Adam Moss On The Artistic Process

The legendary editor writes his first book.

Adam is the best magazine editor of my generation, and an old friend. From 2004 to 2019, he was the editor-in-chief of New York Magazine, and before that he edited the New York Times Magazine, and 7 Days — a weekly news magazine covering art and culture in NYC. His first book is The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing.

You can listen right away in the audio player above (or on the right side of the player, click “Listen On” to add the Dishcast feed to your favorite podcast app). For two clips of our convo — on the bygone power of magazines, and the birth of the great and powerful performance artist, Dina Martina — pop over to our YouTube page.

Other topics: his upbringing on Long Island; fantasizing about NYC through the cosmopolitanism of magazines; being a “magazine junky extremely early”; the literary journalism of the ‘60s; Gay Talese; Joan Didion; Tom Wolfe; Adam’s early start at The Village Voice; 18-hour workdays; joining Rolling Stone then Esquire; commissioning Frank Rich’s groundbreaking piece on gay culture; the visual strength of mags; 7 Days “doomed from the start” because of a stock market crash; the NYT’s Joe Lelyveld hiring Adam to “make trouble” with creative disruption; Tina Brown; “the mix” of magazines like a dinner party; the psychodrama of writers clashing with colleagues; how the Internet killed magazines; the blogosphere; podcasting; the artist Cheryl Pope and her series on miscarriages; Tony Kushner’s Angels in America; when creation is tedious and painful; Leaves of Grass and its various versions; Montaigne’s essays; Pascal and the incompleteness of The Pensées; Amy Sillman painting over her beautiful work; Steven Sondheim; choreographer Twyla Tharp; poetry as the concentration of language and the deconstruction of how we speak; poets Marie Howe and Louise Gluck; the fiction writer George Saunders; how weed suppresses the ego; and Adam’s preternatural calm.

Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Oren Cass on Republicans moving left on class, Noah Smith on the economy, Bill Maher on everything, George Will on Trump and conservatism, Lionel Shriver on her new novel, Elizabeth Corey on Oakeshott, and the great Van Jones! Send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

Last week’s episode with Johann Hari was a huge hit, driving many new subscriptions. A fan writes:

Thank you for the excellent episode! I listened to it twice, because I was trying to figure out how long people have to stay on Ozempic. Johann mentioned continuing the drug to maintain his weight loss. How long will he need to do that? Is it that once your sense of satiety is destroyed by manufactured food, you can’t ever get it back? Or can using the drug be a way to reset or relearn that instinct?

Johann didn’t mention the answer in the podcast he did with Bari Weiss, either. Do I need to buy the book to find out?

Johann responds:

The best evidence we have is that for most people, when they stop taking the drug, the weight comes back. The drugs are like blood pressure pills or statins — they work as long as you take them, then stop. Anecdotally, there seems to be some people who use them for a while to radically change their habits and build new habits, and then are able to sustain those changes when they stop — but they seem to be atypical. (But you should buy the book! There’s so much stuff I haven’t covered in the podcasts … )

Another listener has some advice:

I thought the episode was the most entertaining and funniest you have done so far. Just two silly cunts riffing for our benefit, on a subject I’m familiar with. I, too, am on Ozempic. It’s fantastic. Over the past year, I’ve lost 12 percent of my body weight and, more importantly, my A1C is way down. My doctor says I am once again pre-diabetic, but I prefer to think of myself as post-diabetic.

Here are three things you probably should know, but no one tells you before you start:

• Be prepared to purchase a whole new wardrobe, or for your clothes to be taken in.
• Like you, I lift weights at the gym a couple of times a week. Over the past year my top bench, deadlift, and squat have all decreased by about 20 percent. For every three pounds of fat, you loss about a pound of muscle. I look much better in clothes now, but no more preening in the gym.
• This happened to me last weekend: I was biking in Central Park when a woman in a billowing sun dress just zipped past me. That was tough.

Another on the “fascinating discussion about Ozempic!”:

One topic I hear about a lot when people speak about this topic is the risk associated with going off the drug and how you can actually gain back more weight. I was surprised that you guys didn’t discuss that because that’s what a lot of people perceived to be the biggest risk. You said you just started the drug. How did you risk into the pros and cons overall?

I don’t think there are that many serious risks. If you stop Ozempic, the evidence is that you can gain back your weight, not that you’ll become even heavier. I don’t have a problem with permanent reliance on medications for resilient health problems. That’s how I haven’t died of AIDS, how I keep my blood pressure low, and my psyche from spiraling downwards. My issue is visceral fat, and I’m just going to see what happens. Everyone is different; I may stop if I get too skinny or get Jon Stewart face.

A medical doctor sends me “a note of caution should you decide to take Ozempic or Wegovy to lose your belly”:

I don’t think Johann mentioned that 40 percent of the weight loss will be muscle, which can be a significant problem. And when the drug is stopped, the weight regain is largely fat.

Haven’t heard of that last one. I don’t see why if you maintain a good weight-training regimen. My goal is to keep strength training, and retain as much muscle as I can. I’ve seen only a modest decline in weight in the, er, week that I’ve been on it. I’ve had some mild nausea. The biggest impact was on my breakfast. I make the same thing every day and suddenly could only eat half of it. I’ve tried to increase that this week, with minor success.

Another listener was bummed by the episode:

Johann was funny, charming and engaging. However, I don’t think a Dishcast has ever left me so depressed as this one. It feels like we have fully arrived in our dystopian future. We have sublimated seven million years of hominid evolution to arrive at a place where we fill our bodies with fake food and counteract the inevitable consequences with artificial meds. Just hook us up to machines. I suppose the disembodiment of our intellect into AI microchips is not far off.

I mean, seriously, why in God’s name would we opt for this path? If one is to accept the plausible premise that Johann describes, in which this relatively new phenomenon of widespread human obesity is a result, why are pills and a massive regulatory state the only solutions?

If the obesity epidemic were simply due to abundance of food and peoples’ inability to control their appetites, I might understand the argument for a pharmaceutical solution, since desire and willpower are very powerful and difficult to alter. But Johann makes a convincing argument — from experiments in rats to epidemiological data in humans — that “real” food does not produce the problems that manufactured food does. So, if eating non-processed food affects the same result as an expensive pill that has unstudied, unknown side-effects, why would anyone, including you, consider the latter?

What’s more, eating real food comes with a slew of additional benefits, such as a smaller environmental impact and the fact that it’s immensely more pleasurable (once you have withdrawn from the sugar/salt/hormonal high that processed food delivers). My family and I simply do not purchase, with any regularity, anything in a box or with an ingredient list more than three or four items. It is not a difficult thing to accomplish; we don’t need the government to enable this behavior; and both the preparation and consumption of fresh food brings substantial joy to our lives.

I grew up on processed food and fast food, but it was not a difficult thing to switch. In fact, I ate a McDonald’s hamburger not long ago — after many, many years without one — and it honestly tasted disgusting. Johann’s arguments ring true; I rarely overeat or feel the compulsion to do so. I suggest trying this road first, before adding another regular regimen of pharmaceutical manipulation into your life.

The terrible truth is: it’s just easier to take the shot. And humans will always take the easier path, if they have one.

Next up, a rather biting dissent:

Just a few words on the Johann episode, which left me speechless. Apologies for being rude, but you have no idea what food is, and you’re basically a victim of English food culture — or rather, the total lack thereof. Ultra-processed food is yummy? It looks so good? Andrew, it’s absolutely disgusting. The taste and mouthfeel are horrible, and it looks so bad that they have to photograph fakes for ads. Almost all of it is fat, salt and sugar (not coincidentally the cheapest ingredients available), with some mysterious chemical magic powder sprinkled in.

Obviously you have never regularly eaten real food and never will; it’s just too late; you have been conditioned to eat shite. I also remember hearing you say you always eat the same thing at restaurants, which is a little bit like saying that you always make love in the same position. You think that not being interested in food is a good thing, and that you’d rather work than eat? Would you say the same thing about sleep? I hope not, because it’s bonkers.

That is the root of your problem.

You should be interested in food; it’s our nature as omnivorous animals. Cooking is the ultimate low-hanging cultural achievement. It transforms one of our most basic needs in a way to express our culture, religion, values, personality, and even mood. And it’s available to all classes of society. It’s one of the things that makes us a different type of animal.

Oh, and of course, the reason Anglos have no time for cooking is the back-breaking work that apparently nobody else in the world is subjected to. Andrew, you are a victim of Protestant puritanism and its habit of coming up with hypocritically absurd excuses. The worst is that you know you are eating poison, and instead of doing something about it — not eating the poison — you are announcing to the world that you are going to inject yourself with a risky substance, against medical guidelines, not because you are obese, but because you have a tummy. Almost all of us have a tummy once we’re past 45!

Give yourself some of that empathy you have for severely obese people, who probably do not deserve it and are certainly not helped by it. Our culture stigmatized fat slobs because it’s a correction mechanism that helped prevent people from turning into fat slobs, which is bad both for them and for the rest of us.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I guess it’s a safer subject to rant about than the excuses you keep on finding for Israel. 😉 And by the way, my being angry at you for this nonsense is because I like you, if you hadn’t guessed.

Well I hope you feel better after that. I’m not going to quibble. But I don’t think it’s entirely a function of my upbringing. My siblings are not like me. But I’m allowed to be deeply bored by food, and irritated by foodies. I’m also allowed to love McDonalds from time to time. And Coke Zero. As for the belly, I’ve struggled with it for decades; and it’s become a bucket-list goal to have visible abs before I die. But I’ll keep you posted if it’s all a disaster. And you do you.

From the medical doc mentioned earlier:

Thanks for another educational and entertaining episode. I want to say how much I really like the introductory portion of the Dishcast where we get to know about each guest’s upbringing and how they got where they are now. I want to offer a few comments and warnings about our current food and medical environments and the specific drugs discussed.

Never underestimate how much control Big Pharma and Big Food have over our lifestyles, health and healthcare. They control the research funding for medical science and nutrition, and that creates a culture of eating badly and taking pills or shots to deal with the consequences.

The FDA is also an arm of Big Pharma, as the majority of its funding comes from fees charged to pharmaceutical companies. There is a perverse incentive to keep us sick, and we have epidemics of chronic non-communicable diseases like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease that were not so prevalent a century ago. Changing lifestyle and eating habits is difficult but possible. The food and pharmaceutical industry do much to prevent that.

Consider reading Metabolical by Dr. Robert Lustig for more on this. Nina Teicholz and Gary Taubes have a great substack called Unsettled Science worth reading. One or both of them would be a great guest on the pod, I think.

I don’t want to take away from the many miracles that pharmaceutical researchers and scientists have brought us, such as the medications that keep you alive and allow us be on the receiving end of the Dish. For that, and the many patient lives I have helped through amazing therapies, I am truly grateful. But I hope we can make some changes in what is considered healthy eating while we temporarily use medications to improve the health of those in more urgent need.

Not gonna disagree. Maybe I’ll try and focus on less processed food even as I try out Ozempic. Another guest rec:

I call to your attention a new Atlantic essay titled “The Blindness of Elites,” focused on the journalist Walter Kirn. I found it it well-written and very entertaining. I had never heard of Kirn before and was immediately struck by the thought that he’d be a fascinating guest on the Dishcast. It brought to mind my late wife’s story about her no-nonsense father’s affectionate characterization of her brother’s endless hair-brained schemes: at least he’s not boring.

I’ve published Walter in the past, and it’s a good idea. I thought the piece on him dripped with the condescension typical of Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer excruciatingly attuned to his social status among his professional peers. Taibbi said it better. Another rec:

His name is Peter Gray and he is a psychology professor at Boston College. His book Free to Learn will be on the list of books that changed my life. He argues that modern primary and secondary school education is a coercive and therefore unethical enterprise that is antithetical to our evolutionary make-up. Stephen Pinker’s blurb of the book is “Peter Gray … forces us all to rethink our convictions on how schools should be designed to accommodate the ways children learn.”

Hmmm. One more rec comes from “an Israeli listener and fan of the show”:

I largely agree with your take on Israeli warfare and think it’s gone far over the line long ago. My deep thanks for your empathetic criticism of my beloved home country. I think a really interesting guest would be Naftali Bennet, the former prime minister of Israel and someone who early on had sound, alternative strategic ideas to a full-on invasion. Currently my biggest problem with your reasoning is that I never hear you or anyone else answer the question of what Israel should do instead. Having Bennet on might prove a good conversation about that.

From a reader on Israel and its Arab neighbors:

This will either be an insightful question or the single dumbest one in the history of the Dish: Do we in America simply spend too much time and effort focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? I have never quite understood why a tiny piece of land the size of New Jersey occupies so much space in newspapers, blogs, social media, and our political discourse generally.

Sure, Israel is a solid ally in a geographically important location, given the national security implications of oil. And the plight of the Palestinians is often difficult to witness. But I hardly think Israel is our most consequential ally, and the (pre-war) suffering of the Palestinians arguably shouldn’t make the top 50 on the list of anyone concerned with human rights. Even during the war, the casualties don’t approach the genocide in Ethiopia’s Tigray region (to take just one example), which receives literally zero attention in corporate media or online media.

I agree with the pro-Israel side that much of the obsession with the conflict in America is driven by anti-Semitism. And I agree with the pro-Palestinian side that the conflict receives so much attention in part because many American Jews have a deep emotional resonance with Israel, and they have highly disproportionate wealth and influence (for which I have nothing but admiration and respect).

It seems to me that the Arab states were starting to send a clear message to the Palestinians with the Abraham Accords: it’s time to move on already. I have no doubt that those nations have little love for the Israelis and Jews in general, and that they recognize the very legitimate historical arguments of the Palestinians. But with the accords, these Arab states accepted that Israel isn’t going anywhere, and it’s way past time to take advantage of a wealthy neighbor who can help you make life better for your own citizens.

While the prospects for a peaceful two-state solution currently seem worse than ever because of the brutality of the war and Israel’s far-right government, I remain more optimistic than most that the position of other regional nations will lead the Palestinians to eventually begin thinking differently about the state that has — however imperfectly — been offered to them multiple times.

There’s also the truly weird obsession with Israel on the evangelical right. I think you’re right, though. We cover the question out of all proportion to its salience to America’s self-interest. And I don’t see Israel as an “ally”, let alone a solid one. I think it’s a client state that has never been at America’s side in any war, and will tell the US to fuck off if we don’t subordinate our every interest to theirs. But the extreme interest by evangelicals and American Jews is why we’re so fixated.

Another reader focuses on the prospects of Biden:

I agree with you that President Biden is going to lose the election (badly), but I disagree with you as to why he will lose. You suggest Biden is deservedly losing the election because his presidential record is poor. I disagree. There are some definite weak spots, but his overall record should have him romping to reelection. He will lose the election because of who he is, not because of his record.

Imagine you were thinking of a presidential candidate that has the exact same conditions Biden is facing — the good and the bad. The bad: an indefensible illegal immigration problem; high inflation for the first two years of his presidency; an Israel engaged in a war that began with merit but has been a massacre; student protests looking more and more reprehensible; and a poor military exit of a 20-year war.

The good: an unrivaled economic recovery from a world disrupting lockdown; an unemployment rate under four percent for 28 straight months; GDP growth three years into a recover that is still running at three percent; record stock market averages; prime-age labor participation hovering at record 40-year highs; over a year of inflation-adjusted wage gains and the prospect of positive real-wage gains hitting in the summer of his fourth year; and infrastructure legislation that three previous presidents could not pass and that right now has led to thousands of infrastructure construction projects across the nation.

Also factor in a crime rate that has fallen two successive years. Consider a president ending a disastrous 20-year war and presiding over the fewest US service members killed in a presidential term since the ‘90s. Consider that when Biden entered office, unemployment was at over six percent, people were stuck in their homes due to lockdown, and they viewed or experienced a previous summer of riots with the crime rate dramatically surging in major cities.

Now put Obama, Clinton, W Bush, or even Trump in those conditions. I would argue those individuals would be sailing to reelection with approval ratings in the mid 50s, not low 40s. To underscore that point, a recent poll showed that people believe Trump would be better for infrastructure than Biden. So, a previous president who failed to do anything on a very important issue to most Americans is beating a president whose signature achievement was the passage of a law around that very issue! That’s not a problem with Biden’s record; that’s a problem with the candidate himself.

Great points. And part of it is that Biden just doesn’t have the energy or presence to make his pitch as best he can. But inflation is justifiably disorienting; social media has exacerbated a sense of chaos and drift in the country; mass immigration is at insane levels that call into a question the viability of the US as a coherent nation-state. But my main point is that Biden has not been the social and cultural moderate he said he’d be, and used to be, and has backed his party’s woke, neoracist and homophobic extremism in every area.

This next reader has a “pedantic quibble with last week’s column”:

Yes, Nixon definitely won handily in 1972 (while failing to make much of a dent in the Dems’ control of the House and Senate), but 1968 was a different matter altogether. It’s true that the unrest of the spring and summer of 1968 — including the murders of both MLK and RFK and culminating in the debacle at the Democratic Convention in Chicago — left the Democrats divided and in tatters. LBJ’s continual humiliation of Hubert Humphrey, the party nominee, didn’t help. Throw in George Wallace’s third-party candidacy threatening Dem support in the so-called “Solid South,” and things definitely looked bleak with Nixon way ahead in all the major opinion polls.

And then eventually, Humphrey found his voice and began hitting Nixon’s soft spots and reminding Americans why Nixon had always inspired such mixed feelings, even among his supporters. Wallace got it into his head that he was a national candidate instead of a regional one, and combined with his choice of Curtis Lemay as his running mate, it caused his candidacy to lose steam. Johnson also suspended the bombing in North Vietnam in the last month of the campaign, and peace talks were looking promising.

In the end, the peace talks collapsed and Nixon ended up winning, but with a margin of less than one percent of the popular vote — almost as close as the 1960 election he lost. He had a comfortable margin in the Electoral College, mostly thanks to winning his home state of California. (Up until the 1990s, California was a swing state — how times change). I have a feeling that THIS summer’s Democratic Convention — again in Chicago, as it turns out — might just give 1968 a run for its money in terms of mayhem. Although in Brandon Johnson’s Chicago, the police should probably have reason to fear the demonstrators, instead of the other way around, as was the case in ’68.

Many thanks for these caveats. History rarely repeats itself. I just suspect that the inevitable demos will remind us all of the horrors of 2020, will split the convention, and because the Democratic mayor of Chicago is on the extreme left, will deepen the association of the Dems with the woke loonies. All I can say as an anti-woke moderate who voted for Biden last time is that every time I see one of these protests, I find myself moving away from Biden.

Another gets personal:

I was surprised to read that you struggle with self-esteem issues and are never satisfied with your work. You are a very hard worker — in fact, you should think about taking more breaks, because I think you have earned it.

As for your alleged problems with “sustained intimacy,” your situation is not that unusual. I have never been in a partnership for longer than two weeks. For some reason, I seem to be attracted to deeply closeted guys, and I have found it impossible to make or keep a connection with them. I also find gay male culture to be dull and alienating, which reduces my social circle. Thank goodness I have a small number of gay male friends, who are wonderful.

I feel you. My handful of close friends is critical — but so many have moved on from DC, or gotten married and don’t have time any more. And the sense of community I used to feel in gay male spaces has evaporated as “queerness” and the apps have gone a large way to removing those spaces entirely. Grindr, for example, will ban you if you say you are same-sex attracted and not into people with vaginas. Ptown, once a refuge, is now strewn with “Progress Flags,” which is a way of telling people like me that we are no longer welcome or wanted. The word “queer” is bandied about as a way to force gay men into an extreme politics. I’ve never felt so alienated by the community I used to feel very much at home in.

But Truman definitely helps. His latest report card from doggy daycare:

Another reader highlights an emerging drug:

I’ve read and listened to your work since I was in my early 20s — a quarter-century ago. Your voice is often in my head (in a good way) as I navigate the twists and turns of our culture. I’ve been close to reaching out to you any number of times on the subject of psychedelics, but held back. I don’t want to belabor my own journey here, but a brief synopsis:

I grew up in NYC to two parents who have loved me but haven’t always known how to convey that. I spent 20 years in the hedge-fund world, including running my own for a decade and a half. I went to a meditation retreat several years ago that blew my mind and catalyzed a departure from the finance field. I discovered the promise of psychedelics and became fairly deeply involved in the reemergence of that field over the last few years through supporting a well-known psychedelic researcher’s program to help create a non-profit and a handful of other avenues.

Along the way I encountered a compound called methylone.

It is not a psychedelic, but an analogue of MDMA. It was developed by the inimitable Sasha Shulgin (the only compound he ever tried to patent, albeit unsuccessfully). Unlike MDMA, methylone is much gentler, without that jaw-clenching amped-up intensity. It is not nearly as serotonergic; in fact, it operates along the norepinephrine channel.  It’s gentle; it’s soft; and in my experience, it’s helped me to feel lovable. The intense internal critical voice gives way to something reflective and beautiful. My special underground guide (who’s from Europe, where it was legal until relatively recently) led me to a friend who started a company to bring it through FDA trials. (This is in the full disclosure vein; my interest in methylone is personal and different from my investing in it.)

That was a long wind-up to say if you ever want to learn more about something that I suspect would resonate with you, I’d be happy to engage. Your experience with and perspective on psychedelics, the love for cannabis (which I share) and the driven, critical voice all lead me to think that it’s an experience you might appreciate.

Much gratitude for you. Please be gentle with yourself.

Fascinating. Thank you. Next is a reader who signs off, “Yours in Dishness (for 30 years)”:

You wrote: “I have never smoked cigarettes. I smoke weed daily though. I balance the damage to my lungs with the benefit to my general health and psyche.”

You are probably getting a lot of emails about this, but please, you MUST change. One of my closest friends smoked weed daily for many years and he died in his early sixties from esophageal cancer. Very sad.

I, too, get high regularly, but I never SMOKE marijuana. Instead I vaporize the buds using the portable Mighty vaporizer from Storz and Bickel. I’ve had this device for six or seven years and it still works great. It’s about the size of a cell phone, albeit thicker. I grind the buds, heat them to a temperature of 355-385 °F, then inhale the vaporized resin. No tar, and no smoke — which is what makes smoking tobacco and weed dangerous. Vaporizing is MUCH more comfortable than smoking the stuff, and the high is just fine, thank you. In fact, it is much cleaner because I’m inhaling the natural resin and not the many byproducts formed when marijuana burns.

Note that I stay away from vape pens. They may be okay, but I’d rather stick with the natural flowers. Likely there are other great vaporizing devices by now, but the Mighty is still a great design. Try it. I suspect you will never go back.

I was talking with a friend about this recently. My main reason for weed is sleep; and what smoking does is give you that sudden kick upside the head that prompts me to doze off. Vapes have never had that effect; they tend to be subtler, slower and more in the body. But my friend suggested vaping at the highest temperatures possible — which might give me the same impact. So I’m exploring that. I have a Volcano.

That reader follows up:

One tip about the Mighty. They recommend cleaning the cooling unit once a week. I clean it once every three months, which seems to work fine. Alternatively, just buy a new cooling unit for $20. And I notice there is now a Mighty+. Probably marginally better than mine, but, either way, these are great products. Here’s one comment from a user:

One of the only products on the market that doesn’t really have any flaws it gives you a good taste and it gets you very high, plus it’s discreet and cleaning is so easy I would literally never go back to any other product.

I try to stay healthy. I had a grandfather and an uncle who both died young from lung cancer, so I have a strong concern about the disease. I spent my career in healthcare writing and editing documentation for medical devices and diagnostics. Five or six times a week I either swim 2,000 yards or cycle 11 miles in the hills behind our house. I’m 74 years old. I’d like to keep it going for a while. I hope you can too!

Now I’m going to get loaded.

Again, thank you for the tip. Thanks as always for the dissents and other emails. Send yours to dish@andrewsullivan.com.

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