Welcome everyone to this edition of Amy and TJ. It's Saturday, September thirteenth. We've been doing every week a recovery run episode where we talk about the ways we have intentionally tried to recover spend some time together. This week, honestly, we have nothing to report. This was a very intense and heavy news week. I think it took a toll on a lot of us, and I think it got
really personal for just about everybody in different ways. And certainly we're talking most notably about the political assassination of Charlie Kirk, but there were a lot of other stories that were ripple effects. I think that came from this story. And maybe it's just more of the same of what we've been dealing with, where we've gotten active shooters in schools, we've gotten more hoaxes, and it feels overwhelming to the point where it gets personal and you think about how
it's affecting your life. And we were discussing earlier like how has and I think everyone's felt this, How have this week's headlines? How have you been personally impacted? TJ? Have you felt the weight of this with you and your life and your circle and Sabine like, has this impacted you in a significant way, perhaps more than even other weeks have.
Oh no, it's just a matter of I felt less hope and more despair about where we are. I think we're going more so in this direction before we correct and this stuff stops. It felt like this is going to ramp up. This seems impossible in our lifetimes in twenty twenty five that a political assassination would be taking place. That's insane, right, So it makes me feel like things are going to get worse. At what point do we
turn things around? I actually did think about Emmittil and I thought about George Floyd moments where we all look at something and I don't care who you are, you look and you say, okay, we gotta be better than this. And I looked at this and thought that could possibly be one of those moments and something come of it. But I'm not hopeful there either. So I think just despair was how I walked away from this week.
And it came on a week where we already are reflective and somber because of nine to eleven. It's the twenty fourth anniversary this week, so you already had a heavy week that was kind of predetermined based on our
and we celebrate and we honor and we remember. But in spite of all of that, we had someone actually who was born after nine to eleven who never actually even felt the atrocities of that and what the impact of that, that act of terror created in the generations of folks who have now not even known what it
felt like to live through that day. And so, yes, this week's gunman who took out Charlie Kirk was twenty two, so he was not even alive during nine to eleven, which was something to consider, right, like they don't in this age of feeling connected to people and yet in that sense almost creating a band of thieves, like you have this group of people you find online who think like you, and you can create you can create gang so to speak, or just tribalism where you're like, we
think this and you think that us versus them, and they never really lived through what we all did on nine to eleven. So that kind of struck me that he was he's younger than my oldest daughter.
I think remember al Qaeda, Yes, an Isis, Do you remember the day when September eleventh rolled around an anniversary, and everybody was on heightened alert. You remember that alert system we used to have with the yellow and the orange and the red and the You remember they used to warn us about terrorist organizations. And we found ourselves on September eleventh of this year fearing one of our own.
In fear. Politicians weren't canceling their events because they were scared of foreign actor or a terrorist group was going to attack them. They were worried about an American citizen from the other side of whatever political ideology might take a shot at them.
And in a weird way, this week, with a single shot and a single political assassination, it's carried more weight in a way because someone was silenced for what they think, silence for what they believe, a targeted and assassinated for having a different opinion than the gunmen. And I think, look, we have these mascul shootings, not to you underplay those
and the fear and terror that those instill. But this arbitrary shooting of AR fifteen or some sort of assault rifle where you're just spraying people indiscriminately because you're angry at the world and you have mental health issues, that's
a whole other issue. But I think this act this week cut at the core of who we are as Americans, where we literally stand our ground and base our foundation of our country on the freedom of speech and the freedom of being able to have different opinions and to think that if you think differently than someone else and you talk about it loudly and proudly and grandly, maybe even on major social media platforms, that now you are at risk, physical risk, like your life is at risk.
That is not the country that we believe in that we've built. And that's I think what's so scary about what happened this week.
Now he's not a politician, but it certainly falls in line with political assassinations of what JFK, RFK MLK, Malcolm X all in the sixties was at sixty three, sixty five, sixty eight. I'm missing one of the years, but all of them were silenced because of some power, some voice, some message for what they were saying. They were all silenced for some action they were doing something in their
voice intimidated people. That's where we are now, Where do we go robes If politicians are scared to is this going to discourage I always hate this about politics because I always say like, they're really good people out there who could help, and politics turns them off.
Correct, the people who actually should and could lead our country into better, calmer, more peaceful waters are the very people who know better than to get into it.
So now this you add this to it, my life.
Is going to be on the line, right it used to be. My reputation is going to be on the line. I'm going to be fodder. I'm going to be torn apart. Everyone's going to rip through every potential skeleton in my closet. Now, I don't want that for me. I don't want that from my family because we've all made mistakes. And just to imagine, if your worst mistake was the thing that everyone remembered about you, that was paraded out on every
campaign commercial you could watch on television. Yeah, who wants to put themselves and their families through that kind of scrutiny. Not a lot of people. And so you do have a very small pool of people who are even willing to become politicians. Now you add a threat to their life for based for their beliefs, and a lot of times we all know this. To get elected, you have
to have a strong opinion. You have to appeal to your base, You have to kind of go to maybe the margins of what you believe to bring along the folks who will get you elected in those primaries. That's just how our politics work. But that very strategy is now what potentially could put you at risk, could put
you in the bullseye of somebody who thinks differently than you. So, yeah, this has been a very scary week for a lot of folks, and I can speak personally that this has and so many people out there who are listening have kids in college, kids in high school, kids in school period, and for whatever reason, this all comes in the midst of these We've had school shootings obviously for years now, unfortunately, but now we have these hoaxes, we have these false
nine one called my daughter right now. How many times in the last two weeks have I received a phone call from Analyse who is at the University of Colorado Boulder, with some sort of emergency situation, whether it's a report of a gunman, a report of a bomb threat. That's what we're dealing with right now. I believe she literally is on lockdown right now in her home. She was
pushed out of campus. There are three bills, things now being searched with canine units and police, and she was she facetimed me, and she's kind of got this nervous laughter, trying to play it off because they're hoping and thinking it's probably a hoax. But with a two different school shootings nearby her just in this week, high schools, and then having what happened in neighboring Utah, I've never seen this level of unease in this country, and I don't
know that. I don't know what institution is immune from it at this point.
No, and rose to your point about analyse, I get, at what point does she stop getting scared? And just kind of right, you become immune, you become desensitized to a threat, and you kind of roll your eyes. And then that is the one that's going to be the one? Is it not that we can't have this boy who cry wolf attitude? You have to take each and every one of them seriously. But now it's affecting, like there is anxiety, like what's the next thing? Like I'm on
edge every day. We get up very early and I turn on the tv R, unlock the phone, and I'm nervous to see the first thing that's going to pop up, like what happened overnight? What is it now? And so
this thing and how it looks. It's hard you have to find and we preach it all the time, robes about staying in the moment and enjoying our lives, doing the best we can, kindness and all of these things, and forgiveness even but man, it is hard on a week like this where you just feel anxiety and you feel we didn't know this kid personally, and a lot of the things he said we might even find objectionable. Okay, my heart is breaking for those two kids.
And his wife Erica.
Oh God, But to see that many people can't even just stop there that two kids lost their dad, Like people are being fired left and right across the country because they are putting out messages and essentially saying, so what that he's dead.
I feel like that's almost the worst part of the story. Of course, the death of Charlie Kirk is the most tragic and the worst part of the story obviously, So I just want to make that clear. And it's obviously a relief to know that the gunman is behind bars, But I think The sickening aftermath is the continued hoaxes that are being called in and the apathy and the callousness at which so many people are receiving the news
of what happened. That there is no empathy, there is no there is no compassion, There is none of that for someone who thinks differently than you. And then you have to ask yourself, how am I any different than the people who?
Uh? Nobody gets to that next part? How am I any different? Nobody gets to that part.
It's so easy to agree with and be open minded to the people who think like you do. The challenge is keeping that open mind and that open heart towards people who think very differently than you, and that you might even think aren't good people because you're judging them based on your filter. I just it's one of those things where I just I don't We've been screaming this for so long. When is it not going to be enough?
I don't know. You know, we thought Newtown was, We thought Paul's Nightclub was, We thought the Las Vegas shootings were.
We thought I think you Valdi was the one that sounds great. I think you Valdi was the one that I finally said we will never do anything. I know Newtown should have been the one. And even after Vegas, how awful fifty something Parkland, I forgot Parkland Parklett. Oh my goodness.
I mean, it's just sad. There are so many you forget. And I have been on these campuses. Yeah, and it's the most gutting to see. Let me just tell you, in Uvaldi and in Newtown specifically, I was there for days and days and days. And to see those little coffins, I'm telling you, there's nothing like it. And to know that that's suffering and that loss came at the hands of a young man. And here we are again in the same situation, and you just don't know who you
can trust. You don't know who's good, who's bad, who is going to snap, and who is just having a bad day. It's really hard to know. And it's really disheartening. And and I'm an adult, you're an adult. How do we talk to our kids about this? I don't even know what to say to analyst at this point.
No, I mean, what lesson what are you supposed to say to a kid? You can't explain this evil because I don't understand it. I really don't understand how you get to that point. How is this a gun conversation? It should always be right, access to guns is always worthy of conversation. But what if this is just it's not that. What if it's not mental illness. What if it's just radical behavior? What if this is someone who has just got so caught up. Do you have to
be mentally ill to have done what he did? I don't know. Somebody say you have to be just by its nature. Others would just say you are that. Yes, our dialogue in this country has gotten to a point where people it keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter.
And this the other question is all this technology, have we all become desensitized or at least the younger folks who have not really had to deal in human to human face to face connection, where they've been so removed, like one step removed from actually having people be human, Like if you are on if you're a gamer and you're just everything's virtual, does it take you, like away from the fact that there's a human being on the other side of that debate, there's a human being who
is a father, who's a husband, who has dreams, and hopes and is confused and doesn't know what you know. It's just it's like somehow we just we demonize the other side, and then we justify how we feel and then ultimately even justify our actions.
Man, No, I just don't have to Europe still think about what you say to your kids. I don't have nothing. I really don't want me talking to Sabin. She has more access to things, she sees more things on that phone that I can't keep them from everything she sees it. What do you say? I mean, I don't want it to be out. I don't want her to be in crowds. I don't want to be in crowds. We do events,
we make public appearances. We don't have anything close to security, we don't have anything close to crowds like he brings, but we are in the public. Die. I mean, you just you're scared to go out and you're scared to say anything. I don't know what to say to kids that don't know where the hope is. Where we talking about this earlier, there's nothing like the worst thing in
life is to lose. Hope is not to die. We think that's the worst thing, but it's actually to you die while you're living by losing something inside and hope is the worst thing you can live.
Yeah, And so when we come back, we're going to talk about how we can all live better in the midst of all of this chaos and all of this difficult news, and how we can make a point to not let fear dictate how we live our lives. Welcome back everyone on this Saturday. It is September fourteenth, thirteenth. I jumped ahead. Tomorrow's the fourteenth. Today is the thirteenth, and it's been a hell of a week and a lot of folks. We might be tired, but we're emotionally exhausted,
and we've been struggling. I've been struggling. I'm saying we because I can only imagine that everyone kind of is in the same boat in this situation where we're all feeling a bit underwater. I've been struggling with how to talk to my daughters and even how to get through it as a parent, knowing that I don't have control
over what happens. My girls are off in the world and ones in college and the others in Brooklyn, and who knows what she does and where she is and we all have this feeling of insecurity, I think, really, and I'm talking physical insecurity, which is just the way the world is, and all of what to believe, who to believe. And I think the point being fear is always is there,
and it has been since the beginning of time. And I've really tried to make sure that with what I say to analyse and what I even say to myself, that it isn't fear based, because that doesn't help anything. Yes, we're aware that a threat might be there, but we can't live our lives paralyzed by that fear. I think we have to be motivated by it to make sure we live our lives and every moment to the fullest and not worried about what could happen. I don't know,
how do you? How do you tell? Sabine? We had a really interesting conversation with her just the other day. You and I grew up with tornado drills. I grew up in Saint Louis, you grew up for my formative years, and you were in Arkansas. We were talking about how when we had drills in school, we were running out into the hallway and we knew what tornado position was. Right, So beIN had a very different experience.
Yeah, they have shooter drills, they have lockdown drills, they have on drills in which they're trained to hide, in which their teachers are trained to lock the door and pull the shade, and they're trained to go barricade themselves in certain areas of the classroom. At that's different. So are we Now this is just a part of our culture.
Now we have to be trained to what to expect and what we're putting ourselves at risk, and how we're putting ourselves at risk anytime we show our faces in public. It shouldn't be the case. It's if we need to be mindful of it. I guess we will adjust. It's just a shame to see that this week and we are I feel terrible because we are. We put this in place to recovery Run as really a way to show people, Yeah, you gotta give yourself a beat, take you always got to take a break with you, whether
you're actually running or figuratively. During the week. We are all ripping and running figuratively every single week. And man, we have had I had too many weeks where we come on the Recovery Run and say, yeah, We're sorry, we're just really letting you down. We haven't recovered the right way in this today, and this week just feels.
I feel like this is more of a reflective run, and every now and then you're like, one, Okay, maybe this is our reflective run. But I think it's important to actually verbalize how we're feeling. I mean, there's no way you can consume the news that we've consumed this week. I mean, you think about it. Many of you listening watched that video and maybe even inadvertently, you didn't know what you were about to see. And a lot of your kids have seen it too. You know, you don't
want to think it, but they have. It was available to everybody. The things we saw that we weren't prepared for take a toll, and I just think it's important for everybody to take a beat and acknowledge that that weighs on you, and it defeats the human spirit in a lot of ways, because you start to think the worst of everybody, Like, is there you know, is there
any hope? Is there anyone good in the world left? Yes, and there are mostly good people, and you get a couple bad folks who then make us all feel the weight of that negativity, and I just I just wanted to have a conversation because I'm I was really struggling with with Anna Lisa and what to talk to her about and how to tell her to be vigilant but not to be not to be in any way stopped from living her life because she's in fear, but just
to be aware. And I wanted her to just to take it and be kind and never not react to people and if things look scary, walk away. Like you've got to give your kids the tools, but also make them recognize that you can't live like that, like always anticipating worst case scenario. But you get into this mindset when you hear news and you have a week like we did today or this week excuse me, where you just start to feel like, oh my god, I'm gonna have to be on high alert and you're one of
those people your head's on a swivel. We talk about it a lot. How do you balance that awareness with making sure it doesn't dictate your life and stop you from doing things you love and being with people and being at events and things you want to do, concerts and parades and you know, football games all of these things. Now it's you know, in the back of your mind. Ann Alice told me she was worried about going to the football game this weekend. That's so incredibly sad. That's so incredibly sad.
That has to be on her mind, any young person's mind, in any of our minds, but it is. And folks, we can't say it enough. Just be as kind as you can, yeah, and how good as tight as you can, and don't miss in a moment because you don't know if it's going to be the last. You were talking about this earlier, What was the last thing, Charlie Kirk said to his wife. Yeah, And she said to him, not knowing that it was going to be the last time.
You never think it's going to be the last time, and you can't necessarily live it sounds morbid, but you just youd never know.
So that's always the takeaway in all of these moments. The takeaway is to love, to live, to be kind to the way to defeat darkness is through light and through love, and so that's how we will get through. But the conversation, I think is an important one to have with yourself and with the people you love and hopefully it can remind us all to take advantage of the time that we do have with one another to
be loving and kind. So anyway, with that everyone, we hope you have a wonderful Saturday and a great weekend. I made me roback alongside TJ. Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.