What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward. Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question. Now, what the idea that I would ever take Asian food to school in my lunch? Oh my god, that was like unfathomable. Today, my kids like they take noodles and seaweed packets, and so I saw us back. I think it's just so funny. They'd take him chee if I would let them. But it's just it has a very strong smell that would that might be a problem. It's that's my view where I would draw the line exactly. It's delicious, but you know it's just it's a very strong I feel if you said this, and it just made me, it partially made me so sad. A few of the people in the particular show that I saw saying not wanting to smell like Chinese food, Whereas to me, growing up, I knew it was like a happy time for my mom and I, you know, we were that meant we were going to be together and we were going to eat great food and it was so important. Like it's so funny how sense memory affects us differently. I love hearing you say that, Brooke, because it just goes to show, like what a part of American culture Chinese food has become. My guest today is award winning journalist and author Lee sa Ling. Lisa has been a leader in news for decades, covering stories for CNN, ABC, National Geographic. The list goes on. Her big break came when she was just twenty one and was sent to Afghanistan to cover its civil war. That experienced shaped her immensely, and she since dedicated her career to amplifying marginalized voices. I've watched an admiration as she's gone on to develop an incredible body of work, including This Is Life with Lisa Ling, which ran for nine seasons on CNN and take Out, a fascinating docuseries currently streaming on HBO Max. She's a true badass, and she's an incredible storyteller, and I'm so thrilled to share a conversation with all of you. So here is Lisa Ling. Lisa Ling, so happy to see her smiling face, to see you Brook. Now. I know more of you than I do know you personally, but in some weird way, I feel like we really do know each other. And that's one of the beauties of what you put out there. People think that they really know you. But I always love to ask guests because in my life I'm always slightly disappointed in how I'm introduced because it seems like it's produced to the lowest common denominator or something that I'm not really proud of or something. So how would you like to be introduced? Or who is Leaslay? What answer that question? We? Well, first of all, thank you for having me, and I feel the same about you. While we haven't spent much time together, you were part of my upbringing. I feel like we in some ways grew up together. I like to be introduced as a mother and a storyteller, journalist, a lover of eighties music and an eighties pop culture, which is why you were such a fixture of it for me and someone who is always trying to connect our fellow humans with one another. See that is beautiful and it is what you've done. And I love that you put mother first, which is so so interesting. Can we go back a little bit just to sort of talk about how you came to be and where you came from because your parents immigrated right to the US before you were born. Correct, yes, yes, they came at very different times. My father was ten when his family immigrated to the United States. His parents were highly educated people. My grandfather had an MBA from University of Colorado because he had studied in the United States a couple of decades before they actually immigrated, and my grandmother had a music degree from from cambrid in England. But because they were Chinese, he couldn't get a job in finance and she couldn't get a job in the professional world, so they ended up doing odd jobs and eventually scraped together enough money to open a Chinese restaurant in Carmichael, California, which is a suburb of Sacramento. When neither of my grandparents even knew how to cook, but they realized that it was one of the only pathways to being able to kind of eke out some semblance of the American dream. And so I grew up in Carmichael, California, And at the time when my family settled there, there were no Asians. It was not a diverse community at all. But my family could settle there because they spoke perfect English. And was that difficult, Like, was it because it's all you've known, But behaviorally from other people, I've heard you talk a little bit about it, it was. I was never physically harassed, and I was never I never felt discrimination from any of the adults. But the kids teased me. I mean there were kids who literally teased me every single day throughout middle school and high school. God, you know, I had more nicknames than any any other kid that I know. And it wasn't malicious. But when you're a kid who is different from everyone else and your differences are highlighted regularly, you know at that age when all you want to do is fit in, All you want to do is just be like everyone else accepted. Yeah, those things are hard. Do you think it gave you a certain resilience to just forge ahead. For sure, I definitely think that it really drove me to one leave that area to seek out a place that was more diverse, but also to kind of proved to everyone else that I was going to be not only okay, but that I was going to survive through it and thrive. I imagine it also gave you a certain amount of empathy to provide a place for people to be heard. I do think Brooke that that's one of the reasons why over so many years, people have come to trust me, Because I do think that so many of the stories that I've worked on, you know, deal with people whose voices are rarely heard, who don't get an opportunity to speak out much and tell their own stories. And I do believe that my background and kind of going through similar kinds of things has allowed me to better understand people. I'm as guilty as anyone for having preconceived ideas about what someone's going to be like, what a community is going to be like, but I do really try hard in every experience that I have, in any every interview that I conduct, I think to myself, you know, put whatever a pans or judgments you have aside and really just have a human to human conversation with this person, irrespective of what you know he or she or they may have done or may be accused of. For this hour that we are sitting across from each other, just have a conversation and allow this person to share their hearts and their truth and their truth. I also think that in the same way that you say you're as guilty as everybody, I think so many people in this country are extremely guilty of lumping the entire Asian community in one place. For sure. And you yourself had your mother was Taiwanese, correct, My mom's Taiwanese and your father is Chinese. And did they share any of their cultural history as you were growing up? Did they teach you everything about it? They really didn't. And I think that's a very common thing among the children of a particularly immigrant Asians. You know, maybe it's because I'm part of it, but it's it's it's a highly repressed culture, you know, which is why I think so many of us really carry so many layers of generational trauma that continues to go unresolved and really impact us for generations. You know, so many of our families went through you know, war and crisis and trauma. But you know, unless they were forced to confront it, they just kind of have buried it. I mean, the whole sort of immigrating from distant lands to this country where they felt so unwelcomed, right where they were looked at as second class citizens, where they just had to had to survive. You know, it's mind boggling to me. So that's a long way of saying that my parents did not communicate a lot of those things that they went through in their past. But why I have become such an advocate for our community really addressing so many of these mental health issues that plague us. When I started at the View with Barbara Walters, she took me to lunch one day and started asking me questions about my mom and my mom and dad divorced when I was seven and she moved to Los Angeles. I was still in northern California, And when Barbara Walters started asking me those questions, I broke down. I mean, she's just she has a knack for just making people cry in an instant, like this is all true. But I became emotionally because the truth was I didn't really know anything about my mom's past. I just knew that I harbored some resentment for her because of the divorce and because she moved, And so that compelled me to get myself into therapy and to start having conversations with my mom, where I even took her back to Taiwan and man Brooke. That was such a hard trip because she thought that she was closing the book on so many of the things that she experienced as a young person in Taiwan, which were really dark and ugly. But that action of taking her to confront those things and then talking about them and understanding her really allowed me a deeper level of understanding of what she went through. And eventually, although it took a lot of work, all those feelings of resentment and abandonment just dissipated because I better understood why she did the things that she did. How did she feel at the end of it? Was she thankful or was she she regret it? I think she was so thankful. Again, as hard as it was, I saw her in a different light, you know, like I developed a kind of respect for her that I can honestly say I didn't really have. Were you were able to forgive her? Oh? Yeah? It was the first step. I mean, this has been a process, Brook and you know, plant medicines have even contributed to this, to the process as well. Right, that's a whole other way story. I wish I could I'm the worst, but it was a huge, huge first step, and I think both of us realized that it was a path that we had to continue to walk on. How did your dad react to that? You know, I think my dad, because my mom's the one who left, has just always been bitter, you know. But you know, he's a very idiosyncratic person. And as much as I love him, I mean, he was my first love. I couldn't be buried to my dad. He's very a tough guy. And again like that that also, my parents are such different people. They really should have never been together in the first place. They kind of had, you know, what amounted to like an arranged marriage. And so I think that I've forgiven my mom for leaving my dad because I know how my dad has been. But what what what I did with my mom has really been pivotal. And I channel this in my work a lot, because people share with me things that they may have never shared with their closest friends or family members, And so often when I'm engaged in conversation with people, they often go back to something that happened in their own childhood, right that led them onto the path where they are today. And one of the questions that very often comes up when I talk to people who I don't know may be incarcerated, or you know, we're self medicating, or you know, started to pursue sex work for example. You know, I often in the end ask them like, what would seven year old Jason think about what you're doing now? Well, what do you think that seven year old Lisa would think about that trip and her life? I mean, if I could talk to seven year old Lisa, whose parents were going through that divorce that was so traumatizing for me that you know, used to keep me up crying in bed, you know, regularly, I would just tell her it's going to be okay, that that that her parents were such different people, and that in some cases it might be better for the two of them to not be together, that you could experience them as independent individuals, that they didn't need to be together in order for them and for you to feel like you have a happy life. It doesn't appear that you relied on anybody else to move yourself forward. You go to college, but you leave, you leave before you graduate, which is so risky to take your first job. How did you find the courage to that? What was the reaction by your parents or your peers and family? Right, my my Asian parents, who were all about you know, education, which is why they were right right, right, You know, my parents were actually very understanding because I had a job that was a kinder graduate school. I mean, I would never encourage anyone to drop out of college for just any job. But I had a job that was sending me all over the world to cover stories that were, you know, we're making headline news, the civil war in Afghanistan, the democracy movement throughout China, throughout Iran, even drug wars throughout South America, the Russian referendum elections. So and you're twenty one. I was in my early twenties. I'm sorry my nineteens, really like, what path did you have to take? Because that's unheard enough to put a twenty one year old in Afghanistan in both places and expect that a they won't be traumatized, but be that they will have the wherewithal to stay focused and get through it. Yeah, I was really lucky. I auditioned for a show that was seen in middle schools and high schools across the country called Channel one News, and because it was as a show that was seen in schools, they hired young looking correspondence to cover and deliver the news. So Anderson Cooper, before he was totally gray, was one of my colleagues at Channel one, and they would with regularity send us into the world. And you know, when I went to Afghanistan, I went with the Red Cross, you know, which, as you know, as a highly reputable NGO. And back then, when you traveled with NGOs, the likelihood of something happening would be far less than had you not gone in with them. So I felt pretty secure. And the world was a different place too, it really was. I don't think that Americans had the same kinds of targets on our backs at the time. And for me, I've just I've always been a kid who just was insatiably curious, who never had a chance to really see much of the world because I didn't have the money to do so. So that chance to travel to distant locations and communicate what I was seeing was so incredible, an eye opening, And I'm sure you had multiple experiences, but was there anyone one thing that happened during those years in that time that just stood out to you. I mean, yeah, and I'll keep this short, but you mentioned Afghanistan or I mentioned Afghanistan. I mean that trip when I was twenty one. I was a sophomore at the University of Southern California, and you know, Afghanistan was a place that I couldn't even identify on a map at that time, and most of the people in my world couldn't identify it either, and I probably still can't well exactly exactly. And when we landed and I was immediately surrounded by young boys who were armed to the teeth carrying weapons that were larger than they were, what I saw was so just shocked me to the core. And coming back from that experience, I tried to engage my friends and my colleagues about what I'd just seen there, and no one had any clue that this scene existed in the world, despite the fact that the United States was so deeply embedded in Afghanistan, and that in fact, those very weapons that some of those boys may have been carrying could have been paid for by our country, by the United States. For me that at that moment, I realized, like I need to be Like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, is being out there, you know, whether it was around the world or somewhere in my own backyard, but communicating what I was seeing to a larger audience. And you weren't even further. You wrote a book, correct with your sister. Can you take me through a little bit of that, because I was horrified when I heard what had happened to her. Yeah. So in two thousand and nine, my sister was working for an organization, a news organization that al Gore was affiliated with, and they were working on a story about the refugee crisis and people who would risk their lives to escape from North Korea finally to make it into China where they were often exploited and forced into sex, slavery and other horrific conditions. And as they're reporting on the border, they hired a fixer, and we all hire fixers when we travel overseas, people who have worked with press before to help them sort of navigate the area. And when they were there, the fixer led them over the border, and I don't even think my sister and her colleagues really even realized that they were over the border. And suddenly they heard shouting and people running toward them, and they ran back into China, and North Korean soldiers crossed over the border and violently dragged my sister in her colleague back into North Korea, where where they would stay for five months and be held in captivity and eventually sentenced by the North Korean government to twelve years hard labor. And it required former President Clinton to go over and negotiate the release of my sister in her colleague. And even when I talk about it, it's like, oh, my god, I cannot believe that actually happened. Did you have any communication with her during that horrific time. Well, she was able to make five calls during her five month captivity. Five months may not sound like a lot, but when your sister is inside the most reclusive, isolated country on Earth, you know, one of our number one adversaries, it's terrifying. One day, you know, even yeah, I mean even you know, if you're locked up in the most hardcore prison in the United States, you can at least communicate or have visiting hours. But you know, I didn't know that she had been beaten with a rifle butt until after she had been released from captivity. There was so much that we just didn't know about her time there until she was released. But I think all of my years of reporting and developing connections with people really culminated in this moment. Anyone in this situation would have done anything that they could to have their their sibling released, And it was just a crazy time surreal. Did your focus an approach to reporting change in any way? You know? I it certainly has. For my sister. She is far less inclined to want to do international work, especially you know, to conflict zones. For me, because I have young kids as well, let's just say I will still go, but I definitely take security far more seriously. But I also brook feel like because that story that she was reporting on was prevented from being told, it's actually even made me more defiant about wanting to tell those untold stories, about the conveying the importance of telling those stories and really supporting journalists who take these enormous risks in order for us to be able to consume, you know, incredibly important information. I do feel that many women, so many women, especially women of color, women over forty, you know, they've had to sort of fight to take space and be heard or have a voice or bring those stories. Yeah, do you think that you've had to fight in anyway to get those opportunities? Definitely, I definitely believe that. Or I feel grateful that I've been able to stay in this business as long as I have and have shows that have carried my name on them for as many years as I have. But that doesn't mean that I haven't dealt with my share of discrimination in the workplace. And I can speak for myself. I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of all Asian women, but I know I have not been the best advocate for myself because I never really saw that modeled for me. You know, Asian women, you know, demanding their worth or taking up space, and it's taking a lot of work, I think for so many of us to dislodge those feelings and feel confident and comfortable taking up the space that we deserve to take up absolutely and learning how to advocate for yourself. I mean, did you when when you are feeling those things, are feeling that that being in that position. Did you talk to your bosses, did you complain to anybody? Did you have any path? Well, I've I've I've always, you know, because of this business, you have to have them. You know. I have great agents who are who are bulldogs, quite honestly, and they've even said to me, Lisa, let us negotiate your contract because we know that you would do it for free. And I just let them because it's the truth, because I'm not good at negotiating. I'm not good about, you know, recognizing my own worth. I do the work that I do because I'm deeply passionate about it, and I feel so fortunate to be able to do it. But I have not, I've really suffered from kind of you know, recognizing my worth. And so after a particular incident many years ago, when I was told that at TCA the Television Criticismiation, my show was going to be extended for another year, but that this white male, this white male, and this white male, we're going to have their contracts extended for an additional year, so two years total. I was sort of flummixed because my show performed similarly, if not better than some of those white males I called my agent, and I said, will you please tell the network that if anyone at TCA asks me why I didn't why I was the only one who wasn't getting her contract extended for two additional years, I will respond by saying, well, maybe it's because I'm not white and male enough. And immediately thereafter I got a call saying that my contract was also going to be extended for two years. And I hated doing that, brook, but I realized that I had to do it, not just for me, but for every woman, an Asian woman who would come after me like I had to do this. I had to take a stand on behalf of all those other women who who didn't also have models for standing up for ourselves. What advice would you give women who don't have a team of people around them, I would say, start to find you find your women, allies out there, women who who are in the workplace. You know, I think we've gotten really good at being independent and feeling like we need to do everything on our own, but it's so important to find a community of like minded individuals who can help you figure out ways to advocate for yourself. You know, find those people that you can bounce ideas off of who can empower you, look for people who can mentor you or from whom you think you can learn something and also be that person for someone else. And that's a very important message because I think we can learn from those who have learned already how to advocate for themselves. I mean, it starts this sort of community of women who are really genuinely lifting each other up and who are not afraid of someone else's success, as if that's a threat. And I don't know if it was the show you were talking about, but this is Life, which we've all loved and watched for so long, that went nine seasons, Yes, nine, come on that. I know, it's incredible, It's incredible. My colleague was like, Friends ran for nine seasons. Friends are Seinfeld one of them? Yeah, what was it like to finish that show. I'll be honest with you, I was really really sad because they're really don't I don't know. To me, there's no other show like it, you know, that really embeds and really tries to foster a deeper understanding of our fellow humans. But at the same time, Brooke, I mean, I couldn't be proud of the work that We've done, and there are other things that I want to do as well. You know, I'm not I'm not done. And even though I've reached middle age, I feel like I'm just starting. I mean, you haven't wasted any time. Let's just put it that way. You've gone and this is great for your daughter in particular, to see is that you keep going. But take Out is a food travel docu series and it's on HBO Max, and you explore the Asian food scene sort of in the US. If there's so much, so many different I didn't know, and I've traveled, but I haven't, but I was so ignorant to so many different foods and cultures. And what struck me is how in touch you became with your own Asian history and pride and culture. That was almost it was enhanced. Yes, your trip to Taiwan, I'm sure, but even this show is able to do that and it gets emotional. Well, yeah, this show really it's about Asian American history. I mean really, it's about all of our history, you know what I mean, Like Asian American history is American history. You know these stories of Japanese internment right of you know, the first settlers Filipino settlers in the Bayous of Louisiana who brought shrimp into the American diet. You know, these are all stories that we all own, right And for me, I think there was always this sort of separation between being Asian and being American. But it was really this realization that Asian Americans are kind of its own culture. You know, being an American is a distinctive identity undo itself. I am no more Asian than I am American. Like it's a combination of all these things. And just to be able to produce a show about these buried stories and histories, stories that I may have been ashamed of growing up because I was so insecure about my Asian identity and really ashamed of Asian food. Like the idea that I would I would ever take Asian food to school in my lunch, Oh my god, that was like unfathomable. Today, my kids like they take noodles and seaweed packets and so I sauce back. I like, it's just so funny. They take kim chee if I would let them. But it's just it has a very strong smell that would that might be a problem. It's odorous, that might be where I would draw the line exactly, it's delicious, but you know it's just you know, strong smell. You also, a few of you said this, and it just made me. It partially made me so sad a few of the people in the particular show that I saw saying not wanting to smell like Chinese food. Whereas to me growing up, that was a happy time for my mom and I, you know, we were that meant that just meant we were going to be together and we were going to eat great food and it was so important. Like it's so funny how sense memory affects us differently. I love hearing you say that broke because it just goes to show like what a part of American culture Chinese food has become. The show is called Nawa And I always just would like to touch upon a pivotal moment in your life that you've experienced where you've had to really ask the question, now, what and how did you go forward? Well, I mean I have been sort of asking that lately. You know, when my show ended, I mean I was doing a show for nine seasons, that's nine years, and before that, my show on Oprah's network own that was five seasons, so you know, we're talking about fourteen years of my life, and so when that ended, you know, that's a question that I still have been asking. I mean, I know, in my heart of hearts, I'm just beginning and there's so many things left to do and so many stories that need to be told. But figuring out, like what pat what kind of platform? What you know, how to go about telling these kinds of stories, you know, just given that I have been so sort of entrenched in a particular style, a particular method of storytelling. So I'm kind of going through that now, and I but I feel fortunate that I have, throughout my life in career kind of stood for something and that I like to think that I still have a kind of credibility that will allow me to continue telling similar kinds of stories that have depth and meaning and that my kids will be proud of. That was the amazing Lisa Ling. If you want to hear more from her, go watch Take Out with Lisa Ling, streaming now on HBO Max. Do you have a guess that you'd like to hear on the show, Head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a comment. Oh, while you're at it, please Please don't forget to rate and review the show. It helps me learn and it helps new listeners follow us. Thanks for listening now, What with Brookshields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abou Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahed Fraser.

What do you do when life doesn't go according to plan that moment you lose a job, or a loved one, or even a piece of yourself. I'm Brookshields and this is now What, a podcast about pivotal moments as told by people who lived them. Each week, I sit down with a guest to talk about the times they were knocked off course and what they did to move forward. Some stories are funny, others are gut wrenching, but all are unapologetically human and remind us that every success and every setback is accompanied by a choice, and that choice answers one question. Now, what the idea that I would ever take Asian food to school in my lunch? Oh my god, that was like unfathomable. Today, my kids like they take noodles and seaweed packets, and so I saw us back. I think it's just so funny. They'd take him chee if I would let them. But it's just it has a very strong smell that would that might be a problem. It's that's my view where I would draw the line exactly. It's delicious, but you know it's just it's a very strong I feel if you said this, and it just made me, it partially made me so sad. A few of the people in the particular show that I saw saying not wanting to smell like Chinese food, Whereas to me, growing up, I knew it was like a happy time for my mom and I, you know, we were that meant we were going to be together and we were going to eat great food and it was so important. Like it's so funny how sense memory affects us differently. I love hearing you say that, Brooke, because it just goes to show, like what a part of American culture Chinese food has become. My guest today is award winning journalist and author Lee sa Ling. Lisa has been a leader in news for decades, covering stories for CNN, ABC, National Geographic. The list goes on. Her big break came when she was just twenty one and was sent to Afghanistan to cover its civil war. That experienced shaped her immensely, and she since dedicated her career to amplifying marginalized voices. I've watched an admiration as she's gone on to develop an incredible body of work, including This Is Life with Lisa Ling, which ran for nine seasons on CNN and take Out, a fascinating docuseries currently streaming on HBO Max. She's a true badass, and she's an incredible storyteller, and I'm so thrilled to share a conversation with all of you. So here is Lisa Ling. Lisa Ling, so happy to see her smiling face, to see you Brook. Now. I know more of you than I do know you personally, but in some weird way, I feel like we really do know each other. And that's one of the beauties of what you put out there. People think that they really know you. But I always love to ask guests because in my life I'm always slightly disappointed in how I'm introduced because it seems like it's produced to the lowest common denominator or something that I'm not really proud of or something. So how would you like to be introduced? Or who is Leaslay? What answer that question? We? Well, first of all, thank you for having me, and I feel the same about you. While we haven't spent much time together, you were part of my upbringing. I feel like we in some ways grew up together. I like to be introduced as a mother and a storyteller, journalist, a lover of eighties music and an eighties pop culture, which is why you were such a fixture of it for me and someone who is always trying to connect our fellow humans with one another. See that is beautiful and it is what you've done. And I love that you put mother first, which is so so interesting. Can we go back a little bit just to sort of talk about how you came to be and where you came from because your parents immigrated right to the US before you were born. Correct, yes, yes, they came at very different times. My father was ten when his family immigrated to the United States. His parents were highly educated people. My grandfather had an MBA from University of Colorado because he had studied in the United States a couple of decades before they actually immigrated, and my grandmother had a music degree from from cambrid in England. But because they were Chinese, he couldn't get a job in finance and she couldn't get a job in the professional world, so they ended up doing odd jobs and eventually scraped together enough money to open a Chinese restaurant in Carmichael, California, which is a suburb of Sacramento. When neither of my grandparents even knew how to cook, but they realized that it was one of the only pathways to being able to kind of eke out some semblance of the American dream. And so I grew up in Carmichael, California, And at the time when my family settled there, there were no Asians. It was not a diverse community at all. But my family could settle there because they spoke perfect English. And was that difficult, Like, was it because it's all you've known, But behaviorally from other people, I've heard you talk a little bit about it, it was. I was never physically harassed, and I was never I never felt discrimination from any of the adults. But the kids teased me. I mean there were kids who literally teased me every single day throughout middle school and high school. God, you know, I had more nicknames than any any other kid that I know. And it wasn't malicious. But when you're a kid who is different from everyone else and your differences are highlighted regularly, you know at that age when all you want to do is fit in, All you want to do is just be like everyone else accepted. Yeah, those things are hard. Do you think it gave you a certain resilience to just forge ahead. For sure, I definitely think that it really drove me to one leave that area to seek out a place that was more diverse, but also to kind of proved to everyone else that I was going to be not only okay, but that I was going to survive through it and thrive. I imagine it also gave you a certain amount of empathy to provide a place for people to be heard. I do think Brooke that that's one of the reasons why over so many years, people have come to trust me, Because I do think that so many of the stories that I've worked on, you know, deal with people whose voices are rarely heard, who don't get an opportunity to speak out much and tell their own stories. And I do believe that my background and kind of going through similar kinds of things has allowed me to better understand people. I'm as guilty as anyone for having preconceived ideas about what someone's going to be like, what a community is going to be like, but I do really try hard in every experience that I have, in any every interview that I conduct, I think to myself, you know, put whatever a pans or judgments you have aside and really just have a human to human conversation with this person, irrespective of what you know he or she or they may have done or may be accused of. For this hour that we are sitting across from each other, just have a conversation and allow this person to share their hearts and their truth and their truth. I also think that in the same way that you say you're as guilty as everybody, I think so many people in this country are extremely guilty of lumping the entire Asian community in one place. For sure. And you yourself had your mother was Taiwanese, correct, My mom's Taiwanese and your father is Chinese. And did they share any of their cultural history as you were growing up? Did they teach you everything about it? They really didn't. And I think that's a very common thing among the children of a particularly immigrant Asians. You know, maybe it's because I'm part of it, but it's it's it's a highly repressed culture, you know, which is why I think so many of us really carry so many layers of generational trauma that continues to go unresolved and really impact us for generations. You know, so many of our families went through you know, war and crisis and trauma. But you know, unless they were forced to confront it, they just kind of have buried it. I mean, the whole sort of immigrating from distant lands to this country where they felt so unwelcomed, right where they were looked at as second class citizens, where they just had to had to survive. You know, it's mind boggling to me. So that's a long way of saying that my parents did not communicate a lot of those things that they went through in their past. But why I have become such an advocate for our community really addressing so many of these mental health issues that plague us. When I started at the View with Barbara Walters, she took me to lunch one day and started asking me questions about my mom and my mom and dad divorced when I was seven and she moved to Los Angeles. I was still in northern California, And when Barbara Walters started asking me those questions, I broke down. I mean, she's just she has a knack for just making people cry in an instant, like this is all true. But I became emotionally because the truth was I didn't really know anything about my mom's past. I just knew that I harbored some resentment for her because of the divorce and because she moved, And so that compelled me to get myself into therapy and to start having conversations with my mom, where I even took her back to Taiwan and man Brooke. That was such a hard trip because she thought that she was closing the book on so many of the things that she experienced as a young person in Taiwan, which were really dark and ugly. But that action of taking her to confront those things and then talking about them and understanding her really allowed me a deeper level of understanding of what she went through. And eventually, although it took a lot of work, all those feelings of resentment and abandonment just dissipated because I better understood why she did the things that she did. How did she feel at the end of it? Was she thankful or was she she regret it? I think she was so thankful. Again, as hard as it was, I saw her in a different light, you know, like I developed a kind of respect for her that I can honestly say I didn't really have. Were you were able to forgive her? Oh? Yeah? It was the first step. I mean, this has been a process, Brook and you know, plant medicines have even contributed to this, to the process as well. Right, that's a whole other way story. I wish I could I'm the worst, but it was a huge, huge first step, and I think both of us realized that it was a path that we had to continue to walk on. How did your dad react to that? You know, I think my dad, because my mom's the one who left, has just always been bitter, you know. But you know, he's a very idiosyncratic person. And as much as I love him, I mean, he was my first love. I couldn't be buried to my dad. He's very a tough guy. And again like that that also, my parents are such different people. They really should have never been together in the first place. They kind of had, you know, what amounted to like an arranged marriage. And so I think that I've forgiven my mom for leaving my dad because I know how my dad has been. But what what what I did with my mom has really been pivotal. And I channel this in my work a lot, because people share with me things that they may have never shared with their closest friends or family members, And so often when I'm engaged in conversation with people, they often go back to something that happened in their own childhood, right that led them onto the path where they are today. And one of the questions that very often comes up when I talk to people who I don't know may be incarcerated, or you know, we're self medicating, or you know, started to pursue sex work for example. You know, I often in the end ask them like, what would seven year old Jason think about what you're doing now? Well, what do you think that seven year old Lisa would think about that trip and her life? I mean, if I could talk to seven year old Lisa, whose parents were going through that divorce that was so traumatizing for me that you know, used to keep me up crying in bed, you know, regularly, I would just tell her it's going to be okay, that that that her parents were such different people, and that in some cases it might be better for the two of them to not be together, that you could experience them as independent individuals, that they didn't need to be together in order for them and for you to feel like you have a happy life. It doesn't appear that you relied on anybody else to move yourself forward. You go to college, but you leave, you leave before you graduate, which is so risky to take your first job. How did you find the courage to that? What was the reaction by your parents or your peers and family? Right, my my Asian parents, who were all about you know, education, which is why they were right right, right, You know, my parents were actually very understanding because I had a job that was a kinder graduate school. I mean, I would never encourage anyone to drop out of college for just any job. But I had a job that was sending me all over the world to cover stories that were, you know, we're making headline news, the civil war in Afghanistan, the democracy movement throughout China, throughout Iran, even drug wars throughout South America, the Russian referendum elections. So and you're twenty one. I was in my early twenties. I'm sorry my nineteens, really like, what path did you have to take? Because that's unheard enough to put a twenty one year old in Afghanistan in both places and expect that a they won't be traumatized, but be that they will have the wherewithal to stay focused and get through it. Yeah, I was really lucky. I auditioned for a show that was seen in middle schools and high schools across the country called Channel one News, and because it was as a show that was seen in schools, they hired young looking correspondence to cover and deliver the news. So Anderson Cooper, before he was totally gray, was one of my colleagues at Channel one, and they would with regularity send us into the world. And you know, when I went to Afghanistan, I went with the Red Cross, you know, which, as you know, as a highly reputable NGO. And back then, when you traveled with NGOs, the likelihood of something happening would be far less than had you not gone in with them. So I felt pretty secure. And the world was a different place too, it really was. I don't think that Americans had the same kinds of targets on our backs at the time. And for me, I've just I've always been a kid who just was insatiably curious, who never had a chance to really see much of the world because I didn't have the money to do so. So that chance to travel to distant locations and communicate what I was seeing was so incredible, an eye opening, And I'm sure you had multiple experiences, but was there anyone one thing that happened during those years in that time that just stood out to you. I mean, yeah, and I'll keep this short, but you mentioned Afghanistan or I mentioned Afghanistan. I mean that trip when I was twenty one. I was a sophomore at the University of Southern California, and you know, Afghanistan was a place that I couldn't even identify on a map at that time, and most of the people in my world couldn't identify it either, and I probably still can't well exactly exactly. And when we landed and I was immediately surrounded by young boys who were armed to the teeth carrying weapons that were larger than they were, what I saw was so just shocked me to the core. And coming back from that experience, I tried to engage my friends and my colleagues about what I'd just seen there, and no one had any clue that this scene existed in the world, despite the fact that the United States was so deeply embedded in Afghanistan, and that in fact, those very weapons that some of those boys may have been carrying could have been paid for by our country, by the United States. For me that at that moment, I realized, like I need to be Like, this is what I'm supposed to be doing, is being out there, you know, whether it was around the world or somewhere in my own backyard, but communicating what I was seeing to a larger audience. And you weren't even further. You wrote a book, correct with your sister. Can you take me through a little bit of that, because I was horrified when I heard what had happened to her. Yeah. So in two thousand and nine, my sister was working for an organization, a news organization that al Gore was affiliated with, and they were working on a story about the refugee crisis and people who would risk their lives to escape from North Korea finally to make it into China where they were often exploited and forced into sex, slavery and other horrific conditions. And as they're reporting on the border, they hired a fixer, and we all hire fixers when we travel overseas, people who have worked with press before to help them sort of navigate the area. And when they were there, the fixer led them over the border, and I don't even think my sister and her colleagues really even realized that they were over the border. And suddenly they heard shouting and people running toward them, and they ran back into China, and North Korean soldiers crossed over the border and violently dragged my sister in her colleague back into North Korea, where where they would stay for five months and be held in captivity and eventually sentenced by the North Korean government to twelve years hard labor. And it required former President Clinton to go over and negotiate the release of my sister in her colleague. And even when I talk about it, it's like, oh, my god, I cannot believe that actually happened. Did you have any communication with her during that horrific time. Well, she was able to make five calls during her five month captivity. Five months may not sound like a lot, but when your sister is inside the most reclusive, isolated country on Earth, you know, one of our number one adversaries, it's terrifying. One day, you know, even yeah, I mean even you know, if you're locked up in the most hardcore prison in the United States, you can at least communicate or have visiting hours. But you know, I didn't know that she had been beaten with a rifle butt until after she had been released from captivity. There was so much that we just didn't know about her time there until she was released. But I think all of my years of reporting and developing connections with people really culminated in this moment. Anyone in this situation would have done anything that they could to have their their sibling released, And it was just a crazy time surreal. Did your focus an approach to reporting change in any way? You know? I it certainly has. For my sister. She is far less inclined to want to do international work, especially you know, to conflict zones. For me, because I have young kids as well, let's just say I will still go, but I definitely take security far more seriously. But I also brook feel like because that story that she was reporting on was prevented from being told, it's actually even made me more defiant about wanting to tell those untold stories, about the conveying the importance of telling those stories and really supporting journalists who take these enormous risks in order for us to be able to consume, you know, incredibly important information. I do feel that many women, so many women, especially women of color, women over forty, you know, they've had to sort of fight to take space and be heard or have a voice or bring those stories. Yeah, do you think that you've had to fight in anyway to get those opportunities? Definitely, I definitely believe that. Or I feel grateful that I've been able to stay in this business as long as I have and have shows that have carried my name on them for as many years as I have. But that doesn't mean that I haven't dealt with my share of discrimination in the workplace. And I can speak for myself. I mean, I don't want to speak on behalf of all Asian women, but I know I have not been the best advocate for myself because I never really saw that modeled for me. You know, Asian women, you know, demanding their worth or taking up space, and it's taking a lot of work, I think for so many of us to dislodge those feelings and feel confident and comfortable taking up the space that we deserve to take up absolutely and learning how to advocate for yourself. I mean, did you when when you are feeling those things, are feeling that that being in that position. Did you talk to your bosses, did you complain to anybody? Did you have any path? Well, I've I've I've always, you know, because of this business, you have to have them. You know. I have great agents who are who are bulldogs, quite honestly, and they've even said to me, Lisa, let us negotiate your contract because we know that you would do it for free. And I just let them because it's the truth, because I'm not good at negotiating. I'm not good about, you know, recognizing my own worth. I do the work that I do because I'm deeply passionate about it, and I feel so fortunate to be able to do it. But I have not, I've really suffered from kind of you know, recognizing my worth. And so after a particular incident many years ago, when I was told that at TCA the Television Criticismiation, my show was going to be extended for another year, but that this white male, this white male, and this white male, we're going to have their contracts extended for an additional year, so two years total. I was sort of flummixed because my show performed similarly, if not better than some of those white males I called my agent, and I said, will you please tell the network that if anyone at TCA asks me why I didn't why I was the only one who wasn't getting her contract extended for two additional years, I will respond by saying, well, maybe it's because I'm not white and male enough. And immediately thereafter I got a call saying that my contract was also going to be extended for two years. And I hated doing that, brook, but I realized that I had to do it, not just for me, but for every woman, an Asian woman who would come after me like I had to do this. I had to take a stand on behalf of all those other women who who didn't also have models for standing up for ourselves. What advice would you give women who don't have a team of people around them, I would say, start to find you find your women, allies out there, women who who are in the workplace. You know, I think we've gotten really good at being independent and feeling like we need to do everything on our own, but it's so important to find a community of like minded individuals who can help you figure out ways to advocate for yourself. You know, find those people that you can bounce ideas off of who can empower you, look for people who can mentor you or from whom you think you can learn something and also be that person for someone else. And that's a very important message because I think we can learn from those who have learned already how to advocate for themselves. I mean, it starts this sort of community of women who are really genuinely lifting each other up and who are not afraid of someone else's success, as if that's a threat. And I don't know if it was the show you were talking about, but this is Life, which we've all loved and watched for so long, that went nine seasons, Yes, nine, come on that. I know, it's incredible, It's incredible. My colleague was like, Friends ran for nine seasons. Friends are Seinfeld one of them? Yeah, what was it like to finish that show. I'll be honest with you, I was really really sad because they're really don't I don't know. To me, there's no other show like it, you know, that really embeds and really tries to foster a deeper understanding of our fellow humans. But at the same time, Brooke, I mean, I couldn't be proud of the work that We've done, and there are other things that I want to do as well. You know, I'm not I'm not done. And even though I've reached middle age, I feel like I'm just starting. I mean, you haven't wasted any time. Let's just put it that way. You've gone and this is great for your daughter in particular, to see is that you keep going. But take Out is a food travel docu series and it's on HBO Max, and you explore the Asian food scene sort of in the US. If there's so much, so many different I didn't know, and I've traveled, but I haven't, but I was so ignorant to so many different foods and cultures. And what struck me is how in touch you became with your own Asian history and pride and culture. That was almost it was enhanced. Yes, your trip to Taiwan, I'm sure, but even this show is able to do that and it gets emotional. Well, yeah, this show really it's about Asian American history. I mean really, it's about all of our history, you know what I mean, Like Asian American history is American history. You know these stories of Japanese internment right of you know, the first settlers Filipino settlers in the Bayous of Louisiana who brought shrimp into the American diet. You know, these are all stories that we all own, right And for me, I think there was always this sort of separation between being Asian and being American. But it was really this realization that Asian Americans are kind of its own culture. You know, being an American is a distinctive identity undo itself. I am no more Asian than I am American. Like it's a combination of all these things. And just to be able to produce a show about these buried stories and histories, stories that I may have been ashamed of growing up because I was so insecure about my Asian identity and really ashamed of Asian food. Like the idea that I would I would ever take Asian food to school in my lunch, Oh my god, that was like unfathomable. Today, my kids like they take noodles and seaweed packets and so I sauce back. I like, it's just so funny. They take kim chee if I would let them. But it's just it has a very strong smell that would that might be a problem. It's odorous, that might be where I would draw the line exactly, it's delicious, but you know it's just you know, strong smell. You also, a few of you said this, and it just made me. It partially made me so sad a few of the people in the particular show that I saw saying not wanting to smell like Chinese food. Whereas to me growing up, that was a happy time for my mom and I, you know, we were that meant that just meant we were going to be together and we were going to eat great food and it was so important. Like it's so funny how sense memory affects us differently. I love hearing you say that broke because it just goes to show like what a part of American culture Chinese food has become. The show is called Nawa And I always just would like to touch upon a pivotal moment in your life that you've experienced where you've had to really ask the question, now, what and how did you go forward? Well, I mean I have been sort of asking that lately. You know, when my show ended, I mean I was doing a show for nine seasons, that's nine years, and before that, my show on Oprah's network own that was five seasons, so you know, we're talking about fourteen years of my life, and so when that ended, you know, that's a question that I still have been asking. I mean, I know, in my heart of hearts, I'm just beginning and there's so many things left to do and so many stories that need to be told. But figuring out, like what pat what kind of platform? What you know, how to go about telling these kinds of stories, you know, just given that I have been so sort of entrenched in a particular style, a particular method of storytelling. So I'm kind of going through that now, and I but I feel fortunate that I have, throughout my life in career kind of stood for something and that I like to think that I still have a kind of credibility that will allow me to continue telling similar kinds of stories that have depth and meaning and that my kids will be proud of. That was the amazing Lisa Ling. If you want to hear more from her, go watch Take Out with Lisa Ling, streaming now on HBO Max. Do you have a guess that you'd like to hear on the show, Head over to Apple Podcasts and leave a comment. Oh, while you're at it, please Please don't forget to rate and review the show. It helps me learn and it helps new listeners follow us. Thanks for listening now, What with Brookshields is a production of iHeartRadio. Our lead producer and wonderful showrunner is Julia Weaver. Additional research and editing by Darby Masters and Abou Zafar. Our executive producer is Christina Everett. The show is mixed by Bahed Fraser.