Monday, May 31, 2021 • 44min
Fatherhood
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President Obama and Bruce discuss starting their families, the feelings experienced when their children were born, and balancing fatherhood with their careers. They reflect on what they’ve learned from becoming fathers and husbands.
Find the episode transcript here: http://spoti.fi/RenegadesTranscripts
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Talking about
Speakers
(2)
Barack Obama
Bruce Springsteen
Transcript
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Barack Obama
00:14
For all of our outward success, Bruce and I both agree that the most important anchor over the years has been our families. We were lucky enough to find remarkable, strong independent women to push us and challenges and ground us and call us out on B. S. Women who helped us become better versions of ourselves and forced us to continually re-examine our priorities.
Share
00:41
Michelle
and Patti
also gave us the single greatest gift of our lives. The chance to be fathers to experience the joys and trials and profound humility of being husbands and dance.Share
00:56
We spent some time trading notes about what wives and kids continue to teach us, what values we want to pass on what examples we want to set, and what kind of country we want to leave behind for them to inherit?
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01:14
We're now dads.
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Bruce Springsteen
01:18
Oh yeah.
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Barack Obama
01:20
And uh... How did that change you? How much on-the-job training did you still have to do? Was there still a lot of stuff you had to work out before you kind of got to the point where you said, "All right, this is this is the kind of dad I want to be? "
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Bruce Springsteen
01:43
The problem that I had was I didn't trust myself for a long, long, long time with someone else's feelings. All you have is faith to go on. If you take a baby step, you'll be able to take another one. Where did that face come from? Comes out of the love in your life? My case
Patti
was an enormous source love in my life. And a deep well of faith for me.Share
02:15
Gave me the faith in myself to risk parts of myself I had never risked before and say, "Hey, I think I'm there at a place where I can I can hold this down and let the chips fall where they may. "If it all crumbles and comes apart and winds up in ruin, then that's what happened, You know? But if it doesn't what if it doesn't then what am I going to do?
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02:55
What if suddenly I find myself with a family and with a longstanding love, who who am I? Then all of these things came into question way before being a dad and you know,
Patti
, I we were just together and we were just loving, loving each other. That was our business of the day: to build something.Share
03:24
I'm 35, 36 years old. That's getting up there. And deep inside I want to have a family. And I felt like I've got to be honest with
Patti
, I don't know if I can make this. And she just said, "Well, we'll see, you know. "And she said "It's okay if we take it a day at a time." And so we did.Share
03:57
I came home one night, I think I was away for a few days and I walked in the room she said "Oh, by the way, I'm pregnant. "That's what it sounded like.
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Barack Obama
04:17
Crickets.
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Bruce Springsteen
04:18
Crickets and we're on the bed. She tells me I look away and she doesn't know exactly how I'm going to respond. But there's a mirror on the inside of the door and she says, "Hey, I just saw you smile. "Uh huh. That was it!
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04:46
Many smiles later, here we sit, you know, a boy about to be 30 years old.
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Barack Obama
04:54
It moves man.
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Bruce Springsteen
04:55
Yeah.
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Barack Obama
04:56
Yeah.
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Bruce Springsteen
04:57
Well your oldest, how old is Malia?
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Barack Obama
05:03
22.
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Bruce Springsteen
05:04
22.
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Barack Obama
05:04
Sasha is 19. So, so I meet
Michelle
, uh, while I am working at a law firm for the summer. She's already lawyer, she's younger but had gone straight through school. I had taken my diversion into, I mean the organizing after college. So, I'm an older law student, I'm 28, she's 25 and she comes from a completely orderly family. And they had a big extended family beyond that.Share
05:38
Michelle
and I always talk about how part of the attraction that we had for each other in addition to her being very attractive and funny and smart as a whip was that in me she saw some things that had been missing in her childhood, which was adventure, the open road, a bunch of risk-taking, uh, traveling the world. And, and so that appealed to her.Share
06:06
I looked at her and her family and I thought, "Oh, you know, well they seem to know how to set this up, right? I had a vision of, of wanting to make sure that my kids, we're in a place of love and I liked the idea of, and not necessarily a big family but extended family. Like there was a community of people.
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Bruce Springsteen
06:32
Very nice, yeah.
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Barack Obama
06:32
Who were all part of their lives, right? And
Michelle's
family was very much like that Michelle
, you know, she wasn't shot, you know, pretty early on. She just says, "Look, I really valued my career, but the thing I really want to be as a mom. "Yeah, "And I really cared deeply about family". That very first summer that we were together, I thought to myself, this is somebody I could see spending my life with.Share
07:03
I didn't mean that it was going to be...
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Bruce Springsteen
07:06
Right.
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Barack Obama
07:06
You know, that I'd have the wherewithal to go ahead and commit. And so when I come back, I'm graduate from law school, I live in her apartment, which is upstairs from her parent's apartment, her father had died in, in the interim, he had some health issues and I had flown back and been with her during that time.
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07:30
And I think from her perspective she maybe saw that I'm not a guy who was going to be afraid to be there for her when she needed it. So by the time we get there, look, once you come back to a city and you moved in her place... Now the clock has to be taken because it's like, well, "What are you doing here? "
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07:56
And uh, I did not have a big panic about it. There was a part of me and this goes to our conversation about just being a man in a culture that says in comedies and television and popular culture. It's always like "Man, you're gonna get.
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Bruce Springsteen
08:12
Of course.
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Barack Obama
08:13
"They got their hooks in you. ""You got to try to wriggle free" and, "Are you ready?"
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Bruce Springsteen
08:19
I'm surprised you didn't have a bigger issue with that given your history, your familiar history.
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Barack Obama
08:25
Yeah. I I was under no illusions that the family life I would have would be one in which I could sit back and just be the lord of the manor and have her doting on me.
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Bruce Springsteen
08:45
Yeah, from the top I knew that wasn’t going to happen with Patti.
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Barack Obama
08:48
Yeah, that just was not going to be an option.
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Bruce Springsteen
08:54
I found his
Patti
she was trying to define for me a broader sense of male nous and of masculinity, a freer sense of it. And that that scared me, that I've met someone who can change me and who can assist me in changing myself. That's a great influence to allow into your life. But you realize if you don't do that, you are not going to have a full life, you know? It's a catch 22.Share
Barack Obama
09:29
Well, maybe because in my family, it was my mother and my grandmother who were the adult figures that I both relied on most and respected most. That it was natural for me to see women as my equals, as my friends, as my partners in work or play. And it also meant that the kind of relationship where a woman is just batting your eyes at me and tell me how wonderful I am, I get bored, right?
Share
10:11
Or I just couldn't take that seriously because well that certainly wasn't who my grandmother was, that wasn't who my mother was. I expected to be challenged, I expected to be questioned. And... the women I found most interesting, most attractive were women who interested me because of how they thought.
Share
10:38
I'm not saying I wasn't paying attention to how they looked, but sure their ability to make me laugh, their ability to make me see something I hadn't seen before. Uh, their ability to force me into asking questions about who I was and what I wanted. Well, I expected all. That was something I naturally gravitated towards. And I don't know, I liked the idea of having something kind of hard.
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Bruce Springsteen
11:05
Very similar to miss my ready-to-go
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Barack Obama
11:09
Yeah absolutely!
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Bruce Springsteen
11:11
Patti
went with a lot of guys and she left a lot of broken...Share
Barack Obama
11:14
A lot of broken hearts out there!
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Bruce Springsteen
11:15
... in her trail.
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11:18
I and I was, I was around, you know, I said, "Damn, she’s living like I live. ” In the ways she was approaching her relationships and she didn’t like to get tied down. She didn't want... she had the leash, you know, and that I found I found that attractive about her. And I found it like, "You know what? I need somebody with that kind of power. "
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Barack Obama
11:40
This is somebody who is my equal and that I am always gonna think highly of and even when I'm mad, even when we're in an argument, I'm gonna say, yeah, but she's something she's period full stuff, right? Because to me, at least if you didn't have that, then you wouldn't weather the storms.
Share
12:07
If you're going to have a family, if you aren't choosing a partner who you have confidence is going to pass on strength and values and common sense and smart to your kids. And when I looked at
Michelle
, I could say she was suey generous, I didn't know anybody like her. I thought even if the marriage didn't work out, I would always admire and respect her. And so having been with her, I would have never, I would never regret that.Share
12:36
So we, you know, I asked her to marry me at That that summer when, when I moved in and...
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Bruce Springsteen
12:45
How old were you then?
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Barack Obama
12:47
So I was 31. And so then we had this nice stretch of about three years where she was doing her thing and her career, I was doing mine and then we started trying to have kids, took a while,
Michelle
had a couple miscarriages, and we had to kind of work at it.Share
13:09
And when Malia was finally born, we were more than ready to be parents, right? Because there had been this six-year stretch in which for about half of that we had been trying. So, so there was no surprise to it. There was no are you sure? But I had no doubt. The minute I saw that little creature with those big eyes looking up at me, I said, "My goodness, I will do anything for you. "
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Bruce Springsteen
13:39
I know.
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Barack Obama
13:40
And when the second one came, when Sasha showed up, I felt the exact same way, you know? And the love of being a father was not something I had to work on. I mean, it was just it was physical, it was emotional spiritual. The attachment to my children. I felt entirely and completely and I thought to myself, "Ok if the baseline is unconditional love, I've got that. "
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Bruce Springsteen
14:10
It's something I have. And we had incident where
Patti
was two months pregnant, she had some bleeding. So we go to the doctors, go in the office, I'm standing there and suddenly I realized "There isn't anything I wouldn't do in the world right now. If somebody said there's a lion in the hall, can you please go and get him out of the building. For now... there was a bear out there". There was nothing I wouldn't have done to have Patti
and the baby be all right.Share
Barack Obama
14:47
It was visceral.
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Bruce Springsteen
14:49
It was visceral and it was my first acquaintanceship was unconditional love. There was a fear, I felt a fearless love for the first time in my life. First time in my life. I didn't I never knew that I'd be capable of even feeling that. You know, all I want to do right now is be the man that my wife Evan was born first, and my son needs.
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Barack Obama
15:17
You just don't want to disappoint him.
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Bruce Springsteen
15:19
You don't want to disappoint.
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Barack Obama
15:21
Man, the idea of disappointing, your family and not being there and doing right. You just, you couldn't, I could not abide. I thought this would be...
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Bruce Springsteen
15:36
And I think that was the question, am I capable of not disappointing? I wasn't sure you're never completely sure, I suppose, but but after the children were born and you start to find the resources that you have inside you that you didn't know were there.
Share
15:51
That is a gift you get from your children and from your wife, your acknowledgement of a new self and the realization of your manhood. You know, it was huge. You know, I woke up, I felt as someone, not necessarily someone different, but someone so much further down the road than I thought maybe I'd ever get.
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Barack Obama
16:32
This is one place where I do think the idea of what it means to be a man changed in a real way. By the time I had Malia, it wasn't just that I was completely absorbed and fascinated in love with this bundle of joy and this woman who had gone through everything to give me this joy. There was, I think a sense that dad should want to spend time with their kids, should wanna
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Bruce Springsteen
17:10
Ideally.
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Barack Obama
17:11
You know, burp um and change diapers and I took the night shift.
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Bruce Springsteen
17:17
So did I.
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Barack Obama
17:17
Because I was a night out.
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Bruce Springsteen
17:20
So was I.
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Barack Obama
17:21
And there'd be some breast milk in the freezer and I had certain instructions and midnight and two o'clock in the morning, I'd be patting them on the back and feeding them.
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Bruce Springsteen
17:33
Putting ‘em on my laps.
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Barack Obama
17:34
Putting them in on my laps and they're staring up at you and I'm reading to them and talking to them and...
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Bruce Springsteen
17:43
I used to love...
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Barack Obama
17:44
Playing music for him and I think the joys of that were something that, you know in the same way that for a long time men couldn't even see the delivery, right? I mean that was like Taboo
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Bruce Springsteen
17:57
Yeah…they wouldn't let you in!
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Barack Obama
17:58
I completely loved that. And the timing was good because Malia was born, he's the fourth of July baby.
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Bruce Springsteen
18:08
Wow!
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Barack Obama
18:08
The state legislature was out. I was already in the state legislature at that time. The law school was out, I was teaching law at the time, I could put my law practice on hold. So I just had all this time to just wallow in it. And then Sasha was born, she was a summer baby, same kind of thing.
Share
18:26
Now, here, here's the one thing that I had to wrestle with and
Michelle
challenged me with and the challenge of fatherhood for me was the nature of my work was exhausting all-absorbing and often took me out of town.Share
18:45
The emotion, emotional investment in fatherhood was never hard for me. There was nothing I enjoyed more then just hanging out with my kids, listening to them as they got older and started having their own little insights and the discovery of the world.
Share
19:06
My the re-acquaintance would wonder they provide looking at a leaf or a snail or asking questions about "Why this" and "Why that" all that stuff. I love children's books, love children's movies.
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19:25
I was all in the only thing I didn't love, you know, children's pizza, I always thought was a little bit, they like that little those little flat cheese pizza is that don't have anything on him. But what I was gonna say though is that eventually it wasn't summer and eventually I've gotta go down to
Springfield Illinois
, a three-hour drive for the state legislature.Share
19:51
And when I get back, I've got town hall meetings that I've got to do, I've got and then eventually I'm running for office and then, you know, I'm gone for five days at a time and from
Michelle's
perspective in which family was not just a matter of love was not just a matter of being present when you are there, but was a matter of don't physically being present because you've made choices and organize your life so that you can be with your family more.Share
Bruce Springsteen
20:31
Right? So, you had your children, let me say young in your work life.
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Barack Obama
20:37
Yeah.
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Bruce Springsteen
20:38
All right. I had my children relatively late in my work.
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Barack Obama
20:42
You were sufficiently well established that you could set your own.
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Bruce Springsteen
20:45
Absolutely. I...
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Barack Obama
20:47
You’d be like if I don't want to tour right now, I don't have to tour.
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Bruce Springsteen
20:49
I had already gone to the top of the hill and over the other side. You know, I was like, I had a certain kind of success. I wasn't gonna have it again, didn't expect to have it again, wasn't pursuing to have it again. I was happy. Now I'm just, I'm going to be a working playing musician and I had all that out of the way really before
Patti
and I even got together, you know?Share
Barack Obama
21:16
That makes sense.
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Bruce Springsteen
21:17
Yeah. So, I was at a point in my life where the relationship and the family had really become a priority and I could give myself to it because of where I was. And also you're a musician, musicians create their own schedule.
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21:32
If you've had a certain amount of success, you get up when you wanna you go in the studio when you want to you put your record out when you want to, you go where you want to go, you come home when you want to come home, you can say I'm gonna go away for three days, I'm going to go away for three months.
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21:48
But if you know, when I go away for three months, it's bad when I go and when I come back. When I go, when I go away for three days, it's okay when I come back, I better start going away for three days.
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Barack Obama
22:03
But it's the better choice.
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Bruce Springsteen
22:04
We figured out things like, well, whenever you're away from more than three weeks, that's bad now for a touring musician, that's not much. But all we knew was that when we past a certain point, it wasn't good for our relationship, we started to whoop split into other and separate lives. Anything that's gonna keep add to my stability, I want as a part of my life.
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22:29
The things that are disabling in my life. I don't want those as a part of my life now because they will poison me and they will poison my beautiful love here. You know? And so we slowly figured all this out together and you know, through making some mistakes and your king on the road.
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22:52
Everybody just wants to say "Yes! "
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Barack Obama
22:54
And you’re not king at home.
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Bruce Springsteen
22:56
"How can I do this for you? What can I do to make you happier? What can I give you what my house? You take my girl, take my girlfriend! "You know what it is. It's like everybody just "What can I possibly give to you, the man who writes the songs", that the whole world things.
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23:14
So you're out there and you're going like "Ah, ahh eh this isn’t so bad…I mean what you know... "But when you come back, you are not king. You are this chauffeur. You are the short-order cook in the morning, you know? And the thing is you've got to be at the place in your life where... and you love it.
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Barack Obama
23:40
What you're saying about your schedule though and where you were at your career. That is a difference because essentially we have kids and within the span of two or three years, I am suddenly being catapulted. I mean look, Sasha was when I ran for the
U. S. Senate
.Share
24:04
Sasha is only three years old when I'm sworn in as a US Senator, Sasha's four and Malia's eight, something like that. Three years later, I'm President, of the United States and in the interim for a year and a half I've been on the road, not for three weeks spans, but for... big chunks of time.
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24:26
What? Look, look at all of it, look at all of you! Goodness!
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24:31
And it was hard.
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24:33
Got a couple more guys.
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24:35
This is the life blood of this campaign... Volunteers like you guys coming in.
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24:40
You know, the burden I put on
Michelle
was enormous because she was still look it wasn't even as if I was working for money that would allow her to take a break. She was still working initially full time then part-time when I started running for president. Here's, you know, smart, accomplished woman who has her own career, that she now has to adjust to my crazy ambitions.Share
25:09
You know, I'm missing the girls terribly. The first six months of me running for president, I was miserable because I was missing that family bad. And we got through that only by virtue of
Michelle's
heroic ability to manage everything back home and the incredible gift of my daughters loving their daddy.Share
25:36
Anyway, what I didn't anticipate was the fact that I get to spend much more time with my kids once I'm president. Because now I'm living above the store. I have a 30 seconds commute. And so I just set up a rule, I'm having dinner with my crew at 6: 30 every night unless I'm traveling. But by travel schedule is very different now because people come to see you.
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Bruce Springsteen
26:17
Yeah.
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Barack Obama
26:18
And so unless I was overseas, I'm gonna be home at 6: 30 for dinner and I'm gonna be sitting there and I'm gonna be entirely absorbed with stories about the annoying boys and the weird teacher and the drama in the cafeteria, reading harry potter and tucking them in and listening to whatever music they are now listening to.
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26:45
And that actually was my lifeline right in, in an occupation in which I'm dealing daily with mayhem, chaos, crises, death, destruction, natural disasters, right?
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27:03
And and so I always say that the degree to which
Michelle
and those girls sacrificed and lifted me up kept me going.Share
Bruce Springsteen
27:18
Yeah.
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Barack Obama
27:19
Prevented me from either getting cynical or despairing, reminded me why I was doing what I was doing and spurred me on because man, this better be worth it, what I accomplished this job, this work, it is worth the time that I've spent away from them and the birthday parties, the soccer games or whatever that I've missed, you know, that better account, what do you think you learn being just a dad? Now we talked a little bit about being a husband, but...
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Bruce Springsteen
27:58
I know it was tough being president, but let me explain to you how hard it is to make an album.
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Barack Obama
28:04
Making an album pretty hard!
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Bruce Springsteen
28:06
I'm making a dumb joke. Listen, I had you for a minute! I had you for a minute...
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Barack Obama
28:15
Making album is pretty hard! But it does seem a little more fun sometimes.
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Bruce Springsteen
28:21
I think so.
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Barack Obama
28:23
A little more fun. What did you learn from being a dad
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Bruce Springsteen
28:26
From being a dad? So the hardest thing that I had to learn to do was to be still, I had some habits, I wouldn't give up old musician habits partly was my schedule that I could keep. I like to stay up till three or four in the morning, get up at 12 in the afternoon. And for the first several years of when our children
Patti
was kind of just kind of letting me do it, I was picking up because the kids were still babies and so I was taking the night shift if they cried at night or if something happened at night, I was awake and...Share
29:04
And then, so when the morning came around late morning came around, she kind of picked it up and but you know, as the kids grow older, there was a lot more morning work than there was night work and I was kind of enjoying that. And she just came over to me and she says, "You know, you don't have to get up, but if you don't, we're gonna miss it. "
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29:28
"What do you mean? ""Well kids are at their best in the morning." "That's when they're the most beautiful is when they have reawakened from a night of dreams. ""They're at their most gorgeous at that moment in the morning and you're never gonna see it".
Share
29:48
Okay, I don't think I want to miss that. So I said, "Well what am I going to do". "You're just gonna make breakfast. ""I don't know how to do anything, I don't know how to strum that freaking box!" Try to put me anyplace else. And I'm no good to anybody. She said, "Well you're gonna learn. "I got pretty good at it and I got pretty good at eggs. I got pretty good. Uh like I say, I became a pretty good short-order cook if I could get a job at one point anywhere and any diner from say six to noon and I'd be all right, you know?
Share
30:23
And she was right about the children. If I saw them in the morning, it was almost like I'd seen them for the entire day and if I missed them in the morning, it could never quite make up for it. For some reason that was present. This one, I was not my father, I didn't have to chase that ghost or worry about that anymore. That was a part of my past two.
Share
30:55
Be present in this world, wherever you are at any given moment, be present in their lives. I used to think like if somebody interrupted me while I was writing "What the holy smokes - Do you know the great thoughts I’m thinking right now? ""I'm thinking right now!"
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Barack Obama
31:15
"Have been the greatest American song... "
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Bruce Springsteen
31:17
It could have been!
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Barack Obama
31:19
"... Had you not being walked in here?"
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Bruce Springsteen
31:20
No, I'm being here. That's right. I'm being interest. You know what? So I that's where I started and where I ended up was I realized, oh wait, wait, wait. Songs. Yeah, Yeah. A good song is there forever music is there in my life? Forever children gone.
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Barack Obama
31:45
They grew up.
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Bruce Springsteen
31:46
So those were the initial things I picked up from fatherhood.
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Barack Obama
31:49
Yeah man.
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Bruce Springsteen
31:50
What about yourself? What what's the biggest lesson you learned from becoming a parent?
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Barack Obama
31:57
You know
Michelle
figured out much earlier than I did that kids are like plants, they need sun, soil, water but some of them are oaks and some of them are pines and some of them are willows and some bamboo and those seeds of who they are and the pace and ways in which they're going to unfold are just uniquely theirs.Share
32:27
I think I had a notion with Malia and Sasha, there was sort of a way of doing things and what you know,
Michelle
figured out earlier than I did, but I also ended up learning was each one is just magical in their own ways.Share
32:46
They branch is gonna sprout when it's gonna sprout and flowers are gonna pop when it's gonna pop back and you know you just roll with that unfolding that unfurling of who they are. Being comfortable just discovering them as opposed to feeling as if you've got it as if it's a project right? Sometimes you watch there's a term now helicopter parents right, which but that idea of okay, I approach this the way I would approach some Power Point project.
Share
33:29
I've got to check every box and I got to be, you know, this is when my kids has to be doing this and this is when they, you know thinking of it more as just throw a bunch of stuff Adam be with them, play with them teaching values. We were good about saying to the girls, things like "We're not gonna sweat you on your grades, but we are going to sweat on did you put in some effort? "
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Bruce Springsteen
34:02
Absolutely.
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Barack Obama
34:02
We're not gonna, we're not gonna give you a hard time about making a mistake, but we will give you a hard time if you're lying about making a mistake or if you mistreated somebody, right?
Share
34:22
So, you know, you put some guardrails around them in terms of values, but otherwise, and I think this was particularly important because they were growing up in the white house, they had more than enough expectations and eyeballs on them and you know,
Secret Service
following them around.Share
Bruce Springsteen
34:40
Oh my God at that age too!
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Barack Obama
34:40
And I remember, look, we'd go, uh, million or Sasha, they'd have a playdate.
Secret Service
had to go to the house of the person they were visiting and check everything out and the poor parents, you know, so we had to make friends with the parents and say, "Listen, I'm sorry about the intrusion", and when they went to the mall or the movies, you know, they've got somebody.Share
Bruce Springsteen
35:09
Oh boy the handled it with such grace
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Barack Obama
35:12
They did. And so given all that, the last thing I wanted to do was to make them feel as if they have to be something right as opposed to just being themselves.
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35:30
I still measure myself and I still fall back on a lot of those attitudes about, what does it mean to be a man.
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Bruce Springsteen
35:42
That's right.
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Barack Obama
35:43
And if I had a son, I suspect I would have been tougher on him in some ways. And I'm wondering for you with your boys, how conscious you had to be.
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Bruce Springsteen
35:57
You know, I learned the great word in my house was "No". You know, we don't go outside of our comfort zone and we don't talk about our feelings in this way. We don't cry over these things. And I realized at a very young age, I had taught my oldest son to say no to the things, things that he needed.
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36:23
And and he was quite young to remember. I came into me might have been eight or nine. He was still pretty young, but I remember going into his room one day and saying "Evan, I think I've taught you a very bad lesson and I would like to apologize to you for doing that. I think I've taught you to not need me because I've been afraid of what that meant as your as your father. "
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36:51
"And that's something I really I need to apologize to you for and I need to tell you I need you, I need you so badly in my life so so dearly as my son that I would like to try to connect with him now in a way that I hadn't been doing".
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37:16
You know, and I realized that was going to take a lot of work. And so when I was working instead of thinking, oh, I'm so busy now thinking great thoughts. I don't want to be disturbed. I stopped anytime he came in or any of the children came into my room. I stopped working. The only way to teach him that no wasn't the answer was for me to start saying yes yes, yes, yes, yes. Over and over and over again.
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38:36
Renegades: Born in the USA is a Spotify original presented and produced by Higher Ground Audio in collaboration with Dustlight Productions. From Higher Ground Audio, Dan Fierman, Anna Holmes, Mukta Mohan and Joe Paulsen are our Executive Producers. Carolyn Lipka and Adam Sachs are our consulting producers, Janae Marable is our Editorial Assistant. From Dustlight Productions, Misha Euceph and Arwen Nicks are Executive Producers. Elizabeth Nakano, Mary Knauf and Tamika Adams are producers. Mary Knauf is also editor. Andrew Eapen is our composer and mix engineer. Additional mixing from Valentino Rivera Rainier Harris is our apprentice. Transcriptions by David Rodriguez. Special thanks to Rachael Garcia, the Dustlight Development and operations coordinator. Daniel EK, Dawn Ostroff and Courtney Holt are executive producers for Spotify. Gimlet and Lydia Polgreen are consulting producers. Music supervision by Search Party Music. From the Great State of New Jersey, special thanks to: Adrienne Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse, Greg Linn And Betsy Whitney. We also want to thank: Adrian Gerard, Marilyn Laverty, Tracy Nurse Greg Lynn and Betsy Whitney. And a special thanks to Patti Scialfa for her encouragement and inspiration, and to Evan, Jess and Sam Springsteen. From the District of Columbia thanks to Kristina Schake, MacKenzie Smith, Katie Hill, Eric Schultz, Caroline Adler Morales, Merone Hailemeskel, Alex Platkin, Kristin Bartoloni and Cody Keenan. And a special thanks to Michelle, Malia and Sasha Obama. This is Renegades: Born in the USA.
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Barack Obama
Bruce Springsteen