Senator Cory Booker

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Where Everybody Knows Your Name with Ted Danson and Woody Harrelson (sometimes)"

Episode: Senator Cory Booker (April 15, 2026)

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Overview

This episode features U.S. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey in a wide-ranging, heartfelt conversation with Ted Danson. Together, they delve into the major themes of Booker’s new book, Stand, which explores virtues, agency, truth, community, and hope in American life, particularly during divisive and tumultuous times. Booker and Danson share personal anecdotes, lessons from mentors, and insight on bridging divisions—both political and personal—with stories that underscore the power of kindness, courage, and creative action.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Power of the Arts and Storytelling

• [02:17] Cory Booker on Artists and Social Change:
  “At the center of every great social movement for change is the arts... artists help us see human possibility.”
  • Booker credits his father for instilling in him the optimism and vision that comes from cultural representation. He shares how seeing Black representation on Star Trek and other stories expanded his family's sense of possibility.
  • He thanks Danson for creating art that shapes generations both as an actor and activist.

2. Virtue: The Foundation for Survival and Progress

• [05:36] Ted Danson reads from Stand:
  “Virtue, the disciplined practice of our highest ideals, is the strategy through which we as a nation survive and prevail.”
• Booker frames his book as a response to collective despair and fear:
  “So many people... drenched in that energy of fear and hurt and anger and outrage, and said, what can I do?... This book is my devotional to that question.” [06:24]

3. Facing Darkness with Light: The Importance of Truth

• [08:04] Ted/The Power of Redemption:
  “Truth is the way you get to redemption... if you don’t have redemption, then you can’t heal.”
• [10:41] Booker on ‘Truth with Love’:
  • Booker recounts a constituent confronting him about his record, the importance of honest criticism that comes out of care, and how it led him back to action.
  • “Give me a Mother’s Day card... not trying to shame me but love me back into tough [change]. I’m not talking about love being saccharine or soft. If you had parents like mine, they loved the hell out of me.” [12:54]

4. Agency: Realizing the Power We All Hold

• [19:52] Booker & Danson on ‘Agency’:

  • “The most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place.” [Alice Walker via Booker, 20:00]
  • Booker shares the ripple-effect story of Jimmy Lee Jackson’s death, the Selma march, and how a single hour of pro bono legal work led to his own family’s place in history and his eventual rise to the Senate. [20:38–26:57]

• Notable Quote:
  “My father told me every living human being is the result of a conspiracy of love, a vast conspiracy of love that goes back to generations before they were born. Someone nice doing something for somebody that enabled someone to move forward.” [28:56]

5. Community: Building, Healing, and Redemption

• [32:51] Danson and Booker on Community as Action:

  • Beyond acts of kindness, true community creates a sense of belonging and responsibility.
  • Booker notes the dangers of “counterfeit” online communities, especially for isolated men, and how real connections foster redemption and growth.

• [39:26] Booker’s Story of Redemption via Ms. Virginia Jones:

  • After acting out angrily in a public conflict, his local community leader Ms. Jones confronts and embraces him:
    “She dressed me down... but always with, ‘This is not who you are. This is not what you’re called to be.’... Real community does not excommunicate you. It calls you in.”

• [44:03] Ms. Jones' Life Lesson:
  “The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you... If you look at my neighborhood and all you see is problems... that’s all there’s ever gonna be. But if every time you open your eyes, you see hope, you see possibility, you see love... then you can help me.” [45:15]

6. Meeting Anger with Creativity, Not More Darkness

• [47:14] Booker on Political Anger:

  • Recalls a moment on his presidential campaign:
    “The strategy of meeting darkness with darkness does not work... They [civil rights leaders] won because they were able to expand the moral imagination of the nation.”

• [51:20] Creativity in Activism:

  • Shares stories of creative protest: Alice Paul’s suffragist hunger strike, Jennifer Keland Chaffins’ crawl up Capitol steps for the ADA, and the AIDS Quilt's impact.

• [52:25] The Conan O’Brien Feud:

  • Booker describes how responding to Conan O’Brien’s joke with humor and creativity, not anger, led to national attention, charity, and investment in Newark.

7. Vulnerability and Building Trust

• [57:10] On Openness:
  “To say I made a mistake is part of truth... Being silent about your pain means giving people permission to kill you and think you enjoy it.”
  • Booker emphasizes the power of admitting mistakes, sharing hardship, and forming community around vulnerability, citing groups formed by families of those with rare diseases and Parkinson’s.

8. Patriotism: Redefining Devotion to Country

• [59:40] Booker on John McCain:

  • Booker's initial meeting with McCain illustrates the depth of scars and values shared by true patriots.
    “Patriotism is a quiet and unyielding devotion to America and Americans. Patriotism is service...” [61:25]

• [65:03] McCain’s Last Senate Speech:
  *“

Transcript

[Narrator/Host]

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[Senator Cory Booker]

Every living human being is the result of a conspiracy of love. A vast conspiracy of love that goes back to generations before they were born. Someone nice doing something for somebody that enabled someone to move forward.

[Narrator/Host]

Welcome back to where everybody knows your name. It is such an honor to welcome US Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey today. He was also a two term mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Senator Booker has a new book out called Stand that charts a hopeful path forward for our country, especially in dark times. Wherever you land on the political spectrum, I am excited to introduce a public servant with a vision to bring people together and bridge our divides. Here he is, Senator Cory Booker.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

I'm a little giddy because I have so much respect for you and I just want to talk about your book because it's a great way to talk about you anyway through your anecdotes and everything you talk about through this format of.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Can I flip the script for a second on you?

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

As long as you're going to acknowledge me, yes, some way because it relaxes me.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No, I think that there is a tradition in this country that we don't talk about enough, that at the center of every great social movement for change is the arts. There would be no progress in America if it wasn't for artists who often in the most wretched of times, not only help soothe and sustain people but also help them to see human possibility. And my dad told me from the time I was a kid forcing me to sit down and watch Star Trek because he said this is the Bold, optimistic view. You have a bridge where you have this incredible African American woman there as an equal. And my dad, one of the first. Yes, yes. And the first interracial kiss on TV between her and Captain Kirk. But his favorite story was sitting in a movie theater, segregated balcony. And where he grew up in the South. Watching this story, he said it looked like a different planet from what he knew. It was Manhattan, but he's a rural southerner in the mountains. And. And it was about a salesman getting by on his wit and his charisma. And he said it, like, planted a seed in my heart in a world that was impossible at the time. And then he goes on after College to become IBM's first black salesman in the D.C. virginia, Maryland area. Makes their top 5% of their global salespeople, gets a promotion to Manhattan, to Madison Avenue for IBM. And he said, that's the power of the arts. To see the future before it's even possible, but to plant seeds. And so you're one of those artists that does two things in my mind. One, you've made generationally shaping art. And we were talking in the car right over here. My wife was about 18 years younger, said, oh, three men and a baby. That was like my movie. I grew up on Cheers. But then the other thing that artists do is they step away from the screen and the camera. And Joan Baez, Dick Gregory, all the artists my parents saw Jane Fonda. Jane Fonda, who not only were great artists, but were great activists. And so you fall in that tradition. And I just want to say thank you for that.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Thanks for the acknowledgement. I now can relax. Somebody actually came on this. It was Brett Goldstein who said, I've watched and listened to a lot of these, and I see that you relax when people compliment you. So let me compliment. You know, it's horrible. Brazen. There's so much to talk about in this book and with you. Forgive me if we just dive in. You are on a book tour, I'm assuming, for this book called Stand.

[Senator Cory Booker]

I'm excited. It's been received really well. Yesterday we found out it was number two on the New York Times bestseller list. So we're excited.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Good.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. And a lot of it's a book by me, but a lot of friends and supporters really helped and encouraged me at times that I was coming up short and not being as vulnerable as people wanted me to. They shoved me to open up more. And so you end up pouring a lot of your spirit and heart onto the pages. And I'm grateful, which is Great that

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

they did that to you, because that's one of the subjects you talk about, one of the virtues. Can I just read this? This is in your introduction.

[Narrator/Host]

Virtue.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

The book is about virtue. Virtue is not a luxury or an end in itself.

[Narrator/Host]

Virtue, the disciplined practice of our highest ideals. The disciplined practice of our highest ideals

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

is the strategy through which we as a nation survive and prevail. And now we'll start talking about those virtues. But I have been, as so many people, disturbed by the anger, the sometimes hatred, the violence, the fear that we're all swimming in and not knowing how we can deal with that, how we can make a difference, how we can have an effect. Can we just start?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. And I just want to add.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah, please.

[Senator Cory Booker]

I wrote the book because I had so many people over this last year coming to me with that, drenched in that energy of fear and hurt and anger and outrage, and said, what can I do? What can I do? And this book is my sort of devotional to that question. What can you do? How do you meet these moments? And how do people in history meet it? I'm really happy that Doris Kearns Goodwin, John Meacham, Henry Louis Gates. Historians really took heart in the stories from history that I told and said,

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

look, Skip has read this.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. He's one of the people on the back. Skip and Meacham there.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And they're heroes of mine, the historians that remind us that as bad and complex as our times are, they're not unprecedented. History does echo continually and therefore take heart from the people.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Ken Burns, too.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Oh, my God.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Made that clear too.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

A real patriot. And the great thing about Ken Burns, as you know, is I think at a time that we have leaders that are trying to erase our history or Disney ify it ban books, strip national malls from telling the difficult parts that don't fit nicely into this narrative of perfection. I think that what they do is they cheapen us by sanitizing our history. They prevent us from seeing how complicated, difficult and dark those times were. And yet we still overcame the those times. The greatness is not that we had this destiny of perfection. And the greatness really was the darkness and how we met it with our light.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Okay. That's one of your virtues. Truth.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Telling the truth.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

We don't have to go in my little order or the order of the book. So let's go to truth being one of those, because that's what you just talked about. And the thing that I think we all miss, I don't wanna Be blamed for slavery.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Right.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Gosh darn it, that was years ago. And let's just. Can we just get past that and beyond that and all of that? But no one is actually told the truth if they're saying that. And truth is the way you get to redemption.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And if you don't have redemption, then you can't heal and you can't. Then you can't legitimately move on all together.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

So I just. That that chapter about truth, when I have a fight with my wife, Mary.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

It's because she has pointed out something in me that I don't want to be that person.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And so I fight until I give in.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Right.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And go, shoot. I am that.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

I am that person.

[Narrator/Host]

But then there is redemption.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Then I do have relief and I can be whole because I've incorporated the good and the bad in me and can then move on. And that's the shame of squelching books and tearing down.

[Senator Cory Booker]

But you bring out the constructive power of cognitive dissonance when do that a different way. So when somebody tells you something that you're doing that doesn't align with your own views or your own views of yourself and it's uncomfortable. Cognitive dissonance is really a state of moral panic. Almost like, no, what you're saying is not true. I am not that person. You're saying or you're right. There's a misalignment in my thoughts and my actions that your wife may be pointing out. Sounds like you and I married similar people that so artfully point out the incongruencies of my belief. And in many ways, this book, if there's one origin point and there's not one. But if I had to simplify an origin point, it is me getting confronted by a constituent in Newark in the first months of the Trump administration. And I get cornered in a supermarket. For me, as a plant based guy, it was in the frozen meat section. So a particularly chilling place. Yeah. Raw meat. And he started coming at me and saying, and I don't like when people say this. They lump everybody into a homogeneous mole. They're like, why don't you Democrats do more against the cuts that are happening to Social Security Administration. The va angry at me. But again, the truth without love is a lie. So I still felt this sense of like, he wasn't excommunicating me. He wasn't demeaning my character.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

He wanted you to be better.

[Senator Cory Booker]

He wanted me to be better. And he said, why aren't you Democrats doing more? And I Had good explanations. We're in the minority. Why don't you do that? We can't call hearings. The more I talked to him, then he made a bad dad joke. He goes, corey, are you an American or an Americant? And then bad dad joke. But then he does this to me. Talk about pointing out incongruencies. He goes, I have been voting for you since you ran for city council in 1998. Where is the guy that challenged the political machine when nobody would and you won? Where's the guy that lived in a mobile home and parked it on the worst violent drug corners and saying, we can make a difference here? Where's the guy that did a 10 day hunger strike in the projects to bring attention to the problems there? And he started going through my career and he goes, where is that guy now? Why aren't you showing up? And that sent me back. He both shamed me and embraced me. He called me to be living more congruent with who I am and who I've been in the past and called me to show up. And I always say this about friendship. There's a saying that I love. It may sound trite, but I love it that a real friend is a person to remind you of the song of your heart when you've forgotten the tune. And so I go back to my office in Washington, leave Newark, and I say to my team, I go, guys, you're right. What our real power is in America. And you've shown this through your activism, what you've done on the oceans. Real power isn't a title or a position. It's action and example. And that's where we came up with the idea of standing on the Senate floor and trying to break Strom Thurmond's record. And so somebody who told me the truth with love, not with. I tell people all the time, give me a Mother's Day card. Because occasionally people see me in public and say, you mother. And I'm like, well, okay, Happy Motherfuckers Day. Yes, exactly. We should have one. And that's not. You know, there's a quote in this book about somebody who was far out there on the extremes of hate, and they said they weren't pulled back by people trying to shame them on Twitter. They were pulled back by people who took the time to sit with them, not excusing their behavior or their beliefs, but loved them back into tough. I'm not talking about love being saccharine or soft. If you had parents like mine, they loved the hell out of me. But she said, I was pulled back by people who took the time to engage with me, acknowledge shared dignity, acknowledgment, and challenge me on the incongruency of my ideas.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Right. That's your wife. That's my wife. You know, there's no way, even in the middle of a fight, that I can't do a little aside to the camera going, I know how much she loves me. So it comes out of love. And I think a lot of us gone. You're a bigot, you know, shame on you. Shame, shame, shame. And that makes me also better than you. I'm not a bigot. You are. You know, all of that moral superiority.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Just sticks that person further entrenched in

[Narrator/Host]

their beliefs, you know, God, I love

[Senator Cory Booker]

you for saying that. And it's true for our public dialogue, and it's true for marriages. I am the least experienced guy. I've been in this marriage for four months. But I.

[Narrator/Host]

So far, so good.

[Senator Cory Booker]

So far so phenomenal. Like, seriously, there is redemption for even men like me through great women. But I read a lot about how do you make a successful marriage? And it's the Gottman Institute, which you may have heard of these. Well, they said they can observe a couple and see how they fight and know who's gonna get divorced or not. And the one thing they look for is what you did was wrong, what you did hurt me. What you did was bad. Or is it, you are bad. You are a vile person. That simple thing. Am I demeaning the totality of the human being, or am I talking about their actions?

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Right.

[Senator Cory Booker]

So what you said in the public discourse, the sort of civic dialogue in this country, are we relishing in our moral superiority and taking people who often all we know about is their worst moments or their worst sayings and shaming them and driving them away, or are we affirming the bridge that can bring them back?

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yep. And Democrats have unfortunately done that a lot. I do that. I catch myself doing that.

[Senator Cory Booker]

We have been awful for years. And I think that is what has made us lose a lot of people that would want to be with us but feel like they're judged by this police force, language police often that are so relentless in their focusing in on language and not pulling the lens back and saying, yeah, that language may be hurtful and offensive, but you are a person worthy of love, redemption. And maybe we can have a conversation about understanding as opposed to me, as you said, driving somebody more, hardening them in their hate.

[Narrator/Host]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

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[Senator Cory Booker]

Health.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

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[Narrator/Host]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose,

[Narrator/Host]

treat, cure or prevent any disease.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Can we bounce back to the beginning of the book, which is the agency you start with? If you don't start with it, then. Agency?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes, agency.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Agency, meaning you have the right to.

[Senator Cory Booker]

You have the power.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

The power.

[Senator Cory Booker]

There's a great. Alice Walker said, the most common way people give up their power is not realizing they have it in the first place.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Right.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And I think a lot of us often feel, with the, the, the challenges of the world, we feel overwhelmed or like what we do doesn't matter.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yes.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And so that first chapter, I wanted to go right at proving that you are far more powerful than you realize. You can make more of a difference than you know.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah. And sorry, the story kind of starts that you use. Starts with, sorry, what was his name?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Jimmy Lee Jackson.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And so we're connected.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Will you tell that that ends up with where you grow up?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's one of my favorite stories from history because you have a moment where this young man, 26, his mother is slammed to the ground by an Alabama State Trooper in 1965.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

65.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And they. You see this unbelievable moment, unfortunately, where they're protesting for voting rights. Jimmy Lee goes to try to support his mother and an officer draws his weapon and shoots him dead. And the grief of that town is so profound. And this is a time where black people are dying and it doesn't make the news. And Jimmie Lee Jackson doesn't really become a national story of a murdered person like, like we've seen recently with Preddy and Goode. But this one is yet another black person dying in the south that we don't know about. But the people in that community hold a funeral. And coming out of that funeral, these young activists say, we're going to march to Selma, to the Capitol, for voting rights. We're not going to let this young man die in vain. And they start this march one day, one morning, and they get stopped on this bridge named for a United States Senator, the Edmund Pettus Bridge. That senator was also a grand wizard of the KKK. And interrupting a news TV show. Back then we only had three channels in America that would go off at 11 o'. Clock. That's why the birth rate was much higher back then. Cause you had to find something to do at night. And so we know this is Bloody Sunday. We know the leader of that, John Lewis, this horrific. He got clubbed in the head, skull fractured. Horrific moment. But 1,000 miles away on the couch in New Jersey as a white guy sitting and watching this horror. Horses, horses charging in, tear gas, water cannons, everything. And the movie that America was watching was Judgment at Nuremberg. So grappling with, how do you. From the ashes of the Holocaust, how do you make any semblance of justice? And then they're forced to confront, from that hate and violence, suddenly they're confronting in their own country, senseless violence. Unarmed, nonviolent marchers being beaten savagely. And this man on the couch. One man. First instinct is, I gotta go to Alabama. And we should all.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Where was he again?

[Senator Cory Booker]

He was in New Jersey. And he slumps back down on his couch and realizes he just started a law firm. He's busy, like we all are, with supporting his own family. And then he makes a very American, very human decision. I am not going to let my inability to do everything undermine my determination to do something. And he comes up with a meager civic offering. I can do an hour more, a week of pro bono work and dedicate it to the larger issues swirling in our country. And he calls around America, calls around New Jersey and says, does anybody need an hour of pro bono work for our civil rights effort here in our state? And he finds this young, incredible woman, then in 65, named Lee Porter, who we just buried last year at 94. In 65, she was head of the New Jersey Fair Housing Council, North Jersey, at 94 years old when we buried her, she was still head of that organization. And she's like, I am confronting a problem here. We have housing segregation in New Jersey. I don't know how to fight it. They came together with what was then a novel idea. We'll send black couples into these white neighborhoods to try to buy a home. And if they're turned away, we'll send white couples behind them to see if they were turned away for legitimate reasons or not. And inevitably, they started exposing that. Black couples were told, the house is sold. Oh, it's been pulled off the market. The white couple shows up. The house is still for sale, still on the market. And so they get it in the newspaper. They start showing and exposing what had been operating under cover of darkness. And then he said, Years later, in 1969, a black family's trying to move up from the south, and they go to work helping this family who's been frustrated because they were turned away, turned away. They send that black family to look at a house. They fall in love with the house. And the real estate agent says, I'm sorry, this house is no longer available. They leave. But the white couple who's volunteering, pretending they were home buyers, finds out, still for sale. They put a bid on the house, bids accepted. And now the scene is set because at the closing, the white couple doesn't show up. The black man does. And a lawyer, Marty Friedman. And they walk into the real estate agent's office and they say, you told Mr. So and so here that the house was sold and then you offered it to this other family. But before he could get into his speech and confrontation, the man stands up and punches the lawyer in the face. And Sigs Doberman pincher on the black man. They have to fight their way out, literally. Tables turning over, windows smashed. They get out with not bad injuries and they start writing legal letters. The owners of the home find out what's going on. They're horrified, embarrassed. They knew nothing about it. And they say, we are going to sell this home to the black family. The black family buys the home. It's a father, a mother, a two year old and a baby still in the crib, about four months old. And then you fast forward 44 years and that baby goes on to be America's fourth black person. Barack Obama was number third. This was the fourth black person ever elected to the United States Senate. Me, I am literally here right now having a conversation with you because of that intricate lattice that connects us all. Jimmie Lee Jackson in his 20s, nobly and tragically dying for voting rights. People in a community, even though the world was ignoring it, saying, we're going to march, they bring the world's attention. Even though they got beaten back off that bridge. What they did by just standing up, even though they didn't reach their destination, they trigger a consciousness expansion of Americans. Many came down to finish that march, but many just said, I'm going to stand up too. And then they said in of course things that literally, as I said to this lawyer before he died, I said, you're one hour a month, one hour a week, just one hour a week changed things for generations not yet born. And so my, I never forget that change has never come from Washington. It's never been presidents and senators that made change. I always joke that we didn't get suffrage in America because one day all the men on the Senate floor came together and said, you know what, fellas, put your hand in, we're going to break on three say suffrage 1, 2, 3. It didn't happen that way. You know, civil rights didn't happen because one day Strom Thurmond said, I've seen the light. Let those Negro people have the right to vote. It's always been Americans standing up and doing the best they could with what they had, where they were for the cause of our country. And one small act can radiate not just in the present time, but it could radiate into history and make more of a difference than you know.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And that is so important right now because so many of us could go, oh, I don't know if I'm equipped to jump up on the barricades, but I have to do something. And whatever it is, you may not know the ripple effects, but do something.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And that has comforted me because I beat myself up regularly about comparing myself to other people who are grand and doing grand things and, and are heroic. But I'm not there, you know, for whatever reasons.

[Senator Cory Booker]

I remember asking my mom, when you see all these eyes in the prize videos, and my parents brought me up and the civil rights, I go, mom, were you out there doing sit ins? And she says, son, I did one sit in. I go, one sit in. Didn't they start? The great Diane Nash, John Lewis were all at Fisk University. And I go, you didn't. She goes, corey, I think my parents would have killed me. Cause people were getting suspended from school for their civil rights activism. But there's always a role. She did one sit in. And I want to diminish that in Virginia and Charlottesville. But she said, what I did was making sure that we did the homework for the people that were sitting on the front lines. She goes, there's always a role you can play. And that's what we all need to realize. And I see it in this time of ICE agents jumping out of unmasked cars and dragging people away, that I'm hearing all of these stories of individual Americans in this time of crisis, finding they can't do everything. But I'm going to do something. Whether it's my colleague Tina Smith showing me videos of people in their churches collecting food and clothing and diapers for immigrant families afraid to leave their homes. It may be small, but I promise you, one of those children may one day grow up and help your grandchildren in something that they do. The guy in Minnesota who just has a tow company and said, you know what? All of these abandoned cars that have their doors open or windows smashed, I'm going to find out who owns them and tow them back to the family. Because a vehicle to a hard working family is a lifeline. And so we're all here because of small acts of kindness, decency, and love. That story that I just told is all of our stories. We just don't get the privilege often of piecing it together. But my father told me every living human being is the result of a conspiracy of love, a vast conspiracy of love that goes back to generations before they were born. Someone nice doing something for somebody that enabled someone to move forward. And I have the privilege because I live in a place where constituents are reaching out to me all the time. And I hear these stories, they make me tear up. I was crying on the Senate floor reading constituent letters during that 25 hour stand. I'm a Newark mayor. One story I'll never forget is a guy who was addicted to drugs and his life was in shambles and as an addict, pulled everybody down around him. But finally he hit that rock bottom and got help. And he said he started showing up for his now former wife and their kids and started being able to contribute to his family. And one day he gets pulled over for a random traffic stop. And he didn't realize he had passed arrests. And so now he's getting jailed because he didn't clean these past warrants for his arrest. And he said it was the lowest moment because just when he was about to have an interview for a job that could change his life and help him provide for his children and start redeeming himself, he's in a jail cell. And all he needed to do in that jail was try to call that interviewer and move the interview until he could clear his warrants. And he had no change, no money. And he looked at this guy who was a police officer working in the jail, and he just looked at me and said, can I please have a dollar's worth of change for the, for the payphone? And he said, the guy looks so cynical. And then he suddenly his visage changed and he reached in his pocket and he handed me a few dollars worth of coins. And he goes, I changed the interview. I got there, I got the job and my life was on the right track. And he goes, I will never forget how a handful full of changes change my destiny. We have that opportunity every day of our lives. And here's the thing. If you're not a spiritual person like I assume we all, we both are. If you are scientists, there's a researcher at Stanford who has shown that just by observing a kind deed, if you just do one, pick up a piece of trash. Your body gets a dose of dopamine and other biochemicals that help you fight off infectious diseases. So you're doing well. The people who witness this, they've shown it actually changes the biochemistry of those people who witness goodness. But more than that, she traced that it could actually change the behavior of people 3 degrees of separation, because the witnesses are more likely to do a kind act. Those witnesses are more likely to do a kind act. And so we see that in the negative a lot. Meanness begets meanness. But we've realized that we, as, as everyday actors of humble decency and kindness can counter that same force with our light as lightworkers.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And it doesn't just stop at, you're doing a good deed and other people witness it and feel better and da, da, da, da. But you also. And tie this together, which you do in the book. You also are creating community. And community begets action. So it's not just trying to make yourself and those around you feel better. Do that for me.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. Look, I think that it is not just individual action. I think we all have a responsibility, but we are in a nation now that has had shearing forces tearing away community, and we now have counterfeit community that I think is very dangerous online, where hurt people and all of us are carrying wounds and scars often find or lured into communities that take your hurt and pain and whip it into more darkness and negativity. And young men, I think, are very susceptible to that, or men in general, because all of us are lonelier than we've ever been as guys.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Isolated.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Isolated. Gallup measures it. We all men in America now have less friendships than they've ever had. I talked to one of my. Called one of my best friends. April 1st was his birthday, and he and I had the first, like, really honest conversation about mental health challenges. And he said that one of the things that saved him was finding a men's group to start going to that was rooted in virtue, in this case, faith, and how it really rescued him. And we both talked about it because he knew. And I write about a period of mental health struggle for me where I did some bad things. I write about one of the stupidest things I've ever done in my life where I was at a. I had lost this election. I had something really traumatic that I witnessed, and I was really down on myself. And I felt like I let this city down, I let this community down. And I was living in a really tough neighborhood that I still live in now. But then the murders were out of control and the shearing forces on our community really bad. And I just was in a very tough, dark place and still hoping that four years later I could run for mayor and maybe redeem myself and serve my community in the way that I wanted. But in the middle of all that, there's this incredible basketball game. That is where all the projects, major projects in Newark, come together and have the battle of the bricks. And it's almost showing that there are constructive outlets for rivalry and we could all come together around sport and create communities, and kids can have what I had growing up in the suburbs. Some of my best lessons of life were learned on the football field. A very positive thing. And I'm one of the sponsors of the event. And I show up on this blacktop hurting, honestly, but still active and still getting ready for years from then to run for mayor a second time. And I suddenly have police officers come up to me and say, you need to leave right now. Now, this is the mayor of the city at the time, his kind of squad of cops that do his political bidding. And they had, I'm telling you, my life in Newark challenging. The machine was rough. I mean, they would ticket my car everywhere I parked, even with the other Newark council people, and my driver's license would get suspended by the municipal court. He had such control. My phones were tapped by the municipal police and claimed to be an accident. And some of the more funny things, like they rigged the heater in my office, City council office. So it's like, you know, 80 degrees in August outside and 110 inside. And all of these things, though, built up. I lost my race against him, and then he punished my supporters. And so here I am on this day, and I've had all that I can stand. And I basically say to him, you're gonna either arrest me or you're gonna leave me be the mayor. Then guy that's my father's age comes on, sees me, and just lets loose with a torrent of degrading taunting to me. He can't believe he's upset at his security for not removing me. How dare you let my former challenger. And then I lose it. And me and the mayor of the city are nose to nose, screaming at each other like two schoolyard bullies. And suddenly it becomes such a spectacle. Nobody's watching the children. The children are watching us. The basketball games have stopped. Hundreds and hundreds of people have gathering around. There were New York Times reporters suddenly on there, and newspaper everybody recording this spectacle of two bullies in a playground, screaming and yelling. But then it escalated. The mayor's bodyguard lost control, pushes the mayor out of the way. Now he's nose to nose. He goes to grab his weapon. His other security police, as the New York Times reported, had to start holding him back. And what do I do? Full of anger and testosterone. And as they're trying to hold this guy back from drawing his weapon, I start screaming, pounding my chest, let him go. Let him go. The more people came out, so now there's more people watching the 2 Idiots. The games have been ruined, the tournament's ruined. And when everything finally settles down, this community that voted for me, I won. This neighborhood comes to me and says, how could you have done that?

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, really?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Oh, my God. Yeah, it wasn't this thing. Yeah, you showed him. I go back because at that point, I had moved into some high rise projects. And the center of my. I always got my BA from Stanford, but my PhD on the streets of Newark. And one of my wisest professors of life was my tenant president, a woman named Ms. Virginia Jones. Picture a woman 5ft tall, elderly, but tougher than any linebacker I've ever faced. And she was the. Like, she ruled those projects with an iron fist of love. Like she kept that community together. And so when I get back to the projects after the spectacle, she had already heard about it. Forget the Internet, the community net is a lot faster. And she put word out. She didn't need phones or anything because everywhere I went, coming into the projects, going to my apartment, every person I said that I'd pass by, they're like, Ms. Jones wants to see you. You better go see Ms. Jones.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, wow.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. So by the time I get to the elevator and the folks in the lobby are saying, have you seen Ms. Jones yet? You need to go see Ms. Jones. I realize I can't go and hide from my shame. And so I go to see her. And this is what real community does. It doesn't excommunicate you. It doesn't shame you away. She did the same thing that we talked about earlier. She dressed me down. But always with, this is not who you are. This is not what you're called to be. This is not what we believe in, in you. And it was a brutal talking to her and her chief lieutenant, a wonderful woman named miss Wright. They beat me down, but they called me in, they didn't push me out. And I always mark that as a moment of where what real community does, even when there's disagreements, it airs them. It speaks truth. But at the end of the day, it still embraces you. And for this woman, she taught me what real redemption is. This is not in the book, but just to give you an example of her love. I was. Now you're going to make fun of me because I was on the best semblance of a date that I had back in those days, which is inviting some poor woman to hang out with me in the projects and watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

It's a very sexy move, thank you very much.

[Senator Cory Booker]

So for me getting young lady to come back to me in one of the more notorious high rise housing projects, and by the way, getting people in and out, Ms. Jones and the older ladies would always know when I'm on a date or trying to sneak somebody in. And so we're watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I hear streams of vulgarity in the hallways, somebody screaming my name and kicking indoors. Now, the apartment next to me was open and this person mistakenly thought I was there. And they kick in the door. And then they come over to my door and they start yelling, pounding on the door. So I tell her immediately, go into the bedroom. I realized that this guy kicked in that door. They're gonna do an entry into my door. And I call the police. I know the police. It'll take them 30, 40 minutes or figure out how to do with this guy who sounds like he's coming to truly get me. And so he succeeds in kicking open my door. Bang, bang. And I go into the hallway and confront him now. And he is looks out of sorts. He was struggling with mental health issues, screaming vulgarities at me. And I was able to sort of yell at him back, but sort of mirroring, I was able to tone the conversation down and get him to leave, then call the police. And they came and everything like that. So it was very scary moment. And I was rip roaring ready to go. And Ms. Jones and others came to me and talked to me and said, yeah, you can press charges and all these things, but let me tell you his story. And they knew this kid's background, they knew he was dangerous and they knew one of the reasons why he was off his meds and said basically they came to me with a plan of me not pursuing whatever legal costs for breaking and entering by helping me to understand his fuller story and helping him to make amends to me. And they handled it also making him as, you know, prescription drugs are hard to come by. But they came to me with a plan. There was no need for the police. They found a way in that community who knew that kid since he was growing up and knew why the trauma and the tragedy in his life and knew why he was. And it was just a demonstration to

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

me

[Senator Cory Booker]

of when we have intact communities that are really strong, that believe in truth telling and owning your actions, but ultimately are about healing and redemption. It was this powerful instruction. And then years later, when I needed that same love, that community was always there for me. It's one of the reasons why I still live in that neighborhood as one of the only senators that live in a black and brown community that's at. In fact, I think my census tract technically is below the poverty line, but it's one of the richest, strongest communities I've ever been a part of.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Ms. Jones.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Wow. Wow. What a figure in your life. What a figure, period.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah, I wish. First of all, there are. Ms. Jones is on so many street corners in so many neighborhoods and so many blocks. I'm sure you probably in your childhood had that one house that the moment was a mom for everybody. I had it in Harrington park, to be honest. But she was next level wise and on numerous points in my life that were almost as if God set up the. I mean, I came there with arrogance as a Yale law student, telling her that I was going to help her. And she drags me to the middle of this big boulevard where there were a lot of challenges, and said literally, literally to the street and says, you want to help me? Tell me what you see in my neighborhood. I go, what do you mean? She's, like, very impatient. She goes, describe my neighborhood. And I go, okay. And I described the crack house that was there, the abandoned building. I described the projects. I describe what I saw. And then she says, you can't help me. And she starts walking away from me, and I'm confused. So I chase after her. I grab her from behind very respectfully, and I say, I don't understand. I mean, I'm Cory Booker. I'm a Yale law student. Like, what are you talking about? With all my arrogance, full of myself. And she turns around and she wags her finger at me. She goes, boy, you need to understand something. The world you see outside of you is a reflection of what you have inside of you. And if you look at my neighborhood and all you see is problems and darkness and despair, that's all there's ever gonna be. But if you're stubborn and every time you open your eyes, you see hope, you see possibility, you see love, you see the face of God. She's a very religious woman. She goes Then you can help me. And she walks away.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

This is spectacular. I love this conversation.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And I'm thinking to myself, okay, thus, thus endeth thus, little grasshopper. Thus endeth the lesson. So you believe this because I think you live your life this way. Real faith, forget religion, but real faith in life is knowing that when you come to the end, all the light you know, if you have the courage to step out of your comfort into darkness, that real faith is one of two things that's going to inevitably happen. Either you're going to find solid ground underneath you, or the universe will send you people who will teach you how to fly. And sometimes the blessings of flight will come first by smashing you to the ground. But ultimately that breaks you open and gives you more points of connection to others that you really needed.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

When you started this conversation about the basketball tournament and people confronting you and

[Narrator/Host]

being violent

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

reflection of me, I went, yeah. Oh God, yes. I bet everyone was so proud of you for, yeah, smack him. Smack the dude. And it, and it's, it's what happens to me when I watch too much TV and I throw my. I just get so enraged because dark anger, meanness, all of those things, if you are not really grounded and on your toes, elicits the same in you. Yes, you want to smack that. I do. And I have to turn it off, regain my composure and all of that. But it's also a lesson of that's how you get stuck and not move forward. It's also a great distraction. Keep them angry, scared, pissed off at me. Who gives a shit? Sorry, who cares? Because I'm going to be doing this other stuff, the really, really wicked stuff, while you're going, oh, shame on you for being that way. And you make me so mad. You know, it's such a great lesson in that story. And thank you. I just love that.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No, and the strategy of meeting darkness with darkness does not work. No, it really doesn't. I joke about my presidential campaign and one of the days I realized I was in trouble was when I was at town hall in Iowa and I'm blown away. They fill an auditorium again. My ego is now triggered and I'm excited. So when they call my name, I start running. At that stage. Now I'm a former tight end, but as a middle aged guy, I can't stop as short as I used to on a dime. And so I'm chugging towards the stage and this guy steps out. I'm a former tight end. He looks like a former linebacker. Big dude, like Iowa, big farm Dude. And he's amazing. And I have to now stop putting my brakes on. So now I'm nose to nose with him, and he yells at me, and he goes, dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face. And I look at him and I go, dude, that's a felony. And he laughs. And I jump up on the stage, I lean over, I go, can I tease you a little bit from the stage? He goes, yeah. And I go to the audience, packed auditorium, I go, this guy here just said to me, dude, I want you to punch Donald Trump in the face. And. And I think I'm about to make a great point. And people cheer. And then I go, oh, this is gonna be the shortest presidential campaign. And I go, no, everybody. No. I go, martin Luther King did not beat Bull Connor because he brought bigger dogs and bigger fire hoses. They won in that parochial contest to desegregate one small city. They won because they were able to expand the moral imagination of a nation. They were able to do creative tactics that call to the conscience of a country. And they won not because they made those people of hate love them. They won because they got the good people on the sidelines to get into the fight. Rental cars were not even available anymore. So many people, Joan Baez, Dick Gregory, they came there. And so that's the moment we're in, which is there is understandable wanting to punch somebody in the face, but because

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

you don't think you have license or agency and you feel helpless, but you're not. And that's what you learn over and over and over again in your book. Really, it is a most loving call to arms that I've ever read. It's like empowering people and empowered me. It's like, I sometimes think, oh, I'm just being kind to people in this podcast, or talking about good things. Well, who knows what that little ripple effect. Well, we can cut this part. I got lost talking about me.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No, no, no. But I want to. Can I add a point to you? Because this comes back to you. This is where.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, good. Go ahead, please.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah, no, but this is where, when you're stuck, it is often a challenge to your creativity and the people I show over and over again. It's Alice Paul, this suffragist, who is so frustrated with the national slow pace of the suffrage movement that she uses her creativity. She says, you know what? I'm going to do something that was never before done in American history. I'm gonna do a protest in front of the White House. And all we're gonna do. We're gonna call it Silent sentinels. That's what they were called, is hold up the quotes of Woodrow Wilson and how much hypocrisy he is showing by denying democracy to half of our population. And she's just unbelievable creative. It's just a small group of women captured national attention. They jailed them for obstructing public passageways. They weren't the people jeering them and throwing rocks in of front at them were the ones that actually blocked it. But in prison, she did something before Gandhi did. She went on a hunger strike in prison. And when they started shoving tubes down her throat to feed her, that torture got out by a reporter and shamed the country. She was let out and Wilson joined her. It's this young woman, Jennifer Keland Chaffins, 9 years old. The Americans with Disabilities act is lodged and stuck in Congress. So what does she do? Rolls her wheelchair to the inaccessible Capitol building, hurls her body out, and with her elbows on her chin, she crawls up the Capitol steps. Reporters capture that imagery. It's on papers throughout the news.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Wow, I didn't know that one.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And shames. That bill passed within days after that. It is so many moments, think about this, that we lived through this. I was a kid. The HIV crisis, where you literally have the bankrupt moral indifference of a president not even acknowledging it. And what do these AIDS activists do? The most creative protest, like the AIDS quilt, where you cannot look away. We're gonna tell these stories and let people know. It's always been creativity. When I walked in here, one of my favorite funny parts of the book is just how Conan o' Brien gave me one of the greatest gifts when I was stuck as mayor during a national recession, really working hard to turn my city around. But the indifference. I couldn't get national philanthropies and developers and investors to see that this was one of the best places on the Northeastern seaboard to invest. And one night, Conan o', Brien, unbeknownst to him, goes on the Tonight Show. I'm home with my two best friends, Ben and Jerry, trying to forget about a long day in the cool comfort of. Of raw sugar. And I'm watching this nitro, hoping it'll make me laugh. And he comes on and says, I hear Newark, New Jersey, has a new healthcare program. And I'm shocked that he knew we had done this creative thing to lower prescription drug costs. And I'm literally about to call my mom because she's in a different time zone to tell her Watch the Tonight Show. And instead he finishes his joke. But I think the best health care program for the city of Newark is a bus ticket out of town. And I was like, oh, Instead of calling my mom, I reached again for my chubby hubby. And then all of a sudden, I was angry. Like another punching down on Newark. It's really hard, right? And then I think, oh, my God. And I go to city hall and I film this very serious seeming video where I show my anger and outrage. This is what Conan o' Brien said. I brag about how great our city is, but at the end of it, I go and Conan o', Brien, by the power vested in me by the people of the city of Newark, I hereby ban you from Newark Airport. I said, you're on the no Fly List. Try jfk, buddy. And this is the dawn of the Internet. It's 2009. Twitter had literally just come into invention. And I post it, seeing if this new media platform, if I could beat the bully who has millions of watchers. And we were shocked it went so viral that satellite trucks are pulling up wanting to cover newer. Not a person being murdered or some corruption in city hall to ask, are you seriously putting them on the no Fly List? Civil libertarians in our country, these people who police our civil liberties are calling up, saying to me, you cannot do this. And I yell a four letter word back at them. Joke, joke. It became such a big story that Conan o', Brien, the generous man that he is, not knowing he's probably doing this, he responds on air, plays my video to his millions of viewers, and then he declares, by the power vested in me by my studio audience, Cory Booker, I'm banning you from Burbank Airport, which I wasn't exactly sure where Burbank Airport was. I'm an LAX guy, But it was on like Donkey Kong. And I basically then banned him from the entire state of New Jersey. We discussed banning him from listening to Bruce and Bon Jovi. But his article, you know, there's an amendment to The Constitution, the 8th Amendment, no cruel and unusual punishment. And that's almost.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Is that in your statement?

[Narrator/Host]

Yes.

[Senator Cory Booker]

I would not. Of course, of course I abide by the 8th amendment. But I'm embarrassed to tell you, that week in America, it became the number one trending story. And I'm getting invitations that no mayor of a New Jersey city would ever think they would get. I'm on like Larry King talking about me banning him from putting him on the TSA list. The tsa, no joke, puts a qualification on their website that mayors in America can't put people on the no fly list. They feel like it's that important. And then the best thing happens. There is this woman in America who is in charge of healing wars and conflicts, who films her own video. She is the Secretary of State of the United States of America, Hillary Clinton, who films this hilarious video. In essence, what she says is, Corey Conan, give peace a chance. And next thing you know, all my life since I was sitting on my grandfather's lap watching Johnny Carson, something I never imagined. I am standing behind the Tonight show curtain, and Conan o' Brien talks about this feud. And now we have. We've been ordered by the Secretary of State to bury the hatchet. And the curtain opens, and holy crap, I'm now on the stage. I've watched my entire life. We sit down, he makes some jokes, I make some jokes. He's like, why do you go after me? People make fun of Newark all the time. And I'm like, I'm a lion and you're the weakest gazelle. And we bar. But then he shocks the. The crap out of me by giving $50,000 to Newark charities and apologizing to our city. And from that moment on, everybody was returning my calls.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Wow.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Developers, philanthropists. And we got a lot more help from Newark as a result.

[Narrator/Host]

Okay.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

That's the last Conan o' Brien is a wonderful person story.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Well, I don't know if he's ever come back to New Jersey. You think he's ever visited? I don't know if he's. He may feel still uncomfortable coming to Newark.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

I love that story. I also love how many people took it literally as a feud.

[Narrator/Host]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah. Early days. Hey, I want to get to John McCain. That really comes under no. Well, vulnerability. We kind of did. Which comes under truth, too.

[Narrator/Host]

Being vulnerable.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

To say I made a mistake is part of truth, I would say as a virtue. Right.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. And, you know, there's a quote in there about being silent about your pain.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yes.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes. Means giving people permission to kill you and think, you know, and think you enjoy it. Yeah. And so a lot of us are carrying pains and traumas and hurts where we imagine we're alone and don't realize that caring for a parent with Alzheimer's, which cost you money, your health will deteriorate. I mean, caregivers in America are under the most strain. You're not alone. And the more we talk about it, the more we form what we talked about earlier. Community and communities can come together and advocate. So some of the incredible groups I see come to me and Parkinson's in my family, as I talk about with my dad, are people who've opened up about their hurts and found communities that then become activist communities that bring attention and focus on problems and actually help solve things. I have parents of children with rare diseases who find communities that don't have the scientific investment, who come together to city to not City hall, but to the Congress and the Senate and make a big difference. So I just tell some very powerful personal moments where I thought I was. My family was alone in a struggle and opening me up in many ways to realize I'm not alone. And there's millions of Americans who struggle in the same way. Together we have so much more power. As the African saying says, spiderwebs united can tie up a lion.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Let's move on to patriotism. Yeah, I almost said John Wayne.

[Senator Cory Booker]

John McCain, he was John Wayne, legendary in the Senate.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yes, he was. You know, I love the American flag, but I don't get to carry it anymore. It got usurped. I love God, I love Jesus, you know, but they're being usurped. But let's talk about patriotism and John McCain. Some of the things that you quote him and the conversations you had. Do you mind talking about that? And patriotism.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Bill Bradley, still one of my great. Me too

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Nick's. He.

[Senator Cory Booker]

He told me he gave me three great lessons to being a great senator. This one was get to know all your colleagues on the other side of the aisle. When you get there, try to take as many of them out to dinner or lunch. And it was an odyssey that still is one of my favorite parts of my career. And I couldn't get on McCain's schedule because he is the lion of the Senate. He is busy as hell. His staff finally gave me 10 minutes to sit with him. It turned out to well over an hour as he just opened up.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

You were new in the Senate?

[Narrator/Host]

I was new.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Brand spanking new senator. I still have that new senator smell. And I go in to see, and these are legends to me. I've watched these. John McCain I've watched since I was a college kid. I mean, he is a giant to me. And when I got into the Senate, there were still some of these men mostly, but women as well, that were just people I've seen on TV for years. And so I walk into his office and the first thing I notice is it looks like a museum. He's got these incredible pictures of moments of history, many of that he's in. And so this goes to that little truth, which is it's better to be interested than interesting. And I was so interested. And I'm a history buff. So he starts telling me stories, and the energy in the office shifts, and then suddenly he's going to filing cabinets and he's pulling out these documents from the Vietnam War and showing me pictures

[Narrator/Host]

of him in the lake, of his

[Senator Cory Booker]

lifeless body being pulled out of the lake. And he's changing before my eyes to a guy who you could see was still carrying wounds and scars on his spirit. And he would hold these pictures like he was holding these wounds, valuable relics almost, and then telling me stories about them. And I'm tearing up at some of the kind of power of what he's talking to me about and sharing with me stories that someone. Which he's told publicly. One I read during the 25 hour stand, a story about Mike Christensen, who, when he was in the POW camp and he showed me the offers and frustration on the Vietnamese that they couldn't get him to leave. He was offered to be released. His father was an admiral. And he said, no, it's the code. First captured, first release. And there was people that should go before him. Unbelievable. So he willingly submitted to more months, if not years of torture. But he tells the story of a guy named Mike Christensen who borrowed straps of cloth and weaved them together with a bamboo needle into an American flag that they kept hidden on the inside of, like a coat or something. And at night, though, they would open it and they would all say the Pledge of Allegiance. And one day in their cages. Yes, yes. And one day the Vietnamese found it and they beat him savagely, savagely and viciously and threw him back in. And they tried to tend to him, but he said that night when they went to bed, McCain says he lifts his head and he hears some noise and looks over and there is Mike Christensen, his eyes virtually swollen shut, struggling to sew back together another American flag. And he's described patriotism in a way that isn't about bombasticity and symbols, but something deeper. That real patriotism is a quiet and unyielding devotion to America and Americans. Patriotism is service and what's powerful. I quote this chaplain during the Union, during the Union army during the Civil War, who asked this question that was so penetrating to me. Are we a nation or have we a government? I think people are believing more and more that there's a government, but do we have a nation? Which means common cause, common ideals. It means that we're in this together. And if we're in this together, what happens to your children affects my children. And that's where patriotism should be, is this commitment to this idea that this country wasn't founded because we all look alike or pray alike. It was a break with the course of human events. We were original. We're the longest constitutional democracy on the planet Earth, where we said we should form a government around ideals and principles. And the very imperfect geniuses that founded it ended it with something that John McCain showed me in all his honesty that he was struggling to live up to, which is the last words of the Declaration of Independence, which are, to me, one of the greatest in humanity. Declarations of interdependence, where it says in those final words, we must. If we're going to make this country work, if we're going to succeed over the years, we must mutually pledge, pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. And what it seemed like John McCain was saying to me was that our politics is broken. That idea of I pledge to you, my sacred honor is being corrupted by a lot of forces. And he makes this final demand to me before I left his office. Don't be a politician here. Be a statesman. And says he has failed to that measure at times, but that's what this place needs. He made this funny joke. He goes, I think there's 80 politicians here, but there needs to be more statements. Be a statesman here, not a politician.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

I love that. There was also something he said. This is John McCain. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them.

[Narrator/Host]

They don't want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Our incapacity is their livelihood. I love that.

[Senator Cory Booker]

That is his last speech on the Senate floor.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Wow.

[Senator Cory Booker]

One of his last speeches after he voted to save healthcare. That thing is thumbs down.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Which he was not in favor of ACA to begin with.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

But then realized at that moment that

[Senator Cory Booker]

we didn't have a plan that we would. That millions would lose healthcare. And the Republicans weren't offering a plan of how to stop. How to provide something better.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And that's one of his. I think that's his final speech before he died. And he just calls out the reality of where we live, which is people who are making livelihood off of our hate. And here's something you may not know. There's a guy who goes into classified skiffs is what we call them. There are other countries that cannot beat us tank for tank or warship for warship. But they realize that the kryptonite of our democracy, the more they can sow hate between Americans, the better. And they go on our Internet platforms. This is publicly reported. There are entire bot farms, warehouses full of people who spend all of their time pretending that they're Americans, trying to find whatever fissures they are to gin up more and more hate and more and more division because it is incapacitating to the success of a democracy. If you can't still believe that we belong to the same nation and we can forge common cause, as soon as that ability is gone, there will be a national decline. And I fear right now we're at one of those breaking points as a country where it's not two parties fighting, it's tribalism, where I'm not even going to listen to what you say. I'm going to discount everything that comes out of your mouth because you're in a different tribe. And when you've done that, you have eviscerated our ability to stand together for something bigger than ourselves.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Okay, so that. That brings up the fear. I had this thought the other day about climate change. The thought is, I don't want to talk to you if you think climate change is a hoax and a denial. Let's not talk about that. We're never going to agree. But forget about that. Let's be genuine and talk about how we can help each other. How can I help you? Because seems to me your crops are dying and it's turning into a dust bowl, or there are floods all the time and you can't even get insurance anymore. FEMA's running out of money. How do we change this conversation to something we can both do?

[Senator Cory Booker]

So I love that you're wrestling with that because that's the only way we're going to overcome this inability to have dialogue on issues that matter. You and I will be dismissed as coastal elites and people who don't believe we care about them. People do not care how much you know until they know how much you care. And if we demonize them and think that they're bad people for not agreeing with us, then we are perpetuating the same problem. And it's hard. I tell the story of sort of on a plane. I sit down next to a mom and a daughter, 80 and 60, and they immediately. A lot of people have been paying attention to me, immediately want to know who I am. And they say, who are you? Are you a professional athlete? And I always laugh about that. As a big guy. Thank you. But as a big black guy, There's a part of me that's saying, like, why are you making that? As something. I want to be offended, but as a guy with a big ego who was a former athlete, I want to say, yeah, I could have been.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah, me too.

[Senator Cory Booker]

But I, I look at them and I go, no, ma', am, I'm a United States Senator. And then she asked the first question that most of us want to know. When you meet a congressperson out in the wild, that you don't know, which tribe are you in? All of us. So she goes, are you a Democrat or Republican? And I take a deep breath before a multi hour flight that this is. I got a 50% chance here that this is gonna be a long flight or, or a pleasant one. And I take a deep breath, I go, ma', am, I'm a Democrat. And her face source, she crosses her arms, looks at me meanly, and says, I should have brought my Trump hat. And then she wheels herself, turns her hips away from me towards her daughter. And so that's the tune, right? That's the song that's playing in America, trying to overcome what I think is the real song of our country. And I tell people all the time, one of the best secrets for mental health is that you do not have to attend every argument you're invited to. And I want to, that's great. I want to change the tune. I don't want to fight you. And so I look at her and I say, oh, my God, Donald Trump. With joy in my voice, I go, he signed two of the biggest pieces of legislation I've ever written. And I go, one was called the First Step act, where we liberated thousands of Americans from unjust incarceration. And I go, the other one's called Opportunity Zones, which helped to get billions of dollars invested in the lowest income rural. So she turns back to me and her look on her face is confusion because that didn't fit the tune. It was discordant. By the end of the flight, we're talking and laughing and treating each other like neighbors, like human beings, and affirming the fact that we have so much in common. So how do you break through? I went to a farm tour once. Depending on how this next election turns out, I can end up being the chairman of the Ag Committee in Washington. And I have real big problems about our food systems. And you and I, both, as people who focus on climate, know we're doing so many things that carbon is not getting sequestered. Talk about runoff of these chemicals into our rivers. It then Goes into our oceans. The dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, one of the biggest, bigger than some of our states.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Slash unbelievably high health care costs.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes, it's all tied together. It's just intricate.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

I hope you get there.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Well, I went out to meet with farmers and I still remember one that looked at me like I had horns on my head. And who is this plant based northeast liberal guy coming out to look at my cattle? And I think the beef industry is in crisis, not because of non beef eaters like me, but because of corporate concentration. And I have bills to deal with that. I know you and I have common ground, but this guy looks at me like I am the devil. He won't even fall for my great dad jokes when he's showing me his cattle. I'm like, sir, your cows are utterly amazing. Nothing. I got nothing. And as you can see, I'm very funny. My staff disagrees with me. I tried to milk every joke possible. Ooh, I'm sorry. But when we sat down at his table and he was very like, firm with me and I started asking him to tell me about the deed for his property from the Homestead act like four or five generations ago, he starts talking about his family's struggles, but somehow he's in danger of losing his farm. And I said, why? And he told me, we used to have five people to sell our cows, five companies competing for our cows. Now we have one and our input costs are going so high up because now Monsanto, now Bayer controls everything. And then I just said, sir, that's why I'm here. And I started telling him that I knew this pain by the end of it. He's inviting his family out, we're taking selfies. We see that we have much more common ground than that that divides us. And you and I both know that those are issues right now that are so vital to climate change. But I didn't use those buzzwords. I didn't ask him for to talk my language. It starts with what you said. What are your problems? What are your pain points? What are the values that drive your family that are probably the same as the values that drive my family. And where can we start working together? I'm sorry, Democrats. I'm sorry, you are not going to beat Republicans into submission where one day 90% of Americans think like you that when wave elections happen in this country, I always tell people this. If everybody in your coalition agrees with you on everything, your coalition is too small to be effective and it's too small to be what our democracy needs right now. You've got to find a way to start pulling in people that aren't 100 out of 100 don't use the same language as you, but for you to understand you do have shared values. We do want the same thing for our children and our families and try to build from that common ground to do bigger things than were possible with your Like Minded Only Think Like Me coalition.

[Narrator/Host]

You may have heard the best voice in show business, Morgan Freeman, talking about a serious and underdiagnosed heart condition that's often missed. ATTR Cardiac Amyloidosis, or attrcm. It's a condition that can greatly disrupt your life with symptoms like severe fatigue, shortness of breath and carpal tunnel. If left untreated, ATTRCM may become serious, leading to a shorter lifespan. A truby helps adults with ATTRCM live longer and have fewer hospitalizations due to heart issues so you can focus on more on living for what you love. Tell your doctor if you're pregnant, plan to become pregnant. There are breastfeeding and about the medications you take. The most common side effects were mild and included diarrhea and abdominal pain. If you have ATTR CM, talk to your cardiologist about ATTRUBY and visit ATTRUBY.com podcast that's a T T R U B Y.com podcast to learn more. More it's time to get busy living. Brought to you by bridgebio if you're trying to be more intentional about what you wear day to day, Quint can help you with that. They've got pieces that feel easy, comfortable and still put together. Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than what you'd find at similar brands. It's getting warmer here in Los Angeles, which means it's linen season. I love my linen pants. Not so much of a shorts guy, never had the legs, but I love my linen pants which keep me cool and looking cool as well. Thinking I'll get a shirt too, so my entire body is blanketed by quince. Refresh your everyday with luxury. You'll actually use. Head to Quince.com TedAndWoody for free shipping on your order and 365 day return. Now available in Canada too. That's Quince. Q-U-I-N-C-E.com TedAndWoody for Free Shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com Ted and Woody

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

this book I so recommend people who might be flirting with disillusionment or things that we really

[Senator Cory Booker]

can't afford Right now, I hope it's inspiration and instruction.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And instruction, but it's about changing things. It's not about trying to make you feel better in a kind of goody two shoes way. It's remarkable. And I devoured it, and I'm so grateful for that. And I love our conversation. Let's be silly. We saved the world. You've been married how long?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Four months.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, Alexis. Yes.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Oh, God bless her.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Her. Does she get the full picture yet of what it's like to be married?

[Senator Cory Booker]

Let me tell you, something that happened to us here in Los Angeles is, you know, we're going downstairs for break, and she's not used to this, and somebody surreptitiously takes a picture, and next thing you know, it's on tmz.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

You don't know anything about this other than nothing. And it's hard. I think she's. She signed up for the man she loved, but obviously I bring baggage. Yep, A baggage. Yes, that's exactly. And she has been a champion. And for me, just being selfish for a second, I get a deal I never imagined. I'm 56 years old and never been married and thought I was living the best life. Lots of focus on my work and my career and my selfish beliefs that deep relationships take a lot of time. I want to try to do as much as I can. And she's shaken me in ways that have been so valuable. Humbling, humbling. Deeply humbling. But I really feel like the wizard of Oz at original show, where you're watching, everything seems normal, and then suddenly everything's Technicolor. And you're seeing richness and depth, still challenges on the road to the wizard, still problems, but life is richer, fuller, and more beautiful than I ever could imagine.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

That's great, folks. Alive.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No, my mom is. She lives in Vegas. She's from la. My family's still out here. A lot of my family's still out here. I'm gonna go see her for Easter.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

How is she?

[Senator Cory Booker]

She's 85 years old and getting younger. And part of it, I think, is because she lives in this great community, Las Ventanas, where just she's involved. I write about this, the reversal in my life. Many reversals when you have parents. But I'm suddenly going to see her perform in a play.

[Narrator/Host]

Ah, yes, yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, my God.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And Alice in Wonderland. And the quote from that that I use in the book, she's playing the Red Queen. It's like telling Alice, well, you should believe in impossible things. Why? I've Believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast. And it's the last chapter about vision. And we used to believe in impossible things. So I get to have a mother who's getting younger. I get to. Her parents are still alive and thriving, and they live in Washington, D.C. so I just. I love the life we live in. I married somebody of a different faith. I'm a Christian, she's Jewish. So I'm learning a lot about bringing together marriages of different faith traditions and finding the richness in that. So it's been a great journey.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah. Good for you.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Any advice to. What would you give to. When you meet a young man?

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Well, you've already done this. I'm making a snap judgment, Alexis. But you've already done this in picking somebody who's willing to take a look at their stuff, which allows you to take a look at your stuff.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And if there's not that trust, then it gets very. Which is what we've been talking about this book. We need to take a look at our stuff. But it helps if your partner has to know that. Cause then you can go as deep as you need to and be as honest and truthful with all the little horribly embarrassing, sometimes dark or whatever little secrets.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. You also married somebody. We're both huge fans of your wife.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

A huge fan.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah. You married somebody better than you. Which I've tried to do as well. Yeah, that's. It makes it easier.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

This sounds like guys say this about their.

[Senator Cory Booker]

No, no, way better. I've been a fan of your wife for many, many years, and she seems tremendous.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

She didn't send her love because it sounded like it wasn't her, you know, but she sent it. Sent so much respect. And just wanted to say maybe we

[Senator Cory Booker]

should do one where we have these two empty seats and we let them speak for themselves.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Let the truth be. Yes. That would be amazing.

[Senator Cory Booker]

And by the way, that is something I've gained a lot by asking men friends of mine who've been married in divorce, like, what lessons do you have to impart to me? And I've gotten a lot of honesty from guy friends and a lot of really good insights.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Thank you. I have this stupid grin on my face. I'm so happy.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah, I'm so happy, too. I really do. You've been in my life before I knew you as a human being. You've been in my life as an artist. And I have really, really been grateful. The name of this.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Oh, yeah. He wanted to come.

[Narrator/Host]

Woody Harrelson sometimes.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Well, Woody's a fellow plant based guy. And I love that. But I like that the title of this and what you guys created on Cheers honestly is about community and connection and imperfect people.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

You're talking about Woody now when you say imperfect people, but go on.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yes, just Woody, not you. No, I'm talking about the characters you played and their imperfections were. But yet they, they create in the collective a community that had America's wrapped attention on Thursday nights for. For years and years and years.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

So I hope you and Woody get to meet someday because he is magnificent

[Senator Cory Booker]

as we met each other. So I really, I feel blessed by that.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Yeah, that's good.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Thank you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for whatever it is. The path is for you from here on out and I certainly hope it's. Well, anyway, thank you. Yeah.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Love to you and your family.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

That was such an honor. Thank you, Senator Booker.

[Narrator/Host]

His book called Stand is available at booksellers near you and I highly recommend

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

you check it out.

[Narrator/Host]

That's it for this week. Special thanks to Team Coco. If you enjoyed this episode, send it to a loved one rate and review on Apple podcasts. If you have a mind once again, you can watch our full length video [e-mail] teamcoco see you next time. Where everybody knows your name.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

You've been listening to where everybody knows your name with Ted Dansman and Woody Harrelson Sometimes. The show is produced by me, Nick Leow. Our executive producers are Adam Sachs, Jeff Ross and myself. Sarah Fedorovich is our supervising producer. Engineering and mixing by Joanna Samuel with support from Eduardo Perez. Research by Alyssa Grohl. Talent booking by Paula Davis and Gina Bautista. Our theme music is by Woody Harrelson, Anthony Yen, Mary Steenbergen and John Osborne.

[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

And Doug.

[Senator Cory Booker]

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[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

What is this, your first date?

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Oh, no.

[Senator Cory Booker]

We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together. We're married.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

Me to a human, him to a bird.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Yeah, the bird looks out of your league. Anyways, get a [e-mail] or with your local agent.

[Announcer/Commercial Voice]

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[Interviewer/Ted Danson]

Liberty.

[Senator Cory Booker]

Liberty.

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