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

This week on Where Should We Begin we are sharing a very special episode of What Now? with Trevor Noah. Esther joins Trevor for a heartfelt conversation about the power of friendship. As Esther reflects on her childhood and the experiences that shaped her journey, the two explore how meaningful relationships help us grow—often through our challenges, humor, and even a little friction. From unexpected places like the laundromat to deep conversations with old friends, this episode invites us to consider how friendships can ground us, push us, and ultimately strengthen the communities we build together. All summer long, Esther will be diving deeper into the role of connection and community in our lives. Want to learn more? Receive monthly insights, musings, and recommendations to improve your relational intelligence via email from Esther: https://www.estherperel.com/newsletter For the month of July, Esther is offering 20% off to join her Office Hours on Apple Podcasts. It's a place to continue conversations on important topics like sexlessness, infidelity or the perils of modern dating. It's also a place to follow up with couples and find out where their stories went. You'll also get an ad free version of all the episodes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Esther Perel?

  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, "Okay, 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?

• 0:46Esther Perel?

  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. There are 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.

• 1:27Esther Perel?

  You know, in New York, you ask people how you are, and they often tell you, "I'm behind."

• 1:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. They tell you what they're doing, I find.

• 1:34Esther Perel?

  That's terrible.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  I find that's the biggest change, is when I'm in New York or when I'm anywhere in the US, 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 the people will ask me questions. "So what are you up to? What are you up to these days?"

• 1:59Esther Perel?

  What are you doing?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  "What are you doing? 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?"

• 2:08Esther Perel?

  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 and so much and put yourself in the center. You're there to participate in a collective experience in what we are creating together, 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.

• 2:43Speaker 01

  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 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

• 3:27Speaker 01

  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.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  That's Where Should We Begin? Check it out.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  This is What Now with Trevor Noah.

• 4:30Speaker 02

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• 5:38Speaker 01

  Why did you call it that?

• 5:40Esther Perel?

  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 years until the pandemic, we recorded every session in my office. So people came in, like every...

• 6:20Esther Perel?

  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.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Right, so you're in the same like

• 6:37Esther Perel?

  I'm in the same

• 6:38Speaker 01

  Mental space as well.

• 6:39Esther Perel?

  Same chair, same mental space, same room. It's, 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.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:53Esther Perel?

  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.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:04Esther Perel?

  And here they are. And then there is the person that came with them. And, 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.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:17Esther Perel?

  It's not like there's a book in the house and you're reading that book. You can listen to a podcast for years and no, and your partner has no idea.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  That is the first infidelity.

• 7:30Esther Perel?

  Exactly. You're having a relationship under my eyes.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:34Esther Perel?

  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.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 7:50Esther Perel?

  Eight years we're doing it.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Congratulations. Eight years. Eight years of the podcast, twenty years of mating and captivity, and how many years in the field in practice?

• 8:01Esther Perel?

  Forty, almost.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Forty years. Wow. What do you think people get from hearing couples therapy that they're not part of?

• 8:11Esther Perel?

  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.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:29Esther Perel?

  Your friends can come and tell you they're breaking up and you never saw it coming. Because and on top of it, people are posturing and parading themselves all over socially 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.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:56Esther Perel?

  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.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  The thing I noticed is, just, you know, from my side.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Whenever couples would go out together.

• 9:16Esther Perel?

  Mm hmm.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  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, not in a, like a schadenfreude way. But I mean, like, sitting with another couple, you talk, you, and then, I'm sure you know this, but like, I've always, I've always loved how one person will take the other person's point of view. Another person will, all of a sudden, you'll find crossings where, you know, 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.

• 9:56Esther Perel?

  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.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Esther Perel?

  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.

• 10:18Esther Perel?

  You get taken out of the cellar and the light shines and you've and and air comes in and it's very, very moving and powerful.

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Oh, 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 you know.

• 10:40Esther Perel?

  Maximize.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like like you, I was I was talking to a friend the other night and I was saying, do you remember, it was actually Simon Sinek, you know Simon?

• 10:48Esther Perel?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  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, and 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.

• 11:09Esther Perel?

  That's my story.

• 11:11Speaker 01

  What what do you mean that's your story?

• 11:12Esther Perel?

  I'm here because of my husband.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  That's how you got to New York?

• 11:16Esther Perel?

  That's how I came, well, I came to America to study for one year.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:20Esther Perel?

  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.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:30Esther Perel?

  So I am that story.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  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?

• 11:46Esther Perel?

  No, I actually came from Jerusalem.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 11:50Esther Perel?

  I came from Jerusalem.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  Everywhere.

• 11:52Esther Perel?

  Lived in a few places.

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, wait, wait, let's let's listen, where where have you lived?

• 11:56Esther Perel?

  I've lived in Belgium, in 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.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, seems like many. I feel like you, you have many homes, though, it seems 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.

• 12:18Esther Perel?

  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 fifteen to Paris. Three hours at a time. I mean, these places. I like the, the, the way that Thaïssé Lassie talks about it. She says, don't ask me where I'm from, ask me where I'm local.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Oh, that's beautiful.

• 12:53Esther Perel?

  And I think it's exactly that. I'm local in a few places.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  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, your eyes open a little more when you notice things or when you see things.

• 13:17Esther Perel?

  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 Africans. You know, my entire twelve 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, it's not the only one.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  I've always, I don't know why, I've always thought it was more you. I think it's because of how you, you'll talk about love and seeing love through like a French lens sometimes, you know?

• 13:56Esther Perel?

  That is true.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  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 this in, in Zulu, you know, in, in South African languages. I always feel like our greetings are, are more warm. Our greetings say more than just, like, hello.

• 14:19Esther Perel?

  Don't you have a beautiful expression, saubono?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, saubono means I still see you.

• 14:23Esther Perel?

  Yes, it's beautiful.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  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?

• 14:35Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  Frisson, which is like the...

• 14:38Esther Perel?

  It doesn't exist in English, a frisson. We use the French word. I don't think, I've never seen an equivalent.

• 14:44Speaker 01

  I always think of it as friction, but I don't think it's, it's not, right?

• 14:46Esther Perel?

  No, 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.

• 15:01Esther Perel?

  And now I miss him.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  No, I mean, you've got me, you've got me. This is, this is what I mean by frisson. 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, 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, i- it, it was an understanding that somebody could tease you but could never give in to your whims or your wants or your, eh, eh, ah.

• 15:38Esther Perel?

  I mean, to flirt.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:41Esther Perel?

  Comes from the word fleure.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 15:43Esther Perel?

  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.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see, I, I think most people would disagree with that.

• 15:59Esther Perel?

  In the United States?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Yes, most people would disagree with that.

• 16:01Esther Perel?

  Because this is a pragmatic society trying to engage with the erotic arts.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are a lot of people who say, how could you? Then why did you flirt with me?

• 16:12Esther Perel?

  That's right.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 16:20Esther Perel?

  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.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:33Esther Perel?

  My adolescence was very much steeped in that and... But it's Latin as well, 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.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:55Esther Perel?

  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 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 things, speak.

• 17:21Speaker 01

  What do you love about America then? Because you you've lived here for how many years now?

• 17:26Esther Perel?

  Um, thirty five.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Thirty five years you've lived here. You you you'll engage in it in a very honest way and 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?

• 17:53Esther Perel?

  I mean, I definitely fell in love with New York. And before I came to stay here, I had been here already.

• 18:05Esther Perel?

  My first time I came to the United States was in nineteen seventy six.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 18:09Esther Perel?

  Bicentennial. It was kind of the first time that we began to travel to the US. I came with a cargo airline. I hitchhiked around the corner.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  But what does that mean, a cargo airline?

• 18:21Esther Perel?

  It was one of these airlines that took all cargo.

• 18:25Speaker 01

  No, Esther, come on. You came with like a D H L plane?

• 18:27Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  That's not even a thing. That's not a thing.

• 18:30Esther Perel?

  But it gets 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 every culture. And really, I think that that was such a powerful experience. I was eighteen, not even. And at the time, you could hitchhike.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, those were the good old days.

• 19:02Esther Perel?

  I was totally received by the kindness of strangers. And really, I went to parts of the country that I never even thought I would go because it wasn't in my, I was originally gonna do on a Greyhound tour on the bus. But people were so kind that I ended up doing the entire trip hitchhiking. I'd go from New York to the West Coast, I'd do the whole loop of the West.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  And this is, so what, this is all for fun?

• 19:28Esther Perel?

  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 gonna be a hitchhiking.

• 19:37Speaker 01

  Whoa, wait, wait, okay, let's rewind. You came with the, you didn't tell me about the boyfriend. So, no, no, no, so they were, you were hitchhikers, we're picking up you and the boyfriend.

• 19:44Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, I stood in the front.

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Yo, you pulled the move. Oh, I love that.

• 19:50Esther Perel?

  And it's not like we spoke, 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. To, to people who had never heard about Belgium, it's not like they knew where we were coming from, to AM radio stations where the only, you know, the amount of time they talked about the weather was just unbelievable and with affect, with feeling, and the only time they talked with feeling about things was about the weather.

• 20:29Esther Perel?

  And I did hours of these car rides, you know, staying with people in their homes.

• 20:35Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you get in somebody's house?

• 20:37Esther Perel?

  People would say, where are you staying?

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And you would say?

• 20:40Esther Perel?

  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, and we have a room, you can stay. It's a, it's a very. Interesting way of establishing trust, connection, rapport. You know, I'm as strange to them as they're strange to me.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:57Esther Perel?

  You know, really, I, I, it was all positive, except one time where I, we figured out it was better to just get out of there. But the rest of the time.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Whoa, whoa, you can't, you can't just skip through that. How do you figure out something?

• 21:08Esther Perel?

  Because you kind of, it's all, it's, it's very, very intuitive. It's like, it doesn't sound, it doesn't feel right. It's rude. It's around the corner, but around the corner takes fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:22Esther Perel?

  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 US.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:42Esther Perel?

  And, and I think, you know, things are often both and, 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 necessar- that's when I came. And where, what have you done and who is your family and what's your idea? What do you want to do here? And then you either have people who look at your C V 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.

• 22:27Esther Perel?

  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.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 22:44Esther Perel?

  Here, it's the reverse. So when you come here as a twenty 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, um, on the relationship between blacks and Jews.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  On the relationship between black people and Jewish people?

• 23:09Esther Perel?

  Yes, the psychodynamics of black Jewish tensions.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  I, can I tell you?

• 23:12Esther Perel?

  We're talking eighty-four.

• 23:15Speaker 01

  This is the year I was born. And this is a fascination I've had for a very long time.

• 23:20Esther Perel?

  Yeah, that's you and me.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  In my life, yeah, yeah, literally. No, can I tell you? I, I.

• 23:25Esther Perel?

  I mean, we don't have tension, but it is.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, but, but. 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 in a, definitely in a Jewish neighborhood. Um, grew up, you know, and, and South Africa was weird in that once apartheid ended, there wasn't an immediate mixing of people, but there was 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.

• 24:00Esther Perel?

  Nice.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  So, so in my school, the Jewish kids acted like they were Lebanese, but the Lebanese kids said things that were Jewish, you know, and, and, and these kids were eating that food and that food, and they were singing that song and dancing like, so, so it was this mix. But I, I was always intrigued by the overlaps of black people and Jewish people in the world

• 24:22Speaker 01

  and the alliances and the tensions that would come with, you know? And then I remember reading, I think it was, um, 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 and, but it was still, it was, it was an interesting, it, it's always been a fascinating look for me and I'd, 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?

• 24:51Esther Perel?

  So I had trained as a, in psychology and I was very interested in cultural transition.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:58Esther Perel?

  And particularly in couples and families who are in cultural transition. And that included people who move, who, who immigrate, either voluntarily or forced migration, internationals, but also in the middle, mixed couples, mixed families, interracial, interreligious, intercultural families and relationships.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Interracial, interreligious and intercultural, okay.

• 25:22Esther Perel?

  That really was the bulk of my work, the first 20 years.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  The first 20 years?

• 25:27Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, before I touched mating in captivity, before I began to talk about culture and sexuality.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:35Esther Perel?

  And, um.

• 25:37Esther Perel?

  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 twenty five, I have been here three months.

• 26:18Esther Perel?

  I don't think this would ever happen today, that somebody would let this person out of nowhere, not from here. But there was something about my naivete 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 totally 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 humiliation, you know, and what are the dynamics, you know? And then I did a documentary about that, a little film.

• 27:02Esther Perel?

  And that would never have happened in Belgium. I mean, that doesn't happen, you don't.

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Why? What doesn't happen?

• 27:11Esther Perel?

  Because 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, but today, that people find me and just talk to me directly. And 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 my email, but it's like. The idea that you could do this, you know, rather than calling the thing, can I talk to the professor?

• 27:49Esther Perel?

  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 wanna 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 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.

• 28:33Esther Perel?

  You know, the people who know me well are gonna be very amazed to hear me make.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's why I wanted, that's why I wanted you to tell me.

• 28:38Esther Perel?

  Many positive statements.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I've I've heard you speak at length about all these things, but I 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, this is beautiful cuz even in my short life.

• 28:52Esther Perel?

  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 twenty five, they were living not that different from how they would live at forty five. And at forty five, they were already living like, and I thought they already know what the future is gonna 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, that's 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.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  I agree. I agree with you. I think, I think in many ways.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  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.

• 29:54Esther Perel?

  That's right.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  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 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 pros and cons. You know, the one metastasizes you.

• 30:30Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  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, I guess it's just stuck in time, it doesn't, it doesn't move and it doesn't evolve. I'm always, I'm always trying to play with that balance just in life, is you go, how many times do you wanna evolve, change, move, grow, move on to the next thing? And how many times do you just wanna sit and say, yeah, you know what, Tuesday will be like, Friday will be like Saturday, and let's see?

• 31:00Esther Perel?

  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, straddles 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 US, 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 ten days.

• 31:43Esther Perel?

  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 maintained that notion of the breeding, the space in between, the time to do nothing except dream, reimagine your life, think what else you wanna do. And that form of reset was, I never stopped. And I traveled back home, you know, a few times a year. And that was the essence of, it's like, you go there not to do necessarily, but to be,

• 32:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:19Esther Perel?

  to enjoy the company, you don't have to prove anything. You don't live to work.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 32:25Esther Perel?

  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 my life. And um,

• 32:39Esther Perel?

  it's a privilege really to be able to straddle boats, really. 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.

• 32:53Speaker 01

  Wait, what do you mean by that?

• 32:54Esther Perel?

  Like they, they never, you know, 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.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:07Esther Perel?

  So I would look at my friends who stayed and I would think, they have such a clear sense of where they're going. Of course, it was linear, but I envied that piece of there. And then, but after a week, I thought, oh, now I'm restless. Now I wanna go back, I wanna go back to my life. And I would get all busy. And so I, I, for a long time, I wanted 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.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 33:42Esther Perel?

  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.

• 33:56Esther Perel?

  You know that distinction?

• 33:57Speaker 01

  No, I I I like that. I'm I'm just trying to think of it. I'm trying to process it.

• 34:01Esther Perel?

  Like, it's a part of me.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:03Esther Perel?

  But I am not just that. If you want to know me, you need to know this and this and this. It's various.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  It's all the different parts of you that make you who you are.

• 34:13Esther Perel?

  The locations, the languages, the the the stories that accompanied. I think I think probably you too.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  I I think so. You know, it's I'm trying to think of how it works for me.

• 34:26Esther Perel?

  I mean, what part of your American-ness travels with you to South Africa?

• 34:31Speaker 01

  So I think I think.

• 34:32Esther Perel?

  Really kind of.

• 34:33Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no. So I because I spent so much, because I lived my whole adult life there.

• 34:38Esther Perel?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  I'm very good at being South 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 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.

• 34:57Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  You know?

• 34:58Esther Perel?

  Yeah, like this project I was describing.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's there's 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.

• 35:16Esther Perel?

  Hmm.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  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 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 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.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Why haven't you tried that place? There's a there's a certain, you know?

• 36:03Esther Perel?

  Drive.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, but a but an urgency more than just a drive. There 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.

• 36:16Esther Perel?

  Because when you live in a more collectivist culture, the culture drives you.

• 36:23Esther Perel?

  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 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

• 37:05Esther Perel?

  put all the infrastructure in place, a marriage here is a social welfare state of two. 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.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  We're going to continue this conversation right after this short break.

• 37:33Esther Perel?

  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 Podcasts. By joining my office hours subscription on Apple Podcasts, 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.

• 38:17Esther Perel?

  Join my office hours by clicking the subscribe button on the Where Should We Begin show page. See you there, and thank you.

• 38:30Speaker 03

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• 40:02Speaker 01

  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?

• 40:21Speaker 01

  What do you want to be?

• 40:23Esther Perel?

  Oh, I think I I I had different, I I had three things. I either was gonna be an interpreter, because my mom said, you speak all these languages, you like to travel, interpreter will give you the both. Or journalist.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:37Esther Perel?

  Because I was curious and and and a theater actress.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:41Esther Perel?

  I love the theater. But I think, honestly, for me, there's the people who've always known what they wanted to do.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:46Esther Perel?

  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.

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 40:54Esther Perel?

  I think if so much of what I did is because I arrived to the US because of the opportunities that the US gave because and because of the

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:03Esther Perel?

  because of the obstacles, because I I didn't have the right license and I couldn't do what one would have done normally.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 41:10Esther Perel?

  If I had studied here.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  So necessity became the mother of invention.

• 41:13Esther Perel?

  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.

• 41:26Speaker 01

  So the friction is the reason we have, yeah, you see, this is what I mean. No, it's it's it's amazing. Um, my producer loves a story. 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?

• 41:57Esther Perel?

  Uh, uh, I, my parents had a clothing store. They had clothing stores. I lived above one of the stores. I worked in the store pretty much since I could talk.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  What what type of clothing was it?

• 42:11Esther Perel?

  Everything I wear, everything you wear.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Okay, so just like a mix of?

• 42:15Esther Perel?

  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.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:28Esther Perel?

  And a jacket.

• 42:29Speaker 01

  You just wore what the adults wore, a smaller version.

• 42:31Esther Perel?

  A smaller version, exactly. And then in the sixties, suddenly 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 um 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 to get the merchandise and to look at the fashion shows.

• 43:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 43:05Esther Perel?

  So I kind of grew up in a fashion business, in a clothing business. And um and there was a tremendous amount of attention, but I also sat in the store and watched my mother sell. Because the stores were open till eight o'clock and nine o'clock at night, and my mother worked in the store.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  Was that common back then?

• 43:21Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes. Yes, yes. Every day till eight and Friday and Saturday till nine.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 43:27Esther Perel?

  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, you know. I went with my dad to bring suits to people who were dead, you know, and families who were mourning before they were going to the burials and and the the cemeteries. And I mean, I really learned about life through clothes, basically. Um and I'm the only one in the family that didn't enter the the the business, the family shop.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Why? Was it because something pulled you more? Was it because something pushed you out of it?

• 44:04Esther Perel?

  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. It's all you talk about when you have a family shop.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:14Esther Perel?

  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.

• 44:25Esther Perel?

  You know, do it.

• 44:26Speaker 01

  You wanted the store to live above you.

• 44:27Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes. And I can do it anywhere I go. The thought of being tethered like that to this place. Of course, then I had an office and a private practice. So it wasn't, you know, until, until, you know, Skype started.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:41Esther Perel?

  But that was the main idea. I remember saying to my parents, I want a profession que je peux porter sur mon dos, that I can carry on my back.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  And here you are. I could be wrong, but I, 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.

• 45:10Esther Perel?

  That's the title of my first book, we should probably explain.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:17Esther Perel?

  It has its twentieth anniversary next year.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Congratulations. Wow. Yeah, but I think it, it, 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, that sort of was, yeah, it, it really was your, your conquest at the time. It was the, the, the journey that you were on. Now I feel like you have this, 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.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  I, I, I have this.

• 46:06Esther Perel?

  What did you see?

• 46:07Speaker 01

  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, in unit laundry, whatever this 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.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Imagine how many friendships would have never been sparked if people didn't have to come and and it's friction, it's it's it doesn't seem like you you you know the the right ingredient to get there. 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, you might, nice to see you again. Hey, you left your, I put the the the coins in the dryer, I you know, and I I literally thought of you and I was like, wow, I wonder if this is like part of what Esther's fighting, well, not laundromats, obviously. But

• 47:31Esther Perel?

  Friction.

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Friction.

• 47:32Esther Perel?

  Yes, the importance of friction. That is definitely a piece I I talk about, but if you wanna 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 um eroticism in long term relationships and I took a I took a a kind of a a side road and

• 48:09Esther Perel?

  that and I just thought, oh, I wanna, I wanna 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.

• 48:26Speaker 01

  Wait, you're 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 that that had informed you.

• 48:34Esther Perel?

  Not at all. That's part of why the book became so uh significant because it actually questioned a whole set of uh suppositions that were parading as truths when they were actually not.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Give me an example of like one or two.

• 48:47Esther Perel?

  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 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.

• 49:28Esther Perel?

  And I thought, here too, there's a whole set of ways that we think about infidelity that 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 about eighty-five percent, ninety percent 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.

• 50:08Esther Perel?

  And then, 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.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Let's go back to, you said, systems trained?

• 50:45Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  So help me understand, what is, what is the difference between?

• 50:49Esther Perel?

  Psychoanalytic and systemic?

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wouldn't even know the names, yeah. So psychoanalytic and?

• 50:54Esther Perel?

  Systemic.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 50:55Esther Perel?

  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? Uh huh. Versus going just intra psychically, intra, 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. Hmm.

• 51:39Esther Perel?

  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, it's understanding, um, 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, I, I've been looking at what happens between people. And not just inside of the people.

• 52:20Esther Perel?

  And our mental health models have been very, very focused on what happens inside people. Yeah. And the idea is that if I am 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, et cetera. And that is sometimes the case, but it is not the whole story and, um, but the whole story is also the opposite. If I'm actually, you know, engaged with you, I'm much 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.

• 53:03Esther Perel?

  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.

• 53:18Esther Perel?

  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 and responsibility. They straddle how we negotiate, the self and the other, my needs, your needs.

• 54:00Esther Perel?

  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 of the predictive technologies are aiming at reducing friction.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:29Esther Perel?

  And they want you to have a polished, smooth, frictionless

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:34Esther Perel?

  delivery of your every delight on demand. And that is fundamentally changing how you and I relate to each other.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me personally, I just noticed.

• 54:45Esther Perel?

  That a long story for a...

• 54:47Speaker 01

  No, it's great.

• 54:48Esther Perel?

  Does that give you a...

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I think it does.

• 54:50Esther Perel?

  How I got to where I am?

• 54:50Speaker 01

  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 blame, they blaming themselves. So I, 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.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  But no, 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.

• 55:38Esther Perel?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just like that little weak tie that, that, that builds something in your world. It's a, 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, I, I'll always say to my friends, things go wrong all the time in my life, right? Uh, 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, and you know, a beginning and an inevitable conclusion. Yeah, it doesn't work.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  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.

• 56:33Esther Perel?

  No story.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  There's no story because there's no friction.

• 56:35Esther Perel?

  Obstacles.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 56:36Esther Perel?

  That's the same as the erotic formula. Attraction plus obstacles equals excitement.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, hold on, hold on. Attraction plus obstacle.

• 56:46Esther Perel?

  Equals excitement.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  Equals excitement.

• 56:50Esther Perel?

  It's the same in the, in the rules of desire.

• 56:52Speaker 01

  You know what's funny?

• 56:52Esther Perel?

  If there's no obstacle, if there's no friction, this we're going back to what we said.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  I remember once having a conversation with a stripper who's like, 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 like we, we, 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 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, I, 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.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  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.

• 57:50Esther Perel?

  Correct. That's a good analogy.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 57:55Esther Perel?

  Of course, whose bachelor party was this?

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Oh, what do you mean? This is the most common thing.

• 58:00Esther Perel?

  Of course.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's like, you know, people are like, bachelor party. Um, it's actually more common in the U S. I I don't think I ever got invited to a bachelor party at a strip club in South Africa.

• 58:10Esther Perel?

  Not, what do they do?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  I think it's more, it's more of a, you have a, what we call a bribe, like a barbecue. And you, you hang out. But I, 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.

• 58:43Esther Perel?

  That's right. You're about to enter the marital cell.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 58:46Esther Perel?

  And, and your monastic life.

• 58:48Speaker 01

  But I don't remember anyone saying that in South Africa. I don't remember anybody saying, you're gonna get married, so, ah, 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.

• 59:16Esther Perel?

  I wanna go back to the laundromat. I love the place. I really, I think the laundromat or, or other places like it, the bookstore. Um, the coffee bar, the train station, the train itself. I mean, there's so many places for that friction.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:35Esther Perel?

  I think that that's where I'm positioning myself today. I'm placing myself at the door. I want you to come outside, 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, the antisocial century by Derek Thompson, and he's seventy four percent of food that is cooked in a restaurant is not eaten on the premises.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  That's the new number.

• 1:00:03Esther Perel?

  And that woke me up. An increase of thirty percent of people eating alone in the restaurant. Now, eating is one of the oldest worldwide gatherings.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:17Esther Perel?

  Traditions of coming together with others. It's friction of every sort.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:00:23Esther Perel?

  And the fact that we are going to order from the restaurant and then bring it home and eat it m- many times alone.

• 1:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:31Esther Perel?

  That's a problem. So this is all I'm gonna 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.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:47Esther Perel?

  Um, and so, um, and so transferring their expectations for algorithmic perfection into their relationships.

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 1:00:56Esther Perel?

  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 seeing something that is quite, it's more important than we even let on to. This friction piece.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:27Esther Perel?

  You know, because that's the plot. You tell stories and they have a plot and the plot is built by all these unpredict- unpredictabilities, obstacles, 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 gonna do otherwise? What's gonna happen to us?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  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. Think his name is Dallin, Michael Dallin. 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. Hmm. Carrots. Hmm. Ice cream. Hmm. And insects. Hmm. And he was referring to like these little insects that you could buy at Disneyland, apparently. I'd 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.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  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 ten years, they say carrots. I should be eating more carrots. Hmm. Right? If you ask most people what they what they wish they had eaten, it was insects. 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?

• 1:03:17Speaker 01

  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 Esther 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.

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:04:15Esther Perel?

  But friction is connected. I think to the big issue of the moment.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:21Esther Perel?

  Which is uncertainty.

• 1:04:24Esther Perel?

  Because friction is what makes you have to experiment. Deal with the unexpected.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:30Esther Perel?

  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 what.

• 1:04:45Speaker 01

  Wait, wait, wait, wait. Say that again. Dealing with uncertainty is what helps you deal with anxiety. In what way?

• 1:04:51Esther Perel?

  Because if you become more

• 1:04:55Esther Perel?

  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, you absorb it. You have a shock absorber. And that shock absorber is what allows you to not be as anxious about the unknown.

• 1:05:37Esther Perel?

  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, perfect answers for everything. And relationships and life, our existence, doesn't operate this way.

• 1:06:06Esther Perel?

  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, and that to me, because everybody wants to talk about the loneliness epidemic, but people are not necessarily addressing what I think is 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.

• 1:06:47Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:06:58Esther Perel?

  You want somebody who's gonna help you feel more certain, I'm gonna 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 and captivity is not enough anymore for me. 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.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  What was the system that, that made you this way?

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Like I've, I've always wondered, like, what was little Esther like? When, you know, when, when your parents would talk about you, how were you with other kids? Or how were you in the house? Was your world certain or was it more uncertain or?

• 1:07:49Esther Perel?

  My world was certain, but my parents' world was a world that was completely decimated. So predictions. So I, 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.

• 1:08:16Speaker 01

  Jeez.

• 1:08:17Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:58Esther Perel?

  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 group think 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?

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:09:33Esther Perel?

  And I think it's the combination of those things. I, I, I act very fearlessly, but I am not, but I act fearlessly.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  No, so I guess you act courageously then.

• 1:09:43Esther Perel?

  Yeah, that's interesting. I never, I never saw it like that, but yeah, put it actually.

• 1:09:48Speaker 01

  Cause that's, cause that's what courage is, right? Acting in spite of the fear.

• 1:09:51Esther Perel?

  I think, I think of myself as, as counter phobic. Do you know that term?

• 1:09:55Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:56Esther Perel?

  So you can be phobic, you can be fearful. And counter phobic is when you actually do the things that frighten you the most.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  How do you find the balance between that and living life with a reckless abandon that causes danger to you and others? Cause some things scare you for the right reasons, don't they?

• 1:10:17Esther Perel?

  Yes, of course.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Like, like when you were hitchhiking, you didn't go with that one person because something scared you in some way.

• 1:10:25Esther Perel?

  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean. You always wanna keep judgment. You have a healthy dose of skepticism. You don't believe what everybody tells you.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  People will say this in different ways. They'll be like, go, 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, 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.

• 1:11:06Esther Perel?

  This is, you don't always know. I mean, you, you have a sense. You look around, you ask other people for a reality check.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:15Esther Perel?

  When I am very worried about things, I ask for a reality check. I, I also know that in my stomach lives a really long history of, of, of fear. And, and, and that I can have very strong reactions, you know, to, to situations. But I also know that, that the legacy of this is, is 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?

• 1:11:53Esther Perel?

  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, is, is a check.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:12:02Esther Perel?

  And the check is not, is not always done alone. 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.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, in football, we say man on.

• 1:12:19Esther Perel?

  What is that?

• 1:12:20Speaker 01

  I've always loved that as it's one of the reasons I love playing football.

• 1:12:22Esther Perel?

  Yeah, soccer or football?

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  Soccer, soccer. I mean, that's, you know.

• 1:12:26Esther Perel?

  Our football.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, football. Um, 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 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 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?

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:13:43Esther Perel?

  It's a beautiful image. It 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.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:54Esther Perel?

  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 it fits my thinking, my thinking very much.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14:38Esther Perel?

  Correct.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:14:47Esther Perel?

  I didn't tell them.

• 1:14:47Speaker 01

  Oh, you didn't tell them?

• 1:14:48Esther Perel?

  Oh, no, don't please.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:14:49Esther Perel?

  No.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 1:14:51Esther Perel?

  No, and certainly not that I was traveling with a boyfriend either.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  Okay, no, now the story, you see, now the story is making a little more.

• 1:14:57Esther Perel?

  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 happened to be born later. My brother is born in forty six, I'm born in fifty eight. So I just arrived when my parents were finally beginning to kind of settle themselves. But I often thought that in my community, and what I'm gonna describe, I saw in my community, but I think you can apply this to many other

• 1:15:42Esther Perel?

  communities, uh, and many other circumstances surrounding trauma. There were people who did not die and there were people who came back to life.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  Oh, damn.

• 1:15:57Esther Perel?

  People who did not die lived very tethered 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.

• 1:16:12Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:16:22Esther Perel?

  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 wanna continue live and how

• 1:17:06Esther Perel?

  did they get up in the morning at 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 gonna enjoy life. It wasn't just a, they were gonna enjoy life with a vengeance. The biggest thing they could do was actually enjoy life.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Enjoy life with a vengeance.

• 1:17:27Esther Perel?

  You understand?

• 1:17:28Speaker 01

  It's a beautiful phrase.

• 1:17:29Esther Perel?

  And I think what I took, and this was very, very young, I had the notion that I, my life will be meaningful, 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.

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:47Esther Perel?

  And I'll tell you a very, very interesting anecdote that happened to me this year. And I would often, so that was a thing I had. I'm gonna, I, 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.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:21Esther Perel?

  But as, this year, I was invited by a German media group to be a guest of honor at a dinner at a Polish museum in Warsaw. And amongst the many other guests was also the Foreign Minister of Poland.

• 1:18:40Esther Perel?

  And I had to say something. So I got up. I had no idea what was gonna 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.

• 1:19:13Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:19:29Esther Perel?

  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, but the room was silent.

• 1:19:39Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 1:19:40Esther Perel?

  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 wanna do.

• 1:20:09Speaker 01

  It, 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, 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?

• 1:20:50Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:21:02Esther Perel?

  Excluded, rejected, annihilated. I mean, nobody has the Olympics on victimhood.

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  Don't go anywhere because we've got more What Now after this.

• 1:21:20Speaker 03

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• 1:22:52Speaker 01

  When you look at, I don't want to say the way we are today because I learned the more I travel, the more you realize that there's no myopic lens on what the world is feeling.

• 1:23:04Speaker 01

  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 natural curve that it follows in history.

• 1:23:30Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:41Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:23:53Esther Perel?

  For a long time, people lived in tribes, communities, villages. But 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. 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.

• 1:24:36Esther Perel?

  We moved with the modern era and with 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.

• 1:25:20Esther Perel?

  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 gonna go through. And people are dizzy and they are anxious and they are uncertain. And we know that anxiety and trauma constricts our imagination.

• 1:26:04Esther Perel?

  And so we go into a contraction again.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:07Esther Perel?

  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 threats, what they take away rather than 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, we had the industrial one, we had the agrarian one before. But I think that that's what we are in.

• 1:26:51Esther Perel?

  And I went to South by last week and I did a conversation 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 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.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:19Esther Perel?

  I mean, what is happening to us?

• 1:27:21Speaker 01

  Not just our own extinction, I think we're also cheering our own purposelessness.

• 1:27:25Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  And that's, that's, someone in a thousand years is gonna 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 their, and they'd be like, that can't be right. It seems like slavery. It must have been slavery. Why, why would they do this? But that purpose is.

• 1:27:50Esther Perel?

  But it's purpose with a spiritual dimension. It's purpose with a transcendence.

• 1:27:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, definitely, which is, I think, the most powerful.

• 1:27:56Esther Perel?

  It's not a prag, only a pragmatic purpose.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we're erasing it with, um, with a lot of technology is we, we're, we're, we're going, you don't have to do it. You don't have to, I, I'm, I'm sure you, 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, find, 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 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,

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  your uncle, your grandparent, your, the, who is, that's what a 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, you're right to the airport, there's, there's no Uber, it was whoever. Esther, can you take me to the airport? Esther goes, oh, I don't wanna take you to the, but I, I guess I have to take you to the airport. But you know what I think of?

• 1:29:04Esther Perel?

  I'll take you next time.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:29:49Speaker 01

  You know how nice it was, I think for many people, to say, uh, 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.

• 1:30:18Esther Perel?

  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 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, uh, you, it's a one-way street.

• 1:30:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:30:57Esther Perel?

  And to learn to relate to the other is essential in relationship, not just to learn to relate to yourself.

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  No, you're not just thinking now as you say that, when you said yet.

• 1:31:09Esther Perel?

  No, because usually I get yet.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  No, 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, a path goes, alright?

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  People are selling AI now. And then they go, the ultimate goal is not just AI. It's intelligent AI. And it's not just intelligent, artificially intelligent, and 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, yeah, 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 wanna, I don't wanna do this anymore.

• 1:32:08Speaker 01

  I don't wanna vacuum your house. I have dreams, I have aspirations, Esther.

• 1:32:13Esther Perel?

  I wanna go hitchhike.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  I wanna go hitchhike. I don't care that I'm a robot. I also have dreams, I wanna see what the world has for me. A little frisson, you know? And I, and then I wonder, what are we gonna do when we get there?

• 1:32:27Esther Perel?

  Ah, God, I, I, I can't go as far, but I do know that we are relational creatures. That's part of the purpose. Uh, you, 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.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, say that again, please.

• 1:32:48Esther Perel?

  Sometimes you do things that matter to you, but they get, it's exactly what, what your image of the soccer. I kick the ball, but that ball will actually have a future that is determined by how other people catch it.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Oh, I like this.

• 1:33:03Esther Perel?

  It's the same image.

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Can I tell you, Esther, I'm just noticing there's a huge gap in sports relationship psychology, and I think you could.

• 1:33:11Esther Perel?

  No, no, I.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  No, I'm telling you.

• 1:33:13Esther Perel?

  I'm so bad at it, but you gave me a good image.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  No, but I'm serious, if, 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.

• 1:33:30Esther Perel?

  But you have to translate that for me.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  I'll do it, great.

• 1:33:33Esther Perel?

  Leave you principal because this way you described, I saw the ball, I saw the, I saw the, I mean, I happen to know soccer, so it's easy for me. I saw the guy play and I saw the response and, and I know how people, you know, you're, you're running. And but there is somebody who's, who's telling you, 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.

• 1:33:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:56Esther Perel?

  The, 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.

• 1:34:08Speaker 01

  Hmm, it's everyone in relation to somebody else.

• 1:34:11Esther Perel?

  Yes, and that, 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?

• 1:34:29Speaker 01

  Wait, how, how, how do you think, how do you think it is and will affect romantic relationships? Cause 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 what?

• 1:34:45Esther Perel?

  That's not, that's not the main 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's a, there's a kind of a collective withdrawal. Uh, there's also disillusionment because there has been such a kind of a, a, a, whatever I loose calls an emotional capitalism, you know, it's like the, the commodification of people, the kind of market mentality applied to, to your intimate life. That has been really challenging to people.

• 1:35:23Esther Perel?

  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, 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.

• 1:35:47Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:35:47Esther Perel?

  But they also have less friendships.

• 1:35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, people have few and fewer friendships now.

• 1:35:51Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:01Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:36:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:23Esther Perel?

  These things are, to use the word we keep coming back to, interdependent. So how do we get people to relate to each other more, to have more connection, to come out of their house, to, to go to the lounge romats of this moment? I think is really the question that all the people who work in my field are currently questioning.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  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 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.

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  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 watching it, because the TV's on it, whatever it was. And because of that, 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.

• 1:38:09Speaker 01

  But you had experienced boring with us, as opposed to experiencing entertainment alone.

• 1:38:15Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  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 I, I, 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,

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:39:14Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:24Esther Perel?

  Where people come to laugh.

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:28Esther Perel?

  There's no purpose.

• 1:39:31Esther Perel?

  So to speak, you don't accomplish anything in the transactional sense.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:35Esther Perel?

  You know, they're not thinking about time when they come to you. They surrender. I mean, there's two things, people singing together and people laughing together.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:46Esther Perel?

  These are extraordinary social synchronization techniques, you know, of how you bring people together. And do you feel like you have less people coming out these days?

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  No, I think it's the opposite, actually. I think in music, 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.

• 1:40:09Esther Perel?

  So to this person, I could say, you know, I completely understand that in your life and in your reality, these two hours, you have a ton of other things to do. We're not discussing this. Find yourself every once in a while. The show, the performance, the sing-along, the place to go and laugh together with others. Because these things have, in many ways, they've always existed, but now they exist in replacement of religious experiences. This is what people used to do when 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.

• 1:40:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:53Esther Perel?

  So, these are new iterations of things that have accompanied civilization forever. Find your ways to do this. So 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 whatever. 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.

• 1:41:24Esther Perel?

  And I think you are, you and all the people who do your art, you know. Um, it's, I've never done, I've, 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.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  It's pretty fantastic.

• 1:41:40Esther Perel?

  I'm going tonight to my first comedy.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Wait, really?

• 1:41:44Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Oh, that's gonna be fun. I can't wait to hear what you think.

• 1:41:46Esther Perel?

  At a beacon. And I am really excited to go and I'm going to listen to Mark Bubilia.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Oh, Mike Bubilia's on the show, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:41:53Esther Perel?

  And because I've never been to a, you know, where I, because I always thought, ah, 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.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Wait, you think you won't get the joke?

• 1:42:07Esther Perel?

  I often thought when I would go to a comedy cellar, I've often felt like,

• 1:42:13Esther Perel?

  like, I'm not laughing at the same things. But I am back and going. I'm very excited. It's because I, I, I've understood recently, I have had such joy singing with people. And now I want to go and laugh with people.

• 1:42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  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've just made me realize while we're having this conversation is

• 1:43:12Speaker 01

  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 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 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.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  I can't, no, I gotta, I gotta leave. Yeah, I'm, 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.

• 1:44:15Esther Perel?

  So was the day off?

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  That you're contained in defines how comfortable you are doing or not doing the thing.

• 1:44:22Esther Perel?

  Because it's much harder to have discipline alone. And to know when to stop. You know, now you, it's like, on the one hand, you have the freedom to decide what you wanna eat, when you wanna eat, when you wanna sleep, how much you wanna 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.

• 1:44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:43Esther Perel?

  That 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 people who are secular.

• 1:44:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:59Esther Perel?

  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 wanna go, you don't have the freedom not to go. We don't, it's not this or that.

• 1:45:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:16Esther Perel?

  But the integration of these two poles is really important in, in the cal, 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.

• 1:45:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:37Esther Perel?

  And it's true as a whole in societies. And at this moment, we are off balance.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  So if you were creating a perfect world, in fact, we we play this game on the podcast. One day you should join us.

• 1:45:47Esther Perel?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  I think you'd have a lot of fun. We call it if I ruled the world.

• 1:45:50Esther Perel?

  Hmm.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  And it's um, i- 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, uh, everyone gets free healthcare or that. It's like, we because we sort of agree. It's more like one of the more recent ones I had was I said, um, uh, 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.

• 1:46:17Esther Perel?

  Oh, no.

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  It failed terribly.

• 1:46:19Esther Perel?

  Yeah, but that's not such a good proposition.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it failed, Esther. I don't need you to tell me it failed.

• 1:46:24Esther Perel?

  Okay.

• 1:46:24Speaker 01

  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 the idea.

• 1:46:32Esther Perel?

  I'm very, I wouldn't know how to answer this if I.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Oh, but it's fun. I think it's like.

• 1:46:38Esther Perel?

  It's a.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Because I think it gets it. It's not about like knowing certainly.

• 1:46:42Esther Perel?

  I I know how I would answer this.

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Yes, go.

• 1:46:45Esther Perel?

  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 we?

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:46:53Esther Perel?

  You know, me and the other. Us, them, all these divisions. The majority of these issues in relationships for sure are that it's complex. In relationships of two people, if there is a a complicated question that can have two as, two polarities.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:47:15Esther Perel?

  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 about money. 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.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  Oh damn.

• 1:47:50Esther Perel?

  Right? Do I wanna clean or do I not wanna clean? Do I wanna get up? Do I wanna exercise? Do I wanna 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.

• 1:48:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:06Esther Perel?

  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 it by just picking one side, but it is all about integrating these polarities is, I think,

• 1:48:34Esther Perel?

  what makes us either in a good relationship or not or in a good society or not for that matter.

• 1:48:41Esther Perel?

  The opposite of that is cleavage us intolerance, conflict, disconnect, polarization, all the words that are rampant these days.

• 1:48:50Speaker 01

  So, am I hearing you correctly? If I say that essentially what you're saying is

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  we need to still be able to grapple with both parts of the conversation.

• 1:49:02Esther Perel?

  Yeah, do I want tradition or do I want innovation?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Yes, but you must sort of hold both.

• 1:49:08Esther Perel?

  Exactly. Do we want Europe, tradition, history, the past, the timelessness, the Sunday? Or do we want the United States, efficient, pragmatic? Everything is open 24 hours, 7 days a week? As if it's that or that. It's not. We need, we appreciate 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.

• 1:49:37Speaker 01

  Hmm, it's like, it's almost like, I'm picturing sliders while you're saying this.

• 1:49:40Esther Perel?

  Yes.

• 1:49:40Speaker 01

  I'm almost going, you, you might raise a slider and say, I think seventy percent relaxation right now, thirty percent not, but not on off.

• 1:49:49Esther Perel?

  Exactly.

• 1:49:49Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, you, you, you're talking about like dimmer switches for our, for our opinions versus on off switches.

• 1:49:55Esther Perel?

  And it's an, it's a both end that changes constantly versus an either or. Because these things are completely, they're too complicated to make it an either or.

• 1:50:08Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:23Esther Perel?

  And 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 wanna be on the lead of that.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Okay, I'll apply my mind to it. I might not be the person, but I might bump into the person, so I'll.

• 1:50:49Esther Perel?

  You let me know. But you, you know what I'm saying?

• 1:50:52Speaker 01

  I, I completely, I completely understand what you're saying. And I think,

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  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, uh, 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.

• 1:51:18Esther Perel?

  Uh huh.

• 1:51:19Speaker 01

  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 is what it is. So they designed an algorithm.

• 1:51:32Esther Perel?

  What do you mean, an outcome of what they tried to create?

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  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, right? 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 will really enjoy the food, but what is the outcome going to be?

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  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 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 four hundred 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.

• 1:52:59Speaker 01

  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, not completely. It's accelerated a lot of what we're experiencing. And so now there's this new idea of creating an algorithm the other way around. And so for instance, saying

• 1:53:30Esther Perel?

  The other way around being?

• 1:53:31Speaker 01

  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, I'll, 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.

• 1:54:15Speaker 01

  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?

• 1:54:33Esther Perel?

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  So you, you'll find, yeah, you find you're in a relationship with the person. Let's say they liked 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?

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  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, I think, 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.

• 1:55:55Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:56Speaker 01

  To connect with the people around them. And then if they do, there's gonna be something that benefits them. But I haven't figured out what it is yet, but I know I wanna do something like that.

• 1:56:04Esther Perel?

  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 wanna welcome the skeptics.

• 1:56:28Speaker 01

  I love that.

• 1:56:28Esther Perel?

  So that's number one. So that, and it's, there's always a group of people, they, they just came because somebody said, I really would love for you. 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 country wise? So I get a complete sense as to whether all the places that people have come from. And knowing that each of you is gonna hear me with a different ear. Because you come from different relationship traditions, different relational systems and cultures, et cetera. And then my third question is, um, how many of you have ever been involved in a consensual sexual experience?

• 1:57:12Esther Perel?

  That was also unsatisfying, but you went along with it anyway and you said nothing.

• 1:57:17Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:57:18Esther Perel?

  And they all stand up, this is always this.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 1:57:21Esther Perel?

  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, 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, 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.

• 1:58:03Esther Perel?

  I mean, what if you actually asked 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.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  I mean, jokes are, are dangerous, but.

• 1:58:14Esther Perel?

  Of course, to each other, to the people they're sitting with. Or just to, to tell a, to pick some question.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  No, 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 before.

• 1:58:35Esther Perel?

  So give me an example of crowd work, because is it you to the audience?

• 1:58:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:58:39Esther Perel?

  Or is it the audience with each other?

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  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.

• 1:58:46Esther Perel?

  For example?

• 1:58:47Speaker 01

  Um, someone goes, hey, uh, what's your name? Where are you from? Oh, Esther, Esther. Oh, that's a nice name. It sounds like a grandmother's name, though. So Esther, where are you from? Belgium. Oh, Belgium. You don't know anybody from Belgium. Tell me something.

• 1:58:58Esther Perel?

  Any other Belgians in the room?

• 1:59:00Speaker 01

  Any other Belgians in the room? Woo! Oh, wow. I didn't know there were this many Belgians. And then they're 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, uh, they wanna know, the Belgians, wait, what happened? What, what did they do in Africa? Wait, what did they do in Africa, Esther? And now there's this connection, and it's tension, and there's laughter, and there's, and it's, it's, it's like a very... And it's funny, because some comedians don't like it.

• 1:59:32Esther Perel?

  But you're very central.

• 1:59:32Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:59:32Esther Perel?

  It all gets mediated through you.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, because otherwise it's chaos.

• 1:59:36Esther Perel?

  But there is something about having them, I'll, I'll look in my card deck for you and see if there's one or two things that you can translate.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  I'm, I'll try it. I'm open.

• 1:59:46Esther Perel?

  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.

• 1:59:54Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm open. I'll do this.

• 1:59:56Esther Perel?

  You know, you have, it's so, I mean,

• 1:59:59Speaker 01

  I love this. Love this idea. Love it. I'll try it.

• 2:00:02Esther Perel?

  You can test a few things.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  I will try it gladly, and it will either work, or I will get comedy from it.

• 2:00:08Esther Perel?

  I mean, because so much of my show was about creating the communal experience. So then I say, please stand up if you're currently in a romantic relationship.

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:19Esther Perel?

  And 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.

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Damn.

• 2:00:27Esther Perel?

  Or at least on occasion.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  Who stands? How many people have stood for the first one? Nobody.

• 2:00:33Esther Perel?

  For the being in a romantic relationship?

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  No, no, would you like to be out of the, the relationship you're in?

• 2:00:37Esther Perel?

  Oh, you would be surprised.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  People stand?

• 2:00:39Esther Perel?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:00:39Speaker 01

  Are they there with the person?

• 2:00:41Esther Perel?

  Sometimes, yes.

• 2:00:41Speaker 01

  No ways, Esther.

• 2:00:42Esther Perel?

  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?

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:01:00Esther Perel?

  I'm done with this.

• 2:01:00Speaker 01

  No, I can see the humor in this.

• 2:01:01Esther Perel?

  But 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 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.

• 2:01:34Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do this, I love, now you've given me homework and like a challenge. How do, how do I connect my audiences more? Half of it because I think it, there can be beautiful outcomes and the other half is just because I like the possibility that things might not go well.

• 2:01:49Esther Perel?

  You'll tell me.

• 2:01:50Speaker 01

  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 to a friend of mine, it was about relationships and I said,

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  and 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 the like, it all happens to you for a reason and it was meant to be, no, I don't think of it like that. But I, I, I don't know, I don't know why.

• 2:02:36Esther Perel?

  But you think it has something to do with the perfection? You can't, that, that, that people are, you know, it's like bad investment?

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I do think so.

• 2:02:44Esther Perel?

  It's like a market mentality applied to people too?

• 2:02:47Speaker 01

  It's bad ROI. That person wasted my time.

• 2:02:49Esther Perel?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  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, you know what I mean? Like, how was it a waste of time? Did it have a bad outcome? Or do you feel like the whole time was a waste? Did it 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.

• 2:03:25Esther Perel?

  That's different.

• 2:03:27Speaker 01

  And then I go, but in a way it isn't.

• 2:03:28Esther Perel?

  This is romantic consumerism, huh? This is, you know, this is transaction. You wasted my time?

• 2:03:36Esther Perel?

  That's an amazing statement to make on a relationship. You know, it wasn't worth it. It didn't deliver. Uh, it didn't deliver. They had a poor ROI.

• 2:03:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:47Esther Perel?

  I mean, it 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 market to the relational world. We brought the business mentality into our relationship, you know? Is it worth my time? Um, should I invest in here? Um, it it. I don't, you know, when you really look at what it does to people, um. It's not the most pleasant thing.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  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 are you from? How did you come here? Who are you? You know, especially in a city that that has a mix of the the natives and then people who are relocating or visiting. And yeah, I was surprised. So many people were like, oh, no, we're friends. I was like, oh, I thought you were a couple. No, no, we're friends.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  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? Not just romance. Is there a happy ending on the other side of this? And if there's not, why are we even? Why are we speaking? Why are we, you know? And then I remember you saying you grew up in a world where oh, men and women were friends and going out for dinners. And it was more, yeah, it was more nuanced, I guess.

• 2:05:45Esther Perel?

  Nuanced and less goal oriented, less outcome driven.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Outcome, yeah.

• 2:05:50Esther Perel?

  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 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 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?

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Like the phrase.

• 2:06:28Esther Perel?

  The phrase, no, no, 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's a, it's a very interesting sentence, what's in it for me? You know, and 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 erotic, of the feeling alive.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:02Esther Perel?

  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. 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, as I listen to you, it brings back memories. My mom used to tell me that 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.

• 2:07:46Esther Perel?

  And I'm just thinking, oh la la, after all of this, you just went dancing?

• 2:07:54Esther Perel?

  Didn't you want to first lick your wounds? And it made me think that there really, there are two stances at this moment that stand out. And suddenly 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 new experiences that bring you joy and hope and energy and connection and exploration and all of that,

• 2:08:38Esther Perel?

  that that in itself is healing.

• 2:08:42Esther Perel?

  And I think that those are two very important doors that we stand in front at this moment, individually and as groups, as communities.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that for us as a society right now to ask ourselves, do we want to create new memories

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  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?

• 2:09:11Esther Perel?

  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 in which you connect beautifully and the things that never pose a problem, so you don't even think about them. And you first need to like the person again and the 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. You know, and a lot of people in the field of conflict are talking about eighty, twenty, right? It's the eighty percent that you actually agree upon or share a vision for or care for.

• 2:09:55Esther Perel?

  And the twenty percent that you don't, but we have a real knack at this moment to go to the twenty percent first. And I think that we have a lot to gain to rebalance that a little bit.

• 2:10:12Esther Perel?

  That's where I'm at.

• 2:10:15Speaker 01

  I think that's where we're at. This has been fun. This has really been great. I like that. I think let's, yeah, 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.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  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 reckless abandon that can bulldoze through certain ideas and people around them. I think there's something really wonderful in being doubtful, but also adventurous.

• 2:11:12Esther Perel?

  And you know how I do it?

• 2:11:15Esther Perel?

  By holding the hands of others.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I like this.

• 2:11:19Esther Perel?

  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. But I'll go into all kinds of adventurous 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 by the trust that I have in other people.

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  I love this. You've left me a lot to think. I'm gonna, yeah, I'll apply myself. Let's get people back into laundromats. Thanks, there. Thank you so much.

• 2:11:58Esther Perel?

  Thank you.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  This has been wonderful.

• 2:12:05Speaker 01

  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 Jodi 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.

• 2:12:46Speaker 03

  Pink Pantheress here. Coach and Spotify are teaming up to bring music and style together, and they want you to be part of it. Grab your friends and head to the Tabby Tour, hitting cities around the country with live performances from special artists, exclusive experiences and personalised products. And discover custom playlists on Spotify, booked just for you based on who you are and how you listen. Live your story with Coach. Learn more at coach.com.

• 2:13:14Speaker 04

  This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Football has a play for just about everything. You can go deep, keep it on the ground, or draw up something nobody sees coming. And whether you want to run a flea flicker or the tush push, you need a plan to fit your unique situation. That's why State Farm takes the time to get to know you, so they can help personalise coverage for your life and budget. Now that's a solid game plan. Like a good neighbour, State Farm is there.