Ep 88

Katherine Getty32min

Katherine Getty

00:01

A lot of this podcast is about filling our cups and well boy do I have a new way to fill your cup. This time with plant based milk soy almond cow is a product that I was introduced to recently, and I couldn't be more excited to be collaborating with them. Almond cow makes the experience of making plant based milk at home simple and fun. There's no straining involved and it takes less than a minute. It's an awesome little machine that for me helps you make milk at home, budget friendly and healthy. And as I focus more on being my best filling my own cup almond cow is one of the first things I think of each day. So want to try it for yourself. Almond cow is offering a special code for you that gives you $25 off your purchase of $200 or more, you can shop at Almond cow.co. That's co not calm, and use code your good news at checkout. Hi, and welcome to the your good news podcast with me your host, Katherine Getty. Each Thursday, I'll give you the scoop on the good news coming out of Washington, and how you can get involved with this thing called democracy. Welcome back to another episode of The your good news podcast at the end of season one. In 2022. I was thinking about how I was going to take Season Two into a new direction. And I just so happened to have an interview with our next guest, Brandon Harvey. At the end of the episode, we just chatted for nearly 40 minutes about podcasting about trying to ensure that you were creating good material for folks that is interesting. And he really lit a spark in me to pursue this new Schoolhouse Rock that we've been doing overseas until I wanted to release this episode this interview because it touched my heart in such a way that I am so grateful that Brandon was willing to have an interview with me it is an amazing interview, you're surely going to enjoy it. But also, it's just a good reminder of how important it is to speak into other people's lives, to have deep conversations to make the time for others. And so I hope that that inspires you as well. And without further ado, my interview with Branden Harvey. My heart is so full today for today's episode with Brandon. As I get started with every episode, Branden, what is your good news?

Branden Harvey

02:28

Oh, my goodness, I forgot to come prepared for this question. But also, you know, it's my job to spend time thinking about good news. So, for me, if I was to just encapsulate the thing that is my good news right now, it is truly just the fact that I continue to see people stepping up in creative and beautiful and unique ways to make a difference in their own communities. And it's not like the big stuff is the small stuff. It's being like, Oh, this is the unique thing that I can do for my kayaking club, you know, the unique way I can make a difference with my free fridge in my community, you know, these very small, specific things that add up to a lot of big change in the world.

Katherine Getty

03:09

I love that so much. So let's set the stage I was able to share with the listeners a little bit about you and all the things that you do. So but I want to hear from you yourself. How did good good guy get started? Was it kind of the newspaper first was the podcast First, there's so many amazing things. If you haven't listed the podcast, go subscribe right now. Sounds good. But I'll turn it over to you how to get started.

Branden Harvey

03:36

So before there was good, good, good, there was just me running around being very interested in people making a difference. My background was as a humanitarian photographer, where I got to travel all over the world with a bunch of amazing inspiring nonprofits, helping them tell the story of the positive impact that they were making, and specifically, really the solutions they were creating to the world's greatest problems. So I come home from these trips really amped up being like, wow, I felt really overwhelmed by you know, HIV and AIDS rates or maternal mortality rates are, you know, like these big ideas. And I would come home and be like, Wow, there are people working to create amazing solutions to these problems. They are inspiring, they are creative, they are using, you know, like just the people in these communities who care deeply about these issues. And they are making a huge difference in the world. And it was just so energizing and inspiring. And I could not help but find ways to share this. And that's where good good good begin with a sense of essentially trial and error. How do you communicate these ideas because I learned this later. Apparently, all of our brains have this internal negativity bias where bad news sticks to our brains like Velcro And good news lies right off our brains like a Sobey. Slip and Slide. And the the, the terrible thing about that is that even though we all say we want good news, even though we all, you know, maybe even try to see out good news, it just doesn't stick to our brains as easily. And so I've got these stories that are super inspiring to me. And I know from my conversations with friends who love hearing them, that there's a lot of people who want them, but they just can't compete on social media, they can't compete online. And so I'm basically just trying to figure out, okay, well, how do I get these stories to other people, because I also want to make sure more of these stories are coming to me to kind of come back to the logistical question of like, what came first, the first thing I did was I started a podcast. And my thought process was, hey, we all connect on a story level with other people, an emotional level, I think this could work. And it definitely did. And it took me down this rabbit trail of learning from a lot of amazing inspiring world changers and specifically about like, how they had found their way to making a difference, which, you know, we can get into a little bit later. The short version, though, is that they all were really in tune with the bad news of the World. And only because of that, were they able to create good news. So we started with the podcast. And then I was like, you know, this is working. But I also think there needs to be something that's like competing in almost like the news space, if that makes sense. You know, because we're bombarded with bad news, and maybe our inboxes our social media feeds. At the time, you know, the daily wasn't a podcast, you I don't think there was as much news stuff happening in the podcast base, it was much more comedy conversations, you know, my nerdy last podcast that I listened to back in the day. And so I launched a newsletter at that time, and it was this total like, fluke, where I was just like, hey, I've heard of people starting newsletters. I'm gonna, I did. This is definitely like, not the way to do this. But I just posted on Instagram, like, Hey, who wants me to send you an email with the week's good news, I'm going to do some research by that what good is happening? comment with your email address below. Like, I'm sure all those people ended up getting a bunch of spam from people who like scraped their emails, but I'm very grateful. It was a lot of people who responded, sent out that first batch of good news emails. And apparently, like, the standard open rate for an email is something like eight to 15%. Ours, our open rate was like 70%, like people wanted this thing. And it's still like, 50 60% To this day, like, it's, it's unreal. So I was like, Okay, well, this is working, and then began just the process of okay, well, what are the other things that will kind of cut through the noise in a weird way, and the biggest, weirdest way that we've done this is, we created a print newspaper filled with good news called the good newspaper. That goal was, you know, essentially saying, Okay, well, we cannot compete with traditional media, we don't want to, we just don't have any money. Like, we're just, I'm very poor, I don't have like the ability to, like, you know, invest millions of dollars in, you know, the time, like, a big common thing that media companies were doing is, they would buy a Facebook ad for articles to drive clicks over to the article on their website. And then they would, you know, recoup that revenue from ad revenue on the website. And I'm like, I just don't have the ability to pour millions of dollars into that. Not to mention, it's just gonna get a worse click through rate or whatever, then probably the bad news is because a bad news story is going to connect deeper. So the goal was, what's the weirdest thing we can do to get attention. And of course, as a millennial who had never bought a newspaper in my life, I was like, ah, it would be so funny if we made a newspaper, build of good news. And then it that joke turned into committing a lot of time and energy to actually figure out how to do it. We launched it on Kickstarter. And again, I was surprised by the reaction, I expected that it was maybe a 5050 chance of whether or not we reach our full funding goal and actually get to do it. But we reached that full funding goal within like 56 hours or something like that. And so we were like, Okay, I guess we have to make a newspaper filled with good news now. You know, we figured out that whole process, and ever since then, we've just been trying to continue to find weird, fun ways to help. You know, other people fill their life with a little bit more hopefulness. And it's mostly just because that's what I need. Like, that's what I'm craving. And it's so far is working. We're still in business. We're still sharing good news. And it's really cool to have found a community this growing community of people who care about celebrating good and then not only just celebrate Good, but then going out and becoming the good of the world and making a difference, and taking action so that they can be the next good news story that gets reported and inspire somebody else. And the cycle continues. There's just so many

Katherine Getty

10:11

nuggets. I was like scribbling on my paper, so many, like nuggets. But I think a couple things I'd love to delve even further is like the idea of the negativity bias like this. I started this podcast and 2021 It really was an idea and 2020 because there were so much news that I couldn't I was living by myself with my cat. Like, it was a sad time. It was scary. I didn't know what was happening. Yeah. And how do you kind of like, push through or not push through kind of like, sometimes I'm like, I'm just gonna be in this space and allow myself to feel negative feelings, but still choose like, maybe it's like going smiling at the barista? How do you kind of deal with your own negativity bias to sell create good,

Branden Harvey

10:54

I will say so I mean, natural optimist. I naturally, like wake up in the morning with a smile on my face, all this stuff. And that got me through life pretty well, for a long time. But other you know, natural born optimists have experienced this as well, I'm sure you hit a point where you completely burnout because I think that that optimism is coming from an unsustainable place. And for me, it was that basically what I was doing with my life was I was just pretending that bad things weren't happening. And part of that is just like the privilege that I experienced of bad things weren't necessarily happening to me, they were happening on the news, or they were happening in different communities. And at some point, either that bad news starts happening to you or somebody you love, or you know, community you're a part of, or you just, you know, you have this logjam of like, I can't block it out anymore. And that was actually a big thing that that I learned from starting our podcasts. If you go back and listen to like, the first year or two of our podcasts, you basically hear me coming into all these conversations, happy and optimistic, talking with people that inspire me who are making a difference in the world and seem really hopeful. And every conversation, I'm almost confused, because I'm like, Wait, you're talking about so much heartbreak and pain and feeling these these challenging feelings? This, like, how does that make sense? How do you get from there to actually like, feeling hopeful. And I think that the only way out is through like, I think that the only way that you can actually feel better about the state of the world, is to acknowledge the real challenges of it. And actually a good good good, we've almost at this point created a framework from all these conversations with, you know, activists and world changers, but also like a neuro psychologist, and all these folks who kind of know their way around these things. And we basically say that the the route to hopefulness is, step one, pay attention to what's happening in the world, and feel the feelings of what's happening. If you see a natural disaster, if you see a mass shooting, if you see something heavy, it's natural for you to feel those feelings and mourn that loss. And so do that actually go through that Brene Brown says you can't selectively numb emotion. And I think it's really important that you can actually feel that depth of pain sometimes. So that then you can feel that depth of joy. But then we never want somebody to stop there. Most people stop there with just feeling that pain. The next step that we encourage people to do is to look for the helpers, Mr. Rogers talks about this idea where he's got this quote, where he says, When I was a boy, and I'd see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, look for the helpers, you will always find people who are helping, and we just kind of like, Take Mr. Rogers mom at her word, that there will always be people who are helping. So when that natural disaster strikes, you know, who's showing up on the ground, who's making a difference in their communities, who's helping their neighbors, you can look for those stories, it's easier to find, if you're, you know, in that community or for us, you know, it's our job to find people in that community and share those stories. So that somebody you know, across the world can can tune into us and, and we'll share who those helpers are. And then, you know, we basically say, you know, if you have the privilege of experiencing the news through the news, if you have the experience of looking for the helpers from afar, then maybe you have the obligation to take action and make a difference and become a helper yourself. When you basically complete that full cycle for mourning, to looking for the helpers to becoming a helper yourself. That's how you can feel better about the world. And it does not have to be a big thing every time like if like if there's a natural disaster in I think about I used to live in Tennessee and they had this horrendous hurricane or sorry, tornado, right as COVID was starting and I felt so helpless from afar because I couldn't show up like my friends were and like, move debris and help people you You know, salvage things from their, their houses and stuff, I couldn't do that from afar, but I could donate some money, I could, you know, lend some, some support to my friends, like, there's a lot of different ways that you can make a difference. And they can be in big and small ways. But truly, I think going through that whole process is what allows us to feel better about the state of the world. And I try to do that literally, with anytime I see a bad news story, I'm like, Okay, if I want to actually like go through the full like, like, cycle of my brain processing this, I have to do all three of those things. Otherwise, it's just gonna keep rattling around my brain until, you know, I think I have a breakdown or something like that,

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