Sunday Pick: Margaret Atwood on what AI can’t replace | from ReThinking with Adam Grant

0:03Happy Sunday, TED Talks Daily listeners. It's Elise Hu. As we often do on Sundays, today we're sharing a recent episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. Margaret Atwood is best known as the author of The Handmaid's Tale. She's won a slew of awards for her novels and poetry collections and children's books. Now, at the age of 86, she's written her first memoir, The Book of Lives. In this episode of Rethinking, host Adam Grant speaks with Margaret about how much today's reality seems like the stuff of science fiction. They also discuss the jobs AI will and won't threaten, the benefits of reading banned books, and why she thinks that heroes always need monsters.

0:45To hear more deep conversations, you can find Rethinking wherever you get your shows. Learn more about the TED Audio Collective at audiocollective.ted.com. Now on to the episode right after a short break.

1:20That automate? That's a big one. And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No spreadsheet in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search X-E-R-O for your free trial. Conditions apply. You have the vision for your business. You have the plan. And you just got handed a huge opportunity. But is your business connectivity reliable enough to make a move? Spectrum Business delivers fast, reliable internet, phone, TV, and mobile services. so you're always connected when it matters most. Get connectivity packages built for your business with savings that keep your budget in check.

1:56And with fast, reliable internet and 100 % U.S.-based customer support, you'll stay connected and ready to bring your vision to life. Learn more at spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas. Hannah, I just Venmo'd you for dinner. Obsessed. I'm spending it right now in the lip gloss that's been sitting in my cart. What do you mean spending it right now? You can instantly spend your balance with the Venmo debit card or when you pay with Venmo at checkout. Stop. Say more. More exactly. The more you do with Venmo, the more you get. Like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash.

2:31Get the Venmo debit card or checkout online. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply. Max$100 per month. See terms at venmo.me slash stashterms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A.

2:56How do you feel about having enemies? I think it's a part of life. And anyway, if you didn't have any, what sort of boring person are you? Hey everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back to Rethinking, my podcast with Ted on the science of what makes us tick. I'm an organizational psychologist, and I'm taking you inside the minds of fascinating people to explore new thoughts and new ways of thinking.

3:25Margaret Atwood is the author best known for The Handmaid's Tale. She's won a slew of awards for her novels, poetry collections, nonfiction, and children's books. And now, for the first time in 86 years, she's written a memoir, The Book of Lives. It's one of her first books published in the era of AI, which she has quite a few thoughts about. People want to feel they're connecting with another human mind. And if it is AI, they're not connecting with another human mind. They are connecting with an amalgam of other human minds put together. We know not how, but there isn't a, what we used to call a soul behind what you're reading.

4:09But it's probably quite good at company reports because those don't have souls. I'm just sharing this with you. I first got the chance to speak with Margaret a few years ago about procrastination. She likened it to going swimming in a very cold lake and said, if you're going to do it, you got to just run in screaming. Today, we talked about what convinced her to jump into the very cold lake of writing a memoir and about creativity, AI, and what to do about your enemies.

4:40Margaret, it's lovely to see you again. Are those all your books behind you? Um, they're all my books, but not all the editions of all my books. Wow. So I have so many things I want to ask you about, but I think the, maybe the place that I would love to start this conversation is around AI. You, as far as I'm concerned, have been the most interesting voice on AI and creativity. And as I understand it, you've written dozens of books that AI companies have ingested to train their large language models. Yes. But you're not worried that AI is going to outright us. Well, it's quite bad so far, but it depends what you're writing.

5:22So if you want to write the equivalent of George Orwell's 1984 romantic schlock for mass consumers, it can probably do that because there's a formula, and it likes formulas. So right now, you know, it data scrapes and sticks things together, and you can't actually get anything out of it unless something about that has been put into it. So it is what they used to say, garbage in, garbage out. But not everything that it's scraping is garbage. So I think you could probably get some moderately competent things out of it, including a lot of student essays, which has transformed educational methods already.

6:07The write-it-at-home essay is gone. But when it comes to original voice quality writing, I think it probably cannot do that because it can't, so far, write original writing. It will never be Shakespeare, although it can probably do a good imitation of Shakespeare now, as we all can. I'm reminded of a brilliant Atlantic piece that you wrote where you mentioned that you used to write in the style of different famous authors when you were younger. Absolutely. It's good training. Tell me about that. Well, it's just something we did as part of being graduate students in the early 60s. We used to have to identify passages and guess what century they were from, and then if you had really read a lot of books with very small print, you might be able to guess who the author was.

7:04so identifying authors by their style and period and we did another thing later on when i was teaching in which i assigned them a whole bunch of passages and got them to try to guess whether the writer was male or female and they were quite bad at that and it became clear that you can identify a writer's century you know and roughly their period even within that century so late 19th century isn't the same as mid-19th century, but it was hard to guess gender, and you couldn't even do it through the concerns in the book. So you might think that women were writing more about women, and men were writing more about men.

7:49That's not true, or not in the 19th century. So I give you Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, you know, by men, etc., who used to hide under the kitchen table when their mothers were gossiping with their friends. But women, on the other hand, were not allowed into men's clubs. So they didn't really know what they were talking about in there. But on the other hand, that was probably unprintable in the 19th century anyway. Anyway, it's an interesting exercise, and we used to do it quite a lot. So go back to then the writing in the voice of different authors. Can you still do it? If you read the introduction to my new memoir, you will see what I came up with when they said they wanted a memoir in a literary style.

8:38And I said, whatever would that be? Like, whose style? Do we want heroic couplets like Pope? What do we want here? I could read them to you. Oh. Get the intro. There it is. so this is the subject of pastiche and writing in the style of other so they say when the idea of writing a quotes literary memoir first sprang up from whom memory shrugs but it was someone in publishing I replied to her or him or them that would be tedious you've heard the bad joke about the old east coast fisherman counting fish One fish, two fish, another fish, another fish, another fish. So my literary memoir would go, I wrote a book, I wrote a second book, I wrote another book, I wrote another book.

9:34Dead boring. Who wants to read about someone sitting at a desk messing up blank sheets of paper? Oh, that's not what we meant, they said. We meant a memoir in, you know, a literary style. This was even more baffling. What would that be like? Eighteenth-century mock-heroic couplets. Lo, when dawn's rosy fingers do the curtains part, down sit I at my desk to labor at mine art. Or something more in the gothic flamboyant style of, for instance, Poe. A thousand brightly-hued images whirled within my dizzied brain and menacing phantoms thronged the shadowy corners of my tapestried chamber. In a frenzy, I seized my enchanted quill, and ignoring the large blot of ink now taking demonic shape on the dazzling sheet of snowy parchment before me, I, no, it would not do.

10:35I love this. I could listen to you write in other people's voices all day. Oh, could you? I prefer when you write in your own, I have to say. So I'm curious about how that exercise, when you do it, Margaret, is different from what AI does. Um, probably not that different, except it seems there's quite a few things it doesn't yet know. So it could do probably fairly short ripoffs of other authors, but it couldn't then go anywhere very original with that, I don't think. We did propose a couple of tests to it earlier on. I'm sure it's better now, but the Walrus Magazine in Canada proposed to it that it should write a dystopian short story set in Winnipeg in the style of Margaret Atwood.

11:28So what it came up with was something called The Weeping Willows of Winnipeg. but it did not grasp the essential thing about a dystopia which is in a dystopia you can't just move out so it didn't put any wall around Winnipeg where all these unhappy people were and it didn't also tell us what exactly was making them so unhappy except that it seemed to rain and snow a lot but that's not a dystopia dystopias have to be made by people So we didn't have any sort of evil genius big brother type of person. We just had some unhappy people in Winnipeg. You know, they just could have moved. So a few essentials were not grasped.

12:12And we also asked it to write a poem about our Peely Island Bird Observatory, where the birdbending does take place in a fairly swampy area. And we asked it to include chiggers and mud, But to write a positive thing about this, we had luxuriant, nourishing mud, and we had singing chiggers. So the AI evidently didn't know what a chigger was. They don't sing. They just make your life hell. Well, a couple of things. One, it's just, it's fun to see these examples. Two, it's delightful to see you proving what AI can't do. Well, it could, possibly later with a few twitches. So, for instance, we asked it to give us a picture of our earlier residents for our bird banders, which had snakes in the shower.

13:06So we asked it to include some holes in the floor, which there were, and some snakes, which there also were. And it showed us something that looked like the floor had been hit by a bomb. And underneath it were these gigantic, huge boa constrictors. So you have to be very specific with it. You have to say, make the snakes smaller.

13:31Make realistic snakes for southern Ontario. And make, you know, by hole in the floor, we don't mean no floor. Have you been using AI in your writing at all? Are you mad? Why would I do such a thing? I assumed it was going to be an emphatic no, but I had to confirm. Yes, well, it's confirmed. No, I would never do that. Why not? Well, it's lazy. I'm of the workaholic generation, not the hippies. As a fellow recovering workaholic, I subscribe wholeheartedly to the, I would never write a word with AI philosophy. Well, thank you for reassuring us about that. But what I will say is I've found it useful for writing adjacent tasks.

14:19Sometimes it's a more efficient thesaurus, for example. Yeah, it can tell you various word definitions and refer you to this and that dictionary, and I'm told it's reasonably good at travel schedules. Though guess what? Its mapping abilities are not very good. We asked it to tell us the exact location of a supermarket at Christie and DuPont in Toronto, and it said that that store was in the Maple Leaf Gardens, which is the old hockey stadium down by the waterfront. know. Wherever did it get that idea? I don't know. So I wouldn't trust him. I wonder if those hallucinations that you're describing, though, are dead ends or if they might be paths to new perspectives.

15:05Just a minute now. The hallucinations are hallucinations that AI is having? Potentially, right? So when it gives you wrong information and it's misbelieving things or it's misrepresenting facts, that seems like a version of what a novelist does. Well, first of all, I wouldn't call those hallucinations. I would just call them errors. Touche. So to me, a hallucination has got much more to it than just factual inaccuracy. I don't think that's what a novelist does at all. Novelists tell stories with characters and plots. So that's the part so far where I think it's rather falling down. So I think it could have somebody called Bob doing something or other, but it probably wouldn't be able to tell you much about Bob's inner life.

15:55And that's what novels do really better than any other art form. I'm just thinking about your statement that a hallucination is different from an error. It's striking because the AI community has referred to these kinds of mistakes as hallucinations. That's because they want to make AI sound human. So humans have hallucinations. machines don't they just make mistakes what's the difference just thinking a hallucination is an emotional experience is that the fundamental difference yeah so i was eating breakfast it's not necessarily a hallucination okay so what's different for you between a hallucination and an error what makes you think I don't think I have hallucinations.

16:39I said I wasn't a hippie, right? Yeah, I think you have hallucinations when you're very ill or else on drugs. Not something a machine can experience in either case. Well, I wouldn't think so. Okay, so I'm just thinking about your point of view on AI as a writer. Yeah, I don't think that's the most important thing about it. I think the most important thing about it is its ability to create deep fakes for political propaganda purposes. I don't think writers are going to use AI much because why would they be writers if they can write their own writing? If they can't write their own writing, why are they pretending to be writers?

17:24I'm curious about what that means for the future of creative careers in your view. It sounds like you don't think writers should be worried. It depends what kinds of writers we're talking about. If you mean writers of ad copies, I think they should be worried if people are still even writing ad copy and not just making pictures. Ads used to be very verbal, and now it is really billboards a lot without many words on them at all. So those kinds of writers have already been expelled from their ad copy jobs. Or if you're thinking of newspaper writers, people writing stuff up, I think they might be worried.

18:04But, you know, I think people are still interested in hearing personal points of view from real people. You could, of course, invent a person who was the purported writer. I think the Nancy Drew books were written that way. but not by AI, by ghostwriters. And there have, of course, been a lot of ghostwriters. And they are channeling the, they hope, the voice and the thoughts of the person they're writing the book for, but they're not AI.

18:37Business is booming. But you know what really helped? Zero, the accounting platform for small businesses. I used to think spreadsheets were just part of it. Ugh. But real-time cash flow? Wow. Invoices that chase themselves? Even better. Books that automate? That's a big one. And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No spreadsheet in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search XERO for your free trial. Conditions apply. You have the vision for your business. You have the plan. And you just got handed a huge opportunity. But is your business connectivity reliable enough to make a move?

19:17Spectrum Business delivers fast, reliable internet, phone, TV, and mobile services. So you're always connected when it matters most. Get connectivity packages built for your business with savings that keep your budget in check. And with fast, reliable internet and 100 % U.S.-based customer support, you'll stay connected and ready to bring your vision to life. Learn more at spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.

19:48All right. So let us then take this as an invitation to go to your memoir, The Book of Lives. Yes. I was very surprised to see Margaret Atwood writing a memoir. So was I. You don't normally write about your own life. I don't. Why? Where did this come from? Well, I don't know. oh, you know, they say, why don't you write a memoir? No, no, no, no, I never want to do that. Oh, come on. But then I realized that a memoir is not the same as an autobiography. I wouldn't have to go through all my old travel schedules and say where I'd been when. I could put into it what a memoir really should be, which is what you can remember.

20:28Surely that is why it is called a memoir. So what you remember is usually stupid things you did, stupid and evil things other people did to you, not so much the evil things you did to other people. You tend to forget those. And catastrophes, near-death experiences, and high points. So as you reflected on your memories and decided what you wanted to include, what surprised you? What surprised me? Hmm. I think it was pleasurable to write about a lot of these things, even though they were not enjoyable at the time. So it is a bit like war stories. You almost died, but hey, you didn't. And now it's a story.

21:13One of the stories that really stands out in the Book of Lives is the, I think, what, a trio of nine-year-old girls who tormented you in school. They did. Yes, that got a lot of reaction when I put it into a novel, Cat's Eye. Anyway, I struck a chord with that, yes? Universal experience, it seems. Very much so. It makes me wonder, how did that dynamic play out, and how did the tables turn later? Well, in real life or in the novel? In real life. Okay, so Alice in Wonderland has been an inspiration to many. And I think it's the moment when the Queen of Hearts has been threatening to behead everybody.

22:00Ella says, you're nothing but a pack of cards. And at this point, the cards all flutter through the air and she wakes up. So I think it's the moment when you can say you're nothing but a pack of cards and walk away. If you're in a situation where that is possible, you're not always. But if you are, you realize that the power of those people is dependent on your believing that they have that power. For listeners who haven't had a chance to read yet, what was the worst of The Torment? I think that's a very personal question. How can I choose amongst The Torments? You can choose at random if you like.

22:42Yeah, I don't know. Remember that I had not known any little girls before this period in my life. I older brother was a boy, my dad was a boy, and my mother was a tomboy, so I didn't have any models of frilly behavior. I was the most girly person in my family, believe it or not. So I didn't have, you know, I didn't know the etiquette of girls much at all. So I also tended to believe what people told me because I hadn't had a lot of role models of lying. So I actually believed what these people were telling me. Anyway, you can read Cat's Eye and revel in torments if you wish, but I have to say that some of the letters that I got from readers after publishing this book had much worse torments in them to the extent that you wondered why these people were still alive.

23:44Have those letters changed the way that you reflect on having been bullied? Well, they simply underlined the fact that this is a pretty universal experience amongst kids, and that it is inaccurate to say that little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and little boys are made of snaps and snails and puppy dogs' tails. Yeah, I think we can retire that refrain, for sure. And it's not anti-feminist to say so. It is simply underlining the fact that human beings are human, and they come in all shapes and sizes and do all kinds of things. So if you stop believing that they are supernatural and all empowered, then you can either walk away, or if they are at that point the dragon, you can find the weak spot and shoot your hobbity arrow into a...

24:41Is it the armpit? I think it's the armpit, the weak spot. This reminds me of something I find myself saying often as a psychologist when someone is hurt or upset by someone else's behavior. I just want to ask them, why are you giving that person power over your emotions? Oh, yes. Or the popular saying these days are, why are you letting them live rent-free in your head? Yeah, I'm sure you've seen that one quite a bit. Oh, yes. Do you have any lessons learned about how to charge them rent or remove them from your head?

25:18Well, you're probably asking the wrong person. Yes, I ought to say something about compassion and forgiveness and things like that. And those can be helpful because the moment at which you let them off the hook, they're no longer in your head as this vengeful presence. And I think it was Nelson Mandela who decided to just let it go as he was being let out of prison. You know, he could go for revenge or he could just let that go. So that's one approach. The other one is to get them back, which is very tempting. It's very tempting. I try not to indulge. I try to be a good and virtuous person. I don't always succeed.

26:02You must have, though, had a triumphant moment of revenge at some point in this saga. Not a single triumphant moment of revenge. I would just say, as a teenager, the realization that the power was no longer residing in this other person, it was residing in me. And I didn't do terribly mean things, but I did marginally mean things. Such as? Let's walk home through the cemetery, Adam. Of course, I'm not really alive. And I will show you the mausoleum where I spend all the morning hours. No, no, no, that's too scary. No, come on. I won't hurt you. Will I? Oh, I do not want to ever end up on your bad side, Margaret, ever.

26:52That's a wise choice, Adam. You know, this reminds me of, I think, the first time I laughed out loud as I was starting to read. You quoted Julian Porter, who said, don't piss her off or you will live forever. Yes. He did say that. Oh, yes. So I put it in my epigraphs. And he was very pleased to be in the epigraphs. Yeah, I think one of the more evocative lines in the book was, you realize that while heroes need the monster, the monster does not need the hero. Absolutely not. Talk to me about that. I was not the first person to say that. I think people will remember having heard that before. but what would a monster need a hero for because it's the hero's quest to slay the monster.

27:50So unless you're a very, very masochistic dragon, you do not welcome the advent of the dragon slayer. But in order to be a hero, in order to be the monster slayer and everybody saying hooray for you, you do have to have a monster to slay. or put another way around. I knew some people who'd been in resistance movements during World War II, and one of them who had been in the Polish resistance said, pray that you will never have the opportunity to be a hero because those opportunities always involve monsters. Wow. And quite usually the monster slays quite a few Beowulfs before the actual Beowulf gets there.

28:37That's powerful. So you've made the case that the hero needs the monster. And it makes me wonder, do you have enemies now? Oh, so many. But lots of them are dead, Adam. Hopefully not by your own doing. Not directly.

29:00I'm starting to picture just behind you your enemies list. Oh, I don't have a list. No, not as such particularly. And I think the lists you would be interested in more would be the lists in which I feature as an enemy. Do tell. So when you say, do you have enemies? And I said so many. I was referring to the fact that a lot of people probably think I'm an enemy of theirs in some way. Either for taking political stands or taking some other kind of stand or for being short. Why aren't you taller? No, scrap that. That was frivolous. So reasons like that, and if you're associated, for instance, with an organization like Penn International, which is stand up for the rights of people who have been imprisoned or indeed exiled or tortured or killed for what they've written, you're going to have some enemies.

30:01Okay, this is a good segue to book bans. I loved when you had an unburnable copy of The Handmaid's Tale created and then torched it. I did, and I made everybody in the room very nervous. They were saying, just point it at the book, Margaret, just the book. And then they said, you can give that flamethrower back to us now. It's one of the best videos on the internet. You think? I do. and to set up the question, the best evidence that I've found shows a couple of things. Number one, when books are banned, that completely fails to reduce reader interest in them and sometimes draws attention. And number two, that kids are not nearly as fragile as some parents fear.

30:47There was a study that came out about a decade ago looking at teenagers in Texas and just tracking how much exposure they had to frequently banned books. So Huck Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, Catcher in the Rye, Brave New World, Kite Runner, Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter, perhaps even a Margaret Atwood selection. What is this perhaps? Definitely, definitely on the list. Even if not in the study, it turns out that how much exposure you've had to those books has no bearing on your grades, no bearing on illicit behavior, and actually predicts spending more time reading for fun and higher involvement in volunteering, charity, and civic behavior.

31:28Well, why are we not surprised? And why do we not give awards to the book banners? Because from what you've told me, their net result is positive. It may well be. I don't know if it's causal, but it's at least correlational. Yeah, so the other thing that's correlational is the existence of school libraries. So if there is a school library with a librarian who helps kids find stuff they're interested in, their marks go up. So why would you do away with those unless you wish people to be stupid? I love the way you framed that. Now, I should say in this last study, there were 283 students, and 19 of them showed both high levels of engagement with banned books and also some mental health symptoms.

32:18And my interpretation of that is there's a subset, a small subset of students with mental health challenges who seek out this kind of literature. Not that engaging with this literature causes mental health symptoms, but you've produced some of this literature, so I'd love to hear your take. Our literary festival in Toronto was founded by a guy who was told at school, don't you ever, ever read Ulysses by James Joyce. It's an evil, evil, evil book and your soul will be irrevocably damned. So he rushed out and got one and started reading it, looking for the soul-damning dirty parts and really liked it.

32:59So he thought, if this is literature, I would like to know more about that. And that's what turned him into a reader. So I'll go from that story to me being absolutely traumatized by reading Peyton Place on top of the garage roof where nobody could see me doing it. And what was the traumatizing part? Varicose veins. I didn't know. Varicose veins. Ick! Yes, so you never know what people are going to find alarming or what is unknown to them. And that's one of the reasons for reading. You discover all sorts of interesting things like varicose veins in these forbidden books. But we had three kinds of books.

33:49Those we studied in school, a pretty Victorian curriculum, not lots of sex in it except off the page in the shrubbery where you couldn't really figure out what was going on. books your parents might have, which were, in my case, a wide variety, including science books and history books and historical romances. I liked those. And a lot of detective stories. And science fiction. My dad liked science fiction. He used to get a big laugh out of it. Oh, he was a scientist. So, ha-ha, he would say. Quite a yarn. And then the really things you were not supposed to read, which you usually got hold of either in the drugstore with absolutely trashy covers on them, but it would be like War and Peace, you know, Woman in a Negligé Cleavage.

34:481984, Woman in a Tight-Fitting Uniform Cleavage. There was a lot of cleavage. And you would end up reading world classics because you thought you were getting some kind of forbidden book. And ones that you read at houses where you were babysitting. Those were the best. And you're saying your life was not ruined by any of these memories at all, although it sounds like you haven't been able to remove the image of varicose veins from your mind. Absolutely not. No, no, seared into my brain. Otherwise, I think you've survived the experience. I seem to have done anyway. It gave me a wide range of reading references and was on the whole pretty educational, especially since I was a flashlight under the covers reader and a procrastinator.

35:40So instead of doing my homework, I would be reading one of those Dell mysteries that had the keyhole with the eyeball in it. I feel like that choice of how you spent your time has worked out okay for you. Yeah, but it could have been otherwise. You know, it could have been a mere wastrel and dilettante. I mean, a mere only, shall I say, a wastrel and dilettante. Highly doubtful. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. For a limited time, when you get a new Apple Card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost, up to$250 daily cash. new AirPods Pro and up to$250 bonus daily cash back.

36:22Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval, limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Terms and more at apple.co slash AirPods.

36:36Business is booming, but you know what really helped? Zero, the accounting platform for small businesses. I used to think spreadsheets were just part of it. Ugh. But real-time cash flow? Wow. Invoices that chase themselves? Even better. Books that automate? That's a big one. And I can keep track from my phone while I get the job done. No spreadsheet in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search XERO for your free trial. Conditions apply. You have the vision for your business. You have the plan. And you just got handed a huge opportunity. But is your business connectivity reliable enough to make a move?

37:16Spectrum Business delivers fast, reliable internet, phone, TV, and mobile services. So you're always connected when it matters most. Get connectivity packages built for your business with savings that keep your budget in check. And with fast, reliable internet and 100 % U.S.-based customer support, you'll stay connected and ready to bring your vision to life. Learn more at spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Service is not available in all areas.

37:48All right, it's time for a lightning round. What is the worst writing advice you hear? I think the worst writing advice I was given was by somebody who was supposed to be my student advisor in my final year of undergraduate who said, why don't you just forget this writing stuff and going to graduate school and find a nice man and marry him? Well, I just thought he was an idiot. He was an idiot. What's your favorite writing tip to give? You have to actually do the writing. You have to set the words down. You need to make the hours, and you need to actually do it. It is one of those things that you like playing the piano.

38:35You don't sit down at the piano and expect to rip off a sonata without ever learning how to play. So it's a learning and it's work. If you were hosting a dream dinner party, who would you invite, dead or alive? Dead or alive. I would invite the best conversationalists. So people who are known to be people of few words, I would not invite, even though they might be quite interesting, if you could ever get them to say anything. So I might invite Emily Bronte, but she wouldn't come. Why are you prejudging Emily Bronte? I'm not prejudging her. I'm judging her. I've read the descriptions of what she was like.

39:21She'd probably say, I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than waste my time. in your dining room rather than running across the moors. Yes, I would invite her, but I might invite, would I invite Samuel Johnson? He was said to be a great conversationalist, but a very piggy eater. So, would you be inviting people for their table manners or their conversation? I'd definitely invite Oscar Wilde. He would be very good as a dinner guest. And Nancy Mitford would be very good. So we could go on dividing people into talkers and silent people and narrow the list down from there. That's a great group. I feel like Samuel Johnson would ace the game you introduced me to at the beginning of the conversation around redefining words.

40:15Yes, he'd be very good at that, but he might put the other guests off. Might be a know-it-all. No, he might be a piggy-eater. So, Margaret, what is something you've changed your mind about or rethought lately? I'm changing my mind fairly frequently about what the Trump regime is liable to do next. And of course, that is their aim. Either that or somebody has really lost their mind. So, are they intending to be deliberately destabilizing or are they just erratic? or they throw it out there, see who salutes. If it's not working, cancel it. What is going on? I don't know. A friend of mine photographed Trump for Time magazine and asked him how he deals with all the chaos.

41:07And he just said, it seems like there's always a storm surrounding you. And Trump stared him in the eye and said, I am the storm. Well, that was pretty witty. Yeah. How long ago was that? This was a decade ago now. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Okay. Somebody asked me before this conversation, what is Margaret Atwood like? And I was thinking about the first time we spoke. And I said, she's entirely original. I've never met anyone like her. And she's delightfully disagreeable. Oh, well, I'll think about that. What I found so charming about the way that you engage with people is you are utterly fearless about saying something that might be unpopular or challenge conventional wisdom or maybe lead people to question their own assumptions.

41:59And it seems like you don't worry too much about what other people think of you. Not at my age. It's not that I didn't used to in some circumstances, but let's put it this way. I'm not likely to say any career-destroying thing and nobody can fire me. You're uncancellable. More or less in the usual sense. I think I might do something that would be really bad. For instance, if I wrote a really terrible book and it somehow got past my editors, that would be bad because people would no longer trust that when they opened the book, they might get an experience they might enjoy, they would think, oh, well, she's past it.

42:48Well, that goes to something you said a few years ago, and I quote, writers don't retire. They only get worse. I know. That was bad of me. But you haven't. You haven't gotten worse. How? Not yet. But I will. How have I managed not to get worse? Yes. I think that's probably a question for your department. A colleague of mine was asked, why did you become a professor? And he said, having students keeps you young. Some people would say the opposite. Ages you prematurely. I suppose it depends on the students and also the kinds of relationships you build with them. Yes. Margaret, what's a question you have for me as a psychologist?

43:38Oh, boy. Psychologist or psychiatrist? Definitely a psychologist. Okay. Well, I did know a forensic psychiatrist who said to me at one point, if he knew it was walking around on the street out there, he'd never go out. So my question to you is, what do you think of that? That's a great question. I think I see where that observation is coming from, but it's also, I think, a biased sample of some of the worst of humanity. That's true. So you could also give a sample of people being helpful. I think we know from good evidence that the default human response to tragedy and suffering is kindness and care.

44:20That's one of the default responses. Not the only one. It is not the only one. So some people take advantage of chaos and tragedy to go in and nick the silverware and do things that normal civil society would not permit. So there's that side too. And that's us as human beings. So the very good, the very bad, and then degrees of goodness and badness leading up to the center where most of us live. I think that's really well articulated. And I think humanity certainly is capable of both extremes. Without a doubt. Most of us do hover in the center. So far, yeah. Most of us also have different definitions of good and evil.

45:10So is it really bad? And this is one of the questions that Ann Landers, the newspaper columnist, got most often. Is it really bad to put the toilet paper on with the sheet coming out the bottom? How dare you? How dare you? Morally wrong. Yeah, the other one is with tea. Milk in first or milk after you put in the tea. Great arguments about that. Oh, my version of that is you have to put the cereal in before you pour the milk. Who would do it the other way around? My brother-in-law. He's a barbarian. Oh. Couldn't believe it when I watched him put the milk in and then pour cereal on top. What are you doing?

45:53Well, at least you'd know how much milk you'd put in. Whereas if the cereal's in first, the milk can sort of get lost amongst all those cereal pieces. Which is why my cereal bowl overflows sometimes. Point taken. You've made me rethink that. Okay, Margaret, as we close, you are about to head out on book tour, as I understand. Yes. What are you hoping people will ask or not ask? Well, of the many questions that I've been asked over the years, I've probably answered most of them by now. In the very early days, I would go to places where they had never had a writer before, and they would ask very direct questions that had nothing to do with your symbolic meaning.

46:41And one of my favorites, why are there so many eggs in your books? I had to think about that. Why are there so many eggs in my books? Why are there so many glass jars in your books? Ooh, you've counted them. But my best one was, is your hair really like that, or do you get it done? So that's a pretty non-writer's school type of question. And the answer is? The answer is, if I got it done, would I do this? Shades of Abraham Lincoln. If I had another face, would I wear this one? Yeah, exactly. That's very good. Well, Margaret, thank you for taking the time to do this. This has been such a joy. And having grown up in Michigan and been called an honorary Canadian, I would like to call you a national treasure, but I suppose it would be more accurate to call you an international treasure.

47:36Well, that's very kind. Thank you for sharing your wit and wisdom.

47:43Rethinking is hosted by me, Adam Grant. The show is produced by TED with Cosmic Standard. Our producer is Jessica Glazer. Our editor is Alejandra Salazar. Our engineer is Asia Pilar Simpson. Our technical director is Jacob Winnick, and our fact-checker is Paul Durbin. Our team includes Eliza Smith, Roxanne Hilash, Banban Chang, Julia Dickerson, Tansika Sung Manivong, and Whitney Pennington Rogers. Original music by Hans Dale Hsu and Alison Leighton Brown.

48:14When were you born, do you mind my asking? I was born in 1981. Oh, well, you missed it all, didn't you? Oh, well. I've heard stories and read books. You can read about it.

48:53While I get the job done. No bills in sight. What a life. Do right by yourself and your business and search Xero for your free trial. Conditions apply. Hannah, I just Venmo'd you for dinner. Obsessed. I'm spending it right now on the lip gloss that's been sitting in my cart. What do you mean spending it right now? You can instantly spend your balance with the Venmo debit card or when you pay with Venmo at checkout. Stop. Say more. More exactly. The more you do with Venmo, the more you get. like earning up to 5 % cash back with Venmo Stash. Get the Venmo debit card or checkout online. Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply.

49:30Max$100 per month. See terms at venmo.me slash stash terms. Venmo checkout not available at all merchants. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank N.A. Hey, it's Adam Grant from Ted's podcast, Rethinking with Adam Grant. This episode is sponsored by the Amazon Kindle Scribe. Up until now, people have had to choose between the focus that comes from writing on paper and the efficiency of laptops and tablets, which might come at the cost of distracting pop-ups and notifications. The Kindle Scribe's exciting new AI features are designed to streamline your workflow for maximum efficiency, but what's not on it is just as important.

50:10Scribe comes with no email, messaging, or social apps, so you can unlock your best focus. Use Scribe's AI notebook insights to ask your notebook a question and instantly comb through handwritten notes for fast answers, or pull up and mark PDFs with PDF markup right on your screen, no printer necessary. The Kindle Scribe makes it easy to keep your notes organized with everything you need in one place without having to sort through paper files or type notes on your laptop. I love how the Kindle Scribe brings my notes to life while making them impossible to lose. I know what I'm working on moving forward.

50:43What are you working on? Kindle Scribe.