WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.120 You know, usually when we talk about the great 00:00:02.120 --> 00:00:06.160 masters of literature, there's this expectation 00:00:06.160 --> 00:00:08.980 of a very specific, almost preordained path. 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:11.199 Oh, totally, like they're born with a quill in 00:00:11.199 --> 00:00:13.599 their hand. Right. You picture them locked in 00:00:13.599 --> 00:00:16.420 a dusty library from birth, studying the classics, 00:00:16.839 --> 00:00:19.539 just being groomed by professors for literary 00:00:19.539 --> 00:00:22.120 greatness. But what if I told you that one of 00:00:22.120 --> 00:00:25.079 the most celebrated, critically acclaimed contemporary 00:00:25.079 --> 00:00:27.500 fiction authors in the English language didn't 00:00:27.500 --> 00:00:29.219 actually start out wanting to write books at 00:00:29.219 --> 00:00:32.340 all? Yeah, it completely upends that whole traditional 00:00:32.340 --> 00:00:34.500 image we have. It really does. Because what if 00:00:34.500 --> 00:00:37.799 I told you he basically just wanted to be like... 00:00:37.439 --> 00:00:39.939 the next Bob Dylan. And he spent time working 00:00:39.939 --> 00:00:42.560 as a gross beater at Balmoral Castle and then 00:00:42.560 --> 00:00:44.179 kind of accidentally stumbled his way into a 00:00:44.179 --> 00:00:47.280 Nobel Prize. I mean, we expect our literary giants 00:00:47.280 --> 00:00:50.299 to be these solemn academics from day one, not 00:00:50.299 --> 00:00:52.420 kids trying to hustle their way into the music 00:00:52.420 --> 00:00:55.299 industry. Exactly. Well, welcome to today's Deep 00:00:55.299 --> 00:00:57.399 Dive. We've got a really fascinating stack of 00:00:57.399 --> 00:01:00.479 sources in front of us today. Articles, interviews, 00:01:00.740 --> 00:01:03.179 biographical beta, literary critiques, and it's 00:01:03.179 --> 00:01:07.040 all centered on the life. the mind and the incredibly 00:01:07.040 --> 00:01:10.280 unique style of Sir Kazuo Ishiguro. It's going 00:01:10.280 --> 00:01:12.760 to be a good one. It is. Our mission today is 00:01:12.760 --> 00:01:15.700 to figure out exactly how he creates such massive 00:01:15.700 --> 00:01:17.819 emotional impact in his work. We're going to 00:01:17.819 --> 00:01:19.599 explore what his life tells us about memory. 00:01:19.819 --> 00:01:23.599 about the nature of truth and what he actually 00:01:23.599 --> 00:01:25.719 thinks about the future of human emotion in our 00:01:25.719 --> 00:01:27.840 increasingly automated world. Which is a huge 00:01:27.840 --> 00:01:30.200 topic right now. It is. OK, let's unpack this. 00:01:30.560 --> 00:01:32.319 Because to really understand his unique perspective, 00:01:32.340 --> 00:01:34.939 we have to start with how geographically and 00:01:34.939 --> 00:01:37.359 culturally displaced he was at a very young age. 00:01:37.480 --> 00:01:40.140 Yeah, that displacement is basically the skeleton 00:01:40.140 --> 00:01:42.500 key to his entire body of work. So he was born 00:01:42.500 --> 00:01:45.620 in Nagasaki, Japan in 1954, but his family didn't 00:01:45.620 --> 00:01:48.120 stay there. Right. In 1960, when he was just 00:01:48.120 --> 00:01:50.530 five years old, His father, who was a physical 00:01:50.530 --> 00:01:52.730 oceanographer, was invited to do research at 00:01:52.730 --> 00:01:54.549 what is now the National Oceanography Center 00:01:54.549 --> 00:01:57.250 in the UK, so the whole family moves to Guildford 00:01:57.250 --> 00:02:03.159 Surrey. who has spent his formative, highly impressionable 00:02:03.159 --> 00:02:06.480 early years completely immersed in Japanese language 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:09.000 and culture, and he has suddenly just dropped 00:02:09.000 --> 00:02:12.199 into a very traditional, leafy English environment. 00:02:12.439 --> 00:02:14.819 Exactly, a massive culture shock. And the detail 00:02:14.819 --> 00:02:16.759 from the sources that really caught my eye here 00:02:16.759 --> 00:02:19.199 is that he didn't return to Japan for almost 00:02:19.199 --> 00:02:22.879 30 years. Like, not a single visit until 1989. 00:02:23.280 --> 00:02:25.699 Not once. He grew up entirely in England. But 00:02:25.699 --> 00:02:28.400 what's interesting is his first two novels, A 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:31.039 Pale View of Hills and An Artist of the Floating 00:02:31.039 --> 00:02:34.500 World, they are set entirely in Japan. Oh, wow. 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:37.300 Yeah. And when he later spoke with the Nobel 00:02:37.300 --> 00:02:40.319 laureate, Kinzo Bushi, Ishiguro admitted something 00:02:40.319 --> 00:02:42.659 crucial about those books. He actually said the 00:02:42.659 --> 00:02:44.919 Japan he was writing about was an imaginary Japan. 00:02:45.080 --> 00:02:46.740 Well, yeah, because he hadn't seen the real one 00:02:46.740 --> 00:02:48.560 since he was in kindergarten. Precisely. The 00:02:48.560 --> 00:02:50.800 real Japan was rapidly modernizing, right? It 00:02:50.800 --> 00:02:53.379 was turning into this massive economic powerhouse. 00:02:54.039 --> 00:02:56.340 But Ishiguro was essentially isolated from all 00:02:56.340 --> 00:02:59.139 of that. He was kind of frozen in time. Exactly. 00:02:59.240 --> 00:03:01.219 He was building up this picture of the country 00:03:01.219 --> 00:03:03.879 in his head, patching it together from his own 00:03:03.879 --> 00:03:07.020 faded childhood memories, from the values his 00:03:07.020 --> 00:03:08.740 parents taught him at the dinner table and from 00:03:08.740 --> 00:03:12.080 old stories. He had this really strong emotional 00:03:12.080 --> 00:03:14.939 tie to another country that he was constantly 00:03:14.939 --> 00:03:17.319 just constructing from scratch. It's almost like 00:03:17.319 --> 00:03:19.300 it's like he was building a literary snow globe. 00:03:19.620 --> 00:03:22.319 Oh, I like that. Yeah, like if you take a child's 00:03:22.319 --> 00:03:25.500 fragmented memories, mix them with family values 00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:28.900 and seal them inside this perfectly preserved, 00:03:29.319 --> 00:03:32.199 completely fictional world. It looks like reality 00:03:32.199 --> 00:03:34.280 from the outside, but it's completely isolated 00:03:34.280 --> 00:03:37.060 from actual history. It's beautiful, but it's 00:03:37.060 --> 00:03:39.560 a closed system based on an illusion. What's 00:03:39.560 --> 00:03:41.879 fascinating here is how accurate that snow globe 00:03:41.879 --> 00:03:44.340 analogy really is because it explains his psychology 00:03:44.340 --> 00:03:47.199 perfectly. Growing up in a Japanese speaking 00:03:47.199 --> 00:03:50.000 home in the UK, he was actively kept in touch 00:03:50.000 --> 00:03:52.580 with Japanese values, but he was experiencing 00:03:52.580 --> 00:03:55.120 them entirely out of context. He was occupying 00:03:55.120 --> 00:03:57.340 this liminal space. So he's basically stuck in 00:03:57.340 --> 00:04:00.180 the doorway. He's not fully inside English culture, 00:04:00.400 --> 00:04:02.780 but he's totally locked out of the real modern 00:04:02.780 --> 00:04:05.639 Japan. Exactly. And he explained in an interview 00:04:05.639 --> 00:04:08.159 that this gave him a completely distinct background. 00:04:08.560 --> 00:04:11.000 He literally thought differently than his English 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:13.759 peers. His perspectives were always slightly 00:04:13.759 --> 00:04:15.740 off -center from the culture he was living in. 00:04:15.819 --> 00:04:18.040 Which is perfect for a writer. Right. It laid 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:21.079 the absolute groundwork for his lifelong obsession 00:04:21.079 --> 00:04:23.420 as an author. Because when you grow up preserving 00:04:23.420 --> 00:04:25.920 a memory of a place that doesn't actually exist 00:04:25.920 --> 00:04:28.639 the way you remember it, you become acutely aware 00:04:28.639 --> 00:04:31.819 of how unreliable memory is. You realize memory 00:04:31.819 --> 00:04:34.079 isn't a hard drive of recording facts, it's a 00:04:34.079 --> 00:04:37.319 coping mechanism. That makes so much sense. He's 00:04:37.319 --> 00:04:39.259 looking at how we deceive ourselves about the 00:04:39.259 --> 00:04:43.120 past just to make the present bearable. You know, 00:04:43.120 --> 00:04:44.819 knowing what he writes about is only half the 00:04:44.819 --> 00:04:46.779 story. The other half is how he writes about 00:04:46.779 --> 00:04:49.439 it. And this is where the grouse -beating Bob 00:04:49.439 --> 00:04:52.319 Dylan wannabe phase actually becomes incredibly 00:04:52.319 --> 00:04:55.339 important. Because this subtle, almost haunting 00:04:55.339 --> 00:04:58.399 writing style wasn't born in some creative writing 00:04:58.399 --> 00:05:01.300 seminar. No, it's one of the greatest plot twists 00:05:01.300 --> 00:05:04.180 in his biography. As a teenager, he wasn't studying 00:05:04.180 --> 00:05:06.980 the great literary canon. He was listening to 00:05:06.980 --> 00:05:09.420 Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, and Bob Dylan. 00:05:09.680 --> 00:05:12.180 Just a total music nerd. Absolutely. He learned 00:05:12.180 --> 00:05:14.800 the guitar. He took a gap year, traveled through 00:05:14.800 --> 00:05:17.319 the U .S. and Canada, kept a journal and was 00:05:17.319 --> 00:05:19.680 actively sending demo tapes to record companies. 00:05:20.180 --> 00:05:22.579 He seriously thought he was going to be a professional 00:05:22.579 --> 00:05:24.899 singer songwriter. And he even worked as a grouse 00:05:24.899 --> 00:05:27.319 beater at Balmoral Castle during this time, right? 00:05:27.839 --> 00:05:30.759 Driving game birds out of the brush for hunters. 00:05:30.939 --> 00:05:34.500 Just this incredibly gritty random job while 00:05:34.500 --> 00:05:37.060 he's dreaming of musical stardom. Yeah, it's 00:05:37.060 --> 00:05:39.439 such a funny image, but eventually Actually, 00:05:39.720 --> 00:05:42.540 reality hit. He has this fantastic quote where 00:05:42.540 --> 00:05:44.879 he reflects on this period, realizing he just 00:05:44.879 --> 00:05:46.939 wasn't glamorous enough to be a rock star. Oh, 00:05:47.019 --> 00:05:49.680 the corduroy jacket quote. Yes. He looked in 00:05:49.680 --> 00:05:52.079 the mirror and realized, quote, I'm one of these 00:05:52.079 --> 00:05:54.240 people with corduroy jackets with elbow patches. 00:05:54.779 --> 00:05:57.259 It was a real come down. A very humbling moment 00:05:57.259 --> 00:06:00.040 for him, I'm sure. But the crazy thing is, he 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:01.899 didn't just abandon that musical background, 00:06:02.180 --> 00:06:05.189 he repurposed it. Looking at the sources, he 00:06:05.189 --> 00:06:07.689 explicitly states that his style as a novelist 00:06:07.689 --> 00:06:09.930 comes substantially from what he learned writing 00:06:09.930 --> 00:06:12.550 songs. It really does. But hold on a second. 00:06:12.569 --> 00:06:14.329 I have to push back on this a little bit. Yeah. 00:06:14.589 --> 00:06:16.529 Because I'm looking at this stack of sources, 00:06:17.009 --> 00:06:20.029 and we are talking about a guy who writes dense, 00:06:20.610 --> 00:06:24.120 300 -page historical fiction. A three -minute 00:06:24.120 --> 00:06:26.939 acoustic folk song is basically a totally different 00:06:26.939 --> 00:06:29.620 art form. You strum a few chords, you sing a 00:06:29.620 --> 00:06:32.399 chorus. How does writing a verse about a train 00:06:32.399 --> 00:06:35.839 station actually translate into writing complex, 00:06:36.019 --> 00:06:38.420 Booker Prize -winning literature? Well, it comes 00:06:38.420 --> 00:06:40.759 down to the mechanics of delivery and the relationship 00:06:40.759 --> 00:06:44.189 with the audience. Ishiguro realized that in 00:06:44.189 --> 00:06:47.449 an intimate first -person song, like a jazz singer 00:06:47.449 --> 00:06:50.430 sitting on a stool spotlighted on a dark stage, 00:06:50.829 --> 00:06:53.029 the meaning cannot just be spelled out on the 00:06:53.029 --> 00:06:55.529 page. Oh, because it would sound clunky. Exactly. 00:06:55.649 --> 00:06:57.550 It has to be oblique. You're singing directly 00:06:57.550 --> 00:06:59.709 to an audience, and you have to approach the 00:06:59.709 --> 00:07:02.129 meaning subtly. As he puts it, you have to nudge 00:07:02.129 --> 00:07:04.189 it into the spaces between the lines. So instead 00:07:04.189 --> 00:07:06.110 of an omniscient narrator just feeding you the 00:07:06.110 --> 00:07:08.389 facts of the story, you have a character just, 00:07:08.389 --> 00:07:10.529 you know, talking to you, trying to convince 00:07:10.529 --> 00:07:13.199 you of their version of events. Yes, and often 00:07:13.199 --> 00:07:15.600 trying to convince themselves. With the exception 00:07:15.600 --> 00:07:18.779 of his 2015 novel, The Buried Giant, all of his 00:07:18.779 --> 00:07:21.279 novels use this intimate first -person narrative 00:07:21.279 --> 00:07:24.160 style. Think about the mechanics of this. If 00:07:24.160 --> 00:07:26.379 an author uses an omniscient narrator, they can 00:07:26.379 --> 00:07:29.139 just write, the man was deeply sad about his 00:07:29.139 --> 00:07:31.939 wasted life. Which is a bit boring. Right. But 00:07:31.939 --> 00:07:34.399 Ishiguro puts you inside the mind of someone 00:07:34.399 --> 00:07:37.360 who refuses to admit they are sad. Ah, so you 00:07:37.360 --> 00:07:39.740 have to play detective with their emotions. Exactly. 00:07:40.199 --> 00:07:43.160 Let's look at his 1989 breakthrough, The Remains 00:07:43.160 --> 00:07:46.680 of the Day. The narrator is Stevens, an aging 00:07:46.680 --> 00:07:49.139 English butler. Right, very famously played by 00:07:49.139 --> 00:07:51.899 Anthony Hopkins in the movie. Yes. So Stevens 00:07:51.899 --> 00:07:54.439 has dedicated his entire life, sacrificed his 00:07:54.439 --> 00:07:56.899 chance at romantic love, and neglected his own 00:07:56.899 --> 00:07:59.699 dying father, all to serve an English lord who 00:07:59.699 --> 00:08:01.920 ultimately turns out to be a Nazi sympathizer. 00:08:02.079 --> 00:08:04.620 That is just a devastating realization for a 00:08:04.620 --> 00:08:07.000 character to face. But Stevens doesn't face it 00:08:07.000 --> 00:08:09.879 directly. Instead of crying or screaming, Stevens 00:08:09.879 --> 00:08:12.259 talks to the reader endlessly about the dignity 00:08:12.259 --> 00:08:15.180 of his profession. He goes on and on about the 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:17.660 proper way to polish silver and manage a staff. 00:08:17.800 --> 00:08:20.970 So he's distracting himself. Exactly. As a reader, 00:08:21.129 --> 00:08:23.310 you were sitting there reading a 10 -page description 00:08:23.310 --> 00:08:25.769 of household management. And because of the way 00:08:25.769 --> 00:08:29.350 Ishiguro writes it, you slowly realize, oh, this 00:08:29.350 --> 00:08:32.269 man's heart is breaking. The obsession with the 00:08:32.269 --> 00:08:34.750 silver is the sound of his grief. The tragedy 00:08:34.750 --> 00:08:38.169 is entirely in the unsaid. Oh, wow. OK, I completely 00:08:38.169 --> 00:08:40.809 see the song analogy now. The melody of the prose 00:08:40.809 --> 00:08:43.490 carries the emotion of the words he refuses to 00:08:43.490 --> 00:08:45.870 say. And he didn't actually give up songwriting 00:08:45.870 --> 00:08:48.169 entirely either. No, he didn't. He still writes 00:08:48.169 --> 00:08:50.830 lyrics today. The source has mentioned he's co 00:08:50.830 --> 00:08:52.889 -written multiple songs for the Grammy nominated 00:08:52.889 --> 00:08:55.590 jazz singer Stacey Kent. Albums like Breakfast 00:08:55.590 --> 00:08:57.429 on the Morning Tram and The Changing Lights. 00:08:57.950 --> 00:09:01.250 He's literally writing jazz lyrics while simultaneously 00:09:01.250 --> 00:09:04.669 writing Nobel winning fiction using the exact 00:09:04.669 --> 00:09:07.590 same emotional muscles. It's all about restraint. 00:09:08.009 --> 00:09:10.470 That restraint forces the reader to lean in closer. 00:09:10.809 --> 00:09:13.049 And that quiet restraint method proved to be 00:09:13.049 --> 00:09:15.679 incredibly powerful. Winning the Booker Prize 00:09:15.679 --> 00:09:17.879 for the Remains of the Day really proved that 00:09:17.879 --> 00:09:20.379 his sensibility wasn't just tied to his own Japanese 00:09:20.379 --> 00:09:22.960 heritage. Right. Salman Rushdie actually called 00:09:22.960 --> 00:09:25.799 the book a masterpiece, specifically because 00:09:25.799 --> 00:09:28.679 it proved Ishiguro's talent was capable of travel 00:09:28.679 --> 00:09:31.519 and metamorphosis. He could take that same theme 00:09:31.519 --> 00:09:34.259 of self -deception and apply it perfectly to 00:09:34.259 --> 00:09:36.820 the repressed British class system. He became 00:09:36.820 --> 00:09:39.700 an absolute master of genre hopping. Like in 00:09:39.700 --> 00:09:42.909 2005, he published Never Let Me Go. which Time 00:09:42.909 --> 00:09:45.509 magazine named the best novel of the year. An 00:09:45.509 --> 00:09:48.009 incredible book. It is. And on the surface, it 00:09:48.009 --> 00:09:50.549 has these science fiction qualities. It's set 00:09:50.549 --> 00:09:53.169 in a parallel dystopian version of the 1980s 00:09:53.169 --> 00:09:55.830 and 90s, focusing on human clones raised for 00:09:55.830 --> 00:09:58.629 organ donation. But he doesn't focus on the sci 00:09:58.629 --> 00:10:01.529 -fi world building or some action -packed rebellion. 00:10:01.549 --> 00:10:03.990 Yeah, not at all. He uses that exact same intimate, 00:10:04.230 --> 00:10:06.710 confiding voice to explore how these young people 00:10:06.710 --> 00:10:09.340 accept their grim fate. He focuses on their friendships 00:10:09.340 --> 00:10:12.120 and trivial school rivalries rather than the 00:10:12.120 --> 00:10:14.399 horror of their reality. They're building a snow 00:10:14.399 --> 00:10:16.620 globe again, a safe little bubble of illusion 00:10:16.620 --> 00:10:19.000 to hide from the terrible truth, and all of this 00:10:19.000 --> 00:10:21.379 relentless exploration of the spaces between 00:10:21.379 --> 00:10:24.220 the lines, culminated in 2017 when he won the 00:10:24.220 --> 00:10:26.419 Nobel Prize in Literature. Which is just the 00:10:26.419 --> 00:10:29.509 ultimate validation. It is. The citation from 00:10:29.509 --> 00:10:32.190 the Swedish Academy praised him for uncovering, 00:10:32.190 --> 00:10:35.169 and this is a direct quote, the abyss beneath 00:10:35.169 --> 00:10:37.830 our illusory sense of connection with the world. 00:10:38.730 --> 00:10:41.389 The abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection. 00:10:42.049 --> 00:10:44.529 It's a haunting phrase. It really is. Here's 00:10:44.529 --> 00:10:46.549 where it gets really interesting to me. When 00:10:46.549 --> 00:10:49.190 I read that word abyss in the sources, it made 00:10:49.190 --> 00:10:52.129 me rethink how his books actually feel to the 00:10:52.129 --> 00:10:54.909 reader. It's not like someone just violently 00:10:54.909 --> 00:10:57.049 pulling the rug out from under you. It's more 00:10:57.049 --> 00:10:58.909 like imagine you've lived in this beautifully 00:10:58.909 --> 00:11:01.450 decorated, perfectly normal house your entire 00:11:01.450 --> 00:11:03.690 life. You know, every creak in the floorboards, 00:11:03.710 --> 00:11:06.710 you feel completely safe. Then one day you happen 00:11:06.710 --> 00:11:08.590 to look at an old architectural blueprint of 00:11:08.590 --> 00:11:10.990 your house and you realize there's a massive 00:11:10.990 --> 00:11:14.289 hidden room right behind your bedroom wall, a 00:11:14.289 --> 00:11:16.529 room you never knew about. Suddenly the house 00:11:16.529 --> 00:11:19.049 isn't safe anymore. The structure is totally 00:11:19.049 --> 00:11:21.210 different. Your entire understanding of your 00:11:21.210 --> 00:11:23.610 own reality has been quietly wrong the whole 00:11:23.610 --> 00:11:25.909 time. If we connect this to the bigger picture, 00:11:26.370 --> 00:11:28.769 that feeling of sudden terrifying realization 00:11:28.769 --> 00:11:32.049 is exactly what Ishiguro is engineering. It's 00:11:32.049 --> 00:11:35.389 why he is so drawn to specific historical eras. 00:11:35.950 --> 00:11:38.250 He has said he tends to be attracted to pre -war 00:11:38.250 --> 00:11:40.940 and post -war settings. Why is that? Because 00:11:40.940 --> 00:11:43.139 those are moments in history that aggressively 00:11:43.139 --> 00:11:46.799 test people's ideals. Ah, so the war is the blueprint 00:11:46.799 --> 00:11:49.779 that reveals the hidden room. Exactly. A war 00:11:49.779 --> 00:11:52.440 happens, a regime changes, a paradigm shifts, 00:11:52.580 --> 00:11:54.879 and suddenly the society you live in demands 00:11:54.879 --> 00:11:57.179 a reckoning. You have to look at the life you've 00:11:57.179 --> 00:11:59.720 built, the loyalty you gave to an employer like 00:11:59.720 --> 00:12:01.980 Stevens the butler, or the sacrifices you made, 00:12:02.299 --> 00:12:05.019 and realize your deeply held ideals were fundamentally 00:12:05.019 --> 00:12:07.860 wrong. They just crumble. Right. The ideals are 00:12:07.860 --> 00:12:10.379 tested by history, and they fail. And the character 00:12:10.379 --> 00:12:12.480 has to stare into that hidden room. They have 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:15.419 to face the abyss. That is terrifying. But it 00:12:15.419 --> 00:12:18.200 is universally human. We all build those illusory 00:12:18.200 --> 00:12:20.240 connections, those comforting stories about ourselves, 00:12:20.539 --> 00:12:22.820 just to get through the day. But Ishiguro isn't 00:12:22.820 --> 00:12:26.019 just a historian of human self -deception. He's 00:12:26.019 --> 00:12:28.279 actively looking at how we're building those 00:12:28.279 --> 00:12:31.840 exact same illusions today, right now, with technology. 00:12:32.039 --> 00:12:34.320 And this is where his more recent work and his 00:12:34.320 --> 00:12:37.159 public commentary become incredibly urgent. In 00:12:37.159 --> 00:12:40.259 2021, he published his eighth novel, Clara and 00:12:40.259 --> 00:12:42.960 the Sun. Right. This one is narrated from the 00:12:42.960 --> 00:12:45.860 perspective of an artificial friend, an AI companion 00:12:45.860 --> 00:12:49.340 named Clara. Through her highly observant but 00:12:49.340 --> 00:12:52.440 naive eyes, he tackles the dangers of technological 00:12:52.440 --> 00:12:54.860 advancement and what it fundamentally means to 00:12:54.860 --> 00:12:57.799 be human in a world that is rushing toward automation. 00:12:58.460 --> 00:13:00.580 And looking at his recent essays and interviews, 00:13:00.899 --> 00:13:04.019 Ishiguro takes aim at the current political and 00:13:04.019 --> 00:13:06.129 social climate. And I should note, for the listener, 00:13:06.250 --> 00:13:09.230 we're just imparting his critique here as presented 00:13:09.230 --> 00:13:12.649 in the sources. But he observes that in the post 00:13:12.649 --> 00:13:16.129 -truth Trump era, we are seeing relentless attacks 00:13:16.129 --> 00:13:18.490 on accredited news media. And he says the result 00:13:18.490 --> 00:13:21.370 is a general atmosphere where the truth is completely 00:13:21.370 --> 00:13:23.690 subjective. Yeah. He points out that if people 00:13:23.690 --> 00:13:25.649 don't like the evidence presented to them today, 00:13:25.690 --> 00:13:27.970 they feel completely empowered to just claim 00:13:27.970 --> 00:13:30.049 an alternative emotional truth for themselves. 00:13:30.269 --> 00:13:32.970 Alternative emotional truth. Wow. Yeah. The boundary 00:13:32.970 --> 00:13:35.500 between what is factually true and what we merely 00:13:35.500 --> 00:13:37.720 wish were true has become dangerously blurred 00:13:37.720 --> 00:13:40.419 on a societal level. He's basically saying society 00:13:40.419 --> 00:13:42.820 as a whole is acting like one of his narrators. 00:13:43.480 --> 00:13:45.539 We are just choosing to talk about polishing 00:13:45.539 --> 00:13:48.519 the silver while the world burns around us, creating 00:13:48.519 --> 00:13:51.019 our own alternative emotional truths. That's 00:13:51.019 --> 00:13:53.139 a great way to put it. And he ties this directly 00:13:53.139 --> 00:13:55.519 into his fears about the rise of artificial intelligence. 00:13:56.440 --> 00:13:59.220 He warns that AI is going to go far beyond just 00:13:59.220 --> 00:14:01.480 crunching data, driving cars, or writing code. 00:14:02.220 --> 00:14:05.559 He believes that very soon AI will become highly 00:14:05.559 --> 00:14:08.600 skilled at manipulating human emotions. It will 00:14:08.600 --> 00:14:11.179 figure out the exact algorithm required to create 00:14:11.179 --> 00:14:14.899 anger, sadness, or laughter in us purely mechanically. 00:14:15.580 --> 00:14:17.500 This raises an important question, doesn't it? 00:14:17.580 --> 00:14:19.320 Because you have an author whose entire career 00:14:19.320 --> 00:14:21.799 has been spent studying how human beings deceive 00:14:21.799 --> 00:14:24.659 themselves. He understands the mechanics of illusion 00:14:24.659 --> 00:14:27.610 better than almost anyone alive. So what does 00:14:27.610 --> 00:14:30.389 this all mean for us? If Ishiguro is right, are 00:14:30.389 --> 00:14:33.049 we just sleepwalking into a future where our 00:14:33.049 --> 00:14:35.029 emotions, the most intimate, authentic parts 00:14:35.029 --> 00:14:37.590 of who we are, can be perfectly hacked by machines? 00:14:37.870 --> 00:14:40.370 That is exactly the alarm he is sounding. He 00:14:40.370 --> 00:14:44.370 is uniquely positioned to see this threat because 00:14:44.370 --> 00:14:47.389 he is the absolute master of engineering that 00:14:47.389 --> 00:14:50.350 alternative emotional truth in his readers. Right. 00:14:50.509 --> 00:14:52.429 His characters have been doing it for decades, 00:14:52.970 --> 00:14:55.409 inventing comforting lies to hide from the abyss. 00:14:55.769 --> 00:14:58.710 What terrifies him is the idea of technologies 00:14:58.710 --> 00:15:01.490 that could automate and weaponize that exact 00:15:01.490 --> 00:15:04.610 self -deception on a mass scale. Which is a terrifying 00:15:04.610 --> 00:15:07.009 thought. It is. If a machine knows how to make 00:15:07.009 --> 00:15:09.210 you feel a profound sense of connection, even 00:15:09.210 --> 00:15:12.570 an illusory one, it can control you. If it learns 00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:14.909 how to nudge the meaning into the spaces between 00:15:14.909 --> 00:15:17.309 the lines better than a human can, we are in 00:15:17.309 --> 00:15:19.889 an uncharted territory. It's a chilling thought, 00:15:20.190 --> 00:15:22.269 and it really reframes his entire career when 00:15:22.269 --> 00:15:24.889 you look back at it. We've traced this incredible 00:15:24.889 --> 00:15:27.990 journey today. Sir Kazuo Ishiguro started as 00:15:27.990 --> 00:15:30.529 a displaced kid in England, inventing a version 00:15:30.529 --> 00:15:33.830 of Japan in his head just to feel anchored. He 00:15:33.830 --> 00:15:36.110 wanted to be a guy in a corduroy jacket playing 00:15:36.110 --> 00:15:38.769 folk songs, but instead he learned to hide profound 00:15:38.769 --> 00:15:40.789 meaning in the silent spaces between his words. 00:15:41.070 --> 00:15:43.750 He took that songwriter's intimacy, that restraint, 00:15:44.250 --> 00:15:46.330 and used it to write masterpieces that won the 00:15:46.330 --> 00:15:49.429 Booker Prize and the Nobel Prize. He even earned 00:15:49.429 --> 00:15:51.750 an Academy Award nomination recently for his 00:15:51.750 --> 00:15:55.330 2022 screenplay Living, adapting a classic Kurosawa 00:15:55.330 --> 00:15:58.690 film about a man facing his own mortality. But 00:15:58.690 --> 00:16:01.149 it always comes back to that central theme of 00:16:01.149 --> 00:16:04.590 facing the truth. It really does. And for you... 00:16:04.409 --> 00:16:06.470 Listening to this deep dive, I think the major 00:16:06.470 --> 00:16:09.549 takeaway here is that reading Kazui Shiguro isn't 00:16:09.549 --> 00:16:12.509 just about enjoying a beautifully crafted, slightly 00:16:12.509 --> 00:16:16.570 melancholy story. It is a mental exercise. Absolutely. 00:16:16.610 --> 00:16:19.029 It's a prompt to look beneath the surface of 00:16:19.029 --> 00:16:21.210 your own life, to question your own assumptions. 00:16:21.590 --> 00:16:23.549 Are you absolutely certain about the narrative 00:16:23.549 --> 00:16:25.889 you've constructed for yourself? Will your own 00:16:25.889 --> 00:16:28.250 ideals hold up when the test comes? Or are you 00:16:28.250 --> 00:16:30.269 operating on an alternative emotional truth to 00:16:30.269 --> 00:16:32.409 avoid looking in the hidden room? It's the kind 00:16:32.409 --> 00:16:34.610 of literature that demands you stay awake to 00:16:34.610 --> 00:16:36.929 your own life. It forces you to ask if the connections 00:16:36.929 --> 00:16:39.350 you feel are real or just a comforting illusion. 00:16:39.690 --> 00:16:41.509 And as we wrap up, I want to leave you with a 00:16:41.509 --> 00:16:44.250 final thought to mull over, building on his warnings 00:16:44.250 --> 00:16:48.320 about our technological future. Ishiguro. built 00:16:48.320 --> 00:16:51.720 his entire legendary career on his profoundly 00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:55.159 human ability to evoke massive emotions, sadness, 00:16:55.360 --> 00:16:58.379 joy, nostalgia, deep regret, using nothing but 00:16:58.379 --> 00:17:01.820 words printed on a page. He is a master emotional 00:17:01.820 --> 00:17:04.039 hacker in the best, most artistic sense of the 00:17:04.039 --> 00:17:07.460 word. But if, as he warns, a future AI eventually 00:17:07.460 --> 00:17:09.680 learns to write a story that perfectly manipulates 00:17:09.680 --> 00:17:12.119 your emotions in the exact same way, hitting 00:17:12.119 --> 00:17:14.059 all the right notes, nudging the meaning into 00:17:14.059 --> 00:17:15.859 the spaces between the lines, just perfectly 00:17:15.859 --> 00:17:18.329 to break your heart. Would the tears you cry 00:17:18.329 --> 00:17:20.650 over that machine's story be any less real than 00:17:20.650 --> 00:17:23.150 the ones you cry reading an Ishiguro novel? Wow. 00:17:23.509 --> 00:17:25.609 That is the real abyss right there. It really 00:17:25.609 --> 00:17:27.750 is. Something to think about next time you feel 00:17:27.750 --> 00:17:29.710 profoundly moved by a piece of art. Thanks for 00:17:29.710 --> 00:17:30.670 joining us on this Deem Dive.