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 Hi.
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We have one of your idols on today.
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My very faves.
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One of the people that I think is just an exemplary person living on the planet.
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And, you know, does not come without controversy.
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Sure.
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But every person does.
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And I think just, you know,
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 She has lived a life that is crazy.
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She was a journalist covering human rights.
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She saw the world from that perspective for so long that when she got into politics, I just felt every time I was tracking her, reading about her, she just had such a level head about dignity.
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And her name is Samantha Power, and I just love her like crazy.
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 And she's currently the administrator of the United States Agency for International Development under the Biden administration and was the United States ambassador to the United Nations under Obama.
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And she was with President Obama from the inception of his run for president.
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Yeah.
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And this is.
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 neither here nor there.
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This is a just weird ding, ding, ding.
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Her husband, Cass, co-wrote Danny Kahneman's most recent book.
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Really?
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Called Noise.
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Yes.
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And it was so bizarre.
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I didn't know that.
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It was so weird because we interviewed her and then the next day, Danny Kahneman's team reached out to us for Armchair and I saw the book and I was like, whoa, that is too simulation-y.
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 It's very simulation.
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I mean, they write books, that couple.
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Oh, she's a, speaking of, a Pulitzer Prize winner.
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Yeah.
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That's actually how I discovered her, because I read her book, A Problem from Hell, probably, I don't know, 15 years ago, when I was studying and researching and trying to figure out
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 all of these wars that were happening everywhere where sort of America was getting involved and what's right and what's wrong.
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And I was specifically concerned with the child soldiers in Uganda, but she had a really amazing perspective on that.
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But she wrote this really dense book called A Problem from Hell.
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And she's just so thorough.
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Yeah.
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And so thoughtful.
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 And then she also just, in the midst of all this, became a mom a few times over and, you know, hid her pregnancy when she was first working in the White House because she was like, I don't want them to think I can't do my job because I can do my job.
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And so she was just wearing like really big shirts and running to the bathroom all the time.
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Yeah.
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 What I really like about the show that we're doing is we are trying to show women in different lines of work, in different areas, and trying to cover all of that spectrum.
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And the political one is so specific and so male-driven often.
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And so it was really, really, really cool to hear this powerful woman who's among all these men all the time, has to find a way to make her voice
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 heard and I just I really enjoyed hearing how she did that.
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And never has a really a victim's attitude about it because she's definitely like in her new book An Education of an Idealist which I loved reading because it's very much you know sort of an autobiography.
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She's got such a an idealistic point of view and she talks about how she was sort of schooled about what has to happen and how you have to compromise and
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 What can you give up?
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But in it, she goes into a lot of situations where, you know, she's three minutes late for a meeting in the White House, but to walk into a meeting where the president and, you know, 10 heads of state are waiting for you, to walk in three minutes late is excruciating.
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You might as well walk in completely nude.
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Yeah.
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And she just talks about that with such levity.
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She's just a real human being that you hear speak when she writes, and I couldn't love her more.
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 And I'm glad that you brought her to the table.
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And it was such a fun conversation.
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So please enjoy Samantha Power.
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We are supported by Wondrium.
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I find that I'm endlessly curious.
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Yet, if the television comes on, I will watch something mindless.
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Absolutely.
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I'll watch, you know, three hours of a reality show that I didn't need to have in my life.
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And then I'll feel like, man,
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 I could have been educating myself.
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And Wondrium gives that to you.
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There was one called the Brain-Based Guide to Communicating Better.
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So good.
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So good.
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Because for your personal and professional life, communication is key for everything.
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And there were like lessons and practical strategies, and it was just really, really cool.
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 And they have documentaries, tutorials, and a ton of collections.
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It's really, really great.
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That's W-O-N-D-R-I-U-M dot com slash glass, wondrium.com slash glass.
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SPEAKER_03
 Rolling.
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Okay.
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Rolling.
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Well, wait, first of all, which is more difficult, setting a podcast equipment or asking the world to acknowledge genocides?
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Be honest.
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Be honest.
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Well, asking is easy.
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It's succeeding and getting them to do anything that's harder.
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How are you guys?
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How's it going for you with this?
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Well, we hate to be happy, but we are, you know.
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Can't be happy.
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You cannot be happy now.
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 Well, because we're talking to people that we have an undying amount of respect for.
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And you are at the very top of my list.
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And I've admired you for so long and read even some of your really dense stuff.
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 Because you can write dents, girl.
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That's no joke.
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A Problem from Hell was not a light book.
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Yeah, that was when you outed yourself as being more nerd than glam.
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That's fine with me.
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Look, in preparing for this, searching on the internet and seeing that people have Samantha Power fan club t-shirts.
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 And then coming to the realization that they're not sold, they were made and that I can't get one was something that did not make me happy.
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I was like, well, obviously I need one.
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I'm going to wear it to the interview.
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Couldn't find it.
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And then I just felt an immediate, my competitive glory kicked in and I was like, who does this girl in the t-shirt think she is?
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 I'm the president of the Power Fan Club.
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We can all be fans, Kristen Bell.
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That's what we're working out here.
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And also, Kristen is going to put an Etsy store up because all she's been doing over quarantine is crafting and gel nails.
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So she's going to do a store.
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We keep talking about my A-list crafting to keep me busy.
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I've knitted a sweater and a half.
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 I like to make clay figurines of all my family.
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So there's just like mishmash-faced clay figurines everywhere and I figure why not an Etsy store?
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And you can do Samantha Power t-shirts!
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SPEAKER_03
 Oh, no.
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And the text I get, Finley pooped in Rian's room when I opened the phone.
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Uh-oh.
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Finley is not a child.
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That's a mother's text.
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Finley is a dog.
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Well, yeah, we should say this interview is happening in February, but it will come out later in the year.
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And so at that point, you- We'll be in the job.
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Yes.
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Of?
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Of?
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 of USAID administrator or administrator of the Agency for International Development.
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When Kristen was saying, you know, we get to sit here and we get to talk to people that were incredibly taken by, don't you feel fraudulent?
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A hundred percent.
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We feel so fraudulent.
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And I wondered what your experience was.
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Do you feel that, Samantha?
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Like, do you feel fraudulent in these space?
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Because you're in this insane arena.
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 Like when we come at you with the Sam Power fan club stuff, do you feel as fraudulent as I feel?
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Because mine, I think mine goes deeper because I'm like even saying someone else's words.
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Like I can't take credit for the good place, but do you find that at all?
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 I mean, the short answer is yes, but it's complicated, partly because of the things that I tried to do that didn't pan out that are much more salient in my memory.
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It's partly because virtually on any issue where I've even made modest inroads, it's what you were just saying about the good place.
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There's some team of people that you're working with where when I was UN ambassador, I was the person out in front, but then I had
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 all my sanctions nerds or my humanitarian experts or my climate law people.
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And, you know, I'm the bright
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 shiny objects, so absolutely feel, I don't know what the right word is, not sort of chastened, I suppose, and just a little bit like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's move on.
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Let's talk about something else.
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In how much I feel like I've exposed myself to your life and your work, I feel like you've set such a tone and an example for me as to how to give credit to other people.
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Because one thing I love about when I read your writing is you take such
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 time and loving tone when you describe the people that you work with.
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And I'm not talking about colleagues that are peers.
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I'm talking about like there's a chapter in Education of an Idealist when you talk about having gotten a new position and how much Maria, the nanny you hired for your family to watch, how much she did.
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 The kudos that you give to the people that you work alongside, not just in compliments, but in they are literally the wind beneath my wings.
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I couldn't be here or like, it's just honorable from my perspective of, oh yeah, this is a woman who recognizes it's not just her.
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There is an entire support system here and not only recognizes it, but you take the time to put that information out there.
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 Well, when I chose to write about my life, I think the way I rationalized doing so, because it felt a little bit self-indulgent, you know, it's one thing to write a book about what we should do about, you know, sexual trafficking or about climate change.
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It's another thing to write a book about oneself when those problems are out there in the world.
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And part of my logic was I'd had this experience of being an activist and being before that a reporter.
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 on the outside looking in and thinking I had a pretty decent understanding of how things worked in the U.S.
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government.
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And then I got in there and I started to see this tapestry of humanity, right, both in terms of where people were from, where their parents had immigrated from, religion, race, gender, just the range of backgrounds and people that I was coming in contact with.
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And I on the outside would have
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 tended to focus on sort of the Secretary of State or the President or the National Security Advisor.
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Then I get inside, I'm looking under the hood and I say, oh, my goodness gracious, it's so much more interesting and rich than that.
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And it's a scrum at virtually every level of government.
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And who are these people?
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 you know, who aren't interviewed by the press, aren't profiled in Vogue or any place else.
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And yet they're the lifeblood of the system.
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So the idea was, open it up and tell a story about that.
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And I want people who read to not just see themselves
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 and ask themselves, oh, maybe one day I can be UN ambassador.
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But there's so many ways to make a difference.
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That was an objective, was to show, look at all these different ways of making a difference.
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Separately, though, describing Maria, who was our nanny, was, I suppose, motivated by something else, a what's factual and true, which is there's no way in hell I would have been able to do anything without her.
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So that was an imperative to tell that story, but also to show
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 That it isn't easy and to show the privilege that I had to be able to hire somebody like that, both to have the resources to do so, which so many working women don't have or working parents don't have.
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So I just felt like, let me own this.
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Like, I am lucky not everybody gets to do this.
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And even with Maria,
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 who is a magical human and for it to still be me barely hanging on, barely hanging on.
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Having the conversation with John Kerry about Russia sanctions and having Declan, my son at the time, still my son, my son at the time, six or seven, at me trying to get my attention and being on with Kerry and trying to shoo him away as we all working parents have the experience of doing.
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 and having him trying and trying again, and finally him stomping off and saying, Putin, Putin, Putin, Putin, when is it going to be Declan, Declan, Declan, Declan?
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And that's my version of it.
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But every working parent has a version of that story, right?
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 And that's when I have a Maria, and that's with all the blessings and privileges that I've had.
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And so I wanted to open it up rather than, like, sometimes I feel like it's so stylized, you know?
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Yeah.
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Me and my children and my work-life balance, you know, everything is going so swimmingly.
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Yeah, it's a charade often.
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Yes.
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 Well, I also know that you said that obviously you're telling people to lean in, but also to lean on.
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And I think that's so important because there is this ideal that like women have to do it all.
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They have to be the mom and they have to also work and they have to do this and they have to be loving and nurturing and also disciplinarian and all like they have to be all the things.
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And I think it's really good to say like,
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 No, rely on your village.
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Rely on the people around you because they bring you up.
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And I also wanted to give you, Kristen, I mean, maybe you learned it from Sam, but probably, I mean, maybe it's a fisherman seeing another fisherman at sea, but you are the epitome of that.
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I would not be sitting here if you hadn't done that for me.
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All you do is bring people up and acknowledge them and give credit and you should take that in.
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Well, you know, I will certainly compliment.
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I'll give you for the week.
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Copy that.
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 I will say also, I was downwind of Mike Schur, the creator of The Good Place for many, many years, and he just reeks of lifting people up.
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I was going to ask you if someone modeled that for you.
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Yeah, that's beautiful.
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Oh, he stinks of it.
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He is the best boss I've ever had.
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I was desperate to figure him out.
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Like, what is it?
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What's his special magic?
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What's the recipe?
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And number one, it's that he's just kind and respectful, but also he goes out of his way
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 to uplift people in a very practical and tangible way.
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Like he will see our prop master, who is exquisitely talented, and he'll say, the next time I'd like you to be the production designer.
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But it was the specific desire he had to isolate people's talents and then just see how he could water that seed.
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And
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 It doesn't make sense in my brain to not do that.
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And you were so apparent in the beginning when I met you just as like an acquaintance.
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And I was like, oh, this girl's going to do great.
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She's going to be my boss very soon.
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And lo and behold, here we are.
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 But I do think in a female space, that can be hard to do.
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I think there's a lot of feelings of this can go into race as well.
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But like, you know, there's only one slot or there's only two slots.
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And I got one, so I got to hoard it for myself.
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That's natural to feel that way.
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I mean, we have to combat it.
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But I think I don't know if it's natural or if it's societal and that there's only been one place at the table and it's been looked at as a gift.
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 We need to fight it, for sure.
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Yeah, and not fight each other.
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Did you have a group of women who you felt like you could lean on, like professional or personal?
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So in my early 20s, I was in a pack of female work correspondents, and they were all like me, but by and large, freelancers who would have been prone to not be that welcoming because in the freelance environment,
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 You get strings, you get a string that connects you with a publication, with a magazine, or a TV station, or a newspaper.
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So if you're seeking to acquire lots of strings so you can make piecemeal enough to get by on, not in your interest for some other correspondent, male or female, to show up.
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Yet when I arrived, all the men were like, no, there are no strings available.
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We got it covered, and this woman who was Time Magazine's freelancer, Laura Pitter,
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 said to me, just don't listen to those assholes.
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You know, of course there's work, come, come.
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And she wrote her number on a coaster, you know, which I tucked into like some book I was reading.
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And then I was back in America and I was thinking, just been to the Balkans that one time, should I go back?
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And I have her little, I remember it was a CompuServe email address that she had, you know, it was like the first, the first internet where you had to plug your computer into the wall and,
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 And I thought, will I email her?
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Will I call her?
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Is she right?
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Are those guys, is that what it's going to be like?
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And I trusted her and I went and I stayed in her apartment and she taught me how to write a lead and do a radio and NPR radio spot.
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She kind of educated me.
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And then the circle expanded of just more and more female correspondents like this.
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And they were all in my wedding.
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They're my best friends to this day.
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We have, you know, one of those,
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 message chats, you know, we're posting the latest outrage on this or that or the latest book we've read that we recommend to everybody.
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So so that was just a kind of network that grew up and really defied.
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 I think journalism's reputation and maybe some of the reputation that some women have for kicking the chair away once they've achieved something for themselves.
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That was not my experience.
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Then when I got to the White House, I was not conscious initially of being a woman in the workplace.
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Weirdly, I was pregnant.
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Then I was initially the mother of a newborn.
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 I was new to government, so how do you get a decision out of the president on something that matters and is urgent?
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I had to learn that, as well as I was the human rights advisor, which is likened to being the skunk at the
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 lawn party because there are a lot of trends and tendencies in American foreign policy that cut against human rights.
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So initially I thought, number one, I'm bad at my job, which is terrible because there are people outside counting on me.
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And number two, I'm bad because I'm new and I suck and that's it.
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And I've just got to get better.
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And it's all about me.
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And it was only when
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 a female colleague of mine named Liz Sherwood Randall, who's now President Biden's Homeland Security Advisor and a huge job at the White House.
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Yeah.
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She said, ladies, there are only six of us out of 26 senior national security staff.
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We're meeting in my office on Wednesday night.
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We're going to have one glass of wine.
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Yes.
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And bear in mind that the NSC offices at the White House, if you work on national security because of all the intelligence, you work inside a safe.
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 So you literally have to turn one of those dials, like in a heist movie, and you walk into that safe.
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And so suddenly there's a bottle of wine in the middle of this safe.
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And these five other women, I kind of, we work on different issues.
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And so they seem to totally have their acts together.
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They had none of these thought bubbles, it seemed to me, from the outside that I was having of, why am I so bad at this?
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Why am I not getting things done?
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Then we sat down and one after the other told stories just like mine.
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And then I realized, wait a minute.
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 There's something else going on here.
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I mean, everybody who was there working for Obama at that time was a progressive in their orientation and probably would have self-identified, man and woman alike, as a feminist.
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But it didn't matter.
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There just were these ways in which a woman's comments weren't elevated or taken as seriously.
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It felt like at least that was the other woman's impression and certainly was the impression of my own.
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 contributions or my own inability to get things done.
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So once we had just that one glass of wine in that venting session and I heard, I was like, okay, wait, she works on nonproliferation and she works on counterterrorism and they're having the same experience I am.
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So it's not because it's human rights.
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There's some other dynamics here and numbers matter, right?
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You go from being the only woman in a room
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 to being a majority and how just things change in such subtle and essential ways without you even noticing.
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But it was that experience, and Liz convened this group, and every week any one of us was in town.
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SPEAKER_00
It was called the Wednesday Group, and it was on our calendar.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like a permanent thing.
2
SPEAKER_00
 it totally changed the way we thought about ourselves and our own abilities.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it changed the way we interacted with one another.
2
SPEAKER_00
If one of us was in a meeting, even if we were disagreeing, Liz and I disagreed fervently on a couple of issues, we would say, you know, let's come back to Liz's point.
2
SPEAKER_00
I'm not sure we've engaged it fully and just make sure that the dignity and the agency of the individual was respected and elevated.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that was an intentionality and a self-consciousness
2
SPEAKER_00
 I had never had before.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now running a large agency, I'm thinking about it every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
How do I make the workforce feel that?
2
SPEAKER_00
And not just on gender and not just other people who have long been marginalized or not been present in big numbers, but diverse viewpoints too, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
People who are bringing contrarian perspectives.
2
SPEAKER_00
 that may be valuable?
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, because you have to be efficient.
2
SPEAKER_00
You have to get decisions.
2
SPEAKER_00
You can't have long, lyrical debates about everything at all times.
2
SPEAKER_00
You've got to keep your GSD up high.
2
SPEAKER_00
You've got to keep your GSD quotient at the right level.
2
SPEAKER_00
But at the same time, that feeling that people can have of being attached to something that's inclusive, big priority and a huge opportunity, I feel like, to, at scale, see what's possible.
2
SPEAKER_02
 There is so much to unpack here.
2
SPEAKER_02
I mean, this is why you're my favorite.
2
SPEAKER_01
Well, and also, I think, you know, we interviewed Amy Poehler on Armchair and her and three other men created Upright Citizens Brigade, which is a formative comedy experience for so many comedians.
2
SPEAKER_01
And you were talking about this idea that you almost feel like to succeed, you have to be a guy's girl.
2
SPEAKER_01
 You have to be someone who gets along with the guys and who can hang with the guys, quote.
2
SPEAKER_01
And I just love this idea that you guys had a girls night, essentially.
2
SPEAKER_01
In a giant safe.
2
SPEAKER_00
In a safe.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_01
The female relationships are
2
SPEAKER_01
 important and to not disregard those so that you can like climb a ladder or you can like get along with the men.
2
SPEAKER_01
And of course, the reason we feel this is because men dominate so many of these professions.
2
SPEAKER_01
But I love that it's just like, no, also focus on the girls.
2
SPEAKER_00
I never would have done it.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the reason I'm so careful here on this one to give credit where credit is due is that
2
SPEAKER_00
 Liz had been, she'd worked at the Pentagon for years.
2
SPEAKER_00
She'd been in some of the most male-dominated, and she just knew that this was a place that she could create just with this small act, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
A place of refuge and a place to inculcate a solidarity that wasn't there before.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when I became UN ambassador, I had talked to Madeleine Albright, who was America's first female Secretary of State, shattered some serious glass of her own.
2
SPEAKER_00
Big time.
2
SPEAKER_00
 Before that, she was UN ambassador back in 1993, so 20 years before I was in the job.
2
SPEAKER_00
And she had had this insight as well that I would not have had but for Liz and but for Madeline, which is when she got to the UN, there were 183 countries represented there.
2
SPEAKER_00
And only seven of the ambassadors out of 183 were women.
2
SPEAKER_00
So she created something she called the G7, which of course, there's the group of seven among countries, but girl seven.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And she gathered those seven female ambassadors together.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I think they managed to notch some not trivial policy achievements insofar as they got female judges elected to the war crimes tribunals.
2
SPEAKER_00
And those judges ended up being involved in passing down the first ever verdicts on rape as a weapon of war and as a form of genocide.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it ended up having this knock on effect.
2
SPEAKER_00
 But beyond that, they just met and it allows you to identify kind of what's you and what's the vibe and what's society or what's the community, the broader dynamics.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it was across region and religion and because just what these seven countries happened to be that had put women forward.
2
SPEAKER_00
When I got there, flash forward 20 years, there are 193 countries in the world, about 10 countries had joined the UN since.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when I arrived, we had 37 female
2
SPEAKER_00
 permanent representatives, female ambassadors.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so on Madeline's advice, I convened the G37 and it would fluctuate.
2
SPEAKER_00
It went up at one point, I think it was the G41, G42.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you know this book, Confidence Code?
2
SPEAKER_02
No.
2
SPEAKER_02
Writing it down.
2
SPEAKER_02
Tattooing it on my body.
2
SPEAKER_00
 women and girls and confidence and so forth.
2
SPEAKER_00
So we brought these authors to talk to these female PRs about confidence.
2
SPEAKER_00
And these are women who were often the first person in their, not only in their family, but in their village to go to college.
2
SPEAKER_00
And here they were representing their country at the United Nations.
2
SPEAKER_00
Just breathtaking stories of courage and resilience and so forth.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And yet here they are talking about confidence and disclosing what it's been like for them at every stage when they've been, you know, breaking through some barrier in Nepal or in Vietnam or in Mozambique or whatever.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so that was amazing.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then we had a dinner with Gloria Steinem.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And for them, you know, in their own countries to be able to reflect to her about what the feminist movement in the United States meant in their own communities.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so some of it, again, was was breeding that solidarity, but some of it was cooperating, as Madeline had done, on concrete
2
SPEAKER_00
 issues and things that we were trying to achieve, you know, for example, getting more female police and soldiers into peacekeeping missions, because sexual violence is such a recurring challenge.
2
SPEAKER_00
So, you know, again, it's practical, but it's spiritual.
2
SPEAKER_01
For sure.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it takes time.
2
SPEAKER_00
 And that's what goes, right?
2
SPEAKER_00
When you get busy, when you get stressed, when you're in challenging or competitive work situations, that's what gives because it's the first thing that gets dropped from your schedule.
2
SPEAKER_00
And yet it pays off.
2
SPEAKER_00
It pays such dividends.
2
SPEAKER_00
So make that time.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Oh my God.
2
SPEAKER_02
Again, there's so much to unpack.
2
SPEAKER_02
Wait, but first we have to fix this.
2
SPEAKER_02
I want to help you fix this.
2
SPEAKER_02
Listen, what if you took those headphones off and you flipped them over, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
Like invert them, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
And then still put it on the back.
2
SPEAKER_02
Is there a hook that goes over your ears?
2
SPEAKER_00
There must be some, there's something.
2
SPEAKER_02
 I am doing this wrong.
2
SPEAKER_02
See that hole, the little space between the actual speaker and the black hook thing?
2
SPEAKER_02
That goes over the top of your ear.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh, this.
2
SPEAKER_02
 Does that mean—?
2
SPEAKER_02
Yes, yes, yes!
2
SPEAKER_00
How do you feel now?
2
SPEAKER_00
Breakthrough.
2
SPEAKER_00
Women helping women.
2
SPEAKER_00
Women?
2
SPEAKER_00
What I thought you were going to say—it shows you how old-fashioned— I thought you were going to say what I've tried to do multiple times, which is that, you know how they used to be able to adjust, like the black— Expand.
2
SPEAKER_00
Stretch it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then I'm like, no, I've tried that, Kristen.
2
SPEAKER_02
 But you're a great listener, and you knew there was a small possibility that I had something to contribute, and you went with it, and this is why I love you.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you feel that?
2
SPEAKER_02
Now you can do anything you want with your hands.
2
SPEAKER_02
They call it hands-free for a reason.
2
SPEAKER_02
And we fixed it.
2
SPEAKER_00
We have no wine.
2
SPEAKER_02
We're not in the safe, and we did it.
2
SPEAKER_02
This is the power.
2
SPEAKER_02
I would love to go into the safe.
2
SPEAKER_02
Oh, me too.
2
SPEAKER_02
I feel jealous.
3
SPEAKER_01
 We are supported by HelloFresh.
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And it took me like 20 minutes to do the whole thing.
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 This episode of We Are Supported By is supported by Bourbon Time.
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Maker's Mark makes me feel like a Peaky Blinder.
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I say it every time.
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Maker's Mark is just such a trusted whiskey brand.
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They're starting a movement, a Bourbon Time movement.
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 And it's because everyone's been really burnt out over the last year and they're trying to get people back up on their feet and they're trying to reclaim the six to seven happy hour.
3
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So I'm down for any movement that includes a happy hour.
3
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Yeah.
3
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And if it involves a glass of bourbon, remember to drink Maker's Mark responsibly.
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Maker's Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 45% alcohol by volume, copyright 2021, Maker's Mark Distillery, Incorporated, Loretto, Kentucky.
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We are supported by BetterHelp Online Therapy.
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 The thing about therapy is that if you are in any way resistant to it and you finally make the decision to do it, I feel like you have a really short window for execution.
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Otherwise, you'll just go, no, nevermind, I couldn't find anyone.
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That's better, H-E-L-P.com slash glass.
3
SPEAKER_02
 I would love for you to explain a little bit your thoughts and feelings on being pregnant in the White House.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so I hid my pregnancy.
3
SPEAKER_00
Late.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hid in quotes.
3
SPEAKER_00
You know, pathetically thought I was hiding.
3
SPEAKER_00
Sure, sure.
3
SPEAKER_02
Like I did on House of Lies when I had a whole bunch of briefcases in front of my giant belly.
3
SPEAKER_00
You were doing the same thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
But in, I presume people on the set were
3
SPEAKER_00
 in the know.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was pretty obvi.
3
SPEAKER_00
It's now been, my son is 11.
3
SPEAKER_00
So by definition, it's been 11 years since I felt I had to do this.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I met my husband, Cass Sunstein, on the Obama campaign in the early part of 2008.
3
SPEAKER_00
He proposed shockingly quickly.
3
SPEAKER_00
We got married in July, 2008.
3
SPEAKER_00
The election
3
SPEAKER_00
 of Obama was in November 2008.
3
SPEAKER_00
And by then we knew we were pregnant.
3
SPEAKER_00
We gotten pregnant in sort of August.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I was only a couple months pregnant at that point.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then thinking about what job am I going to do in the Obama administration?
3
SPEAKER_00
And to be honest, my thought was not they're going to hold it against me that I'm pregnant.
3
SPEAKER_00
I actually internalized.
3
SPEAKER_00
We have the massive global financial crisis at that time.
3
SPEAKER_00
We're trying to get our troops out of multiple wars.
3
SPEAKER_00
 America's in a big hole and they would want someone who won't go away for three months.
3
SPEAKER_00
I looked at it, putting myself in their shoes and just thought, well, gosh, I mean, it's an emergency situation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so even if they won't mean to, because they're progressives and understand the rights of women, they're not going to be able to help themselves.
3
SPEAKER_02
 That's an important acknowledgement, I think.
3
SPEAKER_02
And it's a sort of a contrarian's acknowledgement of like, you weren't coming at it from the place of it being sexist or that they would hold it against you.
3
SPEAKER_02
But it's simply a reality sometimes for the other side to go, oh, I'm supportive of this, but she's going to leave for three months.
3
SPEAKER_02
We need someone to fill the position.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I did the whole scarf thing.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then my vanity started to kick in at a certain point.
3
SPEAKER_00
 So then I was sort of torn, but a colleague of mine who was one of Obama's climate advisors, we were due right around the same time.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we had a kind of one of those where we noticed we were both wearing scarves in much the same style and sort of mixing it up.
3
SPEAKER_00
We had one of those looks across the room.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so we chatted.
3
SPEAKER_00
Our boys ended up being born, you know, within days of one another.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so this became a recurring
3
SPEAKER_00
 sisterhood of, you know, then we had to deal with pumping and visiting our babies during the workday once we went back after maternity leave.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mention that just because whatever it is that we women do internalize about the culture, it can impede or contribute to delaying the enjoyment of full rights.
3
SPEAKER_01
 Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
What I wish I had done is just said, here's the situation in part because there are younger women behind me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was in my late thirties when I had my first child.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so me hiding, what signal does that send to people who are thinking, do I have a baby?
3
SPEAKER_00
Do I not have a baby?
3
SPEAKER_00
Me hiding badly, maybe even more like the worst of all worlds.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, so I think just to have the confidence
3
SPEAKER_00
 to know that these systems are there to protect you.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there was no paid leave, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Any at that time at all.
3
SPEAKER_00
It's something we still have to work on.
3
SPEAKER_00
We're still like the last developed country that doesn't have that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that's another issue related to it is if once everybody was well aware that I was having a baby, I mean, I was lucky to be able to take the three months and use the vacation days and the sick days
3
SPEAKER_00
 and then have savings that I could draw on or have my husband still working.
3
SPEAKER_00
But just the choices that forces people in the federal workforce to make, right, where you're not going to be with your baby even for three months.
3
SPEAKER_00
You're going to have to go back after six weeks because it's not covered and you can't afford to
3
SPEAKER_00
 by formula or send your kid to daycare without the income that you get.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think there were a lot of dimensions to being pregnant.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then when I went back, I really did go back whole hog.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had met Maria, this amazing immigrant from Mexico who
3
SPEAKER_00
 spoke to my son in Spanish and I'd come home and she'd be dancing to Mexican music, you know, around the apartment and just so full of love and prayer and again, this kind of effervescence.
3
SPEAKER_00
So that made it easier to leave.
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course, the first day I said goodbye, I'm bawling, you know what I mean?
3
SPEAKER_00
And Cass and I are driving together and he's quite stoic about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
He's like, you'll be back tonight.
3
SPEAKER_00
 You know, it's chemical.
3
SPEAKER_00
I have to be with this child.
3
SPEAKER_00
I'm meant to be with this child.
3
SPEAKER_00
And but we put him in a daycare right across from the White House.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I would sprint in my very modest heels, looking like a Washington working woman and then like sprinting down the corridors of the old executive office building, darting across the street.
3
SPEAKER_00
 trying to get my feed in.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then on a few occasions, you're not even thinking about, I'm just, no, I have the meeting on atrocities in this country to come back to.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so as I'm hustling across 17th Street, without even knowing I'm doing it, unbuttoning the top couple buttons.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, wow, you know, like the efficiencies have to be found.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then on a couple occasions, just getting so busted, kind of pointing and saying, you know, you go girl.
3
SPEAKER_02
 What do you think your most embarrassing or comedic intersection of having a career and being a mom is?
3
SPEAKER_00
The thing that is coming to my mind is less about the many times in which, you know, I'm
4
SPEAKER_02
 whooping up my daughter and have the, it was a Blackberry in those days, but the Blackberry wedged up to my ear and then I feel her peeing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Release.
4
SPEAKER_02
Release, release is a better word.
4
SPEAKER_02
Thank you.
4
SPEAKER_02
I'm on with John Kerry and I'm holding her and it's going all down my suit and then I realize I don't.
4
SPEAKER_02
So there's that, there's that whole genre.
4
SPEAKER_02
But I think maybe the better example, because it's parent or not parent, I think it's got a larger truth in it was,
4
SPEAKER_02
 Before I had Declan, so just a couple months into my time at the White House when I was still very much feeling like a novice, where I was adjusting to having been quite close to Barack Obama, the senator and the candidate, to now there being some layers between me and him, not having
4
SPEAKER_02
 walk-in privileges, certainly at the Oval, and really not seeing him much as he was dealing with the financial crisis and other very grave matters in the early part of 2009.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I'm, I think, around seven months pregnant at this time.
4
SPEAKER_02
I finally get
4
SPEAKER_02
 summoned to the Oval to brief him because he's having a meeting with the U.N.
4
SPEAKER_02
Secretary General.
4
SPEAKER_02
And in addition to being his human rights advisor, I'm his U.N.
4
SPEAKER_02
advisor.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I'm absolutely psyched.
4
SPEAKER_02
And this is it.
4
SPEAKER_02
I'm going to remind him of what he is missing by not having me in the inner circle.
4
SPEAKER_02
I'm going to nail the brief.
4
SPEAKER_02
 And the way our offices are structured, there's the old executive office building where the National Security Council staff and other White House staff work.
4
SPEAKER_02
And then just across a tiny little lane is the West Wing.
4
SPEAKER_02
And when I get over to the West Wing and I realize I know where the West Wing is, I've been to the Situation Room many times, had many important meetings, just I'd never been to the Oval, ever.
4
SPEAKER_02
I'd never even been on a White House tour before.
4
SPEAKER_02
 So I was like, damn, where's the Oval?
4
SPEAKER_02
And instead of doing what I should have done, and what I'm confident most dudes would have done, which is just ask somebody, how do I get to the Oval?
4
SPEAKER_02
I hustle back across this little lane, back to my office, up these flights of stairs to my office, and I Google West Wing Map Oval Office.
4
SPEAKER_00
You wanted to do it by yourself.
4
SPEAKER_02
 damn straight, because you don't want people to know that you've not been to the Oval Office two months into the, so turns out there is a map online, but it's a Washington Post map that's really mainly about who's powerful and kind of who's close to whom, and it's not about actually finding, it's like a guide to getting to the Oval.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I print it out, but it's not drawn to scale.
4
SPEAKER_02
I get back over there.
4
SPEAKER_02
I'm still, there's a chance I can make it on time still.
4
SPEAKER_02
 only briefing, like it's, you know, and I'm just desperate and I'm so panicked and I'm still holding my little battered Poland Springs water bottle because I'd fainted as a pregnant mother in my first week at the White House.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I carry that water bottle ever since.
4
SPEAKER_02
So bottom line is I'm 10 minutes late for this meeting and I come in and everybody's seated, the national security advisor, the secretary of state, with this.
4
SPEAKER_02
Bunky Moon is not in the meeting, it's still in the pre-brief.
4
SPEAKER_02
 I put this, you know, and it's a water bottle again that I've been carrying for weeks.
4
SPEAKER_02
So, you know, the green stickers, like all, you know, the green sticker on the pole, you know, that kind of, I mean, we shouldn't be carrying such bottles and I no longer carry such bottles.
4
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I want to assure people you were reusing it.
4
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So I was reusing it, but nonetheless, but I had the bottle.
4
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I put it on this coffee table in front of Obama where his apples were.
4
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 And next thing this, like, butler comes over and just picks it up, and he's got this look on, like, it's just this unsanitary thing, like, out of the view of the president.
4
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So I'm late.
4
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I do my briefing.
4
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I'm breathless.
4
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Obama ends up, like, cutting me off and just saying, why don't you catch your breath?
4
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We'll come back to you.
4
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Like, it's just so humiliating.
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And it's exactly what you don't want to do.
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You don't want to be the pregnant woman who can't finish her sentence.
4
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 What's important about the story though, because it's not really a mothering story, it's just more the inelegance of it all when you're trying to do too much at once, is that I was so mortified I didn't tell anybody the backstory, the map, you know.
4
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 And after about two years working at the White House, I'd say I had come across a half dozen people who used the exact same Washington Post map and got lost in exactly the same way.
4
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And because I told it for, when I started to feel more confident, I did, I told the story like in a commencement address or something.
4
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And one by one, these people come up to me and said, I used that same map.
4
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Like, oh my God, that happened to you too, you know?
4
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 So it's more just that, you know, you aim to sort of show that you have it together and it makes matters worse.
4
SPEAKER_02
There's that, but it's also just so many people who look like they're strutting around with poise and so collected, whereas you're the scattered one.
4
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There's this great expression, never compare your insides to somebody else's outsides.
4
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And I just love that, love it.
4
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And that Al-Anon, that's where I learned it, Al-Anon, exactly.
4
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 And I think that that is a story that just shows that, that so many people have that same churn of like, how am I coming across?
4
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I've learned my lesson.
4
SPEAKER_00
 I try to be an authentically humble person, but man, I will switch on a dime to an overly confident person.
4
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I'm picturing myself going through that walking in and just the first thing I say, like not even maybe waiting for the president to address me and being like, I got lost.
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SPEAKER_00
It's all happened to y'all.
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Everybody's used that stupid map.
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I'd like to sit down.
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And this is where like I can switch on a dime, but I would look around and be like, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
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SPEAKER_00
Is anyone else in here sustaining another life?
4
SPEAKER_00
No.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
Moving on.
4
SPEAKER_00
 Oh, I love that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I do feel a real desire to own when I feel like I'm either putting up with some shit.
4
SPEAKER_01
It's learned because if you're in an environment where you're afraid you're going to lose your job or you're afraid, yeah, there's somebody in line.
4
SPEAKER_01
 then, yeah, you have to come with the map, because you have to prove you're competent.
4
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You can't ask for help, because that shows that you don't know what you're doing, and you've never been there, and if you've never been there, then you're probably not good enough to be there.
4
SPEAKER_01
And, you know, it just, like, spirals out, I think.
4
SPEAKER_00
That definitely, it's learned then, because I think that my owning my privileges, I've been in a position of privilege for so long, being an actor who could pay my bills.
4
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People want you in the room.
4
SPEAKER_00
 100% yes exactly and then so I have the luxury of not dealing with that of oh I'm gonna be kicked out and actually just going straight to bitch I've been through a lot this morning.
4
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I want everyone to be able to fast forward to that.
4
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That's what I'm saying I wish I could bestow that feeling because it is a quite a liberating
4
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 feeling that I don't necessarily feel is combative, but rather ownership of my space and honesty.
4
SPEAKER_00
I wish desperately that I could, like, bottle that and hand a bottle to everyone who needs it because I... We're going to sell it in our merch store.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, on Etsy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_00
We're going to be able to sell it.
4
SPEAKER_02
Don't you think COVID and the circumstances of the Zoom life
4
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 could be throwing a spanner in the works here in interesting ways.
4
SPEAKER_02
You know, even small things like Zoom bombs and dogs barking.
4
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And for us as women and parents, there's just no way around that the personal life is going to, quote unquote, intrude on the professional life.
4
SPEAKER_02
And yet now that's true for way more people, right?
4
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Just that kind of integration.
4
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I just wonder if we're passing through this season of vulnerability of the deepest and most.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I like that.
4
SPEAKER_02
 primal sense, but also of exposure and whether that creates more give or more of a willingness on the part of people to assert that life is life.
4
SPEAKER_02
But like Zoom brings it all, right?
4
SPEAKER_02
Because it's both lives are often captured.
4
SPEAKER_00
 But there are upsides to it in that, like, I'm seeing what's behind you right now.
4
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You're seeing what's behind us right now.
4
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You're seeing the actual, practical, tangible space.
4
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And there's something to that, like, especially a comparison you brought up in your book that I love so much is when you would get to know people at the UN, you were saying that, like, you valued it because when you walked into the room of someone else who was from another side of the country, you didn't just look at them as the representative of
4
SPEAKER_00
 Senegal, you looked at it as, oh, this person has a picture of their family on their desk.
4
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And I see now what this person likes to drink for lunch, what kind of tea or coffee they like.
4
SPEAKER_00
And you're able to humanize people so much more.
4
SPEAKER_00
And maybe even these little boxes where we get a glimpse into each other's spaces is actually
4
SPEAKER_00
 partly bringing us closer together.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and just in the gender space, like, yeah, if the dad is on a Zoom, the kid's probably coming in there, too, for, like, maybe the first time a dad is experiencing the intrusion of, like, that amazing BBC interview that we all made fun of from, like, eight years ago when the baby came in.
4
SPEAKER_00
 He was talking about something so serious.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now that's everybody.
4
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It is.
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SPEAKER_01
It's bringing some equity in, I think, in a fun way that no one expected, which when you were talking about maternity leave and that whole period of time where you had kept it quiet, the reality of the situation is they needed you there.
4
SPEAKER_01
So you had to be there, you know, and I think that's a really big
4
SPEAKER_01
 reason we need paternity leave, not just for men so that they can spend time with the kids, but so that
5
SPEAKER_01
 that it's equal so that if a child is born, it's not just like, well, the mom's gonna be gone for three months.
5
SPEAKER_01
It's like, well, the dad's gonna be gone for three months too.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it's all one thing, you know, and you can't parse out the female element of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Right, right.
5
SPEAKER_00
No, absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
 You had also referred to that when you were, I think, appointed to the National Security Cabinet position, there was like a picture taken of Declan running to you.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I just want you to express what the reaction was to that picture from people that wrote you.
5
SPEAKER_00
So first, let me set the scene, which is in order to become U.N.
5
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ambassador, I had to go through Senate confirmation, just as I
5
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 did for USAID.
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And I had written prior to that point, maybe a million words as an activist, critic of US foreign policy, I'd written books and so forth as well.
5
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But those words were, I knew going in, were going to be picked apart and challenged.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what you said this and how can you
5
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 defend having said that, and so sure enough, that's what happened.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so Declan at that time was four, and he was sitting behind me.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maria was there with our daughter, but that didn't last long.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was gonna be the, how could anybody be mean to me if my infant daughter was behind me, but that didn't work out so well.
5
SPEAKER_00
That was your insurance.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly, so I could hear Rian off in the hallway, you know, Maria walking her back and forth, and I just wanted to go out.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I was there answering tough questions for a good few hours,
5
SPEAKER_00
 And when finally the gavel went and this quite difficult few hours for which I'd been preparing for weeks finally was over, Declan just leaped over two rows of chairs and just went into my arms.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was so beautiful.
5
SPEAKER_00
He and I talk about it even because it was, I think,
5
SPEAKER_00
 primarily his sense that I needed protection on one level, you know, and sort of things in reverse a little bit.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I had needed protection, but I was all alone there for the prior few hours.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he jumps into my arms.
5
SPEAKER_00
And next thing, because it's a high profile position, this Washington scale paparazzi, a press scrum that just sort of descended on the table,
5
SPEAKER_00
 And my thought bubble in that moment was, finally, there's going to be a picture of me and my son.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because every damn photo is me taking a picture of Cass and the kids and him never taking a picture.
5
SPEAKER_00
So like, immediately, it's just that thought of like, oh, like I will exist in this boy's life.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I had that thought, which speaks to some division of labor issues that we may have to work on still in our household.
5
SPEAKER_00
 And then it ended up in the newspaper and was sort of a very sweet photo of just like my relief and his protectiveness and was beautiful.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then I guess it was picked up on the wires and so went around the country and was published in other places, but it was in The Washington Post.
5
SPEAKER_00
 And I started getting these emails and letters from people, all different walks of life, just saying how inspiring they felt that photo was.
5
SPEAKER_00
The message was some version of usually, it was just really great to see a person with small kids, you know, going into such an important and high pressure and time-consuming national security role.
5
SPEAKER_00
You know, it gives me renewed faith that we can all do it, that we just all have to just go for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Pursue your professional dreams and we'll figure it out.
5
SPEAKER_00
 And lean in and lean on.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the lean on, lean on your, in that instance, I was leaning on my boy.
5
SPEAKER_00
But what was interesting for me was it really caught me off guard.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, you know, I'm just living, but now I'm doing something else.
5
SPEAKER_00
I'm modeling unwittingly in that case.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so it made me, though, act differently than for the next four years when I was in the job.
5
SPEAKER_00
 in being really conscious about how I interacted with my kids or giving more, let me put it this way, giving more visibility into the chaos and into the questions that come at home.
5
SPEAKER_00
There is this great British book series called The Mr. Men.
5
SPEAKER_00
I don't know if you all ever came across it, but it's, it's, oh, it's the best.
5
SPEAKER_01
Writing it down, tattooing it on my body.
5
SPEAKER_00
 It's actually the best baby gift when someone has a baby, because it's for kids just a little bit young.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe your youngest, Kristen, would still go for it.
5
SPEAKER_00
It's Mr. Greedy, Mr. Chatterbox, Mr. Mean.
5
SPEAKER_00
It's basically like parables about the human condition.
5
SPEAKER_01
Are they little circles?
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, they're little circles.
5
SPEAKER_01
Wait, they also have Little Miss, because I have a Little Miss set.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, the Little Miss books, yes, exactly.
5
SPEAKER_01
And my mom got me Little Miss Bossy, which I found to be a compliment and an insult.
5
SPEAKER_01
It's passive-aggressive. 100%.
5
SPEAKER_00
 So I got reading the Mist books and Declan reads the Mister books and the Mist books.
5
SPEAKER_00
But because you want to explain kind of why you're away and not just bring your kids into the darkness of why you're away and all the crises.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I started to explain, you know, each of the ambassadors and kind of liken them to one of the Mister Men characters.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that, you know, who was the Russian ambassador most like?
5
SPEAKER_00
Who was the one who went on and on and on in the Security Council meetings where you could never get home for dinner on time?
5
SPEAKER_00
That was Mr. Chatterbox.
5
SPEAKER_00
 Oh, my gosh.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so we would take the globe out and I would show them on the globe where the country was.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it was all great until they would actually come to the ambassador's residence.
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, is that Mr. Chatterbox?
5
SPEAKER_01
Oh, my God.
5
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I busted again.
5
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But giving voice in public remarks or in interviews with journalists about this experimentation almost or exploration of how to do both, knowing you're not going to be at full cylinder
5
SPEAKER_00
 on both at once at any one time, but instead of internalizing all of that, to kind of externalize it, we do beat ourselves up.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so if you show that you yourself are carrying that same sense of, oh, I'll never be enough to be in two places at once, or even use your platform to urge self-forgiveness and that others kind of forgive themselves, making all of that more open.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in Education Idealist, I wrote about the fertility stuff and miscarriages and IVF, which women, I think, are starting to do much more
5
SPEAKER_00
 And that's another example where if you looked at our literature, our memoirs, you would think that this really was a very rare phenomenon, the fertility challenge or the miscarriage challenges, which are related.
5
SPEAKER_00
It's so prevalent.
5
SPEAKER_00
And in writing the book,
5
SPEAKER_00
 You know, I thought I'll surface this and describe my own journey and knowing how many women are going through it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And just so they know that so many of us have gone through something similar.
5
SPEAKER_00
The number of people at book events who come up and the conversation they want to have is about that experience and about that commonality, that solidarity.
5
SPEAKER_01
 Someone will identify with you if you're saying something honest and I think part of the something we get into this rut as humans to find what one identity that is Doing it right and I do that as well.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like I'm looking for like the way to do it
5
SPEAKER_01
 And this is one thing I've come across in just like, you know, looking at what feminism means.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I'm like, I wonder if we're chasing this one thing when in actuality it's all the things.
5
SPEAKER_01
Because I know in my heart of hearts, I never feel more powerful than when I'm doing sort of my, what you'd look at as like domesticated duties.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like when I get my laundry done and my sink is clean, I'm like, fuck yes.
5
SPEAKER_01
 I nailed it.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I don't necessarily have that feeling like when I get off a set or anything, but like I am elated.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like the feeling of when I'm taking care of my shit at home and I don't necessarily feel like I'm not a feminist when I'm having those feelings.
5
SPEAKER_01
 And so it's like someone who's like, you know what?
5
SPEAKER_01
I'm a working woman.
5
SPEAKER_01
I don't want to have children.
5
SPEAKER_01
This is not my path.
5
SPEAKER_01
I want to just be a career woman or someone who's like, I'm, you know, 40 years old and I don't have kids and I have a loving marriage and I'm more of a party animal.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like to leisure time or having someone who's like, I want to be just a stay at home mom, which is a huge job with one or multiple children.
5
SPEAKER_01
I can imagine.
5
SPEAKER_01
 And then the people, yeah, who have it, who want both.
5
SPEAKER_01
And it's like all those identities are important to represent to women because they're all choices and not one I don't think is more feminist than another.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think if any of us doubted the endurance and multitasking skills and the empathy and the patience that it took to be a stay-at-home mom,
5
SPEAKER_00
 COVID homeschooling has given us some window into why.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like that, that phrase, you know, just to stay at home mom, which the, you know, the words sort of in popular culture probably still go together too much.
5
SPEAKER_00
And
5
SPEAKER_00
 Oh, how these women do it.
5
SPEAKER_01
I have that best meme that came out right in the in the beginning.
5
SPEAKER_01
It said, and just like that, no one ever judged a stay at home mom again.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I was like, yeah, perfect.
5
SPEAKER_01
I really thought you were going to say your most comedic intersection of being a mom and a career woman was when you were pumping in on young soon.
5
SPEAKER_01
She's bathroom.
5
SPEAKER_01
 Oh, because I find that to be one of the most spectacular stories that I've ever read because I've have followed her for Years on young Soochi's was this what's the acronym for her party in Burma?
5
SPEAKER_01
NLD NLD you're gonna be able to speak to it better, but she's a very important figure and she was under house arrest for 21 years I think the president and Hillary Clinton were in the other room talking
6
SPEAKER_02
 with her about major peacekeeping stuff and you were like, wah, wah, wah.
6
SPEAKER_00
No, I mean, I was in a meeting.
6
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it was a historic meeting.
6
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It was the first sitting president's trip to Myanmar.
6
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There had been liberalization where a democratic election had occurred and the results were being respected, it looked like, and things were liberalizing, political prisoners were getting out of jail.
6
SPEAKER_00
I'd actually negotiated the communique before
6
SPEAKER_00
 Obama came with a whole set of concessions by the Burmese government.
6
SPEAKER_00
Obama showed up.
6
SPEAKER_00
The communique was negotiated and people were happy with it.
6
SPEAKER_00
And there I found myself in her house in a meeting with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the rest of the team.
6
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It's a very small meeting of maybe a half dozen people in Aung San Suu Kyi.
6
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And luckily, even though I was incredibly uncomfortable in the meeting, you're busting out.
6
SPEAKER_00
 you're in this security bubble, especially when you're in a foreign country, but even in America where you can't get separated from the bubble.
6
SPEAKER_00
So you can't be like, timeout, I gotta go pump or whatever.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I just got swept along.
6
SPEAKER_02
You can't raise your hand and say, so excuse me, my skin's about to rip.
6
SPEAKER_02
I need to relieve some of this pressure.
6
SPEAKER_02
Cause that's the reality.
6
SPEAKER_00
You should be able to.
6
SPEAKER_00
You feel like your skin's about to rip.
6
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Anyway, so luckily,
6
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 There was a moment where the meeting got so-called skinny down, where only the principals were left.
6
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And I think what was left was Secretary Clinton, Aung San Suu Kyi, and President Obama.
6
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So it was very reasonable.
6
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The rest of us were kind of shooed away.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, hey,
6
SPEAKER_00
 God Almighty.
6
SPEAKER_00
So I run out to the armored car and I get my little pump bag and I run back and say, where's the restroom?
6
SPEAKER_00
Where's the restroom?
6
SPEAKER_00
So they put me in the restroom and I close the toilet seat.
6
SPEAKER_00
I sit on the seat and I take out the implements and I'm doing the thing and it's making this noise.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I have that moment, that moment, as you say, you are swept up in it and you are just, it's like the next thing and you're so busy that you're not going meta on your life.
6
SPEAKER_00
 But just sitting there and having to do that for whatever would have been five minutes thinking about this, you know, how did it happen that I'm even married?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I met Cass on the Obama campaign and then it was all so whirlwind.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then how does it happen that Myanmar has appeared to liberalize in this way and that Aung San Suu Kyi, that anybody can even be at her house and that she can be, you know, the de facto leader of this country and
6
SPEAKER_00
 Wait, how can it be that I had two kids and that I'm pumping for one of them?
6
SPEAKER_00
And so it was sort of the professional and the person who was in all of it to just to say, if any part of this scene, you know, any chart of this scene, if somebody had painted that picture for me,
6
SPEAKER_00
 It would have been completely implausible.
6
SPEAKER_00
It would have been me, you know, kind of doing swim laps on the moon or something.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was crazy.
6
SPEAKER_00
Because I then went meta on me going meta, and I thought, oh, I'm getting a little carried away.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like, where is everybody?
6
SPEAKER_00
I wonder, let me end my reverie and figure out what the hell is, you know, where should I be at the moment?
6
SPEAKER_00
So I knew that the press had been gathered outside her house.
6
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It hadn't occurred to me that the bathroom might be proximate to where the press was gathered.
6
SPEAKER_00
 And so I open the curtain to kind of check out like, I wonder if they're done with their meeting.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then as soon as I open, I see like the back of Aung San Suu Kyi and her her sort of beautiful Burmese fabric and the back of Obama and his suit and the back of a podium.
6
SPEAKER_00
And they're there and they have just started their press conference.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I'm like behind with the curtain and, you know, two inches more.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I'm like flashed, I'm flashed to the wall.
6
SPEAKER_00
I'm news, baby.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would have been news.
6
SPEAKER_01
 Hehehe.
6
SPEAKER_01
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Now, our friends at Primal Kitchen know that real food uplifts and empowers us.
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 Yeah, I don't like fake foods.
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I have so many Primal Kitchen condiments packed for my camping trip.
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Oh, yes.
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It's mainly because I am really bad at camping.
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So I'm bringing like a piece of bread, you know, like I don't know what to do.
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But bring a loaf.
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 I think, not just a piece.
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You'll probably get really hungry if you only bring one piece.
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That's a good tip.
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Okay, so a loaf of bread and then just tons of Primal Kitchen sauces.
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Just sauces for the bread.
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Yes.
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What condiment are you going to put on your bread, Monica?
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Obviously, we're bringing ketchup because theirs is natural, organic, and unsweetened.
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That's a no-brainer.
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Yeah, so I feel like I can just put it on everything and not feel guilty.
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 Yeah.
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Make every bite of food exciting.
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You can find Primal Kitchen in your local grocery store or visit primalkitchen.com slash shatterglass to learn more.
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 I will say that pumping does give you that reflecting on your life.
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A, because there is a physiological good feeling, like it's a dopamine or an oxytocin release, the letdown that they talk about.
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But also, I found that I had some of my greatest thoughts.
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And also, this is another feeling I wish I could bottle and give to people.
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My husband used to say, why do you exclusively pump when my guy friends are over?
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 And I'm like, I'm so sorry, sir.
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I don't exclusively pump.
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You only notice when it's relevant for you.
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Exactly.
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I was like, let me just be clear.
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I pump when I need to pump.
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If your friends are over, that's irrelevant.
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 Because again, I think that that was given to me.
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That privilege was bestowed upon me from being an actor.
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When I went back to work after getting pregnant, I said, I can come back and I'm going to need, you know, every three hours, I'm going to need to go to my trailer for 20 minutes.
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And they were like, great.
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I had the leverage.
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So I just want women that choose this path of having a baby and in addition, pumping, have the leverage to be able to say that.
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And I want the people around them to know how important it is.
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 Yeah, that just women on Earth have the leverage because they're making more people on Earth.
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There's no people without us.
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Yeah, like sometimes forget that.
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Did Obama break your water?
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Not like with a physically hatchet.
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OK, but anything of that did he mentally break it?
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Yeah.
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Did he mentally break it?
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Oh, what a stud.
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 So I, like many working parents, worked right up until the last minute wanting to get as much in as I could.
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I had in an earlier book of mine written at some length about the Armenian genocide.
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In the Obama campaign for president, I had sort of taken advantage, I suppose, of the fact that I had very good ties with the Armenian-American community and I had offered assurances
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 that if elected president that Obama would recognize the Armenian genocide.
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And then I got into government and I was massively outnumbered.
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And it was very hard to actually get the issue before the president.
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It was those layers I mentioned earlier.
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I thought if I could just talk to President Obama himself that maybe, you know, I knew he'd be pretty torn up about it because there were costs in both directions potentially.
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And I just never had the chance to make my case.
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But I found myself
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 in the sort of last week in April, traveling with him and wasn't sure, like, will I stand in the back with the staff with whom I'd worked on the speech?
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I had the opportunity to go to the VIP section.
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People were being very nice to me and where I could sit down being pregnant and everything.
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And I kind of hemmed and hawed and ended up getting separated from the staff and the VIPs such that I was like orphaned
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 backstage at this event, which you never want to do.
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I have a security guard.
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He comes up and is like, ma'am, can I help you?
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And the next thing I hear a voice, a recognizable voice behind me saying, Hey, she leave her alone.
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She's with me.
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And it's the president and he's on his way to the men's room.
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And he sees me and I, you know, he hasn't seen me one-on-one really since he's been president.
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And
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 Bigger and the baby and he knows Cass for a really long time because they talked to get the University of Chicago So he's like, how are you?
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How's it going?
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What do you do?
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And he's very friendly and but my response is I'm really worried about the Armenians
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 And so I took this like beautiful little personal hello moment and unfortunately routed it.
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And of course, he was really conflicted about it.
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And when you're conflicted, that can make all of us, I think a little more.
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 maybe defensive or, and I wasn't, it wasn't good form of me when he was being friendly.
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And in general, in government, you should have all viewpoints represented rather than just kind of go, you know, kind of corner somebody and try to convince them.
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Like it's sort of bad, even by me, if somebody else had done it, kind of bad form.
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 And so we talked about it, but it was a very tense discussion.
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And I think what hit me the hardest was not that I didn't prevail and sort of convince him that this was a risk worth bearing, but it was more the finality of it.
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And I think that's a big difference between being an activist on the outside or a journalist as I'd been, and then being in government.
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When you lose and fail in government, like there's no door number two, you know, it's not like,
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 There's some other place where this kind of thing is going to get addressed or some other room.
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I mean, I'm with the president of the United States outside a men's room.
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So I called I did it my cell phone, luckily.
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So I called Cass.
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 I was like, he's not gonna call it a genocide.
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So Cass agreed to meet me at a street corner and really reframed it as the way you kind of have to do if you work on causes that sometimes feel uphill, which is you have to value the fight.
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You know, it's like growth mindset.
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And then he just said, I'm so proud of you.
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And then I began to feel a little bit moist at the same time.
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So I thought, is this just, was I, it was so hot and I was sweating and is it this?
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 And so at a certain point I called the doctor and said, I might be on exam early.
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It's like a month.
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I'm not supposed to, this isn't supposed to be happening, but I'm feeling like a little, so they're like, get over here.
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And sure enough, I don't know when it happened precisely in that sequence, but yes, my water broke.
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And the consequence of that is that my little boy, Declan, who was meant to be born,
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 a few weeks into May, was born on Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day.
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Oh, wow.
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Yeah, so as it happened, because this was April 23rd, the day before the statement was to be issued, we talk about
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 what it means to advocate on behalf of things you believe in.
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And we talk about what happened and how important memory is.
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And we didn't, not when he was like four, were we talking about the genocide per se, but now he's even asking about that.
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It had a very happy ending in my life, but was immensely frustrating for people who had counted on me and President Obama.
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So I'm hoping we'll get that right.
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 Well, I have no evidence that President Obama broke my water, but I will say I have no evidence that he didn't.
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Fair.
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When I was pregnant with my first child, I was definitely like nine and a half months pregnant and standing in the bathroom and talking to my husband and my water broke right onto the bathroom floor and I was like,
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 Oh my gosh, it's happening.
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It's happening.
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And we call our doctor and I said, okay, so my water just broke.
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And she goes, okay, great.
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Come on into the hospital.
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And I was like, okay, I'm starving.
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We're going to stop and get lunch first real quick.
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And she was like, don't recommend that.
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And I was like, again, I'm starving.
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I need to.
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So we stopped off at a restaurant and the whole time at the restaurant, I'm going,
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 I gotta be honest.
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Maybe it's, maybe I'm a warrior, but this, it's like not that bad being in labor.
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Like I'm fine.
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I'm eating like chilaquiles and loving life.
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We drive to the hospital an hour and a half later and we get there and I'm like, I'm ready.
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And I'm like, lay down on the table.
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And my doctor, my, who is a very good friend of mine, Dr. Hakaka, she lays down and she was like, huh,
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 And I go, what's, huh?
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And she goes, I don't think your water broke.
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And I was like, no, I definitely broke.
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That definitely broke all over the bathroom floor.
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And she goes, OK, tell me this.
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Can you feel this?
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And I was like, nope.
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She goes, can you feel this?
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I go, no.
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And she goes, OK.
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 So there's a lot of pressure down here.
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And I think what happened is your water didn't break, you peed your pants and you didn't know.
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And I was like, what?
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And as it turns out, that was correct.
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I had simply peed on the bathroom floor, but I was just unaware because the baby was so heavy.
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I was so arrogant.
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I was like, I'm gonna stop for lunch first.
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This is great.
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Labor is so easy and not painful.
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That wasn't at all the case.
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I had simply just released some urine onto the floor.
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 I was worried.
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I've been worried throughout my recent career about oversharing, but I'm no longer.
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You've set the bar in a new place.
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I know notoriously overshare.
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We've stolen so much of our time, but I do have one more practical question for you because, you know,
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 No one has done this more than you learned how to talk to men.
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I just rewatched the final year and I was like, Oh my God, it's just Samantha and all these men.
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And she has to convince them of things and have them listen to her and take her seriously.
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And I mean, just practically, how did you do that?
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How did you make yourself heard in a way where people would listen?
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 You know, I'm not sure I've ever been asked that question.
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I'd say first and foremost, and this is just relevant in any form of persuasion, which is meet people where they are.
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Right.
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So is not what their position is, but what they're coming from.
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One of the things I write at length about in the book and that that meant a lot to me was even if it didn't
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 produce the dividends that I sought much of the time but was negotiating, for example, with the Russian ambassador, trying to convince Putin's representative to do a set of things that were oriented in a more humane direction than they might otherwise have gone.
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And that required
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 Meeting him where he was, you know, what were the?
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imperatives that were coming from President Putin of all people, you know from Moscow.
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What are his incentives and disincentives?
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How do you put yourself in in his shoes?
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Even if in certain respects you don't really want to be walking in his shoes and the same was true internal to the US government where the gender dynamics were
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 more pronounced, at least in the early years of the Obama administration, where you were surrounded by men more often than not.
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And it really was, it was, again, not to just hear what their position was, but to just try to think, okay, where is that coming from?
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 We share the same universe of values, and often when you're arguing with somebody, you could find some level of abstraction where you could agree completely, and it's only when you drill in a little bit.
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And so to try to remember what you have in common, but really try to hear what they need, I think is part of it, because that's how you would tailor your message.
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 Second, and this may be something women are more prone to do than men, I'm not sure, but excessive, over-the-top, over-preparation.
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So just, you know, for the big meetings and the big debates,
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 for me to have up my sleeve the not only the rebuttal factually, you know, the facts that are going to strengthen my case, but the rebuttal to the rebuttals to sort of always be playing devil's advocate.
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Yeah.
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You make the best argument when you can anticipate the argument on the other side.
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And so, you know, just taking again a bandwidth issue, but taking that time and with your team thing, OK, but they're going to argue this.
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 So then what facts do I have to deploy that are going to help?
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And then lastly, and this you really have to sort of know your audience, I suppose, and gets to meeting people where they are, but stories and the human connection, which really has been kind of filtered out of
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 many, many institutional discussions.
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I say institution rather than government, because I'm sure it's true in business.
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I'm sure it's true in entertainment, at the management level.
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But if there's a way, and not always in the meeting itself, but, you know, if you have, let's say, Nadia Murad, you know, this amazing Yazidi woman who survived ISIS's attacks and sexual enslavement, or somebody who has worked on the front lines of the Ebola epidemic, or
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 You know somebody now in the covid context who is giving vaccines to people but doesn't have enough to go around and isn't reaching low income communities or isn't reaching developing countries but those personal testimonials.
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That kind of can.
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 find a way in, you know, if I'm debating with Republicans on Capitol Hill, I'm a Democrat and my, you know, this is my view on this issue and that issue rather than, oh, we're both immigrants or we're both parents or we're both Red Sox fans or we're both Catholics.
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And so sometimes it's that that human, something that kind of shakes up the atmosphere and takes you out of that institutional space.
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 Yeah.
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You have given us so much time and I want this to go on forever, but I do just want to say one last thing.
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You know, in your book, you brought this word upstander, a line between a bystander and something you call and have denoted it as an upstander.
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And in my daughter's school, their highest acclaim, their reward is an upstander.
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And I remember her coming home in kindergarten and first grade and going, oh,
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 Johnny won an upstander today and it was like Johnny was Brad Pitt like he won the upstander award and then their picture goes on the wall and why they're an upstander because he believes in helping someone on the playground when they're having trouble it's you know they're all small events that happen in an elementary school kids life but the
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 idea of that word has infiltrated so many communities and so many people I think greater than you even know, the least of which is my daughter and the way they operate their school.
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The upstander is like winning an Oscar and I wanted to say thank you for that.
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 That is awesome.
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It's definitely the only thing I've ever done that my daughter takes pride in, but upstanding and bystanding, we all live on that spectrum, right?
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On our good days, we stand up and maybe many more days we stand by because we're overwhelmed, but to have them aspiring from young to have more good days than not, I love that.
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 Thank you so very much.
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Oh my gosh.
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Good luck at your new job.
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Thank you.
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And if you need any help with headphones in the future, just have a great day.
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There are issues in the world and this is one.
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Okay, see you guys.
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Bye.
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 Yes.