Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Flight 370 Search; Chile Earthquake; Teen Uses Writing to Cope; Interview with Arianna Huffington

Aired April 02, 2014 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the U.K. has now announced that they're -- they've moved one of their submarines into the area.

DAVID GALLO, DIR. OF SPECIAL PROJECTS, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTION: Uh-huh.

BOLDUAN: Many countries pride themselves on keeping the movements of their submarines very secret.

GALLO: So.

BOLDUAN: So we can't assume that that's the only submarine that's in the area. Is that the direction you think the search needs to move, moving those kind of assets in?

GALLO: You know at this - at this point, OK, any kind of knowledge, any clue, anything you can bring to bear that might be - give us an edge. They have some idea where that plane may or may not have ended up is important. So the sub may be -- you never know until they give it a shot.

BOLDUAN: And that's the problem, we just don't know.

GALLO: We don't know.

BOLDUAN: And the area is so huge. Let's show that comparison one more time. I think this is one of the more important things for our viewers to understand. That red box is the search area as it stands now for Flight 370.

GALLO: Right.

BOLDUAN: That little yellow piece is the search area that was for the Air France flight. Today's search area is some - for 370 is some 85,000 square miles. That's 17 times the search area for Air France.

GALLO: And that little dot was thought to be unsearchable it's so big. Back when we did Air France 447, people said we'd never find the aircraft in that dot. So this is just an immense undertaking.

BOLDUAN: And this new search area, this adjoining area, let's talk about this grid, is now more northeast and closer to the coast of Australia.

GALLO: Yes. BOLDUAN: How does the ocean change? How do the conditions change as you move closer to the coast?

GALLO: Yes, I don't -- there's going to be some change. But from where they've shifted it, I don't think it's going to be that perceptible. It's not right up against the continent itself. It will make a little bit of a difference. The sea floor beneath is going to be a little bit trickier. I think it's a little bit deeper the closer we get to the continent in that area, but we'll have to wait and see (INAUDIBLE).

BOLDUAN: Does it surprise you that they're shifting that search area in that direction? Does it indicate anything to you?

GALLO: No, because, you know, if you're sure that you haven't seen anything, that you're done with that area, it's best to move on to the next place and -- because, again, everything's moving. Have a look and see what's in that next spot.

BOLDUAN: And, unfortunately, you have to cross your fingers that you come upon something.

GALLO: We need a break. We need a - you know, we need -- it's time for a little bit of luck and be a lot of prayer. And we need a break in this case. We've got to find that plane.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely right. Two years later in Air France. Let's hope it does not take that long for Flight 370.

GALLO: Yes.

BOLDUAN: Dave, great to see you. Thank you very much.

GALLO: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Chris.

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: All right, Kate, let's take a break on NEW DAY.

When we come back, the death toll is rising from that devastating earthquake off Chile. Why does it have experts furrowing their brows? Is it just a preview of what's to come. We're going to break it all down with a seismologist when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MICHAELA PEREIRA, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

We are following breaking news. A 8.2 magnitude earthquake forcing nearly a million people to evacuate their neighborhoods in Chile. The death toll there stands at six, as we get reports of fires and landslides and collapsed buildings. Want to bring in Dr. Kate Hutton. She is a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology. We call it Cal Tech. She joins us bright and early in Pasadena.

I was going to apologize for the early hour, but I suppose an 8.2 earthquake is going to get a seismologist out of bed one way or the other.

DR. KATE HUTTON, SEISMOLOGIST, CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY: Oh, probably, yes.

PEREIRA: So let's talk about this. We just heard one of your colleagues a moment ago on our air talk about the fact that even though this was 8.2, an even larger earthquake was sort of expected, anticipated in this area.

HUTTON: Well, the whole coast of South America is very active and has had some of the largest earthquakes in the world, including the largest one in - since the seismograph was invented, which was a -- in 1960. And it was a 9.5. That was in the southern end of Chile. And this area has had a number of earthquakes in the magnitude 8s, even up to 8.8 in the northern part of Chile. So we're not too surprised to see this.

PEREIRA: This is in this area that we've heard talk about this so- called ring of fire. These plates are very -- they're very active in the area, is that what's happening?

HUTTON: Well, the whole rim of the pacific up South America across Alaska, Japan and down to the South Seas is an area where the two fastest moving tectonic plates, the Pacific plate and the Nazca plate, are active. And the faster the plate moves, the more earthquakes you have and the bigger earthquakes you have.

PEREIRA: And the bigger earthquakes you have.

HUTTON: So this is in -- definitely in the ring of fire.

PEREIRA: So let's talk about the fact that this is a situation that potentially could have been much more catastrophic. Was the fact that it was off shore, we know that this earthquake, the epicenter was off shore. Is that what saved it from being far more devastating in terms of the lives lost and the destruction to the land? We're still getting word of that right now.

HUTTON: Well, being off shore means that no one's sitting right on top of it. So the shaking could have been worse than it was. But on the other hand, a quake under the ocean floor can cause a tsunami, and this one did cause a six or eight foot tsunami. So it's sort of a tradeoff. And I think it's -- the tsunami was as small as it was because the quake was only 8.2.

PEREIRA: Now we understand, and let me play ignorant here for a second. There's a lot of -- been a lot of reports of seismic activity in the California area recently, and I think a lot of people at home are saying, what is going on down there? What is going on below the ground? We saw the 5.1 on Friday in Los Angeles, we saw that one in Wyoming, the first one in 34 years. Is there anything related in all of this earth shaking and earth movement?

HUTTON: Well, actually, probably not because the most obvious thing when we look at the statistics of earthquake is the randomness. And, you know, if you sit there and throw coins all day, you may get four or five heads in a row every once in a while. And it's likely -- it's more likely than not that that's the explanation, just statistics. But we're looking at it, you know, just to see if we can see anything that would imply a physical connection. But it's just too far between here and South America. One earthquake cannot influence another one over that time period or of that distance.

PEREIRA: And there really is -- you know, it's so funny because I think most of us, we humans want answers always right away. And I'm sure we look to you seismologists and say, how can we prepare? How can we get some sort of early warning system to advise us? Where do we stand on that?

I know the preparation we can do individually, as homeowners and residents and officer workers, we can prepare ourselves. But what can we do more as humans to sort of prepare ourselves for the fact that this kind of thing is coming? Is there any way to pre-warn?

HUTTON: Well, we are working on an early warning system which -- if the quake -- if you're not sitting right on top of the quake, then our seismic network will get notification -- will see the seismic waves before they get to you.

And if we could get out a warning out quickly enough, and it seems like we can beyond a certain small radius, then we could give a few seconds warning, which could get people under desks, could get -- you know, you could stop elevators at floors and slow down high speed trains and all those kinds of things that would save lives.

But another aspect is, you know, beyond a personal preparedness, we need to be willing to support retrofitting old structures and so forth.

PEREIRA: Sure.

HUTTON: Because our building codes, and I'm sure this is true in South America also, have gotten better over time and the old buildings are not up to current code.

PEREIRA: Yes, that's absolutely true. Dr. Kate Hutton joining us from Pasadena bright and early there. Thank you for walking through this recent seismic activity. We are still assessing what has all gone on there as the light of day and as they get to some of those far flung reaches, Kate, they're going to figure out just how bad it was. But initial reports sound like it's - it avoided being as devastating as it potentially could have been.

BOLDUAN: All right, Michaela, thanks so much. Time now for this week's "Human Factor." The stress of managing an illness is hard on anyone. But for a teen, it's especially difficult and can be very lonely. We want to introduce you to a remarkable young man who took to writing as a way to cope with a rare diagnosis. CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, has his story.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For Schuyler Ebersol, high school started pretty normally, but his luck quickly took a turn for the worse.

SCHUYLER EBERSOL, SUFFERS FROM LYME DISEASE: I'd have severe dizziness so that I couldn't really walk or see straight for days at a time.

GUPTA: At first he just chalked it up to stress, but Ebersol quickly realized something was really wrong.

EBERSOL: And no one knew what was wrong with me and there were all sorts of hypotheses.

GUPTA: Home from school for months at a time, Ebersol desperately needed an escape, and he found it in writing.

EBERSOL: I just started writing. And I would get lost in this world. And I identified with this character. And it was just a way to keep me going while everything else in my life wasn't so great.

GUPTA: And then after several months, doctors finally discovered the cause of his symptoms, a rare form of Lyme disease. And at the same time, his scattered pages started to gel (ph) into a book.

EBERSOL: The book is called "The Hidden World." It's about a main character who has a heart attack, he slips into a coma, and when he wakes up he turns into a wolf in the hospital room.

GUPTA: "The Hidden World" was published last December. With more in the works. And Ebersol says, through it all, writing saved his life.

EBERSOL: You really just have to find something that can sustain you and keep you mentally strong.

GUPTA: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN reporting.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: A lot we can learn from him.

CUOMO: That Lyme disease is no joke.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely not.

We're going to take another break. Coming up next on NEW DAY, money and power do not spell success, far from it, so says editor in chief of "The Huffington Post" Arianna Huffington. She'll explain her keys to success and fulfillment when she joins us live comes up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Welcome back to NEW DAY.

If you have money and you have power, you might be considered someone who has it all, right? Well, Arianna Huffington disagrees. It says it right here in her book "Thrive" that we need to redefine success and change our 24-hour connectivity in order to actually make ourselves more productive and healthy and complete and balanced the way editor-in-chief of the "Huffington Post", author of "Thrive" -- Arianna Huffington joins us here. It's great to have you with us.

ARIANNA HUFFINGTON, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, "HUFFINGTON POST": It's great to be with you.

PEREIRA: Welcome. Thank you.

CUOMO: It is a provocative book. It plays against what we all hold out as the main thrust of what we want to be -- work, work, work. Keep pushing. Be focused, be pressure-oriented on it and that's how you get there.

Most interesting to me -- this book is not about a concept, it's about an experience you had in your own life that became revelatory. Tell us about it.

HUFFINTON: Exactly. April 6th, 2007, I collapsed from exhaustion, burnout, sleep deprivation. I hit my head on my desk on the way down, broke my cheek bone, got four stitches in my right eye. Then as I was going from doctor to doctor from MRI to echocardiogram trying to find out if there is something seriously wrong with me, we discovered that what was wrong with. me was the way I was living my life.

That's when I started thinking, is this success? By conventional definition I was successful but by any sane definition of success, if you are lying in a pool of blood on the floor of your office, you are not successful. And I've been talking to so many people who are completely burned out. I mean I was on book tour and women, especially women for some reason, maybe because they're more willing to be open about it, they're coming up to me saying, I don't remember the last time I was not tired.

So we need to change that and redefine success by including what I'm proposing. First of all, our well-being, then our wisdom. You know, when we're burned out we make bad decisions like what Bill Clinton saying the worst decisions I made in my life were when I was tired. He did not specify what decisions.

CUOMO: He didn't say just late at night?

HUFFINGTON: Well, he didn't say when or how. But the point is that we all know that, right. And then one day, you know, bringing joy into our life. And certainly I love what you are doing here, giving, you know, focusing on people and ourselves, you know, not just being narcissistic but giving to others.

PEREIRA: yes.

BOLDUAN: How do you do it? The concept is admirable. We could -- we all strive to get enough sleep, to feel more rested. Clearly not many of us are succeeding at it. How do you propose we actually pull it off?

HUFFINGTON: So, first of all, Chris, I'm pulling up a cup.

BOLDUAN: There is a deal. It's a NEW DAY cup.

CUOMO: It's hard for me to pull up because I'm busy reading it. I need to know everything in here.

BOLDUAN: He's so tired. He just has to read that.

CUOMO: Yes.

HUFFINGTON: So, anyway, you are asking the key question. How do we move from agreeing that this is the right thing to actually doing it? That's why the book is full of little tips, small, microscopic little steps. At the end of each of the four sections there are three steps -- a total of 12 steps by coincidence.

So for example, after well-being, the first simple step is get 30 minutes more sleep a night than you are getting now unless you're Michaela who gets her full eight hours.

PEREIRA: I brag about this. I can sleep eight hours. I don't have children. I don't have a husband at home, a pet -- I don't have any of those things.

BOLDUAN: Which is unusual because you know what you hear people bragging about is how little --

PEREIRA: Exactly.

HUFFINGTON: Especially men.

BOLDUAN: Yes.

HUFFINGTON: You know men wear sleep deprivation like a virility symbol. I had dinner with a guy recently who bragged he had only gotten four hours sleep. I said, you know what, if you had gotten five, this dinner would have been more interesting.

PEREIRA: Can I actually ask about that differentiation because I think there is this really interesting thing. Kate and I think can relate to a lot of this. We're women in a mostly male-dominated world one might argue.

CUOMO: Two against one here, in general.

PEREIRA: I know. We've skewed the numbers.

BOLDUAN: We've won this war.

PEREIRA: One battle. One battle down.

CUOMO: That's why I can't sleep at night.

PEREIRA: But we've been hearing all these messages to women that you can do it all. You can't do it all. You need to lean in. You need to lean out. We're also being told, you know, be a woman in a man's world or do you have to act like a man in a man's world. All of these messages get a little confounding and confusing I think.

HUFFINGTON: What I'm saying is women need to change the world in which we are participating, that the way men have designed it is not working. It's not working for women, for men, for polar bears.

Another little step that I was delighted to find out that Chris is already participating in is learning to meditate. Just five minutes a day is a great beginning. Chris already revealed he meditates. And he takes naps. You see, I think we need to talk about that.

CUOMO: Sometimes they become the same.

PEREIRA: And there's snoring involved.

HUFFINGTON: Fine, no problem. You see a lot of people don't talk about that aspect of themselves.

CUOMO: There's a good tip on page 121.

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die." Note to self. Note to self.

PEREIRA: Or note to us.

CUOMO: And it says right here -- it says right here on page 125, "You should praise the person to your left." And on page 127 it says "Praise the person to your right."

BOLDUAN: I'm still at the beginning of my 12-step process. I'll get to that.

Arianna when you look at these --

CUOMO: This is like a bible.

BOLDUAN: -- important tips, I love the concept. Some folks are going to watch this and say, Arianna Huffington is the picture of success.

HUFFINGTON: Yes.

BOLDUAN: This might work for someone who has quote, unquote, "made it". For someone who may be starting off in their career how does this work for them? Because our culture does not pride itself on saying, "Yes, you can get more sleep. Yes, you don't need to look at your Blackberry anymore. Yes, you can take time for yourself."

HUFFINGTON: But it's changing. Now 35 percent of American companies have introduced some form of stress reduction practices. At the "Huffington Post" we have two nap rooms, for example. And increasingly people have e-mail rules which say after work you are no longer expected to answer work e-mail. We take better care of our smart phones than we take of ourselves. You know that we alert --

PEREIRA: That is a very good point.

HUFFINGTON: 20 percent battery remaining, 15 percent battery remaining and we rush to our little recharging shrines, you know, to charge them up. We are often completely unaware of when we are running out of battery and feeling collapsed in some form or another.

BOLDUAN: Sure.

HUFFINGTON: And I think your question about whether you're starting in your career, I can say unequivocally that if I knew then what I know now, I would have been more effective, less stressed out, less worried. All the worries that we have, all our negative fantasies about things that never happen, we can prevent all that when we are recharged and not operating on burnout.

CUOMO: Sometimes people who have achieved success have something to share with other people who are on their way up. I think that's why it makes sense that you wrote this book. And I think that one of the central messages in it is one of the things we need to start to do is start to define success more for ourselves.

PEREIRA: Instead of letting other people define it for you?

BOLDUAN: Yes.

CUOMO: I know it's not easy but, you know, happiness is a process. That's the way you start getting through it is by starting to answer your own questions. This is very well done. Of course, well written -- we expect nothing else.

BOLDUAN: Yes, 14 books in. She has a message to tell us.

CUOMO: And it was great because I was saying "Thrive", you know, because I'm used to your accent. I thought the word was called "thrive". Turns out it was "Thrive".

BOLDUAN: Let's have one more go. Arianna, lift the cup, Chris Cuomo, lift the book.

CUOMO: The book is "Thrive".

HUFFINGTON: The show is NEW DAY.

CUOMO: The show is NEW DAY and if you watch it, you will be more successful. It says it on page 116.

BOLDUAN: It is.

HUFFINGTON: You will learn to meditate and sleep like Michaela.

BOLDUAN: I'm sure the most baffling part about this interview is that our viewers learned that Chris meditates.

HUFFINGTON: And that Michaela gets eight hours sleep, did you know that?

BOLDUAN: I know. What have I done recently?

CUOMO: We won't argue to define my success. I will define it for myself.

We'll be right back. Until, breathe in through the nose, out through the mouth. (CROSSTALK)

PEREIRA: Lead us in meditation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CUOMO: Time for "The Good Stuff" and this one is going to get you right here. Remember I said that.

A biker and a pastor in Texas was in very rough shape, James Murphy needed a heart. The situation was so bad he even preached his own funeral. That's when things looked up. He reached a donor heart. The heart belonged to 32-year-old Ricky Mada. He had suddenly died of a brain injury.

So when Ricky's sister was getting married, who did she think about to officiate the wedding. That's right, the man carrying her brother's heart. Remember, he's a pastor. That is "The Good Stuff". Somebody had the foresight to want to donate their organs if anything ever happened even though they were young. The worst occurred and it wound up being the best for somebody else which is one of the hopes that many have when they're victimized and their families that some good can come of it. This man had a heart and he officiated the wedding.

BOLDUAN: Paying it forward in so many ways.

CUOMO: That's the good stuff and it gets you right here.

PEREIRA: Families are connected.

CUOMO: Right. Families are connected. Very well said.

All right. There is a lot of news this morning. For that we take you to Miss Carol Costello who is all heart.

CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: I love these compliments when you throw them to my show, Chris. I'll take them. Thanks so much. Have a great day.

"NEWSROOM" starts now.