Chelsea Clinton

of a sudden, I was like shaking someone's hand. I was saying, like, oh, you know, please don't forget to vote. And this guy was like, we were in math camp together. We did the unit on fractals together at the campaign staff. I was like, oh my god, she's like even more of a nerd than we thought she was already. I was like, yes, I did. I went to math camp and yearbook camp and language camp and model you in and I did all sorts of nerdy thing. You did

all the camps. Hello, I'm Mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always loved Prius question ap It was originally an eighteenth century polor game meant to reveal an individual's true nature, But with so many questions and there wasn't really an opportunity to expand on anything. So I took the format of Proof's questionnaire and adapted What I think are seven of the most important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and where were you happiest?

What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that has grown out of a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more we begin to see what makes

us similar and what makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I am honored and humbled to have had a chance to engage with today. My guest is Chelsea Clinton, one of the most multidimensional people I've had the pleasure of speaking to. And as someone who studied acting as opposed to going to a

traditional university, I am always inspired by true academics. What strikes me is even more impressive about Chelsea is that with her doctor in international relations and her master's in public health. She's carved out a space where her voice and expertise can create real change in the world. There's also a grace and a persistence with which she's explored her influence outside of the towering presence of both her parents.

No mean feat. So I admit I just had a moment which this is like so mortifying, but now I have to have to say this because it was in my head and I started to say it and I was like, do I want to say it? And I was like yes. I went on a date to Circle of Friends many many years ago with very sweet Rory Aigan,

who was my high school boyfriend. But I think it was like the second date we went on, so when I was steering and I was like, oh my gosh, I was like ricocheted backed going on a date at the movie theater on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, d C. I love that, you know that. I love that. That is like a grandmother didn't memory. That's great, and like we didn't share popcorn because I was like that felt

too awkward. He was like, do you want popcorn? And I remember being like, no, we do I want popcorn. What's the right romantic answer here? I was like a very awkward teenager, so you know what, so was I, which is what I think I got that part in that film because I was just completely exactly what. I was just kind of overgrown with mental hair and didn't really know which way was up. So glad that was your first date. You and Popcorn my boyfriend, who, by

the way, did model you end with you in New York? Yes, yes, he did what music did. So I was Brazil and Canada in different years. One year I was Brazil and one year I was Canada or not not just me, my my high school team. So you'll have to ask him, does he remember? He didn't want me to mention it at all, but now I have. But anyway, we got again. We're gonna get a to it. When and when were you happiest. I'm happiest with my kids, I really am.

I'm happiest when my kids are laughing. I'm happiest when my kids are like crawling all over me and tickling me. I'm happiest when we are reading a book together or baking together. We bake a lot, even pre pandemic. We just have baked more in the pandemic, which is probably not good. For any of us. It's been a lot of fun, and we try to watch a family movie every weekend um and I love listening to my kids, and I've had these quite deep conversations about trolls or monsters,

inc Or most recently Ryan and the Last Dragon. Well, my two older kids who are four and six, not my youngest, who's one, who doesn't really stay still for the family book reading or baking or movie watching. But that's when I'm happiest. I'm happiest when I feel my children's laughter fill my body and in my heart. Did you enter sicipate that before you were a mother, did you anticipate what that feeling of your children's laughter insidet you would feel? Like? No, No, I mean like I

love my husband. We always knew that we'd hope to have children. I was so excited to be a mom when I was pregnant with all three of our children. And yet this is gonna sound so crazy. I don't think I've actually ever said this in any public format, But my husband Mark and I were watching that show

in the History Channel of the Vikings. I love that, and right after Charlotte was supporting in the hospital like in the operating room because I had to have an emergency C section, and I had the sense of like, if the Vikings come through here, I'm gonna get off the table, even if my guts are literally like spilling all over the place, and protect my child. And it just it felt so primal. I love it, and I

was like, who is this person? I'm no fair? What is this person that has just taken over my body? You had a full Viking flashbang. I love the fact that you were envisioning Vikings and that you would fight the Vikings. I just say, if they were going to come marauding through the operating room, I was ready. I didn't know how I would be ready, but I was ready to protect. And I was trying to explain this to my husband. He was like, what are you talking

about again? But I'm ready, And he was like, talking about but I'm ready. I have my mace, I think exactly under the table. I just felt like all of a sudden I had become a mother and that this was the most important part of my life and what an extraordinary not only gift but new reality. I've been given to love this little person and then to love her brothers and so It's not what I'd anticipated, and yet I could not imagine my life any other way. Did he give context to the things that you were

already interested in? Yes? Yes. Did it make you want to make the world a better place? Yes? And it made me feel even more intensely about the things I already felt strongly about, which I didn't know it was possible. How frustrating it is actually this kind of sometimes conceit of the young people will save us, right, Like why do the young people have to save us? Like shouldn't

we be saving us so they don't have to? Yeah, my job as a parent isn't to say, oh, congratulations, here's the mess I left for you, but don't worry, like I'm going to give me the duel to tackle it and take this. Here's a dumpster fire for you, good luck, I love for you, goodbye, But I'm going to make you a really big, bright, sparkly sign on the sideline. It's like cheering you on, like in a

helicopter around the dumpster file. Right, it's so perverse to me, But it just everything got sharper and felt like more urgency and energy and kind of a vibration of like, oh, like I have to do this now, like I have to write, I had to teach these classes. I have to do this work. I have to try to help people care. I have to get people focused on public health.

And now it's easier because we're in the midst of a pandemic and all my friends are like, Oh, this is what you do, this is why you've been talking about for years. I know what an extraordinary lens as well?

Do they have a pandemic actually bring into even further focused the work that you've been doing all your life as an adults too suddenly go here, here it is illustrated, laid out before you, and once again, you know, in the same way that the Reagan administration refused to deal with the HIV AIDS crisis, the same way the Trump administration refused to admit that there was even a problem with COVID nineteen and that it was going to somehow

disappear painful painful echoes. Because I remember where I was when Magic Johnson talked about being HIV positive, and I remember reading and then later watching the extraordinary movie that came out of and the band played on, and I remember, you know, trying to consume everything I could about act up and just the deeply visceral residence of silence equals death.

And then I remember thinking I will never be there again, right like, even though there's so many things that I wish had been different, you know, at the New Year of last year, I just never thought that you would have had even under the Trump administration, an administration that kind of had the echoes of the worst of the Reagan era, of ignorance and dismissiveness and the discrediting of kind of science and facts and the kind of wilful

trafficking and things that are so unscientific and not based in facts. I know that you are a baker, will be your lost mail. O good lord. I was a vegetarian for many years. I gave up bread meat when I was eleven, and I gave up all of meat when I was thirteen. It was a little bit, a little bit rebellion and a little bit motivated by cruelty toward cattle and slaughterhouses and concerns about excess of red

meat on your body. But it would be totally disingenuous if I didn't also just own that it was a little bit rebellious, which all my friends were like this is how you're rebelling. It was like such a rebel, shall say that as the rebellion of somebody who goes to math camp. I won't eat meat and I will do fractals. Yeah, so you know, and I like, you know, I had to give my mother all of these back in the old days when you would you know, have to write things out right out, like don't worry mom,

I know how to have a well balanced meal. But for some reason, when I was twenty nine, I just start to crave red meat. I don't know if that. I was also running so much the time, so I don't know if it was I needed the iron or I needed the protein. And I'm a big believer in listening to our bodies. And I don't eat a lot

of beatus. I'm still very mindful of the kind of environmental effects, but I do I do love a really good like flat iron steak or skirt steak or cheeseburger, So I would probably have one of those, not all of those. Can have a buy a full three maybe no, well no no, because like I just and like a

really good arrugala salad is that for ring? And I love broccoli, so there'd be some broccoli and some roasted Brussels sprouts, and I would have to have a really decadent piece of Maybe do you know I'm going to not have a piece of cake. I'm gonna have dark chocolate movese with some whipped cream on top. And I'm going to have a really large espresso at the end of the meal. Oh and I definitely. And I want a glass of red wine during the meal. So I want my glass of red wine. I want my steak.

I'm gonna go steak, not cheeseborg I want my steak, I want all my green vegetables. I want my chocolate moves with my glass of red wine. And then I want to have a big espresso and I hug for my kids, and then I guess I can die happy. If that's where this conversation is going. It's quite triggering this question because you know your last meal, you know, before you get on the greyhound to go to Wyoming.

I don't know, but last meal. It does sound like you know it's your last meal before you're going to die. But you were going to say a piece of what you went for the chocolate movese, But you did say I will have a huge piece of Yeah, I love red velvet cake. I have a red velvet cake in my refrige itater we made a few days ago. Well, you can have the red velvet cake and cho Jessie like this is an interesting I feel like you really, even when you're given carte blash to have your your

still abstomust. I don't want to be even at the end, right up to the end. She wasn't a glutton. She only had the moves, she didn't have the cake. Let it be known. That's a good epitaph. Can you just tell me what flavor is red velvet? Because I don't understand. In England we didn't have it. It seems to me that it is just red food coloring in plain cake. What's the flavor meant to be? There are quite intense.

Maybe that's opperstating it. Maybe it's just intense. If you care about Southern Baby, I think they're very intense debates. Then I think this really needs a little bit of a few red velvet platforms. Aren't you just like red groups? The origins of red velvet are a bit shrouded in mystery. Some people say red velvet originated um beat sugar and beat food coloring when sugar was expensive and harder to come by, and beats or not, and so the red

color comes from beats. That is the best explanation I have heard yet. That's what I had heard growing up. I now know though that others say, no, Actually, it was about the texture of the cake. It was the texture of the cake that was velvety that if you were using lighter chocolate kind of the light brown looked a little red and red sounded more novel, and so it was kind of marketed as red velvet cake even before it had the color red. So that's some people's explanation.

So I don't want to go definitively like on this because I'm now gonna have baking forms being like she was not truthful about this. I don't think you are. I think they're going to be happy that you're talking about cake at all, because I know I am. I think it doesn't get enough play. Well. So we love the Great British Baking Show in our family, it's the greatest show ever made. I think that it might be.

I think that it might be. Why couldn't they just have made endless versions of that show to help us through the last fourteen months, to give us like the joy. I'm sorry to Telly, but in England that did this thing where they had celebrities on to bake people who maybe have never baked before, and it was all for stand up to cancer. I've heard my English friends have really they haven't been very kind and like rubbing it in my face. They have had a lot more content.

It's been the best thing about being in England. There is a lot more bake off. What person, place, or experience has most altered your life, Well, probably the honest answer is when my father won the election and we moved to Washington, d C. When you moved from little Rok to d C, did things become sacrisancs? Did you take things with you that made it home, that made this transition somehow easier or made it more familiar completely.

One of the things I'm so thankful to my parents for doing is there were very much the rhythms of our life and that we still had family dinner every night, so that was very sacrisaying time. Even if my parents had to go out to an event, or if my father had to go back to the Oval office, he would come home, my parents would come home. We had dinner every night together. We went to church on Sundays, and we had family lunch after church. That also was

really sacrisying family tradition and all of that translated. I grew up playing just huge numbers of games with my parents and with my grandparents, my uncle's and we I think played games every week, if not kind of more frequently, card games, board games, depending on how we're all feeling. Sometimes tarades, I mean, just we had so many games.

When my father won is probably the event in my life that externally most kind of influenced my life, but certainly internally what most influenced my life was when I became a mother. Oh yeah, I often won about the parallel life if I hadn't had henry of carrying on doing and exploring the things all that I'm interested in a living what can't help but be a fairly sort of selfish life in terms of just living for yourself

with no dependence. But I wonder what else would have filled that space, Because once you know what that feeling is to love a child, once you have had that explosion inside, it's hard to imagine like what it would have been like without them, I can't my imagination fails. I just I can't. I can't see it. Like, I don't know what happens to me after when I became a mom. It's just empty. And I have a pretty good imagination, Like I make up magical stories every night

for my kids. Do you. Yeah, we have Maya the Dragon, the Blue Dragon, We have Cadrew the Penguin. We have all sorts of characters in our kind of magical menagerie. My dad used to tell me my sister the story about Charlie the Fox, which we now embellish. I mean, this fox has really been through the ring at this point, because we add an embellished. But but he's still here, right, Charlie Fox has survived. Oh yeah he was. He was survived, but he's lost most of his tail at this point

because the grounds now getting his tail off. They didn't use to, but they get it now. God, what does that say about our world? You know what? That you can still carry on without a tail? Yeah? Who needs it? But do you remember back to your pre children days? Totally? I remember pre children, But I can't imagine life without

my kids. Yeah, because the vikings really and just the love that I just felt like I could feel my heart in a way like I remember when I went through puberty and like I would have a crush and a boy and I already you know, told you I went on a date to your movie Circle of Friends. So I remember feeling like, oh, like flutters and overwhelmed and happy when my husband proposed to me. And so I felt connected to this organ. But it really wasn't

until I met Charlotte, our our first child. I was like, Oh, this is a this organ that I could feel when I'm I'm a big runner, so like when I was going for longer distances or running really fast, and I of course could feel my heart beating quite literally, but I just felt like, oh, that's what else you're for. And have you read that book Born to Run by Christopher McDougall. Yes, my dad gave me that book because he reads it seemingly like everything the day after it

comes out. Gave it to me probably like two weeks after it came out. Was like, I thought, of you, did you get rid of your big, chunky Nike running shoes and get some minimalist sandals, because I did so, I didn't try the running sandals, but I did try like the very thin running shoes, and I just I'm not proud, but I my feet hurt. I was trying to think of like a more elegant way to say that my feet hurt. So I went back to my more kind of clunky shoes that my feet don't hurt. Wow.

Using do you run to get away from stuff or do you run for health rees or a mixture of both. So I run, yes, absolutely, because you know, I think it's important to exercise and like good for my health. I also run, though very much for my mental health. That is the time when I disconnect. It's the time when I get closest to what I would think of as meditating, where my brain really kind of clears out.

And when i'm going, especially for longer runs, in the first half of my run, I will listen to music or I listen to a podcast, and then I always, at least I try unless I'm like totally enwrapped or whenever I'm listening to stop stop listening about halfway through my run to force myself to kind of be in that silence of my own mind. How far to you run totally depends on how much time I have, does it, Yeah, totally. So if if I can like wake up early and I have time, I can go for a longer run.

But oftentimes I have like forty minutes, so I get changed, I run like, you know, three and a half miles, I come back, and I kind of go back to my day. So it just really depends on how much time I have. Before I became a parent, I often would run at night. Would yeah, I mean, but with

like reflectors, I was safe. I would safe. I always feel like I have because my my poor mother would be like, you need to call me when you get home, and I would be like, I'm thirty two, I've been running at night for a long time, Like I know how to keep myself safe. Also I'm married, Like you're gonna know if I if I don't come home, like Mark will call you. And she would be like, I just you'll understand one day when you're a mother, And

sure enough, I now do. So I used to run a lot at night, and I used to actually love to run later at night, as kind of creepy as that may sound, because New York City would just be quieter. And in the same way, I would love to run like very early in the morning. Also, Mom, if you're listening like with lectures on like very safe on the West Side Highway and not on the roads, do you

think it's because there's a lot in your life. There's this huge public persona, but all of the work that you do and teaching and a marriage and children, and it makes perfect sense to me to go early or late at night to find the quietest moment, to find the quietest moment in yourself would be exactly what you

would need. So I don't go at night any longer, but I do go early in the morning when I can, and I largely just don't go at nate because sometimes your kids wake up and I want to be here if they wake up, So I always be like, oh, I can go in the morning. It's okay, yeah, I mean your kids a little So it's all those considerations. It's finny you'll find you'll reach a point where they're older and then suddenly you'll be like, oh, it's eleven PM. They're going to go into a ten K They're going

to be teenagers and a sleep. Because I do the same thing, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I don't have to worry about like, if he wakes up, he'll just go back to sleep. He'll be fine. Word right now, my kids wake up, they've had a nightmare. They need a glass of water, to care about Petro the penguin. And it's lovely. Enjoy every second of it. What's the quality that you least like about yourself? Oh? I least

like my perfectionism. I really am hoping that maybe in this decade, my fifth decade on planet Earth, I will be able to possibly mature out of it. How does it negatively affect you personally? You being a perfectionist, I would say in two ways. It creates a lot of anxiety and then inefficiency when I am obsessing over which word is going to be most perfect, when actually both words and something I'm writing are probably like equally good.

So it's not my persistence to finish what I start and do the best that I can those I think are good qualities. But it's sometimes the fact that I fall into thinking like, oh, it doesn't just have to be best or excellent, very good. It something has to

be perfect. But often what I'm thinking of is perfect is a morphous Oh totally, there's no there there, right, It's just like this spinning that is just not helpful or actually ultimately productive, unlike the drive to excellence and thankfully the inborn and I think kind of nurtured persistence in the sense that you really have to finish what you start, and kind of what my grandmother always called the ministry of showing up in life for our friends,

the cause we believe in, but also for ourselves. Those are all good things, but perfectionism is not good. I found it quite hard to teach that with my son, but it's kind of that notion of go for excellence, to do your best, to not give up. And it's funny because I feel like maybe because of what he's observed of how I interact and suffer from the same thing, which is too much attention to detail when actually it

should let a little bit more go. And he then funnels that into this idea of what really trying, really hard at something is. And I've noticed this perfectionism exactly what you're talking about, and I realized that I've been

demonstrating it. And we actually had a conversation on the night about it where I was like, I'm failing at being perfect and it's a good thing, and it's a really important nuance and and I don't know how to teach that either, but we are trying, and I don't know we'll be successful, but at least with our kids, were trying to distinguish between like your best and the best, because because what does it mean like to be the best? Right?

But you need to do your best. We care a lot that you try hard, and we talk a lot with our kids about how the most important things in life are to be brave and to be kind, because I think if you're brave and you're kind, you're going to be a good person. You're going to be a good person to yourself, You're going to be a good person to your siblings, to our family, kind of community,

the world. So I don't know if kind of this distinction between you were best and the best will will work, but I hope it will because I don't want I

don't want my kids to emulate this. And when I'm like rereading something for truly the seventeenth time, and like, probably it needed to be reread three times the next fourteen times, we're probably not necessary, I as a panic in my voice goes up a little bit, and it all just becomes a bit tight and it's really not that important, like you said, the choice between two words that really have fundamentally the same meaning and getting stressed

or demonstrating that stress. But maybe they also learned by us catching ourselves and going, you know what that right there, what you just saw, that was exactly what it isn't what? That is exactly what I'm trying, you know, at fifty one, trying to learn to do differently. So perhaps if we pers if we catch ourselves as we're doing it, it teaches. Yeah, And we do talk with our kids about how we

make mistakes. You know, sometimes they're really small mistakes, Like you know, back when we weren't in a pandemic, and my husband said he was going to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home, and like he forgot to pick up the dry cleaning and I really wanted to wear like this shirt the next day. And he's like, oh god, I forgot to pick up the dry cleaning, and I'm like, you know what, and I don't need to wear that shirt. It was like a noyed for like two seconds that I was like, it's really not

a big deal. God, I might have been annoyed for a bit longer than that, I must I might still be annoyed by that. Chelsea. As to tell you the truth, if Addison didn't pick up the dry cleaning at the shirt that I'm going to wear, right, you're a better person off we go. But we would talk about that our kids, like like, we make mistakes because we don't want them to be self conscious about talking about those mistakes with us. Whatever those mistakes. Maybe, yeah, exactly exactly.

It's how we love. It's by being forgiving of the of the imperfections. Right. So the last question is in your life, can you tell me about something that has grown out of a personal disaster. I think I've been really blessed. I can't really think of anything that's been a personal disaster. I mean, there are things that have been disappointing, their things that have been sad, but in

a professional sense. I took my first tour through graduate school right after I finished Stanford, so I went straightaway to Oxford. I knew that I was really interested in global public health. I knew kind of exactly who I wanted to study with. I thought about getting my doctorate at the time, and I just had this sense of, oh, my goodness, I'm going to wake up and be twenty eight, which feels very old when you're twenty two and you're like, right,

which just be so old. And I'm going to know so much about one thing, a really important thing, but like one thing, and oh, I don't know if I want to do that. And so I went and I worked in consulting, and then I worked on Wall Street as an analyst, and then I went back and I got my doctorate at you know, the ripe old age of or thirty. I can remember now when I started again in my PhD program, But I had this sense of like, oh God, did I waste all this time?

And I spent a lot of time thinking like, oh gosh, did I just take this major diversion from my kind of academic, intellectual, professional personal passion around public health. But I don't think so, because I think the time that I spent in consulting, the time that I spent as an investment analyst, really helped me in my professional life.

And I don't think I was ready. I think I would have been really lonely, because working on your dissertation is really a lonely enterprise, like you're trying to do something no one's done before. You spent a lot of time researching and analyzing and writing. I spent hundreds, probably thousands of hours alone. And I think if I had done that, you know, a decade earlier, I think it would have been a lot harder for me. So, you know, I don't know if that's like a succinct answer to

your question. It's an honest one, though, it's an honest one. Yeah, you had the temerity to you know, you'd left, if you're you're working as an analyst, then you're working on wool Street, to then saying, you know, I'm going back to walks, so I'm going to go back. Maybe you know you had to do that in order to know that. Yeah, no, I do want to go and spend hundreds of hours

by myself and explore this to the subject. And I think the other answer to your question, though, when he was like for a long time, I tried, Really, I don't think I tried. I really was a very private person, like in the public domain, where I was incredibly proud of both my parents. I was incredibly proud to support both my parents. I was incredibly proud to sort of stand on a stage or sit on a stage behind them, or kind of hand out stickers like American flags or signs.

I didn't, though, kind of see myself as as any more than that. I didn't want to be any more than that. And then, you know, in in two thousand and eight, when my mom was running, and then later when President Obama was running, I just felt like, oh, no, I people are paying attention to me, whether I want them to or not, Like I'm I'm I might as well try to redirect that attention onto why so strongly

believe in and support my mom. And then later after the campaign and after thankfully President Obama won and I guess became President Obama, I tried to, you know, kind of go back a bit more to being a private person, and yet there still was just all this attention on me, and I just had to then think again, like how

can I redirect it? It's here inevitably, like whether it's the paparazzi following me around, or people wondering on cable talk shows or in the pages of magazines or newspapers, like what I think about things or kind of do I have a view on something that kind of my parents were doing, and so I just thought, well, largely prompted by my grandmother consistently telling me that I had a responsibility to do something kind of with this resource I had been given, even if it wasn't one that

I necessarily wanted. It either could kind of be fallow or it could be you know, put to good purpose. So it didn't feel like my parents choices were a disaster for me at all. Ever, Thankfully, it just felt like that had happened to me. And that's not a good place to be. It's much better to feel like, okay, and then here is now what I am doing. I am in the active part of it and not just in the recipient of it. You embrace the agency, Yes, I mean, I think it's about using the energy of

other people's decisions create circumstance in your life. What you then do with it, how you choose to be creative with the stuff that life is inevitably going to throw at you is really what defines us. So how how Berlyn that you did that. How brilliant to take something

and to turn it into something else. And again, it's one of my favorite things that I've heard you say of that idea about regeneration and generating, to keep turning it into something, to keep using their energy, to move forward and to expand, because what else is there except to keep reaching? Agreed? Agreed, Well, I am incredibly grateful for your time. I know you're a very busy lady, and thank you very very very much for coming on the show. It's lovely hearing about your kids and and

you being a Viking mother is most most excellent. I can concur Thanks so much, Chelsee, thank you so much. Chelsea's podcast, In Fact, has new episodes out every Tuesday. It's a podcast that takes a look into the world of public health through shared stories. This week, Chelsea sits down with three people who share a deep commitment to environmental justice. Also check out her She Persisted series of

children's books as they are truly excellent. Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Lavoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive

produced by Me and man Gesh Hettidor. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson Addison, No Day Lisa Castella and Annique Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech support Henry Driver,