The Art and Science behind Survival & Resilience with Laurence Gonzales Episode #18

Aaron McHugh : Have you ever wondered why some people seem to thrive regardless of their life circumstances, today's show you'll find out why welcome to the work life and play podcast. I'm your host, Aaron [inaudible] today. My guest is Laurence Gonzales, author and adventure journalists. Think you'll enjoy hearing and learning today about the art and science of resilience in survival, situations lives, dies and why? So Laurence, great to have you here today. Thanks for making the time for it. And what I'd like to do is turn it over to you and let you give us kind of an intro of who is Laurence Gonzales.

Laurence Gonzales : Well, I'm a writer. I mean, primarily that's how I define myself. I've always wanted to write. I started to write when I was a little kid writing little short stories and I've written all my life coincidence with that. I'm also my father's son and my father was a combat pilot in world war II and he was a scientist and both of those things really influenced the way my writing developed my father survived, getting shot down over Germany twice and being in a Nazi prison camp and came home to raise seven sons and have a successful career as a college professor and researcher. And I kind of looked at this and thought, wow, you know, survival was a really interesting thing. I might not be here. You know, things had turned out slightly different. And why is that? You know, as a little kid, I began wondering, well, how come his buddies all died, and he didn’t? So that was there. And the kernel of that was there.

And then there was the science cause he was my father. So I was interested in what he did and he didn't seem capable of explaining it very well because he was a biophysicist and I was a little, you know, six year old or whatever. And he's like, well, it's kind of complicated. I can't really explain it. So I, the more he didn't explain it, the more interested I got and I followed a path of, I would have been a scientist if I hadn't been a writer, but I retained that healthy interest in science all my life. So these two things kind of came together in my life and I began doing this sort of adventure journalism where you'd go out and go into the mountains and go into the wilderness and take some kind of risk and write a dramatic piece about it.

But at the same time, I kept my interest in science and that all gradually came together as well. I, one time I got lost in glacier national park while on one of these assignments and it scared me quite, quite deeply. I wasn't lost for very long, but I thought, wow, you know, I'm running around out here. Like this is Disney world and it's really dangerous out here. And I came back to my editor, which was at a national adventure magazine. And I said, you know, I think we owe it to our readers to certainly let's glamorize these trips, but let's also warn them that they can be dangerous and give them some tips on how, how to survive. And he was like, Oh God, our advertisers would hate that. You know, we can't do that. I can't make it dangerous, fun, beauty. Anyway, I persisted.

And I finally wound up writing a piece called the rules of adventure, which went into the neuroscience. What goes on in your brain when you make these stupid mistakes? Like I did when I got lost in glacier and all of a sudden the survivor thing and the science thing came together in my mind. Anyway, I wrote two back-to-back pieces that one, each of them won a national magazine award. And I said, see, people do like this stuff. And so from there I jumped off to, to writing deep survival, the best selling book that started the survival book craze.

Aaron McHugh : Yeah. That's incredible. Well, as I told you, when we were getting acquainted how I first found you was through, I want to say it was national geographic adventure or backpacker magazine, or, you know, outside kind of in that adventure magazine genre that you're talking about. And what I loved is I've spent a lot of time in the outdoors and mountaineering and ice climbing, rock climbing, you know, all kinds of that kind of stuff.

And I loved the combination that you just stated of the science and the adventure. And I, I find that they're usually exclusive exclusively independent of each other. When you read writings, it's either the, this is so great and this is what you should do and you should go get lost and it'll be fun or don't get lost because you might lose some toes or, and then the, the scientifically is like totally separate.

But the fact that you were able to combine the two, I think is what makes it so fascinating to, I was telling a friend over, over a beer last night about one of the stories in deep survival about the Navy seal, who drowns while he's river rafting. And he's like, what Navy seal drowns? And he's like, well, no, listen, this is what Laurence does. He unpacks the how behind, you know, who lives, who dies and why.

So I'd love to hear from you of all of the people that you've interviewed over the years related to survival. Are there any stories that stick out to you as kind of your favorite or most enjoyable people that you interviewed or just fascinating stories that you kind of hang on?

Laurence Gonzales : Oh gosh, there's just so many. I have to talk about this little boy because it's a recent experience that I've had talking to him. And it doesn't have to do with deep survival. It's a new project I'm working on, which maybe we'll talk a little bit more about later, but basically a fully loaded jumbo jet with 296 people on board crashes in a fiery fireball and breaks apart into four big chunks. And at the point where the plane actually breaks apart, the tail comes off and the nose comes off and the wings grape, the ground and all this stuff happens at once. And fire is going through the fuselage was 14 year old boy somehow comes loose of his seatbelt and he doesn't know if he unlatched it or it broke. He doesn't know what happened, but all of a sudden he's flying through the air.

He's free of the plane and flying through the air. And then he hits the runway and he starts tumbling down the runway. And he tumbles, God knows how far they were going. 250 miles an hour when the plane hit. So who knows how far and how fast, but he survived it. And he, when I spoke to him was like a 32 year old man, some kind of executive somewhere and told me this story. And I thought, Oh my God, he was traveling alone, 14 years old. And just his story just blew my mind. Tony, Tony, Tony is his name. Yeah. And get this. He was not the only kid traveling alone in that plane who survived. There were, I interviewed a couple of nine year olds whose stories were amazing too. There are just wonderful survival stories out there.

Aaron McHugh : And tell me one of the things I was curious about as I was reading some of your work, again, kind of getting ready for our call today of, you know, what's the lasting effect on you of as a journalist writer, exploring all of these deeply personal stories with these people over the years, like a 14 year old boy who comes loose and 250 miles an hour and a fireball, what's the lasting effect of does it end up being on, on the side of tragedy or does it end up being on the side of hope because of what they've survived? Where do you settle out as a writer?

Laurence Gonzales : Well, I certainly have come to believe that anything is possible, but if you think, Oh my gosh, I'm dead. That you, you don't really need to think that there, no matter what the situation, I mean, I'll tell you a little bit more about my father's experience in world war two. The last time he was shot down, when he was taken prisoner, his left wing was shot off and the plane spun so violently that it tore itself in half. So he was left in this little fragment of the cockpit falling 27,000 feet without a parachute. So he essentially fell with the aerodynamic characteristics of a donkey, hit the ground from 27,000 feet and lived through it. So, he said, I knew I was gonna die. I was thinking of my mom and I was thinking of your mom. And I knew I was going to die. And it was really sad. And then he didn't die. So I come down on the side of hope, certainly. I mean, if that can happen. And if these kids can survive that plane crash, you know, I've just seen too much in life to, to ever think the door is shut.

So that's one thing. Another thing is it has made me much more appreciative of life because I realize how fragile it is. I mean, a friend of mine died recently, old friend of mine, one very old. He was like 65 years old, which is, these days is not very old. One day he was traveling around Asia with his daughter having a vacation. Next day, he was on the floor of his hotel room, suffering from God knows what he was in Kuala Lumpur. And he was dead within about 48 hours. So it's just like, life is so fleeting. And so when I walk outside, I see the world with different highs. I'm like, wow, this is a beautiful day. You better enjoy it.

Aaron McHugh : Yeah, that's right. I like that. That's good. So we, one of the things we talked about also is in go ahead and we'll chat about it now of the, one of your books is surviving survival. And I I'd mentioned to you that it kind of hijacked me, I guess, in some ways where we were trying to get connected and we needed to reschedule. So I ended up having some more time. And so I go ahead and download this book in, in this case, it's about kind of the, the, the science and the, you know, of resilience, you know, of after survival situations occur and you survive some tragic event it's then often then you kind of retrace these people's stories after this event in time. And as I mentioned to you that my wife and I, you know, our, our, our middle daughter had passed away about two and a half years ago.

And it really was meaningful because as I was listening to, as you trace the chemistry of your brain and the lasting effects that actually are occurring in your body, that coincide with the emotions and things, it re I really found it fascinating. And I'd love to hear you say a little bit more about that, because in my case, you know, I have a story, but it, everyone has a story of some kind, and that may be, you know, loss of jobs, loss of friends, like you just mentioned loss of other loved ones, loss of a marriage, you know, or full on, you know, your, your head's at an alligator, which is some of the examples, but I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about, so like this 14 year old boy, Tony Feeney, you know, what is the journey of survival look like for people after tragic events?

Laurence Gonzales : Well, there's an interesting range of responses. And in, in this plane crash that I've investigated you have, you find everything from people whose lives were totally destroyed by it. You know, although they were uninjured, their lives were just derailed by, by this from there all the way to a guy who I interviewed, who just walked away, he's like, man, I'm never going to be in another plane crash. I know that. So my plane crash is over and I'm okay. And get me back to my life, you know, forget about it. So in between those two extremes, you find all kinds of different responses. And it, I suspect some of it is inborn. Just what kind of character you have.

And some of it is learned behavior, how you were raised and so forth your previous experiences. But I know I interviewed all the flight attendants, for example, and a couple of them who I know really well now, they're, they're fine. You know, they went on with their careers. One of them still flying the older one, retired they're good friends with each other, but whenever they get together, there's like a lot of weeping going on because this flight, this crash is still alive within them. And I think these things do remain a lot alive within us, basically for the rest of our lives. And we all just have different paths to follow in responding to them.

Aaron McHugh : So say a little bit about what you've learned in a lot of your writing. You talk about kind of thematically. What are the key elements or key ingredients or key choices that take you down the path of resilience versus those that don’t?

Laurence Gonzales : Well, I think that the people who are most successful that recovering from trauma are the ones who get busy doing something. In other words, sitting around and going, Whoa is me, is not a good idea just to begin with. And generally this, this path to resilience or psychologist like the color of recovery, but I kind of disagree with that term. It's not total recovery, it's getting on with things. So in the end of Surviving Survival, I give 12 things that you can do to help this process. The first one is one, it needed habit, but as you have to have something you want to do, you have to devote yourself to something passionate passionately, and it can be almost any pursuit. It can be writing your book, you know, your own story.

It could be taking up golf as one world war II veteran does in here. It gives them a sort of peace of mind, peace of mind. But something you have to get up and do something. ‘Be here now' is another thing that I say, and it's a strategy of mindfulness that you are in the moment, not dwelling on the past, or even hoping for the future. You're you are looking what's going on now and being very involved with it. I also tell people to be, be patient and be tough because these things are difficult. They don't happen overnight. And you develop a real sense after you've been through a genuine trauma of not sweating, the small stuff in life. You know, if you've been through the terrible, terrible experience that you've been through you probably know that getting stuck in traffic is not a calamity.

You probably know that if you break your favorite vase, well, it's a vase. You know, all the horrible things that happen in life, you just kind of shrug them off after something really big happens to you. And so those are some of the, some of the 12 things that I tell people. But at the core of it all is doing something activity. And I explain in Surviving Survival, exactly what goes on in your brain that makes these activities work for you. So you can understand that it's not just mumbo jumbo, it's really something physical that you can tackle in your brain and change the circuits that are tormenting you.

Aaron McHugh : Yes. And would you agree that what contrasts the difference between your writing in what people may just term as self-help is? You're not just talking about think happy thoughts. You're actually talking about rewiring your brain and intending to chemical, physical pieces that truly have a lasting effect on you beyond just a fleeting thought of, I think I'll think happy thoughts today.

Laurence Gonzales : Yeah. Right. So I go in and I explain very clearly there when you are suffering PTSD or the immediate effects of, of trauma, you're being tormented by a circuitry in your brain that the neuroscientists refer to as the rage circuits or the rage pathway. And this is a very familiar thing to most people, as you step on a cat's tail, you can see exactly what this circuit does. There's screaming, fighting, struggling, baring teeth. All of that stuff comes from this one circuit that every mammal has, and we have them too. And then they're referred to it as the rage circuit or the rage pathway. There's another thing a cat does. However, that's very interesting. The cat can stalk prey to get food. And when the cat is stalking prey, it can't be doing that rage thing, or it would scare the pray away.

So it has to be calm. It has to be methodical. It has to go step by step and all of this stuff interestingly enough, occupies parts of the same circuit that they call the Ridge circuit. This stalking circuit is called the seeking circuit or the seeking pathway. And it disables the rage circuit for obvious reasons. Cause cats would never have survived if they couldn't get food to eat and they couldn't get food to eat if they couldn't learn to be quiet. So we humans have lots of activities that we can do that activate that seeking circuit and disabled, the rage circuit. And it's the rage circuits, the troubles us when we're suffering PTSD or the aftermath of trauma.

So if we can find one of these activities for ourselves, and I mentioned earlier, there was one world war II veteran who took up golfing and found that that worked for him. The lady who lost her five-year-old daughter who's mentioned in surviving survival, she took up knitting and that worked for her. And everyone has something a little different, but everybody can find some activity to do. I think for me, it's writing.

Aaron McHugh : Yeah. That's great. So really one of the things I, as I encountered your writing through adventure, journalism that you mentioned, what I'm really realizing is that your writing is it'd be helpful for anyone who's ever been through anything, whether it's a car accident or it's, they know someone who's coming back from Afghanistan and Iraq, or they've been through a divorce, they've lost a loved one that, you know, they spend a lot of time outdoors. Like it's a really big breadth of audience. It's not just, if you love putting on a backpack, trying to climb a mountain. I mean, it's all incumbency of just life because along the way you encounter something traumatic.

Laurence Gonzales : Yeah. Everybody does. Everybody has some level of trauma in their life. They have to cope with one of the chapters in surviving survival. And it was about a guy who gets blown up in the rock and comes back with severe injuries, brain injuries, memory loss, all kinds of things, and, and how he works his way out of it. It's a, it's an interesting, very interesting chapter in Surviving Survival.

Aaron McHugh : Well, I'm going to make a bunch of these resources available through the blog posts that will accompany the podcast, but I want to make sure I just highlighted a couple of your key works. So the one that you're working on right now that you mentioned is Flight 232. Is that right?

Laurence Gonzales : That's correct. Yes. About crash of DC10 United Airlines flight 232, which happened July 19th, 1989 at Sioux city, Iowa.

Aaron McHugh : Okay. And when is that book due out, Laurence?

Laurence Gonzales : That'll be published in 2014 for the 25th anniversary of the crash.

Aaron McHugh : Wow. Okay. And then surviving survival, you said is due out in paperback.

Laurence Gonzales : Yeah, it should be out right now in paperback. And I have a new book coming, which is also on my website, which is Laurencegonzales.com. And it is called House of Pain. It's a collection of essays that I wrote that many of which reflect the subjects we've been talking about here.

Aaron McHugh : Okay. and then Deep Survival, as I've mentioned to you, you know, I've found that in, on the shelf at REI and you can find it at any bookstore and whether you love wilderness and spend a lot of time outside or not. I still think it's a great read because it's just captivating stories of how people get lost and what happens. And like you said, who lives, who dies and why? So any other of your works that we should know about?

Laurence Gonzales : Well, there's a book called everyday survival. That is more of a scientific book about the survival of the human race on the planet than it is about individual survival. And then we mentioned surviving survival and of course there's my novel Lucy, which has found a big audience among teenage readers, but lots of adults too. But it's been adopted as a required reading in high schools and things like that. And it's a really fun, interesting coming-of-age story about a young girl who's very unusual.

Aaron McHugh : Okay. Excellent. All right. Well one final question. And then when I finish asking, if you don't mind just hanging on the line and I’ll just close out our chat, but so one final question for you, Laurence is how do you play? What do you do for fun? You said early on, you've spent a lot of time outdoors. So what does that look like today?

Laurence Gonzales : Well, today it looks like my grandson who is 18 months old. And so I, I haven't just become a grandfather for the first time, my wife and I just do tons of stuff with him. And I have also a 10 year old son who I play lots of sports with and go places with. And so I am more of a family man than an adventure these days. And you know, the adventure stuff in deep survival really is a metaphor for the rest of life. And most of our audiences for that book and surviving survival had been not adventure people, but like business people who want to know how to manage risk doctors who want to know how to manage cancer, patients, things, you know, things you wouldn't suspect just by looking at the title women going through a divorce, all kinds of people like that. Find these books to be extremely helpful for them.

Aaron McHugh : Yeah. Excellent. Well, good. I'm glad that you tied that back. Yeah. I really enjoyed your work. I am super appreciative of it and it was really enjoyable to connect with you directly too. Thank you.

I hope you'll accept my invitation to do your best work, to live the life you want to live and find ways to play a whole lot more. Hey friends, we thought this was fun and you'd like some more podcasts or blog writings, visit worklifeplaypodcast.com.

*We’ve done our best for this transcription to accurately reflect the conversation. Errors are possible. Thank you for your patience and grace if you find errors that our team missed.