Hello, this is Everything Else, a new podcast from The Financial Times in which we promise not to talk about the stock market and we definitely won't bring up the state of the pound.

Basically, anything that isn't finance, we'll cover it. That could be art, food, books or music.

In today's show, we call the FTs arts editor, Jan Dali, in New York,

to find out what it's like to interview the infamous performance artist Maroon Abramovich.

Also, we've got the Radical Belgian theatre director Ivo Van Hova,

whose work is everywhere right now. He comes into the studio to tell us how his punk origins still inspire his work. And we'll also be talking about how self-absorbed we all are, or aren't, and consider whether we are living in an age of narcissism. My name's John Sonia. And I'm Griselda-Marie Brown. So we're both culture editors here at the FD, and a while ago we decided that we wanted to do a podcast. We both love podcasts and we talk about them quite a lot, as well as lots of other things in culture. John is my go-to guy for what's new in fiction, and I'm always trying to persuade him to go and see more theatre. Which doesn't work, I'm sorry to say.

Anyway, we thought we might as well record all this stuff and call it work, get a bit of kudos.

And appropriately enough, our first panel discussion is all about narcissism.

Yay!

It seemed so easy when we were talking about the podcast back in the summer in Barrow Market in South London.

Yep, sitting in the sun. Now it's December and it's finally happening and it all feels very real.

So, right, we're kicking off with this discussion about narcissism, whether it's on the rise.

So, this is a pretty bold move for our first ever panel discussion. Why did you want to talk about narcissism, John?

Because, you know me, I wanted to know whether the amount I think about myself is normal.

I can tell you it's not.

No, it's basically one of those things that is seemingly inescapable right now. There are so many articles and features written about it,

including in FT Weekend. There are lots of good books. It's something people pitched us all the

time. We have a US president who seems almost the embodiment of the term. Yes, we do. Yeah, a few

different reasons. So we're joined in the studio by Peter Aston, the former FT arts writer and all-round opinionator.

Hi Peter.

Hello.

Hi.

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