Latest / QUESTION EVERYTHING / The Profound Impact of Teenage Girls Who Sparked America's Social Movements: with Mattie Kahn

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The Profound Impact of Teenage Girls Who Sparked America's Social Movements: with Mattie Kahn · QUESTION EVERYTHING

0:04
Speaker 1: Big things happen when you're pretty, pretty bold, pretty clever,
0:08
Speaker 1: pretty strong. I'm Danielle Robey, and each week my guests
0:12
Speaker 1: and I have conversations that put a new spin on pretty.
0:17
Speaker 1: This is pretty smart. Well behaved women seldom make history.
0:22
Speaker 1: You've likely seen that quote all over the internet, on
0:25
Speaker 1: T shirts and coffee mugs. It's a sentiment that encourages
0:29
Speaker 1: us to be courageous and motivated to be the change
0:32
Speaker 1: we want to see. That quote, while often wrongly misattributed
0:37
Speaker 1: to Gloria steinem Eleanor Roosevelt, among others, was actually penned
0:41
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six by Pulitzer Prize winning historian and
0:45
Speaker 1: Harvard University professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. She later clarified that
0:50
Speaker 1: it's not that well behaved women don't make history, but
0:54
Speaker 1: rather that historians haven't done a good job of giving
0:56
Speaker 1: them credit for their achievements. That is true of women
1:01
Speaker 1: and another demographic, teenage girls. Our guest Today author and
1:09
Speaker 1: journalist Maddie Cohn says that girls have been a foundational
1:14
Speaker 1: and underappreciated force of key moments throughout America's revolutions, and
1:19
Speaker 1: she's got receipts. In fact, she's filled a whole book
1:23
Speaker 1: with them, one she calls young and restless, from young
1:28
Speaker 1: suffragettes to the civil rights movement, teens battling climate change
1:32
Speaker 1: and nuclear disarmament protests, young women having nited nearly every
1:38
Speaker 1: social movement in America, I still.
1:40
Speaker 2: Feel being a teenage girl is sort of practicing like
1:43
Speaker 2: a dark magic. I think that it's a really powerful time,
1:46
Speaker 2: and it's a really powerful demographic.
1:48
Speaker 1: Today we're giving credit where credit is due. We're learning
1:52
Speaker 1: about some of the untold stories of activism that our
1:55
Speaker 1: country is founded on, and why sometimes the mystifying power
1:59
Speaker 1: that teen girls yield lead society to water down their
2:03
Speaker 1: ideas rather than build upon them.
2:06
Speaker 2: One of the ways we as a society neutralized girls
2:09
Speaker 2: is by turning them into a celebrity rather than engaging
2:12
Speaker 2: with their ideas.
2:13
Speaker 1: If you've been feeling hopeless or uninspired lately, or maybe
2:17
Speaker 1: even fired up and looking for that next bit of
2:20
Speaker 1: motivation to push you forward, today's episode is for you.
2:24
Speaker 1: Today we tap into our inner team, and you might
2:28
Speaker 1: be surprised at what she's going to teach you. So
2:37
Speaker 1: I am obsessed with book dedications. I probably think about
2:40
Speaker 1: them the way people think about their Oscar speech, and
2:44
Speaker 1: you have a great one. You dedicate this book to
2:47
Speaker 1: your parents, who you say instilled in you that there
2:49
Speaker 1: were no limits on what a girl could do. I
2:52
Speaker 1: found that really moving, because we're probably the first generation
2:57
Speaker 1: of women who feel that in any way. Yes, not
3:01
Speaker 1: everybody does. How did they do that.
3:05
Speaker 2: Such a good question. I'm extremely close to my parents.
3:08
Speaker 2: I didn't even consider anybody else for the book dedication,
3:10
Speaker 2: including my husband. I talked to them several times a day.
3:14
Speaker 2: Just got off the phone with both of them twenty
3:15
Speaker 2: minutes ago. I think that, first of all, my parents.
3:20
Speaker 2: They didn't always take my side in the sense that
3:22
Speaker 2: they felt like everything you do is right, but they
3:25
Speaker 2: always had my back and they made it really, really clear.
3:28
Speaker 2: They were the kind of parents who if you said
3:32
Speaker 2: I didn't like something a teacher did, they never thought like, well,
3:35
Speaker 2: the teacher must be right because they are the authority.
3:37
Speaker 2: They were like, you must be right because you have
3:39
Speaker 2: a good head on your shoulders. If something doesn't feel right,
3:42
Speaker 2: or if something feels off, trust your gut. And I
3:45
Speaker 2: don't think there is anything that you can give a
3:48
Speaker 2: child that's as valuable as that. How do you feel yeah,
3:51
Speaker 2: and that instinctually, if something's not right, you will know.
3:55
Speaker 2: I just think that that gave me a sense of
3:57
Speaker 2: security and safety that was like, Okay, if I'm not
4:00
Speaker 2: feeling comfortable, I can get myself out of there, and
4:04
Speaker 2: I never have to worry that my parents will second
4:07
Speaker 2: guess that or doubt that I was authentically feeling that
4:10
Speaker 2: way in that moment. But the second part of the
4:11
Speaker 2: dedication is the part that nobody will understand beside my parents.
4:16
Speaker 2: But yes, I thank them for always believing that there
4:19
Speaker 2: were no limits to what a girl could do. And
4:20
Speaker 2: I agree with you. We are definitely the first generation
4:23
Speaker 2: where a parent could say that and mean it, and
4:25
Speaker 2: still not for everyone, as you said, but definitely for
4:27
Speaker 2: some people. The second part was that I always felt
4:30
Speaker 2: like they really encouraged my single minded, psychotic determination. And
4:36
Speaker 2: the second part of the dedication thanks them for letting
4:39
Speaker 2: me go to fair Schwartz when I had one hundred
4:42
Speaker 2: and four degree fever because I had begged, begged, begged
4:45
Speaker 2: for a Madame Alexander Doll, which was all the rage
4:48
Speaker 2: when I was kid, remember those, and my dad had
4:51
Speaker 2: said I would so girly of me. My dad said
4:54
Speaker 2: I'll take you after school with my grandmother who came
4:57
Speaker 2: to And when they came to pick me up, I
4:58
Speaker 2: had a truly raging beaver and my dad was like,
5:02
Speaker 2: well go another day, you should go home, and I
5:04
Speaker 2: was like, we're going today. I want to go today.
5:07
Speaker 2: And they had took me to the Fair Schwartz and they
5:09
Speaker 2: lay me down across the cash register like where the
5:13
Speaker 2: cashier was standing, and the saleswoman brought the dolls that
5:17
Speaker 2: one by one as I pointed and said, no, yeah, no,
5:21
Speaker 2: I don't want that one. It's so New York, it's
5:24
Speaker 2: so crazy. And that is I can tell you for
5:27
Speaker 2: sure that my parents have always said you can do
5:29
Speaker 2: whatever you set your mind too. Because they let me
5:30
Speaker 2: do that.
5:32
Speaker 1: You could trace it all that.
5:33
Speaker 2: It all goes back to fourth grade, Madam Alexander doll shopping.
5:37
Speaker 1: So my dad he always had this saying, it's like
5:40
Speaker 1: a very popular sing, but an mrs degree, right, like
5:43
Speaker 1: go to college. There are some people that go for
5:46
Speaker 1: an em like to be a wife or just to
5:49
Speaker 1: say they have that's probably not as popular anymore.
5:52
Speaker 2: Right.
5:52
Speaker 1: However, I've always felt grateful to him in some way
5:58
Speaker 1: that he treated me and my brother the same, and
6:01
Speaker 1: it annoyed me growing up because my friend's fathers treated
6:06
Speaker 1: them like they were women or girls. Yeah, and my
6:09
Speaker 1: dad treated me fully the same.
6:12
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:14
Speaker 1: Later in life, I've appreciated that. Where do you fall
6:17
Speaker 1: on that?
6:18
Speaker 2: It's interesting. I mean, my mom has always been such
6:22
Speaker 2: an avowed feminist, and she really brought that second wave
6:25
Speaker 2: feminist energy into the household. I mean, my dad is
6:29
Speaker 2: the child of refugees, really has like in some ways
6:32
Speaker 2: of European sensibility, and so I think he actually knows
6:36
Speaker 2: more people who to this day see more of a
6:38
Speaker 2: difference between men and women. He was never like that.
6:42
Speaker 2: He always felt, Yeah, I would say. I mean I
6:45
Speaker 2: had an older half, an older brother, and he totally
6:48
Speaker 2: expected the same from both of us. I mean, he
6:50
Speaker 2: taught us how to ride our bikes. If you fall,
6:53
Speaker 2: you get right back up. All of that, I think
6:55
Speaker 2: of anything, he gave me a little bit more of
6:57
Speaker 2: a sense, though, of an awareness that the world might
7:00
Speaker 2: not do that. That like to be conscious from a
7:03
Speaker 2: young age that I feel things are equal. Whatever your
7:06
Speaker 2: brother's doing, you can do too, but other people might not,
7:09
Speaker 2: and you have to be on your guard a little
7:12
Speaker 2: bit for that. He never excused it, but I do
7:14
Speaker 2: feel like I kind of knew that was out there
7:17
Speaker 2: a little bit, even though I had the lucky experience
7:20
Speaker 2: of always being taken really seriously and not treated like
7:23
Speaker 2: you know, girl.
7:25
Speaker 1: So today we're talking about teenage girls. We're going to
7:27
Speaker 1: be talking about them almost for the entire hour. How
7:30
Speaker 1: did you feel as a teenage girl? Were you silenced?
7:32
Speaker 1: Were you empowered?
7:34
Speaker 2: I was really loud? You talked a lot? Yeah I did.
7:37
Speaker 2: I talked a lot. I was like, it was a
7:39
Speaker 2: typical like always raise your hand, always want to be
7:42
Speaker 2: called on, super competitive girl. I still feel obviously, I
7:47
Speaker 2: wrote this whole book about teenage girls, so of course
7:49
Speaker 2: it's not surprising that I still feel being a teenage
7:52
Speaker 2: girl is sort of practicing like a dark magic. I
7:55
Speaker 2: think that it's a really powerful time, and it's a
7:57
Speaker 2: really powerful demographic. I never felt held back as a
8:01
Speaker 2: teenage girl. It's only in retrospect I think that I
8:04
Speaker 2: recognize the ways in which inevitably, as a class, even
8:07
Speaker 2: if you're the luckiest and I grew up so lucky
8:11
Speaker 2: that you are, kind.
8:12
Speaker 1: Of it's only in hindsight.
8:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's only in hindsight. At the time, I really
8:16
Speaker 2: didn't feel that way. Also, I feel that a lot,
8:18
Speaker 2: and I reflected on that a lot when I was
8:20
Speaker 2: writing this book, that when I started my career having
8:22
Speaker 2: worked in women's magazines, I felt very insulated from a
8:25
Speaker 2: lot of those things. And then in retrospect, I see
8:28
Speaker 2: how it peaks in. But as a teenage girl, I
8:31
Speaker 2: was very loud, definitely not silenced. I like to have
8:34
Speaker 2: seen anyone try. The only thing that I do feel,
8:38
Speaker 2: and that I thought a lot about writing the book,
8:39
Speaker 2: and it's in there a little bit, is that when
8:42
Speaker 2: I was a teenager, I did feel like the battle
8:45
Speaker 2: for feminism is one and over. I felt like that
8:49
Speaker 2: was my mom's generation.
8:51
Speaker 1: And then you get to the workforce, and then you
8:53
Speaker 1: get to the work force the same way.
8:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was like, we're free, now, we're this is all.
8:58
Speaker 2: We're good. And then it's a true life comes at
9:01
Speaker 2: you fast kind of moment.
9:02
Speaker 1: It does, and it's a personal experience, and then it's
9:04
Speaker 1: the way you see other women are treated.
9:06
Speaker 2: Totally Yeah, and your friends go through it and you're
9:09
Speaker 2: kind of like should we talk about this? And you
9:12
Speaker 2: do have that moment I think of wondering is it
9:14
Speaker 2: just me? Am? I being too sensitive.
9:16
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I had like two or three years of that.
9:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's that's that's the degree that you're secretly
9:22
Speaker 2: earning that you don't know about and just like the
9:24
Speaker 2: way the world works.
9:25
Speaker 1: I had a boyfriend say to me like, do you
9:27
Speaker 1: think you think about all of this too much? And
9:29
Speaker 1: that's why it's happening right, and a yeah, I'm manifesting misogyny.
9:35
Speaker 1: I was like, let me get back to you on that.
9:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to reflect. I'm going to think about it.
9:38
Speaker 2: I'll let you know. Yeah. But I again, I think
9:41
Speaker 2: the thinking about in hindsight is really valuable their experiences
9:44
Speaker 2: that at the time I wouldn't have classified them that
9:46
Speaker 2: way at all. And then in retrospect, I'm like, I
9:49
Speaker 2: was so young and so taken advantage of in that moment,
9:53
Speaker 2: and to me it felt like I'm a grown professional woman,
9:56
Speaker 2: like this is all going super well, and I don't
9:59
Speaker 2: know that NASA. I mean, I wish we lived in
10:01
Speaker 2: a world where that wasn't true. I don't feel that
10:05
Speaker 2: I wish I had known it at the time. In
10:07
Speaker 2: some ways, I'm glad that I didn't. But I think
10:11
Speaker 2: that's that's the reminder that that's the naivete I think
10:14
Speaker 2: of being a teenage girl, which can be a huge
10:16
Speaker 2: asset because everything seems changeable and on the horizon and immediate,
10:21
Speaker 2: and it's only when you get older that you think, wow,
10:23
Speaker 2: I can't believe I really thought we were done with that.
10:25
Speaker 2: We're definitely not.
10:26
Speaker 1: I do, and I don't know if I have. I
10:28
Speaker 1: think I'm an eternal optimist, So maybe this is naivete.
10:31
Speaker 1: But I still think everything is changeable. It's just that
10:34
Speaker 1: not everything has changed the way I thought it did.
10:36
Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a lot of people have asked me in
10:38
Speaker 2: the book writing process whether the whole experience left me
10:42
Speaker 2: feeling optimistic or pessimistic, because this book is a chronicle
10:47
Speaker 2: of social change and also the way it illustrates the
10:49
Speaker 2: ways in which sometimes things go backward before they go
10:52
Speaker 2: forward again. And I would say that I do feel
10:54
Speaker 2: optimistic because I think when you're a student of history,
10:58
Speaker 2: you read and you watch, and you see that everything
11:00
Speaker 2: seems like it's fixed until all of a sudden something breaks. Yeah,
11:03
Speaker 2: it changes, and then.
11:04
Speaker 1: The pendulum swings and then it comes back.
11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, but everything always seems disastrous and catastrophic until something
11:12
Speaker 2: snaps and obviously, the book is about the ways in
11:14
Speaker 2: which teenage girls have contributed to that.
11:17
Speaker 1: The snap snap is a great word for it. Me too,
11:20
Speaker 1: felt like a snap, yeah, and I think a.
11:22
Speaker 2: Lot of things are like that. And then the dust
11:24
Speaker 2: settles and things, you know, regress, and it's not the
11:27
Speaker 2: revolution you hoped it would be, but incremental movement. By
11:32
Speaker 2: incremental movement, you can look back and say, well, it's
11:36
Speaker 2: really different now than what feminism is not done. But
11:38
Speaker 2: it's true that when you know, not too long ago,
11:41
Speaker 2: my grandmother couldn't have had a credit card in her
11:43
Speaker 2: own name, so that's changed.
11:45
Speaker 1: There's an aspect to your book, and we're going to
11:47
Speaker 1: like fully dive in. But there's an aspect to your
11:49
Speaker 1: book that I think the press I've read around it
11:52
Speaker 1: hasn't talked about. And maybe because it's too philosophical, okay,
11:55
Speaker 1: but so many people that are around our age, I'll
11:59
Speaker 1: be at dinner and they'll be like, it's just so
12:02
Speaker 1: anxiety written right now. So much is wrong, there's so
12:04
Speaker 1: much to discuss. There's all of this. And I was
12:09
Speaker 1: a political science major, so like you, a student of
12:11
Speaker 1: history in many ways, and if you look back in history,
12:14
Speaker 1: social change feels any political change feels like a snap,
12:20
Speaker 1: but it's actually fifty years, one hundred years, and your
12:24
Speaker 1: book chronicles changed that while something snapped, the actual effects
12:29
Speaker 1: of it are really slow, and it's almost a relief,
12:33
Speaker 1: I think.
12:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, to know that we're like still living in the
12:36
Speaker 2: aftermath of every single one.
12:38
Speaker 1: Of those everything's so bad.
12:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we're just part of the reverb. Yeah, Yeah,
12:43
Speaker 2: I think that's true. I think one of the things
12:45
Speaker 2: the book doesn't spend a ton of time on, you know,
12:48
Speaker 2: what the solutions are to some of the existential problems
12:52
Speaker 2: that come up in the book. But one of the
12:53
Speaker 2: things that I do think is a real bomb. And
12:55
Speaker 2: when I talk to young activists, they say this a lot,
12:57
Speaker 2: and I've tried to say this too, is the answer
13:00
Speaker 2: to some of that feeling is truly to be in
13:02
Speaker 2: community with people who are both older and younger than
13:05
Speaker 2: you are. And I feel that intensely, having grown up
13:08
Speaker 2: in a real community, that some of that is just
13:12
Speaker 2: the narrowness of our own perspective, which of course we
13:14
Speaker 2: have because we only live in our own lives, but
13:17
Speaker 2: people who are a lot older and people who are
13:18
Speaker 2: a lot younger wide in the aperture and show you that,
13:22
Speaker 2: like you're living in this tiny, narrow band and how
13:25
Speaker 2: could you not be. We're just one person, like moving through,
13:27
Speaker 2: you know, the moving walkway of our own lives. But
13:31
Speaker 2: to be with people who are in their eighties and
13:33
Speaker 2: to be with people who are sixteen shows you the
13:36
Speaker 2: breath of what happens in ten years, twenty years, thirty years.
13:40
Speaker 2: And I do find that, Yeah, a relief is a
13:42
Speaker 2: good word. I wouldn't have thought of it that way,
13:44
Speaker 2: but I do think that that's that exhale of like
13:46
Speaker 2: the breath, it doesn't have to happen in the next
13:48
Speaker 2: thirty seconds to feel confident that it will happen.
13:52
Speaker 1: It will unfold, and that the inching matters, the inches
13:55
Speaker 1: become feed and you know, it just matters.
13:58
Speaker 2: I think what feels hard when you're really young is
14:01
Speaker 2: that the damage done by waiting feels so burdensome that
14:05
Speaker 2: every second that it's not happening is a second of
14:09
Speaker 2: someone's life not being as just as it should be.
14:12
Speaker 2: And of course that is so painful. But I think
14:15
Speaker 2: when you talk to people who are yeah, in their
14:18
Speaker 2: seventies and their eighties and their nineties, to be with
14:20
Speaker 2: people who can say when I look back, I could
14:22
Speaker 2: tell you when I was born what this world looked
14:24
Speaker 2: like compared to what it looks like now. It's hopeful.
14:27
Speaker 2: It's really hard.
14:28
Speaker 1: Even our grandmothers, the world was completely different, really different,
14:32
Speaker 1: two generations, right. And then, like you said, the sixteen
14:34
Speaker 1: year olds share what can be what they envision.
14:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're not going to sit there telling you
14:39
Speaker 2: all the reasons it probably won't happen because for them
14:42
Speaker 2: it's literally sitting right on the horizon. And I think
14:45
Speaker 2: that it is really important therefore, to not only be
14:48
Speaker 2: with your own cohort. It's good to see the sweep
14:51
Speaker 2: of history a little bit.
14:52
Speaker 1: I always say that with women. I think it's like
14:55
Speaker 1: so important to have women older than you, and like
14:58
Speaker 1: women younger than you that you're in community with. And
15:00
Speaker 1: I never thought it, I guess in terms of relief
15:04
Speaker 1: or social change. I just thought about it in terms
15:06
Speaker 1: of learning and teaching.
15:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think the perspective of it, what feels
15:11
Speaker 2: so massive and huge, life watering someone else will be like,
15:16
Speaker 2: you know, it's like even before my wedding, which was
15:19
Speaker 2: so exciting, you know, I was with an much older
15:22
Speaker 2: friend who was like, eh, I've had three of those, Yeah,
15:24
Speaker 2: and I was like, okay, Like even something like that
15:28
Speaker 2: is kind of humbly, and it's like the reality is
15:32
Speaker 2: none of us ever know what's coming. Yeah, but someone
15:34
Speaker 2: who's a lot older can tell you a little bit
15:36
Speaker 2: more just how little you know, and sometimes there's comfort
15:39
Speaker 2: in that.
15:40
Speaker 1: So your book is about teenage activist, teenage female activists,
15:46
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about activists and activism so much.
15:49
Speaker 1: Can you kind of dumb down what is an activist?
15:53
Speaker 2: Yeah? I would say the thing that the girls in
15:55
Speaker 2: the book have in common is there are people who
15:57
Speaker 2: woke up in a world where they felt something should
16:00
Speaker 2: be different, something that felt obvious to them should be different.
16:03
Speaker 2: So for some of them, they were very attached to
16:06
Speaker 2: movement work. You know, they were talking about abolition and
16:10
Speaker 2: touring the country giving speeches about abolition and during the
16:13
Speaker 2: Civil War, and for some people it was suffrage. They
16:16
Speaker 2: wanted the right for women to vote. For other people,
16:18
Speaker 2: it's more personal. You know. There's a chapter in the
16:21
Speaker 2: book that's about the beginning of co education in the US,
16:24
Speaker 2: and there's a girl who all she really wants is
16:27
Speaker 2: she doesn't think of herself as a movement person. She
16:29
Speaker 2: just wants to go to Stuyvesant, which is one of
16:31
Speaker 2: the best high schools in New York, and at the
16:33
Speaker 2: time when she wants to do that, it's only open
16:35
Speaker 2: to boys, and so she becomes this crusader to get
16:39
Speaker 2: girls admitted to Stuyvesant. But what she really wants is
16:42
Speaker 2: just like a harder math class.
16:43
Speaker 1: You know, it was for her personal endeavor.
16:46
Speaker 2: It totally I think all to me, like any way
16:49
Speaker 2: into it, all things are equal. I don't care whether
16:51
Speaker 2: somebody wanted to do it for personal advancement or for
16:54
Speaker 2: some ideal. I think what the girls have in common
16:57
Speaker 2: is and what activism really is is that feeling of
17:01
Speaker 2: there's a problem in the world, and I'm going to
17:03
Speaker 2: do what I can to fix it. Sometimes that takes
17:06
Speaker 2: the form of demonstrations. Sometimes that takes the form of
17:09
Speaker 2: a legal case. But whatever it is, Yeah, it's a
17:11
Speaker 2: process of betterment for society.
17:14
Speaker 1: I've followed your writing for years. I told you before
17:16
Speaker 1: we started, I'm such a madd Con fan. You have
17:20
Speaker 1: a beautiful perspective. It's political, socio political, and funny and
17:27
Speaker 1: irreverent in some ways, which I'm now understanding is kind
17:29
Speaker 1: of from your mom.
17:30
Speaker 2: That's great, let's give her credit NASA.
17:32
Speaker 1: Yes, what pieces led you to writing this book?
17:38
Speaker 2: So I think they're the obvious ones. I profiled Greta
17:40
Speaker 2: Tunberg when I was at Glamour for one of the
17:42
Speaker 2: Glamour Women beer covers. I spent a lot of time
17:44
Speaker 2: with the teenagers who were part of the Parkland movement
17:47
Speaker 2: and started March for Our Lives, and those were kind
17:49
Speaker 2: of the obvious connections. I do think that the seats
17:53
Speaker 2: for the book are kind of really old. In my
17:55
Speaker 2: first job out of college, I worked at l magazine
17:57
Speaker 2: and I spent time I'm with a girl who was
18:01
Speaker 2: at the time eleven years old named Marlee Diaz, who
18:04
Speaker 2: has since been a Netflix executive producer and gone to
18:07
Speaker 2: Harvard and done all kinds of impressive things. But when
18:09
Speaker 2: I met her, she was collecting a thousand books with
18:12
Speaker 2: black girls as the main characters. And we did a
18:15
Speaker 2: little interview for this site, and we asked her what
18:17
Speaker 2: she wanted to be when she grew up, and she
18:19
Speaker 2: said she wanted to be a magazine editor. And I
18:22
Speaker 2: don't know, I think this a little bit is the
18:24
Speaker 2: piece of me that's in the book. This was my
18:26
Speaker 2: first job. I had not been in it for very long,
18:29
Speaker 2: and so I had no sense of why it was
18:31
Speaker 2: ridiculous to say, oh, let's have her come be a
18:34
Speaker 2: magazine editor this summer. We'll give her an internship. I too,
18:38
Speaker 2: was young enough that I was like, that seems normal
18:40
Speaker 2: and that'll be fine. We could try that. My wonderful boss,
18:43
Speaker 2: Leah Chernikov said, Okay, if you think you can make
18:46
Speaker 2: it worthwhile, let's do it. We had Marley come back
18:49
Speaker 2: that summer. We had interviews with Larry Wilmore, interviews with
18:53
Speaker 2: Ava Dubernet, that we went on location to interview her.
18:56
Speaker 2: In New Orleans, Marlee interviewed Hillary Clinton, who was running
18:59
Speaker 2: for president, and just for those watching and listening, I
19:02
Speaker 2: will say I do think it's one of the best
19:04
Speaker 2: interviews Secretary Clinton has ever done, because Marley asked her
19:07
Speaker 2: about being a child, about being a girl in school,
19:10
Speaker 2: about finding her voice there. And we did that for
19:13
Speaker 2: you know, a few weeks over the summer, and I
19:15
Speaker 2: felt this feeling of renewed Yeah, I guess optimism and
19:22
Speaker 2: joy in work, which as you know, can easily become
19:25
Speaker 2: a slog but seeing it through her eyes and seeing
19:28
Speaker 2: her sense of why wouldn't we ask Secretary Clinton for
19:31
Speaker 2: an interview, like why would she say no? You know?
19:34
Speaker 2: And the crazy thing was she was right. She didn't
19:36
Speaker 2: say no, she said yes. It made me feel like
19:39
Speaker 2: things were possible in this way that even at that
19:42
Speaker 2: stage I was feeling faltering on a little bit. And
19:46
Speaker 2: Marley and I have stayed really close. I wrote her
19:48
Speaker 2: college recommendation, texted her last night, and I think that
19:51
Speaker 2: was one of the projects that made me think there
19:53
Speaker 2: is something here, There is something to being a young
19:56
Speaker 2: woman that is really powerful.
19:58
Speaker 1: That's one of your younger friends.
19:59
Speaker 2: That's one of my younger friends. Yeah. Absolutely, And I'm
20:02
Speaker 2: one of her older friends. And let me tell you,
20:03
Speaker 2: nothing will make you feel elderly like writing a book
20:06
Speaker 2: about teenage girls when you're in your late twenties and
20:08
Speaker 2: early thirties. These these girls think I'm ready for my
20:10
Speaker 2: ARP card. I mean they are they think I'm wait
20:14
Speaker 2: till they get here. I mean one day they will
20:17
Speaker 2: be humboldt. Yeah, but this is what we're saying about
20:19
Speaker 2: in your generational friendship.
20:24
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Speaker 1: up if it feels right for you. So, your new book,
21:40
Speaker 1: Young and Restless is about the people who have helped
21:42
Speaker 1: spark America's transformative social movements throughout history, aka teenage girls.
21:48
Speaker 2: That's right.
21:48
Speaker 1: So I want to know a few examples of stories,
21:54
Speaker 1: maybe one or two that you can share with us
21:56
Speaker 1: that because you have a bunch in there that are great,
21:58
Speaker 1: but one or two that really stood out to you
22:00
Speaker 1: that can sort of set the stage for our conversation.
22:03
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. One of the stories I love is of
22:06
Speaker 2: Mabel Pung Huali, who's a Chinese immigrant, again a teenager.
22:10
Speaker 2: She is living in New York at a time where
22:13
Speaker 2: the Chinese population is really small because of discriminatory immigration policies.
22:18
Speaker 2: She's a total star in high school, and then she
22:20
Speaker 2: goes to Barnard where she's one of very very few
22:23
Speaker 2: Chinese students, and she becomes involved in the suffrage movement.
22:27
Speaker 2: And I love her story because I think there is
22:30
Speaker 2: a savviness to her awareness that in some part the white,
22:35
Speaker 2: mostly white women who are running the suffrage movement like
22:38
Speaker 2: her and want her to do this work because she
22:41
Speaker 2: is a spectacle because she doesn't look like other people.
22:44
Speaker 2: And on the other hand, she is also smart enough
22:47
Speaker 2: to know I can get something from this too. I
22:50
Speaker 2: can get what I want, I can say what I
22:51
Speaker 2: want to say, even though maybe there's something a little
22:55
Speaker 2: uncomfortable about the reason I'm getting this platform. I think
22:58
Speaker 2: one of the things that the book deals with the
23:00
Speaker 2: lot is that tension of on the one hand, these
23:03
Speaker 2: are girls who have something to say. On the other hand,
23:06
Speaker 2: sometimes part of the reason they're getting a big microphone
23:08
Speaker 2: is because there's something so precocious and charismatic about seeing
23:13
Speaker 2: a young woman open her mouth. So I think Mabel
23:15
Speaker 2: really had that awareness and used her microphone sort of
23:19
Speaker 2: to her advantage. She spoke all over the place. She
23:22
Speaker 2: gave these talks to these huge audiences and often told
23:25
Speaker 2: people just how wrong they were, which of course I loved.
23:28
Speaker 2: And there was a newspaper report at the time that
23:31
Speaker 2: said that people left mabilized by her talks, like that
23:34
Speaker 2: she was so infectious and so articulate that people were
23:38
Speaker 2: just converted on the spot.
23:39
Speaker 1: Do you see a lot of these young teenage activists
23:43
Speaker 1: grow up to continue their activism.
23:45
Speaker 2: So Mabel doesn't. She gets her PhD in economics at Columbia,
23:49
Speaker 2: which is this is like the early nineteen hundreds. It's
23:52
Speaker 2: an absolutely insane thing to do. And then her dad
23:55
Speaker 2: dies around the time of the depression and instead of
23:58
Speaker 2: becoming this amazing crusader for women's rights, she runs his
24:01
Speaker 2: church and that's where she spends the rest of her life.
24:03
Speaker 2: When I was doing the research, I was like, no, Mabel,
24:06
Speaker 2: like go be bigger than that, you know, And I
24:09
Speaker 2: think that was one of the impulses I had to
24:11
Speaker 2: check is I want every single girl who's in this
24:13
Speaker 2: book to go on to have a blazing career. But
24:16
Speaker 2: you can't decide for other people what they're going to
24:19
Speaker 2: do with their talents. So I'm happy that we live
24:21
Speaker 2: in a world where it's more possible for young women
24:24
Speaker 2: to make that decision to stick with it. And I
24:26
Speaker 2: also honor the fact that if you've spent your adolescence
24:29
Speaker 2: doing this, maybe you want to be an account manager
24:32
Speaker 2: somewhere and you don't want to do this and you
24:34
Speaker 2: live your values in a different way. I mean, I'll
24:37
Speaker 2: just say, as another example, the girl that I mentioned
24:39
Speaker 2: who decided she wanted to go to Stuyvesant and wanted
24:42
Speaker 2: the school to be co ed won that case, but
24:45
Speaker 2: actually her family moved before she ever had a chance
24:47
Speaker 2: to go, and she went to another grade high school.
24:51
Speaker 2: And generations of girls have gone to Stuyvestant thanks to her,
24:55
Speaker 2: and she became a doctor. And I asked her, did
24:57
Speaker 2: you ever think about kind of staying in movement work?
25:00
Speaker 2: And she said, I feel like I have I treat
25:03
Speaker 2: my patients, I bring healthcare to a small community. I
25:06
Speaker 2: feel like I'm totally living out exactly what I would
25:08
Speaker 2: have wanted for that girl.
25:10
Speaker 1: So I think that's living out your values is a
25:12
Speaker 1: really interesting way to look at it. There's a lot
25:15
Speaker 1: of different ways to live out your values.
25:16
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't have to be that person who is,
25:19
Speaker 2: you know, speaking to ten thousand people, to be the
25:23
Speaker 2: kind of person that your teenage self would be really
25:26
Speaker 2: proud of, and to keep doing that work in a
25:28
Speaker 2: different way.
25:29
Speaker 1: There's a tweet from Barack Obama in response to March
25:33
Speaker 1: for Our Lives activists fighting for gun reform after the
25:36
Speaker 1: Parkland shooting that rings in my brain all the time,
25:40
Speaker 1: you know, the one I'm talking about. Yeah, And he says,
25:43
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing, but almost all great social movements are led
25:46
Speaker 1: by young people. Yes, and we all kind of know
25:50
Speaker 1: that to be true, but nobody had ever said it, yeah,
25:54
Speaker 1: out there online like that. In doing these interviews and
25:58
Speaker 1: writing your book, what is it. Why do young people,
26:04
Speaker 1: particularly young women, most of the time, lead social movements.
26:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think young people have a really low tolerance
26:10
Speaker 2: for hypocrisy, and part of the work of social change
26:13
Speaker 2: is calling that out. I also think, I mean, adolescence
26:16
Speaker 2: is a time of individuation. It's the job of an
26:19
Speaker 2: adolescent to say to their parents, you're wrong about everything.
26:23
Speaker 2: So it's a good opportunity to get involved in social
26:26
Speaker 2: change and embarrass your parents in a much more public way.
26:29
Speaker 2: So I think developmentally, it makes sense that the age
26:32
Speaker 2: group is the kind of age group that's calling out hypocrisy,
26:35
Speaker 2: that's wanting to change things, that's wanting to, yeah, like
26:38
Speaker 2: call out what they find unfair. I think one of
26:41
Speaker 2: the things that makes young women particularly suited to this
26:44
Speaker 2: work is not at all because girls are born with
26:47
Speaker 2: these qualities, but because we raise girls to be collaborative,
26:54
Speaker 2: to ask themselves what they can do for others. I mean,
26:57
Speaker 2: I think this is the positive of some of the
27:00
Speaker 2: negative aspects of how we socialize young women. Yeah, we
27:04
Speaker 2: tell them, you know, be self sacrificing, be a good friend,
27:07
Speaker 2: be good at your school group projects. And I think
27:10
Speaker 2: we have accidentally minted generations of really, really good activists
27:14
Speaker 2: and organizers, because that's what we tell girls to be
27:16
Speaker 2: good at.
27:17
Speaker 1: So it reminds me of this line in your book.
27:19
Speaker 1: It says the set of tools girls wield to achieve
27:22
Speaker 1: their aims friendship, gossip, and a taste for drama. Why
27:26
Speaker 1: do girls historically bring those three things to the table
27:30
Speaker 1: when it comes to activism.
27:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I'll confess that on the friendship front, my
27:34
Speaker 2: vision is so clouded by my own friendships. I feel
27:37
Speaker 2: like everything I've ever achieved in life has been driven
27:39
Speaker 2: by my ability to always have that base of support
27:42
Speaker 2: with my female friends. I just feel I would be
27:45
Speaker 2: nowhere without them.
27:46
Speaker 1: Have you always felt that?
27:47
Speaker 2: Yes?
27:48
Speaker 1: I didn't feel that till I was older.
27:50
Speaker 2: I would say, as when I was young, I really
27:53
Speaker 2: had one best best friend, and I didn't feel I
27:57
Speaker 2: needed anyone but her me too, Yeah, and she's thanked
28:00
Speaker 2: the acknowledgments, and we were inseparable sisters, and so I
28:04
Speaker 2: would say I always felt I needed one. I think
28:07
Speaker 2: when I got older, I realized that the value of
28:11
Speaker 2: having a.
28:11
Speaker 1: Group of women community. They don't have to be in
28:14
Speaker 1: the same group.
28:15
Speaker 2: No, but also the sounding board like to be able
28:19
Speaker 2: to you know, take it to a group chat and
28:21
Speaker 2: say this thing just happened, like what's your read Sometimes
28:24
Speaker 2: you want a chorus of voices there, not just one.
28:27
Speaker 2: So I definitely brought my own sense of the value
28:29
Speaker 2: of friendships to writing the book. But I think part
28:31
Speaker 2: of that assertion comes out of just how much how
28:34
Speaker 2: often some of the same dynamics came up in story
28:38
Speaker 2: after story. It's like Barbara Johns is planning a school
28:41
Speaker 2: walk out because she wants better conditions for her school
28:44
Speaker 2: at the very beginning of the civil rights movement. And
28:47
Speaker 2: what does she do. She goes and talks to a
28:48
Speaker 2: bunch of other girls and one boy they're allowed to
28:52
Speaker 2: in the school bleachers to say what we do about this?
28:55
Speaker 2: And Alista Rivera, who brought girls into Stuyvesant, had been
28:59
Speaker 2: talking to a friend and the cafeteria when she realized,
29:02
Speaker 2: you know what we should apply, We should give it
29:03
Speaker 2: a go. It was just one setting after another where
29:06
Speaker 2: I saw these same things happening. First girls were talking
29:09
Speaker 2: about it, and then they were doing it. The first
29:11
Speaker 2: chapter is about the Lowell Mill girls who strike and
29:14
Speaker 2: walk out of their textile mills in the eighteen thirties.
29:17
Speaker 2: Page after page of their diaries, and these journal entries
29:20
Speaker 2: they wrote were about you know, I talked to the
29:22
Speaker 2: other girls. I felt, I said, I think this is unfair,
29:25
Speaker 2: So you also think it's that way. So friendship seemed
29:28
Speaker 2: inextricable to me to the work of building social movements.
29:31
Speaker 2: I mean, the process of organizing is the process of conversion.
29:34
Speaker 2: You need to bring people with you to the cause.
29:36
Speaker 2: So it's like, if you've got a lot of friends,
29:38
Speaker 2: you're starting from a better position.
29:40
Speaker 1: You're coloring a quote for me that I always talk
29:44
Speaker 1: about and sight and I didn't. I don't think I
29:47
Speaker 1: understood the true meeting. Gloria Steinem always says that every
29:51
Speaker 1: great social movement starts with women in somebody's kitchen or
29:54
Speaker 1: a basement saying, oh my god, that happened to me too. Yes,
29:58
Speaker 1: and I loved the notion of it. But she is
30:00
Speaker 1: an organizer, she knows the history the way you do.
30:02
Speaker 1: You're totally giving it a new meeting.
30:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I love that. I love that Gloria
30:08
Speaker 2: stein says that, and I think it's funny. There's a
30:12
Speaker 2: point in the book where it turns out that this
30:16
Speaker 2: conference that's happening at a Catholic college of all places
30:19
Speaker 2: becomes the place where our bodies ourselves, where the germ
30:22
Speaker 2: of that book is written, our bodies ourselves obviously being
30:25
Speaker 2: this iconic text that's all about like is this normal?
30:29
Speaker 2: Is this happening to everyone? And it comes out of
30:31
Speaker 2: this session called Women in their Bodies That literally is
30:35
Speaker 2: women sitting in a room talking about their doctors, talking
30:38
Speaker 2: about how they have felt treated by the medical establishment,
30:40
Speaker 2: talking about how they don't know what's going on with
30:42
Speaker 2: themselves because no one's ever told them so. I think
30:44
Speaker 2: it really is true, and I think of that as
30:46
Speaker 2: a revolutionary text. I don't think something has to be
30:48
Speaker 2: a manifesto to be totally instantly revolutionizing, an iconic and
30:54
Speaker 2: I think when, yeah, when women talk, it's just the
30:56
Speaker 2: germs of revolution are planted there.
31:00
Speaker 1: Well said, you talk about respectability politics being a major
31:05
Speaker 1: theme that girls have historically had to navigate in social movements.
31:09
Speaker 1: What are respectability politics?
31:12
Speaker 2: I mean, I think that it probably isn't a surprise
31:14
Speaker 2: to anybody that if you are going to be held
31:17
Speaker 2: up as the figurehead of a movement, you're going to
31:19
Speaker 2: have a really narrow set of ways in what you're
31:21
Speaker 2: expected to behave. I mean, people want you to be polite,
31:24
Speaker 2: they want you to dress a certain way, they want
31:26
Speaker 2: you to look approachable. You know, if you're going to
31:28
Speaker 2: be involved in demanding civil rights, maybe that you pick
31:32
Speaker 2: someone who seems nice. I think we all grew up
31:34
Speaker 2: in the era of thinking Rosa Parks was like one
31:36
Speaker 2: hundred year old, nice little woman. She wasn't that old,
31:40
Speaker 2: and she wasn't that quiet. But part of the way
31:43
Speaker 2: that she sort of became canonized in popular culture was
31:46
Speaker 2: as this really feeble, quiet woman who was you know,
31:52
Speaker 2: not scary to people. That she was kind of made
31:56
Speaker 2: thingless by the process of turning her into this icon
31:59
Speaker 2: of civil rights. So I think that that comes up
32:01
Speaker 2: a lot in terms of her expectata. Yeah, when I
32:04
Speaker 2: was growing up, I had this vision that she was
32:05
Speaker 2: like eighty.
32:06
Speaker 1: Years old too, look like a cane or something exactly.
32:09
Speaker 2: Literally, they turned her into.
32:11
Speaker 1: Do you guys have that missus claws?
32:13
Speaker 2: This is like this is all news to you. Yeah,
32:15
Speaker 2: in her like their forties, when when all this is
32:18
Speaker 2: not that old, not that old, and also like a
32:22
Speaker 2: radical organizer for her entire life. Wow. Yeah, one of
32:25
Speaker 2: the first people to be demanding investigations into the rapes
32:29
Speaker 2: of black women, huge organizer of youth, which comes up
32:33
Speaker 2: in the book that she was extremely dedicated to the
32:35
Speaker 2: next generation of young activists and that was something that
32:38
Speaker 2: motivated her. A totally fierce woman. But of course it
32:42
Speaker 2: benefits kind of the story of how of how change
32:45
Speaker 2: happens to paint her as someone who was never demanding
32:48
Speaker 2: anything and you know, was just minding her own business.
32:50
Speaker 2: That's not true. She was a total radical, and I
32:53
Speaker 2: think that girls are subject to that, that there are
32:55
Speaker 2: ways in which we expect girls to behave in public.
32:58
Speaker 2: On the other hand, something that I do feel is
33:01
Speaker 2: that girls have just ever so slightly more latitude in
33:04
Speaker 2: terms of how they behave in public than grown women do.
33:07
Speaker 2: And that's part of the reason that I think girls
33:09
Speaker 2: have often been the figureheads of these movements. They're allowed
33:12
Speaker 2: to get away with just a little bit more, a
33:15
Speaker 2: little bit more of what. Imagine a woman, a grown
33:18
Speaker 2: professional woman who's like sobbing or screaming in public, she
33:22
Speaker 2: will not do well. I mean, we know how society
33:25
Speaker 2: treats those women. But a teenage girl who is crying
33:29
Speaker 2: or who is shouting, or who's waving her finger in
33:33
Speaker 2: your face, we just allow a little bit more.
33:36
Speaker 1: That's the drama, gossip friendship thing you were talking about.
33:39
Speaker 1: Totally drama.
33:40
Speaker 2: That's the drama. That's the drum, like the being a
33:43
Speaker 2: little over the top, being a little too much.
33:46
Speaker 1: And we allow that, we allow that. I want to
33:48
Speaker 1: talk about some of the figureheads in our current day
33:51
Speaker 1: that we probably all know. Emma Gonzalez, who's now Ex Gonzales.
33:57
Speaker 1: She became the figurehead of the Parkland shooting and the
34:00
Speaker 1: March for Our Lives movement. The Cut did a piece
34:03
Speaker 1: on her. I want to say, like last year, that
34:06
Speaker 1: gave me chills. She kind of recounted her experience post
34:11
Speaker 1: March for our Lives in hindsight. In many ways we
34:14
Speaker 1: think about our high school experience. She talks about in
34:17
Speaker 1: hindsight what this activist experience was like. And I had
34:22
Speaker 1: never considered some of the things that she had gone through. Yeah,
34:27
Speaker 1: talk to me about celebrity and activism in this day
34:30
Speaker 1: and age.
34:30
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so, Ex Gonzalz is a good point.
34:34
Speaker 2: And I actually recently talked to them for another story.
34:37
Speaker 2: And I think that's that whole world navigating all of that.
34:41
Speaker 2: You can see why it would put such a burden
34:45
Speaker 2: on a person yeah, I think that in a way,
34:48
Speaker 2: America has always been in the business of sort of
34:50
Speaker 2: minting child stars. We've always had a weakness for a
34:54
Speaker 2: young celebrity, and so I think that in some ways,
34:58
Speaker 2: the culture as a whole can't help. But if you
35:00
Speaker 2: see a visible girl, the apparatus that makes sense to
35:04
Speaker 2: kind of pluck her into is the child star apparatus,
35:07
Speaker 2: Like that is our There was.
35:08
Speaker 1: An aesthetic that you talk about too, right. They had
35:11
Speaker 1: the shaved head. Yeah, Like they looked different.
35:14
Speaker 2: Totally, and it became like this instant icon. And then
35:18
Speaker 2: once you become kind of a bumper sticker, I don't
35:20
Speaker 2: know how much people want to engage in what you're
35:22
Speaker 2: actually saying. And I think that was one of the
35:24
Speaker 2: things that was so hard for them. They weren't just
35:26
Speaker 2: a figurehead or a clever tweet. They were trying to
35:29
Speaker 2: communicate something about what needs to change in this country,
35:32
Speaker 2: and and that is one of the difficulties about writing
35:41
Speaker 2: this book. I so wanted to avoid that when I
35:43
Speaker 2: was talking about these girls, and one of the things
35:45
Speaker 2: that I tried to do is always contextualize them within
35:48
Speaker 2: the movements and really articulate what they're actually fighting for.
35:52
Speaker 2: But I think in the same society that created Disney
35:55
Speaker 2: child stars, that is our mode for understanding what it
35:58
Speaker 2: means to be a young person in public.
36:00
Speaker 1: We have Hannah Montana and ex Gonzalez.
36:02
Speaker 2: So those are the two poles. I mean, that's what
36:05
Speaker 2: we've got. Yes, I think that's right.
36:07
Speaker 1: What are some of the less perceptible dangers that these
36:10
Speaker 1: girls deal with? I mean that most obvious is the
36:13
Speaker 1: people that don't agree with them, that challenge their existence
36:17
Speaker 1: in their lives.
36:18
Speaker 2: I think the second most obvious, maybe, and the one
36:21
Speaker 2: that weighs on people the most, is the feeling that
36:24
Speaker 2: this whole problem, whatever their problem is that they're articulating,
36:28
Speaker 2: is theirs alone to fix. I talked to Jamie Markgolan,
36:31
Speaker 2: who was deeply, deeply involved in climate change work and
36:35
Speaker 2: Zero Hour, which is the organization she co founded, and
36:38
Speaker 2: she was saying how when she was at the height
36:40
Speaker 2: of her activism as a teenager, she felt like she
36:42
Speaker 2: couldn't go to her grandfather's birthday party because how could
36:45
Speaker 2: she say that going to a family event was more
36:47
Speaker 2: important than the fate of the planet. You know, when
36:50
Speaker 2: you're a teenager, you do see things in black and
36:52
Speaker 2: white and of course, if you're given the choice between
36:55
Speaker 2: choosing for what's going to happen to the world and
36:57
Speaker 2: going to a birthday party like the world is more important,
37:00
Speaker 2: I think that's a really dangerous way to look at
37:03
Speaker 2: your activist work. And of course it's a total recipe
37:05
Speaker 2: for burnout, right, So I think there are the foes
37:08
Speaker 2: that come from the outside who try to belittle, or
37:10
Speaker 2: degrade or humiliate, and I mean, I have been in
37:13
Speaker 2: some of these girls mentions and it is absolute trash
37:16
Speaker 2: fire out there. But then there's also the voice inside
37:19
Speaker 2: yourself that says, you're not doing enough, you should be
37:21
Speaker 2: working harder, you're not making the progress you should be making.
37:24
Speaker 2: Why doesn't everyone see it the way you see it?
37:26
Speaker 2: And that voice can be devastating, and I think that's
37:29
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that we do see these girls burnout,
37:32
Speaker 2: because how can any one person carry that for so long.
37:35
Speaker 1: The idea of reclaiming time, reclaiming a word has I
37:40
Speaker 1: think been in the zeitgeist in the last five years.
37:42
Speaker 1: More so obviously I think of slut, fat, queer, the
37:47
Speaker 1: N word, all words that communities are reclaiming. You write
37:52
Speaker 1: that the term girl is afraided one, Yeah, I was
37:55
Speaker 1: really shocked to hear that what baggage does the word
37:59
Speaker 1: girl carry?
38:00
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, it's funny because I used
38:04
Speaker 2: it pretty unthinkingly in the beginning, and then I encountered
38:07
Speaker 2: more people who said, are you sure you want to
38:09
Speaker 2: call them girls? Do you want to call them young
38:11
Speaker 2: women instead? I think that the reason that girl is
38:16
Speaker 2: complicated is because it's sometimes a way for an adult
38:20
Speaker 2: man in particular to talk about an adult woman. So, yeah,
38:24
Speaker 2: I don't think you should be calling adult women girls.
38:27
Speaker 2: I don't think you should be calling adult men boys
38:29
Speaker 2: when we should just call people what they are. But
38:32
Speaker 2: I think that actually being a girl is really powerful,
38:35
Speaker 2: and I would hate for the book to somehow distance
38:38
Speaker 2: itself from a time that I think is really special
38:41
Speaker 2: and really consequential and can unleash a lot in a
38:45
Speaker 2: person like I don't want to back away from that word.
38:47
Speaker 1: You just made my heart jump. Yeah, so we're reclaiming
38:50
Speaker 1: the word girl.
38:51
Speaker 2: I think so I was proud to be one, I,
38:54
Speaker 2: you know, am proud to know them. I think that
38:57
Speaker 2: it deserves to be respected on its own time. I
39:01
Speaker 2: think it's like any word if someone asked you not
39:03
Speaker 2: to call them that don't call them that. But if
39:04
Speaker 2: there's otherwise, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
39:07
Speaker 1: You know, now that you say this, I'm thinking so
39:10
Speaker 1: much of this podcast is me trying to heal Yeah,
39:16
Speaker 1: my young girl life. I thought it was really hard
39:18
Speaker 1: to be a teenage girl.
39:19
Speaker 2: It is hard. It's still hard. Yeah, I think anything
39:23
Speaker 2: that's the flip side of anything that's really determinative, which
39:26
Speaker 2: being a teenage girl is hugely determinative for the rest
39:29
Speaker 2: of your life. It's going to be hard. And I
39:32
Speaker 2: think becoming the person you want to be is the
39:34
Speaker 2: hardest job in the world, and we're all doing it
39:36
Speaker 2: all the time, and especially being a teenager is I think,
39:39
Speaker 2: really hard, and it's hard now for a million reasons.
39:42
Speaker 2: I'm glad I didn't have to do it through COVID
39:44
Speaker 2: or you know, any of these other things that people
39:46
Speaker 2: have had to deal with. I also think, again, it's
39:49
Speaker 2: a time of huge potential and it's it's powerful to
39:53
Speaker 2: revisit that. I mean, obviously I spent a lot of
39:55
Speaker 2: time thinking about my teenage self when I was working
39:57
Speaker 2: on this book. I have a lot of compassion for her,
40:00
Speaker 2: wanted a lot, you know, and.
40:01
Speaker 1: Have a lot of compassion for her. Yeah, I think
40:04
Speaker 1: I need more compassion for mine.
40:05
Speaker 2: You do. And I don't even know anything about her,
40:08
Speaker 2: but I still feel that way. I think it's it's
40:11
Speaker 2: so hard to be to feel close to adulthood and
40:16
Speaker 2: to know that you're not there yet, And I think
40:18
Speaker 2: it leads people to do all kinds of crazy things,
40:21
Speaker 2: and some of them are great and some of them
40:23
Speaker 2: are really bad ideas.
40:24
Speaker 1: That's sort of like why the Britney song I'm not
40:26
Speaker 1: a girl, not yet a woman? She was only something.
40:28
Speaker 2: Yes, it's wrong, true, and all of us listen it's
40:32
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, she had wisdom.
40:36
Speaker 1: Or her writers did whoever.
40:37
Speaker 2: They all contributed to that beautiful finish product.
40:40
Speaker 1: I'm going to borrow a quote from The New York
40:42
Speaker 1: Times in twenty twenty one. For American teenagers, their political
40:47
Speaker 1: coming of age has been a tumultuous one. They've seen
40:49
Speaker 1: the boundary breaking candidacies of women and people of color
40:52
Speaker 1: and the norm shattering presidency of Donald Trump. They lived
40:55
Speaker 1: through racial justice protests, a pandemic, and attacks on American democracy.
41:02
Speaker 1: Given the challenges that one of the way about in
41:04
Speaker 1: your Boody.
41:04
Speaker 2: The past general girls is by turning them into a
41:07
Speaker 2: celebrity rather than.
41:09
Speaker 1: All generations of girls really have people. But what do
41:12
Speaker 1: you think the world of activism looks like for teenage
41:14
Speaker 1: girls moving forward? And how has social media changed the game?
41:18
Speaker 2: Social media has changed the game in every way. You
41:20
Speaker 2: can organize a thirty thousand person march in about fifteen minutes,
41:25
Speaker 2: not something that used to be possible. You can get
41:27
Speaker 2: the word out so quickly, you can raise money so quickly.
41:30
Speaker 2: I can also share lies. You can also share lies quickly.
41:34
Speaker 2: And I also think you can have a lot of
41:38
Speaker 2: exposure really fast as a young person, very very very quickly,
41:41
Speaker 2: before you know what you want to say, before you
41:44
Speaker 2: feel like you have a sense of exactly what you're
41:46
Speaker 2: fighting for. And I think that's really overwhelming and can
41:49
Speaker 2: be really dangerous for young people. I also think I
41:53
Speaker 2: don't think necessarily this time and history is uniquely bad.
41:56
Speaker 2: As I always say to people, I do think there's
41:58
Speaker 2: a lot of there's to be depressed about. But if
42:01
Speaker 2: you ask me whether I would want to go be
42:03
Speaker 2: dropped into some other moment in history, the answer is definitely.
42:06
Speaker 2: Know there's never been for all the problems, there has
42:09
Speaker 2: never been a better time to be an ambitious young woman.
42:12
Speaker 1: But say that again true that it's true.
42:16
Speaker 2: You would not want to be you would not want
42:18
Speaker 2: to be in another time. I think that the difference,
42:21
Speaker 2: the thing that social media accomplishes is I don't think
42:24
Speaker 2: it's true that in other times young people have had
42:27
Speaker 2: so much awareness of the problems that they face outside
42:29
Speaker 2: of their own lives. So, of course things have been
42:32
Speaker 2: reprehensible for many points throughout our history, but you didn't
42:36
Speaker 2: experience all those things at once, Whereas now you're a
42:39
Speaker 2: young person sitting in class, you're going about your day
42:42
Speaker 2: to day, and you have an awareness of every wrong
42:44
Speaker 2: thing that's going on in every single country and every
42:47
Speaker 2: single sip code in the United States and every single
42:49
Speaker 2: place around the world at once. It's a lot to hold.
42:53
Speaker 1: You used to have that somewhat like at the five
42:55
Speaker 1: o'clock or six o'clock news, right, and not all of it.
42:58
Speaker 2: And you weren't holding in your while you were trying
43:00
Speaker 2: to answer your spelling test. I mean, the ways in
43:03
Speaker 2: which it interferes in every aspect of your life is
43:06
Speaker 2: I think new, and it can feel immobilizing because it's
43:10
Speaker 2: all flooding at you so fast. So what do you
43:12
Speaker 2: do about it. I think one thing that young people
43:15
Speaker 2: can do, and that some of the people I touched
43:17
Speaker 2: in the book do, is to just choose one thing,
43:20
Speaker 2: to choose it and engage with it in real life.
43:22
Speaker 2: So whether that's your community garden, or you want to
43:26
Speaker 2: get involved in a social justice movement that's happening in
43:30
Speaker 2: your town over one particular law that's being passed, or
43:34
Speaker 2: one particular housing development that's being built that you want
43:37
Speaker 2: to fight for, or one particular thing. You can get
43:40
Speaker 2: your hands dirty in that and you can feel what
43:42
Speaker 2: it feels like to organize in person with people. I
43:45
Speaker 2: think the Internet's amazing, and more importantly, I think the
43:47
Speaker 2: internet's not going anywhere, so we have to learn how
43:50
Speaker 2: to engage with it responsibly and to make use of
43:52
Speaker 2: the good parts. But there is no replacement for in
43:55
Speaker 2: person community. And every single organizer I spoke to, including
43:58
Speaker 2: the people who do tons of work on the Internet,
44:00
Speaker 2: we'll say the same thing. You've got to be with
44:02
Speaker 2: people in person. You have to feel that you're all
44:04
Speaker 2: facing the stakes of this, whatever it is, together as
44:07
Speaker 2: actual human beings.
44:09
Speaker 1: There's such an element at something you mentioned at the
44:11
Speaker 1: top of the conversation too, of like don't boo vote, Like,
44:15
Speaker 1: if you're upset about something, you got to take it
44:19
Speaker 1: feels worse to like sit and talk about how gun
44:22
Speaker 1: violence sucks.
44:23
Speaker 2: But I think don't boo vote came from a place
44:26
Speaker 2: of like, if you want to change it, this is
44:28
Speaker 2: what you have to do, I would say. On the
44:30
Speaker 2: at the same time, or like running on a parallel
44:32
Speaker 2: track is kind of like if you want to feel better,
44:34
Speaker 2: this is what you have to do. You will feel
44:36
Speaker 2: better if you're out there better. And there are people
44:39
Speaker 2: who have said, you know, Gratituneberg herself says this, but
44:42
Speaker 2: also tons of other climate activists have said that actually
44:44
Speaker 2: the work of activism has made them feel better about
44:47
Speaker 2: the world, not worse. That knowing more and being more
44:49
Speaker 2: involved has actually helped them because there's nothing as paralyzing
44:54
Speaker 2: as anxiety that has nowhere to go, so give it
44:56
Speaker 2: somewhere to go.
44:58
Speaker 1: Speaking of hope, you say that the this book is
45:00
Speaker 1: filled with hope. Hope is one of my favorite words
45:03
Speaker 1: in the English language. I often say this to my
45:06
Speaker 1: friends going through breakups. When you're really sad, the only
45:11
Speaker 1: thing that can make you feel better is the idea
45:15
Speaker 1: of hope. Hope for who you will meet, hope for
45:17
Speaker 1: the experiences you will have. The idea that it can
45:21
Speaker 1: get better is full of excitement. Why is this book
45:26
Speaker 1: filled with hope?
45:27
Speaker 2: To me? The idea that in generation after generation people
45:31
Speaker 2: have wanted the world to be better is a very
45:33
Speaker 2: very hopeful thing. The idea that people wake up and
45:37
Speaker 2: ask themselves what can I do to realize that universe?
45:40
Speaker 2: That brings me tremendous hope. I mean I think that
45:44
Speaker 2: you don't. It's not hard to find the stories that
45:46
Speaker 2: will make you feel hopeless. Those are everywhere, so I
45:49
Speaker 2: didn't need to write a book of those. But I
45:51
Speaker 2: think the fact that people come together and change things,
45:55
Speaker 2: and that you know, in a funny way, that it
45:57
Speaker 2: has always been dependent to to some degree on this
46:01
Speaker 2: partnership between people in power and people out of power
46:05
Speaker 2: to bring about that change. I mean, all credit to
46:08
Speaker 2: people out of power, who are the ones who are
46:10
Speaker 2: usually doing this. But I do find it hopeful that
46:13
Speaker 2: whatever the reasons were that they did that, eventually men benighted.
46:18
Speaker 2: Though they may be voted to enfranchise women, women couldn't
46:21
Speaker 2: vote to give themselves the vote. I mean, that's not
46:23
Speaker 2: how it works. People in power have to seed power.
46:26
Speaker 2: They have to be forced. Absolutely, they've never given it
46:28
Speaker 2: up by choice. But the idea that there can ever
46:31
Speaker 2: be that partnership, that people can actually be compelled to
46:35
Speaker 2: share influence is a hopeful thing to me because it
46:39
Speaker 2: runs so counter to what human nature is, which sometimes
46:42
Speaker 2: is pretty bleak. And I find that to be very hopeful.
46:45
Speaker 2: And I also find girls growing up to be very hopeful.
46:49
Speaker 2: I feel the world is so lucky to you know,
46:52
Speaker 2: year after a year get a new crop of young
46:54
Speaker 2: women who want to change things.
46:56
Speaker 1: Was this book at all a form of activism for you?
47:00
Speaker 2: Oh, good question. I feel, having spent so much time
47:04
Speaker 2: with activist I admire so much, so reluctant to put
47:07
Speaker 2: myself on their level. I feel like I am so
47:09
Speaker 2: in awe of what it takes, the determination, the tenacity
47:13
Speaker 2: to keep going. I feel the book is a work
47:18
Speaker 2: of observation and a work of bearing witness to these
47:24
Speaker 2: stories so that other people can recognize what a long
47:28
Speaker 2: line of activists they're in. I feel very much a writer.
47:32
Speaker 2: Sometimes I feel a writer at the expense of being
47:35
Speaker 2: a doer, which is sometimes makes me wonder whether I'm
47:38
Speaker 2: on the right side of the equation. But I do
47:40
Speaker 2: think that we wouldn't know these stories if no one
47:43
Speaker 2: wrote them down, And I often grieve how many stories
47:46
Speaker 2: we don't know because nobody wrote them down. So I
47:49
Speaker 2: feel someone needs to be doing this part of the work,
47:52
Speaker 2: and I'm happy to be in that chair.
47:54
Speaker 1: How do your parents feel.
47:56
Speaker 2: My other's so excited. They'll talk, they'll talk to anyone
47:58
Speaker 2: about it. I mean, my dad's literally walking down the
48:00
Speaker 2: street telling people my daughter's book comes out on Tuesday. Yeah,
48:04
Speaker 2: they're tremendously excited. I am also lucky. My mom's a writer,
48:08
Speaker 2: so I got this from her. My dad's an artist.
48:11
Speaker 2: As we always say, we're the only family where being
48:13
Speaker 2: a doctor seems weird, that like, what's that an accounting? Bizarre?
48:18
Speaker 2: But they're Yeah, they're super proud. My dad will say
48:22
Speaker 2: I always knew she would do it. I don't know
48:24
Speaker 2: that I feel that's true. But yeah, there's no replacement
48:27
Speaker 2: for having really supportive people in your corner, whether they're
48:29
Speaker 2: your parents. Obviously that's great. You don't have supportive parents,
48:33
Speaker 2: go ahead and find some older people who will just
48:35
Speaker 2: root for you no matter what. Who think all the
48:37
Speaker 2: you know, anyone who says anything bad about you is trash.
48:39
Speaker 2: Just find that person and put them in the parents slot.
48:42
Speaker 2: They can go there. I think, Yeah, what I said
48:45
Speaker 2: in the beginning is true. It gives you this sense
48:47
Speaker 2: of psychological sense of home, that there's always a safe
48:50
Speaker 2: place to go. I really wish that for everyone. It's
48:53
Speaker 2: really nice.
48:55
Speaker 1: What was the surprising difficulty of this book? Most authors
49:02
Speaker 1: I have on here say that having a book, and
49:04
Speaker 1: I have mostly women, so they say writing a book
49:07
Speaker 1: was harder than having a baby, and that was the
49:09
Speaker 1: hardest thing they thought they had done.
49:10
Speaker 2: Oh God, when I have a baby, I'll let you
49:12
Speaker 2: know which one was worse.
49:13
Speaker 1: This is a bad phrase now, but a labor of
49:16
Speaker 1: love totally.
49:17
Speaker 2: Yeah.
49:18
Speaker 1: Where did the tears come? When did they come?
49:21
Speaker 2: All the time? The writing is the hardest part. Honestly.
49:23
Speaker 2: I love talking to people and I love listening to people,
49:27
Speaker 2: so the research phase for me is always really fun.
49:30
Speaker 2: I mean, one of the reasons I continue to stick
49:32
Speaker 2: with writing, even though I often find it exhausting, is
49:35
Speaker 2: because I think of myself as someone who gets to
49:37
Speaker 2: be professionally curious, and I cannot imagine a better way
49:40
Speaker 2: to spend your time. I mean, it's I indulge my
49:43
Speaker 2: every interest. It is a bit on a regular basis,
49:45
Speaker 2: and most people don't live like that, so I don't
49:48
Speaker 2: want to give that up. Sitting in front of a
49:50
Speaker 2: screen figuring out how to tell these complicated stories, making
49:54
Speaker 2: sure you're doing justice to people who have given you
49:56
Speaker 2: the time, or people you respect so much who you
49:59
Speaker 2: know you want to tell their story in a complete
50:01
Speaker 2: way that is agonizing. And every successive read of the book,
50:06
Speaker 2: which at this point now I've read many, many times,
50:09
Speaker 2: makes you feel like you want to revisit every decision
50:13
Speaker 2: you've ever made in your life. But I would say
50:15
Speaker 2: the writing is always the part that's hard. The talking
50:18
Speaker 2: is always the part that's fun.
50:21
Speaker 1: Very good at both.
50:22
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. In a way, it's funny to
50:25
Speaker 2: be on the other side, you know. I guess again,
50:26
Speaker 2: I've never had a child, But people say after labor
50:29
Speaker 2: is over, you kind of forget the brain like releases
50:32
Speaker 2: all these endorphins and you sort of it all becomes hazy.
50:35
Speaker 2: I do feel that way a little bit with the book.
50:37
Speaker 2: I thought when I was writing it, i was telling
50:39
Speaker 2: people I'm never going to write another book again, And
50:40
Speaker 2: now I'm like, well, maybe if I find the right topic,
50:43
Speaker 2: I could think of something else I could do it again. Yeah,
50:45
Speaker 2: so you do, forget a little bit.
50:47
Speaker 1: You look very well rested for somebody who's on a
50:49
Speaker 1: I did get a fit at a boss, so important. Good job.
50:52
Speaker 2: I mean, listen, we can't be messing around with that.
50:55
Speaker 1: Okay. So you do a really great job of chronicling
50:59
Speaker 1: other people's lives. So I want to do some rapid
51:01
Speaker 1: fire about you. Oh okay, Maddie Cohn. Yes, a woman
51:04
Speaker 1: or a girl that you look up to.
51:06
Speaker 2: Gloria steinem best book Dedication ever, by the way, makes
51:10
Speaker 2: me cry every single time, no matter where you are.
51:14
Speaker 2: I could read it an airport like the least romantic
51:17
Speaker 2: place in the world, and I'm thanking that doctor good brand.
51:20
Speaker 1: Also, I think I've cried at the airport more than
51:22
Speaker 1: any other place.
51:23
Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough, they are pumping something into the air there.
51:26
Speaker 1: But yes, I agree what you've learned from the generation
51:29
Speaker 1: of women above you and below.
51:32
Speaker 2: You, above me, I would say, take no prisoners, keep
51:37
Speaker 2: freaking going, plow through any obstacle that stands in your
51:40
Speaker 2: path below me. Be humble.
51:44
Speaker 1: Interesting they humble me?
51:46
Speaker 2: Really? Yeah?
51:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wasn't because they're not humble in a beautiful way.
51:52
Speaker 2: I know, but I see them and I feel humbled.
51:56
Speaker 1: Okay, me too. I'm with you on that. Your favorite
51:59
Speaker 1: follow on Instagram.
52:00
Speaker 2: It's a tie between Martha Stewart, whom I love, and
52:07
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess that I follow Vogue and I'll
52:10
Speaker 2: follow Vogue till the end of time.
52:11
Speaker 1: Who's a writer we should all be following, Rebecca Taster.
52:16
Speaker 1: The best investment you've made recently.
52:18
Speaker 2: I bought myself for the first time ever in my life,
52:21
Speaker 2: a piece of fancy jewelry when I finished the book
52:23
Speaker 2: and got it, like finally accepted from the publisher, which
52:26
Speaker 2: I am wearing today.
52:28
Speaker 1: It's beautiful from sherman Field. Very timeless.
52:31
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, woman designer. And that is the best
52:33
Speaker 2: investment I made recently.
52:35
Speaker 1: You deserve it.
52:35
Speaker 2: Gift for myself.
52:36
Speaker 1: A book that changed your life, something that everybody should read.
52:40
Speaker 2: I read a book called Fierce Attachments. It's a memoir.
52:44
Speaker 2: It's a story of a mother and a daughter. I've
52:46
Speaker 2: read a million amazing history books. I could tell you
52:49
Speaker 2: about the Swerve, I could tell you about all these
52:51
Speaker 2: other incredible books that taught me a lot, but Fierce
52:54
Speaker 2: Attachments is really the story of the bond. Complicated though
52:58
Speaker 2: it may be between women and what it means to
53:00
Speaker 2: be a woman in the world and a writer, and
53:02
Speaker 2: it changed my life totally.
53:03
Speaker 1: Okay, we do a pretty smart question. Okay, feel free
53:09
Speaker 1: to pick between the cards, question everything.
53:12
Speaker 2: Who do people say you remind them of? Okay, Twice
53:15
Speaker 2: people have said I look like Kate Blanchette, which I
53:18
Speaker 2: really consider. Yeah, and it happened two times. And obviously
53:21
Speaker 2: I've been alive for many, many days, but two times
53:23
Speaker 2: is all I need to be able to confidently say
53:25
Speaker 2: it in public. Agreed, And I don't know. I guess
53:28
Speaker 2: some people say that I remind them of like the
53:30
Speaker 2: nosiest person that they've ever met, but I consider that
53:32
Speaker 2: a compliment.
53:34
Speaker 1: When I was younger, they told me I was the
53:35
Speaker 1: bossiest person they'd ever met, and I also consider that
53:38
Speaker 1: a compent. I mean it is, yeah, smartest decision you've ever.
53:41
Speaker 2: Made, smart decision I've ever made, to decide to be
53:45
Speaker 2: a writer. I mean, I could have decided to do
53:48
Speaker 2: anything else or thought this is going to be way
53:50
Speaker 2: too hard, and I decided to do it anyway, no limits, none.
53:58
Speaker 1: I want to thank the people that make the show possible.
54:01
Speaker 1: Colleen O'Neill, Jill Salama, Karrie O'Keefe and Phil speed Tech. Okay,
54:06
Speaker 1: you know what time it is. Today's a good day
54:09
Speaker 1: to have a good day. I'll see you next week.