Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: Roberts, who writes about wealth and privilege from a rare perspective.
From the inside, David creates Sparks from Culture, a popular substack where he shares honest essays about having generational wealth in America. After 40 years in finance date, David retired to write full time.
What makes his voice special is his willingness to examine his own life honestly. He writes about everything from living in what he calls a wealthy bubble to his responsibility toward his community.
In our conversation, we talk about inequality in America, reforming capitalism, and why the wealthy need to look hard at their role in society.
We also dive into parenting. David's been married 39 years with three adult kids who all still live in New York. We discuss how he and his wife raise their children around money and privilege and what it means to be truly present as a parent.
David donates all his paid subscription money to fighting poverty. And he genuinely wrestles with what wealth means.
Here's my conversation with David Roberts.
[00:01:16] Speaker C: How are you doing?
[00:01:18] Speaker A: I am fine. I'm getting over a cold. I think I'm over it, but had it for a while. Yeah, minor, minor stuff. But we are. Our big event is our daughter in law is due July 2nd. So that's really coming up. It's like a week away.
[00:01:37] Speaker C: Wow, is that your first grandchild?
[00:01:40] Speaker A: It would. It will be our third. It's always, it's always exciting and a bit nerve wracking because you want everything to go well. So. Yeah, that's, that's probably, probably the personal headline. How's everything with you?
[00:01:53] Speaker C: It's good. I'm calling you from the Swiss Alps and so I'm not in the city. I'll be there Thursday for a night, just for.
[00:02:01] Speaker A: And then you head right back or.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: I go to New Newport and then I'll be back in New York, I think for the early part of July. I'll be training with my, my karate teacher. Yeah.
[00:02:12] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Yeah, that's sort of my, my raison d' in New York at the moment.
[00:02:17] Speaker A: Karate. That sounds like a good reason to, to be here. Well, you'll meet. It's supposed to be beastly hot the next few days, so you'll miss that, which is good.
[00:02:30] Speaker C: Yeah. Although the summer in New York is always beastly hot.
[00:02:34] Speaker A: Supposed to get to 100 tomorrow.
[00:02:36] Speaker C: That's crazy.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:02:39] Speaker C: So you know, as you do on substack, you know that our sort of overlapping topic is privilege. Right. David, do you want to let my readership know about your substack?
[00:02:52] Speaker A: Sure. I write a substack newsletter called Sparks from Culture and I write weekly essays on wealth and Privilege and status, mostly. Not all the time, but mostly.
And I write about it from the point of view of someone who grew up in a wealthy family and then had a career in finance, which helped me stay wealthy. And now really, I retired from that career and I write as a vocation.
And I found that I wasn't reading or seeing in the media what I would call any authentic depictions of the wealthy, more cartoonish. And so I thought that it would be useful to write something that. To write about the world that I live in from an authentic point of view.
So that's what really motivated me to do so.
[00:03:55] Speaker C: Well, I'm going to say that it's super courageous because I've been told I'm courageous for doing that.
[00:04:01] Speaker A: Well, you are, and I should say that, Diana, you also write. But when I began writing, I hadn't discovered you. And I have discovered some other people who talk more about wealth and privilege or write more about wealth and privilege. But yeah, I just, I just think it's very interesting to me because it's. It forms who I am. And so it's partially been self discovery.
[00:04:26] Speaker C: That's cool. What have you discovered?
[00:04:30] Speaker A: Well, I discovered that a lot of my views were, I think, not chosen by me, but chosen for me just by the world I lived in.
And so trying to write through what did my upbringing mean and what did my background mean has helped me become a lot more, use a cliched word, self aware. So when I write, I try to. I try to think about my life and my experiences and why did I act this way or that way and how do I feel now?
You know, one example that maybe relates to, but is not directly about wealth, I got married young.
We really had no idea what we were doing, but it all turned out well. We were lucky.
And then we had kids right away.
And I just always assumed that that was sort of the path that everyone either went on or wanted to go on.
And so I've become much more aware that the world has changed in the last 40 years and not everybody wants to do that. So I feel like having lived in a bubble for quite some time and just focused on family and career, I really didn't have a wide view of other ways of being. And so I think both writing about it and then interacting with people, with other writers on Substack has been eye opening for me.
Or perhaps I was surprised at how, how tight my blinkers were beforehand.
[00:06:24] Speaker C: Oh, wow. So what has it. What has your worldview expanded to include?
[00:06:29] Speaker A: Well, I think it's an I certainly write a lot about inequality and the threat from inequality.
And so I would say 10 years ago, that's not something I really thought a lot about. And I, you know, I'm worried about what that means for our society.
And as somebody who loves history and reading about history, I worry about it, I think both from a wanting people to be happy, happier point of view or better taken care of point of view, but I also think about it from a selfish point of view because I think that, you know, the pendulum could swing very hard, very fast in the other direction and that wouldn't be good for people who do have privilege, because I think that would be, I think, you know, things go too far, that's a threat.
[00:07:37] Speaker C: You mean something like the French Revolution?
[00:07:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, you know, yes, something akin to a reaction that kind of goes into a, Goes into a different direction. But yes, it's, you know, if you read history, it's not, I don't know what form it would take. But that doesn't mean that it couldn't take a form where the politics of the day suggested that being against anybody having privilege or wealth could certainly take hold as it has in other countries. I don't know what it would look like in America, but it's a possibility that things could swing too far in the other direction, which would make all of us worse off. I think I'm like a reform person versus a burn it all down person.
[00:08:39] Speaker C: Yeah, it sounds like you're more moderate in terms of, or advocating more for a moderate kind of policy. Is that.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Yeah, I think, I think, I think reforming capitalism is a much better idea than trying to come up with some radical change to it. That's something.
[00:09:01] Speaker C: And what would that reform look like ideally, in your view?
[00:09:05] Speaker A: Well, you're, you know, I'm talking to you from Europe and I think there are examples in Europe where countries have created a more, not egalitarian, but a less unequal society and provided their citizens with a much greater minimum standard of living.
And certainly the United States could afford to do that. But we seem to be going in the other direction with tax cuts and cuts to the safety net. And that, I think is not the direction we need to go in. I think we need to go in the other direction, even if makes us a little bit less wealthier as a society.
People don't feel gdp. They feel, where am I compared to others?
What is my status? And I think that when you have an unequal society, you have much the aggregate happiness, if you will, as people sort of measure Themselves against others, wherever they are in the socioeconomic ladder. The aggregate happiness is lower in an unequal society because even those of us who are, have a lot. Human inclination is not to say, well I'm happy because I have all these things. Human inclination is to look at the people who are at the rung above you and say, oh, I'd like to have that.
That.
And it's certainly accentuated by social media.
[00:11:00] Speaker C: That's interesting. You know, there's, I think, is it Bhutan that has a happiness index?
[00:11:06] Speaker A: They do. I actually have visited, I have visited Bhutan and I have no idea if the people are happy, but we were really happy visiting it because it's a beautiful country. It actually is actually compared to, to Switzerland in terms of its topography. It has these beautiful mountains and yeah, it, it's, it, it was, it was one of our favorite places to visit. But. Right. Happiness is something that's very elusive to measure obviously because it's most, it's all.
[00:11:36] Speaker C: Self reported and everybody has a different idea of what happiness is. And some people say it's joy, some people say it's contentment and peace. Right?
[00:11:47] Speaker A: Yes. And others might view happiness as I'm happy when I'm, you know, biting into a delicious candy bar.
[00:11:57] Speaker C: Or it could be as if I'm.
[00:11:59] Speaker A: Happy for those few seconds.
[00:12:01] Speaker C: But yeah, that's the hedonistic type of happiness. Right. But then there's also the happiness that are, I believe our founding fathers used as a definition, which is the pursuit of work that you find fulfilling or that you want to do.
[00:12:16] Speaker A: Yes.
And the prerequisites being life and liberty. I think it was well articulated, although we don't, it's not mentioned as much.
FDR had his four freedoms. You know, freedom from, want, freedom. I forget them all now. I don't have it off. But it was basically, if you're free from poverty or persecution and other freedoms, then you can go out and have that sort of earned success, happiness and feel productive.
[00:13:02] Speaker C: Well, because that's the biggest threat right now to our, I think one of the biggest threats to our civilization is what AI is bringing. It's taking away jobs from people or this idea of what purpose they might have.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean I, I think it's really hard to handicap exactly what AI will, will do. But certainly if, if you are replaced by a machine or a computer or soft program at this point, you're, you're not going to feel good about yourself. We've seen what's happened when factory jobs have effectively been replaced by robotics or by offshoring in America, that has led to a lot of discontent. So when you have these big changes, certainly can. And you can anticipate a lot of.
A lot of.
[00:13:58] Speaker C: Yeah. And I wrote down what you just said about the comparison. You know, that. That aggregate happiness gets affected by comparison and, you know, the thief of joy. Right, right. But isn't that sort of driven by a culture of, you know, capitalism and consumption?
[00:14:17] Speaker A: It is.
Certainly is. And if you.
I think that's always been true to some extent, but it gets accentuated in times when there's more inequality and there's perceived inequality. I'm not saying the inequality is false, but when I say perceived, it's just that it's in your face all the time.
So, you know, when we see when there's going to be a flood of pictures of the wedding of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, that's going to descend on you whether you like it or not, unless you lock yourself away from it completely. People are going to look at it and say, oh, they look like they have wonderful lives and I don't have that. And, and it's subtle, maybe, or it just, it, it's not a. It doesn't add to people's happiness to see what they don't have. And we just see that a lot.
You see that certainly with body image. I mean, that's a. That's a big deal, particularly for people who are younger.
The.
The technology of.
I wrote about this, or actually with another substack writer, really jointly wrote about how beauty standards continue to rise because of the technology of how people are presented both online and even in real life, where you have plastic surgery, that is.
Laura Kennedy is the writer she writes about. She. She had this phrase that I was. Became thought was really good, traceless transformation where somebody. You see somebody, usually a celebrity and they look better, but you can't really say, oh, they had this done or that done, and that costs a lot of money and you even need to know who to go to. So I'm just using that as an example of how the bar. Bar of what is achievable continues to be raised. And I think that does affect everyone else to some extent.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: Interesting. Especially if they're, you know, looking at those types of accounts. Right.
[00:16:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I don't, I don't. The only sort of social media, if you can call it that, that I go on is substack. But I do sometimes get see in my feed who.
Or writers who talk about the wealthy and visually and so forth and And. Or write articles on. On this subject of how. Of social media. And so I'm. I'm interested in it. So I read about it. And so that sort of forms part of my.
My own worldview of what's going on.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: Have you ever felt isolated, David?
[00:17:21] Speaker A: I have.
Let's forget about adolescence, because I think in adolescence everyone feels more, you know, can feel isolated.
I think I don't feel isolated in part because I have family all around me. I'm with my wife all the time, and my three kids are in the city. And so I feel like I'm with family all the time. So that works against the feeling of being isolated.
But if you. I think that's not necessarily mutually exclusive with living in sort of a bubble where I don't really. I really don't know how other people might live.
So in that sense, I feel.
I do feel.
I do feel that I live in a.
In a world where I necessarily interact with a broad range of people from different backgrounds.
I think that's been my experience. I think joining the substack community and meeting a lot of other writers, I've met a lot of people who do have different backgrounds and different experiences, and I think that's really helped a lot.
[00:18:55] Speaker C: You do a lot for writers. I met some of them at your event, and they were young people who were still starting off in their careers.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah. I think meeting younger people and hearing what they're thinking about is definitely helpful in combating the falling into the rut, if you will, of just talking to other people who are like you.
So I think I feel less isolated once I left my finance job and began just becoming friendly with a host of different people, different ages, different geographies, different circumstances. So that's been helpful.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, your profile on substack is amazing. You've been named the 2024 featured, the substack featured publication for that year. Congratulations.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: Well, there are a lot of people who have that little badge, so it wasn't like, oh, so I have to.
[00:20:01] Speaker C: It's amazing, David. You're. You're putting yourself down.
[00:20:04] Speaker A: No, I, I just. I. I'm a. I'm a. I'm a stickler for, you know, being.
Being accurate. There, There were. It was a big honor, but it was. It was. There were a lot. There were a lot of people who each year, I think, get one of those.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Yeah. How many? Not that many.
[00:20:26] Speaker A: Maybe not that many. I certainly. I certainly haven't counted. I try when you. When you write on substack, you get all These statistics about how many subscribers and badges and other things like that.
Sure, I like it when I. I get positive feedback, but I.
I try not to let that influence what I write or how I write.
[00:20:51] Speaker C: That's still pretty cool. You know, you have quite a lot of subscribers. Can you tell us how many?
[00:20:58] Speaker A: I mean, I'm in like the. In the seven thousands range. And then on Substack, you also have a lot of people who follow you, which means that they prioritize you on their feed that they get. I'll get a fair amount of comments back. When I write something that tells me that the people who wrote the comments read it and then they offer their own.
Maybe their own stories. I enjoy that. I think it's unusual to be able to write an essay and then literally minutes after publishing it, you start getting comments from people. If you write an article for a magazine, I don't think you get any feedback.
[00:21:42] Speaker C: That's amazing. That piece you wrote about the juror, about being a night. You were a nightmare juror.
[00:21:48] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:48] Speaker C: You had 77 comments. That's amazing.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: There were some good stories from other people about when they had served on a jury, too, that I really enjoyed reading.
Otherwise I'd never have heard of these other experiences. I was a nightmare juror for people listening because I was 24 and was supremely confident that I could suss out guilt or innocence in microseconds just by looking at the defendants and their lawyer, which now I was about to say I'm embarrassed by. But I was 24. My brain wasn't, you know, well formed and.
Or all the way formed and. Or at least the restraining part of my brain wasn't in full force and effect.
Wow.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: I love the honesty that. With which you write.
You know, one of the things that struck me, even from your about page, is how important your family is to you. I mean, that's like the picture you have on your, I think on the homepage that you have on Substack.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: I do, yeah.
[00:22:55] Speaker C: Yeah. And.
And then you said that your focus was family and career and that that served you well.
Right?
[00:23:05] Speaker A: It did.
Did. I don't, you know, I don't certainly don't regret.
Regret that I was.
I was always balanced between.
Between family and. And career and. And to me, it wasn't a sacrifice. It was just. It was something that I wanted very much. I'm by nature a home buddy, and I loved the time I spent with my family and was never a fan of networking and obviously took business trips, but I took a few of them as was necessary.
So I like being with my family.
[00:23:59] Speaker C: I've written about some of the pressures of privilege and how families that I've come into contact with, including my own, you know, we get sent off to boarding school, we go off to college. We don't have a lot of contact with our parents after a certain age. And it's not that family is not important, it's just that the raising of adolescents is more done by institutions rather than parents, if that makes any sense.
[00:24:28] Speaker A: Yeah, and I think I had that experience growing up, growing up in the, in the set, being an adolescent in the 70s. I think my parents were certainly not. I mean, they were bridge, they were fiends, bridge fiends. They would go to like national tournaments all the time. And they really didn't interfere very much in my life. They were, you know, I used to play ping pong every night when my father was home with him. I remember those, those contests fondly. And so it's not like they were completely absent, but a lot of time, but it wasn't like they weren't really involved. Like I hear about parents today, where they're very closely involved with what their kids are doing and so forth, so. Or a lot of parents are.
[00:25:15] Speaker C: I'm not going to call it helicopter parenting, but maybe, I don't know if getting too involved is maybe not healthy. What do you think about that?
[00:25:24] Speaker A: I think that what we fell into as what my wife Debbie and I fell into as parents is that we didn't over schedule our kids, but we were around a lot at home.
So because you could never tell when you were going to have sort of a moment with your kid, with one of your children.
And so we always, we always tried to make ourselves available for them. And yeah, I think we were, I think it turned out we were pretty balanced partially because on the weekends we like just to hang out and relax and not have to be scurrying off to so many activities. I mean, if our kids wanted to do an activity, of course we wouldn't, we wouldn't discourage them, but we, it's not like we would sign them up for things that, that they didn't. You know, we wouldn't. Our weekend schedules were, as I recall, were pretty chill and I'm really happy.
[00:26:32] Speaker C: So a lot of hanging around the.
[00:26:33] Speaker A: Table, long meals we did, we had. My wife said we should have dinner every night with the kids and we did. And they were pretty informal. There would be a lot of debating and repartee and sometimes it would get a Little out of hand and there might be tears, but I think all our kids benefited from that in that they all are pretty quick in terms of their wit now and they're older, they're, you know, they're all grown ups. They're 37, about to be 35 and 31.
[00:27:15] Speaker C: So that's so cool. I met some of your kids actually at the substack event, which I think is a testament to you that they would show up to a parental event.
It's a testament to you.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: We, we have very, we're very close with our kids. I don't think they would say we're overbearing at all, but we really enjoy spending time with them and goodness knows why. But no, they, they seem to enjoy spending time with us. We see them really often. One of the really lucky things is that the two, two of our kids are married and they married people. Their spouses are people who grew up in New York also, so there was never a discussion of they were always going to be to want to stay in New York. And our third and youngest child is a theater nut. So I don't think he's leaving New York anytime soon.
It's really very few parents who have three kids have all of them grown up living in the same city. So that was just really lucky for us.
[00:28:26] Speaker C: It's nice. They're very, you know, they say give your kids roots and wings. It sounds like you've done that.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean there's always, as families get bigger, there's, you know, bigger families.
There's always, there's always issues. And so I don't want to, I don't want to paint a picture of perfection because things are never, things are never perfect. But one of the other things that has been really fortunate and that we're, we're grateful for is that we really love our son in law and daughter in law and are close with their families and all the siblings get along. My daughter is very good friends with my son's sister in law. So it's like, it's, it's, it's nice. They're, they, they have that, they have that sort of community.
[00:29:21] Speaker C: So nice, it sounds to me like, like presence. You were very present for your kids and for your family.
[00:29:28] Speaker A: We were. I mean, I can tell you a story about what happened once when we weren't just so that, okay, we are our son.
I think we took both, I think, I'm trying to remember. I think we took both our sons over to, to a trip to England because our the older of the two was going to a program, one of those high school programs at Oxford they have. And we left our daughter, who was a senior in high school, alone, and she said, can I have a birthday party from my friend? And we said, no, we don't think that's a good idea.
And she got talked into inviting a few people over, and then it became viral, so to speak.
And apparently there were like a hundred people in our apartment drinking.
She got ratted out by the doorman and she had a terrible time. Like, she was not enjoying it because she knew she had done something wrong and it was sort of uncontrollable and she was really worried about it. But yeah, that, that. So that's an example of what can happen when you, when you're not around. And so I, you know, I, I think about that and I think. I think. I think being around, there's a. There's a real difference. Like even now when my wife is home, we could be in, you know, we're in a separate, Separate rooms, but there's a totally different feeling to the house when we're both here than, you know, when she's out.
So, yeah, being around and important.
[00:31:15] Speaker C: But also you guys were, you know, consequent. You said no. A lot of parents say yes because they want to be friends with their kids.
[00:31:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that what I remember there were a number of kids from privileged. A lot of kids had privileged backgrounds and private school world.
And a lot of kids just had a credit card. And our kids had an allowance that they had to negotiate with us for, and it was for like going out to movies or going out with their friends for a meal and things like that. And, and they complained bitterly at the time, but they would say now that it was a. It was a. It was a really. It was a really good thing to do. And yes, it.
A lot of times it's from convenience. And I always wonder whether.
Not always, but I don't know if absent my wife's influence, who was raised differently, who was raised to not, you know, to be careful, more careful about spending money than perhaps I was raised at as.
Although I did have an allowance growing up, but she really insisted on that. And of course it takes more time to negotiate an allowance with your kids and hear their complaints and, you know, they're asking for raises as they get older and all that. It's a lot easier just to give them a credit card and say, I'll, you know, we'll look at your spending, I guess. But so, again, it's. There is intentionality there, and it. And it is spending more of an effort.
[00:32:59] Speaker C: Yeah. Or engagement. Like you're engaged with your kids, not just present.
[00:33:04] Speaker A: Yeah. And, and, and I.
I'm still very engaged with all of them, except for my brothers and Debbie, perhaps. No one can make me laugh, and no one is a harsher critic than my kids of me. So they really try to keep me in my place, which I also, I tell them I really appreciate that.
[00:33:30] Speaker C: Well, I'm really interested in health and wellness and how wealth intersects with health.
And I know that you've. In your substack, you have written about some of the more expensive doctors and health insurances and all that, but I'm just wondering, what are you now concluding in terms of the intersection of wealth, privilege, and health?
[00:33:56] Speaker A: Oh, it's a huge. I mean, there's a huge correlation.
There's a statistic I think is accurate because it was done by somebody who's a very precise statistician that if you look at the poorest 1% and the wealthiest 1% in the United States, the life expectancy gap is huge, like 12 or 12 years, I think, for women and almost 15 years for men.
But I think healthcare privilege is absolutely huge. And if I feel it permeates through everything I was about to say, if I feel more passionate about anything, it would be trying to provide a healthier. Provide more health care in whatever form to people who are lower down on the socioeconomic, on the, on the economic spectrum. And a lot of the philanthropy that my wife and I do is. Is certainly targeted to that.
It could be. Could be nutrition. It's very expensive to eat healthfully.
Yeah.
And. And you have these food deserts in areas where most of the people are not wealthy.
And they, you know, you have the obesity rates there are.
And diabetes rates are off the charts. And, and then. And then something like dental care, which no one. I've never heard of, an insurance plan, really doing a good job covering dental care.
It's really expensive. I were involved with a school and a public school up in Washington Heights, and I was talking to the head administrators, and they're all from the Dominican Republic originally, and they will not have any dental care done in the United States because it's too expensive. And the dentists and their experience with dentists in the United States that are affordable to them has been really bad. So they go back to the Dominican Republic to have all their dentistry done. And these are people who are a principal, guidance counselor, and so forth. So they're not, they have, you know, they have good jobs. So then you think about the people who are working at or close to minimum wage. There's just, there's no way they could keep good care of their, of their teeth. And that's a, that's a big, that's a big differentiation just, just there. Apart from all aspects of health and wellness.
[00:36:47] Speaker C: Yeah. Here in my village in Gstaad, they have, the county has a dental program where every child, regardless of family income level, they, they're, they have free dentistry for the first, I think until they're in fifth grade.
[00:37:02] Speaker A: That's great.
[00:37:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So they pay for yearly teeth cleanings and, and it's required, like they have to, there's, they give you a card and, and every time you go to the dentist, the dentist stamps it like, okay, you've done your yearly visit.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: Well, it's, it's preventative. So it's just, it's very frustrating when you think about how little the United States spends on preventative health care, making that available and pushing it, because in the end it's going to cost a lot more if people are not given the opportunity as they're given in your village in Switzerland where they have a good start in terms of their dental care. So. Yeah, it, Yeah.
[00:37:49] Speaker C: I think there was a time in the history of this village where, you know, a lot of families had problems with their teeth, which ended up being more expensive down the road, you know, with root canals and, you know, that's very.
[00:38:00] Speaker A: And I think there's a connection, I think there's a connection between tooth, the health.
Yeah, yeah. So, so it does. Is preventative and it's, you know. Yeah.
[00:38:15] Speaker C: And with mental health, I mean, imagine walking around with gaps in your teeth that can't be very good for your self esteem.
[00:38:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I, I was a very bad orthodontist patient because I didn't like back in the 70s, you had all these, you know, you had like these rubber bands and they, that you. And they were painful. And so I ended up having teeth that, to me, I, I didn't like showing my teeth for many decades because I thought they were. And they were somewhat yellow, somewhat cragged.
And So I. About 20, I think not. If it wasn't 20 years ago, it was 15 years ago. I got veneers. And that was a game changer for my confidence.
I could smile.
But they were very expensive back then. Back then.
And they're still very expensive. And so they're, they're. It's not an expenditure that the vast majority of people would enter into.
[00:39:20] Speaker C: But the, the American, that's an American thing. Having perfect teeth. In Europe, they don't care as much. Like in terms of.
[00:39:27] Speaker A: Well, although, although my, the person who did. The dentist did my teeth. Make sure that they're not perfect.
[00:39:36] Speaker C: Okay, good.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: It costs more to make them look like you just had them. You just naturally had really good teeth from the get go. They can't be sort of those, you know, all pearly white and totally straight. There have to be some imperfection. So he's like a, he's like an artist and well, you know, like, you.
[00:39:59] Speaker C: Know, you remember that model from the 1980s, Vanessa Paradis, and she married Johnny Depp, and she has this huge gap between her teeth and even with that gap, she still made it to be one of the top models of the time.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Yeah, there, well, there was a. I don't know her, but I think it was Lauren Hutton who had.
So maybe I'm portraying that. I'm a bit older than you are, Diana. But Lauren Hutton was known, I think I get. She was known for. She was a model and actress and she was known for having like a gap in her, in her teeth. That was part of her look.
[00:40:41] Speaker C: Yeah, but you see, that's. The fact that that's even a big deal shows you the, you know, the cultural weight of having perfect teeth.
[00:40:49] Speaker A: Right. No, it's true. And then, and then here I was walking around not, not knowing that I could. Could fix that. Fix that. And when I did know that I could and I was privileged to afford it, I, I did.
And I've looked at, you know, beauty standards and, and, and read a fair amount. And I, and I think it's, you know, one of the takeaways I had from one of the posts that I did and some of the comments I got was that it's very well publicized that young girls are very much affected by social media and body dysmorphia and trying to live up to impossible standards.
But it's really, it's not confined to girls. It's also boys who are affected by that. If they're short or don't consider themselves to be attractive, they can quickly get swept up into this whole culture of, I think the manosphere and women are the enemy because they won't like you unless you're, you know, six foot tall and perfect looking and have a great job, et cetera. So, yeah, I've read some stories about, I don't think it happens frequently, but boys who, or young men who want to increase their height, like getting their legs broken and on purpose and then. And then giving themselves additional stature.
So, I mean, that's a very extreme example of it. But just the fact that some people have done that, I think shows that boys are also affected by these standards that are so omnipresent on social media.
[00:42:50] Speaker C: I'm wondering if people with wealth maybe have a bit of a disadvantage because of the pressure on them to look good and the guilt that maybe they might carry some extra weight and they don't. Like, they feel more pressure than somebody who is maybe working as a waitress around the corner who might want to look nice, but it's not as big a pressure as somebody who has to show up at, you know, fundraisers in black tie or whatever.
[00:43:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think there are certain circles where that is. That's certainly true where, where you're, you're being, you're being judged. You're. You're a wealthy person. But if you're not also attractive, or even if you are with a spouse who's not attractive, maybe there's a status, there's status anxiety over that.
[00:43:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:43:46] Speaker A: I like to dress in very casual, if not sloppy clothes. And I don't really dislike.
Now I feel like I've been freed from wearing a suit and tie after so many years.
So I spoke with another substack writer from, from England who, Eleanor Anstruther, who is familiar with, who comes from an aristocratic family with a. So she, she was saying that in, in England at least the, the wealthy male aristocrats dress as slob like slobs. And that's. And they're expected to. That's like a sign of like they're above it all.
So I heard that. And I'm not a wealthy above it all British aristocrat, but I felt like, I felt somehow that if I did go out looking sloppy that maybe I could pretend the wealthy British aristocrat above it all. That would be an excuse.
[00:44:52] Speaker C: What about. Do you ever feel targeted? You know, like, I'm just thinking of somebody who's got wealth and privilege and they want. They're, they're maybe interested in getting healthier.
Like they, they might have too many options, you know, they might have trust issues, you know, people who are, who want their money, you know, health providers who are maybe unscrupulous. And I'm wondering, what do you think about that?
[00:45:19] Speaker A: I haven't had that experience. I have been fortunate in having a relationship with one of the hospitals here. Really riding the coattails of my mother who was A big.
Really devoted herself to being a philanthropist there and continued some of her work. And so I've had access to just really good doctors. And so I haven't felt.
I haven't really felt targeted in that way. But yeah, I do read about, like, who's that guy?
Brian Johnson, is it? Who's like, determined, is doing all these crazy things to live longer? Yes.
[00:46:03] Speaker C: The longevity. Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: Yeah. So I know there's a lot out there about longevity and so forth, and I do re. I do try to keep up on what's going on just to be knowledgeable, but I have a reasonably conservative primary care physician, and so I. He's sort of my guide to, like, should I do this or should I do that? And I know if he, if he's like, there are all these tests now of screening for various cancers and he still feels that they are not good enough because they give a ton of false positives. And he's. He has patients who then, you know, are worried for a long, you know, they get panicked and then you have to do unnecessary operations and so forth and so on. So I think you can, you can certainly go overboard with that. I.
And you know, reality is always a bit behind satire. And one of my favorite TV shows was Silicon Valley. I don't know.
[00:47:10] Speaker C: I love that.
[00:47:11] Speaker A: So I'm thinking of. There's a character in there who's getting transfusions from blood, transfusions from like a healthy 21 year old. Like it's the most normal thing in the world.
[00:47:22] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:47:22] Speaker A: I'm just wondering if maybe that for all I know that's going on, that people are saying, oh, I have old blood, so if I get new blood. I don't know.
[00:47:32] Speaker C: I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's so weird to me because I have grandparents here in Switzerland who lived to be in their 90s and they were not rich at all. They worked very hard physical labor, and they ate meat, cheese, pig fat, vegetables. But they moved, moved, they walked a lot. And. And they lived to be in their 90s. My grandfather drank a lot of wine and beer, and one could almost argue that he had a bit of a substance use disorder, but he lived to be in his 90s. And.
And then I wonder, like, well, they didn't spend any money on getting on longevity or health. You know, they had their usual doctors, normal doctors, but nothing out of the ordinary. And then I wonder why people are spending all this money unnecessarily.
[00:48:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I, I think part of it is chasing a Dream. And, and maybe part of it is, and I'll, I'll say this of myself, hiring people to motivate you to do things you, you, you should do anyway. So, like coaches.
Yeah. Well, well, but. Okay. But I hire people to take me through training routines that I could certainly, I could, I could do it myself, but it's much easier to just make myself the puppet of someone for 45 minutes who will tell me what to do. And I don't have to, I don't, I don't have to think about it.
And so I think that privilege.
[00:49:02] Speaker C: Well, you also, it's, it's more fun to, to work out with somebody else than to do it alone.
[00:49:08] Speaker A: It is. And, and I also like where I don't.
It's less stressful in if someone's telling me what to do.
[00:49:20] Speaker C: Yeah. And they're counting for you and they're reading your. Your face to see is he at 70%, 80%?
[00:49:28] Speaker A: You. Have you felt preyed upon by people or know people who are.
[00:49:35] Speaker C: I don't think anybody's admitted it.
I, I don't think I have, to be honest. I've been, I've always chosen the people I've worked with pretty carefully.
I mean, there was a time when I joined an Equinox gym in New York and I felt a little sold by the trainer there.
[00:49:56] Speaker A: That's their job.
[00:49:57] Speaker C: Yeah. And I sometimes, you know, that sort of bugs me when, when somebody who's there, their role is to get you healthy and to get you fit and they're being made to be salespeople. I find that, I find that I don't have some problems with that because I could see, I could see the sales like right through. It was so transparent, you know, like a script that he had been made to memorize.
And, and you know, honestly, I kind of gave up with him because.
Not because he was a bad person, but I just felt that corporate was forcing him to do stuff he didn't want to do.
[00:50:32] Speaker A: That's probably true.
[00:50:35] Speaker C: So it wasn't him per se.
And he was also a bit younger than me. And I, I realized I like working out with people who are kind of closer to my age. They understand and you know, a body of a 50 year old, I felt than a body of a 20 year old. And he was like in his 20s, lovely person. And, and I think part of the problem is I'm, I'm so invested in the karate training that I was almost overdoing it at point with adding Equinox.
[00:50:59] Speaker A: To the mix well, you and I are friends, but now you're part of a long list of people I will never get into a physical fight with.
[00:51:09] Speaker C: It's always a good rule of thumb, you know, to be prudent, David.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: You never know who has, like, karate or judo training or whatever.
[00:51:19] Speaker C: I'll go for walks with you in Central park and be your personal bodyguard.
[00:51:23] Speaker A: I'll feel.
I'll feel even more protected.
[00:51:30] Speaker C: Well, it's been lovely talking to you. I didn't. I don't want to take up too much of your time.
[00:51:34] Speaker A: Well, thank you, Diana. It's. It's always. It's always nice to. To visit with you. And thank you for having me on your podcast. It's been a pleasure.
[00:51:44] Speaker C: Yeah, it's been wonderful. And I really, really enjoyed hearing about the parenting aspect because I think that's. I think that's what's missing in society.
I really do. I think that sort of presence and engagement with family, I think, is what's missing.
[00:52:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
If you can do it. And again, it's a privilege because a lot of parents are raising kids singly and have to work, but if you're able to do it, it's a real gift to yourself and to your children.
[00:52:20] Speaker C: So.
[00:52:21] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:52:21] Speaker C: Well, thank you for that wisdom. It's wonderful.
Well, I wish you and your family a wonderful rest of your day, and I'll see you around the rooms in substack.
[00:52:32] Speaker A: You as well. Thank you very much.
[00:52:34] Speaker C: All right, thanks, David.
[00:52:36] Speaker A: Bye.
[00:52:36] Speaker C: Bye. Before we wrap up, I'd like to.
[00:52:39] Speaker D: Thank Oliver Kuiker for the jingle and Gwendolyn Christian for the backup support.
Also, a quick reminder, these interviews are not a substitute for professional medical, legal, or psychological advice.
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