just full of books and just feeling so rich in in in the worlds before me and then having that juxtaposed with going to school hungry and seeing my mother work for cents at a time really gave me a sense and understanding that there were indeed two americas out there and that both descriptions were accurate depending on your perspective you write about landing here in america and i love it so i'm going to quote it i ascended to adulthood at cruising altitude which was a metaphor for leaving the p
eople that you loved leaving the the life that you knew leaving your culture and landing in america and you really did go from being a child to an adult in a matter of of blight um what was that like talk to me about your early years here i do think a lot about my parents coming here at 31 barely 30 and having such vivid real memories of what it was like to be a professor in china and then being here and working at a sweatshop or working at a sushi factory and how as an adult from an adult persp
ective how very painful it must have been for a child you know i got here and i just assumed everyone in america was kind of hungry all the time and children had to stay quiet a lot and they went to work with their parents and helped out snipping thread at the sweatshop and i just assume that some everyone here had some variation of that because children i think just tend to assume that their experiences are normal and i think that helps me a lot right because then i wasn't editorializing i was
just doing whatever was put in front of me but it was confusing too because in china i had never ever been alone my grandparents were there my uncles were there and being here and just being with my parents and being so dependent on them and then them being so different given the new demands of life that i couldn't i was not equipped at all to understand um was was really difficult and then not speaking english felt like i was walking through a fog every day of my life until i started to piece t
ogether words and being like okay that's that's what that word means sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand the coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking good are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopenin
g america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is sprouting guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprise yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world love it the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking yeah are you ready we're going to do our part to
spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is sprung guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprising yes this is the face of excitement today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app i love wh
ere you write about your early childhood that it was joyful that you were kind of the mayor of your class that all the little girls came to you to ask what you thought they should do and then you came here to a school where you didn't speak english they put you in a classroom really all by yourself being put in that classroom by myself though helped me because you know there were books around and i found my friends in those books and found a real refuge in those books it just opened up brand new
doors for me and and it really got the sense from my father too that literacy was the way out of poverty and that was a message that i internalized really early on yeah i loved the scene where you first found clifford the big red dog and then it was the girls from the babysitter's club and sweet valley high who became these companions that you didn't have yeah and they really opened up a world yeah and i know that you love babysitter's club yes babysitters [Laughter] for years after i kept tryi
ng to start a club and doing some sort of you know some gardening yeah something it didn't work but but that idea of loyalty and friendship and belonging and also understanding what america was like outside of new york city outside of the inner city it really opened my eyes up to oh like in a place in connecticut there's grass and lawns and people walk to school with their friends and their school buses and it was a world where my biggest concern was doing my homework and getting to my babysitti
ng job like i fully pre pretended that i was one of the babysitters um and it just felt so safe yeah you know that safety is a word that i kept thinking about because as an undocumented child your life was filled with fear even when your mom was so sick that you had to call 9-1-1 or she possibly could have died right you were scared to pick up that phone yeah talk about the fear and what it's like to be a child under that fear i think children pick up a lot of the emotional energy of their paren
ts and their households so for me it was almost i didn't i didn't think of it you know consciously as fear it was just soaking up whatever my parents were sending my way and i just learned to be extremely cautious to turn and look over my shoulder if there was someone in uniform anyone in uniform even a sanitation worker i would pivot and walk the other way it just became ingrained in me that caution was number one number two was not being noticed at all not seeking out the resources and that's
an issue i'm sure millions of undocumented people still deal with today um you know even with with getting the vaccine when i went to get my shot recently and they asked me for my id my first instinct was to pivot and run it was it was just like that and it was that childhood instinct i think never leaves you and you can talk to it and soothe it and have it take its place where where it belongs but i think it will always be somewhat a part of me there's a scene in this where your mom says i've p
ublished two books i'm a published author and then she comes here to work for pennies and shops what was that like to witness your parents go through that it was really difficult made me want to protect her at an age where i did not know how at the same time though both my parents still carried the sense of dignity and pride and it came not in the form of i'm not going to do this work it's beneath me it's not it's not that kind of pride it was i will do this and i will overcome this and this is
not going to stop me and my mom you know every night before going to the sweatshop would put curlers in her hair as if she was going to the university to teach she would dress as nicely as we could possibly afford to to do and she she kept her head held high and that was what gave me hope that her spirit was not broken and as bad as anything got as hungry as i got my mother always said it's temporary and and i think that perspective that she had from having been in china and having seen the heig
hts of china and then coming down here and see seeing the lows of america kind of gave her the perspective that nothing is permanent as long as you can um keep your head up and keep moving forward so i i don't i don't think i could have asked for more inspiration than seeing my mother go through that how did you get through some of the hardships as a seven-year-old the books were a huge part just throwing myself into reading and in part at the be in the beginning it was just a pr matter of pract
icality my dad said if you speak english without an accent you'll be accepted and you'll be an american and people won't question where you're from and when you moved here maybe they wouldn't suspect us of being undocumented so that was my goal just to be as fluent as any white person but i just found myself loving these books the other was teachers i mean i had teacher miss pong in third grade she was just inspired so much in me i mean she gave me charlotte's web which i still have to this day
but she just gave me this sense of home and warmth and i think that's what happens to immigrant children when they move far away from family is that you you tend to find family figures everywhere you applied on your own as a young girl to a talented and gifted middle school even when your teacher said like that's not possible where did that come from i think my ignorance at the time really helped i didn't had no idea of the students i would be going to school with or that i was competing against
to get into school and i had no idea how behind i was like so i just assumed okay people that girl has a tamagotchi that girl has a barbie doll they have a little more than me but i assume they live in the same exact type of home that i did and that really helped me because i was a little bit blind to everything else that i was competing against um and i think in life it probably helps to be a little bit foolish because you never know and then you went on to graduate from yale law school what w
as that moment like surreal i could not believe it was happening much like this book i cannot believe it's happening it's you know i have to say that i also have a lot of privilege right my parents were educated in china and that helped me a lot even if they didn't have the jobs that educated people necessarily have in the u.s the way they thought about things the way that they cultivated reading and thinking and debating at home really helped me and sent me forward and i have a lighter skin col
or than most people of color that has helped me and i don't have an accent by no i mean there are children who come here at the same age as me and they have an accent i i it's inexplicable to me why i have these privileges the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the coveted vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever
to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand the coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition good morning welcome to today nice to ha
ve you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity xbox our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 good morning everybody welcome to today's fut
ure's looking yeah are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is frowned guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprising yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world love it today is now a podcast available every morning
listen wherever you get your podcasts and what do you think it meant like when you were walking across that stage did your mom did her story did her staying up late at night studying even while she was suffering with the sickness did um did you picture her and the other women who were working and freezing temperatures cutting sushi or sewing buttons oh did their stories come to your mind for sure and not just when i walked across the stage with a mortar board it followed me all seven years of hi
gher education when i got into college i was thrown into a different world i had no idea that schools like andover existed for instance or people like to ride horses i just had no insight into that world and i felt so lonely and it was incredibly difficult emotionally i was also working four or five jobs throughout college and there were days when i wanted to give up but then i remembered my mother sitting at that sewing machine for three cents a piece sewing labels onto each piece of clothing a
fter she had published textbooks and was a respected professor of math and i said if she could do that i can do this i mean this is nothing to complain about and it's it's funny because there's this whole narrative in american discourse about asian parents being really strict and pushing children my parents were the complete opposite of that so there's a famous term tiger mom now i think of my mom as the panda mom because in high school she gave me a stack of sick notes and she said just use it
whenever you want just whenever you want to skip school i don't i don't care when just do it and my dad would call me when i was in college saturday nights and i'd answer of course because i'd be working or studying he said why aren't you at a party i don't hear any music in the background go to park go to a party any party and i was like i don't want to parties like just go they they probably wanted the fun and the freedom and that maybe wasn't afforded to them and they're when they arrived her
e do you feel like that's what it was for sure and i think they carry a lot of guilt about my childhood my dad gave such an impassioned speech at my wedding in 2019 i had never heard him say these words before because again we never acknowledged those years it just was not talked about and he said she had a really difficult childhood and if we could do it over we would do everything completely differently and that just broke my heart because they gave me everything they possibly could have given
the very limited resources they had and i think if if nothing comes from this book but for them to feel a sense of healing and forgiveness for themselves that would be my biggest dream come true and have they have they read it i have not allowed them to yet they have been asking but i just you know they're still afraid my mother is a citizen my dad is has a green card they still think isis going to come after us and that trauma really stays with you and there are moments when i think what am i
doing i'm going to get all of us deported we're all just going to get deported because of me and i was foolish i was a little too foolish this time some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts make the
most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning what republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your frie
nds at today in a whole new way today in 30 we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the latest styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking essentials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm so ready only on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in ou
r changing world download the nbc news app you've said before that this is your story but it's the story of so many others and that it was a story that you were ashamed of that you didn't even tell friends and after um the election in 2016 you decided that you could no longer stay silent that that voice that said you must stay silent you must not take up space when away yeah that's right and i think the timing of the 2016 election really woke me up because i had become a citizen just four months
before in may and i remember walking to the courthouse and being sworn in and then president obama was on a video screen and said my fellow americans and those words just meant so much to me to be called an american was not something i even thought about as needing but when it was said to me by the president of the united states it gave me a validation that i had been searching for for 30 years and then when the election came and the national discourse just took a real turn i found myself for t
he first time to be in a position of real privilege and it's true what they say is i'm sure you know and you've lived jenna that with privilege comes a lot of responsibility to speak up for those who aren't able to and i finally felt safe to share this story and not worry about ice banging down my door although sometimes i still have that thought but i know that there are people out there who cannot do that and it was then no longer my story or my choice to keep it a secret this is bigger than m
e and that message came to me loud and clear after that that 2016 election you know there's something super powerful about the fact that you found a life in books you found friends and places you maybe never got to even visit and now your life is written about in this book that you get to share your story when for so many years you were told not to share who you were that it was shameful even who you were there's something really beautiful about that you're right i hadn't thought about it that w
ay but as you were saying that just now i was thinking that southern california always felt like a second home to me because the sweet valley twins elizabeth and jessica wakefield live there and i just feel a natural connection to that place and i do hope that people through my book will feel a real connection to new york city to brooklyn to manhattan to the magic of fifth avenue during the holidays all of these little unique new york moments even on the subway and in chinatown that that it can
bring new york city to life for them like the sweet valley twins did for me for california it did for me it was so fun to read about that and how your parents found these little moments of joy amidst the hardship for you like them like your mom taking you to see those holiday windows the magic of new york um i wonder what you would i wonder what you would say to your seven and eight-year-old self i would tell her that it is not her fault because i think it's really human nature but especially na
tural for a child to blame herself for everything that if there's a shift in your parents if they don't no longer all of a sudden have time for you when before they had all the time in the world to play with you and make you a kite and fly it with you and then now they just don't even have time to talk to you you think you did something wrong it's it's completely natural so reminding her that it's it's not her fault and reminding her as as my mother did so i need to say this less you can get thr
ough this and you will there is another side to it i um i think most people would think that when you got those prestigious degrees you were living the american dream were you and are you now i definitely was not i think it's very dangerous when you get everything you work for materially because you all of a sudden become aware of everything that is lacking emotionally psychologically i was so divorced from who i really was from the child i was everything that came naturally to me all my natural
instincts were tamped down because i had to be cautious and i had to keep everything a secret and i just i remember you know going to work in this fancy office with my fancy briefcase in suit and coming home to this fancy apartment in manhattan looking myself in the mirror and just not knowing who i was i had everything that the american dream told me that i was to go for and it wasn't enough then what else is there right what what is the key and it took me a lot of time a lot of therapy a lot
of thinking and reading my old diaries and crying to understand that real success is not material wealth which is so easy to easily portrayed as in american culture of course it's easier to find the success i'm thinking of which is a connection to your true self when you are not worrying about money right but that's that's necessary but not sufficient for me the american dream that i'm living now is being really honest about who i am i'm the same person here as i am at home i feel i can finally
say no shame about my childhood i feel only love for that child who was hungry and sad and sometimes a little petty and i feel i i cried with her i laughed with her and i feel a closure both a closure and a connection to my childhood and understanding that my childhood has really shaped who i am deep down and continues to guide me and most of all that my instincts are to be listened to that they are the thing that guides me to where i'm supposed to be in life and that i would have could have nev
er dreamed for myself because i didn't know that was a thing to do nor could i have understood that i would be able to find this beauty so writing this book itself has been for me how i define it the real american dream yeah this right here yeah is the dream yeah even if it hadn't been published and i'm lucky that it is and it's you know it's it's being received if i had just written that story if i had been able to get to a place emotionally psychologically to live those experiences again heal
through those experiences and write this down just to pass it down to my children and grandchildren that would have been the american dream [Music] [Music] hi today all day we've got a great show for you on this wednesday morning including an all-day exclusive chat you can only see here let's kick it off with pop start we check in with carson who's covering all the buzzy headlines including some happy news for john mulaney and girlfriend olivia munn time for the best part it's pop start time wha
t's up the results of the food bracket at the end of the pop-up oh yeah just the first round though first round elite eight we're down now to four more on that in a minute we're gonna start today john mulaney and olivia munn last night the stand-up comedian stopped by late night with seth meyers to give an update on what he's been up to lately and after a difficult year in which mullany went through a divorce battled substance abuse and is now living in recovery he did have some good news to sha
re then in the spring i went to los angeles and uh uh met and started to date the wonderful woman named olivia who i know well yes a lovely woman olivia munn very well and we're having a baby together thanks so john melanie and olivia munn are expecting baby number one big news and congratulations to them next up who's clues it's been 25 years since the nickelodeon series starring steve and his buddy blue hit the small screen and to celebrate the big milestone the original host of the first four
seasons steve burns took to social media to share a sweet message to the kids who grew up with him i mean we started out with clues and now it's what student loans and um jobs and families and some of it has been kind of hard you know i guess i just wanted to say that after all these years i never forgot you ever and i'm super glad we're still friends thanks for listening he hasn't changed at all no he looks exactly the same he did the show in 2002 2002 when he left that's when i was at trl at
mtv it's the viacom building so they're in the same building it's just steve all the time 2002. yeah he went to college he left the show but he went to embark on a music career but his voice presence is still just as soothing oh crazy i used to watch that with bring it back stephen i said mail call salt and pepper you can send that to courtney oh my god i'm going to i'm going to stick around by the way in the third hour dylan's going to have a lot more on the 25th anniversary of blue's clues and
finally our tailgating food bracket let's get to it yeah all right thousands of you went online yesterday to cast your vote for the best game day snack with football starting tomorrow let's take a look the results go no shocker there loaded nachos of course pretzels yes not even crushed 77's around the vote sorry savannah but the buffalo wings or as you call them bones with sauce have proven they are dominant beating out chili that's a bowl of soup they will be heading out to the semifinals acr
oss the board take a look the great battle of cheese mozzarella sticks took down cheese fries yes 59 percent of the boat wait still eyes around her house they're disgusting that was a pickle that was disgusting i think if the fry is thick enough to hold up it's that will make a difference yeah please like a twice fried fry and hold up the nacho sauce maybe then it's fine but like they're soggy but you like mozzarella sticks well because they're front they're fried they're crunchy yeah good chees
e they're cheap look if there was twice based potato skins yeah with cheese also the mozzarella stick is like a distant cousin to the pizza really i mean exactly because you get the sauce you dip it in the sauce right it's a different thing it's a meal and a snack i love you more every day last but not least people just can't say no to the classic cheeseburgers just whooping up on cheesecake 72 i think we're going to look like a cheeseburger loaded nachos final year that's like unc duke back in
the day that's a who's going to win over nachos and cheeseburgers are going all the way back isn't upset that's my brother things are going all the way i think things loses steam down the stretch when we do these things i don't know why al is that your bracket that's my bracket you're out i actually voted for bones with sauce because i knew i wanted to be right um but i think every time you say that and and you're blasphemous about wings an angel loses their wings how dare you wouldn't that be g
reat if an angel actually had chicken wings your past with buffalo wings scares me that you've had such a bad relationship with wings for so long in your life it's like the bad boyfriend yeah you know yeah go away you're now married to the best wings ever that's true that's true that's true that's right how would we get into the doctor's wings go to today.com food coming up on today talks dylan celebrates the 25th anniversary of the award-winning children's show blues clues make the most of your
day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts
sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccin
e.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts welcome back today in the third hour can you believe that the beloved children's show blues clues is turning 25 dylan caught up with all three hosts from the show's run to help celebra
te the milestone take a look i had the chance to catch up with all three hosts from the show's quarter century run to hear their memories and find out about working with blue [Music] on september 8 1996. hi out there it's me steve have you seen blue my puppy [Music] nickelodeon unleashed a brand new children's show [Music] featuring a puppy named blue who would leave behind clues for her owner steve as well as little viewers everywhere steve did you know how big of an impact it would have and ho
w long it would be around for i mean we're celebrating the 25th anniversary no i mean even when we were shooting the pilot here's the mail it never failed i thought it was too weird to work there's a clue we're trying to get the home viewer to actually play along and solve a problem with me and then when it not only worked but really worked that was certainly a surprise to me we just figured out blues steve burns earned his stripes serving as the first host of blues clues for six years you know
what we need our handy dandy before passing the famed handy-dandy notebook to joe played by donovan patton hello my daughter when she was young wanted to watch blue's clues she said i want to watch that at joe but with steve which i kind of love are you ready to watch the movie after four years of playing joe patton now works behind the scenes of blue's clues in you a reboot introducing a new generation to blue and the show's third host josh de la cruz the first asian american to fill the role i
t's one of those crews my very first clue josh how does that feel to be the one to reach that milestone growing up i never saw any characters on screen that i identified with and i hope that i'm able to help inspire kids that even if they don't see themselves reflected that doesn't mean that they can't achieve whatever it is they want the trio of hosts now joining forces to star in an upcoming original blues clues film blue first asked us to play along with a music video full of some familiar fa
ces you can't spell blue without you all in celebration of blue's 25th birthday that's 175 in dog years by the way talking about blue how does she stay so youthful looking you know what i heard bow talks [Laughter] show is known for its catchy tunes we are going to the kitchen we just got an email i mean how often do you find yourselves you know at the grocery store just walking around town and these songs are just stuck in your head all the time there was about five years of my life where i wan
ted to forget some of those melodies we just got a letter we just got a letter but could not you know i'd be like i am doing a thing now and i'm singing this song stop stop stop stop speaking of music steve i know you're also a singer-songwriter one of your songs actually became the theme song for young sheldon we can't help but ask here at the today show is there any way you could create a new theme song for us i think the third hour of day needs today is the day that you're watching the show [
Music] [Applause] [Music] it's funny i had calvin helped me do the research for this show and now he is just beyond obsessed like it's all we watch in the house and also in honor of the anniversary nickelodeon is partnering with the global global nonprofit organization save the children and this morning fans are feeling extra nostalgic because steve put out this sweet video telling all the show's loyal viewers he never forgot them oh you want to just google that and try to find that video becaus
e it's really cool and you can catch blue's clues and you weekdays at 11am on nickelodeon i sent it to courtney and she said oh i watched it last night because you talk to the adults as if you were talking to them as kids what is special to be a special place or you hold a special place in everybody's heart yeah i mean that's really i know for so long coming up on hoda and jenna my september pick for read with jenna book club don't miss it stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity
x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch a bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love ab
out our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your sche
dule streaming every day on today all day the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you
think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying you are that's exactly welcome back today on hodangen a new month means a new page turner for my read with jenna book club hoda and i talked about why i chose the amazing memoir beautiful country by chen julie wong take a look it's wednesday it's september 8th hot day it's a beautiful sunny sparkly day here in new york and we want to send our sunshine your way because i know a lot of folks are going through differen
t things and this carefree tune we're listening to right now is called who cares by phil moore i like it right who cares let's play that every morning so shout out to our friend ashley down in raleigh north carolina enjoy every minute with baby jack how cute is he thank you for watching and send your videos to hoda and jenna.com i just want to say congratulations jenna dropped an entire coffee on she had a white dress that's borrowed from our friend savannah and you did the whole thing and not o
ne drop on that white dress that's just old makeup that's oh no there is sorry oh no that's something else i believe that's something else today on the but you know what there are two types of people there are people who get a stain and get obsessed it's like have you ever seen someone like you have a stain you someone will say you have a stain you're like okay and they're like it's just right just yeah and hoda and i don't care couldn't care less but i do feel like i jinxed myself because this
morning savannah brought this to me and i was like great i could use something thank you i'm glad you didn't like it and then she said and carson this morning and the eight o'clock said well do you have to give it back and i said well the one way you don't have to give it back and this isn't i was kind of kidding but i've done it before remember i spilled red i spit red wine on your white pants once is that you spill on it and then all this and you own it but we feel like something is in the env
ironment because this morning do you want to say what happened to you i just i i dropped an entire venti tea on our brand new set sparkly downstairs and everyone looked usually everyone's laughing and it was silent because you know when you really mess up yes then people get silent but i do think there are two types of people for sure i mean people who will immediately after you get a stand they're like let me get that and they get a time stick and they're all on you and you're like i'm okay i'l
l just watch it later and i still remember just remembering this this is so weird jill and i were at a restaurant and joe spilled something on him and the lady the waitress was one of those just hold on hold on hold on she got a napkin and i'm not kidding you we still talk about it she put it inside his shirt she took a cup of sparkling whatever that is sell sir water show seltzer works like this i'm not kidding joe was sitting there it was like a wet t-shirt contest i was looking at joel and we
still everything that we talked about it was like he was soaked like through his clothes and he kept saying thank you i think i'm good she was like no just like you were scrubbing and she kept scrubbing it until i think it was out have you ever had the person and i've had this and i've also been this with my children that spits a little on their finger and rubs like i've had a person to me been like hold on hold on it's right there and spit a little and then rub it on my shirt like that's bette
r than better than chocolate food leave it alone yeah just let it go all right okay we love this tic tac you know we're tick-tock influencers by the way we have a big tick-tock person on our show yes addison ray is going to be with any of y'all that have kids that love tell them you're going to be cool yes they say hey come on in or just tape the show and show them later but anyway there was this viral tick tock from an employee in silicon valley so this gun and kevin really really really wanted
to go to the raiders game okay pre-season game last weekend so we called out sick from work look there he said hey kev okay better take the day you feeling better i need the day so the bottom line is it's hard to see that happened quickly his boss sees him in a cutaway on tv thanks man grabs a screenshot i'm okay jessica relaxing are you sure it looks like you have a twin caught your ugly oh then there was some other stuff okay so um it this this brings up the question when you get busted when
you tell someone you can't go out because dot dot dot and then you can all of a sudden have you ever been busted where if you remember the bus well i i don't like vividly but i have i do it often so i do remember saying i can't do something and then sitting in a restaurant and the person walking by and you're just like this oh my god the babysitter called it last minute she couldn't come you're like oh my gosh my hands in the cookie jar i feel so crummy wait what happened my biggest bust was whe
n i was 15 i had a boyfriend that was older and named blake goddessman sorry blake and my mom said well you're not allowed on car dates sorry you can't go on car dates you can go out with them but you cannot drive in the car with them and i said okay so we went to the austin high maroon football game okay we were at how did you get there you walked i my mom dropped me off okay like the nerd that i was and blake met me there okay and then at some point we had to like i can't remember what but it
was honest like we had to like go get his car for a minute a minute so we're in his car and i look over and my mom is with her my godmother no reagan gammon and they just look out the window and they go busted i mean what is the chance to drive up next to your mother in the car who busted me they yelled out busted i was so embarrassed oh yeah i was like were they kind of laughing busted or they were busted like that but kind of laughing but also it was before the times of cell phone so there was
like it i was left with the bust and then you were and i had to stew in my bust until my mom picked me up when the game was over what did she get punishment or just not i think like yeah yeah maybe ground i think i was grounded for like a week but my parents were pleased did you ever call did you ever call in sick to work and just say you can't make it no you've never done that you know have you well i've done it like a mental health day before because you kind of feel like i'll call in well yo
u call in well like you call in well to go to a you know he wasn't kelvin wasn't sick he just wanted to go to the game so he called in well i know but you're gonna get most bosses don't let you call invested oh so you guys jenna you always pick great books and i know you're good at picking no question this one though has us talking we've we have not stopped talking about since you introduced it at eight o'clock but and and we introduced it and the piece that you're gonna see a little later shows
you some but this uh pick for september which i just love is beautiful country it's by chen julie wong it is a powerful memoir about growing up as an undocumented immigrant in america and i sat down with chen julie to talk about her story what it means to have the american dream to live this life this story is so full of family love of of grit of resilience and it was so meaningful i got to go back to our old neighborhood with her and walk around i mean what she reveals she puts her heart out t
o you it's a beautiful book i literally could not wait jen julie wong's life forever changed at age seven when her family moved to america from china you write about landing here in america and i love it so i'm going to quote it i ascended to adulthood at cruising altitude when we stepped foot out of jfk was when i realized that my life was going to be completely different in china i was just a normal kid running around screaming dancing and in megwa america i was to stay quiet and not be notice
d at all the chinese word for america translates directly to beautiful country it's the title of her debut book a powerful and eye-opening memoir about growing up undocumented in america back then in china no one had a real understanding of what america was like my uncle said oh the streets are paved with gold you'll be so rich having that juxtaposed with going to school hungry and seeing my mother work for cents at a time really gave me a sense and understanding that there were indeed two ameri
cas out there chen julie spent her evenings working with her mom at a sweat shop snipping thread for pennies but during the day elementary school in new york city's chinatown proved to be even more challenging not speaking english felt like i was walking through a fog every day of my life they put you in a classroom really all by yourself in some ways there wasn't a teacher who was teaching you being put in that classroom by myself though helped me because you know there were books around and i
found my friends in those books and found a real refuge in those books and it was through those children's books that chen julie ultimately taught herself english i loved the scene where you first found clifford the big red dog and then it was the girls from the babysitter's club who became these companions that you didn't have i fully pretended that i was one of the babysitters and it just felt so safe but her family faced a medical crisis when her mom needed emergency gallbladder surgery she m
ade it to the hospital just in time but it was a moment in which chen julie felt she had nowhere to turn as an undocumented child your life was filled with fear even when your mom was so sick that you had to call 911 or she possibly could have died right you were scared to pick up that phone yeah i didn't think of it you know consciously as fear i just learned to be extremely cautious to turn and look over my shoulder if there was someone in uniform even a sanitation worker i would pivot and wal
k the other way it just became ingrained in me that caution was number one jan julie kept the stories from our first years in america secret for nearly 20 years despite the incredible challenges she faced chen julie went on to graduate from yale school of law and is now a managing partner at a law firm in new york city she became a u.s citizen in 2016. most people would think that when you got those prestigious degrees you were living the american dream i definitely was not i remember going to w
ork in this fancy office and coming home to this fancy apartment in manhattan looking myself in the mirror and just not knowing who i was i had everything that the american dream told me that i was to go for and it took me a lot of time to understand that real success is not material wealth which is so easily portrayed as in american culture the american dream that i'm living now is being really honest about who i am and understanding that my childhood has really shaped who i am deep down and co
ntinues to guide me so writing this book itself has been for me how i define it the real american dream wow and this book is just so powerful she's an incredible writer so she surely is living her dream today talks continues after the break hoda and i have an exclusive chat you can only see here on today all day good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that
people are saying you are exactly it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit planyourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking are y
ou ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is sprouting guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprise yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world love it [Music] some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept t
hat criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press welcome back to today talks in our exclusive content you can only see here on today all day we're eating a burrito we're eating a burrito but we had the most fun show today i love today because we did everything right okay let's start let's begin so we started with our chat which we love yeah we always l
ike to talk and then we had samantha boardman on and she talked about empty nesters which was great just about life changing how to deal with them that's important you know and then what happened she has this great thing about micro stressors that like it isn't the traumatic moments are really hard but what really can kind of grind you are the everyday little little bits and pieces like yeah you let it get to you like if you're like i spilled now i did this if you you have to somehow take those
micro stresses and sort of put them away like you're putting that burrito away right now and turn it into strengths you know and she i liked her new book it was really cool how do you do that like how do you take if you if you're bugged by little things well you have to first of all address it like why am i bugged by this right get to the root of it and then make a switch which she writes all about how to do it i'm not i can't tell you but i think that's important i tried to i played a head game
i had something that was scheduled and the person was really late and you know how that grinds me i did a whole let it go thing i said you know what i'm going to be here i'm going to take what can i do in this time i filled the time with things that i needed to do so it wasn't like i was sitting around because nothing makes you stew more than exactly and also then when you got together or did whatever you were going to do you weren't like meeting with anger you were meeting with what you would
have had yes so we did that and then addison ray was here and she is a tick tock star if you all i don't know if you guys know where you i'm sure you do or your kids do if you don't but she by the way talk about one of the nicest people she gave her phone number to donna i know now donna's going to be stalking her i know but that that's how nice what no you're fab but no but i'm just saying anyone who gives a phone number like how did it take you to get oprah's how many meetings did you have at
least one or two you got it after one no i'm just kidding that's not true no a long time you had to cultivate it and then she finally gave it to you yeah and she didn't give it to me it's like she asked for my number from somebody and then i got it then she texted you yeah that was one of the best days of my life thank you for taking me back no but she was so cool and um and sweet and humble and i loved how samantha boardman was like oh my god it's addison ray i like it so you know what i love t
hat today for that reason well exactly and also we haven't had those moments because people haven't been here yes so to have those kind of intersecting moments were things that we probably took for granted before and now yes oh my god we're in a member and now we're eating a burrito life is just bad i know it was good and now we realize it's all these tiny things that we never paid much attention to because they happen daily it's like anything appreciate it yes it's like when there's a faucet in
front of you and it's dripping water just a little bit you put your hands under it if it's flooding you're like you back up it's too much like sometimes we just got to remember just so lucky my gosh i feel like and i'm that burrito i really can't get it out of my mind but even like we used to take food for granted we would eat it and not whether there's which is my favorite food and by the way anthony made a killer burrito which is going to be on our show we're saving it for friday i think or w
hatever whenever it was it doesn't matter but the point is you're going to want to make the recipe because it was delish and even we can make it all right that's going to do it for this episode of today talks keep watching for more of today all day goodbye bye okay i'll just have one last one [Music] thanks for doing this man thanks for having me having i'm having you we're in your joint right right now this is raised i used to have a bar i used to bartend just a couple blocks from here at a pla
ce called vaughn so i barged in there for years and years and then other places etc when i was first coming up in new york and so it was nice to have a place where i could go behind the bargain no what's the vibe you want to create we kind of wanted to create like sort of a hometown bar yeah you know what i mean every city has a great hometown bar that is kind of like a local spot and this place actually is that too once we opened it we already amassed a great bunch of locals also some tourists
and things like that but but we like it to be mostly neighborhood people you know familiar faces and walking distance for you you can just pop in i can pop in whenever i want bolt right over and meet people you get back here with the gun and dudes and dads and everything i mean i was never that like you know tom cruise cocktail guy um you know throwing decanters behind my back or anything like that this is the kind of bar where basically no drink takes more than about 20 25 seconds to make right
and if you want something fancy you can go somewhere else it's more of a shot and a beer kind of place exactly right yeah yeah and have you guys been doing through the pandemic um we've done okay we've managed to keep most of our staff completely employed um and that was sort of the game to sort of just ride it out obviously not looking for a profit just trying to keep it in one place um and we've been able to do that so we're very fortunate and we're also lucky that as we talked about before t
hey're having outdoor seating feels a little bit like new orleans at times i have to imagine one of the perks of reaching the level of success you've reached is owning a bar it's like a bomb it's like a feather in your cap especially as a new yorker you kind of want it's nice to you know all places in new york at a certain point are the extension of your living room you know whether it's your favorite restaurant or your favorite deli or your favorite grocery store um or park um but it's nice jus
t to have this it's like an added room to the house that is not in the house kind of thing for people to hear the footsteps by the way this is the famous kuma there's kuma you're over here she's just sort of like a background extra just murmurs doesn't chew her food too loud stealing your scenes that's right speaking of your scenes the mosquito coast mosquito cubs oh man it's amazing i told you i just got finished watching the first episode it's intense you've set the stakes very high for people
who don't fully know the story first of all it's based on a novel 40 year old novel written by your uncle written by my uncle paul and it's about a man who's sort of loosely based on several family members my grandfather being one of them sort of a thrifty industrious inventor um and in the book he basically wants to leave america he wants to get out because he just thinks it's beyond broken and he sort of throws a grenade over his shoulder and takes his family and sort of um absconds with them
to essentially honduras which is the mosquito coast in the book um our show is a little different in that we sort of we're thinking of it kind of as a prequel that has this motivating factor that pushes them out of the country but the character is still exactly the same he's this very sort of hopefully by turns charismatic charming infuriating guy um very opinionated he's kind of like an uber american in a sense you know in that like all americans i think to a man or a woman um has enormous pro
blems with the way our country's being handled or run and he just wants to get out and find his shangri-la and he sort of forces his family to do it with him so he's an amazingly complex character and as i was watching the episode i couldn't decide if i was rooting for him at certain times or or what his motives were or whatever kind of by design at the time um paul wrote the book he was um sort of fascinated by the jim jones story which of course no one really knew about until there was the jim
jones massacre he started to sort of follow that story and the origins of it and and um sort of trying to figure out how this sort of benevolent preacher really could go from a nice guy midwestern moves to san francisco gains a bigger flock and following and then eventually heads to uh the jungles and makes them commit mass suicide and if we've done our job you're constantly sort of asking that question of you know is he the most loving wonderful father for giving these children this experience
or is he the worst man on the planet you know the politics within the family is sort of where the show i think lives you know aside from all the sort of propulsive drama that's that happens what was it like to collaborate with your uncle i mean your the source material is written by a guy you've known for your whole life is that just a phone call i'm taking the role i know it was it was normal channels like he he was sort of already off you know working with apple to uh to to make it i heard ab
out it through my normal channels i thought oh my god well i'm now actually kind of age-appropriate for that i'd like to do that i think most people would assume because of the thorough connection it was like your uncle's you and you said he will play the role he should have done that when i when the book came out when i was 11. it's amazing just coincidental it really is it's one of those i don't know in a career you get lots of sort of happy accidents and this is definitely one of them some pe
ople might remember the movie too from the 80s with harrison ford yeah do you watch that or do you want that out of your head or how do you you want it out of your head but at the same time i had already seen it a thousand times because not only is it a movie that i had seen but it's also like a movie that a family member had written when i was a kid of course you kind of think oh maybe i would i should call harrison ford and genuflect a little and ask him for any tip but you know the truth is i
had to work with the words that i was given and rediscover the character and i also reread the book which gave me ideas for the way that i wanted to do it and i did a pretty good job of keeping him out of my sort of periphery i'm just thinking listen you talk i interviewed ed harris not long ago he's playing atticus finch on broadway and he said the first thing i did was not watch gregory peck yeah i didn't want that floating around in my head because i definitely didn't do a re-watch of mosqui
to ghostly like let me see if i can steal anything embarrassing um probably wise yeah exactly although i did end up meeting him in mexico city when we were shooting oh really another happy accident where he was coming through to do some work and our mutual friends said oh harrison's i don't know him but he said harrison's going to be you know in town you should whatever and we ended up having this long fantastic dinner that's amazing it was really we didn't really even talk we talked a little bi
t about the making of mosquito coat like it was he credits as being one of his most joyous work experiences um just for the location the cast that they had and he lived on a boat and cooked his own you know like yeah so he he loved that experience but then we just talked about you know carpentry and playing things like that is that a crazy thing for you to have watched a guy your whole life and then all of a sudden you're sitting at dinner i i don't i think i'm old enough to not be sort of stars
truck and like oh my god your hand solo and he is but i think more and more uh at least in my life when i meet people that i that i hold in high regard i really just kind of want to mine them for their experience and and their wisdom you know for the most part um and because those are people who have clearly done something right um and so it's just and i find them a joy to talk to if you you know i don't want to talk about the business or anything like that i'm just more curious about what they'
re like yeah he's a fascinating guy on so many other levels the experience of working with apple tv i love talking to guys who come up in the business and now there's this new-ish world of streaming where people talk about creative freedom and you don't get notes every minute of every day what was it like for you when i was first starting out there was really just sort of the four networks um and with that comes an enormous amount of downward pressure creatively and now as we all know with the g
olden age of television television is really exploding in this creatively for really writers you know and show runners um and actors are the you know are reaping the benefits of that getting good better and better parts you know so it's apple's been great you know like it's the perfect amount of um hands-on hands-off you know where they come in and they just sort of tap the ship sometimes because it's a pretty big production and they sometimes just you know uh put it a little bit back on course
but that's only if something's going even slightly wrong you know it's they're not coming in the way i think the big networks used to come in and say you can't do this you can't do that and make sure there's six commercial breaks yeah it seems like the new executive ethos and entertainment is hire good people yeah or talented people and write the chat and then do what they do you know like let when you have a good group don't mess with the formula you know like let let people be creative you kno
w and that's you know at the end of the day you know people get to you know headline things and people get to whatever and obviously show runners or stars within their own right um but it's a team sport you know what i mean you know and and it doesn't work unless everyone's kind of doing the you know firing on all cylinders for exactly what they do whether that's a grip or whether that's a makeup person or whatever you know you really have to let everyone have their say and then the director obv
iously seems ideal and maybe we should have been doing this all along i know i know why haven't we been i know make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been
a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family w
ill watch nightly news kids edition some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app so when you were growing up was that sort of the path y
ou saw yourself on i'm going to follow in some ways in the family business no i knew i was never going to be um a lot of phrases i didn't do well in school and that's putting it mildly the multiple schools that i went to so i don't know i mean look i credit a very um good mother who who always encouraged me through lots of frustration but no matter what was going on in my life academically which was not much she was always encouraging me to do the thing that i liked and it was painting it was ar
t it was drama i can't imagine if you know she had been adamant that i'd become a doctor because that would never have happened or or even the accountant anything um and i was sort of the kid that you know was wearing a pant on his head you know um with money from the waist down you know like was it after college when you started toying around with acting and thinking oh maybe i could do this for a living i mean i studied acting and then you all have the rude awakening when you get to new york a
nd you go oh no one wants me then i just worked you know i did every job in new york from bartending to um construction you know all the normal i did billboards i painted i did everything i also came to new york with a double major drama visual art which is a real winning combo i did everything i could not to wait tables because that's a pretty so for me a soul-crushing experience um and i'm also not good at it um and then bartending i found and that was kind of the that was the greatest job eve
r because you're basically kind of your own boss and it gives you the flexibility to audition and do all those things and then you know i didn't really have any kind of like moment where i was sort of anointed and now you're gonna work you know i was doing small things guest stars you know new york shows every now and then i'd get something that was kind of in l.a you know and um and it was just i think a really great slow kind of road you know um you know it was nice when i could finally quit t
he bartending job you know if you're young i mean and all of a sudden you're just that magic wand hits you it can be a really jarring experience at least from people i know who that's happened to um uh but yeah i think it's kind of you know all things happen for the way they're supposed to happen you were pretty set on being in new york yeah i actually i went to i did go uh i was saying to uh be a sort of a third pa for james l brooks uh at his company grayson films and i got to drive him home o
ne night he said go to new york he said don't ever go to la unless someone flies you there because then you kind of know you're actually wanted you know i think that was great advice because hey i loved new york and it was kind of the advice that i wanted to hear um but b you know he said you know the competition is hard in new york and you'll you'll know quickly whether you should be doing this you know um it can take longer i think in los angeles to figure that out there are a couple rites of
passage for new york actor you can be a corpse on law and order we know that's one i don't think you did i didn't i i'm just law and order if you're listening like i'm ready to be a corpse whenever you want every one of my friends has done like a uh you know like a guest starring you know either on the jury or in the witness box okay so you're pitching yourself for that i'm pitching myself for a long order okay asap please and then the other one is of course play drug dealers now you're getting
a little greedy here let's just get you on the show and then the other one is of course to be on sex in the city yes which you were twice twice but as different guys as different guys now how does that happen well i think you know that show is a huge success in new york and went multiple seasons of course as everyone knows um and at a certain point you kind of burn and when it's about girls who are dating all the time you burn through every single male actor in new york you know and i think basi
cally i hid it in that perfect little g-spot where like i was the last actor in new york the first time i did it and so then they ran out of them again and then i guess my number came up um no it was actually kind of funny i think i did a sort of a small part on the first one you know sort of a you know enters frame says a few things on the stream um and then but we had such a blast doing it um and loved working with sarah jessica and also we knew a few people in common um and they were like why
don't you come can you come back and i was like yeah of course i have to you know um and i remember the big idea they're like yeah well we don't really use actors twice it's kind of a thing and their idea was that they would just shave my head so they just gave me this really short haircut and like some glasses or something they were like voila total transformation just hope they don't notice that's not the guy with the dark hair that was longer earlier was it sarah walked into rehearsal i was
like you again okay exactly i know it was a more substantial part with the second one but yeah sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to
visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] make the most of your day with today
in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medica
l news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press mulholland drive in 2001 which is can where it debuted was about 20 years ago right now it was may of 2001. 20 years ago that was a moment for you i
have to that absolutely was a moment whether you're sort of an early in your career or even late in your career to go to the con film festival with david lynch is like showing up with the pope to walk out onto the quasar with him with a movie that's premiering there i've never seen i mean it's the widest thickest most glamorous red carpet it's walls of photographers um and to be with david lynch with that movie and naomi and laura was just like pretty breathtaking you know for that week you know
the the world was our oyster um it was the first time someone like recognized me or you know that kind of thing right that's kind of cool um uh but it was just you know and it was such a good movie too and what a learning experience right we have reunion yeah what to work with [Laughter] david yeah we got this thing it's kind of a four camera sitcom situation i think it could be really great but that i mean to learn that early in your career from a master like david lynch just how movies are ma
de and what a good performance looks like must have been some i i can't describe being on a david lynch set i've been unfortunate enough to be on two but when you're doing a movie with david it's almost like doing a comedy or something because he's got this incredibly bright personality um and he's calm you know so when things as things inevitably do on a set go wrong he'll his first reaction is always oh great you know like he just oh that's cool like you know like the dp will come up with no y
ou know the sunset dude we're not going to get the shot he'll be like oh it's a night scene he always leans into what would normally be catastrophic and he gets like kind of incredible results you know but it does teach you just as a as an actor or person that sometimes you should embrace the uh the difficulty and it'll make your life easier you know he's an optimist i guess you know which is interesting parrot when you look you know he there's feels like there's a darkness there in the movie bu
t it doesn't sound like the movie you watch after working with him is oh you just can't even imagine you know like that's the movie that we shot i remember me and naomi went and saw the first cut of mulholland drive at david's house he said i want to show you guys the movie so come up to that we went up to the house and we kind of stumbled around we stumbled out of the house you know a couple hours later and we're just like that was the most insane that's so good we i mean we loved the movie um
so we just thought wow but he does something when he goes back to the lab he's incredible that movie is so good yeah good worth going back and watching 12 years later my god i won't go through your imdb page i promise i don't want to board i don't want to board kuma she goes throughout nightly with me i'm like come on you know what was the fifth one um one of the most amazing things about you which i think most people don't know is that you were one of the writers and tropic thunder correct and
the writer on iron man 2. correct which is unbelievable yeah i mean because people view it about having these guys how so the what was the happy accident of tropical thunder i was doing a play on broadway with uh ben stiller's then girlfriend um i met ben i was a big fan of the ben stiller show huge fan i would say we ended up becoming friends and he really was one of those people that reached behind and pulled me up because i was writing a little bit at the time he would come to town uh periodi
cally and do like you know letterman or conan and he used to do sort of much more elaborate bits and um and so we'd spit ball and help him come up with ideas you know like oh this could be funny that could be funny um and we would do these like sort of long extended bits um and then he was like you should really write so then i ended up just writing some things for him you know like when he do like the mtv awards he hosted comments like that comedy writing but i didn't really know i was comedy w
riting yeah um and then he had an idea which was hilarious and the germ of the idea was a bunch of actors go to uh make a vietnam war movie and come back to la claiming they have ptsd that was kind of the kernel and we just riffed on that for months and months just laughing and just thinking all the hilarious really goofing on actors um and that was the joke and then eventually it just snowballed and i started writing scenes and we we kind of write disparate scenes here and there just things we
thought were funny and then eventually it sort of got cobbled together and we passed stuff back and forth and then um and then eventually it was the movie that we got you know like um it was chocolate thunder had you written before kind of rewrites and things like that or punch-ups or but nothing like that was my first screenplay yeah and then um as a result of that um got to work with robert downey jr who played lazarus and um and then we hit it off and then he was like why don't you come and h
e he had just done um iron man he was kind of working concurrently he had finished iron man was working on tropic thunder was worried that iron man wasn't going to do well i remember we were sitting in the trailer in the jungle and he was like i just got the trailer for iron man you want to see it i went to this trailer and watched it and iron man actually was a comic book figure that i loved as a kid i even had the doll and i watched it and i just was blown away and i was like dude buckle up th
at is going to be a ride that's going to do so well he's like no no it's not going to do it you wait it will and then um we had such a good rapport working on it that he when obviously we know what happened to iron man it failed yeah um billion dollars later exactly only one um and then uh and then he just said why don't you come meet with kevin feige and jeremy lachman those guys and so we went we pitched and so you wrote iron man 2. yeah it's incredible what raises the question of those two ma
ssive successes what else are you working on what's your next i've got a couple things on the shelf that um there's one in particular that i it's a comedy that i really want to do that i've wanted to do for years i've already written it it's just a question of where it lives and how it how it looks you know and will you be in it is that something you write for yourself i'm self-conscious about writing for myself this has happened before where i'll write something and then i'll be like oh that co
uld be a part i could play and then i'd be like but you know who would be great you know and i'll i'll think of someone who's actually better for the stuff you know she's weird terrible at casting some humility good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking yeah are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential wo
rkers if you are a nurse thank you spring is frowned guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprise yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the r
est and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts today is now a podca
st available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts you were talking about 20 years ago that experience of being on the red carpet for the first time and people recognizing you and all that now 20 years later i suspect when we step outside there might be some company if they got their checks yeah they will be what is that like for you to live under the microscope and be as well known as you are now are you able to keep normalcy in your life yeah i mean look i always you know the lif
e is any life anybody's life is really the most important part of it or aspect of it is what is in your four walls of your house and your friendships that you maintain um that part is one of those parts where it's just um i've learned not to complain about it but it's just it is what it is you know i do was that a shock to your system though ten years ago when you started dating jennifer and got married all that attention that you got yeah i think part of me was like you know i'm essentially sor
t of a character actor and a writer there's not much there there but um but yeah of course that's that's that's one of those things that you think this is that's a strange thing you know and at that level you know like you know but people are interested you know people for whatever reason you know there's you know there's jason bateman actually once gave me one of the most sage pieces of advice ever um when all that was kind of going on and and he said um he said yeah man because we're already f
riends at that point and he said look um you know it's here's what's gonna happen it's and and it happens to everybody is that in that side of the entertainment industry a character is about to be born and that character is you but it's not you you know so that character is you know angry that character has got a problem that character is you know sweet that character it's just this little soap opera that gets written in the margins um and he said and so my advice is don't follow that guy's stor
yline you know um and it was a good piece of advice because i stuck to it and and that's the only way you can sort of keep saying and all that so you were you able to block all that out i mean that's great advice leaving the house and there's blah blah right but it's but yeah yeah for the most part you know it's an unsolvable riddle so you kind of just go in i don't know why you know it's that fascinating because i don't think one thing helps the other that's sort of the excuse that it's often u
sed well they want it they like that yeah they don't you know speaking of jen she's got the show obviously on apple you're on apple now is there any possibility of some kind of collaboration on any level that you turn up on i don't know wouldn't it be weird if ali fox showed up on the morning show it might just confuse the view i'd love to do it of course but i think it would actually be more confusing than anything else like are they trying to marry these two shows is it a crossover episode wha
t's happening allie would be a strange morning show guest totally the best morning well thanks for hosting us here [Music] oh today all day looking for a hot delicious date who is it up next on hashtag cooking sama dada is taking you on a date with dates and it'll be hard not to fall in love first up she's making the perfect sweet and salty snack miso almond date bites then she's gonna whip up a creamy date shake and then to top it off a french toast smothered in a gooey date caramel i do get an
gry sometimes shockingly you would think because i'm always cooking i never get angry but you know what this is the best of us [Music] i have been dating for a long time and no it's not what you're thinking i have been eating dates dates for a long time i grew up around them especially during ramadan when we would eat them to break our fast and since then i've been absolutely hooked and i hashtag cannot stop dating i want you to be just as obsessed with dating as i am so i'm going to show you th
ree of my favorite recipes first up we've got my miso almond date bites which are salty and sweet then i'm going to show you how to make my super simple vegan date shake and finally we're going to make my favorite french toast with an almond butter date caramel when you're shopping for dates let me tell you something important make sure you're looking for the medjool variety these are a lot sweeter and chewier than their other counterparts which tend to be a bit drier and not as great to bake wi
th or cook with or eat as a snack i like to eat these plain as well which is why i look for a nice delicious chewy sweet medjool date because you want something that's a nice sweet snack but you don't want anything that's dry these miso almond crunch bites have everything going for them they've got some umami from the miso some crunch from the almonds they're the perfect snack to keep in the fridge for when you want something a little sweet but you still want to eat something wholesome i'm putti
ng in a solid amount because i love a date these are going to act as a really nice base a really sweet and chewy base it's going to allow these bites to stick together and we're not going to add any other sugar [Music] i think that's way too many but i don't care so i've got my dates in my blender and now i'm gonna add my almonds i'm using just raw almonds here these are gonna add the nice crunch to these bites we love a lot of texture here now to seal the deal to seal those almonds in i'm going
to add a little bit of almond butter you can feel free to use a peanut butter or cashew butter if you have any other butter in your pantry feel free to use it the almonds and the almond butter make this snack super wholesome and delicious now we're going to add some shredded coconut make sure you use the unsweetened variety here because the dates are already going to add a lot of sweetness to the snack so pretty we're going to add a little vanilla extract just for a little vanilla and finally i
'm going to add some white miso paste this is made from fermented soy beans and i know what you're thinking you're thinking about miso soup stop that train and thought halt it right there this is just going to add some nice umami flavor and balance out that really nice sweet date and almond combination i'm gonna finish this off with a little pinch of salt just to bring everything together pull out that sweetness a little pinch not too much and then we're ready to blend are you ready i'm ready fe
el free to scrape down the sides if you need to i need to [Music] to get everything nicely incorporated [Music] what you're looking for with this dough is to have some nice texture so we don't need everything to be completely pulverized totally fine if we have some little bigger or smaller pieces of almonds that's just going to really contribute to the crunch this is what we're looking for as you can see it's a bit thick it's a bit sticky this is gonna be great because it's gonna help us form it
into our little bites i wish you could smell this it's like warm and salty and sweet and i haven't even tasted it yet okay i'm using a really cute cookie scoop here we want it to be just shy of about a size of a golf ball but you can make them bigger or smaller if you'd like i like a little bite size bite i can just grab from the fridge when i want something a little sweet and salty as you can see this is what we're looking for you can see a little piece of date here you've got some different s
izes of almond pieces this is good we like this we like texture it's a work of art we love this bite look at how cute [Music] first one done my biggest struggle with no bake recipes like this one is that it really is a challenge to get everything to the parchment paper before i eat it all but i'm doing okay so far i did sneak a little bite though don't tell anyone the dates make it really nice and sticky to form into a little ball as well which is really great they add a little sweetness they al
low it to adhere together see this is why i love dating look at that super cute i always have this in my fridge or freezer because i'm always a little hungry i always like to snack so this is really nice to know i feel secure when i have this in my freezer fridge we're almost at the end there's a light at the end of this blender tunnel pretty good rolled out all of my dough into these cute little bites and now i'm just going to let them nap in the fridge for a little bit just to firm up while i
melt my chocolate [Music] [Applause] [Music] would you look at that my little date bites have woken up from their nap in the fridge and i think it's time to add some chocolate i've melted my chocolate already as you know and now i'm just going to do a really nice cute drizzle if you want a little more chocolate if you want a little desserty vibe feel free to completely submerge them i'm just going to do a nice little drizzle here [Music] how smooth and melty that chocolate is look at that all ri
ght let's start drizzling you don't need too much on your spoon go a little light-handed so you can get a nice cute delicate drizzle or you can go full force through a really heavy drizzle whatever is up to you the reason i like melting chocolate with coconut oil is that it makes the chocolate really smooth and nice really drizzleable drizzleable i just make up words honestly at this point got my own dictionary drizzleable makes it easier to drizzle feeling like you want more of a chocolate mome
nt feel free to completely submerge take them for a swim i will not judge you in fact i'll support you all the way you're getting fancy you can even do a little crisscross action like this i mean come on picasso calls he wants his date balls back all right last one they look so cute and now i have one final little step just going to add a little flaky sea salt on top it's going to bring out that chocolate it's going to balance out the sweetness i love using flaky salt over my entire life you rea
dy it's a little it also looks really pretty too there's big chunks of flaked salt so pretty it's so fancy these bites are gonna take another little nap in the fridge for about 30 minutes i want this chocolate to firm up and then they'll be ready to eat [Music] what a successful nap i mean look at this so pretty you've got that nice chocolate drizzle a little salty contrast you know what i should probably take a picture of them before i dig in so i'm going to do that they look too cute not to [M
usic] just straight on the tray real life action you know [Music] i've got to commend on my own drizzling skills i i just have to have a moment for myself okay i think i'm ready to taste you know i thought i was gonna plate them i had this already but i'm just gonna eat them straight from the tray because i can't wait i just can't wait [Music] okay here i go [Music] with that little almond piece in there so sweet the dates something in my teeth the dates are so nicely sweet the almonds add subst
ance a little crunch that chocolate on top just seals everything together and the salt brings all the flavors out and that miso and gives this sort of savory undertone a little salt just trying to pick up the salt no salt left behind you know what i'm saying these are so good you guys have to try these you guys have to try these [Laughter] no crunch it's the best yeah yeah it is [Music] [Applause] so have i convinced you to eat more dates yet no okay that's kind of crazy well challenge accepted
i'm gonna go grab the ingredients for my irresistible date shake and show you how it's done [Music] make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule s
treaming every day on today all day make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your friends in today in a whole new way today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the latest styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking essentials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm so ready only on today all day
stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x-pi our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch our bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 [Music] [Music] not to brag or anything but there are a lot of date farms in my home of sout
hern california and with the date farms comes date shakes i wanted to make a super creamy and delicious date shake but without any of the dairy but they'll never know okay i've gotta preface this recipe by telling you something it is so easy to make you'll never believe it i'm just gonna add all of my ingredients into my blender and it does all the work for me i've got my dates here they're pitted don't leave any pits in there that may not end well for you adding them straight into my blender [M
usic] to make that super creamy milkshake vibe i am using frozen bananas this is a great way to rescue any of your ripe or nearly parish bananas that have just kind of been sitting on your counter for a while freeze them make banana bread with them make this date shake super versatile also when you're freezing your bananas make sure to just cut them up into cute little slices like this it'll make it a lot easier to blend i like the nice little ice cream vibe that these bananas will give the stea
k shake super good and flavorful and the bananas add even more natural sweetness and we go a couple more things i'm adding some vanilla extract and because i really want to feel hugged by this date shake i'm going to add cinnamon because we all know cinnamon is like a hug in spice form you know do you agree with me i agree with me adding my cinnamon perfect now to blend everything together i'm going to use some unsweetened almond milk you can totally use another non-dairy milk option an oat milk
or a coconut would be really nice here as well adding my almond milk into my blender [Music] beautiful now all we do is blend wasn't that so easy it's kind of crazy i shouldn't have but i did here we go prepare yourselves [Music] i'm really excited i think we're done now all i'm going to do pour it into my glass and enjoy [Music] i mean look how creamy that is [Music] that was it that was our recipe i need to send a picture to my parents they're still in southern california they'll be really je
alous okay okay perfect now i get to drink it so thick it's too good it's crazy that this is a plant-based milkshake it's so creamy it's so velvety but there's no milk in it we love a vegan date shake vibe so good [Music] it's cute so good i could eat this forever eat it drink it i could drink it forever [Music] my final recipe that really celebrates the magic of dates it's an almond butter date caramel that you will want to put over your entire life but we're just going to put it on some french
toast i'm going to go clean my blender and get the ingredients [Music] make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today
all day stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking good are you ready we're going to do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurse
s other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is from guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprising yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world love it make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i
am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press [Music] in college at berkeley whenever i went to breakfast with my friends they w
ould always go for the eggs benedict the veggie omelets but for me i only had eyes for the french toast there was a restaurant pretty close to campus called la not that had one of the best french toasts i've ever had it had a really nice and sweet crisp exterior and i knew i wanted to replicate something just like that in my own kitchen but with a twist so inspired by the french toast of my dreams we are going to be making a french toast with an almond butter date caramel we're going to start by
making an almond butter date caramel that is so luscious you will want to drown your entire life in it but today we're just going to put it on some french toast let's start [Music] added some dates in my blender we're going to add a little bit of almond butter the almond butter is going to balance out the sweetness of the dates really nicely to sweeten this up a little further and to add a little bit more of that caramel undertone we're going to add some coconut sugar to make a super luscious a
nd velvety caramel we're going to add some vanilla almond milk i'm using vanilla here but if you don't have a vanilla if you just haven't unsweetened you can add a little touch of vanilla extract my blender is truly my kitchen bff so now all we're going to do is blend it right up and caramel will await us on the other end of this okay i think we're looking good look at how luscious that is and of course a traditional caramel is made by heating sugar up on a stove but this is my version of a cara
mel that uses dates now you can see why i want to put this over my entire life our almond butter date caramel is ready all it needs now is some french toast so i'm gonna go grab the ingredients to make it [Music] sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition good morning welcome to tod
ay nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying you are exactly make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest
and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your friends in today in a whole new way today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the latest styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking ess
entials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm so ready only on today all day [Music] it's time to make our french toast i've got all of the usual suspects here my eggs my cinnamon my vanilla extract and i also have some milk i'm using almond milk here but you can use your favorite i'm gonna crack two of my eggs into my beautiful little pie dish here cute [Music] perfect i'm going to whisk my eggs together until you don't see any separation between the yolks and the white [Music]
really putting my entire body into this whisking eggs morning workout perfect french toast work out of your day okay i'm on board okay this looks nice and smooth now i'm going to add some of my almond milk [Music] vanilla extract [Music] vanilla extract for me is a must when i'm making french toast i just love that little extra sweetness a little essence really brings it to life little pinch of cinnamon now we want this to be super smooth super uniform it's gonna be a nice little bath for our sl
ices of bread okay i'm gonna add a little coconut oil to my pan let it melt and then that's gonna be perfect for me to fry the bread in time to dredge our slices of bread in my little mixture here i'm using sourdough bread here because i love that tangy taste it's my favorite kind of bread we're going to let the bread really soak up that egg mixture and by the way french toast it is a great use for your stale bread so if you got any stale bread in your pantry it's time to make some french toast
i'm going to flip this over make sure it really soaks up all of that goodness it smells really good already which i know is crazy because we haven't even cooked it one last step before i cook my french toast i'm going to add a little sprinkle of coconut sugar on both sides because i want that really sweet crispness on the exterior look at that it's gonna get some nice color as well now we're going straight to my pan [Music] adding a little extra sugar on top [Music] so we want to cook these unti
l they're nice and cooked through golden brown on both sides about three to five minutes per side this is a great brunch recipe a great breakfast recipe and honestly a great dinner recipe too like who are we kidding we can have french toast for dinner there are no rules i like pan frying these in coconut oil as well because i think it plays really nicely with that coconut sugar all right we are going to flip [Music] you know i consider myself a patient person but then when i'm cooking french toa
st i'm like hurry up can't wait all day it's not even that long i don't know why i'm being so dramatic just gonna flip my second piece look at that color looking so golden ready for a photo ready for some caramel some date caramel all right these are looking beautiful i'm going to transfer them to my plate so i'm hungry do we think they're ready for their caramel i think they're ready all right it's thick it's luscious i'm gonna be generous here nothing wrong with a little thick drizzle kind gon
na dip in for some more [Music] i really just went for it i was trying to be delicate before and now i'm just straight up going for it i like having a little pool of caramel on the side it looks really delicious i'm gonna add some berries just to sidle up next to that date caramel sit on top of it they kind of stick nicely onto that caramel too a little powdered sugar you can't tell me you don't want this you just can't tell me you don't want it it looks so pretty i think one note would be proud
i should probably send them a picture maybe i'll slide into their dms oh it looks so pretty the almond butter caramel while delicious it is a brown color and so is bread so by adding pops of color like these berries that powdered sugar just really brings all of those colors and flavors to light i'm going in i'm immediately overwhelmed i don't know where to go okay okay here we go we're going for it i'm gonna get a nice little crust that a berry okay pineapple tea it's i need a minute that date
caramel is like the best sub for a maple syrup it's so much more flavorful more complex those dates and the coconut sugar create this really nice marriage of sweetness i love using sourdough here too because it's sour it's kind of tart because it's so fermented it goes so well with the sweetness of the caramel the berries really make everything pop i mean i'm not trying to have like a french toast off with la note but i don't know i think i might i think i might and don't get me wrong i love map
le syrup sometimes we like switching it up i love snacking on dates they're my favorite thing ever but this almond butter date caramel really shows how many things dates can do we just love to date dates they can do it all [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we are back i'm anthony cantrino and it is time to get saucy we've got a brand new kitchen and new episodes coming your way this summer tune in to today all day mondays at 11 a.m [Music] we are excited for our next guest because he
is an eight-time grammy award-winning artist who also won an emmy in 2013 for outstanding original song on a children's program ziggy marley is part of the music dynasty started by his father bob marley one of the pioneers of reggae music and if that's not enough ziggy also accomplished children's author and he's here today to tell us about his latest book ziggy marley good morning sir good morning how you guys doing doing great here's the thing i mean people know you as a very successful music
ian part of reggae royalty how did ziggy get into writing children's books oh i have um seven kids four young ones that'll do it yeah that would do it and um i mean it's an extension of songwriting i always love writing and so you know it's just like extension and of writing songs i love it i love it your new book is called my dog romeo it started uh it's a story based off of a dog that you actually got during the pandemic so first tell us more about your dog and why you wanted to turn this into
a book all right so my kids they always wanted that dog you know for years now and my wife was very reluctant about it um she was like oh the dog is going to be like another baby and you know and so forth so right before the pandemic hit we got a dog a puppy um he's a legato it's a italian water dog and the pandemic hit and we were home together with a dog for the whole year and you know things like that like animals inspire me does inspire me you know birds nature inspire me so i wrote a song
um about the dog and it's on my latest album which is a kid's album called more family time and we kind of took the song and turned it into a a kids book and then you've got another kid's book coming out this one's called little john crow and you say this is a book that's really an extension of your own childhood how so so when i was growing up in jamaica we grew up around we call them junkra they're turkey vultures and um we always as a kid i used to look at them as very like scary scary creatu
res and we wouldn't like them you know it would be like junk vultures junkers uh the stories we would hear as children were really scary but as i grew up i realized that these animals are are very um important to our ecosystem and so this book kind of goes through that kind of uh of um storyline where this vulture really doesn't want to be a vulture because vultures are seen as dirty and nasty and evil but but then he accepts himself as a vulture and just like i accepted um the importance of the
vulture so in the book this character accepts himself as a vulture and finally fulfills his destiny i love that that's children that is deep and brought to you by nature i i think that's fantastic uh i want to talk about your dad and music you know your father uh was a music music legend in the industry and very instrumental in your career so what would you say was the best and and most impactful advice that that he's given you that you've carried with you throughout the years i think um both m
y parents really um my mother i'm a father um little life that is not for me i didn't learn about things by words or by them telling me things but by watching them and and then being an example so we learned that um we have to help each other um we learn about ideas of unity and love and spirituality and that really has had an impact on me in all my life and my songs and everything it's coming from that kind of foundation ziggy i mean you've got these these two children's books coming out does t
hat mean we can expect a new album to drop soon yeah musical is coming out um you know we're doing a lot of singles nowadays but yeah music is always creativity it's just it's always there so you can expect something you know every now and again we drop a single and maybe album um later this year yeah tis the new model single not albums uh ziggy marley thanks for waking up so early ziggy thank you thank you always a treat sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understan
d will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day stay connected and stream the news you need with
xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch our bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your
podcasts sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition there's a brand new children's book on the shelf and it happens to be written by one of our friends mark schreiber it is called 10 hidden heroes and it teaches kids to count while it also teaches them about everyday heroes that ar
e hidden on each page and it was inspired by mark's career as president of the save the children network mark we love you already and we love you well partly because we love your your sister maria but but we love how your whole family has always been of service mark maria once told me she said we never took vacations as kids every trip we took was one of service is that how you remember it i think we had a little bit of fun along the way but it was definitely service was definitely interest in a
ll of those activities so yes we he definitely were exposed and to all the different activities in a country and we did service when we visited a foreign country but we also had some fun you know mark this book is so cool and i feel like it's coming at the perfect time you know finally i think we're paying attention to those that lift up our country uh this last year has taught us that and i got to count with my kids and find you know in a world where's waldo type way some of these awesome peopl
e and it really starts conversations that's so great to hear jenna thank you uh that was exactly what the book was designed to do it's to see the hidden heroes what pope francis calls the hidden saints next door who are doing these wonderful things in our community that don't get lifted up very often uh so much in american culture we focus on you know the super bowl winning quarterback the ceo is a lot of money uh the movie star but i think what we really should focus on are the people who are d
oing great things uh good things every day um and that's what the book is supposed to do it's supposed to spur conversations between adults and little children and hopefully be a learning experience and a fun experience for both readers and little kids well it's such a cool concept and by the way the illustrations what that we're looking at right now are amazing who's the illustrator on this one laura watson she is from canada um it's we made the decision you know in may june of last year right
in the height of covid and our children were home two of them were home from college our third child is in high school and jeannie and all five of us took a secret ballot on our favorite uh illustrator we had a couple to choose from and laura was number one in all of our secret ballots so it was a family process and the kids helped identify some of the heroes in the pages and genie wrote some of the refrains so it was a really uh family-oriented project a lot of fun we're hoping that it spurs lo
ts of great conversations and lots of fun journeys you know what's funny jen and i have this conversation a lot we talk about wanting our children to be of service and this is a good starting point obviously this book you're watching people just serve their neighbors but how did you teach your kids about the importance of service like what did you do on a daily basis so that became part of their life i think little kids you know soak up what their parents uh do and they soak it up when your pare
nts the parents are happy and joyful and i think if they see you doing things of service to others whether it's cleaning up the dishes after dinner whether it's doing something on the weekend for the homeless for those that are hungry i think these gestures add up and kids see that and they see that you're happy doing it and you're joyful doing it and they're going to start following you i mean my mother and father i don't think ever lectured us on service but i knew that they went to work every
day i knew my father had great admiration for peace corps volunteers he started that program my mother was special olympics athletes she started that program and great admiration for special olympic parents those were the heroes that were discussed in our household and i know that when i saw them get up and want to go to work every day and be happy and excited about that uh just kind of fell in line for us and i hope my wife jeannie and i are doing the same thing for our kids you are just expos
ed you're definitely doing it by this book but also with your work with save the children i've gotten to meet you through that awesome organization how does this book tie into that work save the children jenna as you know spends a lot of time focused in rural america rural poverty kids that are struggling academically and little children zero to six years of age if kids enter kindergarten ready to learn they're gonna grow uh and they're gonna succeed in school and beyond so we focus on those fir
st six years of life making sure that there are books in the home that parents know how important it is to read to their children um expose them to literacy and over the last 12 months really focused on feeding children as well because we want to fill their bellies and fill their minds and covet has had a dramatic impact on the distribution of food through the school lunch program so save the children has stepped into that hole we're feeding kids giving them academic resources and hopefully fill
ing their minds as well mark we appreciate you everything you're all the work you're doing we hope people check out this book it's called 10 hidden heroes you can get it at today.com or anywhere really get it wherever you want wherever books are so yeah thank you mark sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand the coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watc
h nightly news kids edition it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine [Music] stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top
story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch our bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really c
onfusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit planyourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts what you may not know about jimmy is that he s
tarted singing as a young age as a child he stuttered so a therapist had him write down his feelings on a piece of paper and sing what he wanted to say and a songwriter was born well now this brilliant individual is written a beautiful children's book to help kids use their voices to stand up for what they believe in and this book is called my voice is a trumpet jimmy hello hello okay first of all there's too many new things happening in your life where you know we need to slow down okay you're
newly married you've got a new children's book what was the third thing i don't know you had a baby another you know you you've got a a bunch of new things happening in your life just how does it feel to be a newlywed i know you've been in a relationship for a long time though uh it feels great um you know uh i uh things i don't know it's different it's not different but it's different if that makes sense i feel like now i kind of really like have to listen to her more you know because before i
could be like well this is mine it says allen on it she's like whoa it's my last name now and you have a new little one on the way you have two you already have two beautiful kids beautiful i'm sure you're looking so forward to that i am you know it's another it's another girl uh so uh you already know that we will be spending even more time uh at disney world but uh yeah it's uh it's great you know i thought it was gonna be a boy we both did hence why we don't have a name yet and we found out i
t was gonna be a girl who was like ee what do we call it hey uh jimmy first of all i didn't know the this part of your story that you when you were a little boy that you were you stuttered and it was something that you had to overcome tell us what that was like as a little boy dealing with that ah man it was it was rubbing folks because i hated like talking in person yeah public speaking forget about it reading in public forget about it and it was one of them things where i started so bad to whe
re it's not funny but oh yeah it's funny i used to like slap my legs to get the word out at one time asked my friends a question like uh hey uh how many how many like man how many times you gonna ask that question i've been like ah about that but now i kind of got to the point where you know i i want to do something about it um so i got a speech therapist uh how do you say it speaks pathologists it sounds expensive i uh so she started having me write down what i wanted to say right and then she
had me sing the first two words of the sentence because you notice when people sing they don't stutter so if i want to say hey how y'all doing today i'll be like hey how y'all doing today once i get going i'm i'm good to go but ever since i learned how to stop stuttering well i can't shut up you know what to this book is beautiful it compares kids voices to trumpets to rainbows to honey yeah some some that are silent and and i feel like it's a bigger metaphor of teaching kids that they should us
e their voice for good oh for sure you know it um it's super important to me because i feel like that age you know from birth to four k through fourth grade you know kids are still the sponge age and it's like everything that they're gonna have and their tool belt as an adult and as a teenager is what's placed into their life at that age so it's important to kind of get in early and let them know that hey you're important it's okay to encourage yourself it's also encouraging okay to encourage ot
her people you know and when you see something happening that you don't agree with you know you can say something about it because if we don't they turn into adults who don't encourage other people don't encourage themselves you know when they see things happen they're afraid to speak up you know so i i kind of wanted to just get in at a young age and do that and shout out to my teachers who i am super close with still my kindergarten teacher my first grade teacher that were really important to
me and you know my life through books through music that was uh mr dare back then she was miss alexander and miss sharp um my kindergarten teacher and my first grade teacher um uh miss alexander is actually going to be reading my audiobook oh awesome well jimmy we we adore you i love that you shouted out all your teachers yeah so you uh we want people to check out your book it's called my voice is a trumpet you can get it at today.com it's just beautiful i love you jimmy he is an egyptian heart
surgeon turned comedian and tv host who's being called the john stewart of the middle east he's got more than 40 million viewers of his political satire show now bossam youssif and his family call la home which led him to write a book for young readers called the magical reality of nadia a way to help his daughter nadia adapt to living in america while embracing her culture look at famous bossam is here hi blossom how are you hi hola how are you it's so great to see you now we should tell people
a little bit of the backstory you fled egypt because as a political satirist that was a no-no um describe your journey here to the u.s well uh as you said i ran into some troubles because of comedy out of all things and i came here to america in the most interesting political times when you know donald trump was rising to power so uh that kind of inspired me to write something for my daughter because i think i believe that whatever problems we have to go through as adults they weren't addressed
as young kids so i thought like maybe i would like use my experience and kind of channel it into a younger readers but i didn't want it to be on the nose so i used magic i used history i used fantasy and i i think it's um it's a cute book because uh first of all i get to write a book for my daughter and uh and and i think she enjoyed it i at least she tells me that yeah is she right there by the way yeah where is is she nearby we can't we can't go on without you there's there she is hi nadia ho
w are you good good when you found out that your dad was going to write a book with you as the main characters the star what did you tell him i was i i was just like well you know well she's very critical by the way uh she told me by the way i get in the book is not like me because i do not collect bobble heads and i said and i said yeah this is not an autobiography it's a it's a picture so when i told her it's thick and what did you tell me now it says it's fantasy because it has magic fantasy
boy she's smart i know you are super smart you're you're obviously you're the book is written with your daughter as the central character but this is something that all kids can take a page from so what do you hope it how how other kids take from it well that was a question so so basically uh this is a question that promotes the idea that being different is cool i think the the um the the one of the reasons why america is in a unique place is it allows people with their own differences to come i
n and to live together and i i think there's a message here to tell people that being different is cool it's not a source of suspicion it's not a source of weakness this country is good it's great because of all of the different people in the different culture here i think we should embrace our differences while in the same time call ourselves egyptian-american chinese-american the korean-american it doesn't matter we all come from somewhere even if you think that you own this country and you've
been here forever your parents your grandparents at a certain point came from somewhere which makes us all basically uh in the same boat well it's a beautiful book about acceptance i read a little bit to my little girls last night and nadia they love you [Laughter] nadia is a star awesome thank you yeah of course it was a really beautiful book thank you so much bye nadia and you can find the magical reality of nadia oh thank you on today.com stay connected and stream the news you need with xfin
ity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking good are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is
frown guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprise yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world love it the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity xbox our top story
is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts for those of you who don't know rocky merchandise she is a mom she's an award-winning author and more than that she is a long time friend of our show and girl she's a force she's nature is and now she's written a new
book called hair twins that centers around a little girl her dad and the special bond they share and it happens to be based on rocky's daughter and husband rocky's with us hey girl hey friends how are you okay seeing rocky just warms my heart rocky's been a part of this program for almost as long as this program has been in existence so first of all we love you how satya did how's she doing she's great she's really salty that i sent her to school today i put on spanx and heels for hoda and jenna
today go to school rocky i read this beautiful article that you wrote for today.com really that was the genesis of this book and you call it a heart song which like kind of i know warmed my heart so you just first of all i've read this book to both of my girls they loved it so will you just tell us about the genesis of this awesome book yeah thanks i'm so glad the girls loved it i was so keen for them too bedtime story hair twins is the story of my family it is the story of my husband again it
is the story of my daughter satya and it's a story of their bond again and satya is part of their faith they don't cut their hair as many sticks don't and when sethi was little and ugand would tie his turban that they would pull up this little stool and stand next to him in the bathroom and watch him tie his turban and it was that moment that took my breath away an everyday moment because it's a connection that they share this deep bond about who they are their faith the community they come from
it ties them to each other right but it also ties them to against parents and our grandparents to the global community we're a part of and for me that bond was so special and so beautiful i wanted to share it with everybody so this book is a window into our apartment into our lives into who we are into the pride we feel to be all the things we are indian and american sick from new jersey and i hope that it's also an invitation i hope that every single person who reads it adult or kid they feel
call they feel called and compelled to share who they are all the parts of themselves with others that is so beautiful that is so beautiful and i think you did so many things great with satya for people who don't remember she was a little girl who was battling cancer many years ago and we all held hands and prayed a lot around this studio for that little girl and she is now the subject of a couple of books but i was just thinking knowing who you are as a kid is can sometimes be a struggle yeah b
ecause you know kids or kids are different all kids are different and how did you help satya like feel good in her own skin i think in some ways she's felt me she's made me feel good in my own skin i struggled as a little brown girl in new jersey in the 80s and 90s i had a foot in both worlds i had a foot in india i had a foot in america and i felt like my entire existing hinged on keeping those things separate for suck that was really important to us to bring all of who we are and all of who sh
e is oh my god i love that picture to everything so i think she's a riot and so we go to her class right now it's over zoom and we talk about our holidays we talk about our food this weekend or this thursday we're going to celebrate holy with her class and i think just not compartmentalizing the parts of ourselves but fully living into all of who we are all the time has made her own every part of herself and i think she takes up a lot of space in this world because she's able to do that and i al
so hope that she's making space for others right to do the same to show who they are rocky that's that is sort of the part of the this article about how she's different than you are when you were little and there's this moment where a mom in her class sits next to you on a bench in the park and says my daughter wants to be like her my daughter asked if i could braid her hair like hers and that must have been like this profound mom moment for you it actually makes me cry to think about it because
i if i could have washed the brown off my skin as like as a little girl i would have done it and to hear a mother it was so generous of her to say this to me and she said you know my daughter she wants to have beautiful long beautiful braids like that yeah and i know i said his braids are so long they're long and they're beautiful because they're reflective of her faith because she's a little sick girl right and these and her hair is a commitment to love and to equality and to service and to so
cial justice and to know that when she walks through the world folks see it for what it is confidence beauty connection i mean we can't okay rocky please stop doing this to us we love you please get here twins it's so good we love you [Music] welcome to today all day all day today all day all day this is a long way of asking who's your favorite character you've ever played the unicorn the unicorn you gotta have the unicorn what is she right there that's why you're saying all these nice things ye
ah she gave me the look sorry to disturb your day everyone's mad at you willie you better make this fast i don't want the rap luna when i see you i always think i wonder what his quote would be give us six minutes and we'll ask as many questions as we can welcome to cold cuts pull cut cold cut my buddy cow cooking with me dad's don't babysit it's called parenting what was the first book you remember loving heart smart today with simple exercises to strengthen your heart make the most of your bea
ch days it's all about the tracksuit now how good do they look i now pronounce you husband and wife kiss the bride this morning a story of people helping [Music] there's this new study it was published in the journal science and it really takes everything that we thought we knew about metabolism and aging and essentially throws it out the window and we're going to break it down now for with nbc news medical correspondent dr john torres and lead dietitian and manager of wellness nutrition service
s at cleveland clinic kristin kirkpatrick good morning to both of you good morning dr john morning let me start with you dr john explain the science if you can behind this new this new metabolic data like what what does it mean and how could we have been so wrong about it for so long and you're right greg this is turning things on its head because all along i thought the same thing you know as you start getting older your metabolism slows down once you hit your 30s you pack on a few extra pounds
not much you can do about it because it's your metabolism causing that to happen even most more so when you're in your 40s and your 50s but this study is saying not so fast that's not what's happening actually and what they did is they looked at what we call the carbon dioxide expenditure how much carbon dioxide are we burning off every day which is a sign of our metabolism in other words the things we're doing to breathe to digest food just to live our basic metabolism and they looked at eight
day olds up to 95 year olds to find out and what they found out is we do things in groups through throughout our lives and it breaks down into four different categories from birth until one years old we are metabolism machines we are burning metabolism like it's nobody's business but once we turn one until we turn 20 that starts slowing down about three percent a year didn't matter if you're a teenager didn't matter where you were in that period it slows down about three percent a year but once
you hit 20 until you get to 60 it stays the same regardless of what's happening regardless of if you're a man or a woman regardless if you're going through menopause pregnancy none of those things influence that basic metabolism and then once you turn 60 it started slowing down again so that's the key and it turns out again when we're in our 30s and 40s it's not the metabolism putting on those extra pounds sorry lazy and eating too much so kristen that then leads to the question basically calor
ies and exercise which with things we pretty much know that would be i would think the keys to helping improve our metabolic health over that 40 years yeah definitely the key but the the real important point here looking at this data is that this is looking at total energy expenditure so obviously it's looking at energy out the calories burned but we can't stop thinking about the calories in the problem is we are really looking at our calories in the wrong way we are a nation that is still very
overweight and obese despite the fact that we have a million different diets out there but we are still consuming a lot of hyper palatable foods and we're still focusing on the quantity of calories we need to shift the focus what's hyper conversation hyper palatable foods are foods that very edible absolutely so you you can't stop eating them so i always say to my patients there's a reason why you can stop eating a bowl of steamed broccoli but you can't stop eating a bag of potato chips so we ha
ve data that shows that hyperpalatable foods actually hijack areas in the brain that cause you to not have that feeling of fullness and it's right i'm ready to stop so when we're eating these foods we eat tons and tons of calories because our brain is not sending the message hey you need to stop eating and so this is what we're focusing on we really need to look at quantity as something that's not as important as quality quality is key and that starts with eating real food good point um i though
t it was very interesting uh that you know men and women really there is no difference between our metabolic rates i always just assume men burn calories faster than women do were there other myths that were debunked by this study yeah for sure one of the things that i really noticed is looking at menopausal women so a lot of my patient base at cleveland clinic is postmenopausal premenopausal women who come in and say oh gosh i can't fit into my genes when i was 25 and the common thought was wel
l of course this is a normal aspect of aging so this was really surprising that menopause didn't even impact the metabolism and it really does change the conversation that we as clinicians have and how we have to look at our dietary recommendations when we're counseling our patients dr john let's talk about the the impact here potentially on future medical research because i understand that this could actually affect drug dosages for for children and older people going forward why would that be
and this could have a big impact because up until now when we look at drugs it's kind of a one size fits all and we talk about giving dosing based on mainly on weight and on age type situations by grouping them in large age groups but now what we're finding out according to this study is that the cells actually something happens inside the cells to drive that metabolism in those stages we talked about particularly once you get past the age of 60. and because that's happening that means our drugs
are going to be handled differently in the cell level and so we need to make sure that we're adjusting it appropriately so i think in the future you're going to find out that somebody for instance with high blood pressure if they're in their 40s they're going to have to get different dosing than if they're in their 70s just because of that metabolism effect that's happening there hey kristen uh for those over 60 just asking for a friend uh uh what what should those folks mean be be focusing on
as we look ahead toward you know trying to stay as healthy as possible yeah so for your friend al what i would say is that it's really important again to really focus on that real food so michael pollan defines food as something that comes from nature is fed from nature and will eventually rot so we really need to take out all of the the millions of dietary recommendations that we have from from social media and all these other places not look at what is working for your friends but what is work
ing for you i often tell my patients that the best diet for you is the one you can stick to so i think we have to look at that and think okay if i'm over 60 my metabolism is going to drop a little bit and what can i do i can eat more food if you eat more food you're getting more nutrient density you're getting more fiber that fills you up and it naturally lowers your calories and what about exercise yeah the exercise was a surprise as well so what we're finding here is that exercise is essential
for heart health and reduction of certain cancers but might not be the key to weight loss or even weight management so you can't rely on exercise i'm sure you've heard this before but you can't outrun a bad diet and this is definitely true and something that we have seen in this study is that exercise should be part of your overall lifestyle goals but it shouldn't be what you're depending on to lose weight and to keep that weight off as many people know losing weight is not easy keeping it off
is even more difficult so we really have to look and really tighten up the fact that we can't use this excuse anymore it's not our metabolism kristen cook patrick great information [Music] make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today in 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts good morning welcome to today nic
e to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come tru
e what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the pr
ess her weight loss video went viral with 12 million views take a look at this yeah it was last november when certified fitness trainer lucy bergen started recording her weight loss journey taking a daily image of herself wearing the same outfit and she did it in an effort to inspire herself to get healthy she did it for six months and lost a total of 35 pounds and then well she posted it to tick tock and the rest well the rest is digital history lucy bergen joins us now from tampa florida lucy
what what a cool idea and now here we are some 12 million views later and you were showing up on good days on bad days what were you telling yourself when you were looking in the mirror taking those pictures taking those videos what was i telling myself i just kept telling myself that it wasn't a short-term goal it wasn't a diet it was a lifestyle change and that's what's so important and i love this video because it shows my bad days it shows the days that i was bloating or you can even see in
my face if i had a rough day and that's what life is it's not about going on a diet and trying to lose 20 pounds in a week it's not about the weight it's about your mental health and you can see in this video also it's little changes at a time um i didn't even notice my transformation until i put everything together i bet um so this all started like i mean for so many people gaining weight during covid putting on a few extra pounds and then over six months you lost 35 pounds so how did you do it
what were your tips and what what advice do you have for others trying to lose some weight all right so my biggest piece of advice would be to get a friend or someone that you can have accountability with my best friend and i did it together and we kept each other accountable and so because of that we were able to almost make a challenge out of it and when it comes to that um it really helped me and then when it comes to diet and working out i was lifting heavy at first and eating carbs protein
s things like that um something that's actually really awesome is in the fitness world we're taught especially as women that we should be eating 1200 calories or even less and i've had clients come to me saying they're eating about 500 calories a day and what they don't know is that that actually sp like slows down your meta metabolism and you need a certain amount of calories to have your body function properly just like you need to put gas into a car for it to run yeah you need to have full in
your body for your body to burn fat yeah lucy i would think uh when you work at when a lot of us see these trainers and they're all buff and they're in great shape i think it would be more inspirational to be working out with somebody like you who's had the challenges themselves and knows what it's like for the the rest of us to try to get back into shape yes sir that's actually um i worked at a gym in new jersey and i specifically chose that gym because i knew that everyone coming to me was br
and new to the fitness world and i can't tell you the amount of conversations i would have with these amazing people who would come in and they would give me their why their reason why they wanted to change i mean i had people telling me that they wanted to be a good example for their children or be able to fit in a pair of jeans for their honeymoon and these reasons like you could tell they were so special to in every individual that would come in and talk to me and i sat and cried with some of
these people because i've been there and it is so hard to get started on this journey when you think that you're too far gone lucy thank you this is this has been so inspirational congratulations to you and and uh appreciate you spending some time with us this morning thank you thank you thank you so much it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the coveted vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more import
ant than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it work for you you're right i am more talented
than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your friends in today in a whole new way today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the lates
t styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking essentials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm so ready only on today all day stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 the meet the press chuck toddcast free wherever you get your podcasts today is now a po
dcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts you may have the urge to get back to the gym hit the trails or play some sports but after all this time at home your body may not be able to keep up with your brain so here to help us get in shape and stay out of the doctor's office is orthopedic surgeon dr vonda wright doctor good morning good morning joining us good morning i'm so glad to see you again well it's good to see you so doc so for folks who may have maybe put the hi
t the pause button on exercise want to get back into that that fitness routine you say to be careful of the terrible twos t-o-o-s what do you mean you know after we've been inside for 18 months sitting at our desks we are on weekend warrior overload right we want to get back but what we do is we do too much at one time we do it too often we do it too soon and unfortunately that is a recipe for injuries and i want you outside i love you but please don't come to my doctor's office because we've ha
d the terrible twos what kind of injuries are you seeing as an orthopedic surgeon doctor you know what we've been sitting a long time so that makes our cores weak our rear ends weak so we're having lots of knee pain ankle pain we have hip bursitis and we even see a lot of back pain all of these fortunately can be treated and prevented so on that note for all of the people watching this morning who have all those pains that you just mentioned i know you say mobility is our medicine can you give u
s a few things that we can all do to help you know what i love prescribing mobility as medicine and so the first thing i want people to do every single day okay is to dynamically warm up our major muscle groups our hips our knees look at this marvelous squat that's being done brandon brandon brandon doing the perfect squat lunge i mean he's got great form he's warming up every joint the ankles the knees the hips the other thing we need to do every single day is work on our balance and we've disc
ussed before how we can do that simply by standing on one foot while we brush our teeth that's going to help prevent injury so you also suggest a aerobic exercise three times a week so how do we strengthen our stamina as we we build to that absolutely so you are going to be tempted to go outside maybe go to central park and do what you've always done but i want you to work back into it using a method we called speed play so basically for 20 minutes you are going to do five minute blocks okay you
can warm up for five minutes which just means break a little sweat get your heart rate going and then for four minutes speed up now this doesn't have to be running it can be rowing and cycling or even swimming whatever you choose but four minutes and then completely rest and you can see how there's multiple levels and once you work through one minute exertion four minutes rest two minutes exertion three minutes rest eventually over about six weeks you can get back to what you're used to dr wrig
ht you're also concerned about strengthening all parts of the body what's an effective way to do that how often should we be doing that you know craig i like us to do total body uh cross training about twice a week lean muscle mass is really important for us and so things like static lunges that are being shown planks are amazing for our core which have gotten so weak as we've been sitting in a chair and even plyometric exercises if we do these twice a week in between our aerobic exercises we're
going to train the entire body and prevent injury that's natalie our desk assistant thank you now he's having i'm looking at that video so one more tip i guess what would you say to motivate us i think you know what you have some people who they're hardcore they've been working out throughout the pandemic if anything they look better than other ever and then you have the other folks who are just they know they're supposed to work out they just don't feel like it they don't feel like sweating th
ey don't feel like being uncomfortable what would you say you know what even as the mobility doctor i understand that i have just done the six-week track of trying to get back in shape but you know what motivated me i know that at the end of six weeks not only am i gonna feel amazing but maybe i get a pair of hot shoes oh that's cute yeah maybe we go to a date night that we haven't been out to for so long an incentive yeah we just get to see our friends hey doc you go really quick how important
is sleep al we have underestimated the power of sleep and restoration for generations and i can tell you as a you know medical trainee we thought it wasn't necessary but al if you want to perform at peak performance whether you're performing at your job or in exercise or even as your family please prioritize about seven hours a night get a bedtime routine same time every night get off our digital devices and allow ourselves to rest and restore so that we can perform at the level that we're capab
le of rest and restore there you go the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch a bite-sized mix of every
thing you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking yeah are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the im
portance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is sprung guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprising yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let's change the world we're out there we're active we're doing the thing right it's that we're not seeing ourselves represented in mainstream fitness which is a di
sservice for all of us chrissy king is a personal trainer and fitness blogger who recently wrote an article about being black and body positive in an industry that trends white and thin why did you decide to write about this issue in particular i was going to like fitness conferences and i'd be like one of the few only people of color and i just think it's so important because the benefits of wellness are for everyone not just a particular type of people simone samuels agrees after discovering a
passion for working out she added fitness certifications to her two law degrees i almost didn't get into this industry because i didn't see myself represented first of all will jim's even hire me two will people even come to my class are people gonna think oh she's a little fluffy i'm not gonna get a good workout i'm gonna go find somebody else simone talked with chrissy for her article you say quote being big and black in an industry that's overwhelmingly white and thin means being awkwardly v
isible and frustratingly invisible you're an instructor now do you still feel this way most fitness instructors are i mean understandably thin and six-pack and really athletic looking if you see somebody with a six-pack you think they're fit if you see somebody with a bare belly you think oh they are not fit and they're eating too many cheetos when we we know now that you can't look at somebody's appearance to know whether or not they are fit whether or not they are healthy and that's also kind
of why i got into fitness so people could see that yeah i could do a side plank too and i i could run two and i could teach three classes back-to-back too for both of these ladies wellness is more than the number on the scale and body positivity is a lifestyle where is the line between accepting yourself and then wanting to be a better version of yourself for me body positivity real genuine body positivity should compel you to engage in joyful healthful movements it should compel you to want to
move out of respect for your body it should compel you to want to eat good healthy variety of foods out of respect for your body my thing with health at every size is like how am i feeling and living my best nourished life and getting to that better version of myself where i'm feeling good in my skin every day and if weight loss is a byproduct so be it but when you make weight loss the goal you can get to that goal and still have a whole host of other issues that you're not happy with have a neg
ative relationship with food have a negative relationship with your body have a negative relationship with exercise so let's make how we want to feel the focus and let the chips fall where they fall chrissy and simone believe conversations about race and size benefits everyone in the fitness community my goal is to let people know black people black women we're here in the space we deserve to be here and not only that we need to be a part of the mainstream and um if you're not black or a person
of color you need to understand these other perspectives because again you are helping most likely clients that don't look like you and if you're not having these conversations you're not coming to these realizations if you're not doing some education around these topics you could be harming people for one and also turning people away from fitness bases where they need to be and for simone showing up has made an impact the response has been overwhelmingly positive one lady she came to me after c
lasses she's like i love that you look like me and that was so affirming to me to hear that people feel like they are welcome in these spaces because their instructor has a little bit of a tummy since the pandemic she has been leading classes online i want people to know that fitness does not have a size neither this health i want people to know that you don't have to exercise for weight loss that you can exercise out of the joy of having a body and i also want people to start to think about acc
essibility how do we make our fitness place spaces accessible to people regardless of gender and race and color and socio-economic background not only in terms of our actual gym but also in terms of our teacher trainings so that we have diversity across the board [Music] it's bigger than just getting out there and linking up and running 32 year old lance woods a project manager for a local nonprofit and 30 year old consultant joe robinson are both enthusiastic runners from detroit introduced two
years ago one of my friends saw that we were both participating in the miami marathon and then they put us together motivated by a love for their hometown the fast friends created a running club in may of 2019 proudly boasting their area code called we run 313 in our very first run we had over 100 people show up and they've kept it going with an average 200 plus runners at weekly events including their popular two mile tuesdays [Applause] joe your slogan is connect run build what does that mean
what it means is short for our mission connecting like-minded individuals through running to build a happier healthier community we want to bring people together who want change change to them means seeing more runners who look like themselves at races let's say if it's 20 000 people you might come across a sprinkle of black people in those races and in a city like detroit that's 85 black we don't see black people running we have the power to change that but the pair's primary goal helping resi
dents reap benefits like lowering risk of heart disease and diabetes and improve mental health how has this shaped you physically and mentally running has been the most transformative process and whether it was mild depression or anxiety running has just helped me deal with those things in a different way and i feel stronger than ever i feel smarter than ever obviously faster than ever and i just feel like i'm who i'm supposed to be is this for people who are all ages or running levels yes it is
for runners of all levels we have people from six all the way up into 65 all paces all sizes all races and the impact that we got from we run 313 it surprises us to this day we're seeing lifelong friendships being formed we're seeing people start businesses we're seeing people not only start businesses but meet their clients at our runs we're seeing relationships hopefully we'll get a marriage out of the run club soon people come to us and tell us personal stories about how it's changed them fr
om the inside out the greatest thing is that you're not doing it alone the beautiful thing about it is that you have a whole community of support we're encouraging one another if you're falling behind we got pace leaders that's going to say come on come on you got this how did the pandemic impact your mission when everything shut down joe and i we was encouraging people hey this is a great time for you to take your health series get out there and get outdoors and run we started a run solo campai
gn with cover 19 it made us look at things from more of a macro level rather than just micro in in the city detroit and we started to engage people nationally today lance and joe are committed to going the distance for those ready to follow their lead if somebody told you that this was what you would be looking at two years ago what would you have thought it would have been very difficult to believe but now i know running has led me to believe anything is possible especially when it's in the nam
e of progress when it's in the name of positivity and when it's in the name of change [Music] in a small office space in roslyn heights new york hair is everywhere you've got every color here every color is dark blonde ponytails piled up through the pandemic i'm going to say probably sixty thousand 60 000 ponytail when wig factories shut down because of covid donations to hair we share sat in boxes and now as people head out for their first haircut in more than a year it's like nothing they've s
een before i average anywhere between 75 and 100 ponytails a day hair donations nationwide are up more than 135 percent people were sitting home feeling desperate they wanted to go out and they wanted to help people when was your last haircut about three months before the pandemic brian cohen never thought about donating hair but when it got past his ears he got an idea it kept going and i was like you know why don't we do this thing a few snips there she is nice number one and brian's hair is o
ne step closer to someone in need like pamela labarr in north carolina who's had alopecia and breast cancer and loves her custom wig when you look at yourself in the mirror now what do you think well i see myself as beautiful i don't feel insecure anymore for 145 dollars the cost of processing the ponytail hair we share offers a tracking program so people can see where their hair goes being able to see the recipient putting a face to that person it really hits home this one's from texas arizona
virginia beach these are from all over they've gotten donations from around the world and beyond astronaut christina cook sent her hair back from the international space station so normally the minimum to donate to hair we share is eight inches but because people went so long during the pandemic without getting their haircut like our producer katie here they are getting much much more it takes seven to ten donations to make each wig many go to kids and come from them too olivia has a very person
al reason for wanting to donate since my mom had cancer i decided it was a really nice thing to do because my mom said one of the hardest parts was looking in the mirror with like and having no hair and thinking just about cancer it's just so emotional you don't want to be different you don't want to look different or seem different not outside in the world not inside in your home for the recipient it's about much more than hair they are giving back confidence for the donor it's a way to do some
thing after a year when even haircuts were near impossible what do you think you would say to the person who's going to be getting a wig i hope you like it and hope that it exceeds your expectations going to great lengths to give back and there it is that's a lot of hair a pandemic silver lining for today kristen dahlgren nbc news oh it's been so neat to see some things like that come out of the pandemic that just makes such a difference to people i like the words of pamela there one of the canc
er survivors saying i now see myself as beautiful i'm no longer insecure standing on this olympic podium is a lifelong dream for these athletes and it begins at a very early age hopefuls like rising 5th grader 10 year old davis petty who is already winning tournaments in golf i think golf is you know the best sport thing that i like most about the sport is that you can play it solo and you can play it you know with a partner you know that's the fun so he was about 18 months old and got him a bat
and a wiffle ball and he would take it and hit it like a golf club so we got him some plastic gloves and it was on ever since we just started taking him to the golf course and just letting him hit balls about five or six it started to get real serious and he started to play competitively we were like wow we've really got something here my practice is almost every day about five hours he makes straight a's and if he didn't i may not let him be on the golf course as much as he is we have certain
expectations as parents but we don't push him he's won his last four big tournaments it's been incredible to watch and he also has a great attitude which is what i'm probably most proud of when i'm nervous that means i really care and that's when i'm trying the hardest eight-year-old mila song has been participating in gymnastics for more than half her life i started when i was three i love gymnastics because i get to join my friends it's not a solo it's a team effort round two she was already l
ike doing cartwheels and flips and always trying and so we knew at a young age that she was into it i love doing tricks my favorite tricks are my front tucks and my earrings and then flying through the air i feel like i have a lot of power we're holding our breath we're kind of on the on the edge of our seats watching her compete when i fall off the beam i get right back up because that's what it takes and that's what a champion is mila has been climbing the ranks she recently won the washington
state bolt championship and has been recruited for the tops program a national talent search for female gymnasts ages 7 to 10. i do this because i love it my hero in gymnastics is suny lee she's part of the hmong community which we're part of too it really opens her eyes like hey look there's another hmong girl on tv competing for a gold medal just makes the dream that much more achievable watching the tour de france on tv is what started seven-year-old jamison torrance's love of cycling i love
the sport of cycling because i get to be outside you get good exercise and you get to go fast well this started when jameson was probably two or three he always wanted to go faster and longer than everyone else who wanted to ride we both thought that he's really going to go places with this my first mile was kind of easy it got hard in about 11 miles because your legs get sore i ride up to 18 miles in one day my dad my grandpa and my uncle started riding with me i take great pride in it it's li
ke wow we have three generations of florence boys here riding my dad actually set up the bicycle trainer in their living room while they're riding the tour de france on the tv so he would imagine that he was riding with them when he sees some of these guys reaching into their back pockets and getting energy bars he actually had us load up his cycle jersey with energy bars so that he could practice like the other cyclists do on the days that i get tired i put in the effort anyways even when my le
gs get sore i pushed through it next i helped it right up to 20 miles and while he's still too young to compete officially he's excited for the future he's ready to kill it as soon as he's able what i'm thinking about right now is going to the pga tour and uh maybe uh be a future olympian you know i would love to you know represent my country i want to go pro so i can see the world i'm gonna keep training so one day i could be an olympian i hope the future brings for me to go to the olympics one
day i got a medal and i and i got a flower wow great job [Music] make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your friends in today in a whole new way today in 30 we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the latest styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking essentials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm s
o ready only on today all day today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that peopl
e are saying you are some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news [Music] app somewhere along the way we all need help at some point in your life you have n
eeded assistance from someone to get where you're at it's okay to ask for help and it's okay to give help and it's all going to come back around [Music] the little free pantry movement is kind of a grassroots solution to address immediate and local needs little free pantries essentially help neighbors feed neighbors the movement never really took off in the seattle area and then when covet hit in march my husband and i built six pantries and offered them up for free to our neighborhood and that'
s when we got the swell of interest from people asking for more of these pantries [Music] i am a personal chef i started my business 14 years ago and food insecurity is something i've always thought about deeply food insecurity could be someone who is skipping a meal once or twice a week so that they can get to that next paycheck it's a it's a real thing in this country work was slow with the pandemic everything kind of stopped for me so i was looking for a way to to help and give back especiall
y with the extra time i had you know i like to build stuff and so i thought hey that's something i could do [Music] you never know who's struggling sometimes it is your next door neighbor and so i really think about how much dignity comes with food like food's a right it's not a privilege you should be able to walk up to a pantry and grab and grab something and not feel guilty about it i think that's what some people need they just need a little boost food you know not only just feeds our bodies
the food also nourishes our souls and if we can start educating people on culturally relevant foods that can be placed into pantries that also offers an access point that food banks have a difficult time doing because they're working in such large quantities of food spaghetti and tomato sauce may be relevant to one neighborhood but fish sauce in a curry may be more appropriate for another during this pandemic i've seen a lot more neighbor to neighbor just really small kindnesses that i think pe
ople were maybe too busy to think about before that's one of the things that i think it's kind of like blessing in disguise you know and i hope that that continues past this that we don't like just go back to normal positive tomorrows is a non-profit uh which basically addresses the needs of homeless families our primary program is that of a private school for children who come from homeless families i think what we're going to see as we move ahead in the next several months is a continued incre
ase in the number of people who just get left behind and the problem only gets worse if we don't pay attention this is kiara this is my oldest she is 10. [Music] when i thought i was all alone and down they were definitely the people that picked me back up they were initially living in uh one of the local homeless shelters so we helped move them into housing as she was able to to begin to work and she had developed a relationship with uh with her partner and this fella is working and we've been
really really pleased to see that they were they bought their own house i mean that's a huge thing we have families who they never even dream of being able to buy their own house we did get a grant and we used part of that to pay some bills off that we knew we were going to be coming up during me not working and then we used the rest to fund and we got blankets for the homeless and we were able to feed almost 300 people that's really good to do this to help other people and we can look back on a
s we grow up and tell our kids about it hi hi mom how are you good i definitely know being judged for certain situations and people can't help their situation somehow we see families who are very grateful for what they have it may not be very much and we see families who are willing to share when they have a little bit extra and this is one family who did i love it and the next big thing that we are working on is 500 bags of school supplies to give away so if i can teach my kids how to be selfle
ss and to give back that's what i'm here to do it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the coveted vaccines i know i know it's been a little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit plan yourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine today is now a podcast available every morning listen
wherever you get your podcasts good morning everybody welcome to today future's looking good are you ready we're gonna do our part to spread the word on the importance of vaccines so crucial for reopening america a big day around here a very special naturalization ceremony many of them doctors nurses other essential workers if you are a nurse thank you spring is frowned guys and we want to fill this season with some fun and surprising yes this is the face of excitement celebrating earth day let'
s change the world love it make the most of your day with today all day get closer to all your friends in today in a whole new way today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes shop today with jill martin we're helping you shop like never before the latest styles and biggest names today food things are heating up in the today all-day kitchen cooking essentials and recipe inspiration get ready are you ready oh i'm so ready only on today all day make the
most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day the meet the press chuck todd todcast free wherever you get your podcasts today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts the big thing that brought me to summit achievement was how withdrawn i was i had a lot of issues with self-control and with substance abuse i'm actually h
ere because of my video game addiction my anxiety and depression were at a point where i would just spend like most of my days in my room like only coming out for like breakfast lunch and dinner wasting my life away [Music] so they're grouped by what they are working on a group with anxiety and they're working with other students who are dealing with anxiety or substance use primarily it's anxiety and depression the average day is six to eight weeks there's more and more research showing us that
just spending time in nature is good for people's mental health and especially young people amanda and i just scoped out camp and we're planning on doing k-tarp over there [Music] i started in the field as a clinical social worker at a mental health center then i went on to work at a boarding school i was a therapist and also ran a lot of the outdoor programming [Music] back in those early days you didn't see a lot of kids with anxiety it was much more oppositional defiant anger outbursts and d
rug abuse but more recently i would say in the last 10 years they're not refusing to go to school to use drugs or hang out and party with their friends they're afraid to go to school they're anxious about going to school there's triggers related to school and so they just feel like they can't go there and they refuse most of our students at summit have been doing very well in their lives up till about seventh eighth and ninth grade when the executive demands and the social demands of school beco
me greater and greater well when i first came here i was a little nervous i mean i've had therapy sessions before in my life but never including wilderness that was kind of just like what my views on it to start weren't super positive you know i was kind of dreading it it's something i was getting pulled away from my home and everything i kind of knew you brought a kitchen kit yeah even though there are still those kind of negatives i've kind of opened up to a lot of positives and seeing like wh
at it really can help me with we got a hypothetical line parallel to that this line right here three days a week they are at our facility living in dorm settings they're meeting with their therapist and they are going to school hey everybody let's make sure that we pack out the food and so every thursday they go out on expedition where they're challenged to go out backpacking and camping all right everyone let's go we take our students out winter backpacking we're hiking with shoes on and when y
ou're carrying a 40 pound pack that is a very athletic activity and then on top of that they're also sleeping outside you know in the snow and we set up tarps spending that time in the woods gets rid of a lot of distractions of today's world and gives students the time and the space to process what's going on in their life it seems pretty absurd if you're hearing about it for the first time but a big part of it is just sitting with the discomfort of being out there being able to just witness rea
lly beautiful things harnesses look good when you're on the woods you just realize that it's just you your team and the wilderness around you it's a little scary at first but having the open sky around you trees all around you like it's amazing every expedition is about resiliency it's about self-worth it's about confidence and they have to learn how to take care of themselves and that's what we have to do in life we have to learn to deal with difficult situations maybe we can do like a little e
motional check-in where we're at right now everyone's here because they have issues that they're dealing with and we like to talk about those issues when we're on trail i meet with students for at least three hours face to face a week we're right there alongside them we will hike with them we will eat dinner with them and that relationship building process is so important that we're not asking them to do anything that we wouldn't be willing to do at intake all of our students are given several a
ssessments both at the beginning of treatment at the and at the end of treatment and our hope is to be able to capture you know where a student is at when they enter treatment and where is a student at when they are getting ready to discharge [Music] working with my therapist here i have gotten a bunch of coping skills and ways to calm down myself when i'm in a episode or something or like a panic attack now anytime that i'm having a hard moment something i do that seriously helps so much is um
i'm like yeah like this is kind of tough but at least it's not raining on me right now i've got one thing going for me and then i can start coming up with a lot more when insurance companies start reimbursing more and more there'll be more wilderness programs there's a recent study by the university of new hampshire that is showing that it's actually less expensive with less relapse if a young person goes to wilderness therapy than a traditional facility and i think we're all coming to the reali
zation that sitting in an office in with an adolescent isn't all that effective there is nothing like summoning a mountain and seeing a view to make you feel really good whenever we would get to the top of a mountain i would like take some space and like go sit down and just like look out and i would flash back to like my room like just looking at the wall like that's not beautiful and i look out in front of me and just see like this beautiful landscape i'm like okay so this is what the world ha
s to offer sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand the coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying you are for breaking news
in our changing world download the nbc news app good morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying make the most of your day with today in 30. we give you a mix of everything you love about our show in a mere 30 minutes savannah and hoda bring you what you must know the biggest moments of the morning one republic exclusive interviews why did it
work for you you're right i am more talented than the rest and important headlines major medical news this morning watch today and 30 on your schedule streaming every day on today all day the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts i'm the founder of therapy dogs of long island we have about 18 handlers now and we work in a lot of different types of facilities hospitals nursing homes sch
ools and we saw over 13 000 people last year i don't think you can make a dog do dog therapy you can train them but they have to love it terry's here with pumpkin and we're going to read our story so we do reading to dogs when we go to the grammar schools i can't see a nurse very good reading to dogs has really made them feel much better about reading out loud because it decreases their anxieties and that's the bottom line so it's for kids who have issues reading when you read to a dog they're n
ot judgmental it takes away that fear and it's also the comfort of holding a dog when you're reading or petting a dog while you're reading it relaxes you super job reading we had this one little kid and the book was on the ground the dog stepped on the book he goes that dog has no regard for that author [Music] i have three dogs their names are barbie ken and pumpkin and they're all certified therapy dogs each one has their own gift so ken is very obedient he'll visit when you ask him to but he'
s not going to be in your face good good job barbie is the quintessential therapy dog she is super friendly but she's going to come right up to you and she's going to lean on you and she's going to put her face in your face she is just going to love you up and pumpkin is small and she's afraid of nothing and she loves children and babies [Music] the reason i started to become a therapy dog handler was because of lily [Music] not a good prognosis they usually only live to two and a half years i d
iscovered that her brother could make her smile and for her to smile that was a huge thing and i just felt that the energy of dogs and children were similar and i said i was going to get therapy dogs and visit her [Music] she's in a wheelchair and i took her hand and put it on ken's head and she started processing right away and we've been visiting every week since give him a big hug give him the big hug she responds she'll smile you know these are things that she doesn't normally do but she doe
s when the dogs are there good good job [Music] dogs are the best medicine they just cheer you up inside and bring back a lot of good memories [Laughter] the dog is so cute they'll start to engage where with a human there might not be any engagement how are you pretty good what other instance can you go over to something that's living and breathing get love from pet them hug them and they don't care what your mental capacity is or what your physical looks are it's that unconditional love and non
-judgment i think that brings the most joy [Music] barbie high pitch high pitch it's our favorite thing to get petted rosa one of the students contacted us to get the dogs in once a month there was people in my class that were mourning visibly and the whole school just had that kind of feel to it there seems to be a stigma around mental illness especially with teenagers who don't know much about it and so i was thinking of a way to make mental health resources more palatable and so i thought of
therapy dogs gives love freely and receives the love back since we started visiting schools more and more schools are asking for therapy dogs and they are really seeing the impact and now they're starting to get their own dogs which is what they need they really need a dog in school every day if you can bring joy to people in any circumstance why wouldn't you mmm they look good don't they develop today real good and what you've done with your hair we love that you're tuning into our our favorite
streaming channel today all day we're halfway through the week folks hoda and i are right here in the studio you're at home right now watching our digital show or maybe you're on the road but you're watching today in 30 and we've got another packed half hour ahead it's starting with unfortunately the new covid outbreak shutting down schools just as the new year begins and the alarm being sounded now over several new strains of the virus we've got a full report yeah then we'll also have an insid
e look at what's next for pop star britney spears this after her father suddenly asked the judge to end the controversial court order that controls her life right now and then the lovely jessica chastain stopped by to tell us about her new series it's getting a lot of buzz and on the fourth hour it's wednesday so that means wednesday you knew that i love wednesday trends i love that we're great wednesday wednesday we're breaking down all the hot topics for you so let's hit play because it's time
for today in 30. now we move to the pandemic and concerns that coronavirus has still not peaked this is more children are getting infected and yet another dangerous strain has emerged from coast to coast nbc national correspondent miguel almaguer is in los angeles for us with more miguel good morning savannah good morning summer calling this the perfect storm the convergence of cold and flu season just as more children head back to school and a new coveted strain emerges even as the delta varia
nt still thrives today president biden's expected to outline a six-prong approach to fight the highly contagious variant as the country struggles to get the covid surge fueled by the delta variant under control now concerns about the virus mutating yet again the wh recently labeled the mu strain as a variant of interest it's been found in nearly every state in the u.s though still far less common than delta the who has labeled at least nine different variants as of concern or interest as covid c
ontinues to rage it's continuously evolving trying to find the right key sort of like a locksmith molding a key to break through the gates of our own immune defenses some data suggest mew could be resistant to antibodies or vaccines though more research is needed dr fauci says the government doesn't consider the mu variant an immediate threat but notes that as long as the significant number of americans aren't vaccinated covid will develop increasingly dangerous variants as long as the virus kee
ps circulating like that you give it the opportunity to mutate and when it mutates you can form another variant which might actually escape the protection of the vaccines one of the populations most at risk those who can't get vaccinated children under 12. just as more kids head back to the classroom the number of child coveted cases is skyrocketing across the country i love you you're going to be good in school the american academy of pediatrics says last week more than 250 000 children tested
positive for the virus that's more than a quarter of all new cases nationwide while it appears severe illness is more uncommon in kids coveted outbreaks have already led to 1400 school closures in 35 states miguel you mentioned the president said to outline a new strategy on fighting the delta variant what more do we know about it well the president's expected to call for more help from public and private sectors which could include vaccine mandates to boost the vaccination numbers the latest co
unt from the cdc shows nearly 177 million americans are now fully vaccinated savannah miguel thank you very much stick around because there's much more coming up on today in 30. stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x-pi our top story is unfolding right now the
fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch our bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show but half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however y
ou watch with xfinity x5 good morning welcome to you today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying you today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app now to a major development in the battle
over britney spears freedom yeah her father has now filed a petition to end her conv conservatorship entirely it is an unexpected twist and a legal drama that's been playing out for years nbc news now anchor joe fryer joins us with the details on this this was a bit of a stunner yeah it is a big development so after 13 years under a conservatorship led by her father jamie britney spears could soon reclaim control over her fortune and her life while her father had already agreed to step down as c
onservator his new request to free his daughter from the conservatorship altogether is being seen as a potentially huge victory for team brittany what do we want do you want it britney spears could soon be a free woman to spend her life and her money however she wants the past 13 years britney's father jamie spears has been part of a strict conservatorship in charge of her 60 million dollar estate conservatorship was put into place after several public breakdowns but that could soon change late
tuesday jamie spears filed a petition which has been seen by nbc news that states his daughter is entitled to have this court now seriously consider whether this conservatorship is no longer required adding that britney's circumstances have changed to such an extent the grounds for establishment of a conservatorship may no longer exist the petition also argues that britney should not be required to undergo a new psychological evaluation to terminate the guardianship something the 39-year-old pop
star told the court she refuses to do brittany has tried to remove her father from his conservator role twice in the last two years and in recent months she gave explosive testimony in court where she pleaded for her conservatorship to end in emotional testimony she called it abusive alleging she's been forced to perform take antidepressants and was prevented from removing an iud meant to stop pregnancy jamie spears insists he had nothing to do with his daughter's alleged bad treatment there's
a lot that people don't know renewed interest in the star's well-being was ignited by a new york times documentary framing britney spears released earlier this year since then the free britney movement has exploded with a growing number of famous friends and fans joining the chorus even the princess of pop herself is taken to social media using the hashtag free britney to celebrate recent courtroom victories some of britney supporters are cautiously optimistic it's not truly going to be a victor
y until she actually is emancipated and has the opportunity if she wants to to pursue action against some of the people that she feels a wrongful spear's new attorney is calling the filing vindication but adds in part it appears that mr spears believes he can try to avoid accountability and justice but as we assess his filing our investigation will continue the battle not yet over but freedom for brittany seemingly within reach so joe i mean any sense of what might have caused this change of hea
rt clearly britney's lawyers aren't exactly buying it from from the father yeah his lawyer outlined a few examples recently that showed they say britney was capable of maintaining a level of independence that wouldn't require a conservatorship they argue she demonstrated that by doing things like driving herself around choosing her own lawyer which shows the court trusts her with major decisions that maybe she can make her own business decisions now britney's release from the conservatorship sti
ll needs court approval the next hearing on the matter is scheduled for later this month september 29th all right joe thank you very much stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on we begin with breaking news right now in florida and a reliable connection for all your devices this story matters to all of us whenever and however you watch our bite-sized mix of everything you love about all four hours of our show bu
t half the calories oh yes with xfinity x5 stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 today is now a podcast available every morning listen wherever you get your podcasts stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection
for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand will coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a newscast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity x5 our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices
whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 some experts say that this bill still isn't enough you accept that criticism there's been a ton of confusion from the cdc can we try to clear some of this up is america safer today with the taliban in charge of afghanistan if it's sunday it's meet the press the meet the press chuck podcast free wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app so all this week we're going on the job with people who are
n't really working your typical office job shall we say so this morning our natalie morales caught up with an award-winning photographer who is making quite a splash literally quite a splash good morning matt good morning guys yeah that's right renee capazzola was named underwater photographer of the year just a few months ago she is the first woman and the first american to hold that prestigious title and amazingly underwater photography isn't even her primary profession the first time that i w
ent scuba diving it was like a whole new world opened up for me for renee capozzola dipping below the ocean's surface is almost spiritual what do you love about that sensation of being in the water i feel at peace when i'm in the water i feel relaxed and i also feel a sense of adventure hoping to capture that feeling renee started taking photographs of her marine life discoveries so you never had a photography class no when i first started shooting it was just experimenting like a hobby with jus
t this cheap little compact camera and then over time as i became more interested in the photography and i got better equipment i started acquiring books on photography and online articles i picked up a lot of tips from various people over the years renee started submitting her work to photo contests mostly she says so she'd have an opportunity to write articles and share her other passion marine biology the end result is that carbon is highly reactive she's been teaching the subject to high sch
ool students for the last 18 years her real world experience helping to frame their studies i see her pictures all around their classroom and they really bring to light what we shouldn't take for granted in our oceans it enhances our classroom discussions being a biology teacher and being familiar with the importance of marine ecosystems to you know see the deterioration of coral reefs pollution and the effects of overfishing and to see that stuff personally in the ocean i became very passionate
about wanting to use my pictures which i think are a powerful tool to get people's attention and to raise awareness about conserving the marine environments rene might have stumbled into photography as a profession but her approach to capturing those striking images is anything but casual that's especially true for this winning shot the one that recently earned her the title of underwater photographer of the year tell me about capturing that perfect shot and how much work it took for that littl
e moment i had done a lot of shooting in that location before which was in french polynesia for this particular trip which was in august of 2020 i really wanted to do something creative and different and i also wanted to you know show sharks in a positive light to raise awareness to protect these animals that that need protection that need conservation it took numerous attempts over about a two week period did you know right away like oh i just got it yeah actually sometimes i do but not not on
that particular night not until i went back and actually looked like through the camera and put it on the computer then i thought that i had something despite underwater conditions being less than optimal on this cloudy day we decided to give it a go here on california's catalina island tell me about your lens here and what your what you can shoot with this yeah so what i've got on here is a wide angle lens and then i've got a large um dome port which works well especially for the half and half
shots or the split shots um where you can see half above the surface and half below and i was hoping to do some of those shots with you um when we first get in it's cold okay let's go for it all right [Music] [Applause] and after some time in the brisk water renee let me star in one final shot picture perfect pretty cool shot there guys now when renee isn't teaching here in southern california she's researching her next trip and planning her next photo shoots usually with her husband and two son
s in tow it's a vacation for them but for her it's work but it's truly what she loves to do and she says that in the 17 years that she's been diving she has never once felt frightened by a shark i believe her but i can't say the same i don't think i could be as brave i mean swimming with that guy no not the turtle does that camera you know let her kind of take pictures from a distance it's really cool because what it allows her to do it's got that dome so that's her specialty is that split shot
where you can see you know above you know you see that skyline view but then also underwater and it's just really amazing how much you know and how close they are to the surface yeah that's what i i noticed right there the sharks were pretty close does she sell the photographs does she sell them or does she just keep them well for the most part she does sell some photos yeah she does have a website set up renee capazzola but she also her real intention is all about conservation and her messaging
and she says she personally has seen you know the devastation in the oceans by you know just seeing for example the coral reefs and how they've been stripped and shark populations how they've been decimated so that's her real intention is putting her art out there and her messaging which she writes a lot of articles now the picture she took of you is really cool that's a keeper really really cool thank you for that all right thanks natalie [Music] we are so excited because this morning we are c
atching up with a multi-talented actress jessica chastain earned an oscar nomination for her role in the help and then she went on to win a golden globe for her portrayal of a cia agent in zero dark thirty well now jessica is starring in the highly anticipated hbo drama scenes from a marriage she plays meera a tech executive struggling with the ebbs and flows of marriage to her husband played by oscar isaac let's talk about it right now no let's talk it's too late come on let's talk jonathan it'
s two minutes i know that i have i've made my fair share of mistakes okay and i take responsibility for that no no no don't go there you don't have any responsibility you didn't make any mistakes and i didn't make any mistakes and i'm not gonna get into blame because if we do that i will go crazy so this isn't anyone's fault it's just the way that it is jessica good morning it's nice to see you good morning everybody we're in person yeah i know you just flew in from venice oh this is terrific so
this is a remake of that 70s ingmar bergman uh movie how is this one different well the original explores gender in a relationship in the 1970s and this one explores it in 2020 and a lot so much has changed for women and men um and so it's interesting and we've done a little bit of a flip-flop with what the character's behavior so it'll be interesting to revisit your facial expression was good with that one it's like you know clearly we just saw from that scene i mean this is a very emotional r
ole you even said it kind of tested your friendship with uh oscar isaac how how so i mean we're acting yeah we're acting but also oscar and i've been friends we went to college together so we've been friends more than half of our lives wow and we know so much about each other so we know how to make each other laugh without even saying anything we can almost read each other's minds but it also means we could like hurt each other really strongly so like we in the scenes we would know how to get to
the other one before the first you know i play a character who's the breadwinner in the family in the very first episode sometimes before action i would turn to oscar who plays the main um caregiver of our child and be like the house looks really really messy why didn't you clean it and he was like you know what it did there you go i know how to dig in so speaking of speaking of that chemistry can we please talk about this video jessica so it's too holding your head so yesterday true story i'm
on instagram and it took over my instagram feed i'm not i promise the goodness i know let me just say though this is a slow motion but you had fun with it i saw on twitter you guys are you know happily married and what have you but yeah what to other people yes let's make that clear sorry happily married to other people but now that you gave us the backdrop of the friendship it all it kind of makes sense i mean i think it was really funny because when you look at it in regular school this is you
rs i'm looking straight ahead and he like looks over at me and he just kind of goes to give me like a peck on my elbow and at the same time i'm going to give him a hug so all of a sudden his face ends up yeah it's almost like he's sniffing you no but he made a joke out of it like look he's smiling there and then all the photographers started laughing and i'm like what just you know i think i can't cycle analyze people but i just think it's so romantic and charming and beautiful i think a lot of
us are just like oh it's beautiful that's friendship we have all been locked in our houses for so long you know when this video went viral i was like people just need to see people yes there you go trust me people will watch and another project you've got coming up that we are all excited about the eyes of tammy faye what was it like stepping into that role oh my gosh it was that was the scariest and most difficult part i've ever played really yeah because i'm singing i'm preaching i'm you know
i have all this this physical transformation she's from international falls minnesota so there's an accent her voice is super high i mean her energy level is like out of 15 and what from one to ten she's a 15 all the time so yeah it was a it was a big leap of faith and what about the makeup side to it i mean it must have been just so it's just so much how how did you transform into her well i had the help of an incredible uh makeup team and hair team and prosthetics team and and the longest we w
orked was seven and a half hours on makeup on makeup and i remember my very first day of shooting it was um uh my pickup was 3 30 in the morning oh my goodness which you guys are probably saying but we're not in hair and makeup for seven hours and you know i'm not spending that time that's monday through friday well jessica it's so nice to see you thanks for coming in thank you kidding me i'm just happy to like try to get back to you normally again i know i mean i want to also throw my arms arou
nd we'll get there eventually all right thank you and scenes from a marriage premieres september 12th on hbo you guys welcome back to today in 30 on today all day we got a lot for you this trans day wednesday we're talking kylie jenner pregnancy olivia munn with a bun in the oven and the marvel movie that is breaking records you won't believe all this drama [Music] it has been a long year yeah where it's been anything but normal well now there's hope the covid vaccines i know i know it's been a
little confusing like really confusing so it's more important than ever to make a plan visit planyourvaccine.com to find out where and when to get your vaccine what are you waiting for roll up your sleeves and plan your vaccine plan your vaccine plan your vaccine morning welcome to today nice to have you with us we wanted to surprise ellie and make her wish come true what do you think about coming to visit us yes there's only one thing that people are saying today is now a podcast available ever
y morning listen wherever you get your podcasts for breaking news in our changing world download the nbc news app stay connected and stream the news you need with xfinity xbox our top story is unfolding right now the fast speed you depend on and a reliable connection for all your devices whenever and however you watch with xfinity x5 sometimes the news can be difficult and overwhelming for kids to understand the coronavirus come back next year so to help make sense of it all we've created a news
cast just for them man you know a lot we hope your family will watch nightly news kids edition the meet the press chuck todd cast free wherever you get your podcasts it's one of our favorite times of the week when we get to say hello to our pal justin sylvester yeah he's up bright and early for us in l.a with all the trends day wednesday fun you can handle justin before we begin this i have to say something i saw the movie marry me with jennifer lopez and owen wilson and who was in the movie it'
s not going to be released for several months babe you are a scene stealer you rocked it justin are you used it i can't believe it you were amazing people say i'm going to be nominated for an oscar well there's a there's a good you by the way i have to tell you you were great and i was so proud there was some i had like such a proud mom moment i was like look at justin he did it oh my god i love you i love you it's all about pro moms today on trends day wednesday as you know look at you trying t
o pivot away from we want to hear more about your acting debut but tell us about this baby news you guys kylie jenner finally confirmed what fans have been speculating for weeks she is expecting baby number two with travis scott now if you recall for stormy the baby practically told us herself when she was walking into pre-k that her mom was pregnant because she kept it such a secret but kj posted this sweet video montage of her pregnancy so far taking stormy to the doctor her growing baby bump
even the moment she told kris jenner that she was going to be a grandmother for the 10th time take a look at what is this [Music] [Applause] [Music] days of my life oh so sweet how cute is that yeah and nobody looks like that she looks so elegant if i took a shot like that it wouldn't look like that way but kylie's not the only one expecting like that the worst kept secret in hollywood but her boyfriend comedian john mullaney confirmed the news last night on seth myers now if you're a fan of joh
n's like i am you know he's had one crazy year he went to rehab last fall he split from his wife of seven years he met olivia and now he is expecting his first child with her but the good news john told seth that olivia and this baby have helped save me from myself in this early journey out of recovery and for that i just want to tell olivia live on tv i'm holding this one for you sis we're going to crack it open in nine months no and olivia by the way is such fun i still remember when she was h
ere one day she was a guest co-hosting and she slammed a whole beer straight down i remember laughing in hysterics congratulations yes we're so happy for her it's a superhero movie that's breaking records okay you guys know that the only thing making millions in this pandemic was jeff bezos that's until xiang chi starring chinese canadian actor simulu came out and dominated the box office setting a new record for labor day with a four-day haul of 94 million dollars i mean charmin didn't even mak
e that in the great two-ply shortage of 2020. okay so like i mean it's crazy and this is also making history as marvel's first big screen asian superhero it's insane what do you want to know the best part of the story what okay you know how every hollywood actor has a com up some actors work as extras waiters male exotic dancers you wouldn't guess what this man did for money what what in 2014 he did a stock photo shoot for 120 bucks he signed away all rights to the photos because he was so broke
years later they have shown up in ads textbooks and storefronts all over the world the man could have made six figures on all of these photos he's gonna make plenty don't it's good seeing you honey congratulations good to see you too can we watch can we all watch your movie together let's watch it justin thank you and don't forget to catch daily pop weekends on our sister network e we hope that you're going to come back for another great morning tomorrow on today mike tarico he'll be here to ki
ck off thursday night football we are so ready for sub football can't wait have a great day we'll see you tomorrow [Music] you
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