John and Rosianna discuss Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. This episode was originally released to subscribers in January 2020.
Howl’s Moving Castle was the first community pick of Life’s Library! In this episode, John Green and Rosianna Halse Rojas draw connections between the magic and spellbinding characters in this novel to other children’s books. They also discuss domestic work, the Faustian dilemma, interdependence, and the framing of fate.
This episode was originally released to subscribers in January 2020. The Life’s Library Discord and subscriptions are now closed after a wonderful three years of reading together. Check out past books at www.lifeslibrarybookclub.com, Twitter, and Instagram.
Life’s Library logo by Bethany Mannion.
John Green: Hello and welcome to the Life's Library podcast. I'm joined here by Rosianna Halse Rojas, and we're going to be talking about Diana Wynne Jones's book, Howl's Moving Castle.
Rosianna Halse Rojas: We're so excited to talk about this one. It's a community pick, so thank you to everyone who voted on the Discord. And yeah, everyone was really excited to read it, as were we.
John: Yeah, if you liked this book, it's your fault, and if you didn't like this book, it's also your fault.
Rosianna: Did you grow up reading any Diana Wynne Jones?
John: No, I did not. I read my first Diana Wynne Jones books when I was an adult working at Booklist trying to understand the world of children's literature and especially fantasy children's literature. Because, for a time, I reviewed some of that stuff, but I wanted to be reviewing more of it.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And so I tried to verse myself pretty deeply in it. And of course, Diana Wynne Jones is one of the most important writers of this kind. One—I loved, by the way—this is off topic—I love the author bio.
Rosianna: Oh, I haven't seen it.
John: They always make me write my own author bios. And I feel like, you know, you gotta be a little bit careful, a little bit of faux humility—
Rosianna: Oh.
John: —and I just love the first sentence of this author bio: Diana Wynne Jones has been writing outstanding fantasy novels for more than thirty years and is one of the most distinguished writers in this field.
Rosianna: It's brilliant. I have a different bio. And I thought that you were referring to the last line: She was described by Neil Gaiman as the best children's writer of the last forty years.
John: Yeah. I mean, she may be. She's certainly one of the most important children's book writers of our time, you know.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: I think a lot of her work has—I don't know if it influenced J. K. Rowling directly. I don't know if J. K. Rowling read her, but a lot of the work that she has written has influenced, I think, the fantasy writers of today, whether that's Children of Blood and Bone, or Cassandra Clare, or Harry Potter. I think you can feel the way that she's helped to shape our understanding of how fairytales can become big and present and relevant.
Rosianna: And very English or Welsh.
John: Yeah, extremely English. One of the best parts of this book for me is the part where we realized that there's a connection between this world and our world.
Rosianna: And it's so confusing, as well. It's wonderfully confusing. I had to wrap my head around what exactly was being described when you see it through Sophie's eyes, which I loved.
John: Yeah, the way she talks about television and video games was both beautiful and distressing, right?
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: I love stuff like that. I love it in stories when versions of aliens come to our world and look at our world and they ask—that happens a lot in Kurt Vonnegut books. And that's always one of my favorite parts because of course, so much of what we do would seem absolutely absurd from the outside.
Rosianna: And we've spent all this time in the story with them as the—with Sophie as our normal and then go from our normal to the absurd, but the absurd is our world. I just thought it was so clever. I loved it.
John: Yeah. I agree. I also love the fact that right at the beginning of the book, you set up that this is a fairyland world, right? Like it says, "In the land of Ingary where such things as seven-league boots and cloaks of invisibility really exists..." That's the beginning of the book. But you set it up as a fairytale world where a lot of your expectations for fairytales are inverted immediately because we learn that Sophie, by being the oldest sister, is the one who is least likely to achieve something in life.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Whereas of course, in traditional aristocratic European society, the oldest child was considered the most important.
Rosianna: Yeah. And that's it, straight away. It's a really good point. And it's funny, you should mention J. K. Rowling and that whole era of fantasy writing because for me, I didn't grow up reading this precisely because people kept telling me it's like Harry Potter, you'll really like it.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: Which was the surest way of getting me to not read things. I missed out on so many books I would have absolutely loved because people kept telling me it's like Harry Potter.
John: Right.
Rosianna: But it's been actually really fun as an adult to now go back to so many of these authors and Diana Wynne Jones is definitely one of them. I was talking to my friend, Anna James, who works with the Lush Book Club, and she said, you have to read the Chrestomanci series. And that's one that—also by Diana Wynne Jones. So there's just a whole wonderful new world of books being opened up, once I take out the stubborn child of me.
John: That's really interesting because I've been trying to get Henry to read the other—like Rick Riordan or this book. I tried to get him to read this book and he just—he only wants to read Harry Potter.
Rosianna: Yeah. I think it's once someone says it's like something else—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —strangely, that can be such a wall.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Because it just—you're like, well, you don't understand what I love about it.
John: Yeah. So did you love this book, though?
Rosianna: I did. I really did. And I just kept thinking about it as this feat of world creation, but without being super serious about it. Like it does it very realistically and wonderfully, and I get completely sucked into it from the first few pages.
John: Yeah. There is something that felt kind of magical about this book, even in the way that our understanding of magic unfolds, you know, that we start out feeling like magic is something that happens to other people. From inside of Sophie's experience, it feels like magic is something that happens to other people or that other people learn about. And then, slowly, we uncover all the ways that magic works. And I felt like that was also an uncovering of the way that story works and the way that story works its magic on us. The slow reveal of the plot was also the slow reveal of me being moved by the story. I just thought it was really fascinating.
Rosianna: Yeah, I really love that. I love that way of thinking about it because I love how the magic is put into her hands. Or not even put into her hands. It's revealed to her, as you say, like that revealing that she had it all along and actually—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —so many of the things that put her in that situation are from her choices and not necessarily like bad choices, but things that she wanted and needed at that time, which is what I really love about that. I love her freedom and as an old lady, I love how suddenly she looks at everything differently. Or it feels like she does, but in a way she's been looking at that way the long time.
John: Yeah, usually in those body swap stories or you've become a different person stories like Big or whatever—different versions of the Tom Hanks movie Big. Usually the person's personality doesn't change at all and that's the source of the delight and comedy. I really liked that the moment she was in a different body, her personality was different because of course it is! You're in a different body.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Like—
Rosianna: You want to sit down!
John: Yeah. Right. You need to sit down more. Things hurt. I thought that was great. And you need this walking stick that turns out to be something more. And I just thought that—all of that, the way that getting old suddenly was imagined was really interesting because it did—it gave her agency.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: She had absolutely no ability to understand—even to understand that she was being exploited at the beginning of the story. And then over time, that's really the journey that she takes, I think, is that journey to a measure of self-awareness. Because—another thing I kept thinking about while reading the story and that really relates to childhood is that one of the keys to self-awareness is becoming aware of the world outside of you.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Like you can't understand yourself very deeply until you can understand other people and their motivations for why they're treating you the way that they're treating you.
Rosianna: Right, and it doesn't have to be that way, necessarily, or that everyone is making a certain kind of choice or—and so you can, too.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: And I love—I really love how quickly she realizes oh, I would have been intimidated by that person when I was younger.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: But I'm not now. Or how funny that this person looks so young to me, when—on the other side of it—they would have looked so old. She has that perspective so quickly—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —but she is also kind of—she has a self-awareness about it, too.
John: Yeah. Yeah, and she's still a young person in a lot of important ways. Like that's what's so cool about this spell is that she remains herself, but herself is shaped by being in a new body. Which I think is way more realistic than the big thing of like, I'm still a kid, but now I'm a grownup, you know?
Rosianna: Yeah, absolutely.
John: Another thing that I wanted to talk about was domestic work. And the long association we've had with women doing domestic work. Women doing work like cleaning, which is how she ends up in the castle—earning her keep in the castle in the first place, although nobody wants her to be cleaning. And knitting, you know, then she becomes Howl's knitter.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And before that, you know, working on hats. I really—I loved the way that that was dealt with in this story, because—and I was curious to get your thoughts on this—but I felt like it found a way to honor that kind of work, to say that there is magic within it. There was one moment where the witch can tell that there's magic sewn into the threads of Howl's suit.
Rosianna: Yes.
John: And I thought that was such a beautiful metaphor for the fact that there is value in that work and it's important and denying that value isn't isn't empowering, but also that one should have choices. One shouldn't be limited to that work. And it reminded me a lot of the artwork of Michelle Grabner, this contemporary artist who paints—she paints abstract paintings, but a lot of times they are really close up, really large versions of paper towel patterns, or really close up, really large versions of a dish towels.
Rosianna: Is that the same artist who did the weaving on Art Assignment?
John: Yes.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Yes, she did that weaving on the Art Assignment.
Rosianna: I loved that.
John: And so she finds ways to take things that are associated with domesticity and say this can also be the province of high art. And I felt that way about Sophie's work in this book.
Rosianna: Yeah. I think it's so interesting because she doesn't, in many ways, regard it as a skill herself. Like she doesn't—
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: It's not that she doesn't take pride in it, but she just doesn't see value in it. And whether that's working in the hat shop or cleaning, she kind of gets on with it. And, as you say, when she's mending the suit, too, and then later she realizes, oh, actually that's why all these people kept coming back for hats and that's—
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: I did that. There's an owning of that. And sometimes for better or for worse, when she realizes that she's charmed the suit, she's like, oh no, I put my sister in this grave situation. She worries about that. But it is really interesting because it feels like it could go in a direct—it could have gone in a direction of here's this mother figure being really annoying.
John: Right.
Rosianna: Nagging this son who's messy. And yet somehow she's not reduced to this nag, while allowing her to be a nuisance to Howl or Howl to perceive her as a nuisance. And there was an interesting discussion on the shelf in the Discord—I think it was on Scale—where—oh, I've written it down. Tagrantelli said that they thought it was a bit of the trope of the mad scientist. There's hidden order to the chaos and an outsider comes in to fix everything and that causes problems. And someone else, Maza said, I think it's the trope of the man cave. This is a man who lives by themselves and the presence of the woman who cleans everything—disturbs their comforts and habits is problematic. And that made me think, which I'd never really thought about before, how gendered the way we talk about the mad scientist is.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Like that hero figure on their own. And it makes me think again of—I always go back to this—of Walden and how he just went back and got his laundry done every weekend.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Like that role of domesticity being rendered a secondary or annoying, but then also is completely vital to their life. And it's part of it, and it's not secondary to it. It's on the exact same level.
John: Right. But it's complete—it's fascinating that Thoreau was able, in his mind, to construct himself as being utterly and deeply self-reliant.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: While also taking his laundry to his mom every weekend. It's almost as if he didn't think that was part of life, you know.
Rosianna: Yeah, he kind of just exerted it out of his life somehow.
John: Yeah. He didn't think that that kind of work was even fully human. And there's something about that, I think, with the way that Sophie is treated both at the beginning of the book by—it's her aunt. Aunt? Right, or stepmother?
Rosianna: Fanny?
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Yeah, I can't remember what their relationship...
John: Right, but at the beginning, when she's treated that way in the hat shop and then she's treated that way by Michael and Calcifer and Howl—at least at the beginning, although I think, hopefully, they also go on a bit of a journey.
Rosianna: Yeah. And I think I particularly like the relationship between her and Calcifer.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Which I think is full of this strange love from the outset. And there's that worry throughout the book of like, oh no, what's she gotten herself into with this contract that she thinks that she could find a way of sneaking out of, when, you know, the one true thing in all fantasies is that you can't really get away with something like a contract.
John: Right.
Rosianna: But they have that bond. And he genuine seems to want to help her out even though we're told it would be things about what a fire demon is and how bad they are and how you can't trick them and all these things. Yeah.
John: Yeah. There's a huge element here of the Faustian dilemma, which goes back, I'm sure, further than Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, but the basic idea is you make a deal with the devil and then you try to get out of it, because of course you do, right?
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: You want the thing that you want, which in the case of Faust is knowledge of the universe, but you don't want the cost, which is your eternal soul. But I liked the way that all of that was upended and played with in this book, when usually in children's literature, when there's a Faustian dilemma, the—or at least in kids movies, when there's a Faustian dilemma, the hero just kind of gets out of it.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: You know, like in the Little Mermaid—the Little Mermaid is the best example of this, I think. In the movie, Ariel just kind of works out.
Rosianna: She makes it work. It's fine. Yeah.
John: Yeah. Yeah, she makes it work. It's no big deal.
Rosianna: She hasn't read the original.
John: Yeah, right, exactly.
Rosianna: Yeah. I was just thinking about what you were saying earlier about that thorough fallacy of working on your own because the poet that's mentioned in this book is John Donne—
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: —who very famously said, "No Man is an Island." And I wondered...yeah, I don't know, I wonder if that's just my own association, but that's basically the only poem of his that I know well. Or if that was conscious.
John: But no, I mean there's—
Rosianna: Or it doesn't matter.
John: —Yeah. We don't believe in authorial intent around here, but I certainly think that this is such a story about interdependence. I mean, Calcifer is so dependent upon Sophie.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And Sophie is—becomes so dependent on Calcifer and Howl, and so it's kind of a love finds a way story, you know? It is a story of interdependence and realizing that you're not an island and knowing that you can't be and having to move forward with that.
Rosianna: And it becomes this family and this real household—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —despite the fact that it's a moving castle and those dynamics just feel so real and their frustration with each other and trying to get away with something with each other, but then those moments when—one of my favorite scenes is when Sophie and Michael go and try to catch a falling—a shooting star—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —because it's falling and it's just so—it's so emotional.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: And then it just returns to the general bananas nature of the castle afterwards. Like it's—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: You have those moments that—these just hooks in the story, but it doesn't take away from the chaos within.
John: Yeah. Yeah, which is—I think one of the things that makes the moving castle such a great metaphor for a home or for a family...that, I mean, for one thing, home is where you go. Home is where you are. Like this weekend, I was on a long—long for me—long hiking trip with my buddies. We hiked for sixteen miles yesterday and at the end of that walk, somebody said—or with about five miles left, somebody said, I guess we should go home now. And I was like, where is that exactly? You mean to Indianapolis, which is two and a half hours away, or do you mean like back to the cabin? You know, it's amazing how quickly what home becomes where you are. I think it was—home is the people, you know.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And—as much as it's the place. And one of the things that's cool about this story is that Sophie has for so long lived in a very specific place with a very specific life. She's overwhelmed initially even to leave the shop and go out and visit the bakery to see her sister. And then by the end of the story, she's so much more brave and she's seen so much more of the world. I mean, she's seen Wales, for God's sakes.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And that's like one of the great things about the story for me is the way that her world expands as her home moves.
Rosianna: Yeah. And they share each other's homes, as well, which is something that I just love as a visual. She sees out of Howl's window—
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: —as well as going to Wales. She sees him keeping an eye on his home and that care for his home—
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: —and there's a literal door to his home. And then when the castle moves, they're in her home and where she grew up and that sharing of going to each other's homes and each other's places—not just finding it in each other, but in respecting the space that it was. But then also literally making it into something different, not just with the castle, but what was once a hat shop is now a florist.
John: Right.
Rosianna: That transition, too. I just love that. It just says so many beautiful things about change and change with other people.
John: Yeah, I kept thinking that while I was reading this story—I mean, this is a weird connection, but I was thinking of my own life when I was in my twenties and I lived in Chicago and I had a rotating cast of roommates, you know? People would come and live with us for a while.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Rather like Sophie, you know? Somebody would show up and need a place to stay and as it happened, we needed three months of rent, just kind of—so that person would stay for a while and then they'd leave and we'd have stories about them. But the other thing I kept thinking about with my early twenties is that when you have roommates and you're forming a home together, it always feels a little bit impermanent. But also, you do get these windows into their lives, like their lives without you, their lives back home, their lives with their families, you know, their parents or guardians or grandparents or whatever. And it's always so weird and fascinating to see those people in those different contexts.
Rosianna: Yeah, absolutely.
John: And that's one of the delights of this book is getting to see all the characters in new contexts where suddenly they change for you.
Rosianna: Yeah, and it's that kind of—what are you in your off hours?
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: When you're not showing up to meet some—it's funny you should say that, because I've got a friend staying with me at the moment and it's just that level of—it's just a difference. Like you get to know a different side of them just from seeing them at a different time of day. The other thing I really—well, one of the many other things I really love about this book is the clever way it plays with the idea of fate merging with expectation, and what people expect of you and what you expect of yourself.
John: Right.
Rosianna: I just think that fate is such a grand word. And of course it's been traditionally used in terms of like the gods or the stars and so on. But a lot of the time it's—yeah, it's the expectation that we almost put on ourselves or give to others and hold that up as high as you would hold the stars or the gods or whoever.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: Yeah, I like thinking about that with all the characters and how quickly her sisters choose to change their fates, as well.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: They say no, I'm going to pretend to be the other one.
John: Right. Yeah. Well, that's one of the interesting things about the book is that the sisters are so ready to be mischievous—
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: —and ready to get the life they want and Sophie's just like, I work at the hat shop. But fate had something else in store for her. And—I mean, fate is such a difficult concept because it can be very disempowering, you know. It can feel like, well, whatever's going to happen is going to happen. So yolo.
Rosianna: As said in this book, ahead of its time in so many ways.
John: But at the same—but if you're able to think of like, well, this is what got handed to me and here's what I'm going to do with it—
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: —kind of a way of looking at fate, then it becomes much more like either a force in your corner or a force that's that's opposed to you that you're going to figure out a way to work with.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: I've been thinking about that a lot—not super related—when it comes to my mental illness and other forms of—other challenges in my family that I'm always going to have this, probably. It's really just a question of how I live with it. And if I'm living with it well and carefully, then I'm doing my job—
Rosianna: Mhm.
John: —and, you know, the fate part's the fate part, but am I doing my job, is the question. And I feel like at the beginning of the book, in some ways Sophie is not doing her job. She's not—she's in that like, well, this is my fate, so going to stitch some hats, it's getting a little boring, whatever.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And then she has to go on this journey toward, you know, seeing fate as something that is not merely inevitable, but rather like something you're almost in conversation with.
Rosianna: Yeah. And you choose to invest something in it, as well. It's a choice to believe in whatever that fate is—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —which I really—I loved the portion with the spell/poem for school—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —it just was so wonderfully done, because they choose to believe in it.
John: Yeah, and how Michael was like, oh, these spells, they always have weird crap in them.
Rosianna: Yeah, and the bit about, like—and then the second verse. You come up with it. It's just great because it is just that thing of like, they've decided that this is important because they've been shown or told that it's important. And so in a way it does become important because they learn more. They learn about what happens to a falling star and they learn about the mandrake and so on.
John: Yeah, because poetry is a spell—
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: —and spells are poetry and I just love the way that the bright line we have between magic and not magic kept getting erased all throughout the story. But that was one of my favorite moments of that, because it is weird. Like it's weird that that John Donne poem...like it doesn't make that much sense.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: At least to me in 2019, it doesn't make that much sense. And so it becomes a spell, essentially. And...I don't know, the best poems do that to me where I don't even really know how they're working on me. I just know that they're working.
Rosianna: And it's as with the cayenne pepper—
John: Yeah!
Rosianna: —which I also loved when she can't come up with the spell and she keeps reframing it for the guy asking for it.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Well, it's not going to do this, but you have to do this and you have to believe in this.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Yeah. I mean, there's such a celebration of words' magic. It made me think a lot of Rainbow Rowell's Carry On, as well.
John: Mm.
Rosianna: And how much focus there is in that own on language's magic and having to come up with different ways to say things.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: And it just reminded me how lucky I feel to be in this time when there were so many wonderful stories. And I know that there—wonderful stories haven't been in short supply over the last, however many thousands of years. But it's just—I feel—yeah, I just feel really lucky that there are all these places and I have so much access to stories and I can see them in conversation with each other. Like I loved reading this after The Summer Book, because I loved thinking about the grandmother in The Summer Book.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: And Sophie at the same time.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Yeah, it's kind of strange connections there.
John: Well, and they're just such different portrayals of childhood, too, or portrayals of art for children.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Like I don't even know the extent to which The Summer Book is for children, but I feel like children could read it—most of it.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And they're just such different imaginings of what helps children? I don't know if helps is the right word, like what reflects and informs the experience of kids. And that was another thing I kept thinking about in this story that, like—I remember reading Catcher in the Rye when I was 22. And I'd read it in high school, but I read it again, like right at the end of college. And I remember thinking, god, this book was great to read in high school, you know?
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Still good, but oh my god, it was really good when I was sixteen and in a tight spot with some of the adult relationships in my life. And I'll never quite have that feeling again. And I was thinking the whole time I read this, like, oh, my twelve-year-old self would have just been—just lost, just so immersed in that world.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And my adult self is still able to go there, but there's an elasticity to the childhood imagination that I just don't have now. And so it was interesting—I don't read a lot of children's books except with my kids, and so it was really interesting to read it in that context. Like to read it for myself instead of for them.
Rosianna: Yeah. I used to read so many more children's books when I worked at the kids bookshop.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: And I was just thinking about that the other day, because I was walking around a bookshop and I was trying to buy Christmas presents for my nephews, and I had no idea what to buy for them because I don't keep up with those books in the same way.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: But even then I remember—and I started working there when I was sixteen—even then I remember reading things over and over again and being like, I wish this had been out three or four years ago.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: Yeah, I mean, you're right, though, that we live in such a golden age of stories. One of the great joys for me of reading is just like being at a bookstore and picking up a book I would never, ever have bought on Amazon. Would have never sought out—that has been out of print for twenty years—
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: —and that's an absolute delight.
Rosianna: I love that.
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: I love that so much more is getting translated, as well.
John: Mhm.
Rosianna: Yeah, it's just—yeah, it's so much fun. It's so much fun. I think bookshops are so precious and I'm lucky to have a really well-stocked library near me and yeah, I don't take that for granted at all.
John: Yeah. Well, I'm looking forward to discovering lots of new books in year two—
Rosianna: Yes!
John: —of Life's Library. If you want to be part of year two of Life's Library we would love to have you. You can sign up at lifeslibrarybookclub.com. We're really excited to have another year of reading together. We're going to be reading lots of interesting books, including yes, some books that I think otherwise you never would have read.
Rosianna: Yeah. I'm really excited for it. The first book is The Parable of the Sower, which was your pick, John, and—
John: Yeah.
Rosianna: —and that's—we have a slightly longer break this time. I think the end of this current reading period for Howl's Moving Castle is end of January. Just as we turn things over to make sure everyone's got their books in time. But yeah, really excited to start off a new year, as well. And thank you to everyone who's taken part in 2019 and year one.
John: Yeah. It's been really fun. I've learned a lot, I've read so many books that I enjoyed and liked so many great comments about those books. So really excited to read Parable of the Sower with you. It's one of my favorite books and I think it's a book that gets at—really, even though it's decades old—that gets at the heart of the challenge that we have going into a new decade, which is that a lot of the stories that we have relied upon to orient our lives and our values and our sense of purpose and structure in life are—feel less relevant or feel less important, less vital, less true than they did. And I'm trying to figure out what is wrong? Broadly speaking.
Rosianna: You and me both.
John: I guess what is wrong in rich countries and to a lesser extent elsewhere, too. In the U.S., things are going in the wrong direction, objectively, despite the traditional metrics of success going in the right direction. Things are going in the wrong direction in terms of basic stuff, like life expectancy.
Rosianna: Yeah.
John: And I'm trying to figure out why that is. And I think Parable of the Sower has something to tell us about that, so I'm excited to read it with you and talk about it with you. And again, lifeslibrarybookclub.com is where you sign up and we'll see you next time.
Rosianna: Speak to you then.