Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello, Khalila, Hi, Jonathan, let me try Stevie Hello, Hello,
Speaker 1: Hi are you guys? Abr?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: What does AVR mean?
Speaker 2: Alex Bloomberg rules always be recording?
Speaker 1: That's right. How are you guys?
Speaker 2: Okay?
Speaker 3: My update I guess is that since we last did
Speaker 3: this is my roommate has left to go be with
Speaker 3: her family. So now I'm in the apartment by myself.
Speaker 3: It's like a weird moment where everything that brought people
Speaker 3: to New York is like sort of gone or on hold,
Speaker 3: and like you're left with only the terrible part, the
Speaker 3: worst part of living in New York, which is like
Speaker 3: paying a lot to be in a very small room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Stevie, Yeah, I'll ask you the question that is
Speaker 1: on the minds of all American minds of the world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these troubling times. How was your blind date?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 5: Yeah, my blind date?
Speaker 1: It was fun.
Speaker 5: It was fun.
Speaker 1: What did you guys do?
Speaker 5: We we we just we actually just like hung out
Speaker 5: and talked for like three hours. And the thing that
Speaker 5: was so nice about it, honestly, yeah, because it was
Speaker 5: like in the context of like a first date and
Speaker 5: like completely getting to know a person and they're all
Speaker 5: the questions. It was like three hours where we like
Speaker 5: essentially didn't talk about the virus. Like I think sometimes
Speaker 5: it's nice to acknowledge that things aren't and word and
Speaker 5: to like hold that in your mind. But there was
Speaker 5: also something really nice about like this semblance of like normalcy, you.
Speaker 1: Know, of which there's you know, so we're getting in,
Speaker 1: we're getting all these emails, and there's been this one guy,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you noticed, who's been setting us
Speaker 1: like a poem a day, This guy named Kieran Lennon,
Speaker 1: and he had this line at the end of one
Speaker 1: of his poems that I really liked, which was that
Speaker 1: kind of speaks to what you're talking about in a
Speaker 1: way where he says that, you know, today was more
Speaker 1: normal than yesterday, not because it is, but just because
Speaker 1: it was as strange as yesterday.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've you know, been spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: with Aggie and which is great. And so I took
Speaker 1: his tricycle out of the garage, and you know, we
Speaker 1: had the whole alley to ourselves. So I thought maybe
Speaker 1: I could teach him how to use a tricycle. He's
Speaker 1: more into making the sounds like motorcycle sounds. He was
Speaker 1: trying to teach me how to to do proper motorcycle sounds,
Speaker 1: which is something that I've never been very good at.
Speaker 6: He's like talking, WHI shound, your mouth opening like this.
Speaker 1: Is that good?
Speaker 7: You're close to do it?
Speaker 1: Like the way that he understands all of like everything
Speaker 1: that's going on is we've been talking about it in
Speaker 1: terms of germs, because he understands that, you know, like
Speaker 1: about how you have to wash your hands before you
Speaker 1: eat because the germs, right and you know, but occasionally
Speaker 1: the last well, you know, why can't he see his
Speaker 1: grandparents And we say, you know, we have to be
Speaker 1: careful about the germs right now, and he says, you know, well,
Speaker 1: we'll see them when the germs go away. And there's
Speaker 1: something just so simple, and I'm confused about it, as
Speaker 1: as always with a kid, you're always like trying to
Speaker 1: meet them on their level, and in this case, it
Speaker 1: just forces a kind of optimism, like there isn't a
Speaker 1: version of the world where things don't work out.
Speaker 3: Everything makes me emotional lately, like it's like my emotions
Speaker 3: are coming out and all kinds of weird ways.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yesterday, I like I put there's this piece of
Speaker 5: classical music that you guys would know because it's very famous.
Speaker 5: It's this like prelude to this back cello suite that
Speaker 5: I just think is like so beautiful. It's like two
Speaker 5: and a half minutes, and it was sort of like
Speaker 5: stuck in my head on my run, so I like
Speaker 5: put it on to listen to it, and it just
Speaker 5: like made me cry, like just like ball.
Speaker 1: So as as you guys know, so after our last
Speaker 1: check in episode where we asked for people to write
Speaker 1: in and just let us know how they're doing, we
Speaker 1: got so many just really nice, generous emails from all
Speaker 1: over the world. And so you guys started calling a
Speaker 1: few people who you felt especially curious about are connected to,
Speaker 1: and I called a couple of old friends, and among
Speaker 1: them doctor Jackie Cohen.
Speaker 2: Jackie an old standby.
Speaker 1: She's not just like an intro to a show, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. She's a real person. She actually
Speaker 1: she called me, oh, which was which was kind of nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I had left her a message, but she
Speaker 1: returned it, which you know, and she was even kind
Speaker 1: of nice to me.
Speaker 8: Hi, Junny, Hi, how's it going.
Speaker 1: She's been working at a coronavirus clinic in Montreal, and
Speaker 1: so we talked a little bit about that.
Speaker 8: I take these short histories and then I swaped this
Speaker 8: road and then I swap their noses and that's it,
Speaker 8: and then I tell them we'll call them in two days.
Speaker 1: So there's testing in Montreal.
Speaker 8: There's lots of testing, really started up already a couple
Speaker 8: of weeks ago.
Speaker 9: But what does it feel like, Yeah, it feel it
Speaker 9: feels like it feels like it feels like I'm well, lately,
Speaker 9: we've just ramped up the numbers of swabs that we're doing,
Speaker 9: and so it feels like I'm on an assembly line
Speaker 9: working at McDonald's. I mean, it's just like outcome of
Speaker 9: these trays and you just grab the tray and then
Speaker 9: you go to the next person, and so you just
Speaker 9: have to sort of move it along. They're really trying
Speaker 9: to pick up the speed and you have to gown
Speaker 9: up and down between each patients.
Speaker 8: So the gowning, the gowning process is what takes long.
Speaker 8: The rest is super easy.
Speaker 1: And do people come to you sometimes nervous, worried, anxious?
Speaker 8: Oh my god, they're always really anxious. Yeah, either anxious
Speaker 8: and be when I call them up to tell them
Speaker 8: the results are negative, because I've been calling everybody back
Speaker 8: to tell the results of good negative. It's just if
Speaker 8: they've just like won the lottery. They are so happy,
Speaker 8: like they're they're like this palpable release through the phone.
Speaker 1: Does it feel good to make those phone calls?
Speaker 8: Well, part of me, I mean, part of me feels like,
Speaker 8: you know, happy to tell them the good news. On
Speaker 8: the other hand, I'm thinking, I mean, it shouldn't be
Speaker 8: the worst news to get that you have coronavirus, because
Speaker 8: you know, eventually a lot of us are going to
Speaker 8: get it, and it's just feeling like it's so stigmatized
Speaker 8: at this point. So I'm hoping people are to be
Speaker 8: psychologically be ready for a positive.
Speaker 1: And she even thinks that, like she'll probably end up
Speaker 1: getting it eventually.
Speaker 8: Well, at some point, at some point, I.
Speaker 1: Probably will because of the work you're doing.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, I mean we're we're healthcare workers, we're frontline.
Speaker 9: I mean, at some.
Speaker 1: Point, and then she had to go make dinner.
Speaker 8: I've got to get dinner on I've got to get
Speaker 8: dinner on the table.
Speaker 1: Okay, I've got a life. Before she could blow me
Speaker 1: off the phone, I really wanted to tell her that
Speaker 1: I was just really impressed with her. You know, we
Speaker 1: joke around a lot, but I really do think that
Speaker 1: Jackie is one of the most selfless people I know.
Speaker 1: But you know, of course I said none of that
Speaker 1: to her. Instead, I just kind of said something, you know,
Speaker 1: typically sarcastic, you know, over the top, just to kind
Speaker 1: of grosser out. I would like to be the first
Speaker 1: to thank you on behalf of Canada.
Speaker 10: Stop talking about that.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're just embarrassed.
Speaker 8: You're just now, are you?
Speaker 11: So?
Speaker 3: I also talked to someone I have a long standing
Speaker 3: relationship with. I talked to my brother.
Speaker 2: Hello, Kristens, it's Kaylee Holt speaking.
Speaker 4: Hey, what's that? Oh pretty good? It's driving home in
Speaker 4: the rain.
Speaker 3: You know he's still working. He is in Iowa. He
Speaker 3: works at a car dealer. Should he sells cars? Are
Speaker 3: you guys still open?
Speaker 4: We are still open, which I feel I feel two
Speaker 4: ways about. They sent out a memo the other day
Speaker 4: being like, you know, your safety is our number one concern.
Speaker 4: I want to work. It's it's gonna be tough to
Speaker 4: make ends meet if if I'm not working. But don't
Speaker 4: don't tell me your my safety is your number one concern,
Speaker 4: because if it was your number one concern, you'd close
Speaker 4: us down, right, because all non essential stuff is supposed
Speaker 4: to be closed down, but our service center auto repair
Speaker 4: shops are considered essential. So we're using that loophole to
Speaker 4: stay open, and we'll probably stay open until the governor
Speaker 4: herself comes down and personally closes us down. And people.
Speaker 4: The crazy thing is people are still out shopping for cars.
Speaker 3: I was gonna say, I can't imagine anyone as buying
Speaker 3: a car right now.
Speaker 4: Lots of people are lots of people. Are most of the
Speaker 4: people I talk to are still find to shake hands?
Speaker 2: And are you shaking hands those people?
Speaker 11: I am?
Speaker 4: Yeah, they're like, yeah, media is just blowing this way
Speaker 4: out of a portion, and you know, I'm in sales.
Speaker 4: I can't tell him. They're fucking more on it. You're
Speaker 4: dangering themselves and everyone around them.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 4: The past week is like, Okay, today's the day where
Speaker 4: we're just not going to see anybody, and people just
Speaker 4: keep showing up.
Speaker 3: So I just got really kind of scared for him,
Speaker 3: thinking from shaking all those people's hands.
Speaker 1: Does he have any pure l Yeah, he says he.
Speaker 3: Has hand sanitizer at his desk and I'm like, are
Speaker 3: you doing it? Every time he shakes someone's hand, and
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, I'm trying to.
Speaker 1: So Stevie, who did you talk to? Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I talked with a woman named Lexi.
Speaker 12: Just to give you a quick head up, I'm just
Speaker 12: having some like pretty heavy contractions that I really wanted
Speaker 12: to talk to you. So if I stopped talking, or
Speaker 12: if my voice sounds weird, or if like I have
Speaker 12: to mute you for a second, it's because I'm screaming.
Speaker 1: Wait wait, Lexy.
Speaker 5: Lexi, she is like forty weeks pregnant right now. Her
Speaker 5: due date is March twenty seventh, which is four days
Speaker 5: from now. That's very yeah, very very pregnant. Like about
Speaker 5: ten minutes into the call.
Speaker 13: I work for this music management company. Sorry, I'm letting
Speaker 13: a contraction.
Speaker 1: Wow. Did did you feel like you were gonna have
Speaker 1: to like guide her through the delivery of her of
Speaker 1: her child over the phone?
Speaker 5: I honestly like listening back to the tape is like painful.
Speaker 5: I was like, you got this, Lexy, Like we can
Speaker 5: do this.
Speaker 1: What do you need?
Speaker 13: Oh my god?
Speaker 1: Are okay?
Speaker 11: Uh?
Speaker 5: You got this?
Speaker 6: So it's fine.
Speaker 12: I'm gonna hang on one second, are you are.
Speaker 1: You sure.
Speaker 5: The terror in my voice, I'm sure was doing a
Speaker 5: lot more harm than good.
Speaker 6: But yeah.
Speaker 5: So the interesting thing about Lexi is she had never
Speaker 5: really like thought she wanted to be a mom. Yeah,
Speaker 5: but it is with this partner, and it was important
Speaker 5: to him and to them and their relationship, and so
Speaker 5: it was sort of like a decision she made knowing that,
Speaker 5: but maybe not a decision she would have made otherwise.
Speaker 5: It's this weird moment where like, already she has so
Speaker 5: much fear around it and complicated feelings, and then like
Speaker 5: on top of it, she's like about to give birth
Speaker 5: in the middle of a pandemic, and it's scary, you know,
Speaker 5: like she's scared. But on the other hand, there's sort
Speaker 5: of been an evolution in how she's feeling about it.
Speaker 13: It's a real weird thing for me to say, because
Speaker 13: you know, a month ago, I would have been terrified
Speaker 13: because I don't know anything about babies and and I
Speaker 13: don't I'm afraid to be alone with this baby. But
Speaker 13: now it's almost like, here's an external thing that isn't
Speaker 13: the state of the world that you have to focus
Speaker 13: all of your time and energy on. It's almost comforting
Speaker 13: and maybe this is a good thing.
Speaker 5: Then I spoke with someone who's already a parent, a
Speaker 5: woman named Rachel, and Rachel and her husband Drew are
Speaker 5: having a really different experience of this period of social
Speaker 5: distancing than I think a lot of us are. So
Speaker 5: Rachel is the mother of three out in Colorado and
Speaker 5: her youngest son, Johnny. He's three and a half years old.
Speaker 6: Johnny is like a major daddy's boy right now, and
Speaker 6: since Drew is working from home, he's very excited about that.
Speaker 5: So Johnny has this very rare condition called ACTA two,
Speaker 5: and it means that he is incredibly immuno suppressed, like
Speaker 5: he's just always getting sick, and they have to be
Speaker 5: really really careful. So like for Rachel, social distancing isn't new.
Speaker 5: Like the first thing you see when you get to
Speaker 5: their front door is this sign that says, like, please
Speaker 5: do not enter if you've been sick, or like around
Speaker 5: someone who is sick. You know, like Johnny can't go
Speaker 5: to preschool because it's just like too much exposure to germs,
Speaker 5: and they often like can't don't end up going to
Speaker 5: like parties they get invited to because it's like just
Speaker 5: too risky, like that's just like the reality of how
Speaker 5: they live. And so like right now with COVID, like
Speaker 5: Rachel says, people have been reaching out and are being
Speaker 5: really supportive, but it's like for Rachel, it's almost like
Speaker 5: frustrating in a way.
Speaker 6: You know, people are like, hey, can I go to
Speaker 6: the store for you? I know it's probably hard right now,
Speaker 6: but I'm like going to the store is always hard
Speaker 6: for me, like all the time, because I'm always weighing,
Speaker 6: like can I go right now? Okay, if I go
Speaker 6: at like seven thirty in the morning, then it's probably
Speaker 6: going to be quieter and I won't have people, like
Speaker 6: there won't be as many people, and the carts will
Speaker 6: be clean and available, and I can have time to
Speaker 6: clean the card even more, and people won't like look
Speaker 6: at me funny and be like super judgmental that I'm crazy.
Speaker 5: And that's the thing that Rachel is sort of like
Speaker 5: hoping that like after people have gone through what you know,
Speaker 5: like what we're going through right now, that there will
Speaker 5: just be like a greater empathy and understanding of not.
Speaker 6: Just our family, but like so many special needs families
Speaker 6: because whenever everybody else turns back to normal, life, Like
Speaker 6: we'll still be doing this.
Speaker 3: The last Callie made, I phone to this woman, Emma,
Speaker 3: who works at a zoo in Arizona, and the zoo
Speaker 3: is obviously now shut down to the public, as most
Speaker 3: things are, but she's continuing to work and like take
Speaker 3: care of the animals.
Speaker 11: The animals have been just behaving differently.
Speaker 1: I can tell.
Speaker 2: They're like, what is this?
Speaker 9: Why? So what's going on?
Speaker 3: You know, Like for the for people right now, it's
Speaker 3: a time of like increased anxiety, but for the animals,
Speaker 3: like it seems like kind of like they're more relaxed.
Speaker 2: And she's seeing the animals like play a lot more.
Speaker 1: Oh, because there's nobody there.
Speaker 11: Like, for example, we have a group of painted dogs.
Speaker 2: There are three of them. What is a painted dog?
Speaker 11: A painted dog is a African carnivore. They're also called
Speaker 11: African wild dogs. And so they've just been like romping around.
Speaker 2: In the during the day and playing.
Speaker 11: Normally, they they would kind of hang back and like
Speaker 11: because they can be a little bit nervous around people.
Speaker 2: Man, I got to look up painted dogs after this.
Speaker 3: I feel like, yeah, often like as an adult that
Speaker 3: you like learn about a new animal. So I'm very
Speaker 3: excited painted dogs. Have you guys heard of them?
Speaker 1: No, I haven't.
Speaker 2: I'm going to send you guys a picture.
Speaker 1: Oh, they really look like they're painted. They look like
Speaker 1: they're like painted by like an abstract expressionist.
Speaker 5: It's like a hyena and a panda bear had a baby.
Speaker 1: It's like a dog that's wearing like one of those
Speaker 1: Mickey Mouse hats.
Speaker 5: Yes, I was Mickey Mouse ears. I was just about
Speaker 5: to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: You know, this thing also came up while we were talking,
Speaker 3: Like she was talking about sort of what it's like
Speaker 3: to be a zoo keeper and you have to do
Speaker 3: things to like manage the animal's anxiety, and you know,
Speaker 3: they're in an enclosed space and sometimes they need like
Speaker 3: certain like activities set up for them are like different.
Speaker 3: She had like more zookeeper terms for it, but like
Speaker 3: toys introduced to their environment to like keep them healthy
Speaker 3: and stimulated. And it's kind of like now during the pandemic,
Speaker 3: like that's the situation that we're all in as humans.
Speaker 11: We're kind of in captivity right now. We really don't
Speaker 11: have a lot of choice and control, and so if
Speaker 11: you kind of get lost in that, it can be
Speaker 11: really scary.
Speaker 3: It's like we're the zoo animals kind of where we're
Speaker 3: in some code space and we have to figure out
Speaker 3: the things that are going to make it manageable for us.
Speaker 1: We've been getting a lot of really lovely, thoughtful emails
Speaker 1: from you guys, so please continue to send them to us.
Speaker 1: We really enjoy reading them. Also, you may be thinking
Speaker 1: lately about reaching out to someone who you haven't spoken
Speaker 1: to in a while. And if that's the case, and
Speaker 1: you'd like some interlocuting or just you know, someone to
Speaker 1: talk talk about it with, and you know, maybe help
Speaker 1: you make that call, Please let us know. You can
Speaker 1: email us, or you can record a voice memo and
Speaker 1: send it to Heavyweight at Gimbletmedia dot com.
Speaker 5: Hello, Hi, Paul hid Uh, you know hanging in there.
Speaker 10: I know, it's it's it's I don't know, it's been
Speaker 10: hard to like to do anything actually, even with all
Speaker 10: this time. I don't know, Like a lot of people
Speaker 10: are on Facebook and they're all like being all productive
Speaker 10: and I'm seeing like what they're working on and stuff,
Speaker 10: and I'm like, man, I just feel like the exact
Speaker 10: opposite of that. Yeah, I just hadn't a whole lot.
Speaker 10: But I'm like all my work got canceled, so I
Speaker 10: don't I don't know what's gonna happen after this. Yeah,
Speaker 10: it's pretty bad.
Speaker 11: I think.
Speaker 10: I think that's sort of I'm like kind of not practicing.
Speaker 5: Sorry to make you practice when you're when you're not.
Speaker 10: It's good, it's it's it's it's really, it's great. Actually
Speaker 10: it feels good. Okay, so are you ready to should?
Speaker 10: I I'm ready, Okay, let me. I'm just gonna speak
Speaker 10: a phone role. I'm just gonna hate record and then
Speaker 10: I'll just play it through. Okay, and here we.
Speaker 7: Go, stop star stuff to boot. If if I can give,
Speaker 7: give give it. If not Bell, give them, and.
Speaker 1: If one give me the
Speaker 7: Bali became