Lecture Date: January 30, 2025
The Gemini 3 Group Lecture
Barbara Walters broke every rule – the belief that women couldn’t interview the most serious newsmakers, that women couldn’t anchor primetime newscasts, that women couldn’t demand higher pay than, well, anybody else. She did all that, and more. In a career of enormous consequence, she redefined the genre of the big TV interview, questioning presidents and prime ministers, despots and dictators, notorious murderers and more. Her interview with Monica Lewinsky commanded the highest ratings of any TV interview on a single network, before or since. At age 74, she created a new form of TV talk, “The View,” a show that’s still going strong. But it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t free. Her relentless drive cost her three marriages, wounded her relationship with her only daughter, set up a bitter and legendary rivalry with Diane Sawyer, and left her alone and isolated in her final years. Barbara Walters became a source of inspiration and aspiration for girls and women across the country. But her life reflected the limitations of the day for women who dared to break new ground. Even so, on the headstone of her grave: “No Regrets!”In The Rulebreaker, The Life and Times of Barbara Walters, Susan Page breaks news on every front—from the daring things Walters did to become the woman who reinvented the TV interview to the secrets she kept until her death. This is the “stunning” (Norah O’Donnell), “brilliantly written” (Andrea Mitchell) account of the woman who knew she had to break all the rules so she could break all the rules about what viewers deserved to know.
Speaker: Susan Page
Susan Page is an award-winning journalist and the Washington Bureau chief of USA TODAY. Her previous books, Madam Speaker: Nancy Pelosi and the Lessons of Power and The Matriarch: Barbara Bush and the Making of an American Dynasty, were both New York Times bestsellers. In 2024, she covered her twelfth presidential election, and has interviewed the past 10 presidents (three after they moved out of the White House and one before he moved in). A Kansas native, she has reported from six continents and dozens of foreign countries, served as president of the White House Correspondents Association, and moderated the 2020 vice presidential debate. She and her husband, Carl Leubsdorf, live in Washington, D.C. They have two sons.