A Podcast About Nothing with Jenny Odell: Quarantine Edition

Figuring out how to do nothing in the quarantine era

By LARB Radio HourMarch 30, 2020

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Now that we are all stuck inside, we thought it would be a good time to re-air our conversation with Jenny Odell, author of How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Odell joins co-hosts Medaya Ocher and Kate Wolf to assess the state of the human soul in the age of social media reproduction. The verdict is clear: we need strategies of resistance. Constantly tracked and hunted by the digital panopticon, we have no time for reverie, reflection, letting go, or just being. We desperately need Nothing, which is everything. Jenny shares details of her own liberation.

Also, Susan Straight, author of In The Country of Women, returns to honor Toni Morrison by sharing how she has read her favorite book every single year since she was twelve, Morrison's luminous second novel, Sula.