Love and Radio: “No Bad News” (June 7, 2023)

Main Theme/Overview

In this hypnotically immersive episode, Love and Radio’s Nick van der Kolk and producer Sarah Geiss bring listeners into the world of Larry Garrett—a seasoned Chicago hypnotist—who recounts his surreal, ethically thorny experience being flown to Iraq to treat none other than Uday Hussein, Saddam’s infamous son. Mixing elements of therapy, war recollections, psychological insight, and culture clash, the episode blurs the boundaries between personal responsibility, the limits of compassion, and the act of “intentional avoidance.”

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Hypnosis as Escape and Insight

• Opening Relaxation: The episode opens with Larry guiding listeners (and a client) through hypnotic relaxation, foregrounding central themes of conditioning, subconscious influence, and “letting things out.”

  • “I’m going to use a gentle sound that’s going to attempt to assist us in letting things out… it’s going to have your mind extracting, the need to be preoccupied or worry about what you need to do next.” (00:09)

• “No Bad News” Philosophy: Larry explains how he stopped watching or reading the news in the 1980s, framing attention as the ultimate resource.

  • “I said, what was that? It hit me, listen to the news and they will tell you what to worry about today… He spoke to my subconscious mind… that tomorrow is not going to be a good day.” (06:54)

2. The Baghdad Hypnotist: Invitation and Apprehension

• The Call: Larry recounts receiving a request from an Iraqi neurosurgeon to help a patient in Baghdad, reflecting on his own naïveté and “fantasy imagery” of the Middle East at the time.

  • “Everybody I would mention this to would freak out… Eight out of 10 people screamed at me not to go.” (10:18)

• First Encounters with Iraq: Experiences of travel, local culture, and arrival in Saddam’s domain paint a picture of anxious unfamiliarity and overdetermined personal attention.

  • “When we got close to Baghdad… I see pictures of Saddam everywhere… The tile on the entrance of the Al Rashid Hotel had this huge mosaic of the first President Bush with a snarl.” (15:29)

3. The Patient: Meeting Uday Hussein

• Initial Impression: Larry only later learns the true identity and notoriety of his patient, Uday Hussein.

  • “I asked, who is this person that I’m going to be hypnotizing? …It’s the eldest son of our leader, Saddam Hussein.” (18:24)
  • “I just had heard the name over the years. I didn’t know… We have a philosophy here that says we treat everybody very special. We just don’t kiss their butt.” (19:16)

• Therapeutic Dynamics: Describes hypnosis sessions as deeply personal, with Larry striving for intimacy but not deference.

  • “Hypnosis to me is a very intimate, personal experience… Nobody speaks to you like a hypnotist other than your mother or a lover.” (21:00)

Notable Moment

• As the session ends, a guard says: “That was good, but next time it must be better.” (22:11)

4. Uday’s Reputation vs. Personal Experience

• Local and News Silence: In Iraq, “never once did I hear a bad thing about Saddam or Uday”—people are too afraid.
• Personal Contradiction: Upon returning, friends bombard Larry with disturbing stories and headlines, but he maintains distance from secondhand horror.
  • “The only thing that I heard about Uday was how he had been terrible about molesting women or raping women… But all I meet is I meet a person who wants to feel better.” (48:23–49:48)

5. Magical Realism: Sufi Rituals and the Power of Belief

• Describes witnessing extreme Sufi trance rituals, hammering daggers into heads, and draws a parallel with hypnotic suggestion and dissociation.
  • “He comes up and he’s got these large daggers… and he holds the dagger on the left side of his head… and hammers it in… The dagger is not budging, not pulling… What’s holding this dagger in his head?” (30:56)
  • “Allah. God. So they tell us.” (32:54)

6. Hypnosis, Healing, and the Ethics of Helping

• Therapeutic Focus: Larry’s main therapeutic suggestion narratives center Uday as a strong, protective leader—contrary to his brutal public image.

  • “Feel your chest as strong and powerful like the warrior behind your bed… Now, the most important part of your body, feel… the power in your mind to be able to walk well.” (27:26)

• Responsibility & Distance: Addressing the question of enabling a violent person, Larry says:

  • “I don’t feel responsibility of people being who they are if that’s who they want to be… If I were a surgeon and this murderer was needing surgery to survive and I did surgery and he survived and he went back out and killed people, I wouldn’t say to myself, oh, I shouldn’t have operated on him.” (50:37)

7. Living in the Moment & Intentional Avoidance

• Larry actively trains his mind to “intentionally avoid” distressing realities to maintain focus and presence.
  • “I have this ability in my mind not to think of something that I don’t see. And that’s my naïve personality. But it protects me.” (37:10)
  • Interviewer: “Doesn’t sound naive to me… you’re able to develop some kind of intentional avoidance.” (37:15)

8. September 11th and Cultural Divide

• Larry is in Iraq on 9/11, processing the attacks with Uday, who is shaken and predicts retaliation.

  • “He was kind of curious why I wasn’t really upset and devastated about 9/11. And this is difficult for most people to understand. Not just Uday Hussein. I think it upsets us when you’re freaking out and somebody doesn’t freak out with you.” (41:09)

• Therapy Shifts: Uday now wants hypnosis to help his knees so he can run.

  • “I was very excited. He's running. Before he couldn’t walk. Now he's running.” (42:55)

9. Unfinished Work and Government Intervention

• Larry is invited again but the FBI warns him off, interrogates him about details of Uday’s life and locations.
  • “They visited with me. They wanted to see if I had anything with DNA of Uday… If you go back, we can’t be responsible… you’ll never come back, and nobody will ever know.” (47:32)

10. Uday’s Death and Enduring Uncertainty

• After the US invasion, photos of Uday’s corpse circulate, but Larry doubts their authenticity.
  • “There was nothing that resembled Uday… people want to hear what they want to hear and they didn’t want to hear me. But I hear me.” (53:43)
  • Speculates: “If Uday is still alive, and he might be… he has always wanted to live in the United States…” (54:52)

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• Larry on Subconscious Influence:
  “He spoke to my subconscious mind… that tomorrow is not going to be a good day.” (06:54)

• On Baghdad’s Opulence and Discomfort:
  “Let’s not say cheap suits, let’s say outdated suits. And I see pictures of Saddam everywhere... the Al Rashid Hotel had this huge mosaic of the first President Bush with kind of a snarl...” (15:29)

• On Hypnotic Intimacy:
  “Hypnosis to me is a very intimate, personal experience. Nobody speaks to you like a hypnotist other than your mother or a lover.” (21:00)

• Session Review with Uday’s Handler:
  “That was good, but next time it must be better.” (22:11)

• On Uday’s Need to Impress:
  “Uday had found a guy who he could impress.” (34:52)

• On Refusing Responsibility for Uday’s Future Violence:
  “If he’s a terrorist and a murderer and he wants to keep doing that, I would not feel responsible that I helped him heal. No. Because I think if I were a surgeon and this murderer was needing surgery to survive and I did surgery and he survived and he went back out and killed people, I wouldn’t say to myself, oh, I shouldn’t have operated on him.” (50:37)

• On Meeting Evil and Not Judging:
  “I had met this man… I knew this man did all these horrific things that they told me. But that wasn’t the man I met.” (49:48)

• Closing Reflections:
  “Drift off so slow. Drift off and quiet your mind. Feel the calmness you’re beginning to experience... the more you relax yourself every night as you're falling asleep, the more powerful your mind will become.” (56:45)

Important Segments & Timestamps

• Opening Hypnotic Induction: (00:00–02:24)
• Baghdad Bomb Shelter Recollection: (02:24–05:32)
• Reflections on Media Consumption: (06:00–08:45)
• First Meeting with Uday Hussein: (18:24–24:00)
• Sufi Ritual and Belief: (27:54–32:54)
• Discussion of Uday’s Infamy vs. Larry’s Experience: (25:24–27:54; 35:35–37:24; 48:10–51:14)
• 9/11 Occurs During Larry’s Visit: (39:13–44:01)
• FBI De-Brief & Aftermath: (47:32–48:10)
• Reflections on Uday’s Death and Doubt: (53:05–54:52)

Tone & Style

The episode’s tone is thoughtful, paradoxical, and somewhat otherworldly—mixing Larry’s calm, narrative hypnosis with the dark, explosive tension of his subject matter. Larry maintains a blend of Midwestern matter-of-factness, therapeutic warmth, and purposeful, philosophical distance.

Final Takeaway

“No Bad News” is a psychological journey through zones of personal ethics, trauma, and cognitive self-control. It asks: What do we owe those who have done evil? What is it to know versus to judge? And how much of reality do we—should we—let in? The episode haunts by refusing simple answers, letting the listener float, “so slow… so calm… drift off,” held between empathy and horror.