America Doesn’t Give Time for Grief
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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. Look alive, my friends. I'm Bea Spear. And I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream, presented by Betches News. Where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience.

Today we are joined by journalist Luke Russert and author of the book, Look For Me There, Grieving My Father, Finding Myself, as well as the host and creative director of the new MSNBC Live. Welcome, Luke. Thank you so much for joining us. It's an honor to be here. I've followed you guys for a very long time, so it's finally happening that I'm on the show. I love it. Well, I got to tell you, when Sammy said you were coming on the show, I was like, a Bills fan. Yes, we finally have a Buffalo guy. I live in Rochester. I tape in Rochester. I live in Rochester.

Big time Bills fan. And so I was mostly excited and hoping that we were going to talk about Keon Coleman and where you think this season's going to go for us. But Sammy said we had to talk about the book. It's too bad because I would have loved to do a whole hour on the Bills. And congrats. The 716 loves the 585. The growth that Rochester has in the Bills fandom over the last 20 years has been incredible and so great for the region. Really love it.

Well, because they were trying to move training camp. Potentially, they were going to move it out of Johns Fisher's College, which is like our special time with the Bills. And then the Bills were like, we can't do that to the 585. They'll lose their fucking minds if they don't get training camp. So we're safe. Absolutely. And honestly, everybody loves it in Rochester. It's such a fun place to go there. It works out really well. So don't mess with perfection.

So what is a DC creature like you, Luke Russert, have such a strong connection to Buffalo? You talked about this a lot in your book, and I think this is a great way to open up and talk about what your book is about and your legacy of your parents and your grandparents.

Well, it's a good question. You know, my mom grew up in Alameda, California, right in the Bay area. My father grew up in South Buffalo, New York. So both of those places were really ingrained in me from a very young age. I'm an only child. So my parents really tried to get me back with cousins when, um,

they were able to and wanted to have as much of a sense of family as they could because they were the only ones from their family in Washington, D.C. So I spent a lot of time in those two places in the Bay Area and Buffalo growing up and just always felt a real connection with them, especially Buffalo, because, you know, as the old adage goes, you take your mom's religion and your father's sports teams. So I've been a big, big Buffalo Bills fan since I was born. Some of my earliest memories are

It's something that it's a wonderful connection not only to my family, but also my father and just a wonderful part of the country that is often overlooked by a lot of people. And it's too bad because it's really just the city of good neighbors, incredible food. The weather in the summer is great and just a really nice, cohesive structure.

But yeah, that's what I'm a, I'm a huge fan of it. And it's also, I think important because I grew up in DC, DC proper, uh, which is a very interesting childhood. Um,

So I grew up right by the National Zoo. So I'd ride my skateboard to go see the pandas growing up. And that was a lot of fun. And then you were always involved in what sort of the politics of the day were, especially as a young only child. That was the conversations at the dinner table. Like, hey, what did you think about what Bill Clinton did today or Newt Gingrich did today, et cetera. But then my parents wisely realized it would be good to get out and have sort of a more normal upbringing. So that's where the Buffalo and Bay Area stuff came back up a lot.

That's what I was wondering about, because like being from this area, you know how family driven it is and how everybody up here has got like five, six kids. There's a lot of kids in the families up here. It's it's like one of those places where you can afford to have multiple children. It's a real working class kind of town.

And then growing up in D.C. with journalist parents who are deeply serious people, you had to feel a little bit like you had to mature really quickly because it's just the three of y'all sitting at the table talking about the policies of Bill Clinton. We're like, you know, your cousins up here in Buffalo are talking about, well, at that time, probably O.J. Simpson, which we will leave off. We will leave off. These were the better days. But, you know, and having a totally different childhood, how did you navigate that space?

Did Buffalo feel like an exotic oasis to you being from D.C.? I would be sent there happily for a few weeks in the summers over the years. It was really funny. As a young kid, I was like, I don't know why people hate on Buffalo's weather. It's always 78 and sunny when I go in June and July. I go swimming in the lake up there. It's great. No, but it's a very interesting childhood because I had both very serious-driven parents. My father was the first member of his family to go to college.

college. They both had a great sense of humor. My mom still has a real great sense of humor. She'll listen to this and tell me all the things that I was supposed to say that I didn't and know I was wrong. So she's the best. But it was one of these things where you basically would go there and see, for lack of better words, more real America. And

You asked about like safari or what was that like? It was not like that for me. I think my parents did a good job, especially in the D.C. area of trying to have a real exposure to a diversity of people, which is one of the reasons why the D.C. area is really nice. You do have a real diversity in this area.

area. But one of the things that I distinctly remember is we'd go up to Buffalo for Thanksgiving and there is these Black Friday sales at the gallery, at Walden Gallery of Mall, and it was just complete mayhem. And I would go there with my cousins and aunts and uncles and we would go at like 8 a.m. and just run around and get all the deals. I just remember that distinctly. It's like, yeah, the Black Friday gallery and mall shopping experience, you're very far from Capitol Hill at that moment for sure. Yeah.

That's the thing about this area and the suburbs that I think is so great, though, is there's a collective consciousness. We do all tend to do the same things. It's very predictable. And in that predictability can be a lot of safety, can be a lot of tradition. And so that's why I wanted to ask you, like, as a kid who grew up in D.C., went to the St. Albans School, is like dealing with all these other senators, kids in the world that kind of like, you know, exists outside of the regular world.

what that connection to Buffalo means to you, especially now that your father has passed on. When you come back home now, what does that feel like? People are so extraordinarily kind. And I love the acceptance of people there. One of the stories I tell is there's this local bar in South Buffalo called the Blackthorn. And my grandfather was a member of the bar. I mean, they would have their funny meetings there like once a month and talk about the

business of the day and whatnot. And basically the whole membership was about how to march in the St. Patrick's day parade. But when I go back there, I try to go back there a few times a year. It's my unofficial mailing address at Buffalo. So people will like leave things off for me at the Blackthorn bar.

And they'll be like, oh, make sure Luke gets this. And I always get it. And I think that says a lot that you don't get that in a lot of cities in America, that someone can drop something off for somebody at a bar and they may hold it six, seven, eight, nine months and it's there and I pick it up and it's all in safekeeping. So,

That's just something that I really, really like and something that not only keeps me grounded, but it's just a welcome reminder how there are a lot of communities around the country that have that really cohesive structure. And I saw that a lot when I traveled around the world, too. It's something that people ask, you know, what's something that you saw in your travels that you really could bring back? I think a lot of other countries and I think cities like Buffalo and Rochester do this better than a lot of other big cities.

There's a neighborhood connection where something as simple as going on your porch every morning, drinking a cup of coffee and then walking around the block and chatting with people is expected. It's not odd. It's not like someone's being nice. It's like, no, you're supposed to go out and do that every morning. And I would be in places like Portugal or Nicaragua or Zimbabwe and people would do that.

And it was like, man, this is nice. People look out for one another, but there's also this real deep sense of community. And I think something about America is for all our abundance, we're very isolated. We're very lonely a lot of times.

because we don't have that as much. And anything we can do to foster that is good. In person, not online. In person. It's a big, big difference. Yeah, I think that's a lot of what we're missing and why even when I go back to where I grew up in the suburbs, there's something comfortable about the movie theater and the mall and the pizza place and those haunts and everything.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, just for the sake of, you know, the listeners who may have not read the book, though, honestly, highly recommend it. Such a great read. Just go straight through and lovely. Just a lovely weekend read, truly. So, you know, you talk about how your travels...

showed you sort of the other side of the human experience kind of opposite to that sterilized DC, very formal upbringing with two very badass parents and how that had kind of, in ways it gave you so much and in a lot of ways limited you.

And I think it's a very American thing that like reaching for status, reaching for more success. And, you know, you find obviously through your travels that you kind of have every advantage except for the one thing that really matters, which is this connection and, you know, sort of window into life and perspective that you can kind of really only get from not having those privileges. And so I guess what I was kind of wondering is,

Throughout the book, if you could throw your hand that you were dealt back in and pick any other, you know, you don't know which one it'll be. Would you do that? No, because I know, you know, it's interesting. You always think about that to a degree, right? What would life have been like had this been different? What would life had been like if I had been one of my cousins and not me?

But I think that's a really hard game to play because there is a certain, I think, element of you're here in this universe for a reason. The track that you were given to explore, that's one that ultimately is up to you and you have to do. I think for me, the reason why I would never give it back is I was blessed to have a wonderful father, supposed to have a wonderful mother as demanding as she is.

And I've met a lot of people who have not had that privilege of having loving parents and you see the toll it takes on them. So that's something I would never want to give back. Not that it's always easy to have demanding parents, but I knew I was I was never entitled, but I was always loved. And that's just a very important thing.

I think for me, if I could go back and do it over again, the one thing, and I'm always curious about this, is had my father not passed when he did, when I was only 22, and I felt this responsibility to shoulder his legacy, to live the right way, what I perceived that to be by Washington standards or the standards of media or politics, etc.,

I often think about, let's say that he had survived and I had gone on to grad school and pursued international relations as I had wanted to. Would I have spent some years in my 20s after I got that degree, maybe living abroad and living a more laid back existence? I don't know the answer to that. But I felt that in those early 20s, a lot of times where people do have that wanderlust, a lot of times where people do have the time to figure it out, I never felt like I had the time to figure it out.

I felt like, no, you have to pick up this torch and you got to keep moving. You got to keep going forward. And a lot of people have reached out to me since the book has been published. A lot of firstborn people

daughters have connected with me about this complex, about the need to carry on and take care of the family, make sure that everybody else in the family is doing okay. The responsibility is to not only provide for yourself, but for the community in general. And I felt that a lot. As a firstborn son is the only one. But yeah, that's the one thing of the hand. It's if my father had lived or if I had had

More fortitude. If I had less fear in my 20s to go out and sort of strike out on my own, what would life have looked like that? Maybe I would be running a jet ski rental business in Econos right now. I have no idea. This episode is brought to you by Shopify.

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This show is called American Fever Dream because we talk a lot about the experience that is American and how incredibly unusual it can be and just the paths that we take that aren't often talked about.

And when we were going through your book, what was resonating with me so much is this idea of being the grandchild of someone who really started us towards the path of prosperity. So my Gramps was a bar owner, right? My other grandpa was a janitor and he did so well that my mom could do okay so that I could be great.

But I continue to, no matter how successful I become or how comfortable I become, I continue to be like, no, I'm the grandchild of a bar owner. I grew up poor. Like I continue to try to like anchor myself in the average American experience in a way that when you were talking about your grandpa being like the garbage man of Buffalo and whatnot, I was like, this is something that matters to me a lot. And I want to know, does...

This place that we're in right now, the millennial grandchildren of sometimes first generation immigrants are really working class people who have become successful and achieved the comfort that they dreamed for us. Do you find yourself uncomfortable sometimes with that experience being so different? Because for me, I find myself constantly reminding other people that like,

I grew up Roma, that my family's Irish, that they worked really hard, that we had nothing, that this is all very brand new to us, that I'm not this rich kid out here who's doing fine. I'm struggling. I'm a real American. You know what I mean? Do you feel that experience plays into your patriotism, your experience as an American, this idea that you are the manifestation of that garbage man's dreams for comfort and platform and power and respect?

It's a wonderful question. And I think what you speak to is the idea of your American identity and what fosters that. I think for me, it's this simultaneous thread of the pressure of being the most privileged, the most well-off of the entire family going back every generation. I think about that a lot. And I think how you handle that

uh one you should think about that if you're in that position i know a lot of kids who do not and that bothers me i get very upset about that because i'm like come on how do you not appreciate the journey that your family has been on and at least have some respect for it a lot of people do not have that trustafarians i'm looking at you um but they're at least for me i i

think about it and I go, okay, look at this lineage. So you can go back to, here's some poor Irish guy during a potato famine who got out, right? Here's a German farmer who wasn't making it, who got out. Here's this Italian guy who was pretty smart on my mom's side, but wanted to try his hand in a new market and see what would happen, right? That all sort of comes in to a degree. I think it's really interesting when you go travel in Europe,

And you say, I'm Irish American or I'm Italian American or I'm German American. They look at you like, what the hell are you talking about? You're American. You're not German something. You're not Irish. What are you talking about? Shut up. Right. And I think that's just something that is so ingrained in our identities that we tie back to our ancestral past. And what does that mean?

For me, I think it's very important to carry that lesson because if nothing else, it's humbling. I think it's the appreciation of being here. I think it's a manifestation of a country like America for all its faults that still offers a lot of upward mobility across the races and classes. Not as much as it should, but it still exists. There's this unique thing there between the American reality and the American dream and what that means.

So, yeah, I think it's something I definitely carry with me. It's very much a part of my identity. But yeah, there is this irony, right? It's like this son of privilege. You have to project that up because you don't want to be perceived as someone who's out of touch and who doesn't get it. Right. And I think in my case, I feel like I do that honestly. Like I actually went back and I've, I've seen the garbage routes. My grandfather, um,

worked on. Uh, when I was 18 and 19, I spent two summers on the back of a freight truck, which my grandfather was very proud of. And that work was absolutely the most humbling, difficult work, you know, I've ever done. I got great abs after it though. That was great. And muscles. But I remember something my father said after I did that for two summers, he said, um,

you know, you're really lucky that you can make your money with this pointing to my brain instead of this pointing to my arm. And I never forgot that. And my grandfather wasn't afforded that. He had to make his money with his arms and legs and not his head. And I think that's sort of what you remember is that you're very blessed to be in this position of, all right, because of the sacrifices before you, you're allowed an easier path.

and do with it what you will and make sure you take advantage of it. But there's a pressure to that. I mean, I think people, some people are blissfully ignorant, but the ones who are not, there's a real pressure to that. And you get to live up to it. That's honestly something I think about a lot. Also, I hadn't thought about in those terms, being the most privileged member of any generation of my family by a lot. And

I was thinking about how what you had just said about, you know, your grandfather said, it's great that you can make your money with your head and not with your body. And maybe it's an eldest daughter thing, but, you know, something I related to in the book was how, you know, your mother, in this case, it was my father, would always sort of be like,

well, you should achieve because you have everything you could ever need. You have all the tools. So great. Like why not get a plus, plus, plus, plus, you know, we can do better. And that was always kind of drilled into my head. And even now when, whenever someone will like congratulate me or praise how hard I work, which I do work very hard, I always think I'm like, yeah, I do work hard, but my work isn't hard. Right.

So like the idea that I work hard and deserve more than someone who works a shift at Amazon where they do not allow them to go to the bathroom, that's preposterous. And like I'm sending emails and planning for podcasts and, you know, speaking into a microphone and I'm,

People are physically, they need to work those jobs, multiple of them without a choice. And there's no safety net collectively. And I think that people in our position, it makes me feel very strongly that, you know, democracy is imperfect, but we were given these opportunities because of democracy and, and,

It is therefore incumbent upon us to make sure that that is carried forward. So that's something I think about all the time, but, and that was obviously something you tackled in your life and in your book. And I could, I couldn't help but think about how kind of when you were returning from your time abroad and, you know, kind of processing all of that, it, the kind of cultural conversation seemingly like right after you had returned was around Nepo babies, right?

How did you then grapple with, okay, I've spent a lot of time coming to terms with this and figuring it out. And then suddenly that's all anyone's talking about. It's the cover of New York Magazine. Well, let's talk about what Sammy said in the beginning is having a parent that constantly reminds you that you should be doing more. You haven't done enough, et cetera. As I write in the book, my mom has the passion of a fiery Jesuit priest.

And so even until today, I do get a lot of, well, you were able to achieve this because you had this advantage or you were able to. So I tell people I can count maybe on three fingers the times that I've truly felt like I've accomplished something major just because of how I grew up with that. Well, you should have done that. That was the right thing to do, right? And that eats away at you. I think a lot of times it can be healthy. A lot of times it can be

Toxic, how you manage it is all there. It's done out of love in my mother's case. But I do think that's something that honestly helped me a lot because it reminded me, you know, don't spike the football too hard because a lot of people will say, well, you started off the play on the one yard line, right? So that's a good reminder.

All that being said, I think what you said, V, is very important about there is an element of our American existence of where you're trying to be better than your parents.

That's how it was set up. Right. So you talk about a store like, OK, grandpa starts a shoe store and then dad took it and he brought it out and he had 11 shoe stores. And then you went to business school and you grew it out to 24 shoe stores. But, oh, you have a huge advantage because you started out with 11. It's like, yes, but grandpa came off the boat and started. Right. So there's an element of building that up.

I think with the Nepo babies, though, specifically, and I will say that as someone who was like the OG one who got that in 2008 at a really high, nasty level on Twitter and had to deal with that. And I knew it was coming and totally understand why it's coming. No hate towards anyone for that. I get it. I get it. But what I've always thought is that, look, you have to let your work do the talking for you.

And then secondly, a lot of times in my case, I felt like I had to work twice as hard and I had to do things in a way of which, all right, do not have any unforced errors. Do not do something in a manner of which you're going to leave yourself up to intense criticism. You really got to make it good. And I didn't always hit that mark. There were things that in my twenties I did that were dumb or I didn't do a good enough job. But I reached a point in my late twenties where I,

I had done the job for a while at NBC and MSNBC and covering politics. And I would talk with some of these older reporters who'd been around for a while, and they were hard on me on Capitol Hill at the beginning. And they would all sort of say, you know, at the end of the day, you're a pretty damn good reporter. And that was enough for me. I got to a point in my life where I was like, if you are being objective about

You cannot say that I am not a very serviceable, decent player. I might not be an all-star. I might not be the best of the best. I might not be a legend like my dad or my mom, but I'm good. Like I'm good enough. Right. And I think that's very, yeah, I think that's important. But here's the one thing I will say that, that, that I get upset with is you take a kid like LeBron James, his son, Bronnie James. Okay. Um,

Here's a kid who's had insane levels of pressure on him since he was born, basically. Right? Now, the first thing you say is he's bringing this upon himself because he's choosing to go in the same direction as his father. His dad's the best basketball player in the world. He lives, eats, and brings basketball. Of course, he's going to be around basketball and growing up in it. But this is a kid who had like a cardiac event.

and wasn't the same as he was, but then was playing through it. It's like, give him a chance here, right? Give him a chance. He's not going to be his dad overnight. And that's the one thing is I think people need to give everyone a chance. And then those who are blessed with the privileges and who are so lucky, they really need to be mindful of what they're putting out into the space. Yeah.

So, you know, don't, what's the old adage? You, you, you, you reacted like you hit a home run, but you were born on third base, right? Yeah. Just imprint that on the top of your head. Well,

We we call this coach's daughter syndrome, which is something that I have and will continue to have for the rest of my life, which is like when you're the coach's daughter, they're harder on you constantly. Right. And there's this. And I think the Democrats do this a lot where they play coach's daughter with our side of things. The Republicans will line up and they will be for you the whole way. And they're very like, not my son. Right. But on our side, we have this coach's daughter mentality, which is like.

well, you did good, but you should have done better. Or you were progressive, but not progressive enough. Or, well, you always have to do more, always have to do more. And in so many ways, that does hold us back. A question I had for you is you eventually, you broke out of the cycle as we all do, because we can only achieve so much before we have a public or private mental breakdown and then have to go through our quarter life crisis and become someone else and try something else on.

And I appreciated yours. When you decided that you were going to go and travel, you were going to do the social media thing and lean into Instagram a little bit more. Did you ever feel like you had to reinvent yourself or was this your form of rebellion, like quitting the news business to do the social media business? Yeah, it was more so anything, right?

I didn't know who I was independent of the last name of the hometown I grew up in in D.C., the political world of which I occupied. And I needed to figure that out. And I knew that in order to figure that out, I had to get as far away from it as I possibly could. And I had to challenge myself in a way which I had never done before, which was to be untethered, to do things like solo travel alone.

to go out and experience different cultures, experience different races and religions and really get to a place of where, all right, like I can sleep in a small Nicaraguan pig farm on the floor, but on a dirt floor and be okay with it. Like I can be in some steaming hot rice patty in Thailand and be all good with it. Like, so once you start to sort of learn that on the travel, you really challenge yourself.

I think for me, it wasn't so much an act of rebellion. It was an act of becoming. It was, okay, you're really trying to figure out who you are to do that, strip yourself down to the most bare core of all time.

Now, my mother, who is a Peace Corps volunteer in the 60s in Colombia, said, well, you could have done all this by joining the Peace Corps. And I said, thank you, mother. You are more talented than I was. I would have been doing what you do, though. I would have, again, been a nepo baby to the Peace Corps. Right. So I did it in my own way. Did you like the anonymity like that?

a random farmer in Nicaragua, you know, you, you can't be like, do you know who my dad is? It was great. It was great. No, no, it was great. You know, the entire time I started traveling for three and a half years, basically. And I was recognized one time.

It only one time. And that was by this guy who was like a huge news junkie. And I was in some airport in Asia and he came up to me and I was like, Oh my gosh, this is, this is nuts. But that was it one time. And so I always liked that. And people would be, you know, what did you do? And I was like, I was a reporter in American politics. They're like, Oh, I'm so sorry. You know? So it was, it was, it was wonderful, but it's not just, you know, I think a lot of people get that when they travel, it's a chance at reinvention.

And I think especially some of the most inspiring travelers, I write about them in my book, are a lot of these who inspired me. A lot of these young women who broke, very similar to my mother, broke through all these societal limitations that had been placed on them by where they grew up or where they went to school, et cetera. And I talk about one story about a young woman in New Zealand, Maggie, who's a young French woman who...

And she paid for her travels abroad by following the potato harvest and working as a farmhand to harvest potatoes to go see all of New Zealand and employed a lot of the same skills in Asia and other places like that. And so I think there's something to that, which is incredibly inspiring and speaks to the reinvention that one can have in travel, but also the sort of...

a sense of strength that can come once you've been out there and, and really found that you are enough that you yourself are enough and can get by. And that's something that travel really gives me. We've kind of danced around it to this point, but the book,

does focus on the grief that you felt after your father passed away and the way that death changes us. And Sammy and I actually became friends at a bar in Miami when we revealed that we both had a sibling that passed away, which is the most unusual experience I think anyone can have. You kind of know...

that your parents will die before you. You hope it's not until they're very, very old. And I think a lot of people worry that their kids, something bad could happen to their kids, but you never spend one day of your life worrying if your sibling will die because they're your contemporary, they're your peer, they're your age. And to assume that something could happen to them, you have to face that something could happen to you. And as humans, that's just not something that we're willing to do.

So through that grief, there was an entire reinvention that both Sammy and I have had and that you talk about greatly in the book. If you don't mind, because we don't get to hear from men too much about the way that grief affects them, would you tell us a little bit about what that day was like when you heard that this man that you looked up to who provided you the opportunities that you had, who was your friend in many ways, because when you're an only child, it's like,

You and the two other adults in the house, best pals, you know, it's like you three, there's not this delineation of child and adult always. Can you talk about what that day was like when that part of you, you knew the next day you would wake up and that part of you would be gone? Yeah, it was June 13th, 2008. I'll never forget it. The dreaded Friday the 13th. And I was in Florence, Italy at the time with the

My, the girl I was dating in college at BC, we had been on a post-grad trip and my mom had actually been in Florence. Both my parents had been in Rome a few days before we'd actually gone to the Vatican as a family, which was very nice. My father had gone back to tape Meet the Press where he was the moderator on NBC and their Father's Day special. So something that was very important to him.

And I got a call from NBC and they said, well, your father fainted. And I knew right away he was gone. I said, he doesn't faint. I just knew if they had called me for something like fainting, then something was very serious. And I ran and I found my mother at her hotel. And eventually we got news that he had passed away from a heart attack at age 58. And

you know, your world comes crashing down. I think that's a really apt cliche. And there's this moment where you come to the realization pretty early on

that it's over. That the life that you knew, the life that you had, this person who you love so much, this person who was your rock, this person who guided you, who centered you, who provided for you, that you, in my case, really lived for. I mean, I really lived to please my dad for those first 22 years of my life. He was my best friend and I could do anything I could to make him happy because he was such a wonderful person and I loved him so much.

And when he was gone, you have to then figure out, all right, who am I carrying on for? And how do I carry on? And it's really difficult. And I think something that young men face a lot is we're expected to be very strong. You know, it was literally the day he died. I got, you know, messages from very well-meaning kind messages from friends and

other male figures in my life that were, you know, stay strong, be there for mom. And, you know, your dad would want you to keep your chin up and all those sort of, you know, I played football in high school for all those years, all the sort of things you would hear on the football field, like keep at it, like, you know, go get them, you'll be strong, et cetera. And that's fine. You're the man of the house now. You're the man of the house now. And for a lot of time, you know, look, that does work to some degree, but what you do there is you're storing and ignoring.

And for me is I realized through my 20s when I was trying to put up this bravado, this very brave, strong face, never rattled, never cried publicly. Don't let them see you sweat. Keep all that inside. Keep all that in house. It eats away at you. And for me, it was just I would get these spells of anxiety and I didn't know where it came from. I said, why am I so anxious right now? What's going on?

And then it wasn't until I started to travel and I started to sort of explore grief and actually have the time to sit in the process, not just move on to the next busy thing and force myself to confront this void, this interior darkness that I had felt that I began to realize that a lot of that anxiety and a lot of that tension and a lot of that anger and a lot of that sadness, it stemmed from never really grieving my father.

And a lot of that was because if I did go into that space of grief, I had to really admit he was gone. So that was the first thing. But what I came to realize and travel really helped with this, because one of the things you do when you travel is you have to be vulnerable because you're going to places where you don't know the customs. You don't know the languages. You have to trust people because you can't get by without them.

And I learned how to be vulnerable when I traveled. And then I learned how to be vulnerable with myself. And one of the most important things is for men to be vulnerable. Men are not vulnerable enough because we are taught from a young age not to be vulnerable. We are taught that vulnerability equals weakness. That is just not true. And I think what's really sad is that while there's been great, there's been great, great movement in this space, a lot more men are becoming vulnerable. A lot more men will talk about mental health.

you also see the flip side of that as getting stronger to this macho, just false bravado, racist, sexist, misogynistic BS about how men are supposed to act. And it, you know, it's sad because I've heard from a lot of men who've gotten into the vulnerability space and just how much it's enriched their lives and it's enriched mine. And if there is,

any silver lining in the grief of losing a parent. And for what my journey was, it was that it allowed me to be vulnerable and to take that into other areas of my life, which has been something I'm very grateful for. Something you said earlier was, you know, if it had happened 10 years later, maybe you would have been in a different position. I was actually kind of wondering the same thing for you.

Maybe, maybe different reasons. And the first is that at that time there, it wasn't really cool for men to be vulnerable. That wasn't really a space that people were talking about.

Whereas now they are. And then the second thing is, you know, the travel memoir of it all, you sort of reveal that you end up in a little bit of a wherever you go, there you are type of situation. And that Instagram really instigated that and kind of sucked you into living for this parasocial approval. Do you ever wonder that if, you know, you were grieving your

More like now when that Instagram relationship isn't so isn't quite the same. And, you know, the vibe on Instagram isn't quite the same that maybe it's just kind of the timing had not allowed you that distraction and had afforded you the opportunity for a more vulnerable grief space for men. Yeah.

Would things have maybe gone differently? It's a good question. You know, I mean, I think it would have gone differently, but I, you know, I, I, yeah, but we're all products of, you know, the time of times in which we live in. And, you know, at that time we were so far away from it. You know, I think that one thing,

one area where I will sit back and I think about is, you know, what would social media have been like with my father alive? And he, you know, when he passed away, it was really Twitter hadn't really come into existence yet. Um, and there was stuff on Facebook about, um,

you know, politics or people had still connecting on Facebook, Instagram didn't exist yet. There's no Tik TOK. Right. So Facebook was really about, was about it. But even that was, that was before old people had invaded Facebook. So it was still like, I think you had to have like a college email address to get on still, or you're close to that. Yeah. So, you know, if, if that had all played out in a more social media driven society, you know,

I think the effect on me really would have been probably different. And I think it speaks to something where if we fly at 35,000 feet sometimes, one of the things that is astonishing to me is that we don't reset ourselves enough. And what I mean by that is, okay, 2008, that's 16 years ago, right? Right.

The change in technology of the world is it's such a rapid clip that we cannot adapt with the speed of the changes. So our brains are totally rewired. Our brains are totally fried. Like what we value, what we count as achievement, what we're about is just completely been reconfigured at such a quick pace.

And so I think it's very important that especially us elder millennials who remember what life was like when you had to be bored sometimes, when you had to make do with a magazine or 65 TV channels and 56K dial-up internet. You have to check yourself and be like, okay, this is a weird era that we're living in where the technology is kind of dictating it.

And I do think it probably dictates people's grief journeys. I do think it dictates people's, well, we know it dictates their relationships and whatnot. And just to be mindful of that, like this is unexplored, uncharted territory. And I lived out in San Francisco for two years, right? A lot of the book. And I'm going to tell you what those tech people are. They're brilliantly smart. And I am in deep admiration of many of them.

But they don't know what the hell they're making. They just, they throw it out there. It's just, this is like, okay, I came up with this algorithm. I came up with this new, yeah, boom. Let's see how it goes, baby. And just be mindful of that. And it destroys people. It does. It does.

As a person who experienced death in the peak of the social media age, my brother died in 2015. There was a musical that came out at this time called Dear Evan Hansen, and I went to see it the week before he died. I remember that. It really became the playbook for how it was going to go. And it was such a gift to me to see that musical. I didn't know it at the time because the way that social media will take your grief and make content out of it is unbearable and impossible. And I can't imagine...

if you know, now that we see people going through it, if your dad had passed away, let's say in 2015, um, or God forbid in 2021, what the conspiracy theories about him would be, how invasive they would be in your family's life, how easy it is to find people's address, the lies that people make up about it. I heard everything about my brother who was not a celebrity from, uh,

he overdosed till he killed himself till he was shot till he dropped his motorcycle. I mean, people were making up things and this is just a regular boy living in a regular town that passed away young. He was 25 and that level was,

was outrageous because of the intrusivity of social media that I cannot imagine how that would go if you have a celebrity parent, the way that that would work out. So in some ways, I think to your point, social media distorts reality. It disrupts the way that we're supposed to experience things. We're not supposed to see so much about what happens to people from our past or folks we've moved on from. I don't need to know every single thing about the tragedies of the girls I went to high school with. They were mean to me then. They would be mean to me now.

But the social media of it all makes grief content and it makes people feel like they are responsible to their audience. I've seen even people on TikTok who had a tragedy go on and they feel like they have to come out and bare their soul to their followers because...

We don't know what else to do. It's such an ingrained part of our personality that, you know, the clicks equal validation in a place where you're experiencing void. I think what you're speaking to, I find it so interesting. It's like,

this, you have these sort of two ways, right? So it's one way is there's people who I actually think truly do benefit from knowing that there's a community rallying around them, right? And they put themselves out there. They are vulnerable and they're like, hey, I'm not having a good moment right now. Like pick me up. I need you. So there's an added benefit to that because there's that sort of sense of community that can happen digitally through social media.

But then what you're speaking to also happens way too much, which is this sort of grief performance theater. And that is just something that I think a lot of younger people kind of subscribe to that to a degree, unfortunately. Like there's an expectation that you have to do that. And that's one of the things that I've always, on the topic of grief, of which there's now a lot more,

conversations happening, which is good. It's not as taboo of a subject as it once was. There is no right way to grieve. The thing I always say is just don't bring harm to yourself and don't bring harm to others. But if you don't want to do a social media post, do not do a social media post. If you want to post 30 times, then God love you, right? Maybe you have to do that. But it is something where...

When you are going to do something publicly, make sure you're aware of the downside. And that's the conspiratorial nature of everyone who is on there now, which is kind of scary. Not kind of, really scary.

Kind of depressing.

What is your advice for people who are trying to navigate grief, but they just can't catch their footing? What practices did you employ to give yourself that space to safely reflect, to process, and to rebuild yourself? So the first thing is that it takes time. And

Time is the most valuable resource we have. It's cliche to say that, but it's very true. So the first thing on a grief journey is you need to get to a space where you feel like you have sufficient time and you have the time for exploration and you have to start going through the layers of yourself.

Exploring grief is inherently uncomfortable. You're going to feel uncomfortable. You don't want to stay in that space. Why don't you want to stay in that space? Well, one, it's painful. So you're going to have to endure pain. We as humans do not want to deal with pain. We are genetically wired to avoid pain, physical pain, mental pain. We don't want to pain get away from pain, right? So you have to rewire yourself to be able to sit in that pain. And then when you sit in the pain, you have to start to think, okay,

Let me explore this a little bit. Why am I so sad? Well, you're sad because of X, Y, Z. Okay. What can I do to alleviate that? That is going to be healthy. Is there a healthy way to do this besides drinking 10 beers and eating, you know, 30 chicken wings, which we should do after a bill's loss, by the way. But if you have that, they processing that, right. And then you get to a space where,

of reflection. And for me, it seems clear as day, but it took a long time to get there. Imagine your lost brother. Imagine my lost dad. Imagine your lost sibling. If they had two minutes to speak to you,

What they would say is, when you think of me, do not cry. Do not be upset. Do not be angry. Do not be so full of pain. Be grateful for the time you did have. Be grateful for the lessons that were imparted upon you. Be grateful for the relationship that we did have.

and carry forward and be you. I'll always be walking with you, but be you. And you got to get to that place somehow. It's not easy because your first reaction is, this isn't fair. My dad should be here. My brother should be here. I need to be with my family. I miss them. What am I supposed to do? But then you realize, okay,

Come on, you're equipped to handle this. You can do it. They're there with you and get to that place. But it takes a long time because you have to go through these layers and you have to get yourself in the space. A lot of people never get themselves in the space. One of the things that was amazing about my book and the reaction was I thought I was writing it for people like us, our cohort, our age group.

A lot of them read it. I got thousands of letters from people in their 70s, 80s, and even 90s who had never taken that first step

for grief, had always said, you know what? I'm going to throw myself into work. I'm going to throw myself into other members of my family. I'm going to throw myself up fully into religion, or I'm going to throw myself fully into activities and whatnot. And they read the book and they said, oh my gosh, I've been carrying this for so long because I never actually took that first step to sit in pain and think about the pain, explore the pain, and then look at the entirety of my life. And it's scary to do that because you have to

be honest with yourself. And that's not always easy. It's not always easy, but it's really rewarding if you can do it. And Luke, I'm going to tell you, your father's a better man than my brother because my brother absolutely wants me to be losing my shit every day that he's out here. He wants me to be crying.

But she wants me to be lighting candles for him. He wants me to be putting on his hoodie and watching the movies we used to watch. He wants it all. I'm sure wherever he is and watching, he is loving how much I miss him and how much I love him because he loved it when he was alive. And to your point, I said, was he a perfect brother? No, but I wouldn't have wanted anyone else. And even if they told me you can have this, but you'll only have it for 25 years. I wouldn't pick anybody else. And so you have to remember that.

Another part of grief that I'm hoping you can help us just talk through here is the unusual experience of my family is outrageously close, like your family is. And my memories of my brother and the way that I processed my grief was very different than the ones that my parents did or my sister did. And we've

fight about it. So how do you reconcile your memories and your grief and managing the way that you want to move forward with the way that your mother remembers things or wants to move forward? And do you feel like you have to keep pace with each other? Or are there times where you feel like, you know, a little bit of a disconnect on that grief journey with this person that, you know, was a part of the trio? One of the things I write about is, especially with the remaining parent, when one parent passes away,

is your relationship with them changes automatically, right? Which makes a lot of sense. And you get to a place where you see that remaining parent as a mortal. And what I mean by that is they are no longer just mom. You sort of see them in my case for Maureen, who was my mother with all her hopes, fears, dreams, aspirations, etc.,

And I think you see that because you see them in their most vulnerable grief stricken state. They're not the sort of even keeled steady hand that a mom is or a dad is, or, or that level, even if they were terrible parents for some cases, you know, being able to provide some bare minimum there, they're a little bit lost if they were together and happy or just together. And I think what you have to be mindful of is that,

what is the relationship that that person had with the lost loved one versus you? So a child's relationship to a parent is very different than a marital relationship.

Your other siblings might be different because of age, right? So just be mindful of that. I always say that. It's like my mom was married to my dad. My dad was my dad. It's a very different relationship. And when we bring him up and we talk about him and my mom will remember something one way or I remember it another way. And she's like, well, it'll be something mundane like...

It's a funny story where I'll give you an example where my mom was really mad at my dad because he installed a pool water, a pool basketball hoop. And it was right behind this flower bush she likes. So if we missed a shot on the pool water hoop, it would go into the flowers and ruin them.

And she was like, well, your father intentionally did that because he didn't like those flowers. I'm like, no, he did not intentionally do that. He simply wanted it there because that was where we could all stand up to shoot the baskets. Right. So you sort of think through little elements like that. Well, yes, a marriage. Someone might think of the other person is doing something intentionally because they don't like something. Whereas a kid's going to be defensive. Right. Just be mindful of that. That exists in families.

Yeah. It's such a trip when you realize something later or even the same thing that you've reflected on multiple times, you see it in a new light suddenly and they become more human to you even as they're no longer with you. Are you thinking about becoming a father yourself and what this will mean for your journey and the way that you'll experience fatherhood without him here now?

Oh yeah. God willing, uh, recently married. So I'm on the right track for that. And, uh, hopefully we can, we can get that going in the, in the, in the coming year. And, you know, it's interesting because a lot of my friends now are parents and, uh, I'm fortunate to be a God parent and I have gotten to see firsthand the commitment and dedication that being a parent takes, especially in this era of,

of all the screens and all the social media. And yeah, one of my, my, my buddy's kids, it's really funny. I went over to go see him and he was in the basement. He's only like four years old. And I come down and say, Hey Bobby, you know, how you doing? It's uncle Luke, you know, blah, blah, blah. What's going on? And he just goes,

Excuse me, Luke. I will speak to you when I'm done with Unconto. Okay. So you sort of see the degree to how smart these kids are now. So polite, at least. So polite in what they want. So, yeah, I mean, I'm excited for that chapter. And, you know, it's like we said in the beginning is...

You take the lessons of grandpa and your father and you do the best you can. One of my heroes in life, Bruce Springsteen, he's got a great comment where

He was wondering what it would be like for his kids who didn't have the same tough upbringing that he did. And what would that be like? And someone said to him, give them the best and the world will take care of the rest. And I think you give them the best in terms of all the lessons you've learned and you hope they do better than you and go forward.

So you are now back at MSNBC, cementing your legacy, cementing the Russert name. What makes it different this time? And how is what you're doing now informed by your parents and your dad? So I came back to MSNBC in...

late last year, the beginning of this year. And they called me up out of the blue and they said, you know, we want to talk to you. And I said, oh gosh, I'm not going back to political reporting. I just, I'm so done with that. And they go, no, no, no, no, no. It's not political reporting. We want to do these live events series where,

We go around the country, we go in D.C., and we talk about different issues and we try to come up with solutions for these issues and highlight some innovative things that are happening in the public-private space and policymakers and thought leaders and activist space and whatnot. And to me, it spoke to what I had learned on my book tour, which is that

People want a way forward. For as divided as we are in America, I do think that we agree on about 80% of things for the most part if you explain things to people properly.

And getting to that sort of space was something that I found attractive. So the live event space is sort of the best of TV is you have elements of it, but then you get to interact with people in a real room and with a real audience. So I'm happy to be back in that area. And we have a big MSNBC event.

Democracy 2024 Fan Fest in New York on September 7th. So everybody who listens should come out to that and we'll have a lot of engaging, smart conversations with top tier MSNBC talent and other thought leaders from America. And it'll be wonderful.

We talked about so much. And the thing that I really want to know is, you know, there's the person you are before the grief you experienced, especially major grief, and there's the person you are after. What would you say is something that you left behind? What is something that you buried with your dad? Oh, that's a really good question. And I've been on this book tour to a degree for now over a year, and no one's asked me that. And I'm kind of amazed they haven't.

What is something that I have left behind that I'm very happy about? And I will tell you what it is, is that I am someone who grew up with a deep, deep appreciation for tradition. And there is a sort of set way of doing things.

And while I still very much believe in tradition and I still very much believe in a certain way of doing things, I think everything needs to be adaptable for the times in which we live in. And I think if I buried anything, it was rigidity surrounding things should be the way they were.

I travel the world and I'm very blessed to have that experience. The thing that I realized is that we need to be adaptable to where society is. We have to be adaptable to where people are. And there are certain things like, you know, values and truths that should be eternal, like being a good human being, being nice to other people, helping people out. But

The idea that there's only one way to do something or that somebody else's way is wrong. I really shed a lot of that. In my 20s, I always felt like, no, there's only one way to go about life, maybe. You got to work to the bone. You got to present yourself as best you can. And that's it. And I was like, no, there's a lot of other ways to do life that work out just as well. The other one that I would say is...

And I think the technology has helped out with this is when a lot of people would say to me when I was young, like, oh, you know, pay your dues, pay your dues, pay your dues, pay your dues. I think you should soak that up. But I also think that if you as a young person feel that you have the talent and you're showing the talent.

Don't sit behind some mediocre person for 15 years because you think you have to pay your dues. Now, that's changed, I think, as we've gotten older and the technology has changed. There's probably too many young kids that should have paid their dues who think they're good who aren't really good. But there are some very talented young people who are progressing forward. I'm very happy to see that.

And, you know, don't listen to old people that tell you to stay in your lane. That's some advice I would have. And I think I did that a lot. And I wish I hadn't done it as much.

That's a great lesson. Luke, it's been so great chatting with you. I'm going to get off this call and go cry because grief does take forever, right? And when we open up ourselves to these spaces, it's okay to have those feelings come back out. And every single person, I learn a little bit more from their grief about how to manage my own. And I hope the people listening picked up some great lessons here as well.

People will ask how long did it take before you felt normal? And for me, it was seven years. It took seven years of grief to get to a place where I was like, okay, I think that I can accept this, deal with this and, and sort of like be a new person with a little bit more resilience. How long did it take for you? It's a really good question. I would say for me,

There's two stages. I think the first stage in terms of being a functional member of society where I wasn't just carrying this around all the time around my neck, probably that took about a year. That was after like, all right, I went through the date of death. I went through the first Christmas, the first Easter, the first birthday, all the firsts.

That was phase one. All right. I went through all the first and I'm still here. I'm still chugging right along. That really was difficult. Yeah, it was the raw. That sucked. I'm still here. Okay. That's phase one. But before I really was able to feel a sense of, I won't say closure, I don't think there's ever closure, but a sense of peace, that was

would be, you know, that's about 11, 11 years, 11 or 12 years. And that was really through a lot of interiority and a lot of writing. That was a lot of writing and using a journal to sort of see where I was in, uh, you know, the, uh,

Thing that I'm always struck by was the first draft of my book that I wrote, which was insane. It was over 300,000 words. It was way, way too long. It was like travelogue, grief journey, probably a little bit of war and peace. I mean, everything in between. But I finished that not by not planned, but I literally finished that on the anniversary of my father's passing.

And there is something very deep about that, very, very deep connection about that. And it was after I wrote that sort of draft, which was a huge sense of accomplishment within that, but also in those pages was the entire sort of journey that I went on, both exterior and internal. That's where I really felt the great sense of peace and real liberation.

Thank you for sharing that. I know so many of our listeners deal with grief and sometimes it's good to put a number on it. You know, folks got to have something that makes them feel normal. If it takes you seven years, if it takes you 11 years, if it takes you 20 years, sometimes that's how long it takes. You get to a point of like, okay, I could be a normal person now. And then you get relief does come through reflection. And I think your book is such a testament to that.

Your mom is going to say that you could have done it in fewer years though. So just get ready for that. It's true. It's true. So the name of the book again is look for me there. Grieving my father, finding myself by Luke Russert. Thank you, Luke, so much for being with us. You can also find Luke on MSNBC live. Like he said, he's got a lot of cool events coming up that you want to check out, especially that event on September 7th. Luke, where else can people find you?

At Luke Russert on Instagram, threads, Twitter. Yeah, I'm out there. Give me a follow. Give me a holler. Awesome. Great chatting with you as always. Until next time, I'm Vita Spear. I'm Sammy Sage. And this is American Fever Dream. Go Bills! Go Bills!

You can join Luke and several of your favorite MSNBC personalities, including Rachel Maddow, Jen Psaki, and Steve Kornacki, live in person on September 7th in Brooklyn, New York, for a first-of-its-kind fan event. Go to msnbc.com slash democracy 2024 to get your tickets.

American Fever Dream is produced and edited by Samantha Gatzik. Social media by Candice Monega and Bridget Schwartz. Be sure to follow us on Instagram and TikTok at Betches News and follow me, Sammy Sage at Sammy and V at Under the Desk News. And of course, send us your emails to AmericanFeverDream at Betches.com.