Oprah Wasn't Built In a Day

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff Mom Never told You from how stup
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Kristen and I'm Caroline, and let's talk about the title
of this episode. To kick things off, Caroline, Oprah wasn't
built in a day. No, No, This woman worked her

(00:26):
way up through failure, through sexual harassment, through people being
generally just a jerk and not understanding her true and
amazing skill set to be the amazing guardian angel that
I talk about in therapy and that my therapist raises
an eyebrow at me. But I'm like, no, sometimes I

(00:47):
prayed to Oprah. H. I don't see anything wrong with that.
I'm a secular American and I can praise Oprah. Oh.
I am just imagining a little Oprah shrine that you
have in your house that I really hope exists. If
it doesn't, just don't even tell me right now, let
me bask in my in my fantasy. Um, well, actually

(01:10):
I do. And it's in Uh it's in a bread box.
And I just opened the bread box and there's my
Opra shrine. And then she's saying, I love bread. It's
like a pop up book, but it's a pop up
bread boxes, her face pop out of its smiling live
your best life. I love bread, I love Oprah. Um
And funnily enough, when she got her second on airy

(01:35):
job that we're going to talk about more in just
a second. The promos for her debut were and I
and I kid you not listeners on busses and billboards.
I think they even had some on air spots asking
what is an Oprah? What is Oprah? And they had

(01:56):
no idea the question they were asking and the answer
it would become. Um, I know, a mega success, an inspiration,
a book club, maven, a car giving away, fantastic human,
a Michelle Obama friend. Yeah, hello, I mean no shade

(02:17):
to Gail. Gail came, of course, but floatas, I mean,
what a queen? What a queen? Um. Also, though, in
the spirit of transparency, we have to admit that, unfortunately
we are not the first ones to come up with
this phrasing of Oprah wasn't built in a day you,

(02:37):
I think for saw it on a T shirt right, Yeah,
I am currently as of this recording, awaiting the arrival
today in the mail of my Oprah Wasn't built in
a day T shirt from the company teas in the Trap,
and I recommend you all go over there look at
their amazing T shirts, mugs, toe bags, some they have

(03:00):
just you know, some pretty cool swag. And uh, I
saw the Oprah shirt and basically was like, I think
I waited a day because I was like, should I
spend more money on yet another T shirt? And then
twenty four hours later I was like, I was already
entering my credit card information. So yeah, thank you Teas
in the Drip, and thank you Oprah, really, you know,
thank you. Oh And we're talking about Oprah to kick

(03:23):
off this episode on failure, which which might seem like
an odd choice because is there really more of a
success than Oprah? I contend nay, because, as she talks about,
she had to go through one in particular, major flop

(03:46):
that was ultimately a stepping stone on her way to success.
And this is something that we hear about a lot
from really successful and really innovative people. Um And for instance,
the podcast episode that came out right before this one
talks all about women and inventing and patenting, and I

(04:10):
have a feeling that a lot of the folks we
talk about in that episode can definitely relate to the
importance of failure. And I gotta say personally, I am
only now in my early thirties starting to get more
comfortable with the prospect of failure and also processing my

(04:33):
own failures and not just putting on my blinders and
trying to moonwalk away from them. Yeah. I gotta say,
first of all, I've never seen you moonwalk, so we'll
talk about that later. You don't want to see it, Yeah,
I just fall over backward. It's more like just an
awkward backward gallop. Mind's more of an ashamed shuffle. The
shame show, do the shame show? Yeah. Um. I have

(04:57):
to say for this discussion today that we will deep
dive into is a continuation of our perfectionism episode, which
I know, based on your many many letters that you
wonderful people sent us, really resonated with you in the
discussion of tripping yourself up, being afraid of failing. Being

(05:22):
so smart and so accomplished and so skilled, whether it's
you know, writing or acting or art or whatever, sports
who knows, but not allowing yourself to go the distance
because you're so afraid of mucking it all up. And
so that's sort of gonna be the theme that runs
through this conversation too, and similarly to our perfectionism episode,

(05:47):
we're also, of course going to discuss the gendered aspects
of this, and I have to say, as long as
I've been doing stuff Mom never told you, and as
long as I've been a female human, a lot of
the points that we will address in this episode still
broke my brain in terms of thinking about my aversion

(06:08):
to failure. So I can't wait to dive into some
of this stuff with you. You and me both talking
about therapists like this is a huge issue for me
and something that I I hope I'm beginning to get
get better with. Well, yeah, I mean I, for instance,
I make the jokes sometimes of like, you know, I'm

(06:29):
not one of those try try again people. But I
had no idea how gendered that statement is, no idea.
I just thought that I was being silly and sarcastic
and self deprecating. But it turns out that there's a
little more to it feminine gendered. Yeah, okay, okay. Well,
as we mentioned, like, there is a big conversation, especially

(06:50):
in creative fields, around the importance of failure. You heard
a lot too in Silicon Valley and in science um iterate,
iterate it or rate is uh something that you will
probably here um in labs and startup offices and the like.
And as getting in Lickfield put it so perfectly over

(07:12):
at Courts, failure is in fashion. Oh yeah, fail fast
is Silicon Valley's motto. And this reminds me of one
bit in Lean In where Sheryl Sandberg talks about a
poster that's up in Facebook and probably many other Silicon
Valley offices that says, better done than perfect, just like

(07:33):
get over the idea of needing to achieve perfection, like
just execute it and then learn from it, um, which
to me makes me clutch my pearls a little bit
and say but but but well, yeah, I mean there's
just getting it done. And then there's that fear that well,
if I'm failing, I'm not doing, whereas a lot of

(07:54):
people would argue, no, failing is still doing. You're just
onto the next thing, right, And it's the most important
thing in all of ways that you can do, at
least according to a lot of successful people. UM. And
it is refreshing to hear, you know, it's definitely gotten
stuck in my head. If you are a fan of
Ted Talks at all. You probably heard a lot about

(08:14):
this too. But the question that we're really going to
dive into from there is whether that is easier said
than done for women and girls, because, like you mentioned, Caroline,
there is a lot of gendering that goes along with this.
There's a lot of socialization that girls experience that might
make us more risk averse, or at least feel like

(08:37):
we should be more risk averse. Um. But it's not
to say that some women have not thrived in the
face of failure. Like there, I feel like there is
this like the one listical that is circulates around the
Internet and all sorts of pinterest infilo graphics of successful
people who failed first and the women's names that you

(09:01):
always see on it our J K. Rowling because of course,
she was rejected from more than a dozen publishers before
Harry Potter sold. Arianna Huffington likes to talk about how
her second book was rejected thirties six times, although I
would contend that if it's your second book, you've already
had your first book, like I mean, you're already successful.

(09:24):
But that we'll but we'll get to that in a
second too. And then you have a designer, Vera Whang,
who pivoted from figure skating to fashion because figure skate,
I think she might not have made the cut for
the Olympics back in the day. It's something like at
some point she hit her ceiling um and hopefully it

(09:45):
was not due to anything related to Tanya Harding. Well,
thank god she pivoted, because now my mother has so
much to talk about when she looks at magazines and
tells me what kind of wedding dress she's gonna buy me.
Vera Wang, Oh, I will get you that Vera Whang dress.
And I'm like, I've literally never said anything about a
wedding dress to you. But thanks so thank you Verywaying.

(10:05):
I'm glad you were successful in your second career. But also, Caroline,
the question that I really got stuck on is what
would the world, what would our lives be like if
Beyonce had given up after Girls Time lost on Star Search.

(10:26):
I know it's at the beginning of Flawless, right, yeah,
and they lost a skeleton crew. Which have you heard
of skeleton crew, ladies and gentlemen, Well, probably yes, because
you've heard Flawless. But other than that, no, but she
and Kelly Rowland were both in Girls Time, and you know,
if if that had been it for Bay, where would

(10:49):
we be? Where would we be? And then of course
there's Oprah. I mean, we would have a world without
Beyonce if if she didn't try try again, And we
would also have a world where we did not know
the answer to what is an Oprah? I know? And
and just like so many amazingly successful people, Oprah oh,

(11:11):
she herself does have a failure quote. She says, there's
no such thing as failure. Failure is just life trying
to move us in another direction. And she should know because,
as we made very clear at the top of the podcast,
she overcame a lot. In nineteen twenty two year old
Oprah jumps in her red cutlass and drives from Nashville, Tennessee,

(11:33):
to Baltimore to be at the co anchor on the
w jay Z nightly newscast with this guy Jerry Turner,
who is basically considered like the king of local news.
Was like Jerry Turner sounds like a real life Ron Burgundy. Yeah,
he was a terrible human, is what it sounds like.
And he hated Oprah and he hated sharing the spotlight

(11:55):
with this new green uh well woman of color. Not
to confuse anyone, um, but yeah, he just he didn't
want to share the spotlight and he made things really
difficult for her. And Oprah ended up getting canned after
just more than seven months on April first nine, and
she was like, is this a April Fools joke? Right?

(12:18):
Because the way the station manager posed it to her
was classic office space style of you're not fired, we're
promoting you laterally to instead do these things that are
much less prestigious. Right. She was the person who would

(12:38):
come on during the break like in the Today Show,
the local anchor who gives you the news at the
top of the hour, the local news. So basically she
was completely invisible, right. And she, by her own admission,
is not a good newscaster. No, And okay, hello, this
is what I identified with so much when she admits like,
I'm not a great traditional journalist. I am something else.

(13:05):
I'm my skill set lies elsewhere I wanted to. I
want to help the people that I talked to. Um.
And you know, fast forward a couple of years and
that's what she's doing. She's running the Oprah Show after
a couple more stops, but she's running the Opra Show
and she's helping people and like that to me resonates
because it's like, ah, just because you failed at one

(13:27):
thing doesn't mean that there's not another door that's going
to open for you. Yeah, And speaking about that very
difficult time when she was in Baltimore, which is also
where she ended up meeting and befriending Gail King, who
I want to say might have been also working at
W jay z um jay Z w jy Z. I'm

(13:47):
just imagining it's jay Z and Beyonce's UH network, although
of course they'd never demote Oprah. But Oprah later said,
kind of reflecting back on that period, quote, I had
no idea what I was in for or that this
was going to be the greatest growing period of my
adult life. It shook me to my very core, and
I didn't even know at the time that I was

(14:08):
being shaken. And this is coming from a woman who,
even before she got to Nashville, had already survived a
lifetime's worth of abuse and throw you know, like ended
up moving out of her parents home and thrived in
school and made her way, you know, into the big
world and as immediately kind of knocked down, but she

(14:34):
gets right back up again. And now I'm kind of
quoting a Chumba Womba song and I'm not very happy
about it. I'm sure there was a whiskey drink involved,
probably probably a lot. Hopefully her and Gale just thrown
thrown a few back. And I'm sure that part of
what they were talking about was the humiliation that they
faced from not only people like a Jerry Turner, um,

(14:54):
but also just the sexual harassment that they had to
deal with. Oprah was even forced to babysit. Oprah being
forced to babysit for higher ups at the studio like that,
that just doesn't like, what a horrific way to try
to put someone in her place. Oh yeah, to make
her babysit for you, That's like, it's so insulting, abusive,

(15:16):
power much um. But she doesn't leave w jay Z
at that point. In August, she ends up co hosting
this new segment. People are talking with Richard Sheer, who
is delighted to co anchor with Oprah. It's much more
her style of more of a talk show than hard

(15:38):
news reporting. Um. And even though the Baltimore Sun television
critic at the time initially wrote it off um saying
that there was nothing much worth hearing or seeing. Jokes
on you, critic, because it ended up being successful and
it led to her move to Chicago, where she ended
up starting, of course, the Oprah and Free Show and

(16:00):
the rest of history. Yeah, look at how successful she
has been doing the thing that she is so good at,
being the helper, being that Oprah guardian angel and just
talking to people and listening to people. It's gives me chills. Well,
and it makes sense too that in that Harvard commencement

(16:21):
speech she describes failure is moving you in another direction,
because it took her failing in in that sense to
really learn, Oh, you know what, I'm I'm so not
into reporting the news. That is not my strong suit.
But I can do other things exactly. And so she
is a fabulous illustration of how failure is not necessarily failure,

(16:46):
that you can pivot and turn in a different direction
and find what works for you. But now we have
to ask when we talk about failure, and especially when
we hear about failure today in the more like Ted
Talkie sense of the word of embraced failure, run toward failure.
That's what you're gonna need to succeed. Like, what exactly

(17:08):
do we mean when we are talking about failure, Because
also on those types of listicles with J. K. Rowling
and Oprah, these people's failures led up to major successes.
But the failure that terrifies me is just the failure,
the banal failure of just really really just failing at life.

(17:29):
That doesn't sound so banal failing failing at life? What
did you fail? I fail? It's test? What did Christen fail? It? Life? Life,
top down, sideways, all of it. Yeah, all of the
little aspects of life that make up a day. There's
so much potential for for messing all of that up.
I I share I share your fear. And it's funny

(17:50):
because it's those little things that have the potential to
scare you, but that you also might not view in
yourself as oh, well, these just aren't important enough. It's
not like when I tripped and fell and dropped my
lunch and so I failed at eating lunch or something
like that doesn't add up to any great success. And

(18:11):
so over at Scientific American you have Miriam Zerringham, who
tried to launch this thing called science confessionals, with the
motivation of like, hey, there's a lot of failure and
try try again. In science, you know, you do experiments,
they fail, you move on to the next thing. Um.
And so she's like, let's empower ourselves and each other

(18:32):
by sharing our failures and and making them visible. You're
not alone. We all make mistakes or whatever. But nobody shared, right,
and no one said, well, I think she got a
few a few entries here and there, and even though
it was anonymous, the feedback she heard from a fellow

(18:53):
scientists who were hesitant to share was that their failures
weren't sexy enough, essentially like, oh yeah, my hypothesis was
just completely bunk. It wasn't that well. I was wrong
on this, but I pulled Thomas Edison and ended up
inventing a light bulb. So right, there's so many different
types of failures. And Stuart Firestein, who wrote Failure Why

(19:17):
Science Is So Successful, talks about good failures and he
refers to them as Stein failures because Gertrude Stein has
this quote of a real failure does not need an excuse,
it is an end in itself. And so he sort
of explores like what does that mean for a failure
to be an end in itself? And so, through his

(19:38):
exploration of what could Gertrude Stein possibly mean, he writes
that good failures are those that leave a wake of
interesting stuff behind ideas, questions, paradoxes, enigmas, contradictions. So not necessarily, um,
you know, having your mistake turn into a massive, massively

(20:00):
successful scientific innovation, but even opening the door to more
questions could be seen as a good failure, right because,
as Stein is talking about just quitting and stopping the
whole thing altogether, that's your failure, not stumbling perhaps on
or meandering on your way to getting to wherever it

(20:21):
is you want to go. Um and the concept of
grit and the importance of grit in order to process
that failure and keep moving and work toward a good failure,
as Fire steing Um terms, it is something that was
very scientific zitegeistie not too long ago with the publication

(20:46):
of Angela Duckworth's Grit, The Power of Passion and Perseverance
and which she talks about how resilience and passion are
the key ingredients of this thing called grit. And while
of course it takes more than grit to achieve success. Um,

(21:06):
that those are are really the core elements that help
us keep trying, you know, help us do the Thomas
Edison thing of finding ten thousand ways to fail before
you get to the right thing. Well, what's really fascinating
is to look at what failure is doing in our brains,
how we perceive it, what's happening to our brains when

(21:29):
we perceive failure. This is something that jonah Laire wrote
about over at Wired, which is kind of ironic now
considering the turn his journalistic career has taken. Well, wherever
he got this information from, it's very fascinating. Um. He
points to the anterior singulate cortex, which is a collar

(21:50):
of tissue located in the center of the brain, and
it's associated with the perception of errors and contradictions, and
he points out that neuro scientists often refer to it
as the O S word circuit. It's the thing that
lights up. Basically, when we see something that we know
is wrong, is a mistake, we recognize it as such.

(22:11):
So while we have that anterior singulate cortex that is
alerting us to hey, this is an error, this is
a mistake. Um, I wonder if I have a hyperactive
dorso lateral prefrontal cortex, which I'm sure is on the
minds of most modern women these days, because, as Lair describes,
this is the area of the brain. It's one of

(22:33):
the last areas of our brain in fact, to develop
in young adults, and it, as Lair puts, it suppresses
unwanted representation. So it's kind of like a delete key.
It's a thing of like, oh, let's just look over there,
you know what, I didn't fail because maybe that just

(22:54):
never happened. I feel like that it's sort of the
self delusion center of our brain, and that is the
thing to me that that kind of kicks up in
my past failure processing of you know what, we're just
you know, we're not just we're just gonna pretend like
it didn't have just like nope, which is which is

(23:15):
a definite coping mechanism. But it's not a good way
to learn from our failures and learn from our mistakes, right.
And there's even a term for this called hedonic editing,
which is essentially lying to yourself. Donic editing sounds like
what I do on a Thursday night when I'm trying
to edit an article. I've just got like plates of

(23:37):
cake and cookies and all sorts of booze and wine
all over the place. I want to come edit with you.
Sounds magical, a real buck at all, um, But this
also prevents us from learning. You know, Um, if we
are too concerned about really protecting our own self perception

(24:02):
to ourself, if that makes sense, Um, we're not gonna
have productive failure. And this stuff really starts from childhood,
these kinds of patterns, and they're very recognizable to when
you learn about them. And this is coming from you
see Berkeley, which broke down four major ways that children,

(24:26):
regardless of gender, children tend to process failure. Starting with
the success oriented kids. These are the kids with grit.
They are intrinsically motivated, they're passionate. They process failure with
what Carol Dwet terms a growth mindset of you know what,
this is just one step along the way. Yeah, And

(24:48):
growth mindset essentially acknowledges that, you know, who knows what
amazing things will happen when I work hard practice, you know,
allow passion to dry of me. It's something It's where
you basically acknowledge like things are going to change I
might mess up, but I'm going to learn from you know,
we're all works in progress. It's a really great place

(25:09):
to be and maybe one day I can grow up
and have a growth mindset as well. Um. The second
type of failure processing is in the overstrivers and the
closet achievers. These kids avoid failure by succeeding, which sounds like, okay,
that's great, but the thing is they're working really, really,

(25:32):
really hard in the background to get there. Basically, so
they might say like, I don't have time to study
for this test. I might you know, I might do
really badly on this test, and then they end up
studying all night and they ace it, and that just
serves to reinforce like you're not good enough. You had
to study all night in order to succeed. To other people,

(25:55):
they're just like, oh, you must be really smart. Um.
And then of course there's a failure avoiding, which, no,
it doesn't sound familiar. Why do you ask? Uh. These
are the kids who say, you know what, I'm just
gonna not even worry about succeeding. UM, I don't want
my failure to be put on display. And so with
this type of failure processing, you get a lot of

(26:18):
that procrastination, maybe just not participating at all or opting
to pursue tasks that are nearly impossible because that's safer, right,
because if it's nearly impossible, if you fail, it's not
that much of a fall. Yeah, I am totally a
blend of an overstriver and a failure, wrote me and

(26:40):
drew eras to two and three. Maybe that's why we
get along so well, we're just constantly worried exactly. But
it's better to worry, you know, in someone's company, right,
you know. Uh. And then finally, though, we have the
failure accepting kids, and that sounds positive. However, it's not
so much because they internalize their failure failure accepting kids

(27:05):
and adults. Let's be honest. They process failure as a
direct reflection of their work, and when they achieve a success,
whether it's say getting a part in a play or
making a good grade, they feel like it's a coincidence.
So for the play it's like, well, you know, I

(27:26):
was the only one who tried out for that role,
or if it's an a it's like, well the teacher
graded on occur it's just a total fluke and um
the you see Berkeley Fix wrote that with kids in
this group, this fourth group, they prefer non academic avenues
like sports or art. And my thinking about this was like,

(27:46):
well sports, God, no, I avoid competition and hate sports
because I don't want to mess up or look stupid.
But what they were saying, Hugh's closer to it's not
necessarily like I doubt myself in academics, so I'm going
to go out for the soccer team. It's more like,
what are you just naturally good at? Like I was
afraid of failing at athletics stuff, So I was much

(28:10):
more the art kid or the writing kid because that
stuff just came more naturally to me. So when I
excelled at it, I was like, oh, yeah, it's fine,
it's not a big deal. So what does gender have
to do with all of this? Answer in all caps
a lot. And we're going to get into all of
that when we come right back from a quick break.

(28:35):
As stuff Mom never told you, listeners know, some girls
like to play with dolls, some like to play sports,
and some like to do both. But one thing all
girls have in common is that once they reached the
age of nine, their self esteem and confidence begin to drop.
Researches found they become less likely to try to take

(28:57):
risks to expose their vulnerability. So it's up to us
to make sure they keep nurturing their passions, whatever they
may be. Lego Play provides a great opportunity for kids
to build, rebuild, to create and discover. There are no
right answers. What she builds with Lego bricks is right always.

(29:18):
Lego has something for every girl to build of all ages,
based on her interest, whether it's a Minecraft, a friends set,
are simply building with bricks you have at home. So
let's help girls break free from insecurity and embrace the
process of growth and discovery with all its highs and lows,
and remember that we are all a work in progress.

(29:40):
Lego wants kids everywhere to keep exploring, creating, discovering and
building their world brick by brick, just like Caroline and
I do. Here on stuff Mom never told you, and
you can learn more all about how Lego is helping
kids and parents do that over at pinterest dot com
slash Lego. So the bottom line is from early childhood,

(30:09):
girls are socialized to avoid risk taking, and there is
a ton of research to back this up, and we
should mention to you like this is a very Western
centric body of research and I would be curious to
see more of across cultural take on it. But if
we are looking at girls um here in the United

(30:30):
States and in the westmore broadly, chances are parents are
going to uh caution their daughters to be careful more
than they are going to caution their sons. It's called
the skin the effect. This is something we've talked about
several times on the podcast before, of like letting the
boy run off and figure things out for himself, and

(30:50):
if that involves falling down, well he'll learn from it
and he won't do it again next time if it
hurt him. Whereas they tend to be, parents tend to
be a little more careful with their girls. They warn
them about dangers more often, tell them not to climb
to the highest rope or not climb to the highest
part of the playground in case they fall, rather than
letting their little princess figure things out for ourselves. A

(31:13):
little princess. Not that there's hashtag not a princesses. I'm
not projecting that. I'm just saying that the parents who
might be considering their girl to be a delicate princess. Well,
and my parents didn't consider me and my sister's delicate princesses.
But but I do think that we were similarly like
more cautioned than our brothers too, just not to hurt ourselves.

(31:36):
And I still have a major fear of hurting myself. Um.
I it's part of why I don't like heights a lot.
Um and uh. There were a number of times during
my childhood when if I hurt myself, I would not
try try again. That is why friends I am not
a skateboardare now I and as what's funny? Has I

(31:58):
hurt myself so much as a child and I'm scared
to hurt myself? Do you know how scared? Name of knives?
It takes me forever to chop things for dinner. Yeah. Um.
But for a sense of the degree to which parents
tend to do this probably subconsciously, I don't think that
parents are setting out to soften their girls. Um. Two

(32:20):
separate studies found that parents socialized toddler girls three times
more than boys toward avoiding injury, and they are four
times likelier to urge girls to be careful, even though
boys have much higher rates of unintentional injury, probably because

(32:42):
they haven't been so conditioned to not get on tall
things on top above pea, gravel and such. Um. And
when we look more at academia and hobbies and interests,
something that jump doubt to me is this question of
whether this even affects our intrinsic motivation as girls, if

(33:07):
it even kind of puts some reins on that, because
research also finds that girls are likelier to have their
autonomy and motivation threatened. And I have a feeling that
that likely comes across in examples such as a teacher saying, oh,
you know, you don't want to go out there and
get dirty with the boys. Oh well, do you really

(33:30):
want to do that? I don't. I don't think other
other little girls are are doing that, you know, just
kind of constantly being questioned if their interests lies outside
of our acceptable um our acceptable behavior for little girls. Yeah,
And we read that it tends to be true that

(33:54):
boys efforts, regardless of the outcome, are praised more than
girls efforts, and so a way to counterbalance some of
this gender division is to praise girls efforts just as
much even if they fall down, even if they fail
and this kind of approach can really help foster that

(34:15):
growth mindset instead of the fixed mindset. And I mean,
I had to have some real real talk with myself,
uh reading about the fixed mindset. It's basically the viewpoint
that your character, intelligence, and creativity are static. They don't
change their inherent Oh, little Caroline, you grew up and

(34:36):
you were good at writing and art, Well, that's just
because that was inherent, not because you worked at it
because you liked it, you know. Um. And it's the
view that basically your success is just an affirmation of
that inherent skill or intelligence that you assume you just
lucked out with, and you avoid failure in order to

(34:58):
maintain that sense of being smart and skilled. Right, because
this also speaks to our approach to our weaknesses. So
for me, one thing that kept coming to mind while
going over all of this research was how difficult ninth
grade geometry was for me. It was my first year
outside of home school for starters, and the teacher I

(35:20):
had was phenomenal, but he was really really tough, and
there were things because of homeschooling that I had to
play some catch up on really quickly, and I felt
so like such a massive failure anytime I got anywhere

(35:41):
just like barely below an A, because I had a
very fixed mindset about it of well, you know what,
I'm just not good at math and I'm never going
to be good at math. And it turns out that
with more of a growth mindset, the truth of the
matter is, you can get better. And in fact, I
did end up getting always in in all of my

(36:03):
math classes in high school hashtag humble bragg um. And
I mentioned that example because research has found that that
this growth mindset effect has been strong enough that women
in tough calculus classes who come at it with that
growth mindset stick it out and fare better compared to

(36:24):
women with the fixed mindset. And that's controlling for the
group's respective mathematics abilities. So I mean, it's I don't
want to say, like, if you just think hard enough,
then suddenly you will be, you know, a calculus star.
Obviously it takes work, but our mentality also has a

(36:48):
major impact on our performance and our resilience and those
things that it takes to process and push through stumbling
blocks or outright failures you And this ties back to
a lot of stuff that we talked about when it
came to well, hey, anytime we've ever talked about women
in the workplace, but also our imposter syndrome episode and conversations,

(37:10):
because as you've probably read and heard multiple times, women
tend to wait to apply for a job or promotion
until they feel on qualified. And I mean, even if
we remove the research and look just anecdotally, like how
many female friends and colleagues have I heard say this,
Like I didn't feel totally um prepared for that job description,

(37:34):
so I just didn't apply when like, oh my god,
but it's so much more in line with your interests
or it offers so much more money compared to dudes
who tend to, according to the research, apply for a
job when they are qualified. Yeah, and they often get
the jobs in promotion with the idea of like, well,

(37:54):
I'm going to learn on the job. I'm going to
you know, get acclimated to this new environment on the job.
I don't need to be literally born for this job.
And that starts well before we even get into the workplace.
Just generally speaking, girls are likelier to give up if
we feel like we aren't going to ace something. And

(38:15):
I can relate to that. You know, there's still that
fear of it's not It's like we conflate not being
perfect with that being failure, which is oh, such a
such a dangerous mindset. And I just say that because
I've lived in it for a good part of my life. Um,
and that even applies to women who are smart enough

(38:36):
to get into Harvard. So an economist, Claudia Golden, was
teaching at Harvard, and she was really mystified as to
why there was this three to one ratio of guys
to girls in her ECON majors once who made it
through the majors, because in the intro class there it

(38:58):
was closer to fifty fifty. So she did some research
on her classrooms and found that female students who earned
just below an A, not even failing the class, just
below an A in an introductory ECON course, those women
were half as likely to complete the ECON major compared

(39:19):
to the guys who were making bees, who were just
as likely to continue on with their major. That's crazy.
I'm so glad I got a see in science in
high school and I still I still liked chemistry. I
just wasn't any good at it. Well, but you certainly

(39:39):
weren't going to be a chemistry major. No, you know,
I mean that's the thing where it's like the prospect
of failure stymying your potential passion for chemistry. Say yeah, no,
I was definitely not cut out for kim um. And
you know, again, going back to are imposter syndrome conversations

(40:03):
from the past, women are more likely to internalize they're
perceived failures or or stumbles, whereas men are generally more
likely to say, well, that was a hard test or
that was a hard professor or something along those lines.
And this also relates to conversations we've had around the

(40:23):
stereotype threat and uh, this phenomenon that occurs particularly in science, technology, engineering,
and math courses, whether we're talking about college or down
to like elementary middle in high school, where if you
walk into a classroom having internalized the stereotype that you,

(40:45):
whatever your identity is, is just not good at whatever
this subject is, regardless of your actual aptitude, you perform worse.
You know, it's kind of these self fulfilling prophecies. But
the thing is, though with all of these like dismal
study findings that are very broadbrush, the takeaway starts to

(41:08):
seem like, well, gosh, girls are just kind of pathetic.
But here's a thing there layers to this, because even
when you take all of the risks necessary and all
experience all the disappointments necessary to reach that C suite,
when you become Marissa Meyer, say, or a Mary Barra

(41:31):
over at GM, that does not guarantee that you are
home free because of something called the glass cliff. And
this is where stuff really starts to get twisted and
why perhaps our fear of failure does seem to be
so ingrained in women. So the glass cliff is this

(41:54):
term that was coined by Michelle Ryan and alex haslum
Over at the University of Exeter to basically describe how
successful women get to a certain point and are elevated
to these positions, uh where they're kind of set up
to fail. Yeah, I had read about this concept. I

(42:16):
had not heard the term the glass cliff, but you
can kind of imagine it being exactly what it sounds.
So many sharp edges, so many sharp edges. I just
picture like slipperiness, which I tend to slip and trip
very easily anyway, So put me on a glass cliff
and it's just a nightmare. Not that I'm trying to
put myself on the same level as a Marissa Meyer,

(42:36):
but basically here's what it breaks down to. Um, maybe
a company isn't doing well, it's failing, it's going bankrupt
or whatever, and it has been traditionally led by a man.
Uh well, let's put in a woman or a person
of color, basically someone who's not the white man who's

(42:56):
historically led this company, and see if this person can
do better. But the thing is the person is now
helming a sinking ship and gets blamed for the incompetency
that most likely preceded them. Right. It's like, you know,
for instance, President Obama coming into the White House and

(43:18):
inheriting a giant mess that he is often just blamed
for it, even though it's it's a situation um that
was set up, you know, before he even got there.
And this bears out in studies as well, which really
show our unconscious biases. So some research that was reported

(43:42):
on in the Harvard Business Review found that if you
have a fictional company that's thriving and it's being led
by either a woman or a man, doesn't really matter.
The students aren't compelled to make any leadership change, why
would you the company's thriving, it's totally fine. If yeah,
if a woman's running a company and it's doing well,

(44:04):
totally cool. And they also though perceived stereotypically male leadership
traits in this thrive scenario as being more valuable things
like competitiveness and decisiveness. So that's not really news. But
if you flip the script and this fictional company is
suddenly in crisis, that's when we prefer stereotypically female strengths

(44:32):
like communication and our ability to encourage others to step
into a leadership role. So it's it's funny to see
how um we are we want women in a crisis. Basically, yeah, women,
people of color, someone who doesn't look like that traditional boss.

(44:54):
But then we use what in some cases is an
inevitable failure of a company or a department to highlight
what we perceive as like an assumed lack of what
success or lack of um that women aren't good leaders.
Look at her, why wish? Why should we put another
woman in the CEO chair if they keep failing well,

(45:19):
and she's also especially if you are at a level
of say Mary Barra at General Motors or mersa maer Yahoo,
you are going to receive so much more scrutiny to
just by virtue of your gender, since you are replacing
the dude. You know, it's like, oh well, what what
what's the woman going to do in this scenario? And

(45:42):
this is one penalty that's meal research has uncovered for
people in what are called gender incongruit fields. So say
a female mechanic or a male nurse, people in jobs
that we normally wouldn't expect them to be in. Those
folks are judged more harshly less competent when they make
mistakes compared to their gender congruent colleagues. So you go

(46:07):
to a woman mechanic and she screws up your car,
You're going to think that she's far more incompetent than
and probably attribute some of that to her gender than
if he took your car to a mail mechanic and oh, well,
of course, you know, he just screwed up the car,
because not all mechanics are great hashtag no mechanics. I
mean it goes back to inherent bias of like see

(46:29):
I knew it a woman mechanic, of course she screwed
it up. Or a male nurse. Of course, he's not
a sensitive and attentive to detail. And I mean, these
things are nonsense, But we just have all of this
stuff literally and figuratively in our brains that we are
working with. And to add a whole other layer to this,
which I was not expecting going into this research on failure,

(46:53):
is kind of adding some nuance to this whole thing
of you know, women and the so called confidence gap
and how you know, girls just need to kind of
bootstrap buck up, get confident, raise your hands, get passionate,
et cetera. Take those risks, fail more often. Okay, but

(47:17):
that is harder to do when you are not a
white dude. Like this whole Silicon Valley, particularly the Silicon
Valley ethos of fail fast, fail hard, I would argue,
and other people would argue, is a product of white
male privilege. And wow, do I sound like a feminist

(47:38):
or what? Um? Because I mean think about Steve Jobs
or Steve JEWORBS as I like to call him, for
really no good reason. Um, he's kind of the paragon of,
you know, the Gospel of failure, saying things along the
lines of you gotta be willing to fail if you're
afraid of failing, you won't get very far. And that's

(47:59):
soup or true, you know, And and it's so true
in fact, that there's a whole lexicon of buzzwords that
you'll now hear um in offices, especially in the startup world,
where you want to have a soft landing that's failing
gently without any career harm. Sounds really comforting, It really does. Yeah,

(48:22):
I would like a mattress that can give me a
soft landing. You want to fail harder, fail faster. There's
even a failed con that I believe. It's like a
it's a technology conference, you know, celebrating like information innovation
and all of the failure that it takes to do that.
And then you also have this concept of failing upward,

(48:42):
and this is this is a failure that's totally not
failure at all. Failing upward means failing with an immediate
career upside. And I just wonder how realistic that is
for a whole lot of women and people of color.
How do you fail? How do you reliably fail up? Yeah?
And part of this failure conversation that's like like an

(49:05):
aspect of failure that's taken for granted is like, Oh,
you're going to fail, but you know keep going. Well,
what if you don't have the money or what if
you don't have the people believing in you the experience? Uh. Basically,
what I'm trying to get at is like, what if
you're not already a white guy with a lot of
money and a really broad, strong network of of colleagues

(49:25):
who will support you. What if you're a first time
or into this realm whatever it is. Maybe it's tech,
maybe it's writing a book, maybe it's whatever. But um,
one aspect again, like you, I was really surprised to
read about and I shouldn't have been, again with all
that we've ever talked about on this podcast, but I

(49:46):
was like, of course, of course the failure conversation is
one of privilege, right. I mean Jessica Lahy who wrote
a book called The Gift of Failure UM that was
really popular. I want to say. It came out in
she talked to The New York Times about how white
men with connections to capital are the best equipped to

(50:08):
fail because the stakes are the lowest for them. Really. UM.
In the same article, Camille Fournier, who is an engineer
and the former CTO of Rent the Runway talked about
how celebrating failure is quote an inherently privileged concept, and
as I started reading that article, like light bulbs just

(50:29):
started going off, like you said, of oh, oh, of
course that's why. And also explain to me why I
have always had a little bit of a side I
for the whole um digital media fail culture of like
I get it in my head, but something there's something
just slightly off. It's like it's like weirdly fetishized, and

(50:52):
like I get, I get normalizing failure. That's a positive thing,
normalizing failure, learning from it. Yes, that's all positive, and
I encourage that in others and myself. But the whole
like tech bro love for failure, like not everybody has
the luxury of getting up again, you know. And if
that is in fact the path to innovation, which it

(51:15):
really is, then the question we should be asking is
how can we make it safer for people to fail,
regardless of their identity that they are bringing into this space.
And of course that's connected to all sorts of diversity
issues within um Silicon Valley specifically in this conversation, but

(51:38):
as Tanahassee Coates wrote about a few years back, in
the Atlantic. This also relates more broadly, um, when we
aren't speaking precisely about failure, but more um the how
the stakes of failing and perception do differ based on
your identity. Um. He rejects the whole twice as good

(52:01):
notion that asks in the example he gave of, you know,
how did Jackie Robinson managed to achieve greatness in the
face of racism? And Coats is like, no, like, we
don't need to find exceptions to the rule to like
make us feel okay. Rather, the more compelling question is
to ask, well, what could we do? What could he

(52:22):
have done if racism hadn't existed? And because he's such
a brilliant writer, Um, I would like to quote him
directly because I don't want to mangle tanahassy Coats. Um.
And and just for a little bit of background, he
was writing this in after the Academy Awards when Kim Novak,

(52:43):
who is uh an actress from more the classic era
of Hollywood, showed up to the awards ceremony and she
had a lot of visible plastic surgery, and the Internet,
of course like ripped her apart, and um it was
incredibly sexist. So Tana Hausy Coats rights. We should probably

(53:03):
stop bragging about Jackie Robinson and remember that he died young.
We should probably cite Ginger Rogers mostly as damning evidence,
and that of course is going to the quote of
Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astare did, button heels and backwards,
and he goes on to say, we comfort ourselves with
individuals who get over ignoring the broad masses who necessarily cannot.

(53:26):
I think we should pause before noting that Sally Field
is quote aging well, most of our fellow human females
will not. That's because the very notion of aging well
is riven with all our notions of who owns their
body and who does not. And I know that that
seems perhaps tangential to this question of how do we
process failure? But I think it's so important for us

(53:48):
to realize that there are elements beyond our gender, institutional
and socialized elements of really a patriarchy that also tribute
to this pattern. What a good point. I think that
that's so insightful, um, And I think it is worth
pointing out that, UM. While it is important to be

(54:14):
you know, gutsy and blow past fear individually to succeed
in your own life or or what have you. UM
that that won't end those institutional forces. It's the similar.
It's similar to what you hear when you talk about, oh,
well you do have a Marissa Meyer who rose to
the top, or a Cheryl Sandberg or whoever. Um. But

(54:35):
that doesn't mean that sexism is fixed just because you
have a handful of of women leading big departments or
big companies. Well, especially when you keep in mind that
those examples are white, you know, and not to say
that it's only white women who are succeeding, but certainly
opportunity is differs depending on identities. And to that point,

(54:57):
I would like academia to also catch up UM from
our digging that we did. There is scant information on
how all of this breaks down when you look at
low income kids or single mothers, women of color, people
who generally have less room in their lives for risk.

(55:19):
I mean, for me personally, growing up in a lower
income household feeds one hundred and ten per cent into
my fear of failure in the way that that has
influenced my career choices. So as I was reading a
lot of this about gender as a woman, I was like, Okay,

(55:39):
I get you here, but what about this other thing?
You know there, there's so many other factors going into that.
But in the meantime, there are ways that we can
fail better, and we can kick off this segment by
quoting Amy Poehler perhaps Yeah the fabulous st Amy says,

(55:59):
the question you have to ask yourself is how do
you want to fail? Do you want to fail in
a way that feels like it respects your tastes and
value system? Now? What does what does that mean? So?
I think Amy Poehler is saying, uh, do you want
to have a good fail or do you want to
pretend that it never existed and probably go nowhere? You know,

(56:22):
because it's a very bold choice to fail in a
way that respects your taste and value system. You know,
because that means that you are willing to even go
for it, and that if something doesn't work out, it's
not because um, you made some kind of foolish mistake
or you compromise something. It's because you tried. And the

(56:48):
fact of life is not everything works out. Yeah, you
went after the thing you wanted and did the thing
that you wanted to do, and maybe you failed. Sure,
but at least you did it in your style exactly.
I failed authentically. That's like the title of a book.
I feel like authentic failure should be if it's not already. UM.

(57:08):
But we do have some quick hit tips to offer,
starting with Tim Hartford, who is an economist. He also
wrote a book called adapt that's all about this um
and some suggestions that Hartford offers for really cultivating better
failure is to first of all, try new things, give

(57:30):
things the college. Try. Are we sure? Yes? Because you
never know until you try. And I can hear my
mother's voice piping up in my head being like, well
with you know you don't have to try everything, okay
within reason um. And then you can also experiment with

(57:52):
survivable failure to kind of condition yourself for failure when
the stakes are not feast or famine. So in my
creative life, one thing that has been helpful for me
is participating in literary events in Atlanta where we live,
where it forces me to write something and presented in

(58:14):
front of an audience, get vulnerable and nothing is at
stake except for my ego and fair listeners. She is
so funny when she does it on on purpose, not
like no one's laughing at her. She's she's truly truly talented,
thank you. Um. Well, and that goes for the next

(58:34):
point of getting feedback, but also taking the harsh feedback
and understanding how you can take the venomout, so to speak,
because peeps is harsh. Well, and you don't have to
take everything personally, which is which is something that is
very hard. It's something it's very hard for me, and

(58:54):
it's something that I have to constantly remind myself about.
And um, you know, and and there's a difference like
maybe you ask for feedback, so maybe you're more prepared,
uh if you receive negative feedback, um, But if someone
just offers unsolicited feedback, um, it can be helpful to
try to look at it as genuinely helpful in a

(59:16):
way to build future successes, rather than just saying I
must be such a failure if they're offering slightly negative feedback. Well,
especially because in online comment culture, a lot of the
criticism is really personal, so it's an extra challenge to
depersonalize personalized criticism. Yeah, that's why, well, that's why I

(59:38):
appreciate so much the thoughtful emails we get when they
are offering a correction or criticism, and they are willing
to act like humans and take into account that we
are also humans and that we're not perfect and that
if we mess something up, we didn't do it on purpose.
And uh ps, listeners. The they in that sentence is
you so thank you, thank you for being cool, but

(01:00:01):
seriously thank you. Um. There's also a phrase from William
Faulkner that is super helpful, especially if you're a writer.
Does it have any punctuation in it? There is a functuation.
It's just a phrase. Funknarian, very funknaria. Um. But this
can apply to really anything, any project you're working on

(01:00:23):
that you are attached to. And the thing is, you
gotta kill your darlings. You can't. You can't be too
precious with your work, because the more precious you are,
the harder it's going to be. Too accept constructive criticism
except that perhaps your work is not perfect. Well, it's
part of that fixed mindset stuff. I mean, I totally,

(01:00:45):
I very much appreciate the motivation behind saying kill your darlings,
because if your work, or your achievement or your whatever
is too precious to you, you won't be open to
that feedback and you won't be open then to potentially
creating something even greater. Like imagine if Oprah had not

(01:01:07):
been able to rise to being Oprah. I mean what,
we wouldn't have a podcast. Really, I wouldn't have a
T shirt coming in the mail. Um And through all
of this in the background, we need to be fostering
self compassion. It is the whole thing. And Amy puller
against st Amy talks about this a lot where we
need to get better about talking to ourselves like we

(01:01:28):
would a friend and self talk y'all. Oh, I can
tell you from personal experience again, like it is powerful,
and it is also powerful when you choose self compassion
over self hate and just say, you know what, what
would we would be? You know what would I say
to you if you were in the same situation exactly.

(01:01:50):
I was looking at my cellulite the other day and
I was starting to feel really bad, and I was like,
what would I say to my nice, smart friend. I
would be like, don't worry about it, you're amazing. Everybody
has it. Yeah, I'd be like, it's genetic. Also, watched
this stuff mom never told you video that would breakdown
why it's not a big deal and it's such a
lie that it is um And to go full circle

(01:02:14):
with this episode, I did want to come back around
to getting lick Fields courts piece, where in the process
of talking about how failure is so in fashion, he
takes issue with it, saying, you know what true vulnerability
is admitting you failed, that you're still failing and then
it hurts like hell, and being honest about this while

(01:02:36):
you're still in the thick of it is the real
triumph because a lot of times when we hear about failures,
it's in the context of success, in the context of
how these failures got you to success. But when you
are knee deep in the middle of it, you might
not be able to see the light at the end
of the tunnel. And we need to be able to
acknowledge that, hey, sometimes that failure is not going to

(01:02:58):
lead to you know, your own Oprah network and magazine
where you are on the cover every single month. I
love it, and that it hurts, and that it's okay
that it hurts, and that it doesn't make you a
less cowardly person. And when all else fails, just remember
and by the shirt if you need it. Oprah wasn't
built in the day. No, but what amazing stuff she

(01:03:21):
is built of and is still building. I know, you know,
Oprah is still a work in progress and I knows it.
And I think Oprah God knows that. St Oprah knows it.
St Amy and st Oprah. You know, if if there
is an Oprah God, hopefully you are listening, both of you,

(01:03:41):
um and listeners. We want to hear from you about this. Obviously,
Caroline and I had a very personal connection with this episode. This.
This did feel a little bit like therapy. So thanks
for talking to me about a Caroline, UM. But I
do think this is such a such an important issue, UM,
And it's an important issue if you are a parent

(01:04:04):
or if you are a person or someone growing up, Like,
failure is a part of our day to day life
and it's nothing to be scared of. And it's taken
me a long time to figure that out. But y'all,
I'll tell you what, it can be pretty liberating and exciting.
So we want to hear from you. Mom Stuff at
how stuff works dot com is our email address. You
can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages

(01:04:27):
on Facebook. And we have a message to share with
you right now just one message, because it's a special
note that I loved and appreciated, and it is lengthy,
so I didn't want to be reading letters for the
next three hours. But this is a letter from our
j in response to sort of our Philish Laughly episode,

(01:04:52):
but really not focused on Phillis. She says, Hi, as
a new Wish listener of your show, I have to
start by saying that I appreciate so much what the
two of you were doing with Sminty. I discovered the
show while driving across the state to a work conference,
and it was such a breath of fresh air. Listening
to Sminty has been a huge comfort to me and
helps me feel less alone as a young woman in

(01:05:12):
a much older, male dominated field, which is exactly what
I'm writing in about today. In your most recent episode
on Philish Laughley, I remember Kristen being frustrated at the
prospects of ever undoing peace laughs influence. But maybe I
can give you a little hope. I'm a twenty six
year old woman from Pennsylvania who works in local government.

(01:05:33):
You may have heard of my fictional alter ego, Leslie Nope,
heroin to park Lovers and young women in politics. Everywhere,
And just to be clear, no, Parks and Wreck is
not a hyperbole. It's an accurate depiction of my life.
Much like Leslie, I'm in an assistant city manager role
in a medium sized suburban community and have a boss
that deeply believes in the sacred practice of grilling year round.

(01:05:57):
Her character did a lot for women interested in public
sector careers. But although Parks and chronicle the difficulties of
breaking into the old boys club, there's one thing they
failed to address more explicitly, the severity of the gender
divide in the field of local government. Only cent of
leadership roles in local government are held by women. That's

(01:06:18):
one of the worst industry statistics out there when you
consider this alongside the fact that the average age of
local government employees is three years higher than the national average,
and actually one of the professional managers organizations I'm a
member of has an average age of fifty five, more
than twice my age. It can seem like a really
unwelcoming career for young women, but I'm writing to say

(01:06:40):
that it's so so important for women to get involved
in public careers and help swing back the gender gap.
The Atlantic recently published a really interesting piece about how
women entering the workforce has negatively affected civic society, and
they also give a shout out to piece Labs herself,
essentially saying that before women were working like the boys,

(01:07:01):
they used to be the driving force behind civic groups
that advocated for policy change, volunteered in their communities, worked
on campaigns to get out the vote, and so on.
So if women are too busy having those darn jobs
to make their voices heard in the same way as
they did in the early twentieth century, and only of
us are in management in local government, where exactly are we?

(01:07:24):
And now I'm going to let Kristen finish this letter
as if we're reading too o wonderful. The good news
is that recent graduates of degree programs that lead to
public careers like public administration or been planning aren't nearly
so lopsided. The bad news is that even when we
do get into leadership roles, because of the nature of small,
individual community offices, we don't have much contact with each other.

(01:07:47):
It can be really isolating and difficult to hang in
there for the long haul. And that's where Sminty comes
in for me. And don't even get me started on
how to navigate planning a family when we're you're one
of a handful of people running an entire town. Fortunately,
because many of us are those troublesome millennials that can't
ever put down their phones and get off Facebook, something

(01:08:08):
that really baffles at least one speaker at every professional gathering.
By the way, we're forming networks of young people online
at both the regional and national level. Emerging Leaders in
Local Government is one of the larger organizations, and they've
been doing incredible work putting spotlight on the hashtag problem
and how we can solve it. I know local government

(01:08:30):
probably sounds like a really boring field to a lot
of people. Technology is sometimes a struggle, and yes, most
of our records are still on paper, but it's truly
an awesome way to invest in the community and actively
make a difference that you can see. I may not
be testifying in front of the Senate every day, but
if a senior resident calls me because they're no longer
able to maintain their home and are afraid they'll have

(01:08:51):
to leave it, there are ways I can help. I
get to watch thousands of people come together at our
annual Autumn Festival, and also drive them to their parked
cars in a golf cart when it's were Seriously, I
wasn't kidding about Leslie note being my alter ego. Oh man,
and I just hope that you have a little Sebastian
hanging out at that Fall Fall festival. Back to the letter,

(01:09:12):
During a time when federal politics are making people feel
anxious and alienated, it's a way to connect with residents
and still have them feel like they can have a
good relationship with their government. That's my spiel. Hopefully I've
restored some of your faith that women in government are
here taking back their influence on politics and policy, even
if sometimes you don't see us. R J. Thank you

(01:09:35):
so much for this fantastic letter. Thank you for the
work that you're doing. Also thank you for the reminder
that local government matters. And y'all, if you're listening to
this before the presidential election, don't forget the down ballot votes,
don't forget so also don't forget to send us your thoughts.

(01:09:56):
Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
email address and for links to all of our social
media as well as all of our blogs, videos and
podcasts with our sources. So you can learn more about
how to fail. Head on over to stuff Mom Never
told you dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com