Here's Where It Gets Interesting - How History Can Give Us Hope with Dr. Jemar Tisby

Episode Date: September 14, 2022

During this episode of Here's Where It Gets Interesting, historian Dr. Jemar Tisby speaks with Sharon about racism and what we can do about it. We may not be guilty for the actions of the past, but we are responsible for the ramifications of racism that are felt today. It takes courage to make change because fear can be a stumbling block. We fear entering conversations that seem complicated or difficult or fear the push back or judgment we may get from our safe communities, but history shows us that choosing to do the right thing can bring us hope and peace. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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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Buy from dysoncanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Hello, friends. Welcome. Delighted that you're with me today. I am joined by Dr. Jamar Tisby, and this is a conversation that I know so many of you need, because I hear from you regularly questions about like, the whole world is going to hell in a handbasket. How do I find hope? And I had so many takeaways listening to Dr. Wittesby speak about how history can give us hope. So let's dive in, because here's where it gets interesting. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I'm so excited to be chatting today with Dr. Jamar Tisby. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. It's a fun, joy, and pleasure. Oh, by the way, many people, when they hear the letters AGT, think America's got talent. I think of America's government teacher. Oh, that's so nice. Thank you. I'll take it. I'll take the acronym because either way I'm good. Either way I'm set either. I'm really talented or I know how to teach either way. I would love to have you tell everybody just a little bit more about your background. What is your PhD in? What have you studied? What do you do for a living? Just give us a little context. Yes, I am an historian, author, and speaker. I got my PhD in history from the University of Mississippi, studying race, religion, and social movements. Before that, I got my master's in

divinity. And before that, I was an educator. I was a sixth grade science and social studies teacher and a middle school principal. So I'd spend my time these days mostly writing books, writing at my newsletter, and also just trying to educate folks about race, racism, white supremacy, and what we can do about it. I love that. I really appreciate your work. One of the things that I have talked about before, and I noticed on your platform and wanted to chat about is how after the Brown versus the Board of Education decision came down, and people think that they have this misconception that the Supreme

Court said it, so everybody did it. And that everybody was like, okay, I guess we're going to integrate. And that was not the case in many places. Some places were like, nevermind, we'll close the schools. But integration was a very long, laborious process in many places in the South. It was often a violent process. It was not a like, well, I guess we have to, everybody try to make the best of it. That was not the case in many places. And so when integration began to occur, what happened to all of the Black teachers? What happened to all of the Black schools? it wasn't like the white folks were sending their kids to the Black schools. The schools were integrated at the white facilities.

And tens of thousands of Black teachers lost their jobs. And we are still today in 2022, we see the effects of firing tens of thousands of Black teachers, highly qualified, excellent educators, in some cases, did more with less than almost anybody else in the country. And so, I would love to hear you talk about that a little bit as a historian, as an educator, about the long-term effects of the exodus of Black educators out of the public school system. Such an important topic. So even today, I've mentioned before, I was a middle school teacher. As a Black man, only 2% of teachers in the public K-12 system are Black men. And I think only around 9% overall are Black. And that's very important to know because data tells us that having even one teacher of a different racial or ethnic background helps you understand race and diversity much, much better. And that's across the board for white students and students of color. So it's vital to have this representation in the classroom. But as you say, Brown v. Board was in a magic wand

that solved everything. There were certainly many, many people who objected to the decision. Even today, I was just looking on social media, folks arguing that the Brown v. Board decision was improperly decided and doesn't rest on good legal theory. And then it's also important to know the pushback in the immediate aftermath of Brown v. Board. So there was something called the Southern Manifesto that came about that was essentially a document that said, we're going to resist this with everything we've got. And there's actually a phenomenon in history called massive resistance, which this is part of. It was a concerted effort on the part of some to resist

federal and Supreme Court efforts, particularly at integration. Then what you're saying, the integration was not two ways. And really, a lot of historians say it wasn't ever really integration. It might have been token desegregation, right? Because integration would indicate some sort of positive coming together in unity, whereas desegregation simply means like the legal barriers that Black people and white students of color were bused or taken to predominantly white schools where they would typically be one of only a handful. Because imagine the courage and the determination on the part of both the student and the parents to want to send your kids into that environment. We've seen those pictures, right? Angry parents yelling at these little Black children simply for walking into school. In my own town and experience, so I'm talking to you from the Mississippi Delta on the Arkansas side. We're about an hour south of Memphis. There are two

main school options, the traditional public school and the literally white flight segregation academy. Because for many communities, Brown v. Board was not even enforced until subsequent legal cases in the late 60s and early 70s. And so when people at the local level realized, okay, they really mean it, they want us to desegregate. Instead of doing that, sometimes they started their own private schools. And that's what happened here. And so right now, the demographics in my community, the local public school is 95% Black. The private school is 95% White. And that's by design. religious schools after Brown versus the Board of Education that were really only designed for white parents who did not want their children to be integrated with any students of color. And in some cases, states were like, we'll pay your tuition and you can just go there and everybody else have to figure out something else for themselves because we're not going to provide public schooling anymore. And I got DMs from some people who were like, this was like a mind blown moment for me, because I went back and looked at my school's origin story, the school I attended, that began in 1955, and has always been a school for white people. Within their own experience attending the

school, nobody ever told them, like, this was, we started this because people back in the day didn't want to integrate. They didn't tell them that. But it was an eye-opening moment for some graduates of certain private schools that their school's origin story was our religious beliefs do not permit us to integrate with people of color. So we will continue to segregate ourselves on the basis of religion. Isn't that interesting? Yes. You bring up such important points. One of them is the importance of accurate history and of institutional histories.

So honestly, if whatever institution you're part of, whether it's a corporation, a school, whatever it might be, if it's been around since the 70s or before, there's going to be some interesting racial history, obviously, even after that. But particularly around that period, there's going to be a lot to sort of dig into. And often we don't tell those institutional histories. The folks who know it, they don't want to share it. It's not what they want to put in the brochure. And then many people generations after, they just don't know it. So, one instance, the seminary that I went to is in Jackson, Mississippi, a very religiously conservative institution. On their 40th

anniversary, which was like 2006 or so, they put together a little booklet on the history. It traces all the way back to Southern Presbyterianism and the Civil War. They called it the War Between the States, not the Civil War. And then they went on to say that we stand in the sort of intellectual legacy of our forefathers. And then they named four particular theologians, three of whom were pro-slavery theologians who wrote long treatments about the biblical sanction for race-based chattel slavery. And then another one who came later who was pro-segregation. And they said, we stand in that one, never mentioning any of that history, right? So the importance of an institutional history that is accurate is one of the realizations that we need to come to if we're going to reckon with where we are today. When you read that history, reckon with where we are today. When you read that history, did it impact your experience at that institution? What should people who realize that like, dang, I worked for this company that used to not permit integration. I mean, like that's the entire federal government, Jamar.

That's right. Okay. That's like the whole military. that's a good chunk of the whole country industry yeah yeah if your industry has been around for a while that's the whole country what are we supposed to do with that information i think that's what a lot of people want to know like okay all right so this school this business this whatever used to enforce segregation, used to have pro-slavery values? What am I supposed to do with that information? Absolutely. Well, number one, share it. Even if we're not proud of our institution's past, we still need to tell it. And that's the beginning of healing. This is what I believe your platform is about, is accurate information, truth-telling,

so that once we get a baseline of facts, then we can decide what to do about it. But for so many of us, it's going to occupy years and decades just to get our institutions to tell a complete and truthful history of themselves, right? And then put it in places where people can find it. So that's in the about section on your webpage, or if you do an institutional history, you link to the book or the webpage or the initiative or whatever it is. I shouldn't have to be an investigative reporter to find out this work. And in my case, that's what happened with the seminary. I didn't know this history when I

enrolled as a student, and so I had to find out the hard way and then come to grips with being affiliated with an institution that knowing had this past but wasn't completely honest about it either. Beyond that, there are all kinds of things to do in terms of repair. So with many colleges and universities that have traced their histories all the way back to slavery in some cases, but certainly segregation, some of the things they've done are create scholarship funds for the descendants of enslaved people whose exploited labor helped build the institution. More recently, there have been scholarships in the name of, say, the first Black students at these schools. name of, say, the first Black students at these schools. And also, I was part of just witnessing a ceremony at the University of Mississippi where students in the Black Power era were protesting the university's stances, racial stances. Some of them were denied their diplomas and got expelled.

Well, some faculty at the school brought those students back who were still alive in their 70s, brought them back, awarded them their diplomas, and honored them in the way they should have been honored a long time ago. So I think there's a lot we can do when we get creative about what repair looks like. So you would advocate for institutions saying, hey, we used to have really bad ideas and we have now abandoned those really bad ideas, but here's what those bad ideas were. Is that what you're saying? That you would advocate for people putting it out there of we used to do these bad things and here's what we're doing to fix it. As a start, that certainly being honest about that history, but also being very sober-minded and saying, you know what, it's not as if most of these places have eliminated all vestiges of those errors. And so actually using that as a foundation to say, how can we be more

circumspect in the present about our hiring practices, our messaging in marketing or writing, who is empowered within our organization? So I just wouldn't want it to sort of be this, oh, we did badly in the past, but we're over that now and we're great. So it's no problem to admit it because that's not who we are anymore. No, let's recognize that the past has a momentum that affects the present and use this deeper understanding of the past and the truth-telling endeavor to more critically analyze our practices and beliefs right now. What would you say to somebody, because this is something I hear frequently, what would you say to somebody who says, I am not responsible for

the actions of my ancestors? It's not me enslaving people. I didn't work here then. My relatives lived in Boston. None of this is on me. I'm sure you've heard this many times. What would you say to people who feel like I'm not responsible for the bad things people did in the past? Sure. This is not a perfect analogy, but rock with me for a second. I've never bought a brand new car. I always buy used cars and no matter how well taken care of they are, there's always something wrong. Now I, as the new owner of this car, I'm responsible

for that. Even if I didn't cause the rattling that I hear that I didn't hear at the dealership, it is the difference between guilt and responsibility. So we are not guilty of the actions of anyone else, whether past or present, But we may be responsible for the ramifications of their actions. So in the case of U.S. history, no one living today enslaved people in the system of race-based chattel slavery. But there were people who to this day have wealth or opportunities or privileges that come from being, not even just slaveholders, but come from being categorized as white in a nation that has practiced white supremacy. And it is not to say that you're guilty for creating that system, but it is to say that we

have inherited a system and a context for which we are now responsible. It's in our hands right now. And we can assign guilt to other actors, right? There are definitely people who made bad decisions. That doesn't have to be your guilt, but it is your responsibility. It's all of our responsibility in different ways to do something about this nation, its political systems, its economic systems, its social arrangement that we've inherited. I'm Jenna Fisher. And I'm Angela Kinsey. We are best friends. And together we have the podcast Office Ladies, where we rewatched every single episode of The Office with insane behind-the-scenes stories, hilarious guests, and lots of laughs.

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before every episode. Well, we can't wait to see you there. Follow and listen to Office Ladies on the free Odyssey app and wherever you get your podcasts. You can see examples of that in many other areas not related to race, that, you know, it was a bunch of white men who wrote the Constitution in 1787. We're not responsible for what they wrote. It's not on me for what they wrote, but nevertheless, I've inherited a nation who's based all of its laws, its understanding of how humans should act in a society based on that document. And if I want to fix anything, I have to accept responsibility for the nation as it is right now and be able to move forward from here if I ever want to make things better.

The idea that that happened in the past is not on me does not apply to really any other aspects of our lives. Everything is, you know, the way things are today, reality today actually is our responsibility to interact with. Yeah. If somebody named you CEO of this corporation that's been around forever, you wouldn't get in that position and say, well, I'm not guilty for what the previous CEO did, so I'm not going to do anything about it. No, you got the company you got, and now you got to do something about it. And honestly, isn't this just being a good neighbor, right? Like, however it started, if there are things that are adversely affecting my community and the people around me, especially the most vulnerable people, shouldn't I care? Whatever happened to that is part of what frustrates me and part of what I hope my work speaks to. Why wouldn't I want to fix it? Right. Exactly. That's the real question. Why would I want to turn a blind eye? Give me a good reason

for turning a blind eye. I mean, that's really the question. Why wouldn't I want to fix it? And I think you've spoken to this before. It's really hard for people when the sort of view of the world has become part of their identity. It's not as simple as like stacking a pile of facts from floor to ceiling and saying, here, this proves X, Y, Z. It's so much deeper than that. It's about a story that we tell ourselves. It's about communities we belong to. It's about who we think we are and are not. And so this is one of the reasons why it's so hard to change people's minds. And why I really think your approach is so important is because it really begins with accurate facts.

It really begins with the information that we need that then we can build on and decide what to do about. But it's been so hard in this nation to tell an accurate history, especially when it comes to accounting for racism. And part of the difficulty there is because there are some people who really don't want to know because if you start pulling that thread, it's going to unravel their whole world. And that's a scary place to know. Because if you start pulling that thread, it's going to unravel their whole world. And that's a scary place to be. It's going to force them to reckon with their identity, with aspects of their identity that they don't want to reckon with because maintaining this

identity is very comfortable. Maintaining this identity is something that their brain actively seeks to want to do because changing your identity is extremely uncomfortable. All change and growth is extremely uncomfortable. Your brain actively seeks to protect you from it. So, asking somebody to abandon their identity that they don't see as problematic, they're going to resist that with every fiber of their being. And so, when we're saying this is problematic, it is much easier for a person to say, no, you're problematic. It's not me that's the problem. It's you that's the problem. Because if I can make you the problem, I'm permitted to maintain my identity.

Yeah. I talk often about the virtue of courage. I think what is such a big stumbling block in us making racial progress as a nation stems from fear, a lot of different kinds of fear. So on the part of people of goodwill, I think there's a fear of getting it wrong. What if I don't know enough? What if I say the wrong thing? What if I get canceled? Whatever it might be. But it's a fear of entering into a conversation that seems and is very fraught and complicated, even if they want to, right? And then there's the fear of those who don't want to get involved. And one of the reasons they don't want to get involved is, what is my community going to say about me?

Am I going to lose my place of belonging in this only community I know, whether that's a political community, a faith community, a family even? And so fear is often a great stumbling block, which is why these conversations and telling the truth take courage. And boy, do we misunderstand courage, right? It's obviously courage is not the absence of fear. It's doing the right thing in the face of fear. And that's what inspires me as a historian is looking back on people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Ida B. Wells and Harriet Tubman, who against really terrible odds and dangers that were literally life and death, chose to do the right thing even in the midst of that. And if we can capture some of that courage, I think we'd see some more progress. I love that. I would love to hear from you because I hear this all the time. I bet you do too. People feel such a sense of hopelessness. They watch what's happening on the news and they're just like, what is even the point?

I don't even know. How do you want to go on? Is everything going to hell in a handbasket? And I loved what you said a moment ago, that history gives you hope because I feel exactly the same way. And I would love to hear how learning about history brings you hope because I feel exactly the same way. And I would love to hear how learning about history brings you hope. Martin Luther King Jr. talks about an older woman in his church, and she was out on a march, which by the way, folks, I live in the Mississippi Delta. It's hot on these marches. Yes. There's no shade. There's no shade. No. It's not a walk in the park.

This is not your power walk in the park. It's hard work. Standing in the sun. Standing in the sun. And imagine the conviction of this older Black woman to participate in a march. And King walks up to her and he's like, aren't you tired? And she says, my feet is tired, but my soul is rested. And that's just a whole sermon in a sentence right there. My feets is tired, but my soul is rested.

And I think what she meant was there is a certain peace that comes with pursuing justice. justice. This is some of the deep experiential truth that I think activists and advocates today need to absorb. It's not that we are guaranteed to win, at least not in our lifetimes. So the policy changes, the reforms that we're pushing for, we may or may not see those. We push and we fight and we resist as much as we can, but we don't know. But to me, that is not the only goal of activism. Part of the value of resisting injustice is not just how it changes the world around us, it's how it changes us. So what gives me hope is looking at people like this older Black woman, like Fannie Lou Hamer, who I mentioned, who was a poor sharecropper, died poor, but spent her adult years resisting racism. What gives me hope is that they understood on a soul level that pursuing righteousness

makes me a better person, makes me more loving, makes me more open, makes me a better neighbor. And I think we need to understand that too, because if we only look at the change in the external world as our barometer, then yeah, we should be discouraged, especially now. It seems like there's been a backlash since 2020 and those racial justice uprisings we all saw. So what's going to keep you going? It's not just the change out there, it's the change in you. And the last thing is, you don't have to do it alone. I have found an incredible community of like-minded people all across the country who are pursuing justice and righteousness, and they become like a new family, like a chosen

family. It's a new community, and I think it gets close to what King called the beloved community. And it's not a utopia where everything's okay. It is the bond that comes with pursuing a common mission and goal that you know is bigger than yourself. And that's what we need to hold onto in order to maintain and cultivate hope. I love that so much. That's so good that we may not see the changes we're looking for in our external world. And in many cases, those changes are incremental and they're slow. They're painfully slow. They're like a glacier. And you're like, I'm looking at this glacier and I do not see it moving. And it is easy to become discouraged. But I absolutely love what you say, that it is not just about moving a glacier. It's about changing yourself. That's so good. Because if that is

the barometer, because looking at the glacier that is like, I see nothing. You know what I mean? No movement. I see nothing. Even though you know that glacier has the biggest ability to shape the face of the earth, that glacier does. When we're staring at it with our eyeballs, it looks like it's doing absolutely nothing. If that's the barometer, we will become discouraged. But if changing ourselves is part of the goal, then it's easier to see that improvement. It's easier to feel like I'm better today than I was five years ago. I'm a better person. Whatever virtue it is that you're trying to pursue in your life, I'm more courageous. I'm more loving, whatever that

is. If we're the barometer, then it's easier to hold on to that. I just love that so much. It's not that we don't look for change in systems and policies and institutions. We don't give up and throw up our hands and be like, it's pointless. We don't do that. But character matters. Haven't we seen that lately in leadership? My goodness. Oh, my goodness.

It absolutely does. Let's be people of character as we pursue justice and righteousness. That's all. I am picking up what you're putting down. I have often said that, like, listen, policies are a lot easier to change than people's character. You know that's right. You know that's right. One person can't even do that much when it comes to policy. If you have a policy of like, I want to have a tax rate of this amount, and I'm like, well, I think it should be this amount. Like we can come to some kind of agreement. You know what I mean?

I can't fix your bad. That is such an eloquent phrase. Yes. I can't fix how bad you are deep in your core. So I would rather vote for a person of character. Maybe I don't agree with your tax policy or whatever, because we can work on that. Policies are a lot easier to change than character is. pedestal because we're all flawed, but the people whose actions we admire oftentimes are folks of character whose convictions led them in a certain direction. I mentioned Ida B. Wells before, and part of what spurred her journey as an investigative journalist, as a truth teller,

was essentially witnessing the lynching of one of her good friends in Memphis. She was driven out of Memphis, of course, but dedicated herself to revealing the truth of lynching, which was happening at a frightening rate during the Jim Crow era and being relentless about it. And that's not just something she did. It's who she was. The big misunderstanding about Rosa Parks is that she began her activism that one day when she refused to move seats on the bus. No, she had actually, A, had parents who were involved in this. So this tells us again, as adults, not only what we learn from our young people, but what we're teaching them. And then B, she had been involved lifelong in activism and had already developed a reputation as an advocate. And so when that moment came, oh, isn't that critical? When that moment came, she was ready. Do we really think,

do we really think when the moment of decision comes, and there are a few in each person's lifetime, when you're really called upon to make an ethical decision and the stakes are really high, do you really think you're just automatically going to become the kind of person who demonstrates courage? You haven't done that before? These are values that we have to cultivate over a lifetime. And that's what gets us ready. So when that moment comes, whatever it is and whatever it looks like, we are prepared for it. So this is why the subtitle of my second book, How to Fight Racism, includes the phrase, the journey toward racial justice. Y'all, it is not a sprint. It is a marathon. And it is a long walk in that direction of justice. And if we are not, we must be, in terms of my work, we must practice anti-racism daily as a disposition and not as a momentary set of actions or behaviors.

Justice has to become part of who we are, not just what we do. I love that, that Rosa Parks was able to be the kind of person who made the right choice at that decision point because of her many decades of work, decades of going to trainings, decades of being a rape investigator for the NAACP, decades of work led her to that moment. And had she not engaged in those decades of work, I don't know. I don't know if she is the person at that moment. Maybe she is, but I don't know. But I love this idea too, that the practice of developing your own character is a lifelong process. And it is often those around you demonstrate character, it's easier for you to do so. And the opposite is true as well. So we actually have to be intentional about the communities that we're a part of. But communities are asynchronous as well. It's not just the people we're around right now. I look at the people who came before us as a kind of community as well. So on my bookshelf, I have a community of activists who lived decades, even centuries before me. This is the importance of studying history, right? I love history because it's true. These are true stories, right? Because we can say whatever, especially when it comes to our political beliefs, our religious beliefs, we can say we believe whatever, but history has the receipts. History shows us how people actually behave. And we can

find here and there some really incredible examples of people who demonstrated courage, again, as a way of life, not a moment. And so what I'm saying is studying history gives you access to a character-forming community. This is why it's incumbent. History is about identity. History isn't just what happened in the past. It's who we are as a result of the past. We're not completely constrained or confined by the past in terms of our identity, but we are shaped by it. So we need to know those forces that have shaped us,

and we can be intentional about cultivating positive forces to reshape us and mold us into the kind of people who we want to be. So when people ask me, where do I start? Well, I always say what is most familiar is often most misunderstood. So going back and revisiting the civil rights movement, because we got like three facts about the civil rights. We know that one day Rosa Parks sat down on a bus. We know that Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream. And then we know that racism was over. It was over with Brown versus Board of Education. And that is everything we need to know.

That was it. We fixed it. We fixed it. You know, dust off your hands. Let's go. We fixed it. Recliner time. Yeah, that tends to be the narrative we have about the whole civil rights movement. And don't even start on Black power.

Nobody knows about that. Or if they do, it's lots of misconceptions. So go with what's most familiar. How many of us have even read like a biography of the most well-known figure of the movement, Martin Luther King Jr.? Like you've heard the one sentence from his speech. Have you studied his whole life? You know, so that's low hanging fruit. Another place to start if you want to learn about history is locally. So again, your school or your child's school or your corporation, who is the person whose name is on that building? Or who is that person whose statue you pass by every day on your commute? What is personal to us we'll care about and we'll be motivated to learn more about. And then there's just so many ways to access this information from documentaries to books to

your podcast and others. So it really is incumbent upon us to equip ourselves with this historical information that's going to help not only problem-solving the present, but actually shape our character as well. That's so good that we have access to a community of character-shaping individuals from the past. That's so good. It's almost like you should do this for a living. Well, I talk about in How to Fight Racism, a framework, a way of viewing the world that helps us with racial justice. It's called the Arc of Racial Justice, and it stands for Awareness, Relationships, Commitment. Awareness is what we've been talking about. How can we develop a foundation of the knowledge, the information, the data that we need to understand race, racism, and white supremacy? that we need to understand race, racism, and white supremacy. But it's not just enough to have a big head about this stuff. We have to have big hearts, and that's where relationships come in, especially because in this nation, there have been so many concerted efforts for so long to put up walls between people and barriers between people. We have to be intentional about building

bridges, especially if you're white. It's going to be harder since oftentimes you're in the majority in different places to break out of that and have meaningful relationships. And it's a network of relationships. It's not your one Black friend. We have to be really intentional in our relationships for people of color. That means forming alliances and communities of refreshing and flourishing with each other. But then comes commitment because we can't just have big heads about this. We can't even just have big hearts about this. We have to have strong hands to make change. And so commitment doesn't just mean staying the course. It means committing to the systemic, institutional, and policy changes that are going to affect the whole way we do life together and not just our

interpersonal interaction. So the arc of racial justice, I think, beyond the bullet point list of racial justice do's and don'ts, gives us an actual grid and a lens for viewing these things. So good. I feel like we could just keep talking forever. I'm going to need to invite you back because this is really, really delightful. And I know lots of people are going to have so many takeaways from this conversation. But I really want to encourage people to subscribe to your newsletter, read your books. Can you tell us just a little bit more about that? Absolutely. You can get to all my latest good trouble at my sub stack. That's jamartisby.substack.com. And I'm on all the socials at Jamar Tisby. My books are Color of Compromise, How to Fight Racism, and How to Fight Racism, Young Readers Edition. This was, I really, really enjoyed chatting with you today. Thank you so much for being here. So much fun, so informative. Keep doing what you're doing. You're helping save

democracy one podcast at a time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And you. Thank you. this episode on your Instagram stories or with a friend. All of those things help podcasters out so much. This podcast was written and researched by Sharon McMahon and Heather Jackson. It was produced by Heather Jackson, edited and mixed by our audio producer, Jenny Snyder, and hosted by me, Sharon McMahon. I'll see you next time.