← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
Esther Perel: why the world is more divided than ever
00:44:55
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- [00:03]
Christiana Amanpour
This is a global Player original podcast. What do you think of me doing a podcast with my ex husband?
- [00:13]
Esther Perel
When you mentioned it, I first thought it was an X. Then I saw it was an ex, and then I said, how clever. It instantly elicits curiosity for me.
- [00:23]
Christiana Amanpour
I was, like, gobsmacked. You know, my mouth was agog listening to everybody, just so thrilled to let it all hang out.
- [00:29]
Esther Perel
Not only do you start by talking with the one who wants to kill you, but you also spend days listening, just listening. Which doesn't mean agreeing. It means able to hear the perspective from the other side. They're living with predictive technologies that are constantly giving them perfection and immediate answers and no doubt and a lot of certainty. And that is absolutely not what human relationships are like.
- [00:57]
Christiana Amanpour
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the latest episode of the X Files with me, Christiana Manpour. This week, not with Jamie Rubin, because I have a very, very special guest, Esther Perel. She is the world renowned pioneering podcaster on couples therapy. Her podcast is called Where Shall We Begin? It's going for 10 years now. And honestly, I've got her on because she also talks about the kinds of things that our podcast is about. How do you get common ground? How can people who even have political views, different worldviews, different personal views, exes like Jamie and I, how can we actually have discussions that don't veer off into partisan, poisonous corners and come to some kind of agreement and consensus where we can talk and also listen and be heard? So, Esther Perel, a kind of applied therapist for our times and for the global situation as well. Let's get started. Esther Perel, it is truly a pleasure. How are you? Thank you for being with me on my podcast.
- [02:02]
Esther Perel
I am delighted. Any opportunity to speak with you, it's so sweet.
- [02:06]
Christiana Amanpour
So first, I want to ask you a question. Given that this is in your wheelhouse, what do you think of me doing a podcast with my ex husband?
- [02:15]
Esther Perel
I think it's a wonderful idea. If people decide that they can't be married or they don't want to share a home together, or they don't have a love story that is there anymore, but they have a deep affection and respect and intellectual compatibility, why not continue to collaborate? I think we have this notion that a marriage is either on or off. And when it's off, it means that it was bad. Otherwise there would be no reason for it to be off. And so there is no reason to maintain contact. When you mentioned it, I first thought it was an X. Then I saw it was an ex. And then I said, how clever. This is interesting. It instantly elicits curiosity for me. Tell me the story. How did this happen? What. What is it like, et cetera, et cetera? And then you'll tell me if it was a good idea?
- [03:05]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah. Well, briefly, it happened because I wanted to do a podcast that Jamie had basically lost his job when Biden lost the election and Trump came in, he had been in the State Department, and the two of us were sort of potentially looking for. To do. And I wanted to do a podcast, as I said. So I asked him, do you want to do a podcast? Should we talk about foreign affairs? Because one of our little jokes is the one thing that didn't usually go wrong in our. In our marriage was discussing foreign affairs, political visions. Yes, exactly. And. And the other thing, Esther, and this is, I think, where you would have, you know, I'd be interested in what you say, because it's, again, really something that you focus on. I was really interested, given that I was covering on a daily basis, and I guess Jamie was dealing on a daily basis from the government perspective. Horror of the invasion of Russia on Ukraine, that's still going on. The horror of the Israel Gaza war, that's, you know, still going on in one way or another. It's not over. And it was so awful for me to see that leaders on either side couldn't talk, that this had made people on all sides unable to talk, driven people into their corners, not able to discuss these issues, particularly the Israel, Gaza one, but also Russia, Ukraine, without having fights or without retreating into their own echo chambers. And so I thought, if two people who've been married and then divorced for a long period of time, even, you know, in every divorce, Esther, you know, it's difficult, but having been able to come through that and then talk to each other about other things like these events, that maybe that's some kind of modeling. That's what I thought.
- [04:41]
Esther Perel
And did it change the way you then dealt with family life and other things that you still have in common? Did it expand beyond the focus on which you have always had a bonheur tante?
- [04:54]
Christiana Amanpour
Yes, a little bit. A little bit. Given that we live in different continents, countries, cities, definitely. We speak obviously once a week at least to decide what we're going to do. Then we speak on the weekend, then we do the. The. The. The podcast. So we're speaking a lot more, and we are in touch a lot more. And of course, we have a son, and so that is also what connects us. But again, I just thought and people have responded well in that. You know, they think it's kind of amusing. They also think it's interesting to hear the backstory. Yeah.
- [05:27]
Esther Perel
You know, I went to a conference by five leaders, Ireland, Colombia, Tunisia, Kenya, and all of them were talking about how they had come to make peace. Some of them took decades, decades. But it always started with, you actually need to talk with the very person or party that wants to kill you. If you don't want to have anything to do with the person that you actually need to negotiate with, you will never get there. And it was such a clear statement across the globe of these different leaders.
- [06:03]
Christiana Amanpour
Exactly. And I have found, again, one of the issues for me is how do you expand from, you know, the X Files? But I mean, just people trying to resolve their own differences and find some kind of common ground to conflict resolution writ large. And God knows I've covered plenty of conflict resolution. And Jamie has, you know, being in government, when there's been conflict resolution happening, whether it was the Oslo Accords or the Good Friday Agreements in Northern Ireland. And I know that you also talk about that, in a way, and building community, and that's your new substack and your new issues that you're focusing on right now. But, you know, I was always really impressed by two friends. They are the couple who initiated the Oslo Accords, or at least hosted them, guided them, midwifed them through. They are married couple, Mona and Terry Road Larson. They're Norwegians, hence it was in Oslo. But I remember them telling me, and they made a film about it, and then there was a, you know, play about it that you got the Palestinians and the Israelis together, who were sworn enemies in the early 90s. I mean, the Israelis weren't even allowed to talk to the plo, and they got them to talk about their families, to talk about the food that they like, to share a meal together, all those kind of normal things that break down barriers.
- [07:26]
Esther Perel
So there's two pieces that we know that the research is constantly coming back to. In distressed relationships, people will always overemphasize the negative, the differences, the splits, and they will underrepresent what they actually share, what they have in common, what is similar to them. And then when you actually look at all the groups and the movements that try to come together, standing together, every other organization that brings Israelis and Palestinians, Catholics and Protestants, you name it, all over it is because they share something. They share the loss of a child, they share the loss of a land. They share grief usually actually is where it starts. And from that place of shared humanity begins the weaving together. And then from there, at the last moment, they start to talk about the big, big, big issues. I think that our tendency is to say we disagree, let's talk about the stuff we disagree about, let's plunge into the conflict. When in fact, looking at what we have in common, what are the values, the greater values that we actually adhere to is the starting point. And I think it's been one of the things that Monica McWilliams talked about when she worked on the Good Friday Agreement was not only do you start by talking with the one who wants to kill you, but you also spend days listening, just listening. And you try to switch everything that has to do with your assumptions. And I know exactly what you stand for and I know what you want to do, and I know what's your ultimate goal and I know what you're not saying to listening, which doesn't mean agreeing. This is the really important piece. It means able to hear the perspective from the other side. And all people seem to agree that conflict, from marital conflict to family conflict to communal conflict to large scale conflict, 100%.
- [09:26]
Christiana Amanpour
And I think what you say about grief is so important because I look back to some of the joint interviews I've hosted on my program. I really try hard to get people from opposite sides together on the program. It's really, really difficult to difficult, especially in the current environment. But in the past, I've had an Israeli and a Palestinian who both lost kids to talk about how they connected themselves and then how they joined a bigger process to try a grassroots process. And then even after October 7, I convened people on my program, whether they were, you know, people who were journalists or filmmakers or again, parents who had lost a child together. And it's so moving. It's so moving. And those are the people who I just say, wow, if only their voices could be exponentially heard instead of being shut down by the leaders and by the extremes who are in the moment and who are so angry about everything that they don't want to know that they have a shared humanity. So I think the grief is very, very important to realize that, as some people say, you know, everybody has a child. It's not that country X has one child and country, you know, A, B or C, you know, doesn't care about children. It's very much a common humanity. They just have to find it.
- [10:50]
Esther Perel
But you see the beauty of grief. I mean, I work on small scale. I do couples, families, small groups. But the principle, I think translates from when you look at people who have really worked in the political context as well. Grief is loss, but grief is also love. You grieve people that you loved. And when you come together around grief, you come together around your experience of having loved the child, the parents, whoever it is that you lost. And it's the subtext that is not mentioned when we use the word grief. And that's. You get the two polarities. When you are listening to people like that talk, you are transcending the stuff that is. I mean, there are major issues in the concrete that need to be dealt with. I'm not talking that everything is just relational, but it is people who have relationships, who negotiate agreements.
- [11:47]
Christiana Amanpour
Let's just go back a little bit to the building blocks, because as I said, you're new, and I think it's a substack, right, called entre nou. Between us is actually because between us.
- [11:57]
Esther Perel
Is the space in between, but it's also the intimacy that fills it.
- [12:02]
Christiana Amanpour
So tell me what it is filled with for you in terms of a project, because I know it's about, you know, trying to rebuild community or just build community. Try to build the village that, as trite as it sounds, is absolutely vital to a healthy life. It does take a village.
- [12:19]
Esther Perel
I have worked for decades primarily as a couples and family therapist. I basically looked at what is connection and disconnection. What is rupture and repair? Actually, I would say what is connection, disconnection and reconnecting? What does it actually take, that process, harmony, disharmony and repair. And these are the words of my friend Terry Real. But from there, I began to look at what is happening on a societal level. I mean, it's one thing to see units in my office. It's another thing. Or on my podcast. But it's another thing to see people who are more and more talking about the disconnect. They're not working remote, they're living remote. They're living with predictive technologies that are constantly giving them perfection and immediate answers and no doubt and a lot of certainty. And that is absolutely not what human relationships are like. They're imperfect and completely unpredictable. We are talking more and more with generative AIs, and we are basically for. Every time I turn to my AI that is often very sycophantic and tells me how my questions are so smart and doesn't teach me much about accountability. We begin to always talk about the subject of belonging or connection or empathy as something that I receive, not something that I contribute to, that involves a responsibility towards others. So the mutuality that is essential, the reciprocity that is essential to relationships and to communal life is being seeped out. So I thought, I need to broaden the circle. It's not enough to just talk about intimate relationships. Then I went to friendships, I went to work relationships, I went to creative pairs, co founders. And then I thought, no, no, no, I need to actually go and talk about the village, not the traditional village, because many people actually want to leave traditional villages often, but villages that bring what is called apart and together and essentially are intergenerational. I think that that is the most important component of the loss of the traditional village is the intergenerational dimension.
- [14:30]
Christiana Amanpour
I think you're absolutely right. And again, everybody has the data shows us that with, let's say, in Western Europe anyway, and in the United States, intergenerational separation is almost de rigueur, you know, and the idea that you would live close to your family, close to your parents, your grandparents, means you didn't launch. Yeah.
- [14:48]
Esther Perel
It means you didn't leave. It means that you lack independence, that you lack stamina. There's something wrong that you haven't been able to leave home. As if leaving home is a major developmental stage.
- [15:00]
Christiana Amanpour
Exactly, exactly. So I really do think, think especially in this era where there's a massive loneliness epidemic, there's a. Everything is just, you know, centrifugal. It's all, you know, it's just driving us apart, that this idea of bringing us back together again is, Is a good idea to, To. To reconnect with. But I want to ask you, because I know you've had this experience. You are, you know, the child of and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. And you and your. I'm not sure about your husband, certainly you left Belgium and came to the United States and had to make a whole new world for yourself and thus create a new community.
- [15:40]
Esther Perel
Yeah. So I am the child of two survivors of the Holocaust who were the only survivors of their entire family, but who also then were refugees, illegal refugees for quite a few years, more than five years, as they arrived to Belgium. And I came voluntarily. Mine was not a forced migration. I came voluntarily. I thought I came for one year to the US And I never used my return ticket. But I went through a lot of the stages of what is it like to arrive to a place, to learn the codes, to understand how the meaning making of a certain place what is needed? I'll give you two very interesting little examples that allowed me to understand something about how much the United States prones Autonomy, self reliance, independence versus loyalty, interdependence. 1. I have a five year old. He has a wonderful best friend. And I'm convinced that as he goes into first grade, they of course will keep him with his best friend in the same class. Normal. No. What I am told is he needs to learn the habit of making new friends all along because this is what American mobility will demand from him, is to arrive to a new place every time and make new friends. And I'm thinking, what about continuity? I have people I know from 6 years old. Why are we not cultivating that? And I understand there's a different value system. Example number two, I begin to understand that we professionalize help in this country. If you need something, pay for it, find it, buy it, rather than ask friends. I come from an environment where you first ask every friend if they can help you. And if really there is nobody, then you go and you find the paid source. No, here you do not impose, you do not depend on other people, and I mean, nobody survives wars, any wars, till today without constantly asking for help. I mean, this is an amazing survival skill. And suddenly it is seen as, you know, I'm not able to handle my own stuff on my own. And I'm thinking this is migration. And you don't migrate only once when you arrive. I'm sure you had the same experience when your kids go to school, you migrate again. When you get this job, you migrate again at various stages. You really have to relearn. How do they do this here?
- [18:15]
Christiana Amanpour
Yep, absolutely right. And I so agree with you. I have a different but similar experience that essentially the victim of a revolution in my country in Iran, the Islamic revolution. I grew up, you know, thinking one set of things about the world with one set of values and people and what I thought the rest of my life in Iran. And then all overnight, the whole thing, you know, blew up and I did leave. My parents stayed for a while. I left alone. Yeah, I mean, actually my sister was already in the uk, but. And other sisters though were much younger and they stayed with my parents in Iran because they didn't have the wherewithal outside. They hadn't secreted money or property or anything outside Iran, and so they had to stay. And in fact, my parents didn't leave until Iraq invaded Iran in 1980, and then they couldn't go back after a summer holiday. But anyway, the point is that we all had to create new community and luckily I'm pretty open and you know, I'm curious and I like people and I like experiences. But subconsciously or consciously, I was constantly, and still am, making new communities wherever I go. I went to the uk Fine. I went to the United States and started to build my life there. And that was difficult, Esther, because, you know, at the time I came to the U.S. people hated Iranians. They were the, you know, the hostages, the American hostages still in the. In the embassy there. And it was very overt discomfort. And I feel also that I've had to succeed and relate inside the greater American community, despite the fact that I'm Iranian almost constantly having to prove myself that I'm not an enemy or I'm not a, you know, a suspect kind of person.
- [20:03]
Esther Perel
I have probably the reverse prejudice. Interestingly, if we're going to talk about these nuances, I went to work in the psychiatric hospital and I had a French accent, and I knew nothing, but I knew that people listened to me more sometimes than all the people that I was working in the Spanish speaking unit. And I was very happy to be able to speak Spanish enough to be hired in that unit. But the people with that accent were not listened to like me. And I began to understand the cachet of the British and the French accent in the context of the United States.
- [20:36]
Christiana Amanpour
Well, I'm glad you brought that up because that is what was, you know, what helped me. People thought, oh, she's got a British accent. She's smart.
- [20:43]
Esther Perel
Yes.
- [20:44]
Christiana Amanpour
So on that note about the virtue of having a foreign accent, let us take a break, and when we come back, Esther will talk to us about how you get over even family diversity divides, whether it's about politics or your personal life or your boyfriend or your husband, whatever it might be, with the holidays coming up, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New year's.
- [21:13]
Esther Perel
You know, 74 of food that is cooked in the United States restaurants at this moment is eaten off the premises.
- [21:22]
Christiana Amanpour
Oh, my God.
- [21:23]
Esther Perel
People are not having parties. People often talk about how they haven't been invited somewhere. And often when they are invited somewhere, they can cancel a half an hour before because they no longer think that it even matters if they show up or not. And so I had a beautiful conversation with Priya Parker, who works on the art of gathering and talking about the importance of actually hosting. Not fancy things, just hosting. Invite people to do things with you. Take the initiatives. Everybody thinks that everybody else has an interesting life but them. Just if you reach out to other people, it may feel vulnerable, but in fact, everyone is waiting to someone who sends them that message and says, would you like to join in the era of the self? So much has been on the focus of what is going to be given to me, where am I going to find my community, my belonging, my acceptance, et cetera. And rather than where can I bring some of that, what can I contribute, what can I offer? And I think when we regain some of that sense of agency and power, we will have a better situation.
- [22:40]
Christiana Amanpour
The spirit of that is very useful for everybody as Thanksgiving is around the corner and then Christmas and all the holidays that demand so much even of families. So what happens, you know, now again, we're in this fractured world about politics. In America, you're either pro Trump or anti Trump. And that's. That's political, that's societal, and that's within families and friendships as well. Abroad or even in America, you're either pro Israel or pro Palestine. God forbid, two thoughts can happen at one time.
- [23:10]
Esther Perel
That's right.
- [23:11]
Christiana Amanpour
But what do you do? Or in Europe, you're either pro Russia or anti, you know, pro Ukraine and all the antis that go with it. So now Thanksgiving is coming up, Christmas is coming up. What do you think about entre nou and community and, you know, negotiating commonality, even at a red light, traffic, you know, traffic stop, or even with your neighbors?
- [23:32]
Esther Perel
I think that there are different ways for people to think about it. I have an example that just popped into my head from one of the podcast episodes, and the woman is literally on the verge of cutting off with her father. She disagrees with him on all ideas. She doesn't feel particularly accepted by him as a queer person. And in the same breath, she also tells me that anything she ever needs, the first person she turns to is the father. And I'm thinking to myself, you see, this is complex and it demands holding contradictions, paradoxes in your hand. At the same time, if you look at what he does and how he responds to you, none of the things that he thinks about are necessarily standing in the way they somehow apply in his philosophy, in his politics, in how he votes, but not in how he relates to the people. And I'm not just talking to how he relates to you because you're his daughter. He may even. People don't always act in the moment according to their philosophies. You know, if somebody's falling next to them on the street, they don't start to think in the moment. What is my idea about people like this? They pick you up because somebody fell. Some human values are more important and topple everything else and take priority we at this moment. And I think it has something to do in my Mind. With the weakening of religion in the west, we used to know which God you pray to. Now it's, who do you vote for? Never has political allegiances been. No, not never. It has happened in the early 19th and 20th century as well. It's not true, but it is back this idea that I define who you are by virtue of your politics above anything else. I do not look at who you are, what you do, what you support, what kind of citizen you are, how you do citizenry, so to speak. And I think that when people go home for the holiday, it is actually an opportunity for them to listen. Listen to the diversity that exists inside your family. Listen to how people have come to think the way they do. How is it that you've come to see it this way? You know, curiosity before you attack, before you challenge, before you dismiss. You know, learn something, and at least you're learning it from people that you kind of know. And the next minute they'll serve you the sweet potatoes, you know, it's like.
- [26:08]
Christiana Amanpour
And the cranberry sauce.
- [26:09]
Esther Perel
Yeah, it's like all of this will be mixed. It's not possible for everyone. But I think that it is an attitude that a lot of us can take. I think the switch is, first of all, not how am I going to deal with these people. It's who do I want to be in the context of this gathering and what is important for me. And if it's harmonizing. Harmonizing is an essential relational value. We've come to dismiss it as people pleasing. I don't know that that's necessarily fair to it. If it's learning, if it's confronting, if it's challenging. There's a range of ways people can deal with the difference of opinions. But know something, there's a ton of other things to talk about. You know, you can talk about what it's like to come together as a family. What is the importance of family Today? I created an entire card game to help people have. Because I was thinking, how do I make people have profound, deep conversations, stories, you know, the things that you will remember when people are no longer around. In the midst of your grief, you will want to think about what is the story of our family and what are the questions that lead to that.
- [27:21]
Christiana Amanpour
Let's talk about that for a second, because we've met several times in the past in various different contexts, but the last time we had a dinner together, and it's a dinner that you convened at a friend of yours, and it was just fantastic, to be honest with you. I Thought we were just coming for dinner. But you had this amazing idea that.
- [27:38]
Esther Perel
No longer exists with me.
- [27:40]
Christiana Amanpour
Apparently not that we were what, about 18, 20 people around one table and we were trying to have a one table conversation. And at one point you brought out these cards and I just thought it was fantastic because I knew you had done them, but I hadn't played the cards before. Right. So this one is where should we begin? This is the original stories one. And then this is where should we begin? At work. These are the ones you brought out. And some of the questions are my most irrational fear. The worst date I've ever been on a dream I've never shared a text message I found a fantasize about sending. And I mean, I was like gobsmacked, you know, my mouth was agog listening to everybody just like so thrilled to let it all hang out and share everything with. None of us have ever met before. I mean, I knew one person there apart from you, and we were all so ready, willing and able to speak out loud. Some of our most intimate or fantastic, fantastical thoughts and you know, sexual fantasies and all the rest. It was, it was amazing because stories.
- [28:47]
Esther Perel
Are bridges for connection. I just did one recently. It was, you know, someone who impacted your life and doesn't know it. Then you begin to listen to people and they become more layered, they become more complex. And you may still totally disagree with what they think, but you understand who they are and how this comes to be. And sometimes you and them come from the same story. But each of you, you know, took care of your early stories, of your childhood, of your traumas, of your immigration stories, et cetera, and made different decisions. But in fact, the source is not that different. So why do I like these games and why do I like unified conversations? Because I think we are flooded, flooded with information. All of us, all day on the devices. And it's very difficult at this moment to maintain a thought that doesn't get interrupted to create environments where people truly listen with attention. First of all, it just calms the nervous system to begin, but also you don't remember what you ate, but you do remember the stories you heard.
- [29:53]
Christiana Amanpour
That is really very true and I agree with you. It's very frustrating trying to hold a conversation. And you notice actually at dinner it was hard to keep people from interrupting immediately. Right. We have to learn again to sort of let the sentence that the other person is trying to utter end before we interrupt. So, you know, the last time we talked in a formal setting as an interview on my program we were talking about generative AI. We obviously social media and, and what might happen to people and relationships given how much algorithms are taking, taking the space of just ordinary human interaction. And you said something to me that to this day is stuck in my head and I'm just, just really quite depressed about it. You basically said that all of this technology is beginning to, and correct me when I'm wrong here, shift what we are and change our identity and our species. Do you still think that and have I got it right?
- [30:51]
Esther Perel
Yes, I still think that. I still do. I still see an incremental social atrophy. I see an incremental danger. Stranger or stranger danger probably is the better way of putting it. A stranger is a danger. You do not just reach out and start talking to people. I still see people who are lonely not just because they are physically alone, but because they are literally two people sitting, watching TV while scrolling at their phone at the same time. And then somebody talking to someone about something that's actually truly important and the other person goes, huh, you know, with this kind of digital lag where you experience what I could call on a daily basis, ambiguous loss. And I don't know if we talked about that back then, but talk about it. Ambiguous loss is a term that was created by a psychologist, Pauline Boss, and she was talking about situations where you actually cannot resolve the grief. You don't know is the person still there or not. Like Alzheimer or dementia. They are physically present, but they are psychologically and emotionally absent. Or disappearance or miscarriage or hostage taking or deployment. They are physically gone, but they are emotionally very present. And you don't know are you here or are you not? And in all these situations you live with an ambiguous loss. And this is actually what's happening in many social interactions at this moment. I was talking about with a dear friend named this week and she said, I had a conversation with two 11 year olds. She said they really feel a lot more intimate when they are on their phone talking to each other than when they are in real person. Why? Because when they are there in real person, everybody's on their phone, but not with each other.
- [32:50]
Christiana Amanpour
Yeah, it's horrible.
- [32:52]
Esther Perel
And I thought this is really a statement. When both of us are like this, then I know you're with me and the world outside doesn't exist. We've all experienced this. So I think that something profound is going to change. If you don't have enough eye contact, you change if you don't use your senses because you're locked in your house all the time you change. If you don't accept talk with the strangers, as in explore the unknown, Open yourself up to happenstance and all you do is want to create situations of certainty. Then you change. You change existentially, but you also change physiologically.
- [33:35]
Christiana Amanpour
You know, again, that resounds so much and resonates so much with me because, you know, even when the first Walkmans came out, you remember the Sony Walkmans, I just never used them. I never put them in my ear because I didn't want to, to not hear what was going on around me. For me, I felt a sense of A, disconnection and B, maybe danger if I didn't hear what was coming at me or if I didn't hear, you know, the subway or whatever it was. And now the AirPods and the full, I mean the full headgear with the headphones says, don't talk to me, don't look at me. I'm not looking at you, I'm not listening to you. I've got, I'm on my own in my head and I think it's sad.
- [34:14]
Esther Perel
And then we talk about loneliness. It's like without looking at what is happening in terms of algorithmic living, in terms of isolation, in terms of everything is meant to pull us apart from the news that we read to, everything is meant. So I really find it challenging when people talk about loneliness as a mental health crisis, when it is actually a societal crisis of which people are responding with what is still considered a normal reaction. It would be terrible the day you stop not feeling lonely when you are pulled apart that much. It is what you should be experiencing because it's the natural response. The day we don't, we will have become a new species.
- [34:57]
Christiana Amanpour
I mean, that's really something to think about. And I'm just interested in all the elements that you use to make sure that we remain human with our human values and our human human instincts. We were talking about the cards. How can you use that to reverse this idea of turning inside and just thinking about your own phone and your own relationships on your phone?
- [35:19]
Esther Perel
So there's different ways that I. Things that I'm trying. Okay, one, yes, it was this game and especially to bring it into the workplace. Why did we bring it into the workplace? Where should we begin? At work? Is it the result of people telling us all over the world that they would take out the sex questions so that they could actually go and play with their team, with their off site, with their board, you know, with their feedback sessions, et cetera? And so we Created questions, prompts that actually would really cultivate relational intelligence in the workplace. And that's not just so that people would feel good, but that's because if you change the culture, you increase the engagement, and if you increase the engagement, you absolutely change the performance. But I think in addition to the playing of the game, the first thing I really did was to create where should we begin? The podcast. Because I was a therapist, I still am a therapist in my office, but there's only a few people who can come to see me. And so I decided to open the door to lower the four walls and to invite you into the office to listen in on live therapy sessions. When you listen clearly and attentively to the stories of others, you actually end up seeing yourself. You're not at all dealing with the same situation, but there is something in this situation that you're hearing that actually reflects your own experience and that has really created a community. So I start by humanizing people, and then they can find a lot of other places where they can go and deal with the complicated subjects.
- [36:56]
Christiana Amanpour
I'm really fascinated by what you just said. You start by humanizing people, and again, in the big picture as well as the small picture, but certainly in the war and peace and conflict and all those kind of resolution pieces, you have so much dehumanization. It says that is wrong, and nobody can agree with your position. It has to be basically a zero sum game. And that to me, seems to be huge right now and getting ever, ever worse, which means you can't really end these conflicts on a. You know, the word compromise seems to have fallen off the cliff.
- [37:30]
Esther Perel
Language as a whole has become very venomous. Every word instantly means that you are this and you are that, and you are equated with one word. And you are asked, are you this and are you that?
- [37:41]
Christiana Amanpour
Are you?
- [37:42]
Esther Perel
And it doesn't mean that I am apolitical, but it does mean that there is a different way to first establish a connection between people. A contact that then invites into a conversation, that then invites into a collaboration, that then invites into action. If people are attacked and dismissed, they will defend you. Push them to become more and more emboldened in their rigidity because they feel threatened, and it really doesn't solve world conflicts.
- [38:14]
Christiana Amanpour
So I was really wondering. I know it sounds might sound ridiculous, but not to you, because maybe you have this in your toolbox, but because our dinner with the cards and other conversation was so exhilarating, and I know everybody left that dinner feeling so exhilarated and so full of Possibility that I actually said to myself, wow, I wonder if you go to start, you know, the opening dinner or something, even with world leaders, is there some kind of icebreaker like those cards that. I mean, I think it's great, I think it would be fantastic if they took those cards and asked those questions and broke down barriers.
- [38:51]
Esther Perel
I would be more than moved if I ever, if any card could ever make a difference to the horrors of the moment and to the wounds of the moment, it would melt my heart. But I think as a whole, everybody may have had sometime a mother or a father or an angel or someone that looked over us. Everybody may have had a moment when they thought, there's nothing left to do. Everybody may have had a moment when they thought, I owe an apology to someone. Everybody has a moment when they say, I know, a phone call to someone. I mean, there's basic things. And I think that what you will hear in my questions, or if they've had a child or if they've had a loss or if they've grieved. But basically I'm asking people something that invites empathy, but more importantly, something that invites accountability. Accountability is responsibility that doesn't get mired in shame so that it cannot express itself as accountability. And that demands courage, it demands honesty, and it demands to understand that we are flawed people. It doesn't matter which question you start with. I know the questions that really make a difference. You know, a moment I felt proud of something, a risk I took that changed my life. I owe an apology to is a very, very big one.
- [40:18]
Christiana Amanpour
I owe a thank you too.
- [40:19]
Esther Perel
I owe a thank you too. But the thank yous are easier than the apologies because, you know, because in our, in our conflicts, we, we tend to really, you know, the other person is responsible. And if they change, then I could change. And if they did something different, then I can do. You know, it. It's me first. I mean, you kind of want to explain to people that whoever apologizes first or takes responsibility first most often has the power, but in fact it's perceived as being the weaker.
- [40:49]
Christiana Amanpour
Oh my God. It's so interesting you said that because in a similar but slightly different way, when I was talking about trying to resolve basically Israel or the Israel Palestine question, or the Russia, Ukraine question, I was talking to a former MI6, former national security, former ambassador, British, and he said to me, you know, often it's the stronger power who has to take the first step. Yes, well, you know what, Esther? We've been trying to take the small human individual to talk about how it relates to the big issues. And on that note, we're going to take a break. We're rapidly coming to the end of this episode, but when we come back, we're going to have Esther's recommendations. Okay, we're back with Esther Perel for our usual recommendation segment, but this time it's just her. Go ahead, Esther.
- [41:47]
Esther Perel
I am reading outline by Rachel Kusk. Yeah, beautiful book. I just saw a fantastic play. It tells you a small story, but in fact it tells you the larger economic forces of the moment. The difference between a fashion room in Paris versus Mumbai, the conditions of the labor force. But it's told in a magnificent theatrical storytelling. It's called Lacrima by Caroline Nun Guienne, a Vietnamese French director and dramatur. Beautiful. I saw a film actually this week. I'm part of a film club of a group of friends. And the movie is called Misericorde. Misericorde in English, and it's by Alain Girodeau and Giraudich. And it actually tells the story of a guy coming back to the village. And it shows you ambiguity because part of living in the traditional village was that people often knew you better than you knew yourself. It wasn't a place where you could have a lot of personal space. But as a result, since they knew that much, they had to give you leeway because you had to see them the next day. You could have conflict with someone, but you still had to meet them at the bakery because there was only one the next morning. So people came up with entire systems of convivencia, of how do you tolerate the things that are forbidden that you know are happening? Because you can't say, you know, move out of the neighborhood and go to another part of town. So it's a beautiful analysis of dynamics in the village.
- [43:27]
Christiana Amanpour
Esther, thank you so much. This has been really fantastic. And I just appreciate your wisdom and your willingness to talk out loud about some of these issues that should seem obvious. But, you know, individuals are so have such a hard time trying to get together in this time because I think all our pressures are click bait, conflict. That's what the drivers are right now. And we've got to get back to trying to find some harmony. So again, Estebarelle, thank you very much.
- [43:55]
Esther Perel
It's a treat. Thank you so much, Christiane.
- [43:59]
Christiana Amanpour
All right, Well, I hope you all enjoyed that special episode. I find her absolutely fascinating. Just every word she says is super useful and really profound as well as being so much fun. Make sure you never miss an episode. Remember, you can always watch our episodes on YouTube as well. Just subscribe and search for Christiana Onpour presents the x files on YouTube and subscribe to our channel and you can listen for free on Global Player. You can download that from the App Store or go to globalplayer.com on Thursday we'll have our bonus Q and A episode as usual, me and Jamie and we'll have both Jamie and I's recommendations on the Thursday bonus Q and A episode as well. Email us@amanpourpodlobal.com or you can find us on social media. Amanpur Pod that's it for this time. This has been a Global Player original production.