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Binyamin Appelbaum Feb 10, 2020

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Ep. 32 — An economics reporter is jolted by the 2016 Presidential race and rethinks all his assumptions about the American economy and electorate / Binyamin Appelbaum, Author, The Economist’s Hour. Binyamin Appelbaum had been reporting and writing about economics for more than a decade when Donald Trump won the 2016 Presidential race. The shocking outcome led Appelbaum to realize that he must go back to the drawing board, to Macroeconomics 101, in order to understand what had just happened. What resulted is his terrific book, "The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society." The Economists' Hour refers to the 40-year period from 1969 to 2008 when a cadré of economists rose from obscurity to household names, shaping government policy and shifting the government's role from actively shaping the economy to allowing the market to largely do so. Appelbaum concludes that those economists were in essence, "False Prophets.” “They sold their ideas by representing that if we embrace this approach to public policy, the economy would grow more quickly, all boats would be lifted up, prosperity would be broad and well distributed, and even that democracy would benefit,” says Appelbaum. “And I think in all three of those respects, this change in policy making failed to deliver. Growth has slowed, inequality has increased, and our democracy is in worse shape than ever.” Now a New York Times editorial board member, Appelbaum offers an eye-popping primer on the economic forces that are shaping the 2020 Presidential elections. This is a terrific conversation that offers timely context for President Trump’s proposed $4.8 trillion budget that comes with huge safety-net cuts. Appelbaum’s sweeping history of America’s macro-economic policies in The Economist’s Hour is a must-read for every voter who plans to cast his or her ballot in the 2020 Presidential race. I know I came away feeling much smarter after reading Appelbaum’s book and having had this deep discussion with him and I can better understand the economic and social consequences of how I cast my ballot this November. And I hope so will you. Tanscript Download the PDF Ragavan: Binyamin Appelbaum had been writng about economics with considerable success for more than a decade. When Donald Trump was elected President in November 2016. The shocking victory jolted Appelbaum into a humbling realization. Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology start ups find their narrative. After Trump's election in 2016, Appelbaum knew he had to go back to the drawing board and reconnect the dots in his understanding and the public's understanding of the macroeconomic factors that got Trump elected President. What resulted is his terrific book, The Economists' Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society. Ragavan: Joining me now to share what he discovered and the factors that could swing the 2020 Presidential race is Binyamin Appelbaum. He is the lead writer on business and economics for the New York Times editorial board. Before joining the editorial board, Appelbaum was a Washington correspondent for the Times, covering economic policy in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Appelbaum also worked for the Charlotte Observer where his reporting on the subprime lending crisis won a George Polk Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer prize. Binyamin, welcome to the podcast. Appelbaum: Thank you for having me. Ragavan: Were you one of those geeky kids? A wiz at math and head buried in books? Where did you grow up and what were you like? Appelbaum: I grew up outside of Boston and yeah. My father is a professor. My mother is a historian. It was very much a family where books were very important. There was a shelf in my living room where my parents' books were read and shelves throughout the house with other peoples books. And so, yeah. I grew up in a very intellectual environment. An environment where there was a real emphasis on ideas, and curiosity, and debate. And so I mean it was a pretty good childhood. Ragavan: How did you wind up writing about economics? Appelbaum: I fell in love with journalism during college. I worked for the college paper and came out of college feeling like I wanted to be a journalist. But initially I was sort of a general purpose journalist. I wrote about all sorts of different topics: local government, crime, religion. And I happened to be working in Charlotte, North Carolina, which was a big banking center at the time, it still is, and the Managing Editor called me into his office and told me that they needed a new banking reporter. I told them that sounded kind of boring and he told me I was the new banking reporter. So that's how it began. Ragavan: And then how did you end up writing this book? Appelbaum: As you said in the introduction, when the 2016 election results came in, it was clear that Donald Trump had won, it was really a moment I think when I felt like I didn't sufficiently understand what had gone wrong in our economy and why and that a lot of people probably didn't know that story either. And I wanted to go back and understand what had happened and to tell that story. And I have a belief that if we understand how we got somewhere, it's easier to understand how we move forward. Ragavan: Why is your book called The Economists' Hour? Appelbaum: So the basic premise of the book is that there was a revolution in economic policy making that began in the late 1960s and the early 1970s where economists became increasingly influential in setting the course of government policy, and in particular, in advocating for the government to step back from active management of economic conditions and to rely to a much greater extent on the market, to allocate resources, and determine the course of growth. And the 40-year period when those ideas are really dominant runs from roughly 1969 to 2008 is the period I refer to as the economists' hour. Ragavan: And why do you call them false prophets? Appelbaum: I think that they were wrong. I think that at the beginning of this period they sold their ideas by representing that if we embrace this approach to public policy, the economy would grow more quickly, all boats would be lifted up, prosperity would be broad and well distributed, and even that democracy would benefit, that the strains on our democracy would be reduced because we would be forced to make fewer decisions through the process of democracy. And we would be able to rely on markets to make a lot more decisions, and we would have to agree about less. When you go to a market everybody can order something different for dinner. Everybody can decide what kind of house they want. They're going to decide what kind of jobs they want. And the set of things that we would need to decide democratically would be smaller. And I think in all three of those respects, this change in policy making failed to deliver. Growth has slowed, inequality has increased, and our democracy is in worse shape than ever. Ragavan: Now economists weren't always at the table. They weren't always kind of these household names and mini- celebrities that they are today, were they? Appelbaum: That's right. I begin my book actually with a story about a young economist named ... Well, a young economist sitting in the basement of the Federal Reserves in New York in the 1950s. He's essentially a human calculator. He's a very low level employee and he's really frustrated. And he goes home one night and says to his wife, "I don't think there's a future for an economist here at the Federal Reserve. I need to find another line of work." Well, that economist's name was Paul Volcker. By the late 1970s, he's running the Federal Reserve. Today the Federal Reserve is the nation's largest employer of economists. And sort of the arc of Volcker's life really captures the life of this economists' hour. When he worked at the Fed in the 1950s, none of the Fed's leadership were economists. Today they dominate. Ragavan: And even presidents didn't have a very high view of an economist as a whole. Appelbaum: They didn't, no. They were extremely suspicious of economists and economic advice. Really, it's not until the 1960s that presidents begin to lean heavily on the advice of economists in the areas of economic policy making and regulation, but it takes a long time for economists to win their confidence and then that's where this revolution begins. Ragavan: What changed to make that happen? Appelbaum: There are a couple of big changes. One is that economics grows up as a discipline. So when the Great Gepression begins, the federal government doesn't even know how large the American economy is. They hire an economist named Simon Kuznets to answer that question and he goes out and creates what we now know as GDP, the measurement of the size of the economy. And he tells Congress, listen the economy used to be this big. Now it's quite a bit smaller. And once you can measure it, then you can start thinking about how you can manage it. So in much the same way that the first pictures from space, of the planet Earth, really transformed the debate around environmentalism because the Earth suddenly seemed tangible, as an entity. So too once you could measure the American economy, it became possible to talk about it as an entity and economists began to propose ideas for managing the economy. Appelbaum: And so from the '40s onwards you get these growing and increasingly important debates about how to manage the economy. A second, and big factor, is that the economy is breaking down. So there's a period of growth after World War II, a broad prosperity. And then the late 1960s, it's really beginning to come to an end....

Katrina Jones Feb 03, 2020

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Ep. 31 — A single mother of two young sons takes lessons from her grandfather, a small-time hustler turned big-time property owner, about the value of homeownership / Katrina Jones, VP, Single Family Mortgage Business, Fannie Mae. When her husband passed away at a young age, Katrina Jones was left to raise two kids, forcing her to drop out of college to confront her new responsibilities. It would prove to be the most challenging time of her life. What kept Jones going was not just the support she got from her extended family but lessons from her grandfather, a street-smart hustler named George Carter. Born on a plantation in 1990, Carter was the son of a former slave who knew he was destined for something bigger. So he dropped out of school at age 12 and ran away from home to Washington D.C., determined to make a life for himself. Strong-willed and stubborn, Carter slept on streets and did a bunch of odd jobs and side hustles, hauling trash and fixing stoops, convincing people to take a chance on him. Unbathed and unkempt as he was, many turned him away. But others gave him a shot. Little by little, Carter put away the dough to start buying property. His first parcel of land was in Arlington, Virginia, bought for $175, mortgage payment of about $10 a month. Not knowing how to read or write, he signed for it with an X, proud to be able to give his young wife, the woman of his dreams, the home she wanted to raise her family. “There was nothing traditional about that house, five doors, more than 30 windows,” remembers Jones with a laugh, “There were always two kitchens, one upstairs for the winter and one downstairs for the summer. No central air conditioning. Windows were just open, put in a screen with some netting. It was just what we called, that's a scrappy house to go with the scrappy gentleman, who managed to fulfill his wife's dream of creating a home in Arlington where she could raise her family.” Over the decades, quietly and confidently, Carter acquired property, lot after lot — bought or a relative pittance by today’s housing prices — working his street hustles and sweat equity. Today those lots are worth millions. For Jones, it was entirely accidental that she ended up in the housing business. But it’s only made her appreciate even more the priceless legacy her late grandfather left for his family. A recent Forbes piece says a lack of home equity in black families is one big reason for the racial wealth gap between blacks and whites, analyzing 2016 data. “African-Americans on average had home equity of less than $12,000 in September. White households in comparison had average home equity of almost $189,000 then,” wrote author Christian Weller. “Black households on average own only about six percent the housing wealth of white households.” Today, Millennials are also struggling with many challenges with homeownership, including lack of savings, debt, and lack of affordable housing. “I think the way people live is changing, where they want to live is changing, how they want to live is changing and our industry needs a bit of re-imagining to consider, how do we meet the needs of today's generation of future homeowners and tomorrow in a new, different way,” says Jones. “Hopefully we figure that out, but I think affordable housing is a big challenge for us right now. I see it play out in my own family.” Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: When Katrina Jones' husband passed away at a young age, she was left to raise two kids on her own, forcing her to drop out of college to confront her new responsibilities. It would prove to be the most challenging time of her life. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: When her husband died, what kept Jones going was not just the support she got from her extended family but lessons from her grandfather, a street smart hustler who left a priceless legacy. Joining me now is Katrina Jones, Vice President of the single family mortgage business at Fannie Mae. Jones has worked in the mortgage/finance industry for more than 30 years, where she has spearheaded efforts to make the dream of home ownership a reality for Americans. Jones has been recognized and honored for her advocacy of home ownership as a wealth creation tool for generations. Katrina, welcome to the podcast. Katrina Jones: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it. Chitra Ragavan: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Katrina Jones: Oh, I'm the oldest of five kids, only girl, and grew up in a military family. I was born in Fort Dix, New Jersey, and lived just about everywhere. And when my dad moved back here to Washington, D.C., he retired at Fort Myer, so I call D.C., affectionately, my home. Chitra Ragavan: And how did you end up in the housing business and here at Fannie Mae? Katrina Jones: Oh, well, everybody who gets into the housing industry, we typically get into it by accident. I happened to have the opportunity when I was a contractor, very young in my work life, to work for a mortgage company helping people get a home, processing loans for mortgages. And quite honestly, loved it largely because of the impact that I was having. Had no idea what I was doing, but I learned fast and spent a lot of time in a primary mortgage industry. When my grandmother passed in the late nineties, I decided to move back to home where the nucleus is and had an opportunity to interview for a position here at Fannie Mae, where I was hired and have been here for the last 25 or so years. Chitra Ragavan: Your success in life was shaped in some significant way by your grandfather. Tell us a little bit about who he was and why he became such an important figure in the family. Katrina Jones: My grandfather, our patriarch, he was born in 1990 on a plantation. He's a son of a previous slave, and he prided himself on the fact that at a very young age he knew he was different. He knew he was strong-minded and stubborn. And he ended up dropping out of school, believe it or not, in the second grade and running away from home at the tender age of 12. He lived down in an area called Culpeper, Virginia or Caroline County, Virginia, which is south of Fredericksburg, a little north of Richmond, but far enough to be far from D.C. He walked from Caroline County to Washington, D.C. Katrina Jones: And so I asked my mom what was in Washington, D.C. She said, "Well, you know your grandfather, he was a hustler. Jobs were in Washington, D.C." A new opportunity and hope for a future was in Washington, D.C., so he settled down in D.C. Had an opportunity to get some odd jobs when he was young; and I think for him, that's been his entrepreneurialship and hustler will stepped in because this is a 12-year-old kid who's trying to feed himself and look for an opportunity to survive. Chitra Ragavan: What was his name and how did he survive? Katrina Jones: George Carter, he was the second oldest of eight children. I will tell you my grandfather survived because he had passions in life: God, family, and just a view of being a hustler. Always willing to do the jobs that no one else will do; but, more importantly, doing them better than anyone else would do it. I think for him, that's how he survived. And I think for him being here in Washington, D.C., giving him an opportunity to set a new chapter for himself. And I say new chapter, remember, he's only 12, setting a new chapter for himself and a city where I'm so excited he came here because it opened up worlds of opportunity for our family. Chitra Ragavan: Tell me some of the jobs he held starting from the age of 12. I mean, what did he do to survive and what was his hustle? What were the street hustles? Katrina Jones: Yeah. Oh yeah. My mother would share with me all the things he did. I didn't even know they existed back then, but trying to be a busboy and cleaning out garbage cans on the street and laying train tracks around the Washington, D.C. Area. Remember, there were some streetcars here in Washington, D.C., so laying down street cars, keeping the streetcar rails clean. It's manual work, self-learner. And I would also offer self-learner because remember he dropped out of school in the second grade, could not read, could not write very well, but knew enough to be street smart and had a wicked sort of common sense about him. Chitra Ragavan: And did he sleep on the street? Katrina Jones: Of course, of course. Slept on the streets, slept in hallways, slept in lobbies when they allowed them to be in lobbies. But again, this is a person who recognized that he's going to have to do what he had to do. And my mother would tell me stories about him asking for positions or jobs. And as you can imagine, you're sleeping on the street, probably not taking a lot of baths. Cleanliness is probably not top of mind. And she said people would just look at him and turn him away. Katrina Jones: But every now and then someone will say, "Well, come in if you think you can do this, we'll give you a trial period." Would not pay him, by the way. Would not pay him, but he would come in and be so impressive with his ability to learn, his ability to be self-driven, his ability to really take whatever challenges that came his way and made it his own and make it successful. My mom laughed. He would be able to get a job in no time because people saw, "Oh, I didn't know what I had." It was a diamond in the rough. Chitra Ragavan: And he was a bit of a ladies man, wasn't it? Katrina Jones: Oh, most definitely. Before he met my grandmother, he was previously married and he apparently went on a double date. I said, "But mom, he was married." Yes, he went on a double date with one of his brothers....

Heather Knight Jan 27, 2020

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Ep. 30 — An acting class convinces an engineering student to devote her career to building charismatic, performing, social robots / Heather Knight Associate Professor of Robotics, Oregon State University. When Heather Knight was working on her Ph.D. in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University, a two-week class she took in the drama department, called Movement for Actors totally detoured her thesis plans. And it became the heart and soul of her life and work: Helping robots become more like humans. Little did she know how difficult it would be. “I literally spent the next three years trying to get a robot to communicate by emotion, in a way that was similar to the first two weeks of that class,” Knight recalls. But Knight was hooked. Since then, she has devoted her career to becoming a social roboticist. She specializes in building emotional, useful, so-called “charismatic” robots. These robots are “charismatic” in more ways than one. Knight’s lab at Oregon State University is called The CHARISMA Robotics Lab. CHARISMA is an acronym for Collaborative Humans and Robots: Interaction Sociability, Machine learning, & Art. Knight and her team get wildly creative with robots, infusing them not only with smarts but also sociability, charm, humor, practicality, and collaborativeness. In other words, human traits. If anyone can do it, it’s Knight. In addition to her Ph.D. in Robotics, Knight also has degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science. Fiercely smart with a capacity for goofy, artsy and playful, Knight has worked as an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, helped build wildly popular interactive installations including the crazy Rube Goldberg machine in OK Go’s “This Too Shall Pass” music video, which has nearly 64 million views! She has served as a Robotics Artist in Residence and as an Artist/Engineer. She’s done a TedTalk with her robotic standup comedian, Data. And she’s a sought-after thought leader in her field. Knight also runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theater company where she does comedy performances with Data and even organizes an annual Robot Film Festival. The more Knight works with robots, the more she has come to understand an immutable truth: Humans are awesome. “One of the things that I love about what I do, is that I constantly get to kind of bask in the glory of all of the things that we take for granted. Like it's so hard for autonomous cars to actually make sense of the world. And we can see a path through a forest just because of how the leaves are slightly more beaten down, even though there are pine needles and rocks. Our vision systems are absolutely amazing,” Knight says. “And our ability to feel like that someone isn't trustworthy in like 30 seconds or like judge a job interview or decide who to talk to at a party. It’'s very cool what we're capable of, I mean, I don't know if there's life in the extended universe, but we are very rare and unique and lucky.” Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Her dad is a former engineer who built lasers and propulsion systems. Her mom is a multilingual former Peace Corps volunteer. Heather Knight has molded his mind and her heart into a very unique field of robotics, building emotional, playful, social robots. Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Good Story, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me now is Heather Knight, Assistant Professor of Robotics at Oregon State University. Her charisma research group uses methods from entertainment to bootstrap the development of social robots. Knight also runs Marilyn Monrobot, a robot theater company with comedy performances and an annual robot film festival. Knight was named to the Forbes :ist 30 under 30 in science, in 2011 and Ad Week's top 100 creatives in 2017. Heather, welcome to the podcast. Knight: Thanks for having me. Chitra Ragavan: Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you first became interested in this area of robotics, and in building these so-called charismatic social, playful emotional robots. Knight: Well, I fell in love with robots by building them. I went to MIT as an undergrad and my freshman year someone in my dorm worked in a robotics lab, and just so it was a random internship and they made really cool robots that related with people, and had expressive faces and listen to the tone of your voice and it was just a lot of fun to see how people reacted to the systems that we're building. I was hooked. Chitra Ragavan: What were your areas of interest as a kid and did that influence your career decision in any way? Knight: Well, I always liked reading and traveling. I was on the debate team for a little while. It's kind of funny because I was trying to decide between engineering and writing. I wanted to be a writer at one point, but these days I get to kind of write robot characters by building them and coming up with their software. Chitra Ragavan: That sounds absolutely fascinating. Your research group is called CHARISMA. What does that stand for and what does it mean to have these so-called performing charismatic robots? Knight: Yeah, yeah. I've really fallen for the word caring charismatic robots, like our phrase charismatic robots over the last, I don't know, 10 years. This idea that you could have machines in your life that are useful, but they also add value and that you enjoy being around. So, that's what I really mean by using the word charisma. But as a nerd, of course we have to make everything in acronyms. So it's Collaborative Humans and Robots: Interaction Sociability, Machine learning, & Art. And that's the name of my research lab at the Oregon state university. Chitra Ragavan: And what are the kinds of things you do there, what are the coolest stuff, coolest things you do? Knight: Yeah, so I have a bunch of students, both graduate students and undergrads and computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, mostly even human computer interaction. And we make robots that operate around people. So, half of our stuff is like robot furniture, really simple robots or robots that are running around the building asking you to do exercises. And then the other half of our stuff is robots that can be in performance settings. So, we have a comedy system. We had a robot that was in an opera and one of the music department's productions this past fall. It was playing a statue. So it was well cast. Chitra Ragavan: So, tell us a little bit about the history and evolution of social robots and kind of how it dovetailed with your career and interests. I know you worked with one of the key people in the early days whose work led to the evolution of this. Knight: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I said I fell in love with robots by building them, but I was also building them with someone super inspiring. So professors, Cynthia Brazil, she is, you know, kind of the mother of the field of social robotics. So she had created in the late 90s this robot called Kismet that imitated infant caretaker, interactions. It had big eyes and it, if you were giving it too much information, it looked overwhelmed, so that you'd slow down. Knight: And so, she was working in an AI lab, and so her idea was that we could use these social strategies of communication to be able for the robot to kind of limit the data that it was receiving from you to a level that it could handle. And so, by using these cues we just sort of automatically is like, "Oh no, okay. He's tired now. I need to wait till later." So much like we would do with like a student learner that's a person you know or even a kid. Chitra Ragavan: So what's the current state of play in robotics? I mean I guess most people are familiar with the Roomba, right? Is that the vacuum that goes around? But what else is going on in the space? Knight: Yeah, robot vacuum cleaners have definitely been the most successful consumer robot so far. Do you know that cows have a lot more robots than we do? Like they're surrounded by robots. They have robots that like scratch their back, that helped milk them. Like cows, they've already received the robot revolution. It's kind of funny. And they really like them, they're like, "This feels good." Chitra Ragavan: You mean on farms and things? It's all- Knight: Yeah, like in farms like so, you are very full udders, it's uncomfortable. So you can just walk yourself to the milking station. Like it's not the robot chasing you. It's more like, "Oh, of course I want a back massage right now." I mean I would want that. Chitra Ragavan: So, how did you start building these things? How does one go about it? Knight: Yeah, great question. I mean there's so much more stuff out there right now. So I think, I've been in the field for like 18 years now, and when I started was around when the Roombas were first coming out and there was no such thing as like drone wedding photography or you know, now there's even these like security robots that operate in some malls and stuff that are also starting to like, I don't know, give coupons or other kinds of stuff. Like the use of robots has become something that we're actually familiar with now. Whereas, it was only Scifi when I started. So, it's been fun seeing robots on the shelves now. Chitra Ragavan: Yes. And I think on a lot of college campuses now you're actually having robots deliver pizzas. Knight: Yeah, yeah. But you know, pizza, burritos. Yeah. Sometimes they actually have people in like less expensive labor economies controlling those robots, which I actually think is a kind of useful solution because it is hard to program all of the possible social rules and expectations that we have for robots into a robot that's running around with like bicycles and people and skate

Helene Johnson Jan 20, 2020

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Ep. 29 — A second generation holocaust survivor stops carrying the weight of her father’s suffering and starts living life to the fullest / Helene Johnson, President & CEO, Bid2Win. When Helene Johnson was just six years old, she decided to get to the bottom of her beloved father’s bouts of anger and sadness. Johnson demanded a full account of what her dad had been through for five years in Nazi captivity. Obedient to her command, Johnson’s dad told her not only everything that had happened to him and his family but also what he’d seen happening to others in the Nazi concentration camps. Neither father nor daughter realized at that moment the devastating impact those stories would have on Johnson. She became captive to fear in all aspects of her daily life, work, and even worship. “It made me extremely afraid to be in crowds. I'm afraid to go on the Metro, which would have been nice today for work, but I just can't do it,” says Johnson. “I can't take being closed in and not having any chance to escape. When I go into stadiums or concerts or even the movie theater, I have to look for the exit and I have to know that there's a way to escape . . . To this day, I cannot go into a synagogue on the Jewish holidays. I did when my kids were little and I was freaked out, totally, every time.” Johnson spent much of her adulthood trapped in her own shadow of fear and self-doubt, all the while building an impressive career in government contracting. Recently, after Johnson’s beloved dad passed away, she noticed a gradual change in herself. It’s a change that has given her new life, soul, and spirit. Johnson’s story is a reminder of the multi-generational toll of the Holocaust. These stories are vital to prevent such events from ever happening again. A Pew Research Center survey released this week shows that, "Most U.S. adults know what the Holocaust was and approximately when it happened, but fewer than half can correctly answer multiple-choice questions about the number of Jews who were murdered or the way Adolf Hitler came to power.” And the survey revealed that fewer than 50% know that nearly 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. A New York Times story last week reported a disturbing rise in Neo-Nazi threats, “particularly from adherents who cluster in small cells organized under the auspices of a larger group that spreads violent ideology.” The report compared this trend in decentralization of the movement to al-globally dispersed radicalization and terrorism through small cells “or even lone wolves who would be inspired to plot their own attacks. Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Helene Johnson was just six years old when she asked her father, a Holocaust survivor, to tell her exactly what he had been through during five years in Nazi captivity. Her dad took her request seriously. He told her everything that had happened to him and his family. It may not have been a very wise move, either for her to ask him or for him to tell her at that young age. His story had a harsh impact on her childhood, and in fact, her whole life. Johnson spent much of her adulthood as a second generation Holocaust Survivor, captive in her own shadow of fear and self-doubt, all the while building an impressive career in government contracting. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Recently, after Helene Johnson's beloved dad passed away, she noticed a gradual change in herself. It's a change that has given her new life, soul and spirit. Here to tell us more about what happened is Helene Johnson. She's president and CEO of Bid2Win, a Washington D.C. area consulting firm that's helping companies bid for and win federal contracts. Helene, welcome to the podcast. Helene Johnson: Hi, thank you. It's nice to be here. Chitra Ragavan: You were born in Baltimore, Maryland and you were the youngest of three kids. You were raised in a culturally Jewish family, you attended public schools, and you had a tough time. Tell me a little bit about those days. Helene Johnson: Yes, it was tough. When I was in elementary school, I was teased a lot. Actually, bullied, and it was for two things. One, I had an unusually large nose and I was teased a lot about ... They called me all these names like schnoz or big nose or hook nose or banana nose, and they really butchered my self-esteem. I also had a form of childhood epilepsy that would give me seizures, and the seizures would be such that it seemed like everybody was talking really fast yet the world was moving slow around me. I had to call my mother, and my mother was the only one that knew how to talk in such a way to slow my mind down so it could catch up with everything else. Because of that, if I would have one of these seizures in school, they would call me ... I'd have to leave the class, and everybody knew that Helene was weird and she was retarded, they would say. Helene Johnson: Also because of that, I had to go to the counselor, the school counselor, and that brought attention to me. And also, they put me in very slow classes because they thought that I was special education. In seventh grade, when I got to junior high, I met a teacher, a math teacher, and she was a young woman. I'll never forget her. She knew that I wasn't retarded and I wasn't needing special ed. She actually found that I was very smart. She believed in me and she gave me confidence, and she pushed me and convinced them instead of being in the slowest class, I should be in the most advanced class. Helene Johnson: And then, when I got to 10th grade, I couldn't take the teasing anymore. I got my surgery. I had a nose job, which was the most painful thing back then I could imagine. I still remember what it was like. So the teasing stopped, but that's about all that stopped. I never really felt like I belonged anywhere and I had absolutely zero confidence. The only confidence I had is in myself in the area of math. Chitra Ragavan: What kind of damage did all of the teasing do to your self-esteem for your life? Helene Johnson: I've always been afraid that I've said or done the wrong thing. Always. And I've always second guessed myself. The other day someone told me that ... When I was about 40 years old I was a deputy CIO in the government, and I was told that I scared people because I was so tough. I just said what I thought. It was my way or no way. I remember telling my staff, "Don't drop a ball. Whatever you do, don't drop a ball." I mean, I was intense and I was scary. And the reason I was intense and scary is because I had complete doubt in myself. I've always been this way and I've always second guessed myself. Chitra Ragavan: What about your physical self-esteem? Did you ever get over it? Helene Johnson: No. When I look in the mirror I see a woman, because I'm all grown now, with a big nose. Chitra Ragavan: Which is not the case. Helene Johnson: Well, it's not the case, but I see it. I look at myself as the way I looked when I was in seventh and eighth grade and I was teased and I was picked on. I don't see the new me. People tell me, "Oh, you're such an attractive woman." I don't see it. I see the Helene that I saw when I was young. Chitra Ragavan: Now, how did your parents help you deal with this? Especially your dad. I'm sure he thought you were beautiful. You were daddy's little girl. How did he help you? Helene Johnson: He had unconditional love for me. My dad would look at me with stars in his eyes and he always told me he was proud of me, always told me I was beautiful. He believed in me and he just kept ... He always told me that I was his baby and I was special. We had Friday nights where we would go to synagogue together and we would sing Fiddler On The Roof songs and we would have our date, and he was so handsome. My dad was so handsome. I looked like my dad, so I always thought, "Well, I can't be that bad looking because I look like my dad and he's pretty handsome." So he just gave me unconditional love and he always believed in me, and I was always in his eyes, til the day he died, I was his baby, and I was his little girl. I miss that a lot. Chitra Ragavan: Your dad met your mom here in the U.S. but he was originally a Holocaust survivor. Tell me his name and tell me a little bit about him and his family, and what they went through during the Holocaust. Helene Johnson: My dad's name is Rubin Sztajer. He is very famous in the Baltimore area. He's all over the Internet and he has spoken to Shoah. He's on video and DVDs. My dad was just amazing. His family. He was the middle child of five children. His brother Sam is still alive and he lives in Miami, or actually Fort Lauderdale maybe. He's probably 97 or 98, and his health is impacted now. But he looks a lot like my dad and when I hear him on the phone, it just brings back my dad. Chitra Ragavan: Your dad was from Poland. Helene Johnson: Yes, my dad was from Poland. From Klobutz Poland, which is a fishing town. He had a sister, Gussy who actually found him in the camps and saved his life. Chitra Ragavan: How many kids? Helene Johnson: How many kids does- Chitra Ragavan: were they. Helene Johnson: There were five. The youngest son and the youngest two girls, they were killed by the Germans. I think his brother was taken and his sisters were hidden by nuns, and the nuns turned them in so they were killed, and of course his parents were killed by the Germans. He was in school until sixth grade, so my dad had very little formal education. He had an amazing mind when it came to math. He was very strong in math, very strong in the stock exchange and finance and all of that. Chitra Ragavan: How old was he when he was taken? ...

Dr. Michelle Longmire Jan 14, 2020

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Ep. 28 — A dermatologist from a pedigreed Los Alamos science family fights to break the mold in sports, medicine, and Silicon Valley / Dr. Michelle Longmire, CEO and Co-Founder, Medable. Her grandfather worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the hydrogen bomb. Her mother is a radiochemist and plutonium expert, her father is an expert in recombinant - DNA technology. With that pedigree, there was little doubt that Michelle Longmire would embark on a career in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Indeed, when she was young, one of Dr. Longmire’s annual science projects involved breeding multiple generations of hamsters to study Mendelian inheritance patterns. Today, Michelle Longmire is a rising star in her own right in medicine and technology. But throughout her life, Dr. Longmire has found herself underestimated as she has competed fiercely to break the mold in male-dominated sports and careers. “When I was first competing in sports, I was also very small. I was playing coed hockey. And I was less than a hundred pounds. So I think people saw me as fairly small and weren't so sure about my capabilities,” Longmire recalls. “And then I would get on the ice and I was really fast and I was probably meaner than most and loved to compete. And so, being underestimated actually I think is a tremendous advantage because then when you surprise people with what you're capable of, it's really an aha moment that generates a lot of opportunities to reset what's possible.” In sports, Longmire became a champion soccer player and team leader and in medicine, she is a Stanford-educated practicing dermatologist and expert in the genetic origins of certain fatal diseases. Now, Dr. Michelle Longmire is breaking the Founder mold in Silicon Valley where female founders are scarce. She is CEO and Co-Founder of the digital health platform, Medable, a multi-million dollar healthcare startup that’s transforming the way clinical trials are conducted globally. Longmire says her desire to tackle hard problems comes from her grandfather, Conrad Longmire. “I think as an entrepreneur and being in Silicon Valley, we can see a number of different opportunities for how we invest our time.” Longmire says. “And I think we should really aim to solve hard problems that bring a lot of value to humanity and what I learned through my grandfather was that through a team, a dedicated team of experts, you really can solve problems.” Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Born in a family of scientists, her grandfather worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the hydrogen bomb. Dr. Michelle Longmire is a rising star in the science and technology field, but throughout her life and career, Dr. Longmire has found herself underestimated as she has competed fiercely to break the mold in male dominated sports and careers. In sports, she became a champion soccer player and team leader and in medicine, Dr. Longmire is a Stanford educated practicing dermatologist and expert in the genetic origins of certain fatal diseases. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Dr. Michelle Longmire also has broken the founder mold in Silicon Valley where female founders are scarce. Her multimillion dollar digital health startup is transforming the way clinical trials are conducted globally. Joining me now is Michelle Longmire, CEO and Co-Founder of the digital health platform, Medable. Dr Longmire, welcome to the podcast. Dr. Longmire: Thank you so much. It's really great to be here. Chitra Ragavan: You come from an extraordinary family of scientists with deep ties to the Los Alamos National Laboratories, home of the Manhattan project and creation of the atomic bomb. Let's talk with your late grandfather Conrad Longmire. Tell us a little bit about him. Dr. Longmire: Sure. So my grandfather, Conrad, was a nuclear physicist and he was perhaps most well known for his work in thermonuclear weapons where he was a part of a scientific team that developed the hydrogen bomb and this was a really fascinating time in history in the early fifties where Los Alamos was actually a secret community and you had leading scientists from all over the world working together to achieve these kind of new high scientific horizons and he was a part of that. He was also an expert in electromagnetic pulse theory. Chitra Ragavan: And did you know him? Was he alive when you were growing up and recently? Dr. Longmire: Absolutely. I had a wonderful childhood. I spent quite a bit of time with my grandfather. He had retired to Santa Barbara, California and I spent summers there with my grandmother and grandfather and really had the opportunity to understand him as a person which was just a wonderful way to grow up. Chitra Ragavan: Now your grandpa died of multiple myelomas which is a cancer of the plasma cells and one potential cause is exposure to radiation. Did his work in any way contribute to his death? Dr. Longmire: It's hard to say because it was quite a while afterward with regard to when he developed multiple myeloma, that was in his late eighties. A lot of the work he did where he was around nuclear material was in his twenties but he did have a really interesting opportunity to be at Bikini Atoll where they were detonating weapons. So it's hard to know but my suspicion would be that it was not necessarily a contributor. Chitra Ragavan: Your mother, Victoria also is a distinguished scientist. Tell us about her. Dr. Longmire: Sure. So my mom is a plutonium expert and she is a radiochemist who was really among the very first group of women to be able to perform chemistry in one of the core facilities in Los Alamos Labs. So, given that she works with fissile material and she's my mom, I like to call her my hot mama but she's just a phenomenal inspiration in terms of breaking the mold for the workforce, showing that women are so capable and can work alongside and really lead any group of people and throughout her career she had a lot of success in radiochemistry. Chitra Ragavan: And your dad's no slacker either. He's the son of Conrad Longmire and tell us about him. Dr. Longmire: Sure. So my dad is a really interesting person. I think I'm very fortunate to have had really great mentors in my parents from a scientific perspective. My father is an expert in recombinant DNA technology and he is also a lover, and lifelong lover of birds of prey. So when he was a child, he was a self-taught falconer and taught himself how to trap birds and without harming them and then actually fly birds and hunt them and he went on to become certified by the World Wildlife Foundation to actually raise endangered species. So, I grew up with Peregrine falcons and Gyrfalcons and had the opportunity to go into the deserts of Northern New Mexico and hunt ducks with my father and our Peregrine and Gyrfalcons and one of the really interesting things about my father is that he combined that passion for birds with his own work in genetics and he was a part of the Human Genome Project at Los Alamos Labs, but actually did his PhD in developing an assay that was used to test the sex of birds so that they could be bred in captivity. Dr. Longmire: So he developed a test that they could use on blood to determine if a whooping crane was male or female and in looking at these birds, you cannot determine the gender and this test actually enabled the successful breeding of whooping cranes in captivity at a time when the whooping crane population in North America was extremely low. So I think some of the takeaways from my childhood are really this work is not a separate life but it's taking what you're passionate about and you love and making an impact through your work in that domain and I think my dad really embodies it. Chitra Ragavan: So what was your childhood like being surrounded by these incredible scientists of extraordinary caliber and how did you feed off all this talent around you to become who you are today? What was young Michelle Longmire like? Dr. Longmire: That's a great question. I think my parents would probably say I was very curious. I think in that setting you're not thinking, wow, these extremely accomplished people. Realistically, these are your parents and this is your everyday environment. One certain aspect of it is that on a daily basis, I was engaged in science and it was a big part of my upbringing. We were talking about it at the dinner table. My dad often shared a lot of the progress in the Human Genome Project and there was just this constant kind of hunger for discovery and invention. Dr. Longmire: There was just a part of daily life and in fact I think back to my science fair projects and I and my dad, we always work together for almost a year on the annual science fair project. One of them that stands out to me was he was teaching me genetics and I loved hamsters. So I had a couple of hamsters and he had the wild idea, well let's breed hamsters for multiple generations and look at the Mendelian inheritance patterns to determine if the hamster coat length is dominant or recessive in inheritance. So my science fair project involved breeding four or five generations of hamsters and then mapping out all of the coat patterns to determine the inheritance pattern and so it's just an existence about discovery and learning and where I think deductive reasoning becomes just a big part of how you think and operate in the world and I'm really grateful for that. Chitra Ragavan: I think it goes without saying that there aren't a lot of families in the world that do four generations of hamster breeding for a school science project. Dr. Longmire: Right. It's probably today would not be something people would want to accept as a science fair

David Branch Jan 07, 2020

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Ep. 27 — A young African American raised on an Arkansas farm overcomes poverty and racial discrimination and finds his voice fighting for the underprivileged / David Branch, Employment Attorney, David Branch Law Firm. Dear Listeners, The New Year brings a new season of When It Mattered, my podcast examining how leaders and pioneers are forged from critical moments in their lives. I’m thrilled to launch Season Two with the inspiring story of Washington D.C. attorney, David Branch, a descendant of the extraordinary Branch family in Arkansas, with a lineage nearly 600-members strong. The great-great-grandson of a slave from Africa, Victoria Wakefield, Branch was raised on a farm in rural Arkansas with eight siblings on his parent’s meager income of $10,000 a year. The farm was just two hours from historic Elaine, Arkansas, where, in 1919, a dispute between black farmers attempting to organize a union resulted in the deadly massacre of 200 African American men, women, and children by white Arkansans. The poverty, racial discrimination and the fearful stories of the Eliane race riots that were passed down through generations of the Branch family, deeply affected David. But David overcame his insecurities and became one of 70 Branch first cousins to attend college. It wasn't easy. “I went to Southern Methodist University and that's a very wealthy school in Dallas,” says Branch, “So from a $10,000-family income to sitting next to millionaires and people who were driving Mercedes and BMWs at campus, that was really difficult to adjust to and just the whole mindset of people from financial means such as that.” Branch moved to Washington D.C. to go to law school and found his voice as an employment attorney fighting for the underprivileged. In his free time, Branch is dedicated to giving back to the community in a very big way, through many charitable activities, both in Washington D.C. and around the globe. I hope you enjoy this heart-warming story of David Branch, a pioneer in a pioneering family. With Warm Regards, Chitra Ragavan Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: David Branch was raised on a farm in rural Arkansas with eight siblings on his parents' meager income of $10,000 a year. The great, great grandson of a slave from Africa who was committed to education, Branch pulled up his Arkansas roots to go to college in Dallas and then law school in Washington, D.C. confronting great adversity in the process. Chitra Ragavan: Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan, and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Today, Branch is a prominent employment attorney and head of the David Branch Law firm. He has a deep commitment to giving back to his community and is passionate about fighting for clients who are confronting racism or other forms of discrimination, much like he did when he set off to get that education and create a life that would do his great-great-grandma proud. David, welcome to the podcast. David Branch: Good morning. Welcome. Thank you. Chitra Ragavan: You come from an extraordinary lineage, one of 600 descendants of the Branch family. Let's start with your great-great-grandmother, Victoria Wakefield. She was a slave who paved the path for hundreds of Branches to seek education, much of it against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and busing. David Branch: Yes, that's correct. My great-great-grandmother Victoria Wakefield was a slave in Florida at first, and then she was later sold into slavery in Vicksburg, Mississippi. And from Vicksburg, Mississippi after the civil war, she moved to Arkansas and it's the part of Arkansas known as the Mississippi Delta. David Branch: And my great-great-grandmother married a civil war veteran. His name was Henry Wakefield. And after Mr. Wakefield passed away, my great-great-grandmother received civil war pension benefits. And from the civil war pension benefits, she saved enough money to send her eldest great-great-granddaughter to college and this would've been in the late 1900s through 1920. David Branch: And that great-great-granddaughter was actually my aunt, and my aunt actually moved back to our farming community and she became the teacher and principal for a school there and she did it from the 1920s until the 1960s. And she educated the entire family and really that's where it all started. Chitra Ragavan: What's amazing is she became a teacher at age 18, and then a few years later, she became a principal. But when she was a teacher at one point, she was teaching in one classroom that had eight different grades. So she was an extraordinary woman. David Branch: Yes, she's an incredible woman and really I spent a lot of time with my aunt Annie and just love to crack jokes, tease all of her nieces and nephews, and really just made education fun. But she really stressed the importance of education. Chitra Ragavan: Now tell me about your other family, your parents, and where you grew up and what that life was like. You come from a very large family. David Branch: Yes. So my grandmother was Louisa McGhee Branch and she was married to John Branch, my grandfather, and they had 10 kids. My father was the youngest of the 10 kids. His name was Will Bailey or Willie Branch, and I'm the youngest of nine kids. So life was very difficult on their farm. We had a small farm and actually before I was born, my grandfather passed away at an early age. So my dad was responsible for maintaining the family farm when three of his older siblings went off to World War II. David Branch: And my dad was 17 years old, and he really saved the family farm because in that era, if farms were not managed and not operated, particularly farms owned by African Americans, it was very common for people to just come in and take the land. So really, the running joke in our family has always been my dad saved us all from becoming sharecroppers because had he not worked the land while his brothers were away at war, the land very likely would have been lost. Chitra Ragavan: Now, is it true that he learned to drive at age nine and would drive his father around the property? David Branch: That was my uncle, one of my dad's brothers. One of my dad's brothers was Ezell Branch, and we called him Uncle Pete. His name was actually Pete Branch, but Uncle Pete served in the Navy during World War II, but at nine years old, he was a family driver. My grandfather had a heart condition and so he didn't drive at all. But my Uncle Pete was the family driver. Chitra Ragavan: Well, what it shows is the incredibly young age at which kids at the time used to take responsibility. Annie being a teacher at age 18 and Pete driving at age nine and your dad taking on the farm at age 17. It's not like today where kids can hang around forever depending on their parents' good will. David Branch: Oh no, no. We all worked. There was a very serious work ethic there. So that's really what's driven the family to a great deal of success. Chitra Ragavan: Now, it wasn't just you and your family on the farm, right? You also had your uncles on the farm and how many cousins were in this one property? David Branch: So, my aunt lived next door, Aunt Annie, and she was older when I grew up, but she lived next door. She had 10 kids and my Uncle Pete, he lived on the other side. He had 15 kids and my Uncle West or John Branch, he actually had 17 kids. Two of them passed away when they were young, but he had 17 kids. So at any given time, there would be 40 kids or so plus cousins there at any given time. David Branch: And there was always a kind of a running joke in the family when the local school bus would stop, to stop on Branch Hill. It was known as Branch Hill. It would be completely filled just with Branch kids. And my grandmother was always there. She lived on the Hill as well and she was there to greet the kids when they returned home from school. She didn't remember anyone's name, everyone was sweet honey or sweet baby, but she greeted all the kids and we had to greet her as we got off the bus each day. Chitra Ragavan: Just put this against the backdrop of history, it was no small feat to educate all of the kids of the Branch family given where we were at that time in our history. David Branch: That's absolutely correct. And even before my generation, during my parents' generation, it occurred ... In 1919, there was the massacre of African American sharecroppers and farmers in Elaine, Arkansas. And that's only about two hours from my family farm. But of course, news of the massacre spread throughout the local communities there and it just terrorized African American families, causing a great deal of fear, great deal of distrust in Caucasians and just overall alarm and concern. David Branch: And my father and his siblings grew up in the backdrop of that massacre. So there were family gatherings, I'm told, almost on a weekly basis where people would talk about this and the concerns there. So it was no small feat for people to get access to education. My dad only finished the eighth grade because he had to work on the farm. But everyone else in the next generation, we all went to college. We got an opportunity to go to college. Chitra Ragavan: And the Elaine Massacre, if you can describe it briefly. David Branch: Yes, there was a dispute between farmers who were attempting to organize a union, and there was a meeting at a local church there and the police arrived. There were some dispute and one of the officers was shot. And as a result, there was alarm in the Caucasian community and surrounding communities that there were some type of rebellion taking place and approximately 200 people were murdered. African American women, children, men, young, old,...

Barbara Bradley Hagerty Dec 30, 2019

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Ep. 26 — A Christian Scientist forsakes her religion after taking meds for the stomach flu and takes a life detour to uncover the science of spiritual experiences / Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Contributing Writer, The Atlantic and Author, Fingerprints of God. Barbara Bradley Hagerty found herself at a crossroads one day when she got the stomach flu and realized she could no longer abide by the rules of her religion, Christian Science, banning the use of any medications. “I just lay there and this flashing in my head went off, Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol, so I got out of bed and I practically crawled to the medicine cabinet and pulled myself up by the sink, took one Tylenol, not two, just one and crawled back to bed. I lay there and about five minutes later I'm thinking wow I feel pretty good,” Hagerty remembers. “Now that was the beginning of the end for Christian Science for me.” Though Hagerty’s short-term health conundrum was resolved, it was only the beginning of a long-term spiritual crisis. She had to confront a much bigger issue that no meds could solve and it had to do not with her body, but with her soul. So she went on a quest and the answers she found were surprising, even shocking and resulted in her fascinating book, Fingerprints of God, about how what and why of spirituality and spiritual experiences. Join me on this journey to the center of the soul, with award-winning journalist and author, Barbara Bradley Hagerty. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Barbara Bradley Hagerty caught the stomach flu one day. It was no ordinary bug. It was a bug so bad that it set off a short-term health conundrum and a long-term spiritual crisis. Bradley Hagerty was a Christian Scientist and the religion forbids medications, but she felt so awful that she took her first Tylenol ever. Even after Hagerty beat back the stomach flu, there was a bigger issue that no meds could solve. It had to do not with her body, but with her soul. So she went on a quest and the answers she found was surprising, even shocking. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm, helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined today by Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She is an award-winning formal journalist for the Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. Hagerty currently is a contributing writer to The Atlantic Monthly. She's the author of Fingerprints of God: What Science is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience. Chitra Ragavan: Barb welcome to the podcast. Barbara Hagerty: It's great to be here. Chitra Ragavan: There you were. You were 34 years old in a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, never having taken a pill of any kind as a Christian Scientist and you had the stomach flu. Barbara Hagerty: I sure did. It with three days of just being so, so sick. I remember coming home from I think, from exams at Yale. I was on a fellowship there, every year Yale invites five journalists to go through their first year of law school. I was doing this fellowship. I got incredibly sick. I remember going into bed and putting every piece of clothing, blanket, everything I had on top of me because I was so sick. I was shivering. I was shaking. Suddenly, I remembered that my boyfriend at the time who lived in Washington had left a bottle of Tylenol in the medicine cabinet. Barbara Hagerty: I just lay there and this flashing in my head went off, Tylenol, Tylenol, Tylenol, so I got out of bed and I practically crawled to the medicine cabinet and pulled myself up by the sink, took one Tylenol, not two, just one and crawled back to bed. I lay there and about five minutes later I'm thinking wow I feel pretty good. I'm getting warm. Let me get all of these covers off of me. I'm hot, hot. About 15 minutes later I'm sitting there. I'm at the stove. I'm making some tomato soup and I feel terrific. Now that was the beginning of the end for Christian Science for me. Barbara Hagerty: I made a philosophical shift right then. I didn't quite leave Christian Science because my mom and dad were still Christian Scientists and my brother had left and he said, "You can't leave Christian Science until mom and dad die." I felt obligated, but philosophically I thought, "Oh my gosh, medicine is great. Christian Science really relies only on prayer and says medicine essentially doesn't work." I have to rethink this. I not only have to rethink my medical history. I not only have to look at that, but I also have to rethink what do I actually believe. What are the spiritual truths that I'm going to put my flag on. I remember the couple of days later I saw my friend Laura who was also a journalist on the same fellowship. I told her that I had taken the Tylenol and felt terrific. She grabs my hand and squeezes it and she says, "Oh Barb the whole world of pharmacology is now open to you." It was. Chitra Ragavan: It wasn't just the whole world of pharmacology. It was literally the whole world of religion and spirituality had suddenly come open because you were confronted with this dichotomy of moving from Christian Science to Christianity. Barbara Hagerty: That's right. That's exactly right. That shift came a little bit later when the ... The journey began then, but I didn't begin to find some answers for another year and a half or so and that was when I was assigned an article by the LA Times Sunday Magazine to do a story on why some churches grow and why others don't. I went out to LA and I profiled a few churches. One of them was Saddleback, Rick Warren's church. He had never done a national interview before, never done a major interview. I was the first one to interview him. I remember going to Saddleback and looking at these tens of thousands of people who are going to this church, right? Barbara Hagerty: My church, Christian Science churches, are rather small. Here are these people are flooding in and I want to talk to people about their spiritual journey and I sit through the service and it was fine, but afterwards, I was talking to a woman named Kathy Young. She had had melanoma and it had gone into remission. She was just talking about her spiritual journey and how it intersected with her health journey. We were sitting outside. It was dark by this point. We were sitting on a bench underneath a light. It was almost like we were actors on a stage, right? Barbara Hagerty: She's talking about her spiritual journey and suddenly I felt something. It was like the hairs on the back on my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. It was as if there was like, the air grew warm and moist as if someone was breathing on us. It was like there was a presence right there with us. It wasn't just me. It was this visceral feeling, but it wasn't just my own because Kathy stopped talking mid-sentence and we just sat there for 30 or 40 seconds. It felt like an eternity. We just sat there in this presence and then it just receded. Barbara Hagerty: I looked at Kathy. I was so spooked and I said, "Well Kathy it's been so nice meeting you. You don't need to finish that sentence. I'm just going to get out of here." I drove. I remember as I was driving away from Saddleback to my hotel in LA I thought oh my gosh, what the heck just happened there. What was that? Was that a delusion? Was that the firings of my temporal lobe? Am I crazy or is it possible that there is a presence call him God or whatever you want, but is it possible there's a presence that can actually step in the circle of light and breathe on you, that can actually have a physical as well as a psychological effect on you? Barbara Hagerty: That was a very, very profound experience that started me really, really started me looking for real answers. Chitra Ragavan: Going back many years before that even, you had a lot of questions about stories your friends had told you, stories you had read about, even experiences your mother had. What were some of those things that started to raise those questions in your mind? Barbara Hagerty: Well as a Christian Scientist, I had seen with my mother and I had experienced myself spiritual healing. Now we would call it something else. We would call it the mind-body connection that how you think actually affects your body, and we know this to be true. For me, it was very profound. I saw these healings. It made me really believe that there was more than this that we aren't just wholly human physical beings made up of cells and brain firings and all of that. That's not who our identity is. I really saw the evidence of God I thought. The problem with my theology was that it seemed to be hit or miss like what if you prayed and you didn't get better. Chitra Ragavan: What about your mom and her hand for instance? Barbara Hagerty: Oh, that was a great experience, so mom when she was a young woman she was a Christian Scientist and she was talking to my dad and he said something funny and she slapped her hand on his knee and she actually felt a lot of pain. He forced her, he wasn't a Christian Scientist. He forced her to go to the doctor and have it checked it out. This was about three days later. In the meantime, she had been praying about it and she finally went to the doctor. He did an x-ray and he goes, "Yeah you know what, there's a bone in your hand broken, but it's set perfectly. All I could do is break it again and reset it. I'm not going to do that." Barbara Hagerty: Somehow it set perfectly. This was one of these experiences. Mom had many of them where she just saw physical healings. I saw it as well. I felt the presence of God on many occasions. The problem for me was that sometimes it didn't work. Sometimes the prayer didn't work and did that mean that I was flawed in my thinking. It all came back to was I wrong or was I praying badly or was I

Blake Leeper Dec 23, 2019

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Ep. 25 — A double-leg amputee with a love for running beats back a cocaine addiction and battles Olympic bureaucracy in his quest to become the fastest runner in the world / Blake Leeper, Eight-Time Paralympic Medalist. and 2020 Summer Olympics Aspirant Born without legs from a congenital birth defect, Blake Leeper discovered his mission and passion in life when he watched South African Paralympic champion sprinter Oscar Pistorius competing in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. It triggered in Leeper a deep desire to run, despite being a double-leg amputee. “They were saying, ‘Look how this man born without legs...’ I feel like they were talking about me but there were talking about him of course. I was just like, shocked, I was amazed,” remembers Leeper. I was like, ‘Wow, there's something for me.’ And the crowd of Beijing was 90,000 people and they were cheering. It was just a spark of inspiration that was planted inside of me that even though I never ran track and field a day in my life I just felt and knew that's what I need to do with my life.” Leeper got running blades like Pistorius's and began racing in 2010. With grit and endurance, he became an eight-time Paralympic medalist representing the United States. But just as Leeper hit his stride professionally, he entered a dark period in his personal life. He tested positive for cocaine and was banned from competing for nearly two years. It was a devastating blow. But today, at age 26, Leeper says he's back on track, running faster than ever, training better than ever and with one clear goal, to become the fastest runner in the world. That’s easier said than done. Leeper is struggling to qualify for future Paralympics and the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of a dispute over whether his running blades give him an unfair height and speed advantage over able-bodied runners. Leeper is fighting back with the same legal team that helped Pistorius qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics. Don’t miss this fascinating episode with a very different type of Blade Runner. #Leadership #WhatInspiresMe #Success #WhenItMattered Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Although he was born without legs from a congenital birth defect, Blake Leeper has never allowed that to prevent him from winning in sports. When Leeper was a teenager, he watched South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius in the 2008 Paralympics in Beijing. It triggered in him a deep desire to run. Leeper began racing in 2010. Since then he has become an eight-time Paralympic track and field international medalist. He holds many world records, including the sixth-fastest runner in the world in the 400-meter dash. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone, I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined today by Blake Leeper, who at age 26 has ambitious goals to become one of the fastest runners in the world. But Leeper is struggling to compete in the Paralympics and get accepted into the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. International racing authorities say his running blades give him an unfair height and speed advantage over able-bodied runners. It's a fight he's determined to win. Chitra Ragavan: Blake, welcome to the podcast. Blake Leeper: Thank you so much for having me. It is an honor and a pleasure, and just thank you so much for allowing me to share my story and just some of the things I've been through in my life that allow me to be in the situation that I am in today. Chitra Ragavan: You were born with this extraordinary challenge of being a double amputee, yet you've never let it get in the way. How did you overcome those early years of adversity to start participating both is sports and in life? Blake Leeper: I really give it to my parents, my family members. I grew up in East Tennessee, and I had an older Brother, and I had Grandparents, and Grandmothers, and Grandfathers, and Aunts, and Uncles, and of course my Mother and my Father. And just their mindset of just saying, "Yes, we have a disabled child, but we want to give him everything that we got. We're going to allow him to live a fulfilled life." I ask my Parents every single time, "What was it like the day that I was born?" You had doctors rushing out the room. They brought my back and had that conversation, "Mr. and Mrs. Leeper I'm sorry but your baby boy is born missing both of his legs." And I ask my Mom, "Mom, what did you say? Dad, who'd you hit? I know you didn't take that." Blake Leeper: They give me the same answer over and over and over again. They said, "Blake the day that you was born we was nervous because they rushed you out the room and took you to ICU, but they eventually brought you back, and once they brought you back we didn't see what you was missing, we didn't notice that. We seen the beauty inside of you. And in that moment we decided to do two things, the first thing we're going to do is stick together as a family, as a unit." The second answer was, "We're going to keep a positive attitude towards the whole situation." And that's something that was instilled in me at a early age since day one. Chitra Ragavan: That's absolutely beautiful, but I'm sure as a young child you had to overcome that huge mental, and emotional and physical block of a. Being different from everybody around you. And, b. Getting accepted into sports and activities. It must have been super difficult. How did you get over that? Blake Leeper: Absolutely I mean especially in my community I was the only probably disabled child, especially with prosthetic legs and me trying to figure it out, trying to fit in, trying to figure out girlfriends. Trying to figure out life, trying to figure out why I was born without legs. I remember once I was playing tee ball like baseball for when I was like five, or six, seven years old and I wanted to hit a home run. I hit the ball as far as I can and I run to first, and on my way from first to second then like my teammates are cheering. I was really excited because my Dad was my third base coach and I really wanted to make him proud and fit in with the team because they talked about me and I was made fun of sometimes. And, on my way from second to third my leg falls off and the kid comes over and tags me out, and I look over to my teammates and all the excitement's gone and my Dad I could tell he was disappointed, not at me but the situation. As he came over to pick me up I remember being mad at the world, one leg on, one leg off. I leaned over asking, "Why me? Why is this happening to me, I don't get this. My Brother has his legs. My Mom, she has her legs. My Dad has his legs." Blake Leeper: But, what I realized as I got older and more trial and tribulations that I went through I realized that everything happens for a reason. The reality of it is instead of asking or saying, "Why me?" I started asking saying, "Well why not me? I'm meant for this." Or, "Why not me? I'm strong enough for this." And just keeping that perception, that perspective that all my trials and tribulations that I'm facing and saying that my adversity is my advantage. Chitra Ragavan: You started playing all kinds of sports, right? Blake Leeper: Yes. I played baseball, I played basketball, I ran a little bit of cross country in middle school, but I really fell in love with baseball and basketball as a child but it wasn't until I was in college until I started running track and field. Chitra Ragavan: Tell me about that moment when you saw Oscar Pistorius, the South African sprinter in the Beijing Paralympics in 2008. He had this futuristic running blades, and I don't know if you're wearing something similar at the time, but what was that like watching him run? Blake Leeper: Yeah, it was amazing. I can remember I was in my college dorm room on the college diet eating my bowl of Fruit Loops and Oscar Pistorius pops up on ESPN. I was there to watch the basketball highlights. He popped up and it was just highlighting the 2008 Beijing Paralympics Games in the Bird's Nest and he took a gold metal in the 100 meters, 200 meters and the 400 meters. They were saying, "Look how this man born without legs..." I feel like they were talking about me but there were talking about him of course. I was just like shocked, I was amazed. I was like, "Wow, there's something for me." And the crowd of Beijing was 90,000 people and they were cheering. It was just a spark of inspiration that was planted inside of me that even though I never ran track and field a day in my life I just felt and knew like that's what I need to do with my life. That's what it's about. I played sports my whole life, but I was still searching to try and figure out what my passion truly was and why I was really meant to do with my life on this earth. Blake Leeper: Once I seen that, that was like the inspiration and the passion that was sparked inside of me to pursue this. Chitra Ragavan: What did you do next? How did you actually start running and what was that like? That first time you tried to do that. Blake Leeper: Yeah, it was a process of just emailing people and emailing people. These running legs are pretty expensive. Insurance do not cover running blades because they consider it as a luxury and not a necessity, unfortunately. They can range from 10, to 15, $20,000, to $30,000 just for a pair of running legs. I had to reach out to a lot of people to ask for some funding and donations, and of course I heard a lot of nos. I still stayed at it, I still stayed at it, and then I sent a Paralympic friend of mine a email on MySpace and he reached out connected me with a nonprofit out of San Diego, Challenge Athlete Foundation. Blake Leeper: They sponsored and bought my first pair of legs which was pretty amazing, and I'll never forget when I first got them,...

Richard Wilson Dec 16, 2019

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Ep. 24 — A bored and broke undergraduate has a terrible car crash and uses it as a turning point to pursue wealth and knowledge / Richard Wilson, CEO and founder of the Family Office Club. Richard Wilson was phoning it in like many undergraduate students, feeling unmotivated and unrewarded. Then, driving home one night from college to his parent's home, Wilson hydroplaned in the rain into a cement barricade. “The car just kind of crumpled in half and it was the middle of the night, pouring rain. I just kind of stumbled out of the car and several cars stopped because my headlights were facing oncoming traffic. And some people saw my car spinning,” remembers Wilson. “And I just kind of walked away from it, luckily. And it just kind of opened my eyes to that my life could have ended right then.” That was, literally and figuratively, a turning point in Wilson's life. He started piling on more coursework to graduate early and enter the workforce. He learned how to work the phones to look for the best jobs and how to negotiate for higher salaries. And he started to look for “anomalous opportunities,” searching for “white spaces,” where there wasn’t much competition and where he could create his own brand and niche. He found it in the Family Office world, helping high net worth families find and make the right investments and connecting Family Offices to each other. He started a LinkedIn group, bought and quickly monetized a Family Office website, and spoke at 150 events over 14 countries. Today, Wilson is the author of four books and one of the global authorities on Family Offices and investment strategies for the ultra-wealthy. Transcript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Richard Wilson was driving home one night from college to his parent's home. Despite his usual pre-drive triple shot latte, Wilson hydroplaned in the rain straight into a cement barricade. That was, literally and figuratively, a turning point in his life. Today, Wilson helps ultra wealthy families create and manage their single family offices. Chitra Ragavan: Hello everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. I'm joined today by Richard Wilson, CEO and founder of the Family Office Club. Wilson also is the author of four books on family offices. Richard, welcome to the podcast. Richard Wilson: Thanks for having me here, Chitra. Chitra Ragavan: You were an undergraduate student when that accident happened that put you on this path to wealth building, but you always were a budding entrepreneur. How young were you and what was that path? Richard Wilson: Well, just when I was maybe five to seven years old, my parents would pay me a penny per pine cone, pick them up in the yard or they'd pay me a penny per page to read books. We had Christmas wreath sales in the Boy Scouts. We did lemonade stands. I would go along with my dad to his meetings because he had his own business and I'd sit in on his meetings with him. So it was pretty early on that I got exposed to entrepreneurism and I guess capitalism. So I kind of blame my parents for that. Chitra Ragavan: And you became more successful at it as you grew older. I mean you had a lot of failed schemes and scams, but you also had some successful ones. What were those? Both of those. Richard Wilson: Sure. So I had a yard service business and we had some neighborhood clients for that. I had a radio station, internet advertising business that kind of flopped. I also had a used textbook business when I was in college. I also had a long distance telephone service business where I'd call all the parents in the school directory, and try to sell them on changing their long distance phone provider to the company I was representing, as kind of a commissioned salesperson. So a number of different things. Some worked a little bit, some didn't work at all, but I learned a lot at every turn. Chitra Ragavan: And your used textbook business appears to have been really successful. As a mother of two kids who's given away quite a few textbooks. You probably picked up a bunch of those kinds of textbooks and made a lot of money out of it, didn't you? Richard Wilson: Yes. Yeah, I drove to regional book sales. Like I drove to Arizona and back over a weekend. One time, I'd get textbooks out of trash cans around the university if I walked by and saw one. I'd buy them from other students, at garage sales, at Goodwill, at estate sales. Anytime I can buy a textbook for $1 to $3 for $4, I could usually sell it for $8, $10, $25 sometimes. So it was a pretty good cash turnover business, and I built up an inventory of about 7,000 books over a few years doing that in college. Chitra Ragavan: So you were 18 or 19, and what were you making out of this business that you started? Richard Wilson: I was doing somewhere between $6,000 and 8,000 in revenue pretty consistently. And then costs were usually a third or a fourth of that revenue. So it was pretty good money for being in school. Chitra Ragavan: And is that $7,000 or $8,000, 10,000 a month? Richard Wilson: Yes, that's correct. Yeah, per month. Chitra Ragavan: That's pretty remarkable. Richard Wilson: Yeah, it was fun. I mean it really taught me about researching the buy before you actually commit to buy. You can research your inventory before you place that capital down. Look up how much it's selling for online, managing inventory, moving inventory. If it's not selling, then lower the price. Or whoever has other books posted online make sure ours just posted as the cheapest available so the website would push it through eBay or Amazon, and buy ours instead of somebody else's. So a bunch of things like that, just kind of business 101 type lessons that you learn better. At least in my case, doing things rather than having a professor teach you the theories about them. Richard Wilson: And what was funny is that I went to Oregon State University for my undergrad and they had a whole entrepreneurial program. They made a big deal about it, but I very specifically remember getting a letter from the Dean saying, "Richard Wilson, you have been caught trying to start a business in the computer lab within the Business School. And if you're caught doing that again, then you could be suspended from the Business School for trying to run a business on school property." And I was thinking to myself... And the professors would tease me about it. They're like, "Yeah Richard, don't use what we're teaching you. That would be horrible." Chitra Ragavan: That is such a statement on our educational system today. Richard Wilson: For sure. I mean, it's completely backwards, right? I should get extra credit. Like I should be able to skip a class, if I started a business, you'd think, you know. Chitra Ragavan: They probably could have learned a lot from you because you were doing it. Richard Wilson: Yeah. I mean I was still learning the very basics, but I think it should be encouraged, at least within the business school. I could see within other schools, maybe, it not wanting to be encouraged. But I think that some people who might be able to give the most money back to a school, as an alumni, would be the people who are starting businesses in the computer lab. So I never even return their phone calls when they ask for a donation because I learned more on my own, the hard way. And I got hassled when I actually tried to implement the advice I was being taught at school. Chitra Ragavan: So how old were you when you had that accident and what were your thoughts as you kind of walked away from that wreck? Your car was wrecked, but you were alive and unhurt. Richard Wilson: Yeah, the car just kind of crumpled in half and it was the middle of the night, pouring rain. I just kind of stumbled out of the car and several cars stopped because my headlights were facing oncoming traffic. And some people saw my car spinning. And I just kind of walked away from it, luckily. And it just kind of opened my eyes to that my life could have ended right then. And, I think that it made me look around and just realize I was just kind of bumping through college, and just kind of bored out of my mind. So it was kind of a turning point of going from taking the normal 13, 14 credits a term to getting permission from the school to do 21 credits, 23 credits a term, and just try to graduate a year early so I can get into the workforce and do something. Chitra Ragavan: And so, at the time, were you working? Or did you have a lot of money when this accident happened? Richard Wilson: No, I didn't have a lot of money. I was working for a technology company. It was like an internship helping them with a capital raise that they were doing, just research on investors, etcetera. But definitely didn't have a lot of money. And I think, I was in a small college town called Corvallis outside of Portland, Oregon. So, I think, I just wanted to get out of there because I just looked around and there was really nothing to do in the college town that was too productive. So I was just ready to move on. Chitra Ragavan: But once you actually started working, you started to make quite a bit of money compared to the average person who's got an entry level job. Richard Wilson: Yes. Yeah. There's two experiences that came from that. One is deciding that I wanted to get a job working with websites and website development and I didn't have any offers or inroads to that. So I called every company in the Yellow Pages. Only one called me back out of the 16 or 18 that I left voicemails for. And that one gave me a job. It was a pretty well paying job for being still in school, still finishing school. So that taught me a lot. And it taught me that if you're willing to put in that work,...

Jon Macks Dec 10, 2019

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Ep 23 — A political strategist loses his mojo and becomes one of the greatest comedy writers of our time / Jon Macks, Comedy Writer, Democratic Political Consultant, Author. Jon Macks thought he was in for a great ride to the top. Having quit law school for a career as a political strategist, Macks won two big state elections for his clients. But the euphoria quickly wore off and shock set in when Macks then lost 23 straight races in a row. “It's almost self-fulfilling. What happens is that when you are on a losing streak, no one good will hire you,” says Macks, “And so they don't have much money, they can't win the campaign, they don't have the skills, and so then you rack up another loss. So basically at that point you're in a position where you have to somehow convince one person to take a chance on you.” And that’s exactly what happened. Macks began his upward trajectory as a political strategist again, traveling tens of thousands of miles for many winning candidates. To keep himself occupied on those flights, Macks wrote free-lance jokes and sent them in to the rising star stand-up comic, Jay Leno, who was about to become Johnny Carson’s successor on The Tonight Show. One thing led to another and Leno offered Macks a full-time writer position on the show. It was the beginning of an amazing career in stand-up comedy. During his 22 years on The Tonight Show, Macks wrote an estimated 500,000 jokes, getting a record 18,000 on the air. He’s also written for top comedians including Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, and famous actors. And Macks has maintained a parallel career as a top strategist and writer for democratic political candidates and even some U.S. Presidents. In this fascinating interview, Macks talks about how he surmounted his early obstacles in politics and went on to become one of the most prolific and successful comedy writers in history. The author of five books, including his most recent, Monologue: What Makes America Laugh Before Bed, Macks dissects the anatomy of winning jokes and ruminates on what makes some work so well while others fall totally flat. Macks shares what it’s like to write for the current slew of democratic political candidates. And last but not least, he reveals some of his tradecraft on how he is able to write more than 100 jokes a day. The quintessential Jon Macks, on this episode of When It mattered. Tanscript Download the PDF Chitra Ragavan: Jon Macks became a comedy writer in a roundabout way. He had quit law to become a political strategist. He won two huge campaigns, but then his luck turned on a dime. Macks started writing jokes when he was on flights, one thing led to another, and he became one of Jay Leno's most successful writers on The Tonight Show for 22 years. Hello, everyone. I'm Chitra Ragavan and this is When It Mattered. This episode is brought to you by Goodstory, an advisory firm helping technology startups find their narrative. Chitra Ragavan: Joining me now is Jon Macks. He's considered one of the greatest comedy writers of all time by the likes of Billy Crystal, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, and Martin Short just to name a few. Macks has written for 22 Academy Awards. He's written material for high-profile clients including Helen Mirren, Michael Douglas, Hugh Jackman, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others. The author of five books, Macks also is a sought-after democratic political consultant and a speechwriter for political candidates, and even some US presidents. Jon, welcome to the podcast. Jon Macks: It's great to be here. Chitra Ragavan: When you told me earlier that you had won two races followed by losing 23 races, my first thought was, "Wow, people really trust this guy. They keep hiring him even when he's consistently losing campaigns." How did you convince people to keep hiring you? Jon Macks: Well, it was actually a little bit less of convincing people that I was really good and getting people who were really at the bottom of the barrel. It's almost self-fulfilling that what happens is that when you are on a losing streak, no one good will hire you and so they don't have much money, they can't win the campaign, they don't have the skills, and so then you rack up another loss. Jon Macks: So basically at that point you're in a position where you have to somehow convince one person to take a chance at you and generally, and at least for me that worked out the same way it worked for James Carville. We ended up working for a guy named Bob Casey. Bob Casey had run for governor three times and lost. So basically no one really wanted to work for him when he ran for a fourth time. No one would hire James Carville who had never won a race, and no one was really interested in hiring a guy who lost 23 straight, so we were a perfect combination. Chitra Ragavan: So you then ended up getting back on the horse and you started winning races? Jon Macks: Yeah. What happened was that after Governor Casey won, after Bob Casey at the time became Governor Casey in '86, what happened was I started to get interest from media consulting firms as opposed to just being a one-off of running a race and going next race, one of the top two Democratic firms, a firm called Doak and Shrum gave me a call and said they wanted to hire me to be an associate. So I moved to Washington DC where I ended up doing TV ads, speeches, debate prep and strategic advice for a number of races. You're a consultant, you're actually working a number of races, signing a bunch, hoping most of the win in the primary, if not all, then you have them for the general election. So I went from state to state to state doing ads, advice, debate, preps, speeches for different races. Chitra Ragavan: I just want to go back to when you were on your losing streak, what was that like to lose campaign after campaign in terms of your self-confidence and ego because those were high visibility losses, I'm sure. It's not something you can hide when you're losing a political campaign. Jon Macks: No. What you have to do is you still have to convince yourself to walk in the room like you're worth a million dollars when you're worth about 15 cents. Confidence to me is is something you project and that even in the worst of the races even when things were going bad, I would go in there and I would walk in and I'd say, "Listen, even though you have," I wouldn't say it, but even if a candidate had no money, little chance, I would say, "I know how to win this race. I've got the way to do it. Let me tell you and why you should trust me. It's because the one thing to get you ready to win a big race is having lost a race. And I learned from losing," is what I would tell them. So by the time I lost, I think, 23 straight, they must have thought I was the smartest consultant in political history. Chitra Ragavan: So how did you go from there to becoming a comedy writer and on Jay Leno's Show? Jon Macks: When I was growing up I'd always been fascinated by two things. One was the Tonight Show and two was politics. And when I was in law school, I realized that you could basically go into the world of politics, which was a 300-night a year profession or you could go into stand-up comedy which is also about 300 nights a year. So I ended up basically choosing politics. The truth is I don't think I'd have been a very good stand-up, but I ended up choosing politics. But I always had that bug to write comedy. And then one day I read in the Washington Post that was in the days when people actually read newspapers, I read in the post that Jay Leno was coming to a theater called Wolf Trap outside Washington DC. And I'm reading the article and it said that he book jokes from freelancers. Jon Macks: He had not yet been named to take over the Tonight Show. I ended up calling NBC, getting someone in Jay's office who sent me a freelancer agreement. Now, what I didn't know was there was 900 freelancers, and if I knew that I probably wouldn't have sent in any jokes. But I thought, "Oh, they must think I'm really special." And so I signed the agreement and sent in jokes and I started sending them in. Jay was guest-hosting one night a week and then later a whole week a month for Johnny Carson before they named him to take over. He started using jokes and then he called and said, "Hey, you want a job?" And I ended up thinking about it and there I was with three young kids and I was traveling. Jon Macks: I think that one year I think I had 270 flights. And I just made the decision we'll let me try the comedy thing. But what I did is I told my partners in politics, I'll be back in 13 weeks because it's a 13-week contract, and there's no guarantee that it would work. Well, I ended up staying with Jay for 22 years. Chitra Ragavan: So you weren't very good at predicting things. Jon Macks: I've been completely wrong my entire life. Let me just tell you that. The line I always use is I'd rather be an effector than a predictor. Chitra Ragavan: Do you remember the first joke you sent to Jay Leno? Jon Macks: Oh, yeah. It was really stupid. When I say stupid, there's two types of stupid jokes. Stupid as in stupid funny, that's really a good joke or stupid as in it's really not a very good joke. This was the latter. It was I think July of '91 and there was a solar eclipse, total eclipse somewhere and the joke went something like: There was a total solar eclipse today that throws all the animals way off. The chicken stop clucking, the cow stop mooing, the hookers come in on Times Square. I was watching that night and watching TV, watching Jay and all of a sudden I heard the joke. I go, "Wow, he did a joke just like mine." Then three days later that big check for $50 came which from where I'm sitting is still on the wall. Well, actually not the check. I actually wanted to frame the check until my wife told me,...

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