– Intro + favorite musicals + why this episode is different

Liz Canada 0:00

The first question that I asked Jack when we talked was what was his favorite musical? And so I feel like I need to ask you the same thing. What is your favorite musical, Katie?

Katie Adams 0:08

My favorite score is probably Light in the Piazza. Oh, okay. Because I just think never listen to it. Exquisitely b well okay, stop.

Liz Canada 0:17

Never.

Katie Adams 0:18

Here, stop hit stop. Cut. Cut. Stop what we're doing. Listen to the entire score of Light in the Piazza, then we'll come back and finish. Um, it is exquisitely beautiful, just lush and gorgeous.

Liz Canada 0:29

All right, I will listen to Light in the Piazza. Sometimes guests come on and they're like, Liz, you should go read these state statutes. No, but I will listen to the cast recording of Light in the Piazza, I promise you.

Katie Adams 0:41

I think if one of us is gonna make the other one read a state statute, it's gonna be you making me.

Liz Canada 0:59

You're listening to New Hampshire has Issues, and I am your host, Liz Canada, bringing you an episode that is maybe a little bit out of the ordinary. A year ago, I was talking with Katie, who you just heard, about how her son was raising money for endangered animals. And I said, if I'm still doing my podcast in a year, I would love to have Jack on, uh, if he is still fundraising. And he he is, and he's my main guest today. This episode is perfect for those of you who have kiddos who might listen while you listen to this podcast. It's perfect if you don't have kids. Jack is incredible. And it's great if you are someone who just cares about something in New Hampshire and you're like, ugh, can I do anything? Is there anything possible I can do? It's kind of impossible to listen to Jack and not have some hope and optimism about change. And the same goes for Katie. The second half of the episode, I talk with her about things that she's doing, both as a parent of Jack and also on her own. Uh, this was the first year that she went to the New Hampshire State House and spoke at a public hearing, and so we talk about that experience that she had. So this is when I tell you that if you would like to support the show, you can become a monthly subscriber at patreon.com slash nh hasissues. But more important today is if you would like to support Jack's fundraiser, go to the episode description and there is a link in there that will give you the information that you need. If you would like to send Jack a note, some words of encouragement, you can send that message to me, Newhampshire has Issues at gmail.com, and I will make sure that Jack gets your message. Thank you for listening. All right, Jack, welcome to New Hampshire Has Issues. I know that you are a youth advocate, but how young are we talking? What grade are you in?

– Meet Jack: third-grade animal advocate

Jack 2:51

Um, I'm in third grade.

Liz Canada 2:53

Oh my god, you're in third grade. My full-time job, my regular day job, I have a role and it's called an advocacy director. And my job is to help people to advocate for things that they care about. I'm always curious what inspires people to want to make a change and to advocate. And I know that for the past few years, you've been advocating for, I believe, endangered animals. Does that sound right? Does that sound like you?

Jack 3:20

Yes. That is exactly what's been happening.

Liz Canada 3:22

That's exactly okay. So tell me what it is that you do. Talk to me about what your advocacy looks like.

Jack 3:28

Well, it's

– How the annual endangered animal fundraiser works

Jack 3:29

always uh one week in this month, the month of May, where my mom will take videos of me like sharing facts about uh the animal, and then they will be posted on Instagram. And then on the Saturday of the week, we will have a bake sale as pretty much like the final raising of money. Um, and sometimes we'll like take them out to Swayze Parkway and like like walk around and see if we can find anyone there who wants to who wants to buy.

Liz Canada 4:02

In these Instagram videos that you're making, you're giving information about the animal that you're raising money for, is that right? Yes. What are the types of things that you cover in these videos? Like what's the kind of facts and information that you're sharing?

Jack 4:16

Uh, it feels like the most interesting facts that people would most likely not know, which would make people want to dig deeper and learn more about this animal. And it's easier to do that if they exist. So m it m might get them to want to raise money for them so that th they can be helped.

Liz Canada 4:39

Can you share with me the animals you've raised money for in the past?

Jack 4:44

Well,

– Big cats, penguins, and dolphins: choosing the cause

Jack 4:45

this is the third year we're doing it.

Liz Canada 4:46

So wait, you started this in when you were in first grade?

Jack 4:48

Uh yes.

Liz Canada 4:49

Oh my goodness. Okay. All right. Love this.

Jack 4:51

The first year was for big cats. Oh yes, I remember this. Yes, yes, yes. It was it was very fun. It felt like I did not know I could do this, but now I do. So um maybe we could carry on with this next year. And that's what happened. Um, the second year I raced for penguins. And this third year, um, I am fundraising for dolphins.

Liz Canada 5:17

When you started this with big cats, what inspired why why did you start doing it? Like, what made you say, like, okay, big cats love them, respect them, care for them. I need to raise money for them. Like, where did this even come from?

Jack 5:31

When I was in preschool, um, I had a passion for all animals in general. My favorite was always giraffes um in particular. And I was like reading books about these animals. Um, I even made a presentation to my preschool class about giraffes.

Liz Canada 5:54

Just on your own. You were like, I'm doing this.

Jack 5:56

Uh yeah. And that made me want to uh save animals in need. Um and I was also getting into liking big cats, so I decided big cats are endangered. They're so cool.

– The Martin Luther King Jr. school assignment that inspired the fundraiser

Liz Canada 6:15

So cool.

Jack 6:15

So this is the first one we should do. And then it kind of just carried itself through from there. I learned about Martin Luther King Jr. and his famous speech, The I Have a Dream speech. Mm-hmm. And my teacher asked, if you were to uh recreate that speech and write it about something something different, what would you write it about? And I said I would write it about helping animals. And then when I got home from school that day, while we were eating dinner, I s I I told the whole story, basically. And uh that was when the idea like kind of flowed between our heads that we should do animal fundraisers yearly. So so that's where where the idea came from.

Liz Canada 7:02

So you got an assignment in school. You have this conversation at school about Martin Luther King, and you come home and you talk about it with your family. So through that conversation that was started from your school, it has led you to this day still fundraising, still inspired by that assignment. Your school did that for you?

Jack 7:20

Uh yes, that is what happened. It was a school assignment that was not meant to be carried on in the way it did.

Liz Canada 7:28

Or maybe, maybe like the teacher secretly hoped that it would stay with you, but it really has. So it lasts a week. You do this for one full week. It ends with a bake sale, and this year, it sounds like you're focusing on dolphins. Now, I did get a little sneak peek that that was the animal that you were going to be covering. However, I have done zero studying. Okay, I know, I know. Usually for a guest, I do a little bit of research, I promise. But I wanted to be truly coming into this as a fresh conversation. So, can you give us a little bit of a preview of the types of things one might learn about dolphins during your fundraising week?

Jack 8:05

Well,

– Fascinating dolphin facts

Jack 8:06

something, uh, this is probably a more commonly known fact out of all the possible facts about dolphins. Um, dolphins are actually types of whales. So when you think of a humpback whale, a dolphin is just a type of whale. And even though you might think, how can that be? They look totally different.

Liz Canada 8:25

They do.

Jack 8:26

They are both marine mammals and they do carry other similarities that make them in classified in the same family. I really did not know that.

Liz Canada 8:36

Great, I'm learning a lot already. Keep going.

Jack 8:38

Another thing about them is that sometimes the the lead dolphin of a pod, and I I found this out um during my earlier research to be prepared, um, that the lead dolphin will sometimes rake their teeth on some of the rest of the pod to indicate that they're the lead and dominant dolphin, that they will lead the pod in in all life.

Liz Canada 9:06

How much research do you do before you go into your fundraising week? Do you call it fundraising? Do you call it an awareness campaign? What like do you have a an official title for what your week is?

Jack 9:18

Um, it's kind of unofficial, so it's not like fully official, but we do call it fundraising. And we do a lot of researching for this so that uh we can be prepared and pick pick things out that we do want to include when sharing facts about the animal and things that we don't want to include when sharing facts about the end.

Liz Canada 9:41

Mm-hmm. So you have to make decisions of like, I want to tell the audience these really important facts that I think they're gonna like, but these other ones might not be the best for the videos that I'm making.

Jack 9:53

Yeah. And it's like you can learn facts anytime you want to. Just uh if you can like go to the library or something and like pick out a fact book about really anything, uh, and you can like find out stuff uh that you might not have known already. And it it's really cool. Uh and that's why it's not a super big matter that I say every single possible fact.

Liz Canada 10:21

Right. Yeah. You're sort of like getting people interested that if they then want to learn even more, they have like that sort of base knowledge to build off of.

Jack 10:30

Yeah, yeah. That's that's pretty true. And that that sounds right, yeah.

– Where the fundraising money goes + choosing charities

Liz Canada 10:36

All right. I'm gonna I'm gonna ask a question that maybe a listener might be wondering, Jack. Where does the money go? If you're raising money, where does the money get sent to?

Jack 10:46

During our fact preparation, uh, my mom will look into charities that support the animal, whether it's the animal specifically or it's uh the animal and its family. And once she finds a charity that uh she knows will work, we uh always release a video about this is the charity it's being donated to. Right. So yeah, that's where the money goes. It goes to a charity that will uh help and protect the animal. This year's charity is the National Marine Mammal Foundation. And I remember like looking on their website and they had around 10 to 15 marine mammals that were like listed. Uh these are the ones that we definitely want to protect, including the Amazon River Dolphin and the Atlantic Humphack Dolphin.

Liz Canada 11:40

Okay, I didn't even know that there were multiple types of dolphins, if I'm gonna be honest. This is all new information. Do you have a fundraising goal? Sometimes when people do fundraisers, they say, I want to raise this amount of money. Or are you just thinking, I want to just raise what I can raise? Or something else, a secret third thing, maybe.

– Jack’s fundraising goals and building confidence through advocacy

Jack 11:57

Uh yeah. It was something that is uh actually not what you mentioned. I was feeling like personal goals. And it's like I think the second year we did not beat the personal goal of big cats, but we still raised a lot of money. So what I want to do is just it's just beat the personal best.

Liz Canada 12:13

Do you want to share what your personal best is? You don't have to. You can keep it secret.

Jack 12:17

I don't know what the personal best is off the top of my head.

Liz Canada 12:20

Uh it's we might be getting some notes from the side of the room. Hard to say.

Jack 12:23

It is somewhere around $2,000.

Liz Canada 12:27

Wow. Okay, that's a really good personal best, Jack. That's you're in third grade, you've already raised literally thousands of dollars for animals in past years, and so you're hoping to beat that this year.

Jack 12:39

Yes, I am very much hoping to beat that this year. And it's just th there's just so many fun things to helping animals in in these ways because it's like you feel so good about yourself, and it's like, I can do that. I I know that I can do that. I want to keep doing this. I feel like uh the longer I'm doing this, the more confident I'll feel about doing this because I know I will learn some like the secrets to like just being in public in general and like speaking in public, and I've had a lot of experience with that now.

Liz Canada 13:13

So Yeah, to feel that confidence of you know, you're researching, you're learning, you're educating others, and like that does that builds confidence and it's like it's it's this experience of caring about something and wanting to do something about it. Like that's really incredible.

Jack 13:27

Yeah, yeah. I feel so good about doing that as well. That's awesome.

Liz Canada 13:31

So,

– Student council, community fridges, and running for office

Liz Canada 13:32

Jack, you also serve on your elementary school student council. What led you to run for student counsel? Did you go into elementary school being like, you know what, I'm gonna be a politician. I am running for student counsel now. I'm always trying to get people to run for office. Here you are, you're an elected official.

Jack 13:47

Well, my older brother Luke, he also wanted to run for student council and he ended up being one of the what we call officers. Um he was the treasurer, so he like organizes the money that is that is used at the school store. Um and so I wanted to do it too, and I knew it would be hard because I haven't I didn't have that much experience with writing speeches before because that's what we need to do, and then we vote on whose speech was um the best. But I did it and I I got through it and I'm glad I'm in the student council.

Liz Canada 14:23

Do you remember what you campaigned on? What was part of your speech that you gave?

Jack 14:27

The community fridge, um near the Yeah, the YMCA. Yeah, near the Y. Um I remember talking about maybe we should have a drive of food to go to the community fridge. Um, I remember uh talking about that.

Liz Canada 14:43

That's awesome. Now I have learned very recently that you started a petition at your school. You want to tell me a little bit about this petition that you started?

– The petition campaign

Jack 14:54

Uh yes. So I was in the cafeteria. They served French toast. It was it was great.

Liz Canada 15:01

Shout out to the French toast in the cafeteria. Yes. Love that, yep.

Jack 15:04

Except it was hard to cut because we do not have plastic knives at our school. Um, it's like I've done it with two plastic forks, so it would be much more convenient to do it with plastic knives, especially because w we need these forks for other things other than the French toast. Uh so luckily I had some paper and I wrote a petition about we should have knives. And I brought it into the student council, um, and they told me to speak with the the principal about it. So I will be doing that next week.

Liz Canada 15:37

Oh my goodness, so you're like mid-journey in this petition. You got other students to sign on?

Jack 15:44

Uh yes, we got about uh around 30 to 40 students, and it's like out of a whole school, that's not that much, but there's only so many people we could ask access.

Liz Canada 15:56

So Jack, that's a lot of that's a lot of students that you got sign-ons for. Let me let me just be really clear that when we have citizens' petitions in town where you can literally get something on the ballot that you care about if you get enough signatures. It's somewhere around that number, I'm pretty sure, maybe even fewer. So, like, you did as much work as folks do to change something in Exeter in general. You did it right there in your own elementary school. So I hope you will keep me posted on what happens if you get the knives for the French toast. Will you follow up with me?

Jack 16:27

Yes, uh, I definitely will the moment that I can. Yes.

Liz Canada 16:31

Thank

– Jack’s advice for kids who want to make change

Liz Canada 16:32

you. All right, so a lot of people who listen to my little podcast, they have kids in their lives, whether their parents themselves or their aunties or whomever they are, and sometimes they listen in the car with their kiddos with them. What is your advice to those kids who might be listening in the backseat or in their house? What's your advice to them on making change and advocating like what would be your recommendation if they care about something, but they've never done any of the things that you just have talked about?

Jack 17:00

The first step to doing that is finding your passion and looking through it and thinking about it. Is there a problem with this? And if there is, what's the problem and how can it be solved? Once you have the solution, all you have to do is take action and do it. And some people might not feel like, well, I'm just a kid. I I don't have the power to do that. You do have the power to do that. You can change something in the world no matter how small.

Liz Canada 17:33

Jack,

– Parenting boys, activism, and supporting passionate kids

Liz Canada 17:34

thank you so much for being on New Hampshire Has Issues. And I am gonna look forward to the videos that will be posted so I can learn more and so that I can also donate to your fundraising week. That would be great. So, Katie, Jack is incredible, by the way. Not sure if you're aware that your child is incredible. You made him yourself. All right, so you're a boy mom. I'm uh boy list, which can be taken out of context somehow. What are your boy mom's secrets? Like, tell me what it's like raising you have three boys. Give me three boys. Secrets and hot tips on raising young guys.

Katie Adams 18:10

Well, I would say the biggest surprise has been how naturally sweet they are. Like they boys come out sweet and like they love their moms and they're very loving. So I think really like always being that tender place for them where they can always bring that sweetness. Because as they grow up, the world encourages them to harden a little bit and being the like always that kind of soft presence at home, making it safe for them to feel like they can be that um sweeter, more tender side at home, I think is like one of my one of the things I've learned um about being a boy mom. And also, I mean, my three are all very different, but they all went through my my youngest one, Theo, is four and is in it right now, like an incredibly passionate phase of devotion to the Pixar Cars franchise. So the second thing I've learned is absolutely everything about Lightning McQueen and all of the Cars movies and Radiator Springs and the Cars uh cinematic universe. These are now deeply special to me. I will be buried with all of the little figurines. So that is uh if you have boys, I suggest, you know, be a soft place for them to land and know everything about Lightning McQueen.

Liz Canada 19:36

Two easy things to do, I think, yeah. As a as a parent. Perfect. When I talked to Jack, you know, he he was very clear that he has your help in this process, right? He's like, mom helps with finding the right place to, you know, donate to. What's been your experience as mom in this process of supporting him in this journey of raising money and, you know, talking to the general public, putting his putting himself out there and and sharing information. What has it been like for you as mom?

– Helping kids turn passion into action

Katie Adams 20:07

Jack is my middle son, and he is the most, he is the most himself of the three, I would say. He is has always been unique and really steadfast in the ways in which he marches to his own drummer. And I think he mentioned in the interview that his first passion for animals was about giraffes. And I mean, he just gently but forcefully dragged the whole family and his entire preschool class into a giraffe era. Like everyone in that preschool class learned that these things are called osicones and everything else about giraffes.

Liz Canada 20:46

Wow.

Katie Adams 20:47

It was just impossible to resist him. He has like, he's like got us like a steady drip where it just like it is gentle, but it will, it is relentless, which is a wonderful quality in an activist. Absolutely. We have learned. So when this idea kind of germinated about doing a fundraiser, I wanted to empower him about using his voice and following his passion. He's very passionate. Well, I also thought this was an opportunity to both give him the spotlight, which is something I look for for my middle son, and also teach him some things like if we're trying to get people to understand what we're saying in a video, what are some strategies to do that? And when we're going to give money to a charity, how do we think about what are some ways that we find a good one? You know, it feels like there are a lot of opportunities built into this to learn together and to teach him. And my main hope was that he would feel empowered and proud. And I think he does.

Liz Canada 21:53

Oh, I think that comes across very clearly that he's like super proud of what he's working on.

Katie Adams 21:58

But have there been bumps along the way of

Liz Canada 22:00

Of doing this type of fundraiser.

Katie Adams 22:02

Yeah.

– The emotional side of fundraising and public advocacy

Katie Adams 22:03

Well, like sometimes what what we mainly do is make videos sharing facts about the animal. And post I post them on Instagram with his permission. So sometimes, you know, he comes up with a fact where I'm like, this is interesting, but it's not really making our case for this animal. So like how can we, how can we think about choosing the facts? I think the biggest bump is just, you know, I cannot control how much people donate. So we put out a video, and maybe the first day we get a couple hundred dollars sent to my, we just do it, they send it to my Venmo. And he's so excited. But then maybe the second day we don't really get much. And he I and he asks and he's curious about where we are with all of that. And I share it, and I want to share it with him in a way that doesn't make him feel like it's a referendum on that specific video or him that day. Right. But there is a sense in which you open yourself up to being disappointed when you put yourself out there like that. So I would say that's the trickiest part.

Liz Canada 23:06

And what about the rest of the family? You know, he's got an older brother, he's got a younger brother, he's got a dad. How does everybody else get involved or not?

Katie Adams 23:14

It's a different dynamic every year because every year the dynamics between the boys are different. So generally there is some competitiveness about it in the beginning or while we're in like the prep phase. But I would say once we're really in the week where we're sharing the videos and making the videos and preparing for the bake sale, everyone kind of gets excited. I mean, Jack is you just cannot resist him.

Liz Canada 23:39

Yeah.

Katie Adams 23:40

And so, like, even his older brother, who's now 12, who occasionally has moments of rolling his eyes, you know, if he sees a cool dolphin thing out in the world, he's like, Hey Jack, check out this dolphin thing. Like it affects everyone. And like, yeah, and his dad especially helps him with the baking for the bake sale. So the whole family ends up being just seduced to the cause. I mean, that's Jack's that's his magic touch.

Liz Canada 24:07

Yeah, it was great chatting with him and hearing from him and hearing the story about student counsel and going there and you know, bringing his petition and that he's gonna meet with the principal. Has he met with the principal yet? He said he was gonna do that this week.

Katie Adams 24:19

He reached out to the principal today and did not hear back. So little does that principal know that there's gonna be a lot of eyes on him now.

Liz Canada 24:26

Well,

– Katie’s first experience testifying at the NH State House

Liz Canada 24:27

now it's on the podcast. We are all paying attention. That's right now for sure. So, Katie, I I do want to talk about your own advocacy because I I know you as a human. This is the first time you've gone to a public hearing in New Hampshire at least, and given testimony. And I thought that's very interesting that, you know, I'm gonna have Jack on the podcast to talk about his advocacy and also like you have some new advocacy experiences as well. And I'm hoping you just talk about that. Like, why did you do that? A lot of the folks who listen to this podcast obviously care about at least one issue. So, what was that experience like for you to go to the state house and provide testimony to a committee?

Katie Adams 25:07

Well, I am involved in some local action groups. Um, and one of the groups I'm in, we set a goal that we would try to do this this year in 2026. We would try to testify at the state house. And there are no shortage of bills that come before our state representatives that I feel strongly about. And this one in particular was written in such a way that it was claiming that our children are being indoctrinated in our public schools, and we have to stop that. Two of my children are in public school right now. My third will join public school next year. They are not being indoctrinated. Um, and so I felt strongly that I could speak to this topic. I have friends who could give me a lot of insight about how the process worked, which I thought was really helpful. And I thought, you know, once I do this, I'll be able to demystify it for some of my friends and some people that I know who care about it. The experience was interesting. I was, I mean, it is intimidating when you've never done it because the whole process, it follows these rules, which are kind of they seem arbitrary from the outside, and you don't really know walking into it, like what you're supposed to do, where you're supposed to sit, and when do you speak? And so getting used to that, the formality and the kind of culture was, I would say, the part that sort of made me the most nervous. And the first time I went to testify, they had so many people there to talk that I couldn't. They were like, we have to stop the hearing and recess, so we'll pick it up again next week. To drive an hour to Concord the following week is really asking a lot. And I was angry. I was angry that I had taken time, you know, to do this. And I was mad because I was like, I'm trying to do this thing, and now it's become inconvenient for me. But I am more stubborn than anything else. So I came back the next week and I was able to testify. And what I really ended up feeling was I have a lot of respect for this process, but these people work for me.

Liz Canada 27:27

So true.

Katie Adams 27:29

They're not doing me a favor by listening to my two-minute, you know, statement about this bill. That's what they're supposed to do. And I can show up with all the respect and deference to the offices they hold and the process while still feeling extremely entitled to be there and speak my mind. That is their whole job to listen to their constituents.

– Why regular people should testify at public hearings

Liz Canada 27:53

Absolutely. You know, I had an episode very early on with leader Alexa Simpson, and we talked about the process of, you know, the legislative process. And every bill gets a hearing in New Hampshire. And those hearings are folks from the public coming to Concord. You have to go in person. And so what happened in that hearing, Katie, is kind of unusual, where they say, actually, we have to stop and we're going to come back a whole different day. Like that is that doesn't happen very often and is extremely inconvenient for people who have traveled who knows how far and have like made their day about being there. And I'm sure there were quite a few people who were there the first day but couldn't go back the second day. And that just means that their testimony is not heard.

Katie Adams 28:38

Yeah. I work for myself, so I'm able to make my own schedule. And that, and even just the process of going on a weekday in the morning when the vast majority of people are at a nine to five job, it's not set up to be convenient, but it is doable. And it turns out that's actually not that scary. And something I noticed that I didn't expect was a lot of the people there were clearly experts who all the committee members knew already and already knew what they were going to say about the bills.

Liz Canada 29:14

Oh, interesting.

Katie Adams 29:16

And I thought I was not the only one who was not an expert, but I kind of thought it actually makes it more important to go if you're not an expert. Because I think a lot of people, myself included, have felt like, do I really know enough about this? Do I know everything about this subject in to go and testify? Like, shouldn't I really be, shouldn't this be my life's work before I make my two-minute statement? And I would argue that many people are not experts who are in even writing this legislation. So don't let that stop you. But also hearing from the regular people who are going to be affected by this legislation is really powerful and important. And it's actually even sometimes more important for just parents or citizens to be there alongside people giving expert testimony.

Liz Canada 30:06

That's such a great point. There are folks who are at the statehouse pretty often. They're with organizations. And so the lawmakers know them really well. I'm one of those people. When I walk into many of the committees that I'm in, they they know who I am. When they call my name, they know that that's me, right? Like some there somewhat frequently. But folks who aren't there, there's a different reverence to their testimony because they are real life granite staters. Like they have taken the time out of their entire day to make that commute to be there and offer their perspective. And it's not about being an expert. It's about I care about what happens to this. I want it to become law or I do not want it to become law. And here is why. And that's available for anybody in the public to be able to do. So I'm so glad that you that you did that. That's a that's a huge deal. Congratulations.

Katie Adams 30:58

It

– Advice for adults who want to get involved in activism

Katie Adams 30:59

was I was really glad I did it too. And my deepest hope would be that someone that I have a social relationship in our community who is not a political activist would maybe think, well, I mean, if she can do it, like I could do it. You know, one of the baseball moms or someone I know from the kids' theater group or whatever it is. Because that's when the process works best, is when everyone feels like, this is my problem, actually.

Liz Canada 31:24

That's exactly right.

Katie Adams 31:25

All right.

Liz Canada 31:25

So I asked Jack what his advice is to other kids. If they care about an issue, what should they do? What's your advice to the other parents, aunties, grandparents who care about things? What's your advice to them?

Katie Adams 31:40

If it

– Raising civically engaged kids in stressful times

Katie Adams 31:41

if we're talking about pe adults uh trying to get a toe into activism, my advice is even though it is scary to realize that there is no savior coming to right every wrong that you may see in this country or world, it is also all the permission you need to be the one and to decide that you are going to save yourself and your community in whatever way you care about. And so just pick pick a thing like Jack and devote yourself to it. In terms of being a parent or caregiver, I try to lower the barrier of entry for my kids. So um I have brought them to a couple of really local um protests or community events where I knew pretty well who was gonna be there, what the vibe was gonna be. I felt really comfortable bringing them. And they're right in their town, they're seeing familiar faces. I think that's good for kids. But I also try to just be honest about boy, I'm feeling frustrated about this thing and I can't really fix it. Let's bring some food over to the community fridge or let's give $5 to an organization that we care about. And we won't have solved everything, but we'll have done one thing. And just being transparent about those small actions, I think kids then feel like, okay, this is a doable thing. I think that one of the difficult things about being a parent in this moment is managing the bad feelings, fear or anxiety or anger. And I had to learn that pretending I don't have them or I'm not concerned about politics didn't really work. And it was better to just find an age-appropriate way to share it and then find an age-appropriate way to remedy it and doing that one small thing, focusing on one thing in your community. I started out talking about that with the kids as a way to help them, but really it has helped me the most.

Liz Canada 33:47

Taking a little bit of control in this very chaotic world that we are in in this exact moment, and navigating it with your kids along the way, making sure that they get through it too. Yeah. A plus work. Mommy. I'm done. I think they're all perfect. They're perfect.

– Hamilton, Into the Woods, and a future musicals podcast

Jack 34:04

Nail that done and done. I love Hamilton and music. Those two always like break each other up in my mind. And I also remember being um Into the Woods.

Liz Canada 34:17

Into the Woods is my favorite musical. Did you already know this?

Jack 34:20

Uh no, I did not know that.

Liz Canada 34:22

Who did you play in Into the Woods?

Jack 34:23

I played as Reconto Springs.

Liz Canada 34:26

So you had the very funny song. Hagani. Jack, do you think we should start a podcast about musicals? I think yes. Yes. Okay, perfect. The answer is yes.