Zerlina Maxwell

As a second grader, Zerlina Maxwell was obsessed with politics, so it was no surprise that she would go on to work for two presidential campaigns. Today, she is a highly regarded political analyst, a best-selling author, and host of 'Mornings with Zerlina' on SiriusXM. 

A little over a month into this presidency, we are already in the 'find out' stage. With a wealth of experience, Zerlina joins Sophia to help break down the current state of things, what Democrats missed with their messaging, how they can improve communication to connect with everyday people, and the valuable lessons she learned from working on the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. High
whip Smarties. Today we are joined by one of my
smartest friends and someone that I look up to in

(00:22):
every single way, both from the way she lives her
life and runs her career to who she is as
a person. Today, I'm sitting down with Serlina Maxwell, who
you likely know as an incredible American cable television host,
political analyst, commentator, speaker, and author. She writes and speaks
about everything politics, culture, gender inequity, sexual consent, racism, and

(00:47):
so many other topics that affect all of us. She
is a survivor and an activist. She holds a degree
from Rutgers Law School. Started out as a field organizer
in two thousand and eight on the Obama campaign and then
was the director of Progressive Media for the Hillary Clinton
campaign in twenty sixteen. She is a director of Programming

(01:09):
at SiriusXM, now hosts her weekly show on Sirius called
Signal Boost and her daily show Mornings with Zerlina on
SERRIOUSXM Channel one twenty seven. And as if that wasn't enough,
she wrote an incredible book called The End of Wait Politics,
which we're kind of having to reanalyze now because a

(01:29):
lot of fear mongering decided the last election. I'm going
to talk to her today about the way that she
sees the current state of things, how she's figuring out
how to communicate that the political is actually everywhere around
us and is so deeply personal with her audience with
people who agree with her and people who don't. And

(01:51):
she's going to give us a little preview in her
next project, she is launching a new substack called the
Inner Work Dispatch on Monday mornings because she realized, like
many of us, that she needs to do a little
more work on her mental health care and on her
own wellness. She tries to ensure the wellness of the world.

(02:13):
I cannot wait to dive in today. Let's hear from Serlina.
I how where are you?

Speaker 2 (02:30):
I'm okay. I actually I just moved.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I don't know if you saw on the thread or
if they told you that, or if I mentioned that
I was moving to Sicily, and so I just literally
to Sunday, I moved to Sicily. So it's been a
little bit crazy this week, just like because you have
to like do all this stuff, like when you first
move in terms of like your resident your permit to stay,

(02:53):
and so getting a Italian phone number. Like, there's just
a lot going on. But why I'm able to like
do my show from.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
Me, I was gonna ask, how does that work?

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Yeah, well, it looks it works out for me pretty
well because the show's at seven o'clock in the morning,
so here it's not.

Speaker 2 (03:10):
Seven o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:14):
But uh, and and it just like gives me a
different quality of life. You know, I can I live
by the water, I can, you know, go from my
run or walk by the water.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
And I just I don't know. I was here.

Speaker 3 (03:30):
I was in Italy in Rome for like five months
of twenty twenty four, and then I spent the last
month ironically the I spent the election day and day
weeks after here in Palermo. And I I feel like
it was meant to be that way, because I was
like obviously stunned, just like everybody else, but I was

(03:51):
also in like I felt removed from it, so my
head was.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
Clear, Yeah, you had a little distance.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
I was able to like form thoughts about it in
a way that I didn't I after in twenty sixteen.
I was just like couldn't speak, you know, like it
was different than that. Yeah, and so yeah, I'm here
for at least a year.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
That's what the visas for. So we'll just we'll see.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
That's so exciting. I spent some time near the end
of twenty twenty three in Italy with my mom's family,
and it was so special and I definitely had sort
of thoughts of maybe this is what I do, Maybe
this is where I go, maybe I start over.

Speaker 3 (04:41):
There's something special about Italy. I think a lot of people.
I mean, obviously it's a popular place for people to
go on vacation, but I quickly learned and just talking
to people, first of all, I mean it depends where
you are obviously in Italy, but in southern Italy and
in Sicily, the people their warmth is real, Like that's real,

(05:02):
and they I don't know, there's the way they are
is different, and it's actually very I learn a lot
about like being present and you know, when I go out,
not having my phone out, and talking to people face
to face and having like face to face interactions and
like connecting with people in a way that I just

(05:24):
wasn't doing.

Speaker 2 (05:25):
I lived in Washington, d C.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Before I started my trips to Italy, and I was
the most I mean, my mother died at the end
of twenty twenty two, so I was like in a
period of grief and like all of that, but like
also in Washington, d C. I was the most sad
I've been since I was like maybe nineteen, and I

(05:49):
was like, I have to get out of here. My
therapist like, you can move, you were remotely.

Speaker 1 (05:55):
So do you think that's sadness? I mean, of course,
losing your mom is like, what a deep wall of
grief to have to fall into. But do you think
some of that larger sadness geographically was coming from a
sensitivity to just how crazy things have gotten in our system?

(06:17):
I mean, you know, we we're all old enough to remember,
you know, policy fights and debates about legislation and budgets
and priorities and things. But the Pandora's box that the
first not even election, I would say, the first Trump campaign, yeah,

(06:38):
opened right, you know in twenty fifteen leading into twenty sixteen.
I I like, you can't believe we're back here. I
was so shocked and also not at all surprised, which
is a sort of heartbreak that I had to wrestle
with for a few months. You know, the experience of

(07:01):
I believe we're better than this. I guess we're just not.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
No.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
I literally, well, my book is about how we are
better than this. I thought I thought we would be
in a very different place. I did not allow my
brain to think that she may not win. I knew
obviously that it was going to be really hard, right,
and also she's a woman, and she's a black woman,
and she onlyan one hundred days, like yeah, one hundred

(07:27):
and seven, So all those things. I just didn't allow
my brain to even go there. So when it happened,
I was like, this is not happening. I don't I
just sat there for a second and I was like, Okay,
thank god I'm here because I can go and run
and listen to loud Regie music and just like get

(07:48):
that out of my body. Because I was like, it
was like a primal screen almost like yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
And I think, what's hard to you know, and now
that we're in it, let's be in it. I think
what's hard for me is to see the level of
destruction and the sort of shock that a lot of
people are in that he's actually doing what he said
he would do, right, And many of us are like,
he told you the whole time he was going to
do this, Like what are you what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, and.

Speaker 1 (08:16):
It's odd. It's been odd for me. You know. There's
another woman kind of who is in our long time
sphere of political activists who I just kind of caught
online the other day and I was like, oh, you're
you're a traitor, got it. You You thought that by
demonizing trans folks in America it might protect you. But

(08:40):
you you're a woman, and by the way, you're not
even a white woman. And this, this, this is not
good for women like me, let alone for any other woman, Like, like,
everybody has a target on their back unless they're you know,
a billionaire. And I think it's hard for me to

(09:01):
watch the swiftness and the cruelty. And also I think
it's why so many of us have been saying, listen
to the historians who are warning you about one hundred
year cycles, like this shit is not new. We can
tell you exactly where it starts, and we can tell
you exactly where it goes. And by the way, you know,
Hitler didn't start with Jews. He started with trans people,

(09:25):
That's where he started.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
So literally, people who are like, what do you mean,
I'm like, this is why they've been banning books and
attacking the American education system for forty years, Like Mitch
McConnell's forty year plan is literally bearing fruit. I think
it can be tough when you've dedicated so much of
your life to understanding both history, potential and politics and

(09:49):
how it's actually in everything to figure out how to
communicate when you have a large platform like I do,
or you do with folks who just don't have as
many political touch points, who haven't been as in the
weeds for so long. And I guess before we get
into where you are, I just want everybody listening to

(10:09):
understand your background. We've done a lot of shows together,
so I don't want to ask you questions we've already
gone through. But I do want for somebody who maybe
this is their first time hearing us talk on my
show or yours, I want people to understand your background.
You know, like what first sparked your passion for politics?
When did you know that you wanted? And I don't
even want to call it political commentary. I think about

(10:30):
it as like political communication, like it's translation of a
system into words most of us can understand. When did
you know that you wanted that to be your life,
your career.

Speaker 3 (10:41):
I feel like I knew that during the administration of
George W.

Speaker 2 (10:44):
Bush.

Speaker 3 (10:45):
And I've always been somebody who's been obsessed with politics
since I was a little kid.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
I remember vividly.

Speaker 3 (10:52):
I was eight and I was outside of school and
we were lined up to like go in. I think
I was in second or third grade back then, and
it was the election.

Speaker 2 (11:01):
With George H. W. Bush and Michael Ducaccus.

Speaker 3 (11:04):
And I remember like doing a little speech in front
of the school in elementary school telling the kids to
tell their parents to vote for Michael Ducaccus.

Speaker 2 (11:17):
Now, no one told me to do this.

Speaker 3 (11:18):
My parents, both of my parents, like I think my
mom was mostly a Democratic voter when I was growing up.
My dad actually was voted for a few Republicans there.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
So nobody told me to do this. This was just like.

Speaker 3 (11:31):
Completely me sitting in front of the TV as a little kid,
deciding I agree with those people and not those people
like that. It was a very like visceral thing for
me as a little kid, So fast forward to George W.
Bush's administration. I was literally obsessed, in part because at

(11:51):
the time I thought that was the worst we could do,
and I just couldn't imagine not trying to prevent his
you know, Republicans from continuing down this pass. So I
ended up on the Obama campaign in two thousand and
eight because I was like, if I don't do something well. One,

(12:13):
I felt like I couldn't complain if it didn't if
it didn't go well.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
But also I was like, I have I need skin
in the game.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
And I lived in New Jersey at the time, and
I decided I was like, well, New Jersey's not a
battleground state. So I think it was Chuck Todd in
his map, and I picked a yellow state, two yellow
states to apply it to Virginia and Pennsylvania. I got
jobs in both, but then decided to go to Virginia,
a state that I'm very closely connected to my family now.

(12:42):
My parents retired in Virginia, so Virginia is like a
state I know they're politics well, and I've been in
that state for many, many years. But I moved down
to Virginia. I worked for the Obama campaign as a
field organizer. This is before even my career in political
communications took time off law school went down. Was a

(13:03):
field organizer, knock on doors, and I really just learned
what organizing is all about. I mean, I think everybody
who starts in campaigns as a field organizer, that's like,
that's the grunt work. But it's the best work because
it teaches you all the different aspects of what's going
on in a campaign because people are coming in and
out of your field office.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
But also you learn how to talk to people.

Speaker 3 (13:24):
You learn how to communicate with people about what they
care about. Right, all kinds of people are coming into
your field office every day, mostly for yard signs, but
sometimes with other types of questions. And they really just
taught me that there's people of all ages and all backgrounds,
and you know, with so many different concerns, I mean,

(13:46):
and politics is one way to address those concerns. When
I first got that job in two thousand and eight
and all the organizers stood up and they were asked like,
why are you here, we went around the realm of
hundreds of people, and ninety five percent of the people
said health insurance. Healthcare was the reason why they were there,
So they had been impacted directly because parent, her grandparent,

(14:09):
and for me, I think that was a really emotional
experience because I realized that it's not just politics, right,
it's I mean a lot of people think politics is
a thing that doesn't affect them because they're not paying
attention to it. Right. It's, oh, well, that's that's politics,
that's Democrats and Republicans. No, it's it affects you every

(14:30):
single day, whether you know it or not. So I
think I learned in that in the grassroots way, how
politics intimately affects people, and I learned how to organize
on that campaign. The second campaign I worked was Hillary
Clinton in twenty sixteen. In between, I became a writer
and sort of had a profile as a writer and

(14:51):
a media personality and ended up on Hillary's campaign in
twenty sixteen based on that experience and what I learned
were on that campaign, I mean, it was a really
different job. I was a community communication staffer working on messaging.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
I think that's how we started.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
Communicating with each other because at the time Jess McIntosh,
my partner in feminism, as I like to describe her,
we were messaging to influencers, which no one knew what
that meant. Bay twenty sixteen, they were like, what what
is influencers? And we're like, we're doing influencer messaging and
they were like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
What does that mean?

Speaker 3 (15:30):
But I think in twenty sixteen, what I learned in
that experience is that you really have to hit people
in the heart.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
You know. There's something that.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
We and I've been thinking about this idea all year
because there's something that is disconnected between what policies democrats
are talking about and what people are feeling, even if those.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
Policies would would help with that.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
I think, long story short, to bring it back around,
I think my experience both in two thousand and eight
and twenty sixteen taught me from different perspectives how to
actually reach people, right what do people care about, and
how to talk to them so they feel like you

(16:20):
hear them. And the things that you're talking about as
it relates to politics, which affects everybody, are all things
that they're like, oh, okay, I see how that can
help me, and they're not so defensive right away.

Speaker 1 (16:36):
Yeah, we'll be back in just a minute. But here's
a word from our sponsors. There's a few things that
kind of come up for me, and I'm curious about
your lens, you know, much like you. The Oait election
for President Obama was that was my first it's a
political volunteer, and you know, by the time we all

(16:59):
got onto Hillary's campaign in twenty sixteen, I think we
were like, oh, we know what we're doing. We know
how to do this. Part of the reason storytellers are
so effective is because we can remind people take it
out of the policy specific language and talk about how
policy is personal. And one of the things that I
see now is and we knew this right. We know

(17:21):
a lie travels sixteen hundred times faster online than the truth.
We know that soundbites float around and complex conversation doesn't.
We know that the black and white is something that
causes reactivity and nuance, which is required to run a
country of this size, and also to understand all the
people in it often doesn't translate or become clickbait. What

(17:45):
I think I struggle with now is knowing not only
those facts, but knowing how effective fear and othering are
as a message, and to know that for our current administration,
the cruelty is the point. And one of the things
that I think we have failed at assuming we've had

(18:05):
all these wins, we've had all this progress. You know,
we were all born when a woman could get a
credit card without her husband signing for it. We were
born when a woman could rent an apartment without a man.
Some of our elders, you know, the women that we
look up to, were not. They remember the difference. And

(18:27):
what I think we have failed at is communicating well
that progress requires time and destruction is relatively immediate. If
you drop a beautiful piece of pottery, it shatters the
second it hits the floor. To make that pot on
a wheel took time and clay and water and shaping

(18:52):
and attempts and might have failed, and then begin again,
and then it gets fired, and then it gets glazed,
and then it gets fired again. Political progress or requires
an investment of time and patience. But it's why we
have these systems that seem to simply exist, and we
haven't explained how they exist. The fact that we both

(19:13):
have power in our homes is politics. The fact that
we can turn on a faucet and drink water that
hopefully won't kill us is politics. The fact that we
have roads to drive on politics. When you bitch about
the pothole in your neighborhood. Bad politics, Like people have
forgotten that schools and clean air and water and electricity

(19:34):
and a grocery store, all of it is politics. And
so now politics has become these people who want to
give your stuff away versus these mean people who'll do
anything to give it back, And like that just ain't it? Like,
it's not how it works. And when you think about

(19:58):
you know, your show, your right, your activism, your political organizing,
how do you begin to make the political personal? Because
that difference between what we know and what we feel like,
that's the gap. I think, So how do we help

(20:20):
people understand how personal every single political decision is.

Speaker 3 (20:26):
I've been thinking about this for the last three weeks
because one of the things that folks call my show,
and they call from all over the country, they're like.

Speaker 2 (20:34):
What can we do? What can Democrats do? You know,
how do we stop this?

Speaker 3 (20:38):
And it's in part I think there is a disconnect
between some Democrats and what they say and some of
the democratic messaging and what really resonates with people emotionally.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Right.

Speaker 3 (20:53):
I think that is why Trump succeeds in communicating to
his base of support, because he taps in to them emotionally.

Speaker 1 (21:02):
Even though he's lying.

Speaker 3 (21:03):
To that, right, right, Like, that's what makes me crazy,
you know me too, Me just.

Speaker 1 (21:10):
Lies and people go, yep, that's it.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Right, And and unfortunately there are some people who want
to be lied to, so some people do. They They
may even if you got them, you know, in a
corner and you were like, you know, that's not true,
and they probably you probably could get them to admit that.
But but I do think that one of the things
that we sometimes miss on the left, and I hate

(21:36):
even doing like right left, like on my show, I
feel like we're humans, We're trying to survive, we're trying
to be happy. We're all like have sort of the
same goals here, and he's hurting everybody. It doesn't matter
what side of the spectrum you fall on. He's he's
firing government employees that voted for.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Him, right, I mean, just gutted the VA.

Speaker 3 (21:57):
Exactly, literally veterans losing their And one of the things
I've been thinking about in the last couple of weeks
is the way in which Democrats can start talking about
what's happening with Doggie. I don't even call it dose
because Jess McIntosh and I just call it doggy.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Because it sounds funny.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
What stories we can start telling about what's happening, right,
It's not you know, there have been twenty thousand people
who have been laid off. It's let's go talk to
those people who are they it's a mom. It's probably
a mom of three who worked for the federal government,
maybe in a health agency, maybe in the Consumer Financial

(22:35):
Protection Bureau making sure that people aren't getting scammed by
credit card companies, and they're not. They're going to miss
the payment for their mortgage, They're not going to be
able to pay their their bills, they're not going to
be able to pay tuition for their child. There you know,
they may not be able to put gas in the car,
much less afford eggs that have not gone down in price.

(22:55):
So I think that the storytelling element that you that
you referenced is the key, right. And I think sometimes
we can get caught up in statistics and numbers as
opposed to really talk to people's hearts, not their heads.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
And I actually I.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Was having a conversation with somebody in Europe after the
twenty twenty four election, and that is the conversation we were
having because it wasn't just about the United States. It
was about the left globally and how they sometimes struggle
talking to people's hearts. And I mean in the context,
the context was sort of like feeding people, you know,

(23:35):
talking over a good meal and really just talking in
a way that sounds human. And it's not that Democrats
are not and it's not that they don't care about people,
but I think sometimes we can get caught up in
the numbers. And I was actually even in the first
couple of weeks, not sure if even attacking Elon Musk

(23:56):
was necessarily the best message quote unquote for the this
particular moment, even though I think that couldn't be part
of the message, that could be the only message, because
I almost was like, I'm not sure, because there's a
lot of people who look up to him of all backgrounds.

Speaker 2 (24:12):
Right he is the world's richest man.

Speaker 3 (24:14):
There are people backgrounds that look up to him because
they don't know anything other than that's it.

Speaker 1 (24:19):
People look up to him because they don't know how
he got rich, and they don't know where he comes
from exactly, and they don't know what he's done to
people exactly exactly. And we this is the irony, though,
And I'm curious what you think here, because Trump has
demonized the quote elite public servants who make not a

(24:40):
lot of money compared to people like Donald Trump and
his friends. He's demonized folks like you in the news media,
folks like me who you know work on TV sometimes
and I'm like bro, most of us with sad cards,
you know, screen actors, guild actors like I only have
healthcare because I'm in a union, right, Like, that's literally

(25:00):
how I go to the doctor. You know, I if
I make a dollar, my agent makes ten cents, my
manager makes ten cents, my assistant makes ten cents, my
lawyer makes fifty cents. Like I support a whole team
of people when I work, and when I don't, we're
all stressed out. Like we aren't like him. We don't

(25:23):
fly around in private jets. We don't, you know, have
endlessly expendable money. And yet a man who is a
billionaire who launched a meme coin which was likely allegedly
a money laundering scam, who went from having a four
billion dollar net worth to having a twenty nine billion
dollar net worth at the weekend of his coin launch,

(25:44):
and then the coin tanked once he sold all his shares.
I'm like, that's a straight up twenty five billion dollar grift.
And your friend is the world's richest man who is
about to be the first trillionaire, who, by the way,
said to the World Health Organization, tell me how I
could solve world hunger. They gave him a plan and

(26:05):
said it would only cost you six billion dollars. He
announced publicly he was going to do it, and then
he was like, psych I got all the good press.
What I'm going to do is go buy Twitter for
forty four billion dollars instead. Like these are bad people.
These are like movie villain rich terrible people. And somehow

(26:25):
they've managed to convince people with so much less, people
whose livelihoods are at risk from paycheck to paycheck, that
those of us who have been in paycheck to paycheck
positions aren't like them. But the billionaire class is like,
how how, why? What is that? Are we just all

(26:49):
so secretly sure that if we got a reality show
or I don't know, fathered seventeen children with however many women,
Elon has that like, we could be rich too. What
what is that in our psyche that puts us in
these crazy places where we are like the characters in

(27:09):
that kid's book The Emperor has no clothes, and we're like, yeah,
great robe to the naked guy, Like what why are
we like this?

Speaker 2 (27:16):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
I wish I knew the answer. I think part of
it we're delusional. There's a lot of people who are
delusional these days, and I think it goes back to
in all serious it's the point you mentioned earlier about
disinformation and misinformation. So number one, even the story that
you just told about Elon Musk and Donald Trump and
the meme coin, a lot of people don't know that
detail because that's not detail that is in their siloed

(27:41):
media environment.

Speaker 2 (27:42):
So they're not even getting the facts right.

Speaker 3 (27:45):
They are poureding off from fact telling right if they're
just watching Fox News, if their algorithm is only feeding
them right winging voices, they are not getting any of
the facts and that it's it's so because I feel
like one of the things that happened in the first
couple of weeks and it's still happening now with all

(28:05):
the federal layoffs, is people who voted for Trump are like,
I got fired today or I did not, I lost
my snap benefits today or I couldn't access my step
menefits because of the initial funding freeze. I think that
people are now starting to see that, wait a minute,
he's doing things that are affecting me, that are harming me.
And he didn't say he was going to do that.

(28:25):
He said he was going to deport all of the
brown people, all the undocumented people that I thought he
was going to do that. I didn't think he was
going to do this. And I think that the storytelling
plus the making sure they have access to the facts,
I think that there can be a really critical combination
of those two things that can help at least get

(28:48):
us part of the way. But unfortunately, for the next
couple of years, until at least the midtrum elections, it's
going to be incredibly hard. And I think that one
of the things that I know that I've been doing
on my show, I know that AOC has been doing
that every time she goes on IG Live, is really
level setting with people and saying, look, we're not in

(29:10):
power as Democrats, not in the Senate, not in the House.
There's very little that we can do. There's I mean,
I would argue there there's more they could do. But
there's not a whole lot they can do. They can't
stop things whole claw.

Speaker 1 (29:25):
And not only can they not stop things, but when
when the federal government, when our federal courts say, this
is outside the scope of presidential power. You are infringing
on the other branches of the judiciary, this is not
within the scope of executive power. You are breaking the law.
And he says, so, yeah, we've never had that. I mean,

(29:46):
it is truly.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
It's not hyperbole.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
It's not people, you know, being sensitive or fantastical or whatever.
It's a true constitutional crisis or in the person who
occupies the O office, I am not going to respect
any other branch of the federal government, and I am
not going to listen to the law of the land,
nor will I follow the letter of the Constitution. We

(30:12):
have a problem.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
Oh yeah, no, it's a huge problem. I asked Senator
Chris Murphy recently the same exact question. I was like,
I know, But I was also like, well, what do
we do because we have to assume he's not going
to follow any of what the judges saying. Even if
the judges are like, you're in the law, He's going
to be like so what, I'm gonna do what I want.
It's unconstitutional. He's like, so what, I don't care, and
we have to just assume that he's I think that

(30:35):
Senator Murphy pointed made the most important point. One of
the first things he did was was a signal. He
pardoned the January sixth insurrectionists. That was the mall we
all should have known from day one that he is
not going to respect the rule of law.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
I mean, he's going in there as a convicted felon,
but we know he's not going to respect the rule
of law because he pardoned the people who attacked the capitol.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
In January sixth.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Yeah, And so that was the signal that if you
ever commit acts of violence or break the law for me,
you'll be fine. And that is the same thing is
true about mister Elon Musk, Right, if he breaks the
law and a judge is like, stop doing that, he's
gonna make so what because he knows that his buddy

(31:18):
President Trump can pardon him.

Speaker 2 (31:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Right.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
So I think one of the things that.

Speaker 3 (31:26):
So many people are not really grasping right now is
not only did they tell us they were going to
do all of this, they wrote it all down on
probably twenty twenty five, And I remember saying on MSNBC
before the election, the combination of Projecly twenty twenty five
in the presidential immunity decision, that is what a dictatorship is.
Those two things together combined make a dictator And I

(31:46):
don't think people were really getting it. And the pushback
that I got in talking about democracy and protecting democracy
was that people really care.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
About the cost of eggs.

Speaker 3 (31:56):
And while I think that there are people out there
that did care about the cost of eggs, they that
was just their cover for not really admitting that they
wanted to deport some of these brown people and that
was the real reason why they were supporting Donald Trump.
And it frustrated me that we couldn't really get to
the heart of the matter. And now people are stunned
that he's breaking the democracy because they told us they

(32:17):
were going to break the democracy. They had a plan
to break the democracy, and he's using Elon Musk to
do it.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. To go back to that
pottery analogy. When I think about the outbreak of a
global pandemic, the first in one hundred years. You know,

(32:41):
you think the Spanish fluid in nineteen eighteen, and then COVID,
you know, granted we know now that it was beginning
to spread in twenty nineteen, but really went global twenty twenty,
shut down the entire global economy, supply chains, factories, shipping routes.
To build that back up requires a building, almost from scratch.

(33:01):
Once the well oiled machine stops, it takes a lot
to get the machine going again. And when economists were
talking about how President Biden had done such incredible work
to stop inflation and manage to do it without starting
a recession and brought American inflation below three percent in

(33:22):
just three years, and did it so effectively that it
actually began lowering inflation rates in other countries, people were like,
what are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
And when I would.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
Quote to friends and say, have you seen the studies?
Do you understand that inflation in Australia went over twenty percent,
that inflation in Argentina reached twenty two percent, that inflation
in Europe in certain areas was over nineteen percent, And
people were like, wait, what I'm going How much do
you think eggs cost there? And yes, things are not
perfect again here yet, but everything is trending in the

(33:52):
right direction. But for some reason, we are so impatient
with the fix, right, we are impatient with the work,
even though the work for America alone has to be
done for three hundred and thirty two million people. Like,
think about how crazy the freeway looks at five o'clock,

(34:13):
Like there aren't even a million people on the freeway
and you're in a bumper to bumper parking lot. Like
to move hundreds of millions of people back into a
sort of synchronized efficiency takes time, and for some reason
that time, rather than looking at it and saying, wow,
we are so proud to be leading the world on

(34:35):
global recovery, it turned into they're not doing things fast enough.
Let's go back to the other guy. And it feels,
you know, it feels to me like we are in
the upside down. And to your point, it feels like
because these are complex conversations right the left or the

(34:56):
you know, folks that want everybody to have rights and
that want kids to have lunch in school. Because I'm
I'm like, I'm done like you with the right and
the left thing. I'm like, you either want kids to
be able to eat in school or you don't.

Speaker 2 (35:05):
That's it right to me, just basic human decency.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
And so the pro kids having school lunch's side, for
some reason can't seem to harness the messaging on what
they're doing well. And so the other side, despite everyone
know they're lying, keeps lying and then the lies hit

(35:28):
the airways and here we are. So how do you think,
you know, Chris Murphy, I think one of our best
messages AOC doing an incredible job. How do you think
we can begin to cut through some of the bs
and some of the unwillingness for people to listen to

(35:50):
anyone who thinks, yes, I kids should eat lunch in school.
How do we like right the ship a little bit here?

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Well, one of the things I think is that we
have to be better about putting on a show.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Right.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
One of the things that Donald Trump did well, I mean,
for lack of a better description, in the twenty twenty
four election, is he put on you know, it was
silly and and even and I was making fun of
it at the time because it looks silly, But when
he kept standing in front of a bunch of groceries, right,
it was just a visual reminder to people that he
was going to solve that problem for them, even though

(36:25):
he didn't do anything about it. He hasn't done anything
about it since becoming president, and he doesn't intend on
doing anything about it. We just have to tell better stories,
and we have to do it in a way that
is visually compelling. So I have been critical on my
show in the past couple of weeks just in terms
of I think that Democrats showing up at protests outside

(36:46):
of federal agency buildings is great. And I know that
there are like regularly scheduled press availabilities and press conferences
that are inside of Congress because our government has, you know,
things that standard procedure, but we're not.

Speaker 2 (37:02):
In that moment.

Speaker 3 (37:03):
So I I've grown tired of seeing any Democrats stand
in front of a podium inside of the Capitol building.
I do not understand why they're not standing at a
coffee shop with real people who have been fired from
their jobs. That is what I think they need to
do more of. They need to be in with the people.
I know that they have jobs, and they got to
vote on legs. Well, they have to vote on procedural

(37:25):
things and confirmations obviously happening with the cabinet, or hopefully
they're voting in opposition to that cabinet. But I think
that part of the problem and the disconnect sometimes comes
from they're not putting on a good enough show and
it seems silly. It seems like, well, isn't it about substance.
It is, but you do have to make it digestible

(37:48):
for people. Going back to the food analogy, you do
have to to make it so that people are like, oh, okay,
they're gonna they're gonna make sure that.

Speaker 2 (37:57):
You know, I can afford my groceries.

Speaker 3 (38:00):
Now, the president can't do anything about gas prices per se,
but I think that you know, Trump does. That doesn't
make mean that Trump doesn't say he can do something
about that. He still lies and says that you know,
it's all because of him, even though it isn't.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
But Democrats just have to tell better stories. They're not that.
Sometimes they can get into the weeds they.

Speaker 3 (38:21):
Want to they want And I do this a lot
of the time, Like I have to catch myself sometimes
doing this. And I think on my radio show, if
you like listen, over the years, I think that I
talk more like a regular person and less like a
strategist now because I realized that actually coming with all
of my facts and all of my data and all
of my talking points is not actually persuasive as persuasive

(38:43):
it as it is to just talk to another person,
hear them out, listen to what they're saying.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
And then be like, but what about what about this?
Isn't that? Isn't that a better idea?

Speaker 3 (38:53):
And just and talk to them in a way that
they feel heard, but then understand that what you're suggesting
in terms of a policy is actually going to help
them and is for their benefit, like that you don't
have some sort of other agenda going on as well.

Speaker 2 (39:11):
And I think we can get to in the weeds.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
We're talking in too many stats and numbers, and we
just have to get to people's hearts, right, go talk
to their heads, talk to their hearts.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
Well, I hear you. And then it feels so tricky
because yes, a lot of people talked about the price
of eggs, and now eggs are twice as expensive approximately.
I think the numbers change every day as they were
during the last administration. Nobody's talking about it. You know,
the AP is getting banned from the Oval Office, because

(39:43):
they are still referring to the Gulf of Mexico as
the Gulf of Mexico because that's its name, right.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
You know. Some of this stuff is so crazy, you know.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
And I'm like, oh, so you do understand name changes
in pronoun changes. Actually yeah, Trump government got ithilarious loll
but also not funny. You know. Everything he's doing is
it's happening so fast, and we are getting caught on
these things. Gulf of Mexico versus Golf of America was

(40:14):
a week long discourse and it's not even a thing
that matters. It's a distraction to the gutting of the VA.
It's a distraction to the fact that someone with no
government oversight, who has not been vetted, is essentially acting
as a shadow president, someone who comes from a generational
family that supported apartheid, that are allegedly active Nazis, that

(40:37):
are you know, doing Nazi salutes on stages and courting
the far right German Party and interfering in European elections
and buying media outlets. I mean, this is this is
the playbook of the twenties and thirties on steroids, yea,
And people are getting really caught up in dumb shit.

(41:00):
So I almost wonder if the bigger systemic problem. I
think a lot about this with anti vaxers. Okay, people
are convinced that rather than having better science and us
being able to understand the full spectrum of neurodiversity in humans,
thus we understand more people exist on an autism spectrum,

(41:22):
more people are a neurodivergent ADHD. They're actually beginning to
prove was a superpower in hunter gatherer times because you
could really focus and get all the berries and then
go home when you felt like you did your task.
You know, none of this is actually a bad thing.
But now suddenly everybody's like, oh, it must have been
this one vaccine dose my kid got that did something
to them, even though the tighters are all lower than

(41:44):
they were when we were kids, even though the vaccine
amounts are lower than they were, even though there's more
arsenic in a pair from the pesticides it grows in
than there is in the totality of all vaccines you'll
ever get in your life. Like, I think, it's easier
to blame the one thing that maybe you could avoid it,
even though avoiding it could kill you, than to admit Oh,

(42:05):
our government's been poisoning the land on both sides of
the aisle with glycassate for fifty years. Oh, we know
that the pipes in Flint are full of lead and
they're giving kids brain damage, but we're not replacing them. Oh,
we clearly have a problem, you know, after the wildfires
in Los Angeles with water system contamination by a Brita like.

(42:28):
I think it's easier to try to point to the
quickest insult to your safety than to analyze systemic problems. Yeah,
and to require then that these sides work across the
aisle to solve the problems for all people and all voters,
no matter how you identify. It's easier to harp on

(42:49):
something that you think you can avoid than to say, Oh,
I'm a cog in a very big machine that might
not care about me. Do you think that's part of it? Oh?

Speaker 3 (42:59):
Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I mean,
it's interesting that you talk about food policy, because ironically,
when I spend out a lot of time in twenty
twenty four in Europe, that was like, the first thing
I noticed was that fruit tasted like fruit, and I
was like, wait, what is this paar taste sweet and
what's going on.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Instead of like foam exactly.

Speaker 3 (43:22):
And I actually had Governor Walls on to talk about
school lunches as a part of a food policy special
that we did on my radio show, and I learned
so much about not just the difference between food policy
and Europe versus food policy in the United States, but
I think the way in which we've been blocked from
actually changing it, and the way in which the lobby

(43:45):
just makes it completely impossible to change how we make food,
consume food, and what's in our food. And that's a
much more important conversation than any conversation about a vaccine
that has been tested.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
And now for our sponsors. If we made the lobbying
and the money and politics illegal, all of this would change.
It's not actually about the law or the die, which
by the way, is still in food in Europe. They're
just called different things. It's not even that. And it's

(44:22):
really not lost on me as a California And you know,
a year and a half ago, when Gavin Newsom tried
to ban five substances from the California food system, he
was called a communist. People were like, how Dario tell
Us what we can eat. And so was Michelle Obama.
When she tried to say, you can't classify pizza as
a vegetable in school for kids because it has tomato sauce.
You have to give them actual vegetables. People called her

(44:43):
a communist. They said she was meddling. They said she
didn't have the presidential oversight to do this. And now
we're just handing the whole kit in kaboodle over to
RFK who's making millions of dollars a year selling people
supplements that aren't even tested by the FDA. No, I
mean upside down.

Speaker 3 (45:01):
Money in politics is the problem. Right, So everything we're
talking about today, the problem is money in politics.

Speaker 1 (45:09):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:10):
If we did something about that, we would go a
long way to solve all of the other problems. It's
like when you make your list of goals at the
beginning of the year, and you have ten goals written
down on your paper, and there's that one or two
goals that if you actually accomplished those, it would make
the others easier. That's the problem, right, That is the problem.
I remember back when Citizens United was decided. I remember

(45:32):
I was sitting at home watching Keith Olberman because That
was the show eight o'clock on MSNBC at the time,
and he was talking about the danger of a decision
like citizens United. And I won't ever forget what he said,
because we're living through it. He said, imagine a president
Sarah Palin paid for by Citybank. Now we're not living

(45:57):
exactly in that reality. However, how different is it the
reality we're living in now versus President Sarah Palin paid
for by City Bank. We're living in a president Donald
Trump two point zho paid for by Elon Musk. Yes,
it's yes, literally what he predicted that night, says, since
United was decided.

Speaker 1 (46:18):
Right, Well, and I read something last night, and you know,
forgive me, and we'll have to double check it in
the notes for the episode. But you know, Elon Musk
spent close to three hundred million dollars buying his presidency
for Donald Trump, and now he's been awarded nearly eight
billion dollars more in government contracts.

Speaker 2 (46:37):
I'm going, hello, It's is Carlos, plain and simple.

Speaker 1 (46:42):
The Fox is in the Henhouse. Yeah, and I guess
we talked about this, you know, when we first jumped
on that. In a weird way, we're not at all surprised,
but we're absolutely rocked and shocked. When you wrote your
book about, you know, healing a liberal divide, you analyze

(47:03):
past and present problems of the we want children to
have luncheon School's side. But you called the book the
end of White politics because the idea here is that, like,
these systems aren't protecting us, these sort of bastardized ideas
around quote unquote supremacy are hurting everyone. And by the way,

(47:24):
the men like the President who want it the most.
It's like it's older white men that are killing themselves
at the highest rates, so they're clearly suffering in all
of this too. How does it feel to have that
book exist post this election, post the world turning upside down?
How do you make sense of your thoughts and feelings

(47:47):
your analysis? Are there things you wish you could add
to it? Is that where the substack comes from, Like,
how does it all work for you now? From here?

Speaker 3 (47:57):
Well, my substack, which is launching very soon called the
Inner Work Dispatch, is going to focus on mental health
and mental wellbeing because I think that as we are activists,
as we are organizers, as we are thinkers in this space,
we have to also learn how to take care of ourselves.
That's something that I am learning, like I actually need too, right,
like take care of my mental well being before I

(48:19):
can go out and fight fight the man.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
And I feel like I'm learning as an academic quote
unquote expert in certain arenas. I feel like I'm signing
up for kindergarten learning how to actually prioritize my own
health and wellness and mental health.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
I just have to.

Speaker 3 (48:37):
I mean, I've been more intentional in recent years about Okay,
I'm going to read the news now out why I'm
putting it down. I'm not going to look at it.
I you know, push notifications. They're not even on my
phone anymore. And I work in news, so that's like
actually insane. But also I make sure like I'm checking
it with intention.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
I'm doing that on purpose.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
I'm not accidentally seeing something, and so that go a
long way in making sure you're mentally okay. But back
to the book question, I feel like I don't know
that was a version of me. I wrote that book
completely before COVID, by the way, I didn't realize that
it came out in July twenty twenty. So I wrote

(49:20):
the book before COVID even happened, and I had to
write it a forward.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
For the paperback post Insurrection. So the Ford and the Pape's.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
Way, Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, because I'm like, no,
why do I feel like it was so much more
recent than that? And that's why, because the words in
that forward, I know, really stuck with me.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
It's the forward.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
I read it the Ford a lot, actually, because I
think I sometimes I feel like I'm like a couple
of years ahead of like where the political analysis is,
and that's not twenty my own horn. That's just like
sometimes I'm like, I see the matrix, and how come
nobody else sees this? So I knew that, and I
have a chapter of the white resistance in the book.

(50:05):
I knew that there was going to be a backlash
to the evolution of American demographics.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
I knew that.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
I knew it right there was going to be. I mean,
we're living through that backlash right now.

Speaker 2 (50:17):
Now. I don't know what happens on the other side
of this backlash. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (50:20):
I don't know if we actually reach a place and
still have a democracy where we can have a multi
racial and functioning democracy. I don't know the answer to
that question anymore, because I don't know what happens after
this administration. Do we have a democracy to even engage
with right, I don't know. I don't think anybody knows
the answer to that because we're in such unprecedented times.

(50:42):
But I do know that the evolution and demographics of
the country. That's why they're trying to mass support eleven
million undocumented people right now.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Those people weren't.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
Even voting, but it's like a show and it makes
them feel better about the fact that American's demographics are shifting,
that is happening now. They might try to prevent that
evolution right in ways that I don't even want to
talk about because I don't want to allow my brain
to even go there thinking about those horrors that potentially

(51:16):
ways in which they could stop that evolution demographically.

Speaker 1 (51:21):
Their private prison contracts to be modern day concentration camps
are pretty indicative of there.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
There are ways they can do it. We know from
history and also the present. Really scary conversation, but I
will say that I am somebody who comes from an
ancestry that has survived, works, and somehow holds onto some
form of optimism and hope and even the worst moments.

(51:49):
So for me, it's like, we can reach that place,
but we all have to stay really focused in this
moment so that we actually have a democracy to engage
with when our demographics shift and when we could have
a multi racial democracy. But I think about a lot
about the fact that I thought I didn't know that

(52:12):
we would live through quite a dismantling of the democracy
at the pace in the last month that we've seen
under a second Trump like term.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
I really didn't.

Speaker 3 (52:21):
I thought that the first Trump term was the backlash.
Biden winning in twenty twenty was the signal that we
were going in the right direction.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I didn't know that we were so.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
Quickly going to make a turn, a U turn. But
I feel like in some ways that was almost naive
because history, and Melissa Harris Perry said this a long
time ago, we always we make progress and then we
go back. We fight and we fail, and we fight
and we fail, And that's sort of how progress happens
is you fight and you fail, you go a little

(52:53):
bit further, you fail, you go a little bit further,
you fail.

Speaker 2 (52:55):
And so I'm hopeful that.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
We don't go backwards so far that even catching up
to where we started, that the status quo of twenty
twenty is impossible, I don't think.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
I don't think it's impossible.

Speaker 3 (53:09):
I think that as AOC always says, like, some of
the power is an illusion, right they you know, some
of it is an illusion. Some of it's real, but
some of it is an illusion. And I think that
the power of the people in this country, we the people.
It's still true, our collective. They change things that they
were doing the initial days of the administration because of

(53:31):
the backlash publicly, and so I think that as long
as that is still true, we can do everything in
our disposal, you know, through our grassroots organizing, through our
political pressure, and you know, in the arena of public opinion,
we can do those things to try to mitigate the damage,

(53:54):
because it's not going to prevent it, but it can
mitigate it somewhat well.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
And I think that's really important to remind people. It
feels hopeless by design, But the more noise we make,
the more quickly they do retreat. Funding freezes are stopped,
they try to rehire the team working on bird flu,
they rehire the people with the nuclear codes.

Speaker 3 (54:19):
You know, shocker, and you imagine getting rid of the
people working on bird flu.

Speaker 1 (54:23):
I can because you know, he disbanded our pandemic response
network in twenty seventeen. And I know that because I
had a friend who worked for it. So I'm not surprised,
but I am rather shocked that humans who can't go
live in bunkers aren't hitting the streets. It's also not
lost on me that there were mass protests on Monday

(54:44):
and I didn't see them on a single news network.
I saw them on Instagram, I saw them on TikTok.
We need to not only apply pressure to the government
to stop allowing the president to act like a dictator,
but we also have to apply pressure to the news
to not bend the knee in advance, to not refuse
to cover the protests, to not ignore the horrors, to

(55:09):
talk about the fact that our veterans no longer have
access to mental health care benefits and treatment for their injuries.
You know, we need to continue to apply the pressure.
It's why I think five calls dot org is such
a good website. It's why I will remind everyone listening
to listen to your show Mornings with Zerlina As on

(55:31):
Serious XM one twenty seven. It is certainly one of
the first places I turn to when I'm pissed and
stressed and I just need to listen to somebody top
me down a little bit and remind me of what matters.
So thank you for that. I really do think we
have to be reminded that we are in this together,
and there are more of us than there are of

(55:53):
the billionaire oligarchy. Certainly, and as so many people who
did vot for him, I would like to think because
their information was siloed, not because they overtly or consciously
agree with the cruelty. I know some do, but I
want to appeal to the ones that don't. I hope
that the people who believed what they were being sold

(56:19):
who will need our help, I hope those are people
we can welcome to build a new political future. And
just thank you for keeping keeping up the work. Thank
you for the substack that's coming. I need it so badly,
and I guess I mean it feels like you've done
such amazing work, not just in your career but in

(56:42):
your life. To give yourself a fuller life, to find respite,
to find joy so you can stay in the fight
long term. Is the joyful part of resistance. What feels
like you're work in progress right now? Because I know
moving is a literal work in progress. But but is
it is it sort of that whole shift in life,

(57:04):
or is it something else that I'm not even thinking of.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
I think that the joy is part of my journey.
It has to be part of my journey. And I
think it's because of who my mom was. My late
mother was a psychotherapist, so she was always very you know,
she was always inquiring like, how are you feeling, what
are you feeling, what are you thinking? She was always
asking questions like that, And it didn't occur to me

(57:27):
until later in my life that not everybody's parents are
asking them those questions. But one of the things that
she always used to say is that you have to
She called it sole care, right, and you have to care.
You have to be very, very intentional and care about
what you let enter your spirit.

Speaker 2 (57:47):
That's how she used to talk about it.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
And because I work in news, and you know, consuming
news all day is you're allowing the worst things that
are happening to enter into your spirit every day. And
because I'm empathetic and compassionate, it affects me. It's not
just reading statistics. I feel those things really deeply. I

(58:09):
had to I had to get to a place where
I could could create space, right to actually live a full,
beautiful life that wasn't just news and politics and reaction
to what Trump did and reaction to what Republicans did,
and and and.

Speaker 2 (58:29):
I realized that I just wasn't.

Speaker 3 (58:32):
I mean, the whole day would go, you know, front
to back, and I'd be like, what did I do
today that was fun? Did I do anything today that
was fun at all?

Speaker 1 (58:43):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (58:44):
And and I think.

Speaker 3 (58:45):
That who wants to live a life where they are
not enjoying at least a moment of your day?

Speaker 2 (58:54):
Right?

Speaker 3 (58:55):
And and that's not to say that And again, I
am incredibly privileged, right, I'm incredibly but I work remotely.
I'm able to create a life in a way that
I know that that is a privilege that I enjoy.
But I also know that my mother, she always used
to say to me, you know, it's really not you
know any kids, you're not married. She's like, you can

(59:18):
go anywhere, you can do whatever you want. And I
think that those messages that she always used to say
to me, they started ringing in my brain. You know,
when I was living in Washington, d C. In like
twenty twenty three, and I was like, I can go anywhere,
I can do what I want, and I think I
should do it because what am I waiting for? And
now that Trump is back at the White House, it

(59:40):
really feels like, Okay, I'm glad.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
I made the move.

Speaker 3 (59:44):
I took the leap of faith because you know, you
can't take anything for granted.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
You can't take anything for granted. So for me, it's
about I say this.

Speaker 3 (59:53):
I start my show every single morning with a moment
of gratitude, Like even if I in some days I'm like,
I don't even know what I'm grateful.

Speaker 2 (01:00:00):
I don't know, like I'm trying to think. It was
hard to think of it.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
Yeah, but I actually do that to model for everybody
listening that they should do that in their own mourning,
because you have to sort of late have that be
the foundation of what you're doing. And then at the
end of the show every day most days, I'm like, Okay,
do something that sparks joy today, please, Like, I don't
care what it is, but you're going to do that.
And we have a weekly segment mental health Mondays, because

(01:00:24):
if you're going to listen to a new show to
start your morning, I'm going to have to give you
a little bit to help you with your mental health
and your mental well being because this is hard. This
is hard, and no sugarcoating that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:37):
I love that. It really reminds. What you're reminding me
is that we live so much of our life and reactivity.
It's the nature of the world, especially if you care
about the world, that to dedicate real routine time, even
if it's five minutes to proactivity, is something that you deserve.

Speaker 3 (01:00:56):
Yeah, you have to do something that you enjoy. I mean,
I had someone ask me recently. They were like, so,
what do you like to do for fun? And I
was like, I don't understand the question. And they were like,
is there anything that you do that it wouldn't matter
if you weren't good at.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
It, you just enjoy doing it. I was like, I.

Speaker 3 (01:01:16):
Really don't understand your question. I don't understand. What do
you mean I'm not good at it? Like I'm doing
something and I'm not good at it, Like I don't there's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Nothing that I do that's like that. I don't have
things like that. They're like, well, this is what you're
gonna do.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
This is the beginning of the jet this is.

Speaker 3 (01:01:29):
How you need to tap into doing things for the
pure enjoyment of it.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
And so that's sort of the journey I'm on.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
Right now because I realized that I was, I mean,
like so many other people, you know, you're just focused
on your kids, your work, your career.

Speaker 1 (01:01:47):
And then years go by and you go, wait.

Speaker 2 (01:01:50):
Wait, wait a minute, what happen?

Speaker 1 (01:01:52):
Wait a minute. I like being encouraged to take a minute.
Thank you, and thank you for all of the work,
for the writing and the show and the soon to
be substack and all of it. You know, you you
really as both a you know, a friend and a
sort of compatriot out there in the world. You always
remind me to be good to myself and to others.

(01:02:14):
So thank you for that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Thank you