Jon Mooallem’s “Serious Face” Asks Why We Are Not Better Than We Are

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

John Mooallem became a magazine writer after realizing that “instead of thumping my head against the biggest questions of my own life” he could train his insights and inquiry on the world. “I’d been puzzling over myself, torturously trying to unlock the truth of who I was. The truth is, I am the puzzling,” he writes in the prologue to his collection of essays, “Serious Face.” In his wide ranging collection, Mooallem brings his "puzzling" to, among other things, our relationship to nature and disaster, our concepts of evolution, a pigeon pyramid scheme and his own face. Jon Mooallem joins Forum to talk about his new book and the question that he says binds the essays together: Why are we not better than we are? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Key QBD Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport. At SFO, you can shop,
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0:23.1	From three-time Tony-winning composer Jason Robert Brown comes the story of Leo and Lucille Frank,
0:29.6	a newlywed Jewish couple struggling to make a life in Georgia. When Leo is accused of an
0:35.3	unspeakable crime, it propels them into an unimaginable test of faith, humanity, justice, and devotion.
0:43.3	The riveting and gloriously hopeful parade plays the Orpheum Theater for three weeks only, May 20th through June 8th.
0:51.7	Tickets on sale now at Broadwaysf.com.
0:56.6	From KQED.
0:58.0	From KQED.
1:13.2	In San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:18.7	In dozens of deep stories over the years, the writer John Mualem has explored an almost unimaginably wide terrain.
1:21.3	Journalists often talk about what they, quote, cover, but defining that topic for Mualem
1:25.6	is more or less impossible.
1:32.3	The relationship between individual people, their cultures, and this excessively large planet, trying to be a decent person, the alternately mind-boggling and mind-expanding reality
1:38.3	that there are just so many ways to be a person here on Earth, and there have been for thousands of generations.
1:48.2	Those themes probably don't even map Muellum's range, but those are the things we're planning to talk about this morning.
1:49.7	Pour an extra cup of coffee.
1:51.0	That's all coming up next after this news.
1:57.6	Welcome to Forum.
1:58.9	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
2:00.5	John Muellum is the author of multiple books, a fixture of the live event series pop-up magazine,
	...

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