When it Mattered

Ep. 22 — An Iowa musician battles a lifetime of blues and gets his groove back on the international blues stage / Kevin Burt, Singer, Songwriter, blues heritage educator.

Raised by a single mom on $5,000 a year in food stamps, Kevin Burt spent most of his life in chronic “survival mode” in the school of hard knocks.

That meant a chronically anxious and overworked state of mind and body:  “You're so worried about the basics of day to day that there's no way to think about tomorrow, there's no way to think about not a day from now, not a week from now, not a year from now,” says Burt. “You can't make future plans if you're not okay. You're just surviving. That hustle turns into the worst kind of a loop to be in.”

So caught was Burt in a punishing work cycle of 300 or more shows a year that when his friends urged him to sign up for the prestigious International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee last year, he said he was too busy.

But his friends prevailed. Burt decided to jump into the Challenge, albeit grudgingly.

It would prove to be the best decision of his life.

Burt swept the contest in three categories, best harmonica, guitar, and solo/duo  — the first performer to accomplish that little hat trick in the competition’s thirty-five-year history.

His massive success, borne of a lifetime of hard work and resilience, has skyrocketed Burt into a surreal new matrix, both on the international blues soundstage and in his personal headspace.

He says it’s a development that he’s “wholly unprepared for.” But he’s getting there quickly, one step at a time.

Burt’s life is rapidly changing. But there’s one thing that will remain constant: His commitment to his role as a blues heritage educator and a proud narrator of Iowa’s forgotten important role in the evolution of the American blues scene.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Born and raised in Waterloo, Iowa blues artist, Kevin Burt, had a tough childhood that put him in chronic survival mode for most of his life, forcing him to make a bunch of career and personal sacrifices to support his family.

Chitra Ragavan:   Then last year, Burt made a decision that changed everything. Hello. Everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined today by Kevin Burt, who after more than two decades on the local and national blues circuits is well on his way to becoming a recording artist of international merit. Kevin, welcome to the podcast.

Kevin Burt:   Thank you for having me, appreciate it.

Chitra Ragavan:   You told me recently that your survival mindset began at age five when your parents were separated. What was your life like after that moment?

Kevin Burt:   It's just one of those things where you know that every day it's about making sure that you make it to the next one. It wasn't so much that it was out of danger. It's just out of not knowing. It's the knowing that your mom's doing the best she can and you've got siblings and you're watching them do the best that they can. Your responsibility was to do the best you could too. It was a collective mindset versus just being a kid.

Chitra Ragavan:   Your mother had to raise ... How many kids on a very limited income?

Kevin Burt:   There were four of us. My parents separated, they never divorced. My dad was always there but not, and so he was ...

Chitra Ragavan:   But not there.

Kevin Burt:   Yeah, yeah. He was living his best life. I don't fault him for that. It was his choice to make. Mom raised four of us, three boys, one girl. All three of us boys ended up being all American football players and our sister was the best athlete in the family.

Chitra Ragavan:   This was on food stamps?

Kevin Burt:   $5,000 a year in food stamps. Fixed income is just that. The one thing that it taught me is that I knew that I didn't want my kids to ev...

Ep. 21 — A disenchanted doctor finds secret inspiration for his groundbreaking Parkinson’s research from a heroin addict / Dr. Andrew Lees, University College of London, Institute of Neurology.

Dr. Andrew Lees was a young medical student when he realized that his profession was not everything it was cut out to be.

Feeling suffocated by the conservative and powerful British medical system, which gave little room for independent thought and experimentation, Lees was at risk for dropping out.

Then one day, Lees, a Liverpool-born avid Beatles fan saw the cover of their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

When Lees scanned the celebrity-laden faces on the album cover, he saw someone he didn’t recognize.

It was William S. Burroughs, the Beat Generation writer, heroin addict, and harsh critic of doctors and the medical establishment.

Feeling quite anti-establishment himself, Lees began reading Burroughs' work, starting with his most controversial book, “Naked Lunch,” and was soon sucked into Burroughs’ intellectual orbit.

Lees was inspired and influenced by Burroughs’ writings about his frequent self-experimentation with dangerous opiates and his efforts to kick his various drug addictions.

Re-energized, Lees dedicated his career to conduct ground-breaking research into the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, including using the drug Apomorphine to treat advanced complications of the disease — a drug  Burroughs had used to kick his heroin addiction.

Lees became one of the world’s most respected and cited neurologists on the disease.

Because of Burroughs' checkered reputation, Lees kept his “Invisible Mentor,” a deep secret because he was afraid his colleagues would ostracize him.

But late into his distinguished career, Lees finally picked up his courage and told the world about his muse through his book, Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment.

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Chitra Ragavan:   For much of his celebrated career renowned British neurologist, Dr. Andrew Lees, kept a deep professional secret from his peers and the world. The secret was that his groundbreaking research into Parkinson's disease was deeply influenced by the controversial American writer and heroin addict, William S. Burroughs. It all began when Dr. Lees, saw a face he didn't recognize on the cover of the Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Acting on idle curiosity, Lees learned it was William Burroughs. Pretty soon Lees was going down the Burroughs rabbit hole, learning from a man he would never meet, but who would become his life-long invisible mentor.

Chitra Ragavan:   Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is, When it Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined today by Dr. Andrew Lees, Professor of Neurology at University College, London Institute of Neurology. His book about Burroughs is called, Mentored by a Madman: The William Burroughs Experiment. Dr Lees, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Lees:   Thank you, Chitra.

Chitra Ragavan:   You achieved global recognition and many, many awards for your work on Parkinson's disease and abnormal movement disorders and you are one of the most cited researchers in the field. And one could argue that no one should be less afraid of ostracism by your peers than you. What was it about William Burroughs himself and about the culture of the medical profession that made you afraid to disclose his influence on your work and why did you keep it a secret for so long?

Dr. Lees:   Well even today, the British medical establishment is very conservative and also very powerful. So that, if you blot your copybook particularly as a trainee, you end up in the Outer Hebrides during something that you don't really want to do. We were all, I think certainly as trainees quite fearful because unlike the United States which is far bigger,

Ep. 20 — A police officer is brought back to life after a near-fatal motorcycle crash and takes on a profound new mission / Frank Shankwitz, Creator and a Co-Founder, Make-A-Wish Foundation. 

Arizona Highway Patrol Officer Frank Shankwitz  was chasing after a drunk driver one day at 85 miles an hour when his motorcycle broadsided a second drunk driver who cut in front of him.

His partner could not revive Shankwitz who had suffered grievous injuries and reported him dead at the scene.

But an off-duty emergency room nurse driving past the crash performed CPR for four minutes and literally brought Shankwitz back to life.

Recovering slowly from his injuries, Shankwitz didn’t fully realize the implications of getting a reprieve from death until his counselor urged him to find deeper meaning.

Two years later, when he was asked to cheer up a terminally ill seven-year-old boy who was a huge fan of highway motorcycle squads because of the popular television show CHiPS, Shankwitz found that higher cause.

The result was the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which today, forty years after Shankwitz created and co-founded it, has granted more than half a million wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.

After having lived a childhood filled with homelessness and poverty, Shankwitz has created a life for himself that’s rich in meaning by giving sick children around the world a wealth of happiness from their dreams coming true.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. When It Mattered is a podcast on how leaders deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Frank Shankwitz, the creator and a co-founder of the Make-A-Wish Foundation, a global charity that fulfills the wishes of children with life-threatening illnesses.

Chitra Ragavan:   Shankwitz has taken the lessons learned from his early years of extreme poverty and homelessness and has spent most of his adult life giving back. A US Air Force veteran, Shankwitz served as an Arizona Highway Patrol motorcycle officer and a homicide detective with the Arizona Department of Public Safety. Retiring after 42 years on the force, Shankwitz has received many awards for his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, the White House Call to Service award from both President George W. Bush and president Donald J. Trump, and the Making A Difference in The World award from the US Military Academy at West Point, just to name a few.

Chitra Ragavan:   Mr. Shankwitz, welcome to the podcast.

Frank Shankwitz:   Thank you. I appreciate the invitation.

Chitra Ragavan:   Your early years, as I said, were filled with poverty and homelessness and separation from one or other parent. Could you describe what those early years were like?

Frank Shankwitz:   Interesting, I never thought they were that bad, but Hollywood made a movie about it, so I guess they were. I was born in Chicago, and, at two years old, my mother divorced my father and left. We never knew where, had no idea where she went. In later years, I figured out, because she would never tell me, that she went to Arizona. Ages two to five were just very happy years living with my grandparents, while my dad worked down on weekends, aunts, uncles, cousins, just a lot of fun times.

Frank Shankwitz:   At five years old, I was in kindergarten on a playground, and a lady grabbed me, dragged me, and she said, "I'm your mother," I have no idea who this lady was, and actually kidnapped me off the playground, screaming and fighting, but when you're five years old and you get a thump on the head, you kind of be quiet, and she said, "We're going to Arizona," but she took a strange route to Arizona, and we ended up what I later learned was Michigan, upper Michigan, Upper Peninsula, and this is a whole different lifestyle.

Ep. 19 — An aspiring scientist rejects the impersonal sterility of the profession to become a science writer and stumbles upon a gripping emotional saga of courage, heroism, and sacrifice / Sam Kean, Author, The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb.

It wasn’t until the third year of college and endless science classes that Sam Kean realized he was temperamentally unsuited to becoming a scientist.

Shaken by the realization that he had to reinvent his future, Kean took to science writing and found his niche as a best-selling author.

But although he had majored in Physics in college, Kean was writing about everything but physics.

Until one day, when he heard about the so-called Bastard Brigade, a rag-tag group of scientists and spies who had coalesced around a common goal, to thwart Hitler from building an atomic bomb during WWII.

Kean quickly realized that he had finally stumbled upon a physics story worth telling.

Because the story of the Bastard Brigade was not just about the dry, dispassionate nuclear physics, chemistry, and history of the atomic bomb.

It was as much about the hero’s journey of a group of ill-fated and unlikely leaders, who had willingly embarked on a fool-hardy and dangerous mission, ready to sacrifice their lives for a higher cause.

When he had least expected it, Kean had discovered the human face of science.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. When It Mattered is a podcast on how leaders deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is the New York Times bestselling author, Sam Kean. His latest book is called The Bastard Brigade: The True Story of the Renegade Scientists and Spies Who Sabotaged the Nazi Atomic Bomb. Kean also is the author of other science bestsellers: The Disappearing Spoon, The Violinist's Thumb, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons, and Caesar's Last Breath. His stories have appeared in The Best American Nature and Science Writing, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and Slate, and his work has been featured on NPR's Radiolab, Science Friday, and Fresh Air. Sam, welcome to the podcast.

Sam Kean:   Hello. Thanks for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:   Did you always know that this was what you wanted to do in life, to become a writer, and particularly, a science writer?

Sam Kean:   No, actually I, for a long time, thought I was going to be a scientist. When I was going through high school, I was taking all the science classes I could in every subject, and then got to college in Minnesota and was very focused again on science. I was a physics major. It really wasn't until about my third or so year in college when things swerved on me a little bit. I just realized that temperamentally, maybe I wasn't cut out to be a scientist in that I started working in some different labs that were doing research, and I realized that I just wasn't enjoying doing the research as much as I thought I was. I didn't like the fact that you spent all your time building and tinkering with equipment. I was a little clumsy with it, couldn't get it to work right all the time.

Sam Kean:   For really the first time in my life, I started to wonder, "Well, maybe I don't actually want to be a scientist anymore." It was a little scary in that I had been focused on being a scientist for so long that I really almost didn't know who I was anymore if I wasn't going to be a scientist. Basically, what I did was I kind of ran to the other end of campus and got an English major, so I was working on both the science and the English part there, and eventually realized that not only did I like writing, but that you could make a living by writing about science. That was a good fit for me because I got to be sort of involved with science,

Ep. 18 — A young television news producer watches a colleague save a life by doing CPR and finds her true calling in medicine / Dr. Lisa Sanders, Yale School of Medicine and New York Times Columnist.

Early in her career, becoming a doctor was the last thing on Lisa Sanders’ mind. She loved the television news producing business and was happy with her life.

Then one day, while shooting an episode on white water rafting, Sanders watched her doctor colleague save an elderly woman from drowning, through CPR.

It wasn’t an overnight transformation. But it was an inevitable one, she says.

Sanders decided to go to medical school.

Since then, Sanders has blazed a unique trail as a doctor and a Professor of Internal Medicine and Education at the Yale School of Medicine, as well as a book author, journalist, and television consultant.

She is the author of two popular columns in the New York Times about medical mysteries, called Diagnosis and Think Like a Doctor. She has a new book based on those columns.

On that eventful white water rafting trip so long ago, Sanders and her colleague, were testing out their television station’s brand new satellite news van.

Decades later, she continues to be fearless about using new technologies in the field of medicine.

This time, she’s harnessing the massive power of the Internet to crowdsource diagnoses and bring relief to those suffering, sometimes for decades, from lethal diseases for which there is no name, cure, or reprieve.

This Summer, Netflix released a new documentary series in which Dr. Sanders uses that novel, albeit somewhat controversial, technique of global crowdsourcing to help solve eight medical mysteries.

Sanders is also helping to reshape the way in which doctors communicate with patients and to give patients and their loved ones a  bigger voice in the often skewed power dynamic.

She brings to that commitment her own personal experiences with the medical system, having watched both her mother and sister die without warning and finding the interactions with their doctors deeply lacking in both data and empathy.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When it Mattered. When it Mattered is a podcast on how leaders deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative.

Chitra Ragavan:   My guest today is the renowned physician, author and journalist, Dr. Lisa Sanders. She's Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Education at the Yale School of Medicine. Many of you know Dr. Sanders from her two globally popular New York Times columns about medical mysteries; Diagnosis and Think Like a Doctor.

Chitra Ragavan:   The Diagnosis column inspired the hit Fox television series, House, M.D., for which Sanders served as a technical consultant. And now a new Netflix New York Times series also called Diagnosis, showcases Sanders using global crowdsourcing to help diagnose and solve eight medical mysteries. Sanders new book Diagnosis: Solving the Most Baffling Medical Mysteries is a compilation of 50 stories from her column. Dr. Sanders, welcome to the podcast.

Lisa Sanders:   Hi, thanks so much for inviting me, Chitra.

Chitra Ragavan:   You majored in English in college at William & Mary, and you wrote for your school paper, the Flat Hat. And after you graduated, you became a television news producer. So what prompted you to give up television and go to medical school?

Lisa Sanders:   Well, I loved television and I loved the news business, but one day... and it happened over time; nobody really turns on a dime, no matter how they tell the story. But so, one day I was out with the correspondent that I usually worked with, Bob Arnot, or at least I worked with him for years, and we were doing a story about whitewater rafting. And suddenly, he disappeared from the television monitor where I wa...

Ep. 17 — A legendary CIA operative begins his career struggling with imposter syndrome / William Murray, Founder, Alphom Group and 38-year CIA Operations Officer.

When William Murray walked through the doors of the Central Intelligence Agency as a young recruit, he was instantly filled with trepidation.

“Everybody that I met seemed to be better educated, better traveled, and have a better understanding of the world than me,” Murray remembers thinking.

Murray fought his insecurities and over the next nearly 38 years, grew into a highly successful and impactful senior Operations Officer and a legendary figure in the CIA, serving in some of the most world's toughest hotspots, including Beirut, Tehran, Pakistan, the Balkans, and Syria.

After his overseas tours of duty, Murray returned to Washington D.C. and reached the highest ranks of the Senior Executive Service, managing some of the most sensitive and vital intelligence collection programs in the Agency. Among other awards and accolades, Murray received the CIA’s Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal.

Murray's stint in Syria during the Gulf War and his extensive postings in the Mideast gives him a deep perspective on the current mess in Syria. [Hear audio excerpt below]

Despite his long and distinguished service, Murray says he left the Agency never quite fitting in.

He's reconciled himself to having been a quintessential outsider.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When it Mattered. When it Mattered is a podcast exploring how leaders are forged from critical moments and how they deal with and learn from adversity. My guest today is the legendary William Murray. He's a retired senior operations officer who spent nearly 38 years at the Central Intelligence Agency. During his tenure, Murray was posted to some of the most dangerous CIA stations in the world, often during war and civil unrest including Beirut, Tehran, Pakistan, Syria, and the Balkans. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative.

Chitra Ragavan:   Murray also held senior management roles in Washington DC and was seconded in the US Senate to help create the intelligence reform and terrorism prevention act of 2004, which resulted in the largest change in US government structures since the end of World War II. Murray has received numerous awards including the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. He currently is founder of the Alphom group. A business intelligence and risk management consulting firm. Bill, welcome to the podcast.

William Murray:   Hi Chitra, how are you this afternoon?

Chitra Ragavan:   I'm good. How are you?

William Murray:   I'm fine. Thank you.

Chitra Ragavan:   You come from a humble working class, Irish Catholic family in Boston. In some ways, you were an unlikely candidate for the CIA.

William Murray:   That's true. At the time I joined virtually everybody who had come in before me and the people were still coming in were all Ivy League, sort of East Coast big families, long established families, et cetera. I was a shot in the dark. I wasn't sure how it was going to work out.

Chitra Ragavan:   What was your background?

William Murray:   My father was in the Navy during World War II. And then used the GI bill after the war. Got an education as a design draftsman. Worked on a lot of really interesting large engineering projects like the Polaris submarine and the B-58 Hustler and a whole host of missile systems for Raytheon and Honeywell and various other companies around the Boston area. I was always fascinated with what he did, the technology, et cetera. But he had a very large family. There were eight of us. I was the oldest. So trying to feed a family like that and house us et cetera. He wound up working a lot of times, two jobs.

William Murray:   It was not particularly a struggle for us to exist.

Ep. 16 —  A God-fearing trauma surgeon struggles to cope with human atrocity in the wake of a mass shooting / Dr. Alan Tyroch, Chief of Surgery and Trauma Medical Director, University Medical Center of El Paso.

His grades were so poor that Dr. Alan Tyroch almost didn’t get into medical school. But the stubborn Texan was not about to let something as mundane as bad grades get in his way.

Fueled with frequent, sometimes heated, conversations with God and blessed with sheer grit and perseverance, Dr. Tyroch not only fulfilled his dream to become a trauma surgeon, but also helped develop University Medical Center of El Paso’s top-notch trauma program.

Tyroch’s motto, “You play like you practice,” came true on August 3rd, when the medical center was flooded with victims of a mass shooting in which a gunman, armed with an AK-47, killed 22 and wounded more than two dozen people at a local shopping center.

Fresh from a recent city-wide disaster drill involving mass casualties, Tyroch says everyone, including the housekeeping staff, worked as a unified team to save as many lives as possible.

Tyroch says he’s acutely aware of and working to allay the post-traumatic stress that many medical personnel, including on his team, experience in the aftermath of these types of events.

But despite his own nuanced understanding of “good” and “bad” deaths, developed over nearly two decades as a trauma surgeon, Tyroch says he still fights the outcome when a patient dies on his watch.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello and welcome to When it Mattered, a podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they deal with and learn from adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Good Story, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest is Dr. Alan Tyroch Chief of Surgery, Trauma Medical Director and Chief of Staff at University Medical Center of El Paso. Dr. Tyroch also is professor and founding chair of the Paul Foster School of Medicine's Department of Surgery. He's an appointee on the governor's emergency medical services and trauma advisory council. And an active member in the Regional Advisory Council on trauma and emergency healthcare.

Chitra Ragavan:   Dr. Tyroch was in the unenviable position of helping to direct and manage the trauma care after the August 3, 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in which a 21- year old gunman armed with an AK-47 killed 22 and wounded more than two dozen people in a local shopping center. Dr. Tyroch, welcome to the podcast.

Dr. Alan Tyroch:   Thanks for having me.

Chitra Ragavan:   Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Dr. Alan Tyroch:   Sure. Well, first of all, I'm a fifth generation native Texan and extremely proud of it. I'm from Czech heritage. My families came here from either Moravia or Bohemia, which no longer exists, either in the 1850s or 1870s. Depends on what side of the line. Either my mom or dad side. So I grew up in Texas, and very proud of that. I grew up actually in Central Texas. I was born in Temple, Texas. Then when my father retired from civil service at the VA hospital there, he moved us to my great grandfather's farm. The same farm that my mom was born at. She was actually born at home.

Dr. Alan Tyroch:   That's where I grew up. I went to Texas A&M for undergraduate. I got a degree in microbiology. I was interested in the sciences. I decided I wanted to be a doctor but actually before that I couldn't decide. "Should I be a veterinarian, or a doctor. Do I want to take care of animals, which are easy to handle. They don't argue or do I want to take care of humans." That's what I wanted to do. To be honest, my grades weren't the best. I was not the worst in class, but I wasn't the highest either. I struggled to get to medical school. It was clear I was going to have a super high battle to get into medical school at the time. I even decided at one point that this is just not...

Ep. 15 — A big time political advisor returns to his small town roots and finds an urgent new cause / James Carville, Democratic political strategist, author, public speaker.

James Carville earned the privilege of breathing what he describes as the “most rarefied air on earth,” when, as Bill Clinton’s campaign manager, he helped Clinton win the Presidency.

Knowing that the only direction from that pinnacle of success was down, Carville made two life-changing decisions:

He walked away from working on domestic political campaigns, although he remains a prominent advisor to the Democratic Party.

And, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged his home state of Louisiana, Carville moved his family from the nation’s capital to New Orleans in a gesture of solidarity and to help rebuild the city.

The decision to return home to his roots ignited a burning passion for an urgent cause: fighting the devastating impact of climate change on coastal communities.

In doing so, the Ragin’ Cajun, as Carville is affectionately called, knows he has signed up for the most difficult campaign of his life.

He’s raging against a dangerous, unpredictable, and uncontrollable adversary.

The weather.

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Chitra:   Hello, and welcome to When It Mattered, a podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they deal with and learn from adversity. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology start-ups find their narrative. My guest is the legendary James Carville. He's an internationally recognized political strategist and media commentator. He's a best-selling author, public speaker, sports commentator, lawyer, and a prominent advisor in the Democratic Party. Nicknamed the Ragin' Cajun because of his spirited discourse and his Louisiana roots, Carville gained global recognition as the campaign manager who helped elect Bill Clinton President in 1992. He served as a long time CNN co-host and commentator. He currently teaches in the School of Mass Communications at his alma mater, Louisiana State University, home of his beloved LSU Tigers. James, welcome to the podcast.

James Carville:   Thank you, this is a big honor to be on. It's great.

Chitra:   Is it fair to say that you are a bit of a late bloomer? You burst on the national political scene when you were almost 50 as the campaign manager who helped Bill Clinton win the Presidency. What were you up to before you found politics or before politics found you?

James Carville:   A lot of stuff that's not suitable for your podcast. Yeah, I got married when I was 49, and I've only been married once, and I've been married for almost 26 years now. I was 48 when President Clinton got elected, so I guess it's safe to say I was a late bloomer, but bloom I did.

Chitra:   You did. What was your first political campaign like? I guess you were a lawyer before you discovered politics and your natural affinity for it.

James Carville:   I think I discovered politics before I was a lawyer. First campaign I ever worked on was at like 13-14 years old. A guy running for state representative in Louisiana, my job was to go tear the other guy's signs off the telephone poles. Maybe I was 15, because I had to drive. So, when I was 15, I would go around every little place in Louisiana and tear the signs up of the political partner off the telephone poles.

Chitra:   That's great. A lot of our listeners may not know that your last name Carville is actually the name of the town where you were born and raised. Carville, Louisiana, named after your paternal great-grandfather and postmaster Louis Arthur Carville. So, you have deep multi-generational roots in Louisiana. Can you talk a little about that?

James Carville:   By way of interest, my great-grandfather was actually a soldier in the Union army and was a Republican member of the Louisiana legislature doing reconstruction. He died and his wife,

Ep. 14 — A federal prosecutor kidnapped at gunpoint fights for his survival and discovers what’s truly important in life / Stanley Alpert, Environmental Lawyer and Author.

Federal prosecutor Stanley Alpert was enjoying the cold January New York air as he walked to his Greenwich Village home when he felt the gun pressing into his back and realized he was being held up for money.

But what started out as an armed robbery quickly turned into a kidnapping when the thugs learned of Alpert’s significant bank balance.

In an instant, the prosecutor’s plans to spend his 38th birthday the next day with his family and friends changed dramatically. So did his life priorities.

Alpert’s goal: Convincing his captors to let him go and learning enough to put them behind bars if he survived the ordeal.

For the next 25 hours, as he was held hostage and his captors tried to empty his bank accounts and max out his credit cards, Alpert made some strategic and tactical decisions that convinced his captors to let him go.

In the process, Alpert learned some vital lessons about himself.

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello, and welcome to When it Mattered. A podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they overcome adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Stanley Alpert, an environmental lawyer, among other positions in his distinguished career, Alpert served for 13 years as a successful federal prosecutor handling environmental cases for the U.S. Department of Justice in the Eastern District of New York.

Chitra Ragavan:   On the eve of his 38th birthday, Alpert was kidnapped near his Greenwich Village home, and held captive for than 24 hours. He was lucky to released but not before his captors got his ATM password and withdrew large sums of cash from several banks. Alpert wrote a memoir about the incident and what it taught him, called The Birthday Party: A Memoir of Survival

Chitra Ragavan:   Stanley, welcome to the podcast.

Stanley Alpert:   Thank you for having me, Chitra.

Chitra Ragavan:   So this was on cold January night in 1998, and you were walking to your house in Greenwich Village and you were in a really good mood.

Stanley Alpert:   I sure was. I just met a young woman on the train. We'd gone and found some chocolate chip cookies. I got my box, and she got hers, and she went upstairs to go to her apartment and then I walked up the street going towards mine, and that's when my life changed.

Chitra Ragavan:   What happened?

Stanley Alpert:   As I got to the corner of 10th Street and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, I felt a tug on my elbow. I spun around, there was an automatic machine pistol in my gut. Two men behind me with guns. They pushed me into the street into a car, and shut me in the car. They demanded my personal information, my bank information, my name, et cetera. And then they drove me to the bank where they began to withdraw my money.

Chitra Ragavan:   Tell me a little bit about who these guys were. What did they look like, what did they sound like, what information were you able to get in those frenetic first moments? I'm sure you were terrified?

Stanley Alpert:   I was absolutely terrified. It was a shock and I purposely kept my eyes down toward my knees in the car because I did not want them to think that I was looking at them, so I got only the barest glimpses of them. They were three young men, very agitated, very excited. The leader of the gang, who went by the street name of Lucky, had a very professional air about him. He spoke well. He demanded all my information, so he could take the money out of the machine.

Stanley Alpert:   So they drove me to the bank and they asked me how much money I had, and I told them I had $110,000 in my savings account. And even though I was a federal prosecutor who did not make the most mon...

Ep. 13 — Uncovering a pre-Civil War era will takes an estate lawyer deep into his family’s history with slavery and helps him come to terms with his sexual identity / Terrence Franklin, Sacks, Glazier, Franklin & Lodise, LLP.

For nearly a quarter century, Terrence Franklin practiced trust and estate litigation, not knowing how his expertise would reshape his own life some day.

Then, a family reunion took Franklin deep into his family history.  At that event, Franklin noticed snippets of names and words taken from what appeared to be the last will and testament of a slave owner named John Sutton, freeing Franklin's fourth great grandmother, Lucy Sutton, and her children and grandchildren.

Franklin made note of it and then got on with his life. But he could never forget those cursive words.

Years later, Franklin traced the original will and found the poignant and untold story of his family’s emancipation from slavery, nearly two decades before the end of the Civil War.

Uncovering his family history transformed Franklin’s mission as a trust and estate lawyer and in the most unexpected way, also helped him reconcile with his sexual identity.

Transcript

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Chitra Ragavan:   Hello and welcome to When it Mattered, a podcast on how leaders are forged in critical moments and how they overcome adversity. I'm Chitra Ragavan. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. My guest today is Terrence Franklin. He's a partner at the law firm, Sacks Glazier Franklin & Lodise. Franklin is a seasoned attorney with more than two decades of experience handling trust and estates litigation. His depth and breadth of expertise on estate matters became of great importance when he found and traced the last Will and Testament that freed his fourth great-grandmother and her children and grandchildren. The will helped Franklin uncover the poignant and untold story of his family's emancipation from slavery nearly two decades before the end of the Civil War and it transformed his mission as a litigator. And in an unexpected twist, that story of emancipation also helped Franklin come to terms with his own journey as an African American gay man searching for his identity. Terry, welcome to the podcast.

Terrence F.:   Thank you, Chitra. It's a pleasure to be here with you.

Chitra Ragavan:   Your moment of adversity came at a relatively young age in 1983. How old were you and what happened?

Terrence F.:   I was just about almost 20 years old, but I had studied abroad and I came back and I'd had a relationship with someone in France and my brother found a letter that suggested to him that perhaps I was gay. And being from an African American family on the South side of Chicago, Christian family, we really didn't believe in homosexuality or that it was appropriate. And my brother told my parents, doing what he thought was the right thing to do for which was best for us as Christians. And they confronted me and asked me about that. And I had to take a moment to try to understand what I could be and how I could move forward with my life. And in that moment of trying to figure out how I could succeed and be a person of substance because I didn't really have any role models who were African American and gay who were successful. I chose to say that I was bisexual.

Terrence F.:    Looking back on it today, I understand that bisexuality is something different. But for me in that moment, this was sort of my way of acknowledging some truth to what my family was saying to me, and also preserving the possibility that I could somehow move forward, continue with my education and be successful.

Chitra Ragavan:   So that intervention really was a really transformative moment in your life. What happened after that?

Terrence F.:   It was a transformative moment because without really setting out to do so, I then sort of was in the process of trying to figure ...