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Hi, I'm Kara Swisher, and you're listening to Sway. Glenda Doyle has been on the New York Times bestseller list for fifty four weeks and counting for her memoir, Untamed fans include Oprah, Gwyneth Paltrow and Adele.

And when Joe Biden needed to turn out suburban women voters, his campaign, called Doyle, rejects the label influencer, even though she has one point five million Instagram followers, which, by the way, does make you influential.

But Doyle started off with a much smaller following on our popular Christian parenting blog, Mistery, which dealt with topics like her marriage and her faith. She landed a book deal and wrote about her struggles with motherhood, alcoholism, drug addiction and bulimia. Back then, she was raising a family with her husband.

Now she's married to a woman, soccer star Abby Wambach. Their relationship forms a big part of her latest book, Untamed.

So does the idea of being a cheater. Doyle's metaphor for living a life that's wild and free, uncaged by society's expectations. We'll get to the cheetah stuff later. But first, I want to address how other people have tried to define Doyel. You always dislike the label Christian mommy blogger, you would start off with mom story, which was Christian leaning.

Well, first of all, the only time that description began was when Abby and I announced our relationship. I had been writing forever without ever hearing that term. But when Abby and I announced our relationship, the first article I don't know was from some big newspaper. I can't remember which one it was, but it said Abby Wambach in love with Christian mommy blogger. So the reason why they said that was of course, that was the most shocking title that the media could match to Abby Wambach.

Right. So the rest of the world picked up that one frickin. And now on my tombstone and I know what else I do, it'll say Christian Moniba. And clearly I have some feelings about this. I feel like it's the most misogynistic, ridiculous title ever because no male activist or New York Times bestseller is described as a daddy. Right. Or by his religion anyway. So what was the question?

How do you identify that? OK. I didn't get near it, though. You are a mommy and you do write about bombing as a mommy thing. Yeah. And you know who gets to call me? My fucking kids don't even call me mommy. So certainly nobody else gets to OK. I refuse to think so. Giving you labels to be able to describe you is offensive.

It feels I guess as a writer, I'm I'm always trying to get to the truth of things. And to me, it feels like the way my life is played out and continues to is I keep changing and keep evolving. And I like that about life. And the second I put anything about after em, it feels like some kind of promise that I don't want to spend the rest of my life keeping right. It feels like I'm painting myself into a corner that, you know what, two years from now, everybody can say, oh, you said you were blah, blah, blah.

But I like the constant evolution.

But what I was interesting about is changing your story. One of the things I think you're conscious about is how people would view your previous work. So what what was it like doing work to convince your readers that what they read in Love Warrior, which was about trying to save your marriage with your husband, wasn't selling them a bill of goods and neat narrative that wasn't real? Yeah.

I remember handing that book to I think it was my friend Martha, or maybe it was Liz, Liz Gilbert, and this is just so people know, this is Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love, Fame and other many other books.

You know, she's one of my dearest friends in the world. And Oprah had already picked it as her book club pick. And I think my editors had chosen a tagline that was called an epic marriage redemption story. Right. And I remember I think it was Liz handing it back to me and saying, I don't know what the hell this is, but this is not a love story. And it's so interesting because when you read it, that's what it was reduced to as a tagline, because I think that's what sells right.

Everybody, if you give people a promise that like this will help your marriage or I don't know the point being, I think love where it's kind of sad. I think Love Warrior is like a person who's desperately trying to figure out, like it's too hard, like desperately trying to make this marriage thing work. And and I think it's a woman who is still very, very indoctrinated into believing that suffering is godliness. So it's a picture of you at that moment.

One of the it's interesting love war ends with the afterword about you and Greg renewing your vows. And the phrase togetherness is what Craig and I have chosen today. So you found that's a sad coda to what happened?

Well, now I don't write. I mean, now, you know, recently somebody said to me in an interview, actually in the very beginning of an untamed came out and somebody said, is it sad that you, you and Craig worked so hard to save your marriage and that in the end it's still failed? And that was just a funny moment for me, because Craig and I, neither of us would ever say that. Like, we don't consider it a failure.

Like we we married each other. We were so jacked up. I mean, I'd been sober for, like, five minutes, right? I mean, all of my messiness was out there. His we didn't find out. I didn't find out about it later. But like, we grew up a whole lot. Right. We grew we left each other. We left our marriage different, better fuller people with three kick ass kids and like this weird, blended, beautiful family we have now.

I don't buy the idea that that a successful marriage is one that is lasts forever, even when both people are frickin dying inside forever like that. I just don't.

Yeah, it's interesting. I myself got divorced and I said that to someone. This marriage isn't an investment that you then lose. It just is what it is, you know, just ends. That's OK. And I think it bothers people that actually bothered a lot of people. I had several people and I got divorced. You can't do that. I'm going to I absolutely can watch me.

I just did, you know. I mean, but I think it bothers people also because it scares people, because people feel like. You mean if I'm just desperately not happy, I have to leave. I think it's challenging.

There was like I was talking to a friend of mine after I said I was getting divorced and they kept asking me what percent happy I was, which I was like, what do you mean present? Like, what percent? Fifty percent. Because I'm like forty three percent happy.

And I was like, you'll be getting divorced and in the year. And she did. Exactly.

So let's talk a little bit about your influence on people though, because you're living sort of out loud. Everything you do as you shift and change, people seem to hang on everything you do. And the author Bernie Brown wrote about you, Glenn and Doyle is charged. People talk about the gospel of Glenn and Doyle.

Does it worry you that people are turning to influences like you in that way? What kind of responsibility do you feel?

I mean, just the word influence are so freaking annoying, I can't even begin to relate to it. It's so misogynistic, like is it? And by the way, that article unbelievably misogynistic.

It was an op ed in the Times by Author Listin, and she called you an instant evangelist. Oh, my God. Like, no, no other of our male Bernini's male counterparts were even mentioned in that article. It's only the women consider an influencer. I mean, only focusing on my Instagram account, not any of my books, not my activism, not my nonprofit. It's just and by the way, everybody who calls Britney a self-help guru, like it's such horseshit, her male counterparts, they're not self-help.

They're they write about leadership. Right. But since women are such a mess, any woman who dares to speak about her life is or other women's lives is a self-help person. Right. So a lot of that is framed in such a way that I'm not sure what an influencer is. I mean, I know that I'm a writer and an activist who has an Instagram account. And and I actually think that social media is what we make of it.

I think that I have a beautiful community on social media and there's some stuff about social media that makes me sad and depressed and crazy. And there's also my Instagram community has raised thirty million dollars for people all over the world. So I'm not sure what influencer means, but you know what it feels like. It feels like the new mommy blogger, it feels dismissive. I want you to go into why it's misogynistic. I want you to break that down.

Well, I think that it's very often the case that when a man puts work out into the world, the world looks at the work and says, is, is this work worthy? And I think that when a woman puts work out into the world, the world looks at the woman and says, is this woman worthy of putting out work? For example, the first big article that was put out about unnamed in a big newspaper. The headline was Glenn and Doyle writes, Third memoir, question mark, question mark, as if you shouldn't have many memoirs in you.

That's the suggestion. Like, Jesus Christ, this woman is going to say a third thing. Like we already let her say two things. She said two things. And then she's going to come back and say a third thing like who does this person think she is? Right. Sedaris came out with his new and it was like David Sedaris releases one hundred and fifty eight memoir about like not question mark. Question mark. So so that was just really interesting to me because it was like, oh, this is literal.

Like the literal headline is, is this woman worthy of putting out a third idea or does she have is she pulling something on us?

I think that was the issue, pulling something on us. But what do you call yourself if you're not in it? How do you describe yourself? I am a New York Times best selling writer, author, and I'm an activist. That's it, and I have a social media accounts like everyone else has jobs and social media accounts, it's still influential and you still have impact on people. You said you're an activist with a social media account, but you actually people do seem to be attached to you in a way that's that's almost religious in many ways.

When people talk about you who are big fans, they seem to be looking for something and you seem to give them answers.

Do you feel that way at all, ever? Well, I think it's interesting in terms of what a church does provide for people. I mean, in I have tried very, very hard to be part of church. And I think that church for me, organized religion for me, has required too much abandonment of my individual self and my free thinking. But what I have always loved about church is the sort of community, the connection, the belonging and the purpose.

Right. The service, the ability to connect to something bigger than yourself. And what my community is, is people who feel a sense of belonging, I think, because all different types of people and ideas are welcome there. But also for your purpose, because together I think this is your charity organization. And this community of women is not just people who are showing up and sharing quotes with each other. These this community of women is a group of people who have become the leading force of reuniting families at the border, who have showed up over and over and over again for people over all across the planet.

So its purpose, its service, it's like that feeling that the church gives you. Maybe this is the connection that we are there to feel less alone and to also turn our heartbreak into something that matters.

What is your what is your role in that community then?

Well, I think the really cool thing is, you know, I think a lot of people are surprised that our community has been able to roll so much with the huge changes in my life. Like, for example, how does a largely faith based community that is back then was largely Christian? Right. How do they all stick with you after your divorce when you announced marrying Abby? Right. How does that happen? And I think it's because. What has always mattered to me most is my sobriety, like I remember being on the bathroom floor holding a positive pregnancy test when I was twenty five and thinking there was something about me that said it's time to show up like now or never.

Everything good about my marriage and my parenting or my friendships or my career all has to just hangs on the sobriety. And what I learned very early about my sobriety is the only way I keep it is if I don't have shame and secrets. Right. Right.

And you wrote in 2011, Life is like playing those little Russian nesting dolls that pop out of each other one at a time, just when you think there can't be any more versions of yourself. Look, there's still more.

Mhm. Yeah. I mean listen that's interesting. That was a lot of years ago, but I think that if I had to I don't think versions make sense to me anymore. I think I'm just trying to. Get to the version of myself that I would have been if nobody else told me who I should be. And I think that I keep getting a little bit closer to that, and I think that it's it feels more of a returning honestly than I'm becoming different things, meaning you're making the choices, meaning I'm making the choices.

And it's surprising sometimes. I mean, when I fell in love with Abbie, just to be clear, I had never even kissed a girl before. Like, I had no context for what was happening. And what happened is that I had to go dramatically outside of every single thing that had been expected of me to find a love that felt true, where I finally felt comfortable in my own skin. And that's what I've had to do it every freakin area of my life.

That's what I've had to do with faith, with gender, with all of it. So but that feels like a returning like a shedding of all of these. The ways that I was living and being that the world told me would make me happy and successful.

So let's talk about that because it's untamed. Is about that about your shift. You had never considered being gay as a gay person. I've known since I was four, like. Absolutely, yeah. And so and they would say the same thing. Right. Listen, I've so much to to learn about this. I mean, truthfully, I was having a conversation with a friend a while back and she was saying to me, how what? Like you didn't know.

Like you never knew, you weren't pretending before and now you're not turning now. And I said, well, you know, like, I've honestly I've always felt like women's bodies were way more attractive than men's bodies. But but everybody thinks that she goes. Glenanne No, they don't. I don't do that. Yeah. And I was like, what? I do feel, though, that well, I understand completely now the need for sticking with the born this way narrative.

I think there's a wider experience of queerness like I and so many of us are afraid to talk about it because it feels like there's only room for one narrative inside of the LGBTQ experience. And that's no more in this way. Like the idea of, well, I don't know, like is it possible there's a lot more that like experience and learning and politics? Is it possible this is all more fluid and the entire story is not you're either in the closet or you're out?

When I talk like this, alarm bells go off often I have endless conversations with my friends who are LGBTQ activists and who say to me, this is why I'm talking like that is dangerous. And then I also have so many other people who are like, oh, my God, are you saying that out loud? Like, I've never and that's how I feel to talk about why it would be dangerous.

I mean, here you are in a high profile gay relationship with a woman. Why is that dangerous, not identifying it?

So it's dangerous because. I talk about the fact that I should be able to be free to share my story and my truth in any way that I need to and want to, if I want to talk about being queer as being fluid, that maybe I don't feel like I was born in this way, that that is a privilege that I have because it that saying I am free to speak in any way I want to about queerness. The world accepts like 25 queer women, and it's because they're white and it's because they're they have fame privilege and it's because there are a lot of different things.

It's because I'm married to a gay icon, like I have a lot of freedom that a lot of queer kids and people all over the country are still dealing with Bible Belt politics, where the only way their families will allow them to stay out of conversion therapy is if their families can hold on to this narrative that God made them this way and that it's immutable and then it's inborn and that is their excuse for allowing their children to live. So when I speak in terms of choice, that is a threat to the very thing that keeps queer people all over the country safe.

You tell your story rather loudly, actually, in a way that you didn't hold back. You met Avi and you fell in love with her instantly at an event, at a conference. What was the price of acting on it?

You know, when we finally shared this with very close people in my career, they the general consensus very directly to me was this will be career suicide. Like, you can do this. You can you can leave your husband six weeks before this actual launch of this book. But it will be criticism. OK, but the real one was the kids. And it was I was scared to death. I was taught that you don't hurt your kids no matter what you know.

And I think that the most important maybe moment of my life and probably the beginning of this whole concept of taming was looking at Tesche, your daughter, my daughter, knowing that I had actually decided to to go back to the broken marriage. So there was a time during that when I thought, no, I can't do this. And looking at her and thinking, oh, this is so interesting. I am staying in this marriage for her. But what I want this marriage for her.

And if I wouldn't want this marriage for her, then why am I modeling bad love and calling that good mother? That is that is team. So one of the most, I think, effective parts in the book was you telling your kids, hmm, I was in that meeting, too.

I had a meeting like that. That was a quite a genuine moment to me in that hurting them was the thing that needed to be done, even though it was hurtful.

Yeah, I don't have a lot of moments in my parenting where I have actually been the one to sit them down and deliver heartbreak to them. I was the one who was making a decision that was going to break up the family. It really felt like the amount of self trust I had to have to be like, this is this is going to hurt you so badly and not say, but eventually you'll see it's the right thing. Like nobody says.

You can't say that in the moment at the terrible thing to say to someone who's about whose heart is about to be broken, but to believe and know that deeply yourself with that myself. Right.

You obviously make a lot of money doing all this, your books and things like that. What is your relation to the money you make and the power it gives you and the influence you can wield by creating this sort of multimedia organization?

Oh my God. Ali and I talk about this from morning until night now. We really just started having money this year. How much money do you make? I mean, I've been a lot of money on untampered. You're not going to give me a dollar value. Life changing amounts of money. Well, Untamed is sold two million copies in one year. So multiply that. Right. You know, something that happened recently, my my parents were hurting with the whole thing and they were scared to be in their apartment building.

And they were just like I was in tears one night like hell. And we were like, holy shit, we can buy a fucking house. We bought my dad's house. That was power. I am sad I have no control over this situation and I tomorrow can fix it power. We live in a tech town in Naples, Florida. We ended up here for many different reasons. And there have been many beautiful things about being here. And it just really stopped feeling beautiful this year.

A lot of it has to do with the conservative nature of this place, but it's like living inside of a Trump rally, OK? We are a gay couple. We have a gay kid. We have very liberal thinkers. You know, a couple of months ago we were like, why don't we move? So right now I am thinking about power in a way of being able to do what the fuck I need to do. So are you moving out of the Trump rally?

Yeah, I'm moving in two months. Where are you moving? Hermosa Beach in California. Very pretty. Yeah. I mean, I always talk about money being how do you buy as much time and freedom back for yourself? I am constantly here thinking about power in terms of when do I get to quit? When do I have enough? When do you have enough to quit? I don't know. And that's the question. So I was raised by two public school teachers.

We we always had enough, but not ever any extra. And so I have a general feeling of scarcity when it comes to money. Hmm. Abby, she is more there will always be enough and, you know, totally unfair bundled up. And that's your next book in case you're interested.

Does she make more money than you? Not any more. Well, yeah. And it's so amazing that like that dynamic, we talk about that all the time. It's just I think that money and power is the thing I'm so much in and it feels like the same as food to me. Like with the food and the desire and what's allowed to be enough. Am I allowed to want that? Am I allowed to have that? You know the answer.

You know the answer to what is it? Yes. Yes. Good. Yes. Just so you know more.

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That's why Facebook once updated Internet regulations to set clear guidelines for addressing today's toughest challenges protecting privacy, enabling safe and easy data portability between platforms and more. Learn more about why Facebook supports updated Internet regulations at about 40 dotcoms regulations. I'm Jenna Wortham, I'm Wesley Morris, we are two culture writers at The New York Times and we host a podcast called Still Processing. And every week we talk about the way popular culture connects to life. And right now we're talking about the N-word, a word that my most rebellious, youthful self loved using, but recently just started to feel Courtauld coming out of my mouth.

I've never used it. I still can't believe that. I mean, it's been used on me, but I have never used it. We're going deep into why in this episode and into our cultural relationship with this word, too. It's an awful word. And yet it's still with us after all this time. And how we use it is still debated even in our friendship. So we talk about that, too. You can listen to still processing wherever you get your podcasts and you can listen to this episode right now.

So I want to talk about pain for a second. Pain is a lot in your story. It's also in the brand a little bit, your retelling the worst things that happen to you. What's that like to do that for an audience? I mean, I don't think of I don't think of it that way, like I just don't think of it as constantly recounting the worst things in my life. I think I'm I'm constantly recounting the most significant moments in my life.

And while many of those have been wildly joyful, I can't get away from the fact that most of the most significant moments of my life, transformational times when the shit hit the fan were painful times. I think I learned really early that I was supposed to be happy all the time from the culture, from my family, that there were just like a few emotions that I was allowed to have that would be successful. Right. Like gratitude and joy and happiness.

Sad wasn't allowed. In other words, sad wasn't allowed, angry wasn't allowed, jealous wasn't allowed. Doubt, fear, like heartbreak, confusion. So I think the fact that I do talk about pain more than the average bear is just because the average bear isn't allowed to talk about pain.

One of the things you did, though, in your previous books, you identified pain with beauty and you had the word brutal, which is both brutal and beautiful. And you posted on Instagram, if you're hurting, it means you care. If you care your beautiful and short, if you're hurting your beautiful. What do you think of that word now? Do you feel the same way about that?

Yeah, I mean, I the moment the freaking moment that I called my sister from the bathroom floor and told her to come pick me up and take me to my first recovery meeting, it was very clear to me in that moment that if I wanted something as beautiful as. To become a mother that I was going to have to start showing up for the brutal parts of being human and I refused to do that at my entire life was about every single time I felt anything, finding anything I could, drinking, drug trafficking, drugs, food, sex, whatever it was to not feel.

Because and what I figured out later was like, you can either take the brutal along with the beautiful or you can just numb both out. But if I could find a way listen, if I could find a way to just have the good stuff without the bad stuff, I would take it. It just it's I haven't found that.

Now, one of the things you and Abby do is live quite loud. You're on social media. You chronicle a lot of things. And I thought there was an interesting quote in this recent piece on you in The New Yorker. Whenever they find themselves on the verge of a certain kind of interaction, one of them whips out a phone to record it. You know, you're like, oh, here they go again. Each of us knows it's coming.

It's part of our online story. Talk about the pressure to be on online and the performative aspects of it. Why does everything need to be said?

Hmm? Why does everything need to be said? I mean, that's just such an interesting question to ask a writer. It's like asking and asking a freaking architect, why does everything have to be built? I don't know. It's just I fucking know how to do like what? That unemployable. Other than that, it's like this is what I do. This is my job. Like, this is my the way I'm built is to think about the human experience and express it.

This is what I do to contribute. But you're dodging a little bit because you're writing about you like other even Liz Gilbert writes about other people.

Right. Why is it about you? Yeah. So here's what I think, that the reason that my memoirs are so popular is because I never write a single word until I ask myself how is this not just about me, but how is it about everyone? So well, it is true that I'm writing about myself. I am always writing about all of us. And that's why people find themselves in my writing. And I am just I do find it interesting the amount of questions that I get about isn't it self-indulgent?

Isn't it? People will call it confessional. Yeah. And at least I've said this is an obsession with the self you're talking about. Social media and general social media encourages this narcissism obsession with your feelings and it's detrimental to society. Is she right?

Yeah. This is I mean, she's the one that just released a book about self-help. Right.

And no, but I want to get to the sense of that, the idea of living out loud so much because you do that you are exemplify you do it beautifully, actually. Is there a cost to it? Yeah. And I try to ride on this, but there are people talk about this issue, whether there's too much revelation and really nothing at the same time that it's constant, performative because teens do it, lots of people do it.

Well, I mean, I think just like any art or any writing or any ways that people present themselves, there will always be forms of it that are empty and there will always be forms of it that are very, very full and that everyone should decide that for themselves. I, I do it in a way that I believe. And when I lay my head down at night, I believe that I am doing it in a way that is contributory, that like contributes.

So it's not a cage match. I just use your metaphor.

I sometimes I do feel it. I do get to the point sometimes where I feel like it's a cage. And that's usually when I have put something out there that makes people mad at me, like when when the Internet gets mad at me, I feel sad. And what do they get mad at? You give me an example.

Oh, listen, yesterday I said something completely dumb ass. What don't you Twitter? OK, so I got so annoyed about people being late. This is one of my major pet peeves. I do not understand in a professional setting being late, like people will actually ask me for my time. I will say OK and show up and there will be twelve minutes later. I will never understand it. I said something on Twitter yesterday about the annoyance of people being late and wow.

I mean, what happened was a whole hell of a lot of people said this is completely ableist. And so this community focused on neurodiversity came to me and people usually give me a lot of grace and they'll explain themselves in ways that are kind. But people call me on it. And I felt sad and misunderstood and embarrassed, really. And so what happens when I feel that way is inevitably I turn to Albion's. I hate the Internet. I hate everything.

I and no one understands me. And now at last me about, I don't know, thirty minutes. And then I think, shit, I made a mistake. Like I, I do have something to learn here and there. Right. And then you know, at the end. The night I retweeted my dumb ass tweet with the whole thread so that other people like, look here, I fucked up, I thought better of it.

Yeah, there's not a lot of forgiveness on the line these days, though, is there?

You know, there's not. But here's what I seriously believe. If I had to put one mandatory class in each elementary school, it would be, let's teach people how to listen to each other and also let's teach a class on apologizing because nobody freakin knows how to apologize. And there's this, like magic sauce in a true apology that disarms people and surprises people like no other. So.

So that was the last thing you apologized for yesterday for getting a six hours?

What's the last thing you apologize for it? Oh. Oh. So Addy is the kindest person on earth, OK? And I think I keep thinking that if I surround myself with people that are unsuspicious and are nonjudgmental, that that will make me less judgmental and less suspicious, but actually just like exacerbates everything like it. Since she's the good cop, I always feel like I need to be like on guard more. Right. And so because of that, I can be very, very controlling.

And so what I am constantly apologizing to Abby for is trying to control.

What she thinks, breathes does, it says that's our ongoing and it's all fear based and it's all anxiety based and she's unbelievably beautiful and generous about it, but that's what I apologize for the most.

OK, so the Internet actually can be like a cage. Do you ever feel like going full cheetah and ditching social media?

Yes, I feel like that's probably the goal. I don't. And I understand that. Having said everything that I've said, that sounds weird. But there is a part of me that hopes that there is another way to to have connection and share ideas that is different than the Internet. And I don't know what it is, but I'm I'll figure it out for my community.

Have you tried some of the new ones, like clubhouse or Twitter spaces or things like that?

OK, clubhouse scares the crap out of me. Listen, my friend Levy, she texts me every once in a while and says, do you understand that you've been in the lake Nigerien room for three hours? And I don't know. I'm there like I have somehow pressed a button in my pocket that makes me show up in a clubhouse room accidentally. And she text me and says, Glenanne, you're in the room. So clubhouse. No, I have not nailed yet.

Would you want to get into it? Maybe. Maybe. It seems interesting. You want on Twitter, too. There's Twitter spaces.

But you know what? That just feels like more things also. It just feels like more things to then be relevant on on Clinton.

You're in the communications business. You are in the. I know. I know. You're going to go right into into 3D. We're not. Thanks. I'm going to be a hologram. Hologram. He's showing up in people in their bedrooms, waking them up in the morning. Hi. It's going to be untamed. Let's talk about you using your platform project.

So much for twenty twenty was part the importance of suburban white women voters are really a big part of your demographic. You want to be more vocal about racial injustice. But there's all these issues around white women playing in the racial justice movement. And you said to BuzzFeed, part of my work is to get white women to understand who they actually are in this moment compared to who they imagine themselves to be. This is a really difficult line, I think that you're trying to walk here.

Yeah, well, it keeps changing. I'm doing it very awkwardly and screwing up and starting over. I used to think about this in terms of like I shop, like here I am. I'm showing up to do a thing to help you. Right. And lately I've just been thinking about. Whiteness a lot. And it's like, OK, I see the world, I will accept my proximity to power, just like white men, but in exchange for that.

I will make all these promises, which is that I will never demand any real power. Right, that I will look away from all of the injustice being done to anyone else other than me. Know, I will accept the comfort and protection of the police, but without asking what they're doing in that neighborhood over and over again, for sure, we knew all this shit, like we know all of this the way that the world works. So at what point did we decide to be so silent and so complicit and what has it cost to us?

Right, that like it's cost us our humanity is how I feel. So what are you doing to further that discussion? Because you always have an influence on this particular group?

What I do is I go where I'm invited to listen to black women and women of color who have always been on the front lines of every social justice movement. And then I do what they tell me to do, which is usually go get the white women. Like that's literally what they said to me about your job, is to go get the white women. And then I speak the best I can to them, because the truth is that it is not true that everyone knows what I just said.

And you think you have an important influence on that demographic. I for sure have an important influence on that demographic because they read my books and because they listen to my speaking events and because, you know, one of my jobs is just to offer a new way of looking at things.

So do you think you have political influence? Yeah, I mean, you know, the Biden campaign called us and said, we need you to show up for many, many reasons. So, yeah, of course I do. What did you do for them? Well, what I figured out and my team figured out is that there wasn't enough of a plan for people like me to organize. And so what we did was we created our own 40 day activism campaign, I guess it was called.

And every single day for 40 days, we offered a way for people to become more educated and and actually involved in their democracy.

Are you going to remain engaged in politics? Yes. Yeah, I don't have I mean, because it together rising like the way that I feel about. The other thing is that, you know, that is all politics and it's it's not you know, I figured out a long time ago that I don't know. What I know is that I don't know. And what I mean by that is I know what I'm good at, which is that I'm really good at storytelling and I'm really good at fundraising.

I have a face that people have been trained to trust with money. So my job is to be a bridge between the people in their homes who are willing to give and those people right. So I don't know what the hell. I don't know these communities. I don't know what they need, but I know the people who know. Right. So all of that is political. That's all. Everything that I do is political. It doesn't have to be just a, you know, a top with Elizabeth Warren or Hillary Clinton for it to be political.

I feel like every word that I say. Is and and dollar that I transfer is political. So is there another memoir in you or do we have to wait for another seismic event? I would really prefer there to not be another seismic event. I thought that I would never write another book after an attempt. But then about two months ago, I started writing again in my closet. So I don't know about I started writing about my kid and my relationship to.

I guess I would call it like queerness and started writing about. Being a public woman and all the things that that means, I don't know, I'm just I'm just writing, we'll say, well, good, that's a good thing.

I have a name of a book. You know, you can't steal it, though, OK? It's called I have a three. It's a three part series. Well, first one's called. No one's a complete sentence. Excellent. The second one is maybe I'll call you back.

And the third is called. Yes, I'll take that.

So trilogy. Trilogy.

Yeah. Yeah. So who to you is the most the biggest cheat us right now? I hate to use your metaphor, but you wrote it so I'm going to borrow it. Do you think Megan and Harry, are they living worldly like cheaters? Who is the biggest cheater right now to you?

So I felt unbelievably inspired by the activists on the ground in Georgia because it was like proof of hope to me because holy shit. Like, they they did it. You know, it's not like they didn't turn the state blue. They just were they helped the state show its blueness that had always been blue. And they were so wise and connected and and unafraid. But to be fair, I also think that Meghan Markle is a God like in terms of.

Yeah, I do. I mean, in terms of setting fucking boundaries in a family and honoring yourself and refusing to abandon yourself. Yeah, I like I have friends. You can't even, you know, not answer the phone when their mother in law calls and she's up here leaving the royal family, I, I find her to be a deep Qaeda inspiration. All right. Well, let me end with my my daughter is the Jita. I'm waiting for them to take the confidence away that she has and buckets will happen on my watch.

I'll tell you that. That's it. That's right.

There's no way they're taking it away from them.

Yeah. All right, Glenanne, thank you so much. We appreciate it. But yeah. Thank you. All right. Bye.

Hsueh is a production of New York Times opinion is produced by name Arreaza Blakeney, Qik, Hipple Urbani, matchpoint Daphne Chen and Vishakha Darba, edited by Naimah Raza and Paula Schoeman with original music by Isaac Jones, mixing by Eric Gomes and fact checking by Kate Sinclair. Special thanks to Shannon, Busta and lyrical Higa.

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