The Three Questions with Andy Richter - Jason Kander

Episode Date: July 5, 2022

Jason Kander joins Andy Richter post traumatic growth, becoming the Secretary of State of Missouri and to talk about his book "Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD."

uh hello everybody uh you are listening to the three questions i continue to be andy richter and i am talking today uh with one of my twitter pals most people on this show end up being one of my Twitter pals. Most people on this show end up being one of my Twitter pals. But most of my Twitter pals are, you know, scumbag asshole comedians. Whereas today, I'm talking to an author and a former office holder. And now, well, it's Jason Kander, who has a new book out called Invisible Storm, a soldier's memoir of politics and PTSD. And it is pretty riveting stuff. But I first got to know

Jason because you were, everybody was talking about you running for president back in, I don't know when, 2016, was it? 2018. But I mean, at that point, you know, who wasn't thinking about running for president in 2018? I wasn't. Oh, Jesus Christ. It's one long PTA meeting. That's the kind of big stuff. Oh, man, that is perfectly put. No, you're totally right. Yeah, well, you were the one person not thinking about it. The rest of us on the left were all running around, you know, being in green rooms in Iowa and New Hampshire, giving the same speeches over and over again. Yeah, yeah. Now, were you Secretary of State in Missouri at that particular time?

No. So at that time, I was former Secretary of State, had run that race for the U.S. Senate in 2016, where, you know, Hillary lost my state by 19, and I lost that day by 2.8. So everybody went, oh, this guy got over 100,000 people to vote for Trump and then vote for him while he's still a progressive. How'd you do that? And then Obama said nice things about me, and the next thing I knew, I was ready to run for president. Not as if I wasn't wanting to anyway. Right, right.

That gave me the excuse, I guess. And is that still uh is that still part of um your long-term goals i know that's one of the questions i'm supposed to ask is what are your plans ahead you know like what are you where are you going but but you know let's get to it quick yeah i get that question you know of course i'm not very creative i'm not very creative in my question asking so no it's okay let's get it out of it's okay. Let's get it out of the way. A lot of the same shit. Yeah. Let's get it out of the way.

Here's how I would answer that. I would say, like, what I don't want to give you is like a politician, like, right now, Andy, I'm just focused on, because I gave that answer for years. And I was, frankly, pretty good at it. But what I would tell you is this, is that for a lot of years, I, and this is really what the book is about, for a lot of years, I spent time obsessively planning the future because the present was intolerable because I had untreated, undiagnosed PTSD. And if I could think about what I would do in the future, then I didn't have to live with what was going on in my head. And now I've had treatment for all that. And I'm really enjoying my life. You know, I coach my son's little league team. I play on an over 30 wood bat baseball team with a bunch of buddies. And like, you know, I'm like stealing bases and trying not to get hurt. And I mean,

like I'm 17 again and I have a job. I love building villages of tiny houses for homeless vets around the country. So I'm, I'm really enjoying my life. So the answer to the question is, I don't know. I mean, maybe one day way in the future when like the people in my house are tired of me being around and there's no homework to help with or Little League to coach. Yeah. I think I'd be a pretty good president. But the difference now is my life is not ordered by my pursuit of the presidency. It is ordered by when the next Little League game is and my daughter's nap schedule, and I'm enjoying it. And so one day, maybe. But if I don't, I'm fine with that.

Yeah. I want to ask because this is something that, because there's a conundrum to a lot of people that run for president and that are politicians, quite frankly, and in public service, which is there is a sometimes ostensible but usually valid true central drive to get to give to the public good inside there is a raging ego oh and and i'm wondering like how do you balance because you can't want to be i mean that's the one thing like about show business the notion that there's a humble person in show

business is ridiculous because they start out being the only person in a dark room with lights on them expecting the entire room to shut up and listen to them that is ego personified and this is the same thing you want to be in charge of everything but you're you know you're in it for the good of everyone else how do how have you balanced that in your you know now especially since you're kind of on the mental health tip uh how do you balance that in yourself well first of all i think you it's exactly the right question because the two professions are not that different. I mean, politics is just showbiz for ugly people. That's all it is, right?

I'm not that good looking, so I can't fully agree. I guess I should say less talented people, people who aren't funny or good looking, right? And I'm funny for a politician, right?'m like kind of like uh i still play center field on my old man team because i'm fast age adjusted right yeah yeah i'm fast for a 41 year old and i'm funny for a politician and politics is the only profession you can be in where people will give you a compliment that is like you know he seems like a normal guy. Like nobody ever says, like, you know what I like about my accountant, just really down to earth. Like, I mean, it's just like not a thing. You can talk to him like a real person.

Right. My mechanic. Yeah. So the bar is super low and how I balance those things, well, I didn't used to. Like I used to tell myself outwardly, I would try to tell myself, no, this is all about service. But on the inside, I was like a lot of people who have experienced trauma. I was seeking redemption because that's a big part of the American myth about trauma for a long time is, and look, I love the movie Top Gun. I saw the second one. I'm going to go see it again in the theaters, I'm sure. But there's a major flaw in all of that, which is, no, spoiler, I'm sure, if you haven't seen the first movie, sorry. After Goose dies, like,

the Viper's like, you know, you got to get past it. It's been like five minutes, right? And like, no, like, at some point, you got to go to therapy, dude. But, but the, but then what happens? Like he goes out, he kills a couple of bad guys and then he throws the dog tags off the side of the boat and he's good because that's what we've been told. That's certainly what those of us in the military were told, which was, well, you get over trauma by a single act of redemptive heroism. So, so that's what I was doing. I was out there. It was a combination of ego and unbridled self-confidence that came from my parents and talent. And then also this belief that I had to save the world. And if I saved the world, it would be okay that I wasn't in Afghanistan as long as

some other people or that I didn't get hurt or that I didn't get permitted to go back a second time. And whatever the hell it was, that's what was going on with me. And so that's the story I told myself. But the truth is, that redemptive heroism thing is a mirage. Like, it doesn't matter who you are. You're never going to feel it. So you got to just turn around and quit running away from your trauma, go to therapy, and go right through it.

Yeah. Do the work, as they say. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. While you were talking, it was just reminding me of something I've always thought of. You know the movie The Searchers, the old John Wayne movie? I don't remember that. Oh, okay.

Because then I, yeah. But no, there's just, spoiler alert again, the whole point is they're searching for Natalie Wood, who has been abducted by a tribe of natives, and they bring her home. And then the final shot of the movie is Natalie Wood rejoins her family. They go in, which is like a crazy, like she's been living with, I can't remember whether it's Navajo. She's been living for a couple of years with a native tribe, and now she's back in white society. But there's just this final shot of John Wayne framed in shadow in the door, heading out like his job is done. And now he's going back out into the frontier.

And I always kind of felt like, what's that movie? Like, what happens now at the end? Like, after this, you know, consuming task has been done and all the happy people are reunited what about the lonely fucker that like made it all happen oh he's you know just back out into the wilderness i'll tell you that dude has to go find a new person to search for because unless he's utilized by searching for somebody he thinks he's not worth a shit yeah and it's because or whatever the hell happened to the character he's playing. And yeah, that's the lesson I learned. And I guess to your original question about ego, what I had to come to understand was that performing was this endorphin hit that was the drug that was distracting me from what was going on with me.

on with me. You know, if I, if I was like performing and getting that validation that I didn't have to deal with what was going on in my brain. And it was only through therapy that I learned like, Oh, actually I can enjoy performing and not need it just like any other avoidance strategy. So like, I remember my therapist saying to me, cause he knew that like one of my goals was to be able to model post-traumatic growth because there's almost no depictions of PTSD in our culture that aren't somebody in the throes of untreated PTSD, which I call like PTSD porn, like a vet, you know, beating his wife and robbing a bank. And so I wanted to do that. But then after a while in therapy, you know, I was doing much better. And my therapist was like

okay i think you're ready to go do like a major interview and i was like no no this is like you got me sober and now you're trying to get me back to my job as a beer taster and and he eventually helped me see that no no see we dealt with your underlying trauma so you can go do it enjoy it and not feel like you need it and that's what's happened yeah yeah yeah that's basic behavioral therapy you know like separate separate the fear from the activity and then you can you know you get a handle on it exactly well let's start um let's start at the beginning i mean what what was it about like were you from a competitive family and like were you from a high performing group of people i know you're from multi-generational kansas city family yeah yeah my kids are sixth generation

kansas city um there's definitely some high achieving folks in the family i mean my great uncle john is john candor of candor and ebb who wrote new york new york and chicago and cabaret and that kind of thing i have have no musical abilities whatsoever. So I wouldn't go on that route. But so yeah, definitely high achieving family. But really, I mean, my parents were fantastic. I mean, and still are. They met as juvenile probation officers. My dad was a police officer part time. And then they took kids in whose families were struggling, friends of mine and my brothers, and they became our brothers. And so I think the best way to describe it is I grew up in a house

where it was like, well, you know, we've been given a lot, so we have an obligation to the rest of the world. And there was also like a strong protective streak. You know, like my parents, they protected people, and they kind of taught us that's what you do. You step up and you protect people. And all in all, I think that's what led me down the public service and specifically the military route after 9-11. Yeah. And, uh, you have siblings? Yeah. So I got my younger brother, Jeff, and then, uh, like a whole mess of what we call

unofficial foster brothers, just the guys that kind of, you know, my folks took in. Yeah. So. And, uh, were they similarly, uh, inspired by, you know, the upbringing to kind of, you know, my folks took in. Yeah. So. And were they similarly inspired by, you know, the upbringing to kind of do service? Yeah, I think in different ways. I mean, like one, I mean, you know, probably for whatever reason, I was the most geared in that direction. Like I remember, you know, I was in DC on nine 11 and, and, you know, I don't come from like a military tradition family. I mean, like a lot of people, like my grandpa and my great uncle were

on the world, world war two and, but whose wasn't right. So, um, it, but on 9-11, I remember I got an email from one of my brothers and it just said, I know you're going to join the army. Just don't join today. So, you know you know i they knew something about me that maybe i didn't and he was right i was going to and did but um so i guess that maybe i was a little more geared in that direction but yeah everybody does things to give back yeah now was had that met did that manifest itself throughout your youth i mean were you were you ever just a selfish asshole come on admit it sure yeah yeah i mean did you miss the part where I was a politician? Yeah, certainly. For me, you know, I guess it worked like this. It was like,

I wanted to go into politics all the way through college, but didn't know what the hell that was, right? Like I went to American University of DC where everybody thinks they're going to be president and everybody like, you know, got off the tram at campus and wore the little thing around their neck that was from their internship. But it was like, dude, we're like stuffing envelopes. All right, like when I'm like, come on, why you don't really need a suit?

Like, what are you doing? And then you get on your silly little scooter. That, you know, I was one of those kids. But even before that, like I was a, I was a high achieving, very competitive guy. I was a baseball player and a debater. Right. And like thought for years as a, you know, until it was like 15 or 16, like I thought I was going to play center field for the Kansas city Royals. And then, you know, I stopped growing and everybody else kept growing. And then it was like,

oh, I'm pretty good at this debate thing. And so I did that and I was successful at it, but I didn't understand that I was engaged in the ideas. I just was like, oh, I'm good at this. And I like competing. So I do that through college. And then I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to go to law school. So I get into Georgetown for law school, 9-11 happens. And it's like, all right, I guess I'm going into the service because that's what you do. Just like my grandfather and my the service because that's what you do. Just like my grandfather and my great uncle. Like, that's what you do when your country goes to war.

It made sense to me. And it wasn't until I was after law school and was an intelligence officer in the army and was in Afghanistan. It was the first time in my life that I'd ever been on the receiving end of decisions made by people in politics that negatively affected me. seething end of decisions made by people in politics that negatively affected me. And that's when, you know, like vehicles with no armor, cause stuff's getting sent to Iraq instead of Afghanistan, that kind of thing. And that was when it sort of changed the way I thought about politics and public service. It went from being a thing that you debate about and you have views about, but like, you're not that tied to them because it's like a game. I had been a political science major. I was into like, which ads work? You know, that's what I thought politics was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was another kind of football, baseball game. Right. It was another sporting event. Yeah, it was like, hey, you know what? I wasn't good enough to be in the minor leagues, so this is my minor leagues. And so it's like, that's what it was

until I understood what it was to get screwed over. Because I grew up privileged. Nobody could take food off my family's table with a political decision, but they could put me in a vehicle with no armor. And it was like a through line to me. That's when it became clear to me that I had a sense of conviction and why I believed what I believed. Because I felt like back home in Missouri at that point, they were cutting people off Medicaid and celebrating it as a budget cutting thing and I was like that feels a lot like putting people out on the road without armor it just felt the same to me now I mean you obviously were a democrat throughout your even were you a democrat

even like as a kid I mean are you a democrat was it a democratic family yeah i come from like a very liberal yeah and is that i mean had you questioned any of that while you were while you were deciding to get into politics or was it just kind of well this is you know the way that you root for the royals like this is my home team so i'm going to root for them no that's a really good question Because I think that's a lot of our politics now, right? We tend to inherit our partisanship the way we inherit our religion from our folks. And yeah, when I was in college, I'll give myself credit for when I was in college, I spent some time really trying to figure out what I really believed. And there was a moment when John McCain was running in that primary in 2000, uh, I remember just really admiring him. You know, obviously I was

somebody who was predisposed towards service anyway. And the way he was out talking about campaign finance reform and taking things on, there's a world in which, I mean, that's, it's not true to say there's a world in which the Republican party could have gone in a direction there that they could have got me because I was always going to be pro-labor and pro-choice and disagree on, you know, things like climate, but there's a world in which I would have been intrigued by that for a moment at that age. But I, but I remember, you know, taking the time, like any good, you know, college student, who's curious about the world and thinking about those things and being like no and then and then i think i've probably like a lot of us have become increasingly progressive over time but i credit george w bush and donald trump for

that more than anybody else yeah yeah you know yeah and and also sort of for me it's like it just feels like every day being more left makes sense as things continue to not get done you know like even like because well i mean this is a but you know here all right let's take joe biden let's take take this nice old man because we got the evil old man let's get the nice old man and then it's like oh wait nothing's fucking happening oh okay all right you know just it's a very debilitating time it's rough yeah well i mean even beyond that it's like the idea you got a couple people in the senate who want to hang on to the filibuster for i don't know what the hell some sort of traditional reason which is small c conservatism right at its core conservatism is don't change and ah it just makes no damn sense i mean it's like it doesn't you know um so it doesn't unless

there's something nefarious behind the scenes you know i don't know that's the thing i always think like like yeah i bet there's some money there i bet there's money that we don't know about or that we do know about. Yeah, that's it. As a general rule, yeah. But there's also just like there's a real tendency to believe in institutions when you've been part of them for a long time. Yeah, yeah. I remember being with a buddy once. It was in between my two terms in the state house or like, you know, I was at the

end of my first term and he had run for the state Senate and lost. So he wasn't coming back. And I remember we were, it was like the last day of session and he's standing there looking up at the ceiling and the, in the general assembly and the state legislature and talking about how much he'll miss the place. And I remember thinking and saying, dude, it's just a ceiling. And like, my point is like, DC has some of the nicest ceilings in america and if you work in that building all day it can really it can lull you into believing that you're doing really important stuff even when you're not because it's a beautiful building and sometimes that's all it is man it's a beautiful building and you're just in the way yeah yeah yeah no i social media brought that to comedy where i

like the the white men of my age that weren't on social media were still making jokes that like you had to say no you gotta understand people aren't doing that anymore like you just step outside a minute and see that they're not doing that anymore and then feeling you know like how dare they stop me from saying the r word or you know calling little people something you shouldn't call them anymore you know just uh it's you know yeah you get you get stuck in a in a in an echo chamber that's also very self-serving and sort of, you know. Yeah. It's easy to romanticize things just because they're old. Yes.

Yes. And, and because it's a pleasant circle jerk that's going on for years and years and years. Cause, cause as we get older, romanticizing things because they're old is, is quite a self-serving and validating. Yes.

You know. And comforting. Yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah. That makes the grave seem a little less colder uh you know right can't you tell my loves are growing well so let's uh then so uh i can't remember where'd you go to undergrad oh you went to

american yeah okay and then and then georgetown so it was always washington for you you were So I can't remember, where'd you go to undergrad? Oh, you went to American. Yeah. Okay. And then Georgetown. So it was always Washington for you. You were always kind of motivated that way. Sort of. It was like, DC was exciting to me as like a kid from Kansas City at first for undergrad. And then for graduate, by the time I was ready to go to law school, frankly, I was kind of

done with DC. And a lot of that was, I mean, I'd like to, I mean, that's a good way to sound like, oh, you know, I'm an outsider politically, but that's not true. It was just expensive and I didn't have a job. And I love Kansas City and I wanted to be home. You know, that's where my family is. That's where they've always been. And at the time, that's where my fiance was. And, you know, now my wife and I live here, but what happened was, is that we were dumb and we applied to pretty much one law school and we both got in. And so it was like, well, if they had just put Georgetown in Kansas City, that's where we would have gone. And looking back,

it's funny, right? We made some great friends and I wouldn't change anything. But going to Georgetown Law School got me my first job as a lawyer. And since then, it hasn't mattered at all. And I haven't been a lawyer in a long time. So, you know, at the time, it seemed super important. Yeah, yeah. And you and your wife met in high school, yeah? Yeah, high school debate. Did you go to undergrad together?

I can't remember from the book. No, we were long distance then. So she was at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, and I was at American. And that's a big part of why like we got into the same place and made it the answer you know yeah just we're sick of being apart yeah yeah um all right so it was 9-11 that said to you and had you had you thought about the service at all before yeah it was like in this category in my mind i would describe as the maybe someday category, you know, because I really admired the idea of it and everything. And so I would say to myself, you know, maybe someday I'm going to join like the reserve JAG Corps, like army lawyer or something like that, or Air Force lawyer or something. But I have no idea if I ever would have actually done it. And then 9-11 happened. And it was like, I just, it just made sense. It moved from the maybe someday category to the, I'm going to do this and then yeah 9-11 happened and it was like i just it just made sense it moved from the maybe someday category to the i'm gonna do this and then do what my grandfather and my great

grandfather did when war broke out when they were my age like i'm gonna do this and then go back to my life so i decided no i'm gonna go become an intelligence officer and and then after that i'll go on with my life was it was there an uh I think you mentioned it in the book a little bit, like there's a little bit of resume building in there too, but in the motivation. Yeah. What I said in the book is that I had a vague notion of it as a resume enhancer. Um, but what I always tell people about that is that, because obviously having gone into politics afterwards, and once you go into politics, like everything you do is sort of run through that prism of like, okay, what are you really about with this? Right. And so every once in a while people would,

and I know this is not what you're saying, but it's important, like, I guess for the audience to answer this question, like, cause people would say, yeah, but that's why you went in. Right. Cause you wanted to run. And I would always be like, yeah, like I had a vague idea that being in public service was good in public service but it takes about one road march with 50 pounds on your back to be like if that's all that's motivating you you're just gonna be like yeah fuck this i will find another way yeah and so um if that's your if that's your reason for going in like i don't know i can't speak for other branches but if you join the army and that's your reason for going in like you'll find another way real fast so i had something deeper for sure when and well the reason

i was asking about it because it it also because again in thinking about people that have that have made public service their life do you start to question your own motivations for things like like do you start to think i'm driven to do this thing that's altruistic or that's, you know, wholesome? And, oh, shit, am I just angling for PR again? That was a big, that's a big struggle that I talk about a lot in the book, right? Is that the, because I had PTSD and didn't know it,

and it was saying to me all the time, like, you're garbage, like you're garbage. Um, and you haven't done enough, you know, to validate your own existence. I mean, because I'm comparing myself at that point to my friends who, you know, got shot or, you know, things like that. Um, I would then achieve something and instead of giving myself, and I worked through this a lot in therapy, you know, instead of giving myself any credit for that achievement or believing that it came from a good place, like why I chose to pursue it, I would just write it off and argue with myself. And

my therapist called it my lose-lose scenario that I would create, which was, well, I only did that because I feel like I'm not worth a damn. I only did it to redeem myself. And so that doesn't count. Right. Um, and, or it was like, oh, I'm doing this for the attention because it's, you know, this adulation tends to quiet briefly this thing inside me. Um, and it took, you know, months of therapy for me to finally get to a point where I could separate out the fact that, yeah, the fact that I was, you know, the hardest working man in show business, so to speak on the political side. Yeah. Some of that, you can, you can attribute to my trauma and to me wanting to prove myself to myself. But at the end of the day, the stuff I chose to fight for and the causes I went after,

I now give myself some credit for that. That's good. Yeah, I can realize, like, no, my parents taught me that stuff. Yeah. But the breakneck pace, yeah, that's got to give it up to PTSD on that one, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah. also wonder too you know do you feel like you went into you went into the service with some like did you know because it uh i don't i don't i mean you weren't perfect when you went into the service is right i mean not like not like now yeah exactly no but i mean do you think that there was some pre-existing thing you know like care you, you know, I don't know. I was going to say character traits. That's a, that's a terrible phrase to pick, but like that there was some, there was some mental difficulties that you were going through that, that, that were there. And that the, the, you know, if they hadn't been there, maybe you would have come out the other side of it a little better put together.

better put together. It's possible. I don't know what they were. What I can say is, is that when I think back to that period, I can remember like prior to 9-11, I can remember sending my wife, Diana emails. Cause again, you know, like we were separate in school, sending her emails where I would ask these ponderous questions of a 19 year old, like, you know, are you really a man if you've never been tested by anything? Right. I felt like the biggest tests in my life were baseball games and debate tournaments. And that didn't seem like much. And, and so there was definitely a part of me that is upset as I was for my country that when nine 11 happened, there was definitely a part of me that was like, this is, this is my chance to be tested, to be part of something. I, you know, look, I'm a, a kid who grew up with, uh, you know, in a comfortable situation in the suburbs of Kansas City. I'm a white kid who, you know, it wasn't hard. And I'm not saying that that's an affliction in and of itself. I'm saying I was aware of that. So I don't know that that would have predisposed me in any way to a mental health injury like PTSD, but it's part of what pushed me into the military, right?

This idea that I wanted to be part of something bigger than me, and I wanted to see what I was made of. I can remember just being so tired and covered in dirt after days in the field and marching back. And somebody saying to me, another soldier saying to me, like, how great is this, Kander? We got to do army shit today. And I remember laughing and being like, this is great. Like, this is what I wanted. Like, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. So I think that's what I was looking for. And then when I decided, when I volunteered to deploy, it was like, what I kept saying out loud, because I didn't have another

way to articulate it was, well, if I do my job well, maybe some other people come back safely. That was the only way I could explain it and why I wanted to go. But then years later, like just about every other vet, I never felt like, oh, well, I made a difference that makes me feel like I did enough until I worked that out in therapy. Yeah. What was it about being an intelligence officer? Because that was your goal from the beginning. Yeah. I went in initially just saying, I'm not going to be an army lawyer. I just felt like they probably got enough of those. And eventually where I ended up going was army intelligence. It seemed interesting to me.

It seemed like a place where I could make a real contribution. And then when I got there, I mean, when I got to Afghanistan, they presented me with two options. They were like, okay, we need somebody to analyze intelligence that comes in and work the night shift and write stuff up. And then we need somebody to go out and gather this intelligence about who the bad guys are that are pretending to be good guys. And I was like 25 or whatever and pretty sure I was bulletproof. So I was like, I want that job.

And so that's what I did is I ended up doing a job that, you know, I wasn't particularly trained for. job that you know i wasn't particularly trained for um but yeah like you said you were you were you know it was usually you were replacing somebody that was like four levels above you yeah i mean whatever 20 years of service or something like that yeah yeah what i learned in that case was that you can have all these doctrinal ideas about what war is and you can train for all the stuff and then you get there and they're like, yeah, we need somebody to do this. And they're like, okay, I guess that's what I'm going to do. Yeah. Which for me at the time was a real opportunity.

And I still view it that way, interestingly, but yeah, it was, it was an experience for sure. It's yeah. It's a very high stakes fake it till you make it. Usually it's just like's a very high stakes fake it till you make it usually it's just like someone might find out like you don't know how to run this machine whereas you know you're actually you know sitting down with warlords and shit yeah no absolutely like that was me that was me just doing my my crappy james bond impression without a tuxedo yeah acting like you know yeah never, nevermind the

fact that I'm growing this terrible beard. Like I just pretend I know what I'm doing. Yeah. But yeah. Were you, were you afraid of people finding out that you were Jewish over there? Yeah. Tell you a funny story about that. Actually funny story about that. It doesn't sound like when I start this, that it would be a funny story, but it is. Anti-Semitism is a riot. There's no denying it. It's a knee slapper. Yeah. When I was in intelligence school, we had an instructor who pulled me aside and he was Jewish and he was like, hey, Lieutenant, when you get over there, don't let any of your translators know that you're Jewish because they won't want to work with you. It could be dangerous for you. So, I didn't know any better. So, I took that advice. And then I get there and I talk in the book a lot about, I don't have the story in the book,

but I talk about Salam, my translator. Yeah. Who's from Kansas City. Yeah. Of all the crazy coincidences, he was from Kansas City. And so, we were working together for a few months. And the whole time, I never say anything to Salam about me being Jewish. But I'm really curious about a lot of stuff. So I have lots of questions about Islam and all that. And we're just together all the time. We become very close. And toward the end of my deployment, with a few days to go, he and I are sitting there and I'm thinking, I want to tell Salam that I'm Jewish. So I'm like, make this big thing of it. I build it up and I tell him and he just looks at me and he goes, did you think I didn't

know that? And I'm like, I'm like, yeah, no, I never told you. And he's like, Jason, back home in Kansas City, my sister cuts your grandmother's hair. And but, you know, that's the funny part the serious part is what he said next which is he was like over here we're just a couple of americans that the bad guys really want to kill which you know i kind of kept that with me for a long time the idea that we have all these fights here but over there like and salam and i were the same we We were just targets. Yeah. Yeah. Was there a point, was there a point or, and did it happen or did it happen like frequently where you were like,

oh shit, I fucked up. I shouldn't have done this. Uh, yeah. I mean, there were moments where I was very aware. Uh, I mean, there's one in particular, I write about this in the book, um, in pretty great detail, which is that, um, I walk into a meeting with the Afghan attorney general who I had established as a, as a pretty reliable contact. And, and as a result of that, uh, there were always people who wanted to tag along when I would go meet with them and gather information. So in this case, it was some guys from the Defense Intelligence Agency. And so they're like, hey, we want to go and meet this guy. His name was Sabit. And I liked Sabit because he seemed

like he wouldn't want to help anyone kidnap me and he spoke English. So he's like the perfect guy to get to know over there. Yeah, really low threshold. Yeah. It was like he was my fellow as a result. So I, I go there and, um, we pull up at, at, uh, his little compound and we're met by these border, uh, border police, um, which was unusual. Like he had his own security details. So these guys, these border police guys come out and they've got like AKs at the low ready and they're barking at us. And the translator says they want us to leave our weapons in the vehicle. Um, so we put our rifles in the vehicle, uh, and I, uh, some of, I didn't have a rifle. Some of the guys did, they put them in there,

but I thought, well, no, I'm not, these guys may think that I'm this green Lieutenant and they're DIA, but like, I'm not stupid. So I took my pistol and I tucked it into my waistband and put my sweater over it. So we go in and we sit down for this meeting. And then Sobit brings in this guy who, as soon as he walks into the room, I'm like, I know this guy. I'm like, I recognize his face, but I couldn't place it. And then he introduces himself and he, and Sobit says, Jason, this is my friend, General Haji Zaheer. Haji Zahir was a warlord on the border who was a general in the border police. But really what he had become was a guy we were investigating very thoroughly. And he clearly knew that because he was involved with narco trafficking and starting to get

tied up with the Taliban and all sorts of stuff. And we were looking into arresting this guy potentially. And now we're having tea with him. And his guys are standing right behind him. He's got three guys behind him with their AK-47s at the low ready. And we've got our pistols tucked away. And he's getting, over the course of about 45 minutes, pretty animated talking to us about the things he's frustrated about and all this.

And there was a moment there where I think, okay, is he here to kill us? Like what, what's going to happen? And I start thinking, well, if one of the DIA guys shoots first, I got to be ready. Or maybe I need to shoot first and I'm picking out which guy I'm going to shoot. And then I'm thinking, am I allowed to kill these people? And then it's like, well, I don't think it's going to matter here in a second. And, and then after, and like my heart's beating out of my chest. And then after a minute or two of that, you realize, oh no, he wants to try and get us to eliminate his competition. That's actually what the, so it was a huge like relief, like, okay, he's not here to

kidnap us or kill us. He's trying to get us to get rid of the other narco traffickers down there. And so we pretend to go along with this whole thing. And then, you know, that ends and we walk out of there and we get to the vehicle and we open up the vehicle and I see the other guys, the DIA guys reach in and grab their pistols. And I realized I was the only one of us who took my pistol into the meeting. So at first I was super pissed because it's like, we're in Afghanistan. You don't go anywhere unarmed. Yeah, yeah.

And then I realized, oh, I almost pulled out my gun and started firing, and we all would have been killed. And then I wanted to puke for a second. And then I got back to just being angry at those guys. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, were you in the ride in terms of bringing a pistol? That was definitely the educated call. I still don't know what the hell those guys were thinking.

I mean, it's Afghanistan. Were they new? I mean, were they just used to following orders? I don't know. Maybe they were intimidated by the guys at the gate who greeted us. by the guys at the gate who greeted us. In retrospect, I think maybe those guys were a little more Washington than I thought, right? Like I thought DIA, okay, they must have been here a while.

And in retrospect, maybe they were like, you know, guys who usually had a desk at the Pentagon or something. I don't know. Or just they, I don't know. One of them may have been like more the guy that the others looked to, and he made a bad decision, so the others were like, I guess we're putting our pistols in the vehicle. Yeah, yeah. Now, during your deployment, you're in contact with your, and she wasn't your wife yet, right?

It was fiance? We were married by the time I, I. Oh, you were by the time you deployed. Yeah. Yeah. We got married between first and second year of law school. Is she seeing things like in the, you know, in the, in the emails and in the contact that you're having? I mean, is she kind of aware that something's happening? Diana's approach to it. Oh, you mean like in my behavior? Yeah.

happening. Diana's approach to it. Oh, you mean like in my behavior? Yeah. Not while I was deployed. Neither of us had any sense of it while I was deployed. Right. Because, and on my end, it was like, everything was new and exciting combined with the fact that the people around me were all doing the same or similar stuff to me. So it's incredible what can feel normal. Like, you know, whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, right in your job like you've been doing you you've been doing your work in the entertainment community long enough that like you go in you you know you sit in the makeup chair you go out you do the show it's your job it's normal to you and and interestingly i bet after doing that for two months it started to feel that way a long time ago right like not that it wasn't exciting but it was like it wasn't the way it was the first day you did it.

Right. No, no, no. I mean, the second day is better than the first day. You know, the second day, you know what I mean? The second day is, feels like, okay, I'm not going to die. You know, that's, you know. Perfect analogy because fear can operate the same way. And it's incredible what you just become accustomed to and you are still afraid, but you're getting so accustomed to it that you don't sense the change in your body. And I just thought, wow, I'm getting to do these incredible things. I can't believe I'm getting to do this. I felt like a cowboy. And I was like, I didn't want it to end. Whereas for my wife, it's a completely different experience. When you are the loved one of someone who is deployed,

it's different. Because for me, like, sometimes I'm scared and sometimes I'm just bored or asleep or hungry, right? I mean, whereas for her, it's like I'm outside the wire from the moment I leave because she doesn't know what's going on. So she, you know, she, one of the things we did differently in Invisible Storm is she

comes in, you know, with her own first person contributions. It's a fantastic feature of the book that you get, you get to hear from her, you know, how, what her perspective on it. Cause it's also, sometimes it's a little different than yours. So it's, you know, She refers to those as her rebuttal. But yeah, no, I appreciate it. It was important to me because people are going to experience this as somebody who has mental health, but they also are going to read the book and need to know the

experience if they've never had a mental health challenge of what it is to be with someone who has, right? Because they're going to meet people in their lives who do or have people in their lives who do. And also, look, the way I told the story is I didn't have any language. I made sure that in a given moment in the book, I'm not using language that I learned in therapy. I'm using the language I had available to me at the time that we are in the story. And that means like, you know, it's easy if you're the reader to read that and be like, what the hell,

man, can't you see that like violent night terrors is not normal. You need another narrator to help you through. And so one of the things Diana talks about is how the way she dealt with it, which in retrospect, we understand was not healthy was to just act like I was already dead. And, and just to like have,

I mean, cause we were in our mid know mid-20s and nobody had ever trained us how to do this and yeah yeah she just didn't know how else to handle it and that obviously had its effects on her later on as well yeah yeah it's like a circuit breaker it's like something snaps and you just have to make some sort of really rash extreme sort of adjustment just to cope. Yeah. Yeah. And it just, that had effects later on, right? Like, whereas then later,

I'm pretty much running for president, but I can't sleep at night. And I think that my family and I are in constant danger. And now she's developed those symptoms as well. She has secondary post-traumatic stress. And while I'm running around the country, giving speeches, she's at home, you know, holding

a knife under her pillow, convinced that somebody's coming to take our son. So yeah, I was a real treat. I was a prize. Wow. How soon after you get home, uh, did the symptoms start? The first symptom I remember is we landed, my plane landed in Qatar at the air base in Qatar, having left Afghanistan. And I felt a twitch in my left eyelid and like a muscle spasm. And that lasted like six months. And then it still comes back every once in a while. And not too long after I got home, I started to have nightmares. The first thing that, and when we did the book, Diana helped me remember this that, cause this is something she remembered really well is that every time I would get in a vehicle, I would, I would get this rush of adrenaline. As soon as we like start to move

in the vehicle, which even I at the time understood was, Oh, I feel like I'm going outside the wire. Right. Cause every time I got in a vehicle over there, it was, okay, now get ready to kill somebody if you need to. And then the other thing was, I really didn't like stoplights. Because over there, you don't stop, right? Or you try not to. And so, and I'd forgotten about this, but she reminded me that I used to, if I was in the passenger seat and we'd stop, I would kind of jam my right foot down as if I was, like, there was a gas pedal I could hit.

So, it was things like that. But then what caused me to not understand what was really going on was that these things would last a little while. And then what I thought was happening was they were going away. But what I now know from therapy and everything is they were evolving in a dangerous way. So for instance, when I first came home for the first few years, my nightmares were I was in Afghanistan and somebody, I was in a meeting and, you know, somebody rushed in and threw a bag over my head and took me away, right? Because that was like the big thing I worried about as an intelligence officer. Well, after a few years that didn't happen as a, the Afghanistan wasn't the setting or, um, or, you know, like, or I wasn't in the, in a military uniform or I wasn't, you know, in street clothes

that I wore in Afghanistan or anything. And what happened instead was now it was like, I would go to answer my door in the middle of the night and somebody would bowl over me and rush past to go take my family away. And I thought my, you know, in, in my infinite wisdom of trying to tell myself a story that was workable for me, I was like, oh, well, it's not about Afghanistan because that's not even in my nightmares anymore. Um, and it was only years later in therapy that I learned, no, no, no, that's actually really dangerous. The nightmares caused by PTSD evolved, and now they involve my modern environs, which fed into something else I was struggling with, which was hypervigilance during the day, this thing where my brain didn't believe that I was out of a dangerous place. And so everything around me

looked like danger that I had to thwart all the time. Well, then if at night while I'm asleep, people are coming to hurt my family, well, that only reinforces it. And it's happening in my house or in my office. And so the story I was telling myself for years was, well, look, this thing ended. So it's not PTSD. When in reality, no, this thing just changed in a way that's much worse. Well, what were you telling yourself it was? Because you know it's not normal. You know, the crazy thing about it, maybe crazy isn't the term I should use, but- Whatever. We're all friends. Yeah, we're all friends here. The crazy thing about it was that I had been like that at that

point for so long. So I got home in 07, and I didn't go get treatment until 18, toward the end of 18. So what that means is I went all those years getting worse and worse and worse, basically going 11 years without a good night's sleep, for instance, that after a while, Andy, it's like you forget that you didn't used to be like this. Oh, wow. And you just kind of are resigned to the idea of like, well, this is what I'm like. Like some people are happy.

Some people sleep. I'm not happy, but I felt valuable. And I thought, and I was like, well, I'm just not a person who sleeps. And so I thought like, well, I mean, I really got to a point where I was like, okay, I'm not really meant to enjoy and experience my life the way other people are. I saw it as I was meant to live a short life of consequence that I didn't really get to participate in. And I don't feel that way anymore. Right, right.

What a shitty deal that is. Yeah, it was. Yeah. In retrospect, I mean, and the reason I wrote the book is. I mean, I get it. I get it. I get the logic to it when you're in it, but you just take one step out of it and it's like, that's a terrible deal. Like nobody, like that's, you know, I don't know.

Maybe it's just- Especially because if I'd been participating in my life, I would have experienced some really cool stuff that I got to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Meeting one-on-one with President Obama and talking to him about me running for president or giving a speech on national television where I'm basically declaring my candidacy. Right. Or raising kids without fear and misery. That's the biggest thing that got me to say I want to try and get better is I was just not present with my family physically or emotionally. And that's what has changed so

much, right? And so the reason I wanted to write this book as difficult as it was to write was, I know that if this book had existed 14 years ago, and I'd been able to read it when I got home, I would have gone to get treatment then. And then it would have been a completely different deal. Like it would have been right at the beginning. And I compare it to an injury, right? Like, before I went into the Army, I hurt my knee real bad. I had to get surgery and physical therapy. But, you know, I can run. I just got to ice it and stuff.

But that's the way I compare it. It's like, if instead of going to get surgery and physical therapy after I hurt my knee, I just was like, no, I'm just going to do the Army anyway. And I'm going to keep playing sports. And I'm going to deal with this stuff. Like, I wouldn't be able to walk now. And, and that's the thing is I just, there's nothing in our culture hardly that shows people, like I said, who have gotten to the other side and gotten to post-traumatic growth. So I felt like if I can demonstrate that and show people who are in the position I was in

back then, whether it's from combat or a car accident or losing a loved one, it doesn't matter. Like, Hey, deal with it now. Like, don't wait. It doesn't get better.

And also too, you spent so much time. And I mean, there's time you spend some time in the book and, and you even, you know, like you, you talk about when you came back and people would introduce you as,

you know, decorated and you'd be like, and I think your joke was lightly decorated, you know. I mean, you downplayed your own sort of involvement, your own danger level that you had experienced. And you'd tell yourself, oh, I wasn't in a firefight, so I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be this stressed out. So I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be this stressed out.

And that's kind of fascinating because I that notion of going outside the wire he never really did it that much but it's still you know it still can be there everything in the military is built around gradations and rank right and's all, and everything is ranked in some regard, right? And so, and compared and everything. And there's a reason for it. You know, it's, I, I, it sounds like a criticism when I say it, but the moment you get off the bus at basic training, the message that's ground into you is this is no big deal. And it's a super necessary form of brainwashing because imagine if no one had taught that. I'd have gone to one meeting with a potential bad guy who might want to cut off my head, and one only.

And I'd have been like, if this, like, I ain't doing that shit again. That seems like I might get hurt. But instead, I'm like, hey, you know, Todd and Kevin from the Tactical Human Intelligence team who I roll with sometimes, like, they're going to meetings like this. How big of a deal can it be? Like they seem okay. And, and my, I got buddies who have been shot and I haven't been shot. So like, who the hell am I? This must not be a big deal. I'm going to go do it, which is important. Cause if I don't believe that I don't bring back information that might help the cause. Right. So, uh, that's how they teach you that. And that's important. I don't blame them

for that. The problem is nobody ever flips the switch off. Like when you leave the military, nobody sits you down and goes, okay, now that this is over, you should know that's some crazy shit. And you're going to have some problems. And when you think about it, American life is kind of like that in different degrees, right? Like that's why so many people come up to me and they'll start to tell me about their trauma and they'll say, but I wasn't in a war or anything and i'm always like hey look that doesn't matter like you can't rank your trauma out of existence it's all trauma and my brain doesn't know what your brain experienced and so all that time of me thinking well if i say i have ptsd that's stolen valor yeah it didn't rank my trauma out of existence it just wasted time when i could

have been getting right right right yeah there's no like my legs a little broken you know you need a cast you know it's like you need a cast yeah yeah well you now you you served in the missouri legislature you became secretary of state um just explain to people a little bit about what it's like to have kind of your dreams start to come true but having your life be a nightmare wow that was good you should put that as a blurb on the book uh i just came up with that shit right off the cuff. I'll tell you what, the hardcover is already done. But I'll tell you, you tweet that shit and I will retweet the hell out of it. So, yeah, what it's like is you feel ridiculous, you know, is what it's like. It's like I have a chapter in the book.

And by the way, I unabashedly promote this book, but people should know that all my royalties go to the fight against veteran suicide and veteran homelessness, which helps me more unapologetically just plug the hell out of the book. Yeah. That's and I, yeah. And I think that that's, it's very,

it's a, it's a wonderful thing to do. And I mean, and it's a, I mean, I'll get, I'll save it for the, I'll save the ass kissing for later.

Oh, please. Or at any time. Let's do it twice. I'm just kidding. It really is a great read. And I mean, it does. I'm sure that it also makes it easy. I don't know about you, but man, I get tired of talking about myself when I have to promote things.

But if it's doing something good, then fuck yeah, all right, blabbity blab, here I go. Well, especially now that I'm not like running for things, it feels much more, like now that I have a much more like normal human view of life, not political view of life, it feels much more awkward to just promote myself. But anyway, to your question, I have a chapter in the book called I Should Be Better By Now. And that's how I felt like all the time, right? Like it was like, here I am, like I'm becoming known nationally is how it started. I was the first millennial elected to statewide office. And that got me this national notoriety, considering I was a down-ballot statewide officeholder.

And so that was gratifying. And that was supposed to make me feel better. this national notoriety, considering I was a down ballot statewide officeholder, you know? And so that was like gratifying. Um, and that was supposed to make me feel better, but it didn't. And then the next thing was, Oh, you know, I've got this large following and, uh, and there's all these people following me on Twitter and, Oh, I got kind of famous because of this ad I made. And, and then next thing I know, Obama's giving his last Oval Office interview and they ask him, who gives you hope for the future of the country? And he names me first. And all this stuff's happening, which should have been amazing. And it was like ointment in the wound, but it was momentary. And so I didn't get to enjoy any of it because I just felt like a fraud. I'm like, well, I was only in Afghanistan for four months and these people didn't get to enjoy any of it because I just felt like a fraud. I'm like,

well, I was only in Afghanistan for four months and these people don't know that I stocked my house at night with a pistol because I'm convinced there's people coming in to kidnap my kid or I sleep in my kid's room a lot because I'm trying to make sure that if somebody comes through the window, they step on me and I can fight them. Just all this stuff, or I have this self-loathing and shame and guilt and anger. And the only person really seeing any of it is my wife. So I just felt like a complete fraud, you know, like wearing the Jason Kander suit, standing up in front of people smiling and acting like I know exactly where we should go and everything is great and putting off this vibe that says well this guy has it figured out and um you know so all that yeah it's it's very confusing yeah um you ran for senate uh the year that trump won and you lost uh but it was close it was like way more competitive than

you thought it was and and the ad that you uh mentioned the tv ad that you mentioned is one uh that i remember i mean and i mean and i remember you on twitter before you you stepped down from politics but it was an ad where you put together your service whatever your rifle uh and and talked about being pro-gun control while no obviously knowing your shit about guns and that's like you know i mean but you know it's the same way that like a democrat that has served is like oh look at get that you know get that person to the front uh because it you know it's counter to the narrative that oh no the republicans they're the ones that are good at war you know they're the ones that are good at war.

They're the ones that are good at – which is like the evidence doesn't even bear out. Like that in economics, it's like it doesn't bear out. But somehow it still keeps being the conventional wisdom. you know conventional wisdom um so i mean but you you then you're going to run for for mayor of kansas city you're well on your way to winning and and what is it that makes you decide i can't i just can't yeah so there's one step in there right before that right which is getting ready to run for president everything seems like it's going pretty well, actually. I give this- Oh, that part. It's the, this guy's going to run. Let's see if he's any good speech. And I crushed it. It went great.

And at that point, I had come to a point where what I had come to understand about myself was I needed to be performing and I needed to be moving forward all the time so I wouldn't be with myself. And that was working for me. It was like those highs were tidying me over long enough. myself. And that was working for me. It was like those highs were, were tidying me over long enough. And then I gave this speech and it was big success. And by the next morning I felt nothing. I felt completely empty. And it was the first time that I realized like something's really wrong because that was the Zenith of my career, right? I'm on national television and I'm saying, basically I'm running, you know, and, you know, and it goes well. And then 12 hours later, I don't feel anything.

And so I am like, I don't know what I'm going to do. I throw out the idea of like, I tell my campaign manager, my main guy, Abe, the guy who had always done my politics with me. I kind of threw out like, I don't know if I have the energy for this. And he says, well, you can always just quit traveling and just run for mayor of Kansas City. And it was like a life raft. I just like grabbed it. Like, yeah, I should do that. And in my mind, going back to the redemption thing, there were two things that were this, this plan was twofold.

It was one, I am going to go serve my neighbors in my hometown that I love, and that's going to fill the void. Right. And two, I'm going to go to the VA. Now, I wasn't ready to say, like, this is PTSD, but I was ready to try and do something. And I was like, I'm going to go to the VA. That's my plan. So we go back home.

I start running for mayor. Like you said, it's going great. Which, look, it should. Like, if you're going to run for president and you decide to run for mayor, like, what the hell are you doing if you're not the front runner right um and it was the only campaign i'd ever been in where from the beginning we knew we were gonna win um so that should have felt great again i should be better by now is what i was telling myself but i didn't keep my promise

to myself to go to the va i went to fill out the forms and I downplayed my symptoms because I still wanted to be president. And I was like, well, I, you, I can't be commander in chief if people know that I don't sleep and I'm paranoid. Right. And so I, I soft peddled it and then, you know, I didn't get enrolled. Like they were like, Hey, look, no, you don't need this. Uh, or you're whatever it was, you're rejected from the services. So I just was like, okay, well, I guess I'm not doing that. Just mayor's going to have to do. And the campaign's going great and I'm getting worse and worse and worse. And at this point I'm becoming suicidal or at least having suicidal ideation, suicidal thoughts. And it wasn't any one big thing. It was just that I had this sense that while things had been getting worse for a while, now they felt like they were getting worse faster. And it frightened me because

I didn't want to want to kill myself. And so what happened was, is I called the VA veterans crisis line and it was just sort of a, maybe I'll try this. And I remember calling and thinking, because I had this imposter syndrome about my combat experience and my trauma. I remember thinking they're probably going to tell me, hey, this line is for people who really need it. Like, can you please not, can you keep this channel clear? And I call and one of the first questions the woman on the other end of the phone asks is, have you had suicidal thoughts? Uh, and I had never said it out loud to anybody other than my wife. And, uh, and I said, yes. And I started crying and I talked to her for a minute and she asked me about my service and that kind of thing.

And I realized, uh, that from the sound of her voice, I could tell that I didn't sound any different than anybody she had talked to that day or in that job. I just sounded like everybody else. And that's when I realized that this was connected to my service. And then I was like every other vet I'd met who had experienced these things and who I had thought earned it. And I didn't. And so I went and I Googled PTSD, which I had done many times, but I'd always done it to prove to myself that I didn't have it. You know, I would read it like, Ooh, no, that's not me. And then I, this time I Googled it and I read it with a really like just open mind, like just read it. And it was like somebody had just

written a description of me. And, uh, and I broke down and I, and I remember laying on my back and looking up and saying two things when my wife was holding me. I remember I said, it's been 11 years and it took till now for me to understand that I got hurt over there, which was just a complete twist in the reality that I understood. And the second thing I said was, I don't want to do this anymore. And that's when I decided I was going to go get help and I was going to step back from everything. Yeah. Well, I think what's really valuable about that story, too, is that you think that somebody that has met with Obama, that has been in the legislature, held state office, almost won the Senate, going to win for mayor, that person has all kinds of shit at their disposal. shit at their disposal like they're like if they're you know they could take care of that real quiet you know like if they're if they're going through through something like they just tell somebody and somebody rick you know set something up and like no no you're just you're on your own just like anybody else it doesn't matter how much how much you have the appearance

of oh this guy's life is he's that his shit is together, you know, whether it's him putting it together or just like his life putting itself together. Um, well, especially as a politician, right?

Like that's what we do. We package ourselves as a product. Yeah. Right. And, and it's, it's, it's,

it's, it's, it's, it's, you're auditioning for a leadership job. So it's like, it's like, Hey, I know where we're going. I know where we're supposed to go. And I got all this figured out. Everything is pitch picturesque. Here's a picture of me and my family. Don't we

look happy? But the thing is, um, that's actually not even limited to politics. Like the world we live in now, everybody is living a public life to some degree or another. And the flip side to that is, is that while I was fortunate that I had the platform to take, you know, what I was experiencing and use it for good and make value out of it by being very public about what I was doing and trying to let other people be seen who were going through this. That's not unique to me. Like you don't have to have a few hundred thousand Twitter followers to make that difference. Like if you just let the people you work with know, like I'm going through this thing, like, boy, I'll tell you, I've heard from so many people experiencing mental health that I can tell you like everybody is. So if you do that, somebody in your office is

going to give themselves permission to go get help and you might save their life. Yeah. No, I mean, I mean, you know, from your situation to mine, you know, because I always themselves permission to go get help and you might save their life yeah no i mean i mean and you know from your situation to to mine you know because i always like to talk about me it's one it's one of my favorite it's one of my favorite public about this stuff yes i have credit for i have and i and and i've said this before i am i am loathe to be a person that thinks you know because i'm in the public eye that i, you know, I should tell people my story so that, you know, like it just feels so fucking, you know, it's like, it's like the, you know, the gazillionaire who described himself to me as a climate warrior. I was like, I was like like maybe use a different phrase uh you know um it just seems so self-serving but when i did start to and i mean and it wasn't anything i was hiding

but when i did start to talk about being depressed forever being on medication getting a tremendous amount of help from the talking cure of therapy just people out of the woodwork like hey that's really valuable you made me change you may i mean not you know you made me make a change in my life you made me do something that i was afraid to do which is reach out to a professional or you know or start talking to my family about it. And so it's kind of like, oh, well, I mean, again, I'm probably like you. It's probably some Midwestern fuckery. Like, oh, everything I do is silly and little and inconsequential. But I mean, shit, it's nice to help people.

It's nice to feel good. It's nice when somebody comes up and says, I felt like shit for years, and I heard you on a fucking podcast, of all things, and it made me go to therapy. And now I'm a lot better. Like, Jesus Christ, you know. I never thought I'd get to do something that good, you know. It's the most important thing I've ever done. Yeah. And look, at the end of the day, having a mental health challenge

sucks. So you may as well parlay it into something good. And if that is like in our case, or in anybody's case, being public about it, it actually does two things, I think. One, being public about it encourages other people to go get help. I'm sure you and I have both heard from so many people who are like, I realized that if he could have that problem, then obviously I could have that problem. Right. Right. Right. But the other thing it does is, you know, a self-serving one, which is man, it's exhausting to pretend that you don't have this problem. And so for me, it was like, I was just so tired of putting on the Jason Kander suit and acting like everything was perfect that I realized part of my getting better was if I was going to go get therapy and I was going to treat this and if, and I didn't know if I could get better. Right. But I was like, if I can, I don't want to go back to pretending. Like I need people, if I'm going to participate in the public square at all like i just rather people know this about me yeah and that's been great for me like i on the one hand it's a little

weird right because you know when people come up and you know like ask for a selfie or whatever they'll also whisper things like i'm really glad you didn't kill yourself you know which is like i say that to everybody i get selfies well see maybe that maybe that's what it is yeah it's just it's a standard thing you say here i am just thinking it's about me again um but uh but you know obviously that can be a little awkward and then it reminds you like oh shit some people like when they see me that's the first thing they see and they think like i might combust but you get over that and you go oh yeah but you know what's nice like i don't have to pretend i don't have to pretend i'm fine if i'm not fine and it also means that those people like instead of a conversation where they go i really like that

thing you said about patriotism i loved your gun ad we have a deeper conversation where they're like i have a i have a cousin who was in a bad car accident and i had them listen to this podcast you were on and they decided to get out. Like I would way rather have that conversation, you know? Um, and so, you know, I guess it's like anything else. Like if you just let your whole self be out there, it's just not as tiring because you, you don't have to think about what, how you act and what you come across as. Yeah. Tell us, tell us about what the work, the work you're doing now and, and sort of like how you're going to take that forward into the future and

what you, what you, you know, what you want the, the rest of your life to be the next 40 years. Yeah. I really appreciate that question. So I,

you know, I still stay engaged in politics. Like I have a podcast question. So I, you know, I still stay engaged in politics. Like I have a podcast, majority 54. Um, and I, and I still like on social media and sometimes as an activist, I, I, I get to scratch that itch, which is nice, but my day job, um, when I'm not coaching little league or playing old man baseball or, you know, hanging out with my family, the thing that I spend the most professional time on is veterans community, where I'm the president of national expansion. And, you know, I told that story a few minutes ago about calling the VA crisis line.

Six weeks before that, I toured this place, this nonprofit in Kansas City, Veterans Community Project, and was blown away by it. It was like, if a forward operating base in Afghanistan and a startup in Silicon Valley had a baby, you know, it was just like innovative, but really dark humor just felt like home to me. And what they were doing was they were providing walk-in services for any veteran to come in and basically get hooked up with any service they could possibly need, which makes a huge dent in things like the suicide epidemic. But then they were also serving homeless veterans with a village of tiny houses that replicated base housing, had wraparound services, and restarted the military to civilian transition back at day one. And they were doing it with an 85% success rate of getting people permanently housed successfully and keeping them there.

Permanently housed outside of these county houses. Yeah, yeah. Right. Thank you. Yeah, transitioning into homeownership or apartments or whatever. And I went home that night during the campaign. I told my wife, I wish I could quit everything and go work there. But it was like not a realistic notion, right? Sure. I was a politician. I just went back to doing that. Six weeks later, I go to the VA, and I find out that it's going to be four or five months before I can get in.

And I call Brian Meyer, who's the co-founder and CEO of Veterans Community Project. And I'm like, hey, I'm making this announcement tomorrow. I don't know what to do. I'm telling everybody I'm going to the VA, but they can't take me. And he's like, come on down here. So six weeks after that tour, I go through the outreach center, like thousands of other Kansas City vets. They expedite my paperwork. And a week later, I'm in my first therapy session at the VA. Things go very well for me in therapy over a few months. And I'm hanging around Veterans Community Project, BCP, all the time. And they had been so successful in Kansas City that communities all over the country

are inviting them to come and replicate their program there. And I was kind of mentoring them through that because I had started a national organization before. And finally, Brian's like, hey, man, you ain't working. You're here a lot. Why don't you just come here full time? And so I did. So that's how I became president of national expansion. Since then, we have expanded into the Denver area and into St. Louis. And now we're going into Sioux Falls and Oklahoma City. And we're going to keep going after that. And it is the best civilian job I've ever had. I love it.

is the best civilian job i've ever had i love it how i mean just because homeless homelessness unhousedness i don't know if it's impolite to say it's okay you know uh i can just tell you every homeless person i've met and i meet a lot now they call themselves homeless yeah if that helps right right um but it's such a huge thing out here in los angeles it's such an upsetting thing and and it does seem like there's there's at times it feels like the the two sort of opposite ends of the spectrum are well no i i mean i'm that's unfair but there there is kind of like just get them out you know that nimby get them out of sight kind of thing. And but what I mean, in your estimation, and I mean, outside of veterans, what is what's what is the cure? I mean, what's going to get us better?

What's going to get people that same sort of success rate? to me it does seem like yeah you start out with some kind of temporary housing that has a sense of dignity and and hygiene to it that isn't just perpetuating the same sort of unhealthy culture that exists on the streets and then that you know transition that into and also you know like free up a little bit of money from billionaires' pockets, I guess, you know. Well, I'll tell you a couple of things I've learned over the last three years doing this that I didn't know before. That maybe when I say them, they sound obvious, but they weren't obvious to me. One is that homelessness is a full-time job. You know, we tend to look at people who are homeless and think like they're not working.

You know, why don't they just go get a job? Well, when you're in that situation, if you're going to eat, particularly if you're going to eat three times a day, which oftentimes you're not, but if you're going to eat, you better get in line at the place where you're going to eat and you better get in line a couple hours ahead of time. And you better know where you're supposed to be in order to do that. And if you're going to sleep in a place that is even remotely safe, particularly if you're a woman who is homeless, well, you better be at the right place at the right time and wait for a few hours. So, you know, all of this stuff means homelessness is a full-time job. So the idea of dealing with any of the underlying issues that have placed you into that situation, it's nearly impossible to do while you're homeless. to do while you're homeless. So while giving somebody a tiny house, in our case, a place to be,

that cures their homelessness in the sense of you just got them off the street and into a home for a brief period of time. But all it really does is put you in a position where, okay, now if we take a few weeks, we can maybe stabilize this person's, you know, living situation. And it doesn't happen right away. And now we can start to deal with some of the underlying stuff. So for instance, when you have programs, and this is really common in the veteran space, and we don't do this, and it's one of the things that makes us unique. But when you have programs that have all these rules, like you have to be completely sober when you move in, you have to, you can't bring your dog, which anybody who's seen many homeless veterans understands, like a lot of them have dogs and they wouldn't leave people on the

battlefield. They're not going to leave their dog behind in order to come into your shelter, right? Or anybody that's got a fucking dog. Anybody. Anybody that has a dog for more than five minutes. Like that's a deal breaker. Because they're awesome, right? Yeah. You're not going to leave your dog behind. Stuff like that. I mean, sometimes it's big stuff, like the sobriety thing. Sometimes it's little stuff. People can't deal with that stuff if they're not stabilized. And once they are,

it takes time. One of the things we do that's really different is while our average stay in one of our tiny houses is 14 months, we don't put a cap on how long you can be there. The longest programs at the VA say 24 months. But what happens with that, what we found is people are less likely to buy in because even though most people get through our program and way less than that, they look at it and go, I'm probably not going to succeed. Why am I even going to start this? Right. Or, you know, you got to be sober when you move in completely sober. Well, who the hell is going to go from like not sober to sober just to get a house right that you can't do that it's not that's not

how sobriety works yeah so we have a harm reduction model where we say okay you can't have a substance use problem that's so bad that it's disruptive or it's going to you know get in the way of your recovery so if you if that's what you need we're going to send you to a program and have a house waiting for you but if you're uh if you're somebody who like you don't have a substance problem, but you like to drink a beer after work, we're going to treat you like an adult. We're going to treat you like a person who served their country and has earned the right to drink a damn beer. So we're going to put you in a row in our village where everybody's not sober. he's not sober. And after work, you can, you know, if you're a former airman, you can hang out with the Marine next door and y'all can have a beer and grill some burgers afterwards. Like, like people do, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's common sense stuff like that. And I think that is the

kind of thing you can extend to the rest of the homelessness community of just being like, Hey, these are actually people. So if we treat them like people and understand that, like, you can't just go from this terrible situation to turning things around right away, it's going to take some time. And we're going to have to put some time into it. And when you do that, you have pretty awesome results. Right. Yeah, the sobriety thing just seems crazy because I can't even fathom a life on the streets without some kind of substance to to help you know and most people are self-medicating right yeah yeah absolutely that's that's like i did it with like careerism

yeah i did it with over functioning i'm fortunate that i happen to choose that instead of a substance but it's yeah it's just because it was there for me. It was already there. It was at my disposal. You know, if it had been, if it had been cocaine that was at my disposal, you know, would have been a different story. You wouldn't have heard of me. And I don't think people would be buying this book cause they wouldn't have been following me on Twitter, but I'm fortunate. I get to tell this story because of it. A guy I work with said not long ago, because like at Veterans Community Project, one of the fun things about it is like pretty much all of us who run the organization are veterans, but also veterans of the Kansas City PTSD Clinic. And so one of them said, he was like, look, it ain't that big a deal. I got PTSD. It's just nobody wants to read my fucking book about it. So go ahead.

And he's like, it ain't that special around here, man. That's great. Well, thank you so much for all this time uh i want to ask you you know the the the final question of you know what do you what do you want people to take away from your story and and from the book invisible storm i've learned you know i gotta say the name of the book um what do you want people to take away? Like just, you know, sort of the punchy wrapping up the podcast version. The biggest takeaway for me that I hope people get from the book is that you can get better because we've done a good job of convincing people that it's an act of strength, not an act of weakness to get help. But what we need to demonstrate to people

is that help actually works because folks who think they might have PTSD will do what I do, which is they will avoid the diagnosis because they think that it is terminal. It is terminal either because, you know, if you don't know any better, you think, well, people with PTSD kill themselves or people with PTSD careers are killed. But if I hope that what happens is people read the book and see, oh, no, you can get better. I hope that what happens is people read the book and see, oh, no, you can get better. I should just go. I should go do this and get better because it's not enough to tell people it's an act of strength to get treatment. What we've got to convince people is treatment actually works. And that's what I hope people take away from it.

Well, thank you, Jason, for spending this time with me. Thank you, Andy. This is a really wonderful conversation. And the book is fantastic. And I encourage all of you to read it. And it's a good, it's full of heartening information, but it's also a really good story. It's like a really, you know, like, I want to know what happens next kind of read. So congratulations.

Just a guy with a psychological disorder that's secret while he runs for president of the United States. Your standard coming ofof-age tale. Yum, yum, yum. Delicious. Yeah. All right. Well, thank you so much. At least it's a story that hasn't been told.

That's true. That's true. I'm a fan, and I enjoyed this a lot. Thank you, Andy. Thank you very much. And thank all of you out there for listening, and I'll be back next week. Bye-bye. Got a big, big love for you.

The Three Questions with Andy Richter is a Team Coco and Earwolf production. It is produced by Lane Gerbig, engineered by Marina Pice, and talent produced by Galitza Hayek. The associate producer is Jen Samples, supervising producer Aaron Blair, and executive producers Adam Sachs and Jeff Ross at Team Coco, and Colin Anderson and Cody Fisher at Earwolf. Make sure to rate and review The Three Questions with Andy Richter on Apple Podcasts.