Beth Macy

Thanks for having me, Dave.

It was really a moment that I had with my sister, who is 13 years older, at our mother's deathbed.

And it happened to be the Saturday after the election of 2020, the day they were counting the votes.

And my mom was in hospice.

She was 93.

She wasn't expected to live, you know, but a day or two longer.

And

And the hospice nurse's phone pinged and she goes, oh, they're calling it for Biden.

And my sister, who had never been political before, but who was very evangelical, sort of shouted out.

wait, it's fraudulent.

He won't win.

And I just was astonished.

I didn't realize how much we operated in different information ecosystems.

But there were some clues.

As I was driving home more often to see my mom, I noticed things like in Urbana, which was once

We were very proud about it being an important stop on the Underground Railroad.

I would now see Confederate flags flying.

And I noticed that a lot of my friends were posting really political things on Facebook.

And even my own brother, who I was very close to, unfriended me at one point during Trump's first administration because of, quote, all the liberal crap I post.

Now I post, I'm a journalist, I post fact-checked articles, mainly from the Washington Post and the New York Times, some of which are articles that I've written myself.