How To Start (Even When You Don't Know Where You're Going)

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How To Start (Even When You Don't Know Where You're Going)"

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel
Date: April 27, 2026
Guests: Jodi Kantor (NYT journalist, author of How to Start), Priya Parker (author of The Art of Gathering)
Main Theme:
How do we “start” our work and life—especially amid uncertainty and disillusionment? Esther Perel, Jodi Kantor, and Priya Parker discuss personal beginnings, risk, craft versus passion, navigating career anxiety, mentorship, and how to move from waiting to acting, in an environment where old paths and certainties no longer apply.

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Episode Overview

The episode revolves around the launch of Jodi Kantor’s new book, How to Start, and a live conversation between Perel, Kantor, and Parker. They explore the timeless and collective challenge of starting one’s work or career—whether you’re new to the workforce, in midlife transitions, or helping the next generation. The dialogue is candid and intergenerational, blending audience questions, personal stories, and actionable insights.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Universal Anxiety of "Starting"

• Intergenerational Concern:
  The fear and uncertainty around starting out isn’t limited to the young. As Esther Perel notes, everyone grapples with these questions at some point: “It is actually a collective question at every age level.” (00:50)
• Workplace Uncertainties Today:
  Jodi Kantor describes rising disillusionment, job search in the age of digital interfaces and AI, and how entry-level work has lost its personal, connective elements.

  “I’m talking to students who are telling me, ‘Jodi, I applied for 150 jobs and not only did I not get a bite. But I did not meet anybody in the process.’” (13:42)

2. The Power and Pitfalls of Career Advice

• Spectacularly Wrong Advice:
  Esther and Priya survey the audience on bad career advice, often from parents, and find nearly universal laughter and recognition.

  (05:14–06:08) Audience participation: who got bad advice, who’s in a job they didn’t know existed, who’s doing what they never planned?

• Changing Definitions of Work:
  Very few people in the room are doing exactly what they envisioned as children, reinforcing that “where people arrive is often very, very far and different from where they started.” (55:37)

3. Personal Stories of Beginning—and Pivoting

Each of the three women shares how their own path was winding, messy, and improvisational.

Esther Perel’s Story:

• Born above her parents’ clothing store, first job selling clothes – learning people skills.
• Theater, puppetry, and movement work in Jerusalem and Boston, where she used puppetry as a unique skill for entry.
• Used every language and workaround to get jobs, hustling with creative (sometimes not strictly truthful) solutions as an immigrant.
• “You just managed … so that’s really that—it was taking everything I could find. And then, okay, I’ll give you one more because… I knew I speak French and Spanish. And with that I could go work in the Bronx.” (22:52)

Priya Parker’s Story:

• Biracial, born in Zimbabwe, felt like an outsider at UVA, where, at orientation, racial divisions forced her to choose ‘a side’ or break the paradigm.
• Pushed by older students to “do something about it” (24:56), she launched a dialogue initiative that became crucial after 9/11.
• Learned and practiced dialogue facilitation, eventually becoming an expert.
• “I put my foot in my mouth over and over and over again … And there was no social media, so fortunately, you could just kind of make mistakes.” (25:20)

Jodi Kantor’s Story:

• Fired from her first college columnist job, swore off journalism, went to law school, only to realize journalism was her calling.
• “One night at 3 o’clock in the morning, I had an epiphany that was half horrifying, half thrilling, which is that I really, really, really, really, really did want to be a journalist—and I had no evidence that I could succeed.” (28:39)
• Got her first real journalism job through friends and mentorship, then “knew I was home.” (29:19)

4. Craft over Passion: Building Security and Agency

• Focus on Craft:
  Kantor distinguishes craft (a skill you acquire over time) from the ephemeral idea of ‘passion.’ She challenges the myth that career entry must be “a perfect Olympic dive.”

  “When you have a craft, it’s protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable.” (31:30)
  “The online world is telling 20-year-olds they should become crypto billionaires. I’m arguing the opposite. … your craft can never be taken away from you.” (32:14)

• Perel on Craft:
  Values finding great teachers and building through practice and supervision; authenticity comes from connection to craft, not applause.

  “The door closes, you sit with the patient and you do the work and you make mistakes. … It is humble.” (33:46)

• Parker’s Facilitation:
  Her edge as a facilitator comes from repetition, dialogic listening, and being willing to learn through awkward first steps.

  “So much of what I can sometimes think about is, oh, everyone needs to be a consultant. It’s like, what? Find a craft.” (39:08)

5. Assessing Need: The Second Ingredient

• Navigating ‘Need’ vs. Trends:
  Kantor cautions against chasing the “golden ticket” major or skill of the moment.

  “Conventional wisdom… that any one [thing] is going to be a golden ticket, I think is completely wrong.” (41:24)

• Personal Assessment:
  She recommends identifying needs in the world—sometimes linked to personal or societal tragedy—as a source of drive.

  “Need is you looking around the world and saying, what is going to be needed? … In my working years, 40 or 50 years, what kinds of goods, what kinds of services, what kinds of new things that haven’t even been invented yet.” (39:56)

6. From Passenger to Pilot: Taking Control

• Moving from Waiting to Acting:
  Perel draws a parallel to relationships—don’t sit around hoping to be discovered; become the author of your trajectory.

  “How do we switch from being a passenger to a pilot, from waiting to becoming the author of our own life?” (42:12)

• Forming Collectives:
  Kantor describes a group of then-unknown female writers (the “Invisible Institute”) who met to share industry knowledge and ultimately became bestselling authors.

  “These women went from feeling like outsiders to banding together in a collective to sort of climb together.” (44:18)

7. Security vs. Freedom and the Risk/Reframing Conversation

• The Security – Freedom Tension:
  Perel: “I can tolerate the lack of security better than I can tolerate the lack of freedom. That’s why I’m self-employed.” (50:02)
• Redefining Risk:
  Risk shouldn’t be viewed solely as danger or failure, but embraced for its exploration, growth, serendipity, and the fulfillment it eventually brings.

  “I think the word risk at this point is not linked enough to the word exploration, serendipity, spontaneity, improvisation, surprise, curiosity… And I think if you redefine it as a major aspect of life—it has to do with growth, that it has to do with friction.” (50:42)

• Work as Identity/Belonging:
  “Work becomes this hub for belonging, identity, fulfillment, continuity. It’s like work has become a central place for those kinds of needs beyond just the job.” (52:06)

8. Final Advice and Encouragement

• Don’t Start Alone:
  Jodi Kantor: “If there’s one thing I want you to take from this evening is a feeling of encouragement and warmth … there are people you can ask questions of. Because your experience of entry into the work world has been too cold and too lonely … we have to counteract that.” (53:47)
• Jodi Kantor’s Book Tips (via Priya Parker):

  “Exit the library. Do not let your parents decide your career. Look to your friends instead. Observe the obvious. Drop the assumption that your college experiences will dictate what becomes of you. Consult your demons. Relax about coherence. Find by starting. Listen to your positive emotions. Find alternate doors. Make your pursuit a group exercise. You should not have to do any of this grappling alone.” (54:37)

• Mentorship:
  Perel: “Mentorship actually starts the moment you have one year longer experience than the person who comes after you. … when you pass on the experience, when you share names of people, when you introduce relationships, when you introduce need with craft, resources with aspirations. All these encounters actually highlight … the importance of relationships. Work is rooted in relationships and relationships travel to work.” (56:09)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On AI and Connectionlessness:
  “There’s no connection. There’s no reciprocity. There’s no contingency. … So there’s nothing before and there’s not much after.”
  —Esther Perel (08:45), describing talking to a chatbot in a job interview

• On the Value of Craft:
  “Your craft can never be taken away from you.”
  —Jodi Kantor (32:14)

• On Risk and Freedom:
  “I can tolerate the lack of security better than I can tolerate the lack of freedom.”
  —Esther Perel (50:02)

• On Mentorship:
  “Mentorship actually starts the moment you have one year longer experience than the person who comes after you.”
  —Esther Perel (55:37)

• On Community Solutions:
  “They went from feeling like outsiders to banding together in a collective to sort of climb together.”
  —Jodi Kantor (44:18)

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:50–01:29: Esther Perel on the collective and intergenerational aspect of “how to start”
• 05:14–10:17: Audience stand-up and reflection on career advice, parental influence, and unplanned career paths
• 11:09–13:42: Jodi Kantor on Columbia students’ career anxiety and cynical but rational responses to modern work
• 20:44–29:19: Esther, Priya, and Jodi share origin stories—messy, nonlinear, and improvisational beginnings
• 31:30–39:56: Craft vs. passion, tangible skills & protection, learning by doing, and the power of facilitation/listening
• 39:56–42:12: Assessing real world “needs” instead of chasing fads; building agency and propulsion
• 42:12–44:18: Moving from waiting to acting; building support collectives (“Invisible Institute” example)
• 48:59–50:42: Risk, stability vs. freedom, how work now meets many needs (identity, belonging), and reframing risk as exploration
• 53:47–54:37: Jodi’s closing encouragement to listeners—don’t go it alone, mentorship and warmth matter

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Tone and Takeaway

Throughout the episode, the tone is open, honest, and encouraging. Humor, humility, and candor about mistakes and pivots underscore the reality that no one’s career is seamless. The hosts urge listeners to shed the myth of linear progress, embrace messiness and risk, find community, and focus on craft and sincere needs over fleeting trends or parental scripts.

Final Message:
Where you begin rarely determines where you’ll end—persistence, self-awareness, and supportive relationships are the keys. And above all, “You should not have to do any of this grappling alone.” (54:37)

Transcript

[Esther Perel]

I'm often asked how I started my career. So, of course, when Jodi Kantor, author of how to Start, investigative journalist for the New York Times, asked me to join her and Priya Parker, author of the Art of Gathering, in a conversation about how to start our work, life, our careers, I was instantly intrigued. There's so much to tell about how to start. I actually really like the focus on the starting, rather than even anything that follows afterwards. So we showed up on stage and basically asked questions about the book to Jodi, like, what made you want to write a book for young people finishing college or school and wanting to know how to start. What was special about the audience was how intergenerational it was, because everyone is concerned by the question of work today. Whether you have just paid for the college of your child, whether you are yourself in transition in your mid-40s, or whether you are just starting. It is actually a collective question at every age level. So my friend Priya Parker, who is a consummate group facilitator, set the intention for the evening and facilitated the conversation.

[Priya Parker]

We are gathered here tonight as a temporary community with a shared question. And we are gathering around one of the things that people have done for as old as time, which is to sit together and ask something that is relevant to our young people but is actually relevant to all, which is how, in this moment of uncertainty, in this one could even say mess, does one find one's life's work? And a year ago, our friend Jody was asked by the Columbia students to be their commencement speaker. Now, I don't know if you all remember what was happening at Columbia at the time, but most people would probably say, you know, I need to wash my hair. And Jody, being Jody, accepted. But she also didn't go and pontificate in a corner. She did what she always does, which is she went to the people most affected, and she spoke to Columbia students graduating and said, what are your questions? And I want to read just the opening paragraph, one of the paragraphs from how to Start. I reached out to students to ask how they were navigating their sad story strange senior Spring. They didn't want to talk about Israel and Gaza or President Trump or even the university administration many of them had grown to distrust. Instead, all of them, regardless of demographics or political views, were united in worry over one question. How, in this environment were they supposed to find and start their life's work? And that speech went on to become this beautiful, beautiful book, how to Start. And the question that has most kept her up at Night over the last year is how do young people begin?

[Esther Perel]

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[Sponsor/Announcer]

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[Priya Parker]

So that is why we are here. And we wanted to also find out why you are here. Esther.

[Esther Perel]

Yes. Yes. Hello everyone. So, you know, one of the questions we all had in the back room here is if you have ever received career advice that was spectacularly wrong, please if you have received that kind of advice, stand or indicate in the best way you can. We shall quickly realize how much similarity we have. May I just ask you for a moment, how many of that spectacularly wrong advice was from a parent? Thank you.

[Priya Parker]

My son just raised his hand.

[Esther Perel]

And please would you stand up if the job that you have today is a job that you knew existed when you were 10 years old. Took a moment to remember. Right. Okay. Thank you. And may I ask you, who here is doing work today that they absolutely didn't plan to do when they started their careers since. Hold on a moment. Because I see the. The generation that is standing. So for all of the young people in the room, and you too, and me as well, just take a look. Because between what people thought they were going to do and where they ended up is a bit of a journey of life. Yes. Thank you. And who is actually doing what they thought they would be doing? Are there such people in the rooms? Yes, we can clap. Some people had some linearity in their life, you know. And may I ask you, who remembers the first Time that they walked into a professional room and thought, somebody is about to realize that. I know. Shit. Stand up. Yes, yes, yes, yes. How many of you have had job interviews with chatbots? And may I ask you raise your hand if the chatbot never told you any feedback about your interview? And you never even got a rejection letter either, for that matter. And how many of you. It was your first job interview so that you had no guidance. Anyone? Yes, tell us. Tell us. What's your name?

[Priya Parker]

My name is Leila.

[Esther Perel]

Hi, Leila. Hi.

[Priya Parker]

So I did an interview a few weeks ago, and I had to talk directly to an AI, which was very strange because there's no real conversation. There's not really a connection that you're having. You can't be like, oh, how's your day? Had that little banter in the beginning.

[Jodi Kantor]

So.

[Priya Parker]

So you're just really talking to yourself. And then they are like, okay, great. So there's the next question. There's no connection.

[Esther Perel]

There's no connection. There's no reciprocity. There's no contingency. There's no sense that if you say something, it engages another person to say something else. And when they do, so do you. And a rapport is created. So there's nothing before and there's not much after.

[Priya Parker]

Yes, absolutely.

[Esther Perel]

Good. Yes. Would you please stand up if you feel that your career choices have been too risky. Yes, Yes. I see you rise slowly but surely. And you too. Yes. Would you like to say something? I'm trying to pursue journalism. There was somebody else who stood up here. This one.

[Jodi Kantor]

I've left some big companies that joined

[Esther Perel]

some small startups where there's a lot more risk. Anybody else? Yes.

[Priya Parker]

I started a startup digital agency the day my premature twins were born. From the hospital with my husband.

[Jodi Kantor]

Both of us in no net.

[Priya Parker]

It lasted eight years. There's one more here.

[Esther Perel]

Oh, hi.

[Jodi Kantor]

Yep.

[Esther Perel]

Thanks.

[Jodi Kantor]

I write musicals.

[Esther Perel]

I'm going to ask you one last one. Stand up. If you've ever looked at something that is broken in the world and then you thought someone should fix it, and then you realized that someone should be you. Wow. Wow. At some point when you leave here tonight, I will invite you to speak with each other about exactly that. What did you notice was broken, what did you think needed fixing, and in what way did you engage with the project? Thank you so much.

[Priya Parker]

I want to start, Jodi, by asking you a simple question, which is, why did you write this book?

[Jodi Kantor]

Well, thank you. Thank you, Priya. So, as you said, I get this email a year ago and Says, will you please give the undergraduate commencement address at Columbia, where I went. And it was a huge honor and kind of a bad offer because of what was going on at the school. Like, it was just chaos. And I may not name you, but I see a Columbia friend right there, a very wise Columbia friend who was like, don't do it. Colin's sick. But I felt like, give me those kids for 15 minutes. Because I was just so upset. Not really from any one political point of view, but I was so upset at seeing what had happened there. And then what happened is that I got on a zoom with the leadership of the Columbia College class. Some of the students are here. Will you guys stand up?

[Esther Perel]

Woo.

[Jodi Kantor]

So we get on the zoom and I think you mentioned this. They were like, we don't want to talk about Israel, we don't want to talk about Gaza. We don't want to talk about President Trump. We don't want to talk about the university administration. We chose you because of your career. And here's your assignment. Every member of this class, no matter what their political perspective is, is united in anxiety over this question about, in this crazy time, how do you find and start your life? Work And Priya. Their question hit me. I mean, I love good questions, I love hard questions. What's the point of easy questions right now? And what I understood because I had covered employment for many years and also because Megan and I had been speaking on college campuses ever since we broke the Weinstein story, that this was a generational question. Students are saying housing prices are so high that I'm worried that even if I get a good job, it's not going to be enough to rent or buy something decent. I'm hearing students say enjoyable jobs are only for rich kids. I'm hearing there's a thing of not typing the word job J O, B in your text chains. People are writing it J asterisk B because the real word is too scary. And year over year visiting these campuses, I was seeing this feeling of disillusionment and, and cynicism rising about work, which is a rational response in so many ways, including to, like the AI chatbots. I mean, Esther is completely right. You know, I don't think we know what AI will do to entry level work yet. It's too early to say. But I can say this now. It is making the process of looking for a job so sterile, so digital, so lonely. I'm talking to students who are telling me, jodi, I applied for 150 jobs and not only did I Not get a bite. But I did not meet anybody in the process. So anyway, I gave the speech.

[Esther Perel]

I think people need to take a breath when you say something like this.

[Jodi Kantor]

I know because for people our age, it's like, it's inconceivable. So I'm seeing this and I'm seeing that into this very scary situation. I'm meeting too many students who are eating, either getting bad advice or no advice. So essentially what that does to me is that it makes me unable to stop writing. And I'm like, I give the speech, it goes Great. It's on YouTube if you're curious. And then Ron and my family will tell you. I spent the rest of the summer getting up at six in the morning, being at my laptop, writing more and more, saying, am I writing a book? What am I doing? I'm not an advice columnist, I'm an investigative journalist. Is this weird? And the question I was gripped by was, what does a productive response look like to these circumstances, like in the book and at this event all night, like, okay, we laid the groundwork. It's a very tough environment. But we're not going to do the equivalent of doom scrolling tonight, right? Because it's not helpful. The question is, what are young people supposed to actually do in this situation? And I wanted to give them something that felt real and true. And listen, I want all of my journalism to help people, but this was like taking the subtext of my journalism, which is, I want to live in a better world. And this was like making it text. This was being like, sit down on my couch. We are, we are going to work together. I don't want you to give up. I don't want you to give up before you start because then you're going to put satisfaction further out of reach. And we have to do it because the stakes are too high. You can't give up on work individually, but also we can't give up on work collectively. It is our source of collective progress. Right? Total cynicism about the workplace is tempting, but at the end of the day, we cannot afford it.

[Esther Perel]

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[Jodi Kantor]

So here's what we here's the first Thing we're going to do on our way to sort of working this. To this answer of how do you start? I wanted to ask Esther and Priya and I will contribute myself to tell you a story of how we started.

[Esther Perel]

I started my first job working in my parents clothing store. I lived above the store and I was basically, from the moment I could talk, I was asked to come and help. And that meant talking to people of all walks of life and being shy, not being shy, and selling clothes. And that is very personal when you sell clothes. It's actually a very particular form of intimacy that you develop early on. So that was my first job. Then I was in Israel and I basically studied in Jerusalem at a Hebrew university and I was part of the theater company of the Israel Museum. And I worked in puppetry, puppet theater for four years. And I taught dance and movement and theater and I performed and I created plays and I worked with puppetry. It was fantastic. And that same puppetry is what gave me access to my first job in Boston when I came to graduate school, because I wanted to do family therapy. And the only way I could get into the offices of the big teachers was to say I could do puppetry with the children while you work with the parents. And then I became basically, I would work with the parents with the puppet too. And I became a disciple of three teachers who allowed me to be in every session just because I could do something that they could not do. But that made perfect sense if you work with families and young children. I was living in Brooklyn and I was taking the subway all the way to Brighton beach to do workshops that took me about an hour and more to get to, to then have one person show up at the workshop. And I just thought, why am I doing this Hustle? And then somebody said, come back another week. They will come, they will come. And I just thought, okay, I'll do it again. And I iterated and I came back and I basically hustled and lied.

[Jodi Kantor]

What did you lie about?

[Esther Perel]

Oh, I lied. I didn't have. I needed a visa to be in America, first of all. I had already had every other student visa and all of that. In order to open an account, you needed a job. In order to have a job you needed an account, you needed a house, and in order to have a house you needed an account. It was one of these things you couldn't. So I knew five people in New York. Everyone became my previous employer, my previous landlord. I mean, whatever I needed to say, you just managed. So I didn't they were nice, they're fun, but they, you know, so that's the, that's really that it was taking everything I could find. And then, okay, I'll give you one more because so I knew I speak French and Spanish. And with that I could go work in the Bronx. And I went to neighborhoods in the Bronx where I just can't believe I walked. I walked sometimes in places I. I didn't know where I was. And I would go to the clinics, but I didn't have the right degrees to get into this clinic. So in the end, I didn't go and work to any of these places. But I knew that with Spanish and with French, I can find a job in a hospital. And so I began working in the psychiatric hospitals, in the units where people came that spoke primarily French, primarily from Haiti, and in Spanish, primarily from Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and places like that. And I just thought, I am so lucky to speak languages. It's like, what do I have that other people don't? It's very simple. So that's the beginning of Esther Perel.

[Jodi Kantor]

And Priya.

[Priya Parker]

I'm biracial, and I went to the University of Virginia. And the first question I would be asked over and over and over again was, what are you? And I didn't understand what the question meant. And I quickly, I thought, oh, a first year or woman? And I quickly was educated. No, no, no, they mean racially. Oh, okay. So I answered the question in the ways that I was supposed to answer them. Biracial. I'm half Indian, half white American, half. And I remember an orientation. I went to the orientation party and it was at the athletic center and it was at a swimming pool. So we walk in and there's a swimming pool, and I look to the left and there's a lot of black students dancing and hanging out. And I look to the right and it's all white students. And I literally, in that moment, unless I jumped into the pool, had to decide which direction I was going in. And it was such a strange experience for me. I was like many of you, I was, I was born in Zimbabwe. Any Zimbabweans in here? And my mother's an anthropologist and we moved a lot. And so this was the first time I was in a sort of highly racialized environment. And I was very lucky that UVA has a strong sense of student self governance. And two older students basically said, do something about it. I was like, what do you mean? They said, do something about it. And that was the first time. It was kind of a shocking Idea that I could, I'm a freshman, like, I could do something about this thing. And so I just started asking questions like, well, what is the history of race here and what has been done so far? I took courses on race. I put my foot in my mouth over and over and over again. I would say things. And there was no social media. So fortunately, you could just kind of make mistakes. And I learned about a process through my mother, actually called Sister Sustained Dialogue. And I emailed the guy. His name was Hal Saunders. And I was very lucky that he helped write the Camp David Accords. He had retired. He was a senior diplomat. He was very interested in young people. And he said, I will come and teach, train you and your peers in this process called sustained dialogue. And we launched this process, the student club, September 10, 2001 and 9. 11 happened the next day. And part of what happened was we launched, meaning we wrote a letter to the community saying, this thing's happening. And all of a sudden there was a deep and necessary demand for dialogue. And we didn't know what we were doing, but we had a practice, we had a need, we had trainers. And over the next seven years, I learned how to facilitate a dialogue group with people not like me. I learned how to help people have conversations safely that usually only happen behind closed doors. And so I started with this question that was like, why is everyone asking me, what are you?

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Wow.

[Jodi Kantor]

I was fired from my job as a columnist at the Columbia Daily Spectator. But it made me hate journalism. It made me say, journalism is this messy, chaotic, non rigorous, non trustworthy thing I want no part of. And I thought, I admire what lawyers do. I did an internship at doj. I was a Nazi hunting intern.

[Priya Parker]

And what does that mean?

[Jodi Kantor]

So DOJ used to have an office that rooted out former Nazis that had lied on their immigration papers to get into the U.S. i didn't lie about that. And DOJ found these people and sometimes denaturalized them and sometimes deported them. But anyway, I went to law school. And then in my first semester of law school, one night at 3 o' clock in the morning, I had an epiphany that was half horrifying, half thrilling, which is that I really, really, really, really, really did want to be a journalist. And I had no evidence that I could succeed. In fact, as you now know, I had evidence to the contrary. And then, you know, I scrambled. And thanks to generous friends, thanks to Frank Foer, to whom this book is dedicated, I was able to get my first job in journalism. And within a week I said, I'm home.

[Priya Parker]

I want to get into the text to how to start. And I think Jodi has two really core ideas in this book which I think deeply resonates with both of us, which is focus on a craft and focus on a need. And I want to actually just read you a paragraph. Most successful, fulfilled people are practicing a combination of expertise and skill. Skill, the special thing they know how to do that other people do not. This is craft. Craft guides the hand of the surgeon restoring an accident victim's body. It's how a writer, composer or director holds an audience's attention for hours at a time. It's why restaurant meals cooked by experts taste so good and also why the best written home recipes turn out beautifully in amateur hands. Craft is why an AI summary, even an accurate one, feels blank because it's missing an author's voice and intelligence. Now listen to this paragraph. It's one of my favorites in the book. When contracts, science experiments and brand campaigns are well crafted, investment becomes more secure and likely to pay off. Craft protects us in the face of disaster. Firefighters and psychologists rely on strict rules and knowledge passed through generations to protect us and lead us from devastation to repair. When we hone our craft, we build up protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable. What is craft and how did you find yours?

[Jodi Kantor]

Craft is a special expertise or skill that you have that other people don't. Part of what the Columbia students were asking me was how do I gain agency? How do I empower myself? And when you have a craft, it's protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable. Craft is something you learn over a long time, right? It in so many ways, it's not really rewarded on social media, like the kinds of slow stumbles and repetitions and experimentation and exploration that are required to really build a great craft. Like, they're not going to look good on social media, right? They're not going to look sharp on LinkedIn. The online world is telling 20 year olds that they should become crypto billionaires. I'm arguing the opposite. I'm arguing have something that's yours. You can be fired from any job. The employment world is cruel, but your craft can never be taken away from you. Craft is also incredibly rewarding and pleasurable in a way that's really hard to see when you're 22 years old because you don't have it yet, right? And it's all only when you get there are rewards along the way, but it's really when you get to like that highest level of mastery, that the feeling is completely different. Young people are being told you're not needed. That's false, it's degrading, it's wrong. And so I want you to come back to the world with a craft that's going to pull and guide you and say, this is my offering.

[Esther Perel]

I mean, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, we need to make one distinction. Because in the last years, instead of talking about craft, people have been talking about passion. What's your passion? And you know, passion doesn't need, doesn't have an on ramp. Passion is not something that you learn. Craft is a different story. It's practice, it's iteration. And that's why it takes place over time. And every time you think you know, you realize how much more there is to know. But you're less uncomfortable with the fact that you don't know. Because I think that there is a pressure these days for people who begin to think that they should already know. They're just starting, you know nothing. Don't be afraid of being, of being caught not knowing, because you don't. I think as a therapist, which is really one of the professions that you can continue to learn till the day you drop dead, there's relatively little ageism in it. In that sense, it was finding teachers. I've always said to my students, don't just think about which approach and which theory. Find the teacher. A good teacher will make any approach and any theoretical model fascinating. A bad teacher can destroy the most fascinating subject. So get good training, then together with training, it's get supervision groups, stay with other clinicians. But this is true for journalists who come together in the profession of psychology. It's actually a fantastic thing that people continue to meet on a weekly basis with colleagues to discuss cases, to not feel alone with the weight of so much challenges that people bring to us, but to feel that we are supported. I have had supervision till today. People are very surprised that I practice. That's another thing. The craft is something you stay connected to, doesn't matter what else is happening to you, because it's the thing you can come back to. And it's the thing that gives you authenticity. And it's the thing where nobody claps, the door closes, you sit with the patient and you do the work and you make mistakes. You try, but it is humble. To me, it's very important, the notion of staying close to the craft, not just knowing your craft and developing it, but staying close to it. And sometimes you're good at your craft, and sometimes you're not. That's another thing.

[Jodi Kantor]

Well, especially at the beginning. Like, I feel like when I talk to a lot of young people now, they feel like the entry. There's so much pressure that they feel like the entry into the career world has to be like one of those perfect Olympic dives where there's, like, technical excellence and no splash. And if there's a splash, you know, like, you get dinged or you don't win. And that's not the way craft worked. I mean, you have described to me with real vividness when you first became a facilitator, like, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. Right?

[Priya Parker]

I mean, terrified. We would get trained, and then you basically, in the ways that we did it. I had 12 students in front of me for three hours, and we were supposed to talk about race. That all sounded good, theoretically. And then I was sitting there, and everyone's around me, my palms are sweating, my heart's beating, my hands are shaking. And it's like, how do you begin this conversation? What do I actually say? How do you create connection across difference? And so much. I mean, I think the writer David Brooks, I heard him say this at a conference years ago. He said, no question worthy of pursuit is answerable in a lifetime. And so as a facilitator, and I know Jodi is like this. Astera is like this. Astera still sees clients every week. Jerry Seinfeld still writes jokes every day. And these are people who are driven forward in part because there's a craft that is interesting and curious. I mean, one of my first jobs as a facilitator after I graduated was to work with Hal Saunders. And my job was. I was the baby facilitator in the room. And my job was to sit for. We'd go for three days at a time. There'd be a room of a table of 18 senior officials across the Arab world, Arab, European, and American leaders. It was off the record. It wasn't allowed to be recorded, but it was allowed to have a transcript. And guess who got to write the transcript. And so what that meant was for eight hours a day on the laptop, I would sit there with headphones through simultaneous translation and write as fast as I possibly could the notes of the meeting. And I did that for years and years and years. And if I quit, missed a word, people would be livid. That is not what he said. That is not what. That there was risk and stakes, and my. My hands would cramp. And I. And I was so terrified that I wouldn't get it right. And I took typing in high school and I had no idea that that would have been. That was why I got the job. I knew how to type. And so, so much. And yet. And today, 25 years later, if you. It's a really weird trick, but if you want to, if we're ever in a room together and you want to, like, say, Priya, can you just play back the last 120 minutes of dialogue? I can literally just tell you exactly what happened. And as one of the elements that is one of my edges as a facilitator is specifically around dialogue. It's dialogic facilitation. I understand communication, I understand craft, but not theoretically, but because I've listened to thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of where and when does something change in a group? And how does this one moment of vulnerability or a word choice shift everything that we think is actually possible between these people? And so whether it's a therapist or whether it's a journalist or whether it's a painter or whether. One of the things I love about this book is you're so imaginative about all of the jobs that people can be. A chef, right, A firefighter, a policeman, if you are a person. And so much of what I think we can sometimes think about is, oh, everyone needs to be a consultant. It's like, what? Like, what does that mean? Find a craft.

[Jodi Kantor]

And then I think what you want to do is you want to pair your craft with the needs. With the needs? Yeah. Like in the sea of bad advice and no advice and intimidation, I wanted to give young people two really solid building materials, right. That would be powerful in combination. So if the first is craft, the second is need. Craft is authority, need is propulsion. Need is you looking around the world and saying, what is going to be needed? In my lifetime, in my working years, 40 or 50 years of working, what kind of goods, what kinds of services, what kinds of new things that haven't even been invented yet. And the thing about need is that I wanted to be a counter to the roller coaster of, like, hollow, conventional wisdom about what you're supposed to study. I can tell my entire life story since I was 16 years old. Like, I can diagnose every era by remembering what the conventional wisdom was about the thing you had to study. Like when I was in high school, it was learn Japanese. The Japanese were going to take over the world economy. And if you didn't speak Japanese, you were like a loser. Japanese is an incredible thing to study, but it didn't turn out to be right. The Japanese stock market slumped and didn't recover for 30 years. Then it was genetics, then it was Mandarin, then of course, it was computer science.

[Priya Parker]

Right.

[Jodi Kantor]

And listen, these are all great things to study, but the idea that any one of them is going to be a golden ticket, I think is completely wrong. And so what I want to force you to do, what I want to ask you to do is make a more independent need assessment on your own, because I think with your own ideas. So sometimes using tragedy, sometimes using the hardest things you have faced in life, you are going to find that propulsive force. It could be altruistic, it could have to do with business, but that is part of what is going to give your career velocity.

[Esther Perel]

I'm thinking about romantic relationships. This is to you. And how often we find ourselves kind of waiting to be discovered, waiting to be found, to be met for something to just land or someone to just land in our life. And sometimes a similar approach is happening around work. I want somebody who knows my potential without my even knowing it exists. And I wonder, what's your thought about, you know, how we switch from being a passenger to a pilot, from waiting to becoming the author of our own life. I mean, it is interesting that you chose two people here. I think neither of us have ever worked for anybody that's not. Except ourselves. We have worked with a ton of people, though. It's different. But we haven't been part of large structures. You are actually part of a large structure. And in that sense, we have been pilots for a long time. But I think a lot of people need help to transition from waiting to

[Jodi Kantor]

acting well, especially now. I mean, this very unfriendly employment environment is making young people feel like supplicants. You know, there's like that anxiety of not knowing whether you're wanted, of not feeling like you have a lot of control. So I'm going to tell you one of my favorite stories about making yourself the pilot. So about 20 years ago, there was a group of young writers in New York, and they were outsiders. You know, publishing, especially at that time, could be a very clubby industry. These were all women. A lot of them were freelancers. They didn't feel that connected. And so they formed a group and they started meeting. And most writers groups are about what's on the page, right? They're looking at text together. This was different. They wanted to write books, and they decided that they were going to figure out publishing together. So every meeting was devoted to a different topic, like how do you get an agent or what's effective book publicity? Do you really need a book trailer? What makes for a good blurb? And they studied these things together and they called themselves the Invisible Institute. And they initially considered themselves kind of nobodies. You know, the way this story ends. The members of the group were Rebecca Skloot, who wrote the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Gretchen Rubin, who wrote the Happiness Project books. Sherry Fink, who wrote Five Days at Memorial. Susan Cain, who wrote Quiet. Pamela Paul had to leave the group because she became the editor of the New York Times Book Review. So these women went from feeling like outsiders to banding together in a collective to sort of climb together. And so, you know, I don't want to be like overly prescriptive because different scenarios are right for different people. But, you know, I. And a lot of people are tortured right now by this question of, like, if you're a young person who's applying for job after job and not getting any traction, what can you do to both improve the outcome and give yourself some agency during the process? And I think forming something like the Invisible Institute is a really good idea.

[Esther Perel]

There is still so much to talk about. We need to take a brief break, so stay with us.

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[Esther Perel]

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[Jodi Kantor]

Esther, you said something amazing to me the other day. We were talking in your kitchen and you said, you know Jodi, this career thing is very parallel to what I say about relationships, because your famous formulation in mating and captivity is that to thrive, romantic relationships need a balance between security and stability on the one hand, and freedom and exploration on the other. You said, really, career relationships work the same way. So I thought we could talk for a second about how to think about risk at this time. It's a big dilemma. Everybody's aching for stability. It's a chaotic world we live in right now, and yet you don't really get anywhere in a career without taking on some risk. So how do you think through that problem?

[Esther Perel]

I remember always saying we all need security and we all need freedom. When it comes to work. I can tolerate the lack of security better than I can tolerate the lack of freedom. That's why I'm self employed. But I think that it's not which one do I need more, it's we need both. But some of us really need the security for a host of very important reasons that work provides. And then risk comes second. And some of us can tolerate the lack of security better than they can tolerate the lack of freedom. I couldn't tolerate somebody telling me all the time what to do because I had a lot of things I wanted to do. So first of all, I think this question applies beyond work. There is a risk aversion at this moment and a need to want to have predictability in one's life like you have when you open your phone and the app tells you how to get someplace. So in that sense it's not limited to work. And I think the word risk at this point is not linked enough to the word exploration. Serendipity, spontaneity, improvisation, surprise, curiosity. All of that has to do with risk. The word risk at this point is about danger, uncertainty, and therefore lack of safety. And I think if you redefine it as a major aspect of life that it has to do with growth, that it has to do with friction. Then you begin to think about doing things for which you need the craft for which you need time. And you're not just there to deal with anxiety management. So much of work at this moment is about managing anxiety. It's actually not even about thinking about work. Work becomes a symptom of the uncertainty that is in the world. And I would add to that that one of the most important things that has happened to work is that because it is the place where most young people are going to spend 10 years before they deal with any of the other aspects of their life. Since people date less, have less sex, and everything else, work becomes this hub for belonging, for identity, for fulfillment, for continuity. I mean, it's like work has become a central place for those kinds of needs beyond just the job. J, O B fully spelled. If you define risk as the thing that will make you fall, the thing that will make every parent feel like, I invested so much, I worked so hard to be able to have you go to school to pay for it, or to at least pay a portion of it or all of that. And this risk is the devaluing of this entire enterprise rather than, you're young, you have plenty of time to find the thing. And how many of you people here are thinking that you chose what you do versus a bit of choice? And a lot of life kind of life brought things to you and things began to develop and that's where you ended up doing a thing. Life may be a mentor, life may be an opportunity. It's life. Except for people with vocations, artists, musicians, you know, people who know from the beginning that that's what they're going to do, then life doesn't really. I mean, life has a lot of influence too, but you, you have at least a sense, I want to be X, but many of us, we didn't have a career that is based on

[Jodi Kantor]

I want to be wonderful. Okay, so Priya's gonna close us out tonight. But I just wanna say that if there's one thing you take, especially for like the under 30 crowd here, that's still sorting it out. If there's one thing I want you to take from this evening is a feeling of encouragement and warmth and a feeling like, Esther, Priya and I have confidence in you, that there are other older people in this room who do too, that there are people you can ask questions of. Because I think your experience of entry into the work world has been too cold and too lonely. And I think people our age need to counteract that.

[Priya Parker]

So we began with the text. We're going to end with a text, and we're going to close with Jody's words. Here are her tips at the end of the book. Exit the library. Do not let your parents decide your career. Look to your friends instead. Observe the obvious. Drop the assumption that your college experiences will dictate what becomes of you. Consult your demons. Relax about coherence. Find by starting. Listen to your positive emotions. Find alternate doors. Make your pursuit a group exercise. You should not have to do any of this grappling alone.

[Esther Perel]

We wanted to pass on the experience of three women who each had a story of how they started that was very far from where they had arrived or where they are currently, which may not be the end for that matter. The intergenerational conversation around work isn't just between parents and children or bosses and people who work for them. Mentorship actually starts the moment you have one year longer experience than the person who comes after you. And mentorship is not just what the other person person should do, but it is also the sharing of your own experience, which is really what I thought we were doing as well, was to basically share a portion of the story of our career, to give a sense that where people arrive is often very, very far and different from where they started and where they imagined they would get to, and to introduce a little bit more flexibility in the thinking about work or what Jody Cantor called coherence kind of linearity, that it's not just one straight line when you mentor, when you pass on the experience, when you share names of people, when you introduce relationships, when you introduce need with craft, resources with aspirations. All these encounters actually highlight something that is ultra dear to my own work, which is the importance of relationships. Work is rooted in relationships and relationships travel to work.

[Jodi Kantor]

Where Should We Begin With Esther Perel Is produced by Magnificent Noise.

[Priya Parker]

We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network network in partnership with New York Magazine and the Cut. Our production staff includes Eric Newsome, Destry Sibley, Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller and Juliannet. Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider and the executive producers of Where Should We Begin?

[Jodi Kantor]

Are Esther Perel and Jessie Baker.

[Priya Parker]

We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller and Jack Saul. Spring just slid into your DMs. Grab that boho. Look for that rooftop dinner, those sandals that can keep up with you and hang some string lights to give your patio a glow up. Spring's calling. Ross, work your magic.

[Esther Perel]

You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your [e-mail] to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever.