Steven Bartlett, founder and host of The Diary of a CEO podcast, has scored a major media coup – an exclusive interview with former US First Lady Michelle Obama.
The best-selling author of Becoming and The Light We Carry, and co-host of new podcast IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, Obama is also joined on the podcast by brother and co-host Craig Robinson for a candid and emotional feature-length interview.
Speaking to the pair, Bartlett said: “The rise of your family, the grace, the humility and the way that you’ve conducted yourself has been a huge source of inspiration for me as a young black man, that’s navigating the world and looking up to role models that aren’t often in close proximity in our lives. In a small little village in the southwest of England, I can’t tell you what a profound impact you had on me in shaping the man that I became in my life.”
During the podcast, Obama talked about a wide range of issues – and also laid out the rationale for her own podcast. “IMO, In My Opinon, our podcast, is sort of [an] offering back. It’s like, let’s keep up the mentoring that we were taught. Let’s create our table and be a place where people can come for advice and conversation. I think our podcast is part of that legacy because at least for me, as a woman, I think at 61, I’m finally owning my wisdom in a way that I didn’t. I think it takes women until we’re about 60 to be like, ‘I think I know a thing or two.’”
During her conversation with Bartlett, Obama talked about fertility struggles and IVF: “Imagine your life as you’re checking boxes: I’m waiting, I delayed having kids, I’ve found the love of my life, and now I’m gonna get pregnant. So you think it’s gonna be like a box, it’s gonna happen like that, and no one tells you that there really is a biological clock, that’s not false […] So by the time we started really trying, which worked perfectly for our careers and maturing and having everything set [..] while we’re waiting for our lives to be perfect, that biological clock is ticking. So when it happens to you, a box checker, somebody that thought life was gonna be so and so and you did all the right things to have things not work out, and to know that it was gonna be that way and nobody told you so that you be prepared for it, it just, it was a blow. And then as a woman, you’re walking around owning the blow as if it’s your fault.”
Obama, who has been touted as a future US President, also touched on the current state of leadership in America and the importance of empathy: “Business leaders, and people in power, who want power, and haven’t understood their ‘why’ can lead us down some dark tunnels, right? But it’s the empathy for me, that ability to give some perspective that allows them to not take all that hate in and to really see the light in people. It’s just a better way to live, it keeps us from being embittered, it keeps us hopeful, and it keeps us working for people.”
As a note of encouragement, she added: “Barack helps me remember. You know, he says, this is still the country that elected Barack Obama twice.”
Comments and imagery courtesy of The Diary of a CEO podcast
