--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Support for Today Explained comes from the FIFA World Cup, of all things. The FIFA World Cup 26 is coming to North America next summer. It is the ultimate celebration of sports and culture. You can get closer to the beautiful game with a hospitality package, closer to the action, the best seats, the best suites, closer to match day and that world-class food and that world-class entertainment, closer to the experience of a lifetime. Book a hospitality package at fifaworldcup.com slash hospitality.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram. And on today's show, we're going to talk about how awkward COVID-19 can be. Not the virus, but the social stuff. Because we're inching towards month six in the United States with no end in sight. And some states are super open. Some states are half open. It's summer. People are out there recklessly doing stuff. Other people are still very scared. And it's creating a lot of tension.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So this one woman, in the span of a single week, she attended a wedding in Pennsylvania on the West Virginia border and a funeral in Cleveland, Ohio. The wedding, they didn't really want to go. It was the side of the family that, you know, they kind of knew that they were sort of anti-maskers on Facebook and stuff, but there was already kind of a tense family dynamic going on. So they were like, if we don't go to this wedding, it's going to be seen as a dig. We just have to go. We have to suck it up. We're going to wear masks, whatever.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So they arrive at the wedding and it's even worse than they thought that it was going to be, even after all the Facebook posts. The wedding is indoors. It's 150 people. They're one of like three people that are wearing masks. The food is served buffet style. The only bathrooms are porta-potties. There is no soap or hand sanitizer there. The coronavirus is not mentioned at all. People are dancing, people are hugging, and there's elderly people there. You know, it's like people are serious at risk, but because they were in a part of the country that at that point was not really affected too much, they assumed that they were invincible.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: During the same week, they attend a funeral. And what's funny is that there was actually 150 people at the funeral, but they arrived. and the viewing was drive-by. So the family of the deceased was standing outside while everyone kind of drove through and said their condolences from a distance. The funeral was the next day at a very large church. Everyone was social distancing and it was just really respectful. It was a Catholic mass and the priests didn't put communion in their mouths. It was just handed out.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Rebecca Jennings, you write about culture for Vox. And I think these are good, extreme examples of people trying to navigate things like weddings and funerals right now. But there's also some very unremarkable quotidian situations we're all dealing with, right?
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Oh, my gosh, totally. So I was visiting my parents in Arlington Virginia about a month ago for my birthday and you know I got my hair done because it was impossible to get your hair done in New York because hair salons are just open it was impossible to get an appointment and before I was even inside they took my temperature with one of those like temperature guns I had to sign a form that said you know I hadn't been on public transportation and each pen was individually wrapped in saran wrap
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: And I mean, this was like a small business owner and she was, you know, spending more money to make things safer for her employees and her customers. And we wore masks the whole time. It was like four hours. It was super, super respectful.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Can we talk about why your hair appointment takes four hours? Because I get it dyed and I have platinum blonde hair and it is such a bitch to maintain. Never do this. I do not recommend. It's so expensive. It's so long. It's terrible. It ruins your hair.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: So you never considered letting it grow out and be its natural color for the quarantine, for the pandemic?
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Oh, I did that and it looked terrible. Fair. All right. So back to your story. So that night we went out to dinner because it was like my birthday dinner. And we assumed that it was going to be like an outdoor seating, socially distant kind of place. And we arrive and it's so crowded. Like everyone was really close together. It was super packed and it was like it was a pedestrian only street.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: So it's sort of like that all the time. but then we arrive and they're like oh yeah your table's inside and I was like I thought that was illegal and so we were sort of debating like we were like well do we just go somewhere else like there's not really anywhere around here and eventually we just did it and we sat inside pretty close to other people like definitely within six feet there were like four other tables in this one dining room
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean the waiters wear masks but it was very weird and then across the room someone's celebrating their birthday and everyone just like sings happy birthday. I'm like, oh, cool. We're all just like shouting our germs into each other's faces in this tiny submarine of a restaurant.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Yikes. Yeah, it was not great. I think the thing we're dancing around here in this interview and in our lives as we try to return to some sort of safe socialization is that no one really knows how careful everyone else is being, right?
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Yes. And it kind of forces people to revert to like safe sex practices, right? It's just like having the talk every time you decide to see someone or do something with someone.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean we had like a socially distanced Today Explained get together a few weeks ago, and we had to figure out, okay, who's comfortable with like food from a restaurant? Who's comfortable bringing food from home and eating said food? It was like a whole elaborate conversation just so we could figure out how to do like a potluck in a park.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Yeah, totally. These are weird. Like most people don't typically have to have these kind of boundary setting chats with their friends and family, but we do now and it's no one, yeah, no one knows what they're doing.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: There's actually a word for this, insinuation anxiety. Insinuation anxiety. Yeah. I talked to a psychologist who, as soon as she told me this word, I was like, oh my gosh, yes. And it basically just means that we feel weird about insinuating that someone is doing something wrong or doing something bad.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Is this something that was made up for like the pandemic? No, it's apparently a very common thing. The analogy that she used was that, say you're trying to sell someone on something, like maybe it's a piece of advice or a product or something. And you tell them, you know, like, hey, listen, I have a conflict of interest here. You know, I will get paid more if you take my advice or buy this thing. And counterintuitively, it makes the other person actually trust you more because they didn't want to have to go through the mental hoops of assuming that you were profiting off of this. because now they know and they're like, oh, I feel better about this because you were honest.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Hmm. So is there a way to diffuse insinuation anxiety? Because it's not fun saying to your colleagues or your friends or even your family, like, hey, I'd like to see you, but first we need to go through this checklist to make sure that you're a responsible human being right now.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: For sure. And one thing that she recommended was kind of playing a social trump card. Like, If you really want to set a boundary, just blame it on something else. Like, hey, like, I'm going to see my elderly aunt, even though no one should be seeing their elderly aunt right now. Because it's a little bit weirder to say, like, I've seen your Instagram stories and you're hanging out with like 12 people all the time. So no thanks.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Wait a second. So you're saying you should lie instead? It's a white lie. It's a nice lie. You know, you're being safe.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Yeah. But I want to live in a world where we're all being a little more honest with each other. You know, and some people have had the pandemic talk with their loved ones. They've kind of been like, so what you been doing? With a very coded underlying subtext there.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah. I mean, one thing I took away from your article about this at Vox.com is like, this pandemic is making a socially awkward generation even more socially awkward. Oh, totally. And I remember that was like the biggest response to the story when it published. They were like, now you all know what I'm going through. They're like, I'm already like this. So yeah, it's an evening out of the social competence chart. Yeah.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: I mean, like people who didn't know whether to like shake hands or high five or a hug or just like nod at each other when they saw each other before the coronavirus. My gosh, they're just doomed afterwards, huh?
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Well, all the most awkward people I know are really into the elbow bump thing. They're like, hey, I finally have something dorky and weird to do. And now I have an excuse for it.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Elbow bumps will save us from ourselves. Yeah. I think, you know, there is a way to have like a communicative verbal elbow bump. And that is just saying like, hey, we are trying to stay very safe for obvious reasons. And can we just have like a quick conversation about what you're doing so we can see if we're on the same page? Like that doesn't have to be painful, does it?
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: Totally. And actually, I had one of those myself last night. I was going on a walk with a friend and this is a friend. She's sort of in my little bubble. We've been seeing a lot of each other. And we invited her down to come to this like shore house for a week that we're doing. And she was like, all right, before I go, can we talk about like how your parents have been socially distancing? Because one of my sisters is a doctor and she's been kind of hounding me.
--:-- Rebecca Jennings: So, yeah, I have had one of those conversations. It is a little bit awkward, but there's bigger things at stake here, you know, than just feeling weird. So I think we need to suffer the awkwardness to prevent the greater awkwardness of having coronavirus. Yeah, it's not fun. Would not recommend. It's not all bad news. COVID has been producing some habits worth holding on to. That's after the break.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Seagal Samuel, you're the co-host of Vox's Future Perfect podcast. We just spoke to our colleague Rebecca Jennings about how this whole insinuation anxiety thing has left anxious people even more anxious in the pandemic. But you wrote a hopeful piece, strangely for you, about how there have been a lot of positive outcomes, socially even, from this unprecedented experience of ours.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah, I have to start by saying, I think the positive outcomes have been largely for the super privileged among us, right? So this is like not obviously for people who have had to work through the pandemic in high-risk situations. But for those of us who have been lucky enough to be able to work from home and to have kept our jobs and have reasonable amounts of income, I think the pandemic has kind of enabled some potentially positive changes.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Let's hear about them. What are your faves? Well, I kind of wanted to get a sense of whether this was just me or whether this was happening for like a broader swath of people. So I actually put out a survey to Vox readers and I asked them what positive habits and lifestyle changes have been coming about for them during quarantine. And it was cool. More than 100 people responded from around the globe. And a few broad trends leaped out at me.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: By far, the most common one was that people realized that in quarantine, during lockdown, they've been reducing consumerism. That's interesting, though, because I feel like when I walk down the street, I see Amazon packages everywhere. Yeah, this was earlier in the pandemic. And I think at that moment, a lot of us were just sort of like hunkering down and just like feeling the change in lifestyle in terms of not being able to go to a mall or eat out at restaurants every week and all of that.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And they're just like generally saving money by not spending so much on trinkets that they realize they maybe don't actually need. And a lot of people also told me that to the degree they do have to spend on stuff, they are more inclined now to direct that consumption to small local businesses because they've been seeing a lot of them shuddering and like really suffering economically during the pandemic and realizing, oh, like these small mom and pop shops actually need our support to survive.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Sorry, Jeff. Yeah, sorry, Jeff. Another thing has been, again, for the privileged among us, this ability to slow down and put less pressure on ourselves. One person even wrote to me and said, quarantine has forced me to slow down in ways I haven't since I was a kid. All my life I've been on the go constantly for half my life, right? Always busy, busy.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And so I basically think like the broad trend that's happening is a lot of people are kind of looking around at their lives and thinking like, oh, what was all that hyper competitive productivity for? You know, like I've been measuring my self-worth and value as a human being by this capitalist yardstick. And maybe there are other ways to measure my worth and value as a human being.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: With that one, I really wonder how much it will last. You know, I think we all gave the planet a break during the real shutdowns. And of course, you saw all the memes saying, you know, we are the virus. Nature is healing. They can see whatever it was, like the bottom of the Venice canals again. The skies are clearing. But the second we can, isn't everyone just going to be like, finally, I'm taking that trip to Europe I canceled, then I'm going to go to India at last and do that tour through the country. Is it all just going to go back to normal, Sigal? Are we going to lose everything we slowed down and gained?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Well first of all to some degree we are already seeing that right We already seeing you know flights to different countries ticking up again But tell you what why don't we think about the positive things for a bit? And at the end, I promise I will give you some tricks for how to maintain those positive changes post lockdown. All right, let it roll. What else you got?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Other positive changes people have been making, exercising daily, Like all these people who were previously not into fitness have just been going nuts, staying in their houses 24-7. And so they're getting into like yoga and running and all of that. And they're like, wow, shockingly, this actually super improves my life. Yeah. Amazing. I do yoga once a week now. Do you do yoga with Adrienne on YouTube? Because that's what I'm doing. No, she freaks me out. Is that the one with the dog? Yeah. What do you think is freaky about that?
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I do yoga with Allison and Nick. They're friends of mine who do a Zoom yoga. actual humans you know yeah yeah weird in other breaking news the sourdough obsession is real everyone wrote to me in this survey about how they're like obsessed with their sourdough starters and they're obsessed with baking all of a sudden and cooking especially vegetarian food and i think a lot of people have just been spending more time in nature trying to go for hikes, get out of the house, crucially, get their kids out of the house.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: And generally just for people who can, working from home, that is a change that a lot of people told me they want to maintain post-coronavirus. Is it time now to talk about how we maintain these things post-pandemic? Yeah. There are psychologists who specialize in behavior change, and they say that there are a few things you can do now to make it more likely that you will succeed in maintaining your good new habits down the line.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: So one thing you can do right now is you can prime your environment. For example, another one of the positive changes people have been making during this pandemic, they've been donating to charity more. I started doing that when the pandemic started and I realized that I just would get forgetful or whatever if I just left it to chance that I'm going to try to donate every month. So instead, I just set up an automatically recurring monthly donation.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: You're saying the machines can help us keep our good habits. Yeah. So it could be the machines. It could be, let's say the good habit you want to maintain is going for a run every single morning. One thing you can do is put your running shoes right by your bed, and that'll nudge you to go for that morning run first thing when you wake up.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: I like that a lot. I do similar things like that with clothing or with like dishes I need to take to the kitchen. You know, it's like you leave them in a certain place so you don't forget. Yeah. Primate your environment. It's a good one. Can I give you another trick? A hundred percent. Okay. So a lot of people, when they do what's called the target behavior, the habit they're trying to inculcate in themselves, afterwards they reward themselves. So, you know, let's say you like go for that morning run and then you get a delicious milkshake or smoothie or whatever, right? As a reward.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: That, it turns out, is actually not the most effective way to do this. It's good to reward yourself, but make it an intrinsic reward, not an extrinsic reward. So instead of reaching for that chocolate milkshake after every run, pause after the run for one minute to just savor the extra energy and strength and like physical awesomeness that you feel. Because that is actually going to seep into your brain in a more long lasting way. And it's more likely to get you to keep doing this habit.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Okay. Can I just say one other thing? Yes. I feel like it is important to note that if you do not emerge from this pandemic with any amazing, healthy, awesome new habits, like that's OK. surviving a global pandemic is in itself an accomplishment so if you manage to get through this without just being completely pummeled and destroyed by the end of it like congratulations you're doing great Seagal, that's like the ultimate positive note to leave it on.
--:-- Seagal Samuel: Yeah, it's like, you know what? We're in the middle of a global pandemic, okay? We've got it. Just cut ourselves a little bit of slack. Seagal Samuel is the host of a new series called The Way Through in the Future Perfect podcast feed. together with our colleague, Sean Illing. She's kind of put together a philosophy sample course to help you cope with all the ups and downs of 2020. You've got mindfulness, Buddhism, Christianity, even Cornel West. If you're interested, just search for Future Perfect wherever you listen to Today Explained.
