60: What the f**k is water? Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Made You Think

“This wise old whiskery fish swims up to three young fish and goes, 'Morning, boys, how's the water?' and swims away; and the three young fish watch him swim away and look at each other and go, 'What the f**k is water?' and swim away.”
In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. This is a huge novel taking time in a fictitious 2010 characterized by a non-conventional timeline and a lack of a plot. Despite it’s challenging structure and the fact of being a fiction, it has a lot of philosophical nuggets about particularly on the activeness vs passiveness way of living.
We cover a wide range of topics, including:
Hitting goals and sense of satisfaction Letting life happen to you while watching TV Accurate visions of the world in 2020 Best porno-like book titles How Nat & Neil broke and got back together 1-on-1 sports and their secondary effect on us And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman, another book that critics how media and TV are ruining our lives, and The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, another book that shows how tennis is not just about hitting balls with a racket.
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Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Kindle (link Amazon) [8:06] iPad [9:10] Netflix [17:50] The Office [18:36] BoJack Horseman [19:50] Cup & Leaf [40:44] A Crash Course in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cryptocurrency (crypto episode) [42:57] AA - Alcoholics Anonymous [50:30] Ad Blocker [1:05:56] The Trouble With Facebook by Sam Harris [1:06:25] Snapchat [1:07:26] Skype [1:09:10] Mushroom Coffee [1:14:50] University of Arizona [1:18:39] The College Dropout by Kanye West [1:32:20] (album episode) The Matrix [1:33:07] Primer [1:33:14] Books mentioned Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [2:25] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Ulysses by James Joyce [7:16] Finnegans Wake by James Joyce [7:17] The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus [37:59] (book episode) Cleveland is King by Brendan Bowers [38:20] The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz [45:12] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [46:37] (book episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault  [46:47] (book episode) 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan Peterson [46:55] (book episode) Strange Loops [47:07] (book episode) Mastery by Robert Greene [47:10] (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman [47:16] (book episode) The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey [52:05] (book episode) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell [58:55] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [1:15:19] (book episode) Elegant Complexity by Greg Carlisle [1:15:50] Hamlet by William Shakespeare [1:22:44] People mentioned David Foster Wallace Quentin Tarantino [18:10] Michael Schur [18:58] B.J. Novak [19:36] Kyrie Irving [38:15] LeBron James [38:50] Taylor Pearson [42:57] Trump [1:04:20] Sam Harris [1:06:25] Mattan Griffel [1:19:26] David Perell [1:28:23] James Joyce [1:30:00] Martin Scorsese [1:32:00] Kanye West [1:32:20] (College Dropout episode) Joe Rogan [1:35:41] Show Topics 0:00 – Spoiler Alert: it’s a fiction book, there will be spoilers. However, this is not a normal book. There is not much of a plot, so to say. This is probably a book intended to be re-read. It’s self referential, once you reach the end it intends you to go back to the beginning.
2:50 – The book doesn’t follow the timeline of events. If you are confused, congrats! That’s the point of the book :). The “missing” year is where most of the action takes.
3:35 – “Fiction is about what it’s like to be a f**cking human being”, David Foster Wallace. The central plot of our lives is just a narrative fallacy. The book g