00:04:21.760But having a conversation with some other education professionals about what will this time period be called.
00:04:27.780And we were bandying about some ideas. And we actually realized that the people whose job it will be to name this time period, you know, 25 plus years in the future, when people are studying it, are currently Gen Z.
00:04:43.500They are currently 20, 22 years old. And the names that they will come up with are potentially impacted by their own current vernacular. Like, what were we calling it then? The Great Dumpster Fire.
00:05:00.680Or something along those lines, right?
00:05:07.960So interesting to see how history is going to treat all of this.
00:05:11.140I mean, and also so much of it has to do with what is going to play out this year and in the next 10 years in terms of elections.
00:05:20.700I love what you do because, look, we talk a lot about what I think are the dangers and the pitfalls of social media, which are very real, okay?
00:05:32.200But at the same time, social media can give a platform for education that I don't think we've ever had before.
00:05:38.780Totally. Yeah, totally. And that's that's really how I got started. Like I said, it was COVID and the 2020 election when I started making just little like fact based nonpartisan explainer videos about why Chad in the comments on Facebook is wrong about the fact that the Electoral College is not a university you can graduate from.
00:05:58.980Yes. It's always Chad, actually, who says things like that. It's always, always, always Chad.
00:06:04.160It's always Chad. And they are just so confidently wrong. And they know that if they say it with an authoritative tone of voice, that people will believe them.
00:06:17.980I mean, if you think about, like, how men tend to communicate with each other, especially young men tend to communicate with each other, they get into these big verbal altercations.
00:06:28.380Like, no, man, he's not the greatest goalie of all time.
00:06:45.120That is how they communicate with each other and they demonstrate their authority. And again, I'm broadly overgeneralizing, but they demonstrate their authority by talking more loudly and more forcefully about something.
00:07:02.560And whoever's the best at that thing, talking loudly and forcefully, sounding convinced of their own arguments, often gets to be the winner of whatever it is, the fantasy football draft or, like, just the argument around the foosball table.
00:07:54.000It was very, very evident when everyone was home for the second half of the year 2020.
00:08:02.780Everyone was home with opinions on the Internet, you know, watching the Tiger King and wondering, you know, arguing about masks and, you know, various topics.
00:08:40.000I had social media accounts, obviously, and I owned a different business.
00:08:43.840And so I had as a I was a photographer. And so I had a following of around 12 or 14,000 people on Instagram, which is a very good number for a local service provider type business.
00:09:01.040Right. Like that's a great following for that purpose. Yeah. So that was my experience is that I had been posting on social media. I didn't just decide one day to start a new Instagram account. But none of no part of the account was dedicated to anything that I'm doing now. It was really dedicated to like, here's some pictures I took. Oh, my gosh, look at this really cute baby. Look at this beautiful, beautiful wedding. You know, contact me, blah, blah, blah. If you want to book whatever. Like it was primarily used to communicate with potential clients.
00:09:31.040was not at all what I'm doing now. Very different. Very, very different. So how do you pivot? How do
00:09:37.280you get to where you are now to people like Isabel Wilkerson calling you a national treasure
00:09:43.780and a one-woman cavalry for truth, saving our republic, one loving and clear-eyed lesson at a
00:09:50.020time? That is a direct quote. Listen, I'm never going to get over that Isabel Wilkerson quote
00:09:55.180like that. They're going to need to put that on my headstone. They need to put it on your headstone.
00:10:00.340I say this all the time because when The Times reviewed Sicilian Inheritance, they compare me to John Updike, which is ridiculous.
00:10:08.000But I also bring it up all the time.0.92
00:11:16.720So that was really how I pivoted is I just started asking my existing audience what I
00:11:21.660i could do to help um and understanding that a huge chunk of my audience was people that i knew
00:11:27.420personally right like they were clients i had worked with like if you have a new baby and i
00:11:32.480take your new baby's pictures it's like the mom and dad plus the grandma and grandpa plus the
00:11:37.360aunts and uncles who all want to see like when is the sneak peek of baby pictures coming you know
00:11:41.940these are people with whom i have at least um a passing familiarity so they so they know me
00:11:49.400They're like, they're like direct connections to rest or like one, one degree of separation.
00:11:54.060That's right. That's right. It wasn't a lot of strangers who were following me. So I began just by asking them, how can I help you? And that, it turns out, leading up to the 2020 election, there was a tremendous amount of demand for just straight answers. Like what will happen if there's a tie in the electoral college?
00:12:48.100So there was a tremendous amount of demand just from people who were curious about things.
00:12:55.220But also, it really took off when local news stations and local radio stations around the country needed somebody to come on as a guest to be able to explain what was happening in a nonpartisan way.
00:13:13.900Because local media, you know, you're like six o'clock news, the weather report, blah, blah, blah, that kind of media, they can't afford to alienate half of their audience by bringing on hyper-partisan guests that tell you who to vote for.
00:13:27.900Unlike the cable channels that have an already set sort of viewpoint of like people who are watching us already believe that this person is the right person to vote for and we're bringing on guests that support that notion.
00:13:40.460And your local radio station that's like, you know, listen to Dave in the morning, they can't afford to cut out half their audience.
00:14:39.080And I recently interviewed Carolyn Chambers, who has the substack and the book, What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking.
00:14:48.140And she's like, yes, people can Google very easy recipes that you can cook when you have a bunch of kids, or I can just deliver it to you.
00:14:55.620And I think the most successful media brands right now are the ones who are just giving people what they need, what they need and what they want and saying, how can I best serve you?
00:15:04.820As opposed to media brands that say, I know what's best for you.
00:15:08.540I think that's so true because she's absolutely right.
00:15:12.760There's no shortage of ideas when you Google 20-minute dinner recipes.
00:15:18.800You could literally scroll for days and days.
00:16:08.520And I do think that you did something similar with this kinds of information, with these kinds of nonpartisan lessons.
00:16:19.100And questions people just have about the government, because you could Google them.0.98
00:16:22.600You're going to get a lot of spam shit, is what you're going to get.0.96
00:16:25.360You're going to have to sift through a lot of things.0.98
00:16:27.200And so I'm curious, what are some of the things that people wanted to know?
00:16:31.860I mean, I used to be a political reporter. I'm someone who has been on the campaign trail. I still had so many questions in 2020. Can the government really do that? Like, what exactly will happen with some of these electoral counts, you know? And so I'm curious what other people want to know.
00:16:48.660Well, one of the things that I have never really talked about, but I'll tell you now, is that there were newsrooms of major networks that would text me their questions.
00:17:04.120I'm not surprised. I have lived in those newsrooms, okay? And I am not surprised at all.
00:17:08.920they would be it was clear where it was like can we just get sharon to answer that because it's
00:17:14.140really complicated i'm gonna have to say it's gonna take me two hours or maybe she can just
00:17:18.720give us the answer in five minutes to come up with the answer to this question why does the
00:17:24.000electoral count act do x y and z so some of the questions people asked like i cannot tell you how
00:17:30.100many times i have been asked the question what happens if everybody in government dies
00:17:36.560people are really curious about what will happen if everybody dies if every single man is there
00:17:44.600really a you know a designated survivor and what happens what happens if even the designated
00:17:51.680survivor dies like these are the kinds of things that are apparently keeping people up at night
00:17:56.860i was not aware of that see that that's an example of how like i would not have been meeting my
00:18:01.860community's needs because i would not think to myself today's lesson is about what happens if0.67
00:18:07.140every single person dies in a nuclear holocaust i did not think you were going to say that okay
00:18:12.060like i i this is i thought you were going to talk about you know some articles to the constitution
00:18:16.540um no people want to know this specific practical specifics practical specifics very i mean of
00:18:25.420course people are like what does the second amendment really mean and those are often chads
00:18:29.020trying to beat you into an argument about guns. Chad wants to fight with you. Yes, yes. But often
00:18:34.740what people want is an answer to a practical question. Why does the government try to,
00:18:39.980why do they try to shut down all the time? That's stupid. Like, am I going to get paid if they,1.00
00:18:46.820when do I get paid if they shut down? How long can they shut down for? How do we avoid having
00:18:52.280a shutdown? Well, how do they get unshut down? How do they reopen? You know, like, these are
00:18:57.000the kinds of like very practical, real life questions in ways that the government intersects
00:19:01.340with their own lives. Because the federal government is the largest employer in the
00:19:05.740country. Tens of millions of people work for government contractors, even if you're not a
00:19:10.180direct employee. These are real questions people have. And it's not always easy to Google for an
00:19:15.980answer of like, why do they keep shutting down? How do we get them to stop shutting down? And
00:19:21.380And when will I get paid if they do shut down?
00:19:34.780I mean, if every single person in the executive branch is, you know, like every member of the cabinet head, et cetera, is dead, there's no contingency plan for that.
00:19:47.620Mm hmm. So what would happen likely? I can only guess. That's all I can do is guess at what will happen is that Congress would pass some kind of a some kind of, you know, act saying we're going to have new elections. We're going to get a new executive. You know, like Congress is Congress dead, too. That's I mean, this just goes into such a multiverse of questions.
00:20:41.140this was like top of mind for people fascinating fascinating well and no i do want to say in case
00:20:48.740i anyone in my audience doesn't already follow you which they all should be following you um
00:20:56.440you went from 12 000 14 000 followers to 1.1 million that's bananas okay that is just bananas
00:21:06.060crazy how long did that take i remember very vividly that nearing the end of 2020 i was
00:21:18.520getting ready to hit 50 000 followers and that just seemed like a number that was
00:21:23.860unbelievable so huge so huge 50 000 seemed ridiculous and one of my friends even texted me
00:21:31.780and was like, I thought people who had 20,000 followers for a big time and you're going to
00:21:37.500hit 50,000 followers. And I actually planned a little event. I was like, wouldn't it be so fun
00:21:43.580to do a little fun little Venmo giveaway? You guys can all send me 50 cents in Venmo and then
00:21:49.260I will get $1,000 and I will give it away to a waitress or some deserving person will get this
00:21:57.020$1,000 and it will change their day and it'll be so great. It'll be so wonderful.
00:22:01.780And I was doing that in celebration of, like, 50,000 followers at the end of 2020. So I don't remember the precise moment that I hit one million followers. I want to say it was sometime in 2023.
00:22:16.060three okay um but but end of 2022 something along those lines um but it just the thing about it is
00:22:24.620that anytime there is an extraordinary amount of upheaval in the united states it's like that's
00:22:33.740when people watch the news right 9 11 everyone was watching the news nobody's like oh did something
00:22:39.580happen of course we're all glued to our tvs uh so anytime there is like an extraordinary amount
00:22:45.900of upheaval like january 6th like russia invading ukraine uh these types of like very very uh
00:22:54.580noteworthy events people are watching the news and more people pay attention to what i'm doing
00:23:00.700so uh i don't i don't like that that's those are big like leaps in growth but nevertheless that's
00:23:06.980true yes and the news i have to say again as someone who has made news and media for so long
00:23:14.220constantly feels urgent now. In a way, because we have these devices in our hands, which are
00:23:21.180giving us news alerts all the time. I mean, right now, things do feel incredibly fraught.
00:23:26.260But I will say the urgency of constantly understanding things and knowing what has
00:23:32.740happened is different than it was five years ago. Totally. I totally agree with you. And
00:23:37.960it seems like now you're a bad citizen if you are not angry about everything that's happening
00:23:48.340all the time. If you are not constantly outraged, you're a bad person. You're a bad United States
00:23:56.080citizen. You don't care about people. You don't care about your neighbors. You don't care about0.99
00:24:00.220what's happening to the people on the such and such place. You don't care about this community.
00:24:04.560you feel like if I'm a good person, I need to be constantly outraged. That is how I will
00:24:12.800demonstrate my virtue, is by being angry all the time. And it's not hard to be made angry.
00:24:20.120Pick a news channel and they will tell you what to feel angry about that day.
00:24:24.400Yes, they will. Yes, they will. Yes. The anger, the rage baiting and virtue signaling are so real,
00:24:31.140so real these days and i do feel like what you do on your instagram account and also what you're
00:24:39.320doing in this new book are kind of the opposite about that of that um because it is not ragey
00:24:44.880you are presenting facts you are presenting information but then with your new book you're
00:24:48.900also offering some hope which i love thank you i you know it is easy like listen that's how
00:24:55.720news organizations get you to watch that's how they make money yeah right nobody's nobody's
00:25:00.960tuning in to be like today four kittens were rescued from a tree and yay firefighters are
00:25:06.040wonderful public servants that might be a great story but you're not rushing home to tune into
00:25:11.120that it's just not how the human mind works you know you pay attention to things that are scary
00:25:15.880so that the wolf doesn't eat you that is how we have evolved that is how we have evolved yes yes
00:25:21.300That is how this works. It just works.
00:25:23.760Yes. And that's how money is made. If you want a free press, we don't have the publicly funded press in the United States in the way they do in other countries. If you want a free press, the press has to make money and they have to make money by attracting your attention. This is just, if you don't like the media, then you don't like capitalism. Okay?
00:25:46.080That is, anytime people are like, oh, the media is dividing us, the media is dividing us, that might be true, but your beef is actually with capitalism.
00:28:23.760All right, we're going to take one more quick break.
00:28:25.240And when we get back, we're going to talk about the small and the mighty 12 unsung Americans who changed the course of history from the founding to the civil rights movement.
00:28:33.060Because I don't mind selling your product.
00:28:39.880okay we're back tell us about the small and the mighty
00:28:50.600well you know 75 percent of history books are written by men and boys
00:28:58.980yeah men and boys boy men boy men boys yes gentlemen fellows um and when you get into
00:29:07.100the category of biography even, 85% of biographies are written by men. Oh my God. Yes. Only 6% of
00:29:16.300male biographers select a female subject. So what does that tell you, Jo? What does that tell you
00:29:24.800about what we learn and how we learn about history, right? Yes. Yes. Something that I think about all
00:29:31.160the time. I mean, who is both writing history and who is gatekeeping history? That's right. That's
00:29:36.260right. And so, you know, there are, I talk about this in the book too, that there are these sort
00:29:41.740of dominant suns that eclipse everything else that is happening in the universe. And these
00:29:47.880dominant suns have the most ships and the biggest armies and the largest wads of cash and the
00:29:55.340largest numbers of government jobs. And it is around these dominant suns that the universe
00:30:04.240tends to orbit uh that this is how we learn history is it's time posted by war it is you
00:30:12.080know people uh people become noteworthy because they they have amassed the most things the largest
00:30:19.000number of things whatever that is and that's not to say that we shouldn't learn about george
00:30:24.080washington of course we should learn about george washington obviously there's there's plenty of
00:30:29.400books on him most of them are written by men except for one alexis close you never forget
00:30:33.880your first. Almost every single other book on George Washington is written by dude bro. Yeah,
00:30:40.980some of them are better than others, of course. So there's a lot of stories about people who did
00:30:47.300really, really important, consequential things that changed the course of history,
00:30:52.540whose stories you never get to hear. Some of it is by virtue of accident, like no descendants
00:31:00.220saved their letters. Some of it is by intentional exclusion, where the people who were the dominant
00:31:07.780sons of history intentionally eclipsed the smaller players in their story to save a seat
00:31:15.200for themselves at the table. Or the male writers of history didn't deem their contribution important
00:31:23.900enough or didn't know where to look for it in a way that told a compelling story. So that's the
00:31:33.460gist, is that there are so many people who have done truly incredible things in history whose
00:31:39.360stories we do not know. And if not now, then when? And if not me, then who? Yes. Yes. Yes. And yes.
00:31:50.540i'm not going to ask you if you have a favorite story because that is like choosing whether you
00:31:56.520have a favorite child although i say all the time i'm like i do a favorite child um but tell us
00:32:01.620most people do but tell us one story that you really love like one story that you think that
00:32:05.860will be really captivated by well there's this one woman in the book who i really consider like
00:32:12.640a personal hero in many ways and she has a really a set of life circumstances that you you would
00:32:19.780never want to trade places with. You would never be like, oh my, yeah, I would love to trade places
00:32:24.480with her. Like we think about people who have billions of dollars. Her set of life circumstances0.99
00:32:29.420is terrible. You know, she has a baby who has an undiagnosed birth defect and dies a few weeks
00:32:38.000after her birth. She discovers that her husband has an entire secret second family, like a secret
00:32:45.920second wife and other children and then shortly after discovering this she's already she's given
00:32:50.920birth to her second child shortly after discovering this her husband dies oh my gosh yeah leaving her1.00
00:32:57.580with uh you know this baby uh that she cannot support because women were not allowed to have1.00
00:33:03.960things like jobs uh outside of the home aside from unless you wanted to be like a nurse or teacher1.00
00:33:09.760that was it that was what women could do you could do washing and knitting and sewing and teaching1.00
00:33:13.520and nursing. That was it. If you were lucky. If you were lucky. Yes. That's right. Yeah. That's0.99
00:33:19.860right. If you had the ability to attend college for some of those professions. So she, throughout
00:33:26.580her lifetime, she is falsely accused and arrested for crimes she did not commit. She is almost
00:33:33.600killed multiple times in things like a bus accident, a train accident. The police intercept
00:33:41.020a a group of uh boys slash men who are on their way to firebomb her house uh she is fired from
00:33:49.980her job she is you know just i could go on about the incredible life circumstances are terrible
00:33:57.740that nobody would be like let's trade and yet she goes on to teach rosa parks how to be rosa parks
00:34:10.620And as the sort of grandmother, one of the grandmothers of the civil rights movement, without her efforts, who knows where the United States would be?
00:34:21.620And she has asked at the end of her life what she has learned.
00:34:27.640And one of the things that she says has really stuck with me, and I feel like it's a lesson that we can learn today, we can still use today, which is, I have learned that I can work with my enemies.0.92
00:34:39.940because they might have a change of heart at any moment and i was like damn if she can say that
00:34:48.960after everything else she has been through i have learned that i can work with my enemies0.52
00:34:55.000because they might have a change of heart at any moment and and make no mistake this woman had
00:35:00.260enemies who were actively trying to get her yes actively out to get her um so often our perspective
00:35:07.960is today well we don't agree on following things and so you're done we're done immediately no
00:35:14.620yeah immediately no we're not friends anymore unfollow delete block that's our perspective
00:35:20.780today unfollow delete block we're done here um but how can that person who is your ideological
00:35:27.740quote-unquote enemy how can they ever have a change of heart if they are never around you
00:35:34.000to be influenced for the good? If they are only surrounding themselves with other enemies,
00:35:40.740they are not going to have a change of heart. How do you bring people around to be on the
00:35:45.900right side of history? It's by continuing to be in a relationship with them. And now I'm not
00:35:52.000talking about staying in an abusive relationship. I'm not talking about subjecting yourself to
00:35:56.100domestic violence or anything of that nature. But I'm talking about just like a working,
00:35:59.920or even just a working acquaintanceship with somebody else? How can they ever be influenced
00:36:05.340for the good if we have, you know, deleted and blocked them from our lives for believing
00:36:11.300something different? Haven't you ever changed your mind about something where you look back
00:36:15.360and you're like, damn, why did I used to think that? That's so stupid that I used to believe1.00
00:36:21.220that. Yes. Yes. Haven't we all been given the opportunity to grow? And now we can look back1.00
00:36:28.100at some things that we used to think or say or do and be like oh my god that was that's embarrassing
00:36:32.240that's so embarrassing please do not bring that up that was super embarrassing bang
00:36:37.400okay yes i just i always regret them every time absolutely but many friends have talked me out of
00:36:45.080them i got my haircut like um did me more in ghost one oh no oh oh um and do you have the face for
00:36:55.240not really because that's a very specific face it's a very specific haircut and then when you
00:37:02.160have really straight hair that's kind of thick um it just immediately grows out and begins to
00:37:08.260look very misshapen and terrible so of course we all had regrettable haircuts but we've all
00:37:14.340said and done regrettable regrettable things so many aren't you so glad that your middle school
00:37:20.160was not on snapchat yes oh god so glad no so glad my sorority wasn't on snapchat that my entire
00:37:27.180college experience was not on social media nor were the majority of my 20s to be honest yes yes
00:37:32.980yes and think about how much more you would regret today if it was on social media yes um
00:37:40.460we all have to be uh given the space to to change and grow without being deleted and blocked out
00:37:50.140of anybody who might help us change and grow for the better um and i just her perspective
00:37:57.880and what she is able to accomplish and who she is able to impact because she refuses to give up
00:38:04.660despite the obstacles that so many people have thrown in her path man i just got a soft spot
00:38:10.320for her i really do as well you should as well you should absolutely oh gosh i just got chills
00:38:17.040And the book is filled with stories like that. So I'm just, I'm very excited for everyone to read
00:38:21.820it. I think we can all use a little bit of hope right now and inspiration on both sides of the
00:38:28.080aisle. This is, you know, keeping these conversations going among all of us is so
00:38:34.180important. And I think that the book shows us different ways of doing that, which I really
00:38:37.820love. So thank you for writing it. Thank you. Thanks for reading it. I appreciate that.
00:38:41.780that is all we have for today thank you so much for being here if you love the show leave us a
00:38:48.940review share it with a friend do all the things now go do something nice for yourself follow
00:38:53.920sharon for sure and definitely definitely buy a copy of the small and the mighty for all of your