Sharon McMahon “America’s Government Teacher,” on Hope for Better Things - Jen Hatmaker

Sharon McMahon “America’s Government Teacher,” on Hope for Better Things

“I started noticing that there were a lot of people who were just really confidently wrong on the internet, saying things like ‘the electoral college is a university you can graduate from’.” – Sharon McMahon

Episode 11

Friends, today’s episode is a powerhouse! We’re thrilled to have Sharon McMahon, known as “America’s Government Teacher,” joining us to share insights from her new book, Small and Mighty. Sharon dives deep into how twelve unsung heroes from American history played pivotal roles in shaping democracy—and what we can learn from their stories to impact our world today. This conversation is all about finding hope amid challenges and understanding that each of us, no matter our size or reach, can make a difference. So, buckle up for an inspiring episode that’ll remind you of your own power to effect change. Let’s dive in!

In this hope-filled chat:

  • Jen and Amy discuss which historical figures they’d most like to meet and share their election night routines.
  • Sharon walks us through her journey from award-winning yarn influencer to “America’s Government Teacher.”
  • We break down why factual information is so critical in today’s world of fake news and disinformation.
  • Sharon explains the importance of participating in state and local elections.
  • We explore ways to engage in democracy beyond voting.
  • And Sharon answers questions from our audience!

Mentioned In This Episode 

The Henry Fite House of Baltimore

The Angry Trout Cafe, Grand Mariais, MN 

The Small and the Mighty: Twelve Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History, from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement by Sharon McMahon

Episode Transcript

Jen
Okay, everybody. Welcome. We kind of have a special deal tonight.

Amy
We do?

Jen
Yeah. This is a special one. For more than one reason. So number one this is coming out of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club podcast ecosystem which we are sharing with you. Because we have such a phenomenal author with us. We have Sharon McMahon with us who wrote The Small and the mighty, which is just everywhere right now.

Jen
Is that fair to say? Absolutely. Everywhere. Right now it’s at the top of the charts. And we invited my podcast or, I’m sorry, my book club community. And so we, we were live streaming this with the community. Anyway, you get it too. So high and high high, super super fun. Now, before we invite Sharon in and I’ll tell you about her too, just in case, I guess you don’t have social media.

Jen
Just know we are centering this conversation around her work, which has is government. It’s politics, it’s history. And so that’s sort of where we’re going. So in the spirit, I have a question for you.

Amy
Yes.

Jen
If you could go back in time and have dinner, let’s say dinner with any historical figure of your choosing, who in some way influenced American politics. Who would it be? Who would you pick?

Amy
I mean, I really do have an unknown.

Jen
Oh, I’m so excited.

Amy
So in 1776, in the winter, the, the declaration had been signed, and they were gathered in Philadelphia, but the British were coming. Okay. So they moved to Baltimore.

Jen
Okay.

Amy
And they rented the biggest building in town, the Henry Fight House, who was like eight generations back, the brother of my ancestor. So three brothers came over.

Jen
I did not see this coming.

Amy
They the three brothers split, went to different places. I’m in the Yohannes fight.

Jen
Branch spell fight.

Amy
Well, it was vote. But change. When? As soon as I got here to fight. So the Henry fight house was the location of.

Jen
Like, the relocated?

Amy
Yes. It was technically a capital for a little bit. It burned in the big Baltimore fire. But I love to be a fly on the wall. And there was a risk for him to rent. His house was like a tavern. Had stables. Because they hadn’t won yet. Like he was, on the Patriot side, so. Wow. Well, like.

Jen
Have you always known this house? You’ve known this up.

Amy
Link, but he’s not. He’s not a well-known figure that such a well known location. But I do love the thought that, like, he decided to rent his space out for two months. And some huge decisions were made.

Jen
That’s pretty fun. Yeah. Is there anything in that location where the house was?

Amy
Yeah. Like a bronze.

Jen
Plaque. Okay.

Amy
Darn it. Yeah. Fascinating. You.

Jen
I also am deeply interested in the founders and just the genesis of the country is it’s just an endless source of fascination for me. So I could really pick almost probably any given one of the Founding fathers like the balls of it, you know? It’s it’s so clear in hindsight, like, oh, yeah, you you wrote you wrote a constitution and you created a democracy and it’s but at the time, it was muddy and murky and absolutely not guaranteed.

Jen
And there was so much opposition and there was infighting like, what a mess. It was like the fact that America emerged out of it will never, ever cease to amaze me. I think if I had to pick one, I’d love to. I’d love to have a sit down with James Madison for a couple of reasons. Obviously Constitution obviously Federalist Papers, obviously the Bill of rights.

Jen
But he lived the longest out of the Founding Fathers, so he saw the most. Yeah, I’d love to hear his thoughts. He died around like 85 or 86 or something like that. He died.

Amy
And let me look, I’ve.

Jen
Got my notes up in here. He died in 1836. So? So for a founder to have gotten all the way to the 19th like that far into the, the, the 19th century, a bunch of change, like he’d seen it take some roots.

Amy
Yeah, he saw an arc.

Jen
He saw an arc. He saw some of it. I mean, some of the founders were gone before they knew if this was going to work or not. I’d love to hear that. I’d love to hear that story. And of course, they wrote reams about it. So there is a lot to read, but I, I’m and they’re so problematic too, you know, they’re complicated.

Jen
James Madison owned slaves when he died.

Amy
I that makes it more interesting to me. Like the version we were taught was a little.

Jen
Oh, yes. These, like, heroes.

Amy
Not like, not accessible, was not believable. Really? Like we’re so far removed from.

Jen
It’s true.

Amy
But then when people started saying actually super complicated, then.

Jen
Very.

Amy
And they still did an incredible thing.

Jen
They did. They did.

Amy
Both and I mean.

Jen
This experiment that we’re what are we 250 years into is stunning in its success rate. That our democracy has worked as intended more or less all this time. It doesn’t have a lot of precedents.

Amy
Still an experiment.

Jen
Clearly we’re still fighting for some of its basic tenets right now.

Amy
I’d love to know what they have to say.

Jen
The founders.

Amy

Jen
About now wouldn’t you like to hear their thoughts on modern America, especially how we have taken so many of their original bills and ideas and kind of bastardized it like we, we blame the founders a lot with like what the founders wanted, but sometimes it’s not what they wanted. Right. And if we laid that over, the modern iteration of what we are saying is their fault, they’d be like, no, no, ma’am.

Jen
That was not what we wanted anyway. Yes. Okay. The founders, let’s do one very quick segment and get into Sharon because she is just a a fascinating voice right at this exact moment, right in this at the like height of the election season. We’re almost there. Let’s do a little culture shock.

Jen
Okay. This it’s just this simple. Let me see if I want to. I’ll put it in two parts. How do you typically like to spend election night? And maybe if it’s if it’s different it will this year be like that or something different this year.

Amy
Typically I like to be home. Yeah. Like in bed. Under heavy covers, you know, weighted blanket.

Jen
Definitely. Definitely all the emotional support tools.

Amy
And Steve in his khakis with his map. Now, do you really love the map? I do also I do real high need. And so I will stay up.

Jen
Until it’s decided.

Amy
Until it’s decided, which was problematic a few years ago was and in fact, I did not.

Jen
In 2016 go.

Amy
To sleep. And so the last time I cut myself off, like, you don’t need to stay up all night, it’s not going to change anything and get some sleep, but I do. I like to do it by myself. I have a neighbor who in 2020 wanted to, like, set up the screen in the backyard and have a projector and all watch together.

Amy
Oh, and so that.

Jen
Only works if everybody is in a line.

Amy
That we are. Okay. My neighbor.

Jen
Okay. That’s true. Of course. Your neighborhood is.

Amy
So we did that. But then I want to go home and watch the mat by myself in pajamas.

Jen
I also like to be alone because I, I don’t I’m fixated, and I. I don’t ever tear my eyes away. I it’s hours and hours and hours for me to watch. I one of some of our friends are moving and the group around them was like, what if we have their going away party on election night? And I was like, I don’t think I can, I can’t be partying.

Jen
I just, I will, I will be the worst party guest. Yeah. Because I will be back in somebodys bedroom, back in the guest room. Yeah. Trying to watch or feeling one way or another and I, I just don’t, I don’t think I can pull a party spirit. No, it’s too sobering. And this year particularly, it’s too sobering. I just would be unable to be like, well, it didn’t go the way I was hoping.

Jen
So let’s pour it. Pour one out. Like I won’t feel that way now. I will feel devastated and I will so for me, this is is not a party made. In 2016, it was Sydney and I just me in Sydney and she was in high school. She was a sophomore and I was positive and she couldn’t have told me different that we were about to elect our first female president.

Jen
I had a 200 bottle, $200 bottle of champagne in the fridge. Me and Sydney were going to drink and I was going to give it to my sophomore. I’m like, I’m going to drink this bottle of champagne with my kid. Together. We’re going to watch history being made. And I sent her to bed sobbing at midnight because it hadn’t been called.

Jen
Yeah. And it was like, staying up in full emotional distress isn’t going to be useful to send her to bed. And the next day I, did not know what to do with myself, so I cleaned out all my underwear drawer, all my bra drawers, all my socks, and I drank the entire bottle of champagne. So now you know that story sitting on the floor of my closet?

Jen
Just. I mean, I might as well get a little drunk and clean out my bras. I didn’t know what else to do, you know, when I didn’t know what to do. So, Anyway. Okay, having said that, we’ve got a great. This is going to. I’m so glad you’re listening. I’m so glad you hit download on this. And you’re going to be too.

Jen
And I want to tell you this, however you come to this conversation, by the end of it, you’re going to feel hopeful. You’re going to feel encouraged. You’re going to feel even inspired, dare I say, and that’s thanks to kind of Sharon’s wonderful perspective. So let me tell you a little bit about Sharon McMahon, one of the most wonderful civic teachers you could ever hope to meet on the internet.

Jen
So, I don’t want to steal too much of her thunder because she talks to us about this story, but, she was a she was a public school teacher. She was a government and history teacher. And then she turned yarn entrepreneur. And you heard that correctly. And you’ll get the deets on that. And then she turned portrait photographer.

Jen
And all of this was in Minnesota. And then in 2020, her husband had renal failure. So she’s carrying with caring for him after a kidney transplant. She’s raising kids. The businesses are it’s Covid. And she is like, what? What am I going to do here? And out of that, there’s only four years ago that’s not that long ago emerged.

Jen
This whole community that she has built around essentially facts, sort of a bipartisan approach to actual, politics and government and rules and branches. And how does it all work and what’s real and what’s not real? She is the enemy of disinformation. And and, of course, as you can imagine, that has drawn in millions of people because we’re hungry for that.

Jen
We’re all tired. We’re exhausted from the endless partizanship and the the fake news and the disinformation and just the, the the vitriol. We’re tired. And so she is something of an antidote to that rhetoric. And so it’s no wonder that she’s just written her first book called The Small and the mighty. And it is incredibly hopeful. The story of 12 really and truly like American heroes that you’ve never heard of throughout the throughout the story of America, these small people with a billion odds against them doing the right thing.

Jen
It’s so it’s such a great read and of course it’s told. Insurance voice it is. It rocketed up. It hit number one on the New York Times list when it first came out last week, and it was on the list again last week, and I, I assume it’s going to stay. Yes. And she is. She has this whole community that she calls governance darling.

Jen
She’s got a hit podcast called here’s where it Gets interesting. You can listen to that anywhere you listen to podcast. She’s got a newsletter called The Preamble and and if you’re not following her on Instagram, it’s time. It’s time. Basically, her Instagram Stories are a constant running history lesson about what’s going on that day, what’s going on that week, what’s real and what’s not real, what’s true and what’s not true.

Jen
And it just cuts through the crap. So she is smart, she is engaging. She deals in facts, not fiction. And you’re going to love her. We do. Our community does. The book club loves her. I chose the small and the mighty for the Jen Hatmaker Book Club this month, and we are reading it together. And so we’re delighted to welcome you in to this sort of front row seat with the incredible, the delightful Sharon McMahon.

Jen
Hello, hello.

Sharon
Hello, everybody. I’m so good. I’m in Chicago. I have a show. I was just telling Jen before we started that I had food that was supposed to be delivered a half an hour ago. I literally just got here. And, it hasn’t been delivered yet. And so at any moment, there’ll be a knock at the door and I’ll have to say, hold, please, and I’ll go get my shrimp cocktail.

Jen
That was my question. Shrimp cocktail, a bowl.

Sharon
And my and my burrata. Panzanella salad.

Amy
Oh, yeah.

Jen
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And here’s the good news. This particular moment is inside the Jen Hatmaker book club, the most delightful community holdover I’ve wanted for a thing where you’re like, I’m going to answer that question with a mouthful of romaine lettuce.

Sharon
That’s right. I mean, where are my friends? I feel I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t do it for nearly any. I would not let other people watch me eat, except for the Jen Hatmaker book club.

Jen
That’s right. And they will be like, this is what we do. This is how we are.

Sharon
Yes. Because you’re you’re a.

Jen
Cook and a cookbook author.

Sharon
And an Eden. And like cook, food is part of your entire Jen brand.

Jen
That’s right.

Sharon
Yes.

Jen
Night time thing where we’re gathering in the 7 p.m. hour, I am assuming people will have, chips, but probably glass of wine. Maybe. We don’t know about it. Ice cream? I don’t know. It’s all in, everything’s in. So we look forward to the other knock on your door. Okay, let’s let’s let’s get into this. Let’s get into this, because you you’ve been on a journey.

Jen
You’ve been on a journey. And the journey is, I would say nontraditional because at one point you were a a yarn influencer. You were a yarn entrepreneur, if you will. Yes.

Sharon
Yes.

Jen
The yarn Easter.

Sharon
Are you an Easter?

Jen
I mean.

Sharon

Jen
First of all, that’s exciting to know that that’s a thing I, I love the knowledge, and then the next thing you know, you’re on stages on a tour, and it’s just too real. Not obvious. A path from A to B. Now let’s discuss. Can you just if you just had to kind of come up here like 10,000ft up and go, here’s how this looked for me in my little bit to this, to this, to this, to today.

Sharon
Yeah. Okay. So I started college wanting to be a, physician. And I can still, like, in another lifetime. I can see how I would be good at that, you know what I mean? Like, I can see, like. Yeah, I would have been good at that job. But I had a moment in college where I was sitting in my undergrad, in an undergrad class, and I had an experience that I cannot explain.

Sharon
I still don’t have an explanation for it, where it was like this, almost like this knowing descended from the ceiling, like a Star Trek beam of light. I although I didn’t see a beam of light, but it was this moment of like, you are meant to be a teacher. And I was just like, in that moment, I was like, absolutely.

Sharon
That is absolutely correct. Wow. And there was not that not there was not a moment where I was like, no, really, I don’t I don’t know about that. I have this other I’m doing cadaver labs, you know what I mean? I in that moment, I was just like, absolutely. That is correct. And so I left all of my, you know, I finished out the semester and completely changed my major, became a teacher, taught in a variety of, you know, several different states.

Sharon
My very first year as a teacher, they made me teach A11 section of health in, like, an emergency setting, in which you had to show a childbirth movie. Jen.

Jen
Oh, my God, I remember this moment as a student like it was yesterday.

Sharon
And teach them it’s bleak. Excuse me. Please. Yes. Like it takes a special teacher to become a health teacher who’s like, I’ll teach the 16 year old boys about STDs. I’m cool with it. That was not. That was not me. That wasn’t it.

Jen
That wasn’t it for you.

Sharon
Not it for me, I’m sure.

Jen

Amy
Is that what pushed you into yarn?

Sharon
You sure you know these threads? Yeah. I did become, you know, so I. Most of the time, though, I talk government, I taught law, I taught history, and I did that for a long time. I only taught the health class at one time. And we moved around the country for my husband’s job, and I decided, you know, I learned how to knit when I was 12, and I, started doing some little custom knitting projects, like on the side, during holiday breaks and during the summer, and I remember very vividly I had this, one client that I was making a custom flower girl sweater for, and she was like, for

Sharon
a Thanksgiving wedding, and she wanted, this very specific look to this sweater that matched the rest of the decor of the wedding. And we could not find the right yarn anywhere. And she was like, why don’t you just try it? And I was like, but I don’t want to or show how to do that. She was like, just try, just try it.

Sharon
She kept urging me to just try it. And so I did, and it actually turned out really well, and it kind of blew up. And I started my yarn business as a side hustle while I was still teaching high school. And my yarn business became very successful, and I started, getting up at 2:00 in the morning.

Jen
Oh, my gosh.

Sharon
I would I would work from 2 to 6, when I had to get ready to go to school and I would go teach my classes and then I would, you know, pick up my kids from daycare and, then, like, package all of my packages and, like, zoom to the post office to try to get there before closed.

Sharon
And I did that for a while, and that was very, very challenging.

Jen
I’m sure to get out. Your kids were little, little ish.

Sharon
Yeah. They were like. They were like five and two.

Jen
Oh, yeah.

Sharon
Yeah, they were little. Yeah. So, eventually my yarn business got big enough that I needed to start hiring people and getting a space that wasn’t in my basement. Right.

Jen
Yeah, yeah.

Sharon
And so I would then, get up in the morning and go to my yarn studio and get everything set up for my employees to work on while I was not there during the day, while I was teaching. And then when I was done teaching, I would go to my yarn studio and like, oversee everything that was happening there.

Sharon
I foolishly entered a yarn dyeing contest.

Jen
No. Well, this is a bit of new knowledge that I just. Yes.

Sharon
The doorbell has rung.

Jen
Oh, it’s so exciting.

Sharon
Hold, hold. Water.

Jen
Shrimp cocktail coming in. Hot sounds.

Sharon
Have arrived. Just a second.

Jen
I can actually can’t wait to see it. Do you have any, history with knitting, crocheting, cross-stitching, sewing?

Amy
Oh, some cross-stitch. But yeah, my eyes aren’t good enough. Really. But no, I’ve tried with the knitting you have in the crocheting. Yes.

Jen
Does somebody teach you. Who?

Amy
I like other moms that do it all the time. Yeah. Yeah I just do it while they’re talking.

Jen
Oh yeah I’ve seen that like Sarah.

Amy
Bessey but I don’t have that blob of my brain. Is not communicating with the rest of my brain.

Jen
That could have been just really on brand for you as like a big time homeschool mom I know.

Amy
No, no, I’m like the only one that doesn’t.

Jen
I bet you are. I’m sorry. I hope that wasn’t a source of shame. No, no, you don’t care.

Amy
I’m just.

Jen
Joking. I’m. I’m impressed with the skill set. Every time Sarah Bessey comes into my orbit and she holds something up, like a whole sweater, and then she puts it on her body, I’m like, you made that piece of clothing with your hands and just a ball of yarn. It makes no sense to me. I am, I’m fascinated and I can kind of see how it probably feels.

Amy
Yeah.

Jen
What’s the, you know, like how people talk about when they run and their brain just, like, gets free to just think thoughts because their bodies on autopilot.

Amy
I’ve heard people say.

Jen
It to those that haven’t experienced it now, but I want to. It’s exciting. Let’s have a look. Let’s.

Sharon
It’s a nice shrimp cocktail.

Jen
I love shrimp cocktail. For the record, are you like, like a cocktail sauce with it? Like. Yes. Yeah.

Sharon
Yes. It’s one of those things that, like, it’s hard to screw up in a hotel, you know what I mean? Like, you cannot put cocktail sauce in a dish and bring me some shrimp with it. Then there’s no hope. You know what I mean? Like you really? You can screw up a lot of things, but it’s hard to screw up a shrimp cocktail.

Jen
This is really good. Travel thoughts. Like what is probably going to be a slam dunk here? Yes a Hyatt. That’s right. It’s on any given purchase.

Sharon
Shrimp and I don’t even care if it’s homemade shrimp cocktail over the counter. Shrimp cocktails. Fine. I mean, our cocktails. Much is fine.

Jen
Just dump it out of the jar.

Sharon
Literally dip it in a cup. That’s all I need.

Jen
That’s right. I really appreciate your good choices you’re making. I tend to trust and over, identify with the hotel. Chicken fingers and French fries. Yeah. Less good for you, less good for you. But they generally work.

Sharon
They generally work. If you have a fryer, they’re hard to screw up.

Jen
I mean, I know they came out of the freezer, I do, I don’t I know they’re not cutting up a chicken down there and breading it by hand.

Sharon
Insisted though it’s consistent. That’s what.

Jen
It is. Also, if you dunk it in enough honey mustard, well onward. You know, like all you just taste is the sauce. And that’s fine with me as well. So okay.

Sharon
So back to my brewery. Long story to answer your question. Then I’ll be done talking about this. I won a contest. I entered a yarn dying contest and won, like, multiple awards. Like, I think it was like 4 or 5 awards. Okay. And that caused my business to literally blow up. I had over 6000 orders placed on my website in a 48 hour period for handmade products.

Sharon
That’s pretty much in an Etsy store, having 6000 orders placed in 48 hours. And you have to make all this stuff. And a lot of people were ordering lots of things. It wasn’t just like one trinket I’m like, I’m making everything.

Jen
Oh, how did you do? That’s not possible.

Sharon
It it took me months and months and months and months and months to make it all.

Jen
And I had to like dog out of it.

Sharon
Yes. Yes. And I cried through most of it. I cried through most of it. It was, it was. I very much wanted to just return all of the money and, get a job at target. Sure. That’s what I very much wanted to do. And in fact, I did apply to a job at target. And my husband was like, excuse me.

Sharon
You have whatever. You have a job.

Jen
You have two jobs, to be honest.

Sharon
And I was like, yeah, but now we’ve gotten kind of used to the income from my side job. Now I can like, I’ll just get rid of that and I’ll get this other side job at target. And he was like, this is you are banana pants. Go away. No, we’re not working at target. But I did get hired at target.

Sharon
I that’s my claim to fame. Oh, they got caught.

Jen
Could have been, you know.

Sharon

Jen
Just, you know, keep it in your hip pocket. We never know where it’s going to take us. And there may come a day. You get the red vest. We’re not sure I, I.

Sharon
Wouldn’t, I wouldn’t say never.

Jen
No, no. Okay. Moving forward in the story because to be honest, especially in today’s day and age where it’s really celebrated and it’s a super exciting idea to find a way to make your fun side passion, hobby, your main thing. Like that’s a big story that we hear a lot. So you’ve actually done that. You had taken your fun side hobby and made it this huge successful.

Jen
You could have said, this is who I am now. I am the only star and I win awards and I die. I know you are an award winning yada Jaan Dyer and and I’m going to build a little yarn empire and you were on your way to doing it. And so why then did all of this get interrupted?

Jen
And how did we get closer to where you are right now?

Sharon
Yeah, I moved my yarn business back to my hometown of Minnesota, and brought some of my employees with me, built out a huge studio, quit my teaching job, move back to Minnesota. And I did that for a number of years, and, was very successful at it. I traveled all over the country and like, taught workshops and, you know, it was I was good at it.

Sharon
And, eventually one of the workshops that I got asked to teach all the time was how to take pictures of your, like, finished knitting projects. And not to make a long story short, launched what became a lengthy, career in photography. I was a I worked for nine years as a, photographer, photographer. And, did that until 2020.

Sharon
So I eventually yeah, I eventually sold my yarn business, and open photography studio very, very busy doing that. And then everything changed in 2020, and, my husband got, stage five renal failure. And at that time, Covid was so novel and new that there were no treatments for it, no vaccines, nothing like that yet.

Sharon
And people with stage five renal failure had a 30% chance of death.

Jen
Gosh.

Sharon
Which is like those odds that most people would play with. Right. If I said, if you’re going to have a 1 in 3 chance of dying if you get in this car, most people would not get in the car. Right? So, that, you know, just made it especially, challenging for us, that we really could not risk Chris getting sick, from Covid until they figured out some kind of treatment for it.

Sharon
And unfortunately, they have. And, you know, the odds are much better now than they were initially. But that put a halt on my, photography business because, you know, nobody wants their picture taken with masks, and that’s very understandable. But I also could not afford, even if my health would have been okay, I could not afford to spread Covid to Chris.

Jen
Totally.

Sharon
And so it’s.

Jen
I still locked down?

Sharon
Yes. Yes. Very, very isolating. Circumstance. And then in August of 2020, my mom donated a kidney to a stranger in Wisconsin so Chris could get a kidney from a stranger from Texas.

Jen
I have goosebumps.

Sharon
Yes, yes. A 26 year old electrician, from San Antonio, was, working on a hospital project and listening to a podcast while he’s working, like doing the rewiring whatever in the hospital. And, the podcast was talking about people who are good Samaritan, organ donors, people who donate either portion of their liver or donate a kidney into the system, so to speak, the the organ matching system without an intended recipient.

Sharon
Intended recipients, just hoping that the system will match it with somebody who can use it. Most people who donate donate to an intended recipient or on behalf intended recipient, which is understandable. But this guy did not. And, as part of a donor chain, you know, like I said, my mom participated as well. And so then, you know, Chris’s health was extremely fragile at the end of 2020 because of both the pandemic and also, going through an organ transplant is extremely hard on your body, just festive circumstances.

Sharon
So we had to relocate, to, to near the transplant center. There wasn’t one near us. It’s not just like an operation and go home. You have to have daily blood work for weeks and weeks and weeks, and, so we had to, like, take our kids and move to, like, a tiny little crappy Airbnb rental, trying to take care of Chris, trying to keep his kids occupied, trying to not get Covid at target.

Sharon
You know, like just trying to keep.

Jen
Up Covid school like. Yes. Hi.

Sharon
Yes, trying to keep everybody healthy and safe. And so it forced me to, have time on my hands that I had never, ever had before, running, you know, having little kids running multiple businesses, you know, teaching school and doing all this traveling and whatever. I had never had the opportunity to have no job, outside of, you know, outside of the home before, so Covid in many ways was, you know, was a terrible thing, that nobody wants to replicate.

Sharon
But it also created a very unique set of circumstances for me that allowed me, the on ramp to, do what I’m doing now.

Jen
How did that go? How did that work? Because there’s one thing about. And then I got online a little bit and did some little things to. And then I wrote a bestseller and went on a speaking tour in a bunch of theaters that sold out. Like that is not a guaranteed path.

Sharon
No.

Jen

Sharon
I started noticing that there were a lot of people who were really, confidently rung on the internet in the year of our Lord, 2020 ten for Disney.

Jen
The truth of it hurts his feelings. Yeah.

Sharon
2020. There were a few dudes named Chad who were real confidently wrong on the internet, saying things like, the Electoral College is a university you could graduate from.

Jen
For example.

Sharon
Which is just like, that’s not even an opinion, Chad. Okay.

Jen
That’s just that’s false. Yeah, yeah.

Sharon
So I started the very first videos that I made were from this little, like, rental house, near the Mayo Clinic. And Chris, you know, was sleeping like 18 hours a day, and the kids were real busy playing on the Wii. And cable, you know what I mean? Like not interacting with the world. And, you know, I could only clean the kitchen so many times and I decided that instead of, arguing with Chad in the comments that I would just make some little videos explaining how it actually works.

Sharon
And the rest, as they say, is history. They became popular, especially with local news stations like news stations and radio stations who were looking for somebody to explain to their viewers and listeners what to expect in the run up to the election. What should we expect after the election? But without delving into this like, and you should vote for this person, a lot of pundits have a very strong ideological skew, and that’s not especially useful to local media who cannot afford to alienate half of their viewing or listening audience.

Sharon
So I started getting booked to be on all of these, like radio programs and TV programs around the country. And then the election happened and it was bananas. Yeah. And then it went, and then January 6th happened, and that was bananas. That’s right. And, that’s that’s the genesis of how I started doing what I’m doing.

Amy
And now you’ve built this incredible community with Sharon says. So by being approachable and fact driven.

Jen
Yeah.

Amy
How have you translated that into your writing process.

Sharon
Yeah I, I wrote this book as a love letter to this community. It wasn’t because I couldn’t think of another hobby. I have no trouble occupying myself, obviously. Right. I can find something to busy myself with. I can find another book to read. I can listen to another, I can, I can invent a different business, you know what I mean?

Sharon
So this was not born out of a, a lack of activities or boredom. I wrote the entire thing thinking about who needed to hear this. And I hope it shows, you know, like, I hope people read it and feel like that was exactly what I needed. And it’s not what everybody needs, but it’s what some people need, and that’s, that’s is that it will land in the right hands and in the right hearts.

Sharon
And so I really wanted my own sort of voice to come through in the book so that you would read it and knows me. But if you didn’t know me, that you would still enjoy it, that you didn’t necessarily have to know me in order to enjoy it. But if you did know me, there’d be like those little like.

Sharon
I see what you did there. You know, like there’d be those little Easter eggs if you do know me. So that’s, that’s, you know, it took a while to land on this concept when publishers started approaching me. They had other ideas for what I could do. And a lot of those were really good ideas, but I just kept coming back to what?

Sharon
What will what is what will serve the people that I care about, in this moment in time. And that’s how I landed on, what I landed on. And I just wanted it to feel like. Would mean something to somebody.

Jen
You know, obviously, this is our book club selection for the I. So everybody on with us that is live streaming with us has this the small and mighty in their hot little hands. And, I love this structure because you could have I am a imagining that publishers were coming to you saying, why don’t you write a book on ethical, civic engagement or something more instructional, something very like.

Jen
Oh, right. Like, let’s let’s give a template to the people. Like, this is how the maps. Yes, yes. Like a prescriptive instructional. Oh, yes, I get it that there’s a place for that, of course. But you have chosen for people because this, episode is going out to the, the big community. You’ve chosen essentially to tell the story of, is it 12 or 13?

Sharon
I took 12 people to this characters.

Jen
Yeah, 12 American people throughout history, most of whom we’ve never heard us. And they were they they occupied kind of a smaller zip code in the American psyche. When it comes to the stories that we’ve chosen to retell, you know, decade after decade. And yet all their contributions were so profound, so special. So I and many, many, many points was I like.

Amy
Oh, I love.

Sharon
I love her.

Jen
I love this.

Sharon
Yeah.

Jen
And so it was a, an interesting and a bold and the I think the right choice to say I’m going to tell other people’s stories. That’s what I’m going to. That’s the scaffolding. And I’m going to build on it. And I’m curious. We’ve both of course read every word. Amy listened to it. She listened to read.

Amy
It was good.

Jen
Thank you. I’m curious and I think I might know because I think you mentioned this at the at your event. I’m in Austin, but did you have just a real favorite? Okay. I really have two questions. I’m sorry. First of all, how do you pick 12 out of the canon of people who contributed to America?

Sharon
Yeah, yeah.

Jen
How even how even how did you even find some of these people I’ve never heard of? Yeah. And then out of the 12 that you finally selected, I’m guessing there was a big cutting room floor. Did you have a favorite?

Sharon
You know, I have an affinity for each person in this book for different reasons. It’s a little bit like being asked to choose your favorite child, but yet there is a child in your family that you get along with. The best. Even if you would never say, you are my favorite, I love you the most, even if that’s not actually how you feel.

Sharon
There is always a child in your orbit that, like your personalities, just gel better than other people’s personalities and it doesn’t mean that you love them more. But but nevertheless, that’s a little bit I feel about this. It’s just, our viewpoints just gelled, and I just feel like I would meet you in real life, and we would be friends.

Sharon
That’s. You know how I feel about her. And that person for me is, sexual macaque. I do have other people that I’m like, I just love you so much. I love every person in this book for different reasons. But she is just there’s really something about her that is really, really special.

Jen
Did you know her already or did you find her?

Sharon
I did not know her. I had I had seen her name because it’s a unique name, right? It’s a unique name. So I had seen her name in all of my research about the civil rights movement I had. You know, there’s a there’s a big list of people, especially women, who never, ever get the credit when it comes to the civil rights movement.

Sharon
It’s the attorneys, it’s the Thurgood Marshall, it’s the Fred Gray’s, it’s the, Martin Luther King’s. And of course, what they did is incredibly important. It’s not a discounting of their contribution, but, even, you know, all of the women involved in the civil rights movement will tell you that the men in the civil rights movement were super sexist.

Sharon
They will tell you that straight up. They said they found they found Martin Luther King to be sexist. And that’s not okay. It doesn’t diminish what he did. It’s just the it’s just a fact. Yes. He just was he he had a sort of paternalistic view of, like, men should be in charge and women should make the coffee and type things.

Sharon
Yeah. You know, so, but there were a lot of women who with whom, without their contributions, this hot air balloon does not get off the ground right there is there is no leaving leaving the ground without the significant contributions of women. And there were a number of women, especially in the civil rights section, that I that ended up getting cuts that I, really would have loved to be able to, include, even people that I didn’t get a chance to talk about at the book tour.

Sharon
Who just they were out there, doing the next needed thing, like, okay, we’re having a bus boycott. I’m going to drive my white Cadillac around around Montgomery. I am going to give people free rides where they need to go, and I’m going to make sure just to be a little bit extra subversive, I’m going to pull my car, immediately in front of the busses so that all of these bus drivers, they get to see my face and they know my car, and they know my name, and they know who I am.

Sharon
Like, she wasn’t trying to hide what she was doing. There was no, like, secretly give me a jingle. She was out there. Just what are the people need today? They need to get to work. I’m going to give them a ride. And she eventually has a huge, run in with the police, and, it’s just, you know, there’s a million stories like that of people who, just kept doing the next needed thing, without necessarily this grand design of some day I’m going to go down in the history books.

Sharon
And I, I love all of those kinds of stories. And Septa my is a really fantastic example of that. Because she had such a long career and because she was an educator and because she was in many ways the mother of the civil rights movement, she writes her own sort of memoirs. She writes, you know, a couple volumes of her own story.

Sharon
And so that that makes her life really, it colonizes her life. And, you know, takes it from the black and white, the black and white pictures that you see of her. And it makes her three dimensional, and hearing her own story, in her own words, was really impactful for me. And again, she she does not shy away from the spotlight.

Sharon
She knows she’s going to get fired if she continues doing the right thing. And she does the right thing anyway, and she does get fired. And it is that moment, where it seems as though tragedy has struck. And then she takes that suffering, the totality of her life circumstances, and she uses it for the good of other people, right?

Sharon
Not her own self enrichment, not to put her name on the side of a building, not to have a bunch of marble statues of her own face, but she uses her own, circumstances, much like many of us did during Covid. Our life circumstances were such that we, were forced to make changes in our own lives.

Sharon
And for some of us, we turned that suffering into something meaningful. And, she’s just a wonderful example of that. And she later goes on to get elected to the Charleston, trusted school board, the same school board that denies her the opportunity to work in the schools because of her skin color. She later gets elected, and she, she’s an influence on what the Charleston public schools become because she refuses to, she refuses to back down in what she knew was right, and I just.

Jen
I can’t I love.

Sharon
Her, I know now like, there’s there’s one of the things I think about sometimes is whatever people believe about, you know, an afterlife or some people believe in heaven and some, you know, there’s a variety of ways people think about this topic. But, if there is, an afterlife, we always think about, like, our own family, that we’ll see something like, I see my grandma again someday, or, you know, or we think about, like, my dad has passed away.

Sharon
Yeah. I hope my dad’s watching. I hope my dad’s proud of me. Like, whatever it is, I often think about, like, all of the really great people from history that I would someday get to meet. Like, that’s an exciting thing for me to think about. Like, maybe someday I would get to meet Septimus Clark. That is very exciting.

Sharon
Very exciting idea for me.

Jen
That’s so funny tastic. I love it so much. We’ve got our community. You know, we’re in the middle of reading. It’s the middle of the month, so half of us are finished half or somewhere in the middle. But we’ve got a handful of questions that people have already submitted for you. We’re going to get to those, and then we’re going to see if we’ve got any.

Jen
So everybody watching right now, everybody with us, we’re going to throw a question real quick, to Sharon that you guys submitted. And then we’ll open it up to you. And if you’ve got a question out there, you’re up next. Do you have any do you have that first question?

Amy
I do, from Amy Carruthers. She says, what are the top three things we need to do as a country to make progress in moving democracy forward?

Sharon

Jen
Easy. It’s easy. Very, very breezy. Just top three. Top three. How do we save democracy? Just get us save it.

Sharon
Well, the first thing that, you know, that comes to mind, is that we have to stop viewing this as a zero sum game in which our enemies must be defeated. The zero sum game, is in which somebody must be destroyed is, is an onramp to dictatorship. That’s what that is. There are no thriving democracies that have one political party.

Sharon
And so the idea is in a two party system like the United States has, which, again, you can make a lot of arguments that that’s not the best system to have. But nevertheless, it is what the reality of today, destroying one of the political parties is cannot be the goal. We need multiple healthy political parties.

Sharon
And so we have to stop viewing it as from the perspective of, in order for me to win, I have to destroy you. And, we have to realize that democracy exists. Based on consensus building, we have to build consensus. We have to build coalitions that work together to achieve common good. And that is exactly what the civil rights movement did.

Sharon
They took people from disparate backgrounds. People with some people were really religious. Some people were not. Some people were really militant. Some people were more accommodation. It’s like there were a variety of different viewpoints. But what they could rally around is that we need to get the Voting Rights Act passed. Right. It was not complete agreement in all aspects of our rights, not complete agreement in all aspects of our theology.

Sharon
But, we need to get this Voting Rights Act passed and that required consensus building. And it required coalition building. So that’s the first thing is we have to shift away from this modern perspective of, like, y’all have to be destroyed. The second thing is that we, people need to, stop waiting for somebody else to come save us, that there is not somebody on a white horse who’s about to ride in with the plan.

Sharon
Who is here to be like I. I’ve come up with the plan to save democracy. I think many of us feel like we’re in this season of waiting, and we’re waiting for, like, the person to make it happen. And we meet some of us. Pin that on an individual or a person getting elected. But but in reality, we’re the plan, right?

Sharon
Democracy comes from a Greek word that means government of the people. That’s right. It does not mean government of the leaders or government of the people with the plan. Anybody who says I alone can save us, I am. You’re whatever. Like I’m the person who, like that person wants to be a dictator. They for sure do.

Sharon
They might not say it with their mouth, but they’re saying it with their actions. So it is, we need to realize that we, in fact, are the plan. And that is going to require us to do something. We cannot just do nothing and expect someone else to save us. And I guess the third thing I would say, is that there are many, many, many ways, to be involved in democracy.

Sharon
And I think people think it’s like voting and running for office. And those are just two ideas. There’s a lot of ideas of ways that you can help protect democracy that fit with your personality, that fit with your, way that you operate in the world. If you are an extrovert, there are ways that you could be involved.

Sharon
If you are like, I don’t enjoy leaving the house, there are ways that you can be involved. There’s not one prescription, for how to be involved in democracy. My son is working for a congressional campaign right now and he’s like extrovert times 100. Yeah, he loves it so much. He’s in all the parades. He drives the truck that pulls the float in 50 parades all summer.

Sharon
And he loves to be out talking to the people, doing the fundraisers, passing out the shirts and the water bottles and giving the candy like that is so fun for him. And that makes me want to. I would sooner die. Yeah, I’m not doing that. I’m sorry. I’m not.

Jen
That’s your way.

Sharon
No. And thank God there’s people like him to do that job. I will talk to talk on a stage in front of 3000 people. But I will not drive your float.

Jen
I will not. I literally understand the difference.

Sharon
Yes, yes, yes.

Jen
I get.

Sharon
It. I’m not going to your parade. That’s right. I’m not doing that. I’m not. I’m not casting shade on the parade. I’m not saying the parade is a bad idea. It’s just not for me. Right? I will do the things that I’m good at, and everybody can contribute in their own way. And that is not just okay.

Sharon
That’s needed and necessary. We can’t all be parade goers.

Jen
What a great answer. This is from Karen Parker.

Jen
What are your thoughts or predictions about public education? And she says public preschool teacher from South Carolina and a governor Grant recipient. So big fan of you.

Sharon
Thank you.

Jen
Great question.

Sharon
My predictions about public education. Yeah. Well, the predictions are going to be, highly dependent on who gets elected. Right? And.

Jen
That’s true.

Sharon
That the two presidential candidates have very different visions for what public education will look like. But I think it’s also important to remember that public education is largely governed by states, and that the federal government has a more limited role in public education than the states do. So who is going who gets elected in your state matters so much?

Sharon
I think we we put all of our, you know, put on our edge of this, like, I need this president or this president to win. In reality, the things that really affect your daily life are defined at the state and local level. So, I do think some states are going to continue to funnel public money into, vouchers into tuition vouchers into they’re going to funnel public money into private schools.

Sharon
That’s going to continue happening in some states, in other states, it’s not going to be the case at all. And that has everything to do with who is elected in those states.

Jen
Yeah.

Sharon
So, that’s that’s just a trend now that the Supreme Court sort of opened the door to give public funds to, private religious schools, I think that’s going to just continue to be a trend in some parts of the country. Yeah.

Amy
Another question from Melissa. Meyer, she asks, as we, the people approach the moment of voting in this 2024 election, what would you have us remember? For ourselves?

Jen
I like that as we close it out. That’s a good game. We’re all stressed, Sharon McMann, more anxious. This is a lot in the world.

Sharon
Yes. Your first of all, you’re not alone. I’m feeling that way. I think overwhelmingly the most common emotion is like a feeling of anxiety. So don’t feel like. Because this is hard, I’m doing it wrong. That is, how people throughout history have felt. The people who wrote the Dingding constitution felt anxiety about it. They worried.

Sharon
And this is in the book. They worried that it wouldn’t be good enough. They worried that it wasn’t going to hold. They worried that the country would fall to despotism and anarchy. And then they said, we hoped better things. We worried that this might be true, but we hoped better things. And, I, I think it behooves us to remember that our ancestors did not wake up one morning with the blue skies and the birds chirping, feeling this incredible feeling of hope descend upon them.

Sharon
That it was that hope was a choice that they made. We hoped better things. Despite our external circumstances. Nothing had changed in their environment. Nothing had changed. That made them feel an incredible sense of hope. It was a hope that they chose, not a hope that they felt. And so that’s one of the my wishes for people, is that you will remember that despite your external circumstances, despite perhaps the wrong person winning an election, despite of all of the calamity that is on every single news station 24 hours a day.

Sharon
That despite all of that, you can continue to choose to have hope. And that is the fertile soil from which good things grow. We cannot grow good things from a place of hopelessness. If we want things to change, we have to have hope that they can, and our ancestors show us exactly what that look like. They did not grow weary in doing good, and it doesn’t mean that they never felt tired.

Sharon
It doesn’t mean they never felt beat down. It doesn’t mean that the world was fair to them because it wasn’t. But what it did mean was that they continued, to do what they could, where they were with the resources available to them, and they rested when necessary so that they would not grow weary in doing good. And that is was available to, people of the past who’ve lived in terrible circumstances, who lived in poverty, who lived under Jim Crow laws, whose parents were enslaved, who, faced incredible discrimination, who were falsely imprisoned that was accessible to all of them.

Sharon
And it is accessible to each one of us today. And I want us to remember that we are not beholden to our external circumstances, that we can choose to continue to orient our spirits towards hope. And that is the place from where positive things can grow.

Jen
Good question. On that note.

Amy
My.

Jen
Goodness, on that mic drop note. Thank you for that. That’s a good word. It’s a good word. Hope is fertile soil. Thank you for saying that. I think we all needed to hear that. We love your book clearly. We love you. And this feels like such a nourishing, hopeful, inspiring conversation to rally around right at this exact moment.

Jen
So the timeliness is so perfect and I thank you for this dedicated time to my community and.

Sharon
So happy to do it.

Jen
We’re just so delighted to have you among us. And so we invite you to go to your salad.

Sharon
To your thank you for putting up with me, trying to shove a little shrimp in my mouth.

Jen
We’d have it no other way. We’re cheering for you. How much longer on the tour? How many more stops?

Sharon
It is five. It’s six more. Okay. I’m over halfway. Done. Yep, yep. Got it. I got this. It’s going really well. It’s going really.

Jen
Well. Yeah, we can attest. Okay. Eat your food. Watch your little show. Do you have a hotel show?

Sharon
No. I need a hotel show, though. Yeah, yeah. You need suggestions?

Jen
Yeah. Yeah. You need something like real light. Real. The top half of the glass. You know, I like that. Have you seen loot with. No. Maya Rudolph show. Just a comedy queen of mine. So that just. Okay.

Sharon
What? What? Where would one find this apple? Apple. Okay, okay.

Jen
I’d be delighted.

Sharon
I need that.

Jen
Light. Or how about with Jean smart hacks? Either one of these does pick up. Trust us to know these are in time. Hotel show.

Sharon
Okay, great. Perfect, I get that.

Jen
Okay. All right, that’s it. Off you go. Happy to see.

Sharon
You. Thanks, everybody.

Jen
Thanks for joining us, everybody.

Sharon
Thank you. Yes.

Jen
We barely scratched the surface, you guys. There’s a billion things we did to Amy. And I literally left out 15 questions. Yes. That we wanted to ask her. Didn’t get to. There’s so much else to say about her book that we did not get to. So what we would love for you to do is find out more about Sharon on your own.

Jen
And if you go to Jen hatmaker.com under the podcast tab, we’ll have this whole episode. And what we will do for you is round up all things Sharon, her social handles, her newsletter, her podcast link, a link to her book, All the Things okay and so that you can you can find her if this conversation is interesting to you or helpful to you, or if it feels a little bit like a relief to be able to talk about politics in this way, that’s what you get with her.

Jen
So, on behalf of Amy and I, you guys, we are so glad to have you in our little pod community. You mean the world to us. And thanks for being here.

Jen
I’ll see you next week.

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