The psychotherapy room is, by design, one of the most private spaces in human life, but Esther Perel has devoted much of her career to opening the door. Addressing relationships, cross-cultural psychology, and the contours of belonging, she brought therapeutic ideas out into the world through a body of work that spans talks, books, and her hit podcast Where Should We Begin?, which has reached millions of listeners across nearly a decade. In her Substack publication Entre Nous with Esther Perel, she says she’s found a gathering place for it all: “I always talk about how I wanted to bring the therapeutic ideas into the public square,” she told us. “Now I want to create a public square.”

On the day of the 20th anniversary re-release of her book Mating in Captivity, a cultural touchstone on the topic of desire, we’re sharing a conversation between Esther and Hanne Winarsky, Substack’s head of new media, recorded at Temple Bar in SoHo, New York. In this second episode of Open Tab, Esther discusses how she hires and has built her businesses, how work has replaced religion as a source of meaning, whether AI can give good therapy, and how she’s made it her life’s work to re-create the proverbial village online.

New episodes of Open Tab drop weekly through June. You can watch on YouTube, listen wherever you get your podcasts, and always find the full series on Substack.

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