Sharon McMahon's Secret to Finding Strength in Tough Conversations and Online Criticism

Airdate: February 26, 2025 

Sharon McMahon: I felt like, "I'm one person holding up this drawbridge against the enemies of Mordor." That's, in the moment, how it felt.

Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us. You know, every single day I get some tough feedback or hear a perspective I disagree with, or just find myself way outside my comfort zone, and the natural reaction is to lash out or bail out, right? But if I do that too quickly, I might miss a chance to learn something, or feel new empathy, or deepen a relationship. So, the question's, "How," right? How to stick with that discomfort just a little bit longer? Well, that's what this podcast is about: real people telling real stories of choosing to stay open and curious in challenging moments. I'm glad you're here. Now, let's get Uncomfy.

Julie Rose: Can social media really be a place for productive conversation?

Sharon McMahon is my guest, and she hardly needs an introduction at this point. She's been dubbed "America's Government Teacher." She's got this new book called The Small and the Mighty. It has been weeks and weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. It's that good and that popular. She also, of course, hosts her own podcast called Here's Where It Gets Interesting. And her community of Governerds, as they have dubbed themselves, is actively engaging with her on her Instagram, @sharonsaysso, about all the political news of the day. Sharon McMahon, what a treat it is to speak with you. Thanks for taking time.

Sharon McMahon: It's my pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

Julie Rose: As so often happens with, uh, folks who are on the internet, I feel like I know you already a little bit, and I just think it's incredibly brave that you have been so willing to just be there on social media, your Reels and your stories, taking people's questions, talking about the toughest topics imaginable, and somehow you don't melt from all of it, from the hot takes, the hate that I'm sure you get, the emotion that's coming at you. What is your secret to holding up under all that pressure?

Sharon McMahon: You know, first of all, it's understanding your own limitations and we all have different limitations, right? Our distress tolerance when it comes to being uncomfortable, uh, varies, you know, like based on things that are happening in our lives at that moment or our previous life experiences or how much we know and care about the person we're talking to. So, I would, I would say that some of it has to do with knowing my own limitations, uh, and some of it has to do with trying to keep things in perspective. "Am I going to care about, uh, what this one random stranger said to me one year from now?" It's not always easy to do, though. I will admit that it is sometimes more difficult than other times, Julie.

Julie Rose: This decision that you made to launch into this so publicly and then maintain it is really, to me, seems like kind of the ultimate Uncomfy experience. I mean, surely you knew that there were some risks here, but I'd love to hear that first foray. Tell us about that first video that kind of told you, "Yeah, maybe there's a place for somebody like me here."

Sharon McMahon: You know, it was just a fact based, nonpartisan explainer video in September of 2020 about how the Electoral College worked, and I used little props, and I gave the candidates fake names so it wouldn't seem as though at the end of my explanation like I was trying to advocate for you to vote for one person or the other, uh, and it was meant to be, you know, lighthearted and humorous and approachable as opposed to very academic and dense. So, you know, that video, I, I wouldn't say that video went viral. It's not like that video has 25 million views, but what it did do was incentivize me to keep making videos. And I discovered that there were enough people who were like, "Huh, I didn't realize that. That's interesting. Well, what about this thing?" And so I kept making videos and soon I had, um, TV and radio stations all over the country calling me, asking me to help explain things to their readers and listeners. So, it was just like that one little moment of, "Well, I don't know if anyone's going to watch this." It's one little moment of discomfort, uh, that led to much bigger things that I could not have even anticipated.

Julie Rose: When it started to snowball for you, were you at all anxious about where it might lead, what it might expose you to? I've heard from a lot of people who've gone viral and they're, and all of a sudden, like, the tsunami of attention, um, drowns them or creates like enormous, uh, unpleasant backlash. So, so, how did you decide that the risk was worth taking?

Sharon McMahon: I absolutely did have concerns about where it would lead. I, at the time, if you've ever seen Lord of the Rings, there's a moment when, um, the men have sort of barricaded themselves in the fortress at Helm's Deep and outside are, like, the forces of Mordor that are, like, banging down the door and they're, like, "Run," telling the women and children, "Run for the caves," you know what I mean? And they know they're badly outnumbered, and there's, like, just moments until the the draw bridge gives way. That is literally how it felt. I felt like, "I'm one person holding up this drawbridge against the enemies of Mordor." That's, in the moment, how it felt. Um, like, "I don't, what's going to happen? I don't, I don't, I honestly don't know," and it truly was kind of terrifying. Um, you know, when you're a high school teacher, like I've been for so long, you have a lot of control over your environment.

When you are a good high school teacher, you have a high degree of cooperation for and buy in from the students in that classroom. And that's not to say there's never a behavior problem, but when you are an experienced teacher you know how to handle it, and you know what resources you can marshal to fix a problem. Um, and so, that's not the case on the internet, uh, that's not the case, so it was deeply uncomfortable, uh, terrifying is probably a better word. And I just kept trying to remind myself of a couple of different phrases that I go back to when I, um, am dealing with something difficult. One of them is, "What does it look like in this moment to run with endurance?" Um, and for some people that phrase might resonate for, you know, other reasons, but like, "What does it mean? What does it look like to have resilience or endurance in this moment? " And that doesn't always mean going hard, 24/7. Sometimes having endurance means knowing when to slow your pace, knowing when to get a drink of water, knowing when to, you know, eat your slice of watermelon or, you know, whatever your little goo that people eat, um, running with endurance does not always mean run faster right now. So I, I, that's a phrase that I come back to frequently is, "What does it look like to run with endurance in this moment?" And another, and another thing that has sort of kept me going is a concept that I've learned from people in history, and I talk about them in, a couple of them in my book too, is like, "What does it look like to do the next needed thing?" Because I can't fix everything; that's an exercise in futility. There's no way for a single individual to fix every problem the world is facing today. "What does it look like for me, with the resources that I have, with the knowledge that I have, with my station in the world, what does it look like for me to do the next needed thing?" And what it might look like for you, Julie, might be different. And what it might look like for my sister who has seven kids and a toddler, her resources are different than mine are. Different isn't worse, uh, and I think sometimes we get really stuck in this, like, "Well, Sharon has more followers. She can do more things. Thus, she is better or more equipped or has, you know, has, has a greater impact." I would, I would say that, um, different does not mean better, that different is just different, and, um, being okay with different, being different is not just, um, that being okay with different, being different is actually needed and necessary in the world.

Julie Rose: This idea of, "Just do the next needed thing," is, uh, is something that has really resonated with me from your, uh, your Instagram presence. And I frequently need those reminders when they pop up. I'm like, "Oh yeah, that's right. I don't have to do it all today, and I don't have to do it exactly like X, Y, and Z, and as long as I'm doing something to meet a need." Um, you have done that beautifully in a lot of ways I want to talk about in just a minute, including helping people to sort of get better information about how the government functions, um, and digest, like, the torrent, the fire hydrant of news that's coming at us at any moment, but also meeting literal needs in the lives of people with the incredible fundraising, the way you've been able to marshal all of the, the, your community to raise money to eliminate medical debt and to help teachers with their supplies. So, I want to talk about that in just a moment, but would you tell us about Virginia Randolph, who in your book is, um, I think it was her mother initially who told her to do the next needed thing?

Sharon McMahon: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I love her. I love Virginia Randolph. She has not gotten the credit that she deserves in US history. She really hasn't. Virginia Randolph was born in post Civil War America. Her parents had, uh, experienced a very different life than she did. And I talk about in the book how, uh, Virginia Randolph's mother, her name was Sarah, had four daughters who were born not into the hands of enslavement as she had been, but into the hands of liberty and what it meant to be able to give birth to free children. Because uh, previously if you were an African American, the child's, your child's status followed the mother. So, if the mother was enslaved, the children were enslaved. That was something that was very unique about enslavement in the United States, by the way, is that you had no hope of escaping it, and your children were, by default, enslaved indefinitely. So, Virginia Randolph's mother, uh, becomes a single mother when, her husband dies when her, uh, youngest baby is just a couple of months old, and she has to figure out how to feed and clothe and raise these children, uh, at a time when being a single mother was, uh, next to impossible. We didn't have the social safety net where we can make sure that your kids get food at school and that you, you know, have, uh, rental assistance and things that help people keep their children, uh, from abject poverty. Her mother didn't have that, so her mother had a job. Her children had jobs. Uh, Virginia Randolph, for example, has a job, even as a child, helping at a neighbor's home, where she gets paid a small amount to clean and wash dishes. And then in the evenings, Sarah, Virginia's mother, would knit and sew and wash clothes for other families in an effort to make extra money. And one of the things she tried to teach her children, that Virginia Randolph takes and sort of holds in her hand as a cherished object, is this concept of, "Just, just do the next needed thing." And that was how her mother got through a truly terrible time in her life.

Her husband dying, trying to raise these children on her own, working, I don't know, 18, 20 hours a day sometimes. Um, how do you live through those circumstances? It's literally one moment at a time, doing the next needed thing. Her mother could have been like, "Well, how am I supposed to fix racial segregation in the Jim Crow South? How am I supposed to fix white supremacy? How am I supposed to fix fill-in-the-blank terrible societal ill?" And it doesn't mean that those are not problems that needed to be addressed, it meant that Virginia's mother, Sarah, right sized her own sphere of influence to that of her children because that's what she had the capacity to do in that moment. And then, Sarah's sphere of influence, uh, grew exponentially when her child, Virginia Randolph, that she raises, um, when Virginia becomes a teacher who revolutionizes Black education in the American South and whose work has impacted millions. And so, had Sarah just thrown up her hands, had Sarah Randolph just been like, "Well, I can't fix any of this. How am I supposed to fix racial segregation? How am I supposed to fix the fact that I'm a single mom?" Had she just thrown up her hands in overwhelm and allowed the enormity of the world's problems to overcome her and allow her to be paralyzed with inaction, she would not have raised the children that she did. She would not have raised a girl who graduates from college at 16 and goes on to become a teacher and whose work deserves to be on par with other people who are well known in the American story, people like Booker T. Washington. Even when Virginia Randolph was alive, historians at the time said that of her, "Her work deserves to be in the pantheon of greats, just like that of Booker T. Washington's." So, it's time that, uh, both Virginia and also her mom get the credit they deserve. They just kept doing the next needed thing.

Julie Rose: Yeah. Amen. Thank you for telling that story. That's, uh, one of about a dozen. Actually, there are many more than that that you touch on in your book, The Small and the Mighty, which I know has been tremendously inspirational to a lot of people. And another thing that's really, um, powerful about Virginia's story is that what she was doing, what she knew was the needed thing was not always popular. She faced a lot of, a lot of pushback, um, and she persisted, and her school burned down at one point that she had, like, built with her own money and hands, and just the perseverance of that reminds me of the other thing that you mentioned, sort of, like, "What does it look to run a long race, right? What does endurance look like in this moment?"

Sharon McMahon: It's so true. Virginia always kept the next needed thing in mind, and for some days in Virginia's career, that looked like sewing sheets for a sick family who had none and just dropping them off on their doorstep, you know, in an old time equivalent of ding dong ditch. You know, just drop it off on the doorstep, don't even knock on the door because we don't want them to be embarrassed. Um, it could mean, uh, bringing in a dentist because she realizes that her children that she's teaching don't have appropriate dental care and that is really impacting their ability to learn. What the next needed thing was changed on a daily basis, but she taught other people how to do the next needed thing, and together ,this, um, army of teachers, thousands of teachers that are trained in her methods that fan out and teach hundreds of thousands of children who then go on to impact millions of children, um, they all learn how to do the next needed thing.

Julie Rose: How sure-footed do you feel, Sharon McMahon, in doing the next needed thing? Are you always sure that you can do it successfully? Because I think that's, for me, that's, like, one of the most paralyzing things is like, "I can see this, this is a need. I think I could fill it, but I don't totally know. I might get it wrong." So, how do you, how do you feel confident doing the next needed thing knowing that you might also do it imperfectly?

Sharon McMahon: Yeah, I think that's a really great question that I think many people feel, they feel paralyzed by, "What if I get it wrong?" And I, I would argue that it's not even so much that we're afraid to fail as it is we're afraid to have other people watch us fail. So, we fail at home alone all the time, right? Like, we fail at cooking dinner, and we fail at making the bed, and we fail at eating seven servings of fruits and vegetables, and we fail at working out. Like, we fail at home alone all the time, uh, where nobody's watching, and that is not what paralyzes us. What paralyzes us is the fear of judgment when other people watch us fail. And I would argue the people who fail the fastest and who get back up again are usually the people that history remembers with kindness. In fact, if you, if you read interviews with, you know, like the people who are super successful in the business world, you know, like the Warren Buffetts of the world, people always ask them, "What's the difference between you and other people?

How have you been successful?" Of course, people always want advice from billionaires. "How can I be a billionaire, too?" Um, and inevitably they come to some kind of answer that involves failing faster. That's one of the things that Warren Buffett has said is, "I failed faster. I was willing to fail faster." Um, because failure is inevitable, failing faster, uh, enables you to get up faster. Where other people are still slowly trudging through the quagmire of like, "Oh no, I might fall," and then they're like falling in slow motion as opposed to falling quickly and getting up quickly. That takes a lot less time than falling in slow motion. So, do, will I get it wrong at some point or will I, um, not be successful in an endeavor? The answer is, "Yes, of course," but history favors the doers and not the critics, and that, that includes the self critics. The people who are sitting on the sidelines, uh, doing nothing but making fun of other people, uh, critiquing the way they're doing it, or criticizing themselves for potentially doing it wrong. I would rather keep on trying than sit around and think about it. Uh, thinking about things has rarely moved the needle in history. Thinking about things doesn't lead to self-improvement either, right? Those types of things happen from actually doing things. So, uh, fail, failure is actually tremendously valuable information. When, when people like Warren Buffett say, "I fail faster," it's because they use the information they gleaned from failing and use that to set their, set them on the right path.

Julie Rose: Well, just finally, speaking of doing things at the risk of failure, how did it come to you to try to raise money for, for example, eliminating people's medical debt through your community?

Sharon McMahon: Yeah, we've raised, um, 11.4 million dollars so far, uh, including just recently over $700,000 for people who lost their homes in the California fires, another $700,000 for people whose homes were affected by Hurricane Helene. It came to me early on. My husband had a kidney transplant and COVID was tremendously isolating for us, uh, and I won't get into that whole story here and now, but it was December of 2020, and I, um, had this idea that I posed to my much smaller community at the time. "Wouldn't it be fun if y'all sent me your tiny little Venmo balances, your little 28 cents that you had just lurking in this account.

What if everybody just sent me their small little Venmo balances and I got a thousand dollars? And I took that $1,000, which seems like a lot of money to me at the time, and I gave it to somebody who really needed it, like a single mom with little kids who can't buy Christmas presents," or, you know, whatever it was. I just envisioned this scenario where $1,000 would really mean something to somebody, would really change the game for them. And at the time, I thought, "I bet I could raise a thousand dollars," and in my mind I was like, "I might even be able to raise five thousand dollars." Like, five thousand dollars was sort of this, like, reach of, like, "Maybe I'd be able to raise five thousand dollars. I don't know, but maybe." Well, uh, in a couple of weeks I had raised over $100,000 of people just sending me their little Venmo balances. Some people sent me 50 cents and some people literally sent me $1,000. And I just kept, kept going and started showing people what I was doing with their money. And then when that was over, I had about, uh, I had a small amount of money left. I had like $5,000 left, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be great to give this $5,000 to this organization that buys and forgives medical debt?" You know, I contacted them,

I said, "I have $5,000 to give you. You know, wouldn't it be great if we could open this up a little bit and people could donate if they wanted?" And in my mind, I was like, "Maybe we could raise, like, $15 or $20,000. That would be fantastic." And this organization has a, like, 100 to 1 ratio, where for every dollar donated they can forgive, on average, $100 in medical debt. So, that would forgive a lot of debt; $15 or $20,000 would forgive a ton of medical debt. Well, by the end of that endeavor, which was less than, less than a week, people had donated more than half a million dollars. And over the course of my work with this organization, which is called Undue Medical Debt, um, the Governerds have forgiven over $300 million in medical debt. And I think one of the reasons, the reason I can sort of pinpoint is people very much want to be able to help others. I think that's an innate human desire. They want to help other people. They want to be a good person. They want an opportunity to make a difference in somebody else's life, um, we just don't always know how, and giving people the opportunity to make a difference, I have found to be a very powerful idea.

Julie Rose: I think that's one of, uh, the biggest lessons I've learned in watching your efforts, um, and in thinking about this concept of staying uncomfortable in order to try to, you know, learn something or deepen a relationship or become a better advocate is that, um, it's, it's easier to do the next needed thing together. It's, uh, tremendously inspiring. I really, I really appreciate you sharing your story with us today, Sharon. Thank you so much.

Sharon McMahon: Thank you, Julie.

Julie Rose: Sharon McMahon is author of the New York Times bestseller, The Small and the Mighty: 12 Unsung Americans Who Changed the Course of History from the Founding to the Civil Rights Movement. She's got a podcast, Here's Where It Gets Interesting. Be sure to follow that. And you can find her on her Instagram doing all kinds of amazing things and providing lots of helpful information, @sharonsaysso.

And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. I have wanted to speak to Sharon McMahon for a long time, admiring her work from afar, and I really have been thinking a lot lately about how uncomfortable it is to engage with people on social media and yet how sometimes maybe that is exactly what I should be doing. It's so impressive to me when people like Sharon can look at a place full of anger and dysfunction like social media and say, "What's the next needed thing here," and then go and carve out a place for hope and understanding and learning. I really aspire to that. How are you choosing to stay open and curious or maybe do the Uncomfy thing? I'd love to hear your story. Email us uncomfy@byu.edu or find us on social media to connect.

And if you're a fan of Sharon McMahon, I think you'll like my other podcast, too. It's called Top of Mind with Julie Rose. You can find it on all the podcast apps. Every episode, we are tackling one tough social, economic, or political issue, and we don't take a side. We look for perspectives that will challenge us to see things in a new light, feel new empathy, and ultimately become better citizens and kinder neighbors. It's called Top of Mind with Julie Rose. I hope you'll join me there.

Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Henrique Prado, James Hoopes, and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.