

put the pipe down after a couple of hits, packaged

24:03

everything up, threw it in the trash, and never

24:05

touch cocaine again. So I was wondering

24:07

about your question about what was I

24:10

missing, and I decided having

24:12

done this thing, this unforgivable thing

24:14

from the alcoholics anonymous of

24:16

you, it was unforgivable what I did, but I just

24:18

had to find out. Now, this

24:20

process of writing your memoir, obviously,

24:23

you had already lived those years. But

24:25

to write them

24:25

up, put them together, edit them, rewrite.

24:27

What's the main thing you learned about yourself? Okay.

24:32

So one of the motifs in the book

24:34

is to distinguish between the cover story

24:37

and the real story because there's so

24:39

many junches in my life where

24:41

living my life and thinking back on

24:43

it unreflectively, just thinking back

24:46

on it, I embrace the cover Loury. Oh,

24:48

I did that. Because it's always self

24:50

franchising. It's always not as

24:52

craving, not as kallo, not

24:54

as vicious, not as obsessively

24:57

monomaniacally narcissistic

25:00

as it actually was. I never remember it the

25:02

way it actually was. So what

25:04

I've done in producing

25:06

this book and reliving these critical

25:09

junctions. You know, for example, I really did lose

25:11

my nerve when I got to Harvard in the early nineteen

25:13

eighties. I didn't do what Tom shelling advised

25:16

me to do with just put my head down and write

25:18

my little papers about natural resources or

25:20

imperfect competition or imperfect

25:23

information or whatever. I didn't do that.

25:25

I jumped ship. I left economic

25:27

theory behind entirely and I became a Reagan

25:30

conservative political pundit black

25:32

guy. I was pretty good at it, and

25:34

I would say in retrospect, I was

25:36

more often right than wrong in some of the political

25:38

positions that I took. This will come as

25:40

a upsetting remark to some people

25:42

who who know and love me. But I I think conservatives

25:45

have the better of those arguments than those years.

25:47

But be that as it may. The real

25:50

reason. I'm just giving an example. You asked

25:52

me, what if I learned about myself? And I've learned

25:54

that my capacity for self delusion

25:57

is almost unbounded, and

25:59

it's a very dangerous thing. Because

26:01

I had persuaded myself that

26:03

economics department was coal at

26:05

Harvard in the early eighties and and, you know,

26:07

didn't have anybody except for Tom.

26:09

I persuaded myself that Harvest,

26:12

saddled me with these dual responsibilities

26:14

in afro American studies and in economics,

26:16

you're gonna be a humanist, and you're gonna

26:18

be theoretical social scientist at the same

26:21

time. It's almost impossible for anybody to do.

26:23

Let alone a thirty four year old guy

26:25

who's, you know, barely got his legs under him.

26:27

I persuaded myself of everything

26:29

other than the real story. And

26:31

the real story was that I choked.

26:33

I blinked. I lost my nerve. I

26:35

was afraid of failure. I found something

26:38

else that I could do that would generate

26:40

a claim. I went from the economics department

26:42

to the Kennedy School. They were very happy to have me at the

26:44

Kennedy School of Governors. A wonderful

26:46

place. It's just not a place if you're a serious economic

26:49

theorist that you would want to spend most of your time.

26:51

And it was just too easy

26:53

for me to do Now, I could blame

26:56

affirmative action. I could blame the larger

26:58

political environment and whatnot, but I know

27:00

within myself, I was afraid

27:03

a failing. Every time I opened up econometric

27:05

and I saw another paper from Roger Myers

27:07

and Paul Milgram, I was asking

27:09

myself, would I ever write a paper like that?

27:11

And I had it out. Here, if I go over to

27:13

the community school and become a pundit, no one's

27:15

ever gonna ask me to write a paper like that.

27:18

I learned that about myself through

27:20

forcing myself to be honest

27:22

in retrospect about what was really going

27:25

on with

27:25

me. And there are many other stories like that. I won't

27:27

try to recount them all because I I want to say

27:29

something for the book. I have a few questions

27:32

about race for you. Do you have any interest in that

27:34

topic? Let's

27:36

take the part of the white right wing

27:39

that really likes you. And I know there's different

27:41

phases in your thought, but overall, they really

27:43

like you. What's the main point or insight?

27:45

They are missing when it comes to race that you

27:47

would like them to

27:49

know, but they don't. Thanks for asking

27:51

that question. I think I have an answer. Those

27:53

people who are languishing in the

27:55

Ghettos housing projects, the

27:57

lockups, the emergency rooms, so

27:59

the hospital wards, the ones who are doing the

28:01

car jacking, the ones who are doing the

28:03

crazy that you see when you turn on your

28:05

television and you look at what's going on in Chicago

28:08

or Baltimore or Saint Louis or

28:10

Philadelphia. Those people are

28:12

us. There are people. Those

28:14

are Americans. They are

28:16

us. That's us. It's not

28:18

them. That's what I'd like them to understand that. I

28:21

don't think that they are my right wing, you

28:23

know, acolytes. I don't think many

28:25

of them get that. I think they think this is

28:27

an alien imposition upon it otherwise.

28:30

More or less pristine euro

28:33

American canvas. They they think there's

28:35

whole pockets of America that

28:38

they need to protect themselves from in

28:40

True enough, they do. Sometimes,

28:42

need to protect themselves. But

28:45

those are our people over

28:46

there. That's our failure. This is an American

28:48

story. Not a black American

28:51

story. And why doesn't that lesson

28:53

get through? Is it that it's not articulated well

28:55

enough? The people are close minded, racism,

28:58

or what? What's your account of why

29:00

that remains insufficiently known?

29:03

Maybe human nature, maybe it's very easy

29:05

us and them. I mean, I could, by

29:07

the way, flip the script on that and say

29:09

to the radical black activists who

29:11

are rather demanding Black

29:13

Lives Matter Justice that the

29:16

working class, you know, struggling,

29:18

white truck driver, you know, gas

29:21

station attendant guidance working or

29:23

woman that's working, who's attracted

29:25

to the populist rhetoric and who might wanna

29:27

vote for Trump. But those are people too. They're

29:29

people not so differently from ourselves that they

29:31

have a Loury. Everybody has a

29:33

story that a little bit of generosity would go

29:35

long way. I could say that to a black activist and

29:38

they would have a hard time hearing it. It may be

29:40

that empathy and a

29:42

a kind of suspension of disbelief, a kind

29:44

of interrogation of your gut visceral

29:47

instinct to react with at

29:49

homonym and react with a categorical dismissal

29:52

and with a stereotype. It may

29:54

be that the ability to resist that

29:56

impulse is difficult for anybody to come by.

29:58

I would also say that I speculate here

30:00

a little bit, but you're not gonna let me stop speculating.

30:03

That the political interest of various actors

30:05

who have to marshal majorities

30:08

at the electorate and who have to develop

30:10

narratives that get the juices flowing

30:12

in one way or another for their supporters militates

30:15

against that kind of more

30:17

moderate and self effacing

30:20

and humble posture I'm

30:22

not the Christian that I used to be when

30:24

I was coming out of drug addiction, I was

30:27

much more observant and fervent,

30:29

but it seems to me that in the teachings,

30:32

that I can recall from my encounters

30:34

with Christianity about humility about

30:37

walking, thinking, doing, and acting

30:39

as Christ would do as

30:41

he would have us

30:42

do, that there's just a lot there.

30:44

And I think that it's a lot easier

30:46

to talk to talk than it is to walk to walk

30:48

on that. Which aspects of

30:50

the US black experience do you wish

30:53

that you knew more

30:54

about? By the way, let me just comment.

30:56

I like your technique. I

30:58

like your your podcast interview technique.

31:00

I I may well emulate it.

31:01

Okay. All I need is a list of twenty questions that

31:03

we could talk about forever. So

31:05

I have this ongoing conversation with my

31:08

friend John McWarner at the Glen Show,

31:10

where we talk about Omar. Omar

31:12

is a type. He's just you

31:14

know, stand in representation of

31:17

dysfunctional, probably

31:19

on the wrong side of the line in terms of law

31:22

enforcement bragging about having

31:24

babies buy three different women, can't

31:26

keep a job, dropped out of school, etcetera,

31:29

problematic kid in the ghetto. And

31:31

John says Omar makes me sad,

31:34

and Omar makes you mad. He he says this

31:36

to me. This is one of our things. How do

31:38

we react to the fact of this dysfunction

31:41

that is so prevalent in

31:43

low income black communities that creates

31:45

such problems for others who

31:48

share those communities with them and for

31:50

society more broadly, that

31:52

redowns to the discredit of

31:54

African American society, you can't

31:56

be proud of a quote, thug close

31:58

quote, can you reaction to this

32:01

dysfunction. He makes me mad.

32:03

I don't understand him. I don't understand

32:06

how you take a pistol,

32:09

fire it off the window of a vehicle in a residential

32:11

area where you know people are sitting on front porches

32:13

and you have no idea where that bullet is gonna

32:15

land, and then crow about it. I don't

32:17

understand. I don't know what those frustrations

32:20

are. I

32:21

don't know the story. don't know all my

32:23

Loury, not really. I I know stereotypes

32:25

about the story, cartoon representations

32:28

of the Loury. Is he angry?

32:31

Is he disconstantly? Does he have

32:33

hope? What does he believe in?

32:35

And I'm saying he and I'm saying Omar, but

32:37

of course, it doesn't just apply to the guys.

32:40

I don't really know what's going on. And when

32:42

I meet people, social workers cops,

32:44

nurses, religious people who

32:46

are working on the ground in these communities. They're

32:49

trying to tell me a little bit about what life

32:51

is like and so on and I wish I

32:53

knew more about it. I wish I could have more

32:56

factually grounded empathy

32:58

for the people who I am

33:00

so quick to castigate for creating

33:03

the problems. But whose genuine life

33:05

stories I don't know so much about.

33:07

And I wish that the creative

33:10

arts and and the journalistic practice

33:12

would get grittier. Wouldn't be so much

33:14

in the service of a quote unquote progressive

33:17

political program, but just tell me what's

33:19

going on. I want to go inside

33:21

those housing projects and find out what

33:23

people are actually saying to each other and doing to

33:25

each other and how they feel about it.

33:27

And I don't trust the sabotage that

33:30

I get because it's all too ten

33:32

ditches and in the service of

33:34

making sure that Donald Trump doesn't get any more

33:36

votes than he might otherwise get or that

33:38

the black lives matter comes out smelling like

33:40

roses. I wanna know the real story.

33:43

If I flatter myself with this, forgive me.

33:45

Think would allow me to be less mad

33:47

and more sad when I encounter

33:50

the mischief that Omar is creating

33:52

throughout the country.

33:54

Now we've had John McWarner on this

33:56

show and I know you and he have had many

33:58

many dialogues. If you were to boil

34:00

down the differences between you and him and

34:02

your views to the smallest most

34:04

abstract number of dimensions

34:06

possible. To what would you attribute those differences?

34:08

Like, what's the key difference and where does it

34:10

come from? He cares

34:13

what his colleagues at The New York Times think

34:15

about him. And I stopped giving a damn

34:17

about that a long time

34:18

ago. And

34:19

before he wrote for the times, that's pretty recent.

34:22

Right? Yeah. The times are just the

34:24

last year or two. But I mean, he lives

34:26

there in New York. He goes to cocktail parties

34:28

and stuff. I mean, I'll give an example. I

34:30

don't think I betray his confidence in saying

34:32

this. I cannot get John to discuss

34:34

the transgender debate in our

34:36

conversation. I'm not asking him to agree

34:39

or disagree with anything. I just wanna take up the

34:41

question. He refuses to do so.

34:43

God love him. And he says it's a

34:45

complete losing bet. I mean,

34:47

you know, all that is gonna happen is if I

34:49

say when actually take a ton of

34:50

bricks, it's gonna follow me, and so I won't talk about

34:53

it.

34:53

On race, who is your strongest critic?

34:55

On race? The best critic of you.

34:58

You gotta think I'm dodging your question. My

35:01

wife Luan Loury.

35:04

It's not a dodge at all. It's probably an

35:06

excellent answer, not that I know her, but it

35:08

makes sense to me. I think it's

35:10

correct, frankly. Every

35:14

time I go into one of my rant at the

35:16

Glen Show and I start you know, complaining

35:18

about whatever. Affirmative action or

35:20

to defund the police movement or

35:23

critical race theory or

35:26

whatever. She'll say something like

35:28

the real structural issues

35:30

here have to do with economics.

35:33

They have to do with a decent social

35:35

provision. They have to do with corporations getting

35:38

away without paying any taxes. They have to do

35:40

with inequality. They have to do with the defects

35:42

of capitalism to which you are seemingly

35:45

indifferent or unwilling to acknowledge.

35:48

And all of this culture war stuff that

35:50

you engage in, this is my wife talking to

35:52

me about complaining about critical race

35:54

theory or whatever, is just

35:57

a dodge. It's a smoke

35:59

screen from confronting the

36:01

underlying power dynamics that

36:03

generate and sustain inequality and

36:05

privilege and disadvantage and whatnot in

36:07

the society. And that's what I want you to

36:09

talk about. I want you to talk about why

36:11

people can't pay the rent.

36:13

About why the wage is so low,

36:16

about why they can't get decent health

36:18

care and about why the fat cats

36:20

get away on Wall Street and everywhere else

36:23

Practically, they get away with murder, you

36:25

know, and no one ever holds into account. You're any

36:27

economist? Why aren't you developing and

36:30

expositing critical theories

36:32

that address yourself to the real foundation

36:35

of disparities of power, influence,

36:37

and success in our society instead

36:39

of shooting fish in a barrel. I paraphrase,

36:42

but this is pretty much her argument. She doesn't really

36:44

disagree with me about a lot of

36:46

this

36:46

stuff. It's just that she thinks it's the wrong

36:48

target.

36:49

But is she right? That's

36:51

the last chapter of the memoir. In

36:53

your own evolution of your views

36:55

on religion, am I correct in thinking

36:57

you've moved from a Christian evangelical

36:59

to some kind of

37:00

agnostic? Or how would you describe it?

37:02

Yeah. I think that's probably accurate.

37:05

How did that change your views on abortion,

37:07

that evolution? Not at all, frankly.

37:09

I was always one of these people who thought

37:12

that the fetus, before it's viable

37:14

outside the womb, that's one thing

37:17

and people might decide to terminate the

37:19

pregnancy. I could have a private conversation with

37:21

someone about that, but that the law shouldn't intervene.

37:23

But that late term, that's a

37:25

human being, and you

37:27

can't just dispose of it for your

37:29

convenience. I've always thought that. I thought

37:31

that even before I was a Christian.

37:34

So which of your views did change the most

37:37

due to the evolution of your religious

37:39

opinions? I'd say, this

37:41

is off the top of my head here. My

37:44

willingness to hold

37:47

myself to account and accept

37:49

responsibility for the

37:51

way in which I was conducting my life. I don't

37:53

know if you remember the bonfire of

37:55

the vanities. Of course. bonfire of the vanities.

37:57

That was Tom Wolf, comic novels

38:00

from the mid nineteen eighties and he had in

38:02

there. I can't remember the protagonist's name,

38:04

but a bond trader guy who had made

38:06

a lot of money and gotten self

38:08

caught up in a series of

38:10

unbelievable fiascos that ended up ruining

38:13

him. And the bond trader guy was a master

38:15

of the universe, and I always thought of myself as

38:17

a mass of the universe, notwithstanding my

38:19

crisis of confidence when I moved to

38:21

Harvard or whatnot. I I was a high flyer.

38:24

I had shaken hands with the president of the United

38:26

States. I had spoken on five continents.

38:28

You know, I was making money and and I was

38:31

famous. And the world was my oyster, and

38:33

I was accountable to no one. Not

38:35

to the loving woman who was

38:37

by my side, whom I did not respect

38:40

from the way in which I conducted our marriage for

38:42

years, Not to the people

38:44

from whence I had come off

38:46

of the south side of Chicago who were looking

38:49

to me for a certain kind of leadership that I

38:51

was not interested in providing. I

38:53

had no real connections

38:56

with community. I mean, I had these

38:58

folk communities that I would flip around

39:00

with but I didn't have real deep

39:02

personal relationships that

39:04

went across class lines or racial

39:06

lines for that matter. I was a performer I

39:09

was self absorbed. I was a narcissist.

39:12

And I didn't take

39:14

responsibility for that, and it ended up getting

39:16

me into the called a sec

39:18

into which I ultimately

39:20

wandered. Then you become religious but

39:22

moving from religious to agnostic. How

39:24

does that then change your

39:26

views? You go back to being a narcissist. I'm sorry.

39:28

Maybe I misunderstood the question. No.

39:30

And agnostic is not atheist.

39:33

Right? And it's a saying that there's kind

39:35

of mystery there and there's a kind of ah, you

39:37

have a suspension of disbelief, which I

39:39

certainly indulge when I became

39:41

religious and there's a kind of suspension of

39:44

belief What am I asked to believe

39:46

as a Christian? I'm asked to believe literally

39:48

that a man born of a woman was

39:51

divine and that on the occasion

39:53

of his death, he was raced

39:55

from the dead and he lives on to this day.

39:57

I can't believe that.

40:00

I don't know that I ever actually believed

40:02

it. But there's a mystery here,

40:05

and I don't know. And I

40:07

think the quest for belief is noble.

40:10

I think the arrogance of

40:12

a kind of presumption of omniscience on

40:14

my part. Well, you know, I know that that's

40:16

just a lot of bunk. Offends me.

40:18

So An old different in mind

40:20

was the great sociologist Peter Berger,

40:23

now dead, but for many years a great

40:25

man who wrote many books about

40:27

many things. Including about the sociology

40:30

of religion. And he was lutheran.

40:33

And he became alienated

40:35

by the lutheran clergy because they were two

40:38

postmodern y liberal and

40:40

relativist and whatnot in his view.

40:43

But he used to go to a

40:45

Greek orthodox Church

40:48

in Brookline, Massachusetts and

40:50

sit in the back pew and listen to

40:52

the music and smell the incense

40:55

and hear the bells and he just

40:57

immersed himself in that mailier.

41:00

And he wasn't looking for an answer. It wasn't

41:02

a logical proposition. It was

41:04

simply being in the midst of the faithful.

41:06

And do that sometimes. I I don't go to

41:08

church on regular basis, but especially

41:11

in the years after my late wife Linda

41:13

Loury passed away in two thousand and eleven.

41:15

I found myself sometimes just wanting

41:17

to be in the midst of people

41:20

whose belief was affirming in

41:22

my own. So I don't know if I'm answering you or

41:24

not, Tyler. I am not an atheist

41:27

is what I'm trying to declare and

41:30

to some degree in awe of

41:32

the majesty and the dignity and

41:34

the humanity of these people

41:36

who are seeking to have a relationship

41:38

with the creator of the universe. What's

41:41

your favorite novel? Okay. It's

41:43

Mario Vargas Josa, and I've got two.

41:45

One of them is the feast of the goat, which

41:48

is about treeos, ruele, and

41:50

and Santa Domingo in the nineteen fifties.

41:52

The other is the dream of the goat. Which

41:55

is about Roger Casement, an Irish

41:57

diplomat and humanitarian who

42:01

served the British crown in the first decades

42:03

of twentieth century exposing

42:05

terrible humanitarian disasters in

42:08

the Congo where the Belgians were doing

42:10

what they were doing. And in the

42:12

upper Amazon where the Spanish

42:14

were doing what they were doing. And

42:17

he got knighted, sir Roger Caseman.

42:19

But he was an Irish patriot and also a closeted

42:22

homosexual. And he

42:24

ends up being executed because he gets

42:26

caught in a scheme collaborating with

42:28

the Germans in nineteen fifteen to

42:31

try to stage some event that was

42:33

gonna be the occasion for provoking an

42:35

Irish revolt etcetera etcetera long

42:37

Loury. But it's Mario Vargasiosa, a

42:40

master of this kind of historical narrative.

42:42

And just love both of those

42:44

novels. American pastoro is

42:47

another one that I'm really Loury fond of Philip

42:49

Roth. I could go into

42:51

details, but, you know, Let's leave it with

42:53

Yolanda. Vargas Yolanda,

42:55

what's your favorite movie? That's

42:57

a hard question. What is my favorite movie?

43:00

Sherri, it's a fire. Why that

43:02

one? Well, my wife, Linda, and

43:04

I, that she rest in peace. She

43:06

passed away from metastatic breast cancer in

43:08

twenty eleven. We were married in nineteen

43:10

eighty three. We first met in nineteen seventy

43:12

four. We were together for thirty seven

43:14

years. And that was her favorite

43:17

movie. And I loved the movie. So,

43:19

you know, the story of the movie, it was an

43:21

era in Hollywood of movie making

43:24

that I I don't think we'll ever see again.

43:26

I don't know if we're ever gonna see it again. Wonderful

43:28

characters, wonderful human aspiration,

43:31

competition, excellence, the pursuit

43:33

of excellence, dignity, what's his name? Harold

43:35

Abrams. The runner, Jewish guy

43:38

in the upper class British society.

43:40

He was, you know, somebody that I could

43:42

identify with, but I like that movie a lot.

43:45

I also like pulp fiction. I mentioned.

43:47

Oh, no. I mentioned Jacky Brown, but I do like pulp

43:49

fiction. I like the godfather one

43:52

I was going to report that I just saw

43:54

a fantastic movie that reminded me of

43:56

why I like movies. This is not my favorite movie. It's the

43:58

banshees of Anna Sharon.

44:01

This is a movie set in

44:03

Ireland about a friendship that goes

44:05

rotten and I won't even try to say anything more

44:07

about it. And it's quirky and weird in

44:10

a certain kind of way. And yet

44:12

it's deep and it's unpretentious

44:14

in a in a way and and what is another movie like

44:16

that kind of

44:17

movie? They don't make up anymore. They they don't make

44:19

movies anymore. It's all Liz

44:21

Bang and

44:23

What is there in the black visual art?

44:25

That is especially important or meaningful

44:27

to you.

44:28

Black. Visual Arts.

44:29

For me, it's Asian art, of course, but I

44:31

suspect your answer is different. I

44:33

don't know anything about black visual arts.

44:36

We need my late wife, Linda, on the same

44:38

every piece that I have in this house

44:40

of that sort of sculpture

44:42

or sketching or

44:45

painting is something that I inherited

44:47

from a previous life when I

44:49

was the green eye shade guy wearing

44:51

about my research and whatnot,

44:53

and where my wife was a fine researcher in

44:56

her own right, had an aesthetic sensibility

44:58

she cultivated

44:59

assiduously. And it wouldn't have only

45:01

been black, but the black visual arts would

45:03

have come into it. I'm gonna beg off. I don't

45:05

know anything. Loury last question,

45:08

do you think you will do a good job facing

45:10

death?

45:11

I sure hope so, but I've got my

45:13

doubts. So I've mentioned my wife, Linda,

45:16

my late wife, and and she did pass away

45:18

eleven and a half years ago. And

45:21

of course, we were together in

45:23

that room pretty much continuously

45:27

for the last few months. And I watched

45:29

her wither and die. I watched her suffer. And

45:32

bravely and in a dignified manner

45:34

and and without self pity, almost

45:37

almost without self pity. And I

45:39

asked myself as I was watching this,

45:41

where I am the same situation knowing

45:43

that there was no hope, that I'm

45:45

gonna die, that I'm gonna die from cancer

45:47

in my liver and in my brain, that it's

45:50

gonna kill me and the question is when and the

45:52

when doesn't measure in years and may

45:54

not even measure in months. Could

45:56

I have carried myself with

45:58

the courage and the

46:00

dignity that she exhibited it?

46:02

I've got serious doubts about it.

46:05

I think right now, I I don't know

46:08

what will happen when this moment comes because

46:10

it's coming. But right now, I imagine

46:13

that I'd be furious beyond

46:15

consolation. Why me? That

46:18

I would be impossible

46:20

to deal with. Nothing anyone could

46:23

do solicit of my needs

46:25

would be enough because I'm the one that's gonna

46:27

die. That all of this stuff that

46:30

they tried to teach me when I was becoming

46:32

a Christian about grace

46:34

and about belief and about

46:36

acceptance and and about faith

46:39

would be of no consolation whatsoever. Nature

46:43

would be my friend, not the new testament.

46:46

I imagine. And that bitter, old,

46:48

dying man feeling sorry for

46:50

himself, angry at his fate

46:53

is not who I wanna be in my last

46:55

days. I don't wanna be that guy, but I fear

46:57

that that's the guy that I would be. And I fear

47:00

further than that that my stepping away

47:02

from Christianity makes us more likely that

47:04

that's the guy that I would be. And even

47:06

though I think it's ridiculous to

47:08

assert that a person lives on after they

47:10

die, the person is the

47:12

brain and the consciousness which

47:15

will go to dust. There's

47:17

no life there. I think that's

47:19

an absurdity at one level.

47:22

On the other hand, it may be that only by

47:24

embracing some such belief

47:26

could I manage to pass away

47:28

as I must in a manner that is

47:30

honorable and dignified. And and so I don't

47:33

I don't know. I I am worried for myself

47:35

as that moment approaches. It it will come.

47:38

We're all looking forward to your memoir and

47:41

Glen Loury. Thank you very much. It's

47:43

been my pleasure,

47:44

Tyler. It's been bracing, but enjoyable.

47:49

Thanks for listening to conversations with

47:51

Tyler. You can subscribe to the show

47:53

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48:05

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48:07

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48:10

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