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Rise and shine, fever dreamers. I'm Sammy Sage, and this is American Fever Dream presented by Betches News, where we explore the absurdities and oddities of our uniquely American experience. Today, we have the incredible Sharon McMahon, a.k.a. Sharon Says So, joining me.
If you haven't heard of her, I don't know what corner of the internet you're in. I really am somewhat surprised. But also, you would be in for a treat today. You're about to discover a gem. Sharon is the author of the upcoming book, The Small and the Mighty, 12 Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, From the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement. V is out today, but I know she is very sad to miss you. She told me to send my best.
Welcome, Sharon.
That's really what I want to talk about today because there is so much going on, especially now as people are trying to deny history. Can you talk about, you know, kind of your journey as from a government teacher to the Internet's government teacher? Yeah. When I was starting to go to college, I never dreamed it would turn into what I'm doing now. But...
Yeah, I started out teaching high school government and law. I spent a long time teaching in the D.C. area. And working in a place like Washington, D.C., I think you get a little bit of a different picture of how history continues to inform the present. If you want to understand the present, you have to understand the past, right? Like this is something that I think many people –
a fact that's lost on some people. That if you want to understand the present, you have to understand where we came from. So I just started shortly before the 2020 election, started posting some little nonpartisan fact-based explainer videos on Al Gore's internet. That's actually my favorite name for it. Mine too. It is his. Of course. He invented it. I mean...
look, someone had to get the government funding pushed through and it wouldn't have happened without him to be like, this is what we should do it guys. Like we're going to get ahead. And now you have 20 years of American economic dominance because of that. Al Gore's internet. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. So I just put, started posting little explainer videos where people were people asking or answering simple questions about like, how does,
The Electoral College work. Because I had a friend on her Facebook account. Somebody was trying to mansplain to her how the Electoral College worked. And the mansplaining was grossly inaccurate. Grossly inaccurate. It was like when people visit the Electoral College, like a facility. And I realized in that moment, like I can either argue with Chad.
times infinity on the internet. Or I can do something that will outlast this one comment conversation, right? The comment conversations are here today, gone tomorrow. So I just started making little videos that people could repost to all the people who are trying to mansplain things to them.
Right. I mean, so it really all sprung out of just wanting to be productive instead of wanting to feed the outrage algorithm. That's right. Yeah. Like you can now you can still I mean, if you want to Google, you can still find my old videos. But there's arguing with Chad and Brad in the comments on Facebook.
is not anybody's life calling. And if somebody gets to be 99 years old on their deathbed, nobody's going to be like, oh, I could have stuck it to Chad one more time. You know, like that's not anybody's dying wish. But you have to admit it does feel good. It does feel good sometimes when Chad is so wrong. Right. And it's so easy to prove him wrong. It's not even an opinion, Chad. There's no facility.
Something that I have noticed, and I don't know if this was in 2020, but sometimes I've noticed that I will, it's not necessarily like a very occasionally respond to a Chad, but I have gotten into it with what I later realized was a bot or like a troll. Like, you know, it was, it was not a real person arguing with me. Sure.
And that's what I that's not what is really scary to me is that like, is any of this even real? Like, have you seen that movement that like Helen Keller isn't real? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Like that's a this is a great example of what happens when you just totally lose any semblance of like what was taught to us as history is not random. Like it wasn't just random.
created as a fiction novel, there are sources. So and, you know, in the process of writing your book, I'm very interested in how you research the people that you wrote about, because the whole theme is that they aren't big historical figures who we know. So can you talk a little bit about
Like how sources are verified and how we construct history that we know is to be as accurate as we can, as we can share or to paint, I guess, like a fuller picture of what was going on at any time and like how we can prove that Helen Keller was in fact real. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I mean, just look at the number of people who don't believe the Holocaust really happened, Sammy. That's another terrifying example of people who just are denying history that is extremely well documented. Right. Well, I think with that, there's like such a clear motivation for it. Like at least I'm like, okay, well, they are going to say that anyway. Then you get something like, you know, the Helen Keller thing or just like –
where you're like, where is this coming from? Right. Yeah. Right. This extreme distrust of
like sort of one plus one equals two almost. Yeah. I mean, if you want to talk about how we verify historic facts, you know, this is something that it's so easy to disbelieve things because of the amount of fake content on the internet, the bots, the AI things, the people who just invent things. I have personally gone on to like a, a,
a Twitter generator to show people, unlike created fake tweets, just to show people how easy it is to do and why we cannot just assume that something is real because somebody posted it on the internet. So I understand the inclination to like distrust, uh,
Because there are things to distrust, right? But when we're talking about historic facts, these are things that are verifiable via primary sources, meaning that the person themselves existed left behind evidence of their existence. They had writings or they gave speeches that hundreds or thousands of other people witnessed. And
And those people then wrote letters to their friends and recorded it in their diaries or a newspaper wrote a story about it. Newspapers are actually a very, very important source of historic documentation. We think about today people are all about
you know, I don't read that newspaper. It's biased in this way or that way. Newspapers have always been and will continue to be very, very important sources of historic documentation because they are actually sending a reporter to that event who is witnessing something and recording what is being written down. These are important things for posterity. So the idea that like, oh, Helen Keller wasn't real.
Actually, you know, literally tens of thousands of people in the past from 1913 are witnessing her existence and have no reason from 1913 to write a letter like this.
Dear Samantha. Right. So in 2024, we can like kind of reveal that this person wasn't real. Like all these people are going to be on this conspiracy that long after we're dead. Right. Especially because there was no Internet then. So people from very disparate places are writing about. I mean, this is so ridiculous. We're trying to prove. Yes. But I'm just giving it by way of an example of something that is so ridiculous because this can happen with anything. Yes. Right.
Right. And the idea that, yeah, like Luella from 1913 has any reason to write a letter to her friend Rose. Today, I listen to a woman who is blind and deaf, you know, speak through her teacher, blah, blah, blah. There's no reason for her to make, she doesn't benefit from writing a private letter to a friend. And these exist times thousands. Right. So can you talk a little bit about as a history and government teacher, how, what
when her historic sources conflict or when you're trying to construct like a narrative because obviously you're you know people are looking at discrete facts or discrete sources and then ultimately like it is just about writing a narrative and you know there's that saying like the winner gets to tell the right story so
So how did you go about constructing, for example, like the narratives in this book about they aren't sort of preexisting. You're not commenting on something that a lot of people agreed upon. So how did you approach that?
That's a great question. You know, why haven't these stories been sung, quote unquote, before? Like, why are these people unsung? Some of it has to do with, as you mentioned, to the victors go the spoils, the people with the biggest military strategy, the people with the most money, the people with the most notoriety who are giving the speeches to the thousands of people, the people working behind the scenes.
are doing incredible work making lasting change. But because they don't have the level of profile at the time of their existence, they don't have the money to promote themselves on some kind of stage, they aren't being invited to the White House, because those things are not happening for them, we don't have this long-term
long narrative trail of who they were and what they did. But nevertheless, if you are willing to dig for the pieces, you can reconstruct a puzzle. It's just that the pieces are buried in a variety of different places that you have to be willing to spend the time digging them up and assembling the puzzles. And that is the work of many historians. Historians are continuing to do this throughout, have always done this throughout time. But that's
That's generally the process. It is digging up the little individual pieces of somebody's puzzle. Where were they during this year? Who were they visiting then? What were they saying to that person? What did they do when World War II broke out? Where were they at this historic time period? And when you can begin to construct, you know, dig up those pieces, you can put together a really beautiful picture of somebody who did something amazing
So noteworthy that it deserves to be in a book. But up until now, many of them have not been. So are you sort of suggesting that inherently, and I guess maybe this isn't commonly understood, or at least I hadn't necessarily assumed this, that like all historic narratives must be favored in that case to the wealthy. And now I'm kind of thinking about, I'm like, who do we know very, like in history, who is very,
famous or like very impactful like household historic names. They're all wealthy. Like there was no president. I mean, other than like Abe Lincoln and his log cabin. Anne Frank is an example of somebody who wasn't like inherently a zillionaire, but
The people that we remember are the people whose history was recorded in some way, right? So Anne Frank has a diary. And there's copious amounts of evidence. And her dad survived. Yes. And the woman, Miep Gies, who hid them survived. So it's really like because they survived. Yes. And then also that wouldn't come out if the Nazis won. That's right. That's exactly right. We would not know those stories. And so when you think about who has been killed,
A historian who have been the historians up until now. It is largely white men, right? It's largely white men who stereotypically have a certain set of interests. They have a certain set of motivations. They're inherently interested in certain topics and certain kinds of people.
And again, this is not to ascribe ill intent to all historians. There's a lot of great male historians. But throughout hundreds of years of recorded American history, that has been the people who are writing the story, right? It's the people who are like, oh, that Thomas Jefferson. He was such a great writer, you guys. He wrote the Declaration. It's the people who...
are interested in these topics that write these things down. And because of women's position in society, women were not given access to the historic events in the way that men were. It wasn't the women generally who were attending the speeches. It wasn't the women who were writing the newspaper articles. Women were intentionally
and sometimes unintentionally, but intentionally excluded from the narrative, from recording the narrative, or from being a history maker. So both of those things have conspired against entire groups of people, either people of color, women, other marginalized groups have been intentionally and unintentionally excluded from history books.
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So when you, I guess, set out to write this, how did you find the people and how did you pick them? And how did you, I guess, like pick this idea of educating people through vignettes when you could have really taken this in any direction? You know, this is just something that I know that that people are inherently interested
just from experience, they're inherently interested in. They love knowing a story about a person. They love being able to access and digest information in a way that they can get their arms around it. You know, maybe I don't want to know what XYZ person ate for breakfast when they were eight. Maybe those are too many details, but I want to know about like what
what exactly did they do that impacted the rest of us? So I chose rather than to tell everybody's entire, like write a biography of every single person, I chose to instead focus on what their incredible contributions were and to show how throughout the sweep of history, these people are connected, how they're connected to other historic events, how they're connected to other historic people. And I love those kind of moments, those little light bulb moments where you're like,
It's so interesting. So interesting when two people from history show up in each other's lives and you didn't know that they knew each other. That's one of my favorite. I think that's cool. Yes. When you can put that person at the White House and you're like, dang, it must have been at the same party. Yes. They had to have known each other. There's no way they didn't know each other.
They went to the same church. They had to have known each other, even if they didn't, you know, necessarily be like, this is my best friend, Sammy. You know, they had to have known each other. Such a small community. I love those kind of moments where, you know, you can then go down these deep rabbit holes. But in terms of how I found these people, most of them were mentioned in passing in some other historic narrative.
And their name, just for whatever reason, like little bell went off in my mind of like, I should look into them some more.
that's that's really how a lot of history works is you're reading about somebody else you're reading about something that happened you know for example I I'm very interested in um in the 1950s that's one of my most people who are into history have like a a period a period what is yours do you have do you have periods I've always really liked like the late 60s early 70s I've always felt like an attraction to that yeah like
Summer of 69, I feel like, is the core. And I had, honestly, like one of the most impactful assignments I ever did in school was something we did in 11th grade AP English. It was called the year paper. And basically everyone in the class picked a year.
It wasn't like you got to pick whatever you wanted and you had to pick one piece of art or any sort of like event or moment in that year. And you had to explain how that was reflective of the of that year culturally. Sure. And what was happening around it.
And for an 11th grader, that's like a really ambitious concept. And like wrapping your head around that is really was really mind expanding. And I can't help but think about it as you're talking about this. And you're just asking what my period is reminded me because my year was 1973 and I chose David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust. And I'd love to go back and read that now. But yeah, it's really like the.
The periods, I wonder what draws people to a period. What draws you to the 50s? Yes. The 50s, we now, if I were to stand out here on the street corner of New York and be like, what do you think of when you think of 1953? You know, and I held out a microphone. People would be like, poodle skirts. Poodle skirts and Joe McCarthy. Yeah. Poodle skirts, convertible Chevys. You know, maybe. Yeah. Maybe they would think of the Cold War. Maybe if they are like a history buff. But most people would think of like sock hop movies.
type yeah idyllic uh you know 1950s in reality 1953 was one of the most dangerous years in human history and we you know that that it's not it's not a secret i didn't just invent that fact but we're out here inventing the h-bomb which is like you know if you think about uh our atomic weapons being you know like equivalent to say 21 000 tons of tnt the h-bomb is like uh
200 million tons or something like that. Like the ability to blow people off the earth is insane. Yes. The Cold War is, you know, we're very afraid it's going to turn into a hot war. It's a very dangerous time in world history and never and simultaneous to all of that. You have the
You have the civil rights movement, you know, going from its infancy, growing into its adolescence, and then it will eventually move into its adulthood in the mid-1960s. But I find the...
infancy of a movement. Very, very interesting. Like what are the catalysts for the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, you know, those big, those big pieces of 1960s legislation that really changed a lot about America. How did we get to that place? That kind of stuff is super interesting to me. So I find the 1950s like
I could probably spend the rest of my career talking about the 1950s. Maybe you will. Maybe I will. That is very interesting. So what are some like hallmarks of the building of a movement that you've noticed? Yeah. I mean, when we're talking about something like a civil rights movement or any kind of human rights movement, student rights, you know, any kind of thing that has built into a big crescendo when we're talking about Vietnam, for example.
The hallmarks of those movement is about to get started is, of course, it's almost always increasing levels of civil unrest, political violence. Often you it's based in discrimination that becomes more and more overt. You know, during the 1940s, it wasn't it wasn't like.
Of course, things were segregated. Of course they were. But they were so busy that we, it doesn't mean the discrimination went away and everything was fine. Not, of course not. When the war ends and all of these thousands and thousands of GIs come back and they realize, I was treated a lot better in Europe than I was here in my own country that I am serving in the military of. I was treated so much better in Europe. And they don't have the forced segregation there.
even though the military was segregated, they could go into a town and just sit at the bar and have a couple of drinks and smoke some cigarettes with everyone else and not have to go to the side entrance or the separate facilities. And to return home, especially in the American South, and have this enforced legal segregation, it created a tremendous amount of dissatisfaction. When they came home, when Black service members came home and realized that they could not access the GI Bill,
Because there were not schools that would accept them.
Right. You could not you could not use the benefits that you were due because of enforced legal segregation. The unrest, the dis-ease just started to simmer. And that that like simmering point where things eventually start becoming a boil. I always find the simmer very interesting. Yeah. What are the signs of like a denouement? Usually when there is some kind of when you think about like the mid-
you know, 1960s, when you think about like civil rights act, voting rights act, when there is some kind of agreement that is made between two parties that are, you know, have been unhappy with each other, people who are actively like you are, you need to stop blocking our access to the polls. When, when people finally said, you're right,
We do need to stop doing that. It didn't again, it didn't erase discrimination. It didn't make all the problems go away. But you at least felt like your work had been useful. You could see some productive use of your time. So another theme I'm noticing is that of the importance of journalism, especially local journalism. Yes.
Because when there are fewer reporters, they're covering fewer events, fewer less significant events or less openly significant events, but nonetheless, probably events that matter to a lot of people. Totally. And events that matter to the historic record.
right? A lot of times what we're thinking of with, you know, reporters covering events, we're thinking about something that happened in Madison Square Garden. We're thinking about some like, oh, it's a thing with like 25,000 people attended. But in reality, what allows historians to piece together a narrative are those small town newspapers. I can't tell you, first of all, how many newspaper articles I have read writing this book. And it's amazing that so many of them are, you know, digitized now and you can just access them. But I am talking
Small town. Small town newspapers that are like, this woman spoke at a luncheon. Okay? She spoke at a luncheon. The school board meeting. Yes. And here's what she said at the ladies' tea. And those kinds of articles really help you understand the past in ways that just somebody spoke at Madison Square Gardens because it's an intimate audience. Right.
The person is sharing their real thoughts. They're speaking to a friendly group of people who are interested to hear from them. And those kinds of events are not getting going to get covered by the New York Times. They're just not. That's not what the New York Times is for. Isn't it crazy that people were like paid to do that now? You can't even get enough reporters to cover significant, extremely significant things now. Yes. And
And this is one where I say this all the time. People ask me regularly, what newspaper should I subscribe to? Your local newspaper is very important.
The Washington Post is not coming to your child's NHS induction ceremony and not making a record of what was said at the school board meeting and why they just failed to pass the bonding referendum. But nevertheless, these are important things to know about now as a citizen because these things impact your life. But they're also really, really important.
history. And I worry that historians of the future are going to, first of all, be impacted by the lack of official historic record because we are no longer covering these events. But also now that we have moved to digital communication, we don't write letters to each other. There's no box of letters in the attic. Everything is behind a password.
It's all in your DMs. It's all in your text messages. How are historians of the future going to figure out what Sammy Sage really thought about? The other thing with that is like then you have the control of the publishers who can just buy. This is gone. Or you have paywalls or you have I mean, paywalls you can get past. But like a lot of it's just gone. Like and to your point about what will the future what will future people be able to piece together?
I'm sure they'll be able to be together a lot. Sure. I'm sure. Yeah. But you're not going to and you're not going to get the microcultures. And I think that that's actually really important for America specifically. Yes. Because we are a country built of microcultures. Our government is structured for the sake of those cultures. That's why we have states rights and county government. There's a reason why we're not just covered by Washington news and New York news and L.A. news and.
It's a real problem, but one that's incredibly slow rolling. Yeah. When you think about, say, the country of Austria, they don't have the types of local government that we have. They have a national government and then they might have a town government that's overseas picking up your trash and administers the policies that the national government has set.
But they're not creating separate policies of like here in the state of Indiana. No bathrooms. Right. Yeah. Here's what we're going to do. You're absolutely right that America is very fragmented and that makes the historic record, of course, extremely interesting, but also somewhat even more challenging to piece together because of how fragmented things are here. But that's that's intentional.
They built it that way on purpose. Right. It's intentionally fragmented. I think people assume, oh, that's necessarily a bad thing. It's not because I think we've seen that we couldn't. The national government can learn a lot about the way that state policies work or don't work. And sometimes the needs of different places are genuinely different. Of course. And I mean, the question is, like, are you infringing on civil rights? But, you know, that's a bigger that's a bigger problem.
Do you relate to any of the people you picked to profile? I definitely do. Not because I have achieved similar greatness, but because I relate to their motivations, their sense of why I'm doing this in the first place. And as a longtime teacher, some of the people in the book are teachers, and so that, of
of course, is a topic that is always near and dear to my heart, the importance of education, how education has always been and will continue to be a liberation for people. And I think we have, in some ways, moved away from that belief. There are
powerful influencers in America today who are actively discouraging people from seeking education because they want them to continue to believe what they want them to believe and not what they have learned or figured out from their own critical thinking skills. So this idea that education is...
Is so important, not just to your own intellectual development, which it is. This is America. You have the right to be stupid and wrong if that's what you want to do. Right. It's what you want to do. Go for it. I'm not going to force you to become educated, but I don't know anybody with an education who's like, hmm.
I'm real sorry I did that. I'm so sorry that I know how to research that. I'm so sorry that I learned that. Even if they feel like, well, I disagreed with some of my college professors or whatever, that's an important milestone in your intellectual development. How will you ever develop critical thinking if you are never presented with anything you disagree with?
I think that's another problem we're running into is that this refusal to engage if there is a disagreement. Yes. To start with. I'm done. We're done. I'll follow. If you say this, you're out. How do we get past that?
Yeah, that's a million dollar question because it is a danger. It's a dangerous scenario that we are hurtling towards where we are so siloed off with our viewpoints that we do not interact with somebody who has a different view on principle on principle.
principle. Not just like, oh, I don't fuck with them. Right. You know, they're like, I will not. That's right. I don't speak to people who believe X. Yeah. I don't speak to people who think Y or who voted for Z. Or they're evil. You're absolutely right. We have now come to believe in many ways that an association with somebody who has different views than us, by like sitting in a room or having a cup of coffee with somebody,
that that association rubs off on you and makes you dirty, right? Stains you, makes you guilty by association. How do you explain...
expect to influence somebody with whom you have no interactions? And then get what you want to be the reality. Right. If your goal is to try to move the needle on a policy or an idea that you think is an important one, like let's say we agree that we need to do what... We need maternal leave. Yeah, we need paid family leave.
How will we ever get paid family leave if we exert no influence over the people who disagree with paid family leave? Right. It's obvious we don't have the numbers to just make it happen on a national level without people that with whom we currently disagree. And if we spend the whole time being like, screw them.
They're evil. They hate babies. They just want to control people's bodies, whatever it is. If we spend the entire time demonizing them, railing against them, villainizing them,
The our ability to actually convince them to change their mind is zero. Am I going to sit down with somebody who's like, screw Sharon, man, I hate her. Am I going to be like, let's have lunch? No. Right. Maybe it's because people interact so much less in person where you might by chance get to see the person who you have a disagreement with.
in a light where they're just a human. But now it's sort of like you just see people online and they're reduced to word, word, word, opinion. But she's problematic. It's yeah. So I know that you've brought many people over to differing opinions. How did you do that? First of all, it starts by respecting people.
respecting their humanity, even if you don't agree with their viewpoints, right? Dehumanization has never led anyone worth going. It has never in history has led anyone anywhere good. And so the, you have to start with that shared vision of like, I can respect you as a, as a human being without agreeing with every single one of your viewpoints. And I think dehumanization,
To your point, we have moved away from that. That you are only worthy of full humanity if you agree with everything. Right. Which is weird because... No. If you agree with everything your husband says...
I agree with everything I say. It's just like I can evolve my opinions and I do all the time. I think most people do. I think. Yes. I don't know what's going on. You know, we give ourselves permission to change our mind all the time, but we hold other people to this impossible standards of you said it eight years ago. That's who you really are. You're not allowed to change your mind on anything. Right. And I think part of what we're saying here is almost like
counter to American values. I don't know. Like, how do you think we get out of this? Like what, where, where, how do you think we're going to have this breaking point? You know, my favorite part of the history where it's like, okay, these, you know, people who disagree sort of softened on each other. Did you see any glimmers of that? I don't really at the moment, but. Well, I can tell you that Gen, Gen Z uses the internet very differently than millennials do or Gen X does.
Or even, of course, even than boomers do. Gen Z has a very different view of what the internet is for and how it is meant to be used. How so?
Um, you don't see Gen Z being like, Hey guys, welcome back to my daily vlog. Welcome back to my channel. Uh, if they're recording a video, it's, you know, maybe it's for a specific purpose, you know, like I'm sharing my new eyebrow product with you or whatever. Um, but the idea that every single aspect of your life is shared online is something Gen Z is not interested in. They, by and large, they might snap a friend, you know, where they're like, take a picture, like,
Yeah. Silly face. Send it so they can keep up their streaks on Snap. Apparently Snapchat's very pro-democracy. Is it? Yes. And what does that mean? They are very interested in like sharing reliable information and news. They're not like afraid of sharing news. And they're, you know, I think they're just kind of more conscious of misinformation and sharing civility.
civic information than the other platforms. Interesting. Interesting. That's just what I've been told. I'm for it. Gen Z uses the internet differently and in some ways maybe for worse, but in other ways I think it could be for better in that because they use the internet so differently, you don't see Gen Z, like for example, somebody posts a picture of themselves on vacation, you're Gen Z. Other people are going to reply 100, 100, 100.
You know, like they're going to reply like flames, flames, flames. They're going to reply like, you know, killing it, whatever, whatever it is they're going to say. Crispy fresh, whatever they're going to say. But they're not going to be like, dear Sammy, from the moment we met 15 years ago, I want to tell you about the impact you had on my life.
I saw you walking down the street and you were just, it was so, we were drawn together like magnets. They are more likely to have, to keep those kinds of conversations private. I see what you're saying. I kind of think I use the internet like that. Like a little more like a gent, like I don't,
but again it's I'm at a weird position you've also you built a company on the internet maybe it's you're not maybe not the best example no no you're right I'm really not a good example but I also feel like I don't want to put my private stuff yeah you probably learned from from experience I'm just afraid that it's a little dangerous and also like I don't need to I don't know like I'm busy like I'm not even on Instagram as much as you might think it's like I have
You know, I have a job. You're when you're on line like you're making your content. Do you have hope for Gen Z? I know he gets a lot of a lot of bullshit. And I think Gen Z cares about democracy by March. They do. You know, of course, every generation needs guidance and whatever. But I also think it can be a little paternalistic to my generation needs to guide yours. Right. Like it was annoying when they did it. Right. Like your generation has gotten it right. OK, sure. Right. Yeah.
Right. We're all just raised into this. Right. We're socialized into it. We're products of our environment. So, yes. Is Gen Z misguided sometimes? Sure. But haven't millennials been misguided sometimes? Yes. Boomers famously misguided now. Yeah, truly. But I really do think Gen Z cares about democracy in ways that Gen X and boomers do not.
Yes. They really do. Which is weird considering Gen X and boomers got the civics education and somehow like don't
function in alignment with that maybe because capitalistic incentives that's another story for a different show that's a whole other episode i don't think they come across necessarily compassionate in their language but i do think that it comes from wanting fairness equality yes and seeing how bad of a shake they and kind of we too have all gotten yeah and i
whatever they're young they make fun of millennial hair parts i don't give a shit about that i give a shit about like getting caught up in disinformation and misinformation totally and then this sort of like you know reluctance to hear yeah yeah you're not wrong you're not wrong i i totally hear what you're saying we're like we're we're being like oh but bin laden though he said some things that you know it makes sense i hear what you're saying there like that is the dream of
are foreign adversaries. Yes, absolutely. I wonder if as someone who's very steeped in history and can read patterns, do you ever wonder, and I worry that
People right now, the way they argue on the Internet and especially Gen Z are being like weaponized almost as like proper pawns in a propaganda war. And I just fear that people don't see it as it's happening. And I almost I'm like, I get why they are. Why? It's been constructed to happen this way. I mean, it's it's there's no question that some people are. Yeah.
That's just true, right? Is the majority of Gen Z being weaponized in a propaganda war? No. It's a small handful, right? I mean, by handful, it's probably, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. But a narrative-dominating handful. Yes. But if you think about the 1930s, where...
Dozens of United States Congress people were being paid by the Nazi party and having actual speeches written for them by the actual Nazis that they were actually like, I'm delivering this speech.
written by the nazis um this was what rachel maddow's second well i don't remember what the name of the uh um ultra ultra that's what this was about and it's so crazy it is crazy we're not doing that today that we know of right like we are uh we are we've moved past some of uh though that kind of secret uh activity most of these gen z years are not being paid by all
Al Qaeda, right? They're not being like, oh, ISIS is paying you to be like bin Laden. Well, it's gotten cheaper. Yeah, yeah. But I understand the concerns and your concerns are not, your concerns are valid and they have to be something that we continue to work towards. I am not holding up Gen Z as any kind of like, they've got it all figured out. No. I also don't think it's just Gen Z. I think it's other people. It's Gen Z versus other voices. Of course. That are also part of this. Yes. Yes.
The internet, Al Gore's internet is an incredible tool that allows people to connect in ways that they never have before. But it is also tools can be misused, just like a hammer can be used to build a house or break a window, right? You have to be careful to guard against foreign propaganda, which definitely does exist on Al Gore's internet. Definitely. And also members of Congress are out here doing the same thing. Give me a break.
What do you think, just as Al Gore's Internet's history teacher, and what do you think is kind of like the basic level of understanding that people should have to be equipped as like an active citizen or just like a citizen, like a participating citizen? They don't even need to be hyperactive, just the basic. And like, where can people like
Figure this out in a way that parses through accurate information versus like what comes up in your algorithm and may or may not have some true elements in it. I know it's so easy to get sucked in when you are just like. When you're being fed. When you're going off what's being fed to you. I totally is. That's how we get the bin Laden is not too bad kind of situations. You're just scrolling and you, it gets suggested for you.
One of the things that I would suggest is to hold everything that you encounter on the internet, hold it loosely. To not look at a piece of information and be like, oh my gosh, I love it, I believe it. Our human inclination is to want to believe things that we already believe. We will seek out information that reinforces our already held beliefs about something. And so when we encounter something that we like,
We immediately want to believe it. Our brains want to believe it. We want to believe that Joe Biden is terrible or Donald Trump is terrible. And anytime we're presented with that information, we're like, that's absolutely right. That's right. He did do that.
And we don't even have to fact check it. We just, we know that we know what we know that is correct. Well, I know that I do it because of how conscious I am of when I podcast. Because it's like what I think versus like what I have to put on my paper on the script. I'm like, okay, I have to check if
That thought is accurate as it's coming out of my head. And you know what? It is human nature. It really is human nature. And that like all the pieces of it are accurate. Not like, oh, is this generally true? It's like you kind of get lost in the details and you're like, okay, what is the actual detail as is reported, which also has its own. So yes, my idea is hold things loosely and accurately.
Have the courage to change your mind. The best way, if you value being right, the best way to start being right is to stop being wrong faster. That's the best way to be right, to stop being wrong faster. And it does require courage to change your mind. That's the only way to be right is to be willing to admit when you're wrong. And it doesn't have to mean like you go on the internet and you fall on your sword and you're like, four days.
Four days ago, I said 25 and I meant 26. You know, like we're talking about being generally conscious about, you know, about getting the facts correct. But when you are wrong about something, being willing to say,
I wanted to believe it, but it didn't end up being true. And say it fast. Yes. Don't do the double down, which is what so many people on the internet do. When I see people doubling down on incorrect information...
When Chad is like, yeah, when they exit the electoral college. It's like not the defensive double down. That ruins it. Because of how I think doubling down often usually is a bad move. Yes. I think people should hold themselves to a rule. You only get three double downs in your whole life. Yeah.
Use them wisely. Because it's like if you're constantly doubling down, you're probably constantly wrong or annoying. The defensive double down, that's like a death knell for people on the internet. The second you're like, here's the video I didn't want to have to make. You know what I mean? Where people like the tear. You guys were so blah, blah, blah. But what I said was true.
It's never the move. It's not the move. Especially if it's like not provable. Totally. Okay, Sharon, this has been so much fun. Can you tell us when is your book out? Where can they get it? Amazon, bookshop, everywhere. And where on Al Gore's internet can people find you? Well, the book is called The Small and the Mighty, and it's available wherever you buy books, bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et cetera. I will be on a book tour this fall. Are you going on a book tour?
I'm doing a mini, we're doing a mini book tour. New York, DC, Philly, maybe Chicago. And then I think we do want to do something different.
October ish you know maybe come a little swing swing around where you're you are maybe we can join up and I would love to ever yep I would love that maybe Michigan type Wisconsin situation yep yeah let's do that let's do that that would be really fun I'm excited for your book thank you we I think we have a copy for you oh good I want to get it might be a galley but it's that's I'm good with that you're gonna get that I also emailed you to
to send your address in for an influencer box. So I'm really excited for yours too. Thank you. And I got an early copy. Yes, you can. It is coming out September 24th. And I'll be on tour for most of October. You're going to be everywhere. I'm going to be all the places. We're going to be on Team Democracy. That's correct. Absolutely correct. The principles of democracy over party each and every day. I don't give a crap who...
who you vote for. I mean, I do care who you vote for. I'm just saying, I don't care about political parties. If you're Gold Bar Bob Menendez and you're accepting foreign bribes, get out. Right. I think it gets lost because
People just have such general impressions of what's going on and everything. It's all just so like vague ideas, impressions of what's going on. I think that the closer I have gotten to what's going on day to day, I'm like less attached to any particular outcome. And I'm more just like, you got to just keep pushing towards the outcomes you want because you're,
It's like, oh, I don't agree with this intricacy of this policy. It's like, do you even know how this got to this? Every single policy the United States has ever had ever has changed. Every single policy has changed.
So, but if you have, if you do not have democracy, you have nothing. Yes, exactly. So yes, you might really hate this policy that does X that doesn't give us paid family leave. I, I too hate that policy. It's a stupid policy. Someday that will change, but we have to keep pushing. We have to keep pushing for it. That's the other thing. It's like everyone, a lot of people ask me, who do you think is going to win the election? I'm like,
If it were today, I could tell you who I think would win if it were today. I can't tell you about six months from now, but I can tell you that the outcome is not predetermined. No. And what I think doesn't matter because what the only thing that matters is what all of us do and not just what I do or what you do. It's like we're all going to make the outcome. So what I think is kind of irrelevant. Right. If you are if you're somebody who is on the fence about like, I don't know what I'm going to do. Pick the candidate who wins.
is actively promoting democracy every time because the policies can change. If we lose democracy, it does not matter. If you have an authoritarian system, the policies ain't going to be what you want. Let me tell you. Right. And I find it so confusing why the hand-wringing over the Kansas... It's like
You don't have seven options. You have the reality. And I am deeply pragmatic about this. That's right. I look at it this way. If somebody, if a patient comes into the ER and they have cancer and a gunshot wound to the abdomen, right? The ER has to stabilize the patient
so they can live through the night, so they can address the systemic cancer another time. That is a great analogy. This is exactly where we are in America. We have a, where, you know, this election is like a gunshot wound to the abdomen. For many people, that's not that big of a reach. No, it really is a half analogy for our country. You have to work with the emergency situation, which is the 2024 election, before you can
you can begin to address the systemic issues of like, yeah, we should have more than two candidates. We should have multiple political parties.
We should have more choices. We should have more access to voting access. Better. Yes. More access to the polls before we can address those systemic issues. We have the patient has to live through the night. The democracy has to live through the night. And that is where we are right now. If you want to fix the underlying structural systemic issues of the patient of America, the patient has to live through them.
here, here. That is a great place to end. Thank you, Sharon. My pleasure. We are so happy to have you. I know V is going to be, even when she hears this, she's going to be very upset about missing it. Until next time, I'm Sammy Sage, and this is American Fever Dream.
American Fever Dream is hosted by Vitus Spear and Sammy Sage. The show is produced by Rebecca Sousmakat and Rebecca Steinberg. Editing by Rebecca Sousmakat. Social media by Bridget Schwartz. And be sure to follow Betches News on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.