Work in Progress: S.E. Cupp

If it feels like news headlines are getting more and more terrifying with each passing day, you aren’t alone. To try to get some help making sense of it all, Sophia is reaching across the proverbial aisle to conservative TV commentator, author, and nationally syndicated columnist S.E. Cupp.

Cupp was raised in a conservative home and then rose the ranks in conservative media, and she’s courageous enough to state that her values don't align with the current administration. When she first pushed back, she went from a right-wing media darling to being labeled a traitor, and today she shares her story, including the toll the threats and vitriol took on her mental health, ultimately leading to a breakdown.

Plus, S.E. gets unexpectedly emotional talking about what inspired her new podcast 'Off the Cupp,' shares her advice on what to do when feeling hopeless, and her work in progress.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello Whipsmarties,

(00:16):
welcome back this week. Oh man, am I excited about
this week's guest. Like many of you, I have been
trying to keep up with the fire hose of news
and fear and stress and all of the things. If
you are a VA worker who's funding got cut this week,
I see you and I'm so sorry. If you are

(00:37):
a student who doesn't know if your pelgrant is going
to come, I see you and I am so sorry.
I see you all. I know people are overwhelmed, and
I needed to turn to somebody for some hope and
some advice and I don't know, maybe a little bit
of strategy. And I figured it would be really important

(00:58):
to reach across the pro be all ile to do that.
And so I'm sitting down today with a journalist I
admire who was raised as a conservative woman, none other
than Sarah Elizabeth Cupp. You may know her as a
TV host, a political commentator, or a writer. She has
her show se Cup Unfiltered. She's featured often on Politico

(01:20):
dot Com, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and this year she
has started an amazing podcast right here on iHeart called
off the cup honestly because she needed a break from
the news, from politics, from being triggered from all of it,
and somehow leaning into life has reinvigorated her for all

(01:42):
of that too, including yes, the political And it's that
sort of full circle that I am in need of
the inspiration of. So I asked her to join us
today to talk about all of it career, family, identity,
mental health, and how we can really be great at
the kits for our communities in the future of this year,

(02:04):
the next four years and beyond. So let's sit down
with our friend Essie. Sarah, thank you so much for
joining me on the show today. I have been so
excited about this interview, and since the news is a

(02:29):
fire hose, I'm like, I don't even know where we
should start.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
Pick up pick pick pick up place. I mean, okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
We could just throw a dart at the wall and
we'll hit something interesting. At this point, Well, where I
normally like to start with people is actually to rewind
from the present, because I sit across from so many
folks like yourself, who are accomplished and who have these incredible,
you know, resumes and lists of accolades. But I'm curious
if you got to, you know, bend space time and

(03:00):
sit with your eight year old self, if you would
see in her the sort of inklings of who you
are today, your career, your personality, or could you have
never expected this at eight?

Speaker 2 (03:14):
That's a great question.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I'm jealous because I do a podcast like this as
well and never thought to ask that one. It's a
great one.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yes and no.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
I was a bit of a ham as a kid.
I was a performer. I did, I danced ballet, and
I acted. I sang. So the idea that I would
have a forward facing, front facing job would not have
surprised me, but I would have assumed it would have been.

Speaker 2 (03:50):
More creative in the creative arts.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
But I was always very curious, and I was interested
in the news.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
At a very early age, and so I don't.

Speaker 3 (04:02):
Think I would have put together that it would have
led me here to a career in journalism and definitely
not to a career on television. But I think if I,
if I looked back, there were inklings of who I
would become. I didn't know that i'd be a mother.
That's something that came to me much later in life.
I didn't know that I'd love being a.

Speaker 2 (04:22):
Mother, But no, I think there were shreds of it.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Was I was very independent, I was an only child,
so yeah, some of it, Yes, some of it I
could say interesting.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
And what do you think drew you to the news?
Was there this sort of breaking news current events aspect
of it all. Was it that you found the inner
workings of politics really interesting? What? What was this part?

Speaker 2 (04:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (04:54):
For me, it wasn't even the stories themselves, it was
the way they were being covered. I remember it ten
or eleven, lying on my living room floor with my
parents watching the Gulf War and being less interested in
the geopolitics of it that I was in the way
Bernie Shaw was reporting on it for CNN, which is

(05:18):
like wild because now here I am. But I mean
that's a real early memory of loving, like getting obsessed
with news coverage of major events, and that carried with
me through, you know, all of the history of my
young adult life, wanting to see how people covered those stories,

(05:39):
and in particular watching women like Diane Sawyer and Jane
Pauley cover big stories and the places they would find themselves.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
I love to travel.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
As a kid, I thought that, you know, traveling as
a newsperson sounded amazing. I know, when I was seventeen,
a magazine came out about the news, and I spent
my own allowance to get a some description to this magazine.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Like I was kind of a nerd, a media nerd.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
And when I got to college and I worked at
the school newspaper, I knew, this is what I want
to do.

Speaker 2 (06:10):
This is what I was made to do. I was
built to do this.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
Television wasn't on the radar at all, but journalism, you know,
it was clear by the time I could choose that's
what I wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
Okay, And what do you remember then about your first
TV appearance?

Speaker 3 (06:28):
So I had just written a book with a co
author and Simon to choose to publish it, and it
was a political book, and they decided, well, we need
to go on TV and promote it.

Speaker 2 (06:38):
So our first appearance was on Morning Joe.

Speaker 3 (06:42):
And all I remember, Sophia is is my co author
being very nervous.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
And me being not at all nervous. And I thought, in.

Speaker 3 (06:52):
Those moments, this is either going to go terribly that
badly for me because of my hubris, Like why am
I not nervous or it's going to serve me well.
And it served me well. I didn't get nervous. I
could put sentences together, and they just kept asking me
back to talk about the next political story. I think

(07:12):
I was something of a novelty then. I was a
young female conservative in Manhattan and who had just written
a book defending conservatism, and.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
So it was a bit of a novelty.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
I had to prove that I was smart and that
I could hang through every news cycle. But yeah, they
just kept bringing me back to talk about politics, and
I did because it helped promote my writing.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
And that's all I cared about, was the writing.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
I didn't foresee TV really taking over, you know, my
career the way it has. But it's been a great
and very lucky, fortunate turn of events because not only
do I get to write, which is what matters to me,
but I also get a platform to tell stories visually

(08:02):
and orally and you know, shine a light on issues
that really matter to me.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
I love it, and it's it's exciting to me, you know,
for us to sit down because there's this sort of
narrative out in the world that you know, folks who
are I think ideologically perhaps identified by the public, but
not known in the incrementalism required to you know, be
a full human or perhaps form our opinions. People might think, well,

(08:32):
there's no way Sarah's going to go on Sophia's podcast,
And there's no ways if you would go on, Sarah.
It's like they'll just assume we don't want to speak
to each other because we quote come from different sides
of the aisle. And what excites me, particularly in a
moment like this, is we're both talking about many of
the things we agree on, particularly you know, the founding

(08:54):
ideals of this country and what liberty looks like and
all of these things. And I'm saying all of this
because I'm looking at the question I had meant to
ask you next, which was what has been the most
challenging time of your career so far? And I was like,
I wonder if it was maybe when you had to
sort of speak out about the insanity of this cult

(09:14):
of trump Ism in the last election, you know, none
of us being able to forward think to where we
are in present day, which is the reason I'm just
going ahead and saying all of this just to say,
who to thunk it?

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yeah, here we are.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
It seems like a silly question to ask, but I
do want to know the answer. And it's okay if
that answer is right now, because our our collective, our
America's house is on fire. Like, how do you, as
someone who came up as a self identifying conservative who

(09:51):
has pushed back on a lot of this insanity?

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Like all of it? Like almost, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Okay, a few things, and you pick where we start.
How did you find the courage to say this is unacceptable? Also,
this is lawless?

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Huh? You did it?

Speaker 1 (10:11):
Then we've unfortunately come back to the bad place. How
are you doing it now? Is it a threat to
your career because people have certainly told me that my
outspokenness about politics has threatened and hurt my career forever.
But I think it's my duty as a citizen.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Like, girl, what are we doing next?

Speaker 1 (10:29):
Can you just give us all sort of a lay
of the land for you since twenty sixteen and how
you view it now that we've been through this once before.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
There's a lot in there, there's a lot in there.
There's a lot in there. And let me start by saying,
I'm paid to do what I do.

Speaker 3 (10:47):
The courage you have in doing this and waiting into
this space. This is explicitly not what you're paid to do.
So taking that leap, upsetting the apple cart of your career.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Was a huge risk.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
And I'm sure it's paying off for you personally, professionally.

Speaker 2 (11:06):
In all the ways, but huge, huge risk for you.

Speaker 3 (11:10):
It's a risk for me because I was inside of
this establishment, both a media establishment and a political establishment
that now sees me as a trader. And there's a
physical risk because I get death threats and attempts silence

(11:31):
me and actual attacks. That part's not fun, but I
am this is what I'm paid to do, and I
could do it a couple of ways. I have a
lot of friends who came up like I did, and
to Si Wall, just keep going where the power is,
and I'll start justifying stuff. Stuff that I know is

(11:56):
not right, that I know at very least isn't conservative,
but I also know isn't right, isn't good for the country,
maybe isn't good for our party. I'll just start justifying
it because it'll help me keep my job, and it'll help
me keep my friends. It might even bring me more
money and power out of blah blah blah, lots of
people did that.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I could have decided I'm out. I don't want to
do this.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
I don't want to put my hand on the hot stove.
I don't want this heat. I don't like what's going on.
But I also don't want to be at the center
of it or involved in it. I'll go do something else.
I decided to stay and say what I believed, and
it's come with professional and personal peril, but I need

(12:42):
to sleep at night, and I need to know, Okay,
what did I do with this platform that in a
way I lucked into What am I going to do
with it?

Speaker 2 (12:52):
And how am I going to use it responsibly?

Speaker 3 (12:56):
So the idea that I would justify what Trump and
then Republicans have done never crossed my mind. That option
was never a possibility for me. I couldn't do it,
and I believe so deeply in conservative principles.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
And let me just say one thing.

Speaker 3 (13:15):
I am grateful to Donald Trump for one reason, because
we've all had to shed some of the things that
quote unquote defined us and talk to each other like people,
like empathetic, compassionate people. You and I agree on so
much that we would not have identified eight years earlier

(13:37):
because we wouldn't have You were on this side, I
was on this side. I don't know that we would
have sat down for a conversation. We've had to strip
some of that away to say, what do we agree on?
There's so much and that stuff is actually so so
very important. So I you know, I've gone through many
phases in my career where I was a right wing

(13:59):
media darling. I moved from Fox to MSNBC. I was
the token conservative and I got the hate from the
far left. Moved to CNN, found myself being a bit
more centrist as a reaction to what was going on,
and then became you know, just from the jump anti

(14:20):
Trump resistance, this isn't right.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
And now all the.

Speaker 3 (14:23):
Hates coming from me from people I used to know.
So it's been disorienting. It's taken a toll on my
mental health. The hardest part of my career has been
the last eight years, from twenty fifteen, I guess ten
now to now, because not only has it been hard

(14:44):
to professionally cover the flood, the zone chaos of it,
but it's personal for me. A lot of these people
were friends and colleagues, and it's been super disorienting to
be in one place and now I'm ostracized and it's fine,
but figuring out who I.

Speaker 2 (15:01):
Am, where do I belong?

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (15:04):
And I also had a mental breakdown, like I had
a nervous breakdown in twenty twenty one and had to
figure out do I need to do this anymore? And
can I and be healthy? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (15:16):
And now a word from our sponsors that I really
enjoy and I think you will too. I love how
Frank You're willing to be about so much of this
that point, especially for some reason, everyone everyone will say
to people in media, particularly women in media, oh, will

(15:38):
you asked for this?

Speaker 2 (15:39):
Yeah? Comes with a job, right.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Nobody asked for this. Nobody asked to be stocked or
rass to be threatened with death. I'm there. I actually had,
particularly during you know, the fight against him, you know,
fifteen into sixteen in the last administration, when I became
one of the major like repeats, constant articles written on
Brightbart targets. I had some friends of I would say

(16:06):
ours people on all sides of the political spectrum say, well,
you kind of have to wear it as a badge
of honor because if they're coming after you, it means
you're an incredibly effective messenger. You tell the truth. Well,
you're not such a policy wonk that people too now
because it's all numbers. You're communicating effectively and they don't
like it, so they want to scare you. And I said, Wow,

(16:27):
it's really wild that a media establishment would say we
need to attack this citizen for saying that, you know,
dictatorship tactics or dictatorship tactics by making crazy people want
to kill her.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Ye, And you've been there, and I.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Have certainly had to learn to deal with anxiety. I
have had to learn to deal with terror. I have
made excellent friends in many arenas of local and federal
law enforcement. It is so it's so crazy to have
to learn to navigate those things. And I know what

(17:06):
it's like to not want to leave my house. How
are you? I admire that you're able to just tell
it like it is, and I admire that you're willing
to talk about it and be honest. So what does
in your definition, what does a nervous breakdown look like?
How do you realize it's happening? And how do you

(17:28):
get on the other side of it? Because there are
people at home who I know are desperate to understand
this better.

Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, I do too, And it's why I talk about
it a lot, because when you talk about it, it
gets easier to talk about it, and talking about it
is the first barrier to getting mental health help. Yah,
So talking about it is paramount for me. It was
twenty twenty one, and it's not like one thing happened.

(17:55):
I had been an anxious person, unknowingly for most of
my life, and as such, I had created habits that
I thought were keeping me safe. They were not catastrophizing,
which is you know, I would do this all day.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
I would occupy.

Speaker 3 (18:17):
My brain with the worst thing that could happen at
any given second. So if I'm driving, it's a car accident.
If my son's at school, it's something happening at school.
But it would at its worst, it would be twenty
four seven. And it was emotionally, physically, mentally exhausting. But
I told myself, if I don't do that, it'll happen.

(18:38):
The bad thing will happen. So then I was bargaining
with my anxiety, making deals with my anxiety. If I
do this to myself, it won't actually happen. And I
didn't realize I didn't process that I was doing this,
and I, in fact thought, this is what responsible people do.
They are constantly thinking about what could go wrong, preparing.

(19:00):
Doesn't everyone go into a restaurant and look for all
the exits, you know, just stuff that I thought was like,
I'm a responsible this is adulting.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:11):
By the time, you know.

Speaker 3 (19:15):
I'd been doing this for a very long time to
myself and other awful habits too, my body said enough.
One day, I had an anxiety attack in public.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Went home.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
My vision was I couldn't see very well, I couldn't
hear very well. Things were jumbled. I laid in bed
for about three days. I couldn't focus on anything. I
didn't understand. I'd turned on the TV. I didn't understand
like the news. I was instantly very sad, and I
had not been like depressed or anything.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I was overwhelmed. Yeah, and the good news is it
was so severe and debilitating. I knew I needed help
right away.

Speaker 3 (20:02):
And so there was no like I'll sleep this off
or I'll take a break. This was what is happening
to me, and I need help today.

Speaker 2 (20:13):
So I did. I got several doctors, embarked on.

Speaker 3 (20:20):
A therapy journey, a medication journey, and for the past
four years I've been in therapy to deal with this
severe anxiety that is at its worst totally took over
my life. I didn't know you didn't have to live
that way. And so my message is always talk about it,

(20:42):
because if I had known some of the habits, some
of the tricks we did as anxious people, I might
have gotten help earlier, before I was twenty years into
these habits when it's so hard to unlearn them. Yes,
and I'm writing a book now about anxiety, and it's
about my journey to learn how to live without anxiety

(21:07):
because I learned to live with it really well. I
got great at it, of course, right, but and it's addicting.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
It can be addicting.

Speaker 1 (21:14):
Well, what it does, even just in your body hormonally,
when you are constantly in fight or flight and you
are pumping adrenaline exactly right when you start to stop
doing that, you're exhausted because you're feeling the exhaustion of
the four years that you've been running on pure adrenaline
that you've essentially been over caffeinated, and you're feeling the

(21:35):
exhaustion of a body that is missing something that's been
keeping it in forward motion. It kind of feels like
you get hit by a bus, yeah daily, start to
not be a level ten anxious person all the time.

Speaker 2 (21:50):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:51):
And I think that's part of what's so important to
talk about as well, is what it feels like to
heal and how healing can sometimes be the beginning of
it's painful, very And I think it's part of why
I admire the way that you talk about this. It's
part of why you know, I have chosen to be

(22:15):
very frank about what it was like to leave a
workplace that was very toxic and violent for me because
it was making me so sick, and what it took
to recuperate from that, and and the sort of aha
moment I had when I finally said I'm at a
breaking point and people who I'd been asking to help

(22:36):
me change it for four years, when we had no idea,
and I was like, what have you not been listening?
A and then B I had to look inward and go, oh,
how has my adrenaline pump been masking how bad?

Speaker 2 (22:56):
This is exactly right, and.

Speaker 1 (22:59):
It it's weird because it's all the things, particularly as
women in these competitive industries and these very cutthroat spaces
that you get rewarded for. You're such a good soldier,
you're such a good tugboat, you're never tired, you're you're
a good troop leader. They like to use a lot
of like military terminology with us about how tough you are,
and you know that old like.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
You're not like the other girls.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
And then you're like, oh, wow, that's patriarchy. That's trying
to kill us all, including you. Cool, but it takes
a while to realize, Oh, those things that I used
to wear like a badge of honor have been doing
such harm to me.

Speaker 2 (23:34):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (23:36):
I'm going to go back to what you said earlier.
I love watching you nod because again people are going
to be like, well, you guys wouldn't agree on anything,
and we're sitting here going we agree on so much, Yeah,
including how detrimental some of these systems are, including as
you said, things have been stripped away. We can't deny
what toxicity is. We can't deny how upended our cysams are.

(24:01):
You know, there's that great I don't know if it's
a meme or a phrase or whatever we want to
call it. When they go around Instagram. I don't know
how they get redefined, but where people say, you know,
you can't claim to be the party of small government
and tell people who they can love, where where, and
how they can live, how they can dress, what they
can read, what they you know, where they can get

(24:22):
safe water and where not like the list, you can't
say that you know. And then somebody said, well, now
you have to add you can't claim to be, you know,
the party of limited government and have created twenty five
percent of the entire national debt in four years in
the country that's existed for two ald and fifty. How
do you you know you're talking about the personal realigning,

(24:45):
you know, clicking things into place in a healthier way.
How as someone who did come up on the conservative
end of this pendulums, how have you begun to click
things back into authentic reality? And say, is anybody going
to pay attention to the difference between what we say

(25:07):
and what we do? Because everybody out there, particularly people
who listen to my podcast, like they know what I
think about this stuff. For you making sense of this.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Stuff, No, that's been the trickiest part because I can
scream at the top of my lungs like, none of
this is conservatism as I learned it, and the conservatism
that I came up on, you wouldn't dislike. You might
disagree with some policies, but it's very inclusive.

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Okay, before you move on to now, can you tell
me how you defined it in the space and place
you came up.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
Things you just said, lowering the debt and deficit, limited government,
small g government. That's what I was for. The government
should not be in the business of telling you how
to live your life. That's how I was a supporter
of gay rights from a child.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
I grew up in ballet.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
But but in my political career, long before a lot
of Democrats, in fact, were I've I've always been in
favor of gay rights because I believed in limited government.
I'm pro life. All that means is I won't go
out and get an abortion. I've that's that's my personal choice.
I've always supported Roe v. Wade and having that as

(26:25):
an option for women. Who am I to tell you
what to do or what not to do. I would
never I'm not religious, so that it doesn't come from
any kind of religious ideology or anything like that.

Speaker 1 (26:38):
That that feels like an important thing, just to I
love a little asterisk in a moment like that. It's
it's irony. It's ironic to me that the religious right
weaponized abortion as an issue. You know, six years after
the passage of jobs, they never cared, but once they
lost their last appeal on UH trying to uphold segregation,
they decided they needed a new cause. The deepest irony

(26:59):
of this, as a kid who grew up in a
house with two religions in LA and thought I should
probably study more to understand why people fight over this
is that the only mention of abortion in the Bible
is how to. Yeah, so technically it's a pro abortion text,
but you know, we'll leave that for another time.

Speaker 2 (27:15):
Yeah. I know, it's a lot, it's it's all fraught. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
But my version of conservatism coming up was I think
you'd look at it even then and say, Okay, this
is I understand this, and this person isn't foreign to me,
isn't a monster. It was a compassionate conservatism. I believed
in social safety nets and reducing poverty and things that

(27:45):
now are are so identified by today's Republican Party as
woke and weak. You know, to me, it was very
normal and not scary, and our difference is policy. We
could identify similar problems, but we'd come at it from
different policy solutions. Now it's not just that I'm screaming

(28:09):
this is not conservative. Do you care anymore that this
is not conservative? Because they clearly don't know. It's the
thing that you were saying, the intellectual honesty, the consistency,
the hypocrisy.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
You just said this was.

Speaker 3 (28:22):
Fine, and now it's not fine because it's your guy
or their guy. You just said this was awful, but
it's okay if our guy does it. I mean, this
stuff makes me want to light my hair on fire.
It's designed to it's designed to make you just want
to say, gad. I'm tuning it all out, like I
can't even make sense of it. Unfortunately I can't tune

(28:44):
it out. That's my job to make sense of it.
But that's been the disorienting part. It's like I'm going
like this every day?

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Is this thing on? Does anyone listen?

Speaker 3 (28:54):
Does anyone care about forget jettison conservatism? I know y'all
don't care about that anymore. Do we care about intellectual honesty,
consistency and aiocracy? No? I don't think we do. So
I'm on a very lonely island. I'm not the only one.
There are lots of folks, you know, occupying the space

(29:14):
that I occupy now, but it's a very isolating place
to be in, having come from a place where I had,
you know, a big team, lots of friends, lots of colleagues,
lots of fans. We were all united in a purpose
and had a common goal.

Speaker 2 (29:32):
We don't even speak the same language anymore.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
And now for our sponsors, there used to seem to
be a willingness to say, hold on, we're getting a
little too hysterical in the ways we're fighting. We need
to be factual. And now you know, you've got defenders
of the modern day Republicans. I'll call them the Trump Trumpers,

(30:00):
I guess, because I understand that's not what the Republican
Party has been. But you know, you've got one of
his defenders on CNN today claiming that Elon Musk did
not throw up not one but two Heyle Hitler's, which
we know he did, which you know, the images of
which that are being disseminated in Germany as people call,

(30:22):
you know, ring the alarm bells. People are being charged
with crimes in Germany just for showing the images because
they're so violent there for the law. And you know,
he said this.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Trutherism around it. I saw it and I know you're
talking about and I was like.

Speaker 1 (30:41):
I'm sorry, are we tokenizing the truth like that? Can't
be it. You know, you see an RFK go crazy
about the polio vaccine. You can't say it doesn't work.
You cannot. There's no fact, an alternative fact. And conway
there there are concrete facts, right, and we have to

(31:04):
we have to assess, as you said, social services based
on human health, health outcomes CDC data, success of social
service programs. Should they not be working, should they be inefficient?
Let's make them more efficient, Let's not light them all
on fire.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
But that's that is the desire of a lot of
people on the far right now, is destruction.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
That is a nihilism. Well, I think for some people
it's fun.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
But for others there's a contingent that thinks our government
is broken.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Both sides in establishment parties.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Were ineffective, and there's some truth to the ineffectiveness of
our establishment politics. Of course, the answer isn't lighting it
all on fire, which I mean, just take today and
Trump's immediate dissolution of federal grants, federal grants that are
obligated and already awarded that then have to be paid

(32:07):
out with no concern for what happens next.

Speaker 2 (32:11):
And it was the same thing with Dobbs. There was
no overturning. Dobs had no Okay, what comes next?

Speaker 3 (32:17):
How do we then provide for the millions of people
who are just going to be left with nowhere to go,
nothing to do. There's no thought of that. And for Trump,
I think there's fun in the chaos and this idea
that like, I'm going to do it the law, figure
out the legality later, whether it's legal or not, I

(32:39):
don't care.

Speaker 2 (32:40):
I'm going to do it.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
And I'm daring you to challenge me, because we all
know what that looks like by now, and it's rough.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
It's rough.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
The that phrase fun in the chaos really strikes me
because what it seems to be again as a person
who's you know, job, like the way I pay my
bills is not working. In politics, I've been a political
volunteer for over twenty years. People love to come at
me and say, how much money are you making for this?

(33:09):
None I spend my own money to do this right,
and I've lost quite a few, you know, the pretty
sort of endorsement deals that happen in the line of work.
I don't get those big ones because I won't stop
saying words like abortion.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
And exactly on your P and L sheep, this is
an L for you.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
It's a big L. But it matters to me because
that's what I'm going to I'm going to sell us
out to I don't know, advertise something for what. And
I think what's hard for me is not only that
there seems to be glee in the chaos. There seems
to be this energy of retribution, this joy in harming people,

(33:50):
because not only have you overturned jobs and have you
put the lives of women around the country at risk.
I have friends who, you know, my friend Amanda Zarofski
lost her fallopian tube. She may never be able to
be a mom because they wouldn't give her a DNC
after a miscarriage because she'd crossed the line. I mean
things that are just so appalling. Yeah, the suffering. They

(34:14):
know people are suffering and they don't care. And then
when we say you seem to enjoy this, they say
of course we don't enjoy it. We're standing up for families.
And then they propose cutting twelve billion dollars in school
lunch assistance. Right that they know is where so many
children in our country get their only guaranteed meal on

(34:36):
a weekday, kids that go hungry, and they are sitting
here saying not all those kids deserve to eat.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's worse than that.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I saw someone on a congressman on CNN today who
was asked, you know, what would you tell kids who
get a lot of their nutrition? And I work in
child hunger as well. I'm ambassador for no kid hungry,
so I work in this space. She said, what would
you tell a kid who gets boodh assistance from programs
like Snap? And he said, well, when I was a kid,

(35:10):
I had a paper route and then I got a job.
And she said, we're talking about like five year olds.
You're not telling a five year old to get a job.
There's this sort of cavalier, blase, go work for it
attitude where there's not only no attempt to see the
humanside of what's happening, there is total resistance to that.

(35:32):
Do not show me the face of suffering people, do
not show me the cost. I don't want to know.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
I don't care.

Speaker 3 (35:39):
That's how it is feeling as I watch again people
I know inside MAGA operate where the cruelty is the
point and the punishment is the point. In a lot
of cases, it's really hard for me to justify. But
like I said, compassion is now weak, social safety nets

(36:00):
are now woke. This isn't how I was brought up,
either by my parents or in politics. And it's just
so nihilistic, yes, that this is how you must act.

Speaker 1 (36:12):
Now what bothers me too about this idea that our
social safety nets are woke? These are supposed to be
smart business people, right, Yeah, And look, I'm not a
billionaire business person. I am very aware no matter how
many times Donald Trump, who was playing with his name
on it, calls me and my friends the elite, I'm
way closer to being homeless tomorrow than I am ever

(36:32):
being a billionaire.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
Like that's just the stats. Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (36:39):
This man is supposed to be a smart business person.
Now what I know from my years of you know,
making some small little like angel investments in that world,
right business investing, You would never invest in a company
that you were not expecting to get some version of
a return too, And yes, sure, sometimes an investment it

(37:00):
doesn't work, sometimes it does. The ideas that it's going
to work better than it doesn't, the idea that the
American people are supposed to pay taxes into these United States.
The whole point of being in the United States is
because the United States provides for its people, your roads,
the street lights in your city, your drinking water. We

(37:22):
pay into infrastructure, and the return on our investment is
to be able to live theoretically in a country where
you're not gonna get t boned because all the lights
are out, and you're not going to get listeria from
your drinking water, and you're not going to see people
be abused for other rich people's.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Enjoyment or their enjoyment.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Yeah, like social safety nets are our return on the
investment of our taxes, and they've somehow made it seem
like nobody should get a free ride. It's not about
a free ride. If your neighbors lost their job and
was hungry, you'd invite them over for dinner, hoping they

(38:05):
would do it for you. It's just like, it's the
whole point of being in a society. You don't want
to live in a society. I'm like, Okay, move to
antarcticle and live off the grid and see how long
you survive.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it used to be we we
could have conversations about how to solve these endemic problems.
And on the right, I might say, yes, people are hungry,
but how are we going to pay for it? And
on the left you might say, people are hungry, it
doesn't matter, like we just need to feed them. We'd
come together over some version of a compromise that would

(38:39):
do all the things, it would be paid for. We'd
figure that part out. Because you don't think about how
it's paid for it you run out of resources and money. Yeah,
but you also feed the hungry people because they are
in the immediate need. We don't even agree on the
problems anymore, let alone the solutions, because me even caring

(39:01):
about the problem.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
Makes me a snow spoken week.

Speaker 3 (39:04):
Yeah right, So it's it's it's an upside down, and
it's a crazy world, and a very very scary and
sad cynical political world that Maga is creating.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
It's very cynical, deeply deeply cynical.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
So I'm curious because you wrote something, you know, in
reference to in twenty twenty voting for President Biden, and
you talked about how there's this quote of yours that
I love, you said, cloaking it. You know, their extremism
as patriotism or conservativism is just a lie. I think

(39:44):
there are enough good conservatives to see through that, even
in Congress, but there's certainly been a lack of courage
to call out people like the Marjorie Taylor Greens of
the Mega world. And you spoke about the courage of
Liz Change, you know, her standing up for American values,
and you talked about how in a silent vote her

(40:06):
fellow congress people voted to keep her in leadership, but
that your hunch was if the vote was not silent,
it wouldn't have gone that way. We got that now. Yeah,
now the votes are not silent. They're out loud. You know,
you've got JD. Vance talk essentially referring to women as cattle,
saying or it's our job to be pregnant, and you know,

(40:27):
them blowing up everything, education, cancer research, all of it.
I know the chaos is the point because they want us,
they want us, and as I feel right now, I
want to take a deep breath and cry, and I'm
sure people let them listening do to I promise we're
gonna We're going to add a little spark of hope here.

(40:47):
I know this is their goal to make us tired
and to make us go in right, you've seen this playbook,
how do you think about conserving your energy and think
about how to strategically fight back.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
It's really tough because you can drive yourself crazy, and
again that's what they want.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
They want you to get tired.

Speaker 3 (41:11):
They want you to be afraid of speaking and doing
what you do.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
And listen.

Speaker 3 (41:19):
It's not for everyone, and I don't judge people who
say I can't do it anymore. And I know a
lot of people both in media and politics who've decided
I cannot do this anymore. It is awful for my
mental health. I completely understand that. I've had those conversations
with myself, like is this worth it? But I have

(41:40):
found ways, over years of therapy to continue doing what
I deeply love, which is journalism, asking questions, holding powerful
people accountable, without letting it take over my life and
my mental health. And that's been hard, but I've set boundaries.

(42:01):
I mean, I used to turn on CNN. Let me
start over. I never turned off CNN. I would fall
asleep to it, I would wake up to it. It
would be on all day and by osmosis it would
you know, I would just get off. That's not necessary, right,
I mean, for one, most hours of cable news repeat

(42:22):
the same stories.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Two, I can read the news, and.

Speaker 3 (42:27):
It's a very different effect than watching it, especially watching
two people yell at each other or argue about something. Right,
there are other ways to consume news and do my job,
and so I really started looking at that, how I
consume the news and how I moved.

Speaker 2 (42:47):
Through the world that I live in.

Speaker 3 (42:52):
You know, doing philanthropic work is a thing that helps
me escape the feeling of hopelessness and pointlessness, Like I
am pointless and what I'm doing in my professional life
means nothing. Go and do a little philanthropy. I volunteered
a shelter almost every other week. You find meaning in

(43:13):
very small things that can counterbalance the meaningless feeling you
have as a fighter, as an activist, as an advocate,
you have to find meaning and value in other things.
And I've had to make myself feel less identified by
my job as I once did. Maybe you've gone through

(43:37):
this too, where you felt so identified not just by
your job, but who you worked for and the show
you were on and the network I work for. I
mean so identified proudly.

Speaker 2 (43:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:51):
Kind of creating some separation from that is scary but
also really liberating to say, wait a second, a whole
person without any of these trappings around me. I'm a whole,
valuable person. It's a recentering, and it takes a it
takes a while, it's not an overnight thing, but man,

(44:16):
has it saved my life. Literally, it has saved my life.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. I think this happens to everyone.
You know, everybody's got one of these in their pockets.
Like we're all we're all on screen all the time,
but particularly for people whose jobs exist on screen. Whether

(44:44):
you realize it or not, you become a two dimensional person,
but we live three dimensional lives.

Speaker 2 (44:52):
Yeah, And the.

Speaker 1 (44:53):
Flattening and the reduction of your humanity can be really toxic.
And I think you're right. The more we lean into
our expansion, the more we build community. Like the way
I am dealing with this is giving myself thirty minutes

(45:16):
to read the news every day and then having conversations
like this one, calling other folks, starting more group chats,
figuring out where do we volunteer our time, what do
we do? I mean, even the last couple of weeks
in la As, you know, it's been so traumatizing to
watch a city go through what we've been going through.

(45:38):
And it's also been the most inspiring thing because everyone
has shown up. We have been packing suitcases, we have
been delivering waters, we have been gathering donations, we have
been organizing, you know, behind the scenes, from telethons to
fundraisers to it has been like a full time job
and everyone's not everything to do it to show up

(45:58):
for community. And we are doing this no matter what
the guy in the White House is saying, right, and
it's meaning because you can't take it away, find it.
There's so many of us, right, and we're going to
have to lean on each other, you know. And I wonder,
is it that sort of desire for that three dimensional life,

(46:21):
for that community based experience that led you to the
new podcast, Because clearly I love having a good conversation
with someone, and when I was like, wait a second,
a commentator is saying, I want to do a podcast.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
That isn't just about the news, Like he piqued.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
My interest in such a cool way. What was the
impetus for you to say I want to go beyond
the job and into the personal.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
Well, I'm so glad it speaks your interest because and
that's exactly what it was. I need it in this
project of mine where I'm trying to find the non
political me.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Who is that?

Speaker 3 (47:00):
The non CNN personality me, right, the three D me?
Because as you say, like I, you know, you feel
like an avatar because that's how people see you. After
a while in that project, I had to challenge myself,
what are my other interests? And man, I'd forgotten them.

(47:22):
I'd forgotten that I had interests before politics and my job.
And I Heart came to me and said, we want
you to do a podcast and we don't care what
it's about. I said, oh, you mean it doesn't have
to be political. You don't just see me as a
political person. Yes, And to their credit and I'm so grateful,

(47:46):
they said, no, what do you want to talk about?
And I said, well, the most important thing to me
right now is mental health. But I don't want like
a mental health podcast, because I'm not an expert in
mental health and I don't want to pretend to have
all the answers I do not, But I would love
to create a space where mental health naturally and normally

(48:08):
can come up, if it's so desires right.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
So I said, I want to talk.

Speaker 3 (48:13):
To really interesting people, people I admire, and you know,
I love creative arts. So I talk to creative people,
actors and comedians and artists and singers, and I want
to ask them about their lives, their careers, their hobbies.

(48:33):
In it a space where mental health can come up
as they've confronted challenges, loss, love, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (48:43):
And iHeart said, do it, go do it.

Speaker 3 (48:46):
And I can't tell you how grateful I am for this,
both professionally because it is an escape from the other
stuff that I do, but personally how much I don't
want to get emotional, but how much I needed this
in my life to be able to have conversations with
people about how they're feeling, yeah, about mental health and

(49:12):
me sharing you know, I used to do this, and
someone on the other side of the conversation saying, oh
my god, a light bulb just went out when just
went off when you said that.

Speaker 2 (49:20):
And I didn't know I was doing that.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
Yes, Oh my gosh, that moment of connection or someone
saying to me, you know what, I used to do
that too. Here's a great tip for you. Yes, having
those epiphanies and remembering our shared humanity h has been
such a gift that I needed so badly.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
So listen. If this if off the cup, if this
podcast goes.

Speaker 3 (49:48):
Away tomorrow, I'll be sad. But it's been It's been
such a gift for me.

Speaker 1 (49:54):
I please, a I'm a crier. Never apologize for me,
and be the way when you say a light bulb
went off, like the way I feel seen by what
you just said. Because similarly in twenty nineteen, and I
know we're gonna have to do it again. I sat

(50:15):
in a room full of women like you and me,
from every walk of life, who grew up in every
you know kind of family, and you know, none of
them look the same like this amazing group of women.
I can't even believe I'm going to say this. I've
told the story before, but never to you. I went
to journalism school and like twenty year old me in
class at USC Enburgh would die to know that I

(50:38):
get to tell this story. I'm sitting in Glorious Steinem's
living room in New York, Okay, with this amazing group
of women talking about what the fuck we're gonna do
with this country that is making money off hating women.
And I was like, this, this conversation, I wish everyone

(51:00):
could hear it. And it was the reason I decided
to start work in progress because I realized I get
to be in rooms like that. I get to sit
with a friend of mine who is the most unbelievable
scientist who worked at Project argists who helped identify emerging
pandemics around the world, who has a master's in emerging
infectious diseases. And I got to call her when we

(51:22):
first heard a rumor about this you know thing, starting
twenty nineteen, twenty twenty, like I just started to realize
I had all these amazing people I could talk to
about health, about science, about parenting, about relationships, about fertility,
about politics, about writing, about and like, we need all

(51:42):
of it. We need all of that impact and input
in our lives. And so I don't think it's an
accident that so many of us who want more good
people to be connected wind up in spaces like this, right.

Speaker 2 (52:01):
I think that's so.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
True, and your world opens up, which is so lovely
and wonderful because you start to.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
Believe your two dimensional.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
At a point, you start to believe it, this is
all there is to me. And when you open that
door to other people, you remember, oh, gosh, no, I'm
really turned on by this thing or that thing, or
hearing this story or this kind of creative air arena
that I don't get to play in. I'm really I'm

(52:36):
really stimulated by these conversations or whatever it is, or
I'm learning so much about navigating the world.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
When you know, Henry Winkler tells me, I thought.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Everyone was going to call me after Happy Days, and
no one called, and I didn't know who I was
going to be after that.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
And then he tells me what he did.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
And here's what you're gonna do, Sie, because you're you're
smart and you're ambitious, and you're gonna do this.

Speaker 2 (53:03):
You're going to figure it out.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
I mean, who would have thought I'd get some of
the best career advice in my life from the Fonds, Right,
But yeah, I don't know unless you open that door. Yeah,
and opening the door to so many people. Oh, it's
been so enriching and rewarding. And it doesn't mean we

(53:27):
have to agree on everything. I don't know when that
became a requirement of a friendship.

Speaker 2 (53:32):
Or or anything.

Speaker 3 (53:35):
But when you focus on the stuff you do agree on,
you focus on the stuff that's great or hard, or
who are we as people, it's really rewarding and fulfilling.
And that has been something I have missed in my
professional life. It is not felt fulfilling and rewarding. It's
felt like a job. So yeah, love these kinds of

(53:59):
conversations like you so much more than I like talking
politics these days, honestly.

Speaker 2 (54:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Well, and I think what's really what's really cool about
it is in a way, when you can leave the
thing you've always had to do, you know, for you,
when you can stretch past talking politics, you can kind
of re encompass the personal and then be fueled again

(54:29):
for the political, because everything is political, and that can
be daunting and exhausting, and it's especially more exhausting if
you're not showing up to those political fights with your
personal fuel. The people you care about, the people you
want to carry into rooms, the kids, you want to defend,

(54:49):
you know, don't really on no kid hungry, like you
have to have that to sustain the other part. And yeah,
I think anytime we get to kind of reach out
and go have more of ourselves and our communities.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah, it helps.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
Well.

Speaker 2 (55:04):
At the end of the day, politics is for people.

Speaker 3 (55:08):
It's about people, right, We're not governing systems, we're governing
people and trying to solve people's problems. If you don't
come at politics with your own personal lived experience and
those shared experiences of other people, and whether those are
your kids, your parents, your friends, your colleagues, your teachers,

(55:33):
who are you doing it for? What's it for? I mean,
then you're just kind of a technocrat, right, You're just
here to cross t's and dot i's and we need
those people too. But that's certainly not why I got
into politics. I got into it because of people. And
I just find that that's so missing from most political
conversations that you see sort of modeled on cable news.

(55:55):
We've forgotten about the people that are being impacted, people
who are meant to be helped by this.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
What is this helping people? Is this solving problems?

Speaker 3 (56:06):
We've forgotten it's so performative now and again it feels gross.
It feels really gross and moralizing.

Speaker 1 (56:15):
And I think because we're expected to be reachable all
the time, we're expected to know everything all the time,
to have an opinion about things immediately, all of these things,
it keeps you kind of running faster than your legs
can carry you. And so you miss you miss things,
You miss nuance, you miss personal time and anything that

(56:36):
can help you slow down and analyze a bit. Yeah,
which is what happens in good conversation. A light bulb
goes off, you share a resource, you make a new connection.
And I guess I'm realizing as we're talking this stuff

(56:56):
is what I hope we all, you and I and
every when at home listening. Yeah, this is what I
hope we remember to do and cling to as we
enter into another four years of this is to listen
to each other and to be curious and investigate things

(57:19):
so that we can be more three dimensional as we
walk into being together defending each other all of these things.

Speaker 3 (57:31):
Yeah, and politics generally doesn't want you to be three dimensional.
It wants to put you in a box and know
exactly who you are and how you're defined and you're
over here, and you're over here, or you look like this,
or you look like that. It's designed to strip all
of your dimensionality away from you.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
You are not meant to be nuanced.

Speaker 3 (57:55):
Or complicated, right, So, yeah, advocating for that three dimensionality
and that idea that I'm not just the letter next
to my name. I'm not just a political party or
some sort of identity politics thing for you to use.

Speaker 2 (58:16):
Yes, that's the fight.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
That's the fight, you know, of a lifetime trying trying
to you know, trying to persuade people to remember that
and have more conversations like this too, to discover that.

Speaker 1 (58:32):
Yeah, we'll be back in just a minute. But here's
a word from our sponsors, and what happens when people
are willing to claim their fuller selves, like you saying, oh,
I'm not just going to be a broadcaster, a news
anchor and an avatar of this. For me, when I've

(58:59):
allowed myself to take moments and say no, I'm so
much more than an actor. I'm a human being. I'm
an advocate, I'm a friend, I'm this, I'm of that.
You know who am I? What of myself do I
want to take into the world. It's like, as I'm
listening to you talk, and maybe this is for so
many of us who work in some version of again

(59:19):
on screen on air performance. Like having these conversations with
my partner. Some of what we've seen mirrored, although different,
is like what I learned to do as a performance artist,
what she learned to do and present as a performance athlete.
What it is when you finally pause and say, no,

(59:41):
who am I? When I reinflate the balloon? Who is
all of me? And it's crazy side note because I'm like,
oh my god, I have to connect you to because
you should do each other's shows. She had the same
experience with the iHeart folks doing her advocacy in her
work and building out this huge thing. You know, this
women's sports network. We have women their moment, you know

(01:00:01):
in this radio media space.

Speaker 2 (01:00:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:00:04):
I got to sit back and watch and this has
never happened to me in my personal life before, but
I was. I watched them all kind of turn and go, well,
you have to do a podcast. Your stories are wild.
You know, She's out building all these things for other people.
And then they were like, we want you to do one,
and she was like, oh, no, no, no, you know,
I'm I'm finding my world beyond sport. I don't you know.

(01:00:24):
I love you all and like I want to build this,
but I wouldn't want to do like a sports podcast.
And they were like, you can have a podcast about
whatever you want. We want it from you. We've never
seen someone talk about these things the way you do.

Speaker 2 (01:00:35):
And I saw there.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
It was like being at you know, the US Open
and watching a tennis match. I was like, oh my god,
I just happened to like be around because we were
all at the same conference and it was so cool.
It was just so cool to watch it. And so
I guess, really what it is is a shout out
to all of our bosses.

Speaker 2 (01:00:54):
You're at iHeart.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
I'm at iHeart, you's at I heart. And it's this
really cool thing when people can look at you and say,
I want to know all of you. Yeah, past what
you do, past what you get accolades for, but why
you speak this way? Why do you advocate this way?
How'd you get to be this way? Ally, I love

(01:01:17):
that you're encouraging that. I love that the people I'm
closest to are encouraging that. And I don't think it's
an accident that we all keep finding each other.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
I don't either, No, truly, And it's funny because both
you two and me. Right, I'm going to speak for
the three of us, okay, because I think I can,
but you can correct me if you want. We fought
so hard to get where we got and where the
costume of the career we wanted, right, We fought so

(01:01:48):
hard to get there, climbing climbing.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
I just want to be this, I want to embody this.
And then we did. We got there, we embodied it.

Speaker 3 (01:01:57):
Then it got really hard to take the costume off,
really hard, And who am I without this thing?

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
Who am I?

Speaker 3 (01:02:04):
I don't know how people are going to see me,
But I also don't know how I'm going to see myself.

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
So it's a challenge. But when you have a partner.

Speaker 3 (01:02:13):
By that, I mean like iHeart come to you and
say I see more in you. Yes, I don't see
the costume. Yes, take the costume off. You don't even
have to wear the costume to this thing that I
want you to do. It's amazing and gratifying and validating
and reassuring and empowering all the things, all the things,

(01:02:36):
and I don't even know that they know how much
that means to someone like you or me or your partner,
like how much that means to be seen as a
whole person.

Speaker 1 (01:02:48):
And when you're used to with the greatest amount of gratitude,
by the way, but it's like scales are always what
they are. You have such a gratitude for your job
and you're used to being expected to do it a
certain way, and then someone says, no, no, I want
you to come into this arena, which theoretically is work, right,
but bring your whole self, not just your work self.

(01:03:12):
And you go, wait, what what is that?

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
I know totally well yeah, yeah, And I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:17):
Sit here and I do things like this, and it's
like I'll interview another actor, and then I'll interview a senator,
I'll interview you as a journalist, and earlier this morning,
I interviewed a poet. Like I get to look under
the hood of every single car. I think is cool.
It doesn't all have to be the same kind, and
it's it is a really incredible I think, particularly for

(01:03:42):
people like us that are really under the storyteller umbrella. Yeah,
whether you are pursuing fiction or journalism or any of it,
when you can be a storyteller and a witness at
the same time. Right, you know again, twenty year old
me going to classes at Annenberg could not have imagined this.

Speaker 2 (01:04:06):
And I.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
Love it for my life, for.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
My work, for the Resistance, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04:13):
For all of it. It feels very not to be trite,
but it feels kind of holistic.

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Yeah, yes, you know, well, I totally agree. It feels
that way for me too.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
And I think for anyone listening thinking well, how does
this apply to me? Because I'm not an actor, I'm
not a journalist, and I don't have a podcast, I
think we all tend to feel two dimensional at times,
like am I just a mom?

Speaker 2 (01:04:45):
Or am I just.

Speaker 3 (01:04:45):
This thing at my job? Or we get to find
by the things we become. And I think that the
application outside of what we do is just to open
your circle us of influence, hopefully not online, right, your

(01:05:06):
your actual circle of influence right in CRL. Yeah, to
learn more about the world, but ultimately yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:05:16):
Well, and as you said, the encouragement might be you
don't have to start a podcast, but you could, but
you can. You don't have to start a podcast, but
maybe the takeaway is, oh I don't have time to
volunteer once a week. But I heard Sarah say she
volunteers every other week. Oh maybe I could do that.
And you could step into a great nonprofit in your

(01:05:38):
neighborhood and find your people.

Speaker 2 (01:05:41):
Or start one. You could.

Speaker 1 (01:05:42):
Yeah, you could discover that you are actually the best
advocate for school lunches or your local library or whatever
it is you. You might not even know how magical
you are at something, right, So I think the idea
is just follow your curiosity, because that's that's what we

(01:06:03):
have in common. Right, We're curious about people. We come
from this work world, and so it led us here.
We followed our curiosity and it gave us something unexpected. Yeah,
and I would encourage everyone to do that and to
lean into whatever yours is, because they're not all going
to be the same. They can't be. Then we'd have

(01:06:25):
a completely one sided, insane society. But follow your curiosity
and see where it takes.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
You, right, that's right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:35):
And open yourself to the possibility that there are things
you're curious about that you don't even know about yet.
Oh I love that, right, Like there's their entire worlds
that you don't know. You might be interested in, but
you haven't even begun to explore. So Yeah, I think
when you talk about the flattening of us and then

(01:07:01):
the inflation inflating us, it's such a good metaphor, and
it really.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Anyone could use that. Anyone can identify with that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:09):
I feel flat and I need to feel full and inflated,
and that's what that's what that's what's gonna fill you up.
Or those connections and that curiosity and those new experiences.

Speaker 1 (01:07:21):
It's so much fun to get to speak to people
and find all the light bulbs that you didn't even
know you'd share. I'm finding so many with you today.
How have you been finding that on the podcast Shifting
out of traditional news? Who are some of your favorite
people you've interviewed? Who's surprised you the most?

Speaker 3 (01:07:40):
Yeah, gosh, I've loved talking to everyone. I know that
sounds like a but it's I mean, there's something interesting
about everyone. But I mean I had a great conversation
with doctor Drew pinsk right, because he's lived in the
media world but also treats people with addiction issues and

(01:08:01):
also mental health issues. So his own mental health journey
was really interesting to hear about. I have a very
good friend, Josh Gad who's an actor right a door adore,
and we talked about some really tough stuff, including anxiety,
but also anti semitism and navigating that. I get great

(01:08:25):
career advice from people who were successful and that's fun,
but really, when it comes down to it, those mental
health connections. I was talking to Mark Dwoplas, so we
did that episode. It hasn't aired yet, but we've both
talked about our mental health. And I told him that
I was really sad that I'm not like the multitasker

(01:08:49):
I once was. I could do a thousand things at
once and it was great, and now I really have
to concentrate after my sort of breakdown, Yeah, my brain
is not functioning at the level it was and I
have to like really focus on one thing at a time.

Speaker 2 (01:09:02):
And he goes, is that a bad thing? I said,
is that a bad thing? Huh?

Speaker 3 (01:09:08):
And he said, I bet you weren't super happy and
healthy when you were multitasking and doing eleven things not
very well but getting them done, and you felt crazed
and crazy and rushed and stressed. And yeah, I did
feel all those things. And he said, are you allowed
to age and change, maybe get a little worse at this,

(01:09:30):
but better at this, and said, yeah, I mean talk
about a light bulb. You only get those when you
really get honest and deep and you create a space
where people feel comfortable and you're just talking like normal people.
Those are the moments that I savor so much about

(01:09:51):
that pod well and what.

Speaker 1 (01:09:52):
Strikes me too. And not to be a total language nerd,
but I am about what he said, are you not
allowed to age? I wouldn't even put the idea of
aging on it. I would say are you not allowed
to mature?

Speaker 3 (01:10:07):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:10:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:08):
Because when we are younger, it is very easy to
be like, I have to do everything, and I have
to do it all the time. You don't enjoy it,
You barely remember it. Yeah, you probably were pumped full
of adrenaline because you were so anxious. To his point,
maybe you got all those things done, but how well
did you do them?

Speaker 2 (01:10:24):
Right?

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
And at your life stage, you are now kinder to
yourself and mature enough to say, oh, if I don't
just do one thing at a time, I'm not really
doing anything.

Speaker 3 (01:10:38):
Well, yeah, that's right, you know, And it's okay to
say like to my husband or son I'm concentrating. You
need to leave me alone for ten minutes so I
can finish this, right, Yes, you never used to ask
permission for those things, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:10:53):
And by the way, then, how pissed were you when
someone interrupted you and you'd be listening to what they
needed and you'd be resenting them for it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Ye, piss is not the word. Piss is not the word.

Speaker 3 (01:11:02):
I mean the heat of a thousand sun's angry, enraged
that I would get interrupted usually before before all all this,
I could get interrupted, be fine, go right back to
my task or tune it out, I mean enraged, And yeah,
getting permission from Mark Duplas, right, I mean all right.

Speaker 2 (01:11:24):
To say no. You can ask permission.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
You can say I need you to give me this
space so I can focus on this.

Speaker 2 (01:11:30):
Yeah, well, yeah, of course you can do that. Of
course you can do that.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
But sometimes the most obvious things only come when you're
sitting down with a total stranger who can see you
from the outside.

Speaker 1 (01:11:44):
And sometimes the most obvious things are revelatory because they
life changed it obvious to you.

Speaker 2 (01:11:50):
Yeah right, you know, exactly right. My therapist said.

Speaker 3 (01:11:57):
We were talking about social media and the anxiety it
creates and she said, I bet you go on social
media pretty passively, like without intentions. I said, oh, yeah,
I'm on Twitter because I'm waiting in line at the
grocery store and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:11):
Board, or I'm on Instagram for validation. What are people
are they? They liking my post? You know?

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
And she said, well, is that the way you go
to the grocery store just hoping things will jump in
your cart?

Speaker 1 (01:12:25):
No?

Speaker 3 (01:12:25):
I go because I have a list, I know what
I need, and I'm leaving with the things that I need.
She said, yeah, if you go on social media without intentionality,
everything's going to jump in your cart and it's going
to be a lot of stuff you didn't you weren't
there for, and.

Speaker 2 (01:12:39):
It's actually harmful to you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:40):
You don't want God, right, So the idea of this
grocery store that is social media?

Speaker 2 (01:12:47):
What am I there for? You can go? You gotta go,
you gotta go on it. I have to go on
social media for my job. You got to go to
the grocery store. What am I there for?

Speaker 3 (01:12:56):
I'm only leaving with this And even if I am
there or whatever reason, I know why I'm there and
I'm not letting social media happen to me, which is
I think how a lot of people navigate social media
and the news. So I mean, yeah, these sort of
seemingly very simple, obvious, life changing revelations that happen in

(01:13:19):
therapy and then in these conversations with people. I mean,
that's what I'm living for right now.

Speaker 1 (01:13:25):
I love it. Oh, I absolutely love it. I'm like,
we have let's go to dinner. I want to talk
about three more hours.

Speaker 2 (01:13:32):
Right, what are we doing?

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
It's so fun. This is my favorite question to ask everyone,
but I think I'm particularly excited to ask you because
we've just had this beautifully spherical conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
I think that to really consider it kind of requires
that full balloon, if you will. When you look out,
you know lessons, you've gleaned, identity, you've found, kindness you're
bestowing on yourself, preparing for what's to come. I'm laughing,

(01:14:07):
even though it's not funny, because if I don't laugh
a little bit, I'll cry.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
Yeap.

Speaker 1 (01:14:11):
Whether it's personal and professional and mix, what feels like
you're work in progress right now?

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
I mean the easy answer for me is I'm working
on my mental health. That's obvious. But in addition to
doing it, for me, I have a ten year old son,
and it's not just important that I be like a happy,
healthy person for him, but there's like breaking cycles, yeah,

(01:14:42):
and there's modeling for him that it's okay to not
be okay in age appropriate ways. Right. My therapist asked
me once like, are you do you talk about your
anxiety with your kid? And I was like, of course,
I don't. What she's like, don't shield him him from
it completely. He will grow up thinking mom was perfect.

(01:15:04):
Mom never struggled, and so if I'm struggling, there's something
wrong with me. So working on my mental health so
that he sees a person that had challenges, confronted them,
got help, worked through them, talked openly about them is
a gift I'm giving to him as well.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
So that's the work in progress, and that'll.

Speaker 3 (01:15:28):
Always be in progress because he's always going to be
growing up and changing and going through stuff that I
of course want to help him with. But modeling this
challenge in particular is the work in progress of my
life in so many ways.

Speaker 2 (01:15:43):
But that's the most important part of it for me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
Oh, I think that's beautiful. I think it's so important,
especially for our kind of peer group because we're so
lucky we have more resources in terms of mental health
and these conversations being out in the open than our
parents did. For sure, yep, but we weren't raised by

(01:16:08):
parents who had all these resources. Right, So, if we
don't figure out a way not just to follow the
threads of the resources to know better, if we don't
model better, we're really modeling the shit that we saw,
model that hurt us.

Speaker 2 (01:16:24):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:26):
So you have to learn and model to break the curse.

Speaker 2 (01:16:32):
Exactly right.

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
What a cool thing you get to do.

Speaker 3 (01:16:35):
It's a proactive thing. M You can feel like, I'm
gonna work on this thing, but I'm going to work
on it quietly. It's for me. It's isolated, it's alone.
I'm working on it for me. But if you're not
proactively modeling it for.

Speaker 2 (01:16:50):
Your kids or.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
People around you to learn from, you are protecting that cycle.
You are protecting and maintaining that cycle of silence and stigma.

Speaker 2 (01:17:01):
You're not doing it intentionally, but you are.

Speaker 3 (01:17:04):
And so to break that cycle of silence and stigma,
you have to actively go out and almost evangelize, you know, like, yes,
the normalization of these kinds of conversations, the normalization of asking,
are you okay, how you doing? Talking about your mental health,
asking for help normalize so it's you don't even notice it.
That's where I want to get, or you don't even

(01:17:26):
notice that it's happening.

Speaker 1 (01:17:28):
Yes, it becomes as common as talking about the weather.

Speaker 2 (01:17:32):
Correct, exactly right. We'll get there one day.

Speaker 1 (01:17:35):
I love it. I love it. Thank you so much
for today. This has been so much fun.

Speaker 2 (01:17:40):
Thank you. I feel the same. Such a lovely conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
You're such a lovely person and vessel for this kind
of conversation.

Speaker 1 (01:17:49):
Thank you, Thank you have an amazing rest of your day.
I will see you soon too,