We know you have a story to tell us.

a few years ago when my first son was born and i was on paternity leave i was just at home taking care of the baby and a funder called and said vu you know can you come into the office i you know we want to talk to you about this grant you had applied to so my organization and another organization had applied to this grant for a hundred thousand dollars and we spent a lot of time So when we got this call, we were really excited.

I called up the other two colleagues and I said, hey, they just called.

They want us to come in tomorrow.

Can you, you know, can you come? Can you make it? Can you drop everything? The other ED, he made this PowerPoint presentation because we thought this was like a site visit, like the next step into getting this $100,000 grant, which was a major deal for our organizations, right? So the next morning, woke up early.

I was on paternity leave, but I thought this was important enough that I can come in.

Right.

Yeah.

oh my

god right so over here on the progressive side we're lucky if we get like a two-year grant two three-year grant five years we're falling on the ground kissing the ground Here's 20 years of funding.

20 years.

And it's huge, significant amounts of money.

It's general operating funds, right? So they build institutions.

They support their cultural warriors, which is why we have like so many conservative pundits we can name like a dozen immediately, right? You and I can just name a bunch of them.

We don't do that on the progressive side, which is why we have amazing people, but they're not anywhere near funded the same way that the right funds its cultural warriors.

is made up.

Yeah.

Right? They control the judiciary.

The largest political gift in US history was $1.6 billion that was donated to turn the Supreme Court into even more right wing than it already is because it's been so effective in doing that.

Like, they also, like, support the culture warriors.

So we can name so many conservative pundits, and we have some brilliant progressive leaders, but they're nowhere near funded the same way that Charlie Kirk, who in, like, when he was 18 years old, you know, like, he just gave a speech and some donors, one donor was like, "Oh, this guy has potential.

I'm gonna help him form Turning Point USA." By the time he was 21, they had given him a million dollars to start Turning Point USA.

So that, like, those four things.

That's what I'm interested in, and I don't even know how to begin that conversation.

Tell me what you mean by suppressed imagination and let's talk about its root causes first.

Yeah, well, suppressed imagination is just our inability to imagine like a bigger, you know, like I think an example is like when we were talking about defunding the police right now.

The police, their budget is oftentimes 10 or more times the budget of education, civic engagement, housing, everything, right? So we live in a society where we probably highly prioritize a police force.

And of course, over the past few years, people have been calling for like an abolishment of the police or at least a reduction so that we can actually focus more money and resources on other things that would make police create a society where the police is not so needed, right? In a safe society, we don't have a strong police presence.

But when that was proposed, even many people in our own community was like, no, we cannot have that.

We must have the police.

We cannot defund the police.

How did they find you?