In this episode of Firebrand, Rep. Adam Smith (D-D.C.) joins us live from the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. to talk about his new book, "Lost and Broken," and the IRS whistleblower testimony from Rep. Joseph Ziegler, D-Washingon. We also have an inside look at the House Armed Services Committee hearing on Syria, a hearing that was one of the most uncomfortable moments for a general in front of a military committee in a long time. Finally, we have an update from the House Oversight Committee on the Biden/China scandal, and an update on the FBI targeting conservative tech companies. Firebrand is a production of Kicking it Forward, a podcast that takes you behind-the-scenes of the political process and exposes the dark side of politics, corruption, and the deep state. Subscribe today using our podcast s promo code: "ELISSA" for 10% off your first pack! Subscribe, Like, and Share on Apple Podcasts, and Don't Tell a Friend about this or any other podcast you're Interested in supporting Firebrand: Kicking It Forward! Thank you for listening and Share it on iTunes and Good Luck Out There! If you like what you hear, share it on your social media! , and spread the word to your friends about this podcast! Timestamps: 1:00 - Firebrand! 2: 3:30 - What's Good? 4: 5:15 - What do you think of Matt Gaetz? 6: 7:20 - What would you'd like to see me tweet about it? 8: 9:10 - What should I do next? 10:00 11: What's your favorite part of the story? 13:40 - What are you're looking for? 15:00 | What s your biggest takeaway from this episode? 16:00 -- How do you want me to do more of this? 17: What s going to happen? 18:30 -- What s good? 19:40 -- How would you like to hear from me? 21: What would I do more? 22:15 -- What do I think of the future of the podcast? 23:30 | How do I know you're going to stop me tweet me out? 26:30 27:10 -- Can I get more of that?
00:04:35.000You can battle congressman Matt dates Matt Gaetz was one of the very few members in the entire Congress who bothered to stand up against permanent Washington on behalf of his constituents.
00:04:58.000Matt Gaetz right now, he's a problem for the Democratic Party.
00:05:01.000He can cause a lot of hiccups in passing the laws.
00:05:04.000So we're going to keep running those stories to get hurt again.
00:05:08.000If you stand for the flag and kneel in prayer, if you want to build America up and not burn her to the ground, then welcome, my fellow patriots!
00:05:44.000We are live broadcasting out of the Rayburn House Office Building Room 2021. The Capitol Complex in Washington, D.C. I'm told we're on a new platform now.
00:05:59.000We've got folks from Nevada, Oklahoma, Michigan, Arizona, Hawaii, Arkansas, Florida, and Washington State.
00:06:05.000If you're the Washington State viewers, you're going to want to stick around because at the end of this episode, I've got a terrific interview with a Democrat member of Congress I have sparred with frequently, but it's an interview that I think will give you great insights into the pressures of this job and but it's an interview that I think will give you great insights into the pressures of this job and governing and, frankly, just existing in this Congressman Adam Smith will be joining us.
00:06:31.000He's got a new book out called Lost and Broken, and it seems that a great deal is lost and broken these days.
00:06:37.000Also going to give you an inside look at the debate we just had on Syria on the floor, a hearing with our military personnel subcommittee.
00:06:46.000It was one of the most uncomfortable moments for a general in front of the Armed Services Committee in a long time.
00:06:53.000We're going to have that clip, but first, the big news on Capitol Hill today, the IRS whistleblowers, Whistleblower X, we now know as Joseph Ziegler.
00:07:03.000They are laying out the case that in similar circumstances, anyone other than Hunter Biden would have seen a felony charge and that people were directly involved in suppressing the investigatory work with very large sums of money, tax monies owed, not paid, Hunter Biden getting special treatment. tax monies owed, not paid, Hunter Biden getting special treatment.
00:07:22.000And you remember what they did to the FBI whistleblowers, right?
00:07:27.000Garrett O'Boyle, Steve Friend, Marcus Allen?
00:07:29.000They made them all out to be white supremacists, dangerous conservatives.
00:07:35.000You know, those people that President Obama complained about clinging to guns and Bibles.
00:07:41.000Well, you're not going to be able to make that case against the IRS whistleblowers.
00:07:45.000You're not going to be able to smear them just because, I don't know, they're unvaccinated or conservative or they're evangelical Christians.
00:07:57.000You're dealing with people who might otherwise be regularly counted, Among the Biden supporters, but they saw the injustice and they stepped forward.
00:08:08.000Let's go right to Joseph Ziegler in the House Oversight Committee giving whistleblower testimony.
00:08:16.000I've recently discovered that people are saying that I must be more credible because I'm a Democrat who happens to be married to a man.
00:08:23.000I'm no more credible than this man sitting next to me Due to my sexual orientation or my political beliefs.
00:08:31.000The truth is, my credibility comes today from my job experience with the IRS and my intimate knowledge of the agency's standards and procedures.
00:08:41.000In early August of 2022, federal prosecutors from the Department of Justice Tax Division drafted a 99-page memorandum In so, they were recommending for approval felony and misdemeanor charges for the 2017, 2018, and 2019 tax years.
00:08:59.000That did not happen here, and I am not sure why.
00:09:06.000It's because there's a protection racket that exists for the benefit of the Bidens at the expense of the rest of us.
00:09:13.000And really, when you're talking about Hunter Biden's tax evasion, it's the least of the Biden family's worries because increasingly, the money laundering is coming forward.
00:09:22.000The connections to the Chinese, some shady businessmen in Eastern Europe, Was plowing cash in exchange for favors from the Bidens.
00:09:33.000Unfortunately, we have a Department of Justice far more interested in going after conservatives, targeting them, sending the FBI to big tech companies to censor our speech than to actually follow up on these true crimes.
00:09:48.000I want to also give you an important update regarding work that occurred in the House Armed Services Committee today.
00:09:54.000As I've said many times, the greatest perk of being a member of Congress above all else The opportunity to nominate our young patriots for military academies.
00:10:06.000West Point, the Naval Academy, Air Force Academy, Merchant Marines.
00:10:09.000You typically get to see the best of the best and on days when even you're a little down about the country or the state of affairs, when you see these brave young patriots step up to express their love of country through service in our military academies, it is revitalizing.
00:10:26.000Well, increasingly, we have learned that at these military academies, there's been an invasion of wokeness.
00:10:49.000You have to say y'all instead of you guys.
00:10:52.000I guess I don't much mind y'all coming from where I come from.
00:10:56.000But nonetheless, the lack of oversight, the lack of institutional respect for the norms and values of the country seemed to have gone away and we should investigate why.
00:11:07.000So we had all of the service academy superintendents of their various areas before the Congress and we were asking them questions.
00:11:16.000Now, you're about to see me question General Clark.
00:11:21.000General Clark is the leader of the Air Force Academy.
00:11:26.000And at the Air Force Academy, it seems as though some of this stuff has gone most sideways.
00:11:32.000And so I'm asking him about a scholarship program that they allow to advertise and solicit on their base, and he can't even define the basic terms of eligibility drawn from radical gender ideology.
00:12:31.000Are the Ukrainians fighting the Russians a diverse force?
00:12:36.000Sir, once again, my concern is the people that I'm charged to build into leaders.
00:12:42.000Right, but you would acknowledge that throughout history, including present history, that statement hasn't borne true in every example, right?
00:12:49.000Sir, what I would say is that those countries have to rely on the full force of their population to build a war fighting force to win our wars, and that's why it's important for us to be diverse, because our nation...
00:13:01.000Sure, so let's look at the population that actually makes up the fighting force frequently.
00:13:06.000Now, we have more men than women, right?
00:13:27.000And in that fellowship, it specifically says, if you are a cisgender man, this program isn't for you.
00:13:35.000So, you just said that your answer on why we do such this full hug of these diversity concepts is because it's all about the fighting force that we draw from But you're literally pushing a program in the academies that says, if you're a cisgender woman, a transgender woman, a non-binary, agender, bigender, two-spirit, demigender, what's demigender?
00:14:01.000Sir, that's a term of the people that are eligible for that particular scholarship that is available.
00:14:34.000Right, so here we are pushing a fellowship, calling for people that you don't even know what the words mean, and the number one group of people, the cisgender men, are excluded.
00:14:48.000Now, in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, should we be pushing programs that we can't define, That exclude the largest group of service members.
00:14:59.000Well, sir, first, that program is not an Air Force Academy program.
00:15:03.000It's a program open to our entire country.
00:15:06.000Right, but you guys advocate for it within the Academy.
00:15:11.000Why are you allowing your cadets to apply for a program when you cannot define the basic terms of eligibility?
00:15:17.000Because it's an opportunity for us to develop them as warfighters, and we look for every opportunity that we can.
00:15:23.000But you don't even know what the words mean.
00:15:24.000How can you use this as a way to develop the warfighters if you don't know what it means?
00:15:27.000Well, some of those terms may not be applicable to us at the Air Force Academy, but some are.
00:15:33.000Well, if you don't know what they mean, it's hard to tell if they're applicable or not.
00:15:38.000I think one of the reasons why some of this stuff has gotten into the academies is because we don't have the same oversight from the Board of Visitors.
00:15:46.000And, Mr. Chairman, I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record an article from the Washington Examiner entitled, To Push Wokey Ideology, Biden Illegally Gutted Military Academy Oversight Boards.
00:15:57.000And so, in this piece, it goes through a timeline where on September 8th, 2021, all of President Trump's appointees were fired.
00:16:05.000On September 17th, Secretary Austin created Board of Visitors subcommittees, and then he populated those subcommittees with people who weren't on the Board of Visitors.
00:16:13.000Have you ever seen that happen before?
00:16:16.000Sir, our Board of Visitors is populated and supports us in great fashion.
00:16:34.000I mean, here, let me ask the question this way.
00:16:36.000You don't have any basis to disagree with the reporting here in the Washington Examiner that literally we have people who are not on the Board of Visitors who are serving on these subcommittees.
00:16:45.000You have no basis to disagree with that, do you?
00:16:50.000Sir, I'm not exactly sure the question you're asking.
00:16:53.000I'll have to take that for record so I can understand exactly what you're asking.
00:17:13.000And I'm not entirely sure we need to know these things to grow warfighters.
00:17:17.000The point I was making in that hearing that I continue to make is that our military should be focused on lethality, capability, survivability, and having to worry about whether or not we've got the right number of Demi-gender people in a scholarship-fellowship program is a distraction from that mission, and oftentimes it's divisive and harmful to the very sense of unity that we're trying to create in the military.
00:17:44.000So I know I play you a lot of these clips of me asking tough questions of these generals, and it is weird, Selena, that I have to keep doing it, but we have to shine a light on this, and that's a point that many of you have made as well.
00:17:55.000But it's not just here in our country where our military is engaged in far-flung misadventures.
00:18:00.000I've consistently made the argument that the United States should not be entangled in major power competition in Syria.
00:18:07.000But one of the statutory things that allows the Syrian conflict to go on with continued U.S. entanglement is the power we have vested in the executive to declare a national emergency.
00:18:20.000So in 2004, Nearly 20 years ago, we declared a national emergency in Syria.
00:18:29.000And the Congress is supposed to vote on those national emergencies, their propriety, And every six months.
00:18:39.000It allows for massive slush funds, endless wars, and a real risk of accident or escalation.
00:18:47.000So I filed legislation to end the national emergency in Syria, believing sincerely that the United States of America is more likely to be the cause of a national emergency in Syria than the solution.
00:19:02.000Only, I think it was like 25 or 26 people out of the 435 in Congress voted with me.
00:19:22.000I brought a war powers resolution to the floor of this Congress to get U.S. troops out of Syria, arguing that the United States being excessively entangled in great power competition in Syria wasn't making life better for Syrians, it wasn't playing out to our benefit in the sphere of great power competition, and that it left U.S. service members and contractors as sitting ducks.
00:19:47.000And following that vote, which I lost overwhelmingly on a bipartisan fashion, sadly, there were casualties.
00:19:55.000There was the death of an American, because we have now become the neighborhood crime watch of certain areas in Syria where there are oil rigs.
00:20:07.000So I now come to the floor with this resolution to repeal a 2004 Emergency vis-Ã -vis Syria.
00:20:17.0002004. Now, it's supposed to be voted on by Congress every six months thereafter, but we have been derelict in our duty in doing so.
00:20:26.000And so I'm glad that today we're bringing forward a number of these emergency resolutions that have just been dormant slush funds, spending untold sums of money, with no transparency as to how much is going into the Syrian emergency.
00:20:40.000But how about this rule for how about the House thinks about emergencies?
00:20:43.000Nothing's allowed to be an emergency for 20 years.
00:20:46.000Because if it were really an emergency, there probably would have been some cataclysmic event of biblical proportion before the 20 years.
00:20:54.000And if it's still an emergency 20 years later, it's a chronic condition and the United States cannot be the world's policeman and we cannot be the world's piggy bank.
00:21:04.000Now, if the principal argument against my resolution is that my resolution is soft on Assad, well, the logic that undergirds that is that somehow the 2004 resolution was this great anti-Assad tool that we must have, that we must maintain to beat Assad.
00:21:34.000So I think we ought to repeal this emergency.
00:21:37.000We have sought transparency to see how much money has been going pursuant to it.
00:21:42.000We don't know the answer to that question.
00:21:43.000And to the extent that there are sanctions that we still want to maintain, whether there are the other National emergencies that exist targeted at terrorism generally, at Russia, at Iran, the Magnitsky Act.
00:21:58.000There are all kinds of other authorities for the President, the Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of the Department of Commerce, even the DOD weighs in, state, regarding sanctions regimes.
00:22:09.000So this is not a vote to lift sanctions and then just hope for the best with some pretty gnarly Syrians.
00:22:15.000In fact, it's us standing up, To do our job, and that's what we should do in repealing this 2004 resolution.
00:22:22.000I can't think of a more effective way to insult the President of Israel when he stands on that podium and addresses us tomorrow.
00:22:32.000Well, I would observe, Mr. Speaker, to the gentleman, that if he is looking for a more effective way to insult the President of Israel, he need look no further than the remarks of some of his own colleagues in the recent days, which I would deem far more insulting than this policy debate about how to have an effective sanctions regime.
00:22:52.000No one here is arguing for sanctions relief vis-Ã -vis these individuals.
00:22:56.000What we're saying is that the National Emergencies Act is a very ineffective Inefficient way to administer a sanctions regime.
00:23:06.000We do have specific authorities with the Magnitsky Act, with the national emergencies vis-Ã -vis counterterrorism.
00:23:16.000And most importantly, Congress has the authority to impose sanctions.
00:23:20.000If you believe that there are people who should be the subject of sanctions by the United States government, we are the board of directors of the most powerful country on the planet Earth.
00:23:27.000We can introduce those bills, we can vote for them, and we can fulfill our constitutional authority.
00:23:32.000What I'm asking the Congress to do is to repeal a 2004 emergency vis-a-vis Syria when Syria doesn't look anything like it even did in 2004. And to my Republican colleagues, if you vote to allow This national emergency to continue.
00:23:47.000What you're doing is you're gaslighting unaccountable spending by the Biden administration because they never have to make requisite report regarding the outlays on these matters.
00:24:21.000The balance of power was restored and it did not involve the United States of America becoming the bloc captain of Syria or anywhere else in the Middle East.
00:24:30.000And if we want to do that, it should be through a war powers resolution with Congress affirmatively voting to do it, not just having rolling national emergencies.
00:24:37.000When the law contemplates a requisite obligation for us to vote to reauthorize these things, we never do it.
00:24:53.000So if this is the great tool we had against Assad, we better be thinking of some different ones because it hasn't exactly worked out as the proponents of this national emergency would seemingly indicate.
00:25:41.000Moving now from the GOP to an interview I'm very excited about.
00:25:45.000Congressman Adam Smith wrote a book called Lost and Broken.
00:25:48.000This may be one of the least political policy interviews that we've done on Firebrand, We have human beings who serve in this Congress, who are policy makers, who have the frailties and foibles and follies of regular folks, and when those are confronted in the crucible of this place, it oftentimes can lead to lessons that maybe our Firebrand viewers would enjoy and could use to help others.
00:26:13.000So please enjoy my extended interview with Democrat Congressman Adam Smith.
00:26:21.000Get ready for a very different kind of interview.
00:26:24.000Firebrand viewers will be familiar with Congressman Adam Smith.
00:26:28.000He hails from the state of Washington, a beautiful part of our country.
00:26:32.000He's the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and he is currently the lead Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee.
00:26:38.000Now, we've had many spirited debates about military policy and our beloved service members, and we usually play those debates right here on Firebrand and discuss them, and you can clearly see that Representative Adam Smith is very sharp, very quick rhetorically, and if I don't mind saying so, A very worthy debating adversary when we disagree.
00:26:58.000And I think it's a good thing for the country to see lawmakers disagree on substance while actually addressing the substance and not just trying to cancel one another.
00:27:09.000There have certainly been times in my seven years here when Congressman Smith has convinced me to change my view on matters.
00:27:15.000Specifically, he's often effectively pointed out when we're making expensive military systems that are not useful to the warfighter.
00:27:24.000The littoral combat ships come to mind.
00:27:26.000I don't know if I've ever convinced Congressman Smith to hold my point of view on something, and I certainly won't force him to make an admission of that here today.
00:27:34.000But here's some advice to every viewer of this program.
00:27:37.000At least a few times a year, read a book from an author that you might fervently disagree with on something.
00:27:46.000It's how I came to read the essential text of critical race theory, which we highlighted on this show years ago.
00:27:52.000So, Congressman Smith has recently written a book that I highly recommend fitting within this portfolio of observing and understanding and flushing the issues out on.
00:28:03.000And that's true even if you don't agree with Adam on a variety of other things.
00:28:09.000It's not particularly a book about Congress or policy or politics, though there are juicy insights on all of those things.
00:28:17.000Lost and Broken is about pain, anxiety, and the overall state of the human condition.
00:28:24.000Representative Smith has endured an incredible personal journey, and I've been reading books by members of Congress for more than a decade, and I can honestly tell you I have never seen a book where a member of Congress, currently elected, was more personally vulnerable and honest about crippling challenges with Focus and strength and a number of matters that we're going to discuss.
00:28:57.000And first of all, thank you for having me on.
00:28:58.000I completely agree with everything you just said.
00:29:00.000And you have at least convinced me on the medical marijuana issue and on the need for allowing service members to test whether or not drugs can help them with their PTSD issues.
00:29:13.000Now the issue is I had a severe anxiety and chronic pain problem.
00:29:18.000And my book actually starts in 2016 after my third hip surgery, which I was not getting better from.
00:29:25.000And the anxiety really hit me in 2013. Chronic pain hit me in 2014. By 2016, I thought I was never going to solve the problem, bottom line.
00:29:34.000I had tried all kinds of doctors and psychiatrists and all kinds of different things and I was in worse shape than ever.
00:29:41.000I eventually did find people who could help me.
00:29:43.000So what the book does is it talks about how I got there because pain and anxiety rarely just sort of pop up.
00:29:49.000I really had to go back into my full history as a person.
00:29:52.000And then most importantly, how I got out, and if I have one big message on this, you can get better.
00:29:58.000There are treatments for both mental health and chronic pain, and I hope I can help people find that path.
00:30:03.000As you've been talking about it, you know, we say anxiety and chronic pain almost as one continuum, but talk about how those two conditions inform on one another.
00:30:12.000Yeah, no, it's really interesting, and we don't fully understand, to tell you the truth, but it is absolutely true that Mental health conditions like anxiety or depression can trigger pain in your body.
00:30:23.000Now, in my case, I had two separate sets of problems.
00:30:26.000The pain certainly contributed to the anxiety and vice versa, but I had a knee surgery when I was a kid.
00:31:22.000How am I going to change the way I think to stop having anxiety come?
00:31:26.000And that's a fundamental misunderstanding.
00:31:28.000You can, in fact, change the way that you think.
00:31:31.000You can teach your brain to better deal with the stresses and strains that you face in life.
00:31:35.000Second thing I really didn't understand was this concept that's going to sound a little loopy, but the basic idea, you have to have a sense of your own self-worth.
00:31:44.000And if you don't, You are going to have a lot of problems, and it's a lot harder to have than you think it is.
00:32:11.000He's describing it and it couldn't have been an easy decision to write this book because in politics we always want to present the toughest, most impenetrable version of ourselves in campaigns and in legislative debate.
00:32:27.000Did you have to go through a process to be so fulsome in describing the experiences you've had?
00:32:32.000Well, yeah, but I think the process I went through was those six years.
00:32:36.000I can't remember what it was, but I was getting some surgery or something, and you're in an embarrassing position and everything, and the nurses and the doctors are like, now, are you okay with this?
00:32:45.000And I'm like, at this point, okay, yes.
00:32:48.000I mean, I've I've been through three surgeries, psychiatrists, everything.
00:32:53.000I had felt already so exposed to the broader world that I guess I felt more comfortable sharing it more broadly.
00:33:01.000And also, second big lesson after the self-worth thing is, if you're going to get to a proper place in terms of mental health, you have to be honest with yourself.
00:33:10.000Because a lot of what drives us to anxiety is Is that you are suppressing things.
00:33:15.000Maybe you're angry about something that you're hiding.
00:33:18.000You're in a relationship or in a job that you know you have to keep so you kid yourself about whether or not you really like it.
00:33:24.000Or things from your childhood that you're either angry about or feel guilty about.
00:33:28.000So good mental health, being honest with yourself.
00:33:51.000Others, I know you're a big go on walks guy.
00:33:54.000If you stand in one place in Washington, D.C. long enough, you'll see Adam Smith walk by it.
00:34:00.000At one point or another because you're sort of always on the move.
00:34:04.000But if someone's going through anxiety and they don't know that they have access to exquisite tools, what's some of the advice you would give?
00:34:14.000And I was really intimidated by meditation because, well, I used to joke that I'm really stressed out because I don't have enough time to meditate, which seems like counterintuitive.
00:34:23.000And then also when I do meditation, the idea is, you know, clear your mind, right?
00:34:27.000And I'd be sitting there and I'd get, oh, I thought of something, you know, so I've failed.
00:34:33.000What meditation can teach you to do is not to chase after every thought.
00:34:38.000You have to give your mind space to not try to process everything.
00:34:43.000To just experience what's going on around you.
00:34:45.000So a couple minutes a day, whether I'm on a walk or brushing my teeth, I'll just say, okay, I'm not going to try to solve any problems right now.
00:35:47.000Just like every person's physical health oscillates throughout their life, there are times when you're a little more healthy or a little less healthy, I would presume mental health probably doesn't follow the same linear track.
00:35:57.000I know in my life it certainly hasn't.
00:36:00.000And in low points, I lean on my spouse.
00:36:28.000Those are the three things that I lean on.
00:36:31.000I love working out one kind or another, and I will spend an enormous amount of time thinking about what the Mariners should do at the trade deadline, which helps me go.
00:36:39.000And also, if something strikes me funny, which, by the way, is part of the reason why I like engaging with you.
00:36:52.000Those things seem to give me space to let the problems go.
00:36:57.000You know, it's interesting you mention sports because for me, thinking about Florida State University football or thinking about sports, We have to find, I think more of those places to go.
00:37:18.000You know, when I was growing up, whether you were a Seminole or a Gator mattered a lot more about who you could be friends with and whether you were a Republican or a Democrat.
00:37:26.000And I wonder if there are assemblies of people, whether it's churches or otherwise, that give us more of a platform to be able to escape kind of the anxieties that drive, no matter what your life is and your profession is.
00:37:57.000You can really get yourself on a treadmill there that never stops if you don't take a step off and think about something like sports that ultimately doesn't matter.
00:38:36.000Reading my book made him think, yes, and he said he had the best week of his life because he actually started to address it.
00:38:42.000They've told me stories about family members many times themselves as well.
00:38:47.000The other way is a number of members have come up to me and said, hey, I had no idea you were going through that.
00:38:51.000You know, some have apologized, which is completely unnecessary.
00:38:55.000You can't know everything that's going on around you, number one.
00:38:58.000And number two, I will tell you that professionally, Mac Thornberry, former chair of the committee, who was chair right before I was, contacted me about this.
00:39:07.000And that committee and the staff and all members, Republican and Democrat alike, in fact, I quote Michael Turner in the book at one point, were incredibly supportive to me throughout this process, and I really appreciate that.
00:39:21.000Yeah, I mean, you know, we see even during committee at times when there'll be a debate or discussion, you'll stand up, take a few walks around the room and sit down.
00:39:30.000And I wonder sometimes whether that's physically you wanting to get the muscle movement going or whether or not there's actually a mental health component of getting up and moving around.
00:39:39.000And I found walking around a little bit more frequently improves my mental health.
00:39:44.000So the walking around has a dual benefit.
00:39:47.000Well, the good news at this point is I'm doing it just because I like to move.
00:40:16.000We're really entering an era where there's a lot more, I think, diagnosis on the mental health front, a lot of recognition.
00:40:23.000To be candid, it's not your generation.
00:40:26.000It's this Zoomer generation that seems more self-aware on these matters, whereas the Gen Xers and the Boomers were probably dealing with these things without some of the tools and resources that we now know to be available.
00:40:41.000I worry at times about the overindulgence of that, that if we want to still ensure that people confront their challenges and deal with them and don't just cloak it in a sense of, well, I'm mentally unhealthy.
00:40:54.000What's the most encouraging thing you could say to someone who's aware that they are going through chronic pain or anxiety and they want to know that there's a better way ahead?
00:41:05.000Well, as with most things in life, it's about balance.
00:41:08.000And I would say generationally, you're absolutely right.
00:41:10.000One of the big positives is younger generations are now willing to talk about these things.
00:41:16.000There was an older ethos that was, now keep it to yourself, don't talk about it, don't engage in it.
00:41:33.000There has to be a resiliency here, not just, you know, as you said, an overindulgence, but okay, what's going on with me?
00:41:40.000How can I get better so that I can lead a healthier and more productive life and be a more responsible person?
00:41:47.000So, I would say the most optimistic thing, just, gosh, since I wrote the book, I wrote it in 2020 during the pandemic, I think there has been an opening in which a lot more people are speaking openly about mental health, which is step one.
00:42:00.000But you've got to get to step two, which is how do you get better?
00:42:02.000How do you find those treatments that can help you?
00:42:05.000I sincerely hope that the readers of this book are able to access that critically important step to a more constructive way to think about these things.