Why Don't Adults Get Summer Vacation?

21:59Interesting. Which is? Okay. Belovedness is the value of romantic love. We test love three different ways in the Values Bridge assessment. There's romantic love, which we call belovedness. There's the love for your family as an organizing principle. That's called family centrism. And then there's the love that shows up in friendship and community. That's belonging. All right. And so belovedness means that when all is said and done, if you have it as a top value, it means that the first screen that you put your actions and your decisions through is a romantic partner. Now, look, it measures it whether you have a romantic partner or not.

22:33Yeah. Because, I mean, I've seen it as a number one for somebody, and they have 100 % gap because that person has not showed up yet. So I'm single, but I had a 50 % gap. I thought it should be 100 % gap. It's not debilitating. It's not debilitating. Yeah, I mean, like, when I see it when people, I mean, tragically, not tragically, but very sadly, sometimes somebody will come in, and they'll be married, and they'll have it at number one, and they'll have like an 85 % gap, and I'll say, are you having tough times in your marriage now? And they'll say, terrible. And so, I mean, we see it in a bunch of different presentations.

23:02So 50%, you're single, and what that tells me is you'd probably like not to be. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's what I'm seeing. Yeah. I'm dating. Okay. Maybe that helps bridge the gap. That's it. Like you're not lonely, I would say. I'm not lonely. So actually, and it was tied, I should say. I had a tie. Okay. So one was belovedness. Two was agency. Okay. And there I have a 0 % gap. Yeah. I'm not surprised at all. Agency is the value that talks about self-determination. Like when I teach agency as a value to my students, I make them sit through the entire rendition of Leslie Gore singing, you don't own me.

23:37And it's like by the end of that song, they understand what self-determination is. You know, I'm not just one of your little toys. But it's about how much you want to organize your life around owning all the decisions and their outcomes. But I have very low agency, which means I'm very, very collaborative in that I'll be like, you decide, you decide. I don't want to know this. And so agency. Yeah, I don't do that. Okay, yeah. So that's high agency. Okay, my third was voice. Yeah. Not surprising for a podcaster. Right. And that was also a 0 % authenticity gap. Well, I'm not surprised again. I mean, it's individualistic self-expression.

24:10You do not. You show the world who you are with a sense of freedom. You don't hold back. You're authentic. My daughter is married to a spectacular tattoo artist. He lots of self-expression, surrounds himself with people with self-expression. And creative people, artists tend to generally have very high voice. Now, look, it's interesting because I've always wanted to get into an Amish community and give them the values bridge. I think that there are certain communities where there's shared values of conformity. I mean, there's a Japanese concept called wa, which is that you fit into the community for the overall good, and they consider wa a virtue.

24:44So what I'd love to know is most people are living low voice. How many people actually have it? I don't know. Okay, my fourth was scope. Yes. So scope is? Scope is the desire to organize, to have a big life. Okay. And here's the problem, Susie. My scope was negative. I had a negative 36 % delta on scope, which means I have too much scope. You're overexpressing it right now for your comfort level. So scope is the value of wanting to have a big life. I have a friend who says, I want to do all the things. Yeah. You got to do all the things. I want to eat all the experiences. Right. That's right. I want to like - I want to taste everything.

25:15I want to see all the art. I want to go to every place. I want to learn from every person. I want to know everything. That's right. That is exactly a high scope person. And it's not a high value for the general population. There's a woman who I know who has very high scope, and she says, I want to touch everyone's brain. And that is a very high scope person, a person who absolutely wants to drink. And they'll take the chaos. You'll take the chaos. I totally will. Okay, but that negative variant says to me right now in your life you're feeling just a little bit too much chaos. It's a little bit unbalanced for you right now.

25:46It's not surprising when somebody has high scope that sometimes it gets out of balance. My husband, Jack, who you mentioned earlier, had such high scope and one of my favorite high scope Jack stories. One night it was like 11 o 'clock and we got into bed and I thought, oh, goody, it's time to go to sleep. I'm so tired for kids working all day. And then he looked over at me and this is not going where you think it's going. He looks over at me and he said, want to do pub crawl? I said, at 11 o 'clock, we're going to start a pub crawl. A pub crawl? And he says, yeah, we didn't do enough today. I didn't see it going there.

26:16It's going to be fun. We haven't done enough today. And so we called a car and we got into the car and like we got home at two in the morning. He was so energized by it. That is high scope. He had to touch all the brains. How old was Jack at that point? Oh, my gosh. It was probably right before he got sick. He was in his 70s. Yeah. Wonderful. Beautiful. Yeah. My fifth was family centrism. Yeah. And that also had, I think, a 40 to 50 percent gap. Really? Is your family nearby? In D.C. and Bangkok and all over. Okay. So this might explain the gap. So family centrism is the value of wanting to organize your life around your family.

26:48It's a top five value for 40 % of Americans. Only 9 % have it as the number one top value. But I was surprised by that because I am like, and by the way, when I told my sisters, they were surprised and shocked by this, which also probably explains the gap a little bit. But I think you're comfortable with your gap. That is your scope trumping your family centricism. Family centricism. Okay. Okay, so those are my five values. Okay. Do you have any of those in your top five? I have scope, I believe, is number five for me. So my top value is Cosmos. It's the faith value. God. Yeah. Spirituality. No, not spirituality.

27:23It actually doesn't test that. It tests religion. Religion. Because if we had spirituality, every single person who read their horoscope would have cosmos. Everybody who went to Burning Man. Right, exactly, and who has a spiritual experience eating a gummy and so forth. So we didn't want to test for that. We wanted to test faith, religion, as an organizing principle. And it doesn't make any bit of difference what religion it is. It could be any religion, but it has to be an organized religion. So that's my number one value. And it is the screen on which I put everything through. My number two value is achievement.

27:50Where does that show up for you? My achievement is number six. Okay. And zero authenticity gap. So achievement is the value around organizing principle of accomplishment and mastery. It's about, you know, and that's pretty high at number six. For the general population, achievement is number nine. And so I would say that for me, it's very high. I like winning. Then work centrism shows up at number three. I love work. I've always loved work. When I was a little girl, I was going to the doctor one day with my mom in the city, and we saw a woman with a briefcase. And I said to my mom, I thought I'd seen like the Holy Land.

28:25I mean, my family was hippies, and there was no examples of people working. None. Okay. My family's a high eudaimonia family. Very, very hippie, dippy, total feral upbringing with the artists. And I said to my mom when I saw the briefcase, like, you know, what's that? And she said, yuck. And I thought, yum. I started working when I was 14, and I've probably not had a day in my life except for the day I got married that I have not. So I like work. I like it. Okay. Then I have beholderism, which is a top four value for most Americans. Beholderism is one of the oldest values that's captured by and written about by scholars.

28:57Beholderism is the value of aesthetics. Okay. It's wanting to be surrounded by beautiful things. I mean, to have like, you know, it's sort of loving, elevated style and, you know, beautiful stuff. And, like, I love my home is kind of my palette. I love to have a beautiful home. And sometimes there are some scholars who argue that beholderism is a proxy for harmony. I'm not sure I believe that. And I think that, like, I always joke that when people find out they have beholderism as a high value, they want to get right into a support group because they're embarrassed. The fifth one is scope, which is I want to do all the things.

29:34So we covered nine between us. There's seven more left to go. Okay. My number seven is eudaimonia. I'm a little Gen Z. I'm a little Gen Z. I mean, a lot of people have eudaimonia. And look, this is not about happiness because everybody wants to be happy. It's about pleasure, recreation. It's like when you want it. So eudaimonia at number one means I want it right now. I don't want to postpone anything for it. So what that shows me is you're willing to postpone it for some other things like scope and some other things. Well, I have a negative 17 eudaimonia gap and a negative 27 beholderism gap.

30:03Stop taking vacations. It's too pretty and too fun for me. Yeah, right. That's right. No one feels bad for me. And also number nine, belonging. I also have a negative 18. too much belonging. So belonging is the value of friendship and community. And it's not a very common value. People say they want it, say they want it, but then they don't end up prioritizing it. It is hard to make friends. It takes a lot of time. And when you're not in college, you know, college is a big friend manufacturing system. The friends are right there. You can make them. It takes 200 hours to make a friend. Basically, that's what the research would show.

30:31So belonging is a value that modern life is the enemy of. Then it's radius and non-cibby. Okay, so let's talk about these two values. They're different. Radius is the value of systemic impact. And this is about wanting to leave a legacy that you won't even see. It's about wanting to change the world. Non-sivi is a different value. That's Latin for not for oneself. And this is the value of wanting acts of service. And, you know, there can be people who want to change the world who will not stop when somebody's got a flat tire. Acts of service, like the five love languages acts of service? No, no, acts of service like you want to be in customer service when you work.

31:06Or you want to be a nurse. Pediatric nurses have non-sivi. You want to tutor someone. Yeah, you want to help people in an intimate way, one-on-one. Like a one-on-one. Not a systemic impact, but like a one-on-one impact. Okay. And then I have luminance and affluence as 12 and 13. Interesting. So luminance is the fame value. For most Americans, it's the bottom value. It's very simple. You want to be famous. I'm a podcaster. Yeah. So I'm 12 instead of 16. Yeah, that's right. I could be higher, actually. No, but it's statistically. I mean, that statistically is a gigantic difference from the general population.

31:35Okay. And then I have negative 42. Do you feel overexposed ever? No, but I... Or you know what you might feel? You might feel like it's a lot of work to be out there. Like, luminance, there's always a big gap because to be known is hard. It's a noisy world out there. I'm not that known. And sometimes, oh, yes, you are. I'm not that known. I mean, compared to other people, I'm not that known. No, but you are. You are. I mean, I think that... But it takes a lot of work. It's like a full-time job, you know, to promote to podcast, to... Yeah, to do things. Yeah, I think that's probably what the feeling is.

32:06And then what was the last one that you had? That affluence was number 13. This is about how— I have a positive gap there, 35. I need to get richer. Yeah, well, you want to. I want to. But it's not that high a priority for you, so you're not making it—you know, you're not waking up every morning thinking, how can I make more money? Yeah, like fame, wealth, work centricism, cosmos, and then place, my absolute last value. Well, that's so interesting. So place is the value about how important a singular place is to you. I mean, what that tells me is you could live anywhere. Yeah, I could live anywhere.

32:31Okay. Well, that's what— I mean, not anywhere. No, but it's not like, for me, to extract me from New York City would require the National Guard. Okay, I'm never living anywhere else. I've been invited to go teach at other universities, and I've been like, yeah, but they're not in New York. But this is not just like a know your values thing. This is a practical guide. So you want to know these values for the purpose of organizing your life and closing the gap between what you think is important and what you are actually doing with your time in life. Yeah, but there's another reason. I mean, yeah, you should close the gaps because gaps are uncomfortable.

33:03But the other reason is to be in the right job or be in the right relationship. Say you have non-SIBIs, number one, okay? And you're working on Wall Street and you have no client-facing responsibilities. And you can't understand why work is so unpleasant for you. And that's because you're not living your value. When you clock out, you got to go to the Genius Bar and just like help people with their phones or something. That's right. Or do something on the weekends where you're helping people. But I think like it's about alignment with what you're doing all day. So, I mean, say you have incredibly high radius and you've got a job that gives you no connection to world-changing activities.

33:35It can be agonizing not to be having a career that is matching your values. Totally. I was thinking about that when I looked at this because I thought work centricism was actually quite low for me at 14. I think it's because I've made my work, like, that voice, that agency. Yeah. I have that scope in my life. So I look at my top five values and I'm like, oh, I actually have been able to make a job and get paid. That's right. That's the beautiful thing about knowing your values and living them. It's like you're living by design and it feels pretty damn great. I mean, when somebody has high family centricism, high belonging and sort of high belovedness and they say to me, Professor Welch, I'm thinking about going into investment banking.

34:10I think, well, that'll last two years. I mean, I think it helps you. It's like a good screen for what job you should be in. It really, really helps you understand your relationships. Helps you understand your relationships in terms of your marital and partnerships and your romantic partnership, but also your friendships? Yeah, it really helps with friendships. I mean, I love it when I hear two best friends say, oh, we just took it together, and now we know why we're such close friends. And so – or you could find out why you have friction. So friends take it and, you know, teams take it at work and so forth because it's very good.

34:38I mean, it's very eye-opening. Are there certain values that, like, make for really good managers or leaders? Yeah, we're just studying that right now, and we have some very fascinating new data. Yep. We don't have the data on managers. We have it on high-performing teams. In high-performing teams, what we see is a very unusual array of values. And what I say is unusual is because they're so different from the general population. In high-performing teams, we see achievement at number one. For like everybody on that team is a high-achieving person. Yes. Number two, we see belonging. Okay. We see friendship, collaboration, and we see agency very depressed.

35:10So agency for the general population is number two. And in high-performing teams, We're seeing it down at 11. Okay. That's interesting. Low agency, high achievement, high belonging. They're water cooler people. Yeah. They're people who want to be in teams. They're people who want to be in teams and win. I do want to talk about AI and how it's changing things because we're moving to a world where like you talk a lot about values. It's a very human concept. I mean, do you think AI has values? No. Does an LLM have values? No. It can't because it's a machine. There are some aspects of us that are machine-like.

35:39You just described like a doctor. A doctor becomes a doctor because the parents have become a doctor. But that's like a machine that's a human being just absorbing their parents' desire for them. There's nothing machine-like about it. It's the antithesis of it. That's a matter of the heart. So I don't think that AI, I mean, AI pretends to be a person. I wrote something the other day, and I run it through AI to make sure there's no typos or I've left a word out or whatever. And I gave it to them, and it was my newsletter. And it said, oh, Susie, this is so you. And I wrote back, I'm begging you not to speak to me this way.

36:11You're a machine, and that's an awful way to speak to me. You're right. I was wrong to speak to you that way. It's like, this is dreadful. So, I mean, I'm fully aware that it is not a person, and it doesn't have values. Now, the creators of it have values that are in some ways expressed, and that's what scares people. What do you see as that? Look, this is the big debate. Are they just trying to maximize for how many people use it, and it gives you kind of a dopamine? And so if that was the case, then maybe affluence would be the values of the creators. I mean, this is the big fight about Sam Altman.

36:40And is he motivated by helping humanity, which was the claim going in? And that's why they were a nonprofit at first. And this is what the lawsuit was about. You said it was going to be about radius and non-city is basically what they're saying. But it actually ended up being about affluence. And so we're watching this unfold. And this is in November of 2023 when Sam Altman was kind of briefly ejected from his leadership position at OpenAI because people said this wasn't what we were sold. We were supposed to be a good company. We were supposed to be a nonprofit. And it wasn't that. I mean, agents, for one thing, they don't really need belonging.

37:10They don't need recognition. They don't really have bad weeks or dying parents or all those things. And we're moving to a world where we are going to be managing agents. We're going to have agentic colleagues. If we start having agentic reports that need very little kind of human management, do you think that will erode or atrophy our social management skills? One of my daughters works with teenagers, and she was saying they can't even write a text without AI mom. It's frightening. And I think that something's really going to give with our brain. The brain does atrophy. So here's another counter argument.

37:43Maybe AI doing a lot of stuff for us will throw us back into more and more human experiences. Like, okay, if AI is off doing this, if AI is sorting that, if AI is doing this work, what have I got to do with myself? Maybe I'll call an old friend. So I don't know. I think that, look, there's a lot of cataclysmic predictions going on. I'm an optimist, and I hope that it doesn't go that way. And I think that almost nothing can replace the feeling of love. I don't think this machine can replace the feeling of love. I'm going to put my chips on love. You famously wrote that article last year, is Gen Z unemployable?

38:16You didn't choose the headline. No, I did not. But what are some of the trends that you see? And you talk about this also in Career Confidential, this segment on your podcast, where you talk about some work trends, etc. What are some of the trends you see culturally that bring themselves to work? It's changing. Okay. I mean, it's really changing in the past year because when I first started teaching in 2021, 2022, there was a lot, a big desire coming out of the pandemic to bring your whole self to work and to have more work-life balance. I think as, I think that, you know, this term job hugging is real.

38:47I think people are - Job hugging? Yes. So this is the idea that job, it's the opposite of job hopping where people are like, you know, oh, I'm just going to keep on trying things. I'm going to try something that I'm going to go have some fun employment. So you become like a stage three clinger to your job? Yeah. Okay. I think that that's happening more and more. I think people are much less likely. They want to build careers. They want to stay places. And I think a little of this is anxiety about like, wait, why would I jump? If I jump, there may not be a rock to land on. And so I think that that's the biggest trend I see.

39:15I think that as the world is changing all around, like my students more and more are not talking about these kind of portfolio careers where they, you know, I'm going to try a little of this and four years later, I'm going to do that. Then I'm going to have some fun employment. I'm going to take off a year and then I'm going to go back. And people are like, well, not so fast. I'm going to find a job. I'm going to try to be great at it. I'm going to try to build some relationships, and I think I'm going to try to stay. I'm seeing that more and more. Do I have data? No. Is that their values, or is that society's fears?

39:43It is. It's two things going on at once. I mean, I think that people with high scope are always going to want to— whenever I see somebody with very high scope, I say, oh, please go be a chief of staff, because every day will be different, right? But I think part of it is this is just—there's just an economic context in which we live. Yeah. And your values can be overridden by, you know, people may have had certain values during, like, say, the plague. But when the world was ending, it was overridden, you know, by just having to get through the day. So kind of wartime changes people. And we might be in some kind of economic wartime right now.

40:13You also talked about on your show resume Botoxing. Oh, yeah. What is resume Botox? Look, I was asked about it. I mean, this is about when you try to make your resume look younger. And somebody wrote and said, like, you know, ageism is real. Ageism is real. Just talk to any 55-year-old trying to get a job, okay? And so you can go out there and companies are like, yeah, we want the young people, but also young people tend to be cheaper. And so there's this whole kind of dynamic going on right now where people are trying to kind of age-proof their resume by sort of like taking out the year that they graduated and removing a few jobs so that they look like they might be younger.

40:47Just try to get the interview. And my advice on that is either you're going to frustrate the person who's screening your interview and they're going to say, forget it. We can't figure out their age. they're going to suss it out anyway. They're going to go to your Instagram, whatever. They're going to figure it out. So let's just be honest. That's my feeling. But ageism without a doubt, that's a real phenomenon. That's a real thing. Yeah. It's interesting what you're saying, the economic context, because I just interviewed the Calci CEO. I asked him, you know, are you going to give to the giving pledge?

41:11How are you thinking about the billions of dollars that you have in at least paper money right now? And he spoke about the fact that young people nowadays seem cynical, jaded about the world, feel like there's not a lot of optimism in terms of where to put their effort. And it sounds like you're seeing something like that, too. I don't have data on it. I mean, I think that in general, anecdotally, there is pessimism and nihilism. But then you bump into pockets of it where people are just so incredibly encouraged and optimistic. And so I don't know what the true data on it is. My esteemed colleague, John Haidt, who wrote The Anxious Generation, would certainly say that there is an epidemic of purposelessness and that there is pessimism in the land.

41:54Do you think that we have the values as a society at a macro level to actually absorb the kinds of shifts that we are seeing culturally, economically, in the workplace, etc.? Maybe we're going to move to universal basic income. Maybe we're not. But if I look at your 16 values, there are certain things like non-civi, radius. Do we have values as a country, as a society to absorb the kind of shift that we're in right now? I'd really have to think about it. I don't know the answer to that question. I don't. I mean, it's a really profound question. Because I don't know where we're shifting to, I don't know which values would be the most aligned.

42:32I don't. Do you think America has values? Of course it does. So what are the values? Like, how would you stack where America has values? America certainly has a set of virtues. I mean, America's values. I can, you know, this is the data that I have. The number one value for the general population of the United States is eudaimonia at number one. It's agency at number two. It's voice at number three. It's beholderism at number four. And it's family centrism at number five. So that's the general population. Now, what that would mean is that for the number one value, eudaimonia, that would mean that 58 % of the population has it in their top five.

43:03Okay, so you can't make gigantic generalizations off of that. I mean, when you get down to family centrism, that would mean that 40 % have it in their top five. So, yeah, you could talk about it. Those two can be in conflict, right? Family centricism and, like, self-care. It can. They can. Unless your family likes to go along on your self-care excursions with you, right? And so for sure, I mean, it is definitely they can be in conflict. But I mean, American values, I mean, that's the data I have. Can we have a values gap as a society? I mean, individuals have like, like right now we are working.

43:34It seems like we are working so hard. I started this conversation saying, why don't adults have summer vacation? You were like, I do not know the words you speak. Right, right. I mean, I think we as a country, if eudaimonia, pleasure, joy. So we have the gaps on every single value. I mean, I have that data as a country. So with eudaimonia, I believe the gap is for the general population is 25%, meaning people wish they had 25 % more of it. With work centrism, people feel like they're overexpressing it. It's the number 15 value for the general population, but it's negative 7%, meaning people wish they had 7 % less of it.

44:06So even though it's so low in their organized principle, it's also they would like less. And you look at radius, which is interesting because that's the desire to change the world. It's very hard to do that. So people who have it as a general value, people who have it as a high value, have like a gap of like 60 % because it's so hard to change the world. Almost no one, maybe Malala feels like she's changing the world, but most people do not. So, yeah, I mean, there's gaps all over the place. Feels like we have a societal, like a value gap with eudaimonia. Like if people are saying, I want more joy, I want more pleasure.

44:35And then what I said to you at the beginning, like 40 to 50 % of us are not using our PTO or our time off. For sure. Like what's happening? What explains that gap? I think that it could be all around expectations because, you know, we know our values and then we don't go and do them because we think, well, I can't take that time off because I'll get fired. And so maybe that's what's happening or they just hear their, you know, they hear their parents' voice in their ear. Like, when I was young, I worked all the time. I mean, that could be what's going on. We started off saying it's not too late to get your values, to have your one wild and if you want precious life or if you want wild life, but your one life.

45:13What is the number one piece of advice you would give people and how they can have a more aligned life? My general piece of advice on this is that it sounds simple, but it's really hard. And it's this. And it's better to be the author of your life than the editor. And we end up being the editor of our life. You know, there's a lot of people writing the story of our life, our bosses, our partners, our best friends, our parents, society writ large. And then what we try to do is we try to edit it into shape that it's palpable to us, okay? And I think that there's a moment where we have to decide to put the pen in our own hand and say, who am I?

45:48What are my values? What are my aptitudes? What are my interests? Like, who am I? I want to write the story and let other people edit it, but I want to write the story of my life. And this is not about having high agency. It's about wanting authorship of your own story. So that would be my advice. But it's a pretty brave moment. Almost nobody gets there without some kind of reckoning. Some seismic shift in their life. Yeah. Or just some kind of like, I don't want this anymore. I don't want to live by default. I want to live by design. Susie, we end every episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions asking our guest a question they have, ideally a dumb question, that they do not know the answer to.

46:23Yeah. They have not yet asked their, you know, over-obsequious chat agents about. All right. Well, because I listened to your podcast, I knew you were going to end with this question. And I do have a question. And it must be dumb because I've had it my entire life and I cannot find the answer to it. And I ask it all the time. I ask people at dinner parties and I ask friends and I ask it and I can never get an answer. So maybe there's a problem with the question, but it's going to seem so obscure to you, but it's truly a question I don't know the answer to. Okay. So my question is this, why did medieval art happen?

46:56Okay. I'm just going to explain it to you. So before medieval, before the medieval, the dark ages, there was beautiful, figurative, three-dimensional art with a lot of subtle nuance to it. There were human beings, there were emotions in it. And then there were 400 years where art became kind of two-dimensional and completely unexpressive, almost like a child was doing it. And then the Renaissance happened and there was beautiful art again. And I cannot tell you, I mean, I've studied art. I love art. I talk to art people about it. And I'll say, why did medieval art happen? It wasn't a skill problem.

47:26They knew how to draw in three-dimension. What happened? And no one can answer it, but maybe one of your listeners can. Maybe someone will know. I would love to know the answer to that question. I love it. That is a high beholderism question. It is. It's dumb, but high beholderism. Yes. Well, thank you so much, Susie, for being with me. We're going to share a code where people can go and take Values Bridge. I have to take the new version of it as well. Please do. You'll love it. To find out if, but I don't think anything seismic is changing. I don't think your values will change, but it's cool.

47:51Maybe my gap would change. Maybe. My overall gap was like 20%. It may have changed. It might have changed. Yeah. Hopefully for the better. Yeah, I hope so. But we'll share that. Thank you so much for being with me. I so appreciate it. My pleasure.

48:04I love Susie and this idea of being the author, not the editor of your own life. It's so powerful. And there's so much that we do, especially when it comes to work, that just feels mechanical and obligatory instead of decided. So while I don't usually flack stuff, I will tell you to go get a free test of your values at becomingyou.com. You can also get 50 % off the paid test if you go use the code SGDQ50. And then you'll be able to find out how work-centric you are or aren't. And on this question of why adults don't get summer vacation, I went down this massive rabbit hole on where summer vacation even came from and why no one gave it to me.

48:38There's this long-standing myth out there that summer vacation is a hangover from agrarian times. Unfortunately for the farmers, we cannot credit them. It's much more recent than that. Like 200 years ago, American schools were open almost year-round. In places like Boston or Philadelphia, they had school for 240 days, which is wild in case you were dividing by 365 like I was. There are actually only 260 weekdays, guys, which is only a few weeks off. So basically there was this massive urban school reform that happened in like the late 19th century. And it was really driven by weather. Basically the cities were too hot and rich families were leaving anyways to have holiday.

49:15People were also getting sick because of the heat. So they decided, hey, we're gonna institute summer vacation. And nowadays we're down to 180 school days, which means that kids have like 16 weeks off of school, and a lot of that during the summer. Must be nice to be a kid. But what about parents? Who is watching the kids all this time? What about Hot Girl Summer for those of us who don't have kids yet? And what about that early vacation wealth divide? Doesn't it still exist? Because almost a quarter of Americans have no paid time off. For the lowest earners, that's 50 % who have no time off. And when we do get time off, the average American gets like 10 days of PTO versus 24 days in Europe.

49:54So this is something to think about during Labor Day or your next summer holiday, or as we kick off this What Even Is Work series, which I'm so excited about. And it's all made possible in this partnership with Zoom. Over six episodes this fall, I'm going to dive into work, why we do it, where we do it, how we do it, and how all those things might get better. And next up, I'm going to talk to Cal Newport, the bestselling author of books like Deep Work and A World Without Email. That sounds so nice. How can I get a world without email? You'll find out next time on Smart Girl Dumb Questions. I also want to know your questions about all things work for Cal Newport, and I would like you to review the show, to leave a comment, and to subscribe and share it with your friends, obviously, so they too can tune in to the Smart Girl Dumb Questions What Even Is Work series brought to you by Zoom.

50:39That's it for this episode of Smart Girl Dumb Questions, More Summer Vacation, Please. This episode was produced with Shina Ozaki, Melissa Lee Gibson, Santana Nigam and Holly Thiel. It was edited by Davy Chin, engineered by Jamie Van Corff, with mixing by Fernando Arruda and Cam Schenken. And it was shot in the amazing Wonder Studios where I am right now with the amazing Desta Wonder ad. I'm your host, Neymar Raza, and I'll see you next week for an all new Smart Girl Dumb Questions, What Even Is Work? Brought to you by Zoom. And definitely check out Zoom Mate if you are one of these people that's having summer vacation and coming back next week.

51:12Bye.

51:20you