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People in power who haven't understood their why can lead us down some dark
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tunnels. We are in a really tough time right now. The one and only Michelle Obama, the former first lady, and her
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brother Craig Robinson are sharing their rare perspectives into a world very few
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ever get to see. I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and we were taught foundational values so that
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we could function in our society. But growing up, I was just checking boxes.
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And then I met Barack Obama. He showed up in my life as the opposite of a box
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checker. You rejected him at first, right? Yeah. I was even trying to introduce him to some of my friends. He
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said, "Well, why don't we go out?" And what did you think of him? Honestly, I was like, "He may last 2 months." I
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remember my mom saying, "Well, at least he's tall." But the next thing, you know, we were on
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our way to building our lives together. And my initial reaction was, don't do
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this. There would be death threats. How do you raise kids in the White House? How would we afford it? Did you ask for
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any promises if he were to win? I didn't know what that journey was going to be
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and what I would need to negotiate for myself. And if I had known what I know now, I should have said, Michelle, I was
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watching the coverage of your decision to not go to Trump's inauguration. What was the thinking behind that?
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The truth was is that this has always blown my mind a little
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bit. 53% of you that listen to the show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor
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to make sure that this show is better for you every single week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guest
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that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so
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much. Michelle Craig, what do I need to know about your earliest context to
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understand the adults? And I use that word intentionally because I know that's what your your parents were intent on
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raising. The adults that are in front of me today.
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Wow. that starts at 7436 South Ullet, you know, the the the hub of it all.
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That was the the home that we grew up in on the south side of Chicago. And it was
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a teeny tiny house. Uh we lived uh above our aunt Robbie. It was a single family
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home, a bungalow on the south side of Chicago. And our aunt Robbie was married
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to uh her husband Terry and they owned the home. Uh, and they had a little
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bitty almost one-bedroom, two-bedroom apartment over the home. So, it was a
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two family home. We were surrounded by extended family. That community of
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people that you probably because people didn't have a lot of resources, people lived with each other. You know, you
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shared spaces, you lived next to one another. and we lived with our great aunt because it helped our parents save
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some money and get us in a better neighborhood because my father was a city worker. He was a working-class guy,
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didn't have a college education, and working for the city was a really stable job because it gave you benefits and
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some stability. And my mom wanted to stay home uh and and raise kids. So, in
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order to save that kind of money, we banned together and lived with our aunt Robbie. and all of the adventures and
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the lessons learned when I think about my foundational values that house really
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and all the experiences and conversations. The beginning of my kitchen table happened on 74th in Uclid
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and I I talk about it because you think it was a palace but this was a little home. We shared a bedroom most of our
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lives because there would just wasn't room for us to each have our own room. And we shared the space, one bathroom.
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There was no dining room. There was just a kitchen. And the way it was set up, how it was supposed to be used, it was a
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one-bedroom apartment. And the living room was the room that we
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shared as a bedroom. And the one bedroom it had was where my mom and dad lived. And the whole thing could have been 700
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square f feet. Yeah. You talked about foundational values. Mhm. What were those foundational values that you
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learned in that location? And how did your parents teach you those
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foundational values? And I asked that with great curiosity because as I read through both of your books, there are moments in your career
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where as adults in your late 20s where those values show up so clearly over and
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over and over again. And I'm I was as I was reading I was thinking gosh what did their parents do to orientate them in
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such a clear way where both at key moments in both of your careers you make decisions not to get a pay rise or not
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to go for the thing that is higher status and to do something else either something that's aligned with your
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passions and hobbies or something that's in service of others. So what were those values and how did
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your parents instill those in you? I I think our parents modeled it. I mean, if I were to think of
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one one word that would describe my father, he was just a decent man.
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Decent, honest, hardworking, and loyal, trustworthy. I mean, these were the kind
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of things that we talked about. We we didn't have material stuff. He couldn't
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provide that, but he provided a set of lessons about what it meant to be a good
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friend. Um he was the elder in his family uh the oldest of what five and my
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mom was the middle child. And uh he he took care of everyone. Um even though he
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had multiple sclerosis and walked with assistance. He had a cane when we were
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younger. I never knew my father to walk without the assistance of a cane. And MS
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was a progressive disease. So over the course of his life, he just got weaker and weaker and weaker, but he was the
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strongest person in our orbit with everyone. Never took a sick day. Never
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took a sick day. He was the father that fathered all the other kids in the neighborhood, you know. So when Craig
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was playing basketball, he was the person that was at most of the practices
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if he could be if his shift allowed. he was the dad in the neighborhood where a
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lot of kids didn't have those kind of role models. Um, and even though we didn't have a
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lot, you know, there was there was never a time when my father wasn't going to
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help somebody. So, you know, I guess those values where you you you take care
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of people, you know, money doesn't really matter. That's not the thing that makes you great. It's how you show up in
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the world. It's your word. It's um you know how you treat other people. To Misha's point, he was the guy who was
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giving kids rides to practice and to games because their parents couldn't go
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and he would be sharing stories, sharing his values. It was just embedded in his
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being to pass on knowledge that he had. And and with regard to my mom, you know,
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my mom, I think, is where I at least where I get my philanthropic gene from,
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not with money cuz we didn't have any, but with our time and with our resource, whatever resources we had. What was
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behind all of this was unconditional love. It's a tool in the toolbox that you
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sometimes don't even realize is there if you're privileged enough to, right? because it's that tectonic plate that
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sits underneath you that you never can really see, but gives you a certain sense of I guess risk and and uh go get
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it. Well, and and knowing that, you know, it's not just unconditional love, but our parents believed us. They valued
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our voices. I mean, they really liked to hear us talk. They they encouraged us to
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think out loud and to problem solve and to come to us with their problems but
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not be the ones that were going to solve it. And I and this came in very handy
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when you're a kid in public school because you know in public school south side of Chicago teaching was kind of
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uneven. You know one year you'd get a teacher that cared and and invested in the kids. Another grade you'd have a
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teacher that didn't care. And I remember distinctly I started second grade and I went to a classroom that was completely
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chaotic. The teacher clearly didn't want to be there. And I knew this in second
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grade. And there was no order. We didn't have homework. We weren't doing regular
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lessons. And I knew that something was wrong. And I would come home at lunch and I'd complain about we nothing
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happened today at school, you know, and I'm I don't know what second grade is supposed to be, but I don't feel like
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I'm getting what I need to get out of second grade. It took a month of coming home and complaining. And my mom was
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quietly listening. But she wasn't just listening, she was plotting. And it was
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a month in, she went up to the school, watched herself, and saw that this teacher not only wasn't teaching, but it
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appeared that she didn't even like kids. So, she went to the principal's office and read them the riot act. I don't know
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what she said or what she did, but three of us were pulled out of the class for testing. And I just remember I just
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didn't have to go into that class. And I spent a couple of weeks taking some specialized test. We were just doing
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bubble tests. didn't know what it was. Um, got the results and the results
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proved that I could skip second grade and it was a lifesaver for me. But I'll
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never forget my mom finally did. I would hear her complaining of my dad, this teacher, you know, these teachers who
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don't care about these kids. She had gotten us out, but she was worried about the kids who were stuck in that second
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grade class, who didn't have parents who were their advocates, who, you know, were going to spend probably a wasted
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year in second grade missing whatever they were going to miss. But that was one of those instances where I knew that
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if a cry for help from me was heard by my mother and acted upon, she could have
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been one of those mothers who said, "Well, just, you know, life is life. Just get it together." But she knew there was something different in what I
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wanted and what I needed and she, you know, she made it happen. Does that teach you to respond to others who cry
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for that help? I probably does. I mean, I still think about the kids who were
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left behind. I mean, there's just something that that really touches me
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about kids who are as bright as we are because we grew up with them. You know,
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my mother saw them. Uh, and the only difference between me and them was that
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they had a mother that cared. And a lot of their lives looked totally different
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from ours because of that. And I find myself being that advocate for those
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kids, those the the kids who were underestimated and under supported. And
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that turns out to be kids, most kids all over the world. So I do find that that
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moment for me was a defining in in a pretty fundamental way about how I how I
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fight for kids and the way that I saw my mom fight for me
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race. One of the um startling things with these two photos Mhm. mainly because I think it's this way round but
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um this is I believe what second grade or something that was first grade. first grade and then this is seventh eighth
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seventh or eighth grade. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot less white people in the second photo which means that which
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assumes that white people started leaving your school. Oh, absolutely. They leaving the neighbor leaving the
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whole of Southshore. My my question really is about what role did race play in your childhood? Because I think about
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my own childhood and it's quite a prominent persuasive force in who I became and what I thought about the
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world and really what I thought about myself. So race is an issue as young people in Chicago. What role did it
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play? I think there was a lot of race pride in our family. Um there was this
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feeling this understanding that um uh because of people's prejudice, there
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would be a lot of white people that would underestimate you, that would mistreat you, that would assume things
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about you. our family, our entire family on both sides, really smart, talented, gifted
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people to have a family that big and to have and but all workingclass people,
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right? So, we lived among sort of real regular excellence, you know? I mean,
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people who were teachers and who were who were engineers, all of our cousins
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were people who were expected do to do well in school. So, we were taught like
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no one's better, smarter than you. You know, you're capable. My father was that
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voice for a lot of our cousins if they didn't have that kind of energy in their lives. It was always like, you got this
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and you know what you're doing. So, in our home, there was race pride. But when
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you, you know, live in a, when we moved into Southshore into Robbie's house, our
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aunt Robbiey's house, most of my neighborhood friends were white kids. Um, Rachel Dempsey and Susan Yaker and
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uh, Sof Sophenant Conupant who was a Korean girl because we lived by a hospital and her mother was a nurse. So
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it was a very mixed the the stewards who were you know they they were a black
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family but could pass for white. I mean it was just sort of some of everyone in the neighborhood. Miss Mason who was the
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little white lady across the street and our neighbors were the Mendozas, the Mexicans. Um you know it was sort of
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everywhere all around us and everyone got along. Neighbors knew one another.
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We played with each other. I went to Rachel's house and for lunch and you know, but then one year it was like the
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lights went off for the white people and they were gone without a trace. They call this white flight. This was white
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flight and action. Yeah. Yeah. For anyone that doesn't have context on white flight, what is white? It's the
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sociological occurrence of what happens in communities when black people sort of
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start making their way up socioeconomically and can buy homes or rent homes in neighborhoods that are
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predominantly white. So instead of uh white people accepting it, they sell
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their homes on mass. There's a sort of undercurrent of we better get out because these black families coming in
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are going to ruin the neighborhood and bring down property values. So you better sell now and go go further south
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into the southern suburbs. And so when you're young, you you kind of know something is going on. You know, it's
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not like we were sitting around the kitchen table talking about white flight. But what you do know and you
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take in as a child is like these people are running from
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us. You know, it's like my dad who is
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this, you know, amazingly kind and generous person who would would have
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been good for a lot of these people's kids, these white folks kids to get to know and be around us who turned out to
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be who we were and we were always going to be that. You're running for us. Well,
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our feeling was like, well, how stupid is racism and how stupid are you for not
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really looking and getting to know? So, so race to me and in my household was
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just a dumb manifestation of ignorant people, but we were taught to keep
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moving through it. How do you stop it getting to you? One of the remarkable things I noticed even when we spent some
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time together yesterday was there is no apparent bitterness. And
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there's one would say that there's reason to be because when you're so powerful and so prominent and so well
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known, you're exposed to everything. And going through that experience in those early years and then going through the everything that happened thereafter,
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there doesn't appear to be any bitterness. There doesn't appear to be any chip on the shoulder, any anger.
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Yeah. Sometimes there is. Yeah, we just don't show it. We just don't show it. But I I will say at least from my
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standpoint, mom and dad, but mom especially, she she taught us
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empathy almost to a fault, right? So, she always said, you remember how she
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always said, "Put yourself in the other person's shoes." and she would always say, "You never know what's going on in
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someone else's home." And so I always
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approached negativity toward me with empathy. That was the first thing. It's
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like, "Oh, what's what's what happened to you? What happened to you that made you so mean and evil?" The other thing
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that our parents were really big on
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was do not care what anybody else who's not sitting at this table thinks. Mhm.
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If we ever said somebody said something and it affected the way we behaved,
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that's when you saw anger from my parents. That's when you get into trouble. You got in trouble with my
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parents when that I mean it was crackback right away. What would they say back? They they would be like, "So,
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you're gonna tell you're telling me that what whoever this is over here said is
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more important to you than what you hear around this table, then you can go live with so- and so."
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I mean, you know, if our admonitions in our house were always conversations, it
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was discussions. And you you knew when your parents were disappointed. You knew when you had struck a a nerve. And it
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was never about, you know, just making a mistake or, you know, it it was about
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thinking in a way that felt oppressive, internally oppressive. They didn't like
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that kind of thinking in us. They wanted us to feel our own power. They never
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wanted us to surrender the way we thought about ourselves to the rest of the world because they probably
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understood that they couldn't trust the way the rest of the world would treat us, right? So you can't you they they
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knew that we couldn't be so locked into what the world would say because the world was grounded in racism and that
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you know a little black boy more so even my brother they were probably more
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concerned with him because he was going to encounter it every day as he got
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taller and bigger and smarter because all of the men in our lives had
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experienced someone trying to knock them down a peg or two. I think our parents
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understood that that was waiting for both of us and it was waiting for my brother in particular. So, they wanted
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to arm him with enough self-esteem to fill him up at the table where he was
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safe to give him the tools to just embed in him a level of empathy so that he
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wouldn't become angry because anger for a young black boy was dangerous, you
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know. Um, so there was a real clever way of um allowing us to have these
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conversations but filling us up with empathy so that we could function in in
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a racist society. Being underestimated, it's a word that I saw throughout your book and it's a word you you mentioned a
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second ago. You knew you were going into an underestimated world, if I can call it
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that, a world that was going to underestimate you because of your race and and things like that. But it's so
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clear to me that you had your shoulders back regardless. And I I spoke to Valerie. Do you know Valerie? Of course
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you know Valerie. You worked with Valerie for many decades. And um she was a sort of an early mental figure in your
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life, Michelle. Yes, she was. And she actually wrote me a letter about you. She describes that she's never met
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someone in her life that was so clear on what they wanted to achieve in the world
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in terms of the social good and the impact they wanted to have but was so unbelievably confident and high conviction. And when I think about when
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you went to Harvard and studied law there was what 30% of the people attending were were women and then a
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tinier percentage were were black women. And you were aware again of being underestimated but again shoulders back
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it seemed. Where does that come from in you? um
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you living through the incorrectness of that of that underestimation, right?
00:21:59
First of all, I grew up, you know, fortunately in a predominantly black neighborhood after white flight happened
00:22:05
where um everyone assumed I was smart, right?
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I grew up as a the saludiatoran in my grammar school. I went to a top high
00:22:15
school. I, you know, so you I had the the fortune of growing up in a
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validating black environment, you know, which is we talk about that a lot with
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black students, whether they should be going to H.B.CU. And what happens when you get pulled out into a mixed
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environment where you are so underestimated so early, you know, you you start, we talked about the messages
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that you start telling yourself. I didn't have that because when we were
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young, you know, my mentors, my teachers, the coaches, my dance teachers, they were all people who if I
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made a mistake or if they um doubted me, it was because not because of my race,
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it was because they I disappointed somebody in some other way, right? So by the time I hit Princeton,
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thankfully I had enough internal data that I could do a lot of things that I
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was better, smarter, sharper than they would give me credit for. And then it was confirmed when I walked onto
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Princeton's campus as an undergrad, feeling a little intimidated because it
00:23:27
was an Ivy League school and I wasn't a great test taker. Although I was an outstanding student, I wasn't a
00:23:33
standardized good standardized test taker. All those numbers said that I shouldn't do well at Princeton. Um, and
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so I came in as an affirmative action kid. Sort of feeling like maybe I don't
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belong in these ivory towers and maybe these kids coming from these other
00:23:51
schools are really so much smarter and better than I am. And then I sat on that
00:23:57
campus and I looked around and I was like, "Oh my god, well, there's all kinds of affirmative action that they
00:24:03
never talk about." You know, there's wealth and legacy. Uh there there's athletic uh affirmative action. There
00:24:10
were a lot of kids that were on that campus and as I've learned continue to gain access to these
00:24:17
seats of power that have nothing to do with their raw academic ability. there.
00:24:22
She there there are a lot of bright kids who go to these schools, but there are a lot of bright kids whose parents get
00:24:27
them into these schools. And when I got on campus and I came out of my first semester with straight A's, I was like,
00:24:35
what's the what are you talking about? What what are you who are you? Why are
00:24:41
you trying to mess with my head in this way when you guys are you you're not even working as hard as me? But that was
00:24:49
it was infuriating, but it was freeing because I was like, I get it now. This
00:24:54
you're just trying to get into my head. You're scared of me. You know, you don't want me competing with you. And I think
00:25:01
it was at that that period going to one of the top schools that I was like, I'm
00:25:07
done. I am done worrying about whether I belong here. You know, this is a scam.
00:25:14
Um, so that I think that really I came out of Princeton just feeling
00:25:19
like, you know, let me at him, you know, you you know, for forget all this stuff.
00:25:25
And now I'm trying to tell other kids that. It's like I'm coming down from the mountaintop with the with the tablet of
00:25:32
truth and going, "Do not let these people scam you. This is all a racket."
00:25:38
What's the scam? That you don't belong. That they're smarter. That they work
00:25:43
harder. that they know more, that they deserve this more than you do. That's not it's it's just not true. And so from
00:25:50
then on, I was like, you prove that I don't belong here. You know, I'm going
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to sit at these tables and I am going to run it from now on. Why Why am I
00:26:03
listening to you? Why don't you listen to me? I think that experience for me was freeing in an odd kind of way. And a
00:26:10
lot of kids don't get access. They're just blocked out and they're it's sort of like they're told, "Don't look behind
00:26:15
the curtain because you don't belong." And they want us to think that way. I stopped think thinking that way a long
00:26:21
time ago. The journey you've both been on is is really really remarkable for so
00:26:27
many reasons, but it's also remarkable for the pivots along the way. And um I was reading about a bit of an identity
00:26:32
crisis that you had when you were 27 28 years old, Michelle, when you were you
00:26:38
were a lawyer. I was a lawyer. Oh yeah. Sidley and Austin. Yes. Beautiful high
00:26:44
paid corporate attorney. U that allowed me to buy a nice Saab drive attorney.
00:26:50
Driving attorney. Uh first job, first real job I had had right out of uh uh Harvard. Um because that's what you did,
00:26:58
you know, after you went go to law school, top school, you recruited by the top firms in the country and they offer
00:27:04
you exorbitant salaries. So at that age as I started as a firstear associate I
00:27:09
was making more than my parents made combined which seemed like something you
00:27:15
didn't turn down you know if you have the opportunity to do that it's like well yeah sure I'm going to work for a
00:27:20
fir firm but that's what I was really doing all my life I was box checking I
00:27:26
was just because I was a good student and I could do certain things that's what I did you know I sort of understood
00:27:32
that there was a formula be a good student show up do the work. Check. Got that. Get good grades. Go to a
00:27:38
competitive high school. Went to a magnet high school. Was this class treasurer? Top of the class. Check. Got
00:27:44
it. I because I can do this. D. I'm just marching through life. Check. Check. Check. Apply to top college. Um, got
00:27:52
into Princeton, right? I'm am in. Graduated the top of the class. Go to law school. Why? I don't know. There
00:27:59
wasn't really a thought to why I went to law school. It was just I don't know what I'm going to do after graduate
00:28:05
school. Not going to be a doctor because I don't like science or math. I like to
00:28:11
talk. I like to argue. And so why not go to law school? So I applied to Harvard,
00:28:17
get in. You go to Harvard. You know that that was just that was my thought
00:28:22
process. There wasn't a there wasn't purpose. There wasn't what do I care about? I didn't know what being a
00:28:28
corporate lawyer meant. I was just checking boxes. until I became a lawyer and and and a
00:28:36
lot of stuff happened in that year besides me just joining uh Sidi and Austin in that period of time. We lost
00:28:43
our father. Um he died very suddenly. Um
00:28:49
uh um one of my best friends from from college uh Suzanne um died of lymphoma
00:28:58
and it was sudden. She was diagnosed in December and she died in May. Really the
00:29:04
first time in my life where people that weren't expected to die died. You know,
00:29:09
we had lost grandparents and great-grandparents and and I I was really having kind of an existential
00:29:16
crisis sitting on the 47th floor of my in my beautiful office with a secretary
00:29:22
and a Saab in the garage thinking, why me? Why am I here? Rather than Suzanne
00:29:29
because she was that friend was also the dreamer, the person who wasn't boxchecking. She went to Princeton, but
00:29:36
she traveled the world. She didn't go to business school right away. And I always thought, you got to get your life
00:29:41
together. You got to be on a path. And I thought, thank God she didn't do that
00:29:47
because she didn't know she was going to die. But instead of sitting in some
00:29:52
office building, she was living life and trying on new things. And I realized I
00:29:58
hadn't done that for myself. Uh I all I was doing was following a game plan. I
00:30:04
wasn't trying to figure out my purpose. And at the same time, I met Barack Obama. He showed up in my life as the
00:30:12
opposite of a box checker, but somebody I describe in in my book as an ultimate
00:30:17
swerver. He did nothing by the book, but he was brilliant and interesting. You
00:30:23
know, he didn't go to law school right away. He worked as a community organizer. He lived in different parts
00:30:29
of the world. He was really trying to unpack life in a way that people in my
00:30:36
generation weren't trying to do. You were just, you know, I was I was with
00:30:41
the black bgeoa, right? And people were buying their homes and getting their cars together and trying to make partner
00:30:48
at a firm. There was a very finite path. And I hadn't explored anything else but
00:30:54
that. And I thought I I have to do something more before I settle on this.
00:31:00
And I think Barack helped give me the courage. you know, he was the person in my ear that
00:31:06
said, "Why would you want to just stop here and settle on this career when
00:31:12
there's so much out there that you haven't tried, right? You can do this." And I was like, "But I'm I I'm I'm
00:31:18
loaded down with debt." And right around that time, we we knew we were going to be together. We
00:31:24
knew we were going to be engaged. And he was like, "We'll get we'll figure that out." is like don't don't settle on
00:31:31
becoming a partner at a law firm because of money. You know, it's like you need to see the world in a different way and
00:31:39
we'll figure this out together. And so I started swerving. Um I started trying
00:31:45
other things in life and never looked back. Craig, when was the first time you heard that your little sister had met a
00:31:53
guy called Mr. Obama? Well, she called it called me up and said, "Hey, I met a
00:31:59
guy. I want to bring him by." And my mom, my dad, and I were sitting on our front porch and she pulls up in her nice
00:32:08
900 that you've heard a lot about. And he gets out of the car and that was the first time we met him. And what did you
00:32:14
think of him? Honestly, honestly, I was like, you know, he may
00:32:20
last two months because that's because of her because of
00:32:27
she'd be he'd do something and be like, "Ah, that's a deal breaker." And he'd be on on his way. And my mom I remember my
00:32:33
mom saying, "Well, at least he's tall." We we were just meeting him like we would meet somebody she'd she'd bring
00:32:40
by. But I never brought she didn't bring a lot of guys by. So that's why we thought it wouldn't last that long cuz
00:32:46
she didn't bring too many guys by. Yeah. But why would you think it wouldn't last? The people that didn't last you
00:32:52
didn't meet. But we heard about them. Yeah. But they you never met them. Yeah. Well,
00:32:58
I have known my sister. That's one of those just sort of myths. Michelle's so hard on men, you know. So, it's like
00:33:05
Yeah. I you know, say she was hard. I brought him I brought him home and I think there were there was one other
00:33:10
boyfriend that you met even though I had plenty of boyfriends. I just you know I met more than than two. Well, that's
00:33:16
because we went to school together. Yeah. Right. Right. Those guys, but they didn't come. But they didn't come home.
00:33:22
Well, okay. Well, I met them. Yeah, I met them. But they didn't meet mom and dad. No, they didn't meet mom and dad,
00:33:28
but that's cuz we weren't in Chicago. Anyway, all that matters is really how it turned out, right? So, this is the
00:33:35
sibling. It's like, you know, you rejected him at first, right? Yeah. Yeah. Because he uh Barack was I I was
00:33:43
assigned to be his advisor. And that didn't mean I was his boss, but every I
00:33:48
was a first year associate. So they tried to pair first years sort of wi-i with new summer associates just to help
00:33:55
get them acclimated and to kind of give them advice to sort of mentor them for the summer. So I was his mentor mentor,
00:34:02
right? So he comes in, he's late. So I'm thinking, okay, this guy's trifling
00:34:07
because we didn't in the Robinson family, we didn't do late, but he was raining and he didn't have an umbrella
00:34:12
and so he was a little wet. Um, so I was a little annoyed, but he he stood up and
00:34:19
he was tall and he was more handsome than his picture. So I sort of thought, "Oh, okay." And not what I expected. So
00:34:26
um I took him uh around the office, got him settled into his office, took him
00:34:32
out to lunch for the uh that first day and we talked for like hours and I knew
00:34:39
that we were going to be friends. He was smart, he was funny, had a good sense of humor, didn't take himself too
00:34:45
seriously. So, we we clicked right off the bat. And over the course of the
00:34:51
summer, we actually became really good friends. I was even trying to introduce him to some of my friends, my
00:34:57
girlfriends, saying, "There's this really cute guy who's my adviser." because in my mind there wasn't any way
00:35:03
that the the the few black uh asso associates there who both went to
00:35:10
Harvard were going to date in my mind I was like that's going to be tacky that's expected right and I was just sort of
00:35:17
into doing what wasn't not doing the expected right so my mind went somewhere
00:35:23
else I was like h meet all these wonderful beautiful women that I know
00:35:29
you know um and after a couple of outings. He said, "Well, why don't we go out?" And I was like, "No way are we
00:35:37
going to go out. That's just not going to happen. We're friends." And he was sort of like, "Huh? Well, why?" And he
00:35:43
made the case. I said, "Well, you know, I don't think it looks right." And he said, "Who cares about how it looks?"
00:35:49
And so he made his Barack Obama case over a couple of weeks. And finally, I
00:35:54
was like, "Okay, we'll go out on one date." And so he planned a a after that
00:36:01
it was over. It was a full day date where he pulled out all the stops. He uh
00:36:07
we I'm sure I picked him up because I had the nice car and we went to the art
00:36:14
institute where he showed me his suave, you know, view of art and we had lunch
00:36:20
at the museum and then we walked from the art institute down Michigan Avenue
00:36:26
north. So we walked hand in hand, talked slowly and you know then we went and had
00:36:32
dinner on top of Lake Point Tower which was a beautiful view of the city and then we I think ended the evening
00:36:40
watching going to Spike Le's do the right thing. So I mean he had planned
00:36:45
you know culture you know art you know
00:36:50
lovely stroll and slowly I was like okay maybe I I you know I spoke too soon you
00:36:58
know maybe there is something more here but yes that's a long way of saying I
00:37:04
did say no for a a a good month or two and but by the end of the summer we were
00:37:10
I think it was that summer by the end of this summer I was introducing him to my my family. You both have that throughine
00:37:18
through your story of ticking the boxes. Mhm. And then eventually it's kind of what we were talking about yesterday on
00:37:23
your show where if you have sometimes your preconception has to fail you.
00:37:29
Yeah, that's right. You have to feel it for you to understand that maybe a pivot is needed in your life. And I was the same when I was talking about my early
00:37:35
journey. Um Valerie, this very interesting character in your life. This is the letter I found it that Valerie
00:37:41
wrote into me. And she's talking about the pivot you made from being a lawyer to leaving that law firm and and going
00:37:48
in pursuit of something else. What was the something else you were pursuing before I read what Valerie said to me? I
00:37:54
had no idea. Um because I didn't know anything. U but I started with what I I
00:38:01
had to spend some time thinking, journaling about what did I care about. What was the journal question? What
00:38:08
brought me joy? You know, of all the things that I was doing in my life, what was the thing when I had it on my
00:38:14
calendar that I would jump out of bed for that would change my the way I felt about the day? And it always had to do
00:38:21
it went back to mentoring because while I was doing all this stuff in law in in
00:38:27
my education, I was always finding ways to help younger kids understand how to
00:38:33
get here. So it was the mentoring piece that Craig mentioned, you know, we never
00:38:39
talked about that when we think about our our parents. Um that brought me
00:38:45
absolute joy, you know. So I I started really trying to listen to that
00:38:50
self-interested part of me, you know, it's like what made me happy? I never asked myself that. I al I always did
00:38:57
what I thought I was supposed to do. and making money was one of the things that
00:39:02
you were supposed to do if you were anyone who had an opportunity to get an Ivy League education. That was really
00:39:08
all they talked about. That's all they showed you. You know, there wasn't a course or major in helping people. Um,
00:39:15
you know, there wasn't a course on working with young kids. You know, there's no major for that, especially in
00:39:21
the Ivy Leagues. So, I know I knew nothing about the nonprofit world. I knew nothing about NOS's. Well, Valerie
00:39:29
said, she said the opposite. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm
00:39:34
joking. The day I met Michelle Obama changed my life forever. I'll never forget the moment she strolled into my
00:39:41
office for an interview, dressed in all black, hair elegantly pulled back. I was struck by the confidence that she
00:39:46
carried herself with. She looked me right in the eye when she shook my hand. She was so poised and self assured that
00:39:53
it was hard to believe that she was only 27 years old. Michelle told me about her life, how she grew up in the Southside,
00:39:59
how much love and support her parents poured into her and her brother Craig. I asked her why she was considering public
00:40:05
service rather than a much more lucrative path as a partner in a law firm. And she said that she had recently
00:40:10
lost her dad and her best friend within a year. And their deaths were a painful
00:40:15
reminder of the finitness of life and the importance of making it purposeful. and how she knew that her abilities
00:40:23
could lead her to make a difference in the lives of others to serve and to give back to the city that she had grown up.
00:40:28
I was so in awe of her clarity of purpose, determination, and vulnerability that I offered her a job
00:40:34
on the spot. That was close, right? It was the same.
00:40:40
Like, what did Valerie say? And at that time in your life, you know, those early 30s, what's what's going on
00:40:46
with um Mr. Obama? Oh, by then he was uh
00:40:51
he had written his book because he was the president of the Harvard Law Review.
00:40:58
The president of the Harvard Law Review is the top student at the top law school in the world. So, and he was the first
00:41:05
black student to be elected um president of the Harvard Law Review. Um and that
00:41:11
garnered a lot of attention for him. We were dating at the time and so he got a
00:41:16
book contract to write a story, Dreams from My Father. Um, which I thought was
00:41:21
who writes a book at your age, right? You know, but he was like, "Yeah, I might as well tell my story." And, you
00:41:26
know, and it was money, right? He got in advance and we were engaged, so he was working on that project, but he was
00:41:34
still trying to figure out what he was going to do. And when you're the president of the Harvard Law Review,
00:41:39
basically the world of law is open to you. The normal path is that you clerk
00:41:44
for an appellet judge um for a year or two and then you go on to to clerk for
00:41:50
the Supreme Court. Then you know you go on to do appellet work. You you know you
00:41:56
you have offers from every law firm. You are in demand or you can do policy or
00:42:01
whatever. That was the normal path. I was like so are you going to clerk? He was like why would I clerk? So he didn't
00:42:07
work at any of the big firms. He went to a very small firm that was doing public
00:42:12
interest work. So he wasn't making a lot of money. He was doing what I was doing. He was going the opposite direction of
00:42:19
all the things that was were supposed to make us money. But he was like, I money
00:42:24
isn't why I'm doing this. I'm trying to figure out how I can best use my skills to impact the most people. So he was
00:42:31
doing 50 million jobs and we were cobbling together our payments for our
00:42:37
student loans at the time which were more than our mortgage. We had bought a condominium. We were on our way to
00:42:43
building our lives together. But we were in deep debt. So while we were both pursuing our deep love of being in the
00:42:50
community, we our incomes were going in the opposite direction of where they were supposed to go. But we were in this
00:42:57
together. you know, politics hadn't really come into the fold yet. It wasn't
00:43:02
a part of the conversation, but we were both kind of on these parallel paths
00:43:07
kind of figuring out how do we take all these skills and all this energy and
00:43:13
help people. I was working in the city. Um, he was working everywhere else and
00:43:18
writing a book. Um, and we were just kind of, you know, we we were sort of
00:43:23
plotting ahead. Business takes me all over the world and I travel about 50 weeks a year. And up
00:43:30
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00:44:26
I guess I'm seeking advice from both of you on uh on love and romance and relationships because in your you know
00:44:32
I'm in my early 30s now and when I looked at both of your stories of love in your your 30s,
00:44:38
it's not a straight line. Oh no. No, it's not a straight line to say the least. Um, Michelle, you talk about
00:44:44
going to marriage counseling with with Brock. What does someone like me at 32
00:44:51
years old who is in a relationship, who is aggressively pursuing a career, because I feel like I've got to build
00:44:56
and build and build and set my family up for the future. What advice would you both give me about navigating love
00:45:02
through that part of your career where it's go go go? M for somebody with your
00:45:09
personality in particular. Um my advice would be that
00:45:15
um you know I could see you thinking, you know, if we're if if if I've got my
00:45:23
stuff together and I've got my path going over here and you've got your path going over on over there, you know, as
00:45:29
long as we're both trudging along, you know, and pushing, we're going to be good. And generally that that can work
00:45:38
because you can be two independent beings out there with, you know, basically slaying your own dragons,
00:45:45
right? Making the choices about which dragons you slay and how, you know, how how much armor you want to use. You
00:45:52
know, you're you're independent people and that feels good right now until your
00:45:58
first and most important joint project happened, which you told me you want.
00:46:03
you have kids, right? That's oftent times when the rub happens because when
00:46:10
you when you bring life into the world, you know, that's the that's the project
00:46:17
where you can't do that independently. You can't you can't be on one path and
00:46:22
your partner on another because raising those kids and making them as whole as
00:46:27
as you'd want them to be has so little to do with the dragon you're slaying now
00:46:33
than it does with how you partner and engage and and and make choices together
00:46:40
on this these little creatures that you're going to love more than anything in the world. And you're not gonna want
00:46:46
to get that project wrong, but you've got to work with your partner. You got to communicate. And that's when it gets
00:46:52
really hard. Is that when it got hard for you? Yeah. Yeah. Because, you know, when you're independent operators in the
00:47:00
world, it, you know, he's off, he's traveling, I'm traveling. You know, maybe I don't see him during the week
00:47:06
and then on Saturday, whoa, it's great. I love you. I missed you. This was so cool. Tell me about your life. and oh
00:47:12
this is and it's sexy and it's all of this right and it feel and you're you're moving and you know and you also are
00:47:19
okay having a break it's like let me miss you for a little bit so I don't care that you're traveling or that
00:47:24
you're everywhere but the minute there's a little baby that is waking someone up
00:47:30
and if there's one person that's carrying the burden of that you know if one person's dream stops because they're
00:47:37
taking on the lion share of of things and you're still going to the gym and
00:47:43
you're still slaying your dragons at the same rate and you haven't looked over at your partner who maybe is now stuck at
00:47:49
home because she's breastfeeding or she made a set of choices to make this
00:47:54
little creature work and you guys haven't had a conversation about that and what that balance looks like because
00:48:01
you're just slaying your dragon at the same rate. Oh, there's going to be
00:48:06
problems. You know, there's going to be resentment. There's going to be fatigue.
00:48:12
There's going to be measuring and counting and all the things. So I think it's just important to communicate now
00:48:20
to start doing the work of make making sure that you're def you guys are
00:48:26
defining your one life together that you're deciding together now what dragons are going to be slaying
00:48:33
and who gets to do what when you know um and what does that feel like you know
00:48:40
are you going to be working all the time are you going to be traveling all the time on the road is she coming with you.
00:48:46
How does she feel about that? Did you have that conversation? No. No, we didn't have that conversation. No, cuz I
00:48:51
didn't know that that was a thing that you had to worry about because when you're in the midst of it, it when
00:48:57
you're in the midst of pursuing your own independent journeys, it's beautiful,
00:49:02
right? It is. It's like I'm independent, he's independent, we we get along, and
00:49:08
then all of a sudden someone's legs are cut up from under them, you know? You
00:49:13
know, someone is making a different set of sacrifices that wasn't negoti that
00:49:19
weren't negotiated because of children. Because of children and because of life. You had some pregnancy struggles. Yes.
00:49:26
And I I've spoken to many women on this show who have been through similar pregnancy struggles. And it's something
00:49:32
that I've it's actually a big conversation in my life at the moment, but also just some of my friends in my
00:49:37
life around trying to get pregnant um and the IVF journey which you went on.
00:49:43
What do women who are struggling need to understand and how did you feel when you
00:49:50
were contemplating the IVF journey and when you started to have struggles uh
00:49:55
conceiving without IVF? Well, it's the thing, you know, because we don't talk about our bodies and women's health and
00:50:03
there's just not a lot of conversation about marriage or pregnancy or any of
00:50:08
this. Our parents don't talk about it. Their parents before them don't talk about it. Right? So, you imagine your
00:50:15
life and as you're checking boxes, I'm waiting. I've delayed having kids. I
00:50:20
found the love of my life and now I'm going to get pregnant. And no one tells you that there is really a biological
00:50:27
clock. Like that's not false. You know, we have partner in podcast Dr. Sharon
00:50:34
Malone who wrote a book grown woman talk where she's talking she's sort of ripping the the the the curtain off of
00:50:42
women's health questions. And in a conversation with her, she reminded us that women, we are born with a finite
00:50:49
set of eggs and we don't get anymore. And every month we're losing them. And
00:50:55
so there is a period of time usually, and it's different for everyone, usually in your 30s where you go from f fertile
00:51:03
to not. And it's like falling off of a cliff. And I'm like, why didn't anybody
00:51:10
tell me this? I know. Why? Why? Why wasn't people why weren't people talking about this? So, by the time I we started
00:51:18
really trying, which which worked perfectly for our careers and maturing and having everything set, right?
00:51:25
Because that's what we're we're trying to get everything set. Unlike our parents who, you know, had us, we lived in a little bitty apartment, you know,
00:51:31
one income. Our generation were worrying about I want everything set. I I
00:51:37
guarantee you, you have things way more set than any any of our parents had before they started having kids. But
00:51:44
we're waiting for everything to be perfect. No friction. We don't want any friction, right? And while we're we're
00:51:50
waiting for our lives to be perfect, that biological clock is ticking. So, you start trying and you it's not
00:51:57
working. That's when you go to the doctor and they tell you, "Oh, you're you're running out of eggs.
00:52:03
This is normal. I mean, you're going to have trouble getting pregnant and so try a little bit and then now it's time for
00:52:10
IVF. Um, if you can afford it, which it wasn't covered by insurance at the time.
00:52:15
So, you know, it's just a shock to the system and as some as people who like
00:52:21
learning and like knowledge, you really sort of feel jipped. Yeah. You know, that why why is this such a secret? Um,
00:52:28
which is why I talk about it openly and I talk about miscarriages because the other thing I learned is like most
00:52:35
pregnancies, a good percentage of them end in miscarriage. That people have been having miscarriages for years but
00:52:42
not talking about it. So when it happens to you, a box checker, somebody that thought life was going to be so and you
00:52:48
did all the right things, to have things not work out and to know that it was going to be that way and nobody told you
00:52:55
so that you could be prepared for it, it just it was a blow. And then as a woman,
00:53:00
you're walking around owning the blow as if it's your fault, you know. Um, and so
00:53:06
you're carrying around that burden. And that can become the first pressure point in a marriage because emotionally you've
00:53:14
got a woman that is carrying all of this. Feeling like a failure, feeling
00:53:19
not having anyone to talk about, having her hormones go up and down literally,
00:53:25
right? Probably dealing with depression and maybe some postpartum. Still working, still slaying dragons, still on
00:53:32
the path, but she's carrying it all on her own. And then if you do IVF, the
00:53:38
bulk of the work, the shots, the the we are the we are the the the petri dish in
00:53:44
the IVF process. You show up, you come in a cup, and ooh, yay, good for you,
00:53:51
right? And you're a little mad about that, too, because women have to get shots every week,
00:53:57
and you have to go back and forth in between having your job, your high-powered job, and keeping it all
00:54:02
together. You're at the doctor's office every month trying to count your eggs and hoping that you're producing eggs
00:54:09
and then you have to go through the procedure and then you have to be pregnant for nine
00:54:15
months as your partner is going to the gym and keeping his figure and you know
00:54:21
all of that you know so it's a long way of saying there are just many natural
00:54:26
reasons why marriage infertility trying to have
00:54:32
kids makes things difficult. It's like I I try to tell couples, of course it's
00:54:39
hard. Just listen to what I said, right? Like it's pro if you're having some
00:54:44
issues in your marriage. It's not you, it's the process of marriage. It's just
00:54:51
all hard because guess what happens when it all works out right? You know what? You end up with babies.
00:54:59
little people with their own sense of everything. They mess you up. You love
00:55:05
them dearly, but they're a hassle and they're demanding and they have
00:55:11
their own whims. And now they're in your world in in your partnership. They are
00:55:17
you you they they are factored into everything. So even when everything works out and you have the 3.2 two kids
00:55:25
and you got everything right, it's still going to be hard because now you're
00:55:30
you're developing a life, right? So, I talk about these things because I think
00:55:37
that people give up too quickly on on marriage, right? because there is so
00:55:44
much friction built in to the equation. And if you're not getting help, talking about it, going to therapy, just
00:55:52
understanding how things are changing and how do you continuously renegotiate your relationship with your partner. I I
00:56:01
just see people quitting because they look at me and Barack and go # couple goals, you know, and I'm like, it's
00:56:08
hard. It's hard for us, too. But I wouldn't trade it. You know, he is, as
00:56:14
the young people say, he is my person. Was there ever a moment where you thought, you know, there are the moments
00:56:20
where I'm like, right, but it was it real? No. No. No.
00:56:28
There's there was never really a full moment. There were moments when I was resentful. There were moments when I was
00:56:34
mad. There were moments when I didn't feel like I got enough attention.
00:56:40
But it's like, don't you feel that in your relationship right now? Yeah. You know, so it's just me understanding.
00:56:48
Yeah, I was mad, but I forgot even why I was mad. Right. That's so it's like, was I really that mad? Oh, did I say that?
00:56:55
I'm sorry. I didn't really mean that. So, no, in the end, you know, mm- no,
00:57:01
we're, you know, and the beauty of my husband and my our partnership is that
00:57:09
neither one of us was ever really ever going to quit at it cuz that's not who
00:57:14
we are. And I know that about him. He knows that about me, you know. Um, so
00:57:19
no, both of your lives change because of a decision that former President Barack
00:57:27
Obama decides to make, which is to run for public office. And that is has a profound impact on both of your lives
00:57:34
because it's the most powerful job in the world. It is you become the most famous family in the
00:57:40
world. When he said that he was going to do that, did you believe that he was
00:57:46
capable of it? Uh yeah, that was the the problem is
00:57:53
like, you know, I I I knew that in my heart I knew that he would make a
00:58:00
phenomenal president. Um and as I've written in in in the light, um uh the
00:58:07
the truth was is that my initial reaction was like, "Oh no, oh my god,
00:58:12
don't do this." It had everything to do with having the foresight of knowing what this would do to our lives. I mean,
00:58:19
I was projecting that if you win, which I thought he could and should. He would be somebody that I would want as my
00:58:26
president. It was all about this is going to, you know, our kids are little.
00:58:31
We're going to have to move. How do you raise kids in the White House? Um, it's dangerous. Is the first black potential
00:58:40
president. We knew there would be death threats. there were just all the how would we afford it because it's it's
00:58:46
expensive to live in the White House as many people don't know I mean much is
00:58:51
not covered um you're paying for every food every bit of food that you eat you you know you're not paying for housing
00:58:58
and the staff in it but everything even travel if you're not traveling with the president if your kids are coming on a
00:59:05
bright star which is the first lady's plane we had to play pay for their travel to be on the plane it is an
00:59:11
expensive proposition and you're running for two years and not earning an income. Um, so
00:59:17
all of that was in my mind. Um, how would we manage this? So my fears were
00:59:25
uh what came from the fact that I thought he could win, you know, cuz if I maybe way in the back of my mind I was
00:59:32
hoping that maybe he wouldn't, you know, that this would be the last thing he would do.
00:59:38
Um, but I knew he had it in him uh to
00:59:43
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01:00:52
CEOs. All the time people say to me, they say, "Can you mentor me? Can you get this person to mentor me? How do I
01:00:58
find a mentor? So, here is what we're going to do. You're going to send me a question. And the most popular question
01:01:03
you send me, I'm going to text it to 100 CEOs, some of which are the top CEOs in
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the world running a hundred billion dollar companies. And then I'm going to reply to you via email with how they
01:01:15
answered that question. You might say, "How do you hold on to a relationship when you're building a startup? What is
01:01:21
the most important thing if I've got an idea and don't know where to start?" We email it to the CEOs. They email back. We take the five, six top best answers.
01:01:28
We email it to you. I was nervous because I thought the marketing might not match the reality. But then I I saw
01:01:33
what the founders were replying with and their willingness to reply and I thought actually this is really good and all you've got to do is sign up completely
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free. Did you ask for any commitments or promises if he were to win?
01:01:47
I you know it it wasn't very thoughtful. Um, I told him that he definitely had to
01:01:55
quit smoking because he was still toying with smoking. He was in it and not in
01:02:00
it. Um, and we had to have enough of a nest egg so that, you know, we could
01:02:06
that we wouldn't be just financially broke at the end of it. And, you know, I
01:02:12
thought that that that was going to cut it, right? because we weren't in really
01:02:17
we we we were just starting to make uh decision moves where we were covering
01:02:23
the income that we lost making our purposeful moves. So I kind of thought that was going to be the deal breaker.
01:02:30
But then he was chosen to give the speech at the Democratic National Convention and he just blew up. And as a
01:02:38
result of that, and maybe I'm getting it out of order, Dreams for My Father went
01:02:44
back on the bestsellers list. He brought wrote Audacity of Hope, you know, so there was all this income that was being
01:02:51
generated from his book sales. And he kind of looked at me like, I think we're
01:02:56
okay. And I'm like, darn. Um, so I I didn't know enough to
01:03:03
know what to ask for. I mean, we were flying blind. I didn't know what that
01:03:09
journey was going to be and what I would need to negotiate for myself. And that was a bit problematic. It was
01:03:15
problematic not to know what I needed. What should you have said? Oh.
01:03:23
Um, I should have said that I
01:03:29
needed his team to really truly value that he had a
01:03:35
family, you know, that I I shouldn't have just said, well, this is what it
01:03:41
takes to get this done. I mean, it was almost like the consultants that sit around. It was almost like this is the
01:03:47
way it has to be. And remember the the legacy of the presidential office
01:03:53
doesn't recognize families. It it is not designed, you know, you get in there and
01:04:00
it all revolves around the commanderin-chief who has always been a man. And the whole system of it doesn't
01:04:08
really take into account that there's a wife and kids and their needs and their
01:04:15
the demands on them. Um, so I wound up having to fight for a lot of stuff on my
01:04:22
own. So if I had known these things and maybe maybe Laura Bush knew more than I
01:04:28
did because the Bushes had been in the White House, maybe, you know, you know, there I I think about maybe there's some
01:04:34
world where people knew more about this thing than we did to understand the impacts. But there are also generational
01:04:41
differences. I was a very different first lady. uh not terribly different from Hillary Clinton, but it was a
01:04:47
different time. Uh we had small kids in the White House and that didn't happen often. There were just uh accommodations
01:04:56
and and and ways that the the West Wing did not think about
01:05:03
or or work to fully protect all of us in the process as a unit. And so if I had
01:05:11
known what I know knew now, I I would have asked for different things, but I ultimately I had to push to to get the
01:05:18
things that we needed to be able to operate as a family. Even when it came down to how the Secret Service protected
01:05:26
little kids, you know, um the girls had to have a detail, right? So they started
01:05:34
school in second grade and fifth grade in armed cars with primarily men with
01:05:42
guns going into a new school. Um strangers that they did not know and the
01:05:49
details weren't they weren't practiced on going to Sidwell's second grade uh
01:05:58
schoolyard. So we had to basically work on how do you how do you do this for
01:06:03
little kids, you know. So a lot of times details just flood through. They they they continuously move through. It was
01:06:11
important for me that we find two detail leaders that stayed with the girls for
01:06:17
most of their time until they became teenagers because it was sort of like you know these people, right? At least
01:06:24
they get to know. they couldn't just have strange men coming throughout. Um, and we had to kind of fight for that.
01:06:31
Um, so those that's just one example of
01:06:37
the what living under those things and trying to raise small children, you
01:06:43
know, the kind of things that the guys in the West Wing weren't thinking about as they were fixing the financial crisis
01:06:49
and dealing with Syria and on and on and on. I was trying to make sure that our
01:06:54
kids came out of that process not crazy um and whole. Being the first black
01:07:03
first lady in the White House, the public scrutiny that that
01:07:08
comes with is a unique type of scrutiny. Mhm. Being the first lady anyway comes
01:07:13
with tremendous scrutiny. Absolutely. Since stepping reluctantly into public
01:07:19
life, I've been held up as the most powerful woman in the world and taken
01:07:25
down as an angry black woman. I've wanted to ask my detractors which part
01:07:30
of that phrase matters to them the most. Is it angry or black or woman? I've
01:07:38
smiled for photos with people who call my husband horrible names on national television, but still want a framed
01:07:45
keepsake for their mantle. I've heard about the swampy parts of the internet that question everything about me, right
01:07:53
down to whether I'm a woman or man. A sitting US congressman has made fun of
01:07:58
my butt. I've been hurt. I've been furious.
01:08:04
But mostly I've tried to laugh this stuff off. Craig, if that was my little
01:08:11
sister, public scrutiny, elevated to the the highest office in the land,
01:08:17
I'll ask you the question. How how would how did you feel? So I that that's let me back up. Because I had
01:08:25
been a basketball coach at a big conference, I always had to tell them,
01:08:32
"Don't worry about what people say in the newspaper. I'm doing exactly what I love to do." Mhm. And that doesn't
01:08:39
bother me at all. Okay. But then once they got in the White
01:08:45
House, I had to tell myself that. Yeah. because I knew that they were doing the
01:08:54
best that they could do for the most people no matter what anybody said.
01:09:01
But because it's my little sister and brother-in-law and my mom was in the White House and my nieces, I would I
01:09:07
there were times where I would find myself becoming enraged and I'd have to coach myself
01:09:13
to I know they're doing the best they're doing they they can do for the most
01:09:19
people and I would not want anybody else sitting in that seat but my sister and
01:09:25
brother-in-law. And that's how I got through eight years of that. Because it's relentless. It is relentless. It's
01:09:32
relentless. It is global. It is unfair. And it's mean. It's just mean. And you
01:09:39
know the I' I've leaned back on the lessons I learned from my parents a long
01:09:44
time ago. I wasn't worried about what anybody said who wasn't at this table. And um and and I I
01:09:52
coached I I counseledled my family, my immediate family, the same thing cuz our
01:09:58
kids, we our older kids were old enough to read the papers and read the read the news and and things online,
01:10:05
but Meech always talks about this. In order to get through that, she
01:10:12
always says she needed the village of her friends and family. And I just wanted to be a supportive piece of that.
01:10:18
And we tried to get out there as much as we could and make it as normal as you can, you know, having Thanksgiving in
01:10:26
the White House. You know, that that's an oxymoron almost having a normal Thanksgiving in the White House. But we
01:10:33
tried to make it as normal as we could. And yourself, how how does one deal with
01:10:40
such scrutiny? The scrutiny occurs for eight years as the you know the public are at war with different opinions and
01:10:46
ideas and often the president is seen as the the villain or the hero in that context and the family is obviously
01:10:52
impacted by that. But then even beyond the White House it's it's relentless.
01:10:59
What is the is there a framework? Is there an underlying belief? Is there a set of values? You know it go it goes back to what we learned earlier. I think
01:11:06
I approach everything with empathy. Um, and Barack does too, and he he helps
01:11:12
keep me in check. Um, because he is so smart and he believes in ideas and he
01:11:18
understands context in history. You know, we we are always putting these times, these moments into
01:11:26
a greater context. And we're trying to understand where people's rage,
01:11:32
ignorance, hatred, whatever it is, where it comes from. And it usually doesn't
01:11:38
have anything to do with us, you know. It has to do with the state of the world, you know,
01:11:44
and the world in this country is unfair for way more people than it is fair to.
01:11:51
And it impacts people of all races. And folks are angry and they're scared. Um,
01:11:57
and they don't have enough opportunity. And when people are put in that position, they lash out. They're mean.
01:12:05
That's when they're they're you know we we we otherize people because it gives
01:12:10
us a sense of stability. We pick on someone has to be a little more
01:12:15
oppressed than us. Um but that doesn't make what they say or feel true. You
01:12:21
know that's you know just because you say it or think it about me and the way that I had to overcome the racist low
01:12:29
expectations of us in our childhood. It's the same thing. It's like, you're
01:12:35
not mad at me. You don't understand a lot about the world. And you've been told a lot of things about who people of
01:12:43
my skin color are. You've been taught to fear me because of the history of our country, because of what you're going
01:12:49
through. And when you put yourself in other people's shoes, you I I do get why
01:12:55
people are afraid. I do understand it. And also Barack helps me remember which
01:13:00
I experienced myself, you know, he says this is still the country that elected Barack Obama twice, you know, and people
01:13:08
in this country are proud of that. There's a very small percentage of people who would never ever in their
01:13:16
lifetime uh want a black man to tell them how to get down the street to the
01:13:22
grocery store, right? Um they can't hear it. But this this country is bigger than
01:13:28
that, right? Um and we saw it. We experienced it as much hatred or you
01:13:35
know conflict or ridicule. We we had so
01:13:40
much love, so much goodwill, you know, so many people who tell us even today we
01:13:47
miss you guys, you know, and it doesn't look like any you'd be surprised at what
01:13:52
corners of the world and our daughters felt it and feel it, right? That is
01:13:58
true, too. We are in a really tough time right now and we are being led sadly by
01:14:04
people who are are are not being in my opinion their best selves um for
01:14:12
whatever reasons they have, whatever is moving them to to push this country in
01:14:18
this direction. Whatever hurts they have. Billionaires have their hurts too. you know, business leaders, people in
01:14:26
power who want power and haven't understand understood their why, you
01:14:31
know, can lead us down some dark tunnels, right? But it's that empathy
01:14:37
for me um that that ability to kind of give it some perspective that allows me
01:14:44
not to take all that hate in and to really, you know, see the light in
01:14:50
people. you know, it's just the better way to live. It keeps us from being
01:14:56
embittered. Uh, and it keeps us hopeful and it keeps us working for for people,
01:15:02
you know. Um, so it's it's kind of a necessity to get through it.
01:15:07
Marian, your wonderful mother, she was a prominent figure throughout that time in
01:15:13
the White House. Oh, yeah. What did she give you that helped you
01:15:18
through that journey of being thrust into the very very very highest mountain
01:15:23
in public service? What role did she play? What force was she at that time for you both?
01:15:30
For me, she continued to be that soft place to land, you know, the
01:15:37
place where she always saw me. Always always saw who I was.
01:15:44
Um, and she was that soft place for our girls. She was common sense right in the
01:15:52
middle of the White House, you know, in that big house. People, you know, just
01:15:58
with her sheer presence and her wisdom, you know, that old-fashioned wisdom, she
01:16:05
was the center of that house. Everyone came to her door and sat in her room and
01:16:12
sucked up her wisdom. The butlers, the, you know, the florists, the
01:16:18
housekeepers, the chefs, you know, they they were all motherred in some way by
01:16:24
her. Um, and so she was that for me for sure. I can still see her in your face
01:16:30
as you reflect. She's there. She is there. I see it in his face more. You
01:16:35
know how you you don't see yourself in your like I don't think I look like him at all, right? But he looks just like my
01:16:41
mother, right? How did that loss impact the family? It's 2024, so it's fairly
01:16:47
recent. Yeah. Yeah. It's still it's still painful. Um but, you know, I'll go
01:16:54
back to what I I said at the very beginning when you talked about the values we had. The underlying value was
01:17:01
unconditional love. And Misha and I knew that our mom loved
01:17:07
us. And we and and even more importantly, she knew we loved her. She
01:17:13
knew her grandkids loved her. So while her dying was traumatic and
01:17:20
disappointing and sad, I always feel like she knew where
01:17:26
we stood and she was it was it was when when she was uh right before she passed
01:17:33
away and she we knew she was going to be leaving us and I said uh you know Meech
01:17:40
and Barack are on our way and she was like oh that's nice and she just said that that was
01:17:49
Yeah. There was nothing left unsaid. Yeah. Yeah. And there's just there was
01:17:57
there's just a piece. Yeah. Yeah. I I I just miss her. Mhm. Right. But I feel
01:18:04
like she knows how we feel about her and that's that's always comforting. And
01:18:10
speaking of comfort, that's how I felt when she was in the White
01:18:15
House for them cuz I didn't have to worry about them when she was
01:18:21
there. Have you processed the the grief? Have you been able to?
01:18:27
I'm sure I have more than he does cuz he doesn't process stuff. He just keeps
01:18:32
working through it. But yeah. Yeah. I I think I've I pro I for me
01:18:39
um making choices for me. I feel like now I
01:18:44
have permission to do what I want to do. I think part of our podcast is part of
01:18:51
that legacy. Um because at least for me as a woman, I think at
01:18:58
61, I'm finally owning my wisdom. um in a way that I don't, you know, I think it
01:19:04
takes women until we're about 60 to be like, I I think I know a thing or two,
01:19:10
but that wisdom comes from her. And she's she was she's our our last line of
01:19:16
elder wisdom. And so now we're up, we're next up, believe it or not, me and Craig
01:19:21
and our family, we're the we're the ones. Um, so IMO, um, in my opinion, our
01:19:29
podcast is sort of that offering back. It's like, all right, let's let's keep
01:19:35
up the mentoring that we were taught, you know, let's let's let's create our
01:19:40
table and be a place where people can come for the little bit of advice and
01:19:46
conversation in the same way that you're doing, Stephen. It's like when you when you learn
01:19:51
something, the way you hone in on it is that you keep teaching it to other people, right? You said that, right?
01:19:59
Um and so this is sort of helping us continue to you know by helping others
01:20:06
which is a thing we both get great joy from that mentoring just being able to
01:20:11
you know have this conversation here and maybe somebody's going to get something from it that I missed when I was their
01:20:17
age that brings us joy. It's like we're
01:20:22
here for a reason other than making a bunch of money and you know living a nice life or being famous. It's like
01:20:29
maybe we can help somebody. Permission. Yeah. I was watching the coverage over
01:20:34
your decision, your decision to sort of take back some of your control and not go to Trump's inauguration. Uhhuh. Is
01:20:39
that one of those key moments in your life where you did take back control? Absolutely. Absolutely. What was the
01:20:45
thinking behind that decision? Um, what do I want to do in this moment?
01:20:53
you know, as a boxcheing a person who has been box checking her whole life,
01:20:59
doing the right thing. Um, trying to always be an example,
01:21:05
always going high. Um, I I think I now I earned a little bit about how do I feel,
01:21:12
you know, do I want to up in my life and and and take this trip and leave my
01:21:18
peace and my children for this? I don't didn't have to. That that was my choice.
01:21:25
And I I was not I would have never made that choice. I would have always done
01:21:31
what what I thought was the the right thing to do for other people to set an
01:21:37
example. And I I I think I just told myself, I think I've done enough of
01:21:43
that. And if I haven't, then I never will. It'll never be enough. So, let me
01:21:49
start now. This is the perfect time to start. Um, so yeah, obviously off the
01:21:55
back of that people start to swell rumors that there's an issue with you and Brock and there's it was coming. I can I mean you can say it yourself, but
01:22:02
I don't think that needs to be addressed.
01:22:08
What I will say, you know me now well enough, Stephen, is if I were having problems with my husband, everybody
01:22:13
would know about it. If you're like, and let me tell you, and then and he would know it and everybody would know it. I'm
01:22:20
not a martyr. I'm not, you know, and I would I would be problem solving in pro public and be like, "Let me tell you
01:22:27
what he did." Listen podcast now as well. So we were wait but if they were having a problem Yeah. I'd be doing a
01:22:33
podcast with him. Your your podcast is incredible and I
01:22:40
highly recommend everybody goes and checks it out. Um I'm going to link it below on the screen. I was fortunate enough to be invited on it yesterday and
01:22:45
we had a wonderful conversation in there. IM O in my opinion it's a you
01:22:51
know it's a reflection of this kind of conversation. It's human. It's a discovery of life. You're bringing people on there that have wisdom to
01:22:57
share but you're passing through that to understand the world that we're all living in and the struggles that we're all contending with. So it's a wonderful
01:23:02
wonderful space on the internet. I highly recommend my viewers go and check it out on Spotify, on YouTube, wherever
01:23:08
you get your podcasts. It's a must listen in my my opinion because it's so rare that we get an insight and a window
01:23:13
into the the family, but also just the human story of everything that you've both been through in your lives as a
01:23:19
really successful coach, as a stock broker, as the first lady, as a mother, um, and then everything you're going to
01:23:24
do thereafter. You're helping me navigate the world and you help other people navigate the world because not everybody has that foundation. Not
01:23:31
everybody has the parents at home. Everybody has, especially in black communities, not everybody has the
01:23:36
mentors and you're vicariously mentoring the world through that show. So, please do continue. It's a wonderful thing to
01:23:42
get to podcast and I was so happy to hear when you joined the industry. We have a closing tradition. Yes. And the
01:23:47
closing tradition on this podcast is that the last guest leaves a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving it for. Okay. So the
01:23:53
question that's been left for you both is if there is one person in your life that you have been afraid of putting up
01:23:59
a boundary with but know you need to who would it be? Now you don't have to name
01:24:05
them but I guess this question is just about boundaries. Yeah.
01:24:12
The inauguration might have been the opposite. Yeah. I think I've kind of done that. Yeah. Yeah. But at this age
01:24:19
we got our boundaries well set. Uh I I think this that's a that's that's
01:24:26
um I because we're not naming a who I think it's the act of practicing setting
01:24:32
boundaries period. Right. And I'm I'm having that conversation with my
01:24:37
daughters now. I mean, it takes a lot of work to learn how to say no and how not
01:24:44
to be um people pleasers, which I think there are more of us out there than we'd
01:24:49
like to admit. It takes practice and it takes decades of practice. Um, and I am
01:24:55
constantly giving my my girls tips on how to do it, how to politely do it, how
01:25:01
to, you know, how to not jam yourself up, how to not say yes right away, how
01:25:07
to take a moment and say, "Let me think about that." You know, some of a boundary is just saying, "Wait, I don't
01:25:16
have to give you an answer right now. let me go back and sit in it in the the
01:25:22
request and figure out whether it works for me. And so many of us as pleasers,
01:25:28
we're trying to give people an an answer right away. And it's hard to look
01:25:33
someone in the face and say no. So I think it takes practice, even practice in the wording of it. And then the older
01:25:40
you get, the easier it gets because guess what? to realize your no doesn't usually change anyone else's life. You
01:25:48
know, they might be disappointed, but guess what? It all they will find the next, you know, person that they'll ask.
01:25:54
The world continues. None of us are that important. Um, and people can deal with
01:26:00
a little disappointment every now and then. And with that, I thank you both. It's such an honor to get to meet you
01:26:07
and um to learn so much from you. And yeah, I uh the rise of your family, the grace, the humility, and the way that
01:26:13
you've conducted yourself has been a huge source of inspiration for me as a young black man that's navigating the world and that's looking up to role
01:26:19
models um that aren't often um as in close proximity in our lives. So, thank
01:26:25
you so much. I I can't tell you how much you had a profound impact on on me
01:26:31
thousands of miles away in a small little village in the southwest of England. had a profound impact on me in
01:26:36
shaping the man that I became in my life and that's a credit to your family and it's just the greatest honor that I got
01:26:41
to speak to you both today. So, thank you. It's been a a pleasure. Absolute treat to be spending time with you.
01:26:48
Thanks for having us and hopefully it won't be the last. I hope not. Yeah. This has always blown my mind a little
01:26:54
bit. 53% of you that listen to this show regularly haven't yet subscribed to the show. So, could I ask you for a favor?
01:27:00
If you like the show and you like what we do here and you want to support us, the free simple way that you can do just that is by hitting the subscribe button.
01:27:06
And my commitment to you is if you do that, then I'll do everything in my power, me and my team, to make sure that this show is better for you every single
01:27:13
week. We'll listen to your feedback. We'll find the guests that you want me to speak to and we'll continue to do what we do. Thank you so
01:27:20
[Music] much. Heat. Heat.
01:27:26
[Music]
