Gretchen Carlson is a journalist, author, and advocate whose historic 2016 sexual harassment complaint against the chairman of Fox News helped pave the way for the #metoo movement. Gretchen joins Sophia on "Work In Progress" to discuss her new initiative "Lift Our Voices" which is pushing for the end of non disclosure agreements, confidentiality provisions and clauses that have prevented employees from publicly discussing and disclosing toxic workplace conditions, including sexual harassment and assault. She explains why she is unable to tell her own story, how our society protects sexual predators, and why these men should not be allowed to have any comeback. Executive Producers: Sophia Bush & Sim Sarna Supervising Producer: Allison Bresnick Associate Producer: Caitlin Lee Editors: Josh Windisch and Matt Sasaki Music written by Jack Garratt and produced by Mark Foster Artwork by Kimi Selfridge. This show is brought to you by Brilliant Anatomy.
Hi, everyone, Sophia Bush here. Welcome to Work in Progress, where I talk to people who inspire me about how they got to where they are and where they think they're still going. Today's guest is fierce. She is a woman who I would call something that I've been called, which I find very flattering. Tiny but mighty. Today's guest is none other than Gretchen Carlson. She joins me to talk about her new organization, Lift Our Voices, which is advocating for the end of non disclosure agreements, confidentiality provisions, and clauses that have prevented employees from publicly discussing and disclosing their experiences in toxic workplaces, including inappropriate conditions like sexual harassment and assault. And that is exactly what happened to Gretchen. And after she was fired from Fox News, she filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Fox News chairman Roger Ales and helped to bring him down. And she was only allowed to make that lawsuit public because she sued Ales personally rather than Fox News as an organization. If she'd sued the organization she'd been employed under, she would have been forced into arbitration. We're going to get into all the technicality of this today, and we're going to talk about her inability even still to publicly share her own story as it makes its way onto the big screen onto the small screen, and why she is fighting so hard to change that system. She also explains why sexual harassment and sexual assault in the workplace shouldn't be called a woman's problem, it should be called a men's problem, why she believes that predatory men should not be allowed to have comebacks, and what we can do to help push these positive movements for equality forward. Gretchen, I'm so happy to have you here today. Thanks for having me, Congratulations on your podcast. Thank you, it's really spectacular. Thank you so much, and especially coming from internalist, that means a lot to me. Well, you're very comfortable and free flowing, and journalists could actually learn something from you because sometimes because sometimes journalists are very like into perfection and reading the teleprompter perfectly and and not self deprecating. And if there's one thing I learned about being on cable TV versus network was just that there was so much more time to fill that you had to add lib a lot, and then you had to learn to just make mistakes and be like, oh well, and actually people end up appreciating that a lot more because you come across as so much more authentic and real of course. Well, And I think that's something I love about the podcast space is that it offers you an arena for discussion but also discovery exactly. And when you're on you know, a news show or you're doing an interview, and they're grabbing a sound bite and you have and prepared questions and you don't get to stray, so you don't really get to explore. And I think in a world that feels like it's becoming more and more bifurcated, and you know, red versus blue, and us versus them and everything is sort of a nightmare having a space where you can just converse with people and and when they make a point, maybe add your own thought and then ask a follow up questions. But it's really counterintuitive to the way in which we live in the world right now, which is so fast paced and everything snack able. So it's very interesting how podcasts have become so popular because I think it shows the craving of the American people, young, middle age and older who want to have those kinds of real, authentic conversation still, which is very uplifting to me in this hyperpartisan environment that we need to say that I hate me too, me too, me too. And the irony of me repeating me too with you sitting here across from me is that you really helped open the doors for the movement. Thank you. You know, we were speaking just before we started recording about what the environment was like in sen and people forget that it was iron clad and terrifying. And you know, now we're having these conversations out in the daylight. It's yet to be seen what the real outcomes will be from them, but we're talking about it. And you boldly filed a claim against Roger Ailes in July sixteen. It's like a date that I'll never ever forget because it was the scariest thing, in the boldest, most courteous thing I ever did in my life. I mean, were you just shaking that morning? But you know what's happening to you that I've been shaking for a lot of years, because you know, I've been living through something that wasn't comfortable at all. But listen, I had worked so hard, killed myself to get to the top of my career in journalism, and I finally got to do a morning show, you know, five days a week, which was my dream. It was a great combination of news and having fun. At least that's what I thought it was going to be at the beginning. And so when I had been contemplating this for quite some time, courage is not something that you just decided to flip on like a light switch. And if anyone knows me really well, they know that I'm very prepared about things. So I needed to get my ducks in a row. And then, really what was the catalyst or the final push off the cliff was that they fired me. They fired me on June and that was shocking because it was so retaliatory. And so I went away with my sister for my birthday to Mexico and planned this whole thing in very fast pace motion. Then, because it sort of came out of the blue, I was always planning it, but not necessarily planning to get fired. And so then we filed on July six. And I know that this is complicated because you are one of the women, and and there are also so many men who have been put into these forced nd A nondisclosure agreement situations. So there's we can talk about this, but we can't talk about this, which is tricky, and I'm excited to get into the conversation and see, but can you walk the listeners through what you're working environment was like what you were being forced to sort of put up with and and why you were told you were fired? No? Great, So the thing is, I can't tell you anything about the claims that I alleged. People can go online and read my complaint. Now, I will say a caveat here is that my lawyers figured out a brilliant strategy to make my case public, or we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now, and arguably we wouldn't be in this movement per se. But they figured out a way to sue Roger L's personally and not Fox News, which is how my complaint became public and I wasn't forced into arbitration, which is a whole another secret chamber that people don't understand and that I've become an expert on and what I'm trying to change on Capitol Hill. So that was the first good move, was that my case became public. But no, I can't tell you about the environment. I can share with you that there were very obvious, small protests that you can go back now and see what I was doing. For example, one day I walked off the set of Fox and Friends, the morning show that I was hosting, because somebody had said something about the fact that women we just allow women to do everything now, and I said, well, if that's the case, and you guys are so great, then you guys handle the rest of the show. And I walked off, and it was, you know, seen in in in jest, but it was truthfully, it was my way of showing my kinds of protest, and I had to be very careful. You know. Three weeks before I got fired, I came out live on my show and said that I was in favor of reinstating the assault weapons span that was not popular on Fox News. To say that I had had it with gun violence. I'm a mom of two kids, I lived near Sandy Hook, Connecticut. I know people who died six year olds, and I had had it, and so I said what I felt. There was a day that I came on my show and had no makeup on. Because I've always been a supporter of women and girls. And I believe that we empower young girls from the inside of their souls, not by how they look on the outside. I struggled with my weight as a teenager, so luckily I built my self esteem from the inside out. And that's something that I feel is just a crucial message to give to our young girls. That didn't go over as being very popular either. So there were these small protests that I was doing to keep myself in the right frame of mind. And when you say small protests, it my whole body feels carbonated right now, if that makes sense, Like everything in my body is kind of buzzing and fizzy, because I know what you mean. Right There is an experience when you sit with someone who has been through what you've been through, and that kind of recognition is so powerful that it can often have a physical reaction in the body. And I I know from experience, and I'm curious if you've felt this. People on the outside don't quite understand how much courage a small protest, a quote small protest takes, how risky deviating from the line is, how it puts a target on your back, and or walking down the hallway with a knife in your back, watching the blood dripped down, looking over your shoulder, wondering, wondering what's next. And it's interesting to me how there seems to be this there seems to be cognitive dissonance around the experience of women in this case when we talk about the mew too movement, and when we talk in a larger framework of employees who have courage to step outside the lines in these big corporate environments. Because we act as though it's a one to one kind of ratio, right like, well, you could have done more, you could have said more, Why didn't you? Why would you stay? They're all the same myths sys domestic violence exactly. And what people don't often realize is that it's it's a David and Goliath story. It's it's you as one against tens of thousands. If we're thinking about, you know, pressure, and it's it's just so it's so infuriating and culturally ingrained to see that's the problem. That's what I've learned. It's so culturally ingrained that we, for some reason, we'll go to the ends of the earth to protect a predator. I've seen it, I've seen I mean, I just could have never envisioned that this was such a pervasive eponemic when I did what I did, but I started hearing from thousands of women in every profession. It was unbelievable to me because you assume it's just you, well, you assume it's you because they see corporations have figured out a way and society to make you feel all alone, right by silencing you and putting you in these secret chambers where nobody ever finds out what happened to you, and they just get rid of the troublemaker. Let's get rid of her. You know, we've got a totally bass ackwards. It's like, wait a minute, what the hell are we firing a woman who simply had the courage to come forward, and we're going to protect this predator. And guess what, it's protecting predators who aren't even the money makers. I've found out the really sad, scary state of affairs in our country is that will protect also the low end employee who's a harasser. I've seen it. So we have a lot of soul searching to do as a nation. You know, It's why I took the reins of this issue and ran with it, because a lot of people said to me, well, you know, after your case resolved, you could have just gone home, spent more time with your dog and your kids. And but that's not me. I've always been a fighter, and I realized, oh my god, there's so much work to be done. So you know, here I am with more jobs than I ever had when I was doing live TV on a daily basis. You know, but it's it's all. It's all to help women, and it's all to help the next generations. Yeah, and when you really see a miscarriage of justice, when you care about justice, you can't you can't sleep unless you're working toward it. And I know that to your point, we often say, well, of course they'll protect someone like a Roger Ales. You know, he's he's the bestan of this network. He's this epitome of success. And we're so obsessed with success in this country that, for whatever reason, when men achieve it, we look at them. Is infallible, But I love that you bring up the point that the low level, it could be an entry level employee who harasses, our assault someone who gets protected. Also, because we have this weird subconscious generationally ingrained in my in my estimation idea that men have somehow earned it and women are lucky to be there. And if you're there, if you're if you're too smart, they'll criticize you. If you're too pretty, they'll tell you you're only there because you're a pretty face, and that's clearly what paid your way into the room. If you start making trouble, they'll begin to suggest that your pretty face means you must have slept with someone to get your job, or at least let them think maybe you would because you were playing your quote Feminine Wiles Card. I mean quite literally, no matter what we do, it's not right right. We don't put those kinds of requirements on men. I mean, even if you just think about what we're supposed to wear to work, If you look over the last couple of decades, we're supposed to wear a dressed for a feminine side, and then we're supposed to wear a pant suit to be more like men, and then we were supposed to, you know, go back to wearing I don't know, I don't even know what we're supposed to wear right now. You know, here's my advice, where whatever the hell you want, Yes, but it's just this unbelievable. We can't even get we can't even get it straight yet to pay women fairly, which is unbelievable to me. If you're an O, B, G Y N and you're delivering babies, I don't really give a rats as if you're a man or a woman, although I always go to women, but if you're a man or a woman, you should be getting the same salary. That's unbelievable that we're not to that point in time yet in two thousand nineteen. And it's unbelievable to me that eight six percent of Americans think we are eight percent of Americans surveyed believe that the r A passed And and people say that's a joke. It's illegal to pay men and women differently, And any of us like you and I, who are actual data researchers and who work in policy arenas, know that there is no legal protection guaranteeing women are paid the same and so they're actually not. And companies won't make their salaries public because they don't want people to find out how much more they pay men than But it's so crazy, like when you think about it, that men, somehow, some men grow up and just think that's okay, that that's that's why I'm doing what I'm doing, because I have a teenage daughter and I have a teenage son. And here's what I've figured out above all else, that it's actually more important to get to our young boys than to our young girls with these messages because as long as men still predominantly run the fortuneies, we need them. We need them to understand to be up to speed on the things that we were just talking about, so that they will pay us fairly and promote us and put us in the boardroom. Because guess what doesn't happen when you do that harassment? I mean, it's all intertwined. So that's what I found out after my lawsuit. You can't just really stand up and say, okay, let's stop sexual harassment in the workplace. Okay, wait a minute, now, you've got fifteen other jobs. Because it's it's intertwining to pay equity, it's intertwined to how we raise our boys. It's intertwined to tech companies and not having enough women there. Um, it's having just a token woman in the boardroom who then straddles the fence between being in the men's club and trying to protect other women below her. It's complicated, and this is why there's there's so much work to do. But we have to start with our boys young, because it's too late to try and change somebody in their fifties sixties, I think, at least from my experience. I'm not trying to be a pessimist, but we really need to get to them at a young age so that they by the time they get into the workplace, they respect women in the same way in which they might have looked at their mom or their sister. That's my hope, and I have to be honest, I get it, and it also infuriates me that we have to be described as someone's mom or sister or daughter to be respected. It's like I'm someone I know why. But you know what, Listen, it's it's a start because just from what I just told you about like low level employees and how we protect them, I mean it's a long road up. Yeah. Well, and I love that you said that it's a start, because sometimes I think we look at what we want and then we criticize the steps that will take to get there. And if the first step to beginning to educate men on the fact that women deserve I don't know, basic rights is to remind them that we are sisters and daughters and mothers and friends. Okay, if that has to be the first step, we feel like we should be past that. But clearly in so many of these arenas we aren't. You know, look, I mean, look at the last three and a half years. The American public was not aware that this kind of ship was still going on in the workplace. Okay, they just weren't. And it's actually one of the reasons why this movement has continued. I believe three important things. Social media it allowed after my story, and then the me Too movement that came a year later. It allowed it to explode, and women and men could choose to be anonymous or put their name and face on it. Okay, number two, the American public was pissed. They were like, why have we not known about these stories? Well, I can tell you why now. It's because companies have figured out a way how to shove it all into secrecy to cover up their dirty laundry. That's how you didn't know about it. And the American public thought we had solved this by two thousand, sixteen seventeen eighteen, nineteen twenty, but we hadn't. And number three, the media, The media covered it. If I would have told you, as a twenty five year plus journalist three years ago that the media would actually be voting teams of people to cover sexual harassment stories, you would have laughed your ass off at me, right, because we didn't cover stories like that. We were part of the problem. But now the media, they're winning poolitzerprises for this, Now we're covering it. Those three things have been the perfect storm to push this movement forward and and keep it alive. And when you look at just what people were up against before this became a popularized conversation, you know, you read another another whistle bore, you read run in Pharaoh's book, and you find out how long that's those stories about Harvey had been squashed and and gone through the catch and kill procedures and been bought off and paid off and hidden. And I mean, it's horrifying, and and part of me I was thinking when I got to the end of the book and I was reading about Black Cube and all these global organizations that were working to take down Harvey's accusers and protect him, I was like, you need to assault women that badly that you're willing to spend millions of dollars and hire military experts to try to discredit people who you've assaulted. You You really just can't keep your hands in your dick to yourself. Really, I mean, I always said that if serial harassers weren't so busy harassing, imagine how much freaking money they'd be making for their companies. Yeah, how much work they'd get to. Imagine how much more work they'd get done, because if they're already really, really successful, imagine if they were actually paying attention to what they were actually doing. Oh and, by the way, hiring more women, because the bottom line is always increased when you have more women in the workforce. Just look at any McKenzie study to show you that. So, you know, having having said that, it's absolutely ridiculous that so much time has been spent time and money by these predators to to cover up and they were able to get away with it for decades, for decades, but not anymore him. I have so many questions about Fox. Okay, you talk about how you had been planning, trying to figure out and planning how to press charges about what you were being subjected to there and then you were shockingly let go, and then you knew you needed to act fast because you knew why you were let go, and you were let go. I I can say this because I've read the reports, and you may not be able to say yeah, your name, but you were let go for rebuffing advances that were sexual in nature and grotesquely inappropriate from your boss. Silence, you all understand what's happening. She's not allowed to say yes, but I can tell you the answers yes exactly. We can all read it, and so the answers yes when you because you mentioned this earlier, your attorneys realized that this would wind up in forced arbitration, which would be a secret backdoor, darkest day of my life, closed room, goodbye, the world will never know. Or you could stand a chance to take this guy down for real by suing him personally. What was it like when they presented that option to you? Good? I mean, at this point you know I had made the decision. Took me a long time to get there. Luckily I had a very supportive family. I'm still blessed to have my parents in my life. And I mean, no matter how old you you get you, you want to have their support. Listen, I grew up in a small town in Minnesota. It's not like people around there were used to suing people. There's this thing called Minnesota nice. So it took me a while to convince my parents and then they finally realized what it was and they were like, yeah, we're with you. It's a really emotional phone call, and so, you know, yeah, leading leading up to that point and then finding out from my lawyers that there might be another avenue was it was really optimistic for me. And you know, listen, what I could have never, ever, ever known how this was all going to play out. When I jumped off the cliff, I did not know what was going to happen the next minute, much less the next hour, the next day, the next weeks. So when why Fox announced that day that they were going to start an investigation, we were like, holy sh it. Really we never expected that. I mean, my lawyer said to me, look, they're going to crucify you, and they did, but we never never believed that they would start an investigation. So that was the first thing. I never thought that he'd be fired. Ever happened. Two weeks from the day then my case was resolved, and it actually was an incredibly progressive settlement because even then three and a half years ago, I got a rare public apology. Nobody ever gets that, and by the way, that's all women want because they want to be validated for what happened to them, and you never get it because some people might argue that that's an admission of guilt. Yeah, it makes them look culpable. So getting that apology was crucial to me, and it was so emotional the day that my news started trickling out because the news media picked up on the apology, the headlines where Gretchen Carlson gets a public apology. And I was getting my nails done because I had brought my kids to the first day of school and I was waiting to go to another appointment and I'm by myself and this nail slaneteers are coming down my face and the woman is probably like, who the hell is this person? And I was crying, not because of the resolution. I was crying because I got an apology and that the media was picking up on it. I also got the ability within the resolution to talk about this, which is why I've been doing all the work I've been doing trying to pass legislation and the initiative that I'm about to tell you about to stop nd as. I got that ability to become an activist for this issue. Now. Had I known at that time that it would start a cultural revolution and that the floodgates would open a year later with the Me Too movement, and that we have would make so much progress in a short period of time, I would have fought like hell to not sign that nd A. But that's the next phase now for other women, and that's why I'm trying to do what I'm doing now. And the NDAs have always been a standard practice. What was a way too? It was here was the thought process behind it. Simplistically, Hey, we'll we'll pay you some money and then you're going to sign this. You can never tell anyone what happened, right, and then you just go off on your little merry way. But the part of it that people forget is that women never work again. So when people say, oh, well, you knew what you were getting into when you signed the n d A, No, they primarily want to keep you silent and they give you some money. But that's because most of the women never work in their chosen profession ever. Again, so arguably you're out of money even though you get a settlement, right, and so we need to eradicate nda s because the only way we're truly going to resolve this issue is if we continue to discuss this openly and have dialogue about it. That is the only way to solve it and to allow women to have a voice, which is why I've created with my Fox colleague Julie Roginski, Lift Our Voices, which is our new organization to get people all around the world to sign up sign onto our mission to join us to make companies not do this to women anymore. We're to a point right now where women's voices need to be heard, and we're very hopeful that this initiative is the next phase of this revolutions so exciting. Thank you. So how did the How did it come to me? It came to be because I had already been working on the hill for the last three years to get rid of forced arbitration clauses, which I'm still incredibly optimistic about. You know, have you heard about this thing called impeachment? Yeah, it's gotten in the way of We've introduced the bill to different times, but then with so many shenanigans going on politically, um, it's never really made its way to the floor. But I did finally testify before the House last May, which is a prerequisite for it to come to the House floor. So I remained an incredibly optimistic and imagine this it's actually bipartisan, because I'm smart enough to know after covering politics for so long. But nothing's going to pass if it's not bipartisan. It doesn't have a chance in hell. And my bill is really simplistic. It's only three pages long. It gives women a choice. Do you want to go to the secret chamber of arbitration nobody ever hears from you over again, or do you want to be able to go to your Seventh Amendment right of an open jury process for sexual harassment. That will be key to really solving this problem. So I'm still working really hard on that at the same time, in tandem, I'm now fighting to stop nd as. And how this came about was because NBC, after the run in Pharaoh Book and Catch and Kill, I guess felt under pressure two say that they were going to allow women who had signed NDAs there to be able to be allowed out of them. And that weekend a couple of us at Fox who had been forced to sign them got together on the phone and we said, well, what about us? So we went out and did media and demanded that Fox let us out of our NDA's as well, which we have since never heard anything back from them. And then that led us to starting lift our voices because we realized there were so many women out there who have been forced to sign these kinds of secret agreements, even not about sexual harassment, about a bunch of other stuff, toxic environments in the workplace. What kinds of other things are people forced to sign NDAs over maybe injuries that they incurred, you know, or maybe they got really sick over something that was in the workplace, or any kind of other discrimination, pay inequity. I mean, there's a myriad of other reasons of why. And listen, we're not asking just to be clear, because you know, trolls out there on Twitter will be like, you know, they want they don't want, they want everyone to get rid of all their secrets. We're not asking you to give us the formula for Coca cola, right, not that and not that kind of not that kind of an NDA, you know, or the big mac recipe. No, this is about human rights violations and things that are not supposed to be secret that companies want to keep secret. It's they're basically, they're they're dirty laundry. The other impetus for this was that, you know, these projects have been going on about my story at Fox, um the miniseries on Showtime The Loudest Voice, and then the movie Bombshell, and I can't participate in these. And so while that's strange and frustrating, you know, I wanted to have an answer to that, And my answer is I couldn't participate in these, and I don't want other women to not be able to participate, debt, to not be able to have a voice. And how wild that Naomi Watts who played you in The Loudest Voice, and Nicole Kidman who's playing you in Bombshell Casual by the way, You're like cool to have the best actresses on the planet are just playing so how crazy that you don't get to speak to them. They can't do their jobs. They can't actually do research. They have to watch your old interviews, they have to read your complaints, they have to dig up what they can find of you that's been out in the public sphere. They can't sit and have a coffee with you and hear about how you felt in your body here, about the ways in which you were touched or spoken to or demeaned or and the list goes on. And that as a person who both is passionate about journalism and who is an actor as my career, that would make me crazy. It's been incredibly difficult. Now. I have become friends with Naomi Watts since then, because you could speak to her once production was rap, but I could spare, you know, technically I could have gotten together with her and just said, you know, hey, what's your favorite color? I mean, like I could talk to her about anything else, but at the point, you know, it would be tortured. Yes, So I met her at the premiere of The Loudest Voice, and it was really it was fascinating because it was like this instant connection because I knew she had done so much research on me, and she had played this really difficult, painful role, and so she had to immerse herself into what she thought I was feeling, which wasn't good. And so we had this immediate connection and she wrote this beautiful Instagram post about how courageous she felt that I was, and it really it was a tribute that I'll never ever forget because it really sort of tied it up in a nice bow because I couldn't participate it in it at all, and it was like a nice ending and conclusion that she actually understood me and everything that it took to to get there. You know. But it's it's tough to watch something that was such a painful period in your life. Now, Listen, I have to take the high road because I wake up every morning optimistic about this fight. I were a bracelet on my arm that says be Fierce, which is the title of my book. And I looked down some warnings and I go, ship, I don't really feel like it today. And then I go, Nope, I gotta gotta do it. Gotta do it, not necessarily for me, but for everyone else out there who doesn't have the same platform that I might have. And so I have to look at this in the big picture and say, you know, Okay, this movie bombshell. Couldn't participate, couldn't talk to Nicole Kidman, couldn't talk to the writer. They take a tremendous amount of liberties can't tell you what's true and what's not. So the big picture is, look, if this continues the conversation, fantastic. If this helps one more woman to come forward, yes, great, that's the way I have to look at this. But I don't want future generations of women and men to be silenced, and that's why I continue to press forward. That's really incredible. Thank you, You're welcome. Look in the face of my kids when when you say that, I think of them when you say that that, Yeah, you're a little bit punk rock, which I think people don't know about you, but you what way you just are like you're you have that fierce like damn the man, fuck the system. You're sitting here like you've diamond safety pins in your ears. You know, I just got this. This was this was Merry Christmas to me. They're very cool like you are. You are a little bit punk rock, which a lot of people might not assume. From a long time Fox News anchor. Listen, I have been underestimated my entire your life, and people thought because I worked at Fox that I wasn't a supporter of women. I have been a registered independent my entire life. At my first job, I called my mom and I'm like, Mom, holy sh it, women aren't paid the same as men. Did you know that? She's like, why do you always have to talk about women's rights? Because that was me. And then when she became the CEO of a company first day she called me up. She's like, holy shit, you're right, we're not paid. I'm like, Mom, stop being so naive. This is what I've been trying to tell you all along. So but we assume, But we assume, like we assume because I grew up in a small town of Minnesota, and I'm blond and I'm short that oh, I'm just some little lamb, you know, and we are so cute and meek and mild. And let me tell you something, I am fucking fierce, okay. And I have fought tooth and nail my entire life. I've clawed my way to the top of anything that I've tried to achieve. Because all girls should feel that way, and we should be honored for that. We shouldn't be thought of as aggress of bitches because we're like that. We should be empowering like that for the next generation. So, in fact, the last thing my husband said to me the night before I filed the lawsuit, in the middle of the night when we weren't sleeping, was I really think they underestimated you. I was like, yeah, but I've been used to it, you know, my my whole life. It's all part of sexism, it really is. It's all part of how we think we know somebody because of the way she looks and where she's from and where she works. Right, and they'll find any reason to demean you. It's funny. My best guy friends said to me years ago, and I've been thinking about getting it tattooed ever since, but I just haven't done it. That would be really fierce for me. He looked, he looked at me, and he was like, you're tiny but mighty. I love that. And I was like, yeah, I am, you know, and I like that. But when women go in and and show that part of themselves, especially in the workplace, what's the number one thing we're called shive or a bite? I mean, this is how as though he is a dirty word, it is, but it's like salt and pepper hair for men. Oh they're wise and and you know when they go in there, listen that study that shows that men go and ask for a raise when they are only ten capable of doing the next job. Women only go and ask for a raise when they're nine sure they're capable. That is a very sad statistic, which makes me realize we have a long way to go. It's crazy, and I mean to your point, you know, even when you talk about the way our looks are perceived. A couple of weeks ago, there was a whole big, I mean, an internet moment happened because Kanu Reeves walked on a red carpet with his girlfriend. Kiana Reeves is fifty five, his girlfriend is forty six, but she doesn't dye her hair, and she has this like stunning lee beautiful, you know, sort of Georgia O'Keefe waterfall of silver hair. She looks. She looks like a mystical creature. To me, I think she's just so beautiful. She's an accomplished artist and is ten years his junior. And people were like, who is that old woman? Kiana Reeves is dating and you and what's going on? And and then there was this whole other faction of people saying good for her, should just be who she is and thank god, you know, good for him to have an age appropriate girlfriend. And but people were so shocked by seeing a woman in her mid forties with gray hair, and I just thought, what are we doing? Well, this is how we socialize girls though from very beginning, of magazines and toys that we buy for them, and the you know, the princess culture and not building your self esteem from the inside out, which is what I've always tried to do and tried to preach. So that's what I mean about how much work we have to do. There's another study that came out that showed that five year old girls, when you ask five year old girls and five year old boys, you say, this is a smart statement. Who could have said it? And at five they say, oh, a man or a woman. By the time girls are six, they say only men. That's tragic. That So what happens between five and six? Yes, they go to school. They go to school. So even if you have parents who are home trying to teach quality, right, you go to school. And predominantly it's women who are teachers. And I'm sure that they don't intend to be sending subtle cues at all, but it shows how pervasive the way in which we socialize our girls and our boys is in our society because people don't even realize that they're doing it still and giving off signals and subtle cues that that boys are smarter and grow up to be and girls have surpassed boys in education, oh always. And but no woman looks in the mirror and thinks, oh, I am an agent. I'm a secret agent for the patriarchy. But women have been cultured to fit into the patriarchy, and thus they behave in deference to it. So often. One of my favorite courses at Stanford actually was took a couple of anthropology courses about matriarchs in the African cult sure, and it was fascinating to just see how how different that is, because I remember being dumbfounded, like, whoa, these women are in charge? You know when it was really really empowering and so fascinating because people would look at those cultures and think that they were primitive, right, and yet they were actually leaps and bounds ahead of us with regard to our quality, you know, very very fast. Not to be tangential, but it was fascinating for me. Yeah. Likewise, I had a really interesting experience I was at a lecture recently and this phenomenal woman who does a lot of work in Silicon valleys, Kindersing, was speaking and she has created an organization trying to put more women on boards. And there will be people listening, and there's people at home and people who want to be contrarian who are like, well, you know, you got to earn your seat, and it's like, yeah, no, ship, women earned them. They just get passed over. And and if you don't, to our earlier point, diversify a board, the entire company is a mess and by the way, makes less money. So like gender parody, not only is more all, but it's a financial upside. So Sue Kinder's research shows that when one woman makes it into the boardroom, she's immediately identified as an enemy by all the men in the room, even just energetically. No one's gonna say, oh, she's my enemy, but they're like, we've been invaded. When there are two women, all the men in the room look at those two women as though they've ganged up on us and they're here to make our life difficult. It's only when there are three women in the room that they become gender neutral and they just become teammates. So when people say, oh, we have a woman on our board, I'm like, cool, that's like saying that you have a black person on your board and you think your board then could not be racist. It's like you have put the person who has been oppressed in in the glaring view in the target zone of your oppression, and you've pretended that you're somehow diversifying. So I'm fascinated by that that it really requires enough of us in a space to neutral as our gender in the ideas of men so that they just start treating us like people. This is why it's a tangled web to fix yes, which I had no idea of. Yes. So this is what's interesting. And I normally do this as like my second question, but we've just we've just taken the dive off the hyghboard, and I'm obsessed with you because it's so it's just so interesting what you went through and what you've done, what you've done and what you're doing. But when we talk about childhood, when we talk about the environments were raised in, I often love to sit across from these accomplished people who I get to interview and say, Okay, I know you now and especially for you, all of your time and media, all of the exposure after the lawsuit. Everything we can all read and we'll link to it. Listeners will will link to your complaints so they can really they can read the words you're not Unfortunately, you are unfortunately not allowed to say today until I get out of my exactly. God, I'm counting down the days. Um, But I'm curious because you say you were just as minded as a kid. Who who were you as a little girl? Who was Gretchen at ten? Gut gutsy Gretchen? Um? When is that your nickname when my brothers weren't. Not it's my own nickname. But when my brothers were calling me goalpost Gretchen. Because I used to be able to fit my pinky finger between my two front teeth, I had this massive space. I had braces twice, I've had a million teeth pulled. Uh yeah, inside story of Gretchen. But again why I built my self esteem from the inside out. But but Gutsie was sort of you know who I was, according to my mom telling me before. I have memories, but really what was important? While some of that may have been intrinsic my mom told me every single day, you can be whatever the hell you want in this world, and she empowered me to believe that. And she also gave the caveat with a hell of a lot of hard work. So I learned from a very young age to work really hard. I was really serious violinist as a child, and I practiced three, four or five hours a day. And so that was really my career as a child, and it really although I don't play anymore now, it gave me immense discipline and folk us and it gave me one of the greatest gifts in life, which is I learned that by putting time into something, you get better at it. And it built myself confidence and it was something nobody could take away from me, so incredibly, you know, crucial lessons to I think moving on into a very difficult world. So in kindergarten I a story that I think we'll we'll shape what I ended up doing at Fox is that I went to school on the first day, and back then they used to divide you into groups of kids who could read and couldn't read, and they put me in the group of could not read. But I knew how to read, so I went up to my teacher's desk three times that day and I said, but Mrs gross Line, I know how to read. And she was a nice woman, but she pooh pooed me, and she said, just go back and sit in that group. I can still feel myself running home from school that day and slamming the back door of my house and screaming for my mom and telling her what happened, and she called the school and the next day I was in the right group. But I shared that story because what would have happened to my educational trajectory had I not spoken up that day at five, I would have forever thought, oh, well, even though I can do something, if if somebody superior to me puts me in a certain place, then I should just stay there and be quiet. And instead I used my voice. And so I think from a young age, you know, a couple that with getting up in front of big audiences and doing violent competitions at a young age and performing on stages, and that took a tremendous amount of guts, and then other things in my in my life. I think that led to giving me the courage to do what I did all those years later. At Fox. So I do think upbringing has, you know, a tremendous amount of impact on how you see the world, obviously, but whether or not it gives you courage, whether or not it makes you realize that you have a voice, and it matters whether or not you realize that people are equal. Upbringing, to me, was was essential in who I became. That's so cool. How old were you when you tuck up the violence six? Which was late by like by Prodigy standards. Yeah, because you know, a lot of kids start playing when they're three or four. But there's kind of an argument about it, and people in the music world think that that six is probably your pretty goodag because it's when you're starting to read and notes. Seeing notes and seeing letters are very similar in your brain, and if you start that too early, it can be confusing for the brain. So yeah, so so, and it just clicked, like I had no idea. I actually wanted to play piano, and the piano teacher looked at my hands and she was like, oh, your hands are way too small. You'll never be any good. And so, by a fluke, she sent me up to the school and I looked at all the string instruments hanging on the wall, and I was like, holy crap. The bass is too big for me. The cello is too big for me, the viola is too big for me. The violins the smallest one. I think I'll try that. And that's how it started. And by the way, I do play the piano now, but and I still actually play the piano, and I don't play the violin because I never competed with the piano and there's too much pain and emotion involved in picking up the violin now because I'll never ever, ever, ever be anywhere near as good as I was when I was fourteen. It's not like riding a bike. You. I can still see all the notes in my head, but I can't play them, so it's painful. So I don't know I should I should go back to it, because my dad would really love for me to go back to it. But anyway, I it was essential in my life to teach me discipline and self pride and things that people can't take from you. When you say it's painful to not be able to play the way you could, I'm interested in that because you you also speak about it with such love and such affection. You light up when you talk about playing music, and and you said that it was something that taught you that you could always get better practicing, and that gave you discipline, not to say, obviously you need to be putting yourself through these disciplined hoops at this you know time in your life. You have plenty of other things that are requiring your effort. But so now I can I can go binge, stream watch something. I mean, hey, how do you feel like it's fair? But I guess I'm curious. Where do you think the hurdle comes in in just being able to enjoy it? Why? Why? Why does it? Why do you think it has to be a thing that you prove a level of skill? Is it is that the overachiever in you? Is that the the professional in you? What what puts the roadblock in front of the violin? But not the piano? Because I never competed with the piano, So I was never set to any standard or competitive levels. So now when I go sit down and play and I suck, it's like who cares? It's it's much more. You know, it's tough when you've achieved a certain level of something at such a young age. And and listen. I vicariously still do all my music through my children. My children are accomplished pianists, and I don't begin to make them practice like I had to practice. I probably should, but I don't. Kids are just way too busy these days, much more so than when I was growing up. But I I you know, I don't play, but I do in the way that I've transferred passion to everything else I do in my life. People used to say to me, well, you were a serious musician and that was going to be your career, and then you ended up in television. How are those similar? And I say they're really similar, because it's it's like seeing the red light come on on the cameras, that same feeling of walking out on stage and being the soloist. It's it's that same comfort zone of being a performer or a communicator. And so there's a lot of similarities. And I can still draw on that experience without actually playing the violin every day. That's so interesting. So where did that take you? You started playing at six and you were saying you were obviously you set some sort of incredible standard by fourteen. What what's the what's the journey? There, well, I didn't intend to at all. My parents just kept moving me to different teachers because I was excelling at the craft. I eventually was studying with the teacher at Juilliard in New York City, and I was, you know, performing for the top violinists in the world, starting when I was ten years old. But then I burned out when I was seventeen. And you know, a lot of if you look at a lot of gymnasts or figure skaters, where there's these sort of solo tennis players, solo kind of competitive things, it can be very isolating. And I loved so many other things in life. I loved being in school plays. I loved being in singing groups at school. I liked boys. I really thrived academically, and I realized at that young age that for me to become what I wanted to become in music, which was a famous concert artist, that I would have to give up everything else in my life. And I wasn't willing to do that because I just enjoyed too many other things. So I quit and my parents were devastated, and and then I went off to an academic college and went to Stanford and really focused on my my academics. So you know, I don't regret quitting the violin at all, because I have used it as a platform to to go on to do other things in my life. And listen, my life is a testament to that life works in mysterious ways, and that if anyone's listening, they've had a hard time in their life or they feel like they're not on the right path or direction. My life is one to look at for optimism because I've gone in so many different directions and recreated myself and I'm currently back now in a recreation mode, you know, And really what's at the center of finding happiness and success is understanding how to recreate yourself and feeling okay with these diversions in the path. So I think sometimes we put so much emphasis in our society about knowing what you want to do and sticking to it, and and that's a disservice to people out there who have a lot of fantastic ideas and interests and you can always change who you are, and especially for moms who maybe want to get back in the workforce, it's a really fantastic message that you're worth it. Well. I started thinking about it in these terms just being a bit of a data science nerd and loving technology. We laud innovation. We love innovation. We of a new app, a new technology, you know, the next stage of something. Yet we don't make space for innovation in our own lives. And if we treated ourselves like startups or tech platforms or anything in those arenas, we could realize that we could have so many iterations, We could have so many versions of ourselves in our lives. You could become an incredibly accomplished musician and then decide you want to be incredibly accomplished at some other creative thing, and why not. But I think sometimes for women to we get caught in this box of not taking risks right. And that's my biggest piece of advice to young women is to step outside the line and to color outside of the lines and step outside of the box. Because that was the biggest piece of advice that I got early on in my television career was to try and do my live reports different than other people out there, so that I would take that risk and be my own individual. And it was really tough to do. It was hard because especially in news, you don't want to make a mistake but I think women are and girls are socialized to live up to this perfection standard and to stay in inside the lanes. And so my biggest piece of advice is to be a little bit of a renegade. And the thing that happens when you step across the line and you come out okay, you can look in the mirror and go ship. I did that, and that builds your self confidence even more so the next time you go a little bit more and and through that, I believe that you actually achieved much more success in your life because you become so much more proud of yourself and you're not just living in this very sheltered way in which society has deemed that is appropriate for you to do. I love the way that you talk about things, in the way that you observe them. Do you think, because you know, obviously, going through and doing my research, I know that you went from symphony orchestras to as you said, academicly achieving being the valedictorian of your class. And then this is the thing that really boggles my mind and makes me excited. You went to Stanford and you studied organizational behavior. And so sometimes when you talk about the way systems are organized. I'm like, oh my god, I love the way that your brain works. What pushed you into wanting to study organizational behavior and what do you think now in hindsight? Your big takeaways have been because on the day that I had to declare my major, I was out of options and I had to choose something amazing. And luckily at Stanford, you you didn't have to declare until you were junior, which was really really late. In this listen, I had declared my major a million times. This proves my point about who I am and why I couldn't just stick with the violin. I was a humbio major because I wanted to be a doctor until I realized I passed out when I see blood. Oh great, so that wasn't gonna work. Then I was going to be a lawyer, which I still was going to do. I actually took the l sets and then that didn't materialize, and then I was going to be an industrial engineer. But I didn't really want to do all the calculus and all that stuff that came along with that once I got to college. So organizational behavior was kind of a nice compositive of that because it's kind of like a problem solving major. So I would have been like a corporate consultant had I used my major um And back when I was graduating from college, it was either big careers were going into finance or going into being a consultant for firms, a problem solver like at McKenzie or something like that. And that's truly who I am at heart. Is that and it's very similar to journalism actually, because it's like asking a lot of questions and getting to the bottom of things, the same thing as being a lawyer. So all of those things actually fit me perfectly. Like my husband will say to me all the time, why do you have to ask so many questions? I'm like, well, because that's the job I do, and that's who I am at heart. So organizational behavior. I'm also incredibly organized, I hate to admit, but that's not really what the major is. The major is really looking at an issue from the outside and figuring out how to make it easier for somebody and solving it for them. And that's a lot what what journalism is like to it's asking a lot of questions and getting to the heart of the matter. So it was actually a really it was a good, good major for me. I didn't use it at all in the corporate world, but I think that's another great lesson for young people, like stop obsessing about what you're supposed to do or what you think you are whatever, it will work out. I what I always want to encourage people to do, similarly to your talking about studying organizational behavior, I want to push young people, college students into studying in arenas that will make them better critical thinkers. Study subjects that give you nuance, perspective, that allow you to analyze and and to have your own thought, because that's how you become an asset in a work environment, exactly as as long as you're allowed to speak, which brings us full circle asterisk, big bat asterisk. Yes. So so how did you end up going into TV? Oh gosh, well, this is a long, you know, secuitist story. So my parents were upset that I wasn't playing the violin anymore. So I was studying at Oxford at the time for a semester and I got a call from my mom and she said, I just got this for sure in the mail, and it's from the Miss America organization and it says that fifty percent of a candidate's points are based on talent, and you have that, so you should start playing the violin again and is on interview and you're smart, so I think you should do this. Yeah, dead silence, I said, are you nuts? I am. I was a tomboy growing up. As I told you earlier, I struggled with my weight. I'm short, classical violin had never won. I'm from Minnesota, it's not really a pageant state. I had a lot of things going against me from what I thought in the pageant world. And but my mom's, you know, incredibly convincing person, and she believed in me. So I dropped out of Stanford senior year and decided at that point that I would go full steam ahead, you know, towards this particular goal. And you know, listen, it happens to to work out. I became the first classical violinist ever to achieve that goal still to this day, and it taught me amazing communications skills. It's the hardest job I'll ever have as a two year old being Miss America. Yes, I was also introduced to the world of being bullied the minute that I became a unfortunately by other women, and there was a female reporter at my first press conference who deliberately dubbed me the smart Miss America, but in a mocking way, and then gave me a series of questions like a test during my first press conference to try and take me down. And they were questions like, who's on the fifty dollar bill, who's on the hundred dollar bill? You know what you're to the Vietnam War? And do you know what chap of quittic is? With Ted Kennedy owned by the way, Number nineteen, have you ever done drugs? And number twenty have you ever had sex? And the entire New York City Press corps bowed her, which, as you know, the New York City Press court doesn't boo. So it was like alarming to me that this woman was taking me down like this. It was like my resume just evaporated overnight and all of my accomplishments, and so I'm not a huge believer in revenge. However, I saw her ten years later and we were both covering the same event in New York City and have you ever had one of those moments in your life where you think to yourself, should I? You know? Could I? This is about being a gutsy Gretchen right, And I decided when I got done with my live reports that I was going to approach her, and my heart was racing out of my chest. And I marched up to her, and I put my hand out and I said, Hi, Penny. I said, I'm Gretchen Carlson. You probably don't remember who I am, but about ten years ago you tried to take me down at a press conference. And I just want to let you know right now that I'm a correspondent for CBS News and you're not. And then I marched away as fast as I could, and it felt so good. It felt so good, and I'm literally sitting here at my arms and yeah, oh god, that's great. Good for you. You know, Listen, there are moments in every person's life. Whenever I tell that story, people are like, oh, yeah, I can think about ten other things that I've done in my life, and I wish I would have that opportunity. You know. Listen, it's about taking your power back and and somebody tries to wrong you like that for no good reason. Listen, that stayed with me. It stayed with me. It's still with me my whole life. To humiliate me like that and and try to subjugate me into some sort of power struggle like that and make me look like an idiot. Women, women and men don't deserve that, because when people really come for you and they really cut you to the core, that wound leaves a scar, and everybody says, well, what does it matter? But nobody knows what it's like until they're on the receiving end of it. Nobody knows when when you bring up, you know, internet trolls. Some of the things that I've been through with people on the Internet have actually changed me as a person, and that's something I can't undo. The way I react in public spaces, the the increased paranoia I feel in certain avenues like that will never leave me because things have happened, and people forget that they can have a lasting impact on you. That is harmful, especially when that was so public. Yes, I know those Internet rolls are sitting in their basements. I mean, and I used to respond to Internet trolls, but no, you can't. Well, but no, no, I would do it in a funny way. I would if they would, you know, comment on my looks or something like that, I would say, oh, I'm sure you're a perfect ten. And then often I would right back and I would be like, if they said something horrible, I'd be like, wow, you're sounds like you're really having a bad day. You know. Um, I'll think about you and hope that it gets better. And then they would write back, oh, I didn't I didn't really mean what I said. It's amazing how people can you can turn them around by treating them well. Now listen, I don't have time to do that all that. I just do it like as my own social experiment to see what would happen I've done that, and and people will say, well, don't respond. I'm like, you didn't see the n didn't respect. Every once in a while, I have to one of my favorite things when someone's being really nastiest, to go, huh you seem nice. Yeah, exactly. And the problem is, after I've had a couple of glasses of chardonnay, you should not let me near Twitter, yeah, because because then I look at some of them, I'm you know, my apprehension about saying something goes down a little bit. So I'm never a good idea to go on and talk to trolls then, But but anyway, so life, you know, that experience was was life changing for me and really made me strong as as a person. And I ended up doing so much television during that year. And I sort of had this idea of television in the back of my mind from my music career because stories had been done about me, so I was I had a little bit of knowledge about TV. And then it just really heightened that for me. And I did this this show where it was called Bloopers and Practical Jokes It's Before Your Time, and Dick Clark and Ed McMahon played a practical joke on me and I didn't know what was happening. And then so I had to talk about this satellite system for fourteen minutes that was really complicated and I knew nothing about it. And when the show aired, TV agents called me and they were like, if you can do that, you can do TV. Have you ever thought about it? Wow? And I was like really, because I was watching the show in my hotel room with like the covers over my eyes because I was so embarrassed even sitting there by myself, and it's it's it's another example of how what you perceived to be a negative life experience actually turns into this amazing new avenue and path. So I ended up in TV, but I knew my l SATs were good for five years, so if the TV thing didn't work for the first couple of jobs, I could still go back to law school. And then I just ended up. I continued to move. I went to Richmond, Virginia for my first job. Then I went to Cincinnati. Then I went to Cleveland. Then I went to Dallas, and then I went to New York City to work for CBS and then eventually at at Fox. So, like I said, my life has worked in mysterious ways, very mysterious. So when you started your career as a political reporter, what what was the industry like for women at that time? Are you noticing things that are getting pushed under the rug? Is it that over funny you should ask? So, first of all, I got a new boss who was a woman, who made me the political reporter. I was only twenty three years old, and there were I don't know, I don't think there were any other women covering the governor at that time in the state of Virginia. So that was, you know, a huge sink or swim moment for me. But one of the first stories that I covered was the Anita Hill hearings, and I remember being mortified that they attacked her and didn't believe her. And then I was promptly sexually harassed on the job. What happened so by a photographer. We had gone out to do a story in the rural part of the state, and when we got back in the car, he this is before cell phones, by the way, just to put it in place. How fearful I was. He started asking me how I had liked it when he put the Lavalier microphone up my shirt and touched my breasts, and I was panicked sitting in the passenger seat, and then it went. It went downhill from there, and I actually envisioned myself opening up the passenger door and rolling out of the car like I had seen in movies. Perfect person to talk to about that, And then I was wondering how much that would hurt. So I ultimately didn't didn't do that, but I was shaking like a leaf and not a lot rattles me. And I got back to the newsroom and I was shaking, and to his credit, the interim news director at the time was a man, and he kept approaching me and asking me what was wrong, and I didn't want to tell him, obviously, and he finally coaxed me into into telling him. But that was, you know, a bizarre experience to be new in the business. Realized that women were not paid fairly, expressed that to my mom, then watched the Anita Hill hearings, wonder why the hell they were treating her like crap, and then go out on a story and be sexually harassed, and I was like, WHOA, Welcome to the real world. So I guess my Miss America experience quite frankly prepared me for those kind of tough experiences, and um, I was fortunate enough to not face that for my next you know, my next three or four jobs until I got to Fox. So the next couple of jobs were great. Yeah, Oh, I learned. I loved working in Cincinnati. I learned that's where I really honed my my live skills and being able to speak on my feet with no script and changing stories like on a dime. Cleveland was my first anchor job, so that was when I was behind the desk. But I had a really harrowing experience there too, because I was fired the week after I got married. Why because I was Ironically, I was part of the very first two female local primetime newscast in the country, so it was very progressive, so it's very telling for sort of my life history now. But it didn't work, and the other woman was from Cleveland, so she was the obvious one for them to keep. So I came back from my honeymoon and my male general manager called me up to the office and he said to me these words, now that you're married, you'll be fine. You're fired. Yep. Also illegal to tell a woman that. So I spent a year crying in my garage, which I also painted the floor of I'd like to get credit for that, um and I mowed the lawn every week on time. I kept busy, but I realized that to give another TV job, I was going to have to move to a different city, and I just got married, for God's sake. So I finally got a job in Dallas and moved, and then my husband had to stay in Cleveland. So then we commuted the second year of our marriage. And I never really talked about being fired, because this is another thing that we feel humiliated about, right that people keep secret and now I just shouted from the rafters because it's like, you know, there was I did nothing wrong. And it's a great thing for me to talk about because millions of other people have been in that situation and they feel horrible about it and embarrassed and um, and I want to let them know that that I started over and I might have had to take two steps back, but it made me go four steps forward eventually, you know. And I just worked extra hard. Um. And by the way, going into every single newsroom for every job as a Formers America, I had to work trip really hard anyway, of course, because of those stereotypes like oh here comes the bimbo. And I came to understand that when I kept going to new jobs, and so I came in with a vengeance, like I was already a hard worker, but the first day I would be like, I'm going to become the best reporter in this shop. And so I would work myself to the bone to make sure that that happened, to try and disprove what the stereotype was about. Course, because that's the thing. We don't get to walk in the door just as ourselves. We walk in the door carrying other people's projections, especially after the stereotyping. Yeah, so, you know, I've had a lot of different ups and downs in my life. I had a life threatening stoker for four years, and um, I almost didn't continue in the news business as a result, because kind of the worst profession you could have is to be in the public eye where somebody can find you. So, you know, there's been sometimes people have these impressions of well known journalists says they've had a sheltered life, and you know, they just get to put on a lot of makeup and get their hair done and wear fancy clothes. Probably the same perceptions as being an actress, but so far from the truth in the television industry, when you're clawing your way up and getting paid next to nothing. I ate Domino's Pizza for the first eight months of my first job because I didn't have enough money to even buy electricity or eat. So, you know, I I really really, really worked hard and learned that from from early on in my life, and I think all of those things led up to what I ultimately did at Fox and what I'm doing now. How how did you wind up at Fox News? Because was doing the Saturday early show at CBS News, and I loved that, but it was only one day a week, and I had two babies and they were one and two. And Fox came calling and said, you know, we'd love to have you do this five days a week. And you have to put in perspective that this was fifteen years ago, this was before Fox is what foxes? That was going to be my question because and look, you know, for listeners at home, it's no secret you know that I think Fox News is helping to cause the downfall of America. You and I are friends, regardless, We have a lot of things in common, and I think I think people would be surprised that you and I have so much in common given that, again, they'll stereotype you because you were at Fox News. But I went there for the job opportunity because it was five days a week. And my mom was so psyched because she I used to send her my tapes and they'd be like murders and fires and all this serious news, and she'd be like, why can't you just smile a little more when you're reporting the news? Because I want people to be able to see all aspects of your personality. Because you're funny and you know this and that, and I'm like, mom, I'm covering a triple murder. I can't smile through and exactly. You know. So when this opportunity came up, which is always my goal to be able to to showcase all different sides of my personality, maybe even have to cook that, you know, it was just like wow, you know, this was the pinnacle of my career, and I didn't realize how it was all gonna play out, not just what was happening to me, but also the cultish behavior of course. So and this was pre Bush Cheney era reversal of a requirement for news to be non bias. It was right around that time that all that was, you know, coming in, you thought you were going to a news organization. You had no idea what was to come. So so what what's it like in the first couple of years there. I mean, I imagine, as you said, as a mom, you know, having this incredibly steady gig and being able to do this morning show where you're talking news and culture and life and and everything that's important to you. I imagine the beginning was wonderful. Yeah, I mean it was, you know, it was what I had always aspired to as far as the the actual description of of the job. Yeah, and my kids were one actually, my son was three months when I went there to start, because I remember I had to stop breastfeeding because it actually was just too much with a one year old and a three month old and going to a new job and getting up at three am in the morning, you know, and then and I'm not a napper, so I would the person who sacrificed sleep was was me, because you know, kids wake up in the middle of the night, you have to feed them and stuff like that. So but I got into a really good rhythm, and I lived in the city at the time. Then my husband had this crazy idea that we should move to the suburbs. And I'm like what He's like, Yeah, we both threw up in the Midwest. Would be really great if we could give our kids a backyard. And I was like, that would be fantastic. However, then I have to get up a whole hour earlier. But you won that battle. So I learned how to adjust, you know, organize to to not get up a our earlier and and make it make it all, make it all work out. But then we get into the time period where I can't talk to you about what what happened, and so things, you know, dramatically changed. So I'm just going to start asking you questions and if you can't answer them, that's okay. And for everyone listening at home, I'm sorry that you can't be in the room with us, but we'll try. And so the beginning is great, and then I imagine there's a point where you catch Roger's eye. So I'm just gonna say, hypothetically, yes, a lot of men have a real serious problem with smart women. And while they want you to be smart because it's great to promote that, they don't really like the true aspects of a smart woman because they actually speak up and have a voice, and they actually might say something's not fair and something's not right, and then they get penalized for that. So that's hypothetically what happens to many women in the workplace, and thousands of those women have reached out to me since my story broke. And it's not just TV people, by the way, or famous Hollywood actresses. As we know, this is pervasive everywhere US. I mean medical professions, teaching professionals, act police officers, firefighters, airplane mechanics, lawyers, and every single profession has been represented in emailing me. And so it's it's it's awful. But so that's hypothetically what what happens to two women many women in the workplace. So, as a smart woman, I imagine that you have to begin to try to figure out how to juggle who you are and your natural inclination to speak up for things, and figure out how to fold yourself in such a way that you fit into this space you're being given in your workplace, right, And I think hypothetically women go to other women, you know, to look for that support. And I think one of the most disappointing things that happens to women is when other women don't support them. And while I don't want to blame women for that, because I'm a huge belief we're in us all sticking together because there's power in numbers, it's a end result of the culture that we've created here, right, because we don't put enough women in powerful positions, and so again we get into this whole power struggle. So so women are straddling the fence between trying to be in the boys club and trying to help the other women who come to them with all of these issues. So, you know, hypothetically, I think women trust other women and then they end up getting screwed, you know, getting screwed over by it. And then and then the dynamic in the workplace, you just I think so many women realize that they're just all alone, right, and that everyone's out to get them, and because they simply had the guts to say something, and so then women run into this horrible quagmire. You know, I've killed myself to get to this position. They're not a lot of other jobs that are like this. Should I just keep my mouth shut and try to tow the line and have a couple of silent protests every now and then? Or should I quit and give up my livelihood? Why should I be forced to do that? You know? Why should women be forced to give up what they've worked so hard at because there's jerks that are around them. So these are the these are the quandaries that women find themselves in. And my greatest hope in all the work that I've been doing over the last three and a half years is that I've made it easier for women to not be in those quandaries for for women to bond together with men and say we're not going to put up with this. We're going to go to HR and say we don't want arbitration clauses in our employment contracts. We're going to go to HR and to c e O S and say we don't want n d A S anymore. Our voices matter. We're gonna go to the CFO and say we should be paid fairly. We're gonna have a Google walkout. I mean, look at that. There was one woman's idea and it became an international movement in one day. So I do believe that we, you know, we've made major, major progress on some of those things that I just said can happen to women hypothetically, but but they're so deeply in bed. You know, it's it's really hard to change cultural norms. And you know from being an activist that we never do cultural shifts quickly, which is why I remain optimistic about this particular cultural revolution, because so much has changed in a short period of time, and it's sustaining. It's sustaining. So when I did my case three and a half years ago, women were not believed almost never. Now women are are believed at least they're not crucified immediately when they come forward. That's huge, that's a huge step in the right direction. Men are being accountable, they're being held accountable, we're seeing them fired. I mean, I could have never in my world, as dreams believed that we would have had all of these well known men, these titans fall down, and hopefully a bunch of other men that we don't know about in other professions. Because it's really all about all those women. Number three, they're they're apologizing and actually admitting that they probably didn't behave in an appropriate way. They never did that before some of them. I did not have the same experience. But but your story was slightly you know before this, you know, as we continue to push because I quit my job pre Harvey, yes, and I had. It took me a year to do that, so I started trying to get out of my job in and finally was released in and I refused to sign the n d A that I was presented with. Good but just what an interesting experience. You know, they got word that someone on the set for something else after I left, I guess had gone to a reporter. And then I was called to confirm or deny what this person had told them. It happened to me and a lot of other women on our set, and I was like, oh man, this is going to be bad. You know, I was still pretty shaken up. This was in October, and I left my job in April, and I knew I would talk about it eventually, but you have to feel ready, and I didn't feel ready. I was still having a lot of just adverse side effects to the variants when when you were in such a stressful environment as you know, you know, I spent four years every day sixteen hours, eighteen hours a day, and the the sort of post traumatic stress effects don't go away overnight. And I remember thinking like, this is going to be really scary. And when the network was called for comment on what had been reported, I don't know exactly what happened, but within two days a statement had gone out where they made apologies stating that the person in question had been investigated by HR and forced to seek treatment for anger management issues, and that he had apologized to everyone involved. And I was like, I didn't get an apology. What I did get was him texting me the article essentially as a big fuck you like I got away with it, and I tweeted I remember, I said, Wow, it's amazing to me that gross sexual misconduct is being rebranded as an Angerman tim an issue. Well that fits into and they swept it right under the rug, and I thought, okay, your time will come. By the way, hr is not the place where these complaints should be going absolutely because hr IS isn't is an arm of the company exactly. They're looking out for the better interests of the company, not the employees, although it's billed as being the place where employees should go. And since the very beginning, I've been a staunch supporter of an independent council, so to speaker, an ombudsman coming in to handle any kind of discrimination sexual harassment cases. You know what you would love an organization that lift our voices might want to work with is actually an incredible tech company that one of the higher up female engineers from Uber who had been harassed there, and a couple of other women who went through harassment at various Silicon Valley tech companies started this organization called All Voices, and All Voices is a third party, independent data based company that corporations, films, studios. Any sort of office or company can onboard to be their reporting arm, so all voices takes in all of the reporting, anonymizes it, and gives it back to the company. But it's a third party who helps to hold the company accountable while protecting the employees who are reporting men, women, anyone who works there, everyone in between, so that the company gets the hard facts of what's happening within their walls and doesn't have the ability to try to shrink anyone's experiences through HR. Because it was interesting to me when when the then head of my network, who in my I was very lucky happened to be a woman at the time, found out I was asking to quit my job, which I which I discovered. She didn't find out until six weeks before I actually did. They had hidden this from her, and she said, what's going on? And I had a phone call with her and I ran her through my experiences on the show, and she was just horrified and said, how could they not told me this? I heard there were some there was tension, but no one told me what was happening. I'm sure you were blamed for being hard to work. Oh of course I was branded as not being able to take a dick joke, and I was like, cool, I wasn't aware that that that sexual assault means. I don't want to take a dick joke. Okay, I have a pretty filthy sense of humor. I promise you they're different. And she then said, I'm I'm gonna hire us and completely independent investigator to come and look at this. And I said, well, after what I went through, the six months of retaliation I went through when I did finally bring this to HR, I will not speak to anyone until after I am at least off the set where you know, we're six weeks away from being done. I'll talk to her when I don't have to come to work with these people every day. And when I spoke to her, I said, you know, look at all the transcripts. I know, and I know there were more, but I have confirmed. I know there were thirteen people who went on the record with HR about the behavior of this person in my working environment, multiple people who were assaulted, her, ass etcetera, etcetera. And she looked at me and said, there are no transcripts, and I thought, oh wow. They conducted a whole investigation and they didn't put anything on paper and that convenient. Isn't that convenient? Isn't that convenient? And at that point I just went, you know what, fuck it. You guys do whatever you need to do, But I am not going to be You've you've you've let me be a punching bag and then I got stomped on and I'm just not going to put myself through it again and it and it frustrates me because of what I want is for women who have been through what I went through or what you went through to report. I want them to do that. And I also don't want to lie and say it's going to be easy. And my hope is that organizations like All Voices, My hope is that organizations like yours, you launching this Lift our Voices initiative will mean that when we do report, it actually works rather than becomes the arrow they aim back at us. I know, and we have to at least I know, I have to continue to encourage women to come forward and report because unless we all agree that we're going to do that, we're not going to fix it. Now. Listen, it's not only on the shoulders of women to fix um. And that's why I say that we need men because and first of all, it shouldn't even be called a woman's issue. It's really not a woman's issue. It's predominantly men harassing women. So and so not only should we change it just because it's factually correct to call it a man's issue, but also because men don't pay attention to things. When we call it women's issues, they just you know, and maybe it's well, and they also it's kind of tune out. I mean, it's kind of like going to buy tampons or something. I mean it's like, well, they don't need to really worry about that or think about that, so they kind of just don't think about it, not because they're bad, but because they don't think that it's something they need to care about. And so when we call it a man's issue, we might get their attention on it. That's something else that I found out that's really crucial about this. And the sidebar of that is the responsibility shouldn't only be on women's shoulders. I mean, for God's sake, already doing almost everything, so um, you know, the the idea that we should also solely fix this, we can't. It brings us full circle to we're not in charge because it's not up to us to fix what's done to us. Right, it's up to the people acting in those ways to stop acting. But it's also up to CEOs and people running companies to say the buck stops with me, and I'm not going to tolerate this here and here's the new dynamic and environment that I'm bringing to this corporation. And by the way, we're going to celebrate people who come forward. Imagine how that would change the dynamic and the perception of what people think about they'd want to work there. Yes, if we shifted the perspective and realized that any employee, any woman, or any employee who is risking their well being at work to report something that is toxic at work, they're looking out not not just for themselves, they're looking out for the company. You are saying, our company should be better than this. If you fix this problem, it will get better. That should be celebrated. You should be seen as such a warrior for the corporation you work for when you start willing to highlight a problem. Instead, in the past, it has been more like the Catholic priest problem, where people just put it under the carpet and shift those people to other positions and don't tell anyone what they've done. I mean, it's the same thing with harassment. These men get let go potentially in some cases, in many cases they get to stay on the job and the woman has to go. But let's say the man generally gets let go, they don't tell that. They don't say why he got let go. So in fact, I know people who have been fired for harassment who get new jobs, and I would love to call up the people and say, do you really know why that person was was let go? But we don't. We don't publicize that. So well, look and even the people who look away, not even the harassers. But when we talk about news organizations, when we talk about, for example, the issue at NBC, the cover up of Matt Lower's behavior, Andy Lack and Oppenheim still have their jobs. And there obviously here's the conundrum. They're great television producers, they're clearly good at what they do. But the right it's in writing that they obstructed these investigations, and what what message does that send that we go, well, we'll fire the one guy, but maybe not these guys, because they're also making us a bunch of money, and you know, really they're nice. It's like, well, so you can be nice and be dangerous and then what And also, one of the main calls I've been making two mainly men, is to stop being enablers and bystanders, because what ends up happening when men do that and they don't they think they're just not getting involved, but the toxicity increases inside the workplace when that happens, because it's like a kid putting their hand in the canny jar. They take one cookie and they get away with it. The next time they take two. Same thing. With harassment, somebody says something off color, nobody says in anything. Then they think to themselves, oh, that's acceptable, right, And then some of the enablers are like, oh this is cool. Now I can talk like this right now. They start in on it, right, and it's an exponential it is. And then they tend to hire people who are like you. So if you're a harasser, you hire predators, and now all of your lieutenants think like you do you create an environment that's acceptable, and it keeps rising up and rising up, and before you know it, the whole entire place is nuclear right, and the people who work within it kind of get caught up in it and don't even realize how nuclear it is. Because because it becomes it comes, it becomes the norm. So that is why bystanders and enablers, I know, it takes so much courage to come forward. I documented in my book about how men did just that and guess what happened to them. They were promptly demoted, fired and blacklisted as well because they upset the apple cart. But we still need them in this entire movement to to come forward and help us because when they do, they make a huge difference. When in your tenure at Fox, did you really feel the shift, like the shift of culture, because to your point, you say, even in the way they were covering news when you joined the organization, it's not like it is now. And let's remind our listeners you exited in and then they really went nuclear on this insane partisan I mean, I can't even say partisan, non factual circus. When when did you feel that snowball kind of moving down the mountain to runaway speed? Well, there were so many things all happening at the same time that we're very confounding and that's about where I have to leave it because of my NBA. Interesting, so you can't even talk about when stories started shifting at the network, not not even if they have no relation to your harassment. No, because they might have a relation to my alleged perpetrator and dictates that you know, mandates that. So you can't even say his name. But I mean you can't, but you know it may it may be construed in that and that you're criticised him for things that were told to us. Wow. So so perhaps as an I'll be hypothetical here, let's let's hypothetically say that as you all, as employees of the network, are informed that your stories must take these ever growing conservative bent. You know, you give air time to people like Alex Jones, which would go back to talk about Sandy Hook, not you, obviously the network, the network, you know what I mean, horrifying things that talking about even that under the terms of your n d A could be seen as you defaming Roger. Wow. And hypothetically, if a person is in a position where you know, they have a job that they that they want to key, they're in a conundrum mm hmm. And it's ironic to me too, when we think about the conundrums and what we were just talking about, these sort of double standards for women when the men are bystanders and the culture gets so toxic. Sean Hannity is out there campaigning to bring Bill O'Reilly back to the network, a horrendous sexual predator and assaulter and rapist. I mean, you don't pay out a settlement like Bill O'Reilly had to unless you have done the worst of the worst. And Hannity's out here saying he should come back to Fox. I did speak out about that. I know you did, yes, but justeous it's dumbfounding to me that that either of those men thinks this is an appropriate course of action. Well, and if Sean Hannity has daughters, and I don't even know if he does or not, but and it doesn't even matter if he does, but for society, that's just such an incredible disservice. Yeah, like to to promulgate that men who have allegedly done horrendous things to other human beings should be able to come back in an elevated, top notch position. My question is, what about all the women who have done nothing wrong and never work again. We've done nothing wrong aside from say please don't touch me that way and who never work again? Right? Right or way worse things that happened to that, and they had the courage to come forward, you know, so even and I've expressed this two members of the media, nothing just gets my eyre up in the last three years like this. I will look up on the television screen and I'll see the chiron, you know, floating by on the bottom of the screen, and it will say something like, when is Bill O'Reilly making his comeback? Um, when is Charlie Rose? And when is Matt Lower? I heard that they were trying to plan a show together. When are they making their comeback? And I'm like, three weeks have passed, right, It's almost like it's almost so ingrained in us that we're just waiting for these people men to be able to be forgiven and come back. And as the person you know, who's so ingrained in this movement, I look at that and I see so many wrong things. We should be first of all, never saying that because these men should not be allowed to have any comeback. Sorry, I mean I happened to be a forgiving person, and by the way, I'm representing thousands and thousands of women whose voices have never been heard. So I got an army of women who are now with me. And what about them? What about these scientists and engineers and doctors and people who have killed themselves for the American dream and they don't get it anymore? And we as a society don't care about that at least up until this point. We haven't now part of that could because we didn't know about it. But now we do, so we should be arguing and screaming from the top of the rooftop that these women should have their jobs. And that's what I'm doing with Lift Our Voices is to speak up on behalf of all of these women, to not be forced into silence and have to sign NDAs and to be able to get their jobs back. I can't wait for the day all these nda is getting nullified. Yeah, what can we do to support Lift our Voices? And what can we do to support the legislation you're working on? Thank you with with the aim to ban arbitration, Yes, for sexual harassment. It's how Spill fourteen forty three. You can look it up online and then you can email that link to your member of Congress and say that I stand behind this and I hope you will as well. Because sexual harassment is a political Yes, before somebody harrasses you, they don't ask you what party you're in, so nobody nobody should care. If you're independent, Republican, Democrats, socialist, whatever you are, you should be behind this bill because it's for women. And right now I have a bipartisan coalition working on this and I am very optimistic that this is going to pass. So that is the bill with regard to Lift our Voice as you can simply go to lift our Voices dot com and you can sign up to join our mission, become a part of our army. One of my favorite quotes is and it happens to be anonymous. It's one woman can make a difference, but together we rock the world. And that's what this mission is about, Lift our Voices. I'm here to help all of the women who have not been able to have their voices heard. I'm also, you know, trying to get people like yourself who have a big voice out there to join our mission because it's important that the people who listen to you realize that they can have a voice. By joining this mission, and so also people can simply text lift to seven nine seven nine seven nine, and that will sign them up, you know, right away. Eventually, our hope is that this will not just be eradicating n d A S and pushing legislation with regard to that, but any other way in which women are subjugated. And that's why we decided to call it Lift our Voices, because we didn't want to say stop nd as, even though that's our first mission. We don't want to commit ourselves as to the amount of work that we do, and so Lift our Voices really encompasses, you know, an entire, wide ranging, wide ranging movement. I love it. I just love it. Thanks you've been traveling the country to give workshops to help women and and any men who have been subject to this learned their rights and help them combat sexual misconduct. What are you taking away from those trips? What's what's making you feel hopeful? Because we're sitting here talking about heavy things, But I see that fire in you, and I see how excited you are for the fight and and for what's going to be on the other side of it, for all of us, for for everyone in society, and and so I wonder, what's what's lifting you up about all these interactions you're having with people. Well, so shortly after my resolution, I started the Gretchen Carlson Gift of Courage Fund, and so I have been giving away money to organizations to lift up girls and boys, men and women. One of the initiatives that I started from that was the Gretchen Carlson Leadership Initiative for underprivileged women across our country. Because the number one question that I received after my case was, Okay, well, you might have had the means to hire fancy lawyers, and you had a national platform as a national journalist, but what about the fast food worker at McDonald's. And you know it, really, it really troubled me because honestly, I did not have a great answer for that. And through this initiative, my Leadership Initiative, I was able to create this thirteen city tour so far where we go to two cities and we provide free workshops for these women. We provide food and free childcare, free transportation so that they can come and get legal help, legal advice, and just learn more about the issue, to be empowered to know that their voice matters and I have to tell you it's been one of the one of the things that I've been most proud of over the last three years is seeing that I'm starting to make a difference in the communities that nobody else has cared about up until now, or at least not many people have cared about, and people aren't putting resources, they're not putting resources towards and so the main thing for me was to be able to to put those resources to good work, and so I've been really proud of that. So there. You know, there's a lot of things that I'm working on and juggling at the same time, but I think the central theme is that I'm working to help all women and the next generations so that we can finally eradicate these problems. So cool. So the thing that I love to ask everyone I said across from as the podcast is titled work in Progress, what feels like a work in progress in your life? My entire life has been a work in progress. As I said, my life works in mysterious ways. Right now, this has been the most rewarding work in progress for me. Is um trying to make life in society better for women, And you know, I think finally being recognized as the person that I've always been, which is a fighter for women, and and I feel like I'm so close two making major impactful change and being the final part of that tipping point of the cultural revolution that we're experiencing right now. And if I can pass this legislation, and if lift our voices can get thousands of people to join it, and we have power in numbers, and we can go to corporations and say you can't do this anymore. You know. Wow, I'm I'll feel pretty good about the movement that that I've had a part of. Yeah. Awesome. I can't wait to see it. Thanks, thank you. This show is executive produced by me, Sophia Bush, and sim Sarna. Our supervising producer is Alison Bresnick. Our associate producer is Kate Linley. Our editors are Josh Wendish and Matt Sasaki, and our music was written by Jack Garrett and produced by Mark Foster. This show is brought to you by Cloud to Anatomy