How to Discover Your Own Taste
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- čas přidán 19. 05. 2024
- Being on the internet just doesn’t feel as fun anymore. As more of our digital life is driven by algorithms, it’s become a lot easier to find movies or TV shows or music that fits our preferences pretty well. But it feels harder to find things that are strange and surprising - the kinds of culture that help you, as an individual, develop your own sense of taste.
This can be a fuzzy thing to talk about. But Kyle Chayka, a staff writer at The New Yorker, has written a whole book on it, the forthcoming “Filterworld: How Algorithms Flattened Culture (www.penguinrandomhouse.com/bo...) .” We talk about how today’s internet encourages everything to look more the same and is even dulling our ability to know what we like. And we discuss what we can do to strengthen our sense of personal taste in order to live a richer, more beautiful life.
Mentioned:
“Quartets: Two: II. Warmth (open.spotify.com/track/71YFcW...) ” by Peter Gregson
Ambient 1: Music for Airports (open.spotify.com/album/063f8E...) by Brian Eno
Book Recommendations:
“In Praise of Shadows (pdf-objects.com/files/In-Prais...) ” by Junichiro Tanizaki (essay)
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (www.ucpress.edu/book/97805202...) by Lawrence Weschler
The Mushroom at the End of the World (press.princeton.edu/books/pap...) by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast (www.nytimes.com/column/ezra-k...) , and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-... (www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-...) .
This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Our senior engineer is Jeff Geld. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team also includes Annie Galvin, Rollin Hu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud.
Here are some potential takeaways from this interview:
1. Developing personal taste and discernment is increasingly important for resisting the homogenizing effects of algorithms.
2. Data-driven optimization rewards predictable mass appeal rather than complexity and depth.
3. Review aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes have displaced individual critical voices and treat culture as a poll rather than a matter of judgment.
4. Human curators brought challenge by exposing people to the obscure; incentives now discourage weirdness.
5. Distraction-rich environments inhibit the patient attention needed to understand one's reactions and develop taste.
6. Patience with difficult, uncomfortable culture plays a developmental role in taste.
7. Discovering an artist's influences can give richer appreciation and self-understanding.
8. Uncovering artistic lineages teaches you about both aesthetics broadly and your personal taste.
9. The abundance of algorithmic recommendation makes it effortless to consume more culture but risks missing outlier works aligned with one’s idiosyncratic taste.
10. Balancing algorithmic and human-curated culture allows both breadth of access and cultivation of depth and individuality.
Fortunately, podcasts like this still provide intelligent, unique, human curation through the choice of guests and topics.
Thank you so much for having such thought provoking shows on a wide variety of interesting topics.
This episode is thoughtful and fantastic. The conversation is heady but at the same time accessible - and a reminder that pursuing what we see as beauty and happiness isn't trivial but maybe the whole point.
verbal fry hell!
I couldn’t listen, vocal fry of the guest killed it for me. I guess it’s my taste
Yup, what is that all about?
Its L.A uuugh Bro uuuuugh @@singing-sands
Very thoughtful perspectives from Kyle
An interesting conversation, thank you! It made me think that this conversation could only happen in the context of Western culture because it reveals an obsession with individuality and distinctiveness. Could it be that we're craving to be different and distinct so much that eventually this is why we lose our distinctiveness?
Warmth sounds like Fratres by Arvo Pert.
Like i always say: "you can't help what you like".
But you sure can talk about it!
@@gefiltefist2088 📢
OMG! I have no idea what a sherpa jacket is! I'm feeling tasteless. I better go watch some Jeffrey Veidlinger lecture ... a historian I discovered by chance browsing CZcams!
Though I'm not into it, I belive biting the tongue really hard would not be enough.
oh ... got it ... I misunderstood the title - sorry.
Do I really have to know what I am and what I like? That alone is such a huge task that I will never have taste! I'm also too old and I have spent most of my life doing the opposite ... looking for things I didn't like but that people I respected told me was good - all I managed to do is rearing music on the sound of an oil pump and considering 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence to be the most important piece of the 20th century. What can I do now? I think there's no fixing me ... I'll die with a taste of rotten meat!
That’s what I was thinking! Don’t let the New York Times editorial line turn you off music though. There’s a Nick Hornby book called “songbook” that’s like twenty essays on twenty of his favorite songs. I disagree quite vehemently with him on some of them, but it’s the best, most honest way to think and write about music I’m familiar with
Put it on your tombstone. It’s just too corny.
💙🩷
I discovered my own taste after a night of eating taco bell.
Just lick the back of your hand
Ah I was looking forward to reading his book but now I’ve discovered he has the most unbearable voice imaginable
Unlistenable. It’s one thing to say pretentious stuff, but adding the pretentious voice is a deal killer.