Work in Progress: Joy-Ann Reid

Journalist Joy-Ann Reid went from a "nerdy" kid who stayed past her bedtime to watch broadcast news to now fronting her own show! 

The MSNBC Host and New York Times Bestselling author joins Sophia to discuss finding her passion for journalism, why she majored in documentary filmmaking at Harvard, becoming cable TV's first black woman prime-time anchor, and what it's really like behind the scenes of a busy newsroom. 

Plus, Joy shares what it's been like meeting her civil rights heroes and talks about her new book, "Medgar and Myrlie: Medgar Evers and the Love Story That Awakened America." 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome
back to Work in Progress, my friends. This week we
are joined by one of my journalism heroes. Today's guest

(00:22):
is none other than Joy Anne Reid. She is an
incredible journalist and television host, a national correspondent for MSNBC,
and is best known for hosting her political commentary program
to Read Out. Since July of twenty twenty, The New
York Times has described Read as a heroine emerging from
the political movements and protests against former President Trump. She's

(00:44):
written three books that are absolutely astonishing, and her most recent,
Medgar Evers on The Love Story That Wakened America, came
out early this year. I can't wait to talk to
Joy today about her book, her incredible mind, the way
that she is looking at another election year, and how
she stays so inspired to make sure to lead us,

(01:05):
call us in and give us hope. Let's get to it, Hi, Joy,
how are you? I just need to like take thirty
seconds to fangirl you and then I'll be my professional self.

(01:28):
But I mean, I know, you know, because all I
do is comment on.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
All of your posts all of the time.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
But I have like the biggest journalism crush on you,
and I am so excited you're here today.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
I could just die.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Oh you're so sweet, thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you for having me.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
It really means a lot, and you've been such a saint.
And we were just saying, I was like, I don't
know if I need to send this woman flowers or
booths or both, but like between laryngitis and south By,
you have allowed us to reschedule, and you're just you
are a gem of a human.

Speaker 3 (01:56):
Oh, no problem, how is south By Southwest?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
It was great.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
It was you know, it's it's like everything feels like
Mayhem now with with travel and whatnot. But it was
also just very cool. I love being in rooms full
of inspiring women and just hearing what people are up to.
It was really special cool.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, I was a little I can go. We were
trying to figure out if we could get down there,
but it just it's too much going on, too going on.
Then you're just to stop having court cases and indictments
and stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, ninety one indictments must be a lot for.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
You all to eight Now they've taken some of them off.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
So oh wow.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, Okay, well you are. You are doing the Lord
and all that is Holy's work.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
So thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Thank you. I appreciate you. I appreciate Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
We appreciate you so Joy.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
I love to start with people because I do get
to sit across from people whose brains and courage I have,
you know, such intellectual crushes on. You have this incredible
career in your incredible journalist and author, and we all
know you as you know, Joy Anne Reid, who's taking us,
you know, into the halls of learning about America every

(03:10):
night on television. But I like to kind of rewind
to before you became you know, this incredibly well known,
wonderful woman, and see if from this vantage point you
sit at today, when you look back over your life
and you look at little nine or ten year old Joy,
do you see the same kind of kernels of loving,

(03:34):
truth and justice in her? Or was she interested in
completely different things as you know, a little girl in
the fifth grade.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
No, you know, it's funny that you say that, because
it was in the sixth grade that I really kind
of fell in love with news and information and with
knowing more about the world. I mean, I grew up
very nerdy kid with even the I had the coke
bottle glasses and everything legit, and so I was a
legit nerdy kid. But I really always did didn't have
like a hunger to learn. I always did love school.

(04:03):
I loved learning. I loved you know, I was a
weird kid that actually liked school and enjoyed it. And
I enjoyed, you know, learning from my teachers and from
my mom and just from we were a traveling family.
We would do road trips with like a road trip family.
So we've just raised as a family that was ever curious.
But in sixth grade, and I'm going to age myself now,
the Iran hostage crisis happened, and I can still remember

(04:27):
asking my mom if I could sit up and watch
this show on ABC at night where Ted Kopple, and
it was just called Countdown three sixty five or whatever
they called it, and it was just so fat. I
just became consumed by it, and my mom let me
sit up and watch it every night, and then they
renamed the show Nightline. And I had just fallen in
love with the idea of news and information. I mean,
I watched the Sunday shows. I would watch the nightly news,

(04:50):
and my mom would let me sit up and do
it because she's like, at least it's educational, and she
loved news too, so it was like a bonding thing
with me and my mom. So I always loved this,
but I just never I saw myself doing it for
a career.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
Yeah, that is so cool. I had a moment when
I was in elementary school where I pitched my mom
that I wanted her to pick me up fifteen minutes
early from school because school ended at three, but Oprah
Wimfrey started at three, and I was like, Mom, there
is nothing happening in the last period, so if you
get me at two forty five, yeah, I can be
home like butt in Sea by the time Oprah starts.

(05:24):
And I learned much more from watching Oprah. My mom
was like, young, lady, this is not a trial. You
do not get to make an argument here, Like, no,
I'm not taking you out of school early. So I
love that you convinced your parents, so let you stay
it past your bedtime to watch Nightline.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
That's amazing.

Speaker 3 (05:40):
Yeah. I loved Oprah too. Oprah was great. She was
like revolutionary because I had never really seen like, oh,
my lady doing all these things, and so there weren't
many black women, so she was like, I mean, she
really was inspiring to me. And I was transfixed by
that child watch her show and then Phil do he
was like right after, So I would watch that duo
that back to back Dueho. But other than when I
full and Oprah, you really didn't see women looked like

(06:00):
me doing anything that looked like news. So yeah, I'll
go Oprah.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Yeah incredible.

Speaker 1 (06:06):
So so the Iran hostage situation, you know, piqued your
interest obviously, did you Did you stay interested in politics
or was it really that every aspect of the news
became fascinating to you when you were younger?

Speaker 3 (06:22):
It was every aspect. But I really was intrigued by politics,
you know, American politics, and I and you know, I
was a Sunday show watcher and I was just intrigued
by kind of the drama of it. You know. I
kind of saw it as like its own version of
a soap opera, you know, because it was this sort
of constant clashing factions and like it was like a
Game of Thrones before Game of Thrones. So I really
got inted in politics, and by the time that I

(06:42):
got to high school. You know, I'm again aging myself.
Jesse Jackson had run the first time for president, and
so now you had this this guy running for president,
and we were just transfixed by my whole family, my
mom as well, and just all of the kind of
intrigue around him, around Gary Hart getting kicked doubt for Emuel,
Lady said on his lap, like I thought this was
like the highest drama ever. So I also had, you know,

(07:06):
an interest in politics and was intrigued by it. And
actually the second time Jesse Jackson ran was the first
time I ever got to vote, because you know, we
would go with my mom to the polls. Once she
got her citizenship. She was a voter man. She voted
in everything. She voted local, state, school board like she
was a voter. And when she would vote, we the
kids would go with her. So she really inculcated in us,

(07:27):
you know, a sense of civic responsibility. I loved civics class.
I thought it was interesting. So history, civics, politics, I
loved all of it.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
That's amazing.

Speaker 1 (07:35):
So did that real focus and to your point that
the lore of getting to you know, live in this
country and vote and make your voice heard. I think
I have because I helped my dad's study. He became
a citizen when I was thirteen, and I remember what
a big deal that was. Yeah, did all of that
propel you into wanting to study at Harvard? What was

(07:57):
that experience like for you?

Speaker 3 (08:00):
Well, you know, as I do that. You know, the
immigrants come to the country and they have pretty much
three jobs they think that anyone should do. Doctor, lawyer, lawyer, architect,
doctor school.

Speaker 2 (08:10):
Architect is on your list.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Okay, people was on the list. And so my mom,
you know, she was Caribbean, she came from Diana, and
you know that's what was in her mind. And so
we you know, we just were very mom pleasers, like
we were mama's kids. You know, my father who's from Congo.
We was pretty much in the Congo most of the time.
We didn't care what he thought. We heard what she thought.
And I made the mistake when I was about twelve
of saying I would be the doctor. My sister said
she'd be the lawyer, and my brother said he'd be

(08:32):
the architect. So that was kind of what was folk
that our minds were focused on. And I applied to
Harvard and the other schools I applied to PREMET, so
I got into all the schools I got into as
a pre met. But unfortunately, you know, my mom, who
was like literally sort of my biggest cheerleader, she died.
She actually passed away, like about twenty two days before
I started school. So some family friends, you know, took

(08:54):
me to school and I got there and I was
completely discombobulated. You know, for the first time, I failed class.
I had never gotten anything lower than the only thing
I ever did poorly. And I got to see in typing,
you know, we used to stick typing in high school.
I got to see and my mother was outraged. She's like,
you're gonna ruin my daughter's DPA. She was grown one crazy.
But so I had never gotten bad grades. I was,
you know, I'm so depressed that I just I couldn't focus.

(09:17):
I mean, I couldn't walk into a hospital without hyperventilating.
And so I realized that this this being a doctor
thing was not going to work out for me because
I just I didn't have any interest in it anymore.
I didn't have any passion for it, and it just
didn't work out. So I actually took a year off
to try to get myself together, went back lived with
my auntie Dolly in back to Brooklyn, where we originally
came from, and you know, had to figure out what

(09:38):
I was going to do. And when I went back,
I went back kind of different. I went back with
a mission of not trying to pick up where I
left off with pre men and to do something that
maybe I would be passionate about, you know. And so
I wound up actually majoring in what they call Visual
and Environmental Studies, which is a fancy way of saying
a documentary film major. They didn't I have like journalism,

(10:01):
you know, Harvard doesn't have pragmatic degrees, so that was
the closest thing to like a storytelling degree. And I
love to write. I used to always write short stories
as a kid. I used to entertain my sister and
brother by like telling them stories. I was like a
story person, and so I thought this was a cool
kind of major where I could major in something that
was about storytelling and about narrative. And I loved movies,

(10:23):
so that was one of my other passions. So that's
what I went back and did. And that's my weird,
odd way of doing something similar to journalism but not
exactly journalism.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
That's so inspiring.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
It's funny because I went, I went to school to
get a BFA in theater and went, wait a second,
this feels like too narrow a focus for me, right,
And I transferred into the journalism school at USC because
to me it sounds sort of like a kinship and
that feeling you had about documentary. It was a way
for me to shape real stories and understand how to

(10:56):
apply narrative that would engage an audience to people's actual lives,
which is my job as an actor. But I also
realized my job, my self appointed job, as an advocate
and an activist. And yeah, I just think journalism is
the most magic thing in the world.

Speaker 3 (11:14):
I do too. And you know, it's funny because when
I transferred into you know, i'd lived with my aunt
for a while, but you know, I grew up Methodist
and she was an evangelical Christians. That's like four nights
a week church, and that's a lot of church, a lot.
So I moved out and I ended up actually moving
where Spike Lee lived. I moved to Fort Green, which
at the time was like very bohemian black. It was
like black Bohemia and so I went back thinking I

(11:35):
would major in not documentary but like narrative film, and
so I was saying about it. Found out Harvard was
a little bit poopooing that they just only let you
do documentary, which I kind of resisted at first. But
the major was fascinating because vies, as they call it,
it gave you everything from history of architecture to history
of photography to actual practical photography, practical filmmaking and editing.

(12:00):
And it actually, you know, while I resisted the idea
that they were trying to lock us into documentary, actually
wound up falling in love with the idea of documentary
film because we were learning. To your point, it was
sort of a bigger, more unstructured way of learning about
narrative and story. But it was everything from learning about
Oscar Michau, you know, the black filmmaker from like the
nineteen twenties or thirties, to learning about you know, Iranian

(12:24):
film and sort of you know, sort of narrative sort
of about liberation in the Middle East. And it was
so broad that it actually was a great education. That
was sort of my accidental sort of entry entree into
what would later become my journalistic career.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:41):
Well, and then you fast forward and here you are,
you become Cable's first black female primetime anchor. And I
bet all of that knowledge you bring with you into
that newsroom every single day.

Speaker 3 (12:55):
I think so. And you know, we're in this moment
now where like the Middle East is like a thing.
I had this weird advantage. I've never been there, I've
never landed in the region, but I was so fascinated
by that region. That's what brought me into the whole
love of news in the first place was the Iran
hostage prices, which meant I was going in the encyclopedia
sign I wanted to know everything about Iran, and then

(13:16):
I wanted to know everything about Iraq. I wanted to
know everything about the entire region. And so it's like
I was fascinated by everything about that region's history. It's conflicts,
it's stories, it's various religions, the sort of contexts of
Christianity versus Islam versus Judaism. Like, I'm into all of
that stuff. And I was lucky enough to have teachers

(13:39):
at mont Bello Junior Senior High School who were like
interesting people. You know, we had this teacher. We did
like applied religion, and we were actually learning about like
Hamarabi's code and all of this other stuff that you
didn't normally get in school. I had teachers that, like,
they actually stretched themselves to teach us, you know, in
my little town and for interesting, outre things, and so

(14:02):
I kind of went into By the time I was
a journalist, I kind of knew a little about a lot,
you know, and then it gave you this open door
to learn a lot about a lot. So that's what
I do love about my job is that whatever my
curiosity is, I can take what I know that's a
little and I can expand and expand and expand it
and then find a way through narrative to share it

(14:23):
with my audience.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's so beautiful. We'll be back in just a minute.
But here's a word from our sponsors. I can't help
but think you know in the way that you were
watching Walter Cronkite, and that you know we were all
watching Oprah. Like now there's a lot of little girls
who a generation ago wouldn't have seen themselves represented on TV,

(14:47):
who get to watch you every night and who and
who get to watch you as you say, showcase your expertise,
your curiosity, you know, your ability to make sure you
are doing right now by people in regions where they
are subjected to as we're witnessing now, immense harm and

(15:07):
you know, immense geopolitical forces are warring with each other,
and you can you can sit in that anchor's chair
and tell one person's story, you know, one one girl
in the region, One one journalist you know who's out
there fighting to tell the truth from the front lines.
I mean, that's got to be a really incredible feeling

(15:31):
when you get to slow down in the newsroom enough
to have it.

Speaker 3 (15:36):
Yeah, it's heavy, though, you know. I mean people will
come up to me and sort of say kind of
that or like they'll treat that. And I did that
with Whenifel. You know, I actually met Gwhenifel in twenty fifteen.
I sort of humiliated myself, Like I saw her across
the street in Selma. It was like, you know, the
annual Selma of commemoration and I saw her and I'm like,
oh my god, I idolized this woman. So I like
ran across the street, not looking to see if there

(15:57):
were cars coming. So it was probably not wise. The way,
I just threw myself like a muppet and flung myself
at her. I said, Oh my god, quite ee feel
you know, you were everything to be. I'm such a
I'm such an admirer of views. Bl blah blah. She
was so sweet. She gave me a huge hug, and
she's like I And now when people come up to me,
I kind of see what she must have felt, because
it's odd to have a stranger come up to you

(16:18):
and say that. But it also really makes you feel
number one, a huge responsibility because you realize that you're
not just like giving the news for some people. You're
actually giving the news from a perspective that's them. They
hear them, and you're asking the questions they would ask
whether the person is you know, identifies with you racially
or in terms of gender, or in terms of region
where you're from. I'm from the West. Most of the

(16:39):
people who do this are from New York and DC.
You know, I'm from a part of the country people
don't really talk about, you know, out West, we're kind
of left out, or the Midwest if you're you know,
and whatever it is about me, whether it's I'm the
child of immigrants, you know, I've got some African background
and some Caribbean background, all of those things that I'm
bringing to the table. There's somebody out there that is

(17:01):
identifying with that. Yeah, So if like someone comes up
to me, it's very heavy. It makes me feel like
a huge responsibility. It's a bit intimidating in a way.
It makes me feel more responsible to do well. But
it also makes you feel really good because you're like,
you know what I'm representing somebody, like somebody feels seen
because of me, and it makes you feel really good.

Speaker 2 (17:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
I mean, listen, I can tell you as a woman
I obviously am, I'm an obsessive watcher of your show.
And there are days because I spend all day reading
the news like I can't help myself.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
And there are days where.

Speaker 1 (17:37):
I watch you do a piece and you will just
tell the truth and you will beat back the ridiculousness
of the quote unquote alternative facts coming from like the
right wing, and you just lay things bare and you
tell it like it is and you make sure people
are getting the facts and the information, not ideas truth,
and it is so.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Relieving to me. And then there's moments where I'm like
I just.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Really hope when this segment wrap, somebody gives her a hug,
like I want to make sure your people are holding you,
because this has to be stressful and it has to
be hard, But my god, it is so meaningful that
not only do you do it, but that you do
it the way you do it well.

Speaker 3 (18:18):
I appreciate that. Thank you, And I definitely look, we
have believe it or not as crazy as the new
cycle in it as miserable. Our little crew on the
set we are having the most fun. Like we are
giggling and laughing through all the break I almost wish
we could put the brakes on TV so that we
are giving each other the hugs like we are literally
a fun, happy crew. That like because we realize, like

(18:40):
you can you can either let this stuff take you
down or you can try to laugh and love your
way through it. And look, I mean, the thing is
I mean, even with with with the book that I wrote,
I'm like, it's a love thing. I feel like we
still are surviving. This society's sort of this sort of
come apart in a way, right, But what's keeping it

(19:02):
together is that there are enough of us who actually
love the country enough to try to hold it together,
and so it will hol see it together by thinner
and thinner strands. But there are I still believe enough
of us who have enough love for the place and
who have enough belief that it can be what it
says it is and what it you know, the idea
is so good that even if those who tried to

(19:23):
execute it were rotten, you know, and some of them
are really you know, and some of the people who've
attempted at it were bad people, but that doesn't mean
the idea is bad. That you could be a terrible
person with a great idea. And so the idea is
so good that it brought my mother here, it brought
my father here, it brought your dad here, it brought
your family here. So there's something compelling about this idea.

(19:44):
And I think if we hold on to that, it's
less depressing, right because we realize that we're actually fighting
for something good and that no one's ever done before.
The multiracial democracy is super hard. Like almost everybody in
Japan is Japanese, almost everyone in China is Chinese, almost
everyone in Britain. I think Britain has like what six percent, No,
it's like a tiny percentage of people in Britain are

(20:07):
not white British Europeans, and so we have this huge
task ahead of us to create this multi racial democracy
that is very hard to do. So it's not like
we're failing because we're failing at something easy, right, we're
slowly succeeding and then failing a little bit, and then
slowly succeeding and failing a little bit at something hard.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Yes, that's beautiful though, And I want to talk about
your book because it felt like such a breath of
fresh air for me as a person because of the
love story, and it was so inspiring because it is
a history lesson, but it's told through this personal narrative.
It very similarly for me to the way that Ava

(20:51):
Duverne adopted isabel Wilkerson's cast. You know, Origin as a
film is Isabelle's story, her love story of about her,
her husband, her family inside of her academic project. And
you have given us the story of Medgar and Merley
as surrounded by their love. And what it makes me

(21:16):
see as your storytelling about your daily work is that
in a way, that's what your newsroom is like. It's
a family, and inside of it you're doing the news.
But it's the family that fortifies you to be able
to do the work, so can can I was going
to ask you how you cover the news and manage
to relax among the heavy, but I'm like, oh, now
I know how, so I don't need to ask you

(21:36):
that question.

Speaker 3 (21:37):
Come hang out with us. We're so much fun.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
I mean, oh my god, I can't wait. I'll come
be your intern anytime.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
So no, come on, just come on, you can come on.
You can come on be a co host. Okay, Look,
if invitation sent and accepted, I think that would be fun.
I mean, like, the reality is is, like, you know,
the thing that that happens when you actually meet civil
rights leaders and civil rights heroes, is that one of
the things is you go, oh my god, I just
med a civil rights like heroes, right, But then you

(22:04):
also go, oh my god, this is a regular person.
You know, you're a human, They're a human. And I
will never forget I the first time I ever met
in person Revenul Sharpton, for instance. So when I'm you know,
when my mom passed, I move, we moved back to Brooklyn, right,
so I'm back living with my with my auntie. And
then even when I moved out. So we're in this
era where you know, Rev. Sharpton is very much involved

(22:24):
in politics. He's very much involved in all the civic
upheaval in New York. And then at one point, like
he runs for office, like I think this is the first
time he ran for mayor. And so I'm in Brooklyn
and I go to this place called the Brooklyn Tennis
Club and I'm walking in. I'm late, I'm running to
get into this event. Reverend Sharpton is coming out and
we bumped into each other. And this is when he
wasn't skinny and slim like he is now. He was

(22:45):
like a big dude, and he bumped me. And I
was so embarrassed that I bumped into Reverend Sharpton, and
he said, oh, I'm so sorry, young Lanne. I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry, young lady. And I was like, great, the
one time I'm ever gonna meet now Sharton, who I
like lionize, is because I'm a lesson. I ran into
him like like a duke, you know. So I never
would have imagined I'd ever actually then meet him again.
And the next time I met him, I was working here.

(23:06):
I was working for at the time Deegreo dot com
in the NBC building and it's like, now he's like
my friend, Like he's I call my big brother because
he's like a big brother to me. And it's like
it's so surreal. But what it's taught me is that
Reverend NOWL. Sharpton this like hero to me as a
young like a teenager in New York, as the person
fighting for us is just a regular person. And so

(23:28):
he has regular person things. He got kids, you know,
and they're interested people. You know, he has normal stuff.
He goes at the dinner like and so with even
with the Mega and Merley piece. When I met Marley Evers,
I realized this is an icon. She's a person. She
had a love, she fell in love. She had a
you know, a boyfriend. She didn't want to tell her
auntie and her grandma about because he was too old

(23:50):
for her. She he didn't want to like her, He
didn't want to say he liked her. So she had
this whole anxiety that does he really like me? Does
he not like me? They got married. She moved like
a dusty part of Mississippi. She didn't want to live there.
She was annoyed because he was never home. They had
fights about regular person stuff, the budget, did they have
enough money? Is she making dinner? All the regular things,

(24:13):
And that, to me was the most fascinating aspect of
telling a story like this, because civil rights was just
regular people doing this heroic thing, but they were still people.

Speaker 1 (24:25):
So can you talk to us a little bit about
what your goal was with writing this book in this
way and tell the listeners at home a little bit
about them, you know, both as these civil rights leaders
and as a couple for the folks who don't have
the expert view into them that you do, because they're

(24:47):
going to go out and get your book and then
they will, oh, I love that.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Well. I mean I partly wrote the book because of that, because,
like MegaR Evers is the name of the airport when
you land in Jackson, Mississippi. But a lot of people
do not know who that it is, right, It's like
there are a lot of airports where who knows what?
You know? I didn't know Stapleton Airport was named after.
You know, I think Stapleton was the governor of Colorado
at some point. I think he was a plansman. They

(25:11):
changed the name eventually. It's not called Stapleton anymore, but
you don't know. I went to a school called McGlone Elementary.
Growing up, I had no idea who McGlone was. I'm
sorry for Ford. I went to McGlone Elementary, but before that,
I went to Ford Elementary. Barney Ford. Barney Ford was
like a civil rights hero in Denver, Colorado, who desegregated
Denver schools. I didn't know, but I went to that
school and we just knew it was called Barney four.

(25:33):
We didn't knowho that was. I don't still don't know
who Maglone is. You know, that was my other school.
So we oftentimes live in places where we don't know
the person behind the thing, and MegaR was one of
those names people have kind of heard. You know, there's
a there's a there's a famous folk song called Medgar
Evers laid Down. You know his life. There's there's like
songs about him, but people don't know it is. And

(25:54):
once I knew Merley More, it kind of bothered me
that people didn't know he is, because this guy is
the person James Baldwin said is one of the three
great civil rights leaders in history, Malcolm X, doctor Martin
Luther King, Junior and MegaR Evers. That's what James Baldwin said.
So I wrote the book number one so that people
would know who MegaR Evers was and his sacrifices literally

(26:15):
for our right to vote. I wrote in number two
because I love Marley Evers Williams, and I think she's
an awesome person, and I think people should know who
she is and what she did, and that she's still
here and still part of the overall mission of making
America better. And I wrote it for the third reason
because I actually just wanted to write something that I
would enjoy. I wanted to not write a history book.

(26:36):
I wanted to write a love story, and I had
never read a civil rights love story, so I said,
I'll just write one.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
We'll be back in just a minute after a few
words from our favorite sponsors. The thing I can't quite
get over, and then I want the listeners at home
to really think about, is that you, in writing the
book this way, you have reminded us of who these
people were. And what I mean by that is that

(27:06):
sometimes it just takes a person who looks at something
wrong and says, well, if if they're not going to
change it, then maybe I have to change it. When
you think about the fact, these these men and their partners,
you know, doctor King and Kreta, MegaR and Murley, these
people who decided to pressurize America to actually begin to

(27:30):
reach her ideals, to actually begin to be the nation
where all people were treated equally, because my God, were
far from it and were still certainly not there. That
they weren't just people with historical fact behind them, and
they weren't just folks who became experts on the constitution,

(27:53):
and they weren't just you know, leaders. They were young
people who were they were young, They were students who
met on campuses and fell in love, and they were afraid.

Speaker 2 (28:07):
This was terrifying.

Speaker 1 (28:09):
It is terrifying to organize sit ins and bus boycotts
and protests for justice where you know, as you mentioned
the anniversary of Selma, we can look back at those photographs.
Every year we see people being beaten and assaulted and
you know, having police dogs sicked on them, I mean,

(28:29):
unspeakable violence simply for saying I deserve to be treated
better than this, and to remind us of our humanity.
I think inside of as you say, these people who've
been lionized sometimes we think of them as being larger
than life, and it's so special to remember that they

(28:51):
were trying to figure out how to pursue justice in
our country while also trying to figure out, like who's
getting the groceries on Friday, if we're going to be
home for the weekend, that's right, and that's that's such
a it's such a detail that I think sometimes in
our history books we miss.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Absolutely you know, one of the most profound interviews that
we did because you know, my husband and I my
husband's the documentary filmmakerr and so we actually went down
to Jackson. We spent a good panet it. We actually
ran in an airbnb that was across the street from
the house where the person who used to run the
White Citizens Council used to live. And so when people

(29:29):
were coming for the interviews, they would all say, do
you know what's across the street because it's now like
an inn where you can do weddings and stuff, and
it's like, oh wow. People would all whisper, they would
almost whisper, like they like they want to be you
know where you are across the street. We we're like, yeah,
we know. It's like it's really we're in the mix, right,
So we ranted this airbnb and we asked people to
come and sit for the interviews because we knew, you know,

(29:50):
the median age of who we were interviewing were all
like eighty. You know, we were interviewing a lot of
older people, and so we if we could, we went
to them. But a lot of people wanted to come
to and we also wanted to be kind of quiet.
We didn't want to be in a hotel or bring
in a whole MSNBC vibe. We just went down very
low key. So we're in this airbnb and a lot
of people came by, and again they're in their seventies, sixties, seventies, eighties,

(30:13):
but some of the youngest people were children at the time.
And one of the animals that really stayed with me
were the Sweets. So the Sweets are a brother and
sister who lived down the street from MegaR and Merley Evers,
and they played with the Evers kids. They were their besties,
and they the young the man who was a boy
at the time, he said to me, what a lot

(30:35):
of people don't think about is that when you assassinate
a man in his driveway in front of his house.
You've essentially assassinated the childhoods of every kid on that block.
Because MegaR was the fun dad who used to throw
the football with the boys. You took that away. MegaR
was the dad who would put all the kids in
his oldmobile Rocket eighty eight, which had a drop you

(30:57):
could drop the top, and he would go out then
drive them to the drive in movie so they could
all watch Psycho, which Murley got really mad that they
lived to go see Psycho. They really wanted to see it.
So MegaR was the fund dead. It was like, come on,
I'll take you all to go see Psycho. He's the
guy who, you know, the other dads went fishing with
right the sweet's father used to fish with him. Across

(31:20):
the street neighbor was one of his best friends. The
next door neighbor was his friend and a fellow NAACP guy.
You literally killed all of their childhoods. And so it's like,
these are real people who lived on a block, who
had friends, who had girls' nights. They used to have
a garden club that Murley was a member of. They
all would get together in garden. They were trying their

(31:44):
best as black people in Mississippi in the nineteen fifties
and sixties to have a normal life. They just wanted
to do normal stuff. They just wanted to go and
shop in the store and try on the clothes to
make sure they fit. They couldn't. They just wanted to
take their kids to the library. They couldn't. They just
wanted their kids to go to the zoo like all
the white kids. They couldn't. And there came a point

(32:06):
when Black Americans said, enough, we're paying taxes too. We
just want our kids to go to a decent school
that's not a shack, that's got modern textbooks. They can
ride in a school bus like those other kids and
not have to walk three miles. Why are we doing this,
especially after World War Two? Because these men, one hundred
thousand or more black men volunteered to go find a

(32:29):
World War two, and when they came home, they said,
absolutely not. We're not going to go back to second
class citizenship. We also fought in this war and we're
going to insist on our rights. And MegaR Evers was
one of those men. He's a twenty five year old.
He comes back and he's got a twenty five year
old attitude and He's like, I am not sitting in
the back of this bus, not another day.

Speaker 1 (32:54):
It's profound, and I think to talk about the timing
of it, you know, when you really think about the fact,
as you said, that a lot of these people are
still alive. Really, you know, you you sat down to
interview her several times. You know, when we think about her,
when we think about the famous photos of Ruby Bridgers,

(33:16):
you know, being escorted into school by state troopers when
they were integrating her school. She is still alive. She
is in her sixties. Yeah, Like for you know, the
people who watch this podcast who grew up with me
on One Tree Hill, Like, y'all, I'm forty one. If
she's in her sixties, like, we're not even talking a
generation above me.

Speaker 2 (33:34):
She's younger than my parents, right.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
You know, So this this weird thing that we're seeing
this especially on you know, you talk about it a
lot that we see on the right, this backlash. You know,
we can't possibly tell the truth, We can't let kids
know about these things. We're going to change what you
learn in school. It's not just our history, it's still
our present. Yeah, and you know, I think it's incredibly

(34:00):
important for us for anybody who feels fired up from
this conversation, examine the ways in your own life, however
you identify or would be identified, Examine the ways in
which you have experienced oppression. Like Joy, I don't go
through what you go through as a black woman, but
I know what it is to be judged and oppressed

(34:21):
because of my gender, and all it makes me think
of is I go through enough bullshit every day. I'm
enraged all the time, and if it's worse for you,
it's my job to then say, well, what is my
responsibility to help change? Because I'm tired. I can't imagine
how tired you are. And I think we have to

(34:42):
start looking at each other in those ways to say
I know how hard it is, and if someone has
it worse than me, it's my job to make sure
I don't make it worse. And for the people who
have it easier than us, well then it's their job
to help us too. And I I really hope that
this sort of aha moment that is sobering and then

(35:05):
inspiring to action is to be reminded that all these
people are still alive, and if they did this much fighting,
and if they did this much standing, up for us
like our generation certainly has to keep our foot on
the gas.

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Absolutely. And you know, when I would do like speeches
back years ago, when I would give speeches in colleges,
I would remind young people that, you know you talk
about Medgar, Malcolm, and Martin, none of them were ever forty.
Kobe Bryant died at forty one, so each of those
men were at least two years younger. In the case

(35:39):
of MegaR, he was thirty seven when he died, Malcolm
X was thirty nine, and doctor King was thirty nine.
They never were forty, so think about how young that is.
So that means their wives, who were all younger than them,
would have been right. And so the only one alive
of the three widows is of course Merly. But she,
to your point, she's younger than my mom would have been.

(36:01):
Had my mom lived, my mom would have been older
than Miss Murley. So these are people who are contemporaries.
You think about John Lewis, the Great John Lewis. When
Emmett Till was killed, he and John Lewis were the
same age. So Emmett Till had lived, he would have
been the age of John Lewis. So we're talking about
a we're talking about contemporary history. And to your point

(36:23):
about the empathy across these lines, one of the stories
that I tell in the book that really infuriated me
and drove me nuts is that after MegaR Evers died,
Merley had to then figure out her whole life because
remember she was his secretary for a while. She actually
worked for him, so she was a literal part of
his advocacy when he's working at the insurance company, and

(36:43):
at first when he was with the NAACP, she was
his secretary. Once she had her third child, she decided
to stop working and be a stay at home mom.
But that was not usual for black women. Most black
women have always had to work. This whole fifties housewive
sort of iconography, it never applied to black women. But
she was a rare black housewife. So she actually was

(37:04):
the mom who took all the other kids to school
on the block. She would pick up all the other
kids and pick them up from school because most of
the other women were teachers. But when her husband died,
Merley then had to She then ultimately decided to leave
Mississippi and moved to California. When she went to the
bank to try to open a bank account. They wouldn't
open it for her. Why because women in this country,

(37:28):
whether they were white, Black, Asian, American, Latino, doesn't matter
as long as you were a woman. Even white women
could not open a bank account without a man's signature.
Until nineteen seventy four, women in this country got the
right to abortion, a year before we got the right
to open up bank account, meaning that Barbara Walters, the

(37:50):
Great Barbara Walters, icon of Mine and icon, the late
Great Barbara Walters, when she was doing her landmark interviews
in the nineteen sixties, she couldn't open up bank account.
That's how women are all connected, and we as women
are all on the same side of one issue. That
there are a certain amount of men who don't want

(38:11):
us to be individuals with any rights at all, no
rights at all. And we're pushing back not just on
the rights of black folks to have our history told,
to have access to elite universities, et cetera. Women are
being told, regardless of our race, that we don't belong
in the workplace, that we don't belong because affirmative action

(38:33):
benefits white women more than a benefits black people. So
we're being told no more access, no more individual rights,
and soon no more birth control, no more control over
your reproduction. That's where we're headed, and it's not a
good place for any of us.

Speaker 1 (38:47):
It's very scary, And to your point, it's not accidental.
Women have more economic power than ever in history, that's right,
And women who look like me and who vote on
the right are more supportive than abortion and reproductive freedom
than ever. So they're going, oh, we're losing all the women,
and they are pushing back on us in every avenue
that they can. But what is upsetting to me is knowing,

(39:11):
to your point, when they do away with affirmative action, yes,
it benefits more women who look like me than don't,
but it will always hurt women that are black, Latina, Asian, American,
et cetera, et cetera even more. And so when we
think about the way that we have to activate for
each other, the way that we should remember that we

(39:31):
are fifty one percent of the population and vote like it,
I really do believe it is reminders. It's women like you,
it's women like Merly, it's so many of the women
in my life, across generational lines, who I look at
and go, You've all told us what's at stake. You've
done the work. I mean, you enjoy You've written this

(39:52):
beautiful book for us to really personalize this great, multuous
time in our history. And these are the kinds of
lessons I think that can remind us of our power.
You know, to your point, Merley had to reinvent a
life when her husband was assassinated, and the fact that

(40:15):
she is still alive and able to tell these stories
is I mean, what an inspiring woman can you? Can
you like, give us a little bit of a behind
the scenes kind of look in to what it felt
like to sit with her? You know, what kind of
a woman is she?

Speaker 2 (40:32):
What is her?

Speaker 1 (40:33):
Because I've read the book, but I'm like, what does her.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Voice sound like?

Speaker 3 (40:37):
Like?

Speaker 2 (40:37):
What was it like to sit and just kiki with her?
I want to know everything.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Listen at first about her voice. Her voice is so rich,
like of this so to speaks like this, and I
wish I spoke like that, like if I so regal. Listen,
she sounds like the queen of the world. She's fabulous
And the first half a dozen interviews were by phone
with with with great help from her Her daughter, Rina,
the middle child, and she, you know, she put us

(41:02):
on the phone with her because her mom is a senior,
you know, she's a seasoned citizen. You can't just call
her on the sale. You got her like calls. And
then we got a chance to fly out to California,
uh to Claremont, where she lives, and go and actually
she came down to where her son lives, so she
was she came to her son's house and her son
goes and sees her like every day, three days a

(41:23):
week or whatever, because he's on the West Coast with her.
So she came to his house and we did this
epic interview with her there. So I went, my husband went,
because again we're like, we're gonna film this interview for posterity,
because we just want to have it for the you know,
for the future. Who knows what will happen to it,
but maybe you know, the Ford Foundation. A while, we're like,
we need to film this because it's she's so epic.

(41:44):
We get there and her niece, who is the only
person who does her makeup, did her makeup for her,
because she's always gonna even though we're like, we're not
filming a documentary. We're just literally just filming. We just
but she was fully made up, darling. She looked fabulous.
She's a Delta like myself, Delta sigma theta. So she
had heautiful red. She had a fabulous red lip. And
when I tell you, and my sister came with us,

(42:05):
because my sister lives in La she's an actress. June,
Carol shout out to June, and so she came with us,
and we literally stayed all day. They almost had to
evict us from that house. We had so much fun
with Van, his wife, his kids, Miss Merley, and we
had the most glorious day with her. She is funny,

(42:25):
she is feisty, she is silly, she is goofy. She
is in love with Medger Wiley everst to this day.
We'll tell you that fifty five times, if you ask
her fifty six questions. She is as intense about that
love as she was the first time I spoke with her,
as it was the fifth time I spoke with her.

(42:47):
And she also is very centered in her mission. She
still has this mission, carrying on his mission of changing
this country for the better. She still engages with young people,
writes op Eds she's still engaged with Pomona College, which
is where she graduated finally from college. You'll note in
the books she drops out of school to marry her man,

(43:08):
but she finishes her education at Pomona. She's their most
famous alum and most beloved alump. And she's still doing
the work. And the thing I think that's the most
important Sothia is she's still hopeful, she's still positive. She
never let the negativity and the genuine anger because you know,
as women, we're not supposed to access our age, right,
We're never supposed to be anger. And you know, my

(43:31):
favorite chapter in the book is how to be a
Civil Rights Widow, because I talk about that this sort
of you've just lost the love of your life. You're
now a widow and a mother of three. But you're
not supposed to protrude. You're not supposed to exude any anger.
You're supposed to be demure and still be feminine and
still and look perfect. And that was what she had
to do. And she's the first civil rights widow on
a national level. So Dan rather is in her face

(43:53):
as soon as she walks out of her house in tears,
and so but despite all of those pressures and having
to tell her husband's story for six decades and not
allow him to be misunderstood. She's still hopeful, she still
loves this country, she still believed this country can be better,
and she's still working for it.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
And now for our sponsors, I mean, six decades of
carrying that torch, keeping that fire alive. We also are having,
it seems as of late, these very real conversations about
why so often the wives who are really the partners

(44:32):
of these civil rights leaders get left out of the stories.
You know, you hear Bernice King talk so much about
Karta Scott King, about the fact that she was the
first person that doctor King would go to, would bounce
ideas off of, would write with, would would dream and
ide eight for a better America with. And we know
as you talk about the activism of Merley, that they

(44:55):
must have had such a similar dynamic, They had such
a similar dynas. Why do you think the women have
been left out of these stories when they've had such
an impact on the civil rights movement? And why do
you think it's now that they're being acknowledged in the
way that perhaps well that they don't perhaps acknowledged, I

(45:16):
should say that now they are perhaps being acknowledged in
the way they always should have.

Speaker 3 (45:21):
I think, unfortunately, it's misogyny. You know, it's this story.
It's a train that's never late. Even during the movement.
You know, there's a story about the Big six at
the March on Washington, including no women. And in fact,
Murley was the only woman even invited to make a
presentation on the big stage because she was Meger's widow.

(45:42):
They actually invited and Is Murley to present, but they
didn't invite any other women. And this is something that
Kretascott King writes about in her memoir, and she was
arranged about it because in her mind, the women were
doing so much of the work, you know, not only
the women who were helping to you know, sort of
create you know, snick was in partly it was mentored
and created by women. You know, women were working so

(46:05):
hard behind the scenes and the movement. If they weren't
a frontline activist, they were the people typing up all
the memos, They were the people typing up all the flyers,
They were the people distributing out the flyers. Many of
the activists, many of the people getting fire hosed, were women,
and the women got pushed to the back, even within
the movement, but also in the narrative, because again, much

(46:27):
of this was taking place in the nineteen fifties and
early nineteen sixties, when the idea of women's leadership just
wasn't a thing in America. People didn't acknowledge the presence
of women, and it was just something that women weren't.
By the way, all the reporters were men, All the
reports were white men. There were no women reporters. You know,
Barbara Walks comes along much later in the late nineteen
sixties early seventies. So everyone confronting you for the story

(46:49):
is a man. All the cameramen are men, all the
editors are men, All the executives and the media companies
are men. And so white men are making the narrative,
and they make the narrative around other men, and so
they just don't see the women. They become invisible. But
what happens is that when these three men die, Malcolm
Medgar Martin, the only people left to tell the full

(47:11):
story are the women that they were married to. Because
the closest person to them, to your point, their chief advisor,
the sounding board for their speeches, the person they rehearsed
the speeches with. The people who type the speech were
their wives, and so the person who knew them best
were their wives. And so the one who is the
most epic at having created a whole camelot because actually

(47:32):
that also fell to Jackie Onassis when Kennedy died, When
President Kennedy died, she did the same thing. But the
first creator of a camelot was really, in many minds, Coretta.
Coretta Scott King dove into this task of creating the
legacy of doctor King. But the person who did that
first was Merley. She began to write the Legacy of Medger,

(47:57):
but unfortunately it got sort of run over by everything
from the March on Washington to the assassination of JFK.
But she did it first, and she did it brilliantly well.

Speaker 1 (48:06):
And it's it's such a full circle moment, even in
our conversation, because at the core of.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
That is the love.

Speaker 1 (48:14):
You love someone enough to keep their light alive. And
that's what your whole book is framed in, is that
it is a love story. And I even think of activism,
I think of leaders of movements. You have to love
your country enough to demand that it.

Speaker 2 (48:34):
Love everyone back.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
Yes, you have to love a country enough to be
willing to lay down your life for its highest ideals.
And you know it is. It is a tragedy and
a robbery to have lost these men and there, and
the love that their wives had for them kept their
legacies alive and continues to to this day.

Speaker 2 (48:55):
It's pretty profound, it is.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
And to me, it's a love. It's a multiple love story.
It's a love story between two people. It's a love
of family, it's a love of your people, it's a
love of your country. But there's also the girlfriend love.
You know, once Meger is gone, that girlfriend love between
Coretta and Betty Shabbaz and Met and Merley, that is

(49:17):
another kind of love. They were like the group chat
before there were group chats. They were together, they stuck together,
They loved each other. It's the love of Merley for
her children and all that she did to sacrifice in
order to make sure that they were okay. And so
it's the love of your block. You know, if you
grew up on that kind of block, you understand that
kind of love. And so I wanted to tell all
of those different layers of love that existed even for

(49:40):
black people at the worst times, some of the worst
times to be black in this country, people still loved,
They still had all of those layers, all of those things.
And I think it humanizes the black experience when you
understand it's just the experience. It's the experience anybody would have.
And then each of these groups of us in this

(50:02):
country that are sort of thrown together in this salad bowl,
because we're not yet a Melton power, more of a
salad bowl, but salad two. We all have in our communities,
in our individual lives, these same experiences, and if we
were placed in the position that Meker and Murley were
placed in, we would all do it. I do believe
we would all fight for our dignity and fight for

(50:24):
our humanity. And that's all they were doing.

Speaker 2 (50:28):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Why did this here or this time feel like the
right time for you to tell this story?

Speaker 2 (50:36):
Why did you think America needed a love story?

Speaker 3 (50:39):
You know what I have to tell you, It's been
a very weird, weird five years. I kind of felt
like it's a great question because I didn't want to
write another trump Book, to be honest, I just didn't
want did really well, very happy with it, but I
felt like I dove into the negative aspects of the

(51:00):
human personality to do that book. But I feel like
we're at a point where number one, our history is
being ripped away from us piece by piece and being challenged.
It's legitimacy is being challenged. They hit the idea of
telling our history is being challenged, and I love history
and wanted to defend it. I wanted to defend it.
And I've been wanting to do a follow up to

(51:20):
my first book, which was called Fracture, which talked about
the sort of way that the Democratic Party sort of
morph from being the party of the Klan and a
white supremacy into a party that could produce Barack Obama.
And it's interesting that I'd had a conversation after that
book came out with Reverend Sharpton where he said, I
love this book, and you should one day tell the

(51:41):
story of even further back, like how the civil rights
movement kind of moved in that era and then after
And so I kind of had that in my head,
and I thought that this is a time when we
actually need something bigger than just civics, because civics ain't
saving us, right, now, you know, and we need something
bigger than just history and just knowledge. We actually kind

(52:02):
of need a little love, Like we need some inspiration.
And there's nothing more inspiring. You know, you're in Hollywood,
my dalling, so you know that there's nothing more inspiring
than love. So I'm like, I want to do something
that will make people see that regular people can do
big things. The ordinary people did big things, and that
the people who did the big things were regular people
who fell in love, and that love drove them to

(52:24):
do the things they did, and that if we can
get that, we can access that. You know, we may
not be able to access the great heroism of a
Medica average and put our life on the line. But
you love something, and if you love something, you'll do something.
You'll do a little something, whatever is in your capacity
to do, you'll do it because you have that love
driving you.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah, that's beautiful. Do you see that?

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Having written the book and applying love as the lens,
does it make you look at, you know, the pinwheel
of your own life and career differently as a writer
and anchor, know, a journalist, a podcast host, a mother, wife,
like all of these pieces of your identity. It does

(53:07):
it create a sort of different way of looking at
them or spinning all the plates.

Speaker 3 (53:15):
I guess that's a great question. No one's ever asked
me that before. That's a good question, you know what.
I kind of think it does, because I'll be honest
with you, I am a person that I'm a little
bit of a daffy I'm a daffy apple, you know.
I'm kind of a goofball where. But also I can't
bring myself to do something that I don't love. Like
it's very hard for me to do a job I
don't like or love. And I've my poor husband. I
have quit more jobs left. I been like I'm laving,

(53:39):
you know, and he's had to deal with that our
whole lives together. We've been together since we were both
twenty one, so we've been through a whole journey. But
one of the times that I actually left left my
job was I left the news business, like I exited
in two thousand and four because I was just deeply
against the Iraq war and I didn't like the way
the media was sort of jingoistically promoting war, and I'm

(54:02):
very anti war, so I just felt like this wasn't
a place for me. But what I did in doing
that was I actually gave myself opportunity to figure out
what I do care about. I did talk radio where
I could just really talk to people, which I loved
talk radio. I was able to talk to people where
they would call me in. We had a four hour
morning show, so I just loved being able to call

(54:23):
in and talk to vocal and radio and go back
and forth. And it was during a rough time in
Florida where there was a lot of police shootings and
a lot of It's how I met Ben Kromp, you know,
dealing with a police shooting or a police killing of
a young fourteen year old, and it was sort of
it was an opportunity. And then I jumped on a
couple campaigns, including the second being, of course, the Obama campaign,
and I love that and I loved politics. So yes,

(54:44):
I feel like I've had a full circle life. And
then I started out as a sixth grader who loved
politics and news to somebody who got to work in news,
then fell out of love with news, then worked in politics,
and then went back to news. So I do feel
like I've had a full SERVI like the thing I
love the most when I was in the sixth grade
is the stuff I do now, you know. It's a

(55:07):
wild journey from being a sixth grader who had committed
to becoming a doctor to actually being a grown up
version of the original sixth grader.

Speaker 2 (55:17):
That's so cool, that's really special.

Speaker 3 (55:23):
It is. I feel very lucky, and I think my
mom would find it hilarious because while she was committed
to the idea of me being a doctor, she once
said to me, girl, if you could just get paid
for how much you talk, if you could just literally
get paid to talk, that would be amazing because I
just never shut up. And she was like, you should
just somehow figure out how to get paid to talk,

(55:43):
and I did.

Speaker 1 (55:44):
I can picture my dad listening to this episode nodding,
being like I said the.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
Same thing to my kid. Yeah, Oh, I love it.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
Okay, I'm checking the clock because I want to be
respectful of your time, and I know you've got a
million things to do. So I'm going to ask you
my last and favorite question that I ask all of
my guests, which is from this vantage point today, as
you look around and all of the things you do
and all of the things you're passionate about, and all
of the passion you pour out into the world.

Speaker 2 (56:13):
What's next?

Speaker 1 (56:14):
What feels like your work in progress right now?

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Oh, that's such a great question, you don't you have
some good questions.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
You know what.

Speaker 3 (56:23):
I feel like, I just love telling stories like that
is my favorite thing. And so what drives me and
keeps me interested and intrigued is figuring out what's my
next story that I'm going to tell, whether it's on
the redown, on the show, or whether it's a documentary.
And we my husband and I are actually working on
a documentary about the assassination of banker Ever, so I'm

(56:43):
really passionate about that because there's so much more to
that story that I couldn't get into the book. My
poor editor, I would have turned in a book like
it's a phone book, an old phone book from the eighties,
and he was like, you know what, I'm gonna cut
a whole lot of that we're not gonna have on that.
You're gonna have to make that little storder. And so
there's so much more material that I have that really
delves into that, and so I'm passionate about getting that
documentary done and then just about finding more stories that

(57:06):
can intrigue us, unite us, make us outraged, but then
bring us back to a place where we can do
something about it. And I feel like that's what the
mission I was put on this earth for. You know,
we all kind of look for the meaning of why
we're in the universe, why we're why the universe wanted
us here, Like why the universe wanted me here is

(57:28):
that I do love to tell stories, and I do
love people, and I'm interested in people. I find people interesting,
and so if I can find more people's stories to tell,
I'm always going to be happy. And if you're happy
and joyful and you love what you're doing, you're never
working a day in your life.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
I love it, happy and joyful and educational. Like, yes,
I would love.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
For sign me up. I'm telling you I'm coming to
work for you. I can't.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
We're hanging out, like I think we have committed. We're
going to You're going to co anchor with me. We're
going to do an episode. It's gonna be let's go. Yes.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Thank you so much, Joy, Thank you for everything you
pour into what you do and into these books that
you write, and just into who you are. You really,
you're such a north Star for so many of us,
and we're very grateful that you joined us on the
show today.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
Thank you, Sophia. It was so much fun.