# Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem  ## Episode metadata - Episode title: Feminist Icon Gloria Steinem - Show: Fresh Air - Owner / Host: NPR - Guests: [John Powers](https://share.snipd.com/person/0aef4767-d88c-4cd0-8150-7448314e021e) - Episode publish date: 2026-09-04 - Episode AI description: John Powers, longtime cultural critic and writer, reviews Coyote vs. Acme, a surreal legal comedy about Wile E. Coyote taking on corporate power. The program also remembers Gloria Steinem through archival conversations on founding Ms. magazine, workplace equality, abortion and solidarity, her unconventional childhood, feminism, and aging. - Mentioned books: [Unexpected Life](https://share.snipd.com/book/39b9d3f0-b60d-4de0-b408-8f3349a0739a) by [Gloria Steinem](https://share.snipd.com/person/5ef20b15-d8fa-493c-8e19-607b5de77ac2), [Writing a Woman's Life](https://share.snipd.com/book/a1f0042b-058d-44fd-80ea-17bcbe96aa97) by [Carolyn Halber](https://share.snipd.com/person/5dacfe11-08f0-4042-b6ef-f97f4a612db5), [My life on the road](https://share.snipd.com/book/175f0ed1-ef7c-4150-b621-6915d62625fe) by [Gloria Steinem](https://share.snipd.com/person/5ef20b15-d8fa-493c-8e19-607b5de77ac2) - Duration: 46:47 - Episode URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/episode/2ab8f96a-ddac-4429-81e2-1fbb7413c7ac) - Show URL: [Open in Snipd](https://share.snipd.com/show/74968254-1b39-42d5-89fb-0ba0e44cf3a3) - Export date: 2026-09-04T20:40:02 ## Snips ### [Why Ms. Magazine Had To Exist](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0b9e5588-cce9-4bd8-8da3-f8163cc71252) 🎧 02:07 - 03:30 (01:23) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/eff3cdd7-79d9-4221-909b-5c7f8c619682" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Existing magazines confined women to food, makeup, babies, and celebrities instead of treating them as political thinkers. - Ms. emerged because women could neither write nor edit the subjects they considered important. #### 💬 Quote > We could not either write what we wanted to or read or edit what we wanted to in the existing magazines. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on creating Ms. magazine #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** Thank you. You had already worked for several magazines. As a journalist, why did you think it was important to have a magazine written by and devoted to women? Well, **Gloria Steinem:** first, because even before I began to think about anything that might be called feminism or to question the structures that women encountered, I and lots of women could not write about political subjects for the existing magazines. We were thought to be the experts on food, makeup, babies, and celebrities, but that was pretty much it. And though I railed against it, as many other women did, perhaps not hard enough in retrospect, but at least we tried, it really didn't budge very much. Then after we began to realize that there was a reason why women felt connected to other discriminated against groups and kind of identified with the underdog, because we were also underdogs and there began to be a women's movement. Then the magazine said, well, you know, we published our article on feminism last year or if we're going to write one article saying that women are full human beings, we'll have to publish one right next to it saying they're not in order to be objective. So it became more and more clear to lots of us that we could not either write what we wanted to or read or edit what we wanted to in the existing magazines. --- ### [Editors Underestimated Feminist Issues](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bcb9cf96-0f6c-4ffb-8267-e4886871541d) 🎧 03:37 - 04:32 (00:55) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/0e3814ea-47ff-4289-bbd3-2fdaeec90ebc" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Male editors on both the left and right dismissed abortion and equality as too controversial or specialized. - Feminist issues were often more popular than the subjects editors considered serious. #### 💬 Quote > Of course, it was actually much more popular as an issue than anything they were talking about. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on mainstream media priorities #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** Did you find, too, that a lot of male editors thought that it was just too specialized, too narrow to write about issues like abortion or equality for women, because all of their readers wouldn't be interested in it. No, absolutely. And **Gloria Steinem:** that was true on the left and on the right. You know, you would find, I'm sorry to say, because I have much more affection for the left, but you would find left men editors who would say, well, you know, abortion is too controversial, and we can't divide the left, quote unquote, with this kind of argument. Of course, it was actually much more popular as an issue than anything they were talking about. But still, you know, that just wasn't, it just wasn't serious in their view. I mean, when I think about the life of the magazine, I think partly about the fact that everybody said after the first issue, well, they've said everything they have to say, what is there to talk about besides child care and welfare as a woman's issue and, you know, a few other things, but that's it. --- ### [Ms. Magazine Capped Its Pay Gap](https://share.snipd.com/snip/245acc97-4887-4d0b-b66b-d4083c3342c4) 🎧 05:46 - 07:47 (02:01) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ce812e4b-4ad8-4af1-8aa9-0f53a0552cec" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Ms. staff initially wanted equal salaries, then accounted for need, experience, and each person's importance. - They capped the highest salary at three times the lowest, narrowing the gap dramatically. #### 💬 Quote > We couldn't all earn the same salary, but yes, we could substantially change the way money was distributed. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on Ms. magazine's workplace structure #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** I think that women's organizations and publications functions on two levels, especially at the beginning. One was that the content was going to be oriented toward women, and the other was this kind of utopian sense that with women at the controls, it was going to have a different structure, a different sense of power and hierarchy than their male-run counterparts had. Did that happen at Ms. Magazine? Did you have a sense of what the utopian women's-run magazine was going to be like? And I'm talking about the power structure. We did, but it was somewhat **Gloria Steinem:** wrong, but not totally wrong. For instance, when we started out, I an example of our naivete was that we sat around, there eight of us, and we sat around and we fixed each other's salaries, basically. Well, first, no, the real utopian thing was we thought we should all have the same salary. But it soon became clear to us just from just knowing each other's lives that that was not possible. Some of us were supporting children and some were not. Some were older and had been earning higher salaries in the past. So we did fix each other's salaries, but we took three things in mind. One, what our need was. Two, what our experience was. And three, how important we were to the life of the magazine itself. What we did do, though, was to try to, and something we've still maintained, to make sure that the top salary was no more than three times the lowest salary. I think in a way that's a little microcosm of both the idealism and the realism. That is, okay, no, we couldn't all earn the same salary, but yes, we could substantially change the way money was distributed so that the top was three times the bottom, which is very different from other magazines where the chief editor may earn $200,000 or more and the secretary earns 10. --- ### [Activism Must Reach Personal Habits](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1d474bdd-7f69-4b61-8bac-793bf5addd29) 🎧 08:41 - 09:58 (01:17) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/1a276949-804b-4342-80b6-c28b2a02e032" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - “The personal is political” also exposed activists' private contradictions and unexamined habits. - Steinem urged women to manage money but realized she gave hers away because financial control felt uncomfortable. #### 💬 Quote > I hadn't internalized the message myself. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on practicing feminist principles #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** One of the early sayings in the women's movement was, the personal is political. And I wonder if that still has the same resonance for you now that it did in the late 60s. It **Gloria Steinem:** really does. I think in some ways we're only, you know how you learn something intellectually before it gets to you emotionally sometimes? I think it's just getting to us emotionally now. How is it getting to you emotionally now? Well, I guess, I mean, this may sound strange, but I'm just beginning to realize that I need to do some of the things that I have been saying should be done. In other words, I've been telling women, for instance, or trying to help women editorially know how to manage their money to save money. Have I done this up to now? No, absolutely not. I mean, at no point have I had enough money to last more than a month or two, I don't think. Because I was just having a much better time giving it away, but also, which is I think a positive reason, but also just because I didn't feel comfortable exerting that kind of control over money. I hadn't internalized the message myself. --- ### [Truth-Telling Turned Abortion Into A Shared Issue](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2749ddd1-f0a7-4f93-932f-ed7e041fd9ce) 🎧 13:05 - 15:46 (02:41) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/b6e1976b-8b92-4b72-beea-dbf5c5ffda16" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem's illegal abortion in England let her reject marriage to the wrong person and pursue an unknown future. - Hearing other women tell similar stories transformed secrecy into recognition that abortion was both common and dangerous when illegal. #### 💬 Quote > It's the kind of revelation that comes from people just telling the truth and discovering you're not alone. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on abortion speak-outs #### 📚 Transcript **Gloria Steinem:** This book is dedicated to Dr. John Sharp of London, who in 1957, a decade before physicians in England could legally perform an abortion for any reason other than the health of the woman, took the considerable risk of referring for an abortion a 22-year American on her way to India. Knowing only that she had broken an engagement at home to seek an unknown fate, he said, You must promise me two things. First, you will not tell anyone my name. Second, you will do what you want to do with your life. Dear Dr. Sharp, I believe you who knew the law was unjust would not mind if I say this so long after your death. I've done the best I could with my life. This book is for you. **Terry Gross:** Thank you for reading that dedication to your new book. When did you first speak about your abortion? The amazing **Gloria Steinem:** thing was that it took me so long. There was no women's movement. It was supposed to be a secret. Women didn't share in the same way. So it wasn't until many years later, after New York Magazine had started, and I abortion? gone to cover an abortion speak-out held in a church downtown in New York City, and suddenly I heard other women standing up and talking about what it was like to have to go out and seek an illegal abortion. This was actually an alternate hearing to one that the New York State legislature was holding on the liberalization of abortion law in New York State. This was before the Supreme Court ruling. And, you know, a group of early feminists had just said, wait a minute, you know, in New York, in the legislature, they asked 14 men and one nun to testify. You can't make this up. Let's hear from women who have actually had this experience. So I sat there as a reporter for New York Magazine, listening to women tell their stories, you know, that were tragic and ludicrous and every human emotion all wrapped into one. And suddenly I thought, wait a minute, you know, I had an abortion and actually one in three American women had needed an abortion at some time in her life. So why is this illegal and why is it dangerous? --- ### [Steinem Traced Her Mother’s Broken Spirit](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e1e10044-b301-43b7-9c37-dc0a3d694de8) 🎧 17:40 - 18:24 (00:44) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/ebea8d95-13d7-4137-b961-f6fe5d72af20" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem linked her mother's depression and tranquilizer addiction to a spirit broken by giving up journalism and independence. - She rejected the idea that the condition was simply hereditary, saying patriarchy could be the inheritance. #### 💬 Quote > I always said, only if patriarchy is hereditary, because I just think her spirit was broken. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on her mother's depression #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** You spent half of your life on the road. You're still on the road a lot. You grew up on the road. Let's talk a little bit about your very atypical childhood. Your mother was often incapacitated by depression. Can we call it depression? **Gloria Steinem:** spirit was broken. You she, before I was born, had to give up everything she loved and cared about. And she was depressed. She got addicted to tranquilizers. You know, I don't, I don't think there was any, when I first wrote about her years ago, I was surprised that people would say to me, do you fear this was hereditary? And I was shocked. --- ### [A Nomadic Childhood Prepared Steinem For Freelancing](https://share.snipd.com/snip/17ada0e2-c967-48ad-a245-a0d6ef98cbc5) 🎧 22:56 - 26:05 (03:08) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/4a9ef27c-dc77-4199-8e1e-f34f41a3cc24" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem's family traveled in a trailer, funding trips by buying antiques at auctions and reselling them. - The instability still provided food, shelter, and love, preparing her for freelance work without a regular salary. #### 💬 Quote > My memory is that I learned how to read from ketchup bottles and labels and billboards along the highway. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on learning while traveling #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** So getting back to this life that you had as a child, your mother's spirit was broken. It often hard for her to get out of bed. Your father created this, you know, like wonderful dance pavilion summers. But then when the summer was over, the family would move into a van and drive south and basically live, when I say a van, should say trailer, I suppose. And then the family would live in the trailer for the duration until the following summer. You write that you never started out with enough money to complete the trip. Your father would buy antiques and then sell them to antique dealers, you know, buy them at country auctions and then sell them to antique dealers at higher prices to fund your trip south. How did you like being itinerant like that? I **Gloria Steinem:** suppose the two things happen at once when you're a child. One is that you just accept as normal whatever is around you. And the other is that you go to the movies and you see kids or your classmates, because I would go to school till it got cold, Halloween or something, who are living a different way. And you want to be like them. You want to be like the other kids. It never for a moment occurred to me that they might envy me. So I both accepted it and hoped that my real parents would come find me and take me to a house with a picket fence and a pony. I mean, that's **Terry Gross:** the degree of realism and fantasy. So you weren't in school for those years that your family was on the road. How did you learn to read and do basic math? **Gloria Steinem:** Well, I'm not sure I've ever learned to do basic math, to be frank. But I learned to read just because my family had lots and lots of books, especially my mother, you know, read all the time. My memory is that I learned how to read from ketchup bottles and labels and billboards along the highway. I don't know. I'm not sure. But I don't remember not knowing how to read. Was it legal for you **Terry Gross:** to not be in school? No, **Gloria Steinem:** I'm sure it was illegal. And my mother always said that if the truant officer showed up, she would use her teaching certificate. The fact that it was for university calculus, which she had been teaching in order to make money to finish college herself. I don't know how impressive **Terry Gross:** it would have been. But anyway, no, but no truant officer ever showed up. How did your father's sense of money that you could start this trip without having enough money to complete it and just kind of buy and sell things to fund the family? How did that affect your idea of money and the security that you need or don't need from money? It **Gloria Steinem:** felt insecure. However, I must say that unlike a lot of kids, I always had enough to eat. I always had shelter. I always had parents who loved me. So I had security in a lot of ways. But my father's philosophy was he didn't want to know what was going to happen tomorrow because if he didn't know, it might be wonderful, as he said. --- ### [Solidarity Movements Still Excluded Women](https://share.snipd.com/snip/62c0a0ce-f0cd-4686-a270-53ea124130f8) 🎧 31:15 - 33:07 (01:51) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/633dd4e3-4553-4f6f-a8f3-b6290d826df8" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem recognized women's rights only after seeing women excluded within civil rights and antiwar movements. - Her feminism grew from realizing that solidarity with other underdogs did not automatically include women. #### 💬 Quote > Even in those movements that we utterly loved, still were not treated equally. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on discovering feminism #### 📚 Transcript **David Bianculli:** Do **Terry Gross:** you remember the moment when you first realized women's rights was a legitimate issue, along with all the other rights you were interested in fighting for. You know, the amazing thing is how **Gloria Steinem:** long it took me, actually. I mean, there was no, at least to me, there was no visible women's movement. So I thought I just had to function within the system as it was. And I identified with everybody else who was having a hard time. I think women often do that without knowing that it applied to us too. But I owe it to the women who held that hearing on abortion, for instance, or who had been inside the civil rights movement and the anti-Vietnam movement. And even in those movements that we utterly loved, still were not treated equally, and so had understood that there needed to be an additional **Terry Gross:** women's movement. How did it redefine you to know that as somebody at the forefront of the women's movement, you were going to be an example of what you were fighting for, and that the choices that you made were going to be public choices? I **Gloria Steinem:** didn't really think about that because it seemed to me was the whole idea was the ability to make our own choices. So I never felt that I had to behave in a certain way that was subject to outside dictates. I thought the whole point was that we were able to use our own talents and do what we wanted. So I didn't feel inhibited by it in any way. --- ### [You Need A Nest And The Freedom To Fly](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e69dd97-7b6b-41cd-b087-a1f6068af28a) 🎧 33:11 - 35:06 (01:55) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/07cbe4e5-6252-4bd0-982c-bb29d9989592" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem spent decades treating home as storage because she associated permanent domesticity with husbands and children. - Friends helped her build a home after 50, revealing that travel and rootedness can coexist. #### 💬 Quote > You need a nest, birds need a nest and they still fly. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on creating a home #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** relationship to home. You write that it took you a really long time to create a comfortable home for yourself, part because you were on the road all the time and you grew up on the road until you were 10. At what point in your life did you create a home that was truly a comfortable place, more of a nest, that was a good place to return to? Really **Gloria Steinem:** only after 50. I had buried in my head this idea that you only made a home for husband and children. I didn't see a lot of women making a permanent home for themselves. I didn't think that way. And also, I was on the road, so I was always living out of suitcases and cardboard boxes when I was at home. And even though I now, to this day, live in the same apartment that I did then, it was more like a storage place than an apartment. It was only after I was 50 that thanks to dear friends who came and helped me to unpack my cardboard boxes, and another friend who explained to me how to make beautiful colors on the wall and took me around to auction places to buy things that I loved. She said, only buy what you fall in love with, because if the same person falls in love with all these things, they'll fit together. Don't worry about it. I remember going out with her to buy antique sheets. It was orgasmic, practically, the pleasure of buying antique sheep. So I began to make a home, a for myself, and I take such pleasure in it. I think in general, as a culture, we tend to think there are two choices, settling down or traveling, and actually you need both. You need a nest, birds need a nest and they still fly. So it took me a while that it wasn't either or. --- ### [Steinem Reframed Aging As A New Country](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29008b0a-7b7c-489b-bf4a-22b8ba37fbc9) 🎧 35:10 - 38:07 (02:57) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/52c582ae-0636-4785-a27f-77932fc805e2" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Aging initially frightened Steinem because women had few models for life beyond the central years. - She came to see later life as a new country where women can shed imposed roles and become more fully themselves. #### 💬 Quote > We leave behind this female impersonator role and drop a lot of baggage and really become much more our true selves. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on aging and identity #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** on Fresh Air in the past. And I want to play an excerpt of our interview from 1992. So this was 23 years ago. Oh, that's shocking. Right? And one of the things you talked about was you were looking back on having had a lumpectomy, breast cancer, and how that affected you. So I want to play what you said about that. So again, this is from 1992, Gloria Steinem, looking back on having that lumpectomy and how it affected her life. It **Gloria Steinem:** made me realize several things. One was, this may sound strange if I try to say it short, but that actually I wasn't, I was less afraid of dying than of aging, or not of aging exactly. I didn't know how to enter the last third of life because there were so few role models. Because when I first heard this diagnosis, first I thought, ironically, oh, so that's how it's going to end, you know. And then I thought to myself as if it was welling up from the deepest part of me, I've had a wonderful life. And I treasure that moment, you know, it meant a lot to me. But on the other hand, it also made me realize that in this culture, women, we know how to be in the central plateau of life. And I'd been there a terrifically long time because I'd become a grown-up too early because my mother being an invalid. So from about 10 to 52 or so, I'd been in this central plateau. Now I was entering a whole new place. It was like falling off a cliff because I couldn't see enough people ahead of me. You know, in the last two or three years of really, how shall I say, of kind of paying more attention to my own inner life, I've realized that this aging in the last third of life or whatever is a new country. I now actually feel excited about it because, as Carolyn Heilbrunn has pointed out so brilliantly in writing A Woman's Life, women become ourselves after 50. We leave behind this female impersonator role and drop a lot of baggage and really become much more our true selves. You know what I find particularly interesting about hearing **Terry Gross:** you thinking about the latter part of your life is that I think for a lot of women, it's the end of your life where you're supposed to be punished for the freedoms that you've taken during the first parts of your life. You know, like if you've decided to be independent or, you know, not be married or not have children or something, you're punished for that in the end because you're supposed to look forward to an old age where you're lonely, you're alone, there's no one to be with, no one to take care of you. I mean, I think that's been really instilled in all of us. **Gloria Steinem:** Yes, it's sort of the secular version of hell, I think. And like the religious version of hell, it has nothing to do with real life. --- ### [Later Life Can Restore Earlier Freedom](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5d89d553-c380-4bed-b61a-9da811cce3b6) 🎧 38:10 - 41:19 (03:08) <iframe src="https://share.snipd.com/embed/obsidian-player/snip/7e3b1201-ded6-438c-a34f-4c17c8966061" width="100%" height="100" style="border: none; border-radius: 12px;" sandbox="allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-forms allow-popups allow-clipboard-write" ></iframe> - Steinem described the years after 60 as freedom from many gender demands tied to appearance, sexuality, children, and social expectations. - She still noted that women lack enough role models for thriving in later life. #### 💬 Quote > By 60, you're free again. > — Gloria Steinem Gloria Steinem on freedom after 60 #### 📚 Transcript **Terry Gross:** And I just did the math, and I think you were 58 when that was recorded. Thank you for playing that, because it's fascinating to listen **Gloria Steinem:** to your earlier self. **Terry Gross:** Yeah, so does what you said then still ring true? Yes, **Gloria Steinem:** it does. I realize more now that I'm past that stage, that 50 was a very difficult birthday because it was the end of the central years of life. But 60, which I was just entering when I was speaking then, was like entering, as I was saying, a new country. And that means that all the demands of gender that spread from something like 12 to something like 50, and are something of a prison sometimes, are gone, and suddenly you're free. Here's my comparison now. Remember when you were nine or ten and you were this independent little girl climbing trees and saying, I know what I want, I know what I think, and so on? That was before gender descended for most of us, as Carol Gilligan has pointed out in her work. After 50, you've theoretically, according to society, had kids, raised them. So your gender role is over. And ironically, I found by 60, you're free again. So you're the same person you were at nine or 10, only now you have your own apartment, you can reach the light switch, you know, you hopefully have a little money so that you can, you know, do what you want. There is, as I was saying then, a whole different country after 60. But you were never tied to those gender roles anyways. You didn't need to be... Well, we're all tied to those gender roles. I mean, I don't think they're escapable. But **Terry Gross:** it's not like you had the children who are now out of the house, so now you have more independence. No, that's **Gloria Steinem:** true. It wasn't tied to the life cycle of a child, but it was tied to hormones and sexuality and affairs and how you looked. none of us escapes this completely. Nor should we escape it necessarily. What does being in your 80s symbolize to you now? You told us a little bit what 50 and 60s symbolize. Shock in what sense? I stop people on the street and tell them how old I am because I'm trying to make myself believe it. I mean, 81 is an age that I think is someone else's age. It's quite bizarre. And part of it is, I think, because we don't have role models of people going ahead of us. I don't have – I have very few role models of women my age who are doing what I'm doing. And in fact, the people I work with every day and love and, you know, are my current chosen family in terms of numbers are probably, I don't know, at least 40 years younger than I am. --- Created with [Snipd](https://www.snipd.com) | Highlight & Take Notes from Podcasts