The Politics of Kindness with Abby Phillip

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If you want to support your cellular energy and how you age, go to timeline.com/midlife and save up to 39% off your mitochondria gummies. That's timeline.com/midlife. Hey there, it's Julia Louis-Dryfus. I'm back with a new season of Wiser than Me, the show where I sit down with remarkable older women and soak up their stories, their humor, and their hard-earned wisdom. Every conversation leaves me a little smarter and definitely more inspired. And yes, I'm still calling my 91-year-old mom Judy to get her take on it all. Wiser than Me from Lemonade of Media is out now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hey Midlifeers, just a quick message before we get started. You can now listen to every episode of My Soulcog Midlife Add Free with Lemonade of Premium on Apple Podcasts. You'll also get Add Free Access to an exclusive bonus content from shows like Wiser than Me with Julia Louis-Dryfus, failed better with David to Coveney, and so many more. It's just $5.99 a month and a great way to support the work we do. Go Add Free and get bonus content when you hit subscribe on this show and Apple Podcasts. Make life suck less with fewer ads with Lemonade of Premium. My guess this week is someone who's become one of the most trusted and just unflappable voices in the news today. Abby Philip is the anchor of CNN's News Night, and she has a thing or two to share with us about how to stay grounded when the entire nation is watching you and scrutinizing your every word. We get into the myth of overnight success, the freedom she found and not caring what other people think of her, and why kindness is the best rule for surviving institutions and people who just don't want to see you succeed. Abby also tells us about her incredible new book, A Dream Deferred, and what it can teach us about the future of American democracy. I love to this conversation and I can't wait for you to listen. Let's get into it. All right, Abby, I've been looking forward to chatting with you. Spent my Thanksgiving break reading your incredible books. I'm so excited that we're here. So you have technically just entered midlife. Welcome to the club. Thank you. Thank you. So we start with the same question, which is like, what is your midlife mindset? Are you in like, this is my power, like, everything's being unleashed here. I saw like an Instagram post of like a bunch of women calling themselves Queenagers, like Queen teenagers, or are you like holding it together and chasing your youth or being the nostalgic about it? How do you feel? Oh my God. I'm definitely not chasing my youth. Let me just make that perfectly clear. I actually think this is the best time of my life. And I don't think it has even been dispute. I think in actuality, midlife should be, and hopefully for most people will be the best time because you're not kind of in your 20s trying to figure yourself out. I only do things I want to do now in this moment of my life. And that feels so great. You know, the nightswits are not so great. Yes. Mother not. No, they are not. But other than that, I mean, it's good. And I think every year past 30 has been better and better and better. And I know that that's not everybody's experience, but it's been mine. And I think I would hope that what people experience as they get older is that life starts to fall into place and things start to make sense. And also your values start to shift where you really understand yourself and you understand what matters to you. And that becomes the thing rather than all the external forms of validation. So that's where I'm at. Why do you think you're in that camp? Because not everybody is. I'm thinking about this. What separates us? Was your mother like that? Were the women in your life like that? Or were you like, I remember I was interviewing someone. Maybe it was a lot of glacer. And she was like, I just, from the time I was five, I just couldn't wait to get older. Yeah. And you just why is that? I see that. I'm a little bit like that. I've always been the like, precocious child. When I was five, I was acting like I was 15 probably. So that's probably the case if I'm being honest and truthful. I never really liked my 20s. I didn't like my 10 years. I didn't like my 20s. I did not like not having control over my own life. That's one of the things that made teenage, you know, my teenage period so tough was just feeling that I was sort of at the mercy of everybody else around me. And then even in my 20s, you know, when you're in your 20s and you're working and you're doing all these different things. You're just kind of always the young person. You're always the person who has to report to somebody else. And I did not like any of that. I didn't like dating before I met my husband. I did. Right. I'm sorry, but all of that stuff, the running around sex in the city, whatever it is. You are not into any of that. You're like, no, thank you. Not me. No, thank you. I just have always wanted to be settled. I wanted to feel settled and be settled in all the different ways, whether that is in my work life or in my family life and also be able to make decisions for myself. But I think some of that comes from the fact that I'm also a pretty introverted person. I'm a kind of homebody. I like to be in my house. I like to build a life for myself. I don't get a lot of external validation from other people. I'm just never been that person. She's crazy because you are a journalist on national TV. But it helps. Rashma, I think it really helps. It helps me do my job that I don't care what other people think of me. That doesn't influence my self-esteem, especially not at this stage in my life. And I'm not trying to be BFFs with all of my sources and my, you know, I didn't want my social group to be my work life. I never wanted that. And so I think that has actually really helped me to navigate this world, this industry that I'm in, where in fact, I think having a little bit of that distance does help having the ability to have self-validation outside of other people, that helps a lot. It's so interesting and powerful that you say that because I'm going to tell you something. And I feel, because I do feel like we're living in a moment where there's like a bravery deficit. And sometimes I search for courageous moments and courageous people. And I tell you, I go to your Instagram and I see you talking to somebody and somebody says something crazy. And I see that look in your eye. And it's interesting because I feel when I'm watching them, and be honest, I don't think you're doing it for likes. Or to try to get attention, you're actually responding with your heart and how you're actually feeling in that moment genuinely as a human. And so like for me, it's like, oh, like Abby's being brave. And it's such like a guiding light for me. It has been, right? And I think such a role model in terms of how we need to show up in this moment because it's not performative. It's human. Yeah. Yeah. I thank you for that because I think that's what I'm aiming for is a bit of humanity. And that can sometimes be a little bit more emotive than you're used to from the news. But I think it is because it ought to be channeling something real. That if somebody says something crazy and you're like, huh? You're kind of like, what? What are you even talking about? Probably at home is saying the same thing. Yep. And they just happen to not be at the table. And so I try to both respond authentically, meaning I am listening to people. I really want to hear what they're saying. I want to hear where they're going with the argument. And sometimes there are times when I know where they're going. I might jump in and say, hold on, before you even do that thing, I'm going to just set the table and in terms of facts. But sometimes I let them go. I let them unspoole a little bit. So I can really listen and hear what people have to say. And then have some kind of reaction, whether it is to ask them. follow up question or to be a little bit incredulous, I don't know that if it's if it is, in fact, bravery. But I will say this that it is really hard today for people to be honest on television. Because everybody feels so beholden to their groups, to the people that matter to them, whose opinions of them matter. So when people come to the table, this taking me out of it, when people come to my table on newsdive, and they say something that goes against their group, that to me is a form of bravery. And I try to recognize that and acknowledge it when it happens, because it is too rare. And regardless of your point of view politically, you ought to be able to do that from time to time, and to be able to say that like, I know my friends might not like that I say this, but I actually think it's true. That is a form of bravery that is missing so much in our politics today on both sides of the aisle. I put that in scare quotes because there are just two sides. There's people are all the way everywhere. It's missing from everybody. But it's missing from everybody. It's missing from everywhere. Because we are literally ponds of the algorithm. So you know, right? Like if I say this, I'm going to get punished in the social media spear, right? And in the algorithm, right? And somebody else's group chat, they're going to be taking the clip and they're going to put in a group and they're going to be talking about me. People are afraid of that. Yep. They are. And their actions are guided by that. Or I'm going to do something like outrageous, just because I think that the algorithm is going to reward that. And it's like, you know, people always say, oh, we're so divided. I'm like, we're not divided. We are being divided. Like, there's a difference between how we actually feel. But, you know, your career has literally unfolded like at warped speed in front of like the entire country to be a rocket ship. It's hard. It's hard for, especially because I feel like you're enormously humble and like have a relationship with your own ego. I can get that sense. Right? I like that. I like that phraseology. So it's hard, right? When you're just so like when you look back at your path, political, western post debate stage, inquiry, prime time, like what's the moment where you're like, okay, this isn't a job anymore. This is a calling because I'm a big believer in God. Like God had a plan for you, right? And you kind of had to let it just unfold. God definitely had a plan for me. That is for sure. The one thing I will say though is that and I think you might understand what I'm saying here, but I do not think my career has unfolded like a rocket ship. Yeah. I think that sometimes that's that is part of the problem is that we look at people's careers and they're like, where did she come from? Yeah, she just showed up here. And you're like, I've been the engine that could for a long time. Yeah. And the truth is we we're chugging along and we're going and we're going and we're going and then suddenly all the work that you put in starts to matter and starts to make sense. But nobody is like a rocket ship really when you really think about it. We are all building on our experiences and on our work and on our just the grind of it all. And to me, it is very important to convey that because I do think that there is a misconception that I just blinked and my career was this. And that's not the case at all. I've been covering politics at the national level since I was 21 years old. I'm 37 now. And so that's not a blink of an eye. I don't feel 37. I really don't. But it is not a blink of an eye not really because there are a lot of 21 year olds who are like, if I'm not the Forbes 30 under 30 list, then nothing's going to happen in my career. And I'm like, you have no idea. Before you're 30, it is just not even the beginning really. Right. And we're so obsessed with youth and we're so obsessed with doing things at a young age that we craft the wrong narrative about truly impactful careers, which do not happen overnight. Look at them. Like really all of them. They have arcs. They have they are journeys in my 20s. I was really chugging along just job after job after job. And not really even knowing what it was all going to add up to not even really knowing what I was particularly good at. Did you know what you wanted to do? Were you like, my goal is a show on CNN? No, no, not at all. And in fact, what I thought was my goal for myself turned out to not actually be the thing. When I went from ABC News, which was my second job, my second, the place that I worked to, the Washington Post. And I landed at the Washington Post. And I remember walking through the doors of the old classic Washington Post office of Watergate. And I was like, oh my god, I am walking through the doors of the Washington Post. This is where Woodward and Birdstein work. They were upstairs. And I'm walking down the hall. There's like, this is it. Like this is it. And when I was there, I was happy. I thought I was going to, you know, I thought I was going to do all kinds of things I wanted to try to finagle my way into a foreign correspondent job. I wanted to work in Europe or in Africa or somewhere. And I thought that was, I was just going to be a print reporter and I was going to be doing things there. And so this part of life has been completely unexpected in many ways. And it's partly because I didn't know at the time. I didn't know what I was good at at that time. And I was good at it at that time. I just didn't know it. My skill is an analytical skill. What I am good at is helping people synthesize and understand. It's helping to put into words what people need to know and what they what they are thinking and what they need to convey. And I think that that skill is not always rewarded in the sort of Scooby World of Journalism that I was in for most of my career. But it happens to have been the thing that helped differentiate me in my work, both when I was at the Washington Post and also when I went to CNS. So that's when things changed. As we get older, our cellular energy naturally declines and that impacts how we feel day to day. That's why I started taking myda pure gummies from timeline. They're powered by myda pure the only clinically proven form of Euro life in a shown in human studies to help renew cellular function. 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I'm Shan, an ASEC certified sex educator with a master's in psych. and on my podcast, "Lovers by Shan," we make learning about love as mind-blowing as making it. Celebrities and fascinating people share an intimate story then we uncover the lesson for all of us. Watch "Lovers by Shan" from Lemonade Media on YouTube or listen wherever you like your podcast. - So there's someone saying you Abby, like this is your skill, you gotta go to this on. So who was that, how did that happen? - So sometimes you don't know your own strengths and sometimes other people can see you way more clearly than you see yourself. And that's what happened to me. It actually, I think when it really happened was around 2020 when I was, it was drink COVID. And I had been asked to do CNN's convention coverage. I didn't know why they asked me to do that, to be honest, because I was, I was a correspondent, I wasn't an anchor at the time, I was just a correspondent, right? And I was kinda like, okay, whatever, I'll do it. And after the first night, I was like, oh my God, I don't know if that was any good. And I walked out of the building, I happened to walk out of the building with Rebecca Cutler, who was then the head of talent. And she was like, that was great. Whatever you did today, just keep doing that. She was like, you're really good at capturing the moment and always saying something that no one else is gonna say. And I was like, okay. And I just, I didn't exactly what she said to do. And I just did that. I did it for the three nights or the four nights of the RNC convention and then the following week or whatever. But when she said that to me, then I was like, you know what, she's right. That this is what makes me different from other people. And this is my strength. That's, I think, the moment when I really heard that feedback and I started to see myself differently. I stopped seeing that as just a thing that was like a, by the way, part of what I did. And it's actually something that was at the heart of what I did that made me different from everyone else. And that built and that built and built. And then on election night, when or that election week, when everybody was sort of watching, that's one of the things that I think came out of that experience was that people were like, she's really saying things that I'm not hearing from other people. And I think that is what frankly changed the trajectory of my career from then on. Yeah. It sounds like a simple thing to do. But like, again, I think going back to our previous conversation, a hard skill because you don't give a fuck what people think. So you're able to actually do it in a way that then helps you kind of resonate with people, right? Yeah. I mean, I think that, look, my barometer is not really what other people think. I am my own harshest critic. We all are in some ways, but I am for sure. I am so-- I'm my harshest critic too. I'm always editing. I'm always like, was that right? I could have done that better. I'm critical of myself in many ways. And so I hold myself to a very high standard. I tend to think that other people, when they give you feedback, they're trying to be nice. And a lot of times they're not really being honest. And so I don't really take people's feedback. This is a character flaw, by the way. It's not actually a good thing. I don't take other people's feedback that seriously, because sometimes I think that they're underplaying things. So yeah, when my drive to get better and self-correct and do all of that stuff, that comes from me predominantly. But sometimes other people can play a super pivotal role by saying to you, here's a thing about you that you're not noticing that is good, that you need to harness, that you need to develop, that you need to cultivate. And when you are your own harshest critic, sometimes it's actually really hard to see that thing. Because you're so busy correcting yourself, that you're not noticing your special sauce. And I acknowledge that I didn't see that in myself until somewhat recently, but hey, in my 30s, and I think that for many people, for many, many people, it is around that time that you will start to lock in to your purpose, your special skill, your thing that is the differentiator for you. It is right around that time that you really start to see what gives you the edge over other people, because that's when, that to me, that feels like, and maybe for some people it's earlier, but in so-called midlife, so-called midlife. In midlife, that is when your experiences and the passage of time and your failures and your successes start to gel into something that means something to you. - That's right. It's funny you say that, 'cause I feel like I discovered that also my late 30s of like, oh, I'm really good communicator. I can give a good speech, I can give a good talk, I can take an audience through like an emotional experience by telling a story, and I really said, I wanna become great at this. You know, I wanna become great, and I started really working on it, like, as a skill set. Like, I used to, I hated watching myself on TV, right? And I would just never watch myself. And I was like, but wait, if this is the skill that I'm gonna get excellent at, I have to watch myself 20 times, right? And like, notice how I said things or figure out how I could say something differently or like, how am I connected? Am I playing with my hair? Am I doing a weird thing with my smile? Like, but I think you're right, it is really thinking, you know, what's your God given talent? What's the thing that you are really good at? And what's the thing that you love? Because I feel the most at home when I'm on stage. I am the most present, I am the most. You know what I mean there when I'm, that's my happy place. - Yeah, yeah. And I think that it is okay to not know that for a while. I used to hate people would always ask me, where do you wanna be in 10 years? Where do you wanna be in five years? Or what's your dream job? I would always be like, I have no idea. - I have no idea. - I couldn't get myself there. And in my 20s, I thought that was a major character flaw of mine, of failure to imagine, a failure to plan. And maybe it was. But I also think that it is part of actually what has helped my career be so unique, which is that I have not been wedded to any particular path. To getting someplace. And there's an open-mindedness that I have approached my career and my life with that I think has been very important. You have to be open-minded enough to allow, if you believe in God as I do, to allow God to show you what He has planned for you. If you are so busy telling God, telling the universe, whatever, this is what I want. And if I don't get this, I'm not gonna be successful. And you're gonna completely miss the thing. - It's such an important thing what you just said. And I think such a thing that we all miss, right? Because I think we're spending so much time, I think especially as a woman of color, 'cause there's so few of us doing the things that we're doing, you think you gotta follow the playbook. Kinda when I hear you talk, Abby, I'm like, that sounds like the privileged white men in my life and how they talk, that they can actually have, right? This like, openness to guide their own path. And I'm like, oh, we don't need to do that. We have to do it this way. - Yeah, yeah, that's interesting. I had not really thought about it that way. Because for me, it comes from a bit of a different place. I think it comes from more of a place of whatever is possible for me, I want that. And I don't know what is possible. I don't know where the limits are, if there are any limits, but whatever is possible, I want that. And I had to have that approach because I didn't come from a lot. So by the time I was sort of out on my own in college and I was already doing a thing that was beyond my expectations and beyond sort of the dreams of even my own family when I went to Harvard for undergrad, everything after that? - Just bonus. - Yeah, just bonus. Just whatever you put in front of me, God, I will do. I didn't know that that was the mindset of man or right man or whoever, but if it is, then that was really just my chance that I felt like I had to be that way because there, I didn't have any expectations for my career and my life that I must do this or else. The only thing I knew I must do is have a job. (laughing) I'm provide for myself, but other than that, I think I was very open and that, I think that openness has been both liberating and also challenging because there are definitely some times when you're like, I feel rudderless, I don't know where things are headed. And in those moments, then you have to start looking for guidance. Then you have to start reaching out, you have to start, you have to start cultivating your think tank of people who are helping you figure out what is possible in the world. - And I'm sure people ask you, Abby, what's next? What are you doing? Like, I also think it's the people around you that make you, I know for me, they make me feel like, what I'm doing, I should be doing something else because this is not the thing, 'cause I have a, 'cause I think what you're talking about to me is being guided by spirituality, recognizing that you're put on the serve to do a certain thing and it will come. You know what I mean? But it is a different way for anybody on how they guide their life. And I think people who do great things are guided in that way, but the people around you don't understand, right? Because we are taught to be gunning for the next thing and gunning for the next thing. Part of what I wanted to ask you is like again, like your careers unfolded in institutions that don't have a lot of people that have your story, your background, right? So what's a rule that you've learned to kind of survive into crush it? The first rule I think is kindness. This just happens to be my default setting but it's also, there have been times in my career where I've asked myself, am I holding myself back because I'm too nice? Like, is this, am I really cut out for this? If I'm not cutthroat and you know, nifing people in the back and infused with this person and that person and there have been many times I've had to ask myself that, like, is this working for you? Is this going to work for you? But it's been a really important part of the development of my career is just, I don't have beef with anybody, okay? That's my philosophy. I have no beef with really anyone at all. I try to maintain relationships, everyone I encounter, everyone I work with, we don't have to be best friends but we are going to have a cordial relationship. I'm going to understand. What if they try to torpedo you? It happens every day. And guess what? I know that they're trying to torpedo me but it doesn't change how I interact with them. Okay. And I'm just telling you from experience, I've dealt with this many times. Plenty of people have tried to torpedo me in my career. You will never find somebody saying, "Oh, she was so nasty to me." Because I don't believe that that is strategic. I don't believe it is strategic to have that kind of dynamic between you and other people. They can waste their energy hating me all they want but I'm not going to waste my energy doing that. There are people who I know, not on team Abby. That's okay. I still need to understand what they need for me and how I can help them help me. I've always intended to be kind and to be helpful and to be a positive force in the places that I work. And then secondly, even when there are people around me, whether they're bosses or colleagues or whoever, who don't have my best interests in mind, that's okay. I don't ever approach them as if he hates me. I can't talk to him. Because sometimes you still have to walk into their office and ask for something or get them to help you in some way. Somehow, somehow, I've had the discernment to be able to say, "Okay, in every single one of these relationships, if this person has an impact on my life, how do I figure out how to communicate with them, how do I figure out what they need, how can I give them a permission structure to get me what I need?" And approaching every single relationship that way has been super important, 90% of the time in my career, I have not worked for or with people who look like me. So this is not contingent on me having somebody who is an ally because they are another black woman or whatever. Because that almost never happens. It has so rarely happened in my career, I can literally, it's like once, maybe twice. And so to me, it's really important to to figure it out, to figure out how do you connect, how do you maintain generally positive relationships with people, how do you understand what they need, because what people need more than anything else is a win. How do you help them deliver a win for themselves, that's also a win for you? And that, I think, has been a guiding principle in all the different places, corporate places that I've worked where nobody looks like me, none of my bosses look like me, they don't understand me, they don't identify with me, all of that. Still the same formula for breaking through that. And how is that like helps you with your journalism, right? Because right now you are like probably witnessing the best in the worst of people every single day. And like, you know, we're an era of like an enormous amount of national division. And so how has that helped you when you're delivering the news and doing your job? Yeah, I mean, look journalism is about people, it's about understanding them, it's about listening to them, it's about the debate of ideas, that's what politics is all about. And so from the very beginning of my career, when I was first covering politics and I was young and all of that, it was so incredibly rare that I would interact with somebody who I had anything in common with. It just was, it was just really rare. So from the get go, you have to figure out, how do you connect with somebody? What is that conversation sound like? How do you figure out where they from? Do they have kids? Do they, how do you connect? Even when somebody has nothing in common with you. And then when you're talking to somebody who you think is hostile to you, which is also something that happens in a journalistic career that happens all the time, I'm going to be frank, I would call Republicans and they would know, sometimes they would know who I am, and they'd be like, I can hear it in their minds. Oh, she's a black Democrat. She's biased against me. And then you would have to figure out how do you still have a relationship with that person such that they trust you enough to tell you things. So that's a basic journalistic principle. And you don't have to be best friends with them, but you have to approach them with honesty and say, here's why I'm going to be fair to you. First of all, I'm going to listen to you. Second of all, I'm going to be transparent about what I'm doing with the information that you're giving to me. And thirdly, we're both humans when I had a child. Actually, that also tremendously helps because you can really relate to most people on that basis. And so you find the little things to connect on a human level and that helps you even when you don't have anything in common, even when people you disagree with people, even when they think that you are hostile to them, it kind of breaks that down. Do you have a go-to connection question or a go-to hostile thing that you basically say? I don't know for me, my go-to connection is to talk about kids. How many children do you have? It's just immediately when you parent to parent, it just creates a relationship. But do you have something that works if you're in that situation? I think that's one of my go-to's these days, just in the life stage that I am. And this is, by the way, a practice thing because I'm not a natural small talker. I'm not big on that. But asking people just for starters, where are they from is just an easy way to get a lot out of people. They'll tell you, well, I grew up in Florida, but my dad was in the Air Force and they were traveling around. And then suddenly they're telling you all about their lives. And then you can figure out things within that. One of the things that I found net rarely worked for me, this was actually, this is a sort of fail. This is what didn't work for me when I was young. When I was younger, a lot of my peers would connect over where they went to college. And everybody went to University of Missouri or they went to like some state school or maybe they were fans of the football team or whatever. I'm not into sports and I didn't go to a state school. I went to an Ivy League school. All of these things counted against me. So I had to figure out another touch point with people that did not involve anything about college. It didn't involve anything about sports. And it took some time. It took time and it's different for different things. And then sometimes it's also like figuring out if you have mutual people in common, you know, friends or connections. So there are a lot of different ways to do it. And look, if you went to a state school and that's your point of connection, that's a great thing. Or whatever it is, you went to a large university where there are a lot of people. That's great. But that did not work for me. And I had to figure out a way around that. You mentioned your daughter Naomi for a second. I saw that little smile that we all have when we or kids come up. I mean, you're kind of, you know, obviously, you know, someone to the work I do is like in the middle of this conversation about like, do we live in a world that allows us to both kind of mother and liver professional dreams? Like, what are your thoughts on that? I have so many thoughts. Tell me all your thoughts on that. I mean, I personally think that we are in a new and really important moment for this era of feminism. And I think that this era of feminism that I'm a millennial, that my generation is in the midst of is one in which we not just reclaim our femininity and our power at the same time, but we also demand the ability to be all of those things. And that is how I feel personally where I'm like working a legit job, you know, doing the whole thing. We're getting, you know, getting on airplanes every day, traveling, doing the whole thing. I have a daughter, but I also make sourdough on the weekends. And I am very involved in my child's life. I cook as often as I possibly can for my family, not because I have a husband telling me, if you know, I've dinner on the table, but because I want to, because that is the, That's the home that I want to create for myself and for my life. And I think that. the reason that you're seeing all of these women, the tradwives and such, is because we're there. We're like, actually, if we want to make butter from scratch, we will. And I do. And actually, if we want to have a garden in our backyard and cultivate our own produce, we will. And we will do that. And we will have the career. And maybe we will make that the career. And I think that that is a new and important era in the development of feminism. And I, but the missing piece, I know that you can relate to this, is the way in which I think now women are developing enough power to start to demand that the systems around these things change. This is the part that is still in progress. I think as millennials and younger generations, I think get older and grow into their power, I think that's when we're really going to start to see things shifting. That's why we're seeing women talking about what it's like to give birth in this country and paid family leave. And it's not just about equal pay. It's also about how we should be paid and also be allowed to have families and not be penalized for leaning into the softer parts of our lives. Right. And so I think that there is work to be done, but I do feel like this generation is going to start knocking down some doors on those things because we're just like, no, yeah, I say it all the time. Yeah. No, we're just not going to take it anymore because we are living these lives. And yes, we are doing the things. And we want these structures and these systems to start getting out of our way so that we can have the lives that we actually want. And it's interesting as you were talking, I always think about the ad that they did last year in the presidential where they had Julia Roberts. And she was like, shh, don't tell your husband and how wrong we got it, right? Yeah. Because we, the old kind of feminist guard assumed that like, oh, these were things we wanted. The men over there were telling us what we wanted. And the idea that a woman could want to take her kids to school, could want to bake sourdough bread, could want to be with her and crush it like it was just not unfathomable. I mean, Betty Friedman talks about this, like the mistake right in the third wave of feminism was like removing the family from the conversation. And I think you're out we're having a different conversation. So I think culturally we're still catching up to recognizing that it's women's choices to want that softer to be feminine and to crush to do like and I think like we're still having culture kind of catch up to that reality. And so yes, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah. And it can look a lot of different ways. I mean, on the political piece of it, which a lot of this is political, whether you like it or not, like they're women on the right who are very family oriented. And I think the Wall Street Journal did a piece about this about sort of like the rise of this sort of mag a mom. Yeah, you know, I think the piece of people kind of missed about that was that these are women who are like they're just as professionally engaged as the men, but they are also choosing to have many children. They are also choosing to present themselves in different ways. And I think it would be a mistake for the left to criticize that as just them sort of falling into patriarchy. Because I think that women can choose whether they are on the left or the right to do all of those things. And it should be okay. And it is okay. You know, if you want to have a career and have as many kids as possible have six kids, that's great. I think there's a temptation on the left to be like, what's wrong with her? You must not really want a career. She must not really have independence or self respect. And I think that's not the case. Because more women than you think, aspire to that regardless of their political views. And we shouldn't make it a political thing. The choices that people make about how they want to structure their lives and their families. That's my two cents about that. I just think I think that is it would be a mistake to start to put that into political categories. Yeah, I mean, we just announced our documentary about the culture wars of American motherhood, which is exactly the point of like we're all being gaslit and conned because we really just want choice over on both sides. And I've launched a lot of things in my life. And I've never seen a response like this over the past 24 hours. Because I think people are so desperate for this conversation. And it's like on the left, on the left, on all political spectrums of like, yes, yes, yes. So, you know, we don't get the things that you mentioned because they keep us divided. Hey everyone, it's Leah Greenberg. And Ezra Levin, you might know us as two of the lead organizers of the No Kings protests. We're also the co-founders of Indivisible, the grassroots movement organizing against Trump's regime. And this is what's the plan? You're a weekly guide to the state of our democracy and how we fight back. This is not canned talking points. It's a real live discussion space for the pro-democracy movement. We wrestle with strategy together. We take your top loaded questions in real time. And we talk about the most impactful actions we can take right now. Democracy is a participatory sport. The fascist win when we sit on the sidelines. What's the plan is about how we get into the game? What's the plan available Friday, January 23rd wherever you get your podcasts? Subscribe or crew discuss, organize, and win. That's the plan. I want to make sure we talk about your book because I could not put it down. Your book, a dream deferred, Jesse Jackson, what makes you want to write about him and tell his story? Yeah. I mean, I think this story was about the political moment that we've been in actually for a little while now. For instance, I would say the decade of Trump and Trumpism. 2016 was such a pivotal election for so many different reasons. But I think it unearthed something in our politics that really asks the question, "A, are we still going to be okay doing a multiracial democracy? Like, can we really live together? Can we can politics work when Americans of different races and backgrounds are united?" That's the first question. The second one is, as we become more economically stratified in this country, is populism rising? And as you start to ask those questions, what happened for me was that a lot of people kept saying to me, "Well, you don't really understand what Bernie Sanders was doing in 2016 and 2020 unless you understand what Jesse Jackson did in 1984 and 1988. And in some ways, even understanding Donald Trump and why Trump worked, you kind of have to understand Jesse Jackson and what he was trying to do three decades earlier. It was not successful in the sense that he didn't win, but it was far more successful than most people in politics thought it would be at the time. And so this was really about answering the origin story of this, I think, populist moment that we're in and also this moment in which I think our demographic situation in this country is both being challenged and it's also reached almost like a high watermark where black voters actually do have more power than they've ever had in the political system in this country. And can we still do this thing? In the era of Trump, can we still have a multiracial democracy where voters are not at each other's throats? Because if you get something, I don't get something. And I think Jesse Jackson envisioned a world in which you can have those people holding hands and walking into the future together. And I think this book is about is about what could be. So you think Trump in some ways actualize that vision? I mean, the amount of like, right, black, Latino women who are, I've spoken to who are Trump supporters, right? And you're kind of like, what? Isn't that paradoxical? Right? Yeah, it is, but it's not one you really think about it because I think that what Trump did, at least rhetorically, is he talked about how everybody is being screwed over by the system. And that message was not just economic. It was also about, you know, he made it about the deep state, he made it about the institutions. And this sort of outsider message really does resonate. It is very similar to what Jesse Jackson was talking about. He was running as a Democrat, but he was kind of running against Democrats. You know, he was basically saying the party is rigged against you. The economy is rigged against you. Washington is working for the rich and the corporations, and they need to be working for you, the urban worker and the farmer. And so, yeah, I actually do think that Trump took a version of that message. And he made it work for the right. But I think he did exploit an us versus them message that is very much not what Jesse Jackson was doing. I think the us versus them piece of it was always, well, the immigrants are taking our jobs and, you know, that type of thing. And I think that that is why it worked on the right. But on the left, I think there are just so many lessons to learn about why, why is it that some portion of black men, Hispanic voters in general, men and women, you know, Asian American voters and others. And and certainly white voters. Why they all resonated with this idea that Trump put on the table, that America is being screwed over by the world, by the trade system, by the political establishment. And the answer to me, I think that this moment in our politics is a very anti-establishment moment. People are not happy with the status quo. They do not think that the institutions that sometimes Democrats are so eager to protect, they don't like those institutions. They don't think that they are working and they are willing to try a lot of things. They're willing to throw some spaghetti at the wall in order to see if somebody's going to make it different. And that's why when Trump came out with some of these things that everybody who thought was really crazy, whether it's the tariffs or other stuff, voters were like, well, I guess I'll try. Try something. Do something different. It's an imagination thing that I think voters are not as wedded to these systems, as I think, you know, the pollsters and the consultants think that they are. And sometimes when voters think outside of the box, that's what happened in New York, right here where I am. Yeah. In New York, you had Mumbani come in and he was like, we're going to make the bus is free and we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And everybody's like, well, that's not going to work. And the voters said, well, we'll let him try. Yeah. And I think that that is just, it's not, I'm not being prescriptive. I'm not saying that's the answer. I'm just saying that there's a pattern here. And if you don't learn from that pattern, you're going to miss what the real sentiment is. My five year old voices and I had like, Peppa Pig like do something, right? It's like, you know, I mean, like somebody just do something. You know, one of the other parts I loved about the book, when you talk about his relationship with, with Shirley Chisholm, you know, Shirley talked about how like the biggest obstacle that she faced, wasn't race, but it was gender. And he was the only Democratic candidate that publicly committed to choosing a woman as his VP. Yeah. Like how did digging into these dynamics shift your understanding, right? Of, of gender power and coalition, because we're still kind of living through that right now. I mean, the amount of people will be like, Oh, we can't do that again. Don't put a woman on the ticket. You know, I think that that we've gotten very overly simplistic and how we see these moments in our history because I think Shirley Chisholm, when I was writing that part of the book, I was really fascinated because I think the simplistic story is that Shirley Chisholm was a black woman and that, you know, the black community was behind her and she had this historic run in 1972. And, you know, now we laud her as Shirley Chisholm. But when you really look at it, at the time, she was like, these men, black and white, think that I'm a threat to them. They don't really support me. It's important to remember that, but messy complexity of that because in the moment, it's not always unity. It doesn't always look like unity. It doesn't always look like history. Sometimes it just looks like somebody who's annoyingly doing the thing that you don't want them to do. That's basically what was happening when Shirley Chisholm was running. Was that the black establishment and the white establishment, they were like, lady, can you please stop your running for president? This is not going to go anywhere. They were annoyed with her. They didn't think that she should be doing it. And that included Jesse Jackson and people around him. And so with that context, I think sometimes you have to put your head in that, in that headspace because there are people, you know, when you sometimes you see people doing historic things, it just looks like somebody doing something dumb and annoying. And then really what's going to happen is that history is going to look back on it and it's going to look like history. And I think that happened with Shirley Chisholm in 1972. It happened with Jesse Jackson in '84 and '88 and Shirley Chisholm to her credit. The in 1984 was there on the day the Jesse Jackson announced his run for the presidency. And she introduced him. She said, I paved the way for this moment to happen. And so she was able to put aside all the, you know, the hard feelings from that time period and say, this moment is what's in the best interest of the country going forward. But she recognized that politics is a, is a messy thing. And sometimes people are not on your side, not because you're wrong, but because it's politically inconvenient for them to be on your side. And that's, she experienced that. She experienced a kind of patriarchical world that even, you know, I think the people of that generation, the civil rights generation, they had come from a bit of a patriarchy, you know, and they were kind of committed to that in a way. And she was calling that out at a time when it wasn't popular to do that. And she was saying, you know, we've got to move on from this. That men, amen, black men included, you don't get your value from being above women in the hierarchy. And it wasn't popular when she said it in the 70s. And it didn't make her popular with people who looked like her. But it also makes her prescient and historic because she was saying something that was real and true in 1972. And frankly, is real and true in 2025. That's right. When it comes to women in politics. And on that point to close, what do you, as we enter another elections like all, what do you hope women will understand about their power as we go into it again? I think that women are so multifaceted and have the ability to engage different people in a lot of different ways. And that is a superpower of the future. If that is something that we as women can do, then that is, I think, the thing that is the most needed going forward. And I do think that right now women are really starting to come into true power. We are making more money than our partners in many cases and met, then many men. We are running things. We are starting our own businesses. We are building political power. I think it is important for women to build political power across the political spectrum. It's not just good and okay for there to be liberal women. I think there should be independent women and conservative women. I think women need power across the political spectrum in order to use that power to make advancements that are not ideological in nature. They're just about our shared humanity and making this nation work better for all of us, for all of our families, for all of our communities. And so I think we're close to that point, to be honest. I really do. And you know what? I've had a lot of people say to me that they think that America might elect a conservative woman before they elect a liberal woman. Who knows? You heard it here. It's going to be a Vanka Trump in 2020. Do you think that? I don't know. You heard it here. You heard it here. My prediction. I have no idea. But I think that could be true. And if it is fine, but I think that it will allow us to really see and to experience that when women attain power, it can look a lot of different ways. And also when that happens, we are not going to be immune from criticism or immune from critique. I think that actually maybe at the end of the day, what might be good for us when we might actually be reaching some semblance of political equality when we're not walking on eggshells around gender. I agree. Or we're not just available for just one party. Yeah. I think it will be interesting to see how that plays out for the issues that we're fighting for. Like child care is not a political issue. It leaves us at a political issue. But journal health is not a political issue, right? It should not be a partisan issue. It should not be. Yeah. Right. And we can have debates about how about how to achieve that those things. Right. And the fact of the debate, I think, will move us forward. I hope at least. I agree. Well, I could talk to you for five thousand years, but I will say literally, literally, you probably have to get on set soon. So thank you. This was amazing. I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you so much. Great to talk to you. Keep shining. A huge thank you to Abby for sharing her wisdom and her kindness with us. Today, I'm so glad we got to have this conversation. You can catch Abby on CNN's Newsnight weekdays at 10 p.m. Eastern and be sure to pick up a copy of her new book, A Dream Deferred. Jesse Jackson and the fight for black political power. Before you go, thank you for listening to My Soul Club Midlife. If you haven't yet, now's a great time to subscribe to Lumen out of premium. You'll get bonus content you can't hear anywhere else. Like 10 B. Locket Eye, sharing our tips for unlocking your creativity. In Midlife, just hit the subscribe button on Apple podcasts or for all other podcasts apps, heads 11 out of premium.com to subscribe. That's Lumen out of premium.com. My so called Midlife is brought to you by mom's first come see what we're all about at mom's first. Dot US. I'm your host and executive producer, freshman, so Johnny, our senior producer is Katie. Extack, Kordova. Our producer is Beth bro and our sound engineer and editor is Mary Kelly of sweater weather. Our theme music was composed by Ivan Kuryev and performed by Ivan with Ryan Jule and Karen Waltock. Scheduling support from Cindy Cook. Sales and distribution is by Lemon Out of Media. Help others find our show by leaving a rating and writing a review. And let us know what you're doing in midlife. Follow my so-called midlife wherever you get your podcast or listen at free on Amazon Music with your Prime Membership. And be sure to follow me, Rush Mr. Johnny, and Mom's First on Instagram, LinkedIn, and Substack. Thanks, and we'll be back next week. Story Pires is the number one podcast for kids and families in the world. And the newest addition to the Lemon Out of Media Network. 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