Episode 320: Civic Engagement as Self-Care with Emily Amick
Doree and Elise invite Emily Amick (@emilyinyourphone and co-author of Democracy in Retrograde: How to Make Changes Big and Small in our Country and Our Lives) on the show to discuss the most important thing you can do today as the election approaches, how to talk to other humans about politics, and how to rediscover the enjoyment of participating in civic life.
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Transcript
Doree: Hello. Welcome to Forever35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise: And I'm Elise Hugh, and we are just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums.
Doree: It's true. And I think we're still both feeling that post debate high.
Elise: Yeah. It was such a relief to have a candidate
Doree: That you
Elise: Could really root for who was baiting Trump. So effectively I thought Kamala Harris had all the right lines ready to go, but then she deployed them so
Doree: Perfectly. She's so good. She's good. You know what you see, she was a da. She is got that capability to just get in there.
Elise: But the prep too, the way she was prepared for the optics of it, because so much of the debate is in split screen the entire time. So even though Donald Trump spoke a cumulative like six to nine minutes more than her and she could never complain about it because she would end up looking like the one who was whining and the whining woman and all those things. So she never complained about it, but she did maximize the time that she did have to speak and when she wasn't speaking, she was always on screen. So just watching her react and keep her cool and not roll her eyes and just kind of have this bemused expression, and sometimes it was an expression of compass and pity, like this poor doddering old man talking about eating pets, admitting he had no healthcare plan, but a concept of a plan that's going to go down in history. My sixth grade daughter was like, I'm going to go into school and say I have concepts of my essay.
Doree: I have concepts of a plan for my essay. Say so. Good. It's the new. It really is. Yeah. I mean that is, that's a little preview I think of some of the things that we're talking about today with our guest. Before we get to our amazing guest, I have a few things I want to mention.
Elise: Okay.
Doree: One is, I don't know if people are aware that I participate in an accountability workshop for my writing, and I just wanted to give it a little plug because it's been so helpful. It's run by two amazing writers, Tessa Fontaine and Annie Hartnett. Annie and I did an event together for my novel startup. She was living in Maine at the time, and she did an event with me at this great bookstore in Portland called Print because her book Rabbit Cake had recently come out. They're both great. Anyway, they do these accountability workshops that meet on Zoom. So I feel like we hear from people sometimes who want to get into writing, and I'm just saying this would be a good thing for people to get into. I've been meaning to mention this. I just wanted to put in a plug for it. They also have a writing camp that they're doing in November. It might be full, but you can check that out. So their website is accountability workshops.com. Hold on, just make sure I have that.
Elise: This reminds me that I was at a bar on Friday night and there was a bottle of liquor on display just called Writer's Tears, which was so appropriate. It's an Irish liquor, I think it's an Irish. That's Whiskey. Whiskey called Writer's Tears. And now I'm going to get it for all my friends who are writers. You want that on your barcode?
Doree: Yes. A thousand percent. Yeah. So their website is accountability workshops.com and you should just check them out. The next thing that I want to mention, and this kind of goes with the theme of the show, is our Giving circle.
Elise: Yes, yes.
Doree: Which is part of the State's project. We are raising money for the state's project, and we have chosen a state. We're doing Arizona, so all of the money that we raise is going to go towards local races in Arizona this election cycle, you can set up a recurring donation and it really makes a difference. It's kind of amazing how much of a difference it makes. The New York Times even wrote an article about this. They were like, Hey, the States project has made Democrats realize that they can win local races. They flipped state legislatures by tens of votes,
Elise: And state legislatures are the ones who are passing abortion restrictions. They are making huge decisions on the funding of public education, on higher education, and whether the universities in your state are funded. There's so many major issues that happen at the state legislature level. So please support our giving circle. We are raising money for Arizona, as Doree mentioned. I'm looking now. We've just passed the $10,000 mark in terms of donations.
Doree: Oh yeah.
Elise: So thanks for 35 fam. Let's keep it coming.
Doree: In 2022, I think our original goal was $20,000 and we kept raising it, and our final goal was $50,000 and we came super close. We raised $49,073 and 46 cents. Amazing. So I feel like we reached our goal because that was our stretch, stretch, stretch, stretch goal. So we could set a goal right now for, I don't know, you want to say 25,000?
Elise: Why not? Let's go for
Doree: It. Okay, let's do it.
Elise: We could make a huge difference in Arizona, a real swing state.
Doree: So please, the link to that is in our show notes, so click on it and make a donation. The final thing I want to mention, yes, our Patreon is on sale. So in honor of our relaunch, our logo redesign, a lease staying on, we are offering a sale on our Patreon. We are offering annual memberships at 15% off. So what does that mean? That means instead of paying monthly and getting a year for $60, if you're at the $5 level or $120, if you are at the $10 level, you get a year for $51 or $102. So
Elise: It's a nice little savings. My golly, that's a great deal considering how much bonus content we put out on the Patreon.
Doree: Yeah. Elise, what kind of bonus content do we offer?
Elise: We have a full extra weekly episode for our Patreon subscribers every Friday. So you get the Mondays and Wednesdays on all your feeds, wherever you listen. But then if you're a Patreon patron, we have a third episode of the week that comes out on Fridays, our casual chats, where Dora and I just mix it up on really about stingrays, about our relationships, about all sorts of different things about politics, and of course about serums and sunblocks because we got to stay true to the original mission. And we also have monthly pop culture recommendations, which we do as a full podcast episode, but also we share the whole list of recommendations and books, film, television, and music, and tiktoks on the Patreon as well. The Patreon is also a great place to convene as a community. I have an abundance of figs coming off my tree. So last weekend I took the question to the chat just to ask y'all what you do with your figs and have a bunch of different options and recipes thanks to the Patreon community, so we have a good time. If you like hanging out with us, you can hang out with us some more for 15% off,
Doree: And that's at patreon.com/forever three five. Alright, so we kind of teased our amazing guest, but let's just introduce her.
Elise: Alright.
Doree: Her name is Emily Amick. She is a lawyer, journalist, and political analyst who served as counsel to Senate Majority leader Chuck Schumer. She created at Emily in your phone on Instagram to give people her insider insight into the political process and help them find ways they can take action. And with Sammy Sage, who is a co-founder of BE'S Media, she wrote Democracy in Retrograde, how to make changes big and small in our country and in our lives. And I really feel like this book should be just like a guidebook for anyone who has been like, I want to get involved, but I don't involved know how to start. I don't know what to do. Or even, I don't know how to have conversations with people about politics, just anything like that. They cover it in this book. It is so actionable. I love an actionable book. It has,
Elise: That's the word to describe it because there's actually exercises within the book too to figure out what kind of personality you are when it comes to giving back to your community. There's also ways to, they actually even break down if you only have a few hours a month if you have a few hours a week. If you want to give of yourself even more consistently than that, here are some ideas of ways to get more involved. And so I got inspired by it and we think you will too. We also think you're going to love this conversation because she's just such a vibrant
Doree: Personality. Oh, she's so cool. She's just like, she tells it. You know what I mean?
Elise: Sure does, sure does. We love a lawyer.
Doree: We love a lawyer.
Elise: We love a
Doree: Lawyer. Okay, and one last thing before we get to Emily, just a reminder that we drop our fresh episodes on the main feed on Mondays and Wednesdays and our Patreon exclusive episodes are on Fridays plus our monthly pop culture episodes and our Forever35 questionnaire, which is our little bonus with our guests. Those come out on Tuesdays. You can visit our website Forever35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mention on the show. We're on Instagram at Forever35 podcast. Again, our Patreon is at patreon com slash Forever35. Our favorite products are at shop my us slash Forever35, and our newsletter is at Forever three five podcast do com slash newsletter and please call or text us at (781) 591-0390 or email us at Forever35 podcast@gmail.com. We love to get your texts, your voicemails, your emails, and we will discuss them on mini apps.
Elise: Sure do.
Doree: All right, let's take a break
Elise: And when we come back, you'll hear from Emily Amick. We'll be right back.
Doree: Emily, welcome to Forever35. We are so excited to get to talk to you today.
Emily: I am so excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
Doree: Yeah, of
Emily: Course.
Elise: And congratulations on the book too. It looks like it was. Thank you so much. Instant New York Times bestseller,
Emily: Instant New York Times bestseller. We get that sticker on the front.
Elise: That's so
Doree: Cool,
Emily: So satisfying.
Doree: So we always start our conversations with our guests by asking them about a self-care practice that they have and in democracy and retrograde, your new book, you do talk about how civic engagement is a form of self-care, but perhaps that is not the form of self-care you want to talk about. I won't make you talk about that. Do you have something else that you're doing that you would consider self-care and it's whatever you want it to be? I guess.
Emily: So I'll say two things in the book we consider civic engagement, a form of self-care for a bunch of different reasons, which I'd love to chat about. Fundamentally, that bubble bath isn't fun. If your water isn't safe,
You need clean water for those bubble bombs to work. But also because we have a loneliness epidemic in this country, and I too have fallen sway to the supremely aesthetic women of Instagram reels who assure me that if I just abandoned my city life for a beautiful homestead with chickens, I would be happy and I would find community. Though it's never clear to me how if I moved to the rural country I'd find community, but that's fine. I assume it's because all I would need is my husband. But one of the things that civic engagement does for you is it helps you build a community of people who share your values. And I can certainly attest to the fact that I have found so many friends doing this work. And for me over the last couple of years, I've had a bunch of different health problems. I have cancer and I have found that really being intentional about building a community who can be there for me has been the best form of self-care I can offer myself.
Elise: You mentioned this loneliness epidemic that's all over the world or all over the western world. Tell us more about the link between loneliness and political polarization and the decline of democracy.
Emily: So my favorite book to reference is Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam. Shout out to my other PolySci nerds in the audience. But there's actual data to show about the decline of civic life in America, the proverbial bowling leagues, lions clubs, all of this stuff that put us out and interacting with other people in our communities, maybe not people who were exactly the same as us, right? People who held slightly different values or interests had different identities. And so you realize that they were people too, and you could be nice to them and you didn't have to hurl slur words at them at the internet day in, day out on the internet. And so much of the polarization, the tribalization and the calcification of those things has gone hand in hand with this destruction of our civic life. The internet isn't inherently bad and being on it isn't inherently bad. It just can't be the only world in which we exist in, and we have to very much identify how there's negative components to the whole thing.
Elise: How much do you blame polarization on a lot of the social media forces though?
Emily: This is like when you go to the doctor's office and for insurance purposes, they're like, give me a percentage, give us a percentage. Emily.
I think that it's a web I can't untangle. And I think that the algorithms, what of my favorite podcasts of all time was, I think it was a New York Times podcast called Rabbit Hole. And it tracked someone going through the YouTube algorithm and how they became radicalized through the YouTube algorithm. And it's a pretty old, I mean, it's got to be, I don't know, I should look it up how old it is, but it's pretty old podcast. And so this has been in the zeitgeist for a while, but you definitely see it. And Fox News existed before social media though, and was doing the same shit. And frankly, the history channel and their weird conspiracy theories probably cooked the brains of a lot of people in the nineties. But I think it's like all of this soup comes together and the destruction of public education and the fact that we are all working harder than ever for less dollars and the fact that we can't access high quality healthcare. I think that echo chambers online as someone who is in a lot of echo chambers online
Are very dangerous. Instagram actually thinks I'm like a conservative girly. Why is that? Because I follow so many conservative girlies is the answer. Oh, that's funny. I like to keep up the misinformation and disinformation that is fed to me through super cute Instagram reels shocks me on the daily, but people like that content. And so I don't know how to untangle all of this really. And I think that it's not, I mean, I don't know what you guys think, but I'm not sure what the solution is. You can't really take people's candy away from them. Banning TikTok has always not appealed to me because at the end of the day, there will just be another TikTok there. People love it. It's a drug. I certainly get addicted to the drug of social media. And as someone who creates content, I can tell you the things that people like are the things that are the most extreme, the most outrage inducing, the most emotional. And so if you're a creator creating for capitalism, you're just going to create those things
Doree: And it perpetuates, right? Once you get that hit of virality, you're just going to kind of create more and more and keep going to an extreme. I worked at Buzzfeed, so I am pretty familiar with this cycle. Emily, could you talk a little bit about your own career path?
Emily: I'm not exactly who you would imagine would be like a 39-year-old full-time social media influencer, but nonetheless, here I am. So I've always been super into politics. I, I hear a lot of people talk about how they were a kid who watched M-S-N-B-C. That was not me. I was doing teenage kid stuff. But once I got to college, I was very, very invested, particularly in reproductive justice issues. And I ran for office when I was 20. Oh my gosh. I ran for the local town council in the town where my college was, did a lot of dem stuff and then I went to journalism school.
And so I did a really niche program in rural Alabama that was focused on community journalism. They believed that the future of journalism was hyperlocal newspapers and that it was not the internet. I did not agree. And then I went to law school, I was like, well, this, this isn't going to work. I'm tapping out. Yeah, I was like, and I'm done. So I went to law school and I worked in a nonprofit in New York City for a while, and then I worked for Senator Schumer as a judiciary committee council. And then I left that and I worked as a litigator doing anti-terrorism litigation.
And I love Instagram. It is my favorite platform. I've always had dogs and I love posting pictures of my dogs on Instagram. And I was just doing that, having a blast posting cringe white woman shit on the internet. Then I started posting my political opinions and people really liked it. And I realized that this was in the age of the height of Q Anon and there was all of this really aesthetic Q Anon content and it was politics in the vernacular of the platform and there and democratic people, or really a lot of fact-based people on the platform. And I've always been really interested in getting other women excited and engaged about politics and women were on Instagram. And so that's really why I started on Instagram.
Elise: This all connects to Trad Wives, which you've written about. We've got to talk about trad wives because well first describe what the Trad Wife movement is for anyone who doesn't know and how this particular movement and these women connect to democracies decline.
Emily: So trad wives, I would say Nara Smith isn't a trad wife. That's my headline here for my Buzzfeed, but a traditional wives. But it's a very specific movement of women who are engaging in cosplay of what they think traditional wives are. And it's deferring all decision-making to your husband, but then it's having a brood of children living on a homestead, having chickens, posting a lot of Instagram content, making money from the internet claiming you don't work. All of these things, all of these things. But it's very, very aesthetic. And there was a time when it was building just an incredible popularity. And I think back to the Mormon balmy bloggers who really started the influencer era. And it's this same type of idealized white motherhood that is such an effective form of propaganda and has been so much of the currency of the internet for so long, but it's not disconnected from a political movement. And that's what I have always tried to do over the years is to say, these women are the point of an arrow. They're not the entirety of the conservative movement. But what is important is for conservative forces who want to ban contraception, who want to ban IVF, who want to outlaw no fault to force, who now they're starting to say women shouldn't even get the vote. I'm starting to get tons and tons of hate comments.
They can't just go take that over. They need women to be the Serena joy. Not to make a hand man's tale and be classic, but you need these women to stand up and say, this is good for women. Banning birth control is good for women. And that's one of the things I've seen most pointedly from these trad wives that I think we can really tie to a direct political and legal agenda, which is overturning Griswold, which is the case that allowed us to have contraception access and also is a really important case for lots of other rights that fall from it. That's an uninteresting annoying lawyer tangent, I just went on. But as we want to do,
Elise: Shout out, shout out to the lawyers listening
Emily: Shout, Hey guys, we don't get invited to parties for a reason. So what we're seeing is I'm seeing these trad wives be like birth control's for me, my true purpose is motherhood. I use essential oils. This is all, I'm just making stuff up. But you see this type of content and that connects to someone like Alex Clark who is a turning point, USA funded turning Point. USA is the MAGA messaging outlet. They have tens of millions of dollars to engage in propagandizing for the MAGA movement. They have these women who are their banner influencers. Alex Clark has run a pop culture politics show for five years right now she's in the middle of a transition to being a wellness show. Wow. Because now everything is about raw milk, birth control is bad, all of this stuff, they're literally paid for by the MAGA messaging outlet. They are not distinct from it. They are it. And it's obviously deeply connected to a political and legal agenda. And so I think the thing about trad wives is people liked it because it was fun to look at and it's very fascinating how to get people interested in issues. But that really clicked for people and it's still going
Elise: Well. Something that's really been exposed to the light of day through JD Vance and JD Vance's introduction to many Americans who didn't know him is this obsession on the right, on women's reproductive status. It seems to be that's how he describes women of various life stages. What's up with this obsession and how does it explain what's happening in the larger ecosystem?
Emily: It's so creepy. JD Vance is so creepy. I mean, functionally, the role of women in the ideology of people like Peter Thiel, who is JD Vance, is just the mouthpiece of tech billionaire. I dunno if he's a real billionaire, but whatever. Peter Thiel and other Christian nationalists, the role of women is as uterus and in our role is as mothers. And one of the things that I always think is interesting is when all of these abortion restrictions, we think about the recent Idaho Supreme Court case, which I'm happy to get into if you're interested, but people are always like, they realize women will die. And I'm like, no, they know they don't care. Then that's why there's all of this language around Marty Hood, right? If you're a woman who dies in childbirth, you are martyr because it's fine, your purpose. And JD Vance is very interesting. He intellectualizes everything. I love that. His old blog is still on the internet. It's so weird. How emo of you, jd,
Elise: Is it a live journal or
Emily: Blogger? I think he had his own blog, a WordPress, but don't quote me on that. But I've looked at it and I tried to read through it and it was such garbly goop. I was like, just read some Joe Didion and go to a party, dude. But he's this very intellectualized version of misogyny.
Doree: It's
Emily: A lot of big words. The problem is, of course, these are not just opinions held by him. They are connected to a very real political agenda. And I think he very much views women as different than men. And he talked, the APO researchers on the Dem side have been slowly leaking out his worst comments. It's like we're on this drip line of creep jd, and I'm just like, I'm always waiting for the next video to hit my feed. But the one from last week was him. And I think that the cat lady comment, people thought he was like, it was just a joke. But the thing is, there's a bunch of these comments, and so there's this, it's like a full two minute really intellectualized diatribe about how women who care about gender parity are really sad and angry and depressed. And that is a reflection of the fact that if you care about gender parody, you become a sad, angry, depressed person. And so why would you want to inflict that on the rest of America?
Elise: Wow.
Emily: It's a whole theory that he's gone out about fundamentally why gender equity is a bad thing that we shouldn't try to achieve because it makes everyone angry. Where presumably what would make people happy is gender inequity, I guess. I think that's the point of the statement.
Elise: That's some very confusing logic. Yeah.
Emily: And he's like, I'm happy. And I'm like, bud, your wife's like a big law partner or something. You're not living the Stafford Wife dream here, but it's this fascinating hypocrisy that he seems totally comfortable holding.
Doree: Yeah, there's a lot of cognitive dissonance happening in that brain, I think.
Elise: Okay. Let's take a break and we will be right back,
Doree: Emily, that actually I think is a good segue into my next question, which relates to your book, which I thought was so great and I think will be so helpful and probably already has been so helpful for so many people. I love a plan of action,
So thank you for really breaking it down. But one thing you talk about is, or you and Sammy talk about your co-author is how hopelessness can be addictive. And as I'm listening to you talk about JD Vance and this sort of depressing dystopian view that a lot of these rightwing people have, it's very easy to get kind of caught up in this and think, oh my gosh, there's just no hope. We're heading to doom and handmaid's tail into a Handmaid's Tale kind of world. But you are like no backup. And I loved how you kind of broke it down into these hope outlooks and how we can harness whatever our hope outlook is into productive action. So could you kind of talk about that a little bit for the benefit of those who may not have read your book and how we can identify our own hope outlooks?
Emily: So one of the things that Sammy and I both experienced before we wrote the book was people constantly DMing us saying, how do you stay hopeful? How do you stay hopeful? And we have different answers, and we both ask other people that question all the time and everyone has a different answer. And my answer is extremely pragmatic, which is, what's the other option? No, it's
Elise: Actually a cynical, hopeful view,
Emily: Right? Yeah. I'm just like, I have to have hope. We have to do better. What other option
Elise: Do we
Emily: Have? I don't want people dying. I want kids getting school lunches. I got to work for it. That's the option for me. And sometimes people hear that and they find it so offensive that that's my position. Or they're like, sorry, I didn't mean to anger you. And I'm like, no, that's just my answer. I wasn't offended. And so these types of conversations really led us to realize people have different hope outlooks and those outlooks are the underpinning on how they want to view and engage with politics and civic life. And it's important to really know that and think about that. So when we can all sort of work together in collaboration. So let's see if I remember pragmatist, idealist, optimist, realist, pessimist. I think those are the five. And we have quiz questions. There's a bunch of, we tried to make the book actually fun.
As someone who reads a lot of political books, they're often extremely dry and droll and they are not a fun read. And the whole point here is we want people to get excited about getting engaged in civic life, and we want them to find something that's authentic to them and sustainable to them. And that means it has to be a fun, easy book to read. And who doesn't love a quiz? So we have the hope outlook quiz. We also have a personality quiz to find your civic personality. And the point isn't is because we aren't going to prescribe to you exactly what you should do. We you to figure out what's meaningful to you, what's sustainable for you, the only way you're going to keep doing it. And also that's the only way it's joyful and cup filling. And the way you do things repeatedly is when they bring you joy.
Elise: Yeah, yeah. Well, you've already inspired me. I'm going to take part or organize a community coat drive actually,
Emily: Because
Elise: One of your suggestions was like, if you only have a few hours a month, what could you do to be more engaged besides what we do for a living? Which hopefully also has a purpose in engaging community and civic action. But
Emily: Yeah,
Elise: It's exciting. Thank you. I've already, that's exciting. Been a little a micro action.
Emily: It's very giver of you. Are you a giver? Did you take the personality? I'm
Elise: Okay. I am. And sometimes to my detriment. Yeah, for sure. In relationships,
Emily: It can be a problem. We weren't writing love languages, but sometimes I'm like, I don't know. It has as much statistical validity as the languages do for whatever that's
Elise: Worth. Well, how do we teach this in our kids? You mentioned that the public education system has kind of broken down. So what would you advise for those of us who really want the next generation to continue to engage in the real world and
Emily: Be
Elise: Involved?
Emily: It's so important. And so many of both my followers and my friends are moms, particularly moms to little kids. And they are all taking a really pointed path to making sure they raise kids with a heart for civic engagement. And I think one of the things I've seen change so much in this past generation is raising boys to not be misogynist. And that has been a really big shift raising girls to really have a sense of bodily autonomy from a young age.
Elise: I've
Emily: Seen tons and tons of really massive changes, but I think this is a new thing that I've started to see, which is it's taking your kid to vote with you, of course, but making that a celebration, talking to them at the dinner table, say, my parents constantly included me in political conversations growing up. My mom would volunteer, especially for women who are running for office and bring me along to go help all the time, making sure that I always knew that I had a place in this process, which I think was the message she was sending. So whether it's you showing up at school board meetings or taking an interest in your kids library that they really care about just taking them to the local library, which is a really important civic action and enjoying it and using those programs, using the local pool. There's all these different ways, but I think one of the most important things we can do for our kids is really raise them up to realize that so much of our lives are intertwined with this civic life, right?
Yeah. It's the roads we drive on. It's the sidewalks you walk on, it's the water we drink. All of these things are politics. You can't undo it. And so making sure kids realize that. So when I talk a lot about how for us adults, we can't have politics be a biannual freakout. It needs to be a daily habit. And I think we don't want kids suddenly turning 18 and being like, what is happening? I need to vote. It should be something. We're bringing them up that they realize it's a very organic part of life, and it can be fun. It can be joyful. It's certainly not limited to people screaming on
Elise: Twitter. It comes up in the way that we think about taxes too. I think because I think, and Helen Peterson or one of the sub stackers that I follow wrote about how Republicans have really won a lot of the messaging on taxes in terms of like, oh, we just want to reduce tax burdens. We constantly want to cut taxes. But if we think about it and we talk about it with our kids about how it's really about sharing the wealth and how after we share the wealth that helps pay for facilities like your school and your library, that just shifting the way that we talk about things can be really helpful.
Emily: Yeah, for sure. I like to say my political philosophy is a rising tide lifts all boats, which is while perhaps simplistic, I think it's a good metaphor for we don't need to selfishly only care about ourselves because we are in fact enriched when other people's lives are bettered.
Elise: Love that.
Doree: I mean, it seems like so much of the action plan in your book is kind of guiding people into how to just engage in the real world. Here's how to have a conversation, here's how to listen. I mean, do you think that this kind of generally is something that has been lost and is it something that should be taught?
Emily: So I do think that the ability to have political conversations is something that has been lost. If my dms are any indication, I just get tons and tons of dms of people saying I can't do it, essentially. And I think part of that, I think it's two big things that I always think about. Number one, so many, especially women, we're socialized to say, to not talk about politics. No politics at the dinner table. That's not an appropriate thing to talk about for you. And that, especially for my generation at least, is something I was raised on. And when I would articulate in high school, I remember articulate any pro-feminist stance, the boys would call me a feminazi, right? There was a very much immediate response to stop the behavior that I experienced.
So I think there's that, and then there's also the fact that especially right now and in the Trump era that we've been in, a lot of political conversations are started by somebody who isn't engaging in good faith. I always joke, it's like Uncle Chad at Thanksgiving dinner. He wants to have a fight. It's not a conversation. It's not a good faith conversation. I personally, I never stop yapping and I only talk about politics. I have one mode. It's my only mode. And no matter where I am, I'm at the supermarket, I'm in the Uber, whatever, I'm always talking to people about politics. And I pretty much am always fine. I'm always having normal conversations. I ask questions, I listen. I'm curious. I don't scream at them. I engage in normal human conversations. But I think many people are used to political conversations just being someone who has the intention of starting an argument, and that's unenjoyable. And if you do that once or twice, why are you going to keep doing it?
Elise: People
Emily: Don't like doing things like that.
Elise: That all makes sense. But you're saying just get curious. You won't get hurt if you
Emily: Try. Yeah. But I'm also saying don't talk to Uncle Chad about politics. What mean? That's right. There's actually a page with a list of exits, how to exit a conversation about politics that you don't want to be in. And a big part of the book is talking about the exhausted majority, which is 67% of America. There's this huge swath of people who are largely exhausted from politics, mostly disengaged, and all of those people are people who have values, who have interests, have things in people that they care about. And you can start conversations with all of those people,
And they could be really interesting, fruitful, and productive. And having a conversation should never be something with an expected outcome. You'll never win a political argument. It's impossible. Despite the debate bros on TikTok making it seem otherwise right. You know what I mean? It's, there's never going to be an outcome. I have a girlfriend who has been talking to a Republican friend of hers for months and months and months about this election, and she did not enter a single one of those conversations with the goal to persuade that person is now going to be voting for Harris Waltz. But it wasn't the result of one conversation. It was the result of months of dialogue and y yaking, you know what I mean? Sending a meme, sending a text, especially if you're trying to persuade someone to change their vote. It's a long human engagement. It's not a tweet threat.
Elise: Right. Okay. Emily, we are getting close to the election. Before we let you go, what could our listeners out there who are feeling motivated and wanting to get more engaged, what could they do with the most impact in these final days as we get close to the election and then beyond?
Emily: So the most impactful thing you can do with a very short amount of time is talk to people you know about the election. I actually am working with a project called Ripple, ripple vote.org. And you sign up and you enter in the contact information of five friends, and it will give you scripts for text messages. You can send them about what's on their ballot, and you can remind them when they're, you can find out if they're registered and if they're not registered, there's a script to help them get registered, all of that stuff. So that's really the easiest way you can do it from your couch. A text message from a friend increases likelihood to vote by 8%. It is statistically the most effective form of political action you can take regarding election outcomes. There's lots of other options on the table. You can write postcards, you can do Vote Forwards, a great organization.
You can do door knocking. Swing Left is a great organization. Get involved with one of your local candidates. There's hundreds and hundreds of important races on the ballot this year. Harris Trump is, but one, there's tons of important congressional races, but then there's also state level races. There's local, there's school board, there's 13,000 school board seats in this country. Inevitably, some of them are up every year. So your local person, they might need some help handing out flyers. At a farmer's market, for example, it's called Open Canvassing. It's much easier than door knocking, I would say opens, canvassing. You just stand somewhere at a market and hand out flyers and it is helpful. Put out a yard sign. I have a friend that just did an event in Wisconsin where they got these, they got yard signs that were black and white, and they had all their kids come and coloring book the yard signs.
Elise: Cool.
Emily: So it was this community event, and so it was a way to get all the kids together, talk about civic engagement, and now they have these really fun yard signs. So I think what the message of the book is really that elections aren't the only important thing. This election is important not to be. I have the same comment that everyone else has. It's the most important election of our lifetime. Democracy is quite literally at stake. That is obviously my opinion. I am doing everything in my power to work on this election. I literally quit my job to do this full-time because it's so important to me. But that being said, come whatever, January 22nd, when this cycle is hopefully over, there's something else, right? There's another election, there's a crack in a sidewalk, then an elderly person could fall on and break their hip. There's schools that need funding. There's all of these other things that will continue to exist. And the important thing is figuring out a way for everybody to just do a little bit. It shouldn't require a bunch of mes to quit their jobs. What a luxury I have. But it should be everyone just doing a little bit of what they can in the season that they can. So we are doing more to support our communities and to stop the tides of extremism that getting closer and closer to taking the reins of this country.
Elise: Emily, that was such an articulate, yap, as you call it,
Emily: Professional yapping is my favorite form of yapping.
Elise: Thank you so much. Thank you for spending time with us today.
Emily: Thank you for having me.
Doree: Emily, if our listeners want to follow you, where can they find you? Is there anything else you'd like to plug? Yes.
Emily: Oh, please. So I'm at Emily in your phone on Instagram, and you can find me there. I have a terrible TikTok also. I can't keep up with the kids, but I put out a bunch of Substack every week and try to make my Instagram as fun as possible. And at Ripple vote, you can find more about Ripple Vote there or Ripple vote.org.
Doree: Amazing. Thank you so much.
Emily: Thank
Doree: You. Well, I'm inspired. Let's get out there. Let's get out there. Let's get out there and do some stuff.
Elise: Let's also check in on our intention store because let's do that. You've been doing your fall cleaning for the last couple of weeks.
Doree: So I did manage to sell some household stuff. Oh, good. I had a candle that someone had given me that I was just like, I'm never going to like this. I don't love the scent, so I sold it. You know what I mean? There's just stuff like that where I'm like, I just need this out of my house and if I can get some money for it, great. So I did sell some of that stuff. I did not manage to go through Henry's clothes. I thought about it. I think partly the heatwave was demotivating.
Elise: You had concepts of donating his clothes,
Doree: But then I just didn't do it, so I need to do that. But this week, you last week, we're going to schedule writing sessions, and I am going to do the same this week. I'm going to schedule some writing sessions. I'm going to put them in my calendar,
Elise: And just to update on my intention of scheduling writing sessions, I did manage to block off my calendar in major blocks and do it twice, once over the weekend and once just yesterday. And it felt great. It felt so satisfying. In fact, at points I had to get up and move around. I was like, wow, I don't have any meetings. I don't have anything else. I don't have any errands to run. I don't need to go to the UPS store. I'm just here writing. But I was able to make it through an entire script that I needed to make it through and make a lot of progress on the next one. These are podcast episodes. It's not like a screenplay or anything. It's not super ambitious, but just to have that feeling of finishing something and
Doree: Ending it. So good. Yes.
Elise: Yeah. So that was great. This week, my intention is going to be something that I think you have set as an intention over the summer, which is to foam roll. I am having some hip things. My hip is really tight, and then it's probably because of the weak glute muscle. In fact, there's a New York Times story about dead glute muscles and how those of us who spend a bunch of time sitting, your nerves don't really fire in your mid glute anymore. And I thinking, I must have that disease. I got to find that article because when I read it, I felt really seen. And so I'm going to try and foam roll just as kind of some physical therapy at home, DIY, physical therapy.
Doree: May I make another suggestion,
Elise: Please.
Doree: On the Peloton app, they have these mobility classes. They're short, they're like 15 minutes, but they have hip mobility and they're really good for just because they're not exactly stretching. Yeah. They're like mobility. And as we get older, we got to stay mobile. We got to stay active, got to do it. So let's manifest that for us. Yes, Elise, I love that intention for you. Thanks. Well, thanks everyone for listening. Forever35 is hosted and produced by me, Doree Shafrir and Elise Hugh, and produced and edited by Sam Junio. Sami Reed is our project manager, and our network partner is Acast. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks
Elise: Y'all.
Doree: Bye.
*Transcripts are AI generated.