Emily St. John Mandel: belief

Transcript context

…But as a class of people, if you put them in the hat, happiness — in percentile terms, how well are they doing? I would say probably pretty well if you can reconcile yourself to that tradeoff, which it would not be crazy to call an offshoot of prostitution. There’s a pretty clear mercenary trade happening there. If you’re okay with that, then you could live a pretty great life. You have what you need. You have a lot of downtime. You can develop some deep friendships. You have time to read. I think that the risk would be the kind of emptiness that comes from not having a fulfilling career. But there’s no reason why you couldn’t be a trophy wife and have something you were passionate about on the side. I’d say, as jobs go, you could do a lot worse. Do you think it’s harder for trophy wives to have fulfilling friendships?…

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