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Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Fanta to prove trust. Go to vanta.com calm hi, everyone. This is Pivot from the Vox Media podcast network.
I'm Kris Swisher. And I'm Scott Galloway. Scott, what is going on? How are you doing?
What season of Simpsons are you on? Oh, we're on season three, and we're starting to. We're cheating on the Simpsons. We're starting to watch the Family Guy, and I'm gonna watch the Wonder Years because I'm very emotional, but my kids will have none of it.
But I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for one person getting me through the crisis. Who is that? Joe? Exotic.
Oh, my God. Are you still doing the tiger? I was watching the tiger thing. People move.
It's so interesting, you know, they move from love is blind to tiger. Whatever. Tiger. Tiger king.
Why do you like it? It'll be a movie. Movie. Apparently, it just makes you feel really good about yourself.
It's like when you're driving a minivan, you need to say over and over yourself, I like myself. I. This show says your life is not that bad. This show says you have good judgment.
When you're watching the show, you're like, wow, I got my shit together. I have my shit together. It's really like, more schadenfreude. That's your favorite thing.
Schadenfreude. Oh, hands down. Hands down. But it's.
It's got sex, it's got murder, it's got big cats. I've decided I'm a monkey person. Monkey people are weird, but they're not mean. Tiger people are mean, so I'm definitely a monkey person.
Apparently, there's a lady who's after him, right? They're all after each other. It's really. It's really well done.
Netflix. I Just, I always imagine what executive production or content executive goes into. Who. And how do they pitch this shit?
And what kind of vision and batch of crazy vision does it take to say, oh, wait, there's this gay polygamist living in. I think he's in Kentucky who has a big cat farm, who launches a plot to murder someone who's about to be murdered, whose boyfriends are addicted to meth. And someone says, that's a go. That's a go.
If the minute he said gay, polygamous, I'm on, that's a go. Come on. I watched. Speaking of Netflix is really.
I'm really exploring. Netflix is unorthodox. It's about a woman who loves the story. It's really good.
It's about a woman who leaves a Hasidic sect in Williamsburg and moves to Berlin and her escape from that. And it's really good. And she becomes, you know, she leaves the. Leaves the group.
And it's good. You know, it's your typical kind of story like that. But it's really the actresses and Israeli actresses I do love. And it's like, mostly in Yiddish and there's very few subtitles.
And so it's amazing. Like, it's very cheap with the subtitles. And then so you sort of get what's going on there. It goes between English and Yiddish, but a lot of Yiddish.
And it was just. It's great. It's great. Yes.
We're watching a lot of tv. I think you should watch the Bloody Years. It's very sweet that you're trying to. That's an old show for those of you who weren't born, you know, before 1980.
It is nice. It's really. It's really cute, too. It's really nice.
I would suggest West Wing. That's what I'm going to suggest, too. All right, we're going over, finish our TV watching because this is an endless Sunday that we're involved in, which is going to continue for 30 more days, which is amazing. But one of the things about this is that obviously the big headlines about public health issues at stake and the extension of the quarantine ideas, the guidelines from the feds to April 30th now, which we'll see what goes on, because I think the situation in New York is just terrible and it's expanding outwards from there, but everything is just changing, including being on the Internet all the time.
Let's talk about. The companies are dealing with added traffic and how this will change the conversation. I think people won't be using it as much traffic for but last week the average time to download videos, emails and documents increased broadband speeds declined 4.9%. That's not a surprise.
Medium download speeds have dropped hugely in New York. Obviously companies are trying to mitigate the issue. YouTube said reduce the quality of videos from high to standard definition across the globe. And Zuckerberg gave a quote that he was just trying to keep the lights on like he's a Motel 6, I guess.
Given massive volume and working from home challenges, European regulators are pushing Netflix and other streaming services to reduce the size of their video files so that safe on bandwidth. In the United States, regulators gave wireless carriers access more spectrum which is interesting. That's always for sale. Disney delayed the start of Disney plus streaming service in France by two weeks.
AT&T's networks are up and hugely these data caps are lifted for customers. You know, it just shows how much we rely on the Internet. And for those who do not have this Internet access there's certainly they have issues around information and also entertainment for people who are sitting at home. So what do you think about what is going to happen with these companies?
What's the play from your perspective? Well, we literally have everyone talks about it but it looks like we're, we haven't broken the Internet but we're definitely straining it. And it's of course you don't know. It's not a real crisis until YouTube and Netflix start sending content out in standard definition instead of high definition.
That's really what you call almost like peak corona. It's I wonder though if we think about the companies that are really surging here. I mean this might be one of those moments where I don't know if we're ever going to go back. I think people have become so I don't know what's going on in your household but we're just literally if you had electricity and people thought about all right, what are the jobs that electricity creates?
It's massive construction, massive capital infrastructure manufacturing to build everything from a nuclear reactor to a coal fire plant. If it's a coal fire plant to produce electricity. Think about the mines. You think about the union jobs.
You kind of reverse engineer millions of middle class jobs and you think about the surge here. It sort of reverse engineers to a number of high paying jobs that are more on technology information age and a distraction of traditional jobs. So it's just everywhere you look here it's sort of I got invited on Today show as a Sunday morning episode and they asked me to do something from home on retail trends. And I was trying to think of what's new here.
And my only, my only sort of insight was the trends really aren't different in retail post Corona. They're just accelerating. And it feels like the one trend around income inequality where the jobs are. When you think about what's surging here, you know, whether it's pickup, if it's curbside pickup of grocery, whether it's delivery of food, the jobs that will be destroyed will be replaced by fewer higher paying jobs.
And it just feels as if that's absolutely happening everywhere that we're going to everything we're worried about. Income inequality is arguably one of the things that's been most damaging or most susceptible about this virus because it's now looking like certain counties or metros in New York area that are going to be the hardest hits are the ones that are sort of more middle or lower income. And this is in the technology that we're embracing. All the trends we're embracing are only going to accelerate that.
So it's anyways, it's, it's interesting breaking the Internet. We think about what happened if our Internet went down right now. That would be the virus attack. If somebody wanted to really take advantage of society, I don't think it can break down as a whole bunch of.
Right. Yeah. I think if there was a huge attack, it would be a problem for me. What's interesting is how much, how different the experience is.
There's sort of the rich people's time on the Internet right now just talking about Tiger King, no insult, but you know what I mean, like talking about things they're watching, things they're doing, like doing dinner parties or cocktail parties online. There's a wedding, there was actually a wedding online on Zoom and things like that. And then there's, you know, other people using it for informational purposes. But it's a very different experience for people.
One is this heavy entertainment and trading tips around things they're watching, which is meaning people that, you know, just thinking that like, even though this is difficult, when the 30th was added, everything's gonna be extended, my kids are gonna go longer. I was like, oh God, this is gonna go on. And I realized how easy we have it here. Sort of our comfortable homes and enough money to see us through and you know, comforts like the Internet.
So it's a very different experience. And the experience other people are having are just not the same. Especially they're not linked into, you know, what's going on almost constantly Well, a lot of people have to go to work. I mean, there's still people who have to go to work that just really don't have a choice.
And it's. I mean, it just, it just goes back again. I do think that legislation will hopefully help that puts some money in people's pockets and helps them make better decisions or reduces their stress around the economic stress here. What I find are the biggest tension I'm dealing with with all these board meetings and companies trying to figure out what to do.
It's the stress between. I've actually found CEOs have been very responsible. I'm really impressed by some of the leadership at some of the companies I'm working with in terms of them really, their executive teams really rallying and trying to figure out what's the best thing to do and addressing the issue head on. Is this tension around when we start the economy and when we ensure that this virus is kind of stamped out and we don't have a relapse.
And at the same point, there is a valid argument. I don't like the argument and I think people are going to err on the wrong side of this. But the argument around when do we in fact restart the economy? At what point does economic damage or lasting damage to the economy become a real issue?
And what. I don't like it. I don't know if you saw the latest thing, but this notion kind of a B and cities where certain cities will come back online faster. And the.
Really. Bill Gates came online and it's interesting. I would say one of the winners is Bill Gates. I think people are really trying to him for kind of thoughtful, sober information.
He's very apolitical, which is welcome in this environment. But he said, he's come out and said that's a really bad idea that you've got to. You've got to turn the lights on and bleach every corner of this thing. And it's.
There's no, there's no place here that's going to be spared. And you've got to approach this as a whole and not start making excuses. Well, Montana can open up again. No, I.
Actually, the point is it doesn't matter if Montana. No one sells the Montanans, but nobody. No, you're not going to change the Internet. It's going to change locally.
You're not going to change the economy. You know, on a national level. I think the areas are part of the big cities where all the economic value is in most, most cases. Correct.
Yeah, I think, I think That's. I think that's right. It's the coast. Right.
But what's just. I mean, we're definitely having two pandemics. There's a pandemic taking place on the coast where CNN and the New York Times and anyone who isn't concerned about this isn't reading the New York Times, watching cnn. And then there's people who get their media from Fox who are sort of more like, well, we gotta get back to work.
And there really are two pandemics here. And it's dangerous and kind of strange that we no longer, Jonathan Hyde said, Ever since 9 11, we probably will never again have a shared experience as a nation. We'll each have our own experience based on our political beliefs, our tribes, our ideology. And it does feel like we're having two pandemics.
But even I'm sort of down the screen, I think everyone has a little bit of what I call a. I don't call it a breaking point, but it all sort of aggregates. And you wake up in the morning and you just really depress and start feeling what I would call mild grief. You start hearing about people, you know that have it.
You start, you know, your kids and your family wearing on you, your situation wearing on you not understanding this. I still. I mean, as much data as I try to turn to, I just still really don't understand all of this. But the thing that got me really down yesterday, Carol, I was thinking about, you know, American exceptional.
Exceptionalism. I'm guilty of that. I think early on I thought, oh, it's terrible in China, but it's not gonna come here just because we're different and we're better. We don't have wet markets.
The flu starts in China and ends in China every year. And American exceptionalism, there's just no getting around it. What American exceptionalism means. Right now, we have the most cases.
We had a lot of time to prepare where, you know, we are so far behind. And what has been really, the only thing we knew was the frontline defense on this. And that is testing. We've done one third per capita, the testing of South Korea and Italy still.
And American exceptionalism right now is a reconfigured refrigerator, tractor trailer in Queens where they're storing body bags. That is what American. Scott, you're in a dark place. The question to me is tested.
Have you been tested? I haven't either. I would have been recently. That's exactly right here.
I wouldn't know where the fuck to get tested. I'm a Person with a lot of resources. I like to think I'm well read. And this is where America is right now.
I have no, I have no idea where we even start to get tested and tested as a front line of defense. And we like to think we're so innovative. We're still having all these conversations around the fact we can't figure out a way to get ventilators. And then we have the new czar, this guy Pier Navarro, who's like the latest guy who's giving Victory day speeches all over the nation and not offering any numbers.
I mean, he. Listen to this guy, okay? We're. Well, he's been an idiot for a long, long time.
So, you know, he's been sitting on the edges, making a mess of everything else. And so now they inserted him here. I mean, I just. You're right, like thinking about the idea that you and I don't know how to get tested.
It should be like, we know how to get a driver's license. We know how to do blank, blank, blank. But I have no. There's no.
Like, here's where you go, here's the link. Everybody get tested. And then once you know, what, what do you do? Then?
Like, you don't. So then what? Like, I feel like. I feel like the response.
I feel as if we're doing okay. I don't say we're doing okay, but we're doing as well as other places. But we like to think, and I believe this, that we really are exceptional. America is exceptional.
Our spirit, our grit, our creativity, our generosity as a people, we really are exceptional. Our economic might. But the harsh reality is a mix of a total delegitimization and deprioritization of funding our government and respect for employees. At the end of World War II, 5% of our employees were federal employees.
Now it's 2%. We have no respect for them. We've decided to cut taxes over and over and deprivitize government and things like the cdc. We have this fetishization with localization where we leave it up to local states to make decisions, which is mean of outsourcing funding and decisions.
This resulted in a series of jewelry, bag of donuts, health departments that don't know what they're doing. Where people say, oh, oh, you know, we're not going to close the beaches as they did down here in Florida. Yeah, Florida, you know, people down in Florida really killing it. But it's strange so far, so far, and I've been obsessed with the site out of the university of Washington looking at statistics around this stuff.
So far we've actually, it doesn't look that bad down here, to be fair. So far, Florida doesn't look that bad. It doesn't look like we're on track for a New York or a Washington like crisis, but there's just no getting around it. A lack of, a lack of leadership where we politicize everything, where we see everything as an opportunity to make the president look stupid for the president on a campaign rally.
A lack of coordination. This exceptionalism, narcissism, where we decided we can't learn from China. You're in a very dark place. I'm going to pull you out right now.
Grab me by the hands, help me out. You're perfect for our friend. Pivot is going to help you, walk you through your grief. But.
But it is. I'll tell you what we all have in common is the Internet. We have the Internet in common. Thank goodness for the Internet.
Honestly think or maybe you wouldn't know what you don't know. I mean, it's so one of the things is the abilities, speaking of being the government, knowing things that they do know. They're using the Wall Street Journal have a piece about the federal government through the CDC and state local governments to start to receive analysis of the present movement of people in certain geographic areas of interest. The data is coming from the mobile advertising industry, which already follows you around.
They have billions and billions of geographic data points and hundreds of millions of cell phones, mostly from the applications. The track location which everyone allows to have happen and it shows which establishments, parks and public squares are still drawing crowds so that they can stop people there. And one case, researchers found that New Yorkers were congregating large numbers in Brooklyn's Prospect park, which you could do by actually going into Prospect park that was there a couple weeks ago and handed that information over to local authorities. So, you know, light from Chicago closed down lakefront trails and beaches.
So should you get special notification if your data is being used in that way? And there is a public good versus personal privacy issue, you know, houses different, different locations. It's just interesting to, I think in times of emergency probably is a very good idea as long as it's anonymized. But I don't know.
What do you think? Well, we've had this conversation a lot and I come out on the side of I still have a lot of faith, I would say, in judges and our legislators to decide, okay, do you anonymize the data? Do you scrub it? I don't think the folks at Google.
Well, maybe the folks at Facebook, because they're just. They just seem to be psychotic to me, are just so sociopathic that they would think they're doing the right thing and then accidentally forget to spread the data. So I think Facebook is probably the organization you can trust least in the world right now. Maybe with exception to GRU or someone that's an adversary line, because I think they've just totally obsessed with shareholder value despite the damage to the Commonwealth.
But I think every other organization, you know, my sense is in times like this that there are risks that should be taken. It does warrant a special. I don't call it violation of our rights, but I think during wartime, you know, and I don't agree with what happened during 911 in terms of violating people's personal civil liberties and targeting people or profiling people. But you and I have this conversation a lot.
I think exceptional times are exceptional measures. And I think most people, they receive an alert. You know how you get those Amber alerts on your phone that says a car has been stolen or there's been a child that's gone missing? You know, that's a violation of your privacy.
I didn't ask for anybody to send me that stuff, but I decided during emergencies it makes sense. And I think if you send people text messages saying, we would like to notify you about whether you've been exposed or we are tracking and maybe like them, opt in, maybe you don't. I think most people at this point would opt in. I think people are more scared of the virus than they are violation of civil liberties.
Right now, they're the guy. That guy. That's always the case. That happens all the time and that you just don't know which one it is.
So paint the scenario here. Paint what you're afraid of. I think it's that people overreach. What happens to the Patriot Act?
Everyone's terrified, and so they say, yes, yes, yes, please take away my civil liberties for a short time. But any people overreach, and I think that's just the issue in this case. There are other ways to do it. I'm actually testing one thing where it takes your temperature all the time, which is a good way to understand that there's some difference in your health and stuff.
There's all kinds of creative ways that we can monitor people with their cooperation, and that's all. You know, again, I want the same thing as cooperation. And yes, I can do it and not do it in a terrified way. Explain to them.
We need to do this because these companies are in touch with everyone every day of the week and twice on Sunday. And they. It could be a very easy thing. On Facebook.
We're going to do this. If you have an objection, you can opt out right here like that. Perhaps that maybe just do that. Or this will be anonymized.
This will be. It's very easy. They're in constant touch with you. You know, I get more texts about when my FedEx package is going to be delivered than I do on something like this.
Like I'm having FedEx delivered today and I've had 20 notices. They could do it. They could do it. That's all.
I'm just. You know. And then people can decide. I think it's just.
It's. They always have. There's always some national emergency that requires the Veronica civil liberties. And it just should be with the cooperation people.
I think most people would cooperate and people don't want to cooperate. You know, you can figure something else out. But I don't know. Anyway, we've got to go.
I think people right now are. Will be willing to put up with this. But I think at some point they do have to realize that they're being tracked all over the place and still a critically important issue. Especially around advertisers who are just totally misusing your data constantly.
I don't want that idea to get lost in this sauce here. Right. I think it's good that you're taking your temperature. I don't.
I don't feel the need to take my temperature because I'm always at room temperature. Are you? I'll tell you about it. A whole column in the New York Times.
I'm doing it. It's this project that's going. How do you do that? What did you wear something?
You were going to have to wait and read about it. It's really cool. Anyway. Compelling journalism.
You'll see. You' see? You'll see. I'll talk about it.
That's a page turner. Shut up. Listen. It's not Tiger.
Mama. Whatever. I see a politer in your future. Tiger.
It's not Tiger. Whatever the fuck that is. Anyway. All right, Scott, it's time for quick.
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For your next home project, try thumbtack. Hire the right pro today. Scott, how are you and your spouse getting along in this quarantine? Well, we have to figure out when the social distancing is over so I can let her back in the house.
But other than that, that's my big joke. That's my big jo. I think, I think we'll ask Esther about this, but I think relationships are bifurcating into two areas. Your second and third order degree relationships are getting closer, reaching out to old friends and I would argue the first degree relationships, we're all going through sort of the mild Stockholm syndrome where we'll come out of the stronger, hopefully.
But it's definitely. There's some strains in first degree relationships. What's going on with you and Amanda? Everything's great.
I don't buy that. No, we're getting along great. We are. We have nice to each other.
We have wonderful meals. So anyway, we're gonna have. We are. We can talk about more.
This is Esther Perel. She's on the line to help. She's a renowned therapist and host of the podcast where should we Begin And How's Work? She's hosting a miniseries, a new miniseries podcast called Couples Under Lockdown.
Esther, welcome to Pivot. So tell us what your thoughts are, sort of your high level thoughts of the challenges couples and families are facing right now. So. Hi, Cara.
Look, there's a number of very interesting dynamics happening. They're not going to be in order of importance, but each and every one of Them is significant. You know, first is the fact that usually in a family or in a couple, you have multiple roles of which there is a location for these roles. There's a place to be the parent, there's a place to be the lover, a place to be the partner, a place to be the friend, the professional, the worker.
Here you have a collapse of all the roles in one space and they are intersecting with each other all the time. Sometimes the only boundary left is the mute button on your zoom. Then you have the fact that people are experiencing prolonged uncertainty, acute stress, the grief that comes with the world that you have known no longer being nearly as predictable and no one knowing really where this is going. But people don't mention it as grief.
So what they have is different coping styles about how they deal with the unknown. Those who become, you know, clear organizers. Because it's as if order, we provide a bull warp against the chaos of the external world and the one that is rising inside of us. And those who are wanting to talk all the time with other people and check in and have a sense of what's going on with everyone and those who are thinking that their partner is making too big a deal of it and those wanting that their partner is not cautious enough.
And so you have this polarization going on around the way that people deal with fear, with anger, with. With preparation, if you want to do to this impending disaster that is literally coming at us. And then I think what your colleague described here, which is also interesting, disasters generally operate as an accelerator in a relationship. It means that life is short.
Mortality is hitting you. It's like in the shadow right here. And then either people say, life is short, let's get married, let's have babies, what are we waiting for? Or on the other side, life is short.
I've waited long enough, I'm out of here here. And so we've known that there is generally a spike in divorce and a spike in marriage and babies that follows disasters. Wow, this is interesting. I actually got a divorce after I had a stroke, which is interesting.
Yeah. You know what's really interesting? What Scott was talking about was the idea of and stuck in weigh in too, is the idea of grief. Not thinking of it like grief, which I think is interesting.
And then the second thing that you noted was that different couples have different coping mechanisms. There is, there is one issue is my partner does like to read all the news and then waking up by telling it to me and I'm like, I don't want to hear that. What happens? You Know, I don't want to hear anything but that which is.
Which is hard to do. So we're going to talk about tips in a second, but we'll talk about the idea of grief. I mean, it's a word that really will help us make sense of what goes on. You know, grief is not just about death in the physical sense.
It's the grief that accompanies a worldview. And what happens when you have a plague, when you have a pandemic, is that you are reminded that death can randomly exterminate you, you know, and it can throw your world upside down like that. Yesterday they were still running in the park, and today, you know, he's gone. We know it, but the level, the frequency and the intensity at which we're experiencing this right now.
So there is a sense of the world that we've known. There is the sense of the routines that we've had, the relationship that we've known. It's that sense of impending loss that we talk about. And with grief, or what is often called anticipatory grief, because in some places it hasn't hit yet.
But everybody's talking about, it's coming, it's coming. It's this week away. It's like being in the beginning of a horror film where the set and the characters have all been set up and. But the action is yet to start, or it's just starting slowly.
And you know that you're gonna get really, really scared. So in the process of grief, you have different stages and different ways that people react. Now, these are not linearly laid out. You know, people go back and forth with each other and inside themselves or in their community.
So you have the people at first that are getting into gear and began to stockpiling and began preparing and knew it very early on. They kind of knew something bad is happening. And you had the other people that were considered in denial. Why?
Because they said, this isn't happening here. This is happening elsewhere. This can't be happening here. And gradually, people start to think, who is there?
Where is the government? Where are the leaders? Where is the public health facilities and strategies worldwide that are meant to protect us against something like that? And so then you have stages.
Denial, anger, bargaining. You know, you bargain, you create order. You'll be super productive. You're going to work much better, you know, and then you realize that, in fact, the productivity is much lesser.
People are all over the world. They're working more and they're producing less. And they are using the very devices that used to Keep us apart as the prime way to stay connected. But at the end of the day, they don't really want to call somebody else because they've had it sitting at the screen and they are exhausted.
People talk about feeling exhausted, and part of the exhaustion is because you try to organize your life in practicalities and not think about the bigger issue, the bigger meaning of what is happening, which is we are vulnerable creatures and no matter how much toilet paper you bought, you can only protect yourself up to a certain point. And that is a much more sombering, sad, less resilient, American effort, optimism kind of approach. Yeah, that's your point. Does that resonate with you?
It does. And by the way, I just want to point out, you have. I just literally realized who you are. You have the greatest.
And this isn't. This is a fairly high bar. You have the greatest single line of any speaker at a tech conference. Someone you were describing.
You said, people come up to and ask you and say, oh, you're the French lady that believes you should have affairs. And you said, no, I'm actually Belgian. You have. Anyways, you're one of my heroes.
Your TED Talk is one of, I think, the more inspiring, interesting TED talks. So my question is, My question is, what Are there any best practices, if you tried to distill it down to two or three hacks, recommendations for being. And I'll be, I'll be gender specific here. How do you be a better dad and a better husband during a crisis like this?
It's not when you're not used to experiencing crises with your family. Most of the crises I've gone through have been economic, and I feel as if I was either single or I've gone through them alone. This is kind of for shared crisis, how to be a better, a better man, a better husband, a better father. I think actually that, first of all, it's a beautiful question.
And there's three different degrees here, right? So people are experiencing an economic crisis as well. People are losing the savings that they put together for their retirement. I mean, there is.
There are so many different levels of the way that this is entering our lives and our intimacy. But I think here, this thing that we talked about, right, we have different coping styles. This is a given. And this kind of acute stress will exacerbate differences in families, among siblings, between children and parents and in relationships.
The first thing I would say is that, you know, it's very easy to then begin to criticize the way that other people do it or to even see them as A threat. I suggest that with this more than ever, it's always a useful tip, but now it's really important, is that you look for the good things that the other person does, and you just magnify it. You constantly let them know that you appreciate what they're doing. And not just, oh, that's so nice of you to do the dishes, but really to turn it into an act of generosity.
It's really kind of you. You're being very generous, you're being very thoughtful. You know, turning it into a description of the person and not just a description of the gesture. That actually changes the tone in the house.
When people start to feel irritable, they start to bicker more, they're on each other. You know, it's tight. It's tight not just because of the physical space. It's tight because there's a feeling that we are being choked in, not just in our homes, but with the greater meaning of the reality that's around.
And then, you know, be able to nurture yourself. So if you need space, if you need time alone, if you need to take a walk, if you need to go in your room, if you need to put headphones on, you just. You preamp and you say, I need some time. In order for you to get a better part of me, I gotta retreat at this moment.
I need to step out. I can't be with the kids right now. Give me 10 minutes, I will be back. Make it very explicit, actually, the way we teach children.
Articulate the feelings, describe the behavior, make a commitment, and come back. And then these are be the children. I think that this is a cultural piece. You know, some cultures live with the idea that shit happens, bad things happen.
This, we experienced this very much after 9, 11, when my kids were in the school downtown. And you had what we considered American parents who wanted to protect their children and not really tell them that. And then you had all the foreigners, the people from Haiti who had just gone to, you know, major disasters, like, what do you mean? To protect.
You basically tell them this is the world you live in, and you teach them good judgment. If you teach them responsibility and you teach them to think about others. So this is very cultural. I have to put that in brackets first, you know.
But if you can, my stance in general is you actually talk about it with the children. You know, I had a conversation with an 8 year old yesterday, daughter of friends of mine, and I just talked to her about the fact that, you know, she's missing her friends. It's not the Same. I can't just don't go around convincing them that we're lucky, we're in a good place, we have an extra room.
Don't rationalize with them. To not give them the permission to say, this is scary, this is uprooting, this is disruptive. This challenges the sense of continuity. This makes for bad dreams.
And I feel it too. And I feel it too. But we will go through it together. That kind of conversation.
The truth, you mean you're talking about the truth? It's. The truth is still for a certain age, but it normalizes, it gives permission. If you don't give permission, you promote tantrums, you promote depression, you promote isolation, you promote people basically acting in deflective ways rather than just saying, I had a bad day, I'm having a tough time.
And for couples, what's very good is to have check ins for teams at work as well. Check in, do a pulse check. Stress, stress moment. Acknowledgement.
How is it for you? How are you waking up today? Because some days you are more hopeful, you feel calmer. Other days you just feel like you're on edge.
It's okay to do this before you start your meeting. It's okay before you get out of bed with your partner. Just a check in a pulse check. It grounds us and it lets us know where everybody's at.
That's absolutely true. How do you do this online? Because everything is, you know, your family is right in front of you. So it's in a very tight situation when you're with work people because everyone's sort of operating on screens.
Is there a different tip that you have when you are doing these texts or is just the same thing? I can tell you how we have done it at my little startup. Here we are 12, we meet and then we just. Agents say we need to stretch before we sit down again and we get up and we stretch and we have the rubber bands, whatever everybody has at home, we just take a moment to stretch.
Then basically we realize that some of us don't even know if the other people are in a relationship, if they're living with a partner, if they're alone with their dog, you know. And so suddenly we actually ask, where are you? Who are you with? Who's taking care of you?
I like people you're taking care of. Who's responsible for you and who are you responsible for? And it suddenly gave us a map of where everybody went. People have had to fly back to homes that were places where they feel safe and places where they have to Run away from.
It's not always an ideal situation. And then we ask, you know, how is everybody? We take the time to check in actually, and then we go into the meeting. The meeting will not be delayed by anything.
It's important to just say, how is everyone? Are there losses that we need to know about? Are there developments that we need to know about? And if your team is much, much bigger, you still say, you know, write it to us or put it in the, in the chat box or just raise your hand or who's having a tough day today?
Raise your hand. You know, take a moment, let's breathe together. Let's acknowledge this. This is not, let's continue business as usual.
People went home because the company said, you know, we're doing a drill. The drill never ended, they never came back. Then it became a two week thing. Everybody knew that this wasn't going to be a two week thing, but some people didn't.
And now nobody knows when they're going back. So don't pretend it's business as usual. It's not. Work from home is a little bit of an understatement here to euphemism, right?
Absolutely. Do you see relationships changing, kind of in a post corona world, do you think, do you see any specific type of relationships or the way we approach our spouses, our kids, our relationship with work, do you see any specific relationship coming out of this? More change than another. So I would say that where I see some of the biggest changes actually is among the younger people.
Like I have a Gen Z and a millennial. And it's incredible thing, first and foremost, they are for the first time talking on the phone. They want voice, they want voice, they want some incarnate experience. If I can't see you, if I can't touch you, I need to hear you.
And I think that is such an important return. It's so important to reconnect with the voice. And of course the viewing is important too. But the voice is the first thing you hear in YouTube, you know, and it's something that so many of the young people have lost, that's one thing.
And then I think that they are also realizing in a culture, especially in the US where you know, you're self made and you have to cultivate self love and you have to be self sufficient and self reliant and all of it is surrounding the self and self help and self growth and self, people are really realizing the degree of interdependence that we exist in and it, I think it is changing A little bit a sense of, no, we're not just on our own. In fact, when we are on our own, we don't survive. Well, in this moment, we need connection. We are connected to others.
Our behavior affects others. We need them. And it is actually our greatest strength. It is the most important factor for mental health at this point is social support and social connection.
I think that the realization of that is very important. How long it lasts afterwards, I don't know, because I was there during the 911 outpour of solidarity. And it's not like it continued this way. There is a way in which it stays for a while, and then as you start to feel safer again, as you reconnect, you know, as you transcend the grief of the fear of the loss of security and safety, even if it's an illusion, you still think you have it.
People go back to their normal ways. I don't know that we fundamentally change as a society. No, I don't. I think work will change.
I think we are realizing that we don't necessarily need many towers with offices, but we are also realizing that we need a lot more in connection, real, in person connection, than we would like to believe. It was interesting. I was watching a show and everybody was walking around Berlin. I was like, look how close those people are together.
Like, I was like imagining Nako and getting back into a store without washing everything, which is kind of, you know, like, what will that be like? You'll get used to, I think, is what you're saying. It takes time, but, you know, there is. It's very weird to relate to other people as pathogens or to think of yourself as a pathogen.
You know, I mean, we have always had a leopard in our society, said Foucault. You know, there's always been that dangerous vermin virus pathogen, and this is part of what is being. Being activated at this moment. So how do you trust again, how do you not that, you know, go around thinking, you know, what's following me now because I came too close to you, because you coughed, because I allowed you to enter my house, and now I need to go and spray license on my rating, you know?
Right, right. That's a fair point. I have one last question. When you have social media being such a negative force for so long, and now it's a place where people are sort of letting off steam and they're mad at Donald Trump for talking about ratings, for example, you know, there's a lot of political stuff going on.
Is it a good thing or a bad thing to have this social media going on all the time is the react. People are reacting to news instantly, whether it's, you know, it's often around this White House stuff, but it's still political. Is that a good thing or should you turn it off? I think that it's both ends for many things.
You know, do you need it? It is the public square. It is the place where everybody comes to chat and to commiserate and to hear things. But it is also the place for gossip, the place for instant accusations and judgments and lack of real ability to listen on the other end.
We need information. And the problem here has been that we have not been given clear information, not just by Donald Trump, by many other leaders in the world. You know, what prepares you for disasters is unambiguous information and clear instruction. We've known that this is not our first disaster, you know, but I think that every person needs to know how to titrate.
You need to know when you had enough. It's like when you've eaten too much, when you've drunk too much. You need to know when you are beginning to just lose your grounding. You're not going to sleep well, you're breathing more and more shallow, you're getting activated, your joints tensing, your knuckles are getting stiff, and you're beginning to, like, look at people and you're ready to bark.
When you start to feel all that activation or on the other side of the implosion, because some people maximize, some people minimize, you really need to titrate. And that means in a couple of people, have different thresholds. Before you start to say, I just read this, you know, would you like to hear what I just read? Ask the other people, can you take in another piece of information?
Don't dump on them. Because you can have an infinite reservoir that can hold so much information. And the other person is just going to need two hours after that to be able to breathe again and just center right? 100%.
So just finishing up. Give us three tips that people have to do right now because this is endless and people don't know what it's done. Give us three important tips that they have to do if they're in, you know, whatever situation they're in that you think are critically important for that can affect as most people's possibilities. Right.
You know, I've always. I mean, another line for you, Scott, that I have always loved is that it's the quality of your relationships that determines the quality of your life. And this is ever more important now. And it Is true at work and it is true at home.
Where should we begin? Housework are based on that premise. I think at this moment, be some be. I mean, it's going to sound very tragic.
Like be patient. Be a little bit kind. Know that the people around you, they may look like their usual selves, but we are not. We are feeling vulnerable, we are feeling stressed.
We have less patience and we can, you know, we can jump much faster. So be aware of that. And it's okay to say, I am not feeling well. I'm upset, I'm scared, I'm worried about my job, I'm on edge.
Just, just name it. Naming it will actually ground you rather than somatize it and then just deflect it into something else. And people say, what the hell is going on here? Number one.
Number two, really, because you're so close in such close proximity with whoever you're with, even if you don't, if you're not in the house with them, but you are in touch with your friends or you take six feet walks with them and so forth, make sure to really acknowledge at this moment the positive. So you acknowledge the vulnerable. You acknowledge the positive. It's very easy to go to reactive critical mode at this moment.
That's the second thing. And then I think the third thing is as best as you can move because trauma locks itself in the body and it freezes us. If you don't have an ability to go outside, jump do jump jacks, jump rope, go take a walk if you can, but try to get your body in motion. Because we're working on the screen.
We are even sitting more than usual. And then create very creative rituals of meeting with people. Have dinner with other people. Don't just have dinner with your partner alone or with your family.
Invite people for dessert. Invite people for a drink before. Sit for the evening, two hours and just talk with people. Because it can become very hermetic.
You choke on your own juices when you are all together all the time. You know, take walks and then talk with somebody else as you walk if you want, just. But create these very impromptu connective experiences with people. You know, we have a movie club, a virtual movie club.
We have a virtual book club. We have dinners a few times a week. I take walks with sometimes all of it virtual, all of it. But for a moment, I'm outside of myself.
I'm not in my house, I'm not in my reality. I'm not worried about my kids. I'm just talking about things I discussed a movie for 90 minutes and life felt normal for a moment. Yeah, those kinds of experiences, this life affirming, you know, erotic experiences.
But erotic not in the sexual sense only, but in what breeds aliveness, vitality, vibrancy, creativity, imagination, humor. All these things have, for all of history, helped human beings. We sang, we wrote poems, we fell in love. We created antidotes to the feeling of death throughout history in order to keep ourselves going.
That was poetic. That was very nice. Thank you. Poetic.
Esther Perel, please listen to her miniseries, which sounds frightening, but obviously it's not called Couples under Lockdown. She's obviously a renowned therapist and the host of the podcast where should we Begin and how's work? Esther, thank you so much. Pleasure.
But Chiara, just so you know, the couple in Sicily, that is episode one for couples under lockdown. I could have called them couples who mate in captivity with the title of my own book, you know. Now we have this new episode coming out in Germany. It's fascinating.
It's not scary. It's actually what it does is even if it's not your particular experience, you will relate. And it will. It's the reason we read novels.