NEED TO KNOW | Gary Shteyngart on dachshunds, Lenin and reading Twain in Russia | PBS

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/culture/video-gary-shteyngart-on-dachshu... How much of what ails America can be blamed on Facebook? According to best-selling author Gary Shteyngart, quite a lot. Shteyngart's new satirical novel, "Super Sad True Love Story," imagines a world in which the American economy has collapsed and people no longer read. People communicate primarily in online slang, through smart phones and social networking sites. Shteyngart speaks with NEED TO KNOW's Jon Meacham about nostalgia for communication in an ever-digitizing world, the heroism of immigration, and his childhood novel -- commissioned by his grandmother -- starring Lenin and a magical goose. Need to Know airs Fridays on PBS. Watch full-length episodes of Need to Know at http://video.pbs.org/program/1458405365/

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• gary shteyngart
• super sad true love story
• absurdistan
• eunice park
• lenny abramov
• new yorker
• 20 under 40
• facebook
• jon meacham

[princeandrey]

@melkaira Oh, please. NYU students! They're on the cutting edge of vacuousness.

[melkaira]

The whiteness of Meacham's eyes is distracting.

[landline00]

Bullshit that college kids at NYU didn't know how to interact without Facebook. He's a one idea guy and an old idea at that.

[SinnFein4ever]

I heard them talking about this on NPR the day before yesterday.

It's actually a pretty good newstory.

Which is quite a change from the ussual drivel that this new "Need To Know" series puts out.

For example, one of their first stories/vidios was about the "danger" of parents letting their kids eat hotdogs, because of "the risk of choking".