Speaker 1: Pushkin. This is Talk Easy. I'm Samforgo, so welcome to
Speaker 1: the show today. I am joined by author, voting rights activists,
Speaker 1: and gubernatorial candidate for the State of Georgia, Stacy Abrams.
Speaker 1: This past week, Abrams and her longtime business partner Laura
Speaker 1: Hodgson published a new book called Level Up, a Technical
Speaker 1: Guide to Starting and Scaling a Small Business. It offers
Speaker 1: the kind of straightforward and sensible advice we've come to
Speaker 1: expect from Abrams, both the entrepreneur and the politician for
Speaker 1: those unfamiliar. From twenty eleven to twenty seventeen, Abrams served
Speaker 1: as George's House Minority Leader and representative for District eighty nine.
Speaker 1: She was the first woman to lead Georgia's General Assembly
Speaker 1: and the first Black person to lead in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives. While she was making history, she also launched
Speaker 1: the New Georgia Project in twenty thirteen, a nonprofit devoted
Speaker 1: to registering often overlooked voters and communities of color. The
Speaker 1: project was a massive success, bringing in over eighty six
Speaker 1: thousand new voter applications within the first year. But this
Speaker 1: ongoing fight for voting rights came to a head in
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, When Abrams first ran for Governor of Georgia
Speaker 1: against then Secretary Area of State Brian Kemp, it was
Speaker 1: a closely contested race with the record breaking turnout, but Abrams,
Speaker 1: despite her remarkable efforts, came up short. Brian Kemp became
Speaker 1: the eighty third Governor of Georgia. In November of twenty eighteen, Abrams,
Speaker 1: suspecting foul play from the GOP, founded Fair Fight action
Speaker 1: in response. As of today, Fair Fight continues to challenge
Speaker 1: Georgia's restrictive voting laws. We get into some of those
Speaker 1: in this conversation you're about to hear. But between twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen and now, Abrams has stayed on the path undeterred.
Speaker 1: Alongside activist like Debrah Scott, Helen Butler, and Tamika Atkins.
Speaker 1: She focused on the long game, investing in communities that
Speaker 1: politicians have long ignored, some voters that have never voted,
Speaker 1: other voters that have felt like their vote didn't matter
Speaker 1: in the first place. All this work eventually paid off
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty election, as Abrams help secure Georgia
Speaker 1: victories for President Biden and Senators Ralphael Warnock and John Ossoff.
Speaker 1: On the heels of that historic success. She aims to
Speaker 1: unseat Brian Kemp in the gubernatorial race come November. But
Speaker 1: how does she plan to do this? How does she
Speaker 1: hope to combat the new voting laws that will unquestionably
Speaker 1: make it harder for Georgians to vote? Does she think
Speaker 1: it's possible to inspire a democratic party that currently feels rudderless?
Speaker 1: These were some of the questions I was thinking about
Speaker 1: ahead of sitting down with Abrams. And while we unpack
Speaker 1: all of this, we also get into the human toll
Speaker 1: of voter suppression, what a functional democracy could actually look like,
Speaker 1: the role of writing in her life, the first time
Speaker 1: she visited the governor's mansion, and so much more so,
Speaker 1: I thank you for being here. Without further ado, this
Speaker 1: is Stacy Abrams, quick soundist. What did you have for
Speaker 1: breakfast today? I had scrambled egg toasts and assorted fruits.
Speaker 1: That's a real meal. My parents are briefly staying with me,
Speaker 1: and my dad insisted, because he was making himself a
Speaker 1: fruit salad, that I have one as well. I had
Speaker 1: a balanced meal because my dad. It's good to know,
Speaker 1: even after all you've accomplished, your dad can still guilt
Speaker 1: you into eating breakfast. He truly, truly can Stacy Abrams,
Speaker 1: nice to meet you you as well. It is a
Speaker 1: tremendous honor to have you here, and I thank you
Speaker 1: for taking the time. Why don't we just jump right in.
Speaker 1: You have a new book called Level Up. It's a
Speaker 1: guide for small business owners. As we know, with the
Speaker 1: advancement of technology, it's never been easier to start a business,
Speaker 1: and yet it's never been harder to scale it. Half
Speaker 1: of new businesses in America don't make it past five years.
Speaker 1: I know you're very familiar with this. You've co founded
Speaker 1: and worked with a handful of companies in the past decade,
Speaker 1: and from those experiences, you write in the book it's
Speaker 1: easy to feel powerless when you encounter failure caused by
Speaker 1: a systemic problem. Too often, the flaws feel personal, and
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs are hardwired to take the blame. In this book,
Speaker 1: we want to help you better understand the often invisible
Speaker 1: and unexpected forces that hold back many small firms from
Speaker 1: fulfilling their potential to start. What are those invisible and
Speaker 1: unexpected forces that you've mentioned here? We talk about a
Speaker 1: number of the forces we've encountered, and list is certainly
Speaker 1: not exhaustive, but I think you can pour them into
Speaker 1: two categories. There's external and internal. Internally, we are trained
Speaker 1: by the great stories, the mythology of the small business person.
Speaker 1: That should be easier than it is. When you start
Speaker 1: a small business, you have a good idea, you put
Speaker 1: your bloodswet and tears into it, you put your back
Speaker 1: into it, and it will succeed. And that's just not
Speaker 1: how it happens. You're going to run into HR issues.
Speaker 1: Even if you hire one person, you now have an
Speaker 1: HR issue. You are managing someone who relies on you
Speaker 1: for their daily bread, and there will inherently be conflicts.
Speaker 1: There are the challenges that come then with how do
Speaker 1: you make certain that you're paying a competitive wage that
Speaker 1: doesn't also sink your business. You are dealing with and
Speaker 1: grappling with the money you need to start your business.
Speaker 1: There's a certainly a West Coast fable about how small
Speaker 1: businesses can be started with a small loan and a
Speaker 1: really nice garage, but for most small businesses, neither of
Speaker 1: those are available, and so it's really thinking about how
Speaker 1: do you access capital when you don't come from those means.
Speaker 1: And then they're the external forces. The external forces are
Speaker 1: that often the capital markets are not designed for small businesses.
Speaker 1: They're not designed for us to get the money we need.
Speaker 1: They're not designed for us to keep the money we make.
Speaker 1: And the solutions that are often proffered our solutions that
Speaker 1: try to take a fortune one hundred solution and scale
Speaker 1: it down to a small business. But small businesses aren'therently different.
Speaker 1: And so what we try to demystify is that all
Speaker 1: of these stumbling blocks, these forces are not in your head.
Speaker 1: They are real, and some of them you can navigate
Speaker 1: through your own gumption and knowledge, and others we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to ban together because we've got to fix the rules.
Speaker 1: How did you personally navigate through those divvying financial, political
Speaker 1: regulatory systems, sometimes very poorly, So that's part of the
Speaker 1: impetus for the book. You learn by trial and error,
Speaker 1: you learn by experimentation and weird success, And ultimately, I
Speaker 1: think that the success that we've had as partner, Laura
Speaker 1: Hodson and I have had has really been grounded in
Speaker 1: always taking our lessons with us. Sometimes we learn our
Speaker 1: losses but not our lessons. You ask a small business
Speaker 1: owner about a mistake they made, they can give it
Speaker 1: to you in great and granular detail, but you ask
Speaker 1: them about something they've done well and they'll gloss over
Speaker 1: it to get to the next idea. We try to
Speaker 1: extrapolate our lessons and make sure we understood what happened.
Speaker 1: We took lessons about what we did right when we
Speaker 1: were raising money, how to pick clients, how to fire clients,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, when we wanted to solve a financial issue
Speaker 1: that we couldn't solve for our small business, we created
Speaker 1: a new business that solves it not only for us,
Speaker 1: but solved it, we believe, at scale for thousands of
Speaker 1: other small businesses. What you're describing our systemic issues embedded
Speaker 1: into the very fabric of capitalism, right. Yes, and yet
Speaker 1: when people fail inside that flawed structure that you scribed,
Speaker 1: they take it perhaps more personally than they should. They
Speaker 1: see their shortcomings more as a reflection of them than
Speaker 1: the system in which they are working. And it seems
Speaker 1: to me that the same can be said for a
Speaker 1: large swath of voters, especially in Georgia, that have felt
Speaker 1: let down by the structure of government. You have done
Speaker 1: obviously significant work to boost morale to meet people where
Speaker 1: they are, but you too are forced to work in
Speaker 1: a system which includes a new voting law past last summer,
Speaker 1: Can you outline what this law will do to Georgia
Speaker 1: voters in your outcoming election. The work that I do,
Speaker 1: whether it's in politics, in the nonprofit space, or in business,
Speaker 1: it's always driven by trying to understand the architecture of
Speaker 1: the challenge and also understanding how you create solutions not
Speaker 1: for your immediate problem, but how do you create systemic
Speaker 1: that extend beyond you, and, if done well, tend to
Speaker 1: forestall the replication of those broken pieces again. And so
Speaker 1: with regards to voting rights. The identification of the broken
Speaker 1: system started years ago when I launched the New Georgia
Speaker 1: Project to address the underrepresentation of voters of color in
Speaker 1: our registration numbers. In the state of Georgia, more than
Speaker 1: eight hundred thousand people of color were not registered to vote.
Speaker 1: That led to a deeper investigation of the system, and
Speaker 1: we uncovered multiple flaws in the system that were designed
Speaker 1: either by legislation or by the practical application of the
Speaker 1: then Secretary of State. One of the challenges, and this
Speaker 1: is true in capitalism and it's true in democracy, is
Speaker 1: that the rules aren't necessarily made for the people they're
Speaker 1: supposed to serve, and we found that the voting laws
Speaker 1: were not being fairly implemented. But moreover, that the complexity
Speaker 1: of the system protected the system, and that happens all
Speaker 1: the time. And so what we're finding with SP two
Speaker 1: O two the new law is that they've made the
Speaker 1: system more complicated, and by doing so, we'll make it
Speaker 1: harder for the very users of that system to navigate it.
Speaker 1: One of the most famous examples is that they have
Speaker 1: changed absentee ballot rules. There is now this very odd
Speaker 1: eleven day window that is not a natural number for
Speaker 1: anyone to think of. But if you want to vote
Speaker 1: by mail, you have a window that closes within eleven days.
Speaker 1: And that presumes that you know what day the last
Speaker 1: day is, and that you count back, and that you
Speaker 1: count back properly, not counting the last day is the
Speaker 1: eleventh day or is it the eleventh day. It's looking
Speaker 1: at the fact that you are not permitted to use
Speaker 1: drop boxes that are outside. Since the whole notion of
Speaker 1: a drop boxes that you drive up and drop it,
Speaker 1: but now you have to drive up, park, go inside
Speaker 1: and drop it. It has rules about your ability to
Speaker 1: get access to information and it also increases the likelihood
Speaker 1: voter subversion and election subversion. What does that mean? So,
Speaker 1: election subversion is when they can just decide they don't
Speaker 1: like the outcome and they can change the rules. And
Speaker 1: we're already seeing that at play because they've changed how
Speaker 1: local elections are managed, and we have already seen a
Speaker 1: number of counties remove African American members. We've seen raised
Speaker 1: concerns about the closure of polling places. There was a debate.
Speaker 1: It has not resolved itself completely, but there is a
Speaker 1: county that sought to shut down seven polling places and
Speaker 1: leave only one polling place, even though it was largely
Speaker 1: rural county. We believe they've come to a resolution, but
Speaker 1: the window remains open for changes. And the point being
Speaker 1: that this law, by its very intention, is designed to
Speaker 1: use the complexity of the system to push voters out,
Speaker 1: because so many voters use the system successfully in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty and twenty twenty one. But they don't frame it
Speaker 1: in that way, of course, not How do they frame it,
Speaker 1: how do they sell it to their constituents. They rely
Speaker 1: on what is commonly referred to as the big lie.
Speaker 1: They rely on I'm trying to think of the most
Speaker 1: appropriate language. But lie is the best word. It's kindergarten word,
Speaker 1: but it works. We're not against kindergarten words here, nor
Speaker 1: am i. I recently wrote a children's books. I'm very
Speaker 1: good with kids language. The point was that the wrong people,
Speaker 1: in their estimation voted. We saw increased numbers of young
Speaker 1: people voting, We saw dramatic increases and communities of color participating.
Speaker 1: We saw increases in rural communities of color participating, and
Speaker 1: so the rules as they were rejiggered, are designed to
Speaker 1: push those very participants out of the process. They argue
Speaker 1: that it is for the protection of the right to vote,
Speaker 1: but the vote wasn't vulnerable. In fact, it was one
Speaker 1: of the safest votes that we've had, and it was
Speaker 1: one of the most accessible because we made certain in
Speaker 1: response to the twenty eighteen election that accessibility was increased,
Speaker 1: that the effectiveness of the system worked. And so this
Speaker 1: is a direct response. But the argument they're making is
Speaker 1: someone could do something bad, therefore we're going to stop
Speaker 1: everyone from doing anything, which is the antithesis of what
Speaker 1: a democratic, small d democratic system should look like. And
Speaker 1: if you extend out from there to the conversations about
Speaker 1: small businesses. It's the same ethos that instead of solving
Speaker 1: the problem for the very people, the people who benefit
Speaker 1: from the chaos, and still more chaos into the system.
Speaker 1: And some do it out of malice, which is what
Speaker 1: I believe is happening with the voting laws. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: done out of laziness, and sometimes it's simply done out
Speaker 1: of ignorance. If you've never run a small business, if
Speaker 1: you've only ever been in the larger corporate structures, you
Speaker 1: don't understand how capital and equity can cripple a small
Speaker 1: business and spur on the success of a large company.
Speaker 1: What a system that wanted people to vote, perhaps a
Speaker 1: system with less broken parts. What would that look like
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two. So voter suppression has three parts.
Speaker 1: It's the metric you should use to determine the success
Speaker 1: of your voting system. So you want to look at
Speaker 1: can you register and stay on the rolls? Can you
Speaker 1: cast your ballot? And does your ballot get counted? And so?
Speaker 1: First informist Georgia has a pretty good registration system. We
Speaker 1: have almost nine of our eligible population registered to vote.
Speaker 1: That is a good thing. The issue is how often
Speaker 1: people get taken off of the system, which is known
Speaker 1: as voter purging. And so the first change would be
Speaker 1: that the voter purge rules, which we have been able
Speaker 1: to make incremental changes to that we finally remove the
Speaker 1: ability to stop someone from voting in the future because
Speaker 1: they fail to vote in the past. Refusing to vote
Speaker 1: should not be a predicate for removing someone from the
Speaker 1: voting roles. So it's can your registers stay on the rolls?
Speaker 1: So that's one number two. Can you cast your ballot? Well,
Speaker 1: you cannot cast your ballot if your polling place is closed.
Speaker 1: You cannot cast your ballot if they move your precinct
Speaker 1: but you don't have a car and there's no public
Speaker 1: transit where you live. You cannot cast your ballot if
Speaker 1: the only day you have off because you're on one
Speaker 1: of those schedules where they can call you anytime they want,
Speaker 1: and the only day you are absolutely certain you have
Speaker 1: off a Sunday, and your county has now decided to
Speaker 1: eliminate Sunday voting, which is what happened in a county
Speaker 1: here in Georgia. And so it's making sure that we
Speaker 1: have as many opportunities available for casting the ballot that
Speaker 1: understands the complexity of human life in the twenty first century.
Speaker 1: And then it says your ballot get counted. We know
Speaker 1: that absentee ballots are being rejected at astronomical rates right
Speaker 1: now in the state of Texas. It's going to likely
Speaker 1: happen in Florida when they start their process. We saw
Speaker 1: it happen here in Georgia. When you make the rules
Speaker 1: harder for people to cast those absentee ballots, when you
Speaker 1: make the rules so arcane that a normal thinking person
Speaker 1: cannot meet the standards, then that is not right. But
Speaker 1: the other piece of it is making sure that we
Speaker 1: don't have these partisan and anti voter groups that have
Speaker 1: the ability to question your validity as a voter and
Speaker 1: get your vote thrown out. So it's making sure your ballot,
Speaker 1: once cast, actually gets counted and gets included in the
Speaker 1: final tally. And that's the ongoing national conversation because the
Speaker 1: federal laws that we've been pushing, the Freedom to Vote
Speaker 1: Act and the John Lows Voting Rights Advancement Act says
Speaker 1: that no matter where you live in the country, if
Speaker 1: you're in Georgia with its grotesque approach to voting rights,
Speaker 1: or in a great state that does it right that
Speaker 1: your geography shouldn't determine the quality of your voting rights
Speaker 1: in the United States, and that's why we need federal
Speaker 1: laws that actually equalize many of these issues that I've raised.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up because you've also proposed
Speaker 1: same day registration, making election day a national holiday that
Speaker 1: also includes paid time off, especially for those who can't
Speaker 1: take that day off either because the work literally demands
Speaker 1: that they have to stay at their job, or financially
Speaker 1: they need the day's wage. Unfortunately, my understanding is that
Speaker 1: those are not going to be features in the upcoming
Speaker 1: Georgia election. You mentioned the John Lewis Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 1: that too, seems to have stalled in the Senate. I
Speaker 1: guess what I'm getting at is the repairs that you
Speaker 1: and I believe need to be made to improve democracy
Speaker 1: for all people, irrespect of a party, they are likely
Speaker 1: not going to be completed by the time voters cast
Speaker 1: their ballot in your gubernatorial race. And so what are
Speaker 1: you doing differently in twenty twenty two to avoid the
Speaker 1: outcome that came from your twenty eighteen run. In twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: we planned for the known voter suppression activities. We educated voters,
Speaker 1: we engaged, and we saw record turnout and record participation.
Speaker 1: What occurred, unfortunately, were the unknowns. We were unaware of
Speaker 1: some of the actions that have been taken by the
Speaker 1: Secretary of State. We did not know the scale of
Speaker 1: voter suppression behaviors, what were those behaviors. So more the
Speaker 1: one million voters were purged from the roles by twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: including thousands of voters who were purged wrongly, including the
Speaker 1: cousin of Martin Luther King Jr. She was denied the
Speaker 1: right to vote and had to navigate the system, having
Speaker 1: voted from the same precinct since I think the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: We know that under his exact match system, a system
Speaker 1: we had sued him on Secretary of State. It reimposed
Speaker 1: that system and more than fifty thousand voters were denied
Speaker 1: their registrations being processed, the vast majority of voters of color,
Speaker 1: seventy percent of whom were African American. Two hundred and fourteen,
Speaker 1: polling places precincts shut down and in a state with
Speaker 1: a few thousand precincts that mattered, and there was an
Speaker 1: AJC in Atlanta Journal Constitution Report that pointed out just
Speaker 1: how many thousands of voters were likely denied the right
Speaker 1: to vote because they could not reach a polling place.
Speaker 1: And so when you tie all of these things together,
Speaker 1: that level of voter suppression absolutely impeded the ability of
Speaker 1: eligible Georgia voters from casting their ballots. I have no
Speaker 1: claim to who they would have voted for, but the
Speaker 1: sheer volume of suppression was real, and in response in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, in twenty twenty one, in twenty nineteen, we
Speaker 1: worked hard to remedy many of these challenges through litigation,
Speaker 1: through legislation, and through advocacy, and the result in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty was record turnout and record participation among many groups.
Speaker 1: Heading into the twenty twenty two election, we know that
Speaker 1: the changes made in twenty twenty one were a direct
Speaker 1: response to the increased volume of participation and to the
Speaker 1: nature of that participation. And so my campaign is not
Speaker 1: relying on the goodwill of the Georgia Secretary of State
Speaker 1: or the Governor of Georgia who promulgated these laws. Our
Speaker 1: approach is built on the intent of the voters, and
Speaker 1: so we will work with voters to make sure they
Speaker 1: number one understand these new impediments to their right to vote.
Speaker 1: That we help them learn how to navigate where they
Speaker 1: should and circumvent where they can, and that more than anything,
Speaker 1: we refuse the psychic effect of voter suppression, because there's
Speaker 1: the actual effect of blocking you, but the psychic intent
Speaker 1: of voter suppression is to convince you it's not worth trying.
Speaker 1: You referenced paying for a day off. Well, in Georgia,
Speaker 1: that matters because if you're African American, you are the
Speaker 1: most likely to stand in line for more than an hour,
Speaker 1: and in some parts of Georgia the lines get up
Speaker 1: to eight hours long. That's an entire day's wage. You
Speaker 1: can't afford to vote. And if you can't afford to vote,
Speaker 1: and you talk about with your friends in your neighborhood,
Speaker 1: there are others who decide, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: waste my time standing in line for four hours and
Speaker 1: not cast my ballot, and so you lose an entire
Speaker 1: community's worth of participation because of the psychic effect of
Speaker 1: voter suppression. We're going to work on that as well.
Speaker 1: All because when people believe that more is possible, they
Speaker 1: are more likely to participate, and when they are aggrieved
Speaker 1: When they know that someone is trying to take a
Speaker 1: right away from them, people are much more likely to
Speaker 1: use it. And my mission is to make certain that
Speaker 1: voters in Georgia know what their rights are and they
Speaker 1: know that they have the absolute ability to exercise that
Speaker 1: right in practical steps. What does that look like. Well,
Speaker 1: I've been at it for a while. It started with
Speaker 1: you laughing question. No, not laughing at your question. No,
Speaker 1: I'm chuckling in approval the New Georgia Project, which is
Speaker 1: the organization I found it. It's now an independent, standalone entity,
Speaker 1: but it was premised on the recognition that voter registration
Speaker 1: is one part of the equation. But voter registration has
Speaker 1: to always be coupled with voter education. Otherwise it's like
Speaker 1: giving someone the keys to a car but never teaching
Speaker 1: them how to drive. And so those efforts continue, and
Speaker 1: they are executed by a number of terrific organizations throughout
Speaker 1: George and I know they're continuing to do that work,
Speaker 1: especially in marginalize and disadvantaged communities that otherwise would be
Speaker 1: forced to figure this out on their own. The second
Speaker 1: opportunity is that you talk about what's out there. Voter
Speaker 1: suppression worked for so long because it was seen as
Speaker 1: user error. This goes back to the conversation with Level up.
Speaker 1: There's an instinct to think it was your fault. And
Speaker 1: so what we do is make sure people understand, no,
Speaker 1: it's not paranoia. They really are after you, and here's
Speaker 1: what that looks like. And so it's making sure that
Speaker 1: there's both education and there's awareness. Here's what to look for.
Speaker 1: But then the third is to make sure people have
Speaker 1: the resources they need to actually participate. So Georgia has
Speaker 1: rules now about who can tell you how to apply
Speaker 1: for an absentee ballot. They have rules about whether or
Speaker 1: not you can stand in line for hours without dehydrating,
Speaker 1: because they want you not to get water or food
Speaker 1: while you're standing in line, even though it's always hot
Speaker 1: in Georgia. And so we are going to figure outweighs
Speaker 1: to make sure that people come prepared for the long lines.
Speaker 1: There's going to be a lot that we have to do,
Speaker 1: and it's going to differ because this is a massive state.
Speaker 1: This is a state with one hundred and fifty nine counties,
Speaker 1: and so we're going to meet people where they are
Speaker 1: and we're going to make sure that the groups that
Speaker 1: are independent have the ability to do what they should,
Speaker 1: and that our campaign, separate from that, is also working
Speaker 1: with voters through election day. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: a quick break. Three years ago, you said in The
Speaker 1: New York Times, fundamentally Georgians don't care about your party.
Speaker 1: They care about their lives. Do you still think that's true? Absolutely.
Speaker 1: I think it's true for Americans. I think it's true
Speaker 1: for anyone who lives in a system where others are
Speaker 1: in charge of making choices for them. There are Republican
Speaker 1: ideas that benefit my life. There are Democratic ideas that
Speaker 1: benefit my life. I tend to believe the equation is
Speaker 1: balanced more heavily on the Democratic side because of the
Speaker 1: life that I've led. That is the party to which
Speaker 1: I give my fealty. But I work with people from
Speaker 1: differing political views because the people who are being served
Speaker 1: do not care. They don't care if you were tall, short,
Speaker 1: left handed, right handed, Democrat, Republican or independent. They care
Speaker 1: about whether or not you see them. You understand their challenges,
Speaker 1: and you actually do the work to address those challenges.
Speaker 1: And that's fundamentally how I approach the work that I do,
Speaker 1: and I think fundamentally that's why people connect with you
Speaker 1: because you are making an active attempt to meet them
Speaker 1: where they are, which is how you won more votes
Speaker 1: than any Democrat has ever won for state wide office
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen. It's how you helped deliver wins for
Speaker 1: Senator Warnock, Senator Assoff. But I wonder if that instinct
Speaker 1: comes from how and where you grew up. You're the
Speaker 1: second of six children, your father a shipyard worker, your
Speaker 1: mother a college librarian. Of your childhood, you said, I
Speaker 1: grew up in the state of Mississippi, where the Confederate
Speaker 1: battle flag was the state flag. I moved to Georgia,
Speaker 1: where the Confederate battle flag was incorporated into the state flag,
Speaker 1: where you could not enter a bank or the state
Speaker 1: capital without this waving notion of what you should expect inside.
Speaker 1: And I have to say, before we sat down, I
Speaker 1: was thinking of that image, a young woman in the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties coming of age in a hostile environment with
Speaker 1: a deeply racist history. And I wonder if this is
Speaker 1: where you're guiding philosophy was born to meet people where
Speaker 1: they are, not where you want them to be. Because
Speaker 1: the gap between those two ideas in the South, where
Speaker 1: people are and where you wish they were was so
Speaker 1: wide that you had no room to live in the
Speaker 1: fantasy of where you'd like them to be, because you
Speaker 1: were constantly reminded with language or Confederate flags of where
Speaker 1: they were. That's absolutely true. I mean, my parents are
Speaker 1: extraordinary people. My mom and dad both came of age
Speaker 1: during the Civil rights movement. They met when they were sixteen,
Speaker 1: but when they were fourteen, my dad was arrested registering
Speaker 1: black people to vote in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. We tease him
Speaker 1: that my mom was doing the same work on the
Speaker 1: other side of talent. She just managed not to get caught.
Speaker 1: But they both came of age with this very real
Speaker 1: sense of obligation that your responsibility when you see a
Speaker 1: problem is to try to solve it, even if you
Speaker 1: know the solution may not be met with welcome arms,
Speaker 1: if even if it's met with steel shackles on your wrist,
Speaker 1: which is what happened to my father. They raised us
Speaker 1: with the same ethos, and what they also marries us
Speaker 1: to understand is the complexity of how we address the
Speaker 1: world around us. There is always going to be an
Speaker 1: instinct to force you into a very unidimensional notion of
Speaker 1: who you are and what you can be because people
Speaker 1: want you to be what they expect. And we grew
Speaker 1: up working class, working poor, depending on how good the
Speaker 1: paycheck was that week. We grew up without having visible
Speaker 1: examples of possibility around us, but my parents believe that
Speaker 1: they could create the sense of opportunity for us. We
Speaker 1: read voraciously because my mom's a college librarian. My dad
Speaker 1: would tell us stories, but we also served. My parents
Speaker 1: would take us with them to volunteer and we would
Speaker 1: look askance because we're, like, you guys, do know we're poor.
Speaker 1: We don't have running water at home, so why are
Speaker 1: we at this homeless shelter? But my mom and dad
Speaker 1: wanted us to understand that your responsibility was to act
Speaker 1: beyond your capacity. And while that was in service, it
Speaker 1: also has this amazing dream effect on you. When you
Speaker 1: know that you can do more even when you don't have,
Speaker 1: it starts to knock down the barriers to your vision
Speaker 1: of what's possible. And my mom, when my parents became ministers,
Speaker 1: my mom's mantra was meet people where they are, not
Speaker 1: where you want them to be. They would go into communities,
Speaker 1: not trying to chastise people for where they are, but
Speaker 1: would try to find out why they were there. Were
Speaker 1: they there because that's where they chose to be, or
Speaker 1: because they didn't know there was anywhere else to go,
Speaker 1: And then they would help build the road. And that
Speaker 1: means the most important job. Whether you're talking about the
Speaker 1: business world or the nonprofit world or the political space,
Speaker 1: people want to know that you know where they are.
Speaker 1: They also want to know you know why, and then
Speaker 1: they want to know the you're willing to help them
Speaker 1: figure out where to go next. If they're happy where
Speaker 1: they are, okay, let's make sure that where they are
Speaker 1: is as comfortable as it can be. But that comfort
Speaker 1: has to be built, and it has to be a
Speaker 1: shared responsibility. You can't give people their own success. Folks
Speaker 1: want to do it themselves. Most people want you to
Speaker 1: help them. They don't want you to do it for them.
Speaker 1: And that's true in almost every facet of our lives.
Speaker 1: But when we abandon the idea that help is necessary,
Speaker 1: that is where we fail in our responsibilities as citizens.
Speaker 1: And so this is a very long way of coming
Speaker 1: back to your point, which is when I would see
Speaker 1: that Confederate flag, what it was supposed to tell me
Speaker 1: was that I was less than what I heard was
Speaker 1: get rid of it. And what it was supposed to
Speaker 1: tell me was here's your place, and do not aspire
Speaker 1: any higher. And what I heard is live your ambition
Speaker 1: and make sure you bring as many people with you
Speaker 1: as possible, because yes, you start where you are, but
Speaker 1: the best way to get where you want to be
Speaker 1: is to bring as many people as you can with
Speaker 1: you as you go. Many people have talked about your ambition,
Speaker 1: and you have said, and then quite pointedly, that we
Speaker 1: have been taught communities of colors, certainly black women, to
Speaker 1: practice self effacement as opposed to practicing humility. Then we
Speaker 1: question why there hasn't been progress made. In part, it's
Speaker 1: because if we want more, there's immediately a reaction. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, when someone reported that I said, yes, I
Speaker 1: would like to one day be president, the larger narrative
Speaker 1: was that there was something inelegant and actually wrongheaded about
Speaker 1: airing that ambition. Do you think this country is becoming
Speaker 1: more accepting of women's ambition, particularly Black women's ambition? I
Speaker 1: asked that nervously, and knowing that I don't know if
Speaker 1: I want the answer, but I have to ask it.
Speaker 1: Laura Hodson, my co author in Level. We met because
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four we were in a leadership
Speaker 1: conference and it was Race Day, which is a day
Speaker 1: where everyone in the conference we talk about the awkward
Speaker 1: and comfortable issues of race. The very intuitive moderator picked
Speaker 1: me out of my intentional silence. Why intentional. I'm an
Speaker 1: introvert and I like keeping my information to myself unless
Speaker 1: I have to. But I'm also someone who believes in
Speaker 1: getting things done, so when speaking aloud makes sense, I
Speaker 1: do so. In this instance, I was sitting quietly, hoping
Speaker 1: he would not pay attention to me, and he noticed
Speaker 1: my reticence and asked me, what secret I hold, What
Speaker 1: ambition do I have? What dream do I have that
Speaker 1: I've never spoken aloud? And I said, I would like
Speaker 1: to one day be president of the United States. And
Speaker 1: this is two thousand and four, this is pre Obama.
Speaker 1: This was only three years after the first black woman
Speaker 1: became mayor of Atlanta, and she became the first black
Speaker 1: woman to be a mayor of any major city. So
Speaker 1: my audacity was palpable. Later on, I'm standing in line
Speaker 1: for lunch and this woman runs up to me and
Speaker 1: she's like, oh my god, I have to meet you,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, who are you? Please back up, and
Speaker 1: it's Laura and she says, I've never heard anyone say
Speaker 1: that before. I want that too, And then that moment
Speaker 1: is the encapsulation of what you're asking. Laura and I
Speaker 1: have very different personal histories, we have different political belief systems,
Speaker 1: we come from very different spaces, but in that moment,
Speaker 1: we were both women, young women who for the first
Speaker 1: time found common cause and stating in allowed an ambition
Speaker 1: that we were chastised for having. She wasn't asked the
Speaker 1: question because the question was being premised on race, and
Speaker 1: so I was able to answer it, but I was
Speaker 1: answering it as a black person, as a woman, as
Speaker 1: a black woman, and she found fealty with me because
Speaker 1: of that. Yes, we are in a much better place
Speaker 1: than we have been, because if that had been ten
Speaker 1: years before, I didn't even feel that. I talked about
Speaker 1: this in one of my books. I wrote this spreadsheet
Speaker 1: when I was in college. You're eighteen years old. It
Speaker 1: comes on the heels of a breakup. Yes, on the
Speaker 1: heels of a breakup. As I reminded myself that he
Speaker 1: was wrong about my potential and I was right. I
Speaker 1: did an angry planning session, and so, using what was
Speaker 1: then Lotus one two three, I did a spreadsheet laying
Speaker 1: out my ambitions. The highest political ambition I could envision
Speaker 1: for myself was mayor of Atlanta. There had never been
Speaker 1: a black woman to do that job, but it was
Speaker 1: the highest job, executive job I'd ever seen a black
Speaker 1: person hold, where I thought a black woman could have
Speaker 1: that job, And so in nineteen ninety two it was mayor.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and four I could whisper aloud that
Speaker 1: I wanted to be president, and twenty eighteen I stood
Speaker 1: for governor. And in each of those moments, I was
Speaker 1: giving credence to other dreamers, to black women, to black girls,
Speaker 1: to girls of color, to girls everywhere who are chastised
Speaker 1: about their ambition. Because what has always galled me about
Speaker 1: this is why wouldn't we want people to be ambitious?
Speaker 1: Why wouldn't we want young people, and especially communities that
Speaker 1: are often denigrated because of their lack of achievement. You
Speaker 1: solve that by encouraging their ambition and by celebrating their success.
Speaker 1: And I need it to hear it. I answer those
Speaker 1: questions proudly. Now a question that I was very reticent
Speaker 1: to answer in two thousand and four. I answer very
Speaker 1: assertively today. I just had to be the one to
Speaker 1: say it the first time. And I want to say
Speaker 1: that for other young women. And yes, we had Shirley Chisholm,
Speaker 1: and we've had Barbara Jordan, and we have these amazing women.
Speaker 1: But in a contemporary moment, we have to remember that
Speaker 1: children don't always go to history books to find their opportunities.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're passing by the TV where their parents are sitting,
Speaker 1: and I want them to hear me say it before them.
Speaker 1: I bet, what was that guy's name? Chad? Yes, I
Speaker 1: bet Chad feels really dumb now, doesn't it. I wish
Speaker 1: Chad the very best, always a politician. By the way,
Speaker 1: of course, his name is Chad. He's a lovely guy.
Speaker 1: But you know what you're actually talking about. As kids
Speaker 1: walk in and out of the living room and see
Speaker 1: you on TV talking and being yourself, you're talking about
Speaker 1: these dreams and how many people made those dreams feel
Speaker 1: like a far fetched fantasy. And it dawned on me
Speaker 1: that you have written nine novels, I believe, eight romances,
Speaker 1: one thriller, and I wonder does the page afford you
Speaker 1: a complexity, a messiness of humanity that working in politics
Speaker 1: does not. It's a different way to express it and
Speaker 1: a different way to think about it and conceptualize. I
Speaker 1: started writing fiction before I was immersed in politics. My
Speaker 1: first one was when I was in law school, and
Speaker 1: I was then practicing as a tax attorney for several years.
Speaker 1: When I wrote the next three, I was in deputy
Speaker 1: city attorney, and then I was in office and along
Speaker 1: the way. What I've always seen as a through line
Speaker 1: is that there's like atharsis and being able to express
Speaker 1: your darker impulses through romantic suspense, which is what I write.
Speaker 1: There's a body count most of my books. There's also
Speaker 1: a little bit of vengeance. So my very first boyfriend,
Speaker 1: he is mentioned in my first book because I used
Speaker 1: his dissertation as the premise, and when he scoffed at
Speaker 1: the idea, I put him in prison in the book
Speaker 1: and there he languishes to this day. We are also
Speaker 1: good frens these days too. But I think the through
Speaker 1: line to your question that there's a messiness to humanity
Speaker 1: that is pervasive no matter what genre you're in, no
Speaker 1: matter what you're doing, and The issue is containment. I
Speaker 1: can to do more containment on the page, I can
Speaker 1: do more containment in a plot, and I can shape
Speaker 1: the elegance and fluidity of my answers much better when
Speaker 1: I get to edit a couple of times before it
Speaker 1: goes to print. But I just want to follow up
Speaker 1: that messiness you're talking about in literature. Do you believe
Speaker 1: that's afforded to as an elected official? It's afforded to some.
Speaker 1: Is it afforded to those within my orbit? Yes? To me, no.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, there are those who, by nature of
Speaker 1: the acceptability of their presence, they get a lot more
Speaker 1: flexibility for their flaws. I don't get that. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by that? We've recently had public leaders who
Speaker 1: have been masters of malpropism, who have been wildly racist
Speaker 1: and their language sexist in their behavior, and they operate
Speaker 1: with impunity, and we have smaller scale versions of that
Speaker 1: for or others. When you're not to the manner born,
Speaker 1: you don't get the same amount of rope to hang
Speaker 1: yourself with you are. The expectations are higher, and forgiveness
Speaker 1: is a lot harder to come by. It's not impossible,
Speaker 1: and I've benefited from it myself, but it is a
Speaker 1: lot harder, and you have to be a much more
Speaker 1: careful about mistakes you make. You have to be much
Speaker 1: faster about correction, and you have to be intentional every moment,
Speaker 1: which should not be mistaken for being inauthentic. But yes,
Speaker 1: I operate every day knowing that a misstep that would
Speaker 1: be forgiven for a guy will not be forgiven for me.
Speaker 1: That line between intentional and inauthentic. How do you personally
Speaker 1: grapple with that? I tend to be careful anyway. I
Speaker 1: believe language matters. It's part of how I operate in
Speaker 1: the world, and I try my best to be as
Speaker 1: precise as I can. But I also have to have
Speaker 1: space for reaction. And it's inauthentic when I pick the
Speaker 1: ward because it's what you want to hear, not because
Speaker 1: it's what I want to say. I'm authentic when I
Speaker 1: pick the word that says what I need to say
Speaker 1: and gives you space to hear it. That's where I
Speaker 1: need to be. I guess I'm asking you all this
Speaker 1: because I've been following your work for a long time,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, especially in the last five years of
Speaker 1: heightened attention from the former president from the GOP, from
Speaker 1: irate Republican voters both in Georgia and across the country,
Speaker 1: Does it weigh on you? I have become a proxy
Speaker 1: for many wars. I'm not party too, but I've also
Speaker 1: become an avatar for things that I do want to
Speaker 1: see happen, and you cannot celebrate the latter without acknowledging
Speaker 1: the former. If I want people to see me and
Speaker 1: to hold up these values that I hold up, that
Speaker 1: I want them to engage with me on these battles
Speaker 1: for democracy and for safety. If I want people to
Speaker 1: have education and health care, if I want us to
Speaker 1: be better people, and I want to be one of
Speaker 1: the people seen as that, then I can't then be
Speaker 1: upset that I am taken out of context or that
Speaker 1: I am misappropriated, or the people take exactly what I've
Speaker 1: said and say they hate it. That's their prerogative, but
Speaker 1: you can't have one without the other. It's disingenuous to
Speaker 1: think that only the people who like you are going
Speaker 1: to listen to you, and so, yeah, of course it
Speaker 1: weighs on you. It's a terrible thing to be told
Speaker 1: how horrible you are, and it is painful to me
Speaker 1: because I know what my intentions are, but I don't
Speaker 1: dwell on it too much because if the people who
Speaker 1: need to hear something I've said hear it, if people
Speaker 1: with bad motives also hear it. Mozeltov, you're running once
Speaker 1: again to be governor of Georgia. It's something you still
Speaker 1: want to do in spite of everything we've just talked about.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if we can think about the full
Speaker 1: arc of this, going back to nineteen ninety one, where
Speaker 1: you attend Spellman College, historically black women's institution that was
Speaker 1: founded in Atlanta in eighteen eighty one. Do you remember
Speaker 1: the first time you went to Georgia's governor's mansion. I do.
Speaker 1: What happened that day in nineteen ninety one. I was
Speaker 1: the valedictorian from my high school, and as one of
Speaker 1: the valedictorians from across the state, you are invited to
Speaker 1: visit the governor at the Governor's mansion, West paces Ferry Road.
Speaker 1: They bring you in two shifts, so there's a Saturday
Speaker 1: and a Sunday. I was allotted a Sunday visit time,
Speaker 1: and my parents and I got ready for the day.
Speaker 1: We got dressed up, we went outside and we got
Speaker 1: on the bus. Because my parents didn't own a car.
Speaker 1: We didn't have the money for a car, so we
Speaker 1: used public transit. We took the bus. We got to
Speaker 1: the governor's mansion, got off the bus, walked across the
Speaker 1: west paces Arry walked up the driveway to the guard
Speaker 1: station and there are cars coming in bringing kids from
Speaker 1: around the state. And the guard came out and he
Speaker 1: looked at me, looked at my parents, and he told
Speaker 1: us we didn't belong there. My dad said, no, no no, no,
Speaker 1: this is my daughter. We're here for this event. And
Speaker 1: he did not ask for our invitation, He did not
Speaker 1: ask for proof. He was very adamant that we were
Speaker 1: in the wrong place. And I remember him looking over
Speaker 1: our shoulder at the bus that was leaving, and I
Speaker 1: was wishing, very intentionally that I could be on that
Speaker 1: bus as it left, because this is embarrassing, But my
Speaker 1: mother had my arm and I was not going to
Speaker 1: let me escape. My parents pushed back and they argued
Speaker 1: with him, and they made him check his checklist. They
Speaker 1: forced him, after a fairly protracted conversation, finally verify my
Speaker 1: right to be there, and he did. My name was
Speaker 1: at the top of the list. I think there was
Speaker 1: one person whose name was ahead of mine on the list,
Speaker 1: but I was the first or second name, and they
Speaker 1: led us inside. But I recount the story because I
Speaker 1: don't remember meeting the governor. I don't remember the event,
Speaker 1: don't remember being in the governor's mansion. My only clear
Speaker 1: memory was that guard telling me that we didn't belong there,
Speaker 1: that I wasn't going to be allowed to go inside.
Speaker 1: He knew what the day was, he knew what the
Speaker 1: day meant, and he did not see in me someone
Speaker 1: who should be permitted to join this August occasion. What
Speaker 1: do you think that day did to you? I did
Speaker 1: not think of that day for many years. It was
Speaker 1: when I was running for governor that it came up again,
Speaker 1: and it actually was my mom. We were talking about
Speaker 1: the race, and it was not in a George of context.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about it, and she said, well,
Speaker 1: it would be really different when you go to the
Speaker 1: Governor's mansion this time, and I thought, oh, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those memories where it wasn't the
Speaker 1: first time I faced racism. It wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: someone told me I was in the wrong place. Wasn't
Speaker 1: the first time I was underestimated. It wasn't even the
Speaker 1: only time the governor's mansion debacle should have come up,
Speaker 1: but it was a very pointed reminder of what it
Speaker 1: happened the last time, and for me, it became part
Speaker 1: of the conversation about why I'm running, and that to
Speaker 1: me goes to the sort of whole arc of this conversation.
Speaker 1: I'm running because I want Georgia to be the place
Speaker 1: that opens those gates. I want your background and your
Speaker 1: zip code and your parentage and your modes of transportation
Speaker 1: to be irrelevant when we think about your ambition and
Speaker 1: your success and your access. I'm running because I want
Speaker 1: those gates to be open. I'm running because I think
Speaker 1: I can be the one to make it happen. And
Speaker 1: I'm running because I understand all the different parts of it.
Speaker 1: I've been in every part of the state physically, but
Speaker 1: I also understand the different lives and circling back to
Speaker 1: level up. One of the reasons we wrote the book
Speaker 1: was to tell our story, but more than that, it
Speaker 1: was to talk about the systemic issues. I want people
Speaker 1: to understand that I understand that I've been where you are,
Speaker 1: and I want to help you get to the next level.
Speaker 1: And as someone who's been a small business owner and
Speaker 1: wants to be governor, I can tie those two things together.
Speaker 1: And I'm not a small business owner who inherited a
Speaker 1: business or grew a business that was wildly successful. I've
Speaker 1: failed in business, and I know why I failed, and
Speaker 1: I know why I've succeeded. And I want to make
Speaker 1: sure you don't have to do both of those over
Speaker 1: and over again, that you get to scale up and
Speaker 1: succeed when you're ready. My last question for you yes.
Speaker 1: In describing your approach, which you've just outlined, Jelani cob
Speaker 1: And The New Yorker wrote, it's an optimistic view, a
Speaker 1: belief that people are motivated more by their common aspirations
Speaker 1: than they are by their tribal fears. He wrote that
Speaker 1: back in twenty nineteen, a lot has changed between twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen and twenty twenty two. Do you believe Georgians are
Speaker 1: more motivated by their common aspirations than by their tribal fears?
Speaker 1: Do you still believe that after all we've seen. My
Speaker 1: belief is that we have to redefine tribe and that's
Speaker 1: why my premises one Georgia I come from a family
Speaker 1: that has five brothers and sisters. We are very very
Speaker 1: different people. We have wildly different aspirations, and we have
Speaker 1: followed very divergent paths, but when we need something, we
Speaker 1: come together. I think that the tribal aspiration and the
Speaker 1: tribal fear can be mitigated and harnessed when we stop
Speaker 1: thinking of ourselves in competition with one another and instead
Speaker 1: think of Georgia as a state of opportunity. It can
Speaker 1: sound cliche, but I mean it sincerely that part of
Speaker 1: the way to break systems is to redefine the question.
Speaker 1: We let ourselves get trapped by the framing that we're
Speaker 1: given and the successes I've had, the work that I've
Speaker 1: been able to do, the ways my businesses have been
Speaker 1: able to grow. My relationship and partnership with Laura has
Speaker 1: always been harnessed around this idea that we redefine the
Speaker 1: question and we don't let ourselves be held hostage by
Speaker 1: someone else's way of thinking. So what's the question? The
Speaker 1: question was common aspirations, tribal fears. I think we reframed
Speaker 1: the question who's our tribe? And what do we need?
Speaker 1: And the question I need Georgians to answer for me
Speaker 1: is how can I help you? Know you have this
Speaker 1: optimism about you that is really infectious. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: And I realize it's maybe not a great time to
Speaker 1: use the word infectious, but I think you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. My last question for you, after all the
Speaker 1: challenges you've faced and attacks and flagrant attempts at voter
Speaker 1: suppression in the past few years, when you wake up
Speaker 1: in the morning, what in your heart says, this is
Speaker 1: the work I need to be doing. Governors are responsible
Speaker 1: for protecting and lifting up the lives of those that
Speaker 1: they lead. I am a good leader, I am a
Speaker 1: good manager. I'm a good executive. I know how to
Speaker 1: build things that are sustainable. I know how to solve
Speaker 1: problems that seem intractable. I know how to navigate communities
Speaker 1: that seem wholly divided from one another. And I know
Speaker 1: how to win. And for me, winning is not about
Speaker 1: winning an election. It's how do you make sure that
Speaker 1: the person who is the least likely to believe their
Speaker 1: life will change with a new governor finds themselves in
Speaker 1: four years saying thank God you won. That's why I'm
Speaker 1: running because I know I can make that person believe
Speaker 1: in more and believe more as possible. Well, I have
Speaker 1: to say the last five years you've done that in
Speaker 1: me and I'm sure many people listening, So I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for that and for the time you
Speaker 1: have given me. It means the world. Thank you, Sam.
Speaker 1: This has been delightful. Stacy Abrams, stay safe. Take here
Speaker 1: and that's our show special thanks to Amanda Lang, Nina
Speaker 1: Nachelino and the team at Portfolio Books. I'd also like
Speaker 1: to thank Darnell Strom, Fair Fight Action, and of course
Speaker 1: the one and only Stacy Abrams. To purchase her latest book,
Speaker 1: Level Up, and to learn more about her work, visit
Speaker 1: our website at talk easypod dot com. There you'll find
Speaker 1: our back catalog of over two hundred and fifty episodes.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this one, I'd recommend our talks with
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Speaker 1: without our incredible team. Talk Easy is produced by Caroline Reebok.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Channick So Bravo. Our associate producer
Speaker 1: is Caitlin Dryden. Today's Talk was edited by Caitlin Dryden
Speaker 1: and mixed by Andrew Vastola. Music by Dylan Peck, illustrations
Speaker 1: by Krisha Chanoy, Video and graphics by Ian Chang, Derek
Speaker 1: gaberzach Ian Jones Eats and Seneca and Laila Register. Special
Speaker 1: thanks to Patrice Lee, Kylin Hung and Shailah Fagin. I'd
Speaker 1: also like to thank the team at Pushkin Industries, Justin Richmond,
Speaker 1: Heather Faine, mil La Belle, Maggie Taylor, Nicole Morano, Bykanig,
Speaker 1: Carly Migliori, Jason Gambrel, Jacob Weisberg, and Malcolm Gladio. I'm
Speaker 1: San Fragoso. Thank you for listening to Talk Easy. I'll
Speaker 1: see you back here next Sunday with author Margaret Atwood.
Speaker 1: Until then, stay safe and so long.