Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Abby Phillip

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Abby Phillip is one of the most trusted voices in American media — the anchor of CNN NewsNight and a sharp, steady guide through democracy’s most turbulent moments. She argues that journalism today isn’t about pretending to be “impartial” but rather meeting every story with curiosity, honesty, and depth. Abby's also unafraid to put the powerful on blast, and she reveals a major issue that politicians are missing when it comes to voters. Plus, find out how her new book A Dream Deferred is reframing Jesse Jackson’s legacy and raising urgent questions about America right now.Check out her book at bookshop.org.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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So you know the person you're talking to is who they say they are. If you've been thinking about dating again, take this as your sign. Start your love story on Bumble. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Hello, friends, and welcome back to this week's Work in Progress. Today, we are talking to a journalist that I deeply admire. And she also happens to be a woman. I really like to hang out with. Abby Phillip is our guest today, and she has become one of the most trusted and incisive voices in American journalism. She is known for her unflappable energy, her sharp political analysis,

and her incredibly steady presence is the anchor of CNN's News Night. And Abby is here with us today because she's just released a new book, which feels incredibly relevant for these times, even though it's a study. of the 1980s. It is called a dream deferred. Jesse Jackson and the fight for black political power. It looks at his 1984 and 1988 runs for president and really the way he was shaking up a system

that clearly needs some shaking. Abby's here today to talk about the research that went into this book, the lessons that it holds that are relevant for all of us in this moment, her thoughts about what it will be like in the future when we look back at this current political time. And she's also going to share some of her personal stories from growing up in Trinidad and Tobago to moving back to the United States to studying government at Harvard.

She has really led a life that has allowed her to approach the world with a drive to understand people and to make sure their stories are being told well and fairly and in ways that might unite rather than divide us. So let's jump in with Abby Phillip. I like to go backwards with people before we dig into the present because everyone I get to sit with has some amazing story, some amazing career. You have an audience that knows your life, but I like to know how people were made. so if we could have like a very cool animated movie day of our own and like bend space time and step out onto a playground and see our eight-year-old selves

if you got to hang out with that little girl who I know you still carry with you but if you got to hang out with her chat with her hear what she's up to or interested in do you think you would see the parallels in the two of you would you see the woman you are today in your younger self that's such a great question I think so yeah because when I

the funny thing about me first of all is that I have a really bad memory so there are a lot of things about my childhood that I just do not remember and some of it to be honest is probably just

sort of a coping mechanism that I've just sort of locked out certain parts of my life not because it was particularly traumatic but because you know, around that time when I was eight, we had just moved from Trinidad and Tobago to the United States. I was, I was born here, but shortly after I was born, we moved to where my parents are from, and we lived there for eight years. So I really didn't know America all that much until I was around that age. And so much of that time is kind of fuzzy.

to me. But what I will say is that I've always been like Abby. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, Abby is like, you know, a character in my family's house because I'm just like,

I've always been the kid who always wanted to be in charge of things, always wanted to be doing something. I've always had that side of my personality. But I will also say that I don't know that I don't know that

ever really saw myself having a kind of public facing life. That part, I think, has been very different from what I envisioned for myself, from my earliest memories. But I think that the drive, the work ethic, the kind of the mom in me, honestly, I've always been a little bit of a mom ever since I was a little kid. That has always been there. But life has been, actually kind of surprising in a lot of ways for that other reason too. I love it. I get a vision that if we did that walk out together and saw our little selves, they'd be organizing everyone on the playground to really crush a project.

Just like, this is how we're going to get something done. Yeah. I was always the one who wanted to be like at the grocery store, checking things off of the list and pushing the cart. Just with a little pen. Yeah. That type of personality. I totally get it. I love it. Do you think that that shift? I mean, what a what a sort of seismic experience, you know, obviously you don't remember moving back to Trinidad and Tobago, but coming back here, when you really are forming, you know, memories and in a sort of routine in your childhood to have that shift, was there lore around it? Was there a sort of American dream?

story around it, or was there also the sort of sad elements for your parents of having to leave home again? Yeah, I mean, I think there was totally a sense of lore. I mean, any immigrant experience, when you come to America, like the movie coming to America, it is an experience, right? And it is something that most people that I grew up with in Trinidad never experience. But I always, we always knew me and my sisters that we were, we were born in America. And so we always had that kind of part of us that was, what if. We used to watch like, um, Sweet Valley High. Oh my God, the throwback. And like all these shows, um, you know, I mean, we would, we would watch American TV and just kind of dream of.

about what it would be like. And when we did come to the United States, I mean, first of all, our parents had come up a little bit before us to kind of get everything ready. And so a lot of it was just being reunited with them. And the other part of it was just experiencing America, snow. And the leaves changing and Christmas and real Barbie dolls, not the fake ones that we have.

growing up and all of those things were part of the lore and and and and also I mean I have to add that growing up my parents regardless of where we were born or the America of it all I mean I think they always kind of instilled in us this sense that we were not we were not just like everybody else for good or for bad I don't know where that came from for them I mean some of it was that we were raised pretty religiously in a Christian household. So it was always like, you know, you're in the world, but not of the world. So we were always kind of expected to be different from other people. And I think that actually, in a weird way, helped me acclimate and adjust to being in a completely different place because I was very different. I

used to have an accent, a Trinidadian accent when I was eight. And I, I lost that accent, but I also just, I was okay with being different from other people, even though I observed our differences. And I think it helped that my parents were always like, you're, you're not like these other kids. You're going to get A's. You're smart. You know, they would always sort of reinforcing us this sense that we weren't going to just go with the crowd. We had to have our sense of individuality and our sense of purpose outside of what was happening around us. Yeah. And I do, to your point, think that's such a common thread in immigrant families. Because the move and the arrival and the taking your place in this country that has such lore,

you're expected to earn it. And it's really, interesting to hear you talk about how you had a sense of sort of this world and another from your faith-based upbringing, but also you're talking about an experience that, you know, so many people that we both know and so many public figures, particularly black people in America, talk about, like, being of this place and not. And for you to be an American and also to have grown up in Trinidad. It's like you had so many versions of this and that. Yeah. The kind of dialectics of your identity. Yeah. And how special that in a way they were sort of told to you and they were experienced by you in this way that made you feel like, oh yeah, I can be all of these

things. Yeah. I think it gave me a sense of empathy and also a desire to really understand the people around me and figure out how we could find things in common. And I think that is one of those things that I carry with me and that I literally use in my day-to-day life and in my job. Part of it I think also is also where I'm from, where my family is from. You know, Trinidad and Tobago is an island in the Caribbean that is actually an incredibly diverse place. It's a lot of people of African descent, a lot of people of Indian descent, there are Asians there, there are people of Latin descent there. Even within my own family, I have people who look like all kinds of different things. And so that idea of differences was not something that ever really

bothered me, and it never really stopped me from being able to make friends or identify with people that I lived around or that I went to school with and the fact that I had to come in culturally and I am black and I am African American, I'm Caribbean American, but I didn't actually have that much in common

with a lot of black Americans. I still had to adjust and to adjust, not just to people who looked like me physically, but also people who didn't. So I actually think of that as a great blessing in how I grew up, that you're sort of forced to just look at every person individually and just say, what can we have in common? Because there's undoubtedly something. And finding that thing was always more important than finding the things that we didn't have in common.

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One, I think that's something that's missing from our discourse in general today. We're being so encouraged to other people in a negative way rather than to be fascinated by people's otherness. And I, you know, I didn't grow up in the same circumstances as you did, but I feel a kinship in terms of the way you talk about your childhood because, you know, I came here with the intense lore of coming here for the American dream. You know, my grandmother was brought over by my great-grandparents on a boat from Italy. You know, my mom still remembers when her mother forbade her grandparents from speaking Italian to her

because they were trying so hard to assimilate. Yeah. And there is the wanting to belong and also the loss in the belonging because then, you know, my mom lost her language. My dad came here to go to university and, you know, just knowing how long it took him to become a citizen. When people are like, do it the right way, I'm like, take several seats. Like you literally have no idea. Most people have no idea how long and how large was the quote unquote right way is. They don't know.

And I think perhaps because of their stories, I wonder if there's something about that, that desire to know people and their stories that leads a lot of us down the journalism path. Do you think maybe that's what drew you in that direction as you made your way to Harvard? Yeah, I think that it's about stories, you know? I mean, I think that fundamentally history, politics, culture, it's the story of us, how we came to be and also where we're going. And I think I've always been drawn to that. I've been drawn to the way in which history sort of paints a picture that leads us to the present.

And I also have been drawn to the way in which our present day actions are doing the same thing for the people in the future. And so, yeah, I mean, I just think we as human beings, we have so much. power and agency and the ability to kind of shift space and time around our actions. And that's always been fascinating to me because I think of my whole life as a bit of an anthropological moment, right? You know, when you, when a family leaves one place and goes to another, they create a whole new timeline for their descendants. And I'm literally living in that timeline that was created for me in part because of my parents' actions.

And who I am as a person is because of their decisions. It's because of my experiences growing up as a child living in one place and coming to another and knowing what that feels like to have to adapt and change and change. and adjust. And I think that is, that's my story, but everybody has a story like that. And I find that fundamentally interesting because that tells us a lot about what people are really like, what they're going to do, what motivates them, what's important to them. And the truth is that we have all of those things, we have those things in common more than I think we know. And in a way, I mean, the politics of it all, like, I mean, I, I love politics because I do think that is sort of history in the present day.

But I do think that if there's one thing that's wrong with politics, it's the way that it flattens us all into just kind of two-dimensional R and D or whatever it is. And I think the promise of journalism is that we kind of expand the dimensions of who people, really are beyond just what labels they put next to their names and really start to learn more about what really motivates them, how they came to be. And I think that is what I have always been drawn to in doing this. I love that. When you started, I guess rather when you decided to study government, did you imagine that you were going to work in the, in and on the political process before journalism, or was it the study of government that led you to want to be a journalist? Like, how did the light bulb for you in terms of your path get illuminated?

Yeah, it was kind of, well, the truth is that I, when I decided that I wanted to pursue journalism, I was actually studying at Harvard. It was called social studies. And it was sort of like, it's a little bit of like government, a little bit like philosophy. And I, I sort of, to government for a number of reasons, some of them practical. One was that I wanted to do a journalism internship this summer that I would otherwise have needed to write a thesis. So I decided to do the journalism internship first. But also, I knew I was very interested in political journalism. And studying government, sort of the structure of government and how it works was sort of a way of kind of deepening my understanding of that work.

And so it wasn't that I was studying it and decided to do journalism. And I definitely did not want to work in government. I think I knew that pretty clearly, pretty early on. I've never really been much of a follower. I just, I'm not really a big fan of joining a team, so to speak. And so the idea of being a part of a political party as a, you know, political strategist or worker of some kind or definitely not a politician, that just was never appealing to me. I think I've always loved the sort of outsider role, the place that journalism sits that is somewhere between the two-party system. that we have, where we have the ability to kind of probe into the teams, so to speak,

and just have a different relationship with our political system. So it's never really been, I just, I knew, I have no interest in actually being in politics in that way. Right. Yeah, like you'd rather play tennis, not soccer. Yeah. Yes. You know, you're like, I don't want to have to necessarily go where everyone's going. Yeah, exactly.

It's interesting, the way you talk about journalism, it strikes me that it's really, it's a kind of engaged participatory voyeurism. It allows you to do two things at once because you observe and you also really get involved and then you move back to the observing. And in a way, the position of watching to glean information and be able to translate all of it into a story. allows you, I would imagine, to be welcomed into certain spaces that had you gone into traditional government work, you wouldn't be able to. Absolutely. I think that's a great way to put it. I mean, I think journalism is apart from the arena. You're not in the arena in the same way that political actors are. And we are in an observation role to some extent. But I think the participatory part is also really, important because we are a player, a key player. I mean, the First Amendment is the First

Amendment for a reason because you literally cannot have a democracy without a free press. And I do think that as a journalist, we do have responsibilities. And one of it is to the truth as far as we can ascertain it. And the other is, I think, to the public, to the citizen. And the citizen, in my view, is who we work for. That's who we work on behalf of. That is who we sometimes are in a position to speak for. That is who's voices we are responsible for elevating or illuminating. And so that responsibility is massive. But it also has incredible impact. I mean, one of the reasons I was decided that journalism was going to be what I did was because when I was looking back and studying the civil rights movement, it was so clear to me that that era would not have had the impact that it did, had it not been for the role of journalism in bringing these stories to life, in literally going to the places and saying to, you know, some family in Ohio. this is what it's like in, you know, the Mississippi Delta.

This is what it's like in the places where black people can't even drink from the same water fountain as white people. There were so many Americans who had no idea what was happening in their own country. And so the role of journalism in just talking about those stories and putting it on the front pages is massive. And that's the active part of this democracy that we are participants in. We don't have to be on a team in order to play a role. And I think it is important, actually, for there to be journalists who really aren't on a team. Because I know that right now there are a lot of journalists who, they're liberals, they're conservatives, and that's fine.

But I also think that there is a need, a necessity for there to be people who are, are not doing that. It's so important to pull back and remember that being impartial can be a requirement for clear communication. And that also feels really hard, you know, on my and as a very engaged citizen, you know, I know I spend more time in the sort of news cycle and on the political stuff than a lot of people can or want to by the way no harm no foul but it makes me feel crazy you know for example you talk about journalists working for the people yes you know our courts are supposed to work for the

people and we currently are in a time with this current administration where fealty to the administration is being demanded you know you see shifts at cbs you see people getting fired you see anchors being pulled off the air, you see news organizations paying the president, even though they told the truth. Like, your alma mater. Harvard is in this thing with Trump and they're going to pay him. Like, when you know that that impartial requirement matters for how communication is done, how do you make sense of all this stuff that is so impartial? Do you feel like these institutions are being captured? Or do you feel like we're just midway through a chess game and people are trying to figure out how to get to the other side of the board?

You know, I think it might be just that, that we are in the middle of, we're in the middle of a moment, and it's a very significant moment. And I don't know really how it's going to end. I don't think the story is over the, you know, I don't think the game is done. I think we're just, we're right in the middle of it. And, you know, if there's anything I learn from my studies of government is that the structure of these institutions really matters. And we live in a society where we have all these layers of these layers of structures that are intended to protect democracy. And sometimes we find gaps where there are just blind spots, where there are things that the framers didn't even envision that are happening that we're dealing with. And where

sometimes many layers of those structures are being captured all at once and we don't know what that means because it's never happened before. So that's how I kind of look at it

is that we are still seeing how our institutions and our democratic structures hold up in this moment. under probably the most concerted effort to control and restructure them than that I think our democracy has ever seen. And I don't know how it's going to end.

That's the truth. But I do think what I've seen is a bit of a mixed bag. And that's good, actually. I think that it's meant to be that way, that the system is actually meant to produce a lot of different outcomes and it averages out to something in the end. But I think it is a good sign that you can see that sometimes they win, sometimes they lose.

That's what it's supposed to be like. If it were that one team was winning 100% of the time, that would be a different story. And I know that sometimes it feels that way to people. but I think it is not that way based on the fact that I follow a lot of this stuff very closely. I think it is still a mixed bag

and I think what that tells me is that we still have this really kind of brilliant system in which there are so many different checks and balances on power that no one's ever really able to run all the way to the end zone without encountering resistance.

I hope so. And that is the way that this place is supposed to operate. And as long as that continues to happen, I have a lot of confidence still in the way that this country is set up. And on the impartiality question, I mean, I think that this has been one of the most hotly debated things, right, in journalism. Is it possible even to be objective? Is it possible to even be impartial? And sometimes I think, that's the wrong question to ask. I think the right question is, are you approaching every story with openness and empathy? And I think that if you can do that, what that requires is an

acknowledgement of who you are and some of the things that you bring to the table because of who you are and where you come from and what you know. And also what's in front of you, recognizing that what's in front of you might be different from what you know and being open to what you're hearing and you're seeing. And I think that is really, that's the real challenge of journalism because I think for too long people have thought that they were burying their biases and they weren't. They were just trying to present their biases as impartiality when it was not. And I think that just being up front about how you come to a story and also being open to what is actually in front of you, that is the real test of journalism. That's why it's so important to go places and actually talk to people.

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take on Renaissance or compatibility as having the same hometown bodega order, download Bumble, and turn those connections into something bigger. Download Bumble and start your love story. I think one of the wisest adages I've ever heard is that you read things as you are, not necessarily as they've been written. Yeah. You know, and I think that's incredibly true for the political discourse. When you read someone's comment under an Instagram post of a news story or someone retorts to you on a social media platform, you're not having a real conversation.

And I think one of the great privileges in my life that I think overlaps with my very favorite profession, which is yours, is that we get to travel a lot. And so for me, even with political advocacy or working on things like paid leave for all or trying to get better health care protections for people, sometimes people don't understand why I'm really passionate about that. And it's because I spent 10 years surrounded by union workers in North Carolina and, you know, time. I'm in Ottawa and Vancouver and small town, New Mexico, and Texas, and upstate New York, and California, and this enormous city we're in today. And, like, everywhere I go, I learn people's stories, and I learn about their families, and I learn about why they do the jobs they do, and the ways they're protected, and they aren't. And so those stories feel important for me to carry. And I think for anyone who has a mission of advocating or telling the truth somewhere, you carry people's stories with you. Yeah. And I think that when you talk to people, you see how multidimensional they are.

Yes. And I think that is the, that's a thing I'll think a lot of people don't understand about just voters out there that, you know, that, Yeah, they have a lot of contradictory views on things. And that's because people are complex and they see different parts of their lives in different ways. And being open to that is really important because, again, politics sometimes, in politics, it's the job of a political party to have all these things that they believe in. And most people who align themselves with that political party probably believe in a lot of those things. things. But there are many, many people who take a little bit from over here from the left and a little bit from the right. And they're somewhere in the kind of weird, bizarre middle. And it

doesn't really make a lot of sense to you. But that's okay. And giving voice to those people is super important because guess what? Those are the people who actually determine how elections go in this country. They're the ones with the kind of strange, weird like points of view on all these different issues and you don't know exactly where they're going to come down, well, guess what? They're the deciders. And so those types of people I encounter all the time. And I think they probably could be better represented in our public discourse. I mean, I also think that, you know, when we talk about characteristics of different people, and I remember a couple years ago, I was in Kansas doing a story after the Dobbs decision.

And I went into this working class Latino neighborhood and was talking to people about it because there are actually a lot of Latino voters in Kansas that were actually very significant in those elections. And, you know, the thing that I think a lot of people don't see is the way that Latino voters are, many of them, deeply religious people. and they're hardworking, and they have personal views that are actually very strong about

things like abortion, but their political decision-making is different from their personal views. And that viewpoint doesn't really get represented all that much. And voters like that are why in Kansas they protected abortion rights in that state. And so when we, when we fail to surface those viewpoints, we'll miss those stories that diverge from conventional wisdom. And that's why it is so important to not only go out and talk to those people, but to also really kind of unveil their, their complexity to the public so that people understand that people are not parodies. They're not like, you know, they're not cardboard cutouts. They're real people with all these depths to them. And that is what creates sort of a dynamism in our political system that I personally find super interesting.

Well, and it's also so refreshing to hear you speak about people that way because it's a great reminder that no person is a stereotype. No person is just a data point. you know that that kind of dynamic um and i would say very human reality of saying i believe this but i don't think my beliefs should legislate everyone else's lives that's that's a powerful example you know and i and i think when we when we consider as you were saying earlier that right now we are making marks that people who come after us look back at those are the kinds of marks i hope we get to make that that we figure out how to show up and allow people to be fuller humans and listen before we judge and and perhaps advocate for the

best outcomes for the total of us um you know you hear a lot lately about how people are focusing on the wrong 1% and I'm like you think uh and it it really does when I when I think about it feels like we've gotten people really hyped up about some of the wrong things and we're missing we're missing our legacy and and we've clearly forgotten some of our history and that's why I'm so excited about your book because I feel like a broken record at this point being like is anybody paying attention to the correlation between what's happening now and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s and it's like the history nerd in me is just flipping out all the time and you gave me another gorgeous piece of history to dive into you know elements of which I've

studied and there's things in your book that I learned for the first time and for our friends who are going to watch our little clips yes I haven't here and yes I also brought a sharpie so I can ask you to sign it for me later and I did the thing because I'm so excited about this where I prepped for the podcast reading the PDF, making notes on my iPad, because I didn't want to absolutely destroy the paper copy of the book. Because I can never read a book and then give it to anyone. They're just like, what is, what is this? What is going on at this book? Like, what is this Grey Gardens thing you've handed to me in tatters? But I love it. You're a close reader. Yeah. So I, I really, I've been so excited about this. And I, I'm just so curious, you know, you take us back

through Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns in the 1980s. And from this moment, this time, you know, 10 years into Trumpism and the intensity of the firefights we see in the digital world, particularly over politics, what was it about this story for you that made you say, this is what I want to put out into the world and this is the time that I want to do it. Yeah. You know, I think that this story actually has a lot of lessons for where we are right now in this country. Because I do think we're in a moment of kind of backlash against the growing diversity of the country. I think that there's also an active fight going on about who can speak to and appeal to the working class. And both of those

themes are kind of at the heart of what was happening with Jesse Jackson's campaigns in the 1980s as well. One of the key lessons that can be taken away from his campaigns is the way that he argued in favor of seeing people with those multiple dimensions that we were just talking about. The way in which people have all these different desires and all these different motivations and that even though we might all look different, we might be black or white or women or men or farmers or, you know, city workers or whatever it is, factory workers, we share a common desire to have a better life, to have a government that works for us, to have a society that feels like it is invested in its citizens and not in other pursuits. And that was a lot of what

he campaigned on in the 80s. And I think that one of the unfinished pieces of this is, actually, what do we do in this moment of division where it's actually very effective to divide us along all of these different, you know, identities? And can candidates figure out how to do the opposite, how to actually bring people together, not by ignoring who they are, but by saying, I see who you are and I acknowledge it, but also let me show you what we all have. And we all have in common. I think that that is, that I, I call that unfinished business because I do think that is still yet to be done.

And I think there is a lot in Jesse Jackson's vision for politics, his dream, so to speak, that I think is still worth contemplating today. Can it be done? And in a way, both parties are kind of engaged in that. conversation to some extent or at least it seemed to be in the last election where you know in 2024 despite all the rhetoric I think the Trump campaign actually they were carrying out like a get out the vote strategy that was geared toward all these different groups and had some success in chipping away at the Democrats diverse coalition and so I do

think that that reality, plus the fact that the Democratic Party does right now have as its base, a very diverse coalition means that there just needs to be a sort of refocusing on what does it really mean to craft a message that can actually speak to all Americans that doesn't slice and dice them along their different identities, but finds the unifying ties. And, you know, Jesse Jackson used to talk about the country as a quilt. He used to talk about his grandmother using scraps of clothing because they grew up very poor in South Carolina to make a quilt that would keep them warm in the winters. And he would talk about all the different parts of this country as being a part of a quilt.

And I think that is still for so many of us who really do believe in the beauty of this very diverse country, that is still something that is worth aspiring toward, regardless of your political persuasion. And I still think that there is a lot of work that needs to be done to bring our politics to a place where that really, we can say that that really is true. It's interesting because that took my breath away. It's a metaphor that my best friend and I use a lot about communities that we want to connect and connect with and sort of coalitions of support that we are always working to network across the country and we talk about this quilt all the time it feels so imperative to do the thing you're talking about to remind people

that what we have in common i mean we're literally each other's neighbors right yeah yeah and i think his messaging was so effective at the time and to your point when you know we were only 15 years after the fever pitch of the civil rights movement. I won't say the civil rights movement because it's not like it ended. But one of the things that struck me is that in the 84 and 88 runs, his candidacy really pushed the Democratic Party to acknowledge that black voters are indispensable. And it's so important that it was said. And it strikes me as one of those things that also does what you're talking about, which is if everyone gets bucketed by their identity, you know, Latino voters who carry personal beliefs but will vote to protect, you know, reproductive rights access, black voters, black voters in the South, black voters in the North, you know, women, collegiate women, you know, whatever, all the ways we get kind of siloed. The silos can be destructive. The recognition of people's identity and what they bring to a conversation and their lived

experience and their expertise based on their diverse identities is also so imperative. Yeah. So how do you make sense of that seesaw? Yeah. It's both of those things. And it's such a, it is, it is a nuance, right? Because I think that sometimes when people talk about identities, they want them to disappear as if they don't exist.

But I think that is, that's, that's one version of doing it. The other version of doing it is to say, I recognize who you are and your individuality, what you bring to the table, what matters to you. But I'm saying that you can take your individuality and hold hands with someone else who has a different experience and you can have a shared, sense of purpose. And in a way, you know, I do think that that actually comes out of Jesse Jackson's experience in the civil rights movement. Because when you really think about what that movement did, it actually helped spur change, not just for black people,

but for all kinds of other people, for women, for LGBTQ people, for Asian Americans, for Arab Americans, you name it, Latino Americans. I think that that movement gave all these other movements sort of language and power in the political system. And the civil rights movement has not ever just been liberation and justice for black people. It's been for making the country actually live up to its promise to everyone. And so because of that tradition, when he comes into, the 1980s and says that black voters are going to lead the way. We're going to use our political power to force the Democratic Party to recognize all of us. I think that was just a continuation

of the story that began in the 50s and the 60s at the height of that civil rights movement that everybody now understands and knows. And it is, the black struggle has always been in separate from the struggles of all these other people. And in some cases, he would go to the South and campaigned there and had a lot of support from black voters, but he would also be speaking to white voters. And he would say to them, you know, it's really only the cynics and the people who are full of hate who want you to believe that you have more in common with the Uber wealthy white man than you do with the working class

black man. Yeah. And the message was essentially that there are people who want to divide you a long race, but that's not really the power struggle that you're fighting against. And I think he was offering, he was offering a hand out in two white Americans who at that time were not that interested in listening to or voting for a black man and essentially saying that everything that you've been taught about race being the dividing line between us is not really the thing.

Yeah. The real thing is whether or not you have economic opportunity and whether I have economic opportunity. And that message, I think he took to the South, he took to the Midwest to farmers, he took to rural parts of the country, to urban parts of the country, and it resonated because there really weren't other people talking like that and openly acknowledging that some people actually needed a little bit of help getting past what they had always known.

And a lot of people listened. He had a lot of support from white farmers, who he literally spent, Before he was running, between 1984 and 1988, he would go and he would rally with them when they were about to lose their family farms. And he built solidarity with them through his actions, not just through campaign speeches. And there is a lesson in that in not giving up on people, not deciding that, oh, those people are never going to be for you. So let's not talk to them, not assuming that they have. biases that you can't get past.

I think he blew past so much of that and never took that as a given that somebody wouldn't listen to him because they were biased against him, which they might very well have been. Right. But he was from the South. So he was used to being around racist white people that he had grown up around in the Jim Crow South. And so that part never faced him. And I think that in a way, we might need to remember a little bit of that because I think there are a lot of people right now who want to just say, well, they're bad people. Let's not talk to them. And I just don't, I don't know that our democracy can survive that, writing off people because you assume that they can't be persuaded or you assume that they can't be brought

into your column. I think the act of persuasion is the practice of democracy, and you cannot write people off if you say you want to practice democracy. I love that. And now a word from our wonderful sponsors. We often think we know our type in dating. Tall, funny, a certain job, but the research shows we're usually not the best predictors of who will actually make us the happiest. As we often say on the Happiness Lab, our minds lie to us about. all kinds of stuff. And that definitely includes the kinds of things we need to be happy in a

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curious, and let yourself be surprised. Download Bumble today. Would you say that's one of the greatest lessons of working on this? Because I get really geeked when I think about the years you got to spend researching this and interviewing everyone around him and being in his world. Yeah. You know, it's like a dream project, right? But I wonder when I think of the size and scope of it and the sort of, you know, stories you're telling about something as upper echelon in the world,

as running for president, when I bring it down to sort of imagine, you know, Abby at her computer, like, what do you think the most surprising personal takeaways have been for you, not just as an author, but as the total you, the individual? Yeah, I mean, it made me really think about how history will see what we're doing right now. because I did spend a lot of time going back and reading and watching the coverage of him at the time that he was running. And seeing with 2025 eyes the biases that were sort of embedded in how he was talked about, I think it really kind of crystallized how important it is to be mindful of. that. And not just there were plenty of, I think, racial biases in how he was covered, for

sure. But even biases in terms of when we see something different come out in the political sphere, the media has a tendency to dismiss it because it's unfamiliar. And that was true then and it's true now. And I do think that openness to phenomenon that defy recent history, that challenge the status quo, that challenge what we know about politics is super important because if you're not able to do that, you might miss something that's extraordinary, that's happening right in front of you. Yeah. And I do think that frankly, a lot of journalism missed this story in the 1980s. They missed how truly remarkable it was. And looking back on it, there were so many moments that I was like, if that had happened today, it would be a completely bananas thing. Like it would just be, it would just like rock the political world. Like the type of candidate he was, he was. He was. He was. was dynamic and interesting. And honestly, I went back and I was talking to a lot of the journalists

who covered him then, who I actually, some of whom I know now. And, you know, a lot of them said to me, he was the most interesting candidate they had ever covered. Just the most exciting candidate that most of these journalists had ever covered. But they couldn't really convey that because it was considered kind of naive to say that, to express that he was capturing the imagination of Americans with just how different he was for all kinds of obvious reasons and other reasons, like getting on a plane and going to Syria and bringing back an American prisoner of war and just doing things that contravened conventional wisdom. And I think as a person who's practicing journalism today, it is a reminder to me that open-mindedness is the job.

That is a huge part of the job because people at that time, I think, were not really listening to what voters were telling them about what they were interested in and why they found him so compelling. And they kept looking for all these different reasons, why they needed to sort of put Jesse Jackson in a box. And that's a lesson for all of us that we should probably do a little bit better. And I think we are doing better, to be honest. I think, frankly, the industry is more diverse. I think they're way more voices involved now, and that's a good thing. But that really struck out to me because I do think that he's a type of figure that I think had he been placed in a different context, it might have ended a little bit differently. And how do you think about portraying his contradictions, right?

Because he had this visionary leadership style and he had personal controversies. The reality is every human, even our best leaders are human. You know, people fail, they're fallible. They're complicated, as you mentioned earlier, with even our, you know, our voting. box. Yeah. Like, is it a strange thing to admire someone and to admire so much of their character and to have to talk about their flaws?

As a journalist, no. I mean, I think that that's what makes it a good story. Yeah. And I don't even know that admiration is really the totality of it. I think what it really is is that he is a complex. person, like pretty much all of our leaders, right? Every single one of them. And in order to tell this story about why he was both a consequential and extraordinary person, but also why he came up short, you have to explain all of it where he fell short. You can't get to that without explaining

it. And some of it is personal. Some of it is actually also in his leadership style. The way way in which he had certain extraordinary gifts and skills, but also certain weaknesses and shortcomings. And you just can't tell the story without telling the full story. And we do like to lionize people and pretend like they don't have flaws in order to feel comfortable telling their stories. Right. In order to lionize them. Yeah. I mean, and I think that that we should just face that, you know, as human beings, I understand where that comes from. We want people in our minds to be perfect in order to be remembered. And that's not really how history works. That's not really how human beings work. Does it strike you as kind of interesting though that at least the men

at this point are allowed to be fabulous and flawed and the women are still held to the perfectionism standard? Like, what the hell? Yeah, well, you know, I, it's so interesting. Because I do think that because there have just been way more men, like doing this thing, there is more of a textured treatment of them. But because there are fewer women who have done it, there isn't as much. They're still flattened more. Men are allowed to be a little more 3D. But I mean, I also think that, to be honest, I think that sometimes I wonder whether women,

who support women, as I know that you do, are okay with that. Because, you know, sometimes that means that the woman candidate that you love is going to come under scrutiny, that her flaws are going to be revealed and talked about in the same way as her strengths. And I do think you have to be both,

in order to be allowed to have weaknesses, you also have to be willing to be critiqued for them. Yes. So both things have to be true. And the critique that I would give to a lot of my friends who I know are just profoundly supportive of the few women candidates who have tried to run for president is that sometimes I think there's an unwillingness to hear the critiques. And, you know, in politics, when you run for president, man, you've got to have the thickest possible skin, right? And the thing about these men is that they never let their flaws and their weaknesses stop them from doing something.

And I think that that is still part of what women haven't really been able to get past. Like, I think we hold ourselves women to a higher standard A. Absolutely. B, the world holds us to a higher standard. But also C, I think. there is this sort of willingness for the critiques even coming from from your friends to be out there and for it to not be taken personally and not be taken as sort of the end of the world and just taking it as part of the journey in public life, I think we're still not there yet. And, you know, I think about, I covered Hillary in 2016. I've covered Kamala Harris.

I've seen how both of these women have had a lot of fair and unfair criticism. But I also think that I also see how their allies try to create a cocoon around them. And I don't know that the cocoon is helpful. Yeah. Because I think that the peep, the complexity of the person, is part of actually what needs to be revealed and communicated. Yeah, it's really interesting. I love thinking about that, and it's a great point that you make.

When you talk about the fair and the unfair criticism, I think because so much of it is unfair and outsized, it makes everyone, you know, it's almost like when your therapist gives you the adage of how full is your cup, and if your cup is really full and then more is poured in, it's spilling out everywhere. it's like the women get more dumped in their cups and then what what should be relatively normal becomes outsized in a way and I and I also think that's kind of to your

earlier point the fault of a society that's not as used to seeing women in these spaces is you know if a woman was running for president with three baby daddies and an affair with a porn star like she never would get on a ticket yeah she just wouldn't just wouldn't so it's like You can't ignore the double standard and perhaps one of the ways we change it is, as you're suggesting, to just own our shit a little bit and be like, yeah, I made a mistake and and move on. Yeah, yeah. You know, that's pretty fascinating.

And it's, I get it. Trust me, I'm not suggesting that it's like, oh no, and I don't think you are. You know, snap your finger and you're done. There is just like in the same way that, you know, when Jesse Jackson was running as a celebrity candidate who had never run for office before, who was sort of had this sort of larger than life personality and was an economic populist. It was like, get out of here. And then, you know, fast forward 30 years later, and then you get Donald Trump. Yeah. It seems just unfair, right? Because it's just a different standard in a way. But I, so I get that that exists at the same time that I think

what we're sort of striving for, for women, candidates or not, just women in the world, is that their flaws are not weighted more than anybody else's, and that their dimensions are also capable of being put out there, that we can be whole people, we don't have to be perfect people. And I do think that it's going to take someone being willing to sort of just say, so what? Mm-hmm.

I don't know when, but at some point, a woman candidate is going to come around and is going to sort of blow through some of that, and that's what's going to be necessary to sort of get women into that final tier of American politics, you know, belatedly, even though the rest of the world is already there. Well, ahead of us. Yeah. Yes, please. And now a word from our sponsors that I really enjoy, and I think you will

too. We often think we know our type in dating. Tall, funny, a certain job, but the research shows we're usually not the best predictors of who will actually make us the happiest. As we often say on the Happiness Lab, our minds lie to us about all kinds of stuff, and that definitely includes the kinds of things we need to be happy in a relationship. That's why it helps to stay curious. On Bumble, features like shared interests and prompts make it easy to notice right on someone's profile initial sparks of compatibility, like a shared love of cooking or the same nostalgic TV shows. Shared interests and prompts let you showcase your personality right on your profile and connect with people who get your vibe.

And with photo and ID verification, you can feel confident the person you're talking to is real, so you can date with a bit more confidence. When you treat dating as exploration, instead of sticking to a rigid type, you open yourself up to happier, more meaningful connections. So maybe your type isn't tall, dark, and mysterious. Maybe it's loves podcast as much as you do. Stay open, stay curious, and let yourself be surprised. Download Bumble today.

When I think about women in leadership positions, I often think about the way you lead us on the news. You know, your work on News Night is so valuable to me as a viewer, I know to so many people. You seem to have really pierced the veil in certain ways, especially when you get everybody around the desk and get people talking. Like, I just, I love to see the way you are shaking it up, and yet you are this incredibly poised, trusted voice in our news media. And it's not lost on me that, you know, especially after recent shifts at CBS,

like, you're one of the few black women anchoring a national news broadcast. So how does it feel right now for you in that space? Do you have these days where you go like, this shit can't be real? Or are you just so, you're so on your game that you're like, and I will continue through this crazy thing here and that crazy thing there? How do you do this? And do you, I guess it's a two-prong question,

do you also feel nervous? because so much of people's identities are being weaponized right now. Like, how are you doing this all? That part of it I'm pretty used to, you know, because I think that one of the things about being a black woman in news and on television is that everybody knows you're a black woman on television. And there are plenty of people who on a regular basis try to weaponize my identity against me.

And the truth is, you can't help that. So I put that to the side. What I do on a day-to-day basis is try to convene a conversation that I don't think is happening enough in the country where people from all different backgrounds have an opportunity to talk to each other, to challenge each other, to have their ideas heard, to have their ideas challenged, to be pressed on the substance of the thing that they are advocating for and not just the politics of it. And it is hard. And I, you know, I kind of audit myself and what I'm doing daily. You know, every day I kind of think back on the last show and I could have done this better. Did I do that right?

Did I, you know, am I approaching this the right way? You know, all of that. Like, that's part of my practice because I don't see myself as infallible. I don't want to be the center of that conversation. I want to be the facilitator of it. And I think that in these times, like, we have to constantly be asking ourselves, are we striking the right? tone, the right balance, and doing that exercise. And I don't know. I mean, I think the media

business for my entire career has been changing. It continues to change. I've never taken anything for granted in this business. I've never, I didn't ever have the luxury coming into journalism thinking that I would ever have a job forever. Right. And so I do not think that right now. That's not, I approach this as this is what I'm doing right now. This is what I'm, you know, asked to do, call to do. I'll do it to the best of my ability while it's serving a purpose in this, you know, news ecosystem. And there might be another challenge. It might look a little bit different. It might, you know, it might evolve just in the same way our show has evolved. And that's okay. Because I think we have to evolve. and so I don't I don't feel you know I don't I don't feel nervous in that respect I just try to approach it with a sense of integrity every day yeah and that's all I can do and I if I know at the end of every show that my intention was to have the most

interesting conversation that surfaced the things that I think would resonate with people at home, that challenged our guests in ways that are important, that raised topics that aren't getting discussed elsewhere, I'll feel like I've done my job. And I'll do it as long as I'm allowed to do it in this crazy media world that we're in. And people, I mean, they attack me every day. And it's, it doesn't, it doesn't matter. matter, you know, because I think we can sometimes overweight, like, what happens, especially on the internet, so much more than it needs to be. Tell me about it. And when I go out in the world and I encounter people randomly, like, totally randomly, and they'll be on the right and on the left, and they'll be like, I love your show, you know, and they'll be like, give Scott Jennings a break. And, you know, I mean, they just, they, they enjoy the back and forth.

Yeah. They enjoy the discussion. They enjoy the fact that, that it's challenging for guests to come on. Yeah. And I hear from people who are like, oh, my extremely conservative grandmother loves your show. And, or my extremely, you know, liberal grandfather loves your show. And I just, I love hearing those stories because those are real people. In this moment.

the show is going well. You're, you're centered in your purpose and in your family. You have this book that is so beautiful, the culmination of years of work. When you look forward in your personal landscape, what feels like your work in progress? Well, the elusive balance, right? It doesn't really exist, but, you know, I mean, you come into periods where you're kind of like, in the grind. And I definitely think doing this book, getting it out the door and into the world, that has been a major project on top of keeping a little child alive and well. And, you know, I do think that I look at my life as seasons and I see this season kind of coming to, an end and the beginning of a new season coming into being. And I really hope that my next season

has a little bit more rest. But in my professional life, I also want a little bit more balance in terms of balancing the voices, the inside voices and the outside voices and bringing them together a little bit more. And so that's kind of what I'm meditating on right now. And as this is sort of, this project is sort of wrapping up. It's just an opportunity for me to think about what does it mean to sort of like take in a little bit more of life and let that kind of inspire more creativity in my personal life and in my work. And also getting more out of real people because I think that is such a rich source of creativity in my journalistic work. And it's really important to figure that out. So I'm excited to try to

do that. Amazing. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate you coming. I'm so happy for you, and the book is so beautiful. And I can't wait to hear from all of our listeners about how they enjoy it. Well, thank you so much. It was so nice talking to you. You too. This is an IHeart podcast.