March 18, 2025 • 43 mins
Vox writer Rachel Cohen had disregarded individual action as an unhelpful distraction to the more important systemic change that was needed to solve our problems. And then she had a change of heart & mind. She wrote an extraordinary article about her transformation that’s titled "Why I Changed My Mind About Volunteering" and we dive deep into it with her.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Because I definitely read a lot of essays and heard
a lot of arguments in college, specifically, you know, predominantly,
but not exclusively. I guess that these more smaller scale things,
individual action, volunteering in your community, changing your personal behavior,
those were ineffectual at best, they were a harmful distraction
at worst, like they would distract from the attention and
(00:24):
focus that we needed to be doing to push for
the bigger things. And I and I and I think
a lot of people, we were.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Persuaded welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney,
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. And the last part y'all, somehow some
(00:52):
people showed up and filmed us, and it led to
an oscar for the film about our team. That movie's
called un Defeated. I believe our country's problems are never
going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people
and nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses
on shows like CNN and Fox, but rather an army
(01:15):
of normal folks, people like us, just you and me
saying you know what. There's a need over here, and
I can help. That's what Rachel Cohen has done. You
just heard how she was jaded about volunteering, and then
she wrote a remarkable article for Fox about her transformation
(01:37):
into a regular volunteer and donor that we're about to
dive deep into. It's titled Why I Changed my mind
about volunteering. My generation was taught to change the system.
That lesson came at a cost. Guys, this is one
of my favorite conversations. I cannot wait for you to
(01:59):
meet Rachel right after these brief messages from our general sponsors,
(02:22):
Rachel Cohen, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
DC, right, d So not long ago we had the
tragedy at the airport and I did you fly out
a Dallas or Reagan?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I flew out of Reagan today and it was actually
I did text my fiance saying, wow, I haven't felt
flying anxiety in a while, and now I feel a
little nervous. There was, you know, the layoffs at the
Aviation Agency too, and yeah, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Two of my four kids live and work in DC. Yeah,
and flying in and out of DC as all of
a sudden become everything delayed, half the things canceled. It's
a mess over there.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
It was it was smooth, you know, getting on and
leaving today, but I was just like, I really hope that.
I don't like to think about there being a possibility
of an error, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. Well, interestingly, Reagan was actually designed for commuter aircraft
and it's the shortest runway in the United States that
jumbo jets land on, which is why they built Dulles
for big travel. And Reagan was supposed to be actually
commuter travel and it's switched. It was designed to handle
(03:34):
max fifteen meion passengers annually. It holds twenty five now,
So people need to start going to dullas.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I think going to Dulas is horrible.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I know, it's the drive right so far there it
is so well, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I'm I'm glad I'm here, and I'm glad I flew
from Reagan here.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Today is another one of our lunch and listen episodes.
And so hi everybody, thanks for having lunch and listening,
although none of you were eating, so I don't know.
This is more like a listen at lunchtime. Oh there
are a couple of people with lij Well, thanks, you
have a small audience for you. We'll do another lunch
and listen in April with Michael Arkush, who just wrote
(04:18):
a book that's coming out, an argument of the world's
most influential one hundred golfers. It's gonna be really interesting.
He wrote a bunch of cool books. And today you
get to see Memphis Listening Lab. Pretty cool spot.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Huh so cool?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, do you know this was once the Sears? Did
they tell you?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Alex was telling me earlier and when I got here,
I said, this reminds me of Pond Street Market in Atlanta,
and then.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He said that was also a series.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, it's interesting because the Crossdown Concourse is exactly that,
and Memphis Listening Lab is good enough to allow us
to have some things here. So Vox explains the news
and world around you by making complex topics easier to understand.
(05:10):
Vox tries to candidly shepherd audiences through politics and policy,
business and pop culture, food science, and everything else that matters.
Launched in twenty fourteen, the citamassed more than five million
unique visitors in just over one month. Today it reaches
more than ten times that audience through vox dot com.
(05:31):
It's award winning videos, and it's on Tom Trade podcast.
I think I think Vox has like one hundred and
forty five million total monthly content views. Anybody who serves
around on their phone knows what Vox is because it's
yellow and black, I think, right, yes, that's the colors.
And Rachel is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy.
(06:00):
Social policy. That's uh, that could get sticky, can't it?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It definitely can.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I like to say it's it's everything, except I don't
really do the climate policy stuff. We have another team
for that, and I we have someone else who handles healthcare.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But there's a.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's you know, schools, housing, families, education and abortion, abortion rates.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and you've been doing this for more than a decade, right,
So that's who Rachel is professionally. Who's Rachel grown up?
Where'd you come from? What's your what's your world? It's important?
I think it's germane to what we're going to get
to talk about, which is simply an article you wrote
(06:48):
that has spoken to a lot of us in my world.
But when you hear you work for Vox and you're
in DC and you're a writer and you talk about
policy issues like housing, schools, homelessness, childcare, and abortion. One,
(07:11):
not having met you, might categorize you. And I'm curious
as to just kind of a brief where you came
from and how you came up and what led to
this work for you.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, and I'm so glad that you invited me here
to talk. And you know, I definitely know what you mean.
And this article, I know that we're going to be
talking about a lot, was definitely different from what I
typically do for Vox, which is more, you know, covering
specific news, you know, development and trying to unpack them.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And this.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Article essay was more of a sort of a personal
piece that was based on work I've done for Box
that made me, you know, thinking about my personal life.
So I just wanted to say that.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I I grew up outside of Philadelphia. I have a sister,
two parents. I went to public school, I was raised you.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Know, I'm Jewish. I went to college in Baltimore. I
love Baltimore. Where in Baltimore and John Hopkins in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I was gonna say, you can say JOHNS Hopkins, it's.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know, Oh well, I do love like.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I stayed in Baltimore after I graduated because I really
do love the city. I studied history and sociology there,
so it was like very sort of focused on on
the city. I interned at the Baltimore Sun, which is awesome,
and then I moved to DC and I have been
there about ten years. It's weird thinking like we're on
our on the you know, fourth president in my time
(08:54):
like that, I'm like, wow, going fast, and yeah, that's
sort of high altitude.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
And I you know, I got into journalism.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I didn't think I was going to become a journalist
because it sort of felt like I love journalism. I
did my high school paper and I would do a
little on college stuff, but it felt like, oh, people
who become journalist or it's like saying you want to
become an actress. It's just so hard to do. So
there were always a lot of things that I have
been interested in, and I love journalism, but I think
it's a healthy mindset. I try to hold on that, Like,
(09:26):
you know, the industry is changing so fast so much.
There's so many different political and economic threats to journalism
today that I think, should I not be able to
do this work.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
In five or ten years or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
There's so many other things I also, like think would
be interesting and meaningful, but hopefully I can. Hopefully, I will,
you know, be back here in my current job in
ten years.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So really stupid people go to Johns Hopkins and your
degrees are in so theology and history and you end
up in journalism talking about cultural issues. That's interesting. I mean,
maybe you didn't major in journalism, but talking about cultural
(10:16):
issues having studied both history, which is a huge precursor
toward whatever social issues you're engaged in, and then the
sociology of social issues, I think that's an interesting perspective
to write from.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I thank you, and I agree I think what I
have tried to do in my work, and I think
Vox fortunately.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Is a place it's very very open to this.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Not all mainstream outlets are, but I'm very committed to
bringing research and history into the articles to try to
help people think about things from different lenses.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And yeah, I think there are just a lot of
there's a lot of really great outlets that either.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Don't have the constraints or you know, incentives for that.
But Vox is really open to research and researchers and
that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So it's been good.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
OK. So that's where Rachel comes from. That's what she does.
Here's why she's here. Evan Feinberg wrote on his LinkedIn
about an article you wrote. Evan Finberg is the He's
a director right chairman of the Stand Together Foundation. Now,
(11:39):
for those of everybody who don't know what the Stand
Together Foundation is is a foundation supported by the Koch Brothers,
among others, who have poured tons of financial resources into
When you hear Cooke brothers, I know what people think
(12:01):
when they hear that, but they really pour resources into
a non political effort. And I mean we're talking millions
and millions and millions of dollars to support philanthropic projects
across the United States that work and are scalable.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I want to also add, you know, in DC, the
Koch Brothers have funded a lot of criminal justice policy
work reform.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Sort of The Koch Brothers got smoked by a lot
in the left wing media years ago because of some
of the politicians they supported. What the truth is, the
Koch Brothers have been supportive of issues that are important
to people on both sides of the are candidly and
as such, stand Together is just that stand together. We
(12:52):
talk about on an army normal folks and shop talk
all the time that we do not care if you
are a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, gay, straight, white black?
What are some progressive conservative, Republican democrat. I'm trying to
come up with all these little taglines we seem to
(13:13):
collect ourselves in. We don't care. Sorry, yeah, yeah, we
don't care. But if you are engaged in an activity
that is helping elevate or serve someone who is not
as blessed as you in your community, regardless of any
of those taglines about you, I can celebrate that about
(13:34):
you and you can celebrate the same about me. And
then it interesting, if we have this foundation of respect
from that level of service in our communities, how those
taglines seem to disintegrate and not matter so much anymore.
That's really we talk about that all the time. That's
really germane to our entire movement that is this podcast.
(13:57):
So Evan Feinberg, we pay it because he's a guy
that's really engaged in this across the entire United States.
He wrote on LinkedIn only thirty three percent of Americans
are involved in their community at the level that they
want to be. To me, that shows we're not fighting
the battle of whether people want to be involved. People
(14:20):
want to contribute, they just don't know how. That's why
this recent Vox article, your article, Rachel stuck with me.
It highlights something bigger that's happening across the country. More
and more people from different backgrounds and beliefs are rediscovering
the power of community. The author's experience beautifully captures it.
(14:43):
As soon as she starts getting involved, she feels fulfilled.
Then she sees her efforts are actually making a difference.
This shift in perspective is powerful. It's easy to think
that the challenges we face are so big the change
requires concentrated, top down power or massively engineered political campaigns.
(15:08):
But what if it's more personal than that. It's about small,
meaningful actions. These efforts don't just add up in some
abstract sense. They actually build the foundation of something bigger.
That's how communities grow stronger, how trust builds, and how
we solve problems together. Imagine if everyone had the same
(15:32):
aha moment, if everyone rediscovered that their actions matter, what
could our communities look like? Then when I read what
Evan wrote about your article, all I hear is it
echoed in a few different words the things we talk
about every single week. Sure, we're trying to produce a
(15:53):
show to be entertaining and hopefully you cry and you're
enlightened and you're informed and it's interesting, but your words.
The higher altitude view of all of that is, what
if we can inspire people to simply engage, how much
more fulfilled their own lives will be, and what could
(16:15):
our community look like if from that basis we grew
together to serve And now a few messages from our
gender sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up
to join the army at normal folks dot us. By
(16:38):
signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode
summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or
if you prefer reading about our incredible guests, we'll be
right back. So when we read that, we thought, all right, well,
(17:05):
who's this Rachel Cohen chick on Fox. Let's read what
she has to write? So, eh, what's that?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And read you?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
No, I didn't. I read it, and I'm like, I
love it because one of the things stand Together talks
about all the time, which I believe in is instead
of these massive, top down programs, the real work is
done from the bottom up. We talk about always not
having to be part of some massive NGO or massive
(17:38):
organization to have incredible effect. In every week we bring
guests on the show to illustrate that very point from
all walks of life. It feels like to me reading
your article that you yourself had an interesting awakening is
the word I use, And I don't want to put
words in your mouth, but I would just like you
(17:59):
to take us through the article, what your personal journey
was actually in the article, and what you learned about
service and philanthropy and this thirty three percent of Americans.
Only thirty percent of Americans are involved, but all want
(18:21):
to be. And what you learned, maybe even about yourself
and how that can inspire this army of normal folks.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Awesome. I'm so glad to talk about this. Maybe I'll
start and you can interject or steer me. If I
am going.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
And you're much smarter than me, just go. If I
don't understand something in a row, you're.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Going to understand everything. I think.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So a weakening is a fine word to use. I
think as I was on this journey, and I'll go
into the journey, I think one of the biggest things
that for me that happened that I felt was like,
oh I was wrong about something like it was. I
sort of started this project with a certain set of
assumptions that I had, you know, developed over the last
(19:13):
you know, since I was in college, over the last
fifteen years or so, and then as I was doing
more thinking, I just started to change my mind about
all of that. And that's why the article was titled
Why I Changed my Mind about volunteering, although it's kind
of about much more than that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So it started with a note I got from a reader.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I thought, I'm sorry, Oh sure, it's important for the audience,
those of you listening, watching, and here I really look
up the article after you hear this. But the title
is why I Changed my mind about volunteering. The subtitle
my generation was taught to change the system that lesson
(19:59):
came at a cost that in and of itself is
attention grabbing because it's interesting how you say your generation,
and it came at a call. So I aired in
not saying that before you started. I wanted to get
your body up on that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, and I would I would definitely be interested to
hear from you later if you think there's similar things
in your generation or how if you think it's different.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I do think there's similar things, but from a completely
different spectrum.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Cool. I want to I want to hear more about that.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So, as I mentioned, you know, I studied sociology, I've
been writing about social policy for over a decade. I
write about, you know, housing, the housing crisis. I write about,
you know, education reform, all these sort of big systemic
(20:56):
issues that are require policy change and legislation. And basically
it started with a note I got from a reader
who contacted me and sort of said, you know, I
read your latest article. I had done this article about
tiny home shelters, and he said, you know, when I
walk home from work, I see people outside. I live
(21:17):
in Washington, d C. This reader also, I think, was
in DC, and just said, like, what can I possibly
do as one person to help I feel like they're
you know, I feel so overwhelmed by the situation. It
feels like nothing I can do really matters. And I
started to jot back a response, but it was actually
approaching Christmas and you know, in journalism, people news organizations
(21:41):
kind of stuck up on articles to run over Christmas
week while everyone's on vacation. And I thought, I said
to my editor, you know, this actually is a good question.
Why don't I report this out sort of formally, like
why don't I call people and then actually we can
run this as an article over Christmas week about you know,
what do experts say is actually the best ways to
(22:01):
help people who are And you know, I had some ideas,
but I thought, let's do the formal reporting process.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Can we call those preconceived notions?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Well, I think, for at least for me, they were
based on reporting on homelessness, you know, from some dimensions.
But yeah, some preconceived notions, I would say a mix
for me. And so, you know, I sort of made
a list of organizations, started making calls, and.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It's just the responses I.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Got, some of them overlapped with what I had, you know,
was going to tell this reader, you know, you should
go to your city council meetings. You should make your
voice heard for more affordable housing. You should, you know,
support zoning laws that can allow for you know, more
shelters and policies that raise wages because people can't afford
(22:51):
their rent and that's how a lot of people are
becoming homeless. But a lot of the suggestions were just
a lot more, uh, you know, simpler was you know,
carry cash, hind out socks, look people in the eye
and smile, like contact your local shelter, see what they need,
just like a series of things that all made sense.
But I was like, why didn't I Like, why didn't
(23:14):
my mind go there? And why don't I do those things?
And you know why don't I know many people who do?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And it sort of just started me.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
It agitated me, and I remember that Christmas week I
started thinking a lot about like my time and how
I what I'm prioritizing in my busy schedule, and I thought, Okay,
there's some sort of personal questions I feel like I
need to think more deeply about. I need to figure out,
(23:46):
like how I've gotten to this point in my life
where I'm in my early thirties and I'm not sort
of volunteering at a work, like why did what steps
have gotten me to this point?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And in my social circles?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
But in the meantime, let me just start, let me
make a change, really quickly, and I'll do the researching,
thinking thing and for New Year's resolution, let me just
find something to get involved with so I can like
start that process. So that was what that was my plan.
And then can I.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Ask a question, Yeah, did that make you feel better
about yourself?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I like having plans, you know. I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Do you understand the nature of the question.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
It didn't yet.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I didn't really know yet how all this was going
to feel. I only I didn't know that getting involved
would make me feel the way it felt. I don't
mean that, Okay, So maybe I don't understand the question.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I mean the sentiment. Here's the thing. Yeah, at the
risk of being condescending to everybody on the face of
the planet, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's
my show. I'm allowed to the high school I went to. Yeah,
if you cheated, you got in trouble. If you knew
(24:55):
of somebody who cheated and didn't do something about it,
you were con considered equally responsible. Okay, same kind of
line of thinking. People that allow themselves off the hook
because of that sentiment that they're thinking about doing something
(25:20):
nice that, Oh, I feel better about myself because you know,
I really think somebody how to do something about that
one day. That sentiment means nothing, but somehow it allows
yourself off the hook because you're thinking about nice things.
You don't say what I'm saying. Did the just the
beginning of the process give you some false sense of kindness?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Well, Ben, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I do, I do, but I think for my personal journey,
I was like, I'm going to do both of these
things at the same time. So I was like, I'm
not gonna spend a year thinking before I start looking
for something. Let me, let me get involved with something,
and then I'm also gonna think about why I haven't
gotten before. So I told to your point though, one
(26:13):
of the things that really sort of agitated me is
I started to think a lot about how actually easy
it was, like how few intellectual leaps one had to
make to justify not doing anything for other people, Like
there's there's.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That's what I mean, that's what the justification it.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, and and and that sort of and that sort
of freaked me out because I just realized, like, oh,
I know all these talking points and rationalizations and and
people in my social circle, professional circles, like we all
sort of it's you. You're so busy, it's got so
much going on, you know, et cetera. There's a million
different or oh they all waste the money, can't trust
(26:55):
that organization, or they're ineffective. You know, there's so many
different sort of excuses that people smart. I mean, I
think good people have made for themselves that when you
add them together, really just kind of create this permission
structure to not do anything for other people. And I
(27:16):
was like, okay, now that I sort of realized that, belatedly,
for sure, belatedly, I was like, okay, let me just
find something to do. And then I also need to
do some more thinking about how I got here. And
then one of the things that happened to me personally
is it was a little harder. It was harder than
I expected. I was like, I'm a college educated journalist
(27:37):
with professional research skills. I don't have kids yet. I like,
I'm self motivated. I will find it should not be
hard to find stuff to plug into. And but then
it was. It ended up being, you know, I had
all this kind of motivation and I was really like,
I'm ready. And then I was, you know, calling places
and emailing places, and I wasn't hearing back. And I'm
not a member of a synagogue at this time in
(27:59):
my life, and my my workplace doesn't organize anything.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
And it was like this very strange feeling that I had.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It was last winter where it was like, oh, you know,
I have a lot of friends, I feel like I
have I feel like I have a strong social network,
but I felt like this institutional gap where I was like, oh,
this is the kind of stuff that Robert Putnam was
always talking about just having things that you can more
(28:27):
easily plug into when you want to serve, whether that's
somebody inviting you that you know because they're doing it,
or your church or you know, your school. You know,
I know a lot of parents sometimes their schools organized things.
And I was just like very conscious of the fact
that there wasn't anything super easy to plug into when
I was ready to plug into. No, I wasn't gonna
(28:48):
let that be an excuse, but I was thinking, if
I wasn't so motivated right now, I could easily see
why people just kind of give up, because you know,
these a lot of organizations are understaff, so they don't
always get back to the volunteer. A lot of organizations
like need a whole other person to manage volunteers because
it becomes so much work for them.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
And so it just took me. It took me longer
than I expect, not too long.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I did, you know, find things, but it was just
kind of it struck me how it wasn't as easy
to do. And the more I kind of got into
this project and was talking to people in other cities,
and I learned that I'm not alone in that. That
it's that there are a lot of people who, you know,
to Eric Finberg's point, like I think want to get
(29:35):
involved but don't don't know the access points or there
aren't easy access points. And I say this all to
not say that should be an excuse and we should
all find ways, but I think it's helpful when people
are trying to figure out this disconnect of like, okay,
we have statistics that say thirty three percent, you know
or you know that more people want to be involved
(29:57):
than they are. I think at least part of it
is that there aren't as sort of just easy ways
to plug in, or people aren't like inviting each other
as much so that was kind of one.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You mean that interesting word called community.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Community, Yes, exactly. I mean that's because I feel like
I had I had community, but.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
My community wasn't doing these things. You know.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, No, you had community, but there's this whole other
community exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah, And that's one
of the things we're trying so hard to challenge people
to break through, is that your community is just a dot.
(30:41):
There's this massive other community out there.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I think that's I think that's really helpful and I
feel like it's a helpful kind of pushback against the
crisis screaming because I wasn't lonely, you know, but I
didn't have that thing. And so those are just it's
just different sort of ways of thinking about social and connection.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And things like that.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So as part of the researching part of my journey,
I started reading a lot of books, and one of
the books I read was this book called Who Really Cares?
By Arthur Brooks, and it came out in two thousand
and six, and he had a lot of interesting data.
I mean, I think some of it might be a
little out of date now, but one of the points
he had made was how you know. And I would
(31:39):
identify as left of center, you know. And he made
a point that, you know, liberal people tend to donate
less to charity, they tend to volunteer less and they
and they also like give blood a lot less. And
I read this and I was thinking, I've never given blood,
(31:59):
And then I was thinking, why have I never given blood?
And I sort of started going through different things, and
I started researching, and there's it turns out there's a
lot of research that on how to get people to
give blood and what first time blood donors.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And it's a lot like voting, where.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It becomes a habit and if someone invites you to
donate blood for the first time, you're more likely to
do it. And I was like, well, no one's inviting me,
but that's also a bad excuse, like I should just
do it. And so I then I saw there was
a blood shortage. The Red Cross was advertising around it.
COVID really hurt, you know, blood drive donations. People aren't
(32:34):
doing them at work as much. So anyway, I decided, okay,
well let me just at least go donate blood and
then I'll keep thinking.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So I did that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yes, we had a guest recently. Do you know what
percentage of the country needs blood in their lifetime? One hundred? Wow,
everybody needs blood eventually, right, And if you don't need blood,
someone you love needs blood, cancer, car wreck, whatever. You
know what percent that country donates blood or pilot's three
(33:08):
three of our country's blood supplos blood about three percent
of the people. Now, do not tell me there's not
systematic apathy to the greater community of need.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah. Yeah, that's horrifying.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So go ahead. You donated blood. I donated blood, but
you're still researching.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, I'm still reaching and you know, and it I
will say, I don't maybe this maybe your listeners are
sort of more likely to donate blood because they're listening
to your podcast.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
But if you were like me and you had never
donated blood, I was really.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Surprised how good it was, Like the feeling you know
when you get better after being sick for a day
the next day and you're like, wow, I feel so healthy.
Like I never felt sort of more healthy, and like
there was.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So much like vitality.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Was like, oh I I am a healthy person able
to do this for somebody else. It felt so good.
I was really not expecting that it was just a
great feeling. I've now done. I'm actually donating blood on Thursday.
I've donated blood like four times since that point. It's
like actually also really good like health thing because it's
kind of like a workout in terms of calories you
burns and so so uh anyway, that was interesting and
(34:19):
so then I as part and then I as I
was doing this, then I talked to my at Vox
and I said, Hey, do you mind if I'm like,
I'll do this on the side. It won't get in
the way of my work for you, because I wasn't
hired to, you know, go on this journey for them.
But I was like, can I work on something on
the side about volut volunteering and an individual action because
I think there's something here that I want to figure out.
(34:40):
And they were supportive, and so I just kind of
did it outside of my normal work and I started
email at interviewing sort of scholars of philanthropy and historians
of you know, social movements, and I just started I
wanted to understand these questions in addition to getting involved.
And so the other thing that happened was I got involved.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
With the Giving Circle, which I had never heard of before.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I don't know if maybe your listeners also, but I
read about it in one of these books I was
reading and they described it as like a book club
but for philanthropy, and it's very popular amongst women, although
not exclusively. But I'm in a book club and I
love my book club, so I was like, oh, well,
this could be fun. So I found one in DC
call Many Hands, and they have been around for twenty
(35:27):
years and they focus on you know, local DC, Maryland
and Virginia nonprofits that are dedicated to serving women and
children in some way. And every year, you know, they
collectively donate to an organization that the members vote on
and you like meet together to learn and research and
(35:48):
talk and do site visits and it's just kind of
a way to make your the power of collective giving,
they call it.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
So I got involved in that.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I joined like one of the committees where we would
meet weekly to learn more and then the voting was
in May. So that was a cool thing, and I
met all these really nice older women who had been
sort of in this organization for a.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Really long time. And I think.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
One of the things that I started to think about
as I was doing all of this work and trying
to figure out how did I get here? How do
you like, why what's going on? Was I? First of all,
I used to I volunteered as a kid, like I
(36:37):
did things with my parents. We would go to soup kitchens,
we walked for the cure, you know, like cleaning up parks.
All that stuff was very normal kind of childhood things.
And then as I got older something I say in
the essay was it it started to seem childish, Like
it seemed like something you do as a kid when
you're not sort of serious about making real change in
the world. And that real change comes from organizing political movements,
(37:02):
passing legislation.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Top down, top well, but it.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Didn't feel top down when I was because it was
like organ you know, you organize people to push for
for legislation, So there felt like a like a grassroots
component to it, and that it felt I was very
persuaded by all of this stuff that we need people
to push politicians to pass legislation to get the change
that we.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Need, and and the other.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
And then the other component that came with that was
I definitely read a lot of essays and heard a
lot of arguments in college specifically, you know, predominantly, but
not exclusively. I guess that these more smaller scale things,
individual action, volunteering in your community, you know, changing your
personal behavior, those were ineffectual at best, they were a
(37:52):
harmful distraction at worst, like they would distract from the
attention and focus that we needed to be doing to
push for the bigger things. And I and I and
I think a lot of people we were persuaded, like,
you know, oh, if you're if you're talking about recycling,
you're not focusing on the corporations that are you know,
causing so much, you know, destruction to the planet. We
(38:13):
need to keep our focus on that. And we you know,
if you're if you are focused on tutoring a student
in reading, you are not focused on these like bigger
forces that are trying to like hurt public schools, you know,
things like that, or and I just that's I was persuaded,
(38:37):
you know, as a as a student and as a
young adult, and I think a lot of people were.
And there there was this idea that charity and volunteering
it was like it was gonna distract. And I think
one of the things that happened to me as I
was doing this is like, I think this is wrong
in a way that I didn't used to understand. And
(38:58):
I think a world in which we are not doing
these things for other people, in which we're you know,
rationalizing a way spending an hour with a student on
a Wednesday when you have time because you think maybe
there's a more effective or optimist, optimized way could spend
my Like, I don't think people are actually.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Doing that either. Like I think that you've realized that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
It's not like everyone was not volunteering and then mobilized
for change. Actually a lot of people were cynical and
nihilistic over here and not helping in their community and
feeling like nothing was going to change. And it just
started to realize, like, actually, it's not that it's for me.
It's not that we don't need systemic change and we
don't need policies. I'm still a policy reporter. I still
(39:43):
believe in policies are really important for people, but I
no longer I don't think it's true that this idea
that focusing on your community and getting involved and and
you know something, I know you like experiencing the personal
benefits of volunteering, all that stuff is actually so important
(40:06):
to whatever bigger, broader thing you hope to one day achieve,
and we and that was that was really different for me,
Like I that was a change, and I That's where
I've landed. And and I've spent a lot of time
since kind of talking with other people who also have
just been really disengaged and sort of know that they
(40:27):
don't know that there's an issue but haven't really figured
out Okay, so how do I How.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Do I change that?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And one other thing I might add if I can.
I think a lot of people in my generation younger,
like everyone, there's a lot of attention and awareness around
health stuff. Like people are very you know, almost too much.
Sometimes I'm like, you guys can drink, you know, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
One of the things that I also just kind of
realized as I was doing this was, you know, we
everyone says they're so busy, but all these people are
saying they're so busy, like they're still making time to
go to the gym or to get in some sort
of exercise or whatever, you know, cook meals if they
can something. But people were not, including me, We're not
(41:19):
seeing making time for being involved in your community as
like a really just essential thing that should just be
part of your weekly or monthly or you know, annual
whatever it is life.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
They weren't. They just it wasn't being elevated.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
It was like a, oh, sure it'd be nice to volunteer,
but you don't have to make time for that.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That's like a maybe.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
If it works out in the way that people would
definitely prioritize and build in other things. And I read
a book called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, and he
has a term he uses is called moral jogging.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
And he's like, no one.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Really likes to jog. You just jog because you know
it's good for you. And he's sort of he so
he was making this also point that like doing things
for your community, volunteering, donating, you might not like maybe
you don't maybe you don't want to do it at
the time, but it is good for you and it
is a really good thing to build into your lifestyle
(42:15):
and you will reap the benefits just in the same
way like jogging is, you know, ultimately good for you.
And I think, yeah, I don't have to like I
don't have to like rationalize myself to go do it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
But it was all helpful in me sort of unlearning
or unchanging my mind about a lot of things that
I think a lot of people have told themselves about
why they don't do certain things, like it's not worth
my time, it's not effective, I could be doing more
important things I you know, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Rachel Cohen,
and guys, don't miss part two. It's now available to
listen to. Together, we can change this country, and it
starts with you. I'll see in part two.
Because I definitely read a lot of essays and heard
a lot of arguments in college, specifically, you know, predominantly,
but not exclusively. I guess that these more smaller scale things,
individual action, volunteering in your community, changing your personal behavior,
those were ineffectual at best, they were a harmful distraction
at worst, like they would distract from the attention and
(00:24):
focus that we needed to be doing to push for
the bigger things. And I and I and I think
a lot of people, we were.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Persuaded welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney,
I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a football coach in
inner City Memphis. And the last part y'all, somehow some
(00:52):
people showed up and filmed us, and it led to
an oscar for the film about our team. That movie's
called un Defeated. I believe our country's problems are never
going to be solved by a bunch of fancy people
and nice suits using big words that nobody ever uses
on shows like CNN and Fox, but rather an army
(01:15):
of normal folks, people like us, just you and me
saying you know what. There's a need over here, and
I can help. That's what Rachel Cohen has done. You
just heard how she was jaded about volunteering, and then
she wrote a remarkable article for Fox about her transformation
(01:37):
into a regular volunteer and donor that we're about to
dive deep into. It's titled Why I Changed my mind
about volunteering. My generation was taught to change the system.
That lesson came at a cost. Guys, this is one
of my favorite conversations. I cannot wait for you to
(01:59):
meet Rachel right after these brief messages from our general sponsors,
(02:22):
Rachel Cohen, Welcome to Memphis.
Speaker 3 (02:24):
Thank you for inviting me.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
DC, right, d So not long ago we had the
tragedy at the airport and I did you fly out
a Dallas or Reagan?
Speaker 1 (02:35):
I flew out of Reagan today and it was actually
I did text my fiance saying, wow, I haven't felt
flying anxiety in a while, and now I feel a
little nervous. There was, you know, the layoffs at the
Aviation Agency too, and yeah, it's kind of weird.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Two of my four kids live and work in DC. Yeah,
and flying in and out of DC as all of
a sudden become everything delayed, half the things canceled. It's
a mess over there.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
It was it was smooth, you know, getting on and
leaving today, but I was just like, I really hope that.
I don't like to think about there being a possibility
of an error, you know.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Yeah. Well, interestingly, Reagan was actually designed for commuter aircraft
and it's the shortest runway in the United States that
jumbo jets land on, which is why they built Dulles
for big travel. And Reagan was supposed to be actually
commuter travel and it's switched. It was designed to handle
(03:34):
max fifteen meion passengers annually. It holds twenty five now,
So people need to start going to dullas.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
I think going to Dulas is horrible.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
I know, it's the drive right so far there it
is so well, I'm glad you're here.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
I'm I'm glad I'm here, and I'm glad I flew
from Reagan here.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Today is another one of our lunch and listen episodes.
And so hi everybody, thanks for having lunch and listening,
although none of you were eating, so I don't know.
This is more like a listen at lunchtime. Oh there
are a couple of people with lij Well, thanks, you
have a small audience for you. We'll do another lunch
and listen in April with Michael Arkush, who just wrote
(04:18):
a book that's coming out, an argument of the world's
most influential one hundred golfers. It's gonna be really interesting.
He wrote a bunch of cool books. And today you
get to see Memphis Listening Lab. Pretty cool spot.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
Huh so cool?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, do you know this was once the Sears? Did
they tell you?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Alex was telling me earlier and when I got here,
I said, this reminds me of Pond Street Market in Atlanta,
and then.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
He said that was also a series.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Yeah, it's interesting because the Crossdown Concourse is exactly that,
and Memphis Listening Lab is good enough to allow us
to have some things here. So Vox explains the news
and world around you by making complex topics easier to understand.
(05:10):
Vox tries to candidly shepherd audiences through politics and policy,
business and pop culture, food science, and everything else that matters.
Launched in twenty fourteen, the citamassed more than five million
unique visitors in just over one month. Today it reaches
more than ten times that audience through vox dot com.
(05:31):
It's award winning videos, and it's on Tom Trade podcast.
I think I think Vox has like one hundred and
forty five million total monthly content views. Anybody who serves
around on their phone knows what Vox is because it's
yellow and black, I think, right, yes, that's the colors.
And Rachel is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy.
(06:00):
Social policy. That's uh, that could get sticky, can't it?
Speaker 3 (06:04):
It definitely can.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
I like to say it's it's everything, except I don't
really do the climate policy stuff. We have another team
for that, and I we have someone else who handles healthcare.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
But there's a.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
It's you know, schools, housing, families, education and abortion, abortion rates.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Yeah, and you've been doing this for more than a decade, right,
So that's who Rachel is professionally. Who's Rachel grown up?
Where'd you come from? What's your what's your world? It's important?
I think it's germane to what we're going to get
to talk about, which is simply an article you wrote
(06:48):
that has spoken to a lot of us in my world.
But when you hear you work for Vox and you're
in DC and you're a writer and you talk about
policy issues like housing, schools, homelessness, childcare, and abortion. One,
(07:11):
not having met you, might categorize you. And I'm curious
as to just kind of a brief where you came
from and how you came up and what led to
this work for you.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, and I'm so glad that you invited me here
to talk. And you know, I definitely know what you mean.
And this article, I know that we're going to be
talking about a lot, was definitely different from what I
typically do for Vox, which is more, you know, covering
specific news, you know, development and trying to unpack them.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
And this.
Speaker 1 (07:51):
Article essay was more of a sort of a personal
piece that was based on work I've done for Box
that made me, you know, thinking about my personal life.
So I just wanted to say that.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
So.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
I I grew up outside of Philadelphia. I have a sister,
two parents. I went to public school, I was raised you.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
Know, I'm Jewish. I went to college in Baltimore. I
love Baltimore. Where in Baltimore and John Hopkins in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
I was gonna say, you can say JOHNS Hopkins, it's.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
You know, Oh well, I do love like.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I stayed in Baltimore after I graduated because I really
do love the city. I studied history and sociology there,
so it was like very sort of focused on on
the city. I interned at the Baltimore Sun, which is awesome,
and then I moved to DC and I have been
there about ten years. It's weird thinking like we're on
our on the you know, fourth president in my time
(08:54):
like that, I'm like, wow, going fast, and yeah, that's
sort of high altitude.
Speaker 3 (09:01):
And I you know, I got into journalism.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
I didn't think I was going to become a journalist
because it sort of felt like I love journalism. I
did my high school paper and I would do a
little on college stuff, but it felt like, oh, people
who become journalist or it's like saying you want to
become an actress. It's just so hard to do. So
there were always a lot of things that I have
been interested in, and I love journalism, but I think
it's a healthy mindset. I try to hold on that, Like,
(09:26):
you know, the industry is changing so fast so much.
There's so many different political and economic threats to journalism
today that I think, should I not be able to
do this work.
Speaker 3 (09:39):
In five or ten years or whatever.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
There's so many other things I also, like think would
be interesting and meaningful, but hopefully I can. Hopefully, I will,
you know, be back here in my current job in
ten years.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
So really stupid people go to Johns Hopkins and your
degrees are in so theology and history and you end
up in journalism talking about cultural issues. That's interesting. I mean,
maybe you didn't major in journalism, but talking about cultural
(10:16):
issues having studied both history, which is a huge precursor
toward whatever social issues you're engaged in, and then the
sociology of social issues, I think that's an interesting perspective
to write from.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
I thank you, and I agree I think what I
have tried to do in my work, and I think
Vox fortunately.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Is a place it's very very open to this.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
Not all mainstream outlets are, but I'm very committed to
bringing research and history into the articles to try to
help people think about things from different lenses.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
And yeah, I think there are just a lot of
there's a lot of really great outlets that either.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Don't have the constraints or you know, incentives for that.
But Vox is really open to research and researchers and
that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
So it's been good.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
OK. So that's where Rachel comes from. That's what she does.
Here's why she's here. Evan Feinberg wrote on his LinkedIn
about an article you wrote. Evan Finberg is the He's
a director right chairman of the Stand Together Foundation. Now,
(11:39):
for those of everybody who don't know what the Stand
Together Foundation is is a foundation supported by the Koch Brothers,
among others, who have poured tons of financial resources into
When you hear Cooke brothers, I know what people think
(12:01):
when they hear that, but they really pour resources into
a non political effort. And I mean we're talking millions
and millions and millions of dollars to support philanthropic projects
across the United States that work and are scalable.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
I want to also add, you know, in DC, the
Koch Brothers have funded a lot of criminal justice policy
work reform.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
So there's a lot of.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Sort of The Koch Brothers got smoked by a lot
in the left wing media years ago because of some
of the politicians they supported. What the truth is, the
Koch Brothers have been supportive of issues that are important
to people on both sides of the are candidly and
as such, stand Together is just that stand together. We
(12:52):
talk about on an army normal folks and shop talk
all the time that we do not care if you
are a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, agnostic, gay, straight, white black?
What are some progressive conservative, Republican democrat. I'm trying to
come up with all these little taglines we seem to
(13:13):
collect ourselves in. We don't care. Sorry, yeah, yeah, we
don't care. But if you are engaged in an activity
that is helping elevate or serve someone who is not
as blessed as you in your community, regardless of any
of those taglines about you, I can celebrate that about
(13:34):
you and you can celebrate the same about me. And
then it interesting, if we have this foundation of respect
from that level of service in our communities, how those
taglines seem to disintegrate and not matter so much anymore.
That's really we talk about that all the time. That's
really germane to our entire movement that is this podcast.
(13:57):
So Evan Feinberg, we pay it because he's a guy
that's really engaged in this across the entire United States.
He wrote on LinkedIn only thirty three percent of Americans
are involved in their community at the level that they
want to be. To me, that shows we're not fighting
the battle of whether people want to be involved. People
(14:20):
want to contribute, they just don't know how. That's why
this recent Vox article, your article, Rachel stuck with me.
It highlights something bigger that's happening across the country. More
and more people from different backgrounds and beliefs are rediscovering
the power of community. The author's experience beautifully captures it.
(14:43):
As soon as she starts getting involved, she feels fulfilled.
Then she sees her efforts are actually making a difference.
This shift in perspective is powerful. It's easy to think
that the challenges we face are so big the change
requires concentrated, top down power or massively engineered political campaigns.
(15:08):
But what if it's more personal than that. It's about small,
meaningful actions. These efforts don't just add up in some
abstract sense. They actually build the foundation of something bigger.
That's how communities grow stronger, how trust builds, and how
we solve problems together. Imagine if everyone had the same
(15:32):
aha moment, if everyone rediscovered that their actions matter, what
could our communities look like? Then when I read what
Evan wrote about your article, all I hear is it
echoed in a few different words the things we talk
about every single week. Sure, we're trying to produce a
(15:53):
show to be entertaining and hopefully you cry and you're
enlightened and you're informed and it's interesting, but your words.
The higher altitude view of all of that is, what
if we can inspire people to simply engage, how much
more fulfilled their own lives will be, and what could
(16:15):
our community look like if from that basis we grew
together to serve And now a few messages from our
gender sponsors. But first, I hope you'll consider signing up
to join the army at normal folks dot us. By
(16:38):
signing up, you'll receive a weekly email with short episode
summaries in case you happen to miss an episode or
if you prefer reading about our incredible guests, we'll be
right back. So when we read that, we thought, all right, well,
(17:05):
who's this Rachel Cohen chick on Fox. Let's read what
she has to write? So, eh, what's that?
Speaker 3 (17:13):
And read you?
Speaker 2 (17:15):
No, I didn't. I read it, and I'm like, I
love it because one of the things stand Together talks
about all the time, which I believe in is instead
of these massive, top down programs, the real work is
done from the bottom up. We talk about always not
having to be part of some massive NGO or massive
(17:38):
organization to have incredible effect. In every week we bring
guests on the show to illustrate that very point from
all walks of life. It feels like to me reading
your article that you yourself had an interesting awakening is
the word I use, And I don't want to put
words in your mouth, but I would just like you
(17:59):
to take us through the article, what your personal journey
was actually in the article, and what you learned about
service and philanthropy and this thirty three percent of Americans.
Only thirty percent of Americans are involved, but all want
(18:21):
to be. And what you learned, maybe even about yourself
and how that can inspire this army of normal folks.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Awesome. I'm so glad to talk about this. Maybe I'll
start and you can interject or steer me. If I
am going.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
And you're much smarter than me, just go. If I
don't understand something in a row, you're.
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Going to understand everything. I think.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
So a weakening is a fine word to use. I
think as I was on this journey, and I'll go
into the journey, I think one of the biggest things
that for me that happened that I felt was like,
oh I was wrong about something like it was. I
sort of started this project with a certain set of
assumptions that I had, you know, developed over the last
(19:13):
you know, since I was in college, over the last
fifteen years or so, and then as I was doing
more thinking, I just started to change my mind about
all of that. And that's why the article was titled
Why I Changed my Mind about volunteering, although it's kind
of about much more than that.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
So it started with a note I got from a reader.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
I thought, I'm sorry, Oh sure, it's important for the audience,
those of you listening, watching, and here I really look
up the article after you hear this. But the title
is why I Changed my mind about volunteering. The subtitle
my generation was taught to change the system that lesson
(19:59):
came at a cost that in and of itself is
attention grabbing because it's interesting how you say your generation,
and it came at a call. So I aired in
not saying that before you started. I wanted to get
your body up on that.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Yeah, and I would I would definitely be interested to
hear from you later if you think there's similar things
in your generation or how if you think it's different.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I do think there's similar things, but from a completely
different spectrum.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Cool. I want to I want to hear more about that.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
So, as I mentioned, you know, I studied sociology, I've
been writing about social policy for over a decade. I
write about, you know, housing, the housing crisis. I write about,
you know, education reform, all these sort of big systemic
(20:56):
issues that are require policy change and legislation. And basically
it started with a note I got from a reader
who contacted me and sort of said, you know, I
read your latest article. I had done this article about
tiny home shelters, and he said, you know, when I
walk home from work, I see people outside. I live
(21:17):
in Washington, d C. This reader also, I think, was
in DC, and just said, like, what can I possibly
do as one person to help I feel like they're
you know, I feel so overwhelmed by the situation. It
feels like nothing I can do really matters. And I
started to jot back a response, but it was actually
approaching Christmas and you know, in journalism, people news organizations
(21:41):
kind of stuck up on articles to run over Christmas
week while everyone's on vacation. And I thought, I said
to my editor, you know, this actually is a good question.
Why don't I report this out sort of formally, like
why don't I call people and then actually we can
run this as an article over Christmas week about you know,
what do experts say is actually the best ways to
(22:01):
help people who are And you know, I had some ideas,
but I thought, let's do the formal reporting process.
Speaker 2 (22:06):
Can we call those preconceived notions?
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Well, I think, for at least for me, they were
based on reporting on homelessness, you know, from some dimensions.
But yeah, some preconceived notions, I would say a mix
for me. And so, you know, I sort of made
a list of organizations, started making calls, and.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
It's just the responses I.
Speaker 1 (22:30):
Got, some of them overlapped with what I had, you know,
was going to tell this reader, you know, you should
go to your city council meetings. You should make your
voice heard for more affordable housing. You should, you know,
support zoning laws that can allow for you know, more
shelters and policies that raise wages because people can't afford
(22:51):
their rent and that's how a lot of people are
becoming homeless. But a lot of the suggestions were just
a lot more, uh, you know, simpler was you know,
carry cash, hind out socks, look people in the eye
and smile, like contact your local shelter, see what they need,
just like a series of things that all made sense.
But I was like, why didn't I Like, why didn't
(23:14):
my mind go there? And why don't I do those things?
And you know why don't I know many people who do?
Speaker 3 (23:22):
And it sort of just started me.
Speaker 1 (23:26):
It agitated me, and I remember that Christmas week I
started thinking a lot about like my time and how
I what I'm prioritizing in my busy schedule, and I thought, Okay,
there's some sort of personal questions I feel like I
need to think more deeply about. I need to figure out,
(23:46):
like how I've gotten to this point in my life
where I'm in my early thirties and I'm not sort
of volunteering at a work, like why did what steps
have gotten me to this point?
Speaker 3 (23:56):
And in my social circles?
Speaker 1 (23:57):
But in the meantime, let me just start, let me
make a change, really quickly, and I'll do the researching,
thinking thing and for New Year's resolution, let me just
find something to get involved with so I can like
start that process. So that was what that was my plan.
And then can I.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
Ask a question, Yeah, did that make you feel better
about yourself?
Speaker 3 (24:16):
I like having plans, you know. I was like, Okay,
I'm gonna do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Do you understand the nature of the question.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
It didn't yet.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
I didn't really know yet how all this was going
to feel. I only I didn't know that getting involved
would make me feel the way it felt. I don't
mean that, Okay, So maybe I don't understand the question.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
I mean the sentiment. Here's the thing. Yeah, at the
risk of being condescending to everybody on the face of
the planet, but I'm going to do it anyway. It's
my show. I'm allowed to the high school I went to. Yeah,
if you cheated, you got in trouble. If you knew
(24:55):
of somebody who cheated and didn't do something about it,
you were con considered equally responsible. Okay, same kind of
line of thinking. People that allow themselves off the hook
because of that sentiment that they're thinking about doing something
(25:20):
nice that, Oh, I feel better about myself because you know,
I really think somebody how to do something about that
one day. That sentiment means nothing, but somehow it allows
yourself off the hook because you're thinking about nice things.
You don't say what I'm saying. Did the just the
beginning of the process give you some false sense of kindness?
Speaker 3 (25:49):
Well, Ben, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
What I mean.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
I do, I do, but I think for my personal journey,
I was like, I'm going to do both of these
things at the same time. So I was like, I'm
not gonna spend a year thinking before I start looking
for something. Let me, let me get involved with something,
and then I'm also gonna think about why I haven't
gotten before. So I told to your point though, one
(26:13):
of the things that really sort of agitated me is
I started to think a lot about how actually easy
it was, like how few intellectual leaps one had to
make to justify not doing anything for other people, Like
there's there's.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
That's what I mean, that's what the justification it.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
Yeah, and and and that sort of and that sort
of freaked me out because I just realized, like, oh,
I know all these talking points and rationalizations and and
people in my social circle, professional circles, like we all
sort of it's you. You're so busy, it's got so
much going on, you know, et cetera. There's a million
different or oh they all waste the money, can't trust
(26:55):
that organization, or they're ineffective. You know, there's so many
different sort of excuses that people smart. I mean, I
think good people have made for themselves that when you
add them together, really just kind of create this permission
structure to not do anything for other people. And I
(27:16):
was like, okay, now that I sort of realized that, belatedly,
for sure, belatedly, I was like, okay, let me just
find something to do. And then I also need to
do some more thinking about how I got here. And
then one of the things that happened to me personally
is it was a little harder. It was harder than
I expected. I was like, I'm a college educated journalist
(27:37):
with professional research skills. I don't have kids yet. I like,
I'm self motivated. I will find it should not be
hard to find stuff to plug into. And but then
it was. It ended up being, you know, I had
all this kind of motivation and I was really like,
I'm ready. And then I was, you know, calling places
and emailing places, and I wasn't hearing back. And I'm
not a member of a synagogue at this time in
(27:59):
my life, and my my workplace doesn't organize anything.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
And it was like this very strange feeling that I had.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
It was last winter where it was like, oh, you know,
I have a lot of friends, I feel like I
have I feel like I have a strong social network,
but I felt like this institutional gap where I was like, oh,
this is the kind of stuff that Robert Putnam was
always talking about just having things that you can more
(28:27):
easily plug into when you want to serve, whether that's
somebody inviting you that you know because they're doing it,
or your church or you know, your school. You know,
I know a lot of parents sometimes their schools organized things.
And I was just like very conscious of the fact
that there wasn't anything super easy to plug into when
I was ready to plug into. No, I wasn't gonna
(28:48):
let that be an excuse, but I was thinking, if
I wasn't so motivated right now, I could easily see
why people just kind of give up, because you know,
these a lot of organizations are understaff, so they don't
always get back to the volunteer. A lot of organizations
like need a whole other person to manage volunteers because
it becomes so much work for them.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
And so it just took me. It took me longer
than I expect, not too long.
Speaker 1 (29:14):
I did, you know, find things, but it was just
kind of it struck me how it wasn't as easy
to do. And the more I kind of got into
this project and was talking to people in other cities,
and I learned that I'm not alone in that. That
it's that there are a lot of people who, you know,
to Eric Finberg's point, like I think want to get
(29:35):
involved but don't don't know the access points or there
aren't easy access points. And I say this all to
not say that should be an excuse and we should
all find ways, but I think it's helpful when people
are trying to figure out this disconnect of like, okay,
we have statistics that say thirty three percent, you know
or you know that more people want to be involved
(29:57):
than they are. I think at least part of it
is that there aren't as sort of just easy ways
to plug in, or people aren't like inviting each other
as much so that was kind of one.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
You mean that interesting word called community.
Speaker 1 (30:13):
Community, Yes, exactly. I mean that's because I feel like
I had I had community, but.
Speaker 3 (30:18):
My community wasn't doing these things. You know.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, No, you had community, but there's this whole other
community exactly. That's what I mean. Yeah, And that's one
of the things we're trying so hard to challenge people
to break through, is that your community is just a dot.
(30:41):
There's this massive other community out there.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
I think that's I think that's really helpful and I
feel like it's a helpful kind of pushback against the
crisis screaming because I wasn't lonely, you know, but I
didn't have that thing. And so those are just it's
just different sort of ways of thinking about social and connection.
Speaker 3 (31:03):
And things like that.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
So as part of the researching part of my journey,
I started reading a lot of books, and one of
the books I read was this book called Who Really Cares?
By Arthur Brooks, and it came out in two thousand
and six, and he had a lot of interesting data.
I mean, I think some of it might be a
little out of date now, but one of the points
he had made was how you know. And I would
(31:39):
identify as left of center, you know. And he made
a point that, you know, liberal people tend to donate
less to charity, they tend to volunteer less and they
and they also like give blood a lot less. And
I read this and I was thinking, I've never given blood,
(31:59):
And then I was thinking, why have I never given blood?
And I sort of started going through different things, and
I started researching, and there's it turns out there's a
lot of research that on how to get people to
give blood and what first time blood donors.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
And it's a lot like voting, where.
Speaker 1 (32:13):
It becomes a habit and if someone invites you to
donate blood for the first time, you're more likely to
do it. And I was like, well, no one's inviting me,
but that's also a bad excuse, like I should just
do it. And so I then I saw there was
a blood shortage. The Red Cross was advertising around it.
COVID really hurt, you know, blood drive donations. People aren't
(32:34):
doing them at work as much. So anyway, I decided, okay,
well let me just at least go donate blood and
then I'll keep thinking.
Speaker 3 (32:42):
So I did that.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yes, we had a guest recently. Do you know what
percentage of the country needs blood in their lifetime? One hundred? Wow,
everybody needs blood eventually, right, And if you don't need blood,
someone you love needs blood, cancer, car wreck, whatever. You
know what percent that country donates blood or pilot's three
(33:08):
three of our country's blood supplos blood about three percent
of the people. Now, do not tell me there's not
systematic apathy to the greater community of need.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yeah. Yeah, that's horrifying.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So go ahead. You donated blood. I donated blood, but
you're still researching.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
Yeah, I'm still reaching and you know, and it I
will say, I don't maybe this maybe your listeners are
sort of more likely to donate blood because they're listening
to your podcast.
Speaker 3 (33:37):
But if you were like me and you had never
donated blood, I was really.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Surprised how good it was, Like the feeling you know
when you get better after being sick for a day
the next day and you're like, wow, I feel so healthy.
Like I never felt sort of more healthy, and like
there was.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
So much like vitality.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Was like, oh I I am a healthy person able
to do this for somebody else. It felt so good.
I was really not expecting that it was just a
great feeling. I've now done. I'm actually donating blood on Thursday.
I've donated blood like four times since that point. It's
like actually also really good like health thing because it's
kind of like a workout in terms of calories you
burns and so so uh anyway, that was interesting and
(34:19):
so then I as part and then I as I
was doing this, then I talked to my at Vox
and I said, Hey, do you mind if I'm like,
I'll do this on the side. It won't get in
the way of my work for you, because I wasn't
hired to, you know, go on this journey for them.
But I was like, can I work on something on
the side about volut volunteering and an individual action because
I think there's something here that I want to figure out.
(34:40):
And they were supportive, and so I just kind of
did it outside of my normal work and I started
email at interviewing sort of scholars of philanthropy and historians
of you know, social movements, and I just started I
wanted to understand these questions in addition to getting involved.
And so the other thing that happened was I got involved.
Speaker 3 (35:02):
With the Giving Circle, which I had never heard of before.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
I don't know if maybe your listeners also, but I
read about it in one of these books I was
reading and they described it as like a book club
but for philanthropy, and it's very popular amongst women, although
not exclusively. But I'm in a book club and I
love my book club, so I was like, oh, well,
this could be fun. So I found one in DC
call Many Hands, and they have been around for twenty
(35:27):
years and they focus on you know, local DC, Maryland
and Virginia nonprofits that are dedicated to serving women and
children in some way. And every year, you know, they
collectively donate to an organization that the members vote on
and you like meet together to learn and research and
(35:48):
talk and do site visits and it's just kind of
a way to make your the power of collective giving,
they call it.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
So I got involved in that.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
I joined like one of the committees where we would
meet weekly to learn more and then the voting was
in May. So that was a cool thing, and I
met all these really nice older women who had been
sort of in this organization for a.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Really long time. And I think.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
One of the things that I started to think about
as I was doing all of this work and trying
to figure out how did I get here? How do
you like, why what's going on? Was I? First of all,
I used to I volunteered as a kid, like I
(36:37):
did things with my parents. We would go to soup kitchens,
we walked for the cure, you know, like cleaning up parks.
All that stuff was very normal kind of childhood things.
And then as I got older something I say in
the essay was it it started to seem childish, Like
it seemed like something you do as a kid when
you're not sort of serious about making real change in
the world. And that real change comes from organizing political movements,
(37:02):
passing legislation.
Speaker 3 (37:03):
Top down, top well, but it.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
Didn't feel top down when I was because it was
like organ you know, you organize people to push for
for legislation, So there felt like a like a grassroots
component to it, and that it felt I was very
persuaded by all of this stuff that we need people
to push politicians to pass legislation to get the change
that we.
Speaker 3 (37:25):
Need, and and the other.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
And then the other component that came with that was
I definitely read a lot of essays and heard a
lot of arguments in college specifically, you know, predominantly, but
not exclusively. I guess that these more smaller scale things,
individual action, volunteering in your community, you know, changing your
personal behavior, those were ineffectual at best, they were a
(37:52):
harmful distraction at worst, like they would distract from the
attention and focus that we needed to be doing to
push for the bigger things. And I and I and
I think a lot of people we were persuaded, like,
you know, oh, if you're if you're talking about recycling,
you're not focusing on the corporations that are you know,
causing so much, you know, destruction to the planet. We
(38:13):
need to keep our focus on that. And we you know,
if you're if you are focused on tutoring a student
in reading, you are not focused on these like bigger
forces that are trying to like hurt public schools, you know,
things like that, or and I just that's I was persuaded,
(38:37):
you know, as a as a student and as a
young adult, and I think a lot of people were.
And there there was this idea that charity and volunteering
it was like it was gonna distract. And I think
one of the things that happened to me as I
was doing this is like, I think this is wrong
in a way that I didn't used to understand. And
(38:58):
I think a world in which we are not doing
these things for other people, in which we're you know,
rationalizing a way spending an hour with a student on
a Wednesday when you have time because you think maybe
there's a more effective or optimist, optimized way could spend
my Like, I don't think people are actually.
Speaker 3 (39:17):
Doing that either. Like I think that you've realized that.
Speaker 1 (39:23):
It's not like everyone was not volunteering and then mobilized
for change. Actually a lot of people were cynical and
nihilistic over here and not helping in their community and
feeling like nothing was going to change. And it just
started to realize, like, actually, it's not that it's for me.
It's not that we don't need systemic change and we
don't need policies. I'm still a policy reporter. I still
(39:43):
believe in policies are really important for people, but I
no longer I don't think it's true that this idea
that focusing on your community and getting involved and and
you know something, I know you like experiencing the personal
benefits of volunteering, all that stuff is actually so important
(40:06):
to whatever bigger, broader thing you hope to one day achieve,
and we and that was that was really different for me,
Like I that was a change, and I That's where
I've landed. And and I've spent a lot of time
since kind of talking with other people who also have
just been really disengaged and sort of know that they
(40:27):
don't know that there's an issue but haven't really figured
out Okay, so how do I How.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Do I change that?
Speaker 1 (40:34):
And one other thing I might add if I can.
I think a lot of people in my generation younger,
like everyone, there's a lot of attention and awareness around
health stuff. Like people are very you know, almost too much.
Sometimes I'm like, you guys can drink, you know, just kidding.
Speaker 3 (40:54):
But I think that.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
One of the things that I also just kind of
realized as I was doing this was, you know, we
everyone says they're so busy, but all these people are
saying they're so busy, like they're still making time to
go to the gym or to get in some sort
of exercise or whatever, you know, cook meals if they
can something. But people were not, including me, We're not
(41:19):
seeing making time for being involved in your community as
like a really just essential thing that should just be
part of your weekly or monthly or you know, annual
whatever it is life.
Speaker 3 (41:32):
They weren't. They just it wasn't being elevated.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
It was like a, oh, sure it'd be nice to volunteer,
but you don't have to make time for that.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
That's like a maybe.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
If it works out in the way that people would
definitely prioritize and build in other things. And I read
a book called Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, and he
has a term he uses is called moral jogging.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
And he's like, no one.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
Really likes to jog. You just jog because you know
it's good for you. And he's sort of he so
he was making this also point that like doing things
for your community, volunteering, donating, you might not like maybe
you don't maybe you don't want to do it at
the time, but it is good for you and it
is a really good thing to build into your lifestyle
(42:15):
and you will reap the benefits just in the same
way like jogging is, you know, ultimately good for you.
And I think, yeah, I don't have to like I
don't have to like rationalize myself to go do it.
Speaker 3 (42:27):
Anymore.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
But it was all helpful in me sort of unlearning
or unchanging my mind about a lot of things that
I think a lot of people have told themselves about
why they don't do certain things, like it's not worth
my time, it's not effective, I could be doing more
important things I you know, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Rachel Cohen,
and guys, don't miss part two. It's now available to
listen to. Together, we can change this country, and it
starts with you. I'll see in part two.
Host
Bill Courtney
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