Hotel hallways: the loneliest places in the universe.

We’re not supposed to like Michael Stone in Anomalisa. This beautiful stop-motion film, from the byzantine mind of Charlie Kaufman, might impress us with its craft, might make us laugh at its absurdity, but it doesn’t want us to root for its main character Michael. Michael may be at the center of the film, but he is also its villain. It’s a cautionary tale.

The film deals with loneliness, that feeling that sometimes creeps in that we’re somehow apart from and different than everyone else, that we’re tortured and misunderstood and experiencing some special sort of malaise that’s specific to us while everyone else goes on happily living.

Anomalisa confronts us with this phenomenon of both self-absorbtion and self-doubt at once, captures the emptiness it leaves in our hearts by creating a beautiful visual metaphor of Michael’s worldview in which everyone looks and sounds like the same bland person. His perspective shows us at our worst. And yet he gives a lovely speech (as a renowned expert in customer service) about striving to see each person’s individuality, their complexity, their personal pains and failings, that maybe Michael can’t quite live up to himself but must in his heart believe to be true. His speech, even if he can’t practice what he preaches, represents us at our best. Kaufman knows this, and shows us his anxiety of falling on the wrong side of the divide.

When do you feel loneliest or most disconnected from the world and the people around you, not so much physically, but emotionally?

Has anything ever made you feel at a distance from the rest of the world, as if removed from or different than everyone else?

How do you combat that feeling and try to see others as people, not a sea of “everyone else”? Does it work? Does it make life better?

I’ve been to the Google campus. They have mint flavored water.

The stories of tech company largesse and their endless perks are the stuff of legend. Free gourmet lunches, access to gyms, biking around campus, private shuttle busses with wifi and cushy seats. It all makes working in tech sound like paradise from the outside. But The Economist cites a survey that maybe all the free snacks and massages only go so far.

A survey last year of 5,000 such workers at both tech and non-tech firms, by TINYPulse, a specialist in monitoring employee satisfaction, found that many of them feel alienated, trapped, under-appreciated and otherwise discombobulated. Only 19% of tech employees said they were happy in their jobs and only 17% said they felt valued in their work. In many areas they were even more discontented than non-tech workers: 36% of techies felt they had a clear career path compared with 50% of workers in areas such as marketing and finance; 28% of techies said they understand their companies’ vision compared with 43% of non-techies; and 47% of techies said they had good relations with their work colleagues compared with 56% of non-techies.

If free candy can’t make a person happy with their job (to the point of being DISCOMBOBULATED, no less!), then I ask you: WHAT CAN?

Would the lavish perks of the tech sector make you like your job more?

Which perks actually improve life vs sounding good from the outside?

If not, what is the real key to being happy at a job?

Are unhappy tech workers right to be dissatisfied despite the perks, or are they being entitled and not appreciating their good fortune?

“If I could drop this mic, I would, but it’s attached to the podium.”

While listening to Obama on WTF with Marc Maron I remember thinking, in that more conversational, less guarded interview with the president, that more than anything else, he’s a brilliant man that is deeply saddened he couldn’t do more as president.

A lot of those same feelings came through in his final State of the Union speech last week. He’s always been a great speaker, he’s obviously very smart, and wants to make an impact that makes America better. That made him a good president, even if the obstacles in his way (which he dedicated almost a quarter of the speech to addressing) kept him from being one of the great legends he idolized like Lincoln or Roosevelt.

But in another year he’ll be done, and still a relatively young, healthy, driven individual. Still a charismatic figure, still an educated law maker and policy wonk. Where does that potential turn next?

What would you like to see Obama do after being president?

Who’s post-presidency will his most resemble?

What would make the biggest difference?

What do you hope he definitely doesn’t do?

Featuring Steve Carrell as Angry Guy and Ryan Gosling as Slick Dude.

The Big Short probably shouldn’t exist as a movie. As an explanation of exactly how and why the financial meltdown of 2008 happened, it’s fascinating, and does a reasonable job laying out the series of events. But if you’ve read enough news articles, or listened to some of the great podcasts from This American Life or Planet Money since these events unfolded, it’s not really offering a lot of new info. As a story about a few specific finance guys who saw it coming and took action, it’s compelling, but also packed to the gills with journalism and outright explaining disguised as drama, just to allow the audience to follow along.

What results feels like a mix between a Michael Moore movie (specific agenda and point of view, humorous fourth-wall-breaking style) and the most star-studded, entertaining dramatization to escape the confines of what could have otherwise been a talking-head documentary. Its script makes it fun while its facts make it depressing; it has a stylish tone and voice I enjoyed, but comes off as schizophrenic in what type of movie it wants to be.

But that’s the film as an experience. Strangely, the movie seems only glancingly concerned with the moral questions involved. It clearly takes the stance of “The Big Banks are Evil,” which pretty much every non-rich person agrees with going in. The handful of traders and fund managers who saw the signs early enough to profit from it serve as our gateway into the story, a useful device for all the explaining the film has to do as they figure it all out. But while the movie also paints these people as our “heroes” — we follow their actions, we root for them to succeed — it pays only lip service to the fact that their success comes on the backs of millions of people losing their homes or jobs, and the entire globe suffering a huge financial disaster. There’s a lot of glee at them pulling it all off, only a couple quiet moments of realization at the implications. It’s so interested in using these characters to make a bigger point about “the system”, it brushes the possibly-more-nuanced character question under the rug in the process.

So.

If you know something terrible is going to happen, affecting millions of people, but stopping it is out of your control, is it wrong to take action to personally profit from that tragedy?

How would you feel about doing it?
Should it be legal or should the system be changed to prevent it?
Is it better that someone benefit than no one?
Would you feel obligated to use that profit for good?

Playing an instrument is the least interesting answer, but still valid.

In a piece called “Bringing Up Genius”, about a family of chess prodigies whose parents started them young, practiced with them constantly, and produced some of the world’s top players, we hear from some experts who make the argument that any child can be exceptional with the right amount of dedication and guidance. Others say it’s a combination of inborn talents and practice; not all who put in the “Ten Thousand Hours” will become great, not all who become great have to practice nearly that much to achieve that greatness.

But this line of research is only so useful: it’s too late for us adults to put these findings to use on ourselves, really. (Although one example, a man who quit his job to practice golf for 10,000 hours in an attempt to go pro, makes for a fun anecdote.) It is however, fun to imagine what could have gone differently. Our answers, looking back, tell us what we really value now that we wish we had known sooner in life.

If you could change one thing about how you were raised, what would you wish your family had done differently?

How would that make a difference in your life today?

Would you be a “better” person, or just a different one?