Invisible Storm with Jason Kander

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Invisible Storm with Jason Kander

  • Outside Politics: Summer Reading

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UPCOMING EXCITING PROJECTS AT PANTSUIT POLITICS

EPISODE RESOURCES

Jason Kander

Summer Reading

TRANSCRIPT

Jason Kander [00:00:00] The thing is, what we think we're doing is we think we're gaining perspective, but we're not. What we're doing is we're trying to rank our trauma out of existence and it doesn't work. And so for me, when I came home, I'd been trained that everybody had it worse. So when I am having violent nightmares and I'm hyper vigilant, I think I'm in danger all the time. I think my family's in danger. I'm struggling with anger and self-loathing and eventually depression and then eventually suicidal ideation, all this stuff. I'm having this happen and I'm going, no, I have it on good authority that what I did was no big deal. So this can't be PTSD.  

Sarah [00:00:43] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:45] And this is Beth Silvers.  

Sarah [00:00:46] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

Beth [00:01:03] Hello, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us for a new episode of Pantsuit Politics, a very special episode of Pantsuit Politics, as we are thinking about what 4th of July means for our country and how we want to observe it. We are delighted to welcome back one of our Pantsuit Politics favorite guests, Jason Kander. Jason Kander, as you probably know, is a former Army captain who also served as Missouri's Secretary of State and in the Missouri House of Representatives. He is currently the president of the National Expansion Veterans Community Project and the host of Majority 54 Podcast. He's here with us today because he has a new book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD, which he discussed with Sarah. And we are so thrilled to share this interview with you.  

Sarah [00:02:01] Jason Kander, welcome to Pantsuit Politics.  

Jason Kander [00:02:03] Thanks for having me back.  

Sarah [00:02:04] You're here today because you have a new book, Invisible Storm: A Soldier's Memoir of Politics and PTSD. Thank you for coming on our show.  

Jason Kander [00:02:12] Always, always, pleased to be back with you. Thanks for letting me come on and talk about the book.  

Sarah [00:02:16] As I was writing your intro, I was reminded that at our last live event, one of our listeners husband introduced himself to me as a recovering politician. And as a recovering politician myself, it really hit and I thought, I bet Jason would like that too. Yeah. I'd say that's a great introduction.  

Jason Kander [00:02:34] Yeah. I was a recovering lawyer, now I'm a recovering politician. I guess I'm mostly just recovering. I should just introduce myself as, I am Jason; I'm recovering.  

Sarah [00:02:43] I love that. I'm recovering. That's how we should all introduce ourselves.  

Jason Kander [00:02:46] For real.  

Sarah [00:02:48] I loved your book. I knew your story of joining up after September 11th. And I as I was reading the particulars of you joining them and being in the Army, I realized, like, I think I get why people join to a certain extent. I've never been tempted to join the military, but I get the instinct to join, especially after 9/11. What I think you put such amazing words to is the appeal once you're in. The appeal of the purpose, the structure. It helped me understand why people are in the military, why people join the military better than almost anything I've ever read before.  

Jason Kander [00:03:27] Oh, thanks. Yeah, that was important to me for a couple of reasons. One, I know that there's a demographic out there that will read a combat memoir, but I didn't want to write one. And I knew there is. Like, those are all over my dad's shelf. I'm 41, so in ten years they will be all over my shelf. I get what that is.   

Sarah [00:03:52] I am not that person. So that's how you got to me.  

Jason Kander [00:03:54]  Exactly. I wanted to write a book that could help everybody with their mental health. It just was that the source of my trauma was being in a war. So I needed to spend a chapter on joining the military, and I needed to spend a chapter on being in Afghanistan. But after that, I wanted the whole book really to be about dealing with this stuff, with the psychological disorder. The coming of age tale of having a psychological disorder that's untreated and undiagnosed where you pursue the presidency. Just your standard old trope. But what what I felt I needed to do in order to reach out to that larger demographic is I needed to explain why I loved this so much in a way that everybody could connect with so that it wasn't like I don't get it. And I felt that I did that. But the other thing that I thought was really important to explain as part of my story was why, in addition to the trauma of Afghanistan, why actually leaving the military in and of itself was traumatic for me and so many other vets. And the only way to do that was to communicate how much I loved it and to help the reader understand how I could. And so to your point, when you're in the Army, particularly at a time like the years after 9/11, it's like every day you get up, you know what your mission is, you know who your boss is, you know what your job is today, you know what you're going to wear. And you know that you and everybody you work with and everybody you've become very close to because you're basically living together that you have a similar set of values, which is to say you value the same stuff. And so when that's disrupted and it ends, it's really disorienting.  

Sarah [00:05:37] Yeah, it's almost that state of flow. You can find it in the campaign too, where you get to the end of the day and you're like, I did it. I did the things I was supposed to do. I knew what I was supposed to do. I was reaching this goal. It is intoxicating in a way.  

Jason Kander [00:05:53] Yeah. You know what it is? It is the that magical feeling of feeling valuable. Feeling like you are either mostly or fully utilized. I say mostly because it's usually mostly. When you're in a combat zone you feel fully utilized often, which is to say you're drawing on everything you have. You  feel you've been of value to others at the end of the day.  And it's easy to get used to that feeling. And then when you don't have it anymore, boy, you really notice that it's not there.  

Sarah [00:06:25] Well, I want to get to that process of leaving the military and the trauma you experienced in the combat zone and what you were running away from. But before we get to that, I want to talk about how you ran right into campaigns. I did a small campaign. I just ran for city commission. But it makes so much sense to me that that's exactly where you ran to, because in much the same way like you talk about the military, there's this mix of like-- especially as I was reading your book, I thought about that first campaign and my first campaign where you were just knocking on doors. And what I always tell people is. Think about it, it's the building blocks of feeling great because you're outside, you're moving your body, you're talking to people. Like, those are like the three foundations of feeling great. And you have this mission and you're checking things off every day. And I think like it doesn't surprise me at all that that's where you found yourself, because it really does click a lot of those boxes.  

Jason Kander [00:07:23] Yeah. There's no question that it energized me. Every door that said, yeah, I'll vote for you. I mean, everybody who was like, you can put a sign in my yard.  

Sarah [00:07:36] Oh, my god! A sign. A sign was the ultimate.  

Jason Kander [00:07:38] Yes. It's a little endorphin hit, right? And I needed that because I came home, I didn't understand that I had PTSD. In fact, I was working all the time for 10 years to convince myself that I didn't have it. But where I eventually got to where it got really bad, was I was just basically going from one giant endorphin hit like speech to a huge audience to another. But it started with I'm just going to know that, okay, I hit four blocks today. I got 100 houses today.  I got 13 signs today.  Whatever it is, these little metrics that would allow me to say to myself, you know, I'm not irredeemable. And what was layered on top of all this is I just left a place where when I left, there were people there I cared about who are still there. And I was not reconciling these feelings of, I'm glad to be home, I'm grateful to be safe and to have not been physically wounded. But I'm also aware that these people are still there or that people I trained with are about to go there and I'm here. How is that possible? How is that okay? What does that say about me? So it became a search for redemption. And it was twofold. It was if I do something huge and great, then maybe I'll redeem myself and not feel unworthy. But it was also if I keep getting these accomplishments, maybe I'll convince myself that I'm all right.  

Sarah [00:09:07] Well, and you really do a good job of taking us on that journey. Because what I was going to ask you-- I was about to the the next to the last chapter and I'm thinking, well, I'm going to ask him because it felt like, as you're going along this journey that you didn't have a traumatic childhood. You talk lovingly about your family. And I'm like, who put-- I mean, it feels like the army is who told you these messages of stripping you down, you're only as good as the person-- and then you tackle that. I was like, okay, he was anticipating my question because you get to that at the end. Like, I understand the process that the Army has to put you through to like make you a cohesive unit and strip you down and tell you you're no better than anybody else. But the problem is, when you come out of these missions and you go home, there's no building back up and telling you what you did was great. I mean, I thought you did a brilliant job of keeping us in your head of like, I was just there four months. You kind of had me convinced at the end, like, yeah, what was the big deal? You were there for four months. And then you're like, oh, by the way, they stopped asking people to do what I did because it was so ridiculous by the end of the mission in Afghanistan. And so I thought, yeah, they kind of tear you down. I mean, I don't think I'm being unfair. I feel like that's how most people describe the process and then they don't build you back up.  

Jason Kander [00:10:34] Exactly. I refer to it as a necessary brainwashing. And not not unnecessary-- a necessary brainwashing. And the reason I say it's necessary is because, like in my job, for those listening  who probably don't know, I was an intelligence officer whose job it was to go and investigate corruption and espionage within the Afghan government, which basically means I had to go repeatedly into meetings, just me and my translator often with no back up. Nobody knew where we were and we really couldn't know the allegiances of the people we were meeting with. And they were much more heavily armed than we were. So it was a constant threat of kidnaping and that kind of thing. And in order for me to be able to do that more than once, I have to really believe this isn't that big a deal. Like, this isn't combat. Nobody blew me up today, so this is no big deal. And it helped that in my case there were two guys on my camp who were doing a very similar job, Todd and Kevin, who I talk about in the book. And so to me, I'm like, well, this is normal, Todd and Kevin are doing this, right? But the Army, the moment you get off the bus at basic, the army starts grounding into you the idea that somebody has it much worse. And the thing is, that is necessary because otherwise you can't do the job. So, yeah, to your point, the problem is that when you leave nobody sits you down and goes, okay, you should know. 

Sarah [00:12:03] By the way...  

Jason Kander [00:12:04] Yeah, you should know. That was kind of a big deal. And actually that's pretty bad. You're going to probably have to deal with this now.  

Sarah [00:12:12] Yeah. You're going to watch doors for the next 15 years everytime for the rest of your life. 

Jason Kander [00:12:15] Exactly. Yeah.  

Sarah [00:12:16] Right. I think that you do such a good job of using the voice of the PTSD to convince us like it wasn't a big deal. I really by the end of the book was like, Jason, you said it and told us 500 times you're only there for four months. And then you spend this time saying like, oh, no, it was a big deal. And, look, I think the reason to your point at the beginning, this is applicable to anyone on a mental health road or dealing with those challenges, is we all do that. We all say somebody has it worse, right? We all do that. I mean, that's probably why the training in the army sort of catches fire in such a way because I think we train ourselves to do that, to always look around and say, like, so-and-so has it worse. At least I'm not in a coma. Listen, believe me when I say I don't quote Dr. Phil a lot, almost ever. But one time I heard him say, "If you were in a hospital bed and your leg is broken and the person next to you is in a coma, it doesn't make your leg not broken.".  

Jason Kander [00:13:12] That's pretty good. I like it.  

Sarah [00:13:13] And I was like, Dr. Phil is right this time. This time he's right.  And I have never forgotten that because everybody does that.  

Jason Kander [00:13:20] Well, and the thing is, what we think we're doing is we think we're gaining perspective, but  we're not. What we're doing is we're trying to rank our trauma out of existence, and it doesn't work. And so for me, when I came home, I'd been trained that everybody had it worse. So when I am having violent nightmares and I'm hyper vigilant, I think I'm in danger all the time, I think my family's in danger. I'm struggling with anger and self-loathing and eventually depression and then eventually suicidal ideation, all this stuff. I'm having this happen and I'm going, no, I have it on good authority that what I did was no big deal. So this can't be PTSD. And so it took a clinical social worker at the VA to look at me and say, "Okay, so let me get this straight. You went to the most dangerous place on the planet and you went out basically by yourself for hours at a time, as vulnerable as you could possibly be with people who might want to kill you and you couldn't know. And if something went bad, no one was coming to save you?" I'm like, yeah. And she goes, "Yeah, that's combat. Like, how do you not see?"  

[00:14:25] And so it took that. And then being actually diagnosed with PTSD, it took those things for me to understand that I was in combat veteran and that my experience was valid. And I appreciate what you said about the way I wrote the book. I did it very purposefully. And it was a writing challenge to make sure that as I tell the story, I am not utilizing any language that is available to me now because I went to therapy. At the moment that you are in the story as the reader, the only way I allowed myself to explain it to you at that given moment was the terminology and the understanding that I had at that time. And then gradually, as the story goes on and more language and more understanding is available to me, I'm able to reveal more. My great uncle read it and gave me one of my favorite pieces of feedback. He was like, It's a mystery novel. He said that where the third act, all these twists are revealed and you start to see the first and second act differently.  

Sarah [00:15:23] All these pieces fall into place. Absolutley. 

Jason Kander [00:15:25]  Yeah. 

Sarah [00:15:26]  Absolutely. I think that by the end you can see again how this journey you took as a politician really fed all those voices. Because, again, if you're out there knocking on doors or you're in policy meetings and you're talking about all the problems in America, well that's, again, feeding your idea that people have it worse. There's so much more important things I can be working on than my mental health. Because and here's the part I just have to adore Jason, when you sit down with Barack Obama and he says, "But, Jason, you have what I had. You're the natural." I mean, I can imagine why you would be distracted.  

Jason Kander [00:16:04]  Yeah.  

Sarah [00:16:05] And be tempted to follow this path all the way to almost the presidency with sitting with Barack Obama telling you you're the natural. I mean, but that journey feeds all those different narratives along the way.  

Jason Kander [00:16:19] Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing where you're having moments like that in your life and you're going, what the hell is my deal? Why do I still feel bad? And after a while, I mean, I struggled with this for 11 years before I figured out what it was and before I would talk to anybody about it other than my wife. And so the whole time I'm telling myself the story of how ungrateful am I? Like, what's wrong with me? And after 11 years of that, you forget that you weren't like that before you deployed. And so as a result, you just think, I guess this is what I'm like now, and I guess this is who I am. And not everybody gets to be happy, so I'm just going to serve my purpose.  I wrote the book because I mean, honestly, because if this book had existed 14 years ago, I think I'd read it and I'd have got help then and and started dealt with it. And so and it doesn't exist if I don't write it. So that's why I wanted to do it.  

Sarah [00:17:36] Wow. Well, I'm so glad you bring up Diana, because I love that her voice is interspersed throughout the book. In fact, I almost messaged our scheduler and be like, wait, is she going to be on the call too? She half wrote the book too.  

Jason Kander [00:17:48] I want to do more of these with her. I think it would be important.  

Sarah [00:17:51] Yeah. It was incredible to read her story and to see, of course, you brought the thread home, basically. And she adapted and adopted all those different techniques until she had PTSD, too. I mean, 11 years is a long time to be the only person someone is leaning on with this mental health challenge. 

Jason Kander [00:18:12] Yeah. The way she puts it was like, I'd wake up in the middle of the night with these night terrors and then I wanted to talk about it. And so she said, "You're half awake and it's horrible story time." And and so it just kind of seeps into you. Now I like to joke like that I'm just such a giving husband. I mean, I've given her PTSD. There is a couple of reasons I wanted her in there. And obviously we did it a lot differently than any memoir I've ever read. Like, she comes in every chapter for a few paragraphs with her first person perspective where she just writes a passage about what it was like for her at that time and what she was observing with me. And part of that was I want a lot of people to read this because I think it's going to help a lot of people. But some of the people who read it won't be people who struggle with their own mental health challenges, but they probably are going to be somebody who loves someone who does. And I wanted them to have a narrator that they could relate to. And part of that is I also want people to know about secondary PTSD, because we didn't even know about it till I started therapy. And thank God my therapist, Nick, told us about it.  

[00:19:25] But then the other reason was, as you go through there, like, you have to have another voice to tell you about what it is that they're seeing from me. Like, when I recorded the audiobook, Diana did her stuff on the last day and I did like four days of just me. And so then I had the book without her reflections in it. It's very hard to relate to this person when you're getting no perspective from anybody else who's been observing it. And all you're hearing is the version of this from the guy who has PTSD. Finally, I just want her in there because nobody goes through this kind of stuff by themselves and certainly nobody survives this by themselves. And so I wanted people to see that really it's a love story. I mean, that's really what the book is more than anything else. It's a memoir and it's about mental health. And it's a little bit about the military and it's a little bit about politics. But what it really is, is it's just a love story. It's about a marriage surviving this disorder.  

Sarah [00:20:31] Well, I do want to get to the politics part.  

Jason Kander [00:20:33] Sure.  

Sarah [00:20:35] Now, you and I are the same age. I didn't realize you're a 1981 baby, too. It's a very strong year. We share that year with Beyonce. It's a very good year.  

Jason Kander [00:20:41] Oh, I didn't know that.   

Sarah [00:20:44] Oh, my gosh! Beyonce. Britney Spears. Justin Timberlake. Meghan Markle. Brandi Carlile. I can go on and on, Jason.  

Jason Kander [00:20:49] I love that you've researched. Brandi Carlile. 

Sarah [00:20:50]  And 1981 is a very good year. And I'm adding you to the list now. Right? That's a good one innit? Yeah.  

Jason Kander [00:20:54] Oh, man. I really thought I was younger than her. Okay. I've been to multiple Brandi Carlile shows. But, anyway...  

Sarah [00:21:03] But be proud. That's awesome that we share that. 

Jason Kander [00:21:05] Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.  

Sarah [00:21:07] It's a very good year. So I'll add you to my list when I reel off my 1981 babies. When did you run for your very first race?  

Jason Kander [00:21:17] 2008.  

Sarah [00:21:19] So you were a little in front of me and you took off like a rocket ship. I really remember vividly the first time I saw that commercial where you took-- or did you put the gun back together blindfolded?  

Jason Kander [00:21:31] Yeah, where I assembled it and then talked about why I was for gun control. Yeah, that was 2016.   

Sarah [00:21:38] That's when I was running in 2016. Still to this day,  I remember this. So no one knocked on my door and set me on this rocket ship even though we are the same age. It's okay. I'm not better. No, I'm just kidding. But the reason I bring that up is because, look, I wasn't struggling with PTSD. I had PTSD from a school shooting at my school when I was a junior in high school and had sort of a very similar journey. Like, I wasn't shot, I wasn't injured, why am I'm upset? Until I had a therapist say like, you have PTSD. That's not a normal introduction to death at 17 years old.  And I got it treated really early, thank God. But I'm reading this and I'm reading you're side by side political journey and, like I said, I understand why it fed some of that need from the PTSD. But the truth is, even if you're not having a mental health challenge, it's a shitty gig to sit in a room and call people constantly and be gone from your family all the time. And now even more than the last time you were out to run, people are mean. They're just mean.  

[00:22:43] Even from when I ran from 2016 to 2018, people would put my signs in their yard with a red circle and a slash through them in a city commission race. Like, in a city commission race, you know. I think at the end when you talk about the Army's process and then you're talking about, well, this is the question everybody asks me. Will I run again. I thought,  also there's another process that needs to be worked on here. And it's running for office, especially higher office. Like, there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way to elect people and have campaigns without asking someone to sacrifice everything. I mean, even to Barack Obama, he's written about the strain on his family and his mental health. And it's just like, why do we ask people to do this? Because they want to serve.  

Jason Kander [00:23:29] And on top of that one of the things I tried to illuminate a little in the book, is that it'd be one thing if all of that was for the purpose of giving us better government. But noneof it gives us-- I mean, it all makes it worse, right? So the process of sitting in the courtroom making calls for eight to 10 hours a day and then doing it again the next day and not having time to take care of yourself, all that stuff. What I compared it to was if it'd be like basic training was just nine weeks of standing at attention. Like at the end of that nine weeks, you would have definitely proved how badly you want to be a soldier, but you'd be useless in a fight.  

Sarah [00:24:15] Right. Right.  

Jason Kander [00:24:17] So what are we doing? Where we're requiring politicians of both parties to spend 96% of their time talking to people for whom America has worked out extremely well. Like, we're not preparing them to do a good job for the rest of us.  

Sarah [00:24:36] Yeah. And I just think, why would we ask somebody to do this? And if you're in a really good place mentally, like, why would you want to? That's the thing. I was like, aren't we creating a process that almost plays to people's weaknesses that calls people who have something to prove often for, like, either dangerous or harmful reasons?  I was struck even-- not that Barack Obama is like the third guest in this interview. Even in his memoir where he talks about like, am I an ego maniac? Why do I want to do this? He says it in his book. Like, I'm wondering what's wrong with me that I keep doing this to myself.  

Jason Kander [00:25:13] Yeah. And I remember just moments in my life politically where I had these two thoughts. One was like, what the hell am I doing? Why am I doing this? But then the answer was like, I don't have a choice, right? Because I just didn't for a whole mix of reasons. But then the other thing I remember always thinking about was how envious I was of the people who didn't need to do it. And that's a big part of my journey in the book.  I've done a few of these interviews. Here's a story I haven't told that I think will help people see why the book is a little different. There's a point at which I'm sitting there and before I've sat down with President Obama. But I'm sitting down with a couple of people who have just done an event for Let America Vote, my organization, and we're having dinner in L.A. and it's Bradley Whitford and Janelle Maloney. So anybody who's a fan of The West Wing will recognize that is Josh Lyman and Donna Moss  right? Two of the main characters in the West Wing. I didn't know Janelle really before, but Brad and I have been friends. But we get into this conversation where Eli Attie, who's one of the writers from the show and they had all been at this event, says, "We need to run in 2020 as a young Midwestern vet has proven he can win over people who voted for Trump." And I'm like, haha.  

[00:26:41] And the next thing I know, Brad and Janelle are like, no, you need to run. And so I'm sitting there and me, the kid who has watched the entire series several times, Josh Lyman and Donna Moss are like, you need to run for president. So it was this completely surreal moment and it should have been this altogether really exciting thing. But I just felt terrible about it because how much I was enjoying it. And I stepped out and I was going to call my wife and I just felt awful. And I remember thinking about how badly what I wanted was really to be somebody who would coach their son's Little League team and drive a pickup truck and have a job that just felt meaningful all the time and didn't constantly feel they needed to prove themselves. But I realized that's not what I wanted, it's what I wanted to want. I knew that I was never going to make those things happen. And so one of the most important things for me in therapy was getting to a place where I could be happy without external validation. And that's where I got to. And not to spoil the end of the book, but I'm looking out the window right now at my pickup truck which is full of baseball equipment.  

Sarah [00:27:51] I  know as we said do hope you got that pickup truck.  

Jason Kander [00:27:53] Yeah. Yeah. Because I coached Drew's Little League team and I do a job at Veterans Community Project that I love and I find meaningful and I'm getting to enjoy my life and actually participate in it now. The book is really about how I got there.  

Sarah [00:28:09] That's so real.  

Jason Kander [00:28:11] I keep unabashedly pushing the book and I don't feel bad about it, because I should say that all of my royalties go to fight veteran suicide and veteran homelessness, and veterans community project which helps me unabashedly and unapologetically push the book.  

Sarah [00:28:23] That's awesome. I love that. Yeah. We have also been unabashedly and unapologetically pushing a book that's not going to a chartiy, so thanks for making me feel bad, Jason. No, I mean, I think you're right. I think that that's the hard part. And I think, look, that's true. Parts of your journey in the military. That's definitely true of my experience in politics. It's true of parenting to a certain extent. It's like the highs are high and the lows are low. And so those places where it's like that can be enormously validating. They can be enormously unhealthy and codependent. Like, that's the knife's edge you're always walking in situations of sort of high stress and high reward like that.  

Jason Kander [00:29:09]  Yeah, absolutely.  

Sarah [00:29:12] I think that's just the hard part. Well, thank you so much for writing this book. I think it's going to be so helpful to so many people. The other moment with you that I will never forget is when you came on the podcast the first time and you talked about post-traumatic growth. It was the first time I'd ever heard that phrase, it's when you shared it in our interview. And I'm so glad now that you've written this book for people to really show both sides of it. I don't think you skip to the post-traumatic growth and under any scenario. And I think you have to illustrate the journey that you go on to get there and that you now you're there, you have the pickup truck. I'm assuming it's all not green grass and roses though, this is an ongoing journey.  

Jason Kander [00:29:52] Yeah, for sure. I mean, yes, it is an ongoing journey for sure.  

Sarah [00:29:58] You mean post-traumatic growth is not something you just check off a to do list?  

Jason Kander [00:30:01] Yeah. No, it's not. It's not like an IV drip, unfortunately. But, yeah, I think it's really important. I know it's really important because I needed it and it wasn't there for there to be examples out there that people can look to of people who have gotten treatment for PTSD and gone on with their lives and been able to do what they want to do versus what we usually see. Which is the like the oftentimes combat veteran-- not always, because there's a lot of different ways people get PTSD. But when it's depicted, it's generally a combat veteran who's abusing alcohol and abusing their spouse and robbing a bank. And I refer to that as PTSD porn. I mean, it's just like voyeurism.  And it leaves people thinking that's what PTSD is. And if you believe that that's what PTSD is and you think that PTSD is always going to lead to suicide and it's always going to lead you losing your job, well then you believe what I believed for many years, which is that PTSD is a terminal diagnosis from a life and career perspective. And as long as people believe that, they're not going to go get help. And so I just felt like, well, now what I can do, my public service can be the guy who people can say, well, he got help and he's better. So I guess that's the path.  

Sarah [00:31:23] Do you feel like that's getting better inside the veterans community, inside organizations, that the narrative is improving?  

Jason Kander [00:31:30] I think I think we're halfway there, which is to say that we've done a very good job in the veterans community of convincing people that-- can you hear my dog snoring behind me, by the way?  

Sarah [00:31:41] My dog always snores. And, man, she's not in here right now, but she always snores. I'm always asking Beth, "Can you hear Kiki's snoring?"  

Jason Kander [00:31:48] Anyway, I think we've gotten halfway there, which is to say we've done a good job of having a solid refrain for years that says it is not a sign of weakness to get help. It's a sign of strength. And I think most vets hear that now. And where we got to go now is we got to convince folks, oh, by the way, getting help actually works. It actually helps. Because that's the second half of that, it's until people believe that they're just not going to go do it.  

Sarah [00:32:14] Well, again, thank you for doing your part and sharing your story and showing people that there is a path forward and there is a path where you get help and. You start to want to want the pickup truck and the coaching of the Little League. And thank you for coming in Pantsuit Politics again.  

Jason Kander [00:32:34] Thanks for having me.  

Beth [00:32:45] Thank you so much to Jason Kander for being here. Sarah, thank you for that fantastic conversation with him.  

Sarah [00:32:51] I love him. I just feel such camaraderie with him as like a Millennial who ran for office and then was like, oh, this is-- I don't know. I mean, I didn't have Barack Obama tell me I was a natural. So small differences in our experiences. But I feel a large amount of camaraderie with him and I think he's fantastic and I just love any chance to get to talk to him.  

Beth [00:33:12] Outside of politics today, we are entering our July break. What are your reading plans, Sarah? I know you to be a person who, if you come to my house for a few days, has about seven books in tow. So I'm very interested to hear your strategy for international travel and reading.  

Sarah [00:33:26] Yeah, I did. I was very proud of myself because I did bring like five books to your house, but I finished two of them and an audio book. So I've been really flying through some books as I did not read almost at all in April and May because they were really tough months for us as a family between the diabetes diagnosis and and the COVID. And so I'm back on that regimen of a lot of intense reading, and I love it. It makes me feel so good. It's such a break from the intense environment that is my head. And so, yeah, I actually prioritized a couple. I'm really trying to get through a bookshelf of books I've order to read and haven't read. And so I was like, okay, I'll read the biggest, heaviest ones at Best House while I'm driving around in June and I've done that. So I have a couple smaller ones, like actual paperback novels I might take with me. But for international travel, it's just the Kindle. It's just got to be the Kindle. It's so easy to have it and pull up books and you don't have to worry about like, what if I get through this one? Because you can always just get another one. So a lot of books on the Kindle will be my July plan.  

[00:34:34] And I think I've Laura Tremain has finally convinced me and I'm going to read some Stephen King. I've never read any Stephen King. She did a whole episode I listen to. She really believes in him as a storyteller. And it is shocking to like really sit back and think about how many of our  most famous stories were written by him. And so I think I'm going to read Carrie over the summer. That's the book she recommends to read first. I'm going to read Carrie, but I do really want to read some of his bigger book. I don't know if I'll get to those the summer, because I do want to get through this bookshelf, which I've made a really, really, nice dent in. But that's my my loose summer reading plan.  

Beth [00:35:10] Well, I do not read at your pace, and I have not read much at all lately because the Supreme Court has been so verbose. I would like it if they're going to just do what they want anyway, to just say that like one page we just decided because we want to at the end. But anyway, I am looking forward to reading other things in July, so I have four books I would like to read in July.  I'm about halfway through This Will Not Pass, which I've had to take slowly because there's just a lot to absorb there.  

Sarah [00:35:37]  I feel like about every three days we get like, I'm reading This Will Not Pass. and I'm like, is it going to pass?  

Beth [00:35:42] No, it will not. That's the whole idea. But I have had to take it slowly because it's intense and aggravating. It's not a hard read, it's an easy read. But just if you think about what it means, it's a lot. So I want to finish that. I want to read Tim Miller's Why We Did It. I do one on my Kindle now. And then I want to read two books that are not about politics. I want to read People we Meet on Vacation from Emily Henry. I loved Beach Read, so I heard that this book is delightful and I would like to get through it. And then I want to read something from Anne Lamott. I may go back and read Help, Thanks, Wow again because it's so quick, but I just find that when things are hard, I really value her perspective and the way that she writes. So I'm going to read something from her in July as well.  

Sarah [00:36:26] It's funny that you say that because in Laura's book and then another book I was reading or maybe something-- oh, it was Austin Kleon's newsletter. It was like in one day and Lamott's Traveling Mercies was mentioned in my like something I was reading or taking in like three times. And I was like, okay, the Holy Spirit would like me to read this book, so I'm going to try to read that over July. It was listed as like a really good book for like being a mother and a creative. And I was like, okay, I'm interested in that. So I'm going to try to read that this summer as well.  

Beth [00:37:02] The day or the day after the Roe decision, I found myself just going to her Facebook feed thinking, what has she said about this? And I was not disappointed. There was a long thing from her and I feel like she is so good at saying, "Boy, life can be terrible and wonderful at the same time. And that is just the condition of humanity."  So I need a big dose of Anne Lamott in my July. We're looking forward to hearing about what you're all reading. We hope that you have a wonderful time this summer and that whatever life has for you, you get in at least one book that really nourishes you. We'll be back with you on Friday to talk a little bit about what's going on the coasts of the United States. And until then, have the best week available to you.  

[00:37:54] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.  

Sarah [00:37:59] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.  

Beth [00:38:05] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers.  

Executive Producers (Read their own names) [00:38:09] Martha Bronitsky. Linda Daniel. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zugenalis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs.  

[00:38:27] The Kriebs. Laurie LaDow. Lilly McClure. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tawni Peterson. Tracy Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Katherine Vollmer. Amy Whited.  

Beth [00:38:45] Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Ashley Thompson. Michelle Wood. Joshua Allen. Morgan McHugh. Nicole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller.  

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