Speaker 1: I'm Sam Edis and I'm Amy Nelson. Welcome to What's
Speaker 1: Her Story? With Sam and Amy. This is a show
Speaker 1: about the world's most remarkable women, their professional and personal journeys. Together,
Speaker 1: we'll hear from gold medalists, best selling authors, and leaders
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Speaker 1: Eva Gabrand has been referred to as a hacker hero.
Speaker 1: She is the Director of cyber Security at the Electronic
Speaker 1: Frontier Foundation and Technical Advisor for the Freedom of the
Speaker 1: Press Foundation. She is a co founder of Stop Stalker.
Speaker 1: Were so, Eva, how did you become interested in privacy,
Speaker 1: in free speech in this entire world. I am an
Speaker 1: immigrant who came to the United States as a child
Speaker 1: with my family from the Soviet Union, and so all
Speaker 1: of of my most sort of foundational memories are built
Speaker 1: around this notion that we left a place with no
Speaker 1: civil liberties to come to a place that had more
Speaker 1: of them, and that the protection of those liberties was
Speaker 1: very important. Life in the Soviet Union was always framed
Speaker 1: as you know, this place where you had no privacy
Speaker 1: and where you had no free speech, and that these
Speaker 1: were extremely important values that that we needed to protect.
Speaker 1: And so I guess I I I really internalized that
Speaker 1: growing up, and then your interest in technology really started
Speaker 1: very early on. Tell us about that. We left the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union and then we landed in uh in Silicon
Speaker 1: Valley in the eighties. My mom was a geneticist, and
Speaker 1: so she came to, you know, San Francisco, had worked
Speaker 1: in biotech, and my dad was an engineer, and so
Speaker 1: he came to Silicon Valley and worked at a series
Speaker 1: of tech companies, and as a result, there was always
Speaker 1: tech around the house and I was I was online
Speaker 1: at a time when most children were not. When there
Speaker 1: was an Internet, but there was no web, and it
Speaker 1: was assumed that if you were able to speak to
Speaker 1: other people over this Internet, that you were at least
Speaker 1: in college and probably using like your first college account.
Speaker 1: And in my case, that is not what I was doing.
Speaker 1: I was actually using modem and one of those little
Speaker 1: VT one hundred green screens that you used to see
Speaker 1: in libraries to place a phone call to my dad's
Speaker 1: desktop machine at Sun Microsystems in order to contact the
Speaker 1: rest of the Internet. And so my first experiences online
Speaker 1: all required me to sort of have a strong understanding
Speaker 1: of how the inner net worked. That brought me, you know,
Speaker 1: a lot of the fundamentals that helped me land my
Speaker 1: first jobs. But how did you sit down in front
Speaker 1: of that first computer. So one of my friends had
Speaker 1: found some sort of like chat group on Prodigy relating
Speaker 1: to you know, our favorite fantasy and science fiction series.
Speaker 1: And I came to my father and I said, Daddy, Daddy,
Speaker 1: can I get Prodigy so that I can you know,
Speaker 1: sit around talking about dragons. And my father said, no,
Speaker 1: Prodigy sucks, and he got me a Shell account on
Speaker 1: his computer and showed me how to use news groups
Speaker 1: and use net. So take us to your first job,
Speaker 1: I guess. My first computer job was during my freshman
Speaker 1: year in college at UCSC. I worked for a company
Speaker 1: in Sunny Vale doing a sort of a desktop administration
Speaker 1: of Windows machines and also a bunch of you know,
Speaker 1: Unix ad illustration on a lot of Solaris machines as
Speaker 1: some network administration. And the reason that I was able
Speaker 1: to do this was because I had seen all of
Speaker 1: these things before, and I had spent a bunch of time,
Speaker 1: you know, building my own computers and I already understood
Speaker 1: how networks worked, and so all I had to do
Speaker 1: was just sort of expand that knowledge out into you know,
Speaker 1: how how do you look after many machines at once
Speaker 1: instead of just the one machine that you have in
Speaker 1: your house. And that turned out to be such a
Speaker 1: useful skill that eventually I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: what am I going to college for again? And I
Speaker 1: dropped up. Some people have called you their hacker hero.
Speaker 1: How did you go from where you were then to
Speaker 1: becoming the cyber hacking superstar that you are today? Well,
Speaker 1: I don't want to leave people with the impression that
Speaker 1: it is just a NonStop rise to power, where you know, I,
Speaker 1: as a as a vonder Kint mastered the inner No,
Speaker 1: none of that is true. I I dropped out of
Speaker 1: school in order to go work a steady tech job,
Speaker 1: and my parents were appalled and they were like, but
Speaker 1: you need to go to college, and so I told them, Oh,
Speaker 1: don't worry. When this bubble bursts, I will go back
Speaker 1: to school. And I was lying. But the bubble did
Speaker 1: burst because I I have lived in Silicon Valley for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and I have seen many bubbles
Speaker 1: come and go. So the bubble did burst, and no
Speaker 1: one I knew had a job in in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands, and certainly I did not have a job.
Speaker 1: And I turned around and I went back to school.
Speaker 1: I got a degree in international relations and political science.
Speaker 1: I spent two years studying Chinese and my intention was
Speaker 1: to go to law school next and become a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, you know, this computer stuff really isn't
Speaker 1: working out. And I was. I was just about to
Speaker 1: go to to law school and gotten into law school.
Speaker 1: And the guy that I was I was dating at
Speaker 1: the time said, you know, I I don't want to
Speaker 1: leave the Bay area. The law schools that you got
Speaker 1: into are far away. So I've just started a job
Speaker 1: at this place called Twitter, and I think it might
Speaker 1: go somewhere. So can you just like give me a year,
Speaker 1: Just go get a job somewhere, give me a year
Speaker 1: while we work all of this stuff out. And he
Speaker 1: went to go work for Twitter, and I went to
Speaker 1: go work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And my job was,
Speaker 1: you know, extremely high powered and technical. It was my
Speaker 1: job to answer the phone. I answered the phone at
Speaker 1: e f F in two thousand seven, which was shortly
Speaker 1: after the Civil Liberties Organization had filed a lawsuit against
Speaker 1: A T and T for its part in the n
Speaker 1: s AS warrantless wire tapping program that had been going
Speaker 1: on since two thousand three. This was a Bush era program,
Speaker 1: and that meant that we had a lot of people
Speaker 1: contacting us who were are concerned about government surveillance. And
Speaker 1: some of those people had really interesting cases, and some
Speaker 1: of those people were in need of a therapist. And
Speaker 1: it was my job to tell the difference between these
Speaker 1: two kinds of people and to very patiently sort of
Speaker 1: corral both of them. And that was something that I
Speaker 1: that I did for several years, and it really gave
Speaker 1: me a strong background in all of e f f
Speaker 1: S different issues. I I learned about copyright, I got
Speaker 1: to apply my international relations skills, I got to apply
Speaker 1: my uh my language skills, and also my technical skills
Speaker 1: when it came to know understanding how this kind of
Speaker 1: surveillance worked. This was also the UM the height of
Speaker 1: the m p A and the r a S efforts
Speaker 1: to sue mostly college students for pirating UM movies and music,
Speaker 1: and so I was also caring from a lot of
Speaker 1: people who were only a couple of years younger than
Speaker 1: I was, who had these, you know, terrifying letters that
Speaker 1: were coming from the r A and the n p
Speaker 1: a A saying, you know, give us thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: or we will sue you into oblivion because you downloaded
Speaker 1: a movie once or you downloaded an album. And so
Speaker 1: I spent some time working on that as well. There
Speaker 1: was actually a really interesting thing that happened while I
Speaker 1: was doing this job, which was there was a a
Speaker 1: law firm that came up with this interesting scam where
Speaker 1: they would upload files to the Internet purporting to be
Speaker 1: various types of porn, and then they would see who
Speaker 1: downloaded it, and then they would send threatening letters to
Speaker 1: that person saying, we know you downloaded this porn and
Speaker 1: unless you want us to sue you a lawsuit in
Speaker 1: which the title of this porn allowing people to know
Speaker 1: embarrassing things about your taste in pornography. Unless you want
Speaker 1: us to to file this lawsuit, please give us two
Speaker 1: thousand dollars. And they sent out thousands and thousands of
Speaker 1: these letters. It was a tremendous scam. So those were
Speaker 1: my first experiences dealing with people who were being unfairly
Speaker 1: surveiled unfairly targeted with vulnerable populations, with people who were
Speaker 1: really scared and feeling powerless, and we're having their worst today,
Speaker 1: and would then reach out to me. Were you comfortable
Speaker 1: or how did you go about taking that role of
Speaker 1: answering phones into really analyzing what was coming through and
Speaker 1: these massive early issues with the Internet. Well, part of
Speaker 1: it was was just the act of repetition. Once you've seen,
Speaker 1: you know, several hundred different examples of the same issue,
Speaker 1: you get really good at triaging it very fast. And
Speaker 1: when you have accurately triaged things for for your legal
Speaker 1: team or for your activism team, you know, consistently for
Speaker 1: the better part of you know, a year or two
Speaker 1: or three, than your peers start to trust your judgment
Speaker 1: and you you know, kind of build up that kind
Speaker 1: of rapport. But really it just came from doing it
Speaker 1: over and over and over again until I got very
Speaker 1: good at it. The work of answering the phones that
Speaker 1: the Electronic Frontier Foundation had prior to me been a
Speaker 1: job that famously burned people out. It was very rare
Speaker 1: for somebody last more than a year doing that. Why
Speaker 1: weren't you burned out by that job? I think I
Speaker 1: just had a you know, text startup kids capacity for burnout.
Speaker 1: I had a very different idea about what qualified has burnout.
Speaker 1: And I'm not going to tell you that that was healthy.
Speaker 1: It absolutely was not. I think the one of the
Speaker 1: things that's really changed at e FF, and in fact
Speaker 1: in just in workplaces in general, in the many years
Speaker 1: have gone by since I since I did that job,
Speaker 1: is that we have a lot more understanding of the
Speaker 1: psychological impacts of doing this kind of work, and an
Speaker 1: understanding that you can't expect people to deal with with
Speaker 1: other people's trauma four seven every single day and now
Speaker 1: a quick break even there was an incident at your
Speaker 1: work that led you to really focus on cyber stocking.
Speaker 1: I spent many years focused on the privacy and security
Speaker 1: needs of activists and journalists, largely in North Africa and
Speaker 1: the Middle East. A lot of this was happening during
Speaker 1: the Arab Spring and sort of the years after the
Speaker 1: Arab Spring. But in lateen early it became known that
Speaker 1: my primary collaborator on all of the security research that
Speaker 1: I was doing was a serial rapist. He had been
Speaker 1: running around raping women for decades, and in January, I
Speaker 1: think of an interview came out with one of his survivors,
Speaker 1: and she was just terrified. She was really, really scared,
Speaker 1: And everybody else in that article was really scared. And
Speaker 1: they were scared of him, not just because he had
Speaker 1: been raping women for several decades, but also because he
Speaker 1: was a hacker, and they were afraid that he was
Speaker 1: going to compromise their devices. So they all had their
Speaker 1: you know, their microphones covered, and they all had their
Speaker 1: cameras covered, and they were they were terrified, and I
Speaker 1: was so mad. I got so mad, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want anybody to ever feel that way again. And as
Speaker 1: a result, I I started a project that was aimed
Speaker 1: at the sort of commercial spy where that these kinds
Speaker 1: of abusers use in order to stock their victims, and
Speaker 1: I co founded an organization called the Coalition against Stalkerware,
Speaker 1: and we've and working on this issue ever since. You
Speaker 1: need an example to our listeners as to how it
Speaker 1: all works and what it means to be cyber stocked. Well, Uh,
Speaker 1: there are many different forms of electronic surveillance are stalking.
Speaker 1: But the particular thing that I chose to focus on,
Speaker 1: because it's so invasive and also very easy to do, UH,
Speaker 1: is stockerware, so there is commercially available UH software that
Speaker 1: anyone can find or purchase that if they have a
Speaker 1: physical access to your device and they have like your
Speaker 1: user name and password, which is an extremely common combination
Speaker 1: of things. When you're dealing with somebody who is who
Speaker 1: is abusing you, what the abuser does is they simply
Speaker 1: grab the other person's phone when they're not looking, download
Speaker 1: the stalker wear onto their phone, and then the phone
Speaker 1: covertly ex fultraits data from the phone, usually to a
Speaker 1: website which is run by the company that makes the
Speaker 1: stoker wear, and then the abuser pays a monthly fee
Speaker 1: to the stalker wear company in order to get that
Speaker 1: get access to that data through a portal. You have
Speaker 1: been vocal about trying to come after the executives from
Speaker 1: the soccer wear companies, because presumably this is one of
Speaker 1: the worst possible ways to to be making money in
Speaker 1: this world. How have you been successful at that? I
Speaker 1: have had some success when it comes to going after
Speaker 1: the stoker wear companies themselves. I am very careful about
Speaker 1: how how I do this because I am myself a
Speaker 1: security researcher, and so I want to be really careful
Speaker 1: not to use any of the tools that are used
Speaker 1: to sort of persecute security researchers for doing our thing,
Speaker 1: even against bad people. Uh. And I want to make
Speaker 1: sure that I don't create any bad precedent that can
Speaker 1: then be used to stop the kind of work that
Speaker 1: I do. But in addition to the fact that stoccer
Speaker 1: ware is very bad, it is often very poorly made,
Speaker 1: it's often really insecure. So not only is your data
Speaker 1: available to your stalker, but sometimes these portals leave data
Speaker 1: open for anybody to see. And I have managed to
Speaker 1: convince the FTC to take action against to such companies
Speaker 1: that ended up behaving in this way. You've gone up
Speaker 1: against some really powerful companies and powerful people. Have you
Speaker 1: ever felt afraid? Have you faced me backlash? Before I
Speaker 1: worked on domestic abuse, I was working on I was
Speaker 1: working to support people who were being stalked by authoritarian governments.
Speaker 1: And if you think an abusive partner is is a jerk,
Speaker 1: wait until you are, say, going up against the Syrian government.
Speaker 1: It's a very different kind of situation. And I have
Speaker 1: been targeted before by a government that was angry about
Speaker 1: my activism. The Vietnamese government actually sent me malware, but
Speaker 1: I'm not scared because this sort of stuff is old
Speaker 1: hat to me. I have been doing it for a
Speaker 1: very long time, and it's just very difficult to frighten
Speaker 1: me at this point, which means that I don't get
Speaker 1: bullied a lot. What is your relationship to personal safety,
Speaker 1: like in your own everyday life, not online? Well, a
Speaker 1: lot of people are are surprised. They say, well, you
Speaker 1: know I can find you online. I you know you're
Speaker 1: using your real name. There are pictures of you. I
Speaker 1: can see them, you know, I I know what city
Speaker 1: you live in, and all that sort of thing you
Speaker 1: use social media. I see that you have like an
Speaker 1: Instagram account and a Facebook account whatever. And they say, well,
Speaker 1: how dare you? You know, your privacy and security activist?
Speaker 1: How can you can be how can you be doing this?
Speaker 1: And the answer is that privacy and security are not
Speaker 1: about living on a mountaintop throwing all of your devices
Speaker 1: into the ocean, which is presumably located near this mountaintop.
Speaker 1: It is about having control over your data and making
Speaker 1: decisions about who you do and do not share it with.
Speaker 1: And so my life is locked down, but it's not
Speaker 1: so locked down that I can't move. I think one
Speaker 1: of the most important things that we really lose sight
Speaker 1: of when we talk about privacy and security online is
Speaker 1: that you need some wiggle room. You can't just turn
Speaker 1: around and leave the Internet. And that's advice that that
Speaker 1: people give to survivors of domestic abuse all the time.
Speaker 1: They're like, you're being harassed, you're being you know, you're
Speaker 1: being followed, you're being stocked. Just just don't use the internet.
Speaker 1: Just you know, shut down to all of your social
Speaker 1: media accounts and never talked to your friends again. And
Speaker 1: that's just more alienating. What about when you're just in
Speaker 1: your everyday life, do you find that you're less trusting
Speaker 1: of people? Given your work? I'm not sure what I
Speaker 1: would use as a benchmark. I was never a particularly
Speaker 1: trusting person. What is your personal life like when letting
Speaker 1: a new relationship into your life? Are you more cautious
Speaker 1: than the average person? I don't know. I don't have
Speaker 1: an average person around to compare myself with. I limit
Speaker 1: the kind of risks that I take, but I also,
Speaker 1: you know, I live in reality where you have to
Speaker 1: be able to communicate with other people and have them
Speaker 1: be able to find you on occasion. I don't live
Speaker 1: like a secret agent. Okay, so when you met your partner,
Speaker 1: did you meet online? Or no? So you've never dated online? No? No,
Speaker 1: I still meet people the old fashioned way where you
Speaker 1: in meat space. I do not have any good advice
Speaker 1: for trying to date online in the or of our Lord.
Speaker 1: That seems terrifying. What is your relationship like with your
Speaker 1: parents today? Really? Nice? Actually? I mean I did in
Speaker 1: my mid twenties apologize to my parents for that the
Speaker 1: entire time I was a teenager and now we get
Speaker 1: along just fine, but I was, I was an exceptionally
Speaker 1: difficult teenager. How would you define sort of the biggest
Speaker 1: mistakes that most people are making when it comes to
Speaker 1: exposing their own online world to potential stalkers or bad people. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that the first thing people really need to
Speaker 1: think about is so what we call threat modeling. So
Speaker 1: you need to sit down and you need to think
Speaker 1: about what you want to protect and who you want
Speaker 1: to protect it from, because trying to protect everything from
Speaker 1: everybody all at once is a good way to go insane.
Speaker 1: It's just not practical. The other thing to keep in
Speaker 1: mind is that the people that you trust today are
Speaker 1: not necessarily going to be the same people that you
Speaker 1: trust tomorrow. Abusers, for example, do not show up with
Speaker 1: a great, big sign across their forehead saying hello, I'm
Speaker 1: an abuser. They show up looking like the best thing
Speaker 1: that's ever happened to you. And I think that it's
Speaker 1: really important for people to understand the dynamics of abuse,
Speaker 1: but also to understand how to lock someone out of
Speaker 1: their lives, how to sort of take back all of
Speaker 1: the permissions that they have given, and how to do
Speaker 1: it decisively and quickly, and to to sort of practice
Speaker 1: these skills in advance, because generally, when you need to
Speaker 1: lock somebody out of your life, you are already in
Speaker 1: a in a heightened state of panic, and that's not
Speaker 1: when you want to be practicing tricky new skills. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of people feel like if a partner is
Speaker 1: not allowing you to hold their phone and use their
Speaker 1: phone and know their password, that they're hiding something that's
Speaker 1: sort of the converse to you know, being protective. What
Speaker 1: do you think about, I mean, does your partner have
Speaker 1: access to your phone? Oh? Hell no? Okay, will they
Speaker 1: ever know? Not their phone? So in twenty years he
Speaker 1: would never be able to just use your phone to
Speaker 1: look up something on the Internet. Is his phone broken?
Speaker 1: Did something up to his fingers? Me? What if you're
Speaker 1: going on a road trip and he forgot his phone,
Speaker 1: we would chart around and go get it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: there is no circumstance under which he can use your phone.
Speaker 1: I mean in some sort of situation where like terrorists
Speaker 1: are going to destroy the world unless I hand him
Speaker 1: my phone. Sure, but for the most part, you know, no,
Speaker 1: I have my own devices, I have my own privacy,
Speaker 1: and there's no reason I would ever have to give
Speaker 1: access to that stuff to another person. If I want
Speaker 1: someone to have acts us to one of my devices,
Speaker 1: I will set up a separate account for them that
Speaker 1: they can log into in order to get to that
Speaker 1: a device. And the same thing happens with you know,
Speaker 1: all of the electronics around the house. You want access,
Speaker 1: you can have an account, and when it's time for
Speaker 1: you to go, I can change the password on that account.
Speaker 1: I could lock that account out. I can delete that account.
Speaker 1: But you don't get mine. And now a quick break
Speaker 1: in gave a ted talk that you know has over
Speaker 1: three million views. How did that change the tra doctory
Speaker 1: of your career? I was actually kind of surprised. I was.
Speaker 1: I was approached by Ted to give a talk, and
Speaker 1: they sort of shrugged when I asked them what I
Speaker 1: should talk about, like they didn't care. I just wanted
Speaker 1: me to get up on stage and say stuff. And
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, alright, fine, I'll just talk about
Speaker 1: this this thing that I'm currently working on. And I
Speaker 1: didn't expect for it to st such a nerve, But
Speaker 1: I think it was really just the combination of the
Speaker 1: technical problem that I was working on, combined with the
Speaker 1: kind of human interest story of all of these people
Speaker 1: who are being targeted, combined with the human interest story
Speaker 1: of I got so mad I decided to destroy an industry.
Speaker 1: What are you working on today? Well, right now, I
Speaker 1: have just spent a bunch of time working on physical trackers,
Speaker 1: so like tiles and air tags, I am not destroying
Speaker 1: the industry. I'm trying to get the industry to agree
Speaker 1: on a standard that they will then publish so that
Speaker 1: the people who make phones and other devices can build
Speaker 1: sort of tracker detection directly into those devices that will
Speaker 1: work all the time in the background, so you don't
Speaker 1: have to like specifically download an app for every single
Speaker 1: different type of tracker and then run a scan for
Speaker 1: every single kind of tracker, because that is a health scape. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of where we are now. The other
Speaker 1: thing that I'm king on right now is uh, privacy
Speaker 1: and safety for people who are seeking abortions and who
Speaker 1: are doing abortion support. That's definitely my my last couple
Speaker 1: of months of work and trying to come up with
Speaker 1: with best practices for people, and also really bringing these
Speaker 1: issues up to people who are working in tech or
Speaker 1: making products and who are making platforms and get them
Speaker 1: to think about how they are going to protect users
Speaker 1: who are traveling to abortion clinics or searching for information
Speaker 1: about abortions, or who are simply being prosecuted for their
Speaker 1: pregnancy outcome, whether it was an abortion or a miscarriage.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the danger to people in these
Speaker 1: populations isn't widespread now, but I have spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time working in authoritarian countries and watching laws get
Speaker 1: past very quickly and watching the the entire threat landscape
Speaker 1: change very quickly. And when you build a platform where
Speaker 1: you build a tool, it's really hard to turn that
Speaker 1: ship around fast. So I want them to start turning
Speaker 1: it around now before it becomes necessary. You've said that
Speaker 1: you were a difficult teenager. If Eva was a teenager today,
Speaker 1: her parents would have Life three sixty and be tracking
Speaker 1: her every move, how fast the vehicles she's driving in
Speaker 1: or going. What are your thoughts on all of these
Speaker 1: parental tracking devices that are now sort of the norm. Hilariously,
Speaker 1: my parents wouldn't. My parents gave me a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of freedom, partially out of out of respect for my
Speaker 1: need to go figure out who I was and what
Speaker 1: I was doing, and that caused the great deal of anxiety.
Speaker 1: But they did it. And part of that, I think
Speaker 1: is because kids now grow up in a much more
Speaker 1: heavily surveilled in environment then I did. I grew up
Speaker 1: during an era of latch key kids, where it was
Speaker 1: totally normal for kids to come home from school, let
Speaker 1: themselves into the house, microwave up some ramen, possibly feed
Speaker 1: their younger sibling, and then somewhere around eight or nine,
Speaker 1: a very tired parent comes home. That's not what parenting
Speaker 1: is like now. It's very different. So I think that
Speaker 1: that that sort of comparison is just sort of unfair.
Speaker 1: As for parenting apps, I think that parents should give
Speaker 1: their their kids some room to grow and some slack,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, if you are gonna watch
Speaker 1: your kids and what they're doing online and what they're
Speaker 1: doing on their various devices. There are are two bits
Speaker 1: of advice that I have. The first is, don't lie
Speaker 1: to them. Don't lie to them, don't fool them. Make
Speaker 1: sure that they understand you know exactly here are the
Speaker 1: tools that I am using. Here is the information that
Speaker 1: they get. And the second is to talk to your
Speaker 1: kids about being responsible online and how to look out
Speaker 1: for threats themselves and make sure that they're comfortable coming
Speaker 1: to you with problems. Like do some parenting. I think
Speaker 1: that there is a there's a sort of authoritarian bent
Speaker 1: in parenting right now. That's kind of idea that you
Speaker 1: have to run your house like a police state and uh,
Speaker 1: and you don't if you think you've got to fool
Speaker 1: your kids. There are other solutions which which seemed like
Speaker 1: they would probably be less harmful in the long run. Sam,
Speaker 1: do you want to go to the speed round? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What book are you reading right now? Right now? I
Speaker 1: am reading a book called Braiding Sweet Grass, which is
Speaker 1: about combining notions about science and environmentalism with the author's
Speaker 1: experience as a native American growing up in the United States.
Speaker 1: What is your morning routine. I wake up in the
Speaker 1: morning and I have first coffee. No mental effort happens
Speaker 1: before first coffee, and then I just sort of stagger
Speaker 1: until I manage second coffee. I'm not a very good
Speaker 1: morning person who leaves you star struck. Probably the last
Speaker 1: time that I felt that way was I E. F. F.
Speaker 1: Gave a Pioneer Award to William Gibson, and I stood
Speaker 1: in the same room as the guy who wrote all
Speaker 1: of the science fiction that really influenced a whole lot
Speaker 1: of my early childhood, and I was extraordinarily impressed. But
Speaker 1: mostly I was impressed not only that he wrote all
Speaker 1: of these books that influenced me very much at an
Speaker 1: early age, but that he is writing books now that
Speaker 1: I feel are very much at the top of his game.
Speaker 1: Because what he does with science fiction is what what
Speaker 1: any good writer does, which is that people think you're
Speaker 1: describing the future, but all you're really doing is describing
Speaker 1: the present with a really discerning eye. And so he's
Speaker 1: an amazing observer of the present. You're clearly very fearless.
Speaker 1: What is your greatest fear? I've tackled so many of
Speaker 1: my fears by just sort of throwing myself into them.
Speaker 1: There are people who are afraid of public speaking, so
Speaker 1: I took up competitive public speaking in college. There are
Speaker 1: people who are afraid of heights. I am a circus arealist.
Speaker 1: I do tricks thirty ft up at the euir upside
Speaker 1: down and spinning until I'm not afraid of heights anymore.
Speaker 1: But there are definitely is still still things that I
Speaker 1: am afraid of, and I think that more than anything,
Speaker 1: what I dread is is losing autonomy. I have a
Speaker 1: tremendous amount of autonomy in my day to day life,
Speaker 1: more than I ever thought that it was possible for
Speaker 1: a person to have, and losing that would be, I think,
Speaker 1: a really big blow. You know, years ago, I did
Speaker 1: a book series called the Experts Guys Right two different things,
Speaker 1: and I would always try to find the top expert
Speaker 1: in every field, and certainly I would have approached Eva
Speaker 1: for you know how to Protect Yourself Online chapter. But
Speaker 1: I admire anyone who gets to the top of the
Speaker 1: field like she has. I completely agree, and I think
Speaker 1: with Eva. The thing that's even more interesting is she
Speaker 1: is a woman who has really taken truth to power.
Speaker 1: In a completely maldominated arena, right, all of those things together, like,
Speaker 1: that's really hard, and in the national security arena, which,
Speaker 1: like I don't know itself, is an intimidating place to be.
Speaker 1: I thought the most surprising thing was how little fear
Speaker 1: she has about her own safety and how little concern
Speaker 1: she has for that. It really surprised me. I felt
Speaker 1: like she was going to at least be a little
Speaker 1: guarded about that, or or have some just practical concern.
Speaker 1: But it almost makes you feel more powerful the fact
Speaker 1: that she's not afraid at all. Absolutely Thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to What's Her Story with Sam and Amy? We would
Speaker 1: appreciate it if you leave her review wherever you get
Speaker 1: your pot casts, and of course, connect with us on
Speaker 1: social media at What's Her Story Podcast. What's Her Story
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Speaker 1: our producer Stacy Parra and our male perspective Blue Burns