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

This week, we're taking a break and sharing something special, from Talk Easy, part of our podcast network at Higher Ground. On Talk Easy, host Sam Fragoso shares deeply researched conversations with actors, politicians, activists and so many others, getting guests to open up in ways they haven't before. In this episode, Sam talks with Mrs. Obama. They get into her pivot to podcasting, her version of doomscrolling, and why these times are janky. She describes the complicated dynamics of life inside (and outside) the White House, the enduring influence of her late mother, the beloved Marian Robinson, and how her hard-fought belief in the American people has never faltered. For more episodes, watch and listen to Talk Easy with Sam Fragoso on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, IMO listeners. We wanted to share something special with you this week, an episode of another podcast from our network, Higher Ground, 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 modeled by our father, and the enduring influence of our mother,

• 0:45Speaker 00

  and the complicated dynamics of navigating life inside and outside the White House. There are 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.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  What would you like me to refer to you as throughout this episode? I have former First Lady, Mrs. Obama, ma'am, boss?

• 1:10Speaker 02

  I answer to it all. I don't like former First Lady. That's too much.

• 1:15Speaker 01

  We'll cross that one off.

• 1:16Speaker 02

  Mrs. Obama, I guess it's okay.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  You don't love that, though.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  I know. It just sounds so official, you know, Mrs. Obama. But I think it's your, if you want to call me Michelle, if you want to call me, hey, you.

• 1:31Speaker 01

  I don't think we're gonna do, hey, you.

• 1:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  This is Talk Easy. I'm Sam Fragoso. Welcome to the show.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  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 stump in 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 that feels increasingly rare in public life, all of which is on full display on her weekly podcast, IMO, which she co-hosts alongside her older brother, Craig Robinson.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  And so today, we start with the present, life away from 1600 Penn, her version of doom scrolling in 2026, and why podcasting appealed to her at this stage in life. From there, we discussed the lessons 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 wanted 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,

• 3:22Speaker 01

  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 mention this because in the last year, we've had a lot more politicians on Talk Easy, and I suspect discerning viewers will notice a real difference in tone, temperament, and approach to how I handle those conversations with those in elected office, including our recent episode with Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, or our slightly contentious talk from last year with Senator Elizabeth Warren, both of which you can find wherever you are listening or watching this right now. So with that, I hope you enjoy my conversation with Michelle Obama.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I want to start at a very simple place, which is, how are you doing?

• 4:12Speaker 02

  I'm doing good.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  Is that true?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  I'm loving the 60s, you know. I mean, we're out of office.

• 4:22Speaker 02

  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.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  I heard you on a recent episode of IMO, you said, "I'm good, but for the world." The title for the episode was, "Call These Times What They Are: Janky."

• 4:57Speaker 01

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

• 5:02Speaker 02

  And doesn't it feel like the country is there?

• 5:05Speaker 01

  A little, but janky to me feels like the banana-yellow Datsun that Barack picked you up in on your first. Like, that's janky.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  That's janky.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  When you say janky, what do you mean by that?

• 5:16Speaker 02

  I mean, the country feels like it has a hole in it, and it's a little rusty.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Like a hole in the car?

• 5:21Speaker 02

  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. You know, I don't hear or see or feel anyone who's like, "Yeah, this is exactly what I wanted." Not deep down. And so it feels janky. It feels crumpled and messy and rusted and worn and tattered and torn.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  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 basically like a printed version of the doom scroll of what's happening in the news each night?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  No, I don't do that.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  What's your engagement with that?

• 6:27Speaker 02

  Well, I live with Google, my husband.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Is that your nickname for him?

• 6:32Speaker 02

  No, but he's my source of information, you know, although he is trying to ease himself of knowing too much. He is an important source at dinner every night, you know, maybe not every night. He's my primary source.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  It's a pretty good source to have.

• 6:52Speaker 02

  It's a very good source to have, although, you know, he doesn't have inside 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?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  The helicopter to go where?

• 7:20Speaker 02

  That, we don't know, but people think there would be a helicopter that would come for us, you know? And they just want to know ahead of time.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  And just to be clear, you'll have a seat on that helicopter for a 6'1" long-haired podcaster, right? I just want to get that out. In Becoming, 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 of age on the South Side of Chicago, on the upper floor of 7436 Euclid Avenue, in a room separated by a wood partition between you and your brother Craig. And 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?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  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 gallivant 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 Dad gonna be home for dinner? Is this the week that he could go to the basketball game?

• 8:50Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:05Speaker 02

  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.

• 9:17Speaker 01

  But she often encouraged you to question teachers and authority, right?

• 9:21Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  Why do you think she did that?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  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...

• 9:37Speaker 02

  My mom, you know, she would have been an amazing child therapist. She understood kids and she enjoyed them. She enjoyed us.

• 9:47Speaker 02

  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. So she believed we were really smart, that we had all this capability. And that sometimes our teachers were people who didn't have it. You know? I mean, she was pretty honest. She'd point out, 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.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  Sometimes she said, I would go a little, I would, I would cross the, not cross the line, but I would play on the edge of the line.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  And what would that look like?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  There was 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 kinda basic. We were doing vocabulary in a basic way, where we had to find words, put them on a card, like we were children, and write the definition. And these cards somehow had a credit. I always thought the assignment for a high school student was kinda 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?

• 11:21Speaker 02

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

• 11:25Speaker 01

  You, you made your case.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  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, I actually turned in my cards. And then I thought, so you have us doing these cards and you don't even, you're not even keeping track of them? So this is some bullshit, basically.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  You're allowed to curse on this show.

• 11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I didn't wait to be asked. Yes, yes, we curse, not all the time, but yeah, yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  As much as you want here.

• 11:51Speaker 02

  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 us doing this and you've just thrown these cards in here? You're not even paying attention. And so I started going through the drawer. He was like, look. And I was like, there were thousands of cards. It was like, he was, that, that was such a jerk move. And so.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  That's like right here for you. Like you're describing it as if it happened two days ago.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  I mean, it's so unfair and outrageous. So I have an attitude already. And so I start taking the cards out. Okay, you want me to look at them? So I was taking them out and I started throwing them on his desk. Cause I was like, it's gonna be in your way, too. You're gonna have me go through this pile of junk you just threw 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, you, you, 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 kinda stuff.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  And I went home and I told my mother this story and she was like, well, you might not have wanted to have thrown the cards on his desk. She said, you were right. You know, you were fundamentally right. And I eventually got my A in the cards.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Did you get the grade you wanted?

• 13:20Speaker 02

  I did. Because I was like, let's call in the authority.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  You went above them.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't have to. I, I called his bluff.

• 13:27Speaker 01

  There we go. Are you a poker player? Would you, have you ever played?

• 13:30Speaker 02

  Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  I feel like you'd be pretty good.

• 13:33Speaker 02

  Seems like a waste of time.

• 13:35Speaker 01

  Oh. No. It's fun. When you, I, I, I'm not gonna defend poker here, but I.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  We wanna go in on poker, Sam?

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My parents are gonna be like, so you talked about Texas Hold'em with her? Holy 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. Now, I, I was a kid who also rode the bus to school, not as far, not as long. 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 walk? Man, I'm sorry to age you here.

• 14:15Speaker 02

  Don't, no, no worries.

• 14:17Speaker 01

  As you saw the city unfold before you, like, what would you do? And what, what did you imagine?

• 14:23Speaker 02

  You know, when you're up that early in the morning, you're barely up.

• 14:27Speaker 01

  And it feels like a nap to me.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's still dark out at 5:30 in the morning, especially in the winters. I mean, we could take the whole bus ride from the South Side to the West Side and the sun would barely start coming up. And because it was so early, you know, we were commuting with business people, the adults, seeing the city in its fullness, right? You know, in Chicago, cause you're a Chicagoan, you kinda live in your neighborhood.

• 14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. You stay in your pocket.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  You stay in your pocket and downtown is a really kinda special place. Well, we lived downtown because our, the students at Whitney Young had to go through downtown. So I, I, I got a feel for the life of this other world, the important part of Chicago, right? Passing the Art Institute, going down Jackson Boulevard and passing the big hotels with the bellmen and the door, the, the bellhops and the, passing some of the financial district and then moving further west as things were not developed at the time. I mean, the near, the near west side is now this bastion of bourgeois, blah, blah, blah.

• 15:33Speaker 02

  But then it was pretty abandoned and rundown 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 enjoyed. And the wonder and the kind of unfolding of what, what life had to offer beyond my neighborhood.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  And what did you want at that point?

• 15:54Speaker 02

  I, I had a distinct understanding that there were things that you could control at that age that would get you to a better place.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  What do you mean?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  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, this 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. Cause 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 frustrating to kids who struggle than sitting next to the kid who's getting the A.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And now you gotta fight to get home. Or you've gotta, you've gotta code switch to, 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 is the kids that stand out? And that impedes your learning. And I knew all that. And I was like, I wanna be in a high school where I'm not fighting with, you know, where all the kids are on the kinda same page, where it's like really cool to excel and thrive.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  You sound like a pretty wise teenager.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  I was, 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 high. So, the short question is, what was it that I wanted? 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.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  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.

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Now, the story you tell over and over again, I've heard you tell it many times. You're a senior in high school. You, you're in the top 10% of your class at Whitney Young and you arrive at your appointment with the school guidance counselor. Now, I wanna 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?

• 18:39Speaker 02

  I had four schools that I was looking at, that I walked in and said, look, I'm, I'm gonna apply to a state school, like University of Illinois. I'm gonna apply to an out-of-school state school, the University of Madison in Wisconsin. I was gonna apply to an HBCU Howard. And I was gonna apply to Princeton, an Ivy League school, because my brother went there. And I was smarter than him and worked harder than him. So I was like, he, he's managing. It was 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 gonna give it a shot. That was sort of the research I came in with. So I'm sure I presented that to her.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  You were prepared.

• 19:24Speaker 02

  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, do you know me? You know? Have you talked to my professors? I mean, 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, let me get the advice of somebody that's actually taught me.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  I mean, so it was sort of like a gut check, but I was also kinda telling on her. It was like, 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 kinda the thought.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  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, cause Craig was at Princeton when you, 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.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  She thought the style was not conversational enough. I told him, just pretend you don't know her.

• 20:59Speaker 02

  It's like, save yourself.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Michelle, who? I don't, I don't know. Yeah, Chicago, it's a coincidence.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  It's like, no, no, I've never heard of her.

• 21:07Speaker 01

  But was that, is that the kind of college kid you were? If something was wrong, would you, would you get out there and be vocal?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  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.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  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 light.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  Contrary to, for a lot of kids, it's dimmed.

• 22:26Speaker 02

  People are snuffing it out, right?

• 22:28Speaker 01

  They see it and the moment they see it, they try to dim it.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  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 happen 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.

• 22:56Speaker 01

  Is part of that belief, of course, it comes from your mother, who, who told you, question authority, ask why. But you mentioned this earlier, your father, who, who worked for the city at the power plant from, from 27 till 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.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  You know, my dad was, he was a worker. He took us to work. It 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'd drive around the back and it was a beautiful location because it was right on the water. You know, the, the boiler room where he worked faced 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 it 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,

• 24:09Speaker 02

  he worked for, as a city worker, which is what happened in the daily administration. You're a city worker, you also got to work in politics. But my dad flourished in that because he worked in our neighborhood and he knew the grandmothers and the neighbors.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, he said, time is something you give other people.

• 24:26Speaker 02

  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, 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 were the cousin that was kind of a drunk and 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, and those are the kind of things that, I guess it was the, the determination.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  It was the work ethic. It was also the sacrifice. 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 phoning it in, you know, that kind of pisses me off.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  As you know, I, I don't believe in phoning it in here, so. By the billions of notes here, I understand.

• 25:47Speaker 02

  And I'm loving it.

• 25:48Speaker 01

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

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• 28:30Speaker 01

  You graduated from Princeton, you get a degree from Harvard Law, and you promptly get a job as a junior associate at the Chicago law firm Sidley in Austin. Now, I want to talk about the day you meet your future husband. You're on the 47th floor, you're in your office where you typically ate most of your lunches because you, you were working 70 hours a week.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  You were assigned, I think, to be his advisor. So walk, walk me through this.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Barack, at the time I was a first year, was a first year law student. So he was, he 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.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  But he was special.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  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's 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-Eleven to take his picture, right? I mean, it's bad lighting and, you know, and I was like, I don't think he's that cute. And I'm thinking, okay, these are white people that are flipping over an 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, who, who, what black people are in Hawaii?

• 30:00Speaker 02

  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 a, not an angry picture. I was just like, oh, I, 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, he had that Barack Obama voice that I, that I didn't expect because I had already pictured him as kind of a dweeby kind of person who was, would be appealing to white people as a black man.

• 30:32Speaker 01

  Do you ever do his voice back to him?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  All the time. We all do it. He was like, hello, it's Barack Obama. I can't get down that low. But I was like, woo, the voice was sexy over the phone. I was like, wow, this is Barack Obama?

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Like, let me look at this photo again, hold on.

• 30:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. So my job was to greet him and he was like, And then I was like, you're late at the Robinson household. You don't, 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. And I was like, wow.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  Hmm, you got past the tardiness.

• 31:24Speaker 02

  But I was still sort of like, okay, so we got settled. And then I had to take him to lunch after he'd spent 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.

• 31:40Speaker 01

  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, in which he writes about this first encounter with you over lunch.

• 31:54Speaker 02

  Haven't read this in a while.

• 31:55Speaker 01

  I, I imagine it's been a minute.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  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.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  I wanted to know that part of her.

• 32:45Speaker 02

  Oh, what a great writer he is.

• 32:49Speaker 01

  I wonder, I'm sure you haven't read that in a long time.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  I sure have. It's beautiful, though.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  You, you were the student who was, as you described yourself, a box checker, a color-coded noter.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  That description of you, like, did you believe your plans would unravel if you let go for a second?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  The vulnerability that I, I, I think he felt was my honesty and forthrightness about life. You know, you make plans and God laughs, as they say. This was the first time in my life when I realized that I was just on a path. That I had, I didn't know anything about the path. Why did I pick law school? Because I didn't know what else I was gonna do after Princeton. And the options before me, you could work at Procter 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.

• 33:50Speaker 02

  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 that, that 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.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  She was like 26.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  She was my age. She was diagnosed in December and I was at her bedside as she was taking her last breaths in May. And she was healthy. You know, now you're confronted with, this stuff ends and it ends suddenly and it ends unfairly. And well, what am I doing?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:46Speaker 02

  Sitting here on the 47th floor, you know? And now I've met this guy who I'm starting to fall in love with, who did things completely differently. His path, as I said, was swirvy and confusing. And his childhood was something that I'd 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? You know, and it's, 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.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  And I was realizing, you don't like this either.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  And that's going to be your future if you keep going.

• 35:36Speaker 02

  I started to realize that there was time and I hadn't done anything else, Sam, in my life. I'd worked in Bob Goldman's bookbinding. 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, 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 even like.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  And my father died and life is short. And, 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.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Let me swerve with him.

• 36:28Speaker 02

  Let me swerve with him.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  10 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.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, as, 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.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  I know Chicago politics.

• 37:01Speaker 01

  Corruption.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Corruption, incompetence, insularity, people holding on to power, people not wanting, you know? I'd seen it all and I, I knew people in politics. I was, 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.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  Why would you want to do something dumb like that?

• 37:28Speaker 02

  They will eat you up alive.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  You told him that?

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And what, what did he say when you said that?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  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 a tough road, but he was very, he has, had the same thing about him as I did. He knew what he could do. And I, I knew that. It wasn't that I didn't believe in him. I just didn't like politics.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  And I understood its limitations and I'm more pragmatic and less of a dreamer. So that was my view all the way through. But I also thought, well, he has a passion for this. And I learned that, wow, 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. You support me, I support you. That will not be my life.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:37Speaker 02

  That's your life.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  But, but even you 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.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  I don't like politics.

• 38:47Speaker 01

  They called you the closer.

• 38:49Speaker 02

  I don't like politics. I love people.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 38:53Speaker 02

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

• 38:58Speaker 01

  You went out there and you write 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, and how did the press try to distort you?

• 39:17Speaker 02

  In my view, it was also a failing in Barack's campaign, his team of people. Because when I said, okay, I'm gonna, you know, I didn't campaign for a state senate office. I, you know, I helped get petitions signed. I wasn't involved in his US 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. I have a small team that I am given, you know? Well, people I hired, but the structure that I had, my chief of staff, Melissa Winter, and I had one, my comms director, Katie McCormick-Lalavelle.

• 39:59Speaker 02

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

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:09Speaker 02

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

• 40:20Speaker 02

  I got on the first flight out, landed, and there was a kid, some kid, waiting to pick me up. It was, looked like you, Sam, young, even though you think you look like an old man, you look like a baby. And that's what every staffer on the Obama campaign, they were amazingly precocious, smart, engaged, serious people.

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:46Speaker 02

  Somebody would have on a suit, and I'd get in a car, and be dropped off at somebody's house.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  And you'd give speeches?

• 40:52Speaker 02

  I would talk, because I was like, I didn't have a speech, but I would tell my story.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  So what was the distortion? What was the thing that, that, that hurt you?

• 41:02Speaker 02

  The distortion was when I became more effective, because it wasn't what I said. My take is that I was having an impact.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  Oh, positive impact?

• 41:12Speaker 02

  A positive impact. I mean, the backyards turned into, you know, 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, that who is

• 41:57Speaker 02

  this, 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.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  The criticism was severe.

• 42:08Speaker 02

  And then they said I was emasculating, 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?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  They said you didn't love your country?

• 42:21Speaker 02

  I didn't love my country, and this stuff sort of spread out over time, because...

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Can I show you something?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:27Speaker 01

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

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember this. Yeah. Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  I heard you say in the Becoming doc, people would 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've said, what they accused you of, what did that do to you?

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Well, at first, it made me almost walk away completely, you know? I mean, I, my thing was, look, if, if I'm a hindrance to my husband's campaign, then I should just be at home, in my job, where I want to be anyway. 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.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Did you really believe that?

• 43:29Speaker 02

  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, was 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, you know, 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

• 44:13Speaker 02

  husband's campaign team, you know, until it became a problem. I was, I was angry about that, you know? So it was, it would, 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 write 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, no, let's be clear of what you, you're doing.

• 44:47Speaker 01

  I mean, Mrs. Grievance, that's what they call this.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yes, it was politics, because it wasn't true. So in terms of me feeling it, it was soul-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.

• 45:07Speaker 01

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

• 45:08Speaker 02

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

• 45:10Speaker 01

  That's what I want to note, 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, 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?

• 45:39Speaker 02

  These hardships in the campaign prepared me. I mean, instead of quitting, I just said, okay, I gotta be smarter. I gotta, I've gotta be more thoughtful. I have to be tighter, you know? Because we're in it now. My, my husband's doing this, and I'm seeing him less and less, right? Because he's got his own, so we're in it. It's like, hang on, like, everybody's got to buckle up, and we've got to, 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

• 46:24Speaker 02

  beginning of the going high, right? The going high philosophy, that sometimes people are like, do we always go high? It was like, I don't, but I just don't go low in public. I go low at 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.

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Do you not go low in public because you feel people can't handle it?

• 46:58Speaker 02

  I don't think it's useful.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  You don't think it's useful?

• 47:00Speaker 02

  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, 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

• 47:44Speaker 02

  if I didn't and didn't do it quickly, I could easily be redefined, and redefined negatively. So it was like, I've got to do this well.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  I want to talk about how you do this. Fellow South Sider and poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, writes, "Conductor blooming in the noise and whip of the whirlwind." And I thought that was such a vivid description of what I imagine you had to do for eight years. And, and the role of First Lady, like, I don't think people know this, but it's such an odd, like, there's no salary.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  There's a stipend.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a stipend, but the East Wing's filled with a staff with, like, no budget, like, 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?

• 48:44Speaker 02

  What I learned over the course of my career, because by now, I've done many things in life, right? 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.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:08Speaker 02

  Because in this role as First Lady, I pick it, you know? That's the beauty. Barack couldn't pick his issues, they were flying in at, on his table.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  You had to do all of them.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  I understood what the First Lady's power was, and I was like, 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 florist, 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 haven't cooked for a long time, that's, you know, let's let the people who cook, cook.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Do you miss cooking?

• 49:51Speaker 02

  No, I don't.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  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 seed that to you. And there are some people who love it so much that they want to do it. And they should. You should take something off your list and do the cooking.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  I'm in training. I'm getting better. So this is

• 50:14Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  It's a good thing for me.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  You know, it's good. You should know how to cook. So I approached 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.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  That the President of the United States can't support. He was going to be working on healthcare. 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 into healthcare. Whether you support his healthcare plan or not, being healthy and living healthy and doing it for our kids, that's got to resonate. I started there. Over the course of the campaign, when it comes to joining forces in military families, this was an issue that I learned about as I campaigned.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  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 to school. 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 and sacrifice and you wave the flag, you start a war, and you have no idea what these families are going through. I was like, let's put our money where our mouth is. We believe in defense. Well, then let's take care of the people who are defending us.

• 51:57Speaker 02

  They shouldn't be fighting for housing and 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 caretakers and who were caring for a husband that would never walk or couldn't see.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  The first time you went to Walter Reed, you were scheduled to be there for 90 minutes. You stay for four to five hours. When you talk about that, that exact thing you said, people don't know the consequence is like the cost of going. When you see this current administration being as flippant as they are about it, you think about those troops you visited at Walter Reed. How do you hold that? How do you make sense of that in this moment?

• 52:40Speaker 02

  This moment has happened before. So it's, 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, you know? If you're not really looking at the people who serve.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  But you looked at those people. You spent a lot of time with them.

• 53:04Speaker 02

  And, 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, 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.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Irrevocably altered by war.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  I can't leave. Where, 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, where are we rushing to? That's how it goes from 90 minutes to four hours.

• 53:58Speaker 01

  What could be more important?

• 53:59Speaker 02

  You don't leave that situation. And you, 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.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  You all right?

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yep. How are you doing?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  I'm upset.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  What upsets you?

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Well,

• 54:43Speaker 02

  One of the many things.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I, I was thinking, I want to talk to you about January 6. Not, not that one.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Okay, it's like, mm, mm, Sam.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  Sorry, I wrote that joke down. I thought you'd like it.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  January 6, 2017.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  East Wing, your final speech. Final speech as First Lady.

• 55:11Speaker 02

  See, I didn't even really tie those two dates together.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  This is what I'm here for. This is what I'm here for. Everyone in the room got nervous.

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Crystal's about to get up.

• 55:22Speaker 01

  Talking about the insurrection.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Relax, guys, relax. We're talking about something that actually matters to me. Which is the speech you give. And as you know, my, my father, 30 years Chicago Public School teacher. You give, you give a speech to educators and school counselors, speaking to the importance of diversity in education. And I wanted you to watch some of that with us.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Our diversities of faiths and colors and creeds, that is not a threat to who we are. It makes us who we are.

• 55:58Speaker 02

  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.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Shoot, it's the hope of my, folks like my dad. Got up every day, do his 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. Because that is what moves this country forward every single day. So I want to close today by simply saying thank you.

• 57:03Speaker 02

  Thank you for everything you do for our kids and for our country.

• 57:08Speaker 02

  Being your First Lady has been the greatest honor of my life. And I hope I've made you proud.

• 57:16Speaker 02

  Well, that's Miss Grievance. Because it's like, when you speak with passion, your facial expressions, the words that you use, AI 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, 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 see that speech is not just me, but the faces behind me.

• 58:02Speaker 02

  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 this, it's like, like, it's the same thing you feel as a kid. You don't even know me.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  And you don't think I can do this? You don't think I should go to college?

• 58:38Speaker 01

  You don't think to ask a question?

• 58:40Speaker 02

  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?

• 58:51Speaker 01

  When you get on that plane, inauguration day of 2017, and you take off after eight years, after all you have done, after all your family has given to this country, did you finally have a moment to exhale?

• 59:05Speaker 02

  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, all the... It's almost like you could breathe. It's like, phew. Okay. We made it out. Everyone's, it's like, the kids? You got your arms? My husband, you got your head, you know?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Everyone packed their laptop?

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Everybody's wrecked. Got blankie, tiger?

• 59:34Speaker 01

  If you left your phone, I'm sorry.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  It's like...

• 59:36Speaker 01

  We're not going back for it.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  We don't need it. Need it, we'll get another phone.

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Do you remember that plane ride?

• 59:41Speaker 02

  I don't see it completely clearly because so much of what we did was so much. There was so many emotions all the time and managing so much else. And everybody, the staffs, so sometimes the specifics, where people can, you know, it's a little blurry.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Hmm, but how does it feel to you now?

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  It's relief and pride and exhaustion.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  You know, it's a little bit of all of it. I mean, 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 and having their entire childhood ruined. No. I mean, they've lived in the White House longer than they've lived anywhere. Imagine trying to grow up with Secret Service.

• 1:00:34Speaker 01

  Growing up's hard enough.

• 1:00:35Speaker 02

  Trying to have a boyfriend or go to a prom or play on a team at another school or get into college. Or, yeah, I was proud of my mom, proud of our team, proud of the country 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.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  I want to ask some big questions before we go. We talked in the beginning about the janky timeline.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  In 2008, when your husband was elected, you said in an interview for your first cover of Vogue, the writer was Andre Leon Tally. It's 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. The country I lived in was the 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 your thinking about the country you live in change? Did it change by the passage of time?

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I was deeply, deeply disappointed.

• 1:02:00Speaker 02

  But my husband is such a good person to have for context and clarity. And he's right. That outcome had as much to do with people's pain and confusion about where they are in their lives. You know, we haven't completed the assignment of actualizing this democracy. It works and then 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. 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

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  and more people are falling through the cracks and experiencing worse than what I did growing up. You know, my father had a job his entire life. He was never unemployed. We never worried about our rent, you know? We had healthcare. 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

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  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, you know, 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.

• 1:04:10Speaker 01

  They voted for Donald Trump, yeah.

• 1:04:12Speaker 02

  You know?

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  It's a lot of people.

• 1:04:13Speaker 02

  So you can't just pigeonhole them and say you just don't care and you're 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.

• 1:04:52Speaker 01

  I want to talk about your next chapter because you started the show IMO, this beautiful book, The Look. I want to know, the show, was it inspired in 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?

• 1:05:14Speaker 02

  Well, that was kind of a test case, you know? 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.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  I don't, I don't need a job. We've had plenty of attention. As my mom said, I'm not special. I was 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 four-year-old, I was 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.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Work in progress.

• 1:06:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I can now sit in my wisdom in a way that I feel comfortable saying, maybe I can help somebody else. That's the mentor 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.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  I'm expecting a phone call from you anytime I'm making a bad decision here.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:07:05Speaker 01

  As I said, your mother passed away almost two years ago, Marian Robinson. We talked about your father earlier. And I want to know, when you think of her and those conversations you had back in Hawaii before she passed away, how do you hold those now? I should also add, I was re-watching the documentary. And your mother is so funny. Like, I just kept dying laughing. She could have been a school counselor, as you said. She could have maybe done stand-up comedy, I don't know. She was just so fucking funny.

• 1:07:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  And so 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.

• 1:07:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, my mother, I had the pleasure, my mom got sick, had an 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 frailer. 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, you know?

• 1:08:29Speaker 02

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

• 1:08:35Speaker 01

  She was a proud person.

• 1:08:36Speaker 02

  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, you know? I don't want all this mourning, 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.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  And was she ready?

• 1:09:13Speaker 02

  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, Below Deck, which she loved.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  She loved Below Deck. She just couldn't understand why they couldn't get along on that boat.

• 1:09:37Speaker 02

  I was like, yeah, mom, you're right. People are crazy and...

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  They're getting paid to knock it along.

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  But we got, she got quiet and I was like, how are you feeling? She says, good. And 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, life is fricking fast. Because when she got sick that time, and 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.

• 1:10:24Speaker 01

  Look, we can't be perfect.

• 1:10:25Speaker 02

  Can't be perfect. And she wasn't trying either. She was like, don't talk to me about smoking. She's like, I'm here, you know? I'd be, she'd, I'd be happy to die. I don't need, she's like, I don't want to live forever.

• 1:10:35Speaker 01

  She's earned it.

• 1:10:36Speaker 02

  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, 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, or however many more I'm blessed to have.

• 1:11:18Speaker 02

  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? And that conversation, you know, sort of woke me up.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  It's similar to the, to the revelation you had when your friend passed away.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  When your father passed.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  And you met Barack and you went, this can't be all there is.

• 1:11:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  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 you talk about time like that, I have this photo and I, I wondered, if you could talk about this moment for us, because I bet in some ways that happened just the other day.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:12:34Speaker 01

  CNN breaking news.

• 1:12:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. We project he now has enough electoral votes, more than 270.

• 1:12:41Speaker 01

  It has that scary music that comes on.

• 1:12:43Speaker 02

  And 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 as president of the United States of America?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  It really was.

• 1:12:56Speaker 02

  And I was probably sitting over here, sitting to the, to the left. And I'm sure my, my mom has that look like, well, I'll be damned. This boy did it. I can't believe it. He is actually going to be the president of the United States. Oh my God. How is he going to manage it? Is he going to be okay? And I think that, that sense in Barack of, I'm sure he's thinking, oh my God, what have I gotten my mother-in-law into? This lovely Leave It To Beaver family, I've just blown it up. I've just lit a match under this lovely family.

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  Let me grab her hand because we're going to need you to move with us, Mom.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  And she did.

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  She did.

• 1:13:46Speaker 01

  I, I heard, I heard she did even her, her own laundry.

• 1:13:48Speaker 02

  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. You know, 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 and Euclid and we were in her house. She was like, I'll come by when you need me. She was there every, every evening when I came home because she was there to meet the kids. And then she'd go up to her little apartment upstairs.

• 1:14:25Speaker 01

  There was, there was no wood partition this time.

• 1:14:27Speaker 02

  No wood partition, pretty big house.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  When you look at this photo, when I look at this photo, we started this conversation with the, 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 hope for. And of course, when I hear that, I think of Dr. King's famous line, "The arc of the moral universe is long."

• 1:15:00Speaker 02

  But it bends towards justice.

• 1:15:03Speaker 01

  And I have to say, as we sit here in this moment, and 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 arc of the moral universe does not bend toward justice, but breaks?

• 1:15:33Speaker 02

  It's never broken before. Why would this be any different? You know, we've been through worse. I mean, we've been through jankier times, you know? A lot of, a lot of really janky, painful times in the history of humanity, in the history of this country. Nah, you know? I look at this picture, my husband reminds me, that happened. That, that happened here. And a lot of people, more people than who elected 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.

• 1:16:18Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  So you still believe in the promise and hope of this photo?

• 1:16:38Speaker 02

  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 because he knew that his sacrifice was not about him. And that's what we have to understand. People in civil rights movement, the people who sat and fought for women's equality and who died over gay rights, they didn't experience the fruits of their work because it wasn't

• 1:17:23Speaker 02

  for us, it's for them, it's for our 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, 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.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  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 when I'm 60?

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:18:16Speaker 01

  Tell me what's precious to you in this moment.

• 1:18:19Speaker 02

  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, we can either 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.

• 1:19:04Speaker 02

  They're all the same. I don't care what part of the country, the world they're in, they're all precious.

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  This is what your mom said.

• 1:19:10Speaker 02

  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.

• 1:19:47Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 1:19:50Speaker 02

  Yeah. These conversations are important. Please keep it up.

• 1:19:54Speaker 01

  Hey, you tell me. I work for you now, so it sounds great.

• 1:19:57Speaker 02

  Get to work.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  Michelle Obama, thank you.

• 1:20:00Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sam.

• 1:20:02Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  Way to go.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Was that all right?

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  That was beautiful.

• 1:20:25Speaker 03

  I'm Emma Greed, host of Aspire with Emma Greed, the podcast where I sit down with people who don't just dream big, they build big. If you love Michelle and Craig on IMO, just wait until you hear their episode on my show. Michelle told me about the moment at 26 when she lost her father and her best friend in the same year. It made her walk away from her corporate law career to figure out her why. That's the kind of conversation you get on Aspire. We talk about mindset, ambition, and doing the work that actually moves the needle. So if you're ready to raise your standards and take charge of the life you're building, Aspire is where you start. Follow and listen to Aspire with me, Emma Greed, available wherever you get your podcasts.