Speaker 1: Hey everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello Whipsmarties,
Speaker 1: welcome back this week. Oh man, am I excited about
Speaker 1: this week's guest. Like many of you, I have been
Speaker 1: trying to keep up with the fire hose of news
Speaker 1: and fear and stress and all of the things. If
Speaker 1: you are a VA worker who's funding got cut this week,
Speaker 1: I see you and I'm so sorry. If you are
Speaker 1: a student who doesn't know if your pelgrant is going
Speaker 1: to come, I see you and I am so sorry.
Speaker 1: I see you all. I know people are overwhelmed, and
Speaker 1: I needed to turn to somebody for some hope and
Speaker 1: some advice and I don't know, maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of strategy. And I figured it would be really important
Speaker 1: to reach across the pro be all ile to do that.
Speaker 1: And so I'm sitting down today with a journalist I
Speaker 1: admire who was raised as a conservative woman, none other
Speaker 1: than Sarah Elizabeth Cupp. You may know her as a
Speaker 1: TV host, a political commentator, or a writer. She has
Speaker 1: her show se Cup Unfiltered. She's featured often on Politico
Speaker 1: dot Com, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and this year she
Speaker 1: has started an amazing podcast right here on iHeart called
Speaker 1: off the cup honestly because she needed a break from
Speaker 1: the news, from politics, from being triggered from all of it,
Speaker 1: and somehow leaning into life has reinvigorated her for all
Speaker 1: of that too, including yes, the political And it's that
Speaker 1: sort of full circle that I am in need of
Speaker 1: the inspiration of. So I asked her to join us
Speaker 1: today to talk about all of it career, family, identity,
Speaker 1: mental health, and how we can really be great at
Speaker 1: the kits for our communities in the future of this year,
Speaker 1: the next four years and beyond. So let's sit down
Speaker 1: with our friend Essie. Sarah, thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining me on the show today. I have been so
Speaker 1: excited about this interview, and since the news is a
Speaker 1: fire hose, I'm like, I don't even know where we
Speaker 1: should start.
Speaker 2: Pick up pick pick pick up place. I mean, okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: We could just throw a dart at the wall and
Speaker 1: we'll hit something interesting. At this point, Well, where I
Speaker 1: normally like to start with people is actually to rewind
Speaker 1: from the present, because I sit across from so many
Speaker 1: folks like yourself, who are accomplished and who have these incredible,
Speaker 1: you know, resumes and lists of accolades. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you got to, you know, bend space time and
Speaker 1: sit with your eight year old self, if you would
Speaker 1: see in her the sort of inklings of who you
Speaker 1: are today, your career, your personality, or could you have
Speaker 1: never expected this at eight?
Speaker 2: That's a great question.
Speaker 3: I'm jealous because I do a podcast like this as
Speaker 3: well and never thought to ask that one. It's a
Speaker 3: great one.
Speaker 2: Yes and no.
Speaker 3: I was a bit of a ham as a kid.
Speaker 3: I was a performer. I did, I danced ballet, and
Speaker 3: I acted. I sang. So the idea that I would
Speaker 3: have a forward facing, front facing job would not have
Speaker 3: surprised me, but I would have assumed it would have been.
Speaker 2: More creative in the creative arts.
Speaker 3: But I was always very curious, and I was interested
Speaker 3: in the news.
Speaker 2: At a very early age, and so I don't.
Speaker 3: Think I would have put together that it would have
Speaker 3: led me here to a career in journalism and definitely
Speaker 3: not to a career on television. But I think if I,
Speaker 3: if I looked back, there were inklings of who I
Speaker 3: would become. I didn't know that i'd be a mother.
Speaker 3: That's something that came to me much later in life.
Speaker 3: I didn't know that I'd love being a.
Speaker 2: Mother, But no, I think there were shreds of it.
Speaker 3: Was I was very independent, I was an only child,
Speaker 3: so yeah, some of it, Yes, some of it I
Speaker 3: could say interesting.
Speaker 1: And what do you think drew you to the news?
Speaker 1: Was there this sort of breaking news current events aspect
Speaker 1: of it all. Was it that you found the inner
Speaker 1: workings of politics really interesting? What? What was this part?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: For me, it wasn't even the stories themselves, it was
Speaker 3: the way they were being covered. I remember it ten
Speaker 3: or eleven, lying on my living room floor with my
Speaker 3: parents watching the Gulf War and being less interested in
Speaker 3: the geopolitics of it that I was in the way
Speaker 3: Bernie Shaw was reporting on it for CNN, which is
Speaker 3: like wild because now here I am. But I mean
Speaker 3: that's a real early memory of loving, like getting obsessed
Speaker 3: with news coverage of major events, and that carried with
Speaker 3: me through, you know, all of the history of my
Speaker 3: young adult life, wanting to see how people covered those stories,
Speaker 3: and in particular watching women like Diane Sawyer and Jane
Speaker 3: Pauley cover big stories and the places they would find themselves.
Speaker 2: I love to travel.
Speaker 3: As a kid, I thought that, you know, traveling as
Speaker 3: a newsperson sounded amazing. I know, when I was seventeen,
Speaker 3: a magazine came out about the news, and I spent
Speaker 3: my own allowance to get a some description to this magazine.
Speaker 2: Like I was kind of a nerd, a media nerd.
Speaker 3: And when I got to college and I worked at
Speaker 3: the school newspaper, I knew, this is what I want
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: This is what I was made to do. I was
Speaker 2: built to do this.
Speaker 3: Television wasn't on the radar at all, but journalism, you know,
Speaker 3: it was clear by the time I could choose that's
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: Okay, And what do you remember then about your first
Speaker 1: TV appearance?
Speaker 3: So I had just written a book with a co
Speaker 3: author and Simon to choose to publish it, and it
Speaker 3: was a political book, and they decided, well, we need
Speaker 3: to go on TV and promote it.
Speaker 2: So our first appearance was on Morning Joe.
Speaker 3: And all I remember, Sophia is is my co author
Speaker 3: being very nervous.
Speaker 2: And me being not at all nervous. And I thought, in.
Speaker 3: Those moments, this is either going to go terribly that
Speaker 3: badly for me because of my hubris, Like why am
Speaker 3: I not nervous or it's going to serve me well.
Speaker 3: And it served me well. I didn't get nervous. I
Speaker 3: could put sentences together, and they just kept asking me
Speaker 3: back to talk about the next political story. I think
Speaker 3: I was something of a novelty then. I was a
Speaker 3: young female conservative in Manhattan and who had just written
Speaker 3: a book defending conservatism, and.
Speaker 2: So it was a bit of a novelty.
Speaker 3: I had to prove that I was smart and that
Speaker 3: I could hang through every news cycle. But yeah, they
Speaker 3: just kept bringing me back to talk about politics, and
Speaker 3: I did because it helped promote my writing.
Speaker 2: And that's all I cared about, was the writing.
Speaker 3: I didn't foresee TV really taking over, you know, my
Speaker 3: career the way it has. But it's been a great
Speaker 3: and very lucky, fortunate turn of events because not only
Speaker 3: do I get to write, which is what matters to me,
Speaker 3: but I also get a platform to tell stories visually
Speaker 3: and orally and you know, shine a light on issues
Speaker 3: that really matter to me.
Speaker 1: I love it, and it's it's exciting to me, you know,
Speaker 1: for us to sit down because there's this sort of
Speaker 1: narrative out in the world that you know, folks who
Speaker 1: are I think ideologically perhaps identified by the public, but
Speaker 1: not known in the incrementalism required to you know, be
Speaker 1: a full human or perhaps form our opinions. People might think, well,
Speaker 1: there's no way Sarah's going to go on Sophia's podcast,
Speaker 1: And there's no ways if you would go on, Sarah.
Speaker 1: It's like they'll just assume we don't want to speak
Speaker 1: to each other because we quote come from different sides
Speaker 1: of the aisle. And what excites me, particularly in a
Speaker 1: moment like this, is we're both talking about many of
Speaker 1: the things we agree on, particularly you know, the founding
Speaker 1: ideals of this country and what liberty looks like and
Speaker 1: all of these things. And I'm saying all of this
Speaker 1: because I'm looking at the question I had meant to
Speaker 1: ask you next, which was what has been the most
Speaker 1: challenging time of your career so far? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I wonder if it was maybe when you had to
Speaker 1: sort of speak out about the insanity of this cult
Speaker 1: of trump Ism in the last election, you know, none
Speaker 1: of us being able to forward think to where we
Speaker 1: are in present day, which is the reason I'm just
Speaker 1: going ahead and saying all of this just to say,
Speaker 1: who to thunk it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, here we are.
Speaker 1: It seems like a silly question to ask, but I
Speaker 1: do want to know the answer. And it's okay if
Speaker 1: that answer is right now, because our our collective, our
Speaker 1: America's house is on fire. Like, how do you, as
Speaker 1: someone who came up as a self identifying conservative who
Speaker 1: has pushed back on a lot of this insanity?
Speaker 2: Like all of it? Like almost, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, a few things, and you pick where we start.
Speaker 1: How did you find the courage to say this is unacceptable? Also,
Speaker 1: this is lawless?
Speaker 2: Huh? You did it?
Speaker 1: Then we've unfortunately come back to the bad place. How
Speaker 1: are you doing it now? Is it a threat to
Speaker 1: your career because people have certainly told me that my
Speaker 1: outspokenness about politics has threatened and hurt my career forever.
Speaker 1: But I think it's my duty as a citizen.
Speaker 2: Like, girl, what are we doing next?
Speaker 1: Can you just give us all sort of a lay
Speaker 1: of the land for you since twenty sixteen and how
Speaker 1: you view it now that we've been through this once before.
Speaker 2: There's a lot in there, there's a lot in there.
Speaker 2: There's a lot in there. And let me start by saying,
Speaker 2: I'm paid to do what I do.
Speaker 3: The courage you have in doing this and waiting into
Speaker 3: this space. This is explicitly not what you're paid to do.
Speaker 3: So taking that leap, upsetting the apple cart of your career.
Speaker 2: Was a huge risk.
Speaker 3: And I'm sure it's paying off for you personally, professionally.
Speaker 2: In all the ways, but huge, huge risk for you.
Speaker 3: It's a risk for me because I was inside of
Speaker 3: this establishment, both a media establishment and a political establishment
Speaker 3: that now sees me as a trader. And there's a
Speaker 3: physical risk because I get death threats and attempts silence
Speaker 3: me and actual attacks. That part's not fun, but I
Speaker 3: am this is what I'm paid to do, and I
Speaker 3: could do it a couple of ways. I have a
Speaker 3: lot of friends who came up like I did, and
Speaker 3: to Si Wall, just keep going where the power is,
Speaker 3: and I'll start justifying stuff. Stuff that I know is
Speaker 3: not right, that I know at very least isn't conservative,
Speaker 3: but I also know isn't right, isn't good for the country,
Speaker 3: maybe isn't good for our party. I'll just start justifying
Speaker 3: it because it'll help me keep my job, and it'll help
Speaker 3: me keep my friends. It might even bring me more
Speaker 3: money and power out of blah blah blah, lots of
Speaker 3: people did that.
Speaker 2: I could have decided I'm out. I don't want to
Speaker 2: do this.
Speaker 3: I don't want to put my hand on the hot stove.
Speaker 3: I don't want this heat. I don't like what's going on.
Speaker 3: But I also don't want to be at the center
Speaker 3: of it or involved in it. I'll go do something else.
Speaker 3: I decided to stay and say what I believed, and
Speaker 3: it's come with professional and personal peril, but I need
Speaker 3: to sleep at night, and I need to know, Okay,
Speaker 3: what did I do with this platform that in a
Speaker 3: way I lucked into What am I going to do
Speaker 3: with it?
Speaker 2: And how am I going to use it responsibly?
Speaker 3: So the idea that I would justify what Trump and
Speaker 3: then Republicans have done never crossed my mind. That option
Speaker 3: was never a possibility for me. I couldn't do it,
Speaker 3: and I believe so deeply in conservative principles.
Speaker 2: And let me just say one thing.
Speaker 3: I am grateful to Donald Trump for one reason, because
Speaker 3: we've all had to shed some of the things that
Speaker 3: quote unquote defined us and talk to each other like people,
Speaker 3: like empathetic, compassionate people. You and I agree on so
Speaker 3: much that we would not have identified eight years earlier
Speaker 3: because we wouldn't have You were on this side, I
Speaker 3: was on this side. I don't know that we would
Speaker 3: have sat down for a conversation. We've had to strip
Speaker 3: some of that away to say, what do we agree on?
Speaker 3: There's so much and that stuff is actually so so
Speaker 3: very important. So I you know, I've gone through many
Speaker 3: phases in my career where I was a right wing
Speaker 3: media darling. I moved from Fox to MSNBC. I was
Speaker 3: the token conservative and I got the hate from the
Speaker 3: far left. Moved to CNN, found myself being a bit
Speaker 3: more centrist as a reaction to what was going on,
Speaker 3: and then became you know, just from the jump anti
Speaker 3: Trump resistance, this isn't right.
Speaker 2: And now all the.
Speaker 3: Hates coming from me from people I used to know.
Speaker 3: So it's been disorienting. It's taken a toll on my
Speaker 3: mental health. The hardest part of my career has been
Speaker 3: the last eight years, from twenty fifteen, I guess ten
Speaker 3: now to now, because not only has it been hard
Speaker 3: to professionally cover the flood, the zone chaos of it,
Speaker 3: but it's personal for me. A lot of these people
Speaker 3: were friends and colleagues, and it's been super disorienting to
Speaker 3: be in one place and now I'm ostracized and it's fine,
Speaker 3: but figuring out who I.
Speaker 2: Am, where do I belong?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And I also had a mental breakdown, like I had
Speaker 3: a nervous breakdown in twenty twenty one and had to
Speaker 3: figure out do I need to do this anymore? And
Speaker 3: can I and be healthy? Yeah?
Speaker 1: And now a word from our sponsors that I really
Speaker 1: enjoy and I think you will too. I love how
Speaker 1: Frank You're willing to be about so much of this
Speaker 1: that point, especially for some reason, everyone everyone will say
Speaker 1: to people in media, particularly women in media, oh, will
Speaker 1: you asked for this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Comes with a job, right.
Speaker 1: Nobody asked for this. Nobody asked to be stocked or
Speaker 1: rass to be threatened with death. I'm there. I actually had,
Speaker 1: particularly during you know, the fight against him, you know,
Speaker 1: fifteen into sixteen in the last administration, when I became
Speaker 1: one of the major like repeats, constant articles written on
Speaker 1: Brightbart targets. I had some friends of I would say
Speaker 1: ours people on all sides of the political spectrum say, well,
Speaker 1: you kind of have to wear it as a badge
Speaker 1: of honor because if they're coming after you, it means
Speaker 1: you're an incredibly effective messenger. You tell the truth. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not such a policy wonk that people too now
Speaker 1: because it's all numbers. You're communicating effectively and they don't
Speaker 1: like it, so they want to scare you. And I said, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's really wild that a media establishment would say we
Speaker 1: need to attack this citizen for saying that, you know,
Speaker 1: dictatorship tactics or dictatorship tactics by making crazy people want
Speaker 1: to kill her.
Speaker 2: Ye, And you've been there, and I.
Speaker 1: Have certainly had to learn to deal with anxiety. I
Speaker 1: have had to learn to deal with terror. I have
Speaker 1: made excellent friends in many arenas of local and federal
Speaker 1: law enforcement. It is so it's so crazy to have
Speaker 1: to learn to navigate those things. And I know what
Speaker 1: it's like to not want to leave my house. How
Speaker 1: are you? I admire that you're able to just tell
Speaker 1: it like it is, and I admire that you're willing
Speaker 1: to talk about it and be honest. So what does
Speaker 1: in your definition, what does a nervous breakdown look like?
Speaker 1: How do you realize it's happening? And how do you
Speaker 1: get on the other side of it? Because there are
Speaker 1: people at home who I know are desperate to understand
Speaker 1: this better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I do too, And it's why I talk about
Speaker 3: it a lot, because when you talk about it, it
Speaker 3: gets easier to talk about it, and talking about it
Speaker 3: is the first barrier to getting mental health help. Yah,
Speaker 3: So talking about it is paramount for me. It was
Speaker 3: twenty twenty one, and it's not like one thing happened.
Speaker 3: I had been an anxious person, unknowingly for most of
Speaker 3: my life, and as such, I had created habits that
Speaker 3: I thought were keeping me safe. They were not catastrophizing,
Speaker 3: which is you know, I would do this all day.
Speaker 2: I would occupy.
Speaker 3: My brain with the worst thing that could happen at
Speaker 3: any given second. So if I'm driving, it's a car accident.
Speaker 3: If my son's at school, it's something happening at school.
Speaker 3: But it would at its worst, it would be twenty
Speaker 3: four seven. And it was emotionally, physically, mentally exhausting. But
Speaker 3: I told myself, if I don't do that, it'll happen.
Speaker 3: The bad thing will happen. So then I was bargaining
Speaker 3: with my anxiety, making deals with my anxiety. If I
Speaker 3: do this to myself, it won't actually happen. And I
Speaker 3: didn't realize I didn't process that I was doing this,
Speaker 3: and I, in fact thought, this is what responsible people do.
Speaker 3: They are constantly thinking about what could go wrong, preparing.
Speaker 3: Doesn't everyone go into a restaurant and look for all
Speaker 3: the exits, you know, just stuff that I thought was like,
Speaker 3: I'm a responsible this is adulting.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: By the time, you know.
Speaker 3: I'd been doing this for a very long time to
Speaker 3: myself and other awful habits too, my body said enough.
Speaker 3: One day, I had an anxiety attack in public.
Speaker 2: Went home.
Speaker 3: My vision was I couldn't see very well, I couldn't
Speaker 3: hear very well. Things were jumbled. I laid in bed
Speaker 3: for about three days. I couldn't focus on anything. I
Speaker 3: didn't understand. I'd turned on the TV. I didn't understand
Speaker 3: like the news. I was instantly very sad, and I
Speaker 3: had not been like depressed or anything.
Speaker 2: I was overwhelmed. Yeah, and the good news is it
Speaker 2: was so severe and debilitating. I knew I needed help
Speaker 2: right away.
Speaker 3: And so there was no like I'll sleep this off
Speaker 3: or I'll take a break. This was what is happening
Speaker 3: to me, and I need help today.
Speaker 2: So I did. I got several doctors, embarked on.
Speaker 3: A therapy journey, a medication journey, and for the past
Speaker 3: four years I've been in therapy to deal with this
Speaker 3: severe anxiety that is at its worst totally took over
Speaker 3: my life. I didn't know you didn't have to live
Speaker 3: that way. And so my message is always talk about it,
Speaker 3: because if I had known some of the habits, some
Speaker 3: of the tricks we did as anxious people, I might
Speaker 3: have gotten help earlier, before I was twenty years into
Speaker 3: these habits when it's so hard to unlearn them. Yes,
Speaker 3: and I'm writing a book now about anxiety, and it's
Speaker 3: about my journey to learn how to live without anxiety
Speaker 3: because I learned to live with it really well. I
Speaker 3: got great at it, of course, right, but and it's addicting.
Speaker 2: It can be addicting.
Speaker 1: Well, what it does, even just in your body hormonally,
Speaker 1: when you are constantly in fight or flight and you
Speaker 1: are pumping adrenaline exactly right when you start to stop
Speaker 1: doing that, you're exhausted because you're feeling the exhaustion of
Speaker 1: the four years that you've been running on pure adrenaline
Speaker 1: that you've essentially been over caffeinated, and you're feeling the
Speaker 1: exhaustion of a body that is missing something that's been
Speaker 1: keeping it in forward motion. It kind of feels like
Speaker 1: you get hit by a bus, yeah daily, start to
Speaker 1: not be a level ten anxious person all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: And I think that's part of what's so important to
Speaker 1: talk about as well, is what it feels like to
Speaker 1: heal and how healing can sometimes be the beginning of
Speaker 1: it's painful, very And I think it's part of why
Speaker 1: I admire the way that you talk about this. It's
Speaker 1: part of why you know, I have chosen to be
Speaker 1: very frank about what it was like to leave a
Speaker 1: workplace that was very toxic and violent for me because
Speaker 1: it was making me so sick, and what it took
Speaker 1: to recuperate from that, and and the sort of aha
Speaker 1: moment I had when I finally said I'm at a
Speaker 1: breaking point and people who I'd been asking to help
Speaker 1: me change it for four years, when we had no idea,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what have you not been listening?
Speaker 1: A and then B I had to look inward and go, oh,
Speaker 1: how has my adrenaline pump been masking how bad?
Speaker 2: This is exactly right, and.
Speaker 1: It it's weird because it's all the things, particularly as
Speaker 1: women in these competitive industries and these very cutthroat spaces
Speaker 1: that you get rewarded for. You're such a good soldier,
Speaker 1: you're such a good tugboat, you're never tired, you're you're
Speaker 1: a good troop leader. They like to use a lot
Speaker 1: of like military terminology with us about how tough you are,
Speaker 1: and you know that old like.
Speaker 2: You're not like the other girls.
Speaker 1: And then you're like, oh, wow, that's patriarchy. That's trying
Speaker 1: to kill us all, including you. Cool, but it takes
Speaker 1: a while to realize, Oh, those things that I used
Speaker 1: to wear like a badge of honor have been doing
Speaker 1: such harm to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go back to what you said earlier.
Speaker 1: I love watching you nod because again people are going
Speaker 1: to be like, well, you guys wouldn't agree on anything,
Speaker 1: and we're sitting here going we agree on so much, Yeah,
Speaker 1: including how detrimental some of these systems are, including as
Speaker 1: you said, things have been stripped away. We can't deny
Speaker 1: what toxicity is. We can't deny how upended our cysams are.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that great I don't know if it's
Speaker 1: a meme or a phrase or whatever we want to
Speaker 1: call it. When they go around Instagram. I don't know
Speaker 1: how they get redefined, but where people say, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't claim to be the party of small government
Speaker 1: and tell people who they can love, where where, and
Speaker 1: how they can live, how they can dress, what they
Speaker 1: can read, what they you know, where they can get
Speaker 1: safe water and where not like the list, you can't
Speaker 1: say that you know. And then somebody said, well, now
Speaker 1: you have to add you can't claim to be, you know,
Speaker 1: the party of limited government and have created twenty five
Speaker 1: percent of the entire national debt in four years in
Speaker 1: the country that's existed for two ald and fifty. How
Speaker 1: do you you know you're talking about the personal realigning,
Speaker 1: you know, clicking things into place in a healthier way.
Speaker 1: How as someone who did come up on the conservative
Speaker 1: end of this pendulums, how have you begun to click
Speaker 1: things back into authentic reality? And say, is anybody going
Speaker 1: to pay attention to the difference between what we say
Speaker 1: and what we do? Because everybody out there, particularly people
Speaker 1: who listen to my podcast, like they know what I
Speaker 1: think about this stuff. For you making sense of this.
Speaker 3: Stuff, No, that's been the trickiest part because I can
Speaker 3: scream at the top of my lungs like, none of
Speaker 3: this is conservatism as I learned it, and the conservatism
Speaker 3: that I came up on, you wouldn't dislike. You might
Speaker 3: disagree with some policies, but it's very inclusive.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you move on to now, can you tell
Speaker 1: me how you defined it in the space and place
Speaker 1: you came up.
Speaker 3: Things you just said, lowering the debt and deficit, limited government,
Speaker 3: small g government. That's what I was for. The government
Speaker 3: should not be in the business of telling you how
Speaker 3: to live your life. That's how I was a supporter
Speaker 3: of gay rights from a child.
Speaker 2: I grew up in ballet.
Speaker 3: But but in my political career, long before a lot
Speaker 3: of Democrats, in fact, were I've I've always been in
Speaker 3: favor of gay rights because I believed in limited government.
Speaker 3: I'm pro life. All that means is I won't go
Speaker 3: out and get an abortion. I've that's that's my personal choice.
Speaker 3: I've always supported Roe v. Wade and having that as
Speaker 3: an option for women. Who am I to tell you
Speaker 3: what to do or what not to do. I would
Speaker 3: never I'm not religious, so that it doesn't come from
Speaker 3: any kind of religious ideology or anything like that.
Speaker 1: That that feels like an important thing, just to I
Speaker 1: love a little asterisk in a moment like that. It's
Speaker 1: it's irony. It's ironic to me that the religious right
Speaker 1: weaponized abortion as an issue. You know, six years after
Speaker 1: the passage of jobs, they never cared, but once they
Speaker 1: lost their last appeal on UH trying to uphold segregation,
Speaker 1: they decided they needed a new cause. The deepest irony
Speaker 1: of this, as a kid who grew up in a
Speaker 1: house with two religions in LA and thought I should
Speaker 1: probably study more to understand why people fight over this
Speaker 1: is that the only mention of abortion in the Bible
Speaker 1: is how to. Yeah, so technically it's a pro abortion text,
Speaker 1: but you know, we'll leave that for another time.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I know, it's a lot, it's it's all fraught. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But my version of conservatism coming up was I think
Speaker 3: you'd look at it even then and say, Okay, this
Speaker 3: is I understand this, and this person isn't foreign to me,
Speaker 3: isn't a monster. It was a compassionate conservatism. I believed
Speaker 3: in social safety nets and reducing poverty and things that
Speaker 3: now are are so identified by today's Republican Party as
Speaker 3: woke and weak. You know, to me, it was very
Speaker 3: normal and not scary, and our difference is policy. We
Speaker 3: could identify similar problems, but we'd come at it from
Speaker 3: different policy solutions. Now it's not just that I'm screaming
Speaker 3: this is not conservative. Do you care anymore that this
Speaker 3: is not conservative? Because they clearly don't know. It's the
Speaker 3: thing that you were saying, the intellectual honesty, the consistency,
Speaker 3: the hypocrisy.
Speaker 2: You just said this was.
Speaker 3: Fine, and now it's not fine because it's your guy
Speaker 3: or their guy. You just said this was awful, but
Speaker 3: it's okay if our guy does it. I mean, this
Speaker 3: stuff makes me want to light my hair on fire.
Speaker 3: It's designed to it's designed to make you just want
Speaker 3: to say, gad. I'm tuning it all out, like I
Speaker 3: can't even make sense of it. Unfortunately I can't tune
Speaker 3: it out. That's my job to make sense of it.
Speaker 3: But that's been the disorienting part. It's like I'm going
Speaker 3: like this every day?
Speaker 2: Is this thing on? Does anyone listen?
Speaker 3: Does anyone care about forget jettison conservatism? I know y'all
Speaker 3: don't care about that anymore. Do we care about intellectual honesty,
Speaker 3: consistency and aiocracy? No? I don't think we do. So
Speaker 3: I'm on a very lonely island. I'm not the only one.
Speaker 3: There are lots of folks, you know, occupying the space
Speaker 3: that I occupy now, but it's a very isolating place
Speaker 3: to be in, having come from a place where I had,
Speaker 3: you know, a big team, lots of friends, lots of colleagues,
Speaker 3: lots of fans. We were all united in a purpose
Speaker 3: and had a common goal.
Speaker 2: We don't even speak the same language anymore.
Speaker 1: And now for our sponsors, there used to seem to
Speaker 1: be a willingness to say, hold on, we're getting a
Speaker 1: little too hysterical in the ways we're fighting. We need
Speaker 1: to be factual. And now you know, you've got defenders
Speaker 1: of the modern day Republicans. I'll call them the Trump Trumpers,
Speaker 1: I guess, because I understand that's not what the Republican
Speaker 1: Party has been. But you know, you've got one of
Speaker 1: his defenders on CNN today claiming that Elon Musk did
Speaker 1: not throw up not one but two Heyle Hitler's, which
Speaker 1: we know he did, which you know, the images of
Speaker 1: which that are being disseminated in Germany as people call,
Speaker 1: you know, ring the alarm bells. People are being charged
Speaker 1: with crimes in Germany just for showing the images because
Speaker 1: they're so violent there for the law. And you know,
Speaker 1: he said this.
Speaker 2: Trutherism around it. I saw it and I know you're
Speaker 2: talking about and I was like.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, are we tokenizing the truth like that? Can't
Speaker 1: be it. You know, you see an RFK go crazy
Speaker 1: about the polio vaccine. You can't say it doesn't work.
Speaker 1: You cannot. There's no fact, an alternative fact. And conway
Speaker 1: there there are concrete facts, right, and we have to
Speaker 1: we have to assess, as you said, social services based
Speaker 1: on human health, health outcomes CDC data, success of social
Speaker 1: service programs. Should they not be working, should they be inefficient?
Speaker 1: Let's make them more efficient, Let's not light them all
Speaker 1: on fire.
Speaker 3: But that's that is the desire of a lot of
Speaker 3: people on the far right now, is destruction.
Speaker 2: That is a nihilism. Well, I think for some people
Speaker 2: it's fun.
Speaker 3: But for others there's a contingent that thinks our government
Speaker 3: is broken.
Speaker 2: Both sides in establishment parties.
Speaker 3: Were ineffective, and there's some truth to the ineffectiveness of
Speaker 3: our establishment politics. Of course, the answer isn't lighting it
Speaker 3: all on fire, which I mean, just take today and
Speaker 3: Trump's immediate dissolution of federal grants, federal grants that are
Speaker 3: obligated and already awarded that then have to be paid
Speaker 3: out with no concern for what happens next.
Speaker 2: And it was the same thing with Dobbs. There was
Speaker 2: no overturning. Dobs had no Okay, what comes next?
Speaker 3: How do we then provide for the millions of people
Speaker 3: who are just going to be left with nowhere to go,
Speaker 3: nothing to do. There's no thought of that. And for Trump,
Speaker 3: I think there's fun in the chaos and this idea
Speaker 3: that like, I'm going to do it the law, figure
Speaker 3: out the legality later, whether it's legal or not, I
Speaker 3: don't care.
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it.
Speaker 3: And I'm daring you to challenge me, because we all
Speaker 3: know what that looks like by now, and it's rough.
Speaker 2: It's rough.
Speaker 1: The that phrase fun in the chaos really strikes me
Speaker 1: because what it seems to be again as a person
Speaker 1: who's you know, job, like the way I pay my
Speaker 1: bills is not working. In politics, I've been a political
Speaker 1: volunteer for over twenty years. People love to come at
Speaker 1: me and say, how much money are you making for this?
Speaker 1: None I spend my own money to do this right,
Speaker 1: and I've lost quite a few, you know, the pretty
Speaker 1: sort of endorsement deals that happen in the line of work.
Speaker 1: I don't get those big ones because I won't stop
Speaker 1: saying words like abortion.
Speaker 2: And exactly on your P and L sheep, this is
Speaker 2: an L for you.
Speaker 1: It's a big L. But it matters to me because
Speaker 1: that's what I'm going to I'm going to sell us
Speaker 1: out to I don't know, advertise something for what. And
Speaker 1: I think what's hard for me is not only that
Speaker 1: there seems to be glee in the chaos. There seems
Speaker 1: to be this energy of retribution, this joy in harming people,
Speaker 1: because not only have you overturned jobs and have you
Speaker 1: put the lives of women around the country at risk.
Speaker 1: I have friends who, you know, my friend Amanda Zarofski
Speaker 1: lost her fallopian tube. She may never be able to
Speaker 1: be a mom because they wouldn't give her a DNC
Speaker 1: after a miscarriage because she'd crossed the line. I mean
Speaker 1: things that are just so appalling. Yeah, the suffering. They
Speaker 1: know people are suffering and they don't care. And then
Speaker 1: when we say you seem to enjoy this, they say
Speaker 1: of course we don't enjoy it. We're standing up for families.
Speaker 1: And then they propose cutting twelve billion dollars in school
Speaker 1: lunch assistance. Right that they know is where so many
Speaker 1: children in our country get their only guaranteed meal on
Speaker 1: a weekday, kids that go hungry, and they are sitting
Speaker 1: here saying not all those kids deserve to eat.
Speaker 2: It's worse than that.
Speaker 3: I saw someone on a congressman on CNN today who
Speaker 3: was asked, you know, what would you tell kids who
Speaker 3: get a lot of their nutrition? And I work in
Speaker 3: child hunger as well. I'm ambassador for no kid hungry,
Speaker 3: so I work in this space. She said, what would
Speaker 3: you tell a kid who gets boodh assistance from programs
Speaker 3: like Snap? And he said, well, when I was a kid,
Speaker 3: I had a paper route and then I got a job.
Speaker 3: And she said, we're talking about like five year olds.
Speaker 3: You're not telling a five year old to get a job.
Speaker 3: There's this sort of cavalier, blase, go work for it
Speaker 3: attitude where there's not only no attempt to see the
Speaker 3: humanside of what's happening, there is total resistance to that.
Speaker 3: Do not show me the face of suffering people, do
Speaker 3: not show me the cost. I don't want to know.
Speaker 2: I don't care.
Speaker 3: That's how it is feeling as I watch again people
Speaker 3: I know inside MAGA operate where the cruelty is the
Speaker 3: point and the punishment is the point. In a lot
Speaker 3: of cases, it's really hard for me to justify. But
Speaker 3: like I said, compassion is now weak, social safety nets
Speaker 3: are now woke. This isn't how I was brought up,
Speaker 3: either by my parents or in politics. And it's just
Speaker 3: so nihilistic, yes, that this is how you must act.
Speaker 1: Now what bothers me too about this idea that our
Speaker 1: social safety nets are woke? These are supposed to be
Speaker 1: smart business people, right, Yeah, And look, I'm not a
Speaker 1: billionaire business person. I am very aware no matter how
Speaker 1: many times Donald Trump, who was playing with his name
Speaker 1: on it, calls me and my friends the elite, I'm
Speaker 1: way closer to being homeless tomorrow than I am ever
Speaker 1: being a billionaire.
Speaker 2: Like that's just the stats. Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: This man is supposed to be a smart business person.
Speaker 1: Now what I know from my years of you know,
Speaker 1: making some small little like angel investments in that world,
Speaker 1: right business investing, You would never invest in a company
Speaker 1: that you were not expecting to get some version of
Speaker 1: a return too, And yes, sure, sometimes an investment it
Speaker 1: doesn't work, sometimes it does. The ideas that it's going
Speaker 1: to work better than it doesn't, the idea that the
Speaker 1: American people are supposed to pay taxes into these United States.
Speaker 1: The whole point of being in the United States is
Speaker 1: because the United States provides for its people, your roads,
Speaker 1: the street lights in your city, your drinking water. We
Speaker 1: pay into infrastructure, and the return on our investment is
Speaker 1: to be able to live theoretically in a country where
Speaker 1: you're not gonna get t boned because all the lights
Speaker 1: are out, and you're not going to get listeria from
Speaker 1: your drinking water, and you're not going to see people
Speaker 1: be abused for other rich people's.
Speaker 2: Enjoyment or their enjoyment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like social safety nets are our return on the
Speaker 1: investment of our taxes, and they've somehow made it seem
Speaker 1: like nobody should get a free ride. It's not about
Speaker 1: a free ride. If your neighbors lost their job and
Speaker 1: was hungry, you'd invite them over for dinner, hoping they
Speaker 1: would do it for you. It's just like, it's the
Speaker 1: whole point of being in a society. You don't want
Speaker 1: to live in a society. I'm like, Okay, move to
Speaker 1: antarcticle and live off the grid and see how long
Speaker 1: you survive.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, I mean it used to be we we
Speaker 3: could have conversations about how to solve these endemic problems.
Speaker 3: And on the right, I might say, yes, people are hungry,
Speaker 3: but how are we going to pay for it? And
Speaker 3: on the left you might say, people are hungry, it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter, like we just need to feed them. We'd
Speaker 3: come together over some version of a compromise that would
Speaker 3: do all the things, it would be paid for. We'd
Speaker 3: figure that part out. Because you don't think about how
Speaker 3: it's paid for it you run out of resources and money. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you also feed the hungry people because they are
Speaker 3: in the immediate need. We don't even agree on the
Speaker 3: problems anymore, let alone the solutions, because me even caring
Speaker 3: about the problem.
Speaker 2: Makes me a snow spoken week.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, So it's it's it's an upside down, and
Speaker 3: it's a crazy world, and a very very scary and
Speaker 3: sad cynical political world that Maga is creating.
Speaker 2: It's very cynical, deeply deeply cynical.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious because you wrote something, you know, in
Speaker 1: reference to in twenty twenty voting for President Biden, and
Speaker 1: you talked about how there's this quote of yours that
Speaker 1: I love, you said, cloaking it. You know, their extremism
Speaker 1: as patriotism or conservativism is just a lie. I think
Speaker 1: there are enough good conservatives to see through that, even
Speaker 1: in Congress, but there's certainly been a lack of courage
Speaker 1: to call out people like the Marjorie Taylor Greens of
Speaker 1: the Mega world. And you spoke about the courage of
Speaker 1: Liz Change, you know, her standing up for American values,
Speaker 1: and you talked about how in a silent vote her
Speaker 1: fellow congress people voted to keep her in leadership, but
Speaker 1: that your hunch was if the vote was not silent,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't have gone that way. We got that now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: now the votes are not silent. They're out loud. You know,
Speaker 1: you've got JD. Vance talk essentially referring to women as cattle,
Speaker 1: saying or it's our job to be pregnant, and you know,
Speaker 1: them blowing up everything, education, cancer research, all of it.
Speaker 1: I know the chaos is the point because they want us,
Speaker 1: they want us, and as I feel right now, I
Speaker 1: want to take a deep breath and cry, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure people let them listening do to I promise we're
Speaker 1: gonna We're going to add a little spark of hope here.
Speaker 1: I know this is their goal to make us tired
Speaker 1: and to make us go in right, you've seen this playbook,
Speaker 1: how do you think about conserving your energy and think
Speaker 1: about how to strategically fight back.
Speaker 3: It's really tough because you can drive yourself crazy, and
Speaker 3: again that's what they want.
Speaker 2: They want you to get tired.
Speaker 3: They want you to be afraid of speaking and doing
Speaker 3: what you do.
Speaker 2: And listen.
Speaker 3: It's not for everyone, and I don't judge people who
Speaker 3: say I can't do it anymore. And I know a
Speaker 3: lot of people both in media and politics who've decided
Speaker 3: I cannot do this anymore. It is awful for my
Speaker 3: mental health. I completely understand that. I've had those conversations
Speaker 3: with myself, like is this worth it? But I have
Speaker 3: found ways, over years of therapy to continue doing what
Speaker 3: I deeply love, which is journalism, asking questions, holding powerful
Speaker 3: people accountable, without letting it take over my life and
Speaker 3: my mental health. And that's been hard, but I've set boundaries.
Speaker 3: I mean, I used to turn on CNN. Let me
Speaker 3: start over. I never turned off CNN. I would fall
Speaker 3: asleep to it, I would wake up to it. It
Speaker 3: would be on all day and by osmosis it would
Speaker 3: you know, I would just get off. That's not necessary, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, for one, most hours of cable news repeat
Speaker 3: the same stories.
Speaker 2: Two, I can read the news, and.
Speaker 3: It's a very different effect than watching it, especially watching
Speaker 3: two people yell at each other or argue about something. Right,
Speaker 3: there are other ways to consume news and do my job,
Speaker 3: and so I really started looking at that, how I
Speaker 3: consume the news and how I moved.
Speaker 2: Through the world that I live in.
Speaker 3: You know, doing philanthropic work is a thing that helps
Speaker 3: me escape the feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness, Like I
Speaker 3: am pointless and what I'm doing in my professional life
Speaker 3: means nothing. Go and do a little philanthropy. I volunteered
Speaker 3: a shelter almost every other week. You find meaning in
Speaker 3: very small things that can counterbalance the meaningless feeling you
Speaker 3: have as a fighter, as an activist, as an advocate,
Speaker 3: you have to find meaning and value in other things.
Speaker 3: And I've had to make myself feel less identified by
Speaker 3: my job as I once did. Maybe you've gone through
Speaker 3: this too, where you felt so identified not just by
Speaker 3: your job, but who you worked for and the show
Speaker 3: you were on and the network I work for. I
Speaker 3: mean so identified proudly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Kind of creating some separation from that is scary but
Speaker 3: also really liberating to say, wait a second, a whole
Speaker 3: person without any of these trappings around me. I'm a whole,
Speaker 3: valuable person. It's a recentering, and it takes a it
Speaker 3: takes a while, it's not an overnight thing, but man,
Speaker 3: has it saved my life. Literally, it has saved my life.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute after a few
Speaker 1: words from our favorite sponsors. I think this happens to everyone.
Speaker 1: You know, everybody's got one of these in their pockets.
Speaker 1: Like we're all we're all on screen all the time,
Speaker 1: but particularly for people whose jobs exist on screen. Whether
Speaker 1: you realize it or not, you become a two dimensional person,
Speaker 1: but we live three dimensional lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the.
Speaker 1: Flattening and the reduction of your humanity can be really toxic.
Speaker 1: And I think you're right. The more we lean into
Speaker 1: our expansion, the more we build community. Like the way
Speaker 1: I am dealing with this is giving myself thirty minutes
Speaker 1: to read the news every day and then having conversations
Speaker 1: like this one, calling other folks, starting more group chats,
Speaker 1: figuring out where do we volunteer our time, what do
Speaker 1: we do? I mean, even the last couple of weeks
Speaker 1: in la As, you know, it's been so traumatizing to
Speaker 1: watch a city go through what we've been going through.
Speaker 1: And it's also been the most inspiring thing because everyone
Speaker 1: has shown up. We have been packing suitcases, we have
Speaker 1: been delivering waters, we have been gathering donations, we have
Speaker 1: been organizing, you know, behind the scenes, from telethons to
Speaker 1: fundraisers to it has been like a full time job
Speaker 1: and everyone's not everything to do it to show up
Speaker 1: for community. And we are doing this no matter what
Speaker 1: the guy in the White House is saying, right, and
Speaker 1: it's meaning because you can't take it away, find it.
Speaker 1: There's so many of us, right, and we're going to
Speaker 1: have to lean on each other, you know. And I wonder,
Speaker 1: is it that sort of desire for that three dimensional life,
Speaker 1: for that community based experience that led you to the
Speaker 1: new podcast, Because clearly I love having a good conversation
Speaker 1: with someone, and when I was like, wait a second,
Speaker 1: a commentator is saying, I want to do a podcast.
Speaker 2: That isn't just about the news, Like he piqued.
Speaker 1: My interest in such a cool way. What was the
Speaker 1: impetus for you to say I want to go beyond
Speaker 1: the job and into the personal.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm so glad it speaks your interest because and
Speaker 3: that's exactly what it was. I need it in this
Speaker 3: project of mine where I'm trying to find the non
Speaker 3: political me.
Speaker 2: Who is that?
Speaker 3: The non CNN personality me, right, the three D me?
Speaker 3: Because as you say, like I, you know, you feel
Speaker 3: like an avatar because that's how people see you. After
Speaker 3: a while in that project, I had to challenge myself,
Speaker 3: what are my other interests? And man, I'd forgotten them.
Speaker 3: I'd forgotten that I had interests before politics and my job.
Speaker 3: And I Heart came to me and said, we want
Speaker 3: you to do a podcast and we don't care what
Speaker 3: it's about. I said, oh, you mean it doesn't have
Speaker 3: to be political. You don't just see me as a
Speaker 3: political person. Yes, And to their credit and I'm so grateful,
Speaker 3: they said, no, what do you want to talk about?
Speaker 3: And I said, well, the most important thing to me
Speaker 3: right now is mental health. But I don't want like
Speaker 3: a mental health podcast, because I'm not an expert in
Speaker 3: mental health and I don't want to pretend to have
Speaker 3: all the answers I do not, But I would love
Speaker 3: to create a space where mental health naturally and normally
Speaker 3: can come up, if it's so desires right.
Speaker 2: So I said, I want to talk.
Speaker 3: To really interesting people, people I admire, and you know,
Speaker 3: I love creative arts. So I talk to creative people,
Speaker 3: actors and comedians and artists and singers, and I want
Speaker 3: to ask them about their lives, their careers, their hobbies.
Speaker 3: In it a space where mental health can come up
Speaker 3: as they've confronted challenges, loss, love, et cetera.
Speaker 2: And iHeart said, do it, go do it.
Speaker 3: And I can't tell you how grateful I am for this,
Speaker 3: both professionally because it is an escape from the other
Speaker 3: stuff that I do, but personally how much I don't
Speaker 3: want to get emotional, but how much I needed this
Speaker 3: in my life to be able to have conversations with
Speaker 3: people about how they're feeling, yeah, about mental health and
Speaker 3: me sharing you know, I used to do this, and
Speaker 3: someone on the other side of the conversation saying, oh
Speaker 3: my god, a light bulb just went out when just
Speaker 3: went off when you said that.
Speaker 2: And I didn't know I was doing that.
Speaker 3: Yes, Oh my gosh, that moment of connection or someone
Speaker 3: saying to me, you know what, I used to do
Speaker 3: that too. Here's a great tip for you. Yes, having
Speaker 3: those epiphanies and remembering our shared humanity h has been
Speaker 3: such a gift that I needed so badly.
Speaker 2: So listen. If this if off the cup, if this
Speaker 2: podcast goes.
Speaker 3: Away tomorrow, I'll be sad. But it's been It's been
Speaker 3: such a gift for me.
Speaker 1: I please, a I'm a crier. Never apologize for me,
Speaker 1: and be the way when you say a light bulb
Speaker 1: went off, like the way I feel seen by what
Speaker 1: you just said. Because similarly in twenty nineteen, and I
Speaker 1: know we're gonna have to do it again. I sat
Speaker 1: in a room full of women like you and me,
Speaker 1: from every walk of life, who grew up in every
Speaker 1: you know kind of family, and you know, none of
Speaker 1: them look the same like this amazing group of women.
Speaker 1: I can't even believe I'm going to say this. I've
Speaker 1: told the story before, but never to you. I went
Speaker 1: to journalism school and like twenty year old me in
Speaker 1: class at USC Enburgh would die to know that I
Speaker 1: get to tell this story. I'm sitting in Glorious Steinem's
Speaker 1: living room in New York, Okay, with this amazing group
Speaker 1: of women talking about what the fuck we're gonna do
Speaker 1: with this country that is making money off hating women.
Speaker 1: And I was like, this, this conversation, I wish everyone
Speaker 1: could hear it. And it was the reason I decided
Speaker 1: to start work in progress because I realized I get
Speaker 1: to be in rooms like that. I get to sit
Speaker 1: with a friend of mine who is the most unbelievable
Speaker 1: scientist who worked at Project argists who helped identify emerging
Speaker 1: pandemics around the world, who has a master's in emerging
Speaker 1: infectious diseases. And I got to call her when we
Speaker 1: first heard a rumor about this you know thing, starting
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, like I just started to realize
Speaker 1: I had all these amazing people I could talk to
Speaker 1: about health, about science, about parenting, about relationships, about fertility,
Speaker 1: about politics, about writing, about and like, we need all
Speaker 1: of it. We need all of that impact and input
Speaker 1: in our lives. And so I don't think it's an
Speaker 1: accident that so many of us who want more good
Speaker 1: people to be connected wind up in spaces like this, right.
Speaker 2: I think that's so.
Speaker 3: True, and your world opens up, which is so lovely
Speaker 3: and wonderful because you start to.
Speaker 2: Believe your two dimensional.
Speaker 3: At a point, you start to believe it, this is
Speaker 3: all there is to me. And when you open that
Speaker 3: door to other people, you remember, oh, gosh, no, I'm
Speaker 3: really turned on by this thing or that thing, or
Speaker 3: hearing this story or this kind of creative air arena
Speaker 3: that I don't get to play in. I'm really I'm
Speaker 3: really stimulated by these conversations or whatever it is, or
Speaker 3: I'm learning so much about navigating the world.
Speaker 2: When you know, Henry Winkler tells me, I thought.
Speaker 3: Everyone was going to call me after Happy Days, and
Speaker 3: no one called, and I didn't know who I was
Speaker 3: going to be after that.
Speaker 2: And then he tells me what he did.
Speaker 3: And here's what you're gonna do, Sie, because you're you're
Speaker 3: smart and you're ambitious, and you're gonna do this.
Speaker 2: You're going to figure it out.
Speaker 3: I mean, who would have thought I'd get some of
Speaker 3: the best career advice in my life from the Fonds, Right,
Speaker 3: But yeah, I don't know unless you open that door. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and opening the door to so many people. Oh, it's
Speaker 3: been so enriching and rewarding. And it doesn't mean we
Speaker 3: have to agree on everything. I don't know when that
Speaker 3: became a requirement of a friendship.
Speaker 2: Or or anything.
Speaker 3: But when you focus on the stuff you do agree on,
Speaker 3: you focus on the stuff that's great or hard, or
Speaker 3: who are we as people, it's really rewarding and fulfilling.
Speaker 3: And that has been something I have missed in my
Speaker 3: professional life. It is not felt fulfilling and rewarding. It's
Speaker 3: felt like a job. So yeah, love these kinds of
Speaker 3: conversations like you so much more than I like talking
Speaker 3: politics these days, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, and I think what's really what's really cool about
Speaker 1: it is in a way, when you can leave the
Speaker 1: thing you've always had to do, you know, for you,
Speaker 1: when you can stretch past talking politics, you can kind
Speaker 1: of re encompass the personal and then be fueled again
Speaker 1: for the political, because everything is political, and that can
Speaker 1: be daunting and exhausting, and it's especially more exhausting if
Speaker 1: you're not showing up to those political fights with your
Speaker 1: personal fuel. The people you care about, the people you
Speaker 1: want to carry into rooms, the kids, you want to defend,
Speaker 1: you know, don't really on no kid hungry, like you
Speaker 1: have to have that to sustain the other part. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think anytime we get to kind of reach out
Speaker 1: and go have more of ourselves and our communities.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it helps.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: At the end of the day, politics is for people.
Speaker 3: It's about people, right, We're not governing systems, we're governing
Speaker 3: people and trying to solve people's problems. If you don't
Speaker 3: come at politics with your own personal lived experience and
Speaker 3: those shared experiences of other people, and whether those are
Speaker 3: your kids, your parents, your friends, your colleagues, your teachers,
Speaker 3: who are you doing it for? What's it for? I mean,
Speaker 3: then you're just kind of a technocrat, right, You're just
Speaker 3: here to cross t's and dot i's and we need
Speaker 3: those people too. But that's certainly not why I got
Speaker 3: into politics. I got into it because of people. And
Speaker 3: I just find that that's so missing from most political
Speaker 3: conversations that you see sort of modeled on cable news.
Speaker 3: We've forgotten about the people that are being impacted, people
Speaker 3: who are meant to be helped by this.
Speaker 2: What is this helping people? Is this solving problems?
Speaker 3: We've forgotten it's so performative now and again it feels gross.
Speaker 3: It feels really gross and moralizing.
Speaker 1: And I think because we're expected to be reachable all
Speaker 1: the time, we're expected to know everything all the time,
Speaker 1: to have an opinion about things immediately, all of these things,
Speaker 1: it keeps you kind of running faster than your legs
Speaker 1: can carry you. And so you miss you miss things,
Speaker 1: You miss nuance, you miss personal time and anything that
Speaker 1: can help you slow down and analyze a bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is what happens in good conversation. A light bulb
Speaker 1: goes off, you share a resource, you make a new connection.
Speaker 1: And I guess I'm realizing as we're talking this stuff
Speaker 1: is what I hope we all, you and I and
Speaker 1: every when at home listening. Yeah, this is what I
Speaker 1: hope we remember to do and cling to as we
Speaker 1: enter into another four years of this is to listen
Speaker 1: to each other and to be curious and investigate things
Speaker 1: so that we can be more three dimensional as we
Speaker 1: walk into being together defending each other all of these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and politics generally doesn't want you to be three dimensional.
Speaker 3: It wants to put you in a box and know
Speaker 3: exactly who you are and how you're defined and you're
Speaker 3: over here, and you're over here, or you look like this,
Speaker 3: or you look like that. It's designed to strip all
Speaker 3: of your dimensionality away from you.
Speaker 2: You are not meant to be nuanced.
Speaker 3: Or complicated, right, So, yeah, advocating for that three dimensionality
Speaker 3: and that idea that I'm not just the letter next
Speaker 3: to my name. I'm not just a political party or
Speaker 3: some sort of identity politics thing for you to use.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's the fight.
Speaker 3: That's the fight, you know, of a lifetime trying trying
Speaker 3: to you know, trying to persuade people to remember that
Speaker 3: and have more conversations like this too, to discover that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back in just a minute. But here's
Speaker 1: a word from our sponsors, and what happens when people
Speaker 1: are willing to claim their fuller selves, like you saying, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm not just going to be a broadcaster, a news
Speaker 1: anchor and an avatar of this. For me, when I've
Speaker 1: allowed myself to take moments and say no, I'm so
Speaker 1: much more than an actor. I'm a human being. I'm
Speaker 1: an advocate, I'm a friend, I'm this, I'm of that.
Speaker 1: You know who am I? What of myself do I
Speaker 1: want to take into the world. It's like, as I'm
Speaker 1: listening to you talk, and maybe this is for so
Speaker 1: many of us who work in some version of again
Speaker 1: on screen on air performance. Like having these conversations with
Speaker 1: my partner. Some of what we've seen mirrored, although different,
Speaker 1: is like what I learned to do as a performance artist,
Speaker 1: what she learned to do and present as a performance athlete.
Speaker 1: What it is when you finally pause and say, no,
Speaker 1: who am I? When I reinflate the balloon? Who is
Speaker 1: all of me? And it's crazy side note because I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I have to connect you to because
Speaker 1: you should do each other's shows. She had the same
Speaker 1: experience with the iHeart folks doing her advocacy in her
Speaker 1: work and building out this huge thing. You know, this
Speaker 1: women's sports network. We have women their moment, you know
Speaker 1: in this radio media space.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I got to sit back and watch and this has
Speaker 1: never happened to me in my personal life before, but
Speaker 1: I was. I watched them all kind of turn and go, well,
Speaker 1: you have to do a podcast. Your stories are wild.
Speaker 1: You know, She's out building all these things for other people.
Speaker 1: And then they were like, we want you to do one,
Speaker 1: and she was like, oh, no, no, no, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm finding my world beyond sport. I don't you know.
Speaker 1: I love you all and like I want to build this,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't want to do like a sports podcast.
Speaker 1: And they were like, you can have a podcast about
Speaker 1: whatever you want. We want it from you. We've never
Speaker 1: seen someone talk about these things the way you do.
Speaker 2: And I saw there.
Speaker 1: It was like being at you know, the US Open
Speaker 1: and watching a tennis match. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I just happened to like be around because we were
Speaker 1: all at the same conference and it was so cool.
Speaker 1: It was just so cool to watch it. And so
Speaker 1: I guess, really what it is is a shout out
Speaker 1: to all of our bosses.
Speaker 2: You're at iHeart.
Speaker 1: I'm at iHeart, you's at I heart. And it's this
Speaker 1: really cool thing when people can look at you and say,
Speaker 1: I want to know all of you. Yeah, past what
Speaker 1: you do, past what you get accolades for, but why
Speaker 1: you speak this way? Why do you advocate this way?
Speaker 1: How'd you get to be this way? Ally, I love
Speaker 1: that you're encouraging that. I love that the people I'm
Speaker 1: closest to are encouraging that. And I don't think it's
Speaker 1: an accident that we all keep finding each other.
Speaker 3: I don't either, No, truly, And it's funny because both
Speaker 3: you two and me. Right, I'm going to speak for
Speaker 3: the three of us, okay, because I think I can,
Speaker 3: but you can correct me if you want. We fought
Speaker 3: so hard to get where we got and where the
Speaker 3: costume of the career we wanted, right, We fought so
Speaker 3: hard to get there, climbing climbing.
Speaker 2: I just want to be this, I want to embody this.
Speaker 2: And then we did. We got there, we embodied it.
Speaker 3: Then it got really hard to take the costume off,
Speaker 3: really hard, And who am I without this thing?
Speaker 2: Who am I?
Speaker 3: I don't know how people are going to see me,
Speaker 3: But I also don't know how I'm going to see myself.
Speaker 2: So it's a challenge. But when you have a partner.
Speaker 3: By that, I mean like iHeart come to you and
Speaker 3: say I see more in you. Yes, I don't see
Speaker 3: the costume. Yes, take the costume off. You don't even
Speaker 3: have to wear the costume to this thing that I
Speaker 3: want you to do. It's amazing and gratifying and validating
Speaker 3: and reassuring and empowering all the things, all the things,
Speaker 3: and I don't even know that they know how much
Speaker 3: that means to someone like you or me or your partner,
Speaker 3: like how much that means to be seen as a
Speaker 3: whole person.
Speaker 1: And when you're used to with the greatest amount of gratitude,
Speaker 1: by the way, but it's like scales are always what
Speaker 1: they are. You have such a gratitude for your job
Speaker 1: and you're used to being expected to do it a
Speaker 1: certain way, and then someone says, no, no, I want
Speaker 1: you to come into this arena, which theoretically is work, right,
Speaker 1: but bring your whole self, not just your work self.
Speaker 1: And you go, wait, what what is that?
Speaker 2: I know totally well yeah, yeah, And I.
Speaker 1: Sit here and I do things like this, and it's
Speaker 1: like I'll interview another actor, and then I'll interview a senator,
Speaker 1: I'll interview you as a journalist, and earlier this morning,
Speaker 1: I interviewed a poet. Like I get to look under
Speaker 1: the hood of every single car. I think is cool.
Speaker 1: It doesn't all have to be the same kind, and
Speaker 1: it's it is a really incredible I think, particularly for
Speaker 1: people like us that are really under the storyteller umbrella. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether you are pursuing fiction or journalism or any of it,
Speaker 1: when you can be a storyteller and a witness at
Speaker 1: the same time. Right, you know again, twenty year old
Speaker 1: me going to classes at Annenberg could not have imagined this.
Speaker 2: And I.
Speaker 1: Love it for my life, for.
Speaker 2: My work, for the Resistance, Yeah.
Speaker 1: For all of it. It feels very not to be trite,
Speaker 1: but it feels kind of holistic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, you know, well, I totally agree. It feels
Speaker 2: that way for me too.
Speaker 3: And I think for anyone listening thinking well, how does
Speaker 3: this apply to me? Because I'm not an actor, I'm
Speaker 3: not a journalist, and I don't have a podcast, I
Speaker 3: think we all tend to feel two dimensional at times,
Speaker 3: like am I just a mom?
Speaker 2: Or am I just.
Speaker 3: This thing at my job? Or we get to find
Speaker 3: by the things we become. And I think that the
Speaker 3: application outside of what we do is just to open
Speaker 3: your circle us of influence, hopefully not online, right, your
Speaker 3: your actual circle of influence right in CRL. Yeah, to
Speaker 3: learn more about the world, but ultimately yourself.
Speaker 1: Well, and as you said, the encouragement might be you
Speaker 1: don't have to start a podcast, but you could, but
Speaker 1: you can. You don't have to start a podcast, but
Speaker 1: maybe the takeaway is, oh I don't have time to
Speaker 1: volunteer once a week. But I heard Sarah say she
Speaker 1: volunteers every other week. Oh maybe I could do that.
Speaker 1: And you could step into a great nonprofit in your
Speaker 1: neighborhood and find your people.
Speaker 2: Or start one. You could.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you could discover that you are actually the best
Speaker 1: advocate for school lunches or your local library or whatever
Speaker 1: it is you. You might not even know how magical
Speaker 1: you are at something, right, So I think the idea
Speaker 1: is just follow your curiosity, because that's that's what we
Speaker 1: have in common. Right, We're curious about people. We come
Speaker 1: from this work world, and so it led us here.
Speaker 1: We followed our curiosity and it gave us something unexpected. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I would encourage everyone to do that and to
Speaker 1: lean into whatever yours is, because they're not all going
Speaker 1: to be the same. They can't be. Then we'd have
Speaker 1: a completely one sided, insane society. But follow your curiosity
Speaker 1: and see where it takes.
Speaker 2: You, right, that's right.
Speaker 3: And open yourself to the possibility that there are things
Speaker 3: you're curious about that you don't even know about yet.
Speaker 3: Oh I love that, right, Like there's their entire worlds
Speaker 3: that you don't know. You might be interested in, but
Speaker 3: you haven't even begun to explore. So Yeah, I think
Speaker 3: when you talk about the flattening of us and then
Speaker 3: the inflation inflating us, it's such a good metaphor, and
Speaker 3: it really.
Speaker 2: Anyone could use that. Anyone can identify with that.
Speaker 3: I feel flat and I need to feel full and inflated,
Speaker 3: and that's what that's what that's what's gonna fill you up.
Speaker 3: Or those connections and that curiosity and those new experiences.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun to get to speak to people
Speaker 1: and find all the light bulbs that you didn't even
Speaker 1: know you'd share. I'm finding so many with you today.
Speaker 1: How have you been finding that on the podcast Shifting
Speaker 1: out of traditional news? Who are some of your favorite
Speaker 1: people you've interviewed? Who's surprised you the most?
Speaker 3: Yeah, gosh, I've loved talking to everyone. I know that
Speaker 3: sounds like a but it's I mean, there's something interesting
Speaker 3: about everyone. But I mean I had a great conversation
Speaker 3: with doctor Drew pinsk right, because he's lived in the
Speaker 3: media world but also treats people with addiction issues and
Speaker 3: also mental health issues. So his own mental health journey
Speaker 3: was really interesting to hear about. I have a very
Speaker 3: good friend, Josh Gad who's an actor right a door adore,
Speaker 3: and we talked about some really tough stuff, including anxiety,
Speaker 3: but also anti semitism and navigating that. I get great
Speaker 3: career advice from people who were successful and that's fun,
Speaker 3: but really, when it comes down to it, those mental
Speaker 3: health connections. I was talking to Mark Dwoplas, so we
Speaker 3: did that episode. It hasn't aired yet, but we've both
Speaker 3: talked about our mental health. And I told him that
Speaker 3: I was really sad that I'm not like the multitasker
Speaker 3: I once was. I could do a thousand things at
Speaker 3: once and it was great, and now I really have
Speaker 3: to concentrate after my sort of breakdown, Yeah, my brain
Speaker 3: is not functioning at the level it was and I
Speaker 3: have to like really focus on one thing at a time.
Speaker 2: And he goes, is that a bad thing? I said,
Speaker 2: is that a bad thing? Huh?
Speaker 3: And he said, I bet you weren't super happy and
Speaker 3: healthy when you were multitasking and doing eleven things not
Speaker 3: very well but getting them done, and you felt crazed
Speaker 3: and crazy and rushed and stressed. And yeah, I did
Speaker 3: feel all those things. And he said, are you allowed
Speaker 3: to age and change, maybe get a little worse at this,
Speaker 3: but better at this, and said, yeah, I mean talk
Speaker 3: about a light bulb. You only get those when you
Speaker 3: really get honest and deep and you create a space
Speaker 3: where people feel comfortable and you're just talking like normal people.
Speaker 3: Those are the moments that I savor so much about
Speaker 3: that pod well and what.
Speaker 1: Strikes me too. And not to be a total language nerd,
Speaker 1: but I am about what he said, are you not
Speaker 1: allowed to age? I wouldn't even put the idea of
Speaker 1: aging on it. I would say are you not allowed
Speaker 1: to mature?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Because when we are younger, it is very easy to
Speaker 1: be like, I have to do everything, and I have
Speaker 1: to do it all the time. You don't enjoy it,
Speaker 1: You barely remember it. Yeah, you probably were pumped full
Speaker 1: of adrenaline because you were so anxious. To his point,
Speaker 1: maybe you got all those things done, but how well
Speaker 1: did you do them?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And at your life stage, you are now kinder to
Speaker 1: yourself and mature enough to say, oh, if I don't
Speaker 1: just do one thing at a time, I'm not really
Speaker 1: doing anything.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's right, you know, And it's okay to
Speaker 3: say like to my husband or son I'm concentrating. You
Speaker 3: need to leave me alone for ten minutes so I
Speaker 3: can finish this, right, Yes, you never used to ask
Speaker 3: permission for those things, you know.
Speaker 1: And by the way, then, how pissed were you when
Speaker 1: someone interrupted you and you'd be listening to what they
Speaker 1: needed and you'd be resenting them for it.
Speaker 2: Ye, piss is not the word. Piss is not the word.
Speaker 3: I mean the heat of a thousand sun's angry, enraged
Speaker 3: that I would get interrupted usually before before all all this,
Speaker 3: I could get interrupted, be fine, go right back to
Speaker 3: my task or tune it out, I mean enraged, And yeah,
Speaker 3: getting permission from Mark Duplas, right, I mean all right.
Speaker 2: To say no. You can ask permission.
Speaker 3: You can say I need you to give me this
Speaker 3: space so I can focus on this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, yeah, of course you can do that. Of
Speaker 2: course you can do that.
Speaker 3: But sometimes the most obvious things only come when you're
Speaker 3: sitting down with a total stranger who can see you
Speaker 3: from the outside.
Speaker 1: And sometimes the most obvious things are revelatory because they
Speaker 1: life changed it obvious to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, you know, exactly right. My therapist said.
Speaker 3: We were talking about social media and the anxiety it
Speaker 3: creates and she said, I bet you go on social
Speaker 3: media pretty passively, like without intentions. I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm on Twitter because I'm waiting in line at the
Speaker 3: grocery store and.
Speaker 2: Board, or I'm on Instagram for validation. What are people
Speaker 2: are they? They liking my post? You know?
Speaker 3: And she said, well, is that the way you go
Speaker 3: to the grocery store just hoping things will jump in
Speaker 3: your cart?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: I go because I have a list, I know what
Speaker 3: I need, and I'm leaving with the things that I need.
Speaker 3: She said, yeah, if you go on social media without intentionality,
Speaker 3: everything's going to jump in your cart and it's going
Speaker 3: to be a lot of stuff you didn't you weren't
Speaker 3: there for, and.
Speaker 2: It's actually harmful to you.
Speaker 3: You don't want God, right, So the idea of this
Speaker 3: grocery store that is social media?
Speaker 2: What am I there for? You can go? You gotta go,
Speaker 2: you gotta go on it. I have to go on
Speaker 2: social media for my job. You got to go to
Speaker 2: the grocery store. What am I there for?
Speaker 3: I'm only leaving with this And even if I am
Speaker 3: there or whatever reason, I know why I'm there and
Speaker 3: I'm not letting social media happen to me, which is
Speaker 3: I think how a lot of people navigate social media
Speaker 3: and the news. So I mean, yeah, these sort of
Speaker 3: seemingly very simple, obvious, life changing revelations that happen in
Speaker 3: therapy and then in these conversations with people. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's what I'm living for right now.
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh, I absolutely love it. I'm like,
Speaker 1: we have let's go to dinner. I want to talk
Speaker 1: about three more hours.
Speaker 2: Right, what are we doing?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: It's so fun. This is my favorite question to ask everyone,
Speaker 1: but I think I'm particularly excited to ask you because
Speaker 1: we've just had this beautifully spherical conversation.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that to really consider it kind of requires
Speaker 1: that full balloon, if you will. When you look out,
Speaker 1: you know lessons, you've gleaned, identity, you've found, kindness you're
Speaker 1: bestowing on yourself, preparing for what's to come. I'm laughing,
Speaker 1: even though it's not funny, because if I don't laugh
Speaker 1: a little bit, I'll cry.
Speaker 2: Yeap.
Speaker 1: Whether it's personal and professional and mix, what feels like
Speaker 1: you're work in progress right now?
Speaker 3: I mean the easy answer for me is I'm working
Speaker 3: on my mental health. That's obvious. But in addition to
Speaker 3: doing it, for me, I have a ten year old son,
Speaker 3: and it's not just important that I be like a happy,
Speaker 3: healthy person for him, but there's like breaking cycles, yeah,
Speaker 3: and there's modeling for him that it's okay to not
Speaker 3: be okay in age appropriate ways. Right. My therapist asked
Speaker 3: me once like, are you do you talk about your
Speaker 3: anxiety with your kid? And I was like, of course,
Speaker 3: I don't. What she's like, don't shield him him from
Speaker 3: it completely. He will grow up thinking mom was perfect.
Speaker 3: Mom never struggled, and so if I'm struggling, there's something
Speaker 3: wrong with me. So working on my mental health so
Speaker 3: that he sees a person that had challenges, confronted them,
Speaker 3: got help, worked through them, talked openly about them is
Speaker 3: a gift I'm giving to him as well.
Speaker 2: So that's the work in progress, and that'll.
Speaker 3: Always be in progress because he's always going to be
Speaker 3: growing up and changing and going through stuff that I
Speaker 3: of course want to help him with. But modeling this
Speaker 3: challenge in particular is the work in progress of my
Speaker 3: life in so many ways.
Speaker 2: But that's the most important part of it for me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I think that's beautiful. I think it's so important,
Speaker 1: especially for our kind of peer group because we're so
Speaker 1: lucky we have more resources in terms of mental health
Speaker 1: and these conversations being out in the open than our
Speaker 1: parents did. For sure, yep, but we weren't raised by
Speaker 1: parents who had all these resources. Right, So, if we
Speaker 1: don't figure out a way not just to follow the
Speaker 1: threads of the resources to know better, if we don't
Speaker 1: model better, we're really modeling the shit that we saw,
Speaker 1: model that hurt us.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: So you have to learn and model to break the curse.
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
Speaker 1: What a cool thing you get to do.
Speaker 3: It's a proactive thing. M You can feel like, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna work on this thing, but I'm going to work
Speaker 3: on it quietly. It's for me. It's isolated, it's alone.
Speaker 3: I'm working on it for me. But if you're not
Speaker 3: proactively modeling it for.
Speaker 2: Your kids or.
Speaker 3: People around you to learn from, you are protecting that cycle.
Speaker 3: You are protecting and maintaining that cycle of silence and stigma.
Speaker 2: You're not doing it intentionally, but you are.
Speaker 3: And so to break that cycle of silence and stigma,
Speaker 3: you have to actively go out and almost evangelize, you know, like, yes,
Speaker 3: the normalization of these kinds of conversations, the normalization of asking,
Speaker 3: are you okay, how you doing? Talking about your mental health,
Speaker 3: asking for help normalize so it's you don't even notice it.
Speaker 3: That's where I want to get, or you don't even
Speaker 3: notice that it's happening.
Speaker 1: Yes, it becomes as common as talking about the weather.
Speaker 2: Correct, exactly right. We'll get there one day.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for today. This has been so much fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I feel the same. Such a lovely conversation.
Speaker 3: You're such a lovely person and vessel for this kind
Speaker 3: of conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thank you have an amazing rest of your day.
Speaker 1: I will see you soon too,