Here's Where It Gets Interesting - America at 250: Staying Hopeful, plus Saying No in a World That Demands Yes

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Are we heading toward a second civil war? No, but what might happen could still be unsettling. Sharon has an honest conversation with YouTube civics creator Mr. Beat about radicalization, propaganda, and why there’s a difference between optimism and hope.  Plus, in a culture that rewards compliance and punishes pushback, Dr. Sunita Sah tells us why saying no can be courageous and the most effective thing you can do.  And be sure to read our newsletter at ThePreamble.com – it’s free! Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act of hope. Credits: Host and Executive Producer: Sharon McMahon Supervising Producer: Melanie Buck Parks Audio Producer: Craig Thompson (00:00:00) Could the US have another civil war? (00:12:13) Optimism vs hope (00:20:58) Saying no in a world that demands yes To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Visit medcan.com slash moments to get started. Welcome to the Preamble podcast. This week I speak with one of your favorite people on the internet, Matt Beat, who you might know as Mr. Beat. He is a teacher, podcast host, and musician who makes learning about history and geography actually fun. Like, for real, kids willingly watch his YouTube videos. We talk about whether there could ever be another civil war in the United States and why he contacts his member of Congress every day. Plus, why is defiance seen in a a negative light while compliance is viewed so positively. Dr. Sanita Saw tells me why it's sometimes good to be bad. Our conversation is ahead. I'm Sharon McMahon, and this is the Preamble podcast. Here is some of my conversation with Matt Beat. I reached out to you again because this is the big year, 250 years. I mean, first of all, are you going to do anything or are you have any plans? yet for the 250th anniversary? Yeah, the semi-susquintennial.

I'm glad you said it because I can't say that word. The word on everybody's lips is semi-susquantennial. No. Well, I do have a children's book coming out to celebrate, and I'm taking part in a really interesting project that is sort of the brainchild of the former archivist of the United States, Kaleen Shogin. I'm actually going to have the opportunity to interview her

when she's coming to the Dole Institute. Oh, great. She's great. Colleen Shogin's great. Yes. Yeah, it's a very just, it seems like it's a tumultuous time. And I know there's a lot of Dumers that watch my channel that just like, how can we even think about the 250th when it seems like, you know, we have all these as existential threats to the Republic. I mean, I think that's kind of why we need to reflect because it's not like it's always been smooth sailing in the United States of America.

It hasn't. Yeah. When you look at the past. moments of deep division in American history, what patterns do you see repeating today? One of them is the government's use of propaganda techniques. And these are not specific to the United States. Other governments, other countries have used similar tactics. I have found the current recruitment advertisements from various government agencies. Very interesting. Have you been following these on Facebook at all?

I sometimes get the ads, yeah, for like ICE to join ICE, like me. Yeah. Yeah, join ICE, protect the homeland, and they are very patriotic paintings from the past that are very sentimental, nostalgic, protect the American way of life. And it's like a Norman Rockwell painting of a family, you know, having a picnic by the river. And there's like a church in the background. And they're driving like a 1950s Chevrolet car. I think that's a really interesting concept of protect the homeland that we have seen repeated throughout history.

We're also going through a period of anti-immigrant sentiment in the United States. And this is a repeating pattern in the United States. We've targeted different groups of immigrants throughout our history. This anti-immigrant sentiment is not a new idea in American history, but the current form that it is taking has some novel additions to it. So those are just two like right off the top of my head, but I could keep going. I'd love to hear what some of yours are. I notice when I look at American history, there's like a 40-year cycle almost, like because

the United States has always had lots of immigrants, the first big anti-immigrants, xenophobic movement we saw pretty much like in the 1840s is a backlash to mostly Irish immigrants. which is crazy to think about. And then flash forward 40 years to like the 1880s. And that's when you have stuff like the Chinese Exclusion Act. Flash forward again to the 1920s. And this is the first time we have really strict immigration legislation by Congress, you know, the first red scare.

But then 40 years later is the 1960s, which it seems like it was going to happen. But then the civil rights movement would just kind of slam the door on it. And so I feel like it's been a long time since we've seen this kind of xenophobia. And it's interesting to me, too, that modern conservatism, like the type that Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were proponents of was largely pro-immigrant. They gave a lot of very pro-immigrant speeches. Ronald Reagan made a very famous speech at the Statue of Liberty. So I think this is also an interesting pendulum swing where since the early, you know, 19. 1980s, conservatives have been proponents of welcoming immigrants into the sort of the American way. They want to come here for a better life, and that's to be admired.

They were often admired for their work ethic. They were admired for wanting to seek out a better life for their family. And we had all kinds of government messaging to sort of welcome immigrants from both ends of the spectrum. And I do think that has changed now. This is a novel moment. I mean, there's a lot of people that bring up the. the 1850s, understandably, they bring up that civil war. I mean, can you even imagine a second

civil war? But I mean, more and more people are bringing this up. So how would you compare specifically the 2020s to the 1850s? People ask me about civil war all the time. Are we on the brink of a civil war? And one of the things that I usually say is that the United States is now it'd be very difficult geographically to fight a civil war. We do not have a way to call. carve up the country into like North versus South, Union versus Confederacy, the way that we did in the 1850s, where these are the slave states, these are the free states. We don't have those sort of neat markers anymore. And what you have are regions of nearly every state that believe different things. California is a great example. We think of California as being this very

liberal place, but there are actually millions and millions of Republicans right-leaning people in California. So is it just now Orange County fighting Los Angeles County? How are we doing that? Do you know what I mean? So the logistics of civil war are not at all clear to me anymore. I do, however, think we are already experiencing a type of Cold War, an ideological Cold War in the United States, in which if you think back to the Cold War against the Soviet Union, against, you know, this battle between sort of free market capitalism versus the godless commies as we viewed, you know, communist nations during the Cold War, that was very much an ideological battle. We disagreed with who they were fundamentally.

It didn't matter if they had any good ideas because who they were was corrupt to us. And there's this wholesale sort of ideological writing off of entire groups of people that I view as a type of Cold War in the United States. But I don't see how the logistics for a fighting war work. You know, like wars are often started by the extremists. And so it may not matter that we have so many moderates in this country that we have 60% of us that are actually agree on nearly everything, actually. I think that the ones who are really desperate could like start stuff whether we like it or not. But like you said, to your point, though, there's no way it would be like states versus states.

It would be, I think, more urban versus rural. I've had people comment underneath my videos. Anytime I mentioned Civil War, they always say, oh, it'd be more like the troubles in Ireland. Yeah, like, because you'd have, you know, you'd have ambushes and terrorist attacks, probably. Yeah. Rogue actors as opposed to state actors. Yep.

For the Civil War, it's all state actors, the government of X fighting the government of Y or the alleged government of Y, depending on your viewpoint. So we don't have state actors, but I certainly will grant that we could be in the position of having a significant amount of civil unrest. Yeah.

It's different than a wholesale civil war like we see in some other countries that are happening right now. I've been thinking a lot about the 1890s. I have this book by H.W. Brands, the reckless decades, about the 1890s. And I was like, holy crap. The 2020s or the 1890s.

Do the 2020s feel like, late Gilded Age, early progressive era more? Or do they feel more like reconstruction? That's what my mind went to as well. And also the trends in the Titans of Industry, you can see the correlation between these sort of robber barons of the Gilded Age and the AI tech boom and a small handful of people who are controlling vast quantities of countries' resources.

I do think there's a correlation there as well. there were huge issues also in the 1890s, huge issues with government corruption. And that's, of course, one of the things that Teddy Roosevelt became famous for was he was like, listen, I am going to clean this up. We are going to have a merit-based civil service. We are not going to just give jobs to our buddies. Imperfect as Teddy Roosevelt was, because all presidents have their foibles for sure, that was one of the things that Teddy Roosevelt became famous for before he ever was elected president.

So, yes, the progressive era was a swing of the pendulum away from this, like, cronyism, government corruption, robber barons, extraordinary economic growth into new areas. I can definitely see some overlap. And then also, as you're saying about populism, the populism at the time in 1890s, in some ways was an answer to the cronyism. of the late gilded age of like, hold on. We shouldn't have nine people controlling everything in the country. So that is one way that I see it as being slightly different,

is the right-wing populism of this moment feels different than the progressive era populism. Yeah, I mean, at least rhetorically, though, there are similarities. Whenever you hear someone who leans to the right, like they first were attracted to Trump because he was the outsider who was going to drain the swamp. and obviously things didn't work out that way,

but they still view him as somebody who's an outsider, just because he has that reputation of just doing things completely opposite of the traditional way of doing things. And so I think some of them do want to see the whole system burn down, but there's also an element on the left wing side of that as well. You have a lot of people with like, especially those who supported Bernie Sanders in 2016 and then 2020 to see that, you know, the Democratic Party establishment

just completely shut him out. And yeah, like, as we saw in 2024, a lot of those folks just abandoned the Democratic Party. And that's why this whole horseshoe theory thing comes up. But I have my own issues with that. But I think mostly when we talk about populism, we're just talking about rhetoric against the elites, the establishment, status quo. Yeah. It is interesting. And populism in today's moment is fascinating because by and large, the leaders of America's right-wing populist movement,

today are actually elite. Yeah. Right? They co-opted it, yeah. Nobody can claim that Donald Trump is not elite. He went to elite schools. He's a billionaire. He owns a billion trillion properties and golf courses.

You can't tell me that if you own multiple golf resorts, you're not elite, right? He is elite. More of my interview with Mr. Beat when we come back. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. This month, as we celebrate women, I'm reflecting on the women who've shaped me. One friend in particular inspires me with how she balances motherhood, partnership, and career goals, while still being the emotional anchor for so many people. But being strong doesn't mean carrying everything alone.

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g-lp.com slash Sharon. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B-plus life? It's so dangerous to live that. More dangerous than a B-minus or a C-plus life? Because when you're living a B- or B-plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch.

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It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. More now of my interview with Mr. Beat. We've been talking a lot about our division and the chaos. But do you have optimism about this upcoming 250th birthday? Possibly like forcing everyone to kind of just like hit the pause button. Every American is just like, wait a second, why do I love my country?

And then maybe realizing, oh, maybe we should try to form some more coalitions with different people that I don't normally align with. Well, the first thing is you bring up a really interesting point that I think so many people have forgotten about, especially online leftists. The idea that nearly any important thing that has happened legislatively in this country, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the 19th Amendment, et cetera, have all happened as a result of coalition and consensus building. Yeah. that we as a pluralistic society are never going to be in a position again where one party controls 80% of the seats of power. We are going to have to build coalitions to make things happen because the alternative is endless quagmire. It is an endless cycle of doing nothing and infighting and not serving the American public. And so when we have created these purity tests of I will

not work with a person who believes X, even if what they want to work on is something that you actually really believe in, even if what they want to work on is preschool lunches for kids. If they also believe X, I can't talk to them. And that is actually not how pluralistic representative democracies have gotten things done in the past. So I think that's an important point that if we want to move the needle on behalf of American people, we have to be willing to align ourselves not necessarily morally. We don't have to invite them for a sleepover. We don't have to say any of those things,

but we do have to be willing to create coalitions that might actually make us hold our nose a little bit. You know, there's this old phrase in dealmaking that if both of you aren't a little mad at the end of the day, that it's not a good deal. Like, you both have to be willing to give up a little of something that you want. And if it means just like,

moving the ball just a little farther down the field. It means helping 3,000 more kids get school lunches. Those kinds of things are worth it. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, do I have optimism that Americans are going to come together on America's sort of 250th anniversary? I don't have optimism, but what I do have is hope. And those are two different things. Yes, they are. optimism is this feeling that like hey i really think things are going great skies are blue and the birds are chirping and you know like i feel like my chances are good i got a good shot at it hope is not that hope is a choice to act as though what we do matters because what we do does matter and what we do makes a difference

And so we have to decide what kind of difference we want to make. And so I don't have optimism that we're going to have some kind of hair braiding sleepover event because of the 250th anniversary. You go to a lot of hairbraiding sleepovers. Not so many. But I do have hope that Americans have succeeded at nearly everything they have put their minds to. And so if we choose to act, as though what we do matters. We do have the opportunity to succeed. If we're looking around for

somebody to save us, we are just going to keep on waiting. And instead, we have to realize that we are the people we've been waiting for. And that each and every one of us has an important role to play in this entire ecosystem, that it is not up to a single leader or even five leaders or 25 leaders. It's going to require effort on all of our parts because democracy is a government of the people. That's what it is meant to be. And who are the people, if not us? I love to remind people that your civic action is not just working on the government. It's working in your communities. And we all have a different role to play. Yeah. If you focus on your neighborhood, then maybe you won't get overwhelmed because it can be so overwhelming looking at all of all the zeitgeist yeah that's right the system is

actually designed to overwhelm you into paralysis people who seek to grab power people who seek to seize consolidate their own power intend to overwhelm you so that you will feel completely frozen fight or flight will be you know activated if you're familiar with the work of tim schneider who's a political scientist. He's written a book called On Tyranny, another one called On Freedom. He talks about this, too, that anybody who is feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things that they're supposed to be like paying attention to, first of all, understanding that that's part of the intent. They're intending to try to make you feel overwhelmed. First of all, that's normal. But the second way to get out of this feeling of overwhelm is to just pick one thing to work on and just work on that one thing.

that none of us are able to just like fix it, pick one thing and work on it and refuse to listen to the voices that tell you that you have to do everything. That's a great way to do nothing. Trying to do everything is a great way to do nothing. So this is something I decided I was going to do as a New Year's resolution, but I every day have been writing my congressman. I write a letter every single day. And the issue that I'm most passionate about is representation reform. I think that it's a national tragedy that we've had only 435 representatives in the House, more or less since 1929.

So in almost 100 years, despite the population quadrupling in that same span. And so I've been doing this every day. Now, this is my 20th day of doing it. I'm going to do it until I'm just going to keep doing it. I don't need, there's no end date to this. I've brought this up multiple times that like if you live in Alaska, you're getting way more representation in Congress than if you live in a really big state. Yeah.

I think that the next 10 years are going to be, I've been telling a lot of people this, they're going to be turbulent and chaotic compared to the previous few decades. That doesn't mean it's going to be World War III. That doesn't mean it's going to be civil war. So perhaps your final thoughts on how you're feeling, as we approach the 250th birthday, the direction of the country obviously is alarming, but how do you think it's going to turn out like in a few years, 10 years, what's your prediction? Gosh, I don't have any good prognostications about like, well, in 10 years,

we're all going to be driving flying cars. I don't have any good predictions, that nature. But I'll feel a story that if I'm going to bet on something, it would be the American people. If I'm going to bet on something, I believe that the American spirit is alive and well. And despite many pieces of evidence of the contrary, I really do believe in my fellow Americans to be able to rise to a moment when their moment arrives. And I do feel like this is our moment. It's time for us to rise to our moment.

Yeah, I see a lot of people already doing that. And that's what continues to inspire me. And I always bring up the end of the Cold War like, oh, is this the end of history? Like some historians said, no, man, it's like this is a whole new chapter. And we are not the first people to live through difficult times. other people with far fewer resources and Whalas education have lived through very difficult times. And if they can do it, so can we. Hey, you got some good takes here.

We'll end it right there. That's perfect. Sharon McMahon, thank you for joining me for this. It's such an honor to interview you and talk with you anytime. Thank you so much for inviting me. Check out Mr. Beat on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, the power of defiance. I speak with Dr. Sanita Saw about why pushing back is necessary in a world that tells us we should all comply.

I'm joined now by Cornell Professor Dr. Sanita Saw to talk about her book, Defy, the power of no in a world that demands yes. Your book is about defiance in a world that demands compliance. And we think of somebody who's defiant as being disagreeable. insubordinate, you know, something you'd get written up for at a job or in the military. But you actually begin your book by proposing a new definition of what it means to defy. And I would love to hear you start by talking about what do you mean when we're talking about being defiant? I've been fascinated by what that single powerful word defy means for such a long time because I grew up pretty compliant. I was known for being an obedient daughter and a student.

And I remember asking my dad when I was quite young, what does my name mean? And he said, in Sanskrit, Sinita means good. And mostly I did. I lived up to that. And the messages I received about being good was to fit in, to obey, to be compliant, don't question authority, don't make a scene. And we often teach children these messages. And what's interesting here is that we end up

equating being compliant with being good and defiant with being bad. And as you said, being defiant, it's not a nice label to have for a lot of people. We think it has this negative connotation to it. But I got really fascinated by looking at compliance, wondering why I struggled with it so much and how other people had an easier time being defiant. And when I delved in further, I saw that this amount of compliance can cause serious, problems. So, for example, one survey found that nine out of 10 health care workers, most of them nurses, don't feel comfortable speaking up when they see their colleague or a physician making

an error. And that's also true in other professions. So in a survey of over 1,700 crew members on commercial airlines, about half of them felt uncomfortable speaking up. So I started to wonder, is it sometimes bad to be so good? What do we sacrifice by always trying to be so compliant? And, you know, if I was to ask you, Sharon, how many times have you wanted to object with something or disagree or opt out, but you just end up swallowing your words and shaking your heads and going along with it? And my definition of defiance is that to defy is to act in accordance with your own true values when there is pressure to do otherwise. Because if you think about it, all are individual actions of consent and dissent and compliance, they create the society that we live in. So it affects

our lives, our communities, our workplaces. How do I even know what my true values are? Right? Like, how do I know if I'm acting in accordance with my true values or if I just find that person annoying? And I don't want to do what they say. I know that I bristle at what I view as illegitimate authority? You know, like, that is my knee-jerk reaction. Who are you to try to tell me that I can't do that thing? And some of us perhaps have habituated behaviors that require compliance more than others. But how will we distinguish between our acting in accordance with our values and just being annoyed at another person trying to boss us around? I love this distinction. And it's actually a very important one. If we are doing something because somebody is telling us to do it and then we do

the exact opposite, the way that, for example, my son, when he is playing his computer game and I ask him if he's going to do his homework and he says to me, well, I was going to do it. But now that you've told me, I'm not going to do it. Right. So maybe he finds me incredibly annoying. But in this situation, he's actually listening really intently to what I want. And he is doing the exact opposites of that. So his actions are not driven from within. If we think about what true consent is, what true defiance is, it's something that's coming from within you based on your values. But if it's based on what somebody else wants or doesn't want, whether we comply with it or we react against it, that's now being dependent on someone else. So in a way,

it's a different form of compliance. It might appear defiant to some people, but it's what I call false defiance because it's acting on an external expectation. So how can we figure out what our true values are? That was your other question. And I have my executive students do an exercise where I get them to think about their true values

and write them down. And the reason I do this is because if we become really clear about what our values are, then we actually are more likely to live in accordance with them. That's what the research shows. So that's really important to do. And when it comes to those values and why your values are important, a lot of my students, when they drill down to it,

their values often end up being just simple, single words, but they're very powerful if we can enact them every day. So words such as integrity, benevolence, compassion, equality, these are the values I see time and time again. And yet it's really difficult to act in accordance with those values. We might like to think that we do. But what I've learned and what my research has shown me again and again is what somebody believes their values to be is quite different

from how they actually behave when they're in a situation. And so really being clear on your values and then learning with defiance how we can close that gap between our intention and our actual. is crucial. You talk in the book about a scenario that is very famous in the United States now involving George Floyd and about the two police officers who were brand new on the job, who complied with the orders of Derek Chauvin to go along with what they did to George Floyd. They just went along with it.

They obeyed. Yes. And as a student of history, I can think of dozens. of examples of people throughout history who just complied. And historians will also tell you that this is how authoritarian come to power, is people pre-compli, assuming that their defiance will be unsuccessful. They pre-compli with the orders of whatever it is. So you pose this very interesting question, which is, how would I have reacted in that scenario? If I were a brand new cop on the scene with George Floyd, how would I have reacted? I'd like to think of myself as a person

who would not have complied. So many people throughout history have wondered, how would I have acted if I was living in 1930s Germany? Right. I would not have gone along with the Nazis. 100% of the people listening to this at least want to believe themselves. to be the kind of person who would not have complied with the Nazis, right? Right. But you just mentioned, and you mentioned this in the book too, that there is a very large disconnect between who we believe ourselves to be and who we actually are in terms of the actions that we carry out.

Why is that? What is it that makes us comply with things we know are not right? Yeah. So this goes back to how we were socialized. So if you had a master class in compliance like I. you end up being wired to comply. It does become our default and it makes it so difficult to actually defy in the situation. And there's numerous reasons for this. So let me just talk about one of them with the scenario and examples that you just gave. And there's just enormous pressure

to go along with what other people want. And in that situation for the rookie officers, even though one of them was a black rookie like three or four days into the job. And he had joined the police force with the best of intentions. You could even say with the right values. He wanted to make change from the inside and be a bridge for people like him, people like George Floyd. And yet when it came down to it, there's so much pressure to go along with what other people want. And that pressure really has a huge. huge effect on us, and it could be in small-stakes situations where we don't say anything to

these larger situations that are unfolding in front of us and we feel powerless to almost do anything about. In my research, I've discovered a psychological concept that I call insinuation anxiety, and this is a distinct type of anxiety that arises when we worry that our non-compliance with another person's wishes is going to be interpreted as a signal of distress. So if you think about it, if your boss is in that situation, or even if you're with family and friends having a discussion, saying no to something or objecting to something or saying that a particular statement is inappropriate, really could signal distrust. It simply implies that the other person could be corrupt, unethical, incompetent. And we have this anxiety about signaling that. It really is an aversive emotional state where we become concerned with offending the other person.

person. And I found that, yes, it exists in these power dynamics, like a rookie police officer, with their training officer, with an employee and their boss, the manager. But it also happens in one-off situations with strangers when they aren't large consequences. And we just don't want to insinuate that somebody else cannot be trusted. That's very difficult for us to do. What happens to us mentally when we believe that we are causing this sort of rift between us and this other person? I can't trust you. I'm not going to do what you say. What is it that is happening in our mind that makes it so difficult for us to be willing to step out and do that? There's two ideal selves. So we have this ideal independent self where we want to act on our own agency and do what we think is right. but we also have this ideal interdependent self, where we're concerned about harmonious relationships

and we have to live in society with other people. And these are kind of ideals, so they're always going to be in some kind of tension. We can't reach either ideal and probably we wouldn't want to. So that creates some kind of tension between what you want to do, what you think is right, versus what somebody else is expecting of us. That tension is stage one of us. That tension is stage one of, defiance. And it's a really important stage because we all feel tension in different ways and we can really think about what is it, how does that tension manifest in my body? And noting that tension, not disregarding it or thinking it's not worth our doubt, the other person must know better, is really critical because only when you acknowledge it, which is the stage two of defiance,

can you work up through the other stages of defiance? You know, you mentioned a time when you felt pressured into a medical test, you didn't think that you needed. And as a physician, you're like, I don't have the right symptoms. I don't have the thing that you think I have. But you didn't want to offend your colleagues in medicine by appearing to doubt their judgment. By being like, listen, guys, you're just straight up wrong. Yes. And that sense of like, I don't want to offend you by doubting. your judgment. So I'm going to go along with something that I don't think is right. Is that what we're talking about here? That's exactly right. So this insinuation anxiety could also explain why the nurses don't speak up when they see something wrong or why the co-pilots don't tell their pilots

that something's wrong, something that could risk their own life. Like when I had that medical procedure that I knew I didn't need, it was very hard for me to tell the other doctor that, no, you're wrong. I don't have that. I don't think it's necessary to have that. So it really does become a powerful force, even when we have the full knowledge and understanding that this is incorrect, this is not the best way forward, it's very hard to not go along with it in those circumstances unless you know, oh, this is insinuation anxiety, we can name it unless we start practicing for these situations. And as I say, defiance is a skill and it's something that we can practice for. Even if you grew up being as compliant as I am, you can learn how to be defiant.

Do you think because you mentioned before that so much of our compliant behavior is a result of socialization, are women more socialized to be compliant? Is that a higher value you find in parents who are socializing their little girls, even subconsciously to like be a good girl? And what makes you a good girl is if you listen to Mommy and Daddy, you'd be a good girl. You know, like even parents who are very well-intentioned, they feel like they're being judged by how compliance their children are. Absolutely. We do. Like, in a way, we want our children to be compliant.

And I remember a situation when my son was quite young, I think, about four years old. And we were in London at the time. And I really wanted to see the Olympic torch. So it was the 2012 Olympics. And he wouldn't comply. He would not walk along the street to come and see the torch. And I remember thinking, why can't you be good? And then I was fascinated.

I'm making the same moral equation that compliance equals good and defiance equals bad. And we often give our children these messages, possibly more to girls. There is a defiance hierarchy in terms of who we expect to be compliant and the consequences if those people are not compliant. So girls are often expected to comply more than men. In my experiments, often I see both men and women comply and they find it difficult. But there are certain situations. There's one particular study that I did where it was a middle-aged white man given advice, and it was the women that felt insinuation anxiety and complied with bad advice.

The men were okay in that situation to reject it. So sometimes women do feel more insinuation anxiety or the people that are more vulnerable that have less status in society often feel more vulnerable to having to comply. I know there are going to be people listening to this who are going to be like, I am a people pleaser and it gives me hives to think about letting anybody down and the idea of saying no, even if I believe it is aligned with my own value. the idea of saying no, of defying something, I just cannot abide that thought. It's too much for me. You know, whatever it is. They don't feel like any situation of defiance is safe. What would you say to those people? I would say I was in their shoes at one point, and I totally understand that. It is very difficult. And what makes it easier is if you think about the situations that you've complied, so even when I, took the medical procedure that I didn't need, I started thinking about it. Why didn't I speak up? It would have been safe and effective for me to speak up in that situation. Yes, I didn't want to make a scene. I didn't want to be seen as the difficult patient. I didn't want to tell the

doctor that she didn't know what she was doing and that she was wrong. All of those things were there. But yes, it still would have been safe and effective for me to say, no, I don't want this. And so how can we do that? So in terms of practice, there's a number of steps. First of all, we need to anticipate because often we can anticipate the most common situations that will arise because we face them before and many of them are predictable. And then you can start practicing by scripting and role-playing what you're going to say. And this is really important to do this and repeat this, because if we have been wired to comply, we need to change those neural pathways. We need to get our mouths used to saying defiant words and our ears used to. hearing defiant words, because defiance isn't a personality, it's a practice, it's a skill set

that we can choose to implement or not. So even in the police academy, if we go back to that example, police officers are told intellectually that if you see somebody doing something wrong, you must question your superior or another police officer. But they're never given any behavioral training in how to do that. And unless you have that training and role playing and scripting and doing that, you're not going to be able to do it in a moment of crisis. And that's why the training aspect is really important to make Defiance a practice. You need a plan that starts long before the moment of crisis. What do you hope that somebody remembers when they close the last page of this book? What is it that you hope they will take with them and sort of

tuck into their pocket and carry with them moving forward? A few things. One is compliance might have been your default, but it's not your destiny. So you can practice for defiance. And society is actually built on these smaller moments. You know, when we think about defiance, we might think about some big acts of defiance that are dramatic, like Rosa Park saying no on the bus. But in reality, her no on that bus preceded a lot of yeses on the bus. So if we think about these smaller moments, ideally we're building a society where people will speak up and say no when it really matters. And defiance doesn't only transform you in making you more your authentic self, and it is very powerful. But it also changes the people around you.

So it does have a ripple effect, this defiance domino effect, even when nobody's present. So the second time I was able to say no to a medical procedure, I didn't think was the right nobody was really there to observe that interaction between me and the doctor, but I did tell other people about it. And they encouraged me to write an article, which eventually got published, and that had a big ripple effect. But all we need is like that one moment to say no, to practice for that. And that changes everything around us. It changes the water in which everybody else is swimming. And it develops our neural pathways. So it makes it a little bit. easier next time. So my hope is this book is going to make Defiance accessible to everyone.

So we can all become moral mavericks. And live in accordance with the values we have written down. Exactly. Exactly. Thanks to Dr. Sanita Saw for joining us, you can get her book Defy at bookshop.org or wherever you get your books. Be sure to read our newsletter at thepramble.com. It's free. Join hundreds of thousands of readers who still believe understanding is an act. of hope. I'm your host and executive producer, Sharon McBan. Our supervising producer is Melanie Buck Parks, and our audio producer is Craig Thompson. Thanks for listening.