Hey, everyone. Just a heads up that this episode discusses mental health and suicidal ideation.

Take care. Why you give it a listen?

I called up Jason Kander, mostly because I wanted to talk to him about this tweet that

it sent. He posted it on February 16th. At the time, Senator John Federman had just announced

he was checking himself into Walter Reed for inpatient treatment of his depression. Jason

told his 300,000 or so followers. John Federman is far from the first Senator to do this, but

he's the first to have the stones to announce it.

This tweet begs a follow-up question.

So the thought was obvious to me, but I guess I'll start with the claim that I'm making,

which is, by the way, pure speculation, but I'm sure I'm right. The chances that he's

the only one dealing with something like this right now in the Senate are just about zero.

For Jason, this knowledge is hard earned. He himself ran for Senate in an attempt to flip

a red seat blue, just the way John Federman did. He's also run for mayor of Kansas City,

considered a long shot bid for the presidency, but eventually Jason dropped out of politics.

And the reason why was his mental health. In his case, he had PTSD from the war in Afghanistan.

Among other symptoms, it made him suicidal.

When I stepped away from public life for a while to deal with post-traumatic stress, there

were people who unbeknownst to me at the time because I was, as I assume Senator Federman

is doing right now, kind of taking a step back from even paying attention to the news about

my announcement. But I learned later that there were people who stepped up and said those

sort of things, and I appreciated it. And I just thought, well, you know, I'm in a position

to try to do that for somebody else. And so I wanted to.

...