Where did you grow up?
I grew up an hour from Seattle, sort of near the mountains in Washington State.
Aside from family, who made you who you are?
I feel like everyone I've ever interacted with to some extent. Like if I had to create a list of people, it would be way, way too long. Even if it was people who had a substantial impact on my life, like friends, teachers, people I've had relationships with. People I've never even met, but whose work, like novels, literature, music, has impacted my life. Like really, more people than I could even bring to mind.
What's important to you?
I feel like everything's important to me. Like there are things that are particularly important. I really love art. I really love novels and music. I think novels and music make up the majority of what I enjoy doing. They're fulfilling aside from just interacting with other people. But I really find everything important.
I think we...I think people tend to be way too apathetic and way too individually focused, and they tend to get this idea that the only things that matter are like their family, their friends, their career. And I think that's a really poisonous way to experience reality. So I try to maintain the attitude that everything's important.
In five words, how are you different than others?
Different arrangement of the same. I don't know. I don't know how I'm different than others.
What do you want from the future?
I mean, there's a whole lot of things I want from the future. I think it's frustrating that I live in the United States, which is ostensibly a very rich and very well-educated country, but the average reading level of the average American adult is like a sixth-grade reading level. If I had to pick one thing that I could just magic wand to change about the world, it would be the average level of literacy, probably. So one thing I really hope to see in the next couple of decades is just a population in the world that's more literate. Because I think this is the controlling question for everything else, right? Like what politicians we vote for to fix problems really depends on how literate people are. So I think that's the most important thing.
The thing I think I want to see the most change in is sort of a reintroduction of like, like faith and meaning, I guess. I think the modern world has been really good at making our lives more convenient, and in many cases better (better medicine, better technology). But people have sort of, in many cases, lost faith and meaning outside of their ability to engage with technology or just do stuff in their own lives. So more humility, I think. Less individualism, that would be good.