We're back with another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jasinski,
culture editor here at the Federalist. As always, you can email the show
at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr LST.
Make sure to subscribe wherever you download your podcasts, and to the premium
version of our website as well. Today I am joined by the woman behind
a familiar byline. You may have read her work at The Federalist, Teresa
Mole. She is an editor over at The American Spectator, but right now
for the purposes of this conversation. She's also the author of a brand new
book that is coming out in August. It's called Woke Proof Your Life and
is chock full of practical advice. Theresa, thanks for joining the show.
Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah. I
think it's your first time on the podcast. So if you could just Charles
talked to us a little bit about how you ended up writing, especially writing
about these particular issues, that would be awesome. Absolutely so. I've always
been interested in writing and journalism. I studied literature at the University of Dallas,
and I started working in some small town newspapers really enjoyed that. I
still dabble in that here and there. And then I went to Washington,
DC. I interned at a couple of different places. I worked from our
ingram for a bit and have done some freeliancing. And I've worked in conservative
journalism for about a decade now, and recently I noticed that our society just
seems angry. We especially in the past three years since COVID, it just
seems as if we are looking more at one another, not as neighbors with
a Christian attitude, as how can I serve you, how can I help
you thrive, but more as enemies, you know, how can I get
something from you? How can I accuse you of disting against me? We
just haven't an attitude shift in this country that I really don't like. And
I thought, you know, what can I do about this? How did
we get this way? And how do we cure our nation and heal and
get back on that path to the go to old American virtues. So that
was the inspiration for this book. And I after, you know, having
worked as a writer and editor in various capacities, I decided that it was
time to write a longer form piece, so to speak about, you know,
two hundred times longer than I would normally write. And I came up
with this book, and I'm really excited about it. I'm hoping that it
will help help a country get back to where we were at least three years
ago, if not, you know, ten fifteen. I'd love to go
back to the nineteen fifties. I understand that's not exactly realistic, but that's
basically how the book book came into beating in the nineteen fifties. Okay,
So this has become a topic of some debate in conservative media recently because Michael
Knowles said that he didn't want to go back to the nineteen fifties. He
wanted to go back to the twelve fifties. Oh okay, well, yeah,
I mean, I like indoor plumbing. I don't know all about Michaelnols,
but you know, I think I could maybe a happy media, maybe
like the seventeen fifties. I don't know. I didn't have plumbing either,
but a little more hygiene. This is a great podcast idea. We'll have
to have you come debate Noals on the various merits of the nineteen fifties versus
the twelve fifties in the seventeen fifties. But alah, on that note,
I mean it is interesting because I think for so long the conservative world,
and this is common with the political world serve in general, but it is
really mired and esoteric conversations about what's right and what's wrong, and you know
what was? You know that the past was better? But you know what
does that mean for people right now? And obviously you've thought a lot about
that because you decided to sort of translate that into practical, like actually very
practical tips that people can apply in their own life. Tell us about that,
you know, going from that sort of very thirty thousand foot conversation and
then saying, actually, things were better and here's what you can do to
channel some of those healthier lives. Yeah. So I think a lot of
people, and statistics prove this. You know, the number of people who
are on antidepressants, and number of people who are addicted to various substances,
and number of people who are overweight just generally miserable. That number has risen
dramatically in recent years and continues to skyrocket at alarming rates. And I look
at you know, how did we get this way? Take it back to
I take it back more recently to the sexual Revolution and what that did to
our society. You know, in the nineteen sixties and seventies, there was
definitely a shift in the way that sexuality was perceived and normalizing things like sex
outside of marriage. You know, people, I think really began to look
at one another more as an object as you know, I can use your
body, I can use you for a good time, for the weekend,
or whatever it is. And that shift is really important in the way that
we look at one another now and wokeness, because if you think about wokeness,
it is essentially objectifying people. You know, diversity tends to be about
quote unquote, diversity tends to be about the color of someone's skin, their
sexual identity. They're really kind of physical things, not the person's soul,
not the way that they're made in the image of likeness of God, not
certainly not their merit. We saw what happened whenever the Supreme Court ruled against
affirmative action. You know, the left really freaked out about that because they
are very concerned about the physical things and things that people can't really help not
people's virtue. So that's a long winded way of saying we essentially have been
losing God in society, and certainly our belief in Christianity keeps declining as well.
You look at the Gallup does a pool every year of Americans gaging their
values and beliefs, And the belief in God has gone from like ninety nine
or ninety eight percent in the nineteen fifties and sixties to like eighty one percent
now, and the belief in Christianity went from ninety percent to like sixty one
percent in the last few years. So that's really startling. So whenever you
take God out of the picture and our Judeo Christian values, what is left?
You know, people are empty, they're searching for meaning, they're searching
for values, and the left wokeness has swept in and said, oh,
you should you should look at yourself, you should value yourself above all else.
So I'm kind of getting off track. I understand what was Yeah,
so looking big picture, how do we get back to you know, the
twelve fifties or whatever it is. You know what people throughout history, recent
history, and what was you know, the lynchpin that really made our country
great for so many years, and the founders was that it was based on
this fundamental belief that we are created equal, that we are made in the
image and likeness of God, that we ought to treat each they're with dignity
and respect and love, and we're losing that as we lose God. So
the first thing I write in the book guiding people to wokeproof their lives is
to find God in their life. And if you have God in your life,
to strengthen your relationship with him. And if you have a strong relationship
with him, try to spread that relationship to others. And then the rest
of the tips that I give people in Wokeproofing is I hope will also lead
them to God. You know, if if you're not close to God,
doing certain things will also lead you closer to Him. You know, it's
kind of a it's a whole circle to get us back to God and to
get us back to Christianity. So things like spending time in nature, volunteering
at your local church, community or your local nonprofit, serving one another,
rather than sitting at home on your phone and becoming angry, so we don't
necessarily have to go back to the nineteen fifties. As far as you know,
you can't use social media, or you can't use the internet, you
can't you know, watch TV or anything like that. You know, I'm
not advocating that we all become honesh, though I am tempted every day.
I live in Pennsylvania where they're all around me. I'm like, you would
be easy, Yeah exactly. I'm like, yeah, yeah, hop of
the buggy one day and drive off. Yeah. So we don't have to
really radically alter our lives all that much. We just need to tweak a
few things and reset our priorities and remember whenever things were good, the good
old days, what was driving that? It wasn't. It wasn't much more
than just remembering our Christian values and applying them. And yeah, okay,
I will shut up now, go ahead. Oh no, no, no,
no, that's super interesting because it's bringing me towards somewhat of a tangent
that I'll ramble about for a second. I was doing a segment the other
day about the Barbie Oppenheimer memes, which are absolutely hilarious. But you know,
we laugh at it because we think they're so completely different, but they're
actually really tied to the same thing, which is in some ways the way
our American hegemony after World War Two allowed us to just have this incredible access
to oil, which gave us a totally new lifestyles and plastics, Barbie,
we're a huge, huge, huge part of that. And if you watch
old movies, especially old movies, or if you look at pictures before World
War Two in particular, you don't see plastic. And I'm not saying that
plastic isn't great. I think plastic has a lot of applications and has created
a lot of prosperity and improve the quality of people's lives. But there are
so many This is where it gets to my question for you things we take
for granted, like sort of the ways they've dramatically changed how we interact with
ourselves, with nature, how we live as human beings. Brett Weinstein and
Heather Hang referred to it as hypernovelty and and all kinds of different contexts,
not just not just plastics, and not just you know, the post nuclear
world. But there are so many things that have changed, and not all
of them for the better. We have we're just drowning in random plastic stuff
that we use once and you know, then let's sit around in a house
for a really long time. So are there I know in the book,
actually you talk you've already mentioned this talk about gardening. You talk about like
all of these specific kind of lifestyle tweaks that are practical, that are fairly
accessible, easy, It doesn't matter if you live in a red state or
a blue state, although some of the stuff might be easier in red states
or rural areas as opposed to urban areas. But is that really you know,
in some cases when you mentioned the nineteen fifties, is that really what
we're talking about here, that there things changed really quickly in the last one
hundred years, and actually the way that we were doing things, you know,
subsistence gardening for example. You know that we may have conveniences that make
it easier and I'm making pasta for instance. People have machines for that now
and that's probably a good thing, even if they're handmaking their own pasta.
But is that the case that really, when we start to think about it,
just the last one hundred years, there were certain things we were forced
to do because we didn't have technology yet that actually, when we look back
on it, that there may have been values that outweighed the costs absolutely,
I think, and one of the sources I quote in the book makes this
point really nicely, is that we've kind of been lulled into a stupor by
all the luxuries we have. You know, we I think there's like ninety
percent of people in the United States have some sort of smart something. It
might even be more than that, you know, a smart phone or a
smart TV. And most people, even if you're you know, poverty level,
that you're not you're not suffering as much as you would have been,
say in the nineteen fifties. You know. It's it's we just we have
so many resources, and we're very spoiled as a nation, which is wonderful
that we've been able to make all these advancements and to improve people's lives and
have these technologies and all of these wonderful things. But we can't lose sight
of basically what it means to be a human, and we can't we're forgetting,
I think, to ignite ourselves. You know, it's easy to be
lulled into the convenience of ordering from grub hub and to you know, click
twice and next thing you know, your weeks for worth of groceries and supplies
shows up on your doorstep from Amazon Prime without ever having to leave your home.
But so much is lost in that, you know, your There's so
many studies about how good gardening is for you physically, mentally, spiritually.
Your mental health is improved, and a lot of people understandably say, why
would I garden? Whenever I can literally sit on my couch and order food
that is delicious and I didn't have to get dirty or sweaty, and it's
cheap and convenient. But you know, the obviously kind of simplistically no pain,
no game. You know, the same can be said about I am
looking at the ozempic trends. You know, why would I go to the
gym? Why would I go on a diet? Why would I? You
know, do research as far as nutrition goes whenever I can easily take a
pill for that. So we have to be really careful about how much we're
allowed allowing all these luxuries and technologies to control our lives and to be lulled
by it, because there is so much value in doing things yourselves, and
you don't have to do everything yourself. You know, you don't have to
become a homesteader. But yeah, you know, just choose one thing that
maybe you would hire someone to do, or you know, instead of throwing
away your bookshelf and going in buying another one from Ikea in two years whenever
it breaks, you know, I suggest maybe go antiquing or restore something,
or just develop a skill use your hands. It's a disservice, I think
to the gifts that God gives us, not only personally our faculties that were
kind of letting sleep, but also to the beautiful things that He has provided
us. You know, if you're sitting inside just being entertained mindlessly by TikTok,
you're not listening to the the songs of the birds that he made and
appreciating the various colors of wildflowers and the sense of the forests and things like
that. You know, there's this beautiful masterpiece all around us, and we
are a lot of us, are you know, just limitating that to like
a three inch by four inch little plastic screen and just becoming consumed by it.
And wokeness is a symptom of this disease that we have. I think
technology and wokeness really go hand in hand the watched Alto on Wall Street podcast
with Chris Markowski. Every day, Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and
the economy and how it affects your wallet. With crime and drug addiction continuing
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in the family unit. Is there a direct correlation whether it's happening in DC
or down on Wall Street, it's affecting you financially. Be informed? Check
out the watched Aolto on Wall Street podcast with christ Markowski on Apple, Spotify
or wherever you get your podcast. Oh that's a that's such an interesting point.
Can you just flesh that out a little bit? Why? Because my
next question was going to be used It is funny you mentioned home studying,
Like that's something in the wake of the pandemic that's really taken off. And
early in the pandemic we saw people like one of the hottest TikTok trends was
making your own bread or like canning and all of these different things. And
I was just going to ask, you know what, why has some of
the stuff taken off in the aftermath of the pandemic. But that actually goes
hand in hand with what you just said about wokeness and technology being sort of
inextricably intertwined. One rises as the other rises. Twenty twenty is as good
at you know, early days of the pandemic on the other side of the
coin exactly a great example of that. Why is it that these things go
hand in hand? Well, yeah, I think, you know, we
didn't have wokeness as we see it now really before COVID. I guess the
term woke has been around since before COVID, but we had political correctness,
we had iterations of what wokeness has become. You know, wokeness is a
form of evil, and evil has always been around, and wokeness has sort
of always been around in some form, maybe by another name. But it
seems as if the gloves really came off post COVID and during COVID, And
I think a lot of the reason for that is that these concepts and these
agendas have been stewing, so to speak. But then during COVID, everybody
was locked down, everybody was made fearful, which is a huge you know,
like the number one tactic of wokeness is fearmongering, because you think about
how easy it is to control someone whenever they're afraid. I make the analogy
to like a bank robber and an Old West movie. What's the first thing
they do? They like, stick them up, you know, put your
hands up. Get You're scared for your life, so you'll do whatever they
tell you. So people are afraid of being called racist, of being called
homophobe, of being censored, of being canceled, of you know, not
getting enough retweets on Twitter or whatever it is. You know, they put
this fear in us, and then we do what they tell us. We
go along to get along, we go to the d EI training, we
do whatever it is. And technology or social media specifically, I would say
I had a lot to do with that because during the pandemic, in addition
to the kind of the silver linings that you mentioned of people kind of being
becoming re enchanted with doing things themselves and exploring things like making bread or gardening,
we also saw a spike in screen addiction that we're still navigating. You
know, some psychologists wanted to want to diagnose that as its its own form
of mental illness, you know. So I think that that really offered wokeness
and opportunity to people were already afraid and then they were They were on their
phones a lots, and these these platforms that are so notorious for censoring,
we're just feeding them whatever. These people were sitting at home on their phones
and watching TV all day, you know, whatever. They there's this propaganda
that they wanted them to believe. And then you know, after after COVID
kind of subsided a little bit, now we see wokeness really taking hold all
over the place. So I think that without technology, without so much technology,
I should say, without social media, wokeness would kind of wither and
die. I write that wokeness lives and dies online because without these very prominent
and you know, there's hundreds and thousands millions of people absorbing this stuff and
it is censored, so are getting their messaging across very easily. And you
look at Facebook and Twitter until recently it's owned by you know, very radical
left wing people who are able to get their messaging across to all of these
people who are just absorbing it. So you take social media out of the
picture, and you get people out and about interacting with one another, you
know, going to the church, picnic, going to the diner, hanging
out with one another, you know, just joining a club, doing things
that we did do in the nineteen fifties or even the nineteen eighties, you
know, before technology was so well spread. People don't look at each other
whenever they walk into a diner and say, oh, what do you identify
as? You owe me a million dollars. You know, it doesn't really
happen in real life because people are unboldened on social media and in the mainstream
media to do and say these things because there's not really new percussions, you
know. But whenever you get out and about in your interacting with your friends
and neighbors, and you realize, oh, I like this guy. He
has a fun sense of humor or he's really good at woodworking, and I'm
really good at you know, baking pies. Like we can have this exchange
and you realize that you like you like each other. You're not enemies,
you're not looking for ways to accuse the other person and get reparations or whatever
it is. You really you find that you enjoy each other, and a
lot of wokeness is dividing and conquering and isolating people. They rely on that,
and that's really easy to do on social media, and we see that
the fruits quote unquote, they're rotten. Fruits of the movement and of social
media tend to be pretty bad. You know, the more people use screens
and social media in general, the higher their depression and their anxiety and their
isolation and loneliness and all these things. And it's really deadly, not just
for for the individuals but for our society. Yeah, there's so much truths
all of that. Is it getting well here? This is such a tricky
question because well, you do see things like home setting kind of taking off
in certain subcultures, you know, even just homeschooling taking off in certain subcultures.
But also, you know, we even people who don't necessarily recognize that
they're doing something that is along the lines of your book, you know,
gardening, putting it on TikTok or whatever it is, like these things.
It is just interesting to see some of these trends taking off, especially among
gen Z and so I guess my question is are you hopeful that this is
getting better? I mean, what is the path to human recovery? Is
it just the sort of mass awareness that some of our technologies have been unhelpful
and we need to kind of reorder our lives, even if people are secular
people, even if people aren't Christian, and they start to realize maybe I
do need to, you know, stop eating so much junk and start making
some of my own food. Maybe I should have a garden, Maybe I
should put my phone down. Is this getting better in any sense? Or
is it, you know, going to get worse before it gets better?
Is there? You are you noticing this even among people who aren't consciously making
the decision to you know, live a godly and you know, in some
sense conservative lifestyle. What does this? What does the future look like right
now? I'm optimistic and I do think it is getting better slowly. You
know, the people who create these apps and who are behind the screen technology
that we all know and love for the most part, they're very smart.
They make these things so that they are intentionally addictive, and they have been
very effective at that, obviously very successful. But I saw a study recently
that I believe it's gen z actually want less technology. They did a poll
and kids of the younger generation said that, you know, they're kind of
overt technology. And I heard this recently from a parent. She has like
a ten year old and she was getting him his first smartphone, and I
was like, oh, I was kind of asking her, you know,
how are you how are you going to monitor him? Is that all he
wants to do is use his phone all day? And she said, actually,
not really, because they grew up with phones. They're used to them.
It's just kind of like, I don't know, flipping on the lights.
To them, it's like, oh yeah, But they're still enchanted by
nature. They're still enchanted by playing outside. And I think that as I
guess the novelty of these things kind of wear off, we become re enchanted
with the things that have spained society and enchanted humans for forever. And I'm
actually seeing kind of the rise, I guess the trendiness of like being outdoorsy
in recent years, especially since covid, Like, yeah, people were still
posting on TikTok or Instagram like selfies of themselves hiking, which kind of irks
me because I'm like, you're out in the wilderness, you're hiking, You're
you're just supposed to get leave your phone at home. Whatever, but it's
still encouraging to see that. And I think also as the statistics statistics come
out, you know that now that we've had social media for how many years,
were really it takes a few years kind of like you know, smoking,
really to delve into the science and to do the studies and to see
what the effects are. And as those start to come out, I think
people will be reevaluating what the relationship is. And yeah, I'm hopeful.
And also I would say, you know, things like the Dylan Mulviny TikTok
or Instagram backlash, people are are really realizing that wokeness really does survive on
these platforms, and they're kind of getting sick of what they're getting turned off
and they will unturn you know, I write in the book, cancel them
before they cancel you. They are kind of repulsed by the censoring that that
has been proven has taken place on social media, and so Americans, you
know, they don't want that. They don't want to be censored. They
don't want to use a platform that sensors their fellow Americans. And there has
been statistics also from both sides saying, you know, both Democrats are Republicans
that censorship does go on in these platforms, So I don't think Americans will
continue to want to use these technologies that they feel are not presenting reality,
you know, whenever you can go outside and see reality for yourself. That's
a really good point too. Is this a was it sort of a personal
journey for you as you recognize some of these things? And if so,
what of the practical tips you offer? What experiences did you have in your
own life that kind of brought you to compiling a book like this. Yeah,
Like I said in the beginning, I kind of took a look at
society and I thought, why is everyone so angry at each other? Where
are the people who are happy and who are leading you know, virtuous,
joyful lives? And how do I do more of that? I had this
moment where I bought some shampoo and I took it home. I was getting
ready to use it, and I looked down and there was like an LGBT
flag on it, and I was like, really, like, can I
do nothing in this world that is not some sort of radical political cause?
And I saw just I see this nation just becoming kind of disenchanted with modern
life and becoming exhausted, burnout, and nostalgic for the good old days.
And I am fortunate to live in a place that's kind of we're a little
bit behind the times. You know, it's rural central Pennsylvania. We're kind
of like stuck in the eighties a little bit. Of course, we have
TikTok, we have screen addiction, we have all the problems that you know,
the rest of the world does, but it's not as bad here.
And we still have, you know, a bunch of old timers who kind
of do the traditional thing, and I get to be a part of that.
And I really you know, coming back to this small town where I
grew up, and you know, obviously it has some disadvantages, but it
also has a reminder of what life was like, prewokeness, and what it's
like to interact with your neighbors. I belong to my local sportsman's club.
I shoot trap on Tuesdays. I've made like a million friends there. People
are so welcoming. They have different talents and traditions and stories, and every
time I go there, I just feel like I stepped back in time and
it's really enjoyable. And I thought, you know, if the rest of
the world, or you know, had had what I've gotten to experience here,
people would be a lot happier. You know, there's there's a group
of people who go to the local coffee club or a coffee shop every morning
and interact with one another, and sometimes after they have their coffee, they
will go over to somebody's house and help them move something with a project.
You know, you just form these communities and these relationships that really enrich your
lives. And even if they don't see I'd eye on every single political issue
of the day, it doesn't matter because they're not talking about it all the
time, But you really I call it. I refer to it as unforced
stress. In the book. You know, in Tennessee, you have something
called an unforced error, which is basically, when your opponent doesn't do anything
to you, you just mess up on your own. And I find that
we have so much unforced stress through social media and through mainstream media that we
bring into our homes and into our lives, and we allow it to consume
us. And I've I found myself doing that. You know, I get
angry whenever there's something on the news about why men should be allowed to play
on the women's lacrosse team or whatever it is, or you know, men
are able to get pregnant, and I start getting angry, and I start
like arguing in my head, and I'm like, why am I doing this?
You know, people who not that we shouldn't fight. Of course,
obviously we should. We should push back and stand firm and our beliefs,
but we can't lose sight of living our lives also and in informing friendships,
in developing hobbies, and I just feel like we invite a lot of stress
that we don't really need to. There's a time and a place for that,
but we can't lose sight of the other wonderful good things. So it's
really about balancing your life so that you don't lose your inner peace and your
purpose and losing sight of that. I see a lot of conservative friends who
kind of make fighting wokeness and fighting liberals almost like a full time job,
to the point that they're agitating, upset all the time. And that was
another inspiration for writing this book. You know, I thought, yeah,
we should be righteously angry, angry, But if we're like that all the
time and they're robbing us of our joy and our peace and of our appreciation
of the good things that we have. Then they're winning. You know,
maybe not the war, but that's a battle that they're winning. And throughout
scripture, we're tool being not afraid to put your trust in your peace and
your hope in the Lord. And if we're constantly agitated, if we're if
we're all stressed out and are angry all the time, and that's not a
good thing. So how do we, you know, build an impenetrable alternative
society of our own that's basically immune to woke forces? And I've been trying
to do that myself. You know, I'm wokeproofing my own life and it's
great. And in writing this book, I would I found, you know,
a wonderful community of people who are already doing all the things that I
write about, and they have five friends who are doing it, and then
they have five more friends. And there's a lot more people out there who
are woke proof and wollproofing than you would believe by if you just listen to
the media. So what role is there for politics in this situation? I
like the way that you phrase it. They're building a society that's woke proof
That would seem to implicate all of the politicians that constantly talk about wokeness.
Some of it is very constructive and some of it is, you know,
maybe more signaling than sincere. But is there a role for politics, And
you know, maybe this is outside the realm of what you write about,
but is there a role for policy in any of these particulars can incentivize behaviors
that would help us build a wokeproof society in any different ways? Does anything
stand out to you that policymakers could be doing or is it maybe even just
their role as leaders to talk about healthier ways that people can live their lives.
Right, So, I'm pretty obviously a small government person, so you
know, wokeness is reliant on big government, you know, telling you what
to do in the bedroom, you know, what to do at the local
schools. All these things they want to tell us what to think and how
to act and what pronouns to use, and all these things control our language.
So the best thing I would like politicians to do is to limit the
influence. Obviously, that would be the best of what the government's control of
our lives is. And then just I see so much like all the reports
of the corruption of the Biden family and what Trump is going through with his
various cases, and all these things that are really really a bummer and a
downer to the American people. Doesn't really have that much to do with our
day to day lives as far as like paying our bills and things. Of
course it does affect it, but we don't have any say on that.
And politics just seems like it's gotten so big and so out of control,
and so I feel helpless all the time. I'm like, well, what
can I do about this? You know, what's my vote going to do?
Which is not to say that you don't vote and you don't make your
voice heard, but it can seem really daunting and like it's just gotten out
of hand, as if government and politics is just like this foreign thing that
is fighting all the time, and then you're just like this little helpless and
down here just trying to live your life and make ends meet. So what
I advise people is to become a self sufficient so that politics and policy doesn't
affect you as much as you can. Of course it's going to affect you,
but I recommend things like homeschool your kids if you can move somewhere that
has you know, more freedom. We look at things like what Ronda Santists
did with the quote unquote don't say gay bill, which was you know,
obviously it has been misconstrued, but just limiting what the public schools can do
and say and teach. So really just limiting the government's power. I liken
it to like playing a game of whack a mole with all of these all
of these woke agenda items, but if you can make yourself immune to them
by kind of stepping out of the way, so that even if there is
you know, terrible things being taught at the local public school, parents obviously
are pushing back against that, and sometimes the best thing you can do,
and maybe the only thing you can do is to take your kid out of
the public school. You know. I talked to the Pullmans from the Federalist
who started their own school. Maybe that's not realistic or practical for everyone,
but I talked to several parents who homeschool with their kids. And maybe you
can move somewhere that a state that's a red state that has excellent education choice
programs so that you can send your child to a private school and get help
with funding for that, or send them to a charter school. You know,
there's there's so many ways if you just make a little bit of effort
to be unaffected by policy as much as you can. So that's that's kind
of I don't know exactly if I answer your question. I feel like it's
just there's so many bad policies and so much bad politics that sometimes we just
we have to get out of the way of it and do things ourselves as
much as we can. Absolutely, is there anything else do you think people
should know? First of all, people should buy the book, of course,
but is there anything else you think people should know about? You know,
maybe they're thinking this is sort of a daunting prospect. This sounds really
hard. I'm super busy at all these kids, and they're in this world
that you know, is all around them, and the idea of making any
small changes maybe feels like it won't do much to curb the radical the radical
problems that people are surrounded with. What would your message be to them?
It is definitely not as hard as you think it is. There's millions of
Americans already doing it, and they are ready to advise you, to help
you, to form a community with you, there's plenty of statistics showing that
there's really not that many people who identify as woke in America. Is just
they're very well funded, and they're very loud, and they have the media
mostly on their side. So you can get the impression that you're alone and
that's the point, but you're really not. And once you start doing a
few of these things, it will really snowball, not just socially all the
people and friends that you discover, but also you'll find that you like it.
You know, I I've gotten to the point where I kind of crave
chores. You know, I really look forward to gardening. It's so good
for you. Uh. You know, once you you take that first step
and you take a walk in nature after work instead of you know, going
home and tiktoking or whatever it is, you find that you you want more
of it and you don't have to do it all at once. You can
take baby steps, and there's ways that you can micro boycott. For instance,
you know, I have a list of all of these woke corporations,
and then you know, one woke corporation will own like ten of your favorite
brands that you know have become staples in America and it can be really daunting.
You're like, well, I'm not going to be able to eat anything,
you know, from the grocery store because it's owned by all these woke
things. But you can pick and choose, you know, you can start
small. You can just just do little things here and there and then build
on that as you're able to, and know that there are so many people
who are doing this with you and that it adds up and that it makes
a difference and not just you know, physically for you for your own you
know, well being and mentally, but for what you're building as a community.
And it's really satisfying. And uh yeah, just give it a try,
try one or two things from the book, and then you'll like it,
trust me. And then as you're able, you know, try one
or two more things and and reach out and encourage your friends and family to
do it too. And yeah, it's a wonderful journey to res mole.
Thank you so much for joining Federalist Radio Hour. The book is called Woke
Proof Your Life is out in August. Can't wait for people to get their
hands on it. Theresa, thanks for joining the show, of course,
thank you so much for having me absolutely you have been listening to another edition
of The Federalist you hour. I'm Emily Jasnski, culture editor here at The
Federalist. We'll be back soon with more. Until then, be lovers of
freedom and anxious for the fray you got. You are right, we are
You're wrong right