Host Erik Fleming interviews Dr. Ellen Bassuk, her son Daniel Schoonover, and author Susanne Antonetta about two powerful books exploring mental health, care systems, and psychiatry's troubled history. Between Two Worlds recounts a mother and son's struggle for compassionate treatment and recovery, while The Devil's Castle traces Nazi-era eugenics and its echoes in modern psychiatry.
The episode blends personal testimony, professional insight, and historical research to highlight systemic failures, stigma, and hopeful paths forward through advocacy, peer support, and humane, holistic care.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:06 Welcome. I'm Erik Fleming, host of A Moment with Erik Fleming, the podcast of our time.
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00:02:00 --> 00:02:05 Hello. Welcome to another moment with Erik Fleming. I am your host, Erik Fleming.
00:02:06 --> 00:02:11 So today, we're going to be talking a lot about psychiatry.
00:02:12 --> 00:02:17 As a matter of fact, I think the working title is going to be Tales of Psychiatry
00:02:17 --> 00:02:22 because we have two books that we're going to highlight.
00:02:22 --> 00:02:25 One was written by a mother and son team
00:02:25 --> 00:02:29 that deals with a
00:02:29 --> 00:02:38 mother who was in the profession of psychology dealing with a child who was
00:02:38 --> 00:02:46 diagnosed with a mental illness and the journey that they had together in dealing with that.
00:02:46 --> 00:02:53 You know, school and, you know, healthcare professionals, the whole nine yards, right?
00:02:53 --> 00:03:01 And then I have another young lady who has written a book about connecting the dots, right?
00:03:01 --> 00:03:11 And her focus was on what happened during World War II or even prior to World
00:03:11 --> 00:03:17 War II and how people that we—well,
00:03:17 --> 00:03:25 I say people, I should say that we, I say people in the psychology field or psychiatry field even—.
00:03:28 --> 00:03:33 These are people that are held in high esteem, but maybe they shouldn't be because
00:03:33 --> 00:03:40 a lot of the stuff that they did led to what we now know as the Holocaust, right?
00:03:41 --> 00:03:45 A lot of the science that they did, a lot of the beliefs that they had.
00:03:45 --> 00:03:51 And she goes deep into that as well as, you know, gets personal with it because
00:03:51 --> 00:03:57 she's also neurodivergent. And I think that's the term that we should use.
00:03:58 --> 00:04:03 So it's going to be a really, really good show.
00:04:03 --> 00:04:10 It's real good discussions. People are being very open and also being very cerebral
00:04:10 --> 00:04:14 about the issues around mental health in America.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 So, again, I hope that piques your interest.
00:04:18 --> 00:04:23 It's an issue that I've dealt with personally.
00:04:24 --> 00:04:29 It's something that touches all
00:04:29 --> 00:04:32 of us Because we either are
00:04:32 --> 00:04:37 related to or know somebody That has gone through those challenges So I hope
00:04:37 --> 00:04:44 that this episode gives you some enlightenment But also gives you some hope
00:04:44 --> 00:04:49 Because that's what we try to do on this podcast Is continue to give people hope,
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 No matter how dark the times are.
00:04:54 --> 00:05:01 And if you support what this podcast is doing, please show it either through
00:05:01 --> 00:05:07 subscriptions or, you know, just continue to listen and spread the word.
00:05:07 --> 00:05:16 You can go to www.momenteric.com and find out anything and everything you want
00:05:16 --> 00:05:17 to know about the podcast.
00:05:17 --> 00:05:22 If you missed an episode and you want to go back, you can do it that way.
00:05:23 --> 00:05:29 Again, the subscription piece, you want to learn a little bit about me, you can do that as well.
00:05:30 --> 00:05:38 So I encourage y'all to do that, and I thank you all for your continued support by listening.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:43 I want to say this before I do my normal kickoff.
00:05:45 --> 00:05:51 The young lady, Grace G, that does the news segment, she just recently had a birthday.
00:05:51 --> 00:05:57 And I let it kind of slip because I could have said something in advance last
00:05:57 --> 00:06:01 week's episode, but I want to acknowledge the fact that she had a birthday.
00:06:02 --> 00:06:07 And from what I understand, she had a really, really good time celebrating it.
00:06:07 --> 00:06:14 And I just want to congratulate her on another year and continue to thank her
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 for her contributions to this podcast.
00:06:17 --> 00:06:24 She has really been a blessing, and I have words can't express the gratitude I have.
00:06:25 --> 00:06:32 So on that note, ladies and gentlemen, it's time to kick off another episode.
00:06:32 --> 00:06:37 And as always, we kick it off with a moment of news with Grace G.
00:06:44 --> 00:06:50 Thanks, Erik. Representative Eric Swalwell announced his resignation from Congress
00:06:50 --> 00:06:54 and the suspension of his California gubernatorial campaign amid a Manhattan
00:06:54 --> 00:06:59 District Attorney investigation into multiple allegations of sexual assault.
00:06:59 --> 00:07:04 Representative Tony Gonzalez of Texas announced his retirement from Congress
00:07:04 --> 00:07:10 following his admission of an affair with a former staffer who tragically died by self-immolation.
00:07:10 --> 00:07:15 Progressive Democrat Annelia Mejia won a special election in northern New Jersey
00:07:15 --> 00:07:17 to fill a vacated House seat.
00:07:18 --> 00:07:23 Todd Lyons, the acting head of ICE, will leave the agency at the end of May.
00:07:23 --> 00:07:28 President Trump nominated Erica Schwartz, a former deputy surgeon general,
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 to serve as the next director of the CDC.
00:07:32 --> 00:07:36 Authorities confirmed that former Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin in Fairfax
00:07:36 --> 00:07:42 died in a murder-suicide after fatally shooting his wife, Serena Fairfax,
00:07:42 --> 00:07:43 at their Annandale home.
00:07:43 --> 00:07:49 In a historic political shift, Hungary's Viktor Orban was ousted after 16 years
00:07:49 --> 00:07:54 in power by Peter Majar's TISA party, which secured a supermajority.
00:07:55 --> 00:08:00 President Trump ordered a U.S. Navy blockade of the Strait of Hormuz to stop
00:08:00 --> 00:08:03 all maritime traffic to and from Iranian ports.
00:08:04 --> 00:08:06 A federal judge dismissed President
00:08:06 --> 00:08:10 Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. A U.S.
00:08:10 --> 00:08:15 Appeals court blocked a lower court's investigation into whether the Trump administration
00:08:15 --> 00:08:20 willfully ignored orders to halt deportation flights of Venezuelan immigrants.
00:08:20 --> 00:08:26 Former Vice President Kamala Harris confirmed she is weighing another presidential bid in 2028.
00:08:27 --> 00:08:31 The World Bank launched its Water Forward Initiative, which aims to provide
00:08:31 --> 00:08:38 secure water access to 1 billion people within four years across 14 water-stressed countries.
00:08:38 --> 00:08:45 And NASA's Artemis II mission successfully concluded as the Orion capsule splashed
00:08:45 --> 00:08:51 down in the Pacific, marking the first time humans returned from the moon in over half a century.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:57 I am Grace Gee, and this has been a Moment of News. Bye.
00:09:02 --> 00:09:08 All right. Thank you, Grace, for that moment of news. And now it is time for my guests, Dr.
00:09:09 --> 00:09:12 Ellen Bassuk and Daniel Schoonover.
00:09:13 --> 00:09:17 Ellen Bassuk, MD, is a psychiatrist, researcher, clinician,
00:09:18 --> 00:09:22 and advocate whose five-decade career has focused on mental health,
00:09:23 --> 00:09:27 homelessness, and vulnerable populations, especially families and children.
00:09:27 --> 00:09:32 She has served as associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
00:09:32 --> 00:09:35 for nearly 40 years, and is the
00:09:35 --> 00:09:40 founder of the National Center on Family Homelessness and C4 Innovations.
00:09:40 --> 00:09:44 The author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications,
00:09:44 --> 00:09:50 she is a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association,
00:09:51 --> 00:09:55 has received numerous honors, including an Honorary Doctorate from Northeastern
00:09:55 --> 00:09:58 University, the Blanche F.
00:09:58 --> 00:10:01 Idelson Award for the Promotion of Children's Mental Health,
00:10:02 --> 00:10:08 and the American Psychological Association Distinguished Contribution to Child Advocacy Award.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:10 She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
00:10:11 --> 00:10:16 Her son, Daniel Schoonover, is a devoted animal lover and volunteer committed
00:10:16 --> 00:10:20 to supporting overlooked creatures and communities.
00:10:20 --> 00:10:25 With hands-on experience in herpetology and marine life care,
00:10:26 --> 00:10:31 including work at the Woods Hole Science Aquarium and the MSPCA,
00:10:31 --> 00:10:34 he has spent much of his life nurturing the natural world.
00:10:34 --> 00:10:39 Currently studying at the Boston University Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation.
00:10:40 --> 00:10:44 Daniel is deepening his knowledge of spirituality, recovery,
00:10:44 --> 00:10:50 and wellness while continuing his exploration of herpetology.
00:10:50 --> 00:10:55 He also volunteers at a food bank, plays electric and acoustic guitar,
00:10:55 --> 00:10:57 and practices martial arts.
00:10:57 --> 00:11:04 Whether caring for animals or helping others, Daniel is dedicated to making a meaningful impact.
00:11:04 --> 00:11:08 Together, Ellen and Daniel wrote the book Between Two Worlds,
00:11:09 --> 00:11:14 a psychiatrist and her son's quest for compassionate mental health care.
00:11:14 --> 00:11:20 And we'll be talking about that book and their viewpoints on mental health in
00:11:20 --> 00:11:22 America during the interview.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:25 So, ladies and gentlemen, it
00:11:25 --> 00:11:32 is my distinct honor and privilege to have as guests on this podcast, Dr.
00:11:32 --> 00:11:35 Ellen Bassuk and Daniel Schoonover.
00:11:46 --> 00:11:55 All right. Dr. Ellen Bassuk and Daniel, I'm going to mess it up, Schoonover.
00:11:56 --> 00:11:59 Did I get it right? You got it right. Yay.
00:12:00 --> 00:12:04 Okay. How y'all doing? Y'all doing good? Yes. Doing great. Doing great.
00:12:05 --> 00:12:06 Well, I'm glad to have y'all on.
00:12:08 --> 00:12:14 I think y'all are going to be the first father, I mean father, mother, son,
00:12:15 --> 00:12:21 author combo that i've had on the show and y'all have written this book called between two worlds.
00:12:22 --> 00:12:30 And can i can i tell y'all something it was it was a book that you know i felt,
00:12:31 --> 00:12:38 some relief about it but i felt a little angry when i read it and about huh
00:12:38 --> 00:12:42 about what parts of Well.
00:12:43 --> 00:12:46 And we'll get into it, you know, as we get into the interview,
00:12:47 --> 00:12:56 but I kind of felt angry because of all the stuff that Daniel had to deal with, right?
00:12:56 --> 00:12:59 And and of course you being
00:12:59 --> 00:13:03 the mom you know and so
00:13:03 --> 00:13:06 i didn't i kind
00:13:06 --> 00:13:09 of thought you know okay yeah there's some
00:13:09 --> 00:13:13 you know there's going to be some adversity all
00:13:13 --> 00:13:16 that stuff but it was just kind of like when i was reading it i was
00:13:16 --> 00:13:24 like going i you know there was one particular part where I have to think back
00:13:24 --> 00:13:30 to when I was like in kindergarten and my mom had to show up at the school and
00:13:30 --> 00:13:34 get on a on a teacher and a principal. Right.
00:13:34 --> 00:13:41 And I just said, and the restraint that you had in certain situations was very admirable.
00:13:42 --> 00:13:47 But I don't know if I would have handled it as smooth, but we'll get into that
00:13:47 --> 00:13:52 because I don't want to belabor on my part.
00:13:52 --> 00:13:58 But I just thought I'd share that with you, that it was very compelling what you wrote.
00:13:59 --> 00:14:04 So normally what I do is that I start off with icebreakers.
00:14:04 --> 00:14:09 And so the first icebreaker, Dr. Ellen, what I want you, I want you to answer
00:14:09 --> 00:14:12 this quote or respond to this quote.
00:14:12 --> 00:14:17 We have a mental health system that is dominated by political and hidden forces
00:14:17 --> 00:14:22 that keep us stagnated and unable to see real lasting change.
00:14:23 --> 00:14:24 What does that quote mean to you?
00:14:25 --> 00:14:31 From my point of view, the mental health system reflecting some of the problems
00:14:31 --> 00:14:39 in the general health care system is in relative collapse and needs all kinds
00:14:39 --> 00:14:42 of sustenance at this point. And.
00:14:44 --> 00:14:50 It starts from the top down. There aren't enough practitioners.
00:14:50 --> 00:14:51 There aren't enough beds.
00:14:52 --> 00:14:56 There's not enough patient responsiveness.
00:14:57 --> 00:15:04 There's not enough money in the system in rural areas, underserved populations,
00:15:05 --> 00:15:09 vulnerable populations. The services are very sketchy.
00:15:09 --> 00:15:16 That's one part of it. The other part of it is that seriously mentally ill people,
00:15:16 --> 00:15:22 which generally refers to schizophrenia, bipolar, and serious depressions,
00:15:22 --> 00:15:28 have not been properly or adequately researched at this point.
00:15:29 --> 00:15:33 And we really don't know a lot about them.
00:15:33 --> 00:15:39 The DSM, you know, the dictionary that tells you the list, is really just a
00:15:39 --> 00:15:43 collection of symptoms. It doesn't tell you about course, outcome,
00:15:44 --> 00:15:46 treatment, most importantly, treatment.
00:15:47 --> 00:15:56 So there aren't markers for what you need to do to really manage and care for these illnesses.
00:15:57 --> 00:16:05 And what's happened is that there's been a lot more collaboration now with primary care.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:12 And they've become, to a large degree, without the seriously mentally ill,
00:16:12 --> 00:16:18 the primary caretakers for a lot of people with mental health issues.
00:16:18 --> 00:16:23 The system is shifting and it's not necessarily in a good way.
00:16:24 --> 00:16:29 So it's basically, to sum it up, it's a mess.
00:16:30 --> 00:16:35 All right, Daniel, I want you to do the honors of...
00:16:36 --> 00:16:41 Starting off this icebreaker. Now, either one of you can answer.
00:16:41 --> 00:16:43 It's what we call 20 questions.
00:16:43 --> 00:16:47 So either one of you can answer the question. But, Daniel, I want you to pick
00:16:47 --> 00:16:49 a number between 1 and 20.
00:16:50 --> 00:16:53 Between 1 and 20? Yeah, this is 13. Okay.
00:16:54 --> 00:17:04 All right. Y'all's question is, do you think there's such a thing as unbiased news or media and why?
00:17:04 --> 00:17:11 No no i don't believe there's unbiased news or media because this country is completely divided.
00:17:12 --> 00:17:18 And and it's it's it's it's not only is it well this country is like literally
00:17:18 --> 00:17:25 been completely divided and you know ever since it was a country and you know
00:17:25 --> 00:17:28 i seeing you know fox 25 but seeing CNN,
00:17:28 --> 00:17:34 yeah, they're both entirely different, an entirely different view,
00:17:34 --> 00:17:36 and they portray everything entirely differently.
00:17:37 --> 00:17:39 It's like brainwashing, even.
00:17:40 --> 00:17:45 Okay. Yeah. Well, go ahead, Doc, if you want to add to that.
00:17:45 --> 00:17:49 Oh, I think there is a huge amount of misinformation.
00:17:50 --> 00:17:56 You don't know what's true anymore, what's not true. And given the divisions,
00:17:56 --> 00:18:02 which have gotten more and more extreme and have excluded large groups of people,
00:18:03 --> 00:18:08 you can't depend on the news to tell you really what's going on.
00:18:09 --> 00:18:14 It sure does look bad, though, from all of you. Yeah, it's total.
00:18:15 --> 00:18:19 Say that again, Daniel? Total disinformation, and it's very confusing.
00:18:20 --> 00:18:24 And it's very frustrating these days not to be able to know exactly or at least
00:18:24 --> 00:18:27 pretty much what's going on. It's frustrating.
00:18:28 --> 00:18:36 Yeah, it's very frustrating. And, you know, I've asked this question to several guests before.
00:18:38 --> 00:18:40 And mostly everybody is, you know,
00:18:41 --> 00:18:45 they've kind of, they've all come to the same conclusion that you came to,
00:18:45 --> 00:18:48 Daniel, but you're the first one to actually say the word brainwashing,
00:18:48 --> 00:18:51 believe it or not, in all these interviews I've done,
00:18:52 --> 00:18:58 which, you know, it does seem like that to a degree, you know,
00:18:59 --> 00:19:03 and if you, but people get defensive when you say that.
00:19:03 --> 00:19:07 So but I'm glad that you said it out loud.
00:19:07 --> 00:19:10 So why did I guess?
00:19:11 --> 00:19:14 Dr. Ellen, this would be more towards you.
00:19:14 --> 00:19:19 Why did you decide to write between two worlds?
00:19:19 --> 00:19:26 And then, Daniel, your question would be, why did you decide to help your mom write this book?
00:19:29 --> 00:19:37 Well, it's one of the only books that I know of that tell the lifelong story
00:19:37 --> 00:19:45 of serious mental illness and the obstacles that are in the way of adequately
00:19:45 --> 00:19:48 treating it and the need,
00:19:48 --> 00:19:52 given the current system and our current state of knowledge.
00:19:53 --> 00:19:55 To get creative at a certain point.
00:19:56 --> 00:20:02 I mean, I was a company person at the beginning, you know, trained in,
00:20:02 --> 00:20:07 I was at Harvard, trained in classical dynamics,
00:20:08 --> 00:20:12 psychiatry, and it doesn't fit the bill for any of this.
00:20:12 --> 00:20:18 And so over time, you sort of have to figure out how to step away from the system
00:20:18 --> 00:20:24 and create something that is going to be meaningful and is going to work.
00:20:25 --> 00:20:30 And there are emerging models out there, particularly the recovery model,
00:20:30 --> 00:20:32 which doesn't mean cure.
00:20:33 --> 00:20:39 The recovery model is in some ways a partial takeoff from some of the AA stuff.
00:20:40 --> 00:20:45 But we eventually set up our own treatment team, right, Dan? Yes.
00:20:45 --> 00:20:52 And in fact, some of the caretakers on it are people with lived experience who
00:20:52 --> 00:20:56 have been there. They know what the system is like. They know what you're up against.
00:20:57 --> 00:21:02 And they treat the illness as just one part of the human experience.
00:21:02 --> 00:21:03 It's not the whole person.
00:21:04 --> 00:21:10 And what began to really make a difference was stepping away.
00:21:11 --> 00:21:18 But we traveled through it, unfortunately, and Danny suffered a lot. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:19 --> 00:21:25 Okay, so why did I choose to take part in writing this book and contribute my time and efforts?
00:21:26 --> 00:21:31 Well, I knew that if I contributed to this book, it was going to be totally
00:21:31 --> 00:21:33 relevant to my life anyway.
00:21:33 --> 00:21:37 That if it got published, it would be one of the greatest achievements of my life.
00:21:37 --> 00:21:41 And I wanted to address the fact that the system is broken.
00:21:41 --> 00:21:46 The mental health system and the educational system, it's totally broken these days.
00:21:48 --> 00:21:53 And I wanted to address that and I wanted to do it carefully,
00:21:54 --> 00:21:59 and I think it's been done in that manner and I'm really proud of myself for
00:21:59 --> 00:22:06 being a part of this I would not have refused if I went back in time and I got
00:22:06 --> 00:22:09 re-asked to be a part of the book I'd say yes,
00:22:09 --> 00:22:12 no regrets here Yeah, that's cool,
00:22:13 --> 00:22:17 Doc, how far along were you in your career when Daniel was born.
00:22:18 --> 00:22:23 Well, let's see, Daniel, is I was fairly far along.
00:22:24 --> 00:22:32 At that time, I had been on staff at one of the Harvard Teaching Hospitals and
00:22:32 --> 00:22:35 then went to the Bunting Institute at Radcliffe,
00:22:36 --> 00:22:42 which was a women's institute that's now called Radcliffe Advanced Studies.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:49 And it was at that point that Danny was born. And so I was a fellow at the time
00:22:49 --> 00:22:54 and already in the homeless world.
00:22:55 --> 00:23:02 Yeah. So how did Daniel's journey impact your life work? Did it good and bad?
00:23:04 --> 00:23:11 Yeah. So that's kind of like why I led into the interview kind of saying how
00:23:11 --> 00:23:15 the book made me feel because I kind of got good and bad out of it.
00:23:15 --> 00:23:18 So how did it impact you, good or bad?
00:23:19 --> 00:23:23 Well, it was hard going.
00:23:23 --> 00:23:30 Danny initially had a diagnosis of Tourette, which was very disruptive in the school system.
00:23:30 --> 00:23:32 They had no clue about how to handle it.
00:23:32 --> 00:23:38 We had consultants for it, and it made no difference because they don't have
00:23:38 --> 00:23:44 the training, the resources, the money for any vulnerable,
00:23:45 --> 00:23:48 disadvantaged groups, including people with no resources.
00:23:48 --> 00:23:53 They are very disadvantaged in these systems.
00:23:53 --> 00:23:58 And as we, let's see, where should I take this?
00:23:59 --> 00:24:04 Okay, I got lost here. Where might they get the funding from?
00:24:05 --> 00:24:12 They don't have that. Right, and particularly now with this administration of the DEI.
00:24:15 --> 00:24:19 That's ridiculous. It's just such a huge problem.
00:24:19 --> 00:24:25 And you can't use those words anymore, and you have to sort of skirt around it.
00:24:25 --> 00:24:33 But the system is a mess, And they don't fully take care of people.
00:24:33 --> 00:24:37 Well, yeah, you would want their training of these people to be a bit more rounded.
00:24:38 --> 00:24:46 Yeah, yeah. And, you know, as I went along, I moved further and further away
00:24:46 --> 00:24:48 from the traditional system. It wasn't working.
00:24:49 --> 00:24:55 Right. But I also got involved in the homeless world and with homeless families
00:24:55 --> 00:24:58 who were, at that point, not even on the map.
00:24:59 --> 00:25:05 I mean, this goes back to, I started with that in about 1990,
00:25:05 --> 00:25:11 so it's a long time ago, but it was right at the beginning of family homelessness,
00:25:11 --> 00:25:17 which is dominated by children below the age of six, many of whom have been traumatized.
00:25:18 --> 00:25:24 Everybody's poor, they don't have resources, and they need advocates,
00:25:24 --> 00:25:29 they need people who are going to speak for them, They need to be supported
00:25:29 --> 00:25:30 to speak for themselves,
00:25:30 --> 00:25:37 and there still needs to be changes in that part of the system.
00:25:39 --> 00:25:45 The percentage of severely mentally ill in the homeless population is mainly
00:25:45 --> 00:25:51 in the unsheltered groups and in the chronic groups, but they're not taken care of.
00:25:51 --> 00:25:56 And this society should be able to manage it.
00:25:56 --> 00:26:04 And I felt a certain amount of outrage about it all, and it affected me because it affected my kid.
00:26:04 --> 00:26:14 And all I could do was either argue with them, which never had any reasonable outcomes,
00:26:14 --> 00:26:22 so we didn't do that, But to sidestep them and to begin to create our own direction
00:26:22 --> 00:26:25 that I thought would have a chance.
00:26:25 --> 00:26:30 I've really supported Danny, and over time, it has.
00:26:31 --> 00:26:35 But it involved, and this is the direction some of it's going,
00:26:35 --> 00:26:39 it involved a lot of what they call peer workers,
00:26:39 --> 00:26:48 people who have been there, people who have had similar difficulties who understand.
00:26:48 --> 00:26:51 Right. And all this, and building up my treatment team, it helps me.
00:26:52 --> 00:26:55 But the question is, how do we help everyone else too?
00:26:56 --> 00:27:01 This book is set in that direction, helping everybody else too. Yeah.
00:27:02 --> 00:27:10 So, you know, I, my, my experience, even though I did teach for a minute,
00:27:11 --> 00:27:14 a lot of my life experience as far as work has been law enforcement.
00:27:15 --> 00:27:20 And I remember there was a situation where fellow deputy had brought somebody
00:27:20 --> 00:27:28 to the jail and, you know, they described this person as being combative and, you know.
00:27:29 --> 00:27:33 Being, you know, so they had like disturbing the peace charges, all that stuff.
00:27:34 --> 00:27:40 And, you know, when I was doing the intake for him, he had an outburst.
00:27:41 --> 00:27:46 And I just asked him, I said, do you have Tourette's?
00:27:47 --> 00:27:52 And he looked at me and his eyes got big and he said, yeah, I've been diagnosed with Tourette's.
00:27:52 --> 00:27:55 And I said, when was the last time you took your medication?
00:27:55 --> 00:27:58 He said, oh, probably been about a month.
00:27:59 --> 00:28:02 So I was, and I hadn't been trained
00:28:02 --> 00:28:06 in that, but I had been exposed to it because I'm a big baseball guy.
00:28:06 --> 00:28:12 And there was a guy that played baseball I liked named Jim Eisenreich, and he had Tourette's.
00:28:12 --> 00:28:17 And he made it to the major leagues. And so he would do things like when he
00:28:17 --> 00:28:22 would come up to bat and the announcer said that. And I was young at the time.
00:28:22 --> 00:28:28 And the announcer went into this whole thing about Tourette's. So I picked up on that.
00:28:28 --> 00:28:33 So, you know, the deputy didn't know that. And whoever filed a complaint against
00:28:33 --> 00:28:35 the man didn't know that, or else he wouldn't have been in the jail.
00:28:37 --> 00:28:45 So I related to that part when people could not relate to Daniel at the school,
00:28:45 --> 00:28:50 because it's not just, it's in society in general.
00:28:50 --> 00:28:53 Which kind of leads me to ask this question with Daniel.
00:28:54 --> 00:28:57 Your mom can give us the technical term of
00:28:57 --> 00:29:00 what schizophrenia is but i want you
00:29:00 --> 00:29:03 to describe it in your own words what what
00:29:03 --> 00:29:06 what it is not technical terms what
00:29:06 --> 00:29:13 you might call layman's terms yeah yeah oh oh it's it's so it's a disorder but
00:29:13 --> 00:29:19 that that's getting technical so basically what's your experience like what's
00:29:19 --> 00:29:23 my experience like with schizophrenia yeah it's a really,
00:29:24 --> 00:29:26 really long journey.
00:29:26 --> 00:29:33 It's like two, one step forward, two steps back again and again and again. But what goes on?
00:29:33 --> 00:29:38 Well, let's grab some of it. But what goes on is I have my visual and auditory
00:29:38 --> 00:29:40 hallucinations all day.
00:29:41 --> 00:29:47 I don't go 15 minutes without hearing them. And it's really hard to explain
00:29:47 --> 00:29:50 to somebody that they need to take meds that are very sedating,
00:29:50 --> 00:29:57 when they don't understand or don't think that the meds are helping them through the entire thing.
00:29:57 --> 00:30:01 So basically what it is, it's a major disruption in my life,
00:30:01 --> 00:30:05 and it's a major distraction for me to do.
00:30:05 --> 00:30:14 I do, and I can't reach my full potential when I have this issue with being schizophrenic. Yeah.
00:30:16 --> 00:30:20 So, Daniel, did you know or have a sense when you were growing up that you were
00:30:20 --> 00:30:22 different than other children?
00:30:23 --> 00:30:26 I always did. And if you did, how did that make you feel?
00:30:27 --> 00:30:33 You know, I always knew that I was different from when I was a kid.
00:30:33 --> 00:30:39 I always knew I was different, and I prefer to be different.
00:30:39 --> 00:30:41 Some people are just different. I'm not like everybody else.
00:30:42 --> 00:30:46 That was to begin with, but then my tribulations begun, and I'm not.
00:30:46 --> 00:30:49 That's something that's actually similar to other people. Like,
00:30:49 --> 00:30:53 I'm different myself, but if I meet other people who hear voices,
00:30:53 --> 00:30:55 I'm, like, similar to them in that way.
00:30:56 --> 00:31:01 You know, me and other schizophrenics, we share the same symptoms,
00:31:01 --> 00:31:08 yet our personalities and, you know, the way we are internally are different.
00:31:09 --> 00:31:11 So, yeah, I was different ever since I was a kid. Yeah.
00:31:13 --> 00:31:19 What did you do? tell us some of the things that you did to help help you cope
00:31:19 --> 00:31:28 with with this illness yes to cope with this illness i had ever since a few
00:31:28 --> 00:31:30 years after i developed this illness.
00:31:31 --> 00:31:35 I started doing things to ignore
00:31:35 --> 00:31:37 my visual and auditory hallucinations because they
00:31:37 --> 00:31:41 were unrelenting and they were abusive at first i used
00:31:41 --> 00:31:44 to like bounce a tennis ball i used to chew gum you
00:31:44 --> 00:31:47 know i used to turn music up i used to
00:31:47 --> 00:31:51 do all that to ignore my symptoms and then i
00:31:51 --> 00:31:54 i got a job at home depot i was an essential worker during
00:31:54 --> 00:31:59 the covid crisis at home depot and what i was doing the work they had me there
00:31:59 --> 00:32:04 like stocking shelves and helping walking around doing all kinds of tasks all
00:32:04 --> 00:32:10 day long i think it worked it sorted out my brain because the voices are basically
00:32:10 --> 00:32:11 You know, my brain was firing,
00:32:11 --> 00:32:17 and I felt like it sorted out my brain, and the voices became more benevolent, actually.
00:32:18 --> 00:32:22 And ever since then, I hear them all day long, and I hallucinate all day long,
00:32:22 --> 00:32:26 but they're not abusive like they used to be. Yeah.
00:32:27 --> 00:32:32 So, Doc, there's a chapter in the book named after this quote from Daniel.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:38 It doesn't matter, Mom. I didn't go to school anyway. I only went to timeout.
00:32:38 --> 00:32:44 So this was the point where you and Daniel's father thought it was best for
00:32:44 --> 00:32:46 Daniel to be homeschooled.
00:32:46 --> 00:32:50 Was that demoralizing or a liberating moment?
00:32:51 --> 00:32:54 I think it was a very liberating moment, actually. Okay.
00:32:56 --> 00:33:01 Very liberating not to go to school. Finally not to go to school, even.
00:33:02 --> 00:33:09 And I learned at home. I had tutors, several different tutors,
00:33:09 --> 00:33:12 which were all very nice people and very helpful.
00:33:13 --> 00:33:18 And I did try to study at Tufts University for the GED.
00:33:19 --> 00:33:22 Eventually, I did go back to high school, and I did graduate at 18,
00:33:23 --> 00:33:24 and I never thought I would graduate.
00:33:25 --> 00:33:28 I thought I would graduate like at 30 years old. I managed to do it at 18.
00:33:29 --> 00:33:36 But when I went back to school, I was under, I was able to, you know,
00:33:36 --> 00:33:44 I didn't have these pre-diagnosis, which were like Tourette's syndrome, OCD, all that abated.
00:33:44 --> 00:33:48 And after I graduated from high school at age 19, at age 18,
00:33:48 --> 00:33:55 excuse me, I went to a halfway house for people that were in psychiatric units,
00:33:56 --> 00:33:59 and it's nearby, it was in Massachusetts,
00:34:00 --> 00:34:07 and living there, I then developed schizophrenia, and it was a disaster, it was unexpected.
00:34:07 --> 00:34:12 I never knew I would be hit with that disease in my life, and it was a shock
00:34:12 --> 00:34:18 to me and a lot of people that I became so mentally decrepitated,
00:34:18 --> 00:34:23 and I needed help, and I was in an environment where the help wasn't getting to me yet.
00:34:24 --> 00:34:28 Yeah. So, Mom, was it demoralizing and liberating for you?
00:34:29 --> 00:34:35 Well, it was both, because it was clearly the end of the traditional system,
00:34:36 --> 00:34:42 and setting up an alternative system at home had a lot of difficulties.
00:34:42 --> 00:34:46 There were a lot of challenges with it, and Danny eventually,
00:34:47 --> 00:34:53 as he mentioned, was in this residential facility, And that's when the schizophrenia,
00:34:54 --> 00:34:56 that's when the voices emerged, which we didn't know.
00:34:58 --> 00:35:03 Danny, you can talk about this, but Danny didn't talk about them much until
00:35:03 --> 00:35:10 he was somewhat older and until really the big hospitalization happened.
00:35:11 --> 00:35:16 In which the voices were very prominent and really took over.
00:35:17 --> 00:35:24 And that was a hard go. So it's like trappings of both.
00:35:24 --> 00:35:30 And being outside the traditional system doesn't necessarily give you a lot
00:35:30 --> 00:35:33 of confidence about what you're doing.
00:35:35 --> 00:35:41 But the workers that we had were, as Danny mentioned,
00:35:41 --> 00:35:48 were very empathic people who viewed Danny as a kid struggling to grow up rather
00:35:48 --> 00:35:50 than a diagnostic label.
00:35:51 --> 00:35:53 That makes a big difference.
00:35:54 --> 00:35:59 Danny, did you want to add something to that? Not as of yet. Okay. All right.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:04 So, Danny, let me ask you this. How did your time at side-by-side assist you
00:36:04 --> 00:36:06 in being more productive?
00:36:07 --> 00:36:12 And also, you found this thing called Hearing Voices Network.
00:36:12 --> 00:36:18 So how did those two things help you better cope?
00:36:19 --> 00:36:25 I felt like side-by-side was a trial period before seeing if I could live more
00:36:25 --> 00:36:27 independently than I got to live at side-by-side.
00:36:29 --> 00:36:36 And so, at Side by Side, you know, keeping busy, you know, not busier than I
00:36:36 --> 00:36:39 can handle these days, but it's always been with me.
00:36:40 --> 00:36:43 Keeping busy enough but not busier than I can handle has always been one of
00:36:43 --> 00:36:46 my objectives, is to remain somewhat busy.
00:36:47 --> 00:36:48 And that's basically...
00:36:50 --> 00:36:53 Part of my treatment is actually making sure that I have something to do and
00:36:53 --> 00:36:57 not just sitting around all day listening to voices and paying attention to
00:36:57 --> 00:37:01 my hallucinations all day because that's not productive at all.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:10 But also the grounds for your movement after that into independent living. Right.
00:37:11 --> 00:37:17 Which made a huge difference. You're right. You go from phase one to phase two to phase three.
00:37:18 --> 00:37:23 You don't go from phase one to phase three during recovery. It's just that way.
00:37:23 --> 00:37:31 So I felt like being hospitalized was like phase one, side by side.
00:37:32 --> 00:37:36 Then eventually I came around to side by side phase two, phase three. I live on my own.
00:37:37 --> 00:37:41 Before I went to side by side, after I had gotten out of the psych unit,
00:37:42 --> 00:37:46 I was in Cape Cod and I had a job working at a plant nursery.
00:37:46 --> 00:37:51 And I liked it a lot but me being under the microscope,
00:37:52 --> 00:37:56 finally it was sort of decided that I could use a little more care for a while
00:37:56 --> 00:38:03 and a little more attention for a while before moving on so I felt like like I said before,
00:38:03 --> 00:38:09 some of this for me has been like one step forward and two steps back but then
00:38:09 --> 00:38:12 it goes forward again it's just you know.
00:38:13 --> 00:38:17 It's just not a straight shot To my goals.
00:38:17 --> 00:38:21 It's not, it's not, it's a, it's a pretty, it's a crooked road to my goals.
00:38:21 --> 00:38:23 Out of state. Yeah.
00:38:24 --> 00:38:28 Um, what'd you say? Crooked mile. Yeah.
00:38:29 --> 00:38:36 Okay. So this lady named Tamara Hill had written a book called Mental Health
00:38:36 --> 00:38:38 in a Failed American System.
00:38:39 --> 00:38:44 And she said, the presuming social view that mental health is not as serious
00:38:44 --> 00:38:46 as the media says it is, blots progress.
00:38:47 --> 00:38:53 So this is for Dr. Ellen. Do you feel that the media plays a part in how we
00:38:53 --> 00:38:57 view and deal with mental illness? You bet it does.
00:38:57 --> 00:39:03 Yes, it's seen very pejoratively. It's seen very negatively.
00:39:04 --> 00:39:08 It's portrayed in very strange ways.
00:39:08 --> 00:39:14 It has a lot of the trappings of the old views of serious mental illness.
00:39:15 --> 00:39:21 And it's focused now much more on anxiety and depression in the kids.
00:39:21 --> 00:39:28 So it has stayed away from, I think, one of the major groups that needs to be
00:39:28 --> 00:39:33 attended to, which are people with serious mental illness with the big disorders
00:39:33 --> 00:39:34 that interrupt their lives.
00:39:35 --> 00:39:39 And the government has, by and large, stayed away from that.
00:39:40 --> 00:39:47 And now it feels hopeless. It's in the private sector, mainly. Yeah.
00:39:47 --> 00:39:52 You wrote, Dr. Ellen, in the book, history has taught us that neither the hospital
00:39:52 --> 00:39:57 nor the community are inherently more humane,
00:39:57 --> 00:40:02 but rather that social justice issues and civil rights must be combined with
00:40:02 --> 00:40:07 moral treatment and recovery approaches. Expound on that for us.
00:40:08 --> 00:40:17 Well, there's a huge amount of stigma, prejudice, distinctions among social groups.
00:40:18 --> 00:40:21 There's, I think, a lot of racism in it.
00:40:21 --> 00:40:25 It's because the resources are so limited.
00:40:26 --> 00:40:31 There are large groups of people who are excluded. They're not taken care of.
00:40:31 --> 00:40:38 And our society doesn't seem to feel that they need to do it.
00:40:38 --> 00:40:42 I mean, if you take a look at the school shootings, you'd come away thinking
00:40:42 --> 00:40:46 that they're done by people with serious mental illness.
00:40:47 --> 00:40:49 Statistically, that's completely untrue.
00:40:49 --> 00:40:57 And there's so many misconceptions, and there has been historically, about mental illness.
00:40:57 --> 00:41:03 There are pejorative terms, and people are afraid also.
00:41:04 --> 00:41:13 They're very fearful of the major disorders, and they really can disrupt completely people's lives.
00:41:14 --> 00:41:21 The media doesn't portray it realistically when they portray it,
00:41:21 --> 00:41:26 and most of the time, they don't. It's a non-issue right now.
00:41:26 --> 00:41:31 The largest percentage of homeless people now are homeless families.
00:41:31 --> 00:41:36 The largest number of people in homeless families are children,
00:41:36 --> 00:41:37 six years old and younger.
00:41:38 --> 00:41:45 And there's no, I haven't seen anything in the media about that group.
00:41:45 --> 00:41:52 And it's a huge group now. And they're young mothers with little kids,
00:41:52 --> 00:42:02 many of whom are DV survivors or have traumatic histories and completely ignored.
00:42:02 --> 00:42:09 And the media, you know, focuses on what happens at the encampments and anything that's sensational.
00:42:09 --> 00:42:12 They sensationalize mental illness.
00:42:12 --> 00:42:18 Yeah. And then the other piece is what they, this thing called Penrose Law,
00:42:19 --> 00:42:24 which suggests that there's the inverse correlation between psychiatric beds
00:42:24 --> 00:42:25 and prison populations.
00:42:25 --> 00:42:32 So as mental health hospitals close, incarceration rates increase.
00:42:32 --> 00:42:42 And you can say homelessness as well because, you know, a lot of those, a lot of people.
00:42:43 --> 00:42:49 They're not going to be given the opportunity like Daniel and be allowed to
00:42:49 --> 00:42:53 have housing and all that stuff. So, yeah.
00:42:54 --> 00:42:58 So let me let me say let me ask you this question so we can kind of close it out.
00:42:59 --> 00:43:05 Besides reading your book, what can be done to increase advocacy towards mental
00:43:05 --> 00:43:08 health and diminish the stigma associated with it?
00:43:09 --> 00:43:15 Well, I think one of the groups that needs to be appealed to are parents of
00:43:15 --> 00:43:18 kids with mental health issues of any kind.
00:43:19 --> 00:43:22 And I think they need to become advocates.
00:43:23 --> 00:43:28 They need to protect their kids. They need to accept the fact that their kids
00:43:28 --> 00:43:32 may be different. So what? everybody's different in different ways.
00:43:33 --> 00:43:42 There needs to be a lot of press about the realities, mental illness, and there isn't.
00:43:43 --> 00:43:47 It's just sensational distortions from what I can tell.
00:43:47 --> 00:43:56 So I think a huge amount has to be done because the stigma is huge and it remains.
00:43:56 --> 00:44:03 And unfortunately, the more vulnerable groups are people who are poorly resourced.
00:44:04 --> 00:44:09 And, I mean, that's always true, and it's particularly true in this country. Yeah.
00:44:10 --> 00:44:15 So, Daniel, what advice would you give young people that are struggling with mental health issues?
00:44:15 --> 00:44:20 Struggling with mental health issues is to get treatment.
00:44:20 --> 00:44:25 If you can't afford treatment, there are places that there's hotlines you can call.
00:44:26 --> 00:44:30 There's places like, you know, I worked at a place called Webster House.
00:44:30 --> 00:44:35 It was a day place for people with psychiatric problems, psychological problems.
00:44:35 --> 00:44:39 You know, I worked in the kitchen there. It's free. They can come there and
00:44:39 --> 00:44:46 be amongst that community and then begin their self-work as well as, you know,
00:44:46 --> 00:44:51 have their self-work augmented by all the people that are available.
00:44:51 --> 00:44:55 There's always something available to get treatment in some way,
00:44:55 --> 00:44:58 you know, that doesn't cost a lot of money.
00:44:59 --> 00:45:04 There's day places to go. There's groups you can join, virtual ones online and
00:45:04 --> 00:45:08 in person, and you should reach out and try that.
00:45:08 --> 00:45:16 And the supports are critical for both the target patient and the families.
00:45:17 --> 00:45:25 Yeah. So I'm asking all of my guests this question or giving them this challenge,
00:45:25 --> 00:45:26 however you want to look at it.
00:45:27 --> 00:45:30 I need you to finish this sentence.
00:45:30 --> 00:45:36 And if both of y'all can do it or just want it, it doesn't matter. I have hope because.
00:45:39 --> 00:45:45 Okay. Answer that, Danny. I am not 100% hopeful all the time.
00:45:45 --> 00:45:48 You know, I have hope because I'm still alive.
00:45:49 --> 00:45:53 Is that good? Hey, that's your answer. That's great.
00:45:54 --> 00:46:06 That's my answer. And I suppose the general arc of history is towards justice and care.
00:46:06 --> 00:46:12 But, boy, in these times, it's really been challenged.
00:46:12 --> 00:46:21 Yeah. There's so much going on that is very offensive and particularly,
00:46:21 --> 00:46:27 I mean, it's for everybody, but the groups we deal with are targeted.
00:46:28 --> 00:46:34 Yeah. So hopefully now that we've gone through the interview, you kind of understand.
00:46:35 --> 00:46:41 How I responded to the book because as somebody that's been an elected official
00:46:41 --> 00:46:48 and somebody has been an advocate for more funding at the government level for
00:46:48 --> 00:46:52 mental health and pushing for awareness,
00:46:53 --> 00:47:01 it frustrates me that somebody who not only has been a professional in the field,
00:47:01 --> 00:47:05 but also has a personal experience with it,
00:47:05 --> 00:47:10 is just the hoops that you've had to go through, the struggles.
00:47:11 --> 00:47:19 When Daniel talks about his experience at Manville, he said he was manhandled
00:47:19 --> 00:47:25 instead of just, like I said, as a parent myself,
00:47:26 --> 00:47:29 that described me crazy.
00:47:29 --> 00:47:32 And nuts and just, you know, want to lash out.
00:47:33 --> 00:47:38 But the way that you handled it, and I know you had frustrations and stuff because
00:47:38 --> 00:47:39 you reveal that in the book,
00:47:39 --> 00:47:45 but the way that you handled it gives hope that there is a way that you can
00:47:45 --> 00:47:49 channel that anger and frustration and do something constructive.
00:47:50 --> 00:47:54 And, you know, when I look at Daniel in this interview, you know,
00:47:54 --> 00:48:04 I can see the love and the end result of the consideration and care that you put into him,
00:48:05 --> 00:48:09 to have as normal a life as he could have.
00:48:09 --> 00:48:16 And Daniel, I will say to you that you are, your answer was correct.
00:48:17 --> 00:48:22 It's like because you are alive and because you are still working through it,
00:48:22 --> 00:48:30 it's an inspiration and it's very hopeful to me and hopefully it'll be hopeful for others as well.
00:48:31 --> 00:48:34 Go ahead, Doc. I'm sorry. Well, we hope so.
00:48:35 --> 00:48:40 That was the reason for writing the book, that other families could benefit by our experience.
00:48:40 --> 00:48:45 I feel that very likely never to live a completely normal life,
00:48:45 --> 00:48:47 but I can live a good life.
00:48:48 --> 00:48:51 You know, I can help other people live good lives, even if they can't live normal
00:48:51 --> 00:48:53 lives because of their conditions.
00:48:54 --> 00:49:00 Yeah. All right. So how can people get this book? How can people reach out to either one of y'all?
00:49:01 --> 00:49:02 Go ahead and take the time to do that.
00:49:03 --> 00:49:07 Amazon. Amazon has a whole stack of them.
00:49:08 --> 00:49:11 Yeah, they've been selling out on Amazon. Yeah, they've been selling,
00:49:11 --> 00:49:14 it looks like, I think fairly well.
00:49:15 --> 00:49:20 And the reviews have been very good. But Amazon is the most successful.
00:49:21 --> 00:49:24 The big booksellers all have the book. Okay.
00:49:25 --> 00:49:28 It's readily accessible. I went to the bookstore.
00:49:28 --> 00:49:31 It's not on the shelf at the bookstore yet, but it is online,
00:49:32 --> 00:49:34 available online, and it's selling out quick.
00:49:35 --> 00:49:43 Okay. Well, Dr. Ellen Bassuk and Daniel Schoonover, I really appreciate you taking
00:49:43 --> 00:49:46 the time not only to write the book, but to come on the podcast.
00:49:47 --> 00:49:51 And I do this for all my guests.
00:49:51 --> 00:49:56 If you have, now that you've been on, you have an open invitation to come back.
00:49:56 --> 00:50:00 If there's some issues that you think that need to be addressed and you need
00:50:00 --> 00:50:09 a platform, feel free to come on and we'll reach out to B and we'll make sure that we'll get you on.
00:50:10 --> 00:50:13 But I greatly appreciate y'all coming on and talking about this.
00:50:14 --> 00:50:17 And thank you for inviting us. Yes. Enjoyed talking to you.
00:50:18 --> 00:50:20 All right, guys. And we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
00:50:41 --> 00:50:45 Time for our next guest, Susanne Antonetta.
00:50:46 --> 00:50:53 Susanne Paola Antonetta is the author of The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being
00:50:53 --> 00:50:57 Here and numerous other works of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
00:50:58 --> 00:51:03 Her accolades include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award,
00:51:03 --> 00:51:06 a Library Journal Best Science Book, and others.
00:51:07 --> 00:51:14 She writes for Psychology Today, the New York Times, Ms., The Huffington Post,
00:51:14 --> 00:51:20 The UK Independent, The Hill, Orion, and The New Republic, and has been featured on CNN.
00:51:21 --> 00:51:26 She lives in Asheville, North Carolina. Her new book is The Devil's Castle,
00:51:26 --> 00:51:33 Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and How Psychiatry's Troubled History Reverberates Today.
00:51:33 --> 00:51:37 And we are going to get into that book during the interview.
00:51:37 --> 00:51:41 So ladies and gentlemen, it is my distinct honor and privilege to have as a
00:51:41 --> 00:51:45 guest on this podcast, Susanne Antonetta.
00:51:58 --> 00:52:03 How are you doing, ma'am? You doing good? I'm doing well. It's a beautiful day
00:52:03 --> 00:52:05 here in North Carolina, so I'm good.
00:52:05 --> 00:52:11 Yeah, well, you're not that far from me. I'm in Atlanta. And so, yeah, it's nice out.
00:52:11 --> 00:52:16 Of course, they got the burn warnings going on, so... Sure, sure.
00:52:17 --> 00:52:19 Trying to make sure people don't start no fires.
00:52:20 --> 00:52:26 But other than that, I like warm weather, so I don't mind it at all.
00:52:26 --> 00:52:29 It doesn't matter what time of year it is, as long as it's warm, I'm good.
00:52:29 --> 00:52:34 So we're going to talk about your book, The Devil's Castle.
00:52:35 --> 00:52:40 And I found it very, very informative. Thank you.
00:52:41 --> 00:52:45 And, you know, and how you got your point across.
00:52:45 --> 00:52:48 And so we won't be able to, because I want people to read the book.
00:52:48 --> 00:52:52 So I won't, we'll just be scratching the surface with the questions.
00:52:52 --> 00:52:55 But you put a lot into it, I could tell.
00:52:56 --> 00:53:01 Sure. I did. Yes, I did. Yeah. And that'll come out in the interview as well.
00:53:01 --> 00:53:07 So what I want to do is start it off. And normally, I try to pull a quote to
00:53:07 --> 00:53:08 kind of get the conversation started.
00:53:09 --> 00:53:15 But what I decided to do with you was to pull an excerpt from the book to get you to respond to this.
00:53:16 --> 00:53:22 I would love that. All right. So when I was 12, I wrote in my diary that life
00:53:22 --> 00:53:30 was a sort of play and humans were characters wearing garments of such complexity and intricacy.
00:53:30 --> 00:53:35 It dazzles the one who is slow enough to think about it.
00:53:35 --> 00:53:39 Slowness to think about it, I indicated, was not normal.
00:53:40 --> 00:53:43 To be slow enough was to allow your brain to break the rules.
00:53:44 --> 00:53:49 I felt then that I could do this, and my difference let those garments.
00:53:49 --> 00:53:54 I think, young as I was, I chose a word to have more magic than clothing.
00:53:55 --> 00:54:00 Dazzle. I don't know how I appeared to others as I watched those garments.
00:54:00 --> 00:54:05 I imagined I seemed socially awkward, but this is the version of the story I
00:54:05 --> 00:54:07 want to live. Talk to me about that quote.
00:54:09 --> 00:54:12 Sure, absolutely. Well, just to give people listening an overview,
00:54:12 --> 00:54:16 since they won't be familiar with the book, it talks about what happened in
00:54:16 --> 00:54:22 Germany leading up to World War II and during World War II, where they actually eliminated,
00:54:22 --> 00:54:27 killed in gas chambers, a large number of their psychiatric population.
00:54:27 --> 00:54:31 The total would probably be in all the territories they were occupying in Germany
00:54:31 --> 00:54:34 itself, two to three hundred thousand people.
00:54:35 --> 00:54:41 So, and the gas chambers were actually developed for people with psychiatric diagnoses.
00:54:42 --> 00:54:45 And one of the things I'm arguing is that we are getting to the point where
00:54:45 --> 00:54:48 we're medicalizing humanity, we're medicalizing everything.
00:54:49 --> 00:54:54 And that for many of us, you know, I'm very neurodiverse, simply existing as
00:54:54 --> 00:55:01 who we are can work with support rather than medicalizing, rather than medicating.
00:55:01 --> 00:55:06 And as the book goes on to discuss in the United States, and I go to the post-war
00:55:06 --> 00:55:12 period, that medicalizing was actually turned against things like women in menopause,
00:55:12 --> 00:55:14 and something that I write about quite extensively,
00:55:15 --> 00:55:19 the anger of Black protesters in the 1960s.
00:55:19 --> 00:55:24 They're actually psychiatrists suggesting that It was something called discontrol
00:55:24 --> 00:55:30 syndrome that caused people to, we call them race riots, I call them protests,
00:55:31 --> 00:55:37 that caused this to happen and that it should be fixed by brain manipulation, not social justice.
00:55:38 --> 00:55:44 So in using my own story, I think I'm really arguing for let's look at what
00:55:44 --> 00:55:49 we are doing, how we're thinking about the mind, and let's look at it differently.
00:55:49 --> 00:55:53 Okay. So now the next icebreaker is what I call 20 questions.
00:55:54 --> 00:56:01 Sure. So I need you to give me a number between 1 and 20. Oh, let's say 8. Okay.
00:56:01 --> 00:56:07 What is one thing you hope the current administration will do or not do during this term?
00:56:09 --> 00:56:13 Oh, my Lord, getting that down to one thing. Can I say just stop?
00:56:14 --> 00:56:19 I'm going to say just stop and leave it at that. Okay, that'll be good.
00:56:19 --> 00:56:25 All right. So what led you to write this book and how did you come about the title?
00:56:26 --> 00:56:30 Well, the title comes from one of my kind of positive characters.
00:56:30 --> 00:56:34 There's several historical characters in there. And one was a German judge named
00:56:34 --> 00:56:38 Paul Schraber who was committed for life.
00:56:39 --> 00:56:42 And he was committed to an institution that would go on to become one of these
00:56:42 --> 00:56:46 gas chambers used by the Nazi euthanasia program.
00:56:47 --> 00:56:54 So in the late 1800s, he gets to this place, Sarnstein, where he's being forced to, you know, stay.
00:56:54 --> 00:56:59 And he said, oh, this is the devil's castle. And he kind of saw corpses there.
00:57:00 --> 00:57:05 So one of the things I write about is how much what we think of as neurodiversity
00:57:05 --> 00:57:09 is sometimes noticing things that are happening that maybe more neurotypical
00:57:09 --> 00:57:11 people just aren't picking up on.
00:57:11 --> 00:57:16 And when I started the book was learning about the Nazis, just this program
00:57:16 --> 00:57:18 to eliminate the mentally ill.
00:57:18 --> 00:57:23 I mean, I knew, and I don't like that phrase, but I'll use it for ease.
00:57:23 --> 00:57:28 I mean, I think we know now that they, you know, attack Jews,
00:57:28 --> 00:57:34 homosexuals, Roma, and Sinti peoples, But this, to me, was a story that had
00:57:34 --> 00:57:38 really been lost and was not widely known.
00:57:38 --> 00:57:45 It's not just that they did that, too, but that they started with the psychiatric population.
00:57:45 --> 00:57:50 And so many historians, like one I quote, Getzali, said, if people had gone
00:57:50 --> 00:57:56 out in Germany and protested, this action, which you could see them doing in
00:57:56 --> 00:57:58 the very early 40s before the war,
00:57:59 --> 00:58:03 Hitler would not have done what he did with the concentration camps.
00:58:03 --> 00:58:06 He would have known that he wasn't going to get away with it.
00:58:06 --> 00:58:10 So I wanted to tell that story because I think we're always kind of on some
00:58:10 --> 00:58:13 of those slippery slopes as a culture. Yeah.
00:58:14 --> 00:58:16 All right. Before we get too deep,
00:58:16 --> 00:58:21 I need you to define two things for the listeners. The first is eugenics.
00:58:22 --> 00:58:28 Sure. Eugenics was a theory that actually started in the late 1800s with a very
00:58:28 --> 00:58:32 odd cousin of Charles Darwin named Francis Galton.
00:58:33 --> 00:58:37 It literally means good genes, although at the time he didn't know what DNA was.
00:58:37 --> 00:58:43 But there were theories that there was kind of this genetic germplasm that is passed on.
00:58:44 --> 00:58:49 And, you know, it's kind of the belief that genes are everything and that you
00:58:49 --> 00:58:53 control the population by controlling who reproduces and how much they reproduce,
00:58:53 --> 00:58:59 whether you do that through eliminating a population so it cannot reproduce,
00:58:59 --> 00:59:06 segregating that population, or simply trying to keep birth rates down in certain populations.
00:59:07 --> 00:59:11 And we, I think, still live with a lot of eugenics in our cultural thinking.
00:59:13 --> 00:59:17 So that's one idea, that genes kind of shape us into who we are.
00:59:17 --> 00:59:22 And I want to throw in here that I just wrote a piece for Slate about Jeffrey Epstein.
00:59:22 --> 00:59:27 Jeffrey Epstein and his kind of crowd were very obsessed with genes and eugenics
00:59:27 --> 00:59:29 and genetic manipulation.
00:59:30 --> 00:59:35 So it is very much still here. And I think I answered part one and forgot part
00:59:35 --> 00:59:39 two, Erik. I'm so sorry. Was there another part to that question?
00:59:39 --> 00:59:41 Well, no, I hadn't asked part two yet, but.
00:59:41 --> 00:59:44 Oh, I'm sorry. Before we get to part two. I tend to do that. That's okay.
00:59:45 --> 00:59:51 But before we get to part two, you know, one of the things that you mentioned, Jeffrey Epstein.
00:59:52 --> 00:59:56 So a lot of people would say, oh, eugenics. Well, that's, that sounds like some
00:59:56 --> 00:59:57 kind of conservative thing.
00:59:57 --> 01:00:02 The history of the United States is that a lot of, quote unquote,
01:00:02 --> 01:00:08 liberals were into eugenics, especially in the early 20th century.
01:00:08 --> 01:00:12 And that was part of the argument why people were against climate change,
01:00:12 --> 01:00:15 because they were saying that was a form of eugenics, too.
01:00:16 --> 01:00:19 You know, population control, all that kind of stuff.
01:00:19 --> 01:00:26 So I wanted to lay that out because that's one of your arguments in the book.
01:00:26 --> 01:00:31 And then the other thing is the second part is explain what the DSM is.
01:00:32 --> 01:00:36 Sure, that's super important. So in the late 20th century,
01:00:37 --> 01:00:41 when psychiatry kind of felt like it needed to be more scientific and more like
01:00:41 --> 01:00:43 a real branch of medicine,
01:00:43 --> 01:00:49 they kind of took this very obscure book called The Diagnostic and Statistical
01:00:49 --> 01:00:56 Manual of Mental Disorders and revised it and made it central to our operations.
01:00:56 --> 01:00:59 I mean, you can't get insurance reimbursement if you're a doctor unless you
01:00:59 --> 01:01:02 give somebody a DSM diagnosis.
01:01:02 --> 01:01:06 And so it's really the beating heart of psychiatry in this country.
01:01:06 --> 01:01:09 And it's a very problematic document.
01:01:10 --> 01:01:14 So, yeah, it is important to understand what it is. And the point about liberals,
01:01:14 --> 01:01:15 you know, you're absolutely right.
01:01:15 --> 01:01:18 There was no right and left in that.
01:01:18 --> 01:01:25 In fact, lots of people we think of as, you know, very right-thinking people
01:01:25 --> 01:01:31 like Oliver Wendell Holmes were very into eugenics and a lot of millionaires.
01:01:31 --> 01:01:34 It's always kind of been, in some ways, a rich person's game.
01:01:34 --> 01:01:40 You know, the Harrimans, the Rockefellers, the Kelloggs were funding these clinics
01:01:40 --> 01:01:43 where they were doing eugenic research and...
01:01:44 --> 01:01:47 Of the things that always makes me smile a little bit ironically,
01:01:48 --> 01:01:54 can you smile ironically, is that my family spent a lot of time in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
01:01:55 --> 01:01:58 We had this kind of little shack that my grandfather built.
01:01:59 --> 01:02:02 And we would all go there and spend quite a bit of time there.
01:02:02 --> 01:02:09 And it was sort of this area notorious for supposed inbreeding and bad genetics.
01:02:09 --> 01:02:15 And so one of those sites, actually, the eugenics records office has file cards
01:02:15 --> 01:02:19 on all these families. And I like to think my family's in there.
01:02:20 --> 01:02:22 I can only hope. I don't know for sure.
01:02:24 --> 01:02:29 So yes, that was, and I think still is, you know, Jeffrey Epstein and his buds,
01:02:30 --> 01:02:35 you know, people like Noam Chomsky, they're very liberal. Larry Summers.
01:02:35 --> 01:02:38 But the things they were saying to each other in the emails were pretty awful
01:02:38 --> 01:02:44 about minority populations, about women, you know, very disturbing stuff.
01:02:44 --> 01:02:49 So I think that when you put that kind of like robe of science,
01:02:50 --> 01:02:55 that golden robe of science around something, people feel okay about having
01:02:55 --> 01:03:01 thoughts that are pretty despicable. Yeah.
01:03:02 --> 01:03:09 So like you said in your opening answer to the quote that you put your story
01:03:09 --> 01:03:14 in this book, it could have been just strictly a research book,
01:03:14 --> 01:03:18 but you interwove a lot of your personal stuff.
01:03:18 --> 01:03:24 So you revealed to us that you have been diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.
01:03:25 --> 01:03:31 How has that been a challenge for you in life and in the process, writing this book?
01:03:32 --> 01:03:36 I do reveal that. The diagnosis was changed ultimately to bipolar.
01:03:36 --> 01:03:39 But yes, I was diagnosed as schizophrenic when I was a teenager.
01:03:39 --> 01:03:41 I was given shock treatment.
01:03:41 --> 01:03:43 It was pretty horrendous.
01:03:44 --> 01:03:48 And, you know, it was actually kind of controversial even among,
01:03:49 --> 01:03:53 like, my literary agent, people that I work with, to put so much of myself in
01:03:53 --> 01:03:58 there. And I want to say now that so much of myself is maybe 10 to 15 percent of the book.
01:03:58 --> 01:04:01 It's not a memoir by any stretch.
01:04:01 --> 01:04:08 But to me, it's just, you know, whenever I would read these stories about euthanasia
01:04:08 --> 01:04:11 and the Nazi Operation T4,
01:04:11 --> 01:04:15 which was the one that was conducted in the gas chambers, there were six of
01:04:15 --> 01:04:18 them for this action, this project.
01:04:18 --> 01:04:24 You know, it would always be people from such a distance trying to imagine what
01:04:24 --> 01:04:28 the people involved felt, but clearly unable to do that.
01:04:29 --> 01:04:33 And I think the fact that I could have been a victim, that family members could
01:04:33 --> 01:04:36 have been victims, was just really essential.
01:04:36 --> 01:04:42 I think that I needed to be in there as somebody with a stake in it and who
01:04:42 --> 01:04:48 had witnessed a lot of the late 20th century psychiatry here in the United States
01:04:48 --> 01:04:51 and witnessed a lot of what really went off the rails there, too.
01:04:52 --> 01:04:58 So, yeah, that was important to me to do. So, my previous guest...
01:04:59 --> 01:05:06 He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he felt that the illness denied
01:05:06 --> 01:05:09 him an opportunity to be at his full potential.
01:05:09 --> 01:05:11 Sure. Do you feel that same way?
01:05:12 --> 01:05:17 I wouldn't exactly say that, but I think, for one thing, schizophrenia,
01:05:17 --> 01:05:22 there's overwhelming evidence, including a study that was done by a man who
01:05:22 --> 01:05:25 headed the Schizophrenia Project at the National Institutes of Health,
01:05:26 --> 01:05:31 so Lauren Mosher, that proved that schizophrenics do much better if they are
01:05:31 --> 01:05:35 not medicated in their first break, if you can stay off medication.
01:05:35 --> 01:05:40 And one of the two subjects of my book, Dorothea Buck, was schizophrenic.
01:05:40 --> 01:05:45 And so she writes a lot about schizophrenia, about how she was treated.
01:05:46 --> 01:05:51 She was sterilized by the Nazis at the age of 19 because Hitler wanted schizophrenia
01:05:51 --> 01:05:55 out of the population, so he sterilized and killed schizophrenics.
01:05:56 --> 01:06:01 And she came up with an alternative way to treat it that actually was very effective.
01:06:02 --> 01:06:05 So one answer is that I think that you have to make sure that what's limiting
01:06:05 --> 01:06:07 you is not the treatment, but the.
01:06:08 --> 01:06:12 Problem itself or the mental state itself. And, you know, of course,
01:06:13 --> 01:06:19 yes, I do do some things to manage my bipolar, or I would have a reduced life.
01:06:19 --> 01:06:22 And when people say that to me, I understand it.
01:06:22 --> 01:06:27 I'm sure for them it's completely true, because for many people it's completely true.
01:06:27 --> 01:06:32 I would just say that we have never tried on a large scale the things that have
01:06:32 --> 01:06:33 been shown to really work.
01:06:34 --> 01:06:40 And I think that's as sad as hearing that someone feels that their lives have been limited.
01:06:41 --> 01:06:48 Yeah. All right. So many regard Emil Kraepelin, I think I'm saying the name right.
01:06:48 --> 01:06:54 Yeah. As the father of modern psychology, but your book does not put him in a positive light.
01:06:55 --> 01:07:00 Explain why. No. He was an anti-Semite. He was an extreme anti-Semite.
01:07:00 --> 01:07:05 And the head of the a euthanasia program, and the worst of the Nazi doctors,
01:07:05 --> 01:07:10 who also worked at the camps with Jewish populations, had been trained by him.
01:07:10 --> 01:07:16 The Nuremberg Race Law of 1933, which eliminated Jews, eliminated jobs,
01:07:16 --> 01:07:21 eliminated citizenship, really reduced their status, was crafted by his students,
01:07:21 --> 01:07:22 and they said it was in his honor.
01:07:23 --> 01:07:30 So he was a bad guy. We do practice Krapelinian psychiatry.
01:07:30 --> 01:07:34 Our DSM was created by a group who called themselves Neo-Krapelinians,
01:07:35 --> 01:07:40 and I think we need to get that error out of our system because Krapelin was
01:07:40 --> 01:07:42 not working to help people.
01:07:42 --> 01:07:45 He was not working out of a sense of compassion and care.
01:07:45 --> 01:07:51 He felt like the psychiatrist's main duty was to his government and his state
01:07:51 --> 01:07:53 and to cleanse the population.
01:07:53 --> 01:07:58 So his categories, which we use, he identified schizophrenia,
01:07:58 --> 01:08:02 bipolar, and other things, were not created to help people.
01:08:02 --> 01:08:08 They were created to assign value to people. And I think we need a very clear
01:08:08 --> 01:08:09 acknowledgement of that fact.
01:08:12 --> 01:08:19 You mentioned Dorothea Buck and Paul Schreiber. Why were these individuals important
01:08:19 --> 01:08:22 for you to include their stories in the book?
01:08:23 --> 01:08:27 They're just both really heroic. Buck actually lived to be 102.
01:08:27 --> 01:08:32 So she was sterilized by the Nazis. You know, her life was really destroyed.
01:08:32 --> 01:08:37 Sterilized Germans could not work or go to college. They couldn't work at high-level jobs.
01:08:37 --> 01:08:42 And she became an activist. I mean, she was protesting well into her 90s,
01:08:42 --> 01:08:47 demanding the government acknowledge what they had done to the psychiatric population.
01:08:48 --> 01:08:51 Schreber, as I mentioned, was a judge committed for life.
01:08:52 --> 01:08:57 And he represented himself and got himself out.
01:08:57 --> 01:09:01 And his filings, his court filings were so powerful. He got out,
01:09:02 --> 01:09:06 I think, in 1903 that they changed German law.
01:09:06 --> 01:09:09 And he didn't say there's nothing you know i'm just
01:09:09 --> 01:09:12 as normal as you are and that's why you should let me out he said i've
01:09:12 --> 01:09:16 had profound religious experiences and you damn well
01:09:16 --> 01:09:19 better recognize that something real is going on in what
01:09:19 --> 01:09:23 is happening in my brain and the court actually agreed with him and sort of
01:09:23 --> 01:09:29 mocked his doctor in a very interesting way so to me they're heroes but you
01:09:29 --> 01:09:34 know there's so many heroes i was you know i told the story of these three doctors
01:09:34 --> 01:09:36 who believed that, well, it's,
01:09:37 --> 01:09:41 Many other people came to believe it, but they kind of started this idea that
01:09:41 --> 01:09:46 Black protesters were suffering from this brain injury, this discontrol syndrome,
01:09:46 --> 01:09:52 and should be treated with electrodes, right? Just horrendous.
01:09:52 --> 01:10:00 This amazing guy wrote a piece for Ebony Magazine in 1973 saying this is going
01:10:00 --> 01:10:05 into the population and targeting Blacks and trying to manipulate their brains.
01:10:05 --> 01:10:09 And I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that these people come up in my story
01:10:09 --> 01:10:14 who are so heroic that it balances it out in some ways.
01:10:14 --> 01:10:20 And so Buck and Schaber were really important because they're such a great counterweight. Yeah.
01:10:21 --> 01:10:26 All right. In the book, you stated that those diagnosed with a major medical,
01:10:27 --> 01:10:30 a major mental disorder in the U.S.
01:10:30 --> 01:10:35 Have a life expectancy 20 to 30 years shorter than those who aren't diagnosed.
01:10:35 --> 01:10:39 Part of the loss of life lies in how they're medicated.
01:10:39 --> 01:10:44 One in four jailed individuals in the U.S. is in a psychiatric crisis.
01:10:44 --> 01:10:51 One-fifth of police shootings involve psychiatric episodes. Most are harmless.
01:10:51 --> 01:10:57 Is this a fair assessment of the degree of mental misery in this country?
01:10:57 --> 01:11:02 It's a very fair assessment, and I'll sort of punctuate that by saying that
01:11:02 --> 01:11:06 some of those thoughts come from Alan Francis, who's one of the most prominent
01:11:06 --> 01:11:07 psychiatrists in this country.
01:11:08 --> 01:11:13 He actually led the revision of the DSM, the DSM-IV, and, you know,
01:11:13 --> 01:11:18 just an amazingly prominent guy. And what he says is that the biggest psych
01:11:18 --> 01:11:20 hospital in the U.S. now is the L.A.
01:11:20 --> 01:11:27 County Jail, and he's quite correct in that. We are just allowing people to suffer.
01:11:28 --> 01:11:29 We're allowing people to...
01:11:31 --> 01:11:34 Fall through the cracks. And it's really tragic.
01:11:34 --> 01:11:38 And yeah, there are many, many awful police shootings. There are often people
01:11:38 --> 01:11:40 of color who also have a diagnosis.
01:11:41 --> 01:11:47 There was a black autistic teenager killed when police actually followed his
01:11:47 --> 01:11:51 car home over a very minor car stop. He ended up being shot.
01:11:51 --> 01:11:55 It's just, yeah, I mean, I could go on. But yes, it's, it's,
01:11:55 --> 01:11:58 we are in a state, I think, of crisis.
01:11:59 --> 01:12:02 I don't know how else to put it. So much of the population is suffering.
01:12:03 --> 01:12:08 Yeah. And, you know, I have a background not only in politics, but in law enforcement.
01:12:08 --> 01:12:14 And so a lot of times, and most of my law enforcement was, you know, in the jails.
01:12:15 --> 01:12:19 And so, you know, I could testify to that.
01:12:21 --> 01:12:27 Our jail, where I am in Atlanta, we actually have a section that is strictly
01:12:27 --> 01:12:32 for those who have been diagnosed, and it's not a good place for them to be.
01:12:33 --> 01:12:39 And we had a terrible tragedy that happened right when I started working for
01:12:39 --> 01:12:40 the sheriff's office here.
01:12:41 --> 01:12:45 Thank goodness we weren't involved in it. It was at Georgia Tech.
01:12:45 --> 01:12:50 I don't know if you heard about it, but it was a young man who had some issues.
01:12:51 --> 01:12:57 And but he was at school and I don't know if I can't remember if his parents
01:12:57 --> 01:13:01 said he had stopped taking his medication or whatever but somebody called and
01:13:01 --> 01:13:08 said there's a guy with a knife on campus so the campus police responded and
01:13:08 --> 01:13:10 he was out in the middle of the street with the knife.
01:13:11 --> 01:13:16 And you know the officers said put the knife down he wouldn't put it down so
01:13:16 --> 01:13:17 they shot him and they killed them.
01:13:18 --> 01:13:22 And then they realized, you know, afterwards, you know, and a lot of times the
01:13:22 --> 01:13:27 term in law enforcement, they say when people do that, they say that's suicide
01:13:27 --> 01:13:29 by cop. That's the term I used.
01:13:30 --> 01:13:38 And so the parents really have been trying since then to work with law enforcement
01:13:38 --> 01:13:46 here in Georgia and in the state legislature to try to get laws changed or at least, you know,
01:13:46 --> 01:13:51 even in the police training standards to be more sensitive to situations like that.
01:13:52 --> 01:13:58 But having gone through intensive training, they still train us to shoot people.
01:13:58 --> 01:14:00 I'm just being honest, you know.
01:14:01 --> 01:14:05 And so I think that you touched on that.
01:14:05 --> 01:14:10 And I think that's something real that we need to look at.
01:14:10 --> 01:14:16 And like I said, let me get off that rabbit trail. But I'm just saying you were
01:14:16 --> 01:14:19 spot on in what you highlighted on that.
01:14:20 --> 01:14:27 Stated in the book that Philippe Pinel wrote that the highest calling of the
01:14:27 --> 01:14:31 psychiatric doctor was understanding each patient's hopes and dreams.
01:14:31 --> 01:14:38 So my question is, are hopes and dreams unattainable in today's mental health system?
01:14:39 --> 01:14:43 I think what's unattainable is a situation in which you actually have a doctor
01:14:43 --> 01:14:45 who understands what they are.
01:14:45 --> 01:14:49 I mean, Pinel was saying, and Pinel was an absolutely amazing guy.
01:14:49 --> 01:14:55 And if you're interested in him out there, people, I wrote a column about him for Psychology Today.
01:14:55 --> 01:15:00 It was called For a Better Psychiatry, Go Back 200 Years, because he did not,
01:15:00 --> 01:15:03 you know, he went into Paris in
01:15:03 --> 01:15:08 the late 1700s, and people were literally treated with whips and chains.
01:15:08 --> 01:15:12 And he released most of his patients, and they were cured.
01:15:13 --> 01:15:16 So he demanded of the revolutionary government that they do better.
01:15:17 --> 01:15:20 And he demanded of himself and everyone who worked with him that they spend
01:15:20 --> 01:15:23 a lot of time with those patients.
01:15:24 --> 01:15:26 He said it was not as important to understand.
01:15:27 --> 01:15:32 Well, he went back to Hippocrates, who said it's much more important to understand
01:15:32 --> 01:15:34 the patient than to understand the disease.
01:15:34 --> 01:15:38 And he basically took that to heart.
01:15:38 --> 01:15:43 And he said the smartest move in medication is knowing when not to use it.
01:15:43 --> 01:15:47 But he said that unless you understood your patient really, really well,
01:15:47 --> 01:15:51 unless you understood what mattered to them, their hopes and dreams,
01:15:51 --> 01:15:53 that you could not treat them.
01:15:53 --> 01:15:58 And so we have this weird bifurcation where now you basically go to the psychiatrist
01:15:58 --> 01:16:00 for your prescription and your renewals.
01:16:01 --> 01:16:07 And it would have horrified Pinel, who started a movement called the Moral Treatment
01:16:07 --> 01:16:12 that went on for quite a while and actually worked extremely well. Yeah.
01:16:14 --> 01:16:19 Speaking about treatment, why is it important to consider holistic methods of treatment?
01:16:20 --> 01:16:23 Well, sure. I mean, one of the things we know now, and this is something that's
01:16:23 --> 01:16:28 not any longer something we can argue about because it's so well proven,
01:16:28 --> 01:16:30 is that antidepressants in
01:16:30 --> 01:16:35 a lot of studies don't come in or come in at the same level as placebos.
01:16:35 --> 01:16:39 Placebos and depression actually work 30 to 40 percent of the time if you don't
01:16:39 --> 01:16:47 know it's a placebo. They don't always even match the results of exercise, things like yoga.
01:16:47 --> 01:16:51 One thing I'm writing about right now is called social prescribing.
01:16:51 --> 01:16:56 It's very big in the UK where doctors will prescribe walks, classes,
01:16:57 --> 01:16:59 museum visits rather than drugs.
01:16:59 --> 01:17:04 So, I mean, I said this earlier, and I can only reiterate it. We know a lot.
01:17:05 --> 01:17:09 Northern Italy has made huge strides with getting people off the streets that's
01:17:09 --> 01:17:11 virtually not happening there.
01:17:12 --> 01:17:16 I think they're walking back on it a little bit, but they've had just tremendous
01:17:16 --> 01:17:21 success closing the institutions and keeping people engaged in their lives.
01:17:21 --> 01:17:25 What's sad to me is that we do have all this evidence of what can help,
01:17:25 --> 01:17:29 and we're just not using it. We're not committing the resources to it.
01:17:29 --> 01:17:37 So I do go back to Pinnell. I think he's just a fantastic model for all of this.
01:17:38 --> 01:17:42 Yeah. Why do you think, in your opinion,
01:17:42 --> 01:17:51 that is that we don't put the resources into mental health and exploring as
01:17:51 --> 01:17:55 many different ways to deal with,
01:17:56 --> 01:18:00 I know you don't like to term mental illness, but how do you, how,
01:18:01 --> 01:18:06 why do you think it is that we don't prioritize it? Because one thing you said in the book was that.
01:18:07 --> 01:18:13 Lot of us, you know, are saying, well, the pandemic kind of exposed a lot of stuff, right?
01:18:13 --> 01:18:19 But you make the argument that, you know, we were heading that way before the pandemic hit.
01:18:19 --> 01:18:26 We were, yes. Why do you think that we, you know, we don't prioritize it the way that we should?
01:18:26 --> 01:18:30 Because of a lot of mythologies about mental health that I think,
01:18:30 --> 01:18:36 you know, are often based on stigmas or just based on misinformation, that it's in your genes.
01:18:37 --> 01:18:41 That's been kind of an absurdly exaggerated thing.
01:18:41 --> 01:18:45 There is some genetic connection, but it's much smaller than most people think,
01:18:45 --> 01:18:47 and it's much more likely to be life experience.
01:18:48 --> 01:18:52 So we think it's genes. We think it's brain processes, that you can stay on
01:18:52 --> 01:18:55 medication for life, but you can't fix these.
01:18:55 --> 01:18:57 We think things like schizophrenia are hopeless.
01:18:58 --> 01:19:01 I mean, one of the scenes in the book is when I heard at 15 that I was going
01:19:01 --> 01:19:04 to live in an institution. Here I am.
01:19:05 --> 01:19:11 Schizophrenia, actually a third of the time, the first episode never recurs. People are just okay.
01:19:11 --> 01:19:17 And then another third may stay on some kind of care, but are going to do well
01:19:17 --> 01:19:18 in life. They're going to do pretty well.
01:19:19 --> 01:19:21 And another third may not, but
01:19:21 --> 01:19:24 I think, again, we're doing things that we already know don't really work.
01:19:25 --> 01:19:29 But the system works for the pharmaceutical companies. It works really well
01:19:29 --> 01:19:32 for the insurance companies. They can justify these 15-minute visits.
01:19:33 --> 01:19:37 I mean, one of the first books that kind of announced this new way of,
01:19:37 --> 01:19:41 you know, not treating people psychologically, not talking about life,
01:19:41 --> 01:19:44 getting away from Freud, was this book called The Broken Brain,
01:19:45 --> 01:19:47 The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry.
01:19:48 --> 01:19:52 And the author said, it's great, you can spend 15 minutes with a doctor, not an hour a week.
01:19:53 --> 01:19:57 Does most of us need that? It might not be an hour a week, but we need life
01:19:57 --> 01:20:00 interventions. We need help. We need alternatives.
01:20:00 --> 01:20:04 We might need social prescriptions for walks and museums. I mean,
01:20:04 --> 01:20:07 so many different things can help. It's complex.
01:20:07 --> 01:20:13 And this myth, the story of neurotransmitters, you know, we now know serotonin
01:20:13 --> 01:20:17 doesn't cause depression, either less or more of it. That's been disproven.
01:20:18 --> 01:20:24 But it's such a nice story. You know, we can do this so fast and we can put
01:20:24 --> 01:20:29 very little money into it and give people inexpensive drugs, but it hasn't worked.
01:20:29 --> 01:20:33 We've given it a chance. It's time to try something different.
01:20:33 --> 01:20:39 So what do you want readers to take away from this book when they get it?
01:20:39 --> 01:20:44 I would love for readers to understand that neurodiversity, like mine,
01:20:44 --> 01:20:48 which people will probably consider pretty extreme, I've hallucinated, but,
01:20:49 --> 01:20:53 It is its own way of knowing. It's not meaningless and it's not pointless,
01:20:53 --> 01:20:56 which was something Dorothea Buck was such a great champion for saying,
01:20:57 --> 01:21:00 that it's something that you can learn from and can even be transformative,
01:21:01 --> 01:21:02 that there's always hope,
01:21:03 --> 01:21:10 and that human beings are very complex, and it's rare that there's only one thing going on.
01:21:10 --> 01:21:15 Certainly, there could be, but with mental states and traits,
01:21:15 --> 01:21:19 it's rare that there's only one thing going on, And so there is a lot of hope
01:21:19 --> 01:21:26 and keep trying and make sure you get a doctor that respects you if you can. That's hard. Yeah.
01:21:27 --> 01:21:32 So I'm a big sports guy and I grew up in Chicago, so I'm a big Chicago sports guy.
01:21:33 --> 01:21:38 And I'll never forget, there was a young man that played for the Bears named Alonzo Spellman.
01:21:39 --> 01:21:43 And he was, you know, I think he had an all pro season.
01:21:43 --> 01:21:46 He was one of the top defensive ends in the league.
01:21:46 --> 01:21:49 And one day during the
01:21:49 --> 01:21:52 off season he was walking around lakeshore drive
01:21:52 --> 01:21:55 naked and you know the police
01:21:55 --> 01:21:58 fortunately the police recognized who
01:21:58 --> 01:22:04 he was and they got him to the station they called the bears organization and
01:22:04 --> 01:22:12 all that stuff and so what the bears did you know was they they called around
01:22:12 --> 01:22:16 to see who would take him in a trade.
01:22:17 --> 01:22:22 And so, and they explained why they wanted to trade him because they didn't
01:22:22 --> 01:22:28 have the personnel in their, you know, in their medical team to deal with that.
01:22:28 --> 01:22:33 And I think they do now. I think most of the teams do now, but the team that
01:22:33 --> 01:22:36 had the best treatment was Dallas.
01:22:37 --> 01:22:43 And so they traded him to Dallas and he continued his football career at least
01:22:43 --> 01:22:48 for a couple more years because he was getting the treatment that he needed and all that stuff.
01:22:49 --> 01:22:52 So it's very important for people to.
01:22:54 --> 01:22:58 You said take the stigma off and do what they had to do. The Bears could have
01:22:58 --> 01:23:02 been very selfish and, you know, try to keep it under wraps and all that kind
01:23:02 --> 01:23:06 of stuff and just throw him out there on the field because he was a good player for them.
01:23:06 --> 01:23:11 But they took it upon themselves and said, no, we care about this individual.
01:23:11 --> 01:23:16 And if we can get him on a team where he can still play football and get the
01:23:16 --> 01:23:19 help that he needs, then that's what we're going to do.
01:23:19 --> 01:23:23 And I just wish that more people would do that, and I hope that,
01:23:24 --> 01:23:30 People reading your book will get more of a sense of that and understand that
01:23:30 --> 01:23:34 some of the things that are happening now, especially people that are dealing
01:23:34 --> 01:23:38 with issues, you know, there's there's a history behind it.
01:23:38 --> 01:23:43 And we're still at a point where we're, you know, when you were talking about
01:23:43 --> 01:23:47 the guy Kraepelin, right?
01:23:47 --> 01:23:55 And in my mind, I was thinking, yeah, they called him a founder of modern psychology,
01:23:55 --> 01:23:59 but he was doing it for the wrong reasons, right?
01:23:59 --> 01:24:07 Absolutely. And then I thought about Wernher von Braun, who was a scientist
01:24:07 --> 01:24:09 for the Nazis building rockets.
01:24:10 --> 01:24:14 And we stole them. And he built our NASA program.
01:24:14 --> 01:24:19 So there could be some good to come out of it.
01:24:20 --> 01:24:24 But I didn't get that from the book. But, you know, but maybe,
01:24:24 --> 01:24:29 maybe there's, I guess there was some things that he kind of touched on that,
01:24:30 --> 01:24:35 I guess, helps people in the profession deal with their clients.
01:24:36 --> 01:24:40 You know, but I just, it was really, really very eye-opening.
01:24:40 --> 01:24:43 Even, I haven't seen the movie Nuremberg yet. Have you seen it?
01:24:44 --> 01:24:49 I have not. You know, I wrote quite a bit about that guy, Douglas Kelly,
01:24:49 --> 01:24:51 who was the Nuremberg psychiatrist.
01:24:52 --> 01:24:58 And I kind of almost topped out on the story. I will watch it down the road.
01:24:58 --> 01:25:03 He was fascinating. I mean, he became very obsessed with the fact that none
01:25:03 --> 01:25:08 of the Nazi doctors really were disturbed in any way. He wanted them to be.
01:25:08 --> 01:25:12 He wanted an easy answer. But he ultimately said they were like businessmen,
01:25:13 --> 01:25:16 except they considered their business world domination.
01:25:17 --> 01:25:20 I mean, they were very dry, cut and dry about it. And none of them,
01:25:20 --> 01:25:23 you know, they passed every psych test they were given.
01:25:24 --> 01:25:28 Yeah, well, I think you brought a different angle. I think the movie is more
01:25:28 --> 01:25:33 about the trial part, etc., and not about the prep before.
01:25:33 --> 01:25:40 But yeah you get into it so deep that you know one of the things that you highlighted
01:25:40 --> 01:25:46 was the fact that the I don't know if this was at the main trial or the doctor's trial but.
01:25:47 --> 01:25:51 I think the movie is about the very first trial, where it's like the United
01:25:51 --> 01:25:53 States and a couple other countries were involved.
01:25:54 --> 01:25:56 But the doctor's trial was strictly us.
01:25:57 --> 01:26:04 And the part of the defense was that the United States really shouldn't have
01:26:04 --> 01:26:09 any standing in this court because of the Tuskegee experiments.
01:26:09 --> 01:26:13 Yeah, that did come up. Yeah. No, I'm sorry. I was actually thinking,
01:26:13 --> 01:26:15 I think, of a different film.
01:26:15 --> 01:26:19 But I haven't seen the Nuremberg film. But yes, I'm very familiar with what they said.
01:26:19 --> 01:26:23 And, you know, one of the reasons that we didn't, you know, one of the reasons
01:26:23 --> 01:26:27 that the crimes against the psychiatric population wasn't prosecuted,
01:26:27 --> 01:26:31 weren't prosecuted, was that it was German on German crime.
01:26:31 --> 01:26:35 And people in the U.S. are kind of saying, well, if we do that to them,
01:26:35 --> 01:26:38 what are they going to come in here and do to us?
01:26:38 --> 01:26:45 If we're going to target crime against your own population, how are we going
01:26:45 --> 01:26:49 to look, you know, on that, you know, sitting in that defense box?
01:26:49 --> 01:26:55 So, yes, that is very real that it was a concern that we had done the Tuskegee
01:26:55 --> 01:27:01 experiments and we were, you know, we were prosecuting them for experiments they did. Yeah.
01:27:02 --> 01:27:06 On humans. Now, I think the man you mentioned, Kelly, right?
01:27:06 --> 01:27:13 Doug Kelly, yeah. He even said that he had a fear that because of racism that
01:27:13 --> 01:27:16 we would go down that same path, right?
01:27:16 --> 01:27:18 Oh, absolutely. He was, yeah.
01:27:19 --> 01:27:25 He was kind of obsessively afraid of that. And I think he was wise. Yeah.
01:27:25 --> 01:27:29 All right. So let's close out on an optimistic note.
01:27:31 --> 01:27:38 Sure. I'm asking all the guests to do this. Finish this sentence. I have hope because...
01:27:39 --> 01:27:41 Have hope because we actually do
01:27:41 --> 01:27:44 know what we need to do. We have a lot of information on things that work.
01:27:44 --> 01:27:50 And because I think that people like Dorothea Buck, people like Douglas Kelly,
01:27:51 --> 01:27:55 people like Paul Schraber, people like DJ Mason, who wrote that story for Ebony,
01:27:55 --> 01:28:00 these people come along who just demand change and they know how to, they can affect change.
01:28:00 --> 01:28:02 And I think those people are going to come along again.
01:28:02 --> 01:28:05 And Philippe Pinel, Tremendous human being.
01:28:05 --> 01:28:11 I mean, the good news is what one human being can do. And the answer to that is almost everything.
01:28:12 --> 01:28:18 So how can people get the book? How can people reach out to you? All that stuff. Sure.
01:28:18 --> 01:28:22 The book is The Devil's Castle. It's on audio. You know, it's on Audible.
01:28:23 --> 01:28:28 It's available at any bookstore, Amazon, bookshelf.org, whatever your preference is.
01:28:28 --> 01:28:34 And my website is suzantonetta.com. and I do answer my mail.
01:28:35 --> 01:28:40 So reach out through my contact form, say hello, tell me your story.
01:28:41 --> 01:28:48 All right. Well, Susanne, I greatly appreciate you, one, coming on the podcast
01:28:48 --> 01:28:50 and two, writing this book.
01:28:50 --> 01:28:56 I think, you know, it's an issue that I dealt with as a legislator.
01:28:56 --> 01:29:00 And I tell this story anytime I have somebody, we talk about mental health.
01:29:01 --> 01:29:05 You know, it was the one One thing I noticed that every year in the appropriations
01:29:05 --> 01:29:08 process, we were cutting the budget for that.
01:29:08 --> 01:29:12 And I had said that we were going to pay for that. And I haven't been elected
01:29:12 --> 01:29:15 official for nearly 20 years now.
01:29:15 --> 01:29:22 But I knew that if you kept, if we as a government that's supposed to follow the.
01:29:24 --> 01:29:26 Premise that we're supposed to look out for the general welfare,
01:29:26 --> 01:29:33 if we kept cutting money from our mental health, then that was going to be a
01:29:33 --> 01:29:36 problem, especially in a small state like Mississippi.
01:29:37 --> 01:29:41 And that was a national trend. That wasn't just the Mississippi thing.
01:29:41 --> 01:29:43 It was like every state legislature did that.
01:29:43 --> 01:29:48 And I think we're paying the price for that. So I hope that your book,
01:29:49 --> 01:29:50 along with some other people,
01:29:51 --> 01:29:59 you know, continues to raise the awareness that needs to happen so that it becomes more of a priority.
01:29:59 --> 01:30:04 And whenever we do get universal health care, that that mental health will be included.
01:30:04 --> 01:30:09 But I just thank you for the research. And I know that, you know,
01:30:10 --> 01:30:14 you went through some stuff while you were writing the book.
01:30:14 --> 01:30:19 And the courage that you had to push through.
01:30:19 --> 01:30:22 Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you've got to read the book to understand what I'm talking about.
01:30:23 --> 01:30:26 And just the fact that you, even though it was, like you said,
01:30:26 --> 01:30:31 only 10% and 15%, the fact that you put yourself in there.
01:30:33 --> 01:30:37 That's the storytelling that we need to get the message out.
01:30:37 --> 01:30:39 So again, I thank you for that.
01:30:39 --> 01:30:42 I thank you so much for having me. This was a great conversation.
01:30:42 --> 01:30:45 All right. All right, guys, and we're going to catch y'all on the other side.
01:31:00 --> 01:31:06 I want to thank Dr. Ellen Bassuk, her son Daniel Schoonover,
01:31:06 --> 01:31:12 and Susanne Antonetta for coming on the podcast.
01:31:12 --> 01:31:17 I greatly appreciate their vulnerability
01:31:17 --> 01:31:24 and their scholarship in the two books they have written. Dr.
01:31:24 --> 01:31:33 Ellen and her son Daniel wrote Between Two Worlds, and Miss Susanne wrote The Devil's Castle.
01:31:34 --> 01:31:39 If you are into this issue and you really want to see some changes,
01:31:40 --> 01:31:42 you really need to read those books.
01:31:43 --> 01:31:47 I think, you know, the perspectives that they bring, again,
01:31:47 --> 01:31:51 with the combination of being vulnerable and being scholarly,
01:31:51 --> 01:31:57 It really does justice to the awareness, and we need to continue,
01:31:57 --> 01:32:05 we really need to continue to push this issue because this happens.
01:32:06 --> 01:32:09 It can happen to any one of us because all of us have brains.
01:32:10 --> 01:32:15 And, you know, our mental health is as important, if not more important,
01:32:15 --> 01:32:16 than our physical health.
01:32:17 --> 01:32:22 It's got to be a balance. And like I said to Ms.
01:32:22 --> 01:32:27 Susanne, I pray that if we do ever get universal health care in the United States,
01:32:27 --> 01:32:31 that mental health is a major component in that as well.
01:32:31 --> 01:32:37 Because everybody wants to look good, you know, feel good as far as like running
01:32:37 --> 01:32:42 or playing the sport. They want to play recreationally, all that kind of stuff.
01:32:42 --> 01:32:48 But you got to have a sound mind. And for those of you who have followed me
01:32:48 --> 01:32:56 on the podcast, you know that I have been very open about my battle with depression.
01:32:57 --> 01:33:00 I am very fortunate that.
01:33:01 --> 01:33:09 Even with my stubbornness and the personal relationships that I lost because
01:33:09 --> 01:33:16 of it, that I was able to get diagnosed and treated.
01:33:17 --> 01:33:24 And so far, I've been okay. I have moments, but I'm not in that funk that I was in.
01:33:24 --> 01:33:29 When I tell you I was not in a good place, I was not in a good place.
01:33:31 --> 01:33:37 And, you know, even from a spiritual standpoint, I had such a strong connection.
01:33:39 --> 01:33:44 And it was it was like it was just like you, you know, for those of us old enough
01:33:44 --> 01:33:52 to remember dial up on AOL, you know, you would hear the the the chirping noise or whatever.
01:33:53 --> 01:33:58 And and then sometimes you would just get cut off and you had no access at all.
01:33:58 --> 01:34:02 Wasn't like, you know, it was slow or anything.
01:34:02 --> 01:34:04 I mean, it was just like off, right?
01:34:05 --> 01:34:11 And that's what I felt like. I just felt like, you know, my brain, I was just on autopilot.
01:34:12 --> 01:34:21 And, you know, it was until I got treatment, you know, I just kind of felt defenseless on that.
01:34:22 --> 01:34:28 So, And like I said, even when I was an elected official, it was an issue for me.
01:34:30 --> 01:34:35 And it might explain when I critique myself.
01:34:37 --> 01:34:40 Level of maturity in the position I had.
01:34:41 --> 01:34:45 Because, you know, depression is not something that just pops up.
01:34:45 --> 01:34:48 You know, it's something that builds over time.
01:34:49 --> 01:34:56 It's, you know, disappointment, tragedy, trauma, whatever combination you run into, right?
01:34:57 --> 01:35:01 You know, self-esteem, all that kind of stuff that just builds up.
01:35:01 --> 01:35:05 And if you don't fortify yourself, It can it can happen.
01:35:06 --> 01:35:12 So, you know, it's like we have a natural moment of being depressed,
01:35:12 --> 01:35:18 but when it takes over, it's not not good.
01:35:18 --> 01:35:28 And so I commend my guests for being vulnerable and letting people know it's
01:35:28 --> 01:35:33 like we see the challenges out there, but they also see hope.
01:35:34 --> 01:35:40 And that's kind of the way I want to close out, you know, because it's like
01:35:40 --> 01:35:46 in the political world, we're seeing a lot of challenges, right?
01:35:46 --> 01:35:50 We've seen two members of Congress resign.
01:35:50 --> 01:35:55 Within the span of two weeks, we've lost two elected officials to violence,
01:35:56 --> 01:36:03 domestic violence, and two African-American officials at that.
01:36:03 --> 01:36:08 So you never know when it's going to hit.
01:36:08 --> 01:36:14 I do have some pushback with the Congresswoman we refer to as AOC.
01:36:16 --> 01:36:22 Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez you know she was stopped by some reporters and they
01:36:22 --> 01:36:27 asked her what her thoughts were about what was going on at the Capitol and
01:36:27 --> 01:36:32 she said well we just got to get some people that you know have strong moral
01:36:32 --> 01:36:34 character and all that stuff,
01:36:34 --> 01:36:37 and my pushback is good luck on that,
01:36:37 --> 01:36:40 because all of us are human that.
01:36:42 --> 01:36:47 We just laid to rest a man who said in one of his famous quotes,
01:36:47 --> 01:36:50 not a perfect servant. I'm a public servant.
01:36:51 --> 01:37:00 I think the challenge for us is if we want to do good in society,
01:37:00 --> 01:37:03 if we want to make things better for people,
01:37:04 --> 01:37:11 doing whatever personal demons, whatever challenges you have, it can't stop that.
01:37:12 --> 01:37:18 And if it's getting to a point where you can't do good, then you need to address it.
01:37:19 --> 01:37:24 There are some people that think, well, you know, I can compartmentalize it.
01:37:24 --> 01:37:27 And, you know, when I'm off the clock or when I'm not in public,
01:37:27 --> 01:37:29 I can do whatever I want to.
01:37:29 --> 01:37:34 And then I can get out and do what I do.
01:37:36 --> 01:37:40 And politicians fall into that trap a lot.
01:37:41 --> 01:37:49 And so I just want to say that everything that you do impacts you.
01:37:50 --> 01:37:55 If it's something that is going to compromise you, then it's going to diminish
01:37:55 --> 01:37:58 what you can do good, right?
01:37:59 --> 01:38:01 So I'm not here to judge anybody.
01:38:02 --> 01:38:05 I think the actions that have been taken needed to be taken.
01:38:05 --> 01:38:12 I think there's a couple of other folks that might need to reevaluate why they're
01:38:12 --> 01:38:20 in Congress and they need to decide to step down themselves instead of prolonging a fight.
01:38:21 --> 01:38:26 But that's on them. You know, that's about as nonpartisan as it can be.
01:38:27 --> 01:38:30 Doesn't matter if you're a Democrat, Republican, Independent,
01:38:30 --> 01:38:37 Green, whatever. You know, if you did something and you know that that goes against,
01:38:39 --> 01:38:44 So what you're trying to do, if it negates the good that you're doing,
01:38:45 --> 01:38:46 then you need to address that.
01:38:48 --> 01:38:53 And for the good that you did do, people will appreciate that.
01:38:53 --> 01:38:59 Maybe not on a mass scale like you were used to, but the people that you help
01:38:59 --> 01:39:01 will always remember that you helped them.
01:39:02 --> 01:39:07 And that's the satisfaction you can take even if you're no longer in public life.
01:39:07 --> 01:39:11 If you did some good while you were there, you did some good.
01:39:12 --> 01:39:14 But you can't hold on to that forever.
01:39:16 --> 01:39:24 And, you know, it would be nice if we had people of the highest,
01:39:24 --> 01:39:27 of highest characters in elective office.
01:39:28 --> 01:39:36 That's a dream, right? But when you're looking at 435 options,
01:39:36 --> 01:39:38 you're not going to get perfection.
01:39:39 --> 01:39:42 Even with 100 options, you're not going to get perfection.
01:39:44 --> 01:39:48 And that's just Congress. I mean, we ain't got to the judges.
01:39:49 --> 01:39:57 We haven't got to the state legislators, right, who have a high profile in their
01:39:57 --> 01:40:01 state. But if you don't live in their state, you don't know who these people are, right?
01:40:02 --> 01:40:06 You know, because we've had, I've had colleagues, you know, think,
01:40:07 --> 01:40:10 well, I'm not in my state, so I can do what I want to do.
01:40:11 --> 01:40:16 And it comes back to bite them. It happens when you decide to do something that
01:40:16 --> 01:40:19 you know you ain't supposed to be doing and come back and get you.
01:40:21 --> 01:40:27 So I am the last person to judge anybody. I have not lived anywhere close to a perfect life.
01:40:28 --> 01:40:32 All I ask people to do is do what's good for folks.
01:40:33 --> 01:40:36 Fulfill the obligation that's in the preamble, right?
01:40:36 --> 01:40:38 To promote the general welfare.
01:40:39 --> 01:40:42 You're supposed to provide a, provide defense.
01:40:44 --> 01:40:47 And the key word is defense. That's why we called it the Department of Defense
01:40:47 --> 01:40:52 instead of Department of War, because we're not supposed to be going out starting stuff.
01:40:53 --> 01:40:57 We're supposed to be strong enough that when the time comes,
01:40:57 --> 01:40:59 we can defend our nation.
01:41:00 --> 01:41:05 That's the psychology behind the name defense as opposed to war.
01:41:05 --> 01:41:08 When you say you're the Department of War, you're basically saying,
01:41:09 --> 01:41:14 I am the descendant of the war god Ares, and we're going to take over the world.
01:41:14 --> 01:41:16 That's, you know, that's not what we do.
01:41:17 --> 01:41:24 We defend the United States of America. We don't, we're not supposed to be bullying
01:41:24 --> 01:41:26 the rest of the planet, right?
01:41:26 --> 01:41:31 Even though we are imperialistic in the way that we do things,
01:41:31 --> 01:41:34 we're not really an empire. We're not supposed to be.
01:41:35 --> 01:41:41 You know, we can, the strength of us, especially after World War II,
01:41:41 --> 01:41:47 is that the world knew that we could hold our own and help our friends when they need it.
01:41:47 --> 01:41:55 And we channel that through USAID and we channel that through diplomacy, that power.
01:41:56 --> 01:41:59 You know, we are the only nation that ever dropped a nuclear weapon on anybody.
01:42:01 --> 01:42:05 So people have that in the back of their minds. They understand that. Thank you.
01:42:06 --> 01:42:11 So, you know, we're supposed to come in with a position of strength,
01:42:11 --> 01:42:15 but not a position of intimidation, right?
01:42:16 --> 01:42:23 And if you have flawed individuals in positions, that compromises our strength.
01:42:24 --> 01:42:27 But are we going to get perfect individuals? No.
01:42:28 --> 01:42:35 Case in point, Donald Trump is a flawed individual, right? Bill Clinton was not perfect.
01:42:36 --> 01:42:39 Jimmy Carter was not perfect, right?
01:42:40 --> 01:42:44 He was of higher moral character than the other two guys I just mentioned.
01:42:45 --> 01:42:48 But, you know, Barack Obama is not perfect.
01:42:49 --> 01:42:56 But, you know, when you talk about people who set aside money they could make,
01:42:57 --> 01:42:59 circles they could run in,
01:43:00 --> 01:43:06 just offer themselves up for service to the nation, you know,
01:43:07 --> 01:43:09 there's an understanding that they're human.
01:43:10 --> 01:43:15 And it used to be a time where it was like through the vetting process of the
01:43:15 --> 01:43:22 primaries and the election, if you found out this person wasn't all that,
01:43:22 --> 01:43:29 you know, that's going to compromise us, then we didn't vote for them, right?
01:43:29 --> 01:43:35 And it wasn't personal. It was just like, yeah, dude, you sound good, but what about this?
01:43:36 --> 01:43:41 Like Gary Hart, for example, right? The senator from, I think he was from Colorado.
01:43:42 --> 01:43:45 Senator Hart was supposed to be the Democratic nominee in 1984.
01:43:45 --> 01:43:49 He was supposed to be the Vice President, Vice President Mondale.
01:43:50 --> 01:43:54 But word got out that he was having an affair.
01:43:55 --> 01:44:04 But instead of nixing that, right, instead of saying, look, I can't see you
01:44:04 --> 01:44:06 anymore, whatever the case may be, right?
01:44:07 --> 01:44:14 I got to be president. He dared the press, literally dared them to follow him.
01:44:14 --> 01:44:17 If you think that I'm having an affair, then follow me.
01:44:18 --> 01:44:23 Well, somebody took him up on that offer and caught him in an act.
01:44:24 --> 01:44:30 So Gary Hart's issue wasn't the infidelity. It was judgment, arrogance.
01:44:31 --> 01:44:35 You think that you could do what you want and be above reproach?
01:44:36 --> 01:44:41 That's not the person we need to have the nuclear codes.
01:44:41 --> 01:44:47 That's not the person we need in that Oval Office sitting at that resolute desk.
01:44:48 --> 01:44:50 That's the way we were in 1984.
01:44:51 --> 01:44:54 We are obviously lax on that now.
01:44:54 --> 01:45:00 Because if we were going by 1984 standards, Donald Trump wouldn't have made
01:45:00 --> 01:45:01 it out of the Republican primary.
01:45:01 --> 01:45:03 No way, shape or form.
01:45:05 --> 01:45:09 Way more arrogant than Gary Hart. He can't even say I'm sorry.
01:45:09 --> 01:45:11 He can't even say I made a mistake.
01:45:12 --> 01:45:16 So he definitely thinks he's beyond reproach, right?
01:45:17 --> 01:45:21 That's why old cats like me can't get into him.
01:45:22 --> 01:45:26 If we were just having the typical Democrat-Republican arguments,
01:45:27 --> 01:45:30 you know, you don't want to get a George Bush in there.
01:45:30 --> 01:45:35 You don't want to get George H.W. Bush in there, right? You're going to get a Ronald Reagan.
01:45:36 --> 01:45:38 You're going to have a back and forth.
01:45:40 --> 01:45:47 But, you know, and it was understood to a degree that these people were not perfect people.
01:45:47 --> 01:45:49 But could you sit down and have a drink with them?
01:45:50 --> 01:45:54 Could you talk shit to them about sports, about politics, about whatever?
01:45:55 --> 01:45:57 You know, they were your neighbor.
01:45:58 --> 01:46:02 Could you go to church with them? Could you hang out? Could you go to their
01:46:02 --> 01:46:05 backyard party? Could they come to your barbecue?
01:46:05 --> 01:46:10 Do you trust them to make the right decisions for the nation?
01:46:11 --> 01:46:16 That's the standard. Not perfection. Empathy.
01:46:17 --> 01:46:19 A sense of duty and honor.
01:46:21 --> 01:46:27 Not greed, not avarice, not a thirst for power.
01:46:28 --> 01:46:30 That's why I'm critical of the president.
01:46:31 --> 01:46:35 Have disagreements about policy all day long because if the end goal,
01:46:35 --> 01:46:39 if your goal or my goal is to do something to make the nation better,
01:46:39 --> 01:46:43 we're different individuals. So we're going to have different ideas.
01:46:44 --> 01:46:50 That's understood. That's part of the reason why you have those deliberative bodies.
01:46:51 --> 01:47:00 To have conversations because conversations and arguments are supposed to lead to solutions.
01:47:01 --> 01:47:02 That's the end goal.
01:47:03 --> 01:47:08 But if you can't admit that you made a mistake, if you can't even say I'm sorry,
01:47:09 --> 01:47:13 or you misunderstood what I said.
01:47:15 --> 01:47:18 That wasn't my intention. You can't say that.
01:47:19 --> 01:47:23 You're a dangerous person to be given that much responsibility.
01:47:24 --> 01:47:29 That's my beef. You can be mad because your gas is $5.
01:47:29 --> 01:47:36 You could be mad that we're in a war that we weren't supposed to be in.
01:47:36 --> 01:47:39 All those are valid issues, right?
01:47:40 --> 01:47:47 And we're not doing enough to stop genocide in Gaza or the Congo or anywhere
01:47:47 --> 01:47:52 else, you know, the Uyghurs in China.
01:47:52 --> 01:47:59 You can be mad about that, right? That's legitimate. But you should care enough
01:47:59 --> 01:48:04 where even if you have disagreements, that you look at the people that's out
01:48:04 --> 01:48:07 there and you look at where their heart is.
01:48:08 --> 01:48:17 And that should determine who we designate as the leader, because he's not just the leader for us.
01:48:17 --> 01:48:24 He is the representative of us on the planet, in the political world,
01:48:24 --> 01:48:26 amongst other nation states.
01:48:27 --> 01:48:35 That's the standard. And it'd been nice to say she, but we haven't gotten the
01:48:35 --> 01:48:38 courage to vote for a she yet.
01:48:40 --> 01:48:44 Us, because we should have had two by now, at least two.
01:48:45 --> 01:48:53 So anyway, you know, I wish that we could elect perfect people.
01:48:54 --> 01:49:01 You know, the CIA targets Brigham Young University, right, for recruitment,
01:49:01 --> 01:49:06 because most of the young men,
01:49:06 --> 01:49:10 young women that go on missions, they have to be bilingual.
01:49:10 --> 01:49:16 You know, there's a certain standard that they have to keep up on campus because
01:49:16 --> 01:49:17 it's a religious school.
01:49:18 --> 01:49:22 So things that we were doing at Jackson State, they don't do at Brigham Young.
01:49:24 --> 01:49:27 Right. Just to be clear. So, you know,
01:49:28 --> 01:49:32 they kind of profile those young men and women and say those would be ideal
01:49:32 --> 01:49:36 candidates Because when you're dealing with espionage, you've got to deal with
01:49:36 --> 01:49:40 people that have a moral compass that can't be compromised, right?
01:49:41 --> 01:49:44 In the military, the standard's not that high.
01:49:45 --> 01:49:49 We want you to be loyal. We don't want you to turn the guns on us if you're
01:49:49 --> 01:49:51 fighting for the United States.
01:49:53 --> 01:49:57 But the standard is not as high. And that's understood, right?
01:49:58 --> 01:50:04 But every elected official in the United States can't come from Brigham Young University, right?
01:50:05 --> 01:50:10 You could probably elect everybody from Utah, but there's not enough alumni
01:50:10 --> 01:50:14 to serve in all these positions in 50 states.
01:50:16 --> 01:50:22 But you don't have to go to Brigham Young to have high standards, right?
01:50:23 --> 01:50:28 You're raised, based on your discipline, right?
01:50:29 --> 01:50:35 So there's good people out here, and there's a lot of good people that don't
01:50:35 --> 01:50:42 run because the one mistake they did make figures, well, I can't run.
01:50:42 --> 01:50:45 I don't want that coming up in the campaign.
01:50:45 --> 01:50:53 And that's your call. But if you really want to do good and you can either explain
01:50:53 --> 01:51:00 or show that you've gotten past that moment and it's not going to be,
01:51:01 --> 01:51:05 indicative of how you're going to be in that job, then you should go for it.
01:51:06 --> 01:51:10 All of us have to be accountable at some point. And if you decide to run for
01:51:10 --> 01:51:15 office and you have to be accountable to the voters were something you did in the past, do it.
01:51:16 --> 01:51:22 That would say a lot more about the character because we're all going to make
01:51:22 --> 01:51:30 mistakes, no matter how disciplined we think we are, no matter how strong we think we are.
01:51:30 --> 01:51:33 We all have our kryptonite, right?
01:51:34 --> 01:51:42 So, you know, and I commend those folks who are stronger than a lot of us I
01:51:42 --> 01:51:48 commend those folks who stay above the fray as long as they can, right?
01:51:49 --> 01:51:57 You know, as much as I would like for ALC's desire to be fulfilled, it's not.
01:51:57 --> 01:52:02 But the thing is, when you got people and you know that people are doing certain
01:52:02 --> 01:52:08 things, then when they try to get beyond where you can reach them,
01:52:09 --> 01:52:12 you might want to shut that down. Especially if you can't.
01:52:12 --> 01:52:16 Or hope that the voters shut them down. Right?
01:52:19 --> 01:52:25 Because what they're doing not only impacts them, but it might impact you,
01:52:25 --> 01:52:27 especially if you're on the same side of the aisle.
01:52:28 --> 01:52:31 Well, all the Democrats are like that. All the Republicans are like that.
01:52:32 --> 01:52:34 That's just the way they are, right?
01:52:35 --> 01:52:38 And you don't want that stigma.
01:52:39 --> 01:52:41 Nonetheless, we are where we are.
01:52:42 --> 01:52:47 Ask that you pray for the families of those elected officials in Florida and
01:52:47 --> 01:52:52 Virginia, those children that either lost a parent or both parents,
01:52:52 --> 01:52:54 well, you lost both parents.
01:52:56 --> 01:53:03 That. Pray for those communities. Pray for the communities that lost their elected
01:53:03 --> 01:53:09 officials because they have to have the courage and the discernment to pick
01:53:09 --> 01:53:13 somebody else to step in that void, right?
01:53:14 --> 01:53:21 Again, we are in tough times, but the journey of the human experience is always
01:53:21 --> 01:53:24 going to be tough. There's always going to be challenges.
01:53:24 --> 01:53:31 In the Christian faith, we're taught that our sufferings build our character, right?
01:53:31 --> 01:53:37 And it gives us the strength to keep pressing for the high mark.
01:53:37 --> 01:53:46 So just summon that strength within you and get involved.
01:53:48 --> 01:53:51 Continue to support independent podcasters like me.
01:53:52 --> 01:53:59 Vote, petition, make phone calls. Do what you got to do. Stay engaged. Attend meetings.
01:54:00 --> 01:54:06 Do what you got to do. Read the newspaper. Read the online publications, whatever.
01:54:07 --> 01:54:10 Stay informed, right?
01:54:11 --> 01:54:18 Again, not asking people to be political junkies, but we need people to fulfill
01:54:18 --> 01:54:20 the obligation of citizenship.
01:54:22 --> 01:54:27 Step outside your bubble. Listen to a thought that doesn't agree with you.
01:54:27 --> 01:54:31 That was one of the most important lessons I learned in college.
01:54:32 --> 01:54:37 We had a teacher that challenged us. Step outside of the bubble.
01:54:37 --> 01:54:40 Learn what the other side is thinking.
01:54:41 --> 01:54:47 Listen to what they're saying and build your arguments that way instead of just
01:54:47 --> 01:54:50 going on emotion and comfort.
01:54:53 --> 01:54:56 So anyway, there's hope on the other side.
01:54:57 --> 01:55:02 The guess that I have, I had on today, proves that there's hope.
01:55:02 --> 01:55:08 The fact that Congress is still meeting, the Supreme Court is still functioning.
01:55:10 --> 01:55:16 Government still is there, Constitution has been burned up, Declaration of Independence
01:55:16 --> 01:55:19 is still on display. There's hope.
01:55:20 --> 01:55:28 If anything those astronauts prove that we can do things beyond people's comprehension,
01:55:29 --> 01:55:31 if you apply yourself to it.
01:55:32 --> 01:55:36 So I'll leave y'all with that, guys. We're going to get through it.
01:55:37 --> 01:55:40 Can't sit idly by and wait for somebody else to do it.
01:55:40 --> 01:55:45 You know, we had a U.S. president that challenged us and said that we are the
01:55:45 --> 01:55:48 change we want. So let's live up to that.
01:55:49 --> 01:55:52 All right, guys, thank y'all for listening. Until next time.