(dramatic music) (dramatic music) - If you think we're living in an era where optimism, inspiration, and hope are endangered species, stay tuned.

Today, you'll meet four people who can help you break out of that doom loop you feel trapped by, and celebrate the indomitable human spirit and its ability to transcend adversity and hard times.

Joining us are Arthur Brooks, professor at Harvard University and co-author with Oprah Winfrey of the bestselling book "Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier."

Amber Briggle, mother of a transgender son and activist for transgender rights.

Ellen Gaddy, psychologist, political activist, and granddaughter of the late Senator Jesse Helms.

And Brandon Wolf, a survivor of the Pulse nightclub massacre and National Press Secretary for the Human Rights Campaign.

We're grateful to all of you for being with us today.

Let's get started.

On an ordinary June night in 2016, by chance Brandon Wolf had just stepped in to the men's room at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, when a gunman opened fire.

49 were killed, 53 were injured, and countless others were traumatized by the massacre.

It was the deadliest attack on the LGBTQ community in American history.

Brandon, reading about what you went through, all I could think of was life changes in the blink of an eye.

After escaping a childhood rife with racism and homophobia, you left home at 15 and moved to what you thought was a safe place where you could be who you really are, and all of that changed in an instant.

Does it still seem surreal?

- Yeah, well, first of all, it's great to be with you and it does feel surreal.

My whole life feels surreal because, you know, I never had grand dreams of conversations like this one or of fighting for my community which I get the honor and privilege of doing every day.

I had dreams of belonging, I had dreams of fitting in, I had dreams of being normal like every other young person in my community.

And at the same time, I didn't know that that normal would ever be afforded to people like me.

I thought that as a gay, you know, person of color in this country that I was always going to have to struggle to find my little wedge of normal in society.

And so it still to this day feels surreal, first of all, that I was able to find that, that I was able to build that kind of community in Orlando.

And of course it feels surreal to have that community shattered in an instant on a June night doing the most normal activity by the way, going to get a drink with my friends.

- You did grow up in Oregon and you grew up in a predominantly, as I understand it, white community, and, was it that you felt you just didn't fit in?

What about your parents?

- Yeah, the way I describe it to people is I felt a little bit like a stranger who'd overstayed his welcome.

I know there's an immense amount of privilege in being a young person who has a home to go to every night, who has a, you know, warm place to rest their head, who has a roof over them when they go to sleep at night.

But as you know, again, a queer person of color in that environment, I still didn't really feel like it was home.

You know, I would go to school and it wasn't a safe space for me.

I would go to church and that wasn't a very safe space for me.

And then I would come to the dinner table, and my family, I love them very much, but they didn't understand me.

They couldn't understand what I was going through.

They couldn't understand the way that I was experiencing the world around me.

And so I think a lot about how that town with the faces that didn't look a lot like mine, with the people who didn't love a lot like me, how that shaped me to be the person I am today.

And how, as you mentioned, it drove me to go in search of a place to belong in this world.

- Now after the shooting, suddenly you're a victim, you're a survivor, you're an activist, you're, I mean, does it scramble your identity to the point where it's just really disconcerting?

How do you come back?

How do you start to come back?

- Six days after the shooting at Pulse, we had a funeral service for my best friend Drew.

And that's a moment you're never really prepared for.

You never really prepare when you go out to get a drink with your friends to be the one who has to call their parents and tell them that their children are never coming home.

And so to this day, that funeral service was the hardest day of my life and I had the honor of being a pallbearer.

And as I was helping to push the casket down the aisle, I found myself holding onto it really tightly, because I didn't want to let go of my best friend until I found the right words to say goodbye.

When we got to the front of the church that day, I promised him that I would never stop fighting for a world that he would be proud of.

And so all the times that my brain starts to get scrambled, that I start to feel the weight of the moment, all the times I miss him most, I remember the promise that I made to him, and it helps galvanize me.

It helps keep me focused on my purpose.

And my purpose is a world not just that he would be proud of but a world that all of us can be proud of.

And I think that's the world that our generation and generations to come deserve.

- You also talked about the double standard in terms of the way the media and politicians really addressed the violence at the Pulse nightclub versus the violence at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, talk about that.

- Yeah, I struggled a lot with, you know, we asked for many of the same things that the students from Parkland were asking for.

We asked for, you know, common sense gun safety reforms.

We were asking for mental and physical health resources for the community that had been shattered.

And in many ways, the leadership, especially in the state of Florida, ignored us.

Now there were great people doing great things.

The late Congressman John Lewis for instance, led a sit-in on the House floor in Congress.

But in terms of Florida leadership, there was very little done.

In fact, we asked for one simple thing from then Governor Rick Scott which was, you know, sign an executive order that protects LGBTQ state employees from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

And he spent years ignoring those requests.

So I couldn't help but notice the disparity between us asking for really simple protections for our community and hearing nothing, getting silence in return.

And then, you know, when it's a community that looks different than ours, that loves differently than ours, that suddenly there's a different kind of appetite to take action.

- How do you, I mean, that's a really important point you're making.

And it's, you know, discrimination against people who have suffered untold tragedy and loss.

How does that, I know you made a promise to your friend, I know you have a mission and you're resolute, but doesn't that, I mean, isn't that depressing?

Isn't that dispiriting?

- Yeah, well, the setbacks are always heartbreaking.

And I know the community is experiencing an immense amount of setbacks right now.

Let's be clear that there are people in this country, powerful people who have turned their own constituents into refugees.

There are transgender people fleeing their states to find healthcare and access to education.

Those things are heartbreaking.

They are crushing, especially for the families who are experiencing them.

But I continue to be buoyed by the fact that that's not where the vast majority of people in this country are.

People really do believe in freedom.

They really do believe in, you know, the ability to connect with your neighbor, and people really want everyone to do well.

And the more I spend time talking to people, whether it's in, you know, rural Iowa or New York City, the more I spend time talking to real everyday people, I understand that that's where our country's at.

And I know that we've just got to push and push and push until our politics reflect that.

- That's really great to hear, but aren't there, if you're talking to people, aren't there a lot of angry, frustrated people?

I mean, I don't want to, you know, bring this down, but I mean, it's sort of I think a mixed bag with people.

I think people see the problems and they want to be optimistic, but so many people feel they can't be optimistic anymore.

But you seem to be like, I mean, we could clone you.

You're like, your optimism is palpable, it's amazing.

- Well, I've said that hope is all I've got, right?

I mean, on June 12th 2016, I had almost everything I loved stripped away from me.

My best friends were taken from me, they were my chosen family, they were my first experience I think with, you know, real unconditional love and a friendship.

And so all I've got left is hope.

Hope for a world that all of us can be proud of, hope for a world that all of us deserve.

And I do think, yes, as I talk to people, there are a lot of very frustrated people, but what I find they're frustrated about again is that our politics don't match the problems they're experiencing every day.

If you ask someone, let's say you talk to a family in Sarasota, what's the thing that's keeping you up at night?

They're not going to say a drag queen reading 'Red Fish, Blue Fish' at the library.

They're going to tell you that putting gas in the car and food on the table is what's keeping them up at night.

And they really want leaders who have serious solutions to those problems and that's the thing that continues to bring us together.

- They also want common sense gun safety reform.

And I have to say that I read something you wrote four years ago, you're a wonderful writer and you do a lot of op-eds, and you wrote about the fact that, you know, kind of a wait and see, the younger generation is going to bring along sweeping reform in terms of gun safety.

We live in a culture where the overwhelming majority of Republicans, gun owners, Democrats want universal background checks.

They want red flag laws that protect people from dangerous individuals.

They want assault weapon bans.

They want all kinds of things.

There's an overwhelming majority and they don't get those things.

- Yeah, it's very- - And with all due- - It's very frustrating.

- I was going to say, with all due respect to young people, you know, every time it seems like it might be different when Parkland happened and they were galvanized and March For Our Lives started, but not that much has really changed.

- Well, I would push back on that just a little bit.

I would say, you know, first, every major movement for progress has faced setbacks, and they've all taken a really long time, right?

We've not seen that, you know, overnight the New York Times headline that says, “Assault weapons now banned in the country.” I know that's what we're all looking for, but that is not the only bar for success.

And the thing that I would offer you is the way that the conversation has changed over time.

Think about where we were even in 2016 when Pulse had just happened and there was a presidential election cycle.

There were people, probably a large swath of you know, the Democratic party was telling then nominee Hillary Clinton that she could not run on common sense gun safety reform or she would lose, right?

That she would have - Right.

- to be very careful to tread lightly on that issue.

And now we're just a few years removed from that.

We have a president who's not only signed bipartisan pieces of gun safety legislation.

We've got a Congress that's been marked by NRA-backed candidates losing by the dozens every cycle since then.

We've got state policies like in Florida that were passed.

Florida passed its first gun safety legislation in two decades in the wake of Parkland.

So we have made progress.

We've not gotten the New York Times headline that I think we're all looking for.

But I have faith because of the energy that has shifted around this conversation and the way young people have brought, you know, I would say new passion to the table.

I really do have faith that we have solutions on the horizon for this.

- Do you look back?

I'm sure you do look back, you know, as you said, you had everything that mattered to you really stripped away from you.

Your safe space, your friends, your sense of security.

We're living in a world where there's so much going on these days in terms of hate crimes and domestic violent extremism.

And there are a lot of things going on and frankly, I think a lot more people are looking over their shoulders.

What would you tell people who were just really terrified or scared about living in this culture and seeing it change to the degree where they don't recognize their own country anymore?

- Yeah, it's a really dark and challenging time.

And the first thing I would say is it's real, right?

You don't have to tell yourself that you're imagining it or that you're inventing it.

It's real.

We are in a very challenging and scary time, especially if you're part of a marginalized community.

But the other thing that I would just, you know, offer to people is number one, self-care is not, you know, individual activity.

It's a team sport.

You need the community around you.

And I've said many times that community has saved my life more than once.

So when you're feeling the weight of the world on your shoulders, you have to lean on the people around you.

You have to lean on your neighbors, on your family members, on your friends.

And I also think that that's where the solutions lie.

Every single one of us is a trusted messenger for someone in our lives.

I think a lot about my dad, who is very conservative.

We agree on almost nothing, but he still answers my phone calls.

He won't turn on MSNBC and listen to Rachel Maddow and have his mind changed, but he might just be open to a different lived experience if I am the person on the other end of that conversation.

Every one of us is that person for someone else.

And we all have a responsibility to lean into those conversations, to lean into those trusted relationships.

If we just live in our social media silos forever, in our little ecosystems that tell us that, you know, our opinions are the only ones that matter, that we're the smartest people on Earth and that everyone else is wrong, if we just stay in those little ecosystems, we're never going to solve big problems.

We have to break out, we have to have real heartfelt conversations, and that begins with the people that we trust the most.

- I have three things to say to you.

We're out of time that's not one of them, but we are out of time.

I now really wish I could clone you.

Have you thought of running for office?

- Maybe, we'll see someday.

- Okay, that sounds like a possibility.

And finally, it's been an honor.

It's been an absolute honor to talk with you.

And I'm inspired just sitting here listening to you.

I thank you so much for joining us.

And congratulations on what you're doing for the country and for all those folks, marginalized folks who need help.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you, the honor's all mine.

- Being a parent may be the hardest job in the world.

Now imagine what it would be like if your child became a political pawn in a culture war, and you were investigated for child abuse, then threatened with criminal charges.

While it sounds like something out of a Margaret Atwood novel, that's the nightmare that Amber Briggle and her family have been living with for the last seven years.

Amber, your 15-year-old son is an honor student and he's a gifted musician.

He's also transgender.

He's growing up in a culture that can be hostile and cruel, that sends the message, “You're different, you don't belong.” What's the message he should be hearing?

- Jane, thank you so much for inviting me on today, and thank you for asking that really important question.

My son is transgender and that is the least interesting thing about him.

He is, as you said, a gifted musician, he's a talented athlete, he's a straight A student, he's well loved among his friends and his family.

And the message that he should be hearing is that he matters and that he's special, and that his rights as an American citizen should not differ depending on which ZIP code he lives in.

And unfortunately, the message that he's been hearing from politicians is that he's a second-class citizen, but he's some sort of scapegoat or boogeyman to be feared.

What he's hearing from preachers is that he's somehow a mistake.

I want him to be hearing from preachers that, you know, he's perfectly made in God's image just like any one of us.

You know, if God created, you know, light and dark then who created twilight, right?

If God created land and sea then who created the marshes, right?

So like, if the rest of creation isn't binary, why would humans be binary?

He needs to be hearing that he is loved and cherished and a valuable member of the United States with constitutional rights equal to yours and mine.

- But that's not what he's hearing.

And my question to you, why, there are about 300,000 transgender kids between the ages of 13 and 17 in the United States, why is this group of children, of young people, being targeted?

What's the problem here?

- Jane, I don't know.

I would encourage you to ask the next politician on your show why they're being targeted.

I wish that your viewers and everyone in the United States would realize that their rights are tied to his rights too.

That if the government can get away from stripping the rights away from a mom like me or a sweet, innocent, young man like my son, that they're going to come for you next if they haven't already.

And I think the message that he really needs to hear is that we're all going to stand up for him because we're the United States of America and united we stand and we really need to stand up for the least of us.

I don't know why he's being targeted, Jane.

You'll have to ask a politician.

I'm just a mom.

- Well, the politicians have really fielded a lot of anti-transgender bills, especially in your home state of Texas.

- Mm-hmm.

- And when this all started to percolate, you actually asked the attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, and his wife Angela to dinner and- - I did.

- And how did it go?

- Yeah, so I mean, gosh, I wish I had time to get into the whole story about how I got Attorney General Paxton and his wife Angela who's now a state senator to come to my home for dinner.

But I know we've got just a short amount of time.

Dinner was lovely, honestly.

I mean we, it's hard to hate up close.

And our intention, my husband Adam and I, our intention in inviting the Attorney General and his wife over was to put a real face on this issue.

I think a majority of Americans haven't met a transgender person, - Right.

- or an openly transgender person.

And so it's really easy, I think, to kind of buy into a lot of the anti-trans rhetoric that we're hearing coming from politicians and certain religious leaders as well.

Our hope was that by inviting AG Paxton and Mrs. Paxton over that they could see that my family and that kids like my son, that were no different, that were not a threat, that we actually have more in common than one would realize.

We had them over for about 2 1/2 hours, that was back in 2016.

We knew that in 2017, we were going to have a big legislative fight ahead of us in Austin.

And we had hoped that we might be able to grow his grinchy heart a few sizes, so that we'd have an ally in those halls to maybe soften the blow when those bills started getting discussed and debated behind closed doors.

You know, Mrs. Paxton brought over fresh baked dessert still warm from her oven.

They only lived one county over, which basically makes us next door neighbors by Texas standards.

We grilled out.

Mr. Paxton and my son exchanged magic tricks, you know, he broke bread with my family and engaged with my children for 2 1/2 hours.

And then six years later, you know, wrote a legal opinion stating that families like mine shouldn't exist.

And that mothers like I should be put in jail, that my children should be stripped from their loving parents and put into an overburdened and underfunded and quite frankly broken foster care system.

I just, it's, you know, we tried.

- Well- - We tried diplomacy, we tried kindness.

And quite frankly, I just, I can, I will never forgive him for the harm and the damage that - Well- - he's done to my family after that.

Yeah.

- I'm sorry for that.

But you know, he may not, the Texas Attorney General may not have gotten the message, but thanks to a public service announcement you made, millions of people have a better understanding of how families with transgender kids are just like other families.

Let's watch.

- Do you want to meet a family with a transgender kid?

Here we are.

(gentle music) Max loves to do back flips.

Max loves to play his ukulele.

Max loves to just be a kid and just be himself.

When I found out I was pregnant, all I really wanted was a happy, healthy, whole child.

And that's what I got.

If you've never met a transgender child before, what I want you to know is that that child is no different than yours.

They have the same hopes and dreams and deserve the same equality as your child does.

We tell our kids as often as we can that we love them in as many ways as possible.

There are some politicians who are trying to tear my family apart simply because my son is transgender.

Trans kids don't have a political agenda, they are just kids.

They just want to be left alone.

My family's just like yours.

We love our kids unconditionally and we will never stop fighting for them.

Stand with us.

Protect our families.

- What do you think when you watch that, Amber?

- Ah, I think that my kids are so beautiful and perfect and amazing.

Oh, my God, I love that everyone's seeing them.

Honestly as a mom, I'm like, that's incredible.

I'm really proud of that PSA.

We partnered with GLAAD to make that happen.

It was viewed over 300 million times, it was on the jumbotron, and Times Square, won a Telly Award.

It's, you know, I'm just a mom just doing her best, trying to raise my kids in this country.

And it's such a privilege to represent so many trans-inclusive families.

We're certainly not the only trans-inclusive family in the country.

They're everywhere.

As you said, there's, you know, hundreds of thousands of transgender children which means there's hundreds of thousands of parents just like me.

So it was a true privilege to be this face and to, again to put a face on the issue, which is exactly why we tried and invited, why we invited AG Paxton over just to see that these kids are real kids and deserving of love and affirmation.

- I want to ask you though, going back, because every family has its things to deal with and you know, when your son was four years old, you had inklings of this leading up to what he said when he was four which was something to the effect of, can a NASA scientist make me into a boy?

- Yeah.

- Now how do you, not a lot of parents hear that, let's be honest about it.

You and your husband Adam, how do you go off from that?

- Yeah, it took my breath away.

It wasn't really a question of curiosity.

There was really something in his voice, really more of yearning, a little bit of sadness.

You know, I was really unfamiliar with the word “transgender.” I certainly didn't think it was a thing that a child could experience.

And I think like a lot of your viewers, and like a lot of Americans, I think the misunderstanding and the false assumption is that it's something that a person chooses, and it's something that they choose when they are older, when they're 18 or beyond.

And I'd actually like to turn the question around to you, Jane, before I finish answering that question.

Jane, when you were little, when did you decide to be a girl?

- Amber, I already- - See, all right?

- No, I already know, yeah.

- Right, yeah.

- It's like being born left-handed.

- That's exactly right.

And that's exactly my point.

And no one, when you were a little girl ever questioned, well, how do you know Jane that you're a girl?

You should wait to make that decision until you're 18.

- Right.

- Yet everyone in the country thinks that they can tell my son the same thing.

So when he asked that question and there was that sense of yearning and a little bit of sadness, I took it upon myself to really dig deeper.

Now keep in mind, this was 11 years ago, and there was very little information out there for parents like me raising a transgender child at such a young age.

Fortunately, I knew an openly transgender man at my church.

And I was asking everybody, I was asking my son's pediatrician.

I was, you know, I was looking in the library.

And I spoke to my friend at church and I was like, you know, my kid asked me this really interesting question, what do I do?

And he had some tears, you know, in his eyes.

And he just told me his story from when he was a child.

And I began to understand that being trans, just like being cisgender, like you and I are cisgender, we identify as the gender that we were assigned at birth, right?

That's the definition of cisgender.

So cisgender people and transgender people alike have an innate sense of gender identity from a very young age.

And it was my job as his parent to help him, sorry, how do I say this?

It was my job as his parent to accept him, to love him, to affirm him.

'Cause quite frankly, I would rather change the entire world than change my perfect son.

There was nothing wrong with him.

What was wrong was my assumption of my child and other people's assumption of him as well.

And so that's why I've just done everything I can to make sure that he is safe at school, well loved and accepted in his community.

That's why I invited the Attorney General over for dinner and did the PSA.

It's again, I want to change the world rather than change my son.

He's perfect just the way he is.

- You have chosen to be a public face.

You have chosen, and this is a really long road, and in reading about you, I got to tell you, in your shoes, I'm not sure having people call up and leave really ugly messages and, you know, I won't get graphic about some of the things, but you've been through a lot and it's got to be exhausting every single day.

And the question is, I mean, is it the moments of exhilaration that keep you going?

Is it the moments when you see your son shining in, you know, a concert, or you know, in sports because he's also a gifted athlete?

How do you keep going?

- My kids keep me going.

They're pretty amazing kids.

I wish everyone in the country could meet them face to face and see how truly magnificent both of them are.

What keeps me going is just seeing the joy in my kids' faces.

Seeing how well they're doing in school.

My husband is, you know, we're fully on board, the both of us.

And I know that's not the case for every trans-inclusive family.

I know that, you know, many parents break up over this.

That there's one affirming parent and - Right.

- one non-affirming parent.

And so I'm really fortunate that my husband and I are on the same page with this.

You know it's, what keeps me going is seeing the joy in my kids' faces, but also the hope for the future.

Because when I see my son and all of his friends and how celebrated and loved he is, not you know, in spite of the fact that he's trans.

Like, no one cares about that.

They just love him for who he is.

And there's so many incredible young people in Gen Z who are just absolutely, Jane, they're going to absolutely change this world.

Absolutely.

I see my son, he's part of the GenderCool Project.

And I see these incredible young transgender and non-binary young people from across the country, you know, at the White House, and in Fortune 500, you know, boardrooms, and you know, speaking at school board meetings and whatever it is, like really standing up for who they are, and for the values of this country.

And that really just really gives me so much hope for the future.

I know that this is a hard road right now, but I know that it's, we are marching towards progress.

As slow and as painful as it is, I really believe that we're going to get there.

- And I hope that you realize that what you're doing, which is putting a face, as you've said, on this, it's not an issue, it's about people, it's about families.

That you, one step at a time, are showing people why they shouldn't be, people are afraid, they don't understand.

There are all kinds of emotions surrounding this.

Because people don't know, they haven't been exposed to families like yours.

So we are out of time but I want to say to you, and I have a feeling that your children are going to motivate you to carry on.

Even if you get a little tired, they're going to push you.

But I want to thank you for what you're doing in this country that needs a lot more love and a lot less intolerance.

Thank you.

- Jane, thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you today and your viewers.

I'm really thankful.

- As a teenager, Ellen Gaddy campaigned for her grandfather, Senator Jesse Helms, the longest serving senator in North Carolina history.

Today as a political activist, Ellen is devoted to ending her grandfather's legacy, which has cost tens of thousands of women their lives and enabled the weaponization of sexual violence against women in times of war.

Ellen, specifically the legacy you're trying to end is a 50-year-old law called the Helms Amendment, explain why.

- I cannot in my heart live with the knowledge that women are dying around the world globally because of a law my grandfather enacted 50 years ago.

That a man in the South in the United States can control women's bodies, determine their economic mobility or lack thereof all around the world.

And that women die unnecessarily because of the Helms Amendment.

I cannot handle that legacy in myself without dealing with it, and I cannot pass it on to my daughter.

- I want to talk about how you grew up, because it's really a big part of this story obviously.

Jesse Helms was conservative royalty in this country.

You grew up in one of the most conservative families in America.

And on the national stage, you were out canvassing for your grandfather with your mother and your grandmother.

And as you yourself have said, you became entrenched in his worldview.

Now his worldview was anti-civil rights, anti-women's rights, anti-LGBTQ rights, everything that you have come to hate basically.

So the question is, as a child you're going through all of this and there's a lot of glitz and glamour I would assume associated with it.

When is it you start to realize that that worldview is not your worldview?

- There were several moments along the way where, you know, like I said, like you just mentioned, I was fully entrenched in that worldview and reproducing it and on the political platform with my grandfather.

But there are always moments along the way that there, something would just hit me wrong in my core and my center.

And one of the main ones was during the AIDS epidemic.

Ryan White, I was about his age or he was, I could look at him and identify with him, and I had heard all my grandfather had said about AIDS and how it was fault of gay men that they were being punished.

And I couldn't make sense of that at the time 'cause I was so young, but I could identify with Ryan White.

And that was the first really powerful moment for me when I was like, this isn't okay and this doesn't feel right to me.

- And did it just escalate from there as you got older?

I mean, because he- - It did.

- Yeah.

- Please.

- No, no, no.

It just seems like, you know, you were in this thing where he was so, the inflammatory rhetoric and just that's what he was known for.

And to watch that happening as you got older, you started to appreciate how divisive it really was.

- Yes, it was very difficult to be like in his crossfire because he was so polarizing and he was always upsetting somebody.

And to be in the middle of that, you could feel that.

And so in addition to having these moments of just aha, this doesn't feel right, it literally did not feel right in my body to be in the crossfire, in his political crossfire growing up.

- Did you ever talk to him?

Did you ever say, you know, in a quintessential Thanksgiving dinner moment and you know, take him aside and say, I don't agree with what you're talking about.

Did you ever confront him in any way?

- I had one moment and my original major in college was environmental geology.

I was on track to become an oil and gas lobbyist in DC.

But I talked to him about how tar sand drilling, like off the coast of North Carolina would be environmentally harmful.

And he pushed back and he was like, no, it wouldn't be.

I've talked to them and they said it wouldn't cause any environmental damage whatsoever.

And so it's interesting that I never pushed back against him with the issues that I'm working on now reproductive justice.

But that was a moment where I did push back against him.

And you know, he took it, he actually took it very personal that I did, yeah.

- Okay.

So you're, you're hearing all of this and you need to reconcile these, and I'm going to use the word hateful because a lot of what he espoused really was that, was hate.

And yet your grandfather I heard you talk about is making you Christmas breakfast, which is one of your all time favorite memories.

So the question is, how do you reconcile one thing you're hearing and this, you know, this man who's making bacon and eggs?

- Sure, you look at the place where everything you've inherited from your family, from your culture, from your community, and you have the power to look and sort through and find that one place where you think you can push back and make the most impact.

I cannot reconcile my grandfather's entire legacy.

That is not appropriate for anybody to do, it's too much.

But for me, the Helms Amendment is so powerful because it hits back on so many of his issues, his stance on abortion, his stance on women's rights, also his stance on LGBTQIA rights, his legacy on Black and brown people, because the Helms Amendment disproportionately affects women who are Black and brown in the global village.

And so through the Helms Amendment, I'm able to touch on many aspects of his political legacy that I find problematic.

And for me, the Helms Amendment is that place where liberation psychology fuels me and supports my work.

- Are there, I don't know anything really about other members of your family or survivors, your grandfather's no longer with us, but are you like this anomaly in your family?

Are you like an outlier?

Because I mean- - I'm not.

- I'm wondering like if you, did you react totally the opposite to what he was talking about?

Did you form these views because you found his so abhorrent?

It's just really interesting.

I'm sure you've thought about it.

- Of course.

So no, I'm actually not the only one in my family.

My cousin Jennifer, you know, is a member of the LGBTQIA community.

She's pushed back on his legacy and publicly she's the only other one.

So she's the only other member of my family that I will speak for.

But no, I am not the only one.

And so I think all of us kind of have a point, a place where we were able to plug in and say, this doesn't feel right to me.

This was this aspect of my grandfather, our grandfather's or our father's political platform does not feel okay.

So we're all different in the place where we push back, but we do each have our place.

- Let's talk about the Helms Amendment and what, I read that Congress actually has, they've introduced bills in both the House and the Senate - Yes.

- last year to try and roll it back.

And where does that stand right now?

- So it's called the Abortion Is Healthcare Everywhere Act.

- Right.

- And it would completely repeal the Helms Amendment.

They keep introducing the bills each year, the House and the Senate, Cory Booker in the Senate and Jan Schakowsky in the House - Right.

- are the leads on the bill.

- Mm-hmm.

- And each year, they reintroduce and don't have enough votes yet to move it to the floor.

But I have been to DC to lobby, and I will hopefully continue to help lobby on the bill so that one day we can make it, it can make it to the vote.

- So you got to be a lobbyist after all.

- I did.

- Different field, maybe for the best.

- Absolutely.

- So, but what else?

Is there anything that could be done to mitigate the damage?

I mean, you had mentioned I think something that the president could do.

- Yes, so President Biden could reinterpret the Helms Amendment and issue very clear guidance to USAID that foreign assistance can be used for abortions in cases of rape, incest, threat to the pregnant person's life, or in conflict war zones.

And so I wrote an op-ed in Politico asking President Biden - Right.

- to please consider this.

And hopefully heading into the election season, that's still on the table.

- He was a colleague of your grandfather's actually.

- He was, they started their senate term together in '73.

So Biden was there with my grandfather the entire time.

- I have one final question, I just, I've been thinking about, you know, is your grandfather is he looking down and what is he, what is he thinking about what Ellen's doing?

I mean, do you ever, is that just weird or do you ever think about that?

- I like to think that he was enough of a political player.

He loved the game so much that even if he did not agree with me or does not agree with me from the afterlife, that there's a part of him that's like she's playing and I appreciate her for doing it.

- You could also be a diplomat in your next life.

Thank you.

Ellen, I really, it's just been, I've been looking forward to meeting you and I really appreciate you taking the time, but also what you're doing, and your heart and your passion and being an inspiration to other people, which is why we're doing this show today.

So thank you very much for joining us.

- Thank you so much, Jane.

Thank you for having me on the show.

- When it comes to how we see people with different political views researchers say Americans suffer from antipathy toward one another comparable to that of Israelis and Palestinians.

That toxicity can undermine our health as well as our quest for happiness.

Fortunately the man who's been dubbed “The Happiness Crusader,” who runs the Leadership and Happiness Laboratory at the Harvard Kennedy School is here.

Arthur Brooks, you've written 13 books, including the latest you co-authored with Oprah Winfrey, "Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier."

Now I have to ask you right off the top.

We don't just disagree with people anymore, - Yeah.

- we demonize those who don't agree with us.

What is driving this toxicity?

What's driving the animosity?

- Well it's, the problem really isn't anger.

There's plenty of anger.

It's kind of an amalgam of two negative emotions that are anger and disgust.

And that's an ice cold emotion.

Anger actually is a hot emotion that says, I care what you think and I want it to change.

Anger and divorce are literally uncorrelated, which is amazing and wonderful in its way.

But the thing that actually predicts a divorce is when you add in disgust, the conviction of the worthlessness of another person.

And that's this contemptuous view that people have toward each other.

We're getting more and more of that.

- All right, so you talk about the culture of contempt, and that's really what I'm more, - Right.

- because anger, you don't think anger is a problem.

Anger indicates that there's some sort of feeling and some sort of reason - Right.

- to be having a conversation.

- But if you feel contempt for people, - Right.

- that's a whole other thing.

And, - Right.

- this grip of contempt, people write off people without even knowing.

Base on labels, they, you know they hear, - Right.

- they voted for so and so, they belong to this party, and assumptions are made and it's like that they're done basically.

So- - Right, that's right.

- So you're saying that's really what's fueling this?

- Yeah, that's right.

And then you have to ask, is it a naturally occurring phenomenon or did something make us more contemptuous?

And the answer is the latter.

This is really good news.

I mean, if it were a naturally occurring phenomenon, there's no way back.

And there are many places around the world where you really can't see a way back.

But in the United States, what's really happened over the past 10 years is the political environment of politicians and media and activists have told Americans, especially young Americans, that they have to hate the other side, that they don't care enough, that they should be deeply afraid.

And that's what's led to this culture of contempt.

And that's what we all need to fight against if we actually want to find our way back.

- Okay, but don't, I mean, some people, especially in this post-truth era where people can't agree on a collective set of facts to even have a conversation, which is an enormous obstacle.

- Right.

- People who are spreading disinformation and lies and doing it for political gain or self interest - Right.

- or whatever the reason.

The point is, aren't there people who deserve contempt?

- All political eras people have asked that question.

And you know this, let's take it back a couple of millennia.

That was the question on the lips of Jesus.

When he gave in his, you know, the Gospel of Saint Matthew, he said, today I give you a new teaching, "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."

In other words, nobody deserves contempt.

And it was a very practical teaching.

Martin Luther King, he preached on that subject in 1957, a very famous sermon at the Dexter Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, November 17th, if anybody wants to look it up on YouTube, where he said, that's the most practical thing Jesus could have taught.

He didn't say to like your enemies.

You know, that's a sentimental something, Dr. King said.

He said to love your enemies because only when you love your enemies, you can redeem your enemies.

And this is to remember that to love your enemies is not to feel anything about them.

It's to make the commitment to actually communicate them with them as human beings.

So do people deserve contempt?

You decide.

Is it a smart strategy?

No, no.

And there's one more thing to keep in mind.

I have data that asks why young people have been getting so much unhappier over the past 10 years.

And the answer, well, it starts with, you know, the advent of too much social media and the addiction to that.

It also has to do with loneliness from the coronavirus epidemic.

But the biggest is the culture of contempt where we've taught young people through politics and media and activism that they should have contempt toward their enemies.

We're making them sad and angry and fearful.

There's nothing good about that.

- All right, so we've identified what the problem is and the next question is what's the fix?

And I know that you have, you've studied this and you went to the Dalai Lama, is that not correct to ask him, his Holiness, - Yes.

what he thought about this?

And what came back in terms of getting rid of contempt.

What do we do?

- Well, that's the teaching that Jesus had 2,000 years ago.

He said, “I give you a new teaching, to love your enemies,” right?

In other words, do the opposite of what you feel because love is not a feeling, it is to will to good of the other.

And the Dalai Lama said the same thing.

I said, your Holiness, I've been looking, I've been working with him for 11 years, and I've never heard the Dalai Lama express any contempt toward the Chinese who kicked him out of his country, who led him into exile.

On the contrary, he prays for the Chinese leaders every day that they'll have good and happy lives.

And I said, how do you do that?

He said, because when I feel contempt, I react on purpose with my will, with warmheartedness.

In other words, he loves his enemies.

He put it to his mouth, his money where his mouth is.

And this is something that's hard.

I mean, it's the hardest teaching in all of civilization, but it's the most transgressive, life-changing teaching as well.

And if this is what we were talking about in our lives and modeling, if this is what we were actually teaching young people today instead to be more angry and fearful, this is when a love rebellion happens and we start to see society change a lot instead of continuing to get worse - Warmheartedness, so what is, I mean, you know, there are people saying what, I mean, how do we do that?

There are.

- Right.

- There are people going, what do you mean?

What is the first step?

Give us an exercise to basically, - Yeah.

- how you start to approach this.

- Here's a good way to do it for a lot of young people who might be watching us today.

I mean, they're all on social media and social media is a contempt factory.

- Yeah, right.

- It just is.

I mean, it makes us anonymous, you know, and it's just the worst.

It really is for bringing out the worst in us.

So here's the one way to do it.

That's based on the work of the great marriage expert, John Gottman.

He with his wife Julie run the Gottman Marriage Laboratory at the University of Washington.

They're the world's leading experts on marital reconciliation.

- Right.

- They brought thousands of couples back together who suffer from contempt because this is what's driving couples apart.

And he says that, that when he has a couple that's really on the rocks, he makes them carry around a piece of paper and a pencil.

And each time they want to say something contemptuous to their partner, okay, they write it down, I'm going to say this.

But then they have to say five loving things first.

You know, it's like, ah, man, she picked me up late.

She's ugh, so inconsiderate.

Okay, but first, it was very nice of you to leave dinner for me when I came home from work last night.

And you look beautiful today.

And I love your mother.

That's, maybe that's too much.

But you get my point, - Right.

- that this is.

And by the time you get through five, you're not going to get to number six.

So on social media, make a commitment.

I've done this.

And by the way, once you announce on social media you're going to do this, people are going to hold you to it 'cause it's public.

I'm not going to say contemptuous things.

I'm not going to say anything snarky or sarcastic unless I say five loving and positive things first.

And so that's what I wind up spending my time doing if I'm going to be on social media.

Now that works with everybody else as well.

That's number one.

That's technique number one.

Here's technique number two.

Remember this thing.

The people on your side, the activists and politicians on your side want you to hate because they're profiting.

When you hate, somebody's profiting and it's not you.

Now, you see it on the other side.

I get it, there's always another side.

And you always see those people who are afraid and being manipulated and the populism and you know, it's the worst.

It's your side that's manipulating you in this culture war.

Stand up to them by turning them off.

You don't have to go out of your way, just turn it off.

That's how you stand up to the outrage industrial complex.

And now here's the big one.

If you really, really want to do something that's kind of out of the box and you feel up to it.

If it's, you got a lot of energy today and you're ready to go, - Mm-hmm.

- go running toward hatred.

Because that's your opportunity to be a missionary from love.

You know, I've worked with a lot of missionaries.

I've known a lot of missionaries, you know, in different religions.

And one of the things that they all have in common is that they're always getting rejected but they're always happy.

It's so weird.

I mean, nobody's ever said, hey, good news folks, there's missionaries on the porch.

Nobody has ever said these words, right?

But they're so happy.

What's the deal?

The answer is they face opposition to their beliefs, but they surround that opposition with the spirit of love, the spirit of giving.

When you see hatred and contempt, go running toward it with an open mind and an open heart and a spirit of love.

And it will fire you up and you'll get, you'll want the next opportunity to do it, let me tell you.

And you'll get the spirit of the missionary and you'll get happier.

- I'm speechless.

I'm like totally speechless here.

I mean, it's like, you make it sound like it's really easy and it's going to work and.

- No, no, no.

It's hard work.

Nobody wants to be a missionary but once you get used to it, - Not I mean a missionary Arthur.

- you're not going back.

- I mean, just the whole thing you're talking about is like, I mean, you see what's going on out there.

I mean, you see - Yeah.

- what's happening in this country.

Let's just go back to one thing you were talking about 'cause you actually wrote or you've been, you partnered with The Atlantic and have been trying to make people happier through this amazing series.

And one of the things you wrote about was a really tough sort of prescriptive for social media and news watching, where you really - Yeah.

- put people on a diet.

- Right, absolutely.

- Talk about what the menu is.

- Well one of the big problems that we have in this country for citizenship in this country is that with the sort of the death of local media and that national media has become kind of infotainment and national political media has become a real circus that people pay a lot of attention to.

And one of the things that political scientists are finding that people are substituting actual citizenship in their communities.

They're substituting it with attention and outrage for the national news and for national activism, that's what they're doing.

In other words, they're yelling at their cable TV and they're using that, that's kind of a substitute for being involved in your local community.

It's not citizenship to be mad because of Fox News or MSNBC.

That's not citizenship.

And so the whole point is to turn off the media that are deactivating you as an active citizen.

And when you become an active citizen, you're doing something.

And that doing something is usually collaborative with people in your community.

People who don't agree with you necessarily, but where there's a higher purpose to the things that you're actually doing and your life is going to change and your community's going to change.

And that makes progress for all of us in our country and we make the world actually better instead of worse.

- Except that I think you're making a quantum leap.

You assume people may turn off MSNBC and then they're going to go to the local soup kitchen or they're going to run for, you know, the zoning board.

Some people are just going to say, I'm just turning it off and I'm going to stew basically.

The point I'm making is how do you get people to want to be involved and be civically engaged?

- Well, one of the reasons that they are disengaged actually from their communities is because they're being demobilized by their overconsumption of media.

This is one of the things that we know very clearly.

And when people actually stop doing that, they don't become empathetic.

On the contrary, they want to do more.

They actually find themselves empowered to do more.

But it is a two-pronged approach, to get happier and to make more progress, turn off the information that's extraneous and turn on your commitment to actually being involved in your community.

Those are the two things to do.

It's a two step prescription.

Now one will lead to the other, but you got to be focused on doing both as well.

And it'll just enhance your quality of life so very much.

And you'll actually find that you're happier, that people around you are happier, and you're doing something truly good for all of us.

- Let me ask you, I just thought of this, that there had been I think a scientist named Martin Seligman or- - Now, he's my mentor.

He's my great mentor.

- Oh, my heavens.

Is he your mentor - Yeah.

- at the University of Pennsylvania?

- Mentor.

- Okay.

- Yeah, I didn't study there, but he's been part of my career for the past 10 years, absolutely.

- Oh, didn't know that.

Okay, so he wrote the happiness, or he wrote about the happiness gene.

- Yeah, exactly.

Well he wrote, yeah, exactly.

- And so the question is, I mean, you seem like somebody who's a candidate who was just born wired this way.

Were you born wired to be happy?

- No, I was born wired to be unhappy.

You know, one of the things that we know is that about 50% of your mood balance, you know, your baseline, how you feel about life, that's genetic.

And I have gloomy genetics.

I had gloomy parents and grandparents.

And so the reason I study happiness is because I want to be happier.

If it were, you know, if I had natural happiness, it would be like studying air, tons of it.

I don't need to study that.

No, no, no, no.

I study happiness because I want to get better at it.

I want to really work on that other 50% that's not my genetics.

And I'm telling you, Jane, it's amazing.

Since I've been teaching and studying and writing books and articles about happiness, my own happiness has risen by 60%.

I mean, I have good and you know reliable ways of measuring this that I give to my students that are validated scientifically.

And it's been miraculous.

The more you know, the more you change your habits, the more that you love others abundantly, the more that you teach these ideas, it's a game changer.

You know, if I get, five years ago I stepped down from a CEO position running a big think tank in Washington, and none too soon, Jane.

I'm telling you, because I said to myself, what do I want to do with the rest of my life?

And the answer is, I want to lift people up and bring them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas.

And it was the secret to my own life, my own wellbeing.

And I never looked back and this is what I want to do.

I'm avoiding the bad, I'm embracing the good.

And you know, the truth is, we can all do a lot more of that.

- I was going to say, nobody could be a better spokesperson for this than you.

I was like, you're, you're blowing me away with all of this great energy that I'm feeling.

And we are absolutely so grateful that you were with us today, because you are, again, you're the walking ad for this, for your own prescriptive.

Thank you so much for joining us.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

You know, I got one thing.

I love AEI, I'm proud to have done it.

- Right.

- But I sure am glad I'm doing happiness now for the rest of my life.

- Live and be well.

Thank you.

- Thank you, you too.

- Finally, when it comes to personifying the spirit of resilience and grace, nobody does it better than disability rights activists Kerry Gruson, my sister-in-law.

A Harvard graduate, Kerry was a golden girl, smart, kind, and a rising star in journalism.

Her life changed in the blink of an eye when she was attacked by a mentally ill Vietnam veteran she was interviewing.

He strangled her and left her for dead.

As she said later, she was too stubborn to die.

Instead, she doubled down on her potential by becoming a disabled activist and starting a nonprofit, ThumbsUp International, that touts the power of compassion and inclusion.

As a quadriplegic athlete, she continues to score new victories for the Guinness Book of World Records and to inspire everyone she meets to follow in her footsteps, to never ever give up.

We're grateful to our extraordinary guests for their insights and inspiration and to you for joining us today.

Until we see you back here next time, from the Frederick Gunn School in the other Washington, Washington, Connecticut, for Common Ground, I'm Jane Whitney.

Take care.

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