This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Alan Seales: Welcome to a very special bonus episode of The Theatre Podcast. I'm your host, Alan Seales, and my guest today is slightly unusual for this podcast. She is Julia Hobsbawm, a social health expert and author of a new book called The Simplicity Principle: Six Steps Towards Clarity in a Complex World. As we record this episode, it's the morning of March 13th, 2020, less than 24 hours after we found out that Broadway is going dark for several weeks to help mitigate the potential spread of COVID-19, otherwise known very simply as the coronavirus. For some, including myself to an extent, losing the ability to attend live performances is a great detriment to just simple emotional well-being. One step further, as we have to isolate and create social distance for physical health reasons, our social health probably is going to begin to suffer in a little bit.

And for people both on and off stage, Broadway and performing in general feeds that social health. It makes us feel better. We're feeling emotion. And without that outlet now, what can we do? How do we adapt? How do we use technology without actually getting sucked into it? My chat with Julia answers all of these questions, and strangely, how it all relates back to the theater. Julia Hobsbawm, welcome to The Theatre Podcast. And thank you for taking this call.

[1:29] Julia Hobsbawm: It's a great pleasure, and I'm very sorry for New York's temporary loss of Broadway. And I can imagine that the community must be feeling very in shock. And as someone who went to the London theater twice in the last 10 days, wants to see Leopoldstadt, and wants to see The Book of Mormon, I appreciate the theater world. And so, anything I can do to help at this time, I'm grateful for the opportunity.

[1:59] Alan Seales: Well, it's interesting to me, because as I've been doing this podcast for a year and a half now, I've been talking with leads on Broadway and ensembles, like these people who are performing their entire life, and this is all they know. This is all they identify as, and this is their home. And then on the flip side of that, off the stage, there are people who go over and over and over again, because that is their home, to watch theater on stage, to watch stories unfold, to hear music, to feel music coming through their bodies. And now that that's gone, I'm wondering, what would your advice be? What do you see happening? And how can we actually use this to our advantage? Is there a way we can use this to our advantage, now that we're not getting into this group mentality?

[2:52] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, I think there are things. But first of all, I think you rightly introduced me as someone that speaks and writes and thinks about social health. And you also rightly connected it to physical and mental health. In fact, the World Health Organization has a definition of health that hasn't changed since it began 70 years ago, which is that health is the presence of physical, mental and social well-being, not merely the absence of injury and disease. And we've all become really literate about physical health and mental health, but less so about social well-being. And so, I define social health as the very connectedness of humans to other human beings. And that is now in crisis, particularly now because of the coronavirus crisis.

Although when I wrote my book, it was more to do with technology, draining us of the habit of getting around other people face to face. So, the reason why it's important to use that word social is because the default position of the healthy human brain, we know from neuroscience, is literally to keep a motor running around our social essence. There's an incredibly interesting neuroscientist in California called Matthew Lieberman. And he did exercises and studies, tests that proved that, you know, a healthy human brain first and foremost concerns itself with one question alone, like a motor running, who do I love and who loves me? So, that desire to connect, to belong, to be loved, to be valued, or to have feelings that enhance our feeling of connectedness.

If we don't have that, we wither and we shrivel and we do not thrive. So, anything that limits that is a definite problem. And I think that the endorphin connection of going often to the theater and the way that theater triggers all of those feelings of being connected to love and to laughter and to pain and to stories and to music and to performance is a difficulty. So, I suppose the first thing I'd like to do is acknowledge the grief and say that there is no question that this is a massive blow. But also, I suppose I'm a little bit Pollyanna. I do think there are bright sides to this. And they are that we can, as humans reset very successfully, we can in fact simplify our complex lives. And this moment where our lives are sort of going dark for a period of time, we can use to go within and connect to who we are and what we feel. And we can read and we can watch and we can listen in a different dimension, but we can still connect to those feelings. So, I think we have to be resilient and versatile.

[5:59] Alan Seales: The feelings, are they a result of what we typically hear of as the happy chemicals in the brain? Dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and you mentioned endorphins. I'm not a neuroscientist. But what I would say is that the neuroscience that I have studied fairly closely for my research does show that the human brain is a series of neural networks, all orientated around allowing us as humans to connect with others and to be social. And a fulcrum of that is community stories, gathering, and intimacy. And one of the things I think all the creative arts do is give us an intimacy to our feelings, to our ideas, and to experience those with others. So, I think for that reason, the theater is obviously a hugely powerful driver. And it's one of the reasons why economically it's been so successful, and so on. So, it is not to be underestimated as a metaphor for the very connection that the human brain is designed to make.

[7:12] Julia Hobsbawm: That's interesting, the intimacy part of this. Because, I mean, when you take a step back at what theater is, it's a bunch of strangers walking into a building they've probably never been in before, sitting all facing the same direction to watch a bunch of other people get paid to pretend they are people they are not. Right? So, there's theater in a nutshell. And chemically, there's people who will talk about the science of vibration of music, right? So, we're all existing on a vibrational plane. There's that existential conversation that we won't get into. But there's the vibration of the music, there's the atmosphere of the lights. And going back to the intimacy, I really, as myself, I enjoy sharing moments with people I don't know and making those immediate connections. Does that make sense?

[8:11] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, I think the question of intimacy is very important. I've written about it for a long time. And I've written about it in a particular chapter in my book on networks, which is to say the following, that intimacy is the main currency of being human, trust and intimacy. Now, in the case of theater, it bucks the trend because you can achieve that intimacy in fairly large numbers, an auditorium's worth or a rock concert's worth, for example, which is another form of theater. Because of what happens on the stage, everybody's attention is focused on that single stage. Where I actually advocate getting your intimacy outside of those forums is in what I would call the salon, is smaller numbers. Because there's a special number actually called the Dunbar number, the magical anthropological number of 150 being the proven maximum of relationships any human being can have at any one time.

And that's been coined by the evolutionary anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who I've known for a long time. I interviewed him for a BBC radio program I did a few years ago. And the Dunbar number is interesting because it almost sets that intimacy bar. And that got me also thinking that there's no more than 200 countries in the world. There's no more than 168 hours in the week. So suddenly, we're looking at small numbers in a world that's very scaled. The norm over the last 15 years, let's say, which is as long as Facebook has been alive, is huge, isn't it? We think in terms of millions and gazillions and billions. And the human doesn't, in fact, operate at that level. And one of the things that I think makes for powerful mediums, which is why streaming is so successful, which is why theater is so successful, is because they understand that the secret of connection is simple, apropos, my book on simplicity in a complex age. And that simplicity is rooted in intimacy, I believe. It's another reason, actually, why podcasts work so well. Because it's just a couple of voices, right?

[10:36] Alan Seales: Yeah. And you're developing a relationship with the host. You're wearing the host on your head, more or less, right?

[10:43] Julia Hobsbawm: Right.

[10:44] Alan Seales: Yeah, I totally—

[10:44] Julia Hobsbawm: And the listener is in the room with you. The listener has you in their ears. You know, I had a very interesting theatrical experience when my publishers asked me to record my own audio book for The Simplicity Principle. My last book was recorded by an actress. And with no disrespect to her, I didn't like hearing my book through her voice. It didn't feel intimate enough. It didn't feel me. It didn't feel my voice because I write very much from a hybrid position of both personal experiences and anecdotes. Like I open my book with a story about my friendship with the late, great Maya Angelou and how she always told me to keep it simple, sweetie. And Maya was a fantastic performer. I mean, we can talk about Maya Angelou if you'd like.

But the point is that I was— So the publisher said to me, why don't you record your audio book? And it was a very intense experience, but I'm very glad I did it. It was like seven hours nonstop with the cans on. And it really was a performance. It's not like now where I'm sort of talking off the top of my head and I'm feeling just relaxed. You have to really work it in much the same way I imagine that a stage performer does. I really felt I was performing for my audience because it was going to come through their ears and into their heads and into their lives, possibly more intimately than if they hold the actual physical book. I don't know. Different dimension anyway.

[12:17] Alan Seales: I want to go back to what you said about the Facebook and the millions and zillions and whatnot. And it was really interesting to me that you said the ideal numbers for relationships is about 150 and that's close relationships, right? That's not acquaintances or is that just everything?

[12:36] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, it is relationships with people that would sort of really meaningfully miss you and that you're connected with at some point across your community. But of course, the actual number of daily necessary connections is much, much smaller. And guess what? It's the magic, perfect number six that I talk about in my book, which is there's a cognitive limit of seven. The brain can't really hold much more than seven things at any given time. And six, when I began to think about that, just from the purpose of writing a useful how-to book as well as a philosophical and a theoretical one is when I began to look into it, much to my surprise, six is the mathematically perfect number. This goes back actually to Euclid of Alexandria two and a half thousand years ago in ancient Greece.

And so, what interests me is how often that number six, which Robin Dunbar says is in essence on a daily, daily, daily basis, are you really reaching out to more than six people in your immediate intimacy circle of family or friends or colleagues? No, you're not. And we know that nobody really looks at more than about the same three or four or five or six websites. Most people have now up to seven social media handles. So, 150 is actually the maximum give or take, but six is the more daily working minimum give or take. I have so many questions about this. The reason I circled back was my original question was going to be whether or not you thought that it was more or less effective to have these giant theater houses that hold over 150 people. To be on Broadway contractually has to be, I think it's 500 or higher in the house, seats, right? And so, you've got these massive houses with 700, 800, 1,000, 2,000 seats in it.

[14:40] Julia Hobsbawm: And when you're watching a performance, does the number of audience members matter? Like a 40,000 seat concert for Taylor Swift or Aerosmith or whoever it is, right? That's obviously a different type of intimacy than going and watching an unplugged acoustic set with 20 people in a bar. I would say absolutely. And in fact, I make a point. I'm sure this will be music to the ears of your listeners. I make a point of buying the most expensive tickets I can afford, almost always in the stalls, always, almost, you know, row E or less because I like to be up close and in that immersive experience. And I first discovered that when I took one of my kids to see War Horse at the National Theatre in London.

For anyone who's seen it, it's the most extraordinarily powerful physical and emotional experience. And I, you know, it was kind of my quality time with my eldest son. And it was absolutely unforgettable. And I thought, you know what, I'm never going to go back. And then a couple of years later, I took my daughter to a Miley Cyrus concert. Back in the day when she was still a sort of wholesome young girl. And when she was basically Hannah Montana plus. And I didn't have the right tickets. And I'm afraid to say I used my powers of persuasion to basically upgrade on the spot and get closer in because we were up in the gods. And I felt just completely disconnected from it. And so did my daughter.

And so, so to answer your question, everyone is different. You know, I don't, I hate the idea of rigid rules. So everyone has their own experience. If some people love being in an enormous crowd, that's good. And in fact, one of the earliest times I got interested in this whole question about connection and intimacy and scale was that I remembered that when I was 21 years old, I watched Live Aid from the TV in my parents' bedroom. And for any of your listeners old enough to remember Live Aid, it was this extraordinary simultaneous transatlantic global concert of famine relief fundraising. It was led by Bob Geldof. It took place at Wembley Stadium. Phil Collins of Genesis famously got on Concord, which is no more, and flew at four o'clock in the afternoon from London to arrive in New York to play live, I think at Madison Square Garden, someone will correct me.

And years and years and years later, I met the promoter and impresario Harvey Goldsmith, who put on that concert. And we met at a TED conference and we bonded and he in fact became an investor in my network connection business where we began a series of very, very tiny micro conferences that we took all around the world based on that Dunbar number. So to answer your question, I think about it a lot about who finds meaning from large mass audiences. But the direct answer to your question is I like it small. I like it intimate.

[18:15] Alan Seales: Well, Off-Broadway is still, a lot of Off-Broadway is still going. There's been numerous cancellations. And I guess what is your take on public safety, public health versus mental health of should we still have these smaller Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway shows continue at risk of gathering people because we don't want to spread the coronavirus, but in order to maintain social health, and I think, as you said, part of that is mental health, how do we maintain that safely, both in the theater and at home now?

[18:53] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, obviously, I'm not a health expert. So I think, under the circumstances of what is happening in New York, social distancing is very necessary. And so the short answer to your question is, I believe at this point in time, we have to think differently and temporarily. So for instance, I actually, in London, go very, very regularly to spin classes. And in fact, when I'm in New York, I go to SoulCycle, but in London, I go to Cycle. And I've been going two or three times a week as a mid-life woman. I find it enormously helpful. I absolutely love it. I love the theater, if you like. I love the theater and the performance of the gathering, but it clearly is unsafe at the moment, I would say. I went to my gym this morning, where a little bit more social distancing and having a meter's distance and so on and so forth.

So the truth is, I think, what I'm doing is, I was just talking to a girlfriend about this a few hours ago. I am coming to the acceptance that temporarily, I have to make adjustments to my habits and my behaviors, and that that is a mental adjustment rather than a physical adjustment. Can I survive not going to spin classes or the theater for a few months? The answer is yes. Can I replace? Can I compensate? Can I take comfort from different mediums in different formats? Yes. Does it mean that the economic cost is going to be horrific for those industries? I'm afraid yes. That's a whole other level of anxiety, psychic anxiety, that we know some of those off-Broadway shows will not come back. Some of those big Broadway shows won't come back.

We're in this for a very uncertain period of time, and the point about social health is, we need to understand and explain and explore and communicate all of these realities and anxieties together. I would say at this point, technology and communications technology, which has been suffering something of a backlash. If anyone has read my articles, which are online on strategy and business, or read any of my books, or listened to any of my I have my own podcast called The Human and Machine, you will know that I'm not the biggest fan of technology. I hold my hand up at this point and say, this is technology's comeback. The tech lash is officially over with this coronavirus crisis. We need to get on Zoom, get on Skype, get on FaceTime, get on our social media networks, and stay connected and not socially isolated when we have to be physically socially distant from each other.

[22:10] Alan Seales: Well, for people who are now trying to actually put their phone down more, and in one of the recent iOS updates for iPhones, they started giving you screen time reports so you can monitor how much you're actually on your device. I guess the issue now becomes, when you're trying to disconnect in general and be more present, how do you balance that with having to now get back on all these devices just to maintain your social health?

[22:22] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, it's a very good question. I would say the world is temporarily on a war footing, and in war needs must. So what I would say is that some of the lifestyle, mental health, mindfulness approaches to our use of technology and digital overload need to take a backseat to what is necessary for our often economic and definitely our emotional survival, which is, I don't know about you, but I'm talking a lot more to friends and family on the telephone. My own presence on my social media platforms, on Twitter and on LinkedIn and on Instagram, have gone up during this crisis because when you're anxious, I'm certainly anxious, we need to communicate more. However, one of the things I write about and I'm very interested in about this whole balance and axis between simplicity and complexity is you do need boundaries.

And it's another reason why everything is around a sort of six step principle. It's important to have boundaries. It's important to have habits. There's nothing to stop us saying, yes, we can be connected more, but to schedule calls even from home as if we're scheduling meetings. We don't have to sort of take the lid off and become compulsive and just, you know, routed to our mobiles the whole time, our cell phones or whatever, our smartphones. We can have some self-control here. There's no doubt about that either.

[23:58] Alan Seales: Self-control. Yeah, that's the hardest for me personally, because I'll pick up my phone and I'll make a call. And then before I put it down, it's already in my hand. So I start scrolling through Instagram and I check Twitter. And I'm looking to see right now who's complaining about the shows. And I'm worried about like Six, the musical that was supposed to open last night and didn't now. And, you know, the downstream effects of all of this, like if Six doesn't open, does it make it into the Tony nomination deadline this year? And if not, like, are the Tony Awards even going to happen? Because obviously Radio City Music Hall is more than 500 people. So are they going to perform it? Are they going to do the Tonys for an empty house? Are they going to?

[24:46] Julia Hobsbawm: But here's the thing about habit. You're absolutely right. And what I'm saying is, in a time of crisis or unusual circumstances, all bets are a bit off. So I write about habit and how to cultivate habit and the importance of habit. And actually, empirically, it takes about 66 days to make a new habit, to have a routine, to have a rhythm. So it's important, I believe, to structure our day, especially those of us who are going to be working more from home and to be more socially isolated. It's important to structure our day. And I tend to focus on three kinds of things. One is process, just the stuff of life, whether that's emails or whether that's washing up or whether that's getting kids ready or whether that's paying taxes, whatever.

The second is people. Who are you going to meet either on the phone or socially? And then the third is if you like project, it's important to get stuff done every day, whether that's doing your exercises by video and your dumbbells or whether that's doing some writing or doing some client work, whatever that may be. But another part is to look at the three things that we have to do to sort of keep body and soul together. And one of those is what I call mindlessness. We pay a lot of attention to mindfulness, but actually the body needs to reset and rest. And so does the mind. And we need to tune out. And so some of what you're describing, Alan, is a kind of nervous, anxious tune out, mindlessly scrolling and over connecting and over communicating.

And that's OK, too. But the idea is to get back to your habit. The idea is to get back to a sense of rhythm so that you're not compulsively disappearing down the rabbit hole of the Internet. But as you say, staying present and connected to the simple truth, which is we're in a difficult moment, but you're going to trust that we're all going to get through it and we are going to get through it. The theatres are going to come back. The curtain is going to go back up again. And the vast, vast majority of us are going to survive this.

[27:12] Alan Seales: It's interesting. Earlier, you said that you equated this to a bit of wartime. I guess the people now who are millennials, who are addicted to phones and technology, and I won't exclude, I'm sure there's some boomers as well who are addicted to technology, but the majority of people now don't, especially in the US, have never really experienced something that has caused this sort of panic before. And it's a panic that I haven't seen. Yesterday, when Governor Cuomo said that New York City is under a state of emergency, and then immediately Broadway shut down, there was just a run on grocery stores, and there was a line, a queue outside of the grocery stores to get in because people were just going in and freaking out. Maybe I'm underreacting? Am I in avoidance right now?

[28:17] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, like I say, everyone is affected differently. I think it depends where you're at in your life and whether you've got dependents. I mean, I have a family, I have a husband who's got some health issues who's older than me, I have a very aged mother, and we have lots of children. So I would say everyone responds depending on their own circumstances. What I would also say, I mean, I regard New York as my second home, and it is the home of Broadway. I've been nearly 100 times in my life, and I'm 55. I go a lot to New York. I was there twice in January. I love New York. In fact, a couple of New Yorkers came over to London on their way to Denmark this week, and I took them to the Book of Mormon, and they're now a bit stranded in Denmark figuring out how to get home. And so my heart goes out to New Yorkers in particular.

[29:22] Julia Hobsbawm: The truth is that the whole world is experiencing different gradations just like every human is experiencing different gradations. But what we are united by is a common overall reality and a common situation, which is temporary disruption is going to hit everyone. And one of the, I suppose, reassurances I can give based on the work I've done about how humans can reconnect to essential simplicities about human nature. One of the things I hope people may be able to take comfort from that I've certainly discovered in researching how humans are essentially able to be sophisticated in their simplicity and to cut through complexity is that we are very resilient. We are very adaptable. We are very creative.

So I have no doubt that both the theatre community and the theatre going community and the business community, which is really where I come from, is going to get through this. But we are going to need to adapt to extemporize. Let's think of this period as a kind of improv. You know, there's a whole tradition in theatre of improv. And that's the moment that we're in. And so we can recreate the intimacy and the community of theatre in different ways. We can do it with our podcasts. We can do it with our telephone calls. We can do it with our social media accounts. We can do it by just sitting in our apartments or in our homes and connecting to what's really going on and reading and thinking and writing.

And, you know, we will take some comfort from that. One of the things I am struck by, and it's why I refer to this as a war footing, is that the play I saw 10 days ago in London is Leopoldstadt, which is written by Tom Stoppard. And Tom Stoppard is a playwright I actually met because he was friends with my late father. And this play really is about my family, the family of any Jewish person whose relatives were in the Holocaust, caught up in the Holocaust. It's set in Vienna, where my family has come from. It begins in 1899 and it ends in about 1955. It's an extraordinary play. And I was reminded of 1937 when families like mine were on the eve of the 1938 Kristallnacht. And some people knew it was war and knew it was the end and knew that they had to fight to survive.

And others didn't and undertook what was called the last waltz. Now, I would say at this point in time, I'm not making direct parallels to the Holocaust. The vast majority of us are going to survive the coronavirus. But what I would say is bad times are here and putting our head in the sand isn't going to help. So I would say probably don't go to Off-Broadway at the moment.

[32:44] Alan Seales: So you're saying I should take this a little more seriously, especially being in New York.

[32:51] Julia Hobsbawm: I'm saying develop some new habits temporarily. Don't panic. The very famous British Churchillian keep calm and carry on is right. In the UK at the moment, I'm recording this on the day that the prime minister is advising to keep as normal. They're not shutting down in the UK mass public gatherings. They're not doing what over the pond in Europe they are doing at the moment. So every country is in a different stage of the illness. New York is in a very difficult position at the moment. I gather that the outbreak kind of began in earnest in La Rochelle, which is very close. So New York is in a sort of lockdown. And that's real. So we've got to keep it real. That's a very big aspect of what I call the simplicity principle. Keep it real.

[33:44] Alan Seales: Yeah. And there's rumors of shutting down the subway system, which is incredibly hard to keep clean and disinfected, of course. But for me, where it kind of hits home is when Disney shuts down. Because if Disney closes, then like I grew up with Disney World in my life. So if Disney closes, that's like the end of the world for me. That tells you the extent of the crisis and trauma I've been through in my life when that's my sort of litmus test. And yeah, I think after this conversation, I'll take it a little more seriously. I'm not one to panic. And I always think ahead five steps and I'm thinking rationally. And so now, you know, I understand the need to go out and get supplies. But should I mean, should we stockpile? I don't feel like I think if you take more than you need, you risk not having more later. But then you take it away from those who really need it. Like there's got to be a balance somewhere.

[35:03] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, let me hark back to the fact that the mantra of the book is keep it simple. And that was inspired by the late, great Maya Angelou, who I had the great privilege and pleasure to become friendly with and social with when I was in my 20s. So 30 odd years ago. And in fact, I met her many times with the great Oprah Winfrey. And Maya always used to have a number of aphorisms, some of which she used on stage. She gave the most extraordinary theatrical performances. But she used to say them in private, too, usually over a whiskey, usually with friends. And I very I really remember Maya saying to me, keep it simple, sweetie. There's no need to be brutal when people say I'll be brutally honest. She said, why be brutal?

Just keep it simple, sweetie. Just be honest and keep it simple is, in fact, a very well worn safety design principle that was developed by an American called Clarence Kelly Johnson for the military and the Navy in the 40s and 50s. If you keep it simple, you know where you are. One of the problems of the complex world we saw this with the Boeing disasters of the Max 8 jets is that complexity overtook the keep it simple principle in design. And those planes were designed to be so complicated that the pilots not only didn't have enough training, but they couldn't understand them and they didn't actually work. So I would say, keep it simple. Focus on what's real. Focus on what needs to be done right now.

My own worry is not that people in cities are going to run out of supplies. But my concern is how we make adaptations to our daily routine, to our working routine and how we balance the reality of the economic hit, the social hit with the politics and the real politic. That is complicated. And our salvation is to keep it simple, which is to keep calm, which is to keep connected on our social media platforms, which is to give ourselves creative sustenance in the ways that we can. We all have books. We all have audio books. We all have streaming devices. We all have ways of keeping that intimate community feeling alive. And it will soon be safe to get back out there again. But it isn't right now.

[37:29] Alan Seales: Well, I agree. I agree with that. And, you know, everything passes in some form or another over some period of time. The people like service workers who are helping, you know, set up catering for these massive events that are getting canceled or the ushers for Broadway or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. The list goes on of now people who just won't get paid as more and more parents work from home. Their nannies or their babysitters may not be needed, so they're not getting paid. There are people who now they can sit at home and keep it simple and relax and read a book. But at the end of the day, you know, there's still anxiety over bills to pay and supporting their own families. And, you know, so we kind of I don't know where I'm going with this, but, you know, it's a concern of mine that extends beyond just my own inner circle.

[38:19] Julia Hobsbawm: You're absolutely right that simplicity is not always ideal. We are entering a period of enforced rapid simplicity and simplification of our lives. We normally live complex, fun, complicated times to some degree. We travel and we go to conferences and we go to the theater and we go to meetings and we go out to eat and yada yada. And we can't do that at the moment. So so so simplicity on an enforced basis is an adjustment. At the same time, you raise a very real point, which is this is not a picnic for everyone to just sit and hang out in their apartments and, you know, listen to music and podcasts and wait for it all to die down. There are people who can't do that. There are frontline workers.

There are transit workers. There are all sorts of people in the economy who and the creative economy who are on zero hours, who have no job security. And this is going to be economically a disaster. The only thing I will say is there will be plays about this breath. Bertolt Brecht wrote a wonderful poem called After the Dark Times, and it one stanza is after the dark times, will there still be singing? Yes, there will be singing about the dark times. You know, these are difficult, dark times. They're literally dark in theater land. And for our social health, we are going to need to express them, understand them, own them and articulate them, because this is not a time to fantasize that there is there are upsides.

If only we adjusted our thinking. This is about surviving through an extraordinary period. It's not literally a war, but it's a form of war. It's a form of all modern life being suspended. And that's really what we're experiencing to some degree. Every single one of us right now.

[40:31] Alan Seales: Absolutely. Yeah, I, I agree. And I like I like the challenge of adapting personally. That's my personality. I like it when I'm forced to change and figure out problems and be a problem solver. But there, you know, there's a point where where, of course, the solutions that I need to solve problems may not be may not be available or, you know, I need to get super creative because I just can't go to the store and buy what I need or whatever the case is. And so there's anxiety that comes with that. Everybody else who has anxiety and is saddened by the loss of the theater and the loss of their social dynamic. You know, I, I agree with you. Adapt, do what you can. And it's all going to get better. It always does.

[41:15] Julia Hobsbawm: There was a wonderful viral, no terrible pun intended. There was a viral video that went viral of some nurses in Iran in a hospital where people were being quarantined with respiratory problems. I don't know if you know this. And the video was of a nurse who decided to sing and dance to the patients.

[41:39] Alan Seales: No, I haven't seen that.

[41:41] Julia Hobsbawm: And there's this absolutely sort of beautiful, poignant piece of theater, which is, you know, she was performing for them to lift their spirits, to raise them through these dark times. But I do think that ultimately, this is a moment for reset for society. And, you know, it would be good in a way if the idea of theater, which is to connect us to the simplicity of being human in all the feelings. I mean, even the Book of Mormon, which is an extraordinary performance and and was obviously contentious. But I was watching that play and I thought, this is so clever because in amongst the laughs and my goodness, there were laughs from the second the curtain goes up in amongst the choreography and the music and the story.

This is, in fact, a play about human pain. This is a play about the state of the world. And that's what we're feeling right now. So in a funny kind of a way, I would absolutely predict that theater land is going to come back very, very strong from this. I think there will be full houses forever after this.

[43:05] Alan Seales: Well, I think that is a wonderful place to wrap up. I want to thank you very, very much for making the time. I think this is going to be helpful for a lot of people.

[43:14] Julia Hobsbawm: Well, I hope so. My absolute pleasure. And again, my heart goes out to Broadway.

[43:19] Alan Seales: Yes. So everybody, please check the episode notes. There's going to be a link in there to buy Julia's book, The Simplicity Principle, Six Steps Towards Clarity in a Complex World. It's available for pre-order now and it's going to come out on April 28th, 2020. We can find you online at juliahobsbawm.com. That's H-O-B-S-B-A-W-M. You're on Twitter at juliahobsbaum and Instagram. It's juliahobsbaum. Anywhere else? Anything else I need to plug?

[43:49] Julia Hobsbawm: No. That's very simply put, if I may say so.

[43:52] Alan Seales: All right. Well, thank you so, so much. I really appreciate this.

[43:56] Julia Hobsbawm: My pleasure.