Report from Santa Fe; Laurence Gonzales

The National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healy Foundation, Tau's New Mexico. Hello, I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to report from Santa Fe. Our guest today is author and journalist Lawrence Gonzales. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for inviting me. Well, you have received many prizes. You've got awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. And what is it, the National Magazine? Yes, you are such an enchanting storyteller and I must tell you that your books are really life -changing. I'm going to look at your old series that you've done and then we'll look at your new book. This book, Deep Survival, Who Lives, Who Dies and Why, has changed people's lives. Talk to me about the response you've gotten. Tell me about the book. Well, it's a book that's about decision -making in a sense and it

asks the question, it's in two parts. The first part asks the question, why did you do that stupid thing you did? And it talks about how this sort of decision -making works in terms of the brain science that's been done in the last 20 years or so. And it explains why you do the stupid things. Why we do the stupid things we do. Even when our brains are functioning normally and the second part of the book is the question, why does one person survive these dumb things we do and another person not? And what are the characteristics that make survivors better at surviving? And so to this day I get mail all the time from people saying, you know, I just read your book and it changed my business plan. I just read your book and it saved my wife's life. And things like that, very touching and it really means a lot to me to hear from people like that. Well, I have to tell you, I interview authors all the time, I read books all the time. I think it was maybe four years ago, I interviewed you and read this book. And it has stayed with me like nothing else I've read. Well, thank you.

And you say it's contrary to what people think, it's not Rambo that survives. It's sometimes a little lady who's been writing with her left hand even though she's right handed or who's learning another language and who's just developing active patterns in her brain for problem solving. And it's people who practice being aware of what they do all the time and it's people who are humble and the survival psychologists do say that the Rambo types are the first to go. But people who are reflecting on their own lives and becoming aware. And in the book, there are these 12, basically 12 rules of survival, 12 traits of good survivors that show people the kinds of things that they need to know. And the interesting thing is that I talk about a lot of wilderness accidents and that sort of thing, but they're just sort of symbolic for the rest of life. And we get a lot of

people from the business world, from the financial world. I speak to the military regularly, firefighters. But anyone who's interested in making better decisions finds this book useful. Well, you list the survival traits, but you illustrate them with these. And you are an adjunct professor at the Medellin School of Journalism. You are a very good journalist. You illustrate them with the most captivating stories. And some of them that I'm particularly fond of in the wilderness, in case you have an example of someone who broke both of their legs or at the top of the mountain, what to do. And then the person was able to scoot down. Well, Joe Simpson broke his leg on top of a 20 ,000 foot mountain in Peru. He was about 19 ,000 feet up. And this is a really bad place to be. It's basically a death sentence if you break your leg at that height. And nobody in Peru is going to come and rescue you. I guarantee you that. And he thought about what

he was going to do and he decided, well, I'll probably die doing this. This is a survivor trait. I'll probably die doing this, but I'm going to try anyway. And here's what I'm going to try to do. I don't know if I can get down this mountain, but I see that rock over there, and I think I can get to that rock. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to get to that rock. And just little by little, setting small, attainable goals one after the other, he got down the mountain. It took him several days, and he had hair -raising adventures on the way, but he got out. Yeah. Yeah. Another, you talk about the use of rage and the use of humor as survival techniques. Right. Humor is extremely important. There's a part of the brain that detects danger. It's called the amygdala. And it's the little part of the brain that does the fight or flight thing. It can make you panic. It can make you do stupid things when you don't want to. And if you're able to harness humor, it actually calms that part of the brain. So having a sense of humor is a very, very

good tool for a survivor. Being able to think sequentially is another one, because reason and emotion were kind of like a seesaw. The higher the emotion, the harder it is for you to think, clearly. And you need to think to make a plan to save yourself. So the higher the ability to reason, the more you can control emotion. So in an emergency situation like breaking your leg on top of a mountain, it's really good to be able to, first of all, stop and think and calm yourself. Yeah. And then to be able to sort of reflect on yourself and have a sense of humor about what's going on with you, even if it's very serious. The humorous episode you talk about is the man who was sailing alone across the sea. And he had to abandon ship. And he was grabbing things to jump into the little dinghy. And he saw his knife. He thought, I'll need a knife. And then he put it in his teeth. So he could use his hands. And he caught a glimpse of himself in just the

reflecting screen of the camera that he was using. And he looked like a pirate. Yeah. Steve Callahan was a shipwrecked sea for 76 days. And his story of survival, which is in deep survival, is a very instructive one. It's a good, it's a good one for anyone to imitate. You don't have to be at sea to imitate it. But that sense of humor he had, yeah, he laughed at himself for looking like a pirate. And then he went about survival in a very methodical way, much like Joe Simpson, setting himself small goals that he could achieve, and then celebrating that success, which makes you feel better if you celebrate your own success. And feeling good as part of the survival process, you can be in pretty awful situations and find little things to feel good about in surviving survival. I wrote about people in concentration camps who could find humorous things in their daily life, could find things to feel good about, could appreciate a sunset. And so, you know, most of us will never be in

a situation that bad. Well, I would, of course, just like to have you tell me these stories all the time. But since you mentioned the third book, I'm going to go through the series. You didn't plan it as a series, I don't think. Not initially, no. No. So the first one is deep survival. The second one is everyday survival. Why smart people do stupid things? Yes. And this is a book that attempted to take the concept of survival from the very small individual level all the way up to the global level. And to ask, can we survive as a species? Can we, can humankind survive all of our great achievements that we've created? Or will this be the end of us? Do we have a way out of this mess that we've gotten us into globally, specifically global warming? Yeah. Yes. And then just last year, this came out two years ago. Two years ago. It's called Surviving Survival, a great title, The Art and Science of Resilience.

So this is actually the true sequel to Deep Survival. Because in Deep Survival, the stories are told they end with the rescue. So when Steve Callahan finally is shipwrecked for 76 days and meets up with some fisherman who he actually drifted all the way to the Bahamas. And he gets out of the water and that's where my story stops. But of course, that's not where the story stops. That's really where a whole other story begins. Because once you've been through an experience like that, you can't just go back to your daily life and pick up where you left off because you're a different person now. Yeah. And the world is a different place to you. And so you really have to rethink how you're going to live your life. And it's sometimes very difficult, sometimes involves a lot of PTSD and depression and things like that. And so this is a book that talks about, first of all, why does this happen to us? Why is there PTSD? And it explains the brain science behind that. And then it

answers the question, well, what can we do about it and why do these things work the way they work in the brain? Well, that is what is astonishing to me. First of all, post -traumatic stress syndrome is endemic now. Unfortunately, a lot of people not only survivors, but veterans and it's a very important issue now to be addressed. But the modalities, the techniques that have worked are as individual as the cases. But you have people who've been eaten by sharks, mauled by bears, people who have had these terrible things happen. And there's a pattern that they do something, but the thing that they do is so varied. It involves knitting, learning foreign language, traveling, writing. Let's just take a minute about writing, because when you say how useful writing is for this, I'm thinking, oh, you expressed yourself. And no, it's the physical act of writing. Talk to me about that. So we can think of this, the heart of this book, has to do with a couple

of systems in the brain that are very ancient. And one of them is called the rage pathway or the rage circuit. Does that really mean they call it the rage circuit? Yeah, the rage pathway or the rage circuit. Some neuroscientists don't like to use the word circuit, but anyway, it's a pathway through the neurons of the brain. And everybody's familiar with this, even if you don't know the name of it, if you step on the cat's tail, you know what's going to happen, right? Everybody knows this. The cat's going to scream and jump and bear its claws and bear its teeth and struggle. And this is an ancient response, and it's a survival response, because if an animal attacks you, the thing you do is struggle to get away. Then you run away. So it's got real survival value. Well, this can happen under all kinds of circumstances for humans. Humans can symbolically be attacked. You know, if you have cancer, let's say, you can wind up with PTSD from going through all that. A bad divorce can do it to you. Going to war certainly can do

it to you. But what you wind up with is a rage circuit that's kind of stuck in the on position or it's triggered by all kinds of things. So this is what we say when we have PTSD. We have this rage circuit going off all the time and making us feel awful. There's another thing that cats do that everybody's familiar with and that is stalking prey. Everybody's seen a cat. Cat gets down low and he's very methodical and he goes very quietly and slowly so that he can catch the bird, right? Well, you can't do that while your rage circuit is activated. And in fact, that circuit, which is called the seeking circuit or the seeking pathway, takes up some of the same pathway that the rage circuit takes up. So it in effect disables the rage circuit while you're doing that stalking. Well, people don't do a lot of stalking, I guess, but they have other ways of activating the seeking circuit and the things they do to activate the seeking circuit are all methodical, patterned, step -by -step quiet, not necessarily quiet,

but usually solitary things. And knitting falls into that category. So in the book, I tell a story of Anne Hood who's an author and lost her five -year -old daughter to a disease and it ruined her life. I mean, it basically destroyed her life. She couldn't do anything. And she took up knitting and it was the only thing that could calm her rage circuit and calm her down enough that she wasn't constantly weeping and she was able to function again. So the same kind of effect can be had through all kinds of activities. I mentioned writing. There's one guy who took up golf and found the same kind of rhythmic patterned feeling through golf. But it can be almost anything. Learning an instrument, learning to play an instrument, learning a new language, all of these things. And so this is really at the core of this book. Yes, well, we're speaking today with Lawrence Gonzalez and who's written this wonderful series of books, Deep Survival, Everyday Survival and Surviving Survival. Do you find, I know you do a lot of public

speaking, are there groups, even veterans groups or other people that ask you to come about surviving survival? Yes, I've done the most speaking on Deep Survival, which has been a best seller for something 12 years or something. But yes, I have spoken to groups about surviving survival. And I think people are finding it very useful, and not just in huge catastrophic events in their lives, but coping with the small events too. Copying with the small events in your life is a real art. And if you can master that or improve that, you're going to do better if something big comes along. And I appreciate that you give examples of patterns of what people have done to survive survival. But you very honestly say that not everybody does survive survival. And that's very hard. It was hard, but it's true. Yeah, it is true. This isn't 100 % perfect, and this is not a self -help book that says,

follow my 10 steps and you'll be happy the rest of your life. This is a book about the reality of how your brain works and why it can make you miserable sometimes, and some things you can do to stop being so miserable. Yes, and there's so much advice in these three survival books. But what does it come down to? What is at the heart of who lives and who dies and why? Who does survive? What are the traits? You know, I'm asked all the time because of the book, Flight 232, the new book. Which we're going to talk about in a minute. I'm asked all the time why did one person survive in another not survive? And a lot of times it comes down to chance. But there are instances even in that plane crash where people make decisions about their own fate. And they don't freeze and they don't panic. They think, where am I? What's going on? How should I respond? And they also admit to the fact that they may die. They say, you know, this is a reality I can

accept. However, I still am taking breaths. So I'm going to do the next thing I can do. And those type of people tend to survive better. And that's one of the points you make in deep survival. Just do the next best thing. You know, don't do the 19 ,000 feet down just due to that rock. Yeah. And do to that rock. Well, let's talk about your new book. Well, and that's how you write a book, too, is you don't think? I've got to write 400 pages, you think, well, okay, I'm just going to write a couple of pages. Yeah, yeah. This is called Flight 232, a story of disaster and survival. Tell us about the event. Everyone's familiar with the video. This was a very famous crash. Yeah, if you're old enough, you will have seen this on TV. It was a DC -10 United Airlines Flight 232 that crashed at Sioux City, Iowa on July 19, 1989. It was a fully loaded plane, 296 people on board, and 112 people died, but 184 survived this. And if you go to Flight 232 .com, you can watch it on video. It was

caught on video. Yeah. And you will watch this fiery crash, and you will say nobody could possibly have survived this, and yet people did. And in the book, I completely reconstruct this crash from every point of view, the pilots, the passengers, flight attendants, air traffic control, firefighters, doctors. Everybody who was involved gets a point of view in this book. And I tell people, writing the book was kind of like going on the flight. You can get on, but you can't get off. I mean, it was the most riveting project I've ever been involved in my entire career. And that rivetingness translates because this is a riveting read. Yes. And I'm not bragging about my writing, because it's the people's story who told this story to me. It's their stories are what makes this riveting, and my wife can tell you, because she was around while I was writing this. Every day, I'd say you're not going to believe what I just heard, and I would tell her a new story. And the next day, I'd hear something that would top

that, and it's just amazing stuff that went on. And it's an amazing touching story of human resilience, human generosity, heroism. I mean, it gives you new faith in humanity to see how these people responded. Well, it's full of pictures and charts. You point out that the reason that this plane male function was a tiny manufacturing defect, a little bit of nitrogen in this titanium thing. Again, how small? If you go out to the airport and look at the jets there, you'll see that there's a big fan on the front of each engine. That fan is made of titanium. And in this case, the titanium, like you say, was contaminated during the melting process with a bit of nitrogen. If you add nitrogen to titanium, you get a ceramic material. So instead of being this nice, flexible titanium metal, there was a tiny bit of brittle stuff in there, and it cracked. And as soon as it cracked, it started the process of cracking more

and more and more, each time the plane fluid cracked a little more, until it took about 18 years, but it cracked completely through and that engine blew up. And in the blow -up, the residual effect was that it cut through. There were three backup hydraulic systems. So when the DC -10s are three engine plane, there's one engine on each wing and one through the tail. The one through the tail blew up, and pieces flew through the tail and cut the hydraulic lines. So the hydraulics are what make the plane steerable. The steering is hydraulic. So once the hydraulic fluid was gone, there was no steering on this plane. And the plane was rolling over on its back, and it would have plunged down 37 ,000 feet to the ground, except the captain gave the right engine all the power and turned the left engine, reduced it to zero, and that extra power on the right wing brought the wing up. So he was able to keep the wings level like that

for about 45 minutes till they crashed at Su -City Island. And he said he didn't know what made him do that. It was just a hunch. Yeah, well, he was an old experienced captain, not far from retirement, and he just knew that plane so well, and he knew flying so well that something told him to do it, but it was not in his training, and it was not in the manual. So it was a good thing he was an old experienced pilot. Yeah. And so you talk about, for example, the tail section did break off, and it landed to rest with the seats going vertically. Yeah. And there was a mom and a little two -year -old tell us that story. Right, it's a nine -year -old. But Dave Randa and his mother Susan, well, because the tail landed on the side, as you say, these seats were way up in the air. They were about 15 feet up in the air, so they had to unbuckle their seat belts and drop down into this all this torn metal. And the tail is quite a remarkable story, and if you watch the video, if you go to flight232 .com and watch that video, you can see the tail, the tail broke off when the plane first hit, and it went sliding down the runway past

the rest of the airplane with about 15 people in it, and they all lived except for two. And I interviewed about nine of them, and it was quite an amazing ride. Yeah. The stories are just so gripping. The man who jumped through the fire? Yes. Well, speaking of making decisions in a crisis, there was a man in the back part of the plane, which was not a very good place to be, because the fire was so fast in the back, it came on so fast. He dropped from his seat belt. Everyone was upside down when the plane came to a stop. He dropped from his seat belt, and he couldn't breathe for the smoke, and he couldn't see much, and he noticed there was fire off to one side of him, and he thought, I'm going to die here if I don't do something, and I'd rather risk getting burned than just sit here and die, stand here and die. And so he ran and jumped into the fire, and when he landed, he was on the runway in bright sunshine, without a scratch on him, completely unscathed, and he looked, he was a guy in a suit with a pencil still in his

pocket, and he looked so unscathed, this guy in a truck happened to pull up at that moment and said, what are you doing here? You're not supposed to be here. How did you get here? I'm thinking he was like a lawyer or something. You know, coming to chase ambulances. And there is footage of people well -dressed, people just walking around who were passengers. And so there was the element of chance where you were sitting, because in the midsection, the ceiling capsized, so those people didn't have much chance. And the captains were buried alive. Yeah, when the plane hit, it broke the right wing, and the left wing was still flying. So if you watch this video, you can see this, it goes up on its nose, and it pivots 360 degrees, and as it's doing that, it's trying to fly, but it's bouncing on its nose. And when it bounced the first time, the cockpit went tearing away with four pilots inside, and they all lived. And when it hit first class, then it came back down, and when first class hit, it was

crushed, so a lot of people were killed there. But this all dissipated energy that protected the passengers in the regular coach cabin. Yeah. However, part of that, as you say, the ceiling collapsed and trapped some people in there that died from the smoke later. So we have to explain that this is a very specific, in -depth study of really an iconic airplane accident, but fascinating. And again, the way that people, resilience surviving survival, have made sense of it. Right. And it goes into the lives of these people. The human stories in there are just heartbreaking, in some cases, and uplifting in other cases, and astounding in other cases. Yes. But it goes through what was the aftermath, like, too, for these people? How did they go on with their lives? And it really runs the gamut. I mean, there were people who got on a plane that night, went home and said, you know, I've had my plane crash. I'm not going to worry about it ever again. And yet, even in those

people, when I was interviewing them, in every single case, there would be times when they would choke up with emotion and say, I didn't realize I still had that inside of me. Yeah. You know, 25 years later. Yeah. Well, I love your work. I just want to tell you that. Thank you. I want people to, I want to show these survival books again, Deep Survival. This is a classic. And once you read it, you'll never forget it. This has got wonderful information for us. The other one this year, Outlast Year Surviving Survival. This is again. And today, this year's book, you're very busy. It's all because of my wife. She makes it possible. Yeah. Flight 232, again, with pictures, with these human interests, with these stories. But I'm going to ask you, it's very hard. I sit here. I've read all these. I need, you know, if you had a little motto or mantra for us to carry, what do we need to know about survival in this world? I think you need to trust yourself. I think you need to trust your

gut. And I think you, as you said, do the next right thing. That's what it takes. Yes. When we were talking about rage, the story that came to my mind, was a woman on the yacht, and so many of her, you know, they were lost at sea, and so many of the other passengers had died. And she kept going by reciting in her mind what she was going to tell the Coast Guard, because they hadn't heard up and rescued them. Uh -huh. And what, do you, can you... Well, she, you're talking about Debbie Kylie. Yeah. Debbie Kylie was a very good survivor, and she was really angry with the Coast Guard. And anger is something that really can help you. You can turn anger into action, and you can turn fear into anger. Mm -hmm. And so you can protect yourself from overwhelming fear sometimes by getting really irritated with what's going on. But at some point you have to settle down and go beyond the anger to the plan. Mm -hmm. You know, so

anger is a good motivator. You can't stay angry. You have to move through the stages. And in deep survival, I give the stages of survival from, you know, initially you want to deny what's going on. Yeah, this can't be happening. Right. And one of the keys is to admit what's going on. I believe I say perceive and believe. It's like, yes, you did break your leg. Yes, you are at 19 ,000 feet on a mountain. Now, what are you going to do about it? Yeah. And we all face these things in big and small ways through life. Yes, this bad thing did happen. Now, what? Well, I'm dying for the rest of it, but we have to tell the truth that we've run out of time. And it's a fascinating thing. I always want you to come back when you come to Santa Fe. I will. Our guest today is Lawrence Gonzalez. I just want our people to surviving survival, and deep survival, and flight 232. So, thank you. I hope you come back. Thank you. And I'm Lorraine Mills. I'd like to thank your audience for being with us today. And report from Santa Fe.

We'll see you next week. Past archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website report from Santa Fe dot com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at report from Santa Fe dot com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by Grant Strong, the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank

you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.