A Global Search for Meaning: Interview with Luke Russert

Hey, everybody, it's Moshe Wannew. Welcome back to the Mo News Podcast. I'm really excited about today's guest, Luke Russert, a journalist, a brand new author, and someone I consider a friend from our time covering Capitol Hill more than a decade ago. He was doing it for NBC. I was doing it for Fox. Luke is out with a new autobiography called Look for Me There. It documents his journey following the untimely death of his father, Tim Russert, back in 2008. Luke was just 22 years old at the time. His father, of course, Tim Russert, the esteemed journalist, meet the press moderator. Luke would immediately follow in Tim's steps at age 22 going into journalism, going to work for NBC News. Then realizing a few years later, that's not actually what he wanted, and he had never really mourned his father. So he goes on this journey to nearly every continent and dozens of countries, and he documents it in his new book. And the state of the media in this conversation, I think you're really going to enjoy it. Before we start here, a reminder to consider joining Mo News Premium for early access to podcast episodes like this one and extra content over on a members-only Instagram account. By joining Mo News Premium, you know you're supporting what we're doing here at Mo News Independent Journalism, as we say on the Mo News website over at mo.news slash premium. The news is broken, and we're trying to fix it, and support from all of you will help us do that. You can join Mo News Premium again over at mo.news slash premium for just $7 a month, or $70 a year. That is two free months. If you join the annual membership, we also have a founding lifetime subscription available for a limited time only. So you can check that out again over at mo.news slash premium. With that, here's today's conversation. So I'm so glad today to be welcoming a guest. I am also very happy to call a friend, former NBC News correspondent Luke Russert, world traveler, and now author. Luke, it's good to be chatting with you. Mo, what a pleasure. Congratulations on everything you've built. It's incredible. You're the future of news, my man. I hope I can live up to those expectations, Luke. Well, you're doing hell the job. We share a few things in common, including we just realized fathers born in 1950 within a week of each other. And we're going to talk about that and a whole variety of things, including the media world and his world travelers. He's a new author of a brand new book where I think I have it next to me right here. Look for me there. That's it. Right there. There it is. What's notable here, I'm going to go through your journey, Luke. You stepped away from a successful TV career to pursue a three year journey around the world and you tell that story in your new book. Luke for those unfamiliar is the son of journalism legend, a former Meet the Press moderator, Tim Russerk. After unexpectedly losing his father, Tim in 2008, Luke threw himself into his career, following in his father's footsteps. However, after eight years, he started to question why he was chasing his father's legacy, decided to quit his job and travel the world. These continents, three years of travel, Luke has compiled his journals into a memoir. Luke there were a couple of times throughout these past couple of years. You were talking about updates to your book, writing your book, and we could talk about that whole process, but it's good to be chatting with you. Well, thank you so much. You always encouraged me along the way as someone who took themselves out of the standard news path. So I appreciate all your work of encouragement over the years. Yeah, and in fact, we can talk about times that we can sort of run into each other, what we've learned from our time at Legacy Media. And now, I think both of us at you earlier than me became observers of our former profession and getting out of it helped really kind of open up our eyes to it. Yeah, for sure. I think it's unique because I came in in 2008 and it was towards the end of the traditional broadcast news network as we knew it, which was a lot of emphasis put on the morning show, the evening show, and then some basic daily cable in the middle and still real reliance on the morning paper. To some degree, people even we would work with ask, where's the evening paper? And then around 2010, 2011, I would say, is when Twitter took off to such a degree that it completely shattered all the preconceived norms that we had ever known in the news industry. So you and I were right there at that time. And I remember when Twitter first came about, the Speaker of the House would tweet something from their verified account or the White House would tweet something from their verified account. And I would still have to get confirmation because standards at NBC were so high at that point, which is we don't trust a tweet. We have to know if it's actually real or not, which is now these days across all news organizations, a tweet from somebody who had been verified back then. A lot of places still are the old user organizations and government is the word of God. So you sort of saw that transformation take place and what social media has done to news. And I think we're still at the beginning of the beginning of it because a lot of politicians like to live in their own echo chambers. A lot of consumers like to live in their own echo chambers. And what cuts through in terms of news is a lot of people are instantly distrustful, which I find to be quite fascinating. They want some semblance of truth and they want validity. They want to trust the gatekeepers who bring it to them. So I think what you've done, which is really interesting and something I've talked about in the past, is that the gatekeeper is still valuable if you're a trusted person who has the best interests of the viewing public and the reading readership at heart. There's value add to that as to how it cuts through and what platform it comes in on. Who knows? I mean, there might be some new social media phenomenon post tick talk that there will be, not might, there will be, that could become the new news platform. But it's a wild world and just put your stake in it. Yeah, it's interesting. When we were running around Capitol Hill in 2009, YouTube was just gradually figuring, you know, it was only two years old at that point. Twitter is a year old. Nobody really knows how to use it yet. Facebook is still basically a campus yearbook function. Instagram is a couple of years away. You know, tick tock's not there. It really in the past decade just been remarkable to see the rise and how they've all become news sources and information sources. And now you have, you know, tick tock influencers at the White House talking to the president. It's remarkable and you recall when Zach Galvinakis had President Obama in between two first. Right. Right. Zach Galvinakis has YouTube show. Yeah. Now it's this groundbreaking. That was huge. And there were a lot of people, a lot of our colleagues, especially the older ones who took great numbers with that. They go, oh, this is so lowbrow. This is so silly. This is so stupid. No president should do this. And that turned out to be something that allowed President Obama to connect with an entire audience that he had never once had a president speak to them that way. So I think that that's, it's fascinating because now people in power, they are going to these sort of alternative places and finding that, okay, we can speak directly to voters and we don't need to go through the gatekeepers. We want, we want to go through. And no disrespect to Zach Galvinakis. I think he's hysterical. There's a different level of news active between him and say Walter Cronkite. Right. But we live in the era now where Joe Rogan and Dak Shepard are among the two most influential podcasts. So if we're talking this kind of podcast realm where we're talking right now. And but I want to get to that in a second, but I want to begin with your journey, Luke. Yeah, please. You begin the book with the events of June 13th, 2008, the day your father passed. Before we get into that, for those unfamiliar with Tim Russer or perhaps only familiar with him as viewers during his time at NBC, tell us about your dad. Who was he personally as a father and who was he professionally? So I was very fortunate because I got to know Tim Russer is dad and he was the outward facing persona and who he was at home. We're actually quite similar. They're both easygoing guys. They're both very glass half full, very happy, go lucky optimistic people. But at home, there is an intense focus on spending meaningful time with me. So my dad was someone who gave me the gift of time, but it was time that was uninterrupted. It wasn't spent on a phone just sort of standing next to me. It was really asking me about my day, how things were going. And even though he was incredibly busy, he always made that time and I was always grateful for that. When I worked at NBC and got a taste of what the schedule was like, I was so impressed by how he was able to carve out some moments of the day to take care of me. Then I would say about nine years old, I remember walking through a restaurant and people would whisper, oh, that's Tim Russer. That's Tim Russer. Of course, that was Tim Russer, moderate or meet the press. I remember as a young kid finding that's a little strange because I went to a restaurant with Mr. Murphy last week and no one was whispering his name when we were walking to dinner with my friend and his dad. And I kind of realized, oh, they know him because my dad sits in this little box and talks on the screen and it's viewed around America. And as I grew older, I understood the magnitude of the work, the importance of the work and what it entailed and grew to have a great admiration for it. So all my father is his career, continued to grow and become more and more successful until he, when he passed, really died at the top. Kind of looked at is the last of that mold of the sort of honest newsmen, the straightforward facts newsmen. And he took the job very seriously. You know, most you and I see a lot of people in the news industry and there's a sort of way to define somebody. Do they do their homework or do they not? And look, anyone can go to a place like a Syracuse communications program or USC or whatever and they'll teach you how to look really good on camera. Right. Those are two of the top journals of schools out there. Sarah, you want to see how to do that and you will be great at it, right? But they can't teach you how to do the research. They can't teach you how to put in all that work day in and day out to really know the issues better than the people you're interviewing and to know the event and put it in your homework. And that's from my father really did an incredible job is he not only knew the issues, but he did the homework over and over again and then presented himself on television in a very easygoing and manner the connection with people. And I think that's the game on TV is people want to give you a chance. They want to like you. Do your do your part and do right by them and do your homework. Yeah, at the time of his passing is 58 years old. As you said, height of his career. It's interesting, Luke, because my first job was for Chris Wallace at Fox News Sunday. And I was there as his researcher from 2004 to 2007. Then I go as a campaign trail reporter to take us back to an era. Again, we were talking about kind of the advent of social media, but there was a time not so long ago when if you were a politician in Washington and you wanted to make news that would be seen globally, you desire to get on the Sunday show, right? There's ABC. There's a handful of Sunday shows. I was researching over at Fox and I recall, you know, Chris Wallace is another person who took research very seriously, took the arc of an interview very seriously, took the idea that we're going to build up and then we're going to bring in the quote from 1994 where you said the opposite. And that is an art form, I should say, that your father perfected. Yeah. And what he did with that was very much a part of his legal training. He went to law school, never practiced law, but there was a prosecutorial manner about that, which was based in the research, as I mentioned. And the idea was he would send guys like you had your job back then. And he would say, go scour the internet, go scour the live. And the internet still sucked back then. We had to go to libraries. We had to go use micro page and micro film and like find a newspaper in Kentucky. Why did you do that? Paper and all that. And he would get that research and he would go through it. And Lawrence Spivak, who was the first moderator of Mute Depress, one of the first ones, my father called him up when he got the job in 1991. And he said, Mr. Spivak, what would your advice be to me? And Spivak said to him, Lord, as much as you can about the person you're interviewing, and then come at him from the other side. And it was very useful advice. So my dad would get those files and he would build the case against the person. And you see how the politician or prime minister, whoever would react. And some did really well, some did horrifically. Yeah. And it got to the point where it was called the Russert Prime Act, which is if you wanted the president, you had to go on there and take your lumps. And my father used to say, if you can't answer tough questions, how are you to make tough decisions? And he truly believed in that. And I think that's what's so sad about today is that a lot of these politicians, they just skate by by running out the clock or they go to places that are quite friendly or they'll go do an interview or the first questions. What do you think of the weather here in North Carolina? Right. Great. Right. I mean, there's an argument against gatekeepers. There's an argument for gatekeepers. But to your point, through the 2008 election, there was this idea that a presidential candidate would not be taken seriously unless they spent an hour getting grilled by your father, unmute the press. And I remember even that cycle, there were candidates who didn't make it through. And it was considered that if they failed and meet the press, then they're not going to be taken seriously anymore as the presidential candidate. Yeah. And I think we're also alluding to the power of the Sunday shows back then. And those were a very big deal. And I don't think the younger audience understands this, but to get on a Sunday show, whether you are a journalist, whether you are an operative, whether you are a politician, was considered the highest of high. I mean, that was the high brow because the president is watching the secretary of state is watching, et cetera, et cetera. So my father took that very seriously as a pertain to the presidential primaries and the quote unquote, Russert primary. I think what my dad brought to that was this mindset of if you have the ego and you have the desire to say that you are capable of leading hundreds of thousands or millions of your fellow country men and women. You need to be able to come on the program and put forward a coherent vision for how you're going to do that. And my dad was a master of asking policy specific questions that oftentimes if someone was not prepared, they would look quite foolish. So it's very easy to say, I'm going to come in and rescue the economy and I'm going to fight the war on terror and I'm going to make America the best it can ever be. Okay. How are you going to do it? How are you going to get this through Congress? How are you going to sell this on the campaign trail because it's not exactly what your party has been about for quite a long time. And once you got into those more difficult questions, some people would wilt. Some could hold their own. I think the public saw that and the public was deeply appreciative that someone would take the time to advocate on their behalf and try to get to the root cause of those policy proposals. The only thing I would add to that is you now see in politics, especially in the coverage, this hyper focus on the personal. And I think what's interesting is my father would ask those questions. For example, he interviewed Donald Trump in 1999 and said, is there anything from your background that could be problematic? Because at that time, Trump was considering running for president on the reform. He wanted to run on the reform party ticket. He was contemplating a presidential run. And my father went through his books and went through different articles that he had written over the years or been quoted in over the years and asked him a lot of policy questions, which is, you know, what is your view on abortion? How would you stop North Korea from getting more nuclear missiles, et cetera? And that was the crux of the interview. Then he came in and said, you know, you've had a colorful personality to say it best in personal life over the years. Is there anything in there that could be problematic, you know, for presidential run, et cetera? So what I take away from that, and I try and tell folks is, yes, the personal stuff is a part of our culture now, especially as it pertains to politics. There's no doubt about that. But remember what these guys are there for. They're there to make policy. And I know it's not sexy and it's not the most interesting thing, but that's really what their job is. And we shouldn't forget that. We should ask those types of questions in the media and try to get to that type of truth and put them on glass a little bit, make them be accountable. Well, that's one of the issues is we're also, you know, over the course of the past decade, less policy than ever is being made, less bills than ever are being raised. Certainly your former colleagues and mine who cover Capitol Hill are covering that on a day to day basis. So we went through a bit of his career, the impact that he had. That brings us to June 13, 2008. Tell me about that day and then how that leads you to what were you doing professionally? Are you still a student? I just graduated. I was three weeks out of graduating from Boston College and I had been working part time at SiriusXM on a sports and sort of culture show, sort of a show that was like an original podcast. We would have done really well if the podcast era was around that day. So you did have ambitions to kind of follow as a broadcaster in your father's foot. I think I had ambitions to be in the media space, but I didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do. I was contemplating going to grad school for international relations. And when you graduate undergrad, it's a sense of relief. And there's also that time where you're reflecting of, wow, I'm out of school for the first time since I was three years old. Okay. Where do we go now? What's this mean, et cetera? But no, I grew up in a home. My mom is a journalist, writer of Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth. So that profession has always been around the kitchen table. But at that time, I didn't know how I was going to go and do it. Right. Your dad is the moderator of the press. Your mother is a writer for Vanity Fair. And you were figuring out what was next for Luke. And then you find out your father passes. Yeah. I mean, Florence Italy. And that turned out to be somewhat of a blessing to be that far away. And I say that because allowed my mother and I to have a day, basically, to ourselves, where we were not inundated by the remembrances on network news, on cable and social media wasn't as ubiquitous then. But we were able to sort of have a moment to take a breath with one another before we went into what was something we never expected. We thought he would get written up in the paper and there'd be a few specials on TV. But he had a few thousand people show up to his way in Washington, D.C. His funeral was broadcast on MSNBC. So there was a lot of public facing things that occurred, which we were a little surprised by the degree to which he was beloved. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, like, you know, the attendees, right? You had Biden. You had McCain. Sure. Sure. Yeah. And I thought about how I was happily tasked with giving the eulogy. I sort of saw it as there's the right thing to do that I needed to do it. And I didn't want any help writing that. And my mother much to her, she grinned because she's I'm the writer in the family. Let me help you out. I said, no, I got to do this. This is just for me and for dad. And so I ended up writing this eulogy that got a lot of positive feedback. And the service was one of those moments where I remember looking out at the lectern and we had asked John McCain and Barack Obama to sit next to each other and the spirit of democracy and the spirit of America. Right. This is the height of the campaign. Yeah. And they did it to their credit. They did it. And I remember looking out and seeing them next to another nice. Good job. Daddy has these guys sit next to each other and looking out and seeing Joe Biden and the senator at the time at the Kennedy and really trying to compose myself. And I looked in the back and I saw my friends from high school and college and I started looking at them and they knew that I was talking about my dad. Luke's just talking about his dad and I kept my eyes trained there and that made it way easier, way easier for me. But I gave that speech and a version of it that I gave at the Kennedy Center. There's a more public remembrance there later in the day was broadcast on television and I had done a thing on today's show about remembering my dad. And so I got a lot of attention. How old are you at that time? I'm 22. I'm 22. And soon after that, there's, you know, as you know, in media, there's a shiny object and executive sometimes gravitate towards it. And I got an offer from a few places, but the one that was most interesting was from NBC and it was to cover youth issues on the campaign trail, which is something I was passionate about in college. You know, the 2008 election was really the first one and you and I's lifetime that young people were seriously engaged in. And I think that was a byproduct of the Iraq war and that our generation had borne the brunt of that and had really gone through a lot of that point. And of course, the economy collapses in 2008, which our generation is still going on. And you have the, you know, kind of. First up, from America, Tennessee, of Barack Obama. And John McCain, who was very popular, was young people for a long time as well. So I was interested in that and I have these offers and I thought long and hard about it. And I was naive. I knew there'd be nepotism charges and I knew that it would be difficult. But I also felt, look, they wanted to sign me up for multiple years. I said, well, let's just do one year. Just do one year. So see if I like you and you like me and if I'm any good at it or whatnot. And sort of try it out. It would be silly to miss, not take advantage of this opportunity that's been presented itself. It's almost sort of, to me, I saw after preying on it, sort of a divine intervention. It's sort of, okay, here's this thing. See what you can do with it. And if it ends up being a disaster, then so be it, but you won't worry later on in your life that, okay, I never took advantage of something when it was put in front of you. You mentioned the idea of the charges of nepotism and kind of overcoming that. You're a 22 year old. You just lost your father. Your last name is Russ, you have a job at NBC. These are highly coveted positions to give people a sense. Thousands of reporters will look in local markets for $18,000 a year, just for the chance to get to a larger market, to maybe get on national television once. And Luke here has a role, it's a national role, et cetera. How did you face that? I mean, were you hearing, did you accidentally get cc'd on email once? You're hearing people on the hallway. How are you dealing with the works? Right, the actual cc. I mean, here's the first thing I will say. It was an era where you started to see the emergence of different forms of journalism. What I mean by that is if you recall that time, like Politico had launched and they had these sort of dueling blogs that were out there at Bend Smith and Jonathan Martin. And that was starting to get some traction on cable TV. So what I would say is that the net was being cast wider than the usual, all right, go do the news and to peak a Kansas and work yourself up and work yourself up through the different types of ladders. So I was conscientious that knew that there were sort of different ways to get into it. That all being said, it was very hard because it happens that when social media never makes it easier to read all the nasty things about yourself. I knew I would be a target. Never read the comments, Luke. They must have told you that. Yeah, right. Easier said than none. And I understood where that was coming from. It's like, oh, here's this guy. He was in and everything. What does he know? He's an idiot. He's fat. He's sweaty. He's bad. He can't speak. So it's hard because obviously I'd come from a terrible loss. And I'm still figuring out my own way. I wanted to do it because I thought I had a natural ability with a lot of institutional knowledge and contribute. And I think years later reflecting back on it, part of that was chasing my father's legacy and keeping his spirit alive a little bit. I thought that I could do that. And at NBC, especially, while some people didn't like me, I brought a lot of comfort to a lot of other people. So it's 50-50 on that. But overall, I would say looking back on it, it was difficult. That being said, it was instructive. I put on a very sort of jocular bravado held up a very strong shield and never let them see me sweat, took the hits and moved forward. But there are scars that come with something like that. And I think retrospectively, if I could go back and talk to 22-year-old Luke, I would say, go do this if you want, but just be very aware of what comes down the pipeline because there's a lot of venomous vipers that are going to be ready to fight you. You spend your 20s. You spend almost eight years there. So I mean, basically, you... No, I spent all my 20s with NBC. Your 20s is a network course. Some people are finding themselves. Some people travel the world as you did in your 30s, but they do it in their 20s out of college. You reversed it and said, I'm going to go straight into this network correspondent role. Did you like the job? Did you like... I mean, if you look back at it now, did you enjoy it day to day or were you really just doing it because it felt right? I loved Capitol Hill. And when I got to go up to Capitol Hill, which was... Around, I would say, yearly spring of 2009, Obama's in office. There's no more really campaign to cover. I'm kind of looking for story angles. I don't have many. And in my own mind, I'm like, all right, this might be the end of the road here. There's really not much for me. And I look around NBC and DC and I go, wow, they are really understaffed on Capitol Hill. They need bodies. And I go, look, let me be useful. I know a whole bunch of those politicians left over from my father and meet the press. I know the towns. I grew up in it. Just send me down there, off here. I'll go cover some committee hearings and fill up the internal hot file and do radio hits if you need it. Just let me be a utility player. Let me do something. And they go, okay. And that's always a funny thing, most what you know about is it often in television when you're there, you have to kind of direct yourself more than you think. Well, there's... The thing about Capitol Hill, and by the way, I was there from January to July of 2009, beginning of a presidential term, Obamacare, they're figuring that out, they're dealing with the aftermath, the financial collapse, would become the down-brink bill. I was... I mean, I'm sure we were criss-crossing in the same committee rooms. Yeah. The Rules Committee and the Finance Committee and chasing down reports. But what I love about it... It is. And there's so many great stories. And what I liked more about it than anything else was it was like getting a master's degree in American government. And I would spend late nights just sitting there, nerding out like the Library of Congress, reading parliamentary procedure and reading the history about different committees and how things happened and what would get done. I love to walk around the building in late hours. It's like night at the museum. And as a member of the press, this is so important. You get unfettered access on Capitol Hill. Like, you remember those badges? They would let you in anywhere. Besides the floor. Besides the floor. Besides the floor. And you can't have a camera in the speaker's life. But everything else you were allowed access to. And I love that. And it was fun being young in that environment because a lot of my colleagues were young. You know, the great Jake Sherman over at Punchbowl News there was this young, trash arrogant political award. I'm a mutual friend of ours. There are a bunch of us in our 20s running around. Yeah. The only many members of Congress cry. You know, a young Bob Costa was up on Capitol Hill, a young Brianna Keeler, a young Kate Baldwin, Shawna Thomas, who's now the EP of the CBS Morning Show. I mean, just this incredible amount of talent, young, vibrant talent. We're all the same age. Young, dumb, and full of, in full of, and having grown up on West Wing, right? Yeah. Right. We had this, we very quickly realized that the idealistic vision of government that we had watched just several years previous on NBC prime time does not exist necessarily in real life. I walked into a member of Congress and said, you want to come, come by my office and I'll give you some scoops. And I said, all right, I remember this 23 years old and I walk over to the Canaan House office building. And this guy, it's literally noon on a Tuesday and noon on a Tuesday. He's got a huge thing of maker's Mark Bergen with ice in his glass. There's two or three lobbyists smoking cigarettes in there and they're just having just a raucous all good time. And he says, what do you need? Okay, I got you. What vote? Okay. Okay. Okay. And that was a lesson really early on and to, oh, okay. This is, this might not be as idealistic as we saw in the West Wing. So you're covering all that, which then leads to a conversation with Speaker John Boehner. Yeah. So I love the Hill. I didn't like covering tornadoes and snowstorms or missing people that much. We enjoyed watching you stand out there. I'm hurricane arrived. I'm still looking to freeze more, please in the blizzard. That stuff I didn't like as much, but the Hill I love, I just love the Hill. In fact, I didn't even want to go on the campaign trails. I didn't care about presidential politics. I hate it. There's some, there's some Jake's another one. There's some Capitol Hill elitists that do not like politics. No, but this is the White House. They spoon feed you the information. You're not allowed to go anywhere on the grounds. If you walk outside of the zone on the White House, they shoot you literally. It's just awful. So I want to pause you there. So what Luke is explaining here is the distinction between covering the White House versus Congress. And while the White House is prestigious, you stand there on the North Lawn, you have the White House behind you, you ask questions in the briefing, you might at some point get a question to the president. You are very limited. You're in a straight jacket when it comes to information. At the same time across town on Capitol Hill, there's 535 members of Congress. You can run into dozens of them every day. And most of them, they're not with any staff members. And they're all leaking. All of them are leaking. They're all left in the right. And their staffs are too. And there's great rivalries within the body, within the House, within the Senate. My favorite stories were the internal rivalries within the party, within the leadership structure. Yes, some of those, the way they would go after each other behind their backs was more vicious than Republican Democrat, Democratic crime. It was wild to see. But I really liked the Hill. And I did it for eight years. And what ended up happening was when you started to see the coverage sort of shift once two things came about. Something called live view, which is as you know, a way to transmit a broadcast where someone at the time would literally wear a backpack and cable news could go live wherever you were in the building at all times. Right. There used to be limited spots where you get all lives. And the technology comes about between 2010 and 2015 that basically allows you to go live wherever you're walking wherever you're walking. And that changed things. Someone say for the better. You say for the worse, depending on what day you asked me, I would give you two different answers. But it did change the job because you no longer had the ability to review information you just got. It was like this immediate beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond beyond, etc, etc. And I think that was hard because one of the things about Capitol Hill is you got to process the incoming information to sort of see how is this committee going to move something? How is this person going to do on their votes? What is the actual text of the bill? I mean, I just got the bill from the cloak room. I don't know what it is. Don't put me on TV right now. You got to give me at least 10 minutes to read it. You're in common with the people voting on the bill, Luke. Correct. Give me a second. So that was big. And then number two, it was very evident with Trump is that that was the suck up a lot of the oxygen moving forward and it completely changed how politics was covered. So those things I think began to wear a little bit, but I started to have feelings, especially when I turned 30 because I lost a friend of mine at 27 named Corey and that had a big effect on me. And then I always looked at my dad's age at 58 and my mom's dad died at 58. And I sort of saw that a little farther a little sorry a little closer to me in the tunnel if you will when I was turning 30. When people got married, people started having children, mortgages, people really started to sort of move on to that next phase in their lives. And I had this yearning suspicion that, oh gosh, maybe I missed out on something. Maybe there's more to life than just this, this world of Capitol Hill, this world of Washington that I know. And am I making the right decision to sort of just chug along here and live in this really kind of curated bubble that I've known my entire life. And I had these thoughts in my mind and there was a chance meeting with House Speaker John Boehner who I covered very closely and very aggressively and he saw me in the hall and he goes, I want to talk to you. And I thought he was mad about coverage, which as you know happens is a member of Congress will break you off. You took me out of context. Right. When you get something bad, you lied, blah, blah, blah. So I was like, oh God, Boehner is upset about something. I'm going to have to get a beat down and explain, no, you actually did say this. And I get his ceremonial office and he's sitting there reading a golf magazine smoking a cigarette. And he asked me this question. He goes, what are you doing here? I said, well, you invited me to your office. I'm like, what am I doing here? What are you doing here? Right. He goes, no, what are you doing here? Because you've been here a long time. You're 30 something years old. You've never left this place. You've never really left Washington. You've got to go learn to do something. Go learn to build something. Go find something else that is new to you. Don't just become a creature here. I said, don't become a creature. Sir, you are the epitome of a Washington creature. I mean, you headed out checks from the tobacco industry on the floor and got in trouble for it. You are number one with all the lobbyists here. We're talking about a creature. But what I realize is here's somebody who's at the very top and basically saying, look, it's not all it's cracked up to be and you have maybe an opportunity now when you're young to take a pause, take a minute, take a breath. Maybe go explore that. And the conversation left me shook because Banners is very similar to my father in the sense of their upbringing. They both grew up in working class Catholic communities. Both came from large families. Both had to work multiple jobs to get through school. Both first member of their family to go to college. So I kind of felt that vibe, if you will. And I thought about it and I go, you know, these voices that have been in my mind for quite a while, Bader may have just been the catalyst to push him to the forefront. And I decided I needed to hit a pause. I didn't know what I was looking for, but I knew that I just needed to change because the day to day was wearing on me and I didn't feel fulfilled. I didn't feel whole. The thrill of it was gone, but also the meaning of it seemed to be slipping away. So I wanted to try to do something else. So when you're the speaker of the house, you have a lot, you have to deal with your entire caucus. You have 200 plus members. You got to deal with the president. You got to deal with the media. I mean, you're second in line for the presidency. You have a lot of why do you think John Boehner said, I got to take a moment and talk to Luke about his life. I asked him that question and he said, you know, I see you around and he goes, I just felt something. I felt like this need to tell you. And I go, okay, and then I came to realize from talking to some members of his staff that he would always kind of keep tabs on the sort of younger guys and wanted to know like how they were doing. And, you know, there was an honest, shall we say, care, you know, he honestly cared for people. And I think for me, you probably saw that, oh gosh, you know, here's Luke 3031, he could be here till he's 50, easily 60. I mean, times a flat circle on Capitol Hill. And probably, you know, he was trained by the Jesuits as my father was. It's sort of a little bit of a Jesuit mind trick too, which they often do, which I learned at DC, which is the who are you and why are you here? And oh, well, gosh, now I get into the philosophy. So I think that was a part of it as well. So before I was cashed, you had to quit your job. Luke, you leave, you know, at the height of the, you know, 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, future of the country, what's happening in you quit and you begin a global journey. Why that as opposed to, you know, taking a break and paying out of home? Why decide? And did you think going into it like I'm going on a trip around the world and I'm going to do this for a couple of years. What's your thinking when you quit your job and begin this trip? So my mother was a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s. And when she graduated from college, there weren't a lot of opportunities available to women. It was being a teacher or paralegal. And that was really it, unless you caught some breaks, you really worked incredibly hard. And she had this desire to see the world and travel and she couldn't do it unless she joined the Peace Corps. And she also relished the challenge. So she joined the Peace Corps and built a school in Medellin, Colombia, right outside of the city. And it was a deeply profound experience for her. In my entire life, she had always said to me, you need to travel. You need to travel. You live in this bubble. You haven't seen enough of the world. You don't know how people really live. You don't know how things really are. And I'd say, okay, okay. My dad was also kind of dismissive of it too because my father was very risk adverse, whereas my mother is very adventurous. And my mother had said that to me for years to the point of even though I was at the pinnacle of my success in NBC and I have the phone number for the speaker of the house and the president knows me my name. I would go visit my mom and she'd be like, oh, it's great. If you haven't traveled anywhere, you don't know anything. Okay. So I took that to heart. And when I left, I said, well, maybe I'll do what mom has told me to do all these years and go travel a little bit and see what that does for me. And I want to do it by myself. I want to be free of the expectations of my parents. I want to be free of the expectations of Washington. I want to be free of the previous world that I knew and to sort of go somewhere with unlimited time and no real plan because I had never had that my entire life. And I started traveling and I started with the road trip in Maine and the pickup truck that my father gave me when I graduated from high school with my dog, sort of John Steinbeck travels with Charlie thing. And then I did some solo traveling. And what I learned in that experience was that I started to listen to the voice that was in my head that I had been ignoring for many, many years that was basically sort of saying, okay, who are you? What do you yourself want to do? You have this self, this self-proclaimed duty, but what is your desire? And can you get to that sweet spot between duty and desire? And what I found out through the course of travels is that I was looking for something but simultaneously running away from something and ironic. Where were you running away from? I was running away from dealing with the grief of losing my father. I had never truly processed it because after he passed, I would do everything possible to keep his legacy alive. I was in the legacy management business. That's what I believed was my duty, the beautiful son. Take care of dad, take care of mom, make sure dad's flame doesn't go out. Make sure it's not extinguished. And I played that role for folks. One of the things that I try to tell people now, which I kept in for many years, is that I would shoulder a lot of people's grief over losing my father. And I remember one time on Capitol Hill, I just started out there in 2009 and I was having lunch with a source. And this lady, very sweet lady walks by on the street and just comes into the restaurant and gives me a bear hug and starts crying. And I said, I'm so sorry. I loved him too. Take care. Thank you so much for sharing that little book. And the person I was having lunch with, she says to me, she goes, I don't know what was crazier. The fact that that lady just came in here to the restaurant after seeing you did that, gave you the hug or cried, or how you just stood up right away and was completely at ease with it and was able to make the situation fine, like you had been trained for it. And I thought about that for a lot of years, but I never really processed that. And I think what I did right after my father died was try to be there for other people, but never was really there for myself and never really came to a place of peace about what had occurred. And I'm trying to ignore it or say, oh, that happened sad, all right, under the next thing, under the next thing. But eventually that catches up to you because that void that is there from loss and grief, it lingers. And until you address it, you're never totally whole. And that's what the travel did for me is it got me to a place where I could address it. And it never would have happened that I just stayed in Washington. I needed to go somewhere and learn how to live with that internal boy. I was going to say, as I was reading the book, Luke, reading about what you were learning, calling it a form of therapy, I was like, it would have been cheaper and easier for you to just get a really good therapist and stay home. I have one. He's good. He's not as strong. But I do think one of the things I say is, obviously, I'm not naive to think everyone can just leave everything behind and go hit the road. But there is real value in true self-reflection. And on a self-assessment and hitting a pause and doing a reset and figuring out, okay, what I want to do. And you did this too, much. I mean, give you a lot of credit. You took some time away and were able to send it yourself and just sort of see, okay, where do you fit? It's rough, Luke. You know, it's interesting. I mean, your journeys are different. But in the same way, my entire identity was connected to my job. And this goes to being editor of the college newspaper. To being on Fox News Sunday, to being a campaign producer, to being a Bloomberg, to being various roles at CBS, that, oh, you know, and Washington reinforced this, right? Because Washington's a very professional town. You're asked, even on dates, what do you do? Who do you work for? Oh, and your identity is also linked to like, well, oh, you're in the minority, not the majority. Like it's a cuzaro world where, you know, LA has an aspect of this, but DC very much. And I suddenly in 2019, and no longer the executive producer that you've been in, I am just Moshe when you know, well, who is that person? And I'm embarrassed to introduce myself to people because I don't have that honorific. I don't have a title next to my name. And my wife will tell you that like, that was a very difficult process. And you have to learn to live with that. And for me, at the beginning, I didn't mind it. Because I was so happy to break free. I was so happy to be untethered. And the chains were gone. But as I write in the book, there comes a moment about late 2018 where I begin to feel the effects of being untethered for so long. So this is what two years into travel? Yeah, it's about two years. And my mother is worried about me. We're all, we're all worried about you. Yeah, we're all worried. It's like, what are we, what is this guy doing? And that's what I begin to sort of feel I was at the Grammys with my mother. She wrote a book called, Boulder Favours, which is the basis for the show on FX called The Assassiation of Gianni Versace. And the show racked up all these awards there. And look, a famous spawn is not exactly the most out of place thing in LA, right? There's plenty of burnout spawns. Well, we have a term for it now, Nepo, baby. Nepo, baby, trustafarians, whatever they want to call it. But I was there and this lady recognized me, she goes, I love you on the news. Like, what do you do now? I travel. She's like, you travel. I was like, yeah, I travel. And in that moment, I kind of realized like, oh man, like, yeah, I've been away for so long. And the purpose and meaning that I found in that first year and a half, maybe the first almost two years was slowly dissipating. And I needed to figure out what to do. And I turned to my journals. I had kept all these journals for me, which was, that was my reporter's instinct was to keep journals everywhere I went. It gave me a sense of feeling grounded. Like, oh, I'm here in the field doing some reporting, if you will. So I wrote down all these thoughts and feelings that I was going through in different countries and different places. And when I went back through those journals, I was like, oh, I see a story here. There's something cool here. There's something unique here. And there's something here that I think can be helpful to people, which is understanding grief, understanding the power of vulnerability and also dealing with anxiety and its ugly twin inadequacy. And then also just understanding when you need to hit pause and you need to reassess and reevaluate. And there's no harm in doing that. I think a lot of people get on a path and they think, I have to do this. There's always the next thing that I have to do. Take a breath. You don't always have to do the next thing. You can take a pause and reassess and reevaluate. Talking about inadequacy, Luke, you were a network correspondent and you did it long enough where you made it for your own right. It wasn't your last name anymore. I was getting you on television. What did you discover about inadequacy or your feelings of it? I think that for so long, I was comparing myself either to my father or to my mom. And one of the things I write about in the book is I have this period of time where I come back home from traveling and my father's boxes and his files have been up in the attic. And I had been tasked with going through them for years. I always have waited it. I didn't want to deal with it. And I go, I have time now. And I start going through these boxes. It takes weeks. And it's actually back breaking work because you have to open up every single folder. He kept everything. He literally kept everything. He dropped every interview he ever did. Clapped for interviews or different files on different stories that he did. There's correspondence with people. A bunch of it we gave to his all-in-law John Carroll University and their housing in the term Russian Department of Communication, which is very nice of them. They archived all of it. But I went through it because I want to know what was in their case with any special family momentos, et cetera. So I go through it all. I was also curious. And in the process of doing that, I see just how hard my father worked. And I see the level of success that he had at a young age, being a chief of staff on Capitol Hill, Senator Moynihan in his late 20s, orchestrating massive e-material victory for Mario Cuomo in the early 80s and going to NBC News at 34 as a network VP and basically leading the coverage of the morning show. And I read all these things and I'm comparing him to my age and his age, blah, blah, what he had done. And it made me feel, gosh, man, I'm just not there. I'm out close. This is, you know, what have I done with all these gifts bestowed upon me? What have I done with this privilege? What have I done with all this? I haven't done nearly enough. And here's somebody who had one 100th, but I was given and did so much more. And I think that cut me and also what my mom did in the Peace Corps, that cut at me. And I would remind myself, like, well, you know, you did get into the, you got into the front lines in Capitol Hill, you held a job and I could hold onto that, but only for so long. And I had to learn how to be like, hey, all right, no one's at that Hall of Fame level. All right. And the reason why the guy's a legend and you did a hell of a job on your own, right? And be comfortable with that. And I was able to get to that place, but it took time. It took time. Have you talked to the other children of prominent people? You know, yeah, some, I mean, it's interesting. One of my best friends from high school is a guy named Cameron Dantley and Cameron's dad is a guy named Adrian Dantley who's an NBA Hall of Famer. I think a lot of our generation, we've heard of him. The older generation certainly did. The younger one wouldn't, but big NBA Hall of Famer in the 80s and 90s and Cameron ended up going to Syracuse and his dad played basketball. Cameron was a great basketball player, but Cameron played football and he had one year starting at Syracuse as the quarterback. And Adrian Dantley, his dad went to Notre Dame and Syracuse was playing at Notre Dame and Cameron led this up, come from behind, upset to be his dad's all in the moderate. A school that he loved who never recruited him. And I called him after that and I've known Cameron since fourth grade and I said, what are you, what are you feeling? And he's like, you know, it feels like I've made it. And I like, why you were, you were the best athlete at our high school. You, you, you won the athlete of the year two, two times as a junior, which is unheard of. No one wins it as a junior. You just have to be a senior to win it. You were an incredible guy. You're an incredible student. You know, why is that what made you, you know, feel like I've made it? He's like, I just, you know, I got to prove myself. And I always thought about that and Cameron and I would have long conversations because I remember we would be in the gym at a game and someone would be like, you're not your dad, you know, you're suck, you know, you're not your dad. And I would get that a lot on social media and I would get that even in person sometimes. And some even well-meaning people would stop me at an airport. And I'd be like, oh, I like watching you. You have a long way to go before you're him. Like you're not anywhere near there. It's shocking. It's shocking. It's shocking. Just. But I would get, you know, something I saw growing up in Washington and I was thankful to have a friend who also went through it. And then after that, I've had conversations with some folks and some people who were in the same boat and there's sort of two ways to go about it. I think some people go in as something completely different and just sort of keep a distance. Other people go into a version of the family business. And then the people who do that, there's sort of two schools. There's one that just, it's completely half-assed and it's done for show and it's obvious. And then there's people who go into it and it's, I really want to do this. And those people, you know, you can be like, paid manning. You know, as an interesting example, like paid manning somebody who wanted to eclipse his father. And I think Eli is more like, I want to just be like, just like that. And those are the two schools within that. But yeah, it's. Yeah, you see in Washington, you see in Hollywood certainly. I was about a couple of times. Yeah. Back to your journeys around the world. So what six continents, how many countries did you end up in? Well, about 67, 70, depending on how you count autonomous, you know, territories. I'd say the open 67 sounds good. What did you learn like thematically? I mean, I'm sure there's a whole variety of opinions about how the rest of the world looks at this country. Well, the one thing people should know above all else is that the main export of the United States is not the Bill of Rights or democracy. It is Hollywood and it is sports. So our sporting and our Hollywood entertainment culture is what we are known for everywhere in the world. I could be in villages in Sub-Saharan Africa or in Asia and there would be LeBron James jerseys or Steph Curry jerseys. I had to be. As a Chicagoan, when I tell anyone around the world, no matter what, Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, that's right. And you will go to very small villages and the broken English in which they know people will say, oh, so and so is the Michael Jordan. So that is everywhere. And then Hollywood, whether it's different movie characters, like I saw. I would see Scarface posters in like, you know, Scandinavia and Scarface posters in like Nepal. All right. So that type of stuff is everywhere. So that's the first and foremost. And secondly, I would say the whole notion that like Americans are hated. I don't agree with that. I didn't really face a lot of problems. And you were what 2016 to 2019. So this is several years of the Trump presidency. Yeah, I drink some presidency. So there is a lot of people who could be angry, but a lot of the times it was just sort of, oh, wow, it's going on over there, et cetera. There wasn't like active anger towards the United States. Now you would put some drinks into people and they would be like, oh, you guys, you know, think you're so strong. There's so much bravado. But it wasn't like, I'm not going to sit next to you because you're an American or anything like that. And that's really the story of the world is that most everybody I ran into was looking to be helpful and looking to be respectful. And there's an inherent kindness to humans. I think at the end of the day, most people just want to know that they're safe and secure and that they're loved and want to help out. And one of the main things I write about in the book is experiencing all these different types of faiths. And religion is ultimately what you would think is a huge dividing line. And interestingly enough, I actually went out and observed things with people, whether it was in the Holy Land, and saw Judaism and Islam and Christianity smushed together, whether it was seeing Hindu and Buddhist. When you talk about slush together, by the way, just to give people, like I often like to give people the dimensions of the old city of Jerusalem. It's crazy. It's one square kilometer. And in that one square kilometer is the site of the two Holy Jewish temples, where according to various theories, right? Because they all overlap. Muhammad rose at some point in a dream through there. The third Holy A site in Islam, the place of the crucifixion and the burial of trust. Yeah, all right there. It's all there. One square kilometer. One square kilometer. It's crazy. And it's rather accessible at all hours, which is even crazier. And for me, to see these places that you'd run about in scripture for all these years, that come to life was certainly surreal. But the point that I was making with all those tenets of faith is that you would think that'd be a dividing line. And I actually found it to be quite wholesome most of the time. And people very open and very willing to talk with you and bring you in, not just to sort of Joe Taurus. But hell yeah, this is what we believe. This is what's out there. And that would be like a journalist. I'd be like, well, don't you hate those people from the other side? No, we don't hate them. Like that's often what our leaders do because that's the easiest thing to do. And what the world taught me more than anything else motion, we see this to a news is that the world lives and nuance. Everything is in shape. Great. Everybody. It's extremes that we try to typecast people in all the time, whether it's in your own hometown, your own country or somewhere else in the world. It's not that easy. And one criticism I will have of news, and I think we were all guilty of this, of those of us who worked in it, because it's so much easier to be like, A side said this, B side said this, they hate each other and this is why they hate each other. And okay, go to the next one. Actually, the more honest answer is, well, there is side A, but there's sort of side A minus plus or two and there's side B with the overlap. I see it all the time. I mean, whether it's the Russia Ukraine conflict, right? We're all here from Russians who will reach out to me and say, I hate when you refer to Russia said, blah, blah, blah, because that's Vladimir Putin. That's not all of Russia. I saw this with Afghanistan withdrawal. People are asking like, how could the Afghans want the Taliban back? I'm like, well, first of all, most Afghans don't have a choice in the matter. It's not like, yeah, no, we totally and just because they're okay with them as a government doesn't mean they agree with everything the government say. The people of the world are not their governments in the same way that you as an American do not want to have to defend or be seen through the lens of President Trump or President Biden or whoever's in charge. You're 100% correct. And I wish more people knew that. And I think people do see that, but I was just when I came back, I would sort of read some stories about some riot bin and it was just astounding. I, wow, you really missed what it's like to be on the ground there. And I think that's changing. And one of the good things about social media is it does show places in a more honest form. Just through videos, through pictures. I think there's a real value added that. You know, Haiti is obviously in a very tough place right now. And Haiti has a bunch of problems and it needs a serious house. It's a forest country in our history in our hemisphere. Yeah. And it's there. Look, the situation is difficult down there, but I spent some time traveling around Haiti and it's not all just terribly impoverished, dirty, uncapped areas. It's not all just rampant poverty. There's actually some vibrant middle class neighborhoods or some vibrant upper class neighborhoods. There's a lot of people that are doing incredible things and you wish that more of that was sort of brought into coverage because it's not as black and white as sometimes you have to be. Which brings me to one of the questions I had for you, Luke, which is what next? Are you now going to go become a foreign correspondent? Have you got a question? No, no, no. I like storytelling and what form that takes. We'll see. I wouldn't mind writing another book. I wouldn't mind maybe getting into the podcast space, maybe long form documentary. I don't think I would like to go back. I'm joined the podcast world, the water is warm over there. I don't know if I want to get back to the daily grind of network correspondent, that type of job. But I've learned you never say never, you never know. At this rate, most you can be like head of a network tomorrow. We're trying to build our own. We're trying to build our own. At some point, I hope to have a budget to take you on as a correspondent, Luke. Oh my gosh. I hope the royalties of the book will keep you going until we can pay you. We're all just waiting to be bought out by Punchbowl. Yes. Punchbowl News, our friend Jake Sherman is a founder over there. He's an avid viewer of you. Have you even thought to this question, you can't live in America anymore. You travel to 70ish countries. Where would you live? Oh, that's a good one. Japan. Why? Because the Japanese culture is one that I found to be so inherently honest and inherently beautiful and things work there. There's a very healthy level of respect there. Some people think, oh, well, if you like the Japanese culture, then it's just sort of one, very patriarchal. It's not one that lends itself to a lot of creativity and I couldn't disagree more. I think it's a very creative, a very artistic, very sort of live and let live culture in the way that you want. But you just subscribe to some norms are respectful and I like that. I also love the food there. I like to Vietnam a lot. I could definitely live there in Saigon, but that was a very interesting place. Latin America, I liked Chile. I thought Santiago was a very nice city and drivable to the beach. Then if you're going to Europe, people sort of, oh, where do you like in Europe? Barcelona is pretty perfect town on a number of levels. Then the wild card that I would throw out to you is that if someone offered me a job tomorrow in to Bleecy, Georgia, I really love that town. To Bleecy, Georgia is, and I hate saying this because I sound like one of those just painful hipsters, but it's literally the last city that I've been to where there is not just the strangulation consumerism that chokes out all the culture that happens in a lot of cities. Literally in to Bleecy, there is very vibrant, traditional, just fun city and it's in every neighborhood. It hasn't been touched up yet and there's a real beauty to that and the food is incredible and it's the birthplace of wine and you can get jugs of homemade wine, your local bodega that's the best wine you've ever had. It's like $2. I encourage everyone, go to Bleecy. It's a great town. Lesser known and travel to destination. Many more people know about Atlanta, Georgia. Yes. Bleecy. Yes. One of the things, and we don't have to do a deep dive into this, but one of the things that I laughed about, the only thing I laughed about on that horrific day, January 6th, was some of the people storming the Capitol actually had the flag of the country of Georgia because they purchased it on Amazon thinking that it was the state flag of Georgia after those two Senate victories that happened in Georgia the day before January 6th. And I watched that and I was trying to piece it together. Those idiots put Georgia into Amazon, Georgia flag into Amazon and that's what came back and they didn't think to check it. So anyone watching out there in the country of Georgia was not responsible for charging the Capitol. Now it tells a larger story about January 6th. It's breaking down. One exit. Is there something that you took away from your travel over three years or a lesson from a country that you applied to kind of your daily routine? Does it change the way you kind of wake up and live your life? That's a really good question. And yeah, I would say my answer to that is actually something that I learned in Cuba, which Cuba I went in early 2017. So right before Trump took office because I was worried that the United States wouldn't be able to travel. Whether it would shut it down again. Yeah, it would be shutting down the air traffic. And what the humans do every morning, I think part of this is just born out of not being so tethered to technology because it's not there to the degree at which it is here in other places, is waking up in the morning and having a coffee that's sort of communal and not tied to watching the news or to work. It's a coffee that is just you and maybe you talk to a friend or you drink it outside or whatnot. It sounds kind of funny and I'm sure there's a lot of people watching this that go, oh, I have my coffee on my porch every morning and I stare at the tree and it's just as American as everything else. But I picked that up in Cuba because I stayed in this very local little barrio and everyone would have their coffee and they would drink it unattached to technology and I started doing that. So that's one. And then a more, I would say, unique one is I got really, really, really into Fuh, you know, the Vietnamese stuff like that and it is a really good hangover cure. So if you go down that road, we don't like to do you and I've never done that much but we've never been a hot fuh. It helps, it helps. Speaking of what, since you mentioned the hangover in your health, you do get to that at the, your doctor's appointment after you return from your trip. You know, your father having died from a heart attack at the age of 58. How has that changed how you approach your health? I like to say I'm the guinea pig for my cardiologist because I went to him literally a month after my father passed and I have been very, very fortunate to have a very good proactive doctor and I think people out there don't do enough for their own health if there is family history. My grandfather and my mom side have a heart attack at 58. My dad had a bit of heart attack at 58. And a lot of what is problematic in terms of heart health starts at a very young age, whether it's high blood pressure, whether it's cholesterol, whether it's just learning habits about eating, taking care of yourself and the role of sugar and what that plays. So I encourage people that if you do have a family history, go as young as you can. I mean, at least just have a diagnostic check to see what's going on with you. But I pay very close attention to my, to my heart health. Do I eat cheeseburgers? Yes. Do I have steak every now and then? Yes. Do I drink? I don't want the LDL. Yeah, but it's all a balance. It's all moderation. But I think one thing that is incredibly important is that if you feel off, go get checked out and these things start small and especially amongst men, there is a just sort of a white knuckling idea. I'll get through it. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I'll be fine. But it creeps up on you. It really does. And be conscientious of it. Be conscientious of it. The last thing I'd say on that that I think is just super, super, super important that is often overlooked is with checking your blood pressure, don't do it once. Like you got to do it a few times. Some people will do it, oh, I was 120 over 80 at the hospital. Like I'm fine. All right. Or, you know, it's all good. Well, if you take it three or four times and you fluctuate, that's telling you that you're jumping up. And if you're up at that high level, you got to take care of that. Because that can be really problematic down the line. Yeah, no, I completely agree with you. I also, my dad's dad died of a heart attack in his 50s. My mom's father had a heart attack. My father has a couple of stents. So it's a serious thing. And that has to do with colonoscopies. You know, a whole variety of things these days that have looked the young. So take care of yourself. I think it's a very important. It is. It's not too, you know, do it early. And, you know, one of the things that I've said to people is I never would have been as vigorous at checking myself out if what happened to my dad didn't never happen. And, you know, it's God's honest truth. If there's something that's been parting gift, my dad gave me on the way out was go take care of yourself. Because if he was still around, I never would have checked the same level that I've had now. And I think I've added years to my life, honestly, for the vigorous prep, taking care of myself that I have. Good message to go out on Luke. I so appreciate the conversation and I'm wishing you. Congratulations on every single one of you. Congrats to you, man. Congrats on the book. I remember being, I remember being at a sense of giants game asking you about it. And you're like, man, I got to get back to writing. I have to get back to writing. And you remember that game a lot? Or is there a good friend Andrew Snow? And for all of you out there in the Bay Area, I will be doing a book signing an Andrew's bar called the Golden Squirrel, the Rockridge neighborhood of Oakland that is on May 16th, 6 p.m. Pacific time. And I remember you and I talking, I think you had just gotten into the wild then. You had just gotten out. I was in the wilderness and I didn't even think that this was going to be a thing. I thought it was the thing to keep me busy until the next thing until I realized it was the thing. And I remember talking to you, I had to write. And one of the things that I did writing, and this is the last thing I'll say to say is you ever want to write a book, you got to keep that nine to five structure at the bare minimum and then work whatever hours you want to work, but have the structure Monday through Friday or else you'll never get done. I don't care what anyone says. You have to adopt that mindset. And it was greatly helpful. But that's what I said. I couldn't enjoy myself with you that night because I had to go back to work. So it's nice. Luke wishing you incredible luck, man. Congratulations. Thank you. It was a pleasure. I can't wait to your head of a news division tomorrow or you're bought out by Punchbowl. It sounds we all all commiserate with Jake and we'll figure out how to gain fully employed again. You're a good man. All right. I want to thank Luke Russert for taking time to have that conversation with us. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. You can buy his new book. Look for me there wherever you get your books. As we conclude here, a reminder to consider joining Mo News Premium for early access to the podcast episodes like this one and extra content on our members only podcast feed and our private Instagram account. It is a way to support what we're doing here at Mo News, support independent journalism, added plus the extra content. You can get it all for just $7 a month or $70 a year. That is two free months. If you become an annual member, there's also a lifetime subscription available for a limited time only. Pay once and never pay again for the rest of time. You can check all of those options out at mo.news slash premium. Again, that is mo.news slash premium. Thanks for listening, everybody. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.