Jeff talks about finally finding a therapist who actually understood what he was describing, someone who'd worked with combat stress and first responders before. That's where things started to shift.
Jeff spent twenty-five years believing he had to carry everything himself. Here he talks about learning it's okay to let someone else carry part of the weight.
Jeff calls self-acceptance the wall that has to come down, no matter what job or title you're hiding behind. This might be my favorite moment in the whole conversation.
Jeff talks about the panic attacks and nightmares that followed him even on vacation, before he found real help. This is the harder part of the story, and he doesn't soften it.
Maybe you know what it is to be the steady one. The person who shows up, holds it together, and makes sure everyone else is okay before anyone thinks to ask about you. Jeff Abbott has been that person for more than 25 years in emergency medicine, most recently as…
Jeff spent twenty-five years running toward chaos for work. The hardest part turned out to be learning to sit still with his own mind. He gets into breathwork, meditation, and finally quieting the noise.
Jan walks through his path from documentary work into directing, and what changed for him creatively once he started telling stories closer to his own life.
Jan talks about what people actually confront during a full day alone in the high desert, and why facing it head on is the whole point of the retreat he filmed.
Jan describes the year he spent editing Vision Quest after losing Christian, his face on the screen every single day, and how that room slowly became the place he learned to grieve.
Jan breaks down what he studied in the stories that have lasted, and how those old structures shaped the way he builds a documentary scene by scene.
Jan talks about the weight of being the one left to finish Vision Quest after Christian died, and what it meant to know every cut he made was now also a decision about how his friend would be remembered.
Jan spent a year editing a film with his late friend Christian on the screen in front of him. In the beginning, he says, it was not easy. The full story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvAA7yk7Odo
Please note: this story includes a sudden death in a plane crash, including two children. Jan Becker and his friend Christian had just finished shooting a documentary about a vision quest. Then the holidays came. Jan went to Germany to see his mother. Christian went to the Caribbean. On the…
Jan makes the case that storytelling is not just entertainment, it is how humans have always processed the unbearable and passed meaning down. This is the version of that idea he actually lives by.
Jan traces the path from writing in Berlin to directing in Los Angeles, and explains why he says storytelling was never really a choice for him, just a medium he was still looking for.
Jan tells me about the low point that came before filmmaking found him, and how a career built out of that low point ended up saving him twice, once starting out and once after Christian died.
Jan talks about his late friend and collaborator Christian, and the specific way Christian pushed him from overthinking every decision to actually making the film.
Jan explains the vision quest ritual at the heart of his documentary, a full day alone in the wild with no phone, no plan, just the land. He says it changes something in people almost every time.
Jan describes filming a retreat where people sit alone in the high desert for days with nothing but water, sky, and stone. He says walking into that valley felt like stepping back thousands of years.
Kate traces how her work grew from early ask-a-medium shows into something far more grounded. She talks about the readings that taught her the most, and how she kept pushing until she understood the mechanics, not just the moments.
Jan filmed a vision quest in the high desert without knowing his own father was dying. Looking back, he tells me the retreat taught him things he would need only months later.
Jan talks about what it actually takes to get someone to open up on camera, and why the same honesty that makes a documentary work is the thing most people spend their whole lives avoiding.
Kate has this line I keep coming back to. The more you understand that you are a soul, the more human you get to be. In this one she unpacks what she means, and why leaning into it gives you more control, not less.
Jan spent a year cutting Vision Quest with his best friend Christian's face on the screen every day. He walks me through what it felt like to finally sit in a room and watch the finished film land.
