Ezra Klein

I forget how Kalina distinguishes them, but she does.

She thinks it's a really important part of life that we haven't studied because it's not productive.

and that all the work in psychology goes into productive areas of thought.

I think that's changing now.

You have people studying awe and emotions that are not necessarily productive, but awe is very useful.

She just thinks this is a space of creativity and that a lot of creative thinking comes out of mind-wandering and daydreaming.

It's something novelists do all the time.

They get pretty good at daydreaming.

She says we've lost this.

You know, the space of our interiority for this kind of thinking is diminished because of our distractions, our technological distractions.

I think it... Oh, I think it is very productive.

It's just, how are you defining productivity?

And turning off the spotlight.

Mm-hmm.

That the spotlight gets in the way because of those blinders.

And I think when you're daydreaming or mind-wandering, the blinders are kind of opened up and you're taking in information from more places.

She argues that it's just the belief that this is unproductive thought because nobody wants mind-wandering workers.

Yeah.

Right?

The capitalists want us to be, you know, spotlight consciousness.