You Should Start a Podcast with Your Sibling with Michelle and Craig

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1:41And say goodbye to microplastics forever. A lot of people have questions they want to know, especially when they see somebody of note with a platform who, you know, by every measure looks successful. The first question is, how? I think this podcast, first and foremost, gives us an opportunity to hear from folks. You know, we're going to be taking, you know, questions from listeners who are going through some things and just need a little advice. They want to hear from people in conversations. And folks are looking for a place where they can just, they can hear stories, you know? What I realize is by sharing some of these stories, it always taps into something from somebody else.

2:31People, they want to hear some honest kind of conversation about how people are working it through. And we don't have all the answers. I mean, this show isn't about us being experts at anything other than the lives that we've lived. But what we do have are a lot of opinions. Hence the name. In my opinion, IMO.

3:03This episode is brought to you by Rivian and Pinesol. Well, I'm Craig Robinson, and you all know my sister, Michelle Obama, and we're doing this podcast together. And it's really exciting to be working with you on this project. You know, some people react like, you're doing a podcast with your brother. Why would you do that? I know, really. But our dynamic is so, in my view, unique. I think there are plenty of siblings who have great relationships. But, you know, I think when we think back to where that came from, we think about, I think about just the physical closeness that we had. I mean, we weren't wealthy.

3:49Right. And dad was working class. We lived in the same apartment our whole lives and had to grow into that. And as a result, you and me, we were physically close growing up. Remember when we used to share a bedroom? Of course. That was our life growing up. We shared the same room until you went to high school, right? That's right. Well, let's first just recall how small the apartment we lived in. It seemed like it was huge, but it was essentially two bedrooms, right? No, it was one bedroom. Well, that little offshoot bedroom that mom and dad stayed in, you would consider that a bedroom. But that was the only bedroom.

4:34The room we were in was actually the living room. And the living room, what we called the living room, was actually the dining room. Huh. Okay. All right. So that's how small it was. We had to turn it into something else. But the biggest room was always ours. And we were little, little, like baby littles. Like five and three. The twin beds were head to head with like an end table in between. And we had matching spreads. That mom made. That mom made. She sewed them. Big, bold stripes, and the twin beds were up against the wall, and she had the concept of creating these little padding boards. Yes.

5:15She was so crafty, so she created these foam pads that she hung along the side to make them decorative, but to also provide us with a little cushion against the wall, which we thought was so cool. I remember you had a bed guard because you were so little. Yeah, I sort of remember that, yeah. You still probably should have been in a crib. Maybe so. But yeah, I do remember. You remember that? You guys would tell me I'd fall out of bed, start crying, get put back in the bed, and I wouldn't remember anything about it. You wouldn't remember any of it. Everybody else would be wide awake and you'd be snoring.

5:51I didn't snore. Now you're making stuff. But then from there, we went to, and I'm trying to remember what age, when our grandfather, Southside, built us this T. Partition wall. Partition wall. So then we had our own bedrooms in that same room. Yeah. So it went from a one room, one big room into three small rooms. Yeah. Your bedroom was on the right. Mine was on the left. and then we had a common area in the front where mom, once again, crafty, built us desks on each side where we could do our homework. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that was some poverty crafting, right? That's like Martha Stewart on a budget.

6:40But that wall was just, we were still sleeping head to head, but just on the other side of a wall. And it was special to me because I feel like that's where our real relationship began because it's like we would talk for hours. We'd go to bed, we're supposed to be asleep, and we'd stay up all night just talking through that little partition. We thought it was all night, but because we had to go to bed at 7.30, it was probably only 8.30. but we talked till about 10 o 'clock and mom would finally come in there. If you all don't go to bed, go to sleep. But it was really sweet because I remember being able to talk to you even at that young age about anything, what happened during the day, the little drama on the outside world, and just laughing all night long about nothing, making up silly games.

7:45It started that young. Well, what's really ironic is that we were talking about how small our place was. Growing up, our house, yeah. And then look where we're doing this taping in this big, beautiful Airbnb. Got a little more room here. I know, who would have thought we'd be able to be in a snazzy place like this? This podcast is going to be about you and I trying to let people in on some of the lessons that we learned as kids and growing up from mom and dad, but also from different teachers and coaches and things we've learned along the way. And let me ask you this. What is one of the lessons that you learned from mom and dad that really sticks out to you?

8:39Well, when I think about what we're talking about now, our relationship as brother and sister, why we're so excited about doing this podcast, not because we love to talk and we got lots of opinions, But, you know, especially since mom passed, you know, this is a joint project that you and me have. And I think it's the first time we've actually worked together and helping people to understand where does that foundation come from? Where you and I feel so comfortable with each other and we have our whole lives where we can not only work together, but share what has helped to make us close. I think about not just our bedroom space in that little bitty first apartment on Euclid Avenue, but I think about the kitchen table because the kitchen was the other gathering place.

9:35And in our house, we as young people with our parents, what they did for us was they invited us to sit with them at the table and talk. And I think very early on, because our parents had the wisdom to understand how wise kids could be and how important their voices were and how much fun it was to not just have kids just seen and not heard. In our household, our parents wanted to not just see us, but they wanted to hear us. They wanted to hear our ideas. They wanted to hear our opinions. I think that our parents offered us both the first table where we gained confidence in our voices, where we felt like who we were, what we thought, how we felt was important.

10:32And not because it was important to the rest of the world, but it was important to them. Yeah. And I think that's a piece of wisdom in terms of parenting that I try to share, I try to implement in my own life. But our parents wanted to hear from us. They loved our thoughts and ideas, and they encouraged us to say what was on our mind, do it respectfully for sure. But a lot of kids don't grow up like that. They sure don't. And I'm always asked how mom and dad came to be the type of parents that they were, that would be the type to let their kids come into the kitchen table and share in the conversation rather than being lectured to.

11:24And I always remember mom always, when we would always ask mom, how do you know something? She was like, well, I don't know everything. I don't know what to tell you. Yeah, yeah. She was never afraid to tell us when she wasn't sure. When she wasn't sure. And she said, let me think about it and get back to you. And that was one of the most powerful things as a parent. Like you don't, you're not supposed to know everything. You don't have to know everything. And it's better to say you don't know than to make up something or lie or get yourself caught in a position where your kids come back to you and say, you gave me bad advice.

12:03Mm-hmm. And a lot of parents think that a part of being the parent is to be the one with all the knowledge, with all the answers. And because our parents didn't do that, it also gave us permission and taught us that in life, you are in a learning process all the time. All the time. All the time. And it's okay to be wrong. And it's okay to stumble. Mom and dad were also very good talking to us, not just about their successes, but about their failures, what they did wrong, what they got wrong in life. And I see that time and time again. Parents feel like they need a shield of all-knowingness in order for their kids to respect them or in order to keep them safe.

12:53It's like, let me not share with you how I messed up a few times. And I never felt the pressure of their judgment or their expectation in our lives. And it's funny you say that because this reminds me of my favorite lesson from them. When you talk about there's never any judgment, the only time mom and dad would really be upset with us is if we said, well, so-and-so said. I should be doing this. And how about that word so-and-so? That was a Robinson term. Who are these so-and-so? Who's so-and-so? Yeah, it's just - So-and-so? Is that a name? So-and-so is always a little trifling. That's all I remember about so-and-so.

13:41So-and-so is trouble. If you hung out with so-and-so, you were going to get in trouble. That's the only way you were going to ruin your life is following in behind so-and-so. And mom would be so-and-so. Well, but my point is, if you ever came in the house and said one of your friends, somebody outside of the family said, you should do something or you should be something or how about let's try this. And you followed in behind them. And that was your rationale. That is when you caught it. Yeah, yeah. Not thinking for yourself. that not thinking for yourself and having enough confidence in your decision-making process to make decisions for yourself and not because somebody wanted you to.

14:30Well, I wanted to wear bell-bottom jeans because everybody else is wearing them. That was the wrong answer. That was the way to not get your bell-bottom jeans. If you could come up with a reason why you wanted them, then you'd have some bell-bottom jeans. But if you said, I'm not doing this because of somebody out in the streets, as dad would say. You out here listening to these guys? So-and-so out in the streets. So-and-so in the streets. Forget it. Well, you also make me think that another thing that I think mom and dad was so wise about was because in order for them to push us to use our own judgment, they empowered us to make decisions and be responsible very early in life.

15:14And that meant think for yourself. But in order to do that, they had to sort of hand us our lives pretty young. And I'm not saying that they went off to work and left us alone, but I've said this before. You know, very early on, mom was like, you're going to kindergarten now. Here's an alarm clock. Here's how to set it. Set it, get yourself up. Because as she said, you're going to school for you. Not for me. She's like, I had my education. And I don't believe that if you care about yours, that you need your mom to be waking you up every morning. So from the time we started kindergarten, now she was up.

15:58It wasn't like she was sleeping in. She was just listening to hear us. Get ourselves up. Get ourselves up. Right. Start getting dressed. When we got a little older, even start our own breakfast. And in the era of helicopter parenting, where people are waking up their kids, even calling them from college, mom and dad were the opposite of that. And in doing so, they were telling us, I trust you even at five or seven, you have the capability of taking care of yourself. And you know I love you, but I got to get you ready for the life you're going to have as an adult. And that means that if you can't even wake yourself up and get yourself to kindergarten.

16:46You know, that's how mom and dad would think about it. It's like, so they showed us that we were capable. And guess what happened? We rose to that expectation. It was like, I, probably to this day, I don't do late. Oh, not in the Robinson household. You know, we don't do - On time as late? Early as on time. Early as on time. That's Frazier Robinson. And this is a guy who was, you know, for him to be on time, he had to prepare because it was hard for him to get around and get dressed. Our dad had a disability, yeah. The fact that he had a disability didn't make him have an excuse for anything, particularly being late.

17:34So much so mom used to be mad at him because he would get ready so early. He'd keep pushing the time of departure for a family outing. It's like, well, we're going to leave at three. And he's sitting there at two going, well, where is everybody? And it's like, you said three. And I would get ready earlier just to keep him company. Well, Barack, you know, he had to adjust to what on time was. Because he was on that island time. Well, but, you know, I've got this husband who's like, when it's time to leave, it's three o 'clock. He's getting up and going to the bathroom. And I was like, dude, dude, like three o 'clock departure means you've done all that, you know?

18:11It's like, don't start looking for your glasses at the three o 'clock departure. But he's improved over 30 years of marriage. But that was, you must adjust. And Malia and Sasha, if they're doing anything with me, they are early. So they've learned how to snap to it. But that was, those kind of lessons from parents. When you think you're helping your kid because you're worried about them failing, You don't want them to be late. You don't want them to get a not so great grade on their project that you start stepping in and facilitating way more and not letting kids hit bumps. You're delaying their, I think, their ability to understand that their lives are theirs.

19:04And you also are sending them a subliminal message that they're not capable. That they're not good enough, right? Yeah. Right. Mom and dad didn't do that to us. No. But I started thinking too, I was just thinking of another story. We're flip-flopping around. But when I think about our relationship, you know, the other thing that I liked and I try to do with my kids is like, we were close. We were close physically, emotionally, all of that. But we were not codependent. Right. And we weren't allowed to be. Like, because you were a nurturer, you were a natural, on your own, a worrier, a guardian, you took on just temperamentally extra worries and responsibilities.

19:56That's right. Mom understood that she couldn't in any way imply to you that you were responsible for me because you would have taken that on and gone off the deep end with it. Right. Right. I would have been your caretaker rather than your brother. Yeah. In grammar school. And I think that's another thing sometimes parents do with siblings. Like you make one responsible for the other. Now you've got a kid trying to be a parent. And that leads to nothing but resentment on both parts. If you were trying to parent me, that would have replaced the special relationship that is my brother, which is something very different.

20:44I didn't need a father. I didn't need a mother. I needed a big brother. And so you were fully free to be that for me. and I wasn't your burden.

21:02Well, you know, another story I think about is how mom and dad trained us to work hard. You remember the chores? Oh yeah, we had chores very early on, very early on. That's another thing I think, you know, One of the best things that our parents did for us is - Real work. Real work. Real work around the house. And what I mean by real work is I had, my chores were to clean the bathroom. I cleaned the bathroom. What are you talking about? We alternated. We alternated weeks. Okay. Because I loved cleaning the bathroom. And I didn't, but I had to do it. Mom wanted us both to know how to have a clean bathroom.

21:48But my every weekend job was cleaning those stairs. Oh, that's right. Yeah. We had 14 stairs. Notice I remember how many there were. Yeah, you had to. That went from our apartment down to our great aunt Robbie's apartment. And this is what I remember about Saturday morning. You remember that tin pot that we used to have? We had a tin pot, a pot now that used to be on the stove, which was now used for cleaning. And you put a little soap, dish soap in it. And then you put pine salt in it. Ooh, nothing like pine salt. And there was nothing like that smell. Like when you came home from school and mom had been mopping and you could smell the pine salt.

22:36It was usually Monday because she had laundry on Monday. You come home from school and it smells like, ah, new house. Yeah. And I have to say that I still to this day, when I'm mopping, if we don't have that pine oil smell. That's it. That's it, isn't it? That's it. And here we are in adulthood, and they're a partner of ours on this podcast. You know, an appropriate partner. How about it? So when you get a chance out there, visit pinesaw.com and find out where you can shop for your Pine Sol. This episode is brought to you by Rivian and their fully electric, full-sized SUVs and pickups that are designed for all of life's adventures.

23:26The folks at Rivian lent me an R1S to drive around while I'm here in L.A., and it has been awesome. You know, I'm 6 '6", and there is plenty of legroom and headroom for a guy like me. In addition, there's also great cargo space for my luggage, so learn more right now at Rivian.com. This episode of IMO is brought to you by Theraflu. As a product that was created to provide effective and comforting relief when you're fighting the flu or a cold, Theraflu firmly believes that the ability to rest and recover when sick should be a right, not a privilege. You know, I think back to the time when my dad was working for the city of Chicago as a stationary fireman, and it seemed to us that he never missed work and he never got sick.

24:16But what we realized is that my dad didn't want to take his paid sick time because he wasn't sure if he would keep his job by doing that. And my sister and I realized that my dad would be sick, but he just thugged through it. It was a difficult thing for him to deal with then. And unfortunately, so many Americans still face this pressure today. 27 million Americans still lack paid sick time, which causes them to have to choose between losing a day's pay and getting the proper rest they need in order to get better. And what's worse, this all-too-common issue disproportionately impacts lower-income individuals.

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25:39I'm so happy that we're doing this together. And this show in and of itself is just bringing me down memory lane. But let's talk about some times when we had to actually, since you were talking about looking out for each other, when we had to lean on each other for advice. And I'll start because I remember talking to you before I talked to mom about going into coaching. Oh, yeah, that's right. And I want to tell you a story about when I leaned on you, and I want to tell a story about when I didn't lean on you. When I leaned on you, I was, well, I should tell the story chronologically. Because when I didn't lean on you happened before I leaned on you.

26:32Just in this example was when I was going through my first divorce, my only divorce. and I didn't tell you about it. Yeah. And the reason I didn't tell my sister about it or my mom or anybody close to me. Or just the challenges you guys were facing. Were facing was because I know my sister and I said, if I tell her about this, she's never going to get over it. And if we ever got back together, it wasn't gonna be good for my first wife. So I was trying to hold off telling everybody. But the first person I did tell was Mish. And she was so mad that I hadn't told her and so disappointed that I vowed that I would never not tell her, hold anything from you.

27:26Because I had never done that ever and haven't done it since. Well, because it was also interesting because I could see that something was going on, that there was a disconnect because we were close. I mean, we had our periods in life where we would come together, be apart. Life would bring us together. We wound up going to the same college. We didn't go to the same high school because you went to an all-boys school and I went to a magnet high school. And Whitney Young wasn't open. It wasn't. You probably would have gone, but it was a brand new school. And because you were a student athlete, you needed a good, solid basketball program.

28:08And they hadn't developed it at Whitney Young. So we weren't in the same high school. And that was a good thing because we had times in our lives when we were in the same school, sort of in the same orbit, and then we weren't. And then I followed you to Princeton, where you were two years ahead of me and big man on campus there too, because he was all Ivy on the basketball team and all this sort of stuff. So everybody knew Craig. I was always Craig Robinson's little sister. I'm really enjoying the payback of Craig Robinson now being Michelle Obama's brother. Boy, times have changed. But I grew up as Craig's little sister.

28:53It's like, oh, you Craig's little sister. I was like, yeah, yeah. But I do other things, too. It's more fun being Michelle Obama's big brother. Much more fun. But even in those moments when we were in the same orbit, we were close. But again, in the same way, not overly dependent. We had our own friends. We had, you know, you know if I was dating somebody. Because that was the other thing. dating like big men on campus in college, I think you scared off a lot of potential. You would have had way more dates. You had way more dates once I graduated. Yes, I did. I think people didn't want to piss off Craig.

29:31And it wasn't like I was trying to mark any territory or anything. It was just, you know, it's just walk around, people get nervous. And then you graduate, then you go off and you play basketball. You have a whole nother experience. You move to Manchester, England and play in Europe for a couple of years. And so you're coming and going. And then you get married. And I was very close with you and your first wife. We were not inseparable, but it was a close family. We did things together. And then Avery was born. And we were always right there. We were very tight-knit family. And then I met Barack.

30:12And then we got married and we bought a condo right down the street from your condo. Like three buildings down. Three buildings down in Hyde Park in Chicago. So that was a period when we were around each other a lot. And when you see your brother and you think his or your sibling or somebody you care about and you think everything is good, and you're rooting for them, and then you learn that things are falling apart because you think, I thought I saw some things that were red flags, but I would always be like, how you doing? And your reply would be, we're great. We're good. Fine. Fine. You know, and after that, once it all unraveled, I said, your definition of fine.