May 2, 2018 • 48 mins
Irin Carmon, coauthor of Notorious RBG, joins Anney and Bridget to talk about how the Supreme Court justice became so notorious .
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening the stuff Mom never told you. On May four,
RBG a new documentary about the life of Ruth bader
(00:25):
Ginsburg Pitt Theaters, and today we're going to talk about
the notorious RBG as she is sometimes known, and the
social media frenzy surrounding her. Um, and I'm part of
that social media frenzy. I'm a big fan. I can
tell by the shirts that you're wearing. But in fact,
about Annie, when she is doing an episode about something specific,
(00:48):
she will dress dress apart. She dresses apart, but only
I get to enjoy it, I know. But you can
imagine throwing her episode about action figures. We talked heavily
about the Avengers and she you wore your special Avenger
shirt and now I'm wearing my RVG shirt. Always always
a good day when I get to wear it. Um
(01:11):
and uh, we're we'll do like a very brief background
here because we um Kristen and Caroline did do a
pretty in depth episode on RBG, but just to just
to set the scene a little bit right Bridge, just
to set the scene exactly so Ruth bader Ginsburg wasn't
always s notorious RBG that we know and love. She
(01:32):
was born on March fifteenth, nineteen thirty three. A pisces
like myself, so she's probably super creative and very flighty
and fight. She's a justice. I'm not gonna put that
on her. That's on me. Um. She was born Joan
Ruth Bader in Brooklyn, New York. Uh fun fact, she
had the family nickname of Kiki because she was a
(01:54):
kicky baby, so that was her nickname Um. When she
started school, her mom discovered that her class had several
little girls named Joan and so she should go by
Ruth instead to avoid confusion, and she put up with
sexist crap a lot. During the early days of her career.
She was doctor being pregnant from mental floss um. As newlyweds,
(02:16):
Ginsburg and her husband, Marty relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
where Marty was expected to fulfill his Army Reserve duties
for the next two years. Ruth took the Civil Service
exam and qualified to be a claim to adjuster, but
then made the mistake of mentioning that she was three
months pregnant with her daughter Jane. Suddenly RBGS civil service
ranking was reduced and with it her title and pay.
(02:39):
That's terrible. But also even in looking at her biography
a little bit, you can sort of see where all
of these sort of stings of sexism not only were
they harmful for her career, but it's almost like she
was like, Okay, well I can remember this or later, right,
and she it seems like she really they really sort
of like lit a feminist fire in her in a
(03:00):
kind of way. Motivators for sure, exactly exactly, Honestly, the
dean of her law school sounds like kind of a jerk.
In nineteen fifty six, Ginsburgh was one of only nine
female students matriculating into Harvard Law. Now her dean, it's
been reported Aaron Griswold hosted a dinner for the women
and at the end of the meal, he went through
the women one by one and said, how do you
(03:22):
justify taking a spot away from a qualified man? Ah? Yeah,
that's pretty bad. Later it was recorded that he was
joking and it was just it was all in good fun.
But you know, part of me is like, oh, I'm sure, well, sure,
the backlash happened. It's a joke. Yeah, yeah, But I
also feel like it's you're talking about people who had
(03:44):
just become law school students. If the dean of your
law school, even if he thought this was a funny
prank or like, oh, this is where they're gonna get
their go exam, that would be really demoralizing. And it
would that would if that happened to me as a
young student, that would stick with me for life. Guess
what I'm saying. And so, either even if he thought
that this as a joke, it was all in good
fun because of the power and balance is there, I
(04:06):
can imagine that that was not in good fun for
the women who were participating in that dinner. Yeah, and
it would kind of overshadow because in your head, you're
probably thinking, how am I gonna what jobs am I
going to get? And then you hear this joke and
you're thinking, oh, well, maybe I have gotten I've succeeded
in this one step, but I have all these other
hurdles now of finding a job when I'm competing with
(04:28):
men and they're probably just going to go with men
a lot of the time. Exactly. That's probably exactly how
I felt. Yeah, not a good feeling. It's not a
good feeling, and Furthermore, even though she graduated at the
top of her class, she found that very few law
firms would open their doors to women. Despite being you know,
really talented and having glowing recommendations from her professor's, Ginsburg
(04:51):
was actually only able to get her foot in the
door with a lower ranking district court judge, Edmund Palmary,
and this was only after one of her mentors threatened
stop sending other clerks his way if he turned her down.
And so again, she was someone who was super talented,
yet she had to go through all of these means
just to get her foot in the door, despite the
(05:11):
fact that they should have been knocking down her door
her right. But when she found her group, she really
really found it. She was notable for really understanding that
the way that you create social change is a long game. Right.
She was playing chess, not checkers, and her work focused
on winnable, achievable fights and chipping away at gender inequality
(05:33):
that way, And so it was thinking about things of like, Okay,
how could I win this small thing that's going to
have incremental change down the line, which I think is
so savvy and so smart. Yeah, she was like slowly
moving as forward in ways that she she felt she
could succeed um. In nineteen seventy two, Gainsberg co founded
(05:53):
the Women's Rights Projects at the American Civil Liberties Union
the a c l U, and in nineteen and three
she became the a c l USED General Counsel. The
Women's Rights Project and related to a c l U projects,
participated in three hundred gender discrimination cases by nineteen seventy four.
As the director of the a c l USE Women's
(06:14):
Rights Projects, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the
Supreme Court between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy six,
winning five. Rather than asking the Court to end all
gender discrimination at once, Ginsburg charted a strategic course, taking
aim at specific discriminatory statutes and building on each successive victory.
(06:37):
She chose plaintiffs carefully, at times picking male plaintiffs to
demonstrate that gender discrimination was harmful to both men and women.
The laws Ginsburg targeted included those that, on the surface
appeared beneficial to women, but in fact reinforced the notion
that women needed to be dependent on men. I think
that's so smart, because, let's face it, if people feel like,
(06:57):
you know, oh, this is something women are asked, were
something special? You know when you want this focusing on
you know men, I think is so smart because people
will look at that and think, oh, this isn't just
women wanting to quote something special. It's this is about equality.
And this seems to permeate through her career. I had
that when dealing with cases like this, she decided to
(07:18):
use the word gender and not sex because she thought
the word sex would distract or sort of confuse people.
And so you can really get a sense of how
smart she was that sort of packaging and marketing and
being strategic about these cases. Yeah, um, just knowing kind
of how to how to sell it, how to get it,
get it the support behind it, and how to get
(07:39):
it past or how to win these arguments of very
impressive and eventually it led to her nomination to the
Supreme Court of the United States. UM President Bill Clinton
nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
on June fourteenth, to fill the seat vacated by retiring
Justice Byron White. Ginsburg was recommended to Clinton by then
(08:02):
U S. Attorney General Janet Reno after a suggestion by
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch At the time of her nomination,
Ginsburg was viewed as a moderate, which might surprise some
of you. Um Clinton was reportedly looking to increase the
court's diversity, which Ginsburgh did as the first Jewish justice
since the nineteen sixty nine resignation of Justice A. Fortis,
(08:24):
and as only the second female. I'm appointee. Wow, that's
I mean, awesome, but also I know that's always when
you hear those first and you're like yeay, but also
really yeah, that's generally my reaction to first. So, Annie,
what are some of your favorite things about rbg Oh?
I love that picture of her nodding off during the
(08:47):
State of the Union of jess And according to her,
it was because she'd had a little too much why
I can identify. And also when she was going undergoing
treatments for calling cancer and pancreatic cancer in two thousand nine,
she didn't miss one oral argument. And her workout is
(09:08):
intense to this day, intense, and as someone who works
out a lot, I she's a role model in that way.
And recently Stephen Colbert um he did the work out
with her and it was hilarious and of course he
could not keep up, and who could I know, right,
I love that about her. What about you? Do you
(09:29):
have a favorite? Yeah? My favorite thing about her, this
is a bit strange, is that, even though she's this
amazing figure, this icon, you can just tell that she
is deep down a grandma, right Like she comes off,
she just gives me such grandma vibes. Our guest Arend,
will be talking to a bit later in today's episode.
(09:50):
There's this great MSNBC exclusive interview that Arin did with RBG,
and in this interview, Rin shows her on her phone
a picture of people who have gotten RBG inspired tattoos,
and Rbg's reaction is such a great grandmother reaction. Here's
what she says. I saw that, and I thought it
was I thought it was a joke. I thought it
(10:12):
was something you pasted onto your own. But I am
a little distressed that people are really doing that. Distressed
why because why would you make something that can't be
removed on yourself? Now that's some classic grandma reaction. So
(10:32):
I just love that, you know, even though she's this amazing,
amazing badass, you know, Supreme Court Justice, that she also
you can just tell that she's a grandma. And I
love that. I love that she you know, it just
seems so normal despite being so important and influential. So
that's what I love the most about her. I think, yeah,
(10:54):
she's very relatable. And actually here from the Washington Post
or in Carmone in just a side get Rin actually
wrote the book on RBG. Literally, we'll hear from her
after this quick break and we're back today. We're joined
(11:16):
by Rin Carmone. UM a brief by on her. She's
a journalist, author, speaker. She is a contributing writer to
the Washington Post Outlook section and the co author of
Notorious rb G, The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
which spent three months on the Times best seller list.
And I believe you worked with her. I did be
(11:36):
worked together at MSNBC. She's actually she's one of the
reasons why I wanted to work there at the time.
She was one of the figures who was doing the
most like fearless feminist journalism out there. And I was
a big reader of Rin's work before I ever worked
at MSNBC. And when I first got to work with her,
I was like, oh my god, it's a wren basically basically,
(11:57):
but I was never cool. But um, That's why I'm
so happy that she's joining us today. So my first
question for you is probably one that you get kind
of a lot. So I know that the concept of
this book was popularized by Shanna kness next Tumbler account
in support of Ginsburg's descent of the Shelby County the
Holder decision, which struck down a portion of the Voting
Rights Act. But how did this book come to be? Like?
(12:18):
Is it? Is it typical for a book to be
based on a Tumbler account? Is that unusual? Um? Well,
I think it's it's not typical for it to be
a book that anybody wants to read. To be honest.
We so Shanna Uh never really was trying to create
some kind of social phenomenon. She was just upset that
(12:39):
the Supreme Courts had struck down this really important voting
rights protection that would have the impact of disenfranchising people's color.
And so when she wanted to celebrate justice Ginsburg's discent,
she just decided, Uh to take to the Internet and
make a play on words on Biggie Smalls and this
than eighty year old jewish Uh, tiny little lady with
(13:01):
a very very powerful voice. Um, but you know, obviously
it's struck a chord at our editor at HarperCollins, Julia
chafit through the real visionary and she looked at all
of these spontaneous celebrations, not just Shauna's, also our friend Amina,
so you know, she did a meme. This is also
its featured in this upcoming documentary you Can't spell truth
(13:23):
without Ruth. She plastered she in her Franks Frank. She
plastered posters all around DC with it. Um. There there
was something happening, and Julia recognized it and said that
there needed to be a new kind of biography that
would capture the spirit of the Tumbler, which was in
fact really substantive. I mean again it really started because
(13:45):
of a voting rights descent, but also have as kind
of playful as you say spirit, uh you know, juxtaposed
this serious high court judge with a gangster rapper but
as Justice skips like Justice Kisburgh likes to say, they're
both from Brooklyn's um. So so Julia, Julia came up
(14:07):
with the idea for the book went to Shanna. Shanna
was as she's a baby at that point, she was
in her uh third year of law school, and I
believe had just begun. She started to tumble in her
second year of law school, and Shanna just said, sure,
but you know, I want to write with somebody because
I don't know how to write a book. Um and
so uh, through the great Anna Homes, my former boss
(14:28):
at Jezebel, who was first to Bridge about this project,
I ended up teaming up with Shanna and Julia and
at a break next pace writing the book together. Conceptualizing
the book. Um, I did the words, Shanna was in
charge of the images. We came up with all the
ideas together. We both did interviews. Shawna fact checked it
as it was the labor of love that we juggled with.
(14:50):
At that point. You know, Bridget and I used to
work together at MSNBC. I had a full time job
at MSNBC. Shanna was in law school. Uh, it was
sort of a crazy pay. But what we realized is
that no matter how many hours we were working, nothing
could compare to Justice Ginsburgh's own stamina. She can get
by on two hours of sleep at night and you
(15:13):
see her high quality output. So that was our real inspiration. Wow,
So what's it like do? Is that of curiosity? What's
it like to write a book with another person. I
asked to say that I really enjoyed the collaborative process
of working in pairs. You know. Ultimately, the actual words
of the book I wrote by myself in a room,
but that was only one part of it. Um. From
(15:34):
the beginning, you know, we sat down and we figured out, like,
what's each chapter. We had really really strict deadlines because
the book had to come about in a breakneck pace
by book standards. UM. I think let's see, it was
about six months until the entire book was due. Um.
So we sat down Sean and I in my living
(15:54):
room and we figured out, you know, how do we
organize this, What parts of her life are in it?
What aren't? Um? What does the book look like? What
does it feel like? You know when you ask, uh,
what's what is turning a tumbler into a book? We
thought about how we wanted us to feel like more
than just kind of like a meme that somebody printed
(16:15):
that and took between the covers of a book. Um.
You know. And that's what I mean when I say,
did anybody turn and blog into a book that people
wanted to read? Well, it's it's taking the spirit of
it but it's also thinking, this is a story that
people are going to want to read, This is a
beautiful object that people are going to want to hold.
This is going to have visual components and charts and
(16:36):
annotated dissents, you know, with handwritten in the margins by
Justice Ginsburg's former clerks, so all along. You know, the
story was a really important part of it, and the
reporting that we did. You know, we interviewed her clerks
and her children and people she worked with and so long. Um,
that was a big part of it. But it was
also about the entire experience of having kind of different
(16:57):
entry points into her story. And so for some people
that would be sitting down and reading the words of
the books from beginning to end, and for other people
it might be like, wow, she was such a babe
when she was young, and we have photos of that too.
And for some people it might be I would never
read a legal brief, but now the key portions of
it are excerpted in the book, and some of the
(17:19):
most brilliant legal minds, uh like uh jan A Nelson
from the Legal Defense on the end of the LCP
Legal Defense fun who was actually arguing these voting rights
cases writing in the margins on Justice ginsbrook Shelby County descent,
and explaining it to you in her voice and in
a kind of conversational way, like your friend would break
it down for you. So all of those different entry points,
(17:41):
we thought we're going to be the way that the
reader is going to experience the story of her life
in a way that they might not in any other books. Yeah.
That's something that I love about the book so much
is that I'm not someone who would ever maybe read
a legal brief, but I have this book on my
coffee table, and people who come to my apartment, you know,
they're like, oh, RBG. You know it's there are so
many different entry points. No matter what your what your
(18:04):
connection to RBG is so so out of curiosity. So
what is your like, what personally draws you to to Ginsburg?
What is it about her as a figure that you feel, um,
you know, drawn to. Well. The one of the essential
mysteries of the book was that the book sought to
solve is how did she become the notorious RBG? Because
(18:29):
when you read about her when she was first confirmed
to the Supreme Court, everybody says that she's this moderate
consensus seeker, she shy, she's reserved. UM. But that's not
really the whole story, because before she ever was a judge,
she was UM the co founder of the A f
o U Women's Rights Project and one of the most important,
(18:52):
is not the most important, litigators fighting on behalf of
constitutional equality for women. And so in order to do that,
she wasn't such a go along and get a long
kind of person. She wasn't so sort of a you know,
handmaiden of the status quo. In fact, she was going
in front of these all male courts and arguing that
(19:13):
women were people, which at the time no Supreme court
had ever recognized. So that was pretty radical. But but
there's a paradox in that her style was not so radical. UM.
And what we understood in writing the book is that
the way that she became that person is by suffering
(19:34):
enormous adversity in her life. UM. She lost her sister
and her mother are very young. UM. While she was
UM in law school, she was she was married and
a young mother, and while juggling all of that, her
husband became pregnant. Because me, her husband became ill with cancer. UM.
She was a victim of pregnancy discrimination. Um twice over um.
(19:57):
She was repeatedly passed over for jobs being incredibly brilliant.
And what she took from all of this was a
kind of steely determination, but it was also very self contained.
I mean, she was not the person, you know, with
her fist up in the air. Um. She was the
person writing the radical brief and somehow convincing the world
(20:18):
that she was being conciliatory and consensus seeking. And so
for me, what was really fascinating was how did she
become this person? And what's what's incredible is that, I
mean history also forced trying to become a person that
she hadn't been to before, which is a fire starter.
You know, the person who is going head to head
(20:39):
with Donald Trump and who is writing fierce dissense and
who's out on the road being in public in a
way that very few Supreme Court justices have ever been.
That person has been created by this historical moment wherein
where the Court has lurched to the right um, where
obviously the presidency is what it is. And she's the
person for this historical moment, whether anyone could have predicted
(21:02):
it or not. She's the person who has the kind
of stamina and steely determination to see it through to
the end. Yeah. Kind of going off of that. When
RBG was first appointed to the Supreme Court, Clinton thought
she was a moderate, but we think of her today
as this badass progressive. What do you make of this paradox? Well,
(21:24):
I think part of it is as she has genuinely
become more comfortable using her voice in a fiercer way,
and I think she there are some issues in fact
in which I think she has moved to the left,
so to speak. And so even though that's not what
legal scholars would like to perceive it as. For example,
I think there were some early decisions. I mean, she's
always been fiercely approachoic, she has always fought for racial
(21:49):
justice and to uphold legal remedies to try to um
remain his dooric racial inequality. Um. But you know, there were,
for example, there were some criminal justice decisions that might
be considered more moderate that she joined in the past.
But in the past couple of years there's been a
dissenting block that it's just her and justice, so to Mayor,
oftentimes she's joining, she's the only justice joining justice, so
(22:12):
to Mayor's opinions. In various cases that have to do
with Fourth Amendment rights and other issues that it's the
and the death penalty. Um. It does seem like to
some extent her views have changed, but was also changed
that she's become more comfortable, um being a public voice.
You know, Justice Ginsburg, I think never saw herself as
(22:35):
being in spending her life in the minority. You know,
only recently did she have her first chance since she
joined the Supreme Court to assign a majority opinion, meaning
that she was the most senior justice in the majority.
She has always been the senior justice in the minority
of the five four maths that happens on some of
these controversial decisions. And so uh, history has made her
(22:59):
into it was a great dissenter and she embraced that
role with gusto. Yeah, nobody can dissent like RB. I
love a good blistering man. I like that woman can
go the collar. A good question, is it is it
true that she so she's known for her collars. Is
(23:20):
it true that she wears them specifically when she's going
to dissent. She does indeed have a special dissenting collar,
which interestingly is made by Banana Republic. She got it
in a gift bag when she was Glamor a Woman
of the Year, and now you know she wears it
every time she descents a woe betide you. I mean,
I even got a chance when I stack checked the
(23:40):
book to show her a court sketch, because you know,
there are no cameras glad in the courtroom, and so
I showed her a sketch that we were going to
use in the book, and I said, I just need
to verify that this is your dissenting collar in this
little scribble, and she said, yes. I wonder if she
wears it when she's going to go argue with the
dry cleaner, if she's like, how do you put on
my special arguing collar. Well, you know, fun fact, last
(24:03):
um September she officiated at my wedding and she and
everybody asked, you know, what is she going to wear?
And my husband kept saying, well, I hope she doesn't
wear her dissension color. Yeah, that's amazing, that's amazing. I
hope she wore her a gree collar. Like, yes, I'm
okay with this. Yes, she did wear her judicial robes,
(24:26):
and I think you know some of the listen, some
of those she just wears her oral arguments to be
out in a bad I don't know if she has
like a special wedding color or not. I think she
told me that the color that she had was sent
to her by a fan, so she does wear fan crafts.
If anyone out there has a descend collar that they're
dying to make for her or sorry and a Greek color,
(24:47):
I see crafty Annie's eyesight here. I've got to go
right now, podcast over project, so I gotta hit up
those nearing needles. So well, what was it so you mention?
And I mean she officiated your wedding, which I saw
on Instagram and I couldn't believe it. What was that? Like?
Jetfis Ginsburg loves weddings. I mean, obviously she does not
(25:09):
have time to officiate every single wedding that she's asked for.
So was this great honor that she came to Brooklyn Um,
place of her childhood, uh to to affreciate our wedding
in September. Um. She you know, she was funny and
gracious and amazing, and she stayed her dinner and the
toast during the toast, uh my brother said that in
(25:31):
lieu of toasting us he was just going to read
the entigraphy of JOSEPHS. Ginsburg's descend in Shelby County, and
she burst out laughing, And so that was definitely a highlight. Oh,
I love it. I love it. I mean one of
the reasons that it was so special, I mean, she
had met my husband before in the course of writing
the book, and he was a great support to me
(25:54):
to read the insane process of writing the book. Um.
But she had the kind of marriage that any any
person looking to partnership with dream of having. UM. Her
husband was a successful lawyer in his own right, but
energetically defended her, uh far for her, advocated for her,
supported her through difficult times in her life. I mean,
(26:16):
they supported each other. But unfortunately, we really don't have
so many models of marriage that are true partnership where
people take turns supporting each other. And so, you know,
one of the things that we told her when we
asked about it was that we really sought to emulate
the kind of partnership that they had. That's beautiful. Yeah,
I mean, that's something that I loved about her, is that,
(26:39):
you know, I think it's when we talk about public
figures through are women oftentimes it's like, oh, what's their marriage, Like,
are they married? But I think that because her marriage
really was this egalitarian model for how you can be
a feminist and how you can be this like badass
professional woman but also have your marriage kind of exist
as a way to sustain that word and not something
(27:01):
that gets in the way in that word. I think
is is really unusual and something we don't often see
that we should definitely be celebrating it. Yeah, I mean,
I think, you know, traditional injustices are not so open
about their lives, and I do think that there's a service.
One of the reviewers of our book said this, and
I've been thinking about it a lot. She was talking
about the justice's willingness to think with a lynch Waldo
(27:24):
in The New Republic writing about the justice is willingness
to allow herself to be photographed and to talk about
elements of her personal life and not really kind of,
I mean she kind she is very private, but compared
to how other Supreme Court justices have been in the
public eye, she's open and generous and talking about the
challenges that she's faced and also how she's made at work,
(27:47):
and given that we have so few women and positions
of power, let alone women women in positions of power
who were committed to feminists and anti risist ideas. Um.
I think it's really important to figure out, like how
what does that life look like? You know, what is
how do you how do you make it work? How
do you have a happy life? You know? And how
(28:07):
she had a happy life there has been died in
two thousand and ten, but they were together for nearly
sixty years and had a remarkable, if not perfect, I
mean nothing perfect partnership. And you know, the documentary RBG
that's coming out has really exceptional never before seen footage
of RBG and her husband Marty interacting where you just
(28:30):
see what a love Affharaoh was. I mean, it was
a great intellectual and personal and familial partnership, but they
were just in love with each other. It's just incredible
to see it. And so to know that she could
both contribute so much to the cause of equality and
to the law and also be a human being. I
(28:50):
think that that it does a service for people trying
to understand, like how do you be in the world
totally so so K don't coming off that point. I
know that relationships and friends ships are very very important
to RBG. She's written quite a bit about her friendship
with Sandra Day O'Connor, you know, both these awesome women
who were on the Supreme Court. Um. But something that
comes up a lot and people talk about her as
(29:12):
her sort of I guess strange bedfellow friendships with people
that you might not think that she would be super
close with, people like that like Antem Scalia. Right, do
you do you see that as something that is I
mean I always wonder like, are they really friends? Are
they It's just one of those things where it's like, oh,
we get along super well, like we have no problems,
(29:34):
but really they're not, you know, are these relationships are
a key part of what makes her her? Yes. I mean,
I think in particular her friendship with Scalia, and you know,
with Santrade O'Connor was somebody who she didn't always agree with,
a close appointed by wrong with break and as well
(29:54):
there friendships across different views of the world old I
think for her were really important and showing um that
that human beings can talk to each other and work
together productively despite all their differences. And I think she's
really committed to the Supreme courts functioning as it should.
(30:14):
She talks a lot about collegiality. I mean, these these
are very quaint notions in Washington d C. Of Trump
um or even you know, the Washington DC of Mitch McConnell.
She told me when I interviewed her UM in two
thousand and fifteen, Justice Ginsburgh said, yeah, maybe someday we'll
have a Congress that works again. And you know it's
(30:36):
not it's not just it's not just about friendship. Although
her friendship with Justice Scalia was real. I mean they
would spend New Year's together, and they would go to
the opera together, and she liked that he made her laugh.
I mean, she's a great sense of humor. People think
that she's very serious, but in fact she's the devilish
sense of humanity. Was very witty, but beyond that, it
was also about Stolengthending, the work of the chord Sandrade
(30:59):
O'Connor are frequently crossed the aisle, and she's a woman's right.
She helped save Rovie wade In and my parenthood versus
Casey and Scalia. Also, even though a lot of the
times they disagreed, they would join together on Fourth Amendment decisions,
and even when he was descending like he did in
(31:19):
US versus Virginia, which was one of her most important
majority cases, where she um she essentially enshrined into law
some of the work that she had been doing of
a litigator, UM saying that the Virginia Military Institute could
not bar women from entry. Even when Justice Scalia dissented
(31:41):
in that case, she felt like he made it made
her work stronger because he gave her a copy of
his descent on a Friday, and she said, he destroyed
my weekend, but he made my opinion so much better.
Just thinking about the spirit of debate and truly engaging
with each other and not in an ad comin UM
way has always been something that's very important to her.
(32:03):
Let's take a quick break and we're back. Yeah, you
touched on UM too of her kind of big cases
decisions that we we were going to ask about. So UM,
we were wondering, what are some of the decisions in
(32:25):
cases that you think define RBG professionally, one that she
did as a judge or as a lawyer, either all
of the above. Um, Well, you know, one of her
one of her favorite cases that she did as a lawyer. Uh,
this was Stephen Wise and Felds. It's a case that
(32:47):
she started and took all the way to the Supreme Court,
believe nineteen seventy six. This was a case of a
widowed father who um was not given the same kind
of parental benefits because he was a widower and his wife,
who had died in childbirth was a woman. The way
(33:11):
that the tax code was construed, they're really only worth
these kinds of benefits available to women from male wage
and or earners. So she got each of the members
of the Supreme Court enough for a majority to agree
that this violated his rights as a man as a
father to equal protection. It violated the dead woman's rights
(33:36):
because her work was being treated as lesser than that
of a man. And it also violated the rights of
the child UM who wasn't getting the same access to
caregiver benefits UM, just because the caregiver who was taking
care of him as a man as the counter Intuitively,
you know a lot of people at the time that
while bringing all these cases on behalf of men, it's
(33:57):
the women's rights project, not the men's rights project. But
her long game was that if you drew attention to
ways in which gender constricted everybody and also in limited
the rights of men. More people would understand that what
(34:17):
was at stake, you know, was much bigger than whether
women could do just what men could do. It was
about rebuilding a society in which everybody could participate equally. Yeah,
you touched on something that I love about her career.
RBG really kind of focused on the long game, right,
So she thought about what are some achievable, winnable ways
that I can ship away at gender imbalance. And she often,
(34:41):
and this is like strategically very interesting, she often shows
cases that involved men and so you know, like the
case you just described where it's a it's clearly a
gender imbalance, but you it's not one of the people
wouldn't look at it and say, oh, it's the women
wanting something special, right, That's not how someone would look
at it. And I think it's really this. It really
(35:02):
shows a lot of savvy right where a lot of
people will be playing checkers and she's playing chess, where
she's thinking about it in a long term way, in
a way that I think is often difficult to like.
If you're someone who wants to make progressive change. Or
social change. It's difficult to think of it as this
will have a lasting impact down the line, because you
want something that's going to be like I can see
(35:23):
the results now, this is going to happen, you know,
right away, very quickly. And she really just I don't know,
I just really appreciate her strategic acumen when it comes
to the cases that she took on and the ways
that she went about them. She was your stategic because
when she began in the early nineteen seventies, UH, no
(35:44):
Supreme Court decision had ever said yet discriminating against women
was unconstitutional because all of the ways that the law
treated men and women differently were construed as favors to women.
So exempting women from jury service, UM, treating them differently
(36:05):
in the legal or political context, uh a fewer benefits,
and so on, preferring men over women in administrative cases. UM.
All of that was seen as women being put on
a pedestal. It was seen as UH doing women a favor,
making women take mandatory unpaid maternity ly when they became pregnant,
(36:26):
basically forcing a moment off the job. All of that
was saying, we're doing you a favor. Go back to
the home and you'll be taken care of by a man,
even though that was not a reality. Uh. That was
that did not reflect every woman's reality, that they had
a male salary to rely on, particularly women of color.
And so by the end of her time going up
(36:47):
against that barrier, Uh, the court had come around to
the idea that women also deserve equal protection under the law.
But she did so by picking cases that were not sweeping.
They were definitely step by step incremental. I think that
that's one reason why she's become so radicalized in the
(37:08):
last few years, why she had become such a fierce dissenter,
because um cases like Shelby County were activists. They I mean,
Shelby County gutted the Voting Rights Actor, which had just
been reauthorized just a few years earlier and signed by
George W. Bush by bipartisan majority of Congress, was signed
(37:29):
by Republican President. And here was this George Shelby Bush
appoint to John Roberts saying that racism is dead and
we don't need the Voting Rights Act anymore. I wonder
what he thinks about racism being dead now. And she,
you know, did so on the sweeping theory that didn't
really have ground. I mean, the entire point of the
(37:50):
way that the Supreme Court works is step by step cases,
building on cases. But the protest has always been that
it's liberal toward judicial activists. I And in a series
of cases, including this one, the Court did act in
a kind of sweeping way, and I think that helped
create Justice Ginsburg ins notorious RBG out of outrage for
(38:13):
the fact that the rules are not being followed. And
her notion was that if we did act in an
incremental way to try to create a more equal country
and to try to um make good on the promise
of we the people to meet all the people, that
we had to do it in a step by step
(38:34):
away to avoid backlash. Of course, the backlash has come anyway.
The times have forced her to be you know what
she is now, which is whenever possible, she crashed a compromise,
and there have been a few surprising times in the
last couple of years where she hasn't offended and where
she's convinced Justice Kennedy the Keys swing vote to join
(38:56):
her in really important cases, including cases involving abortion rights
and immigration, and you know, recently also a case with
with judge justice corsage. But when the time comes, she's
ready with that hot dissenting pen intercol. Yeah. So something
(39:18):
this is a just to switch gears a little bit.
Something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Is this sort of progressive tradition that is president in
the Jewish community. Do you feel like she is a
like is this part of her legacy, like as a
Jewish woman? You know, Um, there are so many great
examples of radical progressive fighters for social change who are
(39:39):
Jewish and their you know, their religion really informs why
they come, you know, why they are involved in social
change work, which I think is really beautiful and something
that we don't talk enough about. Is this something that
you see in her legacy? I know that she has
talked about being inspired by the Jewish tradition that is
very much based in law and justice and in seeking justice.
(40:01):
And she actually has uh a quote displayed in her office,
Frank displayed in her office about seeking justice and all things.
But I also know that, um, her early stirring the
feminism actually happened because as much as there is the
social justice tradition in Judaism, like many religions, there's also
a patriarchal tradition, and so when her mother died, she
(40:25):
was not counted and gathering in sort of the quorum
for prayer um because she was a woman. And it
was one of the first moments. She was eighteen, maybe
seventeen at the time and immediately realized that she did
not count as a mourner because she was a woman.
And I think that that actually laid the groundward for
(40:47):
her feminism. So yes, definitely, she draws on the tradition
of Jewish commitment to the text, which is very much
a part of Judaism. Legal um textualism, close reading of
laws in the Constitution. Certainly um is something that's co
current with the way that the Judaism is practice in
(41:07):
the United States and commitment to equality. But also I
think questioning the role of women in Judaism also helped
make her who she is. Yeah, I wanted to go
back to something you've mentioned a couple of times, which
is abortion um. Anti choice folks like to point out
(41:28):
sometimes that RBG has an issue with Roe v Wade,
But what's the reality of her thoughts on Roe v Wade. Well,
we talked about justice Ginsburgh's commitment to incremental change. When
she has talked about her problems with Roe v. Wade,
it has not been because she doesn't support a woman's
(41:50):
access to abortion, because she vociferously supports reproductive freedom, whether
that's the decision to a youth contraception have an abortion,
or she represented women who were being forced to have
abortions by the government. Uh and women in North Carolina
(42:10):
women of color were sterilized against their will were also
some of her clients. So the full panoply of reproductive
freedom has long been a really core part of the
work that she's done. But her problem with Roevie Wig
was twofold. One is that she thought that it went
too far, too fast, so it struck down all of
the criminal abortion bands in a single decision, and she
(42:34):
thought that if the court had moved more slowly, then
potentially there would have been less of a backlash, which
a lot of scholars disagree with, but this is her
well earned opinion. Um a lot of people think that
there would have been a backlash no matter what. The
other problem that she has is that the reasoning of
the opinion, she wanted it to be grounded in women's equality,
(42:59):
not in the right to privacy. Now, there were equality
arguments made to the justices that they weren't ready to
hear them at that point. Subsequently, there's been a lot
more of understanding about how both liberty and equality are
important to reproductive freedom. But if you read Rovie Wade,
as Justice Ginsburgh has often pointed out, it talks about
(43:21):
the doctor's right to practice, it hardly at all considers
what this means in a woman's life. It was written
by Justice Harry Blackman, who was had been a general
counsel of the Mayo Clinic and was really sympathetic to
doctor's arguments. And this notion of privacy, as you know,
doesn't get you very far in a reproductive justice context.
(43:44):
Right is, if it's your right to privacy, then do
you have a right to, for example, get medicaid coverage
of abortion? While the Court has found no, but you
do not UM. And that's certainly an equality issue that
has a very different impact on low income people and
people of color and the country. So it's a limited
doctrine UM that doesn't take into account all of the
(44:07):
Court's other cases that are about equality of women UM.
And and so I think if she were rewriting history.
She's often said that she wishes that her case about
an Air Force nurse to the Air Force is actually
saying that she had to either get an abortion on
base because abortion was actually legal in on military basis
(44:30):
despite being illegal in the United States, or quit. And
so she wanted it to focus on the full option
of reproductive choice in it being about a woman's right
to chart her own course and the government not being
able to tell her what to do. But this is
the history that we have totally, totally. So my last question,
(44:50):
what is something about RBG that would surprise people? What
is something about her that you're that you're like, Oh,
people don't know this about her. People don't know necessarily
that she can do to they push up. I don't.
I don't know. Actually, she worked out with Stephen Colber
recently and I believe you can also in the forthcoming
(45:13):
documentary RBG, her trainer is interviewed and you can see
Justice Ginsburg workout and she there she is doing push
ups and squats and pull up maybe not pull ups,
but she is an eighty five year old two time
cancer survivor who has never missed a day on the
bench and part of what accounts for her stamina is
(45:36):
her fierce workout routine and her amazing trainer Bryant, who
has his own book called The RBG Workout, which is
an awesome book. There's a entire bookshelf of RBG books
out there right now, and I love him and his book.
We also have an illustrated version of the workout in
our book and an interview with him. Um. He's part
of the reason that Justice Ginsburg, whose life is very
(45:59):
important to the few true of democracy, is able to
keep her breakneck schedule because she worked out every day
and twice a week with him. I am so glad
you mentioned that because that's one of my favorite facts
about her. She could probably kick our asses. Yeah. We
did her workout for the Melissa Harris Parry Show r
(46:22):
I P M HP Show, which was a great show
that show. Yeah, and uh and definitely by the end
when we're like you win work, I love it. That's
like one of my favorite I don't know if it's
a mean but one of my favorite RBG sayings is
what is it? I'm going to butcher it? But it's like,
(46:43):
RBG didn't survive cancer twice for you to stay in
bed and watch Law in Order of the runs, Right,
It's like this idea that if she can be cancer twice,
work out every day, be this badass contributor to the
Supreme Court, you can get out of bed, you know,
turn off Law and Order and like, go are you?
I think about that? Almost? I think about it too.
(47:05):
I mean, I had to Fish is exactly fifty years
older than me, and I'm exhausted just reading about her schedule.
But it's definitely something to aspire to. Absolutely could not
have put it better myself. Arian, Thank you so much
for being here today. Where can folks find out more
about what you're up to? Uh? Usually Twitter is the
best way. Um, I'm just I R I N on
(47:26):
Twitter or Eran Carmelon on Instagram. Also, we we recently
came out with a young reader's edition of Notorious RBG,
which is available in bookstores and online. Um, it's for
the eight ten year old reader in your life, or
really anyone who likes a shorter, clearer, more explained version
(47:47):
of Notorious RBG. So you've heard it here first. If
you've got a little one in your life who is
maybe a future Supreme Court justice in the making, go
out and pick up this edition for her because it's
gonna probably change your life, yes, or for him? For him, yeah, exactly,
we should read about RBG. Absolutely awesome. Thank you so
much for being here a minute. I really really appreciate it.
(48:09):
It's fun to be with you guys. Thank you well.
Smithy listeners. What are your thoughts on RBG? Do you
have the T shirt and the book and the dolls
and the Halloween costumes? If you addressed your child up
as RBG for havelween, please let us know tag us
and all those Instagram photos. You can find us on
Instagram at stuff but I've never told you on Twitter,
(48:30):
at mom Stuff podcast, and as always, send us your
favorite RBG descent via email at mom stuff at how
stuff works dot com
Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're
listening the stuff Mom never told you. On May four,
RBG a new documentary about the life of Ruth bader
(00:25):
Ginsburg Pitt Theaters, and today we're going to talk about
the notorious RBG as she is sometimes known, and the
social media frenzy surrounding her. Um, and I'm part of
that social media frenzy. I'm a big fan. I can
tell by the shirts that you're wearing. But in fact,
about Annie, when she is doing an episode about something specific,
(00:48):
she will dress dress apart. She dresses apart, but only
I get to enjoy it, I know. But you can
imagine throwing her episode about action figures. We talked heavily
about the Avengers and she you wore your special Avenger
shirt and now I'm wearing my RVG shirt. Always always
a good day when I get to wear it. Um
(01:11):
and uh, we're we'll do like a very brief background
here because we um Kristen and Caroline did do a
pretty in depth episode on RBG, but just to just
to set the scene a little bit right Bridge, just
to set the scene exactly so Ruth bader Ginsburg wasn't
always s notorious RBG that we know and love. She
(01:32):
was born on March fifteenth, nineteen thirty three. A pisces
like myself, so she's probably super creative and very flighty
and fight. She's a justice. I'm not gonna put that
on her. That's on me. Um. She was born Joan
Ruth Bader in Brooklyn, New York. Uh fun fact, she
had the family nickname of Kiki because she was a
(01:54):
kicky baby, so that was her nickname Um. When she
started school, her mom discovered that her class had several
little girls named Joan and so she should go by
Ruth instead to avoid confusion, and she put up with
sexist crap a lot. During the early days of her career.
She was doctor being pregnant from mental floss um. As newlyweds,
(02:16):
Ginsburg and her husband, Marty relocated to Fort Sill, Oklahoma,
where Marty was expected to fulfill his Army Reserve duties
for the next two years. Ruth took the Civil Service
exam and qualified to be a claim to adjuster, but
then made the mistake of mentioning that she was three
months pregnant with her daughter Jane. Suddenly RBGS civil service
ranking was reduced and with it her title and pay.
(02:39):
That's terrible. But also even in looking at her biography
a little bit, you can sort of see where all
of these sort of stings of sexism not only were
they harmful for her career, but it's almost like she
was like, Okay, well I can remember this or later, right,
and she it seems like she really they really sort
of like lit a feminist fire in her in a
(03:00):
kind of way. Motivators for sure, exactly exactly, Honestly, the
dean of her law school sounds like kind of a jerk.
In nineteen fifty six, Ginsburgh was one of only nine
female students matriculating into Harvard Law. Now her dean, it's
been reported Aaron Griswold hosted a dinner for the women
and at the end of the meal, he went through
the women one by one and said, how do you
(03:22):
justify taking a spot away from a qualified man? Ah? Yeah,
that's pretty bad. Later it was recorded that he was
joking and it was just it was all in good fun.
But you know, part of me is like, oh, I'm sure, well, sure,
the backlash happened. It's a joke. Yeah, yeah, But I
also feel like it's you're talking about people who had
(03:44):
just become law school students. If the dean of your
law school, even if he thought this was a funny
prank or like, oh, this is where they're gonna get
their go exam, that would be really demoralizing. And it
would that would if that happened to me as a
young student, that would stick with me for life. Guess
what I'm saying. And so, either even if he thought
that this as a joke, it was all in good
fun because of the power and balance is there, I
(04:06):
can imagine that that was not in good fun for
the women who were participating in that dinner. Yeah, and
it would kind of overshadow because in your head, you're
probably thinking, how am I gonna what jobs am I
going to get? And then you hear this joke and
you're thinking, oh, well, maybe I have gotten I've succeeded
in this one step, but I have all these other
hurdles now of finding a job when I'm competing with
(04:28):
men and they're probably just going to go with men
a lot of the time. Exactly. That's probably exactly how
I felt. Yeah, not a good feeling. It's not a
good feeling, and Furthermore, even though she graduated at the
top of her class, she found that very few law
firms would open their doors to women. Despite being you know,
really talented and having glowing recommendations from her professor's, Ginsburg
(04:51):
was actually only able to get her foot in the
door with a lower ranking district court judge, Edmund Palmary,
and this was only after one of her mentors threatened
stop sending other clerks his way if he turned her down.
And so again, she was someone who was super talented,
yet she had to go through all of these means
just to get her foot in the door, despite the
(05:11):
fact that they should have been knocking down her door
her right. But when she found her group, she really
really found it. She was notable for really understanding that
the way that you create social change is a long game. Right.
She was playing chess, not checkers, and her work focused
on winnable, achievable fights and chipping away at gender inequality
(05:33):
that way, And so it was thinking about things of like, Okay,
how could I win this small thing that's going to
have incremental change down the line, which I think is
so savvy and so smart. Yeah, she was like slowly
moving as forward in ways that she she felt she
could succeed um. In nineteen seventy two, Gainsberg co founded
(05:53):
the Women's Rights Projects at the American Civil Liberties Union
the a c l U, and in nineteen and three
she became the a c l USED General Counsel. The
Women's Rights Project and related to a c l U projects,
participated in three hundred gender discrimination cases by nineteen seventy four.
As the director of the a c l USE Women's
(06:14):
Rights Projects, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the
Supreme Court between nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy six,
winning five. Rather than asking the Court to end all
gender discrimination at once, Ginsburg charted a strategic course, taking
aim at specific discriminatory statutes and building on each successive victory.
(06:37):
She chose plaintiffs carefully, at times picking male plaintiffs to
demonstrate that gender discrimination was harmful to both men and women.
The laws Ginsburg targeted included those that, on the surface
appeared beneficial to women, but in fact reinforced the notion
that women needed to be dependent on men. I think
that's so smart, because, let's face it, if people feel like,
(06:57):
you know, oh, this is something women are asked, were
something special? You know when you want this focusing on
you know men, I think is so smart because people
will look at that and think, oh, this isn't just
women wanting to quote something special. It's this is about equality.
And this seems to permeate through her career. I had
that when dealing with cases like this, she decided to
(07:18):
use the word gender and not sex because she thought
the word sex would distract or sort of confuse people.
And so you can really get a sense of how
smart she was that sort of packaging and marketing and
being strategic about these cases. Yeah, um, just knowing kind
of how to how to sell it, how to get it,
get it the support behind it, and how to get
(07:39):
it past or how to win these arguments of very
impressive and eventually it led to her nomination to the
Supreme Court of the United States. UM President Bill Clinton
nominated her as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
on June fourteenth, to fill the seat vacated by retiring
Justice Byron White. Ginsburg was recommended to Clinton by then
(08:02):
U S. Attorney General Janet Reno after a suggestion by
Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch At the time of her nomination,
Ginsburg was viewed as a moderate, which might surprise some
of you. Um Clinton was reportedly looking to increase the
court's diversity, which Ginsburgh did as the first Jewish justice
since the nineteen sixty nine resignation of Justice A. Fortis,
(08:24):
and as only the second female. I'm appointee. Wow, that's
I mean, awesome, but also I know that's always when
you hear those first and you're like yeay, but also
really yeah, that's generally my reaction to first. So, Annie,
what are some of your favorite things about rbg Oh?
I love that picture of her nodding off during the
(08:47):
State of the Union of jess And according to her,
it was because she'd had a little too much why
I can identify. And also when she was going undergoing
treatments for calling cancer and pancreatic cancer in two thousand nine,
she didn't miss one oral argument. And her workout is
(09:08):
intense to this day, intense, and as someone who works
out a lot, I she's a role model in that way.
And recently Stephen Colbert um he did the work out
with her and it was hilarious and of course he
could not keep up, and who could I know, right,
I love that about her. What about you? Do you
(09:29):
have a favorite? Yeah? My favorite thing about her, this
is a bit strange, is that, even though she's this
amazing figure, this icon, you can just tell that she
is deep down a grandma, right Like she comes off,
she just gives me such grandma vibes. Our guest Arend,
will be talking to a bit later in today's episode.
(09:50):
There's this great MSNBC exclusive interview that Arin did with RBG,
and in this interview, Rin shows her on her phone
a picture of people who have gotten RBG inspired tattoos,
and Rbg's reaction is such a great grandmother reaction. Here's
what she says. I saw that, and I thought it
was I thought it was a joke. I thought it
(10:12):
was something you pasted onto your own. But I am
a little distressed that people are really doing that. Distressed
why because why would you make something that can't be
removed on yourself? Now that's some classic grandma reaction. So
(10:32):
I just love that, you know, even though she's this amazing,
amazing badass, you know, Supreme Court Justice, that she also
you can just tell that she's a grandma. And I
love that. I love that she you know, it just
seems so normal despite being so important and influential. So
that's what I love the most about her. I think, yeah,
(10:54):
she's very relatable. And actually here from the Washington Post
or in Carmone in just a side get Rin actually
wrote the book on RBG. Literally, we'll hear from her
after this quick break and we're back today. We're joined
(11:16):
by Rin Carmone. UM a brief by on her. She's
a journalist, author, speaker. She is a contributing writer to
the Washington Post Outlook section and the co author of
Notorious rb G, The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
which spent three months on the Times best seller list.
And I believe you worked with her. I did be
(11:36):
worked together at MSNBC. She's actually she's one of the
reasons why I wanted to work there at the time.
She was one of the figures who was doing the
most like fearless feminist journalism out there. And I was
a big reader of Rin's work before I ever worked
at MSNBC. And when I first got to work with her,
I was like, oh my god, it's a wren basically basically,
(11:57):
but I was never cool. But um, That's why I'm
so happy that she's joining us today. So my first
question for you is probably one that you get kind
of a lot. So I know that the concept of
this book was popularized by Shanna kness next Tumbler account
in support of Ginsburg's descent of the Shelby County the
Holder decision, which struck down a portion of the Voting
Rights Act. But how did this book come to be? Like?
(12:18):
Is it? Is it typical for a book to be
based on a Tumbler account? Is that unusual? Um? Well,
I think it's it's not typical for it to be
a book that anybody wants to read. To be honest.
We so Shanna Uh never really was trying to create
some kind of social phenomenon. She was just upset that
(12:39):
the Supreme Courts had struck down this really important voting
rights protection that would have the impact of disenfranchising people's color.
And so when she wanted to celebrate justice Ginsburg's discent,
she just decided, Uh to take to the Internet and
make a play on words on Biggie Smalls and this
than eighty year old jewish Uh, tiny little lady with
(13:01):
a very very powerful voice. Um, but you know, obviously
it's struck a chord at our editor at HarperCollins, Julia
chafit through the real visionary and she looked at all
of these spontaneous celebrations, not just Shauna's, also our friend Amina,
so you know, she did a meme. This is also
its featured in this upcoming documentary you Can't spell truth
(13:23):
without Ruth. She plastered she in her Franks Frank. She
plastered posters all around DC with it. Um. There there
was something happening, and Julia recognized it and said that
there needed to be a new kind of biography that
would capture the spirit of the Tumbler, which was in
fact really substantive. I mean again it really started because
(13:45):
of a voting rights descent, but also have as kind
of playful as you say spirit, uh you know, juxtaposed
this serious high court judge with a gangster rapper but
as Justice skips like Justice Kisburgh likes to say, they're
both from Brooklyn's um. So so Julia, Julia came up
(14:07):
with the idea for the book went to Shanna. Shanna
was as she's a baby at that point, she was
in her uh third year of law school, and I
believe had just begun. She started to tumble in her
second year of law school, and Shanna just said, sure,
but you know, I want to write with somebody because
I don't know how to write a book. Um and
so uh, through the great Anna Homes, my former boss
(14:28):
at Jezebel, who was first to Bridge about this project,
I ended up teaming up with Shanna and Julia and
at a break next pace writing the book together. Conceptualizing
the book. Um, I did the words, Shanna was in
charge of the images. We came up with all the
ideas together. We both did interviews. Shawna fact checked it
as it was the labor of love that we juggled with.
(14:50):
At that point. You know, Bridget and I used to
work together at MSNBC. I had a full time job
at MSNBC. Shanna was in law school. Uh, it was
sort of a crazy pay. But what we realized is
that no matter how many hours we were working, nothing
could compare to Justice Ginsburgh's own stamina. She can get
by on two hours of sleep at night and you
(15:13):
see her high quality output. So that was our real inspiration. Wow,
So what's it like do? Is that of curiosity? What's
it like to write a book with another person. I
asked to say that I really enjoyed the collaborative process
of working in pairs. You know. Ultimately, the actual words
of the book I wrote by myself in a room,
but that was only one part of it. Um. From
(15:34):
the beginning, you know, we sat down and we figured out, like,
what's each chapter. We had really really strict deadlines because
the book had to come about in a breakneck pace
by book standards. UM. I think let's see, it was
about six months until the entire book was due. Um.
So we sat down Sean and I in my living
(15:54):
room and we figured out, you know, how do we
organize this, What parts of her life are in it?
What aren't? Um? What does the book look like? What
does it feel like? You know when you ask, uh,
what's what is turning a tumbler into a book? We
thought about how we wanted us to feel like more
than just kind of like a meme that somebody printed
(16:15):
that and took between the covers of a book. Um.
You know. And that's what I mean when I say,
did anybody turn and blog into a book that people
wanted to read? Well, it's it's taking the spirit of
it but it's also thinking, this is a story that
people are going to want to read, This is a
beautiful object that people are going to want to hold.
This is going to have visual components and charts and
(16:36):
annotated dissents, you know, with handwritten in the margins by
Justice Ginsburg's former clerks, so all along. You know, the
story was a really important part of it, and the
reporting that we did. You know, we interviewed her clerks
and her children and people she worked with and so long. Um,
that was a big part of it. But it was
also about the entire experience of having kind of different
(16:57):
entry points into her story. And so for some people
that would be sitting down and reading the words of
the books from beginning to end, and for other people
it might be like, wow, she was such a babe
when she was young, and we have photos of that too.
And for some people it might be I would never
read a legal brief, but now the key portions of
it are excerpted in the book, and some of the
(17:19):
most brilliant legal minds, uh like uh jan A Nelson
from the Legal Defense on the end of the LCP
Legal Defense fun who was actually arguing these voting rights
cases writing in the margins on Justice ginsbrook Shelby County descent,
and explaining it to you in her voice and in
a kind of conversational way, like your friend would break
it down for you. So all of those different entry points,
(17:41):
we thought we're going to be the way that the
reader is going to experience the story of her life
in a way that they might not in any other books. Yeah.
That's something that I love about the book so much
is that I'm not someone who would ever maybe read
a legal brief, but I have this book on my
coffee table, and people who come to my apartment, you know,
they're like, oh, RBG. You know it's there are so
many different entry points. No matter what your what your
(18:04):
connection to RBG is so so out of curiosity. So
what is your like, what personally draws you to to Ginsburg?
What is it about her as a figure that you feel, um,
you know, drawn to. Well. The one of the essential
mysteries of the book was that the book sought to
solve is how did she become the notorious RBG? Because
(18:29):
when you read about her when she was first confirmed
to the Supreme Court, everybody says that she's this moderate
consensus seeker, she shy, she's reserved. UM. But that's not
really the whole story, because before she ever was a judge,
she was UM the co founder of the A f
o U Women's Rights Project and one of the most important,
(18:52):
is not the most important, litigators fighting on behalf of
constitutional equality for women. And so in order to do that,
she wasn't such a go along and get a long
kind of person. She wasn't so sort of a you know,
handmaiden of the status quo. In fact, she was going
in front of these all male courts and arguing that
(19:13):
women were people, which at the time no Supreme court
had ever recognized. So that was pretty radical. But but
there's a paradox in that her style was not so radical. UM.
And what we understood in writing the book is that
the way that she became that person is by suffering
(19:34):
enormous adversity in her life. UM. She lost her sister
and her mother are very young. UM. While she was
UM in law school, she was she was married and
a young mother, and while juggling all of that, her
husband became pregnant. Because me, her husband became ill with cancer. UM.
She was a victim of pregnancy discrimination. Um twice over um.
(19:57):
She was repeatedly passed over for jobs being incredibly brilliant.
And what she took from all of this was a
kind of steely determination, but it was also very self contained.
I mean, she was not the person, you know, with
her fist up in the air. Um. She was the
person writing the radical brief and somehow convincing the world
(20:18):
that she was being conciliatory and consensus seeking. And so
for me, what was really fascinating was how did she
become this person? And what's what's incredible is that, I
mean history also forced trying to become a person that
she hadn't been to before, which is a fire starter.
You know, the person who is going head to head
(20:39):
with Donald Trump and who is writing fierce dissense and
who's out on the road being in public in a
way that very few Supreme Court justices have ever been.
That person has been created by this historical moment wherein
where the Court has lurched to the right um, where
obviously the presidency is what it is. And she's the
person for this historical moment, whether anyone could have predicted
(21:02):
it or not. She's the person who has the kind
of stamina and steely determination to see it through to
the end. Yeah. Kind of going off of that. When
RBG was first appointed to the Supreme Court, Clinton thought
she was a moderate, but we think of her today
as this badass progressive. What do you make of this paradox? Well,
(21:24):
I think part of it is as she has genuinely
become more comfortable using her voice in a fiercer way,
and I think she there are some issues in fact
in which I think she has moved to the left,
so to speak. And so even though that's not what
legal scholars would like to perceive it as. For example,
I think there were some early decisions. I mean, she's
always been fiercely approachoic, she has always fought for racial
(21:49):
justice and to uphold legal remedies to try to um
remain his dooric racial inequality. Um. But you know, there were,
for example, there were some criminal justice decisions that might
be considered more moderate that she joined in the past.
But in the past couple of years there's been a
dissenting block that it's just her and justice, so to Mayor,
oftentimes she's joining, she's the only justice joining justice, so
(22:12):
to Mayor's opinions. In various cases that have to do
with Fourth Amendment rights and other issues that it's the
and the death penalty. Um. It does seem like to
some extent her views have changed, but was also changed
that she's become more comfortable, um being a public voice.
You know, Justice Ginsburg, I think never saw herself as
(22:35):
being in spending her life in the minority. You know,
only recently did she have her first chance since she
joined the Supreme Court to assign a majority opinion, meaning
that she was the most senior justice in the majority.
She has always been the senior justice in the minority
of the five four maths that happens on some of
these controversial decisions. And so uh, history has made her
(22:59):
into it was a great dissenter and she embraced that
role with gusto. Yeah, nobody can dissent like RB. I
love a good blistering man. I like that woman can
go the collar. A good question, is it is it
true that she so she's known for her collars. Is
(23:20):
it true that she wears them specifically when she's going
to dissent. She does indeed have a special dissenting collar,
which interestingly is made by Banana Republic. She got it
in a gift bag when she was Glamor a Woman
of the Year, and now you know she wears it
every time she descents a woe betide you. I mean,
I even got a chance when I stack checked the
(23:40):
book to show her a court sketch, because you know,
there are no cameras glad in the courtroom, and so
I showed her a sketch that we were going to
use in the book, and I said, I just need
to verify that this is your dissenting collar in this
little scribble, and she said, yes. I wonder if she
wears it when she's going to go argue with the
dry cleaner, if she's like, how do you put on
my special arguing collar. Well, you know, fun fact, last
(24:03):
um September she officiated at my wedding and she and
everybody asked, you know, what is she going to wear?
And my husband kept saying, well, I hope she doesn't
wear her dissension color. Yeah, that's amazing, that's amazing. I
hope she wore her a gree collar. Like, yes, I'm
okay with this. Yes, she did wear her judicial robes,
(24:26):
and I think you know some of the listen, some
of those she just wears her oral arguments to be
out in a bad I don't know if she has
like a special wedding color or not. I think she
told me that the color that she had was sent
to her by a fan, so she does wear fan crafts.
If anyone out there has a descend collar that they're
dying to make for her or sorry and a Greek color,
(24:47):
I see crafty Annie's eyesight here. I've got to go
right now, podcast over project, so I gotta hit up
those nearing needles. So well, what was it so you mention?
And I mean she officiated your wedding, which I saw
on Instagram and I couldn't believe it. What was that? Like?
Jetfis Ginsburg loves weddings. I mean, obviously she does not
(25:09):
have time to officiate every single wedding that she's asked for.
So was this great honor that she came to Brooklyn Um,
place of her childhood, uh to to affreciate our wedding
in September. Um. She you know, she was funny and
gracious and amazing, and she stayed her dinner and the
toast during the toast, uh my brother said that in
(25:31):
lieu of toasting us he was just going to read
the entigraphy of JOSEPHS. Ginsburg's descend in Shelby County, and
she burst out laughing, And so that was definitely a highlight. Oh,
I love it. I love it. I mean one of
the reasons that it was so special, I mean, she
had met my husband before in the course of writing
the book, and he was a great support to me
(25:54):
to read the insane process of writing the book. Um.
But she had the kind of marriage that any any
person looking to partnership with dream of having. UM. Her
husband was a successful lawyer in his own right, but
energetically defended her, uh far for her, advocated for her,
supported her through difficult times in her life. I mean,
(26:16):
they supported each other. But unfortunately, we really don't have
so many models of marriage that are true partnership where
people take turns supporting each other. And so, you know,
one of the things that we told her when we
asked about it was that we really sought to emulate
the kind of partnership that they had. That's beautiful. Yeah,
I mean, that's something that I loved about her, is that,
(26:39):
you know, I think it's when we talk about public
figures through are women oftentimes it's like, oh, what's their marriage, Like,
are they married? But I think that because her marriage
really was this egalitarian model for how you can be
a feminist and how you can be this like badass
professional woman but also have your marriage kind of exist
as a way to sustain that word and not something
(27:01):
that gets in the way in that word. I think
is is really unusual and something we don't often see
that we should definitely be celebrating it. Yeah, I mean,
I think, you know, traditional injustices are not so open
about their lives, and I do think that there's a service.
One of the reviewers of our book said this, and
I've been thinking about it a lot. She was talking
about the justice's willingness to think with a lynch Waldo
(27:24):
in The New Republic writing about the justice is willingness
to allow herself to be photographed and to talk about
elements of her personal life and not really kind of,
I mean she kind she is very private, but compared
to how other Supreme Court justices have been in the
public eye, she's open and generous and talking about the
challenges that she's faced and also how she's made at work,
(27:47):
and given that we have so few women and positions
of power, let alone women women in positions of power
who were committed to feminists and anti risist ideas. Um.
I think it's really important to figure out, like how
what does that life look like? You know, what is
how do you how do you make it work? How
do you have a happy life? You know? And how
(28:07):
she had a happy life there has been died in
two thousand and ten, but they were together for nearly
sixty years and had a remarkable, if not perfect, I
mean nothing perfect partnership. And you know, the documentary RBG
that's coming out has really exceptional never before seen footage
of RBG and her husband Marty interacting where you just
(28:30):
see what a love Affharaoh was. I mean, it was
a great intellectual and personal and familial partnership, but they
were just in love with each other. It's just incredible
to see it. And so to know that she could
both contribute so much to the cause of equality and
to the law and also be a human being. I
(28:50):
think that that it does a service for people trying
to understand, like how do you be in the world
totally so so K don't coming off that point. I
know that relationships and friends ships are very very important
to RBG. She's written quite a bit about her friendship
with Sandra Day O'Connor, you know, both these awesome women
who were on the Supreme Court. Um. But something that
comes up a lot and people talk about her as
(29:12):
her sort of I guess strange bedfellow friendships with people
that you might not think that she would be super
close with, people like that like Antem Scalia. Right, do
you do you see that as something that is I
mean I always wonder like, are they really friends? Are
they It's just one of those things where it's like, oh,
we get along super well, like we have no problems,
(29:34):
but really they're not, you know, are these relationships are
a key part of what makes her her? Yes. I mean,
I think in particular her friendship with Scalia, and you know,
with Santrade O'Connor was somebody who she didn't always agree with,
a close appointed by wrong with break and as well
(29:54):
there friendships across different views of the world old I
think for her were really important and showing um that
that human beings can talk to each other and work
together productively despite all their differences. And I think she's
really committed to the Supreme courts functioning as it should.
(30:14):
She talks a lot about collegiality. I mean, these these
are very quaint notions in Washington d C. Of Trump
um or even you know, the Washington DC of Mitch McConnell.
She told me when I interviewed her UM in two
thousand and fifteen, Justice Ginsburgh said, yeah, maybe someday we'll
have a Congress that works again. And you know it's
(30:36):
not it's not just it's not just about friendship. Although
her friendship with Justice Scalia was real. I mean they
would spend New Year's together, and they would go to
the opera together, and she liked that he made her laugh.
I mean, she's a great sense of humor. People think
that she's very serious, but in fact she's the devilish
sense of humanity. Was very witty, but beyond that, it
was also about Stolengthending, the work of the chord Sandrade
(30:59):
O'Connor are frequently crossed the aisle, and she's a woman's right.
She helped save Rovie wade In and my parenthood versus
Casey and Scalia. Also, even though a lot of the
times they disagreed, they would join together on Fourth Amendment decisions,
and even when he was descending like he did in
(31:19):
US versus Virginia, which was one of her most important
majority cases, where she um she essentially enshrined into law
some of the work that she had been doing of
a litigator, UM saying that the Virginia Military Institute could
not bar women from entry. Even when Justice Scalia dissented
(31:41):
in that case, she felt like he made it made
her work stronger because he gave her a copy of
his descent on a Friday, and she said, he destroyed
my weekend, but he made my opinion so much better.
Just thinking about the spirit of debate and truly engaging
with each other and not in an ad comin UM
way has always been something that's very important to her.
(32:03):
Let's take a quick break and we're back. Yeah, you
touched on UM too of her kind of big cases
decisions that we we were going to ask about. So UM,
we were wondering, what are some of the decisions in
(32:25):
cases that you think define RBG professionally, one that she
did as a judge or as a lawyer, either all
of the above. Um, Well, you know, one of her
one of her favorite cases that she did as a lawyer. Uh,
this was Stephen Wise and Felds. It's a case that
(32:47):
she started and took all the way to the Supreme Court,
believe nineteen seventy six. This was a case of a
widowed father who um was not given the same kind
of parental benefits because he was a widower and his wife,
who had died in childbirth was a woman. The way
(33:11):
that the tax code was construed, they're really only worth
these kinds of benefits available to women from male wage
and or earners. So she got each of the members
of the Supreme Court enough for a majority to agree
that this violated his rights as a man as a
father to equal protection. It violated the dead woman's rights
(33:36):
because her work was being treated as lesser than that
of a man. And it also violated the rights of
the child UM who wasn't getting the same access to
caregiver benefits UM, just because the caregiver who was taking
care of him as a man as the counter Intuitively,
you know a lot of people at the time that
while bringing all these cases on behalf of men, it's
(33:57):
the women's rights project, not the men's rights project. But
her long game was that if you drew attention to
ways in which gender constricted everybody and also in limited
the rights of men. More people would understand that what
(34:17):
was at stake, you know, was much bigger than whether
women could do just what men could do. It was
about rebuilding a society in which everybody could participate equally. Yeah,
you touched on something that I love about her career.
RBG really kind of focused on the long game, right,
So she thought about what are some achievable, winnable ways
that I can ship away at gender imbalance. And she often,
(34:41):
and this is like strategically very interesting, she often shows
cases that involved men and so you know, like the
case you just described where it's a it's clearly a
gender imbalance, but you it's not one of the people
wouldn't look at it and say, oh, it's the women
wanting something special, right, That's not how someone would look
at it. And I think it's really this. It really
(35:02):
shows a lot of savvy right where a lot of
people will be playing checkers and she's playing chess, where
she's thinking about it in a long term way, in
a way that I think is often difficult to like.
If you're someone who wants to make progressive change. Or
social change. It's difficult to think of it as this
will have a lasting impact down the line, because you
want something that's going to be like I can see
(35:23):
the results now, this is going to happen, you know,
right away, very quickly. And she really just I don't know,
I just really appreciate her strategic acumen when it comes
to the cases that she took on and the ways
that she went about them. She was your stategic because
when she began in the early nineteen seventies, UH, no
(35:44):
Supreme Court decision had ever said yet discriminating against women
was unconstitutional because all of the ways that the law
treated men and women differently were construed as favors to women.
So exempting women from jury service, UM, treating them differently
(36:05):
in the legal or political context, uh a fewer benefits,
and so on, preferring men over women in administrative cases. UM.
All of that was seen as women being put on
a pedestal. It was seen as UH doing women a favor,
making women take mandatory unpaid maternity ly when they became pregnant,
(36:26):
basically forcing a moment off the job. All of that
was saying, we're doing you a favor. Go back to
the home and you'll be taken care of by a man,
even though that was not a reality. Uh. That was
that did not reflect every woman's reality, that they had
a male salary to rely on, particularly women of color.
And so by the end of her time going up
(36:47):
against that barrier, Uh, the court had come around to
the idea that women also deserve equal protection under the law.
But she did so by picking cases that were not sweeping.
They were definitely step by step incremental. I think that
that's one reason why she's become so radicalized in the
(37:08):
last few years, why she had become such a fierce dissenter,
because um cases like Shelby County were activists. They I mean,
Shelby County gutted the Voting Rights Actor, which had just
been reauthorized just a few years earlier and signed by
George W. Bush by bipartisan majority of Congress, was signed
(37:29):
by Republican President. And here was this George Shelby Bush
appoint to John Roberts saying that racism is dead and
we don't need the Voting Rights Act anymore. I wonder
what he thinks about racism being dead now. And she,
you know, did so on the sweeping theory that didn't
really have ground. I mean, the entire point of the
(37:50):
way that the Supreme Court works is step by step cases,
building on cases. But the protest has always been that
it's liberal toward judicial activists. I And in a series
of cases, including this one, the Court did act in
a kind of sweeping way, and I think that helped
create Justice Ginsburg ins notorious RBG out of outrage for
(38:13):
the fact that the rules are not being followed. And
her notion was that if we did act in an
incremental way to try to create a more equal country
and to try to um make good on the promise
of we the people to meet all the people, that
we had to do it in a step by step
(38:34):
away to avoid backlash. Of course, the backlash has come anyway.
The times have forced her to be you know what
she is now, which is whenever possible, she crashed a compromise,
and there have been a few surprising times in the
last couple of years where she hasn't offended and where
she's convinced Justice Kennedy the Keys swing vote to join
(38:56):
her in really important cases, including cases involving abortion rights
and immigration, and you know, recently also a case with
with judge justice corsage. But when the time comes, she's
ready with that hot dissenting pen intercol. Yeah. So something
(39:18):
this is a just to switch gears a little bit.
Something that I spend a lot of time thinking about.
Is this sort of progressive tradition that is president in
the Jewish community. Do you feel like she is a
like is this part of her legacy, like as a
Jewish woman? You know, Um, there are so many great
examples of radical progressive fighters for social change who are
(39:39):
Jewish and their you know, their religion really informs why
they come, you know, why they are involved in social
change work, which I think is really beautiful and something
that we don't talk enough about. Is this something that
you see in her legacy? I know that she has
talked about being inspired by the Jewish tradition that is
very much based in law and justice and in seeking justice.
(40:01):
And she actually has uh a quote displayed in her office,
Frank displayed in her office about seeking justice and all things.
But I also know that, um, her early stirring the
feminism actually happened because as much as there is the
social justice tradition in Judaism, like many religions, there's also
a patriarchal tradition, and so when her mother died, she
(40:25):
was not counted and gathering in sort of the quorum
for prayer um because she was a woman. And it
was one of the first moments. She was eighteen, maybe
seventeen at the time and immediately realized that she did
not count as a mourner because she was a woman.
And I think that that actually laid the groundward for
(40:47):
her feminism. So yes, definitely, she draws on the tradition
of Jewish commitment to the text, which is very much
a part of Judaism. Legal um textualism, close reading of
laws in the Constitution. Certainly um is something that's co
current with the way that the Judaism is practice in
(41:07):
the United States and commitment to equality. But also I
think questioning the role of women in Judaism also helped
make her who she is. Yeah, I wanted to go
back to something you've mentioned a couple of times, which
is abortion um. Anti choice folks like to point out
(41:28):
sometimes that RBG has an issue with Roe v Wade,
But what's the reality of her thoughts on Roe v Wade. Well,
we talked about justice Ginsburgh's commitment to incremental change. When
she has talked about her problems with Roe v. Wade,
it has not been because she doesn't support a woman's
(41:50):
access to abortion, because she vociferously supports reproductive freedom, whether
that's the decision to a youth contraception have an abortion,
or she represented women who were being forced to have
abortions by the government. Uh and women in North Carolina
(42:10):
women of color were sterilized against their will were also
some of her clients. So the full panoply of reproductive
freedom has long been a really core part of the
work that she's done. But her problem with Roevie Wig
was twofold. One is that she thought that it went
too far, too fast, so it struck down all of
the criminal abortion bands in a single decision, and she
(42:34):
thought that if the court had moved more slowly, then
potentially there would have been less of a backlash, which
a lot of scholars disagree with, but this is her
well earned opinion. Um a lot of people think that
there would have been a backlash no matter what. The
other problem that she has is that the reasoning of
the opinion, she wanted it to be grounded in women's equality,
(42:59):
not in the right to privacy. Now, there were equality
arguments made to the justices that they weren't ready to
hear them at that point. Subsequently, there's been a lot
more of understanding about how both liberty and equality are
important to reproductive freedom. But if you read Rovie Wade,
as Justice Ginsburgh has often pointed out, it talks about
(43:21):
the doctor's right to practice, it hardly at all considers
what this means in a woman's life. It was written
by Justice Harry Blackman, who was had been a general
counsel of the Mayo Clinic and was really sympathetic to
doctor's arguments. And this notion of privacy, as you know,
doesn't get you very far in a reproductive justice context.
(43:44):
Right is, if it's your right to privacy, then do
you have a right to, for example, get medicaid coverage
of abortion? While the Court has found no, but you
do not UM. And that's certainly an equality issue that
has a very different impact on low income people and
people of color and the country. So it's a limited
doctrine UM that doesn't take into account all of the
(44:07):
Court's other cases that are about equality of women UM.
And and so I think if she were rewriting history.
She's often said that she wishes that her case about
an Air Force nurse to the Air Force is actually
saying that she had to either get an abortion on
base because abortion was actually legal in on military basis
(44:30):
despite being illegal in the United States, or quit. And
so she wanted it to focus on the full option
of reproductive choice in it being about a woman's right
to chart her own course and the government not being
able to tell her what to do. But this is
the history that we have totally, totally. So my last question,
(44:50):
what is something about RBG that would surprise people? What
is something about her that you're that you're like, Oh,
people don't know this about her. People don't know necessarily
that she can do to they push up. I don't.
I don't know. Actually, she worked out with Stephen Colber
recently and I believe you can also in the forthcoming
(45:13):
documentary RBG, her trainer is interviewed and you can see
Justice Ginsburg workout and she there she is doing push
ups and squats and pull up maybe not pull ups,
but she is an eighty five year old two time
cancer survivor who has never missed a day on the
bench and part of what accounts for her stamina is
(45:36):
her fierce workout routine and her amazing trainer Bryant, who
has his own book called The RBG Workout, which is
an awesome book. There's a entire bookshelf of RBG books
out there right now, and I love him and his book.
We also have an illustrated version of the workout in
our book and an interview with him. Um. He's part
of the reason that Justice Ginsburg, whose life is very
(45:59):
important to the few true of democracy, is able to
keep her breakneck schedule because she worked out every day
and twice a week with him. I am so glad
you mentioned that because that's one of my favorite facts
about her. She could probably kick our asses. Yeah. We
did her workout for the Melissa Harris Parry Show r
(46:22):
I P M HP Show, which was a great show
that show. Yeah, and uh and definitely by the end
when we're like you win work, I love it. That's
like one of my favorite I don't know if it's
a mean but one of my favorite RBG sayings is
what is it? I'm going to butcher it? But it's like,
(46:43):
RBG didn't survive cancer twice for you to stay in
bed and watch Law in Order of the runs, Right,
It's like this idea that if she can be cancer twice,
work out every day, be this badass contributor to the
Supreme Court, you can get out of bed, you know,
turn off Law and Order and like, go are you?
I think about that? Almost? I think about it too.
(47:05):
I mean, I had to Fish is exactly fifty years
older than me, and I'm exhausted just reading about her schedule.
But it's definitely something to aspire to. Absolutely could not
have put it better myself. Arian, Thank you so much
for being here today. Where can folks find out more
about what you're up to? Uh? Usually Twitter is the
best way. Um, I'm just I R I N on
(47:26):
Twitter or Eran Carmelon on Instagram. Also, we we recently
came out with a young reader's edition of Notorious RBG,
which is available in bookstores and online. Um, it's for
the eight ten year old reader in your life, or
really anyone who likes a shorter, clearer, more explained version
(47:47):
of Notorious RBG. So you've heard it here first. If
you've got a little one in your life who is
maybe a future Supreme Court justice in the making, go
out and pick up this edition for her because it's
gonna probably change your life, yes, or for him? For him, yeah, exactly,
we should read about RBG. Absolutely awesome. Thank you so
much for being here a minute. I really really appreciate it.
(48:09):
It's fun to be with you guys. Thank you well.
Smithy listeners. What are your thoughts on RBG? Do you
have the T shirt and the book and the dolls
and the Halloween costumes? If you addressed your child up
as RBG for havelween, please let us know tag us
and all those Instagram photos. You can find us on
Instagram at stuff but I've never told you on Twitter,
(48:30):
at mom Stuff podcast, and as always, send us your
favorite RBG descent via email at mom stuff at how
stuff works dot com
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Samantha McVey
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