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

Infinite Loops

Strategy consultant turned writer Natasha Joukovsky joins me to discuss why bourgeois comfort is more conducive to writing than you think, why choice-plots make for better fiction, the eyerolling prevalence of manufactured nonchalance, our shared distaste for Atlantis Bahamas, and MUCH more!

I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did. For the full transcript, episode takeaways, and bucketloads of other goodies designed to make you go, “Hmm, that’s interesting!”, check out our Substack.

Important Links:

• Natasha’s Website
• Natasha’s Substack
• The Portrait of a Mirror

Show Notes:

• “You can do everything, just not at the same time”
• It’s Recursion All the Way Down
• Pretending to Read vs Actually Reading
• Manufactured Nonchalance as a Status Signal
• Counter-Signalling, Fake-Famous & Jim’s Cursed Trip to Atlantis Bahamas
• On No-Choice Plots & Writing in Service of Beauty
• The Self-Deception of Status Hunting
• Why Bourgeois Comfort is More Conducive to Art Than You Think
• Natasha’s Next Book
• “We don’t do auctions”
• Natasha as World Empress

Books Mentioned:

• The Portrait of a Mirror; by Natasha Joukovsky
• The novels of Jane Austen
• Status Anxiety; by Alain de Botton
• The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (poem); by T.S. Eliot
• Class: A Guide Through the American Status System; by Paul Fussell
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid; by Douglas R. Hofstadter
• Ulysses; by James Joyce
• Metamorphosis; by Franz Kafka
• Beloved; by Toni Morrison
• In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past); by Marcel Proust
• Collective Illusions; by Todd Rose
• The Status Game; by Will Storr
• Anna Karenina; by Leo Tolstoy
• The Theory of the Leisure Class; by Thorstein Veblen
• A Little Life; by Hanya Yanagihara