The New York Times - USA (2020-08-09)

INVESTING INNOVATION JOBS

2 WITH INTEREST

The extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits is

an issue in the stalled stimulus talks. BY GILLIAN FRIEDMAN

3 ECONOMIC VIEW

The case for getting young children back to school first

is strong, but colleges feel pressured. BY SUSAN DYNARSKI

3 WORK FRIEND

Three months into a job, a woman finds it hard to

deal with a mansplaining misogynist. BY ROXANE GAY

SHENZHEN-HONG KONG BORDER — The
bridge was only 20 yards long, but it was the
longest journey of my father’s life. Holding a
flimsy piece of paper with a Swiss water-
mark and Chinese characters, he crossed
the bridge from the British colony of Hong
Kong into Mao’s China, one of the first for-
eign correspondents to report on a country

largely unknown to the rest of the world in

1954. The paper was his golden ticket.
      Some six decades later, I found myself
      staring out at the same footbridge from the
      other side.
      In mainland China on my own coveted
      journalism visa, I peeked out through the
      metal bars separating me from Hong Kong,
      now a semiautonomous territory of China.
      The closest my father had previously come

to China was approaching this bridge to

meet missionaries who, he wrote, stumbled

“out of the Chinese Revolution with tragic

tales fully confirmed by their emaciated

bodies and haggard eyes.”

As the bamboo gate swung closed behind

him, my father put one foot down on Chi-

nese soil and looked up to see a simple mud

village at the precipice of a new era. Dec-

ades later, I looked back to see a different

view altogether: a towering skyline of glass

and metal with one of the world’s tallest

buildings in a city going through its own

dramatic transformation.

It was almost impossible to get to China

from the West at the start of Mao’s rule. The

country had declared itself the People’s Re-

public of China five years earlier, and it was

the early days of the Cold War that divided

The 1950s China My Father Saw, Echoed Today

By ALEXANDRA STEVENSON William Stevenson’s

observations of

hope, despair and

control remain

recognizable.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 8

In 2016, Ricardo Lori was an avid user of

Talkspace — an app that lets people text

and chat with a licensed therapist through-

out the day. A part-time actor in New York

City, Mr. Lori struggled with depression and

anxiety, and he credited the app with help-

ing him get out of an abusive relationship.

He was a believer in Talkspace’s stated mis-

sion to make “therapy available and afford-

able for all,” and when the start-up offered

him a job in its customer support depart-

ment, Mr. Lori was ecstatic.

Talkspace, which has raised more than

$100 million from investors, had an office in

the old Studio 54 building in Midtown Man-

hattan, with all the usual perks — a Ping-

Pong table in the conference room and beer

and wine in the company fridge, plus all the

therapy employees wanted. “I felt like I was

at the best place in the world,” Mr. Lori said.

After he wrote a general account of his

therapy sessions on the company blog, an

executive named Linda Sacco came to Mr.

Lori with an intimate request. She wanted

to give employees a sense of a typical user’s

experience. Could she and one of the com-

pany’s co-founders, Roni Frank, read

through two weeks of his therapy chat logs

and then share excerpts with the staff?

Mr. Lori thought about his sessions,

which included deeply personal informa-

tion about his sex life and insecurities. Ms.

Sacco assured Mr. Lori that they would

keep him anonymous. “If I wasn’t such a

true believer, I probably would have said,

‘Are you nuts?’ ” Mr. Lori said. “But I was so

enamored of the place.” He agreed.

At an all-hands meeting on a Friday after-

noon in December 2016, employees gath-

ered in a 13th-floor conference room. The

Ping-Pong table was folded up so that Ms.

Sacco and Ms. Frank could sit on the floor,

cross-legged and back-to-back, for a dra-

matic reading. Ms. Sacco played the role of

Talkspace Has Issues.

How Do You Feel About That?

Burner phones, fake reviews,

a false degree claim: A therapy

start-up’s culture may conflict

with psychiatry’s core values.

SCOTT ANDERSON

CONTINUED ON PAGE 4

By KASHMIR HILL

and AARON KROLIK

SUNDAY, AUGUST 9, 2020