Seeking Endings with Lauren Ober

The Best Advice Show

Lauren Ober (@OberandOut) is the host of the podcast, Spectacular Failures. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST TRANSCRIPT: ZAK: Are you a news junkie but feel like you just can't handle it anymore? If so, today's advice is for you. LAUREN: I am a consummate news consumer. I love listening to the radio and I love reading the newspaper everyday and I have gotten to a point and I feel really sad about this where I can't consume the news anymore. It's so terrible. The view never changes. It's like catatonia, really. And so, I was like, I need something that feels like it has and ending. You know, that it isn't a story that lasts for six or nine or twelve months or whatever. I've always been interested...my guilty pleasure is British mystery novels. There's a beginning, a middle, and end, and then you're done. And I feel like our news cycle does not end with particular stories. And Corona virus is the most open ended hell you could ever conceive of, and these mystery novels...they're not like that. There are no real stakes. It's generally, like, a bunch of goobers who are just flitting about and like, maybe one person's gonna solve a mystery in their spare time. And most of the time they're like smoking pipes and reading The Telegraph. I'm just along for the ride but I know that by page 300, we're gonna be done. This problem is gonna come to an end. And that is very, very satisfying in this particular time that we're living in where nothing seems like it has an end-date. ZAK: So yours happen to be mystery novels, but someone's else's could be like a quilt. It could be. It absolutely could be. Any craft that has an end point. You start it and then you finish it. ZAK: That's partly why making this show has been helpful for me lately. These episodes are short. I can start then and end them. There's something satisfying there. LAUREN: My name is Lauren Ober. I'm the host of the podcast, Spectacular Failures. ZAK: If you have some advice for getting through these hard times, I would love to hear it. The hotline number is 844-935-BEST. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices