Episode 1345 - Jason Kander
Marc:Lock the gates!
Marc:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you, what the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fuck nicks?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:What the fuckocrats?
Marc:What the fuck publicans?
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:What are you doing?
Marc:Are you cooking?
Marc:Are you crying?
Marc:Are you crying and cooking?
Marc:Is there anything to celebrate?
Marc:Is today the day we celebrate half of this country's independence from reality?
Marc:And the other half's independence from democracy because of that.
Marc:What are we doing?
Marc:Is there anything to celebrate?
Marc:All I know is today some idiot could set the entire state of California on fire by accident.
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:I don't mean to be negative, but at the very least, it seems that people should get together and at least be with other people.
Marc:Being with other people is important.
Marc:I think being alone at the keyboard is half, if not 80 percent of the fucking problem with people's brains right now.
Marc:Get out in it.
Marc:How many people out there are hobbled by what they take into their head in terms of how they interact with other people?
Marc:Today's a day to sort of let it down.
Marc:If you have plans with other people, be nice.
Marc:Go.
Marc:If you didn't think you were going to go to the party, go to the party.
Marc:Find the person that you can talk to, that you can open your heart a little with.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:Get some love, folks.
Marc:If you can.
Marc:Have a few laughs.
Marc:Eat some bad food.
Marc:And then get to the keyboard later.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:But don't placate your loneliness by sacrificing the way you think because you're just tumbling down too many rabbit holes.
Marc:Fourth of July.
Marc:I'm cooking.
Marc:I'm recording this yesterday, but I'm prepped.
Marc:I didn't know I was going to cook.
Marc:Today, I'm going to talk to Jason Kander today.
Marc:Jason Kander is actually the former secretary of state of Missouri, and he ran for the U.S.
Marc:Senate in 2016.
Marc:He's an army veteran and was an intelligence officer in Afghanistan.
Marc:And in 2017, Barack Obama called him the future of the Democratic Party.
Marc:So why is he on this show now?
Marc:First of all, I talked to him before.
Marc:Jason Sudeikis put me in touch with the guy in 2017 because Kander was starting up a podcast and he wanted to get some feedback.
Marc:Turns out he was also starting up a campaign for president, but I didn't know that at the time.
Marc:And then everything went south for the guy, for Jason.
Marc:The PTSD he'd been suffering from for 11 years was overtaking him.
Marc:He was consumed by depression and suicidal thoughts.
Marc:So he had to put everything on hold in order to get the help he needed.
Marc:Now he's got a book coming out, Invisible Storm, A Soldier's Memoir of Politics.
Marc:and ptsd and i talked to a lot of people about the impact of trauma in their lives and how it affects them moving forward but never from the perspective of a military veteran he also has a lot of insight about the reality of a life dedicated to public service so i had him on and today's the day as the uh as the country crumbles let's talk to a guy
Marc:that has dedicated his life and a lot of it to to to civic duty service in general uh i thought it would be appropriate i'm about to cook a pie this was yesterday and i've just i've rubbed down a large brisket it was so weird because i'm not i'm going to a party i was just planning on bringing a pie a chess pie i have a great recipe for southern chess pie
Marc:That was the plan.
Marc:Bring a pie.
Marc:And then I was at Whole Foods and they had this perfectly trimmed whole brisket.
Marc:And I was like, oh, my God, that thing's beautiful.
Marc:I'm going to buy it and freeze it and I'll use it when I, you know, when I have a party or something.
Marc:I just I'd never seen such a perfectly trimmed whole brisket at Whole Foods or anywhere.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And I fucking bought it.
Marc:And then I texted the wife of the dude whose house I'm going to.
Marc:And I said, I have a brisket.
Marc:You want me to bring it?
Marc:She's like, yeah, I'm going to do my pulled pork, but bring a brisket.
Marc:We'll have both.
Marc:I'm like, fuck yeah, we will.
Marc:So then I got to get up.
Marc:If you're listening to this, I've probably been up since five smoking a brisket, making big decisions, getting all into the food prep, man.
Marc:Getting all into the food prep.
Marc:Not for celebration.
Marc:Maybe for, like, who knows when the fires will come.
Marc:Who knows how long this government looks like the one we grew up with or the one that we aspire to be.
Marc:But I do know I'm going to be spending time with people I enjoy, people I love.
Marc:And all I can say to you is that, you know, despite how horrible everything is,
Marc:You know, if you have an opportunity to spend time with people you like today and you're not doing it because you're sad, go do it.
Marc:Don't fucking don't cry and cook for yourself.
Marc:Go cry with people and have someone else cook for you.
Marc:So listen, Jason Kander, as I mentioned earlier, I kind of told you about him, but his book, Invisible Storm, A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD is available tomorrow, July 5th, wherever you get your books.
Marc:All right, this is me talking to Jason Kander.
Marc:you and i have texted on and off over the years and i i remember you saying that uh you know you were listening to the show to get through the uh the trauma yeah the ptsd process
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's nice to like listen to somebody who's talking about their shit when I was dealing with my shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, for sure.
Guest:So, and yeah.
Guest:And you also, I don't know if you remember this, when I started my podcast, you like, it was a super helpful, I mean, it was only like a half hour, but- We talked.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I remember Sudeikis introduced us because I was like, I'm starting this podcast.
Guest:He had just done the show and I was like, and I listened to Maren, can you introduce us?
Guest:And you said something that I've thought about a lot.
Guest:Because I'm not like a naturally good interviewer.
Guest:And you said you find a thread and you just pull the thread until the thread's gone.
Guest:And that's really just what I do.
Guest:And it works out?
Guest:It works great, yeah.
Marc:It is huge.
Marc:Well, it's a weird thing, but you learn to identify it, you know, and you can find it if you're like thinking about when you're like doing research or trying to talk to somebody.
Marc:I mean, but usually it happens when you're talking to somebody where you realize there's a tonal shift somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And you can just kind of move through it.
Guest:Well, you told me that.
Guest:The other thing you said was... I was really struggling with... I was like... Because it was before I had, like, announced that I was not going to be running for anything.
Guest:So, you know, I was also having to deal with the whole... You got to make... Episodes have to be about issues and all this stuff.
Guest:Who was saying that?
Guest:Like... Your constituents?
Guest:Your potential constituents?
Guest:I would say more like my consultants and probably me driving myself to think like I had to drive toward this idea.
Guest:And so then...
Guest:I remember I told you, I was like, yeah, I get in these conversations, I think they're going to be about one thing, and I find something interesting, but it's not what the episode is supposed to be about.
Guest:And you go, well, do you record your intros before or after you talk to the people?
Guest:And I was like, after?
Guest:And you go, well, then why don't you just decide what the episode's about then?
Guest:And I remember thinking...
Guest:Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Guest:That's what I did.
Guest:Yeah, you don't have to... After the fact, you don't have to go like, no, I fucked this one up.
Guest:Like, I really wanted to talk to him about this, but I didn't.
Marc:Yeah, I was like, oh, super interesting thing you just said, but that's not actually what we're here to talk about, which makes no sense.
Marc:Well, I mean, but that does happen in the world of politics.
Marc:Oh, for sure.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, like, I've talked to...
Marc:Politicians will talk about what they want no matter what they're asked.
Marc:It's kind of an amazing thing.
Marc:You can just sit there.
Marc:There are people that are very good at it where you ask them one question, they'll be like, that's interesting, but what I'm thinking about, okay.
Guest:Well, I picture it as like, remember RoboCop?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where RoboCop had like,
Guest:when they would show you through RoboCop's eyes and you'd see the drop-down menu come down.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:So when I was doing interviews as a politician, it was like there was a drop-down menu.
Guest:It was like you'd be asking a question, but I'm looking at my drop-down menu to think about which question do I want to answer.
Guest:Yeah, and how can I kind of bend this into their questions about a little bit?
Guest:How do I make the listener forget that that's not the fucking question at all?
Guest:Like...
Guest:And there lies the skill.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Once you can fake that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I mean, it's weird because going over this stuff, there's a lot of things happening today.
Marc:And then also when I think about how there was pressure on you from, I mean, in 2016,
Marc:When you ran, right?
Marc:For Senate, yeah.
Marc:For Senate, that there was, you know, Obama was like, when it came down to like, what's the Democratic bench?
Marc:And you're like, we got this one guy.
Marc:We got this guy.
Marc:There's one guy on the bench, this candor guy in Missouri.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then that's when the spiral happened.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I didn't know that then, but then I was like, oh, this is it.
Guest:This is my moment.
Guest:You're going to be president.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You're going to run for president.
Guest:Yeah, I was like, oh, I'm discovered.
Marc:So the chronology of that part of it was that you had run for Senate, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you lost, but not by much, but you did that amazing ad that got everybody, like, it's this ad of you assembling a gun with a blindfold on as a Democrat.
Marc:And being for gun control.
Marc:Right, right, right.
Marc:It was genius, right?
Marc:But then every Democrat, it was sort of like, oh, my God, this guy knows how to talk to them.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Like an anthropological experiment.
Marc:He's got their attention and they kind of get it.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:No, you're right.
Guest:It was like, so yeah, to set it up, Hillary lost my state by 19 on the day that I lost by 2.8.
Guest:So, which meant a whole bunch of people voted for Trump and then voted for my liberal ass, right?
Guest:So, yeah, people were like,
Guest:How?
Guest:How did that happen?
Marc:What's the magic?
Guest:Well, you got to get a gun and a blindfold.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Well, and the funny thing was, is like, I was just saying, well, I say the same stuff y'all say, I just say it like somebody from where I'm from.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I think people wanted like a more complicated answer, but that was, that was mostly it.
Guest:Um,
Marc:Well, it just seems like there is a way to talk about this stuff without.
Marc:But I mean, we don't have to get into what politics has become and that type of fight of language.
Marc:We can talk about whatever you want.
Marc:That's why people listen to your show.
Marc:Well, no, but I mean, but it's sort of like because I've been to your state.
Marc:We appreciate it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And the other guy, Josh Hawley, is like a scary guy to me.
Marc:He is very much like a scary guy.
Marc:But the thing that scares me the most about him just in talking about politics, he's a highly educated, intentionally scary guy.
Marc:He's calculating and how he wants to maintain and hold power.
Marc:And God knows what happens when a guy like that gets it.
Guest:Josh Hawley is a guy doing an impression of a guy who you would want to be.
Guest:What I mean is there was a moment in Josh Hawley's campaign for Senate where he tweeted out some photo of himself and said, sometimes you got to give a speech in the back of a pickup truck or whatever.
Guest:I remember Claire McCaskill, his opponent, was like, that's a flatbed truck.
Guest:And to me, that's Josh Hawley, right?
Guest:There's this guy, I got no problem with the fact that he's very highly educated and all those things.
Guest:I got a problem with him not being able to decide which world he wants to live in.
Guest:He wants to be the educated guy who uses the $5 words, but he also wants to pretend that...
Guest:Like today, they asked him today, you know, what do we do about mass shootings?
Guest:And he's like, and he's, I don't have an answer to that question because obviously he doesn't want to say like anything about guns.
Guest:So he has to pretend it would never occur to him.
Guest:He has to play dumb about things, which I think is kind of insulting.
Guest:Right.
Marc:But like, but what he doesn't play dumb about is, is very repressive and destructive culturally.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I mean, yeah.
Marc:Oh yeah.
Marc:So it's scary.
Marc:I agree.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so what happens, how did you recognize the pressure that was on you, your reaction to it, that you would possibly be presidential hopeful in 2020?
Marc:How did you, as just a guy who's a smart guy and a Jewish guy, and I'm not going to characterize that in any certain way, which I do.
Marc:It's fine.
Marc:How do you know you're losing your shit, not because of fear of expectation or insecurity, and instead it's PTSD?
Guest:Yeah, like what's that realization?
Marc:Well, I mean, how did you know you weren't just fucking yourself?
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:I didn't know for like the longest time.
Guest:I'd say 11 years.
Guest:Well, that's the thing.
Guest:The army does.
Guest:And I wrote about this a little in the book, but I kind of wish I'd gotten into it a little more.
Guest:There's this necessary form of brainwashing, right?
Guest:Like where the moment you get off the bus for basic, the message to you is, you know, what you're doing is no big deal.
Guest:It's ground into you.
Guest:What you're doing is no big deal.
Guest:And then you go and you deploy.
Guest:What you're doing is no big deal.
Guest:And that's necessary because for me as an intelligence officer to keep going into these rooms that I might not get out of or for somebody else to do some other job, if you don't believe that what you're doing is no big deal, you're not going to do it.
Guest:The problem is nobody turns that off.
Guest:And so whether you're thinking you're going to run for president like I was or you're doing any other job, if you're struggling with this stuff,
Guest:but you've got it on good authority from everybody you ever met in the United States Army that what you did was no big deal, well then, what's going on with you can't be PTSD, because you didn't earn PTSD.
Guest:Right, so you're, in a way, it's some sort of gaslighting, almost.
Marc:Yeah, it's an indoctrination.
Marc:Well, that's the repetition with Marines, and then also, I think, I imagine as the military has evolved, there's an element of, like, this is the job.
Guest:Yeah, it's a profession, for sure.
Guest:But it's also everybody knows someone who did more than them.
Guest:You show me a Medal of Honor recipient, and they will tell you about somebody who did more than them.
Guest:It doesn't matter.
Marc:And also, the language around trauma in general has expanded now.
Marc:It seems that it is the word.
Marc:It always started out with military PTSD, but now it's like,
Marc:badly parented people, victims of abuse.
Marc:I mean, everybody's got a mild PTSD.
Marc:I would imagine the entire culture post-COVID, which is sort of the drive of my new hour, that there is PTSD from, I mean, we thought we were all going to die.
Guest:Right.
Guest:For months.
Guest:Well, it could be that car accident, losing somebody.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, it's...
Guest:Anything that you can get stuck on.
Guest:And people always ask me, like other veterans will ask me, well, why does it happen to this person, not that person?
Guest:And I'm like, I have no idea.
Marc:But yours sort of manifested in terms of when you became aware of it, stopped you from your political career.
Guest:Yeah, I got to a point where, you know, the way I talk about it is rock bottom is the international capital of zero fucks left to give.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's, I, so it wasn't like I, sometimes I have hard time.
Guest:I know I should give myself more credit for like, I made a choice that was right for me and for my family and all that.
Guest:But at the time I was like, well, I'm done now.
Guest:It was like, I can't keep going.
Guest:I'm exhausted.
Guest:And I was scared because I was having suicidal ideation at that point.
Guest:And so I just got to a point where I was like, I'm afraid of continuing.
Guest:I was afraid of not continuing because I didn't know what my life would be like.
Guest:It was the only thing that was going well for me was my professional life.
Guest:But I also, I just came to a point where I didn't feel I had a choice.
Guest:And once I called the veterans crisis line and talked to somebody who spoke to me with a tone that said to me like, oh,
Guest:I guess I actually sound like everybody else who calls this number, whereas I had been telling myself, well, I'm not like everybody else.
Guest:I didn't earn it.
Guest:But when they talked to me and they didn't seem in any way either impressed or underwhelmed by my trauma, I was like, oh, I guess- This happens.
Guest:I guess that's me.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And it was very upsetting, but there was also a part of it, particularly when I was diagnosed, that was-
Marc:You know, like anything else, it's good to get an answer.
Marc:Odd because the VA treated the condition the same way they treated your job in the Army.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:This happens.
Guest:This is what you do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Yes, but the VA was like, but we know what to do about this.
Guest:Which is the difference between the VA and the army, right?
Guest:But I mean, I'm saying what the thing that caused it.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Marc:The thing, they just keep telling you that this is just what it is, right?
Marc:That you said that this is normal, this is normal, this is normal.
Marc:And then you got PTSD and they're going like, yeah.
Marc:This is normal.
Guest:They're like, oh, did we not mention?
Guest:Yeah, that's going to happen.
Guest:Same government that told me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Guest:Which in that case was comforting because then you sit in a chair and you talk to somebody who never is like, that's weird.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Of course.
Marc:I mean, I have to imagine it's their primary...
Marc:issue in terms of how they approach it because you know they're you know you're fortunate you're not as you said that your case was whatever the context was and how you experienced it but some people get a drug addiction some people like don't make it some people do kill themselves some people never come out of it so what was the treatment did you do emdr i didn't um that was the next option like so i did cognitive processing therapy and i did prolonged exposure
Guest:And then I was told early on, like, we're gonna try these, and then if we don't make progress through these, we're gonna do EMDR.
Guest:And I'm also open to, at some point, I may do EMDR.
Guest:Have you done it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, do you like it to work?
Marc:Well, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where you're like, is this working?
Marc:But I mean, but they have success with it.
Marc:And I did it for, when Lynn passed and a few months after that, when it was specific, I think it helps if it's specific.
Marc:If it's broad, it's a little tricky.
Marc:Like if it's just sort of like, my childhood was bad.
Marc:If you can lock into an event that you can identify
Marc:as a trauma trigger or the trauma, and you kind of process back from that, I think it does something.
Marc:Even if it's just the process of making the connections, there's a way it goes, you know, whether the buzzers or the light movement, whether that's doing it or the actual methodology of it, I don't know.
Marc:But my sponsor is a practitioner, so I got hip to it, you know, and then later I did it with somebody around, yeah, Lynn's death.
Guest:Well, what I think has the similarity between it and cognitive processing and prolonged exposure is you got to go through the trauma.
Guest:Like, that's really, right?
Guest:You can't.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:You got to get there.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that's what I had been avoiding for 11 years.
Guest:What I found out is the only way out is through.
Marc:But primarily because you didn't think your experience in combat was worthy of having this particular ailment.
Guest:Yeah, at first that was like 100% of what it was.
Guest:And then over time, it was like, well, I don't think that I earned, quote-unquote, earned PTSD, right?
Guest:But I also was like, eh, well, now I'm in politics.
Guest:So even when I got to the point where I was like,
Guest:I should, like, I filled out paperwork at one point for the VA, but didn't answer all the questions, honestly, because I was worried about, I mean, look, I was thinking I want to be commander in chief, like, pretty soon.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, can the commander in chief have, you know.
Marc:Suicidal ideation?
Marc:Right.
Guest:And, like, that's a glass ceiling I'm not really in a hurry to break.
Guest:I imagine they all do in moments.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Well, Lincoln.
Guest:Sure, sure.
Guest:So the treatment took how long?
Guest:It was about five months.
Guest:So it was like a five-month weekly treatment course.
Marc:But leading up to it, though, your life was pretty... I mean, let's go back.
Marc:So your family... You got brothers and sisters?
Guest:Yeah, I got a younger brother, and then I got a mess of what we call unofficial foster brothers, like kids who were in the house growing up.
Guest:My parents took in.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So your parents were in what was their...
Guest:So my parents met as juvenile probation officers, and then my dad was a cop part-time, and then he had, like, a security business.
Marc:See, I love this.
Marc:See, just because, like, you know, people have the wrong idea about Jews.
Guest:Well, before you make me out to be too blue-collar, I want to be...
Guest:My great uncle also is like a Broadway composer.
Marc:That's all right.
Marc:I'm just saying that there's a working class Jewish element.
Marc:As a Jewish kid, there's this idea of exceptionalism, which is true, but I remember when I worked in a deli in Boston, and these guys would come in, these old men, and there was a Jewish cop, there was a Jewish plumber, these guys that come up, but they were probably first generation guys.
Marc:But there was a Jewish working class at one point.
Guest:Oh, sure.
Marc:We weren't always just elitist liberals from Hollywood judging people.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How'd your parents get there?
Marc:Wait, so your great uncle is a big Broadway composer.
Guest:Yeah, so that's why it's always funny for me to like, like my dad, you know, he made the choice to do this public service work, but then like his sister's a composer and then like his brother lives out here and was in the entertainment business.
Guest:Really?
Guest:So his father's brother?
Guest:So his father's brother is the Broadway composer, John Kander.
Guest:Kander and Ebb, like Chicago and Cabaret.
Guest:Those are big.
Guest:Yeah, New York, New York.
Guest:And he's still around?
Guest:He's still writing, man.
Guest:Really?
Guest:How old is he?
Guest:He just turned 95.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:He's like, and if you met, you'd be like, this dude is late 70s.
Guest:That's what you'd think.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's working on a show for next year.
Guest:And he just lives in the city?
Guest:He and his husband, my uncle Albert, live up in Ulster County.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:But they go back and forth.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Pandemic, they pretty much moved up.
Guest:And so what did your grandfather do?
Guest:So Pop was... He was...
Guest:And basically he was a businessman who wanted to do a lot more than that, but he was like, he turned around the family chicken business, which I never really understood other than my dad explained that he once saw where they had an assembly line where they had to slit the throats of chickens and my dad was like, I don't want to be in this business.
Guest:My grandpa didn't either and turned it around, sold it and got out of there.
Guest:And then spent the last 20 years of his career as the development director for the Lyric Opera of Kansas City, which is all he ever really wanted was to be in the arts, but he wasn't artistically inclined.
Marc:So you come from, you're like how many generations of Missouri?
Guest:So I'm fifth generation.
Guest:My kids are sixth in Kansas City, which is pretty rare for Jews.
Marc:How'd they get there originally?
Guest:So down, Milwaukee, down several generations.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:My grandpa wrote a little thing for us once that said, in the beginning there was the word, and the word was Meyer, because Meyer Kander was the first.
Guest:That was the guy?
Guest:Kander in Kansas City.
Marc:Who made it to the mid, they went to the Midwest.
Guest:Yeah, and he knew the whole lineage, and I gotta look back through it, but yeah, that's basically it.
Guest:I think it came from somewhere in Switzerland originally.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:There's a Kander River there.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Or something, yeah.
Marc:So they came over early on, almost in the Wild West-ish.
Guest:Yeah, I think Kanders have been in the US for, it's gotta be like 10 generations now.
Guest:Right, because I think a lot of them came over on a land deal to farm the Midwest.
Guest:when you're fifth generation and Jewish in a town like Kansas City, every Jew I knew growing up was my cousin or something.
Guest:You knew the community because you go to the temple and they're all there.
Guest:I didn't even hardly go.
Guest:I'm Jew-ish.
Guest:I hardly went to temple.
Guest:It was like weddings and funerals.
Guest:When I went to school on the East Coast, all of a sudden I was around all these Jews who would be like, hey, you're a Jew.
Guest:I'd be like, yeah, I sure am.
Guest:Whatever that is, I'm learning right
Guest:now.
Guest:And so the funny thing about it is, so my wife, who we met when we were 17, she came as a refugee of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, her family when she was eight.
Guest:And so I always have kind of jokingly said, in order to marry a Jewish girl from Kansas City, to be safe, I married an immigrant.
Guest:But the funny part about that is my grandfather was the president of
Guest:the Jewish Family Services, which was like the resettlement agency in Kansas City.
Guest:He's the one who prioritized bringing these Jews from the Soviet Union into Kansas City, and then his grandson married one.
Guest:So you have Ukrainian in-laws?
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:And they're all here?
Guest:yeah they're all here oh my god so do they have family there now no family but they know some people oh and so it that's been uh it's been interesting because like they're looking at it and it's the first time i've seen them sort of really acknowledge like that there's things going on there still because up until now it's always been like well that place didn't want it didn't want us that place being the soviet union at the time and now it you know
Guest:cut to they elected Jewish president with 70 plus percent of the vote.
Guest:And so it's like, it doesn't necessarily change their view of where they came from, but they feel more connected to it now, I think.
Guest:Whereas my wife is like, she's like, you know, I was born in Kansas City.
Guest:She wasn't.
Guest:But to her, she's like,
Guest:I got enough.
Guest:I'm not going to deal with that, too.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Interesting.
Guest:Which I get.
Guest:And you got kids?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Two kids.
Marc:So you're growing up in Kansas City.
Marc:And what... I mean, how was... Did you deal with anti-Semitism?
Guest:Not really.
Guest:No.
Guest:Because... I mean, you know, you would... Every once in a while... The same way that...
Guest:When you're a kid, your friends find a thing about you to make fun of.
Guest:Yeah, but nothing real.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Like in Albuquerque, probably very similar, right?
Guest:Like people didn't know enough what a Jew was to know how to be anti-Semitic.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, oddly, that's still sort of prevalent.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:People not knowing what Jews are.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a wide swath.
Marc:I mean, some people would accuse me of not knowing what Jews are.
Marc:Well, me too.
Marc:Because of, yeah.
Marc:But no, I get it.
Guest:Yeah, there was definitely a thing.
Guest:My parents and grandparents dealt with it, especially my grandparents.
Guest:But for me, I was like, I mean, then I went to Catholic high school.
Guest:So it was like.
Marc:So my brother.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, for me, that was like, oh, I was a really good way to get your dad's attention, like taking me out on a date.
Guest:So it was fine.
Guest:And the priests, like, they wanted to convert the Protestant kids, and they figured I was beyond their reach, so I got left alone.
Marc:So what were you doing as you were growing up, though?
Marc:I mean, when did politics become sort of a vision?
Marc:I mean, did you have other ideas for yourself?
Marc:I mean, what were you driving towards?
Guest:Oh, I was going to play center field for the Kansas City Royals.
Guest:Yeah, I was playing baseball, and that was my whole life.
Guest:And then...
Guest:Really?
Guest:Just sort of that?
Guest:Yeah, it was simple.
Guest:I was like, that's- And you were good?
Guest:Played in high school, college?
Guest:I played in high school.
Guest:I was good.
Guest:It became readily apparent- That maybe you're not going to be on the- Yeah.
Guest:About sophomore year, I was like, I really like baseball and I'm pretty good.
Guest:I don't think I'm going to be making a living doing this.
Guest:And then debate came along.
Guest:So I kept doing baseball, but I realized, oh, I'm pretty good at this.
Guest:And
Guest:I did actually get scholarship offers for that.
Guest:For debate?
Guest:Yeah, I didn't.
Guest:Stupidly, I ended up going to a college that had neither a debate nor a baseball team.
Guest:I don't know how that happened.
Guest:Where's that?
Guest:American University.
Guest:In D.C.?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, so then, you know, we started a little debate team, my brother and I, for like a year, and then realized like, hey, we're in the nation's capital where there's a lot of other stuff to do.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You went to college with your brother?
Guest:Yeah, one of my unofficial foster brothers.
Marc:Explain that to me.
Guest:So your parents were- It's like a really weird term to throw around, but I'm so used to it.
Guest:Unofficial foster brother.
Guest:They just didn't come through the foster system.
Guest:My folks were juvenile probation officers.
Marc:Yeah, so they just said like, okay, come live with us.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:That was their deal.
Marc:You can't go home.
Marc:Come at our house.
Guest:No, you've pretty much explained it.
Guest:Because I had friends whose families were struggling in one way or the other, and it wasn't even like we sat down at the table and my parents were like, hey, we're thinking of Mel or Justin or Dan coming to live here.
Guest:They were like, so they're going to be here now.
Guest:We're like, great.
Marc:How many are you talking?
Guest:Over the course of time, there were three or four.
Guest:It was at different times.
Guest:My son gets really confused by this when I refer to who his uncles are and who my brothers are.
Marc:But it's interesting.
Marc:How old were you, though?
Marc:Because to build that bond and to accept it, he must have been pretty young.
Guest:Yeah, it started when I was in elementary school and a couple of kids coming in through elementary school and then high school.
Marc:Wild.
Guest:And yeah, I mean, all the groomsmen at my wedding and my closest friends still.
Marc:That's amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And are you folks alive still?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Are they still working?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, my dad is, so my dad has like an upper neuron issue, but he's able to do a lot from home.
Guest:What is that?
Guest:It's like a version of ALS, but it's like long course, and he can still drive and walk and talk, but it's labored.
Guest:And he was a private pilot, and he buys and sells airplanes, so he can do a lot of it over email.
Marc:Always a private pilot?
Guest:It was his way of rebelling when he was in reform school, I think, when he was 16.
Guest:You went to reform school?
Guest:Yeah, my dad's got a whole other great story.
Guest:He was the rebellious kid who became a cop, and then I think became a rebellious cop, I'm not sure.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:And then, but yeah, he, so he does that.
Guest:And then my mom, she stopped working when I was real young and raised us and they got health issues, but you know what?
Guest:They make it to every one of my kids' games, every one of my baseball games, because I still play and I see them all the time.
Guest:You still play?
Guest:Yeah, play in the- Still think you got a shot?
Guest:I mean, in my mind, deep in the recesses of my mind.
Guest:No, yeah, man, I play in an over 30 wood bat league and I think about it way too much.
Guest:My wife would tell you, I talk about it.
Marc:way too much.
Marc:It's nice, though, if you've got a good sport and got a healthy sense of competition.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I think that's important.
Marc:I don't have that.
Marc:Everything's very threatening to me.
Guest:Well, that gives you things to run away from.
Guest:Yeah, I guess so.
Guest:Or just to take very personally.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean...
Guest:Yeah, that was me until I found baseball again, I think.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So the debate thing led to an interest in politics, or you didn't have that until you came back from the war?
Guest:I had an interest in... I had a somewhat interest, but it wasn't like my family, we would talk politics at dinner.
Guest:It was like my parents were public service oriented, and so we would talk about the news.
Guest:And then, yeah, debate, like policy debate in high school.
Guest:I actually at first thought, I'm really good at giving speeches.
Guest:And then I realized, oh no, I actually like, I'm really into this stuff, this policy stuff.
Guest:And then it was in college when I realized like, oh no, I want to run for office.
Guest:I didn't know what the hell that meant.
Guest:I just, I want to run for office.
Guest:And then by law school, I was like, all right, that's what I'm going to do.
Guest:And I kind of figured out what that would look like.
Guest:And we'd move back to Kansas City.
Guest:What changed with going to Afghanistan was, you know, I was a political science major before that and everything.
Guest:So like I saw politics as, it was like a game.
Guest:It was just an extent.
Guest:I couldn't play baseball anymore.
Guest:This was competitive.
Guest:I knew what I thought.
Guest:And you went to law school?
Guest:Yeah, I did.
Guest:I stayed in DC, went to Georgetown.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So you got a law degree in everything?
Guest:Yeah, got a law degree.
Guest:You're a lawyer.
Guest:I'm a recovering lawyer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't have to sit for the 15-hour course.
Marc:Who knows, the last four or five years would be the biggest boon for lawyers ever.
Marc:And I would miss the whole thing.
Marc:Well, good, because it's the worst kind of law.
Marc:It's just like everyone's suing everyone.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Because that's what people do now, to worm out of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:There's a lot of performative stuff now.
Guest:But also, I didn't really like being a lawyer that much.
Guest:I had a political science degree, and I was like, well, now I guess I do this.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Okay, yeah, sure.
Guest:Well, so then when I went to Afghanistan, that was the first time I'd ever been on the receiving end of decisions made by politicians.
Guest:Yeah, that negatively affected my life.
Marc:Why'd you go to Afghanistan, though?
Marc:You were set up.
Marc:It seems like you could have had a life without that.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:For me, I was in D.C.
Guest:when 9-11 happened, and I had grown up.
Guest:My grandpa had been, like everybody's grandpa, right?
Guest:Been in World War II.
Guest:But I guess to me, it just always made sense.
Guest:There's a war, you go.
Guest:Really?
Guest:And I wasn't from a military family, right?
Guest:I just...
Guest:But you were from public servants.
Guest:Yeah, and I don't think they intended.
Guest:If you had gone back in time and been like, so if you continue in this direction, he's going to the army.
Guest:I'm not sure that my parents were super jazzed.
Guest:How did they react to that?
Guest:They were scared for me, but they knew you're not going to talk me out of it.
Guest:And so 9-11 happened, and I was like, well, I'm going to go.
Guest:I'm going to do this.
Guest:And then when you do the training, you do all of it.
Guest:Where were you ideologically with that, though?
Guest:Well, I was opposed to the war in Iraq.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But when 9-11 happened, where did your brain go in terms of where we stood as a country?
Guest:I don't know how you feel, but I feel like it was so much more simple then.
Guest:It was like we were attacked.
Guest:We hadn't gone into this phase of our democracy where everything was a fight.
Guest:And I felt like we were attacked.
Guest:We're going to war.
Guest:I want to go to war against the people who attacked us.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:So like you, you, you, you weren't down a kind of lefty wormhole with, you know, who's to blame chickens coming home to roost.
Marc:Where is it?
Marc:Was it, was it Saudi driven?
Marc:Any of that stuff?
Guest:No, I was like people my age, like particularly men my age are going to go and who the hell am I to be like, but I don't, I shouldn't have to.
Guest:It's just how I saw it.
Guest:And so then- But it was a choice.
Guest:Oh, it was 100% a choice.
Guest:And professors like at my school, for instance, would look at like, at the time I was on crutches because I had hurt my knee and I had to get surgery and physical therapy to go into the army.
Guest:And they looked at me like I was an absolute crazy person.
Guest:They're like, you're convincing the army to take you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But to me, it just made sense.
Guest:I don't know if I'd been Vietnam era, maybe I'd make a totally different choice.
Guest:But at that time, that made sense to me.
Guest:I didn't think the war in Iraq made any sense, but I also was like, by that point, I was training to go.
Guest:And I was like, well, some of these people I'm friends with are going to go.
Guest:How am I going to be like, they'll go, I'll stay.
Guest:But it was when I was there.
Guest:So when 9-11 happened, I was 20.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:And so...
Guest:I was what you would refer to as a military-aged male.
Guest:In other countries, that's what they'd call it.
Guest:So you went to law school when you got back?
Guest:No, I went to law school while I did ROTC.
Guest:So instead of becoming an army lawyer, I did all the training to become an officer while I was in law school.
Marc:Okay, so you enlisted, you did ROTC, and then you're in law school, and then you go.
Marc:So the war had been going on for a while.
Guest:Yeah, so I got there in 06 to Afghanistan.
Marc:But by that time, hadn't you educated yourself around what might have... Well, I was educated already.
Marc:No, I know that, but at 20, 9-11 happens, but it's just sort of like the politics around the Afghanistan war were dubious.
Guest:At that time, I still felt like, well, this mission still makes sense.
Guest:But that said, it's still a good question, but the frame of mind I was in at that point was like, yeah, I was a guy who was thinking he was going to run for office, but really- So that was there.
Guest:It was there, but I was like, more than that, at that point, I was a soldier.
Guest:At that point, to me, I was thinking much less by that point about the politics of it all and much more like, I was just doing my job and doing what the other people around
Guest:So the ROTC thing started that, that you got a job to do, this is normal and we're good.
Guest:Got a job to do and it became, it was who I was, it became my identity.
Guest:Like I went from being like a law student who did ROTC to like by the time I'm in intelligence school getting ready to go, I'm like, I'm an army officer.
Marc:Was that your choice?
Marc:You could specialize?
Guest:Yeah, I chose.
Marc:Because of ROTC or what?
Guest:Well, as a reservist, which is what I was going in to be, you can sort of, if you find a spot where they need you, they'll send you to the school for that thing.
Guest:And so I didn't want to be a lawyer in the army.
Guest:I felt like there was going to be plenty of time to be a lawyer the rest of my life.
Guest:And I thought I could do a good job as an intelligence.
Guest:I had this idea that sounds so corny, but like in my head, and I still believe this, like I felt like if I did my job well, I could help other people get home safe.
Guest:And back then it was that simple to me.
Guest:I never got the opportunity to feel like I achieved that, but I think most people don't, which is the problem.
Marc:When you say that was what you wanted to do, being an intelligence officer, how did you think that fit in?
Marc:What did you think was going to be the result of your work?
Guest:Yeah, that's a good question.
Guest:Yeah, because you go over and you have an idea of what war is going to be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then, like most other things, it's not that.
Guest:That's not what it is.
Guest:So when I got there- You're not in the trenches.
Marc:No.
Marc:Not anymore.
Marc:It's not World War.
Marc:It's not that kind of war anymore.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And even then, you kind of, in your mind's eye, like in the movies, they never show guys just sitting around bored.
Guest:which is part of it, or hot or cold.
Marc:Well, they're usually in a large tent-like structure, and then all of a sudden they go out in a Jeep, and you're hoping, what is it, an IED?
Marc:Is that what it is?
Marc:It doesn't blow you up.
Guest:Right, and so that I experienced, the whole hoping that I don't blow up.
Guest:I got my fill of that.
Guest:I got that, but I guess as an intelligence officer,
Guest:I went to intelligence school and they teach you all these things and they go, you'll never get to do this because you're a second lieutenant, you're a low ranking officer, you'll never get to do this or that.
Guest:I show up and the thing about war is like the person in charge of a unit, they just got to work with what they got.
Guest:So I show up and they're like, okay, well, we have this job and this job.
Guest:One was like an analyst to work the night shift and the other was,
Guest:We need somebody to go out and figure out who of all these people in the Afghan government and military, who of them are like really corrupt and are working with the enemy.
Guest:And we need somebody to figure that out.
Guest:But we also need somebody to go out and find out the information.
Guest:And I was, what, 25 years old and convinced I was bulletproof.
Guest:So I didn't hesitate.
Guest:I was like, yeah, that job.
Guest:I want that job.
Marc:Oh, so you're going in, sitting down with people with a translator.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:Yeah, that was my gig.
Marc:So are you still in touch with your translator?
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:No kidding.
Guest:Yeah, we're close.
Guest:And his name is Salam.
Guest:And yeah, and so it was me and Salam, like bebopping around.
Guest:And ironically, I don't know if it's ironic, but like...
Guest:Coincidentally, Salam, he had spent most of his time in the U.S.
Guest:in Kansas City.
Guest:So we were like just these two Kansas City guys bebopping around.
Marc:So he's an American Army regular guy.
Guest:No, he was a contractor.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:He was in his late 50s then.
Guest:Uh-huh.
Guest:And by the time I got there, he'd been back in Afghanistan for a few years, like three years already.
Guest:So what's a day-to-day?
Guest:What are the stories?
Guest:Like you're going out and you get an idea, oh, we can go meet with this guy, develop a relationship with this guy, and he'll give us information on this person who we suspect is working with the Taliban in this province or is running drugs along the heroin highway.
Marc:So this is regional.
Marc:You're not solving countrywide problems necessarily, but in your province or whatever you call it,
Marc:This is the job.
Guest:Well, yes.
Guest:And for me, I was like in this weird spot where I was sort of at the top of the chain because I was working with the director of intelligence and his job was to tell like the general in charge and the ambassador and people like that.
Guest:Hey, all these people were working with the highest level.
Guest:Here's what they're really up to.
Guest:So you're dealing with spooks.
Guest:Yeah, I'm like sitting down.
Guest:My boss, my commander over there, he referred to it as thug ant.
Guest:So like in intelligence, you have all this stuff that ends in ant.
Guest:Like signals intelligence is the guys who listen to stuff.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:He made up the term or heard it from somebody, thug ant.
Guest:And he described it as, later he told me, you were building relationships with thugs in order to get information on other thugs.
Guest:Right.
Guest:That was my job.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And so I was convinced, like, that's not combat.
Guest:I went to meetings.
Guest:Now, it took me years and it took then therapy later for somebody to be like, so you were by yourself in the most dangerous place on the planet for hours at a time.
Guest:Nobody knew where you were and nobody could come and save you with people who might want to kill you.
Guest:Or could kill you.
Guest:Could kill, yeah.
Guest:How many people you travel with?
Guest:Just you and Salam?
Guest:Usually just me and Salam.
Guest:And you were told it would be safe.
Guest:No, nobody ever was like, it's safe.
Guest:They're just like, we need to find this out.
Guest:So you're ready to fire.
Guest:Yeah, you're pretty much, you always know where the exits are.
Guest:You have a plan.
Guest:How many guys are in this room?
Guest:How many guys are between this room and my vehicle?
Guest:Can I take all three of these guys?
Guest:Oh yeah, so you don't know if you're walking into a Taliban trap necessarily.
Guest:Right, yeah, or there's all sorts of other bad actors, narco traffickers and different terrorist groups and stuff like that.
Marc:And you talking to all these people?
Guest:Yeah, making friends, man.
Guest:That was my gig.
Guest:Opium movers?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, a lot of that.
Guest:Aspiring terrorist groups?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, or just people who were like, they could get paid a lot by one of the groups.
Guest:I mean, you'd be worth a lot, right?
Guest:And so you're just constantly aware of your surroundings and it brings all of your senses to bear.
Marc:I talked to Chris Hedges years ago about war is a force that gives us meaning, which seems like that is sort of the zone of trauma that you're dealing with, that you're in such a hyper-cortisol-adrenalized state all the time that anything else seems less than, and you build up this weird kind of hyper-vigilance
Marc:that you can't shake, and you crave.
Guest:You crave, and also you come to understand it.
Guest:It's simple, right?
Guest:I describe it, I don't really play golf much, but this analogy works.
Guest:You know, like a golfer, you know, they go out, they got like eight clubs in their bag, right?
Guest:And like different hole, different distance, they're going to select a different club.
Guest:That's like regular life.
Guest:And then you go to a place like Afghanistan, you need like three clubs.
Guest:Like one is anger, one is fear, one is boredom, you know?
Guest:And then you come home and you're supposed to start using all these other clubs again.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But it was much simpler and your brain understood only really needing the three.
Guest:And you're also worried if I start using these others, somebody might kill me because your brain has learned.
Guest:That's what I had to learn in therapy is my brain had learned that if I let my guard down,
Guest:That's what I learned in Afghanistan, is that if I let my guard down, I will be kidnapped and killed.
Guest:And I just had to do a lot of work in therapy to unlearn that.
Guest:Did you almost get kidnapped and killed?
Guest:No, but I constantly thought I was gonna be- But did you see that happening to people?
Guest:No, I guess when I think about it, no, but it was like every day, I mean, you obviously, you hear about it because people, they don't say it's going to be safe.
Guest:Where were you?
Guest:I was in Kabul, but I went some other place.
Guest:They don't say it's going to be safe, but what they do say is, this is what happened to this person.
Guest:This is what, you know, and it's, for me, fortunately, it was for the most part, not people I knew personally, but, you know, they just, you're aware that it's happening.
Guest:But you hear bombs in the distance?
Guest:Yeah, you can occasionally, you hear that.
Guest:So how long were you there?
Guest:I was only there four months, which was another reason why I kept telling myself, that's nothing.
Guest:It couldn't be PTSD.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:Because then I got buddies who did multiple tours and spent years there.
Guest:And so then you're telling yourself, well, how can I claim the mantle of PTSD if they- They're okay?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then you find out later, none of them are okay.
Guest:But you didn't find that out till later.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, it's a big shift, you know?
Marc:I mean, no matter what time or what you're doing, I mean, to operate in that much, have to manage that much fear.
Guest:Yeah, and the thing is, is at the time, you don't recognize it as fear.
Guest:Like, at first, when I first got there, it felt like fear.
Guest:And then after a while, it's like you said, it's your job, and it's what people around you are doing, and it's incredible what can become normal.
Guest:Can't imagine.
Guest:And then also...
Guest:I kind of, I loved it a little.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Well, that's the thing.
Marc:How is that not, how being jacked like that?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Getting away with it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, and exactly.
Guest:And like you, you feel like particularly like in my gig where I was oftentimes not wearing a uniform and like in the army, anything that's not the same as everyone else is instantly the coolest thing.
Guest:So that guy doesn't have to shave and that guy is wearing a gray fleece.
Guest:That guy must be a fucking ninja.
Guest:And so some days that was me and I felt like a cowboy.
Guest:And there were moments that were really scary where I realized like, oh, I'm sitting down with this person.
Guest:I realize who the person is halfway through.
Guest:This is a person.
Guest:Oh, we're investigating this person.
Guest:He knows we're investigating him.
Guest:Yeah, this might be a trap, all that stuff and other things that happened that at the time you think they're normal and then as the years go by- Like what?
Guest:Like being in a convoy and at the time there was a thing where suicide bombers were jumping onto vehicles and detonating themselves.
Guest:And I'm in a convoy, and I'm in the passenger seat, so next to the driver.
Guest:And you feel somebody jump onto the side, and we're in really slow-moving traffic when it happens.
Guest:And just out of instinct, you pull up your rifle, and you zero in, and you're ready to fire, just thinking, I got no time at all.
Guest:And fortunately for me, right before I did, I realized it was a little boy looking back at me.
Guest:So it can be little stuff like that where you're like, you can't help but think about how that could have gone.
Guest:And so that's the sort of thing that would visit me every night in my nightmares.
Guest:But mostly my nightmares were where I did get kidnapped and killed.
Guest:The thing you're most afraid of.
Guest:Yeah, the thing that I spent every day there trying to avoid.
Marc:So you come home after four months and what, you go back to Kansas City?
Guest:Yeah, come back and go within two weeks.
Guest:I'm back at my law firm trying to care about writing legal memos for corporate clients.
Marc:And when do you do your first political thing?
Guest:So I came back in early 07, and I started running for the state legislature in August of 07.
Guest:That's when I really started.
Guest:I'd like announced, but I really started running in August.
Guest:So it wasn't long.
Guest:In looking back, I realized I got right into distracting myself is what I did.
Guest:I recently learned the term over-functioning, and I guess that's what I was doing.
Guest:Yeah, I call it multitasking.
Guest:Sure, that'll work.
Guest:For me, they used to call it working really hard.
Guest:It was supposed to be a compliment.
Guest:Yeah, I'm always busy.
Guest:I'm always busy, man.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that was me, because now I look back and I realize what I wasn't going to do was spend time with myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was going to constantly... And the trauma thing of seeking redemption, which there's an element of... With trauma, I've learned that there's an instinct to want to redeem yourself.
Guest:But then when you add on to that sort of the survivor's guilt part of the military anyway... Redeem yourself how?
Guest:I thought, well, look...
Guest:To me, here's the story I would tell myself.
Guest:I did four months.
Guest:I got friends who were still there.
Guest:There were people who, when I got there, they were there, and they were still there when I left, like Salaam.
Guest:And there were... Oh, redeem yourself to them.
Guest:Yeah, and to myself because I hadn't done enough.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And really, I recognize now, there was nothing I could have ever... I tried to go back at one point.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But there was no way I actually ever would have felt that I had done enough, and it was only through therapy and everything that I realized, like, oh, I actually did quite a lot.
Guest:I've done enough.
Guest:Did you choose to leave or you got sent home?
Guest:Out of Afghanistan?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My tour ended.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah, and I remember... So it's a long story that's in the weeds and boring, but the short version is I was part of a program where it was an individual augmentee from a unit where I got sent in to fill a spot for a long time.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And most of those tours were actually like three months, and I stayed a little extra time.
Marc:So that's weird.
Marc:So you have a guilt that you didn't do enough, and that you met guys over there that you saw in a tougher situation than you, and they didn't get out.
Marc:And then just the sort of adrenaline loss that you're no longer engaged.
Marc:I think that was really the nature of what I talked to Hedges about a million years ago, was just that all of a sudden you're just here and life is not operating at that level.
Marc:I can't imagine just sitting in a law firm.
Guest:fucking i i remember when a partner came in and was like uh you know this is really important and we both we both kind of knew i wasn't going to be there long when i go is anybody going to die and and we kind of looked at each other like yeah i'm probably going to get a new job like i wasn't like fired but it was like this is not so then i left and i became a trial lawyer for a while and that was like a little more fun
Guest:It was more fun than that, you know, like representing real clients and feeling like I was doing something good.
Guest:To me, I was like, that's what a soldier would do.
Guest:He would represent like working people who got hurt.
Guest:And so it was two things.
Guest:It was what you just described.
Guest:It was this is not the adrenaline.
Guest:This doesn't have the meaning.
Guest:It was adrenaline, but I thought in my head meaning, right?
Guest:And then the other part was...
Guest:I had to prove to myself that I wasn't irredeemable, and for me, that became, I have to get into politics, I have to make these huge changes, and that will be worthy of... Right, and also that's what drove you initially, that if what you're telling me, you went into the service because you wanted to get people out or help people out, there was a... It was in there.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And that you grew up in a public service, civic service household where people help people is a premium put on that, which, you know, in a liberal way.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So.
Marc:So then I guess that in light of that, you just kind of picked up the agenda again.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But also you brought up, sorry, that you were out on the other end of policy.
Guest:So that was also an incentive.
Guest:It made me very righteous about it all.
Marc:What was the turn of events on that?
Marc:When did you realize that you could change policy in terms of this isn't right or this is screwed up?
Guest:So I remember the first thread that I drew between the two was... So I remember being in Afghanistan and, you know, the first thing you notice at that time is like, wow, pretty much none of the vehicles I'm in are armored, like almost ever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:And that was... I mean, you were, I think, doing Air America at that time.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I'm sure you were talking about it a lot.
Marc:Yeah, like people were sending people, they were sending stuff to armor the cars.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I remember that, yeah.
Guest:And so that was very clear.
Guest:But then other stuff like missions through really dangerous territory where we were supposed to have helicopters, but they would say, and I don't even know if this was right, but what they would say is, well, most of that equipment's in Iraq, so you're going over the road.
Guest:And I just remember thinking like, oh, this is what it's like to be on the receiving end of politically driven decisions, right?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And no politician could have made a decision that took food off my family's table or anything growing up.
Guest:So that was the first time for me.
Marc:And then I come home- That you put it together.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I come home and I was already going to run, but now it had changed my thinking.
Guest:So I remember at the time, a bunch of people had been cut off Medicaid in my state.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it was being crowed about by the Republican governor at the time as this great accomplishment in budget cutting.
Guest:Right or wrong, I saw like a through line.
Guest:I was like, that is just the same as sending people without armor that they need.
Guest:Now we're taking credit for something that's just hurting people who are already hurting.
Guest:And so by the time I got to the legislature, I was just, every Republican I met was Donald Rumsfeld until proven otherwise.
Guest:I was just so angry.
Guest:And I was on a mission.
Marc:And was that satisfying you, the legislature in Missouri?
Guest:Uh, at times briefly, but not like, I mean, I did two terms and then I ran for statewide office.
Guest:So no, you know, like I am, and I started running for statewide office in my second term, right?
Guest:For secretary of state.
Guest:So I, I pretty quickly, like in my first term, I got a few things done, nothing major cause I was in the minority party.
Guest:And yeah, I felt really stymied and that sounds like a nightmare.
Marc:So, I mean, you've got like, that's the other thing that people don't really realize is like, who the fuck would want to do politics now?
Marc:We're finding that, like, you know, like the level of corruption possible and just craven behavior and and short term grifting and low ball, low money grifting.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I don't think it's ever been different, but anyone who has ideals or ideologically progressive, it's like, why would they even fucking bother?
Marc:And I imagine you've asked yourself these questions.
Marc:Someone's got to do something, but it doesn't seem like anyone's got follow through.
Marc:And it seems like there's a generation of sort of self-serving people.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a lot of issues.
Guest:Yeah, but I mean, there's still a lot of really great people doing things, but I think what's definitely true about what you're saying is that we are at a moment where there's so much cynicism, or maybe the word is like, there's so little progress, to your point, that really talented people are like, well, I'm not going to do it.
Guest:If I want to make the world better, I'm not going to do it there.
Guest:I'm going to do it over here.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But also, it's pretty out in the open now that there's a fairly organized ideological move towards minority rule in a shameless way.
Marc:That there is, you know, a fascistic element that has been in hiding that turns out to be most of the Republicans' agenda for 30 years.
Guest:Well, and it's worldwide right now.
Guest:That's the connection I think we don't make often enough in America.
Guest:What, you mean autocrats?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like we think of it as like Trumpism, but that's Trumpism.
Guest:I mean- Sure.
Guest:Most places live under autocrats.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Like Ukraine versus Putin, Hungary, all these places where- China.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All of it.
Guest:There's this battle.
Guest:Poland.
Guest:Yeah, a battle going on between- Turkey.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:They just had CPAC in Hungary.
Guest:So we as Americans like to think of everything as like, oh, this is our thing.
Guest:But no, we are a battle- This was never our thing.
Marc:And sadly, most Americans are going like, what are you talking about?
Guest:Right.
Guest:We are a battleground in this worldwide fight.
Guest:And so in one way, hopefully that is animating to a lot of people, but the problem is that it also can be really defeating.
Marc:I don't know if it's explained properly.
Marc:I don't know that most people feel the urgency.
Marc:I think that most people, if people, I've decided in this country, if people are okay, they're fine.
Marc:It's enough.
Marc:They don't have to engage in civic responsibility almost on any level.
Marc:And they'll complain about paying their taxes, even if they're good people.
Marc:But, you know, until something becomes plain and usually it's too late.
Marc:Yeah, I just don't want to be.
Marc:I mean, they're already loading people onto trucks who are suspected to not be Americans.
Marc:Like, so if the trucks are already in use, it really comes down to who's operating the trucks.
Marc:That's grim.
Marc:You know what I'm saying?
Marc:Well.
Guest:Yeah, for a long time, I tried to really try and stay sunny and optimistic about it and be like, no, we're going to... And this was really when I was still very much in the fight with Let America Vote, which is the organization I had started and everything.
Guest:And so what choice did I have, right?
Guest:And also I was still in my own... I had this idea of myself and I hadn't gotten any treatment yet.
Guest:So if I wasn't in this fight, what was I, right?
Guest:And I'm not saying that therefore mental health has everything to do with why you're in politics, but I am saying that now it is hard for me not to have a much more sober look at it and say like, yeah, we're getting to a place where if we don't have big changes, it's just going to get really, really, it's going to get harder and harder to make big changes.
Guest:Well, it's going to get horrendous.
Marc:So you came close with the Senate after the September.
Marc:So you were on the trajectory.
Marc:So now we're back where we started.
Marc:Now, what was the moment where you were like, oh, the suicidal ideation?
Marc:Or just the process of it?
Guest:It just...
Guest:It just got to the point where I remember just saying, I don't want to do this anymore.
Guest:I was exhausted all the time.
Guest:Because you can't manage your brain.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And look, I was basically running for president because in the course of about a year, I was giving speeches in 46 states.
Guest:I was in Iowa and New Hampshire all the time.
Guest:Gave this...
Guest:The moment where I knew something was really wrong was I gave the keynote speech in Nashua, New Hampshire at the McIntyre-Shaheen dinner, which is like the big annual Democratic night.
Guest:And so the year before me, I think the keynote was Hillary Clinton and the year...
Guest:after me it was like Joe Biden and one of those years it was Elizabeth Warren and then this year it was me so it was like this was the event this was the like you were the guy yeah like it was live on C-SPAN road to the White House and stuff and I don't know if I was the guy this is our hope but it was my moment to audition for that to have people go like okay he is or is not the guy and I crushed it like I crushed it and I knew I'd crushed it and I felt
Guest:And at that time in my life, and this is probably something you can relate to as a performer who has dealt with mental health stuff, I felt good when I was performing and no other time.
Guest:Yeah, that means you might be doing it for the wrong reason.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I didn't know that then.
Guest:I just thought I must continue to be performing, or in my case, fighting the good fight, engaged in this way.
Guest:and and at this point i had needed this dosage to get higher and higher and higher for it to work and so now i give this huge speech keep killing yeah yeah and and and with bigger and bigger stages yeah and at this point i've also like i've sat down with obama and he's at least been somewhat encouraging about the idea of me running and all this so i'm like i should be right where i want to be it's the zenith of my professional career and like
Guest:The next day, I go to get on the plane to go home, and the TSA guy checks my ID, and he's like, oh, it's the next president of the United States.
Guest:I should be there, right?
Guest:I get on the plane, and the endorphins just drop out of me, and I feel just as empty as I had felt before.
Guest:That was the first time that I was like, okay, something may be really wrong, because if this won't last 24 hours, then something's really wrong.
Guest:And then I got invited to go give a speech in Hawaii.
Guest:So my family and I went to Hawaii, and I actually slowed down for a few days, because it's Hawaii.
Guest:And I realized I'm exhausted all the time, because I didn't sleep.
Guest:I had terrible nightmares every night.
Guest:And I didn't sleep.
Guest:I was going too hard at everything.
Marc:The nightmares of being kidnapped and killed?
Guest:Yeah, like night terrors, sleep paralysis, and all that fun stuff.
Guest:Jeez.
Guest:Yeah, it was no fun.
Guest:But I didn't know.
Guest:I just thought that's what... After a while, you're just like, I guess this is what I am.
Guest:You forget that you didn't used to be like that.
Guest:And then my campaign manager at the time, Abe,
Guest:And I was like, so what if I didn't run?
Guest:And he's like, well, you go back home, run for mayor.
Guest:And I grabbed that shit like a life raft.
Guest:I was just like, oh.
Guest:And in my head, I was like, that's going to fix everything.
Guest:I'm going to go home.
Guest:I'm going to go to the VA.
Guest:And I'm going to become mayor.
Guest:And I'm going to do great things for my neighbors.
Guest:So you're going to go deal with the shit?
Guest:Yeah, that's what I told myself.
Guest:I wasn't ready to tell myself it was PTSD.
Guest:But I was ready to say, there's something wrong.
Guest:And I should go to the VA.
Marc:Oh, so you thought it might be depression, bipolar, who knows?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, maybe I just need to talk to somebody.
Guest:I didn't know what it was.
Guest:But I was like, again, redemption.
Guest:I'm going to go and I'm going to lower the crime rate in my hometown that we just talked about.
Guest:I'm fifth generation there.
Guest:I can get results.
Guest:Get results, I can see them.
Guest:That's why I kept telling myself, I'll get results and I'll see them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And started running for mayor.
Guest:It was going great, like, I mean, but, you know, if you are going to run for president, you decide to run for mayor, like, you really should be the front runner for mayor.
Guest:Like, otherwise, what are you doing?
Marc:Well, that's the other thing.
Marc:It's another layer of pressure on yourself.
Marc:Because now you're going to have to deal with, you know, I just disappointed the fucking old boys network that's about to deliver me to the big house.
Guest:The big, yeah.
Guest:Or like...
Guest:at a more basic level, because you're nailing it.
Guest:Because what I used to say to my wife all the time is, I feel like I'm disappointing everyone.
Guest:So it was like, I'm disappointing my son because I'm not around.
Guest:I'm disappointed.
Guest:But I'm also, if I am around, I'm disappointed.
Guest:Because unlike when you run statewide, when you run for mayor, nobody's like, I'm sure he's busy.
Guest:Because they know you live in town.
Guest:You're supposed to be everywhere.
Guest:And Kansas City has a violent crime problem.
Guest:So I instantly, being hypervigilant and having this soldier mentality of how to protect people,
Guest:I start researching urban violence, and I'm not even mayor yet, and I'm running for it like it's sheriff.
Guest:Like, I'm staying up.
Guest:I can't sleep because I'm thinking about people getting murdered.
Guest:And you're having nightmares.
Guest:And I'm having nightmares.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that's when... And then I didn't keep my promise to myself of going to the VA because I go to fill out the questions, and I'm like, I still want to be president.
Guest:And I'm like, I can't answer honest... Like, I can't... Yes, I'm paranoid.
Marc:It's funny because you knew you weren't ready.
Marc:You knew you could...
Guest:like yeah see that's like that'd be one of those things with me i wasn't in the service obviously but was i'd have to ask like what is my fear yeah and at that point my fear was slowing down because then i'd be it'd just be me and yeah my fear is me 100 yeah and and so i and then that's when the campaign's going great like i the mayor yeah like i
Guest:You don't usually get to run for mayor of Kansas City and talk about it on late night with Seth Meyers.
Guest:It was unfair, the advantage I had by having already had this platform.
Guest:So I should have been, and I kept telling myself, I should be thrilled at this.
Guest:People always want name recognition.
Guest:I had like 100% face recognition.
Guest:People would drive down the street and honk like- For mayor.
Guest:Yeah, they're like, I'm voting for you.
Guest:I'd knock on a door to a voter.
Guest:They'd come out with my book and be like, you know, with my first book, can you sign the book?
Guest:It was like, I should have, because I'd never been anything but the underdog until then.
Guest:I should have loved it, but I was hating life.
Marc:But did you think like, you know, the big shot, the Democrat machine was sort of like, that's that kid.
Guest:He was so close, now he was going to be fucking mayor.
Guest:Oh, the headline on CNN.com the day I announced was, potential 2020 candidate Jason Cantor announces for dot, dot, dot, mayor.
Marc:Oh, no.
Marc:So now you've got this whole other weird shame storm on you.
Guest:And like you said, this sense that am I doing this for the right reasons?
Guest:Am I acting out of fear because I'm afraid of what's going on with me?
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:And so then it all... Okay, really good story.
Guest:So campaign's trucking along, but I'm not.
Guest:And I'm increasingly feeling a burden on my family and all these things.
Guest:So this story doesn't start out funny, but it ends funny.
Guest:So I finally go to the VA.
Guest:And I go in there and...
Guest:Of course, I'm getting recognized a lot, which in this case, you know, not my ideal.
Guest:It's not like the best place to be well known is where you're showing up because you're suicidal at the VA.
Guest:So I'm like pulling my hat down and everything.
Guest:And I sit down with this guy who's doing my paperwork for me and I'm answering his questions.
Guest:And he's like, it seems like maybe you need to see somebody today.
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, I think so.
Guest:So he takes me down to emergency.
Guest:I've answered some more questions.
Guest:Next thing I know, I'm sitting in this windowless room with like a stainless steel toilet.
Guest:The nurse is sitting there with her back to me.
Guest:She ain't leaving.
Guest:She'll turn her back when I got to pee, but this is suicide watch.
Guest:And I'm in scrubs that are four times too big.
Guest:They've taken away like all of my possessions.
Guest:And everybody's kind of recognizing me.
Guest:They're doing double takes, which is, I'm like a little humiliated by it.
Guest:and probably a lot humiliated by it.
Guest:And then this psych resident, this brand new psych resident comes in to talk to me, who's like, I guess he's on duty at the moment.
Guest:And it's pretty clear right away that he doesn't have any idea who I am.
Guest:And at first, like, big relief.
Guest:And we're talking for like 30 minutes, and I tell him my symptoms and stuff that I had never really talked to anybody about.
Guest:And then he, like, we're wrapping up, and he's gonna let me go home because I had said I gotta go pick my son up, and I think he figured, well, he's not gonna kill himself today, he's got a plan.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he goes, do you have like a particularly stressful job or something?
Guest:And I go, well, I'm in politics.
Guest:And he's like, what does that mean?
Guest:So I kind of try to explain it.
Guest:And he goes, well, has it been like particularly stressful the last, you know, however long?
Guest:And I was like, well, yeah, I mean, I was getting ready to run for president, but now I'm running for mayor, but I'm going to quit that tomorrow and start hopefully getting help here.
Guest:And he goes, well, wait a minute.
Guest:What do you mean you were going to run for president?
Guest:He goes, president of what?
Guest:And I'm like, of the United States.
Guest:Now remember, I'm sitting there with my arms wrapped around my knees in pajamas they gave me that are way too big.
Guest:And he goes, he's like, what does that mean, you were gonna run for president?
Guest:I was like, you know, I was going to Iowa, New Hampshire a lot, giving a lot of speeches, raising money.
Guest:And he goes, who told you you could run for president?
Guest:And now I'm pissed that this guy doesn't believe me.
Guest:And so I go, I don't know, man.
Guest:I don't know what to tell you.
Guest:I spent an hour and a half with Obama in his office.
Guest:He seemed to think it was a pretty good idea.
Guest:And this dude takes a beat and then he goes, how often would you say it is that you hear voices?
Guest:And that was my first day at the VA.
Guest:And the next day I announced that I was stepping back from everything.
Guest:And he had no idea who you were?
Guest:No, I think, but then they let me go home.
Guest:So either he Googled me or somebody was like, you know, that's Jason Kander.
Guest:So something said like, he's not a crazy person.
Guest:That's hilarious.
Guest:I mean, maybe he is a crazy person, but not that way.
Guest:It's humbling.
Guest:Oh, for sure.
Guest:So then...
Guest:You pull out of the race.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Guest:Like, drop out of public life.
Guest:Like, drop... Dramatic.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I... And then, like, people would see me out.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I grew a beard and would wear a hat just to, like... Oh, no.
Guest:So you're doing the whole thing.
Guest:Well, just because it wasn't even... It was just, like... But it's a small city, so the people were just... You're like, what happened?
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:The worst part was that everybody was awesome about it when they'd see me, except...
Guest:Everybody, you know, when you tell the world, I'm suicidal, everybody feels like it's their job to make sure you don't kill yourself.
Guest:So you're like maybe feeling just perfectly fine and you're picking out like avocados in the grocery store and somebody leans in and they're like,
Guest:the world is a better place because you're in it.
Guest:And then you have to console them.
Guest:Like, I'm really okay.
Guest:I'm just picking out avocados.
Guest:And so that was... And so, yeah, I grew out the beard to look less like me, to be less often recognized.
Guest:Yeah, but then when they do recognize you, he's really let himself go.
Guest:Well, it was like, the reaction was like, that's Jason Kander.
Guest:He died.
Guest:They didn't say that, but that's what it felt like.
Guest:I felt like they were seeing a ghost.
Guest:And then I felt like I had to project like, no, no, I'm going to be okay.
Guest:When I didn't know if I was going to be okay.
Guest:How long did it take you to shake that shit?
Guest:What'd you do?
Guest:You did cognitive?
Guest:Cognitive processing therapy and prolonged exposure, which have you ever done prolonged exposure?
Guest:No, I don't know what that is.
Guest:It was... So cognitive processing therapy is what people think of as like, you know, it's analytic talk therapy.
Guest:Sure, yeah, yeah.
Guest:Having my...
Guest:symptoms explained to me like going to school right you've done making different choices yes and and then prolonged exposure was the really shitty part which was uh sit there and tell the stories i had avoided telling or thinking about record like with my therapist record a voice memo on my phone of it it'd be like 45 minutes i'd close my eyes he'd ask questions as if he never heard the story
Guest:and I would re-experience.
Guest:I would get, I'd sweat.
Guest:Approaching houses with Salaam and all that stuff.
Guest:Yeah, and my adrenaline would spike.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, and you go into fight.
Guest:Fight or fight, you go into fight.
Guest:And then my homework during the week was to put in my headphones, listen to the voice memo I'd recorded, close my eyes, I wasn't allowed to do anything else, and just listen to it, and then do it again the next week, and it would unlock other parts of it that I had kind of locked away,
Guest:So you'd hear your voice and where you were at when you were going through it?
Guest:Yeah, but also hear myself tell the story, and then it would unlock other details of the story, and so then I had to come back in and tell it again.
Guest:That's sort of like EMDR in a way.
Guest:I think so, just without the lights and the... Well, it's sort of like where you're at now with where you started.
Marc:It's the process of it.
Marc:It's like you go through the thing.
Marc:So the actual listening to yourself, even though if you compare EMDR to anything, there's EMDR people that are like, no, it's a specific thing with lights or buzzers.
Marc:But in the sense that you're kind of reentering the trauma zone.
Guest:over and over again that's what i meant earlier when i said you still got to go to it yes and and and so i would do that and then over time i remember the first time that i came in and said to my therapist his name is nick i said hey can we do a new story because i'm bored with this one and he was like great boredom is the goal like right and that's what i realized like oh the whole idea is to no longer have this have a grip on me and i had been avoiding it for so long and
Guest:And here's one of the most interesting things was I found out that the reason, a big part of the reason I was having the night terrors was because I spent my whole day trying to fend off all these intrusive thoughts and memories and not think about them.
Guest:And then when I was asleep, my guard was down.
Guest:And so they would all rush in because my brain's like, we're dealing with this shit.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:And then when I started doing this- Is that your idea or is that what the therapist told you?
Guest:I learned that in therapy, yeah.
Guest:And for years I thought, and I even wrote in my first book, the way I deal with, because I didn't call it PTSD, I just was like, oh, I got some issues, but nothing in the first book.
Guest:And I wrote, I just don't watch war movies or movies about kidnapping or whatever.
Guest:But that wasn't really working because I actually needed to watch those and process that stuff so that at night I didn't.
Guest:And it turned out like once I started doing that, nightmares decreased a bunch.
Marc:It's interesting, too, because when you hold it in your brain like that or you don't acknowledge it, it's like the truth is you got through it.
Marc:So the more you process it, you're processing it from the place of a guy that made it through.
Marc:As opposed to the guy who's still in it.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My great uncle said to me when I started therapy, he said- The composer?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He said, therapy is just getting a master's degree in yourself.
Guest:And it was one of the smartest things I could ever say.
Marc:What do you do with that degree?
Marc:Anything you want.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You enjoy your life is what you do most of the time.
Marc:Well, great, man.
Marc:And a lot of this is all in the book.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So the book is just basically my journey to post-traumatic growth set against the wild adventure of an undiagnosed psychiatric disorder while you're running for president.
Guest:Just your standard garden variety coming of age tale.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Of a young kid from Missouri.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now-
Guest:Like I work, I'm president of national expansion at this nonprofit that deals with veterans homelessness and veterans suicide, veterans community project.
Guest:That's hands on, man.
Guest:Always busy.
Guest:It's a great way for me to do public service.
Guest:And I'm still in politics.
Guest:Like I have a podcast still.
Guest:We're on a podcast.
Guest:I'm going to plug it.
Guest:Majority 54.
Guest:But I'm not like, I don't feel like I got to run for office in order to be making a difference.
Marc:Well, what do you think about, well, I mean, you're probably going to.
Guest:I might one day, yeah.
Guest:And I'm not trying to be cagey.
Guest:The difference now is I used to constantly obsessively plan about the future because then I didn't have to be in the intolerable present.
Guest:And now I'm enjoying the present.
Guest:And I'm like...
Guest:Maybe I'll do that one day, but I'm coaching Little League, and I'm playing baseball, and I'm doing this work that I care about at Veterans Community Project, and I'm home, and I'm enjoying the shit out of it.
Marc:Maybe one day when- One day that party that wants to save the world- Yeah, maybe I could jump back into some world savings.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:We're going to need it, man.
Guest:We're going to need it.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So think hard.
Guest:No pressure.
Guest:I will spend all this time resting and thinking.
Guest:Thanks for talking, Jason.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:Jason Kander.
Marc:That was good.
Marc:His book, Invisible Storm, A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD, is available tomorrow, July 5th, wherever you get books.
Marc:Also, you can check out Jason's nonprofit by going to veteranscommunityproject.org.
Marc:So listen, folks, we're going to do something new here.
Marc:We're going to we're going to handle this part of the show a little differently.
Marc:All right.
Marc:We're going to do like a little preview of what's coming up on the show this week and what people can expect in the new bonus content on WTF Plus.
Marc:Just hang out.
Marc:I'll tell you in a minute.
Marc:Okay, listen to me.
Marc:Here's what's going on.
Marc:On Thursday's show, Jerry Stahl.
Marc:Jerry Stahl, many people know he's the author of Permanent Midnight and about five or six other books.
Marc:He's one of my best friends.
Marc:He's got a new book coming out called 999, and that's N-E-I-N-N-E-I-N-N-E-I-N.
Marc:Yes, he's coming out with a fun romp through...
Marc:through the concentration camps.
Marc:The subtitle, the subheading is One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and the Bus Tour of the Holocaust.
Marc:Can always count on Jerry for the deep, dark humor.
Marc:And I don't think we've had the full hour conversation treatment.
Marc:And I talk to Jerry all the time.
Marc:We hang out.
Marc:We eat.
Marc:He comes with me.
Marc:He watches me do comedy.
Marc:And he's gotten me through some of the most difficult times of my life.
Marc:And it was great.
Marc:It was great to sit and talk to him on the mics for the long one.
Marc:Yeah, so look forward to that happening on Thursday.
Marc:If you sign up for Acast Plus, we'll have our first bonus content posted, which will be me and my producer, Brendan, giving you some behind-the-scenes details about classic episodes of the show.
Marc:And here's a little teaser, a little taste of me and Brendan riffing.
Marc:It's not just the common complaint.
Marc:of taking something out of context it's that we didn't solicit that you know that's not what we're doing i mean if that happens which it did with sam elliott it's like i i really thought he was gonna say like i love that movie i i mean i right it's like i asked him because i liked the movie and i thought like well maybe me and sam can bond about a western and then like i was like wow okay
Marc:It was such an innocent question, I could not believe it.
Marc:And then all of a sudden, in the eyes of quickbait world and the press, it's like, I set them up somehow.
Marc:And I'm like, I did nothing.
Guest:No, and in fact, we wouldn't want that to be a thing we do because I'll be perfectly honest.
Guest:We've been told there are guests who won't come on the show now because of that interview.
Guest:So it doesn't help us.
Marc:If you want to come see me live, I will be...
Marc:In Vegas on Friday and Saturday, July 15th and 16th at Wise Guys.
Marc:In L.A., I'll be a Dynasty typewriter for two shows, Saturday and Sunday, July 23rd and 24th.
Marc:I'll be at Just for Laughs in Montreal for my gala on Saturday, July 30th.
Marc:I'll also be doing solo shows up there on July 28th and 29th.
Marc:More to come on those.
Marc:Then I've got tour dates coming up in August and September in Columbus, Ohio, Indianapolis, Indiana, Louisville, Kentucky, Lincoln, Nebraska, Des Moines, Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, Tucson, Arizona, Phoenix, Arizona, Boulder, Colorado, and Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Marc:Then in October, I'm in London, England, and Dublin, Ireland.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com slash tour for all dates and ticket info.
Marc:Hopefully, I'm going to get Lara Boyd.
Marc:bites to come with me on some of those gigs because I got to start tightening it up got to start whittling it down to about 70 minutes from the hour and a half from the 90 plus I'm doing now again please folks listen listen to me spend time with people today if you were thinking about isolating okay okay I will play some guitar for you
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
guitar solo
Marc:Boomer lives.
Marc:Monkey and La Fonda.
Marc:Cat angels everywhere.