You stopped waking us up early, very early. I think I bought those alarm clocks when you started school in kindergarten. If you remember, I said you can lay in the bed if you want.

I already have my education. Well, that that message Greg brings to my head every day, every day.

It's like I better get up. My mother was panic that my mother was too designing huge walls no matter. Uh. Hello, everybody, I am Michelle Obama, and this is the Michelle Obama podcast.

On this episode, we're going to talk about the first and most foundational relationship in anybody's life, the relationship between a parent and child. My parents provided me and my brother with unconditional love and support, the ability to think independently and to learn and grow and fail on our own. Now, my mom is not someone who likes to do a lot of interviews. She does not like the public eye.

So I asked my brother Craig to come back on the podcast and join us as well for this conversation.

Marian Robinson is with us today. Yeah, yeah.

We're going to give you applause, Grandma, because, look, I have to tell the world that getting you to do this, you know, is like a miracle.

It's like it's like baby baby Jesus from the resurrection. We saw it. She showed up. She came down from the mountaintop to speak with us today.

But I thought, you know, since we are in a pandemic, that we'd start there, I mean, how you do and how you feel and how how does this time feel for you just, you know, straight up?

It's strange, of course, but I have to say that because I live alone, I think I'm enjoying it more than most people.

I don't have anyone to answer to. And I don't have to listen to other people.

You don't miss us? Well, actually, no.

I wanted to put it out there.

I wanted the world to know where we get all this from. How did you think about parenting us? So I always felt like. Little people and my sister and I, we used to call our kids little people. Had a lot to say, and you start out with conversations, if you recall, we talked all the time. Yeah, dinner time and you all talked and I always say I learned so much from you guys because you had things on your mind that we were listening to.

I mean, we would talk and we would talk about. You might have been thinking wrong or you might have been thinking differently from us, but it was never so bad that you had to be told to just be quiet. But I always said that. Our discipline was really just conversation, we were free to ask questions, to debate, to disagree, but do it respectfully. We were, you know, we were a part of the discussion in our house.

We weren't just ancillary people listening on the sideline.

Where did where did you and Dad get that, especially when you were raised in a generation where that's just not how, you know, folks your age were raised.

I remember not feeling good. You know, I felt like I wanted to say something. Yeah. But I couldn't. And I always felt like I people thought maybe I didn't have enough to to have an opinion. Hmm. And I think that's what it is. If you recall, I used to tell you to question me.

Mm hmm.

And I always said and you also did run that in the ground because. Well, you well, you invited it.

And then I got a little nervous about the questioning because I thought I should know all the answers.

And then I decided, you know, I don't have to know all the answers. That's when I started my count to ten. When you asked me a question that was uncomfortable, I decided I didn't have to answer right away. Yeah. So I'm going to count to 10.

You give yourself a chance to come down with this question and you think. And then before you know, you not even to answer that, you're having a conversation with this person, you know, why do you think you should do that? Did you think about doing so? But it's funny how parents think they have to know all the answers and nobody knows all the answers. Yeah, and I was very comfortable saying, I don't know.

Yeah. With all that you gave me and all that I knew about love and talking to kids, they were just still the physical act that nobody can prepare you for, for bringing a life that you love into the world, something so precious.

And you just have this baby looking at you. Who.

Yeah, well, I would say that I was so nervous.

I'm trying to read every book I could find. What to expect when you're expecting go to Lamaze and all of this.

I was like Rob Petrie from The Dick Van Dyke Show.

I was going to bed every night with all my clothes on thinking this is going to be the night. And finally Avery came and everything was fine. And you remember we used to live like two miles from the hospital.

It took me 40 minutes to get home because I was doing about four miles an hour the whole way.

My what to expect when you're expecting, which was the our modern day Bible. Now they they have it on iPads and iPhones and they have apps and all this stuff.

But my book was so dogeared because it was like every day I read, OK, zero to three months. I would I would study it when Malia was asleep.

I go to the book and be like, OK, am I getting this right? The bottle working. I get what you're saying. It's like that feeling of being overprepared. But then there things that they don't tell you, at least for a mother's like they make it look all easy, like breastfeeding is just going to be this natural thing, you know. And Mom, you didn't breastfeed.

No, I did not.

You also and mom is also kind of a she doesn't remember a lot of stuff.

So while she talked, you know, I remember I was like, well, what should I expect in the delivery?

You should like mom. She was like, don't worry about it.

They just knock you out because you came up in the time when they just gassed you out. Right. We were born. Right.

Like you give me drugs. That's right.

And by the way, by the way, it's a good thing we didn't breastfeed because we suck it on high balls of nicotine.

Oh, it was a whole different thing. As I tell mom, Craig, it's like if she had just, like, focus, we could have been somebody, you know.

I mean, we were born in the time when people didn't stop smoking, people didn't stop drinking. They didn't drive around with seatbelts like you enter this world and you enter the world of an adult.

You're here. Oh, I don't. Seven feet tall. And she could have been smoking so much.

So here we come, you know, with all the rules and all the guidebooks. And you still feel unprepared.

Yeah. Yeah. Bring it out when a new baby that one thing that I remember is that first day home, I felt alone because I had this big responsibility. But I of got over it. When it was time to make the formula, I was like, OK, you got stuff to do late. Yeah.

So what did that, what did it. Because I felt, I felt sad. I mean you. Yeah. The responsibility but it's overwhelming.

Yeah. When you thought I had this look when you're looking at this little baby they can't do anything for themselves but I don't get over it because I was busy mom. You know, I had diapers to wash. I had meals to fix.

You know, I wonder, Mom, you know, when you looked at sometimes how we parent and what we worried about, did you think we were overdoing it? Yanqui?

I certainly did. And I was like, calm down. But you had to do it your way.

So I didn't push it. You know, everybody has to do things the way. They think it should be done. I always appreciated that because you were a hands on grandma. I mean, from day one, because first of all, you love little babies. You love you. All right.

I always joke that mom loves Craig more than me. She loves all of our children way more than either one of us.

That is. I mean, all our kids had a ritual of what it was at least one weekend out of the month with the girls would be like, I want to go Grandma's and that you have a sleepover. And that was the biggest night of the week because you'd get them food that they shouldn't be eaten and couldn't get with me. You know, they slept in your bed. They kicked you out of your bed. I can't believe it. You let them tear up your house and make forts out of the couch.

I mean, you let them all hours sleep with the TV on, go to bed with the TV on what I remember mom saying, well, this is these kids are easy as long as you can give them back.

And that was the thing I got mad with you about because I felt like you were too strict.

Yeah.

Well, you know, but I swear to God, I didn't do one thing that you didn't do, would you? That's why I was like, where do you think I got all this stuff from?

Well, we talk a lot about you, but our hero in our lives, Craig, is Frazier Robinson, who, you know, is not with us, but is with us every single day.

And, you know, we had mom is a great guiding, consistent force in our lives because she was able to stay home because dad worked a shift job and, you know, so she was with us and could invest that time.

But I know I got so much from my dad. I got as a young girl, I got a feeling of empowerment because my dad respected my voice. He treated me as your equal, as his equal.

You know, if he taught you to do something, I learned how to do it. There was no girls can only do this. Boys can only do that. I mean, the expectations he had of me and his love for me, he was my first role model of what it meant to have a supportive, loving man in my life. He always felt like there was something good and absolutely everybody. You know how he. Took up with a drunk uncle or is unemployed.

I mean, he just thought everybody had something going for him, you know?

And I think that that's an important lesson for people to learn. You have to look at people that look like they're bad people. They're not. That was Freyja thing. Yeah. The everybody has issues. Mm hmm. And that's one thing I liked about him. He understood that everybody was basically decent, but they had lots of things happen. And like your story, their story will help you understand why a person is where he is at this point in their life.

And Frazier always understood that.

But, you know, did you agree on everything?

We both felt the same about you guys. And I always said that Frazier and I pretty much thought alike we thought the same things were important.

And did you know that when you guys first met or you kind of grew into you grow into it because you don't always tell the story about when we first got married and moved in together, our first argument was which way to hang the toilet paper? Mm hmm. Some hanging over backwards in time. And we came from two separate households. And I decided then that I refused to get in an argument over toilet paper.

And ever since then, I've been hanging it his way of life out there. It is the where it comes under, not over the top. It comes underneath. And that is how all of our households are now.

Well, no, I'm an older person. What happened? I had a job coming over first. I don't know. I would think of that as you were saying, that it's like, yeah, I know that it's under, but ours is over.

You finally decided not to argue about it, too. So I just felt like that was just too trivial to get into a discussion about, especially when it's important to the other person and it doesn't cost you anything. It's easy to acquiesce.

With each generation, they're making parenting harder, they're making the bar crazier, like for what a parent is supposed to do.

Everybody's online talk and talk and talk and what's good and what's bad and. They forget there's a hundred different opinions out there and raising children, you can play that by ear.

Nobody has a workbook. I mean, you talk about your dog eared copies, but the best thing to do is play it by ear. And that's when you find out. When you have more than one child. They each need something different from a pair playing it by ear in the way you say it actually requires a bit more focus, but not on like books and theories, but on your particular child. And so in order to do that, you've got to know your baby rhino.

You've got to you've you've got to treat it like it has a distinct personality. Right. You know, because the babies do.

I saw Malia and Sasha, who they were, you know, their core personality showed up really early, you know, like they were infants when you could see if you were paying attention and spending time and really listening like your baby has something to tell you which they do, then you can actually see what you mean by playing by ear is like you got to know you're playing by ear, is dealing with things as they are how we're Craig and I different.

What did you say? Oh, God.

Oh, my gosh. Well, first, Craig always looked like he was worried about something. I'm sure some of that had to do with Dad's health. But ever since he was little, his pictures, you look in his eyes and you could see like a worried little child. But then when you came along, I decided I made him too nice and I decided that, well, you remember you used to have temper tantrums.

No, no, we don't need to talk about this.

Came that way. And you came away and it was like, oh, she busted her head for being mad. And I got to the hospital and they start questioning me like I had done something to you.

Almost got you there for CFS. And the next time you did that, I said, OK. Let them come take you and let you live in somebody else's house. You keep that up.

When I said that, you stop throwing yourself around with your man, but you seem like you just wanted to do more. Not that Craig didn't.

You just were determined you were going to do it your way. And that's just the way Craig was acquiescent. And he would say, oh, yeah, that sounds like what that sounds like a good idea. You would say, well, why did you do that?

What did you do that for? You know, and it just I always tell people that I stopped raising you when you were about nine years old.

You know what I remember? I remember you saying when I should be talking about doing some things and I'm like, how are you going to let her do that? And I remember you saying you probably don't even remember the shoes. Like, well, when it comes to me, I have to give her two choices, both of which I'm OK with, because she's liable not to take my advice. And I was like, whoa, that's some jitsu piercing.

Oh.

You have a group of close friends that you guys always sort of relied on each other that I thought was admirable but but important, especially as Barack was running for office and he was a way more because sometimes you don't want to be away from your kids.

But it's nice to be with your kids, with other adults, because all you're doing when kids are little is like you're hoping that you're not messing them up. You're learning from what everybody else is doing. So a whole Saturday with my girlfriends and our kids are spent.

Well, what time is your your baby going to sleep or what are you feeding them? And what what does this mean? You know, you can just ask a series of questions. And what you learn, Mom, is what you talked about is that, you know what? Everybody is doing this parenting thing a little bit differently. Some people are very on top of making sure they only eat whole grain foods and healthy.

Some people are like, look, I gave my baby a chicken leg and she was fine, you know?

I mean, it's just a little bit of everything. Some some of us worked. Some of us didn't. You know, some of us had partners. Some of us didn't. But all of these kids that we raised our families with, these kids all turned out great.

You expected us to be responsible for ourselves at a very early age, setting our alarm clocks very early. I mean, making our beds, all that stuff. Sure. Any kind of chore doing our own laundry.

You stopped waking us up early. Very early.

I think I bought those alarm clocks when you started school in kindergarten. If you remember, I said you can lay in the bed if you want. I already have my education. Well, that that message, Craig rings through my head every day. Every day.

It's like I better get up.

I mean, that was also the beauty of you and dad, is that you made our successes and our failures, our own you know, you were always there for us.

But you believe that you get good grades for you, not for me, you know. You know, so you guys never celebrated our our victories too much or you never wallowed in our failures too deeply.

And I always felt like I'm getting up for me. I've got to get ready to go to school because it's not because my mom is making me do it. But she's told me that I'm responsible for my education, I'm responsible for my homework. But, Mom, it takes a lot to let go.

I think first you've got to realize that a two day old baby, it's a smart person. You know, Frazier taught me that he decided you all were smart when I first got pregnant. He didn't it wasn't a question of whether or not or maybe he just said he was having the smartest kids on Earth. And that's the way I thought of you. I thought of you as people who could learn things.

And I still say that about every single child. I think everyone.

It's smart if their parents think they're smart and treat them as if they're smart and treat them with respect, if you are looking for a child to be self-reliant when they're 21, 22, you have to make them practice that as early as five and six and seven years old.

So it's like if you don't teach a kid how to wake up on their own when they're young and it's easy. Yeah, you could be waking them up for the rest of their lives because you don't make them practice it. One of the things that I had to learn how to negotiate was creating these boundaries with my kids in the White House.

You know, I mean, you talk about a being raised in a totally different world than I ever knew.

It's like plucking these little girls out of our normal life on the south side of Chicago with Craig and mom and our way of doing things in our community and then putting them in a historic mansion with butlers and maids and florists and and gardeners and Secret Service and then trying to make sure that they understood boundaries, understood responsibility, trying to live by the values, raise my kids by the values that I was raised with was I won't say it was challenging because I believed in it.

But Mom, you saw this. You had to basically up in the system of the White House to get them to make sure these girls had some semblance of normalcy, right?

Yeah. And I didn't push it nearly as hard as I should have because of being a grandma, but.

Well, I mean, I tried well, but that's the other thing. It's like that wasn't your job, you know?

I mean, so why we teach you about being lenient? I mean, the point is, is that having being able to be that grandma for them in that environment where somebody was always their advocate and sneaking them a little extra candy and letting them stay up, you did that, as you always said, because you knew that I was being the disciplinarian.

I think the girls did really well with what they had to deal with. You know, they ended up being. They with all the Secret Service and all, they pretty much just went about their. Schoolwork, just a normal child, you know, even though the Secret Service was standing outside their door. Yeah, they just walked by him and gone.

And I really think it's a real testament to all three of you, you, mom, me, Barack, that they ended up being so well-adjusted behind all of that because it's you know, we got a taste of it from afar. Right. But I can't even imagine being there all the time because it was stressful for us to come visit.

So I just don't know what it would be like to raise children in that sort of of official ness and pomp and circumstance. And so I think you guys have done a wonderful job because both Malia and Sasha have turned out to be wonderful young ladies and very well-adjusted giving, given what they what they had to deal with. Right. At a very important developmental point in their lives.

I always tried to make sure that I wasn't pouting in front of the kids when Barack wasn't there because they didn't they loved him, but he was like, well, he travels. He's not here right now. This is what he does.

If I had made a big deal out of it and said, oh, my God, your dad's not here again, oh, he's missing this or oh, I just wish and I wish, then that's the signal to them.

Well, this isn't normal. Then I should be upset about this.

Dad's late again, you know, but I found that especially in the White House when there was a demand, it's like we we worked even as Barack being the president of the United States, he worked his schedule around their schedule.

They weren't waiting until nine o'clock at night to eat because dad was running late. They didn't. They didn't they never could not go somewhere or do something because of dad. And I never wanted them to resent the presidency or resent what their dad did.

And I always thought, well, they would if their lives were put on hold for things that he had to do. So they adapted to him being gone, him traveling around the country. They adapted to me being campaigning. They were like, yeah, this is what we do.

More on the Michelle Obama podcast after the break.

We're at the end of our parenting careers.

Well, no, I am, because wait a minute and oh, dad, I'm going to be Craig is the president and CEO, chairman of the old Dads Club. That's right.

Charter member. Charter member.

But you at least have experienced that point of parenting that I'm at where kids are, where we were supposed to be empty nesters.

But how does it feel, Craig, seeing Avery and Leslie, your older adults, you know, to see them at the end of that cycle with all the hard work that we talked about, all the love, all the the teaching and the caring, to see them then enter into the world because Avery is a grown man?

Well, now that I can sort of look back on what it's like to raise adults, kids, kids who have become adults, I realize what mom used to always say to us about. I'm just going to give you all I can up and then at a certain point, you guys are on your own and to have to have two that are on their own and able to take care of themselves, they both are are capable and and there are good people in good relationships.

There's a sense, you know, Kelly and I talk about this all the time. There's a sense of satisfaction that we've got those two going. And it really makes us feel good about the little two for us.

There was that just that emotion when it's like the actual goodbye. I mean, the process of getting them ready and dropping them off college was the next natural step. They they had outgrown everything else about their lives and they were ready to go. And, you know that and that felt good.

But there is that lot that actual when you leave them, drop them somewhere and you leave and you pull off and you pull off, you know, with Melea, you know, we held it together, you know, sort of we had Barack and had two different ways of dealing with that anxiety. I just had a list of things to do. I was unpacking the room, were making the bed. We're cleaning. We're getting the dorm room ready.

We had things. We were you know, I was occupied and Barack was he was all out of it because he really didn't have a job, you know?

So we had to we had to give him like a make job, like, hey, why don't you try to put this lamp together? Like the lamp was already put together. You know, it really just needed to be screwed.

And, you know, he's up. Yeah. Yeah.

And he he was thinking, yes, yes, I have this assignment. And then he realized this is just make work because he he completed his assignment in like five minutes.

And then he was like, you know, OK, now what? But we took Malia to to lunch and then we were leaving because, you know, with all that we brought to college campus, having us stay longer was not going to be helpful. So we were pretty much in and out. In fact, they let her move in a day early to so that, you know, our commotion wouldn't be in the midst of everyone else moving in.

But that moment when she left the restaurant and we got in our car to go to the airport, we tried to hold it in. And then I heard Barack over the side, just like, you know, that sort of.

Yeah. You know, and and Allen, his agent, passed a handkerchief back to him. He's like, thanks, man.

And we both just, you know, that we both shared some tears, not just him, but me, because they were just something about the actual leaving her, even though she had been to sleep away camp and she had traveled. And she there's just something about that baby is now like she's gone. Little did we know they'd be back so soon.

But given the pandemic and then we were better with Sasha, but still right at that that same moment when we are departing and all of us are leaving and she is staying there is that little choke up that wow, this is this is a real milestone in their lives.

Being a parent has taught me so much about myself. I think that so much of who I am is not just about the parenting you gave me, but the experience of trying to pass on these things to my daughters, who are these two very individual people and learning about me through them. That has been one of the most important over any kind of job, any kind of education, any kind of degree that I have ever had. Being a parent has been the biggest growth point for me.

Being a parent is such a pleasant surprise, it's been such a pleasant surprise because there is something that dad wasn't alive to see any of our kids.

But there is something about each and every one of them that reminds me of dad somehow.

And that's just the culture that we've sort of built that he started.

Well, I think I want, you know, particularly because I know we have a diverse audience.

And as we're in the midst of these protests and Black Lives Matter, you know, this is the frustrating thing for for for black people, because what we know is our truth, which is we are the norm.

We are our family is what black families are and what black neighborhoods are.

I don't want to interrupt you, but no, no. If you remember generations before we bought into the propaganda that they were teaching us about ourselves.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. You know what they said about us? Oh, a lot of people believe that. Mm hmm. Even us. And reacted in in that way. So we are getting to the point now where we know who we are, we know what we're capable of. And all of that stuff that you were pitching just isn't true. But what do you make of what's going on, you know, where we are as a country, you know how these young people are out in the streets protesting, you know, the whole issue of police brutality?

Because we've we've talked about these kind of issues growing up.

The time that, Craig, you were about 10, had your new 10 speed bike that mom and dad had bought you. I, I still see it vividly as yellow. It was your first 10 speed. It was from Goldblatt's. From Goldblatt's. Right.

But you were riding down the street and you got stopped by the police and they accused you of stealing your own bike. Right.

And they would not believe you to the point where you were like, take me to my home because, you know, no, it was it was terrifying only because the I was always taught that the police are your friends and. Right. And they'll believe the truth. And I was telling them the truth and this guy would not believe me. So this guy grabbed my bike and he wouldn't let it go. And I was like, oh, no, no.

And I was so innocent. I was like, oh, you got this all wrong. This is my bike. Don't worry, this isn't a stolen bike. And he would not believe me. And I was absolutely heartbroken. And I finally said to him, listen, you can take me to my house and I will prove to you this is my bike.

And how old were you? I was like ten. I was like ten or eleven. So they put the bike in the trunk of the police car, put me in the back, drove me home. I got out. Mom was waiting at the front of the gate and I started explaining my mom was, you know, how mom is.

Mom was like, go in the house and she's ready to talk to somebody. She's like, I go in the house and I went in the house. And all I could think of was this dude is about to get it.

And I saw her talking and I couldn't hear anything, but I saw her hand pointing and she had that tight lipped.

What did you tell the police officer, Mom? What were you telling them?

I found out that they knew the people who were accused of taking the bike.

They were into it. And what they came and did, they actually came. They ended up coming into the house to sit down. And I said what you did was cancel out a whole lot of things we had been teaching them. And I think you need to come back here and talk to them. And at least admit you made a serious mistake so that you won't cancel out everything we've been trying to teach our children.

Yeah, when when black folks you know what what a lot of folks who are not in our position don't understand is that this is such a way of life when it comes to interacting with the rest of the world.

It doesn't matter who you are and what kind of values you have.

You know, nobody thinks about the fact that we all come from good families that are trying to teach values.

But when you leave that safety of your home and go out into the street where being black is is a crime in and of itself, we have all had to learn how to operate outside of our homes with a level of caution and fear, because you never know.

And we grow up having to have conversations with our children because almost everybody I know has had some kind of incident where they were doing just minding their own business but live in black and got accused of something. And Craig, what does that do to you as a kid at 10?

Yeah, well, I tell you, I was absolutely heartbroken because I could tell they were trying to ask me questions that would trip me up. If I wasn't so sure that that bike was mine and showed any kind of reticence. I could see them taking me off to the police station, not calling mom until after I've been, you know. Booked or whatever they do, and it just made me acutely aware at a young age, what Dad had always with Mom and dad had always talked about, you have to be very careful when you're out here not just dealing with the bad element that you have to deal with when you're living in a black neighborhood of, you know, crime gangs, that kind of thing.

But you have to worry about the police, too. So you have to walk this line where you can't make a mistake on either side or you could get sucked up. And you know what?

I when I called him and he came back over, you know, it's you know what he said? He said, you know, I know that was his bike the minute he said, take me to my house. And then I said, well, why did you let it go that far? You are actually messing with a 10 year old's mind as far as the police are concerned.

Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Now, I know that part. I didn't know that he admitted to knowing that it was my body. But that's the perfect example of what all of these young black people are dealing with now, because this was almost 50 years ago. Mm hmm.

Yeah, just think about that I.

Can't imagine what these young folks are dealing with now when they go out somewhere and just the fact that the way they were acting let you know that it's part of a culture because those two policemen were black and they were acting exactly the same as any other policeman. It's it's almost like this is what they thought they were, how they thought they were supposed to act. Mm hmm.

But me, I'm I'm. I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful. It's sad. But I'm hopeful for a couple of reasons. One. This young group, they're so energized from a movement standpoint, this social media has enabled them to be able to congregate and engage quickly. That's one thing. The second thing, the what everybody's been talking about, the diversity of the group of people who are out there marching and out there protesting and doing it peacefully. It has struck a chord with everybody over the globe, you know, and and and I've been saying all it took was for one of these white women to get shot with a rubber bullet.

Mm hmm. And people like, whoa, what is going on?

Well, don't forget the recording of the whole. And that was that that was going to be the fact that when next week we had to actually see it.

Have you had to see it because you're talking? I'm talking all my life to whoever I run into, white, black, whatever, and telling these stories about how every black person knows a black person who's been put in jail because they were standing on the wrong corner at the wrong time of night and they end up in jail. You say that. But when when you say that to people, they sort of look at you like, oh, that couldn't be that bad because it wouldn't it would never happen to them.

Right. You're taught you know, people are going to assume the worst of you.

So you've got to be better then you've got to be ten times better than them. When we were in the White House, we didn't we we could have never gotten away with some of the stuff that's going on now, not because of the public, but our community wouldn't have accepted that.

You you worked you did your best every day. You showed up and we did it in the White House. But there are people in jobs all over this community, all over this country, all over this world who are doing the same thing because that's how we were raised.

We have to be better to just be equal. So the fact that there are people out there that treat us less than when we're working so hard to be better than that's where the pain comes from. That's whether that's what what that's what these young people are so angry about, because they are doing everything right, everything they are told. And it doesn't matter.

A police officer will still stop them and accuse them of stealing a bike that their parents worked hard to get. That hurts. If you have a good foundation, you are so strong that you can overcome that.

Right. You know, because you are so resilient, because you have had to learn so much empathy and so much self-control.

So the notion that people are out here wondering about these protests, it's like, do you do you know how much it takes that it takes to get up every day and be accused of being less than what you are?

But it's because we come from families like ours.

We have mothers and aunts and grandmothers and fathers like ours.

You know, we have communities that stick together and church groups and, you know, little league teams where, you know, piecing together a life with duct tape and glue and a lot of love and a lot of empathy.

So when people doubt us, it's frustrating and it's painful and it can make you angry. But we want to make sure that, you know, at least you and me, Craig, we can take a moment to acknowledge the Marion Robinson's out there, the the millions of them that are raising amazing people and putting them out there on the planet. Well, thank you, guys. Thank you, Mommy. Well, sweet going to be good. Well, that was a very fun conversation for me, and I hope it was for you, too.

I want to thank my mommy, Marian Robinson, and my big brother Craig, for coming on a day and sharing their stories and their wisdom and their amazing senses of humor. And I also want to thank all of my guests who came on throughout this season.

I couldn't be more thankful for the conversations we've had here on this podcast while we've had to navigate the reality of this pandemic, doing some of the conversations over resume or sitting at least six feet apart from each other to maintain social distancing, each episode really felt like a true reflection of the kinds of conversations I've always had with these special people in my life. We just got to talking and then we forgot that the mikes were even there. We were sharing stories and laughing at each other's jokes and most importantly, connecting with one another in a way that fulfills and sustains us no matter what we've got going on.

So I hope that these conversations have been meaningful for you. Two conversations like these help us understand ourselves better. And when enough people are having enough of these kind of conversations, we will gain a better understanding of each other in our families, our social circles and our communities.

That's how we begin to break down these barriers that too often get in our way by opening up, by listening to one another.

So I want to thank all of you for for being here, for listening.

Thank you for being a part of these conversations.

Thank you for the conversations you're having in your own lives with your own girlfriends, with your mentors, with your own parents and partners.

These conversations couldn't be more important.

Thanks again, everybody. I will talk to you again soon.

The Michelle Obama podcast is a Spotify original presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dusseldorp Productions from Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes and Mukta Mohan are executive producers. Jenny Marrable is our editorial assistant. Adam Sachs is our consulting producer. From Dusseldorp Productions, Mischa Yousef is the executive producer, R-1 Nexen, Jonathan Shiflett are the producers additional production support from Marinus. Jonathan Shiflett is also our engineer. Monika Wilhelm is the archival producer and transcriber.

Rachel Garcia is the Slate editorial assistant. Daniel Ek, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify Special thanks to Mackenzie Smith, Joe Palsson, Christina Shaoqi, Melissa Winter, Trina Clayton, Alex Mae, Caroline Adler, Moralez and Marone Halema Skoll. And thanks to clean cut studio search party music, Tyler Leuchtenburg, Dylan, Rupert, Carolann, Lipka Young Creative Agency and Nazarian. Our theme music is by Stevie Wonder. Original music by Andy Coulson and Tele Fresco.

The song you heard at the beginning of this show is Fragile by Aaron Allen Kane. Thanks for listening to the Michelle Obama podcast.