Unlocking Freedom: Emotional Intelligence in Diplomacy with Mickey Bergman

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Hello, and welcome to Every Moment is a Choice.

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I'm your host, Erika Behl, and I invite you to join me on a transformative journey to

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uncover the extraordinary potential that lies within every single moment of our lives.

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From the choices we make in our relationships, careers, and personal growth, to the mindset

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we embrace in the face of adversity, this podcast will empower you to embrace the notion

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that every moment holds a choice, and it's up to us to seize it.

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Join me as we engage in insightful conversations with thought leaders, experts, and everyday

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people who have harnessed the power of choice to achieve greatness, overcome obstacles,

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and create extraordinary lives.

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If you feel inspired by this episode, please read it and consider subscribing.

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I'm keen to know how it's impacted you.

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Hello everyone, and welcome to Every Moment is a Choice.

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I want to start off a little bit differently today.

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I want to read you some names.

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Trevor Reed. Matthew Heath

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Usman Khan. Sean Turnell

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Aye Moe. Taylor Dudley.

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Fernando Espinoza. Kyaw Htay Oo.

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Danny Fenster. Brittany Griner.

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Tomeu Vadell. Alirio Zambrano.

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Jose Luis Zambrano. Jorge Toledo.

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Gustavo Cardenas and Jose Pereira

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The names I just read out are all former political prisoners who were released back home to their

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families due in large part to the work of Mickey Bergman, who's here with me today.

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Welcome Mickey.

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Thank you.

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Thank you, Erika.

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Let me talk a little bit about Mickey.

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He is the vice president and executive director at the Governor Richardson Center for Global

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Engagement, a nonprofit and non-governmental organization that works on behalf of the families

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of wrongfully detained people abroad to negotiate and secure their release.

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Governor Bill Richardson has called Mickey the heart and soul of the center, which has

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secured the release of more American political prisoners than any other organization.

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Mickey created the term fringe diplomacy to describe the new field he is forging, which

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explores the space and international relations just beyond the boundaries of states and government's

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capacity and authority.

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He has managed private diplomacy efforts in North Korea, Cuba, Myanmar, Venezuela, Russia,

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the Middle East, and in Africa.

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In recognition for the pioneering work he's done to build relationships and bring home

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so many political prisoners, Mickey was recently honored with the 2023 James W. Foley Legacy

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Foundation American Hostage Freedom Award.

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And alongside Governor Bill Richardson, he has been nominated not once, but twice for

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the Nobel Peace Prize, first in 2019 and again this year.

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He is also a professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he educates

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the next generation of diplomats on the value of emotional intelligence and its use in international

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relations.

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And so this is where I'd like to begin the conversation, Mickey, because this is where

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we first met at Georgetown.

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That is true.

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I won't mention how many years ago that was.

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And I remember the first time I arrived on campus, they had this orientation program

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for the incoming students, and I met the other people I would be studying with in this program,

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and I looked around and I thought, how did I get in here again?

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So I was quite intimidated, but actually, I have to admit, you know, thinking about

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your work and what you've done, I am, it is absolutely awe-inspiring.

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I get goosebumps thinking about it, and I'm just all around thrilled to have you here.

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So welcome.

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Well, thank you.

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And by the way, I think we figured it out after that orientation, before we started

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at Georgetown, that most of us had exactly the same feeling at that same moment.

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We all looked around, and I think we went around and each student introduced themselves

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and what they've done for the last couple of years.

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And we all had that same thing.

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Wait a minute, how did I get in?

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And that was the feeling throughout the two years of that program.

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And I have to say, the amount of people that I've, from the peers of ours, classmates of

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ours that I've worked with over the years, including in this kind of work, has been absolutely

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amazing.

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Yeah, yeah.

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So it's not a nervous feeling or anything.

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It's just a proud feeling for me now to see where all of our classmates have ended up

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actually.

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Yeah, yeah.

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Okay, so let's get started.

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Let's talk a little bit about French diplomacy.

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You've created this term to describe what you're doing.

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So what is French diplomacy?

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Yeah, so I think in the intro, you described it, kind of the thinking around it, which

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is really about exploring the space that is beyond the boundaries and the traditional

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authority of governments in international relations.

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And it does rely heavily on businesses, philanthropists, individuals, NGOs, academia, who are empowered

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just like never before and have just as much to gain from a prosperous and stable world

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as governments do.

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But unlike governments, we have more flexibility.

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We're not mirrored in diplomatic choreography and in protocol and with the flags that we're

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wearing basically as suits.

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And if you look at our diplomacy over the last probably a decade or more, it has become

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so bureaucratic that we have left behind one of the most important elements of diplomacy

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in my mind, which is the human one.

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And so we believe that our ability or inability of diplomacy to successfully share and collaborate

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with others, whether it's communities or states, on some of the issues that are most important

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to us, that's a market failure and engagement.

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And so we want to kind of to use fringe diplomacy to add that freely from those bureaucratic

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constraints and really explore the dimension, the neglected dimension of the human experience

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and the human relationships.

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And if we do it right, fringe diplomacy actually creates an additional layer of access and

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personal relationship that can help overcome political and business and societal crisis

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between communities and nations.

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And we divide the work on fringe diplomacy into two parts.

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The first is engagement and the second one is intervention.

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And intervention is typically when we end up going and releasing a political prisoner

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or a hostage and everybody loves intervention because it's quick, it's tangible, it's sexy.

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People do a special on it, but the truth is, engagement, intervention, sorry, cannot be

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successful without years of engagement.

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And engagement is really the heart of what fringe is at and it takes many, many shapes.

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And engagement is not government to government in our world.

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It's much more of community-based, sometimes governments are involved, sometimes it's people,

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sometimes it's businesses, sometimes it's NGOs, sometimes it's other elements.

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And we've done this kind of work in places that typically the United States has trouble

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with, whether it's Cuba, in Myanmar, in North Korea, in places like that.

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And when you build relationships based on engagement and a true engagement, so it's

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not just a fake one, not just for the sake of saying that, but actually something that

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is better in society, you build trust and you build relationships.

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I'll give you the example of Cuba.

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It was easy for us to engage in Cuba as Americans during the late Obama years, President Obama,

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because he has removed, he didn't remove sanctions, but he punched holes in the sanctions that

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allowed Americans to go and interact with businesses, entrepreneurs.

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That was easy.

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It became harder when President Trump came to power and reversed all of Obama's policies

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on Cuba.

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And yet we continued to go.

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We couldn't do much at that point in terms of business development because there were

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constraints, legal constraints on us.

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But what the Cubans saw in that, our friends in Cuba, our partners in Cuba, what they saw

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is that even when it gets hard, even if we can't really do anything tangible, we still

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showed up.

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And that built a level of trust and relationship, which is really personal, that at any time

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of a crisis actually can come really handy.

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Absolutely.

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And the engagement work to me that you're talking about is the building of relationships

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kind of behind the scenes, not, it doesn't grab the headlines, right?

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But it's the behind the scenes work.

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What exactly you've described a little bit about who's interest, who are interested in

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maintaining an engagement relationship like that, but what does that actually look like?

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Is it exchange programs?

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Is it business investments?

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What type of engagement is that?

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So it's both.

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And I'll give you another specific example of years of engagement that we've done with

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Myanmar.

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And we started this actually in 2012.

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And I went there initially with Governor Richardson, who knows An San Suu Kyi from decades before.

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But we went there and that was three years before the elections in Myanmar.

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The democratic reform.

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They just announced that they're going towards the elections and we already jumped in there.

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And we asked, we met both with An San Suu Kyi, we met with back then the vice president,

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who was part of the military party, the USDP there.

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And we asked them both in the individual meetings, how it is that we can help.

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And that's a key component of fringe is that you don't go there and tell them, oh, let

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us come as Americans and tell you what to do because we know best.

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We really don't.

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The last decade proves it.

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It's much more complicated, but we actually go as friends and we try and see what are

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the ways that we can be helpful.

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And both An San Suu Kyi and the vice president at the time told us in two separate meetings,

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again, they come from very different backgrounds and parties.

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They asked us for a few things that were very similar.

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The first was training of their parliament and the political activists because they said,

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we're going to have elections in three years.

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Most of our members of parliament never served constituencies.

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The legislator in Myanmar had 675, I think, members.

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None of them have ever served really in a role as a legislator.

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It was more of a retirement plan for military generals.

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So they asked us to come in and actually help them look at it, look at how to build budgets,

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how to oversee the executive, how to create a relationship with constituents in the field,

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in their districts, which they've never really served before.

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And because we are so small, the Richardson Center really is Governor Richardson, myself,

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and a couple of short-term consultants that we hire.

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And our budget is limited, but we got a consultant on the ground in Myanmar, Mindy Walker, a

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woman from Wisconsin that we just happened to run into in the streets there.

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And we gave her a little bit of money and she started training.

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And before the elections, we have trained 3,500 Myanmar political activism candidates

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that were running these elections, most of them women, because that was our focus.

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But the second focus that we had was to make sure it's multi-party.

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Everybody else was training only Anson Sochi's party.

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We were training everybody, including the military party, including the minority parties,

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because that was, from our perspective, the way we think it could help.

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So that was one thing.

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The second thing that they've asked us to do was to bring in American investors and

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businesses first around food security and water distribution, which was a problem in

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Myanmar.

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Myanmar is one of the most richest countries in the world in terms of resources and one

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of the poorest populations.

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And it was a matter of, it's a matter of distribution and governance there.

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And so we started with that and we bought a bunch of social entrepreneurs from the United

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States with clean cook stoves, with water wheels, with different solutions on distributions

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of water and growth of food.

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And again, we didn't go to teach them anything.

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We went to meet with peers and share stories.

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And that kicked up really, really well.

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And soon enough, Myanmar went through a mobile revolution, a penetration from 10% mobile

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penetration to 75% mobile penetration within two years or three years.

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And suddenly everything was online.

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It was on Facebook.

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Funny enough, not Google.

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They used to call it, let's Facebook things.

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That was their access.

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And it just turned into a technology investment delegations and exchanges.

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And we went there, I went there about 13 times through these years, taking different groups

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of Americans, bringing them over here.

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Funny enough, one of our first training sessions, we had a young mayor from South Bend, Indiana,

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that came with us to do the training, Pete Buttigieg.

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Today, the secretary of transportation in the U.S.

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He was with us in the first training.

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And that's the engagement.

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That's an example of engagement.

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But if I may, I'll tell you how it played out without us thinking we did it because we knew

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it was the right thing to do.

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Now fast forward, and we're looking at following the removal of Ansan Tsu Chi through the military

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government and the establishment of the military government in Myanmar in 2021.

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And suddenly everybody else lost all contact and our ability to communicate with the government

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of Myanmar.

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We didn't, not because they were our buddies' buddies, but because they remember that when

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we did the training, we also trained them.

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And these were the same people.

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Some of the people that were in our training at that point, almost a decade before, were

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now ministers in the military government.

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And we had some contact and some level of credibility that helped us do something that

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might be a little bit controversial, such as engaging with a military government in

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Myanmar following the coup, but led to the release of quite a few prisoners.

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So that's an example of how that circle actually works.

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Yeah.

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Yeah.

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It sounds like an incredibly long game though, Mickey.

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The type of game that requires a very purposeful organization like yourselves and maybe not

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politicians or other people who are in office for maybe four years.

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It sounds like something that you really need to invest in over the long-term.

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It absolutely is.

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And it's one of the things that I feel like where you and I, Erica, you didn't want to

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mention the years.

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But a couple of decades ago when we were in school together and we had that sense of ideology

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and ideals and a way of thinking that there are strategists in our governments that have

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a long vision all about world order and stability.

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And I believe those existed in the past.

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But as we stepped into our professional life and we got exposed to how things actually

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work, at least for me, I found out that unfortunately the brain power is there, but the capacity

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and the bandwidth does not exist anymore.

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So we are, just like you said, we are chasing the news.

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We are reactive.

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Now there's an element of government that has to be reactive.

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The Department of State has to be reactive.

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Different elements from the US government needs to be reactive to events because events

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happen and we can't control them.

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However, you want to have a body which might be the National Security Council who thinks

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long term, who has a vision.

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I know we're getting sidetracked a little bit, but look, over the last few years, the

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world order has been changing underneath us.

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Nobody can deny it.

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We have different blocks.

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The world order of the post-Cold War is kind of over.

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And yet I have not heard a vision from the president of the United States.

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And it doesn't matter who it is, whether it's a current president, a former president, a

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future president.

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I have not yet heard a vision of how the president sees the world, how he wants the world to

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look like in the future and therefore what America does in order to do it.

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And that's a lack.

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I know it's a go around way of responding to your question.

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And we don't have that vision and we don't have that from our political leadership because

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we're stuck in political cycles.

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But as a society, as a community, we should have a vision of what that is and we can drive

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it.

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And so you're right.

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It's a long game that we're playing around in fringe and engagement.

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And sometimes we would spend a lot of time engaging in efforts and resources in engaging

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community and it never comes to an intervention.

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That's fine.

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Because again, the engagement itself has to be worthwhile.

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It has to actually be an advancements of society, something that is a public good.

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And then we're comfortable with some of it hits just like Myanmar hit on the spot when

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we needed it.

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Some of it has not, but it was still worthwhile and still continues to be worthwhile.

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We are again, we're small organizations, so we can't really this type of work cannot be

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done globally.

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You have to pick your spots and do it.

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And it goes to another issue, I guess, stop me if I'm talking too much.

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But you know, in our world, especially in the world of when it comes to philanthropic

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support, there's so many organizations and so many good ideas out there.

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Brilliant people come up with great ideas and the pilot them and they test them and

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they're fantastic and they work really, really well.

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And then suddenly come big foundations and philanthropists and say, Hey, this is great.

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Here's $10 million.

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You know, bring it to scale.

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And about 90% of these ideas fail because they're bad ideas.

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They're fantastic ideas.

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But they but the concept of just pour money into it and scale it up to have bigger and

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larger impact fails.

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And one of the things that I argue is that if you take the principles of this, of what

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we're doing, the good things, not only us, but anybody else, any other good ideas.

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And instead of scale, proliferate, right?

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Have other organizations open source it, have other organizations do it for their own reasons

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and their own ways.

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And that's how you actually get the impact.

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And so it's my saying, even if somebody poured a lot of resources into us and we don't have

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many resources, it's not like we can be successful in every single country in the world.

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We can't.

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What I do need and what I would love to see is other organizations saying, hmm, this whole

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thing about emotional intelligence, that seems to work.

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Engagement that seems to work.

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Now, we might be focused on education or we might be focused on food security or on climate.

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Let's use those tools.

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Let's do the same.

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Let's use these things that work.

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And at that point, you actually start to proliferate engagement in a way that is brilliant.

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And I would argue I had this conversation, former student of mine from Georgetown who

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went to work for Airbnb.

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Look, Airbnb has the potential of fringe diplomacy like no other entity business wise.

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Explain.

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You have people coming into different cultures and staying in people's homes.

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The level of engagement and familiarity and intimacy is unprecedented.

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And these are not people who are coming to fight.

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These are people who are excited.

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They're coming to see a new place.

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They're coming to experience the local community.

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And Airbnb, especially in some places, just like a simple program like, oh, you booked

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an Airbnb in Myanmar?

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That's great.

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Let us send you some material.

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Just reading material, not political positions, not propaganda, just a little bit of material

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so you can actually engage with them on their history and what's happening right now.

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Again, just a resource for people.

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Most people won't use it, but some will.

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But again, the idea of outsiders going and living in homes in Myanmar or Zara B&B is

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just mind blowing for what it can do in the engagement between societies.

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It sounds amazing.

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00:21:42,920 --> 00:21:49,000
And it's a really interesting point you're making about what I'm hearing is that rather

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than the Richardson Center becoming a 200 person organization, you would rather have

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1,000 little Richardson centers all focused on different issues.

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Correct.

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Absolutely.

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And not owned by a Richardson Center, owned by the people who are running them.

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I'll tell you on a personal level, I remember about a decade ago, I was working at the Aspen

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Institute and it was developed a program there.

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It was a public-private partnership program.

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It started with US-Palestinian partnership on economic opportunities.

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And then it developed under President Obama into this thing called Partners for New Beginnings,

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which was a larger engagement between the US and the Muslim world.

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Again, not government to government, but people to people, business to business.

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And in that process, it was a fantastic thing.

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I learned so much about engagement through doing this and developing it.

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But before we knew it, we developed from one country engagement to 11 countries.

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I had a staff of 14 full timers, a lot of them, by the way, graduates of our program

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in Georgetown, the MSFS.

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And I found myself outside of the engagement and into management.

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And I enjoyed it.

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It was fun.

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There are elements of it that was fun.

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But my heart is in the engagement, is in being in the field and meeting the people.

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And so at that point, I actually, my deputy was also a classmates of a classmate of ours,

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Anna Navarro.

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And I told her, Anna, you're going to be the director.

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I'm leaving.

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And I went to restart completely as a startup, basically, fringe diplomacy outside and take

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those lessons that we've learned in that engagement with Muslim majority countries and do it anywhere

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in the world, everywhere in the world, which was really the birth of fringe diplomacy.

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And Anna took over Partners for New Beginnings.

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She was fantastic at it, as I had no doubt that she will be.

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But that was my lesson.

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I do not want to manage a big team of people or 20 organizations that carry this mission.

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I want to do my own thing.

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I call it the mom and pops kind of impact.

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And so I might not be able to talk on the millions, but the names that you mentioned

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at the beginning and the people that I know through the engagement work, I know who they

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are.

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I know their families and I know how their lives have changed.

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And that is everything that matters to me.

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It's amazing.

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I'm struck by the fact that how much you love the engagement.

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And I'm wondering, was it the attraction to being able to secure the release of prisoners

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or was it actually your career developing more out of the engagement part?

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And naturally that led to the type of relationships that would enable, you know, securing release

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of people.

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Which came first, the attraction for you?

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The chicken, it's a great question because it just like the chicken and egg, it kind

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00:24:38,840 --> 00:24:41,760
of came together and in very separate ways.

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It wasn't by design, it's not like I had a clear vision of what I wanted to do and how

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it all plays out.

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00:24:48,660 --> 00:24:52,720
My work on engagement was, you know, started with the Aspen Institute and that kind of

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work as I described and developed and from there kind of grew into French diplomacy.

379
00:24:58,200 --> 00:25:05,040
My work on intervention was happening at parallel, complete parallel when I met Governor Richardson

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in 2006.

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Which was again a fluke, a bunk by the way.

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I, you know, it was very lucky and I described lucky as your ability to recognize and be

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00:25:15,240 --> 00:25:19,840
prepared for when moments and opportunities prepare them, it presents themselves and jump

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00:25:19,840 --> 00:25:20,840
on this.

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And so that's kind of my luck on this one.

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00:25:23,600 --> 00:25:29,600
Governor Richardson reached out to some donors when he was asked to go to Sudan in 2006 to

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try and help, you know, as a private citizen and even though he was a governor, as a private

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00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:37,880
citizen to meet with President Bashir of Sudan at the time.

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And he reached out to some donors to get a private jet funded and one of those donors

390
00:25:43,440 --> 00:25:48,280
happened to have been my boss at the time, Danny Abraham, who told him, yeah, you know,

391
00:25:48,280 --> 00:25:50,480
I'll give you money for the jet, but you need to take this guy.

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He's done, you know, some humanitarian work on Sudan.

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00:25:53,000 --> 00:25:58,040
Like he, you know, and so I get a phone call from Governor Richardson on a Wednesday morning

394
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:00,040
and it's kind of like it's with his voice.

395
00:26:00,040 --> 00:26:01,040
Okay, is this Mickey Bergman?

396
00:26:01,040 --> 00:26:02,040
I said, yes.

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00:26:02,040 --> 00:26:04,440
He says, this is Governor Richardson of New Mexico.

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I need you to get, pack your stuff and get your ass to Santa Fe.

399
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You're coming with me to Khartoum.

400
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:17,440
And at that point, it's not only that I didn't meet him, I didn't know he existed.

401
00:26:17,440 --> 00:26:23,240
And I had really 48 hours to decide whether this is a great idea, an opportunity of a

402
00:26:23,240 --> 00:26:30,720
lifetime or the last mistake I make before my head gets separated from my body, because

403
00:26:30,720 --> 00:26:34,480
I was born and raised in Israel and Israel and Sudan at the time were, you know, at the

404
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:35,480
state of war.

405
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:40,120
And so I relied again, by the way, on our colleagues from MSFS.

406
00:26:40,120 --> 00:26:46,120
In this case, it was a woman named Sarah Margon, had a lot of information on Sudan.

407
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And I tried to kind of, she gave me a briefing.

408
00:26:49,080 --> 00:26:52,080
I relied on a lot of advice and I went with him.

409
00:26:52,080 --> 00:26:58,320
And in Sudan, he worked on the release of an American prisoner, a journalist.

410
00:26:58,320 --> 00:27:03,720
And it was just absolutely mind blowing to see again, as a private citizen there, what

411
00:27:03,720 --> 00:27:07,480
he was able to do on an intervention side of it.

412
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And that's when things started to click for me and saying, wait a minute, those two actually

413
00:27:11,840 --> 00:27:13,900
live together.

414
00:27:13,900 --> 00:27:18,920
And it took me a while to kind of kind of converge those two worlds, because I had contracts

415
00:27:18,920 --> 00:27:21,680
that I was running with Aspen Institute that was doing engagement.

416
00:27:21,680 --> 00:27:25,520
And I had worked with Governor Richardson on intervention.

417
00:27:25,520 --> 00:27:32,960
And over the years, and it was not without arguments and struggles that I was able to

418
00:27:32,960 --> 00:27:35,640
converge the two and now they live.

419
00:27:35,640 --> 00:27:42,840
Fringe Diplomacy has its own 501C3 as an organization that manages a lot of these trips, but it's

420
00:27:42,840 --> 00:27:45,500
done within the context of the Richardson Center.

421
00:27:45,500 --> 00:27:48,120
So it's very, very intentional.

422
00:27:48,120 --> 00:27:53,160
Even though the pandemic kind of put a big dent in our ability to travel and do the exchanges,

423
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:55,880
but we're picking back up on it.

424
00:27:55,880 --> 00:27:58,120
So that's the one we had.

425
00:27:58,120 --> 00:28:04,440
It happened parallel and it merged over several years of hard work and a lot of arguments

426
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:08,560
and trying to push the boundaries and finding the right way.

427
00:28:08,560 --> 00:28:15,280
And it continues to be a journey, because every time you do an engagement, it costs.

428
00:28:15,280 --> 00:28:20,620
And you have to convince your boss of why it's a good investment, especially when you

429
00:28:20,620 --> 00:28:22,240
have resource constraints.

430
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:26,040
And especially when the payoff for the ROI might occur 10 years from now.

431
00:28:26,040 --> 00:28:29,680
If at all, and it's really, really hard to, yeah.

432
00:28:29,680 --> 00:28:33,240
And it's really, really hard to, you know, I remember one of our professors from MSFS

433
00:28:33,240 --> 00:28:38,600
used to say when conflict mitigation, conflict prevention, sorry, and used to say that there's

434
00:28:38,600 --> 00:28:41,480
two problems with conflict prevention.

435
00:28:41,480 --> 00:28:44,200
One is that it's very expensive.

436
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,080
And second is that if you're successful, there's nothing to show for.

437
00:28:48,080 --> 00:28:49,080
Yep.

438
00:28:49,080 --> 00:28:50,480
Because you just averted the conflict.

439
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,320
Nobody, nobody believes that it would have happened.

440
00:28:54,320 --> 00:28:55,320
Exactly.

441
00:28:55,320 --> 00:29:04,400
So I wanted to ask you, because when you're teaching now, you know, you're influencing

442
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:09,400
new diplomats coming up through the ranks at Georgetown now.

443
00:29:09,400 --> 00:29:12,480
And there's a lot of emphasis on emotional intelligence.

444
00:29:12,480 --> 00:29:14,080
Oh yeah.

445
00:29:14,080 --> 00:29:17,600
That you attribute to your success.

446
00:29:17,600 --> 00:29:22,480
What does emotional intelligence look like in action?

447
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:28,240
So first of all, the way I define emotional intelligence is really your ability to recognize

448
00:29:28,240 --> 00:29:35,520
and understand emotions in yourself and in others, and your ability to use this awareness

449
00:29:35,520 --> 00:29:39,820
to manage your own behavior and your relationship with others.

450
00:29:39,820 --> 00:29:44,560
So it really is four different planes of emotional intelligence.

451
00:29:44,560 --> 00:29:47,220
The first is a self-awareness one.

452
00:29:47,220 --> 00:29:50,460
The second one is a self-management.

453
00:29:50,460 --> 00:29:54,740
So once you're aware of where you're coming from and what you're projecting, can you

454
00:29:54,740 --> 00:29:55,880
manage it?

455
00:29:55,880 --> 00:29:57,840
Can you control it?

456
00:29:57,840 --> 00:30:04,580
And the third layer of this is your ability to recognize the emotions of others as they're

457
00:30:04,580 --> 00:30:06,200
engaging with you.

458
00:30:06,200 --> 00:30:11,080
And of course, the fourth layer is your ability now to use that emotion.

459
00:30:11,080 --> 00:30:16,880
And use sounds a little negative, but it really is not, it's not a manipulation from a negative

460
00:30:16,880 --> 00:30:21,240
perspective, but it's your ability to use your understanding of the emotion state of

461
00:30:21,240 --> 00:30:24,840
others in order to manage your relationships with them.

462
00:30:24,840 --> 00:30:26,600
So four different planes.

463
00:30:26,600 --> 00:30:30,480
And it's amazing too, I'll give you, I can give you a couple of examples, both on engagement

464
00:30:30,480 --> 00:30:31,800
and intervention on this.

465
00:30:31,800 --> 00:30:36,580
And maybe one of them to me is one of the most striking one.

466
00:30:36,580 --> 00:30:41,840
And that's when it comes to North Korea, because I've worked there, I've been engaged with

467
00:30:41,840 --> 00:30:45,360
the North Koreans now for about 10 years in different works.

468
00:30:45,360 --> 00:30:49,240
Some of it is engagement work, some of it has been intervention work.

469
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:53,040
And when I talk to an American audience and I asked them, you know, what should we do

470
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:54,640
about North Korea?

471
00:30:54,640 --> 00:31:00,560
And everybody has an opinion, at least two opinions, a person of what we need to do.

472
00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:03,720
And sometimes I like, and I do it with my students, so I write all these ideas on the

473
00:31:03,720 --> 00:31:06,200
whiteboard and then I push the whiteboard part.

474
00:31:06,200 --> 00:31:11,280
And then I said, can anybody here tell me why do the North Koreans hate us so much?

475
00:31:11,280 --> 00:31:14,040
Again, as Americans, and there is silence.

476
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:15,040
Yep.

477
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:19,000
We're silence because everybody has ideas of what we need to do, but nobody has thought.

478
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:21,720
Why is it that they hate us so much?

479
00:31:21,720 --> 00:31:24,120
Why is it that our relationship is like that?

480
00:31:24,120 --> 00:31:27,360
Not in the, oh yeah, because they're trying to send missiles on us.

481
00:31:27,360 --> 00:31:28,360
Why?

482
00:31:28,360 --> 00:31:34,200
And, and to most Americans, those who even remember that there was such a thing as the

483
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:39,400
Korean War, they remember it if at all as something this, it wasn't that that little

484
00:31:39,400 --> 00:31:43,080
war between World War Two and Vietnam.

485
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:48,400
And then my, my favorite next question, which again, I've learned, you know, in my own flesh

486
00:31:48,400 --> 00:31:51,520
when I was in Pyongyang, cause I didn't know it before.

487
00:31:51,520 --> 00:31:56,060
And I asked anybody has any idea of how many Koreans died in that war?

488
00:31:56,060 --> 00:32:00,040
And there's typically a little bit of awkward silence and somebody will throw 50,000, a

489
00:32:00,040 --> 00:32:03,920
hundred thousand, 200,000.

490
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:08,200
It's been four and a half million Koreans who died in that war.

491
00:32:08,200 --> 00:32:13,880
And there's typically a gasp because it's a huge number.

492
00:32:13,880 --> 00:32:17,960
And when I learned that number, I was actually in the war museum in Pyongyang.

493
00:32:17,960 --> 00:32:22,160
And it was the, um, the foreign service officer, the Korean who, who told me who threw that

494
00:32:22,160 --> 00:32:24,080
like a casual, it's a fact for them.

495
00:32:24,080 --> 00:32:25,080
They know that.

496
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:29,640
And first of all, I didn't have any way of checking it because there's not exactly internet

497
00:32:29,640 --> 00:32:32,160
access there, but it is true.

498
00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,720
Now it's combined, it's North Koreans and South Koreans.

499
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:38,040
But from the Korean perspective, it's the same people.

500
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:39,160
It's the same families.

501
00:32:39,160 --> 00:32:41,580
This is as they were dividing.

502
00:32:41,580 --> 00:32:47,360
And in my mind, I was thinking, Oh shit, four and a half million people.

503
00:32:47,360 --> 00:32:52,400
It happened a decade after the end of the Holocaust.

504
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:56,000
I know the Holocaust was systemic killing of my people.

505
00:32:56,000 --> 00:32:58,640
I'm Jewish.

506
00:32:58,640 --> 00:33:01,720
And Korea was a war.

507
00:33:01,720 --> 00:33:06,960
So it was different, but the sheer number at the same timeframe.

508
00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:14,160
And I know I'm just a sec, a third generation of survivors and victims.

509
00:33:14,160 --> 00:33:15,560
It's fresh.

510
00:33:15,560 --> 00:33:20,440
It meant to me that the people I'm negotiating with and engaging with in North Korea, it

511
00:33:20,440 --> 00:33:24,640
could have been their fathers or their mothers or their grandparents for sure.

512
00:33:24,640 --> 00:33:26,200
And their uncles.

513
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:29,760
And with four and a half million dead, everybody suffered a loss.

514
00:33:29,760 --> 00:33:30,760
Yeah.

515
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:39,920
And then it occurred to me even more so that as a Jew and as an Israeli for birth, I had

516
00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:41,960
reconciliation with Germany.

517
00:33:41,960 --> 00:33:45,840
I have recognition in the world of the loss that my people suffered.

518
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:48,280
I have Holocaust museums.

519
00:33:48,280 --> 00:33:51,680
I have International Holocaust Memorial Day.

520
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:52,680
They don't have any of that.

521
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:54,840
Now again, very different.

522
00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:56,140
It's not systemic killing.

523
00:33:56,140 --> 00:33:57,560
It's not about apologizing.

524
00:33:57,560 --> 00:33:59,560
It's about acknowledging.

525
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:05,440
And what I did with that, again, understanding that just hit me.

526
00:34:05,440 --> 00:34:09,760
I describe it actually as a punch in my stomach because that's really how it felt.

527
00:34:09,760 --> 00:34:12,920
Which is something, by the way, about emotional intelligence that we have to remember that

528
00:34:12,920 --> 00:34:18,480
emotions actually generate, they come from a very physical reaction.

529
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:22,760
And there's a reason why we say that when it feels like you got punched in the stomach,

530
00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:25,960
it actually feels that way because you feel like you lost your breath.

531
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:30,800
And when you feel like you're scared, when people say you have cold feet, literally you

532
00:34:30,800 --> 00:34:35,160
actually have cold feet because the circulation slows down in your extremities.

533
00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:36,720
And that's how it felt to me.

534
00:34:36,720 --> 00:34:40,920
I was just before a meeting with the vice minister of foreign affairs, the North Korean

535
00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:41,920
ones.

536
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,720
And that was at the time that I was there to negotiate for the release of Otto Warmbier,

537
00:34:45,720 --> 00:34:50,440
the American student that was held in North Korea back in those years.

538
00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:55,720
And we started the meeting with the vice minister and those meetings always have, you know, the

539
00:34:55,720 --> 00:35:00,600
official part of it starts with the protocol, exactly everything that fringe is not about.

540
00:35:00,600 --> 00:35:02,280
It's the hard language.

541
00:35:02,280 --> 00:35:04,360
You're the source of all evil.

542
00:35:04,360 --> 00:35:07,160
Your leaders are trying to kill my leaders, all of these kinds of things.

543
00:35:07,160 --> 00:35:11,520
And if I were a diplomat, I would have had to protest and everything would go to hell

544
00:35:11,520 --> 00:35:13,020
to begin this meeting.

545
00:35:13,020 --> 00:35:14,280
I'm not a diplomat.

546
00:35:14,280 --> 00:35:15,600
I don't represent the government.

547
00:35:15,600 --> 00:35:16,600
I'm OK.

548
00:35:16,600 --> 00:35:18,920
Let them vent that.

549
00:35:18,920 --> 00:35:23,200
And then when he was done with his portion, I told him, look, I'm going to go back to

550
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:28,240
my points, but I have to tell you, tell you something that yesterday your officer took

551
00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:34,160
me to the museum and I told him, look, this is the first time I've ever heard that four

552
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:37,500
and a half million Koreans died in that war.

553
00:35:37,500 --> 00:35:38,500
It never occurred to me.

554
00:35:38,500 --> 00:35:40,740
And I've been working with you guys for a long time.

555
00:35:40,740 --> 00:35:45,540
And I can assure you that most Americans don't even think about it that way.

556
00:35:45,540 --> 00:35:47,200
And I said, and to me, it means a lot.

557
00:35:47,200 --> 00:35:53,060
And I again, I learned, led with my vulnerability of being Jewish and what I've grew up on,

558
00:35:53,060 --> 00:35:55,120
on the education of the Holocaust.

559
00:35:55,120 --> 00:36:02,360
And I said, I now for the first time understand the huge drift that is between us.

560
00:36:02,360 --> 00:36:04,460
And it wasn't about apologies.

561
00:36:04,460 --> 00:36:05,640
It's about acknowledging it.

562
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:07,760
And the meeting completely changed.

563
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:08,760
Wow.

564
00:36:08,760 --> 00:36:13,240
The meeting completely changed because he had losses in his family.

565
00:36:13,240 --> 00:36:15,960
It's that fresh.

566
00:36:15,960 --> 00:36:19,720
And this is to me, it was one of the most powerful examples of how emotional intelligence

567
00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:22,600
actually works and the power of it.

568
00:36:22,600 --> 00:36:27,520
And it's not because you're sitting there and calculating everything.

569
00:36:27,520 --> 00:36:32,460
When you talk about it, when you're aware of it, when you practice it, it's a natural

570
00:36:32,460 --> 00:36:35,880
progression and your ability to actually communicate.

571
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:38,080
So that's one example of this.

572
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:43,680
Another example in the intervention side of it actually relates to the story of two prisoners,

573
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:49,200
Danny Fenster and Imo and our ability to get them out.

574
00:36:49,200 --> 00:36:51,240
It was purely based on emotional intelligence.

575
00:36:51,240 --> 00:36:54,920
Now, it's not because we were so great in manipulating anybody else.

576
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:59,920
They were doing the same thing to us, but we knew that the key to get Danny Fenster

577
00:36:59,920 --> 00:37:05,360
home would be to create a meeting between Governor Richardson and the head of the military

578
00:37:05,360 --> 00:37:10,880
government, the senior general, Eminem Long.

579
00:37:10,880 --> 00:37:17,640
And not only that, we learned from our past failures that in that meeting, you can't raise

580
00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:22,480
the issue of Danny Fenster in front of any of the other staffers or ministers because

581
00:37:22,480 --> 00:37:24,380
then they would dig in.

582
00:37:24,380 --> 00:37:26,480
It's a matter of pride.

583
00:37:26,480 --> 00:37:30,560
So we did the meeting, we did all of these, the trip was about engagement, it was about

584
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:36,120
COVID vaccines and about trying to find ways to help the people of Myanmar.

585
00:37:36,120 --> 00:37:40,600
And then the governor asked the leader, can we have one-on-one?

586
00:37:40,600 --> 00:37:44,600
I'll send my people out and you'll send your people out.

587
00:37:44,600 --> 00:37:48,760
And towards that, I prepared the governor with a note that was based on our understanding

588
00:37:48,760 --> 00:37:57,160
of who the leader is as a person and his type of leadership and his personality.

589
00:37:57,160 --> 00:38:05,020
And the governor had five minutes to create an emotional bond with the leader to the extent

590
00:38:05,020 --> 00:38:11,280
that when he asks him to release Danny Fenster, it's not in anything, it's without anything

591
00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:17,560
in return except for an emotional accountability or emotional attachment between the two of

592
00:38:17,560 --> 00:38:18,560
them.

593
00:38:18,560 --> 00:38:22,240
And so when it went to that and the leaders looked at him and said, you know, I'm going

594
00:38:22,240 --> 00:38:27,180
to, you know, he asked him actually, he said, you know, is this a big story in the United

595
00:38:27,180 --> 00:38:28,180
States?

596
00:38:28,180 --> 00:38:32,560
And the governor told him, look, Danny Fenster being released will be a big story, but I

597
00:38:32,560 --> 00:38:35,080
don't want you to do it for the United States.

598
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:38,720
I want you to do it for me.

599
00:38:38,720 --> 00:38:42,880
And the leader then said, you know, I will do this, I will release him to you, but it

600
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:44,280
will take me a little time.

601
00:38:44,280 --> 00:38:47,160
Will you come back to visit me?

602
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:48,960
And the governor said, of course.

603
00:38:48,960 --> 00:38:53,720
And so we had to go back to the U.S. and then come back again in another visit.

604
00:38:53,720 --> 00:38:58,680
But that was a bond that they were able, the emotional bond based on our ability to plan

605
00:38:58,680 --> 00:39:02,840
it and to work on it and to build it as such, to prove to him.

606
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:09,440
And again, it's not it wasn't a lie to prove to him that we're there in a sincere way of

607
00:39:09,440 --> 00:39:13,780
engagement and that that is something that can help us.

608
00:39:13,780 --> 00:39:14,780
And he did that.

609
00:39:14,780 --> 00:39:19,960
And he released Danny Fenster and he released Aymar, who was a Myanmar person and who was

610
00:39:19,960 --> 00:39:25,040
a really, really good friend of mine before she got in prison because she was actually

611
00:39:25,040 --> 00:39:30,880
one of our staffers that was doing all this training that I talked about before years

612
00:39:30,880 --> 00:39:31,880
before that.

613
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:37,920
That's absolutely incredible, because I think for those of us who are not in this for those

614
00:39:37,920 --> 00:39:44,520
of us who get information about these prison releases through CNN or through a major news

615
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:50,160
outlet, you normally hear just the headline of somebody was released.

616
00:39:50,160 --> 00:39:52,580
You know, something went on in the background.

617
00:39:52,580 --> 00:39:56,800
But in most cases, you hear about, oh, there was a swap done.

618
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:00,440
There was some type of quid pro quo.

619
00:40:00,440 --> 00:40:04,960
You know, finally, we were able to figure out what the Russians wanted or something

620
00:40:04,960 --> 00:40:05,960
like that.

621
00:40:05,960 --> 00:40:13,720
And and you're saying, actually, you can do this without a swap just via understanding

622
00:40:13,720 --> 00:40:19,840
someone on a human level, understanding what matters to them and breaking through all of

623
00:40:19,840 --> 00:40:22,320
these assumptions of why you should not like this person.

624
00:40:22,320 --> 00:40:23,320
Yeah.

625
00:40:23,320 --> 00:40:24,320
And yeah.

626
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:30,320
And I would say I want to be cautious here, because it's not not every case can be resolved

627
00:40:30,320 --> 00:40:35,440
that way, meaning that, you know, in some cases, it's inevitable it's going to be a

628
00:40:35,440 --> 00:40:38,920
swap or there's going to be some sort of an exchange.

629
00:40:38,920 --> 00:40:44,960
But even if those in those cases, the Brittany Griner case in the United States, a basketball

630
00:40:44,960 --> 00:40:50,020
player or Trevor Reed, who returned a few months before her, we were engaged with the

631
00:40:50,020 --> 00:40:52,200
Russians on this early on.

632
00:40:52,200 --> 00:40:58,160
It was clear to us that this is going to be a swap because the Russians had some of that.

633
00:40:58,160 --> 00:41:05,160
But the two governments were unable, absolutely unable to meet with each other because of

634
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:09,800
the background, the war in Ukraine and everything else to meet with each other and insulate

635
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:15,920
the issue and refine what it is that is going to take in order to get those people home.

636
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:21,240
Because every time a government official, American and Russian would meet very quickly,

637
00:41:21,240 --> 00:41:28,160
it will escalate around Ukraine, nuclear agreements and your evil, no, your evil, all these kind

638
00:41:28,160 --> 00:41:29,160
of things.

639
00:41:29,160 --> 00:41:30,580
And you couldn't insulate it.

640
00:41:30,580 --> 00:41:35,160
But we stepped in again, not on behalf of the US government, on behalf of the families.

641
00:41:35,160 --> 00:41:38,700
And we engaged directly with the Russians at the highest level.

642
00:41:38,700 --> 00:41:39,700
We flew to Russia.

643
00:41:39,700 --> 00:41:43,840
We were in Moscow the day of the invasion into into into Ukraine.

644
00:41:43,840 --> 00:41:45,760
We did not plan it that way.

645
00:41:45,760 --> 00:41:50,440
We just arrived there, slept and woke up in the morning at the hotel near the Red Square

646
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,240
to hear that they put in speech.

647
00:41:53,240 --> 00:41:54,880
But that's not what we were there for.

648
00:41:54,880 --> 00:42:00,560
We were there to get Trevor Reed back home and Paul Willem, which again, Paul Willem,

649
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:01,560
we have failed.

650
00:42:01,560 --> 00:42:06,400
Trevor Reed, we succeeded and we were able because of our engagement.

651
00:42:06,400 --> 00:42:07,920
We weren't able to we tried.

652
00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:12,840
They didn't give us Trevor Reed for free, but we were able to come back and articulate

653
00:42:12,840 --> 00:42:15,980
to our government and say, here's what it will take.

654
00:42:15,980 --> 00:42:20,920
We can guarantee that if you do this, this is how it's going to happen.

655
00:42:20,920 --> 00:42:22,160
And so there's a lot of that.

656
00:42:22,160 --> 00:42:27,880
So again, it's it's it's a way of saying not you can't always avoid the swaps and the and

657
00:42:27,880 --> 00:42:29,920
the exchanges of the transactions.

658
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:35,980
But even getting to those requires emotional intelligence, requires that kind of engagement

659
00:42:35,980 --> 00:42:40,480
and trusted engagements and informal engagement in order to articulate what it could what

660
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:41,480
it can take.

661
00:42:41,480 --> 00:42:46,480
Otherwise, you know, the two sides, when they talk, when they don't talk directly, we rely

662
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:49,560
on third parties and their interpretation.

663
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:54,360
And at the end of the day, if you have a fight with somebody, you need to meet with that

664
00:42:54,360 --> 00:42:55,360
person.

665
00:42:55,360 --> 00:42:59,080
You need to hear exactly from them what their perspective are.

666
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:02,020
And you need to convey what your perspective is.

667
00:43:02,020 --> 00:43:05,840
Because sometimes when people ask for something, it's not the exact ask.

668
00:43:05,840 --> 00:43:08,680
You need to understand why they're asking for it.

669
00:43:08,680 --> 00:43:13,200
And once once you understand the why, maybe there's something else they can get that can

670
00:43:13,200 --> 00:43:15,240
satisfy the same why.

671
00:43:15,240 --> 00:43:17,680
But it's more doable.

672
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:21,540
And so so that's that's kind of a little bit of a flavor of this.

673
00:43:21,540 --> 00:43:23,800
And that has been most cases.

674
00:43:23,800 --> 00:43:28,120
There's there's some sort of of an exchange or some sort of an arrangement.

675
00:43:28,120 --> 00:43:32,840
And when we're able to get somebody home without it, you know, we got Taylor Dudley home from

676
00:43:32,840 --> 00:43:35,620
Russia without anything in return.

677
00:43:35,620 --> 00:43:41,640
But that was because of all the work we've done on on on on Trevor Reed and Brittany

678
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:47,240
Griner and that we were able to get, you know, it's almost like the Russians threw him, you

679
00:43:47,240 --> 00:43:52,120
know, say, yeah, this one will go for you for this and whatever it takes.

680
00:43:52,120 --> 00:43:55,160
We you know, we're able to get to get him home.

681
00:43:55,160 --> 00:44:01,840
And so that's that's kind of the way the way we look at it and the way we approach it.

682
00:44:01,840 --> 00:44:02,840
Absolutely incredible.

683
00:44:02,840 --> 00:44:07,520
So you mentioned the families and I did want to talk a little bit about the families because

684
00:44:07,520 --> 00:44:11,360
I know they are so close to you personally.

685
00:44:11,360 --> 00:44:18,560
And I know that when you have received awards, it's the families who show up in support to

686
00:44:18,560 --> 00:44:19,560
you.

687
00:44:19,560 --> 00:44:24,600
And and you know, I totally understand how they will be forever kind of linked in some

688
00:44:24,600 --> 00:44:27,400
way to you and what you've done for them.

689
00:44:27,400 --> 00:44:34,000
And I wanted to ask you about you've been talking a lot about establishing trust, using

690
00:44:34,000 --> 00:44:38,760
emotional intelligence with the people you are negotiating with.

691
00:44:38,760 --> 00:44:44,320
And on the other hand, you are, I understand, very close to the families who are going through

692
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:47,360
the ordeal in real time with them.

693
00:44:47,360 --> 00:44:54,900
How are you able to reconcile the relationship you have with, I would say, the captors or

694
00:44:54,900 --> 00:44:59,480
the kind of instigators of all this pain as well as the family?

695
00:44:59,480 --> 00:45:01,600
I have a lot of things to say about that.

696
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:07,040
Let me let me start with one thing that is that is important.

697
00:45:07,040 --> 00:45:13,480
When I engage with the North Koreans or the Iranians, the people that we we like to refer

698
00:45:13,480 --> 00:45:20,840
to as, you know, crazies and irrational, what you find out on a personal level is that human

699
00:45:20,840 --> 00:45:22,720
beings are human beings.

700
00:45:22,720 --> 00:45:27,960
And so often we have so much in common on a human level.

701
00:45:27,960 --> 00:45:33,920
And this is not to remove them from the responsibility for the awful things that they're responsible

702
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:35,720
for and that they've done.

703
00:45:35,720 --> 00:45:37,280
It's not at all.

704
00:45:37,280 --> 00:45:44,440
But sometimes you figure out that the circumstances in life lead people to do things that they're

705
00:45:44,440 --> 00:45:47,980
not necessarily so aware of.

706
00:45:47,980 --> 00:45:51,320
And I can give you a couple of examples for this.

707
00:45:51,320 --> 00:45:55,080
I'll go back. One example is in Myanmar in the early in the early training that we did

708
00:45:55,080 --> 00:45:56,080
in 2013.

709
00:45:56,080 --> 00:46:00,440
And we were training the parliament and we had parliamentarians and we had at the time

710
00:46:00,440 --> 00:46:05,400
75 percent of the parliament in Myanmar was former military people.

711
00:46:05,400 --> 00:46:07,920
And they were actually with uniforms.

712
00:46:07,920 --> 00:46:10,220
And we were doing the training there.

713
00:46:10,220 --> 00:46:14,720
And we did one of the things we did was a little role playing when one of them was playing

714
00:46:14,720 --> 00:46:19,840
the president and the others were kind of asking questions about the budget and arguing

715
00:46:19,840 --> 00:46:22,160
different things.

716
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:28,240
And I remember seeing all these 70 year old retired generals who are now members of parliament

717
00:46:28,240 --> 00:46:34,320
all giddy and excited about playing the roles and arguing between them to dedicate more

718
00:46:34,320 --> 00:46:40,440
funds to education and to the farmers and to the poor population.

719
00:46:40,440 --> 00:46:44,440
But excitedly arguing for this with all the great reasons.

720
00:46:44,440 --> 00:46:48,440
And I remember I had this tight conversation with with Mayor Pete at the time.

721
00:46:48,440 --> 00:46:50,860
We said, isn't that amazing?

722
00:46:50,860 --> 00:46:56,060
This mismatch between what those people are responsible for and what we're seeing them

723
00:46:56,060 --> 00:46:58,720
arguing now, which was very genuine.

724
00:46:58,720 --> 00:47:03,160
And you realize at the moment that that the world is not really divided into good and

725
00:47:03,160 --> 00:47:07,440
evil, that good and evil exists in all of us.

726
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:09,400
And circumstances bring up different things.

727
00:47:09,400 --> 00:47:14,920
And again, it's not in order to remove the responsibility from anybody, but it's an opportunity

728
00:47:14,920 --> 00:47:21,920
to grab the positive parts and see what you can get from them and what you can achieve

729
00:47:21,920 --> 00:47:22,920
with them.

730
00:47:22,920 --> 00:47:27,900
So and that is something that I'm not I don't just say and I don't pretend that I actually

731
00:47:27,900 --> 00:47:29,120
believe it.

732
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:34,280
And it's it's true about the generals in Myanmar, but it's also true about Aung San Suu Kyi,

733
00:47:34,280 --> 00:47:41,080
the same woman that has championed human rights and minorities in Myanmar and equality and

734
00:47:41,080 --> 00:47:46,840
democracy and all that is also the same woman who has allowed the genocide to happen under

735
00:47:46,840 --> 00:47:47,840
her watch.

736
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:50,840
And yes, people would argue she had circumstances that led her to that.

737
00:47:50,840 --> 00:47:51,840
Yes.

738
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:59,120
But I also heard her make comments about minorities that are Muslims that would make you cringe.

739
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:01,720
And so you realize people are complicated.

740
00:48:01,720 --> 00:48:07,100
And the key is to find the part of humanity in them and play on that one and get things

741
00:48:07,100 --> 00:48:09,680
that you can get that are good and positive.

742
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:13,440
So that's one thing I want to say on this, because to me, it's such an important, important

743
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:15,480
thing when it comes to the families.

744
00:48:15,480 --> 00:48:22,440
Well, before I even get to the families, another point and negotiations, we use that term and

745
00:48:22,440 --> 00:48:26,000
everybody has in mind a very specific perception.

746
00:48:26,000 --> 00:48:31,560
And unfortunately, the term negotiations, I think, has been dominated by really fantastic

747
00:48:31,560 --> 00:48:34,240
books written by by negotiators.

748
00:48:34,240 --> 00:48:36,240
Some of them we might like some of them we might not like.

749
00:48:36,240 --> 00:48:41,920
I mean, President Trump wrote the art of negotiations, Chris Voss, the FBI hostage negotiator wrote

750
00:48:41,920 --> 00:48:45,320
Never Split the Difference, which made it into a masterclass.

751
00:48:45,320 --> 00:48:47,500
And these books are fantastic.

752
00:48:47,500 --> 00:48:50,040
And there are great guidelines of how to negotiate.

753
00:48:50,040 --> 00:48:55,920
And if you read them and you follow them one for one, you can be the best negotiator ever

754
00:48:55,920 --> 00:48:57,400
if you are them.

755
00:48:57,400 --> 00:49:03,280
And if you notice that they have a very specific personality, these are typically a strong

756
00:49:03,280 --> 00:49:09,160
personality, a bully of sorts, somebody who can fake it, somebody who can who can play

757
00:49:09,160 --> 00:49:10,600
that role.

758
00:49:10,600 --> 00:49:12,880
And that does damage on two levels.

759
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:19,920
One, it makes people who are not like them try to pretend that they're them and everybody

760
00:49:19,920 --> 00:49:21,820
can see through that.

761
00:49:21,820 --> 00:49:25,960
So if it's not you genuinely, it's not going to work.

762
00:49:25,960 --> 00:49:29,600
So if you're a different personality than than Donald Trump and you try to be Donald

763
00:49:29,600 --> 00:49:32,360
Trump, it's not going to fly.

764
00:49:32,360 --> 00:49:38,040
And the second damage it does is that it takes people, other people with different personalities,

765
00:49:38,040 --> 00:49:43,620
myself included, and make us believe that we cannot be good negotiators, which is absolutely

766
00:49:43,620 --> 00:49:45,140
not true.

767
00:49:45,140 --> 00:49:51,400
Because I do believe that in true negotiations, communications and leadership, it starts again,

768
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:52,480
go back to emotional intent.

769
00:49:52,480 --> 00:49:54,380
It starts from self-awareness.

770
00:49:54,380 --> 00:50:00,400
You have to figure out who you are genuinely, not who you want to be, not who you want how

771
00:50:00,400 --> 00:50:06,360
people to see you or how you imagine yourself to be, but who you really are.

772
00:50:06,360 --> 00:50:09,920
You're basically your character composition.

773
00:50:09,920 --> 00:50:14,920
And it's hard because you find things sometimes that you would wish were different, but you

774
00:50:14,920 --> 00:50:18,600
need to embrace yourself because there's no such thing as good personality or bad personalities,

775
00:50:18,600 --> 00:50:20,600
just different personalities.

776
00:50:20,600 --> 00:50:24,240
And there is no good personality for negotiations or bad ones.

777
00:50:24,240 --> 00:50:31,120
It's just as long as you figure out who you are genuinely and you lean into that, you

778
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:33,320
can be a fantastic negotiator.

779
00:50:33,320 --> 00:50:35,520
And for me, I'm not a bully.

780
00:50:35,520 --> 00:50:36,840
I'm not an actor.

781
00:50:36,840 --> 00:50:39,160
I can't play poker for the life of me.

782
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:40,160
I shouldn't.

783
00:50:40,160 --> 00:50:41,640
I'll be losing a lot of money.

784
00:50:41,640 --> 00:50:43,300
And I accepted that.

785
00:50:43,300 --> 00:50:46,080
And so I lean with that.

786
00:50:46,080 --> 00:50:51,920
And just like I told the story about the North Koreans and how I leaned in with my vulnerability,

787
00:50:51,920 --> 00:50:54,760
that is my, this is my go-to.

788
00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,120
I go very personal, but I'm comfortable with that.

789
00:50:58,120 --> 00:50:59,480
Not everybody will be comfortable with that.

790
00:50:59,480 --> 00:51:01,080
For me, it fits my personality.

791
00:51:01,080 --> 00:51:09,020
I go in very personal and it creates a genuine sense of trust and authenticity that has worked

792
00:51:09,020 --> 00:51:10,920
for me in this.

793
00:51:10,920 --> 00:51:13,640
And negotiations for me, it's not that give and take.

794
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:15,060
It's not that transaction.

795
00:51:15,060 --> 00:51:19,240
I define it as our ability to influence somebody else's behavior.

796
00:51:19,240 --> 00:51:24,640
And so it's a, yes, a lot of times you influence it to figure out what they want and give that

797
00:51:24,640 --> 00:51:26,960
to them, but it's not only that.

798
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:30,880
There's an emotional layer to it that we typically just ignore.

799
00:51:30,880 --> 00:51:33,560
And now I'll go, I'll get to the families.

800
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:38,400
Because of my personality and because of what motivates me, what drives me, what connects

801
00:51:38,400 --> 00:51:42,440
me, I am the one within the, between me and Governor Richardson, I'm the one that spends

802
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:44,720
all the time with the families.

803
00:51:44,720 --> 00:51:47,920
And I do the same thing with them as I do with anybody else.

804
00:51:47,920 --> 00:51:52,520
I lean in, it's a personal relationship and it's a genuine one.

805
00:51:52,520 --> 00:51:53,560
It's not a fake one.

806
00:51:53,560 --> 00:51:54,560
It's a genuine one.

807
00:51:54,560 --> 00:51:55,560
I get to know them.

808
00:51:55,560 --> 00:51:56,560
I know their kids.

809
00:51:56,560 --> 00:51:57,560
I know their stories.

810
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:03,280
Ironically, I very rarely meet the actual prisoner, but I know their families really,

811
00:52:03,280 --> 00:52:04,280
really well.

812
00:52:04,280 --> 00:52:05,560
And it's very, very personal.

813
00:52:05,560 --> 00:52:07,560
And that motivates me.

814
00:52:07,560 --> 00:52:10,080
Governor Richardson, my boss, very, very different personality.

815
00:52:10,080 --> 00:52:15,260
He's much more of the, of the high level negotiator personalities like Donald Trump or Chris Voss.

816
00:52:15,260 --> 00:52:19,440
And for him, he is extremely empathetic and he knows it.

817
00:52:19,440 --> 00:52:25,940
And so he actually would try not to meet with the families because he wants not to be impacted

818
00:52:25,940 --> 00:52:28,480
by that relationship when he needs to make decisions.

819
00:52:28,480 --> 00:52:32,340
So it's again, different personalities, different approaches.

820
00:52:32,340 --> 00:52:36,040
It's funny because when I need him to do something that otherwise he probably wouldn't do, I

821
00:52:36,040 --> 00:52:40,240
make sure that he meets a family because then he, you know, he's, you know, despite his

822
00:52:40,240 --> 00:52:46,200
act, he's a softy and he cares about them and he's empathetic, but that's kind of the,

823
00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:52,240
the, the, the logic behind our engagement with, with the families and, and these families,

824
00:52:52,240 --> 00:52:57,400
I mean, you know, my wife says like, you know, they kind of become your family as well.

825
00:52:57,400 --> 00:53:02,960
And again, it's funny that when the prisoners come back, they very often have no idea who

826
00:53:02,960 --> 00:53:06,660
did what, because typically they come back on a government plane.

827
00:53:06,660 --> 00:53:09,860
And so they hear about, you know, the government, we like to say, you know, the government took

828
00:53:09,860 --> 00:53:14,220
the football and move it from the two yard line into the end zone, but they don't hear

829
00:53:14,220 --> 00:53:18,660
about who brought the football, everybody, but it's not only us, every single effort

830
00:53:18,660 --> 00:53:23,240
that brought the football to the two yard line, their families do.

831
00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:25,060
The prisoners don't.

832
00:53:25,060 --> 00:53:29,260
And so even after they come back and I had the last year has been fantastic because I

833
00:53:29,260 --> 00:53:33,180
got to meet a lot of these prisoners, not only the ones that we brought back, but the

834
00:53:33,180 --> 00:53:37,940
ones that the government brought back and, you know, and then I met them afterwards.

835
00:53:37,940 --> 00:53:43,280
But I'm still closer to the families and that's, and, and, you know, and, and that's where

836
00:53:43,280 --> 00:53:46,420
it's just extremely powerful connection.

837
00:53:46,420 --> 00:53:52,300
I know it's one of the hardest moments for me in all of this was when Otto Wombier came

838
00:53:52,300 --> 00:53:56,460
back home and he came back home in a coma, which we didn't expect.

839
00:53:56,460 --> 00:53:59,140
We did not know in all this time that we're negotiating.

840
00:53:59,140 --> 00:54:04,500
And I had such an up and down because when Fred and Cindy called me to let me know that

841
00:54:04,500 --> 00:54:10,540
he crossed the airspace, I was so excited and then they told me, well, there's a problem.

842
00:54:10,540 --> 00:54:17,980
And they just, you know, and like my world went from that huge high into this huge low.

843
00:54:17,980 --> 00:54:24,460
And I went and I went to Cincinnati to see him when he came back.

844
00:54:24,460 --> 00:54:34,420
And I was with his mother by his bedside and he was, you know, he was in a coma, in a coma.

845
00:54:34,420 --> 00:54:38,060
And I remember that I was so devastated because from all the different scenarios that I've

846
00:54:38,060 --> 00:54:43,620
played over the 18 months that we worked to get him home, this was not one of them.

847
00:54:43,620 --> 00:54:48,820
We had great scenarios in which I fly home with him or he comes back and I had terrible

848
00:54:48,820 --> 00:54:53,620
scenarios in which he gets executed, but never this.

849
00:54:53,620 --> 00:54:58,380
And I, I was devastated and I was crying and I was hugging Cindy and all I could say, all

850
00:54:58,380 --> 00:55:00,540
I could mumble over and over again, I'm so sorry.

851
00:55:00,540 --> 00:55:01,540
I'm so sorry.

852
00:55:01,540 --> 00:55:02,540
I'm so sorry.

853
00:55:02,540 --> 00:55:08,540
And, and she said to me, she said, Mickey, it's because of your efforts that I was able

854
00:55:08,540 --> 00:55:13,460
to hug my, my son when he was still warm.

855
00:55:13,460 --> 00:55:19,020
And that, that moment I will never forget.

856
00:55:19,020 --> 00:55:27,980
Because in her worst time, her words just meant so much to me in this.

857
00:55:27,980 --> 00:55:31,860
And it's interesting every now and then when I, when I see them and you know, my, my role

858
00:55:31,860 --> 00:55:34,780
in the lives of prisoners and when they come back.

859
00:55:34,780 --> 00:55:39,300
So it's rare that I actually see them after, but when I, when I saw Cindy, three years

860
00:55:39,300 --> 00:55:45,380
later and she looked at me, she's like, wow, Mickey, you're still doing this, huh?

861
00:55:45,380 --> 00:55:50,520
And I said, yeah, but you know why.

862
00:55:50,520 --> 00:55:52,980
And she said, yes, I do.

863
00:55:52,980 --> 00:55:56,900
But yeah.

864
00:55:56,900 --> 00:56:02,620
Even as you're just saying this, I am feeling emotions.

865
00:56:02,620 --> 00:56:05,420
I I'm just imagining Mickey, what it's like for you.

866
00:56:05,420 --> 00:56:07,260
I mean, how do you take care of yourself?

867
00:56:07,260 --> 00:56:11,620
You're what you're describing is, oh, it is.

868
00:56:11,620 --> 00:56:14,540
And, and, and, and, and my wife knows it.

869
00:56:14,540 --> 00:56:18,100
My wife probably knows it that every time, you know, when you do a, when you do a family

870
00:56:18,100 --> 00:56:22,340
meeting or call, you know, it's not like a 10 minute catch up.

871
00:56:22,340 --> 00:56:25,620
These are like hours, an hour and a half of intense meetings.

872
00:56:25,620 --> 00:56:31,500
And, and you just need a break afterwards, just an emotion, a mental break.

873
00:56:31,500 --> 00:56:37,060
Because it's because a part of a part of what I do is in empathy, like you take on that,

874
00:56:37,060 --> 00:56:40,500
that pain on you and you need that break.

875
00:56:40,500 --> 00:56:45,860
And I, I, this might sound silly, but there's a few things that I do that, that helped me

876
00:56:45,860 --> 00:56:48,180
recover.

877
00:56:48,180 --> 00:56:54,020
I do run and I run long distances and it's not something I used to do.

878
00:56:54,020 --> 00:57:00,660
But now I run, I do, I do crazy Disney races, like half marathon followed by a marathon

879
00:57:00,660 --> 00:57:02,180
and all these kinds of things.

880
00:57:02,180 --> 00:57:07,020
I'm actually just about to launch a marathon campaign with a former prisoner, with, with

881
00:57:07,020 --> 00:57:09,340
Jorge Toledo from Venezuela.

882
00:57:09,340 --> 00:57:14,860
After five years in prison, he's running the Marine Corps and I'm doing it with him to

883
00:57:14,860 --> 00:57:16,740
fundraise to support families.

884
00:57:16,740 --> 00:57:21,300
A running gets out a lot of this.

885
00:57:21,300 --> 00:57:25,500
And actually when, when you're the best runs is when your head is, you forget that you're

886
00:57:25,500 --> 00:57:28,620
running because you're thinking through all of this stuff and that helps a lot.

887
00:57:28,620 --> 00:57:30,860
So that's one thing.

888
00:57:30,860 --> 00:57:36,460
The second thing I do sometimes, because that's the only thing I can do at home is I plant

889
00:57:36,460 --> 00:57:44,580
myself on the couch with my daughter, who's now nine, and we watch silly sitcoms.

890
00:57:44,580 --> 00:57:49,100
Modern Family is one of our favorites and we just watch it, we binge it for a while.

891
00:57:49,100 --> 00:57:52,980
And it just like, it numbs you, but in a pleasant way.

892
00:57:52,980 --> 00:57:53,980
So that, so that helps.

893
00:57:53,980 --> 00:57:59,100
And then the one part that very few people know about, well, maybe now, now more people

894
00:57:59,100 --> 00:58:03,500
will know about, but, but once a year, this sounds crazy, but I go on a little bit of

895
00:58:03,500 --> 00:58:09,580
a solitary escape and of all the places that you would think.

896
00:58:09,580 --> 00:58:15,540
I go to Vegas and it's, they know it sounds, it sounds weird because what's relaxing about

897
00:58:15,540 --> 00:58:16,540
that?

898
00:58:16,540 --> 00:58:20,820
Is that you think I go and I, I plant myself in a lazy river.

899
00:58:20,820 --> 00:58:24,900
I have a little floaty and I just float and I drink diet Coke all day.

900
00:58:24,900 --> 00:58:29,860
And it just, there's something there about people who are completely in a different world.

901
00:58:29,860 --> 00:58:34,620
Nobody asks you what you do, but everybody's extremely friendly.

902
00:58:34,620 --> 00:58:37,900
And it's just, it's a kind of a mental break.

903
00:58:37,900 --> 00:58:44,940
I did learn in life, in my personal life, that the mental health is extremely important

904
00:58:44,940 --> 00:58:48,180
because if you don't take care of yourself, you cannot take care of others.

905
00:58:48,180 --> 00:58:53,540
My wife suffers from depression and she taught me so much of everything that I just talked

906
00:58:53,540 --> 00:58:58,780
about for the last hour on emotional intelligence, on empathy, that that's her lessons.

907
00:58:58,780 --> 00:59:04,860
So her struggle and her, and her journey that I really deployed in my professional world.

908
00:59:04,860 --> 00:59:09,780
Because before that, you know, he probably met me before when we were students and I

909
00:59:09,780 --> 00:59:15,180
was, you know, I was your typical, you know, former Israeli guy, you know, trying to make

910
00:59:15,180 --> 00:59:16,180
his way.

911
00:59:16,180 --> 00:59:17,180
Therapy.

912
00:59:17,180 --> 00:59:19,140
That's for weak people.

913
00:59:19,140 --> 00:59:21,100
No it's not.

914
00:59:21,100 --> 00:59:23,380
And that's something that I had to learn.

915
00:59:23,380 --> 00:59:26,740
Thank you for sharing that as well about what you've learned from your wife.

916
00:59:26,740 --> 00:59:28,940
I know she's been a great support.

917
00:59:28,940 --> 00:59:30,420
Yes, she is.

918
00:59:30,420 --> 00:59:33,580
So I want to take a little bit of a step back.

919
00:59:33,580 --> 00:59:37,420
I mean, you've walked this incredible journey.

920
00:59:37,420 --> 00:59:42,060
Like you've mentioned, you were a paratrooper, you know, when you were first growing up and

921
00:59:42,060 --> 00:59:48,260
then you came to the US, you studied, you, and now you are, you know, releasing hostages

922
00:59:48,260 --> 00:59:49,260
globally.

923
00:59:49,260 --> 00:59:51,740
Kind of what, what drove you?

924
00:59:51,740 --> 00:59:54,900
Did you know that you would end up in something like this when you were young?

925
00:59:54,900 --> 00:59:56,460
Like how did you envision?

926
00:59:56,460 --> 00:59:58,180
I had no idea.

927
00:59:58,180 --> 01:00:03,980
I mean, I was a pretty shy introvert as a teenager.

928
01:00:03,980 --> 01:00:08,660
I broke through that in high school through encouragement of my high school principal,

929
01:00:08,660 --> 01:00:11,500
to be honest, a little bit.

930
01:00:11,500 --> 01:00:17,100
And he made me, he convinced me to run to the student council, which I was like, why?

931
01:00:17,100 --> 01:00:18,540
But I did.

932
01:00:18,540 --> 01:00:26,100
The military gave me an element of trust and or component of leadership that comes not

933
01:00:26,100 --> 01:00:32,660
from your personal charisma or lack thereof in my case, or confidence, but it came from

934
01:00:32,660 --> 01:00:34,180
professionalism.

935
01:00:34,180 --> 01:00:39,460
And so knowing what I'm doing gives me the confidence to sound like I sound and to, and

936
01:00:39,460 --> 01:00:41,540
to believe in what I do.

937
01:00:41,540 --> 01:00:46,740
And that, that was the basic layer for me to, to grow up on and to build on.

938
01:00:46,740 --> 01:00:51,300
But in the military, I served for six years and I've been in combat and I commanded a

939
01:00:51,300 --> 01:00:56,260
unit of 120 soldiers and officers and I've lost people and I got injured myself.

940
01:00:56,260 --> 01:00:59,260
So it's, it's been an intense, it was for six years.

941
01:00:59,260 --> 01:01:08,420
It was mainly in south Lebanon and, and I came out of it with a clear conviction that

942
01:01:08,420 --> 01:01:12,540
violence just never solves the problem.

943
01:01:12,540 --> 01:01:14,980
It might feel like it does in a short term.

944
01:01:14,980 --> 01:01:19,620
It might feel like it's the only solution you have, but in the long term, it always

945
01:01:19,620 --> 01:01:20,620
backfires.

946
01:01:20,620 --> 01:01:23,260
It never solves the problem.

947
01:01:23,260 --> 01:01:30,980
And so I left the army convinced that what I want to do in life is actually looking at

948
01:01:30,980 --> 01:01:35,060
non-violent work and conflict resolution.

949
01:01:35,060 --> 01:01:39,980
And so that's kind of, and it came for me growing up in Israel and serving, it came

950
01:01:39,980 --> 01:01:47,220
for me from a very, very Zionist kind of centrist perspective of saying, look, the only way

951
01:01:47,220 --> 01:01:54,780
to guarantee the future of Israel as a democracy and as a homeland for the Jewish people is

952
01:01:54,780 --> 01:02:02,660
if we have a Palestinian state side by side, that, that was a clear conclusion for me growing

953
01:02:02,660 --> 01:02:05,500
up in serving in the military.

954
01:02:05,500 --> 01:02:11,100
And only when I started working in this field years after, and after we graduated from Georgetown

955
01:02:11,100 --> 01:02:17,340
and actually met Palestinians, not in the checkpoint, but actually Palestinians, that

956
01:02:17,340 --> 01:02:20,060
my motivation started expanding.

957
01:02:20,060 --> 01:02:25,380
It's not only because it's good for me as an, as an Israeli or for my family, it's because

958
01:02:25,380 --> 01:02:31,140
these people are good people and because they deserve that determination and that freedom

959
01:02:31,140 --> 01:02:33,660
and that agency for their lives.

960
01:02:33,660 --> 01:02:35,940
And it happens to be good on all fronts.

961
01:02:35,940 --> 01:02:42,020
And as my life expanded beyond that and started engaging with other countries and other people,

962
01:02:42,020 --> 01:02:49,860
I realized that what was true in my little microcosm is true elsewhere, almost everywhere.

963
01:02:49,860 --> 01:02:51,940
And so that conviction kind of grew, grew, grew.

964
01:02:51,940 --> 01:02:54,940
And sometimes my wife likes to say, oh, you're a pacifist.

965
01:02:54,940 --> 01:03:01,300
It's funny because it's such a political connotation to be a pacifist.

966
01:03:01,300 --> 01:03:02,300
But what can I say?

967
01:03:02,300 --> 01:03:09,260
I truly, I can't be given a simple example of where violence solved the problem.

968
01:03:09,260 --> 01:03:16,380
Again, people can put anecdotes on short term, but I can counter that with a long-term impact

969
01:03:16,380 --> 01:03:18,280
that was not useful.

970
01:03:18,280 --> 01:03:25,620
And so I knew that, I knew it was developing that way as I was growing.

971
01:03:25,620 --> 01:03:29,740
When I came to the U.S. again, chasing, chasing the girl that is my wife.

972
01:03:29,740 --> 01:03:34,780
And I found out that the narrative that I grew up with in Israel about what happened

973
01:03:34,780 --> 01:03:40,260
in Israel, what happened in the formation of the state of Israel and the war of independence

974
01:03:40,260 --> 01:03:48,940
and the Palestinian refugees, what I grew up with the narrative was not exactly accurate.

975
01:03:48,940 --> 01:03:53,660
And that truth was way more complicated.

976
01:03:53,660 --> 01:03:58,860
And I remember I confronted my dad with that and we had an honest conversation about it

977
01:03:58,860 --> 01:04:04,900
and he said, look, you have to grow up in a certain narrative because you're going to

978
01:04:04,900 --> 01:04:09,780
have to defend with your life the state.

979
01:04:09,780 --> 01:04:14,180
But the truth is the world is really, really complicated.

980
01:04:14,180 --> 01:04:19,620
And with that kind of, these are kind of the fundamental moments that kind of shaped how

981
01:04:19,620 --> 01:04:20,620
I look at it.

982
01:04:20,620 --> 01:04:28,820
And then as I mentioned before, the work specifically on releases of prisoners and hostages, that

983
01:04:28,820 --> 01:04:36,500
came as a bunch of coincidences that just captured and not to make light of the thing,

984
01:04:36,500 --> 01:04:38,340
people who play golf will get it.

985
01:04:38,340 --> 01:04:42,240
When you first time you're trying and you're going to hit the ball and one time you hit

986
01:04:42,240 --> 01:04:45,940
it right, at that point you're addicted.

987
01:04:45,940 --> 01:04:47,360
You just can't stop.

988
01:04:47,360 --> 01:04:53,940
And you might not hit right again for 20 years, but you can't stop because the one time that

989
01:04:53,940 --> 01:05:02,820
you see a successful return and you see the look in the family's eyes and you know how

990
01:05:02,820 --> 01:05:05,860
their lives have been changed by that, you can't stop.

991
01:05:05,860 --> 01:05:07,980
You just can't stop.

992
01:05:07,980 --> 01:05:08,980
Wow.

993
01:05:08,980 --> 01:05:11,500
I get it.

994
01:05:11,500 --> 01:05:19,140
And what I hear a lot, because you've spoken about moral compass and some people will think

995
01:05:19,140 --> 01:05:24,700
that the moral compass is something that you are given as a child, you grow up in a certain

996
01:05:24,700 --> 01:05:27,940
environment and that shapes you.

997
01:05:27,940 --> 01:05:34,760
And for most people it probably does, but for some of us who then either voluntarily

998
01:05:34,760 --> 01:05:40,620
or involuntarily get removed from that environment and have the ability to see what else is out

999
01:05:40,620 --> 01:05:42,840
there, it often changes.

1000
01:05:42,840 --> 01:05:47,980
Like you just said, you think, oh, maybe the narrative I've been told my entire life, maybe

1001
01:05:47,980 --> 01:05:50,620
there are parts that aren't necessarily true.

1002
01:05:50,620 --> 01:05:56,380
And I remember at Georgetown in our class, I mean, we were a huge mix.

1003
01:05:56,380 --> 01:06:00,620
There were Americans like me, there were people from I don't know how many different countries

1004
01:06:00,620 --> 01:06:02,820
in our class alone.

1005
01:06:02,820 --> 01:06:08,860
And I remember it's the first time where my best friend is Brazilian and I hang out with

1006
01:06:08,860 --> 01:06:13,180
a Lebanese guy on the weekend and we go out drinking with a Kazakh.

1007
01:06:13,180 --> 01:06:18,740
And it was for me, even though I had traveled and I had done Peace Corps and lived in Africa

1008
01:06:18,740 --> 01:06:26,540
before that and been removed from my American heritage and everything, it was a very nice

1009
01:06:26,540 --> 01:06:32,520
place that felt like a little safe space where it didn't matter.

1010
01:06:32,520 --> 01:06:37,180
You just went out to the bar on the weekend with whoever.

1011
01:06:37,180 --> 01:06:41,740
And those little relationships and realizations that form as a result of that, when you're

1012
01:06:41,740 --> 01:06:43,780
taken out of the normal.

1013
01:06:43,780 --> 01:06:49,460
And I remember one of the first classes that we had to take at Georgetown was globalization.

1014
01:06:49,460 --> 01:06:53,660
And one of the key things from globalization that absolutely blew my mind is that the books

1015
01:06:53,660 --> 01:06:59,340
that we were given to read were not a Mary centric.

1016
01:06:59,340 --> 01:07:04,620
And there were some, you read a book and it tells the history of the world that you know,

1017
01:07:04,620 --> 01:07:08,780
but from a completely different perspective.

1018
01:07:08,780 --> 01:07:14,460
And you suddenly realize, wait a minute, this could have played completely differently.

1019
01:07:14,460 --> 01:07:18,060
And I love that because it gives you that perspective.

1020
01:07:18,060 --> 01:07:21,100
And what you say is absolutely right.

1021
01:07:21,100 --> 01:07:26,660
And that's kind of the heart of Fringe when you take away the flags that we wear or the

1022
01:07:26,660 --> 01:07:33,940
suits that fit our roles and you're able to kind of just engage on a human level, you

1023
01:07:33,940 --> 01:07:41,180
find so much commonalities and how hard should it be to then find common things that you

1024
01:07:41,180 --> 01:07:47,460
tangible things that you can achieve, even if you absolutely disagree on a bunch of things.

1025
01:07:47,460 --> 01:07:51,580
And I think there is, you know, we live in a really, really difficult time now in the

1026
01:07:51,580 --> 01:07:57,220
world and to not in the world in the United States, even domestically, and between society,

1027
01:07:57,220 --> 01:08:02,180
between communities and, and, and people get confused.

1028
01:08:02,180 --> 01:08:07,900
I use the term empathy a lot and people get confused between empathy and sympathy.

1029
01:08:07,900 --> 01:08:12,180
And it's really important to distinguish between the two because empathy is really when you

1030
01:08:12,180 --> 01:08:17,540
step into somebody else's shoes genuinely and you understand how they think, you understand

1031
01:08:17,540 --> 01:08:22,620
how they see the world, you understand how, why they do what they do.

1032
01:08:22,620 --> 01:08:25,140
It doesn't mean that you endorse it.

1033
01:08:25,140 --> 01:08:28,700
It doesn't mean that it becomes your own objective.

1034
01:08:28,700 --> 01:08:32,060
Sympathy is when, when you align objectives.

1035
01:08:32,060 --> 01:08:37,760
Sympathy is just genuinely understanding where they come from and people who can't do empathy

1036
01:08:37,760 --> 01:08:41,380
or not trained or not exposed to empathy.

1037
01:08:41,380 --> 01:08:45,900
Cause you know, yes, people come with it naturally, but you can, you can practice it.

1038
01:08:45,900 --> 01:08:47,340
You can learn it.

1039
01:08:47,340 --> 01:08:50,580
People who don't have that, they confuse and conflate the two.

1040
01:08:50,580 --> 01:08:55,140
And so when I show up the example for that as an Israeli, as if even as a former, you

1041
01:08:55,140 --> 01:09:00,140
know, Israeli officer and people in Israel hear me talk about the Palestinians and their

1042
01:09:00,140 --> 01:09:05,900
rights and the need to have Palestinian states, not because only because it's good for us,

1043
01:09:05,900 --> 01:09:12,660
but because it's the right thing to do immediately labeled me as a Palestinian hugger and a self-hating

1044
01:09:12,660 --> 01:09:14,380
Israeli.

1045
01:09:14,380 --> 01:09:19,760
And that's because they're incapable of empathy without sympathy.

1046
01:09:19,760 --> 01:09:24,340
And it's just, it's such a huge problem for us as a society.

1047
01:09:24,340 --> 01:09:29,020
Look, I, in the United States, I mean, I come from a very, very specific political, you

1048
01:09:29,020 --> 01:09:31,420
know, spot on the spectrum.

1049
01:09:31,420 --> 01:09:37,980
And it doesn't mean that the people that I absolutely disagree with in the United States

1050
01:09:37,980 --> 01:09:44,780
are evil, even if they're supporting policies that I think are absolutely terrible.

1051
01:09:44,780 --> 01:09:52,200
But again, you asked the question why, and when I try to understand why, why white supremacists

1052
01:09:52,200 --> 01:09:56,780
in the United States are doing what they're doing, why they're behaving the way they are,

1053
01:09:56,780 --> 01:10:01,060
they have been over the last few years in a way that they haven't before, at least not

1054
01:10:01,060 --> 01:10:02,060
publicly.

1055
01:10:02,060 --> 01:10:05,540
I'm not looking to justify their actions, not at all.

1056
01:10:05,540 --> 01:10:11,300
I'm trying to understand what is it, what in their narrative, what is it in the way

1057
01:10:11,300 --> 01:10:14,640
they see, where is the fear come from?

1058
01:10:14,640 --> 01:10:19,520
Because if you understand that, maybe we can actually put a dent in it.

1059
01:10:19,520 --> 01:10:21,220
Maybe we can address it.

1060
01:10:21,220 --> 01:10:29,060
And when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, at the end of the day, the two peoplehoods,

1061
01:10:29,060 --> 01:10:33,420
the Israelis and the Palestinians, are a mirror of each other.

1062
01:10:33,420 --> 01:10:39,960
These are two peoples that have suffered a national level PTSD.

1063
01:10:39,960 --> 01:10:44,440
And we have never approached it from an emotional perspective.

1064
01:10:44,440 --> 01:10:49,840
We approach it from a territorial, from a religious, from a cultural perspective.

1065
01:10:49,840 --> 01:10:55,380
But at the end of the day, if you look at a typical, again, I'm generalizing here, a

1066
01:10:55,380 --> 01:11:01,780
typical Israeli would be a progressive, generally progressive individual with liberal thoughts

1067
01:11:01,780 --> 01:11:02,780
and something.

1068
01:11:02,780 --> 01:11:07,660
Until you mentioned the word Palestinian and something clicks.

1069
01:11:07,660 --> 01:11:13,540
And that click is not a rational thing, it's an emotional thing because it's generated

1070
01:11:13,540 --> 01:11:14,540
from trauma.

1071
01:11:14,540 --> 01:11:17,060
And the same goes with Palestinians.

1072
01:11:17,060 --> 01:11:21,500
It's amazing how much of a mirror they are of each other and how close they are actually

1073
01:11:21,500 --> 01:11:23,300
as peoples and communities.

1074
01:11:23,300 --> 01:11:28,360
And unless we start realizing that this is emotional and it's trauma and it's a reaction

1075
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:34,100
to trauma, when we do recognize that, maybe there are different things we can do.

1076
01:11:34,100 --> 01:11:35,100
I hear you.

1077
01:11:35,100 --> 01:11:43,180
And I think for people who are used to being labeled or treated in a certain way, the fact

1078
01:11:43,180 --> 01:11:50,300
that you are coming in and you are seeking to understand and see them, I mean, that's

1079
01:11:50,300 --> 01:11:58,340
a very powerful relationship building tactic is feeling seen and understood by someone.

1080
01:11:58,340 --> 01:12:03,900
But they also, I mean, I'm guessing that there's also, they are clear about what your intentions

1081
01:12:03,900 --> 01:12:04,900
are.

1082
01:12:04,900 --> 01:12:10,220
I mean, you are, you don't have a card from the US government, you know, when you're coming

1083
01:12:10,220 --> 01:12:11,340
in to see someone.

1084
01:12:11,340 --> 01:12:18,460
So is the fact that you're coming in with intentions that might be different than political

1085
01:12:18,460 --> 01:12:23,060
intentions, something that also helps beyond the establishing of trust?

1086
01:12:23,060 --> 01:12:30,620
It's fascinating that you used the word intentions because I find I put so much weight on intentions

1087
01:12:30,620 --> 01:12:33,620
and how people perceive your intentions.

1088
01:12:33,620 --> 01:12:38,800
And look, even though I don't come with a US government card, in some of these countries

1089
01:12:38,800 --> 01:12:44,980
that I work with, there's always an assumption that you are somehow representing the government.

1090
01:12:44,980 --> 01:12:49,380
Even though you deny it, there's some level of assumption because in their world there's

1091
01:12:49,380 --> 01:12:52,820
no such thing as civil society.

1092
01:12:52,820 --> 01:12:56,500
And so there's kind of assumptions in it.

1093
01:12:56,500 --> 01:13:04,300
I have learned to trust that when I'm myself, I'm my authentic self, my authenticity comes

1094
01:13:04,300 --> 01:13:05,300
through.

1095
01:13:05,300 --> 01:13:08,700
So I don't need to say to somebody, oh, I'm authentic.

1096
01:13:08,700 --> 01:13:13,820
You just, you have to trust that it comes through because it's who you are.

1097
01:13:13,820 --> 01:13:15,700
And sometimes it takes time.

1098
01:13:15,700 --> 01:13:22,300
And so the amount of people who believe that I am either an agent of the US government,

1099
01:13:22,300 --> 01:13:30,100
a CIA agent, or even worse, the Mossad agent from Israel is, I can't tell you enough how

1100
01:13:30,100 --> 01:13:31,100
many things.

1101
01:13:31,100 --> 01:13:37,020
Actually, one of my funniest stories is that every time a friend of mine from the US government

1102
01:13:37,020 --> 01:13:40,620
leaves the government, we always have the traditional coffee and we say, oh, you know

1103
01:13:40,620 --> 01:13:43,060
how everybody believes you're a Mossad agent.

1104
01:13:43,060 --> 01:13:45,780
It's like, it's kind of how it works.

1105
01:13:45,780 --> 01:13:52,180
But over time, I've learned to trust that if you're authentic, people see it, people

1106
01:13:52,180 --> 01:13:54,560
accept it, and people realize your intentions.

1107
01:13:54,560 --> 01:13:59,260
The things that hurt me most is not if people disagree with me, people might actually really

1108
01:13:59,260 --> 01:14:05,700
don't like me, is when people doubt your intentions, that's when it really hurts.

1109
01:14:05,700 --> 01:14:09,940
That really hurts, and that's when you kind of lose, because now you're chasing somebody

1110
01:14:09,940 --> 01:14:14,060
you want to make sure that they know that your intentions are true.

1111
01:14:14,060 --> 01:14:18,880
And I've learned that you can't chase it that way.

1112
01:14:18,880 --> 01:14:25,540
You just have to trust that your actions and your conduct over the time proves that.

1113
01:14:25,540 --> 01:14:32,180
And that's been my ability to communicate and work when we work with the Iranians, when

1114
01:14:32,180 --> 01:14:35,820
it comes to some of the prisoners that were in Iran that were able to get back, there's

1115
01:14:35,820 --> 01:14:41,380
still cases, there's still Americans in Iran held that we're working on now as well.

1116
01:14:41,380 --> 01:14:46,840
We worked not only on the prisoners in Iran, we also worked on ways to get pediatric cancer

1117
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:52,400
medicine for children in Iran, which proves to be really, really difficult from the United

1118
01:14:52,400 --> 01:14:57,240
States, not because you can't find donors and pharmaceutical companies that are willing

1119
01:14:57,240 --> 01:14:59,740
to donate it.

1120
01:14:59,740 --> 01:15:05,500
And medicine is exempt from the sanctions on paper, but still somebody needs to move

1121
01:15:05,500 --> 01:15:10,180
it in, which means that there needs to be a transaction and all financial transactions

1122
01:15:10,180 --> 01:15:12,820
are sanctioned.

1123
01:15:12,820 --> 01:15:19,820
And you would think who on earth would be against getting cancer treatment for children?

1124
01:15:19,820 --> 01:15:26,060
Well, policy is, even if it's not on paper, in practice it is.

1125
01:15:26,060 --> 01:15:33,380
And when my counterparts in Iran saw how much we put into this in an effort to get it done,

1126
01:15:33,380 --> 01:15:37,780
they know that we're genuine about this.

1127
01:15:37,780 --> 01:15:43,520
One more example, sorry, when we engaged initially to try and get Paul Whelan, the American who

1128
01:15:43,520 --> 01:15:49,840
is still in Russia right now, he's been left behind about four times in my book on opportunities

1129
01:15:49,840 --> 01:15:51,520
to come home.

1130
01:15:51,520 --> 01:15:56,300
When we engaged the Russians on this one, the first response of the Russians was, well,

1131
01:15:56,300 --> 01:16:00,820
it's funny you're asking us or complaining about the treatment of Paul Whelan when we

1132
01:16:00,820 --> 01:16:07,340
have a prisoner in the United States, Konstantin Yurashenko, who's been denied a basic human

1133
01:16:07,340 --> 01:16:10,860
rights and medical access.

1134
01:16:10,860 --> 01:16:14,380
And my response to that was, wait a minute, I didn't know about that.

1135
01:16:14,380 --> 01:16:15,380
Do you have material?

1136
01:16:15,380 --> 01:16:17,020
And of course they were prepared.

1137
01:16:17,020 --> 01:16:19,580
The Russians are very professional and they gave me that.

1138
01:16:19,580 --> 01:16:23,980
And I looked at them and the governor was with me and he said, let us look into it just

1139
01:16:23,980 --> 01:16:29,060
because we're not working exclusively for Americans here.

1140
01:16:29,060 --> 01:16:31,020
And we studied this.

1141
01:16:31,020 --> 01:16:35,140
Konstantin Yurashenko was at that point 11 years in prison in the American prison in

1142
01:16:35,140 --> 01:16:36,720
Connecticut.

1143
01:16:36,720 --> 01:16:39,940
He was actually arrested in Liberia by the Liberians.

1144
01:16:39,940 --> 01:16:46,220
He was flying a plane with drugs there and he was beaten up in Liberia and they broke

1145
01:16:46,220 --> 01:16:48,700
his teeth, all but four of them.

1146
01:16:48,700 --> 01:16:55,540
And because it was not life-threatening, he has been denied a dentist in an American

1147
01:16:55,540 --> 01:16:57,340
prison for all these years.

1148
01:16:57,340 --> 01:16:59,420
The guy couldn't chew.

1149
01:16:59,420 --> 01:17:03,420
And so we ended up going all the way, the governor and myself, all the way to the attorney

1150
01:17:03,420 --> 01:17:11,340
general of the United States, William Bauer at the time, and said, let us pay for a dentist

1151
01:17:11,340 --> 01:17:13,340
to go see him.

1152
01:17:13,340 --> 01:17:14,340
And he said, why?

1153
01:17:14,340 --> 01:17:18,740
He said, because we believe there will be a reciprocal response for that.

1154
01:17:18,740 --> 01:17:20,500
First, it's the right thing to do.

1155
01:17:20,500 --> 01:17:25,140
And second, if you care about the way that Americans are treated, you need to take care

1156
01:17:25,140 --> 01:17:26,500
of this.

1157
01:17:26,500 --> 01:17:31,660
And to his credit, again, Bill Bauer, somebody that I politically absolutely disagree with,

1158
01:17:31,660 --> 01:17:34,400
when you meet him in person, he's not a bad person.

1159
01:17:34,400 --> 01:17:38,820
He looked at us, he said, oh, no, I'll let you do that.

1160
01:17:38,820 --> 01:17:45,120
And within a week, we sent a dentist who saw Yorushenko and started treating his teeth.

1161
01:17:45,120 --> 01:17:50,220
And within days of that, Paul Wieland received his medical treatment outside of the prison

1162
01:17:50,220 --> 01:17:54,180
in Russia, proving the point.

1163
01:17:54,180 --> 01:18:01,700
And so again, what the Russians learned from that on us is that we're not just talking

1164
01:18:01,700 --> 01:18:02,700
around this.

1165
01:18:02,700 --> 01:18:03,700
We're not big talk.

1166
01:18:03,700 --> 01:18:06,100
This was something that was important for us.

1167
01:18:06,100 --> 01:18:11,900
And it has nothing to do with Yorushenko's guilt or innocent or the level of his crime

1168
01:18:11,900 --> 01:18:13,860
or how it related to the United States.

1169
01:18:13,860 --> 01:18:17,300
It was a basic thing.

1170
01:18:17,300 --> 01:18:19,060
The guy sits in prison for 11 years.

1171
01:18:19,060 --> 01:18:20,060
Why?

1172
01:18:20,060 --> 01:18:21,060
Why deny him that?

1173
01:18:21,060 --> 01:18:24,620
Same thing goes, again, I'm following a lot of examples.

1174
01:18:24,620 --> 01:18:31,220
The former Iranian ambassador to the United States, sorry, to the United Nations, when

1175
01:18:31,220 --> 01:18:34,300
he was here, he had cancer and he was in treatment.

1176
01:18:34,300 --> 01:18:37,820
He was in a bad shape and his son wanted to visit him.

1177
01:18:37,820 --> 01:18:40,380
He thought that he's going to die.

1178
01:18:40,380 --> 01:18:47,700
And we have, we, the United States denied a visa for a son to do, to see his dad.

1179
01:18:47,700 --> 01:18:48,700
Why?

1180
01:18:48,700 --> 01:18:49,700
Maximum pressure.

1181
01:18:49,700 --> 01:18:51,860
What does that have to do with it?

1182
01:18:51,860 --> 01:19:01,080
Human, his father, thank God he didn't die and he survived it, but it was just a devastating

1183
01:19:01,080 --> 01:19:07,900
thing to see and to try and argue against and hit a wall.

1184
01:19:07,900 --> 01:19:12,180
And they say just, again, it goes full circle on French diplomacy.

1185
01:19:12,180 --> 01:19:19,300
It's that neglected layer of human interaction and humanity because we're just so bogged

1186
01:19:19,300 --> 01:19:25,660
down with the political choreography and the flags that we wear.

1187
01:19:25,660 --> 01:19:32,520
It reminds me of the stories of like these small little moments in people's lives that

1188
01:19:32,520 --> 01:19:35,820
mean a lot and that they remember later on.

1189
01:19:35,820 --> 01:19:36,820
Yeah.

1190
01:19:36,820 --> 01:19:44,340
Because you never know when that guy, he may end up in a position of authority later on

1191
01:19:44,340 --> 01:19:49,140
and he will remember I was allowed, you know, they made an exception.

1192
01:19:49,140 --> 01:19:50,140
Yeah.

1193
01:19:50,140 --> 01:19:51,140
They saw me as a human.

1194
01:19:51,140 --> 01:19:52,140
Yeah.

1195
01:19:52,140 --> 01:19:58,820
And it's true because it circles around even in my, you know, I know we're old now, but

1196
01:19:58,820 --> 01:20:01,460
older, but we're still young.

1197
01:20:01,460 --> 01:20:03,660
We're still spring chickens, right?

1198
01:20:03,660 --> 01:20:08,100
Even in that circle absolutely comes around.

1199
01:20:08,100 --> 01:20:12,220
So Governor Richardson, that was before my time when he first engaged with the North

1200
01:20:12,220 --> 01:20:13,220
Koreans.

1201
01:20:13,220 --> 01:20:14,220
That was in the early 90s.

1202
01:20:14,220 --> 01:20:17,700
He was a young congressman and he went there and there are two American pilots that were

1203
01:20:17,700 --> 01:20:21,200
shot down in a Red Cross helicopter by the North Koreans.

1204
01:20:21,200 --> 01:20:26,060
One survived, one died, and he stayed there until he got them out.

1205
01:20:26,060 --> 01:20:34,100
And a young North Korean foreign service officer that was in charge of his visit is now the

1206
01:20:34,100 --> 01:20:37,420
North Korean ambassador to the United Nations.

1207
01:20:37,420 --> 01:20:40,460
And that relationship stayed.

1208
01:20:40,460 --> 01:20:41,460
And so that's the governor.

1209
01:20:41,460 --> 01:20:47,420
Now, even in my life, I start seeing that with the Cubans, the same young officers

1210
01:20:47,420 --> 01:20:53,940
that I dealt with back in 2013, 2014, they are suddenly now senior directors in the Cuban

1211
01:20:53,940 --> 01:20:56,740
foreign ministry.

1212
01:20:56,740 --> 01:20:59,740
And we have a relationship.

1213
01:20:59,740 --> 01:21:00,740
And it pays.

1214
01:21:00,740 --> 01:21:08,260
And the same goes, I know people like to, again, it's all the money investment in things

1215
01:21:08,260 --> 01:21:13,060
like the Fulbright scholarships, the programs, the exchange programs that we have.

1216
01:21:13,060 --> 01:21:17,340
Why are we paying for all these foreigners to come to the United States?

1217
01:21:17,340 --> 01:21:24,700
I cannot overemphasize how many times I have met with officials of countries that are supposed

1218
01:21:24,700 --> 01:21:28,980
to be antagonistic to the United States.

1219
01:21:28,980 --> 01:21:35,220
And inside the conversation, after the formalities break and you raise a toast and suddenly you

1220
01:21:35,220 --> 01:21:36,580
realize everybody speaks English.

1221
01:21:36,580 --> 01:21:38,900
You say, where do you learn English?

1222
01:21:38,900 --> 01:21:41,460
Oh, I went to the University of Kentucky.

1223
01:21:41,460 --> 01:21:42,900
I was a Fulbright.

1224
01:21:42,900 --> 01:21:51,580
And you just, people have no idea how much it pays back, that investment.

1225
01:21:51,580 --> 01:21:55,660
You might not know when, you might not know how long, but it pays back.

1226
01:21:55,660 --> 01:22:00,700
These people, they know, they understand the United States, not in order to manipulate

1227
01:22:00,700 --> 01:22:01,700
it.

1228
01:22:01,700 --> 01:22:04,060
They just understand us better.

1229
01:22:04,060 --> 01:22:06,740
And it helps in moments of crisis.

1230
01:22:06,740 --> 01:22:08,340
Absolutely.

1231
01:22:08,340 --> 01:22:16,660
And I served in the Peace Corps after my bachelor's degree in West Africa in Togo.

1232
01:22:16,660 --> 01:22:23,300
And even when I was there in the early nineties, I would have kind of middle-aged Togolese

1233
01:22:23,300 --> 01:22:27,460
people come up to me because the Peace Corps had been around since the sixties and in Togo

1234
01:22:27,460 --> 01:22:30,260
since probably the seventies.

1235
01:22:30,260 --> 01:22:34,140
They would come up to me and they would say, you know, because, you know, I'm standing

1236
01:22:34,140 --> 01:22:37,420
out because I'm a white person in the middle of this village.

1237
01:22:37,420 --> 01:22:43,620
And I'd be like, you know, I learned English for the first time from a Peace Corps volunteer

1238
01:22:43,620 --> 01:22:46,020
in 1978 or something.

1239
01:22:46,020 --> 01:22:48,380
And they would remember their name.

1240
01:22:48,380 --> 01:22:52,580
They would remember, you know, we would go down to the river and we'd go swimming down

1241
01:22:52,580 --> 01:22:53,580
there.

1242
01:22:53,580 --> 01:22:59,100
It makes such an impact on people, any type of human connection, especially when it's

1243
01:22:59,100 --> 01:23:03,540
from somebody who's foreign or outside or something that is outside of their normal

1244
01:23:03,540 --> 01:23:04,540
thing.

1245
01:23:04,540 --> 01:23:10,700
We say that every time we get ready in the last briefing before we take one of the fringe

1246
01:23:10,700 --> 01:23:14,020
diplomacy trips and engagement.

1247
01:23:14,020 --> 01:23:18,820
I like to say to all the participants and said, look, guys, there's no such thing as

1248
01:23:18,820 --> 01:23:20,460
passive observers.

1249
01:23:20,460 --> 01:23:25,240
You are going to be active participants in every single conversation and every meeting

1250
01:23:25,240 --> 01:23:26,240
you have.

1251
01:23:26,240 --> 01:23:31,560
You might not know how, but it will have an impact because it might not be meaningful

1252
01:23:31,560 --> 01:23:32,560
to you.

1253
01:23:32,560 --> 01:23:36,020
It's extremely meaningful to the person who's engaging you and you have no idea in what

1254
01:23:36,020 --> 01:23:37,020
ways.

1255
01:23:37,020 --> 01:23:41,300
And it's again, it's a, there's a, there's a joke.

1256
01:23:41,300 --> 01:23:44,740
It's a, hopefully it's appropriate, but you know, it's, it's kind of like, and I used

1257
01:23:44,740 --> 01:23:46,940
it a lot because I have no shame in this.

1258
01:23:46,940 --> 01:23:52,740
I say there is no such thing as observers in a game of strip poker.

1259
01:23:52,740 --> 01:23:56,140
You have to be a participant in order to be in the room.

1260
01:23:56,140 --> 01:24:00,660
And to me, it's the same goes when it comes to this kind of diplomacy.

1261
01:24:00,660 --> 01:24:02,460
Like you can't just be an observer.

1262
01:24:02,460 --> 01:24:06,500
You're not, you're not a witness to world affairs.

1263
01:24:06,500 --> 01:24:08,700
You are a part of them.

1264
01:24:08,700 --> 01:24:12,700
And when you engage in these meetings and when you engage with foreigners, you have

1265
01:24:12,700 --> 01:24:14,740
to own it.

1266
01:24:14,740 --> 01:24:16,260
Absolutely.

1267
01:24:16,260 --> 01:24:21,940
Not everybody has the opportunity, you know, at some point in their life to be taken out

1268
01:24:21,940 --> 01:24:26,260
of their normal element and to make these types of connections.

1269
01:24:26,260 --> 01:24:32,580
So you'd mentioned reading, you know, being able to read outside that your normal perspective.

1270
01:24:32,580 --> 01:24:38,580
Are there any other ways that you encourage people or if you, if you, you know, could

1271
01:24:38,580 --> 01:24:43,820
say all children have to do something like this, there's a new course in primary school,

1272
01:24:43,820 --> 01:24:46,660
all children have to learn to do something else.

1273
01:24:46,660 --> 01:24:48,860
What would that thing be to encourage this?

1274
01:24:48,860 --> 01:24:52,700
Well, you know, the saying that when you're a, when you're a hammer, every problem is

1275
01:24:52,700 --> 01:24:53,820
a nail.

1276
01:24:53,820 --> 01:24:58,420
And so for me, of course, because I'm so obsessed with emotional intelligence, I want to say

1277
01:24:58,420 --> 01:25:05,860
that the basic trainings of emotional intelligence and it can be done at a very, very early age.

1278
01:25:05,860 --> 01:25:06,860
It can be gamified.

1279
01:25:06,860 --> 01:25:09,860
It can be like a lot of different experiences.

1280
01:25:09,860 --> 01:25:14,380
It's just, it's such an important and missing part in our, in our society.

1281
01:25:14,380 --> 01:25:18,260
Now we constantly try to fight back against the technology and advancements because of

1282
01:25:18,260 --> 01:25:24,180
the negative impact or the negative ways that people use it.

1283
01:25:24,180 --> 01:25:27,020
Because technology is a tool of estate, a neutral tool.

1284
01:25:27,020 --> 01:25:34,580
I believe that emotional intelligence is one of the key competencies that we need to instill

1285
01:25:34,580 --> 01:25:35,580
in children.

1286
01:25:35,580 --> 01:25:37,540
I know, I mean, God help me.

1287
01:25:37,540 --> 01:25:45,340
My daughter, who is now nine is fortunately and unfortunately very emotionally intelligent.

1288
01:25:45,340 --> 01:25:47,820
I take it, she's adopted.

1289
01:25:47,820 --> 01:25:49,420
She doesn't carry any of my genes.

1290
01:25:49,420 --> 01:25:52,940
So this is much more of environmentally observed.

1291
01:25:52,940 --> 01:25:58,200
So I have no credit in it, but I say fortunately, because I love that in her, because that will

1292
01:25:58,200 --> 01:26:01,500
make her a great human being as she grows up.

1293
01:26:01,500 --> 01:26:07,260
The unfortunate part is because it gives you a hell of a time as a parent, because she

1294
01:26:07,260 --> 01:26:13,900
understands, she sees her emotional, she knows how to, she's aware and manages her emotional

1295
01:26:13,900 --> 01:26:19,940
state very well and she's aware of ours and is able to use that as well to advance her

1296
01:26:19,940 --> 01:26:22,260
needs and her desires.

1297
01:26:22,260 --> 01:26:27,020
But it showed, when she was very young and I was doing this work, I used to kind of,

1298
01:26:27,020 --> 01:26:32,180
you know, I used to claim that it's for her, that I would live without really making a

1299
01:26:32,180 --> 01:26:33,660
big deal out of it.

1300
01:26:33,660 --> 01:26:38,500
But then when I was gone, I was told by my wife that she was a menace.

1301
01:26:38,500 --> 01:26:45,380
And then when I traveled to North Korea for the Otto Warmbier negotiations, she was three

1302
01:26:45,380 --> 01:26:47,940
and a half at the time.

1303
01:26:47,940 --> 01:26:52,980
And I grabbed her, you know, just the day before at the park and I said, hey, your name

1304
01:26:52,980 --> 01:26:53,980
is Noah.

1305
01:26:53,980 --> 01:26:57,440
I said, you know, every now and then I need to travel for work.

1306
01:26:57,440 --> 01:26:58,440
And she said, yes.

1307
01:26:58,440 --> 01:26:59,780
And I said, so I need to travel tomorrow.

1308
01:26:59,780 --> 01:27:00,780
So where are you going?

1309
01:27:00,780 --> 01:27:03,120
Well, I'm going to a country called North Korea.

1310
01:27:03,120 --> 01:27:04,120
Where is that?

1311
01:27:04,120 --> 01:27:07,100
Well, it's kind of on the other side of the planet.

1312
01:27:07,100 --> 01:27:08,100
Why?

1313
01:27:08,100 --> 01:27:12,900
Because there's a boy there that is in trouble and I'm trying to help him get back to his

1314
01:27:12,900 --> 01:27:13,900
parents.

1315
01:27:13,900 --> 01:27:14,900
And she said, what's his name?

1316
01:27:14,900 --> 01:27:15,900
He said, Otto.

1317
01:27:15,900 --> 01:27:19,560
And she said, and will he be my friend when he comes home?

1318
01:27:19,560 --> 01:27:21,820
And I said, yes, he will.

1319
01:27:21,820 --> 01:27:27,540
And I went and that trip, my wife told me because I couldn't be in touch from North

1320
01:27:27,540 --> 01:27:28,540
Korea.

1321
01:27:28,540 --> 01:27:34,300
She told me that not only that, that my daughter behaved really well, but she kind of owned

1322
01:27:34,300 --> 01:27:35,300
it.

1323
01:27:35,300 --> 01:27:40,580
She was very helpful and she was telling people that, you know, her dad is going to help a

1324
01:27:40,580 --> 01:27:43,380
boy.

1325
01:27:43,380 --> 01:27:49,980
And kids are capable of understanding these things way more than we give them credit.

1326
01:27:49,980 --> 01:27:55,580
And sometimes we claim that we don't want it's they're too young for this.

1327
01:27:55,580 --> 01:27:57,880
Now, that's our own protection.

1328
01:27:57,880 --> 01:27:58,880
It's not them.

1329
01:27:58,880 --> 01:28:03,860
They're actually pretty good at understanding these things.

1330
01:28:03,860 --> 01:28:13,860
And so she's and she proved to me how well kids can adopt and adapt and get that kind

1331
01:28:13,860 --> 01:28:19,140
of and digest this kind of material when it comes to the feeling circle, when it comes

1332
01:28:19,140 --> 01:28:24,460
to to be able to articulate your feelings and complicated feelings.

1333
01:28:24,460 --> 01:28:29,340
One of the moments, sorry, I go too long, but we just said my daughter just had her

1334
01:28:29,340 --> 01:28:33,860
first summer camp, sleepaway summer camp, like two weeks ago, three weeks ago when we

1335
01:28:33,860 --> 01:28:34,860
dropped her there.

1336
01:28:34,860 --> 01:28:41,220
And it was really the first night in her life that she was without either me or my wife.

1337
01:28:41,220 --> 01:28:46,140
So it was a jump from never sleepover, some of that into a two week sleepaway camp in

1338
01:28:46,140 --> 01:28:47,900
West Virginia.

1339
01:28:47,900 --> 01:28:54,860
And as we went over there and we helped her make her bed in her bunk in her cabin there,

1340
01:28:54,860 --> 01:28:59,700
she looked at my wife and she said, I'm so excited for camp, but I'm also going to miss

1341
01:28:59,700 --> 01:29:01,240
you a lot.

1342
01:29:01,240 --> 01:29:06,300
And there was that just that statement of a nine year old that is able to articulate

1343
01:29:06,300 --> 01:29:10,860
two conflicting emotions and have no problem with it.

1344
01:29:10,860 --> 01:29:13,940
That's something that we need to do.

1345
01:29:13,940 --> 01:29:21,300
The ability to hold two opposing ideas and still be able to function and reconcile both.

1346
01:29:21,300 --> 01:29:23,380
Are you hopeful for the future, Mickey?

1347
01:29:23,380 --> 01:29:27,900
In terms of you think that children nowadays are exposed to lots of things.

1348
01:29:27,900 --> 01:29:28,900
Are you hopeful?

1349
01:29:28,900 --> 01:29:29,900
I am.

1350
01:29:29,900 --> 01:29:32,140
How do I say it?

1351
01:29:32,140 --> 01:29:36,100
I'm really, really hopeful for the long term.

1352
01:29:36,100 --> 01:29:40,540
I'm very, very worried in the short term.

1353
01:29:40,540 --> 01:29:49,620
I'm afraid that lessons that we have learned as humanity, we forget and we need to relearn

1354
01:29:49,620 --> 01:29:50,620
them.

1355
01:29:50,620 --> 01:29:57,260
It's very unfortunate because relearning them will be at a really, really high cost.

1356
01:29:57,260 --> 01:29:58,700
And I wish there was a shortcut.

1357
01:29:58,700 --> 01:30:04,020
I wish there was a way to avoid the cost and just remind people of it, but it seems that

1358
01:30:04,020 --> 01:30:05,020
we can't.

1359
01:30:05,020 --> 01:30:07,760
So that part I'm really, really worried about.

1360
01:30:07,760 --> 01:30:13,700
We have not hit bottom yet on this and the suffering and the pain that will come with

1361
01:30:13,700 --> 01:30:15,060
it worries me a lot.

1362
01:30:15,060 --> 01:30:20,340
I wish I'm wrong, but on the other side of it, like everything else in the advances of

1363
01:30:20,340 --> 01:30:23,820
our things will come and go quicker than they used to.

1364
01:30:23,820 --> 01:30:29,140
The bounce will be quicker and we as a society, I believe we'll leapfrog from it.

1365
01:30:29,140 --> 01:30:34,580
I think we're going to look back at this period and say, this was an adjustable time that

1366
01:30:34,580 --> 01:30:41,900
humanity had to, was dealt with new tools and didn't really know how to deal with them.

1367
01:30:41,900 --> 01:30:47,940
But once we get a grasp on it, we're going to leapfrog as humanity and as society.

1368
01:30:47,940 --> 01:30:50,100
So I'm very optimistic in the long term.

1369
01:30:50,100 --> 01:30:55,820
I'm very, very worried and fearful of the cost it will take.

1370
01:30:55,820 --> 01:30:56,820
Understood.

1371
01:30:56,820 --> 01:30:57,820
Understood.

1372
01:30:57,820 --> 01:31:07,620
So I want to ask you a bit, you've written a book which has not yet come out, but can

1373
01:31:07,620 --> 01:31:11,900
you tell us a little bit about it and why you feel like you want to write a book?

1374
01:31:11,900 --> 01:31:12,900
Yeah.

1375
01:31:12,900 --> 01:31:15,980
I finished, I submitted the manuscript.

1376
01:31:15,980 --> 01:31:16,980
It's with the publisher.

1377
01:31:16,980 --> 01:31:18,540
It will go out.

1378
01:31:18,540 --> 01:31:19,900
It will come out next year.

1379
01:31:19,900 --> 01:31:21,560
I don't know how authors do that.

1380
01:31:21,560 --> 01:31:25,500
How do they survive the time from the moment they submit the manuscript until it gets out?

1381
01:31:25,500 --> 01:31:28,380
Because I've been patient because you did all the work.

1382
01:31:28,380 --> 01:31:30,420
You wrote it.

1383
01:31:30,420 --> 01:31:35,860
The book is kind of a memoir, but not really that way.

1384
01:31:35,860 --> 01:31:43,580
It does tell in very specific details, the stories of negotiations and getting back people

1385
01:31:43,580 --> 01:31:46,980
who are wrongfully detained around the world.

1386
01:31:46,980 --> 01:31:52,420
Some of the things that we talked about here and many others, it does have a little bit

1387
01:31:52,420 --> 01:31:57,220
of more of a background on me and how I got into this, which was the uncomfortable part

1388
01:31:57,220 --> 01:32:00,100
of the book for me.

1389
01:32:00,100 --> 01:32:06,540
And it's written as a thriller kind of, so it's not a, on Wednesday we did this.

1390
01:32:06,540 --> 01:32:08,140
It's much more of the thriller.

1391
01:32:08,140 --> 01:32:13,740
And what I try to do with this and the purpose for me for writing this book is conveying

1392
01:32:13,740 --> 01:32:17,780
the ideas of emotional intelligence and empathy.

1393
01:32:17,780 --> 01:32:22,060
I know I'm going to get, I hope I'm going to get the readers come in because of the

1394
01:32:22,060 --> 01:32:26,180
intrigue about the stories and the cases that they've heard in the news about, and they

1395
01:32:26,180 --> 01:32:28,240
want to know how it works.

1396
01:32:28,240 --> 01:32:34,100
It's not a how to, it's not a spoon feeding, like, you know, eat your salad kind of book.

1397
01:32:34,100 --> 01:32:40,340
It's through these stories that I'm hoping that the ideas and the themes that we talked

1398
01:32:40,340 --> 01:32:45,140
about, a lot of them we talked about here, about the nature of negotiations, the ability

1399
01:32:45,140 --> 01:32:51,220
to influence somebody's behavior, the concepts of good and evil, empathy, emotional intelligence,

1400
01:32:51,220 --> 01:32:57,060
that somebody who read the book when he finishes the book or she finishes the book, they have

1401
01:32:57,060 --> 01:33:02,780
actually maybe unknowingly or not, not unknowingly because you're not trying to manipulate, but

1402
01:33:02,780 --> 01:33:07,980
that's not necessarily what they intended coming, but they come out with a better understanding

1403
01:33:07,980 --> 01:33:08,980
of these concepts.

1404
01:33:08,980 --> 01:33:14,460
So it has some things in it, like it explains the North Korean narratives or why they do

1405
01:33:14,460 --> 01:33:15,460
what they do.

1406
01:33:15,460 --> 01:33:20,160
It explains the Russian narrative that I've learned over the last few years of why they

1407
01:33:20,160 --> 01:33:22,380
do what they do.

1408
01:33:22,380 --> 01:33:29,260
And again, not because I agree with it, but because we need to understand it.

1409
01:33:29,260 --> 01:33:33,140
And hopefully people will read it.

1410
01:33:33,140 --> 01:33:34,140
I will.

1411
01:33:34,140 --> 01:33:35,860
I mean, I'm already hooked.

1412
01:33:35,860 --> 01:33:40,420
But listen, the stories themselves are amazing.

1413
01:33:40,420 --> 01:33:44,940
I was told by the people who read the manuscript that it does sound like me, which made me

1414
01:33:44,940 --> 01:33:45,940
very happy.

1415
01:33:45,940 --> 01:33:46,940
Very good.

1416
01:33:46,940 --> 01:33:47,940
So it's authentic.

1417
01:33:47,940 --> 01:33:48,940
Exactly.

1418
01:33:48,940 --> 01:33:49,940
Exactly.

1419
01:33:49,940 --> 01:33:57,140
So authentic and very exciting and something that will be a page turner probably.

1420
01:33:57,140 --> 01:33:58,780
And you know what?

1421
01:33:58,780 --> 01:34:04,620
I wouldn't doubt if they actually option it for a movie because your life sounds like

1422
01:34:04,620 --> 01:34:06,220
a Tom Clancy novel.

1423
01:34:06,220 --> 01:34:12,460
Yeah, no, there's conversations about the optioning of it.

1424
01:34:12,460 --> 01:34:19,100
What I'm hoping is that there will be a scripted option to make a dramatized version of this

1425
01:34:19,100 --> 01:34:20,420
because there's so much you can do with it.

1426
01:34:20,420 --> 01:34:27,180
I believe that the media of movies and TV shows as a way of advancing social good is

1427
01:34:27,180 --> 01:34:28,180
huge.

1428
01:34:28,180 --> 01:34:35,300
And I think we have plenty of examples around from our history about this and how to socialize

1429
01:34:35,300 --> 01:34:37,780
ideas and how to embed them.

1430
01:34:37,780 --> 01:34:42,680
And I really, really hope that this can do its part in helping.

1431
01:34:42,680 --> 01:34:47,540
So the most important question of this entire conversation, who is going to play Mickey

1432
01:34:47,540 --> 01:34:49,260
Bergman in the film?

1433
01:34:49,260 --> 01:34:51,820
Here's the funny thing about it.

1434
01:34:51,820 --> 01:34:59,740
We played it at times, we joke around it, and it cannot be a pretty face because my

1435
01:34:59,740 --> 01:35:01,940
face is not pretty.

1436
01:35:01,940 --> 01:35:06,780
It needs to be something a little bit rougher from this.

1437
01:35:06,780 --> 01:35:12,540
And it certainly cannot be somebody with guns blazing, going around and bullying and punching

1438
01:35:12,540 --> 01:35:13,540
people.

1439
01:35:13,540 --> 01:35:14,540
So I don't know.

1440
01:35:14,540 --> 01:35:19,980
I mean, I have my man crush on a bunch of actors like Matt Damon, but I don't think

1441
01:35:19,980 --> 01:35:21,340
he's going to play me.

1442
01:35:21,340 --> 01:35:22,420
And he is a pretty face.

1443
01:35:22,420 --> 01:35:23,900
So that's not going to work.

1444
01:35:23,900 --> 01:35:25,260
Well, you never know.

1445
01:35:25,260 --> 01:35:29,060
You never know.

1446
01:35:29,060 --> 01:35:32,060
So what's next for you, Mickey?

1447
01:35:32,060 --> 01:35:33,940
What's to be done?

1448
01:35:33,940 --> 01:35:36,700
So we are well, so first of all, I've written the book.

1449
01:35:36,700 --> 01:35:38,620
I can't wait for it to come out.

1450
01:35:38,620 --> 01:35:41,940
There'll be a lot around the book for me personally.

1451
01:35:41,940 --> 01:35:44,660
Hopefully it will be successful.

1452
01:35:44,660 --> 01:35:52,940
But in terms of work, over the last 20 months, we were able to bring back about 19, well,

1453
01:35:52,940 --> 01:35:57,580
I should say 19 of the families that work with us have their loved ones back home.

1454
01:35:57,580 --> 01:35:59,820
That's a huge number.

1455
01:35:59,820 --> 01:36:05,700
Unfortunately, it's partially because there's so many more that have been taken than usual.

1456
01:36:05,700 --> 01:36:08,380
Because typically there's at least Americans out there.

1457
01:36:08,380 --> 01:36:13,100
There's about traditionally there will be 20 something Americans on average that are

1458
01:36:13,100 --> 01:36:16,060
taken over the last decade.

1459
01:36:16,060 --> 01:36:18,180
It has grew to 70.

1460
01:36:18,180 --> 01:36:20,980
So there's much more Americans that have been taken.

1461
01:36:20,980 --> 01:36:25,340
It's been a part of, I mean, there's repeat offenders on this Russia, Venezuela, China,

1462
01:36:25,340 --> 01:36:26,340
and Iran.

1463
01:36:26,340 --> 01:36:29,740
So, and they hold about 75% of most of the cases.

1464
01:36:29,740 --> 01:36:30,780
So there's much more cases.

1465
01:36:30,780 --> 01:36:34,380
I'm currently working on 21 more cases.

1466
01:36:34,380 --> 01:36:39,860
Some of them are the high profile cases that are out there on the, you know, in the cases

1467
01:36:39,860 --> 01:36:47,740
in Russia of Paul Willen, and there are Iran cases that are pretty famous and are out there.

1468
01:36:47,740 --> 01:36:52,020
There are cases in Russia that nobody talks about and that we're working on.

1469
01:36:52,020 --> 01:36:53,780
There are other cases.

1470
01:36:53,780 --> 01:36:57,820
There's still people, even though we had a big success in return from Venezuela, we still

1471
01:36:57,820 --> 01:37:01,100
have at least the cases that I'm working on.

1472
01:37:01,100 --> 01:37:05,700
There's at least three Americans that I'm working on in Venezuela.

1473
01:37:05,700 --> 01:37:12,140
And I think for me that those are, they're solvable.

1474
01:37:12,140 --> 01:37:14,220
They're not stuck.

1475
01:37:14,220 --> 01:37:20,180
There's some cases that are harder to solve, especially for us, because it really depends

1476
01:37:20,180 --> 01:37:25,260
on the captors, whether they accept informal or not accept informal.

1477
01:37:25,260 --> 01:37:30,880
And yeah, it's a lot and it's hard.

1478
01:37:30,880 --> 01:37:33,860
But I think this coming year, there'll be some more returns.

1479
01:37:33,860 --> 01:37:36,500
Fantastic, fantastic.

1480
01:37:36,500 --> 01:37:43,260
I just want to thank you so much, Mickey, for spending so much time, for being so vulnerable

1481
01:37:43,260 --> 01:37:50,860
and open and so insightful, because there are, you have so many amazing stories and

1482
01:37:50,860 --> 01:37:54,780
we could just spend three hours just doing stories, which would have been amazing.

1483
01:37:54,780 --> 01:37:59,220
But to me, it's more the insight on emotional intelligence.

1484
01:37:59,220 --> 01:38:03,380
And because that's replicable, we can all learn something from that as well.

1485
01:38:03,380 --> 01:38:04,940
I hope so.

1486
01:38:04,940 --> 01:38:05,940
Thank you, Mickey.

1487
01:38:05,940 --> 01:38:08,380
Thank you, Erica.

1488
01:38:08,380 --> 01:38:10,180
Thank you for listening today.

1489
01:38:10,180 --> 01:38:13,460
I hope this has been a useful investment of your time.

1490
01:38:13,460 --> 01:38:18,180
If you feel inspired by this episode, please rate it and consider subscribing.

1491
01:38:18,180 --> 01:38:20,220
I'm keen to know how it's impacted you.

1492
01:38:20,220 --> 01:38:33,740
Now go out there and seize those moments.