Speaker 1: Pushkin. If a psychologist ever looks at your life, at say,
Speaker 1: your level of emotional maturity or the way you handle
Speaker 1: daily problems, and says that you're well adjusted, you'd probably
Speaker 1: be pretty pleased. I mean, nobody wants to be called maladjusted.
Speaker 2: Right well. In nineteen sixty seven, one speaker at a
Speaker 2: meeting of the American Psychological Association made the case for
Speaker 2: being maladjusted. There are some things in our society, he said,
Speaker 2: some things in our world to which we should never
Speaker 2: be adjusted. In the face of bigotry, violence, extreme inequality,
Speaker 2: and war, feeling good makes no sense. The speech made
Speaker 2: major waves among psychologists, in part because it was not
Speaker 2: given by a psychologist, but by Martin Luther King Junior,
Speaker 2: the great civil rights leader, told psychologists that in many cases,
Speaker 2: their focus on happiness was backwards. When the norms of
Speaker 2: a culture are unjust, true social health requires what MLK
Speaker 2: called creative maladjustment. Creative maladjustment, he argued, had two parts.
Speaker 2: The first was a sense of fury about how things are.
Speaker 2: We need to be upset in the face of an
Speaker 2: unfair status quo, but we should also do so in
Speaker 2: a creative way. We need to bring a sense of
Speaker 2: hope that the future could be different. I'm Jamil Zaki,
Speaker 2: and in my book Hope for Cynics, I explore doctor
Speaker 2: King's idea of creative maladjustment and find that it is
Speaker 2: deeply prescient. A lot of evidence from psychology bears out
Speaker 2: what he said. Hope isn't a complacent feeling that causes
Speaker 2: people to ignore their problems. It's a key ingredient in
Speaker 2: our ability to yearn for a better future and to
Speaker 2: fight for it.
Speaker 1: In this special season on Finding Hope, Jamiale and I
Speaker 1: have shared study after study showing that we humans are kinder,
Speaker 1: less divided, and more cooperative than most people realize. But
Speaker 1: being a good person doesn't necessarily mean that you have
Speaker 1: the courage to do good things, and that is the
Speaker 1: subject of our final show of this series. Many of
Speaker 1: us feel pretty cynical about problems like inequality and justice
Speaker 1: and bigotry. We feel powerless to bring about change, so
Speaker 1: we just kind of go on with our lives. But
Speaker 1: what if we embrace the creative maladjustment Doctor King recommended?
Speaker 1: What if we got pissed off enough to think differently
Speaker 1: and found the hope needed to act differently. Our minds
Speaker 1: are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.
Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our
Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what
Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that
Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all
Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: Would meet doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 2: And me doctor Jamil's.
Speaker 3: I actually hate politics.
Speaker 1: Katie Fahey wasn't exactly a poster job for creative maladjustment.
Speaker 4: The fact that we live in America and that we
Speaker 4: have a government that is supposed to be derived by
Speaker 4: the people, I think all that's great, but the actual
Speaker 4: like politics, us versus them, party versus party, I just
Speaker 4: have never.
Speaker 1: Liked Many of the people in the Michigan town where
Speaker 1: Katie grew up didn't take part in local politics or elections.
Speaker 1: Katie did care about the issues facing her community.
Speaker 4: But I was also busy in twenty seven and trying
Speaker 4: to get my masters and trying to keep my day
Speaker 4: job and like have social relationships and like all that
Speaker 4: kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: But in Michigan there was a lot going on.
Speaker 1: This was around the time of the Flint water crisis.
Speaker 1: Local officials in Flint, Michigan, had decided to switch the
Speaker 1: location of the city's water supply to save money. Soon after,
Speaker 1: the residents of that low income community started complaining about
Speaker 1: the smell and color their water. By the time anyone
Speaker 1: tried to do anything to fix it, it was too late.
Speaker 1: All the pipes in the community had become corroded and
Speaker 1: the water was polluted with lead, bacteria, and other contaminants.
Speaker 1: Katie spent her hour long daily commute listening to the
Speaker 1: radio and hearing about this awful public health crisis.
Speaker 4: I really felt like, doesn't anybody care? How is this
Speaker 4: going on? And yet nobody's doing anything about it. Nobody
Speaker 4: was talking about like how do we prevent the next
Speaker 4: flootwater crisis? How do we make sure this never happens again?
Speaker 4: And I just felt so disheartened that this is the
Speaker 4: world we were in.
Speaker 1: I was just so disheartened. Katie was starting to experience
Speaker 1: the first step of creative maladjustment. She was getting pissed off.
Speaker 1: But there's a second step to creative maladjustment that goes
Speaker 1: beyond anger. We need to do the creative part. And
Speaker 1: that was where Katie got stuck. It just didn't seem
Speaker 1: like the political system was working for communities like hers.
Speaker 3: Our politicians are not afraid of us as the vote.
Speaker 4: They aren't worried about winning our vote or if we
Speaker 4: like what they're doing.
Speaker 1: Things seemed intractable, but Katie wanted to find a way
Speaker 1: to fix things.
Speaker 4: I can't keep going to work every day knowing that
Speaker 4: children can't drink water at their school and like, think
Speaker 4: that's okay. And I didn't know what to do. But
Speaker 4: I was kind of seeing all those pieces and felt like,
Speaker 4: maybe there's something to do that isn't just nothing, or
Speaker 4: isn't just listening to the radio and getting frustrated every
Speaker 4: single day.
Speaker 1: So Katie decided to take a deeper dive. So why
Speaker 1: so many of her local politicians were checked out?
Speaker 4: I was like, Okay, how do we actually start getting
Speaker 4: accountability in Michigan. Maybe we could try and fix one
Speaker 4: of those systemic problems that make it so that our
Speaker 4: legislators don't have incentives to want to listen to the voters.
Speaker 2: America's political system is, at least in theory, supposed to
Speaker 2: prevent problems like this. People within each district vote for
Speaker 2: the person whose policies they like best. If a community
Speaker 2: hates what a politician is doing, they should be able
Speaker 2: to vote that person out. But as Katie learned, it
Speaker 2: doesn't always work like that because of a process called jerrymandering.
Speaker 4: Where politicians decide what voting districts are instead of voters.
Speaker 2: Once elected, a politician can monkey around with the boundaries
Speaker 2: of their voting district. They can even move those borders
Speaker 2: so much that they exclude a huge percentage of votes
Speaker 2: that would be hostile to their policies. The word jerrymandering
Speaker 2: comes from a redistricting bill back in eighteen twelve signed
Speaker 2: by Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Jerry. His party redrew the boundaries
Speaker 2: of Boston voting districts in order to win more power.
Speaker 2: The result was a set of strangely shaped districts. One
Speaker 2: famous electoral map looked a bit like a salamander, or
Speaker 2: rather a jerrymander. Jerrymandering is a process that's helpful for politicians,
Speaker 2: but it's very bad for governance. It makes it harder
Speaker 2: to vote out incumbents and encourages entire communities to be ignored.
Speaker 4: People end up not being able to actually get government
Speaker 4: to deliver on the basic things that it's suppose to
Speaker 4: be delivering up.
Speaker 2: As Katie read more about jerrymandering, she was shocked at
Speaker 2: how much this unfair process affected her Michigan community.
Speaker 3: I knew it was bad.
Speaker 4: I didn't know much else besides that, But I was like, hey,
Speaker 4: I think if we started there, Like if we could
Speaker 4: fix that problem where politicians get to choose who their
Speaker 4: voters are and instead had voters choosing who their politicians
Speaker 4: are based on their voting districts, Like, maybe there's something there,
Speaker 4: But I didn't actually know.
Speaker 3: What we could do to fix it.
Speaker 2: Jerrymandering was infuriating, but it had been around for hundreds
Speaker 2: of years. It wasn't like some random recycling plant worker
Speaker 2: was going to single handedly fix such a big problem.
Speaker 4: So I was kind of feeling, like, why doesn't anybody care?
Speaker 4: I was feeling pretty hopeless.
Speaker 2: I was feeling pretty hopeless. Katie was feeling what a
Speaker 2: lot of cynical people do. She saw a huge problem
Speaker 2: but couldn't envision a solution, so she didn't take action.
Speaker 2: In Martin Luther King's terms, Katie was feeling maladjusted but
Speaker 2: didn't feel the creative hope we need to do something
Speaker 2: about it. Which finds that Katie is not alone here.
Speaker 2: Cynics don't vote or protest as much as their more
Speaker 2: hopeful counterparts. They leave the work to others, and even worse,
Speaker 2: people who feel hopeless sometimes belittle that work. They are
Speaker 2: quick to talk about society's ills, but also claim there
Speaker 2: is no cure and it's dumb for anyone to try.
Speaker 5: To fix it.
Speaker 2: We often think of cynicism as a radical feeling which
Speaker 2: will hold power to account. In fact, it's often the opposite,
Speaker 2: a duel of the status quo. But is there any
Speaker 2: way to find the hope that Katie was lacking? To
Speaker 2: get that creative nudge, we need to start taking action.
Speaker 2: We'll find out when the Happiness Lab returns from the break.
Speaker 5: So the exhausted majority, it's sixty seven percent of America.
Speaker 5: That is the majority of America.
Speaker 1: This is political strategist Emily Amic. Emily used to work
Speaker 1: for Senator Chuck Schumer, but these days she spent her
Speaker 1: time working with people like Katie Fahey, folks who find
Speaker 1: politics to be a massive turnoff.
Speaker 5: And that doesn't mean these people are centrists or moderates.
Speaker 5: But the thing that really brings them all together, that
Speaker 5: connects them all, is that they are like profoundly exhausted.
Speaker 1: Political scientists often categorize people by their willingness to engage
Speaker 1: in issues. Some folks, the ones we tend to hear
Speaker 1: from a lot on social media and in op eds,
Speaker 1: fall into what scholars call the wings. These are the
Speaker 1: hardcore conservatives and progressive liberals, voters on the tail ends
Speaker 1: of the political spectrum. But the devoted folks on the
Speaker 1: wings are a minority. The bulk of Americans, the others
Speaker 1: seventy year or so percent fall into the exhausted category.
Speaker 5: They heard like profoundly exhausted, and they don't view every
Speaker 5: single political issue as a war. They really just want
Speaker 5: the government to work, the trains to run on time,
Speaker 5: their kids to be able to go to school, the
Speaker 5: water to be clean.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: They just want to be able to live their lives.
Speaker 1: The exhausteds want things to be better, but they're cynical
Speaker 1: about their ability to fix things. They wind up disengaging
Speaker 1: and feeling left out of the democratic process. So says
Speaker 1: Emily's collaborator Sammy Sage, these.
Speaker 6: People just feel like everything is corrupt, this is pointless.
Speaker 6: They're frustrated by politics, but it has turned to apathy.
Speaker 6: Nothing I do will matter. Nothing anyone I know does
Speaker 6: will matter. So I wish I didn't have to hear
Speaker 6: about this.
Speaker 1: As you've probably guessed, this sort of helplessness doesn't make
Speaker 1: for a happy nation, especially when nearly seventy percent of
Speaker 1: us are feeling that way.
Speaker 6: But the opportunity there is that if all of these
Speaker 6: people were to start engaging, we would be able to
Speaker 6: have a much more productive conversation.
Speaker 1: And that's why Emily and Sammy are on a mission
Speaker 1: to turn our collective exhaustion into more democratic engagement. They've
Speaker 1: even written a fabulous how to guide. It's called democracy
Speaker 1: in Retrograde, how to make changes big and small in
Speaker 1: our country and in our lives.
Speaker 5: The goal is for politics to be a daily habit,
Speaker 5: not a biannual freakout. We want you to figure out
Speaker 5: how to make civic life upfilling part of your life.
Speaker 1: It should be additive, It should make you happy.
Speaker 5: It should bring you joy so that you keep going
Speaker 5: back to it.
Speaker 1: The book begins by analyzing why so many of us
Speaker 1: got so exhausted when it comes to politics. One factor
Speaker 1: that pair says involves a toxic way that our political
Speaker 1: discourse has evolved over the past few decades, whether it's
Speaker 1: on Twitter or cable news, we've all seen what should
Speaker 1: have been a thoughtful political discussion turn into a polarized
Speaker 1: shouting match, and honestly, what's more exhausting than that. Emily
Speaker 1: worries that this change has caused some voices to be
Speaker 1: silenced while the trolls on the wings show even louder.
Speaker 5: And then the people who then want to talk about
Speaker 5: these issues are people who are.
Speaker 3: Doing it not with the best intentions.
Speaker 5: Right if the only political conversation you have is your
Speaker 5: uncle Chad screaming at you about politics, he's going into
Speaker 5: that conversation without good intentions. He just wants to get
Speaker 5: in an argument. He just wants to shit on you.
Speaker 5: That is not the normal conversation.
Speaker 1: And extreme individuals don't just skew political to be they
Speaker 1: also spend huge amounts of effort to impose their political
Speaker 1: will on the rest of us. They lobby politicians, attend
Speaker 1: city hall meetings, and complain to school boards to get
Speaker 1: their goals realized.
Speaker 5: Sixty percent of book bands were done by eleven people.
Speaker 2: The reality is.
Speaker 5: There are people who are extremely active and they are
Speaker 5: willing to do the work to get extremist policies in play.
Speaker 1: With so many toxic voices pushing for extreme policies, it
Speaker 1: can be hard to figure out what the average person thinks.
Speaker 1: It's a cognitive error that psychologists call pluralistic ignorance. We
Speaker 1: wind up mistakenly assuming that extreme positions are the norm
Speaker 1: and that pretty much everybody disagrees with how we think
Speaker 1: things should work. Consider one of the most famous examples
Speaker 1: of pluralistic ignorance, a study of Princeton students' perceptions of
Speaker 1: their classmates. Undergrads were brought into the lab and asked
Speaker 1: how often they thought the average Princeton student drank to excess.
Speaker 1: Most students assume that the typical student drank a lot,
Speaker 1: even though they themselves had a moderate approach to partying.
Speaker 1: And it's easy to see where this bias comes from.
Speaker 1: I mean, think about who's taking up the most space
Speaker 1: in campus conversations. Students don't often regale each other with
Speaker 1: stories about how they stayed up in their room watching TV,
Speaker 1: but they talk a lot about the raging parties they attended.
Speaker 1: And study after study has shown that our political discourse
Speaker 1: has become a lot like those campus errors. We simply
Speaker 1: don't realize just how much we agree on the big issues.
Speaker 6: Majority Americans support abortion rights at any point in the pregnancy.
Speaker 6: More than half of Americans support some form of gun
Speaker 6: control or gun safety laws. They support taking action on
Speaker 6: the climate. Ninety percent of Americans think that LGBTQ individuals
Speaker 6: should not suffer from discrimination. All of those people because
Speaker 6: they're not talking about politics, they're not finding each other.
Speaker 1: The uncle chads make so much racket that we think
Speaker 1: they're everywhere, while the exhausteds are so well exhausted that
Speaker 1: they just don't speak up, which creates a vicious cycle
Speaker 1: and which the average person winds up feeling even more
Speaker 1: angry about the state to the world and even more cynical.
Speaker 1: Anything can be done to fix it. But Jamille, explain
Speaker 1: how your work gives us a path forward.
Speaker 2: Well, Laurie, the good news here is that if you
Speaker 2: aren't exhausted, you are probably way less alone than you think.
Speaker 2: And research shows that when we take stock of how
Speaker 2: many people actually share our beliefs, this can energize us.
Speaker 2: It can help us turn cynicism into action. I think
Speaker 2: a lot about the work of psychologist Greg Sparkman. Recently,
Speaker 2: he surveyed thousands of Americans and found that more than
Speaker 2: two thirds of them supported aggressive policies to slow down
Speaker 2: climate change. But this same group assumed that barely forty
Speaker 2: percent of their fellow citizens wanted the same thing. Classic
Speaker 2: pluralistic ignorance. But Sparkman also found when people learned how
Speaker 2: angry others were about climate change, they felt less alone
Speaker 2: and were more willing to take action. A super important
Speaker 2: part of this work is that to overcome pluralistic ignorance,
Speaker 2: all you need is accurate information. We've seen many times
Speaker 2: in this series on Finding Hope people often underestimate one another.
Speaker 2: But that means that when we awaken to what the
Speaker 2: people around us are really like, our sense of efficacy
Speaker 2: and possibility swell. Accurate faith in each other now opens
Speaker 2: pathways to a future more of us want.
Speaker 1: That sounds awesome, Jamille, But how do we do that?
Speaker 2: The first step is to start talking about the issues
Speaker 2: we care about with one another, and we can do
Speaker 2: that through what political scientists call relational organizing.
Speaker 5: Relational organizing is a fancy way to say talking to
Speaker 5: people you already know about voting and about elections. It
Speaker 5: is eight times more effective than door knocking, because who
Speaker 5: do you trust?
Speaker 1: Right if you.
Speaker 5: Want to go to a restaurant, You're gonna look at reviews,
Speaker 5: You're gonna look at what people say, and you might
Speaker 5: ask a friend. If a friend tells you to go
Speaker 5: to a restaurant, you're not gonna double chuck it. You're
Speaker 5: just gonna be like, sounds good. I trust what you
Speaker 5: have to say. I understand that we share the same values.
Speaker 5: We both like greasy peas za, so therefore I will
Speaker 5: trust your opinion on what is a good pizza restaurant.
Speaker 5: And relational organizing, it's the similar concept, and it's one
Speaker 5: that works based on a lot of research.
Speaker 2: In one study, people who got a text from a
Speaker 2: friend reminding them to vote were eight percent more likely
Speaker 2: to show up to the polls. That may not sound
Speaker 2: like much, but it's far far more effective than nearly
Speaker 2: any other get out the vote technique political scientists have
Speaker 2: come up with. But the benefits of talking about the
Speaker 2: issues we care about go beyond just boosted voting numbers.
Speaker 2: Some political scientists have argued conversations like these and the
Speaker 2: relationships they forge, can even save our democratic way of life.
Speaker 6: Hannah Arent wrote that fascism and a totalitarian society is
Speaker 6: really just a bunch of atomized individuals who are separated
Speaker 6: and have no identity other than to submit to the state.
Speaker 6: So in that way, and she says this is that
Speaker 6: friendship can be an act of resistance. Having relationships with
Speaker 6: real people who could take care of each other is
Speaker 6: at authoritarian states worst enemy, because when people get together,
Speaker 6: they are able to talk and you know, figure things out.
Speaker 6: So having real, engaged, connected civic fabric is healthy for
Speaker 6: our democracy.
Speaker 2: And being part of an engaged, connected civic fabric is
Speaker 2: also healthy for us personally. If you're a fan of
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab, you've probably already heard about the benefits
Speaker 2: of social connection. Connecting with your neighbors about important issues
Speaker 2: is a great way to build relationships that last Emily
Speaker 2: says this is one of her favorite parts of civic engagement.
Speaker 5: So I recently had cancer and a just completed treatment.
Speaker 5: The people who showed up to help me are people
Speaker 5: who I met through civic life, people who I met
Speaker 5: through this work. Being engaged in civic life isn't only
Speaker 5: giving you also received when you.
Speaker 3: Have cancer and you need people to rely on.
Speaker 5: And the people who you meet in civic life, who
Speaker 5: you meet because you are volunteering and giving yourself.
Speaker 1: It comes back to you.
Speaker 2: But to get the benefits of civic life, we actually
Speaker 2: have to engage. We need to take that first hopeful
Speaker 2: step and talk to people about the issues we value.
Speaker 2: And as Sammy and Emily have found out in their
Speaker 2: own work, getting that first step can be a tall order.
Speaker 6: The challenge and the opportunity with the exhausted majority is
Speaker 6: that they are extremely repelled by the political conversation.
Speaker 2: So how can we get the exhausted majority to start
Speaker 2: that dialogue. Next we'll return to Katie Faihe and hear
Speaker 2: what happens when she started a conversation about jerrymanderin and
Speaker 2: see how that first hopeful step was more effective than
Speaker 2: she could have dreamed.
Speaker 4: There was no guarantee we were going to be successful.
Speaker 4: Everybody told us all the reasons we would fail, and
Speaker 4: yet we were willing to try.
Speaker 2: Anyways, The Happiness Lab will return after the break.
Speaker 4: I make plenty of Facebook posts that don't lead to anything.
Speaker 1: When we last left Katie Fahee, thing recycling plant worker
Speaker 1: was fed up with the jerrymandering in her Michigan community,
Speaker 1: Confuming about politics in her car on the way to
Speaker 1: work for overriding thought at the time something has to change.
Speaker 4: So I went on social media. I have a normal
Speaker 4: amount of followers for the age I am in. I'm
Speaker 4: not an influencer or anything like that, but I just
Speaker 4: thought i'd say, like, I'd reach out to my friends
Speaker 4: and see if anybody else cared about jerrymandering and if
Speaker 4: they wanted to do something about it. So my one
Speaker 4: little step before work was like, Hey, I want to
Speaker 4: end jerrymandering in Michigan. If you want to help, let
Speaker 4: me know smiley face emoji. And I did not think
Speaker 4: that would lead to really much of anything, if I'm
Speaker 4: being honest.
Speaker 1: But that's not what happened. Katie's post blew up, and.
Speaker 4: All of a sudden, all these people were saying, Oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, I'm so glad you're working on this. I've
Speaker 4: cared about it for such a long time. Let me
Speaker 4: know how I could help. What happened when I made
Speaker 4: that Facebook post is I got instantly connected to a
Speaker 4: community I never knew existed, thoughtful people who paid attention
Speaker 4: but didn't really love hyper partisanship and didn't really know
Speaker 4: what to do, but still cared and still wished that
Speaker 4: something could be done.
Speaker 1: For the first time in a long time, Katie didn't
Speaker 1: feel alone.
Speaker 4: I think I had this aha moment of like, look
Speaker 4: at all these people who've also been sitting in their
Speaker 4: car or at home being mad online, thinking like, why
Speaker 4: doesn't somebody do something about this? Meanwhile all of us
Speaker 4: not realizing like we are actually people who can do
Speaker 4: something about this.
Speaker 1: But that positive feeling was quickly followed by panic. The
Speaker 1: people who replied to Katie's post seemed to think that
Speaker 1: she knew what the next step was for fixing things,
Speaker 1: and I was.
Speaker 3: Like, oh, no, I have no idea what I'm doing.
Speaker 1: And so were the people that came together, like, you know,
Speaker 1: experienced political activists, So no, they were not.
Speaker 4: That short answer is none of them knew what they
Speaker 4: were doing either.
Speaker 3: So I quickly literally googled.
Speaker 4: Like how do you end jerrymandering and saw that in
Speaker 4: Michigan we had something called the ballot initiative process, which
Speaker 4: meant that if you could write constitutional language, which I
Speaker 4: had no idea how to do. It's not a lawyer,
Speaker 4: but it's like, okay, step one, and then if you
Speaker 4: could take that constitutional language and get a bunch of
Speaker 4: people to sign a petition saying yes, I want to
Speaker 4: vote on this. When I looked at the number, it
Speaker 4: was three hundred and fifteen thousand, six hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: four registered Michigan voter signatures in.
Speaker 3: One hundred and eighty days.
Speaker 4: And I lived in the second largest city in Michigan,
Speaker 4: Grand Rapids, And even the total population if I talked
Speaker 4: to every single person who lived in my city, was
Speaker 4: only two hundred thousand, so nowhere close to three hundred
Speaker 4: and fifteen thousand. So I was like, oh no, okay,
Speaker 4: also sounds impossible. All right, that's step number two. And
Speaker 4: then step number three would be getting at least fifty
Speaker 4: percent of the population to vote yes on that law
Speaker 4: in the general election, which would be about two and.
Speaker 3: A half million people.
Speaker 4: And I certainly didn't know two and a half million people,
Speaker 4: so that also sounded impossible.
Speaker 3: But I was like, Okay, at least there's a pathway here.
Speaker 1: So ryal loyally petition convinced hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 1: to sign it and then get two point five million
Speaker 1: voters to back you at the ballot box. Right, most
Speaker 1: people would have walked away then in there, but he
Speaker 1: was already too creatively maladjusted to step away.
Speaker 3: If we do nothing.
Speaker 4: We for sure know we're going to get more jerrymandered maps.
Speaker 4: But if we succeed, my gosh, millions of people, over
Speaker 4: ten million people for the very first time, will actually
Speaker 4: be able to vote in a fair election.
Speaker 1: So how do you even start on such a moment
Speaker 1: as task.
Speaker 4: So I was like, Okay, we probably need like a
Speaker 4: fundraising department because you know, I don't have any money
Speaker 4: and it sounds expensive to do. And we probably need
Speaker 4: like a legal department because we have to write constitutional
Speaker 4: language and like, how the heck do you do that.
Speaker 4: We probably need like an education department because like we
Speaker 4: have to talk to apparently millions of people about what
Speaker 4: the heck jerrymandering is.
Speaker 1: Katie had found a group of ordinary folks who are
Speaker 1: as fired up as she was, but how could she
Speaker 1: turn that enthusiasm into a more directed effort.
Speaker 4: Although most people this is the very first quote unquote
Speaker 4: political thing they were ever trying to do besides vote,
Speaker 4: they had a lot of life experience that translated to
Speaker 4: things that a campaign needs to do. For example, somebody
Speaker 4: who who had worked at the Renaissance Fair for years
Speaker 4: in Michigan, and she's like, you know, as the executive director,
Speaker 4: I have to like raise a lot of money for
Speaker 4: weird stuff.
Speaker 3: And I was like, cool. Perfect.
Speaker 4: We had a math teacher who had a little bit
Speaker 4: of canvassing experience, had done some door knocking before, so
Speaker 4: she was like, Okay, I think I can break down
Speaker 4: this really big number of like three hundred and fifteen
Speaker 4: thousand and figure like out how many signatures per day
Speaker 4: that is, and like what we need to do.
Speaker 3: And I was like, okay, great, you go for it.
Speaker 4: And you know, somebody who had been like an accountant
Speaker 4: for nonprofits before, who hadn't done a political campaign before,
Speaker 4: but said she was willing to get trained on how
Speaker 4: to do that. So like slowly it started to feel like,
Speaker 4: even though none of us really knew what we were doing,
Speaker 4: that maybe if we could like piece together all of
Speaker 4: our individual little skills and contributions, maybe just maybe we
Speaker 4: could figure out.
Speaker 1: How to do this.
Speaker 2: The cyniciness might say, great, the CEOs, the math teachers,
Speaker 2: the accountants, of course they can contribute, but what can
Speaker 2: Joe the plumber do or Rebecca the single mom jazzer
Speaker 2: size instructor.
Speaker 3: So Rebecca was awesome. She called me and she's like,
Speaker 3: I really want to help, but I.
Speaker 4: Just feel like there's there's no way I can contribute.
Speaker 4: She's like, you know, I'm dressed a mom, there's nothing else.
Speaker 4: And I was like, first of all, being a mom
Speaker 4: like definitely comes with a ton of skills, so we
Speaker 4: need all of those skills.
Speaker 3: But also like, are there any other hobbies or something
Speaker 3: that you have? And she had mentioned that.
Speaker 4: On the side she was a jazzer size instructor, which
Speaker 4: I still haven't quite figured out how to tie to
Speaker 4: Jerry Bandrick, but also that she was a wood carver.
Speaker 2: Katie thought Rebecca could carve a big wooden sculpture showing
Speaker 2: just how weird Michigan's jerrymandered voting districts looked. It was
Speaker 2: a nice idea, but Rebecca wasn't sure it would work,
Speaker 2: Like it was.
Speaker 4: Not feasible to have a statue stand up because it
Speaker 4: was like so out of balance and it would have
Speaker 4: potentially like crushed children at an art fair or something
Speaker 4: if like the wind blew the wrong way.
Speaker 2: Rebecca's contribution wound up being much simpler and much more valuable.
Speaker 2: She found an easy way for people to sign Katie's petitions.
Speaker 4: They're kind of like a long document and they aren't
Speaker 4: a standard size for a clipboard, And so Rebecca goes,
Speaker 4: you know, what, are there any other word carvers in
Speaker 4: our Facebook group? And actually we had like three of them.
Speaker 4: So they all go and they meet together, and they
Speaker 4: figured out, like if they could go to home depots
Speaker 4: and lows and reserve a certain amount of wood, that
Speaker 4: we could actually make our own clipboard. So instead of
Speaker 4: seventeen dollars a piece, it could actually end up being
Speaker 4: closer to like eleven cents a piece per clipboard. And
Speaker 4: then because they were thinking about these clipboards so much
Speaker 4: and like the size, and how do we make it
Speaker 4: more advantageous, they figured out and we make it a
Speaker 4: little bit longer. We can ask people for their contact
Speaker 4: information to see if they want to be volunteers. If
Speaker 4: we throw on the back a map of the district,
Speaker 4: it can actually work as an education tool where we
Speaker 4: can show somebody a picture of their district and start
Speaker 4: the conversation by saying, do you think this makes sense?
Speaker 3: Is this how you would define our community? Which ended
Speaker 3: up being a great tool for all of those who
Speaker 3: are a little more.
Speaker 4: Introverted and scared of talking to strangers that we could
Speaker 4: have them look at our clipboard instead of us. And
Speaker 4: also we made like raincoats for these clipboards for when
Speaker 4: you're standing.
Speaker 2: On the rain.
Speaker 4: All these kind of innovations we would have never done that.
Speaker 4: We would have never paid attention to this, But because
Speaker 4: we had and those other wood carvers on our team,
Speaker 4: we ended up creating like this really fabulous tool that
Speaker 4: I know even I today like cherished my clipboard with
Speaker 4: all the accomplishments that has seen us through.
Speaker 2: Rather than just her community of Grand Rapids, Katie wanted
Speaker 2: the whole state to have a voice. With eighty three
Speaker 2: counties in Michigan, she had to trust the judgment of
Speaker 2: her fellow campaigners. One suggested collecting signatures at his town's
Speaker 2: annual cheeseburger festival. Another thought the local tractor pull would
Speaker 2: be ideal.
Speaker 4: I was like, I don't know what a tractor poll
Speaker 4: contest is, but if you think we should go there,
Speaker 4: we absolutely should go there. And they took their clipboard
Speaker 4: and they would go and stand outside and try to
Speaker 4: talk to a bunch of strangers about redistricting.
Speaker 3: We did end up making costumes.
Speaker 4: We ended up carving pumpkins, and in the winter we
Speaker 4: made snowmen who are also holding the clipboards and basically
Speaker 4: found every way we possibly could to be creative to
Speaker 4: stop people and just say, are you sick of politics
Speaker 4: as usual? And if so, here's a way that we
Speaker 4: can do something about it. And we had hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of converse stations. We ended up gathering over four
Speaker 4: hundred and forty thousand signatures.
Speaker 1: Four hundred and forty thousand signatures is an amazing feat,
Speaker 1: but it was only the first of Katie's hurdles. For
Speaker 1: her Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission to become a reality, she
Speaker 1: needed half of Michigan's voters to back it.
Speaker 4: So then we had to get into campaign mode and
Speaker 4: door knocking to keep.
Speaker 3: Talking to a bunch of strangers.
Speaker 4: And we ended up door knocking hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 4: doors to building those relationships in those communities.
Speaker 3: So we just kept talking to our neighbors about here's
Speaker 3: why we should care.
Speaker 1: But in the end, did her neighbors care? Would she
Speaker 1: be able to get out the vote to fight redistricting?
Speaker 1: Could a woman with no legal experience who was barely
Speaker 1: old enough to rent a car actually fight a two
Speaker 1: hundred year old policy like gerrymandering and win?
Speaker 2: I kind of have a feeling it's going to have
Speaker 2: a happy ending.
Speaker 3: We ended up getting sixty one percent of the vote.
Speaker 4: We only needed fifty and it was really exciting to see,
Speaker 4: especially for a concept that most people hadn't even really
Speaker 4: thought about before. We reached over two and a half
Speaker 4: million people who said, yes, let's try something different here
Speaker 4: in Michigan, and.
Speaker 1: Katie's efforts have now spread far beyond her own state.
Speaker 1: People have seen what she did in Michigan and are
Speaker 1: copying her approach, not just to fix jerrymandering, but for
Speaker 1: other issues too.
Speaker 4: In Idaho, there was some boddies who are talking about
Speaker 4: how healthcare had like really poor access, and they decided
Speaker 4: to get an RV and go travel across their state
Speaker 4: and talk to their neighbors about how do we expand
Speaker 4: Medicare because we need it and our neighbors do not
Speaker 4: have access to healthcare. There were these brandmas in North Dakota,
Speaker 4: one a Democrat, whan a Republican who are having this
Speaker 4: conversation about they've been kind of civil servants bust of
Speaker 4: their life, and they just said, there is like an
Speaker 4: ethics problem, like our legislators are not self regulating. We
Speaker 4: need some kind of ethics Commission, and they ended up
Speaker 4: deciding to do a ballid initiative like we did to
Speaker 4: create an ethics commission in North Dakota. They call themselves
Speaker 4: the badass Grandmas now fighting for their grandchildren's future.
Speaker 1: Katie hadn't successfully changed medical care or fought ethics reforms,
Speaker 1: but what she did do for the people who are
Speaker 1: her story was something even more important. She convinced them
Speaker 1: that hope was possible.
Speaker 4: And at those town hall meetings we were holding, when
Speaker 4: we were talking to people, all these people, they would
Speaker 4: all raise their hand at the end and keep bringing
Speaker 4: up this question, isn't it impossible?
Speaker 3: Isn't it impossible? I've tried something before it didn't work out.
Speaker 4: And what I realized was that a lot of people
Speaker 4: just needed somebody else to be a little bit more
Speaker 4: hopeful than them.
Speaker 3: Like what I was.
Speaker 4: Doing, the best way I was contributing was being like
Speaker 4: unafraid of the consequences.
Speaker 1: And so as you think back to kind of how
Speaker 1: hopeless you're feeling before, and maybe how kind of annoyed
Speaker 1: with your fellow man you were feeling before, how different
Speaker 1: does it feel now that you've taken action?
Speaker 3: It feels so inspiring.
Speaker 4: I think it's so easy to let current events feel overwhelming.
Speaker 4: That's totally the place I was in was like, oh
Speaker 4: my gosh, why does anybody do anything about this? And
Speaker 4: also like doesn't anybody care that it is this bad?
Speaker 4: And now when I start feeling that way about other issues,
Speaker 4: I start thinking about how I can literally picture a
Speaker 4: person and like every part of the state I live in,
Speaker 4: who we were strangers, yet we were willing to volunteer
Speaker 4: our time, energy, money, creativity, Like we were willing to
Speaker 4: trust each other and fight like heck, even though all
Speaker 4: the odds are stacked against us to try and make
Speaker 4: a better future. And it's just like this constant reminder
Speaker 4: that like when we actually have the option and when
Speaker 4: there's a pathway, even if it's a really slim pathway
Speaker 4: that might be really hard, but when there's a pathway
Speaker 4: to change being actually possible, I think Americans in general
Speaker 4: are just like willing to try and.
Speaker 3: Put in the hard work to do it.
Speaker 4: And it just makes me feel a lot more hopeful
Speaker 4: but also grateful.
Speaker 1: This is our final show and this special series on
Speaker 1: finding hope, and Jamie and I both hope. No pun
Speaker 1: intended that the stories we've shared today have helped you
Speaker 1: become a little less cynical and a bit more creatively maladjusted.
Speaker 2: There are plenty of reasons to be hopeful, ones we
Speaker 2: don't get to see every day on TV or social media.
Speaker 2: The majority of us agree on much more than we think,
Speaker 2: and people like Emily, Sammy and Katie show us that
Speaker 2: we can unite across our differences to help our communities.
Speaker 2: Whether you're the CEO of a renaissance fair, a math teacher,
Speaker 2: or a wood carving jazzer size instructor, there's going to
Speaker 2: be a cause that fires you up and a contribution
Speaker 2: that you can make.
Speaker 1: So give yourself a much needed dose of self help
Speaker 1: via political action the science shows it might just make
Speaker 1: you feel happier. And speaking of feeling happier, Jamille, can
Speaker 1: I just say how much I've loved having you on
Speaker 1: the show. It has been a blast to have an
Speaker 1: actual co host and I'm finally feeling a little bit
Speaker 1: more hopeful.
Speaker 2: Oh man, this has been delightful, and it's just been
Speaker 2: great to be able to connect the science of Hope
Speaker 2: to happiness and well being. And as a longtime fan
Speaker 2: of the show, it has just been an absolute thrill
Speaker 2: to be able to join you in this effort.
Speaker 1: Well, it's sad that it is over, but I will
Speaker 1: say for the last time thanks out there for everyone
Speaker 1: listening to the Happiness Lab with me doctor Laurie Santos
Speaker 1: and me doctor Jamil Zaki.