Sami Sage

The following episode will be discussing themes of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know is a victim of sexual assault or abuse, call RAINN's Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE.

That's 1-800-656-4673.

Hey everyone, it's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress.

Welcome back to Work in Progress, friends.

We are one week away from the midterm elections, and for a lot of people, the hardest part isn't deciding how to vote. It's figuring out how to stay informed without getting completely overwhelmed by the news, the noise, and the non-stop political cycle that feels more like a cage match than anything else.

But here's the thing.

We have to remember, nobody has to become a political junkie or an activist to have political power. No matter where you are on the scale of participation in your personal life, you can start by understanding what's on your ballot, knowing what matters to you, and talking to people you trust. And nobody knows.

This better than Sammy Sage.

She is the co-founder and chief brand officer of Betches Media, an award-winning podcast host, and the New York Times bestselling author of Democracy in Retrograde. She has spent years at the intersection of politics, pop culture, media, and the internet, And Sammy understands how information spreads, who people trust, and what actually makes us all pay attention. So as we head into these midterms, I want to break it all down with Sammy. Why these elections matter, how to navigate misinformation, and why the political power of women should not be underestimated.

I think we've all been reminded of that in the last month in particular. And then I'm going to ask her some questions past November 3rd. Because no matter what happens on election day, The work of being an engaged citizen and a good neighbor doesn't end when the votes are counted.

Let's dive in with Sammy Sage. Sammy, welcome to the show.

You are one of my favorite people to do things with, whether it's like go to a party, go to a march, talk about politics, have a cocktail. Anytime I see you in a room, I'm always really relieved and I know I'm in the right place. And I wanted that energy for the show because we're going into the midterms. Everyone is overwhelmed. The occupier of the Oval Office is a criminal.

And I think people know we need change, but also feel scared about how to get there. So thank you for bringing your expertise. We need you.

I am so happy to be here. Thank you.

Look, I can't promise any solutions. I think that we are like, honestly, I can promise that I can provide empathy and we're all in this together. But that is really, I think, what my, you know, my feeling has been now because people are so overwhelmed. And I just like wish I could help like lower expectations that we're going to solve every problem or even come close. But the more people who are in this together, like our experience of it can be better.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, I feel that.

And it's really interesting, you know, when you say it's hard to solve everything, the thing I think about is progress really is generational. It takes a long time to pass good bills and to solve for problems. And I think sometimes we forget about what it's taken because we live in the world of that we live in now and we look around and there's so much industry and I'm looking out my window and I see a nature reserve and also apartment buildings and a train that does public transit. We forget that these are the results of generations of investment in this community project that is a nation.

And I think the speed with which destruction happens We have to understand as much faster. I think about it, you know, when you see a building get knocked down. It doesn't take long to knock it down, but it can take years to build it.

And the country's like that too.

Like the East Wing, for example?

I can't, I'm still, I just, it makes me sick when I see those photos and it's gone.

It's wild.

I mean, all of DC, I haven't been there in a while, but it's transformed. I mean, he has really made his mark on the Capitol and- In some way, it makes it– I think in the future, it'll make it easier to really call the end of it because you can take all of that down and it can be a meaningful symbol.

But I don't know. What kind of freak wants to live on a construction site?

It's also just a very weird choice to take down a historic part of the people's house.

It's not his house. Well, he thinks it is.

Jackie Kennedy's rose garden, to cut down the cherry trees, to literally destroy decades of legacy for the property itself. Things that, again, belong to us, not him. It's a really surreal thing to think. And I don't know, it makes me feel emotional for the times I've been there for good work. in my adult life. And honestly, it makes me a little emotional for the things I grew up looking up to, you know, because even as a little kid, you study American history, you begin to understand things before you get into the complexity of, you know, systemic oppression and the ugly parts of our history that you have to learn alongside the really inspiring and amazing ones.

It's, it's such a.

The imagery of the white house is so nostalgic. And I think about how nostalgic it felt to me when I was a little kid, when you were little, did you look up to that?

Oh yeah. Oh, completely.

I grew up in a family that was very like news aware, politically focused. My mom took me to the voting booth like every year. Um, And yeah, it was meaningful. I remember my grandmother told me to write a letter to the president who was Bill Clinton when I was in third grade or something. And I specifically remember writing, can you make it so there are no more guns and bombs?

LOL. Obviously, we have not.

Gotten to that point. But I think, yeah, I completely agree with you. I think that this destruction of symbolism is really important to him. Even more so than the laws, which he has, you know, the real workhorses doing behind the scenes, like your Russell Vogt and your Stephen Miller. But I think that I see the president's a predator.

He's like a dog peeing on everything.

And he... It's laitassez-moi.

Like, there's no idea of the people's house. There's no idea that the money that we pay in taxes is public money not to be weaponized by him and his dumb sons.

And I think that bigger picture.

one of the most destructive mindsets that we have in America right now is this idea of like, because I can, like, why do you do something?

Because I can. It's like, there has to be some level.

Of personal respect and restraint and sentimentality. Like, I really feel that he has opened up this portal into like the American soul where people don't see other people as real people.

No one's real to each other.

Obviously, this is exacerbated by social media, but that real human value of life, it seems to have really fallen by the wayside.

I think about this with COVID a lot. We never had any national.

Morning.

Like I feel the closest thing we had during that was in New York City when people would bang their pots and pans at 7 p.m.

Every night.

Like, but there was no, you know, we called nurses and doctors essential workers, but like we don't treat them like essential workers. And it just, it just feels like Logan Roy would say, we are not serious people.

We're not a serious country. And it's very sad.

And I'm hoping that generationally things can shift, as it does.

Things do shift over time.

I hope so.

I mean, I think to your point, this because I can energy, it's like, it's this idea of American exceptionalism gone sour. You know, if it spoils like spoiled milk, it goes from being a treat to something that will poison you. And I think we're in this sort of collective moment of going, oh yeah, this has really gone too far. You know, patriotism to me means loving your country, not yourself in it. It means caring about your neighbors.

It means, you know, being a good person. And I think people got so fatigued with hardship that has been designed to over these last decades by a system that's been rigged ever more in the favor of the ultra wealth class and they were convinced that it was being rigged by their neighbors and And I think we are finally, hopefully, in a moment where people realize that none of that is true. An immigrant didn't take your job. A trans kid isn't the reason you can't go to the doctor.

You know, a gay couple is not the reason that you're having a hard time at home. None of that is real. And what is real is that we live in a world that is giving away the spoils of everyone. to the people that already have far more than their fair share. They, they are literally taking, they're not earning, they're taking. And then when you see the scale they're willing to go to, I mean, even when you mentioned the president and his sons, you know, they, they invested in drone companies and then we launched a war. People can't afford to feed their families and put gas in their cars, but the president's family is making money on the drones we're sending to a war that was never even approved by Congress.

It's like, We've lost the plot.

And they still won't even pay for their own wedding.

I don't know. The oligarchs in Russia are doing that.

But I fear that on the one sense, or I guess on the one hand, I feel like it's really important to know the facts and be educated because then you can do something about them. And on the other hand, I understand that the level of crazy we're living through is giving people a lot of fatigue. So I'm curious how you encourage people as, you know, a media expert, as a person who does so much political communication and also does it in a fun way for young women.

You know, how do you help people stay more engaged instead of become less engaged due to the overwhelm?

So there's a few things. One is sometimes it's just.

Not there for you. And be easy and compassionate on yourself. You're not going to strong arm people into caring about something or.

Volunteering, whatever.

But something you said earlier about how we're not thinking about America as what we can give to the country. We're thinking about taking something that was really like the seed of inspiration behind my last book, Democracy in Retrograde, which I wrote with Emily Amick, aka Emily in your phone, was this idea that we have so much self-help in this country. Like you, there's how to be a mother, how to be a, you know, a wife, how to be a career lady.

Like, you know what it is?

Like you could find self-help for almost anything, but you really don't see self-help for the role of like a citizen, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Like we said at the beginning, like you aren't going to solve every problem. But the way I think about it is like every person is like a thread in the fabric of America. And like you have to find your thread in the way that makes sense for you. And so Democracy in Retrograde is basically a self-help book.

It has exercises in it, but it's supposed to teach you how to get in touch with your own values so that you can figure out how you want to be Engage in your community throughout your lifetime. Like doing something that you're good at matches your personality. There's literally a personality quiz in the book. that doing something that interests you, that you care about, that is like appropriate for your season of life. You know, if you just had a baby, you're probably not like running a soup kitchen today, you know? But what I think is people need to like really bring their ambitions down to a place where there's possibility and you will find fulfillment in that and you will find your people in that. And

so for me, like you said, like, like I love to, talk about like current events and talk about it in like a light. I mean, it can't really ever be light, but talking about it in a way that's like real and non detached.

And so that's always.

Been, you know, something that I connect with and everyone has their own thing. And I also think it like helps build your own sense of self and value so that when you see all this stuff online, that's like just, confusing intentionally, you don't have to be as floored by it, basically.

Yeah.

Yeah, I like that. How do you think about that, though?

Because the internet makes people feel, on the one side of the scale, overwhelmed, and on the other, sometimes replaces in-person participation or activism. You know, yes, it's important to make noise. I But it's also really important to get out and lend a hand, you know, to show up somewhere, to be in a room and be in community with other people. And I fear that if we're doing just too much of it online, we're actually just, you know, staying in our little bubbles and we're staying in our homes.

You've spent your whole career watching the internet change and change the way people get information. So I'm curious what you think about how the balance of power changing from traditional news organizations and politicians to creators and these other audiences being able, yes, to get and provide more information, but also create a hell of a lot of disinformation. Like, how do you encourage people to make sense.

Of it and figure out what they can trust?

I can't really encourage people to make sense of it as much as like, I know that I can provide a space to try to help people do it. And I think what, what makes me so annoyed in this time is that like, I know so many amazing people who are doing incredible work and the names you hear and the people who make the biggest waves in the creator space or an online who draw and things that drive the conversation. are homogenous and or inorganic manufactured conversations.

And there are so many funny women, people, smart experts online that like, that's where I'm getting my information.

That's like who's in my feed.

But it's so disappointing because I feel that so much of the toxicity comes from like the underlying incentives, which also relates back to the tech guys. It is a situation where the algorithms are driven by favoring anger and falsehoods. I think part of the problem with the creator industry are the financial incentives.

Well, yeah.

I mean, look at all the tradwives. that are now leaving the movement. And they're like, oh yeah, we made a ton of money. And we realized we got paid all this money by groups that are run by super conservative men that hate us. And now we've propped up their talking points and we're losing our audiences and we're all fucked. And I'm like, babes could have told you that, but you get lost in the sauce, especially when you do become the breadwinner in your family or it does begin to change your life. And it's like, To be able to zoom out and understand what an op so.

Much of this is.

And it's like part of the reason you don't see major audience growth or major money being made by people who have things to say that are good for you is they're not being funded by people who make money off of policies that are bad for you.

So I think you can't really overstate like that.

And it's the kind of.

Thing that you can't see unless you are doing the opposite, which was like this weird circumstance that I'm in. And it's allowed me to see like, what can you just like opt out of?

What do I just not? I just like willingness to shut the fuck up is so valuable.

Yeah. I mean, it really, really is.

And then to your point, Being able to know when your voice has so much power is, I think, simultaneously valuable. I think it's important to be able to discern between the two. You know, I, and I've made no secret of this. I've been told for years if I was quote unquote less political, I would work so much more.

That's how I feel. I'm like, I'm like, okay, like, so I'll like, What? Yeah. Also, you're dangling a hypothetical in front of me.

Right.

Right now, I know what I feel about this today.

Yes.

You're telling me that I could theoretically work more for people who.

Don't agree with– who won't work with me because of who I am today?

Yeah.

Why would I live that way?

Yeah.

It's a very strange– it's a strange sort of proposition that they put forth to a lot of people.

But also I realized that I can make that decision because I don't need to chase that money. Like because I've, and that is, I think the, the, you know, and so we're lucky in that way.

And that's the thing to be clear. Like I'm privileged enough to do what I love for a living. Is it hard to, you know, be a contract worker? Like, of course, because when you don't have stability, no matter what your life might look like from the outside, you have a lot of stress around planning. But also the carrot you're talking about, like the sort of idea of, oh, well, there would be more.

I'm like, but for what? Like my goal is not to be a person who owns a private jet. I don't want that. I don't need that.

I don't have a desire to be someone who lives so detached from the people around me that I can't advocate for them when I advocate for me.

It's just not my goal.

And I understand that money has become a god for a lot of people. And it's also easy to say that it doesn't rule your life when you aren't making a choice between, like, do I feed my kids today or put gas in my car? But I feel like societally, we got to figure out how to pull it back a little bit from some people have enough money that they want to colonize other planets and most people can't pay their bills. Like that can't be the scale that we live in.

It just cannot. And so I think.

Figuring out how to advocate for others is, you know, that's one of the things that tells me there's plenty of things I might want to say or feel for myself, but I shut the fuck up a lot, despite what people.

Think, I'm sure.

Right.

They don't know the time you're not saying anything. They have no idea.

And my God, I'm silent a lot. But they have no, you know, but I will talk a lot and perhaps ad nauseum about us, about community, about neighborhoods, about healthcare, about SNAP benefits, about things that benefit us. And I think you see the power of that kind of choice to behave for the collective.

You see when that works.

We've seen it with this breaking story at Cornell, not only reopening that investigation because of public outcry over the horrors that a student was made to endure there, but So many other campuses, women all over this country are being honest about what's happened to them and how they've been.

Dismissed by their universities.

The student at LSU whose rapist was found to have raped her, and they said, but he's a football player, so we're going to keep him on the football team.

Like, what? That stems from money. Yes. That's money.

That's a school that makes that money their god, you know?

All of these women, Katie.

Couric shared a bunch of things, you know, individual women's stories in this kind of slideshow that just made me want to sob. And I think something so overtly wrong has made everyone choose to use their voices collectively to say, we cannot continue to live in a world that devalues women this way. And that's the kind of thing I'm excited to see the internet doing together.

That's for all of us. Not just the women, by the way. It's for the men, too.

Yeah. I mean, we're talking.

This whole thing really gets me, obviously, up in arms.

You went to Cornell.

I did go to Cornell.

And I've... basically when this, when this came out or when, after the sun released these guys names, I was like, okay, is anyone, what's anyone going to do? And I kept seeing it going more viral. And at first I was like, okay, obviously I'm seeing this. Like I went there, but then I realized like, I am seeing more stories from people who have no affiliation to Cornell. Like as I'm reading it, I'm like, oh, this isn't a Cornell person. This is like somebody at this, they went to some somewhere else or they're What I think is so egregious here, and this is like my real point about Cornell, we can talk, like I don't really care to talk about like the criminal standard these guys are being held to or like

they were, I don't care about the threesome, I don't care about the ketamine.

When people see that an Ivy League school.

Is going to provide quarter for men who the whole campus knows was involved in what they are, you could colloquially call a gang rape, Yes. They are saying actually anything less than that, less quote unquote than that, and or that's missing as solid evidence as a Snapchat that says free seat.

And by the way, that hours later.

Oh, yeah.

Hours later, is the shop still open?

Right.

As though she was a place to go and not a person. Like, come on.

I mean, to me, that just undermines the consent of it all.

Because like, if she was consenting, she'd have sent that message. Like, you know.

If that were really consent, that would come from her, not from those guys.

So it's like, if you are.

Saying that that is okay, you can keep these men at your school, anything, anywhere, in any situation that is like, quote unquote, less than that, you will probably get away with And you can probably stay at school. If anyone had this on their record coming from high.

School, the school would not admit them.

No.

So why are you allowing.

People, why are you allowing your campus to be a safe space for people to engage in conduct way below the standard of what you're willing to admit?

And not even in an academic sense, in like a physical sense.

Moral, ethical, human.

Yeah. it's illegal.

Like I understand if like you're misogynists or, or you can't like police.

Misogyny at a frat boys. Like that's not going to.

Happen, but you can make them really afraid of getting in trouble because they're, they're, they're not developmentally like, you know, even if they were like the nicest, the nicest frat boys around, like they're not developmentally there and they do need a sense of punishment. And we have been, You know, we have a prison system.

Like, why are they not subject to this? Yeah. Yeah.

Well, because they're privileged and because they're men. And I think what I find a real issue with, too, is this notion that a woman has to be a perfect victim to be believed. I don't care if she wanted to drink and if her and two other people, this is all being alleged, by the way, you know, allegedly they agreed to have a threesome.

Okay.

They're college kids. They should be able to do whatever the fuck they want. I don't care.

That is not just because. And by the way, if she agreed, they agreed. If she agreed, if she had to agree to supposedly, allegedly have a threesome, she was asked.

So if you have such a problem.

With the sexual act, why aren't you offended by the boys who asked her?

Why aren't you offended that they're so crass?

Why aren't you offended that they convinced her that might be a fun experience for the three of them? I don't care if she agreed to that. That's not the same thing as agreeing to being gang raped by potentially 57 men.

It's just not the same.

And this is part of what we talk about. Even if they were in the middle of something, if it was her and one other guy, if it's anyone listening and it's you and another person and you get uncomfortable and say.

I want to stop. I don't want to do this anymore.

You have the right to stop at any time. And if someone says, well, you've already started, so you can't stop me now, that's rape. I don't care if that's heavy to hear.

We've lost the plot on what this stuff means.

And I will never forget the last time one of these things went viral, a guy tweeting something, I'm paraphrasing, basically saying, oh, well, you know, if every guy who's ever gotten a girl super wasted and then had sex with her is a rapist, then every guy is a rapist.

And someone responded right below it and was like, you're so close to getting it.

Yeah.

Because that is what that is. That is actually what that is.

And I think we've, they think it's got to be this like, she got hit over the head and dragged in a back alley and whatever.

And it's like, no, we've lost.

The plot and they don't even get it because to your point, full circle, they've.

Been allowed by all these institutions and systems.

Also, this is not a criminal trial. She is suing the school for negligence and she's suing the individuals for negligence. I don't even think she would have filed this lawsuit if the school hadn't handled it how they handled it.

Agreed. She wouldn't have been forced to.

Right. And like, I think that the point is the school needs.

To be a little more afraid of of this kind of situation, again, even if it's only because they are a business and a brand. And it's like, to that point, I think they actually have an opportunity. Like the term sexual harassment came out of Cornell. I studied industrial labor at their industrial labor relations school. And I spent probably half a semester learning about harassment, gender discrimination, sex discrimination, all of these things. And so like, if you're really this pioneering research university, then you actually have an opportunity to test out a new paradigm.

There has to be something where the severity of it and the PTSD that it causes, which by the way, for our friends at home, more women who've been sexually assaulted have PTSD than veterans who've seen combat in war. And I think a really poignant piece of the conversation people are having now is if a group of women finds a man incapacitated, they take care of him and get him to safety.

They don't sexually assault him.

The worst thing they'll do is draw a dick on his face, like literally.

Yeah. Oh, shame.

You know, I think we really have to figure out how to, how to make men behave like the caretakers they claim to be, but are clearly not, statistically not.

Every person deserves to be at a school and feel safe. And it's not only about what happened. It's about how this institution handles it. And Americans, people are mad because they look at all these institutions, not just Cornell.

Look at the government.

You look at the church. You look at giant companies. And there's just this feeling of like, okay, no one cares. This type of thing is allowed to proliferate everywhere. And if it can proliferate at Cornell, it's proliferating at all the places that Cornell recruits to and the positions they're in later. And I just think that culture drives everything.

And I'm hoping that we will have a pendulum swing soon. Yeah, me too.

Yeah.

We'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. To that point, people are exhausted because you just realize that the instinct of institutions is to cover instead of repair. With the church, you saw them, and I'm sure they're still doing it, moving all of these priests and deacons and people around Who they knew were assaulting kids because to say it in clean house would be too hard, quote unquote. You know, you see Cornell, the campus police took her statement. She said verbatim, I can say with 100 percent confidence that I was raped. And they never took it to actual law enforcement. They buried it. They covered instead of pursuing.

And I think that's what people are tired of, whether it's in medicine, academia, faith, culture, you know, any institution. It's like, why are we covering instead of uncovering.

And fixing things?

And when you realize it's systemic, when you realize we're 51% of the population as women, we're not a niche, we're actually the majority by a slim, you know, 2%. But like, we're treated like a niche, we're treated like a problem instead of a co-equal branch of society. And when one in two women experiences sexual violence in her lifetime, like this is a literal epidemic and everybody kind of rolls their eyes and tells us to just Get along.

To keep along.

We just keep going forward and, like, not solving things.

But imagine— okay, I think about this especially for women. We're so used to doing more with less. You know, I joke, but I actually mean it. Like, if you assigned the moms of the PTA, the government, shit would be fixed by lunch.

You know, like, it just would.

And I think about this— Yes, we can keep going, but imagine what we'd be achieving if we weren't continuously fighting the tide and the tide was going with us.

And I will relate this.

It might seem weird to our friends at home, but I promise it's not. Think about the Consumer Protection Bureau. Oh, I think about the Consumer Protection Bureau all the time.

Like the dismantling of that.

Companies don't do the right thing because they want to do the right thing. They do the right thing because it's the law. And if they break the law, they get caught and they have to pay you back. And we built a bureau that literally gave billions and billions and billions of our dollars that were wrongfully taken from us as the public back to us because companies were being shady and they were doing all sorts of shit they weren't allowed to do. And people were missing hidden fees and whatever, whatever. And we got our money back.

And the current occupant of the Oval.

Office dismantled the bureau that protects us.

So now, not only were.

You being stolen from and sometimes paid back, now you can just be stolen from all the time and nobody has to give you your money back, even though they broke the law. It's like, nobody does the right thing just because, statistically. You have to create a system and a system of punishment if you break the rules That actually forces protective measures to be implemented.

And it's like, whether we're.

Talking about the money you spend online or the workplace that you go to every day and whether or not it's safe for you or your university campus, like we have to have rules, which is why we have to elect sane people again.

Because taking the regulations away, look at the food. All the food is poisoned now. Like, it's not working.

But, Sophia, you know that they understand this because if you suggest that you want to defund the police or abolish the prison system, they would say no because you need some sort of incentive for bad behavior.

You need a policing mechanism. So they get it. They know. They just don't want to have to pay for it.

And to your point about, like, I actually think individuals, like, As an individual, we'll choose to do the right thing. More individuals will choose to do the right thing in a given situation.

It's like if you're going to return a wallet or steal it.

The organization will never do the right thing because of diffusion of responsibility, a bunch of things. But I have a separate reason why I'm obsessed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And obviously, I think what it did is amazing. But the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is also one of the greatest examples of how sexism plays out in electoral politics because it was created by Elizabeth Warren.

Yep.

Who, as we know, in 2020, when she was running for president.

Everyone's like, no, Elizabeth Warren's like a shill. She's boring. Like, let's get Bernie.

Like, oh, he's been saying free healthcare, oligarchs, billionaires, millionaires, blah, blah, blah for years. Listen, Elizabeth Warren is Bernie who does something.

She conjured up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from nothing. Like, she thought about it in her brain and pushed to invent it. Yes.

So it's like she maybe couldn't get– universal healthcare while she was in the Senate.

Neither could Bernie, by the way. But she tried to do things. She invented that out of whole cloth.

No one was like, here, you go invent a bureau to protect consumers. Or you go do something that's going to be good. No one gave her money or a job. She just was like, here, we're doing this. This is my idea and made it exist. And so I just don't think that women, her in particular, everyone's like, she's a skull.

She's like a librarian.

It's like, okay, well, I want someone who can just invent solutions.

I think that that's very valuable. Yes.

We're a few days from midterms. I want to know what you think.

What are the most effective and constructive conversations we can be having with people? Because to your point, we have a say in our future if we elect people who will prioritize us in the plans that they have for the future.

So one thing I think cannot be under, cannot be overstated is the ability to like read the room in these conversations. Like what is your relationship with the person? What is your relationship to, what's their relationship to you? What do they care about? What do you care about? Like what's their context? Are you like their annoying friend who talks about this or like, are they coming to you for the conversation? Like, is there an opening? Like, so much of life is about reading the room. And it's like you talking to like someone who's adversarial with you about like something, you know, they're adversarial about like, that's like a waste of time. You talking to experts or other people who are interested in the same issue

as you are.

And trying to move the needle on one particular thing. That's a good use of your time.

Yeah.

Well, by the way, it's part of why I started this show. because I get to have conversations like this, but I get to have them for everyone at home who doesn't have your phone number. I get to have them for everyone at home who might want to understand a system or by the way, know how Ava DuVernay makes a movie or it's like, I get to essentially highlight all these different interesting avenues. So every single listener can find their thing. It is the privilege of my life.

And it's like, It's part of the reason that around midterms, I really wanted us to have this conversation because I also want people to understand that all these things that we think just happen really are the result of policy and of who's in power, whether it's the school board at Cornell or the Senate we currently have. We have to shift who holds the power if we want to shift the outcomes that affect us all. I'm curious for you, like if there's somebody listening to this who knows voting is important, but it doesn't really think one vote can make a difference. What do you say to them on that subject?

There have been dozens of elections that are decided by one to 10 votes. So like, yes, your vote does actually matter. But the other thing is like, okay, so don't vote. I actually had this fight with my mom a lot because she raised me to go to the voting booth every year. Then when I got to college, Cornell, I was like, Obama gets elected.

I'm like, oh, it's all good. Nothing matters.

And she'd be like, you have to send in your ballot. Like you have to vote. And I'd be like, well, it doesn't matter. The electoral college, what's the point? And she'd be like, it's not really about that. It's about the fact that like, this is such a privilege and you don't realize it because you've always had it. And because you like were born to a situation that you don't even like appreciate how good it is. The only person you're lying to or denying this privilege is you.

Yeah.

We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors.

I also think, to your point, sometimes when you feel a little helpless or like your vote doesn't matter, it's exactly when you need to know that that's the time it's most important. Because sure, in this midterm election, we don't get to change the president, but we can change everything else. If we show up in numbers, we can change everything else. And by the way, you know, who's elected as your congressperson or your senator will, of course, matter.

But also who's on your school board is going to matter. Like these things shape your whole life in ways that, to your mom's point, for a while we were privileged enough to not have to think about. And now that we can't eat the blueberries and we don't know if the water is safe, what do you think staying engaged in the process, like being a citizen who participates in the place where you live, what does it look like when there isn't an upcoming election motivating you? Like, how do you stay engaged after the midterms and for the next two years?

So I would actually invite people to think of the midterms and election years, like less as the time to be engaged, like less as like revolving your engagement around that. Look, if you're involved in your community in other ways, like you're naturally going to end up engaged at those times. And I think that part of the problem is like, it's this like, oh, right before the election, everyone's like jolted into paying attention, but it's like you, and that's what, that was really what the point of democracy and retrograde is.

It's what can you connect to?

Not because it's like a task you have to check off a list, but because you care about this, it's, you know, it's not an extracurricular for your resume. It's an extracurricular because you like it. I put a free little library in front of my house and it's like that costs money to put there and like put it, you know, and I put a bunch of books in and it's like, now it's like changing all the time.

It's like, I don't, it's like doing things for your neighbors. And, you know, now it's like, oh, you're the family that has the library. It's like, just knowing your neighbors. And also I think part of that is like, there's so much division. And so when people talk about like, how do we bridge these divides? It's like, well, we need to stop bringing people together who are, who disagree only for the sake of bridging the divide. Cause you're basically bringing them together for a fight. Like this is a rumble, like intellectual, intellectual rumble.

Yeah.

However, if you are connected with people in other contexts, you play a sport together, you're in a Mahjong league, whatever it is, and you, someone who you totally disagree with, politically, whatever it is, if you have something to relate to them on where it's like, we have this in common, we know each other, we trust each other in some other way. When you do have a rupture or you do have a disagreement or you, someone says something that you find offensive or vice versa. Like you can actually have that conversation and learn from each other and like bring each other closer. Like, I don't mean literally, like it's not going to manifest on like, there's no chart, but like where it's going to like show, but we

as a whole do not interact with each other enough. Like it's all behind the phone. There's no community building. People are like siloed so much. And like, that degrades trust or like the idea that anyone else who's different than you is a human.

Yeah.

And to that point with the Jane Doe case, I really hope no one ever finds anything about her because I think the fact that she's this like blank slate, nothing but like the facts of the case, like that is going to get her the justice she deserves more than if people are like, and she believes this and.

She voted for this person. Like, I don't care who she voted for.

I don't care.

I don't want to ever.

I don't care and I don't want to know.

I think it's actually so important that we remember that every person is a multitude of experiences and beliefs and that those things can be changing all the time and people change all the time. And you're more than your, the worst thing that's ever happened to you, you're more than the moment you lost your temper, you're more than your greatest success. And like, we have to start to remember those things. And I mean, even when you talk about connecting with people that you have commonality with that you don't necessarily agree with, those are some of the most important friendships.

In my life.

And I have people who, you know, some people will say like, why are you still friends with that person? And I'm like, because I think figuring out how to, how to have friction and move through it together is actually important for society. And if I don't model it in my own life, how am I going to encourage us to do it? And sometimes it means we take breaks and then we get back together to talk about things.

But when you don't give up on people, you won't give up on your community either. And I think we all need to remember that. And I think we need to figure out, even when it's hard, how to come back to the table and remember that we're in this together, for better or worse. So we better get it together, too.

I completely agree with you.

It's like, to me, it's this basic sense of like, how would I want someone else to approach me with this?

Would I want them to just think that.

I'm my point of view on this or that thing and be like, oh, she's too.

Liberal, blah, blah.

No, it's like, that's a, it's just a, I think it's a unproductive way to live life. And I think that it has been exacerbated by our online lives, our politics, our culture that can't like, And no event can happen without there being some sort of like argument about it. It's like, and everyone's like, well, keep politics out of it.

And then it's like, well, you can't keep politics out of it.

It's like, oh my God, again, none of this conversation.

Is gonna go anywhere.

I know, it's like, I'm just so tired.

What, and it doesn't have to be a political thing or about the media company or the book.

It can be about any of those.

Things or it can be just a personal thing. I'm really curious what feels like your work in progress right now.

I've really been feeling like I'm sort of, on the cusp of a new phase. And I've been thinking about how to, like, I guess manifest that going forward and just kind of trying to think about how to like flex my creative interests in a way that's different, but still sort of like grounded in the things that people are really like familiar with me for.

So yeah, It's, you know, I feel like I'm always a work in progress.

And it's weird that people would not want to keep being one because like that's death.

Yeah.

If we don't continue evolving, we're over.

Right.

Yeah.

I feel that. I feel that a lot.

It's been an interesting thing with my first book because you know this. it's this massive undertaking and then you put it in the world and you go, oh wow, I have all this sort of space in me freed up. Like I took it all out and I put it in a physical thing and now what do I want to do with all this space?

It's so cool.

I mean, I love that feeling, but it's like, you kind of have to like wait for it to refill. Like you have to almost like go through the cycle of like fully releasing it, getting feedback, not like, oh, did it like do well?

What I mean is like, how did it affect people?

Like, what did they, what is the qualitative things that they say to you about how it affected them rather than like, how many books did you sell? It's like, how many, what did they say in their messages about where it resonated?

Yeah.

I think for me, the thing I constantly try to remind myself of is to always be open to new information and, and to hold it alongside what I already know and, know that it's all fuel for showing up.

And then go out in the world and try to do it.

I'm with you. We contain multitudes and the world is very nuanced. Even though the.

Internet has none.

No nuance online anymore.

I will say I have made so many amazing smart friends from the internet.

Like, that's the thing. It's like, yeah, that sucks.

But I have so many, there's so many funny, smart, interesting people.

And I'm like, wow, like you're all out there in the world.

It's like, there's so, there's just, that makes me feel really hopeful.

Me too. I feel lucky for that.

Yeah.

Even with you, it's like, this is it.

You connect with your people online and then you just have each other. So that's the good side of that.

Pendulum for sure.

Everything is good and bad.

Well, thank you for coming on the show today. Thank you for giving us a much needed boost. And yeah, let's go fight the patriarchy.

Thank you, Sophia. This was so much fun.

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