In new memoir, Angela Merkel details her time as Germany's first woman chancellor
NPR's Book of the Day
NPR
4.2 • 671 Ratings
🗓️ 4 December 2024
⏱️ 12 minutes
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Amperer's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. Anglo Merkel was Chancellor of Germany |
| 0:06.9 | from 2005 to 2021. That's a long time. And from her perch, she was privy to so many world-changing |
| 0:15.7 | events, a migrant crisis, military aggression, and of course, a pandemic. |
| 0:25.5 | She writes about it all in her new memoir, Freedom, and in this interview, through a translator with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, Merkel talks about going toe-to-to-to with leaders, such as |
| 0:31.1 | Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and what she thinks a second Trump term means for |
| 0:37.0 | America's role on the world stage. |
| 0:39.3 | That's up ahead. |
| 0:41.1 | In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. |
| 0:45.9 | Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, sources and methods. |
| 0:52.5 | NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. |
| 1:00.1 | Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 1:05.7 | In her new memoir, Angela Merkel writes about the many dilemmas she had to navigate as Chancellor of Germany. |
| 1:13.0 | Dilemmas, her male colleagues never had to sweat. Like, can you wear a pantsuit instead of a |
| 1:18.3 | skirt in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament? She decided the answer was yes. Well, Merkel is the only |
| 1:24.5 | woman ever to rise to the most powerful political post in Germany. |
| 1:29.2 | She served as Chancellor from 2005 to 2021. |
| 1:33.3 | When she joined me from Berlin to talk about her memoir, Freedom, |
| 1:37.4 | there were so many things we wanted to ask, |
| 1:39.5 | about her record on everything from the economy to energy to Europe's migrant crisis. But we were given |
| 1:46.2 | just 11 minutes, no edits, and so we focused on a few key things, U.S. German relations, |
| 1:52.6 | Vladimir Putin, and female leadership. But you describe a moment in 2017. You were on stage |
| 1:58.9 | at the G20. You were asked, do you see yourself as a feminist? |
... |
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