| 0:37 | Intro. [Recording date: April 23, 2025.] Russ Roberts: Today is April 23rd, 2025, and my guest is author Tiffany Jenkins. She was last here in January of 2023 talking about Plunder, Museums, and Marbles. Her latest book, which is our topic for today, is Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life. Tiffany, welcome back to EconTalk. Tiffany Jenkins: Glad to be here. Russ Roberts: I want to let listeners know that some of our conversation today may involve adult themes, so if you're listening with young children, you may want to act accordingly. |
| 1:10 | Russ Roberts: I want to start with the title of the book. It's a beautiful title, and when I first got the book, I thought, Strangers< and Intimates/em>--hmmm, an interesting title. And, after I finished the book, just that framing of the topics you discuss, the rise and fall of private life and so much more, it really resonated with me. So, start by talking about why you chose that title and what it means to you. Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I originally wanted to write about private life and privacy. And, as I was thinking about it, I was reading about 19th century Britain. And, this was a time when there was a huge influx of people into cities--Manchester and London in particular--and society. One commentator described it was a society of strangers. And, I had this insight, really, that private life is also defined by public life. The two kind of help shape each other's sense of themselves, if you like. And I was very struck by the sense of all these strangers on the streets and in the bars and in kind of political life, then retreating home to a site of intimacy and domesticity and somewhere away from public life. Hence the couplets. So, what I try and do in the book is look as much at the shaping of public life and how it defines private life as private life itself. Russ Roberts: And of course, the boundary between the two has changed so extraordinarily over the last 500 years. I mean, the thing that--after reading your book, the thought that I had about Strangers and Intimates is that, in some dimension, there's a current in modern culture to break down that distinction. And of course, your book deals with this constantly. But, just thinking about it in this strangers versus intimates, that: there should be no strangers. We should be intimate with everyone. And, in particular, I should have no secrets. I should have no public versus private persona. I should be open to the world and share. And, the very idea of private versus public--the very idea of intimacy versus a stranger--is a barrier to be destroyed. Do you agree that there is a push toward that in our culture? Tiffany Jenkins: Yes. I mean, I think in numerous ways the sense that you might be different in public to how you are in private is demonized, if you like. It's seen as phony. The great kind of mantra of the moment is to be false. In all reality TV programs, the kind of the bad person is always described as false and inauthentic. There is a sense that secrets are baggage to be aired. There is a sense in which that they bring you down. And, I think that does two things. It degrades public life. Because actually when you go out the door and you maybe put on a suit--also relatively unfashionable--you become a kind of manners. You talk about--you don't necessarily--it's really interesting actually the drive towards kissing, social kissing, I don't know if that's a thing where you live, but in Britain you social-kiss everybody--your colleagues. And people--I think we're British, we're quite uncomfortable with that sort of thing. But, it's definitely seen as kind of: if you don't, you're stiff. And, I think the sense that if you are different in public than private, then you are being a hypocrite and it's much healthier and more authentic to let it all out to express yourself. Russ Roberts: Do you socially kiss twice in Britain, left and right cheek, or is it one? Tiffany Jenkins: Well, because I think any type of social etiquette is frowned upon, there's no consensus, which is the bizarre thing. That's the beautiful thing about manners when there's a consensus about how you might behave so that you know how to behave. At the moment here people sort of go for one and then prevaricate over the second, and it's just generally very awkward. But, you have this general kind of surge of intimacy in private life--in public life, rather. People are talking about their family life as a way of showing that they're a good person. It kind of degrades public life. |
| 5:58 | Russ Roberts: I would argue, and I think you do in the book as well, that it also degrades private life. But, I'm going to go back to just that one phrase you used. You said: If you're different in public than you are in private, you're a hypocrite. Of course you are. But, is that good or bad? That's the question. We just assume hypocrisy is a negative. What do you think? Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I think we have different parts of ourselves, and that is, you might be a more professional--if you're a professional person, there are certain ways of behaving, whether you're a laborer or an academic, that you wouldn't behave like that at home. And, the beauty of the home, or the private, is that you can sometimes not be your best self. You can let off steam, you can have a row about whatever it might be, doing the dishes or whatever. It is a place of emotional release where you aren't subject to scrutiny; and, there's a certain form of accountability within intimates, but it's not kind of a public scrutiny. I think that we are in danger of eroding that kind of sanctuary, really. I think we have to accept that we are different in public and in private. They're different facets of our selves and they benefit each other, it's not false or phony. Russ Roberts: This morning I showed my wife a video that I found on social media that I found quite amusing. I'm not going to tell you what it was--because it's embarrassing that I found it amusing. But as you point out, it's kind of a nice thing that I get to enjoy this very immature and silly video that you might judge me for enjoying. My wife probably does, too, but put that to the side. Tiffany Jenkins: That's marriage. Russ Roberts: But that's marriage. Exactly. But, she forgives me tomorrow, and a relative stranger might judge me for a long time for finding it amusing. |
| 8:00 | Russ Roberts:But, I think there's something else going on. But, to get at it, I want to take something you, of course, deal with in the book in different ways, which is: 'Oh, privacy is only necessary if you're a criminal or some kind of pervert,' right? 'If you're a good person, you have nothing to hide.' And so, this obsession we have with surveillance or privacy, that protects bad people. What's your thought on that? Tiffany Jenkins: Well, privacy does protect bad people. It does impede accountability and scrutiny. But it's also necessary, and it's necessary for all good people, too. It is a place of self-development and personal autonomy where we develop our inner life, where we kind of go through a process of self-evaluation, as well as emotional release and messing around and experimenting. But, it's also really essential. I mean, you talked about your wife: it's essential for intimacy. Because she does know you, and she knows parts of you that nobody else knows. When you're embarking in a relationship--it might even be a friendship--at the beginning you do tell somebody else something about yourself that makes you vulnerable, that you don't want anybody else to know. And that's a very precious thing that is eroded if you don't have any privacy. And, everybody needs that. Equally, I think people need it for forms of group privacy, for solidarity. It might be professional colleagues, it might be a community group that you're in. You talk about things that affect you together in private before maybe taking it to your boss or taking it to somebody else. So, it is kind of a testing ground for experimental thoughts and ideas before you go out and say, 'This is what I think, this is what we want.' Everybody needs-- Russ Roberts: I love that. But, I think it's more than that, right? It's a gift we bestow, that we don't bestow on everyone; and that connects us in a way that I don't get connected to other people. And, in many, many ways our social life--and your book stimulates wonderful thinking on these issues--our social life is how we choose which boundaries to breach with how many people. Many people have things they only tell their wife or never tell their wife, their spouse; or only tell their spouse and a few intimate friends, family members; and some people get on podcasts and tell all. And, the question is whether that's a good thing. And, the idea that embarrassment or shame or people judging you could hinder you from doing those things and thereby reduce your ability to explore who you might want to become, I get that. But, I think it's also just my connection to you--my connection to you, versus my connection to my spouse, versus my connection to my listeners. My listeners, we have a certain intimacy because we spend a lot of time together. They spend a lot more time with me than I've spent with them though, which is really a strange and interesting thing in modern life. But, there's always this question of this connection I have with you that's unique or precious or special. And, if I share that with everyone, is something lost? I think there is. It's hard to put into words, though. Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I mean I think something's lost in the relationship. There is a kind of, in the exclusivity of you telling somebody else, this one person something, that exclusivity bonds you. I mean, secrecy is that kind of double-edged sword, so it also can be isolating. But, it's certainly essential for that. But I think, if you follow it through, telling everybody everything, I mean, I think you become shallow, as Hannah Arendt once sort of described it. She described it more like a kind of: privacy is a bedding soil where you are underground and you need that to grow. Without it, you just wouldn't grow; you wouldn't blossom. So, I think there's something about the kind of: you know when you've been in--this is a funny example--you know when you've been in the sun too long and it burns. I think not having privacy is like that. You're constantly exposed. Russ Roberts: Yeah. And, that's a nice image. I don't think we understand it fully until we've lost it. And of course, you chronicle Monica Lewinsky in the book, which is a horrific example of exposure. Unimaginable when you think back on it. And, it was interesting to revisit it, having lived through it. But, we're talking about sharing things, but of course sexual jealousy and marital jealousy and romantic possessiveness, which again is sort of--that seems a bit immature to care about. I mean, why not share the specialness that you have? And, yet our nature does not feel that way. For most of us. Not everybody, but for most of us. Tiffany Jenkins: I think for most of us, that's right. And then, I think maybe for those that experiment a bit more when they're younger, settle down at some point with one person. And, there is the kind of the quotidian pleasure of just sharing the everyday of the domestic life. And, I think also you do go through difficult times together--difficult times that you don't want people to know about. And they may be difficult between you, but it is a bonding exercise that, through a kind of exclusivity and sharing those private moments comes commitment and loyalty and things that are really important sustaining forces for the individual. Russ Roberts: There's a poem by Robert Browning I used to love when I was younger--hadn't read it for years, but your book pushed me back to it--which is: "My Last Duchess." Which is a haunting and quite creepy poem about a duke who resented that his wife smiled at someone other than him. That his 900-year-old name, which brought her pleasure, was no different than the bouquet of flowers that, quote, "Some officious fool" brought her. That, she smiled at everything and he did not like that lack of discrimination. Now, that's a form of jealousy; but surely that is getting at some aspect of human nature that I think is important to us. Tiffany Jenkins: We all want to be chosen, and we want to be chosen for ourselves, not for something--not for the flattery that we've given another person, not for the flowers that we can send easily. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Tiffany Jenkins: There's a very nice moment in Sally Rooney's book, Ordinary People--is that the right title? [Normal People--Econlib Ed.]--where Connor talks about how being with his girlfriend--I can't remember her name--but I just remember this passage so vividly: when he says it's like shutting the door to everybody else and he can say anything to her. And, their relationship is not the most functional. But they have this--the book has this tremendous kind of sense of the privacy they have within each other. Which isn't solely physical. It's not because they've gone away from everybody else. It's the relationship that they have: that only they two know each other in the way that they know each other and nobody else does. And, I suppose it's a place of discrimination, really: I choose you. |
| 16:31 | Russ Roberts:Yeah. I want to look at one more aspect of this before we move on: this question of only criminals need to be afraid of surveillance or transparency. And, I think there's a very deep issue here about the imperfection of language. So, you and I are talking about a book: It's about 400 pages. I read it over the last two weeks, and I learned a lot about you. I learned a lot about what you're trying to communicate to me. But of course, the human mind and language is imperfect. And, if you and I having this conversation, if we imagine--we're having it over Zoom, for those of you listening to the audio only. We're having this over Zoom. I can see your face. I can see your raised eyebrow. I can see your smile. I can see your sneer--I haven't seen that yet, but I could if you did. And so, we're communicating in this very complex human way that we have. And, it's remarkably imperfect. And, you can imagine sort of three levels. There's this--four levels. You and I in the same room--which actually is nothing like what we're doing right now over Zoom because it's both more intimate but also less because it could be tense. We could be uncomfortable being in each other's physical presence. I've had that many times with people I've interviewed. It's very--for many people it's easier to be on Zoom. So, you go from the physical face-to-face to Zoom, which is in two dimensions. Then we can think about just the audio; and then we can think about a transcript. And, if you go from each of those levels, something is lost. Sometimes something is gained. But, I think the thing that is hard for us to appreciate is the imperfection of our communication in all those modes. We misunderstand each other, nuance gets missed. You didn't see that I was winking, and you took something that I was making a joke about seriously. And, the person who reads the transcript alone--and this by the way, I think is a huge problem with modern life where we're constantly communicating over WhatsApp and via email, hurriedly--so many mistakes are made in how we connect with each other. And, the danger to me of transparency and of the loss of privacy is that--it's not that I'm going to try something and it might not go well, and at least it's only the two of us, so it's okay. It's that: I actually meant something totally different; and I thought it was totally normal, but you misread it or misunderstood it, or didn't hear the tone in my voice, or only read the words. And, I see that subtlety in human relations is what's lost when we breach these barriers and make snap judgments. Tiffany Jenkins: That's a very interesting point. I'm just thinking about the times in which I've felt most on show--not necessarily doing a talk or something like that where I know what I'm going to say. But, in certain political discussions at the moment, you feel very exposed. And what happens, I think, is there's a tendency to rely on literalness. And so, ambiguity goes out of the window. Comedy goes out of the window. Irony--forget about it. Anything that could be misconstrued. Which is basically everything, because there's so much ambiguity in all our exchanges. And, I think that's what transparency sort of leads to: is kind of false literalness. And it's much reduced as a result. Russ Roberts: It's an interesting example of how people think about translation. They think that the more literal the translation, the more accurate it is. Which is totally false. But it makes sense. It's just wrong. Totally wrong. Tiffany Jenkins: Equally, adaptations of films of books you've loved which follow the plot exactly, all this description. But, they miss something of the heart. They miss--sometimes they miss the kind of oddity of it because they just have to kind of follow the script so rigorously. I suppose it gets rid of the messiness of life. Russ Roberts: Yeah. The only other thing I'd add is that everybody has something to hide. Tiffany Jenkins: Yeah. Hiding is not bad. I think keeping some things for certain people and not showing everybody everything is not a bad thing. We all do have things--there are things I don't want people to know about me, but they're not necessarily bad or illegal. Just, they are private. I mean, there are certain experiences that I would just--love is a curious one because there are certain things we do want at some point to make public about it. And marriage is a public institution. Wedding rings are public. But, there are aspects of love that you would never make public. Equally death. I was really struck when David Bowie died a few years ago, and he hadn't announced that he was going to die, but he had terminal cancer. You can hear it now in his songs. But he made no public declaration. And there was a sense in which his fans felt as if they'd been deprived of something--that they were indignant, that he hadn't let them know. And, I think there are some experiences in life that are just--they're just big and weighty and not that subject to--I mean, you can rationalize them, you can be rational about them, but they are unruly and that's why they should be hidden in a way. Russ Roberts: But, the example of the celebrity who dies and, quote, "betrays" the fan base because they find out afterwards. I mean, that's the way you should feel about your family members. Russ Roberts: And, there's an illusion there. The illusion is, is that you're close to that person. And, we do feel close sometimes to a celebrity, but it's an illusion. We're not close to them. And we're not entitled to witness their dying months or their dying moments unless they choose to share them. And they can; and some do. But, we feel betrayed. And, that's an aspect of modern life that is just so alien to most of human history. Again, I'm not going to judge it. I don't know if it's good or bad. It's definitely a reality. Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I think, yeah, we're treating intimates--we're strangers like intimates. And to a degree with the exposure of private life to scrutiny, we end up treating intimates like strangers, because we can't be fully intimate with them. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Tiffany Jenkins: Because we won't--if you're exposed all the time, you will not be intimate. You look at sort of the accounts of, or sort of the attempt--the accounts of Russia or Nazi Germany--Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany. And, you know, people talk about being unable to talk to their children because their children could easily accidentally just report them and then they would be taken off--taken off to prison or worse. So it kind of--their family life and their intimate life was much reduced. |
| 24:11 | Russ Roberts:Yeah, it's a strange and bizarre thing to think about what it would be like. When I was reading your book, I was thinking about a moment. This is 50 years ago, and it was a workshop--it was a presentation of a seminar paper. The speaker was Victor Fuchs. He was a health economist at Stanford University, and he was giving a workshop, presenting a paper at a workshop at the University of Chicago. It was Gary Becker's workshop. And Becker was known for his caustic and really--I hate to say, brutal--but brutal takedowns of the speaker. I've been a speaker in that workshop twice. It's a challenging experience. And, the workshop was on privacy--the paper. And Victor Fuchs, the speaker, said, about halfway through the talk, 'Now imagine a world where all of your thoughts were broadcast onto a screen.' And of course, we're in a world that's something like that right now, where it's not forcible, but we choose often to broadcast many of our thoughts on the screen. And, Gary Becker said, 'Victor, I don't think you'd like to see what you'd see if that screen were here now.' Because the workshop hadn't gone so well up to that point. But, that whole idea of exposing judgment--and again, just transparency, nothing's hidden. Weird world. Tiffany Jenkins: Yes. And as you say, there is a degree in which we are living in that world at the moment. And as you say, it's not forced. Nobody is forcing us to upload our messages and put everything on WhatsApp and send it to loads of people and then leak them. Technology facilitates that, but nobody is being made to do it. It's the culture in which--and people don't seem to think that maybe they should just be quiet. Russ Roberts: Well, it's an interesting question, right? You say they're not forced, but there are strong incentives in our world to share, because you're judged for not sharing. I will sometimes review things on Twitter, on X, and say, 'I loved this book,' or 'I hated this movie,' and my wife will say, 'Why are you sharing that?' It's a good question. I say, 'Well, people like it. They're interested.' Maybe I shouldn't. I don't know. I don't know. Tiffany Jenkins: Well, I think there are a number of things. There is this cultural push that if you don't share--if you don't talk about your feelings--then you are seen as an odd person. And, there is something about it where it's currency. It's currency of social interaction that I think it does make me slightly uncomfortable. And then, I think there's probably other social factors, which is the communities that you might have shared that with have degraded somewhat. And so, rather than talking to people in our lives, near to us--communities of interest--I think we end up talking to strangers and then expect them to behave as if they know us, which is a peculiar thing. I think there's a degree to which, as well, people are seeking different forms of recognition. Recognition that they exist, recognition that they're liked, recognition that they matter. And, doing that with strangers in this climate is likely to make them feel bad because we don't have sort of rules and etiquette for how to behave in that way. That is, we have become sort of uncivil, I think, as a matter of course. |
| 28:12 | Russ Roberts:Have you ever had a stranger confess something deeply personal to you? Tiffany Jenkins: Yes, I do. I mean, I think the thing is about--strangers do tell you things; and because there's no comeback, the stakes are less high. And, it does forge a kind of momentary intimacy, which is fleeting. But, if they knew you--if they knew that they were going to see you again on Monday morning--they probably wouldn't tell you. But, it's probably a release for them. Russ Roberts: Yeah. Well, I haven't quoted this in long time on the program, but my great-, I think it's my great-great-grandmother or my great-grandmother used to tell my father: 'If you get depressed about something, go out and tell a rock. Go out and tell a tree.' Get it out to someone who can't judge--to something that can't judge you. And I think that's what those stranger-admissions are about. We need sometimes to tell someone, but we need it to be without judgment because they're not going to see us again, or we hope they won't. But, it's hard to keep that secret. Actually, it's a handful of times in my life and I found it exhilarating. There is an intimacy that is forged, and it's something of an illusion, right? But, it can be very, very powerful. Tiffany Jenkins: Yeah. I think it's real, because I've had that as well. I think it's just not permanent, and that's why it feels like an illusion. But I think you can remember those--you can remember as we're speaking what those occasions are. Russ Roberts: I remember them vividly. And, I'm not going to tell you. |
| 30:03 | Russ Roberts:Let's go to the book directly. Your book opens--to the surprise of this reader--with an account of Martin Luther. What does he have to do with this story? Tiffany Jenkins: Well, and it was a surprise to me, as well. I thought I was going to start in the Victorian Age when you have the Warren and Brandeis infamous article, "The Right to Privacy." There were similar kind-of privacy concerns in Britain. But then, I just thought: Well, how did Victorian society come to value privacy? It's not a natural thing. You go back to the 17th century and people talk about privacy as something that's dangerous--you know: Flee it. If you're in private, you are definitely doing something wrong. The echoes of today. So I tried to think: where does it come from? And, certainly there's a degree in which it comes from property--so, the property being secured and all the rest of it. But how did that happen? Those are ideas about restricting borders, setting up borders between the authority of the day and the individual. And so, I looked for those struggles around, kind of, the border between the individual and authority. And that brought me to battles over conscience and religious liberty. Not conscience as we would understand it today--doing what I want to do, basically following my own true beliefs. But the sense in which to follow the faith, to follow my faith, I would have to go against the authority of the day at great risk to myself. And that's what--I mean, I look at Martin Luther; and I also look at Thomas More. I mean, both followed their conscience. In their mind, for Martin Luther, he was following scripture against the Catholic Church. And, for Thomas More it was the Catholic Church. But in so doing, they both, I think, added to a situation where the gap between public conformity and public devotion and private faith kind of split open and began to extend. And you had, particularly in England with a flip-flopping over religious faith, people following their own faith in private before they were allowed to do so. I think there was a degree to which--with Protestantism as well--the reliance upon the Book and the kind of translation of the Bible into the vernacular--whether it's German from Latin or English--did foster an inward kind-of self, an inward reflection. So, that might have also contributed. And, of course, reading. The printing press, which kind of pushed Luther's messages out, did become quite an internal thing. [More to come, 33:06] |
A paradox of our time is our willingness to bare all to strangers while worrying about who exactly is watching us online and anywhere else. Listen as author Tiffany Jenkins discusses her book, Strangers and Intimates, with EconTalk's Russ Roberts. In this wide-ranging conversation, they explore the role of Martin Luther, J.S. Mill, reality TV, and social media, among other factors, in creating the norms of the public and private spheres over time and today.