Drama Queens - Pete Buttigieg

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

In a rare, deeply personal conversation, former — and perhaps future — presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg opens up about what it’s really like to lead, love, and parent in a country in crisis.From the life-defining decisions that shaped the man behind the headlines, to why he’s willing to put everything on the line when the stakes have never been higher, Pete reveals how he’s rising to the moment while staying grounded in what matters most.Stay updated on all things Pete here.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress this week. Friends, we have the ultimate whip-smart guest here with us today, someone that I have been geeked to have on the show and who I have been lucky enough to be in rooms with over the years, fighting for what's right, standing for what's good.

and who's smarter than today's guest? Pete Buttigieg is here, friends. If you have found yourself pausing mid-political argument that you hear on TV and you think, wait a second, this actually makes a lot of sense, I would bet you money that you're watching Pete Buttigieg on screen, and I can't believe I'm going to say it, you're probably watching him completely deconstruct insane arguments on Fox News. He manages to answer tough questions with such calm and precision. His steadiness is disarming.

His smile is so charming. And he's just the nicest Midwestern guy in the political sphere. Pete was elected at just 29 years old as a young mayor in South Bend, Indiana. He served as a Navy reservist. He was deployed to Afghanistan. He was a Rhodes Scholar. Oh, and by the way, the first openly gay Senate confirmed cabinet secretary in U.S. history. His resume is incredibly impressive. His commitment to human

goodness is incredibly inspiring. And he manages to spin all of these plates while being a devoted husband and a loving father of two. And I am just so thrilled that he's here with us today. I want to ask him questions about leadership, about parenting, and about how he's meeting the moment in this absolute insane dumpster fire of a 2026. It's crazy out there, friends, but we're managing to find some good and some hope and, dare I say, some inspiration together. Let's dive in with Pete Buttigieg. Hello. All right. How you doing? I'm really well. It's so nice to see you. Yeah, same here. Yeah, my team was asking if we've met. And it was funny. I realized we had that early fundraiser for you out here in L.A. that Lee Daniels hosted. Oh, yeah. There was so much fun and

so great to meet so many people in your world. And then I was telling everyone about how special the Iowa State Fair weekend Gun Sense Forum was back in 2019 during the primary. And yeah, I just realized we've all kind of been in the trenches together for a long time. So thank you for staying in the fight the way you do. Well, uh, likewise. Thanks for raising your voice. It's proven to be even more important now than it was then. Oh, well, thanks. I try.

And I do occasionally remind myself that it is important for those of us who don't hold elected office or an official journalism seat on the news to be able to say some of the things that you guys sometimes can't. So I'm here. I'm here and I'm loud and I'm not going anywhere. Good. Well, there's a million things I want to ask you about. I mean, the state of the world and your record and what it's like to serve, you know, both for the country and an office and all of it. But before we get into that stuff and then all the side note questions I have about young parent life, I actually really want to go back because I get to sit across from fascinating people like yourself.

And anyone who sits in the hot seat has a career that people know. You know, they know your life, they know your work. But I'm always really curious about folks I admire before we knew them publicly. And I especially like asking this question of parents because I think at a certain point, you're reflecting backwards and also forwards. And I wonder if we could have like our own Marty McFly day and go back in time. And we could be having this conversation and walk out onto a playground and see our 10-year-old selves. would you see the man you are today in that young boy and do you think he would recognize himself in you? Wow. That really makes me think. I don't know. I definitely would not have

emerged as a gregarious political type when I was 10 years old, although I feel like I'm not one now at 44 either, even though I'm involved in politics. and I love being around people. But, you know, I largely kept to myself pretty nerdy, you know, absorbed in the handful of things I really cared about most. And, you know, I think at the time I started to understand that the world was kind of divided into, like, bookish or intelligent people. And then the opposite, which is popular people and social people. And I kind of chose between one or the other. So, you know, one I guess thing I've been happy to learn in life is that there is a way to, you know, link the life of the mind and the things you care about and things that are worth studying and getting smart on to participating in public life and being very socially engaged and social and involved and connected.

But, yeah, I mean, when I was 10, I think my fondest wish was to probably be an airline pilot. I had some awareness of politics, but it wasn't really what I thought I'd be spending my life on. So who knows what a 10-year-old me would have thought of what I've become and what I do these days. That's really exciting. What were you reading? What were your bookish habits revolving around then? Oh, wow. That's right about the age when I hit my Star Trek phase.

So I read anything related to Star Trek, the next generation, which was, also what I would have been watching on TV. And yeah, it's funny because I started out with more of a science mind, and I think I wound up with more of a kind of arts and humanities and social studies mind. But, yeah, it's hard to even put myself back in those days. I remember the kind of paperbacks that were going around, you know, the goosebumps books and stuff like that that we were reading. I'd go to the library and check out books on the tight time.

which I was obsessed with. Before it was a movie, by the way. Well done. Before that made it cool. But I was just fascinated by the Titanic and the discovery, the Titanic. In fact, I think the first time, maybe the only time I ever wrote a fan letter was to Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the Titanic, who famously in the 80s was on this National Geographic covered expedition and found it. And one of the great things about public life is sometimes you get to meet your heroes. and I had a chance to meet him while I was secretary.

Yeah, he actually stopped by. He actually asked for the meeting. I don't know how exactly it came about, but he was interested in a couple of things I was working on and just had this out-of-body experience of watching him over breakfast lay blueberries out on the table to explain the trajectory that his research vessel was taking through the North Atlantic where it was covering, it turns out on a secret mission,

covering a Navy-funded effort to find the wreckage of nuclear submarines, which was how he got the Navy to give them the funding that he then used to find the Titanic on the same mission. He has a new memoir out, so this has been declassified, but we didn't know this at the time. So the story is even more amazing now than it was then. And I just, my jaw dropped as I watched this person who was a hero of mine as a kid telling that story in front of me. It was a really, really cool thing. Yeah, you know, the Titanic, tornadoes, Star Trek, all those kind of nerdy pursuits were the Legos. One of the wonderful things about our kids turning forward as they're reaching the Lego phase, which is throwing me right back to when, you know, my fondest hope was to get a chance to build a Lego set any given day when I was a kid.

In fact, sometimes I have to remember that it's their Legos, not Papa's Legos. Like, if they don't want to play with Legos right now, that's okay. I try not to push it too much. But I love sitting down. In fact, even this morning before I caught a flight, somebody for Valentine's Day gave Gus our son like a little, knowing his little kind of mini micro-leggo packets.

It was like a penguin. And I was torn between knowing that I needed to leave to get to the airport in time and him in the minutes before heading to school, insisting that I help him just put a couple more pieces on this little Lego penguin. And genuinely not being sure what I should do. And just to be clear, we finished the penguin before I left the house.

I love that. I love that. See, that is where your 10-year-old self and your present self really get to merge. It's so crazy to hear you tell some of these stories. I've never heard them. And I, too, was a Nat Geo kid. I mean, obsessively so. An obsessive Lego kid. And I have to say, I have never earned more points with my godson, who is about to be four than last Christmas when I won one. Lego Masters. Whoa. And I genuinely was like, this is the pinnacle moment of my career. Like, yeah, movies are great.

TV shows are fine. But this, to be able to do a TV show about my favorite nerdy hobby from my childhood, because I, too, wanted to tinker and build and then watch documentaries and read weird history books. And as an adult, I'm thrilled. There's a third lane for us, those of us who kind of like straddle both worlds. It's so cool If you love the sort of clandestine

Explorer Meets Pirate World of Mr. Ballard, there's a documentary called The Farthest About when we sent the Voyager Out for the very first time to photograph the outer planets Oh, wow, yeah And NASA, the guys at NASA, including Carl Sagan, did some seriously cowboy shit

That's crazy to learn as an adult You're like, wait, what do you? You did what to get that funding? Like you said what to the president? It's wild. So that has to go on your list. All right. That's on my list.

I got to see that. I think that's the most fascinating thing. And spooky, eerie, right, to know that there's this thing that's been out there for, what, almost 50 years now or maybe more. And I think it's still pinging out there. It's out there. It's out there. We lost the last transmission. Yeah.

And I watched the moment that the scientists. essentially had to say goodbye and I wept. And interestingly, I think it will touch you in the same way it does me because when you fast forward to this moment where things are so fraught and they're echoing some of the worst times in history and you think about this mission being in between then and now, the idea that we not only sent out this spacecraft, but that we made art on it. And the art was an invitation to get to know us with instructions about how to come and see us. It has taken me years having seen this movie and rewatching it every year in the summer to be able to talk about it without weeping.

Because it was kind of the best of us in this moment saying, hey, whoever's out there, come say hi. Can you imagine? I mean, that kind of interstellar neighborly attitude, it's crazy to me. It's so cool. Yeah. But I think that spirit's still there. And yeah, maybe at the moment I would say, come say hi, Bill. Give us a few years to get some things together first.

But yeah, there's something touching and there's something universal about that, right? That reminds us. It just kind of pulls us out of the moment and the fights between parties and between countries and reminds us that there, you know, something. things, if some things we're up against, we're up against as a species, not just as a country or as a family or as a community.

Yeah, it's pretty profound. It made me giggle last week, you know, in the time where we're recording this last week, President Obama got asked about aliens and he was like, well, yeah. And then he was like, wait, wait, wait, hold on. Like, roll it back. I'm not saying there's aliens at Area 51.

I'm just saying, statistically, the size of the universe, the galaxies, everybody calmed down. And I was like, oh, boy, here we go. That was pretty great. I'm curious for you, as a curious kid who maintains that curiosity in your adulthood, I have this sort of lore about you. You know, I grew up with parents in the arts,

but you grew up with your parents being college professors. Yeah. Which to me seems like the coolest house to have dinner in ever. Was it? Like, were you constantly surrounded by all these fascinating minds? or did they leave work at work? Yeah, in hindsight, yeah, I don't think I understood it at the time. We lived in a middle-class neighborhood in northern Indiana,

if anything, like being a kid of people who worked at the university, which is probably the biggest employer in South Bend, Indiana, but it was largely an industrial town. So if your parents were at the university, kind of marked you out as maybe a little bit different from everybody else who had, all the other kids who had, his parents had, jobs that I actually understood what they were, right?

Right. You know, somebody's parents were nurses or teachers or, you know, I had a friend's dad who managed a pizza place. Like, I understood exactly what that was. And then I had to explain kind of what my parents did. And it was hard to actually, hard to actually grasp it, let alone, can't pay it. I was thinking about that last year, because our kids were old enough to start asking what, you know, what we do.

And I could kind of explain when I was Secretary of Transportation. Once I really thought about it, I could say, okay, well, you know, tomorrow I'm going to help fix a bridge. A big bridge fell down and I'm helping fix it. Or, you know, I'm helping make the airplanes safer. But then after I finished my time in the cabinet and I had a brief stint at the University of Chicago, I was a fellow there. And my daughter was asking me, like, what are you doing for work? And it took me a minute. And then I hit on it.

I said, well, I'm a teacher for grownups. And she was really upset. She said, but no, you're my papa. That's your job. I was like, no, no, no. I can be both. I promise. I can be your papa and also be a teacher for grownups.

But yeah, in hindsight, it was a great world to grow up. Because some of the grownups that I met when I was a kid who were asking me about, you know, being nice and asking me about a loose tooth or what was going on with my homework or whatever. You know, we're also really impressive. people, scholars in their fields doing really cool stuff. And some of them had a real lives of moral leadership as well, which I gradually learned to understand and to respect. Many of the people my parents became friends with in the 80s were involved in kind of the

big on-campus activist cause at the time, which was standing up against apartheid in South Africa and pressing the university to not invest in. in South Africa until apartheid fell. And that was something my father had cared about all his life. He talked about back when he was a student participating in a protest where they would tie up the offices of South African Airlines. This was in London. He was in England before he immigrated to the U.S.

And they would, as an organized action, they would pair a white student and a black student as a couple, a man and a woman. And they would all line up. by one and go in to book a ticket. And the ticketing agency would turn them away because they wouldn't book a ticket for a couple that was mixed race. And so it was this way to kind of, you know, use their prejudice as a vulnerability and demonstrate something at the same time. So you fast forward to the 80s and 90s, or certainly the 80s. And that was a cause they continued to be involved with one of my dad's fellow professors who came from, it was a white South African who,

actually was originally from Rhodesia, which became Zimbabwe, could have had probably a professional cricket career, but refused to play on a team for a country that was in an apartheid system. Incredible. And then wound up as a political scientist at Notre Dame. So, yeah, in hindsight, what a privilege to be around some of these incredible people. But to me, they were just other grownups that, you know, when I was done, you know, playing in the park with my friends or neighbor kids and came in for dinner, sometimes they'd be over for dinner. I'd just kind of soak up some of the dinner conversation or not. But I guess that's part of how I learned about how the world works.

Yeah. It's really amazing to hear you say that. It makes me think about my own childhood because, you know, we're the same age. I'll be 44 this year. And I grew up in the 80s in L.A. with a dad who's an immigrant and an artist and a mom whose mother was an immigrant who came through Ellis Island,

lived in a housing project in the Bronx, like these very American stories. And in the 80s in Los Angeles in my dad's studio, everybody was gay. Everybody was diverse. I was like, my uncle Jeff was a makeup artist and his husband Winston performed in drag

in West Hollywood as Diana Ross every Saturday night. And like this gorgeous man with this beautiful dark skin would transform into this lady with massive hair and red sequins. And I was like, these are the coolest people I've ever met. And we would play dress up together. Wow. Yeah, that was not going on in Indiana. I bet not.

But it's like how crazy that you were learning about apartheid. And I realized even only recently when people asked me about my journey. activism, I thought it was National Geographic. I thought it was all the books I was reading. I thought it was growing up in Southern California and advocating for the forests and the oceans. And then I realized, oh, no, I was going to pride marches in a stroller. Like, I was getting in fights on the playground because kids were using the other F word. And I was like, don't you talk about my uncles that way? You know, and you realize how shaped for the better you can be by being exposed to other people's journeys and realities and also the purity of a kid going, well, that's the best person I know.

So when you grow up and someone's criticizing somebody for who they love or what they look like, you go, well, that's absolutely stupid. And some adult made that up to fight over something that isn't real because they don't want to fix the problems that are. It sounds a lot like the current White House. I mean, it's it's so surreal, I think, to be at this age and this place, because we've lived long enough to know our history, right? And when I think about, you know, your history in South Bend, becoming the mayor at 29, you know, a young leader after having been a Rhodes scholar, I mean, entering a, into public life in that time, listening to the conversations at your table that you did,

understanding not just what was happening in your college town in Indiana, but the history of how things shifted around the world. Why did you decide to run for a mayor in the first place? Did you find the calling when you were in your collegiate studies, or was it the sort of thing where you feel like the job picked you? Well, like I was starting to say, you know, even though South Bend is a city that's known for Notre Dame being there, it doesn't really have the character of a college town. You know, it was a company town for Studebaker, which was a major automaker until it died in 1963.

And I didn't really understand until I left that it was unusual to have broken down factories and acres of collapsing buildings everywhere you went. Because our city had never really recovered from losing student paper. And then there were even more blow. that came in the 90s to other parts of the auto industry. So honestly, when I was growing up, the message I got about my community was mostly that if you wanted to make something of yourself, you had to get out, which was a lot of people did.

That's what I did. And then as soon as I did, that's when I realized I was from somewhere. I didn't realize that I was a very Midwestern person until I got to college on the East Coast and realized, and this is nothing against the East Coast. but I just, that was a culture and it was different from the culture that I was from. And I started to realize that I belonged closer to home. And I also found that a lot of folks I had grown up with, that kind of generation of people who have a similar story, got a similar message growing up.

All were asking, well, why can't our city be more than it is? Why can't our city be growing? And I think the more down on that community and on the industrial Midwest generally, the more down on it, people, became, the more militant I became about believing in the place. I remember, you know, standing at a party with a lot of coastal college grad friends holding a beer in my hand explaining that I was moving back to Indiana. And someone asked me if my parents were ill, if that was the reason I was going back. So I couldn't imagine that I would just go back because I thought it was longer I wanted to. You know, another friend who could never remember whether it was Iowa or Idaho or Indiana that I was

Oh my God. You're like they're really not similar at all. Exactly. And so I think all of that helped me build this identity that I really cared about where I was from in more ways than I understood. Because growing up there, sometimes I did feel at odds with my own community, felt kind of different and wasn't sure how I fit in. But by the time I decided to come back, I knew that I couldn't should make a difference and do something about it. And things had gotten more and more difficult for the city's reputation. There was a big national spread on America's 10 dying cities right around the time I ran for mayor.

South Bend was listed as one of them. Just to give you a sense of it, our per capita income around the time I ran for mayor, it was about $18,000 per person per year. And we had a whole blocks on the west side of our city that had more vacant houses than houses of people living in. But a generation of people who thought doesn't have to be this way. And I think when you run for office and you're that young, in a lot of ways, your face is your message. Just even the act of running was kind of me saying, look, I believe in the city, and I think all of us should. And what I found was a lot of voters from an older generation actually wanted to support that because they wanted to believe it'd be the kind of city that their kids or their grandkids would like stay in or move home to the way that I had. It was kind of like a seal of approval on our city having a lot of value.

And so I found that we had a real kind of intergenerational coalition coming together to make that campaign happen. And then we won, which was just the most amazing thing. I was in it to win it, but I still couldn't believe on some level when we did. And then, you know, then came the hard part. Then I had to deliver and had to pull together as many people as I could to change the story of the city. And the incredible things we did. Year by year, things started to change. Yeah. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors.

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matter was quite different. And it's not lost on me that it's you and it's me having this conversation together. And it's beautiful to me that by 2015, when you were in the middle of your re-election campaign, you came out and you did it in the local newspaper in South Bend. And to know, because, you know, again, deep research nerd over here, to know that you won that election with 80% of the votes, it's like you think about how different it was by the time you were in your early career to how it was when you were a young boy. Like, what's that backdrop like? Because yes, I want to know how do you put a coalition together and what is your first sort of plan of attack when you're fixing a city? But also,

you're a person. You're not just a leader. What was it like to take that personal? It's funny. My brain's sort of arguing between two words. On the one hand, I want to say it's a person. It's a personal gamble. And on the other, I want to say, it's really taking the reins. It's taking your own power. It's choosing your own identity in your own way. It's vulnerable and it's very strong. One way to say it is that it was less of a confidence that things would work out politically and more of a confidence that it was going to be worth it, whether things worked out politically or not. So I made the decision to come out largely as a result of my deployment. So I was a sitting mayor and I was a reservist and I got deployed to Afghanistan like any reservist or

National Guard member. You can get deployed and you leave your job behind. And in my case, that meant a deputy mayor filled in. I took a leave of absence, went off to war as Lieutenant Pete and then came home. And in the course of that process realized that if I was going to come home, I wasn't going to continue, you know, deeper and deeper into my 30s with no idea what it was like to be in love. I wanted to start dating and have a personal life. And I did not see a way to do that without coming out publicly because I didn't want to be tiptoeing around or trying to hide something. Yeah. And what all of that meant was that it was time. And if that was going to be a problem for my careers, that just was what it was. But, yeah, I mean, look, that was only five years after

don't ask, don't tell being the law of the land, right? So it hadn't been that many years since it would have been the end of my military career as well as my potentially my political career. I don't know what would have happened if I'd tried to get anywhere in Indiana politics in 2010 as an out candidate. But by 2015, I knew it was at least worth taking a chance on the community that they would judge me by the job I had done instead of. instead of anything else.

And I was at peace with the idea that either way, this was what I had to do. Yeah. That's a big deal, though. And I think it's worth saying, because it's an observation that strikes me, and it's something that's worth our friends at home hearing, you know, there is often a misnomer when you live a public life that that's your reason for being. you know, the access or the power or the office or the TV show or whatever is your whole reason for doing everything. And I think it's really important to remind people you are so

much more than what you do. And it takes a hell of a lot of courage to be who you are, to choose your personhood and your life when it also can risk a big job that people think might be the core of your life. And I really, I know it's been a long time, you know, it's over a decade now, but I really just, I appreciate that you made that choice. And I know you made it for you, but it has ripple effects for all of us, too. Well, thanks for saying that. And yeah, the thing I really wasn't banking on was how much I would hear from people right away. Yeah, wait, tell me about that. Like, what were the DMs and what were the, what was the mail you got?

You know, it was extraordinary. I mean, obviously not all of it was great. You know, there was, you know, there was. You don't have to tell me. But, you know, hearing the number of people who said it meant something to them, some of them because they had a relative that they were thinking about, some of them because they were in the same boat. Some people I had been deployed with, including one person who was,

so one of my jobs is to drive people or vehicles outside the wire, and we didn't have a lot of advanced military equipment in my unit, so I'd just be a land cruiser trying to get between Kabul and Bogram, which is kind of a little road trip. And it was kind of, if I was trying to get somebody to come on that mission with me, it was usually just as a volunteer, just somebody willing to do it because they wanted to be helpful, not because I could order them to do it because I was in a very small unit. And one of the people who was willing to come with me on some pretty risky movements,

who I knew a little bit, but not that well, turned out he was in the exact same boat. And, you know, having seen mine who's reached out just to share his own experience. And so that was a really, really incredible thing to see. But yeah, I think to your bigger point, one of the occupational hazards of having very meaningful work is that you wind up drawing meaning from work. You're at risk of drawing all of your meaning from work, which would not be healthy. It's a good thing to be invested in your work to care about your work. And I consider myself very fortunate that the work I do is very meaningful. But the other side of the coin is especially in politics and public service,

in order to be fit for these kinds of jobs, you have to know what's worth more to you than keeping your job. Because there may be some moments where you're confronted with some decision and just in order to deserve your job, you have to do something that means that your political career might be a risk or might even be over. Yeah. And so I think it is that much harder because it's a line of work where people draw, you know, their meaning their identity from what they do, that you have to be in touch with what's more important than that.

I think this is about to become a challenge for many, many more people. If artificial intelligence continues on the trajectory that a lot of us are expecting, then it may really disrupt a lot of people's relationship with their work. Yeah. or people who consider their work to be a big part of who they are. And there are ways we can deal with that. I think making sure that we're all in touch with multiple sources of belonging. So that if one of those sources of belonging, which is our work, is changing, that other sources of belonging like family or community or service or faith or,

I would say nationality, which is not the same thing as nationalism, I want to be clear about that, but a certain sense of belonging to an American project, that all of these things could be a healthy ballast for us right now, given what's maybe about to happen to a lot of people, especially a lot of white-collar workers, who are facing down this technological change. Yeah.

It's a big shift. And it's interesting to think about what this could mean, you know, in a really seismic way. You know, I think back to grade school and learning about the tectonic. plates shifting. It feels like that. It's like a big enough shift. It's going to reshape the world. And at a time when we're figuring that out and we're figuring out what service to the American project, as you mentioned, looks like while we're fighting fascism, you know, I know in your home,

I know in my home, we're also raising toddlers. We're trying to build a picture of a future. They can be excited about. And, you know, I know you got lots of reachouts from people in your boat, people who appreciated your vulnerability. I know you got on the apps. That's how you met Chaston, which is like one of my favorite stories. You know, how do you look at the last few years? Yes, it's big politically. I mean, you were the Secretary of Transportation. You were in the administration. You did go do your fellowship. You're out here stumping for candidates to try. to yank democracy back, you know, from the jaws of terror. And you've done what you said you wanted to do if you made it home. You found your person. You fell in love. You have two babies. How do you,

how do you balance that? How do you keep your home and your kiddos and your spouse the kind of center of it when the world is in this really big moment of a people? Yeah, it's really hard. I think that my work, you know, my political work requires me to be on the road a lot. That's how I make myself useful. I go out and I campaign for candidates I believe in and I speak out for causes that I believe in and I do a lot of media work too. And it pulls me from home. And it feels like it's always in tension.

And of course, you don't have to be in politics to be living this. Millions of Americans are living this tension between what you do for work and the people you care about the most and wanting to spend time with them. The other way to look at it, though, of course, is that they're a big part of the reason why I do this. And that's one of the biggest things that's changed in my motivations around politics and public life compared to before we got the incredible phone call that changed our lives. And I know every day that whether we succeed or fail in this moment really shapes the world

they're going to live in. They don't get a vote. They don't get a voice. They don't even know what's happening yet. They're four. And yet lots of decisions that are being made right now in the middle of this decade are going to decide by the time they are old enough to ask whether we did right by them or whether we failed them. And so I know that part of my responsibility to them is to try to be present and be a good father and be around as much as I can. But another part of my responsibility to them is to be out in the world using the tools that I have to try to make it better for them so that when I am at the middle of this century, hopefully kicking up my heels, getting ready to retire, and they're entering the thick of it in terms of their careers,

that I can look them in the eye and know that we did right by them to make sure that this is a country that had more rights and freedoms than before, which every generation up until now, has been able to say, but if we get it wrong, then, you know, we just saw the, the high watermark of rights and freedoms in this country before they started eroding. I mean, that's, it really is as serious as that in terms of what the 2020s will be remembered for. And on down the list of things we care about, whether there's clean air and water for them, whether they can live in the same communities that I had access to or whether some of them have been damaged or made unaffordable or unlivable because of what's going on in the climate or other problems that we've created

for ourselves in these last few decades. I mean, this is really, and of course, deciding whether AI is going to be something that unfolds in a way that empowers people or whether it leads to even more extreme concentrations of power in this country. You know, by the time they're adults, I think the decisions we make now as a country will have shaped what it's like for them. Yeah. We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. IHeart Radio is throwing it back.

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on the free IHeart Radio app. Presets the station so it's always one tab away. I'm sure you feel this. I've always been the person who's like, tell me where you need me to be. Tiny stump speech at a bar in Sherman Oaks. You need me on stage with the president. Like, you need me on the border in Tijuana or Texas?

I'm there. Like, where can I be helpful? And it's interesting to fast forward and be in a position where I really want to be at home. I'd rather be at home than anywhere. Yeah. And sometimes I got to leave to love them the best way I know how. Yeah.

Because if we lose it, we might never get it back. You know, you look at countries around the world that have been through this stuff and you go, we can't, I don't want to risk it for me at 43. I sure as hell don't want to risk it for toddlers. Yeah. No, they're counting on us. Yeah. I know you said they're getting into Lego, which I'm obsessed with. What are some of your favorite things to do as a family?

Oh, you know, I mean, none of it's really exotic or, you know, would come as much of as a surprise. You know, Fridays we like to get pizza and watch a movie together, and they, you know, they snuggle in their blankets and we watch something. And I've got to say I'm glad the quality of kids' movies has improved from a parent perspective, I think, compared to what my parents might have had to endure when I was a kid. Totally. Because, you know, I don't mind, okay, there's only so many times you can watch Frozen. But, like, you know, the music is good. Like, I don't mind watching some of these movies 10 or 20 times.

30 is pushing it. But, you know, we do stuff like that. We take them sledding in the winter. We, you know, we take them swimming as much as we can in the summer. It's just like it's basic stuff, right? It's not like exotic or complicated. It's just being around for the chaos. And yeah, when we're home, I'm thrilled that the Lego phase is upon us.

We're, you know, Chast and my husband is better than I am about organizing things, like setting them up with like paints and like crafts and stuff. I struggle with it because they're still at the age where like you set up all the stuff so they can paint or something. There's chaos. You're cleaning up paint and like, you know, 20 minutes into it. They're like ready for it. You know, puzzles.

I never realized how much becoming good at puzzles when you're first figuring it out is like an emotional thing. It's not just, it's not just an intellectual thing. So much of it is keeping them from getting frustrated and giving up and walking them through that process. And then it's so hard not to just pick up the puzzle piece and just do it for them, right? Right. But, you know, watching their little minds figure this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Washington figure that out. And, you know, reading to them, luckily they love reading. They can't read, but they love reading. Yeah. And they love being read to and even just paging through books. And yeah. And as you know, as I tell it, it sounds idyllic. It's also hard because just the attention spans and the chaos and the two of them as twins kind of being in each other's face all the time.

Makes it, you know, real work even when you're doing the fun stuff. but there's so much fun mixed in with it. It's so great. Hey, and I have to give you props. We did it too. You survived your first trip to Disneyland. Yes. You made it to the other side.

Yes. You did the magic. It was great. You know, we had a work trip in the L.A. area. And I was already in California. And rather than taking a red eye and turning it right around, Chaston figured it might be worth trying to have the kids come out. and my mother-in-law came too. And I got to tell you, I heard so many things about Disneyland from the draggled parents

that I was ready to hate it. I was ready to be a real asshole about the whole thing. Yeah. But as soon as we got there, I just saw the magic of it, like the effect it had on them. The effect it had on me, like I felt coming out of it, I almost felt like I was on this kind of high. I can't explain it. But I, because, you know, halfway through the second day, they kept hanging out in the park and I had to switch into a suit and go do my grown-up stuff.

And I found it hard to kind of get my brain out of the kind of zone it was in, riding on these rides and just, yeah, seeing just the pure joy that they had was so fun. Yeah, I definitely had the realization I sort of looked around and went, oh, I didn't know this about myself. I think I'm a Disney adult. Yeah. I was very ready to like Scrooge McDuck it. And it turns out I was all in.

Yeah. No, it's, it really is special. Oh, I love it. Yeah, some of those rides, I'd be happy to do. So fun. Oh, great. At some point, we'll have to get all the kiddos. I obviously have a million more questions for you. We'll have to do a follow-up at some point. You have to be on stage in Indiana. So I'm going to have to skip to the end and ask you my favorite question. And we'll pick it back up another time. Thank you for today. I'm curious, you know, it's so nice. to, of course, know you're in the fight with us politically. And it's also nice to just hang out with Pete, like not to make you list off policy and do all the things. But I know,

I know the span of all of it is alive in you. And when you look out, you know, from this day in February and you think about what's ahead, it could be a mix of all those things, you know, political, personal, or it might just be one specific bug in your ear. But what really feels like your work in progress right now? I guess my work in progress is helping put together the coalition that is going to change the trajectory of our country so that it's really living up to its ideals by the time my kids are old enough to take over the work, whatever they decide the work means to them. So it's all kind of wrapped up in one, but it feels like the work of a lifetime. And I understand and accept that it's going to take a very, very long time to deliver on some of

this. Yeah. I always say to people, political engagement, it's not quick, it's not sexy, but I do think it's romantic because it's kind of like a marriage. You're investing in this thing for your life if you're lucky. And if you're lucky, you get to the end and you've seen. You're succeeded at building something really special. Yeah. I mean, what are they in the kind of books about parenting and couples? They talk about secure attachment, right? Yeah.

You know, I want to feel good about the secure attachment I have to our country as well. Yeah. Yeah, there is something in common there. Yeah. A secure attachment to the American experiment. Sounds like a really nice goal for us. Very cool. Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been an absolute delight. Thanks for having you on. Yes, and not for the podcast, but, you know, my best friend is a native Detroiter. Was that right? Yeah, much like the way you feel about South Bend. It's like, that's the way I feel about Detroit. People are always like, what are you doing here? And I'm like, no, I claim this place for 20 years now.

So I'm like a hardcore Michigander. So we'll have to do something up in Michigan at some point. Yeah, we definitely took notes from the Detroit Renaissance and the way people just militantly identify with that. Yeah. Yeah, I really admire the spirit of what's going on there. Oh, I'm so excited. I'll be there. I'll be in Detroit.

I think it's like the 17th to 19th of March. So if we happen to be in the same state, let's make sure we get our people together. Wonderful. Our husbands and wives. It'll be nice. There we go. Good. Well, I hope we get the chance.

Me too. We're talking with you in the meantime. Great, hang. you have fun out there today. Thanks. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.