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People I (Mostly) Admire

110. Drawing from Life (and Death)

People I (Mostly) Admire

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Society & Culture

4.61.9K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2023

⏱️ 62 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Artist Wendy MacNaughton knows the difficulty of sitting in silence and the power of having fun. She explains to Steve the lessons she’s gleaned from drawing hospice residents, working in Rwanda, and reporting from Guantanamo Bay.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I guess today Wendy McNaughton is an artist and graphic journalist who

0:08.1

work appears frequently in the New York Times and she's had a handful of best

0:11.2

selling books but the main reason I wanted to talk to her today is that she is

0:15.5

produced a stunningly touching book called How to Say Goodbye.

0:19.3

It's called How to Say Goodbye. I'd grab it off the shop and be like oh it's

0:23.0

gonna tell me how to do this thing but then the first thing you learn is there's

0:26.3

no right way to do this. There's no one way to say goodbye.

0:31.6

Welcome to People I mostly admire with Steve Levitt.

0:38.4

There is no doubt that Wendy and I are very different types of people.

0:42.4

Conversations between opposites can be really good or really bad.

0:46.7

Let's see if we can figure out how to talk to one another.

0:56.4

As I headed over to this interview I tried to think about the last time I had

1:01.7

talked with an artist someone who earns their living with a pencil or painting or sculpture

1:08.0

and this will be shocking to you but the last conversation I remember happened 25 years ago.

1:13.2

Are you kidding me? I just don't have any artists in my world.

1:18.8

Really? But you don't talk to a lot of economists either though right?

1:22.4

When's the last time you talked to an economist? That's a really good point.

1:26.7

No I don't. We can be each other's exceptional friends.

1:29.7

The universe might have to rearrange itself.

1:32.1

Something magical is going to happen. Oh I'm sure something will.

1:35.5

I mean I was trying to think I mean why don't it kind of start artists.

1:38.6

One theory is that capitalism doesn't treat artists very kindly and economists are usually

...

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