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CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley
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September 29, 2019 10:30 am

CBS Sunday Morning

CBS Sunday Morning / Jane Pauley

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September 29, 2019 10:30 am

The great electric scooter backlash; The Smithsonian's Lonnie Bunch: A passion for history; Jim Gaffigan and Jeannie Gaffigan on making sense of life; Glass cast in sand; On her toes; Olivia Newton-John on finding joy in a life with cancer; Hillary Rodham Clinton & Chelsea Clinton

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Dream, design, and build with Tough Shed. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley, and this is Sunday morning, our 41st year of Sunday morning. For most city dwellers, the daily commute involves an onerous journey by car or bus or train. But what if there were a completely different way of traveling? A freewheeling way that was actually enjoyable? Well, listen up.

David Pogue has news. In about 70 American cities, there's a new way to get around town, electric scooters, which you rent with your phone whenever you want to go somewhere. The great thing about the way these work is you find them wherever they are, you leave them wherever you're going. Coming up on Sunday morning, they're cheap, they're fast, they're fun, they take cars off the road and they don't pollute.

So why do so many people hate electric scooters? Our Sunday profile this morning is of Olivia Newton-John, the singer and actress who's characteristically upbeat about her latest health challenge. She's talking about that and more with Gayle King. She was sandy in Greece and decades later still has a jacket and those skin tight pants to prove it.

I couldn't even fit in those pants in sixth grade. But for Olivia Newton-John, this isn't a trip down memory lane. It's about her battle with cancer. Now it's come back for the third time.

Yes. How do you stay in the moment and stay present and not let it consume you and worry you? Denial is really good.

It's really healthy. Olivia Newton-John, later on Sunday morning. We'll have a round of questions and answers with Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea, their new book, Drawing Lessons from the Lives of Great Women, from Ellen to Eleanor Roosevelt and talking about some more recent events. A walk in the park with Hillary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea.

I like whenever I can to kind of walk by and see how she's doing. Three years later, we ask how she's doing. Jane, it was like applying for a job and getting 66 million letters of recommendation and losing to a corrupt human tornado.

Being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life. History and her story. Mother and daughter ahead. Hot stuff is one way to describe the creations of the artist Lee Cowan will be watching at work. Marlena Rose doesn't mind getting her hands dirty.

What she doesn't want. Yes. And then right in here. Beautiful.

Is to burn them off. I find it exhilarating from start to end. Absolutely. Each one is so thrilling.

The fiery passion of a glass sculptor ahead on Sunday morning. Chip Reid shares history lessons from the new head of the Smithsonian. Jim Gaffigan tells us the story behind his wife, Jeanie's recent illness. Steve Hartman meets a ballerina in her 70s who's still on her toes. And more all coming up when our Sunday morning podcast continues. This scooter could hold the promise of a better way to get a better way to get around.

Hold on tight. David Pogue takes us freewheeling in the spring of 2018. The citizens of several American cities awoke to find something new. Thousands of electric scooters mysteriously deposited all over town unannounced.

They were put there by a new breed of well-funded companies with one-syllable names like Bird, Lime, Scoot, Jump, and Spin. They want to introduce a cheap, fast, clean way to get around cities like this one, Santa Monica, California. Okay, suppose I'm here and I want to go somewhere else in the city. So I open the app and right here I see these little dots representing all the scooters.

They're charged and ready for me to just pick up. They're 50 of them within two blocks of where I'm standing. So this is the closest one.

I walk over there and here's my scooter. In this case, it's in a cluster. Sometimes it's one by itself.

Very simple. This throttle is for go. This brake is for stop. There's an emergency brake for your foot back here. To get going, I point my camera at this and scan the barcode. And that beep means I am ready to go. I push off with one foot and then use my hand on the throttle. And goodbye.

Now, when you get where you're going, this is the crazy part. There's no dock. There's no rack. You just put the kickstand down, tell the app you're done, and then you leave it there. You just leave it for the next person to find. You put somebody on a scooter for the first time and there's not a person that doesn't come off smiling.

I love that. Joe Krause is the president of Lime. Its scooters have provided 65 million rides so far in 100 cities in 26 countries. What are the problems cities have? Pollution, congestion. We drive around in these boxed aquariums on Weezer box aquariums on wheels. Scooters put you out in the world.

They reduce congestion by taking cars off the road and they're certainly incredibly efficient in terms of carbon emissions. But wait, it gets better. Somebody's got to recharge all those scooters every night. Step right up. So the scooter companies employ an army of freelancers like William Nair in Washington, D.C.

I've been able to make anywhere between 100 to 300 dollars a night. And then you're responsible for getting them back out on the street the next morning. That is one big part of it. I'm about to load up at least maybe a dozen in my Prius. You're going to fit 12 of these things in that hatchback?

I can fit almost two dozen of these. I call it a clown car for scooters, quite honestly. An app tells him where to put the scooters back on the streets.

So the app told you that this is a drug. Yeah. And then I will be able to release the scooters.

All right. So release the scooters. The scooter companies insist on considerate, attractive placement. Looks like you've taken some pains to set them up neatly with the angles. And yeah, you know, you don't want the scooters to be an eyesore.

You don't want them to be in the way of sidewalks and that we're not blocking fire hydrants. What are the benefits of having this kind of job as opposed to a nine to five desk job? There's so much independence that I've gained from this. I've never been skinnier in my wallet. It's never been fatter. It's been remarkable. Wow.

What an amazing development these scooters. Good for us. Good for our cities.

Good for the world. So why have so many cities banned them? They're not allowed in our cities.

John Marish is the mayor of Beverly Hills, California. Well, they arrived overnight, dumped on people's lawns and all around the city. And none of the scooter companies had talked to anyone at the city and they just kind of appeared. And for a lot of our residents, it was litter.

There are other cities that are also upset that these companies just came and dumped their product and we'd all collectively be left to deal with the impacts of what they were doing. Ah yes, the impacts. People can leave the scooters anywhere and sometimes that's in the middle of the sidewalk or on people's lawns. That carelessness infuriates other citizens to the point that scooter vandalism has been an ongoing problem. And then there's the other kind of impact. These people have suffered really terrible injuries, head injuries, broken bones, surgeries, injuries which are going to affect them for a lifetime.

Catherine Lair is a Los Angeles personal injury lawyer. The calls that I get from riders who are injured, they are injured when the scooter malfunctions. Oh really? Do you get the impression that they malfunction much? Very much. So what's the impact of these scooters?

Very much. All the time. The scooters die mid-ride, the brakes lock up, the handlebar post collapses, the handlebars detach. They were never intended to be like rental cars.

Commercial fleet usage, you know, use after use after use every day and that's why they have a lifespan of only 30 to 45 days. Do you think helmets would help? Yes, I think helmets are so so important. In California we did have a helmet requirement. And then came Bird, another scooter sharing company. Bird came in and sponsored a bill which was signed into law which removed the helmet requirement as of January 1st of this year.

So you think this problem is fixable? I mean it has to start with not only the helmets but also inspecting these scooters on a daily basis. The great scooter backlash and reports of at least eight rider deaths seem to have humbled the scooter companies.

According to Lime co-founder Toby Sun, the days of dumping scooters in cities are over. I think working with the city is very important. We're in markets for the long run, right? So I think building that trust and collaboration, collaborative approach will get us a lot longer serving the cities and users. There are problems with accidents and parking and vandals and cities who don't get it. What percent confident are you that you will get through all of this and and scooter sharing will become a standard thing?

My confidence level is 120 percent. I'm fully confident that this is going to be revolutionary. That will happen only if cities agree to accommodate the scooters. For example by designated places to ride them and park them. Lime's Joe Krause thinks it'll happen.

It's happened before. By 1917, nine years after the introduction of the Model T, the last horse-drawn trolley was taken out of New York. In nine years we took a city that was based around human and horses and we transformed it into an urban landscape centered around cars.

These periods of change can happen rapidly when there's big problems, in our case congestion pollution, and there's a great solution in that case the Model T and I would argue today in the case of an incredibly efficient magic carpet that you can drive around for about three bucks a ride. A man who's been learning from history all his life is now in charge of a vast organization that teaches those lessons to the rest of us. This morning he takes our Chip Reid on a tour. Look at that plane. Look how little it is.

It is a tiny plane. Lonnie Bunch is captivated by American history and he'd like us to join him in learning from the past for better and for worse. It's my job to tell the unvarnished truth, to illuminate all the dark corners of the American past. In a museum that's going to talk about difficult issues you try to find the right tension between those stories that are going to make you cry because you better cry, but there are also those stories that give you that resiliency that make you smile. Smiles, resiliency, and tears are at the core of the story of Lonnie Bunch. By way of introduction in June Bunch was named Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. He's in charge of 19 museums, 21 libraries, the National Zoo, 7,000 employees, and a budget of 1.5 billion dollars and a mission that he believes is nothing short of monumental. What's clear to me is that the Smithsonian is part of the glue that holds the country together. Culture is so important. Culture is something that sometimes is seen as dividing people, but in my mind culture holds us together.

Common cultures we have the opportunity to find common ground. There are an estimated 155 million objects in the Smithsonian's collection. We asked Bunch to choose four that have special meaning for him. So does this plane still fly? It doesn't, it doesn't fly but it looks like it could. Some have intensely personal connections including the spirit of St. Louis which inspired him as a child. My father was a scientist and as a kid we would come down to the Smithsonian because it was a kind of safe place that African Americans could go and he'd take me into the arts and industries building and he'd talk about Lindbergh. In 1927 Charles Lindbergh made the first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He was just 25 years old.

What's so amazing about it is what it took for him to not panic, to keep himself under control as he flew for those 33 and a half hours and then the wonder of it actually making it. Lonnie Bunch grew up in Belleville, New Jersey where his family was the only African American one in their neighborhood. He loved baseball but after one game in a neighboring town he says the white kids suddenly attacked him and chased him with baseball bats.

I remember that I was exhausted and that I just couldn't run anymore and basically just collapsed in front of this house and then a little girl comes out and she basically said get off my land and I thought she was talking to me. The girl who came to his rescue was white. Instead she stood between me and the mob and basically protected me and it taught me so much because it made me realize, never generalize, never assume based on the color of one's skin. Personal experience helped Bunch develop a passion for history which he calls his teacher and protector. For me history was both a way to understand the American past was a way to help me understand why some people treated me wonderfully and some people did not. Lonnie Bunch is the first African American leader of the Smithsonian in its 173 year history.

I'm not unaware of the symbolic power of this for many people. Over the years Bunch returned again and again to work at the Smithsonian Air and Space in the late 1970s American history in the late 80s and recently he spent 14 years overseeing the creation of the new National Museum of African American History and Culture which opened three years ago and is the subject of his new book. You essentially started with nothing. We started with a staff of two. We had no idea where the museum would be. We had no collections. We had no money.

This museum collected 40,000 artifacts of which 70% came out of basement trunks and attics of people's homes. One of his most treasured objects, a tin box. I call it a tin wallet. A tin wallet.

Oh I like that. Handmade by a freed slave Joseph Trammell. In the wallet Trammell carried papers, proof of his freedom.

Without that paper you can be enslaved again so the key is to protect it and to keep it. In putting this museum together did you get some pushback from some people who said let's not emphasize slavery let's emphasize the positive things and the heights that we've reached. Oh there was an amazing amount of oh let's just say guidance that people wanted to give me.

Guidance. When we did surveys the number one question people wanted to understand was slavery and the number one question they didn't want to know about was slavery so I knew that slavery and freedom had to be at the heart of this museum because it's the heart at the heart of what America was and what America still is. You used to visit this as a college student. There was something so powerful about it and poignant.

Back to the four objects Bunch selected this one took us by surprise. A statue at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which he's visited for decades. When I was an undergraduate at Howard this was my escape. I'd wander through this museum. This very museum. This very museum and be made better. Historian and philosopher Henry Adams commissioned the great sculptor Augustus Saint Gaudens to create a memorial to his wife Marion Clover Adams a photographer who took her own life at the age of 42.

You can look at that face and you could feel his pain. The fourth item Bunch selected for us is the lunch counter from a Woolworth's in Greensboro, North Carolina which he helped bring here. It is the lunch counter that really sparked a revolution. On February 1, 1960 four African-American students sat at the whites only counter and asked to be served.

They weren't. And that excited people around the country to say this is wrong. How could it be fair that somebody could not simply sit at a lunch counter and eat. Across the country more than 3,000 people were arrested until the lunch counters were finally desegregated six months later.

Again there's a personal connection. So it's got to be 1957 1958. I'm taken to North Carolina to visit relatives. Not Greensboro but Raleigh.

He was allowed to sit at the Woolworth's counter in New Jersey so why not in Raleigh. And I'm sitting at this lunch counter and suddenly these white hands pick me up and take me over to the standing part where only colored people could stand. And I remember being dumbfounded and they served me a hamburger and the taste was never the same.

I never went back to Woolworth's after that. Lonnie Bunch thanks his parents and his grandparents for preparing him to face the world and ultimately the job he has just begun. One thing they told him was that African-Americans had to be twice as good to get half as far. Do you feel that you have to be twice as good? I feel that the burden of race, the burden of expectation is often heavier on African-Americans.

I didn't have the luxury to screw up. In my office there's a picture of a enslaved woman carrying a big hoe in a basket and her knuckles are swollen her dress is tattered and yet she's looking up and moving forward. To me being African-American means you look up you move forward no matter how heavy the burden. And now something very different from our Jim Gaffigan. A story about his wife Jeannie.

Serious, personal, and loving. Over the past couple years I've had the opportunity to do humorous commentaries here on CBS Sunday morning. They've all been universally adored.

Okay not universally adored. Through these commentaries I think you've learned something about me. I like food. I have too many children and I married a woman way out of my league. Today I'd like to talk about that woman. That special woman who has horrible taste in men. My wife Jeannie is a force of nature. She is not only my life partner and the mother of my five young children. She is also my co-writer of seven comedy specials.

When I go out to eat if I order a salad the waiter's always like oh. Two New York Times bestsellers and was even the executive producer of the Jim Gaffigan show. Who wants a mac and cheese? To summarize Jeannie does everything. She is the executive producer of our family. And until April of 2017 her life was pretty much perfect. Five kids.

Six if you include you. Married to a really good-looking guy. And then what happened? Well I was at a pediatric visit for my kids and when my doctor was speaking to me I turned my head and I asked her to repeat what she was saying and she was like what's wrong with her ear and I'm like oh I can't hear out of it.

She's like when when did that start happening? So she sent me to a ear nose and throat doctor and that's when they the MRI revealed that I had um you know like 30 seconds to live. The doctor told us one of those things people pray they never have to hear.

Jeannie had a brain tumor. What was your first reaction? Where you were like game over? No I mean I don't I don't think I was like game over. I uh something just happened where I just was like okay let's figure out how to get this out of my head.

So the more you think about it and the more you talk about it the higher are the stakes. And in what felt like moments Jeannie and I found ourselves here in the office of Dr. Joshua Bederson, head of neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. This instantly became clear this was a very high stakes situation for you because this is what I first saw which is a huge a huge tumor.

There's just no other descriptor which really was stunning to me because you were functioning at an extraordinary level. And so what causes these brain tumors? It wouldn't be like an annoying husband that would cause these brain tumors. A little bit. That's a part of it right? Yeah it's a major part right. What I'm saying it's not my fault right?

It's not my fault. That would be hard to totally conclude. Okay so Dr. Bederson doesn't know the origin of the pear-shaped tumor but thankfully he did know how to get it out. The surgery took 10 hours.

It was a success. The tumor was benign. Still Jeannie wasn't out of the dark yet. First Jeannie suffered from a life-threatening pneumonia and because of the tumor's location some cranial nerves had been compromised inhibiting her ability to breathe on her own or swallow. She couldn't eat or drink anything for an indefinite period. Every time I would wake up and I would see that machine with the yellow gunk going into my nose I was like I can't believe I'm here. It was just like it was really difficult for me but if I could just when I would tap into my faith I would see the big picture.

That I knew that there was a reason for this to happen to me but when I didn't wasn't in touch with my faith it was like too much for me to bear. After weeks in the intensive care unit Jeannie finally came home still unable to eat or drink. The kids and I attempted to make the harsh reality of Jeannie's feeding the world. The harsh reality of Jeannie's feeding tube terrible.

America's favorite feeding tube show which is too tacular. Was there a moment when you're going through this process where you looked at me and you're like I gotta live just because this guy's he's he can write some good jokes but I don't know if he can be there was a single dad. I mean there was a little bit of the feeling of because I had taken on the role of being like oh don't worry I'll do the schedule and I'll do the whatever. I felt like when they were wheeling me into surgery I was like my password on my computer is this I'm fresh direct this is how you order the groceries. I was like oh my gosh I have to he doesn't know any of this stuff.

I still don't know most of that stuff and thankfully I don't have to. How would you sum up your experience in two sentences? One word.

Use one word. How would you how would you summarize what you went through? Mom interrupted. Mom interrupted. No I would summarize it by saying that sometimes you need like a big reminder to realize how grateful you are to be alive and for your life and it just for me it happened to be a massive pear-sized brain tumor on my cranial nerves so. So what does a mother of five young children who's survived a pear-shaped brain tumor do when she she finally gets back on her feet and finally can actually eat? Well my Jeannie wrote a book about that experience, When Life Gives You Pears.

She also started a youth group organization that combines youth groups throughout the city. Frankly it seems like she's kind of showing off now. Occasionally I'll get a text from Jeannie that'll simply say I love you. All right it's nice to receive it but I'm also reminded of how grateful I am that she's still here and that my children still have a mother and that our family still has an executive producer.

Because if you've watched the show you could tell I'd be a horrible single father. This sunday morning sun looks pretty cool right now but not long ago it was hot stuff. Lee Cowan has a portrait of the artist.

Light and glass have had an almost spiritual connection for centuries but rarely quite like this. They're all the same. They're all the same. They're all the same.

They're all the same. Glass I think of is smooth and pretty and and these have a rawness and a mass to them. You don't like delicate little things seems like you want big hefty things. Yeah I don't I know smallest people have the biggest ideas. At five foot three she doesn't exactly cut a towering presence but when an idea strikes her Marlena Rose is on fire.

Yes and then right in here beautiful. Her medium is two thousand degree molten glass. Her fascination it's unpredictability.

Her motto no fear. I didn't realize how much of an adrenaline junkie I am. Is that what you get from it? I really do because you get a buzz. I get a buzz because you know you could really hurt yourself.

But the danger she says is worth it. The glass is so seductive and so beautiful and ethereal. It's such a beautifully spiritual material but you have to get the shape right. To get that shape she uses an ancient but rare technique called sand casting.

So named because of that sandy mold which gives the liquid glass a brief but comfortable home. So it has to be hard enough that it'll hold the shape that you're going to press into it. She's one of only a handful of artists actually trying to do this. When she started nearly every glass studio thought of her as the proverbial bull in the china shop she couldn't find anywhere that would let her work.

I want to come in and use equipment and pour molten glass and I'm going to make a mess in your studio. Why don't you want me? You know it was hard having the door shut in your face and no and no and you know maybe it's just too hard.

Maybe it's just too hard. But she never gave up trying and finally this studio near her home in Clearwater Florida relented and so for the last 20 years she's been turning out her signature pieces. Buddha heads for one. Butterflies another. African pieces too are a favorite. She's in more than a dozen galleries and her work was recently a featured exhibit at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana. Which all made the mold that she poured for us all the more special.

Our Sunday morning sun. She first crafts it in styrofoam gluing it together with the help of her two kids and her husband Thomas. Once built the piece is pressed face down into that wet sand. It's then pounded and packed and when it's gently lifted back out what's left in the sand is the memory of even the tiniest detail. Came out pretty well.

Yeah. The excess sand is then vacuumed away and a golden layer of powdered glass in this case is sprinkled into that mold. What comes next starts the clock ticking on a process where there is no room for error.

I just love how it's this dance amongst all of us and there's danger and it's excitement and who knows how it's going to turn out that that to me is is thrilling. That dance starts as soon as the glass is at the right temperature to be poured. It starts cooling almost as soon as it hits the air which is why almost immediately Marlena starts blasting it with a blowtorch and it could all go south in a second. And if it cools too fast the whole thing cracks and you're done. Whole thing cracks. Bit by bit the sand is carefully removed readying it to be transferred to the cooling oven but bringing down the temperature slowly is so critical Marlena even lights Thomas's gloves on fire to warm you up to make sure they're hot enough not to traumatize the glass.

How did you get roped into helping out? I'm married. The result is always a surprise. This one for example was supposed to be all red glass and yet gold mysteriously bubbled to the surface as it cooled. What'd you think when it came out? I jumped up and down.

It's pretty good. You just never know what you're gonna get. And when it came to our son neither did we. What do you want people to take away from your work? What do you want them to experience? I want them to feel something. I want something.

I want them to look at it and feel it and if they feel something then I've done my job. And with the sun finally streaming through our own little earthly star feel we did. Can a dancer ever grow too old for ballet? Steve Hartman introduces us to a ballerina who's forever on her toes. I must admit when my five-year-old daughter Meryl took up ballet I assumed it would be a passing phase. Kids burn out and even professional ballerinas are often done by 30. But I have since learned there is one remarkable exception which is why I came here to Dallas, Texas. Actually why we came to Dallas, Texas.

To meet the women I want to become. Suzelle Poole is every ballerina's exemplar. More than seven decades in dance and still on her toes. Most ballerinas can't begin to imagine this.

Certainly Suzelle never did. When I was about 26 I knew I only had a few years left. And how old are you now? 79. Is it hard to dance when you're old? I don't find it difficult. Some people think that I dance better than ever. I'm thinking but some people haven't seen me.

They weren't alive. Born in London, Suzelle started dancing at the age of seven and eventually performed around the world. Today she still does guest appearances with local dance companies with no plans for a final farewell.

Even when she broke her arm a few years ago, Suzelle was back at the bar within a week. Okay what's your favorite move? Move. Your favorite move.

That's a very interesting question. I do the dying swan very well. That's a solo ballet that puts the dancer on point for almost three minutes. Obviously Suzelle still loves it. In fact the only thing she likes more is sharing the joy. She now teaches at the Royal Ballet Dance Academy inspiring local kids and the occasional traveling junior journalist who would have never forgiven her dad if he didn't bring her along to meet the one person in the world who understands her passion better than anyone. Ballet helps everything. If you're not feeling well you do a ballet class and you feel better after. Does that happen to you too?

Yes that's true. So true from the tips of their toes to the glow in their hearts. It's the new season on Sunday morning and here again is Jane Pauley. That's just one of the many hits Olivia Newton-John has to her credit. But along with success there's been illness which she meets with no small measure of courage. Our Sunday profile is from Gail King of CBS This Morning. Olivia I feel the reach for speed.

Fearless is a fitting description for Olivia Newton-John especially during our off-road tour of her California ranch. Where are we going Olivia? We're going down to see the horses. What are the horses names? They're named Harry and Winston. Harry and Winston. They're my little jewels. Hi Harry and Winston. Olivia they're so cute.

They're gorgeous. I can't ride anymore so this way I can enjoy horses without feeling the pressure that I need to ride them. The miniature horses ease her mind just as the marijuana buds growing in cups nearby. So here the little babies these is how they start.

Ease something else. How bad was the pain? Really bad yeah crying kind of pain. Oh tears pain. Yeah tears pain. The pain can be unbearable but the spirit remains unshakable. As the English Australian superstar who just turned 71 battles breast cancer for a third time. I think when you're dealing with something when you have a diagnosis like this how do you stay in the moment and stay present and not let it consume you and worry you? Okay denial is really good.

It's really healthy but it was consuming my day and after time I went you know what I don't know what my time is but I need to enjoy my life so I'm going to eat a cookie if I want it and I'm going to have a cup of tea if I want it and if I want to have a little bit of wine I'm going to do that because the joy of life and everyday living has to be a part of that healing process as well. Finding joy in life it's not surprising for someone who brings so much of it to the world and for so long. It's hard to remember a time when Olivia Newton-John wasn't in the spotlight.

Four-time Grammy award winner she sold 100 million albums with songs like I love you. I honestly love you. And have you never been mellow? See all this time I always thought it was have you ever been mellow? I know yeah do most people think that yes people think that. And the biggest hit of the 1980s it's not from Madonna, it's not by you two, it's from her.

Let's get animal I mean it was like I sang it animal yeah let's get animal I want to get animal horizontal yeah let's get horizontal all those things were like so risky you know but now compared to what's on the radio it's kind of like a lullaby. It's so true Olivia. There's also her film career and her role as Sandy opposite John Travolta's Danny in the 1978 blockbuster Grease. Grease turned out to be a game changer for you for a lot of people that's they still see you as sand do people still say sandy?

Yes. Is that annoying or is that hey? Well at this point I'm I'm thrilled they recognized me.

I don't know what to say. She was 28 at the time. 15 years later at 43 Newton John's seemingly charmed life forever changed when she felt a lump during a breast self-examination. That was not the only devastating news that day. You were first diagnosed in 1992 which was not a good day for you because you get that diagnosis on the same day as the death of your father. Yes I had a daughter I had a child to care about and that was my focus you know I've got to get through this for her.

Following chemotherapy she was declared cancer-free until she learned it spread to her back in 2013. Never angry? No I would just be no. Help me understand how you're not angry. I would think so many people would be angry and frustrated and sad and say you know why me?

No why me has never been a part of it but I never felt victimized I never felt why not maybe deep down I knew there was a reason or a purpose for it or maybe I needed to create one to make it okay for myself because it's a again it's a decision how am I going to deal with it? You choose. You choose. The cancer went into remission but two years ago it returned again she was told it's stage four. What did the doctor say to you about your prognosis now? Prognosis I don't discuss prognosis because that's if they give you in my opinion if they give you a percentage or you know this many women get this and they live this long you can create that and make it happen it's almost like I think I know what the statistics are if and and but I put them away but I I'm gonna live longer than that I've made that decision. Is death something that you think about?

Try not to but you know I was wondering yeah you have to think about it I mean it's part of life and of course if you have a cancer diagnosis your death is kind of there whereas most people we don't have a clue when we're going to die and I could die tomorrow a tree could fall on me so it's just that we have that knowledge that we could die but I'm not I try not to think about it too much but I try to meditate and be peaceful about it and know that everyone I love is there yeah so there's something to look forward to. Newton-John is touched by all the fans thinking of her and moved to tears watching a message that Hugh Jackman posted on social media during a concert in Australia. You are the most amazing person the most amazing mom most amazing ambassador singer dancer but we just love you and I just saw right now after three we're gonna say we love you Olivia one two three we love you! Yeah but it it's better than people thinking is she still here oh I know it was lovely it was so reinforcing and positive and you know it was lovely just a thoughtful really thoughtful thing to do. Good girl good girl Stella. Newton-John spends most of her time at home with her husband John Easterling she calls him Amazon John he's an advocate for the healing powers of plants especially cannabis like the ones he grows specially for her.

He is the crown prince um he's just a good seriously a good human being and a kind human being an incredibly smart human being and he's gorgeous to boot. She's also close to her daughter Chloe from her first marriage. She says to me she says your mom different people have different kinds of cancer and my cancer was my my addictions and my problems and my anorexia and things I've had so she feels like she's kind of going through it with me and healing herself at the same time and facing her issues because I'm facing mine so it's been a really wonderful period of growth yeah for you both of us for you both. Retired from performing she's an activist and philanthropist and founded the Olivia Newton John Cancer and Wellness Center in Melbourne. Here's my wardrobe I always have it set up like this. This November her most famous costumes will be auctioned off some of the proceeds going towards her center.

The items include clothes from the movie Xanadu, a pink lady's jacket from Greece and we all remember the unforgettable black outfit from the movie's closing number. I don't know how you got in them that's what I would like to know. Well you know I was I was pretty skinny girl and they were the perfect fit for me except the zip was broken so they would stitch me into them. What would happen if you had to be?

They'd have to unpick it and then sew me back in. Really? Yeah I would try not to drink.

So I was going to say don't drink water that day. Yeah. Skin tight back then could she get into them now? How many people think Olivia can get in the pants? Show of hands yay! We believe in you Olivia Newton John okay. Tada! You did it come out! Whoa that's amazing that's amazing.

Well they live again they live again. Only you could get me to do this. Oh you did it. You're the only one.

No Olivia Newton John you're the only one with the style and that smile and so much strength. It's a decision how you choose to feel about something so I've chosen that path. I'm happy. I'm lucky.

I'm grateful. I have much to live for and I intend to keep on doing it. Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter Chelsea have teamed up to write a book all about women who've made a difference. Reason enough to catch up with them at a New York City landmark for some questions and answers. Looking in on a 20th century giant. I think she was one of the greatest Americans in our history. Hillary Rodham Clinton and daughter Chelsea at the Eleanor Roosevelt Memorial in Manhattan. She is a kind of transcendent figure over generations because of all that she did in her life.

I just find that depiction of her to be as I imagine her thoughtfully listening taking it all in. And at the New York Historical Society a racket from the hands of tennis legend Billie Jean King. It says king. King.

B. Look at that oh I love it. Here's a century-old banner from the women's suffrage movement. I have one of these at my home and I have it over the fireplace.

I look at it every day. The mementos breathe life into a collection of stories called the book of gutsy women co-authored by mother and daughter and published by CBS's Simon and Schuster. Women have been written out of history from the very beginning of recorded time and to a great extent still are and this is a small contribution to the efforts to tell these stories. The collaboration between 71 and 39 year old was at times an intergenerational challenge. Because I write longhand so I actually brought a sample of this horrible writing and then I use an app and I send it to her and she laughs this is what I would get. She laughs at me endlessly.

Although it's not so illegible I could still read it. Some of their earliest inspirations were familiar characters from books and tv. When you handle yourself use your head.

When you handle others use your heart. Donna Reed seemed like the perfect mother to me and my friends and Nancy Drew was a huge influence. Oh I love Nancy Drew and I really looked up to her the same way I felt about Meg Murray in A Wrinkle in Time. All of these fictional heroines who just meant so much to me. Among 103 real life portraits are unsung heroes and greats like Amelia Earhart and Harriet Tubman and another first lady. The reason I chose Betty Ford is I remember as though it were yesterday my mother's best friend had breast cancer. A phrase that was never uttered nobody talked about breast cancer and then a few years later along comes Betty Ford who gets breast cancer as a first lady and I remember she's in the hospital room she obviously had her hair done good for her and because of her breast cancer came out of the deep dark shadows. But no one looms larger for Hillary Clinton than Eleanor Roosevelt. When I ended up being first lady she was one of the people that most inspired me because of how she tried to keep thinking about those who were left out left behind marginalized. You write about discovering that her husband had had an affair with his secretary this was devastating and she offers Franklin a divorce which he rejects and you write she decided to stay in the marriage parenthetically which can be as I know well a gutsy decision.

Right. You had to discuss with your daughter putting that what did you say? Well part of the reason that I admire Eleanor Roosevelt is the way she handled that happening to her and I say look when something happens in your marriage as I know well it can be gutsy to leave it can be gutsy to stay.

I felt like I had learned so much from her that I wanted to share that with a reader and you said it's my mom's story to tell I've always felt that way. Being your candidate has been one of the greatest honors of my life. No surprise three years after the historic election of 2016 she's still grappling with defeat. How are you doing now and what are the metrics by which you know how you're doing on any given day?

Personally I'm doing well and having my grandchildren and especially a new two-month-old grandson has been a gift beyond measure. I feel very blessed I feel good but I can't deny that a big part of me cares deeply about what's happening in the country and what I fear is the damage that's being done to our future the damage being done to our values our institutions and try to think of ways that I can help those who are on the front lines of the fight. Your name doesn't come up much on any campaign except for Donald Trump's.

Lock her up is still a big popular line. I believe he knows he's an illegitimate president. He knows he knows that there were a bunch of different reasons why the election turned out the way it did and I take responsibility for those parts of it that I should but Jane it was like applying for a job and getting 66 million letters of recommendation and losing to a corrupt human tornado and so I know that he knows that this wasn't on the level. I don't know that we'll ever know everything that happened but clearly we know a lot and are learning more every day and history will probably sort it all out.

So of course he's obsessed with me and I believe that it's a guilty conscience in so much as he has a conscience. Of course given the events of the past week now the question is how will it end? The president must be held accountable no one is above the law.

This is familiar territory for her. The house judiciary committee voted to recommend that the house impeach president Nixon. In 1974 Hillary Rodham was a young lawyer on the house judiciary committee staff looking into the impeachment of Richard Nixon and of course in 1998 as Hillary Rodham Clinton. You live through an impeachment as first lady in the Clinton administration. What is your view today on Donald Trump's prospects for impeachment? Given this latest revelation which is such a blatant effort to use his presidential position to advance his personal and political interests there should be an impeachment inquiry opened. I don't care who you're for in the Democratic primary or whether you're a Republican. When the president of the United States who has taken an oath to protect and defend the Constitution and by that defend the American people and their interests uses his position to in effect extort a foreign government for his own political purposes I think that is very much what the founders worried about in high crimes and misdemeanors. What could happen if in another another four years of the Trump administration? I don't accept that I don't believe that will happen.

I believe that there were many funny things that happened in my election that will not happen again and I'm hoping that both the public and the press understand the way that Trump plays this game. She worked really hard to become the person she became. You might say the same about Hillary Rodham Clinton and like Eleanor Roosevelt also loved and loathed but by any measure a gutsy woman. You wrote a book with your mother so Hillary Clinton's name is on the front of the book but as a portrait of gutsy women she's not in the book except maybe between every line?

I think that's very accurate. I just got the chills when you said that Jane because I couldn't imagine any moment of my life without my mom and I'm so grateful not only that she's my role model but that she is my mom because my kids are going to grow up in a world that I believe is immeasurably better for her gutsiness. I'm Jane Pauley.

Thank you for listening and please join us again next Sunday morning. This is Intelligence Matters with former acting director of the CIA Michael Morell. Bridge Colby is co-founder and principal of the Marathon Initiative a project focused on developing strategies to prepare the United States for an era of sustained great power competition. The United States put our mind to something we can usually figure it out. What people are saying and what we kind of know analytically and empirically is our strategic situation our military situation is not being matched up with what we're doing. Follow Intelligence Matters wherever you get your podcasts.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-01-27 23:17:36 / 2023-01-27 23:36:55 / 19

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