The MeidasTouch Podcast - Democratic star and vet Jason Kander REVEALS ALL to Meidas Brothers in July 4 Special

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

The MeidasTouch brothers are joined by Democratic superstar Jason Kander, the former Secretary of State of Missouri who President Obama once said would be a future leader of the party, for this special July 4th episode. Jason Kander discusses his new book called Invisible Storm: A Soldier’s Memoir of Politics and PTSD. In this autobiographical work, Kander discusses his journey as a solider, a top political leader, and his battle and treatment with PTSD. Kander opens up to the brothers about these topics, his life, how to find happiness, and the importance of never neglecting to focus on one’s own inner happiness and wellness. Buy Jason Kander’s new book Invisible Storm here: https://amzn.to/3NGJH7h DEALS FROM OUR SPONSORS: https://Betterhelp.com/Meidas Shop Meidas Merch at: https://store.meidastouch.com Remember to subscribe to ALL the Meidas Media Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://pod.link/1510240831 Legal AF: https://pod.link/1580828595 The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://pod.link/1595408601 The Influence Continuum: https://pod.link/1603773245 Kremlin File: https://pod.link/1575837599 Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://pod.link/1530639447 The Weekend Show: https://pod.link/1612691018 The Tony Michaels Podcast: https://pod.link/1561049560 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

That's not America. Welcome to the Midas Touch podcast, 4th of July edition. Happy Independence Day to everyone out there in the United States of America, for all of our international audience as well. Welcome to our 4th of July here in the United States of America. We have a big international audience, Brett and Jordi. I don't know if you know that. I do realize that. It's pretty amazing. Well, first off, I see all the data. So I do see that we have people all around the world who watch us.

But it's super cool when you actually get to put like a username even or a comment to that data when you're looking at the YouTube comments or the Twitter comments and so on. Super cool that people are entrusting us to bring them American politics via our analysis and just, you know, what the shout out, you know, everybody and happy independence day. Let's go brothers. No days off. I think we're the hardest working three brothers in media. Ben doesn't allow days off. For those listening, Ben doesn't allow days off. So whenever I travel, I've carried my podcast equipment like in my backpack. It's very special. Extra special episode today.

Ben, why don't you tell everybody what's going on? Special episode today. We have Jason Kander, who will be joining us on the podcast. Now, Jason Kander has a book which comes out today. It's called Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. Let me just give you a teaser of where Jason Kander was in 2017. In 2017, President Obama, in his final Oval Office interview, was asked who gave him hope for the future of our country. And Jason Kander was the first name that he mentioned. Jason Kander

is a pretty good endorsement right there. Yes. Jason Kander was the secretary of state for the state of Missouri, was in Missouri, a member of their House of Representatives. He went to Georgetown Law, my alma mater, and then went to Afghanistan, though, as an army intelligence officer before running for a political office in Missouri. He did not win his Senate run against Roy Blunt, but he received this very, very, very close. And he received the most votes of any Democrat who was running in the history of Missouri for that position. And it's really delighted to have him on today. Now, I want to mention before we get into the interview as the title suggests, A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD. What this book is heavily focused on and why I think this book is really one of the most important books

I've read in a really long time, probably the most important book I've read in a long time, though, is its focus on mental health through the lens of Jason Kander's experience. Being a soldier, running for national public office, having this reckoning with his PTSD, confronting it, being treated, his focus on his family, his focus on making time for himself and his loved ones. And that's why this book was really such an important read for me. And when you have people in the national spotlight, like a Jason Kander, you know, someone who was in that 2017 time period and before talked about, and still is to this day, but was particularly in

that national conversation as Jason Kander will likely run for office and could be the next president of the United States in an upcoming election to hear his story, what he was going through, how he confronted it. Having someone open up in such a candid way is something that I'm really proud to share. And I think our country would be in a significantly better place if more people would be open about their experiences and focus on building bridges rather than dividing and focus on how we can affect positive change and improve the conditions of our country, beginning with mental health as one of the major things to start with, is why I think this book is so important. And I'm excited to share this interview with all

the Midas Mighty here and abroad. I do want to mention both the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline and the Veterans Crisis Line. Both have the same number, 800-273-8255, 800-273-8255. And if you're experiencing suicidal thoughts, do not hesitate to call that number. And as you'll hear from the interview with Jason Kander, it was something that he experienced and that he sought treatment for. And it's nothing that you should feel ashamed about or feel in any way embarrassed about. It's something that lots and lots and lots of people go through. And I'm really honored to have someone like Jason share that with us. So without further ado. You know what I just realized, too, about Jason Kander, his last name, Kander.

Very fitting for this interview because he is very open, honest and frank about his situation. I also want to let all of our listeners know that if you buy Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD by Jason Kander, all of the proceeds are going to the Veterans Community Project. So you're also supporting an incredible cause. And this is honestly one of the most important, one of the most special interviews that we have ever conducted. And I hope that you take everything that Jason says to heart. It's funny. You learn a lot about him. You learn a lot about his journey, his mental health journey,

his political journey. And I think this interview could help a lot of people. So please share it with all your friends and family, whether they're veterans or whether they're just civilians. This is such an important interview that people need to hear and people need to read Jason's book, Invisible Storm. So without further ado, let's go to our interview with the great Jason Kander. We are joined by Jason Kander, former army captain who served in Afghanistan. He was elected to the Missouri state legislature in 2008 and as a Missouri secretary of state in 2012, ran for Senate in the state of Missouri in 2016, received the most Democratic votes in history during that election. He also serves as the president of the Veterans Community Project,

a national nonprofit organization, and hosts Majority 54, a popular political podcast and lives in Kansas City with his family. Jason Kander, welcome to the pod. Thanks for having me back. I appreciate it. We wanted to have you on the pod for a lot of reasons. Number one, you're a big friend. We consider you family here at the Midas Touch podcast and appreciate all the work that you've done. But you got a new book coming out, Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD that comes out today. The release of this podcast coincides with the release of the book. And we had the opportunity to read the book before this interview. And so if you will, Jason, I want to talk about the book and really frame the book in the political zeitgeist today. And so that's how I think we take this interview, if you're cool with that.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I really appreciate the chance to talk about it. Look, this book for me is the book that I wish had existed 14 years ago. If this book had existed 14 years ago and I'd have read it, I would have gone and gotten treatment for PTSD and it would not have become as bad as it was for me. And it would have made a huge difference in my life. But so the book is, you know, it is, there are going to be people who read the book because they like me. There's going to be people who read the book because they like politics. There's a lot of stories about politics in there. But really what the book is,

is it is a story more than anything about somebody who is dealing with an undiagnosed, untreated psychological disorder while they happen to be pursuing the presidency. And then all along the way, it's also a story about how my wife and I, you know, went through that period, that 10-year period in our life. So it's kind of a love story too. So it's a political book in the sense that that's what I was doing for a living. But really, this is a book and you don't even have to have served to get a lot out of this. This is a book for anybody who has dealt with any kind of trauma or just cared about anybody who has. When did you go to Georgetown Law? I didn't say that in the bio, but you're a lawyer,

a plaintiff's lawyer. And that's where I practiced before I really kind of leaned into what I was doing on Midas Touch. But when did you go to Georgetown Law? You know, I went to Georgetown Law as well. Oh, I didn't realize that. I graduated in 05, and now I'm a recovering lawyer. So I'm a lawyer. When did you graduate? So we're both recovering lawyers. I graduated in 2010. So immediately when I was reading the book, you know, and I think I may have made that connection the last time you were on the pod, but I'm not sure. But I saw that while you were in Georgetown Law, it really wasn't fulfilling to you. And you thought, hey, I had that you had the need to join ROTC. And so I get it. I went to Georgetown Law. So explain, explain that to me,

though, what was going through your mind at the time and for you to go to the undergrad campus and start going the ROTC with the undergrads. No one freaking does that. No, it was me and another guy, a guy shout out to Eric Almonte, uh, who, you know, who now I think is actually practicing law after several years as an infantry officer. Um, so he and I were, uh, the, the two guys who were doing that. Now remember this is right after nine 11. So, you know, it was sort of like, we, that's just, we happen to have been going to law school next in our careers. But it was like, well, 9-11 happened.

We're going to go join the army. We're going to go serve. I became an intelligence officer. He became an infantry officer. There were a few guys who were grad students. We were and this is kind of funny looking back. You know, we were all like 24 and we were referred to as the old man platoon because, you know, everybody else is like 18, 19, 20, 21.

But, yes, it was an interesting experience to be in this place where everybody, for instance, right before finals. I mean, you know, we're freaking out about what was going to be on the exam. And they're listening to lectures that they recorded when they listened to them the first time in person. And I just didn't care about any of it. I was like figuring out how you're supposed to assault a bunker. And that's what interested me at the time. And so you then became an intelligence officer. You were deployed initially right in Afghanistan. Yeah. And you had a very unique deployment. You talk about it in the book that the role they gave you was basically a role that was one they created kind of for you and was

several degrees above where you had even trained to do. So how'd you even get in that position and were placed to actually not just be an intelligence officer who was writing reports, but you were actually on the field speaking to drug lords and like, like you, you were embedded. Yeah, it was, what happened was, and this is just the difference between how things work in training versus how they work once you're deployed, much like in the other parts of life where how things work and, you know, and when they're drawn up versus in, in real life in application, uh, when I, when I arrived, they had just created this new position, which was, you know, my boss, my CEO referred to it as the internal stability person, which was to say the person whose job it was to figure out which bad guys had infiltrated the Afghan government and were pretending to be

good guys. And then to like write up reports about it. But first they had to go figure it out. And they presented me with two options. He said, you know, you can do that job, which was really a job designed for somebody who had been in the service a lot longer than me. I was like fresh. I mean, fresh out of intelligence school. And then the other thing was just to be an analyst on the night shift and to take the intelligence that people had gotten during the day and then gather it up and write what you think about it and send it up

the chain. And I was 25 years old and pretty sure I was bulletproof. And so the job of going out there and wearing street clothes sometimes and, you know, doing what I had only seen in the movies like that obviously seemed like the more important thing to me. So I was like, I want that one. I wasn't necessarily all that qualified for it, but, uh, the Colonel wasn't going to get a new intelligence officer for a while. And so he had to come up with a reason. So he said, he said, uh, well, you have a law degree. So that's something which had, I mean, he could not have had less to do with having a law degree. Um, but boom, I was hired and then I was in the job. So that's what it was. And it was deceptive to me, right? Because my days were oftentimes exhilarating.

And I was young enough to think that this was very normal. And the army was telling me on a regular basis, like they do everybody else, what you're doing is no big deal. And I knew a couple other guys in my camp who were doing this sort of intelligence work, which my my CEO later told me that he had dubbed Thug Int, which stood for Thug Intelligence, which he said meant it was my job to develop relationships with thugs so that we could get information on other thugs. You know, I knew a couple other guys who were doing this kind of work. And so it just seemed like it must

be normal. So I thought, boy, I feel like a cowboy. This is an amazing experience. It did not occur to me that it could also be traumatic for me until many years later. And so you come back after that deployment. And then right around 2008, you run for House of Representatives. There's a chapter called Running Angry. And then it talks about how you ultimately won. And then you find yourself in Jefferson in this empty apartment where you really didn't want to be. Your wife, Diana, was 150 miles away and wasn't even close to you. So you basically did what you were very critical in the book of

both the Democrats and Republicans who serve in the House of Representatives. So let's start with that. What'd you observe when, you know, you come back from Afghanistan, you're this young, you know, popular House of Representative, you're the hot shot, people are looking at you like, who the fuck is this Jason Kander person, right? Yeah. And I'm going, let me tell's who the fuck is this jason candor person right yeah and i'm going let me tell you who the fuck i am and it's and not in like a good way right like i'm you know where i'm coming from at that point is i am i am this legisl you know i see myself as this flaming sort of legislative righteousness i mean i in no way had earned this but that's how i saw myself and the reason i saw myself that way was because i had come from this experience where, you know, I'd been downrange.

I'd been in Afghanistan. I'd gone on missions oftentimes with no armor on our vehicles and were told, well, you know, we should have had helicopters, but those assets have been moved to Iraq. And so I've come home like a lot of other guys with this sense of anger that I'm not sure how to place. I much later learned not to spoil parts of the book, but I mean, I, I later learned in therapy that, you know, a lot of that anger was about my need to control the situation. Um, and, and one thing I'll say about the book is that one of the things I'm most proud of is that the way the book unfolds is that I didn't allow myself to narrate the earlier parts of my life using language that I've gained in the parts of my life in the last three years. So as I'm,

as a character in the book, as the narrator sorting out what the hell is wrong with me, I only know what the reader knows. I know that I'm having violent night terrors. I know that I seem to feel in danger all the time. I know that I'm very quick to anger in a way that I wasn't before I deployed. But I don't know that it's PTSD. So as a result, what I was doing at that point in my life is I'm looking at every Republican in the legislature and they're just Donald Rumsfeld until proven otherwise. They're just somebody who sent us there without what we needed. So when they're doing stuff like cutting people off Medicaid, I'm taking it deeply

personal because I don't see it any different. And then when I have Democrats who won't back me on things like campaign finance and ethics reform after I've come back from doing anti-corruption work in Afghanistan, I'm just as angry at them. And they're saying, well, I would back you on that, but I'm afraid the speaker will take away my parking spot. And I just, I like can't possibly fathom that idea at that point in my life. And so you channel that, by the way, am I ruining the book for people right now? Hey man, I'm on the podcast. I lived through it.

I think people know it ends well. I don't want to be just little, it's just little bites, you know, they're teasing. Yeah, little bites. The full details, the full story. You got to buy the book. The book, the book has a happy ending. I mean, it has a happy ending. I'm okay.

I'm doing really well. The third act is just me in therapy. My great uncle read it and said something that I had never thought of. He said, you wrote a mystery novel. And he said, because the entire third act is, it's revealing everything that was happening and it's unfolding going oh that's why that happened that's why that happened which is what i experienced in therapy so yeah absolutely like not ruining it at all like it is it ends well it's worth spoiler alert spoiler to the part of it you know that the book kind of reads like a mystery and it evolves over time where I see your growth from

law student to serving in Afghanistan, to serving in the house, to, you know, one of the key things that you focused on and that you were known for, which made you so many friends in the house of representatives was you were the ethics guy. So you focused on, he focused on making sure that all politicians were following the ethical guidelines. Was that just because you were just so pissed off at the way things were operating there from both sides when you were in Jefferson? You know, in the last few years, I've gotten to reflect on that. And one of the things I figured out was that in a lot of ways, that was the continuation of my deployment, right? Like I, whether I realized it or not, like I had done this anti-corruption work over there.

And then I came home and I was so dispirited to find that, you know, while nobody was getting their head cut off over here, you know, money was driving so much. And so I was offended on behalf of people who were still over there doing that. I was offended on behalf, whether I could give voice to this or not, on behalf of the people who were risking their lives to enter politics in Afghanistan. But I think I was also, at a more pedestrian level, just deeply offended on behalf of the college kid, the political science major who chose to go to school in D.C. and never missed an episode of the West Wing and had a certain idea as to what America was and now was in elected office and being confronted with the people who were supposed to preserve that American way and weren't doing it. And when you put undiagnosed PTSD on top of that, I was really mad at those people. And so that's what made me feel like I've got to fix this combined with a not uncommon, I now know, tendency of trauma survivors to seek some sort of redemption for themselves through what they, you know, so they'll pick like some heroic act that may not be achievable in their career thinking.

And I did this on several occasions thinking if I can just achieve that, that'll fill the hole inside me. And then I learned, you know, over time, like not to take, not to rob myself of too much credit, right? Like I still was operating from a place my parents had instilled me with certain values and I had a certain belief system, but the breakneck pace at which I pursued those things, yeah, a lot of that was my way of self-medicating and not dealing with the intrusive thoughts in my mind. You know, and the book does a masterful job explaining those issues because people look at people like you, you know, Jason Kander, Secretary of State, you know, and we see the photos and you talk about the ads, you know, you were either, you know, this golden child in

the ads, you know, with Barack Obama, or you, this golden child in the ads, you know, with Barack Obama, or you're with Nancy Pelosi and you look miserable. But but but, you know, whether it's my ads or the other guys, the other guys ads. But people look at you, look, Jason Kander, he's got it all put together. He's got it figured out. You become the secretary of state. You're on this incredible upward trajectory. But you explain what's really going on behind the scenes and what that kind of vulnerability is and you being able to articulate that. You know, I think our country would be in a much better place, you know, and this is where you start, where you start the book with at the very, very, very beginning. You know, it goes, men will literally run for president instead of going to therapy. And when I look at the current state of the House of Representatives and the Senate,

there is so many psychological issues there and no one's talking about it. And that's really what's it kind of boils down to that sometimes of this and really fucked up people there who are not addressing their issues. Yeah. I mean, I got to tell you that there are so many times now where I watch, I watch sometimes friends of mine, you know, who, who are engaged in that at the day-to-day level. And I, it's not like I'm like, they have to get out. Like, that's not, you know, what I chose in terms of getting out of running for office, at least for this part of my life. It's not like everybody needs to do that, but I definitely have a lot of conversations now with people and people you would know. I would never divulge who they are, but that are about mental health, where I'm I'm their friend from politics who they call not to talk about what the polling says.

And I I'm the one who's like, how much time are you getting with your family? Are you getting in like your workouts? Like, how are you feeling? Right. Like, are you sleeping? And, and that's because you don't have to have been to war to have trauma. I mean, we, so many Americans are walking around with trauma and oftentimes we unknowingly are inflicting it on one another. And so what I, that's why the book that I was most motivated to write is the third act of this book, which is, you know, takes you through therapy and what I learned and the entire experience of learning

my own brain and what people can take away from that. But I recognized eventually that in order to get the chance to tell that story and to have more people understand that post-traumatic growth is a real thing so that more people will actually pursue it instead of feeling like PTSD is a terminal diagnosis from a life and career perspective, because that's what popular culture tells us. I recognized that I needed to tell the story of being in New Hampshire and giving the nationally televised speech that was basically me announcing for president. And then the next morning feeling just as empty as before and going, oh, there's really something wrong with me. And I needed to tell the story of, you know, what it what it is to be the far and away front runner ready to win in a landslide in your in your mayoral race in your hometown.

But calling the veterans crisis line because you're thinking about killing yourself. Like I knew that I needed to tell that story to get people to listen to the rest. And so that's what I did. I want to make sure that anybody who wants to seek help could contact the Veterans Crisis Line at 1-800-273-8255. That's 1-800-273-8255. Jason, I noticed that what you just said was a recurring theme in the book, that these moments that should have been moments of celebration were actually moments that you were kind of at your darkest. I'm looking at when you were after you found out you won the secretary of state race. Later on, you gave that speech your life in New Hampshire. You were going to be running for president.

The next day, you just felt all those endorphins rush away, totally gone. Why do you think it was those moments that should have been celebratory that were actually the next day you just felt all those endorphins rush away, totally gone. Why do you think it was those moments that should have been celebratory that were actually the hardest on you? Because I had gotten to the point I now know where I had become emotionally numb. And the reason that you become emotionally numb as a result of PTSD, it's not like PTSD makes you emotionally numb. What happens is, is that when you have all these negative emotions, right? Like when you're having really bad nightmares, when you are having anger, all the stuff that I've talked about, you don't want to feel those things. And so as a coping mechanism,

what often people do, what I did is it's sort of like I deployed countermeasures against those emotions, right? I like said, I'm not going to feel that. I'm going to push that down. I'm not going to feel, Oh, nope. I understand that something bad happened in Afghanistan today. And that makes me feel something. I won't be feeling that today, right? I'm going to just, I'm going to turn on a podcast. I'm going to watch MLB network. I'm going to go give this speech. The, the, the speeches, the performing became my drug and it was an endorphin. And if I could keep those endorphin hits close enough to one another, then I didn't have to feel anything.

The problem there, there are several, obviously, but one that I will highlight is that those countermeasures that you deploy to not feel the negative feelings, they're not smart bombs. They're not laser guided missiles where they can come in and find the negative emotions and leave the good emotions to themselves. It just suppresses all the emotions. And so eventually, I couldn't feel things that should feel good. When I would be with my son, who at the time was very young, like one, two years old, and he would do something adorable, I couldn't fully feel it. It was like, it was just on the other side of a wall and I could hear it, but it was muffled. And then those up moments, they'd have me way up, but I couldn't fully feel it because there was a, inside my mind, I was rebutting it and saying, yeah, but you, you weren't in Afghanistan for as long as your friends, you didn't get hurt. Your friend TJ got hurt.

You know, Kevin, who you serve with, came back and took his life. All of those things happened. And so that's what I would hear. And so in therapy, I was able to understand the necessity of feeling the feelings. I learned how to no longer be numb. And now when something cool happens, I get to enjoy it. And when something shitty happens, I can, I understand now, like I'll just sit in this shitty thing and this feeling won't last forever. I don't have to fight it. And you know, that seems pretty simple, but I had to have help from the VA to get there. Yeah. And it sure seems a lot healthier than letting it all bottle up and then come out in other ways. Now a word from our sponsor, BetterHelp.

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Thank you. And I want to go back to the beginning of the book, which is what really hooked me in reading this book was you open it. It's a low point in your life, but it's actually, I found it to be a pretty funny anecdote at least where you're running for mayor of Kansas city. You're a patient in the psych ward at the Kansas city veteran affairs medical center to deal with your suicidal thoughts. And there's the one doctor in the place who actually doesn't recognize you. Everybody knows your famous face and he asks who you are and you go, Oh, I'm running for mayor. Oh. And by the way, Barack Obama says I should run for president. He told me that personally. And he's like,

yeah, okay, buddy. Barack Obama told you to run for president. Okay. What was that experience like? Can you share a little bit of that anecdote? Sure. I mean, and, and, you know, I opened the book there because I wanted people to get a full sense of just how low I got at one point. Right. And then, you know, it starts there and then we go back sort of the beginning from there. And then in the middle, we catch back up to that point. But what happened is I go to the VA.

It was before I had announced that I was going to step back from everything and go to the VA. And I looked like shit, man. I mean, I looked like a guy who needed to go to the emergency department at the VA. And and I was pretty mortified that everybody kept recognizing me, which wasn't unexpected. And so, you know, next thing you know, they take away all my belongings, which is what you do, I guess, when somebody's on suicide hold.

And I'm just in these, like, pajamas, these scrubs they gave me that are, like, four sizes too big. And this psych resident comes in. At first, I'm really relieved that this guy is from out of town. He doesn't realize who I am. We talk for about a half hour. I tell him all the stuff that's going on with me. And then I tell him, well, I was running from air, but I'm going to stop that tomorrow. And so he's asking me like, wait, what am I? I don't understand. You're in politics. And remember, this guy's looking at a 37-year-old dude in scrubs that are four sizes too big. And he's like, well, has it been particularly stressful lately or something?

And I'm like, oh, well, yeah, you know, I was going to run for president. And I say it like matter of factly, because to me, I thought everybody knew that. And he's like, wait, what? President of what? You know, and and so I go from mortified that or rather I go from, you know, yeah, mortified that other people are recognizing me to happy this guy doesn't, to now I'm irritated that this guy's questioning what I'm telling him. And so finally I just say, I don't know, man, like Barack Obama thought it was a pretty

good idea. I spent about an hour and a half in his office talking with him about it. And he just says, he looks at me and he goes, how often would you say you hear voices? And so, yeah, it a, so the book is just your standard coming of age tale. It's been different. That's, that's such a wild story. And in the book, you mentioned something, or at least your wife mentions, cause your wife throughout the book will give her perspective on events that are happening in your life. And I found that a very interesting way to also tell the story. And she mentions that there was actually no mental health prep at all before

you went into Afghanistan or upon your return. I was thinking, A, how is that possible? And what reforms do we need to make sure that our veterans are taken care of either before they are deployed and when they return home? Yeah. I mean, one thing I want to give the Department of Defense some credit in the sense that, you know, I deployed in 2006. And so I know that there have been improvements since then, but we're nowhere near where we need to be. You know, in fact, it's crazy. The other night I was talking to my son who's eight about this because the hard covers for the book came and he and he was like, Dad, I want to know more about Invisible Storm. And he knows that dad has PTSD and we've talked about that,

but we started to talk about it more and more the other night. And he asked me, and it's just so interesting coming from an eight-year-old, he's like, Dad, I don't understand. You mean that when you get to the army, it's not one of the first things they do? He goes, isn't one of the first things they do. He goes, isn't one of the first things they do explain what PTSD is so that you know, if you have it and you know, if your other soldiers have it. And I was like, buddy, they don't. And, and I was trying to explain that really the army and somewhat understandable, the army is much more focused on having you learn that nothing you're doing is any big deal. And I say necessary because

if I didn't believe at every moment that what I was doing was no big deal, I'm not going back into rooms where somebody may be waiting in there to cut my head off, where nobody knows where I am. It's just me and my translator. We got no backup. I know I'm about to meet with somebody who, you know, they're pretty tight with the Taliban meet with somebody who, you know, they're pretty tight with the Taliban. And just like, you know, other friends of mine couldn't go back on a patrol and get shot out again. But you can do it if you just really believe that what you're doing is no big deal. The problem is, and I made my son laugh with this the other night, you know, I said, nobody sits you down when you leave and says, okay, actually, that was a really big deal. And you're going to be super messed up, you know? And as a result,

you go into civilian life or just your post-deployment life, still believing that what you did was no big deal. So while we're always saying, and it's not wrong, we're always trying to get across to people, hey, it's not weakness to go get help. It's strength. And that is true. And it's good that we're saying that, but people know that at this point, what we need to get across to people, hey, it's not weakness to go get help. It's strength. And that is true. And it's good that we're saying that. But people know that at this point. What we need to get across is, hey, what you did is a big deal. And trauma is trauma. Whether you survived cancer, had a bad car accident, lost a loved one, went to war, trauma is trauma. Your brain doesn't know what my brain experienced. My brain doesn't know what your brain experienced. You can't rank your trauma out of existence. And so that belief that was so helpful in, in executing your mission overseas,

or maybe it was helpful in getting you through the period where you needed to be there for your loved one as they were dying or whatever, that's not helping you now. And, and, and that's, that's really what I had to learn in therapy and what I wanted to get across in the book, because people come up to me all the time and say, hey, you know, this happened to me and you going public helped me a little bit. But, you know, it's not like I was in a war or anything. And I'm like, hey, what happened to me has nothing to do with what happened to you because your brain didn't experience it. Right. And that's why the lessons that you could take from your book Invisible Storm, I think, are so important and why I think this book is so

important for everybody to read, whether you had military experience or not. Something I want to talk to you now about is politics and your journey into politics, because we all know you right now as superstar Jason Kander. But when you began running, you were not this larger than life figure. You were an unknown figure. And yet you somehow won your state legislature race. You had basically one staffer. You had no budget to compete whatsoever with billboards or TV ads or radio ads. So how do you do it? How do you come from being nobody at that point to actually winning this race? You know, it's like anything else, man. I mean, if you will just hustle to the point of, it doesn't always work, but if you will hustle to the point that other people who maybe have a greater sense of balance in their life won't, it gives you an advantage. I mean, you know, I knocked on 20,000 doors myself when I ran for state legislature. Is that every door in the district?

It was, I mean, worse, we figured out, we figured out that there were 8000 doors of that had voters behind those doors, where those people were extremely likely to vote in the Democratic primary. And that was the main race. So I knocked, entire 8,000 door universe two and a half times. And so by the end, you had people who were coming to the door like, oh, hey, Jason, I was the neighbor coming over to borrow a tool. And so I am proud of that. But I also look back and recognize that there was a point in that campaign where, yeah, I started out as the underdog. Nobody knew who I was. And there were people who were in a much better position in that race. But there was a point where I knew, I think I knew like I've won this thing. But then that, that part of me that was like, I must prove myself to myself. That was the part

that was like, my opponents, both of them were lovely people. But in my mind, how dare they run when I'm running? Right. And so I had I had to go out and prove something. And so that's how you end up in a three way race with 68 percent of the vote when you needed, you know, like 40.,000, you knocked on 20,000, which is just such a wild thing to even think about. And then obviously when you run for a statewide election with the Missouri Secretary of State position, you can't knock on every door at that point. So how do you break through in a statewide race at that point as a Democrat? At that point, it was putting 90,000 miles on my campaign managers on Abe's Ford Escape and just being at every place where a few people were gathered. I mean, we hit every county fair, we hit everything. And then having to work like crazy to raise the money. I mean, there were no limits at the time in Missouri on what people could give. And my opponent had a literal billionaire who wanted him to be

secretary of state. And so, you know, I would raise in a, like in a quarter and in a three month period, I would raise enough to match like a single check he would get from the billionaire. Um, but despite that, uh, we out raised him because I just was on the phone all the time asking for $200 at a time. And it made a difference. It made the difference. I mean, we found out we won at like one in the morning. So it was a late one. It's so incredible. And throughout the book, every single step of the way, no matter what you did, you always gave like 10,000% of your effort towards it. You were not going gonna let anybody outwork you whatsoever. But that also took a toll on you a little bit

and it took a toll on your mental health. So I'm wondering, you know, as you look towards your political future now as to, you know, maybe positions you might ever consider taking in the Biden administration, running for office again, have you figured out how to balance that drive that need to always be outworking the other side with also taking care of yourself and making sure that

there are also more important things that you got to be looking out for? Yeah, I have. And I think what it comes down to is that all those years that being alone with myself was an intolerable experience, my own thoughts, my own intrusive thoughts and memories. Those that meant that I needed to be obsessively planning my own future because that took me out of the present because the present was intolerable. And so when I went into therapy, one of my goals was to be able to be present and not all the time. But, you know, a lot of the time I'm able to do that now. And that means I don't have some massive internal compulsion to figure out what I'm going to do in the future because I'm enjoying what I'm doing right now. And I enjoy my life. And, you know, I'm a person

who I do like politics. I do care about what happens, but I'm able to scratch that itch. You know, I have majority 54 of my podcast. I have a about what happens, but I'm able to scratch that itch. You know, I have majority 54 of my podcast. I have a large enough social media following that I can impact things when I want. I can write books. I, from a public service perspective, you know, I'm, I'm building villages of tiny houses for homeless vets and outreach centers across the country through veterans community project. So I, I know that I'm making a difference. I've done some work with evacuating people out of Afghanistan. I frankly, to be real honest, I've made a greater difference in the world since I left public office.

And it's not even close. Between that and what I've been able to do on mental health. So with all that said, to me, it's simple. I'm like, yeah, I might run for office again one day. And that will be when I can do it in a way that allows me to make an impact, to not have any question that by running for office, I'm making an impact. I'm not just winning an office. I'm to figure out was I've actually done enough for my country. I care about my country. I love my country and I want to do things for my country. But I don't do it anymore because I think I have to or I should or I owe it or I have some obligation that I haven't fulfilled. America and I are square.

And I may choose to do more in terms of running for office one day, but I do a lot every day and it's because I want to. I don't do anything anymore ever because I think I should. I do things because there's a change I want to see or because I enjoy it. And that's enough. That's amazing. And one of the things that I really appreciate about the book, was something that we touched on earlier, sort of the different tracks that the book sort of went through, whether it was talking about your life or including your family's perspective about what was happening to you. And that's sort of what I want to get back to was why did you feel it was necessary to include your family's perspective and specifically your wife's throughout the book?

Yeah, I appreciate that question because it's a hugely important part of the book. The book would not be what it is without Diana's perspective. And I'll tell you, I had two goals when I set out to do this. One was, I did not want this to be a political memoir because I don't write them and I don't read them. They're fucking boring. And I'll be honest, like, and look, I've got some very close friends who've written really good ones. They just, and even my first book, which I think is a very good book, but it is also like, you know, look, I was going to run for president. So I think it's a very good book, Outside the Wire. But it's also like a book where you finish it and the idea is for you to go, I really

like that Jason Kander. And that was not my objective with this book. My objective with this book was for you to go, oh, I've just learned a lot about myself and I've learned a lot about mental health and about what people go through. And part of that, which brings me to the second part is I wanted people, because there will be some people who maybe question whether they're going to connect with me as the narrator, me as, you know, my experience. But even if somebody hasn't personally experienced mental health challenges, there's someone in their life who has, whether they know it or not.

And I wanted them to be able to connect with Diana. And not to mention the fact that, you know, Diana ended up experiencing secondary post-traumatic stress. And I wanted more people to know about that. And so, you know, I just thought it was important that people have that other perspective. Because I'll tell you, when I did the audio book, it was important that people have that other perspective because I'll tell you when I did the audio book, um, it was interesting because, so my wife's portions, you know, she comes in as you know, like for like maybe five or six paragraphs a chapter, right. And it's hugely impactful when she does and she does it in the first person. But when I did the audio book, you know, she recorded on the last day. So I read the entire book out loud without her

sections. And it really highlighted for me how important her sections are, because when you hear the book without her perspective, you can't help but be like, how does this dude not see how messed up he is? Like what, you know, and it's very hard to connect with, but when you have her perspective talking about what it looked like from her point of view, it really helps it all make sense. That was my key takeaway too when I was reading those chapters, how she really brought out the most in the chapters and out of you and let the reader sort of understand what you were going through from a whole different dynamic. And so Jason, what would you recommend to people who may know in the back of their mind that they should seek treatment for mental health issues but just are in denial? What I tell people is that little earlier, but, you know, in our culture, when it comes to trauma, when it comes to mental health, when we see it depicted, whether fiction or nonfiction, like whether it's on the news or in movies or whatever, we don't very often see the depiction of people who have dealt with mental health challenges successfully and made that a part of their life, you know?

And when we do, it do, there's some portion of society that pans it, right? Like when Simone Biles said, hey, I'm struggling with anxiety right now and with this mental health issue, so I'm not going to flip 50 feet in the air and possibly fall to my death when my brain is not entirely in this. And people were like, you know, toughen up, right? So there's the de-stigmatizing aspect of this. But what there really is that we don't have is the making people understand that this stuff works, that you can be in a really, really bad place. And if you commit to treatment, it's not just like, it's not an IV drip, right?

You go in and you do work. But if you will do it, man, your life can be completely different. Because I think about myself, I was four months into therapy and starting to do much better when I started to think, well, I must not have had PTSD. I must just be an asshole. Because nobody gets better. I've seen on I've seen on TV, like people with PTSD, soldiers with PTSD, they're robbing banks or they're abusing drugs or they're abusing their spouse. Like, so I went to my therapist and I was like, what's the deal with me? Why did I get so much better and nobody else does? And he's like, what are you talking about? And he pulled out all these studies and showed me the vast majority of

people who commit to the treatment and do their homework like I did, they get better. You're supposed to get better. It's just an injury like anything else. And if more people understood that this works and that it is worth it, people wouldn't be so afraid of being diagnosed with something. They would go, oh, the analogy I like to use is before I went in the army, I hurt my knee real bad. I had to have surgery and physical therapy in order to get into the army. But not getting treatment for my mental health for over a decade after I got hurt, you know, a mental health injury would be like if instead of getting surgery and physical therapy, I just went into the army. And then, you know, 11 years later was like, I wonder why my right leg doesn't work at all.

Right. Well, it doesn't work because you just made it worse by walking on it and running on it for all those years. And that's what I did to my brain. And it's just not worth it, man. Go get it fixed and move on with your life. The example you gave of Simone Biles is so interesting. I also think of Naomi Osaka and also how the right wing, until fairly recently with the school shootings, though, have really framed mental health as being like woke and that this is, these are woke athletes. This is a woke issue, man up, toughen up, you know, and that's a kind of a course that's coming from the, you know, you know, almost exclusively or significantly rather, I should

say from the right wing. But we're at this weird moment though, as the the right wing wants to so allow AR-15s in the hands of everybody that they've kind of leaned in. And I've heard right wing people saying mental health, frankly, for really, maybe I'm living in a box, but all of a sudden I hear all them saying, no, it's mental health. This is a mental health issue. There's a mental health crisis. I mean, what do you think about that? And even though it's obviously agenda driven by them, is it an opportunity, though, to at least lean in and say, well, mental health is a real issue? Or am I making connections that don't exist. No, no, you're right. Look, you can't help but be somewhat cynical about the people who have suddenly found mental health as an issue because they don't want to do anything the NRA doesn't like. But there are people on the Republican side who have understood this mental health issue for a while. And actually, you know, one of those people is Roy Blunt, who I ran against in 2016. I mean, you know, you will not find an example of me criticizing Roy Blunt since Election Day 2016.

Now, I disagree with Roy on almost everything. All right. But there was one thing that Roy and I never disagreed on during the campaign, which is Roy has said, as far as I can tell, throughout his entire career, that mental health is physical health. And he has worked hard to try and fund it as such. Now, Roy's wrong about a bunch of stuff on guns. But he was there on mental health a long time ago. And there are Republicans that are there on it. And it is something we can work on in a bipartisan way. And that is because this is not something that just liberals deal with, right? Like the reason we can work on it is because when you fully articulate what mental health is and when people understand that, and I'm not just talking politicians, I'm talking voters too. When they come to understand like, no, no, no, we're not, we're not talking about like people sitting with a talk therapist every

week for their entire life. And you know, this Hollywood depiction of it. No, we're talking about people deal with stuff in their lives and you've dealt with stuff in your life and you know that you got a coworker who has or your sister has, it's touching everybody. It always does. And, and yes, I absolutely think there's an opportunity there. Um, and I think we have to work hard on it because, you know, what happens is, and part of the reason I wanted to tell this story to go back to the Simone Biles example, is that people, people don't want to feel right. It hurts to feel, it hurts to feel bad things. And I'm not, I'm still talking about politics. Like people will go out of their way and I don't blame them. And I, I do it a little bit to,

you know, you know, a school shooting happened and man, sometimes you just can't deal with it. You just can't let that stuff in. And I understand that. But at the same time, you can take that too far. You can take that to a point where in order to not feel, you have to discredit and make not real the things that have happened, right? And you have to say about somebody like Simone Biles, that person is an Olympian. That person is famous. That person is probably going to make a lot of money in the future because they're famous and because they've done these things. So there's no way that I can admit to myself that that person might be feeling real things,

because if I can admit that to myself and they don't have this conscious thought, but then it becomes, but then I might have to feel the real things that are going on with me. And so I felt like part of the reason I needed to tell my full story was to say, you know what? You can be at your professional Zenith. You can be sitting across, you know, sitting next to your political hero, Barack Obama, and it's just the two of you in the room. And he can be saying things that you could not have imagined he might say about you. Your dream could be coming true. And you could be thinking about killing yourself at the same time because you can't get past,

you know, what you went through in the past even though you think that you should because your your society your culture has told you uh that if everything is going well for you then everything should be going well for you and so um when we as a country start dealing with our feelings start feeling the feelings more man i think we're going to have a lot better conversations too. And those are conversations that we need to start having to get to that place. And this book does an incredible job at doing that and having that conversation. Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD by Jason Kander. Jason, I want to thank you for coming on the Midas Touch podcast. The book is

available now as we are recording this interview. Everybody go out, buy this book. It's a great read. I could have went on and probably given you the entire story because I liked it so much, but I realized at the beginning as I was doing it. Let's start with page one and walk our way to the end. There's that app that I won't mention it because they don't they don't sponsor us yet but they've they shortened the books in like you know 20 minutes and i'm like am i just being that app right now can i can i throw in one other piece of audio for y'all in the self in the promotion uh thing which is absolutely um or y'all can put it in somewhere which is and i keep forgetting to do this which is to say, uh, that all of my royalties from the book go to, uh, the fight against veteran suicide

and veteran homelessness through veterans community project. That's big. That's amazing. As someone who represents people in book deals, um, in my other world, as a lawyer, I can tell you, um, it takes a lot of time to write these books. It's very, very tough for an author to give up their royalties. And so for someone to, I want the audience to know also just how meaningful of a gesture that is. You pour your heart and soul and you work into this to give all your royalties away for that incredible charitable cause. Jason Kander, thank you for being on this podcast. We so appreciate it.

Thanks, y'all. I am so grateful for all the time you spent with me. And as always, I really enjoyed the conversation. Thank you for lifting this up. We will be right back after these messages. Discover the magic of Bad MGM Casino, where the excitement is always on deck. Pull up a seat and check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer. From roulette to blackjack, watch as a dealer hosts your table game and live chat with them

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of politics and PTSD. The book is out right now. I want to wish all of the Midas Mighty here and abroad a happy 4th of July. We're so grateful as always for your support and we will keep on fighting for you. Definitely want to again, thank Jason Kander. Thank you all the Midas Mighty. We'll see you next time on the Midas Touch podcast. Ben, Brett, and Jordy Mycelis signing off. Shout out to the Midas Mighty. Thank you.