The Unwind is Yahoo Life’s well-being series in which experts, influencers, and celebrities share their approaches to wellness and mental health, from self-care rituals to setting healthy boundaries to the mantras that keep them afloat, Given that she spent her formative years in the White House, it’s little surprise that former first daughter Chelsea Clinton is at ease unpacking complex public health issues in her new iHeartRadio podcast, In Fact with
Chelsea Clinton. The new platform allows the science-driven global health advocate to dig into the statistics and stories behind such pressing concerns as environmental justice, addiction, reproductive rights, and vaccines, with guest experts ranging from Jane Fonda to Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Clinton hopes that bringing these conversations to the forefront will help empower audiences overwhelmed by misinformation amid a pandemic. Here, the mother of three also shares her passion for running, how she’s teaching her kids about kindness, and why worrying about vaccine hesitancy keeps her up at night.
What about the premise of this podcast appeals to you?
I should acknowledge that I love podcasts. I listen to many podcasts, so it is a way to consume information and learn new things and how people I respect think about different questions or issues in the world. A podcast felt natural, partly because I grew up listening to the radio. I grew up listening to NPR with my mom every morning. And
we’re living through a moment, at least in my lifetime, that has had unprecedented interest in public health. And I hope that as we have more people vaccinated and hopefully can move forward out of this horrific moment, people have an understanding of why public health is so important and how interconnected our health is to one another, yet don’t think it’s just about COVID-19 or even just about infectious diseases. And so I hope that this podcast can help inform people and empower people with an understanding of what’s happening in other issues that connect to public health, even if that may not be how they perceive them, whether that’s climate change or reproductive rights or anything else that we’re going to talk about on In Fact.
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You’re speaking to many notable people on the show, including Dax Shepard, Jane Fonda, and Jonathan Van Ness. Is there something shocking that you learned throughout these conversations? Admittedly, I’ve done a lot of homework before talking with my guests. I don’t know if anything is surprising in an “aha!” sense, but what’s undoubtedly incredible is the depth of feeling, thoughtfulness and commitment to the different issues I’m discussing with people even though. I know that they know so much [about the topic]… But just listening to Dax Shepard talking about how he talks to his kids about addiction and substance abuse disorders or listening to Mayor Bottoms of Atlanta talk about how she experiences environmental racism as a Black woman in Atlanta in her home energy bill,
and how even being the mayor of Atlanta doesn’t protect her from generations of literally built-in structural racism in her city. These aren’t just issues that affect a few people; these are issues that affect many millions disproportionately and ultimately affect all of us through our shared public health. So there are some intensely emotional moments that I was incredibly affected by, and I certainly hope that listeners will be too — if only to help them understand the absolute urgency and scope of the different issues we talk about.
