00:01:13.700I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files.
00:01:17.400Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable,
00:01:21.100abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:01:24.740These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:01:28.800Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app,
00:01:33.380Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:01:54.740We recommend some of our recent episodes with Ben Stiller, Danny McBride, Riz Ahmed, and Mary Steenburgen.
00:02:00.760Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:02:06.800They will support people in power because they want access to power.0.67
00:02:17.180There are no girls on the internet as a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative.0.99
00:02:25.220I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.
00:02:30.700As much as I wish I could kind of ignore it, yes, election season is upon us.
00:02:36.100We're about 130 days out from the November election.
00:02:39.520And as it approaches, I'm actually really wondering whether or not we can expect that same kind of empty,
00:02:46.060horse-race political coverage that doesn't so much inform as it does treat elections as a game.
00:02:52.220Not something, you know, foundational to our democracy with big consequences for all of us.
00:02:58.080It's one of the reasons why I read Popular Information, a newsletter about democracy for people who give a damn.
00:03:04.960And as all of my election-related anxieties are coming to a head, I sat down with Popular Information's founder, Judd Legum, about where we're at and where we might be heading.
00:03:17.400So, Popular Information, I have to tell you, is one of my favorite newsletters.
00:03:21.140The about page says you are not a spectator and democracy is not a game.
00:03:26.440But so much of what is written about politics treats you that way.
00:03:32.420I just think so much of the coverage of politics is premised on the idea that citizens are sort of mini political strategists.
00:03:44.440And you should think about how, in sort of a meta way, of how your views might influence someone else's views and the implications of that, rather than thinking about what are the things that are important to me, what do I believe in, what do I want to see the future like, and what's the best path?
00:04:08.580You know, we've abstracted politics so much that I think we've forgotten what it's really about at its core.
00:04:21.320That's such a good point. I agree. But it's so sad.
00:04:25.900And I think you're right that I see that in the way stories are reported or covered over and over again.
00:04:33.400That sometimes when I read them, I think like, what are the values here?
00:04:37.180Like, like, I do feel that we've sort of lost our way a little bit in terms of how we are trying to engage people in these larger stories about our democracy and our country and our world and what their role is in this.
00:04:48.740Right. Like, I'm just not invested in these conversations about democracy and things that are so important in these kind of gamified ways that are like, well, this team said that.
00:05:00.280And so your reactive response should be this.
00:05:02.220Like, I feel like it really minimizes what's at stake here.
00:05:04.820Yeah. And I think just for example, one of the big topics in the news is Trump's criminal trial, which has been going on for a few weeks now. And so much of the coverage is focused on, well, how are his supporters feeling about it? How is it impacting the presidential race?
00:05:24.660And if it's not impacting the presidential race, maybe it was a mistake to bring the case. But there's much less coverage on what is the fundamental conduct at issue and should that be legal or illegal? And if it's illegal, should it be punished?
00:05:48.120I mean, that's the core question. And the politics of it are something that we're going to find out about in November. But we spend a lot of the time, like so much of our time between now and November will be spent just trying to predict exactly what's going to happen in November. And most of that will just be wrong and wasted time. I mean, that's what we do before every election.
00:06:16.500It's so true. I wonder, have you ever have you seen like polls that indicate that a lot of citizens aren't really motivated by things like, oh, protecting democracy or fostering democracy that I wonder if we've sort of got if we're sort of like giving people what they want in a kind of way that's like, oh, people don't care about, you know, was this against the law or not?
00:06:39.680Or is this threatening democracy or not? They care about something else. And so these stories that are reported in this particular kind of way are sort of giving them that thing that they want, which is like they don't care about things like protecting democracy necessarily. That's not a motivating thing for them.
00:06:54.640I think that it is true that sometimes people, and I think the polling reflects this, are less concerned about issues, whether that's democracy or our precise policy on taxes or other important issues than they are on some of these more cultural or personal questions.
00:07:24.640But I also think that it's too much of a cop-out to just say, well, people are only interested in these things and we're just giving people what they want because what people are interested in and what they think is important is dependent on what they're reading and consuming and learning about and how they're gaining an understanding of what's important and what's not important.
00:07:53.600So for me, as somebody who writes and is dependent on people thinking they are interested in what I am writing about, I am, of course, interested in what people are interested in and what they think.
00:08:14.320But I'm also equally interested in, is there a topic that I know people are probably not yet interested in, but can I figure out a way to explain it and to present it to them in a way which they will become interested in it?
00:08:30.340And I think that, from the perspective of the media, is an important role that gets overlooked too much about the process of shaping what is important and what isn't important.
00:08:43.920Not in a hectoring way, but can you present a story that people might not have been aware of, and if they are aware of it, they would be interested in, if you tell it in a compelling way?
00:08:53.800And I think that you do this in a very particular kind of way because there are so many stories that come across my newsfeed or whatever about wrongdoing, like XYZ person, public figure, elected official, whatever, has done something bad or wrong.
00:09:11.300And something that you, an angle that you take that I really appreciate that is, okay, well, this was a bad thing, whatever, whatever. But what are the, let's peel back the layers. What are the corporate forces that are supporting this person? And are they aligning with their stated values or pledges or whatever that are out in the world?
00:09:29.840Like, who are actually the forces that are propping up this person to do X, Y, Z bad thing?
00:09:35.660And that's something that I think that you do better than almost anybody out there.
00:09:39.040And I wonder, how did you come to sort of seeing stories in this way and taking that framing?
00:09:46.620Well, for better or for worse, I've been looking through campaign finance reports since I was, I think, 18 years old.
00:09:58.680I'm 45 now. So I've been doing it for a long time.
00:10:03.780How did this become something that you were into?
00:10:05.620Well, one of my first jobs in politics was in the research department at the Democratic
00:10:10.740Congressional Campaign Committee. There were about five or six of us there, and we had one
00:10:16.160computer that we shared, but you could print out one of the things you would do at that time was
00:10:22.920create a book. They still talk about books in the research world, but they're no longer physical
00:10:28.180books. But at that time, it was a physical three-hole punch book. And one of you, what you
00:10:32.760would do is just print out all the campaign finance filings for that candidate and their
00:10:39.020opponent. And things have changed quite a bit. But the role of corporate money over those decades
00:10:47.480has become more and more important. And I also think that there are, especially the way in which
00:10:55.860We've sliced and diced some of these congressional districts and just the way demographics have shaken out. There's people who are in districts where they're basically never going to lose. They're not competitive. There's not that many competitive districts these days. There's not that many competitive states these days in the presidential election.
00:11:15.700But everyone or almost everyone to one extent or another requires kind of the buy-in or relies on the buy-in from major corporations and other people who do have a desire and a need to be viewed as taking broadly acceptable positions on social issues for the rest of the world.
00:11:45.700And so that's a way to bring a level or some semblance of accountability to those politicians, or it should be.
00:11:58.900It's not always, but at the very least, I think the first step is understanding, yes, there's this Congressman Mike Collins who is saying extremely racist things online and praising people who are engaged in the ugliest, most disgusting racial stereotypes you could possibly imagine.
00:12:27.060If you were trying to come up with the worst one you could, you wouldn't go too far away. But he's not just existing in a vacuum. He's backed by these major corporations, American Airlines, Delta, all sorts of folks who not only would you think reject this, but really present themselves on a corporate level as being champions of equality and treating people fairly.
00:12:57.060and equally and, and in both their business, as far as attracting customers and also their
00:13:02.220recruiting, uh, you know, bringing in the very best employees have a, have a real interest
00:13:06.900in being viewed as somebody who, who welcomes, you know, all sorts of people, regardless
00:13:12.440of their, their race or, or anything else.
00:13:14.980And so, yeah, you can kind of, I think it's useful for at least at the, at the start for
00:13:20.660people to know what's going on, where the money is flowing, and how that assists some
00:13:29.220of these more radical forces that have taken a pretty prominent role, you know, in our
00:14:33.980And as a Black woman who came of age protesting for lefty causes like ending the war in Iraq in the heart of the Deep South, North Carolina, I was Jalen.
00:14:43.800And those white Southern frat boys taunting and jeering at her, well, I knew them too.
00:14:51.380It's like it's been 20 years and nothing has changed.
00:14:54.960And that video actually hearkened back even further for me to the days of civil rights sit-ins and bus boycotts across the South.
00:15:02.860Two male students were kicked out of their frat, Phi Delta Theta, and a lot of people rightly denounced their behavior.
00:15:09.760But not Georgia Congressman Republican Mike Collins.
00:15:13.800Mike Collins tweeted the video of the protesters making monkey noises at Jalen, saying,
00:15:19.160Ole Miss is taking care of business.0.97
00:15:21.560That business being pretty obvious racism toward a Black woman.
00:15:25.760He tweeted that in May, and it is still up today.
00:15:29.800And Collins didn't really even seem that bent out of shape when he got pushback.
00:15:34.800When people called out the fact that the young men in the video that he reposted glorifying their behavior are being blatantly racist toward a Black woman,
00:15:43.800Collins put out kind of a tepid statement, saying, quote,
00:16:43.520So talking about Collins, you know, I have to say, like, the videos and the imagery coming out of Ole Miss, it hit me on a really kind of visceral level.
00:16:55.660Like, I was thinking, like, oh, we're going to see these images in history books or something.
00:16:59.440Like, that's the level that I felt those images and videos elicited.
00:17:04.080I don't well, you know, when, you know, already they're put out by this guy who himself has written for like white supremacist media outlets.
00:17:13.300Then Mike Collins is like, oh, Ole Miss is really taking care of business.
00:17:16.780What was the reaction after Collins tweeted this?
00:17:22.860Well, I mean, I guess it depends on in which in what group.
00:17:27.460I think that there were some people who were online who were certainly outraged by it. You said you think that you might see these images in a history book. It was almost as if we were watching a history book. You felt like you were watching something from the 50s or something like that.
00:17:45.320It's hard to believe that this is a scene of life in a college campus of any sort in 2024, as opposed to 1944.
00:17:57.660But I think, and again, this goes back to where we started the discussion of how so much political coverage is driven by what might be the implication in a future election.
00:18:15.060So the fact that Mike Collins has a very red seat and oftentimes I think doesn't even attract a – I mean he's in his first term, but that particular district doesn't always even attract a Democratic challenger because people don't want to waste their time.
00:18:32.640Then therefore we're not really going to spend time scrutinizing it.
00:18:36.900My view is, no, this is something that's outrageous and let's look into it and let's look into who this guy is and who's backing him because the implications are much greater than one congressional seat.
00:18:57.100Meaning if this becomes an acceptable level of discourse, I don't think things are going to go in a good direction from there. I can't imagine how things would end up going in a good direction. So that's really what's motivating me. But I think the overall reaction from a media perspective is relatively muted, I would say.
00:19:26.900I would say it's, you know, relative to what's happening.
00:19:31.480Maybe I'm being naive and listeners are going to be like, wow, what a Pollyanna.
00:19:35.140But I was genuinely surprised how it does seem like this story kind of petered out.
00:19:42.560And I think it is exactly what you're saying, that part of it is just like, well, there's no real implications for a future election here.
00:19:49.280So what else is there that we could possibly talk about if that's the case?
00:19:54.800And I was genuinely surprised to see how little traction it got, which is one of the reasons I'm making this episode, because I don't think that's appropriate.
00:20:03.320But, yeah, I think it goes back to what you were saying, how when we have this dynamic that treats politics and democracy as if it is a game, and if the stakes are one way, there's not even really any point of even engaging on some of these issues that really go back to, like, right and wrong.
00:20:21.640And what kind of discourse do we want to have from our elected officials and what kind of
00:20:26.600discourse is unacceptable? We're not even really having those conversations in a lot of in a lot
00:20:30.720of cases. Yeah. And I think the other part of it that I think about sometimes is that it's a very
00:20:37.640short sighted view of the political discourse, meaning, yeah, there might not be implications
00:20:44.160in Mike Collins Congressional District right now, but politics can change pretty rapidly.
00:20:49.580It wasn't that long ago, 2008, when all of the major Democratic candidates, all of them opposed same-sex marriage. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, Barack Obama. And you almost forget that that happened, and you couldn't imagine it happening today.
00:21:08.700You couldn't have a Democratic presidential candidate who opposed same-sex marriage. People would be like, what are you talking about? This is some sort of bizarro land. But it was really 15 years ago that that was not only something that could happen, but it was essentially table stakes because people thought that anything else was too radical.
00:21:29.780Not all people, but the people who were running for president at that time thought it was too
00:21:33.800radical. So yeah, Mike Collins might be able to get away with this today. He can pretty much say
00:21:41.180whatever he wants, but we don't know what the future holds. And I don't think that that should
00:21:47.340be an excuse if there is something that's worth exploring and unpacking and worth people's
00:21:55.480attention from covering it. So that's kind of the, I'm less concerned about what are the immediate
00:22:03.240implications of this story and more about what's important, what's not important. And let's just
00:22:09.900start there. And things will shake out in ways that are unpredictable, not always in a great
00:22:16.940direction. Things go in both directions. We've seen that too. I think when Obama was elected
00:22:24.160in 2008, there were a lot of people saying, you know, the demographics of the country are changing
00:22:30.340and, you know, Republicans are never going to be competitive in presidential elections and
00:22:35.040et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, that's clearly, you know, not the case. So it's not that
00:22:41.420things are always just going to get improved, but things are always changing and changing in ways
00:22:48.660that we don't, we can't always predict.
00:29:17.400But then you don't get to give these stories a little bit of breathing room and be like, well, what's going to be the story that really does have longer term implications?
00:29:24.800it's so easy to just crank out reactions and content,
00:29:28.500but it is harder and I think more valuable
00:29:53.620Like, what are something that is not getting a lot of attention that might get attention if people just knew about it?
00:30:01.000But the reality is there are so many stories, so many important stories that are untold today.
00:30:08.080Because you've had with, you know, Google and Facebook and others sweeping up all the local advertising revenue.
00:30:18.240You know, you've had a really hollowing out of local journalism, which used to be, you know, there might have been 10 people covering a state house, you know, in Maryland or wherever. I'm from Maryland, so that's what I'm bringing up. But, you know, it's a similar story at every state. You might have had 10 people and now you have one or you might have had 50 people and now you have five.
00:30:38.580And that just means there's so many things that are going on that people don't know about. So it is important when you can to try to, in my view, or at least what I try to do, is to try to find things that I think are flying under the radar a bit because I think more and more that's what's happening.
00:31:03.900And this and the desire to kind of pile on or it's safer to write about, you know, it's safer to write about Trump, for instance, you know, because like, because everyone's interested in it. And there's nothing wrong. I mean, he may be our next president. It's not, there's nothing wrong with that. And it's appropriate to be interested in who's the next president.
00:31:24.980But you know that there's going to be kind of a baseline level of interest. You also know that it is going to be difficult to break new ground because there's so much that's already been said.
00:31:39.420So I think that there may be more opportunities in down the ballot, in localities, in states where really important things that are happening that impact people's lives, but are not getting that same level of attention just because of where we are, the dynamics of political media.
00:32:03.480don't even get me started um you know not that long ago i was working for an advocacy organization
00:32:10.200and when trump was in the white house we definitely leaned on that when we would
00:32:16.280send emails out to our list because every subject line got to be like what's trump done now trump
00:32:22.080is terrible trump is doing this and that and rightly so like all of that stuff was true but
00:32:27.320When Trump left office, it was so we had like leaned on that so hard that it was like we had trouble engaging people or getting them interested when we didn't have Trump as this like singular bad guy figure to use.
00:32:46.520And it kind of made me think, like, we really sort of lost the plot here. If we can only talk to our community, our people, when we are pointing to something horrible that Trump has done, legitimately so.
00:32:59.440But, like, there's got to be a better way to engage people politically than that, that, like, actually speaks to their values or, you know, a shared future we want to see together that's not just, like, you know, pointing to him as a bad guy.
00:33:13.240It's something that I really think that some of us might have used as a crutch for a bit.
00:33:18.500And now we're sort of like, oh, well, the media legacy or the media landscape that that has given us is really not so great.
00:33:25.740Yeah. And and at some point, you know, Trump will go away.
00:33:31.060I'm not sure what that point will be, but at some point that will happen.
00:33:34.240But that doesn't that won't be the end of his style of politics.
00:33:40.020And he wasn't the beginning of his style of politics either. We had, over many years, the development of the Tea Party. And what Trump does very effectively, a lot of the time at least, is degrade confidence and trust in institutions.
00:34:05.100I mean, that's that's that's the whole game, ultimately, you know, whether it's saying Barack Obama was really born in Africa or saying the election was actually stolen or saying all the prosecutors who are going after him are corrupt.
00:34:21.060I mean, it's about undermining institutions. But that process did not start with Trump. I mean, this is something that has been funded at a very high level with the Tea Party and with with other groups.
00:34:33.500And once Trump, you know, kind of exit stage left, it will continue. It will continue. And there may be people who are who are even more effective at a kind of rallying support around some of these these topics.
00:34:47.360So I do think it is a mistake to present the problem as one of a specific personality.
00:34:56.320And one other thing that I'll just, since I'm on a little rant here, one other thing that I'll say is, I also think it's a problem that what is now considered a moderate pundit is actually some of the most conservative people on pretty much every issue who don't happen to like Trump stylistically.
00:35:23.280and his, his style of politics. So they're anti-Trump, which is fine, but politically they
00:35:32.000are not moderate. And if we come out of this, if we come out of this and the example is, you know,
00:35:37.340that Bill Kristol or whoever, you know, all these folks who have kind of, you know, are very, or,
00:35:43.040you know, that some people become anti-Trump and then they, they come back and they're pro-Trump
00:35:47.640again. But there are a group of people who are pretty consistently pro-Trump, but that does not
00:35:51.880make them moderate in any way it just means that they happen not to like trump it is so true and
00:36:00.600it really i mean it goes back to what you what we were talking about earlier of like i don't know
00:36:05.520when i think about where i was politically and the political landscape in like 2007 2008 some of the
00:36:11.620people that i feel like i'm being told like oh well that's a moderate voice i i like this i i
00:36:16.640just can't believe where the chips have fallen and like where we are in terms of political discourse
00:36:20.900in this country right now, it really terrifies me.
00:36:24.940And yeah, when I think about where we will be in the future,
00:36:42.100so they're kind of on the right track.0.97
00:36:44.860And it's like, no, they really aren't.
00:36:46.400Like, what has happened to our landscape here?
00:36:48.820Yeah. And it'll be interesting to see how that shakes out. We're either five years away or a few months away from the end of Trump.
00:37:05.780I don't think he'll have another run in him after this if he were to lose another time. But either way, there'll be a new dynamic.
00:37:21.220um and to be honest i'm looking forward to it because i think it as somebody you know i mentioned
00:37:29.060that um you know i've been sort of involved in politics in one way or the other for for most of
00:37:35.880my adult life and i think that the moment we're in now um is is definitely one of the most exhausting
00:37:44.240moments because i just feel like the dynamics have not changed for so long like what what's
00:37:51.540what's interesting in in um kind of invigorating is when you get sort of new dynamics new figures
00:37:58.180on the scene new issues at play new kinds of debates um but today you know we're we're engaged
00:38:06.880in a lot of the old kind of debate so it can become a little exhausting but it doesn't make
00:38:13.400Of course, the stakes are still just as important. So you kind of soldier on. But if things do change one day soon, I won't be too upset about it.
00:38:31.740get bell pure fiber internet with crave netflix and disney plus from 94 a month price guaranteed
00:38:43.640for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit visit bell.ca for details
00:38:48.660and to check availability bell connection is everything run a business and not thinking
00:38:54.020about podcasting think again more americans listen to podcasts than ad supported streaming
00:38:59.040music from Spotify and Pandora. And as the number one podcaster, iHeart's twice as large as the next
00:39:04.360two combined. So whatever your customers listen to, they'll hear your message. Plus, only iHeart
00:39:09.280can extend your message to audiences across broadcast radio. Think podcasting can help your
00:39:13.860business? Think iHeart. Streaming, radio, and podcasting. Let us show you at iHeartAdvertising.com.
00:39:20.460That's iHeartAdvertising.com. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine
00:39:27.740months i survived and i've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed
00:39:34.120them i'm elizabeth smart and these are the survivor files i just remember this low taunting
00:39:41.680voice next to my ear saying shut up don't say anything every week i'm with survivors who live
00:39:49.520through the unthinkable i knew if he woke up without a doubt he was going to hurt me i started
00:39:56.740feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed and i just started screaming they are abducted
00:40:04.560stalked controlled and nearly silenced but these aren't stories about what's taken from them
00:40:10.420they're stories about what it takes to make it out alive listen to the survivor files with
00:40:16.440elizabeth smart on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts
00:40:22.320If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:40:29.180This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:40:41.340I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:40:48.480I'm going to have to look up this story.
00:40:51.620From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:40:58.020It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:41:05.920Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:41:15.080Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:42:35.660Given the kind of reporting that you do, what role do you see corporate money and corporate funding and corporate support having in where we are today?
00:42:46.480When it comes to Collins, what brands and what corporate entities are some of the folks who are supporting him right now?
00:42:54.120Well, I think when you look at it, a lot of his supporters are major corporations that are based in Georgia, which is not.
00:43:09.440So you have folks like Delta Airlines, you have folks like Coca-Cola, and then some of the other national, big national groups who are based elsewhere, AT&T, Verizon.
00:43:28.360And one thing I thought was really interesting about Coca-Cola, and this, of course, goes back to its kind of history in Georgia specifically, which is one of the central places where the civil rights movement kind of was played out.
00:43:49.740um and it coca-cola has always had kind of a forward-looking perspective on those issues and
00:44:00.160i think really you know for a whole variety of reasons it's based in georgia i think it wants
00:44:05.460to make sure that it can attract you know the the best black talent the best talent overall but
00:44:11.340particularly a lot of the talent is are going to be um black people and so they've been pretty
00:44:18.220forward-looking. And they actually, in 2021, pledged and said, we are not going to give any
00:44:27.180money to people who are making these kind of outrageous comments on racial issues. That is
00:44:37.860our pledge. And it fits in with a lot of the other stuff they've done. And I don't want to
00:44:45.300diminish the fact that they probably they have done a lot of you know important important work
00:44:50.080in this in this regard but the thing that i find disturbingly cynical is that coca-cola and the
00:45:00.880other corporations too never really want to be held accountable or follow through on pledges like
00:45:08.460that. They want the PR win, and they definitely want that reputation, but they also want to stay
00:45:18.840on good terms with somebody who is a congressman from their state who they may need to get a
00:45:25.980meeting with or might want to be able to bend his ear a bit on an important issue. So that's
00:45:36.600And that's where I see a much larger role if corporations are really serious about this. I mean, that's the whole thing with whether you want to call it ESG or DEI or whatever acronym you want to call it around corporate social responsibility is there's a lot of criticism from the right.
00:46:05.080But the reality is most of this is just talk that many corporations are saying a lot of stuff. They have a whole fancy website about what they're going to be doing on climate in 2045, but they're not doing anything now. Now they're going in the wrong direction.
00:46:24.520So that's, I think, we'll have to see how that plays out. There's a reason why it's a political battlefield right now is because it's important.
00:46:39.880And the right has come back and is trying to make it politically unpalatable for corporations to take any kind of position on political or social issues.
00:46:56.540Yeah, I mean, given all that, like, given that we're seeing things like DEI and, like, inclusion efforts, even the mildest, the most toothless things being attacked and kind of made politically reactive in these ways, like, where do you see corporations and brands landing?
00:47:14.900And in some way, like, does it matter where they land? Because, you know, I have to tell you, I've taken like a tour of the Civil Rights Museum in Atlanta, which they have an entire Coca-Cola wing.
00:47:26.200And the person who was giving us the tour was from Coca-Cola and was like very proud to tell us what a big ally Coca-Cola was in the civil rights movement and how important that economic, economic flexing was to the civil rights movement and all of that.
00:47:41.380And, like, here in 2024, having them be like, well, we made this pledge, but what are you going to do?
00:47:58.540And on some level, like, does it matter?
00:48:02.820I think it, I mean, I think, again, it's the short term and the long term.
00:48:07.600I think short term, there's very little in it for brands right now. And that's why you sort of see a retrenching. The most dramatic thing we saw happen was after January 6th, when you did see a lot of corporations pledge to stop donating to the members of Congress that voted against certifying the election.
00:48:33.260But quickly, we've also seen most of those companies roll those back, or they did it for a year or two years, and then they said that was enough, and now we're going to donate to those members of Congress again.
00:48:47.040Because the reality is that right now, the political environment is pretty evenly split. Maybe it's not completely evenly split, but if you want to appeal to everyone, it's pretty easy to make people upset.
00:49:04.580But I do think that there's a broader trend where people are much more conscious in their consumption. Maybe not right now about the politics of the companies who are producing the products that they're consuming, but people are much more interested, for instance, in if they're buying broccoli, like where that broccoli came from.
00:49:28.920They're much more interested today than they were 10 years ago. They're much more interested in how their t-shirt was produced. Not everyone, but many more people than were producing.
00:49:39.680And I think that if people are starting to engage in those kinds of questions and think more critically about those kinds of questions, it is a natural next step and certainly a step that some people, although maybe not a critical mass of people, are taking to think about what role is this company playing in the political issues that I care about?
00:50:04.120how are they using their influence? Because there is a path where the companies take a step
00:50:16.240back and say, we're not going to do anything. We're not going to donate to politicians. We're
00:50:20.600not going to engage in lobbying. We're just going to focus on making our widgets and selling our
00:50:24.720widgets, and we'll let other people worry about politics. That's not really where they are right
00:50:29.140now. Where most companies are right now is they will support people in power because they want
00:50:35.360access to power. And I do think that there is a point in the foreseeable future when a critical
00:50:43.020mass of consumers say that that is not good enough and that I'm going to shift my consumption to
00:50:49.500corporations that either stay out of it or corporations that more reflect my values.
00:50:54.620So I do think that this process of, at least at the beginning, kind of maybe just exposing the role that corporations play in politics may lead somewhere. Maybe I won't be doing this work long enough to see it, but it's not hard to imagine a world where people are paying much closer attention to these kinds of issues.
00:51:23.720Well, to that end, you know, in your newsletter piece about what happened at Old Miss, I noticed that, you know, you're like, oh, popular information reached out to AT&T, Verizon, Coke, didn't hear back.
00:51:34.540How much of this work for you is like being willing to ask the company an annoying question and then being like, I'm not going to answer that.
00:51:42.400Like how much of this is just being like, well, you said X, Y, Z publicly.
00:51:50.920And it is it is it is sometimes frustrating and you don't always get an answer or if you do get an answer, it's it's sometimes it's it's no comment.
00:52:02.160And I do think that people are much less likely to weigh in now than they even were in 2021 because there's been a concerted effort to try to present this idea that corporations have gone woke and they're guarding against the other side of it.
00:52:22.260So, yeah, that is a big part of it. But I also think it's, you know, important work. I mean, we were the first people in the newsletter was the first place to report that any companies had decided to not to stop donating to the members of Congress who who voted not to certify on January 6.
00:52:44.560And it's because we sent out inquiries to 177 companies, I think, for the first issue.
00:52:56.300But that four turned out to be fairly significant and helped create a dynamic where other companies filed suit.
00:53:06.260So I think it's important to ask those questions.
00:53:08.340And I think sometimes even when you don't get an answer, it's important to know, it's important for the companies to know that it's getting written about and that it's going to be discussed and talked about.
00:53:22.240And I know that companies do pay attention to this kind of reporting, and that's one of the reasons why I stick with it.
00:53:34.080But the other reason is I know that a lot of readers appreciate it, and a lot of readers are looking for that information.
00:53:43.800It's probably not the first thing on the top of everyone's mind when they're in the grocery store or whatever they're doing, going about their day.
00:53:51.220You have to remind yourself when you're working in a political space or the media space that people have other things going on.
00:53:59.800They've got jobs and lives and kids and all sorts of responsibilities. And so they're not always going to be focused on this stuff. But, you know, for the people that are or might be, you know, establishing this factual record, I think is worth some time.
00:54:18.900i think popular information has completely changed the culture around how we think about
00:54:27.940who is funding what and and our role in it and and all of that so i completely agree and i guess
00:54:33.460one of my last questions is for folks who are listening who are like i'm so checked out on this
00:54:38.800i don't even know like how do you stay engaged and not just sit out all of this sit out your
00:54:45.640democracy especially when things are so exhausting and everything seems so exhausting to keep up with
00:54:51.440well i i think that's it's a tough question because i think it is difficult enough to kind
00:55:04.720of keep your own life on track and your own life in order sort of taking in all these external
00:55:11.060things that might not be happening in your front door is difficult. And I think it's actually okay
00:55:17.380sometimes. I know this is maybe like anathema to people who work in the political space,
00:55:24.320but it's okay sometimes to like check out and just focus on yourself. But I do think that the
00:55:32.340progress in politics or things that are more can give you some hope don't usually come in the form
00:55:44.380of this one sort of dramatic event where everything is fixed again and everything is
00:55:52.380good again. That's not the way that it works. But I think that things that can impact even
00:55:58.940one person's life and, or just having someone feel like they're more understood or more valued,
00:56:11.440um, that can be really important. And that's what I, you know, try to, uh, try to focus on.
00:56:22.900And so I think if you're feeling like what you're doing doesn't matter or it's just pointless to be engaged, your contribution might just be explaining the importance of, let's say, expanding the child tax credit to one person and getting them to maybe not even change their mind.
00:56:49.620But maybe just understand that issue and why a lot of people rely on it and why we have, you know, a lot of kids who are still living in poverty in the United States.
00:57:00.500That could be I think that's that's like a contribution that you can feel OK about.
00:57:05.640You know, it doesn't have to be that, you know, you've you've passed a major piece of legislation because that's that's something that that anyone really can do these days.
00:57:15.080Um, so, so that's, I, that's, I think when I'm thinking clearly, I think that's the kind
00:58:15.080If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:58:21.480Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:58:30.120Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.