The Daily Beast Podcast - Jason Kander’s First VA Psych Visit Was Both Sad & Hilarious

Episode Date: July 10, 2022

Former Secretary of State of Missouri Jason Kander, and author of Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD, talks to TNA co-host Andy Levy about living with PTSD, his post-traumatic growth phase when it comes to trauma and how others can get there, too—and a VA tale to beat all VA tales. Plus! Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy discuss McCarthy’s huge Jan. 6 mistake, which they’re so thankful for. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with friend of the pod Jason Kander, who's, of course, the former Secretary of State of Missouri and the president of national expansion at Veterans Community Project and the host of the Majority 54 podcast. But he's here today and is going to talk about his new book, Invisible Storm.

a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. But first, we're still on vacation, but I still had a few more questions for Andy and Molly to have some fun with. So without a doubt, the January 6th committee is doing a way better job than Mueller did. Do we think there's just a more ripe environment of evidence, or is a lot of this the presentation? Do we think Mueller would have gone well if it took on this presentation? Mueller had a lot of trouble hearing, and so it really cut up the testimony badly.

The Mueller testimony had already been torpedoed by Bill Barr. So once we got, you know, Bill Barr came, got out in front of the Mueller report and said that none of it was true. And then he took out some parts of the Mueller report. And then they released the Mueller report and most people never got, you know, far enough to see how damning it was. And the sort of feeling was he got in front of it in a way. So by the time Mueller testified, it was just like this guy who couldn't hear anything. You know, he's a guy who's headed a lot of agencies but was not ready for prime time, so to speak. Yeah, I think that's true.

There's such different beasts. I'm not even sure you can compare them. I mean, one is, you know, we've said this before. Like, the J6 committee has whittled down the boring parts. So what they're televising are the good parts and the interesting parts and the, you know, important parts. So I think they have done a good job in the way they've put it together. I don't know that Mueller had the capability of doing that. It's such a different thing when it's like one guy writing a report basically. I mean, obviously with staff, but it's just so not the same thing.

So I don't know if it's a fair comparison, but that said, I do think that for the most part, the J6 committee, the way they've chosen to do this is very smart. I don't know if it's going to move the needle at all. Hopefully it will. But to this point, it's hard to see how they could have done a better job in presenting it to the American people. I would say that the more, that the sort of closer comparison might have been impeachment. But again, I think impeachment, the first impeachment got kind of off the rails. And the second impeachment was done so quickly that I actually think there wasn't the opportunity to do it. Remember also, as much as there is like a Republican kind of sort of pushback against this committee hearing, I do think that McCarthy, who Trump is very mad at,

McCarthy actually did mess up by not putting people on the committee, even if they were moderates, because there's no one to push back. So it really does, I've said this before, but I think I'm right that it really does feel like watching a trial. Like, I mean, I remember watching famous trials, you know, the Menendez brothers come to mind because that has nothing to do with this. But so I do think that like it does feel like watching a trial because no one is defending Trump. Yeah. I mean, that was going to be my next point too.

It's like not having someone like Jim Jordan on the committee to purposely derail the proceedings has been a huge boon for this. committee and they can say what they want. And I saw the other day, like Brett Baer was even saying, like, yes, it would have been good to have pushback from people like Jim Jordan. No, it wouldn't have. Like, Jim Jordan is not a rational actor. And people like that have no business being on this committee. And I would like to give a hearty thank you to Kevin McCarthy for fucking this up so badly for that wing of the party. Because I agree with you. He really did. He really did. He really did screw the pooch. And we

are eternally grateful to him for that. As we say, we love to see it. Yes. Who's a politician people underestimate and should keep their eye on? Well, Louis Gomert. In French, it's Louis Gomer. Welcome to Bali's TED Talk.

Louis Gomer. It's all I have. It's the only answer. No. Well, there are like Democratic politicians that no one thinks about that are good. like Lauren Underwood. I mean, she's really good and smart and a nurse. So I would say there are people like that where they're just not.

I mean, we love Sheld, this podcast loves Sheldon White House, not just because he comes on all the time, but because he's for the good. Oh, you're my hot, sizzling hot take? The VEP. No. The VEP. No.

Yeah, I think people underestimate her. Yes. No. I couldn't disagree more. Well, that's because you're man. But I think you underestimate her. Jesus. That's right.

Hostile work environment. That's right. You're men. But I'm telling you people underestimate her. This is reverse hostility. I think it's just hostility. But in a nice way. Yeah, I have no idea why you think she's underst.

I mean, I agree that she's thought poorly of, but I don't think that's an underestimation, I guess, is what I'm saying. I know what you're saying. Okay. But I think you're wrong. All right. Who are your underestimated politicians? I don't know. I think, I don't know if he's underestimated, and I don't particularly like him,

but I do think that Peter Buttigieg has set himself up. I knew that was what you were going to say. Very well for the future. And again, I'm not a huge fan of his, so this is not me saying, keep an eye on that guy. He's great. I just think that maybe out of all the politicians, out of all the Democratic hopefuls, he's maybe doing the best job of positioning himself for a future White House run, or maybe Gavin Newsom. Again, I don't know if you would consider that underestimated.

Yeah, I think Gavin Newsom. That would be my one. Yeah, I think he's, I mean, he came out very strongly after the road decision, certainly more strongly than anyone in the Biden administration did. I think maybe he is positioning himself for either, I mean, I guess I won't say 2024, but maybe 2024. but certainly 2028. Yeah, we'll all be dead by then. That's the good news. Yeah.

All right. Let's light in the mood. What other podcasts do you guys listen to? Oh, I'm curious what you listen to. I listen to fever dreams. I listen to any other Daily Beast podcast there are that I may not know of. The Last Laugh. And that's all.

I only listen to Daily Beast podcasts. Yeah, so I listen to the NPR News Now podcast. Of course you do. And it gets updated like 15 times a day, which is good for me because I'm crazy. So every, no, it's so good. It gets updated at 10 a.m. 12, 2, 5, I think. 9. You mute MSNBC for those minutes?

I would like to point out that I listen to it on 2X so that I can get through it really fast. Like a real alpha over here. I listen to all my podcasts on 2X. I also listen to the daily, but I listen to it on 2X too. So it takes me about 17 minutes to get through it. Yeah, I for real, I do not listen to any political podcasts. Explains it a lot. No, I'm just kidding.

Well, I'm gratified to be part of the best one. So why would I listen to you? That's right. I do listen to the Kingcast, which is about Stephen Kingstaff, which I was fortunate enough to guest on a couple of weeks ago. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts. honestly, traitor. Listen, I got to go because my NPR just downloaded. Oh, okay. All right. Favorite place in New York City.

I don't know. My answer is my couch, so. Yeah, I was going to say. Yeah, I didn't want to, I didn't want to say that. But yeah, your couch, definitely. This is not speaking well for the three of us. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's a really good gelato place. I mean, this is going to sound weird because I'm too old for this, but I really like the steps of the Library when the weather's nice. You can just hang out there and do whatever, but I know I also understand that that sounds really

weird from someone my age. So I don't, I really don't mean it in any kind of creepy. My niece goes to Columbia, so I can go hang out there with her. I'm sure she's your niece. Yeah. Now you're just, all right, hostile,

hostile work environment. Hostile work environment. Thank you. Has your niece, Andy. She's good. She's good. I have two nieces. One just graduated from Columbia a year ago, and the other one just finished her freshman year for first year.

Wow. What's the studious family. Yes. Okay. Many people have a certain word that drives them crazy. Any pet peeves? Probably yawning on podcasts. Personally, I find eating.

Eating on podcasts. That's really bad. I hate the expression, it is what it is, and I hate at the end of the day. I hate it is. it is what it is. See, at the end of the day, I have to ask myself, is it what it is? Look, at the end of the day, it is what it is.

Yeah, that's definitely one of mine. Yeah, I get it. Yeah, and the way the right uses woke just makes me want to throw them out of a window. A low window, a low, a low, a low, a low, a low, non-fatal window. Yes. What's the worst part of doing this podcast that's not having to answer these dumb questions I wrote? Probably the yawning. You know what?

God damn it. I say it's the eating. All right. Honestly, I don't have a bad, I'm not even joking here. I don't have a bad part of doing this podcast. It's fun. For real. I mean that.

I feel the same. I look forward to it. Probably uploading the files afterwards just because it takes forever. I'm glad you guys enjoy working with me. Yes, that's right. Okay, one last one. Everything's bad. What still gives you hope? Hang on, Molly didn't answer that question.

You know what's really hard? It's not the worst part, but it's actually hard. Is interviewing, like, really famous celebrities. Because it's not that they're famous. It's like actors are really hard to interview. They kind of don't want to talk to you about politics. I don't really want to talk to them about acting. And so that is probably the hardest. Keeping with that theme, everything's bad.

What still gives you two hope? I just ate a very delicious piece of fruit. Like, I don't know if it wasn't, it looked like it might have. It was something between an orange, not an orange. It was this sort of peachy concoction. How can a fruit be a concoction? Well, it was like maybe a nectarine. Oh, okay.

Have you ever seen an edible arrangement, Andy, Jesus? Yeah, Jesus Christ, Andy. All right. God damn it. What gives you hope, Andy? First of all, I prefer my arrangements inedible, so I would just like to point that out for the record. Yeah. Yeah, smart.

Man, I don't have a ton of hope when it comes to politics, but my hope is that my lack of hope is wrong. Oh, that's good. Yeah. So there are a lot of times when, honestly, Gen Z gives me hope. Mm. Oh. You know, I'm being sincere here that I do. And sometimes I forget that because there are these weirdly both millennial and Gen Z conservatives who are just, I mean, as I've said before, they're just like they're the world's youngest boomers.

But I do think I see the way a lot of Gen Z people treat other people and they're a lot more open and a lot more live and let live. And that gives me hope as it should. Like the future generations are supposed to give you hope. And there are a lot of times when Gen Z does that for me. I agree. That is good. Jason Kander is the president of National Expansion at Veterans Community Project, host of the Majority 54 podcast, former Secretary of State of Missouri,

and author of Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. Jason, first of all, thank you so much for joining us to talk about your book. I feel like this is a very important book that as many people as possible, should know about. Oh, thank you. I obviously agree, but I'm biased because I wrote the thing. Yes. But it means a lot to me that you and other people feel that way as well. You know, there's a phrase that's sort of tattooed in my brain. This is like 30 years later from my army days, suck it up and drive on. Yeah, suck it up and drive on. Suck it up and drive on. And it's something I still find myself saying or hearing, you know, all these years later. In the book, an invisible storm,

you talk about how you didn't think that you had quote unquote earned PTSD. Is it weird that I feel like those two things may be connected? No, it's not weird. Like, you have nailed it, Andy. From the moment you and I got off the bus at basic training, the message that was put across to us was suck it up and drive on. It was some version of, this is no big deal. What you're doing is no big deal.

Somebody else, in fact, most people in the Army have it worse than you. if not somebody in the army right now, somebody in a past war. That's a really actually necessary form of brainwashing that they do with us, because if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to get us to keep doing really scary shit that might get us killed. I mean, and like for me, I as an intelligence officer, couldn't keep going back into meetings to meet with people where I had no backup. Nobody knew where I was, and it was just me and my translator, meeting with people who might want to cut our heads off and put us up on YouTube. in a beheading video, but we had to go in there

to get the information and bring it back. Well, if I'm going to keep doing that, I got to feel like, well, this is no big deal compared to what other people are doing. The problem is, and what I'm mostly right about here,

is my experience with what happens after you get out, and nobody sits you down and says, okay, actually, that was a very big deal. That was some crazy shit, and you're going to need to deal with that. You go through, in my case, over a decade, going,

I have it on very good authority that what I did was no big deal. So this can't be PTSD. no matter how bad it gets. Yeah, something else I was going to bring up later in the interview, but I think this kind of falls naturally into what you just said. There's a part in the book, I think it might actually be in the end in the epilogue. You write, Native Americans made sure everyone in the tribe understood what the warriors had experienced

so that the warriors would never have to feel alone in the tribe. In America today, we give our warriors a free chicken fajita roll up at Applebee's on Veterans Day and expect them to be exactly who they were before the war. And I think that's pretty much what you're saying, right? It's like while you're in the Army, suck it up and drive on makes sense. It's when you get out that suddenly you're like, oh, shit, I'm in trouble here. That's right. Suck it up and drive on keeps you alive when you're deployed.

Right. But it might kill you when you're home. The point that I'm trying to get across in the book overall is that this isn't just a phenomenon in the military. Yes, it's perfected in the military. But in our culture, you know, we view this. We talk about it as, you know, some people think it's weak to get help, but it's actually strength. I actually think we've gotten that message across to people pretty well, that getting help for your mental health is an active strength, not of weakness.

What we haven't fully gotten across is that your mental health problem, whatever it is, you don't have been to combat. Whatever it is you're going through, it's real. And comparing it to somebody else's actually doesn't do you any good. It just waste time because you can't rank your trauma out of existence. So I wrote the book about my perspective as somebody who, you know, is a combat veteran, and that's where I acquired post-traumatic stress. but there are people walking all over this country, this world, with some sort of trauma that they're not dealing with because they look at people like me and think, well, that's actual trauma.

And what I'm trying to say to people is you can relate to all sorts of stuff in this book and you can come to a point where you realize what I did, which is trauma is not like wine. It doesn't get better with time. It's more like an avocado and nobody builds avocado sellers. They don't keep. Trauma comes from you and your brain. So I think that's an important thing that you have to realize is that if your brain is feeling trauma, then guess what? You have trauma. Yeah, and trauma is trauma. My brain doesn't know what your brain experienced, and so my brain finds it irrelevant. So all my brain has to deal with is what it's had to deal with.

So you've got to confront it. You can outrun it. The thing about this is that, like, that could be a car accident. It could be something that happened in your childhood. It could be a bad divorce. It could be losing a loved one. it doesn't have to be going to war. And frankly, at some level, it can also just be living in America right now amidst mass shootings

and insurrection. You don't actually gain perspective when you look at the other problems people have encountered in their lives and say those are greater than mine. All you do is delay your ability to heal. And I want to be clear, this was for me, an important part of the book or something I took from the book that I thought was important. People would say, oh, he had PTSD. You have PTSD.

at least that was something I took from the book. This book is not about you being cured, but what it's about is you learning how to admit you had a problem and how to learn how to minimize and cope with and live with this problem. Am I correct there? No, that's exactly right. I mean, look, it is no different than any other injury, right?

And this book is your standard coming-of-age tale about somebody who has a secret, undiagnosed, untreated psychological disorder and is battling it, while they happen to be pursuing the presidency. And so I would say to people listening, like if you've heard that story before, don't buy the book. But you probably haven't.

The reason I wanted to tell that story in as raw and as frankly, sometimes not all that flattering to me way as possible, is because I knew that I needed to get people invested in order to get them to the third act of the book, which is me confronting in great detail my trauma in moment-by-moment descriptions of what my therapy was like. Because I know that if I can invest

people in that story, and if I can put them inside my therapy sessions with me, helping them to discover what was actually going on with me, you know, as I was discovering what was going on with me and learning from it and getting better, then I can also invest them in the idea that whatever it is that's going on with them or with someone in their life that they're very close to, that you can actually confront it. No, you're not going to cure it. But just like my knee injury that I had to get surgically repaired and I had to get rehab for before I went into the army, you treat the injury and you move on. But that's not what I did. What I did instead is in real life, what I did is I did something akin to if I had not gotten the surgery on my knee, gone into the army, run a lot

of hundreds of miles in the army. By the end, my knee, my leg would have been mangled. Well, that's what I did with my brain. That's what other people are doing. And now I'm at the point where I can run, but I got to ice my knee. I can do whatever I want to do. I'm in a post-traumatic growth stage of my life that is achievable for other people, but I got to manage my symptoms in order to do that. And so I have to be very careful to do so. That phrase, post-traumatic growth, I had never heard before I saw it in your book. And I gather that that is a term of art, as they say, that's the phrase they use to describe the process you go through. You know, the funny thing is, the first time I ever saw or heard that phrase was after I had announced to the whole world that I was going to

step away from everything and get help, the Boston Globe published an article where some expert on PTSD said that Jason Kander has the opportunity to possibly become the poster boy for post-traumatic growth, which I felt like was a lot of pressure. But it also taught me that phrase. And the reason I wanted to write the book was because this is the book that I needed 14 years ago. And had I read this book then, had it existed, then, I would have gone to get help. And the thing is, is that most people think, and I thought that PTSD is, a terminal diagnosis, either literally a terminal diagnosis because you'll end up killing yourself

or at a minimum a career terminal diagnosis because you won't be able to pursue what you want to pursue in your life. That has a lot to do with why I went out of my way not to get diagnosed for a really long time. And so what I wanted to do, well, you know why people think that, right, is because all of our popular culture, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, news, movies, whatever, the portrayals of people with PTSD are what I refer to as PTSD porn. It's voyeuristic where you've got usually a combat veteran, beating their spouse, abusing drugs,

you know, robbing a bank. What they don't show is post-traumatic growth. And the reason that's such a problem is because it turns out, I didn't even know this until I was getting better in therapy. It turns out the majority of people who undergo treatment and who commit to the program, the vast majority get to a point

where PTSD is not disruptive to their life. I literally didn't know that. And it's a big part of why I waited a decade to get help. And I think there's a lot of people doing the same thing and I need them to know, yeah, post-traumatic growth is a real thing and you can get there. And so if that means being quote-unquote the poster boy for post-traumatic growth, and that's the best role for me in public service, that's fine with me because that's a huge impact I can make on the world. Yeah, that's great. And then there's the flip side of that,

where you have the people who just think, well, it's terminal. And then you have the people who think, well, this will go away on its own. Time heals all wounds, et cetera. That's what I thought for a long time. Yeah, sure. And that's, but that's equally bad. Right? Yeah. It's like credit card debt. Like, it don't get better. Right.

It actually gets worse. It goes to the other direction. And the longer you wait to heal it. I mean, I got to a point where I didn't understand, like, I denied the idea to myself that this was related to my service because when you haven't had a good night's sleep in 10 years, because every night is just an endless parade of night terrors and sleep paralysis. And during the day, you are constantly convinced that someone is coming for you and your family and you're in imminent danger, and then you develop self-loathing and shame and guilt,

and you start to really, really have no compassion for yourself, no ability to feel emotions. Well, eventually you're going to be pretty depressed. And if you're depressed like that for long enough, eventually you're going to become suicidal. Well, if all that goes on long enough, you forget that you didn't used to be like that. And it just feels like, at least in my case, it just felt like, I guess this is who I am now and what I'm always going to be, as opposed to being able to look at it and say, oh, I know where this started and I know how to address it. Well, and one of the things you talk about is that how lucky you were to have a fantastic support system, led by your wife, Diana.

And a really, really, really great thing in the book is that you sort of periodically turn over the story to her. And she writes about her side of the story or her recollections and how what you were going through also affected her. And I thought that that was just such a great idea and not something that you see a lot of. Yeah, thank you. I appreciate it. It was really important to me. One, for the sake of the reader, like when your narrator is the person who is trying to explain to you their own psychiatric disorder, you really need another person to come in and say, and by the way, here's what that looked like. Right. Because otherwise, like, it's, you know, the very issue of the credible narrator, right? And the other thing is that this affects mental health challenges affect families.

They don't affect individuals. So it's important to understand, for instance, that Diana had her own journey where she ended up without having the underlying trauma just by living with me for that entire time. She ended up with a lot of my symptoms, with something that we didn't even know about when I started therapy, which was secondary post-traumatic stress. And so the book, people weren't going to read this book if it was just a book about war, just a book about politics. Like those are the books that belong on the shelf,

the bookshelf of, you know, like a 57-year-old suburban man. Like, that's who reads those books, and that's fine. But I wanted everybody to be able to read this, which is why it's about so much more than that, including the fact that, as one of my favorite reviews says, it's a love story. That's ultimately what this book is. It's about the two of us who have been together since we were 17,

going through this together and our marriage surviving it. And not to spoil the end of the book, But at the end of the book, one of the things Diana says is that she feels like she's on her second marriage because she's now once again married to the guy that she married in the first place. Oh, exactly. And it was a beautiful thing to read. How would you describe your experiences with the VA? Yeah, well, really positive, which seems to surprise a lot of people.

Now, what I want to be clear about is navigating the bureaucracy of the VA initially was not positive. In fact, that's how I got involved with Veterans Community Project, where I'm now the president of national expansion. which is also the organization that all of my proceeds for the book go to. So that part, like a lot of people have experienced, was very difficult. But at the same time, every clinician, every support person, every person on the end of the phone at the call center that I have dealt with at the VA, it has all been some of the best medical experience I've had and also some of the best customer experience I've ever had. Everybody I've encountered loves what they do, feels really strongly about what they do, and they're really good at it. You know, a lot of people, when I decided to get help at the VA, I talk about this in the book. People were like, but you have means.

Like, you're a person who people know, like, you could go to some of the best private trauma therapists in the country. Why would you do this? And I kept saying, because I'm pretty sure that for me, the best trauma therapist in the country were at the VA. I wanted to sit across from somebody who there was nothing I could say, and they would go, well, that's weird. And that's what I got at the VA.

It was, you know, at no point did that ever happen. And everything I said to my therapist, Nick, becomes quite a character in the book. Yes. At no point is Nick like, hmm, never heard that before. Everything I said, he went, oh, yeah, that makes sense. Let me explain it to you. Now, there was one thing when you first reported to the VA where someone didn't believe something that you said. Do you know what the thing I'm talking about?

Oh, sure. I'm happy to tell that story. It made me laugh out loud. Well, look, and it's important to tell this story because one of the things that's different about the book is there's a lot of levity. And you know what? If you're going to have people read a book about this experience. like there better be a lot of levity because gallows humor is an important part of getting through this kind of stuff. And yeah, so the very first time I ever showed up at the VA, I found myself in the suicide hold at the emergency room at the Kansas City VA. And this was at a time where I had decided not to run for president a few months earlier. I was running for mayor at Kansas City instead. And look, everybody in town kind of knew my face by design. That was my objective in politics. And so it was kind of humiliating when you notice that everybody in the psych ward is you're being checked in, they're doing double takes, right? And pretty quickly, you're mortified that everybody's

recognizing you. Well, I get put in this suicide hold room. All my belongings are taken away for me, including my clothes. And I'm in like these quadruple-sized scrubs that are way too big for me. And I'm, like, got my knees up to my chest sitting on this like metal bed. And I'm, you know, holding my knees, like have my arms wrapped around him. And after a bit, this brand new psych resident comes in to see me. And it was evident pretty quickly that this guy had no idea who I was, didn't recognize me. And at first, it was a huge relief. And, and, you know, And I spend the next 30 minutes recounting to this guy, my night tears and my hypervigilance and paranoia and all the stuff that had been bedeviling me for about a decade, stuff I had

never told anybody except my wife. And he listens and we talk about it for a few minutes. And then he asked me, he says, so do you have like a particularly stressful job or something? And I say, I'm in politics. And he's like, what does that mean? And I briefly just kind of say, well, I was going to run for president earlier this year, but I decided to run for mayor instead. But I'm calling all that off tomorrow and I'm going to come here to get help.

And he says, wait a minute, president of what? And I'm like of the United States. And, you know, he looks pretty confused. I mean, I'm like a 37-year-old psych ward patient. And but that doesn't occur to me at the time. So he's like, well, who told you you could run for president? So now I've gone from being relieved that this guy didn't recognize me to just flat out irritated that he doesn't believe me. And so I say, I don't know what to tell you, man.

I sat for an hour and a half just me and Obama in his office, and he seemed to think it was a pretty good idea. And so this guy kind of sits back, taps his notebook a couple of times, and then he asked me, how often would you say you hear voices? It's just such a great story. I literally laughed out loud. And I sort of saw where it was going. I'm like, oh, God, there's no way he's going to believe this. But when it got there, I was like, oh, man.

I'm assuming eventually you were able to convince him that you weren't hearing voices. Well, you know what's funny, and I don't really get into what happened next in the book, because it's not that relevant. But what happened next is, he left the room. And he came back a little while later. And he was like, so you have plans to pick up your son today, right? And I was like, yeah, he goes, okay, well, you can go, which I took to mean, well, you have plans, which means you're not going to kill yourself today. It was only later when I actually got. So my campaign manager, Abe Raikov had driven me to the VA, and he was waiting outside and I get in and I tell him the story.

And even then, like, I was so out of it at the time. it didn't really occur to me. And he's like, yeah, well, clearly he either went and talked to the other people there or he Googled you. But one way or another, like, that's why he let you go. Because if not for that, like, he shouldn't be a doctor if he doesn't know who he let go. Yeah. But I have to ask one last question just as a baseball fan, and I'm sure you join me in saying hashtag,

let's go Mets. I have no problem adopting the Mets this year. Yeah. Okay, good. What the hell are the Kansas City hustlers? Wow, I'm so flattered that you asked. Yeah, the Kansas City Hustlers, it's a team in the National Adult Baseball League. No, National Men's Adult Baseball League. I got to get the, I got to get the acronym right, because otherwise it comes out as Nambla. But anyway, I was going to say that's

really close to something awful. Yeah, no, it's the National Men's Adult Baseball League. And so I played baseball in high school. I was a pretty decent ball player. I ended up going to a college that didn't have a team. But there's this very serious National League, not softball, but baseball that a lot of people don't know about that is, you know, mostly former college players, some former pros, and the Kansas City Hustlers are a team in that league and indicative of the life balance that I have now struck in my life. In addition to coaching my son's little league team now, I also am the center fielder for the Kansas City Hustlers. I have a game in a few hours, and man, it's the best. I'm age-adjusted at 41. I'm still pretty fast, and I can hit a little,

so it's pretty fun. Excellent. Jason, thank you so. so, so much for talking to us. And honestly, I encourage everyone to run out and read this book, Invisible Storm, and you will learn a lot. And it's an incredible American story, I thought. Thanks again, Jason. Andy, thank you. I really appreciate it. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of The New Abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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