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Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Little Happier-What Andy Warhol Taught Me About Drama Queens: It's Not a Bug, It's a Feature

Happier with Gretchen Rubin

Lemonada Media

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement

4.7 • 13.2K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2025

⏱️ 6 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Andy Warhol's observation of stars Edie Sedgwick and Judy Garland reveals a surprising truth about why some people are drawn to those surrounded by constant drama. What seems like a flaw—perpetual chaos and drama—can actually be an attraction, offering others an escape from their own problems by becoming absorbed in someone else's compelling crisis.  Get in touch: podcast@gretchenrubin.com Visit Gretchen's website to learn more about Gretchen's best-selling books, products from The Happiness Project Collection, and the Happier app.  Find the transcript for this episode on the episode details page in the Apple Podcasts app.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:18.1

Buttery, fatty yet lean, nice thick fillets. I'm getting hungry just

0:22.8

thinking about it. And I know I can get it at a great price. There are so many ways to save

0:28.1

at Whole Foods Market. Now you know. Lemonada.

0:36.9

I'm Gretchen Rubin, and this is a little happier. I love the work of Andy Warhol.

0:43.7

Surprisingly, perhaps, I'm not a huge fan of his visual art, but I love his writings, and I love reading interviews he gave.

0:52.4

He had a way of looking at the world that's utterly

0:54.9

different from anyone else. Sometimes Andy Warhol said something that allows me to understand

1:01.7

the world in a different way. For instance, in his book Popism, he reflected on two famous women he

1:10.0

knew.

1:17.7

Edie Sedgwick and Judy Garland had something in common, a way of getting everyone totally involved in their problems. When you were around them, you forgot you had problems of your own,

1:23.4

you got so involved in theirs. They had dramas going right around the clock,

1:27.8

and everybody loved to help them through it all.

1:31.3

Their problems made them even more attractive.

1:36.0

When I read this, I understood better something that had puzzled me for a long time.

1:42.9

Why do some people seem to be attracted by someone who is

1:47.4

constantly involved in drama, mishaps, conflicts, bad luck, and chaos? Of course, misfortune

1:55.6

befalls all of us sometimes, and some people have extraordinarily bad luck, but if you do seem to have a flare for

2:04.5

dramatic disasters, and some people do seem to be drawn to that drama. I could never understand why,

2:13.1

but Warhol explained it. It may be that when we're preoccupied with helping someone else deal with

2:19.9

their problems, we don't have to think about dealing with our own problems. When we're helping

2:25.3

someone who's doing worse than we are, we forget about our own situation. When we're thinking

...

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