(dramatic music) - For many of us life often feels like a terminal stress test.

Every day it gets harder to cope, and some days even that's impossible.

Then there are people who seem to have a boundless reservoir of grit and resilience.

They stand on the precipice of disaster and seem to magically emerge stronger than ever.

Today we'll introduce you to five extraordinary women who have done just that.

We'll talk to them about how they deal with adversity and what we can all learn from them.

Joining us are Patti LuPone Broadway legend, and three-time Tony winning actor and singer, Maria Ressa, Nobel Peace Prize winner and author of the new Best-Selling book, How to Stand Up to a Dictator, Topeka Sam, who went from serving time in federal Prison to becoming one of the nation's leading criminal justice activists and MSNBC Anchor Katie Tur, whose latest bestselling book is called Rough Draft, A memoir.

But first, we welcome writer Amy Bloom, who wrote a devastatingly beautiful memoir called In Love about her happy marriage and helping her husband Brian, who had Alzheimer's disease to end his life.

And Amy, we welcome you today.

Thanks for joining us.

- Oh, I'm glad to be here.

- None of us really know what we're capable of doing until we have to do it.

And yet you did something that most people can't even begin to imagine.

When your husband, Brian was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, he came to you and he said, I want to end my life.

And you have a background as a mental health professional, a psychotherapist, and you're going to be able to help me do this.

You're going to be able to handle it.

Were you, I mean, what do you, how do you react to that sort of a proposition?

- Well, I don't know that it was really so much of a proposition as it was him expressing his strong wish and me... feeling that part of our relationship and part of our marriage was that I would help him.

And I also didn't disagree with his choice.

I think that would've been much harder if I had felt that it was immoral or incomprehensible.

But he was a very determined guy and a very active guy.

And as he said, I know what the long goodbye looks like with Alzheimer's.

We had seen it close up in our families.

And he said, that is not for me.

And I thought, that's true.

That is not for you.

And I had said to him, I will take care of you.

I will look out for you.

I will protect you.

I will keep you home as long as possible.

And he said, honey, you're not hearing me.

That is not what I want.

- I'm sure everybody has to ask you if you, now you said you'd take care of him, but did you actively lobby to try and talk him out of this idea or did you, was there an acceptance with you sort of from the get-go?

- Well, I did.

I did lobby him for a little bit at the beginning.

But I would say Brian was a notoriously hard man to stop.

He was a pretty decisive person.

He had been a football player from the time he was seven until he was 22.

He tended to know what he wanted and to pursue that in a pretty firm way.

And so I understood his choice and I did respect that.

And I also understood that I could, I could be helpful to him or I could let him be really frustrated and do it all by himself.

And we didn't tend to do that in our marriage.

We helped each other.

- Trying to find a way to die with dignity in this country is about as easy as finding affordable healthcare or housing.

As I think I've heard you say, it's, - Yeah, - It doesn't happen.

So you went to Switzerland.

Talk about that a little bit.

- Well, it's a little surreal.

You know, you are sort of going through the motions of, oh, glamorous travel to far away places, but of course it's nothing of the kind.

And we got there and it was sort of perfect weather.

It was kind of a gray drizzly day, but not super cold.

And we walked around Zurich a little bit, and usually late at night, Brian would want to take a walk.

And so I would leap up, put on my coat, and we would go out for a walk for a little while.

But he had already, I think, come to terms with this, he understood completely what his choice meant and, and he was at peace with it, probably more than I was.

- And in fact, part of what Brian wanted you to do was to document or write about this experience.

And was that something that you were eager to do or was that a difficult thing to get into?

- Well, I'm sorry to say that I am never eager to write.

I'm always a reluctant writer, but he had been very clear that he wanted me to write about this.

He felt that this was not a subject that people spoke about enough, that people allowed themselves to think about enough or to plan ahead to make advanced directives for the occasions when they could be helpful.

So, you know, I could very much sort of feel Brian's presence.

And I had a lot of notes, not a lot of notes.

I had the kind of notes you have when you're a caregiver, you know?

- Right.

- Three o'clock appointment, you know, get chicken breasts, primary care physician, things like that, the notes that everybody has when they're taking care of somebody.

And I also, I wanted to write about it, I wanted to write about it for him.

- And your editor, Kate Medina, said something that really just resonated when I read it from the philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, which is that we live our lives forward, but understand them backward.

And how did that inform what you were doing in this process?

- Well, I think it informed it two ways.

One is sort of moving forward with the grief.

I don't really think of it as moving through the grief.

I think, you know, you move and you bring the grief with you.

And that for me was okay.

And also being able to look back and understand the years before the diagnosis, because, you know, when somebody gets diagnosed with dementia, that's the point at which it is apparent.

It's not the point at which it begins.

And I think Alzheimer's in particular is always a diagnosis that you make in hindsight about what your life has been like and what the losses are, and how people are managing.

Diane Ackerman, who's a beautiful writer and poet, writes about sort of, you find yourself with grief like a fallen log in the forest, and it's a dead log, except it turns out that grass and flowers can grow in the dead log, and that to me is sort of the great gift.

As you go forward, you get to be with your grief.

You also get to be in life if you choose.

- And as you've said, and I've, I've heard others say on occasion, grief is the price we pay for love.

- A hundred percent.

- Now, what is it about you, aside from the fact you're a mental health professional as well as a fabulous writer, what is it about you that you think enabled you to get through this process?

Which again, surreal, I don't know if you were present in every moment of going through it, but it seems surreal.

- It feels, it felt surreal.

I mean, there were certainly moments where I was doing what needed to be done, but you know, all of the things we do in life have a certain practical form, you know, it's not a dream.

And so, you know, you really do have to get medical records or airline tickets or hotel reservations, and either, I guess you are the kind of person who says, this is simply too much for me, I cannot, which I tend to do with smaller things.

It's like a run to the supermarket.

I might be, oh, simply too much for me, I cannot, and I'm going to put it off till tomorrow.

But with big things, I tend to kind of hunker down and go, I must, I guess I will collapse later.

And that in itself is in some sense reassuring.

You know, it's very important to be able to count on other people and the people you love.

I think it's also important to be able to count on yourself and think like, this is terrible and you can do it.

- Many years ago you wrote a list, 10 things I Wish I'd known Sooner or earlier or something like that.

It was one of these great, you know, kind of, but on it was something that again, resonated, given what we're talking about today.

And we unfortunately are out of time, but I want to ask you as we go out, what you said was ask for help.

And yet, - Yeah, - A lot of people have a lot of trouble doing that.

What would you say to somebody who has trouble, who doesn't seem to have the sort of self-confidence that they see other people enjoying?

What would you say to those people?

- I would say you have a wonderful opportunity in your life to let somebody make you that gift and to acknowledge your need.

And if you don't acknowledge it, it tends to run right over you.

But I think that there's not only nothing wrong with saying to somebody, I could really use a hand.

I think it's an opportunity for somebody else.

And I think it's a very brave thing for the person who asks.

- Thank you, Amy Bloom for the gift.

It really has touched so many people.

It's a book of affirmation, it's a book of love.

It's just so rich.

And we thank you for bringing it to us, and thank you for being with us today.

- Oh, thank you for helping me share it.

I appreciate that.

- In the last 20 years, the number of women in prison spiked by more than 700% at twice the rate of men.

Joining us now is a woman who went from being a drug queen pin who smuggled cocaine for the Mexican cartel to one of our nation's leading prison reform activists.

And Topeka Sam, we're delighted to have you with us today, want to talk about how you are helping formerly incarcerated women and girls through poverty and to readjust to life.

But first, again, because the theme of this show is how we, we deal with difficult chapters in our lives.

And I want to talk about how you, who ostensibly grew up with the American dream.

You had a nice house and you had a pool in the back and your parents were business owners and you were active in school and you were college educated.

So how do you wind up strapping cocaine to your body and smuggling it?

What is that process?

- Well, thank you so much for having me here.

I had to laugh when you say it like that, but the reality of it all is, it's about self-awareness, about really wanting to fit in, about identity.

And that's what was for me.

You know, as you mentioned, growing up for me in suburbia in New York and being the only black family in my neighborhood, when it was time for me to go to college and I chose an HPCU historically Black College University, it was a completely different environment for me.

You know, I went from being again in Long Island to now being in Baltimore City.

And it was a culture shock.

It was me trying to find a sense of connectedness, of belonging, me wanting to fit in.

And all of that had it, it shifted from me just going through college to now being exposed to the street and the street life and what all of that entailed.

And while you mentioned my parents were entrepreneurs, and that innately was a part of who I was, I saw a business opportunity in selling drugs and not actually the harm that it caused to millions of, of Americans and abroad.

- Let me just ask you what your parents' reaction was when you were actually sentenced and went to prison.

What did your parent, the entrepreneurial parents, suburban parents, what did they say to you?

- Well, one, not only my parents, my friends, they were all shocked.

No one had any idea what I was doing.

I mean, I was also division chairperson for Amtrak, for New York and DC and I had owned a business of my own.

And so when they found out I was engaged in this lifestyle and got charged with conspiracy to sell 80 kilos of cocaine, they were completely taken aback.

And like all parents, right?

They feel, well, where did I go wrong?

What did I do that I did?

Or what could I have done?

And as I had to explain to them, you know, they did everything as you mentioned, you know, the classical piano, dance classes, you know, the opportunity to be in a safe environment, the things that we hear so many inner city kids having to deal with gun violence.

And so while it was disheartening for them and very disappointing, my parents loved me through that experience, loved me through it today, as well as my friends and my family, my siblings.

- I can't even imagine the culture shock of being in prison.

But what for you was just the toughest thing to take when you were actually incarcerated?

- So there were actually two.

The first was when I was being transported from the county jail after I was sentenced to 130 months.

You go through the federal system, you have to go what they call the Federal Transfer Center, which is in Oklahoma.

And so in that, you go on this plane that they call Con Air, and it's separated where the women are in the front.

So you think about first class in the front of a plane, and then the men are in the back.

And I was in my clothes from, you know, when I was arrested, so a pair of jeans, heels, and a sweater.

And I was handcuffed and shackled.

And while I had to use the restroom on that plane, you know, I wasn't able to go to the restroom in the front of the plane.

I had to go all the way to the back.

And so I was fostered through by a guard, an armed guard through the plane, and I was being groped by the men.

And I had this feeling of disgust, disgrace, and I was feeling that I was being sexually abused.

I mean, I was.

And as I went into the bathroom, you know, I broke down and cried.

It was very, very dehumanizing.

And then of course, having to, you know, take your clothes off, change your clothes, you know, go through the squatting and opening yourself up to have someone else look at, it was just, all of it was just completely devastating.

- Oh, okay.

And I've heard you say that you, to get through that you need mentors, you need light, you need certain things.

Where did you find that when you were in that situation?

What helped you rise above that situation?

- Well, number one, it was God, you know, I was deep-rooted, raised in the church, always knew who God was.

And I was able to find my way back through my own spiritual journey that I was able quickly to understand that this moment and whatever it was that I was being taken through, that it was going to be used for a greater good.

And I remember when I first opened my Bible after many years when I was incarcerated for the first time, I opened to Romans 8:28.

And that scripture says, in all things God does good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.

And so I was able to use that as a way to continue to understand, no matter what part of this journey I was going through, that it was God that was going to see me through.

Additionally, I had my parents, my friends, my siblings.

I was very fortunate, I was even privileged in prison.

I got visits every week, you know, my friends and family sent money in, I worked the best jobs if there was even a thing called a best job in prison.

And so I was blessed.

I led the choir in prison.

They called me Sister Sam because I was always there.

And so I really had that opportunity through my faith and just like my love for people and God and my healing was part of my healing journey.

- Was there ever a moment where you thought you weren't going to make it, of despair?

- No, never.

You know, I knew the opportunities and I knew that when I left prison, that there would be women and girls that would not have that same opportunity.

And so it was always hopeful that once I left that part of the journey, that I would do a great work for God and also for my people in my community.

- And that's exactly what you did.

You started the Ladies of Hope Ministries and you have affected changes in laws, I think in eight states in the country to try and improve the quality of life for women and girls in prison.

And you continue on with that work.

And I want to ask you about the way in which people look at women in prison and the disparity, the inequities that women in prison who, again, as you've pointed out, mostly you're mothers, have mostly, many mental health issues, have had some sort of childhood trauma or sexual abuse.

I mean, a whole lot of stuff they're already dealing with.

What do you want to tell us about that population?

- I mean, that population, when you think about just the incarcerated population, period, is one in three adults today has an incarcerated loved one.

And when we think about women as the most vulnerable population out of any demographic, we've passed over 18 pieces of legislation to just make sure even women who are pregnant will no longer be shackled during child labor, right?

Or that women have access to hygiene products, tampons and pads, specifically at no cost to them.

These are the things that women have to face that are very, very different than men while they're incarcerated.

And so while you then have these now impacted traumas added on top of your lives, then you come home and now you know, they say PTSDs some coined it prison trauma stress disorder.

And now you've experienced that and now it's the community that you're in.

You become a part of 4.6 million dollar, sorry, 4.6 million people who are on probation and parole in the country.

And then you have to deal with all of those things while trying to get your kids back while trying to heal all of these lived experiences.

And so it is devastating and it is necessary that more people are getting involved to advocate and support women and girls.

- Topeka, we're out of time on this segment, but I want to ask you one last thing, and that is that so many people are looking at you and they're thinking this woman's amazing and she gets through the grace of God, through the grace of her own grit and resilience.

She got through this and could never do.

I don't have that sort of inner strength.

And this is what you give to people.

How do you give people a sense that they have inner strength?

- I share my lived experience, right?

I share all of them.

And because if you see me and you think that I couldn't, there's no way.

Like how could I have been in prison?

But yet I share that I've gone through it and I use that as power, that we all have the same spirit that abides in us.

And that means I can do anything.

And God gives these powers and these strengths freely.

So while we think we can't get through things, I know without a shadow of a doubt and, and a true and living testament that with God, all things are possible.

- And nobody's going to argue with you, Topeka Sam, thank you so much for joining us and we hope we will see you again, until then, thank you for the work you're doing on behalf of women and girls, thank you.

- Thank you so much.

- Our next guest is something many of us are afraid to do.

She practiced what philosopher Kierkegaard preached.

She realized she needed to go backward and confront her childhood before she could go forward to become the best version of herself.

And we're grateful to have Katy Tur here for being to talk about that experience, and I'm going to start, because you've written two books.

The first was about covering Donald Trump, who demeaned, humiliated.

He even shushed you at one point called you Little Katy.

And the second was about the emotional roller coaster, the joy, the difficulty of your childhood with your father, which actually, and this is interesting, helped you to get through the experience of covering Donald Trump for 500 days.

Can you explain that?

- Well, you know, Donald Trump was a familiar personality to me.

Somebody who was in one moment very engaging and charismatic and magnetic and in another moment frightening and, you know, kind of abusive and emotionally or verbally abusive.

And so I understood that personality 'cause I grew up with that personality and I kind of understood how to cover it.

And those 510 days on the road felt weirdly familiar to me.

And it enabled me to just, I guess keep going.

- So explain to folks who don't know that your parents were like superstar journalists who really created a whole genre of coverage.

You literally grew up in a helicopter.

They were literally helicopter parents, and your mother was leaning out of a helicopter shooting the Bronco chaser.

I mean, they really were the ones who, who sort of started this whole kind of coverage.

And it was exciting and it was heady stuff.

And you were doing stand ups at the age of four.

Is that really true?

- That is true.

It's true.

I have a tape of me interviewing my brother and then giving a live report about a fire in San Diego that ended with a party at McDonald's with all my friends.

So it didn't make a lot of sense, but it was my version of the live report, like the lady on the radio.

- But, oh, so, so you're this child growing up with parents who literally, I guess on their first date, they decided to try and track down a serial killer who was stalking homeless people or something?

- Yeah, the skid row stabber, my parents were incredible.

I mean, they met each other very young.

My dad was 18, my mom was 23, my mom's a bit older and they were both looking for adventure.

My mom worked as the ticket saleswoman at, at a movie theater in Westwood.

So my dad said, let's go, let's go break some news, let's find this skid row stabber.

I mean, the cops were trying to chase him.

So they night after night, staked out skid row just waiting to see what would happen.

And they never, they obviously never, - They didn't find him.

- Never did it.

But at that time it, it was an adventure that drew them together and they covered fires, they covered police chases.

They were bounty hunters for a little while trying to make money to buy a camera.

They were EMTs, they were private investigators.

I mean, they hustled and they were an incredible team.

- Okay, so what does that teach a young kid watching all of that?

Does it teach you to be fearless?

Does it teach you to be I can do that.

- Yes, - Yes?

- Yeah, of course.

I never, you know, people say I never grew up thinking that there were any limitations to what I could do.

I never thought, oh, I'm a girl, I can't be this or I can't be that.

I wanted to be a Supreme Court justice, you know, I wanted to be the president of the United States.

I never thought that there would be a ceiling or a limit to what I could do.

And that's because my parents never believed in limits for themselves.

I also never believed in taking the well-tread path.

You know, there's a path you do in journalism where you go from one market to another.

- Right?

- When you work your way up, you get in line.

And my parents never got in line for anything.

And so it helped me have the attitude of, I don't need to, to do what everyone else is doing.

I can make my own path, I can get my own space.

And I think it enabled me to be where I am at, at such a young age because I didn't feel like I needed to wait my turn.

- So that's the good side of, of this picture.

And then there's the side where I've heard you or I've heard your father describe as a grenade, basically, where he was physically and emotionally, verbally abusive to you and your brother and your mother, even the dog.

And you had to deal with that.

And how did that work?

- You know, it also taught me, we live in this world where things are very black and white.

People are good or bad, canceled or accepted.

And I think it helped me understand and helps me understand today that people are complicated.

People have dark and light within them.

And my dad did so many amazing things and in so many ways was an incredible father.

And I love my dad and I had such adventurous with my dad, and he was the biggest cheerleader for me growing up and a great role model in a lot of ways.

But in other ways he was scary, you know, and he was explosive and, you know, ticking time bomb a grenade.

You never knew when it was going to go off, - Right.

- And that was a hard thing to deal with later on in life when I realized that it was not normal, that relationships weren't about screaming at each other and accepting, you know, abuse.

It was, it, that a healthy relationship was one where you are a team and you work together and you work through your problems together without one person trying to run over the other.

And it made me, you know, I had all this rage inside me and I thought that rage was a driver and I thought it was a distinguisher.

And it, you know, it helped me get far, but it also was corrosive.

- Right?

- And now as a 39 year old with four kids, two step-kids and two kids of my own, you know, I want to be the best version of myself.

And looking back, it shows me what I loved about my childhood, what I loved about my parents, what they gave me.

Trying to take the good from that while trying to, to mitigate the bad.

- Okay.

So what you did was essentially break that cycle because so often people who grow up in abusive households, that's what they learn and that's what they carry forward.

- Yeah.

And I've seen these incredible stories that CBS has done on you, on CBS this morning and CBS Sunday morning about you and your husband and oh my God, I mean, everyone should have a relationship like the two of you.

I'm serious, it is the most touching thing to watch.

And so you, but you consciously set about breaking that cycle.

- Yeah, you know, my husband, I got very lucky because Tony had a, a difficult childhood as well with a difficult and, and kind of overbearing or abusive and, but also like an absent father.

And so when we went on our first date, we didn't have to discuss it because, you know, oh, you, you had a crazy childhood too.

Like, well, we can just move on from there, - Right?

- Which was a real relief, like, I didn't have to explain myself and explain my upbringing and I guess, I don't know, we just click, we click, we get along really well.

We fill in each other's gaps.

We, I mean, obviously we're a married couple, so we, we bicker like anyone does.

But there's never a sense that either one of us is in competition with the other.

And one of the mantras that we have is that we need to always remember that the other one is doing their best, doing their best.

They're trying as hard as they can.

And sometimes things are going to fall through the cracks.

But we're all trying, we're doing our best here.

And we're, you know, if we don't maintain our connectedness, then everything's going to fall apart.

- I want to ask you about one last piece of the book, which is what so many people talked about, which was the day that you, you got a phone call from your father basically saying that the father you knew as Bob Tur was dead, I think is, is actually what he said.

Explain what happened.

- So my dad, you know, had a really difficult time growing up and over, I'll say his here and then I'll explain his life.

He had an abusive father and grew up in a, a home where they were evicted every few months.

And he also wasn't the person that he felt he was.

And so when I was ... Ah, it was 2013, so when I was about 30, my dad called me and said, I'm not Bob Tur, I'm not a man, I'm a woman.

And so when I talk about my dad in the past, in my childhood memory, I use he and then when after the transition, I use she, so she is now Zoe and this is the person that she always believed she was and feels most comfortable.

And she told me about it.

And in the course of the conversation, you know, it was illuminating, but it was also difficult because, you know, this was 2013.

I had no language for it, no vocabulary for it.

I didn't know how to understand it.

But also beyond that it was more, okay, if we're going to start over, you're going to wash this away, you're going to say, Bob Tur is dead and you're going to ask for a clean slate and this is going to be the refresh on our life.

Alright, let's address the stuff in the past so that we can really bury it.

This felt like an opportunity because my dad said all that rage I'd been dealing with, it's gone now because this is the person I am.

And I said, great, let's talk about it.

And she didn't want to talk about it.

And she denied any of it ever happened and, and got angry about it.

And it just led to a breakdown that we have not recovered from.

There have been fits and starts over the years, but it, it's been really difficult.

- We're out of time.

But the last thing is, you said something about we can't choose the gifts of our childhood, but we can reject the worst of our childhood.

How do you help somebody who's trying to do that, who doesn't know where to start?

- I think you have to go back and you have to be in a place where you're ready to confront it and you're ready to go there and remember the good times and the bad times and remember them honestly.

And not everybody is ready for that.

And you come to that readiness at different stages in your life.

The other thing I would say is, and this is something that I tell myself.

Everybody has stuff in their past that has complicated their lives.

Everybody for a variety of things.

But once you get to be an adult, once you have kids of your own, especially you no longer get to justify your bad behavior because of a something that might have happened to you when you were younger.

You got to grow up, you got to let it go.

And you got to be a better example for your own children.

And I remind myself of that when I feel like I'm faltering.

- Katie Tur, I don't know what to say to you except that I think that you possibly have a parenting and a marriage book left in you.

And I look forward to reading both of them because you are an amazing person and I already know that there are a lot of people out there that you've really touched and you've really helped, so thank you very much for joining us today.

- Thank you so much.

I do not deserve to be compared to Kierkegaard but I will take it.

- Take it.

- So thank you.

- Okay, take care.

Thank you.

- Bye.

- With democracy in danger around the globe, our next guest distinguished herself as a fearless defender of freedom who offers a roadmap to fight authoritarianism.

We're honored to welcome veteran journalist and Nobel Peace prize winner Maria Ressa.

Maria is also the author of the new book, how to Stand Up to a Dictator.

And we are going to talk about Maria, your real life version of how you stood up to a dictator.

But before we do that, you are so eloquent on the whole subject of how living in a world, a post-truth world where lies have turned everything upside down and brought out the worst in humanity, very often, actually is endangering democracy around the globe, talk about that a little bit.

- I mean, you know, I feel so much of public discourse today talks about the cascading failures downstream, but really the main failure is that the main distribution platforms for news, right, now we're on television, but if you're on social media, the incentive structure for that is actually spreads lies faster than facts.

Imagine a world where you have kids and you tell your kids lie all the time, and then keep rewarding your kids when they lie.

And when they tell the truth, take away rewards, you know, punish them for it.

That's the world we live in today.

And what happened was that lies and facts were indistinguishable.

No one could tell the difference.

When you don't have facts, right, you can't have truth without truth, you can't have trust, right?

Without these three, you don't have a shared reality.

We cannot have democracy, we can't solve any problems.

That's the fundamental core problem that we face today.

And it is existential.

- You actually have studied how democracy has deteriorated.

I think that it's 60% of the world is now under some sort of authoritarian rule.

And democracy, even in America, has been downgraded by very many metrics.

That sounds hopeless to a lot of people.

Is it hopeless?

- Absolutely not.

I actually think we now see the pattern and the trend now is the time when we need to act.

And that's part of what I've been saying over and over.

This is where I feel like Cassandra and Sisyphus combined, you know, it's, this is an incredibly important moment when we look back a decade from now, we're going to look at this moment and say, what did we do?

This is it.

This is the time when we need to.

And actually I came down to, you know, here's the long term, medium term and short term, right?

Long term it's really education.

Medium term it's legislation.

And then finally in the short term, it's us.

It's just us.

We need to move away from being users, being passive consumers to active citizens, to figuring out what civic engagement means in the age of exponential lies.

- You very early, your mother, when Ferdinand Marcos came into power and declared martial law, your mother relocated you and your sister to of all places, Toms River, New Jersey.

Which seems to me, given what you were coming from is an incredible culture shock.

Talk about how that actually was a, a formulating kind of experience, influential experience in who you have become.

- I mean the most crucial lessons I think I learned trying to integrate into American society, you know, and Toms River, New Jersey, or at that point it was Silver Bay Elementary School, taught me so much and, and I was the shortest only brown kid in my class.

I was put into a third grade.

Within a few weeks I was bumped up to fourth grade.

And you know, the, the irony of course is my third grade teacher is half Norwegian and she was in Oslo when I received the Nobel Peace Prize, you know?

So anyway, what she did was she gave me the very first lesson, which was, you know, always make the choice to learn.

So I could barely speak English when I walked into Silver Bay Elementary School.

But I was a very studious geek.

I was a nerd and I kept doing all the right things.

When she tried to get me to move up to fourth grade, within weeks of settling into this third grade, I resisted.

And she just said, you know, you have to always make the choice to learn and you have nothing more to learn in my class.

That was the first lesson.

The second lesson was something also that was stayed with me my entire life, which is that you have to, whatever it is you're most afraid of, you have to embrace it, embrace your fear.

And a lot of that came from realizing that I was kind of holding everything back 'cuz I didn't understand the cultural signals, I didn't understand.

And so I was stopping myself from jumping in 'cuz I was afraid.

And I thought, okay, well whatever that is, touch it, hold it, and then rob it of its sting.

It's a lesson from third grade that went all the way to trying to stand up to a dictator.

And then of course the last one that I wrote about in the book was it how to stand up to a bully, replace Dictator with Bully.

And this is something we learned from school, right?

- Right.

- I was a violinist and, and in the orchestra there was a girl, I called her Debbie in the book, but she was always bullied by everyone.

And when there's someone being bullied, you don't want to get in the way because you don't want to be the target.

And when I reflect on like what we've gone through in the Philippines, it is identical.

People stand aside and you have to kind of bear the brunt.

So here's this Debbie in orchestra crying 'cuz she was being bullied.

And I walked by and then I realized I'm not going to walk by I went and got tissues and then came back to her and I started talking to her and I realized that when you stand up you do better together.

What happened was the bully who was bullying her, tried to bully me and then my friend stood up and that bully was defamed.

- So is this the carryover to when you're exposing the corruption and the abuse of power in the Duterte regime and you do stand up and you do keep going and you're arrested and you're convicted of cyber libel charges and you now have, even now it's my understanding, the threat of 60 years in prison still looming in your life and you stand up.

Is that really where it all started was in Toms River, New Jersey?

- I think this is why I went all the way back.

I think it goes back to your values and the lessons you've learned and you know, when you come under attack, that's when you realize that you are going to hold tight to what is most important to you.

And you go back to what's most important to you in, in the battle with President Duterte, with the Philippine government, I always used the phrase hold the line because when you hold the line, you draw this line where you know, you decide this is on this side, you're good and on this side you are evil.

Like, and it's got to be that clear.

So we held the line and the line for me was the constitution, the Philippine constitution is patterned after the United States, right?

We have a Bill of rights just like the US and instead of kind of aggressively saying, 'cuz this is one of the things I'm uncomfortable with, I am not anti Duterte or pro Duterte, I'm a journalist.

I tell you what, we see what it is and it's fact-based, evidence-based, so by holding the line, we're just holding the line of the constitution.

- So even in the face of death threats and being bombarded by hate messages as many as a hundred an hour, do you ever say, you know enough, I can't do this anymore or not.

- I think there are always these moments of, you know, where it punches you in the gut and then you step back and you go, what am I going to do?

And in the last six or seven years, I think President Duterte attack Rappler and me, I was in my fifties, I knew exactly why I became a journalist.

Why we set up Rappler.

I knew and understood the constitution.

So it was very hard.

These, all these whys had already been put in place.

And I think what, what I just learned is that these challenges make you stronger.

You have a moment of fear and then you embrace your fear and you keep going.

And because you do, then you take your team with you.

You know what, I'm not alone.

I think that's the other part.

- You talked about how when this this threat of a prison sentence came up, the whole notion of losing freedom became a real theme in your thinking.

- Yeah.

- And you really have a cautionary tale for all of us who very often take freedom for granted.

Talk about that.

- So in many ways, Al-Qaeda's threat against America, Al-Qaeda had said, you know, we're going to to run after, we're going to tear down America with a thousand cuts.

Now turn it around.

It's asymmetrical warfare.

And what's happened to democracy globally to us in the Philippines, right, is kind of like all these small, small cuts sometimes like a paper cut.

And when you get so many of these, you're bleeding out to the point that the body politic weakens to death.

That's what we've lived through under the Duterte years.

- I have one final question for you, and that is in the Toms River New Jersey yearbook, underneath your picture it says, plans to conquer the world.

How do you think you're doing?

- Oh my god, I, you know, that's like a hyperbole you do when you're in high school.

And I will say one thing, I have absolutely no regrets.

I think that's what I set out to do, you know, not to be afraid, 'cuz fear is your worst enemy.

Get out of your way.

Go run after what you need to do, what you want to do.

And now, yeah, I have no regrets.

- Maria Ressa, it has been an honor and a pleasure talking with you today.

Thank you for what you're doing to defend democracy around the world, you take care of yourself.

Thank you.

- Thanks for having me.

- Carrying on with the theme of fearlessness that's emerged today, our next guest is a living legend, a force of nature who says when she's on stage, she's completely, utterly fearless.

She's won three Tony awards for her starring roles in Evita Gypsy and most recently Company, two Grammys and two Olivier.

She is of course Patti LuPone.

We are thrilled to have you with us today.

Thank you for being here.

And I'm going to start right in because I am fascinated that, that at the age of 40 years old, you allegedly looked out at an audience during a piano recital and decided this is what you were going to do, this is where you wanted to be.

And that did not include being in the chorus.

Is that actually true?

- Well, it wasn't a piano recital, it was a tap dancing recital, the Miss Marguerite Dance studio, and it was the Ocean Avenue Elementary school.

And I was downstage right, tapping furiously.

And I looked out at the audience and I thought they were all looking at me and they were smiling.

And obviously, I mean, I can remember it as if it was yesterday, because I remember thinking, they're all smiling at me, I can't get in trouble up here.

I can do whatever I want and they'll still smile at me.

So obviously I was getting in trouble in - In other places, right?

- In my life.

- Right?

Other places.

- At four years old.

And so the stage was safe and it was also, it's a calling, you know, that was, I was chosen.

- Even at that young age, you knew that?

- Yes.

- Now it's one thing to have a talent, it's another thing to have a temperament to go along with it.

And you gave an interview back in 2019 to the New York Times talking about the fact that you had been bullied really your whole life, starting with your father.

And yet you've had to suffer slings and arrows and the, I mean, what the business you're in is really, really tough.

So speaking of tough, you've been quoted as saying that you weren't born tough, you were made tough.

What does that mean?

- Well, I'm in a, you know, there's an expression, Broadway ain't for sissies, it is a very, showbiz is a very tough profession.

It's very competitive.

It is for an actor, it's a series of rejections before there's acceptance.

And then there's the, the temperament of all the creative artists involved and actors are low men on the theatrical totem pole.

We interpret the playwright through the direction of the director.

So... it's a position I want to be in.

I love being a storyteller.

I wouldn't do anything else.

I'm not a director.

I certainly don't write, I love interpreting.

But along with that comes personalities and insecurities and some of the times it has nothing to do with the person that's on the receiving end of it, but just somebody's insecurities and fear.

There's a lot of fear in our business because it's about approval.

- Let us go back to your breakout role in Evita because I'm sitting in the audience and I'm watching you sing High Flying Adored, and I'm thinking this woman is magical and she's a star and she's in control and she's got it all.

And then in your memoir, you know, this, doing Evita I think you said was a trial by fire.

It was like the threat of being burned at the stake every night.

And so the perception as an audience person is that you, you're calling the shots, you have everything under control.

And yet that's not the case.

- Remember I wasn't a star.

There was a lot riding on that.

That was Andrew Lloyd Webber's big musical.

It was a huge success in London.

Everybody in the world wanted that role.

I didn't.

- You didn't?

- I did not.

- Why?

- I didn't like the music.

I thought Andrew Lloyd Webber hated women.

The first time I heard The white album, the concept album with Julie Covington, David Essex, and Calm Wilkinson, I thought, wait, it didn't sound like, it didn't sound like a musical.

It's really, you know, I came to appreciate it.

It's an opera basically, - Right?

- 'Cuz it's sung through and it's a modern opera.

But it's not Rodgers and Hammerstein, it's not Rodgers and Hart.

It's not Lerner and Loewe.

And so that's what I grew up on.

So when I listened to him, I didn't like it at all.

There was so much hype around it before I even started rehearsal that the pressure, I was scared to death because of the responsibility and because I couldn't sing it, because it was, I could sing it, I could sing it maybe once, and then I couldn't get that D and I had, I went to several voice teachers and they couldn't help me.

So I was in fear every night of losing my voice, which I did on several occasions.

The thing that I think leads me through any controversy, especially in my profession, is my talent, is my gift.

That is something to be given away.

And no one's going to take that away from me.

I'm supposed to perform, I'm supposed to give this gift away to an audience.

So I will endure a lot of stuff backstage, but no one can prevent me from being on stage.

I just won't let that happen.

So, you know, and it doesn't happen now.

I mean, how old am I?

How many shows have I done?

I'm the oldest one in the room now.

So it doesn't, I see other bullying, I see other games being played among younger cast members and Backstage has its own life and you either get into it or you get buried by it.

And I love to get into it.

I love to see what's going on.

I love gossip.

I love that whole thing backstage and I can see it in company.

It happened in company with the younger performers where, again, it's fear.

It all comes out of fear.

They lash out.

I've lashed out not being able to control the fear.

At this point unless it's something brand new for me.

And the other thing is to admit it.

If you admit it, if you admit you're afraid, if you can say that out loud and you can say, I don't know, you're free.

And a lot of times in our profession, you can't say that because you can't admit, you don't know what's going on.

You've been cast, for example, I was cast as Lady Teazle in the School for Scandal, which is a restoration play.

I didn't know how to spell restoration, let alone what the style was, - Right.

- What the period was.

And I was engulfed in fear until I could work my way out of it.

I mean, had I had the confidence back then I would've turned in a better performance in the very beginning had I had the confidence to go to the director and go, I don't know why you cast me.

I don't know what restoration is, you need to help me.

It releases a lot of stuff for everybody.

And those two words, those three words, I don't know.

And admitting fear can help alleviate a lot of potentially dangerous situations.

- I saw you play Joanne in, in the gender bender version of Stephen Sondheim's Company in London twice.

I went back actually the same day.

I saw you twice on the same day.

And you know, there was a younger cast.

And do you want to go up to them and say, this is what I wish I'd known.

Here's what I want to tell you.

Do you ever do that?

- Yes - You do?

- I'm asked.

- Yeah?

- I am asked and I do, I don't want to see anybody in the pain that this business causes.

- We are out of time.

But I have one very quick last question for you, which may not be quick, but it's the last question.

And that is, if you could go back and do something differently, would you?

- Professionally?

- Yep.

- I'd be a hobo, I'd be a world traveler.

- In your next life, maybe.

What do you think?

- How about the rest of this one?

How about the rest of this one?

I would travel the world.

I think that more people should travel the world.

I think that we don't know how fortunate we are in America.

And I think more people should see the world embrace the world, embrace the cultures.

- On that note, I want to thank you for joining us today.

- Thanks, bye.

- Before we wrap up our show, I want to thank our guests for their candor and insights and for being the very definition of extraordinary.

Now for our silver lining moment, we have our own version of Broadway's 11 o'clock number that could serve as an anthem for overcoming adversity from Gypsy, for which she won her second Tony.

Here's Patti LuPone singing, "Everything's Coming Up Roses".

Take care.

♪ Well, you all be swell.

♪ You all be great.

♪ Going to have the whole world on a plate.

♪ ♪ Starting here, starting now.

♪ Honey, everything coming up roses.

♪ ♪ Clear the decks.

♪ Clear the tracks.

♪ You got nothing to do, ♪ but relax, blow a kiss.

♪ Take a bow, honey.

♪ Everything's coming up roses.

♪ (dramatic music) (light music) (bright music)