Get It Together summary

One day, Jesse Watters’s back went out. He needed emergency surgery at only 43 years old. 

It came as a shock. But as the doctor told him, “sitting is the new smoking,” and in his work for Fox News, Watters was sitting all day – before, during and after shows. He was destroying his back.

While in recovery from the surgery, Watters changed his routine, and started walking everywhere – doctor’s orders.

And it was while he was limping down the street, in a lot of pain, that he became aware of something. He started to notice others who limped – others in pain.

Perhaps Watters was becoming a bit more empathetic? A little less self-absorbed?

Well, whatever it was, he realized that he was interested in going deeper.

By this stage, Watters had made a career out of interviewing extreme people. He was drawn to wild characters – people with maverick ideologies, out of the mainstream.

And he’d noticed that their beliefs were often rooted in a personal struggle. Chaotic childhoods were particularly common.

As Watters interviewed these people, he found himself thinking things like, “Well, of course you believe that – you’ve clearly got daddy issues.”

But while he used to judge these oddballs, he now started to feel sorry for them. He wanted to understand them better.

So, he interviewed a whole bunch of people whose beliefs he disagreed with – nihilistic academics, radical activists, and attention whores.

Watters listened to them – really listened. And what he realized is that these people have issues – serious issues that are just getting bigger, and crazier. Then what happens is that these people project their problems onto the rest of society.

It’s not surprising that people vote the way they do, and hate the way they do, when you look at their pasts, and their issues.

Watters has a message for these people. Your problems aren’t our problems. So, please, don’t make your problems ours. 

Why should we turn society upside down because you want to take revenge on the father you never had? 

Just . . . chill, says Watters. If you’ve got issues with your parents, here’s an idea: Why not try to be a better parent to your own kids? It seems like for many people, that should be easy.

In the following blinks, we’ll meet some of those people, and their problems.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how different our beliefs, there’s still something to be gained from trying to understand each other. 

Next, let’s meet one of Watters’s most surprising interviewees – a man named Joe.