Have you ever found yourself scrolling through your feed, feeling more disconnected from the world around you with every passing second? This week, I sat down with the insightful Julio Vincent Gambuto, author of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! and the mind behind the essay that took the internet by storm, Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting. Through the intimate recounting of his own story, from modest upbringing to the halls of Harvard, Julio helps us navigate the complex web of cultural and economic disparities that shape our lives. Alongside insights from author, Ali Wenzke, we traverse the rocky terrain of life's challenges and the critical role of social ties in overcoming them.
As the conversation unfolds, we confront the pervasive shadow that is loneliness, an affliction magnified by the pandemic and dissected through the eyes of former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy. The stark realities of our individualistic society come to light, revealing how our relentless pursuit of success might actually be leading us away from genuine human connection. This episode isn't just about examining the societal constructs that breed isolation; it's a call to action for each of us to rekindle the bonds that make us human, across all ages and walks of life.
Finally, as we reflect on the recent global pause, we're prompted to question the fast-paced automation of our lives and the true cost of convenience. We celebrate the companies like Patagonia that are blazing trails toward a more balanced approach, where employee well-being is more than a hollow perk—it's the cornerstone of a sustainable future. Join me for a profound look at how we can emerge from these challenging times not just unscathed, but enriched, with a renewed appreciation for what it means to be part of a community.
Julio Vincent Gambuto
Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!, Julio Vincent Gambuto
How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, Harrison Scott Key
The Art of Happy Moving, Ali Wenzke
Have you ever found yourself scrolling through your feed, feeling more disconnected from the world around you with every passing second? This week, I sat down with the insightful Julio Vincent Gambuto, author of Please Unsubscribe, Thanks! and the mind behind the essay that took the internet by storm, Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting. Through the intimate recounting of his own story, from modest upbringing to the halls of Harvard, Julio helps us navigate the complex web of cultural and economic disparities that shape our lives. Alongside insights from author, Ali Wenzke, we traverse the rocky terrain of life's challenges and the critical role of social ties in overcoming them.
As the conversation unfolds, we confront the pervasive shadow that is loneliness, an affliction magnified by the pandemic and dissected through the eyes of former Surgeon General Dr. Vivek H. Murthy. The stark realities of our individualistic society come to light, revealing how our relentless pursuit of success might actually be leading us away from genuine human connection. This episode isn't just about examining the societal constructs that breed isolation; it's a call to action for each of us to rekindle the bonds that make us human, across all ages and walks of life.
Finally, as we reflect on the recent global pause, we're prompted to question the fast-paced automation of our lives and the true cost of convenience. We celebrate the companies like Patagonia that are blazing trails toward a more balanced approach, where employee well-being is more than a hollow perk—it's the cornerstone of a sustainable future. Join me for a profound look at how we can emerge from these challenging times not just unscathed, but enriched, with a renewed appreciation for what it means to be part of a community.
Julio Vincent Gambuto
Please Unsubscribe, Thanks!, Julio Vincent Gambuto
How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, Harrison Scott Key
The Art of Happy Moving, Ali Wenzke
Hi, my name is Mandy Jackson-Bevillie. Welcome to the Bookshop podcast. Each week, I present interviews with independent Bookshop owners from around the globe, authors, publishing professionals and specialists in subjects dear to my heart the environment and social justice. To help the show reach more people, please share it with friends and family and on social media, and remember to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to this podcast. You're listening to Episode 231.
Speaker 1:Julio Vincent Gambuto is the author of Please Unsubscribe. Thanks, a follow-up to his viral essay series Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting, which sparked a worldwide conversation reaching more than 21 million readers in 98 countries. Julio remains a weekly contributor to Medium, where he writes at the intersection of self-help and the system. His latest story, series, modern Muting, drops each Monday. He is a graduate of Harvard University and earned his MFA from the USC School of Cinematic Arts, where he was an Annenberg Fellow. A movie maker by trade and training, julio has written, directed and produced film and television content for the New Yorker Nickelodeon, pbs, e Entertainment, samuel Goldwyn Films, beta Films, stone Co and Kona Entertainment. He also co-founded Tape, an after-school arts program for LGBTQ plus teens, which served vital and important institutions like Harvey Milk High School and the Ali Forney Center for over 10 years. The program was funded in part by the Time Warner Foundation. Julio lives in New York City with his fiance. Hi Julio, and welcome to the show. It's great to have you here.
Speaker 2:Thanks, mandy, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me on.
Speaker 1:You're welcome. Now let's begin by learning about you what led you to Harvard and writing, and how you know my friend Ali Wenske.
Speaker 2:Yes, of course. So Ali Wenske wrote this incredible book called the Art of Happy Moving, and Ali and I went to college together, which I always think was three months ago, but it was 25 years ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know that feeling.
Speaker 2:And you know Ali's been really supportive of the book and really kind of an incredible advocate for how to go through life's more challenging moments and finding the joy where you can and also finding the relationships where you can and building new social relationships and social circles. At least in her book she talks a lot about that and I think there's plenty of crossover between the two books in that way. Harvard was wonderful. It was the late 90s and I was a really nerdy kid and I had gotten a scholarship to a small little independent school in the boroughs of New York City when I was 10 years old and was just kind of doing my best to do my best and it was a really incredible experience strange to be a working-class kid in an environment like that, which is really overwhelming when you get there because I wasn't used to being around so many people who had second and third homes and you start to sort of understand something about economics from a very, very young age. But it was wonderful.
Speaker 1:I'm sure you did a lot of observing during that time.
Speaker 2:You are, You're watching, you're observing, you're standing back, you're hanging back, you're trying to understand the codes of it all, You're trying to understand when you should jump in the water and start to swim and what that might look like.
Speaker 2:And do you put your right hand first or your left? It's very strange, but you develop a skill set that maybe you may not have naturally developed and I think in my case I sort of just learned how to be a gracious social being, because you have to kind of survive at cocktail parties and dinner parties and events in a tuxedo that perhaps you weren't raised to know how to do. So I'm really grateful for it. It certainly gives me plenty of privileges in my life and has given me much privilege in my life, but it's also been a gift to see the world and the country at very, very different extremes. You know, I'm the son of two really hardworking people, a secretary and a bus driver and they are the children of immigrants right from Italy. So it's you know, I sort of got to see people work two and three jobs, and then I also got to see people with two and three houses and understand the cultural differences and the spiritual differences and the similarities in the universalities of what that is.
Speaker 1:And that's a great segue into my next question. On April 10th 2020, you wrote an essay titled Prepare for the Ultimate Gaslighting you are not crazy, my friends and posted it on Medium, so I would love to hear about what happened next. And also, many people during that time got out of New York people who had those second and third and fourth homes. Where were you?
Speaker 2:I was stuck in an apartment in midtown or I guess it's lower Upper West Side, but lower Upper West Side, whatever you want to call it. I was stuck in an apartment in the city and again, a position of privilege, but certainly didn't feel like it in the moment. And it was six months of being solo. It was six months of, you know, seeing friends and family on FaceTime and whatnot, but really just spending time alone and leaving the house to go for a run and leaving the house for a grocery to the grocery store which was a mob scene and a scene out of Mad Max. I mean, every grocery store in Manhattan was something post apocalyptic for months and all you could hear were thirens. You know, I went to bed at night listening to the ambulance sirens and it was. You know, to the day I die, mandy, I will never forget the sound of those months.
Speaker 2:And it was that kind of darkness that led to the essay, really, because we had lost a number of people in our extended family circle. We had recently gotten news that a friend found her father in his apartment alone, having died of COVID, and so there was just this weight around the entire world, but certainly in New York. There was this very, very palpable weight and that night I went to bed and just sort of surrendered to it all. And the next morning I woke up and there was an email from J crew that said hey, 20% off.
Speaker 2:Shipping is free.
Speaker 2:And I was, in fact, mainly because, two weeks prior, all the big brands had been emailing to basically say we're with you, we're in this crisis together.
Speaker 2:This is how you wash your hands, you know soap water left, right. And now, two weeks later, the crisis had clearly gotten worse. But they were back to business and it was like it hit me at the right place, wrong way, and I was was really angry, and so the essay was really a call to say, hey, no matter when we get back to normal, there will be lots of pressure from the business world, the big brands, certainly the big forces that kind of run our society and, at the time, our government to get back on the treadmill, to get back on the ladder, to get back to the bye, bye, bye, click, click, click, go, go, go, get, get, get. And I wanted the essay to be a call for us to be introspective about that moment and say, hey, do we want to get back on the treadmill? Do we want to get back to all the ways in which it was normal? I was certainly not the only one saying it, but I was glad to have the platform for for 10 seconds that I got to have.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that was amazing. And then what happened?
Speaker 2:You know, just for context, I had written a number of times on Medium in the years prior. I'd written this essay about Hillary Clinton in 2016, that I think 100 people read and I was like, yes, I was viral, and so this was a different experience. This I posted and within 24 hours, it had gone to 15 million readers within. You know, that weekend, which was Easter and Passover, it had gone to about 20 million people. So it was. It caught fire in a very stringent way and I got a lot of feedback, certainly on Twitter and on the internet.
Speaker 2:But I got a lot of emails, thousands and thousands of emails from all across the world, many of which just said the same thing, which was hey, I'm horribly devastated by the tragedy, but secretly and not so secretly because I'm emailing you secretly I'm grateful for the pause, I'm grateful for the deep breath, I'm grateful to have a break from the constant pressure that we've all been feeling in this economy and in the way that we do life in this country, and I just started to think about what that really meant that, you know, certainly thousands were at least, perhaps more. We're grateful to have a break, and something was deeply wrong. I thought about how we're living, if we need this to happen in order for us to experience calm in any way. And that's certainly what led to the book in very large ways, because I got to really think through well, how are we living and how have we gotten to this place of living in this sort of breathless, relentless way, and where do we go from here?
Speaker 1:And then, as far as getting the book published, were you approached by an agent at that time, or did you approach an agent?
Speaker 2:So I was approached by a book lit agent to write the book Behind the scenes. The extreme frustration is that I have been working in entertainment for almost 15 years and you couldn't beg an agent to get on the phone with you. In Hollywood and I've made a feature film, I've worked in television for seasons at a time and you can't get these people to reply to an email or to take a call. So it was a very strange and wonderful experience to be able to speak with someone about something I had written like that, and she was very, very supportive and essentially said have you thought about a book? And I said, yes, I was an English major in college. I'm a nerd. I've been reading books my entire life. Of course I thought about a book. I've been thinking about a book since I was five years old. I just never thought it would be this book right.
Speaker 2:I always sort of thought I would write a book about the experience of being a queer kid and an Italian, you know, american home, or something that was more sort of personal essay related or something like that, and so to be in a position to write something about society and comment on the way that we do life and do business and interact with one another was a privilege and a huge weight too, because it felt like, okay, I wanna get this right.
Speaker 2:And you know, the value of the essay was that I woke up and wrote it on my laptop and I didn't have an editor and I didn't put it through 100 rounds of revisions and I just kind of put it out there. So there was definitely this needle to thread for me and you know I had to kind of balance all the time Is this impromptu and from the heart and feels my voice? And yet is it balanced enough with research or other people's work or editorial and the editorial hand? And I worked with a great editor named Julianna Hobner at Adlery De Press who was really incredible and really talented and kind of let me do me, but also, within the framework of this needs to be 300 pages that someone reads and feels good about having. You know, sort of holding together conceptually, exactly.
Speaker 1:So yeah, the actual writing part of writing a book is really difficult. You've got to do that BIC button chair and just do it.
Speaker 2:You gotta do the thing.
Speaker 1:Yep, that's it in a nutshell. Okay, now my next question has kind of a long intro, but bear with me because I think it's super important In the 2023 US Surgeon General's advisory on the healing effects of social connection and community. Dr Vivek H Murphy wrote in his opening letter quote when I first took office as Surgeon General in 2014, I didn't view loneliness as a public health concern, but that was before I embarked on a cross-country listening tour where I heard stories from my fellow Americans that surprised me. People began to tell me they felt isolated, invisible and insignificant, even when they couldn't put a finger on the word lonely. Time and time again, people of all ages and socioeconomic backgrounds from every corner of the country would tell me I have to shoulder all of life's burdens by myself or if I disappear tomorrow, no one will even notice. He said this was a light bulb moment for him. That quote unquote. Social disconnection was far more common than I realized.
Speaker 1:On page 82 of Please Unsubscribe. Thanks. You quote Dr Murphy's cover story for the Harvard Business Review titled Work and the Loneliness Epidemic. Can you expand on your experience regarding loneliness and isolation and what you feel is missing in our communities?
Speaker 2:Thank you. That's a that gets to the core of my book in a really incredible way. You know, the basic grammar of my book is that it's a self-help book, but where self-help meets the system and how can we become happier and lead more joyful lives and lives that feel more connected to the humans around us, while still being in relationship to the social systems, the economic systems, the cultural systems around us? And I think it's really important to understand that we measure so much of our success in this country based on economic prosperity, and so we're always encountering those stories. We're always encountering those charts and graphs and we always see that story in front of us. But the story we don't see is that, at least it's my belief that it's coming at the cost of great destruction of our communities In large ways and in small, day-to-day ways. In the large ways, you know, if you look at our country and our Tamin is centered on Southern California, tech is centered in Northern California, banking on the East coast in New York, and every city in this very large country sort of heads up or headquarters a certain industry, and what that means is that when people leave college, they have to move somewhere in order to be a part of the industry they wanna be a part of. And so from a very young age in our society we leave home alone to go to cities that are industry specific and I'm being general here. I think there's plenty of other varied experiences that 22 year olds have. But from the main apparatus of it all we are creating loneliness from a very young age in our society. And yes, are those cities full of young people? And do we have a million ways to connect with those young people? Yes, but we kind of start out our adult lives by disconnecting from community, by saying I'm not going back to my hometown, I'm not going back to where my family lives, I'm not going back to even where all my college friends are gonna go, I'm gonna go out of my own.
Speaker 2:And we have this myth in America that is hundreds of years old, that's very, very supported everywhere. We look that this rugged individualism is prize and is to be prize and is to become your story as well, and so you see the rejection of community kind of in the growth of many of us as professionals. And then we get married and we buy a house in a suburb that looks exactly like other stuff about the entire country and we focus on the nuclear family and I think there's great beauty in the nuclear family but also it doesn't necessarily mean that your grandmothers around the corner or that your cousins live in the next block or that there's any village in the old ways that we understand village present. And so we're seeing and I think Dr Murthy's report is primarily about that loneliness, and we're seeing loneliness in moms who feel they don't have a support system to raise their children, who are being told this is all on you go, do it right.
Speaker 2:When you know, 100 years ago or more, or in different societies, she was surrounded by a network of caregiving, a multiple generations of caregivers, people who naturally were in her life and lived around the corner or lived upstairs or downstairs and could be a part of that raising of the child. We're seeing in the corporate world, certainly, you know. The report touches on the work world and what it's like to be lonely at work and we're also seeing it with senior citizens. We're seeing, you know, a major for a major cultural shift in this country, as you know, with respect to other nations, about how we treat our elders and where they go when they become quote unquote not useful to the society. That's a very cold way to kind of approach those who have the most wisdom and and and experience in this society.
Speaker 2:So you know, for my book Mandy, I just wanted to talk about isolation and loneliness and I certainly experienced it myself and was sort of dropped into it during the pandemic in a really acute way. But I wanted to understand and think through, you know, how do we reinforce that on a daily basis and how can we begin to unwind it a bit. That was a long answer.
Speaker 1:But it's pertinent. Let's explore the concept of in order to connect, we have to disconnect.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and my book is called please unsubscribe, thanks for that reason, which is we have to disconnect from a lot of these systems that keep us on autopilot and keep us connected and tethered to ways of being and behaviors and habits and systems that are not providing the human connection that we as a people require. And so my call in the book is that we really reevaluate where we are connected and kind of call it down and pair it down to just the basics. I'm not suggesting people not use Wi-Fi for work, right. I'm not suggesting people go live in a cabin and be alone. In fact, I'm suggesting the opposite, which is let's find the places where we do not need to be tethered to the system and cut those ties and clean house so that we can use that time and energy and focus and, frankly, love and put it into human beings and that looks.
Speaker 2:You know I'm speaking in really large terms, but on a day to day basis. That means you know how do I not spend my life on social media? How do I not spend my life in the self check out robot line at the grocery store? How do I not spend my life avoiding humanity? We've made it really easy with products and with commerce to avoid humanity. And we've sold this really sexy story to ourselves that you can be at home and order seamless and get and get your life delivered to your door, and that's a good thing. It's a good thing of your second bed, but it is not a good thing if, on a daily basis, you don't make eye contact, shake hands, hug the apart of a lap of laughter, don't connect for even three seconds with the person checking you out at the counter. I am recently engaged to be married, which is something that readers will learn in the book.
Speaker 1:Yes, I heard about this. Congratulations.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, and and my fiance is always very surprised about how we talk to each other a lot in New York and we don't know each other will walk down the street and say hello, how are you? Good morning. Those are things that are just hard for the course and have been for hundreds and hundreds of years, but we're seeing them disappear. We're seeing people, you know, with their headset in looking at their phones, completely ignoring the other human beings around them. That's not new as of this year. It's been happening for 10 and 20 years in this country. It's not new as of my book.
Speaker 2:Certainly other people are writing about it, but it was certainly something that I wanted to address. As we look at going into this automated future, as we talk about AI, as we talk about automation, as we, as we hear the stories of how great it's all gonna be, you think about a product and have it arrive, the drone that all is being sold to us as a very sexy, convenient future that's gonna feel smooth and fun and exciting I want us to be aware enough to question it, to think like, oh, wow, that sounds really sexy, but is that really what I want? Is that really how I want to spend my day? Is that really how I want to raise my children? Is that really the experience, day to day, that I want to have? And so the book is a call for us to think through that.
Speaker 1:I'm sure my listeners can relate to this. In regards to independent bookshops, I encourage people to go shop for books in their independent bookshop For many reasons and I'll put the link to why in an essay I wrote in the show notes. But yeah, I think it's imperative that we don't always have this instant gratification that we feel we deserve, that we feel we need. I think we can wait a couple of days which is just a couple of days to get a book from our independent bookshop. I want to get back to your book because in part two, titled the great unsubscribe, you give step by step instructions on breaking free and unsubscribing.
Speaker 1:You write happiness is not actually that much of a pursuit. It is much simpler than American capitalism will admit, where continually bombarded with advertising campaigns telling us and showing us how great will feel if we wear this, eat that, drive this holiday. There, happiness revolves around money and stuff and the pitch. If you do this by this, put this cream on your face, you'll be happy. So how do we break up with the big forces, big tech, big banks, big brands, big media?
Speaker 2:I love your thoughts or, funny enough, relates directly to independent bookstores books because first, I just want to say that you know, just having the Opportunity to travel all over the country and visit independent bookstores in the last six months has been incredible, because I know my favorite bookstores in New York. I know my favorite activity is a Saturday afternoon, casually perusing the bookstore. Quick tangent, my fiancee and I spend a lot of time in bookstores and it is one of the reasons I fell in love with him was because that was his idea of a Saturday afternoon and I think this is gonna be great. We're gonna spend 50 years together just in bookstores he sounds like a keeper.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, exactly. But with respect to happiness, I think we have been convinced, and let me be clear that I don't think we are a gullible people. I don't think we are unaware of so many of the pressures around us. When I say we have been convinced, all I mean is that we have been About how products will make our lives better, will allow us to feel a range of emotions, everything from the brand new $65,000 SUV to the you know the. My favorite example is the beautiful William Sonoma five court stand up baking mixer like these things are beautiful, of course they are, but but we have been sold a story that that equals happiness and that if you can achieve quote, unquote those things, you will be happy. And what that does is it keeps us in constant pursuit of the happiness which, in our founding documents, we have the right to, that pursuit right. And so I think you know, as a system, we have evolved To constantly remind one another that happiness is somewhere else, happiness is in the future, happiness is up there at the top of the ladder and that if we just keep climbing enough, we can get there and get the thing.
Speaker 2:I think the biggest discovery for me during the pandemic and for many people during the pandemic was oh, that's wrong. Happiness is actually just dinner with my family around the table, when I'm used to never getting home for dinner. Or happiness is going to my kid's football game, when I've never been able to do that because I've been working on Saturday mornings, or whatever that might be. I think it's different for everyone. For me, it was just the discovery that happiness is a book and a pizza, like I don't need everything else. I can want it and we can certainly talk about the morality and the ethics of wanting it and pursuing it, but I don't need it, and that was a huge, huge distinction. That was very unclear in my life for a long time, and I think the lack of clarity benefits some very big forces in our society. That lack of clarity benefits the big brands and the big banks and all of those who want to see us constantly consuming, constantly buying, constantly keeping the economic engine going. I have no interest in the economic engine stopping right. I don't want to live in a country that that.
Speaker 2:My point is that I want us to focus on the things that really give us joy and happiness and understand that what we need and what we want are two very different things, and that happiness is much simpler than that and many of us have access to that happiness around us. Those are the people we went to during the pandemic. Those were the things we found ourselves doing during the pandemic. Those were the lessons we learned and I want to see us carry it forward. I want to see.
Speaker 2:I'm challenging myself and I'm challenging readers and I'm challenging my friends and family to look and say you know what I might want, that really sexy, special toy or product or experience or thing, but the fact that I don't have it right now is not going to depress me, make me miserable, upset me, make me feel like I don't have anything in the world. I have to separate that and I have to be able to be happy with what I have and the book that's in my hand and the pizza that's on my door and actually enjoy that instead of delaying that joy to the point where my credit score is a perfect 800, right, or to the point where my checking account has the arbitrary number in it that I have decided means I am successful. There's a lot of delayed joy that I have experienced or not experienced, right, because I've said I'm not going to feel that I'm not going to allow myself to be happy until I get that thing, and I don't know that that's the best way to live.
Speaker 1:I've been busy writing notes while you're answering. It brought up a lot for me, and one of the things is, if we look at the word practical, they are things that we often need within our daily life, but I think that we've become imprisoned by instant gratification, and a good example of that is ordering books online through that place and wanting things delivered at two or three o'clock in the morning. It just is a little insane.
Speaker 2:I agree with you and I think that so much of that has been designed that way. If you look at any business that operates on the internet and wants you to click to buy something, the great business effort of the last 10 years has been how do we eliminate friction or seams or pain points from the experience and from the road between I want something and I have it? And so the great business movement has been and subscriptions are a very big part of that the movement has been to find every moment where that experience is clunky or where the customer can even think that they don't want to click and remove it, so that you have a thought I want something it's easy to get and then you have it. And what that has done to us is it has eroded our patience for anything right. It has gotten rid of what we can use to consider a human virtue of just knowing how to wait. And I think, at a psychological level and at an emotional level, we have become very uncomfortable, sitting in the not knowing, sitting in the not having and sitting in the discomfort of not having our needs met immediately. And so, from a practical perspective, what I want, people, my book has 100 different strategies for how you can unsubscribe in order to reconnect to other humans, and it looks at everything from your work to your friends, to your family, to the inner work. That I think is important to rebuild that muscle of patience and calm. But the practical some of those practical strategies are quite simple, right? It's like let's challenge ourselves to go to lunch without a phone one day. Let's challenge ourselves to go to a meeting and just write the address on a piece of paper and find our way there one day. Let's start small in these very, very, what couldn't seem silly ways to relearn patience and relearn the discomfort. And I think what we'll learn is that it's really not that bad and that ultimately we gain so much from it.
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example. During the process of writing the book, I unsubscribed from iPhone life. So I don't carry an iPhone anymore. I carry a phone called the Jitterbug, which is a phone that was developed for and marketed to senior citizens. It has limited apps and large print and a button I can click if I fall down and I can't get up. And it's still a smartphone. It's still connected to the Internet. It just has reduced the noise and the pinging and the ringing and the dinging to a very minimal level. When I'm at the office I'm fully connected on my blazing fast Wi-Fi, with my messages up and my email. But when the time comes for me to leave work I close it and I pick up this phone and I go out into the world like it was 1997.
Speaker 1:Is this Jitapag, a flip phone?
Speaker 2:It is just flat. I think there is a flip phone version, but what I really call it my patience machine, and I know that sounds so kind of silly, but this thing is slow. I mean it is not a fast phone and so when I click I have to take a breath for it to pull up the mask. Or if I click, I have to take a breath for it to pull up my contacts so I can make a telephone call. And in every other context this is the worst phone ever invented.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:But for the purpose of actually retraining myself to be patient, to take the deep breath, to realize that the world is not going to end in the next three seconds if I don't get this information or get this phone call through, or whatever that might be. It has actually been quite a boon to my life and so I continue to use it, and have used it for the last few years, because it just kind of reminds me in the moment that, like, hey, if the internet doesn't pop up in the next half a second, I'm still going to be standing here, I'm going to be OK. I might even meet someone on the street in that half a second and say hello and Mandy, look. I use extremes and comedy to kind of make a point and to be a little bit ridiculous in moments, and I certainly do it in the book, but I don't mean to be ridiculous and really these are serious things to be talking about. But I do think that the answers if you can call them answers, or the strategies, are quite simple. It's just a matter of kind of committing to doing them and making a practice of doing them, and the larger effort there is that what's really happened in the last 20 years is two major things.
Speaker 2:One, we have increased the speed of all of those interactions and we have eliminated limits, and so the first hundred pages of the book is sort of an every man's history of the economics of it all. But those are the two main takeaways. We've made it all really fast and we have eliminated the limits. And so if you use unsubscribing and unsubscription as a practice, those are the two things I recommend people do everywhere, all the time, whenever they can.
Speaker 2:How can I slow this down and how can I put limits back in? How can I slow this down and how can I put boundaries and parameters around it and re-embrace limits? And so I do that with the phone, I do that with my nieces and nephews, I do it in my schedule, where I was so used to before just putting in a meeting or a coffee date for 45 minutes or an hour. Now I'm like, oh, I'm going to meet a friend. I haven't seen that friend in two years. I'm going to block out four hours for that. Slow it down so that you can actually begin to enjoy it again.
Speaker 1:I love that. On that note, I remember last December my husband and I went to visit our youngest son and his wife in Ireland, and all her family lives in Sligo. I thought, oh yeah, we're going to go all these different places. You know we rented a car. This will be really fun. There's all these bookshops. I want to go to different parts of southern Ireland, but what happened was we'd go to visit a relative for a cup of tea or coffee and we'd be there four hours.
Speaker 1:So eventually I slowed right down and enjoyed every second of every day. I stopped planning and it took me a few days to feel that rhythm, but once I did, I didn't want it to stop. It was how I grew up in Australia. That was how it was. We didn't get to see any of the places we wanted to see, but we got to hear some great stories and walk over their farm and see caves and fairy dels. It was beautiful. It was just what I needed. So yeah, slowing down, I think, is super important. One thing I did want to ask you before we go because I know we're running out of time If you could just think back to your state of mind when you wrote that meeting and post during lockdown. How do you feel in comparison now? What words would you use to describe your emotions now, after practicing the things that you talk about in? Please Unsubscribe, thanks.
Speaker 2:Commer, more at peace, more connected to humans and more joyful. And I think those are not things that I wasn't capable of. Those are just things that I had. I couldn't access as easily before. Life before the pandemic was go, go, go, go go. Constant, constant, constant treadmill, constant madness, if you will. And life now is calmer. I still have a job, I still make money, I still go to work, I still have colleagues and friends and, again, I don't live like a monk, but I do think that this way of living has been very good for me, which is why I share it in the book, and I never mean to be prescriptive, just mean to share my experience and this has been my experience.
Speaker 1:Before we go, and in the same vein as what you were just talking about, I feel in this country we have a lot of people talking about wellness, particularly in companies when they'll offer packages for employees with their jobs. We have a great wellness program, we have gym memberships and that's kind of the extent of it, but they will talk about wellness quite a bit Meanwhile. In their first year, employees get maybe a week, maybe 10 days off for vacation time. First of all, that is absolutely crazy. We're human beings and we need more time off to be human, to enjoy our humanity, right.
Speaker 1:But the other thing is I look at companies like Patagonia-based Inventura, not far from where I live, and I have a lot of friends who work there. Everyone wants to work for Patagonia. They have a little school on the campus site where employees children, can attend, and that is one of many wellness programs that Patagonia offers. You see, it's about family and connection. It's not about running off to the gym after a 10 or 12 hour day. It's about spending time with friends and family. Have we become a country of greed where employees are made to work so hard for so long they aren't able to connect with their humanity?
Speaker 2:I think the answer is yes, we have become that greedy. I'm not happy to say that, I think it saddens me to say it. It's my opinion, but we have become that greedy. I think big corporations can't have it both ways. You can't not pay your fair share of taxes and keep wages low and not provide those types of things for your employees. So certain companies, like Patagonia, have understood that as a corporation, they have responsibilities to the public good, to the social good, to the wellness of the people who work with them, the people who are their vendors, the people who are their customers, and they have found ways, like you're saying, to create those type of for lack of a better word amenities for their employees.
Speaker 2:But so much of big business wants to have their cake and eat it too. They want to avoid taxes like the plague and get their tax responsibility as low as humanly possible. They want to return the greatest dividends they can to their stockholders and they want to do it all by offering as little as possible to their employees. This is not a sustainable strategy for the society, and so what you've got is you've got this outcry for things like socialism. That outcry is really just about the day to day benefits of living in a society where healthcare is centered and childcare is centered and everyone has a basic ability to live and drive and go about their lives. I don't know that anyone is calling politically for a repeat of the biggest socialist disasters in the 20th century. Of course not. We're simply calling those who are calling for it are calling for us to adopt the techniques and the public policies that have allowed life in those countries to be more manageable and more equitable and more sustainable.
Speaker 2:And I have, if you trace it back, it really comes down to these major corporations operating under the belief that that profit is the only thing that matters, and we have begun to question it in our public conversation, but certainly not enough. I personally do not believe that the purpose of a corporation is only profit. The purpose of a corporation is to be an engine of wellness and growth in the society. You don't have to sell yoga mats to be an engine of wellness, right? You just have to be aware of the decisions you're making, the products you're putting out into the world and the business practices that you're embracing and how they actually affect the society around you. And so I think it all comes down to language, because once a CEO hears the phrase wellness in society, that's what they think that I'm somehow, and other people are somehow begging them to manufacture chai tea lattes.
Speaker 2:No right, that's not wellness. Wellness is a lack of fear. Wellness is a lack of anxiety. Wellness is a lack of overwhelm, and if we can get to a place where we understand that actually we might be better business-wise. If our employees are not anxious, overwhelmed and unhealthy, then maybe that's good for the long-term sustainability of business. But it isn't how we've behaved in this country and it isn't how our public policy is designed to incentivize or to support. And so those are major, major questions and major major challenges. But that's where it comes from.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah. Another industry that needs an overhaul in the wellness area is the film industry. I was a stylist, costume designer for many years and my husband was a key grip. He's just recently retired. I can't tell you how many back-to-back jobs we've had to do, because we're freelancers, after all, and you have to take the work while it's there. But I used to look at PAs, for example. They just work their butts off and at the end of the day they're expected to work another workday to wrap things up and to help do returns, et cetera, when really they need to get a good night's sleep and come back the next day to finish what they're doing. It's just crazy what we expect people to do basically for free. The film industry definitely needs an overhaul.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it absolutely does. And that's where the unions command. And they are not perfect. They are human organizations. They're fraught with all sorts of challenges, but at the base level, unions are the only way we aggregate power and can rewrite a lot of the behaviors that happen across industries.
Speaker 2:And there was a time in this country where it was okay to work six days a week and someone spoke up and gathered other people to speak up, and that's how it changed. But I agree with you the entertainment industry needs a real reckoning with what is done for free and how intensely it's done. I mean, as a writer, I can't even tell you how much writing I have done for free in the entertainment industry and somehow it is just accepted as just in part for the course. This is how you get your foot in the door, this is how you get your name out there, this is how you even get into the union, right? So those practices are look, there's a word for it they're abusive, and until we can call it what it is and understand it as such, it's very easy for people to get away with these kinds of things.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's get serious and talk about books. What are you currently reading?
Speaker 2:So I brought it with me because I wanted to show you I'm reading this incredible book called how to Stay Married. It's the subtitle is in black because it's a cool design, but it's called how to Stay Married the most insane love story ever told by Harrison Scott Key. And Harrison is an incredible author. He's a really funny author, he's a humorist and I got the chance to meet him at the Six Bridges Book Festival in Little Rock, Arkansas, and he's an incredible guy. But the book is about how he discovered that his wife was having an affair or she told him that she was having an affair and how they ultimately stayed married. And I'm about a third into it and I can't put it down. It's really incredible. So, yeah, gleaning what I can about marriage yes, study up hard, Julio.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it and I shall write to our mutual friend, ali Wenske, and thank her for the introduction to you I recommend and enjoyed. Please unsubscribe, thanks. It's full of humor, love information about subjects that we need to talk about. So thank you.
Speaker 2:No, thank you. This was really wonderful. Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to my conversation with Julio Vincent Gambuto about his new book. Please Unsubscribe. Thanks. To find out more about the Bookshop podcast, go to thebookshoppodcastcom and make sure to subscribe and leave a review wherever you listen to the show. You can also follow me at Mandy Jackson Beverly on X, instagram and Facebook and on YouTube at the Bookshop podcast. If you have a favorite indie bookshop that you'd like to suggest we have on the podcast, I'd love to hear from you via the contact form at thebookshoppodcastcom. The Bookshop podcast is written and produced by me, mandy Jackson Beverly, the music provided by Brian Beverly, executive Assistant to Mandy, adrienne Otterhan and Graphic Design by Frances Verralla. Thanks for listening and I'll see you next time.