A hilarious celebration of lifelong female friendship | Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin

2,070,890 views ・ 2016-01-19

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00:12
Pat Mitchell: So I was thinking about female friendship a lot,
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and by the way, these two women,
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I'm very honored to say,
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have been my friends for a very long time, too.
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Jane Fonda: Yes we have.
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PM: And one of the things that I read about female friendship
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is something that Cervantes said.
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He said, "You can tell a lot about someone,"
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in this case a woman,
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"by the company that she keeps."
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So let's start with --
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(Laughter)
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JF: We're in big trouble.
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Lily Tomlin: Hand me one of those waters,
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I'm extremely dry.
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(Laughter)
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JF: You're taking up our time.
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We have a very limited --
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LT: Just being with her sucks the life out of me.
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(Laughter)
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JF: You ain't seen nothing yet.
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Anyway -- sorry.
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PM: So tell me, what do you look for in a friend?
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LT: I look for someone who has a sense of fun,
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who's audacious,
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who's forthcoming, who has politics,
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who has even a small scrap of passion for the planet,
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someone who's decent, has a sense of justice
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and who thinks I'm worthwhile.
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(Laughter)
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(Applause)
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JF: You know, I was thinking this morning,
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I don't even know what I would do without my women friends.
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I mean it's, "I have my friends, therefore I am."
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LT: (Laughter)
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JF: No, it's true.
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I exist because I have my women friends. They --
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You're one of them.
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I don't know about you. But anyway --
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(Laughter)
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You know, they make me stronger, they make me smarter,
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they make me braver.
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They tap me on the shoulder when I might be in need of course-correcting.
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And most of them are a good deal younger than me, too.
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You know? I mean, it's nice -- LT: Thank you.
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(Laughter)
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JF: No, I do, I include you in that, because listen, you know --
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it's nice to have somebody still around to play with and learn from
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when you're getting toward the end.
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I'm approaching -- I'll be there sooner than you.
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LT: No, I'm glad to have you parallel aging alongside me.
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(Laughter)
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JF: I'm showing you the way.
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(Laughter)
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LT: Well, you are and you have.
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PM: Well, as we grow older,
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and as we go through different kinds of life's journeys,
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what do you do to keep your friendships vital and alive?
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LT: Well you have to use a lot of --
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JF: She doesn't invite me over much, I'll tell you that.
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LT: I have to use a lot of social media --
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You be quiet now. And so --
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(Laughter)
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LT: And I look through my emails, I look through my texts
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to find my friends,
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so I can answer them as quickly as possible,
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because I know they need my counsel.
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(Laughter)
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They need my support,
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because most of my friends are writers, or activists, or actors,
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and you're all three ...
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and a long string of other descriptive phrases,
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and I want to get to you as soon as possible,
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I want you to know that I'm there for you.
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JF: Do you do emojis?
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LT: Oh ... JF: No?
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LT: That's embarrassing. JF: I'm really into emojis.
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LT: No, I spell out my --
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I spell out my words of happiness and congratulations,
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and sadness.
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JF: You spell it right out --
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LT: I spell it, every letter.
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(Laughter)
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JF: Such a purist.
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You know, as I've gotten older,
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I've understood more the importance of friendships,
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and so, I really make an effort
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to reach out and make play dates -- not let too much time go by.
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I read a lot
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so, as Lily knows all too well,
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my books that I like, I send to my friends.
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LT: When we knew we would be here today
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you sent me a lot of books about women, female friendships,
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and I was so surprised to see how many books,
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how much research has been done recently --
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JF: And were you grateful? LT: I was grateful.
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(Laughter)
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PM: And --
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LT: Wait, no, it's really important because this is another example
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of how women are overlooked, put aside, marginalized.
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There's been very little research done on us,
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even though we volunteered lots of times.
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JF: That's for sure.
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(Laughter)
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LT: This is really exciting, and you all will be interested in this.
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The Harvard Medical School study has shown
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that women who have close female friendships
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are less likely to develop impairments --
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physical impairments as they age,
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and they are likely to be seen to be living much more vital, exciting --
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JF: And longer --
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LT: Joyful lives.
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JF: We live five years longer than men.
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LT: I think I'd trade the years for joy.
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(Laughter)
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LT: But the most important part is they found --
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the results were so exciting and so conclusive --
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the researchers found
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that not having close female friends is detrimental to your health,
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as much as smoking or being overweight.
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JF: And there's something else, too --
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LT: I've said my part, so ...
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(Laughter)
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JF: OK, well, listen to my part, because there's an additional thing.
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Because they only -- for years, decades --
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they only researched men when they were trying to understand stress,
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only very recently have they researched what happens to women when we're stressed,
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and it turns out that when we're stressed -- women,
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our bodies get flooded by oxytocin.
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Which is a feel-good, calming, stress-reducing hormone.
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Which is also increased when we're with our women friends.
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And I do think that's one reason why we live longer.
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And I feel so bad for men because they don't have that.
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Testosterone in men diminishes the effects of oxytocin.
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LT: Well, when you and I and Dolly made "9 to 5" ...
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JF: Oh --
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LT: We laughed, we did, we laughed so much,
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we found we had so much in common and we're so different.
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Here she is, like Hollywood royalty,
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I'm like a tough kid from Detroit,
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[Dolly's] a Southern kid from a poor town in Tennessee,
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and we found we were so in sync as women,
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and we must have --
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we laughed -- we must have added at least a decade onto our lifespans.
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JF: I think -- we sure crossed our legs a lot.
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(Laughter)
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If you know what I mean.
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LT: I think we all know what you mean.
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(Laughter)
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PM: You're adding decades to our lives right now.
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So among the books that Jane sent us both to read on female friendship
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was one by a woman we admire greatly, Sister Joan Chittister,
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who said about female friendship
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that women friends are not just a social act,
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they're a spiritual act.
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Do you think of your friends as spiritual?
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Do they add something spiritual to your lives?
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LT: Spiritual -- I absolutely think that.
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Because -- especially people you've known a long time,
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people you've spent time with --
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I can see the spiritual essence inside them,
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the tenderness, the vulnerability.
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There's actually kind of a love, an element of love in the relationship.
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I just see deeply into your soul.
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PM: Do you think that, Jane --
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LT: But I have special powers.
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JF: Well, there's all kinds of friends.
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There's business friends, and party friends,
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I've got a lot of those.
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(Laughter)
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But the oxytocin-producing friendships have ...
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They feel spiritual because it's a heart opening, right?
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You know, we go deep. And --
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I find that I shed tears a lot with my intimate friends.
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Not because I'm sad but because I'm so touched and inspired by them.
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LT: And you know one of you is going to go soon.
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(Laughter)
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PM: Well, two of us are sitting here, Lily, which one are you talking about?
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(Laughter)
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And I always think, when women talk about their friendships,
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that men always look a little mystified.
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What are the differences, in your opinion,
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between men friendships and women friendships?
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JF: There's a lot of difference,
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and I think we have to have a lot of empathy for men --
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(Laughter)
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that they don't have what we have.
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Which I think may be why they die sooner.
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(Laughter)
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I have a lot of compassion for men,
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because women, no kidding, we --
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women's relationships, our friendships are full disclosure, we go deep.
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They're revelatory.
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We risk vulnerability -- this is something men don't do.
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I mean how many times have I asked you, "Am I doing OK?"
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"Did I really screw up there?"
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PM: You're doing great.
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(Laughter)
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JF: But I mean, we ask questions like that
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of our women friends,
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and men don't.
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You know, people describe women's relationships as face-to-face,
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whereas men's friendships are more side-by-side.
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LT: I mean most of the time men don't want to reveal their emotions,
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they want to bury deeper feelings.
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I mean, that's the general, conventional thought.
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They would rather go off in their man cave and watch a game or hit golf balls,
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or talk about sports, or hunting, or cars or have sex.
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I mean, it's just the kind of -- it's a more manly behavior.
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JF: You meant -- LT: They talk about sex.
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I meant they might have sex
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if they could get somebody in their man cave to --
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(Laughter)
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JF: You know something, though, that I find very interesting --
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and again, psychologists didn't know this until relatively recently --
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is that men are born every bit as relational as women are.
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If you look at films of newborn baby boys and girls,
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you'll see the baby boys just like the girls,
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gazing into their mother's eyes,
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you know, needing that relational exchange of energy.
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When the mother looks away, they could see the dismay on the child,
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even the boy would cry.
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They need relationship.
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So the question is why, as they grow older, does that change?
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And the answer is patriarchal culture,
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which says to boys and young men
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that to be needing of relationship, to be emotional with someone is girly.
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That a real man doesn't ask directions or express a need,
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they don't go to doctors if they feel bad.
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They don't ask for help.
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There's a quote that I really like,
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"Men fear that becoming 'we' will erase his 'I'."
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You know, his sense of self.
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Whereas women's sense of self has always been kind of porous.
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But our "we" is our saving grace,
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it's what makes us strong.
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It's not that we're better than men,
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we just don't have our masculinity to prove.
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LT: And, well --
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JF: That's a Gloria Steinem quote.
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So we can express our humanity -- LT: I know who Gloria Steinem is.
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JF: I know you know who she is, but I think it's a --
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(Laughter)
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No, but it's a great quote, I think.
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We're not better than men, we just don't have our masculinity to prove.
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And that's really important.
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LT: But men are so inculcated in the culture
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to be comfortable in the patriarchy.
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And we've got to make something different happen.
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JF: Women's friendships are like a renewable source of power.
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LT: Well, that's what's exciting about this subject.
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It's because our friendships --
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female friendships are just a hop to our sisterhood,
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and sisterhood can be a very powerful force,
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to give the world --
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to make it what it should be --
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the things that humans desperately need.
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PM: It is why we're talking about it,
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because women's friendships are,
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as you said, Jane,
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a renewable source of power.
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So how do we use that power?
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JF: Well, women are the fastest growing demographic in the world,
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especially older women.
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And if we harness our power, we can change the world.
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And guess what? We need to.
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(Applause)
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And we need to do it soon.
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And one of the things that we need to do --
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and we can do it as women --
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for one thing, we kind of set the consumer standards.
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We need to consume less.
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We in the Western world need to consume less
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and when we buy things, we need to buy things that are made locally,
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when we buy food, we need to buy food that's grown locally.
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We are the ones that need to get off the grid.
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We need to make ourselves independent from fossil fuels.
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And the fossil fuel companies --
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the Exxons and the Shell Oils and those bad guys --
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cause they are --
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are going to tell us that we can't do it without going back to the Stone Age.
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You know, that the alternatives just aren't quite there yet,
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and that's not true.
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There are countries in the world right now
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that are living mostly on renewable energy and doing just fine.
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And they tell us that if we do wean ourselves from fossil fuel
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that we're going to be back in the Stone Age,
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and in fact, if we begin to use renewable energy,
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and not drill in the Arctic, and not drill --
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LT: Oh, boy.
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JF: And not drill in the Alberta tar sands --
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Right.
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That we will be --
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there will be more democracy and more jobs and more well-being,
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and it's women that are going to lead the way.
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LT: Maybe we have the momentum to start a third-wave feminist movement
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with our sisterhood around the world,
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with women we don't see, women we may never meet,
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but we join together that way,
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because --
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Aristotle said --
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most people --
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people would die without male friendships.
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And the operative word here was "male."
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Because they thought that friendships should be between equals
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and women were not considered equal --
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JF: They didn't think we had souls even, the Greeks.
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LT: No, exactly. That shows you just how limited Aristotle was.
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(Laughter)
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And wait, no, here's the best part.
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It's like, you know, men do need women now.
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The planet needs women.
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The US Constitution needs women.
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We are not even in the Constitution.
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JF: You're talking about the Equal Rights Amendment.
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LT: Right.
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Justice Ginsberg said something like --
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every constitution that's been written since the end of World War II
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included a provision that made women citizens of equal stature,
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but ours does not.
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So that would be a good place to start.
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Very, very mild --
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JF: Right.
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(Applause)
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And gender equality, it's like a tide,
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it would lift all boats, not just women.
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PM: Needing new role models on how to do that.
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How to be friends,
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how to think about our power in different ways,
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as consumers,
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as citizens of the world,
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and this is what makes Jane and Lily
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a role model of how women can be friends --
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for a very long time,
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and even if they occasionally disagree.
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Thank you.
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Thank you both.
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(Applause)
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JF: Thanks.
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LT: Thank you.
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JF: Thank you.
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(Applause)
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