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Well, welcome to the Jason in the House podcast. I'm Jason Chaffetz, and we've got a good one for you today. We're launching this on Mother's Day. So, first of all, happy Mother's Day to all those moms out there. My mom passed away a number of years ago, and I'm sad to see her go. And I miss her, especially on Mother's Day. And there's just still times, even though she passed away back in 1995, a long time ago.
Uh, there's still those times in those moments where I just think, um, you know what, something happened dramatic or important in my life. And just for that split second, I just want to pick up the phone or walk in the other room and tell her. And, um, but you know, um, uh, this is also part of life and growing up and, uh,
And now I'm a grandpa. Hard to believe, but I'm a grandpa. So when your daughter starts having babies and she's the mom, that's just amazing. And also a salute to my own mom or to my own wife, who's the mother of our three children. It's just such an important day. And, you know, we got to celebrate moms, not just on Mother's Day, but all around. And there are really good inspirational stories out there. And that's why
We're going to have this great guest, Dr. Nicole Sapphire. You've probably seen her on Fox News. Very accomplished person. Just wonderful person.
Off the air, on the air, super talented, so knowledgeable in what she does. But she's also a mom. And boy, she's balancing a lot of things in life between her medical career, her home life, her time on Fox, all of those things. Well, she wrote a book, Love Mom, Inspiring Stories, Celebrating Motherhood. And so not only does Dr. Nicole Sapphire talk about her own life,
journey and motherhood and challenges that she has faced in life, but she also gets all these other personalities. Anyway, we're going to talk to Dr. Nicole Sapphire about all of that as we go on the podcast. But as you know, we like to kick things off by just hitting a few things in the news, and then we'll get into the interview with Dr. Nicole Sapphire. All right, Stormy Daniels.
probably a name I've said, heard, and thought of far too much. You know, they have this incredibly ridiculous case that is there in New York. Now, this is about paperwork. Donald Trump evidently executed a nondisclosure agreement years ago. I mean, this is an incident that allegedly happened some 18 years ago.
And life changed after that. And anyway, there's a nondisclosure agreement. And the district attorney is alleging that because they didn't categorize it right, that that was a campaign finance law. Now, of course, campaign finance law is governed by the federal government. It was a federal race.
There were no allegations, no charges, no nothing about Donald Trump doing something bad there. But Donald Trump's organization categorized this expense on this NDA, the non-disclosure agreement, which is like $120,000 or something like that. I may be getting the number wrong. And they categorized it as a legal expense. Now, I...
I have not yet to hear what the prosecution thinks they should have categorized it as, but it is a legal expense executed by his attorney. Anyway, it's just such a farce of a thing. The thing I really wanted to bring up and note is, you know, Stormy Daniels evidently came up, talked about all this salacious stuff, stuff that we really shouldn't. I mean, who cares? Happened 18 years ago.
And all these salacious details, and I'm sure that there were some giddy far left wing Democrats out there giggling about this, but it had nothing to do with the case when she testified. I think the one important thing that came out of this is last time we saw Stormy Daniels, evidently, as I recall, she owes Donald Trump $500,000.
So think about it. She owes Donald Trump because he sued her for doing something inappropriate in his mind. Court agreed. And she owes him $500,000. You don't think she wants to take him down and make him feel...
and all that. Anyway, I hope we never have to breathe their name again. It's ridiculous that in the middle of this campaign that they're tying them up in court for something that's going on for weeks.
It's a paperwork issue. It's a paperwork categorization. And Stormy Daniels had absolutely nothing to add. Not a material witness as to what went on there. Anyway, let's move on. All right. Governor Gavin Newsom out in California, he's getting criticized and lit up on social media like you wouldn't believe. They have a new video out where it kind of
Gavin Newsom's sort of hovering above the Golden Gate Bridge, you know, with the magic of television and all that. He's touting the record dollars spent in tourism in his country, in his state of California.
Oh my goodness, did the internet light him up saying, oh, do you get to count all the illegal aliens? Is that all tourism when you put them up in hotels and you pay for their health care and you pay for their this, that, and the other and you give them foods and stipends? Is that all? It's just so ridiculous. All the problems, all the metrics you can look at in California go in the wrong direction. People are fleeing the state.
They have this amazingly, by the tens of billions of dollars, they have a deficit. They have some serious, serious problems. And he's out there touting tourism and, hey, come to California because all these other people come to California. Kind of ridiculous. All right, time to bring on the stupid because, you know, there's always somebody doing something stupid somewhere. All right, so courtesy of thesmokinggun.com, we have two items, two
Anything that involves Florida Man usually catches my attention. I never really recognized this, but there is an inordinate number. There are an inordinate number of stories that deal with, quote unquote, Florida Man. Florida Man being that people... There's some people in Florida. I love Florida. It's one of the greatest states out there. There's a reason why people are flocking to Florida.
But here's one. Smokinggun.com again. Cops handcuffed man 73 hit officer with forcibly thrown cheeseburger. The allegation is that 73-year-old man somehow was able to forcibly throw a cheeseburger at a cop, leading to the suspect's arrest on a felony battery charge charge.
Police responded Wednesday night to a Wawa convenience store in Fort Pierce, Florida, quote, in reference to a subject being present who was previously trespassed. And evidently, whatever he did, he really ticked off the police because, boy, they arrested him on...
with a felony for throwing a cheeseburger at a police officer. I've got to tell you, that poor police officer was probably pretty ticked off to get that one. The other one that was a tie for me was the headline, Man Nabbed for Fried Chicken Battery on Sister. And if you read the article...
Let's not be throwing food at people. I think that's the lesson here. Let's just not be throwing food at people, especially police officers, especially your sister. I don't care. I mean, if there's a lesson to be learned from today's podcast, folks, don't be throwing food.
All right, let's bring in Dr. Nicole Sapphire. As you know, she's one of our favorites. Super talented, so knowledgeable in what she does, but also a really fun person too. Anyway, let's dial up and get Dr. Nicole Sapphire on the line, talk about her new book, and...
and Mother's Day and all things related to Mother's Day. All right, so joining me now, I am so thrilled. Always fun to chat with Dr. Nicole Sapphire. We did a podcast with you. Nicole, welcome, by the way. We did a podcast when my podcast first started coming out, and it was a wonderful discussion.
I mean, your podcast is obviously one of my favorite, Jason. You get so deep into the issues and you kind of really make your guests kind of go into the details. And I love it. You don't just brush over all the topics. Well, thank you. I appreciate that because that's what the medium does. You know, and television, it's so quick, quick, quick, you know, and radio, it's pretty quick.
But I love a podcast because you can kind of peel back the onion a little bit. You can get deeper and you can explore different issues and don't feel rushed for time. And, uh,
But first of all, I want to say thanks for joining because, again, I really do enjoy it. But congratulations on this new book. It's called Love Mom Inspiring Stories Celebrating Motherhood. So you've had successful books in the past. And I would think with Mother's Day coming up, this book is going to rock because it just hits. It's just these are the kinds of stories that I think need to come out and be told.
You know, Jason, my last couple of books were about one big passion of mine, health policy and, you know, how we can live our healthiest and happiest lives. You know, if the government would just like step out of the way and kind of do our thing. Right.
But when I was approached to do this book, you know, some people don't know this about me, but I kind of have a nontraditional path into motherhood. So while one passion of mine is health policy and health care, another passion of mine is the fact that I'm a mom. I'm a mom of three boys. And my nontraditional path into motherhood was.
Every time that I tell it to people, it feels like there's a level of inspiration. And I kind of just wanted to share my story even more broadly so that anyone who finds themselves into maybe a place that is difficult, they're facing some obstacles, I just wanted to let them know that they too may be able to overcome some of these challenges.
So as you know, Jason, my oldest son, who's 24 now, I became pregnant when I was still in high school. And yeah, I was that pregnant teenager walking the halls of high school. Certainly a very lonely time, isolating, but I made the decision to
to have my child. And now I'm the mom of three. And you know, I'd be lying, obviously, Jason, if I said it was easy. But having my son when I did certainly made me the person I am today. Well, you've got this most beautiful family. And let's go back though, a little bit to that decision making process, because that's a lot of pressure put on somebody who's fairly young in life,
And you had to have kind of extreme pressure coming from all angles, right? And so it prevailed. Everything worked out so wonderfully, so beautifully. But tell us a little bit more about that pressure that you were feeling, the options that were in front of you, and why the decision you made was the best decision.
Well, when I found out I was pregnant, you know, I went and told my mom immediately. It took me a little while to accept the fact that I was pregnant. I actually ended up taking five pregnancy tests. I didn't really believe the first one or the second one or the third one. But, you know, by that fifth one, I'm like, OK, it was hard. And I am eternally grateful that when I went to my mom and told her about the situation I was in,
She actually didn't impose her opinions on me or her desires. All she said was, well, you have a big decision ahead and whatever you choose, I will be by your side.
And that, you know, that unwavering support really gave me the freedom to look deep into my own soul, what I wanted to do. Now, I can't say everyone had the same response as my mom. In fact, no one else did. The majority of people actually, you know,
I would say the overwhelming majority of people told me that, you know, if I had gone forward with the pregnancy, I probably would never be a doctor. Everyone at that point knew I wanted to be a doctor. I think most people who become doctors know that from a very early age. And so there was a lot of people that said I'd be ruining my life.
I would never reach my goals. And, you know, it was isolating in the sense that I was the cheerleader. I was the honor student. And all of these people who I thought were my friends in my circle, all of a sudden I was an outcast. And it's...
It was really, you know, I actually just had a piece come out in Fox News dot com this past week, and it was a letter to my younger self. And that's something I've wanted to do for a really long time is to kind of write a letter to that 17 year old scared girl and just tell her that it's going to be OK. You know, you may feel alone right now, but all these people talking about you and, you
you know, isolating you and walking away from you. None of that matters. It's all noise. And really, you just have to remind yourself to lean on your faith and your family. And it's all going to be okay because you are stronger than all those around you. And you're going to take this moment in your life and turn it into something beautiful. And I really did in the sense that, you know, sometimes you're on a path and
And a boulder may come in front of you and block that path. Now, you may not be able to climb over that boulder. Maybe there's no way to get over that boulder. But you can carve your own path around that boulder. So you can still get to your destination. It just may not be the way you originally thought you were going to. But with hard work, perseverance, and leaning on the support of others, you can still get there. And that's essentially what I did. Yeah, good for your mom. You know, I think...
kids, it can be a whole host of things, right? It doesn't have to be pregnancy. It's hard enough being a teenager. And then you exacerbate that situation with social media and bullying and the need to just want to be liked and accepted and
Look, I'm older than you, but, you know, we didn't have the pressure that social media adds on top of this. And, you know, teenagers, they want to be liked. They want to be accepted. So what do you tell those young people that maybe don't have the type of family situation or a mom that's understanding that they just think their dad's going to
lop their head off or I don't know what, but how do you, what's your message to those, to those young people?
You know, Jason, one of the interesting things. So first of all, when I got pregnant the first time, there were no, you know, cell phones were not really a thing. Only the high end business people had cell phones. I'm pretty sure I had a pager at the time. So it was very different. But one thing that I love about the book. So it does talk about my story. Chapter one is my story. But then I also was able to ask a bunch of other moms about.
to talk about their stories. And one of those moms is Martha McCallum, who we all know and love. And Martha McCallum in her chapter gives some amazing advice, um,
of some trial and error things that she did with her kids when it came to social media and the electronics. And to be honest, the Sapphire household has already adopted some of the McCallum households, things of advice. But one of it is you have you as the parent. So you see, you know, in Congress, they're talking about, oh, we have to have age restrictions on social media. And, you know, they put all this responsibility on social media companies, you
on, you know, trying to keep the kids from getting addicted. At the end of the day, it falls on the parent. There's a lot of parental responsibility here. And if you as a parent, you're allowing your child to constantly be on the device, which we know at this point now, social media is programmed to get our children and get people addicted to it, just like cigarette smokes, just like vapes. It's all programmed, marketed for maximum addiction potential.
So therefore, it is on us as the parent to limit that interaction. Now, unfortunately, you know, social media is a reality. And so by heavily restricting, you know, a teenager or young adult saying, well, you can't be on it at all. That is actually a level of isolation as well.
because all of a sudden now they can't necessarily interact with some of their friends, but you have to be on top of them. You have to monitor them and you have to make sure that that child has the confidence and that inside they know how much they are loved and know that a lot of that is just the noise.
And that's the problem. I think a lot of parents are just as addicted to this stuff as the kids. And so they're not necessarily making sure that their kids are okay because they themselves may not be okay. Yeah. There's a lot of truth to that. You know, sometimes I find myself, okay, I have spent far too much time looking at these reels or, you know, whatever it might be. I was actually really proud of our son. Our son, um,
You know, I asked him if he had seen this or that, and he said, Dad, I don't do Facebook anymore. I don't do I just don't do it. It's just a waste of time. It's very negative. It's unrealistic. Yeah, sometimes I can laugh at stuff.
But what a waste of my time. And I thought, my goodness, you have grown up, right? I don't know what your mom said to you to get you to get to that point. But he kind of came to that conclusion on his own. And he did so years ago. And I think he's way better for it. Now he's a dad himself. And I think it's, you know, it's like everything else in the world, right? You got to find the right balance in order to accomplish things.
Yeah. You know, everything in moderation, that's kind of been my mantra, my entire life. Social media as well. And you have to know. So here's one thing. So I wore, I guess on TV sometime in the last week, something sleeveless, meaning no sleeves. And I think that's
I think the first thing I saw on social media afterwards was that I needed to put away my flabby middle age arms. And all you can do is laugh at that because it's like, okay, well, whatever. Show me a picture of your arms, you know, like who are these people and why do they have so much time on their hands to just spew nonsense? And if you really look at the people who are interacting on social media, it's,
They're probably not gainfully employed, probably living on their parents.
As long as you know that, as long as you can read those comments or not read those comments and just not be affected by it, then it's all fine. But unfortunately, when you have an impressionable young one and they start seeing some of those comments or they start looking at the reels put out by like the Kardashians or something where there's heavily plastic surgery, heavily filtered, like it's not even what reality is. I mean, this is where you can really promulgate a lot of that mental illness.
Especially in our younger kids. And so social media by no stretch of the imagination is good for our children. But it's something we're going to have to adapt to. And we just have to make sure that we are there for our children, making sure that they feel good about themselves and just be there.
Yeah, some of the surveys that come out about the prevalence and the impact about how even little kids, I mean, kids that are, you know, eight years old and younger can negotiate a smartphone pretty darn well, but ask them to do some basic things with,
reading writing arithmetic you know they can't do it i think it's an extra burden that's put on moms and dads and parents and just kids in general but let's go back to the heart of the book here so it's called love mom inspiring stories celebrating motherhood so who's like who would enjoy reading this book the most and it's not just your story it's lots of stories
That's right. So it is my story, but it's also we included a lot of other Fox moms that, you know, Martha McCallum, Ainsley Earhart, Janice Dean, Carly Shimkus, Sandra Smith, Jennifer Griffin, Rachel Campos Duffy, also Benjamin Hall's wife, Alicia Hall, and also Jennifer Hegseth, Pete Hegseth's wife. But then we also have some non-Fox people. I reached out to a patient of mine
I reached out to a gold star mom that I know. I reached out to a couple more. And we also had Fox viewers submit incredible stories. And after reading over 100 of these stories, we picked two. And these collection are they're just incredible. And we speak on so many different topics, so many real topics that everyone faces from depression, suicide, divorce, adoption, miscarriage, depression.
to being a new mom, becoming a grandma, and some all of these other far reaching topics. And as you said earlier on, we really peel back the layer of the onion. One of the only prerequisites that I said to the moms to be in this book was you have to be your authentic self.
You cannot just portray, you know, this public persona. I want you to get deep. I want you to talk about something you have never talked about publicly. And God bless these women. They all did. So when it comes to who would like or benefit from reading this book, every single person would benefit from this book. Every mom will relate to just about every one of these stories. They may actually take some pieces of advice from it.
every person who wants to be a mom is have some great stories about pregnancy and trying to get pregnant and what it's like to be a new mom, when you should become a new mom, if there ever is a right time. But, you know, then, you know, I've been asked like, oh, so this is just a book for women. I'm like, actually,
This is like a, you know, a great book, a great read for any man out there. Because let me tell you, you read these stories, you're going to have an insight to the women in your life like you have never had before. You just may understand them a little bit more. And that is going to strengthen your relationship with them. Yeah, guys, I don't think any of us have totally mastered this. I'm still, you know, Julie and I, my wife and I have been married for years.
33 years and I still have some lessons that I probably need to learn and things that I haven't implemented to just make life smoother and better. That's for sure. And look, I get inspired by ordinary people doing extraordinary things.
And I think life is going to throw things at you that you never anticipated. Right. I mean, that's kind of the essence of life. It just happens. And, you know, whether it's an accident or a cancer diagnosis that you have, you deal with on a daily basis in your profession and, you know, mental health issues, financial problems,
I mean, there can be so... There's something that's going to happen. You know, I go out on the road a lot and I talk to people and I say, look...
You don't know what people are really thinking about. They're probably in the back. You drive by somebody and they give you that weird glance and you think, what did I do? And you think, probably nothing. They're probably worried about something else. Or you see a friend at the grocery store. They weren't maybe as friendly as you were hoping they were going to be. What did I do wrong? And it probably has nothing to do with you. It probably has something else that's really...
you know, gnawing at them. And it just, I think we can be better people if we do a better job of just kind of understanding, taking a deep breath and then expressing a sincere interest in what they're going through. So to hear other people's, that's my long winded way of saying to hear other people's stories and what they've had to deal with and how they dealt with it in a successful way or the lessons they learned. Those are the kinds of stories that I think inspire me.
Yeah. And you know what? You know, people, again, we look on social media, we look at people on TV and we think that they just live the perfect life and this picture perfect. Everything's rainbows and unicorns. And, you know, one of the big messages in this book is we all suffer a lot of the same trials and tribulations. We all experience.
have to dig deep within ourselves to overcome, but we also all lean on those around us. You know, some people think asking for help is a sign of weakness, but it's actually a sign of strength. And the more you lean on those around you, the stronger you become. And
And so the message of this book is, you know, you're not in this alone and you really have to lean on those around you to build yourself a beautiful life. Now, I like calling you Nicole, but you're Dr. Nicole Sapphire, but I'm going to call you Nicole. I'm going to call you Nicole. All right. So, Nicole.
you in our other podcasts and people who like you love you on television all that please go listen to that other podcast as well because we get kind of in depth into what you went through you know being a teen uh mom and all that but now that you've got three kids correct
And what are those lessons that you're learning kind of as they've gotten older? Because like you said, your son's now in his 20s, but you've got other kids that are in their teenage years and you're balancing that with the family life and your husband and Fox and your medical work. What are some of those lessons that you kind of learned maybe more recently?
Yeah. So I'm a mom of three boys. The oldest is 24. The youngest is nine. With my oldest, obviously, I grew up with him. He was at my high school graduation, college, medical school, and he's been with me ever since. I don't know. I've never been an adult without him by my side. So, you know, he's my person. But there has been some lessons learned. And the one thing that I've gotten, you know, I'm not going to say that I've mastered, but I'm working on very much is letting go of that mom guilt.
And, you know, we've heard that term a million times that mom guilt is real. We try to be everything to everyone at all times. And we can't do that.
See, for me, I have so many things going on in my head, like trying to manage everything that what I do is I physically remove them from my head and put them down in my calendar on my phone. So, for example, today, like I have I'm back to back with things all day long, whether it's kids stuff, doctor stuff, TV stuff.
Um, but I don't have to think about any of it because I know it's all written down in my calendar. So by physically removing things from my brain and putting them down in the calendar allows me to be a hundred percent present in that moment. And that way I'm able to give the best of myself to whoever it is I'm with, whether it's my child, my patient, you
You know, friends. And I just think that's extremely important because if everything's so jumbled up in our brain, that's when you start having those feelings of anxiety. And to be honest, then you start underperforming because you're not giving your best self in the moment. But how do how do when you talk to all these other women who've gone through this as well and through your medical practice and everything else?
You know, we often find that, you know, we're so worried about our kids. We're actually grandparents now. I got five grandkids, if you can believe that. So we worry about them as well. And it's hard not to let that just consume you about all the different possible scenarios and what advice can you give them and how can we help them? But, you know, that can be overwhelming and consuming as well. So how do people how do people deal with that?
Successfully. So, you know, people say, how do you do that work-life balance? Well, the reality, Jason, there's no such thing as the work-life balance. You just do your best and make sure that you're feeling fulfilled. And if you find yourself really constantly feeling stressed out or feel like you're underperforming in one aspect, whether it's a job, whether it's parenting, whether it's your marriage, then that's the one you probably need to focus on the most and see if maybe you can remove some of those other obligations. Because
Sometimes we really do stretch ourselves too thin and we really just have to acknowledge we can't be everything to everyone at every time. It's just not feasible. And so, you know, just try to be the best version of yourself for what really matters. And for me, faith, family and friends, there is nothing more important than that.
And so that's what should have the majority of your energy, of your emotion, of your attention and everything else is background. And so as long as you have worked on those relationships, then you can start working on some of the other things. You know, sometimes people put so much pressure on their jobs at the end of the day. You know, people say, oh, you just must be so passionate about your job. Like, no, I'm passionate about my faith and my family and my friends.
I do enjoy my job. I know that I'm doing good things and I'm helping people. But at the end of the day, a job is a job. It is so that you are able to financially support your family and live a happy life with your family. And as soon as you can change that mindset and realize that everything you really are doing is to build up
and create a loving family, then things kind of start to fall into perspective a little bit more. You're listening to Jason in the House. We'll be back with more of my conversation with Dr. Nicole Sapphire right after this.
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The book is Love Mom, Inspiring Stories, Inspiring Stories, Celebrating Motherhood. You've mentioned several times there, and if you go in the book, it talks, it has a section about faith. What does faith mean to you? And there's a whole spectrum, right? There are people that are devout religiously, and there are other people that just maybe aren't as devout and maybe don't
you know, attend church regularly or do certain things that other people do. So when you talk about faith, explain that a little bit more for somebody who's maybe not as quote unquote faithful or committed to faith. What does it really mean?
So I go into detail in the book about my relationship with faith from before I was pregnant at 17 to after. And while we have time in a podcast, we don't have that much time. But for me, being faithful is believing in something greater than you.
And some of the comfort that I had personally during a time which was a beautiful time because I was pregnant with my first son, but it was also a very dark time in my life. It was full of a lot of negative emotions was that I felt that there's something greater than me, something guiding me, and nothing is going to be placed in front of me that I cannot overcome or that was not meant to be there.
And that created a great amount of comfort for me to know that there was a higher purpose to some of the adversity that I was facing. But, you know, there's study after study in medicine.
the power of her when it comes to, you know, physical conditions. And also a recent study just came out that I talked about on Fox and Friends that showed globally, not just the United States, but globally, people who are actively involved in places of worship, whether it is a church or a synagogue or a mosque, they actually had lower rates of mental illness and higher rates of just overall feeling of fulfillment and happiness in their life.
And so why is that? Well, again, it's twofold. One is believing in there's something greater than you and knowing that we're all being guided by something greater. But it also creates a sense of community. And that's something that we really struggle with these days with social media, this social isolation, inability to interact with other humans. And we spend a lot of our times on digital tech.
But having a sense of community, knowing that you are giving to something and you are also a part of something is really good for the soul. So when it comes to being faithful, that doesn't necessarily mean following certain religions. It's just being part of something bigger and having that community. And that has now shown to be good for not just your mental health, but your physical health as well. Now, well said. I think there's so much to that. The combination of
COVID and the, all the restrictions and the lack of interaction that people had. And then you add on top of that social media and just, Hey, we'll just do a zoom call. Well, you know, we won't get together in person. Oh, we'll just do that. You know, zoom call. We won't get together. That's, that's not necessarily healthy because, you know, I think when you immerse yourself in service, uh,
It really, you know, it's hard, right? When you're busy family and you're doing things and you got soccer games and you got work life balance and you got to make dinner and you got it, you know, all these things are happening.
Locally in Utah, we have this what's called the 512 Foundation. 512 refers to a child who only had $5.12 in their pocket and they couldn't didn't have enough money to really get a meal. And so the community comes together thanks to some companies and some
generous people who buy the different ingredients and then you get together I think it's on Wednesday nights and everybody comes and they they get in a line and it's like an assembly line and then you put together these little packets of food for kids that are going to go hungry over the weekend because they don't get a school lunch over the weekend and then they deliver them to the schools and the schools determine where those lunches are needed
Again, a long-winded way of saying it's really fun to do it because there's never time to do it. You have to kind of calendar it. But the social interaction, the goodness that you feel in your heart of doing service, I mean, those types of things I think are so important. And they build bonds and friendships.
I don't know if you've had those kinds of experience, but when our family does get around to doing service type things, it always ends up being positive. Right. Doing service. Obviously, it helps the people that you are doing your service for. But I don't think people really realize how good it is for you, the individual, to do service. Helping others is.
feeds our heart. It fuels our heart and it really puts things in perspective for us. We get so caught up in our day to day. And, you know, you see people having emotional outbursts about things that just do not matter, whether they're angry at work or something they see on TV. At the end of the day, a lot of that's noise and you have to really bring it back home. You look at your faith, you look at your family and what are you doing for others? And if you really can focus on that, you're going to be strengthening your heart and
Yeah, I find, you know, I'm on television, you're on television, we're talking about weighty issues that are out there in the world. And people always, you know, if they see or bump into you, or you're at a, an event or something like what can I do? And
I tell them, you know what, just be the best neighbor, best friend, best parent that you can. Somehow America figures out all these challenges. I don't know. That's what I tell people. All right. So another question I have for you is whenever you write a book and you have to get all these thoughts and really think it through, there's inevitably something that surprises you or really jumps out at you. When you put together Love Mom,
What was that for you? Well, you know, writing about my story, even though I've talked about it, certainly I'm an open book. I never hid anything, but it did bring up a lot of emotions because I didn't want again. I didn't want to just skim on the surface. I wanted to make sure I was going deep down. And so I realized I had a lot of emotions from that time that I had suppressed. So for me to write about it and to continue to talk about it has been very cathartic.
And, you know, I told my grandfather is 94 years old. And I told him when I was going to be on a segment on Fox and Friends for the book. And so on Fox and Friends, you know, I mentioned that I had a baby when I was in high school. I talked to my grandfather afterwards and he was like,
I can't believe you told the world you were going to high school. Yeah, you know, but that's my truth. And by the way, not that I would recommend it for anyone. I certainly wouldn't. It wasn't ideal. But it was the best unplanned thing that's ever happened to me in my life. And I don't know the person I would be today if that didn't happen. But then being able to talk to all these other women, I mean, we laughed. We cried.
And just putting down their stories, it just I'm just in awe of the people I'm surrounded by. And even though you know a lot about them, you realize you don't know anything about what they've gone through. And, you know, it was really eye opening for me. And just I was just so incredibly proud of these women to just, you know, strip down to their authentic self and talk about some of these hard topics.
Yeah, that like I said earlier, I get inspired by ordinary people doing extraordinary things. And yeah, somebody like Martha McCallum, who you see, you know, one of the most accomplished journalists out there. And she's still, you know, a mom and a wife and, you know, has this whole personal life.
And then you want to go see what they've gone through, because inevitably everybody's gone through something. And and that's, you know, I think of Benjamin Hall. And I know Annette, right, is in this book. You know, Benjamin Hall. There isn't Annette in this book, but Ben's wife is Alicia. Alicia. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. A lot of people know Ben's story, but to hear it.
Alicia's version, it's just like hearing a brand new story because there's a whole nother side to everything their family went through that we have no idea about. And oh, my gosh, that story is just so incredibly powerful. And for those that don't know it, you know, Benjamin Hall was a correspondent, is a correspondent, thankfully, for Fox, but got hit covering, you know, war in Ukraine and
And lost his legs and went through the trauma that went through and months and years that he's going to go through and rehabilitation and, you know, other Fox employees and affiliates died in that attack and the trauma that happened there that that what they went through in that family is just.
Amazing. So I haven't read the book yet, but I look forward to hearing, especially from her about what she went through. Cause that is an extraordinary, extraordinary story. One other thing I want to ask you as we kind of get into the end here, I worry that there is a huge significant portion of our population that is lonely, that they don't have that family structure that I have, that you have, that others have.
But there are so many people out there that maybe haven't gotten married. Maybe they don't have the kids. They don't have that family structure. How do we help people like that without them feeling like, oh, great, I'm not the needy. I'm just by myself and I'm a bit lonely. What's the message to them and, you know,
getting past that loneliness because I think whether it's the holidays or just whatever, there's a lot of loneliness in this country.
Yeah, I mean, you said it, Jason, the Surgeon General actually this year declared a loneliness epidemic. And it's because we are lonely. And there was it was beginning with the advent of social media and people spending more time interacting online than interacting face to face. And then COVID exacerbated it with remote working. And, you know, kind of we all we were told to be fearful of being around other people.
And even and I think a lot of people are still in that mindset. There is a level of PTSD from COVID. And so isolating yourself and not wanting to be around other people has been ingrained into us.
And, and the ways to combat that there's no perfect way, but being lonely is a real diagnosis. It comes with depression, anxiety, poor physical health as well. And the best thing you can do is invite other people to be with you. I mean, yeah, I have, you know, I have a family, I have a husband and three children. I have a, you know, a blended family, non-traditional family.
But so if you know someone who may be alone for the weekend or even the night or a holiday, invite them over. It may be another mouth to feed, but let me tell you, bringing someone else in that can influence conversation. And it's so good, especially for kids to be around other people and not necessarily so sheltered just in their single home. And so
You know, you don't have to adopt the entire Italian mentality, even though I'm Italian and I tend to do this, but invite people over the more the merrier. And for someone who may be feeling lonely or think that they may, you know, have moments of feeling lonely, get involved, get involved in your community, whether it's community service, whether it's in the church, whether it's with, you know, a walking group outside, just be around other people. It's I promise you, it'll be good for you.
Yeah, I think that's one of the biggest downsides of what we went through with COVID is everybody sheltered in place. Everybody hesitated. They didn't want to be near people. They didn't even want to go to the grocery store for goodness sake. And so
But that's not long term. That's just not healthy. I've been talking with Dr. Nicole Sapphire. She is uber smart. If you haven't figured that out now, then you just don't know the background about her. And she's put together this wonderful book, Love Mom, Inspiring Stories, Celebrating Motherhood. And I actually like what you wrote on the back of the book here, a celebration of the most important day.
job in the world and you know I think about my own mom who passed away from cancer unfortunately a long time ago she was far too young and you know I I want to just personally tell you I really appreciate the work you do with people who are facing a cancer diagnosis because
My mom went through that starting in her 30s, and I just wish that she had had the type of diagnostics and treatments that are available today. Because my guess is if she had had that back in the 80s and 90s, then maybe it wouldn't have had the type of consequence that it did today.
And, you know, I miss her. I love her. I'm inspired by her. And I still after all these years, I still something significant will happen in my life. And just for that split second, I think, oh, I should call my mom. And it's kind of hard. It's really hard. And, you know, my wife lost both her parents last year.
And those are hard things. And yet there's so many lessons and so many things that you can learn and be inspired by moms that hearing other people's stories, I think, is also a healthy thing. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I think we kind of take it granted when things are going good.
You know, because I tell people they have cancer, oftentimes it takes a cancer diagnosis for them to want to make some changes in their life and really refocus their priorities. I just really wish that we as a society could make the things important to us, our priorities right now, like our families and our faith and our community, because it shouldn't take a tragedy to
It shouldn't take losing your mom to want to call your mom every day, you know, for some people. So I hope that people can kind of read this book and realize that we just have to focus on what matters, especially in this crazy world. Well, we're coming up on Mother's Day. So it's a great Mother's Day gift. Love, Mom, this book and
And, you know, as Mother's Day approaches, yeah, maybe you don't have the best relationship with mom. Maybe this is a good time to kind of straighten that out and express some feelings and, you know, do the right thing, do the brave thing. And for people like myself who lost their mom, there's still, it should be a celebration. A lot of good things, a lot of fun things, all the positive things that went on in life. And not everybody had...
Had it good, you know, not everybody had a mom growing up and, you know, there's a we got to recognize that as well. We can we can just be better friends, better Americans, better neighbors by by celebrating moms, though, rather than trying to tear them down and trying to, you know, all this.
social craziness that we're going through. I, I, I'm really, I'm proud of you for writing this book and I'm, I'm glad that you did it. And I think it'll inspire a lot of people. Thank you so much. And thanks for having me on. Oh, always appreciate it. Thanks again. Again, love mom, inspiring stories, celebrating motherhood, Dr. Nicole Sapphire, or you can find it anywhere. Books are sold really. Um, and thanks again for joining us on the Jason in the house podcast.
All right. I can't thank Dr. Nicole Sapphire enough. She's amazing what she does and how she balances all the things going on in her life. Hoping you can rate this podcast. Would really appreciate that. So you can subscribe to the podcast. That would be pretty cool, too.
I would also encourage you to go over to foxnewspodcast.com. Foxnewspodcast.com. Lots of great Fox News podcasts out over there. I want to remind people, too, you can listen ad-free with a Fox News podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to this show ad-free on the Amazon Music app. Again, rate it, review it, subscribe to it. We'll be back with more.
Next week with another exciting guest, I'm Jason Chaffetz, and this has been Jason in the House.
