Lauren Jackson

He's 46 years old.

He's from North Carolina and for much of his childhood was a Catholic.

But his family wasn't particularly devout.

Around the time he entered high school, the Catholic Church's sexity scandal was really at the height of its visibility in public life.

So he said he really did not want to go to church anymore.

He fought with his parents, and he kind of pitched this personal crusade against it.

Yeah, okay.

He turned to schools, to his workplace, to a meaningful job as a public defender for a sense of purpose in his life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Then something shifted for him when Trump was elected in 2016.

What shifted?

What changed for him?

One, he didn't see the election results coming.

And it really upended some key assumptions for him about where he thought the country was headed.

He also found himself disturbed by the tenor of the discussion and the discourse around politics, social and cultural issues online.

And he thinks really deeply about the best way to counter what he sees as a kind of toxicity.

So to answer the despair that Nick has been feeling about American politics, he's starting to turn to face this thing that he's been openly hostile to for so long.

What does that look like?

Well, he takes steps slowly.