And now from the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN audio, The Axe Files with your host, David Axelrod.

So today marks the 600th episode of The Axe Files. To be honest, I didn't even know what a podcast was when my colleagues at the Institute of Politics suggested it almost ten years ago. Since then, I've had the privilege to speak with so many fascinating people politicians, performers, journalists, athletes, people across the political divide. My goal has never been to get their talking points. It's been to learn about their stories, the challenges and experiences that molded them. Today, with the help of my great CNN colleague Anderson Cooper, I reflect on some of those conversations and my own journey. I'm so grateful to Anderson, an exceptional and admirable journalist and an even better human being for his example and his friendship. I encourage you to listen to my past episodes with him, which were among the best and richest conversations I've had. My thanks also to Miriam Annenberg, my peerless researcher, Jeff Fox, our superb engineer, to Saralena Perry, Hannah MacDonald, Allison Siegel and Tim Skoczek, the valued and thoughtful collaborators who have produced these episodes over the years. And to Matt Jaffe and Zane Maxwell, the original IOP team who helped develop this podcast. And to my friends at CNN Audio and the CNN executives who embraced the podcast and put it on television for three years as well. Most of all, heartfelt thanks to you, the listeners. I didn't know when we started if anyone would listen. Now, 70 million downloads later, it's been such an honor to share this journey with you and to hear from you. And now the 600th episode. And here's Anderson.

I can't believe you've done 600 episodes. I mean, that's. That's insane.

Yeah. You know, I never imagined when I started this, you know, we're in our 10th year now, that I would do 600 of these, because each one of them requires a lot of research and work. I've got a great researcher who helps, but you have to absorb it and sort of think about the story. This is all about people's stories, and I want to make sure that I'm asking the things that will reveal the most. So it's a lot.

Yeah. When you decide to do a podcast and when you are a very decent and smart human being, as you are, you want to do it at the highest level possible and you want to. There's plenty of people who, like show up in the last second, have done no research, and have not read the book that the person is on. And there's nothing worse. As somebody who's written a book.

Yes.

You know. To have be talking to somebody who clearly has never read the book. And, you know, it's like the much beloved Larry King, you know, he never really read the book and made no bones about it. He claimed, you know, he he could then ask the questions that the average person would ask who hadn't read the book, which is sort of interesting. But he would always say it's a great cover. It's a great cover. So what was the idea initially for you in doing this?

You know what? I have to tell you, this started when I started this Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago. And people would come, you know, Newt Gingrich and other people, and we'd have these conversations. And first of all, people who listen to the conversations were, wow, that's cool. Two people who, from different persuasions, you know, talking about. Political persuasion, talking. And I tried to focus on sort of the more personal. And somebody came up, one of my staff at the Institute Politics who said, you know, this would be a great podcast. And I'm like, What's a podcast? I had no idea. They said, Well, think of it as like radio. But then, you know, around that time I think I heard a conversation between Marc Maron, who was one of early.

Right, yeah, of course.

And and and Barack Obama. And I thought I'd love to do this. Because it wasn't really an interview. It was a conversation. And and that's that's how it started. I, it was all speculative. I had no idea whether anybody would be interested or not. But I love stories.

Do you have any problem talking to people who, you know, I mean, you mentioned Newt Gingrich. Ideologically I assume you guys are very far apart. And, you know, you were probably in the trenches battling against him at multiple points in your life. Do you have a problem?

It is. It is.

Do you view politics personally?

'Well, it's different. It's a little harder now because of what the, in the post-Trump era, it's harder. It's harder to get people. You know, I've done conversations with Tom Cotton and Lindsey Graham and all kinds of people who were on the other side. And frankly, one of the things that I wanted to do was have these conversations, A, because I think it's important to have them, B because I find it's it's it's harder to hate people when you know them. And that's kind of one of the that's one of my big motivations here. You know, Lindsey Graham was a guy who, you know, I learned in doing the research and through our conversations who, you know, grew up above a saloon. He was orphaned at a very young age. He would come down into the saloon and he would, he would be like the jester and he would entertain people and so on. And, but wounded, you know, by early loss. And it does when you think about, and this is now I'm engaging in psych psychology without a degree, but you know his bond with John McCain, you know, and maybe somehow his relationship with Trump, I don't know. But, you know, so those kinds of things interested me. And what I found is that, you know, people, if you approach them as a human being and not as an antagonist, I mean, there's no doubt we'd get into it with, I'd get into it with people over particular issues or decisions or, but that they made, but I'm really interested in their stories. You know, I did two podcasts, one with Mitt Romney and one with John McCain. I think we have a clip from McCain, which I also did.

I'll ask for the clips, David Axelrod. I'm I'm dealing with this podcast.

Yeah, I forgot. You know. Yeah, I'm sorry. Ten years of experience here.

Far more experience than I have.

We're going to crash the car, I'm trying to grab the wheel. But, you know, I ran campaigns with, I don't I never say against them, because it really wasn't against them. It was for Obama. But they were on the other side.

It was against them.

Yeah, they might view it as against them. I'm sure. I remember John McCain came to the Institute of Politics the first time we really had a conversation. This wasn't a podcast. And I said some things about him that I believe, that were nice things. And he said, Man, I wish you had said that during the campaign. But, you know, with Romney, I said I told.

Well, let's start with McCain. Why don't we just play this? Let's talk let's play that some of what would you talked to John McCain about.

Yeah. So let me just set it up. McCain. I was in interested in reading about him and learning about him, about how he had this close relationship with a guy I really admired in the 70s and 80s. Mo Udall, who had run for president in 1976. Udall was hilarious, first of all, but he was a really principled progressive. I mean, a very a stalwart liberal in the House from Arizona. And John McCain, when he came into the House, was viewed as an arch conservative. And I learned that they were they were personally really close. And a really poignant story about the end of Udall's life and and and McCain going to visit him in a I think in a nursing home as he dealt with Parkinson's. That's what this clip is.

Let's listen.

He was the most entertaining guy I've ever known. He's the guy who.

Said, by the way, I know you like this. He said the difference between cactuses and caucuses is that in cactuses the pricks are on the outside.

And that was after he was defeated when he was running for a leadership position in the House. He also said, by the way, when he came out just before that, he said, I'd like to thank the 120 guys that committed to me and the 16 that voted for me. He was a very funny man and a lovely man. We traveled together. We spent time together. He was just he was everything that I wanted to be. And frankly, I have not been I have not lived up to his standard because he was good and kind and generous to everyone.

He was tragically ill at the end of his life with Parkinson's disease. I heard that you regularly visited with him toward the end of his life and you'd go over and read the Arizona papers to him.

I'd bring the clips and read them to him. And, you know, he just was so lovely and so good to me. And he was kind of in many ways a role model to me because of his unfailing good humor and pleasantry.

I'ts so nice hearing his voice.

Yeah, it is. It is. And first of all, McCain himself. A real human being. Yeah, a real human being who recognized his flaws and and, you know, obviously had an incredibly interesting and challenging story, personal story. But I, you know, in listening through to prepare for this and listening back to some of these old clips, it also speaks to an era of politics that I miss and that I think a lot of people miss. The idea that you can be you can have really deep differences and still appreciate each other as human beings, as Americans. McCain believed that. And and it was reflected in that.

Well, I think about the moment on the campaign trail.

Yeah.

Running against.

2008.

Obama when that woman stood up and, you know.

Said he's he's not, you know, he's a Muslim, he's not American.

Right, she sort of looked. It was later lampooned on Saturday Night Live because she sort of, you know, rambled. But he was, I mean, did something he didn't have to do.

I was in the campaign headquarters that night for Obama. And I watched this and I watched it with complete awe and admiration, because he grabbed the mic from her and he was in an arena, much like some of the arenas you see now with a very partisan crowd. And people were actually jeering him because he said he's he's not a, he's a good family man. He's a good American. We just have different ideas. And we so miss that in our politics. But but it also said a lot about John McCain.

That would be unthinkable in, I mean, certainly in the Trump world these days. I mean.

Yeah, and I'll tell you what, I'm not I don't want to give my old tribe a break either. I think that, you know, one thing about Trump is, you know, every action has an equal, and I forget the expression, but reaction. And I do think that, you know, there are many, many Democrats who are so incensed and fearful of what Trump represents that anything goes. You could say anything about him. And, you know, and so if you grabbed a mic away and said, you know, he. I'm sure we'll have this debate if he loses the election, you know, we should, he should be pardoned or sentence commuted or whatever, I think that there'd be a lot of people would be just outraged by that.

I mean, do you think any of the rules apply any more, any of the sort of gravitational forces in politics that used to exist, still exist or has, you know, has the Trump effect changed everything? I mean, does anything matter? Like you don't have to. It seems to me a candidate doesn't have to answer a question reporter asked. They can just answer the question they wish they were asked and just stick to that or, you know, just lying over and over and over again. And it becomes true because it's just repeated so endlessly and it just exhausts people.

'Well, look, I first of all, it does exhaust people. I don't think it's what most people want. The lying thing is one question. I mean, the danger of Trump that I've alway,s and I've said it many times with you when we were sitting together on the air, is he genuinely and fundamentally does not believe in rules and laws and norms and institutions. It's not that he knows that it's--he just doesn't believe in them. He thinks they're for suckers. The world is The Hunger Games, the strong take what they want, the weak fall away. And he has in some ways he is this is this in the social media age, you know, that gets turbocharged. And you know, he has sold this, you know, to large numbers of people. And there are large numbers of people who don't, who feel they've been screwed by the system. And so there's an environment in which this breeds on itself. But having said that, I just think I was so struck by what happened after that vice presidential debate, which was pretty unremarkable in many ways, except for the fact that they seemed to be cordial to each other, more cordial, I mean, with Vance, pretty remarkable because before and after the debate he just was savaging Waltz and everybody else. But he obviously decided that there was an audience for civility and there is an audience for civility. So in a focus group afterwards, a group of swing voters are saying, man, why can't politics be like that? I do think there's a hunger for it, but there are so many forces pushing against it, starting with social media and our modern media habits that push us into silos.

Would you, I mean, if you interviewed Trump, what would you ask him or what would you talk to him about?

You know, akin to what I was saying earlier, I would like to know all about his dad and his relationship with his dad. I know he might not talk about that, but it's his father who told him the world is made up of killers and losers and you've got to be a killer. Which, by the way, also speaks to why he never wants to be a loser and won't acknowledge being a loser. Because, you know, in a sense, his father's affection and his father shunned, you know, his brother, who was more vulnerable and ultimately a tragic figure. His, you know, his namesake. You know, when you. There's a there's a withdrawal of. The message is if you're not a killer, if you're a loser, I'm going to withdraw. You're not going to get anything from me. You know, you're not going to get the affection of a father and or the support of a father. So I think this molded Trump, and I'd love to hear him talk about his dad. You know, now, again, you might not be able to accomplish it, but that's where I would go right away is that relationship, because I'm looking for sort of the formative relationships.

Well, it is what is. I mean, it's become so clear as I've gotten older and just the impact of stuff from childhood, the ripple of effects on it, on everybody, and whether that's recognized or not, or just the cycles in a family that repeat, and, you know, we become our fathers. And I just find that fascinating. I mean, you mentioned it with Lindsey Graham. Donald Trump. I mean, you could go through.

'Well, I talked to Romney. I didn't clip this, but he was one of the first I did. And I told him that his father, George Romney, was a hero of mine when I was a boy because he was a Republican who was who who who stood up at the 64 Democratic Convention when Barry Goldwater, who was was really roiling the kind of, you know, anti-civil rights mood of the Republican Party, and he gave a big speech about civil rights and was booed relentlessly. Later in his career. He was going to run for president and he went to Vietnam and he came back and said, I think we've been brainwashed by the generals. And he talked about how the war effort wasn't going well. And, you know, even in Nixon's cabinet, he took Nixon on because he wanted to push housing integration as the housing secretary. They stuck him there thinking he wouldn't do any damage. And I asked Mitt Romney, like, what did you learn from watching your father in public life? And essentially, he said, if you boil it down, he said, I learned how to be cautious because if you take too many risks, if you say too much, it'll be used against you. And you could see that throughout Romney's career. And in some ways, I watch him now speaking out against Trump and he's channeling what his father would have been doing. I think his father would be smiling on him now. So, you know, all these. I talked to Barack Obama. And here's a guy I knew for, I've known him since he was a returning law student. And I went through the Senate race and two presidential races with him, spent tons of time with him. And and there was this mystery that I couldn't resolve, which is he was the most sort of centered, unflappable, con, self-confident in most ways, human being. And yet his father abandoned him when he was two. His mother was worked for NGOs and would left would leave him with his grandparents for months and, you know, years, really. And yet he had this competence, and I just couldn't square the two. I think we have a clip of that, actually.

Let's play it.

Even when you when she was overseas and you were with your grandparents, she'd communicate.

Yeah. And I never doubted that her her love and commitment for me and she was so young when she had me. I mean, she was she was a teen. Right. So in some ways, by the time I was 12, 13. She's interacting with me almost like a friend as well as a parent now.

And you guys also weathered a lot.

And I didn't always necessarily handle that well. It's not sort of a recipe for ideal parenting. But what I did learn was that unconditional love makes up for an awful lot. And I got that from her early on.

You know, he said she always conveyed to him that he was special and that, you know, that was the message that you're. And so the thing about that answer that I thought was really interesting that I never really focused on was she was 18 when he was born.

You talked to Sally Yates, the former deputy attorney general, who, you know, most people would know if they remember early on the Trump administration, she refused to enforce a travel ban that she thought was unconstitutional. You talked about her about her dad who died by suicide, which she had mentioned before, not really gone into much detail about. And I think she got upset.

'She did, Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, I as I know you know, I lost my dad the same way. So one of the things that I try and do in these conversations is insert a little of my own life into it, because that's how people talk. I mean, when people have conversations, they talk that way, they share experiences. And so this obviously interested me and I shared the experience of having not talked about it for 30 years, as well. That's why, you know, you'll hear I'm amen-ing her all throughout. But yeah, she was mad. I mean, she had talked about it a couple of times, but this was when I was doing The Axe Files on TV as well as podcast. And, you know, I think she was kind of taken aback. She's very, very composed person. But this took her by surprise. And afterwards she was she was mad at me. And she said, you know, you shouldn't have ambushed me with that. And she called me a week later, though. Well, we should listen. Let's listen to it.

Let's play.

Well, it's been over 30 years. Maybe this is why I haven't. You know for a few reasons. One. I hated for him to be defined by how he died rather than how he lived. And. It also is such it felt like an invasion of his privacy. But I've come over the years, I have talked about it a couple of times. And and the reason is, is that, look, if there's anything I can do to help to erase the stigma of mental illness and to encourage people to get help, I mean, my dad didn't get the help he needed because he was worried about the stigma of going and getting help. And, you know, we tried to encourage him. But, you know, I don't know that I encouraged him as much as I should have at the time, not so much because I was worried about the stigma, but just because back then people didn't do that that much. They should have, but they didn't. And it breaks my heart to think that had he just been able to get some help, he could very well be alive today and know my son and his grandchildren.

It's interesting because her answer is succinct and she moves off the topic quickly. It makes sense to me now that you said she was mad.

No, she was mad and she didn't want me to use the clip because she and I told her that I thought it was important for people to hear it because there are a lot of people out there who are struggling and who would be heartened to know they weren't alone in this experience. And must have been a week later, she called me after the show and she said, I have gotten more, you know, just an unbelievable outpouring from people. And she said, I really need to lean into this. And she's become an incredible advocate for suicide prevention and mental mental health.

So you you you didn't talk about your dad's death, you said for 30 years. You didn't talk about it with anyone?

No, I mean, I would mention it to friends, but publicly, you know, especially as I became better known.

Was that conscious?

'Yes, totally. Because of the whole, for the same reasons that Sally Yates said. I thought somehow, and it was wrong, that this would be besmirching my father's reputation, that somehow the way he died would define the way he lived. And I realized that it is that thing, that stigma that prevents people from actually going in, getting help. And it's so important for people to understand that mental illness is part of the human condition as much as physical illness. And there is no, it's not a blight on one's character if if you're dealing with depression. And the thing about it that was really hard was that my father was a mental health professional, and you'd think he would have known that. But somehow he, he he just he walled himself off. And my dad was a refugee from Eastern Europe, and he had gone through, like he had stepped over dead bodies when he left his home. And his house was blown up when he was a kid. And so in this all in the pogroms, it was anti-Semitism. And they finally fled and never talked about it. And I now realize all these years later that he walked around throughout his life with a kind of untreated PTSD. And I think he was depressed a lot of his life, although he never showed me that.

You never saw that as a kid?

I never did know, I mean, when I was a kid. But he was so, he was a loving guy. And, you know, we were, we spent a lot of time together. My parents were split up and we spent a lot of time together. A lot of ballgames, a lot of hot dogs at Coney Island.

How old were you when he died?

19 years old. Yeah. Got a knock on the door from the Chicago police saying.

You were in college?

I was in college and my roommate didn't want to let him in because it was the 70s and it was a little dicey. But the officer was nice and he said, No, no, I'm just here. I have to tell him something. And he was incredibly kind in in giving me this news. And years later, Anderson, I was I was on the desk at the Chicago Tribune and I was calling into a police station for about a crime that had been committed. And this guy answers the phone and I said, I'm David Axelrod from the Chicago Tribune. And at the end of the conversation he says, are you that young man I saw a few years ago at the University of Chicago? I had to give you some news. And I said, Yeah, I did. And I really, I am that guy, you know. And I put it all together and I said, I, I so appreciate how you handle that. And he said, Well, I'm so happy that you you landed in a good place. I always wonder what happened to you. And you know what? Whenever people talk about police officers, I think about Officer Gardner. By the time I got to meet him he was Sergeant Gardner, and all the things that we call on these police officers to do, you know, and not to excuse any police transgressions, but I'll always be grateful to him for the way he handled that. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show.

Tom Hanks. I mean, the sheer sort of variety of people you've had on is fascinating to me. How do you. I mean, how do you think about who you want to?

You know what, it's like to go through a process of who interests me. Like, who is an interesting person. And I got to know Tom Hanks a little because he was active in the Obama campaign and he was just so incredibly nice and warm. My wife always, Susan, always talks about the fact that, you know, she was used to, it's terrible to be married to someone who's in public life in any way because you're treated sort of as a tagalong. And so people are interested in talking to. And he was very much interested in talking to her. But he came up to her and he said, Hi, you know, I'm Tom. And she and they had met before. She said, Susan and he said, I'm so sorry. He said, you know, it's really awkward when you're when people know who you are. Everybody knows your name but you sometimes, you can't remember everybody's name. And he was just but just such a bright, interesting guy, such a fabulous person, a performer. And as I did the research for him, I realized that he had a completely dysfunctional childhood. I go back to the roots.

Again with the child.

Again with a childhood, I can't stop.

But but it is so fascinating.

Yeah. And you know you from your own life, Anderson. I will say for my listeners, two of the two, I think we've done two, maybe three podcasts, the best I've ever done were with you because you have done a lot of thinking about those, about your childhood, and you're very open and willing to talk about it. And he was too. I mean, he was sort of shuttled, his family was shattered. He went from home to home. He was.

17 different schools.

Different school.

In different towns.

Yeah. Well, let's let's listen to him.

There was just the excitement of knowing that anybody had shown up specifically to watch what you are in, whether they liked you or not. I mean, if they laugh, you know, I was in like South Pacific or something like that. That was really exciting. But I also had the same exact thrill of when I was the stage manager of this shows because we were part of this magic thing that was hidden from them. But you could hear them. You could feel the heat of an audience. You could actually feel the focus of their eyeballs on you. And if if they started reacting in a way to something that you were doing, well, that's just. David, That's crack cocaine and crack cocaine.

Did you. And you must have found a community then with people who you were acting with, working with crews.

I found the tribe that I think every person needs to belong to, that every person needs to seek out, you know, a secret tattoo or, you know, the shared same DNA with the people that were in the drama department.

Yeah. So to me, what was interesting about that, then we talk further about it was, you know, first of all, he became sort of theatrical and funny because he'd come to new towns and nobody knew who he was. And it was his sort of way of kind of trying to fit in. But he, he, he found in, in first in high school and then in college, he found community that he never had. I mean, his community became the theater and theater people. And so it was you know, it's interesting, we also talked about the fact that so many people in, you know, this because you deal with many, many different people, but a lot of people in show business, they inhabit their their characters as a way of kind of exiting the one they are. They, you know, they. And I think there's a little of that in him as well. I think given that early upbringing or early turmoil, the ability to inhabit someone else's life became really important to him. So, yeah, almost every story begins at the beginning.

Well, you also talked to Barney Frank, which was interesting because it was about the loneliness of, you know, he was he was gay, not publicly, in political life for for much of his career. There was a scandal, if I recall, with a male prostitute.

Yeah. In Washington.

Right. And that and then that's essentially how he publicly came out. But he talked to you about what sort of being in the closet was like. Yes. Let's play that.

I said, okay, here's the deal. My internal conversation. I really want to be in elected office. I think I'll be good at it. On the other hand, it's not going to be a long time career because I can't see anything beyond the state legislature and I so much want to do this that I'll I'll stay in the closet. And but for me, staying in the closet didn't just mean not telling people. It meant the kind of repression of my personal life. You know, there's an old song Saturday night, it's the loneliest night of the week. It's the countrast. If I would go to party celebrating the progress we were starting to make on gay rights and everybody was thanking me and I went home alone at night. So the fact that the public job made it worse.

You understand these experiences. But to me, there was something poignant, so poignant about the fact that he had to for so long, for so long, deprive himself of relationships because he thought that's what politics required. And it was only a scandal that liberated him. You know, I think he was censured by the House, but he they definitely sanctioned him for, you know, being involved and in you know, there were ancillary issues with this male prostitute. But, you know, and you just don't know people. Barney Frank was a very prominent figure, but no one knew the anguish that he was feeling. So and I think we do that a lot to politicians. I think we you know, they are sort of one dimensional to us and they're not, we don't think of them as human beings. I had a conversation with, that I think we have a clip of with Jennifer Granholm, who was then governor of Michigan during the financial crisis when Michigan was just devastated. And she told a story about an encounter she had then. And it was just really, really moving to me.

Let's play that.

I mean, I just I cannot tell you the anxiety. I can't describe adequately the anxiety of people on the ground. When you go, you know, on my way to church, going into what is what's known as a Biggby's coffee and having this guy, I mean, this is like one story of a zillion, a man, you know, an older man who was like 50 years old, gray hair, come up to me and say governor and then just starts to sob in front of all these people. And he's so embarrassed that he's crying in front of people and him saying, you know, my my job is gone and my kids are in college and how do I how do I do this? Governor, can't you save it? And that happened? I I'm so. This. God. Looking into the eyes of people who, through no fault of their own, have lost their dignity because they've lost their job is so powerful.

'I mean, I really. I was, in that moment. It it wasn't just about her own feelings, but it was. It explains a lot. It explains a lot, Anderson, why we are where we are as a country, because we talk about these economic issues. Well, things cost too much and so on. But and that's important. And it's something we shouldn't we shouldn't dismiss. But she was talking about the loss of dignity. People who, you know, we always what do we do? We see each other. We say, what do you do? And we had a whole group of people in this country who, because of globalization, because of automation, because of the financial crisis, had no answer to that question. Well, I collect a check. And they lost their dignity and their sense of self-worth. And she was feeling it. You know, I mean, she clearly was feeling it. And and that that moved me. So.

Do you think. Were politicians more accessible in the, you know, Mitt Romney's father's generation or less accessible. You know, are they, are politicians more in touch with people now or less?

I, I think that we we are so media obsessed and social media obsessed and there's so much of an emphasis on raising money that, you know, I think politicians are more removed from the people that they represent. Not all of them. Some of them are assiduous about moving around their communities, moving around their districts with, if they're mayors, they're particularly responsive. But I think, you know, they they the way they're accustomed to dealing with people can be more remote. And also, I think that there are a lot of politicians who don't necessarily want to place themselves in a position to be yelled at, you know, in to be. And so, you know, they do what they need to, but they're not, you know, there are others who just plunge right in. She was one of she was one of those people. But it's a harder it's a harder thing. And, you know, in the day before television and and before social media and so on, there was a lot of door to door. There was a lot of kind of going to meetings. There was a lot of.

Were politicians in the, I mean, congressmembers, senators spending more time in their districts in decades past or less time? Air travel is easier now.

So, I mean, there's this this is it's an interesting question because one of the things that's gone wrong in Washington is because air travel was so difficult, a lot of politicians actually lived in Washington and would go home and that actually improve the environment that we were speaking about earlier about commity among members, because they would their kids would be in the Little League together. They would. Now, there's a there's there's a you know, there is more pressure, largely generated by media, but for politicians to go home. So they're not accused. You know, politicians lose if they're viewed as Washington Washington based. But but, you know, like I come from Chicago and those politicians came home all the time because there's a very, you know, going being in the ward, going to the churches and the the it was a very personal kind of politics. One of the people who I mean, you know, I know you know Nancy Pelosi very well and I've done many podcasts with her. And my favorite was the first, because I'm a aficionado of urban politics. Her father was a big political boss, not in San Francisco, but Baltimore. And everybody thinks of her as a San Francisco liberal. But she's really Nancy D'Alessandro from the precincts of Baltimore. And her father was a ward politician who rose up to become the mayor and a congressman and was the political leader of his ward and then the city. And she apprenticed at his side. She watched all of that happen, the kind of door to door politics that was common in that time in the during the Depression, the war in the postwar era. And I asked her like, what did you learn from? And I thought her answer was succinct and explained everything.

Let's listen.

Mostly I learned how to count, and that is really what has served me in good stead. Whether it's about my own election or my election to leadership or my passing legislation. You really have to know how to count. And what is a yes and what isa that would be nice. Because that's not a yes. And so I would. I would see them come like before an election. People would sit around the table with yellow legal pads and say, okay, in order to win, we need, say, for example, 100,000 votes. We need to have 20,000 from here. We need 15,000 from there. So everybody would have their alottment that they had to meet at least. Perhaps surpass. And so it was it was about the numbers, always. Of course it was about the policy and it was about fighting for people. But you have to win in order to do that.

I love that, she says you really have to know how to count and what is a yes and what is and what is a that would be nice. What is a that would be nice?

That would be nice is trying to avoid, say, making a commitment. So, you know, it's like I hear you. That's not a yes. You know, I got it. That's not a yes. Only yes is yes. And that's Pelosi. But I just you know, I love the idea that she apprenticed that way. And I think it explains so much because also these were all New Deal politicians. They actually believed in what they were doing. They they wanted to help people. That was the business they were in. But they knew what they needed to do to be in a position to do that.

I don't know enough about her background. I wonder if her dad like knew she was interested. Like if she was interested at a very young age and talked to her about it and sort of groomed her, or if she.

She and her mother, as she said in this podcast, were in charge of keeping all the records of things that everybody in their ward, what they had done for them. You know, all of that. They were they they had roles to play. I don't think he necessarily, I don't think she would say, I don't think they saw her as the office holder. And I don't think she saw herself as an office holder until much later. But she was an organizer from an early age, and those skills were the ones that served her. We're going to take a short break and we'll be right back with more of The Axe Files. And now back to the show.

You've had a number of sports folks on.

Yeah. My other intereset.

Yeah, but I didn't know much about Steve Kerr. Steve Kerr is fascinating. I mean, his background, his childhood, his experiences overseas. You, I think, are the one who sort of informed me a little bit about him before I'd even heard him. Yeah, he's just got a fascinating life.

Well, everybody knows him as a championship coach.

I actually don't.

I know, Anderson.

'As a non-sports person.

People. People who follow sports know him that way. But what they don't know is that he grew up in a family. His father was an academic and his father spent a lot of time teaching in the Middle East. Steve grew up part of his childhood in Egypt, speaks Arabic, and about when he went to college, his father cultivated also his basketball. And Steve got a scholarship at the University of Arizona. About when he started in his freshman year, his father took a job as the president of the American University in Beirut. And this was shortly after, in the early 80s, when the American barracks was blown up there. And there's real tension between the forerunners of Hezbollah and the U.S.. And he was worried about his father. He talked about taking this job, worried about it because there was such hostility.

His father.

Malcolm Kerr.

Has security, but didn't when he was on the campus, chose not to have security on the campus.

Yeah. And let's listen about a particular day in Steve Kerr's life that shaped him.

At 3:00 in the morning in my dorm room, and a man named Vahid Simonian, a good Armenian name. He worked at the university. Great family friend. He called me to give me the news that my dad had been shot and killed. And obviously, you know, my whole world changed and new life had to begin. And it was it was pretty rough. I turned to my teammates. And that's one of the beautiful thing about sports is it's like a built in family and kind of a cocoon. And you can lose yourself in sports, you can lose yourself in physical activity. And so I went to practice the next day and my teammates knew what happened. Obviously, my coach, you know, I spent I think I slept for three hours on his couch in his office that the next day when it happened and didn't sleep all night. And then, you know, I didn't know what to do. And and but I practiced that afternoon. I needed to, you know, think about something else.

Part of his worldview was informed by the relationships he had when he was a kid with, you know, students who are Muslims and people from other backgrounds. But also, he's really moved by the gun issue because of the violent way his father died. And and so he's incredibly gifted at what he does. He's a great coach, but he's also really thoughtful citizen. His brother, by the way, I think his name is Andrew Kerr, was in the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. Steve always says he's the black sheep of the family because everybody else wanted to get advanced degrees and did things. But, you know, I know what it's like to get that call, that knock on the door when you're a kid and it is life changing. And as he said, you, you know, all of a sudden you're not a kid anymore when that when that call comes so but I he's one of the people out of the 600 he's a person who I just walked away admiring more.

When your dad died and you got that knock on the door. Was it a complete surprise?

Yes. I mean, it shouldn't have been. Anderson. And as you know, you lost a brother to suicide. You think about things. You think about cues and signs. And my father called me two weeks before he died and he said, I just want to tell you that I know now you and your sister are going to do really well. And I just want you to know how proud I am of you. And I didn't you know, it was an unusual call, but I didn't take it as a I'm leaving you now. It was. But that's clearly what he wanted me to know. And then you think about, you know, I mean, he was depressed. And I think back about all the signs of that. He lived in a very Spartan apartment. No pictures on the wall, very little furniture, no rugs on the floor. You know, there were signs, but not ones in our relationship. He could not have been warmer, more solicitous of me. He never shared his problems with me, you know. So, yeah, came as as a shock to me. I suspect as an adult, if I had seen some of the same things, perhaps I would have seen more. But I don't know.

Bill Walton?

Yeah.

He talked actually about pondering suicide at one point in his life. Because of pain that he was experiencing.

Yeah. Bill Walton was. I actually hitchhiked down when I was a college student to see him play in the national championship in 1973. And he had the greatest game I think anybody's ever had in a national championship game. But what I didn't know about Bill Walton and I guess a lot of people didn't know, was I knew he had a lot of pain. He had 37 surgeries that shortened his career. He would have been maybe one of the great pros of all time. Still great. But he was. But but he also he he had a childhood stutter that that extended into his adulthood. So here he was, this national sports hero cover of Sports Illustrated and so on. And he could not speak and he he and which will shock everyone because he became a Hall of Fame broadcaster. But here's what he said here.

I was hurt with this horrendous speech impediment. I could not say hello. I could not say thank you. I could not say a single word without just the stammer, stutter, hesitation. And I did not express myself. I expressed myself through sports. I expressed myself through reading. I expressed myself through just being part of a bigger world that I only dreamed I could ever be a part of. Learning how to speak is my greatest accomplishment in life. Without question. And everybody else's worst nightmare.

And you know, everyone who's ever watched Bill, who ever watched Bill Walton broadcast a game will understand because he never shut up.

Really.

He was one of the most inspiring people that I've spoke that I ever spoke with because he overcame this incredible pain. He had micro fractures in his feet that they didn't diagnose for years. And then he had a spinal injury playing when he was 16 that was recurrent. By the time he got older, he was in such pain. He he had to lie. he could not. He just was lying on the floor for a year and a half before a surgeon came and said, I think I can fix this. And at that point, he said, I have I had a gun. And I really thought, you know, but. When you met him, the most joyful, grateful human being. You. And never wanted. Really. He really didn't want to talk about himself. My part of the challenge of that podcast was he want to talk about me and he wanted to talk about politics and he didn't want to brag about himself, but just infectiously good human being.

What's Justice Sotomayor like?

Well.

I mean, we don't really know these people.

No. She's as real a person as you and I met her, Anderson, before she became a justice. I knew, you know, Barack Obama had had heard about her and studied her work. And because he wanted to put a Hispanic on the Supreme Court and he and she was a standout and he had his eye on her for this, but didn't know her that well. We snuck her into the White House for interviews. He said to me, go and talk to her and see what you think. And I said, Well, that's fine, but I'm not a lawyer. I can't. He said, Don't worry, I am. I can take care of that part. I want to know how you think she's going to hold up under the process. And I went to talk to her and I asked her, what worries you about this process? Do you have concerns about it? And this is what she said. And you said, I, I worry that I won't measure up. And I will always remember that conversation because it helped me understand not just you, but in some ways my own boss and what the pressures of being a path breaker, the first, places on when.

When you have people come up to me and say things like you show my kids that things in the future, their success can happen. We rely on you to continue showing them that. So a lot of pressure in life. If you paid attention to that, you could paralyze yourself. Yeah. And so you have to know enough to step away from it and understand that you have to live your life doing the best you can and hoping that it measures up. But it requires a lot of effort to try to do the best every single moment.

That meant a lot to me because it it did inform me about I never really thought about this. And Obama, you know, I never thought about the daily pressures. I mean, he did say when he was thinking of running, Michelle said, well, why? What do you think you could do that no one else could? And he said, I think. I don't know. But I think the day that I take that oath, there are a lot of kids in this country who are going to look at themselves differently. But there is this other piece, which is if you fail, if you stumble, if you're not a success, that their your your your loss is their loss. And, you know, that's the Jackie Robinson's that's the you know, and you do wonder a little bit about Kamala Harris and whether she carries a little of that as well. But Sotomayor, you know, from the South Bronx, her father died when she was young. Her mother, you know, it was a very tough neighborhood. And she she has juvenile diabetes. We talked about that. Never thought she was going to live past 40 and lived her life accordingly. You know, very trying to suck everything out of every minute. Faced all kinds of discrimination. You know, when she when she got the word that she was likely going to be admitted to Princeton, one of the counselors or nurses in her school stopped her and said essentially there were two kids, you know, the number one and two in the class. They they're not going to. Why do you think you're going? The implication being she's going because she's a Latina and she talked about that. So she's profound but very, very grounded human being. And you can see it in the way she rules on cases and the way she writes about them. She writes them from a real world perspective. And that is what Obama was looking for. He wanted to put people on the court who actually experienced the lives that people who hadn't been represented on the court experience.

One of the things that interests me about your career is that. I'm I'm very interested in sort of people who make big changes in their lives, who have success in one realm and then decide to move to something else. And I mean, is that, do you see a through line through all the things you've done or, you know, the decision to, you know, to to leave the White House, to leave the administration and and, you know going to academics and then podcasting and CNN and all of that. I mean, how do you think about that?

Well, I think a I think that if you live life well, then you should view it as chapters. I don't think I think, you know, what I. My my greatest fear in life is doing the same thing so long that I'm doing it by rote and I'm not giving it my all. And it's not I don't. I've had the luxury of. I've done only things I wanted to do and I was never educated for any of them. I was a journalist for ten years at the Chicago Tribune and I was the City Hall bureau chief and a political writer and a columnist. Left that and I managed a political campaign.

What was that jump like? I mean.

That was the steepest because.

That's a huge jump.

Yeah. And I was pretty successful at the paper. So, you know, I was young, I was 28, 29 years old. And people said, you know, you're foolish to leave here because you could be editor of the paper. I just knew all the, like, interim steps I would have to take to get there. And I wasn't sure I want to take them. But I also, you know, I and I saw the business changing, so. But it was really I had two young kids at the time and then I would later have three. One of them was quite ill. My wife encouraged me because she knew I was unhappy. By the time I left the paper, the changes were happening. The news hole was shrinking. They were more attuned to the business interests of the paper. And that, I think, influenced some decisions. And I was as the idealist who grew up in the front page, end of the front page era, I was like, I don't want to do it this way. But it was scary because I was really jumping into the unknown, and that worked out well for me. I went to the White House and I thought I could go back and make a lot of money being a consultant, but I was really influenced by the kids that I worked with on the campaign, which just inspired the hell out of me. They were there 24 seven. Not because they love Barack Obama, though they they did love him, but because they thought they were changing the world. And that's sort of how I got interested in politics in the first place that I thought, wow, this is a way that you can grab the wheel of history and change the world. And so I thought maybe I could go back and start something and be of use to young people who were trying to find their way in that world. And so I just keep you know, I keep looking for the next thing.

So 600 episodes. Is there going to be 700? What is the next step?

I don't know, Anderson. For the reasons I told you. You know, I love it. I love it. I. Because I love stories. You ask if there's a throughline. The one throughline in my life, I think, is I've been a storyteller of different sorts at every stage of my life, you know, as a as a as a reporter. Then when I did campaigns. To me, when you do it right, you're telling a story, a story about your candidate, a story about a community or a country and where you want to where your candidate wants to lead it. And it has to be real and authentic. So you have to be able to ask a lot of questions about of people, of of your candidate and people. And then, you know, in the last ten, 15 years, however many it's been 12, I guess, you know, doing that work at the university, but also through CNN and through the podcasts, I've pursued storytelling. So if I do something else, it's going to be in that realm. I'm not going to become a lobbyist at this stage of my life. But I you know, I've always wanted to and I plan to do documentaries. I was going to quit the political business and work on documentaries when Obama decided to run for president. And I got kind of derailed there. Glad I did. And, you know, and I may I may do this, but I may do a different kind of podcast. I just want to challenge myself and I don't want to keep doing what I'm doing because I'm, you know, I'm good at it or because it's comfortable. And so, you know, I don't know about a 700th episode, but at least I will have gotten a chance to sit down with you for the 600. And that will that would if it turns out that there's no 700th, that'll be a good coda.

With a couple of days left to go in this presidential race, how do you see things?

It is the most unpredictable race that I've seen. Listen, if you push me against a wall and I look at all the data and I put the whole picture together, you'd say, well, you know, Trump maybe has a slight edge here, but not anything that would that would be predictive or that where I would say I'm absolutely sure. I'm not sure of anything. It's so close that anything can move it. And there may be well, I don't know if there's a wellspring of people out there who just say, you know what, I don't want to be at war with each other anymore. I don't want to live with this sort of migraine headache 24 seven. I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. Or are there people who said, you know, I don't really like Trump and there are people like that. But I think I did better under him. I'm not sure.

I just you you just said the people who say I don't want to go through this migraine, you said they'd vote for Donald Trump?

'Some of them. Some of them. Yeah, I think that's clear. You look at the data and there are people who are voting for Trump who really don't like Trump, and there are some people voting for her who don't have a positive image of they're both underwater at this point in terms of their ratings. But he you know, they don't know her particularly. They know him. And so, you know, there's a tremendous gender gap. How that goes. Are there are there hidden Trump voters like we saw in the last two elections who are going to storm to the polls but have alluded pollsters? I think pollsters have been so conditioned about that that they have been very conservative about how they approach this. They've changed their techniques. I think it's less likely that you're going to see that effect. Are there people who, on the other hand, who are going to vote for Trump, particularly women like Republican women, non-college white women who just don't want to tell anybody that and aren't being pulled or aren't being captured? You hear that, you hear stories about stickers in the ladies room saying you don't have to tell anyone who you voted for. But and then the question is, are young people are African-American voters, Hispanic voters, are they sufficiently motivated? I kind of understand their reticence, you know, because they certainly there are there are people in these minority communities who've been told time and again where things are going to change and they haven't changed enough. And it makes one a little skeptical, if not cynical, about the process. So there are a lot of well, you know, on Election Day, on election night, when the returns start coming in and we start looking at exit polls and so on the thing I'm going to be looking for are those particular, I'll look at areas, but I'll also look at particular constituencies and, you know, are is she doing better among non-college white women than we thought she would? Is she doing better among Republicans and Republican women than we thought she would? You know, I mean, my job when I sit with you is to be as honest as I can about stuff. And I try to sometimes to the consternation of my friends, but I haven't lost my passion for this democracy. I believe in it. I'm the son of an immigrant, of a refugee. I'm grateful to the country. And I really believe in this experiment that we have, and I'm desperately interested in seeing it go on and and restoring faith in it that people have lost. So we'll see. We'll see what happens, but what happens next week. And I think it also influence what what I do and how I do it. And, you know, I mean, the country could be a different place because I, I am motivated by this deep belief in democracy. And it may be that the platform that I have here allows me to say things that I think need to be said. And there but there may be other ways to. I'm mindful that things can change dramatically depending on the outcome of this election. So I don't know. I don't know. But I figure I go to another turn of the wheel in me and I'm going to figure out what it is.

David Axelrod, thanks so much.

Thanks.

Congratulations on 600.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to The Axe Files, brought to you by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago and CNN Audio. The executive producer of the show is Miriam Finder Annenberg. The show is also produced by Saralena Barry, Jeff Fox and Hannah Grace McDonald. And special thanks to our partners at CNN, including Steve Lickteig and Haley Thomas. For more programing from IOP, visit politics dot uchicago dot edu.