NPR's Rachel Martin On: Surviving The News, Making A Huge Career Pivot, And Hosting A Metaphysical Game Show
Rachel Martin, former NPR Morning Edition host, discusses her career pivot due to burnout and personal loss, her journey to find spiritual meaning, and how to navigate overwhelming news. She also plays her new podcast's "Wild Card" game with Dan Harris, exploring existential questions.
Deep Dive Analysis
17 Topic Outline
Rachel Martin's Career Pivot from NPR's Morning Edition
Reasons for Leaving: Exhaustion, Diminished Curiosity, Bad Hours
Identity and Ego in High-Profile Journalism
Prioritizing Intimacy and Connection Over Breaking News
Impact of Father's Death and Adult Orphanhood on Career Change
The 'Enlighten Me' Project and Spiritual Search
Finding Personal Meaning and Spiritual Curiosity
Struggles and Practice of Meditation for Insomnia
Introduction to the 'Wild Card' Podcast Game
Playing 'Wild Card': Place That Shaped You
Playing 'Wild Card': Advice That Changed Trajectory
Playing 'Wild Card': Comfort with Being Wrong
Playing 'Wild Card': Irrational Defensiveness and 'Good-ishness'
Surviving the News and Cultivating Empathy in Contentious Times
Playing 'Wild Card': Making Peace with Mortality
Playing 'Wild Card': The Infinite Universe
Reflections on Nuance and the Media Business
7 Key Concepts
Psychic Exhaustion (from news)
A deep mental and emotional fatigue experienced by journalists, particularly those in anchor or host roles, due to constant exposure to and processing of urgent, often difficult news. It can lead to a diminished capacity to 'turn off' the news cycle.
Diminishing Curiosity
A critical 'red flag' for journalists, indicating a loss of the fundamental drive to learn, ask questions, and engage with stories and people. It signals a potential burnout and a need for change in one's professional life.
Adult Orphanhood
The experience of losing both parents as an adult, which can trigger a profound existential void and a re-evaluation of one's life choices, purpose, and spiritual beliefs.
Spiritual Scaffolding
A metaphor used to describe the spiritual or religious upbringing provided by parents, which lays a foundation but requires the individual to actively build upon it to create their own spiritual home and identity.
Human Imbued Sacredness
The powerful idea that individuals have the agency to decide what is sacred and meaningful in their own lives. This self-created sacredness is not diminished by its human origin and allows for gratitude and appreciation in everyday experiences.
Intellectual Humility
A state of mind characterized by an increasing comfort with the possibility of being wrong and an understanding that certainty does not equate to truth. Cultivating this can improve relationships and reduce arrogance.
Good-ishness
A concept suggesting that people are not purely good or purely bad, but rather a mix of both. Embracing this perspective allows individuals to acknowledge their mistakes without challenging their core identity, fostering self-forgiveness and empathy for others.
8 Questions Answered
Rachel left due to psychic exhaustion, diminishing curiosity about the news, and the unsustainable hours of the job, especially with young children. Her father's sudden death and a period of depression also solidified her decision to prioritize her health and well-being.
Rachel found intimacy in interviews and connecting with people's interior lives most fulfilling. She moved away from breaking news because she was not driven by being 'first' to a story and found the constant focus on death tolls and incremental news numbing and emotionally exhausting.
Her father's sudden death, 15 years after her mother's, served as a 'massive fire alarm,' pushing her to confront her unhappiness and an 'existential void.' It prompted her to leave her job and actively search for her own spiritual and personal meaning.
She learned that it's okay to find a different way to live than her parents, to not be a Christian, and to foster spiritual curiosity in her children rather than indoctrination. A key insight was that 'we get to decide what matters' and create our own meaning in life.
Instead of struggling in bed, get up and do walking meditation. Remind yourself that you've been sleep-deprived before and will be okay, viewing insomnia as an unwanted friend rather than an enemy, as aggression makes it stronger.
Recognize that certainty is not an indicator of truth and that dogmatism can stem from subtle pain or doubt. Embracing the concept of 'good-ishness' (being pretty good but making mistakes) helps to not challenge one's identity when errors are pointed out.
Cultivate appreciation and empathy for others' backstories and influences, recognizing that different forces shape different worldviews. Avoiding the 'lazy' binary of good/bad or right/wrong helps ease the pain of consuming contentious news and allows for more nuanced understanding.
While the idea of mortality and an infinite universe can be disconcerting, one can choose to be enthralled and excited by it rather than afraid. Reminding oneself 'I'm not exempt' from nature's processes can be a wake-up call to appreciate the present, and recognizing one is 'everything and nothing' simultaneously can be freeing.
22 Actionable Insights
1. Prioritize Well-being Over Dream Job
If a ‘dream job’ leads to psychic exhaustion, depression, diminishing curiosity, and unsustainable personal life, prioritize your mental and physical health by considering a career pivot to achieve better sleep, presence for family, and overall well-being.
2. Create Personal Meaning
Recognize and embrace the power to create your own meaning in life by consciously deciding what is sacred and important to you, allowing you to manifest gratitude and appreciation in daily experiences.
3. Act For All Beings
Adopt the principle of acting ‘for the benefit of all beings’ as a core purpose, understanding that orienting your efforts towards being useful to others is a mind state that fosters personal well-being.
4. Practice Present Moment Equanimity
Cultivate equanimity by giving yourself permission to feel whatever is happening in the present moment, while also recognizing that ‘right now it’s like this’ and everything, for better or worse, is temporary and will change.
5. Embrace ‘Good-ishness’
Adopt the concept of ‘good-ishness’ for yourself and others, recognizing that everyone is ‘pretty good but makes mistakes,’ which helps reduce defensiveness when errors are pointed out and fosters self-forgiveness.
6. Cultivate Intellectual Humility
Be aware of your own certainty, as it’s not always an indicator of truth and can mask underlying doubt; cultivating intellectual humility can improve relationships and understanding.
7. Practice Empathy Amidst News
To survive difficult news cycles and political polarization, actively cultivate appreciation and empathy for others by understanding their backstories and the influences that shaped their worldviews, rather than resorting to vilification.
8. Accept Insomnia, Meditate
When facing insomnia, remind yourself that you’ve survived sleepless nights before and will be fine, then get out of bed to practice walking meditation, turning a struggle into a ’no lose scenario’ for either sleep or mental training.
9. Befriend Insomnia Anxiety
Treat anxiety related to insomnia as a misguided friend trying to protect you; approaching it with acceptance and ‘friendship’ will defang its power, whereas aggression will only make it stronger.
10. Embrace ‘Not Exempt’ Reminder
Regularly remind yourself of the Buddhist teaching ‘I’m not exempt’ from aging, illness, and death; this practice, while seemingly grim, actually serves to awaken you to the preciousness of the present moment.
11. Choose Positive Perspective
When contemplating vast concepts like the infinite universe or mortality, consciously choose to be enthralled and excited rather than afraid, as you have the power to imbue these ideas with your own chosen meaning and perspective.
12. Break Insomnia Bed Association
If you can’t sleep, get out of bed rather than staying and struggling, as this trains your brain to associate the bed with struggle, making it harder to fall asleep later.
13. Meditate for Insomnia
If you can’t fall asleep, get out of bed and try walking meditation to exhaust both your mind and body, helping you to eventually fall asleep.
14. Practice Walking Meditation Cues
During walking meditation, use the phrase ’there is a body’ to bring your mind to physical sensations, and if concentration wanes, add mental notes like ‘moving’ or ’thinking’ to skillfully direct your attention to your sensate experience.
15. Cultivate Gratitude as Meditation
Actively train your mind to focus on gratitude, meaning, and what matters, rather than FOMO, envy, or discontent, understanding that this mental cultivation is a powerful form of meditation.
16. Actively Seek Spiritual Meaning
After significant life events or loss, actively seek out and explore different religious or spiritual traditions, or lack thereof, to construct your own meaningful spiritual framework rather than relying solely on inherited beliefs.
17. Embrace Self Paradox
Embrace the paradox of being both ’everything and nothing’ – an expression of the universe interwoven into everything – as this understanding can be freeing and allow for acceptance of your multifaceted nature.
18. Manage Emotional Exhaustion
Understand that engaging in deep, vulnerable conversations, especially in professions like journalism, can be emotionally exhausting; be prepared to make changes or set boundaries to sustain your well-being.
19. Teach Nuanced Human Nature
Teach children that people are a combination of good and bad qualities, with one being more present at different times, to foster empathy, self-forgiveness, and the ability to forgive others.
20. Explore Passions Before Law
If you have any other career interests or passions, pursue them first before committing to law school, as it’s better to try those paths than to become an unhappy lawyer.
21. Use Guided Meditation App
Download the ‘10% with Dan Harris’ app to access guided meditations specifically designed to help with stress, anxiety, sleep, focus, self-compassion, and managing interactions with annoying people.
22. Join Live Meditation Sessions
Participate in weekly live Zoom community sessions offered through the 10% with Dan Harris app to meditate with others and ask questions, fostering connection and learning.
8 Key Quotes
When all the stars are aligned, and you're doing this work that you've always longed to do, that you dreamed of doing, and you get the job, and then you're in the job, and it's great, and it's meaningful... And then you needed to stop doing it.
Rachel Martin
Who am I if I'm not this thing?
Rachel Martin
Any opportunity for me to get to that super intimate place with a person inside their mind to get a peek into their own interior life and how they see the world. That was the stuff I always wanted to do.
Rachel Martin
Human imbued sacredness is not any less than some kind of divinely imbued sacredness. Ultimately, it's our choice.
Rachel Martin
Certainty is not an indicator of truth.
Dan Harris
Aggression will make it stronger, whereas friendship will defang it.
Dan Harris
It's a little lazy, if I'm being honest, to exist in that kind of binary of the good and the bad, the good and the evil.
Rachel Martin
There's aging and illness and dying all around us and you're not exempt.
Dan Harris
1 Protocols
Walking Meditation for Insomnia
Dan Harris- When you can't fall asleep, get out of bed.
- Begin walking around your house or apartment, at any speed (often slowly).
- Drop the phrase 'There is a body' into your mind to focus on the physical sensations of movement.
- Alternatively, use simple mental notes like 'moving,' 'thinking,' 'seeing,' or 'hearing' to direct attention to physical experience.
- Continue walking until you feel good and tired.
- Remind yourself that you've experienced sleeplessness before and will be okay, avoiding panic.
- Approach insomnia like an 'unwanted friend'; aggression will make it stronger, whereas friendship will defang it.