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Speaker 1: Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello

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Speaker 1: Ipsmarti's welcome back for another conversation. Today's guest is the

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Speaker 1: incredible journalist Matt Gutman. He is ABC News's chief national correspondent.

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Speaker 1: Contributes regularly to World News, Tonight with David Muir, twenty twenty,

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Speaker 1: Good Morning America, Nightline, and more. Matt has reported from

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Speaker 1: fifty countries around the world. He lives in Los Angeles

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Speaker 1: with his wife and two children. Matt is joining us

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Speaker 1: from Tel Aviv, Israel, where he is reporting on the

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Speaker 1: Israel Palestine conflict, and he's here to talk about his

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Speaker 1: incredible new book, No Time to Panic. It is an

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Speaker 1: unflinching look panic attacks from a reporter whose career was

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Speaker 1: nearly derailed by them. Matt offers readers a guide to

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Speaker 1: making a truce with their warring minds. The New York

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Speaker 1: Times called his book brave, reassuring and practical, A bomb

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Speaker 1: for anyone who has ever suffered panic attacks and who

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Speaker 1: longs to be released from their grip. I mean, gosh,

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Speaker 1: I have so many questions that I want to ask you,

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Speaker 1: obviously about your work and the current crisis that you

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Speaker 1: have a you know, a front row seat to you're reporting,

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Speaker 1: so all of us can understand what's happening. But before we,

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Speaker 1: you know, focus on the war and also on your

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Speaker 1: book and all of the things happening simultaneously in this moment,

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Speaker 1: I like to kind of go back with people, because,

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Speaker 1: especially someone like you, who folks see on the news

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Speaker 1: and they feel familiar with, I'm sure they feel like

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Speaker 1: they know your story. I'm always really curious about how

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Speaker 1: how the people we know came to be the versions

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Speaker 1: of them we know. So if we were round to

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Speaker 1: you know, when you were say eight or nine years old,

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Speaker 1: were you the same inquisitive, curious man in you know,

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Speaker 1: the same inquisitive curious child that you grew into as

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Speaker 1: the man we know, or did you have a sort

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Speaker 1: of more nonlinear path to becoming a journalist as a

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Speaker 1: grown up. Paint us a picture and from this vantage

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Speaker 1: point and tell us if you see any sort of

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Speaker 1: real connection to where you are today in hindsight.

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Speaker 2: Totally a little chubby with a huge appetite and hyperactive

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Speaker 2: at the same time, and unbelievably curious, just sticking my

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Speaker 2: nose and everything, talking to everybody all the time, asking

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Speaker 2: my grandparents' friends, questions about what it was like to

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Speaker 2: be in World War Two, about the depression being presented

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Speaker 2: at parties, and just sort of mingling with people fifty

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Speaker 2: years old or sixty years older than I was and

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Speaker 2: loving it, constantly asking everybody questions to the great annoyance

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Speaker 2: of I can my older sister and you know, some

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Speaker 2: other people, but also just like massively inquisitive and hyper sensitive,

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Speaker 2: you know, just my mom used to call me mister

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Speaker 2: Mushart because you know, I, you know, it was a

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Speaker 2: sensitive little boy. And I'm still you know, that inner

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Speaker 2: child still lives within me, and I'm sure within you, right,

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Speaker 2: they never go away. That little child in us has

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Speaker 2: to be nurtured and cared for because they're ever present

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Speaker 2: in us. And maybe that's one of the beauties of it.

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Speaker 2: But you know, I try to take care of that

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Speaker 2: little guy as much as I can.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm having such a surreal experience because I truly,

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Speaker 1: and I don't mean this hyperbolically, I truly feel like

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Speaker 1: you just described me as a kid to a t.

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Speaker 1: And I wonder if I wonder if those of us

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Speaker 1: who you know, do versions of this sort of public facing,

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Speaker 1: you know, performing love of news hosting. I wonder if

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Speaker 1: we all would have been friends as kids like this,

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Speaker 1: sensitive little hyperactive, constant talkers. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Do

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Speaker 1: you think that that sort of desire to understand the

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Speaker 1: world around you and the constant question asking led you

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Speaker 1: into studying journalism? Did you study journalism or did you

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Speaker 1: come to it roundabout?

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Speaker 2: I've never taken a signal journalism CLASSIFI. Wow, you know.

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Speaker 2: I went to Williams, which is in the frigid northeast

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Speaker 2: corner of Massachusetts College, and everybody was going off to

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Speaker 2: be an investment banker or a lawyer or something else.

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Speaker 2: And I had no idea what I wanted to do.

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Speaker 2: So I took the Elsatz and then in between the

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Speaker 2: Elsats and the next year of school, I just sort

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Speaker 2: of had some time to kill. So had a girlfriend

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Speaker 2: from Argentina whose family was from Argentina, and she suggested

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Speaker 2: that I travel there, and I did, and I met

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Speaker 2: her family members and they were really kind to me.

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Speaker 2: And I also met a woman that I fell in

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Speaker 2: love with really quickly, and I decided to stay and

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Speaker 2: I fell in love, and I started working for the

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Speaker 2: Buenos Aires Harold, which is a now defunct newspaper that

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Speaker 2: was the English language newspaper in Buenos Aires, and I

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Speaker 2: just fell in love with the city. I fell in

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Speaker 2: love with the place, and I fell in love with journalism.

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Speaker 2: And I was making forty an article. It was not,

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Speaker 2: but it was just like the world opened up. And

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Speaker 2: then I started freelancing through South America and Africa over

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Speaker 2: the next ten months. I actually wound up here in

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Speaker 2: Israel during the peak of what was then the Second

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Speaker 2: in Devada, the Second Palestinian Uprising in two thousand and one,

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Speaker 2: and I decided by then I want to be a

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Speaker 2: writer or a newspaper reporter, and I wanted to be

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Speaker 2: a conflict reporter. And this place was blowing up, and

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Speaker 2: I landed here with two suitcases. And then I stayed

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Speaker 2: for seven years and ended up reporting from the Middle

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Speaker 2: East and you know, Rocket, Afghanistan and Syria and Lebanon obviously,

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Speaker 2: the West Bank and Gaza for the next seven years,

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Speaker 2: and being involved in or seeing and being a witness

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Speaker 2: to every major conflict in the Middle East for those years.

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Speaker 2: So I guess that's in some ways full circle to

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Speaker 2: your question. And here I am back again covering it

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Speaker 2: in a way that was just unimaginable even twenty years ago,

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Speaker 2: like nobody ever thought that we would be where we

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Speaker 2: are now twenty years ago.

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Speaker 1: Why is that? What do you mean by that? Because

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Speaker 1: you've got all the expertise, You've lived there for so long,

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Speaker 1: as you said, you know, you spent just under a decade.

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Speaker 1: When you showed up with two suitcases, you stayed for

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Speaker 1: that long and reported you've you've had this kind of

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Speaker 1: front row seat. There is so much that you know

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Speaker 1: that most people don't. So how would you explain to

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Speaker 1: someone why this was unexpected or unpredictable.

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Speaker 2: I'm gonna be careful here because I but I think

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Speaker 2: the trauma, well, I think that there is historical trauma

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Speaker 2: because of Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza

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Speaker 2: among Palestinians, and now the trauma that Israel went through

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Speaker 2: on October seventh, and that supplies attack by Hamas in

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Speaker 2: which they rated thirty Some keep it seeing those are

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Speaker 2: communal living towns, villages and other communities along the border

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Speaker 2: by land, sea and air. It was so traumatic fourteen

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Speaker 2: hundred people were killed that this is imprinted upon generations

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Speaker 2: of Israelis, and what Israel is doing now in Gaza

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Speaker 2: in retaliation, and what it's going to do in terms

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Speaker 2: of a probable ground invasion by the time this airs,

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Speaker 2: it may have happened, is going to inflict much more

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Speaker 2: trauma on the Palestinian population. And I think this is

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Speaker 2: what Hamas wanted to happen, that generations of people are

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Speaker 2: going to be imprinted with this, and this conflict is

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Speaker 2: not going to go away. The grandchildren, the people who

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Speaker 2: are just kids now in Gaza are going to remember this.

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Speaker 2: They're going to talk about it to their children and grandchildren.

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Speaker 2: And the people I've known here for twenty years and

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Speaker 2: even longer talk about this now being one hundred years

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Speaker 2: of conflict. These are people who've been proponents of peace

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Speaker 2: just don't see a way out now for a very

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Speaker 2: long time. And so I come to this interview with

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Speaker 2: you and your hyper sensitivity, because you are so gentle

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Speaker 2: and sensitive and empathetic with a great deal of sadness,

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Speaker 2: because I love this place. I have family here, I

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Speaker 2: have very dear, close Palestintan friends who are at my wedding,

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Speaker 2: and it's just it's heartbreaking to see how bad it's

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Speaker 2: going to get and how long that's going to last.

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Speaker 2: And it just fills my heart with a lot of sorrow,

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Speaker 2: because there's gonna be a lot of misery here in

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Speaker 2: the coming years.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, not to create some sort of false equivalency, but

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Speaker 1: so much of what we see here at home in

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Speaker 1: our own political system, so much of the upheaval that

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Speaker 1: seems to have no point aside from chaos. You know,

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Speaker 1: something we heard during the last administration, when we saw

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Speaker 1: what we thought would be unspeakably pointless and cruel actions taken,

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Speaker 1: you know, by a White House, people kept saying, the

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Speaker 1: cruelty is the point. And I keep thinking about that,

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Speaker 1: reading about what's happening in the region where you are.

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Speaker 1: Because for a terrorist group to have this idea that

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Speaker 1: the cruelty is the point, a sort of centric to

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Speaker 1: their mission, the ripple effect of that unspeakable cruelty, and

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Speaker 1: then the cruelty in the way people are retaliating it,

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Speaker 1: it just feels like it's piling on suffering. And I

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Speaker 1: cannot understand the point. And I wish I could remember

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Speaker 1: his name. Over ten years ago, I got to say

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Speaker 1: it down. It was long before I had a podcast.

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Speaker 1: I wish it was a recorded conversation better. I got

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Speaker 1: to sit down with a gentleman who was the first

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Speaker 1: Palestinian president or executive whatever the right title is of

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Speaker 1: the Israeli YMCA, and the YMCA is a traditionally Christian

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Speaker 1: organization in Jerusalem. Famous, Yeah, And he was explaining to

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Speaker 1: me what it is to sit at the intersection of

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Speaker 1: these three communities that he calls his own and to

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Speaker 1: work across them in the same way that people come

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Speaker 1: to tour the holy sites in Jerusalem, where you know,

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Speaker 1: you see the whaling wall in the dome of the

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Speaker 1: Rock and the sepulcher and everything is tied. And he said,

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Speaker 1: people want to talk about the conflicts in the forties

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Speaker 1: and the sixties, but what people forget is that our

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Speaker 1: people there has been nomadic moving conflict Jews, Arabs, Christians

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Speaker 1: in this region for thousands and thousands of years. And

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Speaker 1: he said, if we really get honest, everyone has harmed

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Speaker 1: each other. How are we going to be able to

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Speaker 1: live here together if we keep saying but the last

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Speaker 1: person who did the worst thing was well, we did this,

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Speaker 1: but you then you did this. And he really he

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Speaker 1: just sat so patiently and humanized not fifty years or

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Speaker 1: one hundred years of conflict for me, but thousands of years,

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Speaker 1: and it's hard. As you said, you want to be

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Speaker 1: very careful and very sensitive, because it seems now that

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Speaker 1: if you ask a question or try to learn, or

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Speaker 1: or simply say, well, I read this and what does

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Speaker 1: it mean, everybody screams and tells you you're doing the

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Speaker 1: wrong thing. And now, because of the Internet, the screaming

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Speaker 1: you generally comes with death threats, which then makes it

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Speaker 1: hard to continue speaking at all. And this is just me,

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Speaker 1: like a curious person who works in a public job,

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Speaker 1: who has a podcast because I wanted an excuse essentially

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Speaker 1: to be a reporter, And you're an actual reporter who

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Speaker 1: lives there, and you have to figure out how to

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Speaker 1: hold today's reality and all these tens hundreds thousands of

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Speaker 1: years of history. How how are you doing it? How

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Speaker 1: do you approach it? How are you taking care of

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Speaker 1: yourself as a human inside of the responsibility of reporting

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Speaker 1: on this conflict and on the atrocities that we're watching unfold.

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Speaker 1: You know, yes, since October seventh, and you know, to

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Speaker 1: your point, with the occupation and the complexity in the

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Speaker 1: region before, how do you do this as a person?

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Speaker 2: So a really nice little vignette about your friend who

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Speaker 2: was the president of the YMCA. The YMCA in Jerusalem

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Speaker 2: has one of the very few multi lingual schools in Israel,

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Speaker 2: and so they have Palestinians, they have Christians, they have Jews,

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Speaker 2: and they do school in Arabic, English and Hebrew, and

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Speaker 2: it's just like a perfect little oasis and they you know,

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Speaker 2: I've known so many parents who've said their kids there

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Speaker 2: when I was living here, was too young to be

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Speaker 2: a parent, or I had just had my daughter. I

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Speaker 2: was born here before back to the US, so she

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Speaker 2: wasn't old enough to go there, but she probably would

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Speaker 2: have gone there. And it's like that one spot has

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Speaker 2: been such a beacon and a concentration of people who

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Speaker 2: are like minded and loving and tolerant that I've always

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Speaker 2: loved the YMCA and that school and what it stands for.

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Speaker 2: But yeah, I'm I'll be totally honest. I'm struggling, and

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Speaker 2: I had an interaction today which I learned something about

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Speaker 2: some of the atrocities that happened to Israeli women during

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Speaker 2: October seventh. The only way I've been able to deal

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Speaker 2: with this is to do something that is really not

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Speaker 2: so healthy in the long term. I'm completely open about this,

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Speaker 2: but I have my armor up, and I'm able to

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Speaker 2: absorb and be empathetic with the things that I see

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Speaker 2: and the things that I'm told, the images that we

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Speaker 2: put on our story the other night of these two

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Speaker 2: Palestinian toddlers who were scooped up by a photographer. He

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Speaker 2: was just handed these kids after a blast, and he's

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Speaker 2: driving bumping them around on a road to the hospital,

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Speaker 2: and you know, these kids are in such shock, even

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Speaker 2: though their heads are badly wounded, that they're not making

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Speaker 2: a sound. And if anybody has babies out there or toddlers,

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Speaker 2: they know that they're If they have a little ouch,

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Speaker 2: they're hysterical. If they have a mouse massive ouch, they're silent.

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Speaker 2: And just watching them bounce along in the car was devastating.

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Speaker 2: And just hearing the testimony from what Israeli women went

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Speaker 2: through on October seventh has been very hard for me

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Speaker 2: as a father of a fifteen year old. And so

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Speaker 2: I've like added to my armor. I've forged more and

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Speaker 2: more steel to protect my psyche and my heart and

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Speaker 2: my soul. And I'm finding right now at this point

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Speaker 2: that it's not quite thick enough, and I'm struggling with

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Speaker 2: it because we are at the end human and we've

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Speaker 2: been doing this for more than two weeks now, but

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Speaker 2: that's the way I do it. You know, Normally, in

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Speaker 2: my normal life, I'm vulnerable, and that's my greatest asset,

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Speaker 2: you know, being able to come out and talk about

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Speaker 2: having panic attacks and exposing my vulnerabilities and being okay

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Speaker 2: with it. And right now, in order to deal with

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Speaker 2: this conflict and to report on it responsibly and without bias,

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Speaker 2: I've had to really fortify myself in a way that

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Speaker 2: I know is ultimately not healthy.

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Speaker 1: And now a word from our sponsors who make this

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Speaker 1: show possible. I think about this a lot because your job,

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Speaker 1: you know, my day job, the the women in my

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Speaker 1: well men and women in my community who you know,

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Speaker 1: do what I do for a living, and men and

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Speaker 1: women in my community that are athletes all have And

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Speaker 1: I don't know if it's like a like a post

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Speaker 1: COVID reckoning, you know, the way the pandemic shifted us

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Speaker 1: and taught us about our our sort of programming, or

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Speaker 1: you know, if it's this everyone's calling it like back

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Speaker 1: in the twenties was the Great Depression, and everyone's calling

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Speaker 1: this summer, you know, the summer of the Great divorce,

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Speaker 1: like everything sort of shifting, and I've counted myself as

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Speaker 1: very lucky is having this community of women who've all

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Speaker 1: been going through this at the same time, who you know,

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Speaker 1: back in February, like the group text with three started

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Speaker 1: and by the summer there were like a bunch of

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Speaker 1: people in this text chain, and I was like, I

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Speaker 1: don't know if I think this is amazing or tragic,

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Speaker 1: or maybe it's both. But one of the things I've

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Speaker 1: learned from having so many people in that community who

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Speaker 1: do versions of what we do, which is you show

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Speaker 1: up and you do your job, no matter what's happening

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Speaker 1: around you. You know, I watched the clip of you,

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Speaker 1: you know, in southern Israel when you were on the view,

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Speaker 1: and like literally there's military cars rolling in and gunshots

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Speaker 1: going and they're like, you got to get in the car, Matt,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, the holy shit, this is crazy.

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Speaker 1: But you know, you're reporting, you're walking to the car

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Speaker 1: and you're telling everybody what's happening, and you know, it

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Speaker 1: doesn't matter what's going on in your life. You have

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Speaker 1: to show up your job, you have to play, you

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Speaker 1: have to perform, you have to be excellent, And it

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Speaker 1: really does teach you to leave your body to bifurcate

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Speaker 1: or on some level to disassociate and perform. And I

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Speaker 1: don't think it's an accident that we're in a moment

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Speaker 1: where so many people across so many industries and in

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Speaker 1: their professional and personal lives are going WHOA. This sort

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Speaker 1: of disassociation, this splitting in half, is something I've been

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Speaker 1: doing for so long, and I don't know if I

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Speaker 1: can do it anymore. And yet the news has to

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Speaker 1: be reported, and yet you've got to be able to

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Speaker 1: show up for your kids. And yet when I go

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Speaker 1: to work, I've got two hundred people on a set

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Speaker 1: relying on me to do my job, even if last

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Speaker 1: night my grandparents passed away. So and that's true for

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Speaker 1: everybody in any job. Really, when you think about it,

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Speaker 1: and I wonder, because you have been open about mental health,

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Speaker 1: and you have talked about what it's like to be

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Speaker 1: a lifelong sufferer of panic attacks, and you're still reporting

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Speaker 1: from war zones, which to me feels like a recipe

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Speaker 1: for a panic attack. If you ever were like, what

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Speaker 1: could make a person panic? I don't know, maybe being

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Speaker 1: shot at in a war zone that would probably do

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Speaker 1: it for me.

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Speaker 2: So you know. I have a phrase for that. It's

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Speaker 2: called the paradox of the courageous coward, right, because ask

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Speaker 2: that exact question, Wow, Like, you don't freak out when

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Speaker 2: you're in the middle of a war zone there are

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Speaker 2: rockets falling. By the way, there were like three infiltrators

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Speaker 2: right in that area when they broke up my hit

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Speaker 2: on the view and you're watching it. It's because there

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Speaker 2: were gunfights, literally machine gun fights with small arms and

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Speaker 2: machine guns one hundred and fifty yards away. That's why

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Speaker 2: we've been hearing that all afternoon. How can you handle that?

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Speaker 2: And yet when everything is quiet and calm, you have

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Speaker 2: a panic attack like or you can. And I think

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Speaker 2: it's because humans have a This is actually the gift, right.

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Speaker 2: We wouldn't have been able to survive if we didn't

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Speaker 2: have this capacity to disassociate, to block out what is

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Speaker 2: extraneous in moments of crisis, which is an asset. So

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Speaker 2: the question I ultimately asked myself is why am I

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Speaker 2: always seeking that chaos? Because in the chaos I can

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Speaker 2: be calm things, I can focus on just one thing.

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Speaker 2: I'm talking to Whoopee right now, I'm telling her what

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Speaker 2: I know. I know this stuff cold and right now,

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Speaker 2: I am absolutely calm and in control. But it's in

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Speaker 2: the moments of quiet, when you're alone or when there's

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Speaker 2: no threat, that the panic starts to bubble up. And

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Speaker 2: that can be on a broadcast as well. So if

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Speaker 2: I'm doing a broadcast and I have a live shot

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Speaker 2: and it's all calm around me, there is very little

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Speaker 2: reason to not mess it up or to mess it

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Speaker 2: up right. There is an expectation of perfection, of flawlessness,

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Speaker 2: and it's that fear of social judgment that gets to me.

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Speaker 2: That's when I crumble. Because if you're in the field

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Speaker 2: and there are you know, Hamas militants a couple of

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Speaker 2: hundred yards away opening fire in a gunfight with Israeli

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Speaker 2: soldiers and guys interrupting your live broadcast telling you to

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Speaker 2: get out of there, then you're seeing soldiers running around.

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Speaker 2: There can be zero expectation that you'll be flawless, which

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Speaker 2: calms down right. So like in my head, I'm like, oh,

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Speaker 2: I got this, Like I'm just going to be me

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Speaker 2: and Matt can handle that. It's when there's a full

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Speaker 2: expectation of perfection that I really struggle. And this is

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Speaker 2: actually natural right, because one of our greatest fears, we've

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Speaker 2: had two buckets. For tens of thousands of generations human had.

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Speaker 2: Humans had two major buckets of fear. The first is

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Speaker 2: that fear that we're going to be eaten by a

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Speaker 2: lion on the savannah, then a rock fall is going

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Speaker 2: to kill our progeny, that the a holes over in

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Speaker 2: Cave seven are going to come over and club us

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Speaker 2: in the head. Right, that's the physical fear. The social

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Speaker 2: fear became the other major primary fear, and that's that

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Speaker 2: we run a foul of our group, we cross some taboo,

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Speaker 2: we offend somebody in our cave group, are tribe in

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Speaker 2: the woods in the jungle, and then they excommunicate us,

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Speaker 2: they kick us out, in which case we're walking around

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Speaker 2: on the savannah alone and the lines are going to

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Speaker 2: come eat us anyway. So we learn to associate that

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Speaker 2: social fear as being life and death, which is why

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Speaker 2: people have panic attacks like me, and which is why

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Speaker 2: I fear the judgment of my peers, who I respect

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Speaker 2: greatly and whose respect I want. It's them that I'm

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Speaker 2: thinking when I go live, that my my cave group,

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Speaker 2: if you will, right, my social group, and so like

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Speaker 2: that's what's going on in my head. And so we're

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Speaker 2: so good at compartmentalizing ourselves. And I mean that's part

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Speaker 2: of what I explained in the book about why we

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Speaker 2: do it and how it happens.

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Speaker 1: Wow. So was it an interesting thing to essentially have

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Speaker 1: to go and report on yourself, like when you decided

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Speaker 1: to write your book and talk to the world about,

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Speaker 1: you know, panic disorder, and for our friends at home,

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Speaker 1: Matt's book No Time to Panic is I mean it's

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Speaker 1: such a beautifully honest and full journey into what this

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Speaker 1: looks like, what this feels like, how it presents your

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Speaker 1: history with the experience. Do you think because the way

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Speaker 1: you speak about it right now, you know human evolution

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Speaker 1: and how our brains work, and you, like me, really

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Speaker 1: want to understand the data so you can make sense

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Speaker 1: I imagine of the big emotion or the big indescribable feeling.

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Speaker 1: And do you think that going into this and reporting

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Speaker 1: on it in a way made it something you could

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Speaker 1: understand more deeply?

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Speaker 2: I mean, I think that's exactly right. So I didn't

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Speaker 2: have a choice. I am. In January of twenty twenty,

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Speaker 2: I was reporting on the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash, and

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Speaker 2: I was first out the door, pretty much first Enroot

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Speaker 2: when we had our live broadcast on it. It was

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Speaker 2: a special live broadcast. And you know, my dad was

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Speaker 2: killed in a plane crash when I was twelve, and

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Speaker 2: he was the same age as Kobe, and I was

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Speaker 2: the same age as Gianna. And so you know, I've

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Speaker 2: had hundreds of panic attacks on live television before, and

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Speaker 2: most of the time I get through it right. Like

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Speaker 2: I describe it as a leaf blower, so like I

404
00:26:07,680 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 2: have this pile of words that I've compiled, things that

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Speaker 2: I know I'm going to say or want to say.

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Speaker 2: And then when the panic attack happens, And you know,

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Speaker 2: a panic is this like ultimate expression of anxiety. And

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Speaker 2: it hits you like a sledgehammer right. Your heart starts

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Speaker 2: to just like punch out of your chest. You can't breathe,

410
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Speaker 2: you can't catch your breath, You forget how to swallow

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Speaker 2: your sweat, You tremble, You have feelings of derealization, brain fog.

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Speaker 2: Some people feel like they're going to die, some people

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Speaker 2: throw up. I don't have the throwing up or the die,

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Speaker 2: but I feel a loss of control. And so I'm

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Speaker 2: doing this report, and I basically felt like I lost

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Speaker 2: control and all this stuff is going on in my head,

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Speaker 2: including the subtext of my own personal experience with my father,

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Speaker 2: and I just like I couldn't separate between some that

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Speaker 2: I'd heard that was reportable and something that I heard

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Speaker 2: was not reportable, and I couldn't remember, couldn't process everything

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Speaker 2: at once. My brain just couldn't navigate all those lanes

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Speaker 2: of traffic, and it made a catastrophic reporting error, and

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Speaker 2: that of difference to Kobe's family. I'm not going to

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Speaker 2: get into the exact error, but I was suspended for

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Speaker 2: a month, and you know, suspension kind of has a

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Speaker 2: way to open up your schedule. So I've been suffering

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Speaker 2: from panic all these years, and my wife and I

428
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Speaker 2: talked about it, and she was really supportive of me

429
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Speaker 2: leaving TV News because I was like, I just don't

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Speaker 2: know if I can do this anymore because I'm miserable.

431
00:27:39,440 --> 00:27:42,040
Speaker 2: I have all these weird coping mechanisms that I've tried

432
00:27:42,040 --> 00:27:45,879
Speaker 2: to use so I don't have panic attacks, like smoking

433
00:27:45,960 --> 00:27:48,399
Speaker 2: before going on air, which is really not so healthy,

434
00:27:50,680 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 2: magical underwear that gave me luck, weird stretches. Yeah, Like

435
00:27:55,640 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 2: I had a couple of pairs, so it's not as

436
00:27:57,280 --> 00:27:59,879
Speaker 2: gross as it sounds, but it is definitely probably the

437
00:28:00,240 --> 00:28:02,080
Speaker 2: one of the few people had magical underwear and live

438
00:28:02,119 --> 00:28:08,119
Speaker 2: television weird stretching showing up late. I had tried like

439
00:28:08,720 --> 00:28:15,600
Speaker 2: all of the pharmaceuticals by then, you know, benzos and SSRIs, propranolol,

440
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:19,800
Speaker 2: and nothing really worked. And so we decided together that

441
00:28:20,560 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 2: I had to like face this, And I didn't know

442
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:25,320
Speaker 2: I was writing a book at first. I was just

443
00:28:25,320 --> 00:28:28,320
Speaker 2: trying to fix me because I was broken, Sophia, Like

444
00:28:28,560 --> 00:28:33,000
Speaker 2: I felt broken, like something was wrong with me that

445
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:35,640
Speaker 2: shouldn't be wrong with me, and I needed to fix it,

446
00:28:35,680 --> 00:28:38,560
Speaker 2: and I didn't know how, and so the only thing

447
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:41,240
Speaker 2: I know how to do is to report. And so

448
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:44,959
Speaker 2: I sort of just as you said, like you know,

449
00:28:45,000 --> 00:28:47,840
Speaker 2: you do what you know, and so, like I first

450
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,800
Speaker 2: started geeking out on what a panic attack is, the

451
00:28:50,880 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 2: chemical cascade that occurs when you're having one, then I

452
00:28:54,320 --> 00:28:59,520
Speaker 2: went into this whole side world of evolutionary psychology because

453
00:28:59,520 --> 00:29:02,600
Speaker 2: then I wanted to know, Okay, if I'm broken, why

454
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:06,360
Speaker 2: am I broken? And why do humans even have panic attacks?

455
00:29:06,360 --> 00:29:08,840
Speaker 2: If we know that anxiety and panic is so bad

456
00:29:08,880 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 2: for your health. How is it persisted in a human genome?

457
00:29:12,640 --> 00:29:15,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, how haven't we evolved out of it?

458
00:29:15,800 --> 00:29:18,800
Speaker 2: Exactly? Like we don't have tails anymore, we don't have

459
00:29:19,120 --> 00:29:22,240
Speaker 2: hair all over our face and bodies. We've evolved out

460
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:24,800
Speaker 2: of all sorts of traits, and why not that it

461
00:29:24,880 --> 00:29:31,560
Speaker 2: turns out that it's actually evolutionary beneficial, Like it's a

462
00:29:31,600 --> 00:29:35,600
Speaker 2: secret weapon in some ways. Your body is willing to

463
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:38,680
Speaker 2: sound the alarm, a false alarm, which is a panic

464
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:42,080
Speaker 2: attack a thousand times, so long as you don't miss

465
00:29:42,160 --> 00:29:45,760
Speaker 2: a real alarm alarm or real threat, because if you

466
00:29:45,800 --> 00:29:49,520
Speaker 2: have a panic attack, your body's like you're burning fifty calories.

467
00:29:49,520 --> 00:29:52,040
Speaker 2: Don't worry about it, don't sweat it. If you miss

468
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:54,239
Speaker 2: a real threat coming in, if it's a crash on

469
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:57,080
Speaker 2: the one oh one and you don't hit the brakes,

470
00:29:58,240 --> 00:30:00,920
Speaker 2: or a social threat that you don't up the cues too,

471
00:30:01,440 --> 00:30:03,760
Speaker 2: you could potentially be dead, which is a lot worse

472
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:06,600
Speaker 2: than fifty calories burned. And so like our brains think

473
00:30:06,600 --> 00:30:09,960
Speaker 2: that that's like, hey, that's a bonus. So yeah, I'm

474
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:11,800
Speaker 2: going to your brain's thinking I'm going to pull the

475
00:30:11,840 --> 00:30:14,520
Speaker 2: fire alarm all the time that I want. It has

476
00:30:14,560 --> 00:30:18,200
Speaker 2: actually worked for humans, I suppose to our dismay for

477
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,000
Speaker 2: many thousands of generations and so like that's how I

478
00:30:21,040 --> 00:30:23,160
Speaker 2: started getting into all of this. And at first it

479
00:30:23,240 --> 00:30:27,040
Speaker 2: was just about fixing me. And then I started to

480
00:30:27,160 --> 00:30:31,480
Speaker 2: realize how many other people experience panic In the US,

481
00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:34,800
Speaker 2: anywhere from like twenty six to fifty percent of the

482
00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:38,160
Speaker 2: population will experience it in a lifetime. Forty percent of

483
00:30:38,200 --> 00:30:40,960
Speaker 2: all patients who show up at the er with chest

484
00:30:40,960 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 2: pains thinking they're dying of a heart attack or actually

485
00:30:43,680 --> 00:30:46,600
Speaker 2: having a panic attack. And so I realized this, and

486
00:30:46,640 --> 00:30:49,560
Speaker 2: about a year and a half into this journey, it's like, oh,

487
00:30:50,160 --> 00:30:52,719
Speaker 2: people need help. It's not just me, and I started

488
00:30:52,760 --> 00:30:55,920
Speaker 2: sharing and talking about it, and that's when I learned

489
00:30:55,920 --> 00:30:58,480
Speaker 2: that this is good medicine and we all need to

490
00:30:58,520 --> 00:31:01,560
Speaker 2: talk about it. Maybe I need to share this more

491
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:03,200
Speaker 2: broadly than with just myself.

492
00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:15,400
Speaker 1: Yes, and now a word from our sponsors. Was it

493
00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:21,080
Speaker 1: scary to open up really publicly for the first time

494
00:31:21,160 --> 00:31:25,840
Speaker 1: because you are you know, you present, and you're the

495
00:31:25,840 --> 00:31:29,880
Speaker 1: consummate professional, You have a phenomenal vocabulary, you always know

496
00:31:29,920 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: what to say, and then you had to say this,

497
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,400
Speaker 1: How did you how did you get the words out?

498
00:31:37,680 --> 00:31:40,080
Speaker 1: Publicly for the first time, So.

499
00:31:40,120 --> 00:31:43,200
Speaker 2: There are two first times. Actually, the first first time

500
00:31:43,240 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 2: I actually told like it was the deepest, darkest secret

501
00:31:46,160 --> 00:31:49,240
Speaker 2: that I had so feel like. I didn't tell anybody.

502
00:31:49,320 --> 00:31:52,720
Speaker 2: My wife knew, my shrink knew, and that was it.

503
00:31:52,800 --> 00:31:56,400
Speaker 2: And eventually I told my agent, the other confessor in

504
00:31:56,440 --> 00:32:02,640
Speaker 2: our lives. And I couldn't tell anyone because I thought

505
00:32:02,640 --> 00:32:05,240
Speaker 2: that people would judge me. I couldn't tell anyone because

506
00:32:05,280 --> 00:32:10,560
Speaker 2: I thought, like, you know, being a TV reporter live

507
00:32:10,640 --> 00:32:13,000
Speaker 2: on air who's afraid of going live on air, who

508
00:32:13,040 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 2: has panics on air is like a free solo climber

509
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:20,840
Speaker 2: who's afraid of heights, Like this is a major professional liability.

510
00:32:20,880 --> 00:32:23,800
Speaker 2: And I was sure that I'd be fired, I'd be pilloried,

511
00:32:23,840 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 2: I'd be humiliated if I let anybody know, And so

512
00:32:27,560 --> 00:32:30,240
Speaker 2: I kept it a secret for many, many years. Even

513
00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:32,640
Speaker 2: after I decided to start this journey and to try

514
00:32:32,680 --> 00:32:36,480
Speaker 2: to figure it out, I still didn't tell anyone. And

515
00:32:36,640 --> 00:32:40,880
Speaker 2: I had my last full on, sweating through my underwear

516
00:32:41,400 --> 00:32:45,240
Speaker 2: panic attack in December of twenty twenty, and I was

517
00:32:45,280 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 2: so ashamed, and I carried around so much shame for

518
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:53,640
Speaker 2: so many years for feeling broken that I was broken,

519
00:32:53,680 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 2: and I went on this out. We were in Phoenix

520
00:32:55,480 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 2: doing a story about the first Pfizer vaccines that had

521
00:32:58,960 --> 00:33:01,920
Speaker 2: come out. I knew the story cold, and I still

522
00:33:01,960 --> 00:33:03,360
Speaker 2: kind of messed it up on air. And I was

523
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:06,160
Speaker 2: just so mad at myself and so frustrated. And I

524
00:33:06,200 --> 00:33:10,280
Speaker 2: got onto the Southwest flight and I sat next next

525
00:33:10,280 --> 00:33:12,920
Speaker 2: to this lady who was crocheting. She'll say, it's knitting.

526
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:18,120
Speaker 2: We beg you know, and I just like I just

527
00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:20,520
Speaker 2: started talking to her, you know, just like the normal

528
00:33:20,600 --> 00:33:24,440
Speaker 2: chit chat that people make, and for some reason, I

529
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,240
Speaker 2: just spilled my guts, like I spilled the beans about panic,

530
00:33:27,240 --> 00:33:31,160
Speaker 2: about everything. And she reciprocated she had experienced panic before,

531
00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:34,280
Speaker 2: because so many of us have. And her daughter has

532
00:33:34,520 --> 00:33:37,560
Speaker 2: is a metaphobic. She's actually in the book cat Armado.

533
00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 2: Her daughter's a metaphobic, which means she's got a fear

534
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,000
Speaker 2: of choking or vomiting, or seeing anybody choking or vomiting,

535
00:33:44,560 --> 00:33:47,280
Speaker 2: which in turn means that anytime she sees someone having

536
00:33:47,560 --> 00:33:50,040
Speaker 2: like even a coughing fit, she will have a panic

537
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:53,920
Speaker 2: attack because her body goes into the stress response. Wow,

538
00:33:54,240 --> 00:33:56,280
Speaker 2: so this is part of that whole thing. And I

539
00:33:57,000 --> 00:33:59,680
Speaker 2: realized having talked to this woman for the entire hour

540
00:33:59,680 --> 00:34:01,480
Speaker 2: and ten minutes on the way from Phoenix to la

541
00:34:01,520 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh, I feel a lot better now, Like, oh,

542
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,440
Speaker 2: that's that's good medicine. That worked. And then I started

543
00:34:09,440 --> 00:34:12,680
Speaker 2: seeking out support groups for panic attacks, of which there

544
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:15,960
Speaker 2: are only like three nationwide. And again this is part

545
00:34:16,000 --> 00:34:19,919
Speaker 2: of my whole crusade to bring awareness to it because

546
00:34:19,920 --> 00:34:25,440
Speaker 2: people don't know, and you know, alcoholics explode. It's often

547
00:34:25,520 --> 00:34:28,400
Speaker 2: messy and sloppy and very visible and very public. You know,

548
00:34:29,080 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 2: whatever happens, we all, you know, we all have experience

549
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:36,120
Speaker 2: with people with substance abuse, and people with panic attacks

550
00:34:36,160 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: tend to implode. It all comes inside. We get small,

551
00:34:39,840 --> 00:34:42,480
Speaker 2: we get insular, we get a gooraphobic, we don't want

552
00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:46,719
Speaker 2: to talk. Everything gets internal. So it's these people often

553
00:34:46,760 --> 00:34:49,919
Speaker 2: can't find outlets and so like, this whole sharing thing

554
00:34:50,000 --> 00:34:53,960
Speaker 2: was huge, and that was this revelation. The second time

555
00:34:53,960 --> 00:34:56,760
Speaker 2: it went public was when I announced that the book

556
00:34:56,840 --> 00:34:59,680
Speaker 2: was going to come out, which is really sort of

557
00:34:59,719 --> 00:35:03,240
Speaker 2: coming public, and then everybody and their mother started asking

558
00:35:03,280 --> 00:35:06,320
Speaker 2: me about like, oh my god, man, you have panic attacks.

559
00:35:06,440 --> 00:35:09,320
Speaker 2: I didn't know, Like right before I'm going on air, producer.

560
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:11,520
Speaker 2: It's like, you can have a panic attack. Now, does

561
00:35:11,560 --> 00:35:14,719
Speaker 2: this happen all the time? Are you gonna be okay? Yeah,

562
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:16,000
Speaker 2: it's just stressing me out.

563
00:35:16,440 --> 00:35:18,520
Speaker 1: You're like, maybe this is not the moment we should

564
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:19,280
Speaker 1: talk about this.

565
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:22,239
Speaker 2: Like literally thirty seconds before air, Oh you're writing a

566
00:35:22,239 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 2: book about it. That's crazy, and so like that was

567
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 2: the second sort of coming out, and I hadn't anticipated

568
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:32,200
Speaker 2: the stress of that, and that was sort of over

569
00:35:32,239 --> 00:35:36,200
Speaker 2: the past six months, and I got massively anxious this summer,

570
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:41,640
Speaker 2: like really unhappy. But I've been because like everybody had

571
00:35:41,640 --> 00:35:45,040
Speaker 2: been talking about it, and I now felt this level

572
00:35:45,040 --> 00:35:47,439
Speaker 2: of expectation that I'll, well, Matt can never he wrote

573
00:35:47,440 --> 00:35:49,319
Speaker 2: a book about panic attacks, he can never have a

574
00:35:49,360 --> 00:35:55,520
Speaker 2: panic attack again, which basically like triggered my anxiety exactly.

575
00:35:57,280 --> 00:35:59,080
Speaker 2: But because I've been doing this for three and a

576
00:35:59,120 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 2: half years now, I was able to take control of it.

577
00:36:02,200 --> 00:36:06,080
Speaker 2: I don't like control. I was able to redirect. I

578
00:36:06,160 --> 00:36:10,160
Speaker 2: doubled down on mindfulness and meditation and you know, little practices.

579
00:36:10,200 --> 00:36:13,680
Speaker 2: I have a little practice. I don't do big meditations.

580
00:36:15,280 --> 00:36:19,239
Speaker 2: I cut caffeine significantly. I stopped drinking entirely, like I

581
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:21,600
Speaker 2: wasn't drinking a lot, but I was drinking socially and

582
00:36:21,600 --> 00:36:24,120
Speaker 2: I find that it makes me anxious. So I took

583
00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:26,919
Speaker 2: all the things out that I could control in order

584
00:36:26,960 --> 00:36:30,840
Speaker 2: to make me feel better, and it worked. And so

585
00:36:30,960 --> 00:36:32,800
Speaker 2: you know, it's the little things. We are all works

586
00:36:32,800 --> 00:36:38,520
Speaker 2: in progress, right, and wellness is maintenance, and it's unfortunate.

587
00:36:38,520 --> 00:36:41,360
Speaker 2: I wish that there was a magic bullet or a

588
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:44,680
Speaker 2: silver bullet, or it doesn't exist, I would have taken it.

589
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 2: So it's a constant maintenance that we all need to do,

590
00:36:48,680 --> 00:36:51,000
Speaker 2: and that you know, I've learned how to do, which

591
00:36:51,080 --> 00:36:54,080
Speaker 2: kind of helped me through that second sort of tougher phase.

592
00:36:55,120 --> 00:37:00,080
Speaker 1: That's really great, how because you mentioned something that I

593
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:03,839
Speaker 1: that I find really important, you know, for people to know,

594
00:37:03,880 --> 00:37:06,400
Speaker 1: and there's obviously so much science around it, but the

595
00:37:06,520 --> 00:37:11,360
Speaker 1: fact that oftentimes the symptoms of a panic attack feel

596
00:37:11,480 --> 00:37:15,680
Speaker 1: and or present like a heart attack. You know, when

597
00:37:15,680 --> 00:37:20,520
Speaker 1: you talk about that triggering episode reporting on that helicopter crash,

598
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:24,400
Speaker 1: on that very deep, you know, wound about your own

599
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:27,880
Speaker 1: father's loss that it brought up in you, you reminded

600
00:37:27,920 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: me of, you know, something I learned about my dad.

601
00:37:30,440 --> 00:37:32,239
Speaker 1: What an interesting thing, By the way, I know you

602
00:37:32,280 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: mentioned your daughter's fifteen to be in the stage I'm

603
00:37:35,560 --> 00:37:40,080
Speaker 1: in where you know, I'm an adult and my parents

604
00:37:40,120 --> 00:37:43,080
Speaker 1: are adults, and we relate to each other as you know,

605
00:37:43,200 --> 00:37:46,840
Speaker 1: parent and child, but also as friends. You know. I

606
00:37:47,640 --> 00:37:50,120
Speaker 1: knew my dad had lost his dad when he was young.

607
00:37:51,040 --> 00:37:56,200
Speaker 1: I didn't know a lot of details about it, and

608
00:37:56,239 --> 00:37:59,840
Speaker 1: that the year my dad turned sixty six, he was

609
00:37:59,880 --> 00:38:02,840
Speaker 1: just different and I couldn't figure out why, and my

610
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: mom couldn't figure out why. And right before his sixty

611
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:10,279
Speaker 1: seventh birthday, he got rushed to the hospital. We thought

612
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,319
Speaker 1: he was having a heart attack, he was having a

613
00:38:12,320 --> 00:38:18,359
Speaker 1: panic attack, and he finally shared with us. He was like, well,

614
00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:21,640
Speaker 1: my dad died when he was sixty six, and all

615
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:24,600
Speaker 1: year long, I've just been waiting to drop dead. And

616
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:27,480
Speaker 1: when my dad turned sixty seven, it like opened up

617
00:38:27,520 --> 00:38:31,960
Speaker 1: this whole thing in him, that this you know, release

618
00:38:32,000 --> 00:38:35,680
Speaker 1: of emotion and sadness, this unbelievable wave of relief. And

619
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:38,160
Speaker 1: my mom and I were like, why didn't you tell us?

620
00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:39,880
Speaker 2: But he couldn't.

621
00:38:40,200 --> 00:38:42,799
Speaker 1: He couldn't talk about it. It was such a deep

622
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,480
Speaker 1: seated trauma and fear that he didn't want to jinx it.

623
00:38:45,640 --> 00:38:47,880
Speaker 1: He didn't he just couldn't talk about it till he

624
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:54,320
Speaker 1: got past it. And to hear you talk about it

625
00:38:54,360 --> 00:38:58,160
Speaker 1: is so familiar to me, even though your story is unique.

626
00:38:59,120 --> 00:39:03,160
Speaker 1: And I I understand the depths of a trigger like

627
00:39:03,160 --> 00:39:06,319
Speaker 1: that because I watched it happen to my dad. I

628
00:39:06,320 --> 00:39:07,880
Speaker 1: mean he literally went to the hot We were like,

629
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:10,040
Speaker 1: Dad's having a heart attack. Oh, I got you know,

630
00:39:11,480 --> 00:39:16,439
Speaker 1: how as the expert are our resident expert here, how

631
00:39:16,480 --> 00:39:20,600
Speaker 1: can people differentiate if the symptoms are so closely linked?

632
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,760
Speaker 1: How do you know if you're having a panic attack

633
00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:25,520
Speaker 1: and not a heart attack? How do you know if

634
00:39:25,520 --> 00:39:26,880
Speaker 1: you need to go to the hospital or not?

635
00:39:26,960 --> 00:39:30,520
Speaker 2: Like, what do you do first? Well, I'm sorry about

636
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:34,200
Speaker 2: your dad's experience because it's terrifying. Right, just to go

637
00:39:34,239 --> 00:39:36,239
Speaker 2: to the hospital and go to the er is a

638
00:39:36,280 --> 00:39:39,759
Speaker 2: traumatic experience. It's especially when you think you're dying of

639
00:39:39,760 --> 00:39:43,040
Speaker 2: a heart attack. So, my god, I feel for the guy.

640
00:39:43,200 --> 00:39:44,600
Speaker 2: Tell him I got him.

641
00:39:44,840 --> 00:39:46,919
Speaker 1: Well, now he's in his mid seventies and like looks

642
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:49,360
Speaker 1: like Santa Claus and is having a great time. He's adorable.

643
00:39:49,880 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 1: But it was like it was definitely a weird It

644
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:52,520
Speaker 1: was a weird year.

645
00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 2: Have you ever had a panic attack? Oh? Yeah, do

646
00:39:58,040 --> 00:39:58,800
Speaker 2: you know what trigger is?

647
00:40:02,000 --> 00:40:13,080
Speaker 1: Yes, there are certain things. Definitely for me, it that

648
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:17,600
Speaker 1: I can tell when something's coming exactly because of your

649
00:40:17,600 --> 00:40:21,800
Speaker 1: earlier point, that feeling of implosion. For me, what starts

650
00:40:21,800 --> 00:40:24,880
Speaker 1: to happen is I feel like my rib cage is

651
00:40:24,920 --> 00:40:28,680
Speaker 1: in a vice and starting to crack inward, Like I

652
00:40:28,680 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: feel like my sternam is going to snap right right

653
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,759
Speaker 1: into my heart. And I'm like, oh boy, here we go.

654
00:40:33,840 --> 00:40:36,600
Speaker 1: And it's the it's the dry mouth, and it's the

655
00:40:37,120 --> 00:40:40,560
Speaker 1: clammy hands, and it's and it's the it's the inability

656
00:40:40,600 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: to listen. People will be talking and I'll realize I

657
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,600
Speaker 1: can't hear any other words they're saying, and it it's

658
00:40:47,680 --> 00:40:54,239
Speaker 1: all of those things. I think for me, because of

659
00:40:54,280 --> 00:41:00,440
Speaker 1: my job, it can really be triggered by you spoke

660
00:41:00,480 --> 00:41:05,799
Speaker 1: earlier about human evolution, right, like we were programmed to

661
00:41:05,840 --> 00:41:08,680
Speaker 1: be afraid of the lion coming at us out of

662
00:41:08,719 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 1: the grass somewhere. Well, when you live in a digital

663
00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,440
Speaker 1: age and have a job like we have where millions

664
00:41:16,440 --> 00:41:21,000
Speaker 1: of people are connected to you through a device, what

665
00:41:21,120 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: a privilege to be able to talk about activism and

666
00:41:24,200 --> 00:41:27,560
Speaker 1: cause raise awareness, have discussions like this one about mental

667
00:41:27,600 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 1: health but when it feels like millions of people are

668
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:34,040
Speaker 1: coming at you, it's like the feeling of there being

669
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:36,640
Speaker 1: millions of people in the grass, millions of lions in

670
00:41:36,680 --> 00:41:45,160
Speaker 1: the grass can really it triggers a terrifying feeling of

671
00:41:45,680 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 1: being alone in like a very grand scale for me.

672
00:41:49,960 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 2: You know, I read about that in the book as well,

673
00:41:52,200 --> 00:41:55,439
Speaker 2: because it's unnatural, right, we evolve to be a certain way,

674
00:41:55,920 --> 00:41:58,960
Speaker 2: and the human genome is, you know, kind of old.

675
00:42:00,000 --> 00:42:01,880
Speaker 2: We should take sense, it's not so old, but like

676
00:42:02,120 --> 00:42:04,120
Speaker 2: you know, it is old ish, right, we're talking a

677
00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:09,360
Speaker 2: couple hundred thousand years. Yeah, But the evolution of social

678
00:42:09,400 --> 00:42:12,279
Speaker 2: media and the way we connect now is like a

679
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:17,080
Speaker 2: split second in time, and so our genome, the way

680
00:42:17,120 --> 00:42:21,359
Speaker 2: we are, hasn't caught up with modern technology. So being

681
00:42:21,360 --> 00:42:25,160
Speaker 2: responsible for millions of people, or having them react to

682
00:42:25,200 --> 00:42:27,640
Speaker 2: you or relate to you in any way, it's just

683
00:42:27,719 --> 00:42:30,400
Speaker 2: too much for our brains to handle. It's just not natural.

684
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 1: Or or think that because you share anything, they know

685
00:42:36,280 --> 00:42:41,880
Speaker 1: everything about you. That's hard. My therapist said something really

686
00:42:41,920 --> 00:42:48,280
Speaker 1: interesting to me this morning. He said, our emotions evolved

687
00:42:48,360 --> 00:42:53,840
Speaker 1: with us phones, did not exactly. We have these deep

688
00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:57,840
Speaker 1: seated evolutionary patterns and how we feel and relate to people,

689
00:42:57,840 --> 00:43:00,440
Speaker 1: and then we have this crazy device. And thing I

690
00:43:00,520 --> 00:43:03,239
Speaker 1: learned about my you know, the nerdy stuff I like

691
00:43:03,320 --> 00:43:05,759
Speaker 1: to research that I learned about my day job, which

692
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:10,719
Speaker 1: I find fascinating, is that the first silent movie, or

693
00:43:10,760 --> 00:43:15,520
Speaker 1: one of the first silent movies, featured a shot, you know,

694
00:43:15,600 --> 00:43:18,320
Speaker 1: from low angle on a train track and a huge

695
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 1: steamer train coming at the camera. And when the train

696
00:43:22,600 --> 00:43:25,280
Speaker 1: was racing toward the camera, everyone in the theater started

697
00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:28,759
Speaker 1: screaming and got up and ran right because they'd never

698
00:43:28,800 --> 00:43:32,319
Speaker 1: seen moving images before. And so the brain said, you're

699
00:43:32,360 --> 00:43:34,400
Speaker 1: all about to get run over by a train, and

700
00:43:34,440 --> 00:43:38,080
Speaker 1: people ran out of the theater. We've had to learn

701
00:43:38,960 --> 00:43:44,000
Speaker 1: so much in the last hundred years that makes no

702
00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 1: sense to our brains. That took millennia to evolve into

703
00:43:49,960 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: these modern day humans.

704
00:43:52,680 --> 00:43:55,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there's there's this cognitive dissonance. So and it

705
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:59,440
Speaker 2: causes a lot of trouble for us. And I don't

706
00:43:59,440 --> 00:44:03,480
Speaker 2: blame people feeling like they know us and you're famous.

707
00:44:03,520 --> 00:44:08,000
Speaker 2: I'm not, but you know, because we put ourselves out

708
00:44:08,320 --> 00:44:10,480
Speaker 2: I do on social media, and I'm me I'm trying

709
00:44:10,520 --> 00:44:13,239
Speaker 2: to be super authentic, like and so they do know

710
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 2: a form of us. And I don't blame people. I

711
00:44:17,600 --> 00:44:21,920
Speaker 2: just it is overwhelming because you know, even a few

712
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:24,080
Speaker 2: hundred years ago, or one hundred and fifty years ago,

713
00:44:24,120 --> 00:44:27,440
Speaker 2: but certainly thousands of years ago, our networks were tiny.

714
00:44:27,760 --> 00:44:30,320
Speaker 2: It was just a few, maybe a couple dozen people

715
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:33,480
Speaker 2: in our cave group or tribe or whatever it was

716
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 2: that we were roaming the savannah, the jungle, the whatever

717
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:40,000
Speaker 2: in with. It was just you know, a few people.

718
00:44:40,120 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 2: Now it can be hundreds and hundreds of people, and

719
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:46,320
Speaker 2: our brains simply can't manage it. And I think we

720
00:44:46,400 --> 00:44:47,200
Speaker 2: all struggle with that.

721
00:44:48,280 --> 00:44:51,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now a word from our sponsors that I

722
00:44:51,560 --> 00:44:59,000
Speaker 1: really enjoy and I think you will too. How then,

723
00:44:59,400 --> 00:45:02,520
Speaker 1: from this vantage point, you know, having written the book,

724
00:45:03,360 --> 00:45:07,359
Speaker 1: getting this big picture on the data, the science, you know,

725
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:11,000
Speaker 1: the chemicals, the adrenaline and the cortisol and everything that

726
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:15,080
Speaker 1: happens in the body when when you panic, knowing yourself

727
00:45:15,200 --> 00:45:23,200
Speaker 1: and the larger you know, diagnosable disorder, So well, what

728
00:45:23,239 --> 00:45:25,880
Speaker 1: does it feel like to be on the other side

729
00:45:25,880 --> 00:45:27,480
Speaker 1: of the book. What does it feel like to have

730
00:45:28,239 --> 00:45:31,799
Speaker 1: everybody know in a way? Do you feel more free,

731
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:35,160
Speaker 1: less apt to panic? Or is it really still just

732
00:45:35,200 --> 00:45:37,640
Speaker 1: a day by day experience for you.

733
00:45:38,239 --> 00:45:41,080
Speaker 2: I mean that. So obviously part of the book was

734
00:45:41,120 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 2: figuring out what panic is, learning why it is we

735
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:48,560
Speaker 2: have panic, learning that it's okay to be vulnerable about

736
00:45:48,600 --> 00:45:50,520
Speaker 2: it because I'm pretty vulnerable my day to day but

737
00:45:50,560 --> 00:45:52,759
Speaker 2: this was a deep, dark secret that I chose not

738
00:45:52,840 --> 00:45:55,240
Speaker 2: to reveal, and being all about it is something.

739
00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:56,240
Speaker 1: Yeah.

740
00:45:56,440 --> 00:45:59,480
Speaker 2: I also learned that there was more that was going on,

741
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:04,239
Speaker 2: and I started taking breathwork classes with a buddy of mine,

742
00:46:04,320 --> 00:46:09,880
Speaker 2: Lane Jaffey, who's in LA and does breathwork. And have

743
00:46:09,920 --> 00:46:12,160
Speaker 2: you ever done breathwork like holotropic breathwork?

744
00:46:12,239 --> 00:46:16,400
Speaker 1: The no, and I really want to, And you are

745
00:46:16,440 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 1: the third person who's talked to me about it in

746
00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:21,439
Speaker 1: the last two weeks, and I feel like it's a sign.

747
00:46:21,120 --> 00:46:25,040
Speaker 2: Okay, it might be. So those holotropic breathwork or any

748
00:46:25,120 --> 00:46:29,440
Speaker 2: type of intense breath work basically takes you to it.

749
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be this really calm,

750
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:36,080
Speaker 2: sort of chill thing like meditation plus or yoga. It's not.

751
00:46:37,400 --> 00:46:41,280
Speaker 2: It's a pretty intense experience. And so you start by breathing,

752
00:46:41,360 --> 00:46:44,279
Speaker 2: you know, two in one out. He does it through

753
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 2: your belly and you can do it. Depending on the cadence,

754
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:53,600
Speaker 2: it sort of sends you deeper and deeper. So if

755
00:46:53,640 --> 00:46:59,040
Speaker 2: you do it fast and big, basically it deprives your body.

756
00:46:59,080 --> 00:47:01,799
Speaker 2: Even though you're hypervent it deprives your body of the

757
00:47:01,840 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 2: ability to intake oxygen. So you're running short on carbon

758
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 2: dioxide because you're hyperventilating, which prohibits your body from intaking

759
00:47:13,440 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 2: and such a digesting oxygen into your blood system. So

760
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:22,120
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is you're you sort of you

761
00:47:22,160 --> 00:47:27,480
Speaker 2: get lobster hands, you lose sensation in your extremities, your

762
00:47:27,520 --> 00:47:32,080
Speaker 2: toes go all weird, and then you like almost have

763
00:47:32,160 --> 00:47:35,040
Speaker 2: a psychedelic experience. And I basically every time I do it,

764
00:47:35,080 --> 00:47:38,640
Speaker 2: I have I wouldn't say psychedelic, but nearly like I'm

765
00:47:38,719 --> 00:47:40,839
Speaker 2: out of my body. I'm certainly out of my right

766
00:47:40,920 --> 00:47:46,319
Speaker 2: mind because I realized that there were there were decades

767
00:47:46,440 --> 00:47:51,160
Speaker 2: of untapped grief that I hadn't dealt with that I'm

768
00:47:51,200 --> 00:47:54,239
Speaker 2: so good at suppressing. I'm so good at putting up

769
00:47:54,280 --> 00:47:56,600
Speaker 2: the armor, which is why I can see those terrific

770
00:47:56,719 --> 00:47:59,920
Speaker 2: things that you can imagine. Like just last week, you know,

771
00:48:00,719 --> 00:48:02,440
Speaker 2: I was in the room as they were zipping up

772
00:48:02,480 --> 00:48:05,960
Speaker 2: the body bags of people who were murdered in little

773
00:48:06,239 --> 00:48:10,839
Speaker 2: hamlets and I'm totally okay, but I'm just because I'm

774
00:48:10,880 --> 00:48:15,040
Speaker 2: so good at keeping that armor up, but too good.

775
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 2: And so I realized when I was doing this first

776
00:48:18,840 --> 00:48:22,760
Speaker 2: breath work class with this guy that I just started

777
00:48:22,800 --> 00:48:26,440
Speaker 2: sobbing like a big, ugly hysterical cry in front of

778
00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:29,440
Speaker 2: a room of other people. And I'm just crying and

779
00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:32,400
Speaker 2: I can't stop, and I'm like, he comes and he

780
00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,560
Speaker 2: grounds me, so he just like put his hands on

781
00:48:34,600 --> 00:48:36,319
Speaker 2: my legs, on my shinds, and he's like, you know,

782
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:38,920
Speaker 2: I got you. Not taking me out of it, but

783
00:48:39,120 --> 00:48:42,799
Speaker 2: just like I got you. You're okay, keep going, Yeah,

784
00:48:42,920 --> 00:48:49,920
Speaker 2: And such a relief. It was such good medicine that cry,

785
00:48:50,120 --> 00:48:52,320
Speaker 2: that I realized that there's a lot more of it there.

786
00:48:52,840 --> 00:48:56,879
Speaker 2: And I also realized that I've done therapy and I've

787
00:48:56,920 --> 00:49:00,680
Speaker 2: done literally every pharmaceutical you can imagine, for you know,

788
00:49:00,760 --> 00:49:03,479
Speaker 2: gabba is to propranolol, to prasis in all these anti

789
00:49:03,520 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 2: seizure medications, ADHD medication. All of this is with my

790
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:10,080
Speaker 2: psychiatrist to try to figure out the panic attacks and

791
00:49:10,160 --> 00:49:12,719
Speaker 2: maybe there's something else that's causing it. And a lot

792
00:49:12,719 --> 00:49:20,680
Speaker 2: of what's causing it was this subterranean anguish, this untreated pain,

793
00:49:20,880 --> 00:49:24,399
Speaker 2: this grief that I had dealt with. And I ended

794
00:49:24,480 --> 00:49:29,359
Speaker 2: up gravitating towards psychedelics because I realized that as long

795
00:49:29,360 --> 00:49:31,879
Speaker 2: as I'm in my right mind, as long as I'm

796
00:49:31,920 --> 00:49:35,200
Speaker 2: here with you on this plane of conversation, my inclination

797
00:49:35,560 --> 00:49:41,360
Speaker 2: is to please, is to be thoughtful, to be reasonable,

798
00:49:42,239 --> 00:49:44,400
Speaker 2: and I needed to do stuff that was not reasonable,

799
00:49:44,560 --> 00:49:46,799
Speaker 2: that was not logical, to take me out of my

800
00:49:46,920 --> 00:49:51,600
Speaker 2: right head, which is why I went and tried ayahuasca

801
00:49:51,680 --> 00:49:57,920
Speaker 2: and psilocybin ketamine five MAO DMT that's the toad, various

802
00:49:57,960 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 2: other modalities that forced me a time and again out

803
00:50:02,239 --> 00:50:05,319
Speaker 2: of my right brain to let me into this place

804
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:08,600
Speaker 2: that I call the well of grief that you know.

805
00:50:08,640 --> 00:50:10,759
Speaker 2: This place I would go was after my dad died.

806
00:50:11,600 --> 00:50:13,600
Speaker 2: My mom and I would have these bouts of crying.

807
00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:16,000
Speaker 2: We would just hold each other and sometimes it would

808
00:50:16,080 --> 00:50:19,400
Speaker 2: last for days. And it was so scary to go

809
00:50:19,480 --> 00:50:21,920
Speaker 2: back in there that Sophia, I just didn't want to go,

810
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:24,600
Speaker 2: Like I was afraid that if I'd go and fall

811
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:26,960
Speaker 2: into that well of grief, I wouldn't be able to

812
00:50:26,960 --> 00:50:29,919
Speaker 2: claw my way back out again, and so I completely

813
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:32,799
Speaker 2: I sealed it shut with cement, and so the only

814
00:50:32,840 --> 00:50:35,560
Speaker 2: way to unclog it to reopen it up to excavate

815
00:50:35,600 --> 00:50:38,640
Speaker 2: that pain for me, And this is I'm not advocating

816
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:40,239
Speaker 2: this for anyone. I'm just saying what worked for me

817
00:50:40,920 --> 00:50:44,879
Speaker 2: was to go on these psychedelic journeys and to work

818
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,400
Speaker 2: through it that way, which then taught me how to

819
00:50:48,440 --> 00:50:53,839
Speaker 2: cry without having to be on some sort of hallucinogen.

820
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:56,880
Speaker 2: That's the skill that I learned, is to find my

821
00:50:56,960 --> 00:50:59,560
Speaker 2: way back to the well of grief and to know

822
00:50:59,640 --> 00:51:04,800
Speaker 2: that I'm not going to drown inside of it. Sure.

823
00:51:05,760 --> 00:51:11,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really profound because you would think that it

824
00:51:11,960 --> 00:51:16,040
Speaker 1: would be easy to say all humans grief, grief, all

825
00:51:16,120 --> 00:51:19,680
Speaker 1: humans suffer. If you can just sit in those feelings

826
00:51:19,719 --> 00:51:22,520
Speaker 1: and let them out and process them, then they'll be over.

827
00:51:23,120 --> 00:51:28,560
Speaker 1: It's just not that easy, especially when your job requires

828
00:51:28,600 --> 00:51:34,040
Speaker 1: you to perform as on professional, happy, eloquent and pleasant

829
00:51:34,080 --> 00:51:37,719
Speaker 1: to be around all of the time. And that's that

830
00:51:37,840 --> 00:51:42,839
Speaker 1: sort of bifurcation I was talking about earlier. You know,

831
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:48,520
Speaker 1: this this sort of great time, you know, post pandemic,

832
00:51:48,600 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: and this big journey summer for me has been this

833
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 1: lesson in going Oh, I can track back through my

834
00:51:56,000 --> 00:51:59,160
Speaker 1: whole adult life and see every time I've turned my

835
00:51:59,239 --> 00:52:01,960
Speaker 1: back on myself to take care of other people in

836
00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:05,120
Speaker 1: the room. And it's not that I haven't loved to

837
00:52:05,200 --> 00:52:08,800
Speaker 1: do it. I love to host, I love to gather.

838
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:11,400
Speaker 1: I love to make people happy. Is literally my favorite

839
00:52:11,400 --> 00:52:15,600
Speaker 1: thing to do. And I can see that my learned

840
00:52:15,800 --> 00:52:18,880
Speaker 1: tendency is to turn my back on myself, turn my

841
00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:20,959
Speaker 1: back on myself, turn my back on myself, to look

842
00:52:21,000 --> 00:52:30,440
Speaker 1: out and to try to reintegrate those two halves. That's

843
00:52:30,560 --> 00:52:35,120
Speaker 1: that's big work. It's a big journey, and not dissimilarly

844
00:52:35,200 --> 00:52:40,800
Speaker 1: to you, you know, over the last certain number of years,

845
00:52:40,880 --> 00:52:46,640
Speaker 1: the last six years in particular, I have really had

846
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:49,400
Speaker 1: to do a lot of work. I've gone deep in

847
00:52:49,520 --> 00:52:51,960
Speaker 1: the you know, neuroscience and the study and the books

848
00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:56,520
Speaker 1: like yours. I've gone into you know, cognitive behavioral therapy

849
00:52:56,800 --> 00:53:01,640
Speaker 1: and incredible you know, trauma recovery. I joke, a friend

850
00:53:01,640 --> 00:53:04,200
Speaker 1: of mine runs this incredible place where you can go

851
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:08,440
Speaker 1: and do like really intensive experiential therapy and lectures and

852
00:53:08,480 --> 00:53:10,600
Speaker 1: all the things for a weekend at times, called on site.

853
00:53:10,840 --> 00:53:13,680
Speaker 1: It's in Tennessee. It's miraculous. I wish everyone could go,

854
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:16,440
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yeah, I go to trauma camp like

855
00:53:16,600 --> 00:53:17,200
Speaker 1: once a year.

856
00:53:19,200 --> 00:53:22,120
Speaker 2: It sounds like so much fun. Honestly, it's phenomenal.

857
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:24,600
Speaker 1: I come home with like a full notebook. I feel

858
00:53:24,840 --> 00:53:25,680
Speaker 1: more myself.

859
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:31,000
Speaker 2: But you have a question for you? Sure? So? I

860
00:53:31,000 --> 00:53:33,200
Speaker 2: mean I think that I couldn't have been anything other

861
00:53:33,200 --> 00:53:35,759
Speaker 2: than a journalist. And I chose it specifically because it

862
00:53:35,800 --> 00:53:39,800
Speaker 2: allows me to go and do these crazy things, to

863
00:53:39,840 --> 00:53:43,600
Speaker 2: be in places that are so troubled, and to be

864
00:53:43,800 --> 00:53:48,240
Speaker 2: around people when they're having the worst day of their life.

865
00:53:48,560 --> 00:53:53,320
Speaker 2: This trauma because I'm attracted to this cutting edge between

866
00:53:53,640 --> 00:53:56,480
Speaker 2: life and death, you know, where life is its most raw.

867
00:53:57,239 --> 00:53:59,080
Speaker 2: And I think I chose it in a way to

868
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 2: run away. I wonder if you chose what you call

869
00:54:04,040 --> 00:54:07,279
Speaker 2: your day job as an escape as well from all

870
00:54:07,320 --> 00:54:11,960
Speaker 2: that other stuff, because you're forced to be this pleasant,

871
00:54:12,080 --> 00:54:17,440
Speaker 2: this beautiful person this personality who's spot on and super

872
00:54:17,440 --> 00:54:20,040
Speaker 2: professional and everything that everybody else wants you to be.

873
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:23,480
Speaker 2: And maybe that's I mean, I'm not speaking for you,

874
00:54:23,520 --> 00:54:26,320
Speaker 2: what I'm saying for me. I've learned that it's basically

875
00:54:26,360 --> 00:54:27,000
Speaker 2: an escape.

876
00:54:27,719 --> 00:54:30,440
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm sure. I mean, we love to escape. It's

877
00:54:30,440 --> 00:54:33,840
Speaker 1: why reality TV is popular, It's why people love Instagram.

878
00:54:34,239 --> 00:54:37,040
Speaker 1: I think it's very human. And yes, I think you

879
00:54:37,080 --> 00:54:41,880
Speaker 1: know when you grow up raised especially you know you

880
00:54:42,000 --> 00:54:46,880
Speaker 1: talk about it, that notion of being a pleaser, a

881
00:54:46,920 --> 00:54:50,200
Speaker 1: people pleaser. You know, when you're raised to be a

882
00:54:50,239 --> 00:54:55,480
Speaker 1: people pleaser and in a patriarchy as a woman, where

883
00:54:56,360 --> 00:55:01,400
Speaker 1: you are told that your value is in how pleasant

884
00:55:01,440 --> 00:55:05,640
Speaker 1: you are to others, how easy you are to be around,

885
00:55:06,400 --> 00:55:09,399
Speaker 1: and then you become a performer and you get rewarded for,

886
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 1: you know, being this person who entertains and also grabs

887
00:55:14,200 --> 00:55:16,400
Speaker 1: everybody a coffee when you're on your way to craft service.

888
00:55:16,440 --> 00:55:19,040
Speaker 1: You need anything I got you? Yeah, Like, those are

889
00:55:19,120 --> 00:55:24,840
Speaker 1: good qualities and if they become overly weighted on the seesaw,

890
00:55:25,120 --> 00:55:28,880
Speaker 1: you can lose the rest of yourself. And I think

891
00:55:29,600 --> 00:55:31,520
Speaker 1: it's also not lost on me the way you talk

892
00:55:31,560 --> 00:55:36,480
Speaker 1: about being a journalist. You know, my curiosity and I

893
00:55:36,560 --> 00:55:40,840
Speaker 1: have an obsession with justice, Like I can't let it

894
00:55:40,880 --> 00:55:45,400
Speaker 1: go when something is untrue. I have learned to be patient,

895
00:55:46,400 --> 00:55:51,600
Speaker 1: but I won't give up. My adulthood has been learning

896
00:55:51,719 --> 00:55:57,960
Speaker 1: to react appropriately rather than immediately. But when I think

897
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,840
Speaker 1: about the things that I will fine time to do.

898
00:56:01,000 --> 00:56:03,400
Speaker 1: You know. The last time I was in the Middle

899
00:56:03,400 --> 00:56:07,560
Speaker 1: East was not long after the most recent conflict in

900
00:56:07,560 --> 00:56:11,080
Speaker 1: Syria broke out, and I had friends sneak me into

901
00:56:12,480 --> 00:56:15,720
Speaker 1: an enclave where people who were escaping a refugee camp

902
00:56:16,640 --> 00:56:20,800
Speaker 1: in Jordan were living. And these were families who'd escaped

903
00:56:20,800 --> 00:56:23,839
Speaker 1: with young daughters because there were people coming and like

904
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:28,360
Speaker 1: trying to buy young refugee girls out of this refugee camp.

905
00:56:28,560 --> 00:56:33,080
Speaker 1: And I was so upset and I literally got smuggled

906
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:35,880
Speaker 1: into the city where these families were hiding, and I

907
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:39,320
Speaker 1: spent a day with a translator interviewing families and brought

908
00:56:39,320 --> 00:56:45,160
Speaker 1: this book back to then Secretary Clinton's camp. And Hillary

909
00:56:45,200 --> 00:56:46,960
Speaker 1: Clinton was running for president at the time, and I

910
00:56:47,000 --> 00:56:49,480
Speaker 1: was like, you're going to get elected, and figuring out

911
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:50,960
Speaker 1: what we are going to do for these girls is

912
00:56:50,960 --> 00:56:52,640
Speaker 1: going to be my one of my number one areas

913
00:56:52,680 --> 00:56:55,839
Speaker 1: of focus in your administration, Like I can't calm down

914
00:56:55,880 --> 00:56:59,920
Speaker 1: about it. And they were like great, and we were working.

915
00:57:00,080 --> 00:57:03,280
Speaker 1: There were plans, there were things we were talking about

916
00:57:03,280 --> 00:57:06,960
Speaker 1: in terms of using the attention that comes with my

917
00:57:07,120 --> 00:57:12,840
Speaker 1: day job to put global spotlight on these families. You know,

918
00:57:12,960 --> 00:57:16,280
Speaker 1: much like another girlfriend of mine was working on creating

919
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:22,640
Speaker 1: an incredible systematization for the national organ donation system so

920
00:57:22,680 --> 00:57:24,880
Speaker 1: that we would stop wasting organs and people would stop

921
00:57:24,960 --> 00:57:27,560
Speaker 1: dying on transplant lists. We had all these plans for

922
00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:30,400
Speaker 1: the second Claned administration, and then things didn't go our way.

923
00:57:31,080 --> 00:57:35,360
Speaker 1: And I look back and I go a lot of

924
00:57:35,400 --> 00:57:38,440
Speaker 1: people when they're not working, like go to the Bahamas,

925
00:57:39,000 --> 00:57:43,000
Speaker 1: and this is what I do. And it's weird, Like

926
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,240
Speaker 1: I watch you in war zones and I go, what

927
00:57:45,320 --> 00:57:47,680
Speaker 1: a weird thing that you choose to go, But when

928
00:57:47,720 --> 00:57:51,680
Speaker 1: you can't not when you mean to witness.

929
00:57:51,320 --> 00:57:54,320
Speaker 2: Meaning, you yeah for more meaning, and you want to

930
00:57:54,320 --> 00:57:57,479
Speaker 2: help people, And that's I think it makes total sense

931
00:57:57,520 --> 00:58:01,360
Speaker 2: to me. You know, we want to be useful, which

932
00:58:01,360 --> 00:58:02,880
Speaker 2: is part of the reason I wrote this book is

933
00:58:03,000 --> 00:58:03,840
Speaker 2: to be useful.

934
00:58:04,040 --> 00:58:08,720
Speaker 1: I guess, well, right, you turned your personal pain into

935
00:58:08,760 --> 00:58:10,720
Speaker 1: something that could empower.

936
00:58:10,920 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 2: Others hopefully, And yeah, I mean just to I don't

937
00:58:17,200 --> 00:58:19,880
Speaker 2: I just you know, I both get criticized for this

938
00:58:20,040 --> 00:58:25,280
Speaker 2: and applauded for But I don't have the magic solution,

939
00:58:26,000 --> 00:58:28,480
Speaker 2: and I don't think it exists. It's all hard work,

940
00:58:29,000 --> 00:58:31,680
Speaker 2: you know, it's all the stuff that we know how

941
00:58:31,680 --> 00:58:34,560
Speaker 2: to do. Part of it is finding meaning. Part of

942
00:58:34,600 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 2: it is talking to people. Part of it is just

943
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:37,960
Speaker 2: taking care of our bodies the way we know we

944
00:58:38,000 --> 00:58:41,400
Speaker 2: need to. Part of it is emptying out that well

945
00:58:41,400 --> 00:58:43,600
Speaker 2: of grief once it fills up with all that that

946
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:48,320
Speaker 2: gunk of pain. There's so many different components, but yeah,

947
00:58:48,520 --> 00:58:50,280
Speaker 2: for me, part of it is finding meaning is like

948
00:58:50,320 --> 00:58:54,720
Speaker 2: feeling like I'm doing something of utility in my day job,

949
00:58:55,160 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 2: and like it both crushes me sometimes because I hear

950
00:59:00,080 --> 00:59:02,680
Speaker 2: these horrific stories, but it also makes me feel like,

951
00:59:02,760 --> 00:59:06,640
Speaker 2: at least you know I'm doing something. Yeah.

952
00:59:06,720 --> 00:59:11,320
Speaker 1: Well, it reminds me of something a friend said when

953
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:16,440
Speaker 1: we were working on a community organizing project in La.

954
00:59:16,560 --> 00:59:19,120
Speaker 1: She said, Look, everyone has a different skill set, and

955
00:59:19,160 --> 00:59:21,520
Speaker 1: we need everybody to bring their skill sets to the table.

956
00:59:22,320 --> 00:59:25,680
Speaker 1: And I really think that's true. You know, you are

957
00:59:25,840 --> 00:59:28,160
Speaker 1: called to go to places and learn from people. I

958
00:59:28,200 --> 00:59:31,959
Speaker 1: feel a similar calling. You know. There are people who

959
00:59:33,680 --> 00:59:36,920
Speaker 1: don't feel that, but who can make incredible art and

960
00:59:37,040 --> 00:59:40,480
Speaker 1: design the campaign or the billboard. There are people who

961
00:59:40,520 --> 00:59:43,120
Speaker 1: are you know, the best copy editors. There are people

962
00:59:43,120 --> 00:59:46,920
Speaker 1: who will sit and phone bank all day. We always

963
00:59:46,920 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 1: need all hands on deck when something is wrong, and

964
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:55,720
Speaker 1: so I think it's interesting to I feel encouraged in

965
00:59:55,760 --> 00:59:58,760
Speaker 1: a way from this conversation to lean into what my

966
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:01,600
Speaker 1: gifts are, and then to remind people to lean into

967
01:00:01,600 --> 01:00:03,040
Speaker 1: what their gifts are, because if we all had the

968
01:00:03,080 --> 01:00:08,320
Speaker 1: same gift, like, we wouldn't ever get anything done. When

969
01:00:08,400 --> 01:00:12,080
Speaker 1: you lean in in a moment like this, in such

970
01:00:13,640 --> 01:00:20,040
Speaker 1: a moment of suffering in a region, how how do

971
01:00:20,080 --> 01:00:23,920
Speaker 1: you decide to go back? Because you mentioned earlier that

972
01:00:24,000 --> 01:00:27,480
Speaker 1: you lived in the region for almost a decade and

973
01:00:27,920 --> 01:00:30,920
Speaker 1: now your wife and family you live back in the States.

974
01:00:31,640 --> 01:00:36,880
Speaker 1: How do you measure as your life continues evolving, when

975
01:00:36,920 --> 01:00:39,680
Speaker 1: you're going to dip back into a war zone and

976
01:00:39,760 --> 01:00:42,120
Speaker 1: when you're going to stay home or do you just

977
01:00:42,160 --> 01:00:43,000
Speaker 1: always say yes?

978
01:00:46,120 --> 01:00:49,240
Speaker 2: You know, I was on I was flying with my

979
01:00:49,320 --> 01:00:52,960
Speaker 2: wife on Saturday morning, October seventh to Miami because I

980
01:00:53,000 --> 01:00:55,280
Speaker 2: had a couple of speaking engagements there and then there

981
01:00:55,320 --> 01:00:56,920
Speaker 2: was part of the book tour, and then I was

982
01:00:56,960 --> 01:01:01,200
Speaker 2: close to fly to Detroit and then a story in

983
01:01:01,200 --> 01:01:04,880
Speaker 2: Malaysia on the day after that, and I had this

984
01:01:04,920 --> 01:01:08,720
Speaker 2: whole you know, two weeks planned out, and you know,

985
01:01:08,800 --> 01:01:11,560
Speaker 2: this is like history happening, and there's no choice, Like

986
01:01:11,600 --> 01:01:13,840
Speaker 2: this is what I do for a living, and so

987
01:01:13,960 --> 01:01:17,160
Speaker 2: like everything got blown up. My wife stayed in Miami,

988
01:01:17,360 --> 01:01:20,480
Speaker 2: stayed with our friends there, and I flew off to

989
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:23,800
Speaker 2: New York and then Tel Aviv. So you don't often

990
01:01:23,840 --> 01:01:27,560
Speaker 2: have a choice. It's just, you know, this is an

991
01:01:27,680 --> 01:01:32,720
Speaker 2: historical moment the world is watching, and it's it's sort

992
01:01:32,720 --> 01:01:35,040
Speaker 2: of what I do. And my wife is amazingly understanding

993
01:01:35,040 --> 01:01:37,720
Speaker 2: about it. So that's just like been part of the

994
01:01:37,720 --> 01:01:41,080
Speaker 2: fabric of how we live our lives, which takes a

995
01:01:41,080 --> 01:01:43,560
Speaker 2: lot of flexibility on her part and mind. But obviously

996
01:01:43,560 --> 01:01:46,520
Speaker 2: I think it's it's harder for her, but it's just

997
01:01:46,520 --> 01:01:48,920
Speaker 2: sort of how like we're kind of used to it

998
01:01:48,960 --> 01:01:49,240
Speaker 2: at this.

999
01:01:49,240 --> 01:01:52,040
Speaker 1: Point, right, Yeah, because you've been doing this together for

1000
01:01:52,080 --> 01:01:52,520
Speaker 1: so long.

1001
01:01:53,560 --> 01:01:55,400
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it is like, you know, I've lived here

1002
01:01:55,400 --> 01:01:57,760
Speaker 2: and I care about this place. I care about both

1003
01:01:57,800 --> 01:02:01,000
Speaker 2: sides of this place and spent so much time here,

1004
01:02:01,000 --> 01:02:03,080
Speaker 2: and every time there's a conflict, I come back because

1005
01:02:03,520 --> 01:02:06,960
Speaker 2: I speak Hebrew and a little bit of Arabic, so

1006
01:02:07,560 --> 01:02:11,880
Speaker 2: it's very useful. But yeah, it's been it's been hard.

1007
01:02:12,000 --> 01:02:13,280
Speaker 2: This one's been a tough one.

1008
01:02:13,720 --> 01:02:17,800
Speaker 1: For everybody at home who's watching your reporting and really

1009
01:02:17,840 --> 01:02:21,640
Speaker 1: struggling with knowing what to do, because listen, it's it's

1010
01:02:21,640 --> 01:02:25,040
Speaker 1: horrific to understand that the Jewish people just incurred the

1011
01:02:25,080 --> 01:02:28,560
Speaker 1: greatest day of violence that their population has seen on

1012
01:02:28,600 --> 01:02:35,600
Speaker 1: Earth since the Holocaust. And it's simultaneously incredibly difficult for

1013
01:02:35,640 --> 01:02:40,960
Speaker 1: a lot of people to not be upset with the

1014
01:02:40,960 --> 01:02:44,760
Speaker 1: way Netanyahu has been operating since before the seventh and

1015
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:52,480
Speaker 1: with this scorched earth response that the government is enacting

1016
01:02:52,520 --> 01:02:56,320
Speaker 1: that's harming so many innocent Palestinians who are also victims

1017
01:02:56,920 --> 01:03:03,480
Speaker 1: of Hamas as a states answered terrorist organization being you know,

1018
01:03:03,600 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: funded and fueled by bad actors in the region everywhere,

1019
01:03:09,440 --> 01:03:16,360
Speaker 1: the humanitarian tragedy for civilians is undeniable, and the complexity

1020
01:03:16,520 --> 01:03:21,160
Speaker 1: of a terrorist group, and you know, multiple countries warring

1021
01:03:21,200 --> 01:03:22,959
Speaker 1: with each other at the same time, it's very hard

1022
01:03:22,960 --> 01:03:26,480
Speaker 1: for most people to hold and you know, none of

1023
01:03:26,560 --> 01:03:28,680
Speaker 1: us is the president of any of these countries, like

1024
01:03:28,880 --> 01:03:31,400
Speaker 1: if they if the actual presidents don't have an answer,

1025
01:03:31,640 --> 01:03:36,320
Speaker 1: I don't know how we're expected to what in that

1026
01:03:36,400 --> 01:03:39,440
Speaker 1: sort of paralysis of what are we going to do

1027
01:03:39,480 --> 01:03:42,360
Speaker 1: about this that everyone seems to be feeling, What do

1028
01:03:42,440 --> 01:03:45,960
Speaker 1: you recommend people do? Are there aid organizations that are

1029
01:03:45,960 --> 01:03:50,640
Speaker 1: supporting civilians. Are there news sources that you believe, you know,

1030
01:03:51,000 --> 01:03:56,000
Speaker 1: are the most well rounded and that can educate people

1031
01:03:56,000 --> 01:03:58,400
Speaker 1: who feel like they don't know enough about this? Where

1032
01:03:58,720 --> 01:04:01,440
Speaker 1: where do you tell people to turn who want to

1033
01:04:01,480 --> 01:04:03,400
Speaker 1: do something but don't know where to start.

1034
01:04:05,720 --> 01:04:08,640
Speaker 2: First, I would say to parents, and because I'm a

1035
01:04:08,720 --> 01:04:12,200
Speaker 2: dad of two and I'm acutely attuned to this kind

1036
01:04:12,200 --> 01:04:16,720
Speaker 2: of thing, I would say, turn off your phones, get

1037
01:04:16,760 --> 01:04:20,440
Speaker 2: off social media, don't watch too much news, don't expose

1038
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:22,880
Speaker 2: your kids to this because it's not going to help

1039
01:04:22,960 --> 01:04:26,720
Speaker 2: right now, and they're you know, our website on ABC

1040
01:04:26,760 --> 01:04:31,560
Speaker 2: News has a whole bunch of organizations that can help. Okay, privately,

1041
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:36,640
Speaker 2: Matt to you and to the listeners, try to take

1042
01:04:37,640 --> 01:04:41,360
Speaker 2: a bit of a of a fast of a news

1043
01:04:41,400 --> 01:04:44,440
Speaker 2: fast right now because it's so toxic and images are

1044
01:04:44,480 --> 01:04:47,000
Speaker 2: so hard and I want people to be engaged, but

1045
01:04:47,040 --> 01:04:50,760
Speaker 2: I also want to be to protect people, and I

1046
01:04:50,760 --> 01:04:54,640
Speaker 2: want people to protect themselves because you know, this is

1047
01:04:54,640 --> 01:04:56,600
Speaker 2: a twenty four hour news cycle and you can watch

1048
01:04:56,640 --> 01:04:59,240
Speaker 2: these videos all day long and they've been we've been

1049
01:04:59,280 --> 01:05:07,000
Speaker 2: bombarded with that, you know, bodycam footage from Hamas fighters,

1050
01:05:07,200 --> 01:05:13,600
Speaker 2: surveillance video, social video, newsreels stuff that we're producing. It's

1051
01:05:13,760 --> 01:05:17,480
Speaker 2: just so intense and there's so much of it that

1052
01:05:17,640 --> 01:05:20,320
Speaker 2: I worry about people's mental health consuming it too much.

1053
01:05:20,640 --> 01:05:22,520
Speaker 2: I'm not saying don't watch the news, because of course

1054
01:05:22,520 --> 01:05:25,880
Speaker 2: I want you to watch the news everyone, but I

1055
01:05:25,920 --> 01:05:28,120
Speaker 2: do think that we should all impose some limits on ourselves.

1056
01:05:28,160 --> 01:05:29,920
Speaker 2: And I do too in one of the ways that

1057
01:05:29,920 --> 01:05:32,040
Speaker 2: I've you know, I told you I have this armor up,

1058
01:05:32,040 --> 01:05:33,960
Speaker 2: and one of the ways I've done that is by

1059
01:05:34,000 --> 01:05:36,680
Speaker 2: trying to avoid watching too many of these videos that

1060
01:05:36,680 --> 01:05:40,320
Speaker 2: are out there, because Hamas filmed themselves doing a lot

1061
01:05:40,360 --> 01:05:43,520
Speaker 2: of this, and you know, we see these images coming

1062
01:05:43,520 --> 01:05:46,439
Speaker 2: from Gaza, and it's so intense that I don't think

1063
01:05:46,480 --> 01:05:50,840
Speaker 2: that our brains are equipped with watching this much intense

1064
01:05:51,760 --> 01:05:56,400
Speaker 2: violence and harm and blood and gore and cruelty. And

1065
01:05:56,480 --> 01:05:59,520
Speaker 2: so I just urge everyone to just be cautious about

1066
01:05:59,520 --> 01:06:03,720
Speaker 2: their take of these videos and the news right now,

1067
01:06:04,280 --> 01:06:07,200
Speaker 2: and especially if you can keep it away from your kids,

1068
01:06:08,280 --> 01:06:12,520
Speaker 2: because it's terrible and it has an effect, and we

1069
01:06:12,560 --> 01:06:16,760
Speaker 2: should I think our children should be aware of some things,

1070
01:06:16,800 --> 01:06:18,840
Speaker 2: but I don't know how much we should expose them

1071
01:06:19,160 --> 01:06:21,720
Speaker 2: to some of the things. That is even tough for

1072
01:06:21,840 --> 01:06:23,760
Speaker 2: us to tolerate as adults.

1073
01:06:24,360 --> 01:06:31,280
Speaker 1: Right being there, Now, how long do you anticipate staying

1074
01:06:31,320 --> 01:06:35,120
Speaker 1: in the region. Do you have any idea of you know,

1075
01:06:35,160 --> 01:06:37,160
Speaker 1: how long you'll be reporting on the ground versus when

1076
01:06:37,200 --> 01:06:38,000
Speaker 1: you'll get to come home.

1077
01:06:38,600 --> 01:06:41,880
Speaker 2: I'll probably come home in about a week, okay, but

1078
01:06:43,360 --> 01:06:43,959
Speaker 2: I'll be back.

1079
01:06:45,080 --> 01:06:45,400
Speaker 1: Yeah.

1080
01:06:45,520 --> 01:06:48,080
Speaker 2: I think this is going to last for unfortunately, I'm

1081
01:06:48,120 --> 01:06:50,520
Speaker 2: afraid to say this will last for a long time,

1082
01:06:51,840 --> 01:06:54,080
Speaker 2: for months and probably years.

1083
01:06:56,440 --> 01:06:58,840
Speaker 1: It's hard. Yeah, it's heavy.

1084
01:07:00,000 --> 01:07:02,960
Speaker 2: If anybody's listening, It's okay to cry, you know. If

1085
01:07:03,360 --> 01:07:04,880
Speaker 2: this is the thing I learned in my book, is

1086
01:07:04,920 --> 01:07:07,840
Speaker 2: that okay, it's okay to have armor up, and it's

1087
01:07:07,840 --> 01:07:10,640
Speaker 2: okay to also let go, and it's okay to cry,

1088
01:07:10,960 --> 01:07:13,000
Speaker 2: and it's okay for men to cry. You talk about

1089
01:07:13,000 --> 01:07:16,080
Speaker 2: the patriarchy. We boys, we little boys. This eight year

1090
01:07:16,120 --> 01:07:19,400
Speaker 2: old Matt, just to sort of close the circle, cried

1091
01:07:19,440 --> 01:07:22,960
Speaker 2: easily when he was eight, you know, he easily went

1092
01:07:23,000 --> 01:07:25,680
Speaker 2: into his mother's arms and wept and was held by

1093
01:07:25,720 --> 01:07:29,880
Speaker 2: her and felt comfortable and cradled and allowed himself to cry.

1094
01:07:30,360 --> 01:07:34,000
Speaker 2: And so forty nearly six year old Matt has learned

1095
01:07:34,120 --> 01:07:37,640
Speaker 2: enough to be able to also dive into the pillows

1096
01:07:38,000 --> 01:07:40,040
Speaker 2: here in this hotel room if he needs to, and

1097
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:43,840
Speaker 2: just let go. And I'm okay saying that. You know,

1098
01:07:44,040 --> 01:07:45,520
Speaker 2: I know, I'm a girl and man and I need

1099
01:07:45,520 --> 01:07:50,720
Speaker 2: to cry sometimes and that's okay, And it's a chemical release,

1100
01:07:51,200 --> 01:07:54,960
Speaker 2: it is an emotional release, and sometimes I just you know,

1101
01:07:55,040 --> 01:07:55,920
Speaker 2: we all need to do it.

1102
01:07:56,480 --> 01:08:01,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, really important to give yourself permission to be fully human, right,

1103
01:08:01,560 --> 01:08:03,760
Speaker 1: you know, not just a performer, but a person.

1104
01:08:04,400 --> 01:08:08,520
Speaker 2: Right, and feel that full spectrum of emotions that we

1105
01:08:08,600 --> 01:08:09,960
Speaker 2: are capable of experiencing.

1106
01:08:13,480 --> 01:08:18,000
Speaker 1: Matt, what feels It's my favorite last question to ask everyone,

1107
01:08:18,040 --> 01:08:20,320
Speaker 1: even though I could ask you questions for another four hours.

1108
01:08:22,080 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 1: What would you say, you know, in your life right now,

1109
01:08:24,920 --> 01:08:29,040
Speaker 1: whether it's personal or professional, what feels like you're work

1110
01:08:29,040 --> 01:08:30,280
Speaker 1: in progress?

1111
01:08:33,200 --> 01:08:36,120
Speaker 2: My wellness, just my mental health. It's never going to

1112
01:08:36,160 --> 01:08:39,360
Speaker 2: go away. And it's sort of you know, it's exciting

1113
01:08:39,400 --> 01:08:41,040
Speaker 2: to have a big project on the one hand, and

1114
01:08:41,080 --> 01:08:43,240
Speaker 2: on the other hand, oh my god, I've still got

1115
01:08:43,320 --> 01:08:47,519
Speaker 2: to work on that project. It's still going on. Yeah,

1116
01:08:47,520 --> 01:08:51,040
Speaker 2: it's still going on. Yeah, just this mental health thing.

1117
01:08:51,120 --> 01:08:55,120
Speaker 2: You know, I'm naturally anxious. It makes me sensitive to people,

1118
01:08:55,320 --> 01:08:59,920
Speaker 2: it makes me curious about people. It also can be

1119
01:09:00,360 --> 01:09:03,880
Speaker 2: prone to panic attacks. And you know, it's my secret

1120
01:09:03,920 --> 01:09:06,960
Speaker 2: weapon and my achilles heel in one. And so I've

1121
01:09:07,040 --> 01:09:08,920
Speaker 2: just got to, as I said, you know, try to

1122
01:09:09,360 --> 01:09:13,559
Speaker 2: embrace that range of emotions, not try to allow the

1123
01:09:13,640 --> 01:09:15,240
Speaker 2: armor to come down when it needs to come down,

1124
01:09:15,360 --> 01:09:17,400
Speaker 2: keep it up when it needs to be up, and

1125
01:09:17,800 --> 01:09:23,120
Speaker 2: just experience this balanced breakfast of life if I can. Yeah,

1126
01:09:23,880 --> 01:09:24,719
Speaker 2: as much as I can.

1127
01:09:24,920 --> 01:09:27,519
Speaker 1: I like that, A balanced breakfast of life. Maybe that's

1128
01:09:27,560 --> 01:09:28,960
Speaker 1: the title of your second book.

1129
01:09:31,400 --> 01:09:32,400
Speaker 2: Like that? Thank you?

1130
01:09:33,280 --> 01:09:36,320
Speaker 1: Okay, great, I love it. Thank you so much. I

1131
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:38,360
Speaker 1: really appreciate it. It's been such a pleasure to talk

1132
01:09:38,400 --> 01:09:42,280
Speaker 1: to you. Please stay safe over there, and best of

1133
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:45,400
Speaker 1: luck to you and your crew. And congrats on the book.

1134
01:09:45,400 --> 01:09:46,080
Speaker 1: It's beautiful.

1135
01:09:46,600 --> 01:10:01,160
Speaker 2: Thank you so Hea