Hey, everyone who listens to our podcast. This is Ari Melbur, and you guys have said you like some of the extra interviews we're posting here. So this is another one. We recently launched a series on the beat called State of Mind with Tony Schwartz. You may know him as the co-author of The Art of the Deal. He's also done a lot of work with organizations and companies around emotion, around mental health, and around productivity

and happiness. And this is a time when a lot of those issues, of course, overlap with our

politics. So for this episode, we've got a couple interviews with Tony that we think or hope,

go beyond the daily headlines and dig into some of those deeper issues. These are my conversations

with Tony, and we're interested in what you think, so please

feel free to not only rate us, but comment on Apple or on our Facebook and Twitter page, where

we read and respond to some of them.

And as always, thanks for listening to The Beat with Ari Melbur.

We turn to Tony Schwartz, CEO of the Energy Project co-author of The Art of the Deal and the

author of the way we're working isn't working.

This is a table where we have done the very thing I'm going to ask you about, which is live in the exhausting, negative mentality of life today.

What do you see out on the horizon?

Well, I think it certainly has been heightened and exaggerated dramatically by a president who is himself so

relentlessly negative, who's trying to stir up our fear, who's trying to make us feel, we almost forget

his inaugural speech where he painted that apocalyptic vision, but he's been living that

apocalyptic vision.

And I think it's in the air now, this notion that we're insecure, that things are uncertain, that the government

may not survive.

And then we've also got this issue that traverses every institution, which is a lack of trust.

I think people across the ideological spectrum feel as if we can't trust anyone. We can't believe in the

institutions that we did. And this famous Edelman survey has shown this year that trust in virtually

every kind of institution, whether it's non-profits, its political and government institutions,

...