Best Of: Jia Tolentino on plastic surgery & AI / ‘Beef’ creator Lee Sun Jin

Sally Field about her starring role in the '60s television series The Flying None.

“"I was on a 50-foot crane and they would climb into a sight of a building."”

"Don't miss our full conversation and the rest of our games, listen to the Wayway, Don't Tell Me, podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts." From W.H.Y. in Philadelphia, this is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Tanya Mosley in Los Angeles. Today, New Yorker staff writer Gia Tolentino. She coined the term "Instagram Face." Seven years later, we talk about how current beauty standards are changing our relationship to reality.

It seems more explicitly anti-human right now than ever before. There seemed to be something that's dove-tailing with the age of AI. Also, we talk with writer Lee Sung-Jin. He's the creator of the Netflix series Beef. The second season is a story about class and blackmail and an exclusive country club. Lee writes what he knows. So many of the show's storylines are pulled from his own life. And that's after spending two decades in comedy writer's rooms where he was often the only

“Asian person in the room. "That's what people thought of me when I was starting. I was the”

diversity higher." That's coming up on Fresh Air Weekend. This week on Consider This. Virginia thought her criminal record would follow her forever until a few minutes with an AI app

that told her she could clear her felonies. "You'll never find a harder worker than someone who

has something to prove to themselves how AI could help millions of Americans with criminal records find work." This week, I consider this from NPR. Have you ever been so upset that you can't even think straight? When we're distressed and in high anxiety, we tend to breathe from our chest, which is actually more hyperventilating and is the opposite of relaxing. So we want to breathe from our belly area. This week on LifeKit podcast tips for those painful, stressful moments. Listen to

LifeKit on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. "Oh, hey there, I'm Brittany Luce,

“and I don't know, maybe this is a little out of pocket to say, but I think you should listen to my”

podcast." It's called "It's been a minute and I love it and I think you will too." Over the past couple months, over 100,000 new listeners started tuning in. Find out why. Listen to the "It's been a minute podcast from NPR today." This is Fresh Air Weekend, I'm Tanya Mosley. Something strange is happening to the human face. Plastic surgery in the U.S. is increasingly designed to be invisible and it's working. Faces are being lifted, filled and reshaped to look

naturally youthful and at the same time unnatural. I guess today, writer Gia Tolentino says, "This new era of cosmetic enhancement is quietly changing the way people think about aging and what we believe a real face should look like." In her latest New Yorker piece, "Our Plastic Surgery Nightmare," Dolantino reports that cosmetic procedures like Botox and fillers once associated with middle age are now becoming popular for teenagers, with plastic

surgeons reporting a significant uptick of patients under 30. Some are even posting photos online asking strangers whether a facelift is their only hope. One influencer got famous by striking his jawline with a hammer as part of the online movement known as Luxemaxing. Other young men followed suit and artificial intelligence trained on millions of these new faces is generating new beauty standards. Tolentino argues that what's changing isn't just our appearance,

it's our relationship to reality. Her argument is that when every face can be optimized, filtered, or surgically refined, the face itself begins to lose its status as evidence of a life-lived. She argues that the thing we've long treated as a window into another person is becoming less human and more like a product. Gia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker and the best-selling author of the essay collection Trick Mirror. Seven years ago, she coined the phrase "Instagram Face",

capturing the beauty ideal of the social media era. Her new essay asks, "What that face has become?" And Gia Tolentino, welcome back to fresh air. Thank you so much for having me.

Okay, as I mentioned to you, this piece has hit a nerve and so much of the reaction is basically,

yes, we are seeing this, we are feeling this, what can we actually do about it? And the same thing actually happens seven years ago when you coined this term "Instagram Face". And so I thought before we actually get into your latest piece, remind us what Instagram Face is or was.

most prominent, most highly visible faces who generally all belong to white, female influencers,

“they started to kind of converge on a singular face. I remember someone I make up artists,”

described it as a sexy baby tiger. You know, it was the kind of Kim Kardashian looks like Kendall Jenner looks like Bella Hadid looks like Emily Radikowski. There was this kind of convergence of the face towards a certain mean that seemed to me to be very overtly shaped by the algorithm. The face looked like the beauty filters that Snapchat and Instagram provided to kind of lift your cheeks and plump your lips and, you know, make your eyes bigger and make your chin a

little more heart-shaped and you could press a button or you could use face-toon to digitally alter

your face to fit this kind of algorithmically approved beauty standard. Like this was a face that the

algorithm liked. If your face looked like this, you would get more views on your pictures. And then, you know, concurrently there were these technologies. This was kind of the rise of injectables, Botox, filler, these little tweaks that you could do in real life to match the tweaks that you could do digitally. And I wanted to write about it then because it just seemed interesting that faces were becoming the same, that these highly visible faces were becoming the same. And the incentives

didn't necessarily seem to be coming from with it. They seem to be coming from without it. And I wondered what is going to happen in the future and now we're now we're living. Right. So for those who aren't online enough to really pick up the changes over the last seven years, paint a picture for us, what is coming out of this new era on our screens? Not just on our screens too, but also

“in real life. What are we actually seeing? What does this new aesthetic actually look like?”

So this began as kind of niche behavior among the professionally beautiful, the wealthy and famous. But the desire trickles down because those faces are necessarily visually overrepresented. And what those women do trickles down into the desire for the general population. And in the nearly, let's say, decade that has elapsed. When I was starting to research this piece, I started just Googling cities in the United States. I started Googling mid-sized cities everywhere

outside the coasts to check. You know, how widespread is this behavior actually? There are some proxies like the reddit for R/plastic surgery. It has almost as many weekly visitors as the the reddit forum for R/running. You know, so there are some proxies where you can tell this is becoming a quite generalized interest. If you are on social media, you see the way that people's faces have become on candy. The foreheads are freezing. The lips are plump. Instagram face has

kind of trickled down to the general population. You can get it at your local strip mall,

basically anywhere you are in the US and people certainly do. And now the faces of the

the rich and famous and professionally beautiful now it's changing. Now there's facelifts. Now there's these invisible facelifts. They're the flickers of desire and the general population people being like, well, should I get a facelift at age 30? This seems to be the next wave of what's happening that the facelifts are becoming the kind of soon to be normalized desire. Yeah, and the facelifts themselves are providing a look that maybe is taking us in another

direction of trying to look more natural. You mentioned some of those more popular red at pages. There are also so many plastic surgeons now who have these these accounts that are very popular

“showing before and afters of these deep plain facelifts. Which art for the faint of heart?”

You know, it's interesting, right? The Instagram face, the procedures themselves were kind of fundamentally nonviolent, a little needle there back to the office, right? But people kind of looked obviously altered. The Kardashians are the easiest proxy for this. You could see their faces changing in real time, Kim Kardashian published a selfie book called Selfish, where you could see how her face had changed. The work was on display, even though the procedures themselves were fairly

minor. The facelift is interesting because the procedure itself is kind of extraordinarily violent. You're severing all these layers of muscle and fat and fascia. Bridget Reed did a piece for New York Magazine where she describes a plastic surgeon lifting the face off of its bones, like a Halloween mask and rearranging it. But the results are almost supernatural. You know,

this complex secret knowledge. And as you mentioned, there's kind of a cottage industry that has been

“growing over the last decade because these things are interesting to look out on screens. We love”

looking at faces. And we love looking at faces because as I was writing, you know, the face is traditionally

how we come to know each other, how we the first glimpse we have of a person's temperament and soul

in life history and decision. It tells us, it answers so many questions. Also, you can tell if a person is tired. You can tell if they're sick. You can tell their emotions. Do they laugh a lot by their laugh lines? It's a marker of allowing us to see if we can even trust a person. I mean, you're basically arguing that we're entering a world where these faces don't communicate because Botox and some of these other treatments freeze the face. We're losing the ability to read one

another. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it seems like like you were saying their plastic surgeons on Instagram and TikTok. They're all of these influencers that are just for kind of forensically

“analyzing what people may and may not have done. We love to look at faces. We're still looking at”

faces. But increasingly online, especially if you are a girl or your woman, your your feet is

likely tailored towards these sort of things. The face is being presented to us as a consumer guide and a disciplinary manual rather than a human repository of disposition than life. And you know, I don't think this in and of itself, I don't think individually. There's anything immoral or wrong about plasticity, about changing your looks. You know, individually, these cases are not very interesting to me and not worth, you know, judging on an individual level whatsoever.

But it just does seem collectively like that shift has happened that the face is not something that especially if you are socialized as a woman, that you're looking at for human information,

that you want human information and experience to show on your face. It's really being

reconfigured as kind of an object that should stand up under digital surveillance. If you're just joining us, my guest is New Yorker Staff writer, G. Atolentino. Her new piece, our plastic surgery nightmare is about the rise of undetectable cosmetic surgery and what it's doing to our grip on reality. We'll continue our conversation after a short break. I'm Tony Mosley and this is Fresh Air Weekend.

This week on the NPR Politics podcast, another progressive Democrat, Edges Out and Establishment Candidate. A dual LCAID, one Michigan Senate primary, campaigning on affordability, healthcare, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel. Join us as we break down his victory and what it could signal for November's mid-terps on the NPR Politics podcast. Listen, on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.

Myelin, it seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days. Yeah, like the box of hamburger helper in my pantry. Or the new Apple Neo book? Or the resurgence of press on nails, or lipstick, or no lipstick, I've lost track. There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs, though. Listen to the indicator from planet money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air Weekend. I'm Tony Mosley. Let's get back to my conversation

with Gia Tolentino of the New Yorker. Her latest piece is about the new era of invisible plastic surgery, and why she says it's a roading our connection to reality. Aside from the hundred thousand dollar facelifts, what are those who are not in the top brackets doing? It's a lot of injectables.

“You know, I think there's kind of the non-surgical facelift that a lot of people that certainly”

quite popular in the suburbs of Houston where I grew up, where it's just well placed Botox and filler to shape, you know, you can put it in your jawline to thin your cheeks. You know, you can kind of lift your brow with Botox. You can kind of plump and reshape your face. People are getting eyelifts, you know, they're getting the leftover plastics on their upper and lower lids. There is kind of threads. You can get in your forehead to lift. There's necklifts. There's many lipo.

There's all sorts of stuff. There's the realm of just constant facial resurfacing with laser. You know, and all of these things, you know, again, it's like individually whatever, right? You know, individually let people live. However, collectively, it just, what is this reframing the face as? It's not just our faces either. Our producer Molly points out that BBL's Brazilian butlifts are being reversed and people are taking off their nails and lashes are going out of

One thing that is just kind of blanket true will always be true about beauty standards for women

“is that they're never static. There's never a final point. Well, at least from the point of”

view of the industry's dictating it, which now include the surveillance technologies of the phone and social media, there is never a fixed point at which contentment is prescribed or incentivizer, you know, or okay. It's what is prescribed is just a perpetual work, a perpetual outlay of money and time and most importantly concern. A sense of the self as something that must always be optimized, perfected, improved. And, you know, this is beauty standards have been

punitive, disciplinary, they have served the interests of those in power for basically all of human history and every human culture. But there's something interesting about it right now in that it seems more explicitly anti-human right now than ever before. There seem to be something that's

“dovetailing with the age of AI. And AI is where the consequences of Instagram face, they are already”

quite clear, right? The fact that so many of the most visible women on the internet kind of resemble each other, have this look that if you're on Instagram, you can probably close your eyes and summon, you know, the fact that that is kind of what a woman on the internet looks like to the data scraping engines that are powering AI. You know, the Washington Post did this great investigation a couple of years ago. They asked, you know, AI image generators, multiple of them,

to produce an image of a normal woman. Almost every face that was generated was white, young and beautiful. You know, there's already been such a distinct effect. And one wonders, AI is something that I personally, you know, take issue with for the way that it kind of programatically positions what is specifically human as inferior for being specifically human, for being bounded, for being imperfect. When in fact our boundedness, our imperfection, our kind of imminence,

“that's, that's the best thing about us, that's what makes us actually human. And so the way that”

all of this is manifesting through the face is really what I wanted to write about. One of the paradoxes at the center of this essay is also that plastic surgery is becoming both detectable and more extreme at the same time. And the Mara logo face in particular is a good example of this. Can you describe it for us? I feel kind of a fondness for what's called Mara logo face because it's almost like, it's almost quaint. You know, so Mara logo face is if you

have observed the faces of the women of the second Trump administration, this is Mara logo face.

It's kind of like Instagram face. It's as if kind of the Kardashian-esque beauty standard of 2016 has ported itself 10 years later to the seat of American power and added quite a lot of makeup to it. It's what plastic surgery used to be where it flots itself, where it kind of flots its lack of relationship to human reality, which I find kind of funny and I find almost quaint. And it also, you know, there's a way in which it mirrors the actual political policy as of the Trump

administration where power is displayed in proudly disconnecting from reality altogether. And in that way you're saying that these botox and filler faces and the approach to governing are basically the same gesture. It's saying that what is given what is human doesn't matter. I'm going to slash it to bits and you know, put some gold and lipstick on it and we're going to, you know, it's the equivalent of the Trump ballroom basically in human face form. And you know,

there's also something, it's quite, it's so aggressively female, you know, it's, there's something, this is certainly not a new observation, but it's very interesting to watch, you know, people that are very much against trans-health care, gender-affirming, you know, medical care, display a beauty look that is nothing if not gender-affirming. It's fundamentally gender-affirming surgery, like much plastic surgery is. So for like a Mara Lago woman, she's performing

maximal femininity. And for the men, this looks maxing, they're kind of surgically building maximal maleness. Totally. It's almost like drag. I mean, it's, it literally, it's, it's drag,

which is why it's always been so funny to me to see Republicans be so against drag and children's

exposure to drag. And against, again, like trans-affirming, gender-affirming medical care, because essentially all plastic surgery, you know, the, the hair transplants that men are getting

when those were the only things that, you know, that people may be got, it's gender-affirming

surgery. So there is a version of this playing out with the Treadwife trend. These influencers who have lots of followers, sometimes millions of followers, they're, they're kind of performing of femininity in another way to standing in their kitchens and in these pre-readresses. They're being domestic, they're performing submission. It's femininity content in a way. And how does this kind of fit into what you're describing this world of face altering? Well, the Treadwife thing,

“you know, there's some very kind of obvious built-in contradictions and paradoxes in it, right?”

Where the women that are most famous as Treadwives, they are not Treadwives, they are

million dollar business people, right? They, they are entrepreneurs, they make more money than

their husbands, you know, they're, you know, their heads of enormous businesses. And, you know, there's a similar kind of contradiction with the kind of dialogue of face territory where, let's say, you know, the Trump administration, it's point of view on public health is, you know, it's funny to have the beauty look of the second Trump administration be so overtly artificial, one that is only possible with injecting, you know, synthetic substances into your face and at the

same time they're saying raw milk, only, you know, they can make it happen. Yeah, like there's, there's a, there's a similar built-in contradiction between the, you know, the aggressively prescribed naturalness, quote-unquote, and then what the face is look like and what actually has to go into the faces for them to look like that. Both you and I are parents navigating this world for our children and you also wrote in your piece, how Kylie Jenner, who was famous for among other things,

altering her face, says she'd be heartbroken if her daughter got surgery as a teenager and I'm just wondering when you look at your kids, what do you see coming for them and what is your plan to navigate it? Let me illustrate this with a new anecdote. So a few months ago, my, my five-year-old daughter had seen a friend that, you know, had been handed a phone and had picked up or something. She was like, mom, one, can I get a phone? And my husband was walking the whole way and he just

started laughing and my daughter was like, why did he laugh? And he was like, because I know that how much that broke her heart and she was like, well, mom, why did that break your heart? And I was like, how do I explain this to a five-year-old? And what I said to her, as I was like, you, your imagination, your sense of freedom, your sense of what's possible is the most beautiful thing about you. And as soon as you get a phone, all of that will start to shrink. All of that

will become endangered. The most wonderful things about you will will be captured and rendered inadequate by the phone. And I think that's true, you know, with, I think that will be true with her inevitably

her relationship to her physical self. She'll find herself perfect and amazing until she sees the

things on the screen that start to tell her, you can find fault and you can improve. And I,

“you know, I guess I think about my own behavior as the only thing I can really control, you know,”

I, I guess I want her to see me valorizing the human and valorizing, you know, the actual human and not trying to improve and protect and beautify myself in my life in a way that where it seems like that's a priority. How do you do that? Because, I mean, you write that the beauty ideal is basically a mark of obedience. And then you admit on many days you still want it. You want to be seen as conventionally attractive. And I'm not going to lie even at my big ol age. I want it too. So how do

you even resist something that you still want? Yeah. I think that's the question, right? I think that's the question that this, that I hope that this piece raises, right? And it's a larger question, it doesn't just have to do with beauty. How do we look at a world where the incentives are so anti-human? And how do we deal with it? How do we live within it? And how do we where do we hold our

“ground? And I think the answer is specific to every person. But I think I think specifically with me,”

I, I wrote about optimization in my book in 2017 and, and after I wrote about it, it became clear that I could feel a difference within myself. I could feel a difference from wanting to perpetually improve and perfect versus trying to take care. And I think just on a personal level, that's the division I'm trying to draw for myself, right? That I can enjoy going yoga, trying to get

cred as, you know, a second wave radical that's resisting this altogether. And you know, I don't think

it's wrong to want to be beautiful. And from a young age, we probably also understood there's kind of a pleasure in seeing like, what could I be? Like, girls are lovely girls want to self-improve to write a path. The way that, and the way that that gets captured by these systems is almost what I want to, you know, what I feel the desire to protect in my daughter. How do we separate the desire to kind of make something of yourself from the desire that will lead you straight to capture in all of these

“systems? And I think, I think for me, you know, I just never want her to see me becoming deranged”

by this, becoming actually captured by it. I think I think she will see me her whole life,

you know, responding to it, living within the system, you know, but I never want her to think.

I never want her to see within me that the purpose of being a woman is to be as beautiful as possible all the time, you know, and to never look old, to never change, to always look like I did when I was 26. I never want her to see those incentives that exist on the internet be written on my actual activities in life. And I hope I can hold myself to that for her sake, you know? Gia Tolentino, thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you so much for having me.

Gia Tolentino is a staff writer at the New Yorker. Her new piece is called "Our Plastic Surgery Nightmare."

“In the new comedy, I want your sex. Olivia Wild plays an LA-based artist who initiates a”

dominant mis-of-relationship with her younger employee played by Cooper Hoffman, the movie which drew much acclaim at this year's Sundance Film Festival was directed by the queer cinema pioneer Gregg Iraqi. Our film critic Justin Chang has this review. When Gregg Iraqi brought his new movie, I want your sex, to this year's Sundance Film Festival, it felt like a long overdue homecoming. In the early 90s, Sundance helped launch a rocky into

the front ranks of queer independent filmmakers, with daringly sexy, funny, and violent tales of gay identity, like the living end, nowhere, and one movie whose title I can't say here. His output has been more erratic in the decades since, but in all his work,

including the 2019 TV series, Now Apocalypse, he's never lost sight of sex as a defining force

“in the lives of his characters, as well as his audiences. Or, as one character and I want your”

sex puts it, sex is everything. Those are the words of Erica Tracy, a multimedia artist who's known for her provocative work. She's played by a terrific Olivia Wild. When we first meet Erica, she's floating face down in her own Los Angeles swimming pool, while a young man in a pink bra and panties, that's Elliott, played by Cooper Hoffman, clumsily tries to save her. I was reminded of the beginning of Sunset Boulevard, and indeed, I want your sex is an erotic comedy

by way of a noirish mystery. The story flashes back several weeks to around the time Erica hires Elliott as her assistant. Elliott is smart and friendly, but also hopelessly naive, and he has no idea what he's in for when one day, Erica calls him into her office. There is something I need to speak with you about. I wouldn't want you to take this the wrong way, but the way you've been looking at me has been making me feel uncomfortable.

What? Don't pretend you haven't been flirting with me, Elliott, and it is entirely inappropriate in the workplace. Oh my god, I am so sorry. I don't even know what I've been doing exactly, but I promise whatever it is, I will stop immediately. As long as we're really on the same page about that. I would love to be on the same page. Yes. Erica's accusation is, of course, a come on. Before long, the two have crossed over into entirely inappropriate terrain,

with Erica initiating Elliott into a dominant submissive relationship. Most of their encounters take place at Erica's home and are played for easy laughs. But when they're not having sex, Erica and Elliott have some pretty pointed conversations about why so many Gen Zers like Elliott are, well, not having sex. Elliott blames COVID and overproductive parents, noting that he and his peers were raised

to fear any kind of in-person socialization, let alone intimacy. Erica calls them all out as a generation of cowards, arguing that the whole point of sex and of life itself

You could think of I want your sex as his state of the physical union address.

“At 66, he no longer represents the younger generation, but he's still clearly concerned”

for their well-being. That might have seemed condescending coming from another filmmaker, but a rocky style of comedy is warm, genuinely inclusive, and thoroughly disarming. For a moment, the movie is pure pleasure. Full of bright colors, delectable sight gags, and sharp pop culture savvy one-liners. Like when Elliott, wearing all black for a hot date, is told that he looks like an assassin in a Netflix

Yakuza movie. There are also sharp performances from Mason Gooding, as Elliott's snarky-gay co-worker, Zap, and chase sweet wonders as Elliott's best friend, Apple, who envies his forays into King. As it turns out, though, there's not much to envy. Erica invites Elliott to take their

“already wild relationship to another level, but what happens next simply doesn't ring true.”

It's the movie's most daring scene, and ultimately it's most disappointing one.

Like some other recent BDSM themed films, like Baby Girl and Pillian, I want your sex brings its leads to an emotional crisis point that lays bare the long-term limitations of the characters' arrangement. Iraqi is hardly a moralist, but he's melod abit since his more radical early days, and the movie, for all its twists and trists, follows a fairly conventional arc.

And the narrative machinery really starts to splutter in the closing stretch, as the pieces of the swimming pool mystery plot snap laboriously into place. Even so, I left I want your sex with real respect for Iraq's determination to start a cross-generational conversation, and his fun is for his characters and his actors. Hoffman, who came to fame a few years ago in Paul Thomas Anderson's licorice pizza,

has a wildly goofball charisma. He never becomes the butt of the movie's joke.

And while this outstanding is Erica, mocking her own art world pretentions one minute, delivering a sex positive monologue the next, and always seeming to keep the truth of what she really wants, under wraps. She's a classic Greg Iraqi creation. A hilarious, yet wholly serious reminder, of the slippery, unpredictable nature of human desire. Just in Chang as a film critic at The New Yorker, he reviewed "I Want Your Sex," starring Olivia Wilde. Coming up, Lee Sung-jin, the creator of

The Netflix series Beef. This is Fresh Air Weekend. The mid-terms are coming, and if you think

“the new cycle feels intense now, just wait until the fall. That's why summer is a perfect time to”

make sure your new diet is calibrated. I mean, our teen has, on a first we unpacked the three

big stories every morning so you can stay informed and get on with your day in fewer than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe up first today wherever you get podcasts. Since the 1970s, abortion on screen has been portrayed as either a medical necessity or a dangerous decision. On it's been a minute, we discuss how the many depictions of abortion have shifted with the politics of the times. Watch the full is been a minute episode on YouTube or listening to the MPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week on Shore Wave. The internet is in every corner of our lives, but more connections also means... It's easier to do cybercrime than it's ever been before. That's also because AI is making cyber attacks effortless and harder than ever to spot. So what's our counter attack to stop hackers in their tracks? Find out on Shore Wave. Listen on the MPR app or wherever you get your podcast. for the same series. Lisa as he writes what he knows and what he keeps returning to are the

pressures people carry but rarely talk about. Money, class, and the anger we sometimes swallow to get through the day. The idea for season two began when Lee was walking through his neighborhood and heard a couple arguing with each other inside of their home. Later when he told the story, his younger friends were horrified. Did you call 911 they asked? Friends his own age had almost the opposite reaction. They shrugged. Lee couldn't stop thinking about that split. What it revealed about what different

collide with the values of another. That became the new season of beef. Oscar Isaac and Kerry Mulligan

play a married couple whose ugliest private fight is secretly recorded by two young employees, Ashley and Austin played by Kayley Spani and Charles Melton. The next morning, Austin comes over and offers Mulligan's character a safe place if she needs it. And she tells him that he's misunderstood the situation. How old are you? 29. And how long have you and what's the name? Ashley. How long have you and Ashley been going out?

You're now half. Wow. So early. Well, you've got a good fight coming and when it does come,

“you too are going to be stronger for it. If I may say this, man, I don't think that's how relationship”

is work. All right. All I'll say is that all the couples I know that last, they've really had out of, you know. There's actually the ones that don't where someone's usually hiding or something. I mean, not to say that that's your situation with them. Actually, but the bad does have to come out somewhere. Don't stand. The first season of beef, starring Ali Wong and Steven Young, also grew out of a moment Lee couldn't let go of.

A road rage encounter that ended with him following another driver for nearly half an hour. That season, one eight Emmys, including outstanding limited series. Before creating beef,

Lee spent years writing for comedies, including it's always sunny in Philadelphia and Silicon Valley.

Lee sung Jen, welcome to fresh air and congratulations. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. And I'm just so curious. What was it about your friends' reaction to those people fighting in your neighborhood that really sparked this for you? Well, you know, to be honest, the actual neighbors

“are older. They're probably boomers, I think. I don't know. They're exact age, but”

when I was talking to friends and writers, it was interesting that the forty-some year olds were all defending the boomers. And I was trying to examine why that is and I'm like, oh, no, it's 'cause we're old now. We know it is like to be in a relationship. Yeah, I thought that while like elder millennials haven't really, I hadn't really seen characters wrestle with the fact

that, oh, we're starting to feel and do things that the previous generation did for the first time.

And you know, as someone is forty-four, that felt very potent and relevant. And so yeah, it just kind of sparked something in me. I also wondered, is there something very specific about midlife at this time period for millennials in particular? Because in this series, Oscar Isaac

“and Carrie Mulligan, they play Josh and Lindsay, and they're a merit couple who Josh actually”

works for this really swanky country club. And then the two younger people, they also work there, Josh has a little bit more power because he's a manager, but all of them kind of don't have a power. But they begin throughout the course of the series to battle against each other. Instead of the folks who are the ones with the money and power who are part of the country club, you know? Yeah, it's just interesting. I was very much intended. You know, I had the

privilege of, you know, getting to use the country club for a month because I was house sitting for one of my best friends who, you know, we were even friends since our mid-20s, we're broken poor together, temped in random places in LA, and he recently came into a lot of money in tech over the last few years. And so he became a member of Montesito Country Club, and now is house sitting for him for like a month, and he allowed me to use his membership while I was there, and you know,

like, I kind of turned my nose up at it, being like, that's crazy the amount of money you're paying for this place. That's so much. It's a 300K initiation fee. That's just to a plot even your yearly dues. No, so then it's dues, all this stuff, and you know, you're encouraged to donate, and then once you enter the club, it's not like it's like a free buffet. You pay for everything and everything, you know, extraordinarily costly. And, you know, I found myself like, you know, three days into

I was observing that, you know, probably most of the members are like boomer silent gen from my estimation, and then almost all the workers were millennial in Gen Z, and I thought, well, that's a, you know, analogy for 2026 if I've ever seen one, where no matter how hard the

millennials and Gen Z workers work, they're never going to get to be members. They're not going to be

“able to pay that 300K initiation fee, and that felt like an appropriate metaphor for, I think,”

how a lot of people are feeling today, you know. All right, I got to talk just for a minute about season one, because we got to talk about this road rage situation that came from a real thing that happened to you. You were in a parking lot, and you got into it with somebody, you started following them for quite a distance. And my question about this, because you tell this story often, especially during the first run of the first season, what would you have done if that person had stopped?

Uh, I, I, I probably would have just spent a way. I mean, the, the, a, a, a, a declarefival,

the reason it was such a long, sort of, uh, stalking, I, that's called it, is because, uh, I was getting on the 10, uh, one of the main highways in the lead, and it was bumper to bumper traffic. And so,

“what started very heated, then eventually you're just sort of, it's not like the movies or, or the”

show, uh, where you're chasing, you're just sort of like stuck, and then like 30 minutes go by, and then you're like, okay, I'm not that angry anymore. And then, you know, but then it was sort of for two of us on that day, we were both, uh, going to the same exit, which was on the opposite side of town. So you, okay. So I, in my car, I'm just, I've lost interest. I'm listening to music, you know, I'm just like kind of like in a better mood. And I could tell that in his car, he was like,

this psychopath is following me across bumper to bumper traffic through all of LA. And that is what fascinated me is that we're in our literal mechanical bubbles, and trapped in our own subjectivity completely unaware of what the other person is thinking or feeling. There is something that you say, almost in all of your interviews, you talk about this, um, research that you read, and I had to go digging for it, and I actually found it, and you were pretty

accurate with it. But you have mentioned this, uh, this scientific, uh, belief that our inner voices are formed by how our caregivers talk to us when we were small. And ever since I heard you say that, I've been rethinking everything. And I wanted to know how your parents talked to you. Yeah, and I'm working through that therapy actually right now. I love my parents, and I can't imagine a very young adult hood moving to a foreign country.

I'm a grantsman. I'm a grantsman. I'm not really knowing the language. You know, my dad went to grad school at University of Illinois or Banish campaign. And I, I moved here when I was nine months old with my mom and dad and slept in the dorm.

“You know, it was a dorm room that we all lived in. And, um, I think that a lot of immigrant”

parents is not just mine, um, in their parenting in that era, the 80s was like, uh, to provide, to, to help your child assimilate. And, um, to, to really make sure that this move was worth it, that that that you're trying to give your child a better life than the one that you had. And so, I think, you know, there, it's, I think it's a different love language than maybe what, like, modern Western culture is used to where, you know, now it's like gentle parenting. And you got to, like,

you know, accept the child as they are and kind of continue to make them feel supported through, like, words of affirmation. Yeah. What did your parents do? My dad was a professor of, uh, electrical and computer engineering. And he,

then worked for Samsung, which is why we moved back to Korea. And he actually designed Samsung's first

super computer, uh, which is extraordinary. And, uh, my mom, she was going to be a classical pianist, but then gave it all up to, uh, raise my sister and me. So, uh, you know, she still,

And, uh, so, you know, was able to sort of fulfill her dreams in that way.

Highly accomplished people. Yes, they are. So we're a straight-a student, almost perfect SAT or maybe you did and it's played the violin. I mean, highly, highly, you know, just academically superior. That was my parents for sure. It was a lot of, you're whole childhood was like, you know, preparing to try and get into an Ivy League school. Um, and so, hours of violin practice every day, you know, I played tennis. I, uh, you know, was, you know, self-studying for the PSATs I remember and like,

want to say like six grade. And, uh, yeah, and, and, and, and in a work, I got into an Ivy

“League school and University of Pennsylvania. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I think the way the”

spoke to me makes sense with my inner monologue. I am very, like, you know, results driven and, um, you know, I just saw the Novak joke of which, uh, trailer, uh, that came out this week and hearing, hearing him talk about, like, tennis and stuff. I think the trailer's supposed to like, highlight like, oh, like, look how, like, how, how, how harsh he is on himself. And to me, I'm just like, oh, that's me. What did you see in him and yourself? Just this drive for, uh, to prove

everyone wrong, to, to this drive for excellence, this unrelenting work ethic, uh, to push yourself past your breaking point. Um, and I think that's something that, uh, I'm, I'm actually I'm glad that wasn't still didn't meet at a young age because I don't think I can like get through a season of beef without, uh, without that work ethic, you know. Your family moved a lot. You all moved, as you mentioned, you lived up and down the Midwest, um, in Texas and then up, um, Minnesota, um, you go to

you, Penn, you graduate and economics. Is that right? And then you decide, I don't want to do this anymore,

and you move to New York and the first night you get there, your car is like, people steal everything

except for an Aladdin. Uh, CVD. Yes. Um, what were you planning to do there? I thought maybe music, you know, I applied to so many music internships, uh, because I was so musical, um, that didn't

“really pan out. Uh, I remember there was this one forum, back when internet forums were more of a”

thing where a jackpotty, who is the guitarist for Bon Jovi, and just started a record label, and he posted that he was looking to hire interns. And I remember replying on that forum, sent my resume, and he was based in New Jersey, and I would drive out, and I was just like, Fox CDs and think from promotional materials, and I was able to leverage asking like, hey, I got all my being an intern, but is it okay if I create business cards of my own where I can like,

have my title be like director of research? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. And he was cool with it. So then I remember printing those out, and in New York, I, I, I, I didn't know anybody saw this, I was so alone, like, I, I, I, I, I, I, the, I'm not exaggerating when I say I did not have a friend. And so I would Google where like the free events were that night, you know, so there'd be some like, you know, condying us to be having some like release party at the Rimez store, and I would go get dressed up in

my one suit with my little self-made business card. I would stand in line, and I would sneak into the party, and then I would eat the free food, and that would be the dinner for my day, because I was so poor, and then I would just like try to, like, run the elbows in hand out like my business card,

“everybody. But like, how brave you are? I think I was just desperate. Okay, so you, um, you become an NBC page,”

which is a program that you get to give tours to tourists and things through at 30 Rock,

and this really, uh, amazing thing happens while you're, um, a page, the head of, um, comedy

sees, uh, something that you wrote and says, like, you're super talented, gets you hooked up with an agent, you get an agent, you move to LA, um, things get so tough for you while you're in LA, but you're

cot and a, yeah, and a different department. Yeah, you know, I, I, my then writing partner and I went

“with sort of the fancy estate agent and, uh, who was like, you have to move out by up front. And so we”

gave our jobs two weeks notice and moved out here, and I didn't bring my bed, because I was like, oh, I'm going to be like a working writer and I'll buy a bed eventually, and just nothing happened,

like, couldn't get the agent to return our calls, uh, you know, didn't really go out for any

meetings, and suddenly it dawned on me, like, oh, I've made a huge mistake, and, uh, had to start

“tempting, you know, and I, in the meantime, I needed a place to sleep, so my then roommate's girlfriend”

worked at a hospital, and she brought home a cot for me to sleep on. I slept on it for probably a year and a half. Yeah, yeah, I don't recommend. You'll have, like, a long time back as she is, and, uh, you know, was doing that for probably almost two years, uh, the writer's strike also happened, um, and she does a, yep, and then, right after the writer's strike, uh, just so fortunate that

“Rob Charlie and Glenn had its always sunny, um, I think they read a sample and asked for a meeting,”

and the meeting only lasted, like, ten minutes, and I thought I, for sure didn't get it, and, but then that, that changed my life. Lee Sung-Jun, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks so much. Lee Sung-Jun is the creator of the Netflix series Beaf. The latest season is up for 16 immunominations. Fresh air weekend is produced by Teresa Madden. Fresh air's executive producer is Sam Bregar. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer this week is

Adam Stana-Chef's heat, with Terry Gross, I'm Tony Mosley. The midterms are coming, and that means the new cycle, which is already intense, is about to get more intense this fall. So, the summer is a perfect time to make sure your news diet is calibrated.

I'm Layla Faudzell, on up first, we unpack the three biggest stories every morning, so you can

stay informed and get on with your day in less than 15 minutes. Follow or subscribe to up first today wherever you get your podcasts. On this season of Planet Money Summer School, we follow the money, and not just the dollars we're following the Yuan, the Naira, the Krona, and more. Every Wednesday this summer, we're taking you on a world tour to meet the people trying new solutions to old economic problems. Planet Money Summer School, perhaps in friends,

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