After Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, remember to connect with those around you

After the suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, take a moment to re-connect with the important people in your life

Hi everyone, welcome to Plain English. I’m Jeff and you are listening to the podcast that goes at the right speed for anyone who is learning English. Today’s topic is the tragic suicides of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain. Kate Spade was a businesswoman and fashion icon who created a very popular line of affordable but stylish handbags and accessories. Anthony Bourdain was a very popular TV host of food and travel shows.

Today is episode 58 and you can find the transcript of today’s program at PlainEnglish.com/58. The transcripts have instant translations from English to Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese and now Japanese. Have a look at PlainEnglish.com/58.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain suicides shock their fans

Last week brought the news of two suicides of high-profile people in the United States. We talked about Avicci, another high-profile figure, on this program about two months ago. And now there were two more high profile suicides.

Kate Spade was 55 and she built a very successful fashion company that to this day bears her name. And Anthony Bourdain was the host of a popular television show about food and travel. Kate Spade was 55 years old. She has a husband, Andy, and a thirteen-year-old daughter. She talked with her father the night before the suicide and said she was looking forward to a trip to California. Anthony Bourdain was in France, one of his favorite places, shooting an episode of his TV show.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain both made a real difference in people’s lives. I have never seen an Anthony Bourdain television show and I have never bought a Kate Spade handbag, but, at least from my vantage point living in Chicago, a big city in the United States, I can see that these two people, in their own ways, touched a lot of people around me. Kate Spade built a business that made fashionable handbags for people who didn’t want to pay the extremely high prices of big European fashion brands. I know plenty of people who liked and valued Kate Spade products. Jack Spade was a complementary brand for men. They made business shoulder bags, watches, men’s accessories. And I know plenty of people who have these bags. These are very personal things—handbags for women, accessories for men. Millions of people decided they would carry a Kate Spade handbag all day or strap on a Jack Spade watch. So, the fashion empire she built was very meaningful to a lot of her customers. And she was rewarded for it. She sold her business to Nieman Marcus, a high-end department store, for about $100 million, in two pieces, in 1999 and 2006. This is the ultimate pinnacle of success for an entrepreneur—not to mention that she was a woman, when so many big shot entrepreneurs are men. So here is a woman who has touched and improved countless lives through a very personal product, fashion, rich, famous, and yet she carried demons that were scary enough for her to take her own life.

And it was the same with Anthony Bourdain. Like I said, I never watched his TV shows. I don’t watch a lot of TV like that, but I have countless friends—I could see it all on Facebook in the days after his death—I have countless friends who would watch his shows religiously. He had a personal connection with his audience. He did travel food shows. His most recent show was called Parts Unknown, and it was like a documentary. He would go to a new location, talk to the people, learn the customs, eat the food—sometimes crazy stuff—and share it all with his audience. He would do this in nice, civilized refined places like Italy and San Francisco; in food capitals of the world like Mexico City; and in the most distant and inaccessible places you can imagine—Myanmar, Borneo, places like that.

Some people used his show as a travel itinerary. Before going anywhere, people would first see if Anthony Bourdain had been there—and what he had eaten and where he had gone. They would then try to do the same thing. Other people, who didn’t travel as much, would see the world through his eyes. He brought some of the most remote and interesting people and food into the living rooms, iPads, and smartphones of people all over the world. He’s had these shows on TV since 2002. Parts Unknown was most recently on CNN. He’s been on Top Chef. He published a book called Kitchen Confidential. He wrote fiction and history. This is the ideal life of a person in the media, in his industry. And he, too, like Kate Spade, the same week actually, saw no option but to take his own life.

Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain left their families heartbroken and their fans and customers stunned. Now a lot of people are going into their pasts, interviewing people in their lives, trying to find out what might have been the cause, what might have pushed them to take such a drastic step.

They might find something, or they might not. But what I think we should take from this, though, is the knowledge that no matter how successful someone seems on the outside, that doesn’t mean they don’t carry inner demons or suffer from very deep personal troubles.

Here are two people who seemed to have it all. They had fame; they had success; they had money. People around the world looked up to them and admired them. Their names were synonymous with success in their respective fields. And yet for some reason, they felt the only option they had was to take their own lives.

You cannot tell just by looking at someone if they suffer from a mental illness, or if they are deeply troubled in some way. You just cannot. There could be people in our own lives—young people, older people, rich people, those of more modest means, working people, retired people, whatever—there could be people in our own lives who carry these heavy burdens unbeknownst to the outside world. I shouldn’t say there could be; there probably are.

So, I think we owe it to ourselves and to everyone around us to re-commit to connecting with the important people around us. The best thing that we individually can do is think about the people who matter most to us, and make sure we connect with those people in a real and meaningful way. Call them, visit them, have good conversations, and don’t take them for granted.

There is another lesson I think we can take from this. A lot of us are ambitious, forward-looking people. You wouldn’t be dedicating so much time to learning English if you weren’t. And that is great—I’m in the same boat, with a good career, learning Spanish, and doing this podcast in my spare time. But I think we should all remember that the typical measures of professional success, building a multi-million dollar business like Kate Spade or being as popular and successful in the media as Anthony Bourdain—these signals, these typical measures of success, are not enough for a full and complete life.

We have to pay attention, as we go through our lives, to our own mental health and the strength of our relationships with those around us, for our own good and for the good of our loved ones.

One last point today. We know the names Avicci, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and Robin Williams, the actor who took his own life a few years back. The World Health Organization estimates that 800,000 people take their lives every year—or one person every 40 seconds. So, on average 20 people since you’ve started listening to this podcast today. We don’t know their names because the vast majority are not famous whatsoever. But they are no less important, no less valuable to their families and friends. And every one of those deaths every year is preventable.

I found a good list of suicide prevention resources by country compiled by WhatsApp, and I’ve created an easy to remember link to those at PlainEnglish.com/help. These resources are organized by country and they provide support in your own language. They are not just for people contemplating taking their own lives, but also for those who want to help others. Go to PlainEnglish.com/help if you think you might benefit from talking to someone in your own country. If you are even wondering if it’s necessary, then you should definitely make a call; it costs nothing.

When was doing the research for this episode, I thought this was going to be a normal episode, but after I started writing I decided to go in a different direction. So, we are at the end of our typical time together, so let’s skip the English phrase just for today. We’ll be back to the normal format on Friday. Remember that during the World Cup, we’re doing special soccer episodes on Mondays and the regular episodes on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Thanks for being with us today. Really think about what we talked about today and think about a few people you can reach out to and connect with. You won’t regret it.