Wiser Than Me with Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Julia Gets Wise with Nina Totenberg

Episode Date: October 23, 2024

Today on Wiser Than Me, Julia sits down with legendary legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Nina is one of the founding mothers of NPR and has been covering the Supreme Court for over 50 years, longer than any justice has sat on the bench. Julia asks Nina about her friendship with the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, balancing relationships across political lines, and the emotional toll of long-term caretaking. Plus, Judith, Julia's 90-year-old mother, tells a story about how attitudes towards women’s ambition have changed in her lifetime.   Follow Wiser Than Me on Instagram and TikTok @wiserthanme and on Facebook at facebook.com/wiserthanmepodcast.   Keep up with Nina Totenberg @NinaTotenberg on X.    Find out more about other shows on our network at @lemonadamedia on all social platforms.   Joining Lemonada Premium is a great way to support our show and get bonus content. Subscribe today at bit.ly/lemonadapremium.    For exclusive discount codes and more information about our sponsors, visit https://lemonadamedia.com/sponsors/.    For additional resources, information, and a transcript of the episode, visit lemonadamedia.com.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everyone, Julia here. Millions of Americans have lost access to abortion and other life-saving reproductive health care in just the last couple of years. But we can change that. When voters get the chance to decide for themselves, they always choose reproductive rights and freedom in state after state after state, blue or red, people all over the country are organizing to get our rights back. So how can you help? Go to thefairnessproject.org slash wiser. And in just one click, you can make a donation to the Abortion Ballot Measure Fund, which

works with grassroots organizers to get abortion measures onto the ballot in states like Arizona, Florida, Missouri, and Montana. Ballot measures put power back in the hands of voters. Just go to thefairnessproject.org slash wiser to donate today because every time reproductive rights have been on the ballot since Dobbs, reproductive rights have won. You know that movie Twelve Angry Men with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb? I love that movie. It's one of the truly great American films and it all takes place in a jury room. If you haven't seen it, watch it. I have only been under jury once. It was a very long time ago. I can't

really remember exactly when, except that I had two little kids and my husband Brad was running a show and we were incredibly busy and self-absorbed and a jury summons hit my mailbox and I thought oh Christ I don't have time for this bullshit and I figured I'd probably get out of serving because somebody was gonna recognize me from Seinfeld right but yeah nobody recognized me or they didn't give a crap because I went through Voir d'Ire with a couple of hundred people downtown and of course I got selected for the jury. And I am so glad that I did. The jury that I was on with 11 of my peers was made up of actual serious citizens and what I mean by that is, I mean, we all took our obligation very solemnly. It was sober, you know what I mean?

I can't remember the exact makeup of the jury now, but it seemed like it was an actual representation of people living and working in Los Angeles. You know, it was something like a real estate agent and a nurse and a couple of city workers and me, an actor, you know, Los Angeles. On TV, you often see the beautifully polished, grand locations where important things are being decided, but in reality, we're in downtown LA, deliberating in a room that looked and smelled, you know, kind of like the DMV.

The whole thing was impressively drab, and still there was something just so touching about it. I found the whole jury experience to be incredibly moving. The lawsuit was about a woman who was suing her insurance company because they refused to pay for hospital stay and the medical procedure. The case was pretty technical and it took a whole week for the two sides to argue it out. When we started to deliberate, the head juror was this middle-aged stockbroker, I think, who turned out to live about a block away from me.

And he was so good. He was very soft-spoken, and he got everyone around the table to state their personal views of the case. And the thing that amazed me, and actually amazes me still looking back on it is that everyone stuck to the facts and nobody talked about themselves, right? Nobody wanted to bloviate and, you know, make speeches and so on. They had listened and they had things to say about the case. So we took our first vote and I think it was 10 to 2 against the insurance company, but the two who had

voted the other way actually just wanted to talk a little more about it. And pretty quickly on the second vote, we had a verdict in favor of the patient. No drama, no David E. Kelly TV series theatrics. This was just a humble, serious, restrained proceeding. So it wasn't exactly like 12 Angry Men. In fact, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor once said, when she was a lower court judge, that she would specifically instruct jurors not to behave like the jurors in that film. But Justice Sotomayor also said that seeing 12 Angry Men

when she was in college was a big reason that she decided to go to law school. How cool is that? She said that juror number 11's speech about American justice was particularly inspirational to her. He's the only immigrant on the jury, played by George Voskovec. I won't do his accent, but here's what he says in the film. We the jury have a responsibility. This is a remarkable thing about democracy, that we are, what is the word, notified, that we are notified by mail to come down to this place and decide on the guilt or innocence of a man we have not known before.

We have nothing to gain or lose by our verdict. This is one of the reasons we are strong. But I guess right now, unfortunately, a speech like that seems terribly naive. I don't even know how to feel about justice or justices for that matter. The Constitution itself seems to be in danger, and Americans are losing faith in the judicial system so fast it's dizzying. I know our system has never been perfect. God knows we continue to be in desperate need of reform, and justice is unfairly applied, especially regarding wealth and race.

But when I served on that jury, I couldn't help but feel hopeful that the system is working. Now I'm not so sure. So it's a good thing that today we're talking to Nina Totenberg. Hi, I'm Julia Louis-Dreyfus and this is Wiser Than Me, the podcast where I get schooled by women who are wiser than me. Now that I'm in the podcast game, I am more aware than ever of the power of the spoken voice. And I'm talking about the voice itself, the sound that goes into your ear and delivers what the voice is saying to the brain. I've realized that for me, there are a few voices that I have come to absolutely rely

on. And I absolutely need Nina Totenberg's voice. The timbre, the intelligence, and reasonableness that she brings to her reporting of even the most outrageous injustice. Well, somehow what she says, and maybe just as important how she sounds when she says it, calms me. Well, I mean, it also weirdly lets me continue to rage, and I do love a little rage. She was one of the founding mothers of NPR and has been on the air covering legal affairs, justice, and the Supreme Court for almost 50 years, which is actually longer

than any justice has ever sat on the court itself. Her coverage has earned her every major journalism award in broadcasting and she was the first radio journalist to have won the National Press Foundation's Broadcaster of the Year award. She's in the Radio Hall of Fame for God's sakes. Even before NPR, she was breaking national stories and paving the way for future generations of female journalists and just plain journalists. She has written beautifully about her relationship with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in her book Dinners with Ruth. I am beyond excited to talk to a woman who is so much wiser than me, the extraordinary Nina Totenberg.

Welcome Nina Totenberg. Thank you for having me. Okay, so I'm going to start with the first question I always ask everyone on this show. Are you comfortable if I ask your real age? No, I'm not comfortable at all about that because the world is an ageist world. Boy, I'll say. And I don't, so I don't go around advertising my age. Let's just say I am many decades wiser than you are.

So you don't want to say what your real age is? I hate it, but I mean I will if you force me to, but I hate it. Because I don't feel like I'm that age. Okay, well, how old do you feel? I think I feel that I'm about late 40s, early 50s. I feel the same actually. I feel that I'm about late 40s, early 50s. I feel the same, actually. I feel the same. What's the best part, do you think, about being your age that is unspoken?

I don't think there's a wonderful part about being my age, because you suddenly realize that you're not going to be around forever and that the forever part is getting closer. And that you're, as much as I am who I always have been, I had this year a real genuine horrible health scare and I'm still walking around with a cane from it. So, I had to learn to walk again. The most boring thing that I do a lot of is physical therapy. And so that's what I do for the other part of my living is making sure that I will have another good 10 or 15 years maybe. And what have you learned from this process of recovery at this age? Are there big takeaways?

No, I do think there's a good deal of in life when you come to a serious health issue over which you have some control, not total control, but some control, that you just have to try to, as much as you can, act as if you're going to conquer this, because that way you will not scare the people you love so much. And it's one of those things where if you act something, it becomes so. So if you act miserable, you can actually be miserable. And if you act with a sense of humor about your dilemma, you will feel much better about it. Well, that's fascinating that you say that

because I had breast cancer seven years ago and that was exactly my experience. You make a decision to approach it with a certain point of view and you adhere to that, period. As much as you possibly can and you know there's nobody that doesn't have their down moments. Sure. But if you can act as if it's gonna be alright and that you will do your best to make it all right. It gets you there faster and better, I think. Yes, I agree with that.

So I wanted to talk first about your early career, about which I know you've spoken before, but it sure is fascinating. We all know and love you as one of the founding mothers of MPR. I mean, it may not even seem possible to people who are listening to us talking, but you had a career even before founding mothers of MPR. I mean, it may not even seem possible to people who are listening to us talking, but you had a career even before you got to MPR. You dropped

out of college, by the way, I did too, so yay for us. And you started your journalism career at the Boston Record American? Mm-hmm. Doesn't exist anymore. You didn't stay there for very long, did you, Nina? No, I didn't stay there for a long time. I think the straw that broke the camel's back was that I realized that I wanted to have a story that I could call my own. And I had this idea, which was, in hindsight, a very good idea.

Which was? At the time, Massachusetts was a pretty conservative state, hard to believe, because the legislature was very conservative. It was democratic, but it was very conservative, and contraception was illegal in the state. So I figured it wasn't illegal probably at all the schools around town. So I, pretending to be a student, called up Radcliffe and Simmons and Wellesley and made appointments with their health services as a, pretending to be a student, to get contraception, which in those days was probably, I think it was a diaphragm. in those days was probably, I think it was a diaphragm. And I wrote all this up as a memo and I presented it to the editor of the newspaper, the executive editor.

Danielle Pletka Who was a man named? Nina Srebotnjak Eddie Holland. And he, it was lovely to me, but he called me into his office that afternoon and he said, Nina, I can't let you do this. And I said, why not? He said, have you ever had an internal examination? And I said, no. And he said, I can't let you do this. I'm not quite sure when I was writing the book, my editor asked me why he was so upset,

and I don't know exactly why. I think he thought he was protecting me. He wouldn't let me do it. I couldn't persuade him. Didn't he ask you if also you were a virgin? Yeah, he asked me if I was a virgin, and I said yes, I was a virgin. And it's sort of an amazing thought today that somebody in her 20s would be a virgin, but I was, and I was not hugely unusual because it was difficult to get contraception. But when you said it's amazing thing to,

I thought you were gonna say an amazing thing to ask someone. Well, it was amazing, but I, you know, all I ever wanted was a job in the early part of my career. And I was willing to do almost anything. I wouldn't have slept with somebody or something like that, but I, you know, I wasn't going to get offended by something. That wasn't going to stop me from getting a shot at a good job. And so I figured I needed to go someplace else. And you did?

I did. That's when I went to the Peabody Times where I got to do lots. There were days that I wrote every story on the front page, every one of them. Really? Oh yeah. My byline was on every one of those stories a few times, like after an election or something like that. And I covered the courthouse and I covered, they sent me in because I was pretty young, they sent me in undercover to find out what was going on in the local high school, which I don't remember that I found out a huge amount.

And I think it was painfully obvious that I was not the age of the kids there, too. I don't think I was terribly successful. What does that mean that you went undercover? Wait, can we just... I was not an... I did not go as a reporter. I went as if I were a new student in school. I can't remember to save myself what they thought I was going to find out.

Whatever it was, I didn't find it out. And you sort of dressed like a student and tried to blend in. But I felt like an Amazon. I loved that year at the Peabody Times because I got to do everything. And when I got to NPR, I got to do everything. I covered politics, I covered presidential campaigns, I covered the Supreme Court, I covered almost every scandal that broke. I broke a few big stories like the Anita Hill story. Right. But I do want to ask

you, you did say at some point when we were, when I was getting ready to talk to you and I saw you said you weren't, you weren't trying to break a glass ceiling, you. Yeah. You were just trying to get a foot in the door. Yes, exactly. Do you now still have a feeling like you have to prove yourself in some way or stay relevant? Has that changed over time, that driver for you? It changed, but it didn't change until I was well into my 50s, I think. How did it change, Nina? Well, I used to sometimes sit down when I had a big story to write and I was on deadline. I would sometimes sit down and think, oh my god,

this time I'm going to be exposed for the complete fraud that I know I am. It was that kind of uncertainty that is so female. It isn't it. It's so freaking female. I know. That I, and fortunately I was able to talk about it with other women as we got older, which helped, helped a lot. But it wasn't really until then that I was able to sit down and I had that feeling and I would

say, come on, Nina, just suck it up. You just have to start writing and you know you will get through this. And if you do that, when I was writing the book, I asked for a list of the stories that I had done on NPR and there were over 9,000 of them. Oh, fuck. And so I didn't even look at the list. I mean, I thought, okay. There are stories I look at that I wrote that I not only don't remember writing, I don't

remember knowing. I literally don't remember knowing. I literally don't remember knowing. I know. And by the way, I want to say that I've had the same feeling in my own life of like, oh God, you are a fraud. I wouldn't say fraud, but they don't know. They don't know how much you suck. And to push yourself to power through that, because there is a feeling that, for me anyway, that it hasn't completely gone away. That I feel that I have to be able to prove myself, you know, even to this day, to a certain extent, not like when I was in my twenties, but still.

That's a real thing, and I think it's a female thing, as you say. Isn't that interesting? It is a female thing, but also it's returning to the subject of age. Yes. People are very willing, including younger women, to dismiss older women because they think we're fuddy-duddies and we are in some ways.

We are, those people my age and the age that Cokie Roberts was and that Linda Wertheimer is and that Susan Stamberg is. Susan is even older than I am. We were almost always, until we came to NPR, the only women where we worked. We were the only women there. We just wanted a chance to prove ourselves. And therefore, we put up with a lot of stuff that no woman puts up with today or should put up with. That's why I'm doing this podcast for exactly that reason.

Yes, and hats off to you. No, but I mean, I feel strongly about it because they do listen to older men. And I'm exhausted by that now. I'm exhausted. And we need to hear exactly what you're saying right now. Exactly what you're saying. Don't Go Anywhere will be right back with Nina Totenberg after this quick break.

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young person in need of a mentor. Don't miss your chance to be part of this powerful mission. Whether you're rounding up your purchase in-store or donating online, your contribution will make a difference. Together with Macy's and Big Brothers Big Sisters, we can help build brighter futures for kids across the country. Visit Macy's.com today to learn more and get involved. I want to talk about sexism, but before I even do, I do have to ask you this question. It was, I guess when you were at the National Observer that you started covering legal affairs

and in those days you would invite certain Supreme Court justices over for dinner to talk with them. Is that true? Yes. Okay. I invite them and their wives. I mean, if they would come. Yes, of course.

If they would come. Yeah. them and their wives, I mean, if they would come. Yes, of course. If they would come, yeah. So let's talk about how did you get the courage to do that? Because to me, that's like capital B balls. I can't get over it. I love it. I can't get over it either. The truth is, I can't get over it either. I was so ambitious and determined not to fail at this job that I, I, I mean, I really don't know how I had the balls to

ask Lewis Powell and his lovely wife, Jo, to come have dinner at my little 13-foot wide house and I'm in my late 20s, early 30s. And how I had the nerve to do that, I would not have the nerve to do that today. Yeah, but except I think that you would. And for our listeners, Lewis Powell, he was a Supreme Court justice during the 70s and the 80s. Do you still have justices over for dinner parties and so on? If they'll come, it's all off the record, and it's usually just social,? If they'll come. It's all off the record and it's usually just social and if they'll come. And it's how I got to be a really good Supreme Court reporter was at least knowing some of

these people and being able to not so much ask them the inappropriate question, but the appropriate question. One of my great things that I did when I was a bit younger was that I would invite justices who were retired to have lunch with me. They were usually very happy to do that because Washington is a place where, except for your beloved law clerks, once you no longer have power, people are less, visit you less, care about you less, et cetera.

It's not a very attractive thing, but it's true. And so I would have lunch with somebody like Lewis Powell. And I would never have asked him a question about why he voted a certain way in a certain case, as long as he was a sitting justice. But afterwards, what have I got to lose? And he was much more forthcoming, I think, than he would have otherwise, because we're talking about history at that point.

We're not talking about something at that moment that he was doing. And he was very helpful to me. Justice Brennan was very helpful to me. Justice Stewart was helpful to me. Lots of members of the court were willing to talk, at least generically with me, about the court. And then after they retired, if they were remain in Washington, more specifically. Do you even today have justices over? I'm guessing you can't say who, but do you? I can't, but I do.

Yes, I do. Okay. Including some conservative justices who I quite like. I never invite any other reporter and I never invite people who are involved in court business. I invite a really smart couple of doctors, like a duo, husband and wife team. He a critical care doc and she an OB. They're good friends. After Justice Scalia died, who I really adored, they had had dinner with him

a couple of times at our house. And when he died, they went over and bought one of his rifles from him for their daughter who was working in a part of the world that was where you needed to have a rifle. Where? Alaska. Alaska. Oh, I see. You know, in Alaska, if you're going to have, you could see a moose and you would not want

to have trouble with the moose. I had the, I had this experience once where I ran into at a gathering at the White House, Justice Kagan. Mm-hmm. And she was incredibly lovely. And she said that how much she enjoyed this show I was making called Veep at the time and that she and Justice Scalia would get together every week after an episode aired they'd have lunch and they would talk about things within that episode that they thought were funny or whatever and I got such a kick out of

that and I was perfectly amazed that these two justices who, you know, their ideologies are obviously opposed from one another could have the experience of enjoying that show together. That was just mind blowing to me, absolutely mind blowing. But I know that Scalia was a good time. I obviously read a lot about him and understand that to be the case. Nino, right?

Nino. Yes. We used to get a kick out of going to some, you know, I would invite him to the White House correspondence dinner or something like that and would be the Nino and Nina show. Yeah. That's good. That's really good. Okay.

So, Nina, let's talk about losing your temper. I read this amazing quote from you. You said losing your temper is not good for dealing with people and it's not good for you. The person who feels the worst afterwards is usually you. Did you learn this lesson the hard way, Nina? Oh, God, yes. I had a really short fuse, I think. And I think it was really because I always felt as a younger person as if I had to defend myself because after all I was the only woman in the room. And so that I had to be, and I had to prove that I was really tough. And believe me,

I proved that many times, but I never felt that way. I always felt by far. So I, and I would, you know, when I wasn't completely junior anymore, I would lose my temper from time to time. And there was just no two ways about it. At some point, I realized that the best thing to do when I felt that hydraulic push of, you think your head's going to come off, was to turn around and walk out. Really? Yes, because that way I couldn't. Because if I did lose my temper,

inevitably I said something that I was really sorry for, embarrassed about, shouldn't have said. So I don't lose my temper that way anymore. Was there a specific moment or period of time in which you made that transition to controlling your temper? I think it probably, I probably was in my forts, my early 40s, because by then I had started to actually have a real reputation as a person, as a journalist. That means you can't do that and not have people notice. And it's one thing for somebody who's nobody to blow her stack.

It's another thing if you were to do that in the office with people you have to work with and or at the airport or whatever. It was not a wise thing to do and I learned to not do it. And I also learned that the person who, if you really lose your temper, you're physically ill afterwards. It just feels awful afterwards. Yeah, it's a terrible feeling. I mean, you feel as if it's a release in the moment, but when in fact the stink of it stays with you, it doesn't mean you can't get angry, FYI, I would say. Of course you can get angry,

but there has to be a rationality to your expression of anger. But what about, shall I say, asshole management? Because here you are inside the beltway and here I am in show business, there are plenty of assholes at work, I'm guessing in the court, how do you manage that? How do you manage people who you have to work with that are very misbehaved? Well, the people that drive you the most bonkers, I just steer clear of. If I, you know, I just, why bother? And I don't actually get mad at anybody who I interact with regularly at the court because, well, first of all, the public information office is entirely female. Really? Entirely female. And so that's just for starters. And the people who work at the court take a lot of pride in what they do and deserve the respect that we generally give them.

We generally give them. Yes. And we can't certainly, we certainly don't have any influence, I would say is, I guess, the right way to put it, with the justices. So if they're going to be a-holes. Misbehaved. Why bother? I mean, first of all, I don't know how you'd even get to them to say to them that you were very disappointed in them.

Yeah, exactly. But let's go back a second. What were you saying about the Public Information Office at the Supreme Court? Yeah there's the press secretary for the court, the deputy press secretary, then there are two other two or three other people who work in that office and they are very professional and they are all women. So I am fascinated that you say that, because in my experience, when I have worked in situations with all women,

for example, on this podcast, for the most part, everyone's a woman, and on films that I've made, directed by women, Nicole Holofcenter, shows that I've done with Carrie Lizer, female-led. It's an entirely different workplace. And there is a, what's the word I'm gonna say? There is an ease of generosity that's just in place.

And I would imagine you had that experience There is an ease of generosity that's just in place. I would imagine you had that experience with Susan Stamberg and Linda Wertheimer and Cokie Roberts when you first started at NPR, right? I mean... Absolutely. Yes. Linda and Cokie were and are my best friends. When my late husband died and when he was terribly sick for

almost five years, they and my sisters were the people who looked after me, took care of me, made sure I was okay. And they were my closest friends. And Ruth Ginsburg became one of my absolutely closest friends. Even though, you know, in the book I wrote about this because I had to think about it. I didn't realize that I was a close friend of hers until she turned 50 or 60, I don't remember which, and her husband asked me to write something about my friendship with her, a letter that would be he was putting together a book for her birthday. I did that, and when I was writing my book, by then Ruth had died. And I asked her daughter Jane if she had, by any chance,

had a copy of the letter that I had written because it was in a book. And she took a picture or whatever, and she sent it to me. And I was really quite astonished, because now I think of Ruth as my friend for almost 50 years. But back then when she turned 50, I think, I signed it Nina Totenberg, which is a little crazy when you think about it.

So I had this moment of realization that I still thought I was, that we were not best buddies or among the best buddies. And I thought, why did you think that? And what did you have in common that lasted almost 50 years? And the thing that we had in common that lasted almost 50 years is that for much of that time, we both were women of some accomplishment who constantly had our noses pressed up against the window looking inside at men who had all these jobs and they weren't letting us have them. And we wanted them.

Let us in. Let us be part of this gang that you have. And I think that's one of the reasons that she was so generous to so many women and so many girls and so many little girls, is that she understood that. You said that you learned how to be a better friend from your friends? Oh, I definitely learned how to be a better friend. I mean, I don't think I could ever be as good a friend as Cokie Roberts. Why? There was no end to her ability to be a friend and to know what was the right thing to do. So that, I mean, at some point, I remember Lee, her son, was talking to his father and they said, you know, if Koki were here, she

would have been at the house, said Steve. She would have gone over because so-and-so's husband was in terrible shape or just died. And Lee said, no, no, she wouldn't have just gone over the house. She would have been sleeping on the couch that night. So that is the kind of friend she was for me. And I learned from it how to be a much better friend and to understand that what you give you get back to.

Just by giving. Yes, by giving. And that that is, I don't know anybody who could be as good a friend as Cokie was, but just the other day I wrote Steve, her husband, and I said, just want you to know I had one of my cokey moments which is always, you can't figure out what would be the right thing to do. What would cokey have done? Okay, then it's obvious. What would cokey have done? Then it's obvious what you would do. You would give this much money. You would not hesitate to say, I can afford it.

In this case, the woman who had helped take care of my husband called me because she'd been cheated out of some money. Could I help her get that money from the employer who had cheated her? And I thought, she'll never get this money. She needs the money. I'll send her a check. What would Koki have done? She would have given her the money. So look at that. Koki is alive and well in you. That's lovely. It is actually, in fact. It's time to take another break. There's more wisdom from Nina Totenberg when we come back. Well, in you, that's lovely. Yes. It is actually, in fact.

It's time to take another break. There's more wisdom from Nina Totenberg when we come back. In my job as an actor, I travel a decent amount for work. But honestly, a lot of the time, we end up just shooting on a soundstage. Sometimes, if we're lucky, we're shooting in places such as the UK, where I made my most recent movie, Tuesday. That was great. We all love to travel, but it can be a bit of a missed opportunity to leave your home

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quince.com slash wiser Wiser than me season 3 is available ad free when you subscribe to lemonada premium You'll also get access to exclusive interview excerpts from each episode. Subscribe now in the Apple Podcast app. You know, we had Fran Lebowitz on our show back in season one, and she was best friends with Tony Morrison. And she mentioned specific moments in her life when she wished she could ask her dear Toni Morrison for her thoughts on something. And I'm wondering right now, is there anything that you wish you could ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg right now? Other than could you please come back?

That's probably what I would ask. You know, Ruth was in her own way, just as I am in my own way, a rather conservative person in the way she conducted her life and what she thought about things and I would ask her what, knowing now what happened in the aftermath of what's happened at the court, what would she think we should do? Because I don't think this is a question that's easy to answer. And I interviewed her probably six, eight months before she died. And in the course of that interview, I asked her whether she thought it was the court should be expanded, for example.

And she said, absolutely not. If you expand it, you can contract it. Or somebody, the next president could just add more people and more people, and it gets, and it's just an unwieldy situation in which the court just seems constantly political. So there are those who would say that the court seems constantly political now, I'm sure. So what would she say now, knowing more about what happened? I know people will say,

oh, she should have quit earlier. Yes, she would have if she had thought she was sick. She wasn't sick. She was at the height of her powers on the court. She didn't want to quit. And then by the time she did get sick, it was too late to do anything about it. So that's a sort of foolish question. I don't have to answer that one. I know what the answer to that one is. But I'm wondering, because she was very wise, not necessarily about politics, but she was a very wise person, what she would think of today's court and for people who think

it's that the outcome has been more than desultory, but even frightening for some people, what would she tell those people to do about it? And I don't know what her answers would have been. Mm-hmm. Well, maybe we should have a seance or something. Maybe. Yeah. So we're speaking of the Supreme Court, we're recording this in the summer. And I have no idea what's going to happen with our country between now and the time that this episode airs. I mean, let's talk about the culture change that you've experienced covering the court over this very long period of time. I mean, you were there for the original Roe v. Wade decision,

which is extraordinary actually. And then of course, most recently the Dobbs decision. which is extraordinary actually, and then of course most recently the Dobbs decision. I'm sure you have a lot of feelings about this that are unique to you. I mean, I'm not exactly sure how to phrase this. I guess I want to talk about restraint in journalism. We have policies about that. Mm-hmm. Abe Rosenthal, who was for many years the executive editor of the New York Times, used to have this saying, forgive me for my language, but...

Please. If you cover the circus, you don't fuck the elephants. Okay. First of all, that's my new motto. That might be the best thing I've heard all week. I love it. I mean, of course, that was a different time and there is plenty of biased media coverage now, plenty. Fox News, et cetera. It's partisan. I guess my question to you is the

following. Is it challenging to keep your own personal views apart from your reporting? Is it particularly challenging now? It's particularly challenging now because if you had said to me 10 years ago that I would ever be saying regularly that a president lied when he said X, I would have said, no, we don't do that because they didn't lie like that. They may have overstated something, but they were afraid to lie. Now people do not seem to be afraid to just tell bald-faced lies. And that is very challenging to journalists, even journalists who, and maybe especially journalists who believe that we're not supposed to impose our

views on other people. We're supposed to get... Is calling someone a liar imposing a view? Well, if you say that somebody's a liar, you've made a very definite value judgment about them. And I know lots of Republicans. Most of them are no longer in the House and Senate, but there are some who will tell you absolutely that Trump has lied and they will never say that publicly. So what do I do about that? What do you do about it? Well, if you really want to know what people genuinely think,

you have to keep people's confidences if that's the terms of them talking to you. Otherwise, who's going to trust you? Mm-hmm. You do have to do that. And I think the problem of bald-faced lying is a relatively new one. Now, I didn't live through the Civil War, and I didn't live through the late 1800s, and I can't know what politics was like then. I only know what it's been like for my life, which is a pretty now a long life in Washington.

And I came here as a quite young reporter, and I did not know of any president who lied willfully to the American public until well afterwards. The biggest lie, for example, we know that now that Lyndon Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to get the Gulf of Tonkin resolution through. But we didn't know that then. And maybe he didn't think he was lying, but it's a daily occurrence now in our political life. And I'm not just talking about Trump. Well, you're talking about a new culture. I'm talking about a new culture. Have you lost faith? Do you have full faith in the judicial system or has it been shaken? Do you have hope? I don't actually know, but I try to tell myself always that the court for, I would say, 80 or 90 years was on a fairly steady, it

moved back and forth from a bit from liberal to less liberal to more conservative to, but there always was a center on the court, and there isn't now. And I think that's dangerous. I do think that's dangerous. Maybe it's a reflection of my own political views that I think there always ought to be a center. It may be more a right center or a left center, but there ought to be a center that is a bipartisan center. So you could look at Justice O'Connor and Justice Kennedy, for example, who were the

center of the court when they were on the court. And there's nobody like that anymore who's at all, to a very small extent, Justice Barrett, perhaps, in this last term. But this term, the court was on all of the biggest questions, the court, and there were a lot of big questions this term, the court was just divided six to three. So, Nina, I, of course, have to ask you about Anita Hill. When you reported that story, you got a lot of blowback, to say the least. How did you cope with that?

So this is probably a longer answer than you want, but I'm going to give it to you anyway. So I had no idea when I broke that story how big a story it would be. I knew that after I broke the story and I had gotten an exclusive interview with Anita Hill, if she went to ground and just disappeared, that this story would die, that it wouldn't have legs on its own. What I didn't account for enough was how many women had had the experience of being hit on by their bosses. I remember walking into the Russell Senate office building the day that the second set of hearings opened and being shocked at this enormous media conglomerate that was there.

And networks were carrying it live. In fact, the Thomas Hill hearings outranked the World Series, I think. Maybe it was the playoffs, but I think it was the World Series in terms of ratings. What year was this? What year was this, by the way? 1991, the fall of 91. So I had not anticipated this at all, but I did see what happened the minute I broke the story. And that was this rage from Republicans. So they got themselves a special counsel to investigate me and find out who the leak was.

And of course, they did subpoena me. And I refused to, I went, I showed up, but it really paid to be in my middle 40s at the time because I did have a lot of experience. And the night I broke the story, I was on Nightline and there were a bunch of senators on, Alan Simpson and the late Paul Simon. And I knew enough to keep my eye on the clock and to get the last word and say that if I, what I really wanted to say, which was, if you had looked into this, I wouldn't have had a scoop. You buried it, you senators, you buried it, and I got a scoop because you buried it.

And I had enough sense to realize that something was going on and to start probing to find out what the hell it was. I didn't know what it was when I started. So that made Senator Simpson very mad at me. But we eventually buried the hatchet and became good friends. It was in both our interests, I would have to say. And I like Alan Simpson. And did you, did he have any regret about that incident in retrospect? I don't know, but he has a wife and a daughter who made very clear that he needed to make peace. And I was very clear that I wanted to make peace.

So I invited him to one of these correspondence dinners and he came and even brought me a corsage. And he was the Republican whip and he came in the fancy car, you know, the limo from the, we went, we were the stars of the evening because we were the unexpected duo there. Yeah, you made nice. Yes, we made nice. And it was a good thing. We have both, I think, enjoyed each other's thoughts and friendships since then.

But at the time, I remember coming home from that broadcast, two things happened. My husband, who was a former senator, greeted me sort of, he was up on the stairs when I walked in, and he said, what's wrong? And I said, I lost my temper at Alan Simpson and I called him bad words and I cried. And he, because we'd had a contratame outside. And that was outside, that wasn't on air. That was not on the air, that was outside. And he said, well, this was one of those nights where they'd had football, so it was delayed. So he said, well, let's watch it. And so we watched it. And he said,

you won. Come on, let's go to bed. And then I called my sister the next day, my sister Jill. I have two sisters. One is a federal judge in Atlanta and one has her own PR business in New York. And I called her and I was weeping because, of course, people were trying to dig up dirt on me now. And it was very unpleasant. And she said, you just have to suck it up. There's nothing you can do about it. Just do your job.

It was great advice. But I would not have known all of those things when I was 27, for example, instead of, I think it was 46 or 47 at the time. I don't remember. But I would not have known that when I was in my 20s. Yeah, I got it. Yes, of course, that makes sense.

Okay, so wrapping up, I'm going to ask you a few sort of rapid fire questions. Is there something you'd go back and tell yourself at 21, Nina Totenberg? I probably would tell myself, you will make it, so just calm down. You don't have to be quite this pushy. Is there something you'd go back and say yes to? Something that I said no to and that I would say yes to? I can't think of anything like that. Is there anything that you wish you'd spent less time on, Nina?

Well, I wish I'd spent less time perseverating about all manner of things and less time worrying about what people would think of me. was doing an obituary, which we do in our business in advance, of Gerald Ford's dying. He wasn't dying at the time. We just do these, right? People are shocked, shocked. This doesn't shock you, but. And she was, you know, pawing her way through reams of tape and one of the videotapes that she was looking at was the press conference that Ford had right after Nixon resigned, his first press conference.

And I was at that press conference and I was, you know, and I got a question in. I asked him a pardon question. And I'm looking at this picture of myself and I was really pretty. And I had no idea of that then. And I wish I had had at least a little bit of idea that I was pretty and not, because I always felt that I wasn't. Well, it's that adage, youth is wasted on the young. Yes, exactly right. Yeah. What are you looking forward to? I'm looking forward to getting rid of the cane. I'm really looking forward to my vacation this summer. I've earned it this

year. It was a really tough year. And going back to work when I went back to work was essential or my brain would have turned to mush. But it was hard. It was very hard work. And the term has been very hard work. It's been hard for them, the justices too. I don't remember any term in which there were so many important cases. And there's always a train wreck at the end of cases that are backed up, but this year was even worse than usual and it was just an enormous amount of work. Do you want to keep working? I know you're ready for a break right now, but is your plan, you don't seem to me

to be the retiring type. No, I'm not. I consider that the R word. I won't let my husband retire either. Yeah, so you're just gonna keep going. Is that the plan? I'm going to keep going as long as, as Justice Ginsburg used to say, as long as I think I can do the job.

Now my father died at 101 and was a virtuoso violinist and he really didn't want to die. But in the end, you know, even he couldn't stay alive longer than he stayed alive. I can't do what he did, which is in the last 10 years or so of his life, he did relatively little performing, certainly and not in any, I think after he was about 95. But he taught and he played for fun.

And I don't think my brain will hold up long enough for me to be on the radio when I'm 95 or 90, maybe. But so I can't – It might be. Yeah, maybe I'll be a guest person. I'll make the occasional appearance in which I can write about the court or talk about the court in different ways. I don't know. I haven't figured that out. We don't need to right now. No, I don't have to.

If there were an easy way to do a little less work, I probably would, but there's no way to do a good job without working hard. I'm sorry, there's not a way to do that most of the time. I think that's the advice of this whole long conversation. A hard work equals good job, period, end of story, right? It is, and being lucky in your family and the people who love you. Thank you so much for talking with us today. I just adore you and am grateful to you for your hard work, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart.

That's so lovely of you. And for those of you who are dying to know how old I am, just look it up. Yeah. If you have Google, Google it. If you have Google, you can Google it. Yeah. If it says I'm 90, I'm not. All right.

Thank you, thank you, and thank you again. And thank you for having me. Of course. Such a pleasure. Well, that was a trip, having a conversation with someone whose voice you know so well but with whom you've never spoken. That's just wild. I got to get my mom on a Zoom to tell her all about it.

Hi, mom. Oh, hi, love. Hello. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. How are you? I'm good.

I just talked to Nina Totenberg. Well, I'm so excited about that. God, Mom, we talked about so much, but she was talking about up until she was really, I think she sat into her 50s. Nina Totenberg, very often when she got, when she started to write a story, she felt sort of like a fraud. Like she was playing at the role of journalist as opposed to being a journalist. I'm putting words in her mouth there, but I think that's sort of, there was a sort

of a very, and she characterized it as being very female, her lack of security, confidence in herself as a journalist. And she's had, she had to, in her life, she's had to push back against that. And she has successfully done so now. She's 80. She didn't want to say her age, by the way. She's the first guest we've ever had who didn't want to say her age, which I thought was kind of strangely charming because obviously you can Google it. And she said you can Google it, but she still didn't want to say it. But anyway, have you had that experience, Mom,

feeling that way, like as a writer? But first of all, I want to say, why did you use the word frog? Well, first of all, I didn't say frog. I said fraud. I said. Okay. Okay. Well, that's, that's so that's's that's wonderful. All right. Well, well, well, we'll just move on from that There's no way. There is no way that that isn't the funniest thing I've heard in like a week. Wait, wait, Brad has come in here and ruining the podcast because he heard it too. And now he's lying on the floor in the hallway in clutching his stomach. Yes, she was.

She had a story to write and she felt like she couldn't because she was a frog. Well, then she was right to not write it because. Oh, fuck. That is hilarious, mom. Oh, that's so funny. Well, shall we get back to order? Have you ever felt a fraud or a frog? Let me tell you, that's a common thing you hear women say.

Yes. What it took to make them feel legitimate and authentic. Yes. And I have a theory about it, at least as for myself. When we were young, women who were born in the 30s and 40s, we didn't know what to do with our ambition. Your ambition was always like, you don't go there. And what I mean is that, for instance, I was in college and I read about Claire Booth Luce, there was a belong article about her,

and I read about her and I thought, that sounds so interesting. What was she doing? She was then, I guess she was the ambassador to Italy, or she had gotten into politics and she was taken very seriously. She was married to Henry Luce. It was a huge thing in publishing. So I said to my godmother, I was in Florida with her and I said to her, I've read this article about Claire Booth Luce and I'm fascinated.

I think that would be such an interesting life. And so my aunt Harriet, who was my godmother, said, And so my Aunt Harriet, who is my godmother said, yeah, it's very interesting, but you'd have to marry Henry Luce. So the point being that they were saying that all that happened to her because she was married to that person. And that was such a way of, it was like, don't acknowledge your own ambition.

And so, constantly, I think that sometimes women that do, I think part of this is a little bit of that hangover that when you feel like you're not worthy of it or even after you prove yourself over and over again, I think that maybe it has to do with the fact that you don't quite permit your ambition. That makes me angry hearing that story. I wish I could go back and change it for you.

By the way, it is not an uncommon story. I mean, I bet you that, you know, my class and graduating class from college was 55, from high school was 51. And I bet you there are scads of women of my era. That's why I'm so interested in Nina Totenberg and the fact that she had that residue, a little bit of that residue working for her against her.

And I should, you know. Well, and my final words today are, screw you and Harriet for your shitty remark. I don't like that at all. Well, anyway. He was also a product. Yeah, I know, but I'm still mad about it. Yeah, okay. Well, me too. Good, Mommy.

Okay, well listen, we're going to go. Okay. Well, much love and I'm glad we got a good laugh today. Yeah, we got a good laugh. All the frogs are. Yeah, we've got a great laugh today. Yeah, we got a good laugh. That was... All the frogs are... Yeah, we've got a great inside joke. Ribbit, ribbit. Okay. Anyway, I love you so much.

Love you, Mommy. Bye. Bye. There's more Wiser Than Me with Lemonada Premium on Apple. You can listen to every episode of season three ad free. Subscribers also get access to exclusive bonus interview excerpts from each episode. Subscribe now by clicking on the Wiser Than Me podcast logo in the Apple podcast app and then hitting the subscribe button. Make sure you're following Wiser Than Me on social media.

We're on Instagram and TikTok at Wiser Than Me, and we're on Facebook at Wiser Than Me podcast. Wiser Than Me is a production of Lemonade Media, created and hosted by me, Julia Louis-Dreyfus. This show is produced by Chrissy Pease, Jamila Zaraa Williams, Alex McOwen, and Oja Lopez. Brad Hall is a consulting producer. Rachel Neal is VP of New Content, and our SVP of Weekly Content and Production is Steve

Nelson. Executive producers are Paula Kaplan, Stephanie Whittles-Wax, Jessica Cordova-Cramer, and me. The show is mixed by Johnny Vince Evans with engineering help from James Farber, and our music was written by Henry Hall, who you can also find on Spotify or wherever you listen to your music. Special thanks to Will Schlegel and, of course, my mother, Judith Bowles. Follow Wiser Than Me wherever you get your podcasts, and if there's a wise old lady in your life, listen up. Woo, woo, woo, woo.

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