We're Back (Kind of) with More Stories All Week

It's been almost two years, and I (Baratunde) am back with an experimental drop because democracy is something we DO, not something we HAVE (or don't), and this moment calls for that reminder. So...

I’m teaming up with my friend and fellow citizenist Jon Alexander (author of CITIZENS) to do something we believe is urgent and necessary: shine a light on the everyday people practicing democracy in extraordinary ways.

We’ve gathered a week’s worth of short, powerful stories from across the U.S.—people showing up for their communities, bridging divides, building something better.

We’re releasing one story per day this week on LinkedIn and Instagram. But we know there are more.

We’re not doing this for clicks. We’re doing this to prove there’s demand for a different kind of story.

One where people aren’t problems to be fixed, but solutions already in motion.

Here’s how you can help:

📩 Sign up at https://stories.howtocitizen.com

✅ Follow @baratunde, Jon (@thecitizensguy), and @HowToCitizen on Instagram

💬 Engage. Comment. Share. Tag someone doing similar work.

📣 Know someone with a platform or newsletter? Ask them to help spread the word.

We want to show funders—and each other—that this kind of storytelling matters.

Let’s make this the week we saw the democracy we deserve and counterprogram the nonsense and chaos with something beautiful and joyful already happening.

Major appreciation to Shira Abramowitz who has run point on finding the stories we are releasing this week. And to Elizabeth Stewart for great partnership.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm recording this on my phone. It's been such a
long time since we dropped anything into this feed, almost
exactly two years. But we're back, sort of, and this
is a test. This is Baritundae and Hi, thanks for
staying subscribed. We've been all over the place me personally,

(00:22):
my life partner and business partner Elizabeth, our democracy, the
stock market. Everything's just a bit intense. And we made
this show How to Citizen for moments like this, to
help us move through them, to have some practice at
living well together and coordinating our actions and being creative

(00:45):
about self government in the face of such destruction. So
here's the news. We've been collaborating with one of our
season two get guests or was it season one or
was it season three? I think it was season one.
Time is weird? John Alexander. Remember British dude wrote the

(01:09):
book Citizens, How the Solution everything is Everyone. Well, we've
been doing a lot of combined efforts with John. We've
brought on someone named Sheer Abramowitz to help us find
new stories, stories that don't really fit the description of
a whole podcast. But during the week of April fourteenth,

(01:31):
twenty twenty five, as I'm recording this. That's today. We're
launching a story a day on Instagram and on LinkedIn,
and I'm going to see if I can just shove
it into the feed in here. I'm running this by myself.
We don't have the team together for podcasting how to Citizen,
but I will take the audio from these videos and

(01:55):
I will put them in the feed and if you
hear it, then it worked. And if you don't, then
I'm just I'm just talking to myself. But maybe you'll
feel the vibe shift in your life. If you want
more stories of people citizen ing, if you know of
more of these stories, head to stories dot howtocitizen dot com.

(02:20):
We've got a little sign up form and we want
to know that you're interested and if you know more stories,
we should know about. And we're going to be sharing
each of these stories every day for about a week,
sending it out through email and pushing it on social media,
just to counter program all the noise and distraction and

(02:41):
destruction and nonsense and remind us that we have agency,
especially when we do it together. So if I'm technically
not a total idiot, what you should hear after this
is the audio of the launch video that I made
with John as we pointly are launching this week of

(03:03):
Citizen in story sprint. All right, take a deep breath.
We're going to get through this peace.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Hey.

Speaker 1 (03:13):
I'm Barton day Thurston. A few years ago, my wife
and I made a podcast called how to Citizen, where
citizen is a verb.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
My name's John Alexander. And at the same time Barretonde
was making that podcast, I was writing a book called
Citizens Why the key to fixing everything is all of us?
So the two of us are basically hitting on the
same insight at the same time, on opposite sides of
the Atlantic.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
That democracy is something we do, not something we have
or don't have, That citizen is a verb, not just
to now that people all over the world and every
part of society are doing it, but that most of
us don't see this story because the media doesn't put
those on our screens and on our feet. It's pointed
in the wrong direction.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
That's a real problem because when we can't see it,
it's difficult to believe it's happening, especially when the stories
we are top division despair. This affection makes us believe
that there's no point doing anything. Exactly the time when
we most need to be leaning, and it's dark because actually,
when you start to look, you find that people are
leaning in everywhere. And when you see that, you start
to believe that there might be something you can do,
and you start to get involved as well, and that's
when things really start to change.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
Well, we decided, let's team up, let's tell more of
these stories together. I reached out and found a bunch
of these stories across the United States and get the
people making those stories real tell them in their own voices.
That we've collected about a week's worth of these stories,
So we're dropping one a day on Instagram and on LinkedIn,
and we need your.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Healthy stories fly. It'll make a real case of the
thunders we're talking to and they need to get behind this.
So there's a real appetite to hear these kind of stories.
Here's how you can help.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
First, hit yourself on the mailing lift. We're dropping one
story a day and we're announcing them each day via email,
so you don't miss it. I don't want the algorithm
getting between you and a deeper practice of democracy, all right,
Sign up at stories that howdositizen dot com.

Speaker 2 (04:47):
Second, follow Barreton day the Citizens Guy and how to
Citizen on Instagram and Barreton day Thurston and John Alexander
on LinkedIn. That's where we'll be posting.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
And there's the obvious. Do what you do with an
online video you're into like it, Come share and you
know the drill, and talk about other people doing similar things.
Forward and on to someone who's not on social media
but needs to see. The more we see these stories,
the more we can embody and be these stories. They're
out there, and if we can demonstrate that supply and
that demand, then we can get more resources to tell

(05:18):
more of these stories. The world we know is already here.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Beyond that, we're really in your hands. If you've got
a newsletter going out this week, please list it in there.
That would be amazing. If you have any thoughts on
what else we should do, get in touch, post something
in the comments here, get in touched on other website
Stories dot howtositizen dot com. Basically anything we can do
to get these videos out there, prove the case that
there's an appetite for this kind of storytelling. We want
to do it.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Let's do this spoiler alert. We already are