President Barack Obama

Speaker 1 So let's just dive in.

Speaker 1 So let's just dive in.

Speaker 1 So we're going to just dive in.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 We're recording this for the toppers.

Speaker 2 I know.

Speaker 2 I know. It's just funny.

Speaker 1 Did you get that without the laugh?

Speaker 2 No, I was a snake. I'm sorry.
I'll be quiet.

Speaker 3 Stay sick because I follow my gut.

Speaker 3 They say I was pushing my luck.

Speaker 2 I'ma push me, I'm at all black truck.

Speaker 3 I'm not sorry.

Speaker 3 Stay sick, cause I follow my gut.

Speaker 3 They say I was pushing my luck.

Speaker 1 Hello, everybody. I am Michelle Obama, and this is the Michelle Obama podcast.
You're listening to my very first episode.

Speaker 1 I want to start by giving you all a little background on what it is I hope to do with this podcast. And I thought I'd begin by taking you through the journey that brought me here today.

Speaker 1 It starts back when our family left the White House.

Speaker 1 For eight years, my life was full of crazy schedules, juggling, big initiatives, speeches, state dinners, not to mention trying to raise two daughters and just keep my head above water.

Speaker 1 But once Barack's second term ended, the presidency was over, I finally had some time to breathe.

Speaker 1 So for a few months, the first year really, I spent a lot of time thinking, talking with friends and family, really just being, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 I reflected back on my time in the White House, of course, but I went even deeper.

Speaker 2 I look back on the whole arc of my life.

Speaker 1 In this first season, you'll be hearing me talk with some of the people I'm closest with. My mom, my brother, friends, colleagues.
And I wanted to start at the most basic level.

Speaker 1 In these episodes, we'll be discussing the relationships that make us who we are.

Speaker 1 Sometimes that might be as personal as our relationship with ourselves or how we navigate our health and our bodies at various points in our lives.

Speaker 1 In other episodes, we'll be talking about what the challenges and joys of being a parent are or a spouse, the growth we gain from leaning on colleagues and mentors, the friends who help us sort through the toughest times.

Speaker 1 What I love about these conversations is that they're topics and issues that we are all dealing with, no matter what's going on, whether that's a pandemic or nationwide reckoning with race or just any old summer afternoon sitting with our own thoughts.

Speaker 1 And that's truly true of the topic for our first episode.

Speaker 1 Today, we're going to start by discussing one of those relationships that can take some time to figure out, and that's our relationship to our communities and to our country.

Speaker 1 Sometimes this relationship might be a source of fulfillment or meaning or joy. Other times, it might provoke questions that we don't quite know the answer to.

Speaker 1 What we're really talking about is our place in this world,

Speaker 1 how we feel about it, and what we can do with the power we have.

Speaker 1 I asked a special someone to join me for this conversation because he's navigated these questions throughout the course of his entire life.

Speaker 1 Well, welcome to my podcast.

Speaker 2 Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

Speaker 1 Just in case you don't recognize that voice, that is my husband, Barack Obama.

Speaker 2 It's me.

Speaker 1 It is you. It is you.

Speaker 1 Like most Americans, we've been spending a lot of time together in quarantine.

Speaker 2 You don't seem to be happy about that the way she said it, right?

Speaker 1 It's just a fact.

Speaker 1 There wasn't a judgment. We've been together.

Speaker 2 I've been loving it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I've been having a great time. time.
But we've had some interesting conversations

Speaker 1 because these are some crazy times.

Speaker 1 We've spent a lot of time talking about sort of how do our views about community, how do those shape who we are and shape our choices and shape our reactions.

Speaker 1 So I thought we'd start with looking at how we've been shaped by our communities growing up.

Speaker 1 Our backgrounds are pretty different, different, you know, just in terms of the structure of our upbringing.

Speaker 2 Absolutely.

Speaker 1 That I grew up with, as you call it, the leave it to beaver.

Speaker 2 The black,

Speaker 2 the black, leave it to beaver.

Speaker 2 With,

Speaker 1 you know, family four, father at home.

Speaker 2 The only thing missing was a dog. A dog.
A no.

Speaker 2 Marion wouldn't let you get a dog. I know.
She feels bad about it now.

Speaker 1 And now I got revenge. I've got two of them.
We do. And I'd have more if it weren't for you.

Speaker 1 But, yeah, I grew up with that Family Four.

Speaker 2 Classic nuclear family

Speaker 2 unit.

Speaker 1 And you grew up a little bit differently.

Speaker 2 Things were a little crazy on my side.

Speaker 1 Well, I don't know if it was crazy, but it was different.

Speaker 2 Yeah. Yeah.
Look, I was raised mostly by a single mom and my grandparents. until we then moved to Indonesia

Speaker 2 and I had a stepfather and then Maya, my sister was born. And then I moved back to Hawaii and lived with my grandparents for high school.
It wasn't the classic nuclear family.

Speaker 2 It was a tight-knit family.

Speaker 2 The thing that maybe we did share was

Speaker 2 my mom and grandparents were similar to your parents in really prioritizing kids

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 thinking that you had to make sacrifices for kids. And so we felt loved and supported.
And that's obviously where a community starts.

Speaker 2 One of the things we've talked about a lot is that one way or another, they didn't have to do it completely alone. There was a neighborhood or a community or extended families.

Speaker 2 Extended families, structures around that helped families raise their kids in a loving environment and they didn't feel as isolated.

Speaker 1 A lot of the way families ran before recently was an economic necessity. You know, my parents were poor, you know, and you're living on the second floor.

Speaker 1 You're living on the second floor of my great aunt's house because that was a way to save money so that my parents, my mother could stay home. And, you know, my mom was able to work

Speaker 1 on the PTA at our public school because she and a couple of other mothers who could afford to stay home stayed home and they kept their eye on everybody in the school.

Speaker 1 So there was an opportunity for, because we saved money and we lived small, as my father said, there were parents who could be in the schools and who could be going on field trips, knowing that there were plenty of single mothers or mothers who couldn't stay home.

Speaker 1 So moms like mine were looking out for all the kids at Bryn Mawr Elementary School. My dad's city job.
paid for everything we did. And it was, and that's not true today.

Speaker 2 Couldn't happen it couldn't happen because of you know the higher financial costs of of health care the higher costs of if you want to send your kid to college

Speaker 2 so you've got financial pressures on the family you then have all these institutions that used to be support systems

Speaker 2 shrinking so more and more

Speaker 2 people

Speaker 2 start thinking in terms of

Speaker 2 me

Speaker 2 and I do things on my own.

Speaker 2 I pursue a career I make money

Speaker 2 and then if I'm successful enough I can be self-sufficient and my family can be self-sufficient

Speaker 2 that of course the challenge is that that kind of setup creates this huge separation between people

Speaker 2 between

Speaker 2 economic levels

Speaker 2 you always had separation unfortunately around race right

Speaker 1 but now you've got separation within race, right?

Speaker 2 Um, yeah, talk about that because

Speaker 2 you one of the things that happens in your neighborhood is it's not just white folks who move out over time, right? It's also black folks who have means.

Speaker 1 They just start saying, Well, we want the same to go out to the suburbs, um, you know, we saw that too. I mean, I write in my book about white flight, right?

Speaker 1 But the truth is, later on down the line in the 80s or so, as black folks earned more money and got professions, the dream was to move to the suburbs.

Speaker 1 That was the dream of middle-class black folks, too.

Speaker 2 But I also,

Speaker 2 why did your parents not think about that?

Speaker 1 You know, my parents were uniquely stubborn about the suburbs. You know, they really, number one, my father never wanted to be house poor.
Right. Right.
So

Speaker 1 there were times when they talked about buying a home.

Speaker 1 And I remember going to look at some homes and being excited that, ooh, I'm going to have my own room and maybe I have, I was,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I was

Speaker 1 obsessed with having stairs in your house

Speaker 1 along with a station wagon because I was filled with that. I said, maybe we're going to have an upstairs and I can have some stairs.
Well, I distinctly remember that.

Speaker 2 But I also tell you one: stairs and a station

Speaker 1 and a station wagon.

Speaker 2 Now that's some success.

Speaker 1 That's some success right there.

Speaker 1 That's some Cleaver success.

Speaker 2 Did the Cleavers have stairs? Everybody had stairs.

Speaker 1 They must have had some stairs. The Brady Bunch had stairs.
The Partridge family.

Speaker 1 Only people who didn't have stairs were the Jeffersons and the Evans family

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 the Robinsons. So I thought, you know, I want some stairs.

Speaker 1 But my parents looked and my dad crunched the numbers and he said, you know, if I'm putting all my money into a mortgage, then we're not going to be able to go on vacation.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to be able to save for your college. And

Speaker 1 who cares about stairs? And, you know, we grew up in the city and this is just fine. And you need to learn how to live in the city.
So,

Speaker 1 and my father was suspicious of the suburbs because they still weren't completely welcoming.

Speaker 1 You know, we had had incidents of going into the suburbs of Park Forest that were all white.

Speaker 1 And I write about the the incident where somebody scratched my father's car because we were black folks in a neighborhood.

Speaker 1 So I think they probably felt a level of safety and security staying in a neighborhood that was surrounded by our extended family, as I said earlier.

Speaker 2 Well, one of the things when I moved to Chicago and I started as a community organizer and I was basically working in the neighborhoods that you grew up in. You were there.

Speaker 2 And I remember when I went to start my job, the guy who was training me, he said, the first month, all I want you to do is just talk to people.

Speaker 2 So I would go around the neighborhoods and just talk to people about how they had ended up in Chicago, folks coming up from the South and the Great Migration, their parents, grandparents.

Speaker 2 And people would reminisce and they would say, you know, when we first moved here, everybody raised everybody's kids.

Speaker 2 That was a really common theme. People would say, if I was messing up,

Speaker 2 it wasn't Miss Smith down the street, she'd see me messing up.

Speaker 2 She'd scold me.

Speaker 2 Then when I got home,

Speaker 2 I might get whooped because Miss Smith would have called my mom.

Speaker 1 How dare you have Miss Smith calling me and telling me that you were on her grass? And she, and then you said, and you had the nerve to talk back, a boy,

Speaker 2 boy.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 so so what you got was this portrait of a

Speaker 2 village

Speaker 1 yeah things just it it felt easier in those times to have a family unit because it wasn't just that you were supposed to branch out that success was defined by your ability to leave your nuclear unit and make it on your own That wasn't how either one of us was raised.

Speaker 1 Every elder lived with someone. They shared expenses, they shared households, they shared the duties of raising kids.

Speaker 1 So there wasn't this feeling that you were supposed to do this thing called loving and supporting your family on your own. You know, that seems to be kind of a new thing.
And so it felt like the

Speaker 1 community, the neighborhood that I grew up with, operated on that notion. And it wasn't just up to that parent to provide that stability and that love.

Speaker 2 Your values always start

Speaker 2 with those closest to you, right? So my mom deeply believed in everybody being worthy of

Speaker 2 love and praise and support. I think part of what also happened because I moved around a lot as a kid and I didn't have a big extended family like you did was my friendships became really important.

Speaker 2 All my buddies who you still know, Bobby and Greg and Mike and all the guys

Speaker 2 I grew up with and have stayed in touch with all these years, that was my crew. That was my family.

Speaker 2 It's interesting when I look back, all of us were from... broken homes.
All of us

Speaker 2 were working class to middle class, at least from an income perspective. But we were going to a school that had a lot of rich kids.
We had to share and improvise, right?

Speaker 2 Like, so Greg, you know, he lived on one side of town. The school where we went was a lot closer to my grandparents' apartment.
So he'd sleep at either my place or my Grammos' place

Speaker 2 most of the week.

Speaker 2 And my grandparents

Speaker 2 fed him.

Speaker 2 And, you know uh my grand was his uh mom looked after him and made sure his clothes were clean and you know his dad was working hard Greg's dad was a hardworking guy but the point is is that to some degree we built our own community you know at the core of everything you have done politically what I know about you as a person

Speaker 1 and one of the reasons why I fell in love with you is it was just my looks

Speaker 1 you're cute but you know no but one of the one of the reasons I fell in love with you is because you're guided by the principle that we are each other's brothers and sisters keepers, and that's how I was raised.

Speaker 1 You know, I mean, my values in terms of what I think my obligation, my

Speaker 1 personal obligation, Michelle Obama, is that it is not enough that I succeed on my own.

Speaker 1 I have to care about what happens to the kid in the desk next to me at school because he's just as smart, but his mom works.

Speaker 1 And my father always taught us to take in everybody's full story, not to judge people, the drunk uncle or the cousin out of work because you didn't know what happened to them, you know, that we weren't special.

Speaker 1 And as a result, you know, if something good happens to you or if you have an advantage, you don't hoard it. You share it, you reach out, you give back.

Speaker 1 And I can say that my family, my neighborhood, my notions of community growing up shaped that view and shaped the choices that I made in life as I felt your experiences shape yours.

Speaker 2 I think I figured out once I got to school that if I'm just chasing after my own success,

Speaker 2 that somehow I'm going to end up alone and unhappy. And that's why I ended up going into community organizing and the work that I was doing.

Speaker 2 Because when I thought about how did I want to spend my life, what I looked at was those civil rights workers had done and the freedom riders had done.

Speaker 2 And I thought, you know, that looks like hard work, but it never looks like lonely work.

Speaker 2 That looks like hard

Speaker 2 and risky work, but it it never looks like

Speaker 2 selfish, isolated, meaningless work.

Speaker 1 Here you are,

Speaker 1 you could have done anything because of your academic achievement, because you were the number one student at Harvard Law Review, the first black president of the Harvard Law Review, number top of your class.

Speaker 2 Yeah, see, that's why you started dating me. You thought I was going to...
I was like,

Speaker 2 I had a meal ticket.

Speaker 1 I didn't know all that.

Speaker 2 You didn't know I was going to.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I didn't know you were going to be like, what? Broke.

Speaker 1 It's like, you, you were running away from the money. And I was like, what is wrong with this Negro? Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, but, but, the, but the thing that the Harvard education gave me, that the real ticket that I punched wasn't the chance to chase as much money as I wanted.

Speaker 2 What I'd purchased was enough credentials and security that I could go do the crazy things I wanted to do in terms of working in neighborhoods, going into politics, all that, knowing that

Speaker 2 I had enough of a floor beneath me that I was going to be okay.

Speaker 1 And our paths were almost flipped because I was punching the ticket.

Speaker 2 Yeah, you were in sob driving.

Speaker 1 I was like, that was what I thought. It's like, get out of school, buy a nice car, you know?

Speaker 2 Remember the wine club. Remember that?

Speaker 1 I joined the wine club.

Speaker 2 You were a wine.

Speaker 1 And we didn't even drink wine back then.

Speaker 2 I don't know how good that wine is either.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I never opened a bottle, I just joined the wine club. It seemed like the very you know, professional thing to do.

Speaker 2 I think I teased you a little bit on that one.

Speaker 1 Oh, definitely, definitely.

Speaker 2 But, um, the sob did have uh heated seasons.

Speaker 1 Oh, you love the sob.

Speaker 2 Don't act like especially coming from that yellow car with a hole in the bottom.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I was like, no, we are not taking your car, my brother. We are taking the sob.

Speaker 1 I was still driving those thousand dollar, five hundred dollar cars, but I was punching the ticket, I was on the track, I was checking my boxes

Speaker 1 because you know, I was doing what I thought and thought I needed to do because I was a poor kid, so I didn't feel like I had the option to just go off and do other things.

Speaker 1 But I also had a limited vision of what I could be because schools don't show you the world, they just show you a bunch of careers.

Speaker 1 But I came to learn the same thing you learned: that while working on the 47th floor of that fancy law firm and making all that money, it felt lonely and it felt isolating.

Speaker 1 I, you know, I had this amazing view of the southeast side of the city from my office. I could see the lake and I could see all of the neighborhood that I had come from.

Speaker 1 And I never felt further from that neighborhood than when I was sitting in that office working on briefs and cases that had nothing to do with anything that helped a broader group of people outside of myself.

Speaker 1 And it felt lonely.

Speaker 1 And I say this to young people. Why did I leave corporate law and go into community service? The truth is it was selfish.
I was happier.

Speaker 1 When I left that firm and started working in the city and getting out into the broader community of Chicago and seeing the interconnectedness of these neighborhoods, but by being alive in the dirt and the grit of helping people,

Speaker 1 I never look back.

Speaker 2 You're exactly right. I always used to say the years I spent organizing, I got more out of it than the people I was supposedly really.

Speaker 1 We were young.

Speaker 2 We didn't because we were so young and inexperienced.

Speaker 1 We were stumbling around trying to figure out, we can fix it. It's like, no, we can't.

Speaker 2 We don't know anything. Right.

Speaker 2 So, you know, it's not like I set the world on fire, but

Speaker 2 I felt, okay, this, I feel like I've got roots here.

Speaker 2 I've got a community. I've got people whose stories I know, who know me, who

Speaker 2 connect me to a larger vision and a larger purpose. And one of the things that

Speaker 2 happened as a community organizer in Chicago is there are all these different neighborhoods. I know you felt that same way when you started doing Public Allies, right?

Speaker 2 Talk a little bit about how seeing all these different neighborhoods in Chicago and these young people

Speaker 2 gave you sort of a better sense of, oh, my community is not just the south side. My community is all these communities.

Speaker 1 When I left the firm, I went to the city and I got really interesting insight and exposure of what it's like to work in the government.

Speaker 1 But then I had an opportunity to run the Chicago office of this new nonprofit that was basically designed to help young adults 18 to 30 find careers in public service.

Speaker 1 I had to literally go into almost all 77 community areas that make up the city of Chicago and meet with the heads of alternative school programs or you know programs working with single mothers or healthcare initiatives or federally qualified health centers.

Speaker 1 I learned so much about the nonprofit world, but more importantly, I got out into this big, broad, amazing city that was Chicago.

Speaker 1 Because when you grow up in Chicago, as you know, you don't leave the neighborhood. You do not leave the neighborhood.
Some kids never had ever been from,

Speaker 1 left the west side to even go to the south side. There were kids who had never seen the lake, Lake Michigan.
There were kids who had never been downtown before. That was not an unusual thing

Speaker 1 because of racism, because of segregation, because of gangs, because of a whole host of things.

Speaker 1 so i was one of those kids i saw more of the city because i went to a magnet high school and had to had to take the bus take an hour-long bus rides or at least i knew downtown but i had never been spent much time

Speaker 1 on the north side going to pilson pilsim little village which is burdened latino community with all this culture

Speaker 1 indian american community it's like you walk down those streets it's just a whole new world and they were all alive and vibrant with good people trying to affect their neighborhoods and caring deeply about the kids.

Speaker 2 Itch Charlie.

Speaker 2 Second largest outside of Warsaw.

Speaker 2 More Polish folks in Chicago.

Speaker 1 And for the first time, I felt like a true Chicagoan.

Speaker 1 I felt the we of Chicago. Exactly.

Speaker 1 And that was by far one of the best parts of my career development was working with that nonprofit organization and meeting kids from all over the city and watching them discover each other and discover different parts of the community and start to find their power and their voice.

Speaker 2 I mean, and start to find their common stories, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 The Michelle Obama podcast continues after the break.

Speaker 2 Something changed in the late 70s, early 80s, and I am a little bit older than you, although I look so much older than you.

Speaker 1 Good one. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Points scored.

Speaker 2 But I think when we were coming up, the culture, it wasn't beaten you over the head every day with

Speaker 2 what you should have.

Speaker 2 So, I mean, you've

Speaker 2 went back to my grandparents' apartment, right? Oh, yeah. It looked like our apartment.
It wasn't any bigger than really the place you guys stayed. I didn't feel poor in that.
Exactly.

Speaker 1 We didn't feel poor either.

Speaker 1 But you go back to visit the house we grew up in. It's tiny.
You think, oh my God, we were broke.

Speaker 2 We were broke.

Speaker 1 But yeah, we talk about this a lot. It's like you just,

Speaker 1 the phrase that sticks with me for my parents is never enough. Never enough.
Because the minute

Speaker 1 you had a little bit of something, you know, you had a pint ice cream and a chocolate and you asked for strawberry, you get in trouble.

Speaker 1 It's like, how dare you not be satisfied with what you have and and then i we would feel bad because you think you're right why here i am with all this with this little bowl of ice cream and i'm asking for more you know and that was before you even finished before you even finished you haven't even finished

Speaker 1 never satisfied never satisfied and i find myself saying that to malia and sasha that's the biggest thing that gets on my nerves they know it it's like we're doing something great and you start looking over at the other

Speaker 1 side.

Speaker 1 You know, stuff doesn't make you happy.

Speaker 2 Yes, so so this is so this is where I was gonna take it.

Speaker 2 I think that culturally we become much more focused on stuff and much less focused on relationships, family, and part of being an adult,

Speaker 2 part of being a citizen, is

Speaker 2 you give something up.

Speaker 1 So instead of that, we have you can have it all. You know, that's the philosophy.

Speaker 1 You know, even when I talk to young mothers, it's how do I have it all? You know, or young families, because the motto has become not that you sacrifice, but you should be able to have it all.

Speaker 1 And how do you get it? And if you're not getting it, then something's wrong. And I always joke, it's like, that was the opposite of how we were brought up.

Speaker 1 You were never supposed to have it all, you know.

Speaker 1 In fact, if you had it all, you were being greedy

Speaker 1 because if you had it all, that meant somebody didn't have anything.

Speaker 1 But that's what we're kind of teaching young people.

Speaker 1 You should, you should, you know, have a career, you should earn a lot of money, you should be fulfilled, you should have your passion, you shouldn't have to sacrifice that much.

Speaker 1 You should have it all.

Speaker 2 You now have this sense of of kind of a cutthroat competition

Speaker 2 we're all we're all on our own that we're all on our own dog eat dog and it's dog eat dog it's not us it's us against them right um

Speaker 2 and and we are constantly nervous about where we're going to be on this pecking order on this pecking order and and and that then reflects itself in our politics, right? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Because at a certain point, you know, I am going to start

Speaker 2 thinking about politics in terms of how do I protect me?

Speaker 2 Not how do I look after us.

Speaker 2 Look, the good news is that I think everybody's feeling

Speaker 2 this uncertainty, this anxiety, this sense that what we've been doing isn't working the way it should. And now I think you have this big contest of

Speaker 2 competing ideas.

Speaker 2 On one side is

Speaker 2 those who argue that the problem is just them.

Speaker 2 And so there's nothing wrong with chasing after as much money as you can get and not investing in public goods.

Speaker 1 Because when the problem is them, you don't really have to change.

Speaker 2 You don't have to change. All you have to do is to stop them from taking your stuff.

Speaker 2 And that is one route that I think our society and our politics could take. And then there's another story that says, you know what?

Speaker 2 Let's go ahead and re-embrace those values that made everybody better off. back in the 50s and 60s and 70s, except this time, let's do it in in a way that genuinely includes everybody.

Speaker 2 To me, that's the better story. If you go back

Speaker 2 to that basic insight and just widen it,

Speaker 2 take the blinders of racism and sexism and homophobia and all those things off and say,

Speaker 2 there's really,

Speaker 2 our tribe is everybody. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And how beautiful and

Speaker 1 safe and stabilizing it feels when we all have each other to lean on that we're that we don't have to hold this big gigantic thing

Speaker 1 by ourselves

Speaker 2 when everybody was looking out for everybody

Speaker 2 then

Speaker 2 The whole was greater than the sum of its parts, right? Everybody gets a little bit more.

Speaker 2 Kids have more role models, even if their family's not doing as well.

Speaker 2 Because there are people with some clout in these neighborhoods.

Speaker 1 Everybody benefits from their own.

Speaker 2 Everybody benefits from their ability to advocate, to make sure that resources are coming in.

Speaker 2 That whole process of

Speaker 2 lifting all boats

Speaker 2 comes about because this network of relationships in a community.

Speaker 2 And the good news is that when you look at all these young people who've been out there protesting in the wake of the George Floyd murder, that's their instinct.

Speaker 2 It's not uniform, and it could still go both ways in this country.

Speaker 2 Just like it's teetering one way or the other in countries all around the world.

Speaker 2 This is not unique to the United States. It's just we've got our own version of it.

Speaker 2 How do we live together in a world that is shrinking and we are no longer just living in our individual neighborhoods it's it's if they remember you were talking about chicago yeah well now everybody is on top of each other

Speaker 2 and you can't just feel secure in your own neighborhood either you're going to war with the other neighborhoods or you start seeing that the people in the other neighborhoods are just like you and not as scary.

Speaker 2 And so let's see how we can put this whole thing together. I think that's how young people are,

Speaker 2 that's their instinct.

Speaker 1 The The only thing that worries me, and I agree in terms of the hope that I feel when I look at young people, just how they were raised, the values, their exposure, the questions that they have, the change in the economy that's forcing them to ask a certain set of questions, that gives me hope.

Speaker 1 But the thing that I worry is that I hear, I think, too many young people who question whether voting, whether politics is worth it.

Speaker 2 Well, partly because they have

Speaker 2 been told, the message is sent every day,

Speaker 2 that

Speaker 2 government doesn't work.

Speaker 2 They take for granted all the things that

Speaker 2 a working government has done in the past. And in some ways, we're still living on the investment.
that was made by that greatest generation.

Speaker 1 I always joke that, you know, and I said this about,

Speaker 1 you know, one of the challenges of being president is like you don't have a marketing budget you know there's really no structure to market government right

Speaker 1 the average young person knows far more about the cereal they're eating and the car they're driving than they do about what government actually does for them because they don't have marketing budget there isn't a jingle you know the only time they know about what government's doing is when it doesn't work right so we're getting a good lesson in that right now exactly if people are paying attention and they understand what's missing.

Speaker 1 Right. Not having

Speaker 1 a public health system that takes care of people whether you're working or not,

Speaker 1 that takes care of you whether you have pre-existing conditions or not.

Speaker 1 Unemployment,

Speaker 1 Social Security,

Speaker 1 all of the things that sort of keep people going when the chosen path doesn't work.

Speaker 2 And I think you are absolutely right that the danger for this generation is that they become too deeply cynical in government, not understanding that all government is, is us collectively making decisions together.

Speaker 1 That community we talked about.

Speaker 2 That community that we talked about.

Speaker 1 Well, and we've talked about this. This is how we raised this generation.

Speaker 2 We gave lip servers to it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, well, we didn't complete the

Speaker 1 we didn't complete the cycle of the message, right?

Speaker 1 You know, I think more people in our generation raised our kids to be more open-minded and to be more thoughtful and considerate. We had the words for it, right?

Speaker 1 You know, when it comes to fathers raising their girls,

Speaker 1 I do think that the average father today does believe that their girl can be anything she wants to be. And they're delivering those messages around the dinner table.

Speaker 1 And, you know, there's a different way of parenting.

Speaker 1 but what we didn't do we delivered the messages at the dinner table but we didn't take them to the boardroom we didn't change our workplaces we didn't change things outside we didn't institutionalize we didn't institutionalize the values that we've been teaching this generation of kids so now they're growing up They're leaving the dinner table and they're going out into the world and going, the world doesn't look like what I was taught back at home.

Speaker 1 You know, and this isn't right.

Speaker 2 Young people are idealistic as they've ever been. I think more idealistic now than they were when I was growing up.

Speaker 2 The difference, though, is that that idealism, they feel as if they can channel it outside of governmental structures and outside of

Speaker 2 politics. The problem is...

Speaker 2 Again, we're getting a pretty good lesson in this right now. There's some things we just can't do by ourselves or even groups of us can't do by ourselves.

Speaker 2 As a general proposition, we can't build infrastructure by ourselves. We can't deal with a pandemic by ourselves.

Speaker 1 We can't effectively educate the public by ourselves through individual schools, through, you know,

Speaker 2 they're just certain things that you have to do collectively because they're too big. They're too expensive.
At the end of the day, I think that people are going to be.

Speaker 1 You think they're going to do the the right thing?

Speaker 2 I think folks are going to do the right thing. You think they're going to vote? You know, you know me.
I mean, I'm just.

Speaker 1 You are the eternal optimist.

Speaker 2 I'm the

Speaker 1 SUE. Yes, we can, man.

Speaker 2 Yes, we can, man.

Speaker 2 I am the audacity of hope, man. Yeah, yeah.
You know?

Speaker 1 What's the alternative?

Speaker 2 That's the thing.

Speaker 1 And that's as cynical as I can be

Speaker 1 in the end.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 1 We don't have an alternative.

Speaker 2 I think where we disagree is usually you just think things have to get super, super bad before folks figure stuff out.

Speaker 1 Well, I hope we can.

Speaker 2 And I'm always thinking, you know what? Maybe we can learn a little bit.

Speaker 1 Before we crash into the sun,

Speaker 1 we're getting close. Will Robinson pull out.
And it's like, nah, it's not hot enough.

Speaker 2 Will Robinson. See, now that's that's a reference that

Speaker 2 anybody under 50 will not constant space. That's a

Speaker 2 good recognized.

Speaker 1 But I tend to agree. When in doubt, rely on hope.
Because, well, as you pointed out, as a former president who reads and knows history, let's just take a moment to pause and think about that.

Speaker 1 But as that person, you understand the arc. of progress.

Speaker 1 We are moving toward more inclusivity, more openness, more weeness.

Speaker 1 It's not an easy trajectory.

Speaker 2 It's in fits and starts.

Speaker 1 It is bumpy and it is uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 And that's how change happens. It's not just one continuous arc.
It's up and down. It's cyclical.

Speaker 1 One of the things that I want to encourage as we come to a close,

Speaker 1 because I know you're a busy man

Speaker 1 but I want to first of all thank you for

Speaker 2 what like you had a choice right exactly what are you talking about come on

Speaker 1 but it but it's been fun to share some of the conversations that we have around the dinner table yes sometimes our dinners get a little heavy

Speaker 1 part of what I hope that listeners will take away is from this conversation is not that we have the answers, but

Speaker 1 these kind of conversations need to happen around our dinner tables and in our smaller communities for us to just sort of understand and to appreciate the importance that community plays on who we are and that we can't do this stuff and we're not supposed to do this stuff.

Speaker 1 We weren't built to do this thing called life in a vacuum.

Speaker 1 It is much more hopeful. It is much more gratifying, much more effective to live this life as a we.
And I think as young people listen to this, as they are starting to shape their past,

Speaker 1 I would really strongly encourage them to think about building lives that are selfless, not

Speaker 1 just because it's the right thing to do, but it truly is the better way to live.

Speaker 2 It's more fun.

Speaker 1 It's more fun.

Speaker 2 It's more fun and

Speaker 2 it comes back.

Speaker 2 And look, I know that this podcast

Speaker 2 is focused on a bunch of different kinds of relationships that we all rely on.

Speaker 2 And maybe one thing everybody can take away from this podcast relative to the other shows and other guests you're going to have on is just that you can't isolate the healthy friendships, marriages, parenting that goes on from

Speaker 2 the communities that they're in. So all these relationships

Speaker 2 are valuable by themselves, but they thrive,

Speaker 2 they prosper

Speaker 2 when the whole society is reinforcing these relationships.

Speaker 2 When you and I think about what's the inheritance we'd like to leave Malia and Sasha, more than anything, what it would be is that they're living in a country that respects everybody and looks after everybody,

Speaker 2 celebrates and sees everybody.

Speaker 2 Because we know that if we're not around,

Speaker 2 but those girls are in a society like that, they'll be fine. Yeah, right?

Speaker 1 That's absolutely right. Okay, I couldn't have said it better myself.
Well,

Speaker 2 you could. Thanks for having me.
Appreciate you.

Speaker 1 More conversations to come.

Speaker 2 I'm so looking forward to all the other podcasts and wisdom that will be doled out.

Speaker 2 Love you.

Speaker 1 Love you.

Speaker 1 Well, I would like to thank my wonderful husband, Barack, for joining me today on this inaugural episode of the Michelle Obama podcast.

Speaker 1 Now, I know that a lot of you have been having similar conversations with the people you love, trying to figure out just how you feel with all these changes happening.

Speaker 1 But asking yourselves, what is it you want to actually

Speaker 1 do about it?

Speaker 1 How you answer those questions is unique to you, to your experiences, your communities, but the important thing is that you do, in fact, answer those questions, that you go through the process of reflecting and reaching out to close friends and families to talk through what you're feeling and what you're hoping for.

Speaker 1 Because once you do those things, you do that work, I think you'll have a better sense of your community, of your country, and yourselves more importantly.

Speaker 1 And if enough of us can do that,

Speaker 1 if enough of us can empathize with one another going through that process, then over time,

Speaker 1 and it will take a long time, we can come up with some solutions, perhaps create the change we're all hoping for.

Speaker 1 So I know a lot of you are hurting out there right now. A lot of you are confused and that's okay.

Speaker 1 But as I've seen, as Barack has seen, we can take that anger, that disappointment, and turn it into something useful, perhaps even something hopeful.

Speaker 1 But we've just got to keep having those conversations because once we start the conversation, there is no telling where it will go.

Speaker 1 So thanks everybody for listening and I will talk to you again soon.

Speaker 4 This season on the Michelle Obama podcast.

Speaker 1 Oh, my sister has a show and I'm on it. My brother is here with me on my show.
You got to watch Soul Training.

Speaker 1 I grew up in Minnesota where we didn't have Soul Training.

Speaker 2 You all didn't have Soul Training. No Soul Training.
No, what did we do on weekends?

Speaker 1 Just hot flashes. I remember having one on Marine One.
I'm dressed. I need to get out, walk into an event.

Speaker 5 For me, it's not only having the people around me that are going to be like, oh, you're doing good. You're amazing.

Speaker 1 They'll be like, nah, girl, that was shady. Like, you were wrong for that.
You know, if we looked at marriage as a real team, then you want your teammate to be a winner.

Speaker 2 You want LeBron.

Speaker 1 You know,

Speaker 1 you know, college was the next natural step. But that moment when she left the restaurant and we got in our car to go to the airport, and then I heard Barack over in the side just,

Speaker 1 you know, that sort of,

Speaker 1 and Alan, his agent, passed a handkerchief back to him. He's like, thanks, man.

Speaker 1 And I remember walking by the meeting and hearing your voice outside, and you were saying to all the city agencies that were around that table, we are not going to leave this meeting until we figure this out.

Speaker 1 And I remember I turned around, I was like, she doesn't even be that beat.

Speaker 6 What a child does, it's a giant claw that comes down and it picks up your marriage and it shakes shakes it really hard.

Speaker 1 You give us another bottle of that tequila and we can really go.

Speaker 4 The Michelle Obama podcast is a Spotify original presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions.

Speaker 4 From Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fearman, Anna Holmes, and Mook DeMohan are executive producers. Janae Maribel is our editorial assistant.
Adam Sachs is our consulting producer.

Speaker 4 From Dustlight Productions, Misha Youssef is the executive producer. Arwen Nix and Jonathan Schifflett are the producers.
Additional production support from Mary Knopf.

Speaker 4 Jonathan Schifflett is also our engineer. Manika Wilhelm is the archival producer and transcriber.
Rachel Garcia is the Dustlight editorial assistant. Additional transcription help from Tamika Adams.

Speaker 4 Daniel Eck, Don Ostroff, and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify.

Speaker 4 Special thanks to Mackenzie Smith, Joe Paulson, Christina Schockey, Melissa Winter, Chyna Clayton, Alex May, Caroline Adler-Morales, and Maron Halimascal.

Speaker 4 And thanks to Clean Cut Studio, Search Party Music, Tyler Lectenberg, Dylan Rupert, Carolyn Lipke, Young Creative Agency, and Diara Nazarian. This episode was recorded by John Forte.

Speaker 4 Our theme music is by Stevie Wonder. Original music by Andy Clausen and Telly Fresco.
The song you heard at the beginning of the show is Black Truck by Mariba.

Speaker 4 Thanks for listening to the Michelle Obama podcast.