Today, Explained - The end of etiquette

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

It’s not just about being nice. Manners allow us to peacefully coexist at work, in transit, and out in the wider world. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnagan, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Manspreading is the practice of some men sitting on public transportation with legs wide apart, thereby covering more than one seat. Photo by Mike Kemp/In Pictures via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail] to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's me, Will Anderson, host of the new music history podcast, Monday Music Club. And on this week's episode, we're talking about pop music with the boys from one of my favorite podcast switched on pop. Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan are two of the smartest and sharpest minds chatting about music right now, and we got into how they got their start, what they love about pop music, and some recommendations on what we should be listening to. It's a great conversation. These guys are just brilliant, and you can find it by searching for Monday Music Club

wherever you get your podcast. The etiquette has been lost that you're not an island alone. I don't understand. Like, I just wouldn't do that. I think it's so annoying. Let's just talk. Let's be civilized. Okay, this morning I was trying to get to work and racing for the train.

I'm about to swipe my car so that I can step through when this woman blatantly pushes ahead of me in line. We end up both getting to the train just in time. But I'm like, are you really so much more important than the rest of us that the rules don't apply to you? When we're children, we learn how to stand in line, that you wait for your turn at the water fountain. You wait for your turn to grab a pencil. You wait for your turn to tap your card so that you can get on the metro. She did not wait her turn. I'm not the only person who's irritated by this kind of.

kind of thing. Almost a half of Americans say that they've noticed people have gotten ruder in the wake of the COVID pandemic. It's like people don't know how to act anymore. This week I'm writing for basic manners. I'm curious. Where did the days go where people were kind? No, excuse me, no part of me, no, hey man, can I get by you? How do you walk past somebody and I don't even acknowledge them? Everybody's at no manners. I'm John Glenn Hill. This is explaining to me from Vox, and today we're going to learn some manners. Manners, of course, are a really good thing because they encourage us to think about others and to behave in ways that are not antisocial and potentially even dangerous. Kirsty Sedgman is a professor at the University of Bristol, and she wrote the book on being unreasonable, breaking the rules and making things better.

For me, it boils down to, was it a rule that was built for a particular time that is now obsolete? Who was it built to benefit in the first place? And how can we have these conversations so that we figure out what we want, what we all want social life and public space to be like in a way that benefits everybody and doesn't accidentally exclude? It's not inherently elitist at all to ask people to adhere to what we could. call the social contract, which is that system of rules and norms that encourage pro-social behaviour and discourage deviance. And in fact, when I started researching on being unreasonable, I found out that the social contract is the only reason that we were able to form societies and civilizations at all. And it's really common to say that the reason that we're able to

form these societies is because we developed the ability to use tools, but actually just as fundamental was the ability to develop these contracts that would encourage us to trust strangers rather than to see them as a threat. Oh, I think that's so interesting because this idea of a social contract, you know, this responsibility we have for others, putting your trust in others, being dependable for others. How is that holding up these days? Are we still abiding by our social contract? That's what troubles me. So as far back to the ancient Greeks, people like Plato were complaining about people who used to be respectful and quiet and care about their elders, or at least Abel, he said, to be controlled with a stick if they became deviant, had suddenly found their tongues and were talking back to the people in power in a way that he felt to be completely disrespectful.

sound-mindedness is doing everything in an orderly manner and quietly in walking on the streets, in conversation, and doing everything else in a similar fashion. So to some extent, we've been thinking that the social contract is on the verge of collapsing for over 2,000 years now. But it is uncontrovertible that we are now in an age where we are being encouraged and indeed deliberately. incentivized to think in individualistic rather than in communitarian ways. So to ask ourselves, not what is best for us as a society, but what is best for me as an individual. One of the places where I see people thinking like individuals is on public transportation.

Why are people acting out there? I think one of the problems is that we're being increasingly crammed into tightly contained spaces. But what we have been seeing increasingly is people breaking rules. And when you see other people not moderating their behavior for the good of everybody, but instead doing the things that are right for them that they want to do, it can start to seem a bit like a mugs game. Why should I play by the rules if nobody else is going to do that for me? Yeah, and I feel like you see that a lot on airplanes. I saw a lady walk down the aisle on the airplane. Barefoot, go use the restroom, barefoot.

That's insane. We've got to do better. We should get rid of the reclining button on airplane seats. 100% agree. That's amazing. Either give us more room or take the button away. Are there any rules we can agree on there? There's a really easy answer, I think, to that question of,

Should we or should we not recline our seats on an aeroplane? So I call it the reasonable tango, because on the one hand, you have one person going, of course it's reasonable to recline seats. They are made to recline, how else you meant to go to a good night's sleep? And on the other hand, you say, but what about people with long legs? He'll be made physically uncomfortable if you're, and we go round and around like that. Should we or should we not? But for me, it's not so much about yes or no, but how. If we want to recline our seat, how might we go about it?

So I try to make a point of turning to the person behind me and say, do you mind if I recline my seat now? And if they say no, then I'm in a bit of an uncomfortable position because if the person behind me has already reclined their seat, then I've got a much narrower gap. But so far, not a single person that I've ever asked has said, no. But what you can do is just prepare people, get them to move their legs out of the way, and particularly if they've got a drink resting on it,

making sure that you don't just wallop that over their legs and give them a very damp flight. For me, it's less about should we do this yes or no, but how do we work at the acceptable boundaries of behaviour and how can we have these conversations when we are being encouraged to yell at each other across a divide rather than to listen to each other and engage in what the American philosophy, of the general's called public reason, which is where you say, well, this is what seems reasonable to me, and this is why, based on my position, but what seems reasonable to you? What about that calculus of someone, say, say it's rush hour, people are on the train,

someone has their bag in the seat, and other people can't sit down right there? That's one of my pet peeves. Same. And I was just on a train, so I rushed back here. from London where I was giving a talk. But that's not to say that I never accidentally leave my bag on our seats. In fact, I found myself doing it just now because I was getting all my stuff out. I was plugging in my laptop and I was doing some work. And then I looked up and I realized that there were people filtering down the aisle giving me the side eye and I'd left my bag there.

But that's where actually part of the social contract is literally about how we perform compliance. So what I did then was snatch it up and perform a mayor culper. And I'm really sorry. And actually, that's a really important part of what it means to be part of the community. Sometimes you might inadvertently break the rules, but showing that your repentant is really important. It can be really hard to follow the rules when they keep changing. Case in point, our phones. That's next. Support for the show comes from Upside, which immediately reminds me of when, like, school teachers would smack me upside the head.

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That's policygenius.com. It's explained it to me. I'm JQ. As Kirsty told me, etiquette can be easy to talk about, but way harder to follow. So I try always to make a point, and I'm not perfect, believe me. So I'm not saying that I know how to behave in every single circumstance. And I'm always right. I'm now Emily Post. As in Emily Post, the socialite who literally wrote the book on the subject.

Etiquette in society, in business, in politics, and at home, was published back in the 1920s. more than a century later, her family is still in the business of teaching us how to mind our manners. My name is Lizzie Post, and I am an author and a co-president and podcast host at the Emily Post Institute. Does that come with a certain amount of pressure, though? Because I imagine people may hear that and think, okay, so you're on top of it. You must be polite at all times. Did a lot of therapy for a lot of years, yes. Lizzie says, etiquette. it doesn't have to be intimidating or elitist and that it changes with the times.

In Emily's, my great-great-grandmother's previous works from her era, 1922, when she was actually writing, she wrote from 1922 to 1960 for the brand. She was really interesting because while she talked about the standards of the day, she also allowed those standards to change. I mean, think about 1922 to 1960. Big differences, huge swings in how people, behaved, you know, chaperones by her second edition were gone from the book. You know, it was, life was changing and evolving and she changed and evolved with it. Etiquette is not a rigid coat of manners. It is simply how persons' lives touch one another. And I think that it can very easily have these connotations of being something that is

about a secret society almost, or it's only about formality, or it's only about formality, or it's only for people who are very wealthy. And that can have a really exclusive feel that's kind of nasty. It can also start to feel a lot like judgment. I know something you don't know. I think one of the reasons etiquette can feel so out of sorts, particularly right now is because times are changing and they're just changing really quick. I think phone etiquette is really, really emblematic of that.

Like people playing music or having their phone on speaker, no headphones. Do we just not know how to act when it comes to our phones? Like, are there not rules and regulations? Is this a Wild West? What is going on? There are definitely rules of courtesy and blaring anything out of your phone, whether it's a phone call, it's a FaceTime call, or it's, your TikTok feed or that movie that you're watching is all inappropriate when other people are

the captive audience and haven't asked to be. It's just this mindful moment where people forget where they are. They're so used to being in their own world with their phone six inches from their face that they forget that anyone can even hear what it is that they are doing on their phone at that particular moment. Really hard to correct this behavior because generally we don't correct other people's behaviors. Yeah. And I want to get into that. You want to get to that part? Yeah. I mean, I admit, especially in public spaces, I am team mind my business. I'm like, time to mind my business. But at what point do you say like, hey? I feel like it's a really tough judgment call and it's going to be different for every situation. But for me, and just so you

all know, the speakerphone in public is like my greatest pet peeve. Like, this is nails on a chalkboard to me when it happens. I get irate. A lot of listeners feel the same way. Like people taking a phone call on speaker phone in front of a bunch of other people who can overhear it and pretend like everyone's not distracted by the fact that you're having a personal phone call. Please stop using your phone with the found on in the middle of a public place. I thought we all agreed upon this a long time ago, but apparently COVID has changed that. So when do you step in? I think that when I am in a space that I'm only going to occupy for a short time, I am telling myself, mind my own business, don't worry about it. When it's that train ride that we're starting, we're not just getting off at

the next stop, we're going to be on this for a while. And apparently this first. person is to or that four-hour flight that you're on. Now I think we start to have a bit more standing to say something and to ask. And I think one of the ways that you can ask is to say, hey, could you put some headphones on while you're enjoying that or watching that or on your call? I say could you because they might not have headphones with them. But even if they don't, it's a reminder. It's kind of like that little bit of a check of awareness that, oh, this thing I'm doing is impacting people around me. Here's the rub. You can't control other people's behavior. So you cannot control if this person is going to get defensive, even at the sweetest ask from the sweetest looking

person on earth. You have to a little bit if you're going to ask the question, be prepared for rudeness in return. And I hate saying that to any audience, but it is the reality. We can't control other people's behavior. Okay. There's clearly a wrong way to use speaker phones and FaceTime. What's the right way to use them? Because we do a lot of talking on our speaker phones, even in our own homes, and you might be moving from one room to another passing through the living room where people are watching TV or you're in the kitchen and all of a sudden a roommate has come into the kitchen while you're on a call that's on speakerphone, you really want to let the person on the other end of the phone know that there's other people present now. My cousin is so good

about this. He always tells his daughter when she gets into the car, hey, Aunt Lizzie is on the phone, like, say hi to her or something. And then we both know, I know to watch my language. There's now a child present. You know, she knows to not like ask her dad too many questions or knows to say hi to her auntie, you know. And that's just so much nicer than all of a sudden having a voice pop up and realizing, oh my gosh, I was just telling a really personal story and I didn't realize there was a bigger audience for it. What about having your phone on the table, say if you're at dinner or off the table? Because that also gets real people very passionately about that one. I am so bad about this one. I often have mine face down on the table. And the funny thing is, is I'm not even looking or expected. Like, I don't have kids. Like, I don't have a partner. I'm not looking for someone to call, like, with an interruption. But it's not good etiquette. It is really bad.

to have that phone put away to make sure that it's on silent and it's not going to interrupt your time together. But to have it there, especially face-up, where any message that comes in is now going to catch the attention of everyone at the table, that's an unnecessary distraction for sure. There's a lot more control than we give ourselves credit for. And the more that you can remind yourself of that and start using the tools available to you, even if that tool, even if that tool, is putting the phone away, like in your pocket, it is important to exercise those and remember that we have them because otherwise we do get to the point where we use our phones so regularly that we will use them rudely without meaning to. Is there an obligation when you need

to text someone back? Like, does it have to be within a certain time? I know people with inboxes of text message and they pile up. Like, you'll go about your day and the next thing you know, you look at your phone and you have eight. 80 unread texts and it's like, oh no, what do I do? My friends will all be mad at me. Right? I wish. I wish there was, but I do feel like it really depends on the text itself. The one I don't think you should wait on is when friends or potential romantic partners offer a time to get together. That's one that I feel like you should really respond to invitations as soon as possible. Don't let that sit. If there's a reason why you're letting it say, it's.

sit, talk to someone about that, say, oh, I've got to, I've got to check with my partner about that. I know we had talked about doing something else Saturday at that time. You know, give them some kind of an understanding because it's a really beautiful thing to be invited to go spend time with someone. And I think we want to treasure that a little more than we do in today's age. You know where we spend a lot of time with other people? Work. That's coming up. Support for Explain It to Me comes from Granola. Nobody likes having meetings about meetings. What we need is a tool designed to make the first meeting so productive

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dot AI slash explain it to get your time back. Try it for free at granola.a.ai. Explain it. Everybody has a hot take on the economy. And whether you're curious about inflation, trade wars, or the markets, what you need is reporting you can trust. Hi, I'm Kai Rizdahl, the host of Marketplace. Our award-winning reporters talk to everybody from CEOs to farmers

to help you understand how the economy takes shape in the real world. You'll be smarter every time you listen. And these days, that's priceless. Listen to Marketplace on your favorite podcast app. I'm JQ. Back with Moore, Explain It to Me. And I'm here with Tessa West. She's a professor of psychology at NYU

and author of the book, Jerks at Work, toxic co-workers, and what to do about them. Okay, Tessa, I see a lot of memes and tweets online about Gen Z in the workplace. You know, they're bringing iced coffee to interviews. They're making questionable fashion choices. They're hitting the Gen Z stare. And I have been getting so annoyed with the fact that, like, I give instructions or I ask their opinions about something or I say something and they just like,

duh. Like, I'm like, hello. I'm talking to you. Don't bring an ice latte to a job interview. Get the coffee after. How long could the interview be? But a lot of younger workers are firing back and essentially, saying your rules are unfair. It gets heated.

We all have collectively agreed that like we know we can't get fired for saying nothing, but we could get fired if we actively say the thing that we're thinking. You're stupid. And we just can't say that because we're at our job. So that's why we're staring at you. Who is right here? Who is wrong here? No one's right. No one's wrong. I think we all are a bit to blame here. I think older generation, have very strict rules. I think they've come into the workplace with tight cultures, and they like their hierarchies, they like people being respectful in the workplace, and by that I mean, you wear certain clothes, you show up at a certain time, and you write emails with proper

punctuation. And I think younger generations find all of that a bit silly. I think they use written communication in a way to just get stuff done. And so we end up in these intractable conflicts in the workplace where older generations are really angry and feel disrespectful all the time. And younger generations are pushing back and saying, just chill out. We can get the work done without all of that additional stuff layered on top of it. And I think that we are just constantly fighting with each other over being two minutes late to work, wearing the wrong pants and, you know, bringing iced coffee into the workplace or open-toed shoes. I've heard it all.

Wait, not coming for my open-toed shoes. You know, green nail polish. CEOs have been complaining to me about nail polish colors. And just all the things that someone can do wrong, you know, from an older generation person's perspective, Gen Z has somehow done. Why do people need to know when they're forgetting manners at work? What importance does that have for them? I think people don't realize how much self-harm they're doing when they are low-level energy vampire. tires, noise polluters, all of that type of stuff at work. Nobody is going to want to promote you,

even if you're good at your job, or be around you, or invite you to the networking event, all that stuff you need to get ahead if you don't have these things. And I think that when we're annoying to be around, even if we're good at our job, those kinds of workplace creature are always going to take precedence over the quality of your work because there's always someone who can do the job. I think for people who are more seasoned, and even for those who aren't, it's easy to get angry and frustrated when someone's manners aren't up to par at work. How do you take that anger and maybe teach someone like, hey, this is what you do in an office? How do you make that emotion productive? Yes, I think this is hard because all we want to do is just like,

Ugh, yell at the person. I think this is where making super explicit workplace norms, like a list just very out there for everybody, is important. And for people coming in and people who are already there. Here's a list of the things that are okay to do at work. And that includes personal hygiene behaviors, what you can be loud about, where you can have meetings. All of that stuff is in an explicit document somewhere so that when someone violates, the norm, they know they have violated the norm. I think our tendency is to want to go shame the person or tell them don't do it again, but I actually think, like, documented stuff is better

because someone else is going to come along and do something else annoying. And you might as well just get it over with and write all the things down now, even things that you think you would never have to write down, like, please don't walk around barefoot. Like, I've had to create that in my lab manual at NYU. Please don't be barefoot in the bathroom. Please, please, please, please, Sure. Don't vape in my lab. That's also on there. Oh my gosh.

I have like equipment. Like actual equipment and I'm like, do not vape. Okay, well, they vaived all through high school and they got to college and they thought they could vape inside. So I just literally had to. And these are responsible smart people. Super explicit norms that I thought, oh, right. I guess we just, humanity is not at its peak levels of, you know, sophistication right now. Wow.

Write it all down. Okay, then what do you think needs to happen between younger people, older people, more experience, less experience, just in general? What do we need to do to build a better workplace where, you know, there's respect on all sides, we're letting go of the unnecessary things, we're keeping what we need in line, what do you think it's going to have to take to build that kind of. workplace and workforce. Yeah, this is the million dollar question. The first thing we need to do is stop communicating asynchronously, so texting, slack email. Anytime there's conflict or anytime things are getting weird, you have to have a conversation live with that person. And conflict is not bad. Conflict is good when done well. If you address the behavior itself, not your feelings about the behavior, the specific action. I think we've all been trained to talk about our feelings. You

made me feel disrespected. You don't trust me. No. Put all that aside, talk about the thing they did. We tend to, in our heads, form all kinds of reasons why people are jerks at work, but normally they don't realize it. And so we just have to focus on those specific behaviors, do it fast, do it early, do it often, and do it in person or on the phone. That's the best way to get people to sort of get that muscle back and to have a better workplace across people who are used to different norms. And that's our show. We're working on an episode about pets, and we want to hear from your pet.

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and get a ton of other cool perks. To learn more, head over to Vox.com slash members. This episode was produced by Ariana Aspuru. It was edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by Bridger Dunnigan. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. And I'm your host, John Gulen Hill.

Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye.