Tent. Im the editor at large of kirkus reviews, and im the host of the fully booked podcast, if youd like to subscribe. And i am absolutely honored to be in conversation with Samantha Power today. [applause] Samantha Power is a professor of practice at the Harvard Kennedy school at harvard law school. From 20132017 she served as the u. S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a member of president obamas cabinet. From 20092013 she served on the National Security council as special assistant to the president for Multilateral Affairs and human rights. She began her career as a journalist reporting from places such as bosnia, east timor, kosovo, rwanda, sudan and zimbabwe, and she was the founding executive director of the carr center for human rights policy at the kennedy school. Her book, a problem from hell won the Pulitzer Prize in 2003. She is yeah. [laughter] a big one a while ago. [laughter] she is also the author of the New York Times bestseller chasing the game. Her chasing the flame. Her most recent book, the education of an eyedist, was published in september, and ive just learned it is short listed for the irish book prize. Of conch congratulations. Thank you. [applause] and one more time, lets do it one more time, please join me in welcoming Samantha Power to austin. Ms. [applause] if. Theres a reason this is my third trip to austin in, like, three weeks. Just for the record, yall are incredibly warm, and im very grate. Thank you. [applause] okay. So were going to start off this session with a brief reading. Yes. So i want to just set the stage for our conversation, and i thought the reading that i would do today is one that speaks to the challenges that we are facing, figuring out how to engage with people who we disagree with vehemently. And so this is a scene from a chapter called upside down land. And its about my relationship with the russian ambassador. I had invested long hours in forging a constructive working relationship with russias ambassador to the United Nations. Because russia held one of five vetoes at the Security Council, its vote was critical if we were to get the council to send peacekeepers to conflict areas, impose sanctions on wrongdoers or even just condemn a coup. In order for the u. N. To have a meaningful impact on the issues of war and peace, the United States and russia had to be willing to make deals. Our two countries did not have the option of remaining at arms length. Vitaly had only recently gotten to know me during our negotiations over the syria chemical weapons resolution, that was dismantling the vast majority of assads stockpile, but i had known vitaly far longer having watched him in action when he served as the russian envoy to bosnia in the 1990s during the war. I had to occasionally been in the pack of journalists surrounding him in sarajevo, notebook and tape recorder in hand. Vitaly always seemed to relish these engagements, eloquently delivering a predictably proserve line while simultaneously insisting upon his own complete objectivity. I remember being struck by the fact that his english was so fluid that he quoted lines from american movies and songs and even made english puns. But Something Else impressed me more. After the february 1994 massacre of sarajevo marketgoers, tally had had been pivot amal in convincing the serbs to move their heavy weapons away from the capital. This brought a reprieve of many months. To me, it also indicated a promising independent streak. Vitaly became russias u. N. Ambassador in 2006 and seemed a permanent fixture. He had sparred with my predecessor, superrice, when shed been susan rice, when shed been ambassador, but they had become friendly. In their last u. N. Meeting together, she had roared with laughter when he presented her with a mock Security Council statement expressing relief at her departure. [laughter] so mockup also sent condolences to that other Security Council, the National Security council, she would soon chair in her capacity as National Security adviser. Id already come to respect vitalys talents as a negotiator. He brought procedural wisdom and textural creativity to our syria chemical weapons discussions, but above all, he listened with careful intensity. When he wasnt mello da paymentically storming out of a meeting, he was good at bridging gaps. Significantly, he also valued u. S. russia cooperation. From his time as an interpreter in arms control negotiations during the cold war, or he had drawn a lesson. Even when russias overall relationship with the u. S. Was strained, our two countries could carve out discreet areas for progress and try to build momentum. I knew he often pushed for compromises that moscow was disinclined to make. Vial hi and i always took each others calls, and for the three and a half years we worked together, we would do our best to reconcile positions that on their face looked irreconcilable. As i got to know vitaly, i naturally wondered how he could stand working for putin and why he hadnt resigned somewhere along the i way. Even though people who cross putin often ended up jailed or even killed, i didnt think he stayed because he was intimidated. Instead, the most memorable stanzas from tennysons the charge of the light brigade was often come to mind. Theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die. Vitaly had been a child actor in soviet films and had come of age during the height of the cold war competition with the u. S. Like many proud russians, he embraced putins goal of raising russia from its knees, even if russias leaders even if the russian leaders actions made him uncomfortable, he would go on serving his country. U. N. Culture was drearily buttoned up. Whether diplomats bloviated or spoke in monotones, they hued closely to generic talking points. Some had been receiving instruction from their capitals for so long that they seemed to have suspended thinking for themselves. Vitaly was different. He had a point of view on everything from Alexander Ovechkins greatness as a hockey player to what chinas rise to greatness would have on the world. He seemed to delight in playing the role of underdog. He often had an irreverent sense of humor. What i once went on too long speaking, he responded, quote after hearing all that the permanent representative of the United States felt she needed to share with us today, i am tempted to read my statement twice. [laughter] end quote. On another occasion when we were arguing after a council session, i told name i knew he had mixed motives; half sincere and half ulterior. No, he countered, we are fully sincere about achieving our ulterior motives. [laughter] i invited him and irina to my parents home in yonkers for thanksgiving his wife making him the only u. N. Colleague who ever entered my wild irish family sanctum. When they arrived, irina immediately sat down on the carpet and began playing with my children while my stepfather and vitaly talked russian history and literature. When we went around the table to describe what we were most thankful for, vitaly said, quote peace between our two countries. Whatever happens, we must preserve that. It was no fun before, end quote. I liked and respected vitaly, but i also spent most of my time at the United Nations in pitched public battle with him. Thank you. [applause] thank you for that. I have two thoughts in my head, one serious, one not. Where do you want to go . Not. [laughter] okay. When somebody says to me 550page political autobiography, i dont think funny. This is a funny book. Why was it important to you im assuming that it was so imbue this with your sense of humor . Well, i think it ive never been asked that question before. [laughter] i was trying to offer a recounting of these various stages of my life and my career in a manner that was as true to life as possible, and growing up in an irish family where you cant get in a word at dipper if you dont have something dinner if you dont have something funny or interesting to say, recounting as true to life as i could entailed recounting the humor as well as sometimes the poignancy and the sadness. And i really wanted to render also the later phases when you get into darker topics, you know, like the policy issues were dealing with when im in the Obama Administration like ebola or syria. But even as youre managing those issues, its like all of you who are dealing with serious things in your lives, theres still human beings who are attempting to figure out what to do, still human beings who, when you feel like youre about to tear your hair out, somebody will Say Something in real life thats very funny. And itll break, lighten the mood and maybe even unlock sort of thoughts or banter or comfort that then creates a space where other people will feel more comfortable in putting forward ideas that they might have kept to themselves. So, basically, i was trying to make it as true to life as i could so that the story of whether growing up in a pub in dublin or being a war correspondent or being an activist or working in the government, that you doesnt have to be or do any of those things to be able to see the kind of universal truths in what was happening. So it was life, and i thought as true to life as i could make it, that meant including as much human as i could remember. And that was dependent a lot on my journals and my memory. So a lot more funny happened in my life than youll actually see in the book, just so you know. Do you want to share one of those stories with us now . The one that isnt yeah. Well, maybe maybe later. Maybe not i mean, part of the challenge in writing a memoir is i speak as if i know what im talking about. Ive just written a memoir, so i guess on one level that qualifies me, but this was very, very new to me. You know, we have a saying that ive heard in ireland, you know, that irish people have trouble using the first person even in therapy [laughter] and certainly, that was my experience of therapy, as youll read in the book, my challenges with therapy. But i, as i wrote, i was initially pretty buttoned up, and the idea of not only describing what happened at the time you know, im used to being in my former journalistic days a narrative journalist. So im used to trying to make the plot move, and my books dont tend to be all that short, but they tend to move, i hope they do. And propel people forward, and im very sensitive to that as im editing and writing. So id always been kind of narrativedriven and make people compulsively want to turn the page. That had a always been my objective as a writer. But suddenly, i would hand these pages over to my husband or to close friends, and theyd say, you know, this isnt like writing for the new yorker or the atlantic. You have to tell us whats actually going on inside of you at the same time. And im like, thats bullshin. No, i dont bullshit. It just moves to move. Luckily, i kept a journal for all these years, and so i had, it would have been very hard for me retrospectively to project backwards onto my past self as to what i felt discovering a mass grave in darfur or getting dumped, you know, in my from someone i really liked. It would have been really hard. But i had these journals, so i was able in a way to be a reporter into my own subcopps or into my own emotional reflections at least at the time of these different things. So i, you know, i began to open up and began to do what you really, i think, do need to do in a memoir which is offer as much insight as you can into the person who happens, unfortunately, to be me but into ones inner life. So i did that. But then i lost complete sense of where the lines should be drawn. And then people are reading it, theyre like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. [laughter] you know, there is a dig any ety constraint [laughter] you know, to this enterprise. Like, really. And so when you asked, like, whats not in in the book, i mean, you know, as is famously said about memoirs just because something happened doesnt mean everybody else would find it interesting to learn about. Just because its interesting to you doesnt mean its interesting to be anybody else. And so, you know, subjecting whatever youre including to that criteria, you know, like i had thousands of humorous conversations or hundreds at least with my children about putin. But you didnt need to hear about all of those conversations. You just needed to get a sense that putin was an active part of how i described, you know, dynamics in my sons classroom. [laughter] you only need, like, one or two anecdotes for that to be evident. You dont need to be in my life entirely. Ill spare you [laughter] at least some of that. Well, i see our objective as a duo today to try to entice everybody out in the crowd to read this book compulsively. Therefore, i think i would like to, if we could, touch on some of the major, you know, parts of your life starting with something you breezed by a little bit earlier which was growing up in a dublin pub . Yeah. And i didnt sleep there, so to be clear, i was but my, im from ireland originally, both my parents are irish. And my mother, her whole life growing up in county cork in ireland wanted to be a medical doctor, but she at that age group, she was born in 1943, that generation was not encouraged or not even allowed to do science. And so when it came time to go to college, which she became the first in her, among her sisters in her big Irish Catholic family to do, she was told not to do medicine because she didnt have the science background. So she decided to get the sign background in college and in ireland you do medicine as an undergrad degree. Thats when you start. So you become a doctor earlier. So she got her b. S. In, bachelors of science, and then he got a ph. D. Actually, in biochemistry. Scheft a complete trail women blazer, my hero, very funny it must be said as well and a great athlete. She played field hockey and tennis and squash for ireland. So really a remarkable woman. But all he wanted to do was be a doctor and see patients. And so not long after i was born, what in those days especially was very, very late, she decided to go back to medical school. So because she was in medical school, this is in dublin, i spent a lot of those years with my father who was an immensely loving, full of opinion and ideas but was an alcoholic and kind of an alcoholic almost as a vocation. I mean, he would go his business, he had been a dentist, and his practice a had kind of fallen apart, and he just went to the pub, one particular pub which i write a lot about in the book called hardigans, and i was his side kick. He would pick me up after school, and i would go with my nancy drew mystery involves and just read in the basement of this pub. My mother was alert to the risk of this, but it culturally felt then than it would feel, im sure, to my mother then or to me. So as she was trying to do her residency and doing all that is required to become doctor, i was living a very close relationship with my father in this what, in retrospect, was probably not the ideal environment for a child. [laughter] what brought you to the United States, and what did you expect to find . So the alcohol took its toll on my parents marriage, and my mother and father wanted to split up from each other, but my mother particularly was not a fan of the pub or the drink and wasnt a fan at a certain point really drew her line also when it came to me and my younger brothers spending so much time there. But also she had met a man she did want to be with who has been my stepfather now for 40 years, his name is eddie, and youll hes very, very funny. Hes the funniest character in the book as a whole and a great irish sort of one of those storytellers who, before they get to the punchline, just the way they tell the story, people are, you know, have tears streaming down their a faces. She fell in love with him working at the hospital in dublin, and that all would be fine in most countries at that time. It at least in most western democracies, but in ireland you werent allowed to get divorced. So the only way to really go further i think also in the field of medicine that she was most interested in, kidney transplants, but also the way really to separate, to sever from my father and the way that she wanted to to be with my nowstepfather was to move to america. If youre here for long enough, you can actually get a divorce. And so that was a major factor. And there was subsequent to that about ten yearses later this was a referendum on divorce in ireland, and believe it or not that refer dumb failed referendum failed. It was close but not that close. And many of my mothers sisters, i remember my mother just pulling her hair out because several of her sisters voted against divorce, if you can believe it, even though they were very close to her and extremely sympathetic with what she had gone through. And their line, or at least one of their lines was i had to stay with my fella, you know . Everybody else should have to do the same. [laughter] so theres a bit of that. But then, ultimately are, as some of you know, it did pass when it was given a second chance, and now people are able to follow their hearts and do also what at times is best for their children. But it was a combination of divorce and ambitiousing, professional medical am biggs. But when we came, i would have had no idea we were emigrating. I mean, it was i dont know if my mother, i think even she would have been years later before she realized were not going back. You achieved academically, you got a haircut. You practiced your american accent. You loved sports. You followed the teams religiously. Any in particular . I moved to pittsburgh in 197 1979, my way of feting in was to chop all my i had a long ponytail, and i just went bof. And i memorized, learned everything there was to know about baseball statistics and rbis and era, and they didnt have slugging percentage back then, but i traded in baseball cards, i was a hustler in the neighborhood. My teeth rotted with the pink gum that some of you remember from the baseball cards. A lot of knowing regret about that pink gum. But it was i just threw myself into this american life. Fast forward a bit through this american life. What turns you on to the idea that Current Events were important . Well, ill share this story, and, you know, i would say even in my 20s i probably would have looked back on this moment as pivotal. But actually when i went ba