How To Start: Esther Perel in Conversation with Jodi Kantor and Priya Parker Where Should We Begin?

0:00 I'm often asked how I started my career.

0:04 So, of course, when Jodi Kantor, author of How to Start,

0:09 investigative journalist for the New York Times,

0:11 asked me to join her and Priya Parker, author of The Art of Gathering,

0:17 in a conversation about how to start our work life,

0:21 our careers, I was instantly intrigued.

0:25 There's so much to tell about how to start.

0:28 I actually really like the the focus on the starting

0:31 rather than I even anything that follows afterwards.

0:35 So, we showed up on stage and basically asked questions about the book to Jodi,

0:42 like what made you want to write a book for young

0:46 people finishing college or school and wanting to know how to start.

0:52 What was special about the audience was how intergenerational it

0:55 was because everyone is concerned by the question of work today.

1:00 Whether you have just paid for the college of your child,

1:03 whether you are yourself in transition in your mid-40s,

1:07 or whether you are just starting,

1:09 it is actually a collective question at every age level.

1:14 So, my friend Priya Parker, who is a consummate group facilitator,

1:20 set the intention for the evening and facilitated the conversation.

1:29 We are gathered here tonight as a temporary community with a shared question.

1:36 And we are gathering around one of the things

1:39 that people have done for as old as time,

1:41 which is to sit together and ask something that is relevant to our young people,

1:48 but is actually relevant to all, which is how in this moment of uncertainty,

1:54 in this one could even say mess, does one find one's life's work?

2:01 And a year ago, our friend Jody was asked

2:04 by the Columbia students to be their commencement speaker.

2:08 Now, I don't know if you all remember

2:10 what was happening at Columbia at the time,

2:12 but uh most people would probably say,

2:15 "You know, I need to wash my hair." And Jody being Jody accepted,

2:20 but she also didn't go and pontificate in a corner.

2:24 She did what she always does, which is she went to the people most affected,

2:29 and she spoke to Columbia students graduating,

2:32 and said, "What are your questions?" And I

2:35 want to read just the opening paragraph,

2:37 one of the paragraphs from How to Start.

2:41 I reached out to students to ask how they were navigating their sad,

2:46 strange senior spring.

2:49 They didn't want to talk about Israel and Gaza

2:53 or President Trump or even the university administration.

2:56 Many of them had grown to distrust.

2:59 Instead, all of them, regardless of demographics or political views,

3:05 were united in worry over one question.

3:09 How, in this environment,

3:11 were they supposed to find and start their life's work?

3:16 And that speech went on to become this beautiful, beautiful book, How to Start.

3:23 And the question that has most kept her up at night

3:26 over the last year is how do young people begin?

3:31 So, that is why we are here, and we wanted to also find out why you are here.

3:37 Esther?

3:38 Yes.

3:39 Yes, hello everyone.

3:41 So, um you know, one of the questions we all had in the back

3:47 room here is if you have ever

3:51 received career advice that was spectacularly wrong.

3:58 Please, if you have received that kind of advice, stand.

4:03 Or indicate in the best way you can.

4:08 We shall quickly realize how much similarity we have.

4:11 May I just ask you for a moment,

4:13 how many of that spectacularly wrong advice was from a parent?

4:19 Thank you.

4:23 My son just raised his hand.

4:32 And please, would you stand up if the job that you have today

4:39 is a job that you knew existed when you were 10 years old?

4:49 Took a moment to remember.

4:52 Right.

4:53 Okay.

4:54 Thank you.

4:56 And may I ask you, who here is doing work today

5:00 that they absolutely didn't plan to do when they started their careers?

5:08 Since Hold on this moment because I see the the generation that is standing.

5:14 So, for all of the young people in the room, and you, too, and me as well,

5:19 just take a look because between what people thought they were going to do

5:23 and where they ended up is a bit of a journey of life.

5:27 Yes, thank you.

5:31 And who is actually doing what they thought they would be doing?

5:34 Are there such people in the room?

5:38 Yes, we can clap.

5:44 Some people had some linearity in their life, you know.

5:49 And may I ask you, who remembers the first

5:53 time that they walked into a professional room and thought,

5:57 "Somebody is about to realize that I know shit." Stand up.

6:10 Yes.

6:10 Yes.

6:11 Yes.

6:11 Yes.

6:13 How many of you have had job interviews with chatbots?

6:17 And may I ask you, raise your hand if the chatbot never told you any

6:21 feedback about your interview and you never even

6:23 got a rejection letter either for that matter.

6:27 And how many of you it was your first job interview?

6:31 So that you had no guidance.

6:33 Anyone?

6:35 Yes.

6:36 Tell us.

6:36 Tell us.

6:37 What's your name?

6:38 My name is Leila.

6:40 Hi, Leila.

6:40 Hi.

6:42 So, I did an interview a few weeks ago and I had to talk

6:47 directly to an AI which was very strange because there's no real conversation.

6:53 There's not really a connection that you're having.

6:55 You can't, you know, be like, "Oh,

6:57 how's your day?" You know, have that little banter in the beginning.

7:00 So, you're just really talking to yourself and then they are like, "Okay, great.

7:05 So, there's the next question." There's not really There's no connection.

7:09 There's no connection.

7:10 There's no reciprocity.

7:12 There's no contingency.

7:13 There's no sense that you You say something,

7:16 it engages another person to say something else and when they do,

7:19 so do you and a rapport is created.

7:22 So, there's nothing before and there's not much after.

7:25 Yes, absolutely.

7:26 Good.

7:27 Yes.

7:28 Um Would you please stand up if you

7:32 feel that your career choices have been too risky?

7:38 Yes.

7:39 Yes.

7:39 I see you rise slowly but surely.

7:43 And you too.

7:45 Yes.

7:47 Would you like to say something?

7:50 I'm trying to pursue journalism.

7:55 There was somebody else who stood up here.

7:58 Mhm?

7:59 This one?

8:01 I've left some big companies to join some

8:03 small startups um where there's a lot more risk.

8:06 Mhm.

8:08 Anybody else?

8:09 Yes.

8:10 I started a startup digital agency the day my premature

8:14 twins were born from the hospital with my husband, both of us in, no net.

8:19 It lasted eight years.

8:27 There's one more here.

8:28 Oh.

8:29 Hi.

8:30 Yeah.

8:31 Thanks.

8:31 I write musicals.

8:42 I'm going to ask you one last one.

8:44 Stand up if you've ever looked at something that is broken

8:49 in the world and then you thought someone should fix it.

8:55 And then you realized that that someone should be you.

9:02 Wow.

9:04 Wow.

9:07 At some point when you leave here tonight,

9:10 I will invite you to speak with each other about exactly that.

9:15 What did you notice was broken?

9:18 What did you think needed fixing?

9:20 And in what way did you engage with the project?

9:24 Thank you so much.

9:33 I want to start Jody by asking you a simple question,

9:37 which is why did you write this book?

9:41 Well, thank you.

9:42 Thank you, Priya.

9:44 So, as you said, you know, I get this email a year ago and says,

9:48 "Will you please give the undergraduate commencement address at Columbia,

9:51 where I went?" And it was a huge honor and kind of a bad offer,

9:57 um, because of what was going on at the school.

10:00 Like, it was just chaos and my I may not name you,

10:04 but I see a Columbia friend right there,

10:06 a very wise Columbia friend, who was like, "Don't do it." The colon's sick.

10:13 Um, but I felt like,

10:17 "Give me those kids for 15 minutes." because I was just so upset.

10:21 Not really from anyone political point of view,

10:24 but I was so upset at seeing what had happened there.

10:28 And then what happened is that I got

10:31 on a Zoom with the leadership of the Columbia College class.

10:36 Some of the students are here.

10:37 Will you guys stand up?

10:40 Woo!

10:42 So, so we get on the Zoom and I I think you mentioned this, they were like,

10:48 "We don't want to talk about Israel.

10:50 We don't want to talk about Gaza.

10:51 We don't want to talk about President Trump.

10:52 We don't want to talk about university administration.

10:55 We chose you because of your career and here's your assignment.

10:59 Every member of this class, no matter what their political perspective,

11:04 is united in anxiety over this question about in this crazy time,

11:11 how do you find and start your life's work?" And Priya, their question hit me.

11:17 I mean, I love good questions.

11:19 I I love hard questions.

11:21 What's the point of easy questions right now?

11:24 And what I understood, because I had covered employment for many years,

11:31 and also because Megan and I had been speaking

11:34 on college campuses ever since we broke the Weinstein story,

11:38 that this was a generational question.

11:41 The students are saying,

11:44 "Housing prices are so high that I'm worried that even if I get a good job,

11:51 it's not going to be enough to rent

11:53 or buy something decent." I'm hearing students say,

11:59 "Enjoyable jobs are only for rich kids." I'm hearing, um,

12:04 there's a thing of not typing the word job, j o b, in your text chains.

12:12 People are writing it j asterisk b because the real word is too scary.

12:20 And year over year visiting these campuses,

12:24 I was seeing this feeling of disillusionment and cynicism rising about work,

12:31 which is a rational response in so many ways, including to like the AI chatbots.

12:37 I mean, Astera is completely right.

12:40 You know, I don't think we know what AI will do to entry-level work yet.

12:45 It's too early to say, but I can say this now.

12:48 It is making the process of looking for a job so sterile, so digital, so lonely.

12:57 I'm talking to students who are telling me, "Jodi,

12:59 I applied for 150 jobs, and not only did I not get a bite,

13:04 but I did not meet anybody in the process." So anyway, I gave the speech.

13:09 It's on I I think people need to take a breath when you say something like this.

13:14 I know because for people our age, it's it's like it's inconceivable.

13:19 So I'm seeing this, and I'm seeing that into this very scary situation,

13:24 I'm meeting too many students who are either getting bad advice or no advice.

13:30 So, essentially what that does to me is that it makes me unable to stop writing.

13:36 I And I'm like like I give the speech,

13:38 it goes great, it's on YouTube if you're curious.

13:40 And then Ron and my family will tell you I spent

13:43 the rest of the summer getting up at 6:00 in the morning,

13:46 being at my laptop, writing more and more, saying like, am I writing a book?

13:50 What am I doing?

13:51 I'm not an advice columnist, I'm an investigative journalist.

13:54 Is this weird?

13:56 And And And the question I was gripped by was

14:03 what does a productive response look like to these circumstances?

14:09 Like in the book and at this event all night,

14:12 like, okay, we laid the groundwork, it's a very tough environment,

14:16 but we're not we're not going

14:17 to do the equivalent of doomscrolling tonight, right?

14:20 Because it's not helpful.

14:22 The question is, what are young people

14:25 supposed to actually do in this situation?

14:30 And I wanted to give them something that felt real and true.

14:35 And listen, I want all of my journalism to help people,

14:38 but this was like taking the subtext of my journalism,

14:42 which is I want to live in a better world, and this was like making it text.

14:46 This was being like, sit down on my couch, we are we're going to work together.

14:52 I don't want you to give up.

14:53 I don't want you to give up before you start,

14:56 because then you're going to put satisfaction further out of reach,

15:00 and we have to do it because the stakes are too high.

15:03 You can't give up on work individually,

15:06 but also we can't give up on work collectively.

15:09 It is our source of collective progress, right?

15:15 Total cynicism about the workplace is tempting,

15:18 but at the end of the day we cannot afford it.

15:22 So, here's what we Here's the first thing we're going to do on our way

15:25 to sort of working this to this answer of how do you start?

15:29 I wanted to ask Esther and Priya and I will

15:32 contribute myself to tell you a story of how we started.

15:38 I started my first job working in my parents clothing store.

15:43 I lived above the store and I was basically from the moment I could talk,

15:47 I was asked to come and help.

15:49 And that meant talking to people of all walks of life

15:53 and being shy and not being shy and um selling clothes.

15:59 And that is very personal when you sell clothes.

16:01 It's actually a very particular form of intimacy that you develop early on.

16:06 So, that was my first job.

16:08 Then I was in Israel and I

16:11 basically studied in Jerusalem at the Hebrew University

16:14 and I was part of the theater company

16:18 of the Israel Museum and I worked in puppetry.

16:22 Puppet theater for 4 years.

16:25 And I taught dance and movement and theater and I

16:28 performed and I created plays and I worked with puppetry.

16:32 Um it was fantastic and that same puppetry is what the gave me access

16:38 to my first job in Boston when I came to graduate school because I wanted to do

16:45 family therapy and the only way I could get into the offices of the big teachers

16:50 was to say I could do puppetry

16:52 with the children while you work with the parents.

16:55 And then I became basically I would work with the parents with the puppet, too.

16:59 And I became a disciple of three teachers who allowed

17:02 me to be in every session just because I could

17:05 do something that they could not do but that made

17:08 perfect sense if you work with families and young children.

17:13 I was living in Brooklyn and I was taking

17:15 the subway all the way to Brighton Beach to do workshops

17:18 that took me about an hour and more to get

17:20 to to then have one person show up at the workshop.

17:24 And I just thought, why am I doing this hustle?

17:27 And then somebody said, come back another week.

17:29 They will come.

17:30 They will come.

17:31 And I just thought, okay, I'll do it again.

17:34 And I iterated and I came back and I I basically hustled and lied.

17:43 What did you lie about?

17:44 Oh, I lied I didn't have I needed a visa to be in America first of all.

17:49 I had already had every other student visa and all of that.

17:52 I needed In order to open an account, you needed a job.

17:54 In order to have a job, you needed an account.

17:56 You needed a house.

17:57 And in order to have a house, you needed an account.

17:59 It was one of these things you couldn't So,

18:01 I I had I knew five people in New York.

18:04 Everyone became my previous employer, my previous my previous landlord.

18:11 I mean, whatever I needed to say, you just managed.

18:14 So, I I didn't big They were lies that are nice.

18:18 They're fun.

18:19 But they you know, so that's the that's really that.

18:22 It's was taking everything I could find.

18:26 And then Okay, I'll give you one more because So,

18:29 I I knew I speak French and Spanish.

18:31 And with that, I could go work in the Bronx.

18:35 And I went to neighborhoods in the Bronx where I just can't believe I walked.

18:40 I walked sometimes in places I I didn't know where I was.

18:44 And I would go to the clinics,

18:46 but I didn't have the right degrees to get into these clinics.

18:49 So, in the end, I didn't go and work to any of these places,

18:53 but I knew that with Spanish and with French, I can find a job in a hospital.

18:58 And so, I began working in the psychiatric hospitals where

19:02 in the units where people came that spoke primarily French primarily from Haiti.

19:07 And and in Spanish primarily from Dominican Republic,

19:11 Puerto Rico, and places like that.

19:13 And I just thought I am so lucky to speak languages.

19:17 I was like, "What do I have that other people don't?" It's very simple.

19:21 So, that's the beginning of Esther Perel.

19:31 And, Priya.

19:33 I um I'm biracial.

19:36 And I went to the University of Virginia.

19:39 And the first question I would be asked over and over and over again was,

19:44 "What are you?" And I didn't understand what the question meant.

19:49 And I quickly I thought, "Oh,

19:50 a first-year or woman." And I quickly was educated.

19:53 No, no, no, they mean racially.

19:54 Oh, okay.

19:55 So, I I I I answered the question

19:58 in the ways that were I was supposed to answer them.

20:00 Biracial, I'm half Indian, half white American.

20:03 And I the first I remember an orientation,

20:07 I went to the orientation party and it was at the athletic center,

20:10 and it was at a swimming pool.

20:11 So, we walk in and there's a swimming pool, and I look to the left and there's

20:16 a lot of black students dancing and hanging out.

20:18 And I look to the right and it's all white students.

20:21 And I literally in that moment, unless I jumped into the pool,

20:25 had to decide which direction I was going in.

20:27 And it was such a strange experience for me.

20:30 I was like many of you, I was I was born in Zimbabwe.

20:34 Any Zimbabweans in here?

20:37 And I I my mother's an anthropologist, and we moved a lot.

20:40 And so, this was the first time I

20:41 was in a sort of highly racialized environment.

20:45 And I was very lucky that UVA has a strong sense of student self-governance,

20:50 and two older students basically said, "Do something about it." I was like,

20:54 "What do you mean?" And they said,

20:56 "Do something about it." And that was the first time it was kind

21:00 of a shocking idea that I could I I could I'm a freshman.

21:04 Like, I could do something about this thing.

21:07 And so I just started asking questions.

21:09 Like, well, what is the history of race here?

21:11 And what has been done so far?

21:13 I took courses on race.

21:15 I put my foot in my mouth over and over and over again.

21:18 I would say things and there was no social media.

21:20 So, fortunately, you could just kind of make mistakes.

21:23 And I learned about a process

21:24 through my mother actually called Sustained Dialogue.

21:27 And I emailed the guy, his name was Hal Saunders,

21:30 and I was very lucky that he helped write the Camp David Accords.

21:34 He had retired, he was a senior diplomat.

21:36 He was very interested in young people.

21:39 And he said, "I will come and teach train you and your your peers

21:43 in this process called Sustained Dialogue." And we launched this process,

21:47 the student club, September 10th, 2001.

21:53 And 9/11 happened the next day.

21:56 And part of what happened was we launched,

21:59 meaning we wrote a letter to the community saying this thing's happening.

22:02 And all of a sudden, there was a deep and necessary demand for dialogue.

22:08 And we didn't know what we were doing,

22:10 but we had a practice, we had a need, we had trainers.

22:13 And over the next 7 years,

22:15 I learned how to facilitate a dialogue group with people not like me.

22:20 I learned how to help people have conversations

22:23 safely that usually only happen behind closed doors.

22:26 And so I I started with this question that was like,

22:29 why is everyone asking me, "What are you?" Wow.

22:35 Um I was fired from my job as a columnist at the Columbia Daily Spectator.

22:49 But it made me hate journalism.

22:51 It made me say journalism is this messy,

22:56 chaotic, non-rigorous, non-trustworthy thing I want no part of.

23:06 And I thought, I admire what lawyers do.

23:09 I did an internship at DOJ.

23:11 I was a Nazi hunting intern.

23:14 And that mean?

23:16 It so DOJ used to have an office that rooted out former

23:23 Nazis that had lied on their immigration papers to get into the US.

23:29 I didn't lie about that.

23:33 And DOJ found these people and sometimes

23:39 denaturalized them and sometimes deported them.

23:42 But anyway, I went to law school.

23:45 And then in my first semester of law school one night

23:49 at 3:00 in the morning I had an epiphany that was half horrifying,

23:56 half thrilling which is that I really, really, really,

24:01 really, really, really did want to be a journalist.

24:04 And I had no evidence that I could succeed.

24:09 In fact, as you now know, I had evidence to the contrary.

24:15 And then, you know, I scrambled and thanks to generous friends,

24:19 thanks to Frank Four, to whom this book is dedicated,

24:22 I was able to get my first job

24:24 in journalism and within a week, I said, I'm home.

24:28 I want to get into the text um to how to start.

24:31 And I think Jodi has two really core ideas in this book,

24:36 which I think deeply resonates with both of us,

24:39 which is focus on a craft and focus on a need.

24:44 And I want to actually just read you a paragraph.

24:50 Most successful, fulfilled people are practicing

24:53 a combination of expertise and skill.

24:56 The special thing they know how to do that other people do not.

25:01 This is craft.

25:03 Craft guides the hand of the surgeon restoring an accident victim's body.

25:08 It's how a writer, composer,

25:10 or director holds an audience's attention for hours at a time.

25:14 It's why restaurant meals cooked by experts taste so good and also

25:18 why the best written home recipes turn out beautifully in amateur hands.

25:22 Craft is why an AI summary, even an accurate one,

25:25 feels blank because it's missing an author's voice and intelligence.

25:30 Now, listen to this paragraph.

25:31 It's one of my favorites in the book.

25:32 When contracts, science experiments, and brand campaigns are well crafted,

25:39 investment becomes more secure and likely to pay off.

25:42 Craft protects us in the face of disaster.

25:46 Firefighters and psychologists rely on strict rules and knowledge passed through

25:51 generations to protect us and lead us from devastation to repair.

25:56 When we hone our craft,

25:58 we build up protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable.

26:04 What is craft and how did you find yours?

26:07 Craft is a special expertise or skill that you have that other people don't.

26:16 You know, part of what the Columbia students were asking me was,

26:19 "How do I gain agency, right?

26:21 How do I empower myself?" And when you have a craft,

26:28 it's protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable.

26:35 Craft is something you learn over a long time, right?

26:39 Like it it's In so many ways, it's not really rewarded on social media.

26:45 Like the kinds of slow stumbles and repetitions and experimentation

26:51 and exploration that are required to really build a great craft,

26:56 like they're not going to look good on social media, right?

27:00 They're not going to look sharp on LinkedIn.

27:03 The online world is telling 20-year-olds

27:05 that they should become crypto billionaires.

27:09 Uh I'm arguing the opposite.

27:11 I'm arguing have something that's yours.

27:15 You can be fired from any job.

27:17 The employment world is cruel, but your craft can never be taken away from you.

27:22 Craft is also incredibly rewarding and pleasurable in a way that's really

27:29 hard to see when you're 22-years-old because you don't have it yet, right?

27:33 And it's only when you get There are rewards along the way,

27:38 but it's really when you get to like that highest

27:41 level of mastery that the feeling is completely different.

27:47 Young people are being told, "You're not needed." That's false.

27:52 It's degrading.

27:53 It's wrong.

27:55 And so, I want you to come back to the world

27:59 with a craft that's going to pull and guide you and say,

28:03 "This is my offering." I mean, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking we need

28:08 to make one distinction because in the last years,

28:12 instead of talking about craft, people have been talking about passion.

28:16 What's your passion?

28:18 And you know, passion doesn't need doesn't have an on-ramp.

28:23 Passion is not something that you learn.

28:25 Craft is a different story.

28:26 It's practice.

28:27 It's iteration.

28:29 Um and and that's why it takes place over time.

28:33 And every time you think you know, you realize how much more there is to know,

28:38 but you're less uncomfortable with the fact that you don't know.

28:41 Because I think that there is a pressure these days

28:44 for people who begin to to think that they should already know.

28:49 They're just starting.

28:50 You know no nothing.

28:51 Don't be afraid of being of of being caught not knowing because you don't.

28:57 I think for as a therapist which is really one of the professions

29:02 that you can continue to learn till the day you drop dead.

29:06 Um there's there's a relatively little ageism in it in that sense.

29:11 It's was finding teachers.

29:13 I've always said to my students,

29:15 don't just think about which approach and which theory.

29:18 Find the teacher.

29:19 A good teacher will make any approach and any theoretical model fascinating.

29:25 A bad teacher can destroy the most fascinating subject.

29:29 So, get good training.

29:32 Then um together with training it's it's get supervision groups.

29:38 Stay with other clinicians.

29:40 But this is true for journalists who come

29:42 together as an in the profession of psychology it's

29:45 actually a fantastic thing that people continue to meet

29:48 on a weekly basis with colleagues to discuss cases,

29:52 to not feel alone with the weight of so much challenges that people bring to us,

29:58 but to feel that we are supported.

30:01 I have had supervision till today.

30:03 People are very surprised that I A I practice.

30:06 That's another thing.

30:07 The craft is something you stay connected to.

30:10 Doesn't matter what else is happening to you

30:12 because it's the thing you can come back to.

30:15 And it's the thing that gives you

30:16 authenticity and it's the thing where nobody claps.

30:19 The door closes, you sit with a patient, and you do the work,

30:23 and you make mistakes, you try, but it is humble.

30:28 To me it's very important the notion of staying close to the craft,

30:31 not just knowing your craft and developing it, but staying close to it.

30:36 And sometimes you're good at your craft and sometimes you're not.

30:41 That's another thing.

30:41 Well, especially at the beginning.

30:43 Like I feel like when I talk to a lot of young people now,

30:46 they feel like the entry there's so much pressure

30:49 that they feel like the entry into the career world has

30:53 to be like one of those perfect Olympic dives where there's

30:57 like technical excellence and no splash and if there's a splash,

31:00 you know, like you you get dinged or you

31:03 don't win and that's not the way craft worked.

31:05 I mean I you have described to me with real vividness

31:10 when you first became a facilitator

31:13 like feeling awkward and uncomfortable, right?

31:16 terrified.

31:16 I we would we would get trained and then

31:18 you basically in the ways that we did it we had 12 students in front of me for 3

31:22 hours and we were supposed to talk about race.

31:25 That all sounded good, you know,

31:27 theoretically and then I was sitting there and everyone's around me,

31:30 my palms are sweating, my heart's beating, I'm my hands are shaking

31:33 and I was like how do you begin this conversation?

31:39 What do I actually say?

31:41 How do you create connection across difference?

31:44 And so much I mean I think the writer David Brooks I heard him say

31:47 this at a conference years ago and he said

31:49 no question worthy of pursuit is answerable in a lifetime.

31:54 And and so as a facilitator and I know

31:56 Jodie is like this and Esther is like this.

31:58 Esther still sees clients every week.

32:01 Jerry Seinfeld still writes jokes every day.

32:05 And and these are people who are driven forward

32:07 in part because there's a craft that is interesting and curious.

32:10 I mean when I when one of my first jobs as a facilitator

32:13 after I graduated was to work with Hal Saunders and my job

32:17 was I was the baby facilitator in the room and my job

32:20 was to sit for we'd go for 3 days at a time.

32:23 There would be a room of a table

32:25 of 18 um senior officials across the Arab world,

32:29 Arab, European and American leaders.

32:31 It was off the record.

32:32 It wasn't allowed to be recorded but it was allowed

32:34 to have have And guess who got to write the transcript?

32:40 And so what that meant was for 8 hours a day on the laptop,

32:43 I would sit there with headphones through simultaneous translation and write

32:47 as fast as I possibly could the notes of the meeting.

32:51 And I did that for years and years and years.

32:54 And if I missed a word, people would be livid.

32:57 That is not what he said.

32:58 That is not what the There was risk and stakes.

33:01 And my my hands would cramp and I and I

33:04 and I was so terrified that I wouldn't get it right.

33:06 And I took typing in high school and I had no idea

33:09 that that would have been That was why I got the job.

33:12 I knew how to type.

33:13 And so so much And yet And today,

33:15 25 years later, if you It's a really weird trick,

33:18 but if you want to If we're ever in a room together and you want to like say,

33:22 "Priya, can you just play back the last 120 minutes

33:24 of dialogue?" I can literally just tell you exactly what happened.

33:28 And as one of the elements that is my one

33:30 of my edges as a facilitator is specifically around dialogue.

33:34 It's dial-ogic facilitation.

33:36 I understand communication.

33:37 I understand craft, but not theoretically.

33:39 But because I've listened to thousands and thousands and thousands

33:43 of hours of where and when does something change in a group?

33:48 And how does this one moment of vulnerability or a word

33:50 choice shift everything that we think is actually possible between these people?

33:56 And so whether it's a therapist or whether it's

33:58 a journalist or whether it's a painter or whether it One

34:00 of the things I love about this book is you're

34:02 so imaginative about all of the jobs that people can be.

34:06 A chef, right?

34:07 A firefighter, a policeman.

34:09 If you are a person.

34:10 And so much of of what I think we can sometimes think about is,

34:13 "Oh, everyone needs to be a consultant." It's like, "What?

34:17 Like, what does that mean?

34:19 Find a craft." And And then I think what you want

34:23 to do is you want to pair your craft with with a need.

34:26 Yeah.

34:26 Like in the sea of bad advice and no advice and intimidation,

34:30 I wanted to give young people two really solid building materials, right?

34:37 That would be powerful in combination.

34:39 So, if the first is craft, the second is need.

34:42 Craft is authority, need is propulsion.

34:47 Need is you looking around the world and saying,

34:51 "What is going to be needed in my lifetime,

34:54 in my working years, 40 or 50 years of working?

34:58 What kind of goods, what kinds of services,

35:03 what kinds of new things that haven't even been invented

35:05 yet?" And the thing about need is that I want

35:10 it to be a counter to the roller coaster

35:15 of like hollow conventional wisdom about what you're supposed to study.

35:21 I can tell my entire life story since I was 16 years old,

35:25 like I can diagnose every era by remembering what

35:30 the conventional wisdom was about the thing you had to study.

35:34 Like when I was in high school, it was learn Japanese.

35:37 The Japanese were going to take over the world economy,

35:40 and if you didn't speak Japanese, you were like a loser.

35:44 Japanese is an incredible thing to study, but it didn't turn out to be right.

35:48 The Japanese stock market slumped and didn't recover for 30 years.

35:53 Then it was genetics.

35:57 Then it was Mandarin.

35:59 Then of course it was computer science, right?

36:02 And listen, these are all great things to study,

36:06 but the idea that any one of them is going to be a golden ticket,

36:13 I think is completely wrong.

36:15 And so, what I want to force you to do, what I want to ask you to do,

36:19 is make a more independent need assessment on your own,

36:26 because I think with your own ideas, sometimes using tragedy,

36:30 sometimes using the hardest things you have faced in life,

36:35 you are going to find that propulsive force.

36:38 It could be altruistic, it could have to do with business,

36:43 but that is part of what is going to give your career velocity.

36:50 I'm thinking about romantic relationships.

36:54 Yeah.

36:54 This is to you.

36:56 And how often we find ourselves kind of waiting to be discovered,

37:01 waiting to be found,

37:03 to be met, for something to just land or someone to just land in our life.

37:08 And sometimes a similar approach is happening around work.

37:13 I want somebody who knows my potential without my even knowing it exists.

37:22 And I wonder what's your thought about, you know,

37:26 how um how we switch from being a passenger to a pilot,

37:32 from waiting to becoming the author of our own life.

37:35 I mean, the it is interesting that you chose two people here,

37:40 and I think neither of us have ever worked for anybody.

37:43 That's not except ourselves.

37:47 Um we have worked with a ton of people, though.

37:50 It's different.

37:51 But we haven't been part of large structures.

37:54 You are actually part of a large structure.

37:56 And um and in that sense, we have been pilots for long time.

38:03 Um but I think a lot of people need help to transition from waiting to acting.

38:10 Well, especially now.

38:12 I mean, this very unfriendly employment environment

38:16 is making young people feel like supplicants.

38:20 You know, there's like that anxiety of not knowing whether you're wanted,

38:26 of not feeling like you have a lot of control.

38:29 So, I'm going to tell you one

38:30 of my favorite um stories about making yourself the pilot.

38:35 Um So, about 20 years ago, there was a group of young writers in New York.

38:42 And they were outsiders, you know, publishing,

38:45 especially at that time, could be a very clubby industry.

38:50 These were all women, a lot of them were freelancers,

38:54 they didn't feel that connected.

38:57 And so, they formed a group, and they started meeting,

39:01 and most writers groups are about what's on the page, right?

39:06 They're looking at text together.

39:08 This was different.

39:09 They wanted to write books,

39:10 and they decided that they were going to figure out publishing together.

39:15 So, every meeting was devoted to a different topic,

39:19 like how do you get an agent,

39:21 or what's effective book publicity, do you really need a book trailer,

39:26 what makes for a good blurb?

39:28 And they studied these things together,

39:31 and they called themselves the Invisible Institute.

39:36 And they And, you know, they initially considered themselves kind of nobodies.

39:41 You know the way this story ends.

39:45 The members of the group were Rebecca Skloot,

39:48 who wrote The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Gretchen Rubin,

39:54 who wrote The Happiness Project books, Sheri Fink,

39:58 who wrote Five Days at Memorial, Susan Cain, who wrote Quiet.

40:07 Pamela Paul had to leave the group because she

40:09 became the editor of The New York Times Book Review.

40:13 So, these women went from feeling like outsiders to banding

40:20 together in a collective to sort of climb together.

40:27 And so, you know, I don't want to be like

40:29 overly prescriptive because different scenarios are right for different people.

40:34 But, you know, I'm I and a lot of people are tortured right now by this question

40:42 of it like if you're a young person who's

40:45 applying for job after job and not getting any traction,

40:50 what can you do to both improve the outcome

40:54 and and give yourself some agency during the process?

40:59 And I think forming something like

41:01 the Invisible Institute is a really good idea.

41:04 Um Esther, you said something amazing to me the other day.

41:09 We were talking in your kitchen and you said, "You know, Jody,

41:13 this career thing is very parallel to what I say

41:18 about relationships because your famous formulation in Mating in Captivity is

41:23 that to thrive romantic relationships need

41:26 a balance between security and stability

41:29 on the one hand and freedom and exploration on the other.

41:34 You said really, you know, career relationships uh work the same way." So,

41:43 I thought we could talk for a second about how to think about risk at this time.

41:49 It's a big dilemma.

41:51 Everybody's aching for stability.

41:53 It's a chaotic world we live in right now.

41:57 And yet, you don't really get anywhere in a career without taking on some risk.

42:05 So, how do you think through that problem?

42:08 I remember always saying,

42:11 "We all need security and we all need freedom." When it comes to work,

42:17 I can tolerate the lack of security better

42:20 than I can tolerate the lack of freedom.

42:24 That's why I'm self-employed.

42:27 But I think that it's not which one do I need more, it's we need both.

42:32 But some of us really need the security

42:34 for a host of very important reasons that that work provides.

42:39 And then risk comes second.

42:41 And some of us can tolerate the lack of security

42:46 better than they can tolerate the lack of freedom.

42:48 I couldn't tolerate somebody telling me all the time what to do

42:51 because I had a lot of things I wanted to do.

42:54 So, first of all, I think this question applies beyond work.

42:59 There is a risk aversion at this moment and the need

43:02 to want to expe- to have predictability, you know,

43:06 in one's life like you have when you open your phone

43:08 and the app tells you how to get some place.

43:11 Um so, in that sense, it's not limited to work.

43:15 And I think the word risk at this point

43:18 is not linked enough to the word exploration,

43:21 serendipity, spontaneity, improvisation, surprise, curiosity.

43:27 All of that has to do with risk.

43:29 The word risk at this point is about danger,

43:32 uncertainty, and therefore lack of safety.

43:37 And I think if you redefine it as a major aspect of life,

43:41 that it has to do with growth, that it has to do with friction,

43:45 then you begin to think about doing things for which you need the craft,

43:50 for which you need time,

43:52 and you're not just there to deal with anxiety management.

43:56 So much of work at this moment is about managing anxiety.

44:00 It's actually not even about thinking about work.

44:02 Work becomes a symptom of the uncertainty that is in the world.

44:06 And I would add to that that one of the most important things that has

44:10 happened to work is that because it is the place where most young people

44:15 are going to spend 10 years before they deal with any of the other

44:20 aspects of their lives since people date

44:22 less sex have sex sex and everything else.

44:25 Work becomes this hub for belonging,

44:28 for identity, for fulfillment, for continuity.

44:32 I mean, it's like work has become a central

44:35 place for those kinds of needs beyond just the job, j o b fully spelled.

44:42 If you define risk as the the thing that you that will make you fall,

44:48 the thing that will make every parent feel like I invested so much,

44:52 I spent my my I I worked so hard to be able to have you go to school,

44:57 to pay for it, or to at least pay a portion of it, or all of that.

45:01 And this risk is the devaluing of this entire enterprise.

45:06 Rather than you're young, you have plenty of time to find the thing.

45:12 And how many of you people here uh thinking that you chose

45:17 what you do versus a bit of choice and a lot of life?

45:22 Kind of life brought things to you.

45:24 And and and things began to develop

45:26 and that's where you ended up doing the thing.

45:28 Life may be a mentor, life may be an opportunity.

45:32 It's life.

45:33 There's except for people with vocations, artists, musicians, you know,

45:39 who people who know from the beginning that that's what they're going to do,

45:42 then life doesn't really I mean, life has a lot of influence too,

45:46 but you you have at least a sense I want to be X.

45:50 But many of us didn't we we didn't have a career that is based on I want to be.

45:56 Wonderful.

45:57 Okay.

45:58 So, Priya is going to close us out tonight,

46:01 but I just want to say that if there's one thing you take

46:04 it especially for like the under 30 crowd here that's still sorting it out,

46:09 if there's one thing I want you to take

46:11 from this evening is a feeling of encouragement and warmth,

46:15 and a feeling like Esther, Priya, and I have confidence in you that there are

46:19 other older people in this room who do, too.

46:23 That there are people you can ask questions of because I think your experience

46:28 of entry into the work world has been too cold and too lonely,

46:33 and I think people our age need to counteract that.

46:43 So, we began with a text, we're going to end with a text,

46:46 and we're going to close with Jody's words.

46:49 Here are her tips at the end of the book.

46:52 Exit the library.

46:55 Do not let your parents decide your career.

46:59 Look to your friends instead.

47:03 Observe the obvious.

47:07 Drop the assumption that your college

47:08 experiences will dictate what becomes of you.

47:13 Consult your demons.

47:15 Relax about coherence.

47:19 Find by starting.

47:23 Listen to your positive emotions.

47:26 Find alternate doors.

47:29 Make your pursuit a group exercise.

47:33 You should not have to do any of this grappling alone.

47:43 We wanted to pass on the experience of three women who each had a story of how

47:52 they started that was very far from where

47:55 they had arrived or where they are currently,

47:57 which may not be the end point for that matter.

48:00 The intergenerational conversation around work isn't just between parents

48:06 and children or bosses and people who work for them.

48:11 Mentorship actually starts the moment you have 1 year

48:17 longer experience than the person who comes after you.

48:21 And mentorship is not just what to do the other person should do,

48:26 but it is also the sharing of your own experience,

48:29 which is really what I thought we were

48:30 doing as well was to basically share a portion

48:35 of the story of our career to give

48:38 a sense that where people arrive is often very,

48:43 very far and different from where they started

48:45 and where they imagined they would get to.

48:48 And to introduce a little bit more flexibility

48:51 in the thinking about work or what Jody Kantor called coherence,

48:57 kind of linearity, that it's not just one straight line.

49:01 When you mentor, when you pass on the experience,

49:04 when you share names of people,

49:07 when you introduce relationships, when you introduce need with craft,

49:13 resources with aspirations, all these encounters actually highlight something

49:20 that is ultra dear to my own work, which is the importance of relationships.

49:26 Work is rooted in relationships.

49:30 And relationships travel to work.

49:37 Where should we begin with Esther Perel is produced by Magnificent Noise.

49:41 We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network

49:43 in partnership with New York Magazine and The Cut.

49:46 Our production staff includes Eric Newsom, Destry Sibley,

49:50 Sabrina Farhi, Kristen Muller, and Julie Nat.

49:53 Original music and additional production by Paul Schneider.

49:57 And the executive producers of Where Should We Begin?

50:00 are Esther Perel and Jesse Baker.

50:02 We'd also like to thank Courtney Hamilton, Mary Alice Miller, and Jack Saul.