The Michelle Obama Interview (from “Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso”)

Talk easy with Sam Fragoso. This show is a weekly series of intimate conversations with artists, authors, politicians and entertainers. Sam has an uncanny ability to get guests to open up in ways they haven't before, leaving listeners feeling connected and curious about new works of art. In this episode, Sam talks with my sister about many things such as the pivot to podcasting. Vivid memories about growing up on the south side of Chicago, the work ethic model by our father, and the enduring influence of our mother.

And the complicated dynamics of navigating life inside and outside the White House, there's so many good nuggets of inspiration here that I'm sure you'll love. You can listen and watch more talk easy wherever you get podcasts. What would you like me to refer to you as throughout this episode?

I have former first lady, Mrs. Obama, Mam, Boss.

I answer to it all. I don't like former first lady. That's just, that's too much. You across that one off. Mrs. Obama, I guess it's okay.

“I love that though. I know, it just sounds so official, you know, Mrs. Obama, but I think it's your get if you want to call me Michelle, if you want to call me, hey you, right?”

I don't think we're going to do it, hey you. Okay. It's just talk easy. I'm standing for a go, so welcome to the show. [Music]

Today, former first lady, bestselling author and now fellow podcast host, Michelle Obama.

Since the time Michelle first appeared on the campaign trail alongside Barack in 2007, she's attracted a mix of excitement, adoration, and also unrelenting scrutiny. And through all of it, whether it's on the Stomp and Iowa, launching initiatives like let's move, publishing her chart-topping memoir, becoming, or speaking candidly about marriage, grief, race, or public service, she's maintained a level of self-possession and really authenticity.

It feels increasingly rare in public life, all of which is on full display on her weekly podcast, IMO, which she co-host alongside her older brother, Craig Robinson. And so today, we start with the present.

“Life away from 1,600 pen, her version of Doom Scrolling in 2026, and why podcasting appeal to her at this stage in life?”

From there, we discussed a lesson she learned growing up on the south side of Chicago, the ambition that carried her from Whitney Young, to Princeton, to Harvard Law, the first lunch she shared with her future husband, the period of adjustment that followed Barack's bid for the presidency, the complicated dynamics of life inside the White House, and a whole lot more. But before we get into the interview, I want to note at the top that Michelle Obama is not a politician.

As she says a couple of times today, she never even particularly liked politics.

And while there have been repeated calls for her to run for president, whether it's from party strategists, cable news commentators or plenty of anxious Democrats, she has never once expressed interest in mounting such a campaign, or even in the job itself. I mentioned this because in the last year, we've had a lot more politicians on talk easy, and I suspect the serning viewers will notice a real difference in tone, temperament, and approach to how I handle those conversations with those in a elected office.

Including our recent episode with Governor Josh Piero, a Pennsylvania, or our slightly contentious talk from last year, which Senator Elizabeth Moran. Both of which, you can find wherever you are listening or watching this right now. So with that, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Michelle Obama.

“I want to start the very simple place, which is, how are you doing?”

I'm doing good. Is that true? I'm loving the 60s. You know, I mean, we're out of office. There's a new level of freedom.

I am truly an empty nester, meaning that I have grown daughters that are really good, and they are independent. And I'm now moving from parent to consultant friend, and I love that place. But for the world, I am personally doing really well. I heard you on a recent episode of I am out, you said I'm good, but for the world, the title for the episode was, call these times what they are. Janky.

Now, Janky is the makeshift studio I made 10 years ago when I first started this show.

A little, but Janky to me feels like the banana yellow datsin that brought picked you up in on your first.

Like, that's Janky. That's Janky. When you say, Janky, what do you mean by that? I mean, the country feels like it has a hole in it. And it's a little bit of a hole in the car.

Yeah, like a hole in the car that we're messy right now. That we're confused that we're upside down. That's what it feels like. It feels like we are off course. Not that we can't get back on course, but I don't think anybody's happy in the mess we're in.

And I don't hear or see or feel anyone who's like, yeah, this is exactly what I want it. Not deep down. And so it feels Janky. It feels crumpled and messy and rested and warm and tattered and torn. I want to know your day to day, like at the White House, there was a nightly ritual, at least my understanding.

There were two binders of briefings that would get delivered in the early evening. One was for you and one was for the president and you'd read yours in the sitting area of your dressing room.

“So at this point, like, do you get a binder like that every night?”

Like, do you get a basically like a printed version of the doomschool of what's happening in the news tonight?

No, I don't do that. What's your engagement with that? Well, I live with Google. My husband. Is that your nickname for him?

No, I don't. But he's he's he's my source of information. You know, although he is trying to ease himself of knowing too much. He is an important source in at dinner every night. You know, maybe not every night.

He's my primary source. It's a pretty good source to have. It's a very good source to have. Although, you know, he doesn't have insight information. He doesn't, you know, he doesn't have access to the current leadership in that way.

But he knows things and he's reading things.

“And I'm usually like, is there something I need to look at?”

If there's a good article, you know, just tell me, tell me. Just like a lot of people feel about him. They're like, can you call me when you're packing up and getting on the helicopter? Can you just give me a little hint? The helicopter to go where?

That we don't know. But people think there would be a helicopter that would come for us, you know? They just want to know ahead of time. And just to be clear, you'll have a seat on that helicopter for a six-one long-haired Cockaster, right?

I just want to, just want to get that out. In the coming, you say, so little of who I am happened in those eight years. So much more of who I was happened before. Like, you come a page on the South Side of Chicago on the upper floor of 7436, you could have a now. And a room separated by a wood partition between you and your brother Craig.

I've heard your husband describe your upbringing as the black version of Leave It to Beaver.

“Is that a fair assessment? Is that how it felt to you?”

Well, compared to his sort of topsy-turvy life, we were a regular American family. Mom, dad, brother, sister, one of each. My dad was the breadwinner in the household. He didn't put on a suit and tie. He put on a blue engineer's uniform and he had MS.

So he didn't galvan into the house and say, honey, I'm home. He was a shift worker. You know, so he had days, nights afternoons. And my mom had a calendar up on the refrigerator that had his shifts worked out. So we could all know when was that going to be home for dinner.

Is this the week that he could go to the basketball game? You know, so he would do that calendar so that we could plan our lives around just knowing where he would be. My mom stayed home. She was a housewife until I went to high school. She was involved in the PTA very involved when we were young because she made a choice to send us to the neighborhood public school around the corner.

But it was a neighborhood public school in a black community. But she often encouraged you to to question teachers and authority, right? For sure. Why do you think she did that? As my mom said, you know, a lot of adults just didn't give.

Don't give little people credit for having brains and thoughts. And she, you know, for whatever reason.

My mom, you know, she would have been an amazing child therapist.

She understood kids and she enjoyed them. She enjoyed us. And she saw from an early age that we could be taught things that we could understand that we could figure things out on our own and that if you explain something to a child rather than snatching it from them or spanking them that they would get it.

And that sometimes our teachers were people who didn't have it. You know, I mean, she was pretty honest. She'd point out that it's like that teacher shouldn't be a teacher. She doesn't know what she's talking about. And she was very concerned about not letting some other person damage her children.

She wanted us to learn how to fight our own battles in a way that was effective. Sometimes she said, I would go a little, I would cross the, not cross the, but I would play on the edge of the line. And what would that look like? There's this one time in high school. I remember it distinctly.

I was in this, I went to a great magnet high school, but there was, I think I was a sophomore. I was in some English course that was just kind of basic. We were doing vocabulary in a basic way when we had to find words. Put them on a cart like we were children and write the definition. And these carts somehow had credit.

I always thought that assignment for high school student was kind of stupid and lazy for the part of the teacher.

But, you know, it was easy. So I had done all these cards and I'd done all of them. When I got my grade, I had a C. I went to my teacher and I was like, what, what's with the C?

“I know it's a limited amount of work you have to do and I know I've done it.”

You made your case. Right. But all he said was, you didn't turn in your cards. And I was like, how, how could I not turn in my cards? I actually turned in my cards.

And then I thought, so you have as doing these cards. And you don't even, you're not even keeping track of them. So this is some bullshit basically. You're a lot of curse on the show. Yeah, I don't know.

I didn't wait to be asked. Yes, yes, we curse. Not all the time. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We're allowed to. Okay. Okay.

So then I said, well, show me where you keep the cards that students turn in.

He opened a drawer where all these cards were just strewn about. I mean, it was like a dump truck of cards. These cards. And I was like, you have as doing this. And you've just thrown these cards in here.

You're not even paying attention.

“And so I start going through the drawer.”

He's like, look, and I was like, there were thousands of cards. It was like, he was, that was such a jerk move. And so that's like right here for you. Like you're describing it as if it happened two days ago. I mean, it's so unfair and outrageous.

So I have an attitude already. And so I start taking the cards. I don't care. You want me to look at them. So I was taking them out.

And I started throwing them on his desk. Because I was like, it's going to be in your way, too. You're going to have me go through this pile of junk you just through in the drawer. And I actually found all my cards. And when I found them, I just threw them on his desk as like, here they are.

And I was like, call the principal. Call. You don't like my attitude. Because this, what you've done to us having us do this stupid assignment that you're not even tracking. The principal should know.

And please call my mother. You know, it was that kind of stuff. And I went home and I told my mother this story. And she was like, well, you might not have wanted to throw in the cards on his desk. She said, you were right.

You know, you were fundamentally right now. You eventually got my A and it's hard. So you got your dad. Because I did. Because I was like, let's call in the authority.

You went above him. Well, I didn't have to. I called his bluff. There we go. Are you a poker player?

Would you have ever played? No. No. No. No.

I feel like you'd be pretty good. It seems like a waste of time. Oh. No. It's fun.

When you. I. I'm not going to defend poker. But I. We want to go in on poker.

Same. Yeah. My parents are going to be like, so you talked about taxes. Hold them with her. Oh, we cow.

My understanding is to get to Whitney young. You had to wake up at 5 30 in the morning.

Make your way to 75th and Jeffrey to catch the first of two buses.

Yeah. Now, I was a kid who also rode the buses school, not as far or not as long. Yeah. Did you ever nap on the bus?

“Did you procrastinate your homework and finish it at the last second?”

Like, this is before the iPhone before the Walkman. I'm sorry to you here. Don't. No. No worries.

I'm not going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this.

I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this.

I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this.

I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to have to do this. I'm going to do this.

I'm going to have to do this. In your pocket, and downtown is a really kind of special place.

So I got a feel for the life of this other world, the important part of Chicago, right?

And then moving further west as things were not developed at the time. I mean, the near west side is now this bastion of bourgeois blah blah blah. But then it was pretty abandoned and run down. And the school was right on the edge of that place. So sitting there and taking in that experience was kind of a part of the ride that I enjoy.

And the wonder and the kind of unfolding of what what light had to offer beyond my neighborhood. And what did you want at that point? I had a distinct understanding that there were things that you could control at that age that would get you to a better place. What do you mean?

We all understood that in order to succeed, you had to make some right choices.

And the neighborhood high school wasn't a place that would direct you where you wanted to go. And so I knew that Whitney Young is new magnet high school that was doing what the multi-age program did, which was drawing in all of the best talent would give me an opportunity to learn and learn safely. Because you're also when you're dealing with neighborhood schools you're dealing with.

“What is it like to be in a neighborhood school and be a smart kid?”

When not everybody else is thriving, right? Because there's nothing that's more frustrated to kids who struggle, then sit next to the kid who's getting the A. And now you've got a fight to get home or you've got a you've got a code switch to get home because, you know, kids are frustrated, right? Or they don't have a parent at home or there's something else going on in them and who gets the brunt of it except the kids that stand out.

And that impedes your learning and I knew all that and I was like, I want to be in a high school where I'm not fighting with you know,

where all the kids are on the kind of same page where it's like really cool to excel and so I'm pretty wise teenager. I was pretty, pretty wise because you know, my parents were. They trusted us to make these decisions and it wasn't like my mom was the one that was doing this research. My dad was working all the time. My parents didn't go to college. They didn't know this pathway. But they knew that we'd figure it out.

I was already thinking very strategically about life and when I got to height.

“So the short question is, what was it that I want it?”

I wanted to be on this pathway that would lead me to a place where I would have options. I didn't know what those options needed to be. I didn't see it necessarily, but I knew the links to education, the best education that I could get would at least give me the foundation to figure it out when I got there. Now, the story you tell over and over again, I've heard you tell it many times.

Your senior in high school, you, you're in the top 10% of your class of Whitney Young and you arrive at your appointment with the school guidance counselor. Now, I want to know if you can go back to this moment, how did you present your plans to this woman? Like, how did you describe or lay out your dreams to her? And did she ask you any questions? I had four schools that I was looking at that I walked in and said, look, I'm going to apply to a state school, like University of Illinois.

I'm going to apply to what out of school state school, the University of Madison and Wisconsin. I was going to apply to an HBCU Howard and I was going to apply to Princeton and Ivy League school because my brother went there. And I was smarter than him and worked harder than him. So I was like, he's managing. He's like, I went to the campus.

I was like, it's lovely. It seems safe. It's a great school. It'll be an interesting education. I'm going to give it a shot.

That was sort of the research I came in with. So I'm sure I presented that to her. You're prepared. And I think her thing when she looked at Princeton, she says, essentially, you might be reaching too far on that. That might be a stretch for you.

I don't know if you're Princeton material, which was like, wow, you know, do you know me? You know, if you talked to my professors, me, you just met me. I'm pretty sure this was a person of color. She's not a real person in my mind.

“She's a face because that's how little interaction I had with her, because after that conversation, I never talked to her again.”

I went to teachers, professors who knew me and decided, let me get the advice of somebody that's actually taught me.

Just so you know, you got counselors here that are telling little black kids that they shouldn't strive for the best.

“I don't know if I said that, but that was kind of the thought.”

You know, your late mother told the New Yorker, and it's made me laugh since I read it.

She said, Michelle's always been vocal about anything.

If it's not right, she's going to say so. And so Craig would call me because Craig was at Princeton when you land there and she said, and so Craig would call me and say, Mom, Michelle's here telling people they're not teaching French right. She thought the style was not conversational enough. I told them, just pretend you don't know her.

It's like, save yourself. Michelle, who I don't know. I don't know. We're all right. It's like, don't know.

It never heard of her. But was that, is that the kind of college kid you were? If something was wrong, would you, would you get out there? I probably would. I probably would.

I don't remember the French thing that well.

“My family tells me all kinds of stories that like, I don't even remember that.”

But no, my my fundamental personality has always been the same.

And this is something that I tell that I I see in people that I interview and talk to who are successful in all kinds of fields. People say what I felt which was I knew what I could do early on. I mean, my earliest memories of like four was knowing like I know some things. Like I do understand some things. It's in my little soul.

But I'm seeing things and I feel certain things. You know, that are like there was a confidence. There was a sense of who I was and I know that a lot of kids feel that about themselves. You know, that's why I say kids are born with a light, you know, they all have it. I kind of understood mine.

But I also grew up in an environment that was fueling my life. Contrary to for a lot of kids. People live. It's nothing and out. Right.

They see it in the moment they see it. They try to dim it.

“And what I want young people to know is that there's a voice inside of you.”

That is telling you a story about yourself. That is often good. And believe it. I just happened to believe it. I believe that I was smart.

I was capable. I had good judgment. I could make decisions. And a lot of this came from the way my parents parented us is part of that belief. Of course, it comes from your mother who told you a question, a thought.

Ask why, but you mentioned this earlier, your father who worked for the city of the power plant from from 27 to the day he passed. He put on that blue uniform. And I wonder like if that belief in yourself first came from the belief he had in himself to keep going. You know, my dad was he was a worker. He took us to work.

He was the water filtration plant by the way for the city of Chicago and you know the main water filtration plant by Navy Pier that was his work. And we drive around the back and it was a beautiful location because it was right on the water. You know, the the the boiler room where he worked face the lake. But I remember all of that. His sense of pride, his sense of responsibility, his determination, his lack of complaining about it.

But he was that in all kinds of ways. So wasn't just the uniform time when he was putting it on.

It was always also the way he showed up in his community and his family.

My dad was a precinct worker, which meant that, you know, he worked for as a city worker, which is what happened in the daily administration in your city worker. They also got a work in politics. But my dad flourished in that because he worked in our neighborhood. And he knew the grandmother is in the neighbor.

He's in time as something you give other people. Yeah. And he showed that. I mean, he was generous with his time. He was the one people came to.

And I saw that more than I saw his disability. That was as much of had an impact on me and how to show up in the world. His relationships to other people, the way he equalized people. He treated people the same no matter what, whether you with a cousin that was kind of a drunk.

And it was a little irresponsible. He showed him the same kind of love as, you know, he showed us. He didn't discriminate. He didn't, you know, and those are the kind of things that I guess it was the determination. It was the work ethic.

I mean, my fighting was like my dad's fighting for me.

“So when I run into incompetent people, people who don't care about their work and don't care about their job is as much.”

That that sort of sense of outrage that you're a teacher that's giving a stupid assignment to not just me but to a bunch of kids. If you're phone in and in, you know, that kind of pisses me off. As you know, I don't believe in phoning it in here. By the billions of notes I understand. And I'm loving it.

Okay, good. Good. But when we come back, I want to talk about where that commitment and determination delivered you back in Chicago. It's coming up next with Michelle Obama.

Lately, I've been thinking about the moments that change you. Not the big dramatic stuff, the small ones. Like when you catch yourself about to say something reactive and you just don't. It's not something that happens overnight. It's something that you build one moment at a time.

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“You were assigned, I think, to be his advisor.”

So walk me through this. Barack, at the time I was a first year, was a first year law student. So he was interviewed for his first year summer, which, by the way, for a firm like Sidley in Austin, that was inundated with candidates. It was rare for them to select a first year in their program.

And that's all I heard was boy, have we found somebody, everybody that met him, that interviewed him was like, he's amazing.

And the, you know, secretary is like, and he's cute, and he's this, and he's that, and he's like Barack Obama. And I was like, okay, whatever. So I get a picture, and the picture is not a great picture. I mean, it looks like he's gone into like a 7/11 to take his picture, right? I mean, it's bad lighting, and, you know, when I was like, I don't think he's that cute.

And I'm thinking, okay, these are white people that are flipping over and articulate black man. So I was like, let me just lower my expectations, and then it was like he was from Hawaii, and I was like, what black people are in Hawaii. So I already had in my mind that this was going to be some nerdy, ultra-conservative. You know, I just sort of painted a picture, not an angry picture. I was just like, oh, I know what I'm getting.

So I called him first on the phone just to introduce myself. And when he picked up the phone, he had that Barack Obama voice. Mm-hmm.

“That I didn't expect because I had already pictured him as kind of a, do we be kind of person who would be appealing to white people as a black man?”

Do you ever do his voice back to him? All the time, we all do it. He's like, hello, it's Barack Obama, I can't get down that low, but I was like, oh, the voice was sexy over the phone. I was like, wow, this is Barack Obama. Look at this photo.

Yeah, hold on. So my job was to greet him and he was late. And then I was like, you're late at the Robinson household. You know, my dad's not late. How are you late, right?

But I think it was raining and something happened. And as I would learn, that's kind of him. You know, but I went to greet him at the reception's office, and there he was.

“Which I was like, wow, I didn't expect this.”

He was tall, handsome, had some flavor. Mm-hmm. And I was like, wow, mm-hmm. You got past the tardiness. But I was still sort of like, okay, so we got settled.

I had to take him to lunch after he'd spin his day, getting his paperwork, finding his cubicle, and all that sort of stuff. So I took him out to a lovely lunch that was expensed by the firm. And we talked for hours. So this is, this is the part of the story I want to ask you about.

In the absence of your husband being here, I thought we could read from a passage of his book,

The Audacity of Hope, and which he writes about this first encounter with you over lunch.

Evan read this in a while. I imagine it's been a minute. The Audacity of Hope. Oh, Michelle was full of plans that day on the fast track. With no time, she told me for distractions, especially men.

But she knew how to laugh, brightly and easily. And I noticed she didn't seem in too much of a hurry to get back to the office. And there was something else, a glimmer that danced across her round dark eyes, whenever I looked at her. The slightest hint of uncertainty.

As if deep inside, she knew how fragile things really were. And that if she ever let go, even for a moment, all her plans might quickly unravel. That touched me somehow, that trace of vulnerability. I wanted to know that part of her. Oh, what a great writer he is.

I wonder, I'm sure you haven't read that in a long time. I sure have it. It's beautiful though. You were the student who is as you described yourself a box checker. A color coded note or that description of you.

Like, did you believe your plans would unravel if you let go for a second?

You know, you make plans and got laughs, as they say.

This was the first time in my life when I realized that I was just on a path that I didn't know anything about the path.

Why did I pick law school? Because I didn't know what else I was going to do after Princeton. And the options before me you could work at Proctor and Gamble and do sales. You could go to Wall Street and I was like, that doesn't sound good to me. I'm not ready for that.

So what am I good at? I can talk and argue and write. I'll apply to law school and then you apply to law school and you get into Harvard and you go. And this was after we met. So these thoughts were, you know, I was just in it.

I was a first year, right. So the vulnerabilities that he saw were just me understanding that life wasn't certain.

“But I think as we got to know each other and started dating, he was with me through the process.”

I lost my father in the time that I met him. I lost one of my best friends to cancer and she died suddenly. She was 26. She was my age. She was diagnosed in December and I was at her bedside as she was taking her last breath in May. And she was healthy.

You know, now you're confronted with this stuff in and it ends suddenly and it ends unfairly. And well, what am I doing? Right. Sitting here on the 47th floor, you know. And now I met this guy who I'm starting to fall in love with who did things completely differently.

His path as I said was sorvy and confusing and his childhood was something that I never understood or experienced.

He had lived in places that I never thought about and he was doing pretty good. Barack was with me through that process of thinking, who do I really want to be? And it's not just box checking.

“I couldn't do that. I could box check my way. I knew I could become a partner.”

You know, but I was also starting to learn about my fellow junior partners and I was realizing you don't like this either. And that's going to be your future if you go. Right. I started to realize that there was time and I hadn't done anything else, Sam. And my life had worked in Bob Goldman's bookbinder. I'd been a babysitter. I'd been a camp counselor, but I didn't have internships like that.

I didn't get to see banking or other fields or community service or nonprofit. I saw nothing. I knew nothing. And it was just becoming clear to me how little I knew about life. And here I was about to sink my fate into a career that I didn't like.

And my father died and life is short. And this guy that I know, he's done something totally different. Let me put down the box checking. Let me get off the path. Let me take a risk and try something else.

Let me swore with him. Let me swore with him. Ten years of public life, eight years in the White House. Around the time he starts to run for state Senate and then Senator leading up to 2008.

You said in the past, first of all, after not wanting to be in politics, but supporting my husband because I love my country,

my decision to support him had nothing to do with what was good for me. Yeah, as he's talking about politics, trust me, I am pulling back at him. I'm like, this is politics is stupid. I mean, I grew up in Chicago. I know Chicago politics, corruption, corruption, incompetence, insolarity, people holding on to power, people not willing, you know, I'd seen it all.

And I knew people in politics, I was a seasoned person. And I was like, it's hard to do the right thing in politics. And then I was like, and you're this really smart, good guy, you know, good guys aren't in politics. Why would you want to do something dumb like that? They will eat you up alive.

You told him that. Yeah, yeah.

“And I was like, what did he say when you said that?”

You know, he had been an organizer on the south side. He, you know, he spent as much time in these communities as I had. He knew the political structure. He just wasn't afraid of it. He was like, yeah, you're right. He didn't disagree.

He was like, yeah, this is the tough road. But he was very, he had the same thing about him as I did. He knew what he could do. And I knew that it wasn't that I didn't believe in him. I just didn't like politics.

Right. And I understood its limitations. And I'm more pragmatic and less of a dreamer.

But I also thought, well, he has a passion for this.

And I learned that while when you find something that you do love, that's, that's a gift and it's not my place to stand in the way of that. I don't like it. But we are independent people. We support me.

I support you. That will not be my life. Yeah. That's your life. But you're not liking it.

I mean, the amount of work you do for something you don't like. I mean, you're on the campaign trail. I don't like politics. They called you the closer. I don't like politics.

I love people. Yes. And I love service. You're absolutely right. And I was, I was surprised.

You went out there. And you're right so beautifully in becoming about enduring the 2008 campaign trail.

“And you say it's important for young people to know about this chapter.”

About this experience. When, quote, my whole persona was being distorted. What did that look like back then? Like, and how did the press try to distort you? In my view, it was also a failing in Barack's campaign.

His team of people. Because when I said, OK, I'm going to, you know, I, but didn't campaign for a state senate office. You know, I helped get petitioned sign. I wasn't involved in his U.S. Senate race in a major way. I was supportive, but I had a career.

I had small children, so on and so forth. I get out there on the campaign trail. Small team that I'm given, you know, what people are hired. But the structure that I had, my chief of staff, Melissa Winter. And I had one, my comms director, Katie McCormick, L'Elebel.

Mm-hmm. And the three of us, two white women in me, and young. And we go out there and start going Iowa. Sight, you know, that's all we do. We're given an assignment.

Yes. Not a comms team, not speech training, not a speech writer. Not, I talked to no one about this. [laughs]

I got on the first flight out, landed, and there was a kid.

Some kid waiting to pick me up. It was, look like you, Sam. [laughs] Young. Even though you think that you look like an old man.

You look like a baby.

“And that's what every staffer on the Obama campaign.”

They were amazingly percotious, smart, engaged, serious people. Yes. Somebody would have on a suit, and I'd get in a car, and be dropped off at somebody's house. And you'd give speeches.

I would talk, because I was like, I didn't have a speech, but I would tell my story. So what was the distortion? What was the thing that hurt you? The distortion was when I became more effective.

Because it wasn't what I said. My take is that I was having an impact. Positive impact. A positive impact. I mean, the backyards turned into churches.

And then they turned into a gymnasium at a school. I mean, the numbers of people that were in Iowa that were curious about this campaign, this candidate, and then his wife, who gave, I guess, gave them a glimpse into who he was as a man, his values, things like that. I think what I chose to talk about, which wasn't policy. I was like, I can't, I don't have time to learn about all of his policies,

because I still have a job. But I can talk about us as a family that that was appealing to people. And that was a connection. So it was just, we were moving numbers in a way that drew attention to me. Who is the wife of this guy?

And that's when before I knew it, press was at my events and cameras. And then there was one. And then there was more. The criticism was severe. And then they said I was a masculating.

And then they said I was angry. And then they said, you know, there were just all these terms that I was like, oh my God, where is this coming from? You said you didn't love your country. I didn't love my country.

And this stuff sort of spread out over time because. Can I show you something? Yes.

“I want you to just look at this and see if you remember this.”

Yeah, I remember this. Yeah. Yeah. I heard you say in the becoming doc. People will tell you, oh, Michelle, it's just politics.

It's just politics. And you said no. It's not just politics. It changes a person's soul. And I wondered when you see this.

When you think back on the things that they said, what they accused you of, what did that do to you?

Well, first it made me almost walk away completely.

You know, I mean, my thing was, look, if I'm a hindrance to my husband's campaign,

I didn't, I don't want to do this.

And maybe I'm not good for him. Maybe I am not the right person. Did you really believe that?

“I believe that there was a lot of frustration.”

There was just frustration with the campaign. There was frustration with the way I as a spouse which treated as a woman as a black woman was being treated. That made me just want to say, I don't, I don't need this. We have a happy life. I want to, I don't want to get chewed up in somebody else's process.

And then not be protected in it, you know, because I also didn't have a complete press team because I understood what was going on. It just became exhausting. I understood that there was no one that was affirmatively looking out for me on my husband's campaign team. You know, until it became a problem.

I was, I was angry about that, you know. So it was, it just became exhausting. And that kind of exhaustion is soul-sucking. And I talk about it because I want people out there to know that why should somebody right off this kind of stuff to being just politics? Like it's okay.

This is part of the game. And it's easy to do that when people say that. It's just politics. And it's like, now let's be clear of what you're doing.

“I mean, missus grievance, that's what they call this.”

Yeah, yes, it was politics because it wasn't true. So in terms of me feeling it, it was so sucking because it was a game. And I was like, I have to now play a game that this isn't about what it really is supposed to be about, which I knew going into it.

That's why you didn't want to do it in the first place.

That's why I didn't want to do it in the first place. I don't know when your husband's elected, you go into the White House. That game that you're talking about. Because you strike me as someone. This is our third time meeting.

You really don't want to bullshit if you don't have to. Now you're in the White House. First black family there. How do you maintain a sense of yourself? A sense of your authentic self?

When the world is demanding you obscure parts of yourself. That you hide parts of yourself. That you have a perfect image that no one has. These hardships in the campaign prepared me. I mean, instead of quitting,

I just said, okay, I got to be smarter.

I've got to be more thoughtful. I have to be tighter because we're in it now. My husband's doing this and I'm seeing him less and less, because he's got his own. So we're in it.

It's like hang on. Everybody's got to buckle up and we've got to figure this out. We're going to figure this out. We're going to figure out how I, as a black woman in this arena,

needs to communicate. How to soften? How to moderate tone in a way that I can be heard. I mean, it's the beginning of the going high. The going high philosophy that sometimes people are like,

do we always go high? I don't, but I just don't go low in public. I go low in my kitchen table. I go low with my mom. I'm like, I let all that stuff out with people that I can safely

let it out to. But my point became, what are we trying to do? We're trying to create change. We're trying to have an impact. We have the potential for doing this.

I can do this. Do not go low in public because you feel people can't handle it. I don't think it's useful.

“I think if you're trying to get something done,”

the strategy is how do you, and you're trying to communicate with people. If I'm going low, I'm just indulging my fear. I'm doing my worst instincts. It's selfish because it's like, I'm just having a tantrum. You know, so now you see me angry.

But you still don't hear me. What was clear was like, I can reach so many more people. As long as I'm in the game, I can make changes. We can be more strategic.

Be more thoughtful. By that campaign, I understood that I had to take control of my own narrative. That I couldn't count on a team of people or other other people on the campaign. I had to start taking charge of reshaping it because if I didn't and didn't do it quickly, I could easily be redefined and redefined negatively.

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Fellow Southsideer and poet Gwendolyn Brooks writes conductor blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind.

“I thought that was such a vivid description of”

what I imagined you had to do for eight years.

The roll of first lady, I don't think people know this,

but it's such an odd. There's no salary. There's a stipend. The East Wings filled with a staff with no budget. Everything you do is you say like there's a soft power.

But you focus on education, healthy eating, and military families. When you look back on this time now, why were those the issues that you wanted to give yourself to? That you wanted to give your platform to? What I learned over the course of my career,

because by now I've done many things in life. When we're at this stage, I've been a lawyer. I've worked in city government. I've run departments. I've built a nonprofit organization.

I come in as a professional. And so when I came into the first lady's job, it was that same mentality of,

okay, first of all, let me decide what I care about.

Right. Because in this role was first lady, I pick it. You know, that's the beauty. But we couldn't pick his issues. They were flying in on his table.

I understood what the first lady's power was. I can do the, somebody else can do the flowers, and all that. I'll look at it. I approve it. But, you know, there's a forest.

They're good. It's like, give me some options. Number one, that was a minute. Now let's figure out, you know, all that stuff is important. And it's important to do.

I enjoyed it. But I didn't have to set the table. You know, I'm not cooking the meals. You know, I didn't cook for a long time. That's, you know, let's let the people who cook cook.

Do you miss cooking? No, I don't. I don't. When I had to do it, I could find enjoyment in it. But, you know, it's like, there are people who have spent time cooking.

They're better than me. You can do it. You know, I, I, I see that to you. And there's some people who love it so much that they want to do it. And they should.

“You know, you should take something off your list and do the cooking.”

I'm trying it. I'm getting better. So this is good. That's good thing for me. You know, it's good.

You should not cook. I approach the job that way. So the, but I was also strategic because it was like the other thing is like, I can't pick some issue. Right.

That the president of the United States can't support. He was going to be working on health care. So I was like, okay. I do deeply care about health. I've learned about childhood obesity.

I've dealt with that in my life. And I'm really passionate about that because our kids are growing up healthier. I was, I was dealing with that as a mother and I knew there was something that we could do there. So I started with nutrition because I thought that's going to tie in the health care. Whether you support his health care plan or not.

Being healthy and living healthy and doing it for our kids. Mm hmm. That's got to resonate. I started there over the course of the campaign when it comes to joining forces and military families. This was an issue that I learned about as I campaign because I spent a lot of time in military

communities on military bases. And I was beginning to understand that so many Americans have no idea what these families are sacrificing. I was honored. I was moved by who these mostly women were and how they had to move every eight years and how kids were going. I was learning so much.

I thought no one knows. If you don't live in a military community, you have no idea. You just assume that you serve in sacrifice and you wave the flag. You start a war and you have no idea what these families are going through.

Well, let's take care of the people who are defending us. They shouldn't be fighting for housing in childcare and we were in a war. We were visiting Walter Reed. We were seeing people coming back with no legs and no arms.

We were dealing with the pains of care takers and who were caring for a husband that would never walk or couldn't see.

The first time you went to Walter Reed, you were scheduled to be there for 90 minutes. You stay for 4 to 5 hours. When you talk about that exact thing you said, people don't know the consequences like the cost of going. When you see this current administration being as flippant as they are about it, you think about those troops who visited at Walter Reed.

“How do you hold that? How do you make sense of that in this moment?”

This moment has happened before. So it's not new. We talk about security and defense. We're spending so much money on it. Everybody feels good about it because only 1% of us are really sacrificing for it.

So it's easy to be in that position. If you're not really looking at the people who serve. But you looked at those people. You spent a lot of time and our administration did. The president did, the vice president did.

And once you go into Walter Reed, when there's a war and there are the beds are full. The beds are full of not people who are dealing with diabetes or the heart attack that they had. Which Walter Reed provides care all the time. But when the beds are filled with casualties and you see how young these kids are. And you see how young their spouses are.

And you know what the road ahead is going to be for them. A revocably altered by more. I can't leave. Where do I have to go? I'm not going to finish this.

You know, I'm not going to see everybody. I'm not going to stop at every spouse and give a hug to every mother. Well, why am I here? Where are we rushing to?

“That's how it goes from 90 minutes to four hours.”

What could be more important? You don't leave that situation.

And you have a responsibility to at least as the first lady whose kids are not getting shot down.

Whose husband just goes to the Oval office and is not on the battlefield. Let me see you. Let me let you know that I see you. It's like it just seems like the right thing to do. You're right.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. How are you doing? I'm upset.

What upset you? Well. No. What of the many things? Yeah.

I was thinking.

“I want to talk to you about January six.”

Not not that one. Okay. It's like, oh, Sam. I wrote that joke down. I thought you'd like it.

January six, 2017. East Wing. Your final speech. Final speech is first lady. So I didn't even really tie those two dates together.

This is what I'm here for. Okay. This is what I'm here for. Everyone in the room got nervous. I'm here to talk about the answer right now.

The lives, guys. Relax. We're talking about something that actually matters to me. Which is this speech you give. And as you know, my father 30 years ago, public school teacher.

You give a speech to educators and school counselors. Speaking through the importance of diversity and education. And I want to do to watch some of that with us. Our diversity is a faiths and colors and creates that is not a threat to who we are. It makes us who we are.

So the young people here and the young people out there do not ever let anyone make you feel like you don't matter. Or like you don't have a place in our American story because you do. It is our fundamental belief in the power of hope that has allowed us to rise above the voices of doubt and division of anger and fear that we have faced in our own lives and in the life of this country. Shoot it's the hope of my folks like my dad got up every day. Do a job at the city water plant.

The hope that one day his kids would go to college and have opportunities he never dreamed of.

That's the kind of hope that every single one of us politicians, parents, preachers, all of us need to be providing for our young people.

So I want to close today by simply saying thank you. Thank you for everything you do for our kids and for our country.

Being your first lady has been the greatest honor of my life and I hope I've made you proud.

Well that's miss grievance. Because it's like when you speak with passion, your facial expressions, the words that you use. Hey, I could turn that into anything, right? Somebody could interpret that in all kinds of ways.

“And you know, that's why we have to be reminded of the good in us.”

We have to give each other the benefit of the doubt. And if I don't do it as first lady, if I don't do it in my position. You know, that's when we start picking each other apart. You know, we start seeing each other as the other. What I look at when I say that speech is not just me, but the face is behind me.

You know, not everybody in that group was a Democrat, but they, you know, we know what's right. We know what we believe. And I know that about people, but if no one is telling you and they're telling you just the opposite that that same woman who said that doesn't love her country. And that's all you hear because you weren't there, you know, you don't know her. And it's the same thing you feel as a kid, you don't even know me.

And you don't think I can do this, you don't think I should go to college. You don't think to ask a question. You don't think to ask the question, you don't think to do the research. You don't think to do your job to be competent, to be a competent American, to be a competent human. When you get on that plane, a inauguration day of 2017, and they take off after eight years after all you have done, all your family has given to this country.

Did you finally have a moment to exhale?

I didn't just exhale, I sobbed. It was like walking on that plane and having that door close, it was just like it all came out. It's almost like you could breathe. It's like, yeah. We made it out.

Everyone's like the kids. You got your arms. That has been, you got your head, you know. Everyone packed their laptop. Everybody's right.

Got blanky, tiger. If you left your phone, I'm sorry. We're not going back for it. You don't need it. We'll get another phone.

Do you remember that plane ride? I don't see it completely clearly because so much of what we do is so much. There was so many emotions all the time and managing so much else and everybody.

“I think the staff, so sometimes the specifics where people can, you know, it's a little blurry.”

But how does it feel, do you know? It's a relief and pride and exhaustion. You know, it's a little bit of all of it. And I was proud of my husband, proud of the man he showed up as every day. Proud of my kids for, you know, putting up with it, having their entire childhood ruined.

I mean, they've lived in the White House longer than they've lived anywhere. Imagine trying to grow up with secret service. You know, it's hard enough. Trying to have a boyfriend or go to a prom or play on a team and another schooler. Getting to college or, yeah, it's proud of my mom, proud of our team.

Proud of the country, it's still, I was disappointed that we left the way we did. But I still know the country that we led and it didn't change. People didn't fundamentally change. It's just that we can be easily influenced, especially when we're in pain and struggling. I want to ask some big questions before we go.

You've talked in the beginning about the Janky timeline. Yeah.

In 2008, when your husband was elected, you said in an interview for your first cover of

Vogue, the writer was Andre Leon Talley, really a beautiful story. You said, quote, "I was proud as a wife, but amazed as a citizen. I felt a sense of relief, a sense of calm that the country I lived in was a country I thought I lived in." And I read that and I thought, as a citizen, when Donald Trump wins in 2016 and 2024,

“how did you're thinking about the country you live in change?”

Did it change by the passage of time? I mean, I was deeply, deeply disappointed.

And he's right.

“That outcome had as much to do with people's pain and confusion about where they are in their lives.”

We haven't completed the assignment of actualizing this democracy.

It works in a lot of times and for a lot of people, it doesn't. I've seen it all. I've experienced it all. I know what it's like to be underestimated, under-invested in. And that's happening all over the country, more and more as the income gap is widened. And more people are falling through the cracks and experiencing worse than what I did growing up.

And my father had a job as an entire life. He was never unemployed. We never worried about our rent.

We had health care. He could put us through college. We could afford college even though it was expensive. The basics, more Americans had more of the basics. And that's becoming less and less and my gosh, when you don't, when you don't have a chance, and you're doing everything you're supposed to do. And that's happening for people of all races and all colors and all parts of this country and cities and rural counties and on farms and people who are like my dad.

That makes you angry and it makes you susceptible to find someone to blame other than the people who are rightfully a part of the problem.

“And that's true. That anger, yeah, I can't look some people in the face and tell them you have no right to be angry or to do something that maybe is against your own interest, that's what that's human nature.”

Many of the people who voted for my husband twice. Twice. And I know that that's how they feel. It's like this isn't this isn't about anything other than I'm just we need we need something different. They voted for Donald Trump. Yeah, you know, a lot of people. So you can't just pigeonhole them and say you just don't care and your racist or whatever you're thinking this is an act of I don't know what else to do. I just wish we had more leaders that were figuring out how to do more for the middle class for the working folks because

Those are the folks who are drowning in this economy. It's not me anymore, but I know those folks and they're good people and they don't have a way out and that makes for bad choices. I want to talk about your next chapter because you started the show, I am a beautiful book the look. I want to know the show was an inspired and part by the conversations that you were having with your brother and your mother before she passed away. It was almost two years ago now. Why is this the time to do this for you? Well, that was kind of a test case.

“I mean, it was a fun way to promote becoming. It was a good way for people to hear my mom's voice, which I think is a wise, important voice to have out there.”

And so our team was so like, wow, that was that was different, that was special. So that was there. It wasn't like I had a plan to do a podcast because podcasting is just now becoming, you know, it's becoming a thing and it's a really great way to reach people. So all the stuff that I do now post White House is still, is there a purpose that's useful to somebody? Because I don't have to work. I don't, I don't need a job. We've had plenty of attention. As my mom said, I'm not special. I would just, I just had things work out and I've learned some things along the way and now that I'm 60, I know what I know.

And even though I was this little cocky confident for your older, I still sort of like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know if this is right. I'm going to be clear about it, but I don't know. Maybe that's the vulnerability that Barack saw. It's like, yeah, I think I know, but probably don't work in progress. And I can now sit in my wisdom in a way that I feel comfortable saying, maybe I can help somebody else. That's the mentoring in me. I do love when I can make it easier for somebody else.

It's like, don't go down that tunnel. I was down there. It's dark. Come back. I'm expecting a phone call from you anytime. I'm making a bad decision here. You know me. Just, well, now you have to ask, because I've learned just don't call Sam up. You tell him what you think.

I should also add. I was rewatching the documentary and your mother is so funny. Like, I just kept dying laughing. She could have been school counselors. She said, she could have maybe done stand a promise.

“I don't know. She was just so fucking funny.”

Yeah. Before we leave, I want us to hold the story that she would tell that made you laugh and also that conversation that you had with her on the couch.

Yeah, my mother, I had the pleasure. My mom got sick. Had a issue that was going to eventually kill her and she was with us in Hawaii for Christmas like she always was and she had to be hospitalized.

And she was just getting older and frail. And every time she had this issue, she couldn't eat. She had to have a feeding tube. And as the doctor said that, you know, she just wouldn't bounce back and you just never know whether she wouldn't.

“And this was a pretty serious one. She was in the hospital for a couple of weeks. And then she got better and got home and I had the privilege of nursing her, which she hated.”

She hated her being dependent on us and us. She feeling like she was a burden. She was a proud person.

She was so proud. And she was so proud of the fact that she could let us live our lives because she raised us to be independent and not somebody that was worrying about their mother. But my mom was also pragmatic. She was preparing us for her death since we were 10 because she believed that she didn't want little kids feeling like they couldn't go on if something happened to their parents. And she was like, you'll be fine. And I don't want all this morning. People die. That's the way it is. Your mother's going to die one day. And we're like, but we're 10 mom. Do we really have to face this now? So she's getting us ready. So this was the conversation on the couch because we were sitting there and she knew how sick she was, but she was improving enough.

But we were sitting there watching some court show or, you know, blow deck, which she loved. She loved blow deck. She just couldn't understand why they couldn't get along on that boat. I was like, yeah, mom, you're right. People are crazy. And they're getting paid to knock it a lot. But we actually got quiet. And I was like, how are you feeling? She says good. She said, that was fast. I said, well, what are you talking about? She said, life. She said, life was fast. I just, I didn't say anything because I knew what she was saying. It was like, as ready as she was.

I was fricking fast because when she got sick that time, my mom was working out. She worked out at 87. She got on at 86. She got on treadmill every day. She did her exercises. She, she smoked. She smoked and ate what she wanted. Look, we can't be perfect. Can't be perfect. And she wasn't trying either. She's like, don't talk to me about smoking. She's like, I'm here. You know, I'd be, I'd be happy to die. I don't need to. She's like, I don't want to live forever. She's earned it. But she had a happy life. And she loved us and she loved to be with people. And I think when you get to that point, if you're fortunate enough to have a good life, are you ever really ready? If things are great.

“But it made me think and be reminded how short life is that you get to a certain age and things just go really fast. And that it's it made me think about being very mindful about how I spend the rest of this 20 summers or 30 summers.”

All right, however many more, I'm blessed to have. And to make sure that now I'm doing good things, but I'm doing things that mean something to me at its very core. Not just serving others, not just doing the right thing. But what do I want? That conversation, you know, sort of won't be up. It's similar to the to the revelation you had when your friend passed away when your father passed. Yeah. And you met Barack and you went, this can't be all there is.

Yeah. I have to do something else. And you're having it in another way, in this third act. And my last thing for us, you know, when talk about time like that,

I have this photo. And I I wondered.

They both look like babies, Barack and my mom. This is in the hotel room that we went to in Chicago, the night that Barack was elected president. And this was right at the time.

That the news officially even though we knew earlier in the evening that the numbers were looking good. CNN breaking news. Exactly. We project he now has enough electoral votes more than 270. Has that scary music that come right? It's just like in his face, you know, pops in large.

“You know, and it's surreal because it's like is that Barack on the TV is president of the United States of America?”

It really was. And I was probably sitting over here sitting to the to the left. And I'm sure my mom has that look like well, I'll be down. This boy did it. I can't believe it. He is actually going to be the president of the United States. Oh my god. Hmm. How is he going to manage it? Is he going to be okay? And I think that that's since in Barack of I'm sure he's thinking, oh my god, what have I gotten my mother and law into this lovely, leave it to be your family. I've just blown it up.

I've just lit a match under this lovely family. Let me grab her hand because we go need you to move with us mom. And she did. She did. I heard she did even her own laundry. Oh my god. My mother. She was like, there's no need for you to do my laundry. I've been doing my laundry for years. She wouldn't even eat dinner with us. Only on special occasions because she felt like you all need time to be a family. You don't need me sitting there.

The girls may want to talk to you about so she always did her dinners unless we were doing Thanksgiving or birthday or whatever.

She treated her third floor like she was on 74th in Euclid and we were in our house. She was like, I'll come by when you need me. She was there every evening when I came home because she was there to meet the kids. And then she go up to her little apartment upstairs. There was no wood partition this time. No wood partition, pretty big house.

When you look at this photo, when I look at this photo, we started this conversation with the janky timeline discourse.

“Obviously, that was a less janky time. I think we can agree.”

And I wondered, you and your husband have long subscribed to this idea that, quote, we don't fix things in a lifetime. That incremental progress is about as good as we can help for. And of course, when I hear that, I think of Dr. King's famous line. The Ark of the Moral Universe is long, but it instorts justice. And I have to say, as we sit here in this moment, I'm looking at this photo and I'm looking at you, which is a surreal experience for a kid who grew up in Chicago.

But as we sit here in this moment in America and what's going on right now, I'm wondering, after all you and your family have given, after all you've done in the White House and out what if the Ark of the Moral Universe does not bend toward justice. But breaks.

“It's never broken before. Why would this be any different?”

You know, we've been through worse. I mean, we've been through janky your times. You know, a lot of really janky painful times in the history of humanity and the history of this country. No, you know, I look at this picture. My husband reminds me that happened. That happened here and a lot of people, more people than it would like to this person, this current president voted for him. So it will bend, you know, it might bend a long time, but we won't break it. God might break it. Mother nature might break it and we will be indirectly responsible for it, but humanity, we see with any disaster.

The world keeps moving on. Humans are the ones that, you know, can't adapt, but we often do adapt. Believe in the promise and hope of this photo. It's our responsibility to believe. We're the older generation. If you don't believe, then you stop working. You say, oh, oh, well, what's the point? And who suffers, but children who have no choice to work. They don't have. We're working for them, just like Nelson Mandela.

You know, Nelson Mandela was in prison for most of his life and died before he saw the full fruits of his labor and he never got cynical.

They didn't experience the fruits of their work because it wasn't for us. It's for them for kids and our grandkids. That's what our parents did for us. My mother did not have the opportunities that I had.

“My father didn't, but they didn't stop. They didn't stop raising us. They didn't stop voting. They didn't stop reaching for better. They didn't get so cynical that they just gave up.”

So we are, if we do that then we're spoiled. And we're not building the muscle for change. So yeah, we had eight years of wonderful and hard times, but we didn't do that for me and Barack. This isn't about us. It's about the next generation.

My last question, as we sit here, you're somehow in your 60s. I don't know how. There's no chance I look half as good as you 160.

Thank you. Tell me what's precious to you in this moment. Oh, always, always children. I'm like my mother. I love kids. I love young people. You know, they're, they are pure. They come here. Clear, clean, hopeful, positive. We can even lift them up or we can smash them down. But if we lift them up, boy, wow, it's beautiful. It's a beautiful thing to experience and to watch. I started by saying, why am I good? Because I raised these really two good, amazing kids. And I remember when they were babies and they were being formed. And here's the thing, I don't assume that I am special that my girls are special. They're special to me, but they're still human. All kids are like them. They're all the same. I don't care what part of the country, the world they're in, they're all precious.

“Yeah, I believe that. And I've seen it. I got to travel the world. I see all these beautiful bright kids in Africa and India and Asia, all with the same hope, the same possibility, the same fire that was in me.”

I think it's a precious thing to nurture. And if we're thinking in that way, we make different choices. We don't choose things for us today. We choose them for them. And I think we can do a better job of making choices for them.

We can do so much better than we're doing now. And you know, I'll keep working for that as much as I can until I get a little tired.

Me too. Yeah, these conversations are important. Please keep it up. Hey, you tell me. I work for you now. So it sounds great. Get to work. Michelle Obama. Thank you. Thank you, Sam.

Okay. Way to go. Is that all right? That was beautiful.

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