Some More News - Even More News' 200th Episode, with Jason Kander

Episode Date: July 22, 2022

Hi. On today's episode, Jason Kander (@JasonKander) talks with Katy and Cody about his new book, "Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD." They discuss the value of stepping back from "the news" and taking care of yourself, Republican efforts to suppress voters, and avocado metaphors. Plus, listen all the way to the end for a congratulatory 200th episode message from a very special guest. Get your MAYBE COPS SHOULDN'T HAVE GUNS merch here: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/254... Check out our new compilation series, CODY COMPS here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/ Check out our new series SOME THIS! - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list... Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/some... SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqego... Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-mo... Stop wasting time and start saving money when you use http://stamps.com to mail and ship. Sign up with promo code MORENEWS for a special offer that includes a 4-week trial, plus free postage and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts.Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the first and only news podcast my name is katie stole you heard it here first and all the other times you've listened to the podcast hi i'm cody johnston how's it going hi cody john i'm so good you know why it's going so good so well is because today we have an amazing guest. There's a lot of ways to describe him, so buckle up. Today, our guest is the former Secretary of State of Missouri and was a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2016. He also was a candidate for the mayor of Kansas City and generated significant buzz as a potential 2020 presidential candidate.

And we're going to get to all of that in a little bit. But first, I just want to welcome Jason Kander. Hello, Jason. Welcome. Hello. Thank you for having me. I forgot the other two points, actually, which is you're the co-host of the podcast Majority 54, and his new book is out now. And we have got to highlight that because we're going to talk about it. Thanks for saying all those things. I really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Jason, before we, we talk about your book, which is wonderful. Thank you so much

for sending us copies. We have got, got, got to call highlight the holidays because every day is a holiday and we like to have fun today. July 21 21st, is National Junk Food Day. Don't know if we need to celebrate that one, but it is worth being acknowledged. If you want to go have some junk food, do it. Do it.

Every holiday is important. Support the junk food. They need your support. And then, this one's fun. July 22nd, National Rat Catchers Day. This is a reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin story,

which I didn't realize involved rats. I didn't. a reference to the Pied Piper of Hamelin story, which I didn't realize involved rats. I didn't. I knew about the Pied Piper in a flute leading something, but I didn't realize it was rats. That's it. That's all I got. Who decides these things? Yeah, that's a good question. I always thought it was Hallmark, but I don't think they did the rat catching thing. I don't think so. I think that Hallmark- I don't think they have cards for that now.

Well, they should though. Hallmark used to have, you know, the lock on holidays, but I think we're in a new heyday where there are just so many holidays out there. No holds barred. Anybody. We don't discriminate against any holiday. We will share them. And just you can do with that information as you will. And it's a fine way to start a show. I wouldn't say it's a good way to start the show, but it is fine. It's okay. It's a way. It's a way. Anyway, how are you, Jason? I'm good. You are on whirlwind of publicity, I bet, right now. I am. I'm sort of at the, maybe the tail end, but I keep saying that, but then I keep getting up every day and doing this all day. So I guess not.

But I'm pretty good. The book is done very well, which I'm very grateful for. So the whirlwind of publicity has been a productive whirlwind. So that's been great. Yeah. Yeah. You open your book with a tweet from although I don't know how to pronounce this handle. Call three in call three in gene. I don't know. I think her name is Colleen and she just, you know, took some liberty. Colleen who got there first to the handle. It's really smart to use the three instead of an E, but I just, you know, there was maybe another Colleen who got there first to the handle. It's really smart to use the three instead of an E, but I just don't know. Okay. Colleen G says men will literally run for president instead of going to therapy. And you started your book with that. So why not start our episode with that as well? Were you seriously considering running for president at 2020?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I was pretty much doing it. Over a period of about 18 months, I gave speeches at democratic events in 47 states, and I found my way to Iowa and New Hampshire an awful lot. And yeah, I mean, I was running. I was doing everything but saying out loud, I'm running for president. once you do that there's like Legal paperwork you have to file and everything changes But yeah, I mean I was doing that soft running thing where you know I was one of those politicians where I was running But then if you asked me I would tell you well I'm not thinking about that sure when it was like all I was thinking about right at that time

Zuckerberg thing right where you like you have a lot of dinners with families and you post the photos of the families and it's just because you care about america yeah as one does it's just look how relatable i am exactly yeah it is that was probably relatable and a big thing throughout your book is that you you write about your experience uh with ptsd especially in terms of shame and fear. I personally think that's very interesting because I think that all of us, our biggest hurdles in life are shame and fear. I think that we create obstacles and blind spots and we protect it.

And those are the things we're the least vulnerable about. And so when you start talking about it in terms of PTSD, it really did compound for me just how devastating, non-compassing this would be, especially juxtaposed with being back into normal life and high pressures of your job and everything. So I think it's very obviously brave and important that you are having this conversation. And the other thing about it is like, yeah, it can be really hard to pinpoint what's even happening with you because we put these blinders up, right? And we're protecting ourselves. How long did it actually

take you to realize what was happening or even maybe admit to yourself? Because like, I'll read something and be like, yeah, I see that, but it's not me. And then eventually somebody will be like, wait, here's how it is you. Yeah, that's what happened for me. It took 11 years, almost 11 years. And it was almost 11 years of me telling myself that I can't have PTSD because what I did overseas as an intelligence officer in Afghanistan for the army, what I did, well, it doesn't warrant PTSD. Now, what I didn't know was that that's what every veteran just about tells themselves about every injury. You know,

one of the things that makes the U.S. military successful at what it does is that you are taught from the very beginning that what you're doing is no big deal and that what everybody else is doing, you know, it's, it's, it's what they're doing is worse than what you're doing. It's tougher than what you're doing. And the reason that you're taught that is because if you don't learn that, you're not going to keep doing dangerous or difficult jobs. And so I don't really knock the military for that. It was very effective. As an army intelligence officer, it made it so that I could keep going into meetings with people who might want to kill me and there might be traps because I felt like, ah, you know, this isn't that big of a deal. The problem is, is that when you come home or when you leave the military, nobody is like, actually, that was a pretty big deal. Kidding, you know, just kidding. It was actually a really big deal. And so in my case, like I went a lot of years understanding that, yeah, I have these

terrible nightmares. I have these night terrors. I feel like I'm in danger a lot. I feel like I've got to constantly be controlling the situation and thwarting the possibility of a threat of any kind. I'm coping with these feelings by diving into my career and chasing these endorphin highs. Then I start to feel, as you mentioned, a lot of shame and self-loathing, but I'm going, well, it's not PTSD because it's not connected to my service because I have an ungood authority that what I did was no big deal. So this just must be what I'm like. And so I went a really long time before I was able to see for myself and therefore tell the rest of the world, yeah, I have post-traumatic stress disorder and I need to go treat it. The world kind of gaslights people into thinking what they went through

wasn't that big because the world hinges on us being productive. Yes. And I'll extrapolate even further. I mean, there's PTSD we're learning is something that can happen and is not exclusive to service members, you know, like traumatic, but it's that same mentality that makes this such a difficult hurdle to overcome because you think, oh, I had this violent boyfriend, but whatever, I'm fine. And he never actually hit me. He threw plates at the wall. Well, that actually could be for you individually, maybe a really traumatic experience.

And you might need some healing, but the world doesn't support you in that. I think that's just a really important message for everybody to sit with for themselves in their own day-to-day life, the weight of these things. I have people all the time come up to me and share their own story with me, their own trauma with me, and they will very frequently begin with a disclaimer like, well, I didn't go to war or anything, or I was never in the military. And I always stop them and I'm like, that really has nothing to do with this. It doesn't matter. Childhood incident, bad divorce, car accident, surviving cancer, losing a loved one, a domestic relationship, like you described. There's so many... Watching the news in 2022, there are so many things that can affect you

that what it took me 11 years to learn, and it took me going to therapy at the VA to learn, was that you can't rank your trauma out of existence. It doesn't work. All you do, you don't diminish your trauma by saying, well, somebody else has it worse or had it worse. What you do is you diminish your power to heal and you delay your opportunity to get better. And that's all I did for 11 years. And here's the other thing about that, is that the longer you wait, the worse it gets. Trauma is not like wine, right? Like it don't age well. I describe it in the book as it's more like an avocado and there's a reason they don't build avocado cellars. Like they don't keep. And so- Well, you could freeze them and put them in your smoothies in like six to eight months, but- That is a great point.

Sorry, we insert jokes here. No, you just shattered my favorite analogy. I'm so sorry. Sorry. The world should know. Please continue. But look, so I compare it to any other injury. Before I went into the Army, I got surgery on my knee. I had to get surgery on my knee and get physical therapy.

And what I did to my brain after the army is as if instead of going and getting that surgery and doing that physical therapy for my knee, I just went into the army and I did the road marches and I went to Afghanistan and I never repaired my knee. Well, at the end of my service, my leg would be mangled if I had made it at all. Well, what I did with my brain is I had an injury to my brain and I said, well, I'm going to walk it off. It's not that bad. It's sort of like if you break your arm, but you're like, I know somebody who lost their arm.

This ain't that big a deal. Well, after almost 11 years, my brain was in pretty bad shape. Whereas if I had come home, recognized, okay, the fact that I'm having night terrors every night and that I feel like I'm in danger a lot of the time, like that's not normal. Maybe I could go and get that treated. Had I done that, it would never have become the issue that it was. And so this book, you know, I wrote it because this is the book I needed 14 years ago, but it didn't exist.

And so I wanted it to exist. Part of the story that you're telling also, and I'm sure that a lot of people with PTSD will, or just people in general living through the age that we live with is that you were you were staying so busy that it felt impossible to stop and take care of yourself. And in fact, you were staying so busy as a way of not stopping to take care of yourself. And yeah, we feel that a lot of us feel that right now. Late stage capitalism, crisis after crisis. But we still have to keep going to our day-to-day lives. How do you think America or the world, how can we all find better ways to take care of ourselves

in such constant crisis? I think it really comes down to understanding that whatever it is you do, you're going to do it better if you treat yourself, if you take care of yourself. Going back to the analogy about the knee, if somebody was a competitive runner and they were like, well, I'll tell you what I'm not going to do. I'm not going to get surgery on this knee. It's like, okay, well, that's probably going to affect you when you run a race. And it's probably going to limit the amount of races you can run. Whereas maybe if you get it repaired, it's not going to be that way. And so that's what I've learned about it and what I try to relate to others is that, yeah, I used my work, I used my profession as a coping mechanism. And for me, it was the only way

I could be present. The only way I could feel really present was when I had that adrenaline high of I was giving a big speech or I was in a high stakes meeting with a big donor or giving a major interview on national television or whatever. But I also wanted to write the book in a way where people who have never done those things can still relate. Like I didn't want people to be like, well, I didn't run for president with a secret psychological disorder. So I, because I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who's ever admitted to doing that.

So I didn't think a lot of people would be able to relate. Right. So, so I wanted people to understand that, like, that's just what I had in front of me. I had my career available to me in front of me, so that's what I chose. But for somebody else, it could be their career. It doesn't have to be the same career I had. It could be anything, but maybe it was drugs. Maybe it was alcohol. Who knows? Gambling. Whatever that was, it's important to come to terms with the fact that that's an avoidance strategy. It's not going to work. And trauma is really fast. You can't outrun it. You got to turn around and confront it.

I've been thinking, first off, you did write this in such a way that it was very relatable. I find myself nodding along being like, yep, yeah, I get that. And just this world, this rat race, everything that we're living in, I'm rushing. I'm rushing to get everything done. Everything feels really tense. And encouraged to rush, too, I think is important. Yeah, there's like hustle porn out there where you, you know. Exactly. And so my new thing that I'm saying to myself, and like I'm trying to be in tune with it,

I'm feeling that physically, the physical reaction of this stress, or I had this bad memory, I'm feeling that, and I'm slowing down, and I'm saying to myself, I'm trying this out. Is it can wait? Whatever it is, it can wait. The people can wait. This project can wait. I think of that energetically like, okay, maybe you do want to run for president someday. It can wait. It can wait till you're healthy. Maybe I do want to write that thing. It wait till i'm ready you know i don't need to feel that i'm in a race against myself if that makes sense no it does i think it's tough because some like so many people can't even do that because they're like they're it can wait stuff is like well i have to go to work to pay for all the things if i I don't do that. If I put this thing off. Then I might not have health insurance.

We tie all of our health to that sort of rat race. I mostly mean in that situation. If I'm running late. I'm going to get there when I get there. Oh for sure. I know you're talking about these sort of little things. But yeah you're right. I think it's really important to bring up.

You got to distinguish right. Like I mean there's stuff where you got to do. You got to do things for your family. You got to do things for. You got to keep keep your job. You gotta do that stuff. But when it comes to the things that you think you should be doing, uh, but you're not enjoying and they're not making you feel better. For me, it was a, it was a chase for redemption. And I think that's what a lot of people who have trauma are doing. I didn't realize it. Right. And I, I described that now. I've thought about it a lot over the course of this book tour,

like how to describe it. And I, I actually been thinking about it a lot since I saw Top Gun Maverick, because it made me think about what are the stories that we tell ourselves as Americans? Like what is deeply embedded about trauma in the American myth? Tell you what's not deeply embedded about trauma in the American myth, going to get therapy and healing from trauma. What is deeply embedded is the way you get past trauma is you do it through singular acts of redemptive heroism. Goose dies. Viper delivers the news to you that Goose died. You don't go to therapy. You go to an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean, you kill three bad

guys, and then you're good to go. You throw Goose's dog tags off the deck and you get the girl and that's how the story works. And don't get me wrong. I love the Top Gun movies. I'm going to go see Maverick again, but like, it's not how it works, but we've told ourselves that story over and over again. So for me, it wasn't just that my career was right there in front of me and I could use that as a way to, you know, like avoid myself and my own intrusive thoughts. It was also, I genuinely thought, well, if I win this office, if I become president, then I'll feel better. And then it was, well, that's not working. I'm going to go back to my hometown where I'm a fifth generation Kansas

City and I'm going to, I'm going to bring down violent crime. That's going to make me feel better. But the truth was none of that was going to happen. You know, none of that was going to make me feel better. And so I joked that I could have been Bill Pullman's character on Independence Day. I could have got elected president and helped dispatch an alien invasion and still been like, I didn't do enough in Afghanistan. So that's where I was headed. And I say all this to say that the way I think about this, for you, I think that makes a lot of sense to say like, it can wait. The way I think about it is now I have a rule and that rule for myself is twofold. One, America and I are square. I've done enough. I will do more because I want to, but not because I think I have

to. And then the other part is I never do anything so that I can do something else. Like I never anymore, I'm done doing things in my career so that they'll set me up to do another thing. I just do things now because I think that they're important and I enjoy them. And that has simplified it a great deal for me. I bet that's freeing. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And sometimes that is stuff you got to do. Like sometimes I do stuff because I want to earn money for my family. That's not, that's not, you know, it's not like I'm saying don't ever do anything. So like sometimes you got to do things for your career, but do it because that's what you want in your career.

Ahoy! Do you run a small business or perhaps you like to mail celebrities pictures of your own hair? No judgments. I'd simply like to tell you about stamps.com. It's okay what you do in your spare time and speaking of time we don't all have the time to go to the post office for our business or personal or hair needs but with stamps.com you can skip that trip to the post office and print postage right in your home

all you need is a computer and printer and hair and you're good to go. The hair is optional, I guess. No judgments. Stamps.com works for any sized business. Tiny, biggie. You could have an Etsy store or send out invoices or run a warehouse or just have a personal thing that you like to do. Whatever the case, Stamps.com has you covered. They even offer discounts like up to 30% off USPS rates and 86% off UPS.

So quit waiting and try today for your business or whatever. You can sign up with promo code more news for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a digital scale. No long term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click the microphone at the top of the page, and enter code MORENEWS. Send your letters and packages any size, any time, any hair. That's their motto. Don't look it up.

So we're going to pivot slightly. You talk about the administrative nightmare of trying to get therapeutic help through the VA. Can you give us a little bit of details about that and how it impacted your view of mental health care in general in the United States? Yeah, sure. So one disclaimer I want to give is that I've received since then outstanding care at the VA. I like to start with that because what I don't want is because there's a veteran listening to this right now who's not enrolled at the VA, and I don't want to discourage them from going. And also, frankly, the VA gets a pretty bad rap from the sense of like, I think people

get the sense that the care you get at the VA is bad. The system that has been designed and is mostly hamstrung by decisions made in Congress can be very frustrating, and it was for me initially. But every clinician, every person I've interacted with at the VA is uniformly awesome and super dedicated to their job, which they really enjoy doing and are very good at. Now, that said, when I went to the VA initially, they told me I wasn't enrolled in the system. And so they said, well, yeah, you need therapy for PTSD. It's going

to be four or five months before we can get your enrollment figured out and all that, which was very frustrating for me. And a lot of other people have encountered that. Now, I fortunately live in Kansas City where Veterans Community Project is located, and at the time was the only Veterans Community Project campus in the country. And I had toured it in my campaign for mayor a few months earlier, or a few weeks earlier. And so I knew it was there. And so I called them and I was like, hey, this is what I'm being told the VA. I'm literally announcing tomorrow that I'm dropping out of public life to go to the VA. What do I do? And they said, well, come on down. So I've said this publicly a few places, and I think some people have taken it as I got some sort of special treatment. I didn't. I got the same special treatment as every other veteran who lives in Kansas City because I got

to walk into the walk-in center at the Veterans Community Project. They expedited my paperwork at the VA, and a week later, I started weekly therapy. And now I'm the president of national expansion at Veterans Community Project, and we're putting our campuses around the country. So that said, the VA process can be difficult. And the reason that it's difficult, and to your question, what it's made me think about the way we treat veteran mental health care is, our problem is, is that Congress has put in a bunch of rules for the VA, where they've basically tried to make sure that their number one priority is ensuring that nobody who doesn't deserve it gets healthcare. And the problem with that is

the assumption that there's anybody who served in the United States military who doesn't deserve to go to the VA, because there's not. When somebody commits felony murder and they serve 40 years in prison and then they get out, we're not like, you can't have Medicare because you're a felon. We don't do that. But if you make a mistake when you're in the military and you, like one person we served at VCP, got three DUIs, nevermind that they were each in between one of your four combat deployments, it's not that hard to figure out how you ended up with these three DUIs. Well, we say, oh, you made a mistake. You're dishonorably discharged. You will never be treated as a veteran by the federal government.

It makes no sense. It's a really stupid rule. And on top of that, you're dishonorably discharged, you will never be treated as a veteran by the federal government. It makes no sense. It's a really stupid rule. And on top of that, then you have other stuff like, here's one that'll blow your mind. If you're a National Guard member who was mobilized after January 6th and spent five months guarding the United States Capitol, but you never deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, you're not considered a veteran by the federal government. You will not have access to the VA. And that's all dumb. Anybody who served in the United States military, who raised their right hand, they deserve access to those services. And that's what we do. Yeah. They signed up and they were promised those services.

At Veterans Community Project, we're one of the few veteran serving organizations in the country that has that wider view of what a veteran is. And so a big part of what produces the problem, the bureaucratic problems with the VA is this constant need to create a system that makes sure that we use what people did in their service to decide what level of benefit they can get. If we would just say, hey, you raised your right hand, you qualify for 100% of the services that we can offer, then we would not have much of a bureaucracy at all. I mean, it's a different set of circumstances, but the same problem with general healthcare in this country is deciding who gets access and making money in the bottom dollar is more

important than the individual life. Right. Yeah. Any sort of means testing for any of these of these services will gum up the works to the point where you just can't you can't function within it that's right we're going to talk about some more political things here okay this is politics cast sort of random stuff brandon stuff you know the type you've talked a lot about you know republicans pushing to make uh voting harder uh and you write that you were attuned to republican efforts to to do this almost a decade ago as missouri secretary of state what do you

make of the last few years now that their efforts have become just so brazen so aggressive and so just in the light of day what do i make in the last few years? Okay. And the responses that were like, we're going to talk about all this. Here's my take on it. A lot of people think that what happened was is that Donald Trump came down the escalator in like June or whatever. What is that? 2015. And that he invented Trumpism in America, that he created this new version of right

wing politics. But that's not what happened. What happened was, in my opinion, that there has been for the last decade or so, slightly less than a decade maybe, a real wave of right-wing rhetoric and right-wing authoritarianism sweeping across the world. If you look across the world, you're going to see it in all sorts of places. You don't have to look much further than the audacity of Putin's military misadventure that's hurting so many people, killing so many people in Ukraine. So there's a huge battle going on worldwide right now between authoritarianism and democracy. And we in America have a tendency to think that everything that happens here was invented here. We think high gas prices right now were invented here and are only happening here. They're not.

We think that all this stuff, inflation. But the truth is, it's happening worldwide. And Trump just came along at that moment. He was the guy who came along at that moment. And so what we are having in America right now is a battle in the larger war between two forces, authoritarianism and democracy. And I happen to think that it's particularly important that democracy win here because we've tended to be the place that has shown the model for democracy in the world. And if we don't win that battle here, it's really bad for the rest of the world. Yeah. I mean, I very much agree with you about that. I think a lot of people are frustrated right now.

And there's just so much debate about what it is that we should do. There's those of us that feel so frustrated and like a disconnection from the Democratic Party. And that there are things that we've seen coming that maybe there are other things that could have been done to stop it sooner. Name the topic and you probably can find examples of that. But, you know, there's also the very true thing that we need to get up and vote like and we will vote. I'm not going to ever say don't, but it is hard, especially for those of us that consider ourselves progressive, to say like we are fighting so hard just to get some recognition of the fact that

these are dire life or death things happening all around us and we can't get any traction. What is the, how do we move forward? What is the strategy? You know, I'm curious what your thoughts on that whole conversation. Yeah. Like how do we, how do we stay hopeful basically, right? How do we stay hopeful, but how do we get shit done? Yeah. No, it's very frustrating because we know, you started this part of this conversation by talking about voter suppression basically. And it's really frustrating because we know that we're actually winning these arguments like guns, climate, abortion. The majority of the country agrees with us and yet it doesn't get done because of some really archaic political structures that some archaic people are hanging on to.

So it can be very frustrating. Name names. Oh, it's not hard. I mean, like, look, Joe Manchin is like way behind the, I mean, look, it's, I mean, no surprise, right? So here's what I think about it. A couple of things. One, there should be some solace taken to the fact that it's, you know, in 2016, when Trump won,

I think a lot of people felt like, what the hell happened? Is this really what my country wants? Now, at least we understand, no, this isn't what our country wants. It's what our country is currently stuck with until we figure out how to change the system. So when it comes to changing the system, look, I can get pretty discouraged about it too, but I'll tell you what does give me hope, which is that when I look at Generation Z and when I look, I'm technically a millennial, I'm like a geriatric millennial. Me too. that have driven all of us apart very differently than the rest of us. I see them using it to bring people together because they're interested in having shared common experience with people who are not like them. And a lot of how we got to where we are comes out of the fact that this is the longest consecutive period in American history without some form of mandatory service.

Doesn't mean that what I'm saying right now is that everybody has to join the military. But what I am saying is that it has created a real problem that if people want to choose their own factual adventure, they can. And a lot of people in the more senior generations have decided, I don't want to see the humanity in people who don't agree with me. I don't want to feel those feelings. Just like we were talking about avoidance a few minutes ago. I'm not going to acknowledge that that school shooting happened. I'm not going to, you know, all that stuff. I'm not going to.

The other day we had a situation where there was a 10-year-old girl who was raped and became pregnant in Ohio. And there was a full-on right-wing campaign to say that never happened when it very much happened. Because people are like, I will not be dealing with that reality just the way we all do that sometimes to ourselves. be dealing with that reality just the way we all do that sometimes to ourselves. However, when I look at these younger generations, what I see is people who are saying, I'm actually really interested in how people who are not like me and don't think like me feel and what their life is like. And that gives me a lot of hope for changing things going forward, because without that, we're never going through. Yeah. Have your politics changed at all during the last few years as we've seen everything?

I feel like that people are being pulled more in directions. Do you find yourself and you know, you you're from Missouri. It's different than California. You've got a different set of factors with your people that you live with, but you also, you know, in your state and your constituents, but you also were a supporter of Elizabeth Warren, you know, Warren. Do you find yourself being pulled more progressive and what's that experience like in your location and in your state? I have found myself becoming more and more liberal over the years, but frankly, I think I

credit mostly George W. Bush and Donald Trump with that. I think that they, like a lot of us, I think I've just reacted to the situation as it was. It's interesting for me because, you know, coming from the middle of the country and living, I live here in Kansas city. So like my, a lot of my coworkers are Republicans. A lot of my neighbors are Republicans and you know, a lot of my friends are. And then I have this podcast where I talk about how to have these conversations and convince people to be more progressive. I am sometimes characterized as this moderate when I don't feel like one. And I think it's because I have a tendency to use more Midwestern and more congenial language to say the exact same things. And so my politics haven't changed, but I have

definitely become a lot more thoughtful about how I can get across to somebody who I might be the only liberal they know. And our friendship might be based on the fact that we're on the same old man baseball team or we're neighbors and our kids play together or whatever. So how can I bridge that divide? Which doesn't mean that I have to compromise with their politics, but it means I have to find a way to maintain a way to maintain a relationship with them while trying to persuade them. Yeah, I definitely get that. I actually, I wasn't necessarily going to share this, but I am moving soon out of Los Angeles to a small town that is pretty conservative.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not completely. I'm going to have a spot here. But my point being is that I'm really interested. I'm looking for some more peace in a slower day to day environment. But I am interested in the fact that I will be having conversations with people that do not agree with me, probably on most things. to me that there are some people that don't want to talk, don't want to compromise, don't want to learn. But a lot of them so far do. But you just have to, and it doesn't always feel good to couch your words, but sometimes you have to. And then all of a sudden you're seeing things from the other perspective a little bit, if you just kind of take the heat out of it. Well, I'll tell you, here's what I think is at the heart of all that. I think there's a huge misconception at the heart of the Democratic Party right now, which

is that decision to be made is in order to convince voters who don't currently vote with us, do we become more moderate or do we become more progressive? And I just think it's completely the wrong question. Yeah. Because whatever you are is what you are. What convinces people where I'm from and in the South is everybody wants the same thing for their family. They want their family to be happy, healthy, safe, and nearby. So you got to take whatever you believe in and you got to explain to them why it's going to make those things more

likely. And so where the disconnect is in the Democratic Party, it's not that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are liberal. That has nothing to do with it. If anything, and I know and like both those people very much, but if anything, it's that they're from the places our kids move to. So the nearby part of what I just said, they have a tendency not to see the importance of explaining, yeah, this is our position on college debt. This is our position on minimum wage. This is our position on guns. And all of these things are our position because they make it more likely that your kids won't have to move and raise your grandkids somewhere else for opportunity so that your family can stay together.

That's what we're interested in here in the middle of the country. And that's where the disconnect is in the party between the middle of the country and the coast. It's not about liberalism. It's about what it is that people care about and what we should be speaking to. Yeah. Yeah. I guess the thing that sticks out to me is you were running for senator in Missouri and running as a Democratic senator in Missouri. You have to say different things and act in a different way than you would here in California. But in 2016, you said you were pro-choice, but said you were in favor of keeping the Hyde Amendment.

Has that changed? Yeah. That's just one of the things I was wrong about. I can give you a list. I used to favor a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution back when I was in the state legislature, because at the state level, we had a balanced budget amendment. And I was like, well, that makes sense. And then I wrote in my first book, I was like, oh, yeah, I got that one wrong. I had real doubts about the Iran deal. I was wrong about that. Sometimes you get stuff wrong. I actually would like to see more politicians just be like, yeah, I was wrong about that

one. Because man, when you make that many decisions in life, you're going to be wrong about stuff. So refreshing, Jason. It's so refreshing because we all make mistakes and people decide that they just need to stick to their guns on something instead of saying like, yeah, I learned more and evolved. Things changed. Katie, I went 11 years thinking I didn't have PTSD. Like, I'm really comfortable with saying I was wrong about stuff.

Yeah. Well, I appreciate it. And things I think, yeah, a lot of politicians feel afraid to say or admit to, because I think everybody sort of has this idea like politicians, we don't like them, neither party in general. But things like you mentioned in your book, like your brief tour in Afghanistan was pretty much just because you thought it would be good for you politically. Also refreshing. because you thought it would be good for you politically. Also refreshing. Well, I want to be clear about that. What I said in the book is that when I was thinking about joining the service initially, I had a vague notion that it might be a resume enhancer.

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then- Not you went specifically, because I know this will get me to this step. We just think that is a refreshing thing. Like, yeah. Oh, sure. Say the thing, honest.

I just wanted to be- I mean, you also said in the course of this conversation, which I loved, is that you don't want to make decisions like that because of X, Y, Z. You want it to be something you really want to do. Yeah. Well, no, what I would also say about that is that, because I do like to speak to that occasionally, is that, yeah, I had a vague notion that it would be a resume enhancer. But what I also learned is that if you, like, after a week, if that's your real motivation for going into the army, like a week later, you'll be like, I'm leaving because it takes like one 10 mile ruck march for you to be like, yes, I will find another way to enhance my resume. So you got to really want it.

That's a fair point. But Cody, you had something. Oh, well, I'm just curious in thinking about, you know, your evolution and sort of like, yeah, I've changed my mind on this, changed my mind on this, seeing sort of how we can treat veterans and things. I think one thing, also to your point about younger folks these days and feeling this need to connect and who value service, but I think also don't necessarily view the military as the right place for service.

I think there's a hard choice to, instead of like service to the country, but more service to each other. We don't really have the sort of infrastructure of like, yeah, I want to like get into service for the country, but in regards to like climate change or things like that. And,

you know, one thing I think about treating our veterans better is also not putting them in situations like war. That's like, that's the first part, right? For sure. Don't put them there and they won't experience that. I'm sort of curious how that has sort of shaped your view. Yeah. Like don't invade the wrong country. Like that'd be a good place to start. Like don't invade Iraq when it didn't attack us or don't like stay in Afghanistan well past the initial mission. And yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. And as far as like, we have to honor service in a lot of different ways. Like, yeah,

okay. I wore a uniform, but like, you know, if, if that's the symbol of America exclusively, like that's a problem. It also has to be a Peace Corps volunteer. It also has to be, you know, what people do in AmeriCorps, it has to be teaching, and all of that stuff. And I personally, I think that we should have some form of mandatory service. I think that if we have no national identity as a country right now, people don't know what it means to be American. I don't. I can't tell you, here's what it means to be American. And what that results in is an inability for us to see each other's humanity. And I just think it would be great if we all had to get to know each other a little bit and everybody were going to spend a couple of years doing something for their country. It could be

a conservation course. It could be related to climate. It could be the fact that we have an aging population that's going to require an awful lot of home health care. Who knows? But you should have to get to know people who are not just like you. Or at least the options and incentivization for it. It's hard to have a common cause because you don't have a common reality. Experience. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. The word mandatory is tough, but I don't disagree. Like, but I would like, like if I had, there were benefits and a clear structure and something that was organized and I knew was people that were doing, if it was more ubiquitous, is that the right use of the word? I would maybe have considered something like that earlier in my life. I would have had a different trajectory. I would have grown in that way. I keep trying to come up with a way to design a system that has such great benefits that so

many people serve that it won't matter whether it's mandatory. And I can't come up with a way to do it where the most powerful people won't find a way out of it. And then we end up with the same inequity. And at the end of the day, I actually think that rising generations are really looking to be called to something. And I think that I meet a lot of people who never served in any military or otherwise, and they will so often express to me what an enormous regret it is in their life that they didn't spend a couple of years right out of high school or right out of college doing something like that. And I understand why they don't, which is because, like, it feels like life's going to run past you, that the other people your age are going to run right past you and you're going to start behind.

past you, that the other people your age are going to run right past you and you're going to start behind. So to me, going to a place, and this is like the most I've ever talked about this publicly because it's a very controversial idea, but I just really think that if we could level set and make it so that that's the expectation, everybody's going to get skin in the game. Everybody's going to get to a point where they feel like they know people who are not just like them. Well, then you're not going to feel like the world's passing you by if you go do two years as an AmeriCorps volunteer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly.

It's part of that experience. And most people go off to college, don't know what they want out of college. Right. I didn't. Yeah. I mean, the reason that I was so attracted to President Obama, among other things, in 2004, the reason I was like, I want to follow that guy is because I felt like somebody was finally coming along and saying, we have something, our generation has something that

we need to do for this country and that I expect you to do. And three years before that, three years before his big speech in 04, where we all became aware of him, 9-11 happened and George W. Bush went out and he wasn't like, you know, volunteer in your community, join the military, buy war bonds and don't cash them in. He was like, go shop. That's how you can help your country. And like, I remember being so, just feeling so let down by that. And finally somebody came along and was like, no, it's not just the greatest generation who did stuff. Like we're going to do stuff. And I think people are hungry for that. just the greatest generation who did stuff, like we're going to do stuff. And I think people are hungry for that. Yeah. And I think, yeah, being sort of disillusioned by that one option where

you have all these, like the most recent memories of service and war are these disasters that you can't like get on board with. And there's no sort of alternative. I think this unites conservatives and liberals. I've got plenty of conservative friends who tell me that they're just really worried about the future of the country and the way that nobody knows each other and how disconnected the country is. They have different reasons for why they're worried, but they're just as worried. I think people at a gut level understand that the country needs some sort of shared venture. But I agree, shared reality, because a lot of people are worried about things that are not problems. I think shared reality comes from shared experience. So before we let you go, I don't know if you know this,

it's the 200th episode of Even More News. Oh yeah, you mentioned that. That's pretty cool. Yes. I know it's a complete coincidence, but I'm still honored. It is. It's wild.

I have a bit of a surprise for, it's a complete coincidence, but I'm still honored. It is. It's wild. I have a bit of a surprise for, it's a small one, for Katie and Cody. And you, Jason, are going to also sit here and appreciate it. I'm pleased to do so. Here we go. Enjoy. Katie and Cody. Terry O'Quinn here. Or you can call me, well, you can call me whatever you here Or You can call me

Well you can call me Whatever you want You can call me John Long Cody That's fine I'm here to say Congratulations on your 200th episode

I traveled A good long distance Through time To say congratulations 200 episodes Of your podcast I want to thank you. Apparently my name has come up.

I'm going to have to start watching out for it. Give it a listen. Yeah, so Lost. That was quite a trip. I know you liked it, Cody. I know that was your thing. So when you figure it out. Have you ever watched, by the way,

did you watch Damon Lindelof's interview about the end of the show? Because so many people have, I can't use the phrase I was going to use, but expressed disappointment or confusion. Well, let me say this. I was a little confused. I remember there was a scene somewhere in the last portion where I walked into Richard Alpert's tent and I said what year is this and he said it's 1950 something and I said I'm gonna be born in two months yeah and it was at that moment that uh I realized well somewhere in the course of recording that scene, I said, you don't have any idea what's going on. So I hope you're OK with that. And I answered myself, yeah, I'm perfectly fine with that because it was that good.

They used, in fact, people used to say, do you know what's going to happen? And somebody would say, well, here's what we're going to do. And I would say, don't tell me what we're going to do because, hey, life's a surprise, ain't it? I don't want to start playing tomorrow, today. I just want to play today, today. And so you guys on your 200th episode of your podcast, play today. And congratulations and have a wonderful time and Katie I want you to know this Patriot was my favorite job of all time

yes there it is there it is there it fucking is Terry O'Quinn I was waiting for it this is amazing so sorry Jason I just texted a screenshot I just texted a picture of that to Damon Lindewa. I just told him.

Get him on next. Oh, boy. This is a big day for us. It really is. This has been fun. Thank you, Jonathan, so much for that. Thank you so much. That was very delightful.

It's so touching. We love. I love Patriot. Cody loves Lost. I do. Thank. Thank Damon for agreeing with my blog about the end of the show, which he at one point agreed with. Okay. Jason, you've got to go please share the title

of your book where people can get it. Sure. Thanks. Yeah. The book is called Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. It's currently on the New York Times bestseller list. All of my royalties go to the fight against veteran suicide and veteran homelessness at Veterans Community Project. People can get it at invisiblestormbook.com if they want to support independent bookstores, or if they just want to get it, they can get it wherever they get books. Awesome. Check it out, guys.

It's worth it. Thank you. Thank you again so much. Thank you so much guys we will be back next week and remember that we love you very much very much