Brené Brown's books on shame, vulnerability and courage have given her A-list fans like Oprah and Melinda Gates and made her a go-to leadership consultant for both Pixar and the Seattle Seahawks.
But Brown, a research professor at the University of Houston's Graduate College of Social Work, thought she'd spend her career writing for other academics, not making the New York Times' best-seller list.
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Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
"My goal was to put it in peer-reviewed articles that no one would read but like five people and they would just read it to check to make sure they were quoted," Brown told The Associated Press from her home in Houston.
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Five best-selling books later, Brown is debuting her first Netflix special on Friday, "Brené Brown: The Call to Courage ," based off her two decades of research. The special is a bit of an experiment for the streaming service, whose categories Brown doesn't neatly fit into.
"Am I comedy? Documentary? True crime?" Brown joked.
Brown's skill as a writer and speaker is that she doesn't sound like a typical self-help or leadership expert who is shouting motivational speaker mantras. She has a researcher's mind for patterns and a storyteller's gift of language. She peppers her talks with plenty of Texas colloquialisms, like "There's nothing in the middle of the road but white stripes and dead armadillos." She tells personal anecdotes about her kids and her husband to illustrate her broader ideas about parenting, compassion, leadership and more.
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
"People will come up to me and say, 'I already knew everything you said. I just didn't have the language to say it. I didn't know we were allowed to talk about it,'" said Brown. "And so I think I just put language around feelings and experiences and thoughts that we all have."
She can also curse like a true Southern lady, which is just enough to set people at ease and give them a laugh. "Not like Andrew Dice Clay," she said. "An appropriate amount of cursing."
In the special she talks about her 2010 speech at a TEDxHouston conference on vulnerability that has become one of the most watched TED Talk speeches, now viewed about 39 million times. Her most recent book, "Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts," is a playbook for leading with empathy.
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
When asked about leadership qualities she hopes to see among candidates for the upcoming 2020 U.S. presidential election, Brown took a long pause.
"I am one-inch away from being completely disenchanted with politics but I'm holding on. I'm white-knuckling it right now," Brown said. "I need a political system where the people who make the decisions actually are required to live by them and are not in such an elite position where they make policy and laws and financial decisions that don't affect them."
The Netflix special is good timing for Brown, who has spent years traveling all over the country giving speeches to corporations, entrepreneurs, women's conferences and leadership training events.
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Her youngest child is in middle school and she's moving into a period of her career where she's doing less of those speaking opportunities in order to be at home. But with Netflix, she has a chance to continue building on the conversations she started with her books.
"This opportunity from Netflix just felt like such a deeply important gift," Brown said. "This thing is going to drop in 190 countries."
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Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
https://brenebrown.com/
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Research professor Brene Brown, star of the Netflix special "Brene Brown: The Call to Courage," poses for a portrait at Netflix's Hollywood offices, Tuesday, April 16, 2019, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Chris PizzelloInvisionAP)
Iran fired missiles at Israel and some Gulf nations while explosions could be heard around Tehran and the central Iranian city of Isfahan on Friday, as the United States prepared to further reinforce its already significant military forces in the Middle East.
As the war that began Feb. 28 was to enter its sixth week, Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait warned about incoming missile fire, although it was unclear if anything was struck. Activists reported strikes around Tehran and the central city of Isfahan but it wasn’t immediately clear what was hit.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf region energy infrastructure and its tight grip on the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas transits in peacetime, has sent oil prices skyrocketing.
Oil prices surged while Asian financial markets rose moderately during cautious trading. Benchmark U.S. crude rose 11.4% to $111.54 a barrel. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel.
U.S. President Donald Trump said U.S. forces will keep hitting Iran “very hard” in the next two or three weeks.
The largest American aircraft carrier in service sailed out of Split, in Croatia and “remains poised for full mission tasking in support of national objectives in any area of operation,” the Navy’s 6th Fleet announced.
It was unclear where it was going. The USS Abraham Lincoln remains in the Arabian Sea and the USS George H. W. Bush aircraft carrier departed Norfolk on Wednesday to head to the Mideast.
Here is the latest:
Oil prices continued to surge on worries of a prolonged Iran war but the Asian markets that were open Friday rose moderately in cautious trading, while others were closed for the Good Friday holidays.
Benchmark U.S. crude rose 11.4% to $111.54 a barrel. The price of Brent crude, the international standard, jumped 7.8% to $109.03 per barrel.
The U.S. only relies on the Persian Gulf for a fraction of the oil it imports, but oil is a commodity and prices are set in a global market.
The situation is very different in Asia. Japan, for example, relies on access to the Strait of Hormuz for much of the nation’s oil import needs and would need to rely on alternative routes. But some analysts say Japan and oher nations are counting on an agreement with Iran to allow transports.
Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 gained 0.9% in Friday morning trading to 52,938.62. South Korea’s Kospi jumped 2.1% to 5,344.41. The Shanghai Composite sank 0.5% to 3,899.57. Trading was closed in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Indonesia and India.
Wall Street, where trading is closed Friday, finished its first winning week since the start of the Iran war, although trading started out with a decline driven by a surge in oil prices.
Bangladesh is curtailing office hours and enforcing early closure of malls and shops beginning Friday to handle its energy crisis related to the war.
The country’s cabinet ordered 30% spending cuts for fuel and power at government offices, suspended some staff training and stopped purchases of new vehicles, ships and aircraft. Decorative lighting will not be allowed for celebrations.
Bangladesh, a nation of more than 170 million people, is seeking alternative fuel sources and $2.5 billion in external financing for imports, which account for 95% of its fuel.
Australian Energy Minister Chris Bowen on Friday urged motorists getting away for a long weekend during the Easter holiday to fill up in cities because most of the nation’s fuel shortages are in rural areas.
Among 2,400 gas stations in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state, 182 had run out of diesel by Friday.
In Australia’s second-most populous state, Victoria, 76 gas stations were out of diesel. In the remaining states ranked by the most populous first, Queensland had 75 stations without diesel, Western Australia had 37, South Australia had 28 and in Tasmania there were seven.
“For those Australians planning a road trip this weekend, given our shortages are predominantly in rural and regional Australia, it makes sense to fill up in the city to help the country if you can,” Bowen said in Sydney.
The government, which blamed regional shortages on panic buying and distribution problems, is concentrating on delivering fuel to farmers for planting crops.
Palestinian Muslims attend Friday prayers outside Jerusalem's Old City due to restrictions linked to the Iran war, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Tamara and her sister Amal color pictures on the floor as their parents, Sara and Ahmed, who fled their village of Khiyam in southern Lebanon due to Israeli bombardment, sit inside a tent used as a shelter in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A painting lies on the floor of a residential building damaged by recent U.S.-Israeli strikes in Fardis, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Journalists from foreign media based in Tehran document damage from U.S.-Israeli strikes in a residential area of the town of Fardis, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Mohammad Qubaisi, 53, with burn wounds from an Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon undergoes surgery by Dr. Mohammed Ziara, left, and his team, at the Sidon Government Hospital in Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
A newly constructed bridge struck by U.S. airstrikes Thursday is seen in Karaj, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A newly constructed bridge struck by U.S. airstrikes Thursday is seen in Karaj, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A bridge struck by U.S. airstrikes on Thursday is seen in the town of Karaj, west of Tehran, Iran, Friday, April 3, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
Israeli security forces and rescue teams inspect a site struck by an Iranian missile in Petah Tikva, Israel,Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
A man with burn wounds from an Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon sits on a bed at the Sidon Government Hospital in Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A boy who fled with his family following Israeli strikes in southern Lebanon sits inside the van they are using as shelter in Sidon, Lebanon, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
President Donald Trump arrives from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
