Original subtitles

Hello,

I'm Alec Baldwin. First up tonight, a conversation with Emmy -nominated

Kerry Washington.

The former Scandal star is making her return to Broadway in a gritty new drama

called American Son.

She also continues as an outspoken advocate for arts education.

a real -life role she tackled as an advisor during the Obama administration.

Also tonight, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

is here. The passionate environmentalist is out with a memoir about his

captivating American life, a life filled with triumph and, of course,

unspeakable tragedy.

We're glad you've joined us. Kerry Washington and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

up right now.

You went to college at? GW.

For drama? Which you did as well. I went to GW for political science. Ah.

But you went to theater?

Yes, I did. No. I was on a theater scholarship there. And I didn't have to

in theater. So it was like the first time in my life actually that I thought,

oh, I could, like somebody's willing to give me money to do this thing. Like I

might be able to make a living. How did you end up choosing GW to go to school?

Because they gave me the most money.

And I mean, I also, I loved, I went to a very, very tiny school.

school on the Upper East Side, Spence, like very elite, very prestigious. And I

liked the idea of going somewhere where diversity was really in your face. I

mean, it's a very international school. Did you come from an elite, prestigious

school family?

No. No, I grew up in the Bronx.

So, I mean, my mother's a professor of education, retired.

So she, it was important to her that I get the best education possible.

And so I wound up at Spence. Did you enjoy Spence? I did. I mean, it was

I've been thinking about it a lot lately because in the play, An American Son, I

play a mom who has an 18 -year -old son who's biracial. My husband's white.

We're recently separated.

And we can't find our 18 -year -old son who's just had some kind of incident

with the police. And so the whole play is an hour and a half real time in the

lobby of this police precinct trying to find our son.

And so my son in the play is one of those kids who's like one of three black

kids in his...

450 -person school. And he grew up in Coral Gables and has had the best, but

feels like the only.

And he's kind of code -shifting and trying to figure out how to be... Was

you? That was me, in a lot of ways. Really? Yeah, like feeling like you

to two worlds.

And when you went to Spets, you were there for four years?

No, I was there for...

7th, 8th, for six years because I started in junior high school. How would

describe it when you started out and how was it when you finished?

Well, when I was growing up, we were rich in my neighborhood in the Bronx

because we had two cars and we had a microwave and a dishwasher in our

before anybody else did.

And then I got to Spence and I was like, you have a helipad in your house in the

Hamptons? On your yacht?

Yeah, it was like a...

David Geffen's your uncle?

Exactly.

And so it was a totally different world for me.

And it was a culture shock. It was a big culture shock. But I think it also

opened up my world. It taught me that there was...

that there were universes within my world that I hadn't experienced and that

wanted to make sure that my life experiences were not designated by the

I was born into, that I should be able to go anywhere and do anything. It's a

good education. It's a great education.

It's a great, I had a great education. I went to the drama program to take, I

took one class, drama for non -drama major.

At GW? Yeah, it was a total loony bin.

People have no idea. It's nothing like watching actors who have no idea what

they're doing perform and do their exercise.

I'm a piece of bacon sizzling in a pan, whatever their tense memory is. Right,

right, right. And then we did these plays. And I remember everybody in the

was terrible. And that's how I knew I had hope. I just was better than them.

that's great. I just was the best in a class of miserably untalented people.

That's great. And that's what propelled me onward into my career. That is great.

How was the program when you went?

Well, it was...

I think the good thing that I got out of it is because I was there on a theater

scholarship, it was kind of like being on the basketball team. Like I rarely

benched. They wanted to use me all the time. I was required by scholarship to

audition for every single production, whether I wanted to do it or not.

And so I wound up to like my junior or senior year, the head of the department

wrote. an original musical about frogs that were going extinct in Costa Rica.

And I was the lead of that production. And I don't know that I necessarily

have auditioned to play a frog in a musical.

It's okay.

You can be honest. No way in hell you would have chosen this. I mean, I was a

bit of an environmentalist, maybe.

But I mean, I learned so much because I had to. I had to say yes to everything.

And it also taught me like, you know, afterward when you're out there

auditioning, they just say yes.

Just say yes. You don't know.

Just get out there. But obviously, you're somebody who's very famous for a

variety of reasons, the principle of which is the great leading lady on a TV

series you did for the better part of seven years. Yeah. When you did Scandal.

What did you think the show was when you sort of gave a sense of what it was?

And what did it turn out to be?

Oh, it's such a good question.

I thought it was... Thank you.

I thought it was...

An opportunity to do something I didn't know was possible because, you know,

there has been a lot of talk about there hadn't been a black woman as the lead

of a network drama in almost 40 years. And I was 36 or 37.

So in my lifetime, I had never seen a black woman as the lead on a network

drama. So when I read it, I was aware that I was reading something I'd never

seen before and I wasn't sure I knew was possible.

So I knew that was true and I knew I loved the character and I loved the idea

being her.

And I didn't never in my wildest dreams that I think we would go for years.

I don't, I mean.

I remember, no, I remember Sean to think to me in the meeting, like, you know,

if this goes well, we could be like married for a long time. And I was like,

that's not happening.

I always make jokes and I say that all the networks have their own distinctive

kind of DNA.

And my specific take on ABC's DNA, I said an ABC show is where they say it's,

they pick a world, an environment, like law or medicine.

And in your case, the White House. And they'll sit there and they'll say this

drama. It's a new, it's a cutting edge new drama set in the world of medicine.

Yeah. And within three episodes, someone's in a closet and they're all

sex.

ABC shows.

It's true.

Everyone having sex on the show.

It's true. Did you see that coming? I did not see it coming because I wasn't

savvy about any of that stuff. I could have told you. I should have called you.

You should have emailed me. Before Scandal, I was the character actor

Scandal. Nobody even knew that the girl from Save the Last Dance was the same

girl from Last King of Scotland.

Chenille. Yes, in Ray.

I'm very impressed.

Wow. Drop the mic. It's just a gift I have.

And good producers.

Yeah, exactly.

Fanatic cue cards.

So I didn't, I was able to just kind of live in my little indie film world and

I didn't know any of what network did or what CCA was. What do you think she was

hiring you for? Why did she hire you?

That's such another good question.

This is good that you're doing this.

I don't know. I know she was resistant at first. I think she thought I was too

young for the role because the role was written in her 40s and I was in my 30s

at the time. Now I'm in my 40s.

I think maybe it was that I had, I mean, when I started Scandal, I was actually

working for the real White House at the time.

And one of my concerns in my meeting with her, I was on the President's

Committee for the Arts and Humanities for the Obama White House for all eight

years.

And I said to her when I met her, if this president is black on your show, I

can't do it because I'm not going to be part of a show that like.

is the devolving of the black presidency like this black president who's

sleeping around with this other woman like i won't do it um and she said no

he's white and he's republican and i was like i'm in yes yes i'm in we can make

him look bad physically removing me from my home at five in the morning because

they do what i say i don't do what you say why are you helping artie hornbach

and i don't discuss my clients with you you don't discuss anything with me

anymore are you angry that i haven't been taking your phone calls or because

helping artie hornbach i am angry because you're committing treason I am

that you're behaving like a traitor to your country. To my country or to you?

You may not be thinking about politics, but politics is thinking about you.

Today, there are people out there trying to take away rights that our mothers,

our grandmothers, and our great grandmothers fought for. Rights that we

for. Our right to vote.

Our right to choose.

Our right to affordable, quality education, equal pay, access to health

care. And we, the people, cannot let that happen.

When you did this president, what was the president's committee on the arts

humanity? What was that like? What kind of work? So it was an appointed

position. It was a committee that was run by the White House. The first lady

our chair.

And we did a couple of really important kind of supportive initiatives, events

at the White House. But the thing we did that I'm most proud of was in the first

term, we did a sweeping research report on the state of arts education in the

country, the role that arts education plays in. integrative arts education,

art transforms the way that a child learns, not, you know, not conservatory

training, like the making of artists, but how we're making thinking students

using the art.

Everyday students. Yes.

So we did a report on that. And then in the second term, we started a program

called Turnaround Arts, where we actually went into schools. We started

pilot program of five schools, a bunch of artists on the committee.

And we chose really challenged schools all over the country that were in need

turnaround. We did it with the Department of Education.

And we went in and used integrative arts to help transform those schools. And it

went so well that in the second year, it grew to 15 schools and 20. And now we

have...

I mean, we're all over the country now. I'm still working with a school in Los

Angeles, but I've worked with schools in D .C. And we've moved the program out

of the White House a year ago into the Kennedy Center so that it would survive.

Really? Yeah.

You moved it out of the White House? Yeah. An organization that supports arts

education? Huh.

Funny how that works.

But, you know, politics aside, I mean, the specifics of that, obviously you

played Anita Hill in a film.

Listen to me. My grandfather fled Arkansas because he was threatened with

lynching. Real lynching. Not this metaphoric kind that Thomas is talking

He doesn't care about that.

He only acknowledged race because it was about him.

And I wonder if what you're seeing now has had a lot of echoes for you and made

you very thoughtful about that role you played in that project you work on.

Yeah. I mean, I.

It's been interesting to see what's changed and what hasn't, you know, that

some of the same players are actually still in the Senate and saying very

similar things.

But also that I think we as a country, our conversation is different and

mobilization is different and people have a different level of awareness

assault and harassment.

And so it's been hard for you as a woman in this business.

That's such a tricky question to me because I feel like being a working

like making it into the NBA. Like it's so hard. You're so like it's such a

miraculous occurrence to even just be sitting here with you and have a job,

know.

So I know I'm blessed. I know I'm really lucky, like you said.

And I think any woman in this business will tell you that the challenges are

different. Any person of color will tell you the challenges are different.

I mean, if there are fewer roles for people of color, fewer roles for women,

imagine how many roles there are for women of color. Yeah.

And do you feel that's changing?

I'm less aware of it because I'm creating work for myself. I mean, most

work I'm doing now, I'm a producer on. I produce the confirmation, the Anita

Hill film.

I'm one of the producers on the play. I mean,

my production company is doing...

I mean, we have like six films set up at different studios and tons of shows. We

have a web series on Facebook.

So I'm creating work for myself and other people. So I think I'm, again, I'm

sort of in that positive mindset of not focusing on what's hard and focusing on

creating opportunity for myself and other people.

The TV show, when you did Scandal, and when it ended for you, were you

conflicted about that? Was it happy as that?

I did feel like it was time.

I was grateful that Shonda knew that it was time and wasn't going to take us

past the point and that we could end gracefully in the right way.

But I loved those people, like that cast and that crew.

And we still keep in touch, but you can't just take it for granted that

see them on Monday morning in the hair and makeup trailer.

So I miss that. I miss the family.

And I have moments at American Sun, like...

Where I'll be in a scene, you know, and it's rare that you get a job where

you're saying words that give you goosebumps and like working with actors

you're like, oh, God, in this moment, he is making me a better actor.

I had that so much at Scandal that when I have it on another job, I really like

I appreciate it. I hold on to it. I'm so grateful because I know how rare it is.

You have kids. I do. How many? Three. You have three kids. I do. My husband

with one.

Right. And then I have. And you and he have two. Yes.

yeah and when you were doing the show now you had those kids how many of them

the two you had during scandal both both kids were in the show and they were

kind to you in terms of i was like the kids they were fine in there they were

great they were great um yes you know i really i learned a lot from shonda about

what it's like to work in a matriarchy and kind of how to how

awesome it can be as a woman to work in an environment where it's not seen as a

detriment that your womanhood and your motherhood is seen as part of they were

accommodating of your pregnancy yeah that wasn't the problem at all no not at

all and and during the period that you do the show because it's an hour show

were they kind about the schedule and you being able to Yeah, when I got...

Fey had a dressing room next to her dressing room, which was a nursery for

kids. Yeah, I did, I did.

And I actually, Viola Davis and Shonda and I built a playroom on the Sunset

Gower lot for our kids. They did that on our show too, yeah.

What was great was when I got pregnant, the show was at the point where it

needed to start becoming an ensemble show, more of an ensemble show anyway.

It was like this one character...

was the center of the show, but there were all these phenomenal other actors

around me who deserved to have their stories told as well.

And so my pregnancy kind of tipped us into making sure that we were elevating

other actors and actresses on the show to have their own dramatic storylines,

have their own sex and closets and their own murders and all of that. So it was

great. It was great. It was good for me. It was good for the show. It was good

for the actors. You got to see how talented our cast really was.

And I remember honestly being nervous about that. I remember being like, you

know, it was my show and I was the star. And I remember I was pregnant and I was

in San Francisco as my husband was playing in San Francisco at the time.

And I was on a couch. I had just eaten like, you know, a ton of some whatever

takeout I was craving in that pregnancy.

And watching the episode where another actress on the show, brilliant,

incredible, award winning actress, Bellamy Young. And it was like her

It was like the first time it was her episode. And I remember the fear that

started to bubble up in me of like, is this going to be her show now? Like I'm

pregnant and they're going to forget about me and it's going to be her.

Everything's going to be about her. And she's so amazing.

Now they know she's good and she's not going to be difficult and she's not

to have to breastfeed.

really scared.

Yes. And then it's like the years of therapy, there was like another voice

rose up thanks to the years of therapy. That was like, there's room enough for

both of you.

Like there's room enough for both of you and she deserves this. And you will be

a better actress if you make room for this.

and the show will be better, and your life will be better, and, like, just

in how amazing she is. I don't care if this tiny dust -up with Boshron causes

World War III. The only thing I care about right now is making it crystal

that you follow my orders. You have my back. You don't sneak around behind it

and freelance after I give an order.

It's something that you love more than me and them boys.

More than all the women you ever slept with on the road more than all the dope

you ever took your music If you don't stop using that needle

they're gonna take away your music and put you in jail

Is that poison worth losing everything

You're obviously a beautiful leading lady.

Oh, you're very kind.

Everybody thinks you're absolutely stunningly gorgeous and so forth. You

that that, is there a time in your career that that hurt you as much as it

helped you?

Oh, I was... People that you thought didn't want to hire you maybe because

thought you were too perfect?

I was a late bloomer, actually.

You're saying you were ugly at GW?

I'm not saying I was ugly, but early in my career in auditioning, I was really

one of these character actor kind of actors where I remember my manager

me one day and saying, you cannot wear overalls to an audition.

And I was like, what do you mean? No, I didn't know that I had a beauty card to

play. When did that change?

I had an acting teacher who said who was it was like an audition skills class.

And she said, you have got to learn to put makeup on.

And I was like, oh, my God, really?

And I had girlfriends who like helped me to figure out how to do that.

And then there was a part that I really, really wanted in a movie.

And it came down to me and one other girl.

And it was actually a part that like was supposedly mine.

Like people were called, you know how that happens. Like people were calling

agent and saying, oh, congratulations. We hear that's hers. It's in the bag.

And then the director met this other girl and she got the part and it was her

part. Like looking back, everything happens for a reason. That was

her part.

But at the time I felt like she got the part because she was a model.

I felt like she, like she was like going to parties and wearing the dresses and

like in the fashion world. And it is a visual medium. And she got that part

because she's a model. And like what, and I, it was one of those moments where

thought, okay, if I'm an entrepreneur, if I am my own business, like my

marketing department is not operating at a hundred percent. Like I am not

showing up for my marketing department. I'm like really good in the creative

development section and sales, but like. To what you, your career. Yes, in my

career. Now people are saying that about you. No, like.

about you. Kerry Washington only got that job because she's beautiful.

She's not that good. She's just beautiful. By the way, that actress is

talented.

So I was like, I'm going to get an education.

And I called. I'm friends with Tracee Ellis Ross, who obviously, thanks to her

mother and her life, knows everything about fashion. I said, you've got to

me. You have to teach me things. And she set me up with her friend Samira

Nasser, who's now a fancy fashion director at Vanity Fair. But she became

first stylist. And Samira helped me learn how to pronounce Hermes and

me to Giorgio Armani.

And I began to craft this kind of red carpet carry because I wanted to make

that my...

Really, that my own fears about being seen weren't getting in the way of my

opportunities as an artist. Part of the job. Yeah.

Part of the job. No turning back now. Yeah, that's right. No more overalls for

you. No more overalls. No makeup and overalls for you. No, now I'm selling

makeup for Neutrogena. There you go. Yeah.

You have children. Mm -hmm.

And you're political. Mm -hmm. You have your passions about that.

How do you maintain hope?

I don't want to get corny, keep hope alive and all that kind of cliche, but

is hope. How do you maintain, as I have struggled to do from time to time,

there's times I've sat there and said to myself, how the hell are we going to

get out of this?

What are we going to do?

How old is your oldest child?

Twelve. She'll be 13.

How do you keep hope in its proper place for your children?

Yeah.

Lately, I think this is because of the play, actually.

Because the play really centers around parenting a young black man

in this country right now.

The 12 -year -old is a boy or a girl?

She's a girl. But the unique challenges of raising a black teenage son in a

world where that is a dangerous safety. But it's still shooting black teenage

sons.

How does that make you feel?

It's hard to put it into words.

Scared. Yeah.

Concerned. Yeah. Yeah.

It's one of the reasons why I wanted to do the play, because I feel like I get

to say things as Kendra that I struggle to say as Carrie.

But the play makes me also think a lot about how, like, we were all kids. Like,

at some point, all these guys, you know, all this vitriol and hate and, like,

all these guys, at some point, like, somebody was holding this little baby.

And thinking like, I love you more than anything else in the world. And then at

some point, that baby feels unloved and afraid and like they don't matter and

like there's not enough for them. And that turns into fear and hate.

And so I try to think about like ways to, it

sounds so cliche, but like how I can create opportunities for reflection

and... love and human connection because that's the thing like seeing each other

as through what we do yes i have an idea for you tell me you may be the star

especially somebody as beautiful and famous as you can help me sell tickets

let's not kid ourselves i what do you want to do i want to do a gender

production of cuckoo's nest and you play randall mcmurphy you play the nicholson

role

Crazy. You are a woman. You're a female. That's crazy.

All the inmates are women. And Nurse Ratched is a man.

That's such a good idea.

Medication time.

Medication time. We should talk about that.

A gender reversal. That would be so cool.

You playing McMurphy. I've always wanted to see women dig into those kind of

really, really super crazy, nutty roles. Messy.

Messy. Yeah.

I love that idea.

The thing I love most about you as an actress when I see you on the TV show

the other projects you do is that you have, it's going to sound like a weird

word, but I really mean, you have a lot of integrity.

Whether it comes from your upbringing and your parents and your journey

Spence and all these things, the places you...

Put yourself in the things you've done.

Every time you play a part, there's an integrity to you that comes through in

the roles that you play. And you can't buy that. That's a really, really great

gift to have. That means so much to me. Not at all. My pleasure. Thank you.

Thanks for doing this with me. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

That was so fun.

You know, I loved your book.

I want to hold up this book so people can see this book.

American Values, Lessons I Learned from My Family.

And the first thing that occurred to me when I started in on this was you see

there's a lot of things you can connect, a lot of pieces you can connect.

You know, one thing you talk about is apologizing to your mom.

You swim out there with your mom, or maybe it was in another interview we saw

where you say all these things. You're sorry to your mom about this and this

this. And yet, when you look back on it now with this perspective of time, you

and your mother have something very profound in common, which is at one

your life, you're both single parents.

Your mom is left with 11 children.

after the assassination of your father and after the death of your wife, your

second wife, you're left with all your children.

Do you realize, do you look and see that that's something profound you had in

common with her?

Yeah, I mean, I had this very tumultuous relationship with my mother from when

I was, from as little as I can remember.

It was like a civil war that I had with her.

And it was aggravated.

After my father's death, when I got into drugs, it was aggravated and

inflamed clearly by that.

So when I got sober, when I was 29 years old, I went through the steps.

And one of those is making amends to people that you've injured.

And so I took her out.

She goes swimming every day in Nantucket Sound, and we went out about a half

mile offshore, and I went through, you know, my men's store. And she didn't say

anything. She didn't say, well, I'm sorry, too, because that's just not her

nature. But after that, my relationship with her really metamorphosized into

something really beautiful. And the book, in many ways, is an homage to her.

my mother had 11 kids, and we showed up at meals on time.

She conducted one conversation at the meal. There was no sidebar discussions.

That was forbidden.

Everybody talked.

On Sunday nights, we recited poetry or we gave a presentation on some biography

or a historical event.

It was almost always well -known or famous people who came, political

cultural leaders, or athletes at our dinners, at our meals.

She included them and made them the centerpiece of the conversation, but all

us were participants, and we showed up with our nails brushed and with our hair

combed and on time.

And we said rosary every night, the morning offering in the morning. On most

days, we went to daily mass.

Before breakfast, she would wake us very early and take us horseback riding

through the CIA compound and out around the hills of McLean.

And I, you know, I had a time to reflect on that

record, you know, after I got sober and had kids myself.

And just, you know, how could she do that? How could she? Did you raise your

kids the same way?

Well, I try, but, you know, they don't pay anything. They regard me as kind of

comical artifact, you know, and ask him to do this kind of stuff.

Do you ever find yourself, you're there with your kids and you're, I don't want

to say disciplining, you're managing, when they were younger, your kids are

grown now, but when they were little kids, did you find yourself saying

and the words that were coming out of your mouth were your mother's words to

kids? I mean, I...

I think my parenting philosophy was... These things, by the way, are

interesting, obviously, because you're such a famous family, and that family

aspect is always so intriguing to me. Yeah.

I think my parenting philosophy was different than my mother's, which we all

kind of a reaction or a reflection of our parents.

But I don't know. I mean, the more...

The older I get, the less I know about what I'm doing. So, you know, all of us

are kind of making it up as we go along.

And the other thing is they all need different things, you know. And my

really understood that, and he kind of tailored his discipline and his

relationship with each of us.

You know, that he was treating us as an individual rather than hard and fast

orthodoxies and theology.

Parenting isn't about theology. It's about really trying to understand your

kids, understanding their worldview, and trying to direct them in the best

direction, knowing that they're going to respond to different stimuli.

Tuesday night was a particularly joyous night. Robert Francis Kennedy was 42

years old and had just won the victory of his political life in the California

presidential primary.

As he made his way out of the crowd into the hotel kitchen, the senator was hit

by two bullets.

Police later identified the alleged assailant as 24 -year -old Sirhan

native Jordanian who came to this country 11 years ago.

You recently visited with Sirhan Sirhan.

Like the book itself, why now, 50 years later, after the assassination of your

father? You went to see him when?

I went to see him in December of last year.

And how did that come about? How was that brokered? Who did you have to talk

You know, I always... Sir hadn't killed my father.

After all, he was there.

He had a gun. He was shooting.

He bled guilty.

But about three years ago, Paul Schrade began.

Paul Schrade, who was there, who was also shot. Paul Schrade was one of my

father's best friends. He was shot that night, too. He was shot in the head. He

survived. And he was walking with my father about three feet, four feet

my father when Sirhan started shooting.

Sirhan was pointing his gun at my father for his first two

shots, and it seems like one of those hit Paul, and then the other

one struck a wall that became embedded in that door jamb behind my father.

Then Sirhan was grabbed, and by Carl Weir, who was that

major who was holding my father's arm.

Sir Han was grabbed and pointed away, and then there was a dog pile that

Greer, and all those other guys ended up on.

The autopsy report, which changed my perspective, was Noguchi's autopsy

That autopsy is known in the scientific literature as the perfect autopsy. And

what he concluded...

was that all the shots that hit my father were fired from behind and that

were, quote, contact shots fired at point -blank range by a gun that was

touching my father at the time the trigger was pulled.

And there was massive powder tattooing on him and metals tattooing on his body,

his skin, and his clothing.

Oh, the gun had to be touching him, and Sarian never got there.

And then not only that, but there were 13 bullets accounted for, and Sirhan's

gun only fired eight shots.

There were bullets in the ceiling, recovered from the ceiling. There were

bullets in the door jams, and there were bullets in people. And when the Los

Angeles City Council commissioned a group of leading forensics, of

experts from around the country,

To compare the recoverable bullets from my father to those from the other

victims, they found that they didn't match, that they came from different

So there's no way Sirhan Sirhan shot my father. He

was shooting, but he didn't shoot my father.

Would you like to see him get paroled?

Yeah, I would. He deserves to get paroled. Yeah, he should be paroled, and

case should be reinvestigated.

And by the way, I think even an investigation, first of all, there's a

tremendous, as I found, there's a tremendous amount of witnesses that are

alive, surprisingly, because it's 50 years later, but it was a young group.

You don't have to say who, but do you know who killed your father?

I have a pretty good idea. Okay.

And you'd like that to come out of an investigation?

Yeah.

Wow.

We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat

from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement

with force.

For all this, there are no final answers for those of us.

We're American citizens.

Yet we know what we must do, and that is to achieve true justice among

all of our fellow citizens.

So the bulk of this work you've been doing is involving water and water

protection.

How's it going?

Well, there's more pounds of plastic in the ocean today than there are pounds of

fish. And virtually everything you eat,

all the fish that we eat, have embedded microplastics.

The great hope for all the environmental issues is technology.

You know, we have right now...

It costs about a billion dollars a gigawatt to build a solar plant, and it

$5 billion a gigawatt to build a coal plant.

And it's cheaper now to drive an electric car over the life of the car

it is to buy and drive an internal combustion engine over the life of the

So the inflection points have been passed, and you're going to see markets

drive.

These efficient technologies and non -carbon technologies, decarbonization,

the carbon industry is that the incumbents are so powerful that they're

maintain their position through political manipulation, through

democracy, and through huge, huge subsidies that they get. If you show me

polluter, I'll show you a subsidy. I'll show you a fat cat using political

clout.

to escape the discipline of the free market and force the public to pay his

production costs. That's what all pollution is. It's always a subsidy.

It's always a subversion of free market capitalism.

People often say, how would the world be different if Robert Kennedy had lived?

It's a common sentiment.

And the question becomes, how would your life be different if Robert Kennedy had

lived? I think that's almost a more difficult question because I honestly

know. I don't know.

If I would have had, for example, and, you know, this is something that you

been open about struggling with too, whether I would have had that struggle

drugs and alcohol that I, you know, ended up having if my father had been

or whether I would have come into recovery faster or what, I have no idea,

really no clue. I think, you know, my...

attitude about it was always, I guess, which is rooted in faith, was that

life is a kind of a test and that I was privileged to know my father.

You know, I was privileged to have him. My mother said to me after he died, she

said, you know, everybody takes their lick. That's what she said.

And there's kids in Harlem and Watts and Oakland.

lose their fathers every day, and whose father's in jail, who was killed, who

wasn't there, or brothers, and that they don't have the big family structures

and support systems that we have. And I really felt like that was true, that we

had this.

extraordinary support system in our family that gave kind of a soft landing

those things, that we had the rituals of the Catholic faith and death, you know,

and we, you know, we did the wakes, we did the funeral.

We experienced the sadness and the joy through that process, the joy of having

known that person. And, you know, we all kind of picked ourselves up and kept

going and said, you know, we have a job to do.

Once again, I'm reminded of how I was born into the wrong family when I was at

your house in the Cape.

And we have the event. I think you know the story. And we have the event for

your mother and your sister, the center.

And the next day they have breakfast and your mother turns to me and says, would

you like to go to attend mass with us?

And this is like my dream come true. She said, would you like to attend mass

with us? I said, oh, yes.

It would be my great privilege. That's fantastic.

What time should I be here? What time do you guys go get in a car together? What

time does the car leave? And your mother looked at me like I was like an idiot

child. She went, the priest comes to the house, Alec.

The priest comes to the house. There were priests living at the house all the

time. They didn't have to go anywhere. Oh, my God. As you know, basically

there's priests staying there all summer. There's priests on tap there.

Now, if your dad were alive today.

What would he tell you? You got right?

What do you think he'd be proud of you for doing?

There was a time when he was alive that I did very, very poorly in school.

And I think, you know, and I talk about this, I think if he had criticized me at

that point, it would have crushed me, you know. But instead, he encouraged me

the other things and the things that I was doing well at that time in my life.

And he never said anything negative to me. But, you know, my dad, you know, I

think tried to tell me when I was young is that whether you're going to win or

lose, you got to put your shoulder against the stone and keep pushing.

And it doesn't matter if you make it to the top of the hill. You just got to

keep, you know, rolling the stone forward.

Robert Kennedy Jr.'s memoir is called American Values, Lessons I Learned from

Family. Now we leave you, as we do each week, with a story from earlier in the

show as animated by acclaimed illustrator Stephen Brodner.

Thanks for joining us. We'll see you next time.

In the book, obviously, you talk about some of the lighter moments of growing

in your family. One of them is the story about Hoover.

It was in an adjoining building, the FBI.

You could enter through a tunnel.

which we would go through oftentimes.

We would go watch the G -men practicing shooting at a shooting range down there,

and then we would come back up and walk past his office. My brothers and I saw

that he wasn't in one day, and we went into his office. Two of my brothers,

David and Joe, who found a safe behind his chair, so they were standing on his

chair.

Having removed the painting.

And they were trying to... And I was in the front ante room at an aquarium there

that apparently he liked the fish a lot. And I had my little blazer on and had

both hands submerged in it when he came in. And he was angry.