Here's Where It Gets Interesting - Dinners With Ruth with Nina Totenberg

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

On this episode of Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, Sharon sits down with legendary NPR Legal Affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg. Nina wrote a book–not just about her standing dinner dates with the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, but about the importance of friendships between women. Tune in to hear their conversation about connection, support, and thoughtfulness… and stay for the anecdotes about RBG’s goofy side! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. Interior Chinatown is an all-new series based on the best-selling novel by Charles Yu about a struggling Asian actor who gets a bigger part than he expected when he witnesses a crime in Chinatown. Streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. Hey friends, welcome. I have a living legend with me today. If you have been an NPR listener for any period of time, you undoubtedly know the voice of legal affairs correspondent, Nina Totenberg.

And today we're chatting about her book, Dinners with Ruth, a memoir on the power of friendships. Nina Totenberg had good friendships, close friendships with multiple Supreme Court justices. And I was very eager to talk about that with her. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon. And here's where it gets interesting. I'm truly thrilled to be chatting today with Nina Totenberg, who is,

I mean, there is no word for it, but legend. Nina, there really is no word for it. Do you get tired of people being like, Nina, you're a legend? use no word for it. Do you get tired of people being like, Nina, you're a legend? No, as long as you don't tell me that you first started listening to me when you were in a jumper seat as a one-year-old. That's right. That's not flattering. No, that's not flattering. No. Legend is okay. I've been listening to you since I was two is a little much. okay, I've been listening to you since I was two is a little much. That's right. I get it. I've been a teacher for a long time. And it's a little bit like when you see your students who are like, well, I'm an adult. I have eight kids. You're like, what?

That does not make me feel good. That means I'm really like getting up there now. Yeah, I understand. Well, you truly are a legend. I mean, you've won literally just about every award there is to win in your field. Anyone who has been an NPR listener, I mean, the sound of your voice is legendary. It really is. I can hear you introducing yourself in my mind. Well, and I also did the audio version of the book. And one of my sisters called me this morning and said she thinks it's about 20% better to listen to it

than to read it. And I suggested to her that that might be because she's my sister. But you know what, because you've been on NPR for so many years people are used to listening to you that is Nina Totenberg in their mind is somebody that you listen to I can understand why the audio version would be very appealing to people yeah well I enjoyed doing it actually I mean it's it's work but I enjoyed doing it and I'm glad it was my voice reading my memoir and not somebody else's voice reading my memoir. Totally. Well, your memoir is called Dinners with Ruth,

a memoir on the power of friendships. And it's one of those books that it caught my eye before it was even released. I pre-ordered it. When I read it, I bought more copies in the local bookstore. It's just one of those books that appeals to so many different kinds of people. Not only is it a beautiful memoir, there's history in it. There is also a portrait of a beloved American that's about the power of female friendships. There's so many beautiful themes that you write about in this book.

And first of all, if people have not read it yet, Dinners with Ruth refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It refers to Ruth Bader Ginsburg. And the picture on the cover is a picture of us. I'm actually not sure what it dates back to, but it's probably 10 years ago, at least, if not probably more. And when I was talking with Simon and Schuster about the cover, I had all kinds of ideas or sort of a collage of different friends of mine. And my agent,

Bob Barnett, said, Nina, you really can't do that. People buy books, they're looking at it half the time online, and it's the size of a postage stamp. You need it to be simple. And I was looking, and I have this picture of Ruth and me after an event where I had interviewed her, I think at the 92nd Street Y in New York. And I have my arm around her. I look like an Amazon compared to her. She's so tiny. She's so tiny. And I was a little taller in those days. She probably was too. But it's a photograph I like because she's not putting on some sort of a phony smile and neither am I. It's just sort of a warm photograph.

And there are a couple of other photographs in the book that I'm particularly fond of where she's not posing. And it's really, they're great photographs. We often see her in those formal Supreme Court judicial photographs, right? Like in her robes with her lace collar, where she is like being clearly being posed, told to sit here. It is fun to see her in her natural habitat. Yes. I would love for you to tell everyone, how did you meet? How did you become friends with the

legendary RBG? Well, we obviously didn't become friends right away. We met when I was in my early 20s, and she had filed her first brief in the Supreme Court. And it was a brief that argued that women are covered by the 14th Amendment, guaranteed equal protection of the law. And while I understood that, I didn't understand how she was going to argue that that was true. Women didn't even have the right to vote when the 14th Amendment was passed. So I called her up and I got an hour-long lecture.

She was then a professor at Rutgers Law School. And I started calling her more frequently and asking her to explain things to me. I was new on the beat. I really didn't know much of anything. And I was trying to educate myself as quickly as I could. And she was one of the people who helped me. There were men who helped me too. But she was very special because she was a woman.

And there were so few of us at the time. In 1970, whatever, one, two, three, I don't remember, that when we first started talking, there were hardly any women in the newsroom or who argued cases in the Supreme Court or anywhere. And so when I finally did meet her face to face, it was at an incredibly boring conference of some kind. It was so boring that we left and went shopping. I really don't remember the shopping at all. I mainly remember our conversation and a long cab ride. But it didn't really blossom in full until she became a judge and moved to Washington,

D.C., and then I would see her much more frequently. I love that. I love also in your book how you talked about how both you and Ruth were coming up professionally in an era where you were not necessarily trying to shatter glass ceilings. You were just trying to get your foot in the door. That's right. Forget the glass ceilings. You were just trying to get your foot in the door. That's right. Forget the glass ceilings. We were, I think both felt quite often that we had our noses pressed up against the window saying, Hey guys, let us in. And we, we worked probably harder than any of the men we knew to prove that. All right. So when did you find out that Ruth was going to be on the Supreme Court as a legal affairs correspondent? Were you out there like writing all the articles of like,

here's who are who the possible candidates are for this opening? Was she on your radar? She wasn't on my radar till very late in the process. And she wasn't on Bill Clinton's radar until very late in the process. There were other people. He was very much interested in having somebody who had experience in elected office becoming a member of the court so that that perspective, which has traditionally been on the court almost all the time since the founding, up until I would say the 80s, when the Reagan administration was very interested in putting experienced judges on that they could look at their records, know what kind of people they were judges and not politicians. And Bill Clinton was interested first in Mario Cuomo. He didn't want it. Then Senator George Mitchell, who'd been the Senate majority leader, he didn't want it. And he had a couple of other ideas and he was told by Republicans that they couldn't get him through. And so he started looking elsewhere. And I think it was Pat Moynihan who called attention to his constituent in New York,

Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Moynihan was a senator from New York and he had known her for a long time. And finally, she started being vetted and she was called for an interview. And I think it was on a Saturday that they called her and she said, can you wait till tomorrow? I'm supposed to go to Vermont for a wedding. So she went to the wedding and she said, I'll just be in my traveling clothes. Well, you know, for Ruth, that was pretty perfect. But she said, I won't have proper clothes on. And the White House counsel assured her that the president would be coming off the golf course and he would not be dressed up. Well, she arrives for the interview and in walks Clinton, who's just come from church

and he's got a suit on and she's just mortified. But the truth of the matter is that everybody I talked to said that that interview sealed the deal, that he fell for her hook, line, and sinker, and that he offered her the job that night. And the event in the Rose Garden was the next day. That's so fast. Yes. And one of the things I love about her confirmation process is how overwhelmingly she was confirmed in the Senate. There was none of this like 51-49 business. They saw that she was qualified. She was well-qualified and the overwhelming majority of them voted to confirm her. I would say those are such different times. People's inclination was in both parties, we're going to vote for the

person the president nominates unless there's a compelling reason not to. And the people who were nominated by and large were, it's not that they weren't liberals and conservatives, they were, but they were not at the extreme end of either side. And so they didn't raise the kind of hackles. In her case, she certainly was a New York liberal, and she certainly had what one would call today progressive views. But she also was a very disciplined judge and really understood the limits of what you could do as a judge. And anybody who examined her came to realize that because, I mean, I was sometimes surprised by her votes, that they were not liberal, that they were what she thought the law called for. Yeah. Sometimes the law doesn't say what you wish it did.

Yes, exactly. You're bound by what the law says, even though you wish the law were different. Exactly. Do you remember speaking with her or the first time you spoke with her after she was confirmed to the Supreme Court? I'm not sure I do remember because, first of all, when she was nominated, I understood that the confirmation process was something I was going to have to cover. I wanted to cover, but I really should not be involved in any way, shape, or form in the preparations that she was doing, in advising her, which I probably couldn't have advised her anyway, or in being part of the celebration after she was confirmed. As much as I was her friend, this was not an appropriate role for me. I was just a working stiff. And that's what my job was, to cover the confirmation.

I remember in your book, too, you gave a couple of examples of many times that you interviewed her over the years. And you said there was one time where she said, can you please not ask me about X, whatever it was. And you told her, I have to ask you about X. It's my job to ask you. I had had a long scheduled interview with her. And it was just days after she had said some very uncomplimentary things about then candidate Trump. had said some very uncomplimentary things about then-candidate Trump. And she ended up having to walk it back and eat her words and say that she regretted making the comments. And there was just no way I couldn't ask her about that. It was news. I had a practice of when I was going to do a long interview of her, and I did dozens and dozens of them on stage over the years. I had a practice of calling her up and discussing with her what we were going to talk about.

A lot of it was the same material, but I always wanted it to be something fresh. And I found that if I told her ahead of time that I was going to ask her something, she had time to think about it. And she said something almost invariably very interesting. So in my conversation with her on this occasion, I said, look, I'm going to have to ask you about this. And she said, oh, please don't do that. And I said, Ruth, I can't do that. You can ring me out in the interview if you want, but I have to ask. And so I asked her the question, she reread her statement and I followed up and she did read me out. And then we moved on. It is such an interesting story that the two of you have where you were both personal friends,

but it was your job to cover her professionally as a reporter and not just her alone, but of course, legal affairs of the United States, the Supreme Court itself. What an interesting dynamic that had to create inside your friendship. It did, but unlike covering a member of the House or Senate who you can ask about their work, and you should ask them, what's going on behind the scenes? What did you have to give away to get this? What did you get for giving away that? You can't ask those questions of a state justice because if you want that individual to be your friend, they're A, not going to answer

and B, not going to be your friend. So asking them what's going on behind the scenes is really inappropriate and asking them what the outcome of a case is is really inappropriate. And I never have done it. And I've had lots of friends, liberal and conservative, who were justices. And that's the way I got to know them, sort of understand their view of the law.

I could ask them about a decision they had that was already out. And I'd say, how did you figure that out? I could ask that. But I couldn't ask them about something that was ongoing. And it's the way that Justice Ginsburg and Justice Scalia, who were polar opposites, were both my friends. And I miss them both. Their friendship was so famous. And their friendship seems so implausible today, doesn't it? It seems like in today's climate, you would be hard-pressed to find that kind of, for lack of a better term, odd couple again. I love it. And I love reading about their fondness for each other, where they were able to set aside differences of opinion and enjoy

each other as people. Yeah. And I think that, I'm not saying it couldn't happen today. I think certainly the Chief Justice, Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Ginsburg became over the years friends. I don't think they were initially, but with Scalia for her, it was easy. She had met him at, they were both teaching, I think, at the University of Chicago for a brief period. And she would have lunch with him and other faculty members. And he always made her laugh. And she loved people who made her laugh. But he was also a really special human being, had such joie de vivre.

special human being, had such roi de vivre. I can't tell you the number of times that we had Maureen and Nino Scalia to dinner, and we would have people of the liberal persuasion at the same dinner party, and they were all prepared to dislike them, and then just couldn't. It was impossible to dislike them. It was absolutely impossible. He is long regarded as being one of the best, most entertaining writers on the Supreme Court as well. His opinions sometimes have like little funny elements written into them, or he adds just a little bit of spice. In his defense. When you have a majority, you don't risk it for posterity, for those kind of tricks. No, you have to keep everybody on board. And so it's really important that you stick to the script, more or less, and write it as well as you can.

Within the parameters, you have to get to five. And if you lose one of the five, you're suddenly in the minority. So all of his zingers, I think, are basically when he's in dissent and not in the majority. He's really trying to make a very pointed point, as it were. And he's free to do that because he doesn't have to keep people on board. If other people don't want to sign on to his dissent, they don't. And they sometimes didn't because he could be pretty tough in his dissents and insulting to the people of the majority. That's not always the best way to win friends and influence people.

But he was such a charming and warm guy that his colleagues even forgave him for those zingers from time to time. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goal tenders, no. But chicken tenders, yes. Because those are groceries, and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials.

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A buttermilk-battered chicken breast served on a brioche bun with barrel-cured pickles. And here's the best part. It's topped with a sauce made from ghost peppers and on show chilies. If that doesn't send a chill of anticipation down your spine, nothing will. Get your ghost pepper sandwich today at Popeye's before it ghosts you for another year. Your book is called Dinners with Ruth, and I would love to hear more about some of the dinners you guys had together well in some ways it's a it's not a misnomer it's true and especially in the lockdown when kovid came and ruth was fighting cancer for the third time in her life. And she was doing pretty well, but it was still a tough go. But in that period of time, I think she came to dinner 23 straight Saturdays during the lockdown

because it was the only place she could go where she was completely safe. We put all the leaves in the table. We would sit her at one end. Most of the time she would be with her daughter or granddaughter who had come to spend time with her or her son. And they'd come to spend time with her and they would get tested before they arrived. And they would come and we would take exquisitely careful care of her. And nobody in my house was going out for the most part during that time. So we just would wipe down everything in the arrow when we still were. And she would sit. It was at least six feet away from David and me at the other end. at the other end. And what were the topics of your conversation? What did she like to talk about when she was just at your home for dinner? Did she have pet causes that she loved to discuss? Was she into pop culture? What kind of stuff did you guys talk about? In some ways, I don't know. I never kept a journal. But in that last year, I always felt

it was my job to make her laugh and to tell her some jokes I'd heard and to tell her gossip I'd heard she loved gossip she loved judicial gossip and she loved other gossip she loved to know about the private lives of everybody and she and she knew some judicial she would talk about a particular circuit court and she would say, and I hear they're really at each other's throats. Judicial gossip. That is niche. That is niche. Very niche. Very, very niche. And if I heard some piece of judicial gossip, I told her about it. And I think my job was just to entertain her. And, you know, as the time wore on,

she was sometimes even quieter than usual. I think probably didn't feel right, but she wanted to get out. She wanted to have company. She wanted to live. And she was very intent on trying to live during that time up until almost the very end. This is a question lots of people ask me. Why didn't she ever retire? Why didn't she see, you know, like I've had cancer multiple times already. It's time for me to, it's time for me to step away. Do you have any sense of why she didn't retire? You know, I never had a detailed discussion with her about this, but I do have a fair idea about what her reasons were. And President Obama, I didn't know this at the time, but President Obama, either in 2013

or 2014, had invited her to lunch and actually suggested that she think of retiring. And she was not interested in doing that. And people forget what that time period was like. First of all, she was at the top of her game. She was the senior liberal justice and often assigning opinions to conservative justices if she had gotten one of them to join her. And she loved her work. Her husband had died. This was her life. And she said something in an interview, not with me, but with somebody else. And somebody said, why do you not want to retire? And she said, who would be better than me? And I think she thought at the time, remember, the filibuster was still in place, that nobody who she thought was up to her standards would likely get confirmed if she did retire.

And by the time she was sick, really had been diagnosed as having cancer again, Trumpet was already present. She did everything in her power to stay alive, I think. It's what kept her going. And she did things that most of us had probably she would not have done to try to stay alive until after the 2020 election. And she damn near made it, but not quite. I also think that she really did believe for most of that time that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee and would be elected, and that she wanted the first woman president to nominate her successor. Sure, the symbolism of that, let alone any other considerations, but just the symbolism, I can understand how that would, important to her. One of the things that always amused me about learning about her was her workouts. Her workouts.

It always makes me smile thinking about Ruth and her workouts and how she talked about how exercise was really important to her. And it probably absolutely did keep her, you know, sharp and living as long as she did, despite having cancer multiple times. Do you recall her being really active person? Or was this just like a part of her life that she said? Oh, no, no, no, no, no. She was actually quite athletic. She was a very good horseback rider. She went parasailing once and Scalia was there. He said, I was afraid she wasn't going to make it down from there. The wind would just blow her away. She liked to golf. I don't think she was a great golfer from various accounts, but she liked to golf. She water skied. So she was a very good athlete. She started having her trainer because after her first cancer operation, her husband told her that she looked like she'd been in Auschwitz. She was so thin. And she found this wonderful guy, Brian, who was a trainer to a bunch of judges on the D.C. Circuit and District Court.

And so she started going to him and she did it, I think, twice, maybe three times occasionally a week. And when he put out his book of the RBG workout, there were tons of young journalists, you know, in their 30s who would go to him to talk about the workout and they would go to do the workout and they would find that they couldn't do her workout. Oh, that's amazing. That, you know, that probably would be true of most of her intellectual pursuits as well, that probably very few people could have kept up with her. I literally don't know anybody who had a mind and a memory like her. I mean, I've known some really smart people in my life. I've known people who had photographic memories, but I've never known anybody who remembered everything so well and so in context and didn't change it around and knew how to move it on and apply it to a new set of circumstances. I mean, really, if you think about it, think about what she did. She changed the way the world is for American women. When she started out, there were literally hundreds, if not thousands of

state, local and federal laws that discriminated openly against women. I mean, a married woman couldn't get a mortgage on her own. Or for that matter, I remember when my father had to sign a credit card for me because I couldn't get one on my own as an employed woman with a job. Today, they're bombarding me with three cards. Just sign up. Then they wouldn't give me one. The way she structured her cases was so much like somebody who took a jigsaw puzzle and rejiggered the way you fit the pieces in. So that she often had male plaintiffs who were being denied some government benefit because of their gender. In one case, it was social security benefits, survivor's benefits for a man whose wife had died in childbirth and who wanted to take care of his

child. But under the statute, only women, not widowers, were eligible for the benefit. That's the case she took to the Supreme Court. And one of the cases she was, I think probably the case she was sorriest about that she took to the court and it settled was an abortion case that was the same year as Roe. And her client was an Air Force captain who was pregnant. And the policy of the military at the time was women in the military, if they got pregnant, they either had to have an abortion or leave the service. And she wanted to take that and did take that to the Supreme Court. And they agreed to hear the case the same year as Roe. And it was a perfect pairing, as it were, because this was

the opposite, but it proved the same point she wanted to make, that a woman's choice is a woman's choice, not some other person's choice. In this case, the woman wanted to have the baby. And the U.S. government, which was playing defense in this case, finally decided that they were likely to lose this case. And they changed the regulation. And in doing that, they mooted the case. The case no longer, what they call a case in controversy, no longer existed. And so this was, the perfect pairing didn't happen.

She didn't get her moment of having that opinion written and being able to have that written into the, you know, sort of the canon of U.S. law. I feel that. law. I feel that. I love talking about Ruth, but I have a lot of other stuff I talk about. It's why the subtitle is important to me. Dinners with Ruth sells the book. A memoir on the power of friendships is the way I framed the book. And I, you know, I had a lot of wonderful friends like Cokie Roberts and Linda Wertheimer and Susan Stanberg. Those are my NPR friends, particularly Cokie and Linda, because we sat together, we became incredibly close in our personal lives. And other friends like that, and who taught me a lot about the law and about history. I'm not going to go through the whole story here, but after Justice Powell retired,

I used to have lunch with him. And I asked him one day, I asked him often, why did you do this? Or why did you do that? I was surprised that you did this. I asked him why he felt so clearly he had voted consistently for abortion rights. And I asked him about that. And there's a story in the book about why he felt so passionately about that. And it's something of a personal story. And there are a lot of those kinds of stories and friendships. They're part of the fabric of my life. And that I thought, I have to admit that framing the book this way was not my idea. I said no for years to people who wanted me to write something, anything. And when Ruth died, I had just about every publisher approach me.

And I said no to all of them, including Simon & Schuster. And finally, the woman who called me, she said, can you meet with the CEO and the publisher? And I thought, well, it's churlish to say no. So I said, of course, I'll meet with them, but the answer is still going to be no. going to be no. And so I had this Zoom meeting with these two senior executives. I told them that I had not kept a journal of any of my dinner parties. And I said, so I don't, I know you would like a book about all of these memories, but I can't recount them all. I don't have a source for that. And I said, and I have no idea how to write a memoir. I looked up how many pieces I'd done on NPR, and it was something like 10,000. And I know if I actually looked at them, I would start to remember this and that and the other thing. I said, I have no idea how to write a memoir. I'm not going to do it. And Jonathan Karp said, I don't want you to write a traditional memoir. I want you to write a memoir that is based on your friendships,

mainly with women, over the years. Because you do represent the women who got their foot in the door and who eventually did break the glass ceiling, even if you didn't intend to at the beginning. And I thought that was doable. That seemed manageable enough. I do talk a lot about the court in this, but I talk about the justices as human beings, less for what they wrote, but rather for who they were. By the time I was finished, I really didn't like it. And by the end, I thought it was a, hopefully an easy read that almost anybody can read and identify with. It is. It's actually very easy. It's a quick read and it's a delightful read. It is not a slog. It's not an 800 page tome. It is like the stories are so accessible.

Hopefully it'll make you laugh and it'll make you cry. But the last thing I wanted to mention is that what a testament to you, Nina, that you have had so many friendships with extraordinary people who could have been friends with anyone. So I know that this is not a book extolling your own virtues where you're like, look at me, I'm Nina and I'm fantastic. That's not the book at all. But I think it is a testament to you that there are so many extraordinary humans, especially extraordinary women who valued your friendship. Well, they, I mean, as you will find when you read this, none of us goes

through life and has it be all easy. There are some really tough times that we all have. We lose people, we get sick, all kinds of things. And I learned from my women friends how to be a better friend. And they took such exquisite care of me at critical moments in my life, like when my husband died. And before that, when he was dreadfully sick and in the hospital for almost five years, they took care of me, including Ruth. And I learned from them to be a better friend and how to be a better friend. It is a great gift to receive people's friendship and you need to be able to pay it back. Can you give us, what is your secret to being a good friend? If somebody, maybe they struggle with it or they always just

think, I'd love to improve being a good friend. What little tip or piece of advice or secret would you give to people who would like to learn to be a better friend? Well, if you find out that they are really struggling over something, you have to show up. You really do just have to show up and do whatever they need, even if it's just listen. But I try when I can just think, geez, I haven't talked to so-and-so in so long. I need to try to get together with them. And if I can't, just call. I mean, we all have times, believe me, I have felt this fall like I was just barely keeping my nose above the water, promoting the book and doing my day job. And it's a very big and busy term. But I'd like to at least once a week say, geez, I haven't seen them and I need to just call and catch up. And of course, my best friends have been my sisters. I've been very lucky. I have

two fabulous sisters who are the ultimate. And on the way to work today, I was talking to my sister, who's a federal judge in Atlanta. And thank God she was on her way to work too. So I called and she had called yesterday and I didn't have time to call her back. And so I called her this morning on the way to work and we had 20 minutes on the phone. And you can do that with people. And for God's sakes, the really hard thing to do is if somebody dies, just write a note and do it right then. Because otherwise you'll forget and then you'll be so embarrassed you won't be able to do it. I love that.

Well, Nina, it has truly been a pleasure getting to chat with you today. I absolutely loved your book, Dinners with Ruth, a memoir on the power of friendships. I think this is going to be not just an extraordinary gift to give, but also a gift to give yourself

to read more about the fascinating friendships of the legendary Nina Totenberg. Well, thank you for having me, Sharon. I really appreciate it. Hey, thank you so much for listening today. I think you will really enjoy the book, Dinners with Ruth, a memoir on the power of friendships. It is written by NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, and it's available wherever you buy your books. Thank you so much for listening to Here's Where It Gets Interesting. If you enjoyed this episode,

would you consider sharing it on social media or leaving us a rating or review on your favorite podcast platform? All those things help podcasters out so much. The show is written and researched by executive producer Heather Jackson, Valerie Hoback, and Sharon McMahon. Our audio engineer is Jenny Snyder, and it's hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. We'll see you again soon.