What Now? with Trevor Noah - Meet Esther Perel - One of My Favorite People

Trevor Noah's podcast, What Now?, has a new series. It's called My Favorite People. And, well, I was on that list. And that was already a real pleasure. But then he said, OK, I want to have a conversation with you. And then he said, but I would like to talk about you. And if you know me and my work, you know I don't talk too often about myself because I like the stories of the people that I present to be the primary voice. But here I agreed, which is also why I am putting this on our podcast so that you can hear me for a change, not help other people talk about themselves, but talk about myself, what occupies my mind, what I think about, what keeps me up, what gives me joy, what gives me sorrow. Here's the thing. Talking to Trevor Noah is being in a state of flow. You turn around and two hours have passed. People who, when you speak with them, you kind of clinch. And then there are people that when you speak with them, something opens up a certain vastness and things flow out. And you realize that you said a lot more than you ever intended to. So that's what happened to me. I hope you enjoy the show. You know, in New York, you ask people, how you are, and they often tell you I'm behind. Yeah, they tell you what they're doing, I find. I find that's the biggest change, is when I'm in New York or when I'm anywhere in the U.S., if I ask somebody, and I notice it most glaringly when I come back from South Africa, if I ask somebody, how are you or how are you doing, they'll often tell me what they're doing. You know, say, oh, I'm really busy. And that's even how people will ask me questions. So what are you up to? What are you up to these days? What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you, what are you, what are you? It's all about that. And as I say, when I go back to South Africa, it's all, how are you? In fact, if I go home and I start to talk too much about what I do, people don't like it. It's like you're not there to talk about yourself so much and put yourself in the center. You're there to participate in a collective experience in what we are creating together. Yeah. Yeah. The afternoon, the lunch, the walk. You really, there's a clear distinction between talking about work and talking about life. And life is not work. Welcome to What Now? In today's episode, I'm going to be having a conversation with one of my favorite people in the world, Esther Perel. Now, you probably know Esther as a psychotherapist, as a therapist. A bestselling author whose work has changed the way millions of people think about relationships, sex, romance, and intimacy all over the world. But for today's episode, I wanted to do something different. I wanted to chat to the person behind the name. I wanted to hopefully give you an insight into why she is one of my favorite people. And so today we talk less about Esther's work and more about Esther's life and how she got to the place that she is today. And how she got to the place that she got to. And I really love this conversation because it really shows you how the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves aren't always true and how the path that we choose to get us where we're going to get to isn't often how we end up where we end up in life. I know you'll enjoy it. Esther is one of the most profound people I know, so you'll definitely learn something from it. Oh, and by the way, if you want to learn more about Esther's work or what she's doing right now, one of my favorite ways to engage in it, is her podcast called Where Should We Begin? It's a fascinating look into couples therapy and what couples are going through in real time. So you're in the therapy session with them. That's Where Should We Begin? Check it out. This is What Now? With Trevor Noah. Your favorite fall flavors are back at Starbucks. The one and only pumpkin spice latte and the deliciously smooth iced pecan crunch latte have arrived and are ready to sip all season long. Or find a new favorite, like the new iced banana bread latte that tastes just like fall in a cup. You can find your favorite taste of fall only at Starbucks. The one and only pumpkin spice latte. Why did you call it that? Because it's often. The first sentence that I ask when I meet a couple. Like, where should we begin? Where do I find you today? What's on your mind? Maybe it's what you wrote to me. Maybe it's completely different. But where should we begin? Because every relationship is a story. Relationships are stories. We are both storytellers in some way. But, you know, we're sitting here in the studio. The first. The first years until the pandemic, we recorded every session in my office. So people came in like every patient would have come in, except that they come for the podcast. So they are not patients and never will be. They sit in the waiting room. They walk into my office. And it's the same office in which I see people throughout the day for my practice. So you're in the same mental space as well. Same chair, same mental space, same room. And it really, I think, is what gave the podcast a tremendous voice of authenticity because it was blended in with the other sessions that I do. Most of the time, people are completely surprised to be sitting there because, you know, one person at midnight decided to fill in the form and was convinced that they would never hear from us. And here they are. And then there is the person that came with them. And sometimes, they have never heard of me because, you know, with podcasts, one person listens and the other one doesn't know what you're listening. It's not like there's a book in the house and you can, oh, you're reading that book. You can listen to a podcast for years and your partner has no idea. That is the first infidelity. Exactly. You're having a relationship under my eyes, you know, and I don't know anything about it. So it's different, but we have created an office here too. In the studio. And once it starts, I'm in the session. I mean, there is just no world outside. That's amazing. Eight years we're doing it. Congratulations. Eight years. Eight years of the podcast, 20 years of mating and captivity. And how many years in the field, in practice? 40, almost. 40 years. Wow. What do you think people get from hearing couples therapy that they're not part of? I mean, it's like entering the antechamber. It's like going the backstage. It's the story that you hear about other people's relationships that you never know. You really are like a fly on the wall. So who really knows the truth about couples? And these days, especially, your friends can come and tell you they're breaking up and you never saw it coming. And on top of it, people are posturing and parading themselves all over social in these perfect situations. So the real truth about couples is a secret often. And when you listen to it, you feel less alone. You feel like your issues are not your own, only that there are other people who have similar things. You listen intently and intensely to them and you actually see yourself. Even if it's not the same situation and the same story, there's always something where you say, I can relate to that. The thing I noticed is, just from my side, whenever couples would go out together, I always find they come back, and I know I've experienced this, you come back just a little more diffused. You come back just a little calmer. You come back, there's something weird about knowing other people have problems that makes your problems, and not in a schadenfreude way, but I mean like sitting with another couple, you talk, and then I'm sure you know this, but I've always loved how one person will take the other, the other person's point of view, another person will, all of a sudden you'll find crossings where this husband agrees with that wife, and that wife agrees with that husband, and in a strange way, people go home feeling like their relationship isn't as bad or isn't going through as much because of other people. That's one of the ways. Sometimes they go home with the opposite experience, but yes, there is a sense of it normalizes. There is a sense of being in a kaleidoscope, that one partner sees themselves reflected in another or validated by another, or that you get, to hear your partner differently because someone else is saying it for them and it's just you get taken out of the the cellar and the light shines and you've and air comes in and it's very very moving and powerful i feel like these days and maybe it's a maybe it's because of social media i feel like these days people are sort of trying to win at relationships the same way people are trying to like win at therapy and you know maximize yeah yeah like like you i was talking to a friend the other night and i was saying do you remember it was actually uh simon cynic you know simon yeah yeah and simon and i were literally walking through the street and i said to simon do you remember a time when people used to move for love i'm sure some people still do it but it's less prevalent now it's less an idea it's even almost shunned on you know when people go oh i moved here for a boy oh i moved here for a girl people go like oh you should never do that you can't just move your that's my story what do you mean that's your story i'm here because of my husband that's how you got to new york that's how i came well i came to america to study for one year yeah i then thought i would stay a second year and kind of get more training and then um i basically never used my return ticket wow so i am that story what was it about him that made you stay like what was because staying in another it's one thing to visit another country it's another thing to stay in another country because where were you living then was that france or belgium no i actually came from jerusalem wow i came from you've lived everywhere i've lived in a few places i came from wait let's let's listen where have you lived i've lived in belgium yeah antwerp where i grew up um it's not where i was born but it's where i grew up i lived in jerusalem i lived in boston and i lived in new york it's not that many okay it seems like many i feel like you you have many homes though it seems like a lot of people don't have a lot of like as a maybe it's a feeling it's the way you speak about some places that always makes me feel like you've actually lived there they were part of my life even if i didn't live there like paris i went to paris my whole life every few every month sometimes it's part of my life but i didn't have an address there so in that sense i have more than amsterdam would be a similar place because once you're in belgium it's an hour to amsterdam and an hour and 15 to paris three hours at a time i mean these places i like the the the way that uh thais elasi talks about it she says don't ask me where i'm from ask me where i'm local oh that's beautiful and i think it's exactly that i'm local in a few places you're a little softer than the paris i know but maybe that's just how i see you like i find i find parisians to be very blasé about most things or they appear blasé but you you have a little more like you have a little more like you have a little more like you have a your eyes open a little more when you notice things or when you see things but i am very much not french i mean i have a french accent i know that i'm i'm educated in flemish i mean what you call afrikaans you know my entire 12 years of schooling was in flemish i am from a flemish city i'm from antwerp i have we spoke five languages at home i mean i french is a big part of mine of me but it's it's not um it's not the only one i've always i don't know why i've always thought it was more you i think it's because of how you'll you'll talk about love and seeing love through like a french lens sometimes you know like like i i think what i've always loved about french and the french and love is is is how differently you get to see something you know i mean we have in south african languages i always feel like our greetings are more warm our greetings say more than just like hello don't you have a beautiful expression saubono yeah saubona means i still see you yes it's beautiful you know that and that's what i mean and i feel like french is like that for love love relationships like um what's the word you you you spoke about you i remember you saying it to me once was it frisson yeah frisson which is like the it doesn't exist in english we use like at all i don't think i've never seen i always think of it as friction but i don't think it's no it's not right no it's not friction it's a frisson is a shiver it's a the literal translation is a shiver but it's a shiver with anticipation with excitement with a kind of a current that runs through your body um now i mean no i mean you've got me you've got me this is what you see this is the french thing it's like it was that so it was you know what it was it was frisson and then it was um there's another one ah i loved it and i i remember i remember speaking to you about this it was in and around it was in and around the me too movement and it was a specific word or phrase in french that sort of implied it was an understanding that somebody could tease you but could never give in to your whims or your wants or your i mean to flirt yeah comes from the word floret okay which is the tip of the sword that is actually meant to tease you that is flirting is teasing is playing with possibility it has no connection to scoring yeah you see i think most people would disagree with that in the united states yes most people this is a pragmatic society trying to engage with the erotic arts yeah there are a lot of people who say i'm not a fan of the erotic arts i'm not a fan of the erotic arts i'm not a fan of the erotic arts how could you then why did you flirt with me that's right then why did you why did you lead me on i think that's the phrase a lot of people say why did you lead me on and then esther turns around and says like i wasn't leading you on i was playing with the tip of my sword yes it's true that a lot of my thinking about relationships love desire passion all of that was very much shaped within a francophone a french context yeah my adolescence was very much steeped in that and but it's latin as well it's not just french it's not just french it's not just french it's not just french and it's not the pragmatic approach of that that is dominant here you get shit done you achieve things you're direct you get to the point you don't miss you don't miss a beat you don't beat her you don't run what is it turn around the corner it's like all of these things are about this unvarnished directness to say it as it is and that is not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around the world it's not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around the world it's not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around the world it's not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around the world it's not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around the world communication around the world it's not the way we think of the arts of love and the communication around it and the way you express yourself and all of that it's really big cultural differences and i think i write from that place that's true i write think speak what do you love about america then because you you've lived here for how many years now 35 35 years you've lived here you you you'll engage in it in a very honest way and not in an america bashing way i've never found but i i've always been intrigued by the paradox of like why you would like why would you live here when it is that direct and that immediate and it's all about the goal and it's all about the objective like what about it made you fall in love other than meeting somebody i mean i definitely fell in love with new york and before i came to stay here i had been here already the first time i came to the united states was in 1976 okay bicentennial it was kind of the first time that we began to travel to the u.s i came with a cargo airline i hitchhiked around the corner what does that mean a cargo airline it was one of these airlines that were too old come on yeah yeah you came with like a dhl plane yes that's not even a thing that's not a thing better i spent almost seven weeks hitchhiking across the country i saw america like when we'll never see it again i stayed with all kinds of people from every every walk of life every race every religion every profession every class and um every culture and really i think that that was such a powerful experience i was 18 not even and at the time you could hitchhike yeah those were the good old days i was totally received by the kindness of strangers and really um i went to parts of the country that i never even thought i would go because it wasn't in my i was originally going to do on a greyhound tour on the bus but people were so kind that um i ended up doing the entire trip hitchhiking i go from new york to the west coast i do the whole loop of the west and this is so what this is all for fun yeah i finished high school this was before going to college and i came with my boyfriend and we decided to travel but i didn't know it was going to be a wait wait okay let's rewind you came with the boy you didn't tell me about the boyfriend no no no so they were you were hitchhikers were picking up you and the boyfriend yes yes i stood in the front yo you pulled the move i mean his english was much better than mine but i can't tell you what the diversity of people that we met and how much this has influenced me to to certain kind of open-mindedness well you know tolerance curiosity just curiosity before you make your judgments um to to people who had never heard about Belgium. It's not like they knew where we were coming from. 2 a.m. radio stations where the only, you know, the amount of time they talked about the weather was just unbelievable. And with affect, with feeling. The only time they talked with feeling about things was about the weather. And I did hours of these car rides, you know, staying with people in their homes. How do you get into somebody's house? People would say, where are you staying? And you would say? And I would say, I don't know, we will look for a hotel or for a motel or and then they would say, do you want, you know, please, we have a room. You can stay. It's a very interesting way of establishing trust, connection, a rapport. You know, I'm as strange to them as they're strange to me. Really, it was all positive, except one time where we figured out it was better to just get out of there. But the rest of the time. You can't just skip through that. How do you figure out something? Because you kind of. It's all. It's very, very intuitive. It's like, it doesn't sound, it doesn't feel right. It's around the corner, but around the corner takes 15, 20, 30 minutes. You just know that something doesn't feel right and you just say, thank you so much, we'll get off here. You know, it's not my first hitchhiking trip either and I've done others, but, you know, you asked me how I came and why I stayed and I think that that experience was very influential in how I absorbed the U.S. And I think, you know, things are often both ends, right? On the one hand, you come as a European, you have a whole respect for culture that is established a long time ago, you value history, you value tradition, you value rituals, but you also value to come to a place where people rarely ask you necessarily, when I came, and where, what have you done and who is your family and what's your idea, what you want to do here and then you either have people who look at your CV and you don't fit and they say, we can't, or you see people and say, this girl, she has some ideas and she has some energy and ambition and we'll let her try something. This is not what you get in Europe. In Europe, we tried this and it didn't really work and that may take a long time and there's a lot of red tape and because tradition and history are so valued, change and innovation and novelty, is not necessarily instantly welcome. Here, it's the reverse. So when you come here as a 20-something year old and you have ideas and energy and you want to do things, it's incredible. I mean, I came to New York and I got a tremendous amount of money to make a documentary and to do a project on the relationship between blacks and Jews. On the relationship between black people and Jewish people? Yes, the psychodynamics of black Jewish tensions. Can I tell you? We're talking 84. This is the year I was born and this is a fascination I've had for a very long time. Yeah, that's you and me. Yeah, literally. No, can I tell you? I mean, we don't have tension, but it is part of our. Actually, I'd love to know about that work because I've grown up in this world where, obviously, I have a lot of Jewish people in my life. I went to a school that was technically a Jewish school and definitely in a Jewish neighborhood. Grew up you know, and South Africa was weird in that once apartheid ended, there wasn't an immediate mixing of people but there's definitely a blurring of the lines and so the younger generation grew up in a world where we were all exposed to each other's worlds and cultures and, you know? Nice. So in my school, the Jewish kids acted like they were Lebanese but the Lebanese kids said things that were Jewish you know, and these kids were eating that food and that food and they were singing that song and dancing, like, so it was this mix but I was always intrigued by the overlaps of black people and Jewish people in the world and the alliances and the tensions that would come with, you know? And then I remember reading, I think it was Malcolm X's biography and he speaks at length about, like, the Jewish community and, like, this Jewish man who helped him and what he was doing and he was obviously becoming Muslim but it was still it was an interesting it's always been a fascinating look for me and I'd love to know what you were, what did you learn from the work or what were you trying to get from the work? So I had trained in psychology and I was very interested in cultural transition and particularly in couples and families who are in cultural transition and that included people who move, who immigrate, either voluntarily or forced migration international but also in the middle mixed couples, mixed families, interracial interreligious, intercultural families and relationships. Interracial interreligious and intercultural Okay. That really was the bulk of my work the first 20 years. The first 20 years? Yes, yes. Before I touched mating in captivity. Before I began to talk about culture and sexuality. Yeah. And and I wanted to understand the differences between forced migration and voluntary migration. I wanted to understand mixed couples are in cultural transition but they do it in their own living room and they don't have to move across a border but it's happening. And so I arrived here and I did a project a research project on that and on multiculturalism in many different parts of the world and then I had done a lot of work on minority majority relations. I came from groups then to families then to couples. So majority minority relations and I thought but black Jewish relations it's minority minority relations. Now I am 25 I have been here three months. I don't think this would ever happen today that somebody would let this person out of nowhere with not from here but there was something about my naivety that I think kind of worked in my favor in a way where I just was curious because I didn't identify necessarily with American Jews and I certainly am not black and so I did this two year project on minority minority relations and what is the psychodynamic of two groups who have experienced in their own way massive amounts of discrimination and elation you know and what are the dynamics you know and then I did a documentary about that a little film and that would never have happened in Belgium. I mean that doesn't happen you don't. Why? What doesn't happen? That somebody out of nowhere comes and says I have an idea and that somebody says here I found you go ahead and show me what you can do and the same thing is happening with me today that people find me and just talk to me directly. This week I get an email I'm a college student I'm about to study couples therapy I would love for you to tell me what I should study what I should focus on who I should meet and I'm like how did you find my email? Of course I totally know how you found it. But it's like the idea that you could do this you know rather than calling the thing can I talk to the professor and you know it's much less hierarchical in the way that we have that we are internalized systems. But it's all relative. It's not like it doesn't exist. I just want to make sure that this is not taken in an absolute way but that was my experience of why I really liked it here and then I felt everybody in New York came to do something. I mean you come to New York to do things be it in art being in you don't come to New York to live I mean yes you can live the New York life but you come because you have energy to do something. There's refugees of every sort in this place so you start to meet the most amazing people. I have a lot of other things to tell you I'm not always so positive you know the people who know me well are going to be very amazed to hear me make many positive statements. Yeah because I've heard you speak at length about all these things but I've never ever asked you and I've never heard you talk about you know what it is that gripped you about this is beautiful because even in my short life. When I would go home and I would see some of my dearest friends and I'm curious if you have that too. When you go home to South Africa you see the people that you've known your whole life but basically at 25 they were living not that different from how they would live at 45 and at 45 they were already living like and I thought they already know what the future is going to be like if they're healthy and all goes well this is the kind of they're on a linear trajectory. In New York or in the States you have no idea you can start this way and suddenly you're I mean you know this is kind of what happened to me I think it's what happened to you and I can't imagine that literally happening in the same way in Belgium. I agree I agree with you I think in many ways in Europe what I felt Africa might be different in some ways but it definitely has elements of it. In Europe specifically I know it's all about what was and I find in the US it's all about what could be. That's constantly the dance but then I find Europe comes with a certain measure of breathe into it because it is what was as long as it matches it then you can relax so the way people treat their summers and their time off And there's a certain level of patience and calm that comes with it because they know what that it always was that in america there's a certain edge of maybe i'll work on a friday you know what i'm gonna work weekends i'm gonna you know what no time off i'm just gonna push a little bit more and i think both of them come with their their pros and cons you know the one metastasizes you yes yes yes the other one liberates you but i think everything needs to bounce off something right too much liberation is now just chaos and then too much of a metastasized system is is is i guess it's just stuck in time it doesn't it doesn't move and it doesn't evolve i i'm always i'm always trying to play with that balance just in life as you go how many times do you want to evolve change move grow move on to the next thing and how many times do you just want to sit and say yeah you know what tuesday will be like friday will be like saturday and let's see every i mean this is something i teach actually you know when i teach systems i'd say every system every relationship system being an individual or an organic system in nature straddle stability and change if you change too much too fast all the time you dysregulate and you go chaotic if you don't change you fossilize and you die so you need both i think in the u.s you are often on the treadmill and you're moving very very very fast one thing i never lost was the idea that i leave for the summer and i leave not for 10 days i leave for six weeks and people always would say i don't feel guilty and i never understood why i should feel guilty you take time off and i maintain that notion of the breathing the space in between the time to do nothing except dream reimagine your life think what else you want to do in and that form of reset was i never stopped and i traveled back home you know this a few times a year and that was the essence of it's like you you go there not to do necessarily but to be yeah to enjoy the company you don't have to prove anything you don't live to work and that is still very much present and i try to bring some of that back with me here i try to to have it as part of of of my life and um it's a it's a privilege really to be able to straddle both really i i didn't think about it like that at first when i was young i would go home and i would think ah they all know where they belong and i don't know where i belong wait what do you mean by that like they they never you know there's in my mind there were two groups of people those who never left and those who left once once you've left once you know that they're more than one place and you no longer have that sense of roots yeah so i would look at my friends who stayed and i would think they they have such a clear sense of where they're going of course it was linear but i envy that piece of their and then but after a week i thought oh now i'm i'm restless now i want to go back i want to go back to my life and i would get all busy and so i i for a long time i wanted to to have the freedom of being in two places but i wanted to still have the sense of rootedness and belonging that is part of belonging to one place and over time decades maybe it's not i slowly began to actually appreciate that i was part of many places even if i didn't necessarily belong to all these places you know that distinction no i i like that i'm just trying to think of it i'm trying to process it like it's a part of me yes but i am not just that if you want to know me you need to know this and this and this it's various you need to know this and this and this it's various it's all the different parts of you that make you who you are the locations the languages the the the stories that accompanied i think i think probably you too i i think so you know it's i'm trying to think of how it works for me i mean what part of your american-ness travels with you to south africa so i think i think really kind of no no no no so i because i spent so much because i african you know it takes me a week and then i'm i'm into the groove the one thing that i will say that i've inherited from america which i'm always grateful for is the idea that there's the possibility to do it even if it does not currently exist yeah you know yeah and i like this project that was described exactly there's just always this this idea of but what if you could do it but what if you could do it it doesn't exist but what if you could do it and i i think of how crazy that notion is everything that is at some point wasn't now we treat it like it's normal but there was a time when it just it wasn't so i think i think i've probably adopted that um what else is it some there's also some negative things that i think you adopt and then you you if i'm if i'm aware enough i can leave them behind you know so america will make me feel like i have to be actively engaged in everything all the time there's a certain FOMO-ness to america as a whole it doesn't matter what it is business are you missing out are you not doing the thing are you not engaged news have you kept up do you know what's happening has it broken is it breaking is it live is it happy you know that's that's always going on um it doesn't matter what even even small things like food have you tried that place you've got to try that place oh my god i can't believe you haven't tried that why haven't you tried that place there's a there's a certain you know drive yeah but but an urgency more than just a drive there's there's an urgency to be part of and to not miss out on that i don't experience when i'm back home when i'm back in south africa it's different because when you live in a more collectivist culture the culture drives you you don't have to go and attempt everything and be part of everything in order to know that you exist because you are absorbed by a larger tradition i think that is part of the individualism here and part of the individualism is also you know once i'm back home i'm back to my family i had a family i had a very different experience here because you have to do everything yourself it's not just you have to go you have to keep up with the news you have to you also have to pay for your education you also have to pay for your health you have to you are in responsible for everything and when you come from a social welfare system that is a very different experience the idea with which people take it for granted that they have to i put all the infrastructure in place a marriage here is a social welfare state of two and versus you know there's a social welfare state that exists as part of the system and within that you create a family that puts an enormous burden on people enormous we're going to continue this conversation right after this short break if you are new here or haven't been here in a bit welcome to my office for the whole month of july i am offering you 20 off for the annual and monthly subscriptions on apple podcast by joining my office hours subscription on apple podcast you'll get an ad-free version of these episodes plus you will have access to my apple channel that includes the earliest seasons of the podcast plus a clinical library of conversations with colleagues coaches and other therapists as well we offer follow-ups with couples as well if knowing more about their stories is something that interests you and that you're curious about join my office hours by clicking the subscribe button on the where should we begin show page see you there and thank you support for where should we begin comes from quince hate to break it to you but now that it's august that means summer is almost over for some of you that might be a relief autumn means cooler weather which also means it might be time to find some cozy cold 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Did you always think you would do this? No. What was like the idea? I find that there are almost like three different stages that people sort of project themselves in. One is when you're very young. What did you think you would be when you were like a young child? What do you want to be? Oh, I think I had different, I had three things. I either was going to be an interpreter, because my mom said you speak all these languages, you like to travel, interpreter will give you both. Or journalist, because I was curious and a theater actress, I loved the theater. But I think, honestly, for me, there's the people who've always known what they wanted to do, the people who just stumbled upon something and then the people who had an inclination and then they matched it with what life put in front of them. I think so much of what I did is because I arrived to the US because of the opportunities that the US gave and because of the obstacles. Because I didn't have the right license and I couldn't do what one would have done normally if I had studied here. So necessity became the mother of invention. I had to hustle. I had to create myself. I had to find a way to do. And so it became a kind of a combo between what I bring and what life is putting in front of me and says, do this now. So the friction is the reason we have. Yeah, you see, this is what I mean. No, it's amazing. My producer loves. He was telling me that there's a story you told, I guess that paints a picture of a little bit of a life that most people wouldn't associate you with at first glance. But I do think it explains a lot of like your style and how you see fashion and everything is like, how did you get into and not fashion the way people think of it, but what is your relationship with fashion? My parents had a clothing store. They had clothing stores. I lived. I lived above one of the stores. I worked in the store pretty much since I could talk. What type of clothing was it? Everything I wear. Really? Everything you wear. Okay. So just like a mix of. A good clothing store. But, you know, my brother opened the first boutique in Antwerp, which was the first time that young people were dressing separately from adults. Like when you were little, you had a suit with short pants. Yes. And a jacket. You just wore what the adults wore. A smaller version. A smaller version. Exactly. And then in the 60s, suddenly you began. You began to wear your own, the jeans, the sweats, the Shetland sweater, you know. And so my brother opened the first boutique in Antwerp where young people went to dress separately from the older folks. And I lived my life with the change of seasons by looking at the change of windows. And I accompanied my dad to the manufacturers to pick up the merchandise and the collections. And I went with my brother to Paris all the time to get the merchandise and to look at the fashion shows. So I kind of grew up in a fashion business, in a clothing business. And there was a tremendous amount of attention paid. But I also sat in the store and watched my mother sell. Because the stores were open till 8 o'clock and 9 o'clock at night. And my mother worked in the store. Was that common back then? Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Every day till 8 and Friday and Saturday till 9. Wow. So if I wanted to see my mom, I had to be in the store. I sat on the chair and I watched her sell dress. People tell stories. People told their whole life story. I went with my dad to bring suits to people who were dead. And families who were mourning before they were going to the burials and the cemeteries. I mean, I really learned about life through clothes, basically. And I'm the only one in the family that didn't enter the business, the family shop. Why? Was it because something pulled you more? Or was it because something pushed you? I just, we lived above the store. And I just thought, we never get rid of this thing. It's with us at every meal. That's all you talk about when you have a family shop. Yeah. You know, anyone who's a family. And I just thought, I want a profession I can carry on my back. I want a profession that I can travel with and I can, you know, do it. You wanted the store to live above you. Yes, yes. And I can do it anywhere I go. The thought of being tattered like that to this place. Of course. And I had an office and a private practice. So it wasn't, you know, until, you know, Skype started. Yeah, yeah. But that was the main idea. I remember saying to my parents, I said, I want a profession that I can carry on my back. And here you are. I could be wrong, but I feel like there was the mating in captivity, Esther, who came onto the scene and in many ways gave people, their first look at an idea that went beyond the flat way they looked at. That's the title of my first book. We should probably explain. Oh, Mating in Captivity. Oh, for those who don't know, it's a book. Yeah, it's a book. And for those who don't know. It has its 20th anniversary next year. Congratulations. Wow. Yeah, but I think it was one of the first pieces of work that changed people's flat perceptions on not just relationships, but infidelity, the infidelity of the mind, how people, you know, And for a moment in time, that's sort of, you know, how I think a lot of people thought of Esther. And that sort of was, yeah, it really was your conquest at the time. It was the journey that you were on. Now I feel like you have this passion and this laser focus specifically around community, the village, reconnecting with people, finding people. I actually thought about you the other day because I walked past a laundromat and I literally thought to myself, I need to talk to Esther about this. I have this theory in my head. I think we have neglected or we have gotten away from two elements in life that have robbed us of intimacy and we didn't realize that it's a second system effect. And those are need and friction. Right. And when I looked at the laundromat, I saw both, but in different ways. The main thing I saw was friction. And I thought, it's amazing how now. We live in a world where if you live in a building, you want the building to have a laundry, you know, in unit laundry, whatever it is, washer dryer. And when I looked into the laundromat, I thought, ah, imagine how many love stories wouldn't have happened if people didn't have to come and wash their clothes. Imagine how many friendships would have never been sparked if people didn't have to come and wash. And it's friction. It doesn't seem like, you know, the right ingredient to get. But when I looked into the laundromat, I was like, oh, wow, what a, what a cool organic way to meet. Because you're stuck with somebody for three hours and you might find you with them every single week. At some point, you might just say hi. At some point, nice to see you again. Hey, you left your, I put the coins in the dryer. I, you know, and I literally thought of you and I was like, wow, I wonder if this is like part of what Esther's fighting or not laundromats, obviously. But. Friction. Friction. Yes. The importance of friction. That is definitely. That is definitely a piece I talk about. But if you want to go back for a moment. So I had been a couples therapist for quite a while when I wrote Mating in Captivity. I just had not focused on sexuality and the cultural story that supports our expectations around sexuality, around desire, around eroticism in long term relationships. And I took a kind of a side road and I just thought, oh, I want to explore this because I had been trained in certain ways to think about sexuality in relationships. And I just thought, is that really true? I mean, is that the way it works? Because that's not what I see in my office. And I don't think it's what other colleagues see in their office. Wait, you're saying your training wasn't matching up with what you were seeing in the real world. Oh, I had always assumed it was your training. No. That had informed you. No. Not at all. That's part of why the book became so significant, because it actually questioned a whole set of suppositions that were parading as truths when they were actually not. Give me an example of one or two. Sexual problems are always the consequence of relationship problems. If you fix the relationship, the sex will follow. That happens sometimes. But I had seen many couples who got along much better and it changed nothing in their bedrooms. Because. Because the politics of the bedrooms are not the same as the one in the kitchen. Because love and desire, they relate, but they also conflict sometimes. And how do we negotiate and reconcile security and adventure, love and desire? That was the subject of this first book. And then I began to think, well, what happens when desire goes looking elsewhere? And that became the book about infidelity. And I thought, here, too, there's a whole set of ways that we think about infidelity. don't help a ton of people. And I would ask audience after audience if they've been affected by the experience of infidelity in their lives. And 85%, 90% of the people would raise their hands, either because a parent was or they were the child of or they were one of the three protagonists or they were the friend. So this is not just a few rotten apples on the side. And people are gutted by this. And I thought there needs to be a better way to help people deal with the crisis of affairs and the breaches of trust and the violations and all of that. And then these are still two books that basically presumes that people will be in relationships, or at least those are the people I wrote for, or people who seek to be in relationships. And then I became, I went back to the origin of my work, actually, which was I'm a systemically trained therapist who looks at relational systems. And I began to see our relational systems and our relational lives is changing fundamentally. It is one of the most important pieces of the future I'm interested in, the future of relationships. Let's go back to, you said systems trained. So help me understand, what is the difference between. Psychoanalytic and systemic? Yeah, I wouldn't even know that. Oh, the names. Yeah. So psychoanalytic and. Systemic. Okay. Systemic training was the, I mean, it exists in cybernetics, it exists, it borrowed pieces from cybernetics and feedback loops and looked at relationships and relationship problems or problems in families and couples as they are connected to the context. Right. How is the system organized that keeps this problem in place versus going just intra-psychically. Or intra, inside yourself. Right. Looking at your own personal story rather than looking at what is actually happening between me and you. That's a very different interpretation. Looking at how are we interacting in such a way that our communication is really fraught or that we end up both being rejected at the end of every conversation rather than just what happened in my history and what happened in your history. It's understanding. That's it. It's really. Problems occur. In a context, you look at how is the system organized around these problems and it is interpersonal and not just intra-personal. Got it. And that to me was the beginning of thinking relationally. Hence community, friction and all of that. If I look at the line, I've been looking at what happens between people and not just inside of the people. And our mental health models have been. Very, very focused on what happens inside people. Yeah. And the idea is that if I'm better with myself inside, it will solve all the problems between you and I. If I am more at peace with myself, I'll be nicer to you. If I like myself more, if I'm more selfish, etc. And that is sometimes the case, but it is not the whole story. But the whole story is also the opposite. If I'm actually engaged with you, I'm less likely sometimes. To think about myself all the time. Yeah. And to find meaning in doing things for others. And to find relevance and to even get confidence because of how other people see me rather than stand alone in front of my mirror and try to say to myself, you're worthy, you're worthy. So that is the big divide at this moment. That is really an essential division. And then comes technology. And then comes, you know, climate change and migration. Then all of the big. Geopolitical issues. And they all are influencing the way that we are relating to each other. And then instead of just calling it relationships, I began to think, no, no, it's relational intelligence. That's really where I am now. And that's not the same as emotional intelligence. It's really looking at the whole system. Relationships are. All relationships have expectations. They have boundaries. They have room for creativity. They have, you know, a dimension of accountability. Accountability and responsibility. They straddle how we negotiate the self and the other. My needs, your needs. You know, how much I connect to you without losing me and how much I connect to me without losing you. All relational systems have hierarchies, have roles. It's a map. And what is happening to these systems in light of technology, in light of AI, in light of the fact that. And now we get to the friction. That most. Most of the predictive technologies are aiming at reducing friction. Yeah. And they want you to have a polished, smooth, frictionless delivery of your every delight on demand. And that is fundamentally changing how you and I relate to each other. Yeah. For me personally, I just noticed. Is that a long story for a. No, it's great. Does that give you a. I think it does. How I got to where I am? Yeah, I think it does. Because I think. I think a lot of people are experiencing this, but I don't think we understand why we're experiencing it. And I also think most people are being blamed for it, either from the outside or they're blaming themselves. So I think a lot of people are sitting at home saying, I can't make friends. I don't know people. I don't have a community. I'm lonely. I'm depressed. I'm this. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm. And then they're blaming themselves. But no. I think very few people are thinking. I think very few people are thinking about the laundromat. Very few people are thinking about what it means when your food gets delivered to your house versus when you had to walk and go and get the food. And I don't mean it in like an old man way. In my day. You know, I just mean like. I mean like the conversation that you have with the person at the store. Oh, yeah. It's just like that little weak tie that builds something in your world. It's a little. I always think of it as planting the seeds for serendipity. That's how I think of it. Because you never know which one will grow and which one won't. But even in comedy, you know, I'll always say to my friends that things go wrong all the time in my life, right? You're traveling, you have to cancel a show or a thing goes wrong at the show or whatever it is, whatever it is. And my friends will say to me, how are you always so chill about it? And I go, I'm not necessarily chill. But I have practiced telling myself that all of this is inevitably going to be comedy. The friction is the comedy. There's no good comedy that comes from, you know, a beginning and an inevitable end. An inevitable conclusion. Yeah. It doesn't work. I went to the store and I looked for the size that I was looking for and they had it. And I bought it and my card went through and I went home and I put it on and it looked great. There's no story there. No story. There's no story because there's no friction. But give me obstacles. Exactly. That's the same as the erotic formula. Attraction plus obstacles equals excitement. Oh, wait. Hold on. Hold on. Attraction plus obstacle. Equals excitement. Equals excitement. Huh. It's the same in the rules of design. You know, it's funny. If there's no obstacle, if there's no friction, we're going back to what we said. I remember once having a conversation with a stripper. It was the most random conversation. And I said to her, I said, why do you put your clothes back on? And it was just a joke, right? Because all of us are in this club and here we are for a bachelor party. And this person dresses and then undresses and then dresses and then undresses. And I just said it as a joke. I said, why do you put your clothes back on? It would be more efficient to keep them off. And she said, yes, but you'll be surprised. I think I won't articulate it as well as she said it, but she said, you'll be surprised at how the men aren't turned on by us being naked. They're turned on by the idea of us becoming naked at some point. And she was like, that's essentially what we're playing with. And now when you say it like that, I go, oh, yeah, it sounds like the same thing. It's the attraction. The obstacle is the clothing and whether or not it will come off or when it will come off. And that creates the excitement. Correct. That's a good answer. That's a good analogy. Huh. Of course, whose bachelor party was this? Oh, what do you mean? This is the most common thing. Of course. It's like, you know, people are like, bachelor party. It's actually more common in the U.S. I don't think I ever got invited to a bachelor party at a strip club in South Africa. Not what do they do? I think it's more, it's more of a, you have a, what we call a braai, like a barbecue and you, you hang out. But I don't think it's a. It's funny, actually, now that you're asking me, it isn't seen as an ending of a life. Does that make sense? So I find, I find a lot of American bachelor parties are, well, this is the last time you get to explore sex and craziness and eroticism and all of it. So you better enjoy it. One last ride. That's right. You're about to enter the marital cell. There you go. Yeah. And your monastic life. But I don't remember anyone saying that in South Africa. I don't remember anybody. I don't remember anybody saying, you're going to get married, so no more sex for you. Kiss your sex life. That was never, I don't think it's ever even been framed like that. It was more, it's more the coming together of families. That's what people focus on. They go, oh, now you are welcoming another person into your family or the other side is becoming part of your family. I think that's, so a strip club wouldn't make sense for combining families. I want to go back to the laundromat. I love the place. I really, I think the laundromat. Or other places like it, the bookstore, the coffee bar, the train station, the train itself. I mean, there's so many places for that friction. Yeah. I think that that's where I'm at. positioning myself today i'm placing myself at the door i want you to come outside do you know one of the more to come outside and go to any of these places the statistic that really stayed with me recently is an article it's called the the antisocial century by derek thompson and he's 74 percent of food that is cooked in a restaurant is not eaten on the premises that's the new number and that woke me up an increase of 30 percent of people eating alone in the restaurant now eating is one of the oldest worldwide gatherings traditions of coming together with others it's friction of every sort and the fact that we are going to order from the restaurant and then bring it home and eat it many times alone yeah that's a problem yeah so this is all i'm going to do now from now on is the future of relationship getting people to not feel so lonely so isolated so locked up in their houses so defeated by relationships yeah um and so um and so transferring their expectations for algorithmic perfection into their relationships oh they want people to become perfect and predictable like the technologies and we are by our very nature unpredictable and imperfect and that is the part of the beauty of and being human beings it's exactly that if there is no obstacle there's no story that's of any interest let alone comedy and i think that we're saying something that is quite it's more important than we even let on to this friction piece yeah you know because that's the plot you tell stories and they have a plot and the plot is built by all this unpredictability obstacle be it in the in the sexual plot or be it in the comedy plot or be it in the relationship it's really important what are we going to do otherwise what's going to happen to us i think the difficulty though is realizing the value of it in the moment i think that's that's what's hard there's a fantastic professor i think he actually has a course on happiness or fulfillment or something of the sort a swedish professor i think his name is dalin michael dalin and one of the things they found was if you asked most people most most most people what they would like to eat in the future he broke it into three carrots ice cream and insects and he was referring to like these little insects that you could buy at disneyland apparently i'd never heard of them but it's like a chocolate covered insect and it's you know it's it's all the rage and people buy them but he found that there was a large number of people who never ate them a lot of people bought them but never ate them and so he broke it down into carrots insects and ice cream and in all the research what he found was if you asked most people what they want to eat for their next meal or for the meal in 10 years they say carrots i should be eating more carrots right if you ask most people what they what they wish they had eaten it was and then if you ask most people what they want to eat now they say ice cream and it was just a beautiful simple way of looking at the way we avoid friction he went we know theoretically what we want for ourselves in the future what will be the healthiest or the best we also know that we regret not taking the the road less traveled you know the crazy idea the moment that didn't necessarily make sense but in the moment for the most part we are more predisposed to choosing the immediate relief and the and so when i think about friction i think of it in the same way if you as to say dating apps you go trevor don't use a dating app i know myself and a lot of people would say yeah i agree with you esther because in the future i think to myself i would love to meet someone organically etc in the past i would have loved to taken a chance tried something different explored beyond my you said what was a culture religion race all these things but in the moment oh it's so easy to just swipe it's so because it's the ice cream and we never feel good after the ice cream and then we always regret the ice cream but we always fall back into them so that friction like i i love that you're positioning yourself there because i think but friction is connected i think to the big issue of the moment yeah which is uncertainty because friction is what makes you have to experiment deal with the unexpected right deal with the unpredictable deal with the the lessons of making all kinds of bad choices it helps you deal with uncertainty dealing with uncertainty is what helps you deal with anxiety that's oh wait wait wait say that again dealing with uncertainty is what helps you deal with things yes in what way because if you become more um adept at dealing with the unknown the unexpected the unpredictable then you develop a sense of confidence it's what you just described when you get to a show and you had to cancel something or the flight was late you have a stance that basically says i know what i can control i know to handle the unknown and the unpredictable and i know that it will land in my comedy because it will become part of the story now i'm annoyed maybe but i i you know that you don't get completely frazzled you don't get completely frazzled and you you absorb it you have a shock absorber and that shock absorber is what allows you to not be as anxious about the unknown about mortality about the unpredictable all of that you know having all the answers in the palm of your hand is not making us less anxious it's making us more anxious because we're no longer making bad choices discovering something realizing we don't like it we begin to expect immediate perfection we begin to expect immediate perfection we begin to expect immediate perfection perfect answers for everything and relationships and life our existence doesn't operate this way in many aspects some of them do but the majority of things are way more complex than that so this piece of uncertainty matched with all the changes that are happening at full speed are making us very very fraught we and and that to me because everybody wants to talk about the loneliness epidemic but people are not necessarily addressing the loneliness epidemic but i think it's the other piece which is how do we deal with so much uncertainty all at once and when you can't deal with uncertainty and you don't have the resilience to help you with anxiety then you don't know how to deal with frustration conflict differences and then you become more intolerant and then you go to look for people who sell you certainty and that comes with certain political regimes as well you want somebody who's going to help you feel more certain i'm going to solve this for you so to me that's all interconnected and that's happening on a geopolitical level and it's happening in relationships and so to just look at the dilemmas of mating in captivity is not enough anymore for me right i think there's something bigger happening that is touching at the core of our existence every research tells you that you only live longer and you live better when you have meaningful relationships and people are having less and less of it what was the system that that made you this way like i've always wondered like what was little esther like when you know when when your parents would talk about you how are you with other kids or how were you in the house was your world certain or was it more uncertain or my world was certain but my parents world was a world that was completely decimated so predictions so i think it's two different things on the one hand you know one of the most important aspects of my my background is that i am a child of two holocaust survivors and my parents were the sole survivors of their entire family jeez so my mother was the youngest of seven my father was the youngest of nine nobody nobody nobody survived but my parents so they definitely dealt with uncertainty and they dealt with the unknown and they dealt with a world where you have no idea where kindness will come from and where order will be restored and where humanity will come back and all of that so i have all of this in my background they each spent four years in concentration camps i think that all of that is extremely important in how i look at the world how i look at who is who is good and who is not right who thinks of others who doesn't who can be kind how much is our ideology defining who we are versus how much does our behavior and our actions actually define who we are all of these big questions but then i think in addition whenever i see dogma or groupthink or mass psychology or crowds i tend to think there must be something else there must be another way is this really so or is this just so because that many people think like it and i think it's the combination of those things i I act very fearlessly, but I am not. But I act fearlessly. So I guess you act courageously then. Yeah, that's interesting. I never saw it like that. But yeah, potentially. Because that's what courage is, right? Acting in spite of the fear. I think of myself as counterphobic. Do you know that term? No. So you can be phobic, you can be fearful. And counterphobic is when you actually do the things that frighten you the most. How do you find the balance between that and living life with a reckless abandon that causes danger to you and others? Because some things scare you for the right reasons, don't they? Yes, of course. Like when you were hitchhiking, you didn't go with that one person because something scared you in some way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you always want to keep judgment. You have a healthy dose of skepticism. You don't believe what everybody tells you. People will say this in different ways. They'll be like, go to the thing that scares you. And then I've like, I mean, you know, and I've been public about this, but I always think to myself, I go, I wish my mom was a little more scared of domestic abuse because then I wonder what it would have changed in my family. And I talked to her about this, you know, and I'm glad I spoke about it publicly because people have even spoke about it publicly as well now with me. They go, yeah, when do you allow the fear to control you or to inform your decision? And how do you know when it's a good fear, when it's a bad fear? Like, this is, you don't always know. I mean, you have a sense. You look around. You ask other people for a reality check. Yeah. When I am very worried about things, I ask for a reality check. I also know that in my stomach lives a real long history of fear and that I can have very strong reactions, you know, to situations. But I also know that, that, that, that, the legacy of this precedes me. And then what do I do with it is a different thing. But I think, when do you know if your fear is valid? It's a fear. So what helps you with fears is grounding yourself in reality. How do you trust reality? Generally, it helps to have other people around you to help you. You know, am I, is what I'm seeing what you're seeing too? I mean, it's a check. Right. And the check is not, it's not always done. You're not always the best person to actually know. Or at least for yourself, you can be perfectly perceptive for others. But for yourself, you don't necessarily know because you have all, you sense a lot of things. In football, we say men on. What is that? I've always loved that. It's one of the reasons I love playing football. Yeah. Soccer or football? Soccer, soccer. I mean, that's, you know, but, yeah, football. One of the things I love about football is I always go, for me, it's, it's a perfect allegory for life because it's, it's one, you are, you are the individual. Everything you do individually matters to you and to the team. However, you cannot do anything without the team and things will happen because of the team. So you're part of a system. And so it almost ties in those two ideas where one is completely, what am I doing as a player? And why did I do that? Or why am I going to do that? But the other one is you have to do it in relation to others. Correct. And you have to understand why you, so you can kick a great pass, but if your teammate doesn't reach it, there was no point in kicking it, you know? And, and there's one, when you talk about your community, you just say man on or man. And it means you're being marked by something that you may not be aware of. And the people around you can observe you better in the situation than you can because you have your blind spots and good teammates will always tell you what's happening around you. They'll say man on, they'll say time, they'll say you've got time. And it just means you've got time to think you can breathe on the ball, turn, you can turn your body. You can, you know, and I, I love those small moments where, you're reminded that you're not in it alone, even though you are alone in that, in that little microcosm of a moment, you're alone. It's a beautiful image. It really describes it very, very well. You, you, there is what you can do. And then there is how other people can help you do what you're about to do. Yeah. And then how, what you do will help what others need from you, because that's the way the team, I think it's, it's a great image. I, it fits my thinking, my thinking very much. But when, when I think of your parents, I think to myself, and this is, this is purely anecdotal. I have some friends, well, obviously because they're young, it might be their grandparents who survived the Holocaust or escaped it. And I've often found that there will be two groups, and this is purely anecdotal. And I'm, you know, I know I'm distilling it down, but I'll have some of my Jewish friends, like they'll go, my grandparents taught me to be afraid of everything, question everything, run away at the first, because, because of what we experienced. Then there's other ones, who'll go, no, they've taught me to fight harder, to be in this. Correct. And there's no like one correct one. But I, I think to myself, you could have had parents, who wouldn't tell you to hitchhike, or wouldn't let you go anywhere. Oh, I didn't tell them. Oh, you didn't tell them. don't please. Okay. No. Oh, okay. No, and certainly not that I was traveling with a boyfriend either. Okay. No, now the story, you see, now the story is making a little more. But your distinction is very important, because I, I've often described that I grew up in a community that was all Holocaust, survivors. They were not Belgian born. They all arrived. My parents also, when they arrived to Belgium after the war, from the concentration camps, they were refugees, and they stayed illegal refugees for another five years. So this is not just the war. It's everything that follows. I happen to be born later. My brother is born in 46. I'm born in 58. So I just arrived when my parents were finally beginning to kind of settle themselves. But I often thought that in my community, and, and what I'm going to describe, I saw in my community, but I think you can apply this to many other communities, uh, and many other circumstances surrounding trauma. There were people who did not die, and there were people who came back to life. Oh, damn. The people who did not die lived very tattered to the ground, often fearful, often afraid to take risks. Often afraid to enjoy, because when you enjoy, you cannot be vigilant. You cannot be worried and joyful at the same time. You cannot experience pleasure and fear at the same time, unless it is baked into a certain kind of pleasure system, but not the way that these people were experiencing it. And they often lived with curtains that were kind of pulled down. And you entered their homes and there was a kind of a morbidity. They survived, but they were not, necessarily alive. And this is an image. This is not that anybody discussed it like that, but I would feel it when I would go to the homes of my friends. And then you had another group and they came back to life. And I am very blessed to have been part of parents like that. My two parents, they had not survived for nothing. They, they didn't starve for years for nothing. And they, we discussed many, many times what made them want to continue. And how did they get up in the morning minus something degrees and and walk with newspaper around their feet and go work in those factories and be moved from one camp to another all of that and they were going to enjoy life it wasn't just a they were going to enjoy life with a vengeance the biggest thing they could do was actually enjoy life enjoy life with a vengeance you understand it's a beautiful phrase I think what I took this was very very young I had the notion that I was going to enjoy life with a vengeance. That I, my life will be meaningful when my life will be big not fame or things like that but I will do important things I will have a rich life in all kinds of ways and I'll tell you a very very interesting anecdote that happened to me this year and I would often so that was the thing I had I'm going to I'm not I'm the I'm a miracle child I arrived you know years after my parents tried for me to be born. I have this whole legacy and all these dead people at my feet and I'm going to live in a way that's going to kind of give them something so that's a piece also of how why I you know what what drives me yeah but as this year I was invited by a German media group to be a guest of honor at a dinner at the polling museum in Warsaw. And amongst the many other guests was also the foreign minister of Poland and I had to say something so I got up I had no idea what was going to come out of my mouth and I said you know when I was a child I used to lie in bed and I would think one day I'll go places and they won't tell me Jews not allowed they let me in but not only would they let me in but they will tell me you are welcome. And not only would they tell me you are welcome but one day they will tell me you are the guest of honor we want you here and here I am today invited by the Germans at the Jewish Museum of Warsaw in the presence of the Polish foreign minister I guess I actually manifested this dream and then this was like I didn't know if it was the adult in me talking or the eight year old. in me talking. - Wow. the room was silent, you know, it just like, it was right there all in front of me, but I didn't, it was here I am amongst you all and I'm invited, I'm accepted and, uh, and we can start a new relationship and we can repair and we can learn to respect each other and we can learn to honor each other's presence and, um, and that's what I want to do. It reminds me of something my mom often says, um, it's the reason I guess she goes to temple, but she'll go, she says like, she feels like Jewish people and black people are natural allies because unfortunately there's a shared trauma and, um, I forget the other word that she uses, but, but a sort of like ostracization. That they can all relate to. And it's interesting you just saying that, you know, unfortunately a lot of it can be applied to many black people, you know, the dream to go somewhere, to be welcomed, to be brought in, not just be allowed in, but to be welcomed in, to be seen as part of, to be, it's, you know. That's why I tell it to you in my version, but I think these are stories that belong to many other groups and many other people who have been. Excluded, rejected, annihilated. I mean, um, nobody has the Olympics on victimhood. Don't go anywhere because we got more. What now? After this. On any journey using Uber, it helps to know you're getting into the right car. 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The more you realize that there's no myopic lens on what the world is feeling, but there's no denying in Europe, especially in the United States, there's a lot less thinking of what could be and really, really sitting back into the like, this is the way it was. This is the how. As somebody who thinks about systems, where do you think we are in that journey? Because it seems like that journey has, you know, a sort of narrative. Natural curve that it follows in history. If you look at the history of cultures and societies, it's when you do this, I would say it's periods of expansion and periods of contraction. Yeah. That is the movement I see. And I think that we lived for a long time in a system that was more contracted. I'm going to give it to you from the point of view of relationships. Okay. For a long time, people lived in tribes, communities, villages. But relations, and they still do in the majority of the world, mind you. And the relationships are organized around duty and obligation, around loyalty and community. And there's a lot of clarity. I mean, there's been polarization always. There's churches fought each other, tribes fought each other. It's not like we haven't been polarized. But it was slightly different because every one of these hierarchical structures, communities and religions. Provided people with a good sense of clarity and certainty. What you didn't have is personal freedom or personal expression. We moved with the modern era and with to a system of relationships where for the first time we began to switch from duty and obligation. We moved to choice and option. And basically at the center now of relationships is the individual in search of a community. Not an individual in the community in search of personal freedom and expression. And you have more freedom than you've ever had, but you're more alone than you've ever been. And you are crippled with uncertainty and with self-doubt because you have a tremendous amount of decisions to make when you have freedom. You can decide so many aspects of your life today that were never available. Talking in the West primarily. And with that, the burdens of the self have never been heavier. And it's all ruled by the rule of authenticity, meaning being true to myself. Now, how do I know what is true to myself with such absolute certainty? That is really exhausting. That's difficult. So you add to that the speed with which technology is transforming us. This is one of the biggest revolutions that we're going to go through and people are dizzy and they are anxious and they are uncertain, and we know that anxiety and trauma constricts our imagination. And so we go into a contraction again, and we are looking for people to give us some relief and some certainty. And autocracy comes with that. And that's the motion that we are in now. So we become less welcoming. We become less tolerant. We start to see other people as threat, what they take away rather than what they take away. What they bring. And this is not the first time by far. I mean, it's really important at this moment to listen to historians as well, so that we get a sense that. But it hasn't happened with that kind of speed and that kind of intensity, maybe ever, or at least, you know, the industrial one. We had the agrarian one before, but I think that that's what we are in. And I went to South Bay last week and I did a conversation with the with the futurist Amy Webb, and, you know, she was giving the predictions of the future. And half the slides, not half the slides, but many, was like, this is happening and you don't need people anymore. And everybody's clapping and I'm thinking, these people are cheering their own extinction. Yeah. I mean, what is happening to us? Not just our own extinction. I think we're also cheering our own purposelessness. Yeah. And that's, that's. Yeah. So, someone in a thousand years is going to look back and go, wait, you're telling me they went into a building with other people. They sat at a desk, they punched in numbers, sent those numbers to other people. The other people read them, sent it back to them, and this was their purpose. This was the, and they'd be like, that can't be right. It seems like slavery. It must've been slavery. Why would they do this? But that purpose is. But it's purpose with the spiritual dimension. It's purpose with the transcendence. Oh yeah, definitely. Which is I think the most powerful. It's not a prag, only a pragmatic purpose. Yeah. I think we're erasing it with, um, with a lot of technology is we're, we're, we're going, you don't have to do it. You don't have to, I'm, I'm sure you've, you've seen this and I, I say this to my friends all the time. You know, one of my best friends just had twins and he, they, him and his wife have gone through this whole journey now of finding a nanny and finding this and finding that fine. And I remember laughing one day and I sat with them and I said, do you ever think it's, do you ever think of how far. How funny it is that we live in a world that has tricked us into living alone, but then buying our community back. You know, you're buying every element of your community. Who is a babysitter? If not your sister, your friend, your uncle, your grandparent, your, who is that sort of babysitter? I, by the way, I didn't grow up with, I didn't even know that was a concept growing up for me as Trevor. Um, cause it's people, people babysit, uh, your ride to the airport. There's no Uber. It was whoever Esther, can you take me to the airport? Hester goes, oh, I don't want to take you to the, but I, I guess I have to take you to the airport, but you know what I think of next time? I think it was Scott Galloway who says on one of our episodes, which I really loved, he, he, he described it as garbage time. And I mean, I know you wouldn't be so crass as to say it that way, but I, I appreciated what he meant. He said it wasn't the moments where he had planned magic, where magic happened. It's when he didn't. And I think of that. It's when you're on an airport ride with your friend, you hate the friction, you hate the idea, and yet that's the ride where you learn a new thing. about them you connect on something different you laugh at something new you know and i think all of this technology is just like it's just eroding a lot of that purpose even in the smallest ways just the purpose of like i'm the person who always helped esther to do this now there's a robot lifting things for her you know how nice it was i think for many people to say my neighbor helps me put up shelves so i i when i think of that i go yeah it's natural and we're going and we're growing but i i am less worried about jobs per se and i'm more worried about purpose i think without purpose it's very difficult to get out of bed it's very difficult to even know why you tolerate friction because friction without purpose is is now just torture because purpose is is the essential dimension of meaning i mean we are creatures of meaning and we need to know that we matter and we need to know that we exist in the psyches of others and we need to know that when we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're in a situation where we're not there others still think of us and so we have an experience of object constancy that i live inside of you and you live inside of me and that whole intersubjective piece is essential to relationships and that's the piece you do not have with an ai you can have a ton of different things with the machine but the machine doesn't have subjectivity and that doesn't mean that it doesn't yet have subjectivity it just doesn't it you it's a one-way street right and to learn to relate to is essential in relationship not just to learn to relate to yourself you're not just thinking now as you say that when you said yet because usually i get no no no no no no no no the reason i laughed when you said yet is because i i think of the ultimate conclusion if we're honest about where a path goes all right people are selling ai now and then they go the ultimate goal is not just ai it's intelligence and it's not just until it's artificially intelligent it's generative and it is predictive and it is and it is and it is right and i was watching a video yesterday or the other day where it was like um uh i think it was nvidia showing off like a robot vacuuming like a house and now when you said yet i think to myself wouldn't it be ironic and almost predictable that we would pursue a world where we create a thing that works like us moves like us starts to speak like us starts to think like us and then at some point that thing goes yeah i don't want to i don't want to do this anymore i don't want to vacuum your house i have dreams i have aspirations esther i want to go hitchhike i want to go hitchhike i don't care that i'm a robot i also have dreams i want to see what the world has for me a little frisson you know i and i and then i wonder what are we going to do when we get there oh god i i can't go as far i do know that we are relational creatures that's part of the purpose you don't you know i mean sometimes you do things that matter to you but sometimes what matters to you is related to how it affects others oh wait say that again please sometimes you do things that matter to you but they get it's exactly what your image of the soccer i kick the ball yeah but that ball will actually have a future that is determined by how other people catch it oh i like this it's the same image can i tell you esther i'm just noticing there's a huge gap in sports relationship psychology and i think you could no no i no i'm telling you you could take it but you gave me a good image no but i'm serious if we could find like a gap i think there's a lot of people men stereotypically yes who love sports who i think would be able to see relationships and and like psychology in a different way if you if you applied it through that lens but you have to translate that for me i'll do it i can give you principle because this way you described i saw the ball i saw the i saw i mean i happen to know soccer so it's easy for me i saw the guy play and i saw the response and i know how people you know you're you're running and but there is somebody who's telling you yes you know who to kick it to and you are in a complete system of interdependence but while you are also in a state of autonomy yes the cut it's people think that when you say interdependence you've abdicated yourself you haven't you're completely in charge but what will determine the outcome of your thing is not just determined by you it's everyone in relation to somebody else yes and that i i i think that there is something happening at this moment that is eroding this and you know i could say the future of love i could say the future of connection i could say the future of how you know can we still turn conflict into connection how how how do you think how do you think it is and will affect romantic relationships because i know i know i know a lot of people who say oh i'm just happy and i'm not even mocking them they really say i'm just happy with my partner and it's just the two of us and we get cozy and it's wonderful and you know that's not we don't need the world voice of change that the change is really happening that people are actually less and less in relationships less and less in romantic relationships less sex less connection less dreams with others um it's that it is a there's a kind of a collective withdrawal there's also a disillusionment because there has been such a kind of a of whatever i lose calls an emotional capitalism you know it's like the commodification of people the kind of market mentality applied to to your intimate life that has been really challenging to people that's partly on the apps not the only place but it's really taken people down a notch they just can't take it anymore and uh so i think every study looks that comes back talking about from the sex recession to the intimacy recession to the fact that young people are less and less in relationships in romantic relationships but they also have less friendships yeah people have fewer and fewer friendships there's a loss of social capital that people have no one to turn to in a time of crisis or to confide to that friends on social is not the same as friendship in life yeah and all of that i mean there is there is really an impoverishment of connection and at the same time we know that emotional health is essential to overall health so you can't separate the changes in relationships with the kind of mental health issues that are emerging that are connected to the questions of longevity i mean these things are to use the word we keep coming back to interdependent so how do we get people to be more independent people to relate to each other more to have more connection to come out of their house to to go to the laundromats of this moment i think is really the question that all the people who work in my field are currently questioning so i haven't studied any of it nor do i think i'm an expert but if i was to throw in an amateur observation i would argue there are two things that i think are contributing to it in a major way i was with my brother-in-law and i was like my brother and we're sitting myself my brother and one of my best friends and we're sitting together in front of the tv and my friend he goes i want you guys to watch the show and he puts the show on and the three of us start watching and then my brother goes very quickly he's 20 he goes like man this is boring i think his exact phrasing was this is ass that's what he said actually and my friend said i don't care we're gonna watch it just watch the episode it's really it's gonna get good and i'll never my brother went like i don't know and he pulled out his phone and then he went immediately he was just on social media and i'm sitting there and then we started speaking about it which was fun i said man do you realize how crazy it is that there was a time when you couldn't do what you just did and not only could you not do it i argue it would have made the evening a little bit better because you would watch the thing that we're watching sometimes because your parents are you were connected even if you were connected in the thing that you didn't like which i know seems like a paradox but you were so at the end of it you would go that was boring but you had experienced boring with us as opposed to experiencing entertainment alone yeah you know and i that's the first part i think of i know that as trevor i can i can sit here and pontificate and sort of romanticize a laundromat oh this beautiful and then someone will say to me like yeah so you can afford to spend two hours and a half on the phone with me and i can sit here and pontificate and sort of because while the laundry's going i've got to be doing this and i've got to be doing that and i've got to prepare this for tomorrow for work and i've got to get that report ready and my kids need this and my that needs that and my and i think that's the other thing that i notice a lot of people are struggling with is people are trying to save as much time as possible to sort of plow it into the as you say the productivity side the the you know the the the um transactional side i could be using this time to do something productive i could be using this time to get something i could be using and i can't that's what a lot of people say i can't afford to do this so i'd love to know like because you think about all of this do you think do you think there's a do you think there's an answer on the other side of it i mean i think that it's a very very valid argument but we're talking about something slightly different for example you do shows yeah where people come to laugh right there's no purpose So to speak, you don't accomplish anything. anything in the transactional sense right you know they they're not thinking about time when they come to you they they support they surrender i mean there's two things people singing together and people laughing together right these are extraordinary social synchronization techniques you know of of how you bring people together and do you feel like you have less people coming out these days no i think it's the opposite actually i think in music i i don't know in comedy but i'm pretty certain all live entertainment is experiencing its best performance ever like people are coming out more than ever so to this person i could say you know i completely understand that in your world in your life and in your reality these two hours you have a ton of other things to do this is we're not discussing this find yourself every once in a while the show the performance the sing-along the place to go and and laugh together with others because these things have in many ways they've always existed but now they exist in their in replacement of religious experiences this is what people used to do and they would congregate they didn't necessarily come together to laugh but they congregated so and they went on the steps of the church and then they had comedy there right so these are new iterations of things that have accompanied civilization forever find your ways to do this you're going to have to spend time have moments if it's not the sabbath then have it be sunday and if it's on sunday have it be saturday night concert or yeah but you need these experiences these experiences that are more aesthetic more collective more interactive and they don't accomplish anything else besides the power of that congregating and i think you are an you and all the people who do your art you know um it's i've never done i've never in my i go to shows but i don't often go to i've never seen you live for example i've never seen many shows like that pretty fantastic i'm going tonight to my first comedy wait really yes oh that's gonna be fun i can't wait to hear what you think at the beacon and i i'm really excited to go and i'm going to listen to mike mabillia oh mike mabillia yeah yeah yes and because i've never been to a you know where i because i always thought humor is the hardest thing to translate language wise as well and then i feel like i'm i don't get it i don't get the joke wait you think you won't get the joke i often thought when i would go to a comedy cellar i've often felt like like i'm not laughing at the same things but i am back i'm going i'm very excited because i i've understood recently i have had such joy singing with people and now i want to go and laugh with people yeah i want to have those kinds of experiences and to me that's my answer to the person who doesn't have time to schmooze in the laundromat it's okay i get it everybody has a different reality but every person who used to have a very busy life and got up with the sun and went to sleep with the animals had that time in their life but it was regulated through primarily through religion now we have to find secular versions well that's what that's what you've made me realize in this conversation is i think a lot of the conversations we're having in society are thinking of it through the individual lens saying you get out there you do you do you do but what you just made me realize what we have in this conversation is it is a lot easier to do that when the we is doing it so you never felt like you were in the wrong place when you were at church in fact you felt the inverse why aren't you at church why didn't you come to church what do you mean you're missing church and to your point i think a lot of the conversations we're having in society are thinking about what we're doing what we're doing and i think that's the point i mean what are you doing technically you don't have to go there you can pray at home you have the bible at home you can do it another day but because the we was there and you weren't think of um halloween i'm always intrigued now that you say it by how people who are very busy will still have to leave the office because it's halloween because they're kids and because and you're like this is this is the most ridiculous thing ever you're dressing up like a witch but you you're like i can't miss it i can't now i gotta get i gotta leave yeah i'm taking my kids trick-or-treating and and because society has accepted halloween as this concept your boss doesn't say are you crazy you're gonna leave the office early because your your kids gotta dress up and go get candy that's crazy but you honestly you're making me realize now that the the so that you're contained in defines how comfortable you are doing or not doing the thing because it's much harder to have discipline alone and to know when you know now you it's like on the one hand you have the freedom to decide what you want to eat when you want to eat when you want to sleep how much you want to sleep when to exercise all but on the other hand it's a lot harder to have to create all these disciplines by yourself when you have collectively synchronized those things yeah all the stores are closed on a certain day then that's it you know these are the three times a day or the five times a day that you need to pray these are the times that you need to have sex because it's mandated by your religion people who are orthodox have often a lot more sex than you have to have sex because it's mandated by your religion than people who are secular right you know because there is the it's not left to do i feel like it it's i should i have to it's part of what's expected of me and there is something very important about this of course in that system if you don't want to go you don't have the freedom not to go we don't it's not this or that yeah but the integration of these two poles is really important in in the in the equilibrium of a society what is a must and what is a want what is a we and what is an i this is true in every relationship this is true in the relationship between individuals and their family or their community yeah and it's true as a whole in societies and at this moment we are off balance so if you were creating a perfect world in fact we play this game on the podcast one day you should join us i think you'd have a lot of fun we call it if i ruled the world and it's um it's it's the idea is you you rule the world you can change it however the way you you'd like to change it but it's nothing boring like um you know everyone gets free health care or that it's like because we sort of agree it's more like one of the more recent ones i had was i said um if i ruled the world i would make it that everybody's thoughts that they're having during sex is heard by the other person that they're having sex with oh no it failed terribly yeah but that's not such a good proposition yeah it failed esther i don't need you to tell me it failed okay it failed terribly um my reasoning was good though and that's oftentimes what we're actually trying to get into is the reason versus the idea i'm very i wouldn't know how to answer this if i oh but it's fun i think it's like because i think it gets it it's not about like knowing certainly i i know how i would answer yes go but it's not i'm gonna start on the conceptual level i think this thing i just described how do you balance the i and the way okay you know me and the other us them all these divisions the majority of these issues in relationships for sure are it's complex in relationships of two people if there is a complicated question that can have two as two polarities it's very easy to take half of the story i take one side of the issue and i put the other side on you and you could do this with should the kid have a pacifier as you could do this about sex as you could do this ceremony it doesn't matter the issue polarization doesn't have much to do with the thing that you're actually differing about it's the fact that you've taken the complexity and you have parceled it out if you were alone you would have to deal with both parts of it yourself oh damn right do i want to clean or do i not want to clean do i want to get up do i want to exercise do i want to pray you would have to negotiate inside of you the two sides of the complex of the complexity of this issue because there are different sides yeah yeah and you would have to figure out yourself do i work or do i take off do i want kids do i not want kids do i want to be in a relationship but when you're in a relationship it becomes i want a and you want b and now let's fight and this piece about how you have to negotiate the complexity and you can't resolve the complexity of the issue you have to resolve it by just picking one side but it is all about integrating these polarities is i think what makes us either in a good relationship or not or in a good society or not for that matter the opposite of that is cleavages intolerance conflict disconnect polarization all the words that are rampant these days so am i hearing you correctly if if i say that essentially what you're saying is we need to still be able to grapple with both parts of the conversation yeah do i want tradition or do i want innovation yes but you must you must sort of hold both exactly right we want europe tradition history the past the the the the timelessness the sunday or do we want the united states efficient pragmatic everything is open 24 hours seven days a week as if it's that or that it's not we need we appreciate it but we need to be able to grapple with both parts of the conversation yeah do i want tradition or do we need we need we need to be able to grapple with both parts of the conversation yeah this and we appreciate that so how do we bring these things together you know complex problems don't get solved they are paradoxes that you manage it's like it's almost like i'm picturing sliders while you're saying this i'm almost going you might raise a slider and say i think 70 percent relaxation right now 30 percent not but not on off exactly you know it's like you're talking about like dimmer switches for our for our opinions versus on off switches and it's an it's a both end that changes constantly versus an either or because these things are they're too complicated to make it an either or tech tech ai all of this like this or that you know the old system the new system no there is we you want this but there are consequences to it so can we check on it then we want some of that but we don't want all of what it was yeah this is a very different way of resolving the big issues of our life of our society of our of our relationships and i don't know how one helps to shift that but that would be if somebody can help me you know do this at scale i want to be on the lead of that okay i'll apply my mind to it i might not be the person but i might bump into the person so i'll you let me know but you know what i'm saying i completely i completely understand what you're saying and i think you know not not to completely level blame but i i do think if we start with let's just say just start with the algorithm so i don't know if you've seen this recently there are a few um social media companies or one might not not even be social media in its inception and essentially what they've proposed is building algorithms from scratch they go forget villains don't think of facebook as a villain don't think of instagram don't think of anyone as a villain rather think of it as an outcome of what they tried to create and that that's not what they're trying to do and that's not what they're trying to do that is what it is so they designed an algorithm what do you mean an outcome of what so so you know sometimes we go that person is bad because this happened we don't think to ourselves that happened because of what they did but their goodness or badness isn't really part of it the algorithm was was an example of this when they originally made a lot of these algorithms they designed the algorithms to maximize getting people's attention and to keep people engaged and which seems like the right thing to do regardless of the product you're making so you have a restaurant no no make the food taste as good as possible so that people will enjoy the food but we also know there's balance you can also fill the food with cocaine people really enjoy the food but what is the outcome going to be you can and now things like food have a longer history a longer tradition so if you talk to somebody who's cooked and knows their food they will tell you through the history of that food that people learned why not to add this or why to add that oh because then over time they're going to be like oh i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know why i don't know time it does this to you right digestion moods you name it tech i think is still because it's in its infancy it doesn't have the legacy of 400 years where you can trace it through and say like ah yes that is why you know this algorithm exists like this it doesn't have four centuries of knowledge so they went it's all about attention let's make it attention then people will love it but then the attention was what they call like the car crash attention economy people pay attention to car crashes people always look at a car crash almost no one can ignore it the algorithm then went oh that gets your attention so more car crashes more car crashes more car crashes more car crashes right and so they talk about how the algorithm then did its job indiscriminately and put us in the position a lot of the position that we're in are not completely it's accelerated a lot of what we're experiencing and so now this there's this new idea of creating an algorithm the other way around and so for instance the other way around being being it's not about a car crash we won't feed you what will keep you hooked in a negative way we won't show you the opinion that is going to inflame you the most we won't show no we will connect you with the people who you know and who you follow which seems like a small thing but apparently it's big a lot of people follow people that they don't ever see because the algorithm has determined that it's not as interesting strangers are more interesting new is more interesting in fact some of them you would love this i'll send you some of this work that they've shown some of the like social media sites would even not show you your spouse or partner on your feed because they've realized people very seldom interact with it because you know them however it will show you your ex or it will this is one you'll love it will show you the person that your partner is lingering on do you get what i'm saying yes yes so you you'll find yeah you find you in a relationship with the person let's say they like the picture you will see the picture that your partner or spouse liked because the algorithm realizes that you linger on these for longer now it's not malicious it's not even trying to do something but as charlie munger used to say you show me the incentive and i'll show you the outcome it is trying to keep your attention so now people are talking about trying to create an algorithm that's based around what we hope to achieve as opposed to circumstance and saying what is the connection we're looking for what are some of the behaviors we're trying to model what are some of the connections we're actually trying to foster between human beings and can we build that from there and i think funny enough that could be the first building block to you know as you say not the either or using the thing that currently i think comes with a lot of toxicity to try and flip it on its head and create connection which i think i actually think is possible i don't think it becomes the panacea but i think it just becomes one lever that we turn just just a little bit and then all of a sudden you know you try and turn the next thing you try and turn the next thing you try and turn the next thing you know i've i've thought of doing something at my shows i haven't figured it out yet but i would love to find a way to incentivize people who come to my shows yeah to connect with the people around them and then if they do there's going to be something that benefits them but i haven't figured out what it is yet but i know i want to do something like that you know what i did in my show about that and so the first thing i asked when people when as as i meet them is um how many of you are here as a plus one know nothing about me but were recruited and you were curious and open enough to come on some anthropological field trip and so i just want to welcome the skeptics i love that so that's number one so that and it's oh there's always a group of people they just came because somebody said i really would love her and and i'm just saying you know it's much easier for the person who already knows me or is into this kind of work to show up than the person who you know so i shake hands with them and my second question is where are you from countrywise so i get a complete sense as to what are all the places that people have come from and knowing that each of you is going to hear me with a different ear because you come from different relationship traditions different relational systems and cultures etc and then my third question is um how many of you have ever been involved in a consensual sexual experience that was also unsatisfying but you went along with it anyway and you said nothing damn and they all stand up this is always this damn so they all stand up and it becomes very clear that there's a ton of bad sex in the theater and that you know always there's a ton of bad sex in the theater and there's a ton of bad sex in the theater and there's a ton of bad sex in the theater and there's a ton of bad sex in the theater all all genders all orientations all backgrounds included so that kind of creates a and then i ask how many to stand up if you know no one here and then i ask every person that is sitting next to someone standing to actually introduce themselves so that if you came alone you won't leave alone that's the kind of opening thing and and then i do a lot of you know they play the card game during the the the show as well so they have four cards and they they tell each other stories but it's really such an important thing to i mean what if you actually ask people if they could tell a joke to each other and you make you give them five minutes or four minutes to talk to each other i mean jokes are dangerous but i'll try each other yeah to the people they're sitting with or just to to tell a pick some question they could be they could be something i actually think they could i i think i think um a lot of the reason crowd work has become so popular in comedy now is because it's connected audiences to each other in a way that it hadn't so give me an example of crowd work because is it you to the audience or is it the audience with each other well i think what happens is a lot of comedians will talk to the audience but they also sort of facilitate a conversation between people for example um someone goes hey uh what's your name where you from oh esther esther oh that's a nice name oh it sounds like a grandmother's name though so esther where you from belgium oh belgium you don't know anybody from belgium you don't know anybody from belgium you don't know anybody from belgium tell me something any other belgians in the room oh wow i didn't know there were this many belgians and then just like what what are you guys doing here what is this like an invasion and then esther says something what's that oh no we're not the europeans who invade aha very funny esther and then you know the play they play with the person then someone else might say something in the room and they go what's that oh they want to know the belgians wait what happened what what did they do in africa boy what did they do in africa and now there's this connection and it's it's it's like a very and it's funny because some comedians don't like it yes it all gets mediated through you yeah because otherwise it's chaos but there is something about having them i'll look in my card deck for you and see if there's one or two things that you can translate i'm gonna i'll try it where they they there's something about them talking to each other because then you say and when you leave here you continue these conversations i'm open that kind of thing you know you have it's so i mean i love you have them in the palm of your head love it i'll try it you can test a few things i will try it gladly and it will either work or i will get comedy from it i mean because so much of my show was about creating the communal experience so then i say to please stand up if you're currently in a romantic relationship yeah stand up if you would like to be in a relationship stand up if you would like to be out of the relationship that you're in damn or at least on occasion who stands how many people have stood for the first one nobody for the being in a room would you like no no would you like to be out of the relationship you're in oh you would be surprised people stand oh yes are they there with the person sometimes no ways esther actually in the new york show there was a person who stood up literally in front of her she stood up in front of her wife and then announced to her that she was done but it's meant to be funny like on occasion who hasn't on occasion thought you know what am i doing here and i'm done with this no i can see the humor in this sometimes people don't see that so so and so you have both voices the the one that is taking this light and is taking this with humor and the one that is actually sending a message sometimes they're there alone sometimes they're there with the partner and i raise my hand i say me too i've been i've had those thoughts but let's be honest for a minute come on who we can't start a conversation if we don't at least include this it's another way of saying relationships relationship ambivalence is a part of being in a relationship i'm gonna do this i love now you've given me homework and like a challenge how do i connect my audiences more half of it because i think there can be beautiful outcomes and the other half is just because i like the possibility that things might not go well you'll tell me oh definitely there's a story on the other side of it i think there's a beautiful story on the side of everything that doesn't go well um i was saying this the other day i was like oh my god i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this i'm not going to do this it was about relationships and i said um this is genuinely how i feel i was like i i really do feel sad that now more than ever people seem to discard everyone that has been in their lives as a quote-unquote mistake as a waste of time as a you know what i mean and i i don't know i don't know why i have such an aversion to that but i go like no it's and i and by the way i'm also not one of those people who's very pro they're like it all happens to me and i'm like i don't know you for a reason and it was meant to be no i don't think of it like that but i i don't know i don't know but you think it has something to do with the perfection you got that that people are you know it's like bad investment yeah i do think so i think it's like a market mentality it's bad roi it's bad roi that person wasted my time she said that she wanted this and then four years later and then what a waste of time and then i go but how was it a waste of time when you were in it what were you feeling what were you experiencing what were you doing what were you you know what i mean like how was it a waste of time did it have a bad outcome what do you feel like the whole time was a waste did not end the way you wanted it to end and then i'll often say to them what if they died because that's the thing i was like okay i go what if they died what if they died and so the promises they made to you could not be fulfilled what if they died and then they go oh but that's different that's different and then i go but in a way it isn't this is romantic consumerism this is you know this is transaction you wasted my time that's an amazing statement to make on a relationship you know it wasn't worth it it didn't deliver um it didn't deliver they had a poor roi yeah i mean it's really um we have done an interesting thing right we've brought psychology to the business world and to and we've brought the markets to the relational world the business mentality into our relationship you know is it worth my time um should i invest in here um it i don't you know when you really look at what it does to people um it's not the most pleasant thing right yeah you were one of the first people who told me and this like opened my eyes completely we were talking about um europe the french france you know just this whole idea and i remember i i had gone to mexico city and one of the things i noticed in mexico city was how many groups of mixed gender friends were hanging out just just dinners lunches you name it and i would i i love when i'm in a place i love asking people where you from how did you come here who are you you know especially in a city that that has a mix of the natives and then people who are relocating or visiting and yeah i was surprised so many people like oh no we're friends i was like oh i thought you were a couple no no we're friends what about you oh no we're this and oh and and i remember talking to you about it and you said something that fascinated me you said like in america because i had experienced this and when talking to people a lot of people will say what are you looking for oh well then what's the point it's it seems like many people live in the binary of is there romance on the other side of not just romance is there a happy ending on the other side of this and i think there is and if there's not why are we even why are we speaking why are we you know and and then i remember you saying you grew up in a world where well men and women were friends and going out for dinners and it it was more yeah it was more nuanced i guess nuanced and less goal oriented less outcome driven outcome yeah it's like the experience itself has value the process is interesting the you know as they often call the journey but it's really it's the the experience itself has meaning and value of its own it doesn't get measured by the outcome um this i would apply this to a lot of things in life it's like but it is the fundamental difference between task oriented versus relationally oriented task oriented is what does it deliver what does what do i get from this what's in it for me this is an amazing expression doesn't even translate in french what's in it for me like the phrase the phrase it just doesn't exist what's in it for me it's succinct to the point it's very very clear what it means you know is there something for me to gain here it is a it's a very interesting sentence what's in it for me you know and uh versus you know pleasure the fun the discovery the exploration the mystery the surprise i mean that's those elements which i consider the elements that are essential ingredients of the of the erotic of the feeling alive yeah because you can accomplish a lot of things that doesn't mean you feel alive it just means that you feel like you've accomplished a lot of things and it's a different level of existence you know and that does go back to the thing i described about my parents before it's like they definitely that was very central to them you know i thought of that recently because you you as i listened to you i bring it brings back memories my mom used to tell me that um when they arrived to belgium they would go on saturday night to the ball talk about the coming together and they would go dancing and they would have to dress up and take the trolleys the tramway and go to brussels and go dancing and i'm just thinking oh la la after all of this you just went dancing didn't you want to first lick your wounds and it made me think that they're really they're two stances at this moment that have that stand out in certainly in thinking about mental health and trauma and what we're talking about relationships joy loneliness all of these things you know you can think that healing comes from focusing on the trauma and finding meaning in it and understanding its resonance for you and its long-lasting legacy and all of that but healing can also happen by creating a relationship with the person who's creating new experiences that bring you joy and hope and energy and connection and um and exploration and and all of that that that in itself is healing and i think that those are two very important doors that we stand in front at this moment individually and as groups as communities yeah i like that for us as a society right now to ask ourselves do we want to create new memories and new ideas that will heal the wounds that we've experienced or do we want to shut it all down and focus on not losing what we think we have or in a couple you know sometimes you need to first start by addressing all the problems or sometimes you start by actually talking about the things that are going really well and the things from which in which you connect beautifully and the things that are going really well and the things that are going really well that never pose a problem so you don't even think about them and you first need to like the person and they first need to feel like you want to be touched by them again. And then maybe you can go and sit down and think about what happened when you had this mega argument. And a lot of people in the field of conflict are talking about 80-20, right? It's the 80% that you actually agree upon or share a vision for or care for. And the 20% that you don't, but we have a real knack at this moment to go to the 20% first. And I think that we have a lot to gain to rebalance that a little bit. That's where I'm at. I think that's where we're at. This has been fun. This has really been great. I like that. I think let's wrap it there. We could go forever, which is what I always think makes a great conversation and what makes you one of my favorite people. The infinite nature of pondering life. Is what makes it very enjoyable. And I think one of the main things I admire about you is how doubtful and yet adventurous you are. It's a fantastic combination. Because some people are doubtful, but that limits their ability to want to go out and see, explore, discover. And then there are other people who are adventurous, but they almost approach it with a reckoning. And I think that's what makes you so much more than just a useless abandoned, that can bulldoze through certain ideas and people around them. I think there's something really wonderful in being doubtful, but also adventurous. And you know how I do it? By holding the hands of others. Oh, I like this. If I go into nature, and I know I'm a city person, and I really don't know nature, and I feel very vulnerable in nature. Yeah. But I'll go. Oh. I'll go on these trips in nature, because I'll attach myself to someone who I trust and knows it well. So I hold the hand. But I do this in my work, too. And I mediate the dangers of the world through the trust that I have in other people. I love this. You've left me a lot to think, I'm going to, yeah, I'll apply myself. Let's get people back into laundromats. Esther, thank you so much. Thank you. This has been wonderful. It's a treat. What Now with Trevor Noah is produced by Spotify Studios in partnership with Day Zero Productions. The show is executive produced by Trevor Noah, Sanaz Yamin, and Jody Avigan. Our senior producer is Jess Hackle. Claire Slaughter is our producer. Music, mixing, and mastering by Hannes Brown. Thank you so much for listening. Join me next Thursday for another episode of What Now? We'll see you then. Only at Starbucks.