Stephen Curry asks Barack Obama what readers should take from A Promised Land. Obama says it's understanding how power actually works and that your voice can shape it. He shares his own early failures in debates and mistakes to show even presidents are fallible, hoping to inspire people to engage in criminal justice, climate, or education without needing elected office.
Just what would be one takeaway that you want people to know from the book and why, you know, you wanted to put the time in to bring this to the people, you know, after your presidency?
You know, the main takeaway, especially for young people who read it, and, you know, whether you're reading it or there's an audiobook, you know, some folks— The audiobook's you, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
So, you know, folks who want to soak it in that way. My main takeaway connects to what you said just before, which is I want people to read this and say, okay, you know what, actually I have a better sense now of how our government works. I have a better sense of how the world operates, how power operates, how decisions get made that influence the world around me. And my voice, my ability to impact that is more significant than I thought. Part of the reason that I wrote this, you know, tracking my journey as a young man through the presidency—
Mm-hmm.
—was so that people would look at it and say, oh, you know, well, he's smart, but, you know, he's not a rocket scientist, he's not Einstein, you know, he's, you know, yeah, he's a good speaker, but, you know, he wasn't always a good speaker, you know, yeah, he obviously had some talent, but man, he made a lot of mistakes. And, you know, he had some stuff that wasn't working out for him and he was disappointed and stumbled and sometimes got embarrassed, you know, in public. Yeah. You know, I write about how, you know, first couple debates I was in, man, you know, I would stumble through my answer and the buzzer would go off. Like, I was halfway through my answer, you know, I was terrible. And so the reason I want folks to see that is so that, you know, if you're coming up and you want to do something, whether it's around criminal justice reform or it's around climate change or it's around, you know, inequality or, you know, kids getting a better education, whatever it is, I want folks to read this and say, I can do that, you know. Now, you may not end up being president, you may not want to.
Right.
You may not run for public office, but What I want people to be able to see is this idea of government of, by, and for the people, it actually can happen if you get involved.
Right.
The reason that, you know, so much of our public life is governed by, or at least seems to be governed by greed and power and you know, cynicism and, you know, folks want to take advantage of other people is so often because the rest of us just sit back. Because we kind of think like, well, I can't make a difference, I can't do anything about that. And the more cynical we get, the less involved we get, and then the more disappointed we are in the outcomes. And it gets to be a vicious circle. And what I want to communicate is, look, put yourself out there, get in the arena, right? Take your shot. And yeah, it's not going to be perfect, and you won't get everything out of it that you want, but you will have more power than you understand if you just let it— Stephen Curry. You know, let it show and take some risks.
