[upbeat music] It's Quinn. Maybe you're like me, and sometimes you just spiral out, not just because everything is a lot all of the time, but because some part of you actually wants to do something about it. But, I mean, holy shit, where to start, right? Great news. We built an app for that. It's called What Can I Do? Even better news, it's free and it's fast. It takes just three clicks to start unfucking the world. Visit whatcanido.earth to get started for free.
[upbeat music] Turns out it's our 200th episode. Who can know? To be fair, I think at some point I did some episodes, like, without numbers or were special numbers for some stupid reason. I don't know. Maybe it's more than that. But the point is, we're calling this one 200 'cause Willow's in charge, and that's the way it works, and why not? It has been a journey.
Maybe we'll do a special bonus episode about that, maybe bring Brian back for a little convo, bring Willow on to talk about all the mistakes she regrets making, like signing up for this. The point is, the show is now called The Most Important Question, and I can't think of a better answer than just fucking run for something. That's the answer to what can I do? Run for something. Anywhere, right? And so obviously,
the best guest to answer that question, a returning guest for, I don't know, third, fourth time, something like that, it's the great Amanda Litman. Yeah. What can I do about anything? Run for something. Here's the spiel.
Every week, thousands of people ask us the most important question in this world, and every week I turn around and ask someone who actually knows what the hell they're talking about the same question, someone who's already answered it for themselves, who's working on the front lines of the future, in this case, growing herself the next generation of policymakers. But it could be someone in global health. We've done Alzheimer's research and food and water, AI, climate change, you name it.
I find out why they're doing the work they're doing and what we can do to support it, to join it, to run for something, or to fund other people to run for something, to find our own way to the front lines of the future, 'cause this is not ideal. There's a lot that's great. There's a lot that's not great. We're gonna build something better, and it's really helpful if you run for something. I am your host, Quinn Emmett, and again, my guest is Amanda Litman.
If you are new here, she is the co-founder and president of Run for Something, which recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office, state and local, which is a million different variations. Since launching in 2017, a hundred years ago, Run for Something has elected more than 1,500 leaders across nearly 50 states, and mostly women and people of color.
She's also the president of Run for Something Civics, a 501[c][3] that works to end the gerontocracy. Shortly after launching Run for Something, Amanda wrote a book. It was called Run for Something: A Real-Talk Guide to Fixing the System Yourself, and that was published, again, in 2017. She just published her second book, and it's called When We're in Charge: The Next Generation's Guide to Leadership, and it came out in May from Crooked Media Reads. It's wonderful.
It's hugely instructive, whether you are young or old and very brittle like me. It doesn't pull any punches at all because it's by Amanda, and I think anyone in any profession in the year of our Lord 2025, whether this is the last year or not, I think you'll get something out of it, and that's whether you're a leader or just not yet.
For questions or feedback, email us at questions@importantnotimportant.com. You can leave us a review. Those are always great. Our 200th episode, really appreciate it. If you've made it through every one of them, I'm sorry and thank you. Fuck it. Let's go talk to Amanda. 200 more. [upbeat music] Let's do this. Amanda Litman is back. I have
a lot prepared and a little prepared, 'cause you've been on this show a thousand times. But also, things I didn't realize until 10 minutes ago, this is our 200th episode. I had no idea. Quinn. Who knew? Who knew? Somebody. Fantastic. Great. Everything is going great out there. It's had the impact we needed it to have. Perfect. It's great.
But I dragged you back onto this because we're gonna talk about your book in a second, but the impetus was not just the book, but right around the same time the book came out, we got, whatever, 50,000, 60,000 monthly readers, and we love to poll them on shit, right, so that they give us, like, firsthand info so we're not creepy. We wanna know what they give a shit about and why. And we asked them, "Have you ever considered running for local office?"
And the results we got back numbers-wise were very interesting, but we got some really amazing comments. And I was like, "I think Amanda should answer these," because this is what you fucking do all day is people responding to why or why not or never thought about it and all this different stuff. And your job today is to convert some of these people. But first, how is the book going? It's great.
So for those people who are not watching or just listening, so When We're in Charge is my new-ish book, came out in May. Still new. I think that counts as new. Sure. Yeah. About Millennial and Gen Z leadership- Mm-hmm... and what it means to lead in a way that doesn't suck and that treats people compassionately and, like, humans first and employees and team members second, and what it might make possible in our lives if more places were like that.
Like, how could you be a better partner, a better parent, a better citizen, a better community member if your job didn't suck your soul dry at the end of the day?You know, I will admit for a lot of my work stuff I will read them on Kindle or Kobo or whatever so I can highlight them, and I'm scrolling through.
I have exactly 101 highlights from it. But what really sticks out to me the most about the book is it's just this, like, ethos of you can just do stuff. Like, y- you can make it not terrible. You can make that choice for your workplace. You have incredible agency if you decide to. I think that's the thing that is both my personal pet peeve and my professional one is actually things don't have to suck if we make different decisions. Mm-hmm. They just don't. All of it is a choice.
Sometimes it's a choice other people are making, sometimes it's a choice we are making, but all of this is a choice, and we actually are not beholden to the way we did things yesterday as the way we have to do them tomorrow. And I feel like one of the sort of threads throughout that applies itself in a bunch of different ways, but is so applicable to society and how we feel the need to have an opinion on everything, is boundaries.
Boundaries between fucking boomers who won't give up their job in whatever capacity, and young people, but also you and your team and yourself and online, all these different things. How did you realize that is really a big move? 'Cause again, you hear about everybody, and you're so good in here talking about, "No, don't bring your whole self to work, please, but design some boundaries so you can bring your best work self."
You know, I think part of the way you learn that mistake is by making it. [laughs] So most of the people I talked to for the book, and I talked to more than 130 leaders across a bunch of different sectors in tech, in education, faith leaders, doctors, lawyers, across the world. Well, across the country. And I kept hearing folks tell me, "You know, I thought I could be myself with my team, but I can't, and I've learned that the hard way.
I posted the thing on social media that got the blow-back, and that's how I learned the boundary." Sometimes you have to learn it by crossing it. So I have found that throughout my own experience as a leader. It's something candidates learn in real time- Yeah... through the politicians you've worked with over the years. And it is a thing that I hope up-and-coming leaders can really not have to learn the hard way.
You know, one of my mantras, try to only make new mistakes. Don't make the old ones. We've already made the old ones. You don't have to repeat our mistakes. Mm-hmm. New mistakes, right? We'll forgive those all the time. When we go to a public pool and I show my kids the rules and there's always one obscure one, I'm like, "It's there because someone did that, and they were like- Uh-huh... don't, you can't fucking do it anymore." Yeah.
Which, like, I bet they didn't know they needed that as a rule. Nope. Until they- And it's really annoying to have to change the sign, but here we are, so we're changing the fucking sign. I'm curious, again, because, okay, I'm... You know, we, our generation, and I'm, like, Methusel- of, o- I feel like I'm 400 at this point, but we really did grow up online. Like, you...
This specific part about, and I feel like this is all my Instagram is programmed to be now. It's just, like, '90s stuff. It's about away messages, and I'm like, the thought I put into those to make sure to match whoever I was trying to connect with, the whole thing. We've always been so thoughtful, but at the same time, we have a paper trail like it's nobody's business that goes way back.
But these folks, these younger folks, Gen Z, like, their paper trail is much more of a kaleidoscope. It's in more places. It's more raw. If video cameras live had existed when we were in college, like, I'm sure I'd be in one of many prisons.
I think every day how grateful I am to have gone to college just before, like, cell phones all had really good cameras. Like, I remember using my digital camera and taking the little scan card out- Mm-hmm... and plugging it into the, uh, for my computer and uploading the photos, then uploading the Facebook album and going through and doing all of the tagging and being really careful about which photos and who was going to get tagged and what.
Like, the OG photo dump, and I am so grateful that, one, I deleted all that shit years ago. Mm-hmm. But two, that I did not have iPhones, or BlackBerrys didn't have cameras like that at the time, 'cause no one needed to see what we were doing. No, no, no. That's between me and my... You know? True. Yeah, 100%, and nothing...
By the way, talking about parenting again, nothing will undermine your parenting than your children finding out that you're a real person that lived a real life at one point. It's not great. But I do wanna talk about this because as much as, what's the phrase, there's always a tweet, right? That somebody comes up, it's great, and then we discover they said something horrific years ago. We all did shit like that. First of all, delete your shit if you're past that and not a child anymore.
But you do talk about, you know, you talk about a young woman who ran for office, and she posted some picture of herself on the beach doing something. Yeah. A state senator in Rhode Island posted a video of herself twerking as part of her campaign sort of social media. And what I loved here is you wrote, "But fuck 'em, because Tiara h- handily won the re-election.
As she explained to me, the folks that were meant to get it, got it, and the folks that didn't get it are the folks that were never meant to get it. The pearl-clutching racists may not have liked her TikToks, but the young people who showed up at the polls sure did." It doesn't go that way every time, though. No.
It doesn't, but I think it was part of what Tiara's brand was and the story that she was telling about her campaign. Mm-hmm. Like, I think it felt true to... I mean, it is true to her. It's who she really is. She's a Gen Z queer Black woman who, like, is very on the level, very blunt about how she presents herself, and also incredibly thoughtful about her advocacy for tenants and working families in Rhode Island, for reproductive health, for sexual education across the state.
Like, it's part of the reason that she got into the race in the first place. She was running against an anti-choice incumbent, an anti-gay incumbent back in her first election in 2018, I think. Fact check me if I'm wrong. It worked for her because it reflected her. Mm-hmm. I think the candidates for whom it doesn't work for, more often than not, it's because it so clearly undermines the story they're telling about themselves. Mm-hmm.
That's, you know, one of the arguments of the book, is there's actually not a right or a wrong way anymore to do social media, to do personal branding, to, you know, show up with a dress code.
There is the way that serves your goals or the way that doesn't. And that's why when... I mean, you have a fucking manifesto of a checklist in here about how people should consider each of those things in, on each platform, and you talked about how youLive in different spaces a little differently Doesn't make you any less true. Like, the version of me on Instagram, and the version of me on LinkedIn, and the version of me on Twitter or X, whatever we're calling it, those are all me.
They're just, you know, thoughtful about the audience and the story that I'm trying to tell there. They're considered. They're considered, and that doesn't make it inauthentic. And I think that's something where people are like, "Oh, it's fake, it's calculated, it's manipulated." No. Dudes, it's strategic and goal-oriented. Mm-hmm. There's a difference. It doesn't make it not real.
So there's a great part in here where you talk about your romance novels, which is more or less what I wanna talk about most of the time, but we'll get back there. Great. Because you started your organization, Run For Something. I love it. You love it. We all love it. Ups and downs. Amazingly influential. It's my favorite place. It's all I talk about. [upbeat music] Hey, I have three kids. They eat so much. We try to eat real food. We try to cook when we can.
We try not to waste too much, 'cause it drives me nuts, and it's expensive, and also for obvious climate reasons, which is why the Mill Food Recycler changed our lives a couple years ago. It is an odorless, effortless, and fully automated food recycler. Look, we've had this thing front and center in our kitchen for, again, a couple years now it feels like, and it is just such a game changer. Way less waste, less smell, way less garbage, which by the way, saves you money. No leaky bags.
Look, you got peels, bones, stalks, whatever leftovers, dump them in the Mill, and Mill dries and grinds them while you sleep. Again, it doesn't smell, which I don't understand. It's sleek. It's actually sexy. Here's a question people ask: How often do you empty it? Good question. It's every three weeks. I don't know, maybe. And there's a bunch of us.
Plus, there's a little app where you can control it if you want and set a schedule, and it shows you how much food your family keeps out of landfills. A delight. Look, you can get $75 off right now when you go to our special partner site. I'm gonna read you the link, but you should know it's also in the show notes, and you can just click it. It is mill.com/lp/important-not-important. That is [laughs] mill.com/lp/important-not-important. I couldn't remember that, so we put it in the show notes.
It's right there for you. Check it out. Huge thanks to Mill for sponsoring our work and doing the right thing, and thanks to all of you listeners for supporting our partners. [upbeat music] So it's kind of like when you marry someone, and you're like, "This is what I signed up for." Like, your organization, and again, there's been ups and downs. Like, everybody who signs up knows this is who Amanda is, right? This is who she brings to different parts. And I'm curious h- how you feel like...
I'm gonna read this quote from your book in a second, how you would feel like something like this, how a new leader or someone coming into an existing organization might handle if they were this Amanda. You wrote, "A more prudish boomer might suggest it's inappropriate for a serious political strategist and nonprofit executive to post an Instagram review of a four chili pepper novel with extremely dirty sex scenes.
That suggestion would be wrong for two reasons. One, those kinds of posts help show people I'm a full, real human, who both loves my job, is more than my job, and two, romance novels rule, which is also correct." Again, if you hadn't started the organization, do you think you could still kind of do things like that?
Or I guess, how would you come into it differently if you're like, "This is a part of myself I do wanna share strategically to show I'm a whole human," but how much you do it a little differently, if at all?
I do think I have a certain amount of freedom because it's my thing. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I think that if you are good at your job, regardless of whether you started it or not, you get a little bit more leeway, and also you have the ability to shape the story you want people to tell about you. I think about what kind of art would I put up in my office if I had an office. Mm-hmm. What kind of things would I talk about in the team, like, water cooler?
Would it be appropriate for me to talk about the books I read at the office if we had one, like, over lunch? Yeah, pro- for the most part. I wouldn't like... You know, there's a place in which maybe if I was an older white man, I might talk about, like, liking romance novels a little bit differently than- Mm-hmm... because of the way it might affect the dynamic of interpersonal relationships. Sure.
I would certainly not shy away from thinking about the things that make me a human and understanding that is as much a part of me as talking about my kids or talking about, you know, being a baseball fan as I once was, although now that the Nationals are bad, I've moved off that bandwagon. Yeah. We gotta get you... Anyways, that's a whole different- That's a different conversation for a different- Come on.
But I do think, like, you actually have a lot of agency over the story you wanna tell about yourself, whether or not you're the founder, and especially if it's not undermining the goal of your competency. Like, it works because I'm good at my job. Mm-hmm. Which I don't have no, like, weird braggarty complications about saying, like, I am both good at my job- Right... and also have a life outside of it, and I get to do both. And that's so important.
That comes back to the boundaries thing, which is like if all these online spaces are gonna exist, and we're all gonna have 47 fucking inboxes and ways to express ourself in different ways, but they're all kind of the same and all owned by Meta, w- we're allowed to use them, and we're allowed- Yeah...
to be a person. Like you said, the choice... You're quoting here someone, "The choice to log off is just as significant as the one to log on," but you also might be shooting yourself in the foot by not doing stuff to promote your organization, but also things to, again, show you're a full person, that probably people wanna not necessarily work for, but work with a real human being, right?
Yeah. And, like, I have employees who read romance novels too, and it's a topic of conversation that we can agree on. Everybody reads them. Right. Ev- I mean, this is true. They're the number one genre in book selling. Yeah.Like, I do think it is worth noting that for all of the versions of myself that I put online, there are huge parts of my life that never touch the internet. Huge parts. Yeah.
Most people who I do not know in real life outside of the first newborn photos I posted have never seen a picture of my kids. That doesn't mean they're not, like, a huge part of my identity. That just means that's a boundary that I have set. Yeah, that's one I'm not choosing to share with you all in this space. Yeah. Right? No, I love that. Okay.
Because some of these comments that we got back, which are so great... Sorry. Wow. I have to click away from my tomato basil chicken breast recipe that I opened- It's okay... while I was waiting. Here's the thing what I realized, 'cause I haven't had meat in, like, 15 years. You can prety- pretty much do anything with tofu that you can do with chicken. It'll absorb the same.
So that- We just had fried chicken sandwiches for dinner on Saturday. W- at least two people had fried tofu, and they looked just as good. It's just as good. So let me tell you the results first. Have you ever considered running for a local office? And again, specifically local. Here's the results. 40% said, "Nope, no interest."
40% also said, "I thought about it briefly, but I feel like I don't have the experience or qualifications." Hmm. 5% said, "Actively considering it." 7% said, "I've already run," or, "I'm actually holding office." And 7% said, "I never really thought about it." Interesting. So the comments are really... And there was a ton of them, but there's some really interesting ones that I think are specific here. Yeah.
So first question, let's talk about the people who said, "I've already run." I've got two here for you. The first one is, "I ran for local school board," this one's complicated, "but was defeated by an incumbent who's supported by the teachers' union." Okay. Okay? Second one. "I've already run, but I got my ass kicked by the hillbilly MAGA GOP community." Sure. So how do we get those people to run again? Here's what I'll say.
About two-thirds of the candidates Run For Something works with who lose tell us they're gonna run again. Most first-time candidates lose. Incumbents have a 95% re-election rate, so if you're running in a primary against incumbent or even in a general against incumbent, you should assume that you're probably gonna lose. Mm-hmm. For every AOC
who takes out an incumbent and wins, m- hundreds if not thousands of people go up against incumbents and lose. That does not mean you didn't do a good job or didn't have an impact. That just means you ran against an incumbent. You were pushing a boulder uphill in a snowstorm, you know- Mm-hmm... both ways. Mm. Especially if you are running in a red place, like the hillbilly MAGA person.
Your job, yes, is to win, but it's also to m- move the margins. Mm-hmm. Because if you take a district that is 70/30 Republican/Democrat and you make it 68/32- Mm-hmm... or 65/35 or 60/40, you have just laid the groundwork for the next time- Mm... to make it a little bit closer. The only way... And, like, I hate saying this because ultimately the only real winning in politics is winning, but sometimes you have to lose by less each time in order to make winning a possibility.
'Cause no district is gonna go from 70/30 to 50/50 overnight. It's gonna take time. So thank you to the person who ran against the MAGA Republican. Mm-hmm. Hope you run again, and I hope you get a little bit closer next time. And if you don't run again, I hope you help someone run, and use your experience, and use the data you did, and use the knowledge of the community to make it better.
And for the person who ran against someone supported by the teachers' union and lost, keep getting in that fight. Because you know what? Maybe you moved them a little bit further into the direction you wanted. Or maybe next time that candidate's gonna get indicted and not gonna be able to run again last minute, and you're gonna need to jump in the race, you know? [laughs] We need you.
Every cycle there is a surprise opening or a surprise competitive race that we weren't expecting, and if we don't have a candidate on the ballot in the first place, we can't win. That's it. And you always make such a good point in talking about how many offices we just flat out don't compete for, which is completely- True... nuts. And especially the thousands of local and state offices.
And again, my nine-year-old was getting frustrated at the batting cage 'cause he kept whiffing, and I was like, "In 150 years of the best baseball players ever, if you go one for three over your lifetime, you're in the Hall of Fame." And I was like, "That means two out of three times you are guaranteed to lose, and you're among the best." And he's like, "That can't be true." I'm like, "It's 150 years. It's a fucking stat. It's real." Yep.
And I feel like if you come in t- you can choose to see that going against incumbents in the sense of I'm not gonna win, where winning is winning, or you can say, "I'm gonna start to chip away at this shit." And that, like you said, really matters. That's how we turned Georgia is not because we won it in 2020, but because of 20 years of turning out at the grassroots level by mostly Black women in Georgia, right?
It's not happening overnight, like you said. Absolutely right. I've considered it, but I feel I lack the experience or qualifications. I've got a few here, but this is a good one. "I live in a small 1,700 people red town in a deeply red area of my state. Three years ago, I attended city council meetings regularly for over a year and considered running for a seat. Instead, I enrolled in grad school. I stopped attending the meetings, and I've only recently started going again.
There's two seats open again this year, but I don't feel like I know enough about what's going on now to run. Not that any of the current members ever attended meetings before getting elected or appointed themselves." So there's a little feeling like there's a fog of war, you know, the fraud feeling, but how do you encourage someone to understand that nobody knows anything, basically? You know, they said it right in their question.
Like, it doesn't seem like most of the current city council members went to these meetings before they were appointed or elected. It's probably true. I think they should, I think you should, but you don't have to. The way you become a politician is the same way that you become an artist or a musician or a writer or an athlete. You become it by doing it. Nobody is born to do this.
Very few people study it in school and actually put that into practice. You learn on the job in this way, and especially in local politics. The way that you become a politician or a civic leader is by showing up and leading. Put your name on the ballot, and you figure it out.There is so much opportunity for someone who is willing to put in the work to learn.
I would also say again, probabilities-wise if you have been to one city council meeting- Even that... you have been to more city council meetings than the majority of history in, in ever, in, in any town. Pick a fucking town. And that goes so far, 'cause you know what it looks like, you know what it sounds like. You can see the kinda shit they have to listen to every day, which is not bike lanes or free lunches most of the time. So just having that insight on itself should go so far.
[upbeat music] Imagine this. You get some goddamn notification about something you give a shit about, and you just wanna stop what you're doing, whatever you're doing, and actually do something about it. You can't just live out here on the receiving end of these things. So you head to whatcanido.earth, and boom, right in front of you is our new intelligent starter action section.
Front and center, exactly the action you want and need to take right now. Head to whatcanido.earth right now to check it out, because the world won't un-fuck itself. [upbeat music] 100%. You say there's no one who is less ideological than someone who is engaged with local government in any meaningful way. Mm-hmm.
'Cause you quickly learn, like, these are very practical conversations- Mm... about minutia. It is so boring in many circumstances, and being willing to sit through the boring part to get to the fight- Mm... or get to the work is, like, 80% of the job. And it's an amazing, you know, again, like, the best way to get experience is to get experience. Yeah. Sit through that shit. Like, this is- Do it...
a version of door-knocking where you just get to sit there and listen to people talk about what... Obviously, it's a self-selected group of people- Yeah... but they're the ones who are showing up. Well, and, like, this is the thing is it's self-selecting, but it's often very small. And on the one hand, that's, like, a damning indictment of civic engagement, and we should hope that these meetings were very widely attended and incredibly popular. Right now, they're not.
So if you go and have an opinion, I bet your voice will be pretty loud in that room. Yeah, 100%, because most of the people are Maybe. And that's okay. Being a behind-the-scenes person is okay, but you would be surprised at how much criticism you can take when you're in it for the right reasons. And I write about this in When We're In Charge too. If you arm yourself with your integrity and with your values, haters gonna hate, but it kinda rolls right off you. Mm-hmm.
And I've talked to a lot of candidates lately who have been like, "My public perception is so removed from who I am, and I'm getting hate that I don't understand, 'cause it's like I, I'm not a corporate shill. I'm a 26-year-old without healthcare who's trying to make a difference." And, like, you have to understand the critique you are getting is not about you. It's about the persona that has been created about you. Mm-hmm.
Giving it a little... Again, to your point about boundaries, giving it a little bit of distance between that. Like, that's actually a thing you have to fix. That's a, a learning of, oh, the story that's being told about me is not one that I'm controlling, and I need to change that. But also, the hate is for a caricature. Mm-hmm. It's not of me. Mm-hmm.
It's not easy, and it's why- No... you need to make sure, like, your partner, if you have one, your friends, your parents, your family, like, you need to have a good core group of emotional support, good mental health support. But, you know, I'm a person who posts about politics on the internet. My therapist often tells me, he's like, "You get yelled at online more than any of my other clients." Hmm. Or believe that. Bleak but true.
It's not about you. Depersonalizing it and knowing that it's not about you is just so necessary to get through it. You made another good point about probabilities where you said if you told me that someone had a 70 p- percent approval rating, you'd be like, "Holy shit, they're the most popular, like, congressperson alive right now."
That still means 30% of people are like, "Fuck this guy." Yep. That's table stakes. That's best case scenario. If you are taking a stand, if you're putting out a point of view, people are not gonna like it. Full stop. That's part of- Yeah... leadership, and just you gotta steel yourself for it. That's part of being a parent too, by the way. Mm. Uh-huh. The number of times a day I'm like, "This is not an opinion that Dad has.
Like, the school bus comes at 8:00. I don't know what to fucking tell you. Like, you have to go. It's a law." The teachers say I have to put shoes on your feet before you go in the door. Yeah. Sorry. No shoes, no shirt. Like, I, I don't care which ones, but you gotta put 'em on, and it's not my fault that you lost them. Anyways. Yep. I've considered it, but I feel like I lack the experience or qualifications.
I just don't think people would like me enough. As a neurocomplex person, I can be both charming and off-putting in equal measure. You don't need to be the right person for everyone. You just need to be the right person for enough people to win. If people find you charming, great. If people find you off-putting, that's okay. Like, the job is not to be everyone's favorite.
The job is to be enough people's favorite. Yeah. In case folks haven't noticed how tight elections can be, you're not gonna get everybody. [laughs] You're not gonna get everybody. No. I think if you did, it would not... It would be a damning indictment of the way in which you'd refused to take a bold stand. There you go. Right?
And I think this is also a good moment with these two here to point out we want more people, more young people under 40, like you work so hard on, to, to run for office. At the same time, those people need ballers in their corner. They need their spreadsheet friends, especially local office. You got no fucking budget to do any of this. Running for school board shit, if you're like, "I could run this local school board campaign, but I'm not gonna put my face out there," we'll take it, right?
Like, we need all those people, especially if you can get some experience, then do it for somebody else. Great. You're a behind the scenes person. You really don't wanna do it. We'll point you towards somebody who need to. There are half a million elections in this country. Volunteer for one of them, or six of them- Mm-hmm... or a dozen of them, and help make a difference. So somewhat related, this person said, "I have no interest." They said, "I have other ways I get involved civically.
I'm on the board for a local children's museum."I speak at school board meetings I'm engaged in discussions about local education policy, et cetera, and I find politicians, especially local politicians to be awful. Seems like you're the kind of person who should run for office yourself. You know, I often describe becoming a politician or running for office as the lazy way out. [laughs] Mostly a joke, but I will say the most direct way to get the outcome you want is to become the decision-maker.
You're not gonna have to speak at school board meetings or sign petitions or do protests if you're the one just making the calls at the end of the day. Mm-hmm. It is the most direct way. You talked about taking a bold stand. Tell me, and you spend half the book supporting it, which I think is great, and I can't stop thinking about it, about the four-day workweek. Love. Tell me about your bold stand.
Why should it be everywhere? Four day- Sell it. Four-day workweeks are the best thing that's ever happened to me as an employer, an employee, and as a parent, in particular. We started the four-day workweek first as a pilot in 2022, stuck with it for, tried it out for six months. We did surveys of our staff throughout it, asking about, you know, staff engagement, productivity, work-life balance, burnout, all of those things.
Every number you'd wanna see about productivity but also about enjoyment and job satisfaction went up, and every number you'd wanna see go down around burnout, around stress, around exhaustion went down. I have not worked on a Friday for my day job since then. We treat this like a four-day, 32-hour workweek. Does that mean my Mondays through Thursdays have a little bit more back-to-back meetings? Yeah, sometimes. Mm-hmm.
And when we design schedule schedules or timelines, like we take that into consideration. But it has been transformative for our ability to do this work for the long haul because I now have Fridays where both my kids are in childcare and I get to write a book or go to a yoga class or catch up on Grey's Anatomy and really relax for a moment before I go into a, a full-time parenting weekend, which as any mom of kids knows is not a break.
[laughs] 48 hours nonstop with my children is more exhausting than 32 straight hours of work. Not even close. It is. Not even close. It has allowed for me to be a better partner 'cause I get to spend more time with my husband. We get to go on day dates on Fridays occasionally. It has also allowed me to be a better friend. I can go see people on Fridays, we get lunch. And more importantly, it has allowed for my staff to feel rested and recovered.
We have had better impact, more impact over the longer haul, and to a T every person who has worked for us has said, "The things I get to say yes to outside of work make up for the things I sometimes have to say no to at it." 'Cause, you know, you work with people who are ambitious, who wanna do big things, wanna take on big challenges, and have big ideas.
And we do have to be more rigorous about prioritization and about limiting our scope because we don't wanna take on more than we have capacity for. But it is transformative, and I think it is possible in more workplaces than you might expect. Auto workers are asking for it in union negotiations.
We have seen it in schools, unfortunately because that's funding shortages, but I also think there's room there for thinking about how you could better stagger education schedules. We have seen this in doctor's offices. This is often how doctors work, where they'll do four days on, three days off. We've seen this in the legal profession.
Basically any industry, with maybe a few exceptions, could think more about how to staff it and structure it such that people get four days on, three days off. It would require buy-in from leadership at the very top. It requires thinking about your structure and your compensation and your workload very differently, but if you do it, one, I promise you're gonna feel better on the individual level, but two, your impact will not go down. There've been studies that have come out about this.
Basically, every company that tried a four-day workweek through the global pilots has either seen the same or increased productivity. I'm in. I'm in. I wanna figure it out. We've got complications about our content schedule and all that, but I would love to figure it out. If only, like you said, the idea of a Friday where your children are not with you.
And again, love them so much, so great. I need a minute. And you know what? There's a lot of different ways you can think about it. I've talked with folks who did Mondays are their weekends. I've talked with folks that do, like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays are off, Thursday, Friday. Mm-hmm. You know, even, okay, maybe a four-day workweek isn't the right fit for you. But how can you free yourself from the constraints of the Monday through Friday, 9:00 to 5:00?
What does a better, more flexible, real- realistic schedule for you look like to do the work you need to do, get the rest you need to thrive? And this is where I feel like, and not, again, like you're recruiting, the training of candidates, like the message, everything you put online, like everything, it comes back to, and you say it 1,000 times in the book, you're trying to break the fucking cycle, right?
The cycle. Which is this hyper object of how the world has been run by the same people for the past 75 years. And it's like, obviously we need to work. Obviously you're trying to recruit candidates who are basically gonna run full-time for what is probably a part-time office, but it is hard work, and a lot of people are waiting to have families because they can't afford to or 'cause they have been worked to death by boomers who won't give up power.
Whatever it is, like we're past the breaking point on a lot of this stuff, and if we do wanna take back democracy and make it more valuable, not just fighting for universal free lunches, but, like, people have to feel like they're gonna survive. And, you know, the singular silver lining I'm seeing of this entire era, which boy does it suck, is that when we win back power, and I do think we will,
the painful parts of destroying the institutions has already been done. Yeah. So we just get to rebuild, and we get to decide what that rebuilding looks like. We get to decide what the future looks like. It is an incredibly scary, like, opportunity, but it's also incredibly freeing. What do we want the new Department of Education to look like? What should foreign aid in America function as?
Like, how do we think that, you know, any of the other number of agencies that Trump has destroyed should really function? We have spent so much of the last 50 years nipping around the edges and trying to make small little changes. They burned it down. That's-- They're gone now.What are we gonna build out of the ashes? Mm-hmm. That's up to us. I think that is a scary and exciting and energizing opportunity that we should embrace.
And it's great because you make such a point of saying it's not just, like, making these what choices, what platform do I engage with, and how and what do I share- Right... and not share- Understood...
and the boundaries and all of that, but also it's about why. Like, telling- Yeah... your team why you started Run for Something and why you continue to work there after all of this, why though it's important for people to have sabbaticals and be able to take parental leave, and how fucking hard that is, but why it's important to do it.
It's the same thing as not just, like, this... People were like, "Yeah, I've thought about running, but I don't know if people would like me." Yeah, but why have you thought about running, and why does it matter? Yeah. Like, why should voters want you to win? What are you gonna do for them? Mm-hmm. Why is this a thing that's ever crossed your head?
What is the problem that's, like, bugging you so much that, like, you're standing in the shower, and you're just like, "Man, that fucking pothole." Mm-hmm. "I'm so pissed about that pothole." Or, you know, I cannot believe that despite the fact that I am very lucky and excited to enroll my daughter in public school this fall because New York City has free public 3K, and we got a spot, it is still gonna cost me an arm and a leg for aftercare.
Of course. Why? Why is that the case? Yeah. Why is that the case? How are we gonna fix that? Yeah. Why- People will care a lot less about any flaws you may have, and we've all got them. God knows my list goes out the door. If you are like, "I am going to do," and then you show them you're gonna do everything you can to make childcare more affordable, they're like, "I don't give a shit. I really don't."
And they- And by the way, the people who matter, there's always gonna be... We talked about this. There's always gonna be people who are gonna judge you on the superficial stuff, the way you talk, your stutter, whatever your stuff. F- fuck them. Fuck them. You just gotta get enough, and if you stand for the thing that a- applies to the most people, 'cause like you said, everything's burned down, and you're just fighting for the baseline stuff that should've been there all around,
you can get a lot of votes. And you would be surprised how refreshing and energizing it'll be to voters in your community to meet someone who cares enough to do the hard thing. Like, this is the thing I've loved hearing from our candidates over the years.
They'll knock doors, they'll talk to voters, and they will say, especially younger candidates, be like, "The people most excited for me to run is the 70-year-old or 80-year-old who's never had a candidate knock on their door and who's just thrilled to see someone young like me willing to put in the work." They're inspired. It's really moving to see someone care enough to do the thing. It is, uh, and it's a really easy time to... I don't wanna say put your head in your sand.
I think there's many more people that care about what's going on than ever before. But the first time you go to a city council meeting and speak up, it's very nerve-wracking, and then you realize it's not that hard. And it's even easier, like you said, to be on the other side. It's just your job to show up, and if we can get, like, incrementally more people to do that in more places, it becomes even less hard everywhere. Yeah.
Yeah, and I think one of the things I love about what we've built at Run for Something is making sure that people who run for office, especially for the first time, know that they are part of a movement much bigger than themselves. Yeah, I agree. You are not...
It may feel this way, but, like, you, the 20-something or s- 30-something running for city council in wherever you are, maybe you're the only one like you in your community or your town or your state, but you're not the only one like you across the country. Mm-hmm. I promise. And we will connect you to others like you so that you can build a relationship with someone who's going through the same shit.
This is where I wanna pimp my favorite newsletter I get of the entire week, Amanda, which is your Good News. And the number of people I forward it to every week who understandably are like, "What's gonna burn down first, the jet stream or the Department of Education?" I'm like, "Both, same time, same people. However, read this," which you clearly put so much fucking thought into.
You even talked about, like, before your maternity break how you were like, "Well, I gotta figure out how to get somebody to do this thing." Like, it is line by line such an incredible, like, enlightening, inspiring, like, [laughs] just, like, weekly dose in my arm of, thank God. There, those people are out there. They're amazing. I wanna meet these people.
I wanna talk to them. Thank God these people are out there doing it. It's incredible, and there's so much more than you think. There's always so much more than you think. And it's... It doesn't always make the headlines, but it is, like, deeply energizing for me to put that together every week and to remember that there is so much... What's the expression? Courage is contagious. Mm-hmm.
A lot of people have a lot of courage. A lot of people have a lot of courage. Yeah. It's one of my favorite things. We will link to it. I'll forward it to you if you ask because that's all I do. I... Half the things I subscribe to, I'm like, "What am I doing here? This is the darkness. I need to go take my gummy and read dragon romance books," which we've now come to the last and most important part of the conversation. You get to recommend three romance novels everyone needs to read, everyone.
Not just for, like, the hardcore romance readers or people who just do, like, romance and dragons, court of this, fill in that. What are the three, like, all-timers, whatever spice level you want, you can vary it, or you can be like, "Here it is. This is the real shit." What are they? And again, if people don't know, and yes, m- minority of Americans read books, et cetera, et cetera. We don't care how you read. Love an audiobook. Romance is carrying the entire industry.
Okay, so I have a group of friends. We put together a Google Doc. Uh, so we haven't updated it in a couple years. We need to update it. [laughs] It's, like, romance novels for the uninitiated. Ugh. So I'll give you some authors to start with, and you can go through. Mm-hmm. So one of my favorites is a, actually a pair of authors, Christina Lauren. Mm-hmm.
Pen name for two women who have written, I don't know, a couple dozen books. Great. Can't go wrong. Start there. Okay. I really like-Helen Hoang, H-O-A-N-G. She's written, like, a really sad, beautiful, hot romance novels, often about, like, neurodiverse, like, either heroines or heroes. They're all modern contemporary. They're just, like, really beautiful. Mm.
And in particular, the one that is... There's a recent one that's, like, really about grief that is just, like, stunningly sad and so hot. And then, you know, I know it's, like, uh, very cliche at this point, but the Sarah J. Maas, like, Court of Thornes and Roses, in particular that series. The first one is fine.
The second one flips the first one on its head and is worth reading if only for that. It's a series- The second book or the second series? The second book. Okay. So Court of Thorns and Roses. The other series are good. Like, Crescent City is fine. Throne of Glass- I mean, she's the entire bookstore. You go in, you're just like, "She is everywhere." It's amazing... commit to the first two in the series.
If you don't wanna read anything after, that's fine. But the first one is good. The second one flips the first one on its head, and is just... adds a whole new dimension. I really enjoyed it. I- there was, like, a couple weeks, I think it was during my first pregnancy, where basically all I read were Sarah J. Maas books. I think I read probably, like, 10,000 pages of just driving romance.
My husband looked over at what I was reading, he's like, "What are these books? What are you doing?" [laughs] "This is a, this is between me and my God. This is not-" Yeah, this has nothing to do with you. So sorry. You'd think it might. It does not. Exactly. This is what's amazing. You know, when everyone was like, "Oh," you, you know, this is gonna
date both of us a little bit, but you know, when Fifty Shades came out and people were like, "Oh, people are reading on Kindle, so they don't see the cover." It's like, th- this is not a new thing. This is, again, the majority of the people that actually read are reading or have read these books in some way, 'cause they're fantastic.
And I remember somebody being like, again, it's so- some fucking old white guy who I feel like I'm adjacent to, was like, "They're formulaic. It's the same thing." I'm like, "Have you ever seen a sitcom? Like, they're just making things that people [laughs] wanna read. What are you talking about?" Right. NCIS is not formulaic? Yeah, right. What are you talking about? It's just, it's completely ridiculous. Yeah.
I wanna read a thing where there's a happy ending at the end. Mm-hmm. I wanna read a thing where, you know- Mm-hmm... like, the joy in humanity and the pleasure in life, and also that, especially the more modern stuff, like, women have agency and account- and, like, control over their lives- Mm-hmm...
and can find happiness, and that men can treat them well. Or, you know, in same-sex relationships, there can be a beautiful way of seeing love and togetherness. And also, like, they're fun and hot, and you know what? I'm not gonna apologize for that. No. And also, look outside. Like- The world is bad. No, I'm with it. Okay, that's really exciting. I might have to ask you and your group, so we have...
[laughs] I don't know when this started. We started asking guests for book recommendations 1,000 years ago, and then we started putting them into bookshop lists, and we've got a bunch of them. We might have to make, like, a co-developed bookshop list of your recommendations. I would be honored. [laughs] What a gift. 'Cause here's the thing. Nobody wants- No...
everyone's like, "What, what are the nonfiction recommendations?" I'm like, "We're all done there. Nobody needs that anymore." Well, I, I've written two nonfiction books. You can- Mm... buy them wherever you get your books. Mm-hmm. Enjoy them. When you wanna read something really fun- Mm-hmm... slide into my DMs on Instagram. I'll give you some good ones. You're the greatest. This is great. Thank you.
It's hard. It's hard. But, you know, I, I always come back to you all, not just 'cause it's so well run, and it's you and all that, but because, like I tell people about climate or public health, like, it is the sun you feel on your back and the water you and your neighbors drink, and the AC system at your kids' or their friends' school. That's where you can do the most, and that's where you can support people who do the most.
If you hear about someone reasonably sane running for school board, you can throw money at them and win the race. It's amazing. It doesn't even require that much. Please do the local thing. It's so important, and a little bit goes a long way, and you get to live the impact, which is one of my favorite parts. Yeah. Yeah. It's really awesome.
I brought home a pamphlet for their redesign in the kids' library down the block. Mm-hmm. And I was like, "You can pick how many parking space... You can vote for how many parking spaces." They're like, "Really?" I'm like, "Yeah. Who else is gonna vote?" Thank you for everything. I really appreciate you. And that's it. This was great. Thank you. [outro jingle] That's it for this week's conversation.
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