301: The Future is Analog and Books Aren’t Going Anywhere with David Sax

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Our future is not predestined and it's not dictated by technology, and it's not dictated by what came before it. We are responsible for creating our own future. And if there's something we don't like in that, whether it's the Metaverse or whether it's Wonder Bread or Pop Tarts, then it's up to us to create the alternative future to that. What is the alternate reality to virtual reality? It's a far deeper analog reality.

What's next? This is a question we're all having.

To ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the.

Pivot podcast and author of Pivot.

The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast. If change is the only constant, then let's get better at it.

Here we go.

Hello. Hello Pivoters. You are in for a treat today. I am so delighted to be here with David Sachs. He's a technology critic and bestselling author of five books, including Save the Deli, the Tastemakers, the Revenge of Analog and the Soul of an Entrepreneur. Today we're talking about his newest book, the Future is Analogous, how to Create a More Human World. Looking at the resurgence of analog goods and ideas in a digitally proliferated, I would even say post or mid pandemic world. I have to give a big shout out to AJ Jacobs, a former Pivot podcast guest who introduced us and he said, jb, you're gonna love David. And today was my ideal morning. Just reading, holding his book in my hands, the paper, analog copy, thinking, I'm so lucky. This is my job. So with that, David, welcome to the show.

Thank you. I am the one who's feeling lucky and blessed to chat with you and it's great. I remember you sent me your book. Must have been almost a year ago and it was so great. I remember sharing it with my wife who's a career coach, so it's kind of like fully in her realm. And then AJ connected us and we've been talking about this for Months. So it's such a pleasure to actually be here on this day, this glorious day. At least it is here in Toronto. It's a glorious day.

Well, so it turns out you're big in South Korea. I found that a really interesting tidbit that opens the new book. What's that like to be like a famous bestselling author in another market? Maybe you are here too. You live in Toronto, maybe in the US but it sounded like South Korea really ran with your ideas from the last book.

It was surprising and interesting as an author. And I don't know if you've had this experience, but when your books get purchased for translation, you kind of get a note from the publisher, hey, we sold the rights to South Korea for $4,000, so there's an extra $4,000 against your advance. Okay, great. And then maybe get one email from someone via the publisher. It's like, hey, they want to know if they could translate this word into this because the phrase doesn't work. Okay. And then two years later, three years later, like a box of books in another language arrives at your house and you're like, do I know anyone who speaks Korean? So you give it to Ms. Haewon, who was the kids daycare teacher, someone else that you might know speaks Korean. And then you put the rest in your closet and you're like, well, one day these will, I don't know, when I die, someone will give these away or whatever. And then that's kind of it. When I got invited to speak at a conference in Seoul in I guess it was 2018 or 2017, I was like, great. This is great. And I remember walking with my editor, I'd reach out to him, Tai Young Kang. And I was like, so is the book, you know, it seems as though it. You guys had some success. He's like, no, no, it was a national bestseller. I was like, wait, what? It's like, yeah, yeah, it's been a national bestseller for like six months. I was like, huh? You know, as an author, you kind of, you imagine your book coming out and all of a sudden, you know, instant number one bestseller success and you're made for life. And you know, this is my fifth book, so it doesn't happen. And if it does, it's a rare sort of lightning strike. But then when you find it happens in another country where you've never been, and you don't speak the language, you have no connection to it, the first question you sort of ask yourself is why? And so in the two trips that I'VE done to Seoul to speak at conferences and sort of confront this reality. It's been really interesting to try to figure out why that book landed so well in that place. And it kind of focuses or it's sort of revealed a lot of what I talk about in this new book, which is that the more digital one's life is or one exposure is in a society and Korea is. South Korea is the most digital place on the planet. Arguably the highest rates of Internet penetration, cell phone usage, e commerce, yada yada yada. The more the hunger and the desire for an analog alternative or a counterbalance is. And that's what I found over there. So now in hindsight, it's not as surprising that I've been there and sort of had these conversations. But it's a trip.

Yeah, I visited South Korea maybe over a decade ago, but it was so hyper tech oriented. And that was really exciting about visiting was seeing how digital forward they are. And it kind of mirrors the experience that we've all had with this pandemic. It's so interesting that the pandemic really put the Revenge of Analog to the test because it was almost like the revenge of digital. When the pandemic hit. And as you said, like so much of our culture, our education, our communication went online and not necessarily for the better. So in a way, like, it was just so interesting that the Revenge of Analog was talking about books and theater and culture. And I believe it came out, you'll have to correct me, 2015 or 2016.

2016. The day of Trump's election.

Oh, perfect. Yeah. My book then came out like a month prior to that.

Yeah, that book came out that day. The following book came out like April 2, 2020.

So I don't know if we call it luck, but that's some wild timing.

You have luck or schmuck. I think schmuck is the term.

Yeah. So in a way I was feeling a little sad and curious reading Revenge of Analog, talking about your love of books and bookstores, knowing what was to come for them when the pandemic hit, and then so delighted to read Future's Analog, talking about how a lot of us, almost like a rubber band snapping back, we stretched so far digitally, but not always for the better. You even described the experience as a keynote speaker speaking into the void of your laptop and how much better and more alive it is in person. So what have you found with bookstores and books recently? Now I think you and I could say we both love them so much, but what can we say about the future for books as one of our beloved analog devices.

What's amazing is how little has changed, despite the predictions of disruption, like the E book, the sort of E Ink book that we associate with the Kindle or the Nook or these other things. It's been around for, I don't know, 15 years or so. And as I always say in my talks that I give, you're not getting any more information in the paper book. Like, there's no extra words. You're not getting, like, special insights. You're just getting a hunk of dead tree glued together. And yeah, the cover's nice and whatever, but like, that's it. And yet books still outperform ebooks and audiobooks by 10 to 1 across the market and really around the world. Why is that? Why is it that independent bookstores, after decades of decline in the face of chain stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders and Indigo in Canada, and then of course, Amazon coming around and upturning the market before it upturned every other market for retail, why is it that independent bookstores are not only still hanging on, but actually thriving and new ones are opening and they survived the pandemic and they've done well and new ones keep opening today. Why is that happening? It's not an economic thing. It's much cheaper to produce and sell ebooks, and the publishers know that. It's this innate human desire and love of this physical tactile experience and everything that comes with that. And that's not just books, but it's bookshelves. You showed me a photo of your living room, which is an incredible wall of physical bookshelves that seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen in terms of liability, injury when you're trying to get that top shelf.

No, it's the other hoarder stacks that aren't in the shelves. That's where the real liabilities.

I mean, it's just. There's no reason for you to have that. There's no logical financial. It makes no sense. And yet it gives you such tremendous joy and meaning that you told me you actually settled on your apartment in New York because it was the one that could hold that many books.

And that bookshelf was the thumbnail, by the way, of the real estate listing. It was almost this beacon that was the thumbnail, the front cover of the listing. And I saw it in micro, and I had been looking for years. And so you're right, even more so that that thumbnail is what got me to go to the open house and.

That makes no logical sense from a real estate investor's perspective, from a living perspective, in terms of the space and the available use of it, to have these things that, you know, 99.9% of them, you're never going to touch again. They're just sitting there as the sort of decoration. And yet it is important to you, and it is important to anyone who goes, buys books and read books and puts them on the shelf. Because the physicality of the book represents so much more than just the information and words in it. And when you take that and digitize it, it doesn't change the meaning of those words, but it removes all the other analog signals and experiences and pleasures and benefits that we assumed. And Silicon Valley told us we were, I don't know, extra superfluous, inadequate and inefficient. And yet we now know that those inefficiencies are the parts of life where we get the greatest joy. And I think the books and the bookstores and the bookshelves, your crazy ass collection of bookshelves, are a wonderful example of what we learned during the past couple years of the pandemic. And when I talk about the pandemic, I'm not talking about the medical virus of COVID 19 and vaccines and all that crazy stuff. I'm talking about the forced digitization of our lives. In every aspect of our lives that mattered, which we were told would be the new normal, the future that we were destined toward that had finally been fast forwarded, it arrived and we'd be happier and more efficient. And as we worked from home and sent our kids to school from home and shopping, shopped from home and ordered meals from home and prayed from home and met with friends online for virtual cocktails from home, we very, very quickly realized that this version of the future and this version of our life that we just lived through, a screen sucked. It sucked. It was boring, it was antisocial. It was inadequate to what we wanted as humans in the way that for most people, holding a PDF copy of a book and reading it on some flat screen is insufficient for the experience they want reading.

One of the best illustrations of this, I loved the Chapter 6 opener on. I'm going to call it A Tale of Two Book Clubs. So I want to paint a picture for listeners. This is how David opens chapter six. And each chapter opening really zooms in to an aspect of this contrast between digital and analog. So, David, will you read us part one of this chapter six opener about Sean and his book club? And then I'll read Part two.

Sean is hosting book club tonight, which means two things are guaranteed. A mind bending work of science fiction to discuss and a fabulous meal to accompany that conversation. The seven members of the book club maintain a fairly consistent rotation, meeting up every month or two at someone's home to discuss their pick. There will be drinks and food, more drinks, and so much conversation. Hours will fly by, punctuated by laughter, lubricated by various substances and sprinkled with the occasional insight, until someone looks at their watch, notes that it's past midnight, and wisely suggests we head home. Not every book is a winner, but you always have a great time.

Recently a friend told you about the book club they're in. It meets online and includes dozens of participants from all over the world. The conversation is always led by the literature professor who created the club, and your friend marvels at how consistent, consistently fascinating her insights into the book are. Discussion questions are curated beforehand and the conversation freely unspools in the chat box because no one has to leave their home. The book club is incredibly convenient, but also diverse both in terms of age and economic background. There's even a talk of expanding it, possibly into a business. Can you share more about this tale of two book clubs? What are they illustrating? What point are you making here?

Well, one is the book club that I'm in, the first one, which really was, it's been going for, I guess, seven or eight years, but really took on a sort of depth of meaning during the height of the pandemic when we began meeting in person outside after one time trying to do this on Zoom. And it was just awful and it was a terrible book to start, which was everyone has a low point pick. That was his low point pick. And the other one is something I heard about from someone's like, oh, I'm at a book club too. Yeah, it's this digital thing and it's kind of you go and you listen and you might be able to raise your hand and have talks about the book, but it's great because you never have to leave your home. And for me, the whole point of book club, or any sort of club, chess club, my wife plays mahjong, poker, whatever, whatever you want to do is that the thing is the excuse to get together and be with people and have conversation in the same space. And that is not just irreplicable online, but it's almost contrary to what the online world's going to give you.

It's interesting getting that example, how we can seemingly put a lot of bells and whistles onto a digital experience. Like the fact that the second book club was curated by a famous professor and the discussion questions are so neatly organized in advance and I've attended some of those and you're right, my attention just isn't there. The connection isn't there. It's not soul fulfilling in the way that you describe these in person examples. And even the book club, like you said, it's kind of an excuse to get together with your neighbors. It's not really just about the intellectual ideas of it. It's about the collective effervescence that people are always citing. Emil Durkheim Just that serendipity of being together in person and those connections and the warmth of that that I was laughing so hard when you were talking about the Metaverse. Zuckerberg the Sun King is telling us, just as you said, it's just completely arrogant and naive to think that what we need is even more of that and to double down even more with an even fancier virtual headset and way to connect into that.

Yeah, yeah. The problem wasn't that this is not the world we want living on screens, it's that the screens weren't attached to our eyes. And if we could just attach the screens to our eyes, everything will be better.

We'll be right back just after this.

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It also struck me that when you were describing some of your best moments, I was really taken by the fact that they're timeless. As you say, they could have happened five years ago, they could happen five years in the future. It could be five minutes from now. But that similar themes of just being in nature Being in community, being with your family, having resources around you, even the power of cities that also got thrown under the city bus during the pandemic of what a wretched place to be. Everybody should flee. Actually, cities are worth so much connection and innovation. That's why I live in one myself. It's probably why you live in one. It's not just about convenience. And that's how I felt, living in la, that your life is spent in boxes. The box of your house to the box of the car, to the box of wherever you're going to end up. There was not even a way to walk, as you described in certain cities. I even tried to walk somewhere in la, which is a crazy notion, and you end up getting in a very dangerous, precarious situation trying to cross a freeway. There's my rant about cars. The metaverse, it just all connects. I thought it was interesting that you said this book is not one you had planned to write. What do you mean by that?

This book was the product of the time that I was living in. I had other ideas, but the way I like to write books is to go out and experience and research. And all I was getting to experience was what was inside my house and what I could walk to and what was physically around me, and the deepest and most meaningful experiences with these interactions that I was able to eke out in the midst of things being locked down. I mean, here in Canada, we endured much more lockdown than our libertarian neighbors in the United States to the south of us. What I was able to do in that time was really reflect on what I was seeing. And I didn't want or set out to write a book where I never left my house pretty much, and did all these interviews on Zoom. I wanted to go out and experience things, but the more that I was experiencing life, the more it was so clear to me that this theme of analog, of sort of real, tactile physical reality versus the digital kind that was being sold to us was really coming to a head for most people during the first year at least, of the pandemic, if not further on. And to me, it was this very important moment where the digital future that was long promised and heralded and the thing that we were all working toward, whether we were a corporation or a society or politics, a city or an educational institution, a school, this is the future. Things are going to be moving digital. We all got to be moving there. Okay, okay. This is the future. Okay, okay, okay, okay. Oh, here it is. What's it like? Oh, this is Terrible. This is awful. Why is this happening? Is it the way it's designed? Or is there something deeper here? That was my day to day life. That's what I struggled with and I think all of us struggled with. Why am I so exhausted when I don't have to go to an office anymore and I'm working from home? Why does this feel so terrible? Why do I hate my job all of a sudden? Why are my kids bouncing off the walls? Why is them staying home from school even for a day, the worst possible thing in the world? Why am I feeling so disconnected from everybody? And why do I crave any experience that brings me out into the world? A walk in the park, going for a hike, being the highlight of my month. What is going on here that speaks to something far deeper about the human experience? I had no other choice. This was sort of the book that I had to write. I also had no other option. My country's borders were shut for travel. I couldn't go anywhere even if I wanted to. Right.

Especially having written the Revenge of Analog and having that book do so well. It was almost like it was just begging you to address it. You have to address it because Revenge of Analog, coming out in a pre pandemic world and then again being so tested for two and a half, three years. It is perfect timing that you're revisiting this. And I think as you said, people have so much pent up and even probably not even able to articulate exactly how they're feeling about all this until you help us put words to it.

Here's hoping.

Yeah, well, you and I were talking about keynote speaking before we hit record and I felt very seen when I read the part of the book where you described first of all the impact on your income for the last few years, but then secondly, your first in person gig in a long time and just the electricity of that, but also your heightened nerves having been behind the computer. But that the way you described how kind of meaningless the virtual events start to feel where you're looking at yourself speaking to, even if it's a couple hundred or a couple people that you can't see. And as you describe, which I suspect to be true as well, half of them probably don't even have the sound on. They're folding laundry, they're helping their kids, they're phoning it in in some way. And you start to get the sense that is this even mattering? Is what I'm doing even mattering? And I found myself recently hired for an in person gig that got converted to virtual. I couldn't help but feel so disappointed because on one hand it's much easier for me. I get to stay in my sweats and be at home. But I'm losing the sense of how to connect with people in this format because I think people are also so sick of it.

Yeah, it's low stakes online, digital. It's no stakes. Right. It's infinitely replicable and scalable and it's easy. And anyone can sort of sit at home and do it. And that's the wonderful thing that allows you, Jenny, to host this incredible podcast from you're home with this gigantic microphone sound block that you have that is comical and amazing. And I can sit here and do it on mine and we don't have to meet in a studio somewhere. And that's great. That's convenient, right? But the sum total of that convenience, if it's all you have, is just a lessening of the human experience. And I think when you get to things like conferences and keynote talks and performances, which how much streaming concerts or plays or dance recitals were offered during the pandemic. I mean, every artist, every musician, every performer, every person who's giving a talk, they all kind of was like, oh, I'm gonna figure out Instagram live. I'm gonna figure out these things. And the stakes are just so low that it doesn't give you much other than what's there. The experience is less. You know, I was talking to an arts organization and they were, you know, looking at grants for projects and there was, you know, these projects and this, oh, this one sounds great. And someone's like, yeah, yeah, well, it's an online project. And everyone's like, nope, forget it. No discussion of its merits. It's just like, people are done with this. It was just off the table, like, nope, no more. None of that. Nope. Hard. No, it's like, ah, but it's hard. No, like, just nobody wanted anything to do with that. The burning stench of it was so bad, the taste was so bitter in everyone's mouth of just sitting there with another screen to click on and another thing coming through. There was no appetite for it. Why? Because even a lame ass sales conference and, you know, you or I getting paid to stand up in front of the stage at a podium for 40 minutes, talk to these people as they eat their rubber chicken lunch and give them a little insight into Linn island entertainment. Like, that is so much greater than the version where we sit at home in our sweatpants. But a dress shirt, obviously we're still.

Professional business on top, Kamp core on the bottom.

Exactly.

Do you think that the in person events speaking and sorry, listeners, if this has nothing to do with your job, but out of pure selfish curiosity, part of me felt when I was preparing for this event, it was Fireside Chat and I was so grateful because I couldn't imagine standing on stage in high heels with a clicker anymore. Something about that even felt like it was from the before time. Maybe it goes in this theme of I just couldn't imagine talking at people and that that did not seem to be a good use of my energy or their energy in the room. Do you think that the nature of even how we speak or how we show up will change or should change given this return to analog in certain ways?

That's a really good point. I do think that sort of the, in many ways the intimacy of the experience has value. Right. What will make people feel most human, feel most present, feel connect most with other people. That's the thing that everyone wants. That's the thing that we craved and desired. Whether that's at a hundred thousand person Coachella, like music festival where everyone's dancing and you have huge video projections and screens and you're like, you're feeling the collective vibe, or a small intimate concerto for viola in a palace in Vienna. I guess I don't know what is going to bring you in that moment and make you feel like you are present and there. And again, that notion for corporate talks, if you want to call them what they are, it's that idea of like, what is going to get people's attention and hold it and make them actually think instead of this being the live version of the thing they could have seen on the screen. Right. One of the reasons why I never used PowerPoint or any sort of slide presentation, even though everyone said, well, why don't you? Because like, if I can keep people's attention and hold it for 45 minutes just talking, it's going to be what is the bar graph or the sort of stock photo of the AI robot handing a flower to a child? What is that going to add to it?

Yeah. I feel like PowerPoint would not be on brand for you.

PowerPoint. No. And I just, I've been to so many talks where someone's like, the slide's not working, but hold on with me for a second. Can't improvise that.

No, no, you get a pass. Just like Cal Newport, he wrote a world without email. And I feel like what that did was this lifelong Permission slip that no one will email him because they're like, oh, you don't want more emails.

Funny fact about Cal Newport. I know Cal. He helped blurb this book Friendly. He's really good at responding to email. He is, probably because a lot of people aren't bugging him about it.

So what is your hope with this book? So you've written it under not always ideal circumstances because you couldn't quite travel as much and have that experience in person with people. But you did write it. And it is an important answer to Revenge of Analog. What's your hope that when people put this down, what change they make or what they feel inspired to do or even just acknowledge?

What I hope is that we're actually able to reflect on the time and the incredible and in many circumstances, traumatic period of time that we lived through early on in the pandemic and use that reflection of all those weeks and months and maybe years we spent in the sort of test drive of the digital future that we've been working toward. And the notion that digital would be the centrality of our lives going forward in sort of every part of our life. And if you can make something digital in your life or your business or your organization or your society, then that would be better and that this is the future that we're aspiring toward and working toward. And what I would love is that if people look at this book, they can actually reflect back on that and take a hard look at what that experience was like and judge for themselves what they want that future to be and then build the future around that. Because I suspect for most people there may be elements of that digital future that they love. Some people discovered ordering groceries online for the first time and they've never gone back to a store. And they love it. It's convenient. Convenient. It saves time, maybe it saves them money. Other people may decide that working from home in the sweatpants is the way of the future for them and they are never going to go back to an office. But I think for most of us, with the exception of a Mark Zuckerberg or a very small percentage of people, we realize that all digital future that we were sort of promised and Silicon Valley selling is not a future that we want to wholeheartedly accept that it was again, pretty miserable for a lot of it because we were disconnected from the people, the objects, the spaces, the places and the relationships that are best when they're in person and when they're physical. And that form the whole reality of the human experience. And we realize that There are certain things that we want to be analog in the future and not only remain analog, but actually we want them to be more analog. We want to invest in them. So a great example, I think the one that most people will understand if they have children or are children or students, is school. If anyone comes along and says, you know what? We went through the pandemic. Every kid in the world had to go through virtual learning. And we agreed that the future of learning is digital. Those people will be tarred and feathered. And I don't mean like in a Twitter sense. I mean in a dump tar on them and cover them in feathers and chase them out of town with pitchforks. We went through that, and it was a horrendous experience for pretty much everyone involved, for students, for teachers, for parents, for schools, for the entire society that saw that, okay, this future of children learning on screens was a failure, and we cannot go down that direction. We need to invest in so schools and the physical spaces of them and the relationships that they're built around other things again. Will streaming talks and performances have some part of the future? Yes. We want to be able to click online and see a concert sometimes or a play if we can't get there, or it's in another country, or we perhaps have disabilities and we have issues of access. But I think we realize the value of the arts, the value of performance, the way that makes us feel alive is a genuine thing that we want to invest in. And that means investing in sort of art spaces and cultural spaces. So those things not only exist, but that they're accessible to all sorts of people, whether it's economic circumstances or physical circumstances. How can we bring arts and culture alive into the century? For so long, digital was just the answer to what the future was. Oh, the future of X will be digital. The future of books are going to be digital. The. The future of this, that, or the other school. And the future book clubs are going to be digital. But we saw it, we test drove it. We actually got the chance to sit in, buckle up, and test drive the future. What worked for us and what didn't. And so that's what I hope people will get from this. The sobering reflection of what the digital future actually looked like and what the analog future can look like if we actually take the care and time to confront that and invest in it and make it a reality.

We'll be right back, just after this.

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I feel like the way you're describing it, it's almost like the Silicon Valley siren song because it's pulling us and lulling us.

Metaphors.

That was very good. I sensed that theater background from long, long ago.

Listeners did not see the jazz hands that David was drinking.

That's right. Totally lit up. I think your next audiobook should just be delivered in musical format if I could.

Well, at the time of this recording, there was a three page mega spread on the Metaverse in the New York Times. And I was thinking this is the biggest piece of propaganda. I mean, of course aspects of it seemed interesting and novel, but it's just unrelenting. The press and the pressure and the engineering for our attention that is happening in the digital world. And even companies like Amazon. You quote Scott Galloway in one of the two books, I don't even remember which one, saying their business model. It's like they lost money on the book part of their business and the shipping part of their business for over a decade, if not 15 years. And their goal was just to be the last one standing. And that's what's driving me crazy about even retail in New York City, the chainification of places like Bleecker street. Because the only people that could afford to pay the rent were chains. And now with the pandemic, even they couldn't afford to stay there. So what's going to go in the West Village? The little tea shop, the little bookstores? They're going to have a really hard time if something doesn't change and we don't recognize how important they are because the chainification of the West Village was horrible. But then what? They can't even survive. What's left? High end condos for rich people and international people to park their money.

Except the Russians. Not welcome anymore.

Your money that's right, that's right. I'm genuinely curious. How do these institutions that we value so much, like bookstores, how do they pay the rent? You said the Strand owns their real estate. That's one of the only reasons they were able to weather the last few years.

You know, it's seen as this inevitability. But then you look to the bookstores and you look to the record stores and you still see them opening and you still see the independent places pushing and some survive and some succeed and some thrive. And the biggest mistake we make when we consider the future, and this is perhaps due to digital or perhaps due to the nature of it, is thinking that it's this exponential one way growth, right? That 2% user growth today means 4% tomorrow means, you know, it's inevitable. It just keeps going and going. But history has shown in the real analog world that things don't move in one direction, things move back and forth. That you can have all the record stores going out of business 20 years ago and then a bunch of new ones opening up all over the country. And same with bookstores. And why is that happening? How's that happening? Because history and the world and humanity, we don't just move forward in one way. We don't just progress towards some enlightened endpoint. That is, whether it's the metaverse or the Messiah coming or whatever it is, we ebb and flow. We take some of the lessons of what we're living through and we reflect on them. We see the trends of where things are moving and we create counter trends to that. I like to compare it to food a lot. I mean, you know, in the 1940s and the 1950s, the future of food was more processed, more Wonder Bread, wider, longer shelf life, longer preservatives. And now when you look back at whatever it is, coffee, bread, restaurant styles, it's like the trends for the past, you know, 30, 40 years, is going in the opposite direction. Like, what is the slowest way to cook? What is the most traditional way? How can we do that? Because it gives us more flavor, because it's healthier. Our future is not predestined and it's not dictated by technology, and it's not dictated by what came before it. We are responsible for creating our own future. And if there's something we don't like in that, whether it's the metaverse or whether it's Wonder Bread or Pop Tarts, then it's up to us to create the alternative future of that. What is the alternate Reality to virtual reality. It's a far deeper analog reality. Your company, your organization's going to invest in VR. Great. I'm going to invest in. In R. R. Reality. Reality. Real. Analog reality.

Rr. There's a good pirate theme. You can call it the pirate brand.

Rr. There it is.

Okay, I just heard a joke on my favorite show to binge lately called Below Deck. What grades did the pirate get in school?

What grade?

High Seas.

Well, and I love how you're putting the R back into rr. Real reality and I think actual reality. I always used to joke, and I talk about this in free time, that people were always harassing me, that I had to be dating on the apps. I had to be on the apps. That was the only way. And by the way, it was a numbers game and I should just crush my soul by going on countless horrible dates. And I always said, I do real life. Tinder Serendipity is my dating app. And they would tell me that I was just, you know, all my limiting beliefs and yada, yada, yada. And then I finally proved them wrong. But it was so annoying to me, this assumption that the only possible way that I could meet someone would be in an app.

Digital is very binary, right? It is one or zero, Apple or Samsung. And reality has infinite choices. And that's the truth of analog. And so digital, in many ways, while it promises to liberate us, is incredibly stifling. It gives us fewer options. Sometimes Tinder or plenty of fish or whatever you're going to use is the option.

Tinder, Bumble Bagel.

Yeah. And then sometimes meeting someone on an airplane lounge is going to be the answer. We can't think of these simplified stories as the kind of endpoint now. We love that. It's so attractive. And that's why corporations are like, oh, AI is going to be the solution to all our problems. Because it's like, what's the solution to our problems? Well, there's no one solution solution. It's a little of this and a little of that and a little of this, and who knows? But nobody likes that answer. So the solution is robotics. The solution is drones. The solution is AI. The solution is the metaverse. Right? And that's just not how the world works.

That's why I love your ode to cities was that they're inherently chaotic, and that is why we love them. David, if you could give listeners just one small next step to bite off of this giant apple, what would it be?

Take a step back when someone asks you plans for the future. Whether it's in your work or they're considering something that is foisting digital technology online experiences as the future, something, and genuinely think back to those deepest, darkest days of the pandemic spring of 2020 or winter, if you're in China or now if you're in China still, and reflect on that experience. What were the moments, what were the experience that made you happiest, that made you feel comforted and most human? It was probably analog experiences. Going on a walk and actually speaking to a neighbor, even if it was from 10ft away with a mask on, taking your kids to the playground or being out in nature, maybe doing some sort of physical hands on tactile activity, fixing a bicycle or baking bread, even if it turned out to be inedible, as many of my creations did. And then think about what the online experiences were actually like, the digital experiences. What was it actually like to go to school or help a child go to school online? What was it actually like to have Zoom cocktails with friends? Would you do that again? Is that part of the future that you actually want? And that answer and being honest with yourself is going to shape what the future is that you want and the future you're going to help build.

Awesome. Perfect. I love it. Thank you so much, David. Listeners, be sure to check out the brand new book the Future is How to Create a More Human World. And I'll give you a little homework of take something that's gone digital back to analog. Whether it's a thank you note or buying an actual physical book from a bookstore and not Amazon. Let's all try for a little more analog in our life. Is there anywhere else you'd like to send people, David?

No, I think that's to the nearest independent bookstore that you love or that might be in your neighborhood that you've never tried and go in, check it out. You don't have to buy my book. You do have to buy Jenny's book. Buy them both.

I've never seen my book in the wild in a bookstore.

Oh, let me tell you. So the counterpoint to the Korean thing that started the conversation of going to Korean, it's like, oh, your book's an actual bestseller. You're a hero here. I mean, I would say that, but let's just say people know your book. You go into any bookstore, it's there was when my book came out in the United States on the day of the election of Donald Trump, and I went to New York a few weeks later, sad and depressed that nobody was paying Attention to this book. And I went to a bookstore that used to exist in Brooklyn, New York, that's since closed down, Book Court. And I'm there with my family because we went to visit our friends for Thanksgiving. It was when I was having a book event with AJ Jacobs interviewing me on the Upper west side. I go into this book place, Book Court, and my wife's like, ask, ask, ask. I'm like, no, no, no. Like, there's no worse feeling than being an author and looking for your book in the bookstore. She's like, ask.

Just ask.

Just ask.

And you don't tell them it's you. You're like, do you have.

Hey, I wrote a book. I don't know if you have it, but it's called Revenge of an Exposing. They're going to say like, oh, yeah, it's under the bottom shelf in the back. You know, he like, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click. On his computer. Yeah, yeah, it's out. But, yeah, we're not going to carry it. I was like, oh. And then he's like, oh, is that your kid? And I turn around and my daughter, who's then, you know, three and a half years old, has spilled like a whole bag of popcorn all over the floor. And he hands me a broom and a dustpan, and I proceed to sweep the last bits of my dignity up. But, you know, at the end of the day, the book became an international bestseller, and that bookstore, unfortunately, went out of business. So justice, who knows, he got taste.

His taste, you know, I mean, they.

Just can't predict the taste.

Didn't know what's good for them. That's true.

Needless to say, I did not allow my daughter into a bookstore for some time. I blame her.

My dad will go if I'm with him, and he'll ask, do you happen to have Pivot or Free Time by Jenny Blake? And then inevitably, and I got shout out to my dad, because it's sweet that he does this, but they'll start looking for it. And they go, this is the author right here. This is her. And, you know, and I guess so. I'm like, blushing. But then they have a moment where they go, oh, that's of kind. But when I ask, I don't tell them it's me. And then so many times they're like, yeah, no, we don't carry that here.

That crap. What are you crazy?

Never. But friends have sent me. And you can never know. A book is one of those things you got to put out in the world. And I have friends who've seen it in the wild. I'm happy when I see the pictures. So I hope we all get to see futures Analog in the wild. I think it's had as good a chance as ever.

All I ever want in my life. There's two things I want as an author, besides number one New York Times bestseller status, of course. One is to be walking by one of those little free libraries somewhere and see one of my books in the little free library. And the other one is to see someone reading it in the wild. Like, be on a subway in New York, be at an airport and see someone reading it and be like, oh, you like that book? What's it like? And they're like, oh, it's crap. And I'm like, oh, yeah, look at the picture on the back. I wrote that crap. Can I sign it?

Oh, my gosh. Those are great author goals. I told Cal Newport, I said, I just want to be known among nerds. Like, I don't want to be famous in any way, but if you're a book nerd, it'd be cool if you knew about my books. That's all hype.

That's all I things to aspire to. Well, there's our future.

That's right.

Now we have to manifest it.

That's right, David, this is so fun. I already can't wait to see what you write about next. I love the combination of analog books and food that seem to weave these threads across your entire oeuvre.

So very physical and sensual. Yeah, we'll see.

Yeah, I love it. You're like flying the flag for rr.

But a real flag.

Yeah. Thank you. This is so fun, listeners.

Thank you.

If you're still even here. Thank you for bearing with us.

Folding their laundry. And they have it on mute. Just like the virtual talk.

That's right. Gosh, I think this is way more engaging than even a virtual talk.

No one's forced to listen to a podcast except spouses of people who make podcasts.

You might know Neil Pasricha. Fellow.

Fellow. Torontonian.

Author. Yep, Torontonian. So he calls this the end of the podcast club. So, listeners, if any of you made it to this end of the podcast club, high five. Send us an email. Helloivittmethod.com all right, David, I'll let you go. Happy launching. Congrats on the latest book and be connected.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to, and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.