Greg McKeown:
Welcome to the Greg McKeown Podcast. I’m your host, and we have an extraordinary guest today whose career and personal journey have inspired millions. Matt Gutman, ABC News chief national correspondent, is here with us to share some of his remarkable and unexpected stories. He’s covered pivotal events across nearly 50 countries, from the battlefields of the Middle East and Eastern Europe to natural disasters and countless significant moments in the US.
His latest book, is No Time to Panic: How I Curbed My Anxiety and Conquered a Lifetime of Panic Attacks, which is a candid, courageous count of his three and a half year journey to overcome those panic attacks. After an on-air panic attack shook his foundation, Matt embraced a quest for peace of mind, exploring everything from pharmaceuticals to psychedelics. His first book, though, was The Boys in the Cave, which you’ll remember because it delved into the harrowing rescue of that Thai soccer team trapped in that flooded cave. It captured the world’s imagination. And in that book, he offers an in-depth look, the first that was published, about the risks and bravery of those involved.
He lives in Los Angeles now with his wife and two children, but his resilience his determination have shaped a career filled with unforgettable moments. The moments that we watch and read about in the news, he’s been there, been at the front of it, which is an unusual set of choices to make. The rest of us don’t make those choices. Why does he make them? What does he have to share with us? What can we learn? What is the news about in our own lives that we can gain from somebody who’s constantly covering the news for the rest of us?
Matt, welcome to the show.
Matt Gutman:
What an incredible introduction. Thank you. I’m not sure I deserve all of it, but I appreciate it. I’ll take it.
Greg McKeown:
Well, let’s start at the very beginning. You were born December 5, 1977, in Westfield, New Jersey. Parents: Sharon and Paul Gutmann. You grew up with your sister Rachel, but early on in your life, the normal path of family is changed completely for you. Can you tell us about why and what happened and how that may be framed and designed your own life in some sense?
Matt Gutman:
You know, I think a lot of people’s lives, Greg, are punctuated by spasms of pain or trauma. And, you know, mine, I had two early ones. My mom was diagnosed with stage four Hodgkin’s disease when I was eight, and that was scary. And luckily, she survived, but that seared itself on my mind. Thursdays were chemo day. And then, I guess one of the most seminal experiences of my life was when I was twelve; my father went on a short business trip in Georgia, and he was offered a ride on a private plane owned by the company. And like, “Hey, do you want us to, you know, we can fly you down to the Atlanta airport. It only takes 20 minutes on this plane, or you can take a three hour drive.”
And being a bit of an adventurer like his son, he was like, sure, that sounds like a great idea. But the plane went up, and the plane came right down and crashed into the woods. There was a mechanical failure, and he died along with the two pilots.
And, you know, it’s interesting when stuff like that happens. I just went back for the first time to the synagogue where we had the funeral, and the rabbi sort of took care of us right after it happened. And we were all in a daze of Xanax at the time because it was being dosed out liberally, apparently. I don’t know if that would happen today, but this is the nineties, early nineties, 1990.
Greg McKeown:
So you remember feeling, like, affected by the Xanax. Literally, though, that affected the sense of your moment?
Matt Gutman:
No, totally. I was in this halcyon dream state of Xanax. It was great. It was because it blocked the initial pain. And then I was surrounded by the stuff I loved. The rabbi said, he’s like, “I remember you not grieving that much.” Because the first couple days I was crying hysterically, and then I was kind of high, and then we were surrounded by people constantly. So I was playing football and there was lots of food, and I sort of just leaned into that. And you tend to have periods of grief and mourning that never go away.
Right. So, like, every couple of years, I would have these spasms of dealing with it throughout my life, and I still do. And it’s that gradient that goes and lessens each with each little spasm of grief and dealing with whatever it is you’re dealing with. But you do end up having to deal with it, I think, for the rest of your life.
Greg McKeown:
How did it affect your high school years?
Matt Gutman:
I was a hardcore overachiever, so I was captain of the football team, I was captain of lacrosse, I was school council president. I took all the most advanced courses. I got into the best college, and then I broke down in high school. And then I just started having complete meltdowns. Basically got kicked out of high school for drinking on a school trip and got into fights. I was, like, hyper achieving and then a complete disaster. And somehow, I got out of high school without, like, it jeopardizing my college experience. But, yeah, it was it was close.
Greg McKeown:
Have you seen the movie Fablemans?
Matt Gutman:
Yes.
Greg McKeown:
Is there a connection between you and that high school student that is, you know, he’s sort of the hero in one sense, but he’s also the villain. But I don’t mean that you were necessarily the villain, but there’s that very. Maybe the most poignant moment of the whole movie, in one sense, is when he goes to see the protagonist. He’s like, why did you make me look so great in the school outing to the beach? Why did you make me look that great?
Now I have that burden, this sort of perfectionist burden, the insecure overachiever. I have to deal with that, and it’s already killing me. I mean, was there a moment for you in that, or were you like, well, that’s not really my story. How did you react?
Matt Gutman:
I didn’t feel like it was really my story. I felt like I was a little bit more sensitive than that guy.
Greg McKeown:
But sure, I mean, he’s a villain in it, but was there anything in it or no?
Matt Gutman:
I think this is one of the American maladies, is this hyper focus on hyper achieving very early. And it instilled in me this fear of perfection, knowing that I am imperfect, am incapable of being flawless.
Greg McKeown:
Or trying to be.
Matt Gutman:
But always trying to achieve it. So it sets you up for failure constantly and for self hatred and constant dissatisfaction.
Greg McKeown:
Yeah. I mean, one thing that I have observed is just the problem of peaking early. It’s something that I talk to my own children about. It’s like, look, the goal isn’t to be. To be the elite high school person. The goal is to live a life in Crescendo. So be solid, be good, get the foundation, but just grow into more and more of what it is you were built to do over a long, long period. And it seems to me common that people that achieve what we might say is, like, elite status in high school. It’s like a negative correlation with that and being able to continue to achieve after that. But for you, it seems like despite that duality you’re describing, you have continued in this achievement ethic, right? Like that. Well, I mean, you can speak to it for your own sake, but you don’t go, okay, captain of the football team, so on, and then you go into a career that’s high risk, that’s public, that’s media driven, and so on. Like, there’s something. Is there not that same achievement ethic driving all of that, or am I misreading it?
Matt Gutman:
There is, you know, and there is an element of. Is that a book behind you? Is that Pluck? Right? Is that so? Like, that’s what I had. Like, I’m not a very large person, so I like what I had. My greatest. My greatest characteristic was. Was grit and pluck.
Greg McKeown:
It was. It was chutzpah.
Matt Gutman:
It was chutzpah, exactly. Like throwing myself out there. And I did it. And it works great for journalism.
Greg McKeown:
You were willing to go. You were game. You were always game. That’s what you’re saying.
Matt Gutman:
Always game. But I really. I think you hit on something really interesting, which is this peaking thing, right? And we want to, you know, reach this level of crescendo. But I think in a lifetime, especially given the increasing longevity of the human lifespan, that we have multiple peaks and valleys and crescendos and peaks. I repeated myself, but I think. You know what I mean.
Greg McKeown:
We get it, though. But that. But you’re talking about a repetition. You’re saying it goes up, it goes down, it goes up, it goes down.
Matt Gutman:
Like, well, especially I’m talking to a person who is inadvertently doing a doctorate at Cambridge. Right. Like, we’re finding things later in life, and then, “Oh, that’s interesting. Let me ascend this hill and see where it takes me.”
And I think that our lifespans are varied in that sense, that we have periods of accelerated performance and then sort of fallow periods, you could call it depressed periods, also, not in terms of mood, but in terms of less production in which we sort of think and process and our bodies sort of take time to repair and or just to be self protective. And then we, you know, we have these periods of great production and creativity again.
Greg McKeown:
I was influenced by two different sets of thinking by two different authors who’ve both been on the podcast here. One was the book Live Life in Crescendo, that principle that your most important work always lies ahead of you, not behind you, that every single period is that that remains true. So whether you’re in your twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, seventies, or eighties, it’s still true that you hold on to that idea, that there’s a higher contribution ahead of you, and it might be different kinds of contribution, but it’s still the opportunity to make a greater contribution lies ahead of you.
That was shared with me when I was in my. And I absorbed it without any. There was no obstacle to being able to breathe in that truth. But I didn’t understand at that time how vitally important it would prove to be. And here I am now, just in my forties, and I think I still don’t understand how vitally important that will be because the tendency is not that. The tendency is a sort of sense of. I don’t know, of peaking that. Oh, it’s all downhill. This is as good as it gets that there’s a certain time shelf life to people. And so I think it’s a more profound idea the longer that I live.
And then the second idea was from the book From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. One of the things that he identified was that this idea of a midlife crisis is completely, it’s just completely made up. It was identified by someone who, the data pool was, like, 20 people. And one of the things that he got completely wrong when he identified this was because the idea of a midlife crisis is all up, then all down. So it’s a sort of mountain shape. It’s like an inverted v.
But what actually is true is that we have many, many crises and lots of ups and downs. And the goal, if you can put those ideas together, is to accept the ups and downs but still crescendo throughout the totality of a whole life.
Matt Gutman:
So I think you and I are both probably similar in similar age. Right? Like, are you?
Greg McKeown:
I’m 47.
Matt Gutman:
Yeah. Okay. Right. I mean, maybe this is not my midlife crisis. Maybe there are many more, and there have been previous crises, for sure, but I definitely feel it and that there is a period in one’s forties, especially for men, in which you do begin to perceive the loss of certain vitality. You’re not as fast, you’re not as physically capable, you’re not as good-looking. You don’t have as much hair. Your eyesight starts to go. I mean, I made fun of my wife, who had reading glasses, you know, because she needed them for years. And she said, “You’ll see.” She’s a little older than I am. “You’ll see one day.”
And so it is. And now I can’t see.
Greg McKeown:
It comes to all of us. Well, here you have me. I’m here with my Harry Potter glasses on.
Matt Gutman:
Today, I need it for menus at a restaurant. And so you begin to lose the step, and it’s finally perceptible, and you think, wow, I have to compensate for that somehow. Or it is like, maybe my physical vitality is lessening, and that is a monumental moment in a lifespan. And remember, humans didn’t used to. Superhealthy humans could have long lifespans. Evolutionarily, we were designed to live long enough to be able to be grandparents in order to protect our progeny or assist our progeny enough for them to be able to nurture their kids. So human longevity is believed to be part of grandparenthood because that is a wonderful evolutionary asset to ensure that your kid’s progeny live longer and that your genetic code can persist.
Greg McKeown:
Speaking of evolution, after completing your education, you begin your journalism career at the Jerusalem Post from 2001 to 2000. Were you there? Were you based in Jerusalem then through that five year period?
Matt Gutman:
I was there for seven years. Yeah, I was there from 2001 to 2008. And Jerusalem Post, which should have had the masthead, you know, with great negligence comes great opportunity, was my alma mater for the first years. They were. It was great because they allowed me to do almost anything I wanted.
Greg McKeown:
And you were game.
Matt Gutman:
Little oversight.
Greg McKeown:
You reported on conflicts in the West Bank, Gaza, and broader Middle East. But when you say that, like, oh, they did very little oversight, there’s almost something in what you’re saying, like, oh, I don’t know how I feel about those years. Is that what you’re saying? Is there something in you that what?
Matt Gutman:
No, I mean, the standards held by ABC News are vastly different than the ones that we had at the Jerusalem Post in the early two thousands. So just, you know, the stuff I got away with, the stuff I was allowed to do without security or protection or, you know, some safety protocols was vastly different. And I think that also has a lot to do with the differences between, you know, the television world and the print world in general.
Greg McKeown:
What was this? What was the spark for you in this? I mean, why journalism? Why this kind of journalism? I mean, this is a pretty specific, a very specific set of career trade offs.
Matt Gutman:
It’s a great question. I continue, and I think all of us probably asked the question of ourselves. Why do we like the things that we like, right? Why are we drawn to certain career paths, and what keeps us there over the years? And do we maintain that satisfaction? For me, for the most part, the answer to the last question is yes. And I think most of what drew me initially is still what draws me now with some changes. The first is like a desire for adventure.
The second is there is a through line between. I mean, I always was excited by adventure.
Greg McKeown:
So is it adrenaline junkie? I mean?
Matt Gutman:
It’s adrenaline. It’s travel. It’s novelty seeking, which is definitely, you know, a big facet in my life. And that is why journalism is actually very fulfilling because I’m constantly doing and learning new things and experiencing new things. I call myself a collector of experience. People say, well, what’s your hobby? I have none. Like, I hang out with my kids. But I don’t golf. I’m not an ornithologist. I don’t have a wine collection. I don’t do anything other than, like, family.
Greg McKeown:
The experiences are the hobby. The family is the hobby. The experiences are the hobby.
Matt Gutman:
Experiences are the hobby. And so that’s what drew me. And then there is also something else that drew me. And that’s like having experienced this very traumatic detachment from my father. He was killed in a plane crash. I was drawn to that knife’s edge between life and death and those most raw moments where people are experiencing what is probably the hardest day of their life.
Greg McKeown:
There’s something that’s cathartic about that. For you to just live in those moments. Is it too raw for you when you do it, or is there something beneficial in that process of sort of, in a sense, reliving that trauma for you?
Matt Gutman:
Yes. And I also learned that I was good at it. I was able to communicate with people in almost any language. Not that I spoke it, but I could visually empathize with them because we spoke the mutual language of grief. And so I learned that I had this skill that I didn’t even know that I had. And yes, it not only it didn’t retraumatize me, but it also allowed me to go to these places of pain that I couldn’t access on my own.
And it was really until writing the process. Until the process of writing, no time to panic, and I was able to access these places of pain by myself without the assistance of, like, just going to someplace that was very scary or taking a psychedelic drug. It’s another skill that I learned, which is like, okay, I feel sadness, but instead of pushing it away, I’m going to embrace it, and I’m going to know how to live in that space for a little bit of time.
Greg McKeown:
I’m going to name it, and I’m going to feel it rather than just literally pushing it away, numbing it in some way, even if it’s being numbed by some new adventure, some new experience is still forms of numbing it.
Well, let’s get to that, then. So you join ABC as a radio correspondent. At first, you’re great at it, apparently, because you get a promotion quickly. You become a television correspondent for the network; you get named ABC’s chief national correspondent. So that has you just traveling constantly all over. So you’re doing major stories for programs like the World News Tonight with David Muir, 20/20, Good Morning America, and Nightline. I mean, this is elite stuff within the field. I mean, you are the go to person now for these, what we would consider at least traditionally the highest-rated shows. I mean, this is heady stuff for you.
Matt Gutman:
It’s interesting. You mentioned that character in the Fablemans, the jock character, who, ends up confronting…
Greg McKeown:
His perfectionism.
Matt Gutman:
Right. But also being named chief national correspondent. I didn’t actually want that title. What I wanted at the time was more money, but they offered me the title, and I was like, I mean, I guess I’ll take it. You don’t turn that down. It’s a huge honor. And I was so.
I just. I felt like it was too much, but it played with my head for years. And it is really only in the past couple of years that I have been able to inhabit that very lofty title because I took it seriously. I took ABC, and I take ABC seriously. And my colleagues, so many of whom I steam, you know, with just, you know, I’m just blown away by being in the same playing field as these people. And so, like, having that title was very difficult for me and actually was a source of some.
Some massive agita.
Greg McKeown:
Somehow, it puts symbolic pressure on you. That was less helpful than you might imagine it being exactly what was unhelpful about it, because you’re still doing the work, but suddenly you just felt increased pressure. You don’t know to do what, but somehow I should just be doing this better. Whatever I’m doing, it just. It isn’t good enough. Because that’s a title that’s above wherever I am. It just created a sense of gap. Is that the idea?
Matt Gutman:
I don’t think I could have answered it better than you just did. No, I think the job requirements remained absolutely the same. I was still sent to the big stories, which is why they gave me the title. Cause they were sending me to the big stories no matter where they were around the world. But now I felt like I had to achieve a higher standard, and that put more pressure on me. That eventually, because I didn’t have the mental fitness to sustain it and cope, I fail. I ended up having a major failure.
Greg McKeown:
So, let’s talk about the failure. I mean, I’m sure you just love talking about this. I mean, that the idea. I mean, it’s true for any of us in any fail moments that we don’t love that that becomes a part of our story, or at least at first, we don’t. I mean, I don’t. I want to create distance between yourself and the thing until it changes its meaning. But can you just talk to us about what that moment was? It’s obviously was a pretty public moment, but let’s just deal with it head-on.
Matt Gutman:
As I came up to the podium to present to my fellow political science graduates, or about-to-be graduates, and the faculty, I suddenly lost sight of them. My whole field of vision narrowed to a pinhole. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I felt, Greg, like I was molting into a werewolf. You know, like I was gonna. How Benny second and I had no idea what was happening, basically happening to me.
I just knew that it was massively painful and must be unnatural in some sort of way because I was going to die. Somehow, I managed to muddle through the presentation. I honestly have no idea what I said. I don’t know what people’s perception was. I know that I couldn’t remember things like the capital of Turkey, Ankara, which is something that I like…
Greg McKeown:
You’d written hundreds of times. Of course, it’s inherent in everything you’ve been writing about. Yeah, carry on.
Matt Gutman:
So basically, it destroyed my ability to think, to function, to breathe, and to exist in that space. I went back down, and it was so terrible that I never wanted to think about it again. And I did what I do very, very well, which is I compartmentalize. I put that panic attack, or I didn’t know what it was, that experience, that werewolf experience, into its own little cubbyhole. I compartmentalize it. I was going to deal with that again.
Then, once I started in years of print, I didn’t really have that. But when I started doing radio, I noticed that I would have many episodes like that when I did live programs for the radio. Suddenly, words would disappear magically from the page I was reading. My hands would begin to shake, and the page would begin to vibrate. And I had that. That feeling in my throat and in my chest of a vice, squeezing it.
And as I rose through the ranks, it happened in TV. The irony is that my panic attacks on television, I was always able to skate through. And what they did is just jolt me with enough adrenaline to make the executives at all the shows think, wow, Matt Gutman is literally just, like, sizzling with energy on television. That guy is like, punching through the screen. And so I became known as the best live TV guy because I always brought it to TV.
Little did anybody know that one of the reasons that I was bringing that energy is because I was, like, sweating through my underwear on air. I was dying inside.
Greg McKeown:
You’re actually dying on air.
Matt Gutman:
I’m literally dying. Which is why you’re seeing the life force ebb from me. And I didn’t tell anybody about it because.
Greg McKeown:
Career limiting.
Matt Gutman:
Yeah. You can’t reveal that vulnerability. You’d be cut loose. You’d be, like, in one of those sandbags on a hot air balloon, like, thips. This cut you off. So for years, I just kind of kept it quiet. And then on January 20, to come back to your question, January 26, 2020.
Greg McKeown:
Just hypothetically, whatever date that was.
Matt Gutman:
Right? Hypothetically. Yeah. I was actually at home, and I had, like, a 30-day stint before that of just being on the road. I was making the kids pancakes. I got a call from my boss, and she said, “You know, there’s been a helicopter crash in Calabasas,” which is not far at all from where I live, about 10 miles away.
Greg McKeown:
We owned a home in Calabasas.
Matt Gutman:
Oh, nice. Okay. So you know it.
Greg McKeown:
In hidden hills.
Matt Gutman:
Oh, beautiful. I mean, that’s. So. I live in Encino, so right nearby.
“And we think Kobe Bryant was on that helicopter. So, you know, we need you to get there right away.”
So, like, I drop everything. I, you know, dumped the kids, and my wife, she was gonna have a day off. And I’m like, yeah, you gotta deal with this. This is a big story. And then we get word that maybe his daughter Gianna, or maybe other kids were on the plane, on the helicopter. We weren’t quite sure.
Greg McKeown:
Who did you hear that from? Like, do you remember who you heard that information from?
Matt Gutman:
No. The thought about this I have, and, like, yeah, there is a critical piece of information that I got that I. And it doesn’t really matter, and I’ll tell you why in a second. We’re getting a firehose of information. Some of it was wrong, but some of it I was getting directly from the sheriff’s department, with whom I was in contact. As I’m, like, rushing to leave, right? I’m, like, grabbing all my stuff, and I’m out the door. Within minutes, we end up doing a live special report, the first live special report.
And during that live special report, I was. I had a panic attack. And for the first time ever, I was unable to separate a piece of information that was reportable from something that I heard that was not reportable, that I had not confirmed but I heard. And, you know, like, when you’re having a panic attack, it inhibits your long term memory. So long term memory, scientifically, is considered anything longer than 30 seconds.
So I was unable to, like, really piece this stuff together of who I heard what from, and at the. I see, like, I’m talking, and I’m looking. It’s like one of those old world maps where the. You know, there’s like a. A ledge because they thought the world was flat and beyond which, just going to fall off. And the area where the margin of the maps where the sirens live, and the labyrinth is all these scary sea monsters. And I was sailing right towards that cliff because I was running out of stuff to say.
And suddenly, I conjure up this one thing that I’m not sure where I came from. And I tried to couch it in these word airbags, but I said it. And then I wrapped up the live report, and I was driving to the scene of the crash as it was happening, and nobody thought of it for a second. And then I started getting text messages like, “Where did you hear that?”
And then I’m like, “I didn’t say that. I said that.” And I was like, “Oh, no, this is not.”
And that’s when I realized that. I said I’m not going to go through it just because it’s not sensitive to the family. And I don’t see any reason to dredge it up. But yeah, I made a terrible reporting error. And at first, we weren’t quite sure that it was an error, and then it became evident that it was. And, you know, within a few hours, I was notified I’d be taken off the story, although I finished the day.
And then the next short time later, I was notified that I was suspended for making the reporting error. And, like, I don’t say it as an excuse, but it, like, the thing was that swirling in my head as I’m gathering this information, Greg, about Kobe and his daughter Gianna, who was also killed, and seven others were killed in that helicopter crash, was that Kobe was basically exactly the same age as my father, and I was the same age as Gianna.
And I had just turned 42, which was the age that my father was when he died. And I never thought that I would outlive my father. I always thought that the natural terminus of my life would be. And that’s why I lived so intensely in those years. Like, fell in love early, got married early, had kids, traveled the world. I’d been to 80 countries, I had been to war. I had jumped out of helicopters. I swam with sharks. I was with grizzly bears. Like there was no adventure that I had not done.
And I. Once you actually hit that early, you eclipsed the age of your father and the age in which you thought that you would, like, that would be the span of my life. You’re like, oh, I’m fine. I’m still here. What’s next? So it’s a really year time period for me. None of that is an excuse for the reporting error. And ABC suspended me, and then I had a pretty serious reckoning to deal with. Like, what was I going to do with this panic disorder which I had?
