Part II Of Our Interview W/ Neil deGrasse Tyson & Special Guest Nancy Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi stopped caring about what people think of her a long
time ago, so she has no qualms about eating ice cream for breakfast
with a stranger. Dark chocolate, two scoops, waffle cone. It’s a
freezing January morning in Baltimore’s Little Italy, where Pelosi
grew up in the 1950s. “You know what’s good about ice cream in this
weather?” she says. “It doesn’t melt down your arm while you’re
eating it.” The 78-year-old former House Speaker knows what her
critics say about her: that she’s too old, too “toxic,” too
polarizing; that after three decades in Congress and 15 years
leading her party’s caucus, she has had her turn and needs to get
out of the way. But there’s a reason she sticks around. Had Hillary
Clinton won the 2016 election, she says, “we’d have a woman at the
head of the table.” When that didn’t happen, Pelosi realized that
without her, there might not be a woman in the room at all. Pelosi
is one of the most consequential political figures of her
generation. It was her creativity, stamina, and willpower that
drove the defining Democratic accomplishments of the past decade,
from universal access to health coverage to saving the U.S. economy
from collapse, from reforming Wall Street to allowing gay people to
serve openly in the military. Her Republican successors’ ineptitude
has thrown her skills into sharp relief. It’s not a stretch to say
Pelosi is one of very few legislators in Washington who actually
know what they’re doing. Courtesy @TIME