Name: What I learned from President Obama - Smarter Every Day 151
Uploaded: 2016-08-19T04:14:09.000Z
Duration: 8 min 11 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Hey it's me Destin welcome back to Smarter Everyday

Past simple

I just interviewed the President of the United States of America

Which is really strange because I'm not a journalist

I'm not a politician. I'm a rocket engineer.

Which means I'm going to come at this thing from a completely different angle than most people

The process of interviewing the President is strange because you learn things about him,

and the White House of course, but you learn things about yourself.

The mechanics of how this happened; what my goals for the interview were;

the interview itself; and what I learned.

My understanding is there was a long list of people being considered

and then at some point, I was interviewed as a potential candidate.

I'm not a registered Republican or Democrat, but they asked me point blank who I voted for

but the way I answered the question made it pretty clear to me

It was a secret for 3 weeks, and then I went out to L.A. to shoot a promo for the interview.

It was there that I met Adonde and Ingrid.

They were super cool and really down to earth.

When I got home, I asked the Internet what they thought I should ask the President

I mean, good ones, bad ones. It was amazing.

But think about it, I don't agree with the president on every single issue,

I could sit down with the most powerful man in the world and tell him how I think he should run the country,

or I could accept the fact that he might see things differently than I do

and try to have a meaningful, intelligent, respectful conversation.

My goal was not to just have this intelligent, respectful conversation

with somebody I might disagree with on other topics

but to demonstrate that it could actually be fun!

To do this, I went to Washington to meet the President.

The day before the interview we went to a studio

in Maryland, and we practiced with a guy named Fredrick.

He's a stand-in hired by Google and he's a really cool guy.

The next day, we went to the White House and we got to meet the President's dogs

which were really, really soft by the way.

We did some dry runs to make sure we knew how to roll our sets around,

and then each of us kind of went off and reviewed our questions one last time

to make sure we knew what we were gonna say.

We then waited for the President, and he walked in and we started the interview.

The President had already been briefed on who the 3 of us were,

and the fact the Swoozie was gonna give him a lightning round,

and that Ingrid was gonna ask him about what's in his pockets.

A lot of people wanna know, did I share my questions

with the White House, these are the actual cards, before the interview?

I was looking into his eyes during the interview,

and it was clear, through nonverbal communication,

That impressed me! When I figured that out,

I was like, "Holy cow. A common citizen going to the White House,

talking to the most powerful man in the world,

that is an incredible amount of transparency."

And I don't care what you say about the man's politics,

that impressed me, and I appreciated that.

For many reasons, I wasn't nervous, I was actually

how he gets smarter on topics he might not be the expert on.

It was an interesting answer, because it's clear that he's

changed his methods over the course of his presidency.

As he was answering this question, it was pretty clear to me that he was in interview mode:

Now keep in mind that at this point, the President still doesn't know what kind of interviewer I'm gonna be.

What happened next was a moment I will never forget

I knew before he did that we were on the same wavelength,

and I really wanted to let him know that,

after all, I had listened to him already for 10 hours via audiobook.

you can see the exact moment that we connect.

Obama: And that I think is pretty consistent with,

you know, how scientists approach problems generally.

Destin: Now, I actually knew that about you because I've listened to your audiobooks,

it ended with the 2004 Democratic National Convention speech.

Did you see it? Let's back it up and watch his body language.

He's a little guarded, and then the connection.

It's the exact moment that this quit being an interview,

and became a fun, intelligent conversation

between two individuals who want the best for each other.

It was a really cool moment, and I won't forget it.

My second question was about polarization.

It's been clear to me that the country is more polarized now than it's been in a really long time,

and in fact there's data to back this up.

Whatever your views are, it's become really popular to yell

at the other side and blame them for all the county's problems.

The president went into why he thinks this is happening.

Obama: And the problem is, is that when we get to our politics,

a lot of it having to do with the fact that, you know, our media is now splintered,

and so some people, they're just watching Fox News,

some people are just reading the New York Times,

so they're not, they don't even start with a common baseline of facts.

They almost occupy two different realities in terms of how they see the world.