You are listening to American history, and I am Jodi Williams.

Thanks for listening.

Welcome to America, a history podcast.

I'm Niamh Heffernan, and every week we answer a different question to understand the people, the places, the.

And the events that make the USA what it is today.

This edition of the podcast is a very special one.

Firstly, it's our 100th main episode, which is astonishing, quite frankly.

So I want to thank everyone who's played any part in making this podcast, from everyone at UEA and behind the scenes, to everyone, every guest who has donated their time and expertise.

This genuinely would not have been possible without all of you.

On which note, today also marks the first of our I Am series, where we are joined by someone who has made an indelible mark on America, if not the world, to tell their story in their own words.

I am delighted to be joined today by a Nobel Peace Laureate who changed international law by founding the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

She's now a founding member of the Nobel Women's Initiative.

And her tireless determination to make the world a better, safer, and more equitable place has had an unfathomable impact on millions.

It's an honor to welcome Jody Williams.

Thank you very much.

You make me sound bigger than life.

Scary.

You are.

You are a huge person, really.

When we discuss your contributions, which we'll.

We'll get into, and you're.

Honestly, I'll just.

I'll say this on the podcast because talking as much as we have up to this point, you're incredibly modest about your achievements as well.

You don't really acknowledge them.

And.

Yeah, that's.

That's.

That's incredible.

Thank you.

I could be a smarty pants.

But I'll be good.

I'll be good.

I won't say mean things that I would love to say.

Yeah, well, who knows what will come out when we.

When we start talking?

You never know.

Yeah, you never know.

Okay, so let's start off, if you could just tell me about your early life and childhood.

We lived in a tiny town in Vermont named pulteney, population about 1200 people.

We lived, as I like to put it, sort of on the raggedy edge of the middle class.

My parents ended up with five children.

My oldest brother was born deaf.

My mother had German measles when she was pregnant, and he also.

A little bit later on in adolescence, developed schizophrenia.

It was a difficult problem.

That was a period when the thinking about how to teach the deaf was to force them into the hearing world, which is ridiculous.

Especially somebody who's stone deaf.

I mean, my brother's never heard a sound.

My parents tried sending him away to a school for the deaf.

It was a nightmare.

They ended up bringing him home because he was having a kind of a mini nervous breakdown.

And then they found a school for the deaf in Vermont, which was great.

That allowed deaf children to live at school.

I mean, excuse me, to live at home and be day students at school.

He didn't have to board there.

That was the big problem with the other school in Connecticut.

So that was, you know, the.

That was a shocking start to my parents married life, I would imagine.

I guess I'm really curious to know about, you know, the, you know, at that time, what, what general kind of societal accommodations were there for people who were.

Who were born deaf?

Not many.

As I said, the teaching method was forcing them into the hearing world, which is caused further isolation in my view.

Yeah, we were fortunate really to find the school where he could live at home and go to school in Vermont.

But it was a town, I don't know, two and a half or three hours away from where my mother grew up.

And it was hard on her, you know.

Was.

Was it a big change from the time you were at.

It was a very big change.

My father, his job was working for General Electric, salesman on the road.

And before they had had a grocery store in Pulteney.

So it wasn't that big of a trauma.

But when they moved to Brattleboro, they had one car and my father needed it for his work.

And you know, she was suddenly sort of stranded in the middle of a big town of 9000 people after 1200.

And it was very hard for her.

Very hard for her.

Did your dad grow up in the same town or not?

Poultney, Vermont is on the border with New York State.

And he was right across the border, right in Hampton, New York.

So how did your parents meet?

My dad was home from World War II.

He had signed up young and gone in the Navy.

He was very handsome man.

If I had a picture I'd show you.

But really very handsome man.

My mother certainly thought so.

And she sort of chased him around town.

She said when she know, started telling stories about it, she would always smile and it always made me laugh that she would see him in downtown, you know, and run to be like at the next street when he would come by.

So he.

He'd see her and I guess she chased him down and it worked.

And they, you know, were married forever.

He died.

She's been a widow now.

Though, for 20 years.

Just mind boggling to me.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, did you.

Were you a close family?

Very.

I told my mother from the time I was in her womb, I knew she was my best friend, you know, and I was not kidding.

And I still don't get about it.

I mean, I really.

She's a hell of a woman.

Yeah.

So how many, how many of you were there?

Because you obviously mentioned you had a brother, but any other siblings?

We were five in total.

I was the surrogate oldest because my brother Steve, who is three years older than I am, was born first but was handicapped.

So.

So I sort of became the oldest.

And then was my sister Mary Beth, 20 months younger.

And then my brother Mark.

Don't know.

He's a year or so younger than Mary Beth.

And then the youngest one was Janet.

She's nine years younger than I am.

And that was it.

So what, what, what, what, what prompted the, like, Janet's arrival?

Because that's a.

That's a big gap for your parents to suddenly think, let's have another.

Usually what prompted.

I'm not even going there.

You know, having.

Using birth control was not legal under Catholicism.

So, you know, my mother had a tendency to easily get pregnant.

And she used to say, once you guys got, you know, a little older and walking around off on your own, I wanted a baby.

My father always gave in.

So there you go.

It's probably why they had such a happy marriage.

Right?

They had a very strong marriage, strong family.

My mother's 95 now, for God's sake.

And we all live near each other.

I, of course, lived out of the country and out of Vermont for many years, decades, perhaps.

But I've come back.

Was religion a big part of your childhood?

Catholic?

My grandmother was born in Italy.

Grandma was the oldest of eight daughters, if you can imagine, to an, you know, an Italian man.

No son.

They moved to Pulteney, Vermont, which is how come my mother ended up there.

My great grandfather, which is something I still.

I wish I could talk to him to ask him, why, at that time of history, did he put every girl child of his through post high school education?

Eight girls, and he put them through more education.

That blows my mind.

Yeah.

I'd love to know why.

I mean, it's very aggressive for the time.

Yes, extremely.

My grandmother was born in 1905.

And.

Yeah.

And by the way, a household with eight Italian women in it.

That is.

That is a strong household.

Yes.

Yeah.

And.

But my grandmother, unfortunately could not cook to save her soul.

My grandfather had the Grocery store that my parents ultimately bought, but it was a sweets sweet shop.

And my grandmother said she was the oldest, she worked in the store helping, doing whatever.

And the other girls learned how to cook.

And my grandmother couldn't cook her way out of a paper bag, so to speak.

Sometimes she would insist we have Thanksgiving at her house, and we were always, like, horrified because we knew it would be terrible.

Terrible.

I'd like to talk about your.

Your brother a bit more because that feels like that was quite a.

A really formative part of growing up.

And I mean, did that make you have to sort of grow up a bit quicker to look after him?

I don't know about that, but it made me really obviously painfully aware of how mean people could be to other people who were different.

Our next door neighbors, Billy and Bobby, were absolutely horrible to my brother.

They made fun of the sounds he made.

I don't know if you're familiar with the sounds of deaf people who can't hear.

It's a very unique sound.

And they would make fun of him to make him, you know, scream and cry and all that.

And one time he.

My brother and I were riding our bicycles around the block and Billy and Bobby were up on a hill and threw tin cans down at both of us.

You know that you'd open the top of the tin can and it was all scraggly and stuff.

And they cut him in the head and he started bleeding and went home just down the street.

And I went after them up the hill hoping I could catch them and beat the crap out of them.

To be honest, they were bigger than me and older than me, and they got away, but I still want to beat them up.

It feels like you've kind of always had a strong sense of social justice.

Yes.

Well, the next event that I recall, you know, having a huge impression on me for my whole life was when I was in fourth grade and David Cheever was the stud of fourth grade.

He was blond hair, blue eyes, cute, smart.

He was athletic.

And we had a new boy in school that year.

His name was Michael.

Poor thing, he had, you know, ears that were out like this and big, thick glasses.

And poor thing, he was not athletic.

And so when we do break in school and go outside to play games, get air.

David was always the captain of one of the teams.

He would never invite Michael to be part of his team.

And one time he forced him off the playground.

And we were going to play kickball.

I don't know if you know, the game.

Doesn't matter.

So here we are 20 kids or however many, and one bully, you know, making Michael leave.

And I was a scaredy cat kid when I was young, and I just stood there and I don't know, I got really enraged, I guess, and I walked up to him and called him out on it, and he had no right to decide whether Michael could play or not.

And, and I was shocked.

He actually stepped back and he invited Michael back in and he joined the game.

He probably sucked, but he joined the game.

You know, he was included.

And it just made me think, look at, look at this.

Now here we are, 20 some odd kids and one kid being mean to another, and nobody's gonna say anything.

That really was formative.

And I think about it like now dealing with Trump, for example.

In my country, he does whatever you want.

He rules by edict.

And, you know, very few have the courage to stand up to him, especially because he is incredibly vindictive.

Thankfully, David Cheever wasn't in fourth grade, so.

But that has really.

That was formative.

It's part of how I think, you know, why aren't people standing up for what is right for everybody?

You don't have to even like them all.

You know, I'm not Mother Teresa suddenly.

I don't.

There are lots of people I don't like, but they still have the right to, you know, the rights and responsibilities of our community.

But you said you were a scared kid, and I was.

It takes some guts, though, to stand up when you're in a class of like 20 other kids and no one else is saying anything.

That takes a lot of conviction and, and fearlessness to stand up and do something.

I think it's because of my brother, though, you know, trying to help him with Billy and Bobby.

And then you just, you just begin to feel that it's your obligation.

My God, why are people afraid to stand together?

You know, everybody against.

And I don't mean in a bad way, but why?

And I, I was shaking inside when I stepped up to achiever.

But it turned out the way it should have turned out.

I mean, he could have hit me, who knows?

But he, he reacted properly and it was a good thing.

And it was one of the pivotal early things that helped me recognize that we all have power and we all have the option to use it for the greater good or be silent.

And in some sense of being silent, you're complicit.

Do you think, though, that if, in an alternate universe, if he had turned around and hit you, it might have been very formative in, in, in in the opposite way.

You mean, like, would have become a mean person hitting people?

Or you might have become very shy, like, not actually, like, stood up.

Oh, yeah, I don't know.

We'll never know.

Your brother, obviously, was.

Was born deaf and obviously suffered, you know, a fair bit of bullying.

But what happened to him, you know, growing up?

Unfortunately, he developed adolescent onset schizophrenia.

And he became not routinely violent, but he would have bursts of anger about being deaf.

And, you know, one.

Many times he would say to my mother, say, you know, you.

You.

You five children, four can hear, I can't.

You know, he'd get pretty angry.

I remember a few occasions of his trying to strangle my mother with the telephone cord, and I jumped in and tried to save her.

You know, it must have helped you develop a real sense of empathy, you know, growing up with.

With someone who, you know, as you sort of said yourself, was being kind of forced to comply in a world where everyone can hear.

And there wasn't really much accommodation for that.

That.

That must have been very difficult for.

For him to.

To sure live a normal life.

Yes, I guess I developed empathy, but I also developed, like, righteous indignation.

And I.

Sometimes I want to hit him.

You know, he's trying to attack my mother.

And I wanted to defend her, too.

You know, it's just.

Yeah, it was confusing sometimes.

It still is for me.

You know, I think of my brother as a life not lived.

But I guess in that is.

Is maybe an example of how, you know, from.

From a young age, you were having to understand the difference between good and bad versus right and wrong, you know, because you love your family.

But in.

In situations like that, you had to do the right thing.

Yeah.

And then I had the strong background of Catholicism, you know, do the right thing, don't sin.

You go to confession and all that fun stuff.

Were you at church every Sunday?

Oh, yeah, until I was 17.

And then I.

My mother even allowed me to quit, which, of course, was a sin.

I asked the priest a few questions that he couldn't answer, and that was like, why can't you answer?

And he.

And that was the kind of answer he gave was, you have to accept it on faith.

And I'm, like, accepted on faith?

Why.

Why can't you explain why the church sees this as righteous?

And he told me if I continued along that route, I. I could be excommunicated from the church, and that sends you to hell, of course.

And I went home and told my mother, and I said, I don't ever want to go back, and she didn't make me, which is pretty amazing because she still is a practicing Catholic and not in a bad, heavy way.

She was.

She is cool.

Yeah, it's great.

And actually, it sounds like your parents were.

And indeed your grandparents as well, were very supportive, even in the face of things that they maybe weren't agreeable with.

Yep.

My father, I think I mentioned at one point, he stressed that I could be anything I wanted to be.

That I wasn't, you know, stuck with being a girl job because I was, you know, a girl.

He didn't try to make me into a teacher or a nurse or whatever things young girls did those days.

And that had a big impression, too.

And what.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

First I wanted to be a vet.

And it's probably almost harder to go to veterinary school than medical school for humans.

In order to even apply to veterinarian veterinary school in the US you had to work with animals.

You had to work at some sort of, you know, animal hospital or something so you would have experience.

And I couldn't do that.

So that.

That knocked out that.

And what I really wanted to be was an Egyptologist.

I wanted an archaeologist that.

That, yes.

Specialized in Egypt.

And I'm still fascinated by it.

Anytime I see an article about Egypt, it's crazy.

What.

What caused the pivot into your activism?

Vietnam War.

And of course, that was probably the huge sort of backdrop to your childhood, isn't it?

Yep, absolutely.

Well, I was in high school, university, when the Vietnam War was going on.

Was also the beginning of the resurgence of the women's, you know, movement.

So I've always thought I learned more from the experiences around me than from being at university.

I changed my major five times.

I wanted to be.

Will you excuse me one minute?

Mary Beth, I'm on an interview.

You wouldn't.

I love you, sister.

Bye.

Bye.

My sister, Mary Beth, my mother fell out of bed and broke her clavicle, and she's staying at our house.

And Mary Beth is a nurse for 40 years.

We call her the Commander of health.

So she's probably calling to see what's going on with Mom.

But, you know, there you go.

That's great.

I mean, now, obviously, you still have such a close relationship with everyone in your family.

Very.

It feels.

I feel like Vermont is in my blood and my bones, and with that is my family, because we're all from here, you know.

Of course.

Yeah, it's a great state.

It's a blue state.

We have Bernie Sanders.

Thank God, of course you do.

Yeah, of course.

Even though he's a, he's a flatlander.

A flatlander is somebody who doesn't come from New England.

Like, he's from New York, man.

They don't have mountains, you know, so.

But he's a good senator.

Let's talk about Vietnam because, yeah, I guess I'm, I'm curious to know because, you know, history has its way of remembering things a bit differently.

What was the public perception of the Vietnam War at the time?

Well, obviously it depended on your age and where you were in the country, etc.

Etc.

But, you know, most university students were anti war.

You might recall, you might not probably, that National Guard troops were posted in some places and that Kent State, they shot four students who were protesting the.

War in Vietnam just because they were protesting.

Yes.

Four dead in Ohio.

There was a big song that was, it was amazing.

It's really always had a huge influence.

And then the, have you ever seen the film Easy Rider?

Yes, that was shown at that time.

And remember, in the end they get blown off their motorcycles.

That was freaky too.

It felt like dangerous times.

But this, I have to admit, this time now with Trump as president and his band of semi competent cabinet members, it feels extremely frightening, extremely tentative in this country.

People that are obviously listening to this can't see that.

I, I, I very much sense you were biting your lip when you were thinking about how to word that.

Well, I wonder, you know, I keep thinking about if he were to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

I always get called to ask my opinion of who's been selected.

And I recall when Obama got the prize, I thought it was a ridiculous decision on the part of the committee.

So what?

He had a vision of a world without nukes.

Big deal.

He then turned around and financed the, quote, unquote, modernization of our nuclear weapons.

That deserves a Peace Prize.

No, Mr. Trump, in my view, is extremely complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

How could you think it okay to give a peace price to a man who supplied the weapons for the genocide and then turned around and pushed to get an end to the war so he could get a peace price?

That man has talked about getting a peace prize more than any human being I can think of who, you know that I know who won peace prize.

He's horrifying.

It feels like almost a formality at this point, that presidents have rewarded the peace prize just by virtue of the fact that they've been president.

But most aren't, if you think about it.

There was One from Africa.

I think he was Ethiopian.

I can't remember his name.

He got the peace prize, and then he went out and prosecuted war in Eritrea within a few months.

So there had been a tendency, or has been a tendency to not give the prize to people in positions of that kind of power.

And certainly Mr. Trump is not worthy of any recognition about peace, in my view.

I realized we're probably skipping ahead a few years, but seeing as we're talking about Nobel Prizes, how much did that change your life?

Well, in a million ways, of course.

I. I don't even know how to explain it.

Kind of.

Here's an example.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is a close friend of mine, close Nobel friend.

And not long after I received the prize, there was a meeting at the University of Virginia with Nobel, and students were asking different people questions.

And a student asked Tutu how the Nobel changed his life.

And he said, for years and years and years, I would talk and talk and talk, and no one would listen.

Suddenly, everything I say is a pearl of wisdom.

And it sort of, in a way, feels like that, except I'm not that kind of person.

I don't.

I mean, I take myself seriously, but I don't think suddenly I'm something different than from, you know, what I was.

I'm a person who cares, and I try to help make the world better, even for people I don't like, which is a big qualifier in there.

And certainly Tutu was that kind of man.

The Dalai Lama.

He's a very good friend.

We danced, actually.

On the.

On a stage at some place where we were talking in Europe.

What kind of dance was it?

Oh, just a fake waltz kind of thing, you know.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, but, you know, he's.

He's cool.

We were very, very close.

Yeah, I. I guess that's kind of the point, isn't it?

Sort of.

By virtue of the fact that you're.

You're in such company, it must, in.

In the.

In the eyes of everyone who.

Who don't maybe fully understand what you've done.

It does legitimize you.

Oh, sure.

Sure, it does.

Or it also, you know, condemns you.

China called me part of the Dalai Lama clique, and it was not a compliment because we don't support the Chinese, you know, taking over of Tibet and all that goes with it.

So I'm not popular there.

Do I care?

No.

Well, I mean, let's talk about, then, the work that did lead to.

To the Nobel Prize.

Tell me what.

What is the international campaign to ban.

Landmines sure, at that time I was still working in Central America.

Primarily at that time it was Salvador trying to stop or at least mitigate the impact of US military intervention in the region where Al Haig and Reagan wanted to, you know, stop communism before it invaded the border, which is ridiculous.

And I had been working on Central America, also Nicaragua and Honduras for I think about 11 years by then.

And I was really getting sick of it.

The peace process, such as it was, was underway for the region.

And I didn't see myself as helping make the piece in that sense, but I didn't know what I wanted to do, you know, because all I had done was be an activist.

And the funny thing is that I actually got a black suit and I went to an employment agency to see if they could counsel me and what kind of job that, you know, I would get.

And the woman looked at me and thought, oh man.

And I looked at her and thought, oh, man.

Needless to say, it did not work out.

You know, she, she asked me what I, you know, my, my history.

I said, well, I've been working in boors in Central America and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And she just looked at me like I was a freak.

And I thought she was a freak.

And so I left.

And fortunately I got a phone call from a guy from Germany who we worked with in Central America.

His organization was a Medico International.

And he helped in the program that made prosthetic limbs for landmine survivors.

But anyway, he was coming to D.C. he wanted me to pick him up.

He had to go to a meeting.

Would I drive him to the meeting and then drive him back to the airport so he could fly home to Germany.

I went, and I'm sitting in the office of Bobby Mueller, who was the president of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation.

And I wondered, what the hell am I doing here?

And the two of them start talking about landmines and how, you know, something had to be done about them.

And I'm thinking, wait a minute, isn't it time to work on nukes?

You know, they can kill us all and why do you want to work on landmines?

And Mueller, being a veteran of Vietnam, he did get shot in the spine and was paralyzed from the waist down for his life.

But landmines took a huge number of casualties of US military in Vietnam.

And he talked about what happens, you know, you step on a mine, it blows your leg off and your life has changed.

And imagine if you were an extremely poor, dirt poor farmer in Vietnam or Mozambique or Any of the countries that were contaminated, they step on a mine and their life kind of ends in a way.

And so suddenly it made sense to me, you know, that, yeah, could be interesting.

So then Mueller turns around and says, I want you to create a campaign to, you know, try to get rid of anti personnel landmines.

And I just looked at him like he was, you know, crazy, because I still was working on Central America.

And we talked about it and I went home and thought about it and I decided I would accept the job of trying to create an international campaign to ban anti personnel landmines.

At that point, we had two NGOs, Mueller and Vietnam vets and Tomas Gaybauer of Germany.

So it could be called the International Campaign.

And a staff of one, me.

That's how it started.

And we grew to about 1300 NGOs in 80 or 90 countries around the world.

And we banned the weapon.

I mean, you say that like obviously, you know, that's, that's what we ended up doing.

But you were quoted in an interview once saying you were just one woman with a fax machine.

How do you go from, from that to changing international law?

To me, it was logical, you look at the organizations around that landmines could affect in some way.

For example, Human Rights Watch.

I went and met with them to get them to join the campaign, because international law, you know, human rights, they joined.

But, you know, and it was slowly like that.

I would think about who, who would logically fit in an effort to stop landmines.

Think about war, think about, you know, the complicity of the people who provide the mines, in my view, are totally complicit in what happens in a war.

Just like the people who supply Netanyahu with the weapons of genocide are complicit in the illegality of that war, period.

That's how I feel.

Other people might not agree.

I don't care if, if you knowingly give a weapon to a country that is massacring civilians, you are complicit, period.

And so that sort of how I started out with landmines.

And we grew.

And part of the wonder of that campaign, which still makes me wonder, is there was a place for everybody in it.

The steering committee would get together and think about a six month plan of action or something.

Those members of the campaign who wanted to participate could, it wasn't obligatory.

Also, we didn't tell them how to do it.

For example, the Cambodia campaign decided they wanted to get signatures of people who wanted to ban anti personal landmines.

So you'd see these Buddhist monks and, you know, campaigners walking around getting signatures, and it was amazing.

We ended up, I think they got like a million, not just there, other campaigns joined.

And when we went to one of the first meetings at the UN in Geneva to discuss the possibility of a treaty banning landmines, the landmine survivors walked up to the president of the meeting and handed him gajillions of signatures.

I mean, it was just so.

I don't know, I don't like these words, but this was so organic, if you will.

Yeah.

You know, landmine survivors were not poster children.

Landmine survivors were hugely important part of the campaign.

They knew what they were talking about.

You know, it's just there, one woman who is still a dear friend from Hungary, Dalma, she was really good at thinking up slogans.

And it got really tense at one part of the meeting and we were locked out of the conference room, which was kind of unusual.

So Dalma started writing slogans on, you know, pieces of paper.

And she would stand at the door to the conference room and every time a diplomat went by, she'd give them the slogan.

And they were things like, you know, the United States is the biggest military in the world.

Why can't they give up landmines and stop, you know, massacring civilians in countries where there are more landmines in the ground than crops?

You know, it's just so powerful.

It's still.

You can see me smiling.

It's still amazes me when I think about how people came together.

And this is true, it still exists, by the way, of course, the campaign.

But I think it's so easy to underappreciate nowadays, getting like tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of signatures for something because we can start a petition online and, you know, bit attraction grows and, you know, the signatures pile up.

I mean, back then there was no social media, there was no Internet.

You know, actually getting that many signatures and galvanizing that much support, that was a huge feat.

Yeah.

And we can thank everybody in the.

Each country that participated.

I still think mostly of the Buddhist monks and their orange things out there getting signatures.

It just.

I'm proud of it.

I'm proud of the fact that how we work together.

And for so many in the campaign, including myself, it felt like a family, which I've never felt in any other campaign type thing.

It was amazing.

I say this sort of not meaning to diminish everything that you've done, but why is that even necessary?

Why did you need to do this?

Because surely such A basic matter of human rights.

Wouldn't need this sort of campaign.

Okay, why do we need a renewal of a campaign to stop nuclear.

Nuclear weapons?

Why do we need a new campaign to stop killer robots?

You know, why do we need a new campaign to stop artifact?

The marriage of artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons in the world?

Because toxic masculinity.

Okay, I, honestly, I.

When I think of it, I think of Putin, who, when he was expanding his invasion of Ukraine, he started making nuclear threats.

And it's like that stuff stopped ages ago.

What, you're making nuclear threats and, and now with the weapons that they're using.

Horrifying.

I mean, my husband and I, in our kitchen here in this house, conceived of and started the campaign to stop killer robots.

I think back in 2012, I can't quite remember now, it all mushes together.

And we called together campaigners from the landmine campaign that knew how to campaign, and we launched the campaign to stop killer robots in London in front of the Parliament.

It has been a tough battle, as you know.

All you have to do is look at the fighting between Ukraine and Putin.

But, but that's why campaigns have to happen.

I'm sorry.

I really believe it's toxic masculinity.

And who the hell do they think they are that they can create weapons that can wipe out the planet and that's okay?

Well, I don't think it's okay.

And I'm not going to shut my mouth, and that's the way it is.

But there are hundreds and there are thousands of people around the world to feel the same.

If these people that we're trusting to like, run the world on our behalf.

Yeah, we're not trusting.

We're not.

Yeah, that's maybe that's, that's a. Yeah, maybe the wrong one.

If these people who are elected, you know, or certainly, you know, in some countries to, to run the world had the sense to just apply compassion and, and common sense to the decisions that they were making, then there wouldn't be a need for these sorts of campaigns, would that?

No, of course not.

But human beings are complex.

I believe in evil.

I mean, I don't believe it should be, but there, there are evil people who want to control the world.

There are evil people who want to destroy other countries, other people for, you know, their toxic thinking that they have a right to rule the world.

Remember, Putin says the worst thing that ever happened to the planet was the dissol of the Soviet Union.

So he is now attempting to rebuild it, and yet.

Killing thousands of people.

And I have friends in Ukraine.

I every time you read about is damn drone attacks, I worry if my friends are dead.

You know, of course that makes me feel like righteous and indignation and I have an obligation as a person who has done this kind of work and knows somewhat how to get people together to change the world for the betterment of everybody, even, even Putin, although maybe from behind bars.

What can I do if I sit here and do nothing?

I can't even describe how I would feel as a human being if I did nothing.

I can't do nothing.

What point did you, and maybe this takes us back to, you know, your colleges.

At what point did you make that decision of?

Do you know what?

I'm not going to just shout from the sidelines for change.

I'm going to get in the thick of it and I'm going to do something about this.

It evolved.

You know, when I started out on the Salvador stuff, you know, I wrote newsletters.

I, you know, I did things in the organization to spread understanding of that war and why the US was culpable, etc.

Etc.

But then you just keep learning how to do other things in the same process, getting bigger and bigger.

And I always have believed in coalition work.

One organization can do a lot of good, but you know, a thousand organizations working together can do a hell of a lot more.

And I guess ultimately that's what led to the Ottawa Treaty, right?

Was being able to bring lots of different countries and organizations together, right?

Yep, absolutely.

If you can just explain to me, you know, what, what exactly was the Ottawa Treaty?

And, and how did it help?

Oh, the Ottawa Treaty earned that name because the meeting that really made the, the effort to ban landmines make a huge leap and decide to go and negotiate outside the UN because the UN couldn't get it done, you know, the, you know, the voting rights of the Security Council.

If you could be in the UN and 162 nations could be there and 161 agree that you should ban landmines and you have one person on the Security Council who vetoes it and there you go.

That's absurd.

It's obscene.

So one veto can, can throw it out.

Can mess stuff up.

Yeah.

So we were working on the edges of the Geneva meetings and other meetings we were having to get a core group of countries together that would take the lead in pushing governments to ban anti personnel lands.

And it worked.

We went outside of the UN all the meetings negotiating the treaty happened in different countries and we succeeded.

It was Wonderful.

And you.

You sound very blase about that.

And I'm not blase, but I'm proud.

I'm proud.

Are you kidding?

But let's go back to David Cheever and poor Michael Fine, who got, you know, trashed by David.

One person stood up, and it was me.

Little chicken shit Jody Williams.

And things changed.

You know, everybody has the.

The possibility of participating in positive change, but it's choices you make.

You know, do you want to just close your eyes and pretend the world doesn't have a lot of problems, or do you want to participate in trying to make it better?

You know, if I don't do anything, when things are horrible like the world is now, it's very demoralizing.

Right.

If I sit back and obsess with the newspapers, which I do, but then I don't do anything.

I feel.

I can't even say what.

I feel horrified.

You know, like, if.

If I know that when people come together, we can make an impact.

How can I not?

There was a period, though, after college where in a Time magazine interview from about a decade ago, you said you floundered for a decade, in your words.

So, of course.

So why was it that you felt like you had to, for want of a better word, get a normal job after college?

Sure.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know what to do myself.

I told you, I changed my major in university five times.

I finally had to focus or I wouldn't graduate on time.

And I got married right out of college as an idiot.

Move on my part.

Oh, he said, was a nice person, but it just was fraught with issues, and it was a mistake.

I stayed married, like, three years, but I literally did not know what to do with my life after university.

And making that decision pushed me to go back to graduate school.

I got a, you know, degree in teaching English as a second language and teaching Spanish.

I went to Mexico and, you know, lived with the family to make my Spanish fairly fluent.

And that is really what helped set me on the road to getting out of beautiful Brattleboro, Vermont, and doing other things in the world.

I mean, it gives you quite a handy skill set, doesn't it, when you're.

When you're working so internationally.

Right.

You know, I've never regretted my life.

That doesn't mean that I haven't done things that are not stupid, because of course I have.

But the main choices I've made in my life, they fit me and I fit them, you know?

Yeah.

And there's a lot of work out there to do.

Yeah.

You know, and I still have the energy to do it most of the time.

That's great.

And you know, I'm going to go back to the fact that you, you described yourself as, as being quite scared.

And yet you, you willingly, in the name of a, of a good cause and trying to, to do something positive in the world you put yourself in, in conflict zones, you, you, you do things that are equally terrifying, like standing in front of, you know, world leaders and telling them why they should change their laws.

You know, these are, these are huge things for someone to do, especially from someone who, you know, considers herself scared.

I was, I'm not anymore.

I'm really not anymore.

I don't, I don't really know what scares me.

Well, nuclear weapons do.

Let's be real.

And the, the threats that, you know, the threats about using them blow me out of the water.

Brings me back to grade school, for God's sake.

We used to have to practice getting under our grade school desks and curling up in a ball to protect ourselves if there were a nuclear attack.

If a nuclear bomb hit my grade school and I was curled up under my desk, I'd be okay.

Of course that's ridiculous.

All it did was terrify me.

And to hear so called world leaders threatening other nations and people in the planet with nuclear weapons makes me livid.

Is, is a nice word.

Makes me furious.

It makes me enraged.

Yeah.

It makes me feel righteous indignation.

It makes me feel like, who the hell are you to believe that you have the right to threaten the planet with these weapons?

Who, who gave you the Greek?

You know, and Donald Trump militarizing this country as I KNEW There were 35,000 National Guardsmen in different cities in this country.

Now what is that for?

Well, it's for his rising authoritarianism.

But that isn't okay.

Our Constitution says that we are equal.

He is the treating this country like he's a freaking king.

He isn't the king.

So what do I do?

Sit back and do nothing and feel like a horrible person?

I can't do that.

I'm going to assume that you haven't been invited to the White House recently.

I wouldn't go anywhere.

Besides, it's dwarfed by his grand ballroom.

It is.

I can't even go there.

The shallowness of that person is mind boggling.

So I'm keen to know.

Just take a side step from Trump for a second.

In all of this work that you were doing, was there ever a moment that you realized and really understood the magnitude of it all.

And were there any times within that that I guess you felt that a Nobel Prize was a potential.

I never thought about it that way, honestly.

In my view, if you do the kind of work I've done with the mind to receiving a recognition, you don't deserve it.

We didn't do the landmine campaign to get a Nobel Prize.

We did it to try to save the lives of people who live in minefields, for God's sake.

You know, and if.

If I thought about it that way, I mean, there was one campaigner early on, she was from Boston, I think she was a nurse, and she got mad about something and said, you know, this could win a Nobel Prize.

I was like, you know, get a life.

That's not why we're doing this.

Yeah, we're doing this because people should not have to live in the middle of minefields.

You know, it's stupid.

People should not have to go to bed at night wondering if Putin's going to use a nuke instead of just threatening, using a nuke.

And if I can do anything to.

Help, I will, I guess.

You know, actually, that is the fundamental difference between someone like yourself and someone like Trump, because Trump very much wants a Nobel Prize, and it's almost like he's just trying to manifest it by saying things.

Whereas people who actually get the Nobel Prize do so because they are just acting from a place of selflessness.

Most certainly, Henry Kissinger did not deserve a Nobel Prize.

The guy from Africa who then went and started killing people in Eritrea did not deserve a Nobel Peace Prize.

There have been mistakes made.

But, yes, if I can't even go there about Trump and the price, my mother said she.

She would cry if he got the prize.

Then when people like that are in the conversation and when.

When the people that you've mentioned have actually won, why do you think there's still so much esteem held around it?

Because a lot of the prizes are righteous.

You know, I think of some of the people that I know who have received the prize there, they do righteous work because they believe they can help make the planet a better place that is worthy of recognition.

But, you know, Trumpian types who think they deserve it or whatever reason, he does think that, I just makes me unwell.

My only exposure to the process of the Nobel Prize was watching the Big Bang Theory, which is probably a terrible reference.

So I'm just.

I'm curious to know what is actually the real life sort of process.

How did you find out that you'd.

Won oh, they call you.

Yeah, Yep.

You know, I told you we negotiated the treaty in different cities around the world, not in the Geneva U. N. And it so happens that the final negotiations took place in Oslo.

And of course Oslo is the Peace Prize and the other prizes are out of Sweden.

And they were talking, of course, the Norwegian diplomats were talking about, interesting this.

You never know, this could really happen.

And my husband and I were at the house in Vermont and laying there talking about it because they were going to announce it then on the 9th of October.

No, the 10th, right around my birthday.

My birthday is October 9th.

I can't remember if it was after.

Maybe it was the day after my birthday.

But we kept thinking, you know, what would be a logical way to decide who should receive the prize because.

But then he priced three individuals or two individuals in organization or whatever, but up to three can receive the price.

And we started talking thinking, well, what could be very logical would be the campaign, because the campaign, without the campaign there would not have been a treaty.

But then Lloyd acts worthy of Canada because Canada challenged the world to actually negotiate a treaty in one year and come back to Ottawa and they'd sign it even if it was with two other countries.

And then the third element we thought could be the Red Cross, you know, international committee, the Red Cross, because they had finally decided to work on the landmine campaign and work for a band that seemed logical.

And we were told by our friends in Norway, well, what they do is call you at about 3:00 in the morning, your time, you know, and they would tell you that you were receiving the prize because there would they.

They do a public announcement in Oslo.

So the, the dude who called us said, you know, turn on your tv, you can hear it.

I said, well, we don't have a tv.

And then he said, turn on your radio.

I said, we don't do that either.

And he said, look, I'll call you back in 20 minutes or whatever it is so you can hear them and make an announcement live in Oslo.

I said, wait, wait, wait, you gotta call me back, but I gotta call my mother and father.

And so they hung up.

And I called my parents and said, you know, they're making the announcement in a few minutes.

Listen, you know, you can listen.

So the guy calls back and he holds the phone near the microphone and they make the announcement that the, the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize is going to the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and its coordinator, Jody Williams.

And you know, he kind of stunned.

So we hung up and Called mom and dad, and there you go.

And it was my birthday.

So did you, did you do anything to celebrate?

Well, we went to a nice restaurant in town and celebrated with my family.

Of course, since winning the Nobel Prize, you've gone on to found the Nobel Women's Initiative as well.

So, I mean, tell me a bit about that.

Let's see, where were we?

I was in Kenya.

There was a big international landline meeting that was being held in Kenya and Sharia Nabadi from Iran, who received the prize, I can't remember what year now, she was there because in the Iran Iraq war, tons of mines were used, you know, on the border, and lots of children were getting blown up.

And she started an organization to help children and she wanted people to know about it.

I said, look, the next big international meetings in Kenya, why don't you come?

She came, and that year, Wangari Maathai of Kenya received the Nobel Peace Prize.

So Shirin and I were talking and she said, you know, we should start some organization with all the women Nobels to help women.

So, I don't know, the next day or the day after, we organized the Nobel Ladies Tea with Wangari, Shirin and myself, and there are tons of media, and we talked about that we were going to bring together Nobel women to create an organization to support women's organizations in countries in conflict.

And we did.

And now I think we're up to eight women that are part of the Nobel Women's Initiative, including Nargis Muhammad from prison in Iran.

We do good stuff.

I love the women.

We do good stuff is probably the, the most modest way that you could possibly describe everything that you've done.

We do good stuff.

We care, you know, we do good stuff, and anybody can do good stuff if they care.

It's not magic.

It's just get up off your ass, figure out what get you most agitated, find a group working on it and join them, period.

Not magic.

Not magic.

Grow, you know, reflecting on, on everything that you've.

You've achieved.

What kind of legacy do you hope to leave?

Just what I said, you know, that anybody is capable of working for positive change.

You have to, in my view, to have it be really meaningful, you have to want to help everybody, even people you don't like.

And I don't like a lot of people.

Despite having the Nobel Peace Prize, I am not, as I said, Mother Teresa, but I do the work I do.

So the world would be better for everybody in it.

Not a small group that would be like me and my political Party.

Right.

I don't believe in that.

It has to be with a mind to making the planet a better place for, you know, all beings on it.

I'm thinking of Jane Goodall who just died, you know, in my property here.

Our property here got a week or so ago, we had a gorgeous brown bear over at the woodshed.

Now, a little bit after that, I was in the car on the way to the airport to go to the Middle east, and standing in the middle of the road was this elegant purple heron.

Now, the world has to be a good place for them, too.

It's possible.

Anything is possible if you believe it and you find people who have the same beliefs and you care about everybody, some close, some distant, and you take action to make a difference for the world, for people, not for yourself.

Great words to end on.

Jody Williams, I can't thank you enough for taking the time out to talk to us about your.

Your life and your career.

And I, I hope from this podcast episode that a lot more people know who you are and.

And celebrate that.

So, you know, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast.

It was fun talking to you, by the way.

Oh, thank you very much for anyone listening to this.

I don't think, like anyone's gonna quite realize just that the.

The AM issues that we had actually making this yesterday.

Oh, my God, I'm so glad it went perfectly today.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that it's been an absolute pleasure.

Yeah.

Before we let you go, are there any websites or socials or anything that you can direct people to to find out more about your work?

There's The Nobel Womens Initiative.org website, certainly.

There's the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

It's ICBL cmc.

It has united the Landmine Campaign and Cluster Munition Coalition working the band Clusters and, you know, you just Google or Bing or whatever.

Now, who is this person named Jody Williams?

And I'm not the guitarist.

Wonderful.

And I'll put links to those and other stuff in the show notes for anyone listening who wants to find out more.

And also if you are listening to this and you enjoy the podcast, do leave us a rating and a review and give us a follow as well so that all future episodes just appear in your feed.

And if you really like what we do, you can follow the links in the show notes as well to support us from as little as $1 or whatever you have to spare.

Thank you all so much for listening.

Thank you again to Jody Williams and goodbye, Sam.