Speaker 1: For over ten years, I've been blessed with the opportunity
to share conversations with those that have appeared on NBC's
The Voice. It's time to showcase them. Put them all
in one place. Arrow dot net a r r oe
dot net. If you're a fan of NBC's The Voice,
or if you're just discovering it, go listen to the
roots of where we are today a r Oe dot net.
Enjoy your exploration. Robert. I got to tell you that
your book is inspirational to those of us that have
been in the industry for decades. And the reason why
I say that is because you're upfront and you're very honest,
and we know as broadcasters you can take the four
walls of terrestrial radio away from us, but you can't
destroy the journalist. And your book is proving to those
of us who are away from terrestrial radio that when
something does happen, we've got a leader now that we
can depend on, and that's you. That's you. You lived
it and you're sharing it.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, that's just the kindest compliment that
you could possibly give, and I am so appreciative of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, It's.
Speaker 2: Certainly have been, you know, a baptism by fire over
these last couple of years trying to learn about the
world and myself.
Speaker 3: But I'm really glad that this has resonated with you.
Speaker 1: Well, you wouldn't trade it in for the world. I
can feel that in your paragraphs.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, I mean it has totally.
Speaker 2: I'm sitting here in Cluven, Ohio right now, in my
parents' home, and I've just never been more grateful, you know,
to have people, you know, who love me in my
life and have time with loved ones and family.
Speaker 3: And I used to take call that for granted.
Speaker 2: Just a couple of years ago, and sometimes you got
to see people lose everything and meet people on their
worst day in order to truly understand that.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you this on a personal level with
you being up there back in Ohio, because my very
good friend Ben Ducin has been over there as a
in Ukraine as a humanitarian, and when he comes home,
that's my time to really get in and talk to
him because he's got to readjust I want to know
what your readjustment period is, because dude, you just don't
replant yourself. You've got to go in there and regrow yourself.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent.
Speaker 2: We grow is such a good way of putting it,
and I mean it's it's it's one of those experiences
that you spent your whole life going through college, you know,
building yourself up and building into your mind. You know,
I've got this figured out. I understand the world. And
then it's one of those moments that really tears you
down to your baseline and realize and you realize we
are all mortal human beings. You know, we all have
a finite amount of time on this planet. And now
you start to really do those internal audits of okay,
what is actually important in life? And those are the
big things that I found, you know, having in these
you know, two different theaters here is wow, actually the
most important things. I mean it's it's not accolades, it's
not followers on Instagram or any the vanity that's out there.
I mean, it is the people in your life, you know,
who are family. It is home and those are the
things that are priceless. And that's that's been my finding.
Speaker 1: Do you ever just want to look at them when
you're out there getting the story, you look at them
and you say, I need your story, or I'm going
to write a story and I need it from you
because you've got it and I don't want to have
to make it up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's that's the thing.
Speaker 2: It is. So many of these people that you meet
in Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, these are not professional spokespeople,
you know.
Speaker 3: These are people who have probably never spoken to.
Speaker 2: A journalist in their life, and they're telling their own
organic story. But what I tell everyone is the world
actually can look like a very simple place, black and
white place when you stay.
Speaker 3: In the forty thousand foot view.
Speaker 2: But when you look people into their eyes and you
see the terror and the pain, this all becomes complicated.
And it's those complicated stories are the ones, you know,
that really paint the real picture of what war does
to people. You know, And sometimes I think that we
have a bad habit of keeping wars in the forty
thousand foot view. It's geopolitics. This is right, this is wrong.
When you see people on the ground level, you're like, wow,
I mean, these are human beings whose lives are being
utterly destroyed by conflict, by armed conflict, and that changes
your whole calculus.
Speaker 1: On a personal level. What is it like for you
to be back here in the States and even the
slightest sound of a drone that somebody's playing with at
a nearby park, you you've got to go have your
PTSD kick in at that moment.
Speaker 3: There are actually things that I do here. I mean
one of them is drones.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially in the It's just in the Ukrainian
don Bass a couple of weeks ago, and the sound
of drones, you know, that the kind of drone that
you could pick up at a Best Buy for a
couple of hundred bucks. That sound, that mizzing sound, is
a death sentence for so many people. And so when
you come back, you know, to my local park in Cleveland, Ohio,
and see people playing with drones, it's like wow.
Speaker 3: I mean, a.
Speaker 2: Couple of weeks ago, people were rigging those with explosives
and using those to destroy tanks and F thirty five
jets or whatnot.
Speaker 3: Now it's a different ballgame.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I think that what brings me back
the most are the simplest of things, and it is
just time with family, and it is a recognition that
I can if I'm having a bad day, I can
leave the conflict zone and I'm two flights one to
two flights away from Cleveland, Ohio, and I can go
see my loved ones. There are people who grow up
in Mariupel and Melitopol, Ukraine who still hold on to
their last train tickets because those are now occupied towns
and they can't go home. That is the difference between
our lives and theirs.
Speaker 1: One of the things that readers and listeners need to
understand about your book, Lessons from the Front, is that
you paint the picture of all people being real people.
There are no lines inside your book. So therefore I've
got I'm going to ask you a technical question, and
if you want to walk away, I understand. But my
question is is that when you've been to Ukraine, that
means Ukraine, Russia, Israel means you've also got to think
about Gaza and now we've got Iran in the picture here.
I pray for all people, I mean all people, and
I feel like that you've been on the front and
you're bringing back that message. This is about all people, people.
Speaker 2: All people. I would absolutely agree with that. And again
it comes back to what lens do you look at
all this through? Is it a geopolitical lenss Well, that's
when you could say that there's black and white in
the world. But when you are looking people in the eyes,
it's just hard to stand in Gaza and see the
destruction and see people starving and look at a potato
as the best thing that they've seen in their entire
lives and say it should be this way.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Or to stand in kabutsber Ri in southern Israel and
sand in a fruit of ash, some of it is
someone's home and some of it is bodily remains and
say this is good, this is okay. You can't possibly
do that when you've stood in both of those places.
And that's my main message there. War is not political.
War is human. It impacts every people. And that's the
lens that I try and look at this through.
Speaker 1: Please do not move. There's more with Robert Sherman coming
up next, the name of his book, Lessons from the Front.
We are back with journalist and author Robert Sherman. Robert,
I want to know how you were able, though, to
set aside the journalist in you, because you've got real
Robert speak here. This is not you standing there on
a camera or with a microphone. This is you sharing
a story as if I have lived on your block
for the past twenty five years. I want to know
how you were able to put away that journalist and
talk to me as Robert I see what is.
Speaker 2: Going on in the world today, and there's just such
a focus on this. I'm right, you are wrong. You know,
I understand everything kind of situation. And you know the
reason that I've been able to put away all of
that is because I really had it ripped away. It's because,
I mean, I went over to Ukraine that first time,
you know, with my pedigree being a I did well
in school and I got a couple of a's on
a couple of papers in Alisi class, and I thought, oh,
I understand the world. And it takes one day on
the ground in any of these conflict zones to meet
people of different communities, to learn about communities that exist
that you admittedly and ashamedly didn't even know existed until
you got dead before. I mean, how can you possibly
say that you have the world figured out? You know,
when you've when you've had those experiences. So that's my view.
I mean, this is this is more of a story
of you know, not a kid talking about how right
he is.
Speaker 3: But a kid that's like, wow, I just consumed my
humble pie. Here's what I learned.
Speaker 1: You know you're going back. There's no way you're going
to hide that from me, because I watch Ben dou
scene as well as I watched Jodelensley, who are two
of my very closest friends in Ukraine. Right now, I
know you're going back, But how do you tell the
people of Ohio? I have to. It's not a question
of do I want to? I have to.
Speaker 3: And it is always a hard conversation.
Speaker 2: And you know, I mean everyone in my life here
in Cleveland, Ohio is saying, well, hopefully that's the last one.
Speaker 3: And of course it's never the less one's big.
Speaker 2: The big thing for me is, you know, I just
now have such a curiosity to the world of why
is the world the way it is? Why does Russia
think the way that they do? Why does North Korea
think the way that they do? And I want the
American public to be armed with that information as we
make tough political choices in the United States. That's why
I do with That's why I do what I do.
It's that curiosity that drives me. For people and cultures,
and you know, the opportunity to share the things that
I've learned, not necessarily what I know or believe, but
the things that I've learned and seen along the way
that I hope have an impact on people.
Speaker 1: When you have made a presence on that war torn dirt,
do you see a lequll lenses style person there, because
you know, Lek came from the ashes of war to
become a leader of people. I mean, you're right there
on the front lines. Are you seeing that kind of leadership?
Speaker 2: You know, it's one of those things in which you
see it in the most unsuspecting of sorts, right, I mean,
you see the leadership in the refugee camps in Gaza,
in which you know, I mean it's like everyday people
who you know, I mean, their job before the war
was they had a convenience store, you know, in Rafa,
and now all of a sudden, you know, they're in
charge of distributing aid to people in Gaza. I mean,
you see, and I think that there's a lesson to
be learned there. You rise to the occasion and all
these circumstances. Who circles the wagons in Israel? Who brings
people together in Ukraine. In many cases, it's not the generals,
you know, I mean, it's the everyday community leaders. And
I think there's a lesson that we had there. You know,
it doesn't matter where you are. You're in North Carolina, Ohio, California, Wyoming,
you know, there are leadership opportunities there, and there are
going to be times in which people may be looking
to you, and it's a matter of rising to the
occasion in those unsuspecting moments.
Speaker 1: Is there a side of you that would like to
take Bill Riley O'Riley over there with you, only because
I love me some Bill O'Reilly. I know he loves
to share a real story, and then he honors your book.
I'm going you got to take Bill, take Bill with
you on a short trip.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm very grateful for his support with this whole project
here and what he wrote, you know, I mean, as
someone who now says that he believes in journalism again
for me this book, yes, yeah, I mean my whole
view is I would love for anyone to come along
and see this because I hear just so many people
right wrong, They're indifferent talking about this is the way
the world is, This is the way it should be,
so convincing their souls.
Speaker 3: You know, I went over to.
Speaker 2: Ukraine, you know, convinced that I had a pretty good
understanding of the world. And inexplicably, I've said so much
over the last three to four years, and I have
more questions than answers than when I began. And you know,
I mean, that's that's that's what I would like people
to see for themselves.
Speaker 3: Is Wow, just how complicated all of this is.
Speaker 2: It's not RS and D's, it's not black and white,
very human in nature.
Speaker 1: When that entire self of you sat down to write
lessons from the front, who was sitting with you? Because
there's no way that you've gone through what you did
and then you have to write this alone. I don't
believe it, because I believe that something came out of
you and somebody had to be there to receive it
the moment it was becoming words on a page.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, for me, it's I feel so that
so much of what I do is for that eighty.
Speaker 2: Year old version of myself who is sitting there in
that rock and chair, looking back over past life and
just wants the reassurance that you know, we gave it
are all, and we did the most we could, you know,
with the finite amount of time we have on this planet.
Speaker 3: And I think that's that's who is there with.
Speaker 2: Me, is making that eighty year old version of Robert
proud that maybe he had an impact on some kids somewhere.
Speaker 3: Who is struggling through his quarter.
Speaker 2: Life crisis and doesn't know up from down, you know,
just to give that reassurance. Look, it is okay to
not know it is okay and not know where your
life is heading. Because I didn't when I got on
that plane to Ukraine, and in many cases I still don't,
you know, but it's okay. And I hope that this
helps guide young people, are those struggling to find their
way to some light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find out more about you, Robert,
because this is just the start of a brand new
beginning for so many people when they get their hands
on Lessons from the front, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I mean, you can purchase it where most books
are sold. Amazon is a great starting point. Bloomsbury is
the publisher, and of course you can always watch us
on News Nation every day as we've report on those
stories across the globe that impact Americans everywhere.
Speaker 1: You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future, dude, because I'm going to put you right
in there with Ben Doucin as well as Joe Linsley
because I want to share the story of Ukraine as
well as Israel, and you being there is so important
to history.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. And I mean that is
such a that is such a board of highly distinguished
people that you've mentioned as well. It'd be in the
honor to participate in that.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today and be safe. I don't
want to sound like your damn dad, but be safe.
Speaker 3: Thank you, my friend. Appreciate it.