Ted Audio Collective.
Hello, everyone. You're listening to After Hours.
I'm Felix. Hi, Mihir.
And I'm Yang Mihir.
She's back. Wonderful to have you.
Thanks. So great to have you.
I'm so excited to dig into some meaty topics.
Yes, it's going to be fun.
Yeah, Jungmi, what did you bring?
Wait, I didn't bring, no.
Okay. I didn't bring in a topic.
You didn't bring a topic?
No, I thought you guys would have topics and I would respond to your topics.
So Felix, let's just go with your topic.
What did you bring?
No, I didn't bring a topic.
What? Do you have a topic, Mir?
No. I have recommendations, by the way, I have lots of recommendations.
Let's just do that.
Are you serious? Yeah, let's just do it.
Well, because I'm not on the podcast that often.
I actually have so many recommendations, you guys.
It's the best part of the show anyway.
True. Let's just go straight there.
Come to think of it, even business school professors sometimes get tired of talking about business.
Excellent. All right, good.
All recommendations all day long.
Let's do it. Okay, Jungmi, the mega recommendation episode.
Where do you want to start?
Okay, so I want to start with something to read.
I recently finished a book that I found utterly fascinating.
The book is called Strangers Drowning.
Oh my God. You know this book?
Oh my God, he has it on his desk.
Right. It's Lewis McFarquhar.
Yes, long time writer for The New Yorker.
This book is a series of profiles of people who are extremely altruistic.
Right. For example, a couple that starts out by adopting a couple of needy children and end up adopting 20.
Oh my God. Okay. Another couple establishes a leprosy colony in the wilderness in India.
Like really big, monumental.
Yes. Organ donations that are anonymous to somebody who you don't even know.
What I found astounding about it is, first of all, she writes with incredible compassion.
But it makes you question your entire moral compass.
Because there is something both admirable and impressive about these people.
And then there's also something about it that makes you, at least me, personally uncomfortable.
Right. And it forces you to almost confront your own values and morals when it comes to helping people and the lengths to which you would go to help someone else.
I had exactly a similar reaction to you, young me, which is, as I was reading it, I was thinking this is kind of odd behavior.
And then by the end of the book, you ask yourself, maybe they're not the odd ones, but the rest of us who don't do these things maybe we're the odd ones.
Exactly. It's a revelation.
I mean, it's written beautifully, all the other things you said.
But it made me rethink generosity, made you rethink your life in a really deep way.
It really does. The title of the book, Strangers Drowning, actually refers to this thought experiment raised by the philosopher Peter Singer.
And he asked the question, I think, in his books as well as in his classrooms.
He asked the question, if you happen upon someone who is drowning in a pond in front of you, would you stop to try to save their life?
And the answer for most people is, yeah, of course you would do it.
But what if that stranger was drowning many, many miles away?
What if tens of thousands of strangers were drowning or dying in some way, many, many miles away from you?
What is your responsibility then?
And he takes his students and his readers through this thought experiment, and that's where the title of the book comes from.
I see. It's really something.
So that's great. That's my recommendation.
I finished it, and I keep going back to it in my head.
That's a great pick.
It reminds me of a radio interview that I heard recently with young people who live in Poland and who took care of refugees from the Ukrainian crisis, and how that experience of helping someone who was in really a difficult situation completely changed their outlook on life, how they think about even
things like what do you want to do professionally, what matters to you, what's important, what's not important.
And it's maybe like half an hour or so, where you really feel like this is a total transformation.
And then at the very end, the reporter does something really interesting, and he asks, what if the next wave of refugees is from Turkey or from somewhere from the Middle East?
And then everything changes.
All of a sudden, there's, yeah, not sure why us, why not someone else?
It was just this remarkable listening experience, almost like two opposite feelings about generosity, but in the same person.
It's that same internal conflict that this book provokes, Felix.
It's precisely that conflict you're describing.
Anyway, I highly, highly recommend it.
I actually have a book recommendation as well.
It's a book I meant to read for a little while, and I just never got around to it, but I did now it's by Frank Partnoy.
The book is called Weight, and it's about the benefits of delaying decisions, the benefits of procrastination.
This sounds like right up my alley.
When it first came out, people thought it was sort of a response to Malcolm Gladwell's blink that was all about making these really fast decisions.
It's one of these really wonderful books where in the end, of course, there's no general rule, and no one runs a regression or some numerical analysis.
But the way he picks up example after example after example, for instance, I didn't know that in Greek and Roman culture during the classic period, procrastination was seen as one of the main virtues.
It was really if you jump to decisions that was not very smart.
And then he has all of these modern examples.
For instance, in tennis, one of the key advantages of the really good players is that they wait a little longer before they decide in which direction to hit the ball.
Think about comedians.
Comedy is all about timing.
And the best comedians, he talks about how delaying the satisfaction that comes from the joke is just really amazing.
And it's the kind of book where the eclectic examples really make it because they come from left and right and science and philosophy, and it was really fabulous to read.
That is fantastic. Felix, this reminds me of one of the pieces of advice someone gave to me early on in my teaching career.
And in our classrooms, we all take it upon ourselves to try to go into the classroom with tremendous energy and to just bring it every minute.
And I remember him saying to me, young me, when you teach, sometimes the most powerful thing is to just let it be quiet.
Just let a question just sit there.
You don't have to fill every space.
You don't have to jump in every time to rescue every bit of conversation.
And it was one of the best pieces of advice to just be patient and let the answers come.
I love that idea. And it's hard to follow advice, right, young me?
Because a lot of our instincts are...
It's not easy, right?
But the payoffs are enormous and it takes a lot of confidence.
I wasn't able to do that as a younger professor.
I can now do that, but it took me a long time to have the confidence to do that.
I do think that sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing.
And that's true with problems sometimes.
You're sitting on a problem in your life and you want to solve it and you want to fix it.
And sometimes the best thing to do is to just let it linger for a while, to sit on it for a while and let it sort of play out.
And sometimes those problems also solve themselves.
Yes. I love that. Okay, so I have one that is a little bit different, which is, you know these kinds of books like Cover a Phenomenon, like Cod or Salt or books like that.
So there's a recent one about bicycles and about the history of bicycles.
And it's by Jody Rosen, who's an amazing writer.
Bicycles turns out are super interesting.
So first, while the wheel was invented forever ago, it turns out the bicycle is relatively recent, like early 19th century, which is kind of crazy to think through.
And now he makes the case that this is the moment for bicycles in our culture and in our economy because of everything that's going on with fossil fuels.
And so it's like this cultural, economic, technological history of how we got bicycles.
And then he weaves in his own story about how he fell in love with bicycles.
And as somebody who likes bicycles but doesn't love them, I have to tell you, it just made me fall in love with bicycles.
It's like spurred me to want a bicycle in a way that I've never really done as an adult.
So I recommend to anybody, this book, he makes the case that this is the moment where bicycles, this old invention has never been more important to our future.
And I think it's a really powerful argument.
So Two Wheels Good is what it's called by Jody Rosen.
That's my pick. I love that.
I had a recommendation that's related.
So I brought in a recommendation on something I'm going to try to do more of.
And I recommend others try.
And it was bicycling me here.
Nice. So I think I mentioned on an earlier podcast that I had purchased an e -bike.
Oh, yes. Yes. Which has been such a game changer for me.
And when I'm outside of the city, it's just fantastic.
And one of the resolutions I've made for the summer is I'm going to try to do more biking in the city.
I have to get over my fear.
So I have this unwarranted fear of riding my bike in the city, but I'm sure I can do it particularly for the shorter trips.
And to your point about this being a moment in time, I am increasingly finding other forms of transportation to be completely unsatisfying.
So I've made a resolution to do much more biking.
Oh, that is great. It's so fun.
And it takes so little infrastructure to make the quality of biking, in particular in urban environments where we live.
All you really need is a line somewhere that says, this is reserved, or this is mostly for bicycles and car drivers who respect that line.
And then I think biking almost anywhere is just a joy.
It's like you're outside, you see things.
I also find biking is sort of the perfect speed.
If you walk, you end up not seeing that much just because you're so incredibly slow and driving of course you don't see anything because it's too fast.
But sort of like this mid -level speed that is biking is great for getting places, observing things.
Really fabulous. And the miracle of not having to worry about where to park or anything, it's incredible.
It's so lightweight.
You feel so nimble.
So anyway, that's my recommendation for something to try to do more of.
So Jung -ni, my recommendation of something to do actually relates to your book recommendation, just like your thing too relates to my book recommendation.
So it's nice symmetry here.
And it relates to your story about generosity and philanthropy.
And of course everybody has their own relationship to giving and how you do it.
But I will say, I recently did something that I haven't done in a long time that was fantastic.
And so I recommend it as a way of giving.
I was in the grocery store.
I still like going to the grocery store.
I know I'm maybe the only one who goes, but I still go to the grocery store.
And there was a person in front of me, and she was like a young mother and she had a bunch of items and I bought her groceries randomly for no reason at all.
Did you just say I got that?
I offered. I said, I'd like to buy your groceries.
And she didn't have a lot of groceries.
This is like not like a huge bill or anything like that.
But I have a feeling today more than ever, there are people who are struggling and you see it in places like grocery stores.
Often you don't see people struggling.
I bet you'll never forget that.
I think the reason I liked it so much was it was anonymous.
It was random. It was in kind, but it was what she wanted.
And she said, thank you.
And I walked away and it was just the most spectacular experience.
And so at a time where inflation is going through the roof, I guess what I'm suggesting is if you find yourself in a situation where you can do a random act of generosity, which allows people who are struggling to benefit from your generosity in a surprising way, I think it's just monumental.
So that's my recommendation or something to do.
How did you choose?
So why the person in front of you and not the person behind you?
It's totally not anything systematic.
If you spend too much time thinking about it, you'll never do it.
Because if you kind of ask yourself, why this person and not that person?
And I think honestly, she had a baby with her, a very young baby, like a one month or two month old.
I was looking at the baby and I just thought, you know, why not?
And I might've thought she might be somebody who was struggling, but I think I would just wanted to do something.
I don't know, for some reason, food and providing groceries to somebody is like a very important thing.
And I really do look around and there are people struggling.
If you are fortunate enough to help somebody in that way, I recommend it.
It'll fill your soul with all kinds of good feelings.
That's my recommendation and relates to your story.
That's fantastic. But I love this idea more broadly of a random act of generosity.
It could be at the gas station.
It could be at the grocery store.
But I also like you're helping someone with necessities.
With necessities. They've already chosen for themselves.
Yeah. So it has all those virtues.
Yeah. So Felix, do you have something that you want us to do that relates to one of our books?
Oh, yeah. I have something that I would recommend to do that I started not super recent, but a little while ago, I often go out of the house without any electronics.
No phone, no anything.
I'm so stunned. In a way, it sounds so silly, but it ends up being really quite interesting.
So for instance, I find myself going somewhere and I have no idea what time it is.
But of course, otherwise, never, ever happens to me because I always have my phone and I know what time it is.
I find myself sitting in places, looking at people, being much more observant about what is around me and what happens around me.
And it's just this idea that often I feel I've become so accustomed to paying attention to my electronics, having this experience of not being reachable, not really having anything that connects me to anyone else at that point in time that I have found really amazing.
I just love it. And it's almost like you need a little training.
Like for the first I did, it was like, yeah, maybe I'll do it for an hour.
And now, you know, sometimes I go out and I have a day somewhere where I don't have any electronics with me.
I think this is spectacular, Felix.
And I confess I was going to do something related about how to avoid something, which is technology.
And the only way I figured out how to do it, Felix, is your way, which is to leave the phone at home on short trips.
Because for me, going a day or going a week without doing something is just impossible.
But I have found this thing, which is you can go for two hours for a walk or you can go visit somebody and then come back.
It's an hour, two hours.
And it's completely liberating because I'm struggling with devices a lot right now, frankly.
And this is the only way that I found myself able to tear myself away is just leave it at home.
But for these short intervals, which is totally I love this suggestion.
It's the same for me.
I mean, sometimes I think, oh, I have my phone with me, but I don't have to check it.
Yeah. Guess what happens?
Like I'm holding up for five minutes and then, of course, I'm checking.
But not having it, I think it's fabulous.
People kind of do these experiments.
They go for a week or they go for two weeks.
It's not feasible. But this is totally feasible and has a huge payoff.
I'm thinking. She is totally sold.
I don't know. I have been to some dinner parties and things like that where everybody puts their phone away and it's magnificent for sure.
It's an interesting thought experiment for me.
Right now, it's just a thought experiment to see if I can get myself there.
But I love that. So I think that's a great suggestion, Felix, and one that kind of relates to mine to avoid.
Do you guys have things you are going to try to avoid?
You know what? One of the things that I am going to try to avoid this summer is something I have done my entire adult life, which is read the daily news.
Oh, yes. I have read the news every day from, I don't know, high school, maybe.
And I'm going to stop.
I have decided it's not good for me.
It's not good for my mental health.
It's not good for my general disposition.
It's almost like watching a nonstop sporting event where there are no winners.
There have been a few times over the last few months when I've gotten so caught up in my life that I actually haven't been able to be as connected to what's happening on a day to day basis in the news.
And I found it to be almost better to be thinking about what's happening around the world from a ten thousand foot level as opposed to a one thousand foot level.
And so I think I'm going to try to do that all summer and just follow things on a weekly basis as opposed to a daily basis.
There's definitely something about this time.
So it's so interesting.
I have the exact same thing.
Yeah. Stay away from the news.
And I find part of it is that it's so repetitive.
And then, you know, the negativity and it gets days and days.
And later when you think about like, OK, I spent like half an hour on the news or 45 minute on the news.
What did I actually learn?
Yeah. Is there anything worth remembering about what you just read?
And often my only wish is to distance myself as quickly and as completely from what I just did.
And so I've now had weekends when I don't consume any news.
And it's a little bit like maybe leaving the phone at home is not so entirely different.
There's something interesting about this.
And then I had a very specific suggestion of things to avoid also that is actually local here in Boston.
Avoid at all costs the escalators at Amtrak, the train station.
Oh, my God. This is super specific.
But in particular, Felix, which escalator?
The one if you come from the subway, it's the one on the left.
OK, got it. This is a story that I cannot believe I experienced in 2022.
So this is an escalator that you need in order to go to the main hall, to the train station.
And so not surprisingly, because it's a train station, there are many, many people with luggage.
There are stairs, but it's not so easy to walk up the stairs and there is a tiny, tiny, tiny elevator that is sort of tucked away in a corridor.
If you don't know where it is, it's semi hard to find.
This escalator has been out of service, I wouldn't say 80 percent of the time, 90 percent of the time for the past probably five or six years.
And this is 2022. We don't have the capability.
And so I wrote to Amtrak and they said, well, we're not running the train station.
So you have to write to the person who owns the building.
And so I wrote to the person who owns the building.
But the person who owns the building doesn't manage the building.
And the person who manages the building is not responsible for the escalator.
And it's like that typical bureaucratic morass.
And it results in the number of times I see, in particular, older people struggle with their luggage going up and going down.
It's not completely unacceptable, but no one is doing anything about it.
If you can avoid that escalator at all costs.
So I had no idea this was going to become the MBTA complaint line, but I appreciate this feeling.
I actually recently had a similar experience, which is especially with older folks with luggage.
If you can take an elevator, it just feels so dangerous on escalators.
It just feels like it's a recipe for disaster.
So I appreciate that.
That sounds like a great thing to avoid.
Here, do you have another recommendation for the summer?
Well, there's another escalator, actually, at the Harvard Square station.
So, you know, food and drink is really important, and it's like an important part of our recommendations.
And so I, in fact, like to recommend a summer drink in the refreshment and eating category.
I just want to recommend a combination.
So first, on the drink side, there is perhaps no better summer drink than what is known in the UK and other countries as a Shandy.
Do you guys know what a Shandy is?
I don't. I don't think I do.
I don't know. Let me guess, Champagne and Brandy.
Champagne and Brandy?
Phonetically, that is correct, but not correct for our purposes.
So a Shandy is half beer and half like 7 -Up or Sprite.
Oh, yes, I know that.
It's sometimes called a Monaco.
It's sometimes called different things in different parts of the world.
It is so refreshing.
It was my parents summer drink.
And I got to tell you that combination of like a lager beer and 7 -Up, I know sounds weird, but it is perfectly refreshing.
On a very hot day, having a cold drink where you get the sweetness of the 7 -Up and the lager is an incredible combination.
So I recommend Shandy's to everybody and with it, the most savory and wonderful thing, Felix, relates to your chip recommendation, which is salt and vinegar chips.
Oh, yeah. That combination packed flavors, refreshing, salty.
Wow, that's a lot of flavor going on.
That's a lot of flavor.
Wow. I grew up with a slight variation and I'm not sure how I feel about the sugar in the 7 -Up and the beer.
So what we would always drink is same thing like beer, but then just sparkling water.
So something more neutral.
It's less alcohol obviously, and it has that same refreshing feeling without the sugar.
Well, the sugar is pretty important to me, but yeah.
Isn't that like a lemon lime?
Yeah, it's lemon lime.
So you can do any lemon lime drink.
It's Sprite or 7 -Up or lemonade or anything that has the citrus is what you're looking for.
I agree. So we would have beer or sparkling water and then we will put a slice of lemon in it.
Yeah. So I think the lemon is important.
It's the citrus. It's not the 7 -Up, it's the citrus soda of any type, which is really fantastic.
So that's my eating, drinking recommendation.
Wow, that's interesting.
Felix, do you have a recommendation for something?
I have a combination also.
I was recently in a restaurant.
Do you remember strawberries and balsamic vinegar?
Yeah. This was a thing 10 years ago, 15 years ago.
So one of these really unusual combinations where you think, what?
And then you taste it and it's extraordinary.
And I really loved it and then I completely forgot.
And somehow it took that restaurant that served the combination again for me to remember that.
Yeah, actually, strawberries and balsamic vinegar is a really wonderful combo.
So I would recommend that highly for the summer.
And especially the summertime, that sounds fantastic.
It does sound good.
As a combination, like great strawberries are just amazing.
And then to have that little sweetness and sourness of the vinegar is great.
Alright, young me. Do you have a combo or are you going to go for something simple?
I don't have a combo.
So the number of people in my life now who are vegan has really become a significant percentage.
What I have found now is that when I host dinners and things, so it used to be that, you know, there'd be someone there that was vegan.
And I would try to think about that.
And now there's more and more and I find myself really unhappy with what I'm serving to the point where a recent dinner I host.
I actually just outsourced it because there were so many vegans.
And so my resolution for the summer is to get really good at some vegan dishes.
And I'm going to just embrace it.
I've gotten a few tips from my vegan friends on how to think about it.
One is to think about addition before subtraction.
What I was told is, when you think about veganism, you think about all the foods you can't eat.
But before you think about that, think about foods that you just don't eat that often that you can now begin to introduce.
New kinds of grains, different legumes.
Just think more creatively about things you can add.
The second thing I was told was to think about texture.
Think about the different kinds of texture of food.
And so you want to think about nuts.
You don't want everything to be mushy.
You know, you just want lots of different kinds of textures.
And the third is you need a really good dairy alternative.
So figure out what is your best milk alternative or your best cream alternative.
And if you land on that, it kind of unlocks a bunch of stuff.
And then the fourth recommendation I got was to really be more liberal than ever with spices, to just unleash the spices in your kitchen.
So I'm going to take these four recommendations and I am going to experiment this summer with not just having some sufficient vegan dishes I could serve, but some vegan dishes that are actually something I can feel proud about.
So that's my recommendation.
If you need a taste or just let me know, I'm available for you.
I'll be there for you.
I mean, both of you guys cook quite a bit.
What do you do when you have vegan guests?
In my case, I would usually have a dish or two that I would serve anyway.
But at least so far, I haven't really gone out of my way to accommodate people who have vegan preferences.
But you're exactly right, it doesn't feel so great.
Yeah, it doesn't feel great.
And I have to say at the same time, they're always like incredibly gracious, always going out of their way not to make me feel bad.
Yes, it's still hard to feel OK about it.
It's like, just like, and the really hard one for me is also sometimes with like, you know, vegetable dishes, you can get there.
But dessert is hard.
So there are some vegan bakeries that we've gone to to get vegan baked goods and they are really good.
But I think that's a hard thing to do at home.
I completely agree on the dessert front.
But as you put it near our home is this incredible vegan bakery.
So that I will continue to outsource because I can't match that, but now I'm getting hungry.
Youngmi, what's your next recommendation?
Oh, stuff to watch.
So I actually have a few and I haven't seen any of these.
So these are recommendations for shows I'm looking forward to watching.
So my guess is both of you guys are familiar with the book Pachinko, a phenomenal, phenomenal book from a few years ago.
Apple TV has produced the mini series Pachinko and I haven't caught up with it yet.
And I've heard it is visually sumptuous and absolutely fantastic.
So that's number one on my list.
That sounds great. Really, really looking forward to diving into that.
Money Heist Korea. Oh my God, really?
Oh my God, I loved Money Heist.
That sounds great. Any day now I think Netflix is coming out with a South Korean version of the Spanish heist crime drama series.
So it's the same thing.
There's a genius professor apparently gathers a group of people with lots of different personalities and abilities.
It's set in Korea. I'll take a week of vacation when it comes out.
Yeah, exactly. And then my other one I'm looking forward to, of course, is the prequel to Game of Thrones, which is called House of the Dragon.
Game of Thrones. It ended on such a down note that I am hoping that House of the Dragon will rekindle my love for that show.
Those are my recommendations.
That sounds fantastic.
What do you have me or do you have something to watch?
So I have two things.
One is I've recommended or mentioned in passing before Gamora and season five, which is the final season of Gamora, came out.
It wasn't as good as everything else, but it was great.
And so the full five season arc of Gamora, which is this mafia story told in Naples, super gritty.
There are so many things to like about this, but the main thing I'll just mention here is it's not just the plot.
It's the way it's shot and the music.
The music alone is spectacular.
And so I totally recommend it.
And the other one that's related, which I had never watched until very recently, but it's three or four seasons old now.
And I just started it and it's really good.
Is kind of a weird mafia comedy, which is Barry with Bill Hader.
Oh, I like that show.
Isn't it weird? It's so strange, but it's so watchable.
It's so watchable. So it's a story of a hitman who also wants to become an actor and it's both violent and horrific and hilarious and funny.
And like the spectrum of emotions you feel when you watch Barry is like wider than anything like you normally get to see.
So totally fun one also in the mafia space, which is good.
Felix, what do you got?
My recommendation is Borgen, which is a show.
I love that show. So good.
So it's a story of a woman who becomes prime minister of Denmark and it has a little bit of a flavor of House of Cards, maybe not quite as vicious in the politics and you learn a little bit about Danish politics and the big topic.
But to me, actually, the main story and the main fascination is how they show the way the political job puts pressure on the family and how the family struggles with this unusual situation of the mother on the one hand being dedicated to her husband, her kids.
But at the same time, the job of a prime minister is just all consuming.
And it's not overdone in a typical, I think, U .S.
version of it like someone would forget to pick up a kid at school and you would see the kids snatched up by someone.
It's not like that.
It's like the little things.
It's like, oh, we're not coordinated quite right.
And one of the kids struggles in school and who has time to go and the conflict sort of gets sharper and sharper over time, which is impressive in particular.
Because in the very beginning, you can just tell how the couple has an amazing relationship.
And I've seen not quite all the episodes, but so far it's really fantastic.
That was completely my gateway drug to Scandinavian TV.
Oh, really? That was my gateway drug.
And it's so consistently good.
Yeah, which is hard to do.
Yeah, exactly. That is a good one.
So I have another recommendation.
This is a recommendation on somewhere to visit.
Oh, OK. It's a place I haven't been before, but we're going to try to go this summer.
My husband has always wanted to go to Utah of all places and one of my sisters as well to visit Moab, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Park.
And apparently the best way to do this is by driving and ideally some kind of RV like situation.
I don't know if we're actually going to do an RV, but some sort of glamping scenario thing that enables you to be both indoor and outdoor at the same time.
And so we're going to go for it.
Nice. It's amazing.
You will have such a great time.
The nature is just spectacular beyond belief.
Really? Yeah. And it's also the parks are so close to one another, but they're very different.
And your experience in the parks is also very different.
Oh, really? You'll have a fabulous time.
It's been on my list too, young me.
So I'm looking forward to hearing what you say.
I was actually nervous about doing this in the summer because of the heat.
But then I talked to a number of people who've done this over the summer and they say it's actually quite manageable if you're safe and you're careful about the hours that you're inside and outside and you're hydrated.
And Felix, you can tell me, but apparently the colors are so vivid.
Yeah. As you put it, different from place to place and the way the sun hits the rocks, it's just magnificent, apparently.
It's just really, really wonderful.
I think the only thing I will say is you shouldn't expect I'm way out in the nature kind of experience.
Both because of the way the parks are run.
They're quite protective.
So they keep people on particular paths, which on the one hand is great because it's much safer for everyone.
For some of the national parks that I really love, you get this feeling, oh, my God, I'm a million miles away from civilization.
And that's not the feeling that you get a because there are many people who go there, but also they're more tightly managed where you can walk, where you cannot walk.
Often many of the paths are closed for maybe some rock fell or something.
So it feels like a managed experience, but the nature itself is just unbelievable.
Yeah, that's great.
I'm really looking forward to it.
Is there a particular place you guys would recommend to go or visit this summer?
So I have a recommendation and it's a different place for everyone.
I recently flew back on an international flight and I needed to get a covid test.
That was one day before entering the United States.
And so I was visiting my mom and I was looking around, you know, where can I get a covid test?
And it turned out that my old school had offered a service.
There was someone at my elementary school.
And so I had not been back to that place in decades.
And I'm telling you, it was such a fun experience.
One thing that just really struck me is I had these memories of things being really big.
And then you go and they're really small, which sort of makes sense because you were a kid.
But also all the details that you remember like the tree that you remember, except now it's a really grown up tree.
And then the finale, of course, of everything was that I happened to run into now retired one of my teachers from way back when I thought this is maybe something that I should do more often.
And, you know, your elementary school is just one example.
But you have these really fond memories of places where things happen and then revisit them and compare what they're really like and what your memory of them is.
It was just such a joy, such a fabulous experience.
And I did get my negative covid test.
So that was good, too.
Felix, I did that a few years ago on a trip to Korea.
I dragged my kids to the school I went to for them to see.
And it was exactly as you described, everything was the same and yet different.
And of course, parts of it had been refurbished and new.
But I was so struck by how accurate and inaccurate my memory was.
Things that I thought were huge, were smaller, things that weren't so small.
The smell of the place was exactly the same.
Yes, the smell is exactly the same.
And the most hilarious part to me was the coveted place to be in my school was the senior lounge.
When you became a senior at the school, you had access to this lounge.
And once you had access, you were just the coolest thing.
It was just the coolest place.
I walked into this lounge and it was the saddest.
And my kids kind of looked at me like, what?
But to your point, it was a very special day to go back and revisit that.
Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree, Felix.
Visiting old schools is really spectacular.
And it actually relates to one of my recommendations about people to meet and people to connect with.
So as it happens, Felix, I was like on the Zoom call and we were making chit chat because not everyone had arrived.
And this guy says he lives in a place in New Jersey, which is close to where I spent some of my childhood.
And before you know it, we're talking.
And his mother -in -law was my English teacher in high school.
No, it was crazy. His mother -in -law is Ray Phillips.
And so I got an update about Ray Phillips.
By the way, she was like the teacher of English in my high school, like she was like the master, right?
And so my sister and I both emailed her and we are now going to meet her and see her again.
And so my recommendation for a person to meet this summer and a person to connect with, I think what happened to you serendipitously is to see an old teacher.
And I'm going to try to do that with Ray Phillips.
It's a great opportunity and especially because we're in the education business to relate to somebody and a teacher who had a deep impact on you, especially when you're young.
I think it's just a great thing.
So I'm going to try to do that with Ray Phillips.
So that's my recommendation for somebody to connect with this summer.
That's fantastic. And then of course, the thing to keep in mind is what happens to us all the time.
You have so many students and it's hard to remember who is who.
Speak for yourself, Felix.
I remember everybody.
I know young me totally.
So just remember what it's like for you.
I agree. But it is always so wonderful to hear someone say nice things to you.
I mean, come on. Yeah, it is such a gift.
So Felix, let me ask you, do you have somebody who you're looking to reconnect with or meet this summer?
Yes, actually, I had.
And it was sort of a coincidence also.
I've been going to the same dry cleaner for ever, like decades.
And it's an older Korean couple.
And, you know, we know each other and we would chit chat maybe about the weather or there's usually traffic where they have their business.
But it was never really very personal.
And then a couple of months back, they had a sign that the laundry will be closed because they would travel.
And so I asked, where are you going to go?
Because I thought they were going on vacation.
Then it turned out their daughter got married in Ohio.
And we talked about the daughter and their family life.
And what's really interesting is now when I drop off my laundry, it's just different.
It's like you have this relationship.
We no longer talk about the weather.
We don't talk about the traffic.
We're talking about real things.
And it got me thinking, I have so many of these mostly business relationships where I end up going to the same places and I know the salesperson or know and don't really know.
And why don't I know people?
And I've now made much more of an effort to just get to know people.
And this is one of the things that I want to continue this summer.
That just the relationships that I have with the small businesses that I frequent that I really sort of know something about the people who work at these places and somehow hopefully change what their day looks like.
But definitely from my experience so far, it changes the attitude that I have to these businesses and to the people who run these businesses.
I love that. One of the silver linings of the pandemic was once people emerged from their homes and you could actually frequent these places that you used to frequent with such regularity.
For me anyway, it didn't feel right to just if you see the person who cuts your hair or the person who does anything for you to just say, oh, hi, here's my stuff.
There was this moment of, hi, how are you?
How have you been? Have you been okay?
How'd you get through it?
And there was just an opportunity to get to know people in that first conversation back.
And so one of the consequences of that for me is, as you put it, maybe not quite as deep as you described that relationship with that couple.
But I do feel like I've gotten to know some of these people in my life, just slightly better, more of a human connection.
Yeah, that's great.
It looks really nice.
Difference, right? It's like your day's different, your day's a little different.
It's nice. This just makes me remember Felix, that my friend and maybe your friend, Mario at LaGuardia.
Oh, yes. I was going to ask you about him, actually.
I texted him once in a while, but, you know, American has stopped the shuttle for long time, listeners of the podcast, Mario at LaGuardia.
And I text still, although I don't get to see him.
And it's like a real loss, like I don't get to see him as much.
But anyway, those relationships are really meaningful and they're really fun and they make what are otherwise mundane experiences really joyous.
So that's a great one.
That is nice. Speaking of haircuts, young me, I have a recommendation for something to try or explore.
I have now started when I travel, I go to some random place to get a haircut and it's an amazing experience.
You are so brave. Oh, my God.
Yes, it sounds really crazy.
And sometimes the result is a little better and sometimes it's a little worse, but that's maybe not so radically different from the experience.
When you go back to the same place.
I think I told one story on the podcast a little while ago when they burned off the hair in my ears in the turkey.
I got a haircut in Denmark.
It was the fastest haircut ever with regular scissors, everything, but literally you blink and you're done.
How on earth did he do that?
And haircuts, I think there's real tradition.
There's things you do or don't do and say or don't say in some places.
I think if you don't talk, it's really weird.
In some places, I sometimes feel like probably saying something is not quite right.
It's like it's more your silent.
The whole waiting ritual, the tipping ritual, is it the same person that washes your hair, that cuts your hair?
The organization of the salon.
Everything is interesting.
And so I really recommend just be brave.
Look at a place that looks nice.
Seems to have friendly people go in.
You'll be so happy.
I promise. Yeah. One of these days, Felix is going to show up on campus with pink hair and big lopsided cut.
I'm totally a fan of this as well, Felix.
And I think the reason why is sometimes when you travel, you don't have these day to day mundane experiences like cutting your hair.
Yeah. And so you get a commercial interaction that is like a very normal interaction in a totally different place.
Yeah. And it's fantastic.
So I'm a huge fan of that as well.
I think that's a great suggestion.
That's a very brave recommendation.
Here, do you have something you're going to try for the first time this summer?
Well, so I'm embarrassed about this one, but I have never really significantly read alongside my children.
What do you mean? Well, people wax poetic about reading to their children at night or reading books alongside them.
And I've done other good things as a parent, but that's not one of them.
They are now in between eighth and ninth grade.
And we were looking at their list of books for the summer and it's getting really good.
Oh, like that. You're getting to the point now where I want to do it.
I haven't been a big YA fan and they are now going to some classics along with some contemporary books.
And so I am so looking forward to trying and exploring books alongside them because I just honestly haven't done it.
And I think it's a great joy and they are great readers, but we haven't had that shared experience, even with Harry Potter, honestly.
Like I very, very late in the game because they dragged me to it.
I read one of them, but now I think the possibility of reading alongside them is really exciting.
And so I'm looking forward to doing that.
I think the time has finally come for that for me.
That's my big trying and exploring experiment for the summer.
That sounds wonderful.
You're going to have so much fun with this.
I remember when my kids were at that age, that is when the reading gets good.
So trust me when I say when they're in third grade, you miss nothing.
I should put it YA stuff, but also that's the age at which they read really interesting adult books.
They read like the classics, they read like the adult stuff and contemporary stuff.
Yes. And I remember my kids would get their summer reading list.
I'd grab it with them and say, oh, let's read this stuff together.
Actually, Pachinko is on their summer reading list.
And so it has some classics, but then it's kind of been updated.
So I'm looking forward to that.
That's nice. So what are you going to be trying this summer, young me?
So the thing I'm going to try that you'll notice theme and some of my responses is, I'm going to try growing my own garden.
Oh, I think I might have mentioned to you during the pandemic, my son's girlfriend gave me a gift and it was this herb set.
You could grow your own herbs indoors and I kind of fell in love with it.
So since then, I've been growing my own basil and cilantro and just using it in cooking.
And by the way, it tastes so much better.
It's so much fresher.
And so I think I have now graduated to an actual little garden and I'm going to start with some really easy things.
I'm determined to grow tomatoes and strawberries, which are among the easier things to grow.
And plus, you know, they're both red and brightly colored.
So I'm reading up on how to do it.
I've figured out where I'm going to do it.
And I'm going to come back in the fall with a green thumb.
That is amazing. I know.
Do you have any luck with cilantro?
I find cilantro so hard because somehow it doesn't work well for me.
And I don't know why.
The biggest problem I have with cilantro is that we either don't eat cilantro or we require a lot of cilantro for when we're cooking.
So for cooking, for making Mexican food, then the amount that I've grown isn't sufficient for the meal that we want to prepare.
Oh, I see. And there are other spells where we're having no cilantro for long periods of time.
So that's my bigger problem.
But I'm growing these herbs indoor.
So it's a climate controlled environment and it's a little bit better.
So it might be a little bit more fragile, so it doesn't work quite as well if it's outdoors.
So this is why I'm saying I'm graduating to an outdoor garden.
So I don't know if I'm going to be successful.
We'll have to see. Well, so when you invite us over for the vegan meal, you can serve me the tomatoes and you can have some balsamic vinegar for Felix.
And you can serve the strawberries and we'll be all set.
There's a cohesion to this entire podcast episode that was completely organic, spontaneous, unplanned.
This is the magic of our conversations, guys.
You have space for an escalator in your story?
Exactly. We had to work that in.
Okay, so what else, guys?
What other recommendations do you have for how to spend your time this summer?
So I've been thinking about questions that come up every now and then.
And for this summer, I created a little curiosity list.
You know, there's these things that you experience or you see or you read about and you don't quite really understand.
So, for instance, I notice, say, when I'm working out, like if I try harder for a little while before my pulse shoots up, it actually goes down a little bit.
And I always wondered about that.
Like, why is that? Like, if you add more pressure, why does the pulse first go down a little bit and then it goes up?
Or say, I read somewhere that the kernel of the Apple iOS is open source and I don't quite understand that combination of it's a proprietary system, but it's open source at the same time.
Or I'm perennially confused about the source of the tensions between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
And none of these things are really, I'm not sufficiently curious to then find out, but it's always somewhere in the back of my mind.
And so I've created this list for the summer of questions that I have and I will spend the time.
So by the time we meet back in the fall, if anyone's interested in Eritrea, I will have an answer.
Wait, so you have a curiosity list.
Yes. It's just you put random questions on this list.
And it could be about anything.
Could be about anything.
I read, I wonder how that works.
Right. And then it's too far away or I don't have time.
Right. Yeah, I hope it'll be really fun.
That sounds great. That sounds so interesting.
I love that. Because otherwise they just leave your mind and you document it and then also it saves you from this problem, which I have, which is, you know, you asked that question of yourself three years ago and then you ask it again and you're like, Oh yeah, I still don't know the answer to that.
That's exactly right.
And somehow it's never the right time to sit down and really figure it out.
So me here, do you have something equivalent to a curiosity list?
You know, I have a question that I think we should all be asking ourselves, which is, I think now hopefully we're in somewhat of a post pandemic world.
And as a person who is a creature of habit, I really want to try to assess and take an inventory of my post pandemic self versus my pre pandemic self.
And to understand the habits that I've developed that are positive and the habits that I've developed that are not so positive because I think time lost all meaning during that phase of our lives.
And we changed and some of it was good and some of it wasn't, you know, for just two examples, I think walking became a much bigger part of my life.
I'm really happy about that as a habit.
You know, on the other hand, I think over the course of the pandemic, I think I became maybe a better father and probably a worse friend and I became more interior.
And so I think I want to take that inventory of my post pandemic self and compare it to my pre pandemic self.
And decide what I want to keep and what I want to revert back to what I was.
And so I think just acknowledging how much this period has changed us, how many habits have been created that are good and habits that have been created that are not good.
I think it's a good time to ask ourselves going forward, what do you want to keep from this experience and what do you want to kind of reject?
So I've been thinking about that.
That is such a great idea.
I love this. I agree with you.
And I don't even know how easy it would be for me to do.
You know how habits sort of grow on you and then you think I've probably done this forever, but it's probably not true.
It's not true. Right.
Yeah. That is so interesting.
It's funny. I know I've made changes.
The ones that jump to the top of my mind are the lifestyle changes that I consider to be healthier.
Right. The more compelling question to me is what have I given up in the process?
You describe the process of becoming more interior.
You became a better father, but maybe a worse friend.
I mean, that's really quite reflective.
And so to think about what are the trade offs I've made, perhaps implicitly, that I haven't really spent time thinking about.
I don't know. I find that to be quite compelling.
That's an interesting one.
I also like the idea of a question to really probe this summer.
One of the questions I've been thinking of digging into this summer is the broad question of how to avoid becoming more cynical with age, which I feel myself becoming.
And then more specifically, how to engage in politics in a constructive way.
So I'm always someone who's been interested and have followed politics in the same way that I think all of us do.
And yet it has started to feel unhealthy for me.
And yet I don't want to become one of these people who just disengages altogether.
So how to engage in a constructive way.
And so I've thought about maybe choosing one or two things to go really deep on.
I've even thought about maybe incorporating it into my teaching and research through case studies and field work and then bringing it into the classroom.
And Mihir, I know you've done a little bit about that, which would be outside of my comfort zone for sure.
But maybe a constructive way to engage.
But that's something I want to spend some time this summer thinking about.
That's great. I think that's a great one.
And you know, I confess my reaction is if you crack that nut, let me know, because as you age, it's easy to become cynical.
You want to be engaged, but it gets harder.
I think using our work, you know, we have a lot of latitude.
And so using that to kind of resolve this is not just good for you, young me, but it's kind of good for the world.
And so I think it's a great effort to try to undertake.
When you started thinking about racial equality, one of your instincts was to go out and write a case study on a specific thing that you wanted to get deep into.
I thought that was such a constructive instinct.
It was a very simple instinct because I was frustrated.
But I think if we do it in a more programmatic way, I think it's fantastic.
I wrote a case about the Tulsa massacre and the call for reparations, but I think your instincts are just right.
And it has been a huge part of my life in the last year and a half.
And it's been great.
So anyway, I think the summer is a really great time to think about these things.
Yeah, I agree. That's a great idea.
Look at how long we spoke when we had nothing to talk about.
What does that say about us?
I wonder. It is late.
Wow. With summer stretching out in front of us, it's just great to have this list of stuff to think about and to do.
And most of all, avoid that escalator, young me in South Station.
That will save the summer for sure.
So this was it. The final episode in an amazing season.
Thank you for all our listeners.
We really enjoyed the interaction with you.
You have no idea how much it means to us.
We will miss you, but we promise to be back after the summer.
See you in September.
This was After Hours from the TED Audio Collective.
