The Daily Stoic - Sharon McMahon on How We Can All Be Change-Makers

Episode Date: November 2, 2024

If we don’t take action to help just one person, how can we expect to help them all? Ryan and Sharon McMahon, author of The Small and the Mighty,  continue their conversation in this episode about how outrage is not activism, how to not get overwhelmed by the many problems in the world, and why it’s important for the next generation to know the truth about our history.Sharon is known as “America’s Government Teacher,” and after years as a high school government teacher, Sharon now runs the non-partisan, fact-based Instagram account @sharonsaysso.  Sharon just released her book, The Small and the Mighty, where she proves that the most remarkable Americans are often ordinary people who didn’t make it into the textbooks.🎙️ Listen to PT. 1 with Sharon McMahon on Apple Podcasts & Spotify 📚 You can grab signed copies of The Small and the Mighty by Sharon McMahon at The Painted Porch. Check out Sharon’s podcast Here’s Where It Gets Interesting and follow her on Instagram @SharonSaysSo and on X @Sharon_Says_So🎟 Ryan Holiday is going on tour! Grab tickets for London, Rotterdam, Dublin, Vancouver, and Toronto at ryanholiday.net/tour✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us:  Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee 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 the daily Stoic early and ad free right now. Just join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcast. I've been traveling a bunch for the tour that I'm on and I brought my kids and my wife with me when I went to Australia. When I'm going to Europe in November, I'm bringing my in-laws also. So, we're not staying in a hotel. We're staying in an Airbnb. The first Airbnb I stayed in would have been in 2010, I think. I've always loved Airbnb, that flexibility, size, location. You can find something awesome. You want to stay somewhere that other guests have had a positive experience. I love the guest favorites feature that helps you narrow down your search to the most popular, coolest houses. I've been using Airbnb forever. I like it better than hotels. So I'm excited that they're a sponsor of the show.

And if you haven't used Airbnb yet, I don't know what you're doing, but you should definitely check it out for your next family trip. We've got a bit of a commute now with the kids and their new school. And so one of the things we've been doing as a family is listening to audio books in the car.

Instead of having that be dead time, we wanna use it to have a live time. We really wanna help their imagination soar and And listening to Audible helps you do precisely that. Whether you listen to short stories, self-development, fantasy, expert advice, really any genre that you love, maybe you're into stoicism. And there's some books there that I might recommend by this one guy named Ryan. Audible has the best selection of audiobooks without exception and exclusive Audible originals all in one easy app. And as an Audible member, you choose one title a month to keep from their entire catalog. By the way, you can grab Right Thing Right Now on Audible.

You can sign up right now for a free 30-day Audible trial and try your first audiobook for free. You can get Right Thing Right Now totally for free. Visit audible.ca to sign up. Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview St stoic philosophers. We explore at length how these stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the

challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal and most importantly to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. We were talking about social media in the last episode about how social media doesn't favor the best of us. It often incentivizes the worst of us. One of the things I talked about in, trust me I'm lying, there's this phenomenon known as the narcotizing dysfunction.

Basically, it says that the more we follow and chatter and talk about stuff, the more news we consume, the more likely we are to conflate that with our contributions, our civic contributions. And it can actually be correlated with a decrease in something like voting or working on a campaign or running for office or just solving a problem. I think that research, which dates well before the internet, I think has been confirmed by social media.

People wanna change their social media profile picture. They want to tweet about something. But far too many of us don't actually step up and get involved. That's why I loved Sharon McMahon's new book, The Small and the Mighty, which is about 12 ordinary Americans, but not ordinary in that these were doers. History favors the doers, as we talked about in part one of the episode. That's what I so admire about the Stoics. The Stoics weren't these academic theorists. They were active.

They were engaged. They disdained what they would call the pen and ink philosophers. Actually, I'll give you, I had an example. Somebody sent me an email four hours ago. It said, please stop inserting your obvious political views into the daily Stoic. Nothing that goes against Stoic principles. four hours ago, it said, please stop inserting your obvious political views into the daily stoic.

Nothing that goes against stoic principles. People read the daily email and focus on things that are more important than what they can't really control, that is politics. But that's not true, right? If everyone thought that way, in fact, because so many people think that way, we don't change the world. And the stoics wouldn't have despaired over collective action problems. The stoics got involved.

They were involved in politics. I replied, I said, what was Seneca's job? What was Cato's? I may be wrong, but if I recall, it had something to do with politics. The Stoics were doers. They were engaged. They entered the current and the stream of their time.

They fought against corruption. They fought for justice. They tried to do what was right. They accepted that some problems were too big, that human nature was what it was, but they tried to be good. They tried to do the right thing. They tried to make the world a better place. And I'm inspired and fascinated by those people. That's what I obviously wrote about

in Right Thing Right Now. And it's what Sharon McMahon writes about in her new book, The Small and the Mighty. And it's what Sharon McMahon writes about in her new book, The Small and the Mighty. And it's what she talks about and shows us in her very amazing social media accounts, at Sharon Says So on Instagram,

which has millions of followers. Her podcast, here's where it gets interesting. She has these amazing followers all over the world, but she's popularized nonpartisan civic education, understanding how government works, understanding that politics isn't this dirty word. Politics and government, as I said last week, are what we do together.

It's how we solve problems together. It's how we layer our interests on top of each other, how we come up with compromises, how we come up with solutions, how we help people with things, how we improve people's lives, how we inch the world closer to justice. I've heard it said that that's what politics is,

bringing justice to an unjust world. And I really liked this conversation. I split it up in two parts that I really wanted you to be able to chew on it. And I wanted to put it out close to the election because if you're going, oh, well, these candidates, I don't like it. Be an adult, look at the two candidates,

look at who embodies the virtues and the values that we talk about constantly here at Daily Stoic, telling the truth, being in command of your emotions, caring about the common good, right? Being brave, doing the research and the work, right? Getting to wisdom, valuing truth. Just look at some of the things that Marcus Aurelius says about Antoninus, who he held up as a sort of model

for all rulers. Talked about that he wasn't shameless, that he didn't pander to the mob, that he worked diligently, like he did the job. He took it seriously, that he deferred to experts, that he did the work, and he tried to wear his power lightly. You know, all these things, right?

I'm not gonna tell you to vote for, but I am emphatically telling you to vote. As today's guest would, Sharon McMahon is America's government teacher. She's one of my favorite accounts to follow on social media. One of my favorite guests I've had on the show. So let's get into the episode. Here's me and Sharon talking. Follow her at Sharon says so.

You follow her podcast. Here's where it gets interesting. And we've got signed copies of the small and the mighty at the painted porch. I'll link to that in today's show notes. There are awful people who want not just to keep like, it's not just their conservative forces who want to preserve the status quo, but there are often very radical forces that want a new reality you can't even fucking imagine. That's so true. A horrendous one.

Yeah. Yes. And you can look no farther than Aaron Burr, who decided after he killed Alexander Hamilton that he was going to try to seize portions of North America for himself and contacts people in England and is like, you want to help me out? I'll be a friend to you if you let me be the ruler of this section over here, this little section of Texas and Louisiana. I would like it for myself, please. And then of course, he's put on trial for treason

for attempting to do that, he's acquitted. But nevertheless, the history is full of people who, they're not just low-level resistors, you know, of like, no, I don't want you to change that, keep that the same. I think that's how we tend to view people who work in opposition to change makers. Yeah, no, I just want to keep things the same.

No, there is a faction of people who would like to radically remake the country in their own image. They have a profound vision for a different world. Yes. And it's vicious. Yes, yes. And you see that at work today. That demon of unrest is afoot in the country today.

Yeah. Yeah. Vladimir Putin isn't just like, hey, it would be nice to have some of the stuff in Ukraine. He is imagining an entire remaking of the European map, just as there are leaders in China and who have a whole vision of the Pacific, Hitler was a figure of immense vision in a horrendous, heinous, you know, anti-Christ level way, you know? Like he imagined a whole continent at the whim of, you know, not just, not really Germany, but like his group of people who controlled Germany, you know, not just, not really Germany, but like his group of people who controlled

Germany, you know? Yes. We think of these titans in history, you know, like the, the Hitlers and the Putin's and the people with vast amounts of resources, you know, uh, the Vladimir Putin's one of the richest men in the world, right? He doesn't actually need Ukraine's resources for himself. He wants to conquer Ukraine for some other reason. But if you shrink that, you know, it's easy to think like, well, I'm not Hitler. Yeah. You know, like I don't have, I don't command armies. I don't have the resources of a federal government.

But yet there are groups at work, even inside the United States, who don't want to just conserve what we have, who don't want to just slow steady progress over time, but who envision a radical reshaping of the country. Some to the extent that they think that portions of the United States should secede, of course. Texas has tried that a couple of times, hasn't been successful at it yet. But they also have a white Christian nationalist view of what the country should become and that they should

remake the entire federal government, again, in their own image. And the family and people's private lives. Yes, that's right. So, in addition to the fact that we have made a significant amount of progress, you bring up a very good point that the bend towards justice only happens when people actively work at it because it could just as easily bend back the other direction. Yeah. I think it becomes morally imperative to be a small but mighty figure, a person who is engaged and evolved because when you abdicate, when you say,

hey, I hate this, or it's cynical, or you're cynical, the system doesn't work, what difference could I make? What you're actually doing is seeding your vote, your little bit of influence, the territory, the office, to those people. Yes, that's right. Who have the, they know what they would do with it if they got into power.

And you are saying not as actively as the people supporting, giving them money and advocating, but you are saying, yeah, sure, you can have it. And that is to me, like the stoics start as this sort of cynical school. They're descended from the cynics, which is like sort of questioning the status quo and questioning convention. But then they quickly realize, they're descended from the cynics, which is like sort of questioning the status quo and questioning convention.

But then they quickly realize, hey, if like the virtuous and wise people don't participate in the nasty, dirty world of politics, it's ceding it to those ambitious but morally unencumbered people or stupid people or the incompetent people or the just self-interested people. And that's not a world you want to live in. No. I mean, even George Washington, when he is voluntarily giving up power, which everybody

was like, why would you do that? You can be president until you die. He even cautions in his farewell address to beware of the cunning and unscrupulous men who will usurp for themselves the reigns of power. And I mean, like if that is not prophetic, I think we can all look around and point to cunning and unscrupulous men and women who have usurped for themselves the reins of power. And how do we end that? How do we keep them from running away with the reins of power?

It cannot be just saying, well, I'm too small. I don't have any power. I don't have a weirdly shaped rocket ship. I don't have billions of dollars. So nothing I do matters. That cannot be the answer. Yeah, and if collectively lots of people say that, then they're advocating a collectively large amount

of power that they could wield in opposition to that thing. Totally, and also, you know, the idea that all of us doing something ultimately moves the needle a lot more than like five people trying to do it all, right? Like five people trying to do it all, as you mentioned earlier, can die, can be assassinated, can get cancer, can have a scandal from their past that gets uncovered, can be discredited, can have a bad day and misspeak about something. And then people make fun of you for the rest of your life about it. Like, do you remember when Howard Dean ruined his own political campaign from just like-

It would kill for a political world where yelling disqualifies you. Woo! Like that's it, like forget him. He said woo too excitedly. You know, like those five people, proverbial five people, can easily be taken out, right? It is much harder to hold back a mighty tide

of change makers. How do you think about this with your platform? Because I think about it where it's like, sure, I have more followers than your average person, but I also have a thing that I specialize in and I could just talk about that thing and we'd mostly agree and get along. And then there are things happening in the world and you feel obligated to speak out about them. You also know on some level, we speak out about everything. You won't have any room to talk about your actual thing. So I've been fascinated with how you manage your platform because you're this kind of nonpartisan, pro-government in the, like, just government is there to serve all people and do things

since. And yet there seem to be certain issues that you go, okay, even if I'm nonpartisan, I, there is a, one of the parties is insane on this issue. So I have to say something, right? Like you have used your platform sporadically, but I think emphatically on a number of things. How have you thought about that? Because I'm sure it's not always popular. No, yeah. And it just, as an example, one of the things that I do frequently talk about is related to guns, right? Like, I don't think you should, anybody of any stripe, of any party should be okay with children

being shot in their schools, right? Yeah, I'm opposed to that. Yeah, like that's, why is that controversial? We should make it harder for people to shoot people in schools. That does not seem, I mean, like, but to some people, that is heresy, right? So there are some issues that I feel extremely strongly about.

You know, like, as a long-time teacher, we should not be empowering school shooters. Well, yeah, look, your freedom to buy weapons however you want with zero, you know, restraints, deprives me of my freedom to send my kid to public school and not think about that happening. Right.

What about the child's right to live? So the way that I think about it is this, because it's a good point that you make that you can't talk about everything. Otherwise people stop listening. Otherwise you dilute your impact. Otherwise you don't get to talk about anything positive. If all you're ever doing is calling out all of the bad things that you see, well, then you have landed in the category of critic and not doer.

Yeah, and I didn't come to you for day-to-day politics. I came to you for this bigger picture thing to begin with. And yet, there's some moral responsibility, I think, if you have influence to use it. Yeah, yes. So I think it's not only good, or it's not, it's not only permissible. I think it's good that people have issues that are on their heart for whatever reason, whether you believe that those are given to you by some higher power, that God told you what you're supposed to work on, or whether by virtue of proximity or education or life experience, you feel especially pulled

toward a specific issue. I think it's actually a beneficial thing if each one of us has issues that we deeply care about and we take action on those issues. Knowing that, I cannot personally take impactful action on 50 things, but I could take impactful action on a small handful of things. And if my small handful of things is different than your small handful of things, that's

actually good. You know? Like, that's actually a good thing. If somebody over here cares a lot about rainforest destruction and somebody over here cares a lot about guns and somebody over here cares a lot about guns, and somebody over here cares a lot about teacher wellbeing, and somebody over here cares about childhood hunger. That's actually a great thing.

And so I think we should feel unencumbered by this notion that it is, in fact, not your job to have the weight of the world on your shoulders. It's not your job to solve every problem the world presents you with. And that there are some things that you care about more, that you have more experience with or that you just feel especially drawn to. And I really believe that those are supposed to be your things. And I have things that are supposed to be my things. I have education and life experience, working in schools and going to college for certain

things that gives me perhaps a unique perspective on the world. You have different perspective on the world than I do. And that's not just okay, that's needed and necessary. Yeah, and I think accepting that doing this is gonna be at some level expensive and not please everyone. Like I think it's fascinating, it's like the notes unsubscribe, unsubscribe, hate this. Why did you do this?

Blah, blah, blah. And then also, where are you on this? Where are you on this? Why haven't you said anything about this? And so it's, and then going like, if you throw up your hands and go, I can't please anyone. I'm gonna try to please everyone. You're gonna do it wrong.

Or if you can say, I can't please anyone. It's not worth doing. You have to go, hey, I'm doing this because it is right, and I am going to ignore on either side if it's too much and not enough, and everyone kind of has to pick their handful of things and decide, yeah, like you said, the eyes of history are upon you.

You have to go, hey, this thing was happening while you were alive, or a handful of things were happening while you were alive. What and how were you involved? Were you part of the problem or part of the solution? Did you just go, ah, that was bad for my algorithm, so I didn't do anything? I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine.

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free right now by joining Wondery Plus. I also really think it's important for us to remember that we all have important work to do. Yeah. Right. And sometimes people really resist that idea of like, my life is too small. I just work at an insurance office. What is my important work? No, we all have important work to do during our time on this planet. And we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted from our important work. And the

people in this book did not allow themselves to be distracted from their important work. People who have made important change in the world, lasting, meaningful change, did not allow themselves to be distracted from their important work. And to your point earlier, sometimes people, that actually requires training on how to not be distracted from your important work,

because there are forces who, if they can't stop you from doing it, they are going to try to suck all of the joy out of it so that you will no longer enjoy it enough to continue doing it. They will try to distract you, make you look over here. And this sort of mantra of, I refuse to be distracted from my important work.

First of all requires you to identify what your important work is. Yeah. And and then to have the fortitude to say this is not I refuse to be distracted by you. Yeah. From my important work. Either you're you're you're saying it wrong, you're not doing enough of these things. Like right now, we're recording this in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, right? Which is absolutely catastrophic natural disaster where people are very desperately hurting. And over the course of the last few days,

I've raised almost $600,000 for an organization that's on the ground helping with Hurricane Helena Leaf. And I don't say this as any sort of like a pat on the back. I bring it up because to many people, that is an admirable thing. That's great that you use your platform to help. But trust me when I say, there are plenty of people over here who are like, you're not talking enough about how FEMA is blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's people- Or what about what's happening in Gaza? Or what about the election?

Or what about this? You're not talking enough about this thing. You're spending all your time talking about this thing instead, but if I know what my important work is, I can choose to not be distracted from it. If I know what my important work is, and I know that history be distracted from it. If I know what my important work is, and I know that history favors the doers and not the critics, I don't feel as vulnerable to the incoming attacks from whatever angle. It's not impermeable. It's not a complete

suit of armor. I just feel less vulnerable to those sort of incoming when I know what my burden work is. I'll give you an image from Seneca that I think about a lot. He says, he has this word, euthymia. And he says, euthymia, which loosely translates to tranquility, but I think tranquility sounds too passive to me. He says, euthymia is the sense of the path that you're on without being distracted by the paths that crisscross yours. And he says,

especially the footprints from those who are hopelessly lost. And so if you're at the beach and you can see all like a, you go like, yeah, I lost the bead on where I'm supposed to be going. There's a million intersecting footprints. You got to have this kind of, here's where I am, here's where I'm going, and this kind of tunnel vision where you're able to ignore the people who say you're not going fast enough or you're going too slow. The people are saying you're going in the wrong direction, and the people are saying, what about this and what about that?

And yeah, I think a core part of that is knowing, hey, this is my main thing. This is where I, these are my strengths of being applied to a specific problem with this specific goal in mind, as opposed to what I think a lot of people do, which is just a mode about a problem, talk about a problem, try to do a million things

about a problem all at once. And what they effectively end up doing is nothing. Nothing. I say this frequently that outrage is not activism. No. Because it feels like it is to some people, this idea that like, I feel angry and having an emotional response and the fact that I'm having this emotional response to whatever this tragedy is or corruption or whatever it is, they feel like that emotional response

is equivalent to activism. And- I've emoted about it, that's enough. That is, that's my contribution. I think there's a political science term, it's called the narcotizing dysfunction, which is that often high levels of informativeness about an issue or engagement intellectually with ideas

corresponds with a decrease in activity. Like, you're like, hey, I listened to a bunch of NPR reports. I wrote a letter to the editor, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then I didn't vote because like I did my part. And actually you did, you're not part and you neglected your part. I think people are left with a false sense of what it means to actually be active on a topic. Some people don't like the idea of taking up the mantle of activist. That's like... I don't want to be a social justice worker. That's not an amazing thing.

Right. That's something liberals do. You're a leftist if you're an activist on something. There's a million things you can be an activist on, of course. But the idea that outrages activism, I think, has really been exacerbated by social media. We can just like, leave comments. Yeah, she is. I hate her too. I changed my profile picture. Yes. Yes. I left some emojis on your, in a comment, a comment on your Facebook. I think this is a controversial one. So I hope that my statements about the civil rights movement

and the reading and the writing I've done on this topic, people understand where I'm coming from on this. But I think Black Lives Matter is a classic example of this where you have somewhat diagnosing very real problems in our society and then just creating this kind of vague activist group about it with no, like as the kids would say, it's all vibes. What are they actually trying to do?

What did they, what are they doing with the hundreds of millions of dollars they raised? What like, there is the outrage and there's a lot to be outraged about. But what I think all the figures in this book and my heroes, they were like, here's our five priorities, here's our plan, here's our campaign,

here's what we're actually fucking doing about that thing. There was just this kind of like, well now we're a media awareness organization. And it's like, that's not the problem. The problem is these number of vexing, socio-political, psychological issues that we have as a society. And you have to wage war against those things in the courts and in politics.

You have to do something about it. You can't just raise money and have your outrage pointed at the right problems. Right, that's not activism. No. Right. So yeah, but it makes people feel like if I follow, if I like, if I share, if I comment,

that that's really moving the needle on something. We painted this street. Yes. Awesome. Right, great. Yeah. Yeah, I frequently will ask myself or my followers, like, did anybody go to bed with a full belly tonight because

you left some comments on Facebook? You know, like, did any children learn how to read because you left an emoji, a clown emoji on Instagram? Your outrage is not activism. It is not moving the needle for anybody. And imagine if any of the figures from the civil rights movement or any of the figures from this book just sat at home feeling mad. Yeah. Because that's ultimately what a huge number of people are doing sitting at home feeling mad

at a device that contains the entirety of human knowledge. And all the evil in the world. So that an unlimited amount of things to be angry about. That's right. I'm just mad about it. And at the end in the world, so that an unlimited amount of things to be angry about. That's right. I'm just mad about it. And at the end of the day, your outrage has changed nothing except your own soul.

Well, this is where I think your work is so important. And then just every government and civics teacher, I remember my government teacher, my AP government teacher, Mr. Del Orto, and it was a class where we would alternate dates. So I had AP US History and Honors English, and those two teachers changed my life. But mostly what they did was they explained

how the system works. And I'm always amazed at the profound ignorance that a lot of activists and a lot of people with great consciences have as to how they would actually affect the moral change that they think is so imperative. They just, like, at this point in time, I would argue that marching

about essentially any political issue is less than worthless. Like, we have political problems in America that are problems because a minority movement or a minority political coalition understands that they have just enough people to stop things from happening. They're not knowing that millions of Americans

think that this thing should change. The polling already tells them that. You know what I'm saying? Like the polls say that millions of Americans want these common sense issues or these common sense solutions to these problems. So you getting together and yelling, they've already said this to that.

You know, like you have to understand what actually is going to apply pressure to that person. And that's where all your energy and outrage has to be directed. It's a good point, that if you wanna be a heart surgeon, you spend years learning about how the heart works, what the structure is, how it functions, what happens when it goes wrong,

and then how do I fix issues with it, right? Otherwise, if you don't understand the ins and outs of everything about the human heart, if you get in there and you just start hacking at stuff, because you're like, well, that looks bad, slice, you could create irreparable damage to something. And I think if you wanna change something for the better, you have to really understand how it works

in an effort to know, okay, what would be the unintended consequences of taking action A? You have to really understand what that means. And to your point, you have to understand the system well enough to know where the secret levers of power are hidden, right? If you think that they're all with the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz, but in reality, there's a button underneath this table. You might actually be way better off with that fundamental understanding than if you just spend all of your energy screaming at the dude behind the curtain.

Yeah. It's like the right figured out, hey, the legislative branches have effectively ceased to operate in this country. They have ceded their power to the presidency. So there's almost no legislation of any consequence by Republicans or Democrats. So the only real lever of power is the judiciary. And they built a multi-generational, like multi-faceted operation to slowly, steadily transform the judiciary. And they stole a march on,

you know, the center and the left in this country. And it's going to take probably a generation to undo a lot of those things. Or it's going to require, because I would say from a strategic standpoint, you don't just do what your enemy is doing, you go, oh, so we have to seize control of the legislative branches of government. You actually have to elect sizable majorities in the Senate and Congress, or you have to eliminate the filibuster, which has its own pros and cons,

but you're gonna have to figure out how to pass legislation in this country with veto-proof majorities. I just don't hear anyone talking about that. A lot of people are talking about who's gonna become president, but the president doesn't do anything. I mean, the president does a lot of important things,

but the president, you hear Kamala Harris say this, if Congress brings to me this, I will sign. And it's like, okay, so that's like the least important part of it, you know? Like, who's doing that? Where's the energy directed at that thing? Right, you're absolutely right. That people overestimate the power of the president.

Yeah, signing your name is probably, you know, it's legally an important thing, but it's ultimately not building something, which is what legislation is, constructing something from the ground up. It's just sort of putting the final touches on the roof, essentially, of something that was already constructed by somebody else. And then you hope that what you've constructed will withstand the hurricane of the judicial brand, right? That it's windproof, so to speak. But you're right that we're putting a lot of effort and emphasis into the executive

branch right now, into this presidential election, in part because we see how ineffective the legislative branch is. And we feel like this is the least productive Congress in United States history. And I would rather have a less productive Congress and somebody that I can tolerate at the top of the legislative branch talking to my television, right? Because I'm sorry, at the top of the executive branch, because it's their voice that permeates the entire sort of existence of the United States. It's their voice that represents us on the world stage. And so to have somebody at the top

that at least you feel like is moving the rudder in a direction that at least like maybe slowly we can head in this direction. Or they're not certifiably insane. Yes, or they're not just like chopping holes in the side of the boat. That would be great. You know what I mean?

So we do get very emotionally worked up and attached to who the president is. And you're not wrong that if we want real substantive change, most changes that a president can enact are temporary. They are easy to make go away when the next person is elected. If we want substantive long-term change, we have to be willing to do the hard work of working on gerrymandering, working on getting different people in here to do the job because obviously this group of personalities cannot work together. A lot of people love their own individual legislators.

Oh, I just love that guy. He's so great. Never done. Yes. But they dislike Congress as a whole. But it's clear that this group as a whole cannot work together. Hello, I'm Pandora Sykes and welcome to Rivals, the official podcast. Hello, I'm Pandora Sykes and welcome to Rivals, the official podcast. Step inside my Rutscher residence as we celebrate Rivals, the brand new original series now streaming on Disney Plus and Hulu. Those scenes between Cameron and Rupert Dara, I heard that your first draft had to be toned down.

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I'm Afua Hirsch. I'm Peter Frankopan. And in our podcast, Legacy, we explore the lives of some of the biggest characters in history. This season, we're talking about the life of US President JFK. He steered the world through moments of terrifying geopolitical crisis.

But was he quite the shining hero he seemed? A complex personal life, and of course, the source of countless conspiracy theories. There's so much to cover, right? What are you most looking forward to talking about? I'm really looking forward to the Cuban missile crisis, because it's just one of the most dramatic things that's ever happened in history.

I don't know, there's something about Kennedy. You know, as I'm growing up, thinking of him as an all-American hero, the good looks, I want to scratch the surface and see what's really underneath. I'm a slightly different generation. I never really understood what the big deal was. I just knew that there was a big deal.

Well, I'm a different generation. I knew you were going to take it like that. I feel old, but historians love the dating process. So follow Legacy now from wherever you get your podcasts. Or binge entire seasons early and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Well, what I think is so interesting is how much that group itself has accepted its own powerlessness. I was interviewing Adam Kinzinger a couple accepted its own powerlessness. I was interviewing

Adam Kinzinger a couple weeks ago. Great. I love him and probably disagree on most political issues, but think he's a great dude. But he was saying how struck he was and I've had this experience with the politicians I've talked to. He was like, it was as if Congress believed there was a super Congress that would solve this problem. Like, asking, I was like, why don't you do something? And he was like, telling me because, well, if you don't do something, you're not going to get paid. And I was like, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. And I was asking, I was like, why don't you do something? And he was like telling me because, well, if you do that, you're not gonna get a cabinet position. And you're, oh, okay, so everyone is thinking, well, I can't do it because I have this other thing that I need to do. And it's like, if everyone has that attitude,

like ultimately it's just these doers who have zero political power, who are not encumbered by that, who seem to ultimately force the change upon us. Well, like, yeah, to your, you know, the Senator you're referring to, so then it's like, oh, so it's all about you then. Yeah.

Right, it's all about your future career. It's not about what's doing what's right for the people you represent right now. Or though, presented in slightly less selfish terms, it's this idea of like, I have this, like, you know, not do the next right thing. It's I have to keep my powder dry for the big moment. You know, like, hey, my big issue is X.

So everyone is like, I can't waste myself on this issue because what I really care about is this. And so everyone is just expect, it's like, where would we be if that's how society had operated? Like, no, you don't get to choose the crisis that you're in. You have to deal with the crisis in front of you. Yeah, yeah. Of course, people are very, they feel really, really left behind by people

who do have access to the reins of power because they don't do anything with it except it appears as though they act in self-serving manner to build and protect their own political power. But it's also why people have had to go outside of the reins of government because the government moves very inefficiently and very slowly. And often people who do make radical change are people who are acting outside of the confines of the law when they are in government anyway. So I love the idea though, that we actually don't have to sit and wait around for a completely ineffective Congress to get their rears in gear.

We don't have to wait around for some of these people who are 900 years old to retire. We don't have to wait around for the right president to get elected. That despite our circumstances, nothing can change in our external circumstances. And yet we have all of the power in the world to change ourselves, and how we interact with the rest of the world. And the people in this book demonstrate that over and over again, that they chose to have hope

that there was a better future ahead. They did not wait for hope to descend upon them, like some sunbeam peeking out from behind a cloud. They did not wait to feel a feeling of hope. Hope was something that they chose and acted on because they knew that nothing good comes from a place of nihilism or cynicism that changes possible from the fertile soil of hope. How do you give that to kids? I struggle struggle with this where it's like, I despair and feel scared and anxious,

and yet you wanna be realistic. And then also the whole point of generations is you're supposed to move it forward. How do you think about this with kids? Yeah, kids can understand that you can choose to do something even if you don't feel like it. Yeah. Right? That you can choose to not hit your sister even if you don't feel like it. Yeah. Right? Sure.

That you can choose to not hit your sister even when you don't feel like it. You can choose to not throw pencils in the classroom even when you feel like doing it. Yeah. And that hope is something that we can choose even when we don't feel it. In many ways, it's an exercise in self-control.

Do not allow our emotions to run away with all of our thoughts and to allow those thoughts to guide all of our actions. It's an exercise in self-control to say, no, I refuse to allow this temporary circumstance to completely derail my important work and to have the courage to say, I am going to do what it takes, even though I don't feel like it. That can only come from choosing to hope. And also, maybe we can, as a family, start very small.

So, like, what can we personally do about this thing? You know what I mean? Like, we can pick up this trash by the side of the room. We can donate, you know what I mean? Like we can pick up this trash by the side of the room. We can donate the money we were gonna spend on this thing to that thing instead. Like how do you sort of, Aristotle said we should see generosity and kindness

and all these things, not as like a trait you possess or don't possess, but as a verb, like an activity you do or don't possess, but as a verb, like an activity you do or don't do. Yeah, I think so often we make the problems so large. And when we're feeling overwhelmed by the problems of the world, because you're right, the problems of the world are endless. That the way that we can begin to feel

like we are making an impact is to right size the problem. Right? To think, stop thinking about, well, I need to change the world and start thinking about, I need to impact the people inside the confines of my home or at my workplace or in my own classroom or in the town that I live in or at the school board level. And for some of us, we might have the opportunity

to make big impacts at a state level or a national level, but that's not where most people's impacts will be. Their impacts will be in their community. And those ripples may have broader effects in the future, just like some of the people in this book. But nevertheless, when the problems feel too big and overwhelming, you need to right-size the community and stop thinking about, I have to fix childhood hunger writ large. Yeah, and you could pay off some school lunch at your neighborhood high school. That's right, or you could feed one child. You could do for one what you wish you could do

for all of them. And that gets you out of that state of inertia, that gets you out of that mindset of nothing I do matters because you see the difference that it makes for one person and you realize what you do actually does matter. Yeah. You could also run for a school board or volunteer at school. Yes. And those kinds of things seem possible once you begin to move forward.

And do you think parents have an obligation to be informed by and then inform their children of the kinds of people that you're talking about. You know what I mean? Like I do wish as a child, like, yeah, you learn about Napoleon, you learn about George Washington, you learn about these huge larger than life figures. And maybe there's some of us who go, just like somebody goes, I think I should be president.

We go, that's like me. But there's something about finding these more relatable, smaller figures where you go, oh, yeah, these were just regular people. Yeah, I totally agree that these, it seems like it makes making a difference feel accessible. Yeah. Right? Like it's something that you actually are capable of doing. That these are people who came from nothing or whose parents were enslaved or had incredibly tragic life circumstances

that nobody would ever wanna trade places with. Who just kept choosing the next right thing. And that's a power that's accessible to all of us. Yeah. The power to choose the next right thing does not require us to amass large amounts of social following or huge bank accounts. Each one of us can choose the next right thing.

If we're five years old, we can practice it. If we're 10 years old, we might have better mastery over choosing the next right thing. Frankly, there's a lot of adults who still need to work on this skill. But much like liberty, which is an ongoing effort, this is an ongoing effort that each one of us is tasked with to choose the next right thing throughout our lifetimes and not something that is a final destination that we're going to arrive at,

not a thing of like, well, I did that and I'm good. Yeah, and also I think we are doing the important work sort of showing the more realistic nature of history, that the unpleasantness that we plastered over for generations is essential. At the same time, if you don't replace that with other people or non garbage people, basically, you end up instilling a kind of cynicism and nihilism

and a hopelessness. The failings are obvious, so who had fewer failings? I think Alex Haley said that the job of a writer is to find the good and celebrate it. I mean, this is a guy who writes some pretty dark books, right? I mean, this is a guy who writes some pretty dark books, right? So that he believes, but the idea that, yeah, your job is to find things worth sharing and talking about, not just poking holes in popular narrative. Yeah, I totally agree. I think it's, you're right, that for too long,

we have whitewashed over much of the bad things of history in an effort to spare ourselves from discomfort. And in an effort to spare our children from discomfort. And you see this movement afoot in the United States today too that we shouldn't talk about things that make people uncomfortable or that are divisive concepts. That's the word that we use for today.

It's a divisive concept, which is just silly. These are the same people that are mad that certain kids today are snowflakes. It's like, how do you create snowflakes? You protect them from all divisive concepts. People don't realize that you cannot ever learn to think critically if you're never presented with ideas with which you disagree.

Yeah. Otherwise you've just been spoon-fed propaganda if you only hear things you agree with all day long. Yeah, if you like it, it's probably not history. Yeah. The idea that, of course, most people would say, oh, yeah, I think that critical thinking is important, or they like to view themselves as critical thinkers,

but that we should also protect children from anything that is difficult. These ideas are diametrically opposed to each other. You can't have both. So choose one, right? We don't wanna upset our children. And what we mean by that is we don't want to upset certain children. We're fine with upsetting other children. We don't want to upset the children that look like our children. That's the real

subtext here, right? But nevertheless, we've whitewashed over so much of history. People have woken up to that fact and they feel lied to. They feel, yeah, they feel lied to and that makes them angry. But if we never give them anything else to look to as a replacement, they're just gonna be left with nothing but feelings of rage. Yeah. And that is not the place from which good things can grow. Right, what are you telling them that does give them hope?

Like, you know that poem, Good Bones? I love that poem. Like to me, that's your job as a parent. You'd be like, yeah, this place is almost a teardown, but not quite, the bones are pretty good. I think you could turn this into something. That's how you have to explain the world to your children. If you're like, this is amazing.

Look at, it's like, yeah, they're gonna buy it and then live it and realize, no, it's falling apart. Oh, my parents lied to me. Yes, exactly. Or I mean, if someone obscured, if you were buying a house and someone obscured all the problems with it, they didn't fill out the disclosures properly,

that's fraud, you know? So you would be very, and rightfully so, very angry at someone who did that to you. However, what a neighborhood needs is people who see the potential in a dilapidated piece of property and they turn it into something amazing. Someone lives there and it's worth more money

and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But they can only do that if they choose to have hope that what they do will make a difference, right? If they look at the dilapidated house and they're like, F it. I hate all of it. Nothing will ever change. No amount of work will make it better. The whole thing's terrible. I hate this neighborhood. This entire state's the worst. I'm moving to Canada. That is not where you can make positive change from. Right, no, but if they are handy and creative and determined and blah, blah, blah,

if they bring a set of skills to that, there is no house so dilapidated. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, I love that. Well, thanks again. Thank you, thanks for having me. Of course, you wanna check out some books? Yeah. ["The Last Supper"] Thank you. Thanks for having me. Of course. You want to check out some books? Yeah. Thanks so much for listening.

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