Luke Russert on being man enough to embrace grief

Luke Russert and S.E. came up together as journalists in Washington, D.C., "running around like idiots." Now as full fledged grownups, the friends explore Luke's personal and professional journey and the impact grief, and several losses have had on him. Luke also shares what finally made him leave it all and travel the world and what he learned about himself along the way.  Luke's memoir, "Look for Me There: Grieving My Father, Finding Myself" is now out in paperback.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Who am I doing this for?

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Is it for legacy preservation or right? You know, for
an audience who sees my father and me or my mom?
Is you know, a trailblazer? I got to keep holding
the flame for her. So there's all those sort of
questions that I really had to wrestle with, and they
took a long time to figure out.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Welcome to Off the Cup, my personal anti anxiety antidote.
I've known this guest since we were young, twenty thirty
somethings coming up in the news, running around Georgetown the
Hill like idiots, and it's been really fun to come
up together in this business and watch him become the
man he is today. He's a journalist, he's a best

(00:39):
selling author, he's my friend. He's a Nantucket institution, He's
Luke Ressert. Welcome to off the Cup.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
You know, and I've not had such a wonderful intro
since I think you did the same thing on the
cycle in two thousand and eleven? Was it?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
We'll get in twenty twelve. Those were great days.

Speaker 4 (00:56):
We'll get into it. Oh we're going there, you're doing
ess I'm good, I'm good.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
It's good to talk to you and it's so nice
to be with you.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
So I always like to start with our guests by
asking what kind of kid were you?

Speaker 2 (01:09):
That's a good question. I think I was a kid
who was very understanding of duty and I had two
very high performing parents, where the expectation was that you
had to give your best effort and achieve. But I
was also this in this will expose me a little
bit here. I was born on August twenty second, which

(01:32):
is something called the cusp of.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Exposure between Leo's and virgos.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
Right, And I'm always say that I totally believe in astrology,
but there's something interesting here about the cusp of exposure
because you exhibit these Leo tendencies where you like to
be loud, you like attention, but then you have that
Virgo problem where you want to be introverted and go away.
So it's almost like I perform and then I come
back into myself.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Right, Oh, that's so interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
And I would say that was sort of my childhood,
is that I was a popular kid. I liked by friends,
I liked to make teachers happy. I worked hard in
school academics and athletics. But then as an only child
and on this custom exposure. I really relished my alone time.
So from a very young age, I would always do
what I had to do and then be very happy

(02:18):
to go off into my room by myself and play
with legos and play with you know, toy soldiers and
g I Joe's and whatnot, like I wasn't from a
young age. After school, my mom and be like, oh,
don't you want to have friends over? I was like, yeah,
well I saw him during the day.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
It was cool. I was good.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
But while we again, you know, it was enough. It
was enough and in a big adjustment for me being
an only child. You know, it was my freshman year
of college. When ever, forget this, like I had a
roommate for the first time, and I had had, you know,
buddies who had stayed at our house for a long
periods of time where I had gone to camp with
kids and whatnot, so it wasn't like a complete culture shock,
but having the real roommate for you know, a whole

(02:53):
school year was a long time. And I remember kind
of like month two or month three, I just came
in the room. I'm like, why is the remote control
not where I left it? Why are these all these
things moving around. Yeah, so that was a good adjustment
for me. Yeah, but yeah, that was kind of the
kid I was. It's sort of simultaneously like you like
to please people, but also very comfortable.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
Being by myself and having my own time. You know.

Speaker 3 (03:16):
I was also an only child on the CUSP and
that I like that description a lot. I can relate
to that description a lot. What was it like to
grow up in Washington with like power parents. I mean,
most people know who your dad was. Your dad was
Tim Resler, at award winning journalist.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
Your mom is.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Also a very accomplished Vanity Fair correspondent as well.

Speaker 2 (03:37):
She is an investigative reporter and one of the first
female letters at Newsweek.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
Really broke the glass ceiling. You know, it was interesting.
I think my parents did a very.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Good job of using official Washington for the benefits for
me in terms of how interesting the history is. You know,
being around presidents and senators and being on a first
name basis with them was an absolutely incredible thing that
I'm very privileged and lucky to have. But there is
also a real emphasis put on being what I would say,

(04:05):
you know, a real human being and like as in
you know, Little League and soccer and you have chores
and go pick up the garbage. And we kind of
lived this very i think, typical outside of my father's job,
at my mother's job, very American existence. You know, my

(04:26):
my friends and I would play in the alley, you know,
behind the house and you know it's the old you
remember this, like you come home when it gets dark.
That was the sort of rule Rock Creek Park in DC.
We would build forts and things like.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
That, we're out.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
So like, I always knew that my upbringing was abnormal,
because a little bit abnormal because I remember being about
like nine or ten years old and going over to
a friend's house and realizing, oh, like, my friend's dad
doesn't come at me from a little box with the screen,
and my friend's mom isn't like, you know, writing about
Michael Jackson and his station charge. But all that being said,

(05:02):
like my parents really did this idea of trying to
ground me and this idea of you know, you always love,
but you're never entitled. So it was an interesting upbreat though,
because I was simultaneously aware of being in this power structure,
but also my parents been like, you know, don't get
too caught up into that because there's a lot of
sleeves in it.

Speaker 4 (05:20):
Yeah, and you know, I.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
Moved to d C in like twenty thirteen for a
job and also to be with my husband, Goodie, who.

Speaker 5 (05:30):
You know, Well, he's I'm a fine American fellow. Okay, sure,
I'm for sure of men. We love him he is.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
But I found just in a few years that I
lived there, coming from New York City. Sure, I mean
it's a very insular town where obviously politics is the
main event. And I remember I'd like go have drinks
with John and his friends after work, and like I
was done with politics, and no one else was, Like
all they wanted to talk about was politics, and like

(05:58):
I remember just feeling like do we have to talk
about the cr over dinner? But like that's the town,
Like did you feel that way?

Speaker 1 (06:06):
But I think there's a degree of that.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
But I also think that if like you live here
and you have a family here, and you sort of
get into the school vibe and all that. Yeah, there's
a lot of people who don't work in politics. A
lot of my friends' parents, some of them would be
indirectly working for the government, where there was like well
they worked for the FDA, as a lawyer, like the
civil servant. But there's a lot of people who worked,
you know, as doctors or lawyers, and politics would come up,

(06:29):
but it wasn't omnipresent. And it was interesting that you
bring that up because one of the things that my
father tried to do is really turn off after a
certain point.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
And a lot of that would be you know.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
With friends of his who were from college you just
sort of talk on the phone with for for a
long periods of time. But there is this Italian restaurant
that he liked that was kind of by NBC where
literally kind of Fridays he would go by himself and
have a big pizza and salad in the corner and
just chat to the guy who owned the place, who
was this Italian, little about American politics and just sort

(07:02):
of talk about life.

Speaker 4 (07:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
So there you got to find your your your breaks.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
And I'm fortunate that the kids I went to high
school with, you know, politics exists, but the more the
conversations are about you know, sports and pop culture and
other things of that nature, you gotta find those.

Speaker 3 (07:16):
You gotta find that in this business because people know you.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
But it's hard. But it's hard if you don't even
grow up here though.

Speaker 2 (07:22):
That's the thing, Like, I'm very fortunate because I grew
up here around this, But if you come in as
an outsider, you're automatically put in that sort.

Speaker 1 (07:28):
Of political box. A lot of the times, it's just hard.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
I totally was.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
And you know, especially when you're a front face like
public person, that's how you're identified by people, and they
want to talk politics with you.

Speaker 4 (07:39):
I find you know, I I so.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
This real quick on yes, like the thing that drove
my father crazy, and it drives me crazy.

Speaker 1 (07:47):
It's like, well, what do you really think? I don't
want to talk about this, Like.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
Ask me anything else as anything else, And.

Speaker 2 (07:53):
Like you meet celebrities and they're the same way. And
like like whenever I see an athlete, if I'm fortunate
enough to me like an athlete who I like, I
will bring up anything else. I'll be You're like, hey,
I've been to your hometown. Do you like that taco place?
And they're like, yes, yes, you're right.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
It's like anything besides the.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
Ilse, but they do.

Speaker 3 (08:10):
And I've had you know, we've were doing a lot
of these episodes. I've I've done a lot of these
episodes with celebrities and I can tell they just really
want to talk about politics, but.

Speaker 4 (08:19):
This podcast is not a political podcast. And I can
tell they're like there's a disappointment.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Well that's of course, Like that's the irony. Yes, there's
a lot of those celebrities. They love politics.

Speaker 2 (08:29):
Because it gives them an escape, right from what they're
usually having to talk about.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
Yes, but it's not an escape for me.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
And then some of them are like really into it.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
I will not name them that I've become a text
friend with somewhat of a decently large celebrity and they're
asking me stuff about like the cr and I'm like, whoa,
aren't you like promoting and that's like special right now,
Like this is way more than save the Whales and like,
you know, get out the vote. It's I'm very interested
in the minutia of Yeah, the budget negotiations from the

(09:01):
House Appropriations Committee.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
I mean, who yeah, you know I get a lot
of that too, And you have to indulge it because
I if I meet a celebrity chef, like right, I
love I love.

Speaker 4 (09:12):
Food and restaurants, I want to talk about food.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
I'm sure they don't. I want to know what your
favorite restaurant is I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
They're frustrating, right, Yeah, I get it.

Speaker 3 (09:24):
You and my husband have a lot in common, yeah,
which is probably why you guys, you know, came friends
and you were in similar, similar fields. But one thing
that you have in common is you both lost your
dad's very young in your twenties. How does that imprint
on a man?

Speaker 1 (09:42):
It's tough?

Speaker 2 (09:43):
Uh, you know, it's a real central theme in my
book Look for Me There and when I lost my
father of twenty two, a lot of the male figures
in my life who were very sweet and very kind,
but the common refrain was dig down, be tough.

Speaker 1 (09:59):
You know, you'll get through it. Be there for mom,
you know, keep the faith, hold strong, et cetera. And
that's great.

Speaker 2 (10:06):
You know, I played football for six seven years in baseball, Like,
I totally understand where that comes from.

Speaker 1 (10:12):
But it leaves a void.

Speaker 2 (10:14):
And what I mean by that is that if you're
just tough and you're not really exploring emotion, it lingers
and you don't know what lingers, and you don't know
what that is. Why am I anxious? Why is there
something that leaves me unfulfilled? Why do I feel kind
of lost?

Speaker 1 (10:30):
And for me, that ended.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
Up really being grief and never exploring that idea of grief.
And the reason why I wasn't exploring that idea of
grief is of twofold one was I just didn't want
to because it was painful. But also I had been
conditioned to think that vulnerability, especially at that age, was
just something you could not show quickly or even if

(10:51):
you were to do it privately. You know, what woman
is going to want to be with a guy who's
here crying his eyes out every single night because he's lost, Right,
It's just sort of something where you don't think that
that's necessarily okay. And it took me many years to realize, well, actually, no,
you do need to explore that because to be the
best version of yourself, to be a husband and you know,
father or whatever, you have to get into that part

(11:14):
of yourself.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
So I think it's hard. I think it's gotten better,
you know, since John and I had gone through that.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
I think that it's much better in this day and
age where we're more open.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
To talking about that.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Yeah, but you know, two thousand and eight that was
still very much a macho time in our culture.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
And on this podcast we talk a lot about mental
health because I'm open about my struggles with mental health.

Speaker 2 (11:35):
Absolutely, and God love you for doing that. I think
you've been an inspiration to me and a lot.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
Of people for that.

Speaker 4 (11:39):
Thank you. I appreciate that. Did you seek mental health
treatment through any of this?

Speaker 1 (11:44):
No? Sure, sure, I'm a big believer in therapy.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
I think one of the things that it does is
it's sort of twofold, is it won you know, nothing
is off limits, so you could just sort of get
out things that have been stored away for so long
that have been caught and problems. But then I think
what it's really helpful for is identifying patterns and then also, Okay,
what can you do to be the best version of

(12:09):
yourself when you know these things are coming?

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (12:11):
So there's some things you can't control it. There's emotions
you can't control are going to come out, but I
do think that you can kind of control how you
react to them at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
Right, So it's like something is going to make you angry, Yes,
but how do you react to that?

Speaker 2 (12:25):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (12:25):
Yeah, And that is something which therapy has been so
helpful for.

Speaker 3 (12:29):
And why are you reacting this way? Is a thing
that I found important to identify too. I suffer from
severe anxiety, and I had some very terrible, unhealthy patterns
that I actually wasn't aware of that I thought, we're
keeping me safe, things like catastrophizing, thinking of the worst
thing possible to happen, and if I thought about it,

(12:51):
it wouldn't happen, and if I didn't think about it,
it would happen. What were some of your patterns when
you were kind of in an unhealthy place?

Speaker 2 (13:01):
I think, Uh, probably the worst one for me was
just this idea of you, you know, you gotta stick
through it even if it kills you, like you know,
if you're And I talked about this one moment in
the book where it was this super stressful time on
Capitol Hill and I was on TV a bunch and

(13:23):
there was just a lot going on and there was
a lot of incoming and I I essentially fall over
in the hallway walking from one of the house office
buildings to the Capitol. Uh just not just sort of
give out, exasperated, full on panic attack, just just overdone.
And this guy kind of sees me and he's like,
are you okay? I was like, oh, I just I
just lost my footing, and I went and I walked

(13:47):
to the camera and did the hit shaking, and in
my mind it was, well, that's that's the job you
gotta do, right, because there's a there's millions of other
people that would kill for this position, and you know,
pick it up and just do it and and you
know you'll get over it eventually.

Speaker 1 (14:02):
And I think that sort of storming Nor and that
sort of just power through white knuckle as it's called yep,
was something that was very harmful because look, you know,
you can easy, you can get through it, and then
you calm down a little bit and you're like ha
ha ha. But then you think, man, like here I am,

(14:22):
I'm just doing something which is my job, and I'm
feeling all these things. Why is that? And storming Nor?
Not until years later you go, okay, this is all
related to something. Why is that?

Speaker 4 (14:34):
Truly?

Speaker 3 (14:34):
And I was forty early forties when I had like
a total nervous breakdown because I'd been doing just that
for so many years. And I always say I wish
I had known what I was doing earlier, to catch
it before it became so ingrained in my life and
what I did, especially in this job just pushing, pushing through.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
A few years later, twenty.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
Fourteen, you lose a a good friend, Corey Griffin.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
What happened?

Speaker 2 (15:05):
So Corey had come to actually visit me on Nantucket
and there is a charity fundraiser for the Boys and
Girls Club. It's a big dinner and that's actually named
after my late father. It's a lot of fun. And
he had come for that, and he had actually celebrated
my birthday the night before, and I was tired because
I had to perform at this dinner the next night,
essentially being the sort of MC and he wanted to

(15:27):
go out and find a date for it.

Speaker 1 (15:30):
And there is a tradition Nantucket.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
There's a building called the Ulcerve Building versus right by
where the ferry comes in, so it's very deep there,
it's dredged and people jump off of it. It's sort
of like a rite of passage, you know, kids jump
off of bridges and whatnot. So they had gone and
done that and it did something they had done before,
Corey and a few other friends of ours, And when
he jumped, it was a sort of freak thing, which

(15:53):
was the force of his body went onto his neck
and he ended up drowning from it and killing him,
which was very tragic. And he had his wits about
him and wasn't like he was drunk jumping off. It's
just something that people have done like hundreds not thousands
of times up there, total freak thing, and it was
incredibly painful because I you know, there's something surreal about

(16:17):
eating dinner with somebody who's twenty seven years old and
then two hours later they're gone. I mean, that's just
that's a feeling I've never really been able to quite wrap.

Speaker 1 (16:25):
My head around. But what that did was kind of
two things.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
It was one that reminded me that just how you know,
time really is finite, but also you know, there might
not be as much time as you think, right, And
it's this idea of all right, the light at the
end of the tunnel is a little bit closer. And
he was someone who really valued experience in something where

(16:52):
he was like, oh, he's in Montana, or he's you know,
down in the Galapagos, or he's surfing in Portugal.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
I mean, he was doing all these things.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
I was covering the weekend White House shift for the
budget negotiation.

Speaker 4 (17:05):
Right, yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:06):
Yeah, it was just one of those things where I
was like, you know, wow, in twenty seven years, he's
lived way more than I have, way more than I have,
and taken a lot more risks to the betterment of life.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
And it got me thinking about just the sort of
where you are in life and time and what's important.

Speaker 4 (17:24):
I mean, that's a lot of loss at a young age.
And you talk about grief a lot.

Speaker 3 (17:29):
I know Anderson Cooper, a colleague, talks about grief a lot.
I'm so glad that you guys do because it helps
other people process their own grieving. But does that become
something that can define you grief?

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Sure.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
I Mean one of the things that still sticks out
to me is and this was sort of hard. This
is kind of one of the reasons why I needed
some time away from for media was I was sitting
on Capitol Hill. I was eating a lunch outside of
the front of mine and this lady just comes up

(18:02):
and start sobbing, and she gives me this big hug
and is you know, like, I loved your dad so much,
and you know, I see him and you and you know,
thank you for being you. And immediately I just got
up and hugged her, and you know, totally normal encounter
for me and I sat down to lunch and my friend,
she goes.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
That didn't affect you less, That wasn't weird to you.
It's like you were almost.

Speaker 2 (18:27):
Preconditioned to sort of get up and be the comforter
for this person who doesn't know you, you've never met them.

Speaker 1 (18:31):
They just starting you crying because they missed.

Speaker 2 (18:33):
Your dad or something. And that was one of those
moments where I was like, yeah, I am kind of
defined by this to a degree.

Speaker 1 (18:39):
Uh, you know, I gave a eulogy. Is what ended up.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
Propelling my media career at that stage, and it's one
of those things where I had to grow to be
more comfortable in my own skin, because here I was
helping all these other people out with grief for honestly,
a lot of times someone they hadn't even met, they
just sort of knew through their screen, and I had
processed it myself.

Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, and that was hard, and that was really really hard.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
And so I think that was something which propelled me
to your point, which was you can always be defined
by grief in some degree, but you got to define
on your own terms. And I think what Anderson has
done is like, all right, let's explore this.

Speaker 1 (19:17):
Yeah, and Cole Beart has done that too in a
really meaningful way. Let me explore this.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
Yeah, and they've done it together, which is really yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Which is really cool.

Speaker 6 (19:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:35):
Okay, So you get hired very soon after your dad
dies to work at NBC News where he worked. What
was it like coming to work where he had been
such an institution.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
So simultaneously incredibly comforting and then also just very difficult.
And I think that was a sort of push and pull,
which was that there was a lot of people there
who I knew a very young age were rooting for me.
There was a lot of people there who were, you know,
who is this little snot nos and he shouldn't be here,
and you know, screw him.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
So it was a sort of tough sledding. But I
do think.

Speaker 2 (20:07):
That what I came to realize early on in that
job was that nobody, you know, my last name, had
got me through the door, got my foot in the door,
but I was gonna have to get myself through yeah,
And that was a very difficult task because I had
to take a lot of incoming on and I couldn't
say anything because I'm allowed to complain.

Speaker 1 (20:27):
Right, So if you.

Speaker 2 (20:28):
If you're a privileged person and you're complaining, then you've
you've just shot yourself in the foot numerous times. So
I think that was hard, especially for someone who was
going through grief. But I will you know, as I
say in the book, though, it also kind of gave
me an edge a little bit. So is this sort
of the this push and pull where yeah, I probably

(20:48):
should be grieving, I probably should be going over lost,
but also, all.

Speaker 1 (20:51):
Right, the greatest free cure for misery's hard work.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
I'm gonna throw myself into this, improve myself and just
keep going and going and going, going and up let
them get the best of me. So it almost gave
me sort of a competition to do. But yeah, at
the end of the day, that's very unhealthy because if
if you're going to a job to prove somebody else
wrong every day, Yeah, yeah, the people who do that
are it's like the Michael Jordan Tom Brady persona, right,

(21:18):
And you look at those guys like they always have
to find competition because they.

Speaker 1 (21:23):
Can't they can't live unless there's a competition.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
They're competing and trying to beat someone, and that gets
that gets really heavy, It gets really heavy.

Speaker 3 (21:32):
Yeah, was anyone like nasty to your face.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Very rarely.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
And I think that's what angered me the most is
that there's a lot of people who would be keyboard
warriors and then you know, be so welcoming and kind right,
or expect me to be nice to them. And I
remember one person specifically had written some very nasty things
and then I kind of like they came up to
me and tried to shake my hand.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
I'm like, screw it, dude.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Well what And then I was like, well, you know,
this is just all a big game, and I'm like, no,
it's not a game, Like I'm so sorry. When when
hundreds of people are retweeting something you said, it's like, yeah,
this is And I think there's an element of that
where the worst people in our profession kind of just
think it's.

Speaker 1 (22:15):
Like all one big joke, yeah, and it's not.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
I mean, people in the media have real feelings, but
also the viewers have feelings. The readers have feelings, like
people are people, and you shouldn't be in it just
to for self promotion and to like be part of
the scene. You should be doing a service to people
at the end of the day.

Speaker 3 (22:36):
And some people define like winning at work is like
punching up.

Speaker 5 (22:40):
Yeah, and like or I showed them or what yeah? Yeah,
yeah for sure.

Speaker 3 (22:46):
Okay, so you get some chops covering Capitol Hill and
we were there at the same time for a year.
I had that show called The Cycle, and we'd have
you on to report on Capitol Hill stuff or even
sometimes fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
I got to guess host sometimes and you did.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
Right.

Speaker 4 (23:02):
Do you remember this?

Speaker 3 (23:04):
I had this memory as I was thinking back, and
that was a really fun year.

Speaker 4 (23:08):
But it was a quick year. Did we I feel
like we had a nickname for you.

Speaker 1 (23:12):
I feel like we called you said Broser.

Speaker 3 (23:14):
Yeah, okay, I didn't invent this, and we had we
gave our regulars nicknames like I think Jonathan Allen was
Jay Dogg. These nicknames weren't good, nor did they stick.
But I'm right right, we called you Broser you did?

Speaker 1 (23:25):
Yes? Yes?

Speaker 4 (23:26):
Was that affectionate?

Speaker 1 (23:27):
I hope it was.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
Affection You know, here's the thing, like I said to
Steve Freeman, who is the EP of that Yeah, I know,
I kind of like this because you're taking what is
what is a common critique, like, oh, here's this stupid
you know, floppy haired Frapp boy on TV.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Talking and I'm allowed to own it a little bit.
So I kind of liked that, you know.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
I was like, yeah, it's like, let's.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Lean into it.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
And then you know who was it was really funny
with that too, is with it was Alex Wagner and
we would just.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Have fun on it.

Speaker 2 (23:57):
Gs in here comes here are resident bo shoe wearing
preppy Right, yeah, I go, okay, like let's take it
because interesting enough, you know, now that I'm back at him,
I SNBC in some capacity, MSNBC.

Speaker 1 (24:10):
Viewers back then were a lot angrier.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
They're like sweeter now, and I think it's just because
people have like lived through the last you know, nine years,
and it's sort of like, okay, you know, we gotta
we got a hold together if we're gonna get through
all this, right, But like back then, it was like
it's still in the infancy of social media.

Speaker 1 (24:28):
Oh my god, it was so vicious.

Speaker 2 (24:30):
It was so vicious, and that's what the apps would
like cycle the neat stuff away from you. Now they
cycle it away from you. But back then it would
be like, first and foremost, you.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Know, trust me as as the token conservative.

Speaker 3 (24:42):
I remember that's the place that said I loved working
at MS. It was especially then it was so like
creative and fun. They let me do things that had
nothing to do with anything, like I had I had
a squatch, a sasquatch collar on.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
Once I got to go hunt with the guys from
Duck Dynasty, like I remember that politics.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
Yeah, yeah, that was fun. I remember your Duck Dynasty thing.
That was cool.

Speaker 4 (25:11):
It was really fun.

Speaker 3 (25:13):
We had a lot of freedom, which sometimes felt a
little scary like our adults in charge of this, but
it was also very empowering because we were young and
we we were given so much leeway to go out
and do stuff.

Speaker 4 (25:27):
It was so fun.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
It was, and honestly, I think that if you look
at where the network is now, it was really come
born out of that experimentation of the era, Like that
ton of two thousand and seven to twenty thirteen fourteen
era was so was so cool.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
There's so many things going on there and the people
who come out.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
I mean, you remember when Karnaki was just kind of
this like wonderfully loving, dorky guy who played around of poles,
and now he's like a sex symbol, so you know,
it's incredible stuff.

Speaker 4 (25:58):
I can't think of him that way. It was a
great time.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
So twenty sixteen, two Outsiders, you abruptly resign, You say
you need to evaluate your career opportunities.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
Was that abrupt for you or had you been planning
to do that?

Speaker 2 (26:14):
No? I had been thinking about it for over a
year change at that point. I tell a story in
the book about All People. House speaker John Bayner gave
me inspiration, and he had saw me.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
I love that guy.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
He's a great American.

Speaker 2 (26:28):
And he saw me in the hallway and he said, hey,
you know, loudmouth. He's called me loudmouth when he also
called me shithead, which I think we can say on this.
So yeah, okay, And so he stopped me in the
hallway and he goes, you know, I want to talk
to you.

Speaker 1 (26:44):
I said sure.

Speaker 2 (26:45):
He calls me into the office and I go down
there and he goes, what are you doing here?

Speaker 1 (26:51):
You invited me into your office? Was like some Jesuit
mind game, right, you know what are you doing here?
He goes, what are you doing here? On Capitol Hill?

Speaker 2 (26:57):
He goes, you've been here seven years? You know the
place like that your hand. You know, there's always going
to be an up and down the next budget fight,
the next election.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
There's always a he said, great line.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
He goes, there's a merry go round of women and
parties and guys to drink with bah blah. Is you
need to go somewhere you can learn how to do something.
You know, this gets too easy for you. It's just
a constant kind of churn in cycle that is so
removed from how the country.

Speaker 1 (27:22):
Really is or how the world is.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
He goes, you might be well served to get out
here and you know, go see something else or try
something else. And what was really impactful about that was
he had a very similar upbringing to my father. They're
both working class Catholic kids from the Rust Belt. He
was from Cincinnati. He paid his way through school, just
like my dad did. And it was almost like this
sort of validation like you know, I know that, almost

(27:48):
a paternal validation, like you've worked hard, man, you earned it,
you did it. Like if you want some time to
go do something else, don't be afraid to take it,
or if you want to go do something completely radical,
go learn something else. And so that happened in the
spring of twenty fifteen, and that kind of got my
my brain in that place where these feelings that I'm

(28:08):
having about not wanting to do this anymore, about seeing
something different, about doing something different, or even just understanding
who I am, Like what do I really want to
do this?

Speaker 4 (28:18):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (28:18):
And then what But I was like, you know, this
could just be jitters. I'm turning thirty, a quarter life crisis,
blah blah blah blah. But it was those feelings were there.
They kept popping up, They kept popping up. You know,
who are you beyond Capitol Hill? Who are you beyond
the privilege of your last name in this Bubby you
living in Washington?

Speaker 1 (28:37):
Who really? Who are you really?

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And the thing that was the determining factor which kind
of pushed me out the door was it was around
June of twenty sixteen and I had done this story
about a veteran's issue on Capitol Hill. It's a nine
to eleven health care funding It was something I was
very proud of and did all this work on, and.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
Very tough story.

Speaker 2 (29:02):
Where dealing with people who are in different stages of sickness,
and it was emotionally a difficult story to do and
I'm all excited to do it, and they said, sorry,
we have to bump you we're gonna take Donald Trump's
reaction to the shooting death of Harambe the Gorilla alive.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
And I just said, you know, I think it's time.
I think it's time. I'm out. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (29:25):
That was That was about a month before my contract
was up. But it was awkward because they're like, oh,
so we should talk contract.

Speaker 1 (29:30):
I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's just give me.
I'm busy on the hill blah blah blah blah blah.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
And then I was just like that was I'm good
because you could see what was happening in media, and
to me it was divine intervention to a degree. It
was like, okay, totally Bay to you, Brombay, here happened,
Like yeah, go you're good. Yeah, you're you're You're not
gonna miss a lot.

Speaker 4 (29:53):
So did you plan to be gone as long as
you were gone?

Speaker 1 (29:57):
No?

Speaker 2 (29:58):
No, I thought it would be like six months a
year at most. And I think what ended up happening
was sort of two things. Was one, I really enjoyed
the travel and it just became addictive because it was
so interesting. But two, I came to realize that there
is a lot more for me to figure out than
I had ever anticipated. And part of the reason why
is I had I got to a point where I

(30:21):
realized that from a young age, I had just been
programmed to achieve. Yeah, and I had, you know, it
was if I wasn't at school, then it was at
extra career lears, or then I was at summer camps,
and then it was a you know, one of the
big things my parents had me do is starting at
fourteen I could legally work, was like go getting real
jobs in the summer with intense manual labor. So there's
always this sort of like there's no idle time, like move, move, move, Kiev, achieve, achieve.

(30:45):
You always got to keep going and going going. So
when I walked away from NBC was actually like the
first time since oh my god, maybe like I was
seven years old, eight years old, where I felt like, Okay,
there's no massive responsibility over my head at the.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Moment, you know. Yeah, And once I was in that space,
which is incredibly privileged place.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
To be, but having the privilege of time, was Okay,
who am I doing this for? Was I was I
getting those grades from my parents or was I doing
it for me? Who am I working for? Is it
to for legacy preservation or you know, for an audience
who sees my father and me, or my mom is
you know, a trailblazer.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
I got to keep holding the flame for her. So
there's all those sort of questions that I really had
to wrestle with, and they took a long time to
figure out.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
I went through this too, like why does everything in
my life have to be a trophy of some kind?
Like from who I was dating, to where I was living,
to what I was doing to everything started to feel
like I was collecting success and for I lost sight
of for what, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (31:49):
For home, and there's a void, and there's that lingering void.
And I think what the travel did was it was
helping me answer those questions. But at some point you
start running away from it too.

Speaker 4 (31:59):
Though, So did you do you know that you were
going to travel?

Speaker 1 (32:01):
No, I didn't. You know.

Speaker 2 (32:02):
My mom was a Peace Corps volunteer in the sixties
in Columbia and she built a school there as a
young woman in very macho culture. Basically, you know, it's
something which is unfathomable today. But when she graduated from college,
she went to cal Berkeley, which a very progressive place,
and they told her at cal Berkeley in the sixties
and the mid sixties. Well, you know, you really got
to go be a paralegal or or if you want

(32:24):
to see the world, you could be a flight attendant,
or a school teacher or a nurse.

Speaker 1 (32:27):
But that's really you know, what you can do.

Speaker 2 (32:29):
Good of you to get a college degree. You will
be having more interesting conversations with your husband. But that's
what Berkeley was saying in like the early sixties. Okay, yeah,
so god, you can only imagine what like, you know,
Texas was saying, so right, so you have that. So
she's like, Okay, I'm gonna go join the Peace Corps
because that was her one way to get out and
be her own person. And what she said to me was,

(32:54):
you know, I really was able to measure myself and
knew what I was about against the world.

Speaker 1 (32:58):
Where I was in the Peace Corps.

Speaker 2 (33:00):
But to do that, I had to leave the comfortable
environment that I had been born into. Yeah, and she's
always said that, you know, understanding different cultures and measuring
yourself up against the world was really healthy.

Speaker 1 (33:12):
So she encouraged it.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
And so I think part of me traveling was all right,
I'm tired of my mom telling me I.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Have to go travel.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
Then all part of it was it was my friend Corey,
who had seen so much of the world in twenty
seven years, and I said, okay, you know there's something
something there.

Speaker 1 (33:26):
So that got me going.

Speaker 2 (33:27):
But I never thought it would be you know, six
cotton in sixty seven countries three and a half years.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
I mean that was that was a long time.

Speaker 4 (33:34):
How much of that did you plan ahead?

Speaker 3 (33:36):
And how much of that was Okay, tomorrow, I'm going
to go somewhere else.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
So I would always come back, you know, to d
C for periods of time to sort of save money
and you know, get get back into society a little bit.
Because I met a lot of nomads along the way.

Speaker 1 (33:55):
They're just kind of perpetual travelers.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
And I knew that I didn't want to be one
of them because there there is a little bit of
burnout there. Some of them are very cool, but some
of them are just kind of lost. But what I
realized is like, Okay, if I have this opportunity to
have this time, I really want to take advantage of it.
And I think it's one thing in my first trip
in Latin America that really inspired me was. I was

(34:17):
riding this bus in Patagonia and I looked around on
the bus and there's about thirty people and there's about
five or six kind of hippie nomads, and the rest
of the people were all retirees. And I looked at
them and it's very very sweet people, retirees from kind
of all around the world.

Speaker 1 (34:36):
And I realized. I was like, Okay, this is.

Speaker 2 (34:40):
Like what they had worked for their entire lives, and
this is the time they have left on earth, like
they're doing these things. But I realized in that bus
and when I was there, I was like, I don't
want to be this age doing these things. I want
to be the age I am now, because it's going
to be a lot more impactful, a lot more fun
to have these experiences now. So if I can do it,

(35:01):
I'm gonna try.

Speaker 1 (35:02):
And I did. But it wears on you at some point,
it does.

Speaker 4 (35:07):
I mean, also good to do it before kids, because.

Speaker 1 (35:10):
Before kids and before marriage.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
And honestly though, like what you just physically it's grueling
and uh, yeah, you know, there's a lot of miles
in the air, there's a lot of bumpy roads, and yeah,
I tell people that I go because you know you
can fly, you can do it.

Speaker 1 (35:25):
At a very high level and not experienced that. But
I was.

Speaker 2 (35:28):
I was sleeping in uh niker Roguin pig farms, like
on bags on piles of ship, like I really wanted
to get into it and feel it.

Speaker 1 (35:36):
Uh so it can, it can, it can get to you.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
So look for me there. It's a New York Times bestseller.
Did you have in mind that you would write a
book out of all of this or did that kind
of cond So my.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Mother, you know, in twenty eighteen, so about a kind
of I'd say about a year and a half, almost
two years into this, she's like, you know, what are
you doing with your life? Kind of conversation, and I
think she was very worried, and she's like, have you
been journaling? I said, well, actually, yeah, I have all
these journals and there's a lot in there.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
And she's like, well, you know, you should.

Speaker 2 (36:21):
You should think about that. Maybe there's something you can
do with it. And it's kind of dismissed her. It's like, okay,
you know whatever, I'm just going to keep journaling. Those
are for me, it's not really for anybody else. But
then I went through a kind of very difficult time
where I was like, what is this travel about?

Speaker 1 (36:35):
You know? What am I doing here?

Speaker 2 (36:36):
Has has the sort of solution now become the problem.
Am I addicted to something? Which is all this clarity
that was supposed to be bringing me? It has brought
a lot of clarity, but also like, I don't know
when to stop. I don't know you know what I'm
really about more now two years later, I'm much more
cultured and I'm much more worldly. But these questions about

(36:57):
self expiration and self discovery that set out to answer
in the beginning, I don't have as good event an
answer as I.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Thought I would.

Speaker 2 (37:04):
And so I started to review the journals, especially the
earlier ones, and I went back and reread them. I
was like, oh my gosh, there's these two parallel tracks.
There's this one track of who am I independent of
the last name, the privileged bubble? Who am I independent
of this very odd but incredible life.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
That I was born into? But then the other one
was Okay, so I'm sort of searching for something there.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
But then I realized I was also running away from something,
and I was running away from processing the grief of
losing my father, and I was sitting in that grief
more than I ever had in each.

Speaker 1 (37:43):
Of these countries, but I hadn't really totally sat into it.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
And so when I started to realize that, I go, Okay,
I gotta start writing about this because there's something here
that can help somebody. And then I made this sort
of decision to start writing it. And the woman who
I'm now married to God love, she asked me a
very simple question.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
She says, well, you know, why are you writing?

Speaker 2 (38:08):
Writing is kind of an egotistical thing, right, You're why
would anyone want to read your book?

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Like? What are you putting out into the world? Right?

Speaker 2 (38:16):
And it just the answer came to me right there.
He said, you know, if some kid finds this in
the bargain bind at a gas station somewhere for two dollars,
but he reads it or she reads it and feels
a little less lost after losing someone, then.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
I've done my job.

Speaker 2 (38:33):
And that became my kind of like guiding principle and
guiding light, which, as you know, writing a book's not easy.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
And that was the sort of Okay, this is what
I'm doing it for. I'm doing it for that kid,
and that made it all the better.

Speaker 4 (38:47):
How did you meet your wife?

Speaker 1 (38:49):
How did I meet my wife? Good question? Twenty sixteen.
This true story.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
I was covering the Hill and this is in February,
and it was one of those terrible weeks on Capitol
Hill with very late nights, and I get a call
on Thursday, because you know that's when they they would
go home, as usually on Thursday they go out flights
our esteem. Members of Congress usually worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and
half of Thursday that week they were in Monday it open.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Get a call for my.

Speaker 2 (39:19):
Boss and he says, you know, an unnamed NBC correspondent
has to get their hair done this weekend so they
can't cover Donald Trump in Ventonville, Arkansas.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
So can you do it? So let me get this straight.

Speaker 2 (39:32):
I've just worked doubles the last two weeks. If you're
sending me to Bentonville, Arkansas on a Saturday, uh, And
they go yeah, yeah, what a great what a great industry.
I go all right, well, I said, listen, because it's
it's two flights.

Speaker 1 (39:47):
Can can I go tomorrow as a travel day? And
I want to go see Alice Walton's art museum.

Speaker 2 (39:53):
Alice Walton Walton there has a tens of millions of dollars,
beautiful private art museum. If you're for northwest Arkansas, I
highly recommend it. It is absolutely incredible. I won't say
there are any perfect billionaires out there, but the ones
who do give to philanthropy and do our God love them.
So I decide, I'm in a good to Bentonville. Go

(40:15):
see Alice Walton's our museum. So I go there to Bentonville,
and it's a nice, nice place. It's very interesting because
here you are in northwest Arkansas. There's all these little
yuppies from Harvard and Yale and Princeton who want to
take over Walmart one day.

Speaker 1 (40:32):
You will have to move there, right, because like that's
what they make you do.

Speaker 2 (40:36):
If you want to be going up in Walmart, you
have to go live in Mettonville. So I go out
there and it's an interesting place. But there's also like
a very vibrant, shall we say, hunting and fishing culture
as well. Yeah, and so it's this interesting mix of
So I go out and as you know, me, I
see I like dive bars and things of that nature.

(40:58):
And I was, you know, they're in a nice little
expense accounts. I was like all right, I'm gonna.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
See else Walden's art Museum.

Speaker 2 (41:03):
I'm gonna eat a really nice meal in Bentonville, and
I'm gonna go find a.

Speaker 1 (41:07):
Dive bar and I have to be on at six
in the morning tomorrow. But you know what I will,
I'll look good and I'll go to this kind of
divy place that has beer and pizza.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
And I start chatting up. These two older people on
the stools next to me are very nice who are
out on a little date. And this very beautiful woman
comes up. It's just next to me on the other side.
She goes, oh, she goes, it's so cool for you
to be out here with your parents. I was like, well,
these aren't my parents, but it's very nice to meet you.
And we started talking and she says, you know, what

(41:40):
do you do? I said, oh, I'm here covering Donald Trump.
She says, you work for Donald Trump. I said, I
do not work for Donald Trump. I said, I'm covering
Donald Trump. He has a rally tomorrow, and she goes, really,
I said, yes, I'm on television.

Speaker 1 (41:50):
She goes, you're on television. She goes, no, you're not.
Why not?

Speaker 2 (41:53):
She goes, you're eating pizza? And you have this beer
in front of you. You have to be on at
six am. I said, yeah, it's all good, don't worry,
unter professional. So she starts saying these things, say, oh,
I don't believe you. I said, listen.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
I said, I.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
Guarantee you if you turn on MSNBC at six am,
you turn NBC on at seven am, you will see
me on the camera. And I knew I could guarantee
you because they were so obsessed with Trump coverage at
that point, right yeah. So she goes okay, and so
as I get up to leave, I start talking to
these other people, and you know, she had gone off
back with her friend. And I walked over to the

(42:26):
table and they had all this pizza on there, and
I was kind of hungry.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
And I said, hey, it was very nice to meet she.
I said you're gonna eat that? And then they were
like what, And I.

Speaker 2 (42:33):
Just took two slices. I said, take it easy, bah bah.
So she's yeah, next day, wake up.

Speaker 1 (42:42):
I do the Paul Newman.

Speaker 2 (42:43):
So I put the ice in the in the sink,
dip the head in there to reduce any puffiness.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Right.

Speaker 2 (42:48):
I get a nice egg McMuffin and a nice black
coffee and then the secret se which is mac NW
thirty five Bronzer.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Throw that on I like a million bucks. I'm fired up, baby.
It was a beautiful Arkansas morning where we'll do it
live and you know, nail it. Then I have to
go to the airport hangar.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
So we do like ten hours of Trump coverage and
that was it.

Speaker 1 (43:13):
And she sends me a note.

Speaker 2 (43:15):
She goes, holy shit, I can't believe that you actually
weren't lying, Like how did you listen like that? I said,
mac NW thirty five bronzer. It fixes everything. My makeup artist,
you know, told me that I'm so manly. I had
a makeup artist, right. Yeah, So that's how we met,
you know, she just followed me on Instagram, actor I
became friendly. We didn't really actually see each other until

(43:36):
years later, and I was living on California to write
the book and she had moved back there. She's from California,
and then we started to kind of see each other.
So there is a many years where it was just
sort of liking photos on Instagram and hey, how are
you and dating other people, and then yeah, it sort
of all came to be. But yeah, I actually saw
recently my boss who sent me to Bentonville, Arkansas, and

(43:59):
I thank you, thank you because I was so angry
about that.

Speaker 1 (44:04):
I was so angry about that.

Speaker 3 (44:05):
Did you thank the woman who had to do their
hair that weekend?

Speaker 4 (44:08):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (44:09):
I will in due time. I will do time my
wrap be a woman though, you know, we don't want
to just ques.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
I should not have assumed, Okay, we're gonna do a
lightning round to end.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 4 (44:26):
Best movie about journalism, oh, best.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Movie about journalism. Okay, so you you would obviously want
to do you know, the the old with all the
King's men, with Woodward and the president.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
You don't have to do that one.

Speaker 1 (44:44):
A president, I would, did you know what? I really liked?

Speaker 2 (44:50):
What was the one with Russell Crowe, the alcoholic Irish
Catholic guy, and then Ben Affleckx the congressman.

Speaker 1 (44:59):
State of Play? I like State of Play? Yeah, State
of Play was very good. I like State of Play.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
I love that movie. I also like Shattered Glass. Shattered
Glass is a good.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
That's a good one.

Speaker 3 (45:09):
Best movie about politics. Sometimes they can overlap, but.

Speaker 1 (45:13):
Best okay, so they have the overlap.

Speaker 2 (45:16):
I would say the best you know what I'll give
Carville credit.

Speaker 1 (45:20):
I'll say The War Room is very good. Okay, I
think that's documentary.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
It gets really into what those campaigns are like, and
so I say that, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
I think I think one of the problems I have
with a lot.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Of political movies is that they miss so much. Like
it's just like the Hollywood adaptations are really lacking.

Speaker 4 (45:40):
Did you see IDEs of March?

Speaker 1 (45:42):
Yeah, I did. I watched it on a plane.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
It was okay, it was, it was okay, it was
it missed a lot, right, Yeah, I think they all do.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
I think it's just yeah, I mean, part of that
is egotistical because like, well, when you were and you're in.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
It, But yeah, I don't know. There's just not a
lot that have the candidate. Though.

Speaker 2 (45:59):
I really liked a lot going Old School because I
thought that had a lot of validity to it. But
you know what it's interesting is like the best, in
my picking political movies are the ones like the Candidate
that like they leave a lot un said. I think
the ones, the more recent ones to me, are just
so overly literal that it's almost like they're trying too hard.

Speaker 1 (46:22):
Yeah, the audience is smart enough to gage certain things.

Speaker 4 (46:25):
Yeah, yeah, favorite band.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
Uh, that's tough. I have to give you a few,
all right.

Speaker 2 (46:32):
So I am so obviously Springsteen in the Eastreet band
I have, I adore, I've always loved Guns and Roses.
I love Jason Isbell and the four hundred Unit. But
I gotta tell you this, this kid, Zach Bryan, who
I've been following that.

Speaker 1 (46:51):
For the last few years. I'm so thrilled for his success.

Speaker 2 (46:55):
His creative output in the last few years is it's
up there with the best.

Speaker 1 (47:02):
Of the best.

Speaker 2 (47:03):
I mean, I think we will look back on his
last three albums and be.

Speaker 1 (47:07):
Like, oh my gosh, this guy was iconic. Yeah, and
then I love I love Fleetwood Mac too. I love
Fleetwoo Classic.

Speaker 4 (47:15):
What's the best thing you ate on your trip?

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Oh and the world travels?

Speaker 2 (47:19):
Uh huh, Well, that's a good question, I'm I I
have to go with the food in Hanoi.

Speaker 1 (47:28):
In Hanoi, Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (47:30):
You sit on these milk crates and they cook meat
on charcoal at your feet, so you're like you're eating
from your feet. All different types of meats, different spices,
use of fruits and vegetables and rices. And that's just
the best food of all time.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I can't cool. Yeah, so yeah, hano Hanoi food.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
And then you know what's actually really under the radar,
incredibly good food. And if you have an opportunity, if
you's a young kid listening to this and you're a
little bit Austin, you want to go do something cool
to Bla. See Georgia, the country of Georgia, not the state.
Unbelievable food there. They do these meat things and dumplings
that are part of soups and spices. It's the birthplace
of wine. So you get these jugs of wine and

(48:14):
one of those things for like eight bucks.

Speaker 1 (48:16):
And it's a very interesting city because.

Speaker 2 (48:18):
All these Russians are now there, some of nefarious, some
of them are nice. And then Iran, Iran has visa
free travel there, so you hang out in a bar
and to Blasi and like these iraniums come across the
border and a lot of women too, jobs come off.

Speaker 1 (48:35):
Just get tanked. It's just tanked, you know, it's just
like just.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Jugs of wine Coca co. Right, it's unbelievably cool. So
it's a very cool vibe to please see Georgia. Great
food and this is this really inter interesting melting pot
of people.

Speaker 1 (48:53):
And it's cheap. So if you're like a struggling artist
or something, you'll get a little warehouse vibe out there,
be very cool.

Speaker 4 (48:58):
Cool. What's the worst thing you ate on your trip?

Speaker 2 (49:03):
Well, I did, I mean, I ate all the insects.
I did the scorpion, I did all that, but they
just kind of tasted normal. I got a very very
bad local fish in Sri Lanka that messed me. Oh no,
I recall the name of it, but it was, yeah,

(49:23):
it was not good.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
It was Did it last a while?

Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (49:27):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (49:27):
Yeah, oh god, that was not good. And then I'd
say in terms of like people like the.

Speaker 2 (49:32):
Overall sit just like culture's food that just misses for me. Yeah,
it really was like that, sort of like Swiss Slovenian that.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
That Austrian schnitzel not for you. You can only do
so many schnitzels, you know.

Speaker 4 (49:48):
Yes, yeah, okay.

Speaker 3 (49:51):
And the last question, which is very important to me culturally, personally, spiritually,
when is iced coffee season?

Speaker 2 (50:00):
Uh okay, So you just touched on something which is
I'm very odd.

Speaker 1 (50:06):
So I'm gonna have to admit something. Now. I've only
admitted this once before.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
So I ic coffee year round, and what I do is,
and my wife thinks this is so strange.

Speaker 1 (50:17):
I will make a big pot of coffee. Yeah, I
pour a warm cup of coffee first.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Okay, I drink the warm cup of coffee, and then
I have a glass bottle that I ice everything from
the previous day. So the rest of that big that
the rest of that pot then goes from the glass
bottle that I ice, and I drink the iced coffee
throughout the day, drink.

Speaker 1 (50:39):
A lot of it.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Oftentimes my wife will get angry because I start icing
the coffee right away before she's had enough of the
warm coffee or that like, oh my god, I made
the mistake of getting you know, this organic fancy stuff
that this guy from the farmer's market, which you're only
supposed to have one cup up because it's so expensive.

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Nice. I may have iceed all of it right away,
so I have to.

Speaker 2 (51:04):
Yeah, Safeway select brand is what I'm allowed to ice.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
So ice coffee. I go twenty three sixty five twenty
four seven for ice coffee. For me.

Speaker 4 (51:13):
That's the correct answer.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
I love it.

Speaker 4 (51:16):
You're wondering.

Speaker 1 (51:16):
Yeah, there's the others.

Speaker 2 (51:18):
There's people that's say, it's an aromatic, so coffee should
be warm to you know, breathe it in.

Speaker 4 (51:24):
That's the wrong answer. Those people are wrong.

Speaker 1 (51:26):
I agree they are wrong. Yeah, twenty four seven, three
sixty five.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
I knew we had a lot in common, but that's
the most important thing that will bond us for life.

Speaker 4 (51:34):
Well, Lukesler, thanks so much for joining me. Good and
Goodie of course, thank you so much. This was great.

Speaker 1 (51:41):
Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (51:46):
Next week on Off the Cup, I talked to Mark
duplas star of the Morning show.

Speaker 7 (51:51):
I had sort of promised myself and a bunch of
people like, you know what, my days of doing long
term acting TV gigs where I'm not the boss, I
think those are numbered, you know. But what I hadn't
accounted for is the size of my own ego.

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Off the Cup is a production of iHeart Podcasts as
part of the Reasoned Choice Network. I'm your host Si
Cupp editing and sound designed by Derek Clements. Our executive
producers are me, Sie Cup, Lauren Hanson, and Lindsay Hoffman.

Speaker 4 (52:18):
If you like Off the Cup, please rate

Speaker 3 (52:20):
And review wherever you get your podcasts, follow or subscribe
for new episodes every Wednesday.