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Keeping It Fake With Eric Wilson

Eric Wilson is an English professor at Wake Forest University whose new book 'Keep It Fake' draws on the science, philosophy and social pressures that shape our lives.
Wake Forest University
Eric Wilson is an English professor at Wake Forest University whose new book 'Keep It Fake' draws on the science, philosophy and social pressures that shape our lives.
Eric Wilson is an English professor at Wake Forest University whose new book 'Keep It Fake' draws on the science, philosophy and social pressures that shape our lives.
Credit Wake Forest University
Eric Wilson is an English professor at Wake Forest University whose new book 'Keep It Fake' draws on the science, philosophy and social pressures that shape our lives.

Eric Wilson argues that the often-said phrases "shoot straight from the hip," "tell it like it is," and "keep it real" are all fallacies.

We regularly create less-than-authentic identities, whether it is through Facebook profiles, plastic surgeries, or tuning into a news channel that simply verifies our opinions, according to Wilson.

But he also says we should embrace the ways we choose to show ourselves, even if they are "fake." After all, if everything is fake, then everything is real, too.A conversation with English professor and author Eric Wilson

In his new book, Keep It Fake (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/2015), Wilson draws on the science, philosophy and social pressures that shape our inauthentic lives, including his own.

Host Frank Stasio talks with Wilson, an English professor at Wake Forest University, about the pursuit of "inventing an authentic life."

Copyright 2015 North Carolina Public Radio

Will Michaels started his professional radio career at WUNC.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.