Here's Where It Gets Interesting - When Fixing the Problem Isn't the Answer with Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers

Episode Date: May 4, 2022

In this episode, Sharon reunites with the hosts of Pantsuit Politics, Sarah and Beth, to talk about their brand new book, Now What? How To Move Forward When We’re Divided (About Basically Everything). While we all want the next step to be solving conflict together, it’s not a realistic approach. Instead, think of asking “Now what?” as a catalyst for connecting with people in a more heartfelt way. The goal isn’t to fix other people, the goal is to strengthen our understanding about the complexities of human relationships. Seeking peaceful solutions looks like honoring other people’s stories, giving them the benefit of the doubt, and authentically showing our own beliefs and joys. The ways in which we live our beliefs is often varied; we show up in different ways during different stages of our lives. 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

Y'all afraid of ghosts? How about ghost peppers? It's the moment you've been waiting for. The ghost pepper sandwich is back at Popeyes. A buttermilk-battered chicken breast served on a brioche bun with barrel-cured pickles. And here's the best part. It's topped with a sauce made from ghost peppers and oncho chilies. If that doesn't send a chill of anticipation down your spine, nothing will. Get your ghost pepper sandwich today at Popeyes

before it ghosts you for another year. It's hockey season, and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So, no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats. But iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice? Yes, we deliver those. Goal tenders, no. But chicken tenders, friends.

You're here, and that makes me so happy. And today I am chatting with my friends, Sarah Stewart Holland and Beth Silvers. You might listen to their podcast, Pantsuit Politics. And I am so excited that they're back with us today because they have so much heart and wisdom and humor and kindness behind their conversations about politics. They have a new book out called Now What? How to Move Forward When We're Divided About Basically Everything. So let's dive in. I'm Sharon McMahon, and welcome to the Sharon Says So podcast. I'm so excited to be here with Sarah and Beth again. Thanks for coming back. Thank you for having us again. It's always a pleasure. Lovely to be back. I'd love to have you give people just a small introduction. If they've never listened to your show before,

this is their first time listening. Beth, can you tell us a little bit more about your background? Well, we say that we take a different approach to the news and that approach is really centered in the whole of who we are and who we are not. So we aren't journalists. We aren't pundits. We aren't party people. We're not trying to convince anyone of anything. I never want someone to listen to Pantsuit Politics to be Team Sarah or Team Beth.

What we are are two women with law degrees, with a variety of professional experiences, with children. We're very active in our communities. And we bring all of that to the table to say, here's what's going on in the headlines. How do I feel about it? What, if anything, do I want to do about it? How do I make meaning of this thing that's consuming a lot of my attention and my energy and a lot of conversation in my life? How might I engage in that conversation in ways that feel inspiring instead of depleting? And doing that twice a week since November of 2015 has really altered the way that I show up as a citizen. And I'm so grateful to be doing that in community with all the people who listen to the show and who email us after our conversations to say, here's what you missed.

Here's a perspective you might not have considered. Here's what I found helpful in your conversation. Here's a question I'd like to hear you tackle next time. It's a beautiful civic discourse that we're able to have because of all of the people who spend their time with us. I love that. Sarah, how has podcasting changed since you guys started? So my husband is responsible for me entering the world of

podcasting. He, at the time I was writing a parenting blog and he was like, you got to get into podcasting, got to get into podcasting. So I think he sensed it was about to take off. It wasn't new. I mean, it'd been around for a long time when we started in 2015. But at the time, there was still a lot of independent voices. Like when we started our political podcast in 2015, you didn't have like every major political media figure with their own podcast. Like Rachel Maddow wasn't turning her show into a podcast, right? Like you didn't have that proliferation of the big dogs, like the big corporate podcast. You still had NPR as like a major player, but there was just a lot more room in 2015,

I think, to be an independent voice, to be an independent podcast and to break through, you know, the name of the game when we started in 2015 was the iTunes new and noteworthy mentioned, like that was like such a big deal. And so, you know, that really shot our audience up tremendously. Whereas I don't know, I mean, I don't know if that has the same effect as it used to, right? Like there was a really good feature recently about like how hard it is to start a new podcast. You know, you just started one. And so I just think that that has changed like the sort of the corporatization of podcasting, the presence of a lot more advertisers, a lot more advertising networks, a lot of more like podcasting networks.

But I think what hasn't changed is that it's still a really good medium for in-depth conversations. And I think it's still, it remains like a really beautiful medium as far as like the intimacy you have in your listeners. My favorite thing about it is like, you can't skim a podcast, just find something to be mad about like you could in the, in the blogging days. It was like a very different scene, but it has definitely grown and changed. We always call it like the wild, wild west. Like, you know, it just, you never know what's going to come next. You're always learning. And anybody who tells you they like get it all and know exactly how to grow a podcast and know exactly how they are lying to you. They do not understand anybody who says they do don't like believe them.

Twice a week since 2015, that is that major props. That is a commitment. It is. Your new book is called now what, how to move forward when we're divided about basically everything. And I think that's the question on many people's lips, right? It's like, cool. Yeah. I'm over here and you're over there. Now what I understand that we can't just exist in this place forever. Our miracle will self-destruct, but now what, how do we fix it? I would love to know, first of all, how did you land on this title? It's really came from Sarah because we had a lot of conversation about what we were trying to do as a follow-up to our first book. So our first book is I think you're wrong,

but I'm listening a guide to grace filled political conversations. And what Sarah kept saying is, I feel like what people are expressing to us about the first book is yes, I listened. I did the grace filled political conversation. They are still wrong. What's the next step in our relationship. And so this book is much more relationship based. It is much less political and much less policy focused than our first book. And I think we are trying with this book to recognize that I am never talking to just a person who has an opinion about a candidate or about abortion or about taxes. I am talking to a person who first grew up in a household where they learned things. And second is a parent or perhaps a partner to someone and has friends and has a workplace. And every dimension of this person's life has rolled up into these political perspectives and some unrolling instead of just continuing to argue with each other about that political

perspective will help us get unstuck. I love what you say in the introduction where you're talking, we are asking the question now what, and you say, we all want the answers to be. Now we solve the problem. Now we all agree. Now we all stop fighting, but we all know deep down that's never going to happen. And instead we're inviting you to see now what not as an opportunity to solve conflict, but to use it, to connect more deeply with the people around you. And I love that perspective because we are very much, um, deeply in the trenches of like, we got to fix it, need to fix it. I'm sure people have asked you many times, like, we got to fix it. We need to fix it. I'm sure people have asked you many times, like,

just how can we fix it? People have asked me that 1250 million times. So how do we fix it? Yep. And I love that your response to that is not necessarily, we're going to fix it, but we're going to use it to make us better. So can you talk a little bit more about that concept, to make us better. So can you talk a little bit more about that concept, Sarah? I have a 12 year old son. He's very legalistic. I'm told this is developmentally appropriate behavior does not make it any easier to deal with. And I told him the other day, I think we were talking to maybe about something very difficult, like climate change. And I said, I just, I encourage you to abandon the verb fix when you are talking about policy or people or society or culture, you fix a typo, you fix a hole in the wall. You don't fix people and you don't fix situations involving people.

And I think, you know, we talk a lot in this book about how we're just trained up as consumers. We're just trained up as like, I will buy the thing, then I will be happy. I will become more productive. And, you know, I love it. Listen, I love a productivity hack. I am consumed with self-improvement. I love that kind of thing, but I have had to learn the role of grace and the role of curiosity and to see my interactions with human beings as just, it is a surfing situation, not a math problem, right? And I think changing my orientation to that, even as a person who loves policy, who really believes in the power of government to solve problems, to just embrace the idea that, yeah, but you might create

three more it's just that it's the reality and the complexity of of human relationship and that's what we're talking about when we're talking about politics or policy or society or culture we're talking about human relationships and the inherent complexity contained within those as amplified by social media or the internet or a pandemic or income inequality or all these other systemic things playing out upon us. And I think just holding all that is hard. It's not surprising that people's instinct is like, oh, the pass, hard pass. Thank you so much. No. And we retreat and we isolate ourselves or we shun and we shame because we want to find a level of control in the midst of all this complexity. And it's so hard.

You know, we talked about this with our first book. It's so hard to tell people like, I know it feels so scary, but there is, there is comfort in letting go of that. The connection, the strength of the connection will make up for the lack of the control. I promise. I promise. But, you know, once you try to control each other, you lose all ability to influence. It's so hard to, to sort of see the matrix of like, the more we try to control each other

in our situations and try to fix it, the less we have. I love to that, that perspective that we can't fix people. And so if we abandon that as the goal that actually can be tremendously freeing. People don't think that though. They're like, they can't be right. Look again. Let me give you an example of what we're talking about. That is an easy one to digest. So we have a small team that works on our show. And frequently I find myself feeling a way about a topic we're going to discuss or an Instagram post or whatever. And the other three ladies on our team, all of whom I deeply admire and respect, feel a different way. back to feel a different way. And so it would be easy in that situation to say, well, we're going to vote and it's three to one. And so we're going to do this thing. And then I could get my feelings hurt or everybody could feel weird about how I'm feeling about something. But instead we put it all on the table. Usually we do go in the direction that the three support, but by airing what I'm feeling and concerned about, it alters the way that we do it.

I add something, even if I didn't win, I added something. And I think that that's what we need to keep doing. So it's not a fixed situation. It's what can you contribute? What can I contribute? What comes out from all those contributions now? And then what will that look like, comes out from all those contributions now? And then what will that look like, you know, months, years down the road? I love too, how you in this book help people move away from this desire to just fix and control. And you give a very specific sort of concrete examples that I think people will find very helpful in a variety of different relationship types, ranging from your closest family relationships, all the way to politics at large and everybody in between. And I just wanted to read a couple of the questions that you offer as sort of conversation starters. And because

these are sprinkled throughout the book. And I think people who are like, I just don't even know how to talk to my uncle at Thanksgiving about this. Cause it's, I can't fix it. You say we want to stop talking about those different expectations and start getting to the heart of our disagreements. One way to do that is through storytelling. And when we ask each other open-ended and unexpected questions, we can learn more about what's behind the opinions and emotions that can make some of our relationships so difficult. And here's a few examples that you give. If you're talking to a family member about immigration and are surprised at the distance between your stances, you might say, isn't it interesting that we grew up in the same place, went to church together and know lots of the same people and still see this so differently.

I wonder if there's an experience that you remember having that really impacted your views on this. And I, I love that because it's not just like, why are you wrong about immigration? I love that because it's not just like, why are you wrong about immigration? You know, a lot of times we get stuck in this idea of like, tell me why, tell me why you feel that way. And it feels very accusatory and it feels very attacking. And the subtext beneath it is I'm right and you're wrong. And please give me more ammunition that I can then use to reload my weapons. And so when you have that sort of, tell me why you feel that way. Well, why? And you just have this mindset for the person can perceive that your mindset is that you're looking for more ammunition

and you shift to these types of questions. And the book is filled with those types of very thoughtful questions that you can use on a huge variety of topics. with those types of very thoughtful questions that you can use on a huge variety of topics, it really can change the conversation. We exist in many ways to help ourselves work through issues. That's what keeps me coming to talk to Sarah twice a week is I have a need and she helps me process and I walk away feeling better. And the folks in our audience, our listeners, our readers share, share a lot of those needs. And so these questions, many come from personal experiences. I have said, what in your life has influenced you on immigration? What has made this issue so important to you? I have been surprised by the

passion among family members about immigration. When we live in Kentucky, we're not a border state here. We don't have an influx of jobs going to Mexico and the places where I've lived and not just the position, but the intensity of the position comes from. So that's an example for that question. But also we just have conversations with our listeners constantly about these topics and they'll say, here's where I'm stuck with my brothers and sisters. Here's what my dad and I can't get past. Here's what's going on with my boss that I don't know how to navigate. And we really try to just pay attention to what questions were coming to us and what questions we

might be able to offer to help people work through that, because we did not want to write a prescriptive book. This is not a manual. It's not a how-to. As you said, this is not a fix-it. It is just a move forward. It is, let me offer you a question that you might use to take a millimeter of progress with this person and deepen this relationship a little bit, even though the question, how did you get here, isn't going to change anyone's view, but it might soften everybody enough where we can influence each other again. It's hockey season and you can get anything you need delivered with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats, but iced tea, ice cream, or just plain old ice. Yes, we deliver those. Goal tenders, no, but chicken tenders, yes, because those are

groceries and we deliver those too. Along with your favorite restaurant food, alcohol, and other everyday essentials. Order Uber Eats now. For alcohol, you must be legal drinking age. Please enjoy responsibly. Product availability varies by region. See app for details. This episode is brought to you by Dyson OnTrack.

Dyson OnTrack headphones offer best-in-class noise cancellation and an enhanced sound range, making them perfect for enjoying music and podcasts. Get up to 55 hours of listening with active noise cancelling enabled, soft microfiber cushions engineered for comfort, and a range of colours and finishes. Dyson OnTrack. Headphones remastered. Buy from DysonCanada.ca. With ANC on, performance may vary based on environmental conditions and usage. Accessories sold separately. Visa and OpenTable are dishing up something new. Get access to primetime dining reservations by adding your Visa Infinite Privilege Card to your OpenTable account.

From there, you'll unlock first-come, first-served spots at select top restaurants when booking through OpenTable. Learn more at OpenTable.ca forward slash Visa Dining. I also think that we we don't just do the like, well, why? It's we assume we know and it's because you don't care. Well, it's because you don't care if people die from COVID or you don't care if people if babies die from abortions and you don't care if my like we just we go straight to like you're a psychopath. Like I know that piece during the Trump years, like I don't know how to teach you to care. I think that was some title like that really connected with people. But I really thought it was damaging because like it just it's just, you know, there are psychopaths in the population,

but they're not that predominant. You know what I mean? Like you're not encountering them that regularly in your life. Like people are motivated by different things, but most people, like if somebody needed help, we'll help them. So most people want what's best for their kids, wants their kids to have a better life than they do. Like I always talk about like in, you know, in extreme weather events, it's not like, you know, in extreme weather events, it's not like, you know, when the people come out with rowboats, they ask like, what's your party identification before they try to rescue you from your flooded house. Right. Like, but, and so what I think what we're always trying to do with those questions is like, just, just to

remind people that like, give the benefit of the doubt it's free. It costs you nothing in these conversations. If you really, I mean, sometimes the benefit of the doubt. It's free. It costs you nothing in these conversations. If you really, I mean, sometimes the benefit of the doubt costs you. And some people, times people don't deserve it, but like in these conversations, when we're, we're really laying out these levels of connection, if you're in relationship with somebody or you want to influence them, then to do that motivated listening, where you're curious, where you're giving them the benefit of the doubt people sense that. It is so true though, that we, we have the greatest amount of influence in relationships in which there is trust, right? As when somebody trusts you, they are much more likely to take your recommendation for something. If you're like,

listen, trust me, this is the best vacuum. Get it. If you know and trust that person, you'd probably be like, all right, well, I'm going to try it out versus just a man on a commercial. It's a much bigger leap to make that trust is what allows that influence to occur. And if we want to rebuild that trust between us, we have to stop approaching people from the fix it perspective and from the tell me why you're wrong perspective. Well, and I think what's so hard is to tell people like conflict can be a path to build trust. It really can. I promise. I know it sounds bananas, but Beth and I were not close friends when we started this podcast. I know it sounds bananas, but Beth and I were not close friends when we started this podcast.

We built trust in a relationship by talking about hard, conflict-ridden things. You know, like we started the podcast in 2015. I used to work for Hillary Clinton. Beth really doesn't want to talk about Hillary Clinton ever. And still we built a friendship in a podcast, like, you know, during this like very heated political time. And I think it's just, it's hard to convey like you can't, cause that's where we're at, right? We're in this trust deficit. Well, how do we, how do we ever build trust if we can't trust each other? We can't build trust. So we don't trust each other. So we can't like, it's, it can feel very circular, but if you, if you can just convey to people, show people, experience it yourself, that like going through this, like very hard conversation, this very conflict ridden, intense moment,

instead of avoiding it at all costs, you can start to build back that trust bit by bit. I love this too. And wanted to ask you about this. You said, we absolutely don't recommend that everyone agrees to disagree. And instead we recommend showing our beliefs instead of telling them and showing the joy that accompanies our beliefs. How do we show people what we believe instead of just telling them? Well, I hope it first takes place in the way that we communicate with them. It is so interesting to me to go online whenever a crisis moment happens, which seems really frequently, like we've eroded what crisis means. When is it not?

Right. You know, on Tuesdays, when you go on the internet and you have all these people yelling at you about care. If you really cared, you do this to Sarah's point. I don't know how to teach you to care about people. Well, that is not showing me a belief right in action, because if we are informed by an ethic of care, then we have to bring that ethic of care to people who disagree with us as well, or who don't see the issue with us as well, or who don't see the issue as we see it, or who haven't walked down the path that we've walked down to become so convicted about our care. I think first, if I am saying to someone, I wish you would calm down about politics and I need to show up in a calm way in the discussion and doing that more

over time, being genuinely curious. If I want you to read my articles and I need to read yours, just a little bit of reciprocity with each other. It sounds so basic. I see almost none of it happening around politics. So that would be the first thing for me, you know, with agree to disagree. And I think it's related to showing that there's joy in this telling people, I don't want to agree to disagree. If you're done with

this conversation, I'm happy to be done with it today, but I would love to pick it up again sometime because I'm interested in how you got here. And I'm interested in wrestling through this with you. I think it makes me a better thinker. I think it makes me a better person to hear from you on this. I want to keep doing it. So just showing it doesn't hurt me that you disagree. I don't take that as rejection, as insult, as injury. I don't think you think I'm stupid. And I certainly don't think that you are. And saying some of those things out loud, as we go along, we talk a lot about sort of annotating our relationships in this book, stepping out of the subject to comment on the relationship as we go. And I think that's where we can say, I do have a sense of joy and lightness and groundedness, even about

the hardest, most serious topic, because I'm secure in this relationship. I trust you. I'm in conflict with you because I trust you. I feel like that's the unarticulated thing I'm saying to Sarah. Every time we sit down for a discussion, I'm willing to do this because I do respect you. I think you're very smart. It's an iron sharpening iron situation for me. And I want that. As I look back over the past, almost 13 years of my life, since I've moved back to my hometown, I look at the fact that I sort of have this like parallel resume and community experiences and how I was trying to show my values, how I was trying to show my joy instead of just communicating it.

Because when I lived in Washington, D.C., like it was my job, but I didn't feel like I was like living it beyond my job because the job took up so much. Right. So I was like, I was, I was performing my politics every day at my work. And then when I moved home to my, my hometown of Paducah, Kentucky, I mean, I've really like, I I've got all these boxes on my little community values checklist. Right. So I moved back and I joined a lot of boards and I joined a charity organization and I ran for office and I served on my city commission that I ran again and lost my reelection campaign. I'm currently a CASA, Beth and I this year trying to be substitute teachers. Cause we knew our school board,

what are our school systems were really suffering. And I think like for that, by the way, I remember seeing that on Instagram and I'm like that I love. It's been a learning. Well, and that's like, right. How many times am I going to tell people like we have to support our local school systems? Right. I love that you are literally living, showing what you believe instead of just telling. I mean, my dearest friends are teachers. How many times can I pat them on the back and be like, I bet it's hard. You know, like I just, it's just so many times you can do that. And I look back, but I think like, well, that's it, right? There isn't just one way. And at one point in my life, I showed it by running for office.

And at one point in my life, I showed it by serving on boards. And at this point in my life, I'm showing it by working as a CASA. And in 10 years, it might look completely different. So there isn't going to be one way that I show it outside of my conversations. And I think conversations are so important, but I think we can get stuck in this place of where the only way to show that I care is to write a very passionate post on Facebook, or I'm in a lot of group texts where people exercise their political concerns via group texts, which is fine. I'd rather do it in a group text than Facebook. But we talk a lot about this and now what, like, well, what's your work to do?

And it's not going to be like one thing, or it might be like, there are people who like apply to be CASAs and do it for 20 years, right? Like that's their thing. That's what they do. They love it. It's, it's Like that's their thing. That's what they do. They love it. It's how they serve their communities. But I think that community connection and feeling like you're engaged and you're making a difference, even if it's like in making a difference, you're exposed to all the

bigger systemic problems, which is definitely part of the equation a lot of the time, is another way you just show in small ways. You're not fixing it, but you just feel like, well, I'm taking action. I'm being a part of this, this community in a really tangible way. And I think like, that's, that's a huge component of it. I think part of the issue that happens when we don't show it is that we feel incredibly powerless. And any think piece about polarization tells you that part of the polarization comes from the powerlessness that people feel in our system. My voice isn't being heard. I'm not really represented. We have

tremendous power. There is more than enough work to do. And if you raise your hand to actually do the work, it will come to you in droves, right? And you'll see in a school, the people who show up to help in any way have tremendous influence over what happens in the school. Same thing with a city council, with almost any nonprofit effort, the people who show up have a ton of power and influence. We just don't take it because we're busy fighting over the long reads or the tweets or the viral videos. And so there's just so much to be gained when you're willing to step into it instead of typing. Such a good point about how we feel powerless, but sometimes we're feeling powerless about the wrong thing. We're feeling powerless about our ability to influence Congress. We're feeling powerless about our ability to influence the president or the CDC. And in reality, you're not really supposed to be able to influence the

CDC. You know what I mean? That's just twisting at windmills. You're not supposed to be able to influence the CDC. You know what I mean? That's just twisting at windmills. You're not supposed to be able to influence that easily. That is meant to be challenging, a challenging thing to influence. And it's meant to represent the 330 million people, but there are many areas in which you do have a tremendous amount of power, but instead of exercising it, you are typing on Facebook about how you don't have any power. Yeah. Well, and listen, I would like you and to invite the governors to join me in my campaign, because I would like us to be more easily influenceable upon Congress. 435 people is not enough people to represent 330 million people. I'm not great at math, but that

math sucks. There are areas where we feel disempowered because the system is, it needs a system does not that you're right. It's an upgrade. You know what I mean? And there's lots of areas in that space, but there's also like in a, in a country this big, there's always going to be feel spaces where, again, it's, I think some of it is that training as consumers. We're trained as like the consumer is always right. And so the second you think something's wrong, you should be empowered to fix it and everybody should revolve around you and you deserve that. And you're entitled to it. In a country this big, there's always going to be things we're not going to have total control and power over. And we just rage against that as if it's going to fix anything, you know, and I think that that's what's so

paralyzing. It's challenging too, because there is not a very satisfying answer to that problem. So I could look at someone and say, you know, I feel really emotional about the war in Ukraine and I am powerless. There is nothing for me to do about that. I could probably donate. Maybe I put a Ukraine flag in my yard, maybe, you know, but there is nothing for me to do about the war in Ukraine. And that is hard because I can't just drop it. And I don't want to be a person who can just drop it and move on. So what I tell myself and what I hope comes across in the book too, is that I think it still matters that I'm substitute teaching.

You know, I think that me taking care of some need that's in front of me, freeze someone else up to do their work and that free someone else up. And eventually that gets to the people who can have some influence over the war in Ukraine. We don't have a lot of models for that sort of thinking, but I would like us to see in each other that we are doing our part and that doing our part matters because the sort of nationalization and globalization through social media of everything makes us feel personally responsible for the war in Ukraine. And like, if we aren't taking the steps that Instagram says we should take today, that we don't care. And I think that is part of what has led to

a sense of real malaise and despair among people who are really trying to pay attention. Yeah. I feel that. I feel that there are so many issues over which we truly are powerless. My ability to stop Putin from doing anything is basically zero. And so it is easy to just wallow in the depths of despair and feel like it's not fixable. I also love that you say friction that is allowed to live is a remarkable teacher. And I think we spend a lot of our time trying to avoid friction, excise friction from our lives. Friction is uncomfortable. We have difficult and challenging life circumstances. And so removing all friction feels more comfortable, or we think it feels more comfortable. What does that mean to you when you say that friction can be a remarkable

teacher? I surround myself unconsciously with people who are very different than I am in terms of temperament and personality. And so I live with a lot of friction in my marriage because I've chosen a life partner who has really different strengths than I have. And I live with some friction in my work because I've chosen a work partner who has very different strengths and personality than I have. We're both Enneagram ones is what she's trying to say here. Chad, her husband and I are both Enneagram ones. That's what she's conveying. What, and what are you Beth? I'm two. So I am about care and empathy and feeling loved. And the two people closest to me in life right now with whom I spend the most time

are very much about finding the right answer and making sure that we all abide by the right path. Once we have found, I mean, I did go to the trouble to find the right answer. I don't know why everybody can't just follow it. You got to follow it. I'm interested, Sharon, in your perspective on that sense of only one thing can be true because that has to be learned. I know of nothing in the universe where only one thing is true. When I think I know something, I can come up with almost immediately the opposite. I think of gravity as just definitively true. And then I'm like, not off the side of earth. And earth is like the tiniest part of this vast universe that we

occupy. So I wonder where you think we learned that, that this is right. And this is wrong. And that's the end of the conversation. Religion. Well, we're like the clarity in your answer there. We have to take in all that information and our little brains have to find a way to get through it all. So we sort, we sort in a religion teaches us for sure. have to find a way to get through it all. So we sort, we sort and a religion teaches us for sure. If you think about the growth trajectory of Christianity, you know, and I'm just using Christianity as an example, because it's the dominant religion in the United States,

certainty was incredibly valuable because the world itself was extraordinarily uncertain. They didn't understand germs, did not even have the most basic understanding of how the earth orbited the sun. The world made no sense. And so that certainty had to be tremendously comforting. And so then many of our faith traditions that have truly molded and shaped our family experiences and molded and shaped many of the policies and influenced the politicians and the laws that are present in the United States come from those faith traditions that for over a thousand years have been handed down with this degree of certainty. And so I certainly won't pin 100% of it on people's religious faiths or on Christianity

or anything like that but I do think that you can make a strong case that that's where a lot of our need for certainty comes from well and then you had the enlightenment come along and say oh but there is an answer it's just going to be provided by science not religion we're going to intellectualize our way to answers on all these most difficult questions, which was a bit of an empty promise as well. And so it's just what we do, right? Like we're going to find a different way. That way was really crappy at giving us the certainty that we really wanted. But don't worry guys, because now this way has a new foolproof plan to provide us certainty. Like if it's not, if it's not religion, it's the enlightenment. If

it's not the enlightenment, it's the internet, right? Like, it's just like, we're going to get it this time guys. No, but like for real this time, we're going to get the black and white figure in that we really been hoping for this whole time. I would love to know what you want people to take away from this book. I'll give you each a turn to tell your fondest wish for what you hope the hope the reader of now what takes away. I said this when we started writing the book, I would like people to put the book down and just breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief because the people who listen to our show, like I'm sure many of the people in your community are so interested in making the world better that it is wearing them down. And the impossibility of making the world perfect

is exhausting and trying to even sort through their own place and how they express themselves within the world is, is really a lift. And so I just would like to say to people, you're doing it. You are doing it. Just the fact that you care makes a big difference. And every little thing you contribute is a thing that wasn't contributed before. And thank you for that. And you don't have to do it by yourself. That is the big thing I want people to know. I want them to put the book down and know I'm doing enough and I don't have to do this by myself and it still matters. I love it. Sarah, when I look around at America right now, I see so much distrust and so much pain, even expressed by just, you know, an increase in violence and increase in road rage and increase

in all this lashing out at one another. If I could wish anything for this book is that it would find its way to people and would help in the smallest way possible, just chip away at some of that pain. If it makes them feel less alone, if it makes them take one step closer to somebody that they have disconnected from, if it helps them feel less anxious and more empowered to work for something that's important to them in their community, if it helps them have a difficult conversation with their kids around climate change or something their child is worried about in the world. Just that connection like that. I hope people read this book and find even the first baby step on a path to more connection with the people in their

lives and the people that they love. Well, I really enjoyed reading. Now what, how to move forward when we're divided about basically everything. You can pre-order it or order it depending on what day you're listening to this, wherever you buy books and tell everybody where to find your podcast. You can listen to us anywhere you listen to podcasts, pantsuitpoliticsshow.com. Our website is really our front door. So you can get to our newsletter there, the books, the podcast, our membership community, all the places aggregated at fancypoliticsshow.com. Thank you both so much for writing this book and for being here today.

Thank you. Delightful to have you back. Thank you for having us. Always a pleasure to talk with you. Same. Thank you so much for listening to the Sharon Says So podcast. I am truly grateful for you. And I'm wondering if you could do me a quick favor. Would you be willing to follow or subscribe

to this podcast or maybe leave me a rating or a review? Or if you're feeling extra generous, would you share 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.