Gutman also discusses imposter syndrome, grief and his experience with psychedelics.
Matt Gutman is ABC News’s chief national correspondent. A multi-award winning reporter, Gutman contributes regularly to World News Tonight with David Muir, 20/20, Good Morning America, and Nightline. He has reported from fifty countries across the globe and is the author of No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks and The Boys in the Cave: Deep Inside the Impossible Rescue in Thailand.
Full Shownotes: https://www.tenpercent.com/tph/podcast-episode/matt-gutman
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This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
The ten percent happier podcast dan harris, the hello everybody panic attacks can be terrifying, debilitating and.
millie aiding their scary and the moment. Obviously, if you don't deal with
you can find your life getting very small very quickly, because it will severely limit your activities because you will be avoiding so many things and for many of us, myself included, is just plain, embarrassing to be freaking out like this. It can make you feel like you're broke in nor defective. The good news is, there are
a lot of ways to treat panic. I've seen it in my own life as somebody who famously headed
melt down on live television and who also quite recently dealt with a raging case of claustrophobia, that was making my life pretty hellish, especially when it came to airplanes and elevators
therapy and medication. I've been able to get back on my feet its frequently a struggle. Even now
it is totally doable my guest today. Mac Gutmann is a friend and former colleague who, like me, was experiencing
Panic attacks on live television and like me, he went to great lengths to figure out how to deal with this condition, but I have to say: Matt has gone way further than I did he's written a whole book about. This is called no time to panic in which
He lays out the physiological and the evolutionary causes of panic, and then he takes a whole epic journey to treat panic disorder through therapy medication. All kinds of psychedelic breathing exercises meditation and more. The takeaway is very
you're sure panic is both completely normal and very tradable. Little bit of information about
before we dive in here mad as the chief national correspondent at a b c news, where he's won a bunch of awards while contributing to such shows as world news tonight with David,
twenty twenty good morning, america and nightline. He has reported from fifty countries across the planet. This is his second appearance on this show up at a link in the show notes to his first appearance, where he talks about his prior book, which was called the boys in the cave deep inside the impossible rescue in thailand very excited to bring you mac, gutmann.
If you listen to this show for any length of time, you're familiar with share in salzburg, she played a crucial role in bringing my fulness to america, not match it she's one of my earliest and most trusted teachers she's
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So when I helped create the ten percent happier app, I knew we had to bring. Iran is one of the founding teachers and in celebration of sharon's latest book
finding your way we ve made her excellent course on loving kindness, free over on the ten percent happier up until october. Twenty third is called ten percent nicer download the ten percent happy
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Introducing fidelity advantage for one came the affordable for when K plan d for small businesses like yours, it's easy to manage, so you can focus on your business and make saving for retirement reality for plants answer and it s international use. Only some products and services are not available in players outside the. U s: adela advantage for one case: a service market anymore, elsie, fidelity brokerage services, LLC member in my ass, he and my pc copyright to that in twenty one anymore, elsie mac, Gutmann Bobby my man crush work, I'm back to the euro and so good to be back always good to see your face. Their congratulations on your new book.
Two big deal, I think, he's gonna help alot of people. Let me just start at the beginning with you: when did you start freaking out one?
you start having these panic attacks so
background Dan Harrison. I worked with each other for so many years and I didn't actually know what a panic tat was for a long time. Basically until I started talking about these symptoms with Dan and he was describing his book, this ten percent happier
thing, and it was only then that I knew what a panic attack was, but for years before that I've been suffering Dan from these bouts of nerves and and the first one. Nothing. I told you that conversation was in college. I was defending. My college thesis is about turkish israeli relations, slightly s, attack and light,
I knew this and cold, and just before, or just as my name was being announced, mac gutmann with this
Turkish israeli relations thesis is gonna talk about blah blah blah. I suddenly felt like my heart was pounding through my ribcage. I could
breathe. I realize I didn't know how to swallow anymore. My vision construct too
seen through the eye of a needle
Dry mouth and I live
They thought I was gonna fall through the floor and I somehow made it to the podium and I distinctly remember gripping the podium so tightly, because I was afraid I would fall down as white.
I the podium- and I literally remember nothing of what I said that night and I was wearing a turtleneck and I thought was really academic and it felt like cats were clawing at my neck and I never did anything about it and I was in therapy at the time
I didn't even talk about it with the therapist, because I just discounted it as nerves. I don't even know what I thought happened, but I just moved on. I mean that is the like: the cognitive dissonance and the shut off. It was in my brain for many many years about fifteen years, fifteen years between having a panic attack in college and then kind of waking up to the fact that you were suffering from panic attacks, yeah man. I knew that that I had nerves so after college. I traveled and started reporting in for south america and africa, and then I landed in Israel and the peak of the intifada, which is the palestinian, the second intifada. The palestinian upright
and- and this is what I wanted to do- and so I was a print reporter for the first five or six years, and then I started doing a b c radio. That was the first time I met you in two thousand and six covering the
Israel, lebanon war, and I
I was there when I was going live for these very brief. Live radio hits oftentimes words that I was looking at on. The page would magically disappear and I would skip words. The page would shake and again I would realize that was going through the symptoms that I remember from college, but I didn't know what it was, and I guess part of me thought: well, that's just normal. These are nerves that people have when they perform live in watching people like you do live tv that was unbelievable kenneth. How does a guy do that? Just standing up
unravelling off line after line. So again that was the initial bout of it during radio and then the same thing will happen when I started doing television- and I found myself at my best in massively chaotic situations where there were zero expectation of lawlessness or perfection, but the hardest thing for me, especially with radio and tv and radio, was you need to have a page. You have to read sixty five
he works twenty seconds of copied. It so easy that how could you fell that up? But there is an absolute expectation of perfection or flawless and that just killed me, so I found that one stop was literally blowing up around me.
Or there was chaos of a hurricane or tornado or some sort of despair.
Should that made it almost impossible to perform flawlessly that I was at my best and most at ease yeah, you
the guy who was known for being like the master of,
hey, I'm assuming you're still known for that you can send got men.
to an oil spill
or a wild fire or the aftermath of an earthquake or a combat zone and
He's gonna be able on live television, walk you through the damage, destruction, debris. The chaos seeming
utterly in control in his element, high intensity, and so I think it is,
people anybody anybody's ever seen. You on television, myself included, will be surprised that, even in the best of circumstances and again for you, the best of circumstances are perversely,
chaotic you're, still feeling really nervous and wondering whether actually your body's going to mutiny against you at any moment right. I am actually curious about you. So in the periods of the most chaos I felt comfortable because it's like, oh my god, there's no way he can do this. Well because you know there are people falling down downers
potential for him to slip. It's raining. It's windy, it's whatever it is, so those were the easiest it's like when it was at a live shot outside the bureau or on a street corner where it's so calm, you're an absolute safety. All you have to do is regurgitate fifteen seconds. That's where I started to molt into a werewolf and have the
Panic attack symptoms where you know it felt like my skin was coming off and you know like the demand.
In Harry potter were breathing and death into me and suffocating from it. But I wonder if it was like that for you, because I I have seen Dan, you know a talented everything and speaker, but favorite dance story were in haiti after the two thousand and ten earthquake, and it was just
got wrenching and we were traveling all day together. I was a radio reporter and dan and amin mean it was now. The executive producer world news tonight was working with Dan and which is bounce from place to place a dinner reporting all day long and on the way back to our hotel, where he was going to front and anchor world news tonight that night Dan wrote some stuff in his
at the top, and I countered it was literally eight minutes. He wrote the whole show in eight minutes and then delivered the show that he had written in eight minutes off the top of his head without a prompter- and I was like, ah if he quit
how that's not even you know, I was so unbelievably blown away that that's even mentally and physically possible
Just I've never seen anything like it. I do know was possible:
We wonder I live in. I wondered if it was the same for you if, under this
unbelievable pressure. They had this huge story on your hands with death and devastation if, under that kind of man,
it's the crucible, there's no way that Dan can deliver. The entire show off the top of his head, but Dan can do that, but if it was easy and there was an expectation of flawlessness if that affected you- yes, I think, to a lesser extent than you, but I mean it might be worth my I mean I'm I'm going to, hopefully
let you do most zaki here, but it might be worth to answer your question and adding a little bit of color so for people who don't really know the network news business
well when you do alive shot generally in network news, as opposed to cable news, is actually very odd situation, because the anchor says.
See news. Corresponded mac, Gutmann is in filling the blank tonight matt and you mad. Then
have some words you're gonna, say fifteen seconds of words and by the way
is literally fifteen seconds or ten seconds. You agree upon that with the senior producer on the show in advance, because every second of the show was timed.
and in an insanely minute way again on
cable news where they're kind of doing rolling coverage all day long network news
have a half hour. Minus commercial breaks so dearly like seventeen minutes of show at six thirty, every
So the anchor david mirror or me when I used to work, there were tossed a mac gottman and you ve got fifteen seconds to say your thing. What you ve agreed upon, so it's scripted, softer
and then it roles into a taped peace that use meant
day shooting in writing and then on the end of it, you have called alive tag another ten or fifteen seconds.
For me having to get that right.
No matter where I was in the world was insanely difficult and it's so surreal, because
it whether you're on the street corner talking about the latest absent
and a wall street or
you're in the middle of a war zone, it still
you and maybe a small crew of people and a camera, so it doesn't feel like you're in front of a huge
audience. But you know that in the other side of that lends is set
in eight nine million people who are judging you, and so that all of that,
in my head, all the time so so
trusting you brought the seven eight million people that never bother me
I never had a fear of following up in front of the seven eight million people you can say fucking up here, boeing,
This is really the studies that network new executive worthy of
you see,
if they have no jurisdiction here, government or renegade operation lookout. Everyone you're going to hear ST series that phones, where appropriate. So you know in my conception of the world, but I'm going to take a step back so having this fear of failure that caused the panic attacks for years made me think that I had some sort of deficiency, some weird kink in the human genome that still resided in me, and that caused me to have these strange panic attacks. When I know that performer lovely, I was up to the task and I've done it in much more difficult situations and I have flourished. So why was it under these particular circumstances that I choked? I thought it was just because I was born defective right
and one of the seminal questions at the start of this book, for me was, am I broken and to take another step back. The reason I actually started on this journey before actually knew that I wanted to write. The book was that I fucked up. I was reporting on the kobe bryant helicopter crash in january, two thousand and twenty and
had a panic attack and I had
other stuff going on in my brain at the time, and I basically couldn't separate what was reportable. What was fact and what was heresy and my brain couldn't simultaneously navigate all of the lanes of traffic that I asked it to do, and so for the first time in a twenty plus year career. I said the wrong thing live on air and it was catastrophic. It was terrible that was suspended for a month for it, and at that point I decided that. Well for years
I've been thinking about quitting tv, and I told my wife for years we talked about it that I was just so miserable like its socked having to worry about failing on live television and, consequently, like I would smoke cigarettes cause. I thought the imbued me with some sort of supernatural power to stop panic attacks as it so unbelievably unhealthy diana had magical underwear that I ended up
buying in in paris during the bataclan attacks I bought. These underwear did really well in the paris terrorist attacks, and I was all these must be mad.
Underwear
it gave me luck so I'll, wear them everytime, I have a live shot. There are a couple of pairs who don't wear everybody, but like it's demented, I would do push ups backbends. You know like all sorts of twists and stuff because they say that exercise helps to reduce the incidence of panic, all these crazy things, so that I wouldn't panic
and I was convinced that I was broken and in my mind the reason I felt so much pressure is not because of the ten million people. I went back to that dimly lit cave on forty seven west, sixty sixth street, where the e p's and the presidents of the company and the David Muir's and the Dan Harris's and the george Stephanopoulos and robin roberts and all the people white deeply respected. As fellow journalists, I was terrified that I would fuck up in front of them, and
they would lose faith in me and basically, I'd be ousted from this illustrious group. That was my fear. There wasn't the seven eight ten million it was just the small,
my little tribe, that I was so afraid of being ousted from you touch on something fascinating there
just to recapitulate. Some. What you just said met started having panic tax in college. They dog him throughout his media
rise through the new business and then common.
It added where the panic attack that led to a factual error, vs v, kobe bryant, who tragically died along with friends and family members in a helicopter crash a few years ago that got matt suspended from a b c news and then,
He went off to try to figure out what was going on and and the result is this book. They were gonna talk about now and one of the truly fascinating things that you do
I'm in the book that I as a long time panic attacks, suffer
was vaguely aware of but didn't really know, was at a huge component of panic is the fear of social ostracism, nation
said a little bit about that, because you were worried and probably still are
Every time you do a live shot that there are a bunch of people, your bosses and peers and colleagues sitting in a control room back at a busy news headquarters at forty seven west. Sixty six
st judging you you're more worried about them than this seven
people watching, but nonetheless
where are you worried about you worried about somebody and social deprivation or disapprobation? So why is that so important?
what role did that play in panic, attacks the central question
that I had that. I started out with before. I knew that there was a book, but when I knew that I needed to fix whatever was broken inside of me was: why am I defective? Why do humans still have
genetic propensity for anxiety, and why do we have panic attacks rights? We know that chronic anxiety is so unbelievably unhealthy. We know that
to be true, so how come humans haven't selected out of it right? We selected out of tales. We don't have tales anymore. We don't
hair all over our body. We have opposed able thumbs. We selected for these wonderful traits
but why is that? One still in the gene pool and eventually, after talking to evolutionary biologists and psychologists and psychiatrists, I learned that there are basically two major buckets of human fear right. We evolved over hundreds of thousands.
Generations, to be scared sooner anxiety was an asset. Fear was an asset right, so, instead of being in a herd, primates learned that ok, why don't we
run away before the lion starts. Chasing us cry like why won't you
moving out of the clearing when we see a line right away just get out of its way out of its eyesight, so the ability to be afraid
Sooner became a massive evolution
advantage and matches developed because evolutionary advantages develop, so we learned abstract fear and elect deeply abstract fear. So now I can go to
the metropolitan museum of art or the guggenheim whenever I can see a piece of conceptual art there is none
what to do with live, shots were abc news and that will trigger could trigger a pen,
in me, because I'm associating that piece of art, with the fear of being rejected by my peers, so we ve, developed
fear and anxiety into an art. So our early human ancestors had two major buckets of fear. One was the physical
right, you're, gonna, be honest. The and align is gonna, come eat you or your problem.
Many are going to die of disease or you're gonna be hit by lightning or,
assholes over there in caves, seven are going to come and bludgeon you with their clubs. The second fear is a social fear. Humans developed not only to be afraid sooner we gave up muscle mass were scrawny. We gave up speed and size for cooperation and for our brain, so we learned that we can basically what we evolved to be
massively cooperative- which meant that if we get kicked out of our group- and we don't have, the cooperation of our group meets our cave in her.
however, it is lean to in the forest we would be kicked out banished to this
anna, whereupon align would come, eat us anyway, so we eventually associated breaking a social, taboo
running a foul of our peers with death.
Which is why we have panic attacks right. It's your brain, telling your body that there is a very big social thread happening and you better fix that right now or you are going to die and so that
A panic attack is, it is the biggest most blaring alarm that can go off in your brain, telling you don't piss off your peers, because you're going to get kicked out of the cave and then alliance going to eat. You.
This is so fascinating in a really got me thinking about so I'd famously out a panic in toronto.
vision our infamously whatever and largely dealt with it successfully in the subsequent years, but I had some more panic, a big resurgence of it and I've talked about it here on the shows. I won't go to deep into it, but a big resurgence of it about six months ago was able to treat dad as well
oh and we'll go deep on the treatments in a little bit, but one of the things I noticed in this most recent resurgence
And by the way, what I was panicking about in this most recent resurgence was claustrophobia, so elevators,
airplanes. One of the things I noticed was that, aside from the fear of being trapped
I was worried about what other people were gonna. Think of me,
I lost my mind in this
elevator or on an airplane, got very common here, so I'm just agreeing vocally with you keep going
that's ok! I guess I don't have a question of just serve china on your observation, so common policy,
I want to talk about phobias and how we deal with it and our dismissive of it in a second deafening want to go back to that. But
The combination of the whole evolution thing and caring about our peers is that one our parents taught us to not care what other people think, but to a certain degree we must and we do and its natural and the second attack is the upshot of all of this learning about caves. In humans and the two different kinds of fear is that social fee,
is normal, panic attacks are normal, and so about a year into my effort to learn about it evolutionary psychiatrist, randy, nessie told me an interview says: panic is perfectly natural that it is perfectly normal. He said our minds and bodies are wired for us to have a thousand panic attacks, a thousand false alarms. So long as the we don't have a single missed alarm to. If you miss an alarm, a pile up,
and I ninety five and you're out to lunch and you don't get the queues and he slammed into the cars in front of you you're dead. That's not a good thing, but a false alarm. A panic attack is just twenty five or fifty burned calories.
Twenty three, your shirt to your body wants, they have false alarms,
You just can't have a mist alarm, because that means you're dead and just being told that this is normal. That maybe
the pan occurs. The anxious among us are the normal ones.
Exist just that alone, with such good medicine need are being told that you are not broken.
You are not a defective part of it
in genome you're a part in part?
the normal functioning of the human gene,
because, basically, all evolutionary side to say this.
we're not wired or designed to be happy or to be content,
we are designed to survive and to procreate anything else, and I thank you,
this part. This is how I think of it. Anything above survive
in procreating or doing those things is a bonus. So if you can be content
you can derive happiness from your data day. That's a win over a bunch things to say about the latter point of media
The thing you were saying earlier about panic being normal, which I think is just as super helpful thing to say, was clearly very helpful thing for you to hear tat when I spec there, many people listening right now or finding it to be a relief, but we
we think about being on an airplane. I feel like I'm, the only guy panicking on there, but I think I'm the one seeing should clearly we're stuck in a metal tube,
going many many many miles an hour many miles above planet earth. That shit is crazy.
If you look at it with dry eyes, so does feel like anybody
not freaking out eight paying attention
I merely say that in the book did the same thing, the focus the people
have or one hundred percent legitimate it does. It make sense,
to fly in an aluminum to five to seven miles in the air. With two hundred
Germ spewing humans, motor chris and people, who are afraid of driving their crazy they're afraid of driving with scott,
them the number one cause of death for people. Our age, then, is driving time
accidents are the number one killer for people. Twenty was eighteen to fifty four. So why wouldn't you be terrified of that? That makes complete sense and yes, why? Wouldn't you be afraid of speaking in
and of a crowd humans are not engineered or designed to speak in front of crowds. Public speaking was not something we did for tens of thousands of generations right. It was the case
head, man would grant in front of the rest of the group and we'd all nodded assent and go often kills a mammoth right like public speaking, is
thing that has only come into common practice over the past couple of generations. People were not doing this even five hundred years of a few hundred years ago. All of this is new to the human experience
and yet we expect ourselves to be able to give lincoln esque addresses every time we get to a podium or go on a zoom call much more of my conversation with Matt gutman right after this.
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The book about having impostor syndrome key
what that is and how
that played a role in your panic and also in the social.
Approval and validation. Piece of all of this I mean very roughly imposter syndrome is thinking that people are going to find out that you're a fraud that you're not capable of doing whatever thing it is that you're doing and the fear of being outed for it, and typically I've heard it described as like. The friction between two types of experiences one is
growing up. Your parents, tell you, you are god's gift to man. You can do anything you want to do in the world and then, when you
As you go into the world that you can't do anything you want to do you get impostor syndrome, because there is this friction between what your parents told you and what reality tells you or the opposite. You grow up and you come from nothing and a lot of people
Color a lot of women experience this and are told they're not gonna, be anything and then
went to the world in reality. Tells them are you really are talented, you're good at whatever it is you're doing and that friction sends them into a posture syndrome. So it's basically like the rub that fine edgeware expectation meets reality and it creates this little dissidents in your brain that you think I am not up to this task and everybody's going to find out that I'm a fraud and everything all this facade that I built about mac gutmann, the absolutely unflappable tv corresponded who goes to war, is going to be blown up.
you describe yourself in a way that I never thought to describe myself, but really resonated with me. Are you call yourself a courageous coward? You addressed,
we are courageous cowards, I really don't know but the coward part, but I didn't like you, went to scary places and did scary things to yeah. Everybody Dan is one of the
probably the corresponding I wanted to emulate most so massive respect, I'll
of danger and I love danger from the crib right. I literally would take headers out of the crib. I would cross the street as a two year old. I have a very high tolerance for physical threat and physical danger,
I have a low tolerance for social danger. I am extremely conservative when it comes to social threats and I am extremely triggered by social threats, which is why I have panic attacks. When I go on air and obviously from my college experience when I speak publicly, sometimes so yeah
the courageous coward? You also have a high tolerance for repayment discomfort. I mean I remember you telling me a story about how you,
Did you get in endoscopy? But you didn't want to be medicated because you had an assignment,
the words they see. You did an endoscopy which, by the way people is when they shove a little camera on a tube into your stomach. You did it unmedicated. The only reason I do endoscopy is because I
The medication. Just knock me out, do twice with that kind of intent.
and drive, is a huge part of your character and also the fear that can come from.
Social approval or lack thereof. It such an interesting, not a contradiction if you look at it in a holistic way, but it can seem like a contradiction. You know people always asked or now ask once they read the book or had told them. My experiences,
I mean if your job made you so damn miserable. Why did you do it, because I consider myself a collector of experiences right eye
can a curious about what it would feel like doing endoscopy without any sedation, so they stick the thing in your stomach. They
pictures inside and like grab stuff in order to do that they have to fill your
coming up with air in your stomach is massively descended, and once they take the two about you, let out the most
unbelievable burke you have ever heard of such a thing was possible
we're getting somewhere? So I am the collector of experiences in an hour line of work. We do.
to do some really cool things. I'm really gregarious. I love meeting people, and sometimes I did love going on air when there was stuff happening, but it was the time where I feared social judgment most that were so acutely painful that I learned to dread them and to try to avoid them and then create the safety behaviors, which were true
generally tragic comedic, but just tragic like smoking and magical underwear and all the other michigan craziness tat. I was doing
you really go into great detail about the things you tried to deal with panic and I want to go into great detail as well
because I actually think there is no shortage of courage that you demonstrated in attacking this problem, but before you at one last sort of high level question about
panic, which is what did you learn about? What is happening physiologically when we panic
and what are you learn about the long term implications of power?
making a lot on a human. So it's a great question. So in your brain
he's too often size? No, it's called a mig delight. Since incoming danger, there sort of like their play centre field. You can hear an audio version of danger or visual version
since it you can smell it, but whatever it is their sort of playing centre field and getting all these incoming stimuli and once they sense danger, they sent a message to the hypothalamus
then I'm releases adrenaline in your system and if the threat persists, they will release quarters all basically into your system, which pumps glucose to your big muscles, which helps you run fast and keep going. That's why you breathe heavily to get oxygen into your bloodstream, your vision
strikes, because you only need television right, you're bodies, not worrying about anything else around. You need you to get from point a to point b and run fast. You begin to sweat
evolution airily. They think that this is because humans became worse
the pre when they were wet today,
away from an animal, but basically all
All of this chemical cascade, that's happening in europe,
addy is engineered to help you escape from a predator, to run away or to fight or to fight. That's and some people have flight and some people have fight, and so the fight is you know, people you can see them the clench, their jaws clench, their fists, they're prone to bursts of anger. My stress response in a situation is flight. Flight and freeze are very similar,
and so, basically, your your body is preparing to mount a defence, and the defence can either be running away or fighting back, and it does depend on the situation, obviously, but that's basically like the chemical components, and it does that by first shooting adrenaline into your system, which only last a short bit of time and then like night
seconds later cortisol, and so people will have chronic chronic anxiety. It's very unhealthy. It's like smoking, a pack of cigarettes a day, but I
approach, these endo neural criminologists think I'm getting that right and I asked like ok how much damage I mean. I've had hundreds and hundreds of honor panic attack, something doctor gardener.
Ok tell me about it. I mean how, like twelve years, to live again
many years off my life of thy taken he's like none, I had all my blood tested. I got like the biggest blood test. You can imagine, and
fine. It turns out. Your body is ok with this,
I actually have low levels of resting, cortisol like how is that
possible. I have like several panic attacks. A week this is what has happened. Several panic attacks week he's like
We think evolution airily, your body is compensating for the fact you have several panic attacks are weak, so keeps your baseline
in quarters all levels low.
This is normal, you're, totally absolutely okay, and actually the first thing that the doctor said:
when he called me to tell me my blood levels in all the stuff, I was sure there was going to die he's like mad at you have to call me right away. So we
This conversation was after hours of eight p m on a work night and like all god, this is bags good. Tell me some bad news about what I've done,
like a tax and other killing me sick man. Do you like pickles why bengals pickles
Do you like pickles, ah yeah, so good eat, more pickles cause you're sodium levels are low.
That's all you had nothing to do with a panic sounds like you need more sought new diet, so it turns out that, like the evolutionary site
they said, but globally them, your body really is primed to have a lot of panic attacks and be perfectly okay.
Chronic anxiety on a different level like if people go home to parents who are abusive or they are in abusive relationships. That is a different story than what I have experienced. I am experiencing these
ass of spikes, these highs and lows, but not that the law,
Gated prolonged exposure to quarters all in this.
which really really is unhealthy, but that was
The trauma that I was dealing with, I want to pick up on your mention of your trauma, because that will come.
in this next section of the interview where we talk about what you did to deal with the euro pack attacks there's quite a long, an impressive list of of things. You didn't. I just kind of like to tick through these and hear how much help or not these techniques were the first one on the list is breath work.
His breath work and how did it help have you done it? We ve had an episode here or two about breathing exercises and I've done a lot.
but not in an intensive way. Ok, so called tropic breath work and I
I did do a different kind. It's part of this group, but basically it is not what I thought it was and the first time I was exposed to it
it was on a weekday in early february, a friend of mine, from high school lane. It was like the star lacrosse player and captain of the team and captain of his team at rutgers, but he turned into this yogi and
he is a breath were coach, so he'd invited me a couple times, but I never had timing.
do the breastwork. And finally, you know suspension has a way of opening up your schedule.
so who time in the middle of the day ago, do a breath were class with him enough
it'd, be sort mellow and just kind of relaxing and so
I had no idea what I'm getting into and it goes in there and he's like a cox and of a crew both right, and he teaches you had to do this breath. It's pretty simple to press in one breath out, but faster
are you really want to fill your belly intervention
you do that enough that you go into an altered state. You breathe
and so much oxygen that you actually deprive your body of carbon dioxide essentially high, prevent,
later, depriving your body of carbon dioxide which inhibits your body from in taking oxygen. So its counter intuitive
basically are depriving itself of oxygen by overbreeding. This is why, when people hyper ventilate, they get paper bags
cause you're rebreathed in your carbon dioxide. Ok, so you go into the state and you get locked physically and your body, my hands are: should have clamping onto themselves sort of folding in feed. Only your feet go the same way. You begin to go numb in your body
and they call this lobster claws cause you can't move your hands or feet and heat lane is still telling you breathe. You know, he's doing the cadence and he's telling you what to feel and he's telling you what to focus on and eventually you can't focus on him cuz you are off and I went. I go to some altered state, I'm gone and the first time I did it with him. I started crying
and not just like it was full on sobbing, like excavating. This pain,
there was inside mean, and I didn't feel shame I just let it out and so lincoln
when he grounded me by holding my legs, not getting me out of that state but grounded me, and so that was
I so good. I felt relieved and refreshed and light afterwards in a way that I had not
felt in many many years and I was stone cold sober.
was like nine a m on Wednesday morning to breath. Workers is basically that it has the capacity to take people into this altered state on some people. Laugh some people cry some people just go off on their own soil.
Yes, but for most people, if you go deep enough, you will have some sort of powerful experience, but
the feeling of being locked in your body. That would make me panic. Yes, so people get scared
they come out and the way to come out as you just slow down your breathing. So
The only way, then that I could figure to get out of being locked in my panic in this brain of mine, there was always afraid was to do what I do for work, which is ok. I haven't assignment,
My son is to figure out my panic. The way I go about doing my silence is the goalposts simon interface re like
my senior editor of the producer, says Matt. Go into that torrent
Ok, you know, and so links
allows me to breathe I'm going to breathe the hardest in the room. I am going to do absolutely everything I'm going to do it to the max and with some of the stuff it really worked to my benefit, and so I did go deep and lane describe
seeing me like often space and then crying and sobbing, but that kind of intensity.
is the only way that I could really go about figuring out. What was wrong with me and finding a way out of it. So in the crying were you crying because of psychological,
content. I e the trauma that you've referenced but not told us about, or was it just purely a physiological response? Oh that's a great question. No, I think it was the psychological stimulating the physiological right, but I I couldn't pinpoint the pain I just knew was grief. It was sadness and in the book I talk about the well of grief and I've had this conception. Since I was a kid so when I was twelve, my father was killed in a plane crash so and that's the symmetry with the kobe bryant situation is that my dad was the same age as kobe, and I was the same age as giana, and so as I'm reporting about kobe helicopter crash and we're hearing the first tidbits of news about giana, I am understood,
meaning that there is incredible symmetry here between that helicopter crash, my dad's plane crash, and so I talk about trying to navigate multiple lanes of traffic at once, and I failed to do that at the time. So
during breath workin and other altered states, it was hard for me to pinpoint the exact trauma was it that was being held by the venezuelan secret police, which really messed me up for a while. I was just like the day to day absorption
of other people's trauma in this line of work right, like I've, talked to people on it.
very worst day of their life, hundreds and hundreds of times people whose children
then killed in mass shootings people who have lost their home lustre dogs lower everything right victims of war. So is it that then I can't pinpoint exactly what the pain derives from, but I can tell you that there was this sorrow and
pain that needed to be excavated, and once I realise that this crying is good medicine and worked for me.
I went about trying to find other ways to get to that core of of grief and sadness in me and find a way to let it go to release it two points of factual clarification or amplification.
The gina people might have picked this up either because they remember it or via context, but Joanna was copyrights daughter. She perished in that helicopter crashes. Well in and then mats reference to being held by the venezuelan secret police had happened when he went to Venezuela to do some reporting any got picked up.
I the bad guys there and I can only imagine incredibly stressful and traumatic experience, so you, I should say, having issues that those clarifications ye the breath work was really just to begin.
you then moved into psychedelic, including sir Simon, sometimes referred to on the street,
as magic mushrooms. What was that experience like? It was really pleasant, so I had expected to-
be crying inciting snorting through whatever blanket this practitioner, gavi, so mushrooms, suicide in r d criminalized in the bay area, so my wife had actually got up to do a session with his practitioner there a few months before me and she had this epiphany,
right, she was in the jungle in central america. There is this, my in temple and in the opening of this. My and temple was a lion slightly miss cask, as are no lions in central america, but that's ok,
and the lion opened its more and this light be
doubt of the lions mouth and
It shone on my wife Doth, not and it divulged to her her purpose, and that was that she,
ass to continue her music. She has to continue music education and bringing it to the public and she did that she fulfil
The prophecy of the lion, with the light coming out of its mouth, to who doesn't want to fulfil the prophecy of the
with the light coming out of its mouth. I wanted that so I went there and I have in I expected a slightly different experience, which I got, but I actually solving these visions of strength. Like I found myself inside the guts
of yosemite inside half dome peeking out through the skin of the granite. Had these images of solidity and strength,
recurring, may also had a little bit of a cry, but not nothing massively cathartic, and at that point I was still taking s arise, anti depressants, and so that has a way of telling the experience of psychedelic suspect
so a cyber. So even though I had two extra doses, I didn't have like the eye inspiring earth shattering experience that I had hoped for on that. First try
Were you taking the s s arising antidepressants to deal with the panic or something separate,
I have been taking them for eighteen years, I had a little bit of ptsd when I covered iraq, the first time and came back. I was living in TEL Aviv and came back and I saw a psychiatrist who prescribed paxil and basically that was two thousand and three and I stayed on paxil on and off for eighteen years and paxil has the ancillary benefit of helping with panic, and so I gone off of it for a little bit and I saw
Ok, just here and allay and told him about the panic and he said well, you should really go back on packs or is it has this secondary benefit of helping panic, but it did not have that effect on me at all. Yet it's interesting I've been told the same thing. I've been on so loved for fifteen years. Very low doses of referred to is like a sub clinical dose, but it is said to help with panic. I know it's very hard for me to figure that out, but you kept going with this academics
the next one on my last year, is toad, venom, auto venom, so five, any eau de empty is made from the excretions of these two nor in desert toad found.
turban, the arizona, mexico border and its rendered into a powder and then put into a bigger- and I did this at a retreat in Peru and the sacred valley in Peru near much repeated,
and basically they burn the bottom of a bigger any almost drink. This syrupy smoke from this thick rubber straw hose it's pretty way
and immediately upon taking it in you start to pass out like it knocks you out almost to me that you can't get through the bigger and so the practitioner Gloria tabs me awake, dominative gonna, take it take it finish it, and I finish this thing.
And so like the shimmering screen covered my consciousness at first ass I passed out and then sort of everything went to black and
I kind of died. My existence kind of shut off briefly, and then I came flopping back out
into the world and literally flopping off the man on the floor and suddenly I am alert and awake and I'm sweating and I'm like tearing up
face in my hair and I'm screaming not crying screaming at the top of my lungs
kind of primal yell that I didn't even think I was equipped to do so,
embarrassing in our day to day lives like this.
did you would never do
and this went on for over thirty minutes
a facilitator there, a well who was so this will we french
ballerina, who has tended himself over me and protecting me and just like. Let me scream my guts out and people are little bit scared, because this is not, like
typical reaction. Most people just are in their own world, absolutely silent and just awake. You know, having had this amazing trip aboard this velvet rocket ship that takes you cross the cosmos. I was flapping on the floor like some sort of beat a fish,
sweating and slimy and screaming my guts out and all I knew my entire existence in that moment was there only to extricate and ex bell this pain inside of me and all I knew was I had to get it out, and so I kept screaming as long as I could basically tolerated.
This guy named Glenn, whose still a friend of mine who had the most amazing experience at this retreat. Peru, where he's like mad at me,
shut. The fuck up,
but finally, when it was over, like the whole everybody there, there were like twelve people on the retreat and all these facilitators and everybody started clapping. There were applause because they realized that I had been through something absolute
the incredible and it was it was like,
changing. I didn't even
yeah. I didn't even know that I needed it I did know is capable of that. It was a little scare
that that was inside me, but I felt a thousand pounds later when it was over
just to clarify, though, that that screaming was not in terror? It was like an exorcism nod, a panic attack.
I want to use an exorcism, but yes, it was an exorcism. It was not panic. I was not afraid I was not in any physical distress.
I had this baseline consciousness of knowing and I was sort of in my right head that I just needed to scream
it was actually moving thinking about it. I was in a place that afforded me the space to do just that and my whole life. I've been
in control, keeping control, maintaining control, maintaining equilibrium, even
I'm being erratic. There is a purpose: it's there is an element of keeping control
and in tat moment in Peru, I seated control. I allowed something to happen completely to me and I let it happen without feeling shame without feeling bad were stupid about it. I just needed to get it out and I don't care what any
They thought more. My conversation with back gutmann right after this hey it's guy rise here and on my podcast, how I built this. I talked to the founders behind some of the world's biggest and most innovative companies like starbucks, google and patagonia, and together we discuss all of the skills. These leaders have learned along the way like how to solve complex problems and had a lead through uncertainty, but how I built this: isn't your average business podcast by tapping into the hearts and minds of entrepreneurs. We better understand how they use adversities fuel to help them persevere through challenges are overcome, setbacks and achieve their goals, and these are just conversations about the past, my guests and I also explore the novel and world changing ideas there pursuing right now. The goal of our podcast is to inspire you to approach
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you your head, follow even the rules on the wandering up or wherever you get your pod. If you don't want,
wait for more episodes, join, wonder e plus today to listen exclusively and ad free one of the things that's and I've said this before on the show. So I apologize to loyal listeners who would find this repetitive, but one of the things that really blocked me
doing second Alex is fear. I mean the my earliest panic attacks. I would not defending a thesis, I was smoking weed, very common here and so
I really don't like giving up the control of my consciousness. Amidst probably why I'm such a terrible, meditate or so
It's curious. You did not and we have more psychedelics to talk about, but thus far I'm not hearing you say yeah. I was free
get out about having to relinquish control dan. I thought there is no such thing as terrible meditation come on. He s.
Who played I love when people use my own words against me. My son does that to sometimes a big, sadly something
current reassuring jealousy. Is this like an inspirational speech, because if it is, I don't wanna hear it could
Xander? That's what happens when you raise kids and they're smarter than you are and you're like whoa. What did you just say? Oh and so the thing about psychedelics is that they're very different from cannabis. You don't have a choice.
The beauty of psychedelic for me, is they took me out of the realm of having a choice. I was not present anymore. Mac Gutmann was not.
Or to make the decision. No, I'm afraid of letting this out. I've got to contain this inside, because people will feel bad. I will upset other people. I care what my cave group at that moment thinks that consciousness didn't exist anymore and that's why psychedelics for me are so useful because I don't have a choice anymore. Matt gutman is out of this picture.
That social fear that had been dogging you as a as a correspondent there's nobody in the control room at forty seven west, sixty six watching you as you're freaking out exactly beautifully said it right. The control room was empty. I could scream to my heart's content, and so that's why I think it's so
friend from pot. Where do you like you can get into your head? You there is no head than ever.
all intents and purposes that head is gone. It's all empty! Okay, so, let's quickly talk about iowa. What was that experience like for you
So I ask those really tough. I wise guy is a brew for those you dont know it's also often called the tea, but it's really like the consistency of river mud,
and its poured in very small doses and its aim shalmaneser stick
edison, that originated in the sure people tribe in the amazon and its derived from two separate plants. One of the plants sends you off into the psychedelic hallucinatory state. The other plant basically creates the digestive path for your by to be able to break down the chemical compounds in the first plant dm tee, so that you can-
He trip. You can actually have this journey for me. For some reason, it wasn't breaking down
right. So I dunno what was up with my digestive tract. Maybe it was my head. Maybe I was blocking it asserting control- I don't know so that first session and there were three sessions at this retreat of IO oscar first time I did it. I took a dose, I didn't feel much. I took another half dose didn't feel much at all, and that was five hours. I enjoyed the music. I enjoyed the chance, the ikaros as the cold of the shop,
but feel anything in. My had people on this trip with me or having the most unbelievable experiences. All around me. People are being rocketed into space
they're, like you know, in saturn and jupiter, and I'm just like to do to do, don't feel anything and then the second night I took twice that dose
like three cups, three times more than anybody else and in the third night I took five cups and it basically so destroyed my stomach that I thought I was being stabbed by
eyes in finally, five hours in I began to have you know the visuals and
the hallucinogenic experience
but the germans were leaving the room and
for having had massive explosive diarrhoea. We can say that in this, shall I guess
and I just I was dying inside and there like. Ok what won't
some florida water on you and then leave, and then I just ass. I had a very delayed, very strange reaction to
I was caught and, like all around me, the next day people like one of my friends had this
yes, and I'm gonna read one of them for you. You just said to me that the I was gonna. Let me in completely
She turned me into a plant. I died and returned from his seat pod of pure energy. I could feel the charms and navigated the space home port love into my son as he slept at intergalactic soul. Sex with my wife became god
felt the pain of all of humanity, my hands emitted energy that I could manipulate at will that's about half of it pretty great
and I'm sit on the toilet. It's a! U! You have all these second, our experiences and we didn't even get to care
mean, but we have all these psychedelic experiences does any that help a minutes. It's mason for good book, but does it help you
panic. Each of them helped the thing is it really is maintenance, writer
free time I had either a cathartic experience by purging myself, which is what I was gay ended up being this massive purge, and I was sick to my stomach for ten days afterwards lost a fair amount of weight, but there was,
catharsis and purging involved each one of them enabled me to go to a place that I can't really go to in my quote: unquote right mind, so they were helpful, but it does take regular maintenance. Just like meditation sound like you can meditate one day
and then you have a great session and then feel better for the rest, the weak or the rest of the year, its practice, and so am I ketamine session. The psychiatrist, who did it with me as well? Wellness is maintenance. It's all work and you gotta keep the practice up interesting way. One of the ways that I access my journeys, all psychedelic is through meditation
I sit there and then the images start to come up and that's one of the ways I can access these treasure boxes of moments that were actually strengthening like what I felt
on mushrooms and what I felt certain experiences on ketamine. So I think that there
this collaboration between the second alex and meditation. Actually, what I'm curious about is when I've had panic
the modalities of worked for me are. I put him in a couple: buckets one would be preventative stuff where
exercise and I you write about exercise in the book exercise. Getting enough sleep
in meditation, making sure that the nervous system is not junkie and tangley, and so that reduces the odds of panic that one. The second is medication
like ss arise, I don't know how they work, but some s arise can apparently reduce the instances of panic and then another kind of medication is beta blockers, which are these non narcotic meds that many people in performing professions even surgeons take. It doesn't have anything to do with your cycle,
It is not like a xanax, it doesn't relax you, but it puts a ceiling on the heart rate. So that's really helpful, so you can have the psychological part of panic, but not the physiological part, and so for me that has been incredibly important and then, finally,
psychological techniques that I can use in a moment of panic, like you, know, far monoplane at I'm freaking out. I can
but my hand on my heart and talk to myself in ways that
I reassure myself that I'm fine and you ve had these experiences before you ve always derived so this kind of like cognitive behaviour of therapy stuff anyway. So those are the three buckets that have worked for
me and I'm just I'm not really hearing that in the psychedelic that all seems like out side of those buckets and somewhere the psychedelic acts. So, first of all, thank you for your candor. I appreciate that
you can say like listen in a sometimes at the proprietor. All helps the other medications help and they do and their people out there anymore. I stopped pack so after eighteen years, which was really rough, but it enabled me to feel more and I needed to start feeling, but medication,
save some people's lives. Sign still, does it know how essential rights really work? They just released a report last year, a major study they found their both more addictive and that the withdrawal symptoms of s rise, getting off
are more painful than anybody new and there is no informed consent with doctors still for some
segment of the population. Not only do they work and help reducing anxiety, but they are massively helpful in limiting panic
so I interviewed a bunch people who can't live without them, and
and enabled them to
I have normal lives, which is great, so just want to put that out there. It didn't work that way for me, so the psychedelics helped me excavate this pain that was dragging me down. I see I see this grief,
that was holding me down and it was like. Basically, I was drowning because if it is like a thousand pounds,
reform? I just I couldn't get my face out of the water and I think that that was exacerbating the panic attacks
exacerbating my baseline level of anxiety. That brought me just closer to the threshold of having more panic attacks. But you know what then- and I haven't had the time because I've been doing this book and the publicity need to go back and do some maintenance on that. But day to day. I think you said this to me in one of our conversations
It's like just don't be a dick to yourself be kind, it's sort of the inverse of the golden rule. It's do unto yourself what you will do unto others like. I think most of us try to be kind to others, but we're not as kind to ourselves as we should be, and so we've talked about the drill sergeant and I've tried to retire that drill sergeant and if I get anxious and if I have a panic he's not going to make me feel like I'm a total absolute loser any more like I'm a failure that I'm ok with it like. If I happens, it happens and I'm going to be. Ok, I'm going to survive. I survived the previous panic
and I'll survive, the future paddock attacks, and I cannot promise that I won't have panic attacks again. I just I probably will that's how I am engineered, but I need to continue this maintenance that I've been doing eating right.
meaning caffeine, severely limiting alcohol exercising doing my meditation just a couple of minutes of it. In doing my mindfulness, these things absolutely help, and if we don't do them, then we come closer to raising that baseline threshold of anxiety that can lead us towards the paddock space. That's all super helpful and I suspect, maybe I hope, not clinicians. Listen to this work.
A bad shed at my terrible taxonomy here, but I can see after having listened to you there. I can see like four buckets for avenues of approach. For,
panic one is as discussed taken care of yourself
the daily maintenance, making sure you're nervous
Amazing it as good a shape as possible through sleep exercise, meditation
the other is medications including better
blockers or ss arise. If you in your doktor. Thank you need them. The third would be
if you can do in the moment, which can include, you know, learning how to talk yourself in a healthy ways, not being a dick yourselves for learning. As I did through, and I know you did
who see bt and exposure therapy that you can grab
we get more and more comfortable with the things that are scaring you and then. Finally- and this is what I was
seeing the first go round. I think, is deep, deep work like through either.
Therapy or psychedelic psychedelics, or both where you really excavating the root causes
of what is knowing at you was ailing you and that's. It sounds like you. Ve really checked all four of these boxes. I mean, I hope so, but its again its constant work. It's it's like a welcome all thing. He can't check all the boxes
time, and you know there is a sort of tyranny and no and well in this world. You don't fall into this pitfall, but people
Do you know you ve got to do all these things. Get son get cold exercise eat well, meditate. My from this,
nobody's got time in the day to do all this stuff, and then we get into this feedback loop of work
while not maintaining my body and my brain and my mind and my soul, and so I'm a failure and like I definitely want people to avoid that, and I definitely talk about it in the book like it's. Okay, just like that's part of the whole being kind to ourselves and it sort of
ass. If he had met detention right, you lose your mantra. Ok, don't shout it yourself to come back to your micro. Do it again, it's all good said the same thing with the wellness practice but yeah for me. Maybe it's different for other people going into
at the well of grief worked because I'm too afraid to go in it in my right mind because I'm afraid I'll never come out and I did a lot of therapy. The problem with me is that I'm such a pleaser, a former relationship with my therapists
and then I want them to like me, and I want them to be happy and pleased with me, so it becomes about
working that relationship rather than dealing with my demons. Yes, so I'm back
therapy now, but with a very issue, specific thing
but just one thing that I wanted to work on and its temporary, but it's not like that
talk about my mother for you no sixteen year
on the couch. I am not doing that again that that didn't work, the practitioner with whom I did suicide in fara. I asked him what works. This is like my first foray, she said you know I I worked for years with the sharman in southern mexico and he said everything I mean everything does work in a way,
just thinking about it being mindful of taking care of yourself bottom line, though, is what you ve learned. If I could sum it up, is that you're not dysfunctional if you're having panic attacks? It is natural and it is
Readable now there is a large menu you, you got a piglet worse for you and it takes a lot of maintenance and it's easy to fall off the wagon, but you're, not brow
can and you're, not stuck if your panicking or high anxiety exactly it is just part of how humans are wired to be in his part,
the human condition- and we have to remember from what I learned the baseline human condition- is not
to be happy or even to be contented the baseline is to survive. The second thing is to create offspring, after that, whatever you managed to do, if you can bring joy to your life, if you can recognize moments of feeling, content or moments of
venus. That's all a bonus as everything that you have managed to achieve. So, if you feel those things you can pat yourself on the back for it matthews there's something I should have asked but didn't now before I let you go
can you just remind everybody of the name of your book and the name
your prior book and anything else. You want a plug where we can fight
social media. Just purge yours
of all
and promotional materials? Please so I'll try to go into an altered state for this haha, so the book is called no time to panic. How I curbed my anxiety and conquered a lifetime of panic, attacks, booker or before bed is called the boys in the cave, deep inside the impossible mission in thailand about the rescue of the
thirteen boys from the cave in thailand, but no time to panic. Just one more thing about that. I talk about
conquering a lifetime of panic attacks. It set that I've vanquished pet,
can I will never have a panic attack again. Is it if it happens? I'm gonna be ok
that I'm going to know how to deal with it, and I'm going to be able to forgive myself, and that is one of the most important things that I want to impart on listeners. Is that sense of self forgiveness and self compassion, and also a sort of a healthy version of
reliance, it's not like rugged individualism. I don't need any help from anybody, but one way to understand hope and optimism is not that shitty things will never happen to you, it's just that you can handle it if and when it does, and that is a hopeful, optimistic outlook. I like that data, given that one mother,
all yours buddy, I have to say as somebody who's always, you know I'm a little older than you and our relationship from back when we met two thousand
saxon. Israel has always been like on the older guy. I wasn't
you were in radio and I was badgering you to go into tv. It gets jack nice looking face and such a dogged, excellent rapporteur justin
watch, you now writing this incredibly brave book and then talking about it so well. I feel very proud, lotta nothin to put it in yet
ah bobby. Thank you, I'm so happy to be here with you feel my heart. Thank you there. Thank you thanks again to make gutmann. Thank you as well to you for listening. We
would not. It would not do it without you if you want to do me a solid go in and give us a rating and a review on whatever podcast player you used, because it really does help us work. The
the rhythm and reach more people. Thank you most of all
everybody who worked so hard on the show. Ten percent happier is produced by Lauren Psmith Gabrielle, sacrament, Justine gay
in terror, Anderson, DJ, cashmeres, our senior producer from arrest,
schneider. Men is our senior editor and can be regular. Is our executive producer scoring and mixing by peter bonde event?
of ultra violet audio and nick thorburn of the ban. Islands wrote our theme
What's u on wednesday, four, a brand new episode, we're gonna talk to Alex to some who is a politician in structure and has an incredible story that I think many of you all of you will find very mode of.
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Transcript generated on 2023-10-11.