Ten Percent Happier with Dan Harris - How To Feel Less Enraged And Hopeless When You Consume The News | Sharon McMahon

Episode Date: October 21, 2024

“America's Government Teacher” has smart tips for staying calm in turbulent times.After years of serving as a high school government and law teacher, Sharon McMahon took her passion for education to Instagram, where more than a million people (who affectionately call themselves “Governerds”) rely on her for non-partisan, fact-based information.Sharon is also the host of the award-winning podcast, Here’s Where It Gets Interesting, where, each week, she provides entertaining yet factual accounts of America’s most fascinating moments and people. In addition, she is the author of The Preamble, a Substack newsletter about politics and history. In this episode we talk about:How to avoid being ‘confidently wrong’ How we often get confused between our opinions and our identity—which makes it very hard to change our opinionsThe importance of having a diverse media diet Tips for consuming the news without driving yourself nutsHow to have compassion for people who we completely disagree withHow history can be a balm for hopelessness—an antidote for when we’re tempted to conclude that things have never been worseHow everyday people have way more power than we thinkAnd why hope is a choice.Related Episodes:Eight Things I’m Doing To Stay Sane During Election Season | Dan Harris#405. How You Help End Polarization and Inequality – and Get Happier, Too | Robert Putnam & Shaylyn Romney Garrett3 Buddhist Strategies for When the News is Overwhelming | Kaira Jewel LingoSign up for Dan’s newsletter hereFollow Dan on social: Instagram, TikTokTen Percent Happier online bookstoreSubscribe to our YouTube ChannelOur favorite playlists on: Anxiety, Sleep, Relationships, Most Popular EpisodesFull Shownotes: https://happierapp.com/podcast/tph/sharon-mcmahon-847Additional Resources:Download the Ten Percent Happier app today: https://app.tenpercent.com/link/downloadSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to 10% happier early and ad free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. It's the 10% happier podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hello, everybody. How we doing? It is so easy when you turn on the news to feel hopeless, powerless, confused, and enraged. But my guest today comes with a whole corneacopia of practical wisdom for navigating tumultuous times. Sharon McMahon

has been called America's government teacher. She's a former high school teacher who has shot to prominence recently because she is meeting a truly deep need in our culture for clear nonpartisan information and workable strategies for approaching American politics with a sense of sanity and agency. Sharon has a massively popular Instagram account, a thriving sub stack community called The Preamble, a hit podcast called Here's Where It Gets Interesting, and now a new book called The Small and The Mighty.

In this conversation, we talk about how to avoid being confidently wrong, I love that phrase. How we often get confused between our opinions and our identity. And that confusion can make it very hard to change our opinions. The importance of having a diverse media diet. She's very funny on this. Some tips for consuming the news without driving yourself nuts. How to have compassion for people who we think are nuts.

How history can be a bomb for hopelessness, an antidote for when you're tempted to conclude that things have never been worse, which is sometimes called recency bias, how everyday people have way more power than we might think, and why hope is a choice. Sharon McMahon coming right up after this. Before we get started, I wanna remind you that we're doing all sorts of fun and interesting

stuff over at danharris.com. These days, we've started a new community through Substack, which involves all kinds of perks for subscribers like chats about each episode, video, Ask Me Anything sessions, and even live meditation sessions. Plus, you will get crucial episode takeaways and cheat sheets delivered directly to your inbox. I'm having a lot of fun doing this and I'd love for you to join me. It's eight bucks a month or $80 a year

and free for anybody who can't afford it, no questions asked. Just head over to danharris.com, we'll see you there. Meditation is not just a quick fix for everyday challenges, it's a practice that can change your life. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to show up. The Happier Meditation app meets you where you are so you can realize more than you thought possible

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We listen to Life by Keith Richards. Keith, if you're listening, I'd love to have you on the show. We also listened to Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. And Yuval, if you're listening to this, we would also love to have you on the show. So audio books, yes. Audible, yes. Love it.

There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30 day audible trial and your first audio book is free. Visit audible.ca Visit audible.ca audible.ca Sharon McMahon, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Likewise. All right. I want to jump in. You've got an incredible origin story. I would love it if you just walk us through it. So you've become an author and podcaster and

Instagram star, but your history is a little bit more earnest and important, but not as public and flashy. Maybe you could describe that history for us. Yeah, you know, I thought when I was in college that I wanted to be a doctor and sort of went to college thinking that that was, you know, in my future, started taking all the classes. And I had a weird epiphany moment in a college class one day where the best way I can describe

it is it's almost like a knowing descended on me. And it's a weird phenomenon that I can't explain. I have no explanation for it, but I just felt the sense of knowing of like you are meant to be a teacher. And I, in that moment felt immediately like, that is absolutely correct. That is exactly what I'm supposed to be doing. I felt no angst about giving up this sort of path

that I thought that I was on to pursue becoming a physician. And I just ran full force at becoming a teacher. And that's what I did. I became a government and history law teacher, did that for a very long time. And now use the knowledge and skills that I acquired through both educational pursuits, but also professional pursuits

to help people understand where we are and how we got here. Yeah, and it's really taken off. Can you tell the story of what happened in 2020 that kind of sparked this transition from teacher, school teacher to teaching large swaths of the American and global public? Yeah. Well, you know, I left the classroom

and moved back to my hometown in Minnesota. I owned another business. 2020 was a very challenging year for everybody for a variety of reasons. Doesn't matter how COVID affected you or didn't, it affected everybody in some way, I should say. And it affected me personally in a little bit more of a unique way, and that my husband was diagnosed with stage five renal failure, and was quite sick with end stage kidney disease essentially, and needed a kidney transplant.

And in August of 2020, during the height of the pandemic, this was before any treatments were devised, before any vaccines were devised, before any vaccines were developed. He was able to get a kidney transplant from a stranger who donated his kidney altruistically to a stranger. They call those Good Samaritan donations. And this stranger in Texas heard a podcast about kidney donations and was like, I should look into that.

He was an electrician. On his lunch break, he looked up how to donate your kidney and just decided, you know what, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna do that. So he did. This is a 26 year old ma'am who just heard a podcast about kidney donation and decided I'm gonna do that. Well, my husband was the recipient of his kidney. We didn't know it at the time because of patient privacy laws. We were able to connect later.

But as part of a donor chain in order to get that kidney from the stranger in Texas, my mom donated one of her kidneys to a stranger in Wisconsin. So all of this is happening during a time when the world is shut down, when we have tremendous amounts of time on our hands, and where I had an even larger amount of time on my hands because my husband is sick recovering from an organ transplant, which is a very challenging recovery even when we're not in the middle of a global pandemic, but even more so because COVID is actually quite hard on your kidneys. Early in the pandemic, again, before any treatments were developed, people who had stage five renal failure had a 30% chance of death from COVID, And 50% of people approximately would go on to lose their transplanted organ.

So it became exceedingly important that he not get COVID. And that created a very, very high amount of isolation, perhaps even more so than the average person. Because most of us, if you were given a 50% chance of losing an organ that was just donated or a 30% chance of death if you contracted an illness, you would take great care to not get it. Those are not great odds, right? So that left me with a tremendous amount of time on my hands at home. I'd never had this amount of time on my hands at home. I'd never had this amount of time on my hands. I've always been busy. I've always had a bunch of kids and jobs

and stuff to do, you know? The idea that I'm at home and we're all just sitting here, I'd never known what that was like. And it was that opportunity that allowed me to start doing something else. And that eventually became what I'm doing now, but it really started because of a, of kidney disease and COVID. That's an incredible story.

And just to put a fine point on it, my understanding, and you'll correct me if I'm wrong, is at some point you're on Facebook in 2020 and you saw somebody, I love this phrase, being confidently wrong, spreading misinformation, and you made a post. Yes, it was a friend of a friend on Facebook. I didn't know this man, but he was, yes, absolutely confidently wrong is the right way to describe it, where he was

commenting on my Facebook friends post, talking about how, you know, the electoral college was a place you could go. It was a university you could graduate from. This is not a matter of opinion. Okay, this is not a like, who should I vote for, which candidate's better? No, no. That's just demonstrably false. So I sort of decided in that moment that I could either fight with strangers in the comments on Facebook and be like, actually, the electoral college is a concept, not a place. I could either make a million posts arguing with strangers, or I could make a little fact-based nonpartisan explainer

video that explained how the electoral college was a concept, not a location, and actually how it worked in a way that people could understand. Because I've been used to teaching things like the electoral college to 16 year olds forever, who have no interest in learning this by and large, who are being forced to be in your class. So I knew that I could explain it in a way that people could understand. So rather than argue with the confidently wrong people on the internet, I just decided I was going to start making some little videos and they took off. The videos took off, Dan, and here we are. Yeah.

I mean, they took off, I think, for quite a good reason in that they're helpful. And so now millions of people follow you on social media. You have very popular podcasts. You have a new book and a very popular substack, all of which are putting out nonpartisan fact-based information. And beyond that really, because it's not just giving us facts that help us understand things, it's also helping us navigate a difficult moment in American history.

Which I wanna get your advice on a number of issues. But before I do that, let me just ask one more sort of foundational question to help the audience situate you in their minds. You have talked about there being a key difference between being a journalist, a role I understand, and a teacher.

Can you talk about the difference as you see it? Yeah, well, first of all, journalism is extremely important. This is not an effort to pit one against the other. Teachers rely on journalists and vice versa, right? Journalists do really important work gathering the facts, putting them down in a way that helps people understand the nature of a situation perhaps. You know, like there's a fire at 123 Main Street

and there are 11 fire trucks and four cats that have been rescued and it took them three and a half hours to put it out. You know, like there's a fire at 123 Main Street, and there are 11 fire trucks and four cats that have been rescued, and it took them three and a half hours to put it out. And then maybe your subsequent investigation would, you know, why in fact did it take so long to put it out? Have there been budget cuts at the fire department? You know, like there are lots of things that a journalist might uncover. Holding power to account is an incredibly important role of journalism.

We can't truly be free unless we have a free press. So journalism is important, but it has a different orientation than the way I view my role in the sort of ecosystem of information, which is about helping people understand what is. Thinking about how do I think about something as opposed to actively out there uncovering you know new information in the sense of we're doing an investigative report on the defunding of the fire department. I don't view that as my role as much as helping somebody understand well why might the fire department have been defunded? And how does the fire department get funded?

And how could we fix fire department funding in the future? And how can you as a citizen be more involved in your local community to prevent this from ever happening again? So my role, so to speak, is different, even though there are some elements of overlap in the important sharing of information, I don't view myself as an investigative journalist. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it's great.

And one more point I think maybe we should make before we dive into some of the sort of practical questions that I think a lot of people have about how to navigate this moment. There are many types of journalists, as you know. I come out of the sort of non-partisan, I think a lot of people would say allegedly non-partisan mainstream media. There are also journalists who are on the right or left and have a political agenda.

Most of them I think are quite open about it. And I actually think that kind of journalism can be helpful in and of itself. But your role as a teacher, as I understand it, and you'll either correct me or expand upon this, is not to lead people to conclusions, but to help them have the right facts so that they can make their own conclusions.

It's really difficult to make an educated opinion with no education on a topic. So if you need heart surgery, how do you choose which surgeon is best? You need to become educated on the heart surgeons in your area. It's really hard to make up your mind if you have no idea what you're supposed to be making up your mind about. So learning how to think about something in my mind as a teacher is more important than learning what to think about something. And I agree with you that the partisan press has a role in the United States.

I don't decry their very existence. I do think sometimes people are confused about the difference between opinion and analysis and fact reporting. They don't understand that they're watching an opinion show and they think it's supposed to be a fact show and they get all up in arms about like, well, these people are just blah, blah, blah. They don't understand when they tuned in that that's not what they signed up for. I think that's some of where the disconnect lies for some people. Learning how to think about something, it's like teaching a man to fish. That's a far more useful skill lifelong than just being taught a list of facts to memorize. How many of us are using the square dancing skills that we learned in fifth grade, Dan?

There's all kinds of stuff we learned in school that ultimately we're like, I memorized it and it's gone. Your German vocabulary from ninth grade, unless you're using it, you're losing it. So learning how to think about something, I find is a skill you can use the rest of your life in all kinds of situations. Okay. So let me now ask you a series of practical questions. Let me start with this phrase, confidently wrong, which I really love, which again, I'm

stealing from you. Right now we've got an overabundance of people on the internet who are confidently wrong, which I really love, which again, I'm stealing from you. Right now we've got an overabundance of people on the internet who are confidently wrong. Agreed. How can we avoid being one of those people? That's a really great question. And I'm really glad that you asked it. Everybody can be wrong sometimes, of course, but the fastest way to start being right is to stop being wrong faster.

And so that means holding your views loosely in your hand instead of gripping them tightly and being willing to re-examine your views when presented with new and better information. Now, when you re-examine your views, you may not ultimately change your mind. But being willing to re-examine your views is one of the most important ways that you can stop being or prevent yourself from being confidently wrong on the internet. It's when we lack the humility to be willing to admit that perhaps our new understanding of something is maybe better than our previous understanding of something. That like, oh, you know what?

I didn't realize that the fire department lost funding last year. I didn't know that. Now that has changed how I view the situation with the fire at the house. Being willing to re-examine is something too few people, I feel, are willing to do. But being willing to change your mind is a demonstration of your intellectual prowess in many ways, because the smartest people in the room are almost always the people who have changed their mind when they were wrong the fastest.

I've been co-signed on that entirely. One of the fears people often express in the face of this argument that both of us are making about intellectual humility is that if you're in reconsideration mode regularly well then aren't you going to lose your ethical moorings at that point you then stand for nothing and I think and I'll be curious to think to see whether you agree on with this but I think it really comes down to understanding the difference between your opinions and your

fundamental beliefs and your values. And the former can change and probably should change with some regularity. The latter, you can, I don't want to use the word cling because that's a kind of a swear word in Buddhism, but you can hold those a little bit more firmly. Does that, how does that go down with you? Yeah, I love that because your values represent things that are fundamentally important to you. I might have a value of,

it's important that we never dehumanize people, that all humans are worthy of respect, right? That might be my value. However, my opinions on immigration or my opinions on education or my opinions on universal health care, what does it look like to respect all people? Those types of opinions about specific policies or events or people, those are different than my fundamental value of all humans are worthy of dignity and respect. So being willing to change your mind when you're wrong

doesn't mean that you abandon your value of how you view humanity. It just means that perhaps you're re-examining how your opinion about a specific issue relates to your value. Your value is respect, and you realize that your previously held opinion about whatever topic, immigration, that actually is not in line with your values, so you're better off changing it.

I think people falsely equate these two things. Well, my value is that the immigration policy of the United States should be X, Y, and Z. That's my value. When in reality, they're conflating what values and opinions are. You can have an opinion on a political leader. I like that person. I dislike that woman. I love that guy, whatever it is. And your opinions on those things can change. But your underlying values can always be steadfast. And I think too, one other point about the values versus opinions thing is that we are quick to criticize people who have changed their mind on a topic. And in many ways it should be the opposite. We label people as flip-floppers.

We tell people, well, they can't be trusted if they've changed their mind. That's viewed as a negative in politics, somebody who's changed their mind on a topic. We believe that in order to be trustworthy, I should say some of us believe that in order to be viewed as trustworthy, every stated position that you had 25 years ago must remain your stated position today. Otherwise you're a flip-flopper. When in reality, very often being unwilling to change your mind when presented with new and better information indicates a lack of intellectual humility. Do you think part of what's going on these days is that,

you know, we're talking about the difference between opinions and values, that in a deeply polarized culture, people's opinions have gotten tied to their sense of self. And so I want my opinions to be locked up with the candidate that I like, and I'm not gonna change that because it's a threat to my identity. Yes, I absolutely agree with that.

That we have developed a sense of your opinions are your identity. And if you change your opinion on something, you are fundamentally changing who you are. And I mean, you know this, Dan, that your brain wants to keep you safe, and it wants to support what you already believe. It wants to be like, that's right, you figured it out. Keep believing that thing, because that feels good in our mind. It feels good up here to keep believing that thing. And so in order to change your identity, that can be quite painful for people to say, I'm a person who does X. I'm a person who is a certain faith background. I'm a person who, whatever your identity level beliefs are. to change your identity often can come

at great personal sacrifice. It can mean being kicked out of a group, membership in that group is very important to you. It can mean losing friends or support. Changing who you are at an identity level is often too big of an ask for people. They are often unwilling to change who they fundamentally are. And so to ask them to change their opinion is akin to asking them to change their religion. Most people don't change religion quickly, readily, easily, comfortably.

For many people, if religion is an important component in somebody's life, their religious beliefs become part of their identity. And if I were to criticize your religious beliefs and be like, well, you believe in blah, blah, blah things and that's just weird. That's just so weird. I don't know why anyone could think that. That actually doesn't cause you to change your mind about your religion, right? It causes you to change your mind about me. You don't think to yourself, wow, Sharon has really got some points. There is no way that my religious beliefs could be logical. Man, I'm so glad she shared that with me because now I've changed my mind.

That's not what happens. What happens if I criticize your identity is I become the problem. Your That's not what happens. What happens if I criticize your identity is I become the problem. Your identity is not the problem, it's me. Sharon's crazy. I would not listen to a word she said. I am viewed as the person with the problem in that scenario. And everything that I say afterward

is viewed with suspicion or disdain. And so this is one of the challenges with their current moment politically is we have become so attached to some of our political views, some of us have become so attached to our political opinions that they have become a portion of our identity. When that portion of your identity is criticized or somebody points out a flaw in your identity, it causes a psychological reaction of immediately pushing away the messenger. Rarely does it cause a re-examination of those opinions. It causes a, get away from me. You're that, that's crazy.

Because you're criticizing fundamentally who somebody is. That's how it feels to people. I would argue that that's not true, but that's how it feels. But some people that feels like actually painful in their bodies. They feels painful to be criticized that way. So if we look inside our own minds

and realize that we too may have the capacity to conflate our opinions with our identities, what would you recommend to start disambiguating these two things, our opinions and our identities? What are some things we can do in our lives that would help us loosen up, lighten up here? It's a great question. The first thing I think is important to realize

is to ask yourself a set of questions and to really be honest with yourself about the answers. The first one is, how much do I care about being right? Some people care deeply about being right, and some of us more than others, Dan, care deeply, deeply, deeply about being right. And other people feel like I'd actually rather be comfortable in my beliefs. Let's say for example just using religion as an example because it's an easy one. If I say to you I have in my hand the information that will fundamentally change your mind about whatever it is that you believe from a religious background. Do you want the truth or do you want to keep believing what you're believing?

A lot of people would reject the truth or they might say they want the truth, but then when presented with it, they would immediately reject it as the truth. Giving up those beliefs is too painful. So I think we have to ask ourselves quite legitimately, do I actually want to be right? And what am I willing to actually want to be right? And what am I willing to give up to be right? If we actually want to be right, that requires a probably a higher degree of humility than many of us feel comfortable with. But that exercise in

humility, it's an incredible growth opportunity for us to have that humility. So the first thing I would ask people to examine is do I actually care about being right? Because if you do, then in order to be right, you have to be willing to dissect your opinions from your identity. Nobody's saying it's easy. It can be quite painful, but often on what's on the other side of that is something really worth having, right? But only you can decide if that's what you want. Another thing that I would suggest if people are really interested in this idea of how can I ease the transition into moving away from these things as being my beliefs, as being my identity? Another thing you can ask yourself is, am I willing to give up

my membership in whatever group it is in order to be right? And a lot of times being presented with that choice requires a lot of careful consideration. People don't realize that that is often what it requires, but whatever group it is, a faith group, a political party, an academic discipline, a career, my willing to give up membership in that group in pursuit of the truth. If the answer is yes, if the answer is yes, then you have your answer and you know you have some work to do. But for many of us, if we're being honest, the answer is no. And if the answer is no, then at least you can make your decisions from a clear-eyed perspective. I'm not willing to give it up. And then you can reorient yourself in the world.

You don't need to feel like you've derailed against the machine all the time. If you acknowledge, I'm not willing to give it up. It's too important to me. Yeah. On some level, I have some sympathy for that. Belonging is a key human need. Totally. I want to go back to the first thing you said

about how much do I care about being right. I wanna apologize. I laughed when you said that at first, not because I misunderstood what you meant. You meant it in a positive sense, like actually being correct, aligned with the truth. I thought you meant it as like, how much do I care about winning the argument?

Which I think is, you can win the argument and still be wrong. And so I was laughing because I sometimes fall into the category of the guy who cares about being right in that sense. No, I totally get it. I very much enjoy being right, Dan. I get it.

Don't become a teacher if you don't like being right. Teachers are naturally bossy people who like to tell people what to do and who enjoy being in charge and like to be correct about things. That is the mentality of most teachers. So no shade for me. I get it. I can describe most podcasters too. There was a thing you said that I picked up on,

and I just wanna say a few words about it and see if you, you know what you think. You said there are some people who would actually prefer to be comfortable than right or accurate or aligned with what's true. And I completely get that, I can sympathize with that too. And as somebody who likes comfort, I actually think that there's a more subtle

and satisfying version of comfort on the other side of intellectual humility, because there is a subtle pain to dogmatism. There is a subtle pain to clinging to views that some part of you suspect may not be true. That's when we, as Shakespeare says, start to protest too much. And that doesn't feel good if you're paying attention.

And being in don't-know mind, as the Buddhists say, or having open-mindedness or intellectual humility, that kind of suppleness, in my experience, is a new and different and more satisfying kind of comfort. How does that land for you? I like that. It doesn't mean that like, oh, it's going to be painful forever. And it doesn't mean that there's not something even better waiting for you.

It's a little bit like going through a breakup, even when you know that the person's not right for you. But that breakup has to happen in order to meet the love of your life or in order to meet somebody with whom you're more compatible. There is something waiting for you on the other side, whether it's background as you understand it or whether it is just a comfort that comes

from not being burdened by that dogmatic thinking that requires you to constrain yourself in a way that ultimately is not intellectually honest. Coming up, Sharon McVann talks about the importance of having a diverse media diet, tips for consuming the news without driving yourself nuts, and thoughts on how to overcome polarization in this country. The leaves drift to the ground, the wind rises. Pull up a chair by our fire, and listen to stories from the darker side of the past.

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Meditation is not just a quick fix for everyday challenges. It's a practice that can change your life. You don't have to be perfect, but you do have to show up. The Happier Meditation app meets you where you are so you can realize more than you thought possible with a flexible approach that grows with you and wisdom from some of the world's most insightful teachers. Happier helps you get more out of meditation so you can give more to every part of your life.

Go to happierapp.com and start meditating in a way that fits you. When it comes to intellectual humility and openness, what role in your view does having a diverse media diet play? I think it's important. We all have our preferred news sources that we go to first, right? We have the one we check first in the morning.

Most of us do. We have a preferred, like, I just like them the most. And it could be for a variety of reasons. Their website's the best or whatever it is. We just prefer them. But for a variety of reasons including the pursuit of intellectual maturity being confronted with view points that you perhaps disagree with that actually is tremendously important

for your own intellectual growth if all you ever hear is what you want to hear if all you ever hear is a recitation and repetition of your own already held beliefs, that candidate is terrible. Here's 25 more ways that they're terrible. You were right to think they're terrible. And here's another list of people who also think they're terrible. You know, like that feels comforting to our brains. We're like, yeah, you had it right the first time. Good job. You had the correct opinion. And you're constantly being fed new ways

to understand how right you were. That feels good. But anyone who has ever had an intellectual pursuit, whether that's academically, or whether just through reading books that challenge them, or listening to podcasts that expand their horizons, knows that sometimes having your beliefs challenged or thinking about things in a way you've never thought of them before, you leave that conversation being like, well, this has given

me a lot to think about. And that is where that sort of intellectual maturity can come from. You might not end up arriving at the same conclusion, but the endeavor, the exercise of the pursuit actually ends up being important for your own development, much like you might not enjoy your workout, but someday you're going to be glad that you did it. You're going to be glad that you exercised your muscles, even if this moment is not the time you feel happy about it. So a diverse media diet challenges your preconceived notions, challenges your already held beliefs, forces you to grapple with things that maybe feel uncomfortable but are important for your

intellectual development. So that's one reason. Another reason is if you truly want to understand people, you have to understand them through their eyes and not through your own eyes. An example that I can give you is, let's say you are a pro-life individual, you oppose abortion. You might think to yourself, people who are pro-choice just think it's, you know, a fun afternoon activity to go out and kill babies.

That is not how people who are pro-choice understand it. They understand it differently. They believe the right to bodily autonomy is more important than anything else. And vice versa. If you're a pro-choice person, you might think that pro-life people just want to control women. They just want to control women's bodies. They want everybody to live in a theocracy ruled by their God.

That's not how pro-life people understand it. They understand it as the protection of life, an innocent potential human. So what I mean by understanding people as they understand themselves is often different than the lens through which you view them. And in order to understand how somebody else thinks, one way you can do that is consuming the type of media that they are more likely to consume. And the way you can know if you truly understand somebody is to describe for them what it is they believe and see if they agree with you. Yes, that is what I think. I can promise you that no pro-choice person would agree with the same.

It's just really fun to have abortions on Thursdays. Nobody thinks that. And if that was your description, they would not agree. And the opposite is true for people in the other camp. So the way you can know if you truly understand somebody is when you describe their belief or their opinion and they say, yes, that's accurate. That is what I believe so consuming other types of media gives you that peek into their psyche helps

you understand where are they getting these opinions from and that actually is a tremendously valuable thing to know even if you don't arrive at the same conclusion even if at the end of reading that news story you're like, dear lord, why would, why did I subject myself to this? This is terrible. I would imagine, Dan, you have read some bad journalism in your day. You've watched some of it on TV. You've been like, dear lord, no, please stop. It's terrible. You can still learn something from it. If nothing else, you can learn what other people who are consuming it are being told. And that's tremendously valuable endeavor.

Yes. On the subject of consuming the news within the framework of the overarching theme of this discussion, which is how do we survive this election on the subject of consuming the news generally? I'm curious about you. How does Sharon McMahon, avatar of sanity, beacon of fact-based analysis,

how does Sharon consume the news without driving herself nuts? The first thing I do is I don't watch it. I don't watch it. I read it. And some of that is, we all know that there's a difference between reading a book and watching a movie. There's something different happens in your mind.

If I'm reading a book about a serial killer, it's one thing to read. Well, and then he broke into the house and he stabbed her and then she died. That's different than watching the stabbing in graphic detail on the screen. So that's just to illustrate how different it is in our minds when we watch versus read. Now I'm not saying there's never a case to be made for watching the news. I'm not saying that it has no value. I'm not saying that watching footage of things isn't important. You know, we were all glued to our TVs on 9-11, right? We watched those

planes flying to the tower and the Pentagon a thousand times. So I'm not saying there's no value in it, but on a daily basis, I make a point of reading the news instead of watching it. And I make a point of hitting, again, this is because I do this as a living, I read 10 to 12 news sources a day from across the spectrum, from like the most right leaning to the most left leaning. And that is a tremendously,

it's a fascinating examination of what's happening in America and how there are very divergent viewpoints of why this country is going down the tubes, right? They both believe it is, both sides believe it is, but for different reasons. One side thinks we're going down the tubes because of following 25 terrible things, and the other side thinks it's all Donald Trump. Or you know what I'm saying, these wildly divergent viewpoints of why the country is in peril. If it bleeds, it bleeds, right? We all need a little dose of fears to keep tuning in.

That's a big mode feeder. So I read it. I don't spend excessive amounts of time obsessing about it. I don't spend a tremendous amount of time reading opinion pieces. I'm capable of forming my own opinion. I don't get my news from social media. Social media, even though I often share the news

on social media, social media is very click-baity. It's the nature of social media. I make a point of having a separation between myself and the news. And I know my own limitations. Other people have different limitations. And nobody should look at me reading 12 news sources a day and doing this professionally or you professional journalist and think, well, if they're doing it, then I have to do it too.

You have to know what you're good at, know your own limitations. Do you experience this Dan when you're reporting the news? Are you able to compartmentalize to be able to separate yourself from what's happening? Do you need to feel like emotionally verklempt in that moment about it? Or are you able to wall that off, kind of like a first responder walls off their emotions about a car accident, maybe until later in an effort to be able to deal with what's in front of them right now. That's exactly the way it was for me when I was working in the news business.

It was, you know, remember that TV show MASH? You might be too young for it, but there was a TV show MASH, I'm sure some people remember, about the Korean War and it was about these military field surgeons and they would be joking over the bodies of the... and that seems crass on some level, but it's also a survival tactic to like be able to bear the unbearable you need to create some distance. And so for sure, I think that's a very common coping mechanism among journalists.

Yeah, totally. And I hear the same from anybody who works in medicine. You can't work in the ER if you're gonna be like, oh no, oh no, terrible things are happening. Like you have to be able to sort of wall that off. People who work in, who are police officers, et cetera, they can wall that off. I am able to do that relatively easily. I don't personally need to get upset about everything that somebody on the floor of Congress

said. Yeah, he says weird things. That's what he's known for. I don't need to create this huge emotional response every time something happens. That's not to say I have no emotional responses, but I am able to separate my emotional responses from what's happening around me very often. But other people have a far more difficult time doing that. And it's okay to know what your own limitations are.

It really is. It's okay to say, I am super sensitive and I need to keep my news consumption down to just enough so that I'm an informed citizen. That's all I need. Otherwise, it just messes with my mental health too much. I can't stop thinking about it. It's, I can't get any work done. Can't spend time with my kids.

So my capacity to deal with it might be different from somebody else who's listening to this. And that's good. That's good. The world needs people like me and it needs people who are more sensitive and can't handle it. Those are both needed and necessary humans.

Yes, I completely agree. When it comes to titrating your own news consumption, you have to know yourself. In reading up on you in preparation for this interview, I found a very interesting quote. You said that if we as individuals want to be part of, we can call it depolarization

or increasing the sanity quotient in our society, if we want to be part of the solution rather than the problem, it fundamentally, these are your words, it fundamentally begins with a change of heart. So I found that intriguing and I wondered, like what exactly do you mean by that change of heart and how do we make that change?

If you want to be the person that we've been waiting for, you know, that this idea that there's some external force out there, a dude on a white horse, ready to ride in with the plan and is like, I have the plan, follow me. I feel like so many of us emotionally are just waiting for somebody to come by and save us, waiting for a dude with a plan, when in reality, we're the ones we've been waiting for.

We are the plan. And if we want to be part of the plan, be part of the solution, not be part of the problem when it comes to these topics, we can't be looking to somebody else to fix it for us. When in reality, the change is going to come from each one of us. When we decide that we're done doing that, when we decide to stop giving our eyeballs and our attention to things that fundamentally don't serve us, when we decide to stop giving our eyeballs and our attention to things that fundamentally don't serve us. When we decide that we are not going to let differences of opinion lead to contempt for our neighbors. I watched a video

recently from a woman who had a new neighbor that moved into her neighborhood and the other family had a baby and she knew this because they had one of those giant stork signs in the yard that said, it's a girl. And the woman making this video thought, you know what, I bet they could use a bunch of my baby girl stuff. So she packed up a bunch of her baby girl clothes and an expensive stroller and went over and brought it to this new neighbor's house and said, I have a bunch of baby stuff. Do you want this?

And the new family was super grateful. And long story short, they become friends. They each have kids the same age. They make plans to have cookouts and go to the park and you know, yay, we have new friends in the neighborhood. Except a few weeks later, the new family, the one with the stork in their yard, family, the one with the stork in their yard, put out a political sign that disagreed with the view of the first woman, the woman who had given the baby clothes. And her immediate opinion of that family changed to the extent that she then began crossing the street when she saw them out in their yard. When she was no longer willing to let their children who were literally three years old ride bikes together, ride their little tricycles together up and down the sidewalk. When her opinion of that other family that she had previously liked, when it

changed to the extent that she was no longer willing to be neighborly to her neighbor. That's what I mean by a change of heart. That to the extent that you might say, well, my moral values say that I should care about my neighbor. And whether those moral values come from religion or some other moral tradition, most of us would say, my moral values say I should care about other people, whether you use the word neighbor or friend or

whatever. Most people would say that, but by rejecting her neighbor in that way, she was violating her own moral values, right? But she viewed it as that woman with a stork in her yard and the bad political sign is only worthy of my contempt. That's all she's worthy of is my contempt. That actually violates her, what she said are her moral beliefs, for her to treat the person that way. So if we want to see a change in polarization in this country, there are some structural things that I think need to be addressed. Some big picture things, yes. But fundamentally, we have to be willing to change ourselves and to stop looking to some external force that has some grand ideas and a white horse or a regulatory commission or some congressional hearings

or the microphone of a rally. If we're waiting for somebody else to fix it, we're gonna keep on waiting because we are the plan. I hear two things in there and I wanna attack them sequentially. One is when it comes to a change of heart, I think what I'm hearing for is like more empathy, compassion, understanding for people with whom we disagree, willingness to interact with them. And the other is as a antidote to the pervasive sense

of hopelessness, which I know is, because I know from researching you, that is one of the things you hear the most from people who DM you on Instagram or on Substack, that they feel hopeless. That the antidote to that is to actually get involved. And in fact, your new book is really about great Americans throughout history who got involved, and we don't know their names. And so I want to talk a lot about that in a second, but let me just stay with the having compassion for, or even a willingness to interact with people who, with whom you disagree, I'm guessing most of the people who listen to the show are on the left, but the show is for everybody.

So you're welcome, whatever your political views, but, but let me just take, for example, somebody on the left, and we could run this argument in either direction. But most of the people I know on the left believe Trump is a fundamental danger to the union. And if you met somebody and liked them and then saw the next day that they had a Trump sign, well, that would provoke a lot of cognitive dissonance for you, and you'd have to reevaluate lots about them.

I'm sure the same is true. I know the same is true for many people on the right, who if they then saw a Biden or a Kamala sign, would do the same round trip intellectually as well, or emotionally. And so I guess my question is, I can imagine a lot of people listening to this saying, and again, I'll voice this from the left, but it could be from either direction,

Sharon, if you're telling me I need to have a positive relationship with somebody who is so reckless that they're willing to back Donald Trump, I can't get with that. So how do you respond to that critique, which I suspect is running, coursing through the minds of several listeners, many listeners right now?

Yeah, yeah, I think you're absolutely right. That many people feel like, pick a candidate is antithetical to who I am. That candidate is not at all in line with my beliefs. In fact, some people would say, ABC candidate doesn't believe in my family's right to exist or wants to harm people like me, especially if you belong to a marginalized group. That might be your viewpoint. I will tell you though, that most of the great leaders of history have not taken that tactic of that person disagrees with me, that person is antithetical to my moral beliefs, and so I will cut them out.

That has almost never happened amongst the great leaders of history. And the great leaders of history don't have to just be the people who are exalted on the marble statues. They don't need to be the people with the bronze plaques and the portraits in the state capitals. I'm talking about civil rights leaders. People who were absolutely ordinary people born into extraordinary hardship. Who refused to give up on their enemies. Because in the words of Septima Clark, who is somebody that I talk about in this book, I have learned that I can work with my enemies because they might have a change of heart at any moment. And how will your enemies ever have a change of heart? And I'm using enemy very broadly here, not necessarily

an enemy in a war, but somebody to whom you are ideologically opposed. How will your enemies ever have a change of heart if they are never around anyone to show them the light? If they are just sitting over in their little silo of like, yeah, Trump's the worst, or Kamala's a Marxist, whatever their little silo is that they exist in, if that is all they are ever surrounded by, how will they ever have a change of heart?

And so I often look to great people from history for inspiration. And almost always, that has not been the tactic that works. The people who want to excise themselves from a conflict, from a relationship have almost always been on the wrong side of history. Hello, the Confederacy. You know, like you're on the wrong side of history.

When they're like, we're out of here. No relationship with you, union. Goodbye. We're going to do what we want. Your beliefs are antithetical to who we are. We're out of here. The idea that cutting people off who believe differently than you, and I'm not talking about maintaining abusive relationships here. I'm not saying like, oh, if your spouse has domestic violence problems, stay with them. That's not what I'm saying. I'm speaking more broadly, more generally about a posture of how you interact with

the world, with whom you develop and maintain friendly ties. I'm not asking you to invite them to every Sunday dinner, every baby shower, everything you do in your life, but how would that family that had this bad political sign in their yard, how would they ever come to see that people on the other side are actually really nice, reasonable, kind, caring people if they never interact with them? Instead, that family that has a

bad political side now had their belief about the other side reinforced. Yeah. See? Mm-hmm. They just want to cancel people. They just want to get rid of anybody who doesn't align with their beliefs. They had their beliefs about the other side reinforced too. So this notion of, I have to cut people out that disagree with me. It's a new idea to pervade the culture. It didn't used to be nearly as pervasive as it is today. But the greats from history have not taken that position. Yeah. I know you like to point to the Lincoln quote about taking us back to

the Civil War and his second inaugural in the throes of this Civil War. He gets up on the balcony of the White House and delivers this speech in which he calls for people to have malice toward none and talk about a change of heart. And for most of us, because I think many of us have malice toward at least several. True. And so I'm curious, what do you use personally? What would you recommend to us to at least make

a few directions toward the North Star of malice toward none? Yeah, I don't know that anybody will ever achieve it perfectly, right? We're human and people rub us the wrong way. They just do. We can just like, I really just don't like that guy that constantly microwaves fish in my office. Why are people still microwaving fish, Dan?

Why? Why have people not learned this? Microwaving fish at work? I feel like the Hague should look into this because it is a serious crime. It's a crime against humanity. It's basically a war crime. If you are microwaving fish,

let today be the last day it ever happened, okay? We all have mouths towards somebody where we're like, oh no, not him, not Dan the fish microwave. No. That's a normal human response. It really is. So this is not to say that you will ever achieve some state of enlightenment where you will never feel annoyed by other people or where you will never disagree with anyone else. But it is using what attorney Bryan Stevenson would say, a reorientation of the spirit, reorienting yourself. And Bryan Stevenson, of course, is famous for writing the book, Just Mercy, huge international bestseller. He's a civil rights attorney. Reorienting your spirit instead of being oriented towards malice. How can I look for ways to be offended, malice might say?

How can I look for ways to make sure that my existing beliefs that they're being upheld? Yep, people with those signs, they are the worst. Reorienting your spirit towards the most generous interpretation of a set of events. It requires discipline to interpret a set of facts with the most generous viewpoint. It can be quite challenging. And I'm certainly not perfect at it. When people send me DMs telling me to kill myself or that they hope that I die or sending me death threats, my knee-jerk reaction is not like, wow, what is the most generous interpretation that I could view telling me to commit suicide?

Like, I admit that my knee-jerk reaction is not always one of kindness and generosity, but it requires a certain amount of discipline to be able to not react in that moment and to not show up to every fight you're invited to. You can decline the invitation. That is more and more often what I choose to do is decline the invitation that is more and more often what I choose to do is decline the invitation to the fight I've been invited to for my own peace,

for my own ability to maintain a sense of compassion for the world and for others. So that's literally the two biggest tips I can give you as a person who has not achieved some super high level of enlightenment. The first one is try to view things with the most generous interpretation possible instead of the least and give yourself some time

before responding and realize that you don't have to accept every invitation to a fight. I love that. Especially MGI most generous interpretation as a reflex while navigating this turbulent political environment. Coming up, Sharon talks about why hope is a choice and why history can be a bomb when you're feeling hopeless. Being a part of a royal family might seem enticing, but more often than not, it comes at the expense of everything, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Even the Royals is a podcast from Wondery that pulls back the curtain on royal

families, past and present, from all over the world to show you the darker side of what it means to be royalty. Like the true stories behind the six wives of Henry VIII, whose lives were so much more than just divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived. Or Esther of Burundi, a princess who fled her home country to become France's first black supermodel. There's also Queen Christina of Sweden, an icon who traded in dresses for pants, had an affair with her lady-in-waiting, and eventually gave up her crown because she

refused to get married. Throw in her involvement in a murder and an attempt to become Queen of Poland, and you have one of the most unforgettable legacies in royal history. Follow even the royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge even the royals ad-free right now on Wondery Plus. In early 1607, three ships carrying over 100 English settlers landed on the shores of present-day Virginia, where they established a colony they named Jamestown. But from the start, factions and infighting threatened to tear the colony apart. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast American History Tellers. We take you to the events,

times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, after their arrival, English colonists in Jamestown quickly established a fort, but their pursuit of gold and glory soon put them on a collision course with Virginia's native inhabitants and the powerful Chief of Chiefs Powhatan. Before long, violence, disease, and starvation would leave the colony teetering on the brink of disaster. Follow American history tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. Let's talk about the other, and this gets us to your book.

The other thing that I referenced earlier, which is history as a balm for hopelessness. We've established that many people reach out to you and say they feel hopeless. And what I believe, at least one part of what I believe you're trying to do in this new book, The Small and the Mighty, is to demonstrate through narrative, not just exhortation,

through the stories of individuals whose names most of us won't know, who had a real impact on our history without getting turned into statues or having streets named after them. And history in that way can show us that we can make a difference. It may not be sexy, it may not make headlines,

it may not be clickbait, but it's real. So just as an opening question on the book, am I restating at least part of the thesis correctly? Yeah, I think so, absolutely. You do not have to be a person of great import. You do not have to be a billionaire with naming rights to a museum. You do not have to be a person of incredible social standing, have the best, roll the decks. Often some of the most important and impactful and lasting changes in history have been made by normal, average, ordinary people who just kept doing the next needed thing,

who did not arrive with a grand five-year plan. They did not roll in on their white horse with a scroll saying, here's the plan. By the way, if anybody ever rolls in on a white horse with a scroll titled the plan, that plan is always bad news. Okay. That like never listen to the person with the scroll that says the plan. That person is trying to lead you to installing them as a dictator.

That's how that ends. But the idea that normal people, in some cases pregnant 15-year-olds, have done some of the most important things in history, I think is a tremendously hopeful thing to think about. So many of us feel discouraged by our own lack of progress in the world, by our own lack of financial resources, by our own lack of progress in the world, by our own lack of financial resources, by our own lack

of whatever it is. My lack of beauty, my lack of connections, my lack of education, my lack of a plan, my lack of motivation, my lack of happiness. We view ourselves through the lens of lack, through the lens of lack, when instead, if we viewed our role as not waiting for the perfect moment, not waiting to be the perfect person, not waiting to be picked and just kept doing the next needed thing, that is what the world needs. The world does need ordinary people who feel ill-equipped to just keep putting one foot in front of the other. I had an interview earlier today from my own podcast about a biographer of a civil rights great, John Lewis. This is one of the things that John Lewis's biographer talked about, which is that John Lewis started doing his

incredible civil rights work when he was a teenager and was in college. This is when he is on the marches where he gets beaten by the police very badly on TV and it's these big headlines. He believed in the importance, not just of the government taking action to change something, but the work needed to be done by ordinary people. And I just love that thought. I love that message that we cannot be looking solely, yes, do some things have to be addressed by the government? Sure, I can't build my own personal freeways, right? I can't build a road to Ohio and need a government to do some things for me. Yes, that's a given. But the real struggle that people like John Lewis or Martin

Luther King or some of the people that I talk about in my book, that they were engaged in, was work that they believed was important for ordinary, ill-equipped people to engage in. And history is full of those stories. Good news. History is full of stories like that that I think serve as an incredible inspiration for our own lives that often seem too small to ever be mighty. The people in this book prove otherwise, that you can be small and mighty at the same time.

I'd be interested to hear some of those stories. In particular, you use this phrase, the next needed thing. I think in recovery, they say the next right thing. However you phrase it, I like it a lot. In fact, my wife's been talking about getting that tattooed on her wrist as a kind of equanimity spell, you know, like we can get wrapped up in the size of the challenges, but if you think about all the steps that need to be taken, it can be paralytic. Whereas if you just think about the next right thing or the next needed thing, it's quite

empowering. And that phrase, the next needed thing, I believe was coined by one of the characters you write about in the book. And so maybe you can tell us about her. Yeah, it was a phrase that a woman named Virginia Randolph learned from her mother. And her mother had been born enslaved, had four daughters, and shortly after the birth of her fourth daughter,

her husband dies. And we all know how difficult it was in the past for women had four daughters, and shortly after the birth of her fourth daughter, her husband dies. And we all know how difficult it was in the past for women to provide for themselves and their children in the absence of a spouse. Circumstances in history were such that women, many jobs were closed off to women. And it was a tremendous burden for Virginia Randolph's mother, whose name was Sarah, to provide for her daughters. And so she had a job working out at the house. She also did sewing, mending, and washing for other families in an effort to make ends meet.

And so she had a set of life circumstances that most of us would not want to trade places with. Most of us would not want to stay up till three o'clock in the morning washing other people's underwear in an effort to put food on the table for our four little girls. These are not life circumstances we'd be excited to take on. But one of the lessons she continued to teach to her daughter, particularly Virginia, was just keep doing the next needed thing. Do not get bogged down in

the enormity of life's problems. Sarah Randolph doesn't look around at the world and think, um, wow, today I have not fixed structural racism. Wow, today I have not created equality for all. Today my personal actions did not lead to women having the right to vote. What she kept doing was the next needed thing. And she taught this message to her daughter, Virginia, who grows up to have an absolutely incredible impact on the educational system of the entire American South, historians of her time said that Virginia Randolph did as much or more for African-Americans when it comes to education than Booker T. Washington did.

And yet it is his name we remember and Virginia's whose we don't. And Virginia just kept repeating that to herself throughout her entire life. And she does not go on to have an easy road. She goes on to become a teacher and an incredible set of life circumstances that she is faced with.

And she literally just keeps putting one foot in front of the other doing the next needed thing. And when I tell you that perhaps millions of people in the United States have been impacted by the work of Virginia Randolph, whether they realized it or not, that is not an overstatement of the facts. And, but yet hers is not a face you would recognize without a caption.

Hers is probably a name unless you are into educational history or you are a historian in the state of Virginia. Hers is probably not a name you would recognize. And yet the fact that she just kept going, kept doing the next needed thing in front of her has impacted millions of people. You know, she also, one of the things that I thought was so interesting about her is, you know, there's a whole story of how she impacts all of these people in the book, but despite achieving a certain level of, you know, professional success as a teacher and mentor of other teachers. She continues throughout her entire life trying to

earn extra money. And one of the ways, because teachers, guess what? Teachers have never made money in the United States, especially black female teachers have never made money in the United States. She was always looking for ways to make extra money because that money was something that she would put back into the schools that she worked in. She would get up every morning, six days a week, and bake bread and sell it. She was selling bread well into the end of her life. When she finally decides to retire from teaching, she's very very old woman, it's you know like the 1950s by the time she retires, she cuts down to baking and selling bread one day a week, but she doesn't ever stop doing it because there are still needs that she thinks I'm just gonna keep doing the next needed thing. I'm gonna

let that child who doesn't have a stable home come live with me." Some of the children who were taught by Virginia Randolph took a survey and figured out how many people, how many children she housed during her lifetime. There were over 80 children that she had some version of foster care of that lived with her so they could receive an education. And what does it mean when a child is able to become educated? What is the impact on their immediate family? When that child can go on to earn a living that is above subsistence level. When that child can go on and teach their younger siblings how to read. When they are able to help their parents in their parents old age. When

that child who is able to receive an education helps lift that family out of poverty. Those are the kinds of stories that don't make it onto the Netflix dramas, but for whom America owes a tremendous debt. And there's also just an incredible amount of hope to be found in reading stories like Virginia Randolph's. I'm glad you brought up hope again, because, as established, hopelessness is one of the biggest pain points you're seeing as you survey the landscape. One of the themes in your book is this notion of

hope as a choice, not a feeling. Can you say a little bit more about that? I think so often people are waiting for a moment of hope to descend on them from the heavens and they're just waiting for like, well, I don't feel hope yet. As though it is an external thing that will visit them and they will feel it and they'll look outside and the birds will seem hopeful to sing the hopeful songs and the hopeful sunshine and like I'm experiencing hope and when we are waiting for hope to descend upon us too often humans keep

waiting. If we wake up in the morning and feel to ourselves, think to ourselves, well I don't feel hopeful today because the world is just as much of a dumpster fire today as it was yesterday. It's easy for us to get bogged down in this sense of hopelessness like nothing we ever do will matter or make a difference. It leads us to feel cynical. It leads us to feel a tremendous sense of nihilism, like nothing we do matters. That's a very dangerous place both mentally to live and it's a very dangerous place as a country to have a population that believes that nothing they do matters, that's not going to lead us anywhere worth going. Instead, I like to think about hope as a choice. That rather than waiting for it to be a feeling that descends upon us, you know, like we think about laughter as like something that happens to

us, right? Somebody else makes you laugh. They say something that just like tickles you the wrong way and it makes you chuckle. We don't think of laughter generally as being something that we generate. Right? Maybe I can say some jokes and make you laugh, but I'm rarely sitting alone in a room laughing for no reason. And we think of hope in the same way. Something somebody else is going to deliver to us.

They are going to make me feel hopeful. They're going to show me why I should hope. When in reality, hope is a choice that we can make and not a feeling that we can feel. And it is only from that place of hopefulness that positive change will occur in the world. How can we ever make positive change if we don't believe that it's possible that it can happen? That's not a place from which positive things grow. If we believe that it's all hopeless, nothing is worth trying to change, that we can't be 10% happier, that we cannot possibly find a way to improve a situation, that is not a place from which good things come. In order to make positive change,

we must choose to have hope. And we need to stop waiting for somebody else to do something to make us feel it, and we need to choose it for ourselves. One last question about hope. And this comes back to my theme, largely just stolen from you, of how history can be helpful when it comes to hopelessness.

Is that I see this a lot in my friends and commenters on social media, a kind of recency bias that suckers people into the story that things have never been worse. And I'm not poo-pooing our problems, climate change, inequality, conflicts, polarization, those are all real problems with potentially devastating long-term consequences. So having said that, I would rather be alive

now than on the lip of World War II or the full, you know, flowering of the Civil War. And one of the things I get from you and your work and in this book is a reminder that, yeah, I don't need to fall for this story that things have never been worse. Just wondering how that goes down with you. I 100% agree with you. And this is something that people actually say to me all the time, has it ever been worse?

And I'm like, listen here, how much time do you have about how much worse it used to be? We do have problems that need to be addressed. We cannot just rest on our laurels and be like, it's all good now because we made some progress. We do have things that we need to work on. But when you learn history, you will quickly be confronted with how much progress we actually have made. Do you want to force your children to die on the streets because they have the plague? You know what I mean? Like 20 to 50 million people died from the plague. They didn't understand how disease was spread.

And so they would often force people who were sick to remain outdoors and literally they would die on the street. Do you want your children sold out from underneath you by an enslaver? That was much worse. Let me tell you, it was much worse when families had absolutely no agency over their lives and families were separated and you went to an enslaver and had a life expectancy of 30 because of how terrible the conditions were. In some places, especially in the deep south, it was younger than that because of the incredible rates of contagious illness

in places like plantations. I tell one story in the book too of a man who gives a speech opposing slavery in Congress and another man who strongly believes in upholding slavery is very mad at this man. And the man who gave the speech about, you know, like we need to not have slavery anymore, he's filling out some letters because he wants to mail off a couple copies of his speech. And from behind, this other man comes up behind him and begins to violently beat him on the

floor of the United States Congress to the point that this man is incapacitated for years and not able to, his name is Charles Sumner, not able to return to Congress for years because he is so violently beaten and injured. And the man who does the caning, Congress was like, how could you? How could you do this to Charles Sumner? We're going to investigate you. And they do a whole investigation and conclude, yeah, you know what? We're not going to do anything about that. Nothing happens to him. Nothing bad happens to him. So just by virtue of comparison, are hundreds of thousands or millions of people being actively enslaved in the United States and members of Congress being literally beaten within an inch of their life on the floor of the United States Congress with absolutely no repercussions

for the person who did the beating. That's just one example of how things have improved over the last period of time. And again, it's not to discount how much work there is left to do, but I mean, I'm real glad for Advil, Dan. Okay? I like Novocaine. I like having a numb mouth before my teeth get worked on. I like not being awake for operations. I like that if I break my leg, I have a reasonable opportunity of walking again in the future. I like that my children have a reasonable expectation of living to adulthood when they're born. I like that all people have equal rights under the law. There's a million reasons why we're better today than we were in the past.

And I wholeheartedly reject the viewpoint that this is the worst it has ever been. That is objectively false. Objectively false. This has been great. Before I let you go, can you just please remind everybody of the name of your new book, of your Substack community, of your podcast, all of it, just so if I suspect people are going to want to go check out your work so they can do that.

Thanks, Dan. This has been really fun chatting and I love your incredibly thoughtful questions. I appreciate your time. And yes, if somebody wants to check out my book, it's called The Small and the Mighty, 12 Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History. It's available on September 24th, so grab a copy wherever you like to buy your books. You can also follow my daily writings on thepreamble.com. All of these things are linked on my website, SharonMcBann.com, and you can also find me on Instagram atamble.com. All of these things are linked on my website, SharonMcMahon.com. And you can also find me on Instagram at SharonSaysSo.

Sharon, thank you again. Thank you, thanks so much, Dan. Thanks again, Sharon McMahon. Don't forget to check out her new book, The Small and the Mighty and her excellent substack, The Preamble. Speaking of substack, if you go to my sub stack today, which you can find on danharris.com, you'll get a cheat sheet of this episode, which will give you a full transcript, some

time stamped highlights, and a set of the key takeaways. Subscribers also get video AMAs with me, where you can ask me anything. Live streamed video meditations, a set of guided meditations, and a steady drip of wisdom in your inbox. Lots going on over there, please check it out. Before I go, I want to thank everybody who worked so incredibly hard to make this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan,

and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our production manager. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Cashmere is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme. If you like 10% happier, and I hope you do, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts.

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