So hope is for me everything. I wake up hopeful. I wake up optimistic. I think it really makes a difference for me who has chronic illnesses. It really does make a difference. And whether or not I feel like life is worth it, like the days when I'm really tired and my body is exhausted and I can barely get out of bed, it's still worth it to get up because the world is still moving, like the world is changing better is coming, whether or not I live to see it. Hi, I'm Rachel Hollis, and this is my podcast. I spend so many hours of every single week reading and listening to podcasts and watching YouTube videos and trying to find out as much as I can about the world around me. And that's what we do on this show. We talk about everything. Life and how to be an entrepreneur. What happened to dinosaurs? What's the best recipe for fried chicken? What's the best plan for intermittent fasting? What's going on with our inner child? How's therapy working out for you? Whatever it is, my guess are into, I want to unpack it so that we can all understand. These are conversations. This is information for the curious. This is the Rachel Hollis podcast. And I guess we'll just jump in to our chat. So event for listeners who aren't familiar with your work will you tell us a bit about who you are, what you do and why we come to have this conversation today. Yeah, I am a multi hyphenate is how I describe myself. A trained, I'm a trained journalist, so my day job is being the executive editor at this magazine called yes, where I focus on solutions journalism. So thinking about the biggest issues of our day, whether it's racial injustice or indigenous rights, and thinking really forward about what are the solutions to those issues instead of just presenting the problems themselves. And I would say that is something that carries across my life in my career so outside of that an author, a lot of my work focuses on gender and race and size and taking through the lens of pop culture about how we can address those issues and solve them and really think about dismantling those sorts of institutions. So that's a part of my work. And then outside of that, I speak about a lot of those issues and I do it to children. I do it with adults and really trying to get everyone on the board on board with the idea that we can imagine a new world. It doesn't have to look the way that it looks now. The first thing that you said that really sparked curiosity to me is, did you call it solutions journalism? Is that how you set it? I did, yeah. What does that look like? Is that finding experts in the field is that doing your own research? Just fascinated by how that manifests in your life. It's really being connected to and doing community building with people who are on the ground addressing these issues. So whether it's thought leaders or activists or organizers, people who are really ingrained in movements. So I think a lot about one of my favorite people in the world Renee bracey Sherman who is on the ground related to reproductive justice. So when we wanted to do a story about the ways in which activists in Latin America have become a lighthouse for activists in the United States who are focused on reproductive justice, I reached out to Renee like we need someone in Argentina and she said, I know the perfect person. So it's really having and building relationships with people who are not just focused on the problem, but focused on how do we create a better world around this issue, how do we use community to do that and how can the work that I do amplify that message? So it's not just about the bleakness of it, but the hope of it, the optimism of it, like what comes after. Well, and I think when you're getting into an awareness of a new, I hate to say the word problem, but that's what they are. Problems that are facing us in this world in our country, how do you even understand which grassroots organizations are the ones that are truly affecting change? Because I think, you know, when we become aware of something that's going on in the world, like I think of when roe V wade was overturned, and all of the sudden, it was like, I hate to sound like an idiot. I couldn't even believe that that could happen. And you know, and as it was getting closer and closer, it was like, holy shit. No way. No way, and then it happened, and it was like, oh, what do we even do? And so just starting to arm myself with information about which organizations in my local community and the nation that I could support with my platform with my money with my whatever, how have you found that it's best to identify the ones that are truly doing that have the efficacy that we should be supporting because I also think that sometimes it becomes so popular that everyone's doing it, you kind of don't know who you're supposed to look at for guidance. I always say to look toward a person who you trust and ask them about an organization. So no matter what organization it is, if there's someone in your community or even a distant friend who's involved in some sort of movement, ask them, ask them, and I also think social media has been a really great way to figure that out because people will openly criticize organizations that are not on the ground doing the work that they claim to do. So sometimes it's as simple as searching for organizations names say on Twitter or on Facebook or on Instagram and seeing what the criticism is of that organization. And then you can always make a choice of whether or not to support it, but at least you have all of the knowledge about the organization before you decide to throw your support around it or platform it or give money to it. And how did you how did you find your way into this specific type of coverage and journalism? Like, what was it in your past that kind of led you to this place? Oh, that's an awesome question. I am a trained journalist, like a straight up trained journalist, and the way in which we are trained is that we are never the story and that we're supposed to have this objective lens of an issue without any bias or any perspective. And I came to realize that was untrue and graduate school. When I really started understanding that, regardless of whether or not people are open about their biases, everyone has them, and a lot of it is subconscious. So everyone has a worldview, everyone has a perspective. And that really came to the forefront for me when I started supplementing my journalism education with humanity's education. So in history courses and in black feminist theory courses and sociology courses and communication studies, it really helped me develop knowledge outside of just the skill of journalism. And I wanted to figure out how to merge those two things.