Heading Home with Anne Helen Petersen

behind the curtains of the production of the show. You know, we we have to record all the time because very often we're having a great conversation that's super interesting and I'm rambling about something and then it's not recorded. So just prior to this, I started to talk about something and then you were like, start recording. You didn't yell at me. I mean that makes it sound like you're cruel,

but you're not. You're actually I was very nice for anybody, know, even though she was made fun of my audio in the last episode. Okay, I'll tell you the story of how I came to purchase my new gadget. Are you familiar with Instagram? Have you ever used the service? It's a photo photo sharing service owned by Facebook. Well, the company is called Metta now formerly known as Facebook. Anyhow, I was on Instagram which I'm increasingly on because I don't want to look at Twitter. Uh, and I have

to say, like, I'm that seems fine. So far, it seems fine to not look at Twitter. I was on Instagram and I was looking at there's a tab on Instagram which I don't know how many people interact with it, but I want to say that the symbol for the tab is maybe what is it? Is it a Is it a magnifying glass? Perhaps? Is it a what is it? Is it a magnifying glass? Yeah? That sounds right. It used to be called the Discover the Discover tab, yes, correct.

So so every so often when I feel like I've exhausted my Instagram sort of scrolling or story watching, I will go to the to the Discover tab just to see what's going on. Now, I have to say, their curation of things that I might be interested in is second to none. So um. A little while ago, I started following this musician whose name is Fred Again. Do you have ever heard of Fred Again? Fred Again is a British guy. He looks like a classic white British clubgoer.

I can't describe it any better than that. He just looks like he just looks like a classic British guy who's into raves from train spotting. You know those people are heroin attics. This is like a look um, you know. Yeah, he has like a short like a closely cropped haircut maybe some I don't think he's any facial hair, but he kind of maybe always has a little bit of a five o'clock shadow. I think he wears like a

vest all the time for some reason. Like I don't know if I've ever seen him not wearing a vest in any of the photos or videos I've seen. Anyhow, Fred Again makes like kind of euphoric pop house music. He's fairly well known, he's fairly popular, He's got like a following. It also sounds like rave music from the Nine Ties, which I used to produce, So you know,

for me, it's it's like catnet. So I started following the Instagram, I started listening to some of his music, and and then I went to the Discover tab one day and there was a video of Fred Again talking to Zane Low. Also like Fred Again. His whole vibe is like he's really possy, Like everything's like super positive, like loving smiles, hugs, like it's all like very it's very plur. Do you know what plur is. Plur is the thing that people used to put on rave flyers

in the nineties and early two thousands. It stood for peace, love, unity in respect. It was like an ethos by which the raver lived by. So there's a video of Fred Again and Zane Low and Fred again is playing this instrument and it's it's something made by a company called Native Instruments. It's called the Machine. Plus this is like a more advanced version of it. I mean, I assume you've seen the types of samplers that like in hip hop and in rap, like if like you think of

like how do like rap producers work. It is like the thing that you think of iconic. So it's like kind of that. But it also has like two screens on it, and it has like all these buttons like in knobs and stuff. It's not much bigger than a laptop, okay, And the entire thing is like a self contained like music production device. And in the video Fred again, I'm assuming his first name is Fred, but I can't be sure.

Fred is like talking about how this thing had completely changed the way he makes music, and I was like, oh, that's interesting because this guy's music is pretty interesting and what he was playing on it was pretty interesting, and I had never really explored the device at all anyhow, So I ordered one, like just rant just was like, I'm going to check this out. I want to. I

want to play with it, and and I have. I've been messing around with and in fact, I was late to this recording because I was messing around with it. And it's so fascinating to me because it's a completely tactile experience. It is a completely new experience for me.

I don't know how it works. Actually, so most technology, I have a very very deep understanding of how it func and this is a thing that's like, I mean, for sure, if I put it in front of anybody who has not produced music, they would be completely just

dumbfounded by its functionality. And even as a person who has used very complex software and hardware to make music, it's still like it's kind of vexine to me in a good way, though, in like a fun way, like I don't know how it works, and so I'm experimenting and learning things. But the thing that's really interesting about it to me is that it is completely offline right, I mean it is. It does connect to Wi Fi. You can download sounds and stuff like that, but it

is not a computer. Now, I'm used to making music on a computer. When you're on a laptop, you're still like on the Internet or whatever. You might get a notification, you might decide to like look at something on Amazon, or you know, research something. This is like you can't really do anything else when you're using it, and it is just unbelievably pleasant to be doing something creative that has no material connection to any of the other things

that exists in the digital realm. Like it is just it is essentially air gapped from the stuff that would be otherwise distracting to you. And um and yeah, and I've been like I've had it for a couple of days, and I think it's like I find it like endlessly fascinating and and extremely good at what it does, with like you know, having learned probably one percent of all of its functions. Anyhow, Native Instruments, by the way, not sponsoring yet, but I would love to do some reads

for them about how much I love the machine. Plus the other thing that I've been doing in the same set of days that I've been messing with this is that we have recently purchased several landline telephones for the house. Laura has been buying old telephones, like from the sixties and seventies and eighties, and god, they sound so good

first off when you use them. But secondly, there's something really amazing about taking a call and being like locked to a place and like literally not receiving a notification while you're in the middle of it, or you know, having somebody like, you know, face time you or whatever. Why are you getting landlines? Well, you know, that's a great question. We were telling Zelda what a land line was like a few years ago, and she was like, could we get one? And I think we thought it

would be novel and fun. And she probably has used the landline more than anybody. She likes to make calls on the phone, So that was the original reason. And then and then Laura, I don't know, recently got this idea that she wanted one in her office, and um, she has an office here at our house. And and then you know, now we have one in the kitchen and they're just springing up all over the place, like the kitchen landline the kitchen. Yeah, we got like the

iconic kitchen. It's like hangs on the wall. We actually got this like bright orange phone. It's like hangs on the wall. It's got like the curly you know, cable

connecting the handset. I mean, Laura had told me the story about how one time, you know, her mother like you know, accidentally like let go of the phone and had it pulled all the way across like two rooms and it went like flying out of her hand and it like whipped into her brother's head or something, you know, which is a real thing that used to happen with these phones. Yeah, I mean that was the whole thing. It was how far could you go to have your

private twelve year old conversation exactly? Well, now I think we're for Christmas. We're gonna get one for Zelda's room because she's been asking for one. Like we're gonna have like a full house of of landlines. It's going to be like But this is why I feel like it's connected to my interest in this music making gadget, which is obviously it's very very futuristic, but it's self contained in a way that I don't think that enough things

feel these days. And you know, I think that's increasingly important to people for their sanity, Like a little sliver of of all of of these things are like trying to find a way back to some form of living that feels more sane and familiar. I might argue cozy, some style of living where you have like much closer connections. Like the phone is a great example of a thing where you know, who do you call on the phone If you're not prying calling, you know you're calling like

your friends and family. You had to memorize their phone numbers. There was an infinite amount of people you could call. Laura reminded me that you used to be able to call an operator, and you would talk to an operator like a person. She said that sometimes, like when her parents didn't pick her up from school or something and she had no money, she would call the operator and like kind of beg the operator to put her through to her parents, and they would do it. Sometimes like

on a pay phone. Oh, we would do the what is that? I was that like where it tells you that you've got to collect call coming through or whatever. We had a baby, it's a boy. What does that mean? That was the commercial We had a baby, It's a boy. Is that because that code? Will you accept this collect call from we had a baby? It's a boy? I see. So it's you just get the message out in that manner and I'm ready to get picked up, right. I see. You'd stay it as fast as possible and then they

would just get that like a page. Well that's a little more advanced. That's probably ten years later, you know, but still to your point, and perhaps to my point, I do think we're kind of seeking out at this point as the world around us has become unfathomably and uncontrollably large. And I have definitely touched on this in other episodes. I do think we're kind of seeking out like more of what would be considered a traditional. Well,

the word traditional is loaded. You can't say traditional anymore because that's like Nazi stuff basically. But like if you say a traditional now, people are like, oh, that's coded language, meaning like white Aryan family or whatever. I think maybe

I'm wrong, but I feel like it is. But you know, just sort of like scale down way of living where your world is much smaller and your communities are much smaller, and you have sane real world interactions with people and anyhow, and thinking about all this site, I thought about the writer and podcaster and author and Helen Peterson, who has written a about well, She's written a lot about a lot of things, but definitely has kind of developed this

community around her work and around talking about sort of modern life and all of its pitfalls and traps and sort of out of wax scale. She's written a lot about burnout, which is a topic that is sort of the byproduct of a world where our jobs are our entire personality. Anyhow, So I thought we should talk to Anne Helen and talk about what's happening to the world right now and how we how we get back to sanity.

So here's my conversation with Anne Helen Peterson. Hello, we have someone digging out our old step dick tank and replacing it with a new septic tank in our backyard, just the normal today nightmare scenario. As a person with a septic tank, I can tell you that I dread the day was the only matter of time. Isn't it that they're going to be like, you need to get a new septic tank? Our is this from? Like? And

well our house built nine so we're right behind you. Yeah, so our house is built in nineteen o four and was like a fishing camp and then they slowly turned it into a habitable place. But the septic is very very old, and when there are metal septic tanks, they rest out and they fail. And and we didn't know when we bought the house, like there was no red flag next to septic tank as metal. We're just like, oh, really,

you didn't have like you had an inspection. Yeah, we had an inspection, but they weren't like bad, bad bad. We actually had an older inspection because you know, it was during the pandemic. So it was like, oh, this house sold two years ago, just use this old inspection. They were like, it's fine, we just looked at this two years ago. Yeah, like everyone was waving inspections then too. Anyway, No, no,

I mean, you don't write. You don't want to go in and get COVID, you know, looking at the septics tank at somebody's house, So just go whatever. It's fine it is. We didn't know. It was a big deal

and it didn't fail. This is actually very in fact, what I'm about to tell you, it's very germane to many years of your output about like burnout and also like obviously working from home and all this, you know whatever, But like, okay, did you know we just talked to our septic people here, who like, God, this is so disgusting, by the way, but here's the thing. The rate at which they need to pump out septic tanks has gone

up like tenfold over the pandemic. Like they were like, yeah, like everybody shiftied all the time now and the septic tanks are getting full in like they're like we used to come every it's like two years or something. Now they're coming like every six months or whatever. It's like, this is the most disgusting. Anyhow, welcome to the podcast. This is exactly I don't know if this is what you were planning on talking about. I love this. I

love this whole. I like everything is happening right now, and I never I've read enough scene that you're all of your new content is basically septic related. I mean, your entire new world of output is all about septic stuff. So I think you're an expert in just a couple of things septic tanks and work life better. Uh And Okay, thank you first off for joining the podcast and doing this. I really appreciate it. You're a person who, like I

know you from online. I feel like we've interacted at some point probably, but we don't actually know each other where, just like a person on the internet. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's like person on the internet knowing person like particular currency. Uh. Now, we're not here to talk about Twitter, but it is kind of in the news, and I have a question specifically about you and Twitter that I'm sort of curious about.

Correct me if I'm wrong, But I feel like I've seen this a few times that you like to crowdsource people on Twitter. You'll like ask them questions about stuff. And if Twitter goes away, which it seems like pretty possib able now, or maybe doesn't go away but becomes way less. I don't want to say cool, because I don't think it was ever exactly cool to be on But you know, do you have a backup plan for that kind of engagement, that kind of interaction, Like what

happens to those kinds of activities for you? If like elat Musk makes it totally intolerable on Twitter, well, you know, the first place I started doing that was Facebook, because I started this Facebook page related to like an old word plus blog that I had called celebrity gassap academic style back in the late two thousand's, like two thousands seven. I'm just interrupt. Sorry, I hate to interrupt you, but I'm gonna do you have like a degree in celebrity.

I have an actually PhD in the history of celebrity. So it's not right you're like a doctor of celebrities. So I have my PhDs and media studies because oftentimes people say, like those are the real thing. So it's in Media Studies University of Texas at Austin. I wrote my dissertation on the history of celebrity gassa, So it's really like a study of the way that start images were formed, sold, consumed, all that sort of thing. And that's what I started writing that that word press blog

as I was studying for my comprehensive exams. It was bored out of my mind. Wanted some sort of like interaction with the outside world, and so I started writing this blog and then like in a hint of what it would come with my life, I know, did not ever think journalism was in the future. I was like, oh, I'm also bored. What if I made a Facebook page for this to get even more engagement. And I ran that group. You know, it was people like it ran for a long time. Yeah, that's a lot of people. Yeah.

And then I noticed that like it also was getting hidden by Facebook all the time, you know, like it just and also, you know, everything that we all know to do with Facebook controversial was a controversial no no, no no. It was like people would join it and we have like clear moderation. And I just also got sick of like doing every single platform. So I think this is kind of a history that you'll see with

people who like, oh it was on that platform. And then I've had more and more interesting conversations on Twitter, and I actually have seen over the course of the last couple of years, like I'm less interested in those responses on Twitter, in part because everyone is in that moment of what the podcasters Sarah Marshall calls like like if you're like I like poppy seed bagels, the responses are all like this is garlic eracer, you know what I mean, Like it's just very combative, like how dare

you think not like pose this question in this way? Very reactionary hair trigger even if they like you, I believe I completely understand. Have you been on Twitter for a long time. It's like when you open it, right, it's pretty bad news. Every time you look at it, you're like, yikes, like it's a word were why are we hanging out? It's like things are so bad in

ways I didn't even realize. Yes, and I've moved. You're doing a lot more of it on Instagram because you can do the like box where people can fill in the question. So I'll put in a question there and then people can respond. That community there is like women, so it's it's filling this well, it's filling in a different niche. And then a lot of it too, happens

on my newsletter for subscribers. There are these really rich and interesting conversations that we have in the comments and then also in the weekly threads, and then also in our discord, which is where I think a lot of the conversation is migrating right now from Twitter for people who are in good faith want to have conversations. Okay, so you've got sub stack, you've got a discord. Obviously,

you still have the social stuff. You've got Instagram. It sounds exhausting like everything you just described not not to knock it, but no, it is it is. You know, I think that I am a person who likes chatting with other people online. Some people do not have that part of them that is not interesting to them. I've

like chatting with people online. It just has felt so unfun for so long now, Like I mean, I remember like loving being online, Like I can remember the feeling, you know how talking about of just being like I'm surfing this is I'm like surfing the information. I'm like high fiving all my buds as I go along, you know, as I hit the waves or whatever. And it is so good. It is like the best day at the beach of all time every time I log on and and I can remember that palbably like for a long

period of my life. But you know, like since like twenty somewhere around there, it started to get real maybe even earlier, honestly, just real bad. And now I feel like we're kind of at this strange Maybe I'm old, by the way, This is totally possible that I'm just an old guy. Yeah, Like I like chatting with people, but I haven't found a lot of people to chat with recently. Maybe this is the reason why I need to do a sub stack. I need to just go

inside anybody who would subscribe to sub stack. But the problem sometimes in situations like that as you get like a bad echo chamber. So you really have to encourage conversation that's not just with you, right, um, And then it also takes moderation, and that's something that I think most platforms are unwilling to do. And also most participants are unwilling to do with each other and with themselves, Like they're just not willing to try to have a

better conversation. They just want to like scream into the ether because there are a lot of things to scream about. You know, I have to do this work all the time in the threads and the comments like do not be butts to one another, like and don't be assholes, and there's a lot that goes into that. But let's try to keep this a good place on the internet.

Like that's a constant refrain, right And you know, we have moderators in the discord because even like nice liberal people devolve into behaviors that are everybody could be an assholet yes, no, I mean nobody is like purely good. There's everybody has a dark side. Now, I think that's so interesting. Like I actually I was in a back and forth on Twitter about you know, I don't know whatever.

We're talking to Tony Hale, who was at Twitter for a long time and trying to figure out their content, and anyway, we got into a conversation about like if you look at places like Reddit and you're talking about discord moderators, like you know, people human beings who are like one, they decide there want they want to be in a place for a very specific reason, not just randomly. And two you've got people who are there to make sure things stay on track or stay in a place

that's somewhat reasonable for everybody. It really matters. And like I think that increasingly it just feels more like what would you do in a normal human situation, right, Like you wouldn't just let the party be completely open ended, like anybody could be invited to it, and even if somebody's a complete assholt the party, you just let them keep doing it. Right, there's some sense of ofly you

just scale it down a little bit. If you make it about like Okay, it's this group of people in this place and there's rules, it's a becomes a lot more manageable. So maybe you've got the right solution here, And you know, it's it's hard to because it's not just like what can't you do? You know, like we have these whole community guidelines that we worked as a group to come up with. And it's not just like no turf is um, no bigotry like that stuff is

easy to moderate. It's more like, how do we not make this like an incredibly white space even if the majority of the people who are there are white? Like, how do we descenter that? How do we not make it so incredibly us centric? What are the small things we can do to try to remind ourselves over and over again to try to like not just go with the status quo of how we already have conversations online. So it's hard, it's hardware, No, it is again, I'm

saying that sounds like a lot of work. I'm like exhausted just hearing about it, just right. But here's the big thing is I don't have a company slack that I have to check into, so I'm not wasting my time pretending to work, right, which used to take up so much of my time. Now I actually work when I want to wear don't work when I don't want to work, and that frees up time to do the

things that I actually want to do. Kind of sounds so so good now, I would say one of the things that you became very well known for is talking about burnout, which to me, everything you're saying makes me feel I'm like, I'm burning out just hearing about the discord, you know. But like, so you've written a lot about and talked a lot about a feeling of exhaustion, you know, sort of stretched thinness of this generation, Like, how do you avoid it with all the things that you have

to personally be responsible for. Well, first of all, I think that one of the primary sources of burnout is lack of community, just generally, right, people who because they have been forced or feel like they have been forced to really dedicate themselves to working all of the time, and all of their mental energy goes into work, and they feel bad if they're dedicating any extra time to

anything that isn't work. And then when they aren't working, they're so tired that the only thing they can do are like things that seem appealing but that aren't actually the things they want to do, like scrolling their phone forever. Right, Yes, that is a perfect example. It's like I'm doing it. It feels good, but is it good? Is it good?

And I have had to spend a lot of time thinking about how do I mindfully like actually norrish community in my life that makes it so that I have things that I want to do besides working, and then also give me that time away from work that is really restorative and makes me feel like I have the safety net, right, like I have people, and so I've done that in my like in person life with choices about where we moved and like I don't have kids, but we take care of my friends kids twice a

week after school, Like that is an important thing. Like yeah, it's basically like the fun part. That's what I was gonna say, Like that sounds like so much fun. I mean I don't know how old they are, but like kids are a blast their kindergarten in third grade. So I walk over pick them up from school. We like get to do the fun stuff and then right when they get cranky. It's like that's definitely yeah. I was gonna say, like definitely, Like it's like a babysitter mode.

You're like, yeah, I had a blast of the kids, like give me my twenty bucks, I'm out of here. So I've done that in my real life in meaningful ways and then in the community that and it sounds corny, but it really is a community that we have in this discord, like and as a subscriber community, like the threads are hundreds to thousands of comments every week, Like it is about stuff that is really meaningful to people's lives.

They are really seeking community. Twice a year, we raise between twenty and thirty dollars in mutual aid, Like this is a it's a real thing. And so when I'm participating in the community, Yes, there are those harder parts of like moderating and being like guys, stop being like so white bougie right now, or like whatever you know, um, But then it also is a source of community for me too. It's newshing. So if it ceased to feel like that, I think I would step away from it.

But for me right now, like it doesn't feel overwhelming. It feels like there are people who are also taking labor off of my plate too, Like this is the reason that there are moderators who do this work for comp subscriptions, you know, like it feels important to them, you know, like Venomo the money. I could vent with the money, but all of them are in the position where they don't need extra money, so I'm not suggesting

you should. It makes sense, like it's like, okay, this is a bad example maybe, but I'm like, you know, in the Mechanical Keyboards Reddit, it used to be pretty small. Actually now there's like a million people in it. But for sure the people who were investing time and energy into it were there to like make it. They wanted

to make it a positive experience. And there's actually a lot of Reddit communities are not read it is in any way perfect, But they did figure out some basic stuff on the Internet, which is people really want to be part of, like to your point, a community, and when you're there, you invest send it in a way that when you're a part of it that you might not if it's like this kind of free floating anything goes space like a for instance, like a Twitter. Yes,

so I get that. I get that. I mean, like any community that I'm a part of, and there are very few because I'm horrible loser, but there aren't a lot of places on the Internet that feel pleasant anymore. So maybe I'll have to join your discord and hang out. I mean, you should come and look. It's like it's

an interesting place. There's like some thread that would make total sense in terms of like interests, Like I don't know, there's like a running thread that some people like that's the only place to hang out out is the running thread. They're like, I want to hang out with other people who run, who think about running this way, which is like, let's take a load of rest and also let's let's congratulate each other. But it's just like not people who

run until they throw up. There, like people who run reasonably. They're not fast. Holes is the name for like a certain type of I've never heard that before, and I didn't realize this is that a lot of online spaces for running are incredibly toxics. So it's people who really some of that community. Yeah, yeah, really toxic. It's so funny how any online space for anything is toxic. It's

like any Babies collectors forum. Actually it was extremely toxic and political turns out well, and you know, like the best example of this is like the knitting forums are incredibly toxic. I just saw something I don't know what it was. I was like randomly seeing something about letters to a knitting magazine about some people are really angry because they have like modern like knitting patterns in it.

But then other people are like, well, I'm a young knitter and I think this is really cool that these are I was like, wow, this seems so contentious. People are always in a community. People are always going to like push back against different things no matter what. But if you can figure out, like, okay, how do we come to a consensus when we disagree about something like what does that look like? How do we how do

we do that? Right? So, Okay, we've talked a lot about your many many online communities that you have to deal with, which actually sounds like you're doing very well with. So tell me about the podcast and tell me about the sub stack, because it feels like, you know, I think it would have been very easy for you, given that you have written so much and talked so much about this whole like culture burnout and like work life balance and stuff like that. Obviously, just to do more

of that. But tell me about like the culture study world that you're in now or what you're trying to do with it. It is so obvious to me in hindsight that it should have been a sociologist, right, because I I really just I'm fascinated by the way that society works, how we set up different functions within our society, how we work within those functions. It's all that sort of thing, and media studies actually has a lot of overlap depending on the department that it's in with sociology.

And I think like in my current work, I am really engaging in a lot of like basic sociological questions of like why is that thing the way that it is right? Like how did we arrange it that way? And who does it benefit? Who does it harm? But also like isn't this weird? Like making the things that we understand is the status quo kind of making them seem weird and questioning them and how they came to

be right. And there's a couple of sociologists that I really am sometimes think about sociology is like reverse gaslighting, so being like, you know, it isn't it isn't normal, Like this is this is a construction the way that we've come to Wait, what is reverse Explain reverse gaslighting conceptually to me, because it sounds like something I should understand,

but I can't grasp what that would be. Right, Okay, so let's talk about like mothering in America right now, where everyone's just like, yeah, it's hard, but you got this, like Mama, you got this, like like you're made for this, like you're going to get through it, you know, just like continual messages of support is that when you can

do it all? You know, that's gaslighting that like you've got this, right, Like the reverse gaslighting is no, you don't have this, and here are all the reasons why you don't have it, like heure, all the ways that have been set up to make this incredibly hard for people trying to mother to parent in America today. So it's like breaking down the gaslighting to reveal the truth or like I mean, if we don't want to use the term gaslighting because I think sometimes people like stop

listening when you hear that term. It's breaking down things that we have normalized, right right, and saying like, Okay, how did we come to normalize this? Why is it actually strange? And like who does it benefit when we normalize these things? Like there's always a critique of structures of power. I think inherent to sociology too. It's also just like everything is really interesting if you can just

push a little bit more. And this is true. And the way that I think about celebrity the newsletter is called culture study is kind of a fun cultural studies, which is looking at things that sometimes people are like, there's nothing interesting here. It's just an artifactive pulp culture. It's just an artifact of material culture, just just the thing that is around us and saying, actually, there's a

whole lot of interesting stuff to unpack here. So whether it's the construction of a celebrity or when I'm thinking through right now, is like what happened to the team Babysitter, Like there's a lot to unpack there. Oh my god, I personally would like to know. I'm fascinated by this question because so my daughters eight and for a while

we were reading the Babysitters Club books. Yeah, yeah, I would imagine you've read, or at least you maybe revisiting for and it's like these girls are like thirteen or something or twelve, and they're like babysitting whole groups of kids. And I'm like, n Zelda was younger, you know, I couldn't imagine having like a thirteen year old over here to like babysitter and be like, okay, bye, we're going out for the day. I did that starting when I

was twelve. I was one year old. Cool. Yeah, it's crazy. No. I talked to Laura about it all the time, and she's like, oh, yeah, I did that. Like me and my friend Emily would go over and we babysit these like three kids. And I'm like, that's nuts. I mean, I think we've learned a lot about I don't know, maybe we're wrong. I feel like in the seventies and in the eighties, people didn't know that much. No, I think it's actually okay to have a thirteen year old babysitter,

especially now that we have cell votes. Act feel very nervous, like right, but that's because of like hyper parenting norms like and I'm not criticizing them, and they've just been

really normalized. But we've changed our whole perspective on kids, like like you can't leave a child alone in a car even for like two minutes now, like the amount of time I spent in the car when my mom was going to the grocery store right now, Oh yeah, you just be they just be like you don't want to go to the store, like you're just gonna sit here and like and I used to do that all

the time. But now if you leave your kids sit in the car, even if you're only got for like five minutes or ten minutes, you like you could literally be arrested for it. So I feel like there's one

of these things. Yes, I agree, there's definitely an over do you say over parenting as that was the term used, or like hyper parenting ROMs, like just like you know, like a high intensity parenting, right, I don't feel that way, Like I don't feel like we're I mean, of course a person would say they don't feel like they're hyper parenting or whatever. But it is interesting, like I don't know, maybe the world feels so much more complicated. I know, so many more horrible things than I feel like my

parents knew at this age. Like, I mean, my parents certainly were, I mean, they're definitely worried people. They would voice the most insane worries about any subject, but like still, I feel like they weren't as aware of all of the possible things that could happen in the world. And now we seem so aware. I mean it's kind of like the Twitter mind, right, like where you can see

every bad thing happening all at once. Yeah, this is a sociological finding that like when there is more violence on television and you pull people after watching more violence on television, the perception of violence in their neighborhood or in their city goes up, and you can make people

believe there's more cry and then there actually is. Or the way that like on house people, like if you see an on housed person, even if they're not committing a crime, they up the perception of crime in an area. So like all these things that have bearing I think on our on our fears and all that sort of thing.

But another huge thing is even parents who are totally on board, especially with like a fifteen year old or a sixteen year old, there is no teen babysitting supply, and that is also hyper parenting because all of these kids are scheduled to the gills, don't have any space too babysit, and that is a problem in it of itself. It's funny, I mean, you're still on topic for me, but we actually have a neighbor whose daughter is sixteen and we've been trying to pin her down for some

babysitting and it's been very difficult to schedule her. And I think there's I mean, listen, you know, it is a busy time. We're all, you know, we're cramming for the I don't know whatever tests that sixteen year olds are taking. But p s A T p s A T. Sure. I mean there's not a lot of free time anymore because you can just look at the internet. I mean, I don't know what your teen experience was like. But like I baby said, all the time, because there wasn't anything else to do. Um, I did not do a

lot of babysitting. Well that's also a gender thing. That's pretty messed up. I should say I did a couple of babysitting gigs. I will tell you boys are great babysitters. I thought I was excellent. We mostly watched movies, to be honest, totally well, and that's what most people want. So the first time I saw The Little Mermaid was while I was babysitting, and I was like, I've never seen this movie before, and the kids loved it, and

I'm like, wow, this is very interesting. It's pretty pretty enjoyable. Yeah. No, I think that the kids who need babysitting and then also the ones who would be doing the babysitting, And there's a real understanding that all time can be kind of colonized for self enrichment and like lines on a resume, and because babysitting can't be a way to get into college, it's it's devalued in that list of things that should

be taking up kids time. Right, I feel like babysitting should tell if you get into college, Like I think if you're good at it, like, it's pretty impressive. I mean, kids are insane and taking care of them is very hard. Yeah. I also think it just generally gives you incredible perspective, Like so many parents I know who have never changed a diaper before they have kids, and then they're like what happened? Uh? And yeah, you can learn all of

those skills. But I think that having a lot of experience with it also makes you make a more informed decision. Don't you think that this idea of like it being hard to find a teen babysitter also has something to do with I feel like we've like really fucked up communities,

like real world communities in a big way. Like obviously the pandemic had an impact on how we associate with the people around us, But I think the existence and I don't want to blame everything on the Internet, but it definitely is way easier now, much easier than ever before, to totally disengage with the people around you, like, particularly

if you don't live in a major city, right. I mean, this is to me, like the root of a lot of the problems in the world is like you're never worse to like interact with other people, and if like you have to interact with other people that are not like you, it's very easy to not care or think about them at all. And I do think the Internet is part of it. I think like Amazon is part of it. I think like this whole sort of disconnected way that we live is like not to go all

the way back to Twitter or anything. But I had Tolentino on and we talked about this, that there's this conception of the Internet being this town square or Twitter being a town square, and it's like a town square is a physical place where you interact with the people that you live near, right, And it's like a very specific kind of personal interaction, like if you think historically about what they're like, and we've sort of removed a lot of that. Like I only just met my next

door neighbor. I live, you know, about an hour outside of New York and I've lived here for eight years and I only just physically interact with my next door neighbor for the first time, like three months ago. I want to point to another sociologist, Robert Putnam, whose book Bowling Alone from two thousand, Like he didn't theorize this.

There are other people who had kind of been talking about this before, but he brought together a bunch of data and put it all together to say, like, here's what has happened to our loose ties, which are like the people that you just kind of know, right your next door neighbor, the people the people would go to

church with. It's called bowling alone because people used to be part of things like if you grew up in America and your grandparents generation that generation were joiners, Like they were part of so many different clubs, you know, the Elks, the Moose, and in addition to whatever religious organization that they were part of, and that was just

the norm, that was the status quo. And there are many reasons why that cohesion, that social cohesion really rose after World War Two and stayed strong for several decades and then began to fall apart over the course of

the seventies, eighties, and nineties. And I think the Internet is an accelerant, but also there's so many other things that were insisting in that basically, like when people no longer feel compelled to go to church all the time, may because of other things happening with face structures or just loosening of moral structures that make it so like, oh, I don't have to go to church every weekend to

be a part of a community. Actually, like I can live with someone before I get married, right, There's so many reasons for the decline of these and I think, you know, and a lot of these organizations, like the ku Klux Klan was one of these organizations, people feel

like they were part of something. Are you recommending just to make sure I'm hearing this, you're recommending more like there's nothing like, you know, purely good about being in the same community as someone necessarily, but that stuff, and it also coincides with the need to spend more time, more hours working in order for a family to survive, right, So if you're spending all of this time working and

then when you get home you're so tired. And then we also have all of these new standards of parenting, especially for like middle class parents, in order to get your kid ready for college in order to hopefully have them be more successful theoretically than you are, or at least equal successful. Like, all of those things come together to really create these highly individualized situations where people are desperate for community and have no idea how to make it.

And I think, you know, there's a lot of people that I really admire who talk a lot about what it takes to build community. Garrett Box to rates things like the White Pages is one of my favorites, but

sometimes it's weird and awkward and boring. Like I think that we also have this expectation that if we sign up to go to something, it should be really compelling and like all about us the way, right, Like it should be like an instagram able experience, because some of the work of community building is like showing up for the library committee meeting and just it's kind of boring,

but that's how you meet people. Sometimes it's doing boring stuff. No, I mean it's interesting, Like the religion thing is is so fascinating because it is kind of one of the things that's like a very clear forcing mechanism to make you interact with your community typically, right, like a church going community is going to be people from around you who are going to the same place, and even if you're not religious or whatever, you're just you end up

there and you end up meeting people. But like, I mean, I would never argue that, like we should have more religion, Like I think that it's good that people feel they have the option to not be religious that they don't want to, but we have not replaced that with anything really meaningful and and in fact, everything we do kind of reinforces that, like the less you interact with people, the better you can be, or like the better it is for you. And to me, it's like it's a

very political thing. Like when you think about some of the major political problems of our time or the cultural things that are happening, like it's very easy to see that we've just become very focused on ourselves and everything kind of reinforces that. Well, it's defensive Crouch, right, It's like everything feels so tenuous economically, societally in so many different ways that you have to be on the defensive and really just focus your energy and preservational energy on

me and mine, right. And I see this a lot, right, And that's like I don't want to fund anything that isn't benefiting me in mine. Right. It's very selfish, right, It's like a weirdly like obviously selfish thing to just go, well, sure there's a lot of stuff going on, but that's not my problem. Like I need to figure out how I can get what I need. That's not my problem. Right. I have seen a voting strategy that I that I like, which is that you vote in the interests of the

most vulnerable in your right. And that's a very different voting strategy than vote for things that immediately benefit me in mine. You are reminding me of a few years ago. I mean, Laura's dad. He's a person who like kind of never voted. There's a kind of a certain like older person in this country who's like they're all bumbs or whatever, you know, which like to be fair probably accurate, um. And he sort of sat it out and I remember, you know, Laura talking to him and saying, like, you're

not vote for you, You're voting for like Zelda. If you think about voting for like our kid and the world she's going to live in, like you can just completely think differently about why you're voting or what you're voting for. And he definitely was like, oh yeah, Like

I never thought of it that way. And I think it requires some level of empathy to be able to go what would it be like if I were that person and let me think about it for a second and actually care, which I think it's become increasingly hard to do. I will say, there's this whole school thing, and during the pandemic, it became really obvious to me

how much we lost. And of course I have a perspective because we have, you know, a child who's like had just gotten into like the public school system here, and and you couldn't go to the school, like there's a period where they weren't going, but then like you couldn't go in, We couldn't meet any of her teachers, Like we couldn't talk to the principle, Like we didn't know the other parents because nobody was allowed to assemble

in the same place. So it's like, we have all this stuff happening with religion, We have the Internet, we have like modern society, and Amazon will deliver you anything. You no longer have to go to this or for it. But then the pandemic kind of hit, and it was like even some of these places where you still were finding yourself interacting with people in a way that you never would have expected or you know, you sort of forced to in some way, went away. And I think

that kind of hastened whatever state we're in now. It's like we're in a very dark zone, right. But I think it also like highlighted how much we need those bonds too, so it hastened their decline and also accelerated the need for them. You know. I think when I was talking to people about the team babysitter thing, there were some people who said, you know, because I don't live in the proximity of either of my parents, and and or like my parents aren't longer with us, like

all sorts of different reasons. If you don't have immediate familial childcare. They're like, we don't have any childcare either

can't afford it or we can't find it. And they're like, this has affected my life in many ways, like it has affected our marriage, it has affected my personal health, Like people need time away from their children, I think, and it's meaningful, and then they find themselves thinking like I can't you know, I can't build community, like to find the babysitters, to be away from my kid, because I can't be away from my kid, Like it's a

chicken and the egg kind of self fulfilling prophecy. And a lot of parents in particular have found themselves mired in that situation. And there are things that we could do structurally to make community building easier, whether it's you know, funding childcare, is infrastructure, or or just things that make it so that you're not just where you're not in that defensive crouch all the times that make that possible. I mean, it's funny, big you go back to it,

and you could go, well, it's kind of capitalism. Yeah, you know, I don't want to be like, well, if we could just do away with capitalism, but there is an argument not to do away with it, Like if we just could slightly rearrange the way we have ordered priorities in our society, a lot of stuff might be

quickly alleviated. But meanwhile, this is we're not doing that apparently, um, and we're unfortunately where we're almost out of time, like I have, I feel like there's a million things that we can talk about, No, for sure, like I we did like a full half an hour old Like I don't even know what septic ts, yeah, exceptic tanks, which I think is honestly some some of the best stuff we've done on this podcast yet. But before you go, if somebody wants to engage with the Anne Helen Peterson

Extended universe, like what is it? Where to start? You have so many things going on? Where should a person start? Well? The new podcast is work appropriate. It's from Cricket Media, and I have heard it alternately described as like Delilah, Like you know Deliva, the like late night romance UM talk show that you can get syndicated across America. What now, I have no idea what you're talking about? What is Delilah?

Listeners to the show will know Delilah for work or car talk for work, Like basically it's an advice show car talk. I do under yeah, but now I'm really interested in Delilah. Look it up like a Delilah talk And really what it is is it's like looking at work with people who don't have n b as, like who aren't like you know, publishing in Harvard Business Review and like LinkedIn influencers, but are just trying to make

work better. And so people right in with their work quandaries and me and a co host go through and try to address them to try to make work survivable sustainable in different ways. I love this idea, yeah, yeah, And then my newsletter culture Study and Helena's subject dot com. I like when people are not just one thing. I think like we have too many people, and I think by the world and the Internet to some extent, expects people to go like you just do this one thing

and that's who you are. I think a lot of people think of you and you're like, oh, you're the burnout person. But there's so much more to talk about, and like you're so smart about this stuff. Like just this conversation is and utterly fascinating. We can talk so

much more about babysitting. I mean just I know when you look at your sub stack, I feel like you're doing that where you're not just on this like a single thing, but it is like there is a lens and it's your lens, and your lens is super interesting, and so you have to come back. We have to talk more, because this feels like part one of a multi part for sure. We have so much more to

talk about. I mean, I got to hear what happens when you get the new septic tank in, because like, I don't think I've ever met anybody with a brand new septic tank, to be honest with you, so please do. The great thing is that you're not gonna be able to see anything else. It's one of those home investments where you're like, oh, we just like spend a bunch of money and it's something that will never affect my daily life except for the fact that we will not

have a poop catastrophe in our backyard. And I think that is the best you could ask for in life, is you don't see it, but you have no poop catastrophes because of it. And Helen, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate. I've super serious, heavily enjoyed this conversation, and you have to come back and uh and discuss things even beyond the septic tank. I very much look forward to it. Thank you so much. Well, that was fun. Oh my god, that was the best.

We have to have many more conversations with than Helen, I think. Yeah. I have to say I've been such a huge fan of hers for you know, ten plus years. It's a long time. Every couple of years, I feel like she hones in on a new expertise topic and and it's just has the most interesting way of presenting her findings. That's all true, I believe. But also I'm I'm kind of on the edge of my seat about the septic tank. You know, I'm thankful that I don't

have to worry about a septic tank. Oh wow, that's right. It's Thanksgiving right now. This episode is actually out on Thanksgiving. This is the way I say thanks to all the listeners by giving them more of me. This most selfless thing I can think of doing, to be honest, is just putting myself out there for them. No, yeah, it's Thanksgiving. It's a weird time to feel thankful about anything, to be honest, I mean, I guess we're still alive. That's good,

you know, no, no nuclear war so far. Pretty good. Yeah, that's something that I used to worry about a lot more. I've lately, I've been more worried about it. For some that's like the older I get, the less concerned I am with being wiped out. Then you should not read any articles about the war in Ukraine. It's my recommendation. Well it's yeah, it's not that I don't think it's less likely to happen that I think you care less, Like yeah, yeah, yes, wipe me out in a flash

of white hot fire. Good, you know, is it? I don't know. There's only one way to find out. I think very dark stuff for Thanksgiving, extremely dark, but um, yeah, what don't you know. Listen, I'm thankful for my landlines, my new layout lines, and uh, you know, I just think Thanksgivings a perfect time to actually be thinking about all this stuff for you about like scaling down life. It's one of my favorite times of the year, and there's always a lot to do, and then you get

to hang out with people. And I guess I'm lucky. I have a kind of privileged view of Thanksgiving because I don't have any relatives that show up that are like horrible, you know, somehow I've lucked out. And I say this in this year, it'll they'll probably some wild card situation. But I know a lot of people go home for Thanksgiving or whatever, it's very fraught because there's some like uncle. It's always like the uncle who's like racist and a Trump voter or whatever. But um, I

don't have that. All of my uncles are democratic social I have that, but they're not outspoken, so they just stay quiet because they know how outnosed they are. I think that's about as good as you can expect, really in those situations. You know, it's because the thing about it is, if you're friends or something you find out they're like a Nazi, you can always be like, well,

we're not gonna be friends anymore. But yeah, with your family, you might end up at a wedding with them or a Thanksgiving dinner, and then you've got to tolerate their terrible opinions. So I think if they don't say anything, that's actually the best possible, the best. Yeah, that's what you're thinking for all right, Well, I think we should wrap this up. I mean, frankly, all of this is making me think about eating some eating some food. What's

your essential Thanksgiving dish? You mean, like the Thanksgiving dish I can't live without? Well, Laura makes these things called spinach balls, which are like a ball of spinach and bread and cheese. Uh, and then they're baked and they are just unbelievably good. It's like a ball of Thanksgiving in my opinion. What about you? Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving? I love cranberry sauce. My mom's pool on

the stove, cranberry sauce, never from the can. And then when I moved out here, I told her I was making cranberry sauce. I called her for the recipe. We're on the phone for like an hour. I'm confused. Her directions are kind of vague. Keep asking like more specifics, and then eventually she goes, I don't know. It's on the back of the bag. It's just it's just the ocean spray very recipe. I'm not a big cranberry sauce person. Have I ever even had it. It's the thing that

I'm wondering I'm going to have some this year. But the flavor tart start, Yeah, and you put it on something. You don't need to buy it, so you can put it on you garnish something with the cranberry sauce, yeah, or you or you just eat it in a bowl for days. You spoon it out into your mouth and from a bowl. That doesn't sound right to me, but fair enough. You know, everybody's got there something as they say, well, that's what I'm gonna do. That's great. Sound very dismissive,

like get good you do you? Okay, have your bowl of cranberry sauce. It does sound. Now I'm signing for a sort of intreat. I'm gonna you know what, I'm gonna report back about the cranberry sauce in the next episode. I think I'm gonna give you my my take on cranberry sauce. In fact, the next episode will probably just be one hour of talking about cranberry sauce. I would love it. All right, Well, that is our show for this week. We'll be back next week with more what future.

And as always, I wish you and your family the very best, and I hope they don't need too much Thanksgiving dinner because think you get very, very sick.