Ok, one more thing. We have a Party Pressure up here. I think that jason is going to tell you who she is we have a Party Crasher up here. I think that jason is when a tell you who she is. Jason so good to have you all here. I learned a long time ago not to instruct an audience to do anything, but i think at this point it would be only appropriate if you give jason and diana a round of applause to this evening. [applause] that was my joke for the night. Hope you caught that. That was my joke. Welcome. It is great to see you all here and great to be with jason and diana at this place where so many of these events have occurred over the years. I thought i would begin by asking both of you, jason, i have known you for a while now, going back to when you first came to the General Assembly and i was reporting for the kansas city star. What is amazing, particularly after reading your book, is that i didnt know most of the stuff, what you are going through, and diana, what you are going through. It strikes me that we are also good at disguising difficult things not just you, but many of us. We all have difficult things. Im just wondering, you are in such a highprofile position for so many years. How did you manage it . Jason i didnt. [laughter] steve thats the point of the book. Jason thank you, steve, for doing this. Thank you, vivian lets just keep applauding things. [applause] yeah, i guess when you are asking that, the word i locked in on was when you said i didnt know any of it. Neither did i. I knew what was going on, but i didnt know what was going on with me. The whole time it was like, it cant be that. This is just how i am now. After a long enough period of time i just forgot that it wasnt always this way. Im having trouble explaining how i didnt know the thing that i just wrote a book about. [laughter] steve diana, all of these incredible things were happening in your private life, and you didnt want the public to see what was going on. That must have been pretty tough to manage. Diana i think we were very high functioning ptsd and anxiety. We channeled it into very healthy not healthy, but very productive avoidance strategies. There is a lot of roads to go into, so we are lucky that is the one we picked. Jason thats what was there. That is what i was doing. As things got worse, you reach for the thing that is there, and raise your hand if i knocked on your door at some point. [laughter] you were part of my selfmedicating a strategy. I didnt know it at the time. Steve well, you have been on incredible ride going back 20 years now, because it was exactly 20 years ago this year that you first put on a uniform, jason. I want to tick off what you have done these 20 years and you mentioned many of these in the invisible storm. Law school and the General Assembly, basic training and a run as a state representative, deployment to afghanistan and a run for mayor. There were several moments where you thought your life was on the line during your service. I didnt mention that you have kids and you meant for secretary of state and one and you ran for the u. S. Senate and almost won and you are growing the Veterans Community project across the country. I guess the question is, how the hell are you . [laughter] jason thanks, steve. I am now very good. It is a lot of stuff. It was exhausting, but not because of all the stuff we were doing. It was exhausting because i wasnt sleeping, and i was constantly feeling like i was in danger. And you know, the other stuff you read the book. That was exhausting part more than anything. But now my life is completely different. I Coach Little League and i play some baseball and i am fully present as a husband and father and a son and a brother. Im doing really well now. Steve diana, did you have any idea what youre buying into when you married him . Diana we were competitive debaters. Obviously i had no idea. [laughter] steve and it sounds like you, diana, have been standing having been standing idly by you had your own best seller, you are in innovation consultant, you are an entrepreneur. You mixed that in with all of us this. Diana we learned that you can accomplish a lot. You can use work in a healthy way just like you can use anything in an unhealthy way. I meditate to cope with severe anger. That was one of the symptoms that jason and i shared. We thought, meditation, that is a good thing, awesome for you. But if you are using it to hide and numb your anger problems underneath, it is an unhealthy to a fulsome anything can be good or bad for you. You have to see what is underneath. Steve jason, i want to ask you about a point you made toward the end of the book. Given a choice between where you are today and being a member of the u. S. Senate, where would you rather be . Jason i had the best civilian job as president of the project. I would rather be here. Sometimes when i say that it upsets people because i understand there is a razor thin margin in the u. S. Senate. But that is how i feel. Ive been doing a lot of interviews the last couple weeks. Another version of this question i get a lot is the sliding doors question. What if you had run for the nomination in 2020 and all that. Its not a sliding doors question to me. If id been in the u. S. Senate, i dont know if i would go to get help. And now im really enjoying my life. Im really i would rather be here. Steve one of the points you made in the book is that you won by losing. Jason im like a weird case. Maybe it is easier for me to say im glad with how things are because i tend to see myself these days as a Little League coach from kansas city, but im also aware that there is something i want to say, i can go on a national tv and say it. I can turn it on and turn it off, which is a real luxury fulsome i have a platformwhich is a real luxury. I have a platform, i have things i feel deeply about, and when i decide to speak about them, i can. I am fortunate. That is what i feel i won by losing means. Back then it was i lost, but it was in this race that was super close and president obama said nice things next thing they said i could run for president. That is not what it means to me anymore. Steve lets talk about your career and go back to the beginning of your adult career. You loved the military, absolutely loved it. What was it about the military that drew u. S. Powerfully as it did drew you as powerfully as it did . Jason it is one of the things in the book. That first chapter come that is what it is about fulsome a lot of people who read this book, a majority of people who didnt serve you cant just say i love the military. People are like, ok, why . It is the kind of thing that a politician would say, so you will be skeptical of it. I thought, ok, there is a war going on, im 20, 21 years old at the time, and im going to do what might ran father, greatgrandfather, uncle did, go and serve. I didnt think i would be good at it. I thought, im going to go do it, and it is probably going to suck. Turned out i was put good at it. And i loved it. What i loved about it is the sense every day that you get up and you feel that you are part of something greater than yourself i said that before, and people are like, they immediately go to, well, the war in iraq this, the war in afghanistan that. That is not what i mean. You put on the same clothes every day and you care about each other and you have the same boss and you are try to look out for each other. It made sense to me. I felt like i got that. I had a mission and i fit into it and it was simple, and i love that part of it. Steve you were deployed to afghanistan, and what you get it takes a little explaining. Tell us about what your role was there. Jason i was an Army Intelligence officer. My job was to basically figure out which bad guys were pretending to be good guys and go out and figure out what the level of corruption, espionage, narco trafficking, that kind of thing, u. S. Investors, generalsu. S. Ambassadors, generals, battalion commanders are dealing with. What are the Extracurricular Activities of these folks . In order to do that you go out, usually just myself and a translator, a guy named salam, who is from here, and sometimes a few other people with you, and you go to meetings. You go to meetings with people and you dont know what their allegiances are necessarily sometimes. You could be concerned about their allegiances. Sometimes you know that their allegiances are not to you. But you got build those relationships. My boss, the director of intelligence, he described it as thugins. You have a signals intelligence and all these different disciplines. He kind of made up the term and said you build relationships with thugs to get dirt on other thugs. That is what i am a couple other guys did. Steve when you are over there, you got yourself in some fairly typical predicaments. But first i wanted to ask diana, he goes over and goes through these experiences and comes home. When did you first begin to notice problems in your husband and begin to think that something just wasnt right . Diana i think he does a really good job of explaining how insignificant it was, like it built on itself over decades. Like the very first thing that i noticed was that he had a lot of so there is no out processing. You fly home on an airplane, turning your stuff, have a great life turn in your stuff, have a great life. You couldnt be in a car, he couldnt stop at stop lights, because he was in afghanistan, you never stop at stop lights because you were afraid of a bomb or someone shooting at you. Steve you are a sitting duck at some point. Diana not only did he have trouble driving at first, but when i was driving, i would stop at a stoplight and he would phantomly hit the gas. He was having a very uncomfortable experience. With him coming back, it was like, ok, thats the thing. Steve how much did he tell you about the difficult moments of his deployment . Diana we would talk frequently, but when he was able to get to a phone, he would have to, i dont know, go across campus to a shed to make a phone call to the u. S. Base and would call me between 2 00 and 5 00 in the morning. Steve nice touch. [laughter] jason theres a time difference diana and so then he couldnt say much. So he would call at 2 00 in the morning and be like, hey, you mightve seen on the news there was an excursion in ka explosion in kabul. I was like, i did not catch that. He would say hes ok. Ok, thank you for telling me that. But he would get me worried trying to get me to not. One day i will tell you about this really scary meeting i had. [laughter] jason in my defense, i was 25 years old and pretty sure i was bulletproof, and thought this stuff was amazing. Diana my favorite story was when he called and said im going undercover. How are you going undercover . He said, im going out my beard. When you have a beard, they dont think you are a soldier. I was like, your beard is red. [laughter] jason there is no chance i said undercover. Lowprofile. Diana ok. [laughter] jason there might be army people here who are like, i cant believe you said undercover. What a tool. [laughter] diana ive said too much. Jason no, its fine. Steve your whole thing, when you eventually came out and announced to the city and to everybody that you were suffering from ptsd, your whole thing was saying over and over again, what i experienced over there was nothing compared to what a lot of other troops. I came away with the impression that you really had an experience very much that was all that dangerous. But then i read the book, and i came away with a completely different impression. There were a couple of stories i wanted to ask you about. I will ask you about the second one first come this late night drive home to your base. Your driver wound up taking a different route, and you were pretty agitated. Jason yeah, so, first to the point you made, i also didnt know that what i did was significant until i went to therapy. You and i had similar experiences, and that is kind of one of the things we try to do with the book. You sort of discover these things along with me in the narrative. That is how it was for me. I told that story in the book about how i sort of lead into it with going to these donor meetings all over the country and you are going in and you were sitting down and taking these uber rides everywhere and people act like they want to hear a story. I kind of learned which stories i could tell that you could sanitize, tell them, make people laugh, and kind of move on. And then there is a stories that i didnt tell people, and i would fantasize sometimes, what if i just tell the story . Often when i was running around doing these fundraising trips because you are going in taxis and ubers and stuff, and this was an example of how theres just this hum of bad stuff and scary stuff that happens. It doesnt have to be about there i was, the last man. The weight it was set up the way it was set up is that i was on came and we live in these safe houses, i dont know, a halfmile or so from camp, and you work really long hours and you would need to go into these shuttles to go to the safehouses. They had local nationals who drove the shuttles. The rule was never get in one of the shuttles by yourself. Always be in pairs because you dont know if somebody has been paid off and then the taliban has kidnapped you. I had to get up three hours, like midnight or whatever, and i just wanted to get a threehour nap, and nobody is coming to get the shuttle, so i was like, screw it. When my boss read this in the draft, he was like, pissed. [laughter] i get in and we pull out of the gates and the guy is going the direction he would usually go and went into complete a different direction. The alarm bells started going off, this is not the route. I start saying to the guy, basically getting firm, and then eventually yelling at him. Ok, do i have to blow this guys head off and run . I had a pistol at the back of the guys head and im yelling at him and hes yelling back and he dont speak english, there was no need for it until we invaded the country. Ive got a make a decision. I see the back of our safehouses. They just change the route and did not tell us. I spent 11 years and ive got stories like that and i spent 11 years that is not a combat story is what i was telling myself was a i got in what was basically a cab and had a misunderstanding, but i had memories about it and i struggled with uber rides for a long time. Steve well, that stories not bad enough, lets try another one. One day you met a man in kabul, and this guy had become your favorite contact. K he had been educated here and you got to know him very well. Your favorite contact and the afghan government. And he introduces you to a general during a meeting who was working with the taliban. This is one really harrowing tale. Jason im going to tell this faster than i do on the radio. Steve we ran out of time. Jason the whole crowd is here, ive got to get the end of the story. [laughter] i had been working with him for a while, the afghan attorney general, and he and i had a Good Relationship, and people would tag along. For some reason this lieutenant has a Good Relationship with the afghan attorney general. Lets go and have our own meeting and gather information. He likes to hold court, so i could bring people. One day i brought a couple of guys and translators, these guys from the Defense Intelligence agency, dia guys. I was putting green, so i thought, these guys, dia, threeletter agency, they know what is up. We go to this compound in kabul, and we pull up and these guys come out who were not part of the usual security detail, they were Afghan Border police, which didnt make a lot of sense. They were pretty threatening, they came up with ak47s, and they through the translator tell us we have got to leave weapons in the vehicle. Leave your body armor in the vehicle. Not that big of a deal, because youre trying to build trust. And i remember thinking, these guys may think im just this green, stupid lieutenant, but im not leaving my weapon in afghanistan. I take my pistol out of the holster and tuck it in my waistband and we go into the meeting. We are having meeting and it is fine, and this guy walks in i know this guy. I couldnt place him. Hes like, jason, this is my friend general zahir. He had become a narco trafficker at the border and was working with the taliban as a result, sort of out of convenience. Just a guy we were investigating. He was working his way up the system of our investigating him. And he knew that and we knew he knew that. All of a sudden we are in a meeting with this guy we are investigating, and three of his guys are standing behind him with the ak47s. This goes on for 45 minutes and he goods more and more animated and im trying to size him up. Where are the exits, how do i get to the exits, who do i have to shoot to get to the exits if that happens . How many guys who are potential bad guys between us and the vehicle . That is the math you are doing. It started to seem like he may be about to kidnap us or kill us, and im figuring out, ok, if my guys start shooting, what do i do . Then it is like, ok, im going to take this guy out. You were kind of giving yourself up. It turns up after about 45 minutes we figure out that he was basically trying to clear out the competition in his province by getting us to arrest of the other narco traffickers. Once we figure that out, hes like we are like, he is probably not going to kill us, because he has a purpose for us. Steve your wheels are turning the whole time. Jason then we get out, we walk out, we get to the vehicle, reaching the vehicle for my body armor, and i see the dia guys get their pistols. I realized i was the only one in the meeting who was armed. We all would have been told. I feltwe all would have been killed. I felt really nauseous well, first i was pissed, then nauseous, then pissed again. Steve you came close. Jason one body language thing from him and i had my guide picked out who was going go first. Steve so you come home and it is 2008. Diana, your husband is going to run for state rep. He runs this well coordinated campaign for state rep. Jason coordinated by who . Steve in the book he points out that this the first time that the monster, as you guys began to call it, the symptoms of ptsd begin to appear. When do you recall the first time something seeing your husband that something wasnt right . Diana well, besides the, you know, just trouble going to restaurants for a long time, just general things. We used to go to a restaurant and eat and sit there and talk, and afterwards, soon the bill came, he would stand up and be ready to go. During the campaign, we first got together, we wanted to change the world, we would debate public policy, we would watch meet the press and talk about policy ideas. It was during that campaign that he began having people, enemies he needed to not see jason vanquish. Lovely people, by the way. Diana fantastic people. Slight change in his demeanor. Jason the lovely people think was in sarcasm. They were perfectly nice people. Especially during the primary. But you were between me and what i was trying to do. It was just i came home and my brain was like, ok, we we are geared all the way up. My brain understood, triage threats. It wasnt like, that person could keep me from winning the election. The meter always went to the top. You are thinking all day long, hey, if i just when this race things are going to be fine, it will go back to the way things used to be. It was like, if i could just win past the major ethics reform. Then you get into the campaign it is like, when we get this fundraiser quarter, it was perpetuating. Diana, you surprise me in the book. The extent to which jason struggles and began to pull you in. You begin to take on some of jasons characteristics yourself, paranoia, uncertainty about the many things, tell me about that and how that progressed with you as he went through the journey. Diana you spend enough time they do not do enough research on it in the united states, but in other states where they do research on ptsd, it is a significant amount of children and returning veterans. Until i went to therapy, i do not know what secondary ptsd was. Now it is a responsibility to tell as many people as possible. I read an article about spouse veteran spouse he was doing the laundry and had a moment where she had a flashback, an idea of somebody invading the house. She never served in combat, she was just related to somebody who had. I had all of the symptoms. For me it was like, i relate to that. Jason, at some point you begin leaving the house in the middle of the night, your patrolling the perimeter of the house, i think weapon in hand, tell me if i am wrong. Jason hypervigilance is what i had. At the time, the language i would use is, none of you people understand how dangerous everything is. That is how i saw things. That is how she came to see things. Because i was persistent and persuasive about it. Yeah, i tried a cocktail of things, where i came home and i never really adjusted my brain. I was constantly trying to control that danger. That happens when you try to control everything. When there was nothing left to control, it was very difficult for me. All the way difficult for me. It manifested in everything from, being advanced convinced that someone was coming to kidnap our son, convinced that when we would go on walks up weird i was traveling all the time and i would come back walks. I was traveling all the time and i would come back to go on walks. The real kicker to that is, i have been having these night terrors since i got back. I first they were the environments where afghanistan. It was everything i was worried was going to happen there, it would happen in my subconscious at night. Over time i have the story i could tell myself. In this case, i told myself after several years is stopped taking place in afghanistan. They were taking place in my home. There were somebody invading and i could not stop it, whether they were coming for her, my son. My therapist told me, while i told myself, the nightmares arent connected to afghanistan so it is not ptsd, he was like, no, they evolve. The happen sometimes and it is dangerous. Your nightmares evolve in your current environment. Youre waking up full of adrenaline and searching the house at night with a pistol. Now your subconscious is reinforcing it and tell you that there is danger everywhere in your modern environment. I wasnt delightful to live with. Delightful. Diana in my first appointment with my trauma therapist, she sat back and was like, we are safe here, we are safe, this room. That is how we felt. Never. It is never a safe moment. I want to recap. He ran for secretary of state, Political Correspondent for the kansas city star. You go on to win the race. Something you said a minute ago, it was Election Night, how difficult those were. Jason, Election Nights for you, as he wrote in the book, they were agony. You are in english, why . Anguish, why . Jason if you want to survive, you control everything around you. You just have to maintain control of the situation. When i did not feel like i had control of the situation, when i did not have control of the situation it would cause me to think that i was going to get killed. That is just what my brain has learned. That kept me safe over there. It was unhelpful here. The other reason, when you do not have any way to distract yourself, you do not have there were no more hands to shake, there was nothing more to do but wait. That is when i try to avoid it all the time because there was an intrusive thoughts, intrusive memories in my mind. For instance, Election Night 2012, i am in the back of the room before we won and i am half they are and have in afghanistan. When we won, it was not like, it was not that he laid that i expected. It felt like, i survived again. I am not going to die. I kind of missed out. That is the thing about this. When i look back at those years, i feel like i missed a lot of great stuff. Theres a part of me that is kind of like a kind of wish i was able to participate in that. I feel like i wish is getting through it. All of these feelings are only amplified that you run for the u. S. Senate, youre looking for excess every room you go into. At one point in the book, he felt that you were destined to a short life of consequence, one that may have matter to others, but was never experienced by me. That is hard to hear. After everything you have been through, that is hard to hear. Jason the book also has a jokes. [laughter] yeah. You now, you know, the only thing that seem to matter there are several passages in the book, one in each chapter, at least diana writes in first person, which makes the book will hundred times better. One of the parts is where, i will just let you talk about how the only thing that seem to matter to me was how what i was doing. I was in believe that what i was doing in my work was all that mattered, nothing else mattered. It was not because i was into my work, it was because that was the only thing that quieted me the invisible storm in my mind. Family was not doing it. I wanted family to do it. I felt a lot of shame that family was not doing it. That stuff made me feel present. That stuff made me feel fully utilized the way i felt, afghanistan, nothing else did. In between all of that, i did not take care of myself at all, did not go to the doctor, did not exercise, eight terrible food ate terrible food. I was looking at my grandfather, i was just like him i do not think i am going to be able to do that. I felt like i was not persistent in my life. You all remember in the campaign, putting the sort of put jason on the map. Tell us about how you decided to make that add . . How many takes did it take to get the damn thing right . Jason who were being attacked by the nra. We were decided we decided we were going to make a add for gun safety. It is basically what that ad was. It kind of blew up. We do not even run that much in missouri, it was just nationally, it raised a lot of money for us. It ran a little here. That ran a lot back here. Jason they do not let me watch more tv. Compared to others we were running, they were very effective. It is interesting to me, the lure of that campaign, we were at that point starting to pull ahead. That add raised a lot of money. What that did, afterwards for me, i had a lot of guilt about the fact that, heres this weapon that i never fired in combat, now i am like a celebrity because i can put it together so fast. It is just more shame and guilt upon me. Diana it took him one take to get it right. They did it a couple of times to get it to the pace they would like. Theres a picture, you know, he had the line fold on with the paper towels behind it so he could not see. Every now and then, we would go, we are running for the senate. Hours running for the senate. Jason the hard part was, you have to say the words in between the sounds of the weapons. Obviously, you cannot read the words. The other fun thing, which i cannot do either, the other funny thing, the one take as i remembered that i find hilarious, i remember seeing a clip on fox news, where it was like him he could see to the blindfold. [laughter] jason i just got a kick out of that. I am sorry that it made you feel the way it did. It was a pretty cool ad. Diana the entire crew was like him i can we get it the entire crew was like, can we get a photo onset . I want to get to some of the questions that you guys have smitten on some of the cards. You speak at this big dinner in new hampshire, very successful evening. As the evening ends, you are feeling like you got nothing left in the tank. You decide to run for mayor. I want to read from page 135 about your run for mayor in 2019. You write this, in the fall, commanding lead, head of every person in kansas city. I was thinking about ending my life there and i had reached a point that i hated myself fiercely that i saw myself as a burden and i was convinced that diane i would be better off without me. You decided to quit the race and he wrote the letter that laid out the reasons why. Why did you feel the need to describe all of that in the letter, which had impacted so many people very strongly when you wrote that letter . Jason i just felt like by that time we will not get into the hallway or the course whole way of calling the Veterans Crisis line and everything. I admitted to myself that it was ptsd. Once i got to that point, i just felt like god, i waited almost 11 years because i did not feel like i earned it, i i kind of wish somebody would have been up front with this 11 years ago. Maybe i would have got treatment a long time ago. Maybe it when i have gotten this bad. It is the reason i wrote the book. It is in the continuum of public service. I would like for it to help somebody else. As a book, we know we had a Great Fortune of having a lot of people tell us how much it meant to them. People need to understand that ptsd is not a terminal diagnosis. From a literal point of view, from a career perspective, it is just portrayals of anybody on screen, certainly by achieved growth by going to therapy. What i learned, that is super common. People go all the time and they get to a point where it does not disrupt their life anymore. Nobody ever shows that. Usually combat vet, even though theres so much people who are not vets, they are beating their spouse or breaking into places. It is like, we wanted to do this because i would like somebody who was where i was 14 years ago to get help, i can go to therapy and i do not have to be a wake in my house all the time and i can be present with my family. That was the greatest role of service that i can ever do. [laughter] [applause] im going to ask one more and i will go to your questions. Im going to coming out of the darkness into the light for your theres a man named nicholas. Tell me about him . Jason he might be here. Stand up, nick. [applause] important man in your life. Jason yes. Mick is my therapist. I had an appointment this morning. Yeah. Let me make lead me to helping myself. Led me to helping myself. I started figuring out all of the twist in my life, like things like, you are not married to the most difficult person in the world. You might be the most difficult. When i started therapy, he says therapy is getting a master degree in yourself. I basically went to graduate school with nick. Diana before he went, jason thought he was committing career suicide when he made his announcement. He was ending at all. The scary thing for him, he did not know if there was anything else possible. He kept asking me, he asked nick in the first meeting, he says do you think it is possible for me to be happy . He did not think that was a option for him. I think there some way people who are like, that is not for me. I think nick was a valuable resource for him and our family. To say like, yes, you can be happy. One round of applause more round of applause. [applause] i hold in my hands questions from the audience. First question is not going to surprise you. What is the chances that you will run against josh hawley . [applause] in 2024 . Jason i am not going to do that. [applause] no chances. I should probably elaborate. I left my job. Love my job. These people as well. [applause] jason i spent a lot of time thinking about the future because it was intolerable to live in the presence. Now i am enjoying the hell out of the presence. It is not just i am enjoying it, it is also i learned something i did not believe for a very long time. I did not use think that. Let me just follow up a little bit. The other day utility kansas city star, i might run for mayor someday the other day you told kansas city star, you might run for mayor someday. Jason i guess we are just now in a place where we are like, we do not know what will happen and we are ok with that because im not trying to control it. I Coach Little League and playing baseball at 41 years old. I spend my down time thinking about it. My team are doing pretty well over the age of 40. I want to know how you are coaching. Jason we are doing really well in the over 40, we are doing less well in the over 30. I think we have lost three games this season. I spent like two hours a week. It is really fun. Can anyone be elected to Political Office if they admit to needing psychological help . Jason i think so. Im going to Say Something that is going to sound like something that something someone can say that is trying to run for office, that is not what im trying to say. I will tell you, i prefer we had more people in office who have dealt with their stuff. [applause] jason i do not mean because all politicians are crazy. We all have stuff. You know. What percentage of politicians are crazy . [applause] [laughter] jason 100 of politicians are crazy. If theres a big u. S. Senate primary in missouri coming up in just a few weeks on the democratic side and republican side, this question is about lucas, who is a democrat running for the senate, any thoughts about . Jason seems like a very good dude. Lucas clearly knows a friend who submitted that question. That is awesome. You are a good friend. You and i have talked about this briefly on the radio the other day. I ran for u. S. Senate, it is really hard. All of the candidates are working really hard. I recognize that i have a lot of influence over the democratic primary. I would not want to trample on somebodys hard work. They both seem great. Would you like to see republican eric win the Republican Party . Jason there are layers to that question. Yeah. I am not willing i have no control over it. If im going to root for something, i am not going to read for that. Lets be realistic. Trump won the state more than he won mississippi in 2016. By the same he won mississippi in 2020. It is not like everyone else in the republican side is he is a sociopath. I am not a clinician. I am sure i am right. [laughter] [applause] lets not root for that regardless of what it does. What makes you optimistic about our country and democracy, assuming you are . Jason there is plenty of reasons not to be sometimes. It is good to sound like the kind of thing somebody old says. I am getting older. I get much more optimistic about the future, particularly our democracy when i talked to people younger than me, when i talk to generations the. I am as old as you get as a millennial. There are obviously great structural problems in our democracy, gerrymandering, the way we do primaries in general and all of that. The root of that is a cultural problem of a complete lack of shared experience in our country right now. This will not change American History without some form of. Shared experience. He watched the same newscasts you watch the same newscasts. That is driving us apart. When i look at millennials, i see people who are trying to use technology to build those bridges and interested in learning about and building relationships with people who are not like them. That is frankly different than what our senior generations are using these new technologies. That makes me more optimistic. What is your walk up song . Jason thank you. You know, senator fields because i am just a goofball. This is the dumbest thing. That montage is just narcotic. Very simple. I think it is zach who wants to know as a baseball fan, the royals, yes or no . Jason we should totally do that. People get out of the metro and just pour out of it into the stadium. It has some very wealthy people who own baseball teams. The folks who own this one are pretty great. I do think theres a way to work this out where it is just not on all of us. It has got to be something that is really good for the city. It cant just be like, that would be really cool. If we get to that point, absolutely. I will hold the last question, what advice would you have for President Joe Biden . Jason thats an easy one. Theres hundreds of thousands of people still in afghanistan should that that should still be here. [applause] the book is titled, invisible storm. [applause] and now joining us on book tv is mark scorsone, whos an but he is also the founder of freedom fest. Mr. Scales and were sitting here in the mirage hotel in vegas. Whats going on here . Well, this is an enlightening this is unique. We are an intellectual feast in the entertainment capital of the world. And i remember mayor goodman saying, oh, you you have most unique conference here. Everyone else is just kind of fluff and play and so on. But we actually great sessions on philosophy history, science and technology, healthy living, economics, politics,
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