How to Make a Difference (Happily) AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

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Episode: How to Make a Difference (Happily)

Author: Pushkin Industries
Duration: 00:32:11

Episode Shownotes

We often assume that we can’t fix the big problems we see in the world around us. And that trying is for suckers - who’ll just end up sad, exhausted and defeated. Dr Laurie Santos and Dr Jamil Zaki meet people who have tried to make a difference in their

communities - often against great odds - and have found the process made them happier and more hopeful. Jamil's book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness is out now.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Summary

In this episode of 'The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos,' the hosts explore the idea of 'creative maladjustment,' urging listeners to confront societal injustices like inequality and activism. It features Katie Fahey, who becomes politically active in response to the Flint water crisis, highlighting the importance of political accountability and the detrimental effects of gerrymandering. The podcast addresses widespread political apathy and introduces relational organizing as a method for civic engagement, emphasizing that personal connections can inspire action. Ultimately, it celebrates community involvement, showing how collective efforts can create meaningful change and enhance personal happiness.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (How to Make a Difference (Happily)) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_06
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00:00:26 Speaker_10
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00:01:44 Speaker_10
Pushkin. If a psychologist ever looks at your life, at, say, your level of emotional maturity or the way you handle daily problems, and says that you're well-adjusted, you'd probably be pretty pleased.

00:02:03 Speaker_10
I mean, nobody wants to be called maladjusted, right?

00:02:07 Speaker_00
Well, in 1967, one speaker at a meeting of the American Psychological Association made the case for being maladjusted. There are some things in our society, he said, some things in our world to which we should never be adjusted.

00:02:22 Speaker_00
In the face of bigotry, violence, extreme inequality and war, feeling good makes no sense. The speech made major waves among psychologists, in part because it was not given by a psychologist, but by Martin Luther King Jr.

00:02:38 Speaker_00
The great civil rights leader told psychologists that in many cases, their focus on happiness was backwards. When the norms of a culture are unjust, true social health requires what MLK called creative maladjustment.

00:02:52 Speaker_00
Creative maladjustment, he argued, had two parts. The first was a sense of fury about how things are. We need to be upset in the face of an unfair status quo. But we should also do so in a creative way.

00:03:07 Speaker_00
We need to bring a sense of hope that the future could be different. I'm Jamil Zaki, and in my book, Hope for Cynics, I explore Dr. King's idea of creative maladjustment and find that it is deeply prescient.

00:03:21 Speaker_00
A lot of evidence from psychology bears out what he said. Hope isn't a complacent feeling that causes people to ignore their problems. It's a key ingredient in our ability to yearn for a better future and to fight for it.

00:03:36 Speaker_10
In this special season on Finding Hope, Jamil and I have shared study after study, showing that we humans are kinder, less divided, and more cooperative than most people realize.

00:03:46 Speaker_10
But being a good person doesn't necessarily mean that you have the courage to do good things. And that is the subject of our final show of this series. Many of us feel pretty cynical about problems like inequality, injustice, and bigotry.

00:04:00 Speaker_10
We feel powerless to bring about change. So we just kind of go on with our lives. But what if we embrace the creative maladjustment Dr. King recommended?

00:04:09 Speaker_10
What if we got pissed off enough to think differently and found the hope needed to act differently? Our minds are constantly telling us what to do to be happy. But what if our minds are wrong?

00:04:22 Speaker_10
What if our minds are lying to us, leading us away from what will really make us happy? The good news is that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction.

00:04:32 Speaker_10
You're listening to The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

00:04:36 Speaker_00
And me, Dr. Jamil Zaki.

00:04:47 Speaker_09
I actually hate politics.

00:04:49 Speaker_10
Katie Fahey wasn't exactly a poster child for creative maladjustment.

00:04:53 Speaker_09
The fact that we live in America and that we have a government that is supposed to be derived by the people, I think all that's great. But the actual, like, politics, us versus them, party versus party, I just have never liked.

00:05:06 Speaker_10
Many of the people in the Michigan town where Katie grew up didn't take part in local politics or elections. Katie did care about the issues facing her community.

00:05:15 Speaker_09
But I was also busy in 27 and trying to get my master's and trying to keep my day job and like have social relationships and like all that kind of stuff. But in Michigan, there was a lot going on.

00:05:25 Speaker_10
This was around the time of the Flint water crisis. Local officials in Flint, Michigan, had decided to switch the location of the city's water supply to save money.

00:05:33 Speaker_10
Soon after, the residents of that low-income community started complaining about the smell and color of their water. By the time anyone tried to do anything to fix it, it was too late.

00:05:43 Speaker_10
All the pipes in the community had become corroded, and the water was polluted with lead, bacteria, and other contaminants. Katie spent her hour-long daily commute listening to the radio and hearing about this awful public health crisis.

00:05:56 Speaker_09
I really felt like, doesn't anybody care? How is this going on? And yet nobody's doing anything about it. Nobody was talking about like, how do we prevent the next Flint water crisis? How do we make sure this never happens again?

00:06:09 Speaker_09
And I just felt so disheartened that this is the world we were in.

00:06:14 Speaker_10
I was just so disheartened. Katie was starting to experience the first step of creative maladjustment. She was getting pissed off. But there's a second step to creative maladjustment that goes beyond anger. We need to do the creative part.

00:06:28 Speaker_10
And that was where Katie got stuck. It just didn't seem like the political system was working for communities like hers.

00:06:35 Speaker_09
Our politicians are not afraid of us as the voters. They aren't worried about winning our vote or if we like what they're doing. Things seemed intractable, but Katie wanted to find a way to fix things.

00:06:45 Speaker_09
I can't keep going to work every day knowing that children can't drink water at their school and, like, think that's OK.

00:06:51 Speaker_09
And I didn't know what to do, but I was kind of seeing all those pieces and felt like maybe there's something to do that isn't just nothing or isn't just listening to the radio and getting frustrated every single day.

00:07:02 Speaker_10
So Katie decided to take a deeper dive into why so many of her local politicians were checked out.

00:07:07 Speaker_09
I was like, okay, how do we actually start getting accountability in Michigan? Maybe we could try and fix one of those systemic problems that make it so that our legislators don't have incentives to want to listen to the voters.

00:07:21 Speaker_00
America's political system is, at least in theory, supposed to prevent problems like this. People within each district vote for the person whose policies they like best.

00:07:31 Speaker_00
If a community hates what a politician is doing, they should be able to vote that person out. But, as Katie learned, it doesn't always work like that, because of a process called gerrymandering.

00:07:42 Speaker_09
It's where politicians decide what voting districts are instead of voters.

00:07:46 Speaker_00
Once elected, a politician can monkey around with the boundaries of their voting district. They can even move those borders so much that they exclude a huge percentage of votes that would be hostile to their policies.

00:07:59 Speaker_00
The word gerrymandering comes from a redistricting bill back in 1812, signed by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry. His party redrew the boundaries of Boston voting districts in order to win more power.

00:08:12 Speaker_00
The result was a set of strangely shaped districts. One famous electoral map looked a bit like a salamander, or rather a gerrymander. Gerrymandering is a process that's helpful for politicians, but it's very bad for governance.

00:08:26 Speaker_00
It makes it harder to vote out incumbents and encourages entire communities to be ignored.

00:08:33 Speaker_09
People end up not being able to actually get government to deliver on the basic things that it's supposed to be delivering on.

00:08:39 Speaker_00
As Katie read more about gerrymandering, she was shocked at how much this unfair process affected her Michigan community.

00:08:46 Speaker_09
I knew it was bad. I didn't know much else besides that.

00:08:49 Speaker_09
But I was like, hey, I think if we started there, like if we could fix that problem where politicians get to choose who their voters are and instead had voters choosing who their politicians are based on their voting districts, like maybe there's something there.

00:09:01 Speaker_09
But I didn't actually know what we could do to fix it.

00:09:04 Speaker_00
Gerrymandering was infuriating, but it had been around for hundreds of years. It wasn't like some random recycling plant worker was going to single-handedly fix such a big problem.

00:09:14 Speaker_09
I was kind of feeling like, why doesn't anybody care? I was feeling pretty hopeless.

00:09:18 Speaker_00
I was feeling pretty hopeless. Katie was feeling what a lot of cynical people do. She saw a huge problem, but couldn't envision a solution. So she didn't take action.

00:09:29 Speaker_00
In Martin Luther King's terms, Katie was feeling maladjusted, but didn't feel the creative hope we need to do something about it. Research finds that Katie's not alone here. Cynics don't vote or protest as much as their more hopeful counterparts.

00:09:45 Speaker_00
They leave the work to others. And even worse, people who feel hopeless sometimes belittle that work. They're quick to talk about society's ills, but also claim there's no cure, and it's dumb for anyone to try to fix it.

00:09:59 Speaker_00
We often think of cynicism as a radical feeling which will hold power to account. In fact, it's often the opposite, a tool of the status quo. But is there any way to find the hope that Katie was lacking?

00:10:12 Speaker_00
To get that creative nudge we need to start taking action? We'll find out when the Happiness Lab returns from the break.

00:10:22 Speaker_01
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00:11:30 Speaker_10
The holidays have always been a time of joy and coming together. But let's face it, shipping out all those gifts can be a hassle. To help ease the load, turn to the United States Postal Service for all your holiday shipping needs.

00:11:43 Speaker_10
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00:12:00 Speaker_10
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00:12:26 Speaker_10
United States Postal Service. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. This month is all about gratitude. And so today I wanted to give a shout out to my mom. Mom, thanks for everything you do.

00:12:36 Speaker_10
I get to give a nice shout out to my mom, but there's someone else we should all be giving a shout out to, ourselves. It's sometimes hard to remind ourselves that we're all trying our best, and in this crazy world, that's not always easy.

00:12:48 Speaker_10
So here's a reminder to send some thanks to the people in your life that you love, including yourself. And a great way to extend gratitude to yourself is through therapy. Therapy can help you learn positive coping skills and how to set boundaries.

00:13:02 Speaker_10
It can empower you to be the best version of yourself. And therapy isn't just for folks who've experienced major trauma. It's for anyone wanting to help themselves out a bit. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give BetterHelp a try.

00:13:14 Speaker_10
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00:13:26 Speaker_10
Let the gratitude flow with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Laurie today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash Laurie, L-A-U-R-I-E.

00:13:43 Speaker_02
So the exhausted majority, it's 67% of America. That is the majority of America.

00:13:47 Speaker_10
— This is political strategist Emily Amick. Emily used to work for Senator Chuck Schumer, but these days, she spends her time working with people like Katie Fahey, folks who find politics to be a massive turnoff.

00:13:59 Speaker_02
— And that doesn't mean these people are centrists or moderates, but the thing that really brings them all together, that connects them all, is that they're, like, profoundly exhausted.

00:14:09 Speaker_10
Political scientists often categorize people by their willingness to engage in issues. Some folks, the ones we tend to hear from a lot on social media and in op-eds, fall into what scholars call the wings.

00:14:20 Speaker_10
These are the hardcore conservatives and progressive liberals, voters on the tail ends of the political spectrum. But the devoted folks on the wings are a minority. The bulk of Americans, the other 70 or so percent, fall into the exhausted category.

00:14:35 Speaker_02
They're like profoundly exhausted. And they don't view every single political issue as a war. They really just want the government to work, the trains to run on time, their kids to be able to go to school, the water to be clean.

00:14:47 Speaker_02
You know, they just want to be able to live their lives.

00:14:49 Speaker_10
Exhausteds want things to be better, but they're cynical about their ability to fix things. So they wind up disengaging and feeling left out of the democratic process. So says Emily's collaborator, Sammy Sage.

00:15:02 Speaker_04
These people just feel like everything is corrupt. This is pointless. They're frustrated by politics, but it has turned to apathy. Nothing I do will matter. Nothing anyone I know does will matter. So I wish I didn't have to hear about this.

00:15:16 Speaker_10
As you've probably guessed, this sort of helplessness doesn't make for a happy nation, especially when nearly 70% of us are feeling that way.

00:15:24 Speaker_04
But the opportunity there is that if all of these people were to start engaging, we would be able to have a much more productive conversation.

00:15:32 Speaker_10
And that's why Emily and Sammy are on a mission to turn our collective exhaustion into more democratic engagement. They've even written a fabulous how-to guide.

00:15:41 Speaker_10
It's called Democracy in Retrograde, how to make changes big and small in our country and in our lives.

00:15:47 Speaker_02
The goal is for politics to be a daily habit, not a biannual freakout. We want you to figure out how to make civic life a cup-filling part of your life. It should be additive. It should make you happy.

00:15:58 Speaker_10
It should bring you joy so that you keep going back to it. The book begins by analyzing why so many of us got so exhausted when it comes to politics.

00:16:07 Speaker_10
One factor, the pair says, involves a toxic way that our political discourse has evolved over the past few decades.

00:16:14 Speaker_10
Whether it's on Twitter or cable news, we've all seen what should have been a thoughtful political discussion turn into a polarized shouting match. And honestly, what's more exhausting than that?

00:16:24 Speaker_10
Emily worries that this change has caused some voices to be silenced while the trolls on the wings shout even louder.

00:16:30 Speaker_02
And then the people who then want to talk about these issues are people who are doing it not with the best intentions, right?

00:16:36 Speaker_02
If the only political conversation you have is your uncle Chad screaming at you about politics, he's going into that conversation without good intentions. He just wants to get in an argument. He just wants to shit on you.

00:16:48 Speaker_02
That is not the normal conversation.

00:16:51 Speaker_10
And extreme individuals don't just skew political debate. They also expend huge amounts of effort to impose their political will on the rest of us.

00:16:59 Speaker_10
They lobby politicians, attend city hall meetings, and complain to school boards to get their goals realized. 60% of book bans were done by 11 people.

00:17:08 Speaker_02
The reality is there are people who are extremely active and they are willing to do the work to get extremist policies in play.

00:17:17 Speaker_10
With so many toxic voices pushing for extreme policies, it can be hard to figure out what the average person thinks. It's a cognitive error that psychologists call pluralistic ignorance.

00:17:27 Speaker_10
We wind up mistakenly assuming that extreme positions are the norm, and that pretty much everybody disagrees with how we think things should work.

00:17:35 Speaker_10
Consider one of the most famous examples of pluralistic ignorance, a study of Princeton students' perceptions of their classmates. Undergrads were brought into the lab and asked how often they thought the average Princeton student drank to excess.

00:17:48 Speaker_10
Most students assumed that the typical student drank a lot, even though they themselves had a moderate approach to partying. And it's easy to see where this bias comes from. I mean, think about who's taking up the most space in campus conversations.

00:18:02 Speaker_10
Students will often regale each other with stories about how they stayed up in their room watching TV. But they talk a lot about the raging parties they attended.

00:18:09 Speaker_10
And study after study has shown that our political discourse has become a lot like those campus errors. we simply don't realize just how much we agree on the big issues.

00:18:19 Speaker_04
Majority Americans support abortion rights at any point in the pregnancy. More than half of Americans support some form of gun control or gun safety laws. They support taking action on the climate.

00:18:31 Speaker_04
90% of Americans think that LGBTQ individuals should not suffer from discrimination. All of those people, because they're not talking about politics, they're not finding each other.

00:18:41 Speaker_10
The Uncle Chads make so much racket that we think they're everywhere, while the Exhausteds are so, well, exhausted that they just don't speak up, which creates a vicious cycle in which the average person winds up feeling even more angry about the state of the world and even more cynical.

00:18:57 Speaker_10
Anything can be done to fix it. But Jameel, explain how your work gives us a path forward.

00:19:02 Speaker_00
Well, Lori, the good news here is that if you are an exhausted, you are probably way less alone than you think. And research shows that when we take stock of how many people actually share our beliefs, this can energize us.

00:19:15 Speaker_00
It can help us turn cynicism into action. I think a lot about the work of psychologist Greg Sparkman. Recently, he surveyed thousands of Americans and found that more than two-thirds of them supported aggressive policies to slow down climate change.

00:19:30 Speaker_00
But this same group assumed that barely 40% of their fellow citizens wanted the same thing. Classic pluralistic ignorance.

00:19:38 Speaker_00
But Sparkman also found when people learned how angry others were about climate change, they felt less alone and were more willing to take action.

00:19:47 Speaker_00
A super important part of this work is that to overcome pluralistic ignorance, all you need is accurate information. As we've seen many times in this series on finding hope, people often underestimate one another.

00:20:01 Speaker_00
But that means that when we awaken to what the people around us are really like, our sense of efficacy and possibility swell. Accurate faith in each other now opens pathways to a future more of us want.

00:20:15 Speaker_10
That sounds awesome, Jamil. But how do we do that?

00:20:18 Speaker_00
The first step is to start talking about the issues we care about with one another. And we can do that through what political scientists call relational organizing.

00:20:29 Speaker_02
Relational organizing is a fancy way to say talking to people you already know about voting and about elections. It is eight times more effective than door knocking because who do you trust, right?

00:20:40 Speaker_02
If you want to go to a restaurant, you're going to look at reviews, you're going to look at what people say, and you might ask a friend. If a friend tells you to go to a restaurant, you're not going to double check it.

00:20:48 Speaker_02
You're just going to be like, sounds good. I trust what you have to say. I understand that we share the same values. We both like greasy pizza. So therefore I will trust your opinion on what is a good pizza restaurant.

00:20:58 Speaker_02
And in relational organizing, it's the similar concept.

00:21:01 Speaker_00
And it's one that works based on a lot of research. In one study, people who got a text from a friend reminding them to vote were 8% more likely to show up to the polls.

00:21:11 Speaker_00
That may not sound like much, but it's far, far more effective than nearly any other get-out-the-vote technique political scientists have come up with. But the benefits of talking about the issues we care about go beyond just boosted voting numbers.

00:21:25 Speaker_00
Some political scientists have argued conversations like these and the relationships they forge can even save our democratic way of life.

00:21:34 Speaker_04
Hannah Arendt wrote that fascism and a totalitarian society is really just a bunch of atomized individuals who are separated and have no identity other than to submit to the state.

00:21:44 Speaker_04
So in that way, and she says this, is that friendship can be an act of resistance. Having relationships with real people who can take care of each other is an authoritarian state's worst enemy.

00:21:55 Speaker_04
Because when people get together, they are able to talk and, you know, figure things out. So having real, engaged, connected civic fabric is healthy for our democracy.

00:22:07 Speaker_00
And being part of an engaged, connected civic fabric is also healthy for us personally. If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you've probably already heard about the benefits of social connection.

00:22:19 Speaker_00
Connecting with your neighbors about important issues is a great way to build relationships that last. Emily says this is one of her favorite parts of civic engagement.

00:22:28 Speaker_02
So I recently had cancer and just completed treatment. The people who showed up to help me are people who I met through Civic Life, people who I met through this work. Being engaged in Civic Life isn't only giving, you also receive.

00:22:46 Speaker_02
When you have cancer, you need people to rely on. And the people who you meet in Civic Life, who you meet because you are volunteering and giving yourself, it comes back to you.

00:22:55 Speaker_00
But to get the benefits of civic life, we actually have to engage. We need to take that first hopeful step and talk to people about the issues we value.

00:23:04 Speaker_00
And as Sammy and Emily have found out in their own work, getting that first step can be a tall order.

00:23:10 Speaker_04
The challenge and the opportunity with the exhausted majority is that they are extremely repelled by the political conversation.

00:23:18 Speaker_00
So how can we get the exhausted majority to start that dialogue?

00:23:21 Speaker_00
Next, we'll return to Katie Fahey and hear what happens when she started a conversation about gerrymandering and see how that first hopeful step was more effective than she could have dreamed.

00:23:32 Speaker_09
There was no guarantee we were going to be successful. Everybody told us all the reasons we would fail, and yet we were willing to try anyways.

00:23:40 Speaker_00
The Happiness Lab will return after the break.

00:23:45 Speaker_10
The holidays have always been a time of joy and coming together. But let's face it, shipping out all those gifts can be a hassle. To help ease the load, turn to the United States Postal Service for all your holiday shipping needs.

00:23:59 Speaker_10
With over 600,000 employees working in sync all over the country, USPS serves over 167 million addresses six and seven days a week. The best part? Their enhanced network is built to deliver your packages reliably and on time.

00:24:16 Speaker_10
And if you're looking for an affordable shipping option, USPS Ground Advantage has you covered. It's a complete ground shipping solution for all your holiday needs.

00:24:25 Speaker_10
Reliable, with upfront pricing, no hidden costs, and it's fast, helping you stay on top of your holiday plans. So why not take your packages on a true holiday ride this season? Visit usps.com slash holiday ride to get started.

00:24:41 Speaker_10
United States Postal Service. If you use paper, you're a human. But if you choose paper, you're a paper-tarian. Someone who lives a paper-based lifestyle because it has a positive impact on the planet.

00:24:53 Speaker_10
And also because it's the easiest choice you'll make all day. Seriously. It's as easy as reaching for boxed instead of bottled water. It's as easy as opting for beauty products that come in paper packaging.

00:25:05 Speaker_10
It's as easy as grabbing eggs in a cardboard container. And that's all in one trip to the grocery store, which, if we're being honest, you were planning to go to anyway. But paper isn't just an easy choice.

00:25:17 Speaker_10
Papertarians know that it's the smart choice, too. Because paper comes from trees, a renewable and sustainably managed resource. And paper products are designed to be recycled.

00:25:27 Speaker_10
In fact, when you choose products that come in paper-based packaging, those fibers can go on to be recycled up to seven times. So why wouldn't you go paperitarian? I'll wait. Learn more at howlifeunfolds.com slash paperitarian.

00:25:43 Speaker_08
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00:26:19 Speaker_09
I make plenty of Facebook posts that don't lead to anything.

00:26:22 Speaker_10
When we last left Katie Fahey, the 20-something recycling plant worker was fed up with the gerrymandering in her Michigan community and fuming about politics in her car on the way to work. Her overriding thought at the time? Something has to change.

00:26:36 Speaker_09
So I went on social media. I have a normal amount of followers for the age I am in. I'm not an influencer or anything like that.

00:26:43 Speaker_09
But I just thought I'd say, like, I'd reach out to my friends and see, like, if anybody else cared about gerrymandering and if they wanted to do something about it.

00:26:50 Speaker_09
So my my one little step before work was like, hey, I want to end gerrymandering in Michigan. If you want to help, let me know. Smiley face emoji. And I did not think that would lead to really much of anything, if I'm being honest.

00:27:02 Speaker_10
But that's not what happened. Katie's post blew up.

00:27:06 Speaker_09
And all of a sudden, all these people were saying, Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're working on this. I've cared about it for such a long time. Let me know how I can help.

00:27:13 Speaker_09
What happened when I made that Facebook post is I got instantly connected to a community I never knew existed.

00:27:20 Speaker_09
Thoughtful people who paid attention, but didn't really love hyper-partisanship and didn't really know what to do, but still cared and still wished that something could be done.

00:27:31 Speaker_10
For the first time in a long time, Katie didn't feel alone.

00:27:35 Speaker_09
I think I had this aha moment of like, look at all these people who've also been sitting in their car or at home being mad online, thinking like, why doesn't somebody do something about this?

00:27:46 Speaker_09
Meanwhile, all of us not realizing like, we are actually people who can do something about this.

00:27:50 Speaker_10
But that positive feeling was quickly followed by panic. The people who replied to Katie's post seemed to think that she knew what the next step was for fixing things. And I was like, oh, no, I have no idea what I'm doing.

00:28:03 Speaker_10
And so were the people that came together like, you know, experienced political activists?

00:28:08 Speaker_09
So, no, they were not. The short answer is none of them knew what they were doing either. So I quickly literally Googled, like, how do you end gerrymandering?

00:28:18 Speaker_09
And saw that in Michigan, we had something called the ballot initiative process, which meant that if you could write constitutional language, which I had no idea how to do, I was not a lawyer, but it's like, okay, step one.

00:28:28 Speaker_09
And then if you could take that constitutional language and get a bunch of people to sign a petition saying, yes, I want to vote on this. When I looked at the number, it was 315,654 registered Michigan voter signatures in 180 days.

00:28:41 Speaker_09
And I lived in the second largest city in Michigan, Grand Rapids. And even the total population, if I talk to every single person who lived in my city, was only 200,000. So nowhere close to 315,000. So I was like, oh, no. OK, also sounds impossible.

00:28:56 Speaker_09
But all right, that's step number two. And then step number three would be getting at least 50 percent of the population to vote yes on that law in the general election, which would be about two and a half million people.

00:29:06 Speaker_09
And I certainly didn't know two and a half million people. So that also sounded impossible. But I was like, OK, at least There's a pathway here.

00:29:12 Speaker_10
So write a loyally petition, convince hundreds of thousands of people to sign it, and then get 2.5 million voters to back you at the ballot box. Right.

00:29:22 Speaker_10
Most people would have walked away then and there, but Katie was already too creatively maladjusted to step away.

00:29:29 Speaker_09
If we do nothing, we for sure know we're going to get more gerrymandered maps. But if we succeed, my gosh, millions of people, over 10 million people for the very first time will actually be able to vote in a fair election.

00:29:41 Speaker_10
So how do you even start on such a momentous task?

00:29:46 Speaker_09
So I was like, OK, we probably need like a fundraising department because, you know, I don't have any money and it sounds expensive to do. And we probably need like a legal department because we have to write constitutional language.

00:29:55 Speaker_09
And like, how the heck do you do that? And we probably need like an education department because like we have to talk to apparently millions of people about what the heck gerrymandering is.

00:30:03 Speaker_10
Katie had found a group of ordinary folks who were as fired up as she was. But how could she turn that enthusiasm into a more directed effort?

00:30:12 Speaker_09
Although most people, this is the very first quote unquote political thing they were ever trying to do besides vote. They had a lot of life experience that translated to things that a campaign needs to do.

00:30:23 Speaker_09
For example, somebody who had worked at the Renaissance Fair for years in Michigan. She's like, you know, as the executive director, I have to raise a lot of money for weird stuff. And I was like, cool. Oh, perfect.

00:30:34 Speaker_09
We had a math teacher who had a little bit of canvassing experience, had done some doorknocking before.

00:30:39 Speaker_09
So she was like, okay, I think I can break down this really big number of like 315,000 and figure out how many signatures per day that is and what we need to do. And I was like, okay, great, you go.

00:30:48 Speaker_09
And, you know, somebody who had been like an accountant for nonprofits before, who hadn't done a political campaign before, but said she was willing to get trained on how to do that.

00:30:57 Speaker_09
So, like, slowly it started to feel like, even though none of us really knew what we were doing, that maybe if we could, like, piece together all of our individual little skills and contributions, maybe, just maybe, we could figure out how to do this.

00:31:10 Speaker_00
The cynic in us might say, great, the CEOs, the math teachers, the accountants, of course they can contribute. But what can Joe the plumber do? Or Rebecca, the single mom Jazzercise instructor?

00:31:21 Speaker_09
So Rebecca was awesome. She called me and she's like, I really want to help, but I just feel like there's no way I can contribute. She's like, you know, I'm just a mom, there's nothing else.

00:31:29 Speaker_09
And I was like, first of all, being a mom, like, definitely comes with a ton of skills. So we need all of those skills. But also, like, are there any other hobbies or something that you have?

00:31:37 Speaker_09
And she had mentioned that on the side, she was a jazzercise instructor, which I still haven't quite figured out how to tie to gerrymandering, but also that she was a woodcarver.

00:31:46 Speaker_00
Katie thought Rebecca could carve a big wooden sculpture showing just how weird Michigan's gerrymandered voting districts looked. It was a nice idea, but Rebecca wasn't sure it would work.

00:31:58 Speaker_09
Like it was not feasible to have a statue stand up because it was like so out of balance and it would have potentially like crushed children at an art fair or something if like the wind blew the wrong way.

00:32:09 Speaker_00
Rebecca's contribution wound up being much simpler and much more valuable. She found an easy way for people to sign Katie's petitions.

00:32:17 Speaker_09
They're kind of like a long document and they aren't a standard size for a clipboard. And so Rebecca goes, you know what, are there any other word carvers in our Facebook group? And actually we had like three of them.

00:32:29 Speaker_09
So they all go and they meet together and they figured out like if they could go to Home Depots and Lowe's and reserve a certain amount of wood that we could actually make our own clipboard.

00:32:38 Speaker_09
So instead of $17 a piece, it could actually end up being closer to like 11 cents a piece per clipboard.

00:32:45 Speaker_09
And then because they were thinking about these clipboards so much and like the size and how do we make it more advantageous, they figured out if we make it a little bit longer, we can ask people for their contact information to see if they want to be volunteers.

00:32:55 Speaker_09
If we throw on the back a map of the district, it can actually work as an education tool where we can show somebody a picture of their district and start the conversation by saying, do you think this makes sense?

00:33:06 Speaker_09
Is this how you would define our community? Which ended up being a great tool for all of those who are a little more introverted and scared of talking to strangers, that we could have them look at our clipboard instead of us.

00:33:16 Speaker_09
And also we made like raincoats for these clipboards for when you're standing on the rain, all these kinds of innovations. We would have never done that. We would have never paid attention to this.

00:33:24 Speaker_09
But because we had Rebecca and those other wood carvers on our team, we ended up creating like this really fabulous tool that I know even I today like cherish my clipboard with all the accomplishments it has seen us through.

00:33:36 Speaker_00
Rather than just her community of Grand Rapids, Katie wanted the whole state to have a voice. But with 83 counties in Michigan, she had to trust the judgment of her fellow campaigners.

00:33:47 Speaker_00
One suggested collecting signatures at his town's annual cheeseburger festival. Another thought the local tractor pull would be ideal.

00:33:54 Speaker_09
And I was like, I don't know what a tractor pull contest is, but if you think we should go there, we absolutely should go there.

00:34:00 Speaker_09
And they took their clipboard and they would go and stand outside and try to talk to a bunch of strangers about redistricting. We did end up making costumes. We ended up carving pumpkins.

00:34:10 Speaker_09
And in the winter, we made snowmen who were also holding the clipboards. basically found every way we possibly could to be creative, to stop people and just say, are you sick of politics as usual?

00:34:20 Speaker_09
And if so, here's a way that we can do something about it. And we had hundreds of thousands of conversations. We ended up gathering over 440,000 signatures.

00:34:30 Speaker_10
440,000 signatures is an amazing feat, but it was only the first of Katie's hurdles. For her Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to become a reality, she needed half of Michigan's voters to back it.

00:34:42 Speaker_09
So then we had to get into campaign mode and door knocking to keep talking to a bunch of strangers.

00:34:47 Speaker_09
And we ended up door knocking hundreds of thousands of doors to building those relationships in those communities where we just kept talking to our neighbors about here's why we should care.

00:34:56 Speaker_10
But in the end, did her neighbors care? Would she be able to get out the vote to fight redistricting? Could a woman with no legal experience who was barely old enough to rent a car actually fight a 200-year-old policy like gerrymandering and win?

00:35:10 Speaker_00
I kind of have a feeling it's going to have a happy ending.

00:35:12 Speaker_09
— We ended up getting 61% of the vote. We only needed 50, and it was really exciting to see, especially for a concept that most people hadn't even really thought about before.

00:35:23 Speaker_09
We reached over 2.5 million people who said, yes, let's try something different here in Michigan.

00:35:28 Speaker_10
— And Katie's efforts have now spread far beyond her own state. People have seen what she did in Michigan, and are copying her approach— not just to fix gerrymandering, but for other issues, too.

00:35:39 Speaker_09
In Idaho, there was some buddies who were talking about how health care had, like, really poor access.

00:35:44 Speaker_09
And they decided to, like, get an RV and go travel across their state and talk to their neighbors about how do we expand Medicare, because, like, we need it and our neighbors do not have access to health care.

00:35:54 Speaker_09
There were these grandmas in North Dakota, one a Democrat, one a Republican, who were having this conversation about, they'd been kind of civil servants most of their life, and they just said, there is like an ethics problem.

00:36:05 Speaker_09
Like, our legislators are not self-regulating. We need some kind of ethics commission. And they ended up deciding to do a ballot initiative like we did to create an ethics commission in North Dakota.

00:36:15 Speaker_09
They call themselves the Badass Grandmas now, fighting for their grandchildren's future.

00:36:19 Speaker_10
Katie hadn't successfully changed medical care or fought ethics reforms. But what she did do for the people who heard her story was something even more important. She convinced them that hope was possible.

00:36:31 Speaker_09
And at those town hall meetings we were holding when we were talking to people, all of these people, they would all raise their hand at the end and keep bringing up this question of, isn't it impossible? Isn't it impossible?

00:36:41 Speaker_09
I've tried something before. It didn't work out. And what I realized was that a lot of people just needed somebody else to be a little bit more hopeful than them.

00:36:50 Speaker_09
Like what I was doing, the best way I was contributing was being like unafraid of the consequences.

00:36:55 Speaker_10
And so as you think back to kind of how hopeless you were feeling before and maybe how kind of annoyed with your fellow man you were feeling before, how different does it feel now that you've taken action?

00:37:04 Speaker_09
It feels so inspiring. I think it's so easy to let current events feel overwhelming. That's totally the place I was in was like, oh, my gosh, why doesn't anybody do anything about this? And also, like, doesn't anybody care that it is this bad?

00:37:20 Speaker_09
And now when I start feeling that way about other issues, I start thinking about how I can literally picture a person in, like, every part of the state I live in who we were strangers, yet we were willing to, like, volunteer our time, energy, money, creativity.

00:37:37 Speaker_09
Like, we were willing to trust each other and fight like heck, even though all the odds were stacked against us, to try and make a better future.

00:37:44 Speaker_09
And it's just like this constant reminder that when we actually have the option and when there's a pathway, even if it's a really slim pathway that might be really hard, but when there's a pathway to change being actually possible, I think Americans in general are just willing to try and put in the hard work to do it.

00:38:01 Speaker_09
And it just makes me feel a lot more hopeful, but also grateful.

00:38:06 Speaker_10
This is our final show in this special series on finding hope. And Jameel and I both hope, no pun intended, that the stories we've shared today have helped you become a little less cynical and a bit more creatively maladjusted.

00:38:18 Speaker_00
There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful. Ones we don't get to see every day on TV or social media. The vast majority of us agree on much more than we think.

00:38:28 Speaker_00
And people like Emily, Sammy, and Katie show us that we can unite across our differences to help our communities.

00:38:34 Speaker_00
Whether you're the CEO of a renaissance fair, a math teacher, or a wood carving jazzercise instructor, there's going to be a cause that fires you up and a contribution that you can make.

00:38:46 Speaker_10
So give yourself a much needed dose of self-help via political action. The science shows it might just make you feel happier. And speaking of feeling happier, Jamil, can I just say how much I've loved having you on the show?

00:38:57 Speaker_10
It has been a blast to have an actual co-host, and I'm finally feeling a little bit more hopeful.

00:39:02 Speaker_00
Oh man, this has been delightful, and it's just been great to be able to connect the science of hope to happiness and well-being. And as a longtime fan of the show, it has just been an absolute thrill to be able to join you in this effort.

00:39:15 Speaker_10
Well, it's sad that it is over, but I will say for the last time, thanks out there for everyone listening. To The Happiness Lab, with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

00:39:23 Speaker_00
And me, Dr. Jamil Zaki.

00:39:36 Speaker_01
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00:40:44 Speaker_06
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00:41:08 Speaker_06
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00:41:10 Speaker_05
This podcast is supported by BetterHelp, offering licensed therapists you can connect with via video, phone, or chat. Here's BetterHelp Head of Clinical Operations, Hesu Jo, discussing who can benefit from therapy.

00:41:25 Speaker_03
I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to be going to therapy once you're like having panic attacks every day.

00:41:31 Speaker_03
But before you get to that point, I think once you start even noticing that you feel a little bit off and you can't maintain this harmony that you once had in relationships, that could be a sign that maybe you want to go talk to somebody.

00:41:44 Speaker_03
There's always a benefit in talking to someone because we can all benefit from improved insight about ourselves and who we are and how we behave with other people.

00:41:54 Speaker_03
So if you're human, that's like a good indicator that you could benefit from talking to somebody.

00:41:59 Speaker_05
Find out if therapy is right for you. Visit BetterHelp.com today. That's BetterHelp.com.