This is hidden brain.
I'm Shankar Vedanta.
Like millions of people around the world, Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom has been working from home since March.
Instead of a university classroom, he now uses a spare bedroom.
And sometimes one of his four kids pops in while he does meetings over Zoom.
He'll never forget this one time back in May, he was on a very important call with some business executives, trying to help them with a research project.
About 20 minutes into the call, this happened.
It was two of my kids starting their daily practice on the bagpipes.
I was thinking, oh, no, now is not the time.
I had to, like, say quickly to Evan and meeting, I'm sorry, there's something going on in the background.
Mute myself, and, like, run into the toilet to take the rest of the meeting in there, because it was the only place that was quiet enough.
And our house isn't that big, and the soundproofing is just dreadful.
The toilet's about the only sound bunkered room.
So I'm sure I'll be back in there again, taking calls, probably many calls.
Because Nick is an expert on the economic, cultural, and social implications of working from home.
And now, in an almost surreal twist, he's living his research day in and day out, just like the rest of us.
So is working from home working?
So many people said, you know, we thought we'd be great at this.
We thought we could deal with it.
I thought I was mentally strong or, you know, I didn't like many of my employees, but I realized after, you know, three or four months, maybe I did miss them.