Sibling Revelry with Kate Hudson and Oliver Hudson - Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Suneel Gupta

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Dr. Sanjay Gupta is a neurosurgeon and chief medical correspondent for CNN. Suneel Gupta is the founder of RISE, teaches innovation at Harvard University, and is the author of the upcoming book "Backable." The Gupta brothers join Kate and Oliver on "Sibling Revelry" to discuss their upbringing and ten year age difference, Sanjay's air band, how they got into their fields, the mind-body connection, marijuana, and much more.Executive Producers: Kate Hudson, Oliver Hudson, and Sim SarnaProduced by Allison BresnickEditor: Josh Windisch Music by Mark HudsonThis show is brought to you by Cloud10 and powered by Simplecast.This episode is sponsored by Coors and Sakara.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. September is a great time to travel, especially because it's my birthday in September, especially internationally. Because in the past, we've stayed in some pretty awesome Airbnbs in Europe. Did we've one in France, we've one in Greece, we've actually won in Italy a couple of years ago. Anyway, it just made our trip feel extra special.

So if you're heading out this month, consider hosting your home on Airbnb with the co-host feature. You can hire someone local to help manage everything. Find a co-host at Airbnb.ca slash host. The Super Secret Bestie Club podcast season four is here. And we're locked in. That means more juicy cheesement. Terrible love advice.

Evil spells to cast on your ex. No, no, no, no. We're not doing that this season. Oh. Well, this season, we're leveling up. Each episode will feature a special bestie, and you're not going to want to miss it. My name is Curley.

And I'm Maya. Get in here. Listen to the Super Secret Bestie Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. It's important that we just reassure people that they're not alone, and there is help out there. The Good Stuff Podcast, season two, takes a deep look into One Tribe Foundation, a non-profit fighting suicide in the veteran community. September is National Suicide Prevention Month, so join host Jacob and Ashley Schick as they bring you to the front lines of One Tribe's mission.

One Tribe save my life twice. Welcome to Season 2 of the Good Stuff. Listen to the Good Stuff podcast on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcast. or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Kate Hudson. And my name is Oliver Hudson. We wanted to do something that highlighted our relationship. And what it's like to be siblings.

We are a sibling rivalry. No, no. Sibling rivalry. Don't do that with your mouth. That's good. So we got an opportunity to talk to our favorite, Sanjay Gupta, and his brother, Sineal Gupta. And we got so excited that we literally just jumped into a conversation. And so when this episode starts, it's literally.

it literally goes right into a conversation. Yes, but him and his brother have such like a beautiful relationship. And it's, it was nice to hear them talk about how they haven't had time to talk like that before. You know, I mean, bringing them on was interesting. They got to have a conversation with each other that they haven't had in a long time. And it was fun to sort of feel that energy back and, back and forth with the two of them. It was so great. And during this time, during the pandemic, Sanjay has been this very comforting educational voice for us about coronavirus and COVID-19.

And they're just both so smart and so in tune. And, you know, they're so curious in their respective fields. And it's just, it's been really, it was really fun. I could have, I could have talk to them for six hours. I had so many questions. It was really lovely to talk to Sanjay and Sunil get an understanding of how they grew up and they're a decade apart, 10 years. So quite different upbringings. Reminiscing about childhood, you know, getting into Sanjay's air band where he had, you know, had a band with just all air instruments and like performed across, you know, the greater Michigan area. And then like, I mean, so much happens in just a week.

So even just to go back from a month, it feels like forever ago. But this we recorded, I would say about a month ago. And it was just a lovely, wonderful conversation. We loved getting to know the Gupta's. So here it is and enjoy this episode. Sunday's been telling me this for a long time when he was trying to get me to eat better. Yeah. No, Senil, he was not the, he was not the healthiest kid, you know, and we're, we're 10 years age difference.

Yeah. So, you know, I was kind of, I was kind of a third parent to him. And, and then when I was going, you know, getting interested in medicine, you know, he was sort of my guinea pig. I'd try out various things, but he, can I tell the story sitting around quick about your diet? Is that okay? Yeah, you can tell the story, but just, this will clear up a lot for both of you, Kate, Oliver. Like, if you're like, this guy's weird, you have Sanjay to blame. Oh, wait.

I wasn't going in that direction. Okay. I was taking a lot of credit. I was thinking on that direction. I was taking credit for your exquisite physical and mental health. Oh, right, right, right, right, right. Okay, well, go ahead. No, but this one time I was home, I was home visiting from college.

And I guess I was in med school maybe at the time. So, Neil, you were, I think you were eight or nine years old. You were young. And I was in college. And I came home, and I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I was just sitting there, and our parents both worked, and Sineal came home from school. And, you know, we were latchkey kids, right? So you come home, you're doing your thing. He didn't know that I was home, but I was sitting at the kitchen table watching him.

He came into the house, and mom would stick all the hostess treats, like the Twinkies and the King, and the, was it, the King Dongs? King Dongs? Poor are those chalks. Ding-dongs. Ding-dongs. Oh, yeah. Not that I was... On the... Not that you know how you're talking about. On the upper, upper shelf, the highest shelf of the closet. And so I was sitting there, and he came in in a tsunami of activity and threw down his bags, immediately grabbed a chair and then stacked another chair on top of that. It was... It looked like he might, you know, he might fall. Got up on both chairs, reached at the very top of the shelf, and... and took down two twinkies while he's still precariously balanced, stuffed both of these twinkies in his mouth, left the rappers on the top shelf, got down. I didn't want to say anything because I was afraid if I said something,

it would jar him and he would fall. And then he got down, and he was starting to stack the chairs, and I said, hey, Sunil, and he had this twiki frosting still on his mouth. I mean, literally kidding with his hand in the cookie jar. not even yeah go ahead go ahead it was it was the most it was the most sort of primal sort of act i think i'd seen of eating you know it was just it was just he was hungry it was a i don't know it was a comfort food i think there was it was it was the mix of of needing the sweetness and the calories and

the emotional sort of fix that comes with that it was it was just wild for me to watch as an as an older brother of an eight-year-old kid and it made you realize how quickly these things start in life But you didn't even take the rappers to, for evidence, you left major evidence. I mean, you were that ravenous. You didn't care about the consequences. You're like, forget the consequences. I need it now. I will leave the rappers right where they are.

It made me realize a lot about food. I probably had a lot to do with Sunday becoming a journalist because he's like, someone should be filming this. So let's start from the beginning. You are 10 years apart. you were born and raised where Michigan Michigan for both of us

small town in Michigan I was born outside of Detroit parents were auto industry folks and Sineo was born in Michigan as well we had moved a couple of times by the time Sineal was born but a pretty small town as well

always in southeastern Michigan I was reading about your mom What an amazing woman. She's incredible. I mean, she really is that person. I mean, I don't know what specifically you read, but whatever you read, I can tell you it's true. I mean, you know. First female engineer, Ford.

First female engineer. The story leading up to that is like really, really incredible as well. I mean, you know, you're talking about a little girl who was a refugee on the border of India and Pakistan who, you know, basically grew up with no running water. no electricity, and she does something really remarkable, which is she teaches herself how to read. And the first book that she reads from cover to cover is the biography of Henry Ford. And she decides, after reading that book, that somehow, some way, she wants to become an engineer at Ford Motor Company. And her parents, like, get completely behind this dream. They save every penny they have.

They get her somehow to America. She gets an education. She went to Oklahoma State University. The day after she graduates, she gets in her car, she drives to Detroit, and she basically finds a way to get herself in front of a hiring manager. But there's one big problem, because this is the 1960s, and while Ford Motor Company is like in its heyday, this is like Ford versus Ferrari had just happened, and the auto industry is doing really well, Ford does not have a single woman working as an engineer.

And so the guy looks at her, this hiring manager, and he says, we don't. don't have any female engineers working here. And, you know, my mom is at this point in time deflated. She gets up. She's, she's picking up her purse. She getting ready to walk out of the room. And then all of a sudden she turns around. She looks at the guy. And she says, if you don't hire me, then you may never have the benefit of having a woman work here as an engineer. And so this guy ends up getting so inspired with this meeting with my mom, the two of them advocate. And in August, 1967, she becomes Ford Motor Company's first female engineer. Oh, that gives me the show.

It's like a movie. This is a story or her story, you know, I mean, what a beautiful... That's amazing. It was the hidden figure story before hidden figures. Right. You know, and then there's all the stuff that's baked into that, right? I mean, she was the first woman who attended an all-male engineering college in India. And there was a lot of just sexism and stuff that you had to endure doing that.

And, you know, and it's funny. I had this conversation with her the other day. Like, that's obviously, like, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, more subjective obstacles that you, you have to overcome. And how do you, like, as a woman, you know, how did you navigate that stuff? You know, did you, did you always like push back on everything? Did you, did you take great pride in the moment? Did you realize how significant it was in the moment that you were the first woman engineer? I mean, I think about that all the time, like even historically now, all the things that we're going through. Do we always know in the

moment that something is so significant. Like in 1918, did they know that 100 years from now they would be talking about what happened with that flu pandemic or was it just something? I think about that with mom all the time. I'll just tell you another thing. I was just talking to mom the other day. She told me this quick story. I'll tell you, which I think in some ways encapsulates mom. I don't know if you've even heard it. But my nani, who's my mom's mom, you know, they, I think when you're living the life of a refugee, there's a lot of faith that you need to have in things. You just got to believe that things are going to get better. better because you got no proof that it will. And so they believe in certain things like palm

reading. And that was a big thing with my nani, which was surprising because she was a very objectively minded woman. But she believed in palm reading. And then she wanted to take my mom, who was a little kid at the time, to get her palm read to determine whether or not she was going to actually, you know, amount to something and they should invest in her and all that stuff. Can you imagine? All based on your palm. Wow. So my mom did not believe in that at all. I thought it was Pocus, pocus. But she read to find out what they would be looking for, and she took a piece of glass and cut the line in her own palm that she knew would reflect what the palmist would look for. Now, obviously, they would know that that was a cut. But it was just like the, okay, I don't

believe in this at all, but you want to play the game. I will cut my hand as an eight or nine-year-old girl to make you believe that I am that person. That's kind of who she is. Had you heard that before Sunil? I had not heard that story. Isn't that incredible? So many, so many parts of the story, that one I had not heard. I know. I know. I've been spending a lot of time talking to mom lately, which is weird

because in the middle of a pandemic, I feel like in some ways we've become a little bit more connected, strange, but we will do FaceTime calls. And she loves to do it. And usually she wants to talk to the girls and the girls get quickly, you know, they're very

distractable. And so, but then I just sit there and I talk to her and it's just been these kind of amazing conversations about nothing. Stuff like that. I don't know if you heard this, but the story of how their parents met is pretty amazing. Do you want to share that with us? Cidia, you give the story and I'll add in some of my little detail, which I've just never even beforehand, just typically though, was there was arranged marriage, but that wasn't the case for them, for what reason? Right. So that's part of it.

Okay. And I'll just preface one thing to say that the range of marriage is still happen. Yeah. I mean, that is still part of the culture. So we're, you know, now we're talking, you know, sick 1960s. So. Yeah. So it kind of picks up where we left off.

Mom is now Ford murder company's first female engineer. Oh, Kate, you'll appreciate this. Her name at this point is Dementi Hingarani, which is kind of a long name, Damienti Hingarani. And so one of the, one of the managers said, you know, we might want to shorten that, find a nickname of some sort. And so she comes up with Ronnie as her nickname. Yes. Yes. I know. Wow. Kate's daughter's great. I love it. I saw that. I was like, oh my gosh. It means queen. And she was like,

she was like, I love the idea of these white guys calling me queen every day. Yeah. Make me change my name. You will call me queen for the rest of your career. Yeah. So Ronnie, mom, You know, she is living alone. She's living in the Dearborn area. And again, 1960s, not a lot of Indians, people in our community around. But she had heard that in Ann Arbor, there were more Indians hanging out. You know, people went there from the University of Michigan. And so she would, you know, every once in a while, get in her car and drive from Dearborn, Ann Arbor,

which was maybe about a 40-minute drive. And one day she does that, and her car breaks down right on the outskirts of campus. and so she walks to a local phone booth because there were phone booths back in that day and it had one of those wires connecting an actual phone book one of these big sort of phone books. I remember that. So she goes, she flips to the A's

and she thinks of the most common Indian name in the A's that she can think of, which is Agarwal. And she calls up the first Agarwal in the phone book and Guy answers the phone and she's like, hi, is this Mr. Agarwal? And the guy says, no, he's out. This is his roommate. The guy who answered the phone was my father. Wow.

Isn't that amazing? And then he helped her, right? He helped her with the car. Yes. And all kinds of things. It's damsel and distress. Exactly. Exactly.

And how did their parents react to their coming together? Was it something that was looked down upon because it wasn't deranged or were they okay with it? That's a good question, Kate. Add the detail. And then we'll talk about that. Oh, the detail, okay, this detail is kind of fine. So one of the great joys that I've had recently, I think, is I've been able to, you know, I did this Finding Your Roots sort of thing with my parents.

And, you know, we went back to Pakistan and India and wanted to go back to where they met. This phone booths, you know, talk about, which is no longer there, but that corner where it was. And I also knew where my dad lived at that point. And as it turns out that my mom, when she called him, she happened to be calling him and he was in the building right next to this phone booth. So he asked her where she was and she told them and he realized it was right outside. He was on the third. So he looks down and as he puts it, he kind of, you know, check things out first and then

decided he would go ahead and, uh. That's, but that is so crazy. It is crazy. So, so where are you? Now, I'm just, I'm diverting just a little bit, but now where do you, where do you go with something like that? Do you believe in coincidence? Is there something bigger at play from a spiritual standpoint from a energetic, universal, godly, whatever that means to you standpoint, you know?

I'll tell you what I think, and I'm curious what you think, Sine. I mean, I'm not a big coincidence sort of guy. I guess maybe, and that's not to, you know, I just think as someone who's a science guy who's just been sitting in science classes all his life, you know, we're spending all of our time. working at the fringes, you know, all the, all the known knowledge is in the middle. Where the real learning happens from is when you can explain the fringes of things, the things that don't make perfect sense. So, you know, I mean, the fact that two Indians in the 60s would somehow connect when there were so few Indians and, and then even get together, you know, in that way, it's not, doesn't make any less magical, but it's, it's not, less coincidental. And I think that my mom and dad were from very different parts of Indian, different backgrounds. So that part made it more challenging for them.

I think the magic also came in terms of how they ultimately raised us. You know, when you are the, and I was born in 69, when you're the oldest son of an Indian family that got together that way, we were very unusual. There weren't none of my Indian friends' parents, they were all arranged marriages. So the idea that my parents had a love marriage, as we call it, was he arranged. marriage was the love marriage, which is an interesting juxtaposition, right? One insinuates that the other is not true, right? There's a lot of arranged marriages that are perfectly lovely marriages, but the love marriage. So then all my friends would be asking my parents for advice on their own relationships as they were going through teenage life in early 20s and deciding if they were going to get married. My parents sort of became that person. And for me, too. I mean, there was lots of, lots of guidance. So I think how they, they, they, they, they, they how they informed a lot of people around them based on their experience was was pretty was pretty from the research that i've been doing and listening to you it seems like you are a intrigued by causes of phenomena is there a quantum element to your parents is there a quantum entanglement

or something there that yeah is is science base that we just don't know yet i mean are those things that you're interested in oh absolutely no and and i don't you know i don't you know i I think the idea of the continuous exploration to try and explain things, you know, is fun. It's joyous. It's not, I don't think you're doing it because you're questioning things or making them any less significant. Yeah, I do, I'm curious as to why certain things happen for sure the way that they do. And like I said, a lot of things you can sort of explain, the things that you can't, I don't think it means that there's not an explanation. I just think it means you haven't found it yet.

And maybe I would even take it a step further and say there's some things that maybe you just never find. You never explain. And I think I'm also okay with that. I don't feel like it's less important because I can't explain it or because I haven't discovered, you know, the sort of reasoning mechanism behind it. And so there's, you know, the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence, as they say in science. But I think what I enjoy a lot is the deep dive, you know, just going really deep into something, just becoming all consumed with it. And being comfortable with the idea that maybe I won't still fully be able to explain it in the end. But I might.

Yeah, we had a conversation. We actually had a conversation about this maybe a couple of years ago, Sanjay and me. And I think the way that you articulated at the time, which stuck with me, was kind of almost like, if we believe that all knowledge is in a jar, and right now that jar is maybe half full, so there are at least as many unknowns out there as knowns. Then the question is, do we think that given enough time,

you know, thousands upon thousands of years of trying to find that information, we're going to, we're going to one day fill the jar? And if the, it's almost as if you believe the answer that is no, then there's something else. There's a spiritual angle. There's something else that you believe in. If you believe that given infinite amount of time with the right minds, we're still not going to be able to fill the jar.

Then something else is at play. What about... I love that. It's so true, isn't it? It's a great analogy. It's infinite. What about mind-body? You know, what about someone like a Joe Dispenza, you know,

who who you know where are you at with with that because we know that obviously meditation you know can scientifically be proven to sort of heal and do things to your brain you know our brain is a muscle isn't it it's like a working like we can actually work that muscle which then it speaks to the rest of our body you know can do you think you can heal yourself Yeah. No, I think I think you can. And I think that, and I listen to part of that podcast that you guys did as well on that. And it's really interesting. I've just finished writing a book about the brain. The mind-body connection, I think is really, it's very interesting because I think we've known this anecdotally to be true for a long time, probably since I started medical school in the late 80s. And then I started my neurosurgery training in 93. we've known that. We knew patients who were more optimistic about their recovery were going to do better. We couldn't, there was no term for it.

We knew that if I operated, if I took a, operated on a brain tumor of somebody, and the next day when I went to go see that patient, if she was sitting up in bed with her lipstick on already, that she was going to recover more quickly because she was optimistic about that. We even knew little things like I stopped shaving hair on, patients when I did brain surgery. And those patients always did better because they just felt better. It was nothing different about the operation. So this idea that how you feel, how you approach it, changes how you recover, in that case from a disease, but how you optimize yourself

continuously, I think is true. I think what has changed over the last several years now is that we can show it mechanistically happening in the body. We can show these neurotransmitters being released in certain ways in certain parts of the brain. We can measure the impact of that and other parts of the body in terms of modulating blood pressure and heart rate and even seeing the speed at which arteries become hard, arteriosclerosis, all of that. It's really, it's quite fascinating because it gives you the sense that it's within your control to be able to heal yourself. I think the reason most scientists are conservative when they talk about this stuff is because anything that seems like it's minimizing a disease is something that we want to be very mindful of, you know. I mean, when

when it comes to mental illness, for example, you know, this idea that it is within your own mind to heal yourself is a very tenuous topic, right? Be it are people who have legitimate neurotransmitter deficiencies and things like that. Obviously, a child who develops cancer, you know, no one is suggesting that people can just heal themselves, but they can certainly make a huge impact far greater than I think, you know, we realized even 20, 30 years ago. And it's fascinating. It's a, call it the mind-body connection or just call it, you know, it's the human sort of species that's able to do this.

The mind and body have no separation. We don't, we think of it as separate, but there is no separation, really, when you think of it like that. It feels like we're scratching the surface with this. I mean, it feels like in a hundred years from now, you know, if we can sort of hone in on this and, you know, it could shift tremendously, you know. Yeah, we, we, we tend to. medicalize everything, you know, and I think it goes back in some ways to the fact that if you can measure it, it takes on added significance, right? Why is cholesterol so important for heart disease? Because we can measure it. There's probably things like Sineal was saying that are far more

important. And we know that, you know, in, my parents are a perfect cohort. My dad has three brothers who live in India. My dad lives in the States. As Sineal mentioned, he had heart surgery when he was in his late 40s. His three brothers genetically pretty much the same as him. him, um, did not. And now their diet was different to some extent, but I'll think a lot of it is just how they approach things overall. We, we tend to medicalize things in the United States a great deal. And, and over there, just the lifestyle and everything ended up making a big difference in terms of not having a significant medical problem for basically their entire lives. That's, that's, that's, that's, you see examples of that all over the place.

No, Oliver, Oliver, do you meditate? Uh, I meditate and I medicate. it's true yeah yes no um so yes i do actually um in the last uh about month i have gotten back into it um i had been going through anxiety you know some anxiety over this time i was i had acute anxiety in my 20s like hard hitting eight months of not wanting to leave my house but wanting to live a normal life and fighting through it, but throwing up and couldn't breathe. I mean, it was really gnarly. But in this last three, in this last five, six weeks, that didn't come back, but just this overall anxious feeling, tightness in my throat, tightness in my chest, you know, my brain starts to spiral a little bit. The difference now is I've been through it and I know that I'm

okay. You know, I know that there's nothing medically wrong with me. So I started my meditation again. And the first one I did, I just, first time I closed my eyes and just started bawling, crying, out of nowhere, you know, and I just realized that I hadn't gotten quiet with myself in a long, long time, and it was necessary. And so I've definitely fixed myself. I've shifted all of that through my meditation, and it's almost fun to play with it. You know, I would have these meditations where I would try to just melt everything in my fifth, I think your fifth chakra is your throat chakra and it's it's about expression and for me expression was not an easy thing to do being vulnerable being able to say how I feel express love you know it's been a

difficult thing for me in my life and am able to physically feel it melt away through my breath and it brought a big smile to my face and I was like wow it's powerful it works I can do I can do this you know so yes I do meditate and I do medicate I do medicate I do medicate I I am on Lexa Pro as well. Yeah, yeah. You know, I was telling Kate about this yoga teacher training that I'm doing right now, and there are so many people in this training that are battling a lot of the same things, you know, anxiety, depression, bipolar, schizophrenia, that, that, you know, just swear

by what they've been able to achieve with meditation, you know, what that's brought to them. just this simple kind of coming back to the breath. And I've kind of now, I mean, how I'm speaking as I'm some kind of yogi, I'm 30 days into this training. But what I am, what I am inspired. One of the things that I realize is like, I thought yoga was all about getting into postures, getting into poses, like that's what I was going to learn. And what I've learned is something completely different than that.

We don't use, you know, our body to get into postures. we use postures to get into our body to make ourselves feel something it's the difference between the aesthetic and the functional like the aesthetic is how you want to look but the functional is how you want to feel and ultimately it's all about that and that's the thing that I've learned

with the breath like one of the things that this teacher I'm learning from right now has taught us is that for every pose what you're trying to do is spend 20% of your time getting into your edge finding your edge finding something that little point that's going to make you feel just a little bit uncomfortable, the feeling.

And then you're going to spend the rest of that time, the other 80% softening around that edge. And that softening is where you get growth, right? You're pushing yourself to a new point, but then finding a way to actually breathe through that, soften through that, that's where you start to develop. It's an interesting metaphor and practice for actually what's going on right now in the world. I think we have a primal sort of reaction to things. all the time, but the idea that you let it settle in and, and, um, uh, you're trusting your instincts, but you're letting your, your, your subconscious mind sort of, you know, reflect over this. I mean, I think that that's maybe in some ways a definition of empathy. I, you can tell

in conversations that you have with people right away, I, are pretty quickly at least, who is, who is going through the motions and who has exactly what you and Sunil are describing, letting, you know, letting the edges blur a little bit and really feeling like you're in that position. It's, I mean, that's, it's been tough, I think, for, for a lot of people to, and it's such a busy news environment and things are moving so fast. And it does make you anxious, makes me anxious, as you were describing that, my throat was tightening up a bit all over, you know, it just, it's the same thing. So how do you find the time to just let those edges blur a bit? It's tough, but it's important. it's a it's a tough time to navigate as well because you know I think judgment is something that

is just natural that we judge as an instinct in a way I don't it's hard not to sort of oh he looks like this or she looks like that just in general but we are in a time now of sort of high intensity judgment and sometimes it makes people passive I think it makes people fearful sometimes to sort of say what they want to say you know because if you say the wrong thing, then we're living in this time of cancellation. You could be canceled. You could be admonished. And your intentions weren't that. But, you know, walking on eggshells. It's very true. I mean, you know, we certainly see that in the news business as well, like everything from the editorial decisions. But I got to tell you, though, so I have three daughters, 14, 13, and 11. And I was having this

conversation with my oldest daughter the other day about this exact topic. And I can just, you know, when we say reflexive creature that human beings are, I think in part that means that we as human beings lived by being able to quickly recognize threats. We recognize threats and we were able to. And so our threat sort of meters are really tuned up. We saw most things as threats. That's how we stayed alive. Evolved individuals, if you're a truly evolved individual,

I don't think you immediately look at the world as a threat or non-threat. you know, you let, you, you, you apply this, this thinking to it, this logic, you know, this judgment, the, the, the blurring of the edges like Sunil was describing, letting that sort of be okay as opposed to binary threat or no threat. And, you know, I think even when you look at xenophobia, you look at what's happening now, you know, it's primal, reflexive, reactive creatures, see the world as threat or no threat. If you're evolved, you're able to, to get beyond that. reflexive part of ourselves. And it's, it's, it's, I think you're right, it's hard and, and you're worried that you could get judged because all of a sudden you may be the threat by the way you said something or what exactly you said even if that wasn't your intent. But I just don't know how we move forward as a human species and sort of in terms of tolerance for one another if we, if we don't stop thinking of ourselves as our most basal beings, you know, just, just primal threat or no threat beings. We have to be like humans, the human

species did not succeed without each other. Everyone knows that. It was never about rugged individualism. It was about reciprocal altruism. We succeeded because we took care of each other. And strangely enough, it actually felt good to take care of each other. Why would it feel good for me to do something nice for you? That would make no sense from a Darwinian standpoint, right? I should get mine, right, or my families. And yet it does. If I do something nice for you, it feels good. That trait was selected for and preserved through human race. And that allowed us to succeed. And I think if we run to that as opposed to the threat versus no threat primal reflexive, you know, side of our beast, then I think we can move forward. But, God, man, it doesn't seem like it right now.

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It's just two of us. I enjoyed your arrival. When you were an only child with your mom and your, What was that like? Give us a glimpse into your 10 years, your decade alone. By the way, that should be the title of maybe one of your next books, My Decade Alone. It was a, you know, it was a very formative time. I don't know that I would necessarily describe it as a happy time. I think it was a very formative time. We were an Indian family living in a very small town in Michigan. very, very, almost a little rural, very homogenous. There was nobody that looked like us. There was nobody that sounded like us, ate the kinds of foods that we did, prayed to the same gods

that we did, anything. It was just totally different, you know, starting with your name, you know, and, and so, I think there was always a sense of wanting to fit in. That's what I think I remember the most about my early life, you know, just, just wanting to, my, and, and I think, I think the same was true for my parents to some extent, even though they were very, you know, grew up and on the other side of the world, they realized in order to succeed, you have to fit in. And so fitting in became sort of the name of the game. And it was, it was, you know, it's all consuming in a way. I had friends, you know, but a lot of times I felt like I was the Indian friend. You know, I was the additional friend added to the group because I was Indian. I was almost, and I'm not, this isn't a sob story by any means. you know, because saying that it wasn't, not necessarily happy, doesn't mean it was said. It just, it wasn't defined by happiness. I think that you're a bit of a peculiarity, you know, more than anything else. So that was, that was, you know, up until what's 10 years old is like fourth or fifth grade or something like that, I think.

Do you remember the time when you realize that, you know, when you were old enough to sort of cognitively think, oh, wow, maybe I'm different than everyone else? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think it was fairly early, like, you know, first or second grade. And I think a lot of times it was just everyone go around and introduce themselves, you know, and it was everybody was, you know, Bob, Bill, you know, Alan, whatever. And then my name. And then it was the, you know, can say that again. Can you pronounce that again? How do you say that? Butchering the name, you know, and it just, it was a source of like your face would flush every time you had to say your name, you know. It was like the most basic thing, right? Didn't you want to change your name to Steve? Yeah, so that was probably the, I was, yeah, Steve was going to solve all my problems. I'll tell you why, though. It was a good story. You may, you may be too young, but my favorite show on television at the time was, was the $6 million man, Colonel Lee Major, Steve Austin. Oh.

And Steve Austin was, I mean, he was, he was it. and so and you know started with an S our names all start with an S so I had that box checked as a first or second grader and I thought that I just changed my name to Steve if I changed it then that would solve everything and I talked to my mom about it and she you know wasn't thrilled with the idea but actually was fairly okay with it and and said we could do it and and then I realized in retrospect she was just waiting for me to sort of come to my own senses and realize that would be silly that is my name that is my identity you don't just You can't just change your identity, you know? Well, Kate, Kate went through a phase where she decided to change her name from Kate. It still didn't remain Kate, but she goes, it's not Kate with a K anymore. It's Kate with a C. And I was like, okay. Gary, it was Kate Gary, which was my full name.

No more Hudson. Yeah, it was. Solves everything, right? Solves everything. Yeah, but, but I, but I, um, no, I, I, um, no, I, I, um, it was interesting, you know, I mean, I think it's going to be interesting to look back at some point and just say about all these immigrant families at that time. You know, they were some among some of the first immigrants really are a big wave of immigrants in the 60s, what those lives were like, you know, how people assimilated. And, you know, my parents did not come to the United States because they were persecuted or prosecuted in search of something.

They came here just for education and in a way of life. And so there wasn't a galvanizing force for drawing them all. together and as a result we just sort of felt it was like a it was sort of a loose a looser sort of existence we were just trying to make our way i think in the world my parents are incredible people i mean incredibly hard working they they everything they did they did for us without without a question that was just how they were wired they didn't think about their own lives they didn't we didn't take vacations they worked weekends i mean it was and and it wasn't like they had to but anytime they didn't work a weekend it was like well i'm i'm i'm i'm

not doing enough now for my kids. I need to work the weekend, even though we're fine, because then I'm not doing enough for my kids. So that was sort of the first 10 years of life. Was there affection? Was there affectionate home? Yeah, I would say it was. I would say it was. If you were to have visited at that time as a friend of mine, you may not have perceived it as such, but it was there. When I started dating my now wife, she joked around that, you know, my dad and I would still shake hands every time we see each other. You know, there's no hugs. We didn't even, and my mom, my mom's very affectionate, but we didn't hug.

It was not a hugging family. There was no, nothing like that. We called each other. I mean, I called them mom and dad. They called me by my first name. There was no affectionate sort of nicknames and things like that. But now they hug. They've become hugers now, you know, like a lot.

I mean, with the grandkids, I think, and my wife is like, she just, come on, bring it in, you know, you're hugging. And so now it's changed. And that's how my kids will remember them. Did you ever feel, though, that you wanted more love or more affection from them? Or was that just what it was? It just felt like what it was. I didn't have a lot of context for life.

I didn't have a lot of friends. So it wasn't like I was going to other people's houses and saying, well, their parents hug. How about you guys? You know, I watched the $6 million man. That was basically my context for life outside of school. Steve doesn't hug. Steve wasn't a huger. I don't know anything about the $6 million.

dollar man. Oh, yeah. I think it was just past your, your time. Because Sunil and I were the same age. You're 79, right? Wait, 70, are you 80? I'm 79. And what's interesting is that a lot of this stuff that I probably shouldn't know,

I do know, because of Sunjay. And the other thing that's interesting about it is that when that happens from somebody who you kind of admire, like you will with a brother who's 10 years older than you, that stuff kind of just sticks with you. So when he moves on, I don't. So I'm still kind of into all this stuff. Like my friends would get into my car when I was in high school and I'd be playing 80s music because I suddenly got me into 80s music.

And like a friend would get into my car and instead of being like, dude, I love this song. He'd be like, dude, my mom loves this song. Oh, that sucks. I mean, that basically means you might have missed the best era of music, which was the 90s. I did kind of float by the 90s because I was so I know I took that away from him sorry about that he did now he was in the 90s he was in the 90s what was funny what was funny is that sonj so you guys may not know this sonjay when he was in high school formed an air band with an air band like air instruments air all instruments not just air guitar but air drums air everything right

And lip singing, and of course, lip singing. Wait, this is, is this, is this? Wow. Are, is this like an exclusive? This might be an exclusive. All the tapes from us straight. So there was, was it just a silent concert? So what would they do?

No, we played music in the background. And we were very good. What air instrument did you play? So he, what sort of music? Sundry was actually lead singer of this band. yeah and and and and and so he found there was a family right there was a family there were there were three brothers and their last names were gupta as well and so sun jay and this that this this family of three brothers formed a band and get this this the creative name of their band they named themselves

the gupta's and so and so and so literally they would get together in the basement and they put on 80s music which i still have playing and then actually actually, if you can see my shirt here, I don't know if you could see it. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Pour some sugar on me just, like, changed my whole life and dance moves, but.

They would also do skits. Skits were part of it, too. Like, kind of skits to kind of almost frame the whole thing. Like, uh, rock of eight, I remember they did rock of ages and like there was a skit before that. But anyway, like, the thing is, my mom. It should have been gooped into the third power or maybe G3. G4.

G4. I like that. G4. G4. G4. There's always a reunion. So my mom would always make Sanjay include me in these things. So I was actually asked to be the cameraman recording these.

This is all on video. I'm with you. I have some of these recordings. Wait, you have those? I do. The thing is the video camera was already on a tripod. So I didn't have to do anything, but that was my role. Until one time, Sunjay brought me in, and I got to do Tom Sawyer by Rush.

Oh yes And that was it Where are these videos And can we have them? I'm pointing I'm pointing And who was Neil Pert In that song

Who was playing the drums? I think there was Sondip Or Andre No it was Adjah Yeah he was He was really got into that You got into the air You were convinced

You were convinced You were convinced Talk about mind-body connection That was that That was it Do you remember Sanjay when Seneal came into this world

Do you remember him coming home? Yeah. Oh, very much so. That was 10. And I guess I was 9. I turned 10 that year. And it was really, I mean, you know, went through the whole, you know, my mom was pregnant, that whole thing. And, you know, just taking care of her and being excited.

And then when he came home, I remember, I remember thinking that I was the most excited, that other people weren't as excited as me. Like I'm sure my mom and dad were thinking about the work they now had to do. They were excited as well, Sunil. I don't want you to take that the wrong way. But I was like so excited and I had a brother and I would, you know, every time in school, people always ask you, you know, in addition to your name, how many siblings do you have? And I was always Sanjay, which nobody could pronounce and then zero, you know, siblings. And so that all got to change. And so it was really exciting.

And I feel like it was an inflection point. We moved shortly after Sunil was born as well to a new neighborhood and, you know, I switched schools. a couple of times during that time. So I felt like it was like Sineal's birth for me was a point of real transformation, I think. And I still think of, like, you know, I guess this just happens with younger siblings, but I still think of Sineal as very much a little kid. And so everyone is measured by, are they older or younger than my brother? If they're my brother's age or younger, they're a kid.

If they're older, then they're, you know, then they're a full-on adult, right? I don't know when that changes. It doesn't. You actually called me the other day and asked me, when does that change? Yeah, I did. This was like three weeks ago. I think I was brushing my teeth and I suddenly had this, I suddenly had this thought. Like, I still think of you as this little kid.

So is that always just how it is to, you know, to my dying day? Or like what changes? When do we think of ourselves as contemporaries and peers as opposed to I am the 10-year-older brother, you know? And what did you? You had a good answer. I can't remember what you said. I said, I don't know if it's going to change. I think kids probably have a lot to do with it.

I've got two girls in my own now. So, Sanjay's got three. I've got two. That's right. My parents have five granddaughters. Oh, my God. All girls. All girls.

Wow. Lucky grandparents. Yeah. Wow. I feel like Sanjay was, you know, he was a third parent. And he was more than that. You know, he was also a brother. He was a friend.

He was a mentor. It was all kind of rolled up into one. So, you know, I think that that, that that hasn't really changed for me because of all you know he's always sort of been this guiding kind of figure for me that was true when I was four years old it's true it's true today so that part I don't think is going to change it is it is strange I remember when um Sanjay had his first daughter sage his oldest his oldest daughter and I remember him calling oh well I was there but he called me like the minute he was she was born and it seemed like and he was like you know

know, I'm, I'm really thinking about you right now because I think that that kind of just transported him back to those days that we're talking about right now. And I, and I, it's, um, it's, it's, it's, it's, I remember him so well during that time, you know, the, the, the, the, the age of, because he, he left the house when I was about seven years old, which means that really, if I, if I, if I start to kind of really remember things when I was like three, four years old to seven that's not that's not much time that's about three years but it seems like forever like i have so many memories of the two of us at the house together which in a lot of ways makes me think about my role for my girl right now my younger one who's three years old right like

sometimes i think it's easy to dismiss this age because you kind of feel like well they may not remember as well um but i think that for me it was i mean it was it was it was so much a part of my childhood so so so so so dramatically influential you were involved you were very involved in your little brother's life right yeah because that can go either way i mean i guess you could be like i'm too old for you we don't have anything in common but you guys were latchkey kids i mean your parents were working so sanja i would assume that you had just by nature took on a very more a paternal role for soon yeah i think so i mean you know my parents did work and they even worked a lot weekends so a lot of times it was just senile and i and you know i mean it's funny now because you can't

think of a 10 year old i don't think like i wouldn't have looked at my daughters and said they're 10 and now they can take care of a a baby you know but and we had help you know from time to time there would be sitters and things like that that would help but i was you know a lot of times i was primary sort of caregiver and i mean one of the one of the stories i love is that i took senile to this little amusement park when you were just like a year old or so and it was bablo island it's this little amusing park on this island uh in the detroit river and it's it's cool it's not there anymore but it was a neat little place and we had to go by bus and then we had to get on a boat and take him and i was 11 and he was one and just how we just how we did it you know

i would never let my like the idea of like rider even at 16 taking ronnie is like no it's not happening. I know. It was crazy. But, you know, sometimes just out of necessity, you know, why don't you take him? We should take Sunil to Boblo. I don't know why, you know, he was baby and I felt like that'd be a good thing. But like, well, you take him. I'm like, okay, you know, figure this out and we made it happen. So what were you guys like as kids? Like, what was your personality? Were you outgoing, shy? Hmm. I think, well, I'm curious. This is a really good conversation. You know, it's funny, doing this sort of conversation, we don't typically have these conversations, right? I mean, just to, I mean, I think, I was the shy one. Sineal was definitely, I think,

a lot more outgoing. I didn't, I didn't have friends, really. Sineal, you seem to have a lot of friends. Well, you had an air band, so you had some friends. I had my air band, yes. I had, I had organized. He had his fame. He had his fame, even as that air friends. That was not, that, that, those take me to be destroyed. There's no fame. Wait a minute. Well, there's, why didn't you friends, like this seems to be a theme here. Well, I think part of it again is, you know, so even during the 10 years, a lot changed in Michigan, you know, there were no, my parents, their friends were mostly Indians, culturally, you know, food-wise, music, things they could share. And a lot of times they didn't have kids my age, you know, so we would go to their house, whatever, that would be

our social thing. And so I didn't have friends. And I, and I think just living in a, in a, um, uh, neighborhood where you're, again, the only Indian family, I just didn't have a lot of friends in the neighborhood as well. I had a couple, but not, I didn't have like a friend group by any means. So, no, you seem to have a lot of friends. You were definitely more outgoing. And I got to say one thing as well, it's really interesting now being a dad, because I see different personality traits in my own kids. And what's so funny to me, and again, I was having this conversation is that how do you succeed as a kid, right? Like, how do you think you're succeeding as a kid? Like, I think a lot of times it's the measurable things. I'm getting good grades.

I'm involved in activities, whatever it might be. I think the idea of being just a sweet, engaging, curious kid, because it's harder to measure, you don't know, you don't always know what to do with that. I think I was a bookish sort of kid, and Sineo was a bookish kid as well, although, you know, I think he was, Sineo was always just a really sweet, engaging kid,

and I just saw people respond to him differently than they responded to me. I was, I was shy. I was not very outgoing and I probably didn't smile as much even if I was smiling on the inside so people thought you were surly it wasn't that I was surly

if I was interested in something I would just sit there and stare at it and they would think I wasn't curious but I was you know so it was it was a lot of that it was I think I was misunderstood it's so funny the irony of the fact

that now you are like America's chief medical correspondent and like bring everybody comfort but I think you just said something that is really, really smart. Finally, you've said something. I get that a lot too. Because I deal with that with my kids as well.

You know, we live in this world of measurements, right? It's how do you stack up? Right. How are you in school? Do you have extracurriculars? Yeah. Why isn't happiness a measure of one's success? But that's such as doing such a disservice to all those kids, you know, just because we can't measure it.

And I think that school, education needs to shift in a way to sort of take so much, so much pressure and stresses on standardized testing and all of these markers. Yeah, I mean, Sunday and I talk about this quite a bit, community now. I mean, I, I remember Sanjay having friends in college that we, that I would hang out with, and we still hang out with now. Like, I think one thing that him and I have both done is we've, we've, the friends we really, you know, grew to like and liked us, like we, we, we definitely formed our circle and made sure that those relationships stayed intact. And, you know,

Sanjay and I were talking about this because I was, I just, I just took a trip to Bhutan. Or if you, you know, Bhutan is the one country in the world that measures itself based on gross national happiness. So based on the happiness of their people. And, you know, gross domestic product and all the other measures that, you know, we prioritize here in the United States are important, but they're not everything. They're part of all. They're part of a bigger hole. And so when I was there, I got a chance to spend time with the team that really goes out and does the surveys and actually figures out how to measure the happiness. And I just simply, I asked them, you know, is there one question when you're going village to village, city to

city? Is there one question that you can ask that will give you a pretty good sense of how happy someone really is without having them fill out this whole survey? Just one question. And they said, yeah. And the question is, if you were in trouble today, do you know that there would be people who could come to your side without, without any hesitation, with 100% certainty? Do you have those people? And if the answer to that is yes, like you feel that, then your likelihood of being happier is much, much higher. But there's a part, there's a part two to that as well, which is whose list are you on? Are there people out there who know without a doubt that you would be there by their side if they needed you?

And they actually feel that that second part is even more important than the first. Wow, that's very cool. To be on someone's 911 list. Yes. I think I'm on a lot of people's 911 list. I don't know if I can think of that many people that I would call, though. Why you call me? Really?

I'll call you. But does brother, I think siblings count? So, Neil, do you feel that Sanjay and how close you guys were during that brief time that Sanjay was home, that it really informed who you are now? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think it gets to a lot of the stuff that Sanjay is talking about. I mean, I think the warmth in the house wasn't always, you know, visible. It was there, but it wasn't always visible. And I think Sanjay made it a point to want to keep things light for me.

He wanted to add that for me. So no matter how serious things were, you know, he always brought the lightness. Sometimes he brought it in ways that, like, have been traumatic for me. Like, he made me watch the Michael Jackson thriller video when I was like four years old. Oh, that's nothing. Oliver used to make me watch, like, Nightmare on Elm Street. He really went there. That's worse.

He went, all right, Oliver, you are messed up now. Yeah. I agree. Yeah, so I, Sanjay kept this lightness. So I think that for me has been, I mean, so important, right? I mean, you know, no matter how serious things get, like knowing that there's some levity in the situation that you can find, I think that's a life skill. And he instilled that at me at such an early age. And by the way, like, he's such a great example of that.

Like, he still does that. I mean, imagine kind of what the past two months have been like for Sunjay. But we're still like texting every day or calling each other every day. And the conversations always have like a certain, we always make sure there's a certain level of lightness to it. No matter what, no matter what's happening in the world, we find a way to make that happen because we know it's important. it's important. It is. Sanjay, you got, you got accepted to, as an early app, right, at 16 years old, to a medical program? Yep. And so did you leave high school and go right into medical school, basically? Kind of, you're accepted into medical school right away. You have to do two years of college. So you need to be at least 18 to start medical school. So I was, I did that time, you know, the first couple. It was at Michigan, University of Michigan. And, um, and, um, Um, yeah, it sort of, it sort of set me on my, on my way. You know, you had to make the decision pretty early that you wanted to be a doctor, which is a tough decision to make in retrospect. You know, you got to make that decision at 15 years old and you're making a life decision. That's crazy. It's crazy. I, I, again, I have a daughter who's 14. I don't think she could make that decision next year. Um, and she shouldn't, frankly. Did you know, though? I mean, were you sure? Or were you? No, I wasn't, I wasn't sure. I think sometimes it's, it's kind of like you just, you just, you just. You just. do it and then you sort of see i mean you'd like to think everything in life is well planned out but

but you know as i as i now i'm 50 and i realize that most things aren't you put yourself into certain situations and you think uh there's things about this that i like i have certain attributes that i think you know may serve me well in in these situations i don't know exactly what they are um but i you know i like science my my grandfather my mom's father had a stroke when we were pretty young. I don't even know if you remember us. I guess you were very young. I mean, five or six years old,

but nobody in my family was a doctor, and I spent more time in the hospital than with him, sort of getting to spend time with him and talking to his doctors and stuff, and I think that's what sort of set me on my way, but it wasn't, there wasn't some big, drawn-out sort of thinking process. You just do it, sort of just a leap of faith a little bit. And it was a good program,

and it would save two years, of tuition and my dad loved that and you know it means the practicalities of life and i was already accepted to med school so i wouldn't have to go and take the mcat exam you know it was just it was the logic of it more than the emotion of it what would your parents have said if you're like mom dad i want to go to hollywood and i want to be an actor how would they how would they be very careful how i answer this um my dad would not have liked it i'd be honest with you at all I can tell you, because I actually told him that last week. Oh, yeah, yeah.

So, yeah, you got, you got a, you got to, well, to answer your question, my mom, I think, I think the idea, I think the idea of being a dreamer extends to all parts of your life, you know, it, it, the dream is, is the currency at that point. It doesn't even hardly matter, to some extent, what the outcome is, it's the dreaming, you know, like. Like, I, again, with my own kids now, I keep talking about our own kids because it defines our lives now. But what have I given them? I've given them the luxury to dream. That's it. You know, you talk about education. There's this great cartoon, and it's got a monkey, it's got an elephant, it's got a fish in a bowl, and it's got this guy sitting in front of all of them.

And it says, this is a very simple intelligence test. All you have to do is climb that tree over there. Right? Monkey, elephant, and fish in a bowl. Now, fish in a bowl will obviously fail that test. but the fish in the bowl would be amazing at something else the right person in the right seat

on the right bus like how do you like I've given my kids the luxury to find the right seat on the right bus that's what I've done so going back to your question if I said I really wanted to go to Hollywood my mom would have totally supported

my dad would not have paid for it he would have cut me off financially so I would have suffered for that exactly well you made the right choice I don't know I don't know I do you well I mean by the way

you essentially are a performer in the idea that you have no no no just hear me out for five seconds all every all all you guys are because you have to go say the same thing over and over again within an hour and have conviction make it sound like it's the first time you've said it and that's exactly what we have to do take after take you know what i mean like is and never thought of it that way Now that you've said it, that's all I'm going to think about each time I do this. I've got to vary it up. Oliver's watching. You're like, oh, God, I'm saying the same thing.

Yes. You're a great actor. My mom would be so proud. My dad wouldn't believe it. You know, I will tell you, Rebecca, my wife actually wrote this the other day. She wrote in a Facebook post, and it was interesting because she will write things in Facebook posts again that she would never tell me directly. It's weird a little bit.

Maybe sometimes it's less, I don't know, not that I'm intimidating by any means, but I'm just saying that sometimes you're more candid. And it was this Maya Angelou quote, and it was basically the quote where you say, people don't always remember what you say, but they remember how you made them feel. And she was talking about this time in our history through this pandemic and things like that. I know my content, you know, I wake up at 4.30 every morning. I've been waking up at 4.30 every morning, basically, since the beginning of the year, and I work all day. I work till 11 o'clock at night. That has been my life for the last several months. But as a result, I'm fully immersed. I know everything about this virus. I know everything about the vaccine trials, the therapies. I talk to sources in China every day in Taiwan and at the NIH. But how you say it, I think, to your point, I think ends up almost being the thing where I have to spend a lot of time because some of it is frightening and scary

and and I don't want to be not truthful I want to be honest but the inflection point between hope and honesty maybe that's where performance lies in this regard I'm never going to sacrifice honesty but can I do it in a way that's hopeful you know and maybe it's the way you say something maybe it's it's the lilt in your in your voice you know maybe it's how fast you're saying something if you're not trying to make it sound urgent and emergent, you know. It's also as a patient of many of doctors, you know, I guess we would call it the doctor's bedside manner, you know, which says a lot for, you know, and I think for a lot of patients and people who are looking to, especially caregivers and doctors for hope in their

diagnosis, that a bedside manner probably would go a long way for someone's, sense of safety. Oh, I think that's so smart and I think that is, there's more importance than there's, it's so important to create that for the audience. I mean, I think even Fauci, he sort of gets up there and you just feel like, oh, like, I kind of want to hang out. I trust you. He's like, look, I don't know what's going to happen. This, it's about that. And you're like, oh, wow, I sort of, I believe you. And the way you're speaking to me is if like we're sort of friends and, you know, there's a camaraderie. there. He's a part of it in a sense. I think trust is such a commodity nowadays. And it's almost jarring when you are convinced someone is authentic. It's so rare seemingly nowadays that it's almost

jarring when you look at somebody and you just say, that guy is authentic. I mean, it shouldn't be that way, but it is. And I think, you know, you're right. Fauci is that guy. And it's a really tough time so many pressures on him i mean the the the collision points right now between science and politics are unlike anything i've ever seen and i'm talking about anywhere in the world really you know i cover stories all over the world this it's it's it's really it's really challenging i think for someone like a fouchy to i mean i think i talked to him on a regular basis i think he has the hardest job in the world in some ways you know i know this isn't what you wanted to talk about But South Korea, they've had fewer than 300 deaths.

Their first patient was diagnosed on the same day our first patient was. We've had 102,000 people who have died. Yes, they are one-seventh the size, so multiply it times seven. Their death count is in the hundreds, not the thousands, not the hundreds of thousands. You know, it's still, they didn't have a magic pill. They had no vaccine. They had the same things we did. And so my point is, you know, everyone, everyone's going to do the post-mortem on this.

I was reading about that in in in in Vietnam as well yeah Vietnam lost they yeah I don't it's really low death counts I know and and and basic just public health principles they use the world health organization test they identified people very quickly isolated them never got this into exponential growth like happened here so everything that we we could have done correct absolutely and we were the world leaders in that stuff I mean we are the we are ready smallpox. We're on the verge of eradicating polio. We came up with some of the most effective vaccines anywhere in the world. Yeah, we, other organizations and other countries call their organizations the CDC in deference to our CDC. We, you know, we, that was our, that was our bread and butter, really, in this country. You know, guys like Larry Brilliant, who is still alive and, you know, talks about things I'll take. He eradicated smallpox. He eradicated a disease. you know, nobody gets to say that. And, and they knew how to do this, even, you know, before, you know, before, even anticipating that there wouldn't be a vaccine available for some time. So it's, it's, it's tough. You know, I know people who've died of this disease. And it's very tough to go out there and say, you know, their deaths were preventable. It doesn't make the families feel any better. That's for sure. It makes them feel worse. But, you know, there's going to be other waves to this. And I'm sure Vivek talked about this as well. So hopefully we'll learn, you know, some of these things going forward. Yeah. We're going to have to apply these lessons right away. It's not like this 100 years from now. We need to apply these in the fall, like maybe in a couple of months.

Well, because there's going to be a second wave. The virus is still out there. Fauci is so good at what he does because he does this thing. And I told them this flat out. I said you have this amazing ability to sort of slow roll the country into things. You know, we'll do a 15-day pause. see how things go. Yeah. It was never going to be a 15-day pause. He knew at that point this was going to be months of having to slow the country down. But you can't say that. And then, you know,

we'll have a vaccine, you know, in 12 to 18 months. We don't know. Maybe that's true. But he has this way of slow rolling things. So yes, if he told you maybe there would be a second wave, there's going to be a second wave. Has Sanjay always been a person who was interested in like a little bit of everything, you know, to be, to go, he goes, becomes a doctor, then he, then he becomes a journalist, and now, you know, you have a brother that's like in Iraq, and then he's in, you know, covering Ebola, and then he's in Puerto Rico and all over the world, putting himself in dangerous, you know, literally a front, you are a frontline journalist. Right, and with all that making time for the air band, which is.

That's going to be the headline. So, yeah, thank you very much. No, but, but I mean, was he always like that as a kid? No, you're right. I mean, Sanjay's always the guy who's running, as people are running away from the fire, Sunjay's running into the fire. And that was true, New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, earthquake, Haiti, Africa during Ebola. And I think that, yeah, I think that he's always kind of been that way.

I mean, he's always been, he's always been someone who is curious and interested in wants to serve, wants to be useful. You know, one of the pieces of advice that Sanjay gave me, which is kind of related to this, is like, you always want to be running towards something and not away from something. And I think in the context that he gave back, it was career advice, you know, because I was in a job, I didn't like, and I'm like, you know, I think I'm going to go do something else. And he's like, cool, go do something else. But figure out what it is that you want to go do and then go do that, run towards something rather than sort of saying, I hate this job and I'm going to run away from it. And I think that that's kind of, you know, how I've seen Sanjay sort of live his career as well, life and career is, is always kind of being, you know, willing to run towards something, always, always feeling like even if people are running away from it, I'll run towards it. That's relevant. That's relevant advice right now in this last eight, nine days, by the way.

It's not easy to run towards the burning building, but it's a necessity at this point, even if it's uncomfortable and you might get burned a little bit here and there. But it's important to run towards the problem. And I'm learning that right now. You know what I mean? I'm going through these motions of, man, what do I do? How do I do? you know I need to move forward and not backwards it's not time to retreat and I've never been

someone honestly to run forward I kind of hang out in my spot and watch things go by like that's my nature literally literally I've watched him do that many times I watched my career go by I've watched no no but you know it's it's a relevant it's a relevant that's relevant information right now it's a great great sort of thing I mean and also Danielle, I mean, I'm just going to put myself in your shoes for a second. We're 10 years older, which is a significant amount of time to be older. And doing all of these really, like, amazing, interesting, selfless things. In my mind, I would wonder if that would affect how you would look at your future. Like, what am I going to do? Am I going to become a dog?

And interestingly enough, you become, I mean, what, you're, you were called like, what, like the great young innovator. What was it? What was the title? I was like, this will always stay with you forever. The world's sexiest innovator. The new face of innovation.

Look, I mean, I think, I think that the, if you ever want to ask yourself the question, like, what the hell am I doing with my life? Right. Like, have Sunjie be your brother. Exactly. Like, you're always, I'm always asking myself that question, but at the same time, like he is he is the guide he prompts me to ask myself that question and then he guides me to the answer so it's this it's this sort of this push and pull but it is funny like you know

2016 after the presidential election i moved back to michigan to run for congress and and um and i i moved back here because i felt like you know our our community where sunday and i grew up was one of the communities that decided to flip from blue to red that year and i and i really wanted to kind of just run, follow my brother's advice, run towards the problem, figure out what I could do. And ultimately, that ended up being me running for office. And it's funny because it was the first time that, you know, in my own community, in this congressional district, where I'd walk around and people would, would recognize me when I wasn't walking with Sanjay. When I walking with Sanjay, they're coming up to us all the time. This is the first

time people come out to me and you know like asking for like uh you know photo or something like that so you know i still remember the first time it happened this this guy comes up and he says hey can i can i get a selfie and i said yeah i mean again used to this with sanjay not used to this alone and the guy says yells to his buddy before he takes the shot he yells his buddy says hey brian come in here get in this photo with dr sanjay gupta's brother oh well welcome to my world man Welcome to my world. I'm Kate Hudson's brother. Yeah, Oliver, I think you and I, I think you and I should start our own podcast. We should.

The brothers of. There'd be no play on words in that one. That would be sibling rivalry, straight out. Sibling rivalry, that's right. Yeah, but you said something really interesting, Sineal, which I think was a really good point. In the tech world, in the business world, like you're in consumer goods, right? You're in consumerism. And there's a lot of really brilliant business minds. that can help in the in the in the uh whether it be the healthcare community or in politics or that actually are looking at how do we how do we talk to the consumer how do we talk to uh the patient or the the political how do we how do we speak to the to the people kate and i think you

talk about this a lot too and you know maybe it's an overused word sometimes but empathy is is i think you know, the way to do it without having to manipulate anything. I mean, it's just, it's, it's amazing, you know, how, how, how under, how much of a lack of empathy there can be, I think, both in the consumer space and politics, everything. Even just, I mean, I was, I was, I was, I was looking up the definition of empathy and comparing it to the definition of compassion the other day, because I was really wanted to understand sort of the nuance between the two. And they're very different, right? I mean, compassion is, is sort of, you know, you get a feeling of, you know, I'm really sorry that that happened to you and you're sort of there for

that person. And that's really important. But empathy is simply being able to describe what happened to you in a way that you say, yeah, that is exactly what happened to me. Right. So just being able to put yourself in somebody else's shoes and say, look, this is what I think you're going through right now. This is what I'm hearing. And having that person be like, yeah, you got it is an incredibly powerful and very, very underutilized thing. Like, it's almost unbelievable how powerful it is, and yet how rarely we see it being, you know, put into use. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. So what was it like when he, when Sanjay left? Do you remember that? Was it lonely? Was it empty? Were you excited? That's funny because, it's funny because the program that Sanjay was describing was called Interflex.

That was the name of the program, Interflex, which was the combined sort of short, college plus med school and i am six years old i had no idea what that meant and i just heard the word flex and i thought my brother was going to be a bodybuilder makes total sense i still yeah i still do one day so so no that that's it was lonely kate it was lonely i mean all of a sudden like again you got this sort of larger than my presence who's in your house and is is kind of everything to you you know older brother, second, third parent, and then all of a sudden that's sort of gone. But the good news was that he was not that far away, it was only half hour away. So actually, one of my, one of my special memory that I'll never forget is Sanjay actually

bringing me to his dorm for an overnight stay. I'm seven years old. And I'm, I'm there hanging out with all his friends. What was that, West, was it West Quad? East Quad. East Quad, right. I still remember. I still remember that. Do you remember that? That's crazy. Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course.

Aw, that's a sweet. It was special. It was, you know, it was a really interesting relationship. There wasn't a lot of people who had siblings that much younger. But I will tell you, though, I did worry that it would be lonely for Sunil at home, to your question, you know, because I had been sort of a third parent. And I think there was also this, this other nuance sort of point, which was that, like, I think, you know, my parents had me pretty young. They obviously were 10 years older when they had Sineal, but my, I think mom was 23 when she had me, you know, so, you know, young for, you know, obviously people have kids at younger ages. But for them especially, it was pretty young. And there was a certain, I think, there's a certain maturity that just comes about as you get older as a parent. And I also think that when you live your life as a refugee early on in life, you, no matter what, no matter how much success you have, you always live this life. like it could all be taken away tomorrow. It could all go away tomorrow. And the way that manifests itself sometimes is stress. Just lots of stress and a lot of anxiety and, you know, being stricter, I think, as parents.

And so I think I was there in part to, as soon as says, lighten it up, but also soften the edges a bit. And then I think when I was now accepted to medical school, I think my parents did have this idea that even if everything was taken away from them, that at least, you know, I was going to. have a job and, you know, help support them if necessary, whatever it might be. And that, I think, helped delay some of the stress and anxiety in their lives as well. So hopefully it, it serves Sunil well. You know, it was, again, we never really talked about this. Fun, fun, fun. He did. He did. More levity. Is it that, is that true with all siblings? Do they always say this that the other one had it better? I think maybe they do. I don't know. I think That's all he had it the best.

I'll say that's true. It's so funny. You're talking about visiting him at college at seven years old. When I went to visit Oliver at college in Boulder, I literally was like I'm never going to college. It ruined. It ruined my, my, oh, it was just terrible. Everybody was wasted. Oh, yeah.

It was rowdy. It was a attraction back then. Wasn't that the, isn't that why you... Yeah, I mean, I went for two years. I showed up at Boulder with my best friend, which was great. You know, one of the first moments I had was just watching, you know, some guy in a crazy mullet run into a door on purpose and knock himself out. That's not even a joke.

And I'm like, oh, whoa, like, where the hell am I? And I said, well, this is a two-year plan for me. And I was going to have a good time on campus and off-campus. Memphis, and then I was out. What do you think that mullet guy is doing right now? I know his name. I'm not sure I should say it's today. Let's look this guy up.

I don't know what he's doing. So it'll break my social media. So it's the face of innovation. He can find this for you. Do you guys remember a moment, you know, when you know, you're 10 years apart, but then your ages really didn't matter as much? So, Sanjay and I both, we spent, we both spent some time together in D.C. Sanjay at the time was I mean what

29 and I was 19 kind of around there and and and we were both we were both working at the White House at that time Sanjay was a fellow I was an intern and we spent a lot of that summer together and that was the first time that we had spent I mean I think it was the first time both of us had been outside of Michigan

living outside of Michigan somewhere and and it was it was a really I mean I think that that probably started it. I mean, it still very much was the big brother, little brother thing. That was a fun. It was a fun time, you know, but I think that was probably it. I think that, you know, being able to have a drink that just

engaging in some tradition, I think, made a difference. I think we have a lot of family members. We'd go to go to family weddings and things like that. And I remember, you know, people sort of looking at us as just brothers now, not, you know, he's 10 years older, you know, just Sinele and Sanjay, you

just sort of describing us together. I think that. And then I think certainly after we all had kids for sure, I think you're right about that, Sineal. We, that now it just, it's kind of like it's not about us anymore. It's about our kids and therefore we're on equal footing. We share that in common. It's not, our lives are not for us anymore. Were you guys in each other's dating lives? Were you like, I like this girl, I don't like this. I mean, that would have been so weird. Even when we got together when he was 19 or 18, you know, I really had not spent time with him since he was six or seven years old. So, you know, there was still that part of it. Like, I probably wasn't going to ask him for advice on my dating life, although he did.

But I gave it to him anyway. He gave it to me anyway. But he did spend time with my now wife when he was a kid. I mean, you know, very young, which is still wild to me, right? 12, 13 years old. I think she came to, like, my 12th birthday, which is, you know, that's younger than much under and sage. Coorslight. Actually, I am heading on a RV trip with the family.

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options near you. Celebrate responsibly at Coors Brewing Company, Golden Colorado. Okay, Bill Clinton, I took a puff and didn't inhale. Can our next president be a pothead? Can our next president just say, yeah, I smoke weed? Asking the man who studied it for five years before. Well, this is why I'm asking him because, you know, I know this is probably an exhaustive topic, and we know a lot through you know, your coverage of it and your sort of transformation from being, from from against a four, you know, and I love, I love my marijuana for a lot of reasons, but I'm wondering, has it changed to where our next president could be like, yeah, I take a puff

now and again. Yeah, I think absolutely, you know, and, you know, I mean, even if you go back and read, you know, Fresno Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, I mean, he talked, He talks about, you know, he talks about the fact that he was, as he describes it, quote, living the life of an urban, quote, urban black male at that point, which meant he did a lot of drugs, you know, he did things that were illegal. And the consequence, right, for someone of his position saying that is then people will say, well, how does that translate towards drug loss and drug reform and all that? And that's always going to be the dicey thing. You know, you did it. So why are you, why are people getting penalized for it? You know, fair. Fair question. So they'll have to do both. They'll be able to admit it and they'll have to be able to have a rationale in terms of how they're going to take their own experience in and apply it to policy, you know. But yes, I think that, I mean, I think what you're saying in terms of all different sorts of reasons that you said you took, that you use marijuana, people do use it as a medicine, you know. I mean, I think that was the sort of transformative thing for me is that you automatically thought of it. this illicit sort of thing, you know, sort of the hangover from, you know, the reefer madness sort of thing to this idea that people who actually had legitimate medical problems were taking it for legitimate medical reasons. And by the way, the antidepressants and other medications that they would be prescribed had all sorts of side effects, you know? Like, why was that legal?

How did they justify that? You know, how do you justify that this is a, you know, hundred billion dollar drug over here, approved by the FDA, prescribed by a doctor, given to in a pill form, all that versus this over here, which is a plant that helps me and costs me very little money, whatever it might be. So it's, a lot has changed. I mean, and the research is ongoing, obviously, you know, we're just. The research is ongoing, but I think what we can say is that it's a medicine. Yeah. Right. And so is opioids, and opioids, medicine. They have side effects, but it is a medicine. So I think that's the first sort of decision thing, you know, just, it's not just this, this hocus, pocus, illegal stuff. I just got to tell you this

real quick thing about, about weed and Sanjay, because it's funny, like, like, careful. Weed and Sanjay. That's going to be the name of our episode. It's the first, like, issue that, like, we saw him, like, you know, be a journalist, but also be an advocate, right? Like, actually say, like, this is what I, this is what I believe. By the way, like, here's all the research behind you. it, but also I believe, you know, be an advocate for it. And it's funny because that's the first visible issue at least. And my dad calls me one day, he's like, of all the issues that he could have chosen, he chose his medawanna. I didn't know that, really? Dad was upset with me about the whole pot thing. I didn't know that. Mom was proud of me. Mom's always proud. I'm so proud

of you. Mom's always proud. What was the year with the first thing on CNN? with weed? Let's see. I think that was 2015, maybe, five years ago, five, six years ago. But I want to get to psilocybin really quickly because this is something that had been studied earlier on, you know, I think it was like in the 40s and 50s and 60s, and then the drug culture sort of, you know, the counterculture, I guess, ruined it. I think, you know, it's exactly what you said. There's a similar trajectory here. You know, psilocybin was used for the treatment of addiction in the 40s as As we came off of, you know, the prohibition sort of era, there were all these different substances that I think that's, those enforcers were setting their sights on, including cannabis, including psilocybin. I got really, I read Michael's first article that he wrote in The New Yorker about the NYU trial, which even predated the original Hopkins trial.

And that was amazing. And I am lucky to know Michael. I talked to him a lot, spent a lot of time just talking about the science. I went and interviewed the scientists at NYU who did that first trial, and it was, it was mind-blowing, really. I mean, you may know this, but just briefly, there was 30 patients in that initial trial. All of them had been given a terminal diagnosis. They were all going to die, different ages, different reasons, different backgrounds, belief systems, and they were incorrigible in terms of their depression, their anxiety.

They just could not, nothing was working. So they had this terrible situation where they were terminal, and they were also becoming increasingly suicidal, totally isolated from their families. And they got enrolled in this trial using psilocybin, a single dose of psilocybin. And, I mean, you know, the reason it became such a big deal was because that trial was unbelievable. I mean, you had 26 people who had response, which was, these were people who didn't respond to anything, anything. They went through generations of medications. Nothing worked. 26 of them had a response.

Many of them never had to take another medication again, you know, so it worked. Not only did it work, but it was durable. It lasted for several months, maybe even longer. So I think it's really interesting, and I think, you know, the idea, I mean, I could go really deep into this, but, you know, we're trying to maintain a certain amount of serotonin in the brain. Problem is when you give serotonin through a pill, the body then is basically saying, that's great, getting serotonin elsewhere, I no longer need to make it. So when you stop taking the serotonin or a serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which is what these medications are, then you crash. And you can have these horrible, horrible sort of episodes and side effects. For whatever reason, psilocybin seems to create a pattern in the brain where the body essentially is sort of teaching itself to make this serotonin to, again, the specific serotonin again.

It's wild. Why would that happen? We don't know. But I think this idea that we evolve with these plants. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, people, you know, now I will say the difference, I guess, a little bit between psilocybin and cannabis is that cannabis side effect profile is super, super low. I mean, nobody's ever probably really had significant problems, you know, on cannabis. And some people do with psilocybin, you know. But, and so I think it would need to be studied in terms of dosing it and whether microdosing makes sense and all these various things that they're looking at. But I think that this is another example of a plant, of a naturally occurring. thing being ostracized for political reasons, you know. It's for cultural reasons, not for scientific. But it's shifting. At least it's shifting. Yeah, we couldn't talk about these things at all. I mean, when I first did the weed documentary and I wrote an op-ed, I was worried. I think I

probably even called Sineal and said the, I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow when this thing gets published. I, you know, I don't know how my, I still practice neurosurgery. I don't know how my colleagues in the hospital are going to look at me or think about this. Are they going to think of me as some podhead who's just like, you know. Is he high on my brain right now? Exactly. He must have been high. Right. Exactly. But you know, my favorite stories. My favorite stories from that time is like Sunday was at like the, he was like in the New York, New York, CNN office. And he was going out to lunch with like a few of the executives. He's got suit types. And they're like on the street in New York and they're walking down the street. And all of a sudden like there's a, there's a

bunch of guys from across the street. They're like, yo, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, you fucking rule, man. They were clearly high. I look at them and they kind of give me this look like this year, your buds. And I'm like, the weed documentaries. You know, it's a whole new thing. It's a funny story. It is, but it speaks volumes to expanding your demographic for real.

I mean, that one op-ed or the one documentary, boom, you have just. just expanded your demographic by at least 25 million people. It's crazy, right? I know. And, you know, one thing I'll say about that is that, as you know, as a lot of people who've been beating the drum on this issue know, and they would rightfully say this, is that, so I've been saying this for 20 years. Other people would say that, right?

I've been saying this for 20 years, and then Sanjay Gupta gets on and he does this thing, and all of a sudden, well, you know, I would no way dismiss all the work that came ahead of time. I admitted it. I wasn't listening to people. I dismissed them because I thought it was just a ladder towards recreational. There wasn't any other motive in my mind. You know, so it did take the digging, but there were people who've been saying this for a long time, you know, and we just got to amplify that message. Are you still practicing, by the way? I still practice, yeah. Do you get people calling you like, I want Gupta to do my surgery? I just think he's amazing on CNN.

I find like there's three types of patients I've realized. There is that type who they see you on television and they figure, well, if he's on television, he must be good, which is ridiculous. That's no way to think about the world. I think I'm good. Don't get me wrong, but I don't think I'm any better because I'm on television. The second type, I think, is people who actually would prefer that you're not on television. Like, hey, so just so we're clear, you're thinking about nothing but my brain.

you know during this time right which is which is what i would do anyways and then there's a significant population that just doesn't doesn't register doesn't click that somebody will tell them afterward or something like that and they'll be like wait what that guy so really but yeah you get patients who aren't aware that you're going to be doing their surgery and they're like um yeah so sanjay gupta will be doing your surgery and they're like what fucking cool man well the the um the um If so if we're doing elective operations, you know, I'll go meet with the patient in the office and talk to them in the clinic and stuff like that. So, you know, we have that relationship already. Okay.

You know, now there will be trauma sometimes. Like, I'll take care of trauma patients. And then after trauma, like car accident or a gunshot wound to the head or something like that, I'll go talk to the family afterwards and the patient. And there'll be that moment of sort of. Oh, my gosh. That would be like. Good news is your loved one's doing great. I mean, that would be shocking.

I would think that that family would That would be one of those sort of shocking moments Of my God Oh my God Well it's like Sanjay Gupta saved my life You should tell him this story about Jesus Jesus Oh yeah

As father Jesus I love this Well Yeah that's right So I mean it's I'll summarize Because it's kind of

But when I was out in Iraq You know covering a war as a neurosurgeon You know I was there as a journalist but covering as a neurosurgeon. There weren't neurosurgeons out there in the particular area of the battlefield where I was. And I was embedded with a group of doctors called the Devil Docks, and we got really tight.

I mean, you're in a war together, and you get really close. And so we're there for weeks, and one day somebody got shot in the head, a lieutenant. It was on patrol outside Baghdad, and they came to me, and I was, again, the only neurosurgeon there.

Like, can you take you? take off your journalist's cap and put on your surgeon's cap and take care of him, which I, which of course I wanted to do and was honored to do and ended up operating on him and decompressing his brain, taking this bullet out of his brain in the desert, and, um, which is a whole sort of, you know, um, life sort of moment, but, but, and I didn't know how he was going to do. He, he, you know, was a significant injury. It was a sniper injury. And, um, months later, I'm home and I get a call from San Diego where he lived

and it was the rehab center where they were taking care of him and I didn't even know that he had survived. There was no medical records in the desert. So they call him and he's like, you know, do you remember operating on Jesus Vedanya over in Iraq? And I'm like, yeah, operating on Jesus in the middle of the desert.

How do you forget that? Right? And I, I, they're like, and I was like, how's he doing? And they say, well, he's, you know, he's got a little bit of left hand weakness He's doing great. You should pay him a visit sometime, which was...

So I was out in Southern California, I go to look him up, go to his house, call him ahead of time. It wasn't a total surprise. He answers a door, handsome Marine, you know, last I'd seen him, he was just beaten and battered on the desert floor. And, you know, and he was great. And, you know, he just kind of fall into it, right? Start talking, and we go inside his house. He's young guy. He's living with his parents.

And his mom comes out a few minutes later. And she's so sweet. And she takes my hands. Are you the guy that operated on my son? I said, yes, ma'am, I am. And she holds my hands. Thank you very much. You know, and then a couple minutes later, dad comes out.

Dads are different. And he's like, you're the guy that operated on my son? And I said, yes, sir, I am. He goes, and you're a journalist? I haven't quite gotten the whole story. So, but we, you know, I, I'll tell you one other thing, and that reminds me just of this podcast, is that we just sat down talk. Hey, Zeus, his mom and dad, and I, we just started talking.

And I realized something, and this is months after the guy been shot in the head, almost died in the middle of a war zone outside of Baghdad, went to Germany for a while, went to Walter Reed, ended up going back to Southern California where he lived. And I realized after a few minutes of being there with them, they'd never really talked about it. I mean, they sort of talked about it. They talked about it procedurally, like, you know, you flew from here to here, but just the idea of, of, like, what it meant for them, that they thought they were going to lose their son, that that Jesus had said to him his father before he left that I'll be fine, don't worry about me, only worry if a car pulls up with a couple guys in uniforms, that means that's bad, that means I'm dead. And that's exactly what happened. And that's the only thing his father could remember when they came to tell him that, you know, Jesus had been shot. And, you know, just like all those things. And I think it's not a good experience by any means, but it was an experience.

And the idea that they, like I was nurturing that conversation for them, I felt very powerful. It's kind of like, I mean, this is a different sort of conversation we're having right now. But Sineal and I never get to talk like this. You know, it's kind of wild. We just don't have these conversations. So it's so important. And also, like, just the fact that there's nobody in the world who knows you better than your younger brother. he's seen it all, and vice versa.

Have you guys seen each other at all, or where are you at with that? We were supposed to all hang out. Yeah, we were supposed to all hang out in March. We were actually going to see my parents, our parents, and we ended up calling that off. And this was before any shelter in place or anything. And so everybody's excited, particularly our girls. We're very excited to see each other. They really like hanging out.

And Sanjay calls me a couple days before we're all going to leave. and says, you know, I think we should, I think this thing is going to, you know, be, be more real than people are giving credit for, and we should probably bag the plans. And so we haven't, we haven't seen each other in person since then, but, you know, soon. Like, my daughters, my daughters cannot wait. They are constantly talking about their cousins, constantly talking about when are we going to see them. So one way or another, like, we're driving out to you. Mm-hmm. So you guys are obviously, I mean, that you can feel the, love between you guys. You're extremely

close and open. I wouldn't go that far, actually. No, no. I missed the mark on that one. What was that you were saying before, Oliver, about performing? Some things don't change. What's the book that you guys wrote that is not, not together, but the each, that has not come out yet? Yeah.

So it was back on. Mine's called Keep Sharp. My book sort of is about the brain. And it's this idea, a little bit like what we were talking about earlier, that, you know, we do tend to medicalize everything with regard to the brain, Alzheimer's disease, various forms of dementia, the self-healing of the brain, what is possible, really, and evidence-based. You know, we look at societies around the world that have hardly any evidence of dementia. There are things to learn from these places, and we now recognize that, you know, the basic lifestyle changes that we used to think of primarily with heart disease, you know, we can. reduce heart disease by doing the following things. We don't think about that with the brain as much, but that evidence does exist. So I, you know, it was a selfish book in a way. I just want to learn as much as I could and have an organizational structure to do it. And I love the brain.

Awesome. I can't wait. Can't wait. Okay. So, Neil, so yours is called Backable. Yeah, Backable is all about how do you inspire people to take a chance on you. And I got inspired to write the book because when I was founding my first company, I was struggling to get people to invest in it. How do you raise money? How do you get people excited about the idea? And I kind of had to just work my way into it and figure it out. And along the way, I started taking notes. Like, here's what's working and here's what's not. And then, you know, after I ended up selling the company, I started interviewing people who are backers across all these different industries. So, you know, military leaders at places like the Pentagon, creative executives at places like Pixar and Lego, Oscar

nominated producers and directors. And just understanding what is it that inspires them to say yes to something, yes to an idea, yes to a person. And I started to realize that there's really these themes that come out no matter where you are, no matter what you're trying to do, whether you're starting a nonprofit, a service, an app, Kate, or whatever it is, there are these common themes about how you get somebody excited about your idea. So that's what this book is about. Speed round. Okay, ready, let's go. Here we go. One word to describe the other. Courageous. compassionate

Okay, what about one word to describe the other at 16? Excited. Excited. That was a big year for you. You're on the brink of going out and doing, getting out of the house, and you're excited. Getting out of No, by Michigan. Yeah, that's true.

One word. Curious. Who's more competitive? Hmm. That's a good question. So now you go first. I think you are more competitive, I would say. I don't know.

What do you think? Yeah, I think that's probably true. I think it's probably true. I think part of that just goes back to the earlier discussion where the metric of success was just different. You know, it was the measurables. So I needed to get the measurable things right. But I think you were always, I wouldn't say competitive, but you were always, really good at all that stuff.

You just didn't have a competitiveness didn't drive you, I don't think. Okay, who is the favorite child? Sineal. Me. Who's the biggest hypochondriac? Cineal. Definitely.

Really? I don't know. You always had some ailment. Always. Mom was always calling me. Saniel, it doesn't feel well today. I think mom was a hypochondriac for me. I'm like, does he have a test? He's getting out of a test.

But Sanjay, are you, are you hypercognom? and dryical at all? I mean, is there any part of you? It's like, oh, what is this? No. No. I mean, it would have to be pretty bad. It would have to be pretty bad. I'm, you know, a little bit with this COVID stuff because I was in some crazy places and I thought I definitely have it. But I'm, I'm, and even with the kids, the kids joke. I mean, my wife's not a doctor. They always go to her for any anything because I, I, like that's not a thing. That's so funny. That's a cut. Let me show you a cut. Um, who's boss here? I'm not being me. I'm an older sibling. I think older siblings are... Who got the better grades?

Sonjay. Yeah, I did. Who's your first celebrity crush? Hmm. The girl played, uh, Winnie Cooper on, um... Oh, my God. On Wonder Years, Fred Savage was mine. 100%, yeah.

I loved Fred Savage. And then I remember I went to prom and he was there and I was like, oh, my God. I'm at a prom and there's Fred Savage. That is how most stories don't turn out. I know. I don't remember. Jamie Summers. Oh.

Jamie Summers. Who's Jamie Summers? It's the $6 million man. She was the bionic woman, right? That's right. Jeez, this really was like the only. only thing you've ever watched. That was a thing for me.

He's based his everything. I was a lot of an hour of television a week. His entire practice is based on the $6 million dollar man. No one knows that. We can go deep on this. Who would win in a physical fight?

Sanjay. Maybe for a couple more years. I am doing yoga. I'm going to say, you're more, you're you're more flexible um who's funnier hmm that's a subjective thing isn't it

I think I think senile's very funny he is timing is is impeccable um I'd say senile if you guys could do another job what would it be you know if if you didn't if you weren't doing what you were doing is there something that you would do

I'd probably write I'd probably be a writer I think as a full-time job just I would I would write enough like in my job job to make a living and then work on the side on writing projects I really loved okay so not an actor not an actor although I might write stuff for actors maybe you know that type of thing I don't think I um but I I love the idea of being able to express and some way like that and i think writing was uh ended up being sort of a a um a strength for me something that that kind of clicked for me do you enjoy being on the air i mean is that something you love or is it something that has a shelf life i think it has a shelf life i don't think i'll do it forever um for sure i i i like being on the air when there's important things to talk about i mean you know i guess it's like that in most things in life i mean uh we don't know i think for any job i don't think We like all aspects of it. You know, there's things about it that we have to endure.

So, you know, when you work for 24-hour news network, you know, there's a lot of things you end up talking about. Like, right now, I love my job. I think it's really important. I think that it's, it feels like it's got purpose to it. But I didn't pine a way to do this sort of work, you know. The writing was the common denominator. And through the writing, sort of that writing medium became a broadcast medium. How about you, Sunil?

What would you be doing? I'd probably do one-on-one conversations on air, kind of like a Larry King. Cool, yeah. Who would win in Jeopardy? Sunday, for sure, Sunday. Yeah, I think I'd like, I retain a lot of useless stuff in my mind, you know, I think. I don't know. Who's more adventurous?

That's got to be Sunday. I think we're both very adventurous. I'd like to say I take you after him, but, you know. He's more adventurous. I'm getting there. What if you're in the woods? Okay. Who you're leaning on for survival?

You know, I'm talking to nature stuff. Pais still, Sanjay. Why are you laughing, Sanjay? This reminds me about a flat tire story in San Francisco once. It didn't go very well. I'm like, brother, brother, what would you have done if I wasn't here right? No cell phone signal. He's like, so we're exactly, he's a spare?

I'm like, dude, seriously, it's in the trunk. I don't see it. I'm like, lift that mat. All right, asked an answer. Next question. Well, it's funny because technology, it's always trying to sort of make life easier. And it feels like the father of invention is laziness in a strange way. I mean, it's like we're always trying to make life a little bit easier.

And we've forgotten how to do the things that we should know how to do. We can call AAA or push on Star or whatever nowadays, you know. Oh, God, so many questions. But we got to get going. Okay, well, before we do this, I just want to say thank you guys for coming on because this has been such a joy. So fun. So much fun. I can talk to you guys for hours.

And all I ask is when you go on the air, just do one of these, okay? Just do one of those. And I know that you're thinking. about me. No, I got to do something else. I'm not allowed to touch my face. This is a crazy thing because you keep saying, don't touch your face. And then all I want to do is touch my face when I'm on TV. So I need another signal. Okay. I'm going to just raise the roof. You know, just be like, I'm going to point my pen at you. I'm going to point my pen. Okay, watching 20 minutes. I'm going to. Okay. Point the pen. Okay. So here's the last question

we asked. So it's a two-part question. The first is what is one thing that you wish you could alleviate from your sibling that you think would be in the betterment of their for the betterment of their life something you would sort of take from them and then the other question is what is one thing that you wish you could emulate i'm going to nominate you to go first okay all right i'll go first um in terms of what i would take i think snail has an extraordinary ability to have a a very very beautiful ease with life. I think he seems like he's just gracefully moving through life. Um, it's, it's pretty to watch. It's like watching a great athlete or a great performer. Not that I'm saying you're,

this is athletic or performance. I'm just saying your approach to life is, is, is, is, you make it look easy. You really do. Um, which I've, I've always had trouble with that. I feel like I, I clunk my way through and, you know, I'm stutter starting all the time. and tripping over my own feet and, you know, I can't quite gallop, you know, to get to a run. I think, I think in terms of what I would alleviate for you, I think it would be, you know, any sense of self-doubt or insecurity. We all have insecurities to the extent that I've been the cause of any of that for you, for all the reasons that we joke about, but, you know, I would love to alleviate that for you. Yeah, I guess, I guess that would be it. Maybe I should have gone first.

You didn't alleviate it, man. You just make more self-conscious. That's really, really funny. Sike. In terms of, Mike drop. In terms of, in terms of, in terms of, emulating, I think that there's so much. I mean, I think this answer won't do it justice,

but a long time ago I read a book called Feeling Good. And one of the, it's a psychology book by a guy named David Burns. And one of the things that he wrote in the book is that we need to treat the world as if we all have one unit of worth. No matter who that person is, no matter even if that person is your boss, that person is worth the same as you, you're worth the same as them, the person serving you food, the person you're serving food too. We all have one unit of human worth. And I think Sanjay has always sort of just gotten that at his deepest, deepest level, no matter where he is, what he's doing. Just this idea that we are all in this together. You can say that, but to believe it at your core, to have that be,

what fuels you every single day, I think, is a really special thing. And he's always had that. And I've always admired that. And I want to, I want, I want more of that genuinely for me and for everybody. I think the thing that I would alleviate, I think, is, you know, Sunday and I talk about this sometimes. And I think that we've both evolved with this feeling of needing to leave a legacy. I think that there's always so much pressure of like what how will the world remember you and I think if there's if there's if there's anything I think that we kind of both realize

together now is that what we really have is our kids like those are the people who are going to be talking about us more than anything else those are the stories that are going to be shared those are the things that matter most to us and and any pressure at all to leave a legacy is the thing that I feel like I would want to alleviate whatever's left to that. Love, that's awesome. Oh, guys.

This was awesome, guys. Thank you so, so much. Sibling Revely is executive produced by Kate Hudson, Oliver Hudson, and Sim Sarna. Supervising producer is Alison Bresnick. Editor is Josh Windish. Music by Mark Hudson, a.k.a. Uncle Mark.

In early 1988, federal agents race to track down the gang they suspect of importing millions of dollars worth of heroin into New York from Asia. Had 30 agents ready to go with shotguns and rifles and you name it. Five, six white people pushed me in the car. Basically, your stay-at-home moms were picking up these large amounts of heroin. All you got to do is. receive the package. Don't have to open it. Just accept it. She was very upset, crying.

Once I saw the gun, I tried to take his hand, and I saw the flash of light. Listen to the Chinatown Stang on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Jenna Lopez, and in the new season of the Overcomfit Podcast, I'm even more honest, more vulnerable, and more real than ever. Am I ready to enter this new part of my life? Like, am I ready to be in a relationship? Am I ready to have? kids and to really just devote myself and my time join me for conversations about healing and growth all from one of my favorite spaces the kitchen listen to the new season of the overcomber podcast on the iHeart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast the super secret

bestie club podcast season four is here and we're locked in that means more juicy cheesme terrible love advice evil spells to cast on your ex no no no we're not doing no at this season. Oh. Well, this season, we're leveling up. Each episode will feature a special bestie, and you're not going to want to miss it. My name is Curley. And I'm Maya. Get in here. Listen to the Super Secret Bestie Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast.