How to Cope with Now

Summary

Proxy with Yowei Shaw: Episode Summary - "How to Cope with Now"

Release Date: August 12, 2025

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Introduction

In the compelling episode titled "How to Cope with Now," host Yowei Shaw delves deep into the emotional turmoil that many are experiencing amid a cascade of global crises. Moving beyond traditional therapy, this episode exemplifies Proxy’s commitment to emotional investigative journalism™️ by exploring collective emotions, coping mechanisms, and the intricate relationship between individual well-being and societal upheavals.

Facing the Polycrisis

Yowei begins by articulating the overwhelming sense of being "stuck" amidst multiple crises—ranging from geopolitical tensions and climate change to social injustices and political instability. She shares a personal account of feeling inundated by distressing news, such as "photos of dead bodies and starving Palestinian kids on Instagram" and "attacks on marginalized communities." This sets the stage for a broader discussion on collective emotional distress.

Notable Quote:

• Yowei Shaw at [00:58]: “It's not therapy - it’s emotional investigative journalism™️.”

Introducing Anya Kamenetz and Collective Emotional Coping

The episode introduces Anya Kamenetz, a former NPR colleague of Yowei, who has transitioned to freelancing to better address and express her emotional responses to the world's state. Anya's newsletter, The Golden Hour, serves as a focal point for discussing practical strategies to manage overwhelming emotions.

Key Discussion Points:

• Anya's Journey: From covering education and parenting at NPR to freelancing for authentic emotional expression.
• The Golden Hour: Anya’s approach to blending emotional insight with actionable coping strategies.

Understanding the Psychophysics of Emotions

A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring the concept of the "psychophysics of emotions," a term used by psychologist Paul Slovik. This framework explains why our capacity for empathy diminishes when faced with large-scale suffering.

Research Highlight: Paul Slovik's "Arithmetic of Compassion"

• Study Findings: When individuals are shown a single starving child, donations remain high. However, introducing a statistic that millions share the same plight ("7 million children like Rokia are starving") causes donations to drop by half ([10:41]).
• Psychophysical Limitation: Humans are wired to respond effectively to individual suffering but struggle to extend the same level of empathy to large numbers due to emotional saturation and cognitive overload.

Notable Quote:

• Kyle at [12:25]: “We care a lot about individuals, but we can't care twice as much about two people as we do about one person.”

Strategies to Reclaim Compassion

Yowei and Kyle discuss actionable strategies to overcome emotional numbing and sustain compassionate engagement:

1. Naming Emotions: Categorizing and labeling emotions to better manage and understand them ([20:05]).

   Example:

   • Describing fear with specific details helps individuals act despite not feeling less afraid.

2. Self-Compassion: Emphasizing the importance of being kind to oneself to prevent burnout ([17:15]).

3. Engaging in Play and Joy: Incorporating joy and playful activities as essential for mental resilience ([30:42]).

   Notable Quote:

   • Kyle at [31:06]: “Play is something that literally brings more oxygen to our brains, which is really helpful when we're stressing out.”

4. Community and Collective Action: Building connections with others to alleviate feelings of isolation and foster a sense of belonging ([37:14]).

   Example:

   • Hosting intentional gatherings that blend social fun with purposeful discussions, as illustrated by Kyle’s description of his husband’s 50th birthday party ([34:20]).

Balancing Normalcy and Crisis Awareness

The episode examines the human tendency to normalize ongoing crises, contrasting it with the need to remain vigilant and compassionate.

Insights:

• Energy Fields and Polarity: Drawing from therapeutic concepts, Yowei reflects on how interpersonal dynamics can influence collective emotional responses ([23:46]).

• Living Amid Crisis: Kyle shares observations from his time in Ukraine and Tel Aviv, highlighting how communities strive to maintain normalcy even in war zones ([27:02]).

Notable Quote:

• Anya Kamenetz at [25:53]: “It's such a very human and in a way, very beautiful desire to normalize, to habituate, to find our footing in any situation and to keep on living.”

Preventing Burnout

Addressing burnout, Yowei and Kyle emphasize the cyclical nature of emotional exhaustion and replenishment.

Key Points:

• Acknowledging Burnout: Recognizing the signs and understanding that it’s a common response to prolonged stress ([35:47]).

• Sustainable Practices: Advocating for balanced periods of activity and rest, much like sailors taking turns on watch to stay vigilant ([36:49]).

• Community Support: Leveraging the strength of a supportive network to mitigate feelings of isolation and overwhelm ([37:29]).

Notable Quote:

• Kyle at [37:06]: “Burnout comes from thinking that you're all alone and that you're the only person who cares.”

Conclusion and Call to Action

Yowei wraps up the episode by reiterating the importance of collective emotional resilience and the role of community support in navigating tumultuous times. She encourages listeners to engage with Anya Kamenetz’s The Golden Hour for more in-depth strategies and reinforces Proxy’s commitment to providing a platform for emotional understanding and support.

Final Thoughts:

• Empowerment Through Action: Emphasizing that taking small, meaningful actions can restore a sense of agency and connection.
• Support the Podcast: Yowei invites listeners to support Proxy via Patreon to continue fostering a community dedicated to emotional well-being.

Notable Quote:

• Yowei Shaw at [38:08]: “Proxy is an independent podcast and we rely on listener support. Thank you to everyone who signed up and who's listening and supporting emotional investigative journalism.”

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Key Takeaways

• Collective Emotional Burden: Understanding the limitations of human empathy when faced with large-scale suffering.
• Practical Coping Mechanisms: Implementing strategies like emotional labeling, self-compassion, and purposeful joy to manage distress.
• Community and Connection: Leveraging social support to maintain resilience and prevent burnout.
• Balance Between Normalcy and Awareness: Recognizing the human urge to normalize crises while striving to remain compassionate and active.

Recommended Resources

• Anya Kamenetz’s "The Golden Hour": A newsletter offering strategies to manage collective emotions.
• Paul Slovik’s "Arithmetic of Compassion": Insights into the psychology behind charitable behavior.
• Miriam Greenspan’s "Healing through the Dark Emotions": Exploring the role of difficult emotions in personal and collective healing.
• Joanna Macy’s Stories of Transformation: Understanding the narratives that shape our response to global challenges.

Further Engagement

Listeners interested in deeper insights and exclusive content are encouraged to join Proxy’s Patreon for ad-free episodes and bonus interviews, including an in-depth conversation with Anya Kamenetz about sustaining compassion in turbulent times.

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Follow Proxy:

• Website: proxypodcast.com
• Newsletter: Sign up here
• Instagram: @proxypodcast and @yoweishaw
• Contact: [e-mail]

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This summary encapsulates the essence of the "How to Cope with Now" episode, offering a comprehensive overview of the discussions on collective emotions, coping strategies, and the importance of community support in navigating contemporary crises.

Transcript

[Craig Finn]

Hey, it's Craig Finn. I'm a songwriter and the lead singer of the band the Hold Steady, as well as the host of a podcast called that's How I Remember It. I recently put out a new solo album called A Legacy of Rentals. It's a record about memory. How we remember friends that are gone, places that have changed, major events that are part of our past. Like all stories, these songs are subject to the imperfection and limitations of memory, the distortions that happen to our own histories when stretched by time and distance. So my new podcast, that's How I Remember it, takes this idea one step further, examining the connection between memory and creativity. In each episode, I sit down with one creator like comedian Fred Armisen, Emily Haynes from the band Metric or Billions showrunner Brian Koppelman about the role that memory plays in their art. These conversations reveal the different ways each creator synthesizes their remembered life experiences to tell stories about themselves and the world we live in. So subscribe to that's How I Remember it on your favorite podcast platform today.

[Kyle]

This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out odoo@o-o o.com. that's O D O O dot com.

[Yowei Shah]

This episode is brought to you in part by Mood. Hello, Proxy engineer and bedraggled podcast spouse Kyle.

[Kyle]

Hello.

[Yowei Shah]

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[Craig Finn]

Yeah, that sounds sick.

[Yowei Shah]

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[Kyle]

Oh, it was great.

[Craig Finn]

I fixed some stuff around the house, I cleaned some things, I went out and gardened. Yeah, it was just like a nice stress relieving activity.

[Yowei Shah]

It's like chore weed. It is. It makes doing your chores a little bit more fun and you have energy to keep going. Yeah. Best of all, not only is every Mood product backed by a 100 day satisfaction guarantee, but as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code Proxy. So if you wanna support Proxy and get a sweet discount, head to mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for, and let Mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use promo code Proxy when you check out to save you 20% on your first order.

[Craig Finn]

Yo, dude, it's Mood.

[Yowei Shah]

They should hire you. Hey, everybody. Welcome to Proxy. I'm Yowei Shah. Today we are on the Emotions beat. Okay, so the team is busting ass to bring you more. More Proxy conversations this September. And so this month we are putting out a couple episodes featuring reporters who've been addressing issues that are very much on my mind. Conversations that have helped me navigate this moment of crises upon crises. Speaking for myself, and I'm sure this is a unique experience. I'm not doing great. I'm having a lot of trouble keeping up with all the bad and continuing to respond in productive ways. Waking up again and again to photos of dead bodies and starving Palestinian kids on Instagram, opening the news to yet another attack on trans people, immigrants, the poor, the sick, the EPA being gutted, job numbers looking bad. Oh, and what do you know? Trump has now fired the official in charge of those numbers. And it feels like my heart can't take what's happening. It wants to dissociate with hours of Real Housewives. But then I feel bad about watching Real Housewives, like something is wrong with me. But then last month, I came across someone who's made me feel very much not alone. Anya Kamenetz is a reporter who's doing really interesting work about exactly this problem. And like me, Anya has been having trouble coping with her feelings about the state of the world. For her, it started in 2018. First there were the terrible Australian bushfires. And then the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with that terrifying report.

[Kyle]

Temperature rise could reach. They busted through a lot of their, like, scientific reticence and they were like, we are really, we have 12 years left to stay within a safe planetary boundary of 1.5 degrees. Paris Climate Agreement. And then the third thing that happened was my then seven year old said to me, you're lucky that you got to grow up and become an adult before the world exploded. That's fucking massive, man. I've never seen that before.

[Yowei Shah]

This is about the point when Anya started to spiral. Is there A moment that kind of illustrates how you were coping at the time.

[Kyle]

There was a month where I went to Doha for work, for a conference. I moved houses. My second child turned one and I ran a marathon. I think my internal logic was just if I did all the things I was supposed to do, if I hit all my marks for living a good life in the 21st century, then I wouldn't have to worry about the bigger picture. Because if you're so busy, there's a distancing effect that happens, and I think we all spend some time buried in that. But that's not sustainable.

[Yowei Shah]

Anya used to be my colleague at npr. She covered education and parenting for many years. And in 2022, Anya decided that she needed a drastically different approach. She quit NPR and went freelance to be able to call things like she sees them. And she now has a newsletter called the Golden Hour where she's providing exactly the emotional investigative journalism I've been craving that I think a lot of people are craving. Her beat is basically how to cope with now.

[Kyle]

I'm defining collective emotions as the feelings that we are feeling in relationship to what's happening in the world, not necessarily in our personal lives.

[Yowei Shah]

Reading Anya's newsletter, I found so many ideas and practical tips that feel surprising and genuinely helpful in this moment. The thing that's really unique about Anya's work is that she dives deep into scientific research on why we feel the things we do and on the limits of those feelings, how they can get in the way of us doing the things we know we should. So I had a conversation with Anya about her work. I think of it as a starter pack for how to cope right now. And I have to say I've already noticed this conversation's impact on me. Small but real positive changes in my day to day life. All right, here's my conversation with Anya Kemenent. Well, hello, Anya.

[Kyle]

Hi yoe.

[Yowei Shah]

I want to tell you about an experience I had just this past weekend that I feel like is probably pretty common for people right now. Yeah, I was in a lift to go see a Lucy Dacus Hopalong jsom show and I opened up Instagram and saw another absolutely horrifying photo of a starving Palestinian kid in Gaza. And I started to feel this tightness in my heart and throbbing and then I immediately closed Instagram and tried to put it out of my mind because I was about to go hang out with my friends and then I started to feel bad for doing that. And if I'm being honest, that's not an Isolated incident.

[Kyle]

No.

[Yowei Shah]

It has been getting harder and harder to even just read these stories, let alone, you know, respond with concrete action.

[Kyle]

Yes. So what you're describing, there's a lot of different terms for it. One term is like context collapse. So we're in this 247 information environment, and this piece of information is reaching you out of context at a time at a place where you're in transit someplace else. There might have been a previous era where media was much more confined, and it'd be like you're reading the newspaper when you're reading the newspaper. And so that sort of collapsed. And then another concept I think is really useful is Miriam Greenspan has a book called Healing through the Dark Emotions. And she talks about how we have this burden of toxified dark emotion that is arising from the conditions of the world, and it is held back by a massive wall of denial that just enables us to function. And that is 100% like a survival response, because we have to keep functioning. Like, if we were to take in this information and let it move us, I mean, the danger for the people in power is that we would all rise up as a body and absolutely stop it. Right. That there wouldn't just be, like 200 people outside the UN, but there would be a hundred thousand people outside the UN and they'd be there every day. And then there's like the internal. Like, well, I'm going to fall apart. Right. And so there's a wall of denial.

[Yowei Shah]

And you actually talked to this psychologist who has been investigating this wall of denial and what's going on with it. And you write about this set of experiments he did called the Arithmetic of Compassion, which is a devastating title for a study.

[Kyle]

Yeah. I talked to this amazing guy, Paul Slovik. He showed people pictures of a starving child, and 30 to 40% of people decided to give money to this child. And then in the second condition, he showed the same child, and then behind her name and her photograph is a number, and it says, 7 million children like Rokia are starving. And. And in that condition, the donations dropped by half.

[Yowei Shah]

That is just so depressing to hear about.

[Kyle]

It is extremely depressing. And it's not because we're bad people.

[Yowei Shah]

It's not?

[Kyle]

No. It is not because we're bad. We're not bad. It's because the way he says is our emotions are enumerate. Right. Just like illiterate. They're enumerate. They can't tell numbers.

[Yowei Shah]

Hmm.

[Kyle]

And we are wired to care about people in front of us and about individuals. We care a lot and we'll do a lot. If somebody you know is getting hit by a car in front of you, like, you will probably go and help them. But we can't care twice as much about two people as we do about one person, because we care about one person so much that we don't have that capacity. And this is what he calls. I love this term. He calls it psychophysics, the psychophysics of emotions. This is like a technical term. Right. So in our perception, your vision is good at dimness. It's good at seeing small shapes with small amounts of light. That means if it's good on the low end, it's bad on the high end.

[Yowei Shah]

Right, right, right, right. And same thing goes for hearing, too.

[Kyle]

Same goes for hearing. We are good at whispers and like the difference between I don't know what it is. Right. Like a jet plane and two jet planes. Like, it's just loud.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

So we max out on our compassion. And then what kicks in? Then what kicks in is the bad feeling from thinking about all the people that you're not helping. Like, yes, you can still save Rokia's life, but now you're thinking, but I can't save them all. And that's where you start to feel. He calls it pseudo inefficacy. We think that we're ineffective because the measure of what we can do doesn't stack up to the measure of what we are not able to do.

[Yowei Shah]

And then we decide to help less.

[Kyle]

Then the warm glow that we imagine from helping one person is massively outweighed by the guilt of not being able to help the other people. And so we just decide to close the book on the whole thing and walk away. And that's the distancing, that's the self preservation part. Right. Because every life is precious.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And so how are you going to spend your brief time on this earth? Are you going to spend it happy that you helped Rokia or sad that you didn't help the thousand other children or the million other children, or are you going to try to close up your phone and go enjoy your concert? Because you deserve to be happy too.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah. I mean, if you were to really try to think about 7 million children starving to death.

[Kyle]

Right.

[Yowei Shah]

From what you're saying, this research shows that we wouldn't be able to even. But even if you were, it would be unbearable.

[Kyle]

Yeah, yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

Though you did find there is something we can do to avoid the psychic numbing, which is to learn more about individual details and stories and then to stop reading after a certain point to almost like trick our system into not crashing out.

[Kyle]

Yeah. I mean, I want to be careful about saying that because there is a lot of selective empathy in the world. And so that can be very dangerous if people are only choosing people that look like them or seem like them to relate to. So, you know, applying a little data and thinking about, like, who is the victim in this conflict and who are the people that I want to attune myself to. And then within that, is there a story, as you know, I wrote about Anas Baba, who was our former colleague and is in Gaza. And so that's very relatable to me. And he wrote a piece about going to one of these aid sites and just the complete apocalypse scenario there. But the image that stuck with me out of all of it was people are starving and they walk down the street holding onto each other to stay upright, I think because it's an image of support, mutual support, as strange as that sounds. And it's so visceral.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

So, yeah, that's what did it for me.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah. I think we typically see compassion as something we need to feel in order to help.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[Yowei Shah]

But your reporting shows that our feelings can actually get in the way of helping.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

And you say this thing about how even if we are psychically numbing out, even if our systems are crashing out, it's important to just act, no matter how you feel. You say it's a matter of justice, not sentiment. What do you mean by that?

[Kyle]

I mean, that's just something I believe morally it's the right thing to do for all of us to help in the ways that we can. And there's also this concept of activation energy. So if someone's depressed, rather than wait for them to feel like taking a walk, sometimes you're kind of like, no, we're going to take a walk. We're going to get some sunshine. And so if you act and if you help, you will be contributing to your view of yourself as someone who's helping. And that will enable you to feel the feelings that go along with that. And let's remember that the reason that we're altruistic is because we feel good. It makes us feel good to do that. It doesn't make us bad. But that's how it is. It's rewarding to be altruistic. And so you'll get that reward by helping. Other people will see you also, you'll be helping.

[Yowei Shah]

Okay, so we've talked about some ways to try to have a different response than turning away.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

What are some other things we can do to recover our compassion?

[Kyle]

I mean, the first move is really about your self compassion.

[Yowei Shah]

That's not where I was expecting you to go.

[Kyle]

I really believe that we're all connected. And if you really believe that we're all connected, you know that you have to be coming from a place not of shame and not of guilt, but of expansion and of acting out of that connectedness. That's where the empathy, the real compassion and empathy can come from. And since I started investigating these, like, difficult emotions that arise in relationship to our collective experiences politically, you know, climate, the number one move over and over again has been you're not the only person who feels this way. And it doesn't make you a bad person. You're not uniquely bad because you feel this way. Your feelings are a sign of your connectedness. And so letting yourself feel those feelings and not beating yourself up for them, even if it's hard, is the first move foreign. Hey, it's Anna Sale, host of Death, Sex and Money, the show from Slate, about the things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.

[Yowei Shah]

Many of us have something going on behind closed doors.

[Kyle]

Like a listener, we called Elizabeth, who told us she. She's a hoarder. I see mess beyond probably what most people think of when they think of meth. We'll work through it all together on Death, Sex and Money. Listen, wherever you get podcasts.

[Yowei Shah]

I want to talk about another emotion that people are probably feeling, which is fear.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[Yowei Shah]

And you write about this moment when the NYC mayoral candidate Brad Lander was grabbed and manhandled by ICE agents when he was trying to accompany an immigrant in court. And that morning you also saw neighbors post a photo online of what looked like ICE agents knocking on doors.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

And you had this quote, fear crawling through my belly like a cold, wet newt.

[Kyle]

It made my blood run cold. I mean, I know this guy Brad. I've been in a room with him like he's a normal person. And to see him grabbed that way and held is terrifying. What are we heading into as a country? It made me feel vulnerable in a way that I hadn't before.

[Yowei Shah]

So you were feeling scared and vulnerable. What technique did you come across in your reporting that can help with that feeling?

[Kyle]

Basically, the insight here is that naming our emotions helps tame them. And the more detail you can get, the better. And this is directly a study of fear. So this is a study of people with this arachnophobia and they are trying to overcome their phobia so they're getting exposed to this spider. It's like a tarantula in the study. And there's three different approaches. The first one is just look over here, right? The second one is downplaying it, like, oh, that's just a little spider. It's no big deal. And the third group of people were asked to narrate how they were feeling as they looked at this horrible spider. Like, I am so obsessed with this spider. I feel like I'm jumping out of my skin. It feels like I'm panicking, low key. I'm getting sweaty. And also I feel like I'm kind of fascinated at the same time because it's so. The way that it moves is so gross. Gross to me. And so there was like an edge of fascination behind my fear. And the funny thing was the third group, which was the emotional granularity, the describing the narration of the motion, they were less stressed objectively. Also, in the next time they saw the spider, they were more likely to be able to approach it. So they were braver, but they didn't feel less afraid because they're amplifying it in a way. They're talking about how they feel. And so it doesn't. If you ask them, do you feel less afraid? They wouldn't necessarily say so, but their actions show that they are less afraid and they're getting braver by doing it.

[Yowei Shah]

And so did you try to label your emotions that day?

[Kyle]

I did, because I could say these things rather than have them crawl around in my brain and manifest in you snap at your. It's your partner. Or you're like, why aren't people. Why does nobody noticing that ice is taking over and you turn it into some bigger political thing or you turn it off and you watch Real Housewives like the distraction. And that's very, very common. And if you get into a conversation with someone, it's also really likely that they're going to use one of these strategies on you. Because with collective emotions, there's a lot of polarity between people. It's very likely that if you speak up about your feelings, you will become the designated feeler and other people will downplay while you're up playing.

[Yowei Shah]

Has there been research around this?

[Kyle]

I'm planning on looking into it. It has been seen in climate anxiety, and it's a reason that we have young people expressing more climate anxiety because they are constantly met with denial and downplaying and distraction by adults. So it's sort of like you're speaking up about this. You Must be anxious. But actually we all hold the same feelings. It's just that some people are speaking up and some people aren't.

[Yowei Shah]

The polarity thing is very interesting. It makes me think of what this former therapist of mine would say, and we're gonna get woo woo right now. So she would talk about energy fields and how in any relationship someone might be holding more of an energy, say jealous energy, and that if the other person were to just take on some of that energy, whatever it is, then maybe things would be more balanced. Like the person who was holding all the jealous energy in the beginning could let some of it go.

[Kyle]

I don't think it's woo woo at all. I mean, I've written about this coming from couples therapists. They talk about this a lot. So. Esther Perel. That's where I first heard the concept of polarity. And it's exactly what you're saying. It's like one person is in it to win it, and for sure the one who's most attached and that lets the other one be like, well, I don't know. I don't know. But if the first person is like, I'm done. That's when the second person has to decide if they really are into it or not. That's the polarity. And you see that in so many ways. I saw it myself after Katrina when, you know, my parents were in New Orleans at the time. And a lot of people that they knew there would be, if they were a couple, one person would be like, we're definitely leaving and never coming back. And the other person would be like, we're staying at all costs.

[Yowei Shah]

Okay. Another feeling. There's so many feelings that I'm confused by. I have a whole list. Another feeling I've been confused by is how normal my life feels right now while all these crises are happening, which I know is an incredibly privileged position to be in.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[Yowei Shah]

But yeah, I'm going to the beach tomorrow with my friends.

[Kyle]

You should.

[Yowei Shah]

While a genocide is still happening in Gaza, I'm sure I'm going to see more dead bodies on Instagram. And, you know, I'll see another immigrant mom being torn from her baby and disappeared by ICE agents and more and more and more. And yeah, you write about the dangerous beauty of normal life right now. And you quote the journalist M. Gessen comparing what's happening now with what unfolds in war zones, that at first people are shell shocked by what's happening, and then within days they're continuing life as normally as possible. Here's the Quote from M. Gessen. Yeah, I think it's a very human and in a way, very beautiful desire to normalize, to habituate, to find our footing in any situation and to keep on living. It's sort of a great life affirming ability that we have, except it has a way of normalizing things that we really shouldn't live with.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

And I had never thought about this disconnect in that way, like as a beautiful life affirming impulse. I'd only thought of it as a bad thing.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

How have you been wrestling with this in your own life and what have you found from your reporting?

[Kyle]

It used to make me crazy because I felt like Cassandra. Like I had weird special goggles on and I was like seeing doom everywhere and everybody else was not paying attention and just continuing their stupid little lives. And I realized that that was a very limited and arrogant way of seeing it. And in fact, it's a dilemma that we're all caught in that Gessen talks about. And the truth is multiple. There are multiple things happening. So one thing that really did change my perspective on this was I went to a war zone for npr. I spent a month in Ukraine, and everybody was conducting life as normally as possible. That was absolutely the goal.

[Yowei Shah]

What do you mean? Like, what did you see?

[Kyle]

Well, in Lviv, in the west, which was a relatively safe part of the country, and this is the very beginning of the war, in May 2022, Zelenskyy had reserved money to pay street performers so that the square would be filled with music. And there were people dancing. There was a choir singing in the church. There was. There were soldiers on leave dancing with their sweethearts. There were people, like, shooting pictures of Putin. There was a curfew, but the bars would be full until 9pm and this was people being defiant, being joyful, and also just trying to conduct their normal lives. You know, influencers taking pictures and like Instagram cafes. And it's necessary. Right. Like, soldiers have always gone home from the front and had their, like, time on leave and then gone back. And they've had to live in that too, in that double world. Not what we're saying. Like, being a war is an ideal situation, but we kind of have to. And we also have to engage. And I was in Tel Aviv in March and it happened to be during the ceasefire, but you knew what was going on. We came very close to the border with Gaza and the energy people were exerting to ignore what was happening was really palpable.

[Yowei Shah]

So how do you avoid doing that?

[Kyle]

So I Want to call in Joanna Macy, who I haven't been able to mention yet, but she's been so important to my thinking about this, and we just lost her. She says very simply that there are three stories about what's happening in our world. There's business as usual, which I think we understand what that is. There's the unraveling, which pretty clear what that is. And there's the great turning, which are the seeds of the transformation and the positive things that we all want to see. A society that isn't toxic and that allows life to be sustained. And it was such like a shoulder drop moment for me to be like, no, they're all happening. Of course there's multiple stories. That's just how it is. That's how it is to be alive right now. There's multiple stories and you can turn your attention, and you should, you should turn your attention to each of them and give them each their due. But we get so rigid when we're stuck in one of the stories.

[Yowei Shah]

Okay. Another challenge with all of this coping with the polycrisis is how to stay engaged.

[Craig Finn]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

Oh, my God. I think first of all, it can be helpful sometimes, right, to blow off steam. How do you keep contested the research? But the research on this nature deficit or ecopsychology is about when you're walking in nature or even in a park, there is a sort of soft attentional focus that comes over you, which is a little bit more like how we evolved, where it's like sounds are coming from both close and far away and there's ambient things and your attention kind of drifts from one visual to another. You might be looking at a little tiny detail, but then you might be looking at a very far horizon. And this is good for our visual systems, it's good for our cortical systems, it's good for our stress, and it actually replenishes attention. That's a very simple thing you can.

[Yowei Shah]

Do, which is to take a walk in the park. Yeah, take a break.

[Kyle]

Take a walk in the park.

[Yowei Shah]

You also talk about the importance of joy and even partying when the world is on fire.

[Kyle]

Yes.

[Yowei Shah]

You write that it can feel like the mature, serious, moral thing to do to pass up the chance to celebrate. And it can feel callous and perverse to flaunt your happiness and good fortune in times like these. But the pursuit of pleasure and play and joy is necessary. It is not optional. Is there research that backs up our need to party?

[Kyle]

So some of the research, this is coming from my background Reporting on kids. And it's about play. Play is something that literally brings more oxygen to our brains, which is really helpful when we're stressing out because it helps move toxic byproducts of stress out of our brains, like physical motion, oxygen. But also play gets us out of the rigid thinking. So a lot of times, you know what it takes to kind of deal with serious stresses in our lives. Maybe what we're really doing is like ruminating in an anxious spiral in a way that is repetitive. Things feel repetitive and our responses are repetitive. And a lot of times the way to break out of that is to use a little bit of imagination. So aligned with sort of the joy is the creativity and the question of, like, what can I bring to the world that's unexpected and that adds a little bit of delight to it and that sort of enables us to keep going. You know, you see it in movements and in protests a lot. People using slogans and images and costumes and just different ways to show up and make it feel like a moment, like an event.

[Yowei Shah]

You seem very serious about partying.

[Kyle]

Yes, I am.

[Yowei Shah]

From what I can tell, like, you grew up going to Mardi Gras. You love to dress up, you love to dance.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

Any tips for people who are feeling like it's hard to party right now?

[Kyle]

Oh, my God. I love Priya Parker, the art of gathering. She talks about, like, setting a really good intention for a gathering, making sure that there's buy in and like, there's nothing you can't do with a theme. Like, if you decide that you're gonna like, get your friends together to, like, decorate wooden duck decoys while wearing, like, Martha Stewart outfits, people will go for it. Because people want a chance to kind of give up a little bit of control and to be part of something collective. I'll give an example. My husband turned 50 at the end of last month, and I felt very good about the influence that I've had over him over the last few years because he decided to use his birthday to encourage people to get a little more engaged in politics or in what's happening in the world in whatever way that that felt good. So we threw a party. It was a very cheese plates and cocktail and a dj. And then we invited three people that we know that have amazing nonprofits to just talk for a few minutes about what they were doing and how they got into it. And then we got people talking amongst themselves for a little bit about, like, what's going on in the world. What could you be doing that you're not doing. Could you do a little bit more of very, like, lightweight little activation? And then people called back in and somebody said, like, oh, I'm going to get involved in my, like, neighborhood library. Somebody else said, I'm. I'm organizing with other scientists to write letters to the editor in our hometown paper. So it's like little sparks. And it was really fun because it wasn't a whole. A whole ass organizing meeting. It gave enough weight to what the moment was that people felt like a sense of occasion.

[Yowei Shah]

I mean, one way of reading what you just said is, oh, that doesn't sound particularly fun. It sounds like a mandatory icebreaker at a party. But what you're saying is mentioning and addressing the moment in a way that felt empowering was useful. How did it affect the party?

[Kyle]

It made the party even better because people were talking to each other, to strangers, about something that was important to them. They were not feeling the need or the tension to like, ignore or downplay or beyond the normal, like, how are things? Oh, you know, except for everything, it's great. And just make little chit chat. It was like, what is keeping you up at night? What's making you mad? But that was part one. The part two of the activation was my husband decided that he was tired of going bald and he was going to shave his head. And he did it at the party.

[Yowei Shah]

Oh, really? Like, in front of everyone.

[Kyle]

He hid this room a bit. He brought a pair of clippers, and then we lined up and everybody took a turn. And you had to say something you loved about him and then do a little bit of his head.

[Yowei Shah]

That's such a fun ritual.

[Kyle]

Then it was just like dancing.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah, right. Okay, there you go. There you go. That was like the release.

[Kyle]

That's the part two. Exactly.

[Yowei Shah]

Okay, my final question for now is how do you not burn out? Have you burned out yourself? What do you suggest?

[Kyle]

I definitely burned out. I burned out during the pandemic while covering school closures, writing a book, and parenting two kids who were not at school. So I burned out without realizing that I'd burnt out. And when I left, it was a very, very long process to kind of come back to myself. And I think I cheated on the question by making it my job to think about it.

[Yowei Shah]

Which is something that we tend to do as journalists.

[Kyle]

Yes, absolutely. Let me just do some research on that. So, yeah, I think that, I mean, burnout is very. Is a very real issue and it threatens us all. And I think that the answer to it is going to be cyclical. Right. We're going to alternate between periods of being very tired and exhausted and periods of feeling more resourced and more filled in.

[Yowei Shah]

You use this beautiful analogy, this image of sailors mid voyage, trading off duty watch, everyone having to take a turn and also having to take a break and actually sleeping on their break. Otherwise you wouldn't be able to be vigilant and actually do your job when you're on watch.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

And then you also have to do chores.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

You're also probably gonna entertain yourself and party sometimes.

[Kyle]

Yeah.

[Yowei Shah]

But you never forget you're at sea.

[Kyle]

So burnout comes from thinking that you're all alone and that you're the only person who cares. And the second we start talking about this stuff, we'll realize that that's not true.

[Yowei Shah]

Yeah.

[Kyle]

And the relief is so huge. I can't tell you how what a relief it is to have friends who are out there stopping ice raids and writing pro trans protection legislation and delivering babies in a public hospital in Baltimore. The people that I know and love that are all doing what they can so that I can do what I can. And so when you start to see yourself as part of that whole, you can exhale.

[Yowei Shah]

That was Anya Kamenetz. She writes the newsletter the Golden Hour. And if you want to hear more concrete tips from Anya about how to hold space for each other's collective emotions, even when it's uncomfortable, and the surprising things she learned about anger from going to a protest recently, you can listen to our Patreon exclusive bonus episode with Anya. You know the drill. Proxy is an independent podcast and we rely on listener support. Thank you to everyone who signed up and who's listening and supporting emotional investigative journalism and trying to get to a world that's a little more emotionally understanding and less confusing. For just $5 a month, you'll get ad free episodes and exclusive bonus interviews. Sign up at patreon.com ProxyPodcast that's patreon.com ProxyPodcast and if you can't swing financially supporting the show, which I totally get, please consider sharing this episode with a friend who will get something from it. Word of mouth is how creative works, sustain itself and grow. Thank you so much. We'll be back with a new episode on Tuesday, August 26, and more proxy conversations in September. This episode was edited by Tim Howard, mixed by Kyle Pulley, and produced. Produced by me. Proxy also has help from Charlie Klein, Kim Nadervane Petersa, and Anna Karan Santana. Music in this episode by Tim Howard and our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. Proxy is a proud member of Radiotopia from prx, a network of independent, creator owned, listener supported podcasts. Audrey Martovich is the Executive Producer of Radiotopia. Yuri Lozzardo is the Director of Operations, discover audio with Visionadiotopia FM. As always, you can follow us on Instagram, ProxyPodcast and I'm Oashaw. Also, we have a free newsletter. We'll have those links in our show notes. And remember, if you have a niche emotional conundrum you'd like investigated by proxy, get in [e-mail] we're taking cases.

[Kyle]

Radiotopia from PRX.