I took care of a young lieutenant and he was shot in the head. You know, We're in a dusty desert tent, you know, with lots of munitions being fired around us, and he needed an operation. We didn't have drills, so I used actually the black and decker drill that we've been using to put up the tents and did the operation on the back of his head in the middle of this warzone.
Hello Loves, I'm Andrea Waters King. That was doctor Sanjay Gupta, neurosurgeon and CNN's award winning Chief Medical correspondent, sharing one of the most harrowing moments of his career. Sanjay and his wife of over twenty years, Rebecca, joined us for a rare joint interview, giving us an intimate look into
their lives. We'll hear what Sanjay is really like as a husband and three time girl dad, the social media rules in the Gupta household that I think every parent will want to hear, and the incredible life changing stories that have shaped America's favorite doctor. You do not want to miss this conversation. This is My Legacy, a podcast hosted by me and my husband, Martin Luther King. The third eldest son of doctor Martin Luther King Junior and
Coretta Scott King. Together we're caring for their iconic legacy of equality, peace and justice. Plus we're joined by our good friends New York Times bestselling authors Mark and Cret Kilberger. Let's dive in.
Welcome to My Legacy. Today, we're honored to sit down with doctor Sanjay Gupta and his wife, Rebecca Gupta. Together, they built a life of purpose, compassion, and connection, and we hope that their journey will inspire you to create a living legacy and to lead a more fulfilled life. What makes this podcast unique is not just hearing from brilliant people like Sonjay, but also getting insights from the remarkable people who've walked beside them every step of the way.
Rebecca's love and partnership has been central to Sanji's extraordinary and we're excited to have both of you here today. And so, doctor Gupta, would you mind introducing your wife to.
A very nice that's very very well done. I like that this is my lovely wife, Rebecca, who she probably knows me better than I know myself, and we've been married for twenty plus years now. So three lovely kids together and as you said, made this beautiful life together. She is an attorney here in Atlanta and does all kinds of activities in the community to make the place the world a better place.
I may we also add that there are neighbors exactly.
So let's go right back from the beginning, if we can. Sosanja, your family came from India, grew up in Michigan with your brother. Can you tell us how some of the values that your parents helped raise you with influence how you've sought to live your legacy.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I don't I hadn't really reflected on this very much until more recently after I had my own kids. But my parents or immigrants, and my mom in particular had a really really challenging upbringing because she was part of the great partition of the subcontinent of India. And this is nineteen forty seven timeframe.
She was five years old. So you, in the pursuit of your religion, you give up everything you have, You give up your home but also your way of life, and flee to another place and live in refugee camps. And I bring that all up to say that that was my mom. So that's the woman who raised me. And you know, when you have a mom like that, saying I can't do something is not an acceptable answer. You can't. I fled a country when I was five. I lived in a refugee camps till I was twelve.
I was the only woman engineer at my college in India, and I became the first woman engineer at the Ford Motor Company in the United States. They never had an engineer who was a woman before that. So that is the house that I grew up with. And you know, my dad also an immigrant, although it's a funny sort of thing because in many ways he did not go
through it. My mom went through during the partition, and he's almost always had a sense of this is her story, even though I'm also Indian, this is her story, and so both very focused on academics and this idea that you know, I think if you're an immigrant, you you
chose to live in the United States. You feel privileged to live in the United States, and you when I was growing up, there was always a sense that maybe we wouldn't live here anymore because it couldn't make it work, and so that was sort.
Of the background were you born in the United States.
I was born in the United ste Okay.
And I know that you all have taken your daughters back to Indy. You have three beautiful daughters. Thank you fantastic and you all have traveled to India with them, correct, And so I'm just really curious as to seeing India through their eyes.
They were very young when we took him to India, and it was an interesting because at their age they kind of said what they thought, they didn't kind of really hold back. I think one of the cutest conversations we had was with our youngest. In India, there's you know, a lot of cows around and my we were driving around with a cousin and her daughter, and my youngest goes, well,
why do you have all the cows? Why are all the cows all over and they're in the streets and you know, and the auntie says, well, that's because you know, we really love and respect and cherish them, and we feel that, you know, they provide us milk and substance are wonderful and we really care for them, and my daughter, without missing it, beat goes, well, if you really loved them, it seemed like you put them on a farm where they couldn't get hit by a car. So everybody has their own perspective.
And you all have been married for twenty years, yes, So I'm just really curious, after twenty years of togetherness, what are some things that you all have Not only that you've seen Sanjay pass down that you've passed down to your girls, but is there anything that you all do in particular that with the girls out of your own unique legacy?
You know, I think that that's a really large question to try to unbundle, and you think about all the little things that we do. But one of the big things that I think really helped a lot of that is our family dinners. We sit down and have dinner almost every night, and when we do, even when we're out in public, we're laughing hysterically. We are joking. I mean, people come up to us and are like, while you're
making so much noise, you're laughing so much family. Like my mom will come out to dinner with us and she's like, are you guys always this like raw, just and just loud and crazy, And we're like, yeah, we we really are. But we don't hold back too. We like love each other. We talk about things, we tease each other, but really that's all because of Sunday. He really makes it a fun, you know, activity that everybody
wants to be there for. They all show up for dinner and they're like, they're like seven seventh and the time really hit because of COVID, because he would get this tiny little window to come and eat at a certain time that he like told, you know, you know,
and I need to eat. So they're like, okay, we'll give you like seventh, He's like seven thirty, give me a break, and so we'd all go up and during all that stress, we're still laughing and joking, and that really I think even now they all talk about, well, when when's dinner family dinner and we're all we go out on vacation and we all want to have dinner together. It's it's important to us.
Are there phones?
Are Are they allowed to bring their phones to dinner?
There's no phones on at dinner the hardest, but he knows, he follows. Sometimes they're present for I want to show you this picture of something to happen today, or sharing, but not otherwise they're not visible or out or if they aren't, you know, they're gone, but it's never been a problem.
It's very interesting not to make this a data analytics thing, but there was really good data on families that dine together at night. You may have seen some of this data. But the likelihood you were not going to suffer from a mental illness, the likelihood you were going to go to college, the likelihood you would not end up in prison, likelihood you would not take drugs were so directly correlated with having dinner with your family every night, or most
nights at least. It's not why we started doing it, because we just really enjoy being together and you know, to have that time to check in in a non threatening way. You know, you don't have to make eye contact, you can sort of ask questions like this. Uh, it's just turned into a really nice thing.
For us, and we've learned over the years, like we're not going to talk about one person's bad you know, test score, We're not going to I mean, we keep it sounds I get.
Kicked under the table.
I know that I appreciate it.
Yes, we're Bacca.
Could you share the story of how you all met and in a twenty something Sanjay when he was in medical school and you went in law school.
It's kind of funny. So, I mean it's a little embarrassing. We met through a mutual friend at you know what, you're in college and your social time is often spent like at bars, and so we were at a bar and somebody knew us. Both was like, hey, you know, you got to meet and that's how we met, and and it took a while from there. We were just friends. It took a while from there before we started dating
and that kind of thing. But that's more typical to college, I think, and more typical to a lot of relationships people. Not everybody is like love at first sight. It's more like you get to know each other and then maybe we should.
I feel like I was just insulted.
You have some analytics, so are those who are friends first they tend to what is the science?
Well, I don't know. In my anecdotal case of one, it worked out all right. Site for you pretty high on that scale. Yeah, so much higher.
Than hers to be.
Yeah.
I actually it's interesting. I mean I think I don't have the like, the statistics or anything to back me up on this, but I think men tend to have more visual like when they're attracted and women are more intellectual.
So did you see them. They're shaking their hands eagerly and take what do you think?
Yeah, I think the way you interpret that COMMI we are either smart nor good looking. It took a while on the you know.
Like to be honestly, Well, what.
Is the secret though? The two of you have been happily married for twenty years and extraordinarily demending lives. Like, let's just call it what it is. Like you're on television, as you said, you're whisking back for dinner. You know, America's doctor. You run your own law firm or back up for goodness sakes, and raise three daughters between the two of you, Like, how do you stay connected?
Which is very involved in the community as well.
So I'm asking this, like, not just for our listeners, I'm asking this for Mike, myself, my wife who got we got three kids. How do you stay connected as a couple?
Well, one of the big things, and again I give Senjay credit for this. We'd go for walks. Whenever we had a chance, we go for a walk together. Sometimes for a long time I was running, but even when we would run, we spent part of that time walking. And just talking and connecting. And and even if it's not like we're not talking about really anything, like you know, what do you think about that color that person was wearing or something? I mean it is it just gives
you that time to connect. And and now we go for a walks.
When you all.
Do spend time together, are you all able because with your schedule, his schedule, the girls schedule, do you all have a lot of one on one time with the two of us or would you say you all have more family time together.
What's a lovely thing about teenage girls is they don't necessarily want to spend a lot of time with us, like we want to be somewhere in our orbit.
But yeah, sometimes all of a sudden get an evening free and we'll say, how did this happen?
Are you a romantic or like, what's what's your demeanor when you guys want to have a chance to connect.
I'm probably more of the romantic.
I love wait for him to answer.
Look at Mark space.
I think I'm pretty romantic. I think definitely more procedural, like in the sense that let's make a plan, you know type of thing, and so, but I don't know, does that is that at odds with romanticism. I don't know, question, but one of the.
Things he does do that that's romantic, but I think it's towards our whole family is in the mornings, when he has to get up and go before the rest of us, you always kind of will leave the lights on and some music playing, and sometimes you know, he'll turn the coffee pot on, or like if it's cold, he'll turn the fireplace on, which is nice to come down to in the morning.
Start cars for people. And when it's cold, you know.
He starts the girls cars because that's an old like because we're from Michigan. That's an old Michigan like sing and our kids are like, why are you starting? Used to be really cold?
I love that, I think because I was thinking about this, uh and and anticipation of this interview. By the way, people don't get to have nice conversations like this enough. I just I'll just throw that in there, like it's funny. We talk all the time, Rebecca and I, and yet we probably don't really have conversations like this. But I think, oh, let me just say what. I think that the the idea that there's a lot of mutual respect for each other.
Like I think that that that ingredient more than maybe any other, the the love at first sight, the intellectualism, all of that. Mutual respect, genuine respect, I think is the key. And and also coupled with that is the idea that I never question she has my best interests
in mind. I think when you have interactions with people in your life, you do wonder they're competing interests, sometimes with why they're telling you what they're telling you, or and and and that's okay, that's it's not a criticism, that's life. But I think when you have a partner who who you don't ever question that they have your best interest in mind, that's a really powerful thing. And it's hard to find. It's hard to find, and if you find it, you hang on to it for sure.
Sandia, of course you're known as America's doctor. But Rebecca at home, does he try to give medical advice?
And or is he you know, normal? I know what she's gonna say, and she's right. Even if I don't like it, I agree with it.
We've you know, things happen, right you have kids, they fall, they get you know, bruises or bangs or you know, cuts, and frequently you got to run to the er and you know, get stitches and stuff. Usually the decision of whether or not to go to the er is on my shoulders. I mean just last night was at the er. And sometimes like, you know, stitches to him or like,
they'll be fine, It'll just be a little cut. And they are girls, so they're gonna care more about whether or not their chin that's cut, like that much is sewn up or not. And he's like, it'll just be a little scar. It's like a you know, show is strength and I'm like god character. So every once in a while we we have those those kind of conversations and then things like rashes and I mean he'll be like, I'm a neurosurgeon. I gotta like I gotta know when
to stick in his day of my lane. So but he's also really really good at like the big things, you know, which is which is really helpful because and and it is wonderful because he's so kind of gracious there. I don't think there's anybody who's ever called him, he's ever turned down or not helped or even if he's like I look, I can't talk to him. But tell him X, Y, and Z. He's always been very very good about that.
The girls definitely go to mom.
Answer your question.
So I don't know.
You call me America's doctor, which is very gracious, but not at home, not the home doctor.
When you all go into the yard, does the other doctors and nurses eyes get big, like, oh, America's doctors here.
Well, it's funny. One of the guys throwing stitches into the same daughter, same daughter, a different daughter when we got to the ear. I went that time, and he happened to be somebody that I had trained, and and so right away he got super nervous. So I had to walk out of the room. And then I and then, as it turns out, she was more critical of him than I would have ever been. She's like, you didn't throw that stitch, right, you have.
To do that literally made the guy rethrow a stitch. And he's going, oh my god, you didn't even have you even even go to medical school and you're telling you to rethrow a stitch. I'm like, that's not acceptable. You're nervous.
Are you mess with doctor Bob? I love stay with us because coming up we'll hear from Sanjay and Rebecca about raising healthy daughters in our social media obsessed world. We'll be right back after a word from our partners. Welcome back to my legacy. We have the privilege of speaking with America's doctor, doctor Sanjay Gupta and his extraordinary wife, Rebecca Gupta Andrea. Your turn to jump.
In, Sanjay.
Even with everything on your plate, you still make time for patients and surgeries each week at Emory. Now, is there any particular patient that has really impacted your life that you still think about to this day.
Yeah, there's a lot of patience. You remember all your patients, you know. I think the nature of things probably similar in life, as you remember things that were harder, more challenging in some ways. There have been times I think when as a journalist you're in situation where all of a sudden a neurosurgeon is needed, and that is an
unusual situation to be in. When you're in the middle of a war zone and there's no other neurosurgeons there, but someone's been injured and needs brain surgery in the middle of the desert, or middle of a natural disaster, or on the moving ship, whatever it may be. I think those stories I remember the most just this confluence
of the world. I took care of a young lieutenant in Iraq in two thousand and three named Jezus Vidania, and he was shot in the head and it was, you know, we're in a dusty desert tent, you know, with lots of munitions being fired around us, and he needed an operation and trying to operate on him, and that's we all had our biochemical suits on, you know, so just imagine the scenario. We didn't have drills, so I used actually the black and deck or drill that
we've been using to put up the tents. I sterilized that bit and did the operation on the back of his head in the middle of this war zone. And then a black Hawk helicopter came and picked him up and took him off. And I didn't know anything about him except his name is Vedagna.
And he's the macguy for of neurosurgery. He said, he's not even giving himself enough credit. Like they took an IVY bag and cut it open because they didn't have any anything sterile, and that he knew the inside of an IVY bag would be sterile so that he could like help, you know, protect the wound. Because it's a desert and there's dust and dirt everywhere, even inside the operating theater. So yeah, he he doesn't really give himself
enough credit on that one. And there's others that, especially during that time that he helped that nobody will ever hear those stories, but they're incredible.
And if I may interrupt, because I actually know a little bit how the story ends. He survived. He survived, like you got to tell that part of it.
Also, Oh yeah, it's it's it's incredible. So I was back home. I just tell you because you'll appreciate. And I get a fun phone call one day in the area code is six one nine, which I recognize as San Diego. So I answered the phone. He's like, oh, hey, is this doctor Gupta. I have an update on one of your patients. First thing I thought is they got the wrong doctor Gupta. So I said, I think he got the wrong guys. It turns out there's a lot of doctor Gupta's. He goes, no, I think, did you
remember operating on Jesus Vedanna over in a rock? And I remember thinking to myself, yes, of course, how do you forget operating on Jesus in the middle of the desert. You know, it's like this, this really sort of metaphorical thing. And he said, he's doing pretty well. He's got a little bit of left hand weakness and he's doing well. You should visit him sometime.
And he's like, he's getting married and.
Yeah, he had a girlfriend. He was getting married. He's you know so, but i'll tell you. I'll just tell you really quickly, because I did go visit him. And he's this handsome guy, this handsome marine, and he's so young. And you forget how young the people are who safeguard our country. They're young. They're my kid's age now, you know, and they're responsible for keeping our entry safe. It's a monumental task. But anyways, I talking to him and he's so he's such a nice guy, and you know, he
right away get into it. And he's living with his mom and his dad. And his mom comes out a little later and she's very sweet. She's like, are you the guy that operated on my son? I said yeah, and she's like taking my hands and you know, very nice. Dad came out a few minutes later. Dad's are different, right, he goes, you're the guy that operated on my son. I said, yes, yes, sir, I am he goes and you're a journalist. He never got the whole story.
I never got the whole story.
And I just thought that was so interesting that, you know, I sat down and talked to them mother, father, and son, and he had been shot in the head. He had gone to Kuwait City, then he had gone to launchdul Germany, then he'd gone to Walter Reed and then he'd gone to San Diego. And as I was sitting there talking to them, I realized they had never really talked about it.
Wow.
They he almost died in the desert and they never life became procedural as opposed to reflective. Reflection is a luxury for a lot of people, and they hadn't reflected. So all of a sudden, I'm like, I'm enabling and empowering a conversation between this family that otherwise I don't think would have been had. And I'll be honest, and
I'm not just saying this. I think that was as therapeutic for him as operating on him in the desert, that type of connection and his family and his family, Yeah, beca Can.
I ask you a question, So all of us here have been in war zones and conflic zones. It's just the nature of the work. And I remember, I sincerely own personally when I got back, it played with my head a little bit, like you sit with child soldiers and some pretty horrific realities of like the mutilation of the violence that takes place. And I remember coming back and personally actually having nightmares from what I had experienced.
And my wife was the one who I just talked through a lot of this with to try to make sense of everything seeing. But I don't know if you I found that you serve that role with your husband because he comes back from these really tough realities.
Well, absolutely, I mean there's isn't any time, and sometimes it takes, like probably with your wife, it takes she takes responsibility of pulling it out of you, like you know, let's talk, or I noticed this, or you know, there's little things like when he came back from Smelia, I think one of our daughters didn't want to eat something and he got really upset about it. But it was just a reaction to like all that he had been through. It was nothing unusual. I mean our daughter was little,
so it wasn't really anything unusual. For a kid, but for him, after seeing what he had seen, it was just too difficult for him to see somebody like turning away food kind of thing. We give him the space where he can say, I can say, well, you know that's normal, so let's talk about this.
And.
It helps. And sometimes you never know when that comes out. I mean there's little things sometimes that he'll do even now that I can see that are because of experiences that he's had that were so impactful. And I don't think there's one thing he's ever done that hasn't impacted him.
He's super empathetic, so it all hits him. I think that's what makes him so good at what he does, is because he does feel every single thing that he goes through, and then he can process it and explain it to others in a way that they can feel and understand what's going what's happening.
We did ask you a little bit of a different question, and you've written and spoken extensively about longevity and aging, and you've said something we love that if you could go back and talk to your younger self, you would talk about two really critical things. One is take time to talk to people from older generations. Really cool and two attitude matters. So can you just explain to us a little bit about why those two reflections are so important?
Yeah, I think when it comes to talking to people of older generations, you know, I think this is a sense that you have to experience many of these things yourself, and I think there's a lot of truth to that. One of my favorite books is Sadartha by Hermann Hesse, and I think to distill that message down, it's like there are a lot of lessons to be learned in life, but some of them you just have to learn yourself. You have to go through the experience to learn it yourself.
People can tell you, but it can't really be taught. You have to experience. But for a lot of other things, there are hacks. I feel like, you know, things that my dad probably thought of at the exact same age that I was thinking of, or my grandfather, and instead of saying, hey, look, let me just you know, fumble the ball and make the mistakes, Like, can I just ask them what did you prioritize at this point in life? When did you start to shift your priorities? How did
you save money? You know, just whatever it might be from very practical things to to more philosophical things. I think was really important. I also found that it made me feel good to have those conversations with them, and it made them feel good. This is this component of reciprocal altruism. We have a lot of knowledge about our own personal biology now, and I think the idea that we think about affecting our biology through extraneous methods, through
pills that you take, medications, procedures, things like that. One of the really interesting sort of revelations and science is that we can actively change our biology by our thinking. And we kind of thought that if you're optimistic, you're going to feel better, you're gonna heal better, you're going to recover more quickly from things. We kind of knew that, but now we can measure it, and we can see
cells changing. We can see the increase in tumor necrosis factor cells that bust cancer, cells that boost your immune system, purely by thinking about it. And so attitude matters. Attitude matters, It matters when it comes to pain, when it comes to recovery from things. Pain is a big one because we can't really measure pain, and yet we know two people who have the exact same injury, like bang your hand with a hammer. Two people that have the exact
same insult to their hand. If the more optimistic person, person with the better attitude, is going to feel less pain and recover more quickly. Wow, I mean we aren't at the point yet as a human species to be able to quantify this almost sixth sense of things, and yet we know it exists. So attitude matters.
Sancha. Your work has touched countless people, millions are inspired by your message. But I've heard you say when we had dinner that at the heart of all you do, in the heart of your purpose, is your three daughters. So how is being a dad affected how you think of purpose and legacy?
Not only a dad, but a girl dad.
Dad.
It doesn't make reach out to boys a little bit like hey.
Guys, No, it's a it's a it's a it's a great question. And then again, I'll just say, this is what's so nice about these conversations, because I think life moves so fast you don't often reflect on on that sort of thing. It's just my life. I'm a teenage girl dad, and so the idea of how it changed me, I don't know. I don't know what to compare it to. I don't know what I would have been like had I not done this, but I will. I will say this.
It feels very natural. I feel like there's there's times that I've said to Rebecca, I feel like I manifested my destiny in a way that this was how it was supposed to unfold. So that's a good feeling, as opposed to feeling out of sorts or like something doesn't work or belong. I'll be honest. I think a lot of people think about their legacy, and I think that's important to the extent that it drives them to do good things in the world. But to think about yourself
in retrospect generations down the line. Who knows. We live in a really flimsy world and people's attitudes and belief systems and all these things change. So all that to say, we don't think about legacy in a conventional sense that way, except when it comes to our girls. They are the legacy. That's it.
What do you love most being a girl?
Dad? What?
What what gets you up in the morning? Having that wonderful title?
They they challenge me in a in a tell Us tell Us tell Us God. You know, I think I think when you're when you're a neuroscientist, I think part of what drives you is that you're you're consistently trying to find logic in the world, and there are things that are just they defy logic, and you have to get comfortable with that. You know, you have to get
comfortable with the uncertainty. So you know, the idea of walking down in the kitchen in the morning and never really knowing for sure what you're going to get, it's it's it's it's wonderful if you lean into it. Yes, you know, if it scares you, then you know you got to readjust but you get.
To about very personally. And we've got one amazing daughter here among the family as well.
We'll be back shortly with more of this inspiring conversation. We're back with doctor Sanche kuptad is amazing wife Rebecca on my legacy.
Sonjay. On your podcast Chasing Life. You've explored the effects of social media on kids, even going as far as interviewing your daughters, who you call the real experts. How do you and Rebecca help them navigate a healthy balance between social media and real world connections?
I will tell you one thing that I found interesting is that they did this camp over the summer where there was no phones allowed, and it was a couple of weeks.
Right, Yeah, they always did that every summer.
And they come back super happy, super happy from this. And I made the observation that, hey, you know this thing that you are using all the time, you didn't use it at all, and you're super happy. And my youngest, who's I think a very wise child, she said to me, she said, you know, it's called social media. And I said, I get it. She goes, I was totally social. I had all these people in my own age. I was with them all the time. I was interacting in a
social wad. That's what I'm really trying to do. But in the United States many households have become more siloed off, and so having that type of village social interaction, all the kids playing together in the in the street, you know, or in the playground whatever, you know, that you don't see that as much. So this is it is filled
a gap for them. It's there's problems, you know, and I think you know the devices are designed to be addictive in a way, but it does at the same time serve a purpose that I think is very human evolutionarily, Like they want to be together. If they can't be together physically, then they want to be together virtually digitally, and.
That feels different to them, I think than to us. I mean, since they were raised with it, and you know, we're just like you all, like we're trying to balance between the two because just taking it away, it's not they won't be prepared. They're not prepared for digital world, and they are using it also sometimes in a way that is connection. And I do think for us connection is all physical, but perhaps since our kids are being
you know, they're nurtured in a digital world. You know, part of their connection is social, like you know, like digitally.
And you'll notice a big difference when they start driving because then they can go and be social where that is such a huge difference in our society too, Like it's when it becomes the parent's responsibility to get them here and get them there, they spend less time. It's we're controlling it too much, and so they spend less time, like I said, having those study groups or doing those things. And when they do have that autonomy to like go out meet a front for coffee and go over you know,
history or something. They start doing it, and the and the phone and the social media becomes less and less and less.
I'm smiling at my husband across the table.
Yeah, you do notice it, and suddenly you're like, wow, Well, I mean because we have all this technology that tells us how much time our kids are off social media, and we look at our daughter who's in college and now she's living with her sorority sisters that kind of stuff, and she's rarely ever on it, and she used to be our biggest person on it. So it's a social thing.
I'll tell you three quick things that she came up with. Rebecca came up with as far as if people are thinking about social media for their kids. One is that we made an agreement that we actually could have access to their accounts, so kind of the ability to lurk. Now, we didn't really do it much, but they knew that we could. Number two was and we every now and then we would peek in to see what was going on. Number two was that no friends online that you couldn't
touch in the real world. I want to be able to touch that person physically, like or is this somebody who's totally made up right. And the third thing, which Rebecca mentioned is that your technology allows you to monitor screen time, so you can get indicators that there's too much screen time being used on Snapchat or Instagram, and it can even cut off after a certain amount of time. So you know those three things. Again, it's a brave
new world for everybody when it comes to this. But I think they've worked well for our three teenage girls.
Yeah, we did have a cut off at a certain time at night and turn back on at a certain time in the morning because sleep is really important, exactly, and it is hard when they're up studying or need to get the you know, lost that paper or something that they want to reach out. I think technology and social media is not going to go away. It's learning how to make it work for you and thinking about what is the main reason that it is in our lives, and then how do you work around that.
So in a culture that is so focused on, you know, chasing happiness, we often overlook what truly makes life for feeling. So, in your view, what creates a life of real fulfillment.
I'll make my answer very simple. I feel like I got really lucky in life, and I don't know that I deserved it, but I got lucky. I have a great life, and I think my fulfillment is to constantly be a source of good energy for people, to just walk into every situation, every interaction, and sharing good energy is a really powerful thing.
You know.
It's not as objective as money or something like that, but just to bring good energy to someone's life because I was blessed with it and so I want to give it away. I also think, as I talked about in the book, that there's a component of reciprocal altruism there.
It feels good to do good. This seems almost an anti evolutionary in a way, because it was always the survival of the fittest and everything, so we've got to keep mine and you know, but yet we evolved as humans to feel good when we did good, Like where did that come from? And it's true. I think everybody would agree anybody that if you do something nice for somebody, you actually feel really good about it. And so that's
it for me. I don't think a lot again about legacy, but the idea that genuinely bring good energy into every situation, make people feel good around you take the time to listen. Empathy is not a weakness. Empathy is sometimes seen as a weakness nowadays. When did that happen? It was always a strength when I was growing up, you know, but now it's almost seen as a weakness. So change that narrative.
Well said, because we talk about legacy a lot here. You all focus your legacy globally, you know, nationally and locally. What are some things that you all We talked about your family, which certainly is your legacy, but also how do you spend you all's time. Are there any particular projects that you want to talk about or share?
Well, you know, I think the issue of childhood hunger is something that viscerally affected us. I think the hardest story I ever covered was the famine and Somalia, and there's one hundred thousand children who starve to death, and you think, and this is twenty eleven, I think timeframe around then. So in this day and age that happened, and you think, we know how to do drought resistant agriculture.
We can send Amazon packages to anywhere in the globe within a minute, and yet children are dying of starvation. So that was that was quite striking I think for me and I had a really hard that was harder on me than conflicts and natural disasters because it seems so preventable. And then you came home and you realize that about twelve percent of children in the United States go to bed food and secure, so they don't know
when or if they're going to get another meal. And at the same time, we waste forty percent of our food in this country. This is a math problem. And how did how do we not pay more attention to this math problem? Because kids are dying of starvation. We got nuclear fission to figure out, The Middle East is falling apart, political election cycles around the world are in turmoil.
Those are challenging problems. This one is not as hard, and so you know, we said, let's let's focus our attention in a place that really needs it and where we think we could objectively make a difference. So that's that's how we do it.
I think I have been involved a long time with UNI Seth because they do do a really good job at getting things in those really hard regions or helping people when they have been hit with something like a natural disaster, war. But it's still a problem that even they can't totally get their arms around.
One of the things we talked about at dinner too, which is is you also get not only is it it feels good to do good, it feels good to receive good. It also you get dopamine rushed by witnessing someone just witnessing someone doing good. So which is what excites us too, so much about the Realize the Dream initiative, just America coming together to serve. So it's helping whomever
you're serving, it's helping the person that's serving. But even just witnessing service, witnessing a good act and helps the person as a witness.
Here's another opportunity for your social media is to put those out there so people can see people doing good instead of so much social media out there people doing bad things to each other or competing or yeah, judge.
So guys, we're so grateful for our time today. This has been in such an enlightening conversation, from love to relationships, to social media to raising teenagers. My last question is to you. Your work emphasizes the importance of small, intentional actions to create a healthy and more meaningful life. We're hoping that you could give one, two, maybe even three suggestions backed by science for our listeners on what they can do to live their best lives possible.
There's this one thing that I write about in my book Keep Sharp, which is you know, it's classic because I write an entire book about this topic of brain health. And then I talked to my mom about it and she says, can you can you explain it in a couple sentences? You write an entire book, But she like, what should I do? And the thing I told her, and I mean this is that you should take a brisk walk with a close friend and talk about your problems.
Do that on a regular basis. The brisk walk is important because it's the best way to actually grow new brain cells. That has the greatest evidence behind it. There's obviously benefits to the way you nourish yourselves and the activities you pursue how much rest, but movement in particular, and brisk movement, not intense movement, is the best for
actually what they call neurogenesis human connection. Again, this is one of those things that we've known to be powerful, and now we have data to show that you make more oxytocin, the hormone that actually draws people together when you're spending time with people you love, friends and family. But the last one was a bit of a revelation for me, which is to talk about your problems, because we have long been told it's not the number of
friends you have, it's the quality of those friendships. And what makes a quality friend someone you can be vulnerable around. It's a hack. If you can be vulnerable around that person, you know that they're a quality friend. So talk about your problems and it really works. Something that we we do on a regular basis, as Rebecca mentioned, to have that brisk walk close person talk about the problems and and I think the second thing I would just say is is the idea to constantly put out good energy.
Sometimes you don't even feel like it, just do it. Do it anyway, because you'll feel better if you didn't have good energy going into that situation. By pushing it out, you'll actually grow your own reservoir. It's it's a it's a biological hack.
One of my favorite things about this conversation today is that because people are our listeners are listening and they can't see us, is that every time Rebecca is talking, Sanjay, you're just like looking at her and like just like n say, like you're just like lighting up and.
All every time that that is panic.
She said that.
I like to keep him on his toe.
Well, you guys have been just such an incredible force of nature today. You know, when we see you, we all see you on TV, you do it with such poison empathy and you do it with such genuine desire to communicate clearly to people who you obviously care about. And it's a real gift.
It really really is you.
Mark.
So I just on all our behalf. Thank you very much, appreciate that.
So grateful to both of you for being here today, ensure sharing your story, but how we can leave fulfilled lives and create our legacy every day.
Thank you both.
Thank you, thank you.
Honored and humbled that you would have us. Thank you, thank you very much, thank.
You, thank you for joining us. We are so grateful to have you as part of this journey. For more information on Realize the Dream, visit realizethdream dot org. If you enjoy today's conversation, subscribe and share the podcast with friends, family, and loved ones, and follow us on social media. You can find us on Facebook, install Graham and TikTok at My Legacy Movement. You can also subscribe to our YouTube
channel at my Legacy Movement. At the heart of this podcast is doctor King's vision of the beloved community and the power of connection. Produced by Legacy Plus Studio in partnership with iHeartRadio creator and executive producer Suzanne Hayward, co executive producer Lisa Lyle, editing an av by Guarcia Creative. My Legacy podcast is available on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time, may you find connection and inspiration to live your most fulfilled life.