0:00

There is nothing better than closing

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out the hiring process and finding some new

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teammates you know will just help you level

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up in a big way. That's

0:09

why I love Indeed, the number

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one hiring platform offering unparalleled access

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to a diverse pool of qualified

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to your team. And

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a $75 sponsored job credit to

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get your job's more visibility at

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indeed.com/Sam Bee. Just go

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to indeed.com/Sam Bee right now and

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support our show by saying you heard about

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Indeed on this podcast. indeed.com/Sam

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Bee. Terms and conditions

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apply. Need to hire? You

0:41

need Indeed. Hey

0:43

everyone, it's David Duchovny. Do you

0:45

ever feel like a failure? Trust

0:48

me, I get it. Hell, I've

0:50

spent my whole life almost feeling

0:52

like a failure. It's

0:54

appropriate though because on Fail Better,

0:56

my new podcast with La Minotta Media,

0:58

exploring the world of failure, how it

1:00

holds us back, propels us forward, and

1:03

ultimately shapes our lives is the whole

1:05

point. Each week

1:07

I'll chat with artists, athletes, actors,

1:10

and experts about how

1:12

our perceived failures have actually been our

1:14

biggest catalysts for growth, revelation,

1:17

and even healing. Through these conversations, I hope

1:20

we can learn how to embrace the opportunity

1:22

of failure and fail better

1:24

together. Fail Better

1:26

is out on May 7th, wherever you get your

1:28

podcasts. La

1:32

Minotta. I

1:37

would like you to know that

1:40

whatever I'm about to say was

1:42

certainly not written by AI, unless

1:44

you hate it, in which case, oh,

1:47

AI is so bad. I'm kidding.

1:50

I'm joking. Let me just tell

1:52

you that nothing I say is written by AI,

1:55

and that is important to me because if something

1:57

that has been clear from AI- beginning

2:00

but has only recently begun

2:03

to be acknowledged by most

2:05

people. Using AI is bad

2:08

for the planet. It is

2:10

a massive drain on

2:12

our energy infrastructure and uses an

2:14

incredible amount of water and I'm

2:17

saving up my massive water consumption

2:19

for when I became a lady

2:21

of leisure who spends the afternoon

2:23

in a luxurious clawfoot tub. Which

2:26

is why I have some serious choice

2:28

words for people who can't use their

2:30

imagination to picture an animal with the

2:33

body of like a frog

2:35

but the head of a horse and the tail

2:37

of a lion like we have done for millennia

2:39

and instead demands that AI conjure

2:42

one up for them. A

2:44

simple search like that can take as

2:46

much energy as charging your phone and

2:49

recent reports speculate that within a few

2:51

years AI could use the same energy

2:55

as entire nations. Entire

2:58

nations! What

3:00

scares me the most is that

3:02

we are creating this monster ourselves

3:04

and seem utterly uninterested

3:07

or unable to control it

3:11

while we still can. New

3:13

environmental issues are not the

3:15

kind of innovation we were

3:17

looking for. The old ones are still serving

3:19

us. Just fine thanks so much.

3:22

For I think we have barely

3:24

figured out how to save the sea

3:26

turtles for our plastic straws. This

3:43

is Choice Words. I'm Samantha Bee. My guest

3:45

today is the exceptionally smart

3:47

Joy Ann Reed. You know her

3:50

from MSNBC's The Readout and recently

3:52

she was the victim of another

3:54

new technology when she herself was

3:56

deep faked. We talk about

3:59

how hard it is. to regulate emerging

4:01

tech and the election and the

4:03

news industry in general. I hung

4:05

on every single word of our

4:07

conversation. So take a listen and

4:10

make good choices. Thank

4:16

you so much for being here. Thank

4:19

you for having me, Sam. It's great to

4:21

be here. I feel that my

4:23

listeners are going to be so jazed

4:26

to hear from you. They're not going

4:28

to believe it. Anyways, OK, I want

4:31

to hop into it. And I really want to talk

4:33

to you about the book and everything

4:35

that you're doing. It's a big week

4:37

in the world of news, my goodness.

4:40

But first, my launch point, what

4:42

I like to start the podcast talking

4:45

about, is the choices that we make

4:47

in life, how we

4:49

got here. That's what the

4:52

show is all about. So we'll make decisions

4:54

in different ways. How do you make decisions?

4:56

What does the word choice

4:58

mean to you? How does that sit with

5:00

you? That is such a

5:03

profound and great question. I have never been

5:05

asked this question. I'm always impressed when

5:07

an interviewer comes up with a question I've never been asked.

5:09

I've never been asked that. That's a great one. OK. Oh,

5:11

boy. So now I've got to think about it. So what

5:13

does choice mean to me? I think that

5:16

what choice really means is

5:19

self-ownership, right? Because choice

5:22

is something that we

5:24

have only in a limited

5:27

quantity when we're kids, because our

5:29

parents kind of have custody. They

5:31

have literal and local parenthesis over

5:33

us. So most of our choices are made

5:35

by them, right? Right, right, right. And then

5:37

when you kind of go out into the

5:40

world, what's happening is you're taking over the

5:42

role that the people who raised you had,

5:44

which is they made all the decisions of what you're going

5:46

to do with yourself, where you're going to go, what you're

5:48

going to do with your time. And

5:50

now you have self-ownership. And

5:52

without self-ownership, then

5:55

you might as well be a child or

5:57

a pet. And so when I think about

5:59

it, I think about it. Get

52:00

me those! I need it right now! I need

52:02

two kittens! I

52:05

need someone to be wearing a sweatshirt with two kittens

52:07

in the hoodie and a

52:10

baby bottle. They

52:14

get more and more insane as

52:16

the news gets worse. Okay,

52:21

I really, it's hard for me to imagine being

52:23

so steeped in the news

52:25

every night and then also finding time

52:28

to do your own personal writing. Okay,

52:31

you just wrote Meg or a Merle. How

52:34

in the world did you find time to do

52:37

that in addition to everything else that you're doing? And

52:39

also why did you feel like you

52:41

needed to write it now? You

52:44

know, the whole project

52:46

took about two years to get

52:48

done between the research and the interviews and then just

52:50

trying to figure out how to make it into a

52:52

book. I didn't actually initially come up

52:54

with the idea, but I got the spark to do

52:57

it in 2018. When

52:59

I interviewed Ms. Merle for my old show for

53:01

AM Joy, I was just in LA and

53:04

I had interviewed her before just remotely and this

53:06

was my first chance to interview her in person.

53:08

So I was very excited and she and Maxine

53:10

Waters came on and they were my little panel.

53:13

And after the interview,

53:16

she presents me with this New York

53:18

Times piece about me and

53:20

asked me to sign it. I nearly fainted on the

53:23

floor because I'm just like, I'm such a stan of

53:25

her. I just respect her so much. She's like an

53:27

icon. And I'm like, you want my autograph? I want

53:29

your autograph. And so we just started chatting.

53:32

And we just started talking and

53:35

she brought up Medgar. I don't remember how

53:37

it came up. I guess we're all talking

53:39

about our relationships and we're

53:41

talking about, we talked about Ms.

53:43

Maxine, we're representing Waters relationship and

53:45

everything. But when Merle Evers Williams

53:47

talked about Medgar Evers, she

53:50

spoke about him, like that was her high school

53:52

boyfriend and she just fell in love with him

53:54

yesterday. It was so intense, her

53:56

love for him. And

53:58

I said to her, Ms. Merle, it's been 60 years. He's been

54:00

dead for 60 years. You still seem like you're madly in

54:02

love with this man." And she said, Medgar

54:04

Evers was the love of my life.

54:07

Oh. And that

54:10

stayed with me for literally two

54:12

years. And once my editor and

54:14

my publisher were

54:17

pushing me to come up with

54:19

another book for Harper Collins, and

54:22

I, Peter, my publisher, has done all my books with

54:24

me except one. And so he's just my guy. I

54:26

go back and there he's like, what book would you

54:28

like to write now? And so we went out with

54:30

my agent, Suzanne, and the three of us are out

54:32

at lunch. And they're like, what do you want to

54:34

write? And I was trying

54:36

to think of what I would enjoy writing, right? Because

54:38

I had written a Trump book. It did well, but

54:41

I didn't want to go in that mind again. I

54:43

wanted to do something different and nothing political. I'm like,

54:45

what do I want to do that's different? That's not

54:47

necessarily a politics book. And I thought about

54:49

that love story and I said, you know what? Has anyone ever

54:51

written a civil rights love story? Because I think I have one.

54:54

And I pitched it to them. I didn't even write a

54:56

pitch. I just pitched it to them at lunch and they

54:58

were like, we love it. Do it. So

55:00

then it took a good two years. And

55:03

then of course the pandemic hit. And

55:05

it was very difficult to get

55:08

it done. And then I got this show. Yeah, then

55:10

you're launching a new show. Yeah. And so it

55:12

all kind of got discombobulated. And I ended up

55:14

doing the interviews and spending a lot of time

55:16

with her. And then once I had all of

55:19

these interviews and all these interviews with other people,

55:21

we went on her block where they lived and

55:23

we just congealed all this great information. And then

55:25

I got like profound writer's block, partly

55:27

because I was just so busy and things are so crazy. I

55:30

put my podcast on hold and I was just like, I have

55:32

to figure out how to write this book. And

55:34

my favorite writer of

55:37

all times is James Baldwin. I love James Baldwin. I'm

55:39

like obsessed with him. And

55:41

I said, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to

55:43

get on a plane. And I went to

55:45

Paris and I said, I'm going to go.

55:47

And I had never really vacationed without Jason, my husband. We've

55:49

been married like 30 years and we always vacation together. This

55:52

is the first time I had vacationed by myself. I went

55:54

for two weeks. I checked into this beautiful

55:56

Airbnb, which I call my apartment. I don't know why these

55:58

other people think they live there. activists

58:00

that he was training and bringing into the movement

58:02

were between 15 and 19 years old.

58:06

They were young. John Lewis was only 22

58:08

when he took those blows on the Edmund

58:10

Pettus Bridge. So we're talking about people like

58:12

Dr. King and Medgar. They were the older

58:14

ones and they were like 30. And

58:17

so we're talking about a movement. And the reason

58:20

for that is pretty obvious in some ways, if

58:22

you think about it, that adults,

58:25

people my age, you're

58:27

a young lady, but me, my age, I'll

58:29

say it, I'll put myself out there. That's

58:31

kind. But, you know, grown folks

58:33

had mortgages and jobs that they could

58:35

lose if you joined the movement. If

58:38

you joined the NAACP, you could get your mortgage

58:40

recalled. You could

58:42

be fired from your job just for joining

58:44

the NAACP and specifically in Mississippi. So

58:47

people were terrified if they'd managed to form a

58:49

middle class life. And that mostly meant

58:51

teachers, World War II veterans. There

58:54

weren't that many other jobs you could do as a black,

58:56

quote unquote, middle class person. You could

58:58

get paid to lose it all. And you could get

59:00

lynched for it. Whereas young

59:03

people had this bravado and a lack of fear

59:05

of death that enabled them

59:07

and also the lack of responsibilities,

59:09

no financial responsibilities, no kids. And

59:12

so they were the ones who were free to

59:14

act and they had the courage to act. And

59:16

so they're the ones who really formed the core of

59:18

the movement. That is why

59:20

we seek such youthful thicker in

59:23

our presidential candidates. Those

59:29

two spunky lads. Those spunky lads.

59:31

They're in the prime of their

59:33

lives. Okay.

59:37

So many people come to you for the news. Who do

59:39

you go to? It's

59:41

interesting. I am

59:45

both an MSNBC staffer and an

59:47

MSNBC consumer. I really do watch

59:49

MSNBC. Especially my prime time friends.

59:51

You know, I love Rachel. You

59:53

know, that's my homegirl. I love

59:56

her. I love Nicole.

59:58

I love Chris Hayes.