Teddy Wayne, Author of 'The Au Pair'

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
You're listening to Bloomberg Businessweek with Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec on Bloomberg Radio.

**Carol Massar** (0:14)
Teddy Wayne writes novels you can't put down.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:16)
I already know I'm outnumbered, but go ahead.

**Carol Massar** (0:18)
Yeah, sorry, Carol. No, you can hang.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:21)
I can hang.

**Carol Massar** (0:21)
You can hang. All right. Teddy Wayne writes novels you can't put down. I know this because I've read all seven of them. They include The Winner, which has been optioned by Sony for a film starring Tom Holland, The Great Man Theory, The Love Song of Johnny Valentine, Capitoil, and others.
Teddy's a novelist, a screenwriter. He's also a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, McSweeney's, other publications too. He was a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, Penn Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

**Tim Stenovec** (0:47)
I feel like it's Outlander for guys. I'm just going to put it out there. But anyway, his new book, The Au Pair is a literary thriller that comes out tomorrow. We're not going to spoil it. We're going to get to that in just a moment. Teddy, of course, joining us in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio. Welcome, welcome.

**Teddy Wayne** (1:03)
Thank you for having me.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:03)
Your book is being kind of passed around our newsroom, to be quite honest, and different people reading it. Anyone who reads your book, and I listen to a bunch of podcasts, it's often men who make really questionable or in some cases really bad decisions. What's up with that?

**Teddy Wayne** (1:21)
I think I'm just entranced by the idea of someone destroying their life, who has a pretty one, a fairly accomplished or content life, but is driven by the American pursuit of more and more, more happiness, more money, more sex, more status, and that ambition is their downfall.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:41)
Why are you so interested in that?

**Teddy Wayne** (1:43)
I live in New York City. It's all around me. That's so fair. I'm at Bloomberg right now.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:48)
That is so fair.

**Teddy Wayne** (1:49)
The mecca of ambition and status and money.

**Tim Stenovec** (1:52)
It does feel like we live in a society, but certainly in the New York Metro, it's never enough, right?

**Teddy Wayne** (1:58)
It should be. We all know that instinctively. We all have been taught that over and over many times in our lives. But when you're actually presented with the opportunity and the potential to get more, it's very hard to turn it down.

**Tim Stenovec** (2:08)
There was somewhere on a podcast you talked about billionaires specifically, and you were like, you know, that's not what people really want to be or shouldn't be. It's not like all of a sudden everybody's so happy or like everything's solved.

**Teddy Wayne** (2:20)
There is that stat. I'm sure you guys know that study that people's happiness rises to a certain income level and then maybe it tails off. I think the original number is $75,000 a year. They upgraded that to $150,000 or something because of inflation, perhaps.
I strongly believe that past a certain point, it actually goes down your happiness, that you might have more material comfort, of course. You might feel in some sense like you won at life. But the people I know who are in that kind of ultra-rich, high net worth category tend to have thinner relationships, tend to feel like if they don't recognize it themselves, that people like them for their money and their power. And I think it's very difficult to have that kind of level of wealth, not even income, and still have an authentically happy life.

**Carol Massar** (3:10)
Well, perhaps it's a good segue to talk about your new book, The Au Pair. It goes on sale tomorrow. We're speaking with Teddy Wayne. He's a novelist, author, screenwriter.
The Au Pair is a literary thriller. It's about a middle-aged novelist who lives in Brownstone, Brooklyn.
He's married. The marriage is not so great. A young Norwegian Au Pair enters the picture.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:29)
Okay.

**Carol Massar** (3:30)
Right there.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:31)
It's trouble. I mean, come on.

**Carol Massar** (3:32)
I'm not going to give everything away, but let's just say things get a lot messier.

**Tim Stenovec** (3:36)
Yes.

**Carol Massar** (3:36)
It sounds like they're going to get. You talk about writing about what you know and what you're surrounded by. That profile of Stephen, the main character, middle-aged, plays pickleball. I guess you play pickleball too.
He has two kids, lives in a certain part of Brooklyn. That's very similar to you.