Drama Queens - Work in Progress: S.E. Cupp

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

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.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to work in progress. Hello, Whipsmarties. 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 whose funding

got cut this week, I see you and I'm so sorry if you are a student who doesn't know if your Pell Grant 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. a little bit of strategy, and I figured it would be really important to reach across the proverbial aisle 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 Cup. You may know her as a TV host, a political commentator or a writer. She has her show S.E. Cup unfiltered. She's featured often on Politico.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 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 advocates for our communities in the future of this year, 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 fire hose, I'm like, I don't even know where we should start. Pick a, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick a place. I mean. Okay. Yeah, 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 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? That's a great question. I'm jealous because I, I do a podcast like this as well and never thought to ask that one. It's a great one. Yes and no. 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 more creative in the creative arts but I was always very curious and I was interested in the news at a very early age and so I don't 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 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 mother.

But, no, I think there were shreds of it. I was very independent. I was an only child. So, yeah, some of it, yes, some of it I could see. Interesting. And what do you think drew you to the news? Was there the sort of breaking news current events aspect of it all? Was it that you found the inner workings of politics really interesting?

What was the spark? Yeah. For me, it wasn't even the stories themselves. It was the way they were being covered. I remember at 10 or 11 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 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. And in particular, watching women like Diane Sawyer and Jane Polly cover big stories and the places they would find themselves I loved to travel as a kid I thought that you know

traveling as a news person sounded amazing I know when I was 17 a magazine came out about the news and I spent my own allowance to get a subscription to this magazine

like I was kind of a nerd a media nerd and when I got to college and I worked to the school newspaper I knew this is what I want to do this is what I was made to do I was built to do

to do this. 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. Okay. And what do you remember then about your first TV appearance?

So I had just written a book with a co-author, and Simon O'Soucester published it, and it was a political book, and they decided, well, we need to go on TV and promote it. So our first appearance was on Morning Joe. And all I remember, for Sophia is my co-author being very nervous

and me being not at all nervous. And I thought in those moments, this is either going to go terribly 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 I was something of a novelty then. of young female conservative in Manhattan and who had just written a book defending conservatism. And so it was a bit of a novelty.

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. And that's all I cared about was the writing. 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 and orally and, you know, shine a light on issues that really matter to me. I love it. And it's exciting to me. 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, there's no way. Sarah's going to go on Sophia's podcast, and there's no way Sophia would go on Sarah'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 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, gee, I wonder if it was maybe when you had to sort of speak out about the insanity of this cult of Trumpism in the last election, you know, none of us being able to forward think 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?

Yeah. Here we are. 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 hour, collective hour, America's house is on fire. Like, what? How do you as someone who came up as self-identifying conservative who has pushed back on a lot of this insanity? No, like all of it, like almost all of it, yeah.

Yeah. Okay, few things. And you pick where we start. How did you find the courage to say, this is unacceptable? Also, this is lawless. You did it 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. Like, girl, what are we doing next? Can you just give us all sort of a lay of a land for you, 2016 and how you view it now that we've been through this once before. 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.

You, 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 is, was, a huge risk, and I'm sure it's paying off for you personally, professionally, in all the ways, but huge, huge risk for you. 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 traitor. And I, there's a physical risk because I get death threats and attempts to silence me. and actual attacks.

That part's not fun, but this is what I'm paid to do. And I could do it a couple ways. I have a lot of friends who came up like I did and decided, well, I'll just keep going where the power is. And I'll start justifying stuff. Stuff that I know is not right,

that I know 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. It'll help me keep my friends. It might even bring me more money and power. Blah, blah, blah. Lots of people did that. I could have decided I'm out.

I don't want to do this. 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 to sleep at night.

And I need to know, okay, what did I do with this platform that in a way I looked into? What am I going to do with it? And how am I going to use it responsibly? 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. And let me just say one thing.

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

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 very important so I you know I've gone through many phases in my career where I was a right-wing 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-Trump, resistance, this isn't right. and now all the 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 2015, I guess 10 now, to now, because not only hasn't been hard to professionally cover the flood the zone chaos of it, but it's personal for me, 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 that's fine. But figuring out who I am, where do I belong? And I also had a mental breakdown. Like I had a nervous breakdown in 2021 and had to figure out, do I need to do this anymore? And can I and be healthy? Yeah. 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 will say to people in media, particularly women in media, oh, well, you asked for this. Yeah.

Comes with a job, right? Nobody asked for this. Nobody asked to be stalked, harassed, to be threatened with death. I'm there. I actually had, particularly during, you know, the fight against him. you know, 15 into 16 in the last administration, when I became one of the major, like, repeat, constant articles written on Breitbart targets. Yeah.

I had some friends of, I would say, 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 tune out 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, 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.

Yep. And you've been there. And I 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. Yeah. It is so crazy to have to learn to navigate those things. And I know what 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 get on the other side of it? Because there are people at home who I know are desperate to understand this better. 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. Yeah. So talking about it is paramount for me. I was 2021 and it's not like one thing happened. 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. I would occupy my brain with the worst thing that could happen. in 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 24-7. And it was emotionally, physically, mentally exhausting. But I told myself, if I don't do that, it'll happen. 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 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 by the time you know 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. Went home. My vision was caught. 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. understand. I'd turn on the TV. I didn't understand like the news. I was instantly very sad and I had not been like depressed or anything. I was overwhelmed. And the good news is it was so severe debilitating. I knew I needed help right away. 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. So I did. I got several doctors embarked on, you know, 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 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 20 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 because I learned to live with it really well I got great at it um right but and it's addicting it can be addicting well well what it does even just in your body hormonally, when you are constantly in fight or fight 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 overcaffeinated. And you're feeling the 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 10 anxious person all the time. Yeah. Yeah. 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 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 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 me change it for four years when we had no idea. And I was like, 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 this is? Exactly right. And 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 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, you're not like the other girls. And then you're like, oh, wow, that's a 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. Yeah. And 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 would not. agree on anything and we're sitting here going we agree on so much yeah 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 systems are 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 and how they can live, how they can dress, what they can read, what they, you know, where they can get 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 25% of the

entire national debt in four years of a country that's existed for 250. How do you, you know, you're talking about the personal re-aligning, you know, clicking things into place in a healthier way. Yeah. How, as someone who did come up on the conservative end of this pendulum swing, 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 and what we do? because everybody out there, particularly people who listen to my podcast, like they know what I think about this stuff. How are you making sense of this 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. Okay, before you move on,

to now can you tell me how you defined it in the in the space and place you came up 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 because i grew up in ballet but but in my political career long before a lot of Democrats, in fact, were 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. That's my personal choice. I've always supported Roe v. Wade and having that as 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 it doesn't come from any kind of. religious ideology or anything like that.

Well, that feels like an important thing just to, I love a little asterisk in a moment like that. It's ironic to me that the religious right weaponized abortion as an issue, you know, six years after the passage of Dobbs, they never cared, but once they lost their last appeal on trying to uphold segregation, they decided they needed a new cause. The deepest irony of this as a kid who grew up in a house with two religions in L.A. 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 a how-to. So technically it's a pro-abortion text. But, you know, we'll leave that for another time. Yeah. I know. It's a lot. It's all fraught. Yeah.

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 now 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 differences were 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, this is not conservative, do you care anymore that this is not conservative? Because they clearly don't.

No, they do not. It's the thing that you were saying, the intellectual honesty, the consistency, the hypocrisy. You just said this was 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 like, my hair on fire, it's designed to make you just want to say, get, I'm tuning it all out. Like I can't even make sense of it. Unfortunately, I can't tune it out. It'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. Is this thing on? Is anyone listen? Does anyone care about, forget jettising the conservatism. I know y'all don't care about that anymore. Do we care about intellectual honesty, consistency, and hypocrisy?

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 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. We don't even speak the same language anymore.

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, 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 Heil Hitler's, which we know he did, which, you know, the images of which that are being disseminated in Germany as people call, 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 trutherism around it. I saw it. I know who you're talking about. And I was like, I'm sorry, are we tokenizing the truth? Yeah. Yeah. 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 you cannot there's no fact and alternative fact Kelly Ann Conway there are there are concrete facts right and we have to 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 But that's, that is the, the desire of a lot of people on, on the far right now, is destruction and nihilism. Well, I think for some people it's fun. But for others, there's, there's a contingent that thinks our government is broken. Both sides in establishment parties 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 out with no concern for what happens next. And it was the same thing with Dobbs. There was no overturning Dobbs had no, okay, what comes next. 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 don't care. I'm going to do it.

And I'm daring you to challenge me. Because we all know what that looks like by now. And it's rough. It's rough. 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, the way I pay my bills is not working in politics. I've been a political volunteer for over 20 years. People love to come at me and say, how much money are you making for this? None. I spend my

own money to do this. Right, right. And I've lost quite a few, you know, the pretty sort of endorsement deals that happened in my line of work. I don't get those big ones because I won't stop saying words like abortion and exactly on your p and l sheet this is an l for you yeah i get it's a it's a big l yeah but it matters to me because like what i'm going to i'm going to sell us out to i don't know advertise something for what right 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 um energy of retribution Yeah. This joy in harming people.

Yeah. Because not only have you overturned Dobbs and have you put the lives of women around the country at risk, I have friends who, you know, my friend Amanda, Zorovsky 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 cross the line. I mean, things that are just so appalling. Yeah. The suffering, they 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 $12 billion in school lunch assistance.

Right. That they know is where so many children in our country get their only guaranteed meal on a weekday. Kids that go hungry. And they are sitting here saying, not all those kids deserve to eat it's worse than that i i saw someone on a congressman on cnn today who was asked what 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 i work in this space she said what would you tell a kid who gets food assistance from programs like snap um and he said well when i was a kid i 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 blazee go work for it attitude where there's

not only no attempt to see the human side of what's happening there is total resistance to that do not show me the face of suffering people do not show me the cost I don't want to know I don't care. 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 are now woke. This isn't how I was brought up either by my parents or in politics. And it's just so nihilistic. that this is how you must act now. What bothers me too about this idea

that our social safety nets are woke, these are supposed to be smart business people, right? And look, I'm not a billionaire business person. I am very aware, no matter how many times Donald Trump, who has his plane with his name on it, calls me and my friends the elite, I'm way closer to being homeless tomorrow than I am to ever be in a billionaire.

Like, that's just the stats. Yeah. And 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 to. And yes, sure, sometimes an investment doesn't work. Sometimes it does. The idea is 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 streetlights in your city, your drinking water, we pay into infrastructure. And the return on our investment is to be able to live theoretically in a country where you're not going to get, teaboned 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 enjoyment. For other enjoyment, 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 neighbor lost their job and was hungry, you'd invite them over for dinner.

hoping they 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 Antarctica and live off the grid and see how long you survive. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it used to be, we could have conversations about how to solve these endemic problems. Yes. 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 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

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 we don't even agree on the problems anymore let alone the solutions because me even caring about the problem makes me a snowflake. Yeah.

Right. So 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. It's very cynical, deeply, deeply cynical. So I'm curious because you wrote something, you know, in reference to in 2020 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 conservatism is just a lie. I think 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 MAGA world. And you spoke about the courage of Liz Cheney, you know, her standing up for American values. And you talked about how in a silent vote, her fellow congresspeople 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 answer. Yeah. Now the votes are not silent. They're out loud. You know, you've got J.D. Vance, essentially referring to women as cattle saying it's our job to be pregnant. And, you know, them blowing up everything, education, cancer research, all of it. I know the chaos is the point because they want us they want us in as I feel right now I want to take a deep breath and cry and I'm sure people at home listening do too I promise we're we're going to we're going to add a little spark of hope here 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.

It's really tough because you can drive yourself crazy. And again, that's what they want. They want you to get tired. They want you to be afraid of speaking and doing what you do. And listen, 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 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 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 just you know I would just get all that's not necessary right I mean for one most hours of cable news repeat the same stories

two I can read the news and 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. Yeah. And so I've, I really started looking at that, how I consume the news and how I move through the world that I live in. You know, doing philanthropic work is a thing that helps me escape the feeling of hopelessness and pointless. Like I am pointless and what I'm doing in my professional life

means nothing. Go and do a little philanthropy. I volunteer at a shelter almost every other week. You find meaning in 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 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. Yeah. Kind of creating some separation from that is scary. But also really liberating to say, wait a second, I'm a whole person without any of these

trappings around me. I'm a whole valuable person. It's a re-centering and it takes a while. It's not an overnight thing. But man, has it saved my life? Literally, it has saved my life. 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 you realize it or not, you become a two-dimensional person. But we live three-dimensional lives. Yeah. And the 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 the way I am dealing with this is giving myself 30 minutes 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 L.A., as you know, it's been so traumatizing to watch a city go through what we've been going through. 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 dropped everything to do it, to show up 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 that away. There's so many of us. That's right. We're going to have to lean on each other, you know.

And I wonder, is it that sort of design? for that three-dimensional life, 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 that isn't just about the news? Like, it piqued my interest in such a core way. What was the impetus for you to say, I want to go beyond the job and into the personal well i'm so glad it's piqued your interest because and that's exactly what it was i need it in in this project of mine where i'm trying to find the non-political me who is that the non-cernan personality me right the 3d me um because as you say like i 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 had forgotten them. I had forgotten that I had interests before politics in 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, 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 can come up.

Yeah. If it's so desires, right? So I said, I want to talk 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 in a space where mental health can come up as they've confronted challenges, loss, love. etc. And I heart said, do it, go do it. 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 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. And I didn't know I was doing that. 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 has been such a gift that I needed so badly. So listen, if this, if off the cup, if this podcast goes away tomorrow, I'll be sad. But it's been, it's been such a gift for me.

I, please, A, I'm a crier, never apologize for emotions with me. And B, the way when you say a light bulb went off. Like, the way I feel seen by what you just said, because similarly, in 2019, and I know we're going to have to do it again, I sat 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 whom 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 20-year-old me in class at USC Annenberg would die to know that I get to tell this story. I'm sitting in Gloria Steinem's living room in New York. Okay. With this amazing group of women talking about what the fuck we're going to do with this country that is making money off hating women.

And I was like, this conversation, I wish everyone could hear. 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 Argus, 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 first heard a rumor about this thing starting 2019, 2020. 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 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. I think that's so true. And your world opens up, which is so lovely and wonderful because you start to believe your two-dimensional 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 arena that I don't get to play in. I'm really I'm really stimulated by these conversations or whatever it is or I'm learning so much about navigating the world when you know Henry Winkler tells me I thought 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. And then he tells me what he did and here's what you're going to do,

Essie, because you're smart and you're ambitious and you're going to do this. You're going to figure it out. I mean, who would have thought I'd get some of the best career advice in my life from the Fonz, right? But like, you 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 have, have to agree on everything. I don't know when that became a requirement of friendship or or anything. 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 um so yeah love these kinds of conversations with people like you um so much more than i like

talking politics these days honestly yeah 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 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, you know, working on no kid hungry. Like, you have to have that to sustain the other part. And, and yeah, I think any time we get to kind of reach out and grab more of ourselves

and our communities, it helps. Well, at the end of the day, politics is poor people. 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, 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 eyes 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.

We've forgotten about the people that are being impacted, the people who are meant to be helped by this. Is this helping people? Is this solving problems? We've forgotten it's so performative now. And again, it feels gross. It feels really gross and demoralizing. 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 things. You miss nuance. You miss personal time. And anything that can help you slow down and analyze a bit, 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 is what I hope we all, you and I and everyone at home listening. 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 so that we can be more three-dimensional as we walk into being together, defending each other, all of these things. 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 from you. You are not meant to be nuanced 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 um some sort of identity politics thing for you to use. Yes. That's the fight. That's the fight, you know, of a lifetime trying to, you know, trying to persuade people to remember that and have more conversations like this to, to discover that. 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, an avatar of this. For me, when I've allowed myself to take moments and say, no, I'm so much more than an actor.

I am a human being. I'm an advocate. I'm a friend. I'm a this. I'm a 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, 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 feel. finally pause and say, no, who am I when I reinflate the balloon? Yeah. 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 and her work and building out this huge thing, you know, this women's sports network to give women their moment, you know, in this radio media space. Yeah. I got to sit back and watch, and this has never happened to me in my personal life before, but 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 finding my world beyond sport. I don't, you know, 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 do a podcast about

whatever you want. We want it from you. We've never seen someone talk about these things the way you do. And I sat there, it was like being at, you know, the U.S. 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. You're at I heart, I'm at I heart, she's at I are.

And it's this really cool thing when people can look at you and say, I want to know all of you. 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? Totally. I love 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. 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 I'm wrong. We fought so hard to get where we got and wear the costume of the career we wanted, right? We fought so hard to get there. Climbing. Climbing, I just want to be this. I want to embody this.

And then we did. We got there. We embodied it. Then it got really hard to take the costume off. really hard. And who am I without this thing? Who am I? I don't know how people are going to see me, but I also don't know how I'm going to see myself. So it's a challenge. But when you have a partner, by that I mean like I heart, 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 to all the things 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 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 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. And you go, wait, what? What is that? I know. Totally. What? Yeah. And I 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 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. It's like, you know, again, 20-year-old me, going to classes at Annenberg,

could not have imagined this. And I love it for my life, for my work, for the resistance, for all of it. It feels very, not to be tried, but it feels kind of holistic. Yeah, yes. You know? Well, I totally agree.

It feels that way for me too 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 Or am I just this thing at my job Or We get defined By the things we become And I think the application

outside of what we do is just to open your circle of influence hopefully not online, right? Your actual circle of influence, right? Yes, your life. Yeah. To learn more about the world,

but ultimately yourself. Well, and as you said, the encouragement might be, you don't have to start a podcast, but you could. But you can't. 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 neighborhood and find your people. Or start one. Yeah. You could discover that you are actually the best advocate for school lunches or your local library or whatever it is. 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 what we 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 a completely one-sided, insane society. But follow your curiosity and see where it takes you. Right. That's right. 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 are 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 the inflating us, it's such a good metaphor. And it really, anyone can use that. Anyone can identify with that. I feel flat and I need to feel full and inflated.

And that's what, that's what, that's going to fill you up or those connections and that curiosity and those new experiences. 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 surprised you the most? Yeah.

Gosh, I've loved talking to everyone. I know that sounds like a cop-out. But it's, I mean, there's something interesting about it. everyone. But I mean, I had a great conversation with Dr. Drew Pinsky, right? Because he's lived in the media world, but also treats people with addiction issues and 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. Adore. Adore. And we talked about some really tough stuff. including anxiety, but also anti-Semitism and navigating that.

I get great career advice from people who are successful, and that's fun. But really when it comes down to it, those mental health connections, I was talking to Mark Duplas, 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 I want. 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 and he goes is that a bad thing I said is that a bad thing huh and he said I bet you weren't super happy and healthy when you were multitasking and doing

11 things not very well but getting them done and you felt crazed crazed and crazy and rushed and stressed and I said yeah I did feel all those things and he said are you allowed to age and change maybe get a little worse at this 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 that pod. Well, and what strikes me too,

and not to be a total language nerd, but I am, about what he said is, 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? Right, right.

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. 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?

Right. 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. 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 10 minutes so I can finish this, right? Yes.

I never used to ask permission for those things. 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. Sophia, piss is not the word. Piss is not the word. I mean, the heat of a thousand sons, angry, enraged that I would get interrupted. Usually, before, before 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, of all people, right? To say, no, you can ask permission. You can say, I need you to give me this space so I can focus on this. Yeah. Well, yeah, of course you can do that. Of course you can do that. But sometimes the most obvious things only come when you're sitting down with a total stranger

who can see you from the outside. And sometimes the most obvious things are revelatory because they were never made obvious to you. Yeah. Right. You know? Exactly right. My therapist said we were talking about social media and the sort of 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 bored.

or I'm on Instagram for validation. What are people, are they liking my post? You know. And she said, well, do you, is that the way you go to the grocery store? Just hoping things will jump in your cart? No, 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 it's actually harmful to you. You don't want it. Right. So the idea of this grocery store that is social media, what am I there for? You can go.

You got to 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? I'm only leaving with this. And even if I am there, for 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 therapy and then in these conversations with people i mean that's what i'm living for right now i love it oh i absolutely love it i i'm like we let's go to dinner i want to talk for three more hours right what are we doing oh 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. Yeah. 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 even though it's not funny because if I don't laugh a little bit, I'll cry.

Yeah. Whether it's personal and professional a mix, what feels like your work in progress right now? 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 10-year-old son. And it's not just important that I be. be like a happy, healthy person for him. But there's like breaking cycles. Yeah. And there's modeling for him that it's okay to not be okay in age appropriate ways, right? Um, 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 from him from it completely. He will grow up thinking, mom was perfect. 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 the gift I'm giving to him as well. So that's the work in progress.

And that'll 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 and progress of my life in so many ways. But that's the most important part of it for me. 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 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 modeled that hurt us. That's exactly right. So you have to learn and model to break the curse. Exactly.

Right. What a cool thing you get to do. It's a proactive thing. You can feel like I'm going to 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 your kids or people around you to learn from, you are protecting that cycle. You are protecting and maintaining that cycle of silence and stigma. You're not. doing it intentionally, but you are. And so to break that cycle of silence and stigma, you have to actively go out and almost evangelize, you know, like the normalization of these kinds of conversations, the normalization of asking, are you okay? How are 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. You don't even notice that it's happening. Yes. It becomes as common as talking about the weather. Correct. Exactly right. We'll get there one day. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for today. This has been so much fun. Thank you. I feel the same. Such a lovely conversation. You're such a lovely person and vessel for this kind of conversation. Thank you. Thank you. Have an amazing rest of your day. I will see you soon.

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