Where Should We Begin? | Audible
5 Live Daily (BBC 5 Live) | iPlayer
Woman’s Hour (BBC Radio 4) | iPlayer
Esther Perel is a psychotherapist from Belgium who is, says Wikipedia, known for “exploring the tension between the need for security (love, belonging and closeness) and the need for freedom (erotic desire, adventure and distance) in human relationships”. Perel has done TED talks watched by 7.5 million people, written a bestselling book that’s been translated into 24 languages, she’s highly respected and feted internationally. Yet, busy as I was, tottering along my own security/freedom tightrope, I knew nothing about her until recently. Now, I’ve been able to listen to her in action. And it is utterly fascinating.
The second series of Perel’s podcast, Where Should We Begin?, started last week. In the first episode, as in every one, we got to hear a couple’s counselling session. Certain details are changed, for anonymity, and every so often, Perel breaks out of the session to explain what she’s thinking, but for the most part, you’re right in the room. Here, the couple’s problem was not their own solid, loving relationship, but the relationship they were having with their daughter. After years of being a successful student, she had withdrawn into her room to sit at her computer for 14 hours a day. Perel’s insights were instantly enlightening. The parents had kept the situation private. “You think,” said Perel, “you are protecting her, by colluding with her. But you are doing a parallel process. She’s not talking, you’re not talking. She’s trapped, you’re trapped.” Therapy is an amazing thing, and Perel is a great therapist.
Plus, her Belgian accent can’t help but remind me of someone... She’s the Hercule Poirot of emotions. She doesn’t have the fragile ego and showiness (nor the twirly moustache), but she has the detective’s unerring ability to spot clues, put them together and make the couple in the room – and those of us listening in – understand what has actually happened, what is taking place right now. The first series of Where Should We Begin? is free on iTunes (episode 4, The Addict, is a mind-blower), but the new series is on Audible, which means you pay for it. I expect it will be free once the series ends. Whether you can wait is up to you. Every episode is as gripping as a thriller, and as moving as any real-life documentary.
If you were in the mood to be moved, Adrian Chiles’s interview with ex-footballer Clarke Carlisle (left) and his wife, Carrie, on 5 Live Daily last week got the tear ducts working. I’ve been a bit rude about Chiles in the past – he can seem sleepy and unengaged – but he is a natural, sympathetic interviewer and he was excellent here. Carlisle suffers from depression and, in September, left his Preston home, set on killing himself. He was spotted in a Liverpool park by a man whose friend had recently committed suicide, and who sat with Carlisle, cried with him – and saved him. Carrie Carlisle said something very astute: “If I could go back, I would stop using my own mental framework as a reference.” The polar opposite of every unhelpful why-don’t-you-just-pull-yourself-together remark.
If all these emotions were a bit much, you could enjoy a broadcasting taboo being smashed on Tuesday’s Woman’s Hour, courtesy of Jane Garvey’s interviewee Katy Tur, a reporter on the Donald Trump trail. It was fascinating stuff, right up to and including the moment when Tur talked about the T-shirts women wore at Trump rallies. Some, she informed us, had “Hillary is a C-U-N-T on them”. Woman’s Hour listeners can all spell. So can their children, and it was half-term last week. Garvey made the usual apologies, but it did make me smile.
