American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 44.1 Barack Obama

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

We are getting very modern! We all remember Barack Obama's presidency, but how well do we know his past? Join us as we go through his early life from Hawaii, to Indonesia, to New York and Chicago! 

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, a rack of power. Part 1. Hello and welcome to American Presidents Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob ranking all of the presidents from Washington to Biden. And this is episode 44.1. It's the man, Jamie. It's none other than Barack Obama. Barack Hussein Obama II. Yes. There we go. Barack Hussein Obama II, yes. There we go.

Yeah, I mean, I remember the days when presidents were presidential and he was one of them. No scandal, apart from the suit. Jamie, you're jumping right into all of this stuff. I'm so sorry. This is such living memory. Don't bring up this tan suit. That's got to be a good 45 minutes in episode three that is disgrace gate right there definitely

but yes no i know what you mean uh we've been saying for a while uh that it's weird that we're in living memory but wow this is like real living memory we we were adults yeah we could legally vote not for barack ob Obama in the wrong country, but we could have done had we lived in America. I remember being on a year two teaching placement during the inauguration speech. Yeah. And the teaching ex-aul said, this is history.

You're going to remember this. I was like, maybe. No, maybe. Maybe I won't. Yeah, so some clear memories of Obama. But how much do you know about Obama's life? I know where he was born, you know, Kenya. I know that he had a sense of humour, which I liked.

I know he didn't deal with the Flint water crisis very well. Oh, interesting. Going to Flint straight away. Yeah, yeah. I should just hesitate to add, just for clarity, that when you say Kenya, Jamie, that was you sarcastically referring to a conspiracy theory. Oh, yeah.

Just to be clear for listeners. No, of course. I know Jamie well enough to know, but it was said very seriously. Yeah. We will get into the conspiracy theories around him or based around racism let's face it but that is all for future episodes because none of that happens in this episode this episode is his early life going up to him becoming a state senator we're going to go roughly to the the mid to late 90s that's where we're heading to today but before we do let's uh

let's let's do an introduction. Right. Now, I know you hadn't planned anything. No, I've got nothing. Nothing at all. I'm going to have to wing it. I'm going to throw you a bit of a softball here. A blue sky and a balloon, like a child's balloon that's been lost,

like one of those helium balloons that's in the shape of a unicorn or something. It's floating up towards the sky. Okay, no, I've got it. It's a unicorn balloon floating towards the sky. Right, so focus on a unicorn floating towards the sky. It's the sound of wind. Brief, brief. No, no, no, tone it down, tone it down.

Gentle breeze, I should say. Gentle breeze. It's sunny, it's lovely. The sun is glinting off the foil. Glint, glint, glint, glint. Foil of the unicorn. And you just hear a voice, a voice of Bruce Springsteen saying, Hey. That's how he sounds.

Hey. That's how he sounds. He goes, Hey. Barack Obama. There's a balloon up there. And Barack Obama says, Bruce, there is a balloon up there. And Bruce Springsteen says, does that remind you of anything? And as this is going on, it pans down and you see Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama sat side by side with some microphones recording a podcast. And Barack Obama says, well, it reminds me of my youth. Let me tell you a story.

And then it all goes wibbly on the screen. And then it comes up with Barack Obama part one. Because yes, Bruce Springsteen and Barack Obama did do a podcast together. Oh, this is like your wet dream, isn't it? You know what? I have not actually listened to it. Haven't you? No, no, I've not. You haven't done your in-depth research?

I have. I'm shocked. I did think about listening to it uh as i have done many times but i don't know i'm a bit for some reason i'm a bit nervous about listening to braga baron and bruce springsteen just chatting about stuff just in case it's not as good as i hoped it would be i think it would obama's tends to be a good interviewee. He's quite good. He is. And also Bruce is Bruce. Yeah. Can't get more Bruce than Bruce.

Exactly. You've got to love Bruce. So anyway. Bruce. Yeah. Anyway. So there we go. That's the start.

But that's not why we're starting. Where are we going to start, Jamie? Go on. Guess. I mean, I just want to keep saying Kenya. Okay. Okay. Well, it's not going to be Kenya, Jamie, because we're not in the tea party spreading malicious lights.

No. No, we are starting. You know what? We're going to start in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Of course. It is the place to be. Swerveball. No one saw that coming, did you?

No. No one listening right now thought that's where we were going to start. Guaranteed. I didn't. No. It's November 1942 where a baby Joseph Biden has just been born. Aww. Baby Joe. Baby Joe. Brandon.

People weirdly call him Brandon. Yeah. Anyway, more on him later. This isn't Biden's episode No What you need to do is start on little baby Joseph Biden And then pan over to Kansas This is not going how I thought it would No, no, I thought I'd thrown a swerve ball

Right, I don't know if you've ever tried to pan From Pennsylvania to Kansas Before No, not that I remember It takes nine days It's a long way How are you travelling there, though. On average panning speed.

Like, you've got a camera and you're just panning to the left until you hit. Did you actually research how long it takes to pan from Pennsylvania to Kansas? Yes, yes, I did. Take my word for it. Oh, you're such a nerd. Yeah, well, if you just stand still and pan left from Pennsylvania until you hit Kansas, it's nine days. Don't question it. Don't think too hard about it.

Just accept the fact that it takes nine days. And it just so happens that just when you've panned left enough to get to Kansas, another baby is born. This baby is a girl called Stanley Ann Dunham. So there you go. is a girl called Stanley Ann Dunham. So there you go. Just as I am absolutely fascinated for some reason the fact that Trump, Clinton and Bush were all born roughly the same time,

I just also happened to notice how close Obama's mother and Biden's birthdates were. They were born nine days apart. And I just found that really interesting. That's why Obama called Biden Daddy. Yes, definitely. Anyway, so, we... You're going to have to see a lot from this episode.

How long we've been recording? And we barely started. Right, anyway. The father of Stanley Ann was called Stanley. Okay. Yeah, and he called his daughter Stanley after himself That's a cruel fight Clearly he wanted a son

Oh yes, I'll get into that in a moment Anyway, Stanley was in the army He joined up after Pearl Harbour And the mother, Madeline Worked in the Boeing plant Building plane parts In Wichita And apparently Stanley wanted a boy

He wanted a boy. He wanted a boy so much that he named his daughter Stanley in one of those, no, I don't care, it's a boy without a winky, it's going to be called Stanley. That's what it's going to be called. It's like in the UK, we had a politician MP called Nigel Lawson had a daughter. Ah, Nigella, that'll be fine. Yeah.

Names, what are names? They're universal. They're just things. It's mere convention. That's all it is. Yeah. Got to break the mould occasionally. Anyway, it was not long before Stanley, as in the father Stanley, was off to Europe fighting in the war. Madeleine worked in the factory and brought up Stanley Anne on her own. Once Stanley came back home in 45, the family was restless and they kept moving around.

They moved to Oklahoma, then to Texas, then back to Kansas, and then to Washington State, where the Rainers and Frasier. Stanley-Anne, growing up, would introduce herself by saying, hi, I'm Stanley, my father wanted a boy. Oh, that's a bit soul-destroying. As you would. But as you can imagine, Stanley-Anne started calling herself Anne more and more as she grew older. In Seattle, her father was now a furniture salesman and her mother was an escrow agent. And they were doing all right for themselves.

She went to a high school and developed a love of Elvis and jazz because that was the music scene at the time. All good. Coffee shops were around. She was enjoying herself there her friendship group were progressive and they were starting to see the rise of the civil rights movement so anne was very much in that kind of teenage group that saw change happening in society and they was liking what they saw there's movements to get behind anyway it was in all this that Anne realised what she wanted to do with her life. She wanted

to study anthropology. Like all teenagers do. Yeah. We all go through our anthropology stage, don't we, as teenagers? Yeah, we all have a good hominid. Yeah. Occasionally it's like you're painting your wallpaper black because no one

gets your feelings one week. The next week you're just getting some skeletons in and studying the differences. Yeah, exactly. We've all been there. Yes, so, yeah, for some reason, the study of the origin and development of the human species, societies and cultures really appealed to her.

Apparently this came from nowhere. Her friends had no idea what the word meant and had to go and look it up when she started talking about it. But that's what she wanted to her. Apparently this came from nowhere. Her friends had no idea what the word meant and had to go and look it up when she started talking about it. But that's what she wanted to do. Anyway, when she reached her last year in high school, her father announced it's time to move again. They really liked moving around, they did. And this time, we're off to Hawaii.

Hey! Literally just become a state a couple of years before. It was the land of opportunity. That's what it was. There was lots of building going on there. It's expanding. If we go to Hawaii, we're in there on the ground floor, was what her dad was thinking.

And it's also expanding because the lava flows. True, yeah. Anyway, Anne wasn't happy about this. She had been accepted to the University of Washington and the University of Chicago. She was deciding between the two. Well, you can commute. It's fine. Well, no. Her parents put down on commuting

or her just staying. It's like, no, we're going as a family to Hawaii. We are all going to Hawaii. You can go to the University of Hawaii. It's fine. We're going there. But I could commute back to Washington every day. No, not allowed. Oh.

Yeah. Oh. It's just, it would be doable. On a six to eight hour flight. No, no, no. Six to eight hour flight every day. Just fly west over the international date line and then you'd probably make it early.

Oh, yeah. West? Okay. You'd fly 24 hours or more. Yeah, but you've gone over the international oh no no it's the wrong way isn't it damn it yeah oh if only hawaii was just over that line damn it damn it oh so close of that that's why they said no right okay it just doesn't work they had a big debate during breakfast yeah it's like hang on is it possible to time travel no it's not if only

other side of the line, it would have worked, but never mind. Anyway, they're all off to Hawaii. So nothing she can do. She leaves her friends and she heads to the new state. Once there, she attends the University of Hawaii and decides to sign up for a Russian language course. Why not? Lots of courses. That one took her fancy. And it was here that she met a Kenyan student by the name of Barack Obama. Her son? Not quite. Oh. Yes. Barack Obama took a liking to Anne straight away and asked her to meet him at one o'clock by the library. So Anne, liking the look of this young man, agreed. She arrived at one o'clock and she waited and she waited and eventually she lay down on the bench in the sunshine and she had a nap because that's life in Hawaii apparently.

Apparently it's really nice in Hawaii. I got a lot of this from my research the last couple of weeks. Apparently it's nice in Hawaii. So anyway she's having a nap on the bench and she's awoken about an hour later to the sound of Obama's voice saying, you see, gentlemen, I told you she was a fine girl and she would wait for me. So that's how they met. Yeah.

But who is this Barack Obama? I hear you cry. Who is this Barack Obama, Rob? Well, let me tell you. Born as Barack Hussein Obama in 1934 in British Kenya. He was born on the shore of Victoria Lake and he was raised in a village. The Obama family were socially very well respected, but obviously no one had much money in British Kenya. So they weren't wealthy, but they were of a higher social class. Now, I'm just going to put it very bluntly here.

I am going to brush over a lot of Obama Sr.'s life. Okay. For reasons that will become very clear. Yes, it is all very interesting. And yes, it is very different for this podcast, the idea that we could go off to Kenya and do some stuff there is fascinating. And I really did want to. But spoilers for his and Anne's relationship. Barack Obama Sr Senior does not play a major role in Obama Junior's life at all and these episodes are going to be

long enough as it is so I just don't think it's a justifiable use of our time going into a lot of detail a lot of the biographies and stuff I've read about invest a lot of time into it because it is interesting. And go read it. It's fascinating stuff.

But it's just, it's not really relevant to our podcast. So reluctantly, I'm just going to have to cut it away. But what I will say is that Barack Obama Sr. was intelligent, ambitious. As a child, he would boast about being the smartest in his class. He refused to be taught by a woman because women were in charge of the discipline in the classroom, and he refused to be beaten by a woman because they were lower than men, to put it bluntly. So he just refused to be taught by a woman. So instead of going to the local school, he walked for miles to a different school so he'd be taught by a man. He was very opinionated as a child. Yeah. Yeah. When he was six, this school heavily encouraged children to convert to Christianity. So Baraka did and changed his name from Baraka to Barak. In school, he did very well, but he misbehaved. He was expelled for various things, including stealing chickens

and breaking into girls' dormitories. He basically messed about. He was very intelligent, but he messed about. His father beat him until his back was bloody that day. He was very disappointed with him. Very strict patriarchal family. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway,

in 1956, aged 18, Obama moves to Nairobi and becomes a clerk. And it's here where he meets Kezia at a party. Kezia's a couple of years younger, and they meet, and within days they are married. Oh. Yeah. They meet, they get married very quickly. Frustrated with his life, however, he managed to use the connections to get his school certificate,

which he hadn't got to begin with because he'd been expelled. And he did so with very good grades once he actually buckled down. And then with the help of a couple of American teachers he knew, he started applying for American universities. He knew that if he was going to make it somewhere, he needed the best education.

And his ambition was to rise in Kenyan government, to be free from Britain, and he would be at the forefront of this as Kenya rose to be its own independent nation. If he wanted to do that, he knew he needed a foreign education because that's what the path was at the time. So he applies for American universities. He received many rejections, but Hawaii accepted. By this time, Kezia, his wife, had a son and was pregnant again with a second. So he told his wife that she should wait for him

and he would be back after a couple of years with his education and he would do great things for Kenya. He's a bad man. Why do you say this, Jamie? Because he's just started hitting up with Anne. We'll see, shall we? We will see. Anyway, so he arrives in Hawaii. He signs up for this Russian language course and he meets Anne and the two start spending a lot of time together. He tells everyone at Hawaii that he was married once, but he's divorced. So he just keeps the fact that he's got a family back home hidden completely. He's a bad man.

He didn't see it that way because the culture he came from, multiple wives, was common. But he realised enough that it would be seen as not great to keep it hidden. Anyway, Anne and Barack start spending time together. Anne was very shy, fairly quiet at this time in her life. Obama apparently was very much dominating the centre of attention in any room that he was in. So people who knew them both together tend to report Anne being very quiet in the background, not really getting involved, but very, very much infatuated with Obama. Anyway, the two get closer and within a year, Anne is pregnant. So they quickly get married.

Yeah. Oh, bigger me, bigger me. Yeah, bigger me, bigger you, bigger everyone in the room. Yes. Bigger me, bigger me. Yeah, bigger me, bigger you, bigger everyone in the room. Yes. Anne's parents, according to one of her friends,

were dealing with all of this, and I quote, reasonably well. So they had a few breakdowns. Yes. A few stress, but they sort of kind of accepted it and would support their daughter kind of thing. Yeah. Let's face it. The older generation was struggling to come to terms with the fact that their daughter had suddenly met a black man from Kenya and got married to him and now had a baby on the way. But they weren't disowning her and they weren't shouting at her.

They were dealing with it, and I quote again, reasonably well. So take that how you will what i will say is hawaii was not the mainland in hawaii there was such a mix of races on the island you had hispanic people black people white people japanese people chinese people indigenous people hawaii obviously um yeah um It was very much a melting pot of different cultures, races, ethnicities. Arguably, it was the easiest place in the United States to have an interracial relationship. But it doesn't mean it didn't raise eyebrows.

It was still the early 60s in the United States. So they had to deal with their problems. But apparently, Anne's mother in particular, it was nothing to do with race. She just really found Obama odd and untrustworthy, almost as if he was, like, keeping a secret or something. I mean, she's not a million miles off the market. She's not wrong.

Apparently, Dad, it was a bit more just racism, but he was trying to keep it in check. So, yeah, Madeleine, the mother, just described Obama as strange, and that's my quote. Yeah, like I say, Stanley, Sir Anne's dad, found the race issue harder to deal with, but he was working at it,

and mostly it was coming out as a, I'm just concerned that things will be hard for my grandchild. It's coming from a place of concern, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. Which, uh, it could have been worse is what I think I'm trying to say. Yeah. Yeah. Certainly could have been better. They weren't the only parents struggling with the issue though. Obama's father heard about this second family his son had and the fact that his son had married a white woman and told his son that she would sully the bloodline of the family and wanted nothing to do with it so uh yeah both sides of the family were struggling to terms with the the mixed race relationship which is a shame anyway still anne surprised all her friends by

suddenly becoming very maternalistic up to the up until this point and had never expressed any desire to have children she was a student she wanted to be an anthropologist and then suddenly oh baby's on the way but she threw herself into it she drops out of school to look after the boy who was born on the 4th of august in 1961 in Honolulu, Jamie. I don't know if you know where... Honolulu? Don't know if you know on the map where that is.

Is that East Kenya or South Kenya? I'm not quite sure. It's... Oh, no, no, it's Hawaii, Jamie. It's Hawaii. Oh, it's Hawaii. It is Hawaii. Oh, so he is an American resident then?

He is an American citizen. That's what he is. Oh. Yes. So what you're saying is the conspiracy theory is a load of... Yes, Jamie, that is very much what I'm saying. Yes. Anyway, we'll get into that more in another episode.

Anyway, this boy was named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama. Within a year, the boy's father left. Oh. Yeah. Obama Sr. had finished his course and he had a choice. He could either take his new family to New York and attend New School in New York, and he would be able to afford to take Anne and his child with him, so they could all move to New York. Or he could go to Harvard on his own. He went to Harvard, didn't he?

Of course he did. It wasn't even... didn't even blink his arm off to Harvard. No choice at all. In what was fast becoming a pattern, he promised his wife and child that he'd be back for them as soon as he's got his education. Yeah. Yeah. So off he goes.

Anne tried to keep the relationship alive. She did go and visit Cambridge at one point, but it became very clear to her that Obama was moving on and had no interest in this family whatsoever. Cambridge, Harvard. Harvard's in Cambridge. Not our Cambridge, their Cambridge. What? Because Cambridge's in Cambridge? No! Yeah, it's very confusing.

How have I never said that in this podcast before? I mean, you may have. Maybe I have. Sorry, I should have just said Harvard, shouldn't I? Right, she visited Harvard one day. Thank you. I know what you mean. Yeah, Obama's moving on.

No interest in the family. So she returns to Hawaii, realising that she is now a 20-year-old single mother. And she's got to figure out what to do. So she decided it was time to go back to Seattle and enroll in the University of Washington. She was not going to let having a child slow her life down. This was, it's the 60s after all.

It's modern. We're in the future now. So she takes little baby Barack in tow. But within a year, finding life hard, she returns to Hawaii to be closer to her parents, which makes a lot of sense. It's hard being a single parent even harder if you're away from your extended

family so back to Hawaii she goes once back at the University of Hawaii she met an Indonesian geologist whose name was Lolo Soetoro if I'm pronouncing his name correctly I apologise if I'm not anyway the two hit it off really well and within a couple of

years Anne was divorced from Barack Obama and married to Soetoro. So, married again. And the little boy, who has fast become known as Barry, now has a stepdad. So, you've got Anne, Lolo and Barry. When Soetoro finishes his Masters, he says to Anne, Right, I'm off home.

To Indonesia. Oh. You're looking stressed. Yeah. Well, this time Anne's determined to go. And Sorotaro is more than happy with this. It's like, let's keep the family together. Yes.

It's not I'm off home, bye. It's a... That's good. I'm off home, let's all go together. So that's what they do. So little Barry's around six years old at this point, and the family arrive in Jakarta in Indonesia in 1967. This is just after a major bloody coup has taken place, which just for a little bit of context, was aided by the CIA, of course it was.

Oh yeah. Yes. The country was very tense when Anne and Barry arrived. But Barry's stepfather lived in a middle-class area. Everything was quite nice where they were. Sarotaro had a menagerie in his garden to the delight of the young Barry. Nice. Because he grew up with chickens in the back garden. Yeah. Oh, and what else was there? Cockatoos?

Oh, I love cockatoos. Yeah, cockatoos. What else? Crocodiles, Jamie. Crocodiles. Bloodyos. Oh, I love cockatoos. Cockatoos. What else? Crocodiles, Jamie. Crocodiles. Bloody hell. Yeah, they kept some crocodiles. I call this one Snappy.

And an ape called Tatter. Oh. Yeah. So, just imagine that. It's like, oh, there's the chickens, and there's a crocodile. And a massive orangutan. Yes. So, yeah. Don't go near him orangutan. Yes. So, yeah.

Don't go near him, Barry. Don't go near him. You rip your arms off. You know when you're a kid and you're doing like little tea parties with all your toys. No, no. Little Barry's there. Passing a small tiny china teacup to an orangutan. Yeah. And another one to the crocodile. Just hooks it on one of his teeth. passing a small tiny china teacup to an orangutan.

Yeah, and another one to the crocodile. Just hooks it on one of his teeth. Yeah. Yeah. Looks a bit confused, goes back into the water. Yeah. So, there you go. Anyway, Saratoro taught Barry how to farm and how to kill animals for butchering.

It was very much a practical education he got from his stepfather. Aquarian life. While his mother taught him American history and continued teaching him English. Barry would often be woken up before dawn. We're talking four, five o'clock. So his mother could give him extra lessons based around English and being from America. Barry hated this. Absolutely hated this because of course he did.

But his mother said it was important, so it had to happen. After Dawn English lessons, it was off to school, where he was the only foreign child. The other kids called him Negro, which apparently, according to one source I read, wasn't considered a slur word in the country, because it was quite an unusual word to be used. So it wasn't used with malice by the other kids, apparently. But little Barry definitely took offense to it. Later on, Obama remembers, looks back and goes, yeah, that really used to annoy me because of course it would. So, yeah, it wasn't the easiest time for him.

He had some of the language, but not much. And by the time he left, he was fairly fluent to begin with. He was really struggling to fit into a school where everyone spoke a different language. And he looked different. There were no other black children there. He was not a Muslim, and pretty much everyone else was a Muslim. These things all added up to him being picked on. The worst case was when three boys picked him up and threw him into a swamp. But I'd like to think the crocodiles all came along and picked him up and dropped him on the shore because that one time he gave his little China cup to Charlie the croc. Yeah, Charlie remembers.

Yeah, Charlie remembers. Yeah, Charlie remembers. Charlie's loyal. Yeah, and he got Chris and Karen and... Sandra. Oh, I was going alliterative, but Sandra, fine. Okay. That's all. She's new to the group.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Anyway, yeah. So he was fine. Obama's fine is what I'm saying. He got out of the swamp. He didn't die. Around this time, possibly as he was hitting the swamp water,

his sister was born. Yes, his sister... One child comes in, one child goes out. It's the circle of life. Yes, his sister Maya is born, so he's now got a little sister. And the family moved to a new neighbourhood. He starts a new school, which registered him pretty much automatically on an assumption as a Muslim.

Ah. Soatoro was sort of a Muslim, but not particularly practicing, and his mother wasn't really religious in any way whatsoever, but it just wasn't a big deal. He got enrolled into the school, and it was just a piece of paperwork, and it was just like, oh, well, yes, obviously, he's the same religion as everyone else is here. No one would have noticed at the time, I'm sure. You can imagine the racist uproar in several decades' time when this fact is found out. Oh, yeah, of course.

Yeah. So there you go. Anyway, Barry's still not liking school. He apparently used to pull faces during the lessons on the Koran that he was forced to sit through and then his mother would tell him off because he wasn't being respectful to other cultures and religions and reminding her son that they were the visitors in the country and they needed to be polite. We're dealing with it. Yeah because he wasn't a Muslim however he was taken out

to do Catholic classes occasionally even though he wasn't Catholic. Wasn't Catholic. You can see the logic. Yeah, he was Christian, Christian, same thing. Not a Muslim, must be a Catholic. Yeah, anyway, so apparently he would open his eyes during the prayer looking for these angels that were being talked about, but when none ever appeared,

he kind of stopped caring about all that. It's like, you know, it's clearly nonsense's clearly nonsense so yeah all the religious studies going on he just found dull and uh he found school hard and he didn't have many friends uh and also things were not going well between his mother and his stepfather their relationship wasn't awful but it was just starting to fray fall around around the edges and was worried about her son as well. He'd just turned 10, and she wanted him to have the best opportunities in life, and that meant an education in the United States at a university.

So, realistically, what this means is going back to the United States sooner rather than later. Her and her husband are not getting on, so she starts to make some plans. And it started with Barry being sent to Hawaii to stay with her parents for the summer. Just go and stay with them for a little bit. It's like a tactical exit from India.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, we're not all moving, but just a summer holiday for little Barry. Barry was excited about the idea of going back to the United States. I mean, he was six when he left. The difference between six and ten is huge. So he would have back to the United States. I mean, he was six when he left. Difference between six and ten is huge. So he would have barely remembered the United States, but he would have heard a lot about it

through these awful lessons he was being forced to have at four in the morning. So, yeah, he was excited, back to the United States. But on the other hand, he didn't know his grandparents, and that's who he was going to go and live with. So he was nervous about that. His grandfather, by this point, sold insurance, and he was struggling a little bit.

The markets weren't good for it. But it just so happened he was on good terms with his boss, and his boss was a big name in the community. I don't know if you noticed the capital letters on big and name there. Yes, I heard them. Good, I'm glad you did. Right. His grandmother was a banking executive, bigger name there yes i yes good good i heard them good i'm glad you did right uh his grandmother

was a banking executive which was uh very impressive for the time not many women managed to get to that level due to all the sexism but his grandmother had managed it now she wasn't paid very well because she was a woman and she was not paid the same amount as her peers yeah because sexism but she had through a mix of her competence and being in the right place at the right time, managed to work her way up from the bottom. So what this means is, although they didn't have a lot of money, both his grandparents had connections in Hawaii.

Yeah. They had respect from people who did have money. And it was these connections rather than the money that was going to help Barry, which would ultimately mean he became the President of the United States. Because his grandfather's boss happened to know people who knew how to get people into the most prestigious private school in Hawaii, which was Punahou, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Probably. Well, this was a very popular school. This is the feeder school to the big universities in Hawaii.

If you want to go to Yale, if you want to go to Harvard, if you want to go to one of the prestigious universities, there's only one way if you're in Hawaii, and that's to go to this school first. So this is a huge deal, being able to get into there. But it was also very popular because, apparently, Hawaii's really nice, Jamie. I don't know if you've heard Hawaii is really nice. It's this this school was all palm trees, open spaces, people dressed casually as if they were going to the beach all day. I can only assume everyone was walking around with cocktails and coconuts. Yeah. Yeah. It had a reputation for being able to get you to places, but it also had a reputation for just being a really nice place to be. That sounds almost like the perfect place.

It really does, doesn't it? Like having a lecture on the beach. Let's just go and chill on the beach. Let's go and chill on the beach, but go and learn some stuff. And you stay there for eight or nine hours. Exactly. And then at the end of it, you're not called a sort of lazy dropout because you took the easy course you then get to go and like go to the fancy places it sounds perfect doesn't it anyway and you don't just discover say

anthropology you discover yourself when you're there exactly yeah so soon decided understandably since they had this connection that barry wasn't going to go back home to indonesia he was going to stay in hawaii and he was going to enlist into this school and his mother and sister were going to come to hawaii to him i'm still finding it weird that you're calling him barry i'm thinking it's completely different now oh funny you say this there were a lot of people from obama's early life who only ever knew him as barry and then he disappears from their life and then suddenly he pops up as running for president and they're all like i'm sorry barack that's barry when did barry start calling himself barack yeah he was the hash smoking hippie for my school we'll get into that yeah anyway so he enrolls in fifth grade but again barry finds it hard to fit

in here as well he was again, again, one of only the handful of black students, so felt like an outsider straight away. Now, everyone else had known each other since kindergarten. In an attempt to sound cooler than he really was, he told his classmates that he was the son of a Kenyan prince. So, he's royalty. That's why I'm here. Which was believed. Barry. Barry. Nice. Yeah. It was a little bit embarrassing not long afterwards because his father came to visit.

Oh, he's come back. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Being told his father was coming to visit him. Remember, he's 10 here, so he's never known his father. He's 10 years old and his father visits. Barry hated every single moment of it the man was moody

and bossy and seemed to want to get back together with his mother which really freaked him out his really freaked out his grandfather as well who was not having any of that oh no and that led to arguments between members of the family and it just did not sound like a fun time the only part of his father visiting that he did like was being taken to a jazz show. Barry, by this point, was developing a love for jazz, which just keeps developing throughout his life. Yeah, he discovers he really likes jazz music.

Anyway, fortunately for Barry, Obama Sr. soon heads home, so he doesn't have to worry about this anymore. Back at school, Barry's doing OK now. He's not a naturally gifted student, nor did he struggle, typically getting Bs. He does all right, but he's no child genius. He sometimes struggled in literacy,

but apparently he wasn't alone. One of his teachers later said that it's really hard to teach literacy in Hawaii because everyone was so happy all the time. You need to be sad and suffering to understand. Yeah, apparently none of the students could ever

really grasp the struggles of the characters in the book. Can you feel the torture and torment? No. It pans over, everyone's just waving fans in their faces with their feet on the table drinking half a coconut. This is so nice.

Sounds terrible. Sounds terrible. It just really amused me. I'd have a teacher just go, damn it, they're too happy. Don't understand. Anyway, life continues happily enough until his mother completed her master's degree in

anthropology. So there you go. Oh, she did it? Yeah, yeah, she did it in the end, which is really nice to hear. And she knew what she wanted to do for her doctorate, but that would involve fieldwork back in Indonesia, where she had made connections there. Barry was horrified by the idea. He was a teenager now, and his life was

in Hawaii, and he had no desire to go back to Indonesia. Imagine how disappointed he was moving to bloody Washington, D.C. when he was a teenager now and his life was in hawaii and he had no desire to go back to indonesia oh imagine how disappointed he was moving to bloody washington dc when he's older gosh well we'll get to that um in the end it was decided that barry could stay in hawaii living with his grandparents you get the feeling and remembers back to her childhood when her parents were saying nope you're coming to hawaii whether you like it or not and how much that annoyed her yeah so yeah apparently anne found it very hard to leave her her boy behind but she saw that it was the right thing to do for his education he wanted to stay so off she goes barry missed his mother obviously

but soon was living the life that he wanted to keep. As a teenager in Hawaii, he was living the dream, Jamie, and it certainly sounds like the dream. He would hang out on the beach with the surfers and his friends. He'd go on hikes, hang out in the burger joints. When he got a bit older, he smoked a hell of a lot of weed, which was literally everywhere on the island. He grew naturally, yeah. In school he had settled. Those awkward first years were behind him and he now just fit in everywhere. He was just that kind of guy

who just fit in. His love for basketball meant that he fit in well with the sporty crowd but he also had developed a love for writing by this point. So he also fit in with the more bookish groups. The nerds, Jamie. What a...

He's just got such a great... He spent his time listening... Living in paradise. He spent his time listening to Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis. He later wrote... Son of a... Well, he later wrote about how on the surface

he found school a good time and everything seemed really good, but... Because it does sound really good. But there was always that sense inside that he didn't quite belong. He had naturally gravitated to the other few black students in the school, but there weren't many of them. And he also knew some black military men who played basketball in the park.

But again, he was a kid, he was a student, and these were military people, so he didn't really fit in there. He was very much feeling like he was a black kid in a white world with no guidance whatsoever. He's living with his two white grandparents. Yeah, I guess that is an element that would be quite challenging, especially at that time. Yeah, definitely. You're a teenager, you're trying to figure out who the

hell you are, and this is just going to make things far more complicated. Yeah, and he struggled with it. There were several... Did he consider taking up anthropology? I don't think he did. There were several racist incidents that he did have to put up with. One time a classmate told him not to touch a piece of paper because he'd make it dirty. The typical mindless stuff. Barry replied with a cold, what do you mean by that? And the classmate suddenly realised the room was very much against him and tried to shrug it off

as a joke. So just little things like that that just are gonna chip away at you and make you feel very very annoyed. Anyway, he loved his grandparents by this point. They were no longer strangers. He was very happy with his grandparents, but it wasn't something he could talk to them about. I mean, no one's going to be able to talk to their grandparents at the

best of times, but how do you talk to your white grandparents about the race issues you've got going on in your head? Especially when one of your grandparents is a bit, you know, racist themselves. Oh, apparently he really got over this by this point. That's good. You'll be pleased to know. Yeah, apparently he really grew as a person and it all worked out fine. It was a challenge to begin with, but he got over it.

So that is good, yeah. So he couldn't talk to his grandparents. His mother, who was visiting one summer around this time, tried to talk to him about it, but she really didn't know how to deal with it, which is understandable she simply said that they were all the same because she didn't feel white and barry in full teenage mode just just couldn't see that this was a fumbled attempt to connect and just got angry

with his mother for just not understanding him whatsoever yeah i i yeah i get that i mean you can see where she's trying to come from it's like i i don't see the color of the skin we're all the same we're family but that's not what young barry wanted to hear at this time he wanted a solid yes i know what you're going through because i have definitely gone through the same thing and you know that because you can look at me and see that i have. He just didn't have any of that. It just wasn't in his life. By this point, he's in his senior year. His teachers were frustrated.

He apparently could have been a straight-A student if he wanted to be, but he just didn't care enough to be one. Instead, he liked to party and play basketball and drink and get high because you're in Hawaii, why wouldn't you? You're in paradise. Enjoy yourself wouldn't you you're in paradise enjoy yourself yeah there you go however being a b student at this school was enough to ensure that he could pretty much take his pick of the schools across america for college your a students are definitely going to harvard's or yale or something like that but b student you can still take your pick what

what do you want to do he He'd had enough of Hawaii. Small, small town as a state. It's like, no, I'm going to be stuck on this island forever. I want to go to the mainland and make myself. But where to go? Well, he had a couple of friends who had given him a recommendation. Oceadental, which I'm assuming is how you pronounce it.

One of those times where I've been writing it down and never thought to actually listen to how it's said. O-C-C-I-D-E-N-T-t-a-l oceodental oceodental or oceodental yeah is it oceodental or is it soft seas i've never heard of it in my life well you might not have heard about it but you've seen it oh yeah because it's a californian college close to hollywood this is good weather palm trees trees, etc. Nice open spaces. It's essentially the same kind of place he's just come from.

More paradise. Oh, brilliant. Well done, Barack. Yeah. Well done. I'm so happy for you. So nice and picturesque it is, in fact, and also so close to Hollywood. It's used in quite a lot of films.

Okay. So when you imagine what it's like to be in California in a typical American college, you're probably thinking of this place. It's where they filmed Clueless, for example. Oh, Clueless! Yeah! So, yeah, you know what it looks like. You've seen it. So that's where he is.

He's there in September of 79, and he moves into a dorm room with two roommates. And he quickly settles in. He studies, but he hangs out as well at the student bar which was called the cooler and if he wasn't hanging out or studying he was playing basketball he was running uh his music tastes had expanded aside from the jazz he was now listening to the stones and hendrix it would appear that barry mostly had a good time here because why wouldn't you yeah again it seemed like he fits in with most groups.

And again, he spent a good amount of his time thinking about his origins and about his race and what it meant to be a mixed race person in modern America. As before, there were very few black people in the college and most of them tended to stick together and not make friends outside the group. When talking to others about this later, he recalled, I'll quote here,

that he had stumbled upon one of the most well-known secrets about black people, that most of us were not interested in revolt, that most of us were tired of thinking about race all the time, that if we preferred to keep to ourselves, it was mainly because it was the easiest way to stop thinking about it, spending your time mad or trying to guess whatever it was that white folks were thinking about you yeah so he realized that okay some of this segregation is people just being so tired by being worn down by racism all the time but despite this barry did cross over different groups in fact his main friendship group was a very diverse and interracial people from all over the world the kind of people he was

hanging out with his period of self-discovery and his becoming an adult is shown by the fact that he started to go by Barack at this point. Barry twofold. One, it sounded very childish, and two, it sounded very white, and he didn't really want either of those at this point, so it's back to Barack. Overall, his college years seemed very typical for the time. He studied, he drank, he smoked, he partied, he got involved in student politics, he did an okay time. There aren't any crazy stories that I could find. There's no hiding cows in unusual places.

He didn't freeze a bell, whatever that is. He just... He just got on with stuff. As he went through the years, however, he did become more serious. His friendship group changed, and by the end, he, he did become more serious. His friendship group changed. And by the end, he was very much in the intellectual crowd. Barack had decided what he wanted to do with his life.

He wanted to become a writer. Oh. Yeah. So in my head, he's now in the intellectual crowd. He wants to be a writer. He's listening to jazz. I can only assume he's wearing black polo neck shirts. And a beret.

Yeah, and a beret. And he's... Ugh. Yeah, I can only assume he's wearing black polo neck shirts. And a beret. Yeah, and a beret, and he's... Yeah, I can only assume it's that. Another thing he wanted to do was get out of the West Coast. He realised that getting off the island and going to this school that seems very much like the one in Hawaii wasn't actually enough. He had become very interested in the civil rights movement. He spent a lot of his time reading about it. He became very knowledgeable about the area. And he looked

around his Hollywood college campus and he just didn't see it. What was this civil rights movement that has literally just happened? I'm not seeing it anywhere. He wanted to see the real black America. He wanted to see urban America that he had read so much about. Not this, as he looks out the window at the beautiful sunshine and people walking around. Smoking his spliff. But very importantly, mostly white people doing it. So, yeah.

So he wants to go to the East Coast. So where? Where at East Coast? Well, where better? He was going to transfer to Harlem in New York Cityork city oh yes yes especially this time period yeah oh my goodness yeah he was going to go to harlem in new york in the early 80s oh my yeah and study at columbia university in my head it's blazing sunshine really lovely and everyone is having a great time. He steps on the aeroplane, snap cut

to him stepping off the plane snow and lots of people shouting at each other and just lots of crying. Graffiti. Graffiti. New York is a very impressive city, but if there's one thing I know about it, it's that it was not hugely pleasant in the

80s. No. So, yeah, culture shock for him, yes. But exactly what he was looking for. He wanted to be shocked culturally. This is what he was looking for. Do you think he may have romanticised it slightly? Yes. And I don't say that in a kind of, yes, I'm sure he did.

I mean it in a, yes, I have read him saying that. Oh, okay. Yeah. in a kind of yes i'm sure he did i mean it in a yes i have read him saying that okay yeah yes uh his because he hadn't been in a typical what what can you call typical but typical black community uh in america up until this point but he'd read a hell of a lot about it he had pitched to the and he built it up in his mind and now he's going to go and try and see it and obviously what you imagine your mind is never actually what its real life is like so yes anyway he's in new york now off he goes to do a course on english literature and political science with a speciality in international relations yeah all very interesting he and another friend went together from california and they got a small apartment off campus. Small, cold, and cheap. The heating and the hot water was so temperamental,

they just abandoned using it. So if they ever needed a shower, they'd just go to the university gym and have a shower there. Barack enjoyed his course. His love of writing developed, as did his understanding of politics. But he did get frustrated how much time was taken pulling apart the classics

instead of simply reading and enjoying them. That's like trouble with english studies right yeah it's like i say classic trap that i think teachers fall into because they know the source material so well they want to be pulling it apart all the time it's like no these students need to understand it and love it first and then pull it apart because if they don't love it and you're pulling it apart they will just resent it anyway that's me going on a teaching rant nothing to do with barack but anyway so uh that that's what he's doing for his course he's studying politics and literature but uh he was busy in his spare time far less partying taking place he's very much become far more serious in the last couple of years in fact i, I quote him, when I transferred, I decided to buckle down and get serious. He attended church services on Sunday. His family, like I say, were never hugely religious, but Braque himself always had a fairly spiritual side,

even if it wasn't always clear exactly what it was. But yeah, so he'd go to church services on Sunday. He met with a socialist conference in the week. He attended various African cultural fairs in Brooklyn and in Harlem. And as ever, he enjoyed any jazz band that was playing. That's what he'd do to unwind, go and see some jazz. He started a journal where he swore

to stop the drinking, the drugs, and the smoking, which he pretty much managed to do. The drinking and the drugs stopped, but smoking and cigarettes didn't lose so even his president he spoke didn't he yeah it's the one vice he couldn't kick he really loved the cigarettes he was smoking heavily uh his diet at this time because he was a poor student was mostly rice beans and bagels and cigarettes. And he'd just sit around, I'm assuming in his black polo shirt, writing bad poetry in his journal.

Bad poetry, again, his words, not my words. I'm not being mean there. After a year, he moved out of his first flat and lived on his own for a while, but due to costs, he soon called upon a friend as a roommate again. This roommate who had known him before now found Obama a changed man. He was now taking himself far too seriously, according to the friend. Barack would often give him lectures on the plight of the poor in the country.

That's not fun. His new roommate didn't want to hear this. He wanted to go and party, and Barack would say, Party? Do you know people are starving on the streets? You're becoming a bore, was what his roommate said to him. Oh. And just walked out one night.

In his autobiography, which is where I get a good chunk of what we're talking about today, this is Dreams for My Father, which was his first book, which was released in the mid-90s. Yeah, Barack admits that, yes, he had become a bit of a bore at this point. He explains it is his essentially seeing America properly for the first time. He moves to New York.

He'd read a lot about the civil rights movement and he had seen it as a change and a force for good. And then he arrives in New York City expecting to see that good. And then he arrives in New York City expecting to see that good, and he didn't. He arrived in New York and he saw the segregation, and he saw the poverty, and he saw the crime, and he saw the fact that white people overwhelmingly were doing better than black people. He saw that race and class were so strongly linked that they became essentially part of the same problem. And he started to worry that he was going to be a successful man.

I mean, he was just on the path that he was going to be successful. He knew he was going to be successful. That means he would no longer be working class. I'm saying this, I realise, as an English person, where we use terms like this and they don't really in America. But he was going to have money. And if he has money, if class and race are so strongly linked does that mean he's turning his back on his racial roots by just merely being successful these were the kind of things he was

tearing himself apart with as a student it's a lot of philosophy in there. Yeah. Sociolonomical eclablogomics. I can only imagine a lot of bad poetry was written about this. Oh, yeah. Posters and everything. Should I be mad that I am sometimes sad? Mad I am. I am mad. If I am rich, can I hitch to my race?

Mad am I. Now he clicked his fingers a bit. Yeah. Jazz. Yeah. Spooky. You can see he's become a very serious young man, can't you? Yeah, I can.

I'm trying to say I can see why people would find him boring, but it's a culture shock, I guess. Oh, yeah, you can see where it comes from, definitely. Burst the balloon of expectation. He talks about it afterwards, saying how he was angered by the very fact that he was having to think these thoughts.

He should be going out and partying, but no, he's stuck here, worrying about the plight of the poor black man of America. He shouldn't have to be thinking about this, goddammit. No. Yeah. He also starts getting frustrated with political discourse. He used to love debates back in his old school. They were great, but they were losing their appeal because it was just nothing but talk.

There was no action. Everyone was talking it was not a single punch up well i've seen a single fist thrown it's boring everyone knew what to say everyone knew that racism was bad and poverty is bad and everyone knew that we should all be better to each other and we should all help each other with our lives and we should all get on and blah blah blah blah blah what's actually happening nothing is happening and he used to get very annoyed by that uh he was quite possibly depressed i would say i didn't see that in the biography anywhere but when i'm reading it um i it's like yeah it seems like he was very depressed at this point yeah when his mom and his sister came to visit they were alarmed. Barack sat in silence whilst they ate and just listened to them talk about the tourist sites they'd seen. It was New York. They'd never seen New York. It's like, oh, we went and saw the Statue of Liberty and et cetera, et cetera.

He waited until they finished and then would tell them about the struggles of the poor in the city. I hope you enjoyed yourselves having your tourist trip. Don't you know people are starving? And then he told his sister off for watching TV instead of reading the books about the plight of the poor that he had lent her. Yeah, it's a very serious young man by this point. And then things got worse,

because it's around this time he got news about his father. His father had got behind the wheel of a car in Nairobi and wrapped it around a tree and died instantly. Yeah. He didn't really have a relationship with his dad, but that's irrelevant, because that would still be very impactful, I imagine. He didn't have a relationship with his dad personally but his father had shaped so much about his life yeah just by the virtue of the fact that his father was black yeah and barack was struggling with feeling alone and not being able to connect with this culture because he wasn't part

of it it's gonna be a mind bleep isn't it it? Yeah. Yeah, it really is. So, yeah, he spent the last months of his university life downhearted and angry at the world, which is understandable. But he graduated and he did well enough that he would easily be able to get a good job. His friends were all applying for law firms or similar because, of course, they were. Barack was hesitating. I mean, what do you do when you finish your prestigious university? We've seen this countless times. What do you do? Go into law. Go into law. So when asked what he was going to do, he replied, I'm going to become a community

organiser. To which his friends went, I'm sorry, what? What's a community organiser? That sounds a bit like in the UK, we've got the, you know, you get the posters on the windows, community watch. It sounds a bit like that in the UK, you know, where you watch out for people's doors and make sure they're not getting burgled. Yeah, it's not quite that, but I see where you're coming from.

But yeah, I mean, his friends who, they were all going to law school, of course they were. They turned around and went, what's a community organiser? What are you talking about? Barak's talked about grassroots change, about actually helping black communities instead of just talking about it.

But in reality, he didn't really know what a community organiser was. He liked the sound of it. He wanted to do something practical to help people. In 1983, he wrote to all the organising groups and progressive charities he could think of, and then he went to Indonesia to visit family. And he found himself on a porch in Indonesia one evening, sipping coffee and smoking a local clove cigarette

and felt a twinge of guilt. He's there in the beautiful sunshine, having a cigarette, drinking coffee. It's like, no, I'm living the easy life again. I've got to get back, and I've got to do something. So he goes back to New York, and he was very disappointed to find that his applications had gotten him nowhere. So broke, he decides to just get any job. He's not going to become a lawyer, damn it.

He's not going to do it. That's what everyone else does. So in the end, he works for a publishing firm called Business International Corporation. That sounds exciting. It's a job that sounds so boring, I'm not even going to go into it. I am just going to use some keywords that I saw on a page that was describing this job. Oh no. Consulting, data collection, business and finance, and corporate clients.

My soul is weeping just reading those words. I had a mini nap as you were reading those words. Yeah, yes. We don't need to know the details. We don't care about the details. We don't. Barack didn't either. Within months, he found himself in a suit

having business meetings with German bond traders and Japanese financiers, and he was hating every moment of it. He would catch himself in reflections of windows and just go, what am I doing? If I'm going to do this, I might as well be a lawyer and get all the money like my friends have. But he was doing a good job. I mean, he like my friends have. But he was doing a good job.

I mean, he didn't like it, but he was doing a good job. His colleagues called him Mr. Cool, because apparently he just came across as very relaxed and calm all the time. But that was surface level. His insides, he was still the angry student, and he needed to move on. So he quit. I'm not doing this anymore. And he did a couple of small jobs with non-profit

organisations that were trying to mobilise students on voting issues. But it wasn't what he wanted. He wants something bigger than this. So he decides, I've got to get out of New York. And he had decided that if he was going to be a community organiser, because he'd looked into it a bit now, he kind of had a bit more understanding of what it was. He was going to go to Chicago to do it. Wasn't that where he... Hmm. A penny has dropped. Yes, massively.

Wasn't he the senator or something of that area? Yes, yes. Oh, you've remembered something. Illinois. Yeah, we'll get into it. Yes, the penny has dropped for you. Yes, Chicago seems Oh, you've remembered something. Illinois. Yeah, we'll get into it. Yes, the penny has dropped for you. Yes, Chicago seems the place to be for him. It had recently got its first black mayor.

It had a very large black population. They had for decades, but the black population was now the largest demographic in the city. And it was also suffering from a lot of poverty. Seemed like the perfect place, Pepper Acta proved that he was not just words but actions. So the plan was to move there, working community outreach by day, and right by night his desire to be an author was still very much alive. He had written to a community organiser who worked there asking about a job, and this man was named Calman. Now Calman had been working in Chicago on community projects for over a decade.

He was a veteran in the area, but it also meant that he was a realist. His current job was to recruit community organisers. These are people who go round the community and help people. So, yeah, so people don't understand the forms they're meant to be filling in, help them fill in forms.

Yeah. The road that they live on is absolutely a state, and the local government are not filling in the potholes. Let's organise something to make sure the local government know that this needs to be fixed. It's local politics, but not being a politician. It's the one actually doing stuff. Yeah, like a councillor in the UK. No, no no because

no no no no um because that's actually one of the politicians not fixing the roads it's the person who goes around getting people together and saying we need to tell the councillors to fix the road so loudly they'll actually do it okay yeah now because cam Cameron had been doing this for so long, and his job was to recruit community organisers, I quote him here, it was easier to promise than deliver. The logic is that you need someone who is smart, but if you're smart enough to be an organiser, you should be also smart enough not to do it.

And if you're black and the pride of the family, why would you want to become downwardly mobile? I mean, there's no money in this. There's no future in community organizing. So if you're the pride of your family, if you're the smart one, if you're the one who could actually do the job well, there's no way you're going for this job.

Calman struggled to find people he liked. But when he phoned this Obama fella in New York, he was impressed. He was surprised to begin with because apparently he assumed he was Japanese. Turns out it's a half white, half black guy from Hawaii. So there you go.

He made an elaborate meal. Parade down the street. Anyway, he saw Barack as someone who was looking for a home this is clearly a young kid who wants to belong somewhere he wanted to help disadvantaged people he wanted a mission in life and he was worried that barack was going to come along and then just go off again because it seems like this kid likes moving around. But he also seems very keen, so let's give him a chance. So yes, come to Chicago, I'll hook you up with some people,

you can come and work as a community organiser, you can have a job. So Barack moves to Chicago. He goes to a neighbourhood near the University of Chicago, and he found a cheap first floor apartment. He spent very little time in his apartment. He spent most of his time out and about. He started by being given a tour of the city by cowmen. So he went to go and see the abandoned mills and the rusted ships.

And, I mean, Chicago in the 80s, very much in the same kind of trouble that New York in the 80s was. Yeah. It was a tough time for certain communities. Equally, you've got Reagan in the same kind of trouble that New York in the 80s was. Yeah. It was a tough time for certain communities. Equally, you've got Reagan in the White Office talking about how rich everyone is now. Right. Yeah.

Anyway, Calman saw that he'd made a good choice almost immediately because Barack seamlessly just chatted to everyone he met. He talked to the community organisers, he talked to the members of the public, he talked to everyone, and he just seemed to get on with everyone. Brack himself spent his time making a list of all the priests and ministers and other community leaders that he could, and arranged to interview every single one of them. Because if he was going to have an impact, he had to know who was who. He couldn't just swan in and say, hey, do this.

He had to be part of the community himself. So his first job was to introduce himself to literally everyone who was some kind of community leader. And he threw himself into the work, only stopping to run or play basketball. But apart from that, he didn't really have a social life.

This was his life. He spent his time in meetings, visiting churches, which was most of the community work and writing he was still asking himself questions about his identity and about how to enjoy life while seeing so much suffering it's like can i go and just enjoy myself and watch some jazz when i know that there are people starving in the streets that i talked to earlier it's like guilt kicking in isn't it yeah been there for a long time yeah but it does

seem that slowly he comes out of his angsty student phase at this time he calms down a little bit before long he was very comfortable in the community he was helping and says that he finally felt black rather than mixed race and he actually fit in somewhere because he's very much in a black community and when he was in education people would talk about his mixed race heritage and talk about how white he is how black he is and but when he was just talking to someone in the streets of chicago they didn't care that his here's this young lad actually helping them out but with i don't know whatever's going on with their lives and he was just chatting to them and he just fit in there. So he finally felt like he was fitting in in the community. He's feeling accepted, isn't he?

Yes, exactly. His day-to-day work life was varied. He worked across five neighbourhoods, all different socio-economic backgrounds. I mean, none of them really rich, but it was like there was poor and then there was really poor. Yeah. Yeah. He could be working with bus drivers and nurses one day who lived in areas that had been ignored by the sanitation department.

Maybe another day he's working with single mothers trying to get them into training. He could be working with the elderly, trying to get them to connections for state help or give them advice on healthcare yeah so general community work most of it was driving from place to place and being in boring meetings with officials trying to get these officials to actually bloody do something and if he wasn't doing that he was talking to distressed people and seeing projects he had spent months on go nowhere as it just hit a wall of red tape as soon as he finished and passed it on to the government and said, here, all you have to do is sign and then it hits the red tape. Frustrating.

Yes, very frustrating. This is why no one really lasts in this field for very long without becoming jaded. But according to him, 5% of the time, something would happen. And I'll quote him, the sudden sound of hope in the voice of a grizzled old man, or the shy housewife standing up to an official. That 5% of the time, something like that would happen, and that would all make it worth it. And that's what kept him going. after a few years of this uh this was his home chicago was his home like nowhere else had been in his life he settled there but things were starting to stress him out the nature of a job meant that he was getting burnt out and frustrated with politicians that weren't fixing anything yeah yeah this is like i say typical to anyone who works in charity fields or community organisations.

Any of our listeners who work in an area like this fully know that this is what happens. You get burnt out. Yeah. However, Brax started to think something that doesn't happen very often. Maybe, he thought, just maybe, I could make a bigger change if I was one of the politicians and he started making small comments about how if he was mayor of the city he'd do this and he'd do that and

slowly the idea of him getting political power to make change starts to grow within him and eventually he speaks to cowman he said how he was scared he was going to end up like his father frustrated with the world and never making a difference. Yeah. And he was no longer happy with that 5% improvement to the occasional person. He wanted to make bigger change. So, he was finally going to do it. He was going to go to Harvard

Law School and become a lawyer. Hey! He's going to do it. He's bitten the bullet. Yeah. He didn't want to do it, because it felt like betraying his roots somehow but he has come away from that and gone no this is now a route forward to making change because if he becomes a lawyer every time something came up in the future where the lawyer said oh well we can't do that then he could fight that personally the moment as soon as the lawyers

step in and say well that can't happen that's it it's gone all the month's work's gone yeah but if he becomes a lawyer himself he can fight fire with fire cowman didn't argue back he agreed that the problems in the united states at the moment were so big that needed change from the top grassroots is important but it's not going to fix everything so cowman i mean by this point he was very worn out himself in the field. So it's like, yeah, okay. But not everyone agreed. Many in his circle saw politicians as the enemy. One of his friends told him that he was currently the advocate of the people,

but politicians by their very nature are the opposite, and he was going to become the enemy if he does this. Still, this friend who had said that had connections to Harvard, and because Barack was a friend, he wrote a letter of recommendation. This friend was a little bit worried that Barack didn't quite have the grades to go to Harvard. He had decent grades, but they weren't stellar grades.

Yeah. But this friend had seen the work he'd been doing in Chicago for the last several years, and was like, well, this makes up for it. He clearly is very bright and he knows what he's doing so he writes a very glowing letter of recommendation and Barack is accepted into Harvard hey yes so uh Barack splits up with his girlfriend quits his job and gives his cat to a friend oh no yeah yeah yeah all things that I didn't mention by the way he's dating people all the way through this.

He got a cat at one point. But no, this was a clean break for him. It's like, no, I'm going to go to Harvard, and I'm going to focus on that. There was no time for girlfriends. There's no time for my job. There's no time for Mr. Snuggles. Oh, not Mr. Snuggles.

I can only assume that's what his cat was called. Yeah, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Or Miles. Maybe Miles. Miles Davis obviously. Yeah, yeah. Or Miles. Maybe Miles? Miles Davis. Definitely Miles, yes. Miles, Miles the cat.

Yeah, two cats, Miles and Davis. Yes, excellent. Yeah, so he starts Harvard in 1988, and he made a good impression. He was older than most of the other students, because he'd spent all his time in Chicago working. And he had a good impression. He was older than most of the other students because he'd spent all his time in Chicago working. And he had a massive wealth of experience that almost all the other students did not have.

Yeah. Most of the other students have not done anything in real life and they're coming to do their law degree because that's what you do next. And they'd read about poor people. They haven't really come across poor people. Not in Harvard Law School. Of course not.

They might see them out of a window occasionally. And then Barack comes in, and he knows this life inside out. So professors loved him. It's like, oh, good luck as a mature person who actually can talk about real-life things rather than just bloody students. As ever, he seemed to get on with everyone. Where other students got into bitter political arguments,

Barack never did. Even with people he fundamentally disagreed with, he'd never get drawn into an argument. He'd just calmly and politely listen to them and then calmly say he disagreed with them and then that was about it. He spent most of his time in poorly lit libraries. He found law, like literally everyone we've ever covered in this podcast,

tedious and disappointing. Yes, it's really, really, really boring. He continued to write, and he was one of the editors at the Harvard Law Review by the end of his first year. Now, being one of the editors at the Harvard Law Review, apparently it's a big deal. Apparently it was a very argumentative and fractious place to be, where you got liberal editors and you got federalist editors. You got black editors, white editors.

You got all sorts of editors. And they did not mix. They did not agree with each other. And they were all writing for the same thing. Lots of arguments going on. But yet again, people there at the time say their residing memory of Barack was his ability to move between all the different groups. As per usual, his closest friends were the black people,

but he was on friendly terms and mixed with all the others, including the conservatives, who he disagreed with politically, and everyone seemed to get on with him. It's something that seems to pop up a lot. It's like, yeah, everyone gets on with Barack. In summer, he returned to Chicago and continued his community work, but it wasn't long before he's back in Harvard and studying again.

And because of his maturity, he got on very well with his professors, like I said. One of his professors recommended Barack to her father, who ran a law firm, to get a summer job, to get experience in a law firm. However, it just so happens that this firm's recruiter had got there first and had noticed Barack. And Barack was, to this recruiter, a smooth-talking, good-looking hotshot who probably thought too much of himself but still it's probably what the firm needs so yeah so she recommended him for a job in in the firm so with recommendations from the professor and the recruiter he easily got a job in this law firm the recruiter was a woman named

michelle robinson uh she was given the job of... Oh, I was wondering if that was going to... Yeah, they just hit, yeah. Yeah, she was given the job of showing Barack the ropes. So I remember interviews to say, like, he, you know, he went out with his boss. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, so she's showing him the ropes.

To Robinson's surprise, she found she actually got on with this hot shot from Hawaii. Yeah. Still, she was cautious. He was probably just putting on a show for the job. Meanwhile, Barack met a friend and told him about his new summer job and the recruiter who was showing him around and said, and I quote, man, she's hot. I'm going to work my magic on her.

Anyway, so he asked Robinson out for for a date but she refused no no professional we're working together professional uh she found the idea of the only two black people in the firm dating somehow tacky as well so we'll just be confirming to stereotypes no professional not interested uh she also she came from the south side of Chicago. She came from a poor family, the kind of area that Barack was working in, actually, but she didn't really realise this at the time. She just saw a rich boy from Hawaii.

Yeah. But Barack continued to ask. Go on, go on, go on, go on, go on. It's fine. It's not stalking if eventually they say yes, because then it's romantic. Everyone knows this. Fine line between stalking if eventually they say yes, because then it's romantic. Everyone knows this. Fine line between stalking and romantic. If they're weeping, you say, okay, I give in.

Yes, date. No, she caves in the end, but doesn't say, doesn't say, let's go on a date. She caves, they can go out, but I quote, we won't call it a date. Oh, okay. A meeting in a coffee shop. A meeting.

Barack agrees. So they go to an art installation and then to a jazz band. And then they go and see a movie. And then they end up in an ice cream parlor, the same chain that Barack spent his childhood in in Hawaii. Sounds like a pretty good first not date to me. Yeah, that sounds like a really good not date. Yeah.

How do you fit all that in? An art a jazz band and then a film and then go and get some ice cream oh and there's a walk through the park at that if you make a day of it like you're going to see the thing in the morning yeah it's a full day you're going to see the art installation in the morning i mean jazz band should be in the evening. It should. It should. I was thinking that. It should be. Art installation, then the movie, then ice cream, and then jazz to finish the night. Yeah. Jazz, like, 12,

from midnight to about 4 in the morning. Yeah, some sexy, sexy jazz for your night date. Anyway. But, it's not for me to tell Barack Obama how to organise a date, I'm sure. No, I mean, yeah. Because apparently it works.

Michelle Robinson admits that after this, not date, she was sold. Yeah. So the two spend a lot of time with each other over the summer. She was soon invited to meet her parents, who, like I say, lived in the kind of neighbourhood in Chicago he was used to. Her parents had been worried about Barack being white, but were soon won over.

Yeah. Which is, like, as a white person, you... Always good to be reminded that Barack's getting this from both sides. Yeah. Yeah. But they were soon won over when they met him. It became very clear that despite his background, he knew the community, he knew the culture, he fit in perfectly. There was no

problems there. Yeah. Anyway, back at Harvard, Barack was making his mark. In the often tumultuous atmosphere of the law review, he had put himself forward to become the president. This wasn't unusual. About half of the editors put themselves forward every year. Yeah. So in this case, it was about 19 people. There was a conservative faction and several liberal factions, one of which was behind Obama. However, as the conservative nominee was knocked out early, due to the fact that Obama was always polite to them, the conservative faction swung behind Obama, giving him a push.

I'll quote here, there was a general sense that he didn't think we were evil people, only misguided. So yeah, so it turns out him just being polite to the people he disagreed with gave him a huge political advantage. And it was enough to build momentum. Obama became the president of the Harvard Law Review, a position that would do just about as much for his CV as education at Harvard himself. Which, by the way, he graduates. He does very well, yes. A friend

told him at this point that he could go straight on to clerk for someone in the Supreme Court, and then maybe one day he could become a law professor. Oh, lofty goals yeah can you imagine if he achieved that those high high stakes obama wasn't impressed apparently he just looked at his friend kind of seriously is that all you think of me uh no this was not the future he wanted

he was then offered a clerkship on the US Court of Appeals. Like, here, have a job, and a job that will bottom the rung, but you will go places with this job. But no, he turned it down. That's not what he wanted. Yes, he had gone to law school, but he'd only ever done it for a reason. He went to law school not to become a judge or a teacher.

What he wanted to do now was write a book. Really? Yeah, he'd always wanted to be an author, remember. Now, he'd already been approached by a publisher. It's the kind of thing that happens when you become the president of the Harvard Law Review. Publishers come to you and say, would you write a book? We'll probably be able to sell it. To Obama's amusement, they wanted him to write a book about him pulling himself out of the black slums of Chicago and getting into Harvard, because they'd made a lot of assumptions. Yeah, so he met with them a few times

and eventually agreed, okay, I will write a book, but about something else that I actually know about. So yeah, he's got a book deal. He just doesn't know what he's going to write about. Yeah. Yeah. However, he first needs to get a decent job. And he does need to get a job with a law firm

because it just makes sense. He needs to make some money. He's very poor at the moment. With his CV, he could work into any law firm he wanted, but he still was not happy with the idea of being a lawyer, so he does the best thing he can think of, which is go to a small law firm with a history of civil rights cases. There's only about 12 people there,

and they focused on things like voter rights, tenant rights, employment rights, and whistleblower cases. This was the small firm that would stand up for the little person against the big machine, is what he told himself. That's how he justified himself being a lawyer to himself. Anyway, he was told when he got the job that he could pick any case he wanted that would help him sleep at night. So do whatever you want, Barack. He was also approached by a friend who worked at the University of Chicago. Would you like to teach part-time?

And by part-time, we don't mean that you actually have to teach. We mean we'll just pay you to be part of the university. You can have an office, and in fact, you can spend that time writing your book if you want. So would you just like some money and an office for nothing? Yeah. Yeah, says Barack. I'll have that. I would love an office. Yeah, it'd be great.

The book, by the way, he's decided by this point is going to be on race and voting rights. So, yeah, an office to go and write my book in. Sounds great. You might be wondering something at this point, Jamie. Yes. What are you wondering? I'm wondering when does he stop being a lawyer? That is literally what I'm wondering. Oh, OK. That's not quite what I thought you might be wondering.

I'll get to that, though, because that does... We'll talk about it. No, I thought you might be wondering, why is Obama suddenly living a dream life where people are just giving him stuff? Oh, that's a good point. Yeah. Why has a law firm just said,

yeah, fine, take your pick on whatever cases you want? And why has a university come along and just said, yeah, we're paying you to not do any work? Well, this is because people have started to notice him. He did well enough at Harvard that there were some people around who were going, this is a rising star. And if we hitch our wagon to him now, it can pay off hugely later on down the road. Dividends. Oh, yes. So let's just give him some stuff. Yeah. And just tell him to remember us later on in life. Now, this led to some resentment. There were some other lawyers in that firm would look over to Obama occasionally,

and he'd be literally sat there with his feet on the desk with his laptop on his lap, typing away. Yeah. What year are we in? Oh, we're in the early 90s. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. He's got his laptop, and he's typing away on his book

whilst everyone else is beavering away being a lawyer. He's just writing his book. Still, it wasn't as if he was doing nothing, by the way. Don't get the impression he suddenly just led a life of luxury because what he was really doing at this time was being in charge of the Illinois Project Vote. This was a voter registration campaign with 10 staff and over 100 volunteers. It had a goal of registering 150,000 of the 400,000 unregistered black voters in the state. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot. This is a national movement,

by the way, all over the US, designed to combat the Reagan administration's stripping of the social security net. We need to do something. We need to get organised. We need to get out and vote. We need to get people to vote for their own interests, damn it. The man in charge nationally, called Newman, had kept hearing about this name Obama in Chicago.

He was head of the Harvard Law Review. He did lots of community work. People I know keep mentioning his name. So he contacted Obama, who was interested in running the Illinois branch, but was worried that it would mean he'd miss the deadline of his book, because that's his focus. He's going to write his book. His book, by the way, at this point had stopped being about black people and voting rights

and had morphed into an autobiography. Okay. He was now just writing his life. Thinks very highly of himself. He's about 30. Bloody hell. Go on, Barack. Yeah. When talking to

Obama about this, Newman pointed out that Obama you're in your very early 30s do you really want to spend time writing a biography about your life when you're this young or I don't know do something to actually help democracy that's kind of what you've been talking about isn't it this seemed to really wake Obama up

to the fact that he had fallen into the trap that he'd always said he would never do he said for ages no actions not words I'm not going to be a lawyer but then eventually he became a lawyer now he's just sitting in an office that he doesn't do any work in and he's writing a book about himself yeah yeah so he kind of shook himself a bit and went, oh dear, what am I doing here? Right, okay, let's do this project vote thing. So apathy is what they focused on. Obama was frustrated by the black youth wearing Malcolm X t-shirts,

but not registering to vote. It's like you're talking the talk, but if you want change, you've got to actually go and vote. So they leaned into that. Instead of having boring register to vote posters, they created Malcolm X themed posters with the big X on it and just the slogan, it's a power thing. They really leaned into something that sounded a lot more interesting than register to vote.

He trained volunteers to get the word out. He met with politicians, community leaders. He went back to doing the kind of stuff he was doing when he was a community organizer and he used all the connections he had from those days, but also all the connections he had from his Harvard days. Project Vote was so successful that it exceeded its ambitious goals. To the point that, for the first time ever, the number of registered black voters in Illinois was higher than white voters. Wow.

Yeah, that was beyond anyone dreamed they'd be able to do. In the upcoming elections, therefore, local black candidates did very well, but so did the Democratic Party. Bill Clinton wins Illinois against Bush. Oh, yes. Okay. So successful was Obama's running a project vote that many in the Democratic Party took notice of him. This could be a rising star. I mean, he's not in the party or anything, but he's doing stuff and it's helping us and people are saying his name.

Anyway, it's around this time during Project Vote, Michelle and Barack get married. We're in 92 at this point. Yeah, apparently it's a really nice, fun wedding. Guests came from all over the place hawaii kenya chicago uh yeah nice nice wedding everyone has a good time uh soon after obama found himself with enough time to focus on his book completely so after his honeymoon he rented a hut on a beach in bali i've been to bali it's beautiful did you rent a hut?

how old were you when you were in Bali? pre-covid if that helps would you say early 30s? yeah, oh no what was he like, 21? no no was he 3?

he wrote his novel at 3 Obama, everyone hates you, this is why no, he's about... Was he three? Was he three writing his novel at three? Obama, everyone hates you. This is why. No, he's 31, if I've remembered exactly. Maybe he's 32 by this point. I was slightly older than that. Yeah. Did you think about writing your biography of your life at this point?

No, I just wanted to see, like, Komodo dragons. That's what I wanted to see. Oh, right, OK. Yeah, well, he writes. He writes and he writes and he writes. He what I wanted to see oh right okay um yeah well he writes he he writes and he writes and he writes he's always wanted to be an author so renting a hut on a beach somewhere and writing a book must have been the dream yeah he emerged with this book dreams from my father I say this book I'm holding up to the camera so Jamie can see it there we go

that is the book that he writes at this time. I don't know. I'm getting a really bad feeling about that. I don't know why. Just like, it seems very sort of... Up himself? Yeah. Yeah. I know what you mean.

It is a little bit, isn't it? Yeah. What I will say is it's very well written and very interesting. It is certainly not a bad book. No. But I think it takes a certain personality to decide in your late 20s, early 30s, you're going to write a biography about your life when you've been asked to write a book about black people's voting rights.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I mean, it did the job. You got paid for it. it wasn't like hugely popular as you can imagine who is this guy but it then becomes very popular when it's republished when he becomes a senator yeah and in fact it also as we will see does him some good because it is not written by a politician that's a good point yeah yeah so he's not trying to hide things he's not trying to come across like in a certain way because it will look good in the optics.

It's just written by a guy talking about his feelings about his father and about race and about America and about the plight of the poor people. That's a pretty good point. So it's interesting. Anyway, with the job of writing the book under his belt, he decided the time was right. So he became a lawyer, remember, to get into politics so he could help the people he was helping before, but from a different perspective. And he was determined not to become just one of those politicians.

We'll see how he does. So do you remember he was offered a job clerking for someone on the Court of Appeals and he turned it right down? Right, well, that person was still a friend and Obama went to go and have a chat with him. His friend had some bad news. The Chicago political scene meant that people got jobs because it was their turn, not because they were there to try and do some good. It was not Obama's turn. Who was he? There was no way there were any political jobs for him, none of the big ones anyway. So Obama decided he needed to network.

So he continued working for the law firm and the university. By this time, he actually taught some lectures, mostly on voting rights. And for the law firm, he was now actually working, not writing this book. But he wasn't one of those lawyers who go into courts and argue cases. He was in the background doing legal writing. That's what he did. When he wasn't doing that, he and Michelle accepted whatever invitations they could to lunches, dinners, receptions, etc. They networked, they networked, they networked. And eventually, an opportunity opened up, because a Democratic representative in the United States Congress

called Mel Reynolds was found guilty of sexually abusing an underage campaign worker. Yeah. Ah. Now, bear in mind that this was back in the days where if a jury found that you had sexually assaulted someone, it was actually damaging to your political career. Oh, yeah, I remember those days. Yeah, do you remember those days? Yeah. We'd have to resign and you'd be, you know, a pariah. But it was only liable for sexual assault, as if that's any kind

of defence. Anyway, I digress. What this meant was that there was now an opening in the United States Congress. Now, this is too big for Obama, definitely. He can't just go from nowhere to the United States Congress. But a member of the state senate of Illinois, Alice Palmer, decided to go for the United States Congress seat. Well, as Palmer was going for the National Congress, why couldn't Obama go for her state senate seat, he thinks. So he sounds out all the contacts he had in the party. Could he do this? He met with Ivory Mitchell, who worked in the party, and Mitchell said, OK, well, how much money do you have to put behind the campaign?

And Obama replied, none. I'm not rich. I don't have lots of money. I have maybe five, six dollars. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, by this point, him and Michelle were doing absolutely fine financially, but they weren't mega rich.

And not enough to lead a campaign. Yeah, exactly. However, Mitchell was impressed with this young man. He saw something in him. He knew him and he saw that he was possibly a rising star. So, he told Obama, okay, well in that case, the party will have to fund you then.

His main opponent was Michelle Obama. What? what yeah i married you because you're cute and you're smart but this is the dumbest thing you have ever asked me to do his wife said michelle obama did not want to get into politics she wanted to do things that helped communities they they have a very shared vision here. But she couldn't see her husband's... She couldn't see why her husband wanted to get into politics. That's the enemy.

They don't help people. They just pad their pockets as the poor people suffer. This explains a lot of, like, interviews and things that I've seen with either Michelle or Barack. He's always been like, yeah, Michelle wants me to stop and she'd kill me if I rang for a third term. And there's this weird thing at the moment, like Michelle's going to run. That's what I was literally about to say. Anyone who knows anything about Michelle Obama would never go, oh, she's going to run. No, there's no way she wants that job.

She just does not. But yeah, so Michelle Obama doesn't want to do it, doesn't think that it's a good idea. But Barack wins her round eventually. And once she has won round, she jumps in with both feet. Anyway, Palmer announced that she's running for Congress. Obama announced that he's running for her vacant seat. Saying at a press conference that he wanted to

restore people's faith in the job of politicians because currently they were seen lower than lawyers. And that's a bad place to be. Yeah. So the Obamas start campaigning. Apparently Michelle was very efficient and very good at it

even though she didn't want to do it she was very good at doing it Barack was less so, he was very good at meeting people he got on with people but he was slow and he would talk to people for too long and he wasn't ruthless enough to just go right, we've had our time, I'm now off to go somewhere else

we've seen this a lot before but it doesn't always hold people back no personal touch so anyway they're winning people over things are going very well but but then obama gets some awful news his mother was very ill he drops everything and jumps on the plane to hawaii but he was too late he arrived the day after his 52 year old-old mother dies. 52? That's very young. Only 52.

Remember, she had Barack when she was very young herself. And Barack's not that old at this point. So, yeah, it turned out that she had cancer that had gone undiagnosed for ages. And when it was caught, it was just too late. As always, very hard time for the family, obviously. His sister had managed to get back in time, and other families were there, so

when Obama arrives, family are there, all devastated. They have a funeral. But as ever, life goes on, and three weeks later, Palmer loses her race for Congress. Well, that's going to put a spanner in the works, because

she has quit her job in the State Senate, but she can now run for her job again. Yeah. Yeah. Obama immediately calls Palmer. And luckily, Palmer says, no, no, don't worry, I'm not going to get back into the race. I'm not going to try and get my old job back. That's fine. Just not going to happen. back, that's fine. Just not going to happen. Relieved, Obama carries on campaigning. However, things do not go well immediately. There was a groundswell of support for Palmer. Palmer was liked. No one wanted her to leave the state senate, but they understood why she was. But now she wasn't going somewhere, she can come back, says everyone. Who the hell is this Obama kid? We don't want him. We want you, Palmer. A lot of public pressure was put on Obama to drop out

it's not your turn he was told basically but Obama refused and then Palmer announced that actually she's thought about it a little bit and actually she was going to run for the seat Yeah this is pretty much an end of Obama's campaign there's no way he could beat the incumbent

who was popular. However, in order to run, Palmer needed the signatures of 750 registered voters in the district. A formality. Obama's team, absolutely desperate, decided to have a look at those signatures. And to their joy, they found they were very messy. It was full of fake names addresses that were not in the district it was obviously very badly put together yeah now like i say this is a formality especially for the person who had already got the seat but technically it had to be

done and it hadn't been done right how could you fail at that? The basic, like, how can you fail? Surely it takes more effort to fake and... You'd think, you would think. Yeah, Obama's team realise they're onto something, they have a look at all the other candidates and realise that everyone else has been sloppy as well.

In fact, the only ones who hadn't been sloppy were them. So they roll with it. Now, Obama's not happy about this. He thinks this is very dicey. Yes, this could get Palmer kicked off the ballot, but oh, it's not going to make him popular. He'll have just kicked off someone who everyone likes off the ballot on a technicality.

So he wonders what to do for a while. His advisors are saying, do this. Come on, seriously. We've got something here. It's the only way we can possibly win. In the end, Obama is one round. Okay, yeah, let's got something here. It's the only way we can possibly win. In the end, Obama is one round. Okay, yeah, let's pull the trigger. The issue was raised and looked into by the

governing body, and seeing the evidence, Palmer is removed from the ballot. Many were very upset. Many saw it as typical politics. Most people didn't care at all because they're busy leading their lives and they don't care about the inner workings of a political party.

Anyway, Obama wins with 82% of the vote. He is now a politician. He is in the state senate of Illinois, and that's where we will leave him for today. Very interesting episode. I had no idea he lived in Indonesia. Nor did I, Jamie. It's crazy. Yeah. i know i knew very very little

about obama there's been many times whilst doing this podcast i've thought i wonder and then stop myself it's like you will have to research this at a later date so don't look into it yeah loads of fascinating things i found the thing i most was surprised by was how much I related to him. And I think it's because he's... Because you're black. Well, not that. No, obviously. No, the fact that he's going to university and drinking and

listening to the Rolling Stones. Things like that. And obviously I'm not that generation, but it's close enough that I can see it. I can go, yes, no, that's a real thing. I mean, I say not that generation. but it's close enough that I can see it. I can go, yes, no, that's a real thing. I mean, I say not that generation. We went to university and we drank and listened to the Stones. Yeah.

We did that. It's like, yes, I can see little snippets of modern life in this, which, spoilers, we're not going to see again. Yeah, which is really interesting and the other thing is um i was pleasantly surprised i kind of assumed he was going to grow up and yeah go to university and become a lawyer and yeah and i kind of assumed that all the talk about oh he's a really good man was typical politics bigging up your uh your man in in the white house yeah but he actually went and worked in communities for years and felt guilty because

of the way he was brought up and that's what led to that yeah he genuinely wanted to help poor people yeah and you're not in a kind of yes I became a politician because I want to help poor people. In a, no, I'm not going to get a job as a lawyer. I'm going to spend several years working an awful job because I want to help poor people. We have not, I don't think we've seen that. Have we? Have we seen that? I don't think we've seen that. No.

They either become lawyers or they're soldiers or they're rich. Yeah. It's someone who actually genuinely wants to seem to help people. It's such a breath of fresh air. We'll see how things continue, but I am pleasantly surprised. I never thought this was going to be a bad episode in terms of all these lots of scandal, but it's better than I thought it was going to be.

So, yeah, interesting. He's always seemed like a nice politician, and it's nice to see that that isn't a facade so far. Yeah, so far. And it's not all perfect. I mean, the guy's clearly got an ego. Oh, obviously, yeah. I mean, that was obviously even though he's president. Writing, obviously, yeah. That was obviously when he was president.

Writing your autobiography in a hut in Bali when you're 31. This is my life. Yeah. Yeah. I just was like, well, things aren't going to get more interesting than this, so I might as well write my autobiography now. Yeah. Anyway, right, we should probably stop just rambling on about it but there we go

that's obama part one aiming to be three episodes this one yep so we'll hit his presidency and get into that so uh thank you very much to everyone who has been listening to us for all this time yeah and thanks for downloading us way download us and And thank you for our patrons as well. That's really helpful. It allows Rob to do what he does and it allows him to be chained to his office chair. Yeah. Those chains don't come cheap, Jane. No, they don't. They're a massive investment, so thank you.

They're bulky chains. They are, but yeah. Girthy. They've worked. Yeah. I guess so much work done now that I can't leave. Yeah. It's good.

Yeah. And also, thank you to Robin Pearson from the Byzantine History Podcast. Yeah. Because we had a chat with him. I'm not sure exactly when our interview with him is going to go out on his channel. But if you are a listener to our Byzantine episode, well, Roman season two, as we call it, then look for that coming out soon because that was a fun chat. OK, then. Right. Really should say goodbye now. We're chatting. Yes. So goodbye. Goodbye. building a sand castle i love building a sand castle kenny kenny hey hey barry how are you Kenny Kenny Hey Hey Barry

How are you? Hi Kenny Happy birthday Oh thank you Well he says I've got to give you this Oh thank you Oh Oh

It feels like a book Oh I love a colouring book Thank you so much Yay That's okay Is there any jelly at your party? Yeah we've got some jello In the bowl over there.

I love jello. Oh, it's so great. We've got ice cream as well. Ice cream, yay! In my fifth birthday party last week, we had lemonade. You had lemonade? Oh, that's so good. We've got root beer.

Oh. Full of sugar. Are we going to play pass the parcel, Kenny? Really fast with all the sugar. Anyway, are you going to open your present, Kenny? I chose it. Mummy wanted to get you something else and I chose it. Yeah, hang on.

Oh. wanted to get you something else and I chose it. Yeah, hang on. Oh, it's a book. It's got your name on. What's this? It's my autobiography, Kenny. What? Struggles Through Kindergarten. kindergarten an epic in five parts this is part one um thank thank you but my mummy told me to say thank you um can we just go eat some jello kenny jello kenny do you realize there were poor people kenny and you want to eat jello you might as well on as well **** on the poor people. God damn you, Kenny. I'm off to go and smoke and write poetry. Who's Barry? You be Barry. I think you're more boring.

Sorry, that was really a funny song. I'm very sorry. I didn't mean it. That was not true. Oh, well, that's going in the episode. Right. Yeah, okay.

You know the facts more. You can just ramble about your life. Good save. There won't be anything on five. But yeah, okay, birthday party.