Four years before Nina Totenberg was hired at NPR, where she built her career as a prize-winning reporter—and nearly 22 years before Ruth Bader Ginsburg was ap-pointed to the Supreme Court—Nina called Ruth about a legal brief she’d filed asking the Supreme Court to undo centuries of legal precedent by declaring any law that dis-criminated “on the basis of sex” to be unconstitutional.
That phone call launched a nearly 50-year friendship between two women who would both become legends.
In her new book, Dinners with Ruth, Nina discusses their regular meals at her house, their shared love of opera, their fondness for shopping for clothes that would be their armor and the power of friendship.
She joins us to talk about that sisterhood, about tearing down professional and legal barriers to women, about lessons learned during those struggles and the women and men—from Cokie Roberts to Antonin Scalia and her own family—who gave her the courage to keep fighting.
The Supreme Court and Legal Affairs correspondent for NPR, Nina Totenberg has won every major broadcast journalism award, many for breaking the story of Anita Hill’s allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas.
In conversation with Preet Bharara, former US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.