#335: The Life Lessons and Success Habits of Four Presidents — Doris Kearns Goodwin

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. And then also the personal question. Now it is. Cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal enter scale. No

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Hello, boys and girls, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to deconstruct world class performers to tease out the habits, routines, et cetera, that you can use in your life. And this episode is a four or five for the price of one, which is free, but four or five for the price of one because my guest is none other than Doris Kearns Goodwin. Who can be found at Doris Kearns Goodwin, that's K E A R N S. DorisCurns Goodwin dot com, also on Facebook and

Doris K Goodwin, who is Doris? Let me begin with some background. Doris's interest in leadership began more than a half century ago as a professor at Harvard. Her experiences working for LBJ in the White House and later assisting him on his memoirs led to Lyndon Johnson and The American Dream. She followed that up with the Pulitzer Prize winning No Ordinary Time subtitle Franklin and Eleanor and the Homefront in World War Two. She then earned the Lincoln Prize for the runaway bestseller Team of Rivals, and for those of you who don't recognize that book title, you might recognize it as the basis for Steven Spielberg's award winning film Lincoln. and she then won the Carnegie Medal for the Bully Pulpit, the chronicle of the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and William Howard Taft.

Her newest book is is leadership. times. And I love this book because

It goes all the way back to the very beginning. and looks at how the four presidents she studied most closely, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt F D R and L B J. How they found their foot. goes all the way back to their first entries into public life. And uh we encounter them at a time when their paths were filled with confusion.

Uncertainty, fear. and hope. How did they establish themselves as leaders? What did other people recognize in them? But also How did they manage their lives day to day? How did they get to sleep? Were there any tricks that they used, any social conventions or rituals that they used to maintain composure in the hardest of times? We dig into all of that. And as such we get all sorts of tidbits.

and life lessons from not just Doris. We do talk about her life as well, but These presidents she has studied so In depth. And with that I had a blast with this episode, and let's just get right to it. Without further ado, please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with

Doris Kearns. Good one. Doris, welcome to the show. Glad to be with you, Tim.

I have been looking forward to this conversation and also very intimidated by this conversation in my prep and in doing all of my homework. So I'm going to apologize in advance to you and my listeners if I embarrass myself with my lack of domain expertise as we we get into many different things. Uh but I thought we could start with something that Does not intimidate me, and that is

Some of your very early childhood experiences. I had read in the course of doing preparation for this conversation that Your father was an optimist and his optimism was perhaps the greatest or one of the greatest gifts that he gave you.

Perhaps just set the set the scene and explain some of the circumstances and then also what that meant. Uh to to instill optimism in you. No, I do indeed feel like it was the greatest gift he could have given me. He had a very difficult life, which I learned about, of course, when I was a little girl, but never having met his parents or grandparents.

Grandparents had come over from Ireland. And then my father was orphaned when he was ten years old. His little brother was hit by a trolley car when my father was ten, the little boy was six. His mother was pregnant, he had a two year old sister And the little boy died finally from the trolley accident. His mother had a child

Died. another child and um his sister and he were then put out to other people After his mother died in childbirth, his father committed suicide.

I only learned this all later. So here's this man, Michael Francis Alowishus Garns. Ten years old. Goes to work very early. eventually becomes a bank examiner in New York State was great with numbers. Something that he did not.

Give me as a gift. But most importantly, he somehow if you saw that man, you would never know that sadness that he had in his childhood. He had a twinkle in his eye. He loved life. He gave me that optimistic spirit, telling me if you like people, people will like you in turn.

And I I it's been the way it my life has been led since then, and I it's hard to imagine what better gift there's confidence that I think you get from your family and I think I got that too. But the ability to just get through h adversities with resilience And to have that hopeful feeling that things are gonna turn out all right. Even though sometimes they don't. You think they will again

It it's it's sustained me through my whole life. Are there any particular uh examples that you can think of or just approaches that you remember your father taking to coach you through difficult times or difficult experiences. I mean when you were Perhaps not at

the peak of confidence when you're suffering hardships What approach it. Would he have taken or did he take? Well, I think, you know, in small and large ways. I remember once I was in a concert at school And um I was s we were singing Old Man River.

And by mistake, I instead of saying said of Singing Old Man River. Instead of saying he's tired of living and scared of dying, he's I said he's tired of dying and scared of living, and I was so embarrassed and And after I came out he said

That was much deeper, what you said. His heart flipping, scared of dying. Isn't that incredible? And then I felt great and we went and had some ice cream. You know, and then of course, because I was such a huge baseball fan, I had to get through the failure of the Dodgers year after year after year, the Brooklyn Dodgers. And again he just said, It will happen some year. And he made me feel that Wait till next year will happen. But probably more importantly My mother had had rheumatic fever.

as a child, so she had a damaged heart. And really was an invalid for most of my childhood. En so he saw. what I had to go through and what he had to go through where She was not well, she had several small heart attacks.

And again he just got her through it, got me through it. And it all sounds so sad what I'm saying. But my childhood bizarre, was not sad, and I think it had a lot to do with him. Y you also mentioned and part of the reason for people listening that I'm asking these questions and I'm so interested in you as a person is that you are

such a keen observer and that's reflected in your writing, certainly reflected in your speaking as well. And I'm I'm interested in The formation of your Baseball. Uh you mentioned baseball. I don't know much about your background of baseball, but is it true? And I can't believe everything I read on the internet, so I I I certainly stand to be fact correct at any time.

That you were the first woman to be invited into the Red Sox locker room, is that true? Is absolutely I don't know about the first woman to be invited in, but I was the first journalist to be invited in. I happen to be at spring training. On the day that the order came down from the court saying that women journalists had to be allowed into the locker room to be able to do their job.

So the owners of the Red Sox said, Go in. So it happened that I was the first person to go in. And it actually is a trivial pursuit question in a New England trivial pursuit game. So it's a it's a great tried to have done it. It wasn't that exciting to be honest. I didn't see lots of guys in matters undress. I'm okay. Have you always been a as as long as you can remember, a an aficionado of baseball? How did that develop? I think in so many ways, um, my love of history came from my love of baseball. My father had grown up in Brooklyn And then moved to Long Island just before I was born. But still love the Brooklyn Dodgers.

So when I was only five, six years old. He taught me that mysterious art of keeping score while listening to baseball games. So that I could record for him like on a summer afternoon. the history of that afternoon's Brooklyn Dodger game. And then he would come home from work on the Long Island train at night

And I would recount for him with all my miniaturized symbols, the K for strikeout. Getting the guy around the bases Um I could tell him every play of every inning of the game that had taken place, and he made me feel I was telling him a fabulous story, but So it makes you think even as a little girl there's something magic about history to keep your father's attention for so long.

In fact, I'm convinced I learned the narrative art from those nightly sessions with my dad because at first I'd be so excited before I went into this huge rendition, I would say The Dodgers won or the Dodgers lost, which took the drama of this two hour telling away. So I finally learned you had to tell a story from beginning to middle to end. He he made it even more special for me when I was six. He never told me then. that all of this was actually described in great detail in the sports pages of the newspapers the next day. So I thought without me he wouldn't even know what happened to the Brooklyn Dodgers. So it really did I think t teach me

The importance of telling a story. In fact, much later I read an essay by my heroine Barbara Tuchman. And she said, even if you're writing about a war as a narrative historian You have to imagine to yourself you do not know how that war ended. So you can carry your reader with you every step along the way, from beginning to middle to end, not

being an all knowing person that says oh they won this war what's the drama if you already know that So I learned that just trying to keep my father's attention and telling him the story step by step of what happened to the Dodgers that day. For those who don't know, who is Barbara Tuchman? Robert Tuchman

Is a female historian, and I only mentioned female historian in course she was a very important early female. Pulitzer prize winning historian. And I read a book that she wrote, Guns of August, when I was in college, and it was so beautifully written. But more importantly for me, She was writing about battles and military stuff and things that you don't imagine that sometimes a woman might be so adept at. But more importantly, she was just a beautiful story teller and writer.

So as I I met her later, but she became a mentor in my imagination, I think, when I was in college. Now The point at which history Enters the scene.

Uh as such, labeled as such. even if baseball and your f your experiences with your father perhaps introduced you to crafting this this narrative arc. Did that start in high school? I had read I don't know if if that's true or not, but I I had read that you had a fantastic history teacher in high school, who I think won an award for best history teacher in New York State or something along those lines. Was was that a very

Uh influential period for you and when you were specifically in that class or were there did history somehow enter the picture Prior to that. Well, I think beyond baseball, the other experience that led me to love stories from the past is

Because my mother had had rheumatic fever and and had this damaged heart, I I love to listen to her tell stories. I kept saying to her, Mom, tell me stories about you when you were a young girl like me and I somehow thought if I could keep her mind talking about Days when she was young before her illness set in that her mind would control her body and this premature aging process we were witnessing would be stopped in its tracks.

So I was constantly saying, Mom, tell me a story about you when you were my age, not realizing how peculiar that was Until my own three sons never once said to me, Mom, tell us a story about you when you were our age. But I think It again it instilled in me the idea that stories from the past can can bring people who are different alive when they were younger. And then of course when I ended up studying Dead Residents, trying to bring them to life. So these two roots I think of my father's love of baseball

And my wish that my mother could be younger and I could imagine her running up the steps two at a time. led to my interest in the past. But then I think when I got to high school, a wonderful high school in Long Island, South Side Senior High School. This teacher, Miss Austin, who was the head of the social studies department. She made you feel when she was telling I remember about FDR's death.

as if she were experiencing it, you know, her her eyes filled up. And she did indeed win an award as the best history teacher in New York State, so all of us benefited. by having that chance to see history come alive. I I love history so much now and I just wish that every kid in school would have a teacher with that kind of passion because Whenever I hear kids say, Oh, it's boring, it's just a bunch of facts. And I keep thinking, No, it's about people who lived before. They had drama in their lives. They they went through tough times. Our country went through tough times. And the more you can learn from that perspective, just like learning from your parents or grandparents, you're learning from generations ago.

And if I could just have a Miss Austin in every school in America, that would be my dream. W when did you decide that you wanted to explore biography? As uh as I I suppose your your uh explorations of of literature and uh as a writer. When when did that

first come onto your radar or did you first think of it? No, I think where biography came from was Lyndon Johnson. Um when I was in graduate school And in college I was really interested in the Supreme Court and thought I might actually go to law school rather than graduate school.

Um, but I did end up going to graduate school. And I had a great teacher at Harvard Graduate School who taught the history of the Supreme Court. So my PhD thesis was was on Supreme Court. So I might have been studying These guys in their robes rather than my dead presidents. Were it not for the fact that I got a White House fellowship.

And a wonderful program that still exists today, which takes people from twenty three to Forty eight or fifty perhaps. And brings them to Washington for a year. hoping that you'll get a sense of of the government and then go back to your private life. you know, ha having been enriched by that experience

And I was at the young end. I was only twenty four when I was chosen And ended up in a peculiar way working for Lyndon Johnson. and then helping him on his memoirs um the last years of his life. And then writing my first book on Lyndon Johnson. So that's what set me into presidential history. That's what set me into biography.

that random experience. I mean Chance plays a role in so much of our lives, I think. I in the course of Prepping for this. Read that

Uh You had some doubts. about whether you would remain Uh in the White House I and I'm I'm paraphrasing here, I'm pulling from memory, which isn't always my strong suit, because you had written an Anti war piece.

Uh and that I I guess at the time the the president decided To Yeah.

A if you could flesh that out a little bit. And B Why he would make that type of decision. Yes, what happened is when we were chosen as White House fellows

There was a big dance at the White House. And he did dance with me that night. Not that peculiar. There were only three women out of the sixteen White House fellows. But as he twirled me around the floor, he whispered that he wanted me to be assigned directly to him.

But it was not to be that simple. for in the months prior to my selection as a White House fellow, like many young people I was active in the anti Vietnam War movement. And had written an article with a friend of mine that we had sent to the new republic weeks before And had not heard anything back on the need for a third party candidate to challenge Lyndon Johnson.

So it came out with the title Two Days After the Dance in the White House. how to remove Lyndon Johnson from power. Oh my God. I was certain he would kick me out of the program, or even worse, he might destroy the entire program. But in instead, surprisingly he said, Oh bring her down here for a year. And if I can't win her over, no one can. So I was not assigned directly to him in the White House, though. I think I was too incendiary for that. So I was assigned to the Labor Department under Willard Works, who was a wonderful mentor.

And then Johnson withdrew from the race in march of nineteen sixty eight. And right after he withdrew from the race he called me to the White House and he said, Well, you said I should be removed from office I've now removed myself. Now you have to work for me the rest of the time. And so I did. I went to the White House and then as I say, he asked me when the White House fellowship and the year working for him came to an end. to help accompany him part time to his ranch.

um to help him on his memoirs. He wanted me to come full time But I knew enough about Lyndon Johnson then that if you were completely in his sway Um it was really hard to to keep your own sense of balance, so I asked him if I could just go part time and go back to Harvard to start teaching, which is what I wanted to do. And at first he said, No, all or nothing, all or nothing.

So then the last day when he was in the White House and he was going to leave the next day he call me back and just said Okay, it's all right. Come part time. And then he just got to me. He said, You know, it's not so easy when you're not in power in the same way to get what you want. I I won't forget that you're doing this. But just don't let those harvards poison your feeling about me. So that was the extraordinary experience. I stayed at the ranch much of the time I was there.

got to know Lady Bird, got to know him very well, and And felt a great deal of empathy for him, even though he never changed my mind about the war. I did see extraordinary success that he had had in the Great Society and in civil rights. And I saw him struggle with how he would be remembered.

in those last days and l last last years of his life. So it was A very emotional experience led to my first book, Lyndon Johnson. And then from there, I became a presidential historian somehow. It wasn't that I set out to become one. What an incredible opportunity. I wonder and this is I'll I'll just ask you, if if Just in an alternate universe I were able to ask him directly why he asked you.

uh to help him. What do you think he would say? I mean he he could have reached out to any number of people What did he what did he see in you? Or how would he answer that question, do you think? Well, you know, he had a number of other people that were working on the memoirs with him. But I think to some extent because I was young And he knew that the audience he wanted to reach were those young people because he felt

That they hadn't understood him, even though he liked to believe he had done so much for them, which he had, except for this except for this huge thing, the Vietnam War. Um he I was a woman, so maybe it was easier to be able to Talk to me as a woman. Um, and he knew that I loved listening to stories and he was a great storyteller. I mean fabulous, colorful anecdotal stories. There was a problem with these stories I later discovered that half of them weren't true, but I loved listening nonetheless.

So I think part of my attraction for him was that I loved listening to his tall tales. Um, there was also a moment when I worried that part of the reason he had me there was because I was a young woman. Um, because and but everything was perfect. I kept talking to him about steady boyfriends even when I had no boyfriends at all until one day he decided to have a discussion, he said, about our relationship, which sounded ominous when he took me nearby to the lake, conveniently called Lake Linden Baines Johnson. There's wine and cheese and a red check tablecloth, all the romantic trappings, and he starts out, Doris, more than any other woman I have ever known, and my heart sank. And then he said, You remind me of my mother. I see what was going on in my mind.

But nonetheless I was there, you know, we used to walk on the ranch. I I talk about this actually in the epilogue of my new book because I tried to bring all Four of my guys. Lincoln, Teddy, Franklin, and LBJ. to the whole question of how they wanted to be remembered. Over time.

So I describe a lot of the scenes of walking with him every day where he his mind was just going back over the happier parts of his life. And also the sadness of knowing that hopefully the or the sadness of knowing that the Vietnam War had cut his legacy in two, but hoping that what he did on civil rights would receive Some sort of of of bounty in the time to come, and it certainly did, and it has, but he died before knowing that for sure.

And uh I'm I'm paraphrasing here, but Good. Referring to your decision. Or your

priority of doing uh working with him part time. You said something along the lines of it when you when you're fully sway, it was hard to maintain balance. So I decided to or asked for part time. Uh What does that mean? Uh if if you could uh

Elaborate on that. Іно, а ти вот мінсьє по That you had a feeling sometimes That um you couldn't get away from him. He wanted me to be there every moment. I mean, even when he took a nap.

He would want me to be sitting in a chair. right outside the closet just in case something happened to him, or just not wanting to be alone. And this was a man who needed company. And You know, you f I felt in some ways like

At twenty four years old, am I gonna be able to, you know, to say, No, I wanna go to the movies tonight, or I want to I just need some time or I wanna read Um, even though it was an extraordinary thing to be in his presence. I remember one time in particular, you just sparked this memory which I haven't thought about. when he would have visitors to the ranch He would take them in his car and show them the the jumping antelope, the the blue narrate the whole beauty of the ranch to them.

And when I was first working down there, I'd be in the front of the car with him. It could be an important person in the back, like Dean Rusk or something, and he'd say to me, Look, Doris, look at the jumping antelopes. But then I remember one weekend I didn't go to visit him at the ranch, um, and I think he was mad that I hadn't gone'cause I'd stay stayed at Harvard. So the next time I was down I was in the back of the car. And he's saying to whoever's in the front of the car, look, look at the jumping antelope. I felt like I was in Siberia. And I thought what is the matter with me? I don't even want to be in this car. I've seen these jumping antelope a thousand times. That was one of the times I think I knew that A small thing could be transferred into an arc of power. And at least had enough sense to think As long as I've got myself back at Harvard and I can come on weekends, I can come vacations and

It really was perfect. And I also wanted to be back teaching. That's what I'd been preparing for. I got my PhD and I couldn't wait to teach. So it it was a balance I think between the two, but it worked out really well. Why couldn't you wait to teach? I I think I always Talked ever since I was a little person, telling stories.

And I I knew that if I could teach now the kids at Harvard, it was later than getting them in high school or gr or or elementary school, but at least then If I could make them love history just as I had, and that I would be doing something meaningful because I thought in passing on that passion and there could be one or two or three or five kids in the class. that might end up really loving history, even if they didn't go into it, maybe for the rest of their lives they'd be reading history.

as their avocation not their vocation that I would do something that mattered to me. So And I really love teaching. I mean I only stopped teaching when I got married and had my kids and couldn't teach and write and be with the kids at the same time. And it was scary. I mean to to think of myself as suddenly becoming a writer when I was much more sure of my ability to teach.

So I le I left Harvard. I had two kids immediately after I was married. My husband had already had a son from his first marriage. His first wife had died. So all of a sudden I have three boys. And I was finding myself hardly able to get through the day, much less get anything done. So I had to make a choice, will I continue teaching or will I try and be a writer? And so

I I had luckily by that time finished the first book on Lyndon Johnson. and was gonna be working on my next book and had a contract But even then it took me ten years to finish the next book. And I remember being at a cocktail party in Cambridge at one point where somebody said, Well whatever happened to Doris Kearns anyway? Did she die? I wanted to hit the person and say, I had three boys. That's what's happened to me. But it it was able to I was able to balance, I think being uh a writer better with having the kids than I could if if I were teaching and writing and having the kids.

But I every now and then when I lecture and it's a forty five minute lecture or a fifty minute lecture, I think yes, this is what it used to be like Forty five minutes. Is uh it's a nice Self encapsulated. uh beginning, middle and end compared to perhaps ten years. How did were there times when you

Didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel or weren't sure if you were gonna finish. Did you have any self moments of self doubt over that ten year span. I mean that's a l that's a long period of time. Well, in fact, each of my books have taken such a long period of time that there are certainly moments where you just think, What am I doing? I mean, the book about Franklin and Eleanor and World War Two took longer to write than it took the war to be fought. It's which is really embarrassing. And the book on Teddy and Taft took seven years. And the book on Lincoln took nearly ten years. The reason it's not as scary as it might sound is that

I always sort of have an outline of knowing what I want to do before I start. It's sort of the lay person's. I don't know that much about the person, so I wanna know what do people wanna know about them. I'm not that much of an expert on the person when I start. And and then I start building the book, usually chronologically, if not from their childhood, wherever I'm starting. So chapters get done.

So it's not like I spend five years researching and then start writing. Again, Barbara Tuchman, my heroine, said you've got to start writing as soon as you can'cause otherwise you'll really feel this massive material is is on unable to be worked on. So Yes, sure there were times, but on the other hand

it meant that I could have my own hours. I w my husband's was a writer and we both wrote at home. I didn't have to travel anywhere to go and do what I was doing. I didn't have faculty meetings at night. I could be with the kids, I could go to the little league games and I really appreciated that I was Now in a professional That allowed me to balance as much as I could, even if it meant I wouldn't produce forty books.

I sometimes think What if I you know, had been a man living in another time and I wasn't involved with the kids. I mean, it's a sad thing to think about. Maybe I would have produced more books, but I would never trade it. Oh, I think I think you're doing spectacularly. I have I have uh as I was mentioning earlier

Uh such an i incredible level of respect for uh the work you've done it's it's very intimidating, uh uh uh on some level. Uh just fat. I'm not sure it's intimidating, but it's fat. Somebody was teasing me who read the bully pulpit. In Which was very long book, actually, I mean nine hundred pages, that she was reading it at night in bed and she fell asleep and it broke her nose.

Luckily my new book is shorter than any of those. Well let's let's talk about some of your guys. And Uh per perhaps we could we're gonna bounce around quite a bit and we can take this in just about any direction. Uh I I'd love to perhaps start with a question about Lincoln.

And uh I've read that uh You've said What's perhaps most striking about Lincoln was his emotional intelligence and temperament. Uh can you can you can you explain what you mean by that?

Absolutely. I mean I think When we look at the quality of empathy, which I think is a critical quality for any leader. I think for some people it's inborn, others can develop it over time. But for Lincoln, even as a child, when his friends would be putting hot coals on turtles to watch them wriggle.

He would stop them and say, This isn't right. We can't do this. Or there are times when he Foody drunk in a pit hole And everybody was walking by the person and he ended up going back. and picking that person up and bringing him, carrying him to a home.

And you can see that in him as a child. But it's more than that. I just I felt that living in his presence that I could become a better person. I don't always think that. I I I have great respect for the people that I've written about, but there was something about Lincoln's And even forgetting how it made him a great leader, which it did, he just refused

to let resentments fester. He refused to let himself get jealous of people. I mean it wasn't that he didn't have the normal human emotions Of jealousy or envy or anger. But he said if you allow those to fester, they'll poison you. So there would be times when, you know, I I might be jealous of something or envious of something and I just remember I'd say Lincoln would tell me this isn't doing you any good. You have to stop.

Амінез. of of Stanton who becomes his war secretary. And they had met when they were in the um in the law practice together in the eighteen fifty. Stanton lived in Cincinnati. Lincoln, of course, is in Springfield, Illinois.

But Stanton had a very national reputation and had a big case to be tried in Chicago, so they thought they needed someone of counsel in Illinois. His partner came and looked at Lincoln, thought he'd be fine. Lincoln was so excited at the thought of working with this extraordinary lawyer Stanton. But at the last minute the case got transferred from Illinois to Cincinnati. So they didn't need Lincoln anymore, but they forgot to tell him, so he kept working on his brief. He went to Cincinnati all on his own. He met up with Stanton and Stanton's partner on the street corner. And he said in his typically gregarious way, let's go up to the courthouse together in a gang.

Stanton took one look at Lincoln, and He had a huge stain on his shirt, his hair was disheveled, his arm sleeves were too short for his long arms and legs. And he turned to his partner and the partner said this later and said, We have to lose this long armed ape. He will hurt. And Lincoln was humiliated and they didn't open the brief he had painstakingly prepared. But the amazing thing is He stayed and watched the entire trial for a week, because he could see that there was some brilliance in Stanton and he wanted to learn from him. And he went back to Springfield, Illinois, and he said, I still have to learn how to become a better lawyer. So he would stay up later at night, he'd get up earlier in the morning, he taught himself Euclid when he was on the

And on the circuit in Illinois. But more much more amazingly So after his first secretary of war has had to resign Everybody comes to him and said, The only person that can mobilize the North and mobilize the war department is Edwin Stanton.

He's tough, he can be a bully at times, he can be insensitive, but he's your guy. and somehow Lincoln was able to put that past hurt behind him and give Stanton that most incredibly important job. And Stanton came came out eventually loving Lincoln more than anyone outside his family. Now that's a story that just it tells everything you want to know about him. He said, I don't care if somebody disliked me or liked me in the past. If somebody's been guilty of ill treatment or abuse of me.

If they're right at this time, in this place, they're the right person for the time. I trust that I'll be able to bring out the best in them. And he did. It's really uh incredible uh to hear these types of stories. And I th I and I think that uh It's worth digging into perhaps some more examples. Uh and I'd love to get your definition or how you think about temperament. Uh Because I've I've I've read you describing

Temperament as the greatest separator in presidential leadership. And maybe we could scratch presidential from that phrase. I don't know. But I and I think it was uh let me get this right, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. who said uh about FDR. He has a second class intellect, but a first class temperament. What does that what does that mean to you? I think what temperament means really is your basic stance Toward people, toward the world. Um

Does it do you ha if you have the kind of temperament that's got a certain base of confidence in it? so that you can surround yourself with people who can argue with you and question your assumptions. You have a temperament that allows you to share credit when something goes well. to take the blame when something goes badly. Um, do you bring out the best in other people? Do you make them want to work because you have a common sense of mission?

All of these are the basic way you treat other people. I mean I suppose it is encompassed in emotional intelligence. But I think you're born with a certain temperament, but you also can develop a certain temperament over time. And I do think Oliver Wendell Holmes was right. I don't think he was right that

F D R had a second rate intellect. I think that's defining intellect by academic excellence and he was a mediocre student at at Harvard, a mediocre student at Columbia Law School, but he had an incredible problem solving mind And he had the ability to bring people around him, experts in all the academic fields. And he start out these evening, z brain trust evenings. where they just relax and tell funny stories and have a couple of drinks and then he would start questioning them. And he was an incredible questioner and he could bring out it was almost as if he was excavating their brain. And whatever he heard

by verbal thing he could remember. People remember in very different ways. I mean Lincoln remembered when he read, he had an extraordinary memory that if he read something over and over again, it would stick in his brain like a poem or a piece of Shakespeare's drama. FDR learned by listening to other people. And once he had the story in his own mind, he could then tell it to somebody else. So that in that's intelligence is of a different sort, I think, than just doing well on a s on a series of exams when you're in school.

And if if we're looking at saying, Attributes Versus skills that are developed or the nature versus nurture

aspect of some of these abilities uh or the temperament as you mentioned. If if we look at say and I think I'm getting this right, uh The Lincoln quote, uh you know, your opponents today, maybe your allies tomorrow. Was was he always that way, or is that something that he Uh

Developed Over time and became better at. No, I think he did develop it over time. In fact I think most of these There are attributes that may be inborn that are perhaps like intelligence or

maybe even people skills. um empathy, as I say, may be inborn. Um but the ability to communicate in some ways, but you can develop all of these as time goes on. And I think that's the important thing for leaders to understand. But in his case I think Um when he was younger

І ардирисенсор. And he could really take down an opponent. By making fun of him. And and he did that on a couple occasions. There was one time when it the audience loved what he was doing and making fun of the opponent and then he saw the opponent leaving

leaving the audience and with tears in his eyes. And he just said to himself This isn't worth it. This is not the way you do it. So he learned from the experience of feeling guilt. at taking down an opponent that way. That if it were possible

to bring him on your side eventually. Мі обісли when he's in the middle of the war. The Confederates are his opponents. But even there. When you look at that second inaugural

What is he doing in that second inaugural weeks before he dies, but saying Um both sides You know, both sides read the same Bible, both prayed to the same God. Neither's prayers were fully answered. where he's acknowledging that the North had had problems with slavery just as the South had

And then with malice toward none and charity for all, let us bind up the nation's wounds. That's the The the words that say it. But what really says it was that night when he's elected president In eighteen sixty. He knows he's had least much less experience than any of his three rivals.

They were more celebrated, more educated ones, but they've been governors, they'd been senators, Seward, Chase and Bates. And he realizes I need their help. The country is in peril. These are the strongest and most able men in the country. I need them by my side. He brings them into the top three positions in his cabinet. Some of his friends say, Why are you doing this? You're gonna look like a figurehead having these strong people around you. And he said, I need them and I'll be fine.

And at the beginning some of them thought they were more important than he was. Seward in particular his secretary of state. thought he was running the show and that Lincoln would be like a figurehead. But then at a certain point Lincoln saw what Seward was doing. He knew he needed him, but he put him in his place. He said I I am the president and I will do this. And they too became great friends. And so it ended up

you know, admiring him more than anybody else. So I think he had an internal confidence. That he could bring these opponents into his midst. But it wasn't easy. It meant holding hands with a lot of them. It meant having to chew them out when they started bringing their anger toward each other out in public. And and and you have to keep going at it, it's much harder than if you have the same people around you who are all in the same direction. You may not have as many arguments and as many troubles

But he was able to contain those factions within his cabinet, and then he was containing it in the country at large, because they each represented a certain segment of the population, whether it's radical, moderate, or conservative. So it it's an extraordinary way to do it, but The interesting thing is, you know, when I've talked to business leaders A lot of them said they were able to to look maybe maybe not in that extreme way.

having those kind of rivals with you. But to understand the importance of bringing people near you. who really can argue and and question your assumptions. There's there's a moment the same thing with FDR. He's in a room with a bunch of generals.

Um early before the war had even started, the second world war. And it's Describing some pet project that he loved. And all of them are Shaking their heads as if that's wonderful.

And he looks over at George Marshall, who eventually, of course, becomes the chief of staff, and he says George, you're you're not shaking your head. What do you think? And he said, Well, Mr President, I I don't agree with you at all. And the room came to a silence, and everybody laughed, and they thought, Well, that's it for George Marshall. And then he appointed him not long after, bringing him up like fourteen names on the list or more to be the head because he wanted that kind of person around him. So it's that strength, I think, that inner confidence that allows you to do that, that's a critical question in all leadership capacities.

Do you have any uh people you surround yourself with who you know will speak truth to you or who have wildly divergent Or political perspectives that you have

proactively built into your life? Or did you just have people already who surrounding you who offer those opportunities to hear dissenting opinions. You know, it's it's a really important question. I mean, I think in my work So I I've had a woman who's been my research assistant for the last thirty five years and she's still working for me.

Beth who's my manager, my Best friend. My partner in a lot of things that we do together. um lives in California, has worked with me for the last eighteen years.

And I trust her, I think more than almost anybody to tell me when something I've done is not up to par when something I've written is not as good as it should be. Um and when um when maybe I'm I'm moving in some different direction. And then my husband and I have a best friend named Michael Rothschild who is a writer and a sculptor and lives in Maine.

And he has worked with both my husband and me, and we've worked with him on everything we write together, everything we do together, and he's absolutely Um Honest about this sentence isn't any good, or this you're not making this clear. So that's built in in a certain sense.

I'm not sure that I did it on that purpose. But they They are the kind of people, Beth and Michael, and my husband, of course. My husband read every single thing I've written. And not only edited them but would tell me when when I was going off in a direction that really wasn't right. I remember when I was working on the book.

on the Kennedys and I'd always been interested in medical history. Because the um my sisters were both nurses. And my brother in law was a doctor because of my mother's medical history. So John Fitzgerald, Rose Kennedy's father, had gone to Harvard Medical School for a year and I thought, Oh, this is great, I can write a whole chapter on the state of medicine in the eighteen eighties

You know, and then my husband looks at it and he says But he dropped out of medical school and he became a politician. Why are you doing this? And oh I hated to make that chapter go down to two pages, but he was just dead right. But the other thing that happens that build builds in descent is that um We we live in Conklin, Massachusetts.

And ever since the kids have been grown and the kids are now joining us'cause they live back in the town, which I can talk about later, but anyway, we go out every night to t to eat at a bar, one there's two or three bars in Concord that the whole gang of us goes to one one night, one the other night, and the next one the next night. And in that group of people, there are Trump supporters, there are radical people, there are moderate people, and we argue and talk about politics.

And I think it's really important for me to be able to listen to those other sides when I'm gonna be talking on television or thinking about today as opposed to thinking about the past. Let's let's say you're having one of those group conversations. You're at a restaurant slash bar, so there may or may not be alcohol involved. If things get heated.

H how do you or other people in the group are there any pot particular phrases you use or interjections you use to cool things a little bit if if they start getting too ad hominem or too heated? And I guess what I'm stretching for here. Is If there are any tools or phrases, approaches that people might use

To create environments where a group like that can actually communicate and hear each other's opinions without it devolving into a verbal fist fight. Yeah, I'm obviously you know, all over the country right now it's a difficult situation where some places you go in bars and they won't even put the news on because they're afraid it will rile the people and make them unhappy.

So it's it's not been easy discussions not only this time, but we've had a tribal feeling about democrats and republicans for some time now, through Obama, through Clinton, through Bush. And I guess the best thing is I as long as you can just ask the people Why do you feel that way? Um what what makes you what parts of him do you like, or do or do you like this part of what he's saying or not that

And you can sort of parse it out, or they can ask us. You know, w why did you like Hillary or why why did you think she'd be okay? you know, even though they might have thought she was a terrible candidate And as long as you can acknowledge You know, that yes, parts of her candidacy didn't work, but this is what I thought she was prepared for. Or on the other hand, they could say

He touched a cord, Trump did, and people who felt they were being left out. And people who felt they they're they weren't being listened to. Um and then and then s sometimes it does. Sometimes if it gets too hard Then we just say, Okay, let's have another drink and change the subject and talk about the Red Sox. That's what does it. And there may there may be some Yankee fans in the group, but usually it's not. So not not up here. So the Red Sox are a very calming device. Even though we get mad at them too, because they but not this summer. This summer they're doing great. So this is uh what we're discussing this type of

Uh Uh looking for a different adjective, but still civil is fine. discussion, civil discourse about some of uh these potentially polarizing topics. I mean that is a skill that can be developed. You have to practice, but it can be developed. And I'd love to Look back at uh some of your guys

And to to look at perhaps some of the mistakes, failures, or roadblocks, which I know you you discuss uh very very directly in the new book. Uh

give an illustration of something they they perhaps weren't very good at that then later became good at. Uh j just to show us uh give us some historical examples of uh those those early mistakes, slash weaknesses, slash roadblocks and how they dealt with them. Well, I mean taking both Teddy Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, for example

in both of them had grown up in an extraordinary privileged background And both had a certain kind of snobbishness, I think, about people who are not in their class. When Teddy Roosevelt went to Harvard. He looked up the names of potential friends to see if they were on the social register so that he would know they'd be safe. For him to be friendly with.

But then interestingly, he always was interested in the outdoors, in fact, in part because he was suffering from terrible asthma as a child. So he had to build the body. that would allow him to become a man and and to live on. So in the summers he would go to Maine with these guides and they were kind of backwoodsman guys. And he just loved being with them and he loved asking them about their lives. He had always been interested and curious in other lives through literature. But now he was seeing them they knew the woods, they knew things he didn't know. And all of a sudden the fact that he read more books than they did seemed less important. But even so when he first got into the state legislature.

He he was a fiery kind of character, and he went after a judge who he thought was corrupt and he pounded his desk and he said terrible things about him and he got a swelled head when the the judge was Was undone by the newspapers. And then he realized that he'd become so self important that that he thought the democrats on the other side were terrible people, he wasn't dealing with them, that only he knew what was right.

And as he said, I rose like a rocket and then I fell to the ground. And he finally decided that you had to compromise and collaborate. And be with other people and learn from them. So and FDR similarly, when he first got into the state legislature, he did very well at the beginning. He was organizing a group of people and he thought that the The Tammany bosses were all bad people.

And then he began to see, My God, they m they may be doing some corrupt things, but they also are helping people in the cities. They they The people who vote for them do it because they come to their funerals, they get them food, they get them full fuel. And he moderated his kind of approach to politics

But that's the thing that You know, what Teddy said at one point was the great thing about being a politician More than if he had chosen another field, and I'm not so sure it's true today, but it was then, he said A man who takes an active part in the political life of a great city is is going to be meeting all sorts of people as a result.

And that's what he called fellow feeling, which he said was essential for any democracy. He said that by by going to places that he normally wouldn't go. He went to tenements, he was a police commissioner and he roamed the slums at night. He was a civil service commissioner, so he understood what it was like to take an exam and want to have a job for that kind of clerkship. He was in the army, he had fellow soldiers that he was leading.

And he lived with them in this in the same kind of tent. All of that broadened his experience that he would not have had as a child. And by the time he reached the presidency He had what he called that sense of civic life being marked by understanding other people's points of view.

It's the very thing that's missing in our country today. He said a large part of the ranker of political and social strife. arises from misunderstanding by one section or one class. They're so cut off from each other that they don't appreciate each other's passions and prejudices. And because he had spent time in the West, where he went after his wife and his mother died on the same day in the same house to escape his depression. He saw cowboys, he was a cowboy.

And it's that breadth of experience that I think all leaders need to It can come through curiosity, it can come possibly through reading but it comes to meeting people of different sections and different places And that's what politics in the best sense can do. But today I think w they're much more narrowed down to the people who agree with them and they don't have that same broad experience that they used to.

Let's let's say that there are people in government listening to this podcast and I and I do know that there are a number of senators who subscribe to the podcast. uh various policymakers. What are some recommendations you would have if if they want to develop that broader perspective? Are there any particular

actions you might suggest, any particular habits that based on the historical accounts in your research of these larger than life figures that they could in the current day somehow incorporate To

uh develop These types of attributes that we're talking about? I d I do believe there are. I mean, think about it. Lincoln used to have ordinary people come into his office in the morning and and just talk to him about what they wanted. They wanted a job. This is the days before civil service.

And he'd listen to their family discussions, he'd listen to why that clerkship or that postmaster ship would matter to them. And after a while his secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, said to him, Mr President, you don't have time for these ordinary people. He said you're wrong. I must never forget the popular assemblage from which I have come. So

Teddy Roosevelt took whistle stop tours on a train six weeks in the spring and in the fall. And he went to places where he'd been defeated as well as places where he had won. And then he would stop the train at the local station and listen to newspaper editors you know, who would be criticizing something he was doing, he'd be talking to ordinary people You have to get out of the office. Мій ФДР.

was not able because of his paralysis to go around the country as much as Teddy Roosevelt was. But he sent El Honor his wife. Two hundred days a year she would be going from one New Deal project to the other, seeing which ones were working, which ones wasn't, bringing him back stories. of people who were hurting during the depression, the stories that he needed to really to really work.

And L B J If you look at the way he dealt with the Congress. Why was he so brilliant in getting the two sides of the aisle together? because in the first six months of his presidency after JFK died Yet every single congressman over in groups of thirty to the White House.

They would then have start with drinks together and then Ladybird would take the spouses in those days on a tour of the mansion. And then they would sit and talk. And then he would call them up at six in the morning, he'd call them at noon, he'd call even a senator at two AM, he said, I hope I didn't wake you up. But I just need your advice. And then the Senator says Oh no, I was just lying here looking at the ceiling hoping my president would call. But not nothing beats

spending time with different people And not letting your day get filled up. just with the colleagues and the and the people in the government itself. I mean FDR said when he was uh putting over the papers to the FDR library, the first presidential library He said there's millions of papers here of government talk to one another.

But the ones I value the most are the letters from the people who are telling me their stories and their opinions of me and what I should do differently. And those are the ones that I hope people will read as time goes by. So maintaining that connection whether it's a leader and and their company and their shareholders

or whether it's a president and their constituencies And keeping that sense of understanding and connection directly. That's why FDR was so terrific on the radio because He made people feel when he was communicating with them that he was talking to them individually. You know, people would be sitting in their living room or in their kitchen looking at the radio, but they felt somehow he was just talking to them. There's a story about a construction worker

going home one night and his partner said, Where are you going so early? He said, Well, my president He's coming to Speak to me in my living room tonight. It's only right I be there to greet him when he comes. It's that sense of keeping that connection. The higher up you go.

The more it likely it is to narrow the numbers of people that you see. And all of these people reached out. Across those barriers. To keep fresh. Even when Eleanor Roosevelt came back from her stories

um the what would the people were feeling in the country. They would always have dinner the first night. So the story would be fresh, not repeated over time. Yeah. You you mentioned Eleanor, uh you also mentioned Lady Bert Johnson. Are there any uh first lady stories or attributes uh that

That you think Don't get enough Uh Airtime or that perhaps are are lesser known that should be better known. Well, I think the important thing is that

The importance of a first lady And so far we have had just first ladies, no first men. The importance of a first lady to the president goes well beyond whether they contribute in the partnership way That Eleanor did. I mean, she was extraordinary. She's the first lady to ever have a radio program, the first lady to speak at a national convention, the first to hold weekly press conferences where she had a rule that only female reporters could come to her press conferences, so that all over the country stuffy publishers had to hire their first female reporter to go to Eleanor's press conferences.

But they all can't be as active in politics as Eleanor was. In fact, when Bess Truman came in Eleanor said, I'll introduce you to the ladies of the press. And Bestuma said, Why in the world would I want to do that? I'm not going to be talking to the ladies of the press. What you need to know is the same thing you need to know. about any partnership. Is what are they contributing to one another?

Um, Teddy Roosevelt's wife Edith. had no interest in being a public figure. She said the only time a woman's name should be in the press is when she is born and when she dies. But she gave him the the stability of a raucous family home. The the kids were were part of his life. He'd come home and play with the kids. He knew that that they had a family that was strong and stable and could withstand any of the pressures of public life.

So I think we need to look at the the way in which um the wives of first ladies have contributed to their husbands that may be very different from political. It could be a balance, as Ladybird was an extraordinary balance to Lyndon Johnson. There were times even when I was at the ranch. where I could see him get so angry about something and controlling anger is such an important part of leadership and somehow

As he was yelling at somebody, she could just put her hand on his knee and say, Now, Linden, Linden, you don't really mean that. You're gonna feel bad about this later on and somehow it just calmed him down. So I think sometimes it's somebody who's calm against the manic person, sometimes it's somebody like Eleanor who could actually argue with him. I mean he said she was like a welcome thorn in his side. She was the person who could tell him the truth whenever he needed to hear it. Are there any other presidents uh well they could be someone you have written about, could be someone else you've studied, doesn't even have to be a president, a leader, let's just say.

uh who strikes you as particularly Underrated or overlooked. And it doesn't have to be one. Could be m could be more than one. Well, you know, that there's there's leaders that I don't know about that I mean, that's what's amazing, even though I taught a course on the presidency for years at Harvard. I don't really know a lot of our presidents. In fact right now I'm involved in

uh possibility of a a mini series on George Washington. And I can't tell you how little I know about George Washington, which is really embarrassing, but I'm so excited because now I'll be able to live with him. I'll wake up with him in the morning and think about him. I'm not writing about it and it won't be quite as intense as it would be, but helping as a consultant On this documentary.

So I don't think he's underrated though. I think people know about him But I'm sure if I were to go into somebody like Cleveland, maybe um Grover Cleveland, if I went into James Polk, which everybody who knows him says now he's a really interesting guy, you'd find more about it. That's the thing. When you study somebody, you get interested in them. And

The fact that they reach the presidency usually means that there's some ambition there. There's some desire hopefully to to do something for the country. There's some resilience because they've all been through something. So they become human beings and then you realize that maybe they're underrated as a person. because of their judgment in history. The way presidential historians judge people can often be difficult. I remember

I happen to be at a dinner Um at the White House in nineteen ninety. Seven. So it's before Monica Lewinsky happened to Clinton. But there'd been a presidential historian's poll that came out that day that ranked him sort of in the middle.

And he was so angry through the dinner. He just kept talking about it. I unfortunately was sitting next to him as a presidential historian. So I was trying to make him feel better. That very day the owners of the Brooklyn Dodgers were Now the Los Angeles Dodgers had announced that they were selling the team and there was some thought that maybe they'd come back to Brooklyn. So I said to I said to President Clinton, I'd make you a corrupt bargain if you bring the Dodgers back to Brooklyn I will put you up a notch on the next presidential poll. He didn't even really laugh. I didn't think he thought it was funny, but I thought it was funny. Anyway, um, you know, just mentioning that

business though of Lyndon Johnson and having anger Controlling anger. It's such an important part of leadership and But Some of my guys were so much better at it than others. I mean, Abraham Lincoln had this wonderful ritual that I think you can develop where when he got angry with somebody

He would write what he call a hot letter. um to the person, releasing all his anger. And then he put the letter aside, hoping he would cool down psychologically and never need to send it. The famous case of that is when General Meade failed to follow up with General Lee's army after the victory at Gettysburg, despite telegrams saying you can't let Lee's army escape. Um he did let these armies escape and

Yeah, and and And Lincoln was so upset about it, that he wrote a long letter saying, I'm immeasurably distressed. You didn't do what we asked you to do. Had you done so, the war would have come to an earlier end. But then he realized, Oh my God, he's still in the field. This will paralyze him. He puts the letter aside, and

And it's never even seen until the twentieth century, when his papers are opened and a raft of these kind of letters exists, never sent and never signed. So after the book Team of Rivals came out. Um a CEO wrote me and he said Thank God for Lincoln's hot letters. written an email to a subordinate thinking that the subordinate had done something wrong.

And then you decide, I think I'll just put this in draft instead of sending it. And he found out the next day that he had been wrong about the information. So that's one way to get through of anger. FDR had his own way. He wouldn't write drafts of speeches, say his fireside chats would go through five or six drafts. Before they would be done.

And if he was angry at a congressman over a particular incident. He would call out the person by name in the first draft, you know, he'd call him a traitor to his class, a terrible guy. A new young speechwriter came along and said, I can't believe he's gonna do this. This will look terrible. The older speechwriter said, Just wait till the second draft. By the second draft the congressman's name was gone, by the third the negative adjectives were gone. By the final draft all was sweetness in life, but he'd gotten it all out of his system by doing that. So figuring out ways to get that anger out.

in a way that's not gonna hurt the person directly and hurt your own leadership is something that my guys were able to do. Lyndon Johnson less able to Um, when he'd be angry, he would go, for example, to somebody's And if the desk was clean, he'd think, Oh my God, the guy's not working hard. If it was messy, he'd think he's disorganized. And and then when he got angry, he would just start yelling at the person right there and then he'd feel bad. And he might send

you know, a present to them the next day. But so much better if you can release that anger in a different way. Stanton, Lincoln's war secretary. um came by one day and he was furious at a general And so Lincoln said to him, Well, why don't you write to the general and tell him what you're feeling And so Stanton comes back.

A few days later and he reads them the thing and And s and he says, Now, Stanton, what are you gonna do about it? He said, Well, I'm gonna send it, of course. And Lincoln said, No, you're not, just throw it in the white pepper basket. He said, But it took me two days to write. And he said, I know, and it did you ever so much good. You feel better now. That's all that's necessary. Just throw it away. And so after a little more grumbling, Stanton did just that. And the interesting thing is when I When I interviewed President Obama for a Vanity Fair exit interview.

Um, I was talking to him about Lincoln's hot letters and And he had read Team of Rivals, but we we re we went over it again. And he said I said, Do you ever do that? And he said, What do you mean? Of course I do all the time. I said, What do you mean? He said, I write dozens of letters and crumble them up and put'em in the waste packet. So that's a a lesson one could learn. Pulling from that Vanity Fair piece, I I wanted to ask you about this because at one point Ben, I think I have this right. Uh you you wrote at the beginning, you're preparing for this conversation today, I realized that it was nine years ago that you first called me on my cell phone, quote, Hello, this is Barack Obama. I've just read Team of Rivals and we have to talk about Lincoln. So

A couple of questions. Did you know this call was coming? Was it Uh blocked number and then someone saying they're Barack Obama. Did do you believe that it was Barack Obama? Could you Tell us a little bit about that phone call. running way behind Hillary Clinton.

But obviously he'd been a a star at that convention, so I had never met him, but I'd heard him give that speech because I'd been there covering it for television. But No, I I can picture the room I was in in my house. when I just answered the cell phone and he said, This is Barack Obama and I thought at first, is it really? But indeed it was. And what had happened is that he wanted to talk to me about the book, not because

He was thinking of creating a team of rivals. He was so far behind Hillary at that point. He just was fascinated by Lincoln's emotional intelligence. you know, how he could forgive these people in the past, how he could control his anger, how he could share credit, all those things. So I went to his Senate office building and talked to him about Lincoln. And then the interesting thing that happened is that when he then appointed Hillary Secretary of State his chief rival.

After he had won the nomination, actually, somebody asked him, a journalist said to him Would you really be willing to put one of your chief rivals into your cabinet Even if he or she had a spouse who could be a pain in the neck, of course it was meaning Hillary and Bill Clinton. And he he then quoted Lincoln and he said, You know, the times are in peril, you know, these are the strongest mouth people. If she's the strongest, yes, I'll put her in. So then when he did, it sort of became a term team of rivals. So when I went to the inauguration

covering it for television and there was a party the night before where Hillary Clinton was And teasingly, she came up to me and said, You are responsible for my being Secretary of State. Of course, not me, but Abraham Lincoln. But yes, I I think leaders do learn from each other that one of the great things about Harry Truman was that even though he was not college educated, he loved reading history and biography. And he learned from the leaders in the past. I mean each one of them I think learns from each other. I mean when I think about it

the book that I've written about Lincoln and Teddy and Franklin and LBJ it's almost like a family tree because LBJ's hero was Franklin Roosevelt, who he called his political daddy. Franklin Roosevelt's hero was Teddy Roosevelt. In fact, he modeled his whole career on him. When when Franklin was twenty-eight years old and a law clerk, as I say, not having been a great student or even a great law clerk, he and the law clerks are sitting around and talking about what might happen to them in the future.

He said, I'm not gonna be practicing law forever. I think what I'd like to do is to be a state legislator. And then I think I'd love to be assistant secretary of the Navy. He loved ships and he loved maps and he loved the Navy. And then maybe from that I could be governor. And then who knows, maybe I could be president. exactly the path that Teddy Roosevelt had taken. And Teddy was his hero. They were distantly related. But of course Eleanor Roosevelt was Teddy Roosevelt's younger brother's daughter and

her father had died of alcoholism young, so Teddy became a really important uncle to her. So from the time that Franklin was young, meeting the family early on, and then from knowing Teddy Rosevells, a young man, that was his hero. Teddy Roosevelt's hero was Abraham Lincoln. And he used to read he read one summer when he was in the middle of this terrible crisis of the coal strike.

He read the volumes, eight volumes by Nicolain Hay on Lincoln, and it just helped him, he said, to learn that Lincoln had been through rough times before, that Lincoln had had to face radicals on the one side, conservatives on the other, and figure out a moderate point of view. And in the middle of this cold strike he's reading this book and it gives him solace and then Of course. Lincoln's heroes were the founding fathers in George Washington. So it shows how short the history of our country is that you can encompass these

four or five leaders. in the whole history of the country who f form a family tree. It is remarkable. I mean it just I think about say uh traveling overseas and you find these buildings that are by Not a small margin. Uh

so much older than the entire history of our country. It's it's really remarkable. Uh and uh I'd love to Come back to

That Lincoln would write. Uh are there any other Routines or habits Uh Could be for anything.

for forgiveness, sharing or giving credit or anything at all that have stuck with you that you find particularly interesting or unusual from a any of the figures you've studied. Well, I think you know, one of the things that Teddy Roosevelt would argue was that procrastination was a mortal sin. So that if he knew he had to give a speech months away He would start writing it that day. just so that he wouldn't have to think about when am I gonna start it, when am I gonna start it.

Even when he was leaving the presidency, he was supposed to give a speech in the Sorbonne after his year in Africa on the hunt that he went on, but he had already finished the speech before he went even on the hunt. to Africa, and so there's so many times Even for myself, if I've something I really don't want to do, I at least start it so that I won't have to think when am I going to start that thing. So that's a habit that I think he developed in his other people in the cabinet. Whenever they had to give a speech or go somewhere, they would all be preparing ahead of time and sharing drafts with one another, which they wouldn't have done if it had waited till the last moment. Um I think the most important thing, however, that they all figured out how to do um was how to relax and replenish their energy to find time to think and relax.

You know, I think about it in our twenty four seven world, so many leaders or even regular people working in an organization feel I can't take a vacation or I have to take my email with me wherever I go. I can't find time to do anything else other than work. But think of these guys that I'm studying. They certainly had difficult situations. You had Lincoln having to deal with the civil war. You have Teddy dealing with the industrial revolution and the huge gap between rich and poor that arises during that time and big labor strife. You have obviously FDR with the depression and World War Two, and Lyndon Johnson with the civil rights struggle.

And here they go. Lincoln goes to the theater more than a hundred times during the civil war and people criticized him for it. They said how can you go to the theater in the midst of all this? And he said I've got to get out of politics and out of the war, and for a few hours when I'm watching Henry the Fourth I can imagine myself back at the war of the roses. And I must have some relief from this terrible anxiety. It will kill me, and the theater is it.

Or for Lincoln when he told funny stories, he was a great story teller. And he could tell stories to people who were around him and they'd laugh. And when he would laugh. Somehow he was whistling off his sadness. So humor In a certain sense.

was his way of dealing with anxiety. Teddy Roosevelt. Every afternoon found a time two hours every afternoon. for either a raucous tennis match or a uh strenuous hike in the wooded cliffs of Rock Creek Park.

or being thrown around by two Japanese wrestlers or a boxing match. He loved playing this game single stock. He would often injure himself in these various games he played And then there was one time when he was in the middle of the cold strike where he was deprived of these zany exertions because he had an infected leg. So he writes to the librarian of congress. Ані се нід саме скайфолдес. I want you to send me something on Mediterranean history or something on the history of Poland and so in the middle of this poll strike at night he says and he writes back to the librarian of Congress and he said

It's been such a delight to drop everything useful, everything relating to my duty, particularly the coal strike, and spend an afternoon reading about the relations between Assyria and Egypt. which could not possibly do me any good, but in which I reveled accordingly. Frank Franklin is the best. I think in some ways he's the best. So first of all He loves going having movies at the White House. He loves crossword puzzles. He loves his stamps, he loves looking at maps. He loved playing poker.

He really, really knew how to relax, but the best thing he did was when he was in World War Two. He had a cocktail hour every night. And the rule was that you couldn't talk about the war. You could talk about books you'd read, you could talk about movies you'd seen, gossip about people, as long as the war

wasn't mentioned. So for a few precious hours he like Lincoln when Lincoln was at the theater could relax totally. And after a while this cocktail hour was so important to him that that he wanted his closest friends and associates to be living on the second floor of the White House to be ready for the cocktail hour. So the White House became the most exclusive residential hotel you could possibly imagine. Harry Hopkins' foreign policy advisor came for dinner one night, slept over, didn't leave until the war came to an end.

His secretary, Missy Lahan, lived with the family in the White House. I'm Lorena Hickcock, who had an emotional relationship with Eleanor, had a bedroom next to Elinor. And the princess from Norway in exile in America during the war lived with the family on the weekends. And the great Winston Churchill came and spent weeks at a time in a room diagonally across from Roosevelt's. So when I was writing the book, I just imagine all these people in their bathrobes at night on the corridor of the second floor of the White House waiting for the cocktail hour or or having come from the cocktail hour and then being ready for bed

and and wishing that when I've been up there with Lyndon Johnson When I was twenty four, I'd asked where did Roosevelt sleep? Where was Eleanor? Where was Churchill? But I wasn't thinking in those terms then. So I happened to mention this on a radio program in Washington when No Ordinary Time came out. And it happened Hillary Clinton then in the White House was listening. So she promptly called me up at the radio station, inviting me to sleep overnight in the White House so I could wander the carter together with her and their husband and figure out where everyone had slept fifty years earlier. She invited me and my husband to sleep overnight and we were given Winston Churchill's room, which meant there was no way I could sleep. I was certain he was sitting in the corner drinking his brandy and smoking his cigar. But with my map, we figured out yes. Chelsea Clinton is sleeping where Harry Hopkins was, and the Clintons are sleeping where FDR was, and of course we were with Winston Churchill. So it was pretty exciting.

That is amazing. routines, tools, anything that you use to rejuvenate or decompress yourself. You have an incredibly

busy schedule or you certainly uh just based on the amount of work you put out it would it would seem that you are certainly able to go go go. So what have you built into your schedule? to help recharge the batteries. Well, the most important thing I think is that once it's time

For dinner. I don't work late into the night. I work I get up early in the morning. I can wake up at five or five thirty. I love getting up before everybody else is he is around. And I don't look at email until seven or seven thirty. If it's winter, I come downstairs and I have a fire that I can turn on, a fireplace. If it's summer and it's air conditioned, I'd put a blanket on myself.

and the rest of the household hasn't awakened yet. So those are really precious hours to to just read over what I'd written the day before, not look at email, not think of everything else I have to do that day. And similarly by six thirty or so at night. That's the end of work. Um I we go out to dinner every night as I was saying, and when I get to that bar with my friends It w it has nothing to do with what I was doing that day. We're talking about the game of the Red Sox, or we're talking about politics.

And it's totally taking me away to another channel of thought. And then because we've had season tickets for the Red Sox. Um for the last you know thirty years. when I walk into the baseball game, I obviously became a Red Sox fan after the Brooklyn Dodgers abandoned me and went to Los Angeles and I moved to Harvard and became a Red Sox fan equally as crazy as I was as a Brooklyn Dodger fan.

But once I walk into that ballpark and I keep score still when I can there Um I feel like I'm in another place and I don't think and worry about what I'm doing. And then when I get home at night I don't read history at night, I read mysteries. Somehow That's what I need to do before going to sleep is to read some mystery. I don't know why, trying to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

But just relaxing with a good mystery. So There are ways to do it, I think. I mean It the the most interesting way of thinking about anxiety For my guys is FDR had all these ways

Uh allowing himself to relax. He went on a fishing trip at one point. ten day fishing trip in the middle of the crisis of Britain before we were in the war. And he came up with the whole idea of Lend Lease on that fishing trip because he was away from the turmoil of Washington where the bureaucratic structure couldn't figure out how to lend money Or lend supplies.

Can you explain what that is? I'm gonna admit my ignorance, I don't know what that is. No, I absolutely so what happens is that When Britain has is already being bombed by Germany. And it's nineteen forty, so it's we're not in the war yet.

Um he he knows that Churchill has run out of supplies. Dunkirk had happen, so their destroyers were killed. We need to somehow get our supplies and our weapons to Ingland. But England has no money to buy them anymore. And neutrality act say we can't just give them to them.

So he comes up with the idea that We will lend you our weapons. And then after the war is over, you will get them back to us as if a neighbor's house is on fire. And you're gonna lend them your hose. to save that neighbor's house, but also save your house too.

And then in return for Giving the weapons We got a lease on British bases all around the world. It was really a good deal, a good Yankee bargain. But anyway, it it it eventually gave us money. for um for Russia. It gave us money for all of our allies, not just money but supplies that were given to our allies all over the world because of leasing them rather than letting them buy it. So

On this ten day fishing trip. He comes up with the idea That he can just lend the weapons and then get them back at the end. And it's really leasing them rather than selling them or having them buy it. So it's a simple thing, but nobody could figure that out in Washington.

But the thing that really struck me was that on evenings when FDR couldn't fall asleep when there was unusual tension. And the poker game didn't do it or the cocktail hour didn't do it. He had this ritual That helped him to fall asleep.

He would close his eyes and imagine himself As a boy again at Hyde Park, Standing with his sled atop the steep hill. Behind his house. And he would

go down the hill until he reached the bottom and then slowly come back up again. to the top and then he'd do again, go over and over again. It was his method of counting sheep. But the amazing thing is he's also liberating himself from the paralysis by this imagining And in that way he falls asleep. So

And what Teddy Roosevelt would do when he was anxious about an election, and this I've thought about a lot, actually. He would write letters to his friends and his family saying Don't worry if I don't win this election. I've had the best life so far. I've had a first rate run

And it would be Selfish of me to think that if I don't win this one, everything is lost. And I've thought about that a lot, actually. I've thought about the fact that if I knew I were dying. And and maybe this is a dramatic way of putting it,'cause he was just worrying about losing an election.

But that I'd hope that it would Give me solace to think I really had a good life and I felt like it was what I wanted it to be. And I can't control that it won't go on any longer. But I can look back on that, just like Teddy looked back on his life.

And I thought about it so much in these last months because my husband had got cancer this last year and he was incredible during the whole time. I mean he's He still, even though Okay. couldn't enjoy food anymore because of the radiation that he went through.

couldn't have his trademark cigars anymore. He went out every night with us to our regular bar dinners. Um, even though he was being fed by a feeding tube during the day so that he would get the nourishment he needed. And I actually learned how to you do the feeding tube. I couldn't believe that I learned that. I was so afraid of my technical abilities. And I had to face that fear and somehow do it.

But In the days before he died, all of our friends came to visit him. 'Cause he was in hospice at home. And somehow magically he he woke up. when people would come and he had something to say to them, something funny or something serious.

And and then he would go back to sleep and then wake up again. But in in so many days before that he would say He he didn't necessarily know he was dying right then, but he knew that he had cancer and that the radiation hadn't worked. And he there was no sense of talking about death. He was still working on a book that he hoped to finish But he kept saying, I love this town. I love what's happened to our life. Our kids are great.

How lucky we are and I just hope I can say that it the same way he did it made. It made me less nervous about dying to watch the peacefulness of of the way he handled it and There was an extraordinary moment. I I can't believe I'm really talking about all this night now, but I've somehow gotten into it.

Um where The last thing he said to me, he just looked at me and he had this incredible light in his eyes. Everybody said it was almost like magic. And he just said to me, You are a wonder. I mean I will take that those words with me the rest of my life. So I just hope I can be as peaceful and loving as he was as he faced his own death.

Thank you so much for sharing that. I don't know how I got into all that, but it has something to do with anxiety. How you got to sleep at night. Yeah, it's uh I mean the The gratitude and appreciation that you're Describing. Uh on so many different levels. Uh

Well first and foremost, I'm sorry for your loss. I can't even imagine what that would be like. Uh But uh I I thank you for sharing that. No, you're welcome. He was great, forty two years and

of marriage and and an extraordinary life that he had. I mean he was You know, he was involved in so many things that People knew when the obituaries came out, the breadth of it. Um, people had known part of it. I mean, we knew he wrote for Lyndon Johnson the great We Shall Overcome speech. He wrote Bobby Kennedy's South Africa speech, The Ribbles of Hope. He worked with L with JFK when he was only in his twenties.

and worked on some of his famous South American speeches, Al Gore's concession speech. Um but more important than any of that, he was just involved in policy and in in the great society and civil rights. And um And then he was in the Quiz Show investigation and that was made into a movie that'cause he was the young guy who discovered that those quiz shows when you weren't even born, those quiz shows were corrupted. And and then he wrote a play about Galileo and Pope Urban the Eighth, and was put on in London and in Boston.

It was such a such a wonderfully broad life, and he was a great guy and a great husband and father to our kids. Our our kids adored him. I feel like I'm unsure of where To go next with this. That that was such a beautiful story. Uh

And you're such a You're a gifted storyteller, and it seems to go back a long way. You've honed that certainly over time. And Uh

You have some of the most incredible J speaking of sport storytelling, some of the most incredible Book blurbs and quotes. from admirers of your work for the this new book, Leadership in Turbulent Times. You have Warren Buffett, you have an incredible uh collection of

of fans who have have provided you with Uh words. for this book. Why why did you write this book? I mean you you have to have a Such a keen

sense of the finite amount of time that we're all given on this planet, given your study of history, certainly mortality, your first hand exposure to it. Why Why put the time And energy.

into writing this book. Well, you know, in in some ways I mean I started it five years ago, so the times were not as turbulent as they are now, but there was a sense that Washington was broken even then and that we weren't

kind of leadership on the two sides of the aisle that could get anything done. And having lived through the sixties, having been there when the civil rights bill passed and the voting rights bill passed and aid to education, Medicare It was such a thrilling time to be young to see our country moving together in those directions. I'd written about these four guys before. But I hadn't really looked at them as leaders and what it was that made them able So

not just bring two sides of the aisle together, but lead the country through such difficult times. And I realized that Each of the times in which they led were far worse than the time we're living in now. So that if we think this is the worst of times, history will tell you, no, we've had more turbulent times before, and we got through them when you had the right leader fitted for the right time. mean they they all have different leadership styles. They wouldn't have been fitted to be in the other time to possibly so It's not just a matter of the constellation of traits you have. It's whether or not those behavioral patterns fit the challenges of the moment of the time.

But I think what I really wanted to do was just to understand how they became leaders. I mean we see them as iconic figures now. They're Mount Rushmore, there's monuments. And I was giving a talk. to a group of

college students, you know, four or five years ago. And one of them raised their hands and said, But how can we I was talking about leadership lessons from the White House, but how can I ever become one of them? It's too far removed. So the way I start the book is when each one of them is running for office the first time. So they're not formed yet, and they're not gonna necessarily succeed. Lincoln in fact loses his first election when he's twenty three years old, but incredibly he says

If I lose, um I've been already too familiar with disappointment to be very chagrined. But I do promise I'll come back five or six times and try again until it's too humiliating and then I'll give up. That's incredible, that kind of resilience. um Teddy Rose, they all suffered adversity. And I guess I was interested in that too, maybe because of my personal history of My mother dying when I was fifteen, my father dying when I was in my twenties, so that I had encountered death at an early age, but All of these people went through terrible adversity. Lincoln had a near suicidal depression.

when he his word was no longer his bond. He had broken his engagement to Mary and he was humiliating her by doing so He had failed in bringing infrastructure projects to Illinois, which he had promised to do. And he really was almost ready, he said, to die, but when he was You have to rally, or you will die. They've taken all knives and scissors and razors from his room.

He said, I would just as soon die now. But I've not yet accomplished anything to make any human being remember that I have lived. So that was his load star. That carried him through everything, all the losses that he had. He tried for the Senate twice, he lost He finally wins the presidency and then he has the civil war in front of him. So resilience in coming through adversity was a a key that I wanted to understand and all

It happened to all of them. Teddy Roosevelt. lost his wife and his mother on the same day in the same house in New York. His wife was pregnant, having a child. The mother had only forty nine, had come to take care of her. The mother got typhoid fever and died. And the wife died in childbirth on the same day in that house. And he was so depressed, he left the state legislature. He went to the Badlands. He said he had to be on his horse fifteen hours a day. He could outride black care, depression.

But more importantly, he found solace in nature, he found solace in the West. And became a different kind of leader because he understood the West as well as the East. And he came back and then went on to this extraordinary political career, but it taught him, he said And you don't build your resume little by little. He had always thought before he had a pattern worked out. And no longer did that pattern seem. So he said I'm just gonna take whatever job comes

It seems really interesting to me'cause it may be my last job'cause he now had a fatalism about life. So his friends say, Why am becoming civil service commissioner? Why am Police Commission? This is below you. He said, No, I wanna do these things. And if it's my last job, so be it. And then of course most importantly FDR. I mean what he went through when he contract polio and was paralyzed from the waist down. It

Allowed him to emerge more warm hearted More connected to other people to whom fate had dealt an unkind hand. than he would have been before that. You know, he said if you spend you learn humility through something like the polio and the paralysis, he said if you spent two years Trying to move your big toe.

which is frozen, and you finally move it and you celebrate it, then the pressures of the presidency are not gonna get to you. Um what he did at warm springs by bringing his fellow polio, as he called them To enjoy life again, not just to rehab themselves in the warm springs pool. But he would have wheelchair dances, they'd play games in the uh soccer games or or bad mitten games in the pool He made them learn to live.

Life again. Even with the affliction of having been paralyzed. and he emerged a different person. I mean it's extraordinary what he did. I and I just on a human level I found these stories so important to understand. Um much less because it made them great leaders. I mean when he first made a

an appearance after his polio two years afterwards. He hadn't been in public life. He was asked to give A nominating speech for Al Smith. For president in nineteen twenty four at the Democratic Convention. And he was very worried about how he could get from the seat. With his braces locked in place.

he could make appear to be walking if he held on to the arm of somebody his son strong arm. get to the podium, but he practiced and practiced. that distance in his own library. time after time and he was sweating and he got up to the podium and he made it. And he would practice even when he couldn't walk at all.

He would practice crawling up the stairs one stair at a time, and each stair when he got higher, they'd have a celebration. When you go through that adversity, you're a different person at the other end. And Lyndon Johnson what happened to him was that He had

he he had a a loss in a Senate race in nineteen forty one and for him it was as big an adversity as these other things were because it meant the end he thought of his political upward climb. And sometimes people don't get through adversity in a positive way, they can go backward. And he then just accumulated wealth and power. and was not as interested as he'd once been in making lives better for other people. Then he had a near fatal heart attack in nineteen fifty five, and as you often read about with other people It changed his attitude toward his life, and he decided I need something more than power. I need to make that power put to a purpose.

And when he did finally get into the presidency through the death of JFK And he decided that the first thing he would go for would be the Civil Rights Act and segregation in the South. Everybody said it's too risky. You can't do that. You'll never get through the filibuster and your presidency will be a failure and you're not gonna be able to win the next election. And he said, Well every now and then if you're playing pokey, you gotta throw in all your chips. So he had learned that through adversity. So I think what I wanted to do was even though I knew them as

family men, I knew their colleagues, I'd studied the times, I'd studied the substance of their leadership. I wanted to understand how they became leaders. How they got through adversity, how they developed, how they learned from their mistakes. And then finally the last part of the book are case studies, their their pivotal moments in their histories.

Um which are Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. which is actually um coming out in uh Harvard Business Review. this you know, in days actually, the Emancipation Proclamation as an example of transformative leadership. And then with Teddy its crisis management leadership of the Cole strike. And with FDR its turnaround leadership.

with the hundred days and with It's surprisingly visionary leadership for LBJ on civil rights. though obviously there's a quota about the war in Vietnam where his leadership utterly failed and it was an epic failure of leadership. But even when I was in graduate school, we used to talk about big things like ambition. Where does ambition come from? Where do you get a sense of purpose? How do you have meaning in your life? These are the things you'd stay up with late at night to talk about.

And I realised that That was what I wanted to come back to. Probably, you know, this is in some ways a culmination of fifty years of studying presidents. But it's at a different level. It's a more personal emotional level about my guys, as I call them. And I've really it's really stretched me in a way'cause it meant drama and history and Literature and Not just biography, but

O other things to try and understand psychology to understand how they led and how they became leaders. Doris, this is such a a gift of a conversation. I I've had so much fun and I And completely certain that this this book is going to be so incredibly compelling and valuable to

readers, uh because as you said, it's It's taking such a personal lens to the stories. Uh and lessons learned. vis a vis leaders that it transcends politics.

Uh and really layers of the human experience uh I really appreciate you taking the time to

Chow with me today. And to share all this. I enjoyed it so much. Really? This is so so weird to just be looking at this little picture of your face and I feel like we're talking to each other. That's terrific. I thank you so much. Oh it's entirely my pleasure. And I I really encourage everybody to Uh Take a look.

at your new book, Leadership, subtitle In Turbulent Times couldn't be more timely and timeless in at the same time. And uh I will link to the book, of course. in the show notes. Everything we've discussed for people listening will be in the show notes. So you can find links there at Tim.blog forward slash Podcast.

And uh Doris, I have to ask you one more question before we wrap up, which is Speaking myself as someone who occasionally has trouble sleeping. Mysteries. Do you have any mysteries that you might recommend or types of mysteries? Absolutely. In fact, I I just go on reading one mystery writer, you know, as sort of a binge reading. So just recently it's been John Grisham. And the great thing was that I was already into John Grisham when a few

months ago he came up to Boston with four of his friends from old Mississippi including one who was eighty years old and had a bucket list of things he wanted to do and places he wanted to see and they were all on a bus together and then they would come to these various places. So they went to New York and Anyway, when they came to the Kennedy Library part of the bucket list of the older guy was for me to talk to them for a couple of hours. So Grisham was there. So it was so exciting. I mean for me

Just having come into reading all of his works. To be actually meeting him and hearing him talk about how he creates a story. Um and and what sparks his desire to write about a particular law firm or a particular medical problem that happened. So yeah, there's something about there's something about

mysteries that just allow me to transport myself somewhere else. So I think Christian's a great pl I've read Bill Clinton's new book. And I'm I've r I'm reading um Jake Tapper's book right now, Hellfire Club, which is really good also. So I have several of them because when I'm on tr on a trip I have to take a paperback'cause my suitcase is too heavy. So if I'm reading a hardback, I have to have another one going at the same time. But I somehow get to sleep. Well, no one will ever accuse you of of being an underachiever. Uh you are so gifted at telling stories that are worth telling and and also doing Th it's such an incredible depth of research to piece it together in a narrative in a

And uh a story arc. that is is easily digested. I I really appreciate you doing the work that you do. And uh Once again, thank you so much for the time today. I thank you for yours. Wow. And uh to everybody listening, like I said, links to everything.

are in the show notes Tim.blog forward slash podcast and until next time, thank you for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again, just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share The coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out, just go to fourhourworkweek.com, that's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out, and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it.

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You may have heard of it, The Town of Seneca by Seneca, if you want to hear my favorite collection of letters of all time, as well as The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, which is a fiction book I use to reintroduce non-fiction purists to the beauty and truth and enjoyment of fiction. Graveyard book. It is incredible. And I like the version that Neil reads himself, but the Entire ensemble cast is also fun. Audible members get a credit every month good for any audiobook in the store. Regardless of price, and unused credits roll over to the next month. So if you didn't like your audiobook, no problem. You can exchange it, no questions asked. Plus, your books are yours to keep with Audible. You can go back and re-listen anytime. even if you cancel your membership. And for some books, again, Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, I've listened many, many times. You may even just start over as soon as you finish it the first time. Audible also helps you to listen to more books by letting you switch seamlessly between devices, picking up exactly where you left off, whether it's on your phone, through your car, on the tablet or at home, on Amazon Echo, whatever, you can get through tons of books, hands and eyes while doing almost anything. So that is part of the beauty of audio. It is a secondary activity when you're walking the dog, cooking, whatever it might be.

Audible content includes an unmatched selection of audiobooks, original audio shows, news, comedy, and much more from leading audiobook publishers, broadcasters, entertainers, magazine and newspaper publishers, and business information providers. Maybe that's what I am, a business information provider. And right now Audible is offering listeners of this podcast a free audiobook with a 30-day trial memberships. Check it out. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim and browse the unmatched selection of audio programs. Download a title free and start listening. It is super simple. Go to audible.com forward slash Tim. or text Tim to 500-500 on your telephone to get started today. Check it out.

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