Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - We are supported by... Samantha Power

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

We are supported by, hosted by Kristen Bell and Monica Padman is a 10 episode limited series podcast. Each episode deep dives with a woman who has put a crack in the glass ceiling. Episode 4: Samantha Power Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi. We have one of your idols on today. My very faves. One of the people that I think is just an exemplary person living on the planet. And, you know, does not come without controversy. Sure. But every person does. And I think just, you know, she has lived a life that is crazy. She was a journalist covering human rights. She saw the world from that perspective for so long that when she got into politics, I just felt every time I was tracking her, reading about her, she just had such a level head about dignity. And her name is Samantha Power. And I just love her like crazy. And she's currently the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development

under the Biden administration and was the United States ambassador to the United Nations under Obama. And she was with President Obama from the inception of his run for president. Yeah. And this is neither here nor there. This is a just weird ding, ding, ding. Her husband, Cass, co-wrote Danny Kahneman's most recent book. Really?

Yes. And it was so bizarre. It was so weird because we interviewed her and then the next day, Danny Kahneman's team reached out to us for armchair and I saw the book and I was like, whoa, that is too simulation-y. It's very simulation. I mean, they write books, that couple. Oh, she's a, speaking of, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Yeah. That's actually how I discovered her because I read her book, A Problem from Hell, probably, I don't know, 15 years ago when I was studying and researching

and trying to figure out all of these wars that were happening everywhere where sort of America was getting involved and what's right and what's wrong. And I was specifically concerned with the child soldiers in Uganda, but she had a really amazing perspective on that. But she wrote this really dense book called A Problem from Hell. And she's just so thorough and so thoughtful. And then she also just in the midst of all this became a mom a few times over and, you know, hid her pregnancy when she was first working in the White House because she was like, I don't want them to think I can't do my job because I can do my job. And so she was

just wearing like really big shirts and running to the bathroom all the time. And yeah, what I really like about the show that we're doing is we are trying to show women in different lines of work in different areas and trying to cover all of that spectrum. And the political one is so specific and so male-driven often. And so it was really, really, really cool to hear this powerful woman who's among all these men all the time has to find a way to make her voice heard. And I just, I really enjoyed hearing how she did that. And never has a victim's attitude about it. Because she's definitely like in her new book, An Education of an Idealist, which I loved reading because it's very much,

you know, sort of an autobiography. She's got such an idealistic point of view. And she talks about how she was sort of schooled about what has to happen and how you have to compromise and what can you give up. But in it, she goes into a lot of situations where, you know, she's three minutes late for a meeting in the White House, but to walk into a meeting where the president and, you know, 10 heads of state are waiting for you, to walk in three minutes late is excruciating. You might as well walk in completely nude. Yeah. And she just talks about that with such levity. She's just a real human being that you hear speak when she writes, and I couldn't love her more. And I'm glad that

you brought her to the table, and it was such a fun conversation. So please enjoy Samantha Power. We are supported by Wondrium. I find that I'm endlessly curious. Yet, if the television comes on, I will watch something mindless. Absolutely. I'll watch, you know, three hours of a reality show that I didn't need to have in my life. And then I'll feel like, man, I could have been educating myself. And Wondrium gives that to you. There's curiosity at your fingertips, video learning experiences, audio learning experiences, going so much further than what you'd find searching on the web. There was one called The Brain-Based Guide to Communicating Better. So good. So good. Because for your personal and

professional life, communication is key for everything. And there were like lessons and practical strategies, and it was just really, really cool. And they have documentaries, tutorials, and a ton of collections. It's really, really great. If your curiosity has ever been piqued about anything, you will love Wondrium. Wondrium is the best. We use it and love it. Join us and experience your own mind-blowing moments with Wondrium. Right now, our listeners can get this special offer, a free month of unlimited access to the entire library. Go now to Wondrium.com slash glass to sign up today. That's W-O-N-D-R-I-U-M dot com slash glass.

Wondrium.com slash glass. inside gonna turn it up gonna break it we're gonna feel it all and gonna let you fall gonna make it we're gonna raise our hands gonna raise our voice gonna break it we're gonna lift us up gonna sing out loud gonna stand up tall Rolling. Rolling. Well, wait, first of all, which is more difficult, setting up podcast equipment or asking the world to acknowledge genocides? Be honest. Be honest. Well, asking is easy.

It's succeeding and getting them to do anything that's harder. How are you guys? How's it going for you with this? Well, we hate to be happy, but we are, you know. Can't be happy. You cannot be happy now. Well, because we're talking to people that we have an undying amount of respect for.

And you are at the very top of my list. And I've admired you for so long and read even some of your really dense stuff. Because you can write dense, girl. That's no joke. A Problem from Hell was not a light book. Yeah, that was when you outed yourself as being more nerd than glam. That's fine with me. Look, in preparing for this, searching on the internet and seeing that people have Samantha Power fan club t-shirts. And then coming to the realization that they're not sold. They were made. And that I can't get one was something that did not make me happy.

I was like, well, obviously I need one. I'm going to wear it to the interview. Couldn't find it. Oh, no. And then I just felt an immediate, my competitive glory kicked in. And I was like, who does this girl in the T-shirt think she is? Oh. I'm the president of the power of fan club.

We can all be fans, Kristen Bell. I know. That's what we're working out here. And also, Kristen is going to put an Etsy store up because all she's been doing over quarantine is crafting and gel nails. So she's going to do an Etsy store up because all she's been doing over quarantine is crafting and gel nails. So she's going to do a store. We keep talking about my A-list crafting to keep me busy. I've knitted a sweater and a half. I like to make clay figurines of all my family. So there's just like mishmash faced clay figurines everywhere. And I figure why not a Etsy store? And you can do Samantha Power t-shirts.

Hold on. Oh, no. And the text I get, Finley pooped in Rian's room when I opened the phone. Finley is not a child. That's a mother's text. Finley is a dog. Well, yeah, we should say this interview is happening in February. Okay. but it will come out later in the year. And so at that point, you will be in the job. Yes. Of of of USAID administrator or administrator of the Agency for International Development. When Kristen was saying, you know, we get to sit here and we get to talk to people that we're incredibly taken by. Don't you feel fraudulent? A hundred percent. We feel so fraudulent.

And I wondered what your experience was. Do you feel that, Samantha? Like, do you feel fraudulent in these spaces? Because you're in this insane arena. Like when we come at you with the Sam Power fan club stuff, do you feel as fraudulent as I feel? Because I think mine goes deeper because I'm like even saying someone else's words. Like I can't take credit for the good place, but do you find that at all? I mean, the short answer is yes,

but it's complicated partly because of the things that I tried to do that didn't pan out, that are much more salient in my memory, it's partly because virtually on any issue where I've even made modest inroads, it's what you were just saying about the good place. There's some team of people that you're working with where when I was UN ambassador, I was the person out in front, but then I had all my sanctions nerds or my humanitarian experts or my climate law people. And yet I'm the bright, shiny object. So absolutely feel, I don't know what the right word is, not sort of chastened, I suppose, and just a little bit like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's move on. Let's talk about something else. In how much I feel like I've exposed myself to your life and your work, I feel like you've set

such a tone and an example for me as to how to give credit to other people. Because one thing I love about when I read your writing is you take such time and loving tone when you describe the people that you work with. And I'm not talking about colleagues that are peers. I'm talking about like, there was a chapter in Education of an Idealist

when you talk about having gotten a new position and how much Maria the nanny you hired for your family to watch after how much she did the kudos that you give to the people that you work alongside not just in compliments but in they are literally the wind beneath my wings I couldn't be here here. It's just honorable from my perspective of, oh yeah, this is a woman who recognizes it's not just her. There is an entire support system here and not only recognizes it, but you take the time to put that information out there. Well, when I chose to write about my life, I think the way I rationalized doing so, because it felt a little bit self-indulgent, you know, it's one thing to write a book about what we should do about, you know,

sexual trafficking or about climate change. It's another thing to write a book about oneself when those problems are out there in the world. And part of my logic was I'd had this experience of being an activist and being before that a reporter on the outside looking in and thinking I had a pretty decent understanding of how things worked in the U.S. government. And then I got in there and I started to see this tapestry of humanity, right, both in terms of where people were from, where their parents had immigrated from, religion, race, gender, just the range of backgrounds and people that I was coming in contact with. And I, on the outside, would have tended to focus on sort of the Secretary of State or the President or the National Security Advisor. Then I get inside, I'm looking under the

hood and I say, oh my goodness gracious, it's so much more interesting and rich than that. And it's a scrum at virtually every level of government. And who are these people, you know, who aren't interviewed by the press, aren't profiled in Vogue or any place else. And yet they're the lifeblood of the system. So the idea was, open it up and tell a story about that. And I want people who read to not just see themselves and ask themselves, oh, maybe one day I can be UN ambassador. But there's so many ways to make a difference. That was an objective was to show, look at all these different ways of making a difference. Separately, though, describing Maria, who was our nanny, was I suppose motivated by something else, a what's factual and true, which is there's no way in hell I would have been able to do anything

without her. So that was an imperative to tell that story, but also to show that it isn't easy and to show the privilege that I had to be able to hire somebody like that, both to have the resources to do so, which so many working women don't have or working parents don't have. So I just felt like, let me own this. I am lucky not everybody gets to do this. with Maria, who is a magical human, and for it to still be me barely hanging on, barely hanging on. Having the conversation with John Kerry about Russia sanctions and having Declan, my son at the time, still my son, my son at the time,

six or seven, at me trying to get my attention and being on with Kerry and trying to shoo him away as we all working parents have the experience of doing and having him trying and trying again. And finally him stomping off and saying, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin. When is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan, Declan? And that's my version of it. But every working parent has a version of that story, right? And that's when I have a Maria

and that's with all the blessings and privileges that I've had. And so I wanted to open it up rather than like, sometimes I feel like it's so stylized, you know, me and my children and my work-life balance, you know, everything is going so swimmingly. Yeah, it's a charade often. Well, I also know that you said that obviously you're telling people to lean in, but also to lean on. And I think that's so important because there is this ideal that like women have to do it all. They have to be the mom and they have to also work and they have to do this and they have to be loving and nurturing and also disciplinarian. And like they have to be all the things. And also like they have to be all the things. And I think it's really good to say like, no, rely on your village, rely on the people around you because they bring you up. And I also wanted to give you, Kristen, maybe you learned it from Sam, but probably, I mean, maybe it's a fisherman seeing another fisherman at sea, but you are the epitome of that. I would not be sitting here if you hadn't done that for me. All you do is bring people up and acknowledge them and give credit. And you should take that in. Well, you know, I will say-

That's the only compliment I'll give you for the week. Copy that. I will say also, I was downwind of Mike Schur, the creator of The Good Place, for many, many years. And he just reeks of lifting people up. I was going to ask you if someone modeled that for you. Yeah, that's beautiful. reeks of lifting people up. I was going to ask you if someone modeled that for you. Yeah, that's beautiful. Oh, he stinks of it. He is the best boss I've ever had. I was desperate to figure him out. Like, what is it? What's his special magic? What's the recipe? And number one, it's that he's just kind and respectful, but also he goes out of his way to uplift people in a very practical and tangible way. Like he will see our prop master who is exquisitely talented and he'll say, the next time I'd like you to be the production

designer. But it was the specific desire he had to isolate people's talents and then just see how he could water that seed. And it doesn't make sense in my brain to not do that. And you were so apparent in the beginning when I met you just as like an acquaintance. And I was like, oh, this girl's going to do great. She's going to be my boss very soon. And lo and behold, here we are. But I do think in a female space, that can be hard to do. I think there's a lot of feelings of this can go into race as well.

But like, you know, there's only one slot or there's only two slots. And I got one, so I got to hoard it for myself. That's natural to feel that way. I mean, we have to combat it. But I think I don't know if it's natural or if it's societal and that there's only been one place at the table and it's been looked at as a gift. But I think to fight it for sure and not fight each other. Did you have a group of women who you felt like you could lean on like professional or personal? So in my in my early 20s, I was in a pack of female war correspondents and they were all

like me. But by and large, freelancers who would have been prone to not be that welcoming because in the freelance environment, you get strings, you get a string that connects you with a publication, with a magazine or a TV station or a newspaper. And so if you're seeking to acquire lots of strings so you can make piecemeal enough to get by on, it's not in your interest for some other correspondent, male or female, to show up. And yet when I arrived, all the men were like, no, there are no strings available. We got it covered. And this woman who was Time Magazine's freelancer, Laura Pitter, said to me, just don't listen to those assholes. Of course there's work. Come, come. And she wrote her

number on a coaster, which I tucked into some book I was reading. And then I was back in America, and I was thinking, just been to the Balkans that one time. Should I go back? And I have her little, I remember it was a CompuServe email address that she had. It was like the first internet where you had to plug your computer into the wall. And I thought, will I email her? Will I call her? Is she right? Or are those guys? Is that what it's going to be like?

And I trusted her. And I went and I stayed in her apartment. And she taught me how to write a lead and do a radio and NPR radio spot. She kind of educated me. And then the circle expanded of just more and more female correspondents like this. And they were all in my wedding. They're my best friends to this day. We have, you know, one of those message chats, you know, we're posting the latest outrage on this or that, or the latest book we've read that

we recommend to everybody. So, so that was just a kind of network that grew up and really defied, I think journalism's reputation and maybe some of the reputation that some women have for kicking the chair away once they've achieved something for themselves. That was not my experience. Then when I got to the White House, I was not conscious initially of being a woman in the workplace. Weirdly, I was pregnant. Then I was initially the mother of a newborn. I was new to government. So how do you get a decision out of the president on something that matters and is urgent? I had to learn that as well as I was the human rights advisor, which is likened to being the skunk at the lawn party because there

are a lot of trends and tendencies in American foreign policy that cut against human rights. So initially I thought, number one, I'm bad at my job, which is terrible because there are people outside counting on me. And number two, I'm bad because I'm new and I suck and that's it. And I've just got to get better. And it's all about me. And it was only when a female colleague of mine named Liz Sherwood Randall, who's now President Biden's Homeland Security Advisor and a huge job at the White House.

Yeah. She said, ladies, there are only six of us out of 26 senior national security staff. We're meeting in my office on Wednesday night. We're going to have one glass of wine. Yes. And bear in mind that the NSC offices at the White House, if you work on national security because of all the intelligence, you work inside a safe. So you literally have to turn one of those dials, like in a heist movie and you walk into that safe. And so suddenly there's a bottle of wine in the middle of this safe and these five other women, I kind of, we work on different issues. And so they seem to

totally have their acts together. They had none of the, these thought bubbles. It seemed to me from the outside that I was having of why am I so bad at this? Why am I not getting things done? Then we sat down and one after the other told stories just like mine. And then I realized, wait a minute, there's something else going on here. I mean, everybody who was there working for Obama at that time was a progressive in their orientation and probably would have self-identified man and woman alike as a feminist, but it didn't matter. There just were these ways in which a woman's comments weren't elevated or taken as

seriously. It felt like at least that was the other woman's impression. And certainly it was the impression of my own contributions or my own inability to get things done. So once we had just that one glass of wine in that venting session and I heard, I was like, okay, wait, she works on nonproliferation and she works on counterterrorism and they're having the same experience I am. So it's not because it's human rights. There's some other dynamics here. And numbers matter, right? You go from being the only woman in a room to being a majority and how just things change in such subtle and essential ways without you even noticing. But it was that experience. And Liz convened this group. Then every week, any one of us was in town. It was called the Wednesday group and was on our calendar.

It was like a permanent thing. It totally changed the way we thought about ourselves and our own abilities. And it changed the way we interacted with one another. If one of us was in a meeting, even if we were disagreeing, Liz and I disagreed fervently on a couple issues, we would say, you know, let's come back to Liz's point. I'm not sure we've engaged it fully. And just make sure that the dignity and the agency of the individual was respected and elevated. And that was an intentionality and a self-consciousness

I had never had before. Now running a large agency, I'm thinking about it every day. a large agency, I'm thinking about it every day. How do I make the workforce feel that? And not just on gender and not just other people who have long been marginalized or not been present in big numbers, but diverse viewpoints too, right? People who are bringing contrarian perspectives. That may be valuable. You know, because you have to be efficient. You have to get decisions. You can't have long, lyrical debates about everything at all times. You got to keep your GSD up high. You got to keep your GSD quotient at the right level. But at the same time, that feeling that people can have of being attached to something that's inclusive, big priority and a huge

opportunity, I feel like, to, at scale, see what's possible. There's so much to unpack here. I mean, this is why you're my favorite. Well, and also I think, you know, we interviewed Amy Poehler on Armchair and her and three other men created Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a formative comedy experience for so many comedians. And you were talking about this idea that you almost feel like to succeed, you have to be a guy's girl. You know, like you have to be someone who gets along with the guys and who can hang with the guys, quote. And like, I just love this idea that you guys had a girls night, essentially. In a giant safe. In a safe.

Yes. The female relationships are important. And to not disregard those so that you can, like, climb a ladder or you can, like, get along with the men. And, of course, the reason we feel this is because men dominate so many of these professions. But I love that it's just like, no, also focus on the girls. But I never would have done it. I mean, the reason I'm so careful here on this one to give credit where credit is due is that Liz had been,

she'd worked at the Pentagon for years. She'd been in some of the most male-dominant and she just knew that this was a place that she could create just with this small act, right? A place of refuge and a place to inculcate a solidarity that wasn't there before. And when I became UN ambassador, I had talked to Madeleine Albright, who was America's first female secretary of state,

shattered some serious glass of her own. Big time. Before that, she was UN ambassador back in 1993, so 20 years before I was in the job. And she had had this insight as well that I would not have had but for Liz and but for Madeleine, which is when she got to the UN, there were 183 countries represented there, and only seven of the ambassadors out of 183 were women. So she created something she called the G7, which of course there's the group of seven among countries, but Girl 7. And she gathered those seven female ambassadors together. And I think they managed to notch some not trivial policy achievements insofar as they got female judges elected to the

war crimes tribunals. And those judges ended up being involved in passing down the first ever verdicts on rape as a weapon of war and as a form of genocide. So it ended up having this knock-on effect. But beyond that, they just met and it allows you to identify kind of what's you and what's the and what's the vibe and what's society or what's the community, the broader dynamics. And it was across region and religion and because just what these seven countries happened to be that had put women forward. When I got there, flash forward 20 years, there were 193 countries in the world. About 10 countries had joined the UN since. And when I arrived, we had 37 female permanent representatives, female ambassadors. And so on Madeline's advice,

I convened the G37 and it would fluctuate. It went up at one point, I think it was the G41, G42. Do you know this book, Confidence Code? No. Writing it down, tattooing it on my body. Women and girls and confidence and so forth. So we brought these authors to talk to these female PRs about confidence. And these are women who were often the first person in their, not only in their family,

but in their village to go to college. And here they were representing their country at the United Nations. Just breathtaking stories of courage and resilience and so forth. And yet here they are talking about confidence and disclosing what it's been like for them at every stage when they've been, you know, breaking through some barrier in Nepal or in Vietnam or in Mozambique or whatever. And so that was amazing. And then we had a dinner with Gloria Steinem and for them, you know, in their own countries to be able to reflect to her about what the feminist movement in the United States meant in their own communities. And so some of it

again was, was breeding that solidarity, but some of it was cooperating as Madeline had done on concrete issues and things that we were trying to achieve. You know, for example, getting more female police and soldiers into peacekeeping missions because sexual violence is such a recurring challenge. So, you know, again, it's practical, but it's spiritual. For sure. And it takes time. And that's what goes, right? When you get busy, when you get stressed, when you're in challenging or competitive work situations, that's what gives

because it's the first thing that gets dropped from your schedule and yet it pays off. It pays such dividends. So make that time. Oh my God. Again, there's so much to unpack. Wait, but first we have to fix this.

I want to help you fix this. Listen, what if you took those headphones off and you flipped them over, right? Like invert them, right? And then still put it on the back. Is there a hook that goes over your ears? There must be something. There's something. I am doing this wrong. See that whole, the little space between the actual speaker and the black hook thing, that goes over the top of your ear. Oh, this. Does that mean?

Yes, yes, yes. Oh. How do you feel now? Oh my gosh, breakthrough. Women helping women. Women. What I thought you were going to say, it shows you how old fashioned.

I thought you were going to say what I've tried to do multiple times, which is that, you know how they used to be able to adjust? the black. Expand. Yeah, yeah. And then I'm like, no, I've tried that, Kristen. But you're a great listener and you knew there was a small possibility that I had something to contribute and you went with it. And this is why I love you. Oh, deliberation of this. Now you can like do anything you want with your hands. Hands free. They call it hands-free. They call it hands-free for a reason.

And we fixed it. We have no wine. We're not in the safe and we did it. This is the power. I would love to go into the safe. Oh, me too. I feel jealous. We are supported by HelloFresh.

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at betterhelp.com slash glass. That's betterhelp.com slash glass. I would love for you to explain a little bit your thoughts and feelings on being pregnant in the White House. Okay, so I hid my pregnancy late. Hid in quotes, you know, pathetically thought I was hiding. Sure, sure. Like I did on House of Lies when I had a whole bunch of briefcases in front of my giant belly. You were doing the same thing.

But I presume people on the set were in the know. Yeah, it was pretty obvious. It's now been, my son is 11, so by definition, it's been 11 years since I felt I had to do this. So I met my husband, Cass Sunstein, on the Obama campaign in the early part of 2008. He proposed shockingly quickly. We got married in July 2008. The election

of Obama was in November 2008. And by then we knew we were pregnant. We got pregnant in sort of August. So I was only a couple months pregnant at that point. And then thinking about what job am I going to do in the Obama administration? And to be honest, my thought was not they're going to hold it against me that I'm pregnant. I actually internalized we have the massive global financial crisis at that time. We're trying to get our troops out of multiple wars. crisis at that time. We're trying to get our troops out of multiple wars. America's in a big hole and they would want someone who won't go away for three months. I looked at it, putting myself in their shoes and just thought, well, gosh, I mean, it's an emergency situation. And so even

if they won't mean to because they're progressives and understand the rights of women. They're not going to be able to help themselves. That's an important acknowledgement, I think. And it's a sort of a contrarian's acknowledgement of like, you weren't coming at it from the place of it being sexist or that they wouldn't, they would hold it against you. But it's simply a reality sometimes for the other side to go, oh, I'm supportive of this, but she's going to leave for three months. We need someone to fill the position. Yeah. And so I did the whole scarf thing. And then my vanity started to kick in at a certain point. So then I was sort of torn. But a colleague of mine who was one of Obama's climate advisors, we were due right around the same time. And we had a kind of one of those where we

noticed we were both wearing scarves in much the same style and sort of mixing it up. We had one of those looks across the room. And so we chatted. Our boys ended up being born within days of one another. And so this became a recurring sisterhood of, you know, then we had to deal with pumping and visiting our babies during the workday once we went back after maternity leave. I mentioned that just because whatever it is that we women do internalize about the culture, it can impede or contribute to delaying the enjoyment of full rights. Exactly. What I wish I had done is just said, here's the situation, in part because there are younger women behind me. I was in my late 30s when I had my first child.

And so me hiding, what signal does that send to people who are thinking, do I have a baby? Do I not have a baby? Me hiding badly maybe makes it even more like the worst of all worlds, right? So I think just to have the confidence to know that these systems are there to protect you. I mean, there was no paid leave, right? At that time at all. It's something we still have to work on. We're still like the last developed country that doesn't have that. So that's another issue related to it is if once everybody was well aware that I was having a baby, I was lucky to be able to take the three months and use the vacation days and the sick days and then have savings that I could draw on or have my husband still working. But just the choices that forces people in the federal workforce to make, right? Where you're not going to be with your baby even for three months. You're going to have to go back after six weeks because it's not covered and you can't afford to buy formula or send your kid to daycare without the income that you get. So I think there were a lot of dimensions to being pregnant. And then when I went back, I really did go back whole hog. I had met

Maria, this amazing immigrant from Mexico who spoke to my son in Spanish. And I'd come home and she'd be dancing to Mexican music around the apartment and just so full of love and prayer and, again, this kind of effervescence. So that made it easier to leave. Of course, the first day I said goodbye, I'm bawling, you know, I mean, and Cass and I are driving together and he's quite stoic about it. He's like, you'll be back tonight. You know, he's chemical. I have to be with this child. I'm meant to be with this child. But we put him in a daycare right across from the White House. So I would sprint in my very modest heels, looking like a Washington working woman, and then like sprinting down the corridors of the old executive office building, darting across the street, trying to get my feed in. And then on a few occasions, you're not even thinking

about it. I just know I have the meeting on atrocities in this country to come back to. And so as I'm hustling across 17th Street without even knowing I'm doing it, unbuttoning the top couple buttons, the efficiencies have to be found. And then on a couple occasions, just getting so busted, kind of pointing and saying, you know, you go, girl. What do you think your most embarrassing or comedic intersection of having a career and being a mom is? It is. The thing that is coming to my mind is less about the many times in which, you know, I'm swooping up my daughter and have the, it was a Blackberry in those days, but the Blackberry wedged up to my ear and then I feel her peeing. Release. Release, release is a better word.

Thank you. I'm on with John Kerry and I'm holding her and it's going all down my suit. So there's that. There's that whole genre. Thank you. I'm on with John Kerry and I'm holding her and it's going all down my suit. And then I realized I don't. So there's that there's that whole genre. But I think maybe the better example, because it's parent or not parent, I think it's got feeling like a novice, where I was adjusting to having been quite close to Barack Obama, the senator and the candidate, to now there being some layers between me and him, not having walk-in privileges, certainly at the Oval, and really not seeing him much as he was dealing with the financial crisis and other very grave matters in the early part of 2009. So I'm, I think, around seven months pregnant at this time. I finally get summoned to the Oval to brief him

because he's having a meeting with the UN Secretary General. And in addition to being his human rights advisor, I'm his UN advisor. So I'm absolutely psyched. And this is it. I'm going to remind him of what he is missing by not having me in the inner circle. I'm going to nail the brief. And the way our offices are structured, there's the old executive office building where the

National Security Council staff and other White House staff work. And then just across a tiny little lane is the West Wing. And when I get over to the West Wing and I realize I know where the West Wing is, I've been to the Situation Room many times, had many important meetings, just I'd never been to the Oval, ever. I'd never even been on a White House tour before. So I was like, damn, where's the Oval? And instead of doing what I should have done and what I'm confident most dudes would have done, which is just ask somebody, how do I get to the Oval? I hustle back across this little lane, back to my office, up these flights of stairs to my office. And I Google West Wing map Oval Office.

You wanted to do it by yourself. Damn straight. Because you don't want people to know that you've not been to the Oval Office two months into the... So turns out there is a map online, but it's a Washington Post map. That's really mainly about who's powerful and kind of who's close to whom. And it's not about actually finding, it's not like a guide to getting to the oval. So I print it out, but it's not drawn to scale. I get back over there. I'm still, there's a chance I can make it on time still. It's my only briefing, like it's my only briefing. And I'm just desperate. And I'm so panicked. And I'm still holding my little battered Poland Springs water bottle

because I'd fainted as a pregnant mother in my first week at the White House. So I carry that water bottle ever since. So bottom line is I'm 10 minutes late for this meeting. And I come in and everybody's seated, the National Security Advisor, the secretary of state, this funky moon is not in the meeting. It's still in the pre-brief. I put this, you know, and it's a water bottle again that I've been carrying for weeks. So, you know, the green sticker is like all, you know, the green sticker on the pole. I mean, we shouldn't be carrying such bottles and I no longer carry such bottles. I want to assure people you were reusing it. So I was reusing it, but nonetheless. But I had the bottle.

I put it on this coffee table in front of Obama where his apples were. And next thing, this like butler comes over and just picks it up. And he's got this look on it. Disgust. Just this unsanitary thing, like out of the view of the president. So I'm late. I do my briefing. I'm breathless.

Obama ends up like cutting me off and just saying, why don't you catch your breath? We'll come back to you. Like it's just so humiliating. And it's exactly what you don't want to do. You don't want to be the pregnant woman who can't finish her sentence. So what's important about the story though,

because it's not really a mothering story, it's just more the inelegance of it all when you're trying to do too much at once, is that I was so mortified. I didn't tell anybody the backstory, the map, you know. And after about two years working at the White House, I'd say I had come across a half dozen people who used the exact same Washington Post map

and got lost in exactly the same way. And because I told it for when I started to feel more confident, I did, I told the story like in a commencement address or something. And one by one, these people come up to me and said, I use that same map. Like I, oh my God, that happened to you too. You know? So it's more just that, you know, you aim to sort of show that you have it together and it makes matters worse. There's that, but it's also just so many people who look like they're strutting around with poise and so collected, whereas you're the scattered one. There's this great expression, never compare your insides to somebody else's outsides. And I just love that.

Love it. And that Al-Anon, that's where I learned it. Al-Anon, exactly. And I think that that is a story that just shows that, that so many people have that same churn of like, how am I coming across? I've learned my lesson. I try to be an authentically humble person, but man, I will switch on a dime to an overly confident person. I'm picturing myself going through that, walking in, and just the first thing I say, like not even maybe waiting for the president to address me, being like, I got lost.

It's all happened to y'all. Everybody's used that stupid map. I'd like to sit down. And this is where like I can switch on a dime, but I would look around and be like, yeah, okay. Is anyone else in here sustaining another life? No? Okay, moving on. Oh, I love that. I do feel a real desire to own when I feel like I'm either putting up with some shit. It's learned because if you're in an environment where you're afraid

you're going to lose your job or you're afraid, yeah, there's somebody in line, then yeah, you have to come with the map because you have to prove you're competent. yeah, there's somebody in line, then yeah, you have to come with the map because you have to prove you're competent. You can't ask for help because that shows that you don't know what you're doing and you've never been there. And if you've never been there, then you're probably not good enough to be there.

And, you know, it just like spirals out. That definitely it's learned then because I think that my owning my privileges, I've been in a position of privilege for so long being an actor who could pay my bills people want you in the room 100% yes exactly and then so I have the luxury of not dealing with that of oh I'm gonna be kicked out and actually just going straight to bitch I've been through a lot this morning I want everyone to be able to fast forward that's what I'm saying I wish I could bestow that feeling because it is a quite a liberating feeling that I don't necessarily feel is combative but rather ownership of my space and honesty

I wish desperately that I could like bottle that and hand a bottle to everyone who needs it because I we're gonna sell it in our merch store oh on, on Etsy. Yeah. We're going to be able to sell it. Don't you think COVID and the circumstances of the Zoom life could be throwing a spanner in the works here in interesting ways? You know, even small things like Zoom bombs and dogs barking. And for us as women and parents, there's just no way around that the personal life is going to quote unquote intrude on the professional life. And yet now that's true for way more people, right? Just that kind of integration. I just wonder if we're passing through this season of vulnerability of the deepest and most primal sense, but also of exposure and whether that creates more give or

more of a willingness on the part of people to assert that life is life. But like Zoom brings it all right because it's both lives are often captured. But there are upsides to it in that, like I'm seeing what's behind you right now. You're seeing what's behind us right now. You're seeing the actual practical, tangible space. And there's something to that, like, especially a comparison you brought up in your book that I love so much is when you would get to know people at the UN, you were saying that like you valued it because when you walked into the room of someone else who was from another side of the country, you didn't just look at them as the representative of Senegal. You

looked at it as, oh, this person has a picture of their family on their desk. And I see now what this person likes to drink for lunch, what kind of tea or coffee they like. And you're able to humanize people so much more. And maybe even these little boxes where we get a glimpse into each other's spaces is actually partly bringing us closer together. Yeah, and just in the gender space, like, yeah, if the dad is on a Zoom, the kid's probably coming in there too for, like, maybe the first time a dad is experiencing the intrusion of life. Like that amazing BBC interview that we all made fun of

from, like, eight years ago when the baby came in. He was talking about something so serious. And now that's everybody. It is. It's bringing some equity in, I think, in a fun way that no one expected, which when you were talking about maternity leave and that whole period of time where you had kept it quiet, the reality of the situation is they needed you there. So you had to be there, you know? And I think that's a really big reason we need paternity leave, not just for men so that they can spend time with the kids, but so that it's equal so that if a child is born, it's not just like, well, the mom's going to be gone for three months. It's like, well, the dad's going

to be gone for three months, too. So it's all one thing, you know, and you can't parse out the female element of it. Right, right. No, absolutely. Yeah. You had also referred to that when you were, I think, appointed to the National Security Cabinet position, there was like a picture taken of Declan running to you. And I just want you to express what the reaction was to that picture from people that wrote you. So first, let me set the scene, which is in order to become U.N. ambassador, I had to go through Senate confirmation, just as I did for USAID. And I had written prior to that point, maybe a million words as an activist, critic of U.S. foreign policy, had written books and so forth as well. But those words were, I knew going in, were going to be picked apart and challenged. And when you said this, and how can you defend having said that?

And so sure enough, that's what happened. And so Declan at that time was four and he was sitting behind me. Maria was there with our daughter, but that didn't last long. That was going to be the, how could anybody be mean to me if my infant daughter was behind me, but that didn't work out so well. That was your insurance. Exactly. So I could hear Rian off in the hallway, you know, Maria walking her back and forth and I just wanted to go out. But I was there answering tough questions for a good few hours. And when finally the gavel went and this quite difficult few hours for which I'd been preparing for weeks finally was over, Declan just leaped over two rows of chairs and just went into my arms. And it was so beautiful.

He and I talk about it even because it was, I think, primarily his sense that I needed protection on one level, you know, and sort of things in reverse a little bit. And I had needed protection, but I was all alone there for the prior few hours. So he jumps into my arms. And next thing, because it's a high profile position, this Washington scale paparazzi, like a press scrum that just sort of descended on the table. Washington scale paparazzi, like a press scrum that just sort of descended on the table. And my thought bubble in that moment was finally, there's going to be a picture of me and my son because every damn photo is me taking a picture of Cass and the kids and him never taking a picture of me. So like immediately it's just that thought of like, oh, I love it. Like I will exist in this boy's life. So I had that thought, which speaks to some division of labor issues that we may have to work on still in our household.

And then it ended up in the newspaper and was sort of a very sweet photo of just like my relief and his protectiveness. And it was beautiful. And then I guess it was picked up on the wires and so went around the country and was published in other places. But it was in up on the wires and so went around the country and was published in other places, but it was in the Washington Post. And I started getting these emails and letters from people, all different walks of life, just saying how inspiring they felt that photo was. The message was some version of usually, it was just really great to see a person with small kids, you know, going into such an important and high pressure and time-consuming national security role, you know, it gives me renewed faith that we can all do it, that we just all have to just go for it. Pursue your professional dreams and we'll figure it out.

And lean in and lean on. Yeah, the lean on, lean on your, in that instance, I was leaning on my boy. But what was interesting for me was it really caught me off guard. Like, oh, was leaning on my boy. But what was interesting for me was it really caught me off guard. Like, oh, you know, I'm just living, but now I'm doing something else. I'm modeling unwittingly in that case. And so it made me though act differently than for the next four years when I was in the job in being really conscious about how I interacted with my kids or giving more, let me put it this way, giving more visibility into the chaos and into the questions that come at home. There is this great British book series called The Mr. Men. I don't know if you all ever came across it, but it's the best.

Writing it down, tattooing it on my body. It's actually the best baby gift when someone has a baby because it's for kids just a little bit younger. Maybe your youngest, Kristen, would still go for it. It's Mr. Greedy, Mr. Chatterbox, Mr. Mean. It's basically parables about the human condition. Are they little circles? Yeah, they're little circles. Wait, they also have Little Miss because I have a Little Miss set. Yeah, Little Miss. The Little Miss books. Yes, exactly.

And my mom got me Little Miss Bossy, which I found to be a compliment and an insult. It's passive-aggressive. A hundred percent. So I got read in the Miss Books, and Declan reads the Mr. Books and the Miss Books. But because you want to explain kind of why you're away and not just bring your kids into the darkness of why you're away and all the crises,

but I started to explain, you know, each of the ambassadors and kind of liken them to one of the Mr. Men characters so that, you know, who was the Russian ambassador most like? Who was the one who went on and on and on in the Security Council meetings where you could never get home for dinner on time? That was Mr. Chatterbox. Oh, my gosh. And so we would take the globe out and I would show them on the globe where the country was. Yeah.

And it was all great until they would actually come to the ambassador's residence. Uh-oh. Is that Mr. Chatterbox? Oh, my God. Exactly. So out and busted again. But giving voice in public remarks or in interviews with journalists about this experimentation almost or exploration of how to do both,

knowing you're not going to be at full cylinder on both at once at any one time. But instead of internalizing all of that to kind of externalize it, we do beat ourselves up. And so if you show that you yourself are carrying that same sense of, oh, I'll never be enough to be in two places at once, or even use your platform to urge self-forgiveness and that others, you know, kind of forgive themselves. Making all of that more open. And in the Education of Idealists, you know, I wrote about the fertility stuff and miscarriages and IVF, which women, I think, are starting to do much more. And that's another example where if you looked at our literature or

our memoirs, you would think that this really was a very rare phenomenon, the fertility challenge or the miscarriage challenges which are related. It's so prevalent. And in writing the book, you know, I thought I'll surface this and describe my own journey and knowing how many women are going through it. And just so they know that so many of us have gone through something similar. The number of people at book events who come up and the conversation they want to have is about that experience and about that commonality, that solidarity. Someone will identify with you if you're saying something honest. And I think part of the something we get into this rut as humans to find like one identity that is doing it right. And I do that as well. Like I'm looking for like

the way to do it. And this is one thing I've come across in just like, you know, looking at what feminism means. And I'm like, I wonder if we're chasing this one thing when in actuality, it's all the things because I know in my heart of hearts, I never feel more powerful than when I'm doing sort of my what you'd look at as like domesticated duties. Like when I get my laundry done and my sink is clean, I'm like, fuck yes, I nailed it. And I don't necessarily have that feeling like when I get off a set or anything, but like I am elated. I like the feeling of when I'm taking care of my shit at home and I don't necessarily feel like I'm not a feminist when I'm having those feelings. And so it's like someone who's like,

you know what? I'm a working woman. I don't want to have children. This is not my path. I want to just be a career woman. Or someone who's like, I'm, you know, 40 years old and I don't have kids and I have a loving marriage and I'm more of a party animal. I like to leisure time. Or having someone who's like, I want to be just a stay- home mom, which is a huge job with one or multiple children. And then the people who have it, who want both. And it's like all those identities are important to represent to women because they're all choices and not one I don't think is more feminist than another. I think if any of us doubted the endurance and multitasking skills and the empathy and the patience that it took to be a stay-at-home mom, COVID homeschooling has given us some window into why, yeah, you're absolutely right. Like that, that phrase, you know, just to stay at home mom, which the, you know, the words sort of in popular culture

probably still go together too much. And oh, how these women do it. I have no idea. That best meme that came out right in the, in the beginning, it said, and just like that, no one ever judged a stay-at-home mom again. Oh, I didn't see that. That's perfect. I really thought you were going to say your most comedic intersection of being a mom and a career woman was when you were pumping in Anyang Sunchi's bathroom. Oh.

Because I find that to be one of the most spectacular stories that I've ever read. Because I have followed her for years. Aung San Suu Kyi was this, what's the acronym for her party in Burma? NLD. NLD. You're going to be able to speak to it better, but she's a very important figure. And she was under house arrest for 21 years, I think. The president and Hillary Clinton were in the other room talking with her

about major peacekeeping stuff. And you were like, wah, wah, wah. No, I mean, I was in a meeting. I mean, it was a historic meeting. It was the first sitting president's trip to Myanmar. There had been liberalization where a democratic election had occurred and the results were being respected, it looked like. And things were liberalizing. Political prisoners were getting out of jail. I'd actually negotiated the communique before

Obama came with a whole set of concessions by the Burmese government. Obama showed up, the communique was negotiated, and people were happy with it. And there I found myself in her house in a meeting with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and the rest of the team, very small meeting of maybe a half dozen people in Aung San Suu Kyi. And luckily, even though I was incredibly uncomfortable in the meeting. You were busting out. You're in this security bubble, especially when you're in a foreign country, but even in America where you can't get separated from the bubbles. You can't be like, time out, I got to go pump

or whatever. So I just got swept along. You can't raise your hand and say, so excuse me, my skin's about to rip. I need to relieve some of this pressure because that's the reality. You should be able to. You feel like your skin's about to rip. Anyway, so luckily, there was a moment where the meeting got so-called skinny down, where only the principals were left. And I think what was left was Secretary Clinton, Aung San Suu Kyi, and President Obama. So it was very reasonable. The rest of us were kind of shooed away. And I was like, thank God almighty. So I run out to the armored car and I get my little pump bag and I run back and say, where's the restroom? Where's the restroom? So they put me in the restroom and I close the toilet seat. I sit on the seat. I take out the implements and I'm doing

the thing and it's making this noise. And I have that moment, that moment, as you say, you are swept up in it and you are just, it's like the next thing. And you're so busy that you're not going meta on your life, but just sitting there and having to do that for whatever would have been five minutes thinking about this, you know, how did it happen that I'm even married? Because I met Cass on the Obama campaign and then it was all so whirlwind. And then how does it happen that Myanmar has appeared to liberalize in this way and that Aung San Suu Kyi,

that anybody can even be at her house and that she can be, you know, the de facto leader of this country? And wait, how can it be that I had two kids and that I'm pumping for one of them? And so it was sort of the professional and the personal was in all of it to just to say, if any part of this scene, you know,

any shard of this scene, if somebody had painted that picture for me, it would have been completely implausible. It would have been me, you know, kind of doing swim laps on the moon or something. It was crazy. Because I then went meta on me going meta. And I thought, Oh, I'm getting a little carried away. Like, where is everybody? I wonder, let me end my reverie and figure out what the hell is, you know, where should I be at the moment? So I knew that the press had been gathered outside her house. It hadn't occurred to me that the bathroom might be proximate to where

the press was gathered. And so I opened the curtain to kind of check out, like, I wonder if they're done with their meeting. And then as soon as I opened, I see like the back of Aung San Suu Kyi and her sort of beautiful Burmese fabric and the back of Obama in his suit and the back of a podium. And they're there and they have just started their press conference.

And I'm like behind with the curtain and, you know, two inches more. And I'm like flashed to the news. I'm news baby. I would have been news. We are supported by ZipRecruiter. Hiring's hard. It just is. Big time. We are kind of having this right now because we're kind of at max capacity and looking to potentially grow. And it's hard. Not everyone's qualified. Enter ZipRecruiter, who narrows down all these qualified candidates and makes it easy. And make sure that the people you're looking at are qualified. I mean, I am on a school board of my kid's school and we're having to make hires throughout the school administration, not just teachers,

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I will say that pumping does give you that reflecting on your life. A, because there is a physiological good feeling, like it's a dopamine or an oxytocin release, the letdown that they talk about. But also I found that I had some of my greatest thoughts. And also this is another feeling I wish I could bottle and give to people. My husband used to say, why do you exclusively pump when my guy friends are over? And I'm like, I'm so sorry, sir.

I don't exclusively pump. You only notice when it's relevant for you. Yeah, exactly. I was like, let me just be clear. I pump when I need to pump. If your friends are over, that's irrelevant. Because again, I think that that was given to me, that privilege was bestowed upon me from being an actor. When I went back to work after getting pregnant, I said, I can come back and I'm going to need, you know, every three hours, I'm going to need to go to my trailer for 20 minutes. And they were like, great. I had the leverage. So I just want women that choose this path of having a baby. And in pumping have the leverage to be able to say that. And I want the people around them to know how important it is.

Yeah, that just women on Earth have the leverage because they're making more people on Earth. There's no people without us. Yeah, exactly. Like we sometimes forget that. Did Obama break your water? Not like with a hatchet or anything of that nature. Did he mentally break it? Yeah.

Did he mentally break it? Oh, what a stud. So I, like many working parents, worked right up until the last minute wanting to get as much in as I could. it, wanting to get as much in as I could. I had in an earlier book of mine written at some length about the Armenian genocide. In the Obama campaign for president, I had sort of taken an advantage, I suppose, of the fact that I had very good ties with the Armenian American community. And I had offered assurances that if elected president, that Obama would recognize the Armenian genocide. And then I got into government and I was massively outnumbered.

And it was very hard to actually get the issue before the president. It was those layers I mentioned earlier. I thought if I could just talk to President Obama himself, that maybe, you know, I knew he'd be pretty torn up about it because there were costs in both directions, potentially. And I just never had the chance to to make my case.

But I found myself in the sort of last week in April traveling with him and wasn't sure, like, will I stand in the back with the staff with whom I'd worked on the speech? I had the opportunity to go to the VIP section. People were being very nice to me and where I could sit down being pregnant and everything. And I kind of hemmed and hawed and ended up getting separated from the staff and the VIPs such that I was like orphaned backstage at this event, which you never want to do. I have a security guard. He comes up and is like, ma'am, can I help you? And the next thing I hear a voice, a recognizable voice behind me saying, Hey, she leave her alone. She's with me. And it's the president and he's on his way to the men's room. And he sees me and he hasn't seen me one-on-one really since he's been president.

And Bigger and the baby, and he knows Cass for a really long time because they talked together at the University of Chicago. So he's like, how are you? How's it going? What do you do? And he's very friendly. But my response is is I'm really worried about the Armenians. And so I took this like beautiful little personal hello moment and unfortunately routed it. And of course he was really conflicted about it. And when you're conflicted, that can make all of us, I think a little little more maybe defensive. And it wasn't good form of me when he was being friendly. And in general, in government, you should have all viewpoints represented rather than just kind of go, you know, kind of corner somebody and try to convince them. Like, it's sort of bad, even by me, if somebody else had done it, kind of bad form.

And so we talked about it, but it was a very tense discussion. And I think what hit me the hardest was not that I didn't prevail and sort of convince him that this was a risk worth bearing, but it was more the finality of it. And I think that's a big difference between being an activist on the outside or a journalist as I'd been, and then being in government. When you lose and fail in government, like there's no door number two, you know, it's not like there's some other place where this kind of thing is going to get addressed or some other room. I mean, I'm with the president of the United States outside a men's room. So I called, I did it on my cell phone, luckily. So I called Cass and I was like, he's not going to call it

a genocide. So Cass agreed to meet me at a street corner and really reframed it as the way you kind of have to do if you work on causes that sometimes feel uphill, which is you have to value the fight. You know, it's like growth mindset. And then he just said, I'm so proud of you. And then I began to feel a little bit moist at the same time. So I thought, is this just was I was so hot and I was sweating and is it this? And so at a certain point, at the same time. So I thought, is this just, was I, it was so hot and I was sweating and is it this? And, and so at a certain point I called the doctor and said, I, I might be, I'm early. It's like a month. I'm not supposed to, this isn't supposed to be happening, but I'm feeling like a little, so they're like, get over here. And sure enough, I don't know when

it happened precisely in that sequence, but yes, my water broke. And the consequence of that is that my little boy, Declan, who was meant to be born a few weeks into May, was born on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Oh, wow. Yeah, so it happened because this was April 23rd, the day before the statement was to be issued. We talk about what it means to advocate on behalf of things you believe in. And we talk about what happened and how important memory is. And I, you know, we didn't, not when he was like four, were we talking about the genocide per se, but now he's even asking about that. It had a very happy ending in my life, but was immensely frustrating for people who had counted

on me and President Obama. So I'm hoping we'll get that right. Well, I have no evidence that President Obama broke my water, but I will say I have no evidence that he didn't. Fair. When I was pregnant with my first child, I was definitely like nine and a half months pregnant and standing in the bathroom and talking to my husband and my water broke right onto the bathroom floor. And I was like, oh my gosh, it's happening. It's happening. And we call our doctor and I said, okay, so my water just broke. And she goes, okay, great. Come on into the hospital. And I was like, okay, I'm starving. We're going to stop and get lunch first real quick. And she was like, don't recommend that. And I was like, again, I'm starving. I need to. So we stop off at a restaurant and the whole time at the restaurant, I'm going,

I gotta be honest, maybe it's maybe I'm a warrior, but this it's like not that bad being in labor. Like I'm fine. I'm eating like chilaquiles and loving life. We drive to the hospital an hour and a half later and we get there and I'm like, I'm ready. And I'm like, lay down on the table on my doctor, my who is a very good friend of mine, Dr. Hakaka. She lays down and she was like, huh? And I go, what's huh? And she goes, I don't think your water broke. And I was like, no, it definitely broke. That definitely broke all over the bathroom floor. And she goes, okay, tell me this. Can you feel this? And I was like, nope. She goes, can you feel this? And I go, no. And she goes, okay. So

there's a lot of pressure down here. And I think what happened is your water didn't break. You peed your pants and you didn't know. And I was like, what not painful. That wasn't at all the case. I had simply just released some urine onto the floor. And I was worried. I've been worried throughout my recent career about oversharing, but I'm no longer. You've set the bar in a new place. I know notoriously overshare. We've stolen so much of our time. But I do have one more practical question for you, because, you know, no one has done this more than you learned how to talk to men. I just rewatched the final year and I was like, oh my God, it's just Samantha and all these men. And she has to convince them of things and have them listen to her and take her seriously. And I mean,

just practically, how did you do that? How did you make yourself heard in a way where people would listen? You know, I'm not sure I've ever been asked that question. I'd say first and foremost, and this is just relevant in any form of persuasion, which is meet people where they are. Right. So it's not what their position is, but what they're coming from. One of the things I write at length about in the book, and that meant a lot to me was, even if it didn't produce the dividends that I sought much of the time, but was negotiating, for example, with the Russian ambassador, trying to convince Putin's representative to do a set of things

that were oriented in a more humane direction than they might otherwise have gone. And that required meeting him where he was. You know, what were the imperatives that were coming from President Putin, of all people, you know, from Moscow? What are his incentives and disincentives? How do you put yourself in his shoes, even if in certain respects, you don't really want to be walking in his shoes? And the same was true internal to the U.S. government, where the gender dynamics were more pronounced, at least in the early years of the Obama administration, where you were surrounded by men more often than not. And it really was, it was, again, not to just hear what their position was, but to just try to think, okay, where is that coming from? We share the same universe of values. And often

when you're arguing with somebody, you could find some level of abstraction where you could agree completely. And it's only when you drill in a little bit. And so to try to remember what you have in common, but really try to hear what they need, I think is part of it, because that's how you would tailor your message. Then second, and this may be something women are more prone to do than men, I'm not sure, but excessive, over-the-top, over-preparation. So just for the big meetings and the big debates for me to have up my sleeve, the, not only the rebuttal factually, you know, the facts that are going to strengthen

my case, but the rebuttal to the rebuttals to sort of always be playing devil's advocate. Yeah. You make the best argument when you can anticipate the argument on the other side. And so do, you know, just taking us again, a bandwidth issue, but taking that time and with your team thinking, okay, but they're going to argue this. So then what facts do I have to deploy that are going to help? And then lastly, and this, you really have to sort of know your audience, I suppose, and gets to meeting people where they are, but stories and the human connection, which really has been kind of filtered out of many, many institutional discussions. I say institution rather than government, because I'm sure it's true in business. I'm sure it's true in entertainment, at the management level.

But if there's a way, and not always in the meeting itself, but if you have, let's say, Nadia Murad, this amazing Yazidi woman who survived ISIS's attacks and sexual enslavement, or somebody who has worked on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic, or, you know, somebody now in the COVID context who is giving vaccines to people but doesn't have enough to go around and isn't reaching low-income communities or isn't reaching developing countries. But those personal testimonials that kind of can find a way in, you know, if I'm debating with Republicans on Capitol Hill, I'm a Democrat and my, you know, this is my view on this issue and that issue, rather than, oh, we're both immigrants or we're both parents or we're both Red Sox fans or we're both Catholics. And so sometimes it's that

human, something that kind of shakes up the atmosphere and takes you out of that institutional space. Yeah. You have given us so much time and I want this to go on forever, but I do just want to say one last thing. In your book, you brought this word upstander, a line between a bystander and something you call and have denoted it as an upstander. And in my daughter's school, their highest acclaim, their reward is an upstander. And I remember her coming home in kindergarten and first grade and going, oh, Johnny won an upstander today. And it was like, Johnny was Brad Pitt. Like he won the upstander award. And it was like, Johnny was Brad Pitt. Like he won the upstander award and then their picture goes on the wall and why they're an upstander because he believes in helping someone on the playground when they're having trouble. It's, you know, they're all small events that happen in an elementary school kid's life. But the idea of that word has

infiltrated so many communities and so many people, I think greater than you even know, the least of which is my daughter and the way they operate their school. The upstander is like winning an Oscar. And I wanted to say thank you for that. That is awesome. It's definitely the only thing I've ever done that my daughter takes pride in. But upstanding and bystanding, we all live on that spectrum, right? On our good days, we stand up and maybe many more days we stand by because we're overwhelmed. But to have them aspiring from young to have more good days than not. I love that. Thank you so very much. Good luck at your new job. Thank you.

And if you need any help with headphones in the future, just have a great day. There are issues in the world, and this is one. Okay. See you guys. Bye. Bye.