I'm Colin from Louisville.

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I'm Jesse Thorne live on tape from My House in Los Angeles.

It's the Sound of Young America from MaximumFund.org and PRI Public Radio International.

It's the Sound of Young America.

I'm Jesse Thorne.

My guest is the writer, David Rackoff.

His third book, Half Empty, is a collection of essays that are meditations on

the darker side of the human psyche.

It comes with the warning, no inspirational life lessons will be found in these pages.

But frankly, it sort of betrays that.

There are none of the traditional inspirational life lessons.

But it is, in part, at least an argument that one can be inspired and draw life lessons

from a little bit of pessimism and melancholy.

David Rackoff, welcome back to The Sound of Young America.

Thanks for having me.

I want to talk about the story that opens this book.

It's the story of you trying to write this magazine article in 2001 just about 10 years ago.

...