[00:00:00.23] PREET: Cyrus Habib, thank you so much for being on the show.

[00:00:02.16] CYRUS: Wonderful to be here with you.

[00:00:04.09] PREET: I should actually call you, I should call you Lieutenant Governor, you like the title, it’s a pretty good title, right?

[00:00:07.13] CYRUS: I don’t do this, but technically, Lieutenant Governors are called “Governor,” but I find that it’s…

[00:00:14.16] PREET: Nice try, Mike Pence says, “Vice President, you would call ‘President,'” (laughs) I don’t think it works that way.

[00:00:19.11] CYRUS: Yeah, yeah yeah I like keeping a good relationship with Governor Inslee, so I definitely don’t push for that.

[00:00:25.20] PREET: So, you know, you were born to Iranian immigrants, to the United States, in the early 1980s, so you’re Iranian American, but the other thing that you had to contend with in addition to perhaps you know people not understanding what Iran was about, was a disability. YOu went blind in one eye at age 2. And then you went blind in the other eye at age 8. And you’ve been fully blind since then. How did you deal with that challenge as a child?

[00:00:58.12] CYRUS: I often joke that because that was in 1989, that’s when I was 8 years old and became blind, all 8 years that I could see, took place in the 1980s, so all my visual memories to this day, Preet, are still from the 1980s. So everyone still looks like Cyndi Lauper and Boy George.

[00:01:16.26] PREET: I look more like Cydni Lauper than Boy George, just so you know.

[00:01:21.00] CYRUS: Cyndi Lauper than Boy George? Yeah, no it’s a great, you know that’s nothing you ever want to have happen to you, but in a way it was the best time for it to happen because I was old enough that I had a good archive of visual memories, but young enough that I was still adaptable. And was still learning things and the….you know I learned braille when other kids learned cursive.

[00:01:45.15] PREET: Did you begin to learn braille as you were losing sight in the second eye?

[00:01:48.15] CYRUS: Yes. The cancer that I had really is only curable by removal of the retinas, and so they knew that I was gonna become blind. And the goal of the treatment was to try to prolong my eyesight as long as possible to give me that archive of memories as a kid. But they did start to prepare me, not only by teaching me braille but also how to use a cane, etcetera.

[00:02:14.16] PREET: Do you remember being scared during this time when you were told how much the cancer was affecting you? How did your parents explain it to you? Like, what was that, being a child is difficult for an average child who didn’t have this tremendous medical challenge you had. How did, what is your recollection of that time?

[00:02:33.20] CYRUS: Yeah, you know it’s interesting because I was an only child, and because my parents did such a good job of making me feel typical, I didn’t really have a sense of how extraordinarily bad the situation was. I lost my hair because of chemo and had to wear a baseball cap, and that was, you know I knew that that was different, but you know I didn’t have a bench mark of like a sibling or something to compare my life to, and my parents later told me that they kind of made a pact with one another that they would not allow their fear to become my fear.

[00:03:20.16] PREET: Have you talked to your parents since? And how hard it was for them? Parents are protective. I have three kids, people are protective of their children, they don’t want any harm to come to them. And it can be difficult to hide that from a child who you’re concerned about. How did your parents deal with it?

[00:03:35.22] CYRUS: Well they did a wonderful job of concealing their fear from me. And when I was in 3rd grade, and by this point we’d moved to Washington state, I was, it was one of the first days of the school year and all the kids were playing out on the playground during recess time, as kids do, and the school district knowing that I had recently become blind, and I think more importantly knowing that my mother was a litigator, didn’t want this blind kid playing on the jungle gym, and monkey bars and swingsets and everything, you know 5 feet off the ground, so while the other kids were playing they would keep me sidelined, basically, with the recess monitors. And so I went home and I told my parents, “Hey, I’m not being allowed to play with the other kids.” And my mom went to the school, the next day [00:04:33.15] and she actually, she took me with her to the principal’s office so that I could learn how to advocate for myself. And she said to the principal of the elementary school, “I’m gonna take my son to your school over the weekend, and I’m gonna teach him how to get around the playground, and I’m gonna teach him to use all the playground equipment. It might happen that he might slip and fall, and he might even slip and fall and break his arm.” That’s a fear that any mother has. But she said, “I can fix a broken arm, I can never fix a broken spirit.”

[00:05:02.16] PREET: What was the reaction of the school to that? Were they taken aback?

[00:05:05.04] CYRUS: Yeah I mean they were, you know they were…this was before, this was right when the ADA was actually being passed by COngress, and I don’t think they’d had experience with a mom who was empowered and understood the law and, and so…

[00:05:23.20] PREET: And by the ADA you mean the Americans with Disabilities Act.

[00:05:26.04] CYRUS: The Americans with Disabilities Act yeah, that wouldn’t actually come into full effect until I was in 8th grade. But that was the moment that I learned that I had a right to be included.

[00:05:38.21] PREET: ANd was the school worried…were they more concerned about your safety or about liability?

[00:05:43.23] CYRUS: I think it’s both. I think that you know, the people on the frontlines, the teachers and the recess monitors, I think they really were thinking about safety, you know, and I think this is something that comes up in so many different ways with people with disabilities. This is a kind of protectionism. I think you know, as you go up the totem pole, you know you get to people whose job is to think about legal liability. But, yeah what I had to deal with in a number of occasions, whether it was learning how to downhill ski or do martial arts, etcetera, or you know…

[00:06:18.27] PREET: Can you explain how you learned to downhill ski? ‘Cause I think that strikes some people’s ears, as that seems very difficult to do. And more dangerous than a jungle gym.

[00:06:32.06] CYRUS: So it was a few years later, I was in 6th or 7th grade, and I wanted to participate in one of these ski school programs. And this time it was my dad, and so he said, “Alright, I’m gonna come up with you,” and what we did was we would take a ski lift up to the top of the slope, and then he would describe, “Okay here’s kind of the layout of the slope we’re gonna go down,” and then he would ski behind me, a few yards behind me, and yell, you know, “Left! Right! Left! Right! Cliff!” So that’s how we did it! And you know, people with disabilities are often, even if they’re encouraged to feel good about their minds, they’re still made to feel ashamed of their bodies. [00:07:22.22] And they’re not, their bodies are kind of the locust of pain and difference and illness and injury, and so it’s really powerful when you give, particularly a young person with a disability, the opportunity to really revel in their physicality and enjoy their body and be able to do sports or do some kind of activity. It actually really up ends some of the deepest feelings of insecurity that they might have internally.

[00:07:54.05] PREET: So your parents did an amazing job in showing you that you didn’t have limits. But obviously, there still are some limitations because of your inability to see. I’m gonna read you something you said, and ask you, you know what does it feel like to have to, even with all of your independence, have to rely on other people more than the average person perhaps? And you said once, “I rely on the generosity of cab drivers, baristas, store clerks, each time I make a purchase with cash. That I have rarely been ripped off is a testament to their honesty or my charm,” and I think it’s probably both, “but I cannot help but protest the perpetual necessity for either.” How does that feel to have to rely on other people?

[00:08:40.06] CYRUS: Yeah that was, that was part of a movement that was ultimately successful, led by the American Counsel of the Blind who make our US currency accessible. We’re the only industrialized country where you can’t tell, other than visually, the difference between the 5 dollar bill and a 20 dollar bill. And so I got involved with that movement and it’s true that that’s one of the, that’s one of the areas where you know, unfortunately because those bills are not distinguishable right now, they will be soon, a person who’s blind or low vision even, can be vulnerable. And the, I think the important thing there is it’s not just a lack of independence when it comes to like a consumer, but it’s also the idea that someone who’s blind ought to be able to work at a Starbucks and, to plug a Seattle company, [00:09:38.23] or another coffee shop. They ought to be able to do that, and be able to make change for people.

[00:09:44.28] PREET: You raise the issue of employment for people who are blind. You know the overall unemployment rate in the country is at you know historical lows, but tell folks what the unemployment rate is among blind people in the United States.

[00:09:57.23] CYRUS: Yeah well as recently as a few years ago, the unemployment rate for blind Americans was about 70 percent. And since, and I would also say, of those who are employed, many are under employed. And so we’ve got a long ways to go.

[00:10:15.11] PREET: So you, you know you had a sort of mediocre academic career at Columbia, Oxford, Yale, after which at some point you decided to get into politics. Why on earth would you do that?

[00:10:28.04] CYRUS: Mainly so that I could use the expression, “I went from braille to Yale,” on podcasts like this. And get laughs out of it.

[00:10:36.24] PREET: You know I believe that is going to be the title of the episode. Thank you for that.

[00:10:40.27] CYRUS: Alright. You know without teachers, without social services, without the person who taught me how to use a cane or read braille, or use software on the computer that reads what’s on the screen, without any of those things, I wouldn’t have been able to travel the road from braille to Yale. So as I graduated law school and came back and entered into private practice in Seattle, you know I, heard about all these attacks on social services. ONe of the things you’d hear often times is education being pitted against social services, and I knew first hand that you need both. You need good schools  and you need the wrap around services to help kids. And so I, I felt that that was a perspective that while there are a lot of people who care about these things, that there aren’t a lot of people in public office who actually had active case files with multiple state agencies and departments to help them get to where they are. [00:11:37.22] And you know we’re always in a way competing with Silicon Valley, and I wanted our state to be more friendly to entrepreneurs, and so those two areas of interest, based on personal experience led me to decide to run for the state house of representatives in 2012.

[00:11:56.19] PREET: And you got elected. First time out?

[00:11:58.24] CYRUS: I did and you know it’s the first time I decided to run, I went and spoke with a party leader in our state, and said, “I’m thinking about running for state house of representatives, and here’s my background and here are my interests…” And he said, “Well, in order to run for office you know you’re gonna have to do a lot of door belling, and you know going door to door and meeting voters and, I just don’t know. How would that ever work for you?”

[00:12:25.03] PREET: He hadn’t seen you ski.

[00:12:26.08] CYRUS: Exactly! That’s what I thought! I said, “You  know what,” and I just turned and said to him, “YOu know what, I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but, you know you may not hear this all that often, but running for state legislature is not actually gonna be the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” And there have been, since then, I mean, there’ve been lots of instances when people have said, “How could you do this?” One of the jobs of the Lieutenant Governor, is to preside over the state senate and call on senators. So there were people during the campaign that would say, including my opponents, that would say, “He can’t do that. Don’t vote for him because he’s not gonna be able to do that.”

[00:12:58.23] PREET: Wait, I’m sorry—you actually had opponents who said in the campaign, that you wouldn’t be able to do your job because you’re blind?

[00:13:06.15] CYRUS: Yep.

[00:13:07.12] PREET: THat doesn’t seem to be, it’s both not right and also doesn’t seem politically smart, so (laughs) I don’t, maybe that’s why you beat those guys.

[00:13:15.09] CYRUS: There were other things. I mean I had, we had my own version of a birther conspiracy, people saying, “Is he even born in this country?” Which by the way is not a prerequisite for becoming Lieutenant Governor…

[00:13:26.00] PREET: For state office.

[00:13:27.22] CYRUS: It, you know, it happens. But yeah there were people who would say, because I can’t see senators, how am I gonna be able to do my job? Well guess what, we put touch screens on every senator’s desk, and when they want to speak, and because they’re politicians you know they always want to speak, they touch the screen on their desk and it sends their name up to a computer where I’m standing at the front of the senate chamber, and I can feel their name in braille. In real time. So all their names pop up and I can call on the senator that makes sense for the debate at that time. So all these things can be solved, but what, you know I think the biggest obstacle, honestly, is impoverished imagination. When people just can’t imagine how could you do this?

[00:14:09.20] PREET: No I think that’s absolutely correct. So on election day, November 2016, there were two unlikely, among others, there were two unlikely victors in campaigns. One was you, as Lieutenant Governor of the state of Washington, and the other one you may recall, and have heard of, was Donald Trump as president.

[00:14:27.16] CYRUS: Mhmm.

[00:14:29.10] PREET: What was election night like for you, given that?

[00:14:32.24] CYRUS: I, I still prize the, and value and cherish, the 30 minutes in between my knowledge of those two events as some of the sweetest…

[00:14:44.16] PREET: You found out about your own victory first?

[00:14:45.25] CYRUS: Right, yeah, I found out about my own victory first, and you know it wasn’t looking good for Clinton, but it was like, we, along with everyone else, “this will be fine, it’s, we’re gonna have to think about why it was so close tomorrow, but you know, she’ll win…” You know for me it was also a really bitter sweet time on a personal level because my father passed away on October 13th, just three weeks earlier, so the last few weeks of that campaign were kind of a blur for me. YOu know I know my dad would have loved nothing more than to celebrate with us that night, and nothing would have made him more angry than Trump winning the election.

[00:15:27.11] PREET: WHat was the split in the vote on the presidential side in Washington state in 2016? Do you remember?

[00:15:32.15] CYRUS: Trump got under 40 percent in our state.

[00:15:34.22] PREET: So Trump got under 40 percent, that’s still hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are Trump supporters in your state, and the reason I point that out, ’cause you and I have talked about this, and I want you to share your views with the listeners, you know, in politics, at least if you’re doing statewide politics and you think expansively about bringing people over to your point of view and persuasion, and we talk about persuasion a lot on this show because people seem not to be in that business anymore, you know they just slice the electorate up. And you talk about the way that it makes sense to have conversations with people who disagree with you. And those include Trump voters, who are in your state, in you’re Lieutenant Governor for everyone in Washington state, whether they supported Clinton or Trump, how do you go about talking with people who disagree with you?

[00:16:21.15] CYRUS: I think you have to start by showing them basic respect. IT sounds like common sense, but it’s really hard. I think that what a lot of voters tfelt, was ignored, disrespected, like they weren’t being listened to, and I find that actually my own story, from the playground and beyond of having felt marginalized resonates with people. Everybody knows somebody with a disability, in a way that’s different from say race or gender, or sexual identity, disability actually can be an inroad into talking about respect, and opportunity, and even equality, and some of these things that can sometimes be very charged in our debate. [00:17:15.12] So I try to share my own personal story, I try to listen to them, and I try to show up to things that matter to them. You know I try to go around the state, go to county fairs, show up at things, knowing that probably 75 percent of these people didn’t vote for me.

[00:17:31.27] PREET: Would some political strategists say, “Well don’t waste your time, the important thing for you, Cyrus, or any political person running, is to increase the turnout in the neighborhoods where there are people who are likely to be progressives like you,”? I mean I like the message, but explain why it makes sense.

[00:17:49.26] CYRUS: First of all I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. I mean I think that this is my job, so I would, I should do it and I would do it irrespective of the electoral outcome and in a lot of ways I actually don’t do it, I don’t expect that these people will turn on a dime and all the sudden start voting democratic. It’s gonna take a long time, and it’s gonna take more than just one elected official for Democrats to show rural voters, and suburban voters, that we care about everybody. So, it’s the right thing to do, I don’t think that it’s mutually exclusive. And I actually think that it allows you to actually get to the heart of the matter, if you meet with different types of folks, in different parts of our state, different parts of our country, and hear their challenges and recognize how many shared issues and challenges there are. [00:18:43.29] I mean climate change, you know right now in Seattle, it’s hazy and smoky all over because these wildfires have gone crazy. Well those same wildfires are devastating the rural parts of our state. And so, in a very poignant way, it’s like Mother Nature is reminding us that we all live under one sky, in one shared reality. So I don’t think, I don’t see them at all as mutually exclusive and I think actually it benefits us as a public officials to do that.

[00:19:12.27] PREET: One of the reasons I think people will say that Trump got elected is there’s a lot of disaffection among the electorate for establishment politicians, right? They talk a lot, they have gridlock a lot. They don’t really help us so much, and they’re repelled by politicians. Is that right? What is it that people should expect from their representatives?

[00:19:35.22] CYRUS: I’m gonna take a big risk on this podcast, and I’m gonna say something positive about Donald Trump, that is not a backhanded compliment. Donald Trump, I think more than any other president that I can think of in recent history, really is working to follow through on his campaign promises. Those campaign promises are heinous, and awful and un American, but he is gonna do everything he can to build that wall. You know, he’s gonna do everything he can to reduce immigration in this country. He said he would get out of the Paris Accord, he got out of the Paris Accord. He said he would get out of the Iran deal, he got out of the Iran deal. He said he’s gonna actually talk tough with China, as many other presidential candidates, Democrat and Republican have said they would do, and he’s actually done that. [00:20:26.21] You know the analogue would be that when President Obama was elected, had he come in and within the first 6 months said, “You know what? I’m shutting Guantanamo. And I’m gonna send these guys to Europe, federal prisons in Alabama or South Carolina, or Virginia, and Congress better figure out what to do about it.” You know, and so…

[00:20:48.00] PREET: But it’s sort of fascinating, right? ‘Cause I get your point, the positive way to describe it is that he sticks to his guns and he adheres to his promises, but there’s also the art of compromise and I thought we were electing a president who likes to tout his ability to make a deal, and so on the other side of the coin, you know maybe he would have greater approval than he has if he actually backed off a little bit on some of the things that he’d said he wanted…

[00:21:14.01] CYRUS: Oh for sure! I mean he’s anything but a deal maker, he’s walked away you know countless times from immigration deals, and in his stubbornness he’s also you know done it in the worst possible way using children as hostages etcetera. So I completely agree with you about all that. But I think what people are tired of, is politicians that will say anything, and say, “I’ll do this, I’ll do this, I’ll do this, I’ll do this.” And then they get in, and then they view their job in Congress or in any other office as continuing to be a spokesperson, for the things they said they would do, as opposed to working really hard to accomplish some version of it or some compromise based on it. And I think that you know, again, I ‘d like to see our Democratic nominee in 2020 be someone who really takes their campaign promises seriously. And by the way I’m not saying that President Obama didn’t, I mean obviously healthcare was front and center and he did get that done, [00:22:12.08] but I think there’s a kind of, a kind of cynicism about politicians and….

[00:22:18.05] PREET: Because politicians, they don’t only compromise with other folks, they have to compromise within their own agendas, and we’ve heard Rahm Emanuel and others say, “These were the kinds of conversations going on in the White House. We can either hold people accountable for engaging in torture, or we can have healthcare.” And you can’t put too much on the table because you only have limited political capital because very quickly you’re running for office again, and so you have to be stark in the choices you make, even though you promise 10 things, when you come into office, these conventional politicians say, you’ve got to pick one or two, ’cause that’s all you can do, man.

[00:22:52.28] CYRUS: Well what I would argue in response to that is to say actually, if you can do one, and you do it well, you build momentum, and you get more capital. Capital is, in other words, I don’t view it in that kind of a zero sum way…

[00:23:03.20] PREET: I guess, although just to challenge that for a second, Barack OBama, as you said, one of his singular achievements was enacting the Affordable Care Act, and lots of people would say, that success, which alienated a lot of people on the other side, and was largely accomplished without any votes from the other side, is what caused him not to be able to achieve further things that he wanted to. Fair or not?

[00:23:24.25] CYRUS: I think 2010, you know, was gonna be just as 2018, god willing, will be, a wave year. My point is, how did they use those two years in 2009 and 2010? And, not even what could or couldn’t be done, but what the perception of the voters is, is that if we’re only gonna do one or two things, let’s at least be bold with those! You know, I think that’s why you saw Bernie Sanders get so much energy in 2016, behind his presidential bid. And I think you’re gonna see in 2020, people really wanting a nominee who can espouse, as bold a positive a vision as Donald Trump has expressed on the negative side.

[00:24:07.20] PREET: Yeah one thing that we talk about a lot on the show and generally in American discussion of politics, and the presidency, is: does this president have autocratic impulses? Does he just want everything to go the way he wants it to go by fiat? By executive order? That’s a complaint that’s made about other presidents too but, I think Trump has taken it to an extreme. And we say, “Oh that’s terrible…” But isn’t there, and I think I’ve heard you say this, isn’t there some logic to some people being attracted to a leader who by whatever method, even if it’s by bypassing the Congress or whatever else, at least tries to get something done?

[00:24:46.24] CYRUS: I think there’s a balance, right? I think there’s a spectrum, and, you could be at the very process end of that spectrum, process heavy end, and people are really frustrated with that. But what I’d say is look, why are mayors so popular right now, compared to other executive office holders? Why are governors looked to? And in large part it’s because they have been as bold as they can be without, look I’m not saying you don’t violate separation of powers, and any of these things that Trump has sought to do, you certainly don’t enrich yourself personally the way he’s doing, but you know, mayors have been able to use their office to break logjams. You know I remember I met Rahm Emanuel one time, he was talking about some controversy in Chicago, and he said, “You know, there were all these stakeholders, and some of them said, ‘you ought to do this,’ and some of them said, ‘we ought to do that,’ and so finally I said, ‘You know what? I’m gonna decide this the democratic way. We’re gonna do this the democratic way. [00:25:44.15] The elected mayor is gonna decide.'” I don’t think that that needs to be hostile to the legislative branch, but I think voters really want us, when we get elected, to do something more than grandstand…

[00:25:59.04] PREET: Than talk. More than talk. People are sick of talk.

[00:26:01.08] CYRUS: Yeah more than talk. I mean you know you have politicians who are out there, elected office holders who are out there, and they think the best thing that they could do in public office is to get arrested. But really members of Congress are the 535 who can DO something about this, I want them in their offices and on the Senate and House floor, doing something to fix this problem and to check this president. And so it’s not just a question of executive power, it’s also about legislative power, and I think voters are tired of people that just jockey for spots on podcasts and MSNBC interviews, or FOX News interviews, etcetera.

[00:26:38.17] PREET: Don’t knock the podcast jockey.

[00:26:40.20] CYRUS: No it’s an important part of it! But I want people to come on these shows and talk about what they’ve done, and what they’re doing. Not bemoan the way the rest, the way the rest of Americans are doing, because…

[00:26:50.10] PREET: So let’s talk about that, instead of bemoaning. Obviously, you are where you are in life in part because of the educational opportunities you had, and you took full advantage of them, and you know did amazing work in multiple schools. What are you doing to improve higher educational opportunities for people in Washington?

[00:27:06.23] CYRUS: Yeah. That’s been our focus in my office and I’ll tell you why. When I ran in 2016, when I was traveling around the state, I would hear this sentence, this sentiment, uttered over and over again, by frankly by both Democrats and Republicans. And the sentiment was, quote, “College isn’t for everyone.” It’s often not said from a place of malice or hostility, it’s often said from a place of compassion, you know. But I heard echoes of the things that I had experienced as a child, and people saying you know, people lowering expectations. YOu know, and I still do this, when people say, “College isn’t for everyone,” I ask them, I said, “So let me ask you this: did you go to college?” And it turns out that, almost inevitably they did. [00:27:55.07] And then I’ll ask them, “Well what do your kids do? Or what are you planning for your kids?” If their kids are young. And then they’d say, “Oh, you know my daughter’s going to the University of Washington,” or “My son’s going to Whitman College.” And I’m like, “Okay, so college is for YOU. College is for your kids. Who is it that you’re saying college ISN’T for?” Right? And I think we know, its….

[00:28:15.28] PREET: What’s the answer? Yeah what’s the answer to that?

[00:28:16.25] CYRUS: …it’s, I mean ’cause we know ’cause we know who’s not going to college. And we know it’s kids from communities of color, kids from rural parts of our state, kids with disabilities, kids whose parents didn’t go to college.

[00:28:28.24] PREET: The people who are saying, that you’re describing, who say, “College is not for everyone.” Are they saying, that for some people there should be no further education past high school? OR are they saying, you know, there should be vocational training, that sort of thing?

[00:28:41.17] CYRUS: They’re saying, “You know what, there are plenty of jobs today. We ought to really focus our high schools on preparing Washingtonians for the kind of technical jobs that exist today.” The problem is, the reason they wouldn’t send their own kids down that path, is that we know very well that those jobs are very unlikely to be there in 10 years. And certainly not in 40 years. That 17 year old needs to be thinking about preparing for that and preparing herself to be able to be mobile in the economy. And I want to be clear, I’m not hostile to learning a vocational trade, but my project in our office has been, how do we connect that with a bachelor’s degree? So we created a program, the legislature has funded, called Complete Washington, and the idea is to take folks who are working, [00:29:37.14] they’re already in a job, and maybe they’ve done an apprenticeship, to take them and connect that prior learning, and they’re work experience, with a bachelor’s degree, through online education. Through quality, I’m not Trump University, but actual quality online college.

[00:29:55.06] PREET: Is part of the problem that it’s hard to convince everyone of the value of education?

[00:30:00.20] CYRUS: I think there’s a, a kind of bougie guilt on the Left…

[00:30:08.03] PREET: I haven’t heard that phrase in a while, “bougie guilt.”

[00:30:09.04] CYRUS: Well, right? Like there’s this, there’s this kind of the sense that they don’t want to be offensive, to others who haven’t gone to college. And so they say things like, “Well you know, if you say college it ought to be for everybody then you sound like an elitist.” You know, what it reminds me of is when Paul Ryan last year, would say about health care. “Well not everyone necessarily wants to buy health insurance. You know, we ought to give people money in their pocket, and they can make the decision for themselves.” And it’s like, “Paul Ryan, you don’t know anybody, no one in  your social family doesn’t have health insurance. You knew very well that everybody wants to have health insurance to protect them in the event of an illness,” and so it’s just disingenuous to say that. And I think in the same way, we know that everyone ought to have the opportunity to go and get a college degree, which will mean they’ll make 90 percent more on average, [00:31:05.28] than their colleagues without a college degree. We know that the jobs that the robots will take over last, are gonna be ones that require critical thinking and persuasion and communication skills and these kinds of things. And so, let’s just call a spade a spade, and I don’t think it’s offensive to people. In fact when you go and meet with communities that don’t have access or can’t afford a higher education, they’re really eager, folks are eager to hear about plans and ideas to expand access to college.

[00:31:37.16] PREET: Yeah, I think that’s right.

[00:31:39.00] CYRUS: And you know from being from an immigrant family, the kinds of sacrifices people make.

[00:31:44.21] PREET: Look, for my parents the thing that they cared about the most, any kind of educational aid, for me and my brother, and they would say that that faith in education was vindicated, ’cause this many years later, one of their sons is a successful multi millionaire business man and the other one has a podcast, so. You know their dream, (laughs) their dream is…no, kidding aside, you know I think there’s lots and lots of people in America who feel that way. There are certain immigrant communities who came to this country for that purpose. For the better education.

[00:32:15.05] CYRUS: They came for that sole purpose, and I mean that’s why my dad came here himself, but it’s why they stayed. And it’s one of the reasons they stayed, and it’s why so many people come here and nothing is more heartwarming, I got a chance to give a couple commencement speeches this year, you know and I’m sitting up there on stage, and so I’m hearing these graduates thank the president, the provost, as they walk across the stage, and it just brings tears to your eyes, how excited people are when they get this degree. And I want that for everybody, recognizing that we might have to reform our higher ed system a little bit more, if we really want to reach everybody, we have to certainly make it more affordable, and we have to connect it to some of the more vocational work and training like apprenticeship programs that exist out there.

[00:33:01.21] PREET: So we’re running out of time, and I could go on with you for hours and hours on lots of things and, hopefully we can have you back. I have a very simple question for you, ’cause I’ve been thinking about it for a while and there’s a lot of debate about what this word means in the current moment in America—what is patriotism to you?

[00:33:17.13] CYRUS: You know, I think about what it is that allowed me, a three time cancer surviving fully blind Iranian American from a mixed religion immigrant family, to be able to serve in this role. And I think it is the welcoming spirit and the desire to continually renew ourselves as a country, it’s love of that. It’s love of you know, no sacred cows. It’s love of we will continually question and rebuild and innovate and challenge ourselves to be made new again, most tangibly through immigration, but also through disruption, innovation, and technology, and the arts and new ideas, and that, that to me is what i love about this country. I don’t think any other country on earth, was based on an idea [00:34:14.24] and that idea continues to exist and it continues to get reimagined as more and more people are brought into it. The question is, as we continue to evolve as a country and as more and more people get to have a voice in this great American idea, can we talk to one another, can we communicate with one another in a way that is respectful? In a way that demonstrates that we’re not threatening one another, that we all just want to be included. And I  think that that can be done, but it does require those of us who are people of color, those of us who are or do have disabilities, and I know this can be frustrating, but it does require us to do a little bit of that extra work of reaching out to those who may feel threatened. And I know it can feel like [00:35:07.20] why do we have to do this over and over and over again? And Van Jones makes this point, it is unfair. It’s deeply unfair, ’cause we haven’t done anything wrong. But at the same time I want the future of this country to be one that is knit together, and where white, black, Iranian American, Indian American, you know, all of us feel that we are better off because of this and right now we’re just not there, and so that might mean that we have to do a little bit of the extra work right now, but I think the pay off for future generations will be tremendous. This idea that we’re ever improving, more inclusive as President Obama reminded us, always becoming a more perfect union. We have to do that hard work and make sacrifices and sometimes those who have to do that have been the ones who have been oppressed historically, but let’s show by example, what makes this country great.

[00:35:59.18] PREET: So that’s a very good answer, with which I agree. So final question to you then, would you take the opportunity here and now, on this podcast, to announce your candidacy for president? I believe you have just cleared the age requirement very recently. What do you say? What do you say, Cyrus?

[00:36:17.09] CYRUS: I thought, I thought you and I were friends, and you wanted what’s best…

[00:36:22.15] PREET: Yeah, so announce it on my podcast!

[00:36:23.24] CYRUS: …you wanted what’s best for me, and I will, I’ll tell you there is a….

[00:36:30.27] PREET: I would vote for you, sir.

[00:36:32.05] CYRUS: I appreciate that. There is another person from our state who is seriously considering running for president, so I’ve been told, I don’t know that first hand.

[00:36:41.11] PREET: Jeff Bezos?

[00:36:42.15] CYRUS: (Laughs) I think, I think he’s a….

[00:36:45.20] PREET: Let the record reflect I said Jeff Bezos’s name and you laughed. That’s not gonna be good for you.

[00:36:49.13] CYRUS: I think he’s got enough on his hands right now.

[00:36:52.02] PREET: Okay, so here we have it, you do not rule it out.

[00:36:55.09] CYRUS: Well no no no, I will say this, I was born in the United States.

[00:36:58.25] PREET: Yeah, so you say…

[00:37:00.02] CYRUS: So I want (laughs) so I wanted to, I will be on record as having said that….

[00:37:04.12] PREET: I’ve heard rumors to the contrary.

[00:37:05.16] CYRUS: Ha, yeah, that’s right.

[00:37:07.14] PREET: I believe you. Well look, it’s been great having you on the show, as I said at the beginning, what you’ve done and how you’ve achieved what you’ve achieved is really inspiring to a lot of people, so thanks for sharing your story with us, and I hope you can be back soon.

[00:37:19.14] CYRUS: Preet, thank you so much.