Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: I believe there is limitless potential in our city, and I am desperate for a chance to unleash it. I was kind of flying under the radar, and the moment you actually get credible is when all of the fire comes in. But we were able to escape this horrific war. My mom was a teacher in Sri Lanka. She was selected to become a teacher ambassador to Baltimore. And she came over here in 1970 by herself, in her 30s. On the way back, she called her brother and said, listen, I just finished teaching. I need you to take all the money that I made and I want you to buy me.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Hello, I'm Britt Arnold, president of Tegler Construction and Supply.
[00:00:47] Speaker C: And I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation. And today we continue with our guest series.
We've got a very special guest, Tharu Vignaraja, which I finally have nailed down after quite some time.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Yes, better than my parents.
[00:01:02] Speaker C: I could have thrown the accent there, too, but I saved you.
So through. Thank you so much for taking time and. And we're so excited to have you here because you have such a fascinating story and career. And I love doing the research. But I really love doing this research because you started at such a young age with such a, you know, a storied childhood and the progression. And I've got about a thousand threads that I want to pull on, but as typical, why don't you start us off with your biography?
We really want to know what makes you. You.
[00:01:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I appreciate it. First of all, it is such a pleasure to be here with friends. I'm so excited that you guys are doing this and that you're killing it as you do in every corner of your lives. It seems you guys are role models for so many. I mean that. Thank you.
Look, I have become quite adept at telling a story around my life. I think we all have stories. And one of the unexpected virtues of running for office was you force yourself to kind of look back and find a way to understand how you got to where you are.
It starts with my parents. My parents are retired city school teachers.
My mom taught at poly at the beginning of her career, finished teaching at Morgan State.
My dad started teaching at Edmondson and then Douglas and then Southern and then Western. When he retired, he was the oldest teacher teaching in the state of Maryland.
But the truth is that their story goes back even further.
And this is one of the remarkable things that I learned, like, a year and a half ago. So my mom was born on the right side of the tracks. You know, she was the. The Rebel, daughter of an aristocrat.
And my father was from the wrong side of town. And they actually. My mom was, you know, born as my sister, and I like to say 100 years before she was supposed to.
She didn't want to get married like her sisters did.
She went off to college and became a math teacher when math and women were not in the same sentence, especially in that part of the world.
And when she was a teacher in Sri Lanka, she was selected to become a teacher ambassador to Baltimore. And she came over here in 1970 by herself, in her 30s, and taught. There's a picture in the Pali yearbook of my mom in this beautiful sari, which I guess she wore every day to school.
And eventually she went back, and on the way back, she. She called her brothers, who were living in London and Australia at the time, and said, listen, you know, I just finished teaching. The Sri Lankan rupee versus the US Dollar was, like, a strong win for her. And she was like, I just made a ton of money.
I need you to take all the money that I made teaching math at Poly High School in Baltimore, and I want you to buy me a Volkswagen Beetle.
And they did, and they shipped this Volkswagen Beetle back to Sri Lanka. And she spends her 30s, the 1970s, zipping around Sri Lanka in this Volkswagen Beetle. She eventually, you know, that's not what.
[00:04:10] Speaker B: I thought you were going to say.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: No, no, no. And she begrudgingly ends up, as she would say, relenting to the pressures to get married. She gets married in her late 30s to my father, who happens to be a teacher at the same school.
And my father had kind of clawed his way out of poverty, literally grew up in a mud hut, one of five children to a single mother, and, you know, had found his way into teaching because he was good at it.
And the two of them get married, the war breaks out, and they have two children, me and my little sister, and they have to get out. And my mother, the industrious one, even to this day, she's like the problem solver.
She takes the Volkswagen Beetle that she had bought with money she had made teaching math at Poly High School, and she sells it for four tickets back to America.
And that is how we were able to escape this horrific war.
[00:05:09] Speaker B: We are bringing some very engaging and interesting guests onto our podcast. So please, if you're interested, don't forget to subscribe.
[00:05:18] Speaker A: So.
[00:05:19] Speaker B: So when every episode comes out, you're notified and you can join in on the conversation.
[00:05:24] Speaker A: And we get here and, you know, product of public schools went from Edmondson Heights and Woodlawn to Yale College and Harvard Law School.
Became president of the Harvard Law Review. Clerked on the US Supreme Court for Justice Breyer, thinking I was going to be a law professor.
But then I had this kind of impulse to try to do something in the public sector.
Started my career as a professional prosecutor. Loved it. Loved being a federal prosecutor. Was a city prosecutor, then was deputy attorney general, but saw the frustration with our city and ultimately, like a moth to a flame, it seems like these days, was drawn to politics. It was not the plan.
You look back and you think about how much Baltimore meant to my family, how in many ways it saved their lives, our lives.
I understand better where that impulse comes from, but it wasn't the plan.
I am a big nerd, but I really thought I was going to be teaching constitutional law at Georgetown or something, but I wouldn't have it any other way.
[00:06:26] Speaker C: So, question about your dad. So I don't want to leave that thread before we go. So your dad came from the other side of the tracks, but somehow managed to get enough education that he was able to become a teacher. How did he do that as one of five with a single mom? Because that would.
If you just wrote that story yourself, you'd say, oh, geez, no way. You know, school, whatever. How did he amass enough education to be able to become a teacher?
[00:06:48] Speaker A: It's an amazing fact about Sri Lanka.
They have actually flagged this as one of the most literate countries in the world.
In Sri Lanka, even during this civil war that raged for decades, the families prioritized education.
Every extra disposable dollar did not go to vacations or dinners. It went to getting tutors. So virtually every kid, even the ones that were from families of low means, had extra tutoring. And my father will tell you that he literally.
They didn't have electricity, so he had to study during the day hours.
And his mother taught him math by drawing numbers in the sand and using tamarind seeds. I mean, this is literally how he got it. But he would. And this is one of those, like, I've now seen the walk. He literally did walk three miles each way to school. Right.
And kind of because education was such a priority for the country, not just for his family.
Everybody has a shot, and there's kind of upper limits to how high you can climb. But he was able to be a teacher. When he.
I think I mentioned this, when he retired, he was the oldest teacher teaching in the state of Maryland. He was 80 years old. He is 88 now. And he really did have an affinity for it. In his last year of teaching, this national organization actually gave him this honor.
The organization is actually called Honored, and they have a famous writer write a biography about the person. The person comes down, they get these professional photographers, and it's this beautiful story written by this Pulitzer Prize winning author about my father. And I had never seen him teach.
And so in his last year of teaching, at the author's request, I actually joined him in class just to watch him. And this is a guy who, like, he's still got a little bit of an accent.
You know, my mom was, like, raised at these, you know, pride, fancy schools, and, like, you know, she's got an accent, but it's like almost like a British accent, right As a royalty. Dad was from, you know, and so he. But he found a way to connect with people. Like, if the intellect and kind of commitment to education comes from my mother, the social piece comes from my father. And he will talk to anyone and everyone. He loves it.
And.
And I think that's sort of what he found in teaching. He got a chance to, like, get to know these kids and get to connect with these kids.
I have to tell, if you don't mind, just this story at the very beginning, it became a sort of a mantra of our household.
When my father first came to teach here, my mom had no problems getting a job, very well schooled and all that stuff.
And so she used her connections at Poly, and my father was a little bit of a harder sell. And even though the city was desperate for teachers, he tells this story about when he interviewed at Edmondson High School and the department had said to him, he said, look, this isn't going to be like teaching in your Catholic school in the capital city of Sri Lanka.
They don't wear ties to school.
They're not going to stand up when you walk in. They're not going to. They. They're going to pretend they don't know how to pronounce your name. They're going to pretend like they don't understand you, even though your English is understandable.
Are you sure you can do this? Like, are you sure you can do this? This is Baltimore City public schools.
And my father answered with three words. He said, let me try. He said, let me try. Said, I don't know. He literally said, I don't know. I'm not sure, but let me try, and if I can't, you'll fire me.
And they let him try. And he ended UP teaching for 37 years in the Baltimore city school system and retired as the oldest teacher in the state.
[00:10:46] Speaker C: Wow, that's amazing. What a great story. We'll have to find that honored piece.
[00:10:50] Speaker B: Yeah. And when you're talking about your bio, you went from Baltimore city schools to Yale.
And, like, how.
What happened in between there? Same thing, like your father that allowed you to make that jump.
[00:11:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
So, you know, Woodlawn is just in the county, and it is. It was a tough school.
We had a couple people killed on campus. This is before Columbine and social media.
We kind of, like, almost treated as, like, normal, even though it obviously was not. It was a very tough school, but education was a priority in my house, and that was what we poured our energies into. I look back on how I got into Yale, you know, I was a good standardized test taker. Fine. Like, that obviously levels the playing field.
Brit, you'll appreciate this. On the campaign trail, I made this joke, true story joke that I led my high school soccer team to a 1 in 42 record.
[00:11:56] Speaker C: I remember that.
[00:11:58] Speaker A: I mean, it was a terrible team, but I was the proud captain of this terrible team.
And I assumed that you're applying to Yale, you would write this, like, cerebral essay about something. And it just so happened that I wrote my essay about soccer. The season had just ended, and I was heartbroken. Like, I don't think I realized what it would feel like to have played my last game. I'd been playing since I was a little kid.
I was, like, an all county level player. Right. Like, um. And it really, like, broke me. And I wrote this essay that was, like. I think it started, like, really unimpressively with. I thought I was gonna write about a different topic, but I'm instead gonna write about soccer. Like, that's how it started. Um, and then I poured out my heart about how much soccer had meant to me, um, which seems like a really generic essay. And years later, I was curious, and I had said, you know, how do kids, like, distinguish themselves? And how, like, how does a kid from Woodlawn who has, you know, great grades and great sats, but there's tens of thousands of those kids, like, how do they distinguish themselves? And said, there's one thing that we looked for, and maybe this is what came out in your essay, which is passion.
Like, you can't teach passion.
And now that you're telling me the story about what you wrote about, like, if you can be so passionate about something that you're not actually that good at, like, you're not going to go play soccer at Yale, you were on a crappy team that, you know, got scored on a lot, but you were so passionate about that. We think to ourselves, what happens when this guy finds something he's good at? What happens when he finds his raison d' etre? Mark Twain has this great phrase, the two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you figure out why.
What happens when that passion meets a calling?
And it made sense. I am someone who pours my heart into things.
And the part that I think has been really important is that notwithstanding the fact that I pour my heart into it, when it doesn't work out, I bounce back.
I remember having a conversation with this really studious, successful young man who had run for office in Baltimore unsuccessfully.
He had raised a ton of money. He ran a great campaign. Lots of issues.
The system and the club took some really unfair shots at him and kind of humbled him. And then he left town.
He is married to this wonderful doctor in New York, and he works in finance.
He's living a great life. But he dropped, and I had dinner with him after one of the elections. I lost. And I said, you and I are not that different. Why is it that I get attacked? You get attacked, but you turn around and say, I'm done. I can't do this, like, any. And he gave us a really interesting answer. He said.
He said, you know, it turns out I have a gentle soul, and those attacks really hurt.
And I said, that's true for me, too. Like, they really do bother me. Like, I can't. I can pretend like they don't bother me, but of course they bother me. He said, but the other thing is, I never really lost.
Like, I went from a fancy school to Ivy League institutions to the White House, and never really, like. And I was like, oh, my God, that makes so much sense. I've lost a lot. Like, I've actually practiced losing at things that I care deeply about.
I think that kind of learned resilience has been awfully important that I don't think they could have seen in that essay. But that's my best explanation.
I got a little lucky, but Woodlawn didn't send a lot of kids to. To Ivy League schools. But.
But I was one of the lucky ones.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: So I want to follow on just chronologically shortly thereafter. So you got to clerk for Judge Stephen Brier, right?
[00:16:11] Speaker A: Justice Brier.
[00:16:12] Speaker C: I'm sorry. No, no, no, Justice. Yes. Excuse me, apologies.
Who was appointed by Clinton in 1994. And I just did some research on some of the cases that I believe you would around on just trying to figure out, you know, when you would have been there. And are there any cases that stick out because pointed by Clinton and listen by today's standards, very centrist, right? Not then. I mean, he was way left, but centrist. And from what I read on Justice Breyer, comparable the decisions that I read that he was majority on and when weighed in on, very centrist by today's standards, any of those decisions that had a profound effect on your understanding of things or change maybe your course in how you viewed a certain topic or issue that you thought you knew.
[00:17:00] Speaker A: It's a really thoughtful question, Mick. And there is one case that I can't help but talk about, and I will in just a second involved the resegregation of public schools.
But I just got to say something about Justice Breyer first.
He was a real institutionalist. He still is.
He very much believes in the institution of the Supreme Court word. And in his view, though he was appointed by a president of one particular party, he never really conceived of himself that way.
He really did believe and would often emphasize in his public addresses how many decisions were 9 0. You know, he would say, look, of the thousands of petitions to the Supreme Court, we take less than 100 of them. And these are the cases that are the most controversial cases in the country. They are here because they are issues of real significance where the lower courts are divided. Right. The Maryland Supreme Court and the Minnesota Supreme Court have different interpretations of the First Amendment. The Second Circuit and the Ninth Circuit and the Seventh Circuit are on one side, and the Fourth Circuit and the Eighth Circuit and the Fifth Circuit are on another. These are really difficult issues. And they come to the Supreme Court. And even with respect to those issues, there's a huge number of cases that are 90 decisions where justices appointed by Democrats and Republicans come to the same view on the interpretation of that statute or interpretation of the Constitution. And he always emphasized that because he said, you only hear about the five, four decisions that have great social significance. Abortion, the death penalty, campaign finance. But there's a whole bunch of other really important decisions, the most important decisions in the country that don't get that play and are often uncontroversial.
It was remarkable to me that the Supreme Court's rebuke of President Trump's, you know, sending the immigrant to El Salvador, that was a 90 decision.
You know, people that were appointed by Donald Trump not that long ago said, no, you're not allowed to do that.
And I think Justice Breyer would want the world to know how apolitical the Supreme Court can and should be and in fact is on a huge number of issues. We can't pretend that Bush vs Gore didn't have a political dimension to it.
Those are the cases in many respects that he worried about. But he would actually tell you that he's got this great address. I always find it very, very inspiring. He would talk about how he'd give these talks in Eastern, Eastern Europe or in Europe and people would say, okay, you've told us this great story about the rule of law in America, but how does it really work? Who do you bribe? How do you really win the cases? And he's like, no, no, no, it really is that way. But then he would say to the public, but let's not pat ourselves on the back too much. This hasn't always how it's been. We actually had to earn that level of credibility with the public where the rule of law was honored. And he would go back to Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, this case involving Native Americans.
John Marshall is the justice that wrote the decision. Andrew Jackson, the President, famously said, or is reported to have said, john Marshall has made his decision. Now let me see him enforce it.
Just ignore the decision. And the Trail of tears followed by Fast forward to the next century. Brown vs Board of Education is decreed as the law of the land. Unanimous per curiam decision. Supreme Court has spoken.
And in Little Rock, Arkansas, the governor of Arkansas orders the state militia to block the schoolhouse doors to prevent the integration of Little Rock Central High School.
President Eisenhower had to deploy the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, federalized the state militia and those kids, the Little Rock Nine, were walked into school by paratroopers.
And so not that long ago, decisions came out by the Supreme Court and they were just ignored. But until recently, and I'm not trying to turn this political, but when Justice Breyer was giving the speech when I was clerking, he would say, whether it's Bush versus Gore or abortion or the death penalty, the most controversial issues in this country, once the Supreme Court makes the decision, the country listens. It honors that decision. They can disagree, they can get upset about it. Even Bush versus Gore, you know, Vice President Gore said congratulations and the peaceful transfer of power.
I think that was a really important lesson. It stayed with me. It's obviously particularly relevant. But the most controversial case of our term involved the desegregation or resegregation of public schools. This is a little known fact and actually I'll start By saying, just a couple years ago, we published a reprint of Justice Breyer's dissent from this case. And I did a long introduction with Brookings.
The title is Breaking the Promise of Brown the Resegregation of America's Schools. And it reported, just as he had reported 15 years earlier when he wrote this dissent, that the worst kept secret in America is how stubbornly segregated our public schools are by race. In fact, today's public schools are more segregated by race than at any point since 1967.
They are more all black and more all white than they were since any point since 1967. The pinnacle of integration in this country was 1988. That was the best, most integrated year in the country.
And I remember a couple of things about this. It was a five, it was five, four decision, very controversial.
Still to this day, I think Justice Breyer would say is the most important dissent that he has written, maybe the most important opinion that he has written.
And it was an honor to have a chance to work on it. We all did. It was a really, really important case.
And I remember this reaction he had to a first draft.
And it was such a lesson in how to be a good lawyer, how to be a good advocate.
You know, I had worked on this draft. Sleepless nights. This is like, I know how important this is. I'm sitting here thinking, I've written the best thing I've ever written in my life.
These passages are going to echo through textbooks and history books.
Every sentence is, you know, sculpted with poetry.
He reads it and comes back out. And I don't think he'd mind me, you know, breaking this. He's like, no, no, no, no, no.
[00:23:55] Speaker C: Can I interrupt for a second? So give us just a quick inside dynamic. You were a clerk. There were multiple of you. Okay, so how many?
[00:24:01] Speaker A: Just each of the nine justices has four clerks.
[00:24:04] Speaker C: Okay, got it. So. But still a lot of autonomy, right? And a lot of one on one.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Extraordinary, really, is you get to know the justice, you actually also get a chance to get to know some of the other justices. And they were all amazing. I mean, they really were.
And so draft comes and he does not like it one bit.
And he. He says to me, and I think it's in front of the clerks, he says, no, no, no, no, no. This will not do.
You have to earn it. You have to earn it. And I didn't know what it meant when he first said it. I remember being like, I kind of nodded, like I did, but I.
And he said, I want, you know, 20 pages of even handed history, no adjectives, no embellishment. I want you to tell the story of what happened in Seattle, Washington, and Louisville, Kentucky, the places where these two cases were coming out of. Tell that history without any tilting of the story. And then I want 20 pages of even handed legal analysis.
No frills, no adjectives. Tell the audience what the law is, and then you can.
Then you can tell them the sky is falling. You have to earn it.
And he said, this will. What you've written will not convince anyone who's not already convinced. It'll make the people that are already convinced more mad. But it will not take people on the other side and make them think twice. And it certainly won't take people that are on the fence and bring them to your side. And it was such an insight about how you have to advocate, because if you just kind of scream and shout, you'll rile up your side. But if you're trying to actually build consensus, if you're trying to persuade a jury or a judge of something that they're a little skeptical of, all of the outrage and all the poetry won't actually make people change their minds.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: Wow, that's a great lesson. I mean, just so applicable to everything.
[00:26:08] Speaker C: In life, I think, in such a lost art in today's exact world, right, where that volume. By volume, I mean noise, where it would just be about getting louder to not be able to hear the other side versus ever doing anything about building consensus or earning it.
[00:26:24] Speaker A: Like you said, I think it's very applicable in the business context when you're making sales, when you're making pitches, you know, when you're talking to a used car salesman and they're immediately authentic. Tell immediately.
I remember when I was first running for office, one of my biggest hesitations was people never doubted my motives. When I was a federal prosecutor, when I was deputy attorney general, they believed genuinely that this guy who had done a lot of things in his career and had options, was committed to doing public service.
They weren't wondering what I was angling for next. But the moment you run for politics, I was worried that everybody would look at everything I said through this sort of prism of cynicism.
And I realized really quickly, people have a pretty good bullshit meter. They can tell when you're being inauthentic, when you're not saying. And so one of the great virtues, whether it's in business or law, as an advocate or in politics, is if you just honor the simple principle of telling the truth, of being forthright about your positions, on things, people will at least believe you. They may not be convinced or agree. They may not agree, but they're not going to be like, he's just saying it to get ahead.
[00:27:41] Speaker B: One thing I, and this is not a question for you through, this is just a testament to what you've, you've said.
I think I know Mick, and I can agree that you are one of the most relentless, committed, resilient. That's exactly my next word, resilient person we have ever met. I'm not saying that because you're here. You're actually here because, because we believe in that and we're drawn to you. And because of that, we have seen you go through different elections and, you know, you're, you're in the spotlight all the time, so you're, you're taking hits. People are creating their own narratives, and that's, I can only imagine how challenging that is. And you always come back and you're always positive, and you just keep moving forward. And that is, that's hard and it's hard to find. So that is just a statement, period.
[00:28:30] Speaker A: I, I, I appreciate it. And I, I, you know, I can't remember who said it about, you know, every plan is great until you get punched in the face.
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Yeah, right.
[00:28:41] Speaker B: Mike Tyson.
[00:28:41] Speaker C: Yeah, Mike Tyson.
You know, the philosopher Mike Tyson, the great Mike Tyson once said, Mike Tyson.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: I don't think I knew what it meant to see the ugly side of politics until you got punched in the face.
And I remember the first time it happened, I was shocked. I was like, because there are things that are weaknesses that are failures that you know about yourself. Right. Like, nobody doesn't realize that they screwed up when they screwed up, those things when they get shared and candidly, and this is one of the hardest things to say, some of the stuff that's been said about me is actually fair.
It reflects something that I've worked on, something that I hope I've grown from. But it wasn't unfair to criticize me for some of those things.
Those ones, they hit a different way because you're like, I want to say this is profoundly unfair. And maybe even politically, that's the right thing to say, but it's not unfair. That is something that I've had to grow out of or grow from.
The stuff that is like the curveball is the stuff that's not true. Right.
I'm sure you remember this great controversy around the Green Mount traffic stop. Oh, yeah, sure.
[00:30:05] Speaker C: And by the way, that was on the eve of the election, and it was Right there. Because we were in a lot of contact at that time.
[00:30:13] Speaker A: I mean, it's a really remarkable thing about the dynamics of politics, which I'll sort of return about sort of when these attacks come and what motivates them and who brings them.
But I remember first hearing that somebody had a video of me, like essentially the story, the scuttlebutt was like, through buying drugs with a prostitute on Greymouth. And I was like, I think there's a lot of things that can be said about me, but that cannot be said about. That is not. You're talking to a guy who hasn't smoked a cigarette, right? The whole thing just didn't.
And I remember like being puzzled as what it could be. And then it clicked, right? I, you know, this friend of mine had come to town, she's a lawyer, and I offered her a tour, a tour I've given probably two dozen times to people visiting from. And I show them the best of the city and the worst of the city. And Greenmount Avenue, the particular block where this traffic stop happened, is where I prosecuted this very high profile murder and gang case. And the impact of that on the community is part of the story. I'm proud of it. You know, in a way it is a little like self congratulatory, that part of the tour. But I want them to see that, like you can make neighborhoods better.
The distance between the truth of that story and what was being said about it was so alarming.
And it was the first time I realized that expression a lie can get around the world before the truth gets out of bed. Like we actually called a press conference and said, oh my God, we're hearing that our opponents are going to use this. Like, we want to tell you what happened. What's this about? All of it. And tried to get ahead of it. But before that could actually hit people's ears, there were so many other people committed to spreading the spirit. That was hard.
And I still meet people that are like, that are advocates of you, that are like, you know, I totally understand.
You know, I too have bought drugs on Green Mountain. And I'm like, oh, no, no, no. I appreciate your. Appreciate your enthusiasm and your support, but thank you for commiserating what happened.
And you know, you got to kind of laugh about it in the moment. You do have to put on a brave face.
And I think, you know, for what it is worth, it is the product of two things aside from what I'd already said. One of them is really wanting something like really believing that this is Worth it. You know, I believe. And again, this is one of the things you can tell from the center of my voice that I genuinely believe it. Like I believe there is limitless potential in our city and I am desperate for a chance to unleash it. That's what I want to do. That's, you know, that is my calling. Feels like a calling.
So you gotta want it.
The other piece is.
It is what I think we would want to see our leaders do in the face of adversity. It is trying to be the leader that you believe the city deserves.
It isn't one that's hiding. It isn't one that's retreating. It isn't one that gives up. It isn't one that lies about it.
It's one that kind of faces the music, tells as clear and honest a version of it as you can, and then tries to get back to the real issues.
The hard thing is in the crucible of politics. And Mick, you'd mentioned before that lots of people are dragged into this new world of social media and get there 15 minutes and sometimes is not great.
I think the part that is really hard in the context of politics is it's not just the story and the gossip train. It's that people put a lot of money behind advertising. So it gets to everyone.
You know, the week before the Green Mount story broke, there had just been public independent polling that had us leading the mayor's race. We had just announced that we'd raised more money than anyone else. We were in a really great spot. All of a sudden this, you know, out of nowhere candidate was in a real contender seat for the, the mayor position of Baltimore. And that's when the knives get sharpened. Right. I was kind of flying under the radar. And the moment you actually get credible is when all of the fire comes in. And if you look at our races, the, the hardest thing about being.
Not being an elected official already, where the public kind of has a sense of you, those attacks cut through you like razor wire. You have no defense. Like you don't have a preexisting identity of who you are. So when those mass advertising campaigns are run, it really gets to define you in ways that are. That are tough.
[00:34:59] Speaker C: Right.
As I recall, about that time too, there was another candidate that entered the race as well. Mary.
[00:35:05] Speaker A: Mary Miller.
[00:35:06] Speaker C: Mary Miller, Right. Which, which had a Perot effect to it. Right. Where you know, whatever that, whatever that like minded contingent which would be heading in that general direction, it was split in that moment, which certainly made it tough.
[00:35:19] Speaker A: I believe it was a fascinating race from just a pure political perspective, because it wasn't as though Brandon Scott, who ultimately won the race, won with like 60% of the vote. He won the majority of his particular lane. Right. This sort of like, you know, ultra liberal, you know, young guy, you know, the cool lane, but that sort of liberal lane that is actually not the majority of Democratic voters in Baltimore. There was another lane, which was sort of the institutional. So people that got to vote for the people that have been there before. Sheila Dixon and Jack Young split that lane, and had they not split that lane, Sheila might have been mayor. And then there was the lane of people that wanted something completely different. That was actually the biggest lane. But Theroux and Mary Miller and TJ Smith ended up splitting that lane. And so in a weird way, Brandon was able to benefit from consolidated support within that relatively narrow lane, whereas the other lanes got kind of split up.
And you don't think about politics that way because you just think, like, one person wins with 51% and the other person. That's actually not what primaries look like. And in a city like Baltimore, where the Democratic primary does decide the mayorship, it's way more complicated.
[00:36:35] Speaker C: Yeah, no, interesting. Good. And. And interesting walk down memory lane because we were in the throws of it.
[00:36:39] Speaker A: Right.
[00:36:39] Speaker C: We were city. We were city residents. And. And right next to you and in constant contact and just watching all that play out real time. So interesting. And thank you.
[00:36:48] Speaker B: Question for you.
As you're working through challenges, but actually both your ups, your downs, your highs, your lows, I know you're not doing it alone. Even though you are the one that's always in the spotlight, for better or worse, who. Who do you surround yourself? Who is your support system in helping you navigate? Because politics are hard. And I know you have to have some really strong support system to continue to do what you do.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, there are two groups that are omnipresent.
One of them is my family.
You know, I've got this amazing sister, amazing son, my parents. You know, that group is sort of your steady rock. And the best thing about them, actually very similar to the second group, is they will tell you when you've done wrong too. Right. There is no hesitation when they're like, that was a terrible debate or, that was a terrible speech.
The other group was some of my best friends from high school and college.
There's this group of us from high school that I'm still really close to. We do an almost annual reunion, a group of my buddies from college that Are that are sort of always there. And whether I'm sort of in touch with them every week or every year, they're the folks that knew you when you were not anybody that anybody would recognize. Right. They knew you at your core. And when you were sort of daydreaming about the things that you do now.
You know, when there are people that have known you longer than they didn't know you, those people are really, really important to me.
And I have leaned on them through thick and thin.
You know, they are often the ones that are like, all right, so when do we, you know, get ready for the next race? Like, they're. They're almost there. Being like, I don't know if you're thinking about it the root, but we already think, you know, that was a bad break, but we're gonna. We're not giving up.
And then in each of these campaigns, one of the extraordinary blessings is people come out of the woodworks. It's not the people that you would necessarily expect to be.
The industry calls them super volunteers. They feel like family.
They're people that so believe in your vision.
They're not just donors. They're more than that. Right. They're organizers. They're your kitchen cabinet.
And interestingly, in each of my races, I've been blessed with kind of different sets of them. You know, there's overlap. They always.
But it often is like, the bandwidth that the other person has at that chapter in their life to invest. I remember I had one incredible supporter, and when it didn't work out, I think he took it harder than I did.
And it's almost like they really do believe in what they're doing because of what you've inspired them to think about the city.
I have been so blessed to have those people.
They're the ones. You know, when we decided hard decision to drop out and endorse Sheila Dixon in the previous race, that was a hard call, right? Like, I'm one who wants to run through the finish line. And, you know, even if we're going to lose to Perry Hall 16 0. Like, we're going to finish the game.
That's a true story, unfortunately.
The reality, though, is that when we made that decision, I brought so many of the people that I felt like were owed an explanation and talked them through it. And at the beginning, there was a lot of like, this is crazy, Theroux. You can't do this. We believed in you. Why don't you believe in yourself? Let's see what the results are. I don't believe the polls.
But after that conversation has had at the end, there's a remarkable, like, we got your back.
We. We. We got you.
I don't know that I would be able to do it without those things. Like, I. I talked to my therapist about this.
[00:40:48] Speaker C: I'm like, we call them brain coaches here, by the way.
[00:40:52] Speaker A: The. Why is it that you're not only willing to run and lose and run again, right? But why is it that you like it so much? Like, I love the act of running. It, like, brings. And I've come to understand it. Part of it is the people person. The extrovert in me. The extrovert in me loves that I get an excuse to meet people all around the city and learn their stories and talk to them about mine. Like, the extrovert, the. My father's side that Gene gets Joy.
The nerd in me loves it, right? The intellectual in me that gets to see these different problems and come up with solutions, genuinely believing that there are answers to so many of these kind of obvious, almost pedestrian problems.
And then there's a third part, which is the one that took a little bit longer to decipher, which is the optimist in me. I would run into these rooms and run into people, and they would say, theroux, why are you running? Like, nothing's going to change. The city is so broken, it's never going to get better.
And then you say, can I share with you my perspective for a few minutes? And they got to give you, like, five or 10 minutes. It can't be done in 90 seconds. But if they give you five or 10 minutes, you can almost sort of see, like, an injection of hope going into their veins. And they walk out of the conversation being like, all right, maybe we can turn this around. Maybe this narrative that this stuff is broken and we was here before I was born, and therefore we need another 20 years. Maybe that's all bullshit. Maybe actually there are some really obvious, smart solutions to these problems. And when you have been blessed with loving to communicate and trying really hard to communicate clearly and well, you can convince them like a juror, like a judge, you can convince them to go from being a skeptic about the future of the city to an optimist.
And that joy, it's selfish, right? But, like, there's an adrenaline rush out of coming up with something that makes people feel good about their city, that the, The. The core team, that was what they delivered to me, like, every day. And I. I certainly don't think I could have done it without Them.
[00:43:07] Speaker C: So what do you think?
You know, Baltimore, right?
We operated in one zip code in Baltimore for. For 89 years and. And finally moved out to the county.
And I agree. I mean, if you look at the mounting challenges, right, Whether it's education and just a general lack of hope in the younger people in Baltimore, it seems like insurmountable, or it's going to take so much time that why would you possibly even start? And then. Then it also comes down to leadership and picking leadership, and for me, being frustrated with our citizens and constituents and doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result versus just starting. And let's just stay on that point for a second. What would a start look like? Because, you know, it's an elephant and had. And if you look at the elephant, you're like, how the hell am I going to eat all this at once? And the answer is one bite at a time.
What would.
[00:44:03] Speaker A: What would.
[00:44:04] Speaker C: What would be a reasonable start to eating this elephant one bite at a time that would keep people from getting so wrapped around the entire meal that they would want to shut down and quit?
[00:44:15] Speaker A: Look, I will spare you guys the long stump speech, but I will tell you there are some relatively straightforward things that you could do very quickly that would get the spin wheel turning in the right direction.
[00:44:28] Speaker C: Right. And it would at least infuse some of that optimism, because that's what we need, some positivity and some optimism and some hope.
[00:44:34] Speaker A: Yep. You know, in some respects, one of the advantages that our current mayor has is he is living at a time when homicides in particular are dropping across the country. Right.
And there's lots of theories on what it is. One is that we're far enough out of COVID There was a spike during COVID Baltimore had already spiked after Freddie Gray, but.
But there was a spike during COVID And so that is retreating. The other one is that that kind of really frustrating moment where there was real talk of abolishing the police, which I found, you know, unpersuasive, to put.
[00:45:14] Speaker C: It politely, or even preposterous.
That's how I experienced. It was preposterous.
[00:45:19] Speaker A: You know, not realizing the police are part of the solution, not the problem. All of us think that there's reforms that could be had, of course, but that also has retreated. I think the sort of pendulum has sort of swung back to a place where we are appreciative of the important work that police do. Those two trend lines, frankly, across the nation have benefited Baltimore as they have other cities. And so getting Crime a little bit better is part of it. The problem is people don't feel safer.
Even if the homicide rate has come down significantly, all of those other crimes and the failure to tell a good story around the successes has resulted in people still feeling like, I can't live in that neighborhood. I don't wanna.
I just met with some residents in Federal Hill and they were providing me a list of all of the violent crimes that had happened in Federal Hill. You know, this is rapes and armed robberies and carjackings and assaults. And I'm like, oh, that's why you're not convinced that that crime is on the down low is being reduced. Because the one or two homicides that you once upon a time had now is only one homicide doesn't actually make you feel better. And the carjackings and the armed robberies and everything else is still happening. And I'm not talking about petty drug dealing or, you know, public urination. These are violent crimes that are still happening.
You gotta take that on and you've gotta be able to tell that story. I wanna. You know, we had sort of laid out this plan that within a few months we were going to see dramatic reductions in these violent crime numbers. And we would then turn around and go to every newspaper that wrote a story about how Baltimore was the most violent city in America. USA Today, Washington Post, the Economist, and say, look, what you reported was accurate when you reported it, but you owe us one. And we've done an extraordinary thing, and we want you to tell the world about what is happening in Baltimore. Baltimore, that's one part of it. Cutting property taxes. And not cutting property taxes by like 1 1/2% over, but cutting property taxes in half, which is what they should do.
You know, those are the kinds of public signals that you send into the market, into communities that say, something's different here. And look, I'm a broken record on this. This does require leadership. It requires not only the willingness to do things that seem unpopular, at least within your party or within the club, as I often refer. It's not even Democrats. I mean, there's huge swaths of Democrats in West Baltimore, in Edmondson Village, in East Baltimore that very much want police to do their job, that very much want school choice, that very much want property taxes to be cut in half.
And so it's not even like, oh, that's not what Democrats want. That is what Democrats want. But they, the club doesn't want it. You gotta have somebody independent and courageous enough to sort of say this conventional Wisdom is nonsense. We're gonna try something different. And then you have to have somebody who can tell that story.
And I know it can be done because virtually every other American city has.
[00:48:23] Speaker C: Done it, especially Detroit.
[00:48:24] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:48:24] Speaker C: There's this great story about the mayor of Detroit returning.
[00:48:27] Speaker A: I was just gonna say. And in each of these stories, it is often a small group of people with a mayor who was willing to do things that before were not done. Detroit, Washington, D.C. new York City, Rudy Giuliani. I'm not. I can't defend who he has become, but he was a hell of a mayor.
And New York City changed dramatically on his watch, almost single handedly.
And in Baltimore, where we have the strongest mayor model in the nation, there is no mayor in this country that has more power than the mayor of Baltimore.
You can make those things happen very quickly. And when you decide not to, it's really frustrating.
[00:49:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Interesting. And thank you.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: Why does the mayor of Baltimore have more power?
[00:49:13] Speaker A: So it is structural. Literally. The mayor appoints the heads of virtually every agency.
They all serve at the pleasure. The police commissioner, the head of dot, all of those are mayoral appointments. The mayor appoints the members of the school board, or majority of them, who then selects the, the, the, the CEO of schools. The mayor controls a majority of the board of estimates. So you have the power of the purse. So even where the money gets spent and what. The mayor has the power, the mayor has the veto power.
So if you control a majority of the board of estimates, you appoint every city agency head they serve at the pleasure. You appoint a majority of the board. You set the tax rate. The budget is set by the mayor's office. That tax rate each year that is set is literally set by the mayor.
Those are things that other cities have diffused.
And there's a lot of folks that say, well, gosh, it sounds like we should reduce the power of the mayor. And I say you complain about the power that the mayor has. When you have a bad mayor. If you had a good mayor, it's just like having a good CEO. You want a strong CEO model when you have a strong CEO, because they need to get things done. They need to be able to fire and hire and rebuild culture.
If you have to, like ask permission and kind of slow things down at every turn.
You got to build some consensus. There's obviously some wisdom in that, but you've got to have the ability to pull those levers quickly if you're going to want to make things change quickly. Right.
[00:50:43] Speaker C: And so just back to our former conversation. We're just talking about the, the election where you had five candidates. Right. And cut. So you would actually have a situation where, because of the way Baltimore structured politically, where the, the winner of the Democratic primary is ultimately the mayor with far less than anything that looks like a majority, and then step into what has a dictatorship type feel to it. Right. As it relates to all of those appointees. And the democracy stops over here, where. With far less than anything that looks like majority, which is an interesting structure.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Absolutely. And because of the power of incumbency. Right. Incumbents tend to win because of name recognition. That's the stuff that you got to overcome.
Once you get in, you get to stay.
And I think that's one of the really hard things when you think about, like, the glacially slow pace of change. It's like a person wins and they're not just there for four years.
They used to be there for 12 or 16. They're at least now there for eight. That can be a long time for a small business, for a family that's thinking about raising their kids in the city being like, oh, we'll just wait eight years. Our kid's gonna go from third grade to graduating from high school.
That's too much to ask.
[00:51:54] Speaker C: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. And then we celebrate that the population of the city went up on a decline. We went up by two people and celebrate coming down from a million to 600, 1,000. Right. Or whatever the, the latest numbers are.
[00:52:06] Speaker A: I think it was down 65,000. And, and here's the part of the story that they don't tell you. And I'm gonna. I, I speak very openly about race.
The challenge in Baltimore is it is not white flight from the city. It is black flight. It is middle and upper middle class black families that are fleeing for the suburbs for exactly the reasons that you would predict. High crime, high property taxes, tough, terrible schools.
They don't want their kids going to those schools or walking those streets any more than anyone else does from any part of the city. But they have options. If you, you know, when I was growing up, Pikesville High School was, you know, 95% white, 95% Jewish.
Today, Pikesville High School is 45% black. That's great for public Pikesville High School, it is terrible for my city because those are families that have spent generations in Baltimore that are saying, no, we're going to, we're going to find a place, you know, two miles north of here that has all of the things that we want for our children and have our kids go to Pikesville instead of one of these city schools. And for each one of those families that leaves, what you're left with is cohorts of students that are even harder to educate. Right. It's like some of the most engaged parents and their children are the ones that are leaving because they have the ability to.
So even when you look at the population increase that current politicians are crowing about, if you break that out demographically, if you break that out by neighborhoods, the white L is becoming more dense. So the spine of the city has more people moving in. So there's more. That's great. Wonderful. No objection to it. But the black butterfly, as people refer to, that's where we're hemorrhaging people to the county.
[00:53:51] Speaker C: Speak to the white owl for a second because that's a rather local term. Just build that out for a second for some of our out of town listeners.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, Baltimore is a fascinating story, like so many others in terms of racial dynamics. You know, after Brown versus Board of Education, there was this sort of white flight from cities, and the populations that remained tend to be scattered in particular spaces. And a professor actually coined. Coined this term the black butterfly. If you look at the map of Baltimore, if you draw essentially an L literally right down the spine of the city and then kind of following the water to the southeast, that is where the most prosperous neighborhoods are. High density, high white population, the remainder of the city looks like a butterfly. And they refer to it as the black butterfly.
In Baltimore, the white L is becoming more populous. The black butterfly is hemorrhaging people to the county. And that's got to break your heart to think that families that have been here for generations are calling it quits.
And I love that new people are coming here, and we hope they will stay.
But the population gain is not because we've reversed the trends in the black butterfly. It's just that there's fewer and fewer people to leave from those areas. And. And the white L is continuing to grow.
[00:55:09] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. Good. And thank you. That's. That's it. Yeah. There's. There's so many nuances of. Baltimore is a 200-year-old city. And, and I was on the phone with someone recently and I kept saying, baltimore city, Baltimore City, for example, things that we just take for granted. And he finally said, why? Because he was from Dallas. He said, why do you keep calling it Baltimore city? I mean, isn't it? And I said, oh, good point. Let me, let me explain this to you. And, and the idea that we have a City and a county and one's 530 some thousand. But if you took the populace inside of the Beltway, it would be in the top five largest cities in the country. But we'd cut it up in such a way where the, the, you know, the city is in such a difficult situation.
[00:55:48] Speaker A: If you think about all the assets that this city has, I mean, two major sports franchises, the Orioles are not doing what I think we all thought they were going to do, but you know, two major successful sports franchises, a deep water pool, some of the best institutions, the best hospital in the known world, this location between the political and financial capitals of the universe.
That's an extraordinary set of things to squander. I mean, when you've got all that going, Cincinnati does not have this going for it, right? Charlotte, Nashville, Nashville. I mean, these cities that are finding ways to grow and define themselves and be the beacon of these specific industries, they are doing that with none of the assets. I just rattled off. Nashville does not have the Ravens or the Orioles. It does not have a deepwater port. It does not have a location between D.C. and New York. And yet they have found a way through leadership to turn that city in a really, really positive direction. It's one of the reasons why I think cities can prosper so quickly when there's only two presidents of the Harvard Law Review that, that I've ever run for office.
Barack Obama was one and I am the second.
[00:56:57] Speaker C: Well, that's a cool fact.
[00:56:58] Speaker A: It's a cool fact.
[00:56:59] Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty cool. It's pretty cool.
You gotta hear everybody, listen up, everybody.
[00:57:03] Speaker A: I remember saying everybody else was smart enough to go become the head of a law firm or some dean of a law school.
But the part of it that I actually think is true, and this is an admission, is there is a great ambition to that. Right? Barack Obama was not a slouch when he decided to run for office, when he decided not to do a Supreme Court clerkship, and he certainly could have. First black president of the Harvard Law Review, decides to go back to the south side of Chicago and starts being an organizer. That is a person who knew what he wanted to do and thought he could make a bigger difference than being the dean of a law school or the partner, you know, the managing partner of a major law firm.
I want to fix this city that has so much potential. I think that's a better end to the story I started telling you about my mom and dad coming here.
Would my mom and dad be proud of me no matter what? Yes. Would they love to see that Theroux is the managing partner of something? Sure.
But when you think about that kind of extraordinary American story, I often say my sister and I didn't live American dream. Our parents did. They're the ones that came over here with $200 in their pockets and built a life for their family. We're the beneficiaries of it. But the end of that story, I don't think is supposed to be. And then he was the managing partner of a multinational law firm.
I love being a lawyer. I have had the joy of taking on a lot of really important causes and cases when others wouldn't.
But at the end of the day, I can't pretend like my dream isn't still to make a difference in Baltimore.
[00:58:40] Speaker C: So let me. Let's touch on that one, because you talked about some law cases, and one that keeps popping up and has been incredibly followed nationally and probably even globally is the Adnan Syed case, which keeps coming back up. And. And I think I was intrigued recently when it popped back up and you popped back up. You know, that's. That's a number of years. And to. To bring it back up in front of the courts and. And litigate it again. Right. And you, without question, felt the need to come out and speak about it.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Why.
[00:59:12] Speaker C: Why are you, to this day, still so passionate about that case and the idea that the outcome was right the first time and should not be overturned?
[00:59:22] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, in part, the challenge of being a prosecutor is you can't speak very much about pending cases.
And while we were successfully litigating it before the court, nobody in the podcast world is reading these appellate briefs. Right. So they get their version of what happened in this very high profile, very tragic murder case that happened at my high school, at Woodlawn High School.
They get that from a podcast, which is incredibly entertaining, incredibly well done, but is incomplete and doesn't share a lot of the information that was ultimately able to convince the judges that Mr. Syed was rightfully convicted and his conviction, you know, was restored.
I have remained largely, you know, not vocal about it, but I will tell you some of the things that I have said in the public about that particular case, which is.
Your job as a prosecutor is not to do what is popular. It is to do what is just.
And sometimes what is popular is not just, and what is just is not popular, but your job is to always and only do what is just. And the challenge with one of these cases where it sort of takes a life on its own and a Bunch of sort of, you know, armchair lawyers and jurors suddenly think they know what happened or why there is or is not reasonable doubt. Like, I'm as skeptical of the people that are like, oh, he's definitely guilty, as I am of the people that are of the view that he's definitely innocent. Because I will say, look, come back to me after you've read all the briefs, like, listen to both sides, and then we should have a conversation. I'm happy to talk about it. I do think it's important for prosecutors, especially as we see the politicization of this, to remind themselves of their oath.
Your job is to strike strong blows, but to strike fair ones, to strike just ones.
And it is just as much an injustice for a wrongfully convicted person to be held in prison. You know, I have worked on cases of true innocence. It is also an injustice when a person who is rightly convicted is able to ride a kind of tide of popular sentiment to try to get out of jail when they deserve to be there. And so, you know, I, I, I was, I had a proud and long career as a prosecutor. I think it is really important work, especially in cities like Baltimore. And I think one of our commitments that remains is to make sure that you're doing not just what is popular, but more importantly what is just.
[01:02:07] Speaker C: Is there a time when you got it wrong? And let me, let me, let me build out on that, where going into the case, you did your homework and you did the analysis and you forged ahead as the prosecutor, and you didn't get to the point where there was a wrongful conviction, but something materialized along the way that the defense brought forward, and you thought, oh, hell, here I am halfway through and I'm getting this wrong or I got it wrong.
[01:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:02:31] Speaker C: And what do you do?
[01:02:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, this was a case that it was not indicted by my unit, but it was sort of inherited by my unit, so the case was sort of transferred to my unit. So we didn't sort of know the full story at the outset. You know, often, especially as a federal prosecutor, you're investigating the case, you're deciding which charges to bring, you're presenting it to the grand jury in Baltimore City partly because of volume that sometimes is being done by others and then handed over to, to for homicides, that's not true. But for some of these, you know, less serious crimes, prosecutors can inherit cases from other folks. And this was one. I know exactly what, what persuaded us.
I had been told by the defense attorney that this individual had been charged who was, you know, charged with a robbery or an armed robbery was maintaining his innocence. And you don't hear that that often. Right. It's one thing you murdered, but, like, person saying, I did not commit an armed robbery. And the attorney calling and saying, this is an actual. It makes you pay attention.
[01:03:29] Speaker C: It should make you pay attention versus pleading it out. Right. That would be the other.
[01:03:33] Speaker A: Correct, exactly. And. And so. Or saying, we're going to fight this, but, you know, we're not. We're not pretending and privately telling the prosecutor that this is a case of actual innocence. One of the things that we did was we listened to the jail calls, because you can listen to the calls from jail to other individuals. Individuals. And I remember hearing his voice, and he was not only maintaining his innocence to, like, loved ones and girlfriends, he was maintaining his innocence in every call. And there was one particular call where he essentially said, please go get the video, because he was at a facility. And he said, that video should be there, and it should show that I was there at the time that this happened. And he was saying it so earnestly to be like, please go get the video. And we knew that it was going to be hard to get that video because the amount of time that had passed, but he didn't. He didn't know we were listening to his calls.
And so we did the right thing, which was we communicated to the defense attorney that we were not proceeding with the case, and you dropped the case.
And it's one thing when this happens way too often in Baltimore, you drop the case because of the volume. Right. Like, and that's a real. That can be a really bad, wholesale approach to justice when there's serious cases that are just being dropped because you don't have time to call the witnesses or.
But when you have real doubt in your mind, you've got to honor that impulse and that feeling, because it's a gut call in that instance. It wasn't like he proved to me that he didn't do it, but I had doubts that the evidence was sufficient to convict him. And at that moment, I don't think it's a close call about what you do.
[01:05:11] Speaker C: Right. Good. Thank you.
[01:05:12] Speaker B: Well, it's very obvious that you are. You are passionate. You're one of the most passionate people I've ever met. And the energy you bring to that passion is incredible. And it seems like that's what allows you to. To be real, you know, just unrelenting in what you do and continue to do it.
And that's something that I think is really important to highlight to the audience because you've, you've been so successful.
And I think that's part of the reason at least. Why. What other advice or tools would you give to the audience that are. Are looking to be successful in whatever aspect of life they're pursuing right now? In addition to that.
[01:05:55] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's almost a cliche now that so many of these successful business people, politicians, whatever, they often talk about the times they failed.
You know, every politician has a story about the race they lost. Every entrepreneur has a story about the company that didn't get off the ground, that went bankrupt, and being willing to pick yourself up off of the. I think that is true. It is important.
But there's a lot of people that just fail and actually never do get it off the ground. You don't hear those stories right, because they don't. They don't become the CEO of PayPal. They just are the CEO of the five failed companies. Beforehand, I had a conversation with one of the celebrated Paralympic Olympians from, from Baltimore, Jessica Long. She was decorated swimmer, I think history.
And I remember after my first loss, going to her and saying, you know, this doesn't feel like a Ravens season or an Orioles season because you lose. You're supposed to win the Super Bowl. You don't. You just, you know that camp starts again in a few months. Right. You can get back on there and you can try again next year. This feels a lot more like the Olympics because it's four years away.
And so I gotta ask you, Jessica, like, tell me about the, the athletes don't. Tell me about the athletes that don't medal. They train for four more years and then they win the gold medal. Because if you tell me I'm gonna be mayor and all I have to do is work my ass off for four years, I will do it in a heartbeat. I wake up at three in the morning every day for the next four years. Tell me about the person who works up at 3am and trains for four years and doesn't meddle again.
Like, do they jump off a cliff? That's what I'm worried about.
And she said, it depends on. And I said, on what? And she said, and it was such a simple insight, but it stayed with me. She said, it depends on whether they love swimming.
If they love swimming, they don't mind it even after they don't medal the second time.
But if you don't love swimming and it's just the gold medal or the silver medal those four years, if you look back are going to be preposterously frustrating.
I think that it is very important to find things that bring you joy.
I remember a conversation with my son where he was thinking about starting a couple of online businesses. And he's a very precocious kid. He's in ninth grade, but he was talking about selling these interesting bugs online and also doing day trading.
I remember a conversation where he said, dad, I. I know that day trading would make more money, but the website brings me joy. And he was like, in seventh grade, and I remember, like, almost wanting to tear up because you're like, if a kid can understand that, that, like, what you need to do is find a vocation that brings you joy. I think that is a huge piece of this. But I will end with one last insight. I read this in a Harvard Business Review article about businesses, and they were talking about how great leaders have resilience they're able to overcome, even pick themselves back up. But there is a subset of them that not only after a failure, are able to brush themselves off and get back on the horse and do it again, but they find meaning in the losses.
And when I've read it, I was like, oh, my gosh, I do this naturally where when I lose, I look back and I'm like, that loss was actually really important.
I wouldn't actually want it another way. If you ask me two weeks after, I will tell you I wanted another way. But you give me a little bit of time to reflect on it. Six months, a year, a couple years.
I think about all the setbacks, Britt, that you're alluding to, and I'm not sure that I would have wanted to live a life where I didn't have to endure it. Maybe not everyone, maybe a couple of them we could have seen skipped, but I think that finding meaning in those parables, in those low moments and saying that was actually important for me to become the person I needed to become.
I think it's really important for people not just to be willing to pick up after a failure, but to think about how the failure was actually valuable, reflect on what meaning it has.
[01:10:18] Speaker C: So, so yeah, yeah. And, and. And we. We talk about it a lot. Just the idea that, you know, would you want to go through that, you know, strife at times, whether it was a failed marriage, a failed relationship, a failed business? Not really. But to change any of the course would change where you are today.
[01:10:32] Speaker A: Totally. Totally. I. The. The. I. I don't wish some of these things on my worst enemy, but I'm Almost grateful that I got a chance to do them. There's a. I'll end with this Chinese parable. There's a story about an elder in a village and all the villagers are unhappy with their lives. And he tells all the villagers to come to the middle of the. The village and to bring a bag with all their troubles inside of it. And he tells them to open their bags and to walk around and look at every other person's bag and then pick up the bag that they want. And all the villagers have brought their bag of troubles. They go and look at every single one. And at the end, they go pick up theirs and walk away.
I kind of think. Think that's what life is. Right? Like, everybody goes through these struggles, and if you really knew them, you'd say, you know what? I actually prefer mine. I. I can handle what I've got. God gives us exactly what we need to get through, exactly what we're going to face.
And I. I hope everybody in every course is. Is blessed with that insight. Maybe not immediately, but in due course.
[01:11:36] Speaker B: Yeah. The most interesting people have the most textured life.
[01:11:40] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, that was awesome.
[01:11:41] Speaker A: Thank you.
[01:11:42] Speaker C: Yeah, thank you so much. The insights are incredible.
Yeah. Nothing much to say. Here we are. As always, we will look forward to your next venture. We know that part two coming. There's some term limits coming up in our foreseeable future, and you can speak to that on your own at a later date. We, of course, are here to help and, and, and support. And we, you know, we want the best for Baltimore. We agree with everything. We didn't hit on the fact that there are 65 direct flights on Southwest here. Day two.
[01:12:06] Speaker A: Just.
[01:12:06] Speaker C: Just when we're ready to get that thing going and get the leadership. And I do remember, I do want to touch on this. The first time I met you, you were talking about optimism and positivity. You told me a story about Baltimore and the B and O railroad. Right. And responding to New York and the Erie Canal and just all of the threads that go back through Baltimore.
[01:12:25] Speaker A: No, it's an extraordinary city and I appreciate your friendship. I love seeing all the amazing things you guys are. Are doing, and may that path continue.
[01:12:33] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, we'd love to be able to connect here.
[01:12:35] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you.
[01:12:36] Speaker C: Thank you.
[01:12:41] Speaker A: Welcome to H Romy talks for the superstars tonight. Tonight.
