Quote · Call Her Daddy
Katie Couric: Sexism, Storytelling & Standing Up to Cancer
Where this was said
The Amy Schumer Prank & Katie's Real Personality
At 6:06 · chapter starts 3:15
The interview's icebreaker is a gleefully chaotic story about Amy Schumer unlocking Katie's unattended phone at a Glamour magazine dinner and texting Katie's husband a lurid proposition, a gag Schumer later told on Jimmy Fallon. Katie's punchline — that no one reported what her husband texted back ('Again?') — sends both women into laughter and sets the tone for the conversation's frank warmth. The exchange then pivots to a more substantive question: how would Katie describe her own personality? She pushes back against the word 'perky,' calling it demeaning and vapid — a label that implies cheerfulness at the expense of intelligence. This becomes the episode's first real argument about how women are boxed in by cultural expectations, leading to Katie's invocation of Walt Whitman: 'We contain multitudes.'
Katie Couric pushed back on being called 'perky' and 'America's Sweetheart,' explaining that labels framing women as warm and likeable simultaneously strip them of perceived intelligence. She cited Walt Whitman's 'we contain multitudes' as her counterargument to society's habit of compartmentalizing women.
