Angry Planet - The road to Ward 17

Episode Date: November 14, 2016

Dean Yates' view into war and suffering left changed. That he knew. But just how profoundly didn't become clear until he retreated to a quieter life to the place where his wife grew up, in Tasmania.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast? Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters' News. A lot of the memories and a lot of the thoughts that I'd kept, I guess, buried in my mind, had a chance to emerge, and they emerged with a vengeance. Who's entitled to experience PTSD?

Is it just men and women with guns pointed at their heads, with grenades and bombs exploding around them? Evidence shows that it's not simple. PTSD reaches deep, and sometimes all you need is enough quiet to feel it. You're listening to Reuters War College, A discussion of the world in conflict, focusing on the stories behind the front lines. Here are your hosts, Jason Fields and Matthew Galt.

Hello, and welcome to War College. I'm Jason Fields with Reuters. And I'm Matthew Galt with Wars Boring. Journalists are by definition non-combatants. That doesn't mean they don't experience things that leave them scarred. Dean Yates covered the nightclub bombing in Bali in Indonesia in 2002. He was also Reuters Baghdad Bureau Chief in 2007, which was a time of horrible violence there. And Dean will be the first to tell you that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder.

So, Dean, thank you for joining us first. My pleasure. So can we just start off by talking a little bit about your career? Tell us some of the things that you've done. You've been with Reuters for how long? 23 years. And yeah, as someone who's worked at the Baron, as it's called, for only two and a half years, I can just tell you that's a lot. Yeah, it's been a long time.

So can you tell us a little bit about where you've been posted and the things that you've done? Yes, I spent a lot of time in Asia. I guess the real memorable postings have been in Indonesia. I was, as you mentioned, I covered the Bali bombings in 2002. I also spent about a month in Indonesia's Arche province after the Boxing Day, tsunami, which was a humanitarian catastrophe beyond description, just beyond belief, 160,000 people killed in Indonesia's Arche province alone. I did a number of assignments in Iraq in 2003, 2004. I was in Gaza when Israel withdrew settlers from the Gaza Strip in 2005. I was posted to

Jerusalem in 2006, during which time there was the Lebanon War. And then in the start of 2007, I was posted to Baghdad as the Bureau Chief for Reuters, spent about two years there. So if you could give us an idea, and I don't want to make it sound too much like, you know, for, voyeurism, but I mean, when you're covering something like what happened in Indonesia, what is it that you're actually seeing? I mean, as a journalist, as you're walking through it. I think the Boxing Day tsunami for me, and I think for just about every journalist who was there, That was, in a way, that was the story of our generation, the biggest story of our generation, because this was a natural disaster on a scale that no one had ever seen before. And you're trying to imagine that within the space of 20 minutes, 160,000 people have been killed when these giant waves have struck the west coast of Sumatra.

It's, without being too graphic, there were just, there were dead bodies everywhere. I would say that I saw thousands of dead bodies during the month or so. that I was there. And the loss of life, the destruction, the scale of it was just beyond comprehension. And I think that entire population up in Arche was just in complete shock. No one had ever seen anything like this, these waves, some of them went up to four to five kilometers inland, and they just took everything with them. And it's a story that will, I'll never forget, the images are etched into my mind.

and it leaves you with a real sense of just the fragility of life and the power of mother nature. And it was one of those stories as well, whereas journalists, we always say we want to be objective. We want to remain balanced in our work. But that was one story where I can't think of any journalist up there who didn't feel, didn't feel for the people of Archei, and who worked incredibly hard to get the stories out, to get the tech stories out, the photographs, the TV footage, because we were determined that the world needed to know just how bad the situation was in, in Aceh. I had aid workers come up to me and say, you know, what you media guys are doing here is just fantastic.

It's helping inform the world about this tragedy. And some aid workers said that's one of the reasons we're able to, we're raising a lot of money to help with the relief effort and then later on the reconstruction effort. One of the problems up there was that there was no fuel. So you couldn't, to get around was very, very difficult. Even if you had a car, there was no, there was no fuel. And I remember basically hitchhiking, trying to hitchhike to places. And if just say a motorbike guy and a motorbike came past and I'd flag him down, they would not accept any money.

I would want to pay them for taking me somewhere. And they would say, you guys, you've got to tell the world what's happened here. They would not accept any money. The generosity of those people up there was just extraordinary. We just, we stayed in people's homes, the homes that hadn't been demolished. in the waves. And I never, in the entire time I was there, there was not an ounce of hostility. It was just, it was, we need you people to tell the world what has happened. And that was, that in itself made it, I think, a very unique story to cover. But I guess, I mean, what we're

talking about today, though, I mean, the main thing is that it didn't leave you unmarked. It didn't leave an observer unmarked. And even if, you, you know, it didn't leave you. And even if, you, the stress of that and what you saw then didn't immediately, you know, derail you or, you know, you still moved on to cover other stories. That's, that's one point along a path to where you found yourself later on, right? Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. My psychiatrists refer to it as the softening up, if you like. They say that it started with, say, the Bali bombings, which was a very difficult story to cover. I think it was the worst terrorist attack after 9-11 at the time, 202 people killed in that bombing. And then Arche, and so these things soften you up.

You've got a certain amount of capacity to, I think, to process and to handle these traumatic events. And Arche was definitely something that in retrospect, I moved on to other stories, but it really did stay with me. And there are images from Arche that still just flash into my mind now. What are we, nearly 12 years later? Can you contrast that time with what it was like to be the Baghdad Bureau Chief? I guess the, it was different in a sense that in Aceh, I was in charge of a team of about 10 reporters and photographers and cameramen, and I would often talk to the guys there and say, you know, how's everyone doing? Because this was just an unimaginable situation to be in. But Iraq was more, the stress in managing 100 people in Iraq was just magnified tenfold because the safety

of the Iraqi staff were at threat every single day they were out on the streets covering that story. And so I think it, that's not to diminish the stress I felt in Arche, the stress and that sense of responsibility, that sense of being responsible for people's lives in Iraq, it just made it a very difficult and challenging job. I have no regrets about doing it. Don't get me wrong, but that stress, it continues to this day. For example, when I've been working in recent years, I work from home, I edit stories from home. If I get stressed about something when I'm writing a story or editing a story,

I sometimes feel like I'm actually back in my Baghdad office. I'll just picture the Baghdad office and it's like I'm sitting there. It's like I'm transported back. And it's just, it's a difficult one to deal with. What happened there that you feel like you've gotten kind of stuck in that place psychically? Or is that an accurate description of what's going on? I think for me, I talk about my PTSD pyramid and right at the top is, and as I'm sure you'll understand, we tragically lost three Iraqi staff members in July 2007.

One was a translator who was killed by militants at a fake checkpoint in Baghdad. And the other was the tragic killing of a photographer called Namir, Nord Eldon, and a Reuters driver, Sayat Chum, they were killed in an attack by a US Apache gunship on July 12, 2007. And that loss of life, the circumstances of their deaths, the enormity of that was just, left us all absolutely grief-stricken in Baghdad. And it was my job to try to hold the Bureau together, to try to investigate, find out what exactly happened in that attack by that US helicopter gunship. And it was just, there were times when I really thought that I just couldn't, I wouldn't be able to get through it. And there were times, there was one time, for example, I just broke down,

I had a nervous, virtually had a nervous breakdown a few days after it. And I just, I was in my office. I just wept. And I had a colleague at the time, a colleague and friend, a great Lebanese journalist called Mariam Caruny, who she just comforted me and she told me, you've just got to keep going. And I did. I just felt someone stronger needed to come in and take over,

but I guess I managed to keep going. And that, it's when you're responsible for people and you lose people like that and you feel responsible for their safety, it's something that for me has been very hard to deal with over the years. I guess it became harder still when in 2010 classified US military video was leaked by WikiLeaks and it showed in graphic detail cameras from the helicopter gunship that killed Namir inside and a bunch of other civilians. It showed actually how it unfolded. And I have not been able to watch that full video to this day. I'm fully aware of

transcripts and what happened, but it's just, I find it. I want to watch it when I was recently in a psychiatric ward for five weeks. I wanted to watch it, but my psychiatrist wouldn't let me. They just said, I'm not ready. And I guess it just, for me, it's a graphic reminder of what happened, but also, and this is one of the strange things. Not the strange things, but some of the things about PTSD. A lot of people will think PTSD is about fear and about things you witnessed and saw. But to me, PTSD is all about, it's also about guilt. It's about shame. Did I do enough? Did I do enough to prevent their deaths in the first place? Did I do enough when that video came out to explain what really happened on that day? And the answer to that second

question is no. I was just utterly paralyzed and I just wanted to hide and I let others in Reuters manage that story when I was the one who knew most about what had happened. And I just wanted others to do it. I was just too paralyzed to respond. And I feel terribly guilty and shameful about that to this day. Well, what were you doing in 2010 for Reuters? What was your current assignment? I was the what's called the top news editor for Reuters in Asia and so I was responsible for our coverage of the major stories in Asia each day. I was actually on holiday at the time when the video came out. I was in holiday, on holiday in the beautiful Australian state of Tasmania where I live and I had no idea that video was out until one day I just I opened a newspaper and

there it was splashed across the pages of this newspaper and and I was just shocked I couldn't believe that this this that happened and I contacted some of my editors and tried to get a better understanding of what was going on and and then I just went to ground I really just couldn't deal with it I just wanted someone else to deal with it it was just it was just too much for me and I just now I wish I had more courage and and been able to to basically set the record straight of what happened. And I didn't do it. And that's something I'm trying to deal with now. I think it's fair to say that you're more than a little hard on yourself.

Well, people say that, Jason. And people will try. And so many people are in recent months, I've reached out to my Iraqi colleagues, the people I work with at the time I've reached out to some of the foreign colleagues that I worked with at the time. And they say that. They say, look, you did it, did everything you could. But what people don't understand about PTSD is that you have to, you have your own version of events and your interpretation of those events. And I have my own interpretation of those events. And I know deep down that I could have done more, especially when that video was released and I didn't. And that I feel like I let down

Namiya and say it. I feel like I let down my Iraqi colleagues who was so wonderful to me when I lived in Baghdad. And I've just got to learn to move on from that, I guess. And that's something I talked about a lot when I was in this psychiatric ward for five weeks with my treating team. And I think I can get there, but it's just going to take some time, that's all. How long were you still the Baghdad Bureau Chief after their deaths? Yeah, probably about 15 months. So, I mean, you, you know, I am thinking. thinking about the fact that after you knew, in a sense, the worst that could happen to the people who were under you, you then had to carry that stress in the same circumstances for another 15 months.

It's, I mean, it just sounds like it would compound whatever you felt. I mean, if that's what you're going to the office and dealing with every single day. Yeah, that's right. There were reminders, obviously. You could not, I don't think there a day when I didn't think about Namir and say it. But what I tried to do at the time was to, and I guess this is what people remind me of, is that one of the things I did at the time was to try to negotiate with the US military

on what are their rules of engagement when it comes to journalists working in Baghdad because they were doing things at that time that we just didn't know. Like their rules of engagement were that they would open fire on people who were carrying weapons, even if there was no fighting taking place. The U.S. military at the time regarded that as basically enemy combatants showing hostile intent.

Media did not know that. And so, and we learned a very hard lesson. So what I did was I talked to my colleagues, foreign media colleagues in Baghdad, and we got together and we basically sat down with the U.S. military in over a period of many, many months, we were able to get them to at least be a little bit more open with us about those rules of engagement. And then we were able to come up with a set of guidelines that we're able to circulate to media in Baghdad and say, look, this is what these rules of engagement are. And you have to take them very, very seriously.

That was one way at least of ensuring that the deaths of Namir and say weren't in vain, but it still didn't bring them back, of course. you're now in from your description i mean one of the most beautiful places on earth and it's very isolated as well from the most of the world i mean tasmania most of us in the united states know it from the devil in the car sure he's totally honest uh so you you came home to this very peaceful place and what started to happen what did you start to experience it's interesting because I actually, when I came home here, I started to unravel. And I think it was because while I worked in Singapore for a few years after Iraq, I was incredibly busy. I was responsible for the top stories

in Asia each day. And that was a very demanding and a very busy job. When I got to Tasmania, and the idea was that I'd edit stories for Reuters from home was I had a bit of time to think. And I was a bit isolated, actually, because I was working from home. My kids would go to school. My wife would have other things to do. And sometimes I'd find myself at home on my own all day. And I started to, I think I started to ruminate. I started to really just feel that, yeah, things, things just started to bubble. It came to the surface. And my wife started to see a lot of changes in my behavior. I had this amazingly, I was so sensitive to any loud noise. I became very irritated, easily, agitated, emotionally numb. I wasn't really a nice person to be around. And then

I'd be in my office and I'd, my home office. And as I said, if I got stressed, I'd bang my fists on the table. I'd even scream at the walls. And I could just feel myself slipping. But I just refused to believe that it was anything like PTSD. And my wife and I went round and round in circles on this for a long time before. She finally, I mean, our marriage was really at breaking point there earlier this year. And that's when I agreed to see a psychiatrist who,

who diagnosed me with PTSD, but I actually think coming to Tasmania brought a lot of this stuff to the surface because it gave me more time to think. And a lot of the memories and a lot of the thoughts that I'd kept, I guess, buried in my mind had a chance to emerge. And they emerged with a vengeance. Why did you think at the time that it wasn't PTSD? You know, I just felt that I really felt that I was the sort of guy who would not get PTSD. In fact, when I was in Baghdad, we didn't even talk about PTSD. I can't recall a single conversation with anyone about PTSD. It was just, you know, we'd say, oh, so-and-so is messed up.

We'd say, oh, so-and-so is drinking heavily or whatever and needs a break. But we just didn't talk about PTSD in the terms that we talk about PTSD today. and I felt that I'd always enjoyed running large operations. I felt that I could always, I was decisive, I was calm, I was rational, I could make decisions, and I just felt it wouldn't affect me. I just felt that mentally I was strong enough. So I was in denial, and it's a bit like, I guess it's a bit like an alcoholic who denies that they're an alcoholic.

I just refused to believe that anything was wrong with me. And of course, my wife could see it. and I was very good at putting on a mask. And this is the other thing about people with PTSD is they can appear pretty normal to outsiders, to folks who are not their loved ones. You put that mask on, you seem like everything's fine,

you can have a conversation. I did my work and people who I dealt with remotely, they wouldn't know that anything was wrong with me. They couldn't see how I was feeling. And so I guess it was just, just, I don't know, male stubbornness. As a species, I think men are pretty stubborn and don't like to admit that they've got problems, and I was one of them. I think you also mentioned at one point that, you know, despite what you may have seen in Acha,

you weren't in a front line position in Iraq, for the most part, right? And so some feeling like you were one step removed, so you almost didn't deserve to feel how you felt. Exactly. One of the things that first, when I was first diagnosed with PTSD, I said, but there are so many other people who, who have seen so much more in war zones than I have, who've experienced so much more in war zones than I have it. And it's a strange word, but it's sort of like, if anyone deserves to have PTSD, it's them, not me. You know, deserve is not the right word, but it's the best I can think of right now. And when I was in the psychiatric, this ward in a Melbourne hospital, and we'd have these group sessions. soldiers would say, I don't deserve to be here. It's my comrade who saw more, he deserves to be here, or my superior who deserves to be here because they saw more than I did. And so there's this, that's sort of like that feeling of guilt that you didn't earn, you haven't earned the, to be diagnosed with PTSD.

And as I, when people say, what's it like being a war correspondent? I say, I'm not a war correspondent. I was just a person who lived and worked in a war zone. Because to me, a war correspondent is really someone. I mean, the first person I think of when people talk about war correspondents is the great Kurt Schauch, who worked for Reuters and was tragically killed in Sierra Leone in 2000. He was on the ground in Bosnia for years and really right in the middle of it. That, to me, is a war correspondent. Whereas for the most part, in 2007, 2008, I was behind blast walls.

We had guards. We rarely ventured out. It was just too dangerous. It was our Iraqi staff who were the ones taking news. They were the ones going out and covering the story. And so in a way, I guess to come back to the original question, it's like, yeah, did I really, and that was one of the things that I think I struggled with initially was do I deserve this PTSD description?

And I would argue with my psychiatrist about this when I was in hospital. And they said, and they would tell me, no, you deserve to be. here. You've had this cumulative trauma over a period of many years and you can't just look at one incident, but you add it all up and what it amounts to is cumulative trauma and you have a right to be here was what they said. Sounds strange. It sounds strange I know, but there was a thing that came up a lot in the group sessions. I remember in these group sessions, there was a woman, she was a teacher and there was an incident that had her school where they thought someone was basically trying to attack them and she and a color of others locked themselves in the principal's office and of course

you think of in australia we don't have the sort of stuff you have in america but that's what they were thinking and and she was and she would say in these group sessions but i've never been to war so i don't i don't deserve to be in this in this facility getting this great treatment and we would say to her now you've suffered a trauma and and that's you've got PTSD so some of these when i was in this hot the psychiatric unit i was with with men and women Police men and women, for example, who have been on that job for 20 years and who have seen and experienced death and trauma and suffering on a daily basis, right up close, whether it's young people committing suicide, whether it's going to a horrific accident where children have been killed, road accidents, that sort of thing. and yeah you really feel for these sorts of people or or soldiers who've returned from war and their buddies have been killed they've been maimed themselves and then they they have a feeling that

the system just wants to wants to get rid of them dispensed with them so it's look it's it's still something that i think i struggle with a little bit and and even feel a little bit embarrassed about if that makes sense but but i know that my symptoms are real my wife will tell you that my symptoms are real last night, for example, I woke up at 3.30 this morning. I couldn't sleep. My wife said to me, you had a really restless night last night. I said, what was I doing? She said, you were running in your sleep again. It's my feet. They moved like I'm running. And I think it's an extension of the worst nightmares that I have, which are that I'm in the streets of Baghdad. I'm running through the streets. I'm on my own. Insurgents are looking for me, and I'm trying to find a place to hide.

So when you did get treatment, what did they prescribe? I mean, what did they tell you what helps? I mean, and the same things help everybody, or they have to be different, you know, regimens for different people. Yeah, I think the thing with treating PTSD is it's a combination of things, but not what works for someone is not going to work for the other person. And so it's a real case of trial and error. So it's trial and error with your medication first. medication is not generally seen as the be-all and end-all for PTSD. So they put me on a specific course of antidepressants to basically deal with my depression.

They gave me some medication to try to stop or at least reduce the intensity of the nightmares. Valium, if I'm having anxiety attacks, they gave me that, as well as sleeping tablets. And that's sort of a pretty general medication. that gets given to patients there. But then there's so many other things that they'll try and work on and see what works for people. So a lot of psychotherapy, a lot of talk therapy. There were some people in the unit who were having ECT,

electro-magnetic compulsive therapy, which is basically, you know, we're not talking one floor over the cuckoo's nest here. Things have moved on since then. But this effectively stimulates the, I don't quite know how it works, but the brain in a way, that it can actually get people out of a depressive episode that they're in.

A lot of physical exercise. Meditation is a big thing. I like to meditate. I find that really helps me. Did you used to meditate before? No, I thought meditation was, you know, I just, I thought meditation was, I didn't think it would, not that I dismissed it, but I really didn't think much about it. But what I found with meditation was that it actually really helps ground me.

and for half an hour or so, it helps you live in the present. It forces you just to focus on one thing. So I count my breaths when I'm meditating, and it just helps me just focus on the present. And it works for me. I generally feel better after I've meditated. If I haven't meditated for a few days, like recently, my wife will notice and she'll say,

you've got to get back to your meditation. Yoga works for a lot of people as well. You've just got to find the right mix, I think, the right combination of things, of things. And also just friends and family. You've got to reconnect with people. You've got to be part of a, you need a good support network around it. Because one of the worst things with PTSD is you start to isolate yourself. That's when you're going to start to go downhill again.

And if you've got a supportive network around you, people, and not just acquaintances, you've got to have people who really know you, who understand what you're going through, and who are happy to talk about what it is you're going through. Because some of this PTSD can be a bloody nightmare, and you just need to be able to feel comfortable that you can share stuff with others. And I find that's been really important for me as well. So in so many ways,

it's going against everything in the, like, the, you know, how to be a man handbook, right? I mean, the stuff that we're brought up with. I mean, there's, this is still, I mean, it could be generational, but the whole idea, you know, you're supposed to keep things like this inside. You're not supposed to connect too emotionally with people who aren't your immediate family. If you feel like crap, suck it up. And that's a very journalism thing, too.

It's a very macho industry still. So, I mean, it just sounds like there are so many different things that you have to face down to get to a point where you can get yourself better. I mean, you have to challenge assumptions of even what it means to be masculine, right? I mean, the way that we're brought up. That's a really good point, Jason. It is the opposite of what in the past we would think of what a man is about. I mean, before I go to bed at night, I dab lavender oil on my temples, for example.

I like running a bath and putting epsom salts and lavender oil in and having a soak, that sort of thing. it's really and it's and even crying for example one of the problems that I've found is I just I find it hard to really express my emotions because I've been emotionally numb for so many years and a couple of weeks ago I found myself I was walking through this lovely village of Evindal where I live and I was walking I started walking around the main oval and I was thinking about this guy in the ward that I was with this ex-Australian is this veteran who'd served in Afghanistan. Afghanistan, big guy, but he's had a really tough life and his PTSD is bad. And yet all he wants to do is help people. He does these adventure challenges. He climbs mountains. He goes on treks to raise money for other veterans or for other people. And I was thinking about this guy and what a wonderful fellow is.

I started to cry. Tears were streaming down my face. You know, the first thing I did, I looked around to see if anyone could see me. Yeah. You know, it's that typical male response. And I just thought to myself, I don't know this is this is okay this is good just let it go and so for two full laps I just cried as I walked around this oval and I I felt better after that so I think as men

and as especially as male journalists we've got to we've got to try to feel and express our emotions and talk to people about these sorts of things because the longer you bottle it up one day it's it's just going to come out and then then you've got to deal with the the mess so where does that leave you I mean, what is next for you? It's a good question. I had a long talk with my treating team in hospital before I was discharged back in mid-September. And we sort of tried to work out a routine.

There's still a lot of psychotherapy I need to do it. While I was in the hospital, what I spent most of my time talking about was Namir and Sade and their deaths and the aftermath of their deaths. I haven't even got to Archa yet. I haven't even got to the Bali bombings yet. and there's other stuff that happen to interact that I haven't got to. So I think there's a good years worth of psychotherapy ahead of me. I think it's also to, I'm really keen to get back to work. You know, I'll be honest, and I haven't worked in eight months.

You know, Reuters has been very good giving me this time off. And I think that time off has been incredibly useful because it's allowed me to think about stuff and to process stuff. I need to just get a good routine going, do my walks, do my medical. meditation, build up a sort of a solid foundation so that I can then move to that next stage of my recovery, which will be getting back to some work and maybe doing things that make me feel good about myself. So maybe doing a bit of voluntary work here and there. And also, you know, maybe most importantly, reconnecting with my family, reconnecting with my wife and my kids.

I've got three teenagers. They've been, their struggle, they've found it very hard to understand and what's been happening to their father. And I think reconnecting with my family is it's an absolutely vital part of my overall recovery. But it's going to take time. But I think on the positive side, I do believe in this concept called post-traumatic growth. It's this idea that out of this trauma and out of this suffering, you can actually lead a more meaningful life. Because I guess once you've experienced something like this,

you look for more meaning in your life. and you look for ways to be a better person. And I hope that that will be me one day. Dean, thank you so much for sharing this with us. I mean, I think it's good to talk about this, even on a podcast in more honest terms. It's actually cathartic, you know, Jason, talking about this sort of stuff.

The more people with PTSD, the more people with mental illness can talk about it and be open about it. Like, I'll go away from it. from this. I'll feel better because I'll feel like there's been some sort of release. It's like a little bit of the burden that's been lifted because I've shared it and we've got to share these experiences. And I think people who are the listeners need to listen. They need to try to understand and realize that something like PTSD mental illness, it's a real bugger of a thing.

You can't, it's hard to see it because it's not a physical injury, but it is there. And it can be a nightmare at times. All right. Dean, thank you so much for talking to us. Thank you. My pleasure, Jason and Matt. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you enjoy War College and want other people to find it, nothing works better than rating us on iTunes. The more ratings and comments that we get on iTunes, the more likely it is that Apple will suggest it to other people. We'd also love to hear from you on Twitter. We are at War underscore College. We've gotten some cool ideas for new shows recently, and we're going to add them to our list to produce. War College was created by me, Jason Fields, and Craig Hedick.

Matthew Galt co-hosts the show and Wrangles the guests. Our producer is Bethel Hopton.