Reentry Anxiety

Uncanny Valley | WIRED

WIRED

Technology

4.1 • 571 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2021

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Vaccines are here, unemployment is down, and the pandemic is nearing its end. These are obviously good things. Still, the idea of returning to "normal" might seem daunting. That's because our brains aren't used to being in crisis mode for so long. All that anxiety and uncertainty that's built up over the past year is going to take a while to go away.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED science writer Matt Simon joins us to talk about the psychology of reentry anxiety, and WIRED service editor Alan Henry offers some tips on how to manage it.

Show Notes:

Read Matt Simon’s story about the psychology of returning to “normal” here. Read Adrienne So’s story about vaccine FOMO here.

Recommendations:

Alan recommends the game Monster Hunter Rise. Matt recommends the show People Just Do Nothing. Mike recommends Hari Kunzru’s podcast Into the Zone. Lauren recommends the film Minari.

Alan Henry can be found on Twitter @halophoenix. Matt Simon is @mrMattSimon. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Mike.
0:00.8	Lauren.
0:01.4	Mike, what do you think it's going to be like when we have to sit next to each other in the office again?
0:06.5	Remember you had a jar of salted, roasted nuts at your desk?
0:11.8	So I would say I'm probably going to be putting my hands back in that.
0:14.9	I mean, we actually used to both dip our hands in that jar.
0:18.2	Are we going to do that again?
0:20.1	Yeah, why not? Okay, well, I really want
0:24.0	everything to go back to normal, but the thing is normal has pretty much changed. So we should
0:29.6	talk about that. Hey, everyone, welcome to Gadget Lab. I'm Lauren Good. I'm a senior writer at Wired.
0:41.5	And I'm Michael Colori, a senior editor at Wired. And Wired's service editor, Alan Henry, is joining us from New York today.
0:48.6	Alan and his team write all of the helpful how-toes on our website. They cover the video game industry.
0:53.9	And Alan is currently
0:55.2	writing a book on productivity. Hey Alan, thanks for joining us. Thanks for having me back.
0:59.2	Also with us is Wired science writer Matt Simon. Matt writes about climate change, human
1:04.4	psychology, and strange creatures, which you may have seen on Netflix because it's a video
1:09.5	series. Hey Matt. Hello, and thanks for having me.
1:11.6	All right, guys, it's been a weird year and you probably don't need me to tell you that.
1:15.6	This pandemic has really made us all feel a keen sense of loss and tested our personal limits of uncertainty.
1:22.6	But on the upside, people are getting vaccinated.
1:25.6	And while we're not out of the woods yet, and some countries are still seeing alarming spikes in COVID cases, we may slowly start to reintroduce normalcy into our lives.
1:36.4	But this presents its own jarring shift, right?
	...

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