The Internet is buckling under COVID-19 pressure, Esther Perel on our relationships in quarantine, and the possible Fox News reckoning

Support for the show comes from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunello Caccinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Saks Fifth Avenue for the Best Fall Arrivals and Style inspiration.

Thumbtack presents Project Paralysis.

I was cornered.

Sweat gathered above my furrowed brow and my mind was racing.

I wondered who would be left standing when the droplets fell.

Me or the clogged sink.

Drain cleaner and pipe snake clenched in my weary fist, I stepped toward the sink and then...

Wait, why am I stressing?

I have thumbtack.

I can easily search for a top-rated plumber in the Bay Area, read reviews, and compare prices, all on the app.

Thumbtack knows homes.

Download the app today.

Hi, everyone.

This is Pivot from the Vox Media Podcast Network.

I'm Kara Swisher.

And I'm Scott Galloway.

Scott, what is going on?

How are you doing?

What season of The Simpsons are you on?

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 want to watch The 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 everyone's watching the tiger thing?

People move.

It's so interesting.

You know, they move from Love is Blind to Tiger, whatever, Tiger.

Tiger.

What's the name of it?

Tiger King.

It's somewhat simple.

Why do you like it?

It's going to be a movie movie, apparently.

It just makes you feel really good about yourself.

It's like when you're driving a minivan and you need to say over and over over to yourself, I like myself.

I like myself.

This show says your life is not that bad.

This show says you have good judgment.

When you're watching this show, you're like, wow, I got my shit together.

I have my shit together.

It's really, it's

fantastic.

It's like more Schadenfreude.

That's your favorite thing is Schadenfreude.

Oh, hands down, hands down.

But 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?

Oh, they're all after each other.

It's really, it's really well done.

Netflix, I just said, 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 batshit, 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.

That's a go.

If the minute you said gay polygamist, I'm on with you.

That's a go.

I'm on.

You could never be.

You know what?

I watched, speaking of Netflix, is really, I'm really exploring Netflix, is unorthodox.

It's about a woman who's a story.

It's really good.

Like, I watched more serious.

Hi, 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 group.

And it's good.

It's your typical kind of story like that.

But the actress is an Israeli actress.

And I do love the, and it's like mostly in Yiddish, and there's very few subtitles.

And so it's amazing.

Like, they're very cheap with the subtitles.

And then, so you sort of get what's going on.

And there's, it goes between English and Yiddish, but a lot of Yiddish.

And it was just, it's great.

It's great.

Yes.

And we're watching a lot of TV.

I think you should watch The Wonder Years.

It's very sweet that you're trying.

That's an old show for those of you who weren't born, you know, before 1980.

It is nice.

It's really cute.

It's really nice.

I would suggest West Wing.

That's what I'm going to suggest to you.

All right, we're going over, finished 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 that's about this is that obviously the big headlines are about public health issues at stake and the extension of the quarantine ideas of the guidelines from the feds to April 30th now, which we'll see what goes on because 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 how the companies are dealing with added traffic and how this will change the conversation.

I think people won't be using as much traffic as for, but last week the average time it took 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 it would reduce the quality of its 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 have pushed Netflix and other streaming services to reduce the size of their video files to save on bandwidth in the United States.

Regulators gave wireless carriers access to more spectrum, which is interesting.

That's always for sale.

Disney delayed the start of its Disney Plus streaming service in France by two weeks.

ATT's networks were upping 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 as good internet access, there's certainly

issues around information and also entertainment for people who are sitting at home.

So what do you think about all this?

What do you think 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 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 and instead of high definition.

That's really what you'd 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 to millions of middle-class jobs.

And if you think about the surge here, it sort of reverse engineers to a number of high-paying jobs that are more around technology and information age

and a destruction of traditional jobs.

So it just, everywhere you look here, it's sort of, I got invited on.

Today's show has a Sunday morning episode, and they asked me to do something from home on retail trends.

And I was trying to think of, well, what's new here?

And

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 made us most susceptible about this virus because it's now looking like certain counties or metros in the New York area that are going to be the hardest hit 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.

Think about what would happen if our internet went down right now.

That would be the virus attack.

If somebody wanted to really take advantage of a society, they would say that.

Thank you for giving the thought, Scott.

That's true.

Absolutely true.

Absolutely.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

I don't think the internet can break down as a whole, but you're right.

Yeah.

I think if there was a huge attack, it would be a problem for everyone.

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, which is talking about Tiger King, no insult, but you know what I mean?

Like talking about things they're watching and things they're doing, like doing dinner parties or cocktail parties

online.

There was 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 there's 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, I was just thinking that, like, even though this is difficult, and when the 30th was added, and everything's going to be extended, my kids are going to be home longer.

I was like, oh, God, this is going to go on.

And then I realized how easy we have it here is sort of in our comfortable homes and

enough money to see us through and, you know, comforts like the Internet.

So it's a very different experience than the experience that other people are having are just not the same, especially if they're not linked into the Internet and know what's going on almost constantly.

Well, a lot of people have to go to work.

I mean, there's still people who are having 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 put 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 is the stress between

I've actually found CEOs have been very responsible, and 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 do we start the economy and when do we ensure that this virus is kind of stamped out and that 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 and at what point does economic damage or lasting damage to the economy become a real issue?

And what I don't like, I don't know if you saw the latest thing, but this notion of kind of A, B, and C cities where certain cities would come back online faster.

And they're really, Bill Gates came online, and it's interesting.

I would say one of the winners is Bill Gates.

I think people are really turning 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 turn the lights on and bleach every corner of this thing.

And

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 agree.

But the point is, it doesn't matter if Montana.

No, no one's sell to Montanans, but nobody, no, you're not going to change the internet.

It's going to change it locally.

You're not going to change the economy, you know, on a national level.

I think the areas that are hardest hit are the big cities where all the economic value is in most cases, correct?

Yeah,

I think that's right.

It's the coast, right?

But what's just, I mean, we are definitely having two pandemics.

There's a pandemic taking place on the coast where it's CNN and the New York Times, and anyone who isn't concerned about this isn't reading the New York Times or isn't watching CNN.

And then there's people who get their media from Fox who are sort of more like, well, we got to get back to work.

And there really are two pandemics here.

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 or ideology and it does feel like we're having two pandemics but even i was sort of down this week and 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 one morning and you're just really depressed and start feeling what i would call mild grief you start hearing about people you know that have it you start you know your 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 care was i was thinking about you know american exceptional exceptionalism and i'm guilty of that i think early on i thought oh it's terrible in china but it's not going to come here just because we're different and we're better we don't have wet markets the flu starts in china and it 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.

We are so far behind in what has been really the only thing we knew was the front line of defense on this, and that is testing.

We've done one-third per capita of the testing of South Korea and Italy still.

And American exceptionalism right now is a reconfigured refrigerated tractor trailer in Queens where they're storing bodybacks.

That is what American exceptionalism.

Scott, you're in a a dark place.

Speaking of you've been tested.

It's the truth.

Have you been tested?

I haven't either.

I wouldn't even know how to get tested.

That's exactly right, Kier.

I wouldn't know where the fuck to get tested.

I'm a person with a lot of resources.

I'd like to think I'm well-read.

And this is where America is right now.

I would have no idea where to even start to get tested.

And tested is the 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, Peter 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 listened to this guy and you're like, okay, we're fucked.

Well, he's been an idiot for a long, long time.

So, you know, he's been sitting along 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 tests, like, 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 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 want to 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, that 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 deprioritize 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 a mean of outsourcing funding and decisions that's resulted in a series of joey 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 people down in Florida are really killing it.

But it's strange.

So far, so far, and I've been obsessed with this 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 leadership where we politicize everything, where we see everything as an opportunity to either make the president look stupid or for the president to hone a campaign rally.

A lack of coordination.

This exceptionalism, narcissism, where we've decided we can't learn from China.

Scott, you're in a very dark place.

I'm going to pull you out right now.

I'm not going to pull you out.

Grab me by the hands.

Help me out.

You're perfect.

It's perfect for our friend Pivot, who's going to help you walk you through your grief.

But it is, I'll tell you what we all have in common is the internet.

We have the internet in common.

We have that.

Thank goodness for the internet, honestly.

Or maybe you wouldn't know what you don't know.

I mean, it's the two things.

So, one of the things is the abilities, speaking of being

the government-knowing things, is they do know they're using the Wall Street Journal had a piece about the federal government through the CDC and state and local governments have started 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 on hundreds of millions of cell phones,

mostly from the applications applications that 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.

In one case, researchers found that New Yorkers were congregating in large numbers in Brooklyn's Prospect Park, which you could do by actually going into Prospect Park, because I was there a couple weeks ago and handed that information over to local authorities.

So, you know, the Lori Lightfoot in Chicago closed down lakefront trails and beaches.

So, should you get special notification if your data is being used in that way?

way?

And there is a public good versus personal privacy issue?

You know, how is this different in different locations?

It's just interesting to, I think, in times of emergency, it 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 just seem to be psychotic to me or just so sociopathic that they would think they're doing the right thing and then accidentally forget to scrub the data.

So I think Facebook is probably the organization you can trust least in the world right now, maybe with the exception of the GRU or someone that's an adversarial enemy, 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 want to call it a violation of our rights, but I think during wartime, you know, and I don't agree with what happened during 9-11 in terms of violating people's personal civil liberties and targeting people or profiling people.

But you and I have had this conversation a lot.

I think exceptional times require exceptional measures.

And I think most people, if they received 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 decide 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 you let them opt in, maybe you don't.

But I think most people at this point would opt in.

I think people are more scared of the virus than they are a violation of civil liberties right now.

Although 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 this scenario here.

Paint what you're afraid of.

I think it's that people overreach.

What happened 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 I think 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 that takes your temperature all the time, which is a good way to understand if 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.

Again, I'm on the same thing.

It's cooperation and yes, I can do it and not do it in a terrified way.

Explain to them we need to do this because this and listen these companies are in touch with everyone every day of the week and twice on sunday and they could 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 or or this will be anonymized this will be it's very easy they're in constant touch with you uh you know i get it more texts about when my fedex package is going to be delivered than i would do on something like this i got like i'm having a fedex delivered today and i've had 20 notices 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,

they always have, there's always some national emergency that requires for us to give us our civil liberties.

And it just should be with the cooperation of people.

I think most people would cooperate.

And if people don't want to cooperate, you know, you can figure something else out.

But I don't know.

I just, anyway, we've got to go.

I think it, it, it, I don't, I think people right now are, will, will be willing to put up with this, but I think at some point, um, they do have to realize that they're being tracked all all over the place and it's still a critically important issue, especially around advertisers who are just totally misusing your data constantly.

It's just, 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 feel the need to take my temperature because I'm always at room temperature.

Are you?

I'll tell you about it.

It's a whole column in the New York Times of doing it.

It says project that's going on.

How do you do that?

Did you wear something?

You are going to have to wait and read about it.

It's really cool.

Anyway,

that makes for compelling journalism.

You'll see, you'll see, you'll see.

It'll be, you'll be, I'll talk about it next week.

That's a page turnout.

It's time for shut up.

Listen, it's not tiger, mama, whatever the I see a Pulitzer in your future.

Tiger, it's not Tiger, whatever the fuck that is.

Anyway, all right, Scott, it's time for a quick break.

We'll be right back with someone who's going to help you feel better with a friend of Pivot.

So, your AI agents, they make the team that uses them more productive, right?

But if they aren't connected to other agents, or your data, or your existing workflows, how productive can they really make your teams?

Any business can add AI agents.

IBM connects your agents across your company to change how you do business.

Let's create Smarter Business, IBM.

Support for Pivot comes from LinkedIn.

From talking about sports, discussing the latest movies, everyone is looking for a real connection to the people around them.

But it's not just person to person, it's the same connection that's needed in business.

And it can be the hardest part about B2B marketing, finding the right people, making the right connections.

But instead of spending hours and hours scavenging social media feeds, you can just tap LinkedIn ads to reach the right professionals.

According to LinkedIn, they have grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, making it stand apart from other ad buys.

You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, and company revenue, giving you all the professionals you need to reach in one place.

So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads.

LinkedIn will even give you $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it for yourself.

Just go to linkedin.com/slash pivot pod.

That's linkedin.com/slash/pivot pod.

Terms and conditions apply.

Only on LinkedIn ads.

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 joke.

I think they're

Esther about this, but I think relationships are bifurcating into two areas.

Your second and third order degree relationships that are getting closer, reaching out to old friends.

And I would argue the first degree relationships, we're all going through sort of a 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 would you what's going on with you and Amanda everything's great I don't buy that I never buy that no we're getting along great we are we're nice to each other and we had wonderful meals so anyway we're gonna have we are we can talk about it more and Esther can ask us this is Esther Perel she's on the line to help she's the renowned therapist and host of the podcast Where Should We Begin and How's Work?

She's hosting a mini series, a new mini series podcast called Couples Under Lockdown.

Esther, welcome to Pivot.

So tell us what your thoughts are and sort of your high-level thoughts of the challenges couples and families are facing right now.

So hi, Kara.

Look, there's a number of very interesting dynamics happening.

And they're not going to be in order of importance, but each and every one of them is significant.

You know, first, it's 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 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 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 clear organizers because it's as if order will provide a bulwark 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 who are thinking 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 the preparations, if you want, 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.

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 so this is interesting.

I actually got a divorce after I had a stroke, which was interesting.

I did.

Same thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it was really interesting, what Scott was talking about was the idea of, and Scott can weigh in too, is the idea of grief and 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 one issue is my partner does like to read all the news and then wake me up by telling it to me.

And I'm like, I don't want to hear that.

What happened?

You know, I don't want to hear anything but that, which is hard to do.

So we're going to talk about tips in a second, but talk about the idea of grief.

I mean, it's the 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,

frequency, and the intensity at which we're experiencing this right now.

So, there is the 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 with grief, or what is often called anticipatory grief, because in some places it hasn't hit yet, but everybody is talking about it.

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, 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 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 health, you know, 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 think you're going going to be super productive, you're going to work much better, you know, and then you realize that in fact your 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.

Scott, there's your entry point.

Does that resonate with you, Scott?

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 ted conference someone you were describing you say 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 i you're you're you're one of my heroes your ted talk is one of the i think the more more inspiring interesting ted talks so my question is so much my question is what are are there any best practices if you tried to distill it down to two or three hacks or recommendations for being

and

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 have gone through them alone.

This is kind of the first shared crisis.

How do you 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 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 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 us.

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 preempt 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 vis-à-vis the children.

I think that this is a cultural piece.

Some cultures live with the idea that shit happens.

Bad things happen.

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 much.

And then you had all the foreigners, the people from Haiti who had just gone through, you know, major disasters.

It was like, what do you mean you protect?

You basically tell them this is the world you live in and you teach them good judgment and 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 eight-year-old yesterday, daughter of friends of mine, and I just talked with 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, but we're lucky, we're in a good place,

we have at least an extra room.

We 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, truth, you mean?

You're talking about the truth, Esther.

It's the truth distilled 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 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 is 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 tip that you have when you are doing these checks, or is it 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 either stay, who needs a stretch before we sit down again?

And we get up and we stretch and we have the rubber bands, whatever anybody 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.

And so suddenly we actually ask, where are you?

Who are you with?

Who's taking care of you?

Are there people you're taking care of?

Who is 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 had to run away from.

It's not always an idyllic situation.

And then we asked, 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 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.

It's a 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 an 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 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 utero, you know, and it's something that so many of the young people had 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 this 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 9-11 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 and I was like, oh, look how close those people are together.

Like I was like imagining not 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 it, I think, is what you're saying, essentially.

It takes time, but you know, there is this, 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 of what is being being activated at this moment.

So how do you trust again?

How do you not like, you know, go around thinking, you know, what's what's following me now because I came too close to you or because you coughed or because I allowed you to enter my house and now I need to go and spray Lysol on my railing, you know?

Right, right.

Well, that's a fair point.

All right, I have one last question.

When you have social media have being such a negative force for so long, and now it's a place where people are sort of letting off steam or 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?

Because

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 and for many things.

You know, 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 jaw is tensing, your knuckles are getting stiff, and you're beginning to look at people and you're ready to bark.

When you start to feel all that activation or on the other side, on the implosion, because some people maximize, some people minimize, you really need to titrate.

And that means means in a couple, people have different thresholds.

Before you start to say, I just read this, but 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 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 into the 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 when it's in.

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 as possible.

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?

How is work based on that premise?

I think at this moment, be be some be, I mean, it's gonna sound very tri, but it's a little bit like be patient, be a little bit kind.

Know that the people around you 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 name it.

Naming it will actually ground you rather than somatize it and then just deflect it into something else and people are saying 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'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 into 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 hypometric.

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 some friends 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 discuss a movie for 90 minutes and life felt normal for a moment

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 mini-series, 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.

I feel so much better.

It's pleasure.

But Cara, just so you know, the couple in Sicily, that is the episode one for couples under lockdown.

I could have called them couples who met 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 it's the reason we read novels, it's the reason stories have carried us us through.

So don't scare your audience.

I won't.

I don't lock down.

I promise.

I'll tell you.

I'll give you one tip for a lockdown.

Have a baby with you because it's really lovely with the baby.

I just had a baby.

There's a business idea.

Rent a baby.

Let's rent babies.

I'm telling you, I'm 100% happier because I wake up, that baby's happy and doesn't know anything that's going on.

And it's sort of fancy.

Because it's so life-affirming to have a baby.

It is.

Right?

So episode one is the story of a midwife.

Okay.

All right.

Cool.

Thank you to the world.

Well, perfect.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

Thanks.

Bye.

All right, Scott.

One more quick break and we'll be back for wins and fails.

As a founder, you're moving fast towards product market fit, your next round, or your first big enterprise deal.

But with AI accelerating how quickly startups build and ship, Security expectations are also coming in faster.

And those expectations are higher than ever.

Getting security and compliance right can unlock growth or stall it if you wait too long.

Vanta is a trust management platform that helps businesses automate security and compliance across more than 35 frameworks like SOC2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, and more.

With deep integrations and automated workflows built for fast-moving teams, Vanta gets you audit ready fast and keeps you secure with continuous monitoring as your models, infrastructure, and customers evolve.

That's why fast-growing startups like Langchain, Ryder, and Cursor have all trusted Vanta to build a scalable compliance foundation from the start.

Go to Vanta.com slash Vox to save $1,000 today through the Vanta for Startups program and join over 10,000 ambitious companies already scaling with Vanta.

That's vanta.com slash box to save $1,000 for a limited time.

Support for the show comes from Sacks Fifth Avenue.

Sacks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to shop for your personal style.

Follow us here, and you can invest in some new arrivals that you'll want to wear again and again, like a relaxed product blazer and Gucci loafers, which can take you from work to the weekend.

Shopping from Saks feels totally customized, from the in-store stylist to a visit to Saks.com, where they can show you things that fit your style and taste.

They'll even let you know when arrivals from your favorite designers are in, or when that Brunella Cacchinelli sweater you've been eyeing is back in stock.

So, if you're like me and you need shopping to be personalized and easy, head to Sacks Fifth Avenue for the best follow arrivals and style inspiration.

Okay, Scott, we're back with wins and fails.

Was that great, Scott, or what?

I feel so much.

Not only do I feel better, I feel so much more sophisticated.

I forgot to get one of those Flemish French.

You like the word erotic.

Yeah, but when she says it,

it seems legitimate.

I don't know.

It just felt, all of that felt very, I don't know, very TED meets PhD, meets, meets Europe, meets.

She's a very, by the way, have you listened to her TED Talk?

I do.

I love it.

I listen to Esther's podcast all the time.

I think it's great.

It's about, you know, I try to invest in my relationships by doing the homework, my friend.

Yeah, I know.

Everything's perfect at the Swissers.

No, it's not perfect, but I'm just telling you, I do listen to her because I think she's incredibly wise.

We had her at South by Southwest last year.

And I think it's really important.

I think the most important of the many very wise things she said there was

articulating what you're feeling.

Like saying, I need five minutes.

I need this.

Stop talking to me.

And and i think that does really help it without being um

articulate exactly what you're feeling not a sidelight of what you're feeling at the yeah there's a bunch of

interesting observations i'm i'm i'm observing my friends and what i find is a lot of us are very focused on broader relationships so how do i be a good boss how do i be a good citizen and sometimes at the expense of well charity begins at home how do you be a better dad and a better husband you know it just sort of there's um but you know what you know who thinks i'm just doing an amazing job with my relationships at home?

Who?

Vodka.

Vodka, Kara.

Oh, God.

She said nothing of liquor.

But listen, now that we've got you in a better frame of mind, sort of.

So, so now you're like three feet deep right now, which is, I think, the most depth we've gotten from you.

What are your wins and fails?

What are, this is an extra long podcast.

Well, I'll go fails first because I want to end on an optimistic note.

I believe that there is going to be, I think we might be looking at, I think, I'll start, I think Fox News or News Corps, Fox News, which was not sold to Disney, it was spun out.

I think Fox News is going to be sold under the financial strain of lawsuits.

There are going to be so many interesting correlations versus causation and

data sets looking at what drove higher infection rates.

And I've come to believe, and this is an incendiary statement, and I think it's true, though.

I think one of the things we're going to find has resulted in a higher

incidence of infection across America

when you

test for income, when you test for region, when you test for age, it's going to be viewership of Fox News.

When I look back on Fox News on YouTube, they have been so consistently behind, they have been so brazen in their recommendations around getting back to work, around going to the pub,

around promoting a narrative that has, in my view, been reckless.

And I believe courts will listen and entertain the notion that it has been that it has been absolutely damaging to national health.

I think what happened to the cigarette companies in the 80s is about to happen to News Corps and that's my fail and also along those same lines a university and I think this university actually has done

a good job.

I think

it's not a university where I would teach, but I think they're going to come under tremendous legal scrutiny is Liberty University in Kentucky, who has decided after, I mean, I can't tell you, I've been on the phone with the dean of my business school, and they are spending so much time.

Three weeks ago, they were talking about how do we decrease the density in the dorms?

How do we make sure that our technology is up and running if and when we move to remote?

They were so concerned and on so on the right side of being cautious, thinking about things I never even would have dreamt of.

And then you have Jesse Falwell Jr.

or Jerry Falwell Jr.

calling people back to school and claiming it's a hoax.

And they're forced.

Did you see that New York, that New York Times?

I think she, Elizabeth Williamson, who's amazing, she's like, someone off the record said, we can't say anything because we work here, but please find a way to get us out of here.

Like they're under like a cult or a prison or it's really bizarre.

That place is one bizarre.

Nobody can speak out.

And it's run, and he's insane.

Like

he's just a menace.

I don't know how else to be able to do that.

Well, to be fair, I actually think the university has done a lot of wonderful things.

There's people with different ideologies.

They've been great for the community.

I think it's a university university with actually decent, and I'm going to go out on a limb here, probably decent academics.

I think universities take different shapes.

And unfortunately, in universities, we've decided that we are tolerant of people who don't look like us, but people who don't think like us.

And even though Liberty thinks different than us, I think it's a university.

I'm talking about not being able to lose.

No, I 100%.

I'm talking about my point.

They're going to come under tremendous scrutiny.

But my fail here is I believe that Fox is having its tobacco moment and they're going to come under tremendous legal scrutiny.

I would agree.

I actually,

oddly enough, right in front of me, I have an essay that i'm thinking of putting in the times called a murdoch ate my mother's brain um and she how much how little information she had and how how hard it was and when those lawsuits came i mean i talked about it with my brother i'm like she is actually like i i'd love to see the emails internally it's if there's discovery if someone if someone actually died like who who whose parents have died or something like that because of this and there's actual emails and they do discovery inside of fox about what how they made these editorial decisions it could be devastating.

I think there probably are emails internally.

Exhibit one will be, okay, what drives mortality?

We know it's age, we know it's how healthy you are, underlying conditions, whether it's asthma, whether it's cancer treatment.

We know that men appear to be more vulnerable, but we don't know.

Again, we'll have to screen out if it's because men are less healthy or they smoke more, whatever it might be.

But I think you're going to find that an indicator here or a signal is viewership of Fox over other media.

Anyways, yeah, it'll be interesting from a legal perspective, but I'd love to get the discovery on how they made their editorial decisions.

And of course, I'm a journalist, and it's sort of like, you know, they're going to obviously use the First Amendment, which they should use.

But I can't imagine there were not very clear decisions made.

You know, it's interesting because they fired Trish Reagan and

they're doing things now, which is they've sort of shifted

around, but they still have

the conduit.

Yeah, there's...

There's still the conduit.

They don't have the Content Decency Act.

They don't have the same legal shield as tech, right?

They're actually evaluated legally by the same standards as other media companies.

They can't fall back to this.

Well, they have the First Amendment.

They have the First Amendment, and they should use that.

It's going to be a very interesting conversation.

So my win, if you think about the vital organs, if you think about how we live our life, I think if there was one place that embodied sort of joy and passion and what I'll call

throwing caution to the wind, I don't want to say throwing caution to the wind, but a passion for life.

I think if there was one place in the world that embodied one of the wonderful things about our species and our culture, it would be Italy.

I think the colors, I think the beauty, the fashion, the food, the emphasis on family and love and affection and beauty.

Italy, it looks as if their curve is beginning to flatten there.

And that while it has

almost a third of all the reported coronavirus deaths, it looks as if the lockdown is starting to work and we're starting to see a reduction in the number of new cases and death.

And it sounds, it feels to me like Italy is moving to the right side of this.

And that's not to say that they don't have to be vigilant, but I think we can all take comfort from the fact that a Western nation and a place of such extraordinary beauty and grace is starting to get a handle on this.

So Italy is my win today.

I think that the first moment we see a Western nation start to turn this thing back and flatten the curve, I think it's going to be an enormous sign of hope.

And I think that that light

has been illuminated in Italy.

That's a good one.

That's a good one.

I think we've taken far too long, all of the people in the West have compared to other places still.

And

it'll be interesting afterwards when we start to count up what should have happened and for the future.

I think it's critically important to do that.

I'm going to do I'm not going to do

well, you know, this obsession with ratings of Trump is weird and strange and I hope it haunts him forever, the idea that his ratings are up because of death,

which is sort of a little depressing.

But I think I'm going to look at a couple people.

One was Yamichi Alsender.

It's just an amazing reporter there.

Bill Gates, I think, is being a really great voice.

And, you know, he's talked about prepped.

He's talked about this.

I've interviewed him.

He's talked about

this kind of thing.

Well, his TED talk.

He basically laid this out.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep, exactly.

And so I think this is, he's really doing a great job.

And you're right.

He's being non-political.

He's just laying it out.

But he's still being firm.

He's like, this is insane, not to keep the quarantine.

Like, he's very firm.

He's a little Fauci-like in that regard, sort of threading that needle and but I think the the the the I'm gonna I'm gonna actually give it to

San Francisco because my brother just wrote me from the hospital he's there today he's been there since early this morning and he goes things are looking semi-stable here I really think Newsom and London Breed who's the mayor Gavin Newsom and London Breed is the mayor of San Francisco the governor of California did a good deed locking us down when they did still too early to say we are clear but it's looking up which was great yeah California looks like they're on the right side of this as well.

California looks like they're,

yeah, that's why he's he thinks the governor and the mayor of San Francisco and the mayor of Los Angeles, he's not in Los Angeles, but it did a great job in terms of being leaders, which I think was great.

So that is a happy thing.

When I got that text this morning, I felt so much better.

I'm very nervous about my brother's safety.

So it felt really great.

So, Scott, another week.

Hopefully, we will talk about other things besides Pancha.

That's right.

That's right.

But we won't.

So you go back to Tiger King

and you have a good week.

I hope Esther helped you through this a little bit and that

you're doing well.

Well, this is an acceleration of a lot of trends.

The major trend in my life is that I hate my life less and less every day.

So as is always the case, after 45 minutes with you, I hate my life a little bit less.

Just a little scoch less.

Just a scoch.

Just a scoch less.

Escoch less.

Well, Scott,

enjoy your vodka this week, but get some time out by yourself.

Have a little Scott time.

Have a little Scott time, okay?

Okay.

Don't forget.

Good enough.

Little Scott time.

Don't forget, if you have a story in the news you're curious about and want to hear our opinion on, email us at pivot at voxmedia.com to be featured on the show.

Scott, please read us out.

Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Sinanis.

Our executive producer is Erica Anderson.

Special thanks to Drew Burroughs and Rebecca Castro.

If you like what you heard, please download our podcast, wherever you download podcasts.

Tune in later in the week for a breakdown of all things tech and business.

Well done, Italy, the home of grace and beauty and love and passion and also confidence in being ahead of the curve.

They are kicking this thing's ass.

Well done.

This month on Explain It to Me, we're talking about all things wellness.

We spend nearly $2 trillion on things that are supposed to make us well: collagen smoothies and cold plunges, Pilates classes, and fitness trackers.

But what does it actually mean to be well?

Why do we want that so badly?

And is all this money really making us healthier and happier?

That's this month on Explain It To Me, presented by Pureleaf.