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The Humor of Being Human with Costica Bradatan

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The author of In Praise of Failure, Costica Bradatan, joins me from Romania to share his wisdom on all things lack and loss. We talk about the true meaning of humility, the benefits of clumsiness, and just how broken democracy is — and has been — across time and place. Plus, we discuss quite possibly the biggest failure of all, the one none of us can avoid: death. I got to indulge my latent philosophical bent in this conversation, meaning I could even comfortably confess that I tried to work an 1880 parable into The X Files.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Costica Bradatan, David Duchovny

David Duchovny  00:00

I’m David Duchovny, and this is Fail Better, a show where failure, not success, shapes who we are. Costica Bradatan is an author and a professor. He currently works as a professor of humanities at Texas Tech University and honorary research professor of philosophy at the University of Queensland in Australia. He’s also the philosophy and religion editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books. You may have read his work in multiple places like the New York Times and The Economist, where he’s contributed pieces that are at the crossover of philosophy and pop culture just where I like it. He also published a book in 2023 a favorite of mine, called in praise of failure, four lessons in humility. Costica was born in Romania, and brings a unique perspective to all his work, especially when it comes to politics. He’s written a lot about democracy, and I was very excited to talk to him about all the precedent for our current political landscape. Here’s that conversation.

 

David Duchovny  02:45

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, good something, good sir.

 

Costica Bradatan  02:49

It’s evening here.

 

David Duchovny  02:52

Well, thanks for spending a little bit of your evening with me.

 

Costica Bradatan  02:56

Oh, thank you for inviting thank you for it’s an honor.

 

David Duchovny  02:59

No, it’s my honor, really I have to blame you. I had terrible nightmares last night. I never heard I did because, I don’t know, because, but they were.

 

Costica Bradatan  03:13

Was it mishema?

 

David Duchovny  03:14

No, it was fail. It was all, it was all failure oriented stuff. It was, one was a physical failure, and the other was kind of a mental failure. So I covered two of the of the four categories of failure that you that you point out in your book, but one was miss him.

 

Costica Bradatan  03:34

He comes at the very end, yeah.

 

David Duchovny  03:36

Yeah, he’s the one that I was not quite so well acquainted with him. Or can you please tell me how to pronounce C, I, O, R, A, N.

 

Costica Bradatan  03:47

Charan.

 

David Duchovny  03:47

Charan, yeah.

 

Costica Bradatan  03:49

That would be he was Romanian. That would be his. That would be the Romanian pronunciation of his name. Yeah. But of course, he’s known as a French guy, and the French would call him chaunce.

 

David Duchovny  04:00

Sure, all right. What I loved about your work, loved is perhaps not the right word. What I was moved by is that, because, because kind of the American spin on the fail, better notion is that failure is just another step on the way to success. You know, failure is kind of a necessary it’s information, you know, on the way to to the final learning moment. Learning moment, exactly a teaching moment, a learning moment, something we like to say, but I get the sense for you, failure, in and of itself, is a good there’s not this, it’s not this binary of success and failure. For you, it’s kind of, that’s kind of, what you’re trying to explode is that failure and success are not brothers. They are not in the same game. But failure is actually the good. Failure is is the thing that makes us human without success. It’s not a binary. It’s just failure.

 

Costica Bradatan  05:06

Is real. It exists, it happens, it’s there. There’s no point. I mean, that’s and the problem is how we, how we face it, how we how we digest it, how we move beyond and how we if we stay alive, it doesn’t, if it doesn’t crush us. So it’s not the because, in the way, in the usual way in which we use it, it’s kind of the binary thing. It’s kind of, it’s a value that failure, value of success. But I think my guess is there’s no value there. It’s just it exists. It’s not there’s no nothing, aspiration, aspiration, whether it just exists and you, you have to live with it, you have to incorporate it. You have to to design your life in such a way that there is room for that failure, small or big, you know, now or later. Yes, it’s there. It’s unavoidable. It’s you have, I don’t know, for biological failure, which comes from our sheer mortality. There is no way we can avoid it. There’s no and that and that kind of thing is not a stepping stone to anything rise up to death.

 

David Duchovny  06:18

Forgive me for laughing.

 

Costica Bradatan  06:22

Young man. I mean, the book is meant to make you.

 

David Duchovny  06:26

I thought so.

 

Costica Bradatan  06:27

I know it’s  by design, because I thought I had this negotiation with the editor, and she was perpetually complaining, look this too dark. That’s too much. So I thought. But there is this layer, this narrative layer, where there is irony and there is storytelling, there is some kind of entertainment, and that should kind they’re supposed to mitigate somehow.

 

David Duchovny  06:49

Well, that’s, I mean, that’s something that I learned writing about Beckett. And reading Beckett, you know, he can be considered the bleakest author, but if you ever read it out loud, or, if you go see the plays, it’s, it’s slapstick, it’s, you know, a lot of it has to do with what you’re saying is biological failure. And this kind of, you know, that we are trapped inside, we’re, we’re these infinite feeling souls, trapped in this finite, ridiculous body, you know. And Simone vile is somebody that you talk about as being, you know, kind of clumsy. And you know, clumsy as a almost a virtue, because it puts you in touch with with failure. You know, like, if you have, if you’re an Olympic athlete, you’re gonna have to find some other way to get your failure, because it’s probably not going to be through, through the failure of your body, at least until you’re older.

 

Costica Bradatan  07:41

Yeah, as clubs and is, of course, I paid some attention to that issue, because we, when it comes to physical, our physicality and to things, there are different ways of going, but clubs and it’s kind of it’s a moment of revelation when you are clumsy, you you are faced with your future in a really, you know, shocking way, not visible, you know, unavoidable. It’s you’re clumsy, and there is something imperfect, something you know, insufficient, something profoundly disturbing in the way in which relate yourself to the world, to the world of things. Yeah, it’s as if, as we proceed, as we leave our daily lives, it’s as if we surround ourselves with, you know, this, this veil of projections of power, of of ambitions, and so on and so forth. And that, you know, that film, that that net kind of interferes, interferes with our understanding of what’s going on. It’s the interposed between us and the things as they are. So really we, as you know, as scholars, as human beings are we have to strive to kind of rip that off, to get rid of that veil, to kind of to be able to, one day, to see things as they are. And that’s humanity. Humanity would allow us to, kind of, it takes, takes us down. It brings us down to earth. And the very word in English and as well as in other modern languages, comes from, from, from Earth, almost in Latin. So it’s a, it’s a very nice I play with, with the etymology of the word in the book. And it’s kind of also with the visual, the visuality involved there, because it’s about high and low.

 

David Duchovny  09:29

Yeah, and I think, you know, I’m intrigued by how so much of your thinking leads me back to, you know, my own education and kind of following the thread of humility through writers that I’ve loved, philosophers that I’ve loved. I mean just when you’re saying when you were speaking about humility, just now I think of Socrates, the first western philosopher. So he says, I know nothing. That is, that is the, I don’t see how you could get more humility than that.

 

Costica Bradatan  10:07

Exactly, I think it’s, it’s counter, it’s a bit counter intuitive. But humanity is really It sounds simple. It sounds, you know, basic. It sounds something like, what humanity, what’s no big deal, right? However, like simplicity, it’s so difficult to achieve humanity. Simplicity are explains externally difficult to achieve. It takes you a lifetime to get there. It’s really if you read, you know the religious authors, Christians, or other from other religions, you’ll see how much, how important that is, because we are our default, our starting point is hubris, is arrogance. We are ready. You know, when we are born, when we kind of find ourselves in this world, we come equipped with survival instincts, with the hunger, with the power, hunger for power, thirst for, you know, wealth.

 

David Duchovny  11:04

Yes, so you, in your writing, you, you, you mentioned Franz Duval quite a bit. And he’s a. How would you describe a primatologist? I don’t know what. Yeah, he’s he studies, that’s what, what he called himself. Yes, he studies our closest animal relatives, primates, yes, chimpanzees, yeah. And your conception of basic base, what we come into this world with, seems to be tinged with an agreement with what he sees in in chimpanzee society and things like that, is that a fair assessment.

 

Costica Bradatan  11:41

Yes, I was,  I discovered him relatively late, but it was like, like a revelation, because I saw he talks about the politics of the apes, the politics among among animals, pre human, pre human primates. And there is so much. I mean, his studies are so insightful and so especially for humanists, for scholars from, from the humanities from, for philosophers, it kind of it humbers us, that kind of study, that kind of understanding of life that should bring us down to earth we put in a better perspective, right? But as humanists, we tend to ignore the sciences. We typically, we have our own, you know thing. But, you know, it’s good once, every once in a while to to have some, some, you know, some farmers with scholars like him, with people from biology, from from the hard sciences. It, put it anyway, gives you a more, a more realistic, I would say, more realistic, understanding about from the outside. Of course, things are complicated, because it’s there’s so much, you know, background noise and false problems that you we have to deal with every day. There are some real issues like oppression, political oppression, poverty and so on. But then there is so much, so many things that are thrown at us, you know, by the media, by the social media, by but they’re not real. They, you know, five days from now will not remember that.

 

David Duchovny  13:09

Right, well, this is, this is part of what I was moved in the end by your project. Is something that is so near and dear to my heart, which is storytelling. You end your book. I was surprised. You know, in this you pivot to kind of like Man is the storytelling animal that defines us. So implicit in that definition is we have the liberty to tell the story the way we want, and we have the duty to tell the story in the way that probably causes the less pain for others, causes the most joy for us, whatever. And that writing to you, writing is the way writing your own story, whether that means journaling or just writing fiction or non fiction, I don’t know, but that, to me, was an amazing kind of end to your book, in that the freedom which, which maybe you’d call the interior freedom, apart from whatever political oppression or standing you have in the hierarchy today, you have the freedom inside to tell the story your way, no?

 

Costica Bradatan  14:22

Oh, yeah. First of all, I needed a chapter that. Well, it’s not the chapter, it’s an ending.

 

David Duchovny  14:28

Yes.

 

Costica Bradatan  14:30

What’s the Epilog? I owed some explanation to the reader. The book engages massively with storytelling, especially coming from a philosopher. Such an approach is unusual. So I, instead of just, you know, making arguments, I would use, you know, summarize those biographies of the four figures you mentioned. So there is a kind of a constant and significant amount of storytelling. But by the, by the moment I, you know, I reached the end, I thought I owe the reader. Some kind of explanation and that that that was the function of that ending. So I look, that’s why, that’s why you had so much, there is so much storytelling here. But as you, as you said, more importantly, I kind of open up in that, that point, I open up a new conversation about the the importance of storytelling. It’s about, it’s really it is fundamental. We are the stories we tell ourselves. We are. We exist only to the extent that we can. We can frame ourselves. We can we can tell a story about we are. Without such a story, we have nothing. And it’s not about just, it’s not about writers were script.that’s

 

David Duchovny  15:44

What I was going to ask. Because what do you do if you can’t write?  What do you do?

 

Costica Bradatan  15:50

No, that’s kind of that kind of story, telling everybody that it’s, every single person tells a story. It’s, it’s the from the moment when you wake up, you you have an understanding of who you are. You see yourself in a certain way. You You remember things in a certain way. You position yourself in the world and in relation to others in a certain way. And that’s storytelling. You You want people to know you in a certain way. You have you want to cause in the others a certain representation of who you are, and that’s all, you know. It’s a business of storytelling, of course, under different names, perhaps, and kind of not, not explicitly storytelling, but it’s a process of narration. It’s a process of plotting, if you if you like, yeah, there is some, some element of clock there.

 

David Duchovny  16:41

Well, it’s interesting because you in the in the four people that you discuss in your book, you often, and especially in the personages of children and Gandhi you, and this is part of the humor of it. You point out the disconnect between their private lives slash behavior and their mature thought. Insurance case was a flirtation with Hitler. In Gandhi’s case, it’s food and sex and things like that that, you know, you’re like, oh, this. You’re pointing out that these, you know, we would call them hypocrites if we had to write at large, but I see that you’re up to something else, which is like, there’s an impossibility, in a way of there’s always going to be a bit of a disconnect between the story that you’re telling and the facts.

 

Costica Bradatan  17:32

Yeah, it would be a bit too easy to facile, to call them hypocrites and move on. It’s much more complicated.

 

David Duchovny  17:39

Yes, no. I was just using.

 

Costica Bradatan  17:41

Yeah, but it’s the temptation is there, but it’s much, it’s much more complex, especially if you have the chance to observe those, the progression of that person from an early moment all the way into into maturity and something. So I tell those stories from, you know, I had over learned expanses of time, and in the case of Gandhi, what’s interesting we have his autobiography. It’s a very interesting document. It’s the story he stories he himself, tells us of him, of his own progression, of his own fight, you know, struggle with inner struggle with with sin and sinfulness and temptations. But so kind of, he, that’s what he was only around. He was in his 50s when he wrote that book that, I think it came out in 1925 around so it actually, it was published, you know, periodical first. But it’s interesting because it’s his own self. It’s a performative writing. It’s a performative it’s in the process he wants to project a certain an image of himself so that which others can use. He blames himself quite a bit. He’s kind of, he shows little mercy upon himself, right? He he kind of confesses a lot but, but he’s in charge of the storytelling that the way in which he framed things, the way in which he makes a selection of those, you know, embarrassing, shameful details, is his way. He’s a master of the narrative. Very interesting. It’s a interesting. What happens I don’t, I didn’t have the time to go there and into other, you know, to explore other other avenues, like Jean lacrosse song. It’s a very much it’s very similar to what happens with Rousseau when he writes his own confessions. He takes upon a lot of blame upon himself only to be able to conceal other things. Very interesting.

 

David Duchovny  19:47

What is being concealed? In your estimation, with Gandhi and or Rousseau or Thoreau or Whitman or any of these other, you know, confessions […]

 

Costica Bradatan  19:57

I’m not, yeah, we, I guess, and we did another. Recession, but exactly, it’s a good question. It’s a fabulous, actually, a very important question. In the case of Jean Jacques Rousseau, one of the things he blames himself for was, was the fact that he abandoned his children, that he gave them for up for adoption, because she said, Look, I had this. I couldn’t care of them properly. I was a poor scholar, you know, I didn’t have the right condition so somebody else would take care of them. And he, of course, that attracted a lot of, you know, criticism and you are hypocrite. You write about education, and you are not able to educate your to raise your own children, so but it looks like he never did that. Apparently, he never, he never had children. It looks like it was that’s there’s no trace of them. This 1111, it’s a very interesting why, why would would you say that? Why would you,  make such a thing up? Yeah, so what Gandhi, I guess I, I would guess he would conceal, he would want to conceal some of the things about power. He would be quite comfortable, uh, confessing stuff, you know, pertaining to the domestic life, to his private, you know private vices or private affairs. You know sexual temptations, whatever. But when it came to power, to the practice of power, to the pursuit of power, I would guess things were more more complicated there, because he was a ferocious, he was a he was an extremely interesting politician, a non political politician, somebody who’s playing, I don’t want power. I don’t like power. And yet he was an extremely talented, a gifted negotiator. Those people who were around him, those part of his team, were on the other side, for the British side, they would say that this guy is is a tough is a tough negotiator. He’s a, I’ve never, we’ve never seen a politician like him. So when it came to power, he had a different there’s a there’s a different Gandhi there.

 

David Duchovny  25:07

Not to spend the entire time on storytelling, but I wanted to ask you your story. You know, we’re talking about these, these people. And, oh, dear, I thought it would be interesting. Because the way I justify asking you this is because, you know, you identify children as a Romanian, and you and you, you ascribe certain attributes to that, you know, and or he, or you, or you quote him, ascribing certain attributes to being Romanian?

 

Costica Bradatan  27:09

With much sympathy, yes.

 

David Duchovny  27:13

And you know, and again, please correct me if I’m wrong, but you know, he bemoans the fact that he’s born into quote, unquote, second rate country, not a historical player. How can I, you know, it’s all it’s almost as if he is saying, I cannot have an effect, a world effect, you know, in a way that turns into a gift, because he doesn’t even try, you know. And, of course, ends up having an effect. But I wonder there’s the big issue of, is that good storytelling to have, like an ethnic identity or a country identity? Is that, in your mind, powerful storytelling? And then let’s leave that behind, and then maybe let’s go to you. Can you give me a little history of you as a young person, and how you came to have this kind of consciousness that you do have, whether it was parental or a mentor or a certain teacher or just being in Romania.

 

Costica Bradatan  28:11

Oh, it’s so complicated, because, well, I do come from the same place as Charan. We are born in same country, but we are born at very different times. He, technically, he was born in the Austro Hungarian empire in 1911 and then the country, that part of Transylvania became, later on, after World War One became part of Romania. So at some point he became Romania. But he was born Austro Hungarian. I was born sometime later, decades later, in a very different time and place, because the country was now a communist regime. Was under a communist regime, and you cannot imagine. I mean, of course, you know, everybody knows stories, but it was a very dark place. It was this, you know, I grew up in the 70s and the 80s, you know, behind the Iron Curtain, and the poverty, the greatness, the oppression, the the constant, you know, feeling that you are under surveillance, that and the powerlessness, that the overwhelming. There’s, there’s nothing you could do there is they would, you know, stop you in the street. They could, you know, show up in your house. They could plant microphones in your in your phone, whatever. And there’s nothing, there’s no authority. There’s no way to to challenge that, except to, you know, to try to flee abroad. But they would shoot as you try. So imagine the kind of imagine the kind of early worldview, I mean, the kind of experience one has, finding himself, herself, in that kind of world. It shapes you, your mind, your character, your personality, all kinds of ways, intellectually, emotionally, morally, political. So on. Later on, when I was reading about democracy and oppression and tyranny and so on, I could not avoid thinking relating to my own understanding of politics, of what in particular dictatorship can do to people. So that would end up puts you in a certain position to understand history, how history operates, and how society operates, and how society can be can be subjected to some this kind of endless cruelty. Anyway, I’m not going to tell the whole story.

 

David Duchovny  30:37

Endless cruelty. Yeah, well cruelty is a motif in your book as well but go on, yeah.

 

Costica Bradatan  30:43

Exactly, so I guess much of the book comes from there, even if it was not planned my, you know, my plan was to, it’s almost ridiculous. I the book started. I was as a joke. I was at one, one point. I wanted to write an essay for the New York Times, and I tried to be a bit more provocative, and I used that title in praise of failure, and I made the little argument about, why should we trace failures? And then I realized that, in fact, there’s no joke, but I became the victim of my own captives to my own job, and ended up, you know, writing the whole book. And so many things, you know resurfaced, and it’s one of those cases where you think you choose a topic to write on, but in fact, the topic chooses you, and you, you have to work, you have to labor, you have to kind of you surrender yourself to that, you know, project, and bring it to some kind of end. So then to go back to the previous point as I was going through, you know, chapter by chapter, through those circles of failure, much of what I had experienced in my, you know, previous existence kind of resurfaced and asks, asked for some kind of resolution, or some kind of yes resolution, I guess, I’m not sure if I succeeded, but i guess i Something did happen as I, as I wrote the book.

 

David Duchovny  32:11

Something happened as you wrote the book. You felt something you felt. I mean, it’s too ham fisted to say it’s an it’s your autobiography. But in ways, you’re saying, this is your this is your storytelling of this is the story you’re telling of yourself. In many ways, is this is this book?

 

Costica Bradatan  32:32

It’s very, in a very indirect way I never met. I don’t think I use the I, the person, the first person pronoun, but I never talk about myself explicitly in the book. No, as I just, as I just said, there’s a lot of myself here and there and there. When I really it’s when I talk about clumsiness, about, you know, political failure, about oppression, about, you know, revolution, fake revolution, and so on. There so much mortality, feeling shoot and so on.

 

David Duchovny  33:03

Yeah, I didn’t know that that was the, the genesis of the book was, was the the article, you know, and that you kind of go to yourself into writing this book. Do you know it reminded me when you’re saying that the Milan Kundera book, the joke similar. I mean, I, I feel like that’s a very, it’s a very you kind of thing to have happened. You become victimized and or lionized by your own joke, in a way.

 

Costica Bradatan  33:31

Yeah, you think you are in charge. I think you have control over things, but in fact, you’re not. You things take over.

 

David Duchovny  33:41

And so how did thethis is a funny thing to ask, I think. But like, the success of the book to a profit of failure, how do you, how do you get how do you get around the fact that’s the worst thing that ever could have happened to you? Is for that book to.

 

Costica Bradatan  34:00

Surprising,  I wouldn’t say worse, it’s funny. It’s really funny. Why? While I was writing, because I, at some point, I had the feeling I have to do it. There is no there was something like inside myself I had to get rid of. So I was produced. I was working with laboring on the book. And I was hoping, you know, my in my best moments to, you know, to be to produce something decent. I was really I had serious doubts. I mean, I there are weaknesses, and there’s the issues of structure, and at some point there’s too much there. I had to make some cuts and so on. So I was hoping in my best, in my most hopeful moments, that something decent would come out of it.

 

David Duchovny  34:43

Right did you think about the the style of writing? It seems like, you know, you would. You couldn’t have expected, you know, kind of a, such a popular reaction. But I’m wondering, you know, it’s somewhat dense. I mean, it’s a book of philosophy, in a way, it’s not. Written to be a best seller at all. You know, it’s, did you think about, Am I making this too opaque? Am I making it opaque enough? Was there any sense at any point in the creation of the book and the writing of the book, as you said, it was a labor. It was difficult. At some point you felt maybe I’m not up to this idea, you know?

 

Costica Bradatan  35:20

I was aware that it was a not just that a philosophical talk or a philosophical approach, which is it’s by its its nature is dense and demanding, right? But the very topic is green and difficult and kind of heavy, right? So failure, finish death and so on. So from the very beginning, I had this plan to make it easier for the reader to kind of to befriend, befriend the reader, and establish a accordion, a nice relationship. So that’s why you have a very peculiar style where I have a couple of pages of argumentative prose and then you have the next few pages of pro philosophical Well, of storytelling, right? And then again, philosophical argument, and then again, storytelling, so I guess that makes things easy should make things easier. And I was taken by surprise, because it’s there’s also an issue of luck. The book was lucky enough to be reviewed in the New York Times soon after it came out. And then there’s, there have been a number of other very, quite generous reviews. But then it was, that’s the American reception, the Anglophone reception. But then it started coming out in other languages. That’s a new territory. That’s such a new experience for me, because I’ve been, you know, abroad, launched in Italy, you know, several times, actually in Croatia, Poland, Brazil. And it’s funny, because everywhere where I launched the book, it’s as if I launch a different book, people respond so differently. They recognize themselves in the book somehow, but in a very unique way. I launched it in Warsaw in Poland. It’s a country where which I love, because we are so close geographically, and I have so many Polish, you know, artists and filmmakers and poets I love. So I launched the book and they look, they said, but that’s, that’s us. Because, you know in Polish history, we had, we had, I don’t know, 11 up, great uprisings, all failed. Failure defines us. We are, it’s not about Romania. You’re joking. You you’re not telling the story of your own country. It’s about us. I don’t know, in Croatia, there’s a different response, not not to mention Romania, because it’s a kind of it was I was teasing at some point. I was talking about Romania as the land of failure in a very teasing kind of way. And I thought doing so, I thought, well, Romanians will react angrily, will will be upset. I’ll get some criticism. Nothing like that. They love it here. But I what I love about launching the book is that you know the real people, the real what happens. So some of them have read the book before. They come to the lunch, and they come with questions, and they come with an understanding of the book, and we do have a real conversation of what’s what’s at stake. So that’s the best part of the book. Those book launches encountering people in our fashion, but who do have a stake in the project.

 

David Duchovny  39:35

I’m wondering if we can get into a little discussion not just about the kind of tenor that Trump has brought to to the world, to this country, but but really to go back to Calvinism, to go back to Dale Carnegie. You know that this, that Trump is actually in an American tradition. He’s not actually a rupture. He’s actually kind of, you. You know, this whole demarcation between winners and losers, and what you point out brilliantly in your book is, you know, the winners need the losers, because without the losers, they’re not winners. And it goes back to Calvinism. And if you could, you do talk about that in your book. And I’m wondering if, if you can, you know, speak to the American version of this book, which is Calvinism on one side, and then the counterculture, which is, you know, Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman, the hippies.

 

Costica Bradatan  40:30

Yeah, good point for me. America was a was a discovery. I grew up elsewhere. I I’ve been, you know, I’ve been living in this country for for 20 years now, and I’m grateful I am. I’m an American citizen and so on. But I discovered it later in life. I came, I came to it as an outsider, and I guess that’s a different it gives you, gives you a different perspective. And I couldn’t, I couldn’t see, because you come as I did, come as an academic. I was working, you know, in university circles and so on. You see that nice face, always smiling, kind of the Americans. There’s nothing tough and rough and, you know, aggressive.

 

David Duchovny  41:20

That’s your vision of the American people coming from Romania. It was of a smiling, friendly.

 

Costica Bradatan  41:26

Oh yeah, you remember I just got up off dictatorship where nobody was smiling. There was no reason to smile. So we I wade through that. And I was impressed by the Americans, the generosity of the Americans, the kindness that you see, and so on. But then Shannon, I discovered that lurking, you know, Calvinist dimension later on. Remember, I live in Texas. It’s, it’s things are differently Texas. I I would suspect it. I would see would have a sense of growing Ghanaians. And then, of course, with Trump, it kind of came out in the open, and it kind of, it was expressed. It was expressed. It was somewhere in the background before all the time. It never, never. It was never, you know, it never disappeared from all the way, from the first, you know, colonists. But, you know, in the 19th century, early to 20th century, kind of things improved, you know, you had a disability, this culture of civility all around you, and that tough cattanist, you know, side was, was pushed somewhere in the background. But with Trump and other other developments. It’s, kind of, it showed up and and kind of claimed its rights.

 

David Duchovny  42:47

Can we talk about the appeal of that? Because what you what you talk about in your book, that I found interesting is, you know, democracy versus small d, democracy versus fascism or dictatorship. And you talk about how democracy is messy, and, you know, it’s hard to take action in a democracy because you’re constantly having to to work through majorities and work through debate, whereas dictatorship is sexy. I mean, it’s what you say. You talk about triumph for the will and reef installs, kind of, you know, Hitler’s hold and almost sexual relationship to the crowd. And I found that to be in your book. It was fascinating to read from your perspective, as somebody who came from that world.

 

Costica Bradatan  43:35

But it’s everywhere. It’s if you watch, I had to actually watch Mussolini, for example, yeah, it’s even more powerful than than Hitler’s. It’s interesting how dictators are feel the need to be also actors, to be entertainers. Yeah, to be sometimes clowns. Yeah. And it’s part of the story type process. If you want to say, well, come on, once, what? Why would they do that? Why would they, you know, try to be funny. It’s all serious stuff. I mean, they have a message to convey. They talk about crisis and they talk about enemies and they talk about wars and whatever. What’s the reason why? Where do they need to be funny? Where does that come from? So my explanation was, where there is a sketch, you know, an attempted explanation there was, it’s part of the storytelling that the function, the storytelling function that they do perform in my reading dictatorships, you Know, Hitlers and and Mussolini’s and others, are moments of when people lack a sense of meaning, a collective meaning. There are crisis of faith. Yes, people, there is something wrong with their religious life.

 

David Duchovny  44:52

Well, that’s your, that’s your storytelling motif, again, is another word for saying. Give meaning to I’m going to give a shape. Up to this. And so what you’re saying now is that, you know, there’s a constant crisis of of humanity, of a nation or whatever, looking for that unifying story, the story that makes them feel decent about themselves.

 

Costica Bradatan  45:14

Yeah, but collectively, so individually, exactly. So we started initially with this need, individual, this great need each one of us has for meaning with and that’s why, that’s why we tell a story, that’s why we come up with the story. But collectively as well, we need the stories as well, and and when that that story is not provided by by religion, for example, by mythology, by by some, some by the church, people can go crazy. And they they would go after they would embrace any, any Mad Men who tell who, who promises them some kind of meaning. It may be fake. It may be a conspiracy. It may be some of the craziest stories you’ll ever hear. But it’s, it’s some kind of resemblance of a story. And there is a promise of meaning. Of course, the promise will never be delivered, but there is a they are after  they go after that kind of.

 

David Duchovny  46:11

Yeah, it’s like those cults that say the world is going to end, you know, July 3. It doesn’t end July 3, but somehow the cults continue. You know, it’s not like.

 

Costica Bradatan  46:20

Yeah, this is really important. You you find, I found it. You find in different places, but in Dostoevsky, so in the grand.

 

David Duchovny  46:28

Yes, the Grand Inquisitor

 

Costica Bradatan  46:29

Is such a it’s expressed. in such a way.

 

David Duchovny  46:33

Well, this is one of my favorite stories, and in fact, I tried to weave it into the X Files, which I could, I can tell you at some point, yeah, there was a whole Grand Inquisitor, kind of a motif in the X Files that I that I tried to weave in. But you know, my conception of the Grand Inquisitor is, and for those our listeners who haven’t read it, is the Grand Inquisitor comes to a prisoner and who he knows is Jesus. And it basically says, why did you come back? We were doing fine without you, you know, we had the system. We don’t need the person. You’re giving too much. You’re asking too much of people, you know, I give them the church, I give them a system, I give them a hierarchy. You’re asking them to have faith, which is slippery, freedom like I get. I know that I’m going to hell, but I go there willingly, because I know that I love my people. You don’t love the people. If you want to give them freedom, you want to give them that gives them anxiety and depression.

 

Costica Bradatan  47:32

Yeah, they have too much to choose, and they are and they they’re crushed. Give them freedom and they’re it’s overwhelming. People don’t need freedom. They need bread. They need orders. They need they need, you know, specific advice. They don’t they don’t need to be in a situation to have to choose.

 

David Duchovny  47:51

And is that, is that what you see going on all around the world right now?

 

Costica Bradatan  47:56

Yeah, I’m afraid that’s exactly what was going on, you see, there is, right now, I guess in a long I mean, the majority of people are living under under some kind of dictatorship, or at the very least some kind of authoritarian regime. Even in Europe, in Hungary, things are not good at all in Romania. And you have China, you have Russia, you have, I don’t know, Iran, you have the Gulf countries. You have it’s, I think the trend is towards less and less democracy. Democracy is as I as I say in the book, democracy is fragile, is difficult to accomplish, and is exceptional. If you look historically across you know, time and space, democracy has happened very, very rarely, and it’s external. It’s extraordinary. Whenever it happens, it’s something extraordinary. We should celebrate it. We should try to preserve it, but sooner or later, it just dies. It’s just it’s so complicated, so many things have to go right for democracy to exist, for democracy to operate, to kind of to last. And that’s you need institutions. But it’s not that, not just the institute, political institutions. You need a certain culture. You need, I don’t know, education. You need a free press. You need the freedom of so many things have to know.

 

David Duchovny  49:21

You know, in your book, you talk about Athenian democracy, which is different from our conception of democracy. And I wasn’t aware of this, because obviously, in this country, we have, we have institutions that are, you know, supposedly democratic, but aren’t, like the electoral college or the Senate, you know, that aren’t actually related to the populace. They’re, almost a check against the majority rule to outright how many votes versus how many votes. But in Athenian democracy, which I think you call a true democracy, is like anybody. It’s almost like a lottery. You wake up one day and you’re a senator, and it’s not something that you campaign. For it’s not something that you supposedly have the right education to do. It’s just a true democracy is, by chance we’re going to have certain people leading us this term, and then by chance we’re going to have certain people leading us next.

 

Costica Bradatan  50:14

Yes, not everybody. There are limitations, if you are a woman, if you’re a slave, if you’re not a citizen, you could not participate. Those were the limitations of the times everywhere. I mean, we have to place things in a bigger context. They were. They had their own problems, but they were better than others. So, yeah, it was, they would draw. They would draw a lot. It’s like it makes when I first heard of the idea, even somebody in this in the state, I think, I think there’s a conversation, there’s something, there’s a movement, I think in the states to have that. You think it’s great.

 

David Duchovny  50:48

Oh, was there? I didn’t know that.

 

Costica Bradatan  50:50

Yeah, I think there is a, there is a movement right now in the States, but it’s a very kind of a niche. It’s a niche thing now, by the drawing lot, I mean, that’s that doesn’t make any sense. We have to explain who we are. We have to […]

 

David Duchovny  51:03

Well, how we do our it’s how we do our jury system. You know, we exactly exactly.

 

Costica Bradatan  51:08

So it’s so that when you, when you draw a line, when every, when you all things are are considered. There is a virtue there, there is a there is a chance that you can if you, if you choose people by chance, they may be actually doing, doing, be doing a decent job.

 

David Duchovny  51:26

Yeah, well, I mean, I guess you could say the same for a monarchy. There’s a chance that the child of this king or queen is going to be a decent, a decent ruler, you know? I mean, I guess, I guess there, we still have that kind of innate kind of response to, you know, we have political dynasties in this country. We have the Kennedys. We have the, you know, the bushes, you know, it’s like we have this kind of continuing belief in dynasty, in a way, or in or in that kind of continuity seems ingrained.

 

Costica Bradatan  52:00

Yeah, it seems ingrained. It’s interesting. I’m sure we so we are proud, you know, proud Republicans. We, we got rid of monarchy long ago, right? And yet we behave in such a way that kind of betrays a certain monarchic instinct. We, we, we kind of we appreciate them. We love them. We, we want gossip about them. We want to know more news when they come here and visit. We kind of every the whole media.

 

David Duchovny  52:30

But to even, like take it away from the monarchy, specifically the British monarchy. We do have an ongoing fascination with the hero, with the great person, the great man or the great woman, which I would think is kind of in the same ballpark as as as the monarch, we have an innate interest, curiosity for power, powerful exemplars of our of our people, you know and,  but that’s not humility, that’s, that’s not coming from humility, like if, if we worked, you know, on our own humility, maybe we wouldn’t be seduced by power in that way. Is that, is that something in your project?

 

Costica Bradatan  53:15

Yeah, it’s coming from our need for our security. Yeah, we It’s always, it’s, hopes. It’s the Lydia time, whenever there is trouble, whenever there is, you know, threats, public threats, and a sense of insecurity, we would rather, we would rather give up some, some of our freedoms, and have and have somebody instead, who brings in some, some who manages to bring in some security. You see that all it’s a pattern. It’s an archetype. It’s in MI Bucha Valley, for example, which was written five centuries ago. And yet it’s we see how it plays out in Russia, in America, everywhere, the relationship between individuals and the leaders, whether they are presidents and or kings or dictators or whatever, there is a it’s the dynamic of power and and the playing out the forces, because as an individual, I knowI’m limited. I’m power. I have very limited power, even if I may be, you know, occupying some kind of position, it’s individually we are all vulnerable. That’s why we need some kind of some kind of fear, some kind of kick, some kind of leader.

 

David Duchovny  54:35

Something to make us feel invulnerable. That’s and that comes.

 

Costica Bradatan  54:39

Exactly as you suggested, from, from millions of years of of living, you know, in very dangerous places. It kind of, it’s, it’s this resurgence in us of the of the animal in us.

 

David Duchovny  54:52

Yeah, God, I need more time. I’m being told. I gotta wrap up. But it’s been a pleasure. I wish I could take your. Course, I wish, I wish you could come back every week and teach a course on this podcast, and I could just take a break and give you the microphone. So let’s talk about that later. It’s been fascinating for me. I love the book and praise of failure, and I just love, I love the notion of humility, actual humility. So I thank you for for making that a discussion, a viable discussion. Thank you.

 

Costica Bradatan  55:29

Thank you so much. Thank you such a pleasure.

 

David Duchovny  55:32

Thank you for everything. Thank you and I eagerly await your next book.

 

Costica Bradatan  55:36

I make sure that you get a copy.

 

David Duchovny  55:38

Oh, thank you. That’d be wonderful. I appreciate that. Sure, have a good night.

 

David Duchovny  55:42

Yeah, that’s another one of those interviews where I feel, you know, I’m swimming in deep water, or trying to swim in deep water, again, reminding me of graduate school, in a way, and it’s so very theoretical and philosophical. And I don’t know if, I don’t know if it’s a popular way of going about doing a podcast, you know, where you know, maybe the promise was to talk to famous actors about failure, or famous people about failure, and, you know, funny stories, shit like that. And I guess there’s a place for that, and podcasts for sure, you know, but I tend to lean into these more theoretical discussions about failure and, you know, cost, because book is incredible and dense and kind of hard to talk about Without. It’s hard, it’s hard to talk about sensibly. For people who haven’t read the book, you know, that’s kind of where I’m where I’m going there, it’s like, how do we talk about this with knowing that, you know, 99.9% of the people listening to it will not have read that book. So I don’t know but it gets to me, you know, and it’s kind of what I’m interested in, and I hope that at some point, you know, the listeners, are going to go on that journey with me.

 

CREDITS  57:32

There’s more Fail Better with Lemonada Premium. Subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content like more of my behind the scenes thoughts on this episode. Subscribe now in Apple podcasts. Fail Better as a production of Lemonada Media in coordination with King Baby. It is produced by Kegan Zema, Aria Bracci, and Dani Matias. Our engineer is Brian Castillo. Our SVP of weekly is Steve Nelson. Our VP of new content is Rachel Neel. Special thanks to Carl Ackerman, Tom Karpinski and Brad Davidson, the show’s executive produced by Stephanie Wittels Wachs, Jessica Cordova Kramer and me, David Duchovny. The music is also by me and my band. Lovely Colin Lee. Pat McCusker, Mitch Stewart, Davis Rowan and Sebastian […]. You can find us online at @LemonadaMedia and you can find me @DavidDuchovny. Follow Fail Better wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership.

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