Gretchen Carlson
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Why is breaking silence a personal decision?
I still advise people, it's such a personal decision whether or not you want to break your silence, come forward if you own your voice. Because you will probably still be punished in our culture. Culture is so much harder to change than even passing bipartisan laws
in the most
hyper-political time of our generation.
Gretchen, I am so happy to welcome
you to Reclaiming. Thank you. Thank you. I feel like we have this symbiosis with each other. Yes. It's kind of like when you meet people and you don't have to say anything because they just get it. Yeah. Exactly. And I've always wanted to be able to have this personal conversation with you because I I can't imagine everything that you went through because even what I went through will never, ever be to the level of what you went through. And I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry and I'm there for you. Thank you. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, I think you'll probably agree with this, that it's a very binary thing. You either know what it's like to go through some sort of public exposure or you don't. So if I drown in 60 feet of water and someone else drowns in water, like we both drowned. It is very binary. You either understand that or you don't. Exactly. And I really wanted to start by saying thank you for all the work that you have done on behalf of women I think that just in the wake of your successful lawsuit against then-Fox chairman Roger Ailes, you worked tirelessly to bring the secure passage of the bipartisan, the ending forced arbitration of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment Act, and then also the Speak Out Act that both signed in 2022.
Yes, and we should have thought of a better name for the first one. I mean, for more understanding,
it's known
as the EFAA now.
Oh, okay. Great. Okay.
But then people don't have any idea what that is either.
Okay. But we will,
yeah.
We'll
delve into how we got to that. I think, though, that, you know, again, just for parallels. Right, right. I thought, I'll just stay at home for the next 20 years and cry my eyes out, you know, and look out my windows in my backyard. I
mean, I had
no idea what I was going to do with myself or how I was going to recreate myself. And interestingly enough... What really ended up being my life support were all the people that started reaching out to me. You know, you go through this experience where you jump off the cliff by yourself, and there's no safety net. But then all these people started reaching out to me right away when I finally filed the lawsuit. And actually, back then, they were saying, me too. And they started sharing all of these incredibly similar eerie stories. So I realized there was this epidemic still of horrible behavior happening in the workplace. But then I realized there was a second epidemic. And that was the silencing of all of these people who had come before me.
And I just had this light bulb go off in my head. And I was like, I got to do something about this. I have to pay tribute to all of these people who came before me that nobody knows about because they all went into secrecy and they were shunned and they lost their careers as a result of it. And that's really what put me on this new pathway of recreating myself into passing laws on Capitol Hill. Are you
effing kidding me? We say fuck here. I mean, I don't know. Are you fucking kidding me? Like, The
idea that – well, I wouldn't say that on the Hill. Although they're saying that much more on the Hill now. I think you could even say it on TV now.
I think so. Especially on cable. Right, right. On cable.
Yeah. But anyway, it just ended up being this purpose in my life. And the interesting thing is it will end up being my legacy. I mean it will be so much more important than any TV interview I ever did, any president I interviewed or any high-profile person or – None of that really equates to when you start changing the lives of millions of people.
Yeah. No, it's extraordinary. It's really extraordinary. And I think one of the things that is so... interesting and sad, too, about your case is that there are legal parameters for you right now, sitting here, that you can't even get into.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
Why is breaking silence a personal decision?
0:00–8:49
2
How did Gretchen Carlson’s 2016 lawsuit lead to bipartisan legislation?
8:49–17:19
3
What role did forced arbitration clauses play in her case?
17:19–25:02
4
How did the Speak Out Act change NDAs for survivors?
25:02–34:00
5
Why is culture harder to change than passing laws?
34:00–43:52
6
How can workers identify restrictive contract clauses?
43:52–52:29
7
What impact did the lawsuit have on other women’s voices?
52:29–59:47